#( so he may appear to show mercy but it's largely because the alternative would be more tedious. he's a bit lazy at times. )

[erabundus]

scaramouche  is  such  a  fun  muse,  because  he  can  be  playfully  annoying  like  a  little  brat  —  only  to  turn  around  and  do  something  genuinely  (  horrifyingly  )  malicious  without  an  ounce  of  hesitation.

[fannishcodex]

some more rambling/venting thoughts: Talking it Out Works Better than Turning Your Baby into a Hybrid

Kipo is half human half mute because Lio and Song, who were both completely human at the time, made her that way through experimentation and genetic engineering. Kipo is mixed race because she has a Black father and Korean mother who loved each other. There should be no mixed race metaphor because Kipo was genetically engineered half human half mute due to the scientific experiments of her human parents. There are potential metaphors and commentary for the abuse of science as a shortcut over engaging with others found in the concept of Kipo being genetically engineered to be half human half mute.

Burrow humans seem to regularly hold the belief that they cannot live safely on the surface. Lio and Song started Project Kipo with the goal that their genetically engineered daughter/experiment could make the surface safe for humans. They are of course making huge decisions about their daughter's life and future without her consent and are forcing their ambitions on her before she's even born, but that's not exactly the main thing this time and another meta post.

Years later Kipo makes more progress with mutes not because of her genetically engineered hybrid status, but because she's Kipo. Because of herself. Because of her willingness to communicate, emotionally engage with others and listen to them. Kipo starts making more progress with a number of mutes than anyone else by engaging with them, dealing with communication/negotiation/sympathy/etc. while under the lifelong held belief that she's entirely human and still visibly appearing human. Kipo herself even remarks that all her life she's been told the surface is a horrible, dangerous place--and Kipo does learn it's threatening, but she also learns about the wonders of it too, and generally moves past her fears and the prejudices the Clover Burrow tried to teach her when she engages with the likes of the Timber Cats, Umlaut snakes, and Jamack, and finds their better sides or encourage them to start changing. Kipo continues to make more progress with mutes by continuing to do the work of engaging and communicating with them. Kipo's artificial hybrid status as half human half mute doesn't often play a huge factor in true engagement with mutes, other than some practical uses that still often support a broader effort to emotionally engage with others, and sometimes also are in response to the long-reaching consequences of her parents' actions; and again, her genetically engineered mega mute--not just mute, but mega mute--apex predator traits are volatile, threatening herself and others. What ends up mattering more to mutes and progress with them are Kipo's actual efforts to reach out to them as fellow sentient individuals with their own feelings. Lio and Song did not show signs of actually wanting to reach out to mutes when creating Project Kipo. They wanted Project Kipo to make the surface safe for humans, presumably safe from mutes, or "the Other." They wanted security for humans, not actual engagement with mutes. Their decision to not take away intelligence from mutes did not lead to them wanting to try to fully engage with mutes as fellow sentient beings; they started thinking of another way science could be used to more quickly improve the life and status of burrow humans and bypass engaging with mutes and even safeguarding against the "automatic danger" of mutes. Let's dissect the safety/threat of the surface for a bit. Burrow humans often act like the surface is not safe for them, presumably because of mutes, and they have to live deep underground in their burrows. The surface is truly dangerous, and mostly mutes live there now with so many humans apparently going underground--but the surface isn't that much safer for mutes either. Mutes do fight amongst each other. They have mega mutes and other wild, non-sentient mutes to deal with. There are other environmental dangers to face. Hugo was shown no mercy on the surface even though he was a mute, and had to literally fight for any basic acceptance from other mute primates. (Thanks to @lemonadesoda for the latter point.) And the root cause for Hugo/Scarlemagne eventually making the surface more dangerous for humans is the consequence of insanely oppressive/cruel/abusive treatment he suffered since his birth from burrow humans; it was suffering he endured while young and impressionable and still developing, and so it heavily warped him; his restrictive and abusive upbringing while young left him with a limited understanding of humans and a negative response to them, and he had no reason to believe differently after that or even try to look