#“we must study the perversions of our subjects”

[clair-de-lunar-tears]

pod gave everyone this poll for science

[adarkrainbow]

"Frauds on the Fairies" was a text by Charles Dickens, published in an 1853 issue of his magazine "Household Words". I discovered it while reading Palacio's study of fin-de-siècle fairytales, since it is a good illustration of what became of fairytales in 19th century England. And it contains a full Cinderella parody!

I will be copy-pasting the content of a website that you can find here.

First, a little introduction to explain the context behind the article:

Although he was an old friend as well as colleague of Charles Dickens, illustrator George Cruikshank (1792--1878) earned the novelist's Horatian satire for his re-writing traditional fairy tales in a moral manner designed to inveigh against the evils of alcoholism, which the reformed dipsomaniac had explored in a cautionary series of plates entitled The Bottle (1847) and its sequel, The Drunkard's Children (1848). Dickens's initial response to this social realism was initially positive, but as one who favoured reasoned moderation rather than absolute teetotalism, Dickens gradually came to regard Cruikshank's temperance propaganda as fanaticism. "As a child he had detested books which had discounted the wonderful and the bizarre in favour of precept or homily, and now his old faith in the stories of his youth was crystallised in this little essay" (Peter Ackroyd, Dickens [1990), page 689). By 1 October 1853, when "Frauds on the Fairies" (written in Boulogne, France) appeared in Dickens's weekly journal Household Words, relations between the novelist and his former illustrator had become somewhat strained. However, re-writing fairy tales as moral (particularly teetotalism) was nothing new in 1853: Dr. Thomas Bowdler (1754-1825) who in retirement on the Isle of Wight issued the sexually sanitized Family Shakespeare in 1818 had also re-written traditional fairy tales.

Then the article itself:

We must assume that we are not singular in entertaining a very great tenderness for the fairy literature of our childhood.What enchanted us then, and is captivating a million of young fancies now, has, at the same blessed time of life, enchanted vast hosts of men and women who have done their long day's work and laid their grey heads down to rest. It would be hard to estimate the amount of gentleness and mercy that has made its way among us through these slight channels. Forbearance, courtesy, consideration for poor and aged, kind treatment of animals, love of nature, abhorrence of tyranny and brute force--many such good things have been first nourished in the child's heart by this powerful aid. It has greatly helped to keep us, in some sense, ever young, by preserving through our worldly ways one slender track not overgrown with weeds, where we may walk with children, sharing their delights.

In an utilitarian age, of all other times, it is a matter of grave importance that Fairy tales should be respected. Our English red tape is too magnificently red ever to be employed in the tying up of such trifles, but every one who has considered the subject knows full well that a nation without fancy, without some romance, never did, never can, never will, hold a great place under the sun. The theatre, having done its worst to destroy these admirable fictions--having in a most exemplary manner destroyed itself, its artists, and its audiences, in that perversion of its duty--it becomes doubly important that the little books themselves, nurseries of fancy as they are, should be preserved. To preserve them in their usefulness, they must be as much preserved in their simplicity, and purity, and innocent extravagance, as if they were actual fact. Whosoever alters them to suit his own opinions, whatever they are, is guilty, to our thinking, of an act of presumption, and appropriates to himself what does not belong to him.

We have lately observed, with pain, intrusion of a Whole Hog of unwieldy dimensions into the fairy flower garden. The rooting of the animal among the roses would in itself have awakened in us nothing but indignation; our pain arises from his being violently driven in by a man of genius, our own beloved friend, MR. GEORGE CRUIIKSHANK. That incomparable artist is, of all men, the last who should lay his exquisite hand on fairy text. In his own art he understands it so perfectly, and illustrates it so beautifully, so humorously, so wisely, that he should never lay down his etching needle to "edit" the Ogre, to whom with that little instrument he can render such extraordinary justice. But, to "editing" Ogres, and Hop o'-my-thumbs, and their families, our dear moralist has in a rash moment taken, as a means of propagating the doctrines of Total Abstinence, Prohibition of the sale of spirituous liquors, Free Trade, and Popular Education. For the introduction of these topics he has altered the text of a fairy story; and against his right to do any such thing we protest with all our might and main. Of his likewise altering it to advertise that excellent series of plates, "The Bottle," we say nothing more than that we foresee a new and improved edition of Goody Two Shoes, edited by E. Moses and Son; of the Dervish with the box of ointment, edited by Professor Holloway; and of Jack and the Beanstalk edited by Mary Wedlake, the popular authoress of Do you bruise your oats yet.

Now, it makes not the least difference to our objection whether we agree or disagree with our worthy friend, Mr. Cruikshank, in the opinions he interpolates upon an old fairy story. Whether good or bad in themselves, they are, in that relation, like the famous definition of a weed; a thing growing up in a wrong place. He has no greater moral justification in altering the harmless little books than we should have in altering his best etchings. If such a precedent were followed we must soon become disgusted with the old stories into which modern personages so obtruded themselves, and the stories themselves must soon be lost. With seven Blue Beards in the field, each coming at a gallop from his own platform mounted on a foaming hobby a generation or two hence would not know which was which, and the great original Blue Beard would be confounded with the counterfeits. Imagine a Total abstinence edition of Robinson Crusoe, with the rum left out. Imagine a Peace edition, with the [97/98] gunpowder left out, and the rum left in. Imagine a Vegetarian edition, with the goat's flesh left out. Imagine a Kentucky edition, to introduce a flogging of that 'tarnal old nigger Friday, twice a week. Imagine an Aborigines Protection Society edition, to deny cannibalism and make Robinson embrace the amiable savages whenever they landed. Robinson Crusoe would be "edited" out of his island in a hundred years, and the island would be swallowed up in the editorial ocean.

Among the other learned professions we have now the Platform profession, chiefly exercised by a new and meritorious class of commercial travellers who go about to take the sense of meetings on various articles: some, of a very superior description: some, not quite so good. Let us write the story of Cinderella, "edited" by one of these gentlemen, doing a good stroke of business, and having a rather extensive mission.

ONCE upon a time, a rich man and his wife were the parents of a lovely daughter. She was a beautiful child, and became, at her own desire, a member of the Juvenile Bands of Hope when she was only four years of age. When this child was only nine years of age her mother died, and all the Juvenile Bands of Hope in her district--the Central district, number five hundred and twenty-seven--formed in a procession of two and two, amounting to fifteen hundred, and followed her to the grave, singing chorus Number forty-two, "O come," &c. This grave was outside the town, and under the direction of the Local Board of Health; which reported at certain stated intervals to the General Board of Health, Whitehall.

The motherless little girl was very sorrowful for the loss of her mother, and so was her father too, at first; but, after a year was over, he married again--a very cross widow lady, with two proud tyrannical daughters as cross as herself. He was aware that he could have made his marriage with this lady a civil process by simply making a declaration before a Registrar; but he was averse to this course on religious grounds, and, being a member of the Montgolfian persuasion, was married according to the ceremonies of that respectable church by Reverend Jared Jocks, who improved the occasion.

He did not live long with his disagreeable wife. Having been shamefully accustomed to shave with warm water instead of cold, which he ought to have used (see Medical Appendix B. and C.), his undermined constitution could not bear up against her temper, and he soon died. Then, this orphan was cruelly treated by her stepmother and the two daughters, and was forced to do the dirtiest of kitchen work; to scour the saucepans, wash the dishes, and light the fires--which did not consume their own smoke, but emitted a dark vapour prejudicial to the bronchial tubes. The only warm place in the house where she was free from ill-treatment was the kitchen chimney-corner; and as she used to sit down there, among the cinders, when her work was done, the proud fine sisters gave her the name of Cinderella.

About this time, the King of the land, who never made war against anybody, and allowed everybody to make war against him--which was the reason why his subjects were the greatest manufacturers on earth, and always lived in security and peace--gave a great feast, which was to last two days. This splendid banquet was to consist entirely of artichokes and gruel; and from among those who were invited to it, and to hear the delightful speeches after dinner, the King's son was to choose a bride for himself. The proud fine sisters were invited, but nobody knew anything about poor Cinderella, and she was to stay at home.

She was so sweet-tempered, however, that she assisted the haughty creatures to dress, and bestowed her admirable taste upon them as freely as if they had been kind to her. Neither did she laugh when they broke seventeen stay-laces in dressing; for, although she wore no stays herself, being sufficiently acquainted with the anatomy of the human figure to be aware of the destructive effects of tight-lacing, she always reserved her opinions on that subject for the Regenerative Record (price three halfpence in a neat wrapper), which all good people take in, and to which she was a Contributor.

At length the wished for moment arrived, and the proud fine sisters swept away to the feast and speeches, leaving Cinderella in the chimney- corner. But, she could always occupy her mind with the general question of the Ocean Penny Postage, and she had in her pocket an unread Oration on that subject, made by the well known Orator, Nehemiah Nicks. She was lost in the fervid eloquence that talented Apostle when she became aware of the presence of one of those female relatives which (it may not be generally known) it is not lawful for a man to marry. I allude to her grandmother.

"Why so solitary, my child?" said the old lady to Cinderella.

"Alas, grandmother," returned the poor girl, "my sisters have gone to the feast and speeches, and here sit I in the ashes, Cinderella !"

"Never," cried the old lady with animation, "shall one of the Band of Hope despair! Run into the garden, my dear, and fetch me an American Pumpkin! American, because some parts of that independent country, there are prohibitory laws against the sale of alcoholic drinks in any form. Also, because America produced (among many great pumpkins) the glory of her sex, Mrs. Colonel Bloomer. None but an American Pumpkin will do, my child."

Cinderella ran into the garden, and brought [98/99] the largest American pumpkin she could find. This virtuously democratic vegetable her grandmother immediately changed into a splendid coach. Then, she sent her for mice from the mouse-trap, which she changed into prancing horses, free from the obnoxious and oppressive post-horse duty. Then, to the rat- trap in the stable for a rat, which she changed to a state-coachman, not amenable to the iniquitous assessed taxes. Then, to look behind a watering-pot for six lizards, which she changed into six footmen, each with a petition in his hand ready to present to the Prince, signed by fifty thousand persons, in favour of the early closing movement.

"But grandmother," said Cinderella, stopping in the midst of her delight, and looking at her clothes, "how can I go to the palace in these miserable rags?"

"Be not uneasy about that, my dear," returned her grandmother.

Upon which the old lady touched her with her wand, her rags disappeared, and she was beautifully dressed. Not in the present costume of the female sex, which has been proved to be at once grossly immodest and absurdly inconvenient, but in rich sky-blue satin pantaloons gathered at the ankle, a puce-coloured satin pelisse sprinkled with silver flowers, and a very broad Leghorn hat. The hat was chastely ornamented with a rainbow-coloured ribbon hanging in two bell-pulls down the back; the pantaloons were ornamented with a golden stripe; and the effect of the whole was unspeakably sensible, feminine, and retiring. Lastly, the old lady put on Cinderella's feet a pair of shoes made of glass: observing that but for the abolition of the duty on that article, it never could have been devoted to such a purpose; the effect of all such taxes being to cramp invention, and embarrass the producer, to the manifest injury of the consumer. When the old lady had made these wise remarks, she dismissed Cinderella to the feast and speeches, charging her by no means to remain after twelve o'clock at night.

The arrival of Cinderella at the Monster Gathering produced a great excitement. As a delegate from the United States had just moved that the King do take the chair, as the motion had been seconded and carried unanimously, the King himself could not go forth to receive her. But His Royal Highness the Prince (who was to move the second resolution), went to the door to hand from her carriage. This virtuous Prince, being completely covered from head to foot with Total Abstinence Medals, shone as if he were attired in complete armour; while the inspiring strains of the Peace Brass Band in the gallery (composed of the Lambkin Family, eighteen in number, who cannot be too much encouraged) awakened additional enthusiasm.

The King's son handed Cinderella to one of the reserved seats for pink tickets, on the platform, and fell in love with her immediately. His appetite deserted him; he scarcely tasted his artichokes, and merely trifled with his gruel. When the speeches began, and Cinderella, wrapped in the eloquence of the two inspired delegates who occupied the entire evening in speaking to the first Resolution, occasionally cried, "Hear, hear!" the sweetness of her voice completed her conquest of the Prince's heart. But, indeed the whole male portion of the assembly loved her--and doubtless would have done so, even if she had been less beautiful, in consequence of the contrast which her dress presented to the bold and ridiculous garments of the other ladies.

At a quarter before twelve the second inspired delegate having drunk all the water in the decanter, and fainted away, the King put the question, "That this Meeting do now adjourn until to-morrow." Those who were of that opinion holding up their hands, and then those who were of the contrary, theirs, there appeared an immense majority in favour of the resolution which was consequently carried. Cinderella got home in safety, and heard nothing all that night, or all next day, but the praises of the unknown lady with the sky-blue satin pantaloons.

When the time for the feast and speeches came round again, the cross stepmother and the proud fine daughters went out in good time to secure their places. As soon as they were gone, Cinderella's grandmother returned and changed her as before. Amid a blast of welcome from the Lambkin family, she was again handed to the pink seat on the platform by His Royal Highness.

This gifted Prince was a powerful speaker, and had the evening before him. He rose at precisely ten minutes before eight, and was greeted with tumultuous cheers and waving of handkerchiefs. When the excitement had in some degree subsided, he proceeded to address the meeting: who were never tired of listening to speeches, as no good people ever are. He held them enthralled for four hours and a quarter. Cinderella forgot the time, and hurried away so when she heard the first stroke of twelve, that her beautiful dress changed back to her old rags at the door, and she left one of her glass shoes behind. The Prince took it up, and vowed--that is, made a declaration before a magistrate; for he objected on principle to the multiplying of oaths-- that he would only marry the charming creature to whom that shoe belonged.

He accordingly caused an advertisement to that effect to be inserted in all the newspapers: for, the advertisement duty, an impost most unjust in principle and most unfair in operation, did not exist in that country; neither was the stamp on newspapers known in that land-- which had as many newspapers as the United States, and got as much good out of them. Innumerable ladies answered the [99/100] advertisement and pretended that the shoe was theirs; but, every one of them was unable to get her foot into it. The proud fine sisters answered it, and tried their feet with no greater success. Then, Cinderella, who had answered it too, came forward amidst their scornful jeers, and the shoe slipped on in a moment. It is a remarkable tribute to the improved and sensible fashion of the dress her grandmother had given her, that if she had not worn it the Prince would probably never have seen her feet.

The marriage was solemnized with great rejoicing. When the honeymoon was over, the King retired from public life, and was succeeded by the Prince. Cinderella, being now a queen, applied herself to the government of the country on enlightened, liberal, and free principles. All the people who ate anything she did not eat, or who drank anything she did not drink, were imprisoned for life. All the newspaper offices from which any doctrine proceeded that was not her doctrine, were burnt down. All the public speakers proved to demonstration that if there were any individual on the face of the earth who differed from them in anything, that individual was a designing ruffian and an abandoned monster. She also threw open the right of voting, and of being elected to public offices and of making the laws, to the whole of her sex; who thus came to be always gloriously occupied with public life and whom nobody dared to love. And they all lived happily ever afterwards.

Frauds on the Fairies once permitted, we see little reason why they may not come to this, and great reason why they may. The Vicar of Wakefield [in Goldsmith's novel] was wisest when he was tired of being always wise. The world is too much with us, early and late. Leave this precious old escape from it, alone.

[maciek-jozefowicz]

Homosexual Mythology

In the past, when psychologists studied insanity, they noticed that insane people create, in their minds, elaborate, alternate reality that has its own rules and logic. In essence, it is a interpretation of reality by an unhealthy mind. Often, the insane create highly detailed artwork depicting their reality. Even poetry. This is what has happened to homosexuals — they have created their own alternate reality, an interpretation of true reality, with its own rules and logic.

This homosexual “reality”, homosexual mythology (though fascinating, it still requires a gay Ovid to come along and turn it into a literary classic) — of gender fluidity (a metamorphosis well suited to be a subject of painting and poetry), non-cis non-binary beings (heroic non-conformists battling mythical dragons of tradition and oppressive convention), men with vaginas and women with penises (another subject well suited for visual expression), MENses, Back Holes and Front Holes (Charybdis twins?), Love is Love (we can’t choose who we love; love justifies itself and our acts), and FEELINGS (what we feel we are, we are; feelings are the ultimate reality and take precedence over physical/biological reality; feelings are personal Truths, not to be questioned, disputed or criticized) — was created by homosexuals to help them cope with the unpleasant real reality in which they are relegated as sexual perverts.

This reality offers homosexuals their own “mental space” into which they can safely withdraw. But despite its perverse logic and the passion with which it is embraced by homosexuals, this reality is a delusion created by disordered minds to help satisfy their emotional needs and make them feel better about themselves.

It must be noted, that most insane people, people suffering from a serious mental disorder, don’t think that they are insane. The fictional world that their mind has invented is as real to them as the real world is to us, it’s their “truth”, and no amount of sound reason will topple their “truth”. It can only arouse their anger.

Sometimes though, when their reality is threatened to be exposed by the actual reality, it can cause great upheavals in their minds. Therefore, it is no use for a sane person to argue with an insane one. It can be dangerous. One must just nod one’s head, smile and smoothly slide to a galaxy far, far away, and let homosexuals inhabit their reality in peace and “love”.

Homophilia (aka. homosexuality) is not like other mental disorders. It is not debilitating. Homosexuals know that homosexuality is a perversion. They just can’t deal with it. Most homosexuals are intelligent enough to realize that a perversion is not, and can never be, equal to the real version. But they desperately want to be equal, they believe that they should be equal, so they’ve been trying to circumvent biological reality by inventing their Homosexual Mythology.

