#&like i understand (+very much value) the educators in these circles who are willing to do the work&sift thru the nonsense

[jvzebel-x]

🦋

[agent-cupcake]

As a resident Claudefucker, I know am curious to know what our fave charming schemer is doing during this Mafia!AU. He'd look lovely in a suit.

~It was quite the headline when Godfrey Riegan died. The details are a little hazy, a little convenient, but people don't talk about that sort of thing. Car accidents are common. Tragic, but not unreasonable. There’s no reason to smear a man’s perfectly respectable political career for the sake of some sensational gossip.

~In the right circles, however, there was a huge uproar, questions about who was going to take over the Riegan family when the elderly boss Oswald died. The Riegan’s had been dominating Leicester for quite some time, but a lot of people began to predict that the Gloucester family was going to move in. They had powerful friends, it seemed. Friends with money, no less.

~Claude Riegan, grandson of Oswald, appeared out of nowhere just when he was needed. Stories of the lost daughter Tiana still circulated, sure, but there were still a lot of questions about Claude’s origins when nobody except Oswald were able to vouch for him. He obviously had military leadership experience—his skill with guns and ability to lead was just too excellent for any other explanation—but he dismissed the question out of hand. There’s no documentation of him, either, leading some to wonder if even his name was false. But Oswald said he was family, and that was that.

~Claude was quick to establish himself, in any case. Despite his cavalier attitude, his efficacy in overhauling the power dynamics of Leicester were profound.  

~He decided, first and foremost, that the way to win the people over was to invigorate the local culture, which had seen a sharp decline as a result of new laws that were unfavorable to business, Adrestia’s growing market monopolies, and the bad reputation of the red light district Ailell. This included some perfectly legitimate campaigning and some under the table type schemes. 

~The result was a flourishing Derdriu Street. While it lacks the prestige of Enbarr Square in Adrestia, it welcomes entertainment that would be considered too “low brow” like comedy, trendy new restaurants, and music venues. Even better, all of it is built on the recently cleaned up river. The Riegan family is involved in all of  it, of course. 

~Casino owner Claude. This exists solely to thirst but maybe it was preexisting and he took it over due to its poor management? If there’s going to be gambling anyway, it should be done right. The extra money’s not so bad, either. But, Claude lounging in a big leather chair in a dark blue blazer with gold brocade, his white shirt unbuttoned low enough to see enough his chest. Enough to make you drool. Enough that you’d definitely get caught staring and probably called out for it because he can’t help himself. Claude with his elbows on the arm rests and fingers folded in front of him as he considers you, gold rings winking because he’s just that ostentatious and appearances are important. Claude asking you how you feel about taking risks in a way that really feels like it has nothing to do with cards, staring at you with a friendly smile that doesn’t meet those calculating eyes—eyes that you know will pick up on every tell. 

~Claude also struck a deal with the Kupala Distillery. They’d been fighting to keep hold of their historic business for years, and Claude offered to help them with that. You know, not for free, but he’s good at making deals that leave everybody happy. 

~The second biggest thing he tackled was the drug trade. For the most part, no one family had ever had a complete handle on that market. The Goneril’s had a hold over the docks for years, but the Edmunds had been moving in and working with the Gloucester family to bolster their power. Distribution was scattered and hard to keep track of as it ultimately circulated wherever there was a profit to be made. Looking at it like this, Claude decided that the only way to fix things was to take control over all of it. In his line of work, shady things like the drug trade are impossible to avoid. At the very least, if he has control over it, he can ensure the product is clean and expel far more unsavory ventures.

~Through these escapades, Claude was able to make alliances with all of the major families. A lot of them had only remained loyal to the Gloucester family out of fear so as soon as they had an alternative, they bolted. This has an unfortunate side effect of revealing how his power is perceived. Every day is a balancing act for Claude. He allows each family to function as they please as long as they’re aware they do so at his mercy. It’s better to keep friends than to control enemies, but even that requires a delicate maneuvering of power.

~However, Claude likes the conflict. He enjoys the game and he especially enjoys winning the game. There’s a certain level of his excusing amorality for the sake of his family and Leicester, but there’s an equal part of him that understands his wrongdoings and deals with it separately. He wouldn’t hold to the naïve “ends justify the means” idea to excuse himself, but he would still argue that his actions have value and are even necessary. If it weren’t him, it would be somebody a lot worse than him. That’s probably something that would linger in the back of everybody’s minds whenever they shook his hand or paid their respects, whenever they began to think of how easy it would be to take him out. Fear, too. So far, Claude’s never done anything shockingly bad, only what was necessary. But with his power and intellect, it’s always a question of what he could do.

~If someone asked him that, Claude would smile that friendly smile and tell them that he would do anything to see his vision made real. Whether or not that’s true remains to be seen. 

~Luckily, Claude’s not alone! Hilda is the stereotypical crime family princess. She joined Claude because he offered her freedom from the overbearing control of her father and brother. Her skill in manipulating everybody around her combined with her reputation as a ditzy rich girl makes her fantastic at gathering information, assuming Claude can get her to do so. But, as long as he’s not being too forceful, she’s surprisingly motivated to weave her way through social circles and charm everyone. Although she would never say it, the order he brought to Leicester, not to mention the entertainment, made everything a lot better for her and her family. Plus, she likes being useful after spending her entire life watching Holst give his heart and soul to family while she did nothing. Ultimately, the information she provides is essential and her relationship with Claude is one of the few either have that’s built on trust, respect, and loyalty. That said, sometimes even Claude gets a little shiver as he watches how easily Hilda can manipulate people.  

~Lorenz was one of Claude’s most disdainful detractors, although a part of that was jealousy. Claude just swept in and did things that Lorenz had been waiting and planning to do once he became the head of the Gloucester family. Even after being on the receiving ends of such vicious attacks, once Claude undeniably had the upper hand in Leicester, he went behind the Gloucester boss’s back to Lorenz and told him that they were going to be friends or enemies, it was Lorenz’s choice. Not threatening him, just pointing out that the fall of the Gloucester family was inevitable under his father’s leadership and that Lorenz didn’t have to suffer for his father’s sins. Probably over mimosas and brunch. Lorenz is proud and has no appreciation for Claude, but he’s not stupid. After they worked out their disagreements and more or less accepted each other, Lorenz and Claude became pretty close. Claude knows that having someone to openly and aggressively disagree with him isn’t a bad thing. Not only that, but Lorenz’s a solid ally with a better grasp on some of the things Claude has difficulty with due to not being a native. Lorenz is willing to admit that Claude is a good leader.

~Marianne is well educated in the realm of the law and political action. The reason the Edmund family saw such success despite their lesser status was because of her adopted father’s genius. which he made sure to share with Marianne. She is invaluable in aiding Claude on the perfectly legitimate side of his business, and helping him hide his tracks for the shady stuff. Raphael is the muscle. Lysithea is a computer genius. Being a sickly shut in with issues that only recently saw treatment, she’s on the Mr. Robot level of hacker mode activated. Ignatz is an architect which is useful since so much of Claude’s power is in the property and infrastructure. He also designed a lot of places to have some neat-o hidey holes. Claude loves buildings that have secrets. Leonie is manages a lot of the physical and pettier side of the work. If someone’s stirring up trouble, she’s likely to pay them a visit as a warning before Claude has to get involved. She used to be a mercenary but being on Claude’s payroll is a lot better of a gig.    

~As for the suits, one thing is very important. Claude would not, under any circumstances, wear something tight on his thighs. I actually kind of like the idea of him going for a 1980′s style modernized. In his post timeskip outfit, he’s already got a hint of that going on with how oversized his outfit looks. The 80′s (rightfully) gets a bad rep for fashion, but it’s also very iconic with those wide-collared suit jackets, matchy-matchy three piece suits, sportscoats with a fun patterned shirt underneath, open blazers, pleated pants with an oversized jacket, and—in particular—the trend of summer suits in shades of tan and cream with colored shirts underneath. Then, combine that with a pair of Ray-Ban Aviators and a topless convertible and you’ve got a distinctly recognizable mob boss who doubles as a devastating heartthrob. I’m not saying he’d do a 1:1 recreation, but you’d definitely see references to the fashion of the era in his outfits. He would wear oxfords or ankle boots. Whatever it was, they’d have to be comfortable. He also doesn’t shy away from jewelry. The earring, of course, and rings when he's feeling particularly decadent. When he’s wearing his shirts unbuttoned Claude could possibly wear a gold chain. I mean, what are you gonna say, no? That gold doesn’t look gorgeous against his skin? That it’s tacky? You’re talking to the man who wore quilted pants. Claude’s not afraid to stand out because he knows he will anyway, nor is he afraid to be seen as unfashionable because he doesn’t particularly care about trends. I also enjoy the idea of him emulating the 80′s as someone who didn’t grow up in a western culture and thus mainly saw things through the lens of movies. Whatever he wears, however, he would look very handsome.

[samwisethewitch]

Coping with religious trauma

CONTENT WARNING: THIS POST CONTAINS DISCUSSIONS OF MENTAL ILLNESS, TRAUMA RECOVERY, AND HOMOPHOBIA. The advice in this post is intended for an adult audience, not for those who are legal minors.

A lot of people find their way to paganism after having traumatic experiences with organized religion, especially in countries like the United States, where 65% of the population identifies as Christian. (This number is actually at an all-time low — historically, the percentage has been much higher.) Paganism, which is necessarily less dogmatic and hierarchical than the Abrahamic religions, offers a chance to experience religion without having to fit a certain mold. This can be extremely liberating for people who have felt hurt, abused, or ignored by mainstream religion.

To avoid making generalizations that might offend people, I’ll share my own story as an example.

My family joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, better known as the Mormons, when I was nine years old. The Mormons are an extremely conservative sect of evangelical Christianity that places a heavy emphasis on maintaining a strong community that upholds their religious values. The problem with that is that Mormon values are inherently racist, sexist, homophobic, and transphobic. As a teenager in the Mormon Church, I was told that as a woman, my only purpose in life was to marry a (Mormon) man and raise (Mormon) children. I was discouraged from pursuing a college education if it meant delaying marriage. I was not allowed to participate in the full extent of religious ritual because I was not a man. I was not allowed to express myself in ways that went against Mormon culture, and I kept my bisexuality secret for fear I would be ostracized. I didn’t have any sort of support system outside the Church, which inevitably made the mental health issues that come with being a queer woman in a conservative Christian setting much, much worse.

I left the Mormons when I was seventeen, and by that time I had some major issues stemming from my time in the Church. I had been extremely depressed and anxious for most of my teen years. I struggled with internalized misogyny and homophobia. I had very low self-esteem. I had anxiety around sex and sexuality that would take years of therapy and self-work to overcome. I wanted to form a connection with the divine, but I wasn’t sure if I was worthy of such a connection.

I was attracted to paganism, specifically Wicca, because it seemed like everything Mormonism wasn’t. Wicca teaches equality between men and women, with a heavy focus on the Goddess in worship. It places an emphasis on doing what is right for you, as long as it doesn’t harm anyone else. It encourages sexuality and healthy sexual expression. Learning about Wicca, and later other types of paganism, helped me develop the kind of healthy spirituality I’d never experienced as a Mormon. Although Wicca is no longer the backbone of my religious practice, it was a necessary and deeply healing step on my spiritual journey.

I’m not sharing my story to gain sympathy or to make anyone feel bad — I’m sharing it because my situation is not an uncommon one in pagan circles. The vast majority of pagans are converts, meaning they didn’t grow up pagan. Some had healthy upbringings in other faiths, or no faith at all, and simply found that paganism was a better fit for them. Others, like myself, had deeply traumatic experiences with organized religion and are attracted to paganism because of the freedom, autonomy, and empowerment it offers.

If you fall into this latter category, this post is for you. Untangling the threads of religious trauma can be an extremely difficult and overwhelming task. In this post, I lay out six steps to recovery based on my own experiences and those of other people, both pagan and non-pagan, who have lived through religious trauma.

While following these steps will help jumpstart your spiritual healing, it’s important to remember that healing is not a linear process — especially healing from emotional, mental, and spiritual trauma. You may have relapses, you may feel like you’re moving in circles, and you may still have bad days in five or ten years. That’s okay. That’s part of the healing process. Go easy on yourself, and let your journey unfold naturally.

Step One: Cut all ties with the group that caused your trauma

Or, at least, cut as many ties as reasonably possible.

Obviously, if you’re still participating in a religious organization that has caused you pain, the first step is to leave! But before you do, make sure you have an exit plan to help you disengage safely and gracefully.

To make your exit plan, start by asking yourself what the best, worst, and most likely case scenarios are, and be honest in your answers. Obviously, the best case scenario is that you leave, everyone accepts it, and all is well. The worst case scenario is that someone tries to prevent you from leaving — you may be harassed by missionaries or concerned churchgoers, for example. But what is the most likely case scenario? That depends on the religious community, their beliefs, and how involved you were in the first place. When making your exit plan, prepare for the most likely scenario, but have a backup plan in case the worst case scenario happens.

Once you’ve prepared yourself for the best, worst, and most likely outcomes, choose a friend, significant other, or family member who can help you make your exit. Ideally, this person is not a member of the group you are trying to leave. Their role is mainly to provide emotional support, although they may also need to be willing to run off any well-meaning missionaries who come calling. This person can also help you transition after you leave. For example, you might make a plan to get coffee with them every week during the time your old religious community holds worship services.

Finally, make your strategy for leaving. Choose a date and don’t put it off! If you have any responsibilities within the group, send in a letter of resignation. Figure out who you’ll need to have conversations with about your leaving — this will likely include any family members or close friends who are still part of the group. Schedule those conversations. Make sure to have them in public places, where people will be less likely to make a scene.

If you feel it is necessary, you may want to request that your name be removed from the group’s membership records so you don’t get emails, phone calls, or friendly visits from them in the future. You may not feel the need to do this, but if contact with the group triggers a mental health crisis, this extra step will help keep you safe.

Of course, it’s not always possible to completely cut ties with a group after leaving. You may have family members, a significant other, or close friends who are still members. If this is the case, you’ll need to establish some clear boundaries. Politely but firmly tell them that, although you’re glad their faith adds value to their lives, you are not willing to be involved in their religious activities. Let them know that this is what is best for your mental and emotional health and that you still value your relationship with them.

Try to make compromises that allow you to preserve the relationship without exposing you to a traumatic religious environment. For example, if your family is Christian and always spends all day on Christmas at church, offer to celebrate with them the day after, once their religious commitments are over.

Hopefully, your loved ones can respect these boundaries. If not, you may need to distance yourself or walk away altogether. If they are knowingly undermining your attempts to take care of yourself, they don’t deserve to be in your life.

During this time, you may find it helpful to read other people’s exit stories online or in books. One of my personal favorites is the book Girl at the End of the World by Elizabeth Esther. Hearing other people’s stories can help you remember that other people have been through similar situations and made it out on the other side. You will too.

Step Two: Seek professional help

I cannot overstate the importance of professional counseling when dealing with trauma of any kind, including religious trauma. Therapists and counselors have the benefit of professional training. They are able to be objective, since they’re approaching the situation from the outside. They can keep you from getting bogged down in your own thoughts and feelings.

I understand that not everyone has access to therapy. I am very lucky to have insurance that covers mental health counseling, but I know not everyone has that privilege. However, there are some options that make therapy more affordable.

There may be an organization in your area that offers free or low-cost therapy — if you live in the U.S., you can find information about these services by checking the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) HelpLine or visiting mentalhealth.gov. You can also look for therapists who use a sliding scale for payment, which means they determine an hourly rate based on the client’s income. And finally, if you have a little bit of extra cash you may want to look into therapy apps like BetterHelp or Talkspace, which are typically cheaper than in-person therapy.

If none of those options work for you, the next best option is to join a support group. Support groups allow you to connect with other people whose experiences are similar to yours and, unlike therapy, they allow you to get advice and feedback from multiple people. These groups are often free, although some charge a small fee.

Finding the right group for you is important. You’re unlikely to find a group for people recovering from religious trauma but, depending on the nature of your trauma, you may fit right in with a grief and loss group, an addiction recovery group, or a group for adult survivors of child abuse. If you’re a member of the LGBTQ+ community, you may be able to find a queer support group. (The LGBTQ+ club at my college was an invaluable resource in my recovery!) Depending on your area, you may also be able to find groups for specific mental and emotional issues like depression or anxiety.