at things differently, and no one to try showing him differently, and that went on uninterrupted for about 13 years, further warping him. Like, I can't ignore that in an ongoing fictional story. Hugo/Scarlemagne would not have done that if he hadn't been so hurt and traumatized since birth by Emilia and several humans in the DNA Burrow. And again, a lot of Hugo/Scarlemagne's suffering at the hands of humans is because they wanted to revert mutes and go back to the status quo and make the surface safe for humans. Because of a refusal to engage with mutes as fellow sentient beings and instead treating them with fear/prejudice/rejection for the "danger" they pose. Mega mutes also seem like literally the biggest danger. Lio and Song's reactions indicate they're probably the biggest motivation for humans to go underground. But the mega mutes so far have not been shown to be malicious. They do seem like normal animals, but largely more dangerous because of their size. With centuries into this mutation, mega mutes just seem like a part of life now. Other mutes largely don't go deep underground to avoid them, but live with them on the surface. Why can't humans do the same at this point? I suppose what I'm saying is that burrow humans seem to act like the surface is barred from them and it's impossible to live there as it is, and that mutes reign; but the mutes are dealing with similar surface threats and are living there regardless. It's not impossible for humans. It's especially not impossible if humans tried to engage with mutes more instead of fearing them so. Also may seem a little...too privileged? Like humans--some humans--apparently can live underground in burrows; that doesn't seem like an option for mutes. The surface isn't just dangerous, it's very much not to the liking of humans at all and doesn't center them at all anymore; humans are not largely in charge on the surface like they were 200+ years ago. Instead of trying to deal with the surface as it is now and their new sentient mute neighbors, a number of humans seemed to have just packed up and left and went underground, and some of these burrow humans even plot to remove the intelligence of *newly sentient beings like the mutes (relatively newly sentient, like within a span of about 200+ years apparently). I do think largely mute distaste for humans at this point is more a cultural thing passed down through generations, especially since mutes don't seem to have any regular contact with humans. In contrast, Hugo/Scarlemagne has direct experience with humans, and it was a damaging experience, making his hate for them more personal and amplifying his negative response to them; Hugo/Scarlemagne has more reason to hate (and arguably even fear) humans. But I think the larger mute cultural distaste for humans is rooted in experiences similar to Hugo/Scarlemagne's, that it originally came from mutated animals who remembered suffering under humans, or experienced new suffering under humans; but through the following generations that somewhat faded and became more a matter of culture/tradition for mutes, connected to mutes' lessened exposure to humans. But now I do also wonder if the average mute population also might resent humans for hiding underground to be "safe." Like every other mute they know lives on the surface and deals with its danger; but oh no, not humans, they largely have to stay underground for their own "safety." Also I guess I just keep thinking, "Wow, Kipo seems to progress a lot with mutes by actually talking with them and learning about them! ...Has any other human ever just tried talking to them before??" Speaking of, Benson and Dave are a great example of human-mute engagement and friendship on the surface. Other than promoting Ratland, they may not have shown as much willingness as Kipo to try engaging with others*, but Benson and Dave are a big example of a strong personal connection that can happen between humans and mutes when they engage. Speaking of, also Ratland is another example of an actual effort of human-mute engagement.  *But Benson and Dave also have surface/survivor upbringings versus Kipo's sheltered burrow upbringing with a parent and a long standing community. But many humans, including Lio and Song (especially from before), show an unwillingness to really try engaging with mutes and regard them more with fear; and sometimes implied to think them as lesser, like of course they're so-and-so-and-a-threat, of course we have to fear them. It's even suggested in how Lio and Song continue to treat Hugo. When the formula finally works on Hugo, it motivates them to change their minds about taking intelligence away from mutes, but they still apparently maintain other arguably troubling attitudes. Again, they choose human experimentation over trying to actually talk to and engage with mutes. After they decide they don't want to be a part of the effort to revert mutes, do Lio and Song try to get Hugo out of the awful situation they're complicit in maintaining? No, they again go for human experimentation instead and continue to be complicit in