Unfortunately, imaginative myth-making cannot alter the biological reality that sodomy is not sex and that humans are a heterosexual, binary species. Science is real, after all.

(Shouldn’t our insane asylums to be more inclusive?)

[karlamielgoart]

Research Journal

The key outcome of this Research Journal is a personal manifesto in which I will critically reflect on the contextual direction of my studies with a view to positioning your practice.

I will identify preliminary research objectives and through analysis of my  ongoing practice, considering the scope and parameters of my intended contextual pathway.I will locate your personal voice and perspective within these chosen pathways and collate a personal research bibliography.

Manifesto Contents:

   Declaration / Statement of Intent    Scope of inquiry/ context    Insight gained    Practical Future Outcomes    Research Bibliography

1. REALISM ( Plano terrenal) 2. ABSTRACT // Expressionism 3. FIGURATIVE-REALISM 4. ABSTRACT-FIGURATISM

Declaration of Intention

Artists continue to SEARCH in pure frustration WHAT IS THEIR PURPOSE AS AN ARTIST. What artist has never questioned this rhetorical question at some point? What's the point of making art? Why after all, after the invention of photography and specially now in the digital era ,would we continue to reproduce the world as we see it,past the schematic stage as children?. On our continuous search for purpose through  artistic expression we question the futility of our actions.Our values and morals are as important to me as the quality of our technique. I intent to promote an artistic movement that inundates into a new wave of expression away from the contemporary superficiality we've created in a pointless search for non-existent perfection.

It must not focus into the mimesis, but I encourage to dive into it. Nor abstract, but a equality of both poles . Do not fear the de-construction of matter,neither the composition of life & perfect beauty. Ethereal-ism will be that expression, for whomever can not identify with either the classics nor the modernists.

With this aesthetic expression our purpose will be to explore our subconscious-idealism, characterized by disfiguring reality into our pictorial reality as a self-study of Psychoanalytic realism.

Emotion and consciousness become realities. Meditation through mind and body will lead to your true expression of emotion and consciousness as realities. Guidance through our intuition is VITAL. The use whenever its possible our melancholy & neurasthenia, and search the equilibrium of Apollonian & Dionysium artistic natures. Artistic feeling & Intuition can be expressed as Aspects like the uses of symbolism suggests ideas through symbols and emphasized the meaning behind the forms, lines, shapes, and colors. What unites the various artists and styles associated with Symbolism is the emphasis on emotions, feelings, ideas, and subjectivity rather than realism. Their works are personal and express their own ideologies, particularly the belief in the artist's power to reveal truth. Specific subject matter, the symbolist combines religious mysticism, the perverse, the erotic, and the decadent. Symbolist subject matter is typically characterized by an interest in the occult, the morbid, the dream world, melancholy, evil, and death. The symbolist artists aimed more for nuance and suggestion in the personal, half-stated, and obscure references called for by their literary and musical counterparts.

Emphasizing the importance of Perspective: Linear perspective uses a geometric system consisting of a horizon line at eye level, vanishing points, and lines that converge toward the vanishing points called orthogonal lines to recreate the illusion of space and distance on a two-dimensional surface.

Context:

As a young Fine Art student I've come across many students and non students who verbally criticize, even insults, ( with rather ignorance ) means to justify they discontent with alternative aesthetic stimuli. We all know that painting , drawing and illustration never died. IN FACT,what we as a society,thought would kill the visual arts , aka Photography, SAW THE birth OF MODERN ART. Abstract art might upset many classical artists, probably more than to the average person. Abstract art confounds its viewers, how are we supposed to deal with an art completely unaltered , from the world of recognizable objects? Why should we? BUT. Freed from the burden of realistic representation it  gives space to more interpretation. In the "The Tragedy of Birth", Nietzsche describes the state of Greek art before the influence of Dionysus as being naive, and concerned only with appearances. In this art conception, the observer was never truly united with art, as he remained always in quiet contemplation with it, never immersing himself. The appearances of Apollo were designed to shield man from the innate suffering of the world, and thus provide some relief and comfort.

Then came Dionysus, whose ecstatic revels first shocked the Apollonian man of Greek culture. In the end, however, it was only through one's immersion in the Dionysian essence of Primordial Unity that redemption from the suffering of the world could be achieved. In Dionysus, man found that his existence was not limited to his individual experiences alone, and thus a way was found to escape the fate of all men, which is death. As the Dionysian essence is eternal, one who connects with this essence finds a new source of life and hope. Nietzsche thus shows Dionysus to be an uplifting alternative to the salvation offered by Christianity, which demands that man renounce life on earth altogether and focus only on heaven. For, in order to achieve salvation through Dionysus, one must immerse oneself in life now.

However, while humanity can only find salvation in Dionysus, he requires Apollo to reveal the essence of Dionysus through his appearances. The chorus and actors of tragedy were representations, through which the essence of Dionysus was given voice to speak. Through them, man was able to experience the joys of redemption from worldly suffering. These Apollonian appearances also stood as a bulwark against the chaos of Dionysus, so that the viewer would be completely lost in Dionysian ecstasy. Nietzsche emphasizes that in real tragic art, the elements of Dionysus and Apollo were inextricably entwined. As words could never hope to delve into the depths of the Dionysian essence, music was the life of the tragic art form. ( footnote) The fusion of Dionysian and Apollonian "Kunsttriebe" ("artistic impulses") form dramatic arts, or tragedies. In relation to the arts I could say the eternal enigmas of duality between the arts as the Apollonian & Dionysian.As for my practice, I believe my process follows an Apollonian phase of of measurement & rationalizing to give it meaning or purpose. Even if I try to stick to this process of work, mostly always, unless I'm working on strict step by step techniques, I tend to get carried away by my Dionysian side, showing either my frustration and expressiveness, or showing my mood or reveling my feelings.

As for history of art has been diveded in two opposites,often rivalries. (justificar) and for these two concepts to co exist and work in harmony we must learn to understand and evolve.

In my attempt to explore both sides equally, first I must agree on a convienience marriage between the figurative ( the terrenal plane)  and  the abstract (the astral plane) we intent to explore the three bases  of human needs; emotional, spiritual & carnal.

We must shed off the burden of high expectations of traditional mastery, and become understtanding of the misunderstandment of the abstract. With the abstraction of realism , the distraction of subject matter is no longer apparent, with it,art can directly act on the soul. We are against the XXI century popular movement of the superficial & fake.

A movement which must illustratee the complex imagery of dream or subconscious visions and irrational space and form combinations. Ei. George Grie modern surrealist dreamns, dark gothic, inspirational romanticism . The word αἰθήρ (aithḗr) in Homeric Greek means "pure, fresh air" or "clear sky". In Greek mythology, it was thought to be the pure essence that the gods breathed, filling the space where they lived, analogous to the air breathed by mortals.[3] It is also personified as a deity, Aether, the son of Erebus and Nyx in traditional Greek mythology.[3][4] Aether is related to αἴθω "to incinerate",[5] and intransitive "to burn, to shine" (related is the name Aithiopes (Ethiopians; see Aethiopia), meaning "people with a burnt (black) visage").[6][7] Etherealism explores the conscious, existencialism & expressionism involved with art making. In the frustration in the technical ejecution and experimentation of the figure gave birth to neo-expressionist & a indiosincratic figures which come together to give away to the ethereal creative plane.

The cusp of this realization came with the 2017 piece "Danae" in which I explore the composition used by Rothko and Bacon, and the symbolism of concepts of Eros as the figure of Danae. Eros (/ˈɪərɒs/ or /ˈɛrɒs/; Ancient Greek: ἔρως érōs "love" or "desire") is one of the four ancient Greco-Christian terms which can be rendered into English as "love". The other three are storge, philia, and agape. Eros refers to "passionate love" or romantic love; storge to familial love; philia to friendship as a kind of love; and agape refers to "selfless love", or "charity" as it is translated in the Christian scriptures (from the Latin caritas, dearness).[1] The term erotic is derived from eros. Eros has also been used in philosophy and psychology in a much wider sense, almost as an equivalent to "life energy".[2] Danae represents a classical myth that inspired artists from every period. As told in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Danae was a princess of Argos, whose father, Acrisius, imprisoned her into a bronze tower to avoid her from falling pregnant after an oracle had predicted his grandson would kill the king.Danae became increasingly represented throughout art history.Old Flemish master Jan Gossaert depicted Danae in the manner of an annunciation — wearing blue cloths with sun rays above her head representing the Spiritus Sanctus — while his Italian counterpart Antonio da Correggio showed her with cupids in a similarly divine vision of procreation. Other Renaissance artists like Titian and Tintoretto departed from religious subjects strictly-speaking with depictions of Danae increasingly highlighting her nudity, and featuring gold coins instead of rain.  Danae means " thirst" and symbolises sensuality and eroticism, the object of desire of a higuer figure and the fear of the father as a threat to his  pratiarchy.Danae stood as the perfect subject because of the suggestive nature of her immaterial fecundation. Depictions gained eroticism in the 18th-century in works from artists like Jean-Baptiste Greuze and Anne-Louis Girodet. Ultimately, the Argive princess appeared in a non-diluted sensuousness in Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele’s representations, and her contemporaneity was again made visible with Anselm Kiefer’s Danae sculpture displayed at the Louvre in 2007. Over time, her unparalleled beauty and grace owed her to symbolize the arts, creation, aesthetic, and taste. Her figure is a straight influence from the Marseille Tarot card,Justice – La Justice Tarot, number 8, represents perfection. This is the top of even numbers. Following the accumulation of number 2, the setting of number 4, and the pleasurable discovery of number 6, number 8 reaches the level that has nothing to add or subtract. Number 8, an Arabic number, is made up of two overlapping circles: perfection in Heaven and Earth. According to Tarot digital science, this is also the double of number 4, and therefore, some double squares: stable both in the material and mental world. But balance and perfection are not synonymous with symmetry. Just as the sacred art of the cathedral builders that remove symmetry because they consider it is evil, the Justice card is structured asymmetrically. The pillar on the right of her seat is higher than the other one and on the top, there is a small yellowish sphere that the left column does not have; her necklace lifted higher to the left; scales are not located on a horizontal plane; and her sword is not parallel to the axis along her throne. Women – Motherhood – Sovereignty – Balance – Judge – Completion – Persistent viewpoint – Bravery – Assessment – Perfection – Presence – Command – Empowerment – Prohibition. In conclusion I want to find an equilibrium between the beauty of realism while finding  my own way into abstraction (if they belong to the classics & reject the unkown, the uncertainty of the abstract)

Realism:

Art is currently in a dormant phase.  Stuck either in the past or thrilled by the hope of selling abstract pieces.  Society is blinded by the superficiality of fast produced images, suberged in constant self hatred , racism,borders and conflicts. We are afraid of feeling & the reality of life. Real-ism, real raw artistic expresion. It's absolutley neccesary to get rid of superficiality , superficial beauty, superficial erotism, superficial sensuality, superficial fanatism, superficial instant gratification attention-It's ESSENTIAL to search into the reason and meanings of art making.  The lack of purpose comes with the death of art.We are in search of sources and origins of structures of signification.imaginary world's  evoking our visual experience. The pursuit of realistic optical effects, we artists still the attempt to achieve extraordinary realism. But why is this? What is the use of this mimesis and is it worth our time to observe it with awe when the world around us it self is all around us in pure form.since the Romantics vision of artists, artistic endeavour roots from a deep need of expressing a vast variety of emotions ,sometimes beauty,sometimes ugliness. When "Realism" emerged in the mid 19th century , it was at the same time when photography was emerging and getting the attention into every aspect of our lives. We can find cameras in technological devices, a large range of photography cameras , digital & analog. Everyone has access to photography. But the aim of realism was not to glorify mythological or historical figures. BUT to depict the reality around , every day people and places of the time, in no way idealized or sentimentalized. NOT to paint in a photographically realistic manner aka naturalism and this theme has been prelevant throughout human kind history, to depict us humans and our enviroment, our landscapes, the people & their beliefs.  It was SHOCKING to paint like life it self, it still is, but it can somehow lack purpose and meaning. It's done for the sake of beeing able to. Sometimes, essential and neccesary skill to become an artist. The development and use of linear perspective; helps in crafting the appearance of a three dimensional world on a two dimensional surface. Shocking immediacy and impact. Looking back to the ancient classics, the greeks, who represent the IDEAL figure. The desire to depict life itself, has long played out in three dimenions. The IMPACT of the wildly uncanny feeling of realism. Realism emerges as a strategry amond many thats combined with other approaches and employed toward a wide variery of ends. Disrupting many people's expectations about what art should be, showing us the often aggresivly unartful side of every life, and acknowledged the invasiveness of advertising and consumer culture. While the subjects of photorealists paintings aren't usually that remarkable, the skill involved in their reproduction often is.

Cries for help as we drown in an image saturated world or the death rattle of the great pictoral tradition.

Throughout the time spam of ( 1780s-2020) artists have demonstrated that things that exist in the world can often look abstract eg. James McNeil, Victor Hugo, William Turner. Artists became increasingly interested in depicting things non-naturastically, the early stages of abstracting things, ie stylizing,symplifying, flattening it. Reaching the 20th century artists were painting familiar themes in unfamiliar ways, using  intense vivid  colours in broad brush strokes that critic dubbed them the Fauvs or Wild Beats.  Or as the case of Hilma Af Klint (1862-1944) was painting mostly abstract works as early as 1905 as a form of spiritual communication. The main interest was in the spiritual and the occult, science and the depiction of of invisible forces , recently discovered such as  electromagnetic fields. Annie Besant / Charles Leadbeater had published images in 1901 they called Thought Forms, illustrating their belief that ideas, emotions and sounds manifest as visual auras. Then the Cubists came along, the Futurists in Italy, German Expressionists such as Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, who used abstraction and rich unreal colours to depict the chaos and anxiety of the streets-city life. As Kandinsky's interest in to commune with the spiritual, he claimed his art was quote " What the spectator lives or feels while under the effect of the form and colour combinations of the picture".  Abstraction was not opposed to Realism. It was realism. The immediacy & pictorial realities of color and contrast,by Sonia Delaunay & her first disk was considered the first and purest obstraction at the time. As she illustrated an influential book of poetry combining abstraction and typography, a style she extended into painting and fashion. The sentimentalism of expressionism, this style is filled with emotion, spontaneity, and movement; you can feel an artist’s mood almost jump off of the canvas at times. It’s all about painting a feeling or experience that is shared with the world through the canvas. Use of intense colors.Thick and distorted traces.Focus on subjective aspects. Tragic vision of the human being.Exposure to the pessimistic side of life. Deformation of the reality of the world.Expression of individual freedom.Use of three-dimensionality in works.

   Rothko painted scenes of urban life using figurative, biomorphic forms that represented otherworldly creatures and plants.    After World War II, he focused on interpretations of ancient myth and religion, as well as timeless themes of death and survival.    His signature style consisted of rectangles of vibrant color and light that seemed to be floating against a colored background.    This formula allowed Rothko to create different moods and effects using variations of color and proportion. Rothko considered color as merely an instrument while his true focus is “only in expressing basic human emotions — tragedy, ecstasy, doom, and so on”.

Most artists associated with Expressionism sought to project their emotions onto the world, deforming or distorting appearances toward that expressive end. Such art can, therefore, be considered idealist; exaggerated facial traits, for example, can flaunt the subject's distance from an imagined ideal. Bacon's works have in common with some modes of Expressionism in modern art the violence of the pictorial gesture and the immediate effect of shock, but they could be considered Expressionist only in a very general sense. The artist himself summed up his work as an attempt to capture, through the painted image of the body, the sensations that its physical reality stirred within him. For Bacon, abstract art held little appeal; the human figure was the fundamental, and almost the only, subject. The figure is subjected to distortion in Bacon's work for reasons different from those of the Expressionists: what he seeks is to mock the routine, superficial way we generally look at ourselves and the world. He seeks to overturn conventions associated with everyday perception in order to bring the viewer closer to the raw fact of corporeal life. The objective is to upset the stability of the ordinary point of view, breaking down the protective barriers separating us from the immediacy of experience. Perhaps the term that best describes Bacon's work is "realism," a classification that is often employed too loosely but which here is meant in a special sense. In this case, realism does not mean direct, straightforward representation—something Bacon dismissed as mere "illustration," and from which he felt as far removed as from abstract painting. Instead it means a fidelity to the vital experience of living inside the body, which for him is a fundamental theme of art. Like the realists of the nineteenth cen-tury, Bacon scrupulously recorded the mobile, shifting reality of the human form with the means that painting placed at his disposal. The difference is that by Bacon's time, a century later, the arsenal of resources for painting is much greater; naturalistic, imitative criteria are no longer sufficient. Bacon's realism is, therefore, radically modern, and his point of departure, as he freely admitted, was Pablo Picasso's work from the late l920s, which is sometimes considered Surrealist, though of an unusually tough-minded kind.    Practical Future Outcomes:

Exhibition

[determinate-negation]

Bourgeois political economy, as criticized here, does not regard alienation and estrangement as such as a fact (the circumstances to which these words refer are covered in the bourgeois theory under quite different headings); for socialist political economy this fact will only ‘exist’ if and in so far as the theory is placed on the foundation which Marx worked out in the context of the studies we are discussing. We must therefore ask what sort of fact this is (since it is essentially different from all other facts in political economy), and on what basis it becomes visible and can be described as such.