Make sure to do your research before attending a meeting. Find out what, if anything, the group charges, who can join, and whether they use a curriculum or have unstructured sessions. See if you can find a statement about their values and philosophy. Make a note of where meetings are held and of who is running the group. Some support groups meet in churches and may or may not have a religious element to their curriculum. It’s best to avoid religious groups — the last thing you need right now is to be preached to.

Getting other people involved in your recovery will make you feel less alone and prevent you from getting stuck in your own head. A good therapist, counselor, or support group can help you realize what you need to work on and give you ideas for how to approach it.

Step Three: Deprogramming

“Deprogramming” refers to the practice of undoing brainwashing and reintroducing healthy thought patterns. This term is normally used in the context of cult survivors and their recovery, but deprogramming techniques can also be helpful for people recovering from a lifetime of toxic religious rhetoric.

To begin the process of deprogramming, familiarize yourself with the way organizations use thought control to shape the behavior of their members. I recommend starting with the work of Steven Hassan — his BITE model is a handy way to classify types of thought control.

The BITE model lays out four types of control. There’s Behavior Control, which controls what members do and how they spend their free time. (For example, requiring members to attend multiple hours-long meetings each week.) There’s Information Control, which restricts members’ access to information. (For example, denying certain aspects of the group’s history.) There’s Thought Control, which shapes the way members think. (For example, classifying certain thoughts as sinful or dirty.) And finally there’s Emotional Control, which manipulates members’ emotions. (For example, instilling fear of damnation or punishment.)

Here’s a simple exercise to get you started with your deprogramming. Divide a blank sheet of paper into four equal sections. Label one section “Behavior,” one “Information,” one “Thought,” and one “Emotions.” Now, in each section, make a list of the ways your old religious group controlled — and maybe still controls — that area of your life. Once you’ve completed your lists, choose a single item from one of your lists to work on undoing.

For example, let’s say that in your “Information” column, you’ve written that you were discouraged from reading certain books because they contained “evil” ideas. (For a lot of people, this was Harry Potter. For me, it was The Golden Compass.) Pick up one of those books, and read it or listen to it as an audiobook. Once you’ve read it, write down your thoughts. Did you enjoy it? Why or why not? Why do you think your group banned it? What was in this book that they didn’t want you to know about? Write it down.

Once you’ve worked on the first thing, choose something else. Keep going until you’ve undone all the items on your lists.

If you want to go further with deprogramming, I recommend the book Recovering Agency by Luna Lindsey. Although this book is specifically written for former Mormons, I genuinely believe it would be helpful to former members of other controlling religious groups as well. Lindsey does an excellent job of explaining how thought control works and of connecting it to real world examples, as well as deconstructing those ideas. Her book has been a huge help in my recovery process, and I highly recommend it.

Step Four: Replace toxic beliefs and practices with healthy ones

This goes hand-in-hand with step three, and if you’re already working on deprogramming then you’ll already have started replacing your unhealthy beliefs. This is the turning point in the recovery process. You’re no longer just undoing what others have done to you — now you get an opportunity to decide what you want to believe and do going forward. This is the time to let go of things like denial of your desires, fear of divine punishment, and holding yourself to unattainable standards. Get used to living in a way that makes you happy, without guilt.

Notice how each step builds on the previous steps. Therapy and deprogramming can help you identify what beliefs and behaviors need to be adjusted or replaced. Your therapist, support group, and/or emotional support person can help you make these changes and follow through on them.

These new beliefs and practices don’t have to be religious — in fact, it’s better if they aren’t. If you can live a healthy, happy, balanced life without religion, you’ll be in a better position to choose a religion that is the right fit for you, if that is something you want.

Your new healthy, non-religious practices may include: mindfulness meditation, nature walks, journaling, reading, exercise, energy work, learning a hobby or craft, or spending time with loves ones — or it might include none of these things, and that’s okay too. Now is the time to find what brings you joy and start doing it every day.

Step Five: Ritual healing

This is an optional step, but it’s one that has been deeply healing for me. You may find it helpful to design and perform a ritual to mark your recovery.

Note that when I say “ritual,” I don’t necessarily mean magic. Rituals serve a psychological purpose as well as a spiritual one. They can act as powerful symbolic events that mark a turning point in our lives or reinforce what we already know and believe. Even if you don’t believe in magic, even if you’re the least spiritual person you know, you can still benefit from ritual.

You might choose to perform a ritual to finalize your healing, or to symbolically throw off the chains of your old religion. It can be elaborate or simple, long or short, joyful or solemn. It might include lighting a candle and saying a few words. It might include ecstatic dance. It might include drawing or painting a representation of all the negative emotions associated with your old religion, then ritually destroying it. The possibilities are literally endless. (If you’re looking for ritual ideas, I recommend the book Light Magic for Dark Times by Lisa Marie Basile.)

One type of ritual that some people find very empowering is unbaptism. An unbaptism is exactly what it sounds like — the opposite of a baptism. The idea is that, if a baptism makes a Christian, an unbaptism makes someone un-Christian, no longer part of that lineage. It is a ritual rejection of Christianity. (Obviously, this only applies if you’re a former Christian, though some of the following suggestions could be adjusted to fit a rejection of other religions.)

If you’re interested in unbaptism, here are some ideas for how it could be done:

A classic method of unbaptism is to recite the Lord’s Prayer backwards under a full moon. (For a non-Christians version, use a significant prayer from whatever religion you have left.)

Run a bath. Add a tiny pinch of sulfur (a.k.a. brimstone) to the water. Get into the bath and say, “By water I was baptized, and by water my baptism is rejected.” Submerge your entire body under the water for several seconds. When you come back up, your unbaptism is complete. (You may want to shower after this one. Sulfur does not smell good.)

The Detroit Satanic Temple has a delightfully dramatic unbaptism ritual. For a DIY version, you will need holy water or some other relic from the faith you were baptized in, a fireproof dish, a black candle, and an apple or other sweet fruit. Light the candle and place it in your fireproof dish. Toss some holy water onto the flame (not enough to extinguish it) and say, “I cast my chains into the dust of hell.” Take a bite of the apple and say, “I savor the fruit of knowledge and disobedience.” Finally, declare proudly, “I am unbaptized.” You can add “in the name of Satan” at the end or leave it out, depending on your comfort level.

Personally, I’ve never felt the need to unbaptize myself. I’ve ritually rejected my Mormon upbringing in other ways. Maybe someday I’ll decide to go for the unbaptism, but I’ve never really felt like I needed it. Likewise, you’ll need to decide for yourself what ritual(s) will work for you.

Step Six: Honor your recovery

Our first reaction to trauma is to hide it away and never speak of it again. When we do this, we do ourselves a disservice. Your recovery is a part of your life story. You had the strength to walk away from a situation that was hurting you, and that deserves to be celebrated! Be proud of yourself for how far you’ve come!

You may choose to honor your recovery by celebrating an important date every year, like the day you decided to leave the group, the date of the last meeting you attended, or the date you were removed from the membership records. Keep this celebration fun and light — get drinks with friends, bake a cake for yourself, or just take a few moments to silently acknowledge your journey.

If you feel like having a party is a bit much, you can also honor your recovery by talking to other people about your experiences. Share your story with others. If you’re feeling shy, try sharing your story anonymously online. (Reddit has several forums specifically for anonymous stories.) You’ll be amazed by how validating it can be to tell people what you’ve been through. `

Another way to honor your recovery is to work for personal and religious freedom for all people. Protest laws with religious motivations. Donate to organizations that campaign for the separation of church and state. Educate people about how to recognize an unhealthy religious organization. Let your own story motivate you to help others who are in similar situations.

And most of all, take joy in your journey. Be proud of yourself for how far you’ve come, but know that your recovery is a lifelong journey. Be gentle and understanding with yourself. You are doing what is right for you, and no god or spirit worthy of worship could ever be upset by that.

[rein-ette]

Are you still working on your Commonwealth study? Do you have any thoughts on Arthur's relationships with his colonies apart from Canzuk + US?

Not properly, unfortunately with exams and then work I haven’t had mental/emotional capacity to do real research (and probably won’t for a while 😔). But I have continued to think about and develop certain relationships, and I think I also have old hcs I’ve never shared, so I’ll put those down!

Born into the Empire

Australia

@oumaheroes has already done such great hcs on him idk what I can add, but basically he was a little bit of a rowdy child, always breaking windows and shattering fancy pots, never able to sit still. I think rainbow once mentioned that Ken (short for Kenneth, my name for Aus) was a lot like England as a child in his curiosity and energy, and I wholeheartedly agree. But I think Arthur’s intensity was more inwardly directed, pushing him to pursue and master new talents and learn whatever he could, while Australia is a little more carefree in his love for the outdoors, exploring, jumping around and off things, little wild animals. Unfortunately for him, he was born in a period of the empire when Arthur was very serious about his kids education, and therefore often praised those who studied hard and learned fast, which really just wasn’t Australia’s cup of tea. Australia took this kinda hard and thought he was the “dumb” one in the family that Arthur was always scolding, but in reality Arthur knew and appreciated that Australias interests lay elsewhere — he was just a frustrated, tired, parent who really wanted to give his kids the best while also holding his empire together, two goals that were never going to fit well in the end and would completely exhaust him.

As Australia’s grown older he’s realized a bit of this (not entirely, though) and also that 1) he really did break a lot expensive things and cause general mayhem 2) scolding us Arthur’s way of showing he cares, if he didn’t he wouldn’t have payed attention to him at all 3) despite being a penal colony, he was still one of Arthur’s more “legitimate” children (being white and a boy) and was therefore still incredibly privileged — never having to question, for example, why it was that Arthur was his dad, if it should be this way, or if he had a seat at the family table at all (more on this later).

New Zealand

Zee, from birth, was a clear favourite. Obedient, calm, quietly intelligent, he would also later develop a blistering sense of humour which combined with his appearance made it overwhelmingly clear who’s child he was. If Ken questioned his place in the family because of his poor academic record and others did because of their appearance/race/other complications, Kaelan never had such problems; his siblings called him the “prince.” Zee, however, also had a charm that, like Matthew, endeared him to his siblings and mostly protected him from jealousy, though he certainly still had issues with being called a try hard, daddy’s boy, bossy, arrogant. Certainly as a child Zee was a little prideful and, under that unperturbed demeanour, willful, but he grew out of it by the 20th century and became one of those most trusted by Arthur, second only to Matthew. He’s also always been inseparable from his brother Australia despite their differences, and today they both have one of the healthiest and most amicable relationships with Arthur of any nation, let alone former colonies (family road trips, every summer).

Bermuda

I absolute fell in love with this girl after reading about here, once, in this fic by @shachaai, and after that my mind just ran away with me. For me, her human name given to her by Arthur just has to be Ariel — for the little mermaid reference, yes, symbolizing her connection to the sea and stunning good looks, but also because:

1. Ariel is a biblical name, meaning lion of God. This makes sense to me, because Bermuda began as a Portuguese trade post, so Arthur definitely consulted our resident bad catholic Port before naming her.

2. Ariel used to be boys name. This also makes sense, because I hc Bermuda was and still is a tomboy. Bitch is fierce, takes no prisoners, and has zero filter. Her letters to Arthur, which all the colonies sent so Arthur could keep an eye on things, were full of shit like “I swear to god if the Spanish don’t get out of my waters I might eat one of them,” and “father, I asked you for destroyers two months ago, and yet you sent them to Hong Kong — could you explain this most unusual occurrence, surely it’s not that you forgot”, and “thank you for the harpoon on my birthday, I caught a small shark a couple days ago and have sent you some of its teeth for your collection.” Arthur tolerates this attitude because he’s weak when it comes to girls; he absolutely spoils his daughters (and flushes like a 16 year old when a woman so much as bats her eyelashes at him). Yes, p*ssywhipped Arthur is a hill I will die on.

3. It also suits her because? Ariel? Shakespeare? The Tempest? Bermuda Triangle? Shipwrecks? Daughter-like figure of powerful and vengeful sorcerer? Yeah. And this girl is a fire spirit — she is so lively, snarky, clever. As she’s grown older she’s mellowed out a little, but still: a no shit taken, no fucks given type of gal.

4. Speaking of growing up, she’s also become quite the beauty. Shacha, if I’m remembering correctly, described her as dark skinned, wavy-haired, and green eyed and that image has been burned onto the back of my eyelids ever since. Those Iberian genetics really be pulling through for her, that’s for sure. Engport love child if I’ve ever seen one. Definitely one of the prettiest in her family.

Singapore

I’ve already mentioned this to needcake, but I’m not too big a fan of canon Singapore, so this is my oc version. Singapore is fascinating to me because it had only a very small local population before it became a colony (The original settlement had actually been destroyed by the Portuguese about two centuries before the British started building a port there.) So nation-tans like Singapore and Bermuda really are Arthur’s children in the most direct sense of the word. And yet, Singapore is mostly ethnically Chinese, with Malays being the second largest group. Growing up Asian in a white, Victorian era family surely cannot have been easy and more than once Singapore probably wondered if there hadn’t been some mistake. To make up for the constant fear that he wasn’t “really” British, Singapore studied ferociously and had a truly terrifying work ethic. I’m not sure if this is common knowledge outside Asian circles, so I’ll mention that this hc comes from the fact Singapore is well known for having truly exceptional students and some of the most prestigious schools. Singaporeans score highly in literally everything and they have an advantage with good English learning environments, a highly desirable trait in Asia, but these results come from brutally long hours — and its really saying something that they’re known for working hard, considering the studying ethic of students in Korea, Japan, and China aint nothing to sneeze at, either. To me this actually fits really well with Singapore’s upbringing in Arthur’s household, because Arthur himself prizes intelligence and hard work above all else, being a workaholic himself.

As for their relationship, it was probably the best when Singapore was young and peaked in the 1930s with the massive naval base the British built at Singapore, at the time the largest dry dock in the world. Singapore was a well-behaved child, not necessarily introverted but not rowdy either, and all the way into his teenage years he truly admired Arthur and was proud to be a part of the British Empire, despite his lingering unease and insecurities. The British defeat in World War II, however, was a massive turning point. He had worked his ass off to be a good son, a good brother, to contribute to the only family and system he had ever known, and he had thought by the 30s he was finally on his way to becoming a fine adult. And suddenly, the British surrender brings his entire world crashing down. He had followed the rules faithfully thinking it was his destiny, but suddenly it was clear that all rules were made up. Of course, his insecurities exploded. If the empire was a ruse, what the hell was he? A part of the illusion? He couldn’t have a truly Asian identity, because many of the old East Asian nations shunned him for his Western upbringing, and he could not entirely understand their values either. So he was a kid who kinda had to figure out late and very very suddenly who the fuck he was and wanted to be.

And, well, he’s done pretty well for himself, hasn’t he. After having a total crisis and questioning everything, I think Singapore slowly started to realize that just because the British Empire as a political entity didn’t last forever, that didn’t mean that his entire childhood and identity weren’t real. The love he gave to his siblings and the love he got back, the hard work he put in, his bond with Arthur and the safe, happy childhood he had — those memories and feelings didnt have to be diminished by what came after. Essentially, he learned the lesson all nations have to learn, which is that one needs to be able to discern between duties as a nation and feelings as a human being, and to some extent keep them separate to protect both.

Whoooooo ok I’ll stop there because this turned into a dissertation, sorry. Let me know if there are any specifics u want me to elaborate on or anything I missed, but I’ll leave this here for today :)

[beautifulpersonpeach]

Repost: Ask on BTS and Racism

Anonymous: I clicked on your blog straight away when **xyz mentioned yours, and yes, I straight away (again) read your post regarding rumours. I'm interested to know what's your opinion on those antis who keeps on spreading the narrative that bts are racist and claiming that, only now they're acknowledging their mistakes and apologized. Yet, these antis won't acknowledge bts' apology by still claiming it is half-hearted realization.

*

Hi anon,

My post was not about rumors. It was about hate. Rumors can be either positive or negative, but hate is decidedly ill-willed and vicious, and rumors are one tool people in general (not just the k-pop community) use to create and spread hate.

As a very recent example, the rumor that Taehyung has a ‘sponsor’ reared up again last week after those illegally taken pictures leaked and they’re still spread in some circles though there is frankly no substance to them. But it doesn’t matter if there’s substance to it or not, that’s never the point. The point is to smear his character, to dismiss his own efforts and hard work to reach where he is, or at the very least to create the perception that he is simply not a good person.