Hugo's imprisonment until they're ready with an alternative for humans to live "safely" on the surface. They make Hugo wait, they do not prioritize him or his new status as a sentient mute; the greater good and "safety" of humanity takes precedence over the welfare of one mute. (Like Lio and Song are not on Emilia's level, but I think they're an example of the layers that can happen in something like this; Lio and Song are not as terrible to mutes as Emilia is, but I think that, for example, they don't or didn't actually respect mutes that much.) Kipo is also not a potential bridge between mutes and humans because she's half human half mute. Kipo cannot even meaningfully engage on a cultural level as half human and half mute because her whole life she was culturally raised as only a burrow human. She's learning more about mutes, but still culturally as a burrow human outsider. She doesn't have enough lived experience to meaningfully reach out to both human and mute cultures because she spent most of her life culturally as only a burrow human, and never even had to deal with growing up with a half human half mute identity; and she's an artificially made hybrid due to scientific experimentation conducted by her human parents, not the child of human and mute cultures truly engaging with each other, Kipo is not the child of a human parent and a mute parent. Lio and Song genetically engineered mute DNA into Kipo in the interests of making the surface safe for humans, and did not think of true engagement or communication with mutes and their culture. They probably didn't even consider mutes having a culture and society, etc. They only saw the physical benefit of mute DNA as something useful to ensure human "safety" on the surface, but didn't look at mutes as fully formed sentient beings with multiple layers to them. (*The entirety of Project Kipo is flawed and poorly thought out. Why not at least average mute DNA instead of going straight to mega mute DNA for an already risky experiment on your own child? They probably went straight for mega mute as the highest safeguard against other mega mutes. And they probably went with apex predator mega mute DNA to make the safeguard against other mega mutes even stronger. But there seems to be the heavy risk of an apex predator mega mute also seeing humans as prey and turning against them too. And the risk of that seems to be even more implied now that it's known that half mute-humans can lose themselves to mega mute side. And jaguars are again carnivorous predators. So. Just. I don't think Lio and Song thought this through at all and it's had poor consequences for everyone.) But Lio does end up raising Kipo as more his daughter than an experiment, and he did care for her and kept her mostly safe until the past came back to bite them with Emilia using mind controlled mega mute monkey Song to attack the Clover Burrow, and the mega mute jaguar traits making a comeback in a big way and exposing Kipo to losing her mind in mega mute mode and other traumas and dangers. (Would Emilia target Kipo like this at all if Kipo were a normal human?) But Lio is in a way still not as open as Kipo, or needs her help and/or reminders from her to try to be more open. I think Lio was able to create an environment where Kipo could come to her own and learn to be open herself. So a pro for him there, but Lio (and Song) again still made numerous other mistakes with severe consequences for both Kipo and Hugo/Scarlemagne, and a lot of others too actually (Emilia is using Project Kipo research after all). So Lio helped give Kipo a loving and safe enough upbringing for about 12 years before the consequences of his and Song's actions caught up with them; and Kipo was able to develop to the point that actually the most important thing she can offer is being herself, not the artificially hybrid half human half mute status forced on her.  I suppose what I'm also saying is that Lio and Song really unnecessarily experimented on their daughter, changed her body without her consent and forced these ambitions on her without her consent, tried to use science as a shortcut focused on only improving the status of humans, instead of trying to actually engage with mutes as fellow sentient beings in an ongoing dialogue and relationship. I'm saying that Kipo is doing what her parents and a lot of other humans should have tried before: talk to and engage with mutes on an emotional level. I'm saying that Kipo didn't need to be experimented on and genetically engineered into an artificial half human half mute hybrid for that. I guess what I'm saying is: Human Experimentation or Sending out a Peacekeeping Delegation to Mute Factions (Talk to Mutes)?? And Lio and Song went with human experimentation. (I love that the show has made me think about stuff like this. Lio and Song are very interesting and part of that is because they've screwed up so much, and they'll be even more interesting if the narrative ends up really acknowledging this. Also I felt he was relevant, but I also could not resist Hugo/Scarlemagne thoughts, I love him.)