The description of the circumstance of alienation and estrangement seems initially to proceed completely on the ground of traditional political economy and its theorems. Marx significantly starts by dividing his investigation into the three traditional concepts of political economy: ‘The Wages of Labour’, ‘The Profit of Capital’ and ‘The Rent of Land’. But more important, and a sign pointing in a completely new direction, is the fact that this division into three is soon exploded and abandoned. […]

The development of the concept of labour thus breaks through the traditional framework for dealing with problems; the discussion continues with this concept and discovers the new ‘fact’ which then becomes the basis for the science of the communist revolution. Our interpretation must therefore set out from Marx’s concept of labour. When Marx depicts the manner of labour and the form of existence of the worker in capitalist society – complete separation from the means of production and from the product of his labour which has become a commodity, the balancing of wages around the minimum for mere physical survival, the severance of the worker’s labour (performed as ‘forced labour’ in the capitalist’s service) from his ‘human reality’ – all these features can in themselves still denote simple economic facts. This impression seems to be confirmed by the fact that Marx, ‘by analysis from the concept of alienated labour’, reaches the concept of ‘private property (p.117) and thus the basic concept of traditional political economy.

But if we look more closely at the description of alienated labour we make a remarkable discovery: what is here described is not merely an economic matter. It is the alienation of man, the devaluation of life, the perversion and loss of human reality. In the relevant passage Marx identifies it as follows: ‘the concept of alienated labour, i.e. of alienated man, of estranged labour, of estranged life, of estranged man’ (p. 117).

It is thus a matter of man as man (and not just as worker, economic subject and the like), and of a process not only in economic history but in the history of man and his reality.

The Foundations of Historical Materialism, Hebert Marcuse (1932)

[josefavomjaaga]

Job profile of a viceroy

This is the first - but hardly the last! - of Napoleon's letters for his newly appointed Viceroy of Italy, his 23-year-old stepson Eugène de Beauharnais, containing orders and advice on how to govern in Napoleon's name. I know this has been translated before but I still find it interesting. It's No. 8852 in the old Correspondance de Napoléon Premier, Volume 10, and dates from Milan, June 7, 1805 - at this point, Eugène himself was probably still trying to recover from the shock of not being allowed to return to France.

Instructions for Prince Eugène, Viceroy of Italy

My Cousin, by entrusting you with the government of our kingdom of Italy, we have given you a proof of the esteem which your conduct has inspired in us. But, as you are still at an age when the perversity of human hearts is not yet known, we cannot recommend too much circumspection and prudence to you. Our Italian subjects are naturally more secretive than the citizens of France. You have only one way of preserving their esteem and of being useful to their happiness, and that is to trust nobody completely, to not tell what you think to the ministers and the great officers who surround you. Dissimulation, natural at a certain age, for you will be a matter of principle and command. When you have spoken from your heart and without necessity, tell yourself that you have made a mistake, so that you will not fall into that mistake again. Show an esteem for the nation you govern, and show it all the more as you discover reasons to esteem it less. There will come a time when you will recognise that there is very little difference between one people and another. Since your administration has as its aim the happiness of my peoples in Italy, sacrificing those aspects of their ways which you are passionately opposed to is the first thing you owe them. In any other position than that of Viceroy of Italy, take pride in being French; but here you must make them forget it, and you will only succeed by persuading them that you love the Italians. They know that you only love what you value. Cultivate their language; let them be your main company; show them a special distinction at festivities; approve what they approve and love what they love.

Speak as little as possible: you are not knowledgeable enough, and your education has not been sufficiently thorough for you to be able to engage in careless discussion. Learn to listen, and be sure that silence often produces the same effect as expertise. Do not be ashamed to ask questions. Although you are a viceroy, you are only twenty-three years old, and whatever flattery may say, everyone secretly knows what you know, and esteems you more by the hope of what you will be than by the opinion of what you are.

Do not imitate my conduct in everything; you need more restraint.

Do not preside over the Conseil d'État much; you do not have enough knowledge to preside over it successfully. I would not mind if you were to attend under the chairmanship of a consul, who would preside from his place. The knowledge you lack of the Italian language, and even of the legislation, is a very good pretext for abstaining. Never speak at the Council: they will listen to you without answering, but they will see immediately that you are not in a position to discuss a matter. The strength of a prince who is silent cannot be measured; when he speaks, he must be sure of a great superiority.

Do not put any faith in spies. There is more inconvenience than advantage in having them. There is never any concern to be imagined in Milan, and perhaps not even in any of your countries. Your military police, which assures you of your troops, is all you need.

The army is the great object which you can deal with directly and by your own knowledge.

Work twice a week with your ministers: once alone with each of them; once in council. Some of the good you can do will be done when your ministers and advisers are persuaded that you are arguing to surrender only to reason and without letting yourself be preempted.

In public ceremonies and at festivals, when you have foreigners and Frenchmen, know well the place they should have and what you should do. It is advisable that you never make a school in this part, and you must avoid with the greatest care exposing yourself to affronts. If this should happen, do not suffer it. Princes, ambassadors, ministers, generals, have anyone who has offended you arrested in your palace, even an Austrian or Russian ambassador. But, once again, these events are always unfortunate. What is indifferent to me is a thorny matter of consequence for you.

Your great concern is to treat the nationals well, to know them all, to know their names, their families. Do not show too much eagerness to foreigners; there is never anything to be gained from them. An ambassador will not speak well of you, because his job is to speak ill of you. Foreign ministers are, in the fullness of time, spies with titles. There can be no disadvantage in keeping them away from you; they are always more disposed to esteem what they see little of than what shows them friendship and benevolence.

There is only one essential man here, the Minister of Finance; he is a worker who knows his part well.

Although it is known that I am behind you, I have no doubt that your character will be studied. Have your orders carried out, especially on the part of the military; never allow them to fail.

The public decree which I have signed designates the portion of authority which I entrust to you; I reserve for myself a greater one, which is to direct you in your operations. Write to me every day about what has happened to you. It is only successively that you will learn how I consider each question and each object.

Do not show my letters to anyone, under any pretext whatsoever. No one must know that I am writing to you, nor what I am writing to you. Have a room where no one enters, not even your private secretary and your secretary of commands.

M. Méjan will be useful to you if he does not seek to make money; and he will not seek to make money if he knows that you are looking at his actions and that a single fault of this kind would lose him in my mind as well as in yours. He must be well paid and have the hope of all sorts of advances; but for this he must be on his feet night and day; if he makes a habit of working only at fixed hours and amusing himself the rest of the day, he will be no use to you. You will have to repress in him, as in the other Frenchmen, the disposition which leads them to despise the country, all the more so as melancholy will be added to it; for the Frenchman is nowhere better than in France.

Keep my house and stables in order and, at least every eight days, settle all my accounts. This is all the more necessary because here people do not know how to do administration.

Have a parade in Milan every month.

Preferably employ young people from the country; the old are no good.

I will distribute, every two months, the funds for the credit of the ministers. Consequently, you will send me the state of the demands of each minister, and, with this state, those of the situation of the public treasury and the orders issued for the two preceding months. You will send me the work sheet of the ministers, the minutes of the Council of State, the state of the troops and the police reports.

Your duties are important and your task very considerable. Study the history of each of the towns which make up my kingdom of Italy; visit the strongholds and all the famous battlefields. It is likely that before you are thirty you will be fighting in a war, and it is a great achievement to know the territory.

Finally, be inflexible for the rascals. It is a victory won for the administration to discover an unfaithful accountant. Do not allow the French army to smuggle.

[arcticdementor]

When the idea that a woman could have a penis was no longer a privileged insight of the academic elite but had gone mainstream, I remarked to my friend, “How long before we have to affirm the furries?” At the time I was joking, but after reading Kathy Rudy’s article “LGBTQ…Z?” in Hypatia in which she claims to “draw the discourses around bestiality/zoophilia into the realm of queer theory” I’m starting to wonder if my joke isn’t that far off. After all, there was a time when the idea of a man becoming a woman was a joke—as in this clip from Monty Python’s comedy The Life of Brian.

What Duke University professor Kathy Rudy seems to realize by arguing we should add “Z” (zoophilia) to the queer alphabet soup is that a great way to have a successful career in academia is to bring postmodern gobbledygook into absurd combinations with anything and everything.

…

I will hand it to Rudy, her article is at least comprehensible, even if it’s just as insane. Rudy begins by noting that humans who “kill animals, force them to breed with each other, eat them, surround them, train them, hunt them, nail them down and cut them open for science” are considered “normal, functioning members of society. Yet having sex with animals remains an almost unspeakable anathema.”

…

While some might conclude that, since we wouldn’t shag a pig, we also shouldn’t confine one to a gestation crate, Rudy’s reasoning seems to be that if we already force terrible things on animals, then why not also screw them? If you’re a cow, having a human copulate with you can’t be as bad as going to the slaughterhouse, right? Besides, Fido already humps my leg so why don’t I hump him?

Technically, Rudy claims “my argument is not for or against humans having sex with animals, but is a meditation on both the elusive nature of sex itself and the subjectivities of human versus nonhuman animals.” She never explicitly promotes sex with animals, but considering that the entire point of the article is to call into question the taboo against having sex with animals, well…

It’s as if I said I’m not advocating for pedophilia but then proceed to undermine all the reasons for being against pedophilia. “Why not?” might not be as strong as “you must” but it leads to the same outcome, namely, radical permission.

As is often the case with academic postmodernism, the claims being made become less clear the more the author writes:

“Put differently, queer theory teaches us that it's not really a question of whether we have ‘sex’ with animals; rather it's about recognizing and honoring the affective bonds many of us share with other creatures. Those intense connections between humans and animals could be seen as revolutionary, in a queer frame. But instead, pet love is sanitized and rendered harmless by the presence of the interdict against bestiality. The discourses of bestiality and zoophilia form the identity boundary that we cannot pass through if we want our love of animals to be seen as acceptable.”

Rudy’s elusive, wishy-washy prose is a common rhetorical tactic. The goal is to avoid clearly committing to an argument so that one can simultaneously promote radical nuttiness while removing oneself from the burden of defending it. After all, if the claim really were as basic as “we love our pets but not in a sexual way” then the article wouldn’t be, as Rudy puts it, “revolutionary.”

The only way the article can be truly “transgressive” is for her to argue that our love for animals is already sexual or should become sexual. After all, Rudy seems uncertain as to whether she is sexually attracted to her own dogs:

“I know I love my dogs with all my heart, but I can’t figure out if that love is sexually motivated.”

For some reason, I’ve never grappled with this problem, but then again, I’m not versed in Queer theory.

…

Indeed, what is the difference between inserting a piece of bread into a toaster and penetrative sex? According to postmodernism, nothing at all! As Rudy explains:

“The widespread social ban on bestiality rests on a solid notion of what sex is, and queer theory persuasively argues we simply don't have such a thing. The interdict against bestiality can only be maintained if we think we always/already know what sex is. And, according to queer theory, we don’t.”

Despite earlier claiming that she is not advocating for sex with animals, Rudy has just provided us with an indirect argument for it. She states that we can only maintain a ban on sex with animals if we know what sex is. She next states that queer theory has proven that we don’t know what sex is. Therefore, we cannot ban sex with animals. She suggests her indirect argument again at the end of the article by masking it in the form of a question:

“But without a coherent and agreed upon definition of sex (which queer theory persuasively argues is impossible), the line between ‘animal lover’ and zoophile is not only thin, it is nonexistent. How do we know beforehand whether loving them constitutes ‘sex,’ and how can such sex be so dangerous if it so nebulous and undefined?”

Not only is it false that we have no idea what sex is, but it is also false to say that we require a taxonomy of every kind of sexual feeling before we can forbid certain acts (such as coitus) with animals (or children and the cognitively disabled, such as Chris Chan’s mother with dementia).

I may not be able to verbally capture the feeling of sexual desire or pleasure any more than I can define pain or joy or sadness. It’s something I know from experience. What I can say for sure is that what I felt kissing my grandma’s cheek is definitely not in the same category as what I felt kissing my boyfriend. Rudy may be unclear as to whether she is turned on by a slurp from her dog, but I personally have never felt confusion on the matter.

…

Yet, the true perversion, according to Rudy, is not to lust after camels, dogs, parakeets or naked mole rats but to set up the sexual boundary between humans and animals in the first place:

“Put differently, both animal rights (3) and psychosocial perspectives [which view desire for animals as mental illness] (4) do not believe that borders can be crossed. Queer theory, on the other hand, tells us that few of us have stable identities anymore, that borders are always crossed. We're all changing, shifting, splitting ourselves up this way and that. It labels these processes ‘hailing,’ ‘suturing,’ and ‘interpolation’; where once we saw ourselves affiliated in one way, a new interpretive community emerges to capture our passions and move us differently. I am asking the reader to entertain the possibility that the same kinds of shifts and disruptions happen with categories like ‘human,’ ‘rabbit,’ ‘ape,’ or ‘dog.’”

And no woke paper would be complete without the accusation of violence:

“Both positions [animal rights activists and bestialists] oppose sex with animals, and in doing so they perform a kind of violence on animals by lumping them all together into one seamless identity.”

That’s right. Physically violating an animal does not constitute violence. Words do. Especially when those words reject postmodern queer theory.

…

Unlike the many women who have been cancelled for claiming that males aren’t women, Rudy’s August 2012 article (republished March 2020) for Hypatia did not result in her being fired, censored, or otherwise deplatformed.

It’s not as if no one came across her article either. According to Altmetric, Rudy’s article is in the “top 5% of all research outputs scored by Altmetric” and is “One of the highest-scoring outputs from this source (#1 of 704)” and has an Altmetrics attention score in the 99th percentile.

When Rebecca Tuvel wrote a paper for Hypatia suggesting that the same assumptions that ground transgenderism could be used to support transracialism, scholars demanded Hypatia retract the article and the journal's Facebook page posted an apology on behalf of the associate editors. Rudy, on the other hand, was invited to deliver the commencement speech for North Carolina Service Dogs in December 2012.

We must remember that the word “transgressive” has relative, not absolute, meaning. What is considered “normal” defines what is considered “transgressive.” If queer theory articles on bestiality result in publication and validation, then is Rudy truly, in her words, “transgressive”? Or is Hypatia, rather, representative of a new establishment norm that is just as desirous of punishing transgressors—now in the form of TERFs and other enemies of the postmodern left—as the old establishment was eager to fire and ostracize homosexuals? As The Who sang, “Meet the new boss / Same as the old boss.”

[canchewread]

Editor's note: this journal is original content (written by myself, of course) and has not appeared elsewhere online before today. I should also note that because this is both an opinion piece and an informal journal, my level of commitment to providing citations for the disingenuous wasn't particularly high; if you're looking for formally documented evidence that we're currently in the middle of a fascist takeover, I encourage you to check out my academic writing about the subject on ninaillingworth.com instead.

Journal 09/09/2020: Looking the Beast in the Eye

When I originally sat down to pen this journal, my intention was to call it something along the lines of “advice to a young leftist” which is probably in no small part, the reason why it's taken me three days to write this piece. This is because unfortunately I do not have very much good advice for a young leftist today in two-thousand and twenty, or at least much advice that isn't going to sound rather a lot like “quit before what you believe destroys your entire life.”

As I've written (extensively) elsewhere, we're in the middle of a fascist takeover that is more or less succeeding across the entire Pig Empire, and what passes for the liberal (read: capitalist) establishment in our respective nations seem quite content to try and appease the beast by feeding them the entire left and any marginalized group “uppity” enough to demand justice, equality or representation. There is not a lot of upside to being an open leftist right now and understanding what I know about both the history of fascism and the history of reactionary crackdowns in America, it's awful hard for me in good conscience to advise any young person to willingly subject themselves to the tender mercies of an uncaring state and its fascist cutout vigilante groups.

Let's talk a little bit about what that history, including very recent history, can tell us and why what it tells us isn't very good for the American left. Here in particular, we as both a class in American society and a people that believe in a more equal, compassionate and humane way of life, stand at the intersection of state power, class oppression and the homicidal revenge fantasies of a fascist political order that has seized power throughout much of the United States. The fact that this is not understood by our milquetoast Dem Soc allies and the bougie “progressive left” is completely irrelevant; as any Ferguson activist (who is still breathing) can tell you COINTELPRO never ended, performative liberal anti-racism stops well short of opposing police repression, and genteel society will respond to violent reprisals against activists by the reactionary right with either dead silence or some mild clucks of disapproval at best.

Are the liberals aware that when the increasingly fascist American right says “the left” they mean liberals and suburbanite Democrats too? On some level I'm sure they are, but clearly the threat of increased taxation and social programs for the poor terrifies them far more than the possibility fascism will progress to the point that they're next in front of the firing squad – I've been told the liberals of Weimar Germany felt much the same way during Hitler's rise; which merely demonstrates that the liberal capacity for coddling fascism if it's profitable knows few limits. Furthermore the nauseating truth is that many of your misguided and misinformed liberal allies in the working class simply don't understand that the fascist right always seeks to eliminate the militant left first simply because those are the people who're going to fight back when you start loading Muslims, Latinos and lanyard Democrats onto cattle cars.

This historical process of fascism of course intertwines with the American establishment's history of ruthlessly repressing, criminalizing and even murdering the left. As I detailed extensively in a prior essay called “The Inversion Perversion” the state's war against Americans who want a more equal society (in any number of ways) predates the rise of Nazi Germany, the American Civil War and as those who've studied colonial America might argue, even the foundation of the country. Between the mass deportations of anarchists, suppression of left wing literature through the mail, two Red Scares, anticommunism, Hoover's COINTELPRO war against the civil rights movement, the black power movement and the American student left, or all the way up to the Obama Department of Justice's ruthless oppression of the Occupy, Ferguson and North Dakota Pipeline protests, I could easily spend this entire essay demonstrating that when it comes to persecuting, destroying and yes even murdering the left, there is a long and storied history of bipartisan consensus in America – I see no reason or evidence to suggest that has changed much in our modern times.