Apply the same thinking to the rapline and racism allegations. The point isn’t actually about whether or not they are racist. The truth is if they are really racist, outside of a Da baby-esque screed on tape, we really won’t know. The point is to create the impression that they are racist.

Now I’ll give a short version of my personal opinion on Bangtan and racism below and why I’ve been reporting related posts on the matter since 2018.

As a general rule, ethnically homogenous societies that have suffered some degree of Western imperialism are colorist at best, and racist in the worst case. There are several studies on this subject but it’s one reason why a majority of people in Korea and Ghana think ‘whiter/lighter is better’. In Nigeria, it’s not uncommon to see darker-skinned women ‘bleach’ their skin at some point to be ‘funfun’ (Yoruba for lighter). Others try very hard to not tan ‘too much’. My point is that the underlying culture in these countries do value lighter skin, and this translates into the language. A second thing to note is the very cringe-worthy observation with non-American Asian/Hispanic people and Black or hiphop culture in general: these people have a very shallow understanding of the ‘aesthetics’ they admire and borrow. This isn’t surprising because why would American history (and the sort that critically examines America’s racial history) be taught in Asia/Spain/Korea when it’s not even taught in all America’s 50 states? There are a few other nuances too, like how many non-native English speakers often pick up the accent they learned English in and sometimes switch accents depending on who they’re speaking with. It’s why some Hispanic or Latin American people who learned English listening to a lot of rap music, pick up a Blaccent. A LOT of k-pop acts in the 90s and 2000s said the n-word in their music and it was standard practice in some weird attempt to seem ‘hip’. This really didn’t change in k-pop until the middle of the last decade (2010s) as the genre gained more attention in the West. With all this considered, let’s take a look at Bangtan.

There is racism borne out of spite and racism borne out of ignorance. Many times, these two racisms coincide, but sometimes they don’t. The second can be corrected with enough exposure and education, the first…, not so much. Many of the rapline’s gross racial offences happened between 2012 and 2017 (they’ve said the n-word once singing along to a song, and once covering a Shinhwa song which included the word). As the group gained more exposure in the West, they’ve proactively become more culturally sensitive, even changing out the Korean word for “I” (naega) in some performances so people don’t even mistakenly get the impression they said the n-word. Also, the rapline seem to have had a deep respect and admiration for Black hiphop culture since debut. You see this when they talk about their rap heroes and how they associate being a Black hiphop artist with being fierce and aggressively true to yourself. Many of their missteps have been out of a misguided attempt to imitate their rap idols, while operating in their larger culture that, until very recently, was woefully uninformed about racism and appropriation.

I report those post about the rapline because they are repetitive and transparently insincere. Many of those call-out posts are not content with actual events that happened, they resort to mistranslations or things taken out of context to create their narratives. It’s why some k-pop stans were attacking Wale, a Nigerian-American rap artist, for “being racist” for working with RM..… Imagine speaking over someone that way. For BTS, I’ve seen the same allegations repeated over and over for like 5 years now, and it only takes a few minutes to see how they are portrayed is inconsistent with the reality of their craft – like looking beyond Hoseok’s hair twists to see how careful he is making notes about Black dance styles or him reaching out to, building a relationship with, and paying full royalties to the maker of CNS - a courtesy that was never awarded her by even American (and Black) artists.

Originally posted: October 25th, 2021 2:13pm

**Edited to avoid unnecessary wahala.

[slightlyrebelliouswriter23]

Hi Em✨

I absolutely love your writing and your posts and I’ve been following you for a while now💕

I’m not sure about you but I feel quite uneasy/conflicted with the current rhetoric on book tok. I understand people not liking certain books but it’s been hard to see people slander books and the people that like those books/characters/stories,etc. I get that criticism is needed for certain themes or values that appear in books but reading is loosing some of its escapism for me:(

Reading in context (fictionally and in the real world) is always needed but sometimes I just like a book because of the characters or it’s story and not necessarily that it checks all the boxes for being perfect.

Tbh, as much as I love certain books, some of them have become tainted for me and I genuinely wish I didn’t I read other people’s opinions on them.

Book tok is great for reccs but I can’t even filter it out of my feed at this point. I kinda wish toxic fandoms also looked inwardly because as much fun it is to engage with fans and people that are apart of that fandom, some people take it way too far such as sending hateful anons to creators (such as you🥺) or calling books trash when they’ve been super influential or important to people.

I guess my little rant is over but I was wondering if you had any opinions on this or have any sort of guidance. Is there a place I could get reccs or how can avoid all of this rhetoric that can affect my view of a book.”?

Stay safe and have a good day✨💐

hi there, nonnie! thank you so much for the kind words, i really appreciate you 🥺❤️❤️

first off, i want to say that i 100% understand this. i never really got into booktok specifically because i had a feeling it was basically going to be book twitter 2.0 where everyone is just ripping into each other constantly. i don't like being influenced by other people's opinions either, and the drama that seems to be obligatory baggage for most fandoms these days (with the exception of TFOTA, cos for some reason we are extraordinarily chill) just isn't for me.

it is, of course, essential that we continue to think critically when it comes to media. it's the only way we can affect change in a positive direction. but this also must be balanced with a willingness to be humble with our opinions, understand that they are just opinions, and accept that everyone consumes media for different reasons.

this also means we'll all hold different boundaries about what we're willing to consume, and where we draw the line for things we won't consume. granted, books might be the mirror through which we see life reflected, but they are not reality itself. to a certain extent, fiction is fiction. and different boundaries does not a bad person make.

speaking of drawing lines, i'm going to direct you to this post by @bookofmirth , which is mainly about ACOTAR/SJM/Palestine but some of what they have to say there is very applicable to this topic, and eloquently put:

"Some people can separate art from artist. Some can't. It's up to all of us as individuals to draw that line where we are comfortable."

i agree with this statement wholeheartedly. it is not up to randomgal4549 on tiktok/twitter to decide what eye should or should not read. the unmitigated gall of anyone to think their opinion should dictate other people's choices is highly presumptuous and quite frankly exhausting.

apart from maybe the bible/other religious texts, what a person reads is not a reflection of who they are or what beliefs they hold. we need to learn not to conflate the two, and start regarding each other once more as humans with complex thoughts and feelings, capable of introspection and growth, instead of little icons on our phone screens with immovable and absolute beliefs.

so that's my opinion on that. my main advice to you would be KEEP THINGS ORGANISED. what i mean by that is this:

curate your social media experience! it is YOUR responsibility as an owner of any social media account (including tumblr) to customise your space to fit YOUR needs. if you don't like someone's opinion/content? unfollow. if someone is rude/you don't like their vibe? block. if you find the things someone shares to their socials offensive? unfriend. this is setting boundaries, and the people who take any of these things as a personal offence are the exact people you want to keep a healthy distance away from. you decide who you follow and what you see on your dash. be protective of your space and who you allow to have access to your energy.

keep personal feelings separate from the public! i honestly can't stress this point enough. if you feel the need to rant about something that irks you about a specific book/author/person's opinion, keep these discussions in the DMs with a trusted circle of friends. it is psychologically proven that when someone feels attacked, they will double down on their og opinion, no matter if they realise they're wrong. thus, projecting high-strung emotions into public spaces such as twitter, while understandable in some cases, will only serve to further polarise people and hurt the very movement you're likely trying to bolster. blow off steam with people you can entrust with your emotions. NOT strangers on the internet.

designate time to learning about issues that are important to you! i strongly advise against turning to any fictional medium for moral lessons or life advice. if you can dedicate some time outside of your escapism to inform yourself about important subjects through educational resources that are specifically designed to Teach/Impart Knowledge, instead of giving an ounce of thought to Intrinsically Biased Information Received Second Hand, i promise you you'll feel a whole lot less obligated to other people's opinions.

if you're unsure about a particular book/author, consider borrowing from your local library, purchasing the book second hand, or finding an ePub copy.

for recs, consider booktube. i know it's probably seen as a bit old school by now, but the great thing about youtube is that you're not randomly/unexpectedly subjected to other people's shit opinions like on other social platforms. you have to click a link to watch the video, which gives you more autonomy in regards to what opinions you consume. my personal favourite youtuber is Khadija Mbowe. she's not a booktuber, per se, but her content focuses on in-depth critical analysis of media/society through the lense of WOC (specifically Black women), and i find her channel compelling as well as informative.

goodreads is also a great place to find book recs without the constant influx of opinions. if you can find yourself a circle of trusted friends to follow on there, you can't go wrong. my goodreads is linked in my bio under "connect" and you're welcome to follow me there. or not! it's your choice.

–Em 🖤🗡

[kissed-by-snow]

My Take on the Radiant Quote

Jon noticed the shy looks she [Myrcella] gave Robb as they passed between the tables and the timid way she smiled at him. He decided she was insipid. Robb didn't even have the sense to realize how stupid she was; he was grinning like a fool.

His half sisters escorted the royal princes. Arya was paired with plump young Tommen, whose white-blond hair was longer than hers.

Sansa, two years older, drew the crown prince, Joffrey Baratheon [...] Sansa looked radiant as she walked beside him, but Jon did not like Joffrey's pouty lips or the bored, disdainful way he looked at Winterfell's Great Hall. 

- A Game of Thrones, Jon I

Let me begin by saying I don’t think Jon describes Sansa this way because of  a romantic interest in her. However,  I do think this quote is interesting because it describes their relationship in a different way and has other implications. One way to read this quote is by contrasting to how he sees about Myrcella to how he sees Sansa. 

Objectively, both Sansa and Myrcella feel the same about the boys escorting them - flushed and lovestruck, but Jon calls Sansa radiant and Myrcella insipid and stupid.

The reason for this could be multiple things:

he’s notes how happy she is (notice he doesn’t talk about Arya’s appearance - which is probably either disappointed, disgruntled or neutral - most likely because Sansa’s happiness is so vibrant)

a side observation might be that he’s never seen Sansa look so happy?

he’s happy that she’s happy (calls her radiant when he could have mocked her admiration by calling her insipid)

This leads me to believe that their relationship isn’t as bad as people usually interpret it to be. I think they had a fairly neutral relationship but didn’t have much to bond over (he’s into swords, she’s into embroidery he was a punk, she did ballet, what more can I say) and with contrasting personalities, tended not to gravitate towards each other. So, a neutral but respectful relationship considering their own duties, roles and how they spend their time (which was mainly in different social circles).

Now, the people Jon most frequently remembers are his father (for obvious reasons) Robb and Arya.

First, let’s begin with Jon’s relationship with Robb.

Robb, his rival and best friend and constant companion;

- AGOT, Jon III

Jon told the story of how he and Robb had found the pups newborn in the late summer snows.

Robb and Bran and Rickon were his father's sons, and he loved them still, yet Jon knew that he had never truly been one of them.

Jon had often hunted with his father and Jory and his brother Robb. He knew the wolfswood around Winterfell as well as any man

- AGOT Jon IV

Jon was still not certain how he felt about it. Robb a king? The brother he'd played with, fought with, shared his first cup of wine with? But not mother's milk, no. So now Robb will sip summerwine from jeweled goblets, while I'm kneeling beside some stream sucking snowmelt from cupped hands. "Robb will make a good king," he said loyally.

- ACOK, Jon I

...so Robb and he used to climb the towers of Winterfell to shout at each other across the yard.

- ASOS, Jon VII

Once Jon had meant to prove them wrong, to show his lord father that he could be as good and true a son as Robb. I made a botch of that. Robb had become a hero king; if Jon was remembered at all, it would be as a turncloak, an oathbreaker, and a murderer. He was glad that Lord Eddard was not alive to see his shame.

- ASOS, Jon X

When Jon had been very young, too young to understand what it meant to be a bastard, he used to dream that one day Winterfell might be his. Later, when he was older, he had been ashamed of those dreams. Winterfell would go to Robb and then his sons, or to Bran or Rickon should Robb die childless. 

- ASOS, Jon XI

You can't be the Lord of Winterfell, you're bastard-born, he heard Robb say again. And the stone kings were growling at him with granite tongues. You do not belong here.

A son was something Jon Snow had never dared dream of, since he decided to live his life on the Wall. I could name him Robb. 

- ASOS, Jon XII

It reminded him of warmer, simpler days, when he had been a boy at Winterfell matching blades with Robb under the watchful eye of Ser Rodrik Cassel

- ADWD, Jon VI

From the above quotes, we see that Jon’s memories oscillate between feeling fond and mildly resentful/jealous of his brother. They’ve been together the longest and had the most in common but Jon was constantly aware of the distance in status between them. And when you consider the fact that Ned wanted Jon to have the best education possible, Robb and Jon had more reasons to spend time together but his status as a bastard in comparison to Robb’s as the heir of Winterfell, does seem to hold him a little back from having a bond as close as the one he has to Arya. 

Now Jon and Arya almost seem to have too many reasons to be close. From sharing the Stark look (which in the books, only they share and which may have made Jon feel a little better compared to Robb) to feeling out of place (Jon as a bastard and Arya not wanting to conform to traditional femininity) and having common interests (fighting, mainly). Add on to the fact that Arya is almost just as likely to inherit Winterfell as Jon? Yeah, they have every reason to be close.  

And Arya … he missed her even more than Robb, skinny little thing that she was, all scraped knees and tangled hair and torn clothes, so fierce and willful. Arya never seemed to fit, no more than he had … yet she could always make Jon smile. 

AGOT, Jon III

Something about her made him think of Arya, though they looked nothing at all alike

ACOK, Jon VI

She wasn't wed and her weapon of choice was a short curved bow of horn and weirwood, but "spearwife" fit her all the same. She reminded him a little of his sister Arya, though Arya was younger and probably skinnier

ASOS, Jon II

Jon Snow sank to one knee in the snow. Gods of my fathers, protect these men. And Arya too, my little sister, wherever she might be. I pray you, let Mance find her and bring her safe to me.

But what if Arya was not there to be saved? What if Lady Melisandre's flames had told it true? Could his sister truly have escaped such captors? How would she do that? Arya was always quick and clever, but in the end she's just a little girl, and Roose Bolton is not the sort who would be careless with a prize of such great worth.

ADWD, Jon VII

He wanted to believe it would be Arya. He wanted to see her face again, to smile at her and muss her hair, to tell her she was safe. She won't be safe, though. Winterfell is burned and broken and there are no more safe places.

Wherever he might send her, though, Arya would need silver to support her, a roof above her head, someone to protect her. She was only a child.

“Once Cregan gets a child by me they won't need me anymore. He's buried two wives already." She rubbed away a tear angrily, the way Arya might have done it. "Will you help me?"

ADWD, Jon IX

It had been so long since he had last seen Arya. What would she look like now? Would he even know her? Arya Underfoot. Her face was always dirty. Would she still have that little sword he'd had Mikken forge for her? Stick them with the pointy end, he'd told her. Wisdom for her wedding night if half of what he heard of Ramsay Snow was true. Bring her home, Mance. I saved your son from Melisandre, and now I am about to save four thousand of your free folk. You owe me this one little girl.

ADWD, Jon XI

Compared to Robb, every memory Jon has of Arya is positive. He emphasizes their similarities and feels protective of her as she was the closest family member to him (and he still thinks of her as a child in ADWD which is why Jonarya makes me feel more than a little uncomfortable). He sees her in everything and everyone because she’s directly tied to his happiest memories and is his closest tie to the Stark family.

TL: DR - So, the reason he reminisces about Robb is because he grew up with him (and was a similar age to him, had the same education and also shared a father) and even more with Arya because they related to each other the most and had the Stark look (especially Arya because he doesn’t have the attached semi-resentment of Robb becoming the lord of winterfell, because it’s what he’s always wanted).

This doesn’t mean that Jon and Sansa’s relationship was awful or horrible or that they hated each other. Just that Jon has more memories and similarities to Robb and Arya.

Moving forward, I would like to see them develop a closer relationship (once they reunite - I’m tentatively in the camp of Grey Girl Sansa -  through their own reciprocal experiences (Jon, from bastard to Lord Commander, and Sansa, from Lady to Bastard), learning the value of home (both Jon and Sansa were most eager to leave, albeit for different reasons) and coming to appreciate each other’s compatible but different skill sets. 

[not-poignant]

if you dont mind answering, you seem queer and well educated and I have a lgbt question. Why is being a "gold-star" gay or lesbian offensive? I'm a lesbian and only've been with girls but someone said that calling yourself a gold star lesbian is biphobic. I dont understand why. I wouldn't think worse of anyone for having been with multiple genders, bisexual or not. For me its just a two truths and a lie kind of fun fact about me. do you have any insights you'd be willing to share?