[lady-of-all-cards]

Ikemen Revolution: Alternate Ending (Jonah Clemence)

One-Shot Statictis: Pages: 6 Word Count: 2575 Characters: 14211 Characters (without spaces): 11706

Fandom: Ikemen Revolution Characters: Jonah Clemence, Luka Clemence, Alice the Second, Amon Jabberwock, Jonah’s Heart Defenders Pairings: Jonah Clemence/Main Character Summary: It seemed surreal the way they had confessed their love. He had tried to ensure she got home to her world, on the far side of the moon, but she just wouldn’t have it. One thing was for sure however; he would give his life to protect his love.

Notes: SPOILERS!This is an alternate universe ending based on Jonah’s main route. If you don’t want the main points of Jonah’s route being spoiled, don’t read this. I highly recommend downloading the game if you already haven’t and experiencing Jonah’s route for yourself, because it is one of my favourites in the game and I really recommend it.

It was so amazing, and so surreal at the same time. Jonah and Alice had parted from Luka and the Heart Defenders at dawn, but dusk was now creeping up on the Queen and his new found beloved. The temperature around them was slowly dropping, but a warm, comforting heat passed through the juncture where their hands. It was this heat, and the comfort of the other’s company, was what kept them going, trudging along to the end goal of their mission.

Their mission... Over the past three days, neither of them had any chance to really process or internalise what they had done, and what they were about to do. The fact that the fate of all Cradle was now down to just them two fighting the greatest evil the country had ever faced. The war didn’t compare to this, not by a long shot, but Jonah would damn himself if he didn’t put as much of his strength, intelligence and might into this mission as he did in his duties as Queen.

The silent between them grew more and more tense the closer they drew to the old ruins. The last remaining proof of peace, the last place where the two sides sat down at the same table smiling, whole, as a family... a part of Jonah was making plans to recreate that peace, he could see it clearly- all of them sat around the table in the Garden, smiling, laughing. That image elated him, and his pace increased.

“Jonah... what are you thinking about?” Alice asked sweetly, tightening her grip on his hand in a way she hoped was comforting, and she would never know just how much hope such a simple act gave him.

“The future.” His smile was bright, because in his image of the tea party, Alice was by his side, leaning against his shoulder. Luka was smiling at them both, and the whole atmosphere was achingly sweet and picture-perfect. He even saw the Joker in the image, and Mousse and his old Professor, Dean Tweedle. The perfect image of peace, the perfect image of what this final fight brought.

“What about the future?” Alice probed with a light giggle, a beautiful sound that made the soft ache in Jonah’s heart grow.

“Just... the future.” He spoke unabashedly in a teasing tone. He wouldn’t ever tell her what he saw, because one day, she would see for herself the future he smiled upon, the future he held close to his heart. They just needed to fulfill this one final task...

It had been thirty days since Alice had gotten lost in Wonderland, and the night of the full moon had come to Cradle once again as they cut into the clearing of the battered ruins. Deep in the heart of the Forbidden Forest, the ruins of an ancient castle slept.

“This is the castle the royal family lived in long, long ago.” Jonah spoke wistfully, taken by the decrepit beauty. “Now it’s nothing but a discarded, empty shell. Proof of just how far even the highest among us can fall.”

“Yeah, it’s a melancholy sight...” Alice muttered, sharing his despair for the loss of a more peaceful time. But somewhere in those ruins was Amon’s hidden stash of Magic Crystals.

“Let’s go in, Alice.” Jonah led, picking up his pace, tightening his grip on his beloved’s hand. The air felt tense, as if each step brought them ever closer to Cradle’s secrets. Alice thought about all the people who had helped them get this far, who made it possible for them to save Cradle. Edgar in the beginning giving them enough time to get out of the country, King Lancelot with his riddle, Blanc and Oliver giving them a place to stay, and Luka and the Jonah’s Heart Defenders helping them through the start of the forest.