In other words history, even recent American history, says that this story ends in a jail cell or a shallow grave for some of the folks reading this journal right now and I don't know how to sugarcoat that for anyone, let alone a young person with their whole life (such as it is) ahead of them. The plain, god-awful truth is that the American right wants you dead, and the center-right American liberal establishment simply doesn't care, just as it has never cared, because they also want the left destroyed and fear sharing their ill-gotten wealth more than they fear fascism. Furthermore, this same elite “liberal” establishment is actively engaged in splitting the component parts of the current American uprising up into acceptable and non-acceptable targets; that's why Joe Biden keeps yammering about police funding, anarchists and “looters.” Democrats in particular are doing this even as fascist militia vigilantes are starting to execute antifascists and protesters in the street, might I add.

Did I mention that it's a really bad time to be an open leftist, or even just someone who passionately feels cracker murderpigs shouldn't get away with murder because some fascist gave them a badge? And yet of course therein also lies the rub; just as there is danger in resisting the imposition of a fascist order there is also danger in refusing to resist.

Turning once again to history, we know that the fascist creep isn't going to stop itself until well after it has killed millions of people and destroyed everything about our lives that contains any meaning whatsoever. The reactionary backlash will not stop with silencing, arresting and/or killing teenage anarchists, African Americans protesting against racialized police violence or Portland soccer moms who've had enough fascism for a lifetime. The fascist mindset and method of societal control dictates that there must always been more enemies both within and outside of the state who represent both an abomination that should be destroyed and a threat to everything good and pure in the national character. Right now, the waking dragon of American fascism has cast a laser-like focus on those brave few Americans who are willing to physically resist the transformation of the country from a corrupt Oligarchy to an overt fascist police-state with rigged elections. Once that enemy is crushed and defeated, the beast will turn its eye to others – unions, teachers, and yes even Democratic Party politicians who've always been friendly to the fascist capitalist billionaires running much of the reactionary American right today.

Whether you choose to fight, hide or run, it has become crystal-clear clear to me that we are all headed towards dark days in the very near future and the only variable left to be determined is which segments of the audience reading this will be thrown onto the pyre first. What we know today as “Western Society” is blindly crashing through the kinds of barriers people who desire peace, comfort and security simply don't breech without expecting violence, bloodshed and a whole lot of rain.

Perhaps in light of all this my advice to the young leftist should be to harden oneself for the torrential downpour of violence, repression and yes death that lies ahead, regardless of whether or not you choose to resist the fascist creep. Perhaps the best thing I can offer a young person staring directly into the eye of this beast is the assurance that it is not their fault, that nobody in history has ever asked to be born into the war against fascism and that ultimately the fascists cannot win because fascism is a death cult that will eventually eat itself and has done so every single time before this one. Perhaps all I really have to share with you is the hope that in the darkness and despair that lies ahead of us you will remember my words and know that no matter how much they repress, terrorize and torture us, fantasy cannot be reality, slavery cannot be freedom and life cannot be death.

And that I think is the handle and the comfort I can offer those of you reading this who’re young enough to have a future beyond the fascist order; I have no optimism to sell you but I can make one promise that may help carry you through the bowels of the hell we are all descending into after all. It might not amount to much yet, but I promise you there will always only be four lights; no matter how many of us they murder to try and “prove” otherwise. Do not give these maggots the satisfaction of seeing your fear; know that at least some of you reading this will eventually dance on their graves and take whatever comfort you are able to, in that inevitability.

Never forget - one way, or another, the future is left.

nina illingworth

Independent writer, critic and analyst with a left focus. Please help me fight corporate censorship by sharing my articles with your friends online!

You can find my work at ninaillingworth.com, Can’t You Read, Media Madness and my Patreon Blog

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“It’s ok Willie; swing heil, swing heil…”

[clothedinjesus]

Fallen Angels, Demons & Nephilim

Today we’re briefly going to discuss Jude verses 6-7 and Genesis 6. 

I’ll be answering:

1. If fallen angels are imprisoned in darkness until judgement day then how/why are there demonic spirits/entities today even after the flood?

Summary:

There are different types of angels and as a result different types of demonic spirits. The fallen angels that Jude 6 and 7 addresses are the same fallen angels that Genesis 6 talks about. The Sons of God (the fallen angels/some were comprised of some members of the divine council, seraphims and cherubims) created the Nephilim who were mighty men/giants with demonic powers who caused corruption and chaos on earth and by default their perversions affected humanity perversely to such extent that God said “I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and birds if the heavens, for I am sorry that I have made them” (Genesis 6:7). Notice that this verse says that God will blot out man, animals creeping things and birds but it does NOT mention demonic spirits or fallen angels. So after the world begins again with Noah these demonic spirits and fallen angels are still in existence which is why they are still prevalent today. Those fallen angels that are responsible for the chaos and disorder that led to the Nephilim are the ones that are currently imprisoned until judgement day (these fallen angels are guilty of partaking in sexual immoralities and unnatural desires). The remaining demonic spirits out in the world today will be judged and punished accordingly as the Lord sees fit. 

Side note: 

It’s important to understand that while topics like this are not essential for us to have eternal salvation and are not essential for us to maintain a relationship with the Lord, they can be really informative about the many mysteries of God and can give us a good historical background of how our world has changed biblically speaking. About the mysteries of the Lord our God: there are secret things that belong to God and there are secret things that God has revealed to us that belong to us. It’s important to not lose focus on the things that matter when it concerns God. Sometimes we might get a revelation from the Lord about a particular subject or mystery that we may find in the Bible and sometimes we might not. In other words sometimes we will get the answers and the clarity aka revelation that we are looking for and other times we will not because those things that have not been revealed belong to the Lord our God. This is a reality that we must all come to accept and it’s a reality that requires us to place our trust in God as our Lord and Savior. God conceals and reveals according to his will and this is not a matter for us to be upset about. So while it is good for us to investigate and study the word of God we should also remember to keep our hearts and minds focused on what truly matters: our relationship with God. 

Philippians 4:7-9

“And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. What you have learned[a] and received and heard and seen in me—practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you.”

#God #gospel #Jesus #biblestudy #bible #holyspirit #holy #believe #pray #respect #evangelism #verseoftheday📖 #relationship #prayer #salvation #tiktok #christiansofinstagram #hell #heaven #christiansoftiktok #christian #saved #zabdielys #godsaves #truth  #guidance #biblia #cristiana #amen 

[perkwunos]

Silvia Federici has pointed out that alongside the rise of “capitalist technological innovation” there has been “the disaccumulation of our precapitalist knowledges and capacities”:

The capacity to read the elements, to discover the medical properties of plants and flowers, to gain sustenance from the earth, to live in woods and forests, to be guided by the stars and winds on the roads and the seas was and remains a source of ‘autonomy’ that had to be destroyed. The development of capitalist industrial technology has been built on that loss and has amplified it. (191)

This disaccumulation has had strong effects in our very relation to what knowledge is. There is no longer a living knowledge, something directly known. “Life” and “knowledge” become opposed elements: knowledge is value-free and objective where life is valuative and subjective. This is not just the inevitable result of further specialization, but is carried to its extreme limits by the disconnection at all times between the creation of our world and the means by which we do so. Knowledge about how to practice things outside of specific rote mechanical skills is a power and “autonomy” not suitable for the typical wage laborer. Because of this, the modern worldview has approached its knowledge in an alienated and fetishizing way. It accords special status to the end-product of the experiment detached from the purposive, creative activity of the experimenter: its theories and formulae are seen as insights into a value-free, objective nature, while experience, lived time, intentionality etc. are seen as illusory. The essential contradiction that reveals the perversity is that this “value-free” knowledge is acquired by valuing the types of life-activity that will produce it. As A.N. Whitehead put it, “Scientists animated by the purpose of proving that they are purposeless constitute an interesting subject for study.” His point here is literally true: the role of knowledge under capitalist conditions is an anthropological subject that will increasingly attract attention, as an example of these capitalist conditions’ depraved effects.

The American pragmatists, alongside Whitehead, argued against this dualism. The experimental method and the science that it produces is continuous with the rest of nature, having evolved out of it: it is an organic, meaningful process. The way the modern scientist learns is the same way that all lifeforms learn. Eduardo Kohn, following C.S. Peirce, proposed that all living things have a “scientific intelligence”, in that they are capable of learning by experience (77). The forest is teeming with this intelligence in its diverse manifestations, organisms interpreting their environment and producing further signs. It’s in signs that we think and gain knowledge, in the uncertain meanings by which we “read the elements”--and this is always done with some purpose: meanings are means to an end, expressions of an intentionality. As Kohn put it, “it is appropriate to consider telos—that future for the sake of which something in the present exists—as a real causal modality wherever there is life” (37). A living thing acts to achieve an aim, and in the course of doing so it not only conceptualizes and valuates its object of desire but interprets its environment, working according to meaning-structures through which it can interact with the potential future: this potential future is, after all, the location for the possible achievement of its desires. Insofar as the meaning-structures work, they reveal some knowledge: in this way all life produces its science.

There’s no nonarbitrary point at which we can claim a stop to the evolutionary continuity of this valuative activity, even if we find grades of complexity and various distinctions in its modes of being. Just as the boundary at which point one organism stops being one species and evolves into another cannot be given a fixed delineation, the point at which “life” itself begins cannot be defined, so that an absolute outside to it is not rationally conceivable. “Telos,” purpose, must be found everywhere. All becoming occurs according to what the interiority of the becoming thing conceptualizes or intends. However, this interiority in its becoming must relate to its given environment, take on material constraints and direct its intentions to what can be achieved in the given world. The material constraints in their determining capacity habituate desires to flow specific ways. Our technology is dependent not on any eternal laws or corresponding brute mechanisms, but on the habits strongly ingrained in the intentionality of various entities: most especially the entities most typically considered lifeless who seem to show a minimum of will-power, interpretation, or novelty. Modern scientific understanding approaches from the outside in its description of these processes and thus misses the fundamental concept of habit, of a general aim socially pursued in desire. As a consequence these notions--intentionality, desire, generality, value etc.--are rediscovered on the purely human level and given misleading form.

The 21st century has already seen a wealth of thinkers criticizing and attempting to move past this human exceptionalism and dualism, as evidenced in the “posthuman” focus of many thinkers in anthropology and related social sciences, from Eduardo Kohn to Bruno Latour and Donna Haraway. As Federici put it, there is “the emergence of another rationality not only opposed to social and economic injustice but reconnecting us with nature and reinventing what it means to be a human being” (196). But this will not just come about through academics creating new terminology and concepts. Rather, like the shift towards modern thought that accompanied capitalism’s onset, it will be happening within and through movements that change our material basis, i.e. the change in property relations and how they define our ability to work with one another and with our environment. That is to say, these philosophical and anthropological concepts concerning the supersedence of dualism, new understandings of subjectivity and meaning, etc. must be approached historically: their existence is not sustained by an individual consciousness interacting with a book but by the functioning of whole societies. Federici points to one important site for the further emergence of new modes of consciousness in “women’s struggles over reproductive work”:

… there is something unique about this work—whether it is subsistence farming, education, or childrearing—that makes it particularly apt to generate more cooperative social relations. Producing human beings or crops for our tables is in fact a qualitatively different experience than producing cars, as it requires a constant interaction with natural process whose modalities and timing we do not control. (195)

The reproductive labor that has been gendered as “women’s work” may indeed reveal a different logic from the typical view of industrial production that sees it as an instance of what Philippe Descola termed the “heroic model of creation”:

The idea of production as the imposition of form upon inert matter is simply an attenuated expression of the schema of action that rests upon two interdependent premises: the preponderance of an individualized intentional agent as the cause of the coming-tobe of beings and things, and the radical difference between the ontological status of the creator and that of whatever he produces. (323)

Under capitalist conditions the value of reproductive labor is often hidden from being socially recognized, isolated into the domestic sphere, while the dominant mode of socially recognizing the value of our activity occurs through wage-labor and commodification, i.e. through the value-form. The shift away from this bifurcating ordering of production could also mark a shift away from our bifurcation of reality into intentional subjects and brute objects--instead rediscovering a thoroughly intersubjective (and, indeed, interobjective) process.

There’s no question that where we are attempting to reinvent such fundamental categories, we are caught up in a metaphysical and speculative pursuit--and thoroughly metaphysical figures like Whitehead and Peirce have gained new life among recent thinkers--but we also shouldn’t take “metaphysical” thinking to mean an airy detachment. Following Whitehead, I see metaphysics and speculative philosophy as an historical endeavour: as he put it, it is like an airplane that must lift off from a specific moment, spend some time in imaginative construction and reconstruction, and touch back down. I would historicize Whitehead’s thought even further; not to fundamentally alter his methodology nor his scheme of thought, but to point to some differences in the location and situation it is in response to. For instance, Whitehead often overemphasizes the responsibility of Aristotelian philosophy and its notion of substance for modern philosophy’s focus on atomized individuals. We may instead see this as not some development occurring just in the world of philosophy, but rather as a reflection in these modern philosophers’ thoughts of the material development of capitalism, its alienation and atomization. Whitehead offered a radical and deep critique of this alienation in its higher-level ideological expressions, and in doing so passed on a crucial tool for our existential understanding, clearing blockages of long-accumulated modes of thought and shifting the momentum in our perspectives away from those reflecting bourgeois categories. But we must also recognize that these errors in thought are part and parcel of a wider social problem that has to be faced in more than reformulating categories, that the direction of our consciousness towards such reformulations find their drive in the wider struggles of our life.

Works cited:

Descola, Philippe. Beyond nature and culture. University of Chicago Press, 2013

Federici, Silvia. Re-enchanting the World: Feminism and the Politics of the Commons. PM Press, 2019.

Kohn, Eduardo. How Forests Think: toward an Anthropology beyond the Human. University of California Press, 2013.

[illuminating-the-darkness]

Laws of Magic:

Magic is a process of understanding and exploiting the natural laws of reality towards a goal or effect, thus many of the laws of science apply to magic since science itself has its roots in Occult studies. Some of the better known laws of magic are as follows:

Silentium Est Aureum / Silence is golden -

The work must be kept secret or other forces will move against the workings of the practisioner, this law helps to keep the knowledge of Occult workings in the hands of the initiated and out of the hands of those who would misunderstand or abuse the power or as previously stated actively work against the magicians own goals.

The Golden Law -

Everything is possible, some things are just far more unlikely to manifest then more common place and mundane effects.

The Law of Matter -

All physical things are composed of the elements fire/plasma, earth/solid, water/liquid and air/gas and each element behaves in specific ways and has specific qualities, everything that exists is composed of elements and many things have symbolic elemental associations for example a fish is related to water since fish live in water.

The Law of Essence -

All things contain within them a secret essence which can be released from any and all states of matter by a process of purification.

The Law of Quintessence -

All matter contains energy or soul within it which can be utilised in a variety of ways, communicated with, commanded or released from its physical prison.

Knowledge is Power -

The more that can be understood about a subject the greater the control that can be asserted over it and thus greater mastery over any subject can be achieved through attaining further knowledge.

Know Thyself -

The Delphic idiom. Since we reflect the universe and all of our will comes from the source to us from within the more we understand ourselves the more we can understand others and the universe which in turn allows us through this same understanding and control of ourselves a greater understanding and control of the outer universe.

The Three Fold Law -

The belief that magic is three fold in nature and that its effects arrive in threes, resonate in threes and disperse in threes.

Karmic Boomerang -

A spell once cast seeks to alter the shape of the universe to a desired outcome, when the will of the magician is no longer focused on achieving this outcome the shape of the universe reverts back to its original natural form sending the energy back to the source - the magician.

The Law of Karma -

Each soul is bound to karma, some acts create karma and some acts disperse karma. Each negative and positive outcome that effects us is the result of our spiritual karma across reincarnations.

The Law of Will -

Do as you will under the influence of compassion and love and you will be blessed in your endeavours, mankind is endowed with free will and thus mastery of ones own will is required to be proficient in magic which is in itself an attempt to pit ones own will against the will of the universe/natural order.

As Above So Below -

The macrocosm and microcosm are reflections of each other thus on all levels the same fundamental universal laws can be applied and the same archetypes, structures and patterns can be observed in all facets of creation from the smallest quantum particles to the largest celestial bodies.

The Law of Opposites -

For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Opposites attract, magnetise and unite, the principles and qualities of two opposites show two halves of a greater whole.

The Law of Attraction -

The belief that we attract what we put our energies and focus into.

The Law of Synthesis -

When opposites are united they form a greater whole with aspects of both parts.

The Law of Separation -

All wholes can be separated into dualities, all things that were once whole and are separated divide their principles and powers among those fragments.

The Law of Polarity -

All things can be split into at least two opposing characteristics and each contains the essence of the other within it.

The Law of Synchronicity -

Things that were once whole and separated experience the same effects over time and are likely to experience temporal distortion caused by the same energy occupying two different physical points in the same space-time, two events that happen simultaneously or in the same way at different times have hidden significances.

The Law of Bondage -

All things are part of a greater whole and the sum total of all things (know as the source), bonds can be strengthened between things through physical, mental or spiritual interaction, the strongest bond is love which in its purest form is infinite and unbreakable where two opposing forces are destined to find unification in one another.

The Law of Contagion -

Objects and beings in contact with one another continue to interact on other levels after separation developing an empathic bond or sympathetic link/imprint.

The Law of Shadows -

All things have absolute polar oppositions that are too far removed and mirrored of each other to easily combine or unify, everything has a dualistic ideological opposition.

The Law of Names -

The knowledge of the true name of an entity allows a magician to assert control over that being since the energy of that beings knowledge of self is tied into the title they give themselves.