Hiya!

I am, unfortunately, familiar with this term. And tbh, I’ve only ever heard it used pretty much exclusively in ways that were actually intended to be passive aggressively (or aggressively) biphobic and transphobic. I’ve mostly heard it used by TERFs, tbh. And it didn’t occur to me anyone would use the term for literally any other reason. So I’m going to talk about the myriad ways they can be taken to be biphobic (and transphobic). I’ve literally never seen it used by men, so I’m not going to address that side of things. I have, however, literally been on the receiving end of vicious biphobia by lesbians who used terms like this.

For those who don’t know, the term usually has one of two meanings: A woman who has only ever slept with women, OR in TERF circles, a woman who has only ever slept with women and never transwomen. There’s your instant transphobia, by the way.

The first thing to point out is why make it a merit or award that draws an arbitrary line in the sand about which lesbians are worth gold stars and which ones aren’t? Why not just say ‘I’ve never slept with men’ or ‘I’ve never had experience with men and I’m not looking to’ or ‘I’ve only ever been with women’ etc.

The term itself is insidious precisely because it awards merit and therefore suggests everyone else who doesn’t meet that criteria does not deserve that merit or the metaphorical gold star. 

It is inherently, a judgemental term.

But specifics:

1. Women who’ve had sex with men and are lesbians, are still lesbians. Therefore, to imply that women who have never slept with men are somehow better or more deserving of a gold star is offensive and shitty to literally every other lesbian out there.

2. It implies a narrative where women who sleep with women are more pure, more deserving of reward or more deserving of gold stars than women who sleep with women and men. Aside from the fact that this implies really fucked up value judgements towards only ever sleeping with one gender (if you’re proud of it, fine, but don’t talk about it in a way that insinuates judgement upon others, like ‘I’ve only ever slept with women and I’m glad’ is different to ‘I’m a gold star lesbian’ which implies you’re somehow at the top of the tier and better than the others; you’re not), it also implies that any wlw who isn’t a gold star lesbian is less desirable specifically because of their sexual experiences. That’s gross.

3. Since TERF lesbians use this term to also mean ‘have literally never touched or been near any kind of penis’ it automatically excludes many trans women as well. This is transphobia. There are plenty of lesbians who have penises, and plenty of lesbians who love those women who have them. They’re still lesbians.

4. Finally, as an aside, it also makes it harder for rape victims in lesbian communities to speak up about sexual assault. The idea of the ‘gold star lesbian’ is so rooted into shitty conceptions about purity and status that a lesbian may not be willing to give up her status and reveal that she’s been assaulted by a man. You might say this is outlandish, but I have known it to happen, especially in the dark ages when the term was sadly more common. Because you know what, some people will literally say that you’ve lost your ‘status’ via sexual assault. And that’s because the term itself is inherently judgemental, and designed to create an exclusive club from which you can look down upon others and know they don’t have the same ‘gold star’ you do.

It’s far more mundane, and far healthier, to literally just say: I haven’t slept with men.’ That’s it. Done. You still get to keep your two truths/lie fun fact, and you can turf the weird judgemental gross phobic ‘gold star’ part into the bin where it belongs. Even if you never ever mean to hurt anyone else with it, you’re using a term used for more than one kind of phobia knowingly by many lesbians for a very long time.

Incidentally there are more reasons why this term is considered offensive in many parts of the queer community. I’ve just included the ones I’ve encountered, or have seen, but there are tons of articles about it.

[phroyd]

When I ask my European friends to describe us — Americans, Brits, who I’ll call Anglo-Americans in this essay — they shake their heads gently. And over and over, three themes emerge. They say we’re a little thoughtless. They say we’re selfish and arrogant. And they say that we’re cruel and brutal.

I can’t help but think there’s more than a grain of truth. That they’re being kind. Anglo-American society is now the world’s preeminent example of willful self-destruction. It’s jaw-dropping folly and stupidity is breathtaking to the rest of the world.

The hard truth is this. America and Britain aren’t just collapsing by the day…they aren’t even just choosing to collapse by the day. They’re entering a death spiral, from which there’s probably no return. Yes, really. Simple economics dictate that, just like they did for the Soviet Union — and I’ll come to them.

And yet what’s even weirder and more grotesque than that is that…wel…nobody much seems to have noticed. There’s a deafening silence from pundits and elites and columnists and politicians on the joint self-destruction of the Anglo-American world. Nobody seems to have noticed: the only two rich societies in the world with falling life expectancies, incomes, savings, happiness, trust — every single social indicator you can imagine — are America and Britain. It’s not one of history’s most improbable coincidences that America and Britain are collapsing in eerily similar ways, at precisely the same time. It’s a relationship. What connects the dots?

Let me pause to note that my European friends’ first criticism — that we’re thoughtless — is therefore accurate. We’re not even capable of noticing — much less understanding — our twin collapse. Our entire thinking and leadership class seems not to have even noticed, like idiots grinning and dancing, setting their own house on fire. They are simply going on pretending it isn’t happening — that the English speaking world isn’t fast becoming something very much like the new Soviet Union.

So what caused this joint collapse? How did the English speaking world end up like the new Soviet Union? To understand that point, consider the fact that you yourself probably think that’s an overstatement. But it’s an empirical reality. The Soviet Union stagnated for thirty years. America’s stagnated for fifty, and Britain for twenty. The Soviet Union couldn’t provide basics for its citizens — hence the famous breadlines. In America, people beg each other for money to pay for insulin and antibiotics, decent food is unavailable in vast swathes of the country, and retirement and paying off one’s debt are impossibilities: just like in the Soviet Union, basics are becoming both unavailable and unaffordable. What happens? People…die.

(The same is true in Britain. In both societies, upwards of 20% of children live in poverty, the middle class has imploded, and upward mobility has all but vanished. These are Soviet statistics — lethally real ones.)

Politics, too, has become a sclerotic Soviet affair. Anglo-American societies aren’t really democracies in any sensible meaning of the word anymore. They’re run by and for a class of elites, who could care less, literally, whether the average person lives or dies. In America, that class is a bizarre coterie of Ivy Leaguers pretending to be aw-shucks-good-ole-boys on the one side, like Ted Cruz, and Ivy Leaguers pretending to be do-gooders on the other, like Zuck and Silicon Valley. In Britain, it’s the notorious public school boys, the Etonians and Oxbridge set.

That brings me to arrogance. What’s astonishing about our elites is how…arrogant they are…and how ignorant they are…at precisely the same time. Finland just elected a 34 year old woman as a Prime Minister from the Social Democrats. Finland is a society that outperforms ours in every way — every way — imaginable. Finnish happiness is way, way higher — and so is life expectancy, mobility, savings, real incomes, trust, among others. And yet instead of learning a thing from a miracle like that, our elites profess to know a better way…while they’ve run our societies into the ground. What the? Hubris would be an understatement. I don’t think the English language has a word for this weird, fatal combination of arrogance amidst ignorance. Maybe cocksure stupidity comes close.

And yet our elites have succeeded in one vital task — what an Emile Durkheim might have called “social reproduction.” They’ve managed to reproduce society in their image. What does the average Anglo-American aspire to be, do, have? To be rich, powerful, careless, selfish, and dumb, now, mostly. We don’t, as societies or cultures, value learning or knowledge or magnanimity or great and noble things, anymore. We shower millions on reality TV stars and billions on “investment bankers.” The average person has become a tiny microcosm of the aspirations and norms of elites — they’re not curious, empathetic, decent, humane, noble, kind, in pursuit of wisdom, truth, beauty, meaning, purpose. We’ve become cruel, indecent, obscene, comically shallow, and astonishingly foolish people.

That’s not some kind of jeremiad. It’s an objective, easily observed truth. Who else in a rich society denies their neighbours healthcare and retirement? Nobody. Who else denies their own kids education? Nobody. Who else denies themselves childcare and elderly care? Nobody. Who else doesn’t want safety nets, opportunities, mobility, protection, savings, higher incomes? Nobody. Literally nobody on planet earth wants worse lives excepts us. We’re the only people on earth who thwart our own social progress, over and over again — and cheer about it.

How did we become these people? How did we become tiny microcosms of our arrogant, ignorant, breathtakingly stupid elites? Because we are perpetually battling for self-preservation. Life has become a kind of brutal combat to the death. For jobs, for healthcare, for money, for the tiniest shreds of resources necessary to live. We wake up and fight one another for these things, over and over again. That is what our lives amount to now — gladiatorial combat. Meanwhile, elites and billionaires sit back and enjoy not just the spectacle — but the winnings.

People who are battling for self-preservation can’t take care of anyone else. If I ask the average Brit or American to consider paying for their society’s healthcare, education, elderly care, childcare, increasingly, the answer is: LOL. In America, it always has been. Why is that? The reason couldn’t be simpler. People can’t even take care of themselves and their own. How can they take care of anyone else — let alone everyone else?

The average person is living right at the edge. Not at the edge of the middle class dream and an even better one. But at the edge of poverty and destitution. They struggle to pay basic bills and never make ends meet. They can’t afford to educate their children, and retire, or retire and have healthcare, and so on. Let me say it again: the average person can’t take care of themselves and their own — so how can they take care of anyone else, let alone everyone else?

A more technical, formal way to say that is: our societies have now become too poor to afford public goods and social systems. But public goods and social systems are what make a modern, rich society. What’s a society without decent healthcare, schools, universities, libraries, education, parks, transport, media — available to all, without life-crippling “debt”? It’s not a modern society at all. But more and more, it’s not America or Britain, either.

What makes European societies — which are far, far more successful than ours — successful is that people are not battling for self-preservation, and so they are able to cooperate to better one another instead. At least not nearly so much and so lethally as we are. They are assured of survival. They therefore have resources to share with others. They don’t have to battle for the very things we take away from each other — because they simply give them to one another. That has kept them richer than us, too. The average American now lives in effective poverty — unable to afford healthcare, housing, and basic bills. They must choose. The European doesn’t have to, precisely because they invested in one another — and those investment made them richer than us.

We are caught in a death spiral now. A vicious cycle from which there is probably no escape. The average person is too poor to fund the very things — the only things — which can offer him a better life: healthcare, education, childcare, healthcare, and so on. The average person is too poor to fund public goods and social systems. The average person is too poor now to able to give anything to anyone else, to invest anything in anyone else. He lives and dies in debt to begin with — so what does he have left over to give back, put back, invest?

A more technical, formal way to put all that is this. Europeans distributed their social surplus more fairly than we did. They didn’t give all the winnings to idiot billionaires like Zucks and con men like Trump. They kept middle and working classes better off than us. As a result, those middle and working classes were able to invest in expansive public goods and social systems. Those things — good healthcare, education, transport, media — kept life improving for everyone. That virtuous circle of investing a fairly distributed social surplus created a true economic miracle over just one human lifetime: Europe rose from the ashes of war to enjoy history’s highest living standards, ever, period.

That’s changing in Europe, to be sure. But that is because Europe is becoming Americanized, Anglicized. It has a generation of leaders foolish enough to follow our lead — now remember the greatest lesson of European history, which is one of the greatest lessons of history, full stop. That lesson goes like this.

People who are made to live right at the edge must battle each other for self-preservation. But such people have nothing left to give one another. And that way, a society enters a death spiral of poverty — like ours have.

People who can’t make ends meet can’t even invest in themselves — let alone anyone else. Such a society has to eat through whatever public goods and social systems it has, just to survive. It never develops or expands new ones.

The result is that a whole society grows poorer and poorer. Unable to invest in themselves or one another, people’s only real way out is to fight each other for self-preservation, by taking away their neighbor’s rights, privileges, and opportunities — instead of being able to give any new ones to anyone. Why give everyone healthcare and education when you can’t even afford your own? How are you supposed to?

Society melts down into a spiral of extremism and fascism, as ever increasing poverty brings hate, violence, fear, and rage with it. Trust erodes, democracy corrodes, social bonds are torn apart, and the only norms left are Darwinian-fascist ones: the strong survive, and the weak must perish.

(Let me spend a second or two on that last point. As they become poorer, people begin to distrust each other — and then hate each other. Why wouldn’t they? After all, the grim reality is that they actually are fighting each other for existence, for the basic resources of life, like medicine, money, and food.

As distrust becomes hate, people who have nothing to give anyways end up having no reason to even hope to give anything back to anyone else. Why give anything to those people you are fighting, every single day, for the most meagre resources necessary to live? Why give the very people who denied you healthcare and education anything? Isn’t the only real point of life to show that you beat them by having a bigger house, faster car, prettier wife or husband?)

That is how a society dies. That is the death spiral of a rich society. In technical terms, it goes like this. A social surplus isn’t distributed equitably. That leaves the average person too poor to invest anything back in society. He’s just battling for self-preservation, and the stakes are life or death. But that battle itself only breeds even more poverty. Because without investment, nurturance, nourishment — nothing can grow. Having become poor, the average person only grows poorer — because he will never have decent public goods or social systems, let alone the rights and privileges and jobs and careers and trajectories they become and lead to.

A society of people so poor they have nothing left over to invest in one another is dying. It goes from prosperity to poverty, from optimism to pessimism, from cohesion to distrust and hate, from peace to violence — at light speed, in the space of a generation. That’s America and Britain’s story today, just as it was the Soviet Union’s, yesterday, and Weimar Germany’s, before that.

You can see how a society dies — with horrific, brutal clarity — in the self-destruction of America and Britain. The hate-filled vitriol of Trumpism, the barely-hidden hate of Brexit. Why wouldn’t people who have grown suddenly poor hate everyone else? Why wouldn’t they blame anyone and everyone they can — from Mexicans to Muslims to Europeans — for their own decline? The truth, as always, is harder. America and Britain’s collapse is nobody’s fault — nobody’s — but their own.

They are in a death spiral now, but no opponent or adversary brought them there. It was their own fault, and yet they still go on choosing it. They don’t know any other way now. Their elites succeeded at making the average person truly, fervently believe that battling perpetually for self-preservation was the only way a society could exist.

And though it’s too late to escape for them, let us hope that the rest of the world, from Europe to Asia to Africa, learns the lesson of the sad, gruesome, stupid, astonishing tragedy of self-inflicted collapse.

Umair December 2019

Phroyd

[star-anise]

why would your social environment affect if you identify as a woman or nb?

I don’t know if you meant it to be, but this is a delightful question. I am going to be a complete nerd for 2k+ words at you.

“Gender” is distinct from “sex” because it’s not a body’s physical characteristics, it’s how society classifies and interprets that body. Sex is “That person has a vagina.” Gender is “This is a blend of society’s expectations about what bodies with vaginas are like, social expectations of how people with vaginas do or might or should act, behave, and feel, the actual lived experiences of people with vaginas, and a twist of lemon for zest.” Concepts of gender and what is “manly” and “womanly” can vary a lot. They’re social values, like “normal” or “legal” or “beautiful”, and they vary all the time. How well you fit your gender role depends a lot on how “gender” is defined.

800 years ago in Europe the general perception was that women were sinful, sensual, lustful people who required frequent sex and liked watching bloodsport. 200 years ago, the British aristocracy thought women were pure, innocent beings of moral purity with no sexual desire who fainted at the sight of blood. These days, we think differently in entirely new directions.

But this gets even more complicated, in part because human experience is really diverse and society’s narratives have to account for that. So 200 years ago, those beliefs about femininity being delicate and dainty and frail only really applied to women with aristocratic lineages, and “the lower classes” of women were believed to be vulgar, coarse, sexual, and earthy, which “explained” why they performed hard physical labor or worked as prostitutes.

Being trans or nonbinary isn’t just or even primarily about what characteristics you want your body to have. It’s about how you want to define yourself and be interpreted and interacted with by other people.

The writer Sylvia Plath lived 1932-1963, and she said:

“Being born a woman is my awful tragedy. From the moment I was conceived I was doomed to sprout breasts and ovaries rather than penis and scrotum; to have my whole circle of action, thought and feeling rigidly circumscribed by my inescapable feminity. Yes, my consuming desire to mingle with road crews, sailors and soldiers, bar room regulars–to be a part of a scene, anonymous, listening, recording–all is spoiled by the fact that I am a girl, a female always in danger of assault and battery.”

She was from upper-middle-class Massachusetts, the child of a university professor. A lot of those things she was “prohibited” from doing weren’t things each and every woman was prohibited from doing; they were things women of her class weren’t allowed to do. The daughters and sisters and wives of sailors and soldiers, women who worked in hotels and ran rooming houses, barmaids and sex workers, got to anonymously and invisibly observe those men, after all. They just couldn’t do it at the same time they tried to meet the standards educated Bostonians of the 1950s had for nice young women.