However, just as Alice gave Jonah’s hand an extra squeeze, they discovered they weren’t alone...

“Stop right there.” There had been no footsteps to warn of his presence, but a tall man with a dark purple robe around his shoulders appeared from within the ruins, followed closely by a large group of men in black robes.

“Amon!” Jonah glared at the man as his utterance confirmed Alice’s suspicions. They caught a glimpse of his maniacal smile from the depths of his hood, causing a shiver to run down her spine.

“I came here because I felt an odd hunch, but I wasn’t expecting for you to have sniffed out this secret place. Tell me, why has the Queen of Hearts, the king’s loyal dog, come here?”

“To put an end to the threat that’s infesting Cradle.” Jonah answered, not missing a single beat.

“Oh? I take that to mean you’ve come to steal our hard-earned treasure?”

“We’re not here to steal it. We’re here to destroy it.” Alice snapped, glaring at Amon through the fear she felt in his company.

“Alice. Do you seriously think you have enough power to destroy all our Magic Crystals?” Amon challenged, turning his gaze on the woman. “Don’t make me laugh!” Amon’s cackling laughter shattered the silence. ���Hear me, my faithful servant. Show no mercy. The Queen of Hearts is a traitor hunted by his own army. You may kill him. As for Alice-- hurt her all you want, but take her alive. She’s going to make the best test subject we’ve ever had.”

“Yes, Lord Amon!” Alice’s anger outweighed her fear as she watched the disciples draw their swords. As the enemy got into their battle formation, Jonah whispered to her.

“Listen. The Magic Crystals must be somewhere inside the castle. I’ll clear a path so you can get inside and turn those Magic Crystals into worthless pebbles.” He hissed the last part maliciously.

“Got it.” 

“I promise that I will keep you and the future of this country safe.” As he swore that, the image from earlier popped back into his mind, fueling his resolve. “Starting tomorrow, we’ll be able to wake up each morning and greet each other without any worries or fears.”

“I believe in that future too, Jonah!” She breathed, tears threatening to form at the thought. They squeezed each other’s hands once more before letting go.

“Go! Kill! Offer up the queen’s blood for our cause!” However, Amon command was drowned out by Jonah’s declaration--

“May glory run crimson through our veins!” Shouts shook the forest air as Jonah and the Disciples of Magic clashed. Moonlight glinted off Jonah's saber as he smashed an enemy’s blade in two.

“Ugh--” 

“No one can keep us out of there!” Jonah proclaimed, not even giving the men time to tremble in fear before cutting a swath through them.

“You impudent--” gritting his teeth angrily, Amon’s hand began to glow with an ominous light. “That’s enough of this foolishness!

“Uh!”

“What’s happening?!” A powerful gust of wind lifted her and Jonah off the ground, but even as they were tossed about as if by the breath of some invisible giant, Jonah managed to catch hold of her. When she fought against the magic, they crashed to the ground and went rolling across the grass.

“Resistance is futile. You’re not strong enough. Now, Queen of Hearts, just give Alice to me and die.” Amon’s scornful voice made her forget all about the pain she felt.

“No, it’s time for you to give up!”

“Hm-” the Magic Crystal in Amon’s hand stopped glowing and the wind stopped with it. Jonah and Alice got to their feet to glare at the startled disciples and Amon.

“You there-- Amon or Almond, whatever your name is-- I don’t know who you think you’re talking to! But you do not give orders to the proud Queen of Hearts!” He stressed.

“Bark and whine all you like, dog. That won’t change the fact that the king you serve is the one who wants Alice gone and the Black Army under his control.” Amon hissed, sneering at them from in his shroud. “You let your emotions take control and betrayed your master to help this woman. That is the ultimate malfeasance, Queen of Hearts.”

“Malfeasance? You must be thinking of yourself. You’ve sentenced an innocent woman to a terrible fate because of your ambitions to rule this country. That’s utterly ludicrous.” Jonah bit back.