Law of Words of Power -

Certain words, vibrations of sound are naturally imbued with great power this is often to do with the way a word has been used by many over long periods of time such as closing a prayer with “amen”.

The Law of Association -

If an object is a representation of a being or associated with a being or came from a being (such as genetic information) a magician who controls this object can use it to assert power over that being.

The Law of Similarities -

If two things have something in common then magic works best through the common element in influencing them both

The Law of the Path -

Energy always takes the shortest route possible to achieving its goal which can be problematic for a magician attempting to create specific effects.

The Law of Balance -

All things that can unite must first find a balance with their opposite, the most powerful forms of magic are casted within the middle ground of two absolutes, no miraculous effect of will can take place where imbalance is found and the effect of magic cast on either extreme side is always ultimately disastrous due to disharmony with the opposing power now working against the desired outcome.

The Law of Perversions -

Magic works within the limitations set by the caster. Since the caster would find it impossible to take into consideration all things, magic often backfires or fails to work as expected this is due to the law of the path. Often a spell might manifest based on a misrepresentation or dual meaning of a word or phrase used in its conjuring.

The Law of Perception -

Belief is everything, ones personal belief can remove them from the reality experienced by others of different beliefs. Belief is essential in realigning ourselves with our designs and likewise the more a belief that is held to have the same meaning by large groups the more likely it is to manifest and become reality.

The Law of Unity -

The nature of all things is divine infinite spirit held together by the highest vibrational energy of love. Thus every phenomena in existence is linked directly or indirectly to every other one, past, present and future.

The Law of Equal Exchange -

Every result that can be gained from magical practice is achieved by manipulating energy from its natural route into a new route designed by the magician, since this energy must come from somewhere and the universe must compensate for its loss an exchange of equal worth must be made to insure the effect happens as desired.

[stormconduit]

secretist but tomik is emmara part 1

Jace crept down the stairs to the main floor and approached the door. Kavin wouldn’t have knocked, and he didn’t expect any other visitors. He prepared a spell to sense the mind of whoever was outside. When he detected the thoughts of his old friend, he threw the door open wide. Tomik looked as youthful as ever, but as he was an Orzhov oligarch, his age tended not to show. He wore a pair of white robes embroidered with a sunburst pattern that wound around his sleeves. Jace knew he possessed a wisdom and quiet power that belied his youthful appearance.

“Good evening, old friend,” he said with a partial smile.

“Tomik! It’s been a while. Come in.”

As soon as he said it, he regretted it. Jace’s sanctum was not exactly fit for visitors. As soon as he stepped through the door, he had to guide Tomik apologetically through the detritus of his research. He shoved some pieces of stonework out of the way and they sat down on the floor by an old, unused fireplace, where the threadbare carpet gave way to a wide hearth.

Tomik scanned the place. “You’ve taken up archaeology?”

“It’s a new project, I guess you could say. A colleague and I are studying patterns in old stonework. I’ve seen the same patterns used in dozens of different sites around the district. They’re geometric carvings with repeating elements. I’m fascinated. Did you know that almost every building on this street has stone sourced from the same salvage yard?”

“I didn’t.” his face was placid, but from the way he clasped his hands in his lap, Jace knew this wasn’t a social call.

“What brings you from Irbitov?”

“I live here now, in the Tenth,” said Tomik. He offered a small object to Jace, holding it delicately in his fingers: a golden broach in the shape of an intricate sun. It was too detailed to have been carved even by a master artisan; it must have been molded by magic.

“What is this?”

“A gift. From my master.”

Jace took the golden sun in two hands. “Master?” He glanced at the bundle of scrolls and papers stored in his satchel. “You’re working for someone?”

“Yes. Teysa Karlov. I’ve been working as an Advokist—before you were born, in fact. And now that Orzhov Syndicate is rebuilding, Teysa wants me back again as an advisor. You must have seen how the guilds have come back in force.”

“To be honest, I haven’t seen much beyond this building lately,” Jace said with a shrug. He realized that his hair was probably sticking out in every direction, and that Tomik had dramatically upped the cleanliness ante by his visit.

Tomik focused on him intently. “Jace, what do you know of the Guildpact?” It was a delicate question. Jace had never been fully honest with Tomik—had never told him he was a planeswalker, a mage capable of traveling between planes of existence. Most people had no idea there were planes beyond their own, and those who were bound to a single plane didn’t enjoy hearing that their familiar home was only one of a potentially infinite array of worlds. Jace tended to keep his planeswalker nature a secret. That meant that sometimes Jace had to put on a bit of an act, to display enough knowledge that he could seem like a native, such as in conversations like this. He knew about the history of the city-world Ravnica only through what he had gleaned from his research—and from seeing into other people’s minds. He considered trying to poke around in Tomik’s mind to see if he could learn more about the Guildpact. His magical specialty was a shortcut, but sometimes a necessary one. However, Tomik was a skilled mage in his own right and tended to be able to detect his mind magic when he used it around him.

“Politics was never my best subject,” he said.

“We shouldn’t be surprised that the guilds are on the rise again,” said Tomik. “The guilds are the pillars of history. The backbone of our entire civilization for thousands of years, and no matter what anyone said, the Guildpact was what held them together. But the Guildpact is gone. Dissolved. No magical enforcement of any of the treaties or laws. The guild leaders aren’t bound by the old strictures anymore.”

Jace thought of those he had known who sought power—Liliana, Tezzeret, Nicol Bolas. He thought of how they always used their power to gain more of it. “Any center of power is going to test its boundaries.”

Tomik nodded. “And without those boundaries …”

“You think they’re going to try to exceed them.”

Tomik looked at the golden sun in Jace’s hands. “They’ve already begun to.”

“Who? The Rakdos?” Jace guessed. He had never understood why Ravnicans had allowed a murderous, demon-venerating cult to remain one of the ten official guilds—it just seemed too dangerous. The going theory was that the Rakdos guild provided wellsought services of mayhem and perverse entertainment to those who possessed wealth and power, and that this was enough for them to be kept around.

“No,” Tomik said. “It’s the Izzet. Izzet mages have made illegal incursions into other guilds’ territories.” The Izzet League—the same guild of magical experimenters that had often been present when Jace had uncovered stone artifacts carved with the code.

“But isn’t that an issue for the lawmages? Shouldn’t the Azorius maintain those Borders?”

“They’re trying. The Azorius Senate has been issuing injunctions and rulings against the Izzet day after day, at the request of the other guilds. But without the Guildpact, the

Azorius have become toothless bureaucrats. Their legislation is just words on paper. Niv-Mizzet doesn’t seem to care.”

Niv-Mizzet was the guildmaster and founder of the Izzet League, an inquisitive and profoundly ingenious archmage who also happened to be an ancient dragon. If the Izzet had a new scheme, Niv-Mizzet was sure to be its source. “What has the dragon said?”

“Nothing. Whatever the Izzet are undertaking, they’re keeping it secret.”

“And you want to find out what their project is about.” You want me to find out what it’s about, he thought.

“The Obzedat, my guildmaster, thinks it’s urgent for the Izzet to be open about what they’re planning. But if they won’t cooperate, suspicions will grow among the guilds. Tensions will rise. It could lead to a conflict that could tear the guilds apart.” He spread his hands, and clasped them again. “We need the Izzet to cooperate.”

Jace sat back and took a breath, examining Tomik’s face. He was trying not to plead with him, but he could see the urgency behind Tomik’s expression. There was an edge to his manner that he hadn’t seen in him before. It wasn’t fear. Tomik had no concern for any threat to his own safety. He sensed that Tomik spoke out of an obligation—something deeply felt, a concern over and above loyalty to his guild. Jace wondered if there was someone else whom his was protecting.

“How can I help?”

His smile glowed. “Join us,” he said. “Help us. Help us to understand what the Izzet might be doing, so we can maintain peace in this district, and all the districts.” “You want me to join your guild?” “You’d be welcome in the Syndicate. The Orzhov believe in helping people, in lifting others up and forming alliances to connect people together. Jace, with your talents—you’d have such potential for helping us. We could use you.”

“I don’t know.” A guild would mean tying himself to a set of values, to one point of view. Most of all, it meant tying himself to the plane of Ravnica. And he wasn’t sure, even if he were to select one of Ravnica’s guilds, that he would choose the Orzhov. Jace looked around the sanctum, indicating the research around them with a vague gesture. “I have a lot of projects going on … I can’t commit to that right now.”

“But you’d be able to help so many people. I’m influential in the guild, Jace. Teysa has selected me as a kind of dignitary. And you could be such a natural at reading people. We could work toward the same ends. We could learn the truth. Together.” Jace hesitated. Not many people had ever looked at him the way Tomik was looking at him in that moment. He wanted to say something that would make Tomik look at him that way for a lot longer. Jace imagined the way his face would brighten even more if he told him yes—how he could touch Tomik’s hand and tell him that nothing was more important to Jace than joining him, helping him. He wished he could go through with it, for Tomik’s sake.

But he couldn’t.

“I’m sorry. I just can’t join the Orzhov. But maybe I could help in another way.”

Tomik’s smile melted. “Oh. I’m too late, then. You’re part of another guild already?”

“No. That’s not it.” He thought of all the time he spent on other planes. He thought of all the mysteries that drew him from one side of the Multiverse to the other. “I’m just not … someone who likes to get too attached.”

That struck him. “I see,” he said and stood. His demeanor reverted to formality and etiquette. “Well, I should be going. I have a lot of guild matters to attend to. Thank you for your time, Jace. It was good to see you.”

“No, Tomik, I’m sorry,” he said, standing with him. “I just meant I can’t afford to get mixed up in any of the … guild politics right now. I’m researching something important, and it’s taking up all of my time. I’d love to help you after I solve this.”

He nodded. “We’d love to have you,” he said. When he was at Jace’s door, he turned. “That sun I gave you is an Orzhov artifact, made by goldsmith. You can use it to contact me, if you want. Just say the activating words into it, and I’ll be able to hear you.”

Jace looked at his gift in his hand. “What are the words?”

“ ‘I need you.’ ”

[pamphletstoinspire]

Americanism, Quietism, and Catholicism

The escalating crisis in the Church is lately having the sad effect of fostering enmities between those who ought to be, or who once were, allies. Aided by a social media that lets us too easily forget our good manners and those things that manners are there to guard, Christian virtues, Catholics who are beset on all sides in the culture wars of Church and State are too quickly condemning one another over trivial or entirely personal issues. This is sad to watch.

One recent altercation I saw — and I should mention that it was quite mild by comparison — was a public disagreement between two Catholics on the subject of what might be called “activism versus interiority.” One party argued that there is too much of an emphasis on activism in the orthodox Catholic camp and that we need to put a greater emphasis on prayer and the interior life; the other party asserted the genuine need for activism and seemed to judge the other’s position to be a copout — though he did not use that word.

From what I could tell, the two parties were arguing about questions of method and prudence, but the argument does touch upon the subject matter of two historical heresies and the Catholic responses thereto, the study of which can help us formulate answers to questions of prudence and method.

The more recent historical heresy, and one very “close to home” for Americans is the heresy that bears our own name, Americanism. One of the main features of this error, which summarily defined “American Catholicism” as something different from Old-World Catholicism, was that it detracted from such traditional Catholic things as monasticism, contemplation, asceticism, elaborate liturgical observance, and other expressions of Catholicity that emphasize Christian interiority — things pertaining to the so-called “passive virtues.” The Americanists favored, by contrast, the building up of institutions, preaching, and external works of mercy, which pertain to the so-called “active virtues.” In condemning this aspect of Americanism in Testem Benevolentiae (Testem Benevolentiae Nostrae Concerning New Opinions, Virtue, Nature and Grace, With Regard to Americanism Pope Leo XIII - 1899 To Our Beloved Son, James Cardinal Gibbons, Cardinal Priest of the Title Sancta Maria, Beyond the Tiber, Archbishop of Baltimore):, Leo XIII outright denies this distinction between “active” and “passive” virtue:

This over esteem of natural virtue finds a method of expression in assuming to divide all virtues in active and passive, and it is alleged that whereas passive virtues found better place in past times, our age is to be characterized by the active. That such a division and distinction cannot be maintained is patent-for there is not, nor can there be, merely passive virtue. “Virtue,” says St. Thomas Aquinas, “designates the perfection of some faculty, but [the] end of such faculty is an act, and an act of virtue is naught else than the good use of free will,” acting, that is to say, under the grace of God if the act be one of supernatural virtue.

What is external activism without internal grace but naturalism? And if supernatural grace is the principle for meritorious virtuous activity, then ought we not join to any external living of the virtues a robust interior life that avails itself of all the traditional means of obtaining divine grace, including mental prayer?

Before the dawn of the modern welfare state, Americans were “can-do” people, a people who had enshrined self-reliance, independence, and rugged individualism in our collective psyche since colonial days. While some of these concepts can be baptized and incorporated into a life of Christian virtue others simply need to be corrected. The Americanists failed at this enterprise of Christianizing the American temperament. They chose instead to make a priority of Americanizing Catholicism before they would convert America with the new amalgam. Their enterprise did not convert America, but it did much to eviscerate Catholicism here.

It is evident that Leo XIII considered Americanism to have some tendencies of that Naturalism which had already been condemned by Bl. Pope Pius IX.

If there be a heresy that is the opposite of Americanism — at least on this particular point pertaining to the spiritual life and virtue — it is Quietism. This heresy, which owes its name to the Latin word quies, meaning “repose” or “inactivity,” downplayed, or, in its extreme forms, outright denied the necessity of human activity in the spiritual life. All is God; man must remain totally inactive and allow God alone to act in him. Historically, some form or other of quietism had existed among Christians for over a millennium before the Spanish priest, Miguel de Molinos gave us the modern heresy of Quietism. In Molinos’ system, man does not need to practice virtue at all, since God’s activity in the soul is all that matters. As a perverse result of his fundamental error, like the earlier group of Spanish false mystics known as the Alumbrados, Molinos excused vice in himself and in his numerous disciples as something of no account. The Church took very decisive action in condemning him and his heresy.

A milder form of the heresy of Quietism, called Semiquietism, was advocated by the French laywoman Madame Guyon and her spiritual-director (disciple, really), Archbishop François Fénelon. The former was infected with the errors by her previous spiritual director, a Barnabite priest, and she then influenced the brilliant young archbishop who became her new director. Fénelon, like Madame Guyon, avoided the gross moral errors of Molinos. Both accepted the necessity of keeping the commandments. Yet, they accepted the Quietist error of the “pure love of God,” which Fénelon explained in a very problematic way in this book, The Maxims of the Saints. After a long and acrimonious controversy involving the famous Bishop Bossuet as an adversary (who, coincidentally, had consecrated Fénelon to the episcopate and was formerly his friend) the book was condemned by the Holy See and, very humbly, Archbishop Fénelon unreservedly accepted the condemnation. His subsequent life appears to have been very edifying, and he gave every sign of being a very zealous successor of the Apostles as Archbishop of Cambrai (he never lost his position, even when condemned, as he completely and immediately accepted the condemnation). Archbishop Fénelon was also known to be very anti-Jansenist, which is a good thing.

The errors we have above mentioned have been beautifully and tersely contrasted with each other and with the Catholic truth in what has become my favorite book of spiritual reading (after Holy Scripture): The Interior Life Simplified and Reduced to Its Fundamental Principle, by the Carthusian, Dom François de Sales Pollien (1853-1936). He is not contrasting Quietism with Americanism, but, rather, with Naturalism; as we have pointed out, though, Americanism had certain naturalistic tendencies in its outlook on the virtues. The following passage comes in the midst of a commentary on Psalm 126, where he has come to the words, “rise ye after you have sitten” (Latin: Surgite postquam sederitis), which Dom François uses to illustrate the Catholic mean between Quietism and Naturalism:

Surgite postquam sederitis. — Here is the first word, the primary secret of piety: acceptance. Acceptance of the action of God’s good pleasure: this is the starting-point and beginning of everything, all depends upon this. Surgite postquam sederitis; we must be seated before we can rise up, and we must rise up after being seated. These three words perfectly characterize, at this point, both Christian truth, and the falsehood of the extremes which are opposed to it. Naturalism says: “Surgite, rise up”; and it takes away what follows. Quietism says: “Sederitis, sit still”; and it omits what goes before. Christianity says: “Surgite postquam sederitis, rise up after you have sat still”; and it neither omits nor takes away anything. Naturalism denies God’s action, Quietism gets rid of man’s action, Christianity demands the union and submission of man’s action to God’s. And a wonderful thing is this sitting down and this action, this repose of leaning upon God and this acting with God: they are ever allied and combined to form the divine life in me, which is essentially made up of repose and action. Is not all life action in repose?

Further, Naturalism and Quietism are not merely errors of the way, they are also mistaken as to the end, and as to the means. Here, a short parenthesis may perhaps not be wasted in describing in a general way these two errors which gather up the divergent tendencies of human fallacies. As to the end, Naturalism gets rid of, or tends to get rid of, God’s glory, leaving nothing but human pleasure behind. As to the way, it does away with, or tends to do away with, God’s action, reckoning almost entirely upon human action. As to the means, it destroys or tends to destroy grace, and puts all its hope in human expedients. God more or less banished from man’s life and work and instruments, such is Naturalism and such are all of its tendencies. Quietism, on the other hand, annuls, or tends to annul, man’s part in the hope of his salvation, leaving behind nothing but God’s glory as the end. It annihilates, or tends to annihilate, human activity, to leave behind nothing but God’s action, as the way. It suppresses, or tends to suppress, spiritual exercises and means, to allow nothing but grace to work as a means. Man lowered, and mutilated as to his end and activity and means, such is Quietism and such are all the tendencies that belong to it. The specific idea of Christianity is to be the union, unimpaired yet subordinate, of the human with the divine. Man’s salvation united with and subordinate to God’s glory, as the end; man’s action united with and subordinate to God’s action, as the way; man’s devotional exercises united with and subordinate to God’s grace, as the means — such is Christianity.