Failure to understand how diverse womanhood is has always been one of feminism’s biggest weaknesses. The Second Wave of feminism was started mostly by prosperous university-educated white women, since they were the people with the time and money and resources to write and read books and attend conferences about “women’s issues”. And they assumed that their issues were female issues. That they were the default of femaleness, and could assume every woman had roughly the same experience as them.

So, for example, middle-class white women in post-WWII USA were expected to stay home all the time and look after their children. Feminists concluded that this was isolating and oppressive, and they’d like the freedom to pursue lives, careers, and interests outside of the home. They vigorously pursued the right to be freed from their domestic and maternal duties.

But in their society, these experiences were not generally shared by Black and/or poor women, who, like their mothers, did not have the luxury of spending copious amounts of leisure time with their children; they had to work to earn enough money to survive on, which meant working on farms, in factories, or as cooks, maids, or nannies for rich white women who wanted the freedom to pursue lives outside the home. They tended to feel that they would like to have the option of staying home and playing with their babies all day. 

This is not to say none of the first group enjoyed domestic lives, or that none of the second group wanted non-domestic careers; it’s just that the first group formed the face and the basic assumptions of feminism, and the second group struggled to get a seat at the table.

There’s this phenomenon called “cultural feminism” that’s an attitude that crops up among feminists from time to time (or grows on them, like fungus) that holds that women have a “feminine essence”, a quasi-spiritual “nature” that is deeply distinct from the “masculine essence” of men. This is one of the concepts powering lesbian separatism: the idea that because women are so fundamentally different from men, a society of all women will be fundamentally different in nature from a society that includes men.

But, well, the problem cultural feminism generally has is with how it achieves its definition of “female nature”. The view tends to be that women are kinder, more moral, more collectivist, more community-minded, and less prone to violence. 

And cultural feminists tend to HATE people who believe in the social construction of gender, because we tend to cross our arms and go, “Nah, sis, that’s a frappe of misused statistics and The Angel In the House with some wishful thinking as a garnish. That’s how you feel about what womanhood is. It’s fair enough for you, but you’re trying to apply it to the entire human species. That’s got less intellectual rigor and sociological validity than my morning oatmeal.” Hence the radfem insistence that gender theorists like me SHUT UP and gender quite flatly DOESN’T EXIST. It’s a MADE-UP TERM, and people should STOP TALKING ABOUT IT. (And go back to taking about immutable, naturally-occuring phenomena, one supposes, like the banking system and Western literary canon.)

Because seriously, when you look at real actual women, you will see that some of us can be very selfish, while others are altruistic; some think being a woman means abhorring all violence forever, and others think being a woman means being willing to fight and die to protect the people you love. As groups men and women have different average levels of certain qualities, but it’s not like we don’t share a lot in common. The distribution of “male” and “female” traits doesn’t tend to mean two completely separate sets of characteristics; they tend to be more like two overlapping bell curves.

So, like I said, I grew up largely in rural, working-class Western Canadian society. My relatives tend to be tradesmen like carpenters, welders, or plumbers, or else ranchers and farmers. I was raised by a mother who came of age during the big push for Women’s Lib. So in the culture in which I was raised, it was very normal and in some ways rewarded (though in other ways punished) for women to have short hair, wear flannel and jeans, drive a big truck, play rough contact sports, use power tools, pitch in with farmwork, use guns, and drink beer. “Traditional femininity” was a fascinating foreign culture my grandmother aspired to, and I loved nonsense like polishing the silver (it’s a very satisfying pastime) but that was just another one of my weird hobbies, like sewing fairy clothes out of flower petals and collecting toy horses.

Within the standards of the society I was raised in, I am a decently feminine woman. I’m obviously not a “girly girl”, someone who wears makeup and dresses in ways that privilege beauty over practicality, but I have a long ponytail of hair and when I go to Mark’s Work Wearhouse, I shop in the women’s section. We know what “butch” is and I ain’t it.

But through my friendships and my career, I’ve gotten experiences among cultures you wouldn’t think would be too different–we’re all still white North Americans!–but which felt bizarre and alien, and ate away at the sense of self I’d grown up in. In the USA’s northeast, the people I met had the kind of access to communities with social clout, intellectual resources, and political power I hadn’t quite believed existed before I saw them. There really were people who knew politicians and potential employers socially before they ever had to apply to a job or ask for political assistance; there were people who really did propose projects to influential businessmen or academics at cocktail parties; they really did things like fundraise tens of thousands of dollars for a charity by asking fifty of their friends to donate, or start a business with a $2mil personal loan from a relative.

And in those societies, femininity was so different and so foreign. I’d grown up seeing femininity as a way of assigning tasks to get the work done; in these new circles, it was performative in a way that was entirely unique and astounding to me. A boss really would offer you a starting salary $10k higher than they might have if you wore high heels instead of flats. You really would be more likely to get a job if you wore makeup. And your ability to curate social connections in the halls of power really was influenced by how nice of a Christmas party you could throw. These women I met were being held, daily, to a standard of femininity higher than that performed by anyone in my 100 most immediate relatives.

So when girls from Seven Sisters schools talked about how for them, dressing how I dressed every day (jeans, boots, tee, button-up shirt, no makeup, no hair product) was “bucking gendered expectations” and “being unfeminine”, I began to feel totally unmoored. When I realized that I, who absolutely know only 5% as much about power tools and construction as my relatives in the trades, was more suited to take a hammer and wade in there than not just the “empowered” women but the self-professed “handy” men there, I didn’t know how to understand it. I felt like I was… a woman who knew how to do carpentry projects, not “totally butch” the way some people (approvingly) called me.

And, well, at home in Alberta I was generally seen as a sweet and gentle girl with an occasional stubborn streak or precocious moment, but apparently by the standards of Southern states like Georgia and Alabama I am like, 100x more blunt, assertive, and inconsiderate of men’s feelings than women typically feel they have to be.

And this is still all just US/Canadian white women.

And like I said, after years of this, I came home (from BC, where I encountered MORE OTHER weird and alien social constructs, though generally more around class and politics than gender) to Alberta, and I went to what is, for Alberta, a super hippy liberal church, and I helped prepare the after-service tea among women with unstyled hair and no makeup  who wore jeans and sensible shoes, and listened to them talk about their work in municipal water management and ICU nursing, and it felt like something inside my chest slid back into place, because I understood myself as a woman again, and not some alien thing floating outside the expectations of the society I was in with a chestful of opinions no one around me would understand, suddenly all made sense again.

I mean, that’s by no means an endorsement for aspirational middle class rural Alberta as the ideal gender utopia. (Alberta is the Texas of Canada.) I just felt comfortable inside because it’s the culture where I found a definition of myself and my gender I could live with, because its boundaries of what’s considered “female” were broad enough to hold all the parts of me I felt like I needed to express. I have a lot of friends who grew up here, or in families like mine, and don’t feel at all happy with its gender boundaries. And even as I’m comfortable being a woman here, I still want to push and transform it, to make it even more feminist and politically left and decolonized.

TERFs try to claim that trans and nonbinary people reinforce the gender identity, but in my experience, it’s feminists who claim male and female are immutable and incompatible do that. It’s trans, nonbinary, and genderqueer people who, simply by performing their genders in public, make people realize just how bullshit innate theories of gender are.. Society is going to want to gender them in certain ways and involve them in certain dynamics (”Hey ladies, those fellas, amirite?”) and they’re going, “Nope. Not me. Cut it out.” I’ve seen a lot of cis people who will quietly admit they do think men and women are different because that’s just reality, watch someone they know transition, and suddenly go, “Oh my god, I get it now.”

Like yes, this is me being coldly political and thinking about people as examples to make a political point. Everyone’s valid and can do what they want, but some things are just easier for potential converts to wrap their minds around.. “I’m sorting through toys to give to Shelly’s baby. He probably won’t want a princess crown, huh?” “I actually know several people who were considered boys when they were babies and never got one, and are making up for all their lost princess crown time now as adults. You never know what he’ll be into when he grows up.” “…Okay, point. I’ll throw it in there.” Trans and enby people disrupt gender in a really powerful back-of-the-brain way where people suddenly see how much leeway there is between gender and sex.

I honestly believe supporting trans and enby people and queering gender until it’s a macrame project instead of a spectrum are how we’ll get to a gender-free utopia. I think cultural feminism is just the same old shit, inverted. (Confession: in my head, I pronounce “cultural” with emphasis on the “cult” part.) 

I think feminism is like a lot of emergency response groups: Our job is to put ourselves out of a job. It’s not a good thing if gender discrimination is still prevalent and harmful 200 years from now! Obviously we’re not there yet and calls to pack it in and go home are overrated, but as the problem disappears into its solution, we have to accept that our old ways of looking at the world have to shift.

[pamphletstoinspire]

Archbishop Vigano’s  Warns Trump About ‘Great Reset’ Plot

Open Letter To The President Of The United States

DONALD J. TRUMP

Sunday, October 25, 2020

Solemnity of Christ the King

Mr. President,

Allow me to address you at this hour in which the fate of the whole world is being threatened by a global conspiracy against God and humanity. I write to you as an Archbishop, as a Successor of the Apostles, as the former Apostolic Nuncio to the United States of America. I am writing to you in the midst of the silence of both civil and religious authorities. May you accept these words of mine as the “voice of one crying out in the desert” (Jn 1:23).

As I said when I wrote my letter to you in June, this historical moment sees the forces of Evil aligned in a battle without quarter against the forces of Good; forces of Evil that appear powerful and organized as they oppose the children of Light, who are disoriented and disorganized, abandoned by their temporal and spiritual leaders.

Daily we sense the attacks multiplying of those who want to destroy the very basis of society: the natural family, respect for human life, love of country, freedom of education and business. We see heads of nations and religious leaders pandering to this suicide of Western culture and its Christian soul, while the fundamental rights of citizens and believers are denied in the name of a health emergency that is revealing itself more and more fully as instrumental to the establishment of an inhuman faceless tyranny.

A global plan called the Great Reset is underway. Its architect is a global élite that wants to subdue all of humanity, imposing coercive measures with which to drastically limit individual freedoms and those of entire populations. In several nations this plan has already been approved and financed; in others it is still in an early stage. Behind the world leaders who are the accomplices and executors of this infernal project, there are unscrupulous characters who finance the World Economic Forum and Event 201, promoting their agenda.

The purpose of the Great Reset is the imposition of a health dictatorship aiming at the imposition of liberticidal measures, hidden behind tempting promises of ensuring a universal income and cancelling individual debt. The price of these concessions from the International Monetary Fund will be the renunciation of private property and adherence to a program of vaccination against Covid-19 and Covid-21 promoted by Bill Gates with the collaboration of the main pharmaceutical groups. Beyond the enormous economic interests that motivate the promoters of the Great Reset, the imposition of the vaccination will be accompanied by the requirement of a health passport and a digital ID, with the consequent contact tracing of the population of the entire world. Those who do not accept these measures will be confined in detention camps or placed under house arrest, and all their assets will be confiscated.

Mr. President, I imagine that you are already aware that in some countries the Great Reset will be activated between the end of this year and the first trimester of 2021. For this purpose, further lockdowns are planned, which will be officially justified by a supposed second and third wave of the pandemic. You are well aware of the means that have been deployed to sow panic and legitimize draconian limitations on individual liberties, artfully provoking a world-wide economic crisis. In the intentions of its architects, this crisis will serve to make the recourse of nations to the Great Reset irreversible, thereby giving the final blow to a world whose existence and very memory they want to completely cancel. But this world, Mr. President, includes people, affections, institutions, faith, culture, traditions, and ideals: people and values that do not act like automatons, who do not obey like machines, because they are endowed with a soul and a heart, because they are tied together by a spiritual bond that draws its strength from above, from that God that our adversaries want to challenge, just as Lucifer did at the beginning of time with his “non serviam.”

Many people – as we well know – are annoyed by this reference to the clash between Good and Evil and the use of “apocalyptic” overtones, which according to them exasperates spirits and sharpens divisions. It is not surprising that the enemy is angered at being discovered just when he believes he has reached the citadel he seeks to conquer undisturbed. What is surprising, however, is that there is no one to sound the alarm. The reaction of the deep state to those who denounce its plan is broken and incoherent, but understandable. Just when the complicity of the mainstream media had succeeded in making the transition to the New World Order almost painless and unnoticed, all sorts of deceptions, scandals and crimes are coming to light.

Until a few months ago, it was easy to smear as “conspiracy theorists” those who denounced these terrible plans, which we now see being carried out down to the smallest detail. No one, up until last February, would ever have thought that, in all of our cities, citizens would be arrested simply for wanting to walk down the street, to breathe, to want to keep their business open, to want to go to church on Sunday. Yet now it is happening all over the world, even in picture-postcard Italy that many Americans consider to be a small enchanted country, with its ancient monuments, its churches, its charming cities, its characteristic villages. And while the politicians are barricaded inside their palaces promulgating decrees like Persian satraps, businesses are failing, shops are closing, and people are prevented from living, traveling, working, and praying. The disastrous psychological consequences of this operation are already being seen, beginning with the suicides of desperate entrepreneurs and of our children, segregated from friends and classmates, told to follow their classes while sitting at home alone in front of a computer.

In Sacred Scripture, Saint Paul speaks to us of “the one who opposes” the manifestation of the mystery of iniquity, the kathèkon (2 Thess 2:6-7). In the religious sphere, this obstacle to evil is the Church, and in particular the papacy; in the political sphere, it is those who impede the establishment of the New World Order.

As is now clear, the one who occupies the Chair of Peter has betrayed his role from the very beginning in order to defend and promote the globalist ideology, supporting the agenda of the deep church, who chose him from its ranks.

Mr. President, you have clearly stated that you want to defend the nation – One Nation under God, fundamental liberties, and non-negotiable values that are denied and fought against today. It is you, dear President, who are “the one who opposes” the deep state, the final assault of the children of darkness.

For this reason, it is necessary that all people of good will be persuaded of the epochal importance of the imminent election: not so much for the sake of this or that political program, but because of the general inspiration of your action that best embodies – in this particular historical context – that world, our world, which they want to cancel by means of the lockdown. Your adversary is also our adversary: it is the Enemy of the human race, He who is “a murderer from the beginning” (Jn 8:44).

Around you are gathered with faith and courage those who consider you the final garrison against the world dictatorship. The alternative is to vote for a person who is manipulated by the deep state, gravely compromised by scandals and corruption, who will do to the United States what Jorge Mario Bergoglio is doing to the Church, Prime Minister Conte to Italy, President Macron to France, Prime Minster Sanchez to Spain, and so on. The blackmailable nature of Joe Biden – just like that of the prelates of the Vatican’s “magic circle” – will expose him to be used unscrupulously, allowing illegitimate powers to interfere in both domestic politics as well as international balances. It is obvious that those who manipulate him already have someone worse than him ready, with whom they will replace him as soon as the opportunity arises.

And yet, in the midst of this bleak picture, this apparently unstoppable advance of the “Invisible Enemy,” an element of hope emerges. The adversary does not know how to love, and it does not understand that it is not enough to assure a universal income or to cancel mortgages in order to subjugate the masses and convince them to be branded like cattle. This people, which for too long has endured the abuses of a hateful and tyrannical power, is rediscovering that it has a soul; it is understanding that it is not willing to exchange its freedom for the homogenization and cancellation of its identity; it is beginning to understand the value of familial and social ties, of the bonds of faith and culture that unite honest people. This Great Reset is destined to fail because those who planned it do not understand that there are still people ready to take to the streets to defend their rights, to protect their loved ones, to give a future to their children and grandchildren. The leveling inhumanity of the globalist project will shatter miserably in the face of the firm and courageous opposition of the children of Light. The enemy has Satan on its side, He who only knows how to hate. But on our side, we have the Lord Almighty, the God of armies arrayed for battle, and the Most Holy Virgin, who will crush the head of the ancient Serpent. “If God is for us, who can be against us?” (Rom 8:31).

Mr. President, you are well aware that, in this crucial hour, the United States of America is considered the defending wall against which the war declared by the advocates of globalism has been unleashed. Place your trust in the Lord, strengthened by the words of the Apostle Paul: “I can do all things in Him who strengthens me” (Phil 4:13). To be an instrument of Divine Providence is a great responsibility, for which you will certainly receive all the graces of state that you need, since they are being fervently implored for you by the many people who support you with their prayers.