“Are you sure about that? My conquest will bring peace to this country. Once I reign from the shadows and all of Cradle bows before my power, the conflict between the Red and Black will come to an end. Absolute control through fear will bring peace. How can you claim that’s not just? And you’re willing to throw all of that away-- let chaos reign-- for the sake of one woman? Doesn’t that make you the villain here?”

Alice was about to give Amon a piece of her mind when Jonah put a calming arm around her shoulder.

“Amon, you’re free to say whatever you want, but I will never stop doing what I think is right, and protecting the woman I love sounds right to me. How could loving someone ever be wrong? Even if it is emotionally taxing...” He stood strong and proud as always, even in the face of Cradle’s greatest evil. “Amon, are you prepared to become a stain on my blade for your ideals?

“Er--” Jonah’s piercing look made Amon’s shoulders tremble. Trying to escape the intense gaze, Amon quickly hid behind his disciples. “How dare you treat me with such disrespect!? You’ve really made me angry now!” Amon reached into the folds of his robes, bringing out a new Magic Crystal and raising it skyward. “Don’t leave a drop of blood in him! Go, my servants-- I will give you strength!”

“Y-yes-- as you command--” the bodies of all the disciples gave a sudden jerk. Eyes wide and vacant, they turned to look at them in perfect synchronization.

“Your lord is scum of the earth. I’ll open your eyes so you can see him for what he really is!”

“Arrrrgggghhhh!” The puppet disciples roared as they raised their swords and charged, but despite being vastly outnumbered, the men toppled one after another under Jonah’s blade. Unable to feel pain, however, they kept coming no matter how many were hit. Jonah glanced back to flash Alice a confident smile as he caught an enemy attack with his blade.

“When you’re with me, Alice, there’s no way I could lose.”

“Really?” Jonah’s beautiful eyes gave off sparks in the moonlight.

“Don’t you get it? You’re amazingly dense sometimes. If it means being able to hold you in my arms, I can and will do anything.” Flexing his muscles, Jonah sent the enemy and his sword flying backward.

“Ugh!” As the stunned man lay on his back, Jonah stomped on his chest mercilessly.

“Who wants to be stepped on next?”

“H-he’s so-- powerful--” the bewitched disciples began to tremble and stagger backward, opening a clear path into the castle.

“Go, Alice!”

“Okay!” She took off running down the path Jonah had cleared for her without hesitation. She had just reached the entrance to the crumbling ruins when--

“Not so fast, Alice!” Amon sprang from his hiding place, latching onto her from behind.

“Alice!” Jonah cried, fighting off the disciples harder.

“You’ll make me a fine shield, Alice.” He had her arms pinned. All she could do was crane her neck around to get a look at him. She glimpsed at Jonah, his face stricken as he tried to cut his way to her. “Wahaha! Too bad, Queen of Hearts. If you want to save Alice, you’ll have to pay with your life!”

“Get your dirty hand off of me!”

“Urk!” Alice rammed her elbow into Amon’s stomach as hard as she could and his grip on her loosened. She broke free of Amon’s hands and started running again just as Jonah caught up.

“I couldn’t agree with her more. Don’t you dare touch my Alice!”

“Urgh!” Amon gasped in pain as Jonah’s blade cut through him. He looked into the honey-gold eyes of his killer, and with one last smirk, drove a dagger into the stomach of the proud Queen of Hearts.

Although Amon knew it was all over for him, he reveled in the sight of the Queen of Hearts stumbling back, gripping the handle of the dagger buried deep in him. The Magic Tower’s leader laid to Jonah’s right, watching as he fell to his knees, finally able to pull the weapon from his body, and just before the darkness took him, Jonah crawled to lean against the ruins of the castle.

Jonah held his hand tight against his wound, trying to regulate his breathing. He felt paralized, rooted to the spot, left to await his inevitable demise. Casting his gaze to the sky, he watched as thousands of tiny flecks of magic rose towards the magical full moon, and, knowing the mission was complete, he closed his eyes blissfully.

“Jonah!