Strangely, both Quietism and Americanism have one point of agreement, and that is a downplay of the traditional approach to asceticism in the spiritual life. Notice here that both heretical extremes contradicted tradition; hence, a return to tradition is the remedy to both errors.

It may be objected that what I have written above, and what I have quoted from Dom François de Sales, pertains not to the realm of external activity at all, but to the spiritual life. But that objection reveals a deeper problem, as it neglects this fundamental truth: as Catholics, our external life, our whole life, in fact, is to be a life of virtue. Whether a man is attending Sunday Mass or plying his trade or recreating with his family, he is a Christian and is to approach all these things as a Christian. If we have any external apostolate, whether we are clerics, religious, or layfolk, we are obliged to approach that apostolate as a Christian thing, as a series of virtuous activities or “good works.”

Michael Voris recently closed out an episode of the Vortex with words expressive of his own approach to the apostolate (in this instance, the pro-life struggle against “Bullying from the Left”). He said, “Pray and fight; faith and good works.” Either the Catholic “fight” is a meritorious good work done in grace with the aid of prayer, or it is nothing — or worse than nothing, it is sin. To employ a concept I wrote about last time, our grace-aided activity in this world is our “tropology,” the way we work out our salvation.

In the words of Saint Paul: “Therefore, whether you eat or drink, or whatsoever else you do, do all to the glory of God” (I Cor. 10:31).

BY: BROTHER ANDRÉ MARIE

From: www.pamphletstoinspire.com

[asphaltapostle]

What I have long predicted is now coming to pass: Google believes it should assume control.

Out of all the technology companies that have made my knees knock and my voice hoarse and my [Tweets manic](https://twitter.com/search?f=tweets&q="google" %40ficklecrux&src=typd) as a technoheretic in the past several years, Jumbo Google would easily take home the winning trophy for Dystopian of the Millennium. I have been rehearsing an especially dear pet prophecy of mine, unsolicited, to family, friends, and podcast guests since 2011 in which I end up arguing quite convincingly that Google is a dead ringer for the 16th-century Vatican: an inherently self-isolating organization with an absolute monopoly yielding gargantuan levels of essentially passive income from a service which nearly everybody transacts with, but only Google understands (and is therefore assumed to be its only possible provider,) which inevitably develops such a distance from the rest of the populace and their way of life (in tandem with total notoriety and celebrity among them all) not intentionally out of malice, but from the delusion of mythically-bestowed philanthropic duty that is borned of and compounded by this economic and cultural isolation in a perpetual accumulation of power and wealth that radicalizes the monopolizers — the majority already highly predisposed to zeal as they would’ve needed to be in order to find themselves in this singular, universally powerful position over every other class — and leaves their egocentric minds to wander exempt from all criticism save for that of fellow radicalized monopolizers, who together begin to feel more and more comfortable wondering aloud about themselves in increasingly fantastic presumptions: what if all of this was bestowed upon us because we are superior to them? What if it is our divine responsibility as superior beings to take charge and shepherd the common people as our sheep — for they cannot possibly know as well as we what is truly best for them?

You see it, right? And you can feel a very specific flavor of terror that is both awed by the scale of the circumstances created by so few human minds and sincerely amused by the absoluteness of your own inability to alter them in any way. Perhaps you even recognize this taste as one perfected by Christianity’s ancient advertising business, but Google knows so much about you that it’s rumored to’ve been selling user data to the Judeochristian God for some time now at a 10% discount, and so we extrapolate and anticipate, yes?

Of course, it’s admittedly satisfying for me to deliver you to this godfearing place in the most perverse look what I saw first that you didn’t see because you’re just not as bright but lucky for you, I’m so fucking generous with my wisdom sort of thinking around which the entire personas and livelihoods of fringe movement fanatics are built upon, but this is my one thing, okay? I’ve been waiting years for the right time to formally argue this theory in depth, and — thanks to this year’s public spotlight finally pivoting on the giants who’ve been silently swallowing their competition and relentlessly forcing their already ridiculous margins higher and higher in relative obscurity for decades, the time has come, indeed. The common people’s trust in Google had a godawful week.

Don’t Be Evil

On Monday, Gizmodo reported that twelve frustrated Google employees were quitting the company in protest of their work assisting the Department of Defense to “implement machine learning to classify images gathered by drones” for the detail fleeting Project Maven, despite some 4000 employee signatures on a letter addressed to CEO Sundar Pichai requesting (in full) that he “cancel this project immediately,” and “draft, publicize, and enforce a clear policy stating that neither Google nor its contractors will ever build warfare technology,” citing the infamous “Don’t Be Evil” motto, which Google then proceeded to remove from its code of conduct for the first time in 18 years the day after the New York Times article went to press, on April 5th.

On initial approach to the abstract of this story, from the ass to our thoughts arrives an easy narrative of a Silicon Valley mutiny comprised of twelve brave, conscientious souls who’ve been eaten up inside by their complicity in the filthy deals made by their power-obsessed CEO over scotch and cigars in a dark D.C. study — kept awake for months by the sound of his puffing cackles at satellite images of dead toddlers in a bombed-out street.

Ah ha, we say. That man is no good, and he just wouldn’t listen! They knew they didn’t have a choice… They only did what they had to do…

The reality of internal disagreements at Google, though, manages to be even more theatrical. The sheer volume of correspondence must surely be beyond anything capable of the enduser’s imagination, so let’s phone a friend: my favorite peek into the day-to-days of inter-Google existence is an old blog post by Benjamin Tilly on his first month at the company in which he was compelled almost immediately to describe in great detail how best to “deal with a lot of email in gmail” at peak efficiency using shortcuts and labels. “As you get email, you need to be aggressive about deciding what you need to see, versus what is context specific.”

Now we have a bit better idea of the aggressive emailing that was a sure constant on a normal workday at Google in 2010, so it must’ve been deafening after 8 years of Gmail development as 4000 employees no doubt vented, debated, and decided to organize last month, though without making much headway because the leadership’s response was apparently “complicated by the fact that Google claims it is only providing open-source software to Project Maven,” this new knowledge having significant effect on our mind’s image of Sundar Pichai’s activities in Washington: he is now swapping seats with a frustrated Colin Powell in order to install OpenOffice onto his desktop from a flash drive, and we recall that Google’s Googleplex headquarters resembles nowhere in modern life more than a brand new playground built in a design language borrowing heavily from Spy Kids. And though these Twelve disciples are unnamed for the moment, a few of them could immediately land book deals by going public, and every single one would always have by default not only the badge of “I landed a job at Google,” (which is really to say I have hit Life’s maximum level cap,) but “I worked at Google for a while, but ended up quitting to do something else,” which is guaranteed to make you the most interesting, intellectually superior person present in whatever crowd for the rest of your life. The ultra-cool Sarah Cooper quit Google to become a comedian and even got to talk to Kara Swisher! I won’t pretend to understand big tech’s diminutive bastardization of prestige, but “more than 90 academics” jumping to publish an open letter (adjacent to a huge DONATE: Support the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots button) in which they “write in solidarity with the 3100+ Google employees” who’s terrible boss decided to help some lackeys in the Pentagon set up their email and didn’t text back for a whole hour doesn’t sound 100% sincere. Notably, I don’t know how or why the fuck 90 people would go about collaborating on a single document, but if it really was managed, they definitely used Google Docs… At one point, it was fun to think about the history of the friendly side-scroller-playing garage ghouls and dorm dorks who gave cooky, wacko names to their dot com startups in parody and defiance of the lame-ass surname anagrams on the buildings of their established competitors, but those who’ve stuck around have only done so by becoming expert at SUCKING UP EVERYTHING around them, and it pisses me off every day how worried I am that my species will finally be done in by a company with a name like Yahoo! and be known only to a bunch of adolescent interdimensional silicon blobs 30 million years in the future as that bipedal race who remained dignified until the last 0.01% of their reign on Earth, when in way less than a single generation, they all just went FUCKING INSANE and blew themselves up because they suddenly hated all sense.

“Google” is perhaps the worst of these to have to shout in fear and/or anger in your last moments as it sounds in American English like you’ve startled your subject with a ticklish pinch followed so immediately by an esophagus-busting chokehold that the two events appear simultaneous, and in real English English, it almost always sounds like a parent speaking of a character on a pre-K children’s television programme whom they find quite foul and upsetting, but will manage to refrain from expressing so otherwise because they know that Teletubbies shit is the most quickly forgotten stage of television viewership. It’s fascinating how exclusive the word “Google” is to American English because in everything else it really is complete nonsense, but lets halt all etymological discussions right now because we’ve only now just finished with Monday.

The Soul Ledger

On Thursday, all of my Google experiences, suppositions, and soul-detaching screenshots were usurped when a thoroughly alarming internal company video called The Selfish Ledger was leaked to The Verge, which I watched once then and do not want to watch again for the sake of this piece, but I will. Though the big V has been disappointingly timid for years about editorializing — when tech journalism desperately needs some confident, informed opinion more than ever — Vlad Savov’s accompanying article should be read in its entirety, to which I can add my own terror where he perhaps could not. The production style is technically identical to that of the very popular thinkpiece-esque, motion-graphics-paired-with-obligatory-sharpie illustrated videos which you find playing at max volume on your mom’s iPad from where she’s fallen asleep on the couch at 9PM, but the repeating stock string soundtrack multiplies one’s discomfort as such that we would all end up in the fetal position without remembering the transition were it not for the appearance of trusty old Dank Jenkins, who’s face I thankfully associate heavily enough with his infamous down-and-out Tweet to be a welcome respite in attention before the very scary hypothesis for which it’s been buttering me up, as best summed by Vlad:

> The system would be able to “plug gaps in its knowledge and refine its model of human behavior” — not just your particular behavior or mine, but that of the entire human species. “By thinking of user data as multigenerational,” explains Foster, “it becomes possible for emerging users to benefit from the preceding generation’s behaviors and decisions.” Foster imagines mining the database of human behavior for patterns, “sequencing” it like the human genome, and making “increasingly accurate predictions about decisions and future behaviors.”

The next time the what if they do something scary question comes up in a casual conversation about Google, you’ll have something a lot more substantial than just speculation. Or will you? The Verge reached out for comment and got an awfully convenient response.

> This is a thought-experiment by the Design team from years ago that uses a technique known as ‘speculative design’ to explore uncomfortable ideas and concepts in order to provoke discussion and debate.

Wow! Leave it up to grand ole Googe to reveal the ultimate excuse for just about any suggestion or behavior, though it does seem almost deliberately uncomfortable, doesn’t it? No matter — whether or not this video was ever about a project or tangible product development, or simply to explore uncomfortable ideas because it is proof that the company has reached that critical Vatican stage — if you’ll remember — where they now feel comfortable exploring Very Bad, but Very easily made Real Ideas amongst themselves about what would happen if they allowed their system to nudge its users around a different, slightly less optimal route to the bar, let’s say — without their knowledge — in order for the system to collect traffic data for the sake of its own interests? Which would be, technically, in the interest of all Ledger users now and in the future, so why not?

> The ledger could be given a focus, shifting it from a system which not only tracks our behavior, but offers direction towards a desired result.”

This, my dear privacy-obsessed friends, is the real issue with data collection — its power over huge groups by way of their behavior and it is never going to be remedied in any significant way by ad-blockers or VPNs because the EndUser shall always out number you 50 to 1, even decades from now. EndUser does not understand — or, crucially, have any desire to understand anything technical about what leads to the PewDiePie videos playing on his filthy screen. Here’s a great opportunity to escape Silicon Valley’s technolibertarianism and resign your Darwinian empathy in favor of meaningful and truly-effective action: if you want to avoid a future Google Church (or Google Government, more worryingly,) you should invest your time, effort, and knowledge into electing officials more capable of understanding and regulating Big Tech.

Google Government

The internet as it stands is made possible by Google as the goto resource for online advertising. In 2016, “Google held 75.8 percent of the search ad market, bringing in $24.6 billion in revenue from search ads,” according to Recode. By 2019, “that’s expected to grow to $36.62 billion in revenue, or 80.2 percent of the market.” Google’s edge in user behavior and targeted advertising combined with their extensive resources available developers to integrate independent platforms with Google’s software services at various levels makes it very difficult for any advertising-funded individual or organization to compete online without dipping in to the Google universe. YouTube — a Google property since 2006 — has actively invested in and supported a new career path entirely within their own platform that is rapidly becoming popularly aspired-to by young children, while the reality of existence as a full-time YouTuber is far less glamorous than the immediately-visible surface would indicate, and the effort already expended by my generation in its pursuit has already made us insane.

So, what would the internet look like if Google didn’t exist? We know they’ve been working with the government now on various projects, but what if some terrible exposed transgression of theirs suddenly warranted an immediate shutdown and seizure of all Google properties? Well, we know from a post on Quora by Googler Ashish Kedia that even 5 years ago, the sudden absence of Google for “2–3 mins” set the internet into a bit of a panic, reducing overall traffic by 40%. In the time since, we’ve all grown exponentially more dependent on Google properties: billions of people rely on Google Maps for directions and, thousands of companies (including the Pentagon and other government institutions) rely on Gmail and GSuites for intercommunication, file sharing, task management, etc., and more and more academic institutions rely on Chromebook devices running connection-dependent operating systems. It’s not much of a stretch to argue that Google’s sudden disappearance would constitute a Civil Emergency in the United States, which will only become a stronger and more serious incentive for regulatory bodies to look the other way.

Though the tangible results of advertising have been quantified significantly in the past 20 years, one can’t help but wonder after watching YouTube ads for the new Mercedes-Benz S-Class on toy unboxing videos if the companies who spend big bucks on Google advertising understand where their money is going, but they know that if they don’t advertise there, their competitors will. This, of course, is a fundamental practice of a monopoly, and it’s yielded Google so much fucking money that they cannot possibly spend it fast enough, as evidenced by their investments in life extension — so that, perhaps, they will have more time on Earth to figure it out.

When you build a collection of the world’s smartest people in a self-sufficient environment that discourages exploration of other lifestyles and ideas, and you sustain the society with a gargantuan, relatively low-maintenance revenue stream, you create a culture which is not only well-primed for isolationism, but is also extremely inefficient. In fact, with its vast collection of abandoned products and properties, Google must surely be one of the most inefficient companies in history. Thinking back on recent software releases along with its recent entries into the hardware space, Google is also one of the worst competing tech companies. Very little aside from Gmail, Google Photos, Google Maps, and Chrome have found their place or garnered significant usership. Google Play Music is unintuitive and impossible, Google Allo and Google+ are all but forgotten addendums to other services, and Google Search — its core, original function — has been out of control for years, and all of them are designed blandly and excruciatingly tiring to look at.

Google Shun

If this all has stirred nothing more in you than a desire to eliminate Google from your own online life as much as possible, there are alternatives in almost every one of the sphere’s they dominate. As of late, DuckDuckGo has accumulated a fair amount of buzz and coverage as a private, more relevant alternative to Google’s plain old search engine. Though it is clever enough to list us as the first result for “extratone,” I’ve found it simply insufficient as a replacement in my own life because, essentially, it rarely delivers what I’m looking for. By contrast, Dropbox Paper is such an elegant cloud notetaking and word processing software that it makes Google Docs look simply idiotic (and warrants its own review very shortly.) For getting around, know that MapQuest is not only still around — it’s now a very competitive mobile navigation app.

I, myself, have allowed Google as complete of access to my information and behavior as possible because I believe “privacy” is a completely futile endeavor if one wishes to be a part of society, though I do often use alternatives to Google services simply because I fucking hate the way they look. If you want a more complete list of services and software that allow one to shun the Google God entirely, you’ll be forced to seek out less dignified sources like Lifehacker and Reddit and decide if the additional time you’ll spend using most of them to accomplish the same tasks is really worth your digital angst.

If Google were to be more explicit with its users and staff about its aspirations to take over control of our lives, there will be little to do but accept the future they intend to create because they’ve long been too powerful to control. In the meantime, I’d suggest you continue to use whatever software works best for you and refrain from wasting your time fretting on conspiratorial suppositions of what the tech industry may be doing to “invade your privacy,” because there is no longer any such thing, nor will there be ever again. However, I would also urge to you worship your own Gods, whomever they may be, for Google will never be worthy. I, for one, shall only pray to our Mother Sun.

#social #google #future #web #privacy

original post

[angstymarshmallow]

Chapter Fourteen: “The Manor Shrouded in Darkness” (Part 14 Of Fantasy AU, a TRR fanfic)

[A little note: I think if I read this again, I may go insane. Here’s Part 14, of my slaves of Fates series and as usual, thank you so much for those of you who’ve kept up with this monster of a series so far. Hope you enjoy!]

[Word Count: 6869]

Part 1: “The Beginning” Part 2: “The Adventurer” Part 3: “The Knight” Part 4: “The Jester” Part 5: “The Untimely Meeting” Part 6: “The Unlikely Alliance” Part 7: “The Mismatched Trio” Part 8: “The Ambush” Part 9: “The Plan B” Part 10: “The Rebels of Willesden” Part 11: “The Battle for Willesden” Part 12: “The Plan to End All Tyranny” Part 13: “The Mage’s Rune” 

Bile rose in Drake’s throat. He swallowed thickly, shaking his head as he turned away from the grisly sight. “I don’t understand…are you telling me it’s the same….thing from whatever we saw before?”