With this heavenly hope and the assurance of my prayer for you, for the First Lady, and for your collaborators, with all my heart I send you my blessing.

God bless the United States of America!

+ Carlo Maria Viganò

Tit. Archbishop of Ulpiana

Former Apostolic Nuncio to the United States of America

[smuttymess]

bts astro soulmate reading | for vanessa

sign: taurus sun | leo moon | virgo rising

lover: min yoongi | soulmate: kim taehyung

Those born with their Sun in Taurus are known for their reliability and fortitude: they know the power of making a plan, staying the course and seeing it through to the end. People initially experience you as a thoughtful, diligent, and strong-willed individual who can be trusted to make key decisions not lose their cool under pressure, establishing you as a valuable figure both in the workplace and in positions of power but also in your personal relationships. Your Virgo rising, or how you present to others, only furthers your presence as a matter-of-fact, hard working person who values perfection and purposefulness in everything that you do no matter how seemingly small and unimportant. Beneath this stoic, occasionally cold exterior is fiery Leo Moon, which brims with a boundless energy that comprises your internal state of emotions and reactions. Leo is driven by ego and being seen, meaning you derive great value from being appreciated from all of your hard work, and you're not afraid to ask for it. When the elements come together, you are likely to experience profound clashes between your outgoing, showy and prideful Leo Moon and the patient, balanced nature of your Taurus Sun. Your specific placements make you one of the most opinionated and brazen signs in the zodiac, meaning you are highly respected but not always liked. Let's face it: not everyone is ready for your level of honesty! And while this can sometimes leave you feeling misunderstood (Leo loves to be loved), the strength of your Taurus Sun affords you heightened sense of self and the world around you alongside a keen understanding that not everyone is for you. Once the bruises on your ego have healed, you're more than happy to pour your signature loyalty, compassion and dedication into the many people that do adore you, creating lifelong relationships that are of the most importance to you.

A Moon in Leo means you have a deep confidence gained from your vast life experience, and your Taurus Sun knows how to use this knowledge to move you forward towards your best self. This inner security allows you to speak candidly, something that others deeply admire about you and undoubtedly has contributed to your success in career and relationships. In being able to very frankly admit to your strengths and weaknesses, you are able to advance ahead of others who are still unsure of their place in the universe and focus on achieving the greatness you know you are capable of reaching, going for nothing less than perfection. It is no surprise that you are selective with your relationships, naturally gravitating towards people who match you level of intellectualism and curiosity. It is Min Yoongi, the sensitive, creative Pisces, that strikes your interest at a large dinner party hosted by a shared acquaintance within your high-rolling social circle from various industries. Preferring to lay back on the sidelines, Yoongi takes in the room, his eyes becoming fixate on you as you light up the room with your Leo fire while deeply immersed in raucous conversation about current events. A Virgo Moon, Yoongi immediately connects with your very logical and perceptive mind, but his lively Aries Venus is both amused and turned on by the evident passion underlying your words as you so expertly articulate your point of view. It is towards the end of the night after countless passing stares when Yoongi finally approaches you, the low, seductive hum of his voice sending you into a daze as his dark eyes pierce into you. It's not everyday you hear people speak their mind in this way - your authenticity is refreshing. I'd love to hear more of your thoughts. Sit with me? This combination of praise and immediate appreciation for your inner self is almost foreplay in and of itself, which only intensifies with the natural flow of the conversation that follows. Not one to waste time, you tell Yoongi to call you when he's free to meet again while he's in town, and it's through the long, winding exchanges in the days and weeks that follow which sets this love affair into motion.

Pisces and Taurus are two signs that connect on a highly emotional level, falling for each other's minds before even thinking of moving to the physical. Underneath your strong, Virgo exterior lies a highly empathetic, good-hearted soul that senses a similar kindness in Yoongi - a quality that you sometimes overlook Though softs spoken at first, you enjoy seeing him open up about his passion for music and artistic pursuits which are much different from your own career path. While you don't enjoy too much leisure in your daily life (there's so much to do!) you find yourself spending hours in bed with Yoongi with whom time simply stands still. His innate passion extends into sex, which you two take your time getting to but inevitably erupts in something very intense and romantic. You are both extremely sensual signs representing the art of pleasure, and nowhere does it become clearer than when Yoongi's lips are on yours, devouring every inch of you while one hand rests behind your neck and the other is free to explore the rest of your body. He is soft but commanding in his presence, his eyes laser-focused on yours as his fingers slide your panties to the side to enter your core, expertly curving inside you and driving a loud moan from your lips. Yoongi is the type to make you fall in love with his sensitivity but also his genuine care for your orgasm, his movements sending shivers throughout your spine as he draws you closer and closer to your edge and stopping only when you are trembling and thrusting against his fingers to ride out your high. A Pisces gets lost in your pleasure, wanting to satisfy you to the fullest extent. You're so fucking beautiful, I can't wait to taste you.

Though highly compatible in bed, this is not a forever duo due to the conflicting nature of your placements. The classic Taurus/Pisces dilemma lies their innately different expectations and life values: while you are both money-motivated, you work in entirely different ways to achieve your goals. You deeply crave the stability that comes with financial independence, while Yoongi's Pisces, makes him much more interested in the freedom that wealth offers. He is the free-flowing fish, who often spends a great deal of time alone inside his fantasy world where he is able to bring his artistic visions to life, neglecting you in the process. You prefer to live with two feet firmly on the ground, and while his Virgo Moon makes him driven, he does not match your level of intensity in this way. His laid-back demeanor, while initially endearing to you, over time this becomes frustrating as it does not align with your need to be doted on and truly adored on a daily basis. It soon becomes clear that your visions of the future are not in sync, and it is the decisive Taurus that ultimately cuts ties in pursuits of someone that is a better fit.

However hurt you are when one relationship prospect ends, your pride does not let you stay down for long - after all, you are all about improving and moving forward. Your sign is likely to immerse themselves in work projects or helping friends and family when they need a distraction and something to get lost in. A Virgo rising has an innate love of learning that knows no limit, and you are likely to enjoy travel that involves a historical/educational component. It is while on a solo adventure through Rome that you meet a fellow wanderer - his dark brown, curly hair falling across his face as his eyes come to meet yours, revealing perhaps the most gorgeous face you've ever seen. I'm Taehyung, pleasure to meet you.

You are dual in nature, and you need someone to appreciate that in full - quirks and all. Enter Kim Taehyung, the enigmatic Capricorn whose varied emotional complexity matches your own and effortlessly clicks. Immediately you come to admire each others shared levels of honesty and ambition, traits you explore over walks through the city streets and subsequently over long-distance phone calls once you return home. From the start these two earth signs are like magnets to each other, and the chemistry's pull is undeniable. Your impatient Leo spirit has likely landed you in trouble by rushing into things romantically, and the Capricorn man is more than happy to take things move at your pace - in fact, he enjoys nothing more than a slow build. While hours-long conversations floating from topic to topic may be a waste of time, with Taehyung it is easy to get lost in the sultriness of his voice, but also the way he romantically views the world around him - the charm emanating from his Aries Moon is infectious and speaks to your soul that also wants to achieve but cares deeply about people. He is also exceptionally lighthearted, knowing exactly when to shift from the pragmatic, hard-working idol to laid-back and silly friend that just wants to make you laugh with a random meme or nonsensical text. Traditional at heart, you're more than happy to be wooed, allowing Tae someone to plan a date and show you an excellent time by curating according to your fine tastes. A Leo Moon knows the value of themselves and their company so doesn't settle for anything half-assed, your Virgo rising makes you prone to criticism, while your Taurus means you are particularly averse to anything that is careless or superficial. You prefer grand gestures to be thoughtful in nature, and you are pleasantly surprised makes you feel appreciated from afar, repeatedly surprising you with gifts delivered that perfectly match your style. Thought this would suit you nicely. Show me on video, I can't wait to see you in it... By the time you are back together in person, it's almost as if reuniting with a long lost friend who you also can't wait to ride.

After several weeks of foreplay over the phone, you two waste no time when you find yourself standing at the entryway of his hotel suite. The intuitive Capricorn male can easily recognize a bit of a praise kink within you, one that his very task-oriented side is happy to experiment with and execute in in the bedroom. His Aquarius in Venus is creative and loves to play, excited to explore dominant/submissive behavior you've expressed interest in and very much wanting to be the one that allows you to relinquish the control you have on all areas of your life. It is truly unnerving how dual he is in nature, his eyes darkening to expose his dominant side that senses your anticipation at the appearance of a small toy, the tension steadily building between your thighs as you imagine how it will feel against you. A true tease, Tae lights you on fire with ease as he moves to close the gap between your bodies, his fingers gently tracing your jaw and neck as his lips graze your trembling lips. Patience, my love. It's going to be a long evening. Tae's Capricorn/Aquarius combo alongside your Taurus/Leo means that there is an unpredictability in the dynamic, resulting in many sexual possibilities. You're both more than capable of switching roles, your Taurus takes the lead as Taehyung stares up at you in awe, his lips falling apart as you press your breasts against his strong chest. You enjoy coaxing praises from his lips as you straddle him, grinding down onto his length slowly as a desperate moan escapes his lips and he bucks his hips, aching to fill you up. You've teased me all this time, let's see how you like being toyed with. There is something so deeply satisfying about his deep voice groaning and telling you how perfect you are as you bounce on his cock, stopping strategically to to edge him and hear him beg with those beautiful lips of his. This is a pairing that is as good at long-drawn out passionate sessions as they are with to-the-point quickies, learning with ease how to make the other come undone in a matter of minutes. It is not unusual for a 20 min break in the day to turn into you and Tae on the couch, your leg over his shoulder with his finger rubbing your clit as his strokes feverishly into you and smiling as he sets a new record. While sex between these two can be extremely gentle, especially after days apart, there is a natural bit of a competition here: who can make the other come the hardest? Either way, you both win.

Together, a Capricorn and Taurus build a life of comfort, stability, and trust that could only be created by two earth signs. Above all else, you need the emotional stability that comes from being with a like-minded soul who is as strong, independent and decisive as you are - someone who will let you shine brightly while confidently pursuing their own goals. But at the end of a long day, your partner also needs to be able to consistently shower you with the love and affection you crave - almost as if it were their second job. While you certainly get off on being admired by many, at a deep level you truly desire one lifelong love who only has eyes for you. You find this in Capricorn Tae, a highly disciplined, hardworking spirit who also enjoys surprising you with his quirky, unconventional nature that brings out your inner child and proves to be a life partner in all ways. With a shared love for learning and individual perfectionism, this is a duo that will likely achieve greatness in very different fields but find a way to make them mesh well - Taehyung in music and art and you in whatever path you choose - while providing a level of understanding to each other that few others can. This combination enjoys a very stable and established home base in each others hearts given a high importance placed on wealth and comfort, but not extravagance or over-indulgence. This is a pairing that likely has an apartment in the heart of the city for business matters, but prefers the coziness of their primary residence outside of the city. It is in this home that you are able to fully decompress from a day of leading and producing to simply be your unique selves, the space serving as a sanctuary for you to get lost in pure domestic bliss. Possessing a complimentary balance of temperaments and desires, Capricorn and Taurus is a match for the ages, one that is long-lasting and rooted in family, loyalty and prosperity.

[ohhophelie]

ORIGINS & FAMILY:

Name: Ophélie Evangeline Redgrave

Nickname: O, Fee

Birthday: 31 July 1992

Age: 28

Gender: Female.

Place of Birth: London, United Kingdom

Places Lived Since: London, United Kingdom; Saint-Malo, Ille-et-Vilaine, France

Current Residence: Kensington, London, United Kingdom

Nationality: British & French

Parents: Lambert & Sérephine Redgrave, née Callac

Grandparents: Harold Redgrave (grandfather, paternal, deceased)  Hélène de Broglie (grandmother, paternal, deceased) Aurélien Callac (grandfather, maternal) Ophélie Hervé (grandmother, maternal)

Aunts & Uncles: Charlotte, Georgina Redgrave (aunts, paternal) Anita Acton (aunt, paternal)

Number of Siblings: Three brothers; Sébastian Redgrave (38), Arnaud Redgrave (36), Gaël Redgrave (32)

Relationship With Family: Ophélie is closest to Gaël, her other two brothers see her mostly as the family fuck up although they all feel somewhat protective of her as the youngest. This was particularly meaningful during the wild years of her teens when an attention starved Ophélie might find herself in places or situations she was likely too young for, they were mostly all still at home and willing to come collect her from wherever and keep her secrets from their parents. Her father has always been distant, she sometimes fears he’d rather forget she existed. Her mother is overbearing and critical - after three boys she thought Ophélie was at long last the daughter who’d belong only to her, a little doll to shape as she wished. She was very wrong.

Happiest Memory: The freedom and acceptance she finally found in university, the Christmas and New Years she spent with Gaël in New York when spent a year at NYU.  

Childhood Trauma: oh boy - see this answer HERE

PHYSICAL:

Height: 5'4”

Weight: 110lbs.

Build: Slim - some might say too skinny

Hair Color: Blonde.

Usual Hair Style: loose curls, a careless, practiced ease. Sometimes she wears it up if she's bored enough, high ponytail when she runs

Eye Color: Blue.

Glasses? Contacts?: Neither.

Style of Dress/Typical Outfit(s): Expensive as fuck - if she had to choose a ‘style’ it would be classic. She isn’t conservative in the least bit, but she also isn’t one to go into more out there fashions - that is Gaël lane. She tends to favor dresses and skirts and more feminine looks. Ophélie caught in jeans is a very rare Ophélie. When she is home alone she is usually wearing a thin robe or some form of lingerie/pjs  

Typical Style of Shoes: Ophélie does not like to wear shoes. However, given that going barefoot is usually frowned upon in society, she can usually be found in heels that match whatever she may be wearing. If she is very close with someone she will take her shoes off the moment she enters their home, and at her own flat can always be found barefoot.

Jewellery? Tattoos? Piercings?: She has both of her earlobes pierced, as expected. At one point she had a cartilage piercing, but she long ago forgot to keep it open. Unbeknownst to her mother and most of her family, she has both of her nipples pierced. Ophélie will say to anyone who knows that these are her favorite piercings. She has a tattoo of a scorpion on the nape of her neck. Everyday jewellery includes a heavy men’s watch that belonged to her grandfather, whatever earrings she fancies on any given day, as well as rings. The one ring she wears at all times is made up of three interlocking circles - when she is anxious or focusing on something Ophélie spins this around her finger.

Scars: She has a scar on her shin from falling off a horse as a child. The most recent additions include a thin line across her chest/sternum and a nearly perfect large C in the center of her back - she plans on adjusting that soon.

Unique Mannerisms/Physical Habits: When she is focusing, Ophélie will twist her ring around her finger. She has the tendency to curl her hands into fists and dig her nails into her palms. She also chews on her bottom lip, which has caused a significant investment in longwear lipstick.

Athleticism: Ophélie grew up playing tennis with her brother Gaël and got into running in her teens. She never does any actual races mostly because she couldn’t be bothered and also way too many people near her. It’s mostly a way for her to focus her own mind/punish her body.

Health Problems/Illnesses: She absolutely has an eating disorder from the unrealistic expectations of her mother when she was growing up. It is something she has struggled with most of her life that her friends are likely unaware of. Ophélie also has undiagnosed ADHD, PTSD, addiction issues that are yet to be explored.

INTELLECT:

Level of Education: BSc in Politics and Philosophy from LSE - it wasn’t exactly what she wanted to study but a compromise that got her parents off her back. If possible she’d want to go back to school for linguistics or art history.

Languages Spoken: English & French natively, Spanish fluently. Functionally fluent in Italian, a lingering understanding of Latin from prep school. She has a very good ear for languages and dialects and can pick them up quickly.

Level of Self-Esteem: Fluctuates between “I hate myself I’m such a bitch” and “I love myself I’m such a bitch.” No in between.

Gifts/Talents: Very good at languages and remembering things she’s heard if she cares enough to focus, weirdly good at crossword puzzles if she has the patience, has the ability to come off as unthreatening and use it to manipulate people.

Mathematical?: Hell no, she absolutely cheated her way through math and she is not at all sorry about it.

Makes Decisions Based Mostly On Emotions, or On Logic?: Emotions, particularly whims. She does have a vindictive streak and while that is based on emotions she can adapt logic to her purposes is.

Life Philosophy: live fast die young bad girls do it well. No joking, she doesn’t really have one or doesn’t like to consider it, but if we had to define it, somewhere along the lines of ‘never let them see you cry’ IDK TBD

Religious Stance: Was raised Anglican, not really about it. Enjoys the art and melodrama of the catholic church.

Cautious or Daring?: Daring, boarding on reckless, she has the arrogant privilege of the very wealthy, that they are untouchable and almost immortal.

Most Sensitive About/Vulnerable To: Her mother, people trying to lessen her or force her to be something she is not, her eating disorder/body image

Optimist or Pessimist?: says she's an optimist, mostly because she doesn’t let herself project any other way; deep down is def a pessimist mostly out of self preservation and years of building up armor

Extrovert or Introvert?: Extrovert.

RELATIONSHIPS:

Current Relationship Status: fucking her way through the french bros/leadership

Sexual Orientation: bisexual in that she is attracted to all beautiful women and men who are older, dangerous, and low key damaged.

Past Relationships: Only real/serious relationship was with Charles Jameson (alexa play champagne problems by taylor swift)

Primary Reason For Being Broken Up With: being caught cheating whoops

Primary Reasons For Breaking Up With People: boredom, afraid of getting to close

Ever Cheated?: yep, and if not for the way he reacted she might actually feel guilty about it.

Been Cheated On: not that she knows of

Level of Sexual Experience: very high and no she will not be slutshamed thank you very much

Story of First Kiss: A boy she met while staying with her grandmother in France. She was 11 and kissed him on a dare.

Story of Loss of Virginity: She’d just turned 14 but told him she was older, it was mediocre at best but she loved the rush of power she felt when she turned him down the next time.

A Social Person?: Very - she literally wouldn’t be able to do her job so well if she wasn’t. Plus shes a slut for attention and once you cross the threshold between casual friends and very close friends - she’s loyal as fuck.

Most Comfortable Around: Paul for sure, although she feels safe and comfortable with most of the frenchies she knows well - Noa, Laurent, Guillaume, Delphine, Sofie - its Paul she goes to first, her ride or die bitch. Outside of the French she feels comfortable around Spencer, shockingly, and within the family it's only Gaël who she feels she can even be remotely herself around.

Oldest Friend: Camilla Berkeley, her brother Gaël. Most of the people she knew through grade school and her teens she grew bored of or dropped for Paul and the French.

How Does She Think Others Perceive Her?: Dancing right on the knife’s edge between hot and hot mess; a fuck up; shallow and vain. For those who know her well she often fears they think she might be stupid or reckless, not as devoted as she actually is.

How Do Others Actually Perceive Her?: Literally dancing right on the knife’s edge between hot and hot mess. Those closest to her often think she’s smarter than she herself does, hopefully they also value and recognize her deep loyalty. All should think she's a great time.

SECRETS:

Life Goals: To be happy and find something and someone that makes her happy.

Dreams: That she will stop letting the negligence and cruelty of her parents - mostly mother, hurt her. That she will matter to someone, be loved and wanted for exactly who she is and not who they think she should be or who she pretends to be.

Greatest Fears: Being abandoned by those she loves,  being hurt by those who should care for her, never being seen for who she is. Horses - she had a bad fall as a child and doesn’t trust them.

Most Ashamed Of: The walls she builds out of self preservation, lying to her brother when he only wants to help her.

Secret Hobbies: Puzzles - the more pieces and complex the better. It isn’t really that much of a secret because there is usually one in progress on the unused dining room table. Collecting first editions of her favorite books - it's a secret because she is usually too impatient to find a better deal or negotiate and will literally pay whatever the seller asks for it, usually above what it is worth.

Crimes Committed (Was she caught? Charged?): She has never been caught or charged, but possession with intent to distribute multiple illegal drugs, selling said drugs for organized crime. There was also that one time that she may or may not have led a man to his death, which although she has done her best to block this memory, would likely make her an accessory to murder.

DETAILS/QUIRKS:

Night Owl or Early Bird?: Both really,  but that's the insomnia and stimulant usage.

Light or Heavy Sleeper?: light sleeper when she’s alone, heavy if she’s sleeping with someone she trusts

Favorite Animal: penguins

Favorite Foods: strawberries, champagne,

Least Favorite Food: anything mint

Favorite Book: The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

Least Favorite Book: any of the myriad of self help books well meaning psychiatrists have suggested

Favorite Movie: Heathers, Jurassic Park  

Least Favorite Movie: emotional porn - aka any movie specifically designed to make you cry without any profound or complicated themes other than ‘life is short’

Favorite Song: Kyoto by Phoebe Bridgers

Favorite Sport: she’s a tennis bitch for sure

Coffee or Tea?: coffee although she does like tea

Crunchy or Smooth Peanut Butter?: Ophélie is allergic to peanuts rip  

Type of Car She Drives: lol no one let this bitch drive

Lefty or Righty?: Left

Favorite Color: the champagne sheer of the sun pushing through the curtains in an early morning, baby pink of her favorite peonies, rich red velvet of box seats at the opera, the soft golden grey of art museum marble floors.

Cusser?: Yep - but controls it around her family because she doesn't have the patience or stamina for the lecture/scandal it would cause her mother.

Smoker? Drinker? Drug User?: Never smokes, drinks pretty often, regular cocaine use since her teens, a more recent venture into pills.

Biggest Regret: Letting it go on so long with Charles, the fact that she still lets her mother’s cruelty hurt her, not going to school for what she actually was interested in.

Pets: two italian greyhounds named Pogo & Banana

[livingmybestfakelife]

Gospel Truth

Summary: You finally break Tommy after showing your true colors

inspired by the song Gospel Truth by Joseph J. Jones

gifs by @mistress-gif

When you woke up this morning it was freezing, it gave you a good boost to get out of bed and get on with your morning routine before heading out to work. You couldn’t wait to speak to Thomas about what had occurred last night, you weren’t there to witness the commotion but your daughter had vented to you about it, tears falling out of her big beautiful eyes that she inherited from you, she could hardly get any words out because she was so upset, her father had embarrassed her in front of a very important man that could be of importance to her future, one that even though had a clean record, was known to be respectful and trustworthy, Tommy just didn’t trust around his only child.

It took everything in you to not go up to his room and give him a good chewing out for doing what he promised you he wouldn’t do. But the house of full of guests wardering about, surely one of them would be nosey enough to put their ear up against the door to listen in, and last thing your baby girl neeeded was more embarrassment, so you decided to leave it alone...for the time being. Today was a big day, Selena would be leaving for university this afternoon so you and Tommy would be sending her on her way at the train station, but before all of that you both headed to work, he had left an hour before you did, you were also early so the office was empty except for the both of you, perfect, no one around to listen to you two bicker.

Your footsteps could be heard all the way in his office, he for some reason recognized your footsteps, “it has a certain rhythm” he once told you, you never understood that, it didn’t sound any different from any other woman, but he insisted that it was different, he just knew you way too well to misktake it for anyone else’s. It was unusual but it was him, he sighed and gulped down the rest of his whiskey before straightening up in his seat, preparing for your wrath he already knew was coming. As you entered the room he was hit in the face by a whisk of air caused by the swing of the door, your glare making him feel colder, the only other women that he ever intimidated by was his mother and Polly, then came you.

You were fourteen years old but had a mouth on you like a grown man, always prepared for a debate, a fight and had enough stamina to outrun any authoritative figure that tried to chase you down. It would be cliche to say that you were different from any other girl Tommy has ever met but it was the truth, besides your bold and brass personality, you were also the only girl Tommy knew who was being raised by a single father, your mum passing on when you were only eight years old, your dad taught you how to defend yourself from a very early age, knowing all too well how boys and men would try to take advantage of a beautiful young lady like yourself. Your relationship with your dad was one that he was jealous of, his own father being a coward and walking out on his own family not too long ago, but here you were with one that could’ve easily given up, and abandon you like most of them did, not wanting to be bothered with a child all by themselves, or remarrying just for someone to keep up with the house, but he didn’t do that either, he loved your mother too damn much to move on, he had all he needed with you, it was you two against the world, and Tom only wished that his own pop valued him and his siblings the same way.

Your personality from who were as child to today never changed, when you wanted to get your point across you’d do it loudly and dramatically, how else would these stubborn men listen to you. You walked into his office and closed the door with your foot, marching to one of the chairs in front of his desk, as you sit down you move your collar down and expose your neck a little, just enough to show him your trophy from the night before, something that you liked to do to taunt him, the faint bruise on your neck caused by an admirer that you invited up to you bedroom late last night, making sure to sneak him out quickly after you were done with him. He balled up a fist then unclenched it and let out a heavy sigh.

“Why do you insist on pissing me off?”

“Why do you insist on breaking your promises?”

“If this is about last n-“

“Of course it is, you told me that you wouldn’t do this Thomas, I’m holding out my end of the deal and I expect you to do the same”

“Oh, right, you are doing that aren’t you? Fucking a different simp every other night in my house”

“Oh fuck off, like you don’t have women who warm your bed every night, I deserve a good fuck as well”

“YN”

He says your name in a warning tone, he knows how easy it is for you to push his buttons and he hates himself for always falling into your trap and making himself look crazy. But that’s what you always did to him, you make him fucking insane, because he never fully had you, and you never fully gave your heart to him, your deepest secrets he had to learn from the grapevine, meanwhile he was spilling it all out for you, he’s done every he could think of to get you to understand how deep his love ran for you, he’s sacrificed, stole, lied and killed for you, one time right in front of you. Even after all of that, you still didn’t fully commit to him emotionally, sure you married him, but it still wasn’t enough, he didn’t feel anything on your end, now he understood how Lizzie and so many other of his “girlfriends” he had felt, to be willing to give anything just for a “I love you” but only getting crumbs in return.

“Look, as I said, I’m holding up my end of the deal, I agreed to move back in here for as long as you pay for Selena’s education, which is fucking insane”

“What’s so insane about it Yn? We both know that she isn’t mine”

“Thomas!”

“Well she isn’t, not biologically at least...listen to me, look I don’t mean to sound so cold alright, I love Selena like she was mine, hell I adopted her didn’t I? Gave her my last name, but...I”

“Wow, you’re so sad, the big tough Thomas Shelby having the nerve to call other men simps when he’s the biggest one of them all, too blind to see that I’ve been using you for security all these years, I mean men hell, might as well take advantage right, it’s not like you were getting the hint, you took me in when I was already seven months pregnant with another mans baby, a man you knew you couldn’t compete with because he had something you didn’t, and that was me, I actually had some feelings for the poor bastard and you couldn’t handle that, it tore you up didn’t it? That I was having his baby and not yours, that we were so close to getting married...well luckily for you he died in that club fire, then you had a chance to swoop me in, not that I could put up much of a fight, I was twenty one with no man to help me raise my child, you were my meal ticket Tom, my simpy little meal ticket-“

You cut yourself off when all of a sudden he pulled out his gun and shot it into the ceiling, his eyes were wide and dark, the dark circles under them making him look more like a mad man, for the first time in all your years of knowing him you were afraid of him, you had finally broke him after slowly chipping away at his heart, your rant breaking it apart completely, he felt nothing but anger and betrayal, you’ve played with him for too long, and now...well that hole in the ceiling tells you all you need to know. He lowers the gun and walks closer to you, you back away as far as you can only for him to grab your arm, pulling you up against his chest.

“Tommy, please”

“You’re begging, since when do you beg, that’s for dogs remember?”

“I’m- I’m s-sorry, I didn’t mean it”

“Course you did, because it’s true, you played me like an instrument and I let you...because I love you”

“Y-you didn’t deserve it”

“I didn’t get what I deserved I got what I took, I took whatever I could get from you”

You reach over to take the gun from him and put the safety on, not trusting him with it for the moment, he’s breathing hard and beginning to sweat around his forehead, you wipe it away before kissing it, he melted at your comfort, even if it was your way of taming the beast he was being right now, your kisses and caresses were always warm.

There was a knock on the door that startled you out of the moment, you straightened him out before shoving his gun in your purse

“Come in”

The door opens to Selena walking in with a big smile on her face, she’s wear her brand new dress she purchased yesterday just for this day, wanting to make a good impression on the new people she would meet at school.

“Sorry if I’m interrupting something, but I was just coming by to pick up my last check”

You smiled at her and walked over to his desk to pick up her check that you knew was already written out and signed, he had it prepared for her every Friday.

“Here you go baby, we’re gonna miss you here, especially your dad, you’re the best assistant he’s ever had and will ever get”

“Oh, I know”

She gives him a wink earning her a chuckle from, he reaches out to give her a big hug, the two of them being just as close as you were with your own dad, the both of you never told her about his adoption of her, and you’re not sure you ever would, maybe one day she’ll find out on her own, either way it wouldn’t change their relationship, she’s the only father she’s ever known.

“Okay, I just finished packing, I still have some things to do before I leave, I’ll meet you at Esmeralda’s Place for lunch and then we can head on to the train station, sound like a plan?”

“Sure, darling, it’s a plan”

He gives her a kiss on the cheek before she excitedly leaves the office with her check that would end up leaving her even more in glee once she see’s that he’d given her a three hundred pound bonus, he’s too good to her, always giving her more than you’ve ever asked of him, it made your guilt tear your heart and stomach apart, you would have to spend an extra half hour in church on Sunday begging for forgiveness.

At the moment you didn’t have anything to say, deciding to leave things where they were you went to leave, but not before he spoken up.

“We’re not done here YN, cancel your plans for tonight, we have a lot to talk about”

And by talk he means have dinner and then fuck, it’s how you settled almost all of your issues with each other, so his threatning tone had no effect on you.

“Of course Tommy, whatever you say”

You go to give him a soft peck on the cheek then leave to head to your own office, luckily Polly was just coming in, the awkwardness finally exiting the office building.

“Morning Aunt Polly”

“Morning honey...everything alright?”

“Fine, Selena going away is just making me a bit depressed is all, she grew up too fast”

“Yeah she did, don’t worry darling you’ll see each other again before you know it”

She pats your shoulder and walks to her office, you were glad that a tear that was about to fall from your eyes dropped after she walked away, the last thing you wanted to do was keep her from her work over the count of your emotions, you would need to toughen up a little more now, and keep your guard up more often, Tommy was no longer manipulable.

[revlyncox]

No Human Being is Illegal on Stolen Land

This address was written for the Washington Ethical Society for indigenous People’s Day Sunday, October 11, 2020, by Lyn Cox. 

One of the things I notice about the values expressed in the story, “Grandmother Spider Brings the Light,” is that none of the characters attempt to keep the sun for themselves. In this legend, we are entering a paradigm in which the basic necessities of life are shared freely. In the world of the story, members of the community are willing to sacrifice for the benefit of all. The warmth of the sun is something that would be ridiculous to hoard. Part of the sun’s worth comes from the way it shines on the whole community, and the way in which the whole community works together in response. Each character makes suggestions and participates in the work, and even the setbacks give the whole community something to learn from. Proximity to raw power leaves its mark on some, and this is another reason to take turns. In the world of the story, people understand that their well being is bound up together.

These values stand in sharp contrast to the values brought to this continent by European conquest and colonization. The colonization mindset is still a strong current in United States law, policy, and culture. The assumptions of colonization influence ideas and customs about property ownership, the scale of impact of moral choices, and what it means to be an American. The way we understand class, race, education, the use of force in civil society, and so much more is tangled up in the mindset of colonization. Among the urgent issues arising from these roots is that of immigration justice. The way we understand who is welcome in our communities and how we demonstrate that is filtered through the assumptions of colonization. Justice for Indigenous people is one aspect of the project of dismantling systemic racism. Economic justice is an aspect of dismantling systemic racism. Immigration justice is an aspect of dismantling systemic racism.

The abstract concepts can be dizzying when we first become aware of the connections between all of the issues that bring suffering and division in our society. Today’s Address has a lot of history and facts, and we’ll put out a document with references and links after Platform. We might begin by focusing on our relationships, and on understanding that our interrelatedness extends beyond our immediate circles. We show up for our neighbors because of our common humanity, because we are connected in community, and because our liberation is bound up together. We work to understand how the myths of colonization have affected our minds so that we can clear away the obstacles to rich and full relationships with all of our neighbors and loved ones.

The impact of injustice for Indigenous people and for immigrants is closer to home for some of us than others; WES includes people from a variety of backgrounds. When we add just one degree further to include the consequences for our spouses, children, and close loved ones, many of us have a very personal view of the effects of systemic racism in affairs related to Indigenous communities, in policies toward immigrant communities, and in a variety of government actions that fall especially heavily on people of color. If it’s not you or someone in your immediate inner circle who is impacted by any given manifestation of systemic racism, it is almost certainly a friend in this Zoom room or someone close to them. Shifting our priorities to be rooted in love means remembering that threats to Indigenous sovereignty, cruelty and abuse in our immigration system, out-of-control policing that destroys lives in favor of property, all of these things affect specific human beings-- people we care about.

Indeed, the very assertion that the people we care about are human beings, with human rights -- people who deserve dignity and self-determination -- flies in the face of colonization. So let’s step back a bit and look at the roots of that philosophy.

In her book, An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz traces the roots of the European mindset of conquest back to the Crusades, heading into the Inquisition and to the enclosure of public lands in the 1600s. She writes that the privatization of the common lands, creating a permanent underclass of landless poor, was both an expression of the trend in European conquest and also one of its mechanisms. “The traumatized souls thrown off the land, as well as their descendants, became the land-hungry settlers enticed to cross a vast ocean with the promise of land and attaining the status of gentry.”  In essence, what happened with enclosure was to more deeply codify the idea that a few people mattered but most didn’t, and that property mattered more than the majority of people.

Meanwhile the Crusades, which was an attempt to take control of lucrative trades routes, also brought new avenues for oppression. Dunbar-Ortiz reminds us that this period brought us the papal law of limpieza de sangre, cleanliness of blood, beginning in 1449. Clean blood referred to ancestry that was exclusively Christian. So, in other words, even converting to Christianity did not bring legal equality to those whose ancestors were Jewish or Muslim. Some people are more important than others. Only some people are really human.

It is not an accident that this is the same period of history that brought the Doctrine of Discovery. In 1452, Pope Nicholas V decreed that so-called Christian nations had permission for the conquest, colonization, and exploitation of non-Christian territories and peoples. This became a cornerstone of international law. In 1823, the United States Supreme Court ruled that the discovery rights of European sovereigns had been transferred to the new United States. Indigenous ways need not be respected, according to the Supreme Court in 1823.

Some people are more important than others. Only some people are really people. And who gets to be a human being, who gets to have human rights, is inextricably tied with the thirst for wealth and the desire of conquering nations to extract resources and labor from land and people not their own.

These are not natural laws. These are not ethics that are universal for all people. Civilizations all over the world have shown that other ways are possible, ways built on mutual relationship and community thriving. But the baseline assumptions of conquest helped make all of the misery of colonization possible. These baseline assumptions fed the lies that justified the enslavement of human beings, generation to generation, because the extraction of wealth for the few was more important than the human rights of the many.

We can plainly see the destruction that this worldview brought to all of the places that were targeted for conquest. But it wasn’t done destroying lives in Europe, either. There may have been periods of uneasy peace, when it seemed like enlightenment might eventually bring liberation to all, or at least to all who could be admitted to European universities. But the bargain was still built on inequality, and in times when there was land or wealth to be gained by the few, or in times when scarcity arrived and the ruling class needed someone to blame, the illusion fell apart. Felix Adler, educated in Germany in the 1870s, absorbed the hope that it was possible for people to regard one another as full human beings. But the powers of division had been dug too deeply. The legacy of dehumanization was still there, and the horrors of World War I and World War II showed that, once again, only some people were regarded as human.

It has been observed that the phrase “illegal immigrant” was not in popular use until World War II, and it was first used to describe Jewish refugees. You may recall that the potential arrival of these refugees in the United States led to another layer of racism and cruelty in U.S. immigration policy, on top of the racism and cruelty in laws such as the Chinese Exclusion Act. The attempt to keep out Jewish and Eastern European refugees, based on concepts of race rooted in blood, brought immigration quotas to carefully control who was allowed in. Having no place to go, those subject to Nazi persecution were tortured and slaughtered. It was this experience that led Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel to coin the phrase that makes first half of the title of this Platform, “No human being is illegal.”

Wiesel said, “Know that no human being is illegal. That is a contradiction in terms. Human beings can be beautiful or more beautiful, they can be fat or skinny, they can be right or wrong, but illegal? How can a human being be illegal?”

Yet, in 2018, the U.S. Department of Justice instructed U.S. Attorney offices to refer to undocumented immigrants as “illegal aliens.” Immigration attorney Shahid Haque-Hausrath explains that this term is used to “dehumanize immigrants and divorce [us] from thinking of them as human beings.”

Are we clear how we got here? Are we clear about how the dehumanization of Indigenous people, the dehumanization of people who were enslaved, and the dehumanization of immigrants and refugees, even unto this day, are all related? When it benefits the few to exploit people and land and all of our relations in order to extract wealth, that system rests on the idea that only some of us are humans, only some of us are worthy, only some of us deserve human rights. There are lies that are told to make it seem like some of us have provisional worth, conditional humanity; lies that try to entice us to help maintain this system -- lies such as purity of blood, or the superiority of the Euro-American definition of civilization, or that scarcity comes from the arrival of other poor people rather than from rich people hoarding wealth.

We need to untangle all of it so that we can remember that we are in relationship with each other. Colonization has been part of Western civilization for so long, it has infected our minds and hearts. Few of us are immune from subtle messages about the worth or lack of worthiness of people, especially people who do not contribute to wealth as it is commonly measured.

Our liberation is bound up together. Like the people in the story, “Grandmother Spider Brings the Light,” we can operate with a different mindset, one of collective well-being and shared wisdom. To get there, we will need to re-think our assumptions about the way people are permitted to live and move in the world.

That brings us back to re-thinking the rules and customs around us, a network of assumptions that rests on colonization. Basing the United States legal system on the belief that Indigenous forms of government were and are not valid and that Indigenous value systems were and are inferior meant that the treaty rights and governmental systems of sovereign Indigenous nations have not been respected. If we take Indigenous sovereignty seriously, different solutions become evident.

When we consider the issues of immigration justice, to take one example, many assume that the United States government is the only entity that can determine who remains within and who is expelled from this territory between Millinocket, Maine, and San Diego, California, let alone the territories currently known as Alaska and Hawaii. Elizabeth Ellis, Assistant Professor at New York University and a citizen of the Peoria Tribe of Oklahoma, questions this paradigm. She writes:

“If we reposition ourselves, and think about migration not as American citizens, as documented or undocumented, but as settlers who have built lives and identities on Indigenous lands, and often at the expense of Indigenous peoples, this conversation looks very different.”

She goes on to say: “In articulating support for these critical [immigration] reforms, many typically appeal to humanitarian sympathy and visions of a modern world that provide all humans with the right to migration and citizenship. Yet we often forget that Native people have been fighting the United States’ efforts to carve borders into their homelands and territories for centuries and, in many ways, we have come to see exclusionary borders as a natural and normal state of international relations. In this context, then, including Native people [in the conversation] both bolsters challenges to US borders and provides alternative models of relationality and nationhood that may help us reimagine solutions to our current humanitarian crisis.”

Ellis gives a number of historical examples and contemporary applications in her full article. We’ll send out a link after Platform to a document with all of the links related to today’s Address.

Remembering that we are all related, then, we include immigration justice and supporting Indigenous sovereignty among our action plans for anti-racism and anti-oppression. As we heard in the reading that Karen shared, we can think of this in terms of restitution, in addition to being simply ethical and in right relationship with a goal for the common good. Not every person can do everything, yet we can coordinate in this community and with our community partners to embrace the whole circumference of the ethical manifold. We do this not simply out of compassion, but with recognition that another world is possible, a world of right relationship, and we hope to live into that world to make it as real as possible as soon as possible.

This Indigenous People’s Day weekend, there are two action items that might interest you. There is a bill in the U.S. House of Representatives, “The Truth and Healing Commission on Indian Boarding School Policy in the United States,” which aims to help us come to terms with the atrocities committed against Indigenous children and their families through boarding schools. Contact whoever will listen to you in the U.S. House of Representatives to let them know your thoughts on this bill. There is a lot of history to unpack, and this is a place to start. While you’ve got the attention of your favorite Member of Congress, you can ask them about the Native American Voting Rights Act. Indigenous voters are subject to many of familiar voter suppression tactics, such as reduced polling places and interrupted mail service. Check out the Lakota People’s Law project for more information on both of those. https://www.lakotalaw.org/

I asked R. of WES’s Immigration Justice Team for some other ideas about how we can work together toward collective liberation. R. reminded me of the Food Justice Initiative, which is connected with Sanctuary DMV. The Food Justice Initiative is a “systemic program rooted in justice” that helps immigrant families, regardless of immigration status, access mutual aid in the form of food and other necessities. Keep in mind that the COVID relief bill blocked aid to families in which any person in the household is undocumented. The Food Justice Initiative (article in the Post) gives us a chance to stay in touch with our neighbors and the needs they identify for themselves.

WES’s Immigration Justice Team has also been monitoring the situation of Binsar Siahaan (article in the Post), who was snatched from his faith community, Glenmont United Methodist Church, when ICE showed up and lied about the purpose of their visit. WES members may recall your past support of Rosa Gutierrez Lopez, who has been living in sanctuary at Cedar Lane UU congregation. R. points out that the strong organization of the Sanctuary team at Cedar Lane made it much more difficult for ICE to try the kind of underhanded tactics that they used to arrest Binsar, and that community support makes a tremendous difference. If you are on WES’s Immigration Justice action email list, stay tuned for possible actions we can take to support Binsar and help him return to his family.

R. told me, “Doing support work changes you as it changes the world. You meet people who are not anything like you, from different races, classes, faiths and world-views. It is the antidote to helplessness in the time of neo-fascism, as well. There are so many opportunities to join in.” He said WES members have written letters, gathered materials and funds, and attended vigils. The work is ongoing.

Humanism, to me, is a worldview in which we seek human solutions to human problems. And most problems are human problems; the few problems that are facts of the natural world are made exponentially worse by human choices to favor greed and selfishness over the recognition of our interrelatedness. Intellectual rigor and a humanist outlook lead us to dismantle the fallacies that undergird conquest and colonization; to note clearly the common roots of injustice affecting Indigenous peoples, people of color, and immigrants; and to turn toward right relationship in our thinking and in our practice. Let us remember that we are all related, and that our liberation is bound up together. So be it.

[sortinghatchats]

Sorting the Lizzie Bennet Diaries

Note: in the way we like to play this sorting game, “primaries” are WHY you do things and “secondaries” are HOW. If you want to learn more about our system’s definitions, check out our other tumblr posts, our blog at sortinghatchats.wordpress.com, or our quiz at https://ejadelomax.itch.io/sortinghatchats.

Lizzie Bennet values her sisters more than anything. She is not just confused but sometimes horrified when others don’t intuitively perform or understand that. The way Darcy eventually wins her over is by doing kindnesses and reparations for her sisters (without any clear aim to gain praise or recognition), and by letting Lizzie see him interact fondly with his own sister.

Lizzie’s drive is based around her own aspirations and the people she loves; she’s a Slytherin Primary, with a loud Gryffindor Secondary. Most adaptions of Elizabeth Bennet seem to make her this Slytherin/Gryffindor – she is one in the original source material, and those themes of healthy selfishness, close personal dedication to her loved ones, and forthright manner have carried over.

As a Gryffindor secondary, Lizzie can’t keep thoughts to herself, and she can’t be anything but herself. Where Darcy stumbles into social interactions overburdened with scripts and plans, Lizzie barrels through them and often gets herself in trouble with the way she instinctively, honestly, and thoughtlessly reacts to what she encounters. She drives herself almost completely on intuition and assumption. It screws her up sometimes, but that same burning Gryffindor Secondary is what draws people in her wake like eager moths.

Darcy is a Hufflepuff Primary, burnt by George Wickham and others. He’s defensive and suspicious of charisma, and he circles anxiously and sternly around the few people he holds in his good graces– Gigi, Bing Li, Fitz, sometimes Caroline, and eventually Lizzie.

The boy can’t improvise worth anything– neither the reactive Gryffindor or the adaptable Slytherin Secondary is for him. Darcy is practical rather than emotional (or would like to be). He builds thriving systems and approaches social situations with a stiff set of social scripts and rules. It’s a Ravenclaw Secondary’s system-building and prep where he excels. It’s his Hufflepuff Primary’s essential generosity and goodness which causes big hearts like Fitz and Bing to flock close, support him, and sing the taciturn kid’s praises.

Lovely, giving, beautiful Jane is a Hufflepuff/Hufflepuff in a nest of Slytherins (Lydia, Lizzie, Caroline, and likely Ms. Bennet as well, though she’s so much a caricature in this, by design). Jane’s kindness is not so much a choice as a willingly held obligation; by right of their being a person, every other individual deserves her time and the benefit of her doubts. And Jane fulfills her Puff Primary obligations to all people with kindness, patience, tolerance, tea making and cookie baking– common skills of the traditional Puff secondary.

Luckily, kind Bing, who looks at her like she’s made of sunshine, is also a Puff/Puff. Even his great failure, in listening to Caroline’s ploys and Darcy’s honest worries, originates there – he’s much to apt to take people at face value and not question their judgements or their accuracy. But once he gets his head out of his, well, um (with Darcy’s repenting help) Bing and Jane are very well matched. They’re likely to give too much to other people, but at least Jane, who gives too much, and Bing, who trusts too much, have a romantic partner who will repay them in kind and never take willing advantage.

Lydia is a Slytherin/Slytherin, and a reactive one. Her actions are driven not by ideals but by who she thinks is currently the most loyal to her. The tumble down into her consuming and abusive relationship is fueled by her feeling spurned and betrayed by her family, all of whom she holds close. This is also why she shatters so hard when she’s betrayed at the end of the series– once again, she has been burned (this time so much more severely) by the people she chose to give her Slytherin loyalty to. Only the rekindled (or rediscovered) love from her family stops her from what may have been the beginning of a spiral toward petrification.

She uses performances almost constantly, and it’s a testament to her actress that we can tell that sometimes she believes her own performances, and other times she doesn’t. But in both cases, Lydia puts them on and carries them not because they are a buffer between her and the world but because they’re how she best likes to interact with it. This adaptability as a solid nature is her Slytherin Secondary, and it’s there for Lydia when she starts to spiral as much as it is when her world is filled with joy.

Caroline Li is also a Slytherin/Slytherin – ambitious, possessive, and manipulative, she’s a classic example of the maligned Slytherin/Slytherin as a villain.

Charlotte, who “leaves” Lizzie for Collins&Collins, who loves quietly and practically and well, who eyes Lizzie’s fiercely possessive Slytherin with a kind of wry, fond confusion, is an Idealist Primary– Ravenclaw or Gryffindor.

From the way Charlotte deliberates over her choices and the way she makes choices she *thinks* are right, rather than *feels* are right, she’s likely a Ravenclaw Primary. Her instincts don’t tell her to take Mr. Collins offer, her practicality and her well-thought-out ambitions do (and it’s the right choice, go Charlotte).

For secondary – the way Charlotte shows affection, or one of the ways, is to do service for her friends and family (this suggests Hufflepuff secondary). She edits Lizzie’s videos. She gives her little sister the internship opportunity and tries to make it effective and educational. She excels at Collins&Collins by being clever and prompt but I think her greatest successes come from a dedication to hard work, a willingness to ladder-climb and put in her time, and an ability to honestly and genuinely decide to like and value people like Mr. Collins.

Charlotte’s deliberation and organization suggest Ravenclaw, but I think that’s just something she models, a tool set she’s found useful and developed. I think her actual secondary is Hufflepuff– hard work, service, tolerance, and an ability for decisive fondness that’s as useful as it is nice.

tl;dr

Lydia, Lizzie, and Caroline are all Slytherin Primaries, with their greatest priorities laid on their personal worlds and the people they love. Lydia and Caroline rock the adaptive (and sometimes manipulative) Slytherin Secondary, while Lizzie charges in and bowls the world over with her Gryffindor Secondary.

Darcy and Charlotte, Lizzie’s most important non-family people, are switched, which is interesting: Darcy has the Hufflepuff Primary’s dutiful generosity with a side of its optional stuffiness, where Charlotte has the steady service and adaptable warmth of the Puff secondary. Charlotte, then, has the constructed and thought-out decision making of the Ravenclaw Primary where Darcy has its deliberate and effective system building as his secondary.  

Bing Li and Jane are a matched pair of Hufflepuff/Hufflepuffs, possibly too nice for this world and the nest of beautiful snakes that inhabit it.