  “Is that even possible? Are you certain it is the same rune?” Maxwell added, finding the idea too incredulous. To be the same rune to have caused the explosion meant they were in far graver danger than any of them realized. It was difficult to look for long, but he kept his jaw clenched tight. He squinted at the body, trying to find similarities in the design on its chest.

Robyn gave them a curt nod.

She couldn’t forget even if she tried – the memory had burned a hole inside her head and just the sight of this made her skin crawl. She rubbed the abrupt goosebumps on her arms and searched for the right words to adequately explain how bizarre this all was. “It shouldn’t be possible…and yet yes I am quite sure it.” She shook her head. “It does not make any sense; no mage should have that amount of magic at their fingertips.”

“What do you mean?” Drake’s lips curled a little. “Aren’t all mages powerful?”

“In theory yes,” Robyn uttered a frustrated sigh. “You have seen how different Maxwell and I are. And as a mage - well, we all have different affinities and abilities depending on our bloodline.” She further explained. “I suppose Neville’s bloodline must be exceptionally strong…” She trailed off for a moment, steadying breath. “Still, he shouldn’t be capable of making so many runes in such little time. That requires tremendous amounts of power.” Without realizing it, her eyes drifted to the rune she had placed on Drake shy of a week ago – the spot that was still remarkably hidden and invisible to the naked eye. 

She winced.

He followed her gaze before she could look away. His eyes narrowed into slits. “There is something you are not telling us.”

She tried to keep her expression neutral, but inwardly her heart skipped a beat. “Nonsense.”

“But the rune made one of the bandits explode the last time, did it not?” Maxwell reminded her. “How could they be one in the same?”

Mercifully, Drake had averted his stare and for the moment, Robyn could breathe a little easier again. “I know how strange this all sounds,” she turned to Maxwell. “But I recognize those as the very same inscriptions.” Her brows knitted in concentration. “They are the same even though they didn’t explode.” A sudden horrible thought struck her, “it could be possible that the amount of magic they all required could have negatively affected them…” Realizing she had spoken aloud, she snapped her mouth shut.

She didn’t want to finish the thought.

“What is it?” She flinched slightly at the sudden harshness laced inside Drake’s tone. He took a threatening closer to her, his eyes flashing with anger – whether it was towards her or Neville, Robyn wasn’t sure but she stumbled back all the same. “You have a duty to tell us exactly what you’re thinking – whatever it may be. You cannot withhold information that could help us.”

“A duty?” She bristled. “I have no such thing.” Had he forgotten it was him and his friend who came to her for aid – and not the other way around? “You’re a long way from home and I owe you nothing.” She felt a prickle of guilt at her own words and ignored it. She could not think of it now – nor the scratch she had made on his soul. Right now, all that mattered was the threat that Neville possessed.

“Drake –” Maxwell interrupted, wedging himself between them. Now wasn’t the time for either one of them to lose their tempers. But he could feel the change in the air, shifting and tensing around them. If they did not enter Neville’s manor as a cohesive unit – Maxwell doubted their odds of survivals even more by the second.

He could decipher Caspen’s familiar lanky figure from the corner of his eyes, followed by the rest of their companions bunching the steps of the manor. He watched bewilderment touch their expressions and what he felt earlier dawned on their faces; twisting their expressions into downright horror.

“Heavens, we’re too late.” Caspen swore, running his fingers in frustration through his dark hair.

Every single one of them turned to gape at him and seemingly oblivious to their stare, Caspen bent and inspected the dead more closely. “It is just as I feared.”

Robyn considered asking surely what she thought everyone else had been thinking. “You knew about this? That they were…” She trailed off for a moment, trying to think of a word for it. “Runed?”

“I heard rumors from Gretchen.” Caspen answered carefully. His eyes were unreadable until they shifted to the body again. “But I didn’t want to believe they were true.” Those crystals of his were suddenly clouded with something she could describe as pity and sympathy before he got to his feet, after uttering a short prayer in aiding their passage in the afterlife. Clearing his throat, the Pinevale mayor frowned. “Gretchen didn’t have the time to tell me what they were capable of but by the looks of it – it’s not good.”

“Is there anyone else that wants to return back to Willesden right about now?” Maxwell said, gazing uneasily around him. “No? Just me?” He paused. “Well then.”

The rest seemed to have ignored his words. Most of them were still staring at the dead with fresh fear reflecting in their eyes until it felt as though it was even lingering in the air around them.

Drake had been the only one to recover quickly. He was no longer as stunned as the rest. He knew what mages were capable of and this only fueled his desire in believe that nothing good could from them. Mages, simply could not be trusted and were still as much of a danger as he always believed. And despite his earlier blunder when it came to Robyn, despite feeling her lips for the first time and wanting to devour her the moment she whispered his name, the woman in front of him – as much as she took his breath away, was a damned mage too. He glared at her, jaw locked tight with contempt. “And we won’t know the full extent until Robyn tells us whatever it is that she’s hiding.”

At the sound of her name, Robyn jolted – drawing attention from the rest of her companions onto her from Drake’s words. A mixture of curiosity, surprise, bewilderment and suspicion – flitted across their features, and no matter where she looked, she could not get away from their stares. They felt as though they were trying to pierce through her soul, rather than plead with her for more information.

She swallowed thickly.

“Oh, boy.” Maxwell mumbled. He did not like where this was headed at all.

“I’ve already told you all I know about runes.” Robyn folded her arms, chin jutting out to meet Drake’s glare with one of her own.  Liar, liar. A voice inwardly whispered to her but she shrugged it off.

For all she knew, they were going to somehow use that knowledge against.

“Robyn,” She hated the way he said her name – like it was poison, as if they hadn’t shared…something in the last twenty-four hours. She was wrong to think things were changing between them, because from where she was standing – all she could see was the same disregard for her life when he had discovered she was a mage.

“Time is running out – and we need to know what Neville is capable of.” Drake continued curtly, lips bared into a sneer.

She stiffened.

Maxwell stepped between them, raising his hands held high. “Okay, this is getting a little too tense for me.” He tried to placate them both with a smile. A smile he did not feel, as his gut suddenly prickled. “I don’t agree with Drake very often, but he does have a point my lady. If we are to storm in there and fight him – we need to know,” before she could protest, he quickly continued. “If it pertains to this that is.” He spared Drake a look. “And nothing more.”

Drake grumbled something under his breath, and the rest of their companions were anxiously waiting her answer.

Robyn sighed. “I suppose I do know something.” She said vaguely. She decided to choose her next words carefully; knowing that it Maxwell was right – didn’t mean she wanted to place herself under scrutiny. “I have mentioned how runes work,” she began. “Usually mages attach them to items – to imbue them with magical power or to store them somewhere for later…But…” She trailed off for a moment.

“Spit it out.” Drake snapped.

Maxwell elbowed him.

“Anything you have to say Robyn, we are all ears.” Caspen muttered. His eyes, glancing at her with that strange sympathy – as if he knew more than he was letting on.

Blinking, Robyn bit her lower lip. “Neville isn’t the first person I’ve come across that have used runes in this manner. Although, his are the only…positive results I’ve seen in quite some time.”

“This is positive results?” Drake uttered in disbelief. “The dead lying around us?”

She ignored his outburst. “When he placed the runes on his army, they didn’t die right away – that in itself is more than enough for what I anticipated. You see – although I don’t know all the rules around magic, trying to perverse it this way can never end well.” She thought briefly of her own parents – a stray thought that was somewhat murky; and the journal they had left behind – buried in the bottom of her burlap sack. “There’s been some…studies,” she didn’t know how else to explain, “and usually the subject has died.”

“So Neville’s using some major mumbo jumbo on his army.” Maxwell finished for her.

“Yes.” Robyn smiled slightly at him. “I remember from our last fight – the rune had allowed him control over the bandit, and I’m assuming there are other benefits as well.”

“But that doesn’t explain why he’s lying on the ground, dead.” Drake spoke up, impatiently.

“I was getting to that.” She gave a tired sigh. “Because runes are usually used on objects – they make artifacts. What Neville is trying to do is make people living weapons and, like I said the results of using it on people goes often unprecedented. I think because he’s using it on living beings – and a rune needs magic to work…it’s somehow taking the life force of the person to fuel itself.”

They all stared at her, stunned into silence by the implications of her words. She couldn’t blame them, she was still wrapping her head around it herself.

“You mean to tell me…” Maxwell shook his head in disbelief.

“Yes. That Neville’s using his magic to…an unstoppable army.” She sighed, “his mind is so simple, singular. My guess is he wants to take over not just small bits of it, but all of the North by the rate he’s going.” It was all starting to make sense to her now – his ego had indeed been that big.

“That’s madness.” Gavin whispered, his voice tinged with fear.

“But it is the truth.” She insisted. “I never understood why he needed the materials I had procured for him when we first met. But then I noticed all his diagrams and notes on his desk…now I understand. If he can perfect the rune on humans capabilities…”

“Then he really will be unstoppable.” Drake finished for her, sounding as horrified as she felt.

“Exactly.”

“No, he won’t.”

Robyn was surprised by the vehemence in Caspen’s voice as he stepped in front of them, unsheathing his sword as he pointed towards the door. Out of everyone all the other village leaders, she hadn’t expected the sudden grim determination to be in his eyes or for him to lead the charge into the manor.

“Follow me, we end Neville’s tyranny tonight.”

-

Ending it was easier said than done.

Once they entered the manor, the entire home seemed to be engulfed in darkness. They were surprised to find it pitch black and seemingly empty. The air was extremely chilly, Robyn had to rub her arms furiously in an effort to keep herself warm as she peered into the darkness of the room. It made no difference, she couldn’t see anything.

Caspen had ordered everyone to use their lanterns as he lit his own. He kept one hand on his weapon and the other clenched tightly around the oil-lamp once they had a chance to stare at their new surroundings.

But nothing could prepare them for this.

Everywhere they looked there was a strange and downright uneasy sight. Blood that seemed to have been present for at least several weeks was dried against the hardwood floors. The air seemed heavy with death although they could find no trace of bodies – only continuous signs of blood and the uneasy feeling that someone was watching them.

Robyn shivered.

Drake’s hand tightened around the hilt of his sword.

Maxwell’s gaze skirted wildly as the terrible feeling in his stomach returned a tenfold.

Something very bad had happened here, and something was also telling Maxwell that it was a mistake coming through that door. Trying to swallow back his fear, he followed along with his companions – each foot taken was measured and careful steps were their forefront as they spotted the hall.

This was not the same place Robyn had been invited to several weeks ago. The air reeked of death. There were broken pieces of glass belonging to vases, windows – and intricate designs from Neville’s personal itinerary. Her eyes widened at the sight of the state of the walls. It was peeling in several paces. Portraits of the most recent Bloomingdale old mayor’s family were torn, left in tatters. The more they walked, the more she felt as though they were being watched.

She shuddered enough to draw a worried glance from Maxwell and Drake. She ignored Drake and gave Maxwell a timid smile of reassurance. It was the only thing she could muster without fear gripping her.

Their half-thought of plan to surprise Neville with an ambush seemed unlikely with the manor’s state and Robyn wondered when the last time the man had any visitors. Still, she couldn’t shake off the uneasy feeling that had stricken her the moment they begun heading down the hall.

They kept a formation while they walked. Caspen, Hannon and Belfay were at the front. Robyn was comfortable in the middle while Maxwell, Drake and Gavin were stationed near their rear – all the while keeping a watchful gaze ahead, in case anything jumped out at them.

But nothing did.

Their feet were the only noise that carried; a soft thud against the carpet that was also stained with blood.

Heavens what happened here, Drake thought to himself. He frowned at the sight of more blood and wondered if there was no end to it.

“We need to find Gretchen.” Caspen whispered, breaking the silence first.

They had all been on edge that the sound of his voice made most of them jump; except for Drake who scowled at the suggestion. “She isn’t our priority.” He hissed.

“I don’t care. She is mine.” Caspen hissed back.

“Guys, we’re supposed to be keeping quiet.” Maxwell reminded them, with a whisper of his own.

“What exactly are we keeping quiet for?” Hannon grumbled, speaking louder than the rest. “There’s no one left alive.”

Caspen stiffened and Robyn shook her head. Something in her was telling her differently. “There’s evil here.” She murmured. She could feel it; reaching out to her, trying dig its claws onto her soul – and she wanted to recoil in fear. Swallowing thinly, she picked up her speed until she was only a few inches away from Caspen and Balfey. “I think we’re heading in the right direction.”

Near the end of the hall, there were several splitting from one another. A grand staircase whittled with age that led to the upstairs part of the manor. There was also a secondary staircase, although there was dried blood leading towards the lower level of the building and Robyn had a feeling whatever evil had tried to reach out, it had to be there.

“We do not split up.” Maxwell said stubbornly before anyone else had the chance to suggest it. “Splitting up is always a bad idea.”

Drake quirked an eyebrow at him – not that he disagreed, but there were also benefits in divide and conquer strategies.

“Does this have to do with that vi-” Robyn paused for a moment; remembering their company. “Ah,” coughing, she cleared her throat. “Does that have to do with that thing you talked about earlier?”

He stared at her for a moment then slowly realization dawned on him. “Yes, um at least, I think it does.” He frowned faintly. “I can’t really tell unless,” he bit his lower lip before he could finish his sentence. “But this all looks familiar.”

“I see, well that puts us back to square one.” Robyn sighed.

The rest of their companions except Drake had confusion flitting across their features by their whole exchange. “Just what in the bloody hell was that –” Caspen’s brows arched while Hannon’s eyes had narrowed in suspicion.

The rest of his sentence was rudely interrupted by a sudden noise. It was an ear-splitting scream; loud enough to make their eardrums ache as they moved to cover their ears.

“What in heavens name is going on?!” Hannon growled.

Robyn would like to know. All she could was press her eyes close and wait for the noise to subside. When it did seconds later and she could finally hear again, she glanced at her companions in dismay. “I don’t know what that it is, but whatever it is –couldn’t have been good.”

Another loud scream pierced their eyes, bringing nearly all of them to their knees.

Robyn had to think on her feet. Keeping one hand in the air, she forced herself to push past the ghoulish sound and focused. She concentrated on letting go – just enough to feel the familiar flood of magic in her veins. It came quickly as though it had been waiting an eternity for her.

She gritted her teeth and forced it to heel; taking what she needed to feed a quick spell. Her senses became duller and to her ears the high-pitched scream became nothing more than dull background voice. The incantation was brief but she knew it was successful as the people around her suddenly dropped their hands.

They shared glances of confusion, which Robyn avoided by staring straight ahead. She couldn’t exactly explain why they suddenly had no difficulty withstanding the screaming – not without revealing her magic.

Then the screaming returned, loud enough to nearly break Robyn’s spell – and this time it was accompanied by something furry – and vaguely familiar squeezing itself into the hall.

Emerging from the basement was a furry looking beast. It’s head had nearly reached the ceiling and its paws were rather razor sharp along with the long canine teeth that seemed to have grown into fangs the moment it growled at them. If it had two feet high instead of wide and taking up one fourth’s of the room, Robyn might have laughed.

However, their circumstances were quite unlaughable as Robyn noticed the glint of a rune; the same inscription that had troubled them all night.

Shit.

The furry creature wasn’t just any furry creature. She remembered it being a cat once – barely a foot tall.  It still had its sleek and nearly all white coat but it wasn’t the adorable little critter that occasionally hissed at her the last time she was here. She stared at it while everyone else had begun backing away with increased frenzy.  “Is that Snowball?” Sure enough the large animal’s whiskers and ears seemed to twitch in recognition before it begun circling them; its red eyes glinting as though they were its prey.

They probably were.

“Robyn,” Maxwell somehow managed to keep his voice calm – despite the real possibility of death becoming very apparent. He wanted to scream. “How do you know this Snowball? More importantly why is she looking at us like we’re breakfast?”

“That’s because we probably are.” Robyn muttered back. Louder, she yelled. “Here kitty, kitty.” She stretched her arms in the air, “don’t you remember me?” She cooed, biting back the fear she had felt rising to her chest.

It hissed – sending another shrill scream through out the air.

She quickly hugged herself. “Yup, I’m definitely getting the impression that we’re on the menu.”

“What do we do?” Hannon whispered urgently. “I do not fancy being cat food.”

“I say we split up.” Caspen grunted, spinning his sword fluidly in his hand.

Maxwell was the first to protest. “I thought we agreed splitting up was a very bad idea.”

“Well if you haven’t noticed outsider, we’re pretty much shite out of luck. So, unless you’ve got something better –”

The furry beast, “Snowball” roared. It bared its teeth before pouncing forward.

“I see your point!” Maxwell yelled back and as the giant creature darted across the room, the companions dispersed into several directions.

Both Maxwell and Gavin skirted towards the right before making a mad dash for upstairs. Caspen and Robyn had darted to the left, using the basement stairs as coverage. Drake and Hannon narrowly missed its sharp claws and Drake winced at the sudden stab of pain he felt in his side.

“Drake!” Robyn yelled. She couldn’t dampen her reaction. Her stomach lurched and she was afraid for his safety. She took a small step in his direction.

He gave a brief nod in an indication that he was alright. “You go on ahead, we’ll take care of this beast while Maxwell and Gavin are upstairs.”

“But – ” She hesitated. She felt uncertainty and dread nearly overwhelm her all at once, until Caspen was almost yanking her away.

“Don’t be stupid. This is our only shot. We’ve got this.”

“No, we don’t!” Hannon grunted, ducking as the large animal swiped at him with her paws. He loaded his crossbow and fired three into its side.

Snowball hissed. Its large tail manage to swipe Hannon off his feet. Though at the sight of the other three talking, it skirted around Drake and made a dash for Robyn and Caspen with its fangs bared. Before it could reach them however, Drake used the brunt of his shoulder to dive into his side; shoving and screaming until Snowball tittered forward on unsteady legs. The large animal slammed into the wall – inches away from Robyn and Caspen.

“Go you idiots!” Drake snarled, his eyes bright with determination. “That’s an order!”

Robyn wanted to argue that she wasn’t a soldier and therefore didn’t take orders from him, but by the look inside his eyes, she knew this was not up for debate. Ignoring her fear for his safety, she allowed herself to pulled towards the stairs. “Alright, alright. But don’t you dare die. We’ve still got a prince to go rescue.”

She thought she was seeing things, but the corner of his mouth lifted into a half-smile. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”

-

It was colder in the lower area of the manor. The minute they locked the door behind them, Robyn couldn’t stop shaking. Coldness bit into her cheeks and she rubbed her hands together to stop them from going numb. Her breaths came out in the air as hurried smoke and she tried to get her breathing under control.

“Here, take this.” The Pinevale mayor from beside her handed her his cloak.

She wanted to ignore his outstretched hand, however the temptation was too great. The rest of agreed her seemed to agree his gesture as she gratefully slipped it around her. Instead of using it all for herself, she placed her arm loosely around him and tugged him close enough to share. “You can’t fool me for even a second. You’re cold too.”

Caspen laughed until his teeth started to chatter. “I am, but I thought it was the chivalrous thing to offer the fair maiden in my present company, my cloak.”

She snorted. “Caspen, you will soon realize I am unlike any fair maiden you have ever met.”

“Aye, I am already starting to realize that.” He glanced at her then. “Considering you are a mage.”

“I – what?” She stumbled, nearly falling into him.

His arm came out to steady her.

Robyn wanted to deny it of course, it was the only logical thing to do. She did not know him and despite how charming his subtle and not-so-subtle flirtation was, she had to protect herself. “Magic?” She snorted. “Are you daft? Why in heavens sake would you think that.”

His eyes unnerved her. They trapped her under their stare. She didn’t see fear reflecting back at her, she saw gratitude and something else. “When that blasted beast was screaming at us – you saved us.”

“No, I didn’t,” she quickly tried to protest but he interceded.

“You did. It’s the only explanation as to why it didn’t destroy our eardrums.” Caspen searched her eyes. “You saved us and you have my gratitude.”

For a moment, Robyn couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t speak either.

“If you’re worried about me telling anyone, I won’t. I have my own secrets and I believe people more than deserve to have their own.” He smiled. It was a soft smile that Robyn couldn’t look away from. “I don’t think the others have noticed as much; they fear magic as much as the next person and would rather believe it was the work of the gods.”

Instead, she nodded slowly; releasing a breath she hadn’t realized she had been holding. “Yes, I am a mage.” It had been awhile since she had uttered such words and aloud; and saying them now filled her with a sense of purpose and identity. “But why aren’t you afraid?” She looked at him; really looked at him – there wasn’t an ounce of fear in his open gaze.

“Because you’ve done nothing for me to fear you.” He seemed to be...admiring her. It was something she wasn’t used to. “I see things a little differently than the rest of the village leaders. Unlike them I’ve explored a little, seen bits of the world – things that could not explained until father called me home.” A shadow passed through his features before he continued. “But magic in itself is nothing to be feared, it is a tool that shapes and bends to the person’s will. It is always people that have been scary – no matter how many wars, rivalries or time that has passed; it seems that will always stand true.”

Robyn nodded thoughtfully at his words. She couldn’t agree with him completely; she was living and breathing proof of magic and yet she did not consider it a tool – she was beginning to think it was simply apart of who she was. “I do like the way you talk,” she hadn’t realized she had said the words out-loud until the Pinevale mayor chucked; guiding her closer to him as they walked.

“It isn’t the first time someone’s said this to me,” he said coolly, “but it is the first time I’ve been interested to care what someone else thinks.” His gaze held and his hand slid to hers where her pulse jumped.

She swore she could see deepest hues of blue in his eyes before she pulled away. “I bet you say that to all the woman you meet.” She murmured.

He made a noise of agreement. “Only the pretty ones,” Winking, he turned his sight back into the impending darkness in front of them. It seemed to stretch eons as he held his lantern higher.

Robyn’s gaze drifted towards the ceiling for a moment before they began walking again. “What is this place?

“Neville’s creepy dungeon.” Caspen offered.

She knew he meant it as a jest, but she found herself more than inclined to agree. “I wish laughing wouldn’t hurt.”

“Save it for something truly funny,” he waited a beat. “Such as Neville’s face when he realizes we’ve come to put an end to his foolish reign over Bloomingdale.”

“You really think we can beat him?” She peeked at him from the corner of her eyes. She liked admiring people when she could, yet the usual confidence Caspen seemed to radiate seemed to be missing now.

He looked shaken but not defeated. “I don’t know.” He answered carefully. “I haven’t seen anyone alive. Gretchen is probably dead. There’s a giant cat upstairs ready to maul and eat everyone. And whatever hell is waiting for us down here is likely to get us killed.”

“So, all in all…you’re saying it’s likely that we’ll win.”

He laughed and Robyn found it was a pleasant sound compared to the silence she had become accustomed to whenever she was with Drake. Although, she had no idea why she was suddenly thinking of him – and why comparing the two was her first thought. Her first and foremost thought should be getting out here alive, preferably all intact.

“Your sense of humour may be what we need to turn the tide.” He teased.

“You wouldn’t be the first to admire it.” Actually, he would be – but Robyn didn’t want to mention that. She didn’t want to break their easy banter as they came closer and closer to certain doom. Her expression softened, “besides you don’t know that she’s dead.”

He gave her a droll stare. “We haven’t seen anyone alive, everyone else has either been eaten by that…monster upstairs or worse.”

“She’s important to you, isn’t she?” She peeked at him from the corner of her eyes.

“What?” An easy smile slid in place. “Feeling jealous?”

“Hardly.” She snorted. “It’s just…you don’t seem like the type.”

He shrugged his shoulders. “She’s a close family friend, since you’ve asked.” He seemed to be lost in thought for a moment, “I disagreed with her leaving for Bloomingdale but she didn’t listen.” Sadness flashed in his eyes before just as quickly fading. “And for the record, you’re wrong I am the type.” His unnerving blue eyes settled on her. “But only for the right person.” Then he had the galls to wink at her.

She laughed and playfully slapped his shoulder. “You’re ridiculous!”

“Maybe, but I did get you to laugh – didn’t I?”

“Maybe.” Her lips twitched.

“And to smile despite our grim circumstances.” He smirked. “I am truly a worker of miracles.

Shaking her head, she was about to retort before a sudden chill seeped into her bones. She shivered.

“What is it?”

She could sense it again. A great evil that was growing stronger the further they headed into whatever awaited them in the dark. She could hear its subtle whispers and cocked her head to listen. It was almost nauseating. “You remember the evil I mentioned earlier?”

“I don’t think I’ll like where this is heading, but yes.”

“Then you’re really going to hate what I have to say next. It’s somewhere down here.”

“Fantastic.”

-

Upstairs Maxwell and Gavin had begun searching every room in sight. They split up; Maxwell had gone for the bedroom first while the older gentleman ran to the guestroom a couple feet away. Both could hear the scurry of feet moving downstairs, the crash that followed when the wailing cat had crashed into something. And no mattered how terrifying it sounded, neither one of them offered to rush back and help.

Maxwell enjoyed being alive too much, and right now he knew he could do more good by finding whatever plans Neville had for all six towns before it was too late. He understood the basic concept of wanting to create better versions of one selves, however the rune part was still very beyond his knowledge of magic. Unlike Robyn he wasn’t well-versed in magic and not knowing made it easier for him to part with the others in good conscience.

He gave a little squeal of triumph when his fingers had finally found something heavy and black. He made room for it on the dresser as his curiosity overtaken the better of him. Laden with pages wrapped in leather, he hovered over the parchment only for his fingers to suddenly burn the second they made contact.

“By the heavens!” Maxwell swore foully. He blew on his fingertips.

“Did you find somethin’?”

Maxwell hadn’t heard the older gentleman come in. He pointed at the book, “sort of. It won’t budge. But my guess is there’s magic binding this together.” When he tried to touch it again, all he could manage was a yelp. “Yup definitely magic.”

“It’s foul! We should leave it here.”

Maxwell shook his head. He knew the benefits of something important when he saw it. Glancing around warily, he carefully used his rapier to slice half of the bedsheet and wrapped it inside the magical item before strapping it to his back. “I say it’ll be useful for later.”

He heard the older man grumble before disappearing again and when he was gone, Maxwell scourged the rest of room. He found nothing – nothing else of his importance anyway. For a man that had always seemed arrogant the lack of any personal items here he found was startling. His eyes located a picture though, although the frame seemed broken he brushed of pieces askew before raising it closer to his lantern.

It was a picture of Neville several years younger with his parents. As a little boy, he looked like the Neville he remembered – a person that laughed for the fun of it and not for other people’s expense and enjoyed games that only children could. But they were no longer children and whatever ties Maxwell felt to the man couldn’t stand in the way of all the horrid atrocities he committed.

Heaving a sigh, he folded the photo and tucked it into his breast pocket before seeking another room.

-

Downstairs Drake was trying his best not to be killed. Despite his earlier reassurances to Robyn, it was proving to be far more difficult to keep his promise each time he dodged another one of the creature’s attacks.

His muscles were starting to grow weary and tears were starting to form into his clothes, while Snowball seemed to have an abundance of energy. He didn’t doubt that it had more to do with the rune on his neck than its actual physique as the beast’s unnerving bright-crimsons watched his every move.

Drake couldn’t fathom how he was getting out of this one – at least not alive, especially with his comrade swearing and yelling as he tried to stay out the way. “Can your aim be a little better Hannon?” He growled at the heavy-set man, as he nimbly missed another swipe of Snowball’s dastardly terrifying claws.

“I am trying.” Hannon wheezed through a cough, as he unloaded another barrage of bolts –only two hitting true to it’s arm. They stuck the beast’s left side. And yet it seemed more a nick though than doing any good in slowing it down because the furry creature didn’t as much as winced despite its side starting to bleed rather profusely.

Drake couldn’t understand it. Did the animal feel no pain?

It must be the rune. His inner thoughts nagged insistently as the cat begun circling him. But how do I stop that? How did he have any hope of stopping such a thing when he didn’t know its weakness?

The rune itself seemed to be pulsating from its exposed neck. The familiar looking inscriptions etched into its coat and the veins around it were a stark contrast to its white fur. It was pulsating a dark shade of violet.

Drake’s brows furrowed at the sight, his brain trying to think of a way to gain the upper hand. The beast pounced for another attack and his blade met claws head-on before he rolled and feinted left, swiping his weapon to chip off one of it’s jagged edges.

The creature didn’t as much as blink at the lost claw, confirming Drake’s suspicions that it seemed incapable of feeling pain. “Great.” He muttered grimly, “an enemy without pain is going to be hard to cut down.” The thought alone would have terrified if it not had been for the adrenaline him rousing the knight to his feet.

“I have an idea.” Drake yelled to Hannon as he skirted around the hall with Snowball nearly snapping at his heels. “But you’re not going to like it, hell I don’t even like it.”

Hannon was across the room; his beady eyes widening as the two figures drew closer. “What the hell are you doing? You’re supposed to be the distraction!”

“I am the distraction!” Drake shouted back. “See that rune on his neck? The one Robyn was talking about?” He didn’t wait for him to answer as he ducked against another swipe of the creature’s claws. “Just aim your next attack at his neck – and please for the love of god – do not miss.”

Hannon’s mouth moved to protest but at the increasing alarm in which they grew closer, he seemed to think better of it. Raising his hands high, he kept his eyes locked on the animal – watching its jerky movements. There was a pattern to it and Hannon smiled as he adjusted his weight on his weapon. He closed one eye and held his breath. He released the same moment the bolts did – one missing its mark but the other two dug itself right in the middle.

Snowball dug its feet into the ground, yowling loud enough for Drake to cup his ears as he tried to skirt out of its way. Its claws were desperately trying to reach him as it started sliding against the floor.

“Heads up,” Drake began running past Hannon and at the last second; he thought better of it and scooped the shorter man into his arms. His feet began an all-out sprint.

Hannon screamed, clutching the taller gentleman as the beast begun tumbling down. Its eyes seemed to widen in horror when Drake glanced back and for a moment, he felt a wave of pity for the animal as it landed in a heap – its head slamming against the hallway’s wall with such force that it made a hole giant enough for its head to fall quickly through.

Drake uttered a sigh of relief, shoulders sagging until Hannon started hitting him with his fists. “Put me down – you giant oaf!’

The knight grunted, narrowly missing another fist to his shoulder as he helped the village leader to his feet. “You’re welcome.” He said dryly.

The shorter man harrumphed and muttered something under his breath; too low for Drake to hear. He patted his protruding stomach before hooking his crossbow to the straps across his back. “We’re wasting time.”

Drake agreed. “We need to find the others. Hopefully they’ve had much better luck than the rest of us – ”

“Drake!” Maxwell’s voice interrupted. It boomed from upstairs and the knight had to crane his neck to see the nobleman’s frantic wave. “Are you alright?”

“We’re fine.” He couldn’t lie to himself. He was happy to see the other man alive.

“Speak for yourself.” Hannon grumbled.

Drake ignored him. “And you?”

“Fine.” Maxwell beamed. “Even better now that we’ve found something. I think – I think it may help, but we’ll have to show Robyn.”

At the sound of her name Drake stood a little straighter and cursed. He had forgotten. He left the woman with that village leader because he hadn’t any other choice. Now he wondered what kind of ill-fate awaited them since making it to the lower level. They needed to hurry.

“Aye, I’m here as well!” Seconds later, Gavin’s grey hair poked through before his face met Hannon’s relieved smile. “He says that blasted thing is useful but it isn’t since we can’t actually put it to use right now, can we boy?” He glared at Maxwell.

“Not every little thing will reveal itself all at once.” Maxwell argued, glaring back. “One has to simply wait for the meanings to make themselves known. I am sure of it.”

Gavin stared at him. “What kind of foolish, dimwitted thinking –”

“Explain on the way,” Drake cupped his mouth to shout and interrupted their bickering. His impatience and worry were at odds with each other, warring as he thought of Robyn and the imposing threat that awaited them at the other staircase.

The knight was not a betting man, or a superstitious man but he was a man that believed in fear. Fear was real and tangible in a way that he could not stop the shudder of trepidation from reaching him. Whatever the lower level held – it most certainly would descend them into more danger. “We need to find Robyn and Caspen before Neville does.”

-

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[sevillacf]

“New Normal”

The push for a “new normal” really takes for granted how shit the old one was (a mere couple of years ago lest we forget). Life costs too fucking much to live. Our rulers don’t give a shit about the 99%. People are slaughtered in the streets for the crime of being an “other”. War is waged by the rich using the bodies of the poor. 

The Earth is being choked out. Now, the planet will survive. Humanity’s era is most likely not going to end the rotation of the Earth or cause it to fall out of the sky but existence as we know it could cease. Let’s zoom in a little to the day to day trends pre-pandemic. Worship of the dollar by those in charge continued. Their religion of greenbacks kinda goes like this. If you have money, you are saved and must quickly make it your life’s mission to make more money. If you don’t have money, your life mission is much the same but there is something inherently wrong with you for having lacked money. It is a brutal doctrine that we have been unwittingly subjected to. The paradigm it produces has people begging for food in front of all you can eat restaurants. Wealth surges upwards into hand of the few at the stroke of a pen while millions pray for a drop to land in their outstretched hands. There’s an Instagram+ and a Tumblr+ and an AMC+ and soon there’ll be Alcohol+ and Weed+ and Books+, everywhere a quick buck needs to be made off of you. I think that started off with video game micro-transactions way back when. Or even having to take money out of your already meager restitution to beg some landlord to let you stay in a home. Micro-transactions are not merely the ire of gamers the world around but part and parcel of our everyday life. A shit one I will add! No passive voice for me, I fucking hate it here!

Though humanity has made the rules for money, it is treated as this deity above us and a convenient excuse not to help those without. If you’ve been saved by the grace of the greenbacks (or whatever perversion of the dollared perfection your personal hellhole uses) then you can afford to survive for a little bit longer. If not, well, you see the state of people’s lives when there’s nowhere else to go. Lack of money is, in my not so humble opinion, a shit excuse not to build life affirming infrastructure that is so badly needed everywhere. I don’t exactly have a study that says we need it but it was 70 degrees in December and hell appears to have opened up underneath the Eurasian continent. We are no stranger to the bloated American military budget and how it directly contributes to the warlike conditions of everyday by sapping funds from those aforementioned life affirming institutions such as schools, healthcare infrastructure and like shit we need. Little side note but discarded military grade weapons are in a worrying amount of cases just given to the police as their own little welfare. Police are armed with weapons that would be used to slaughter people overseas but are instead turned inwards on the populace. This brazen lack of care for people’s safety is as apparent at the end of a barrel as it is in the boring SEC meetings where finance dictates whether people will be able to afford an evermore expensive life. 

Lemme give a section to optimism. Join an organization, tell a friend to join one! Be radical in your demands and don't budge an inch. So much has already been taken from us! Tepid ending, many apologies for that. I will do better. Be scared of this new normal, it isn’t something that is above your influence. Society is made up of human rules so it’s not this fixed, immovable thing. We must push back. A rising tide and all that uplifting nonsense. Our world actually can be better believe it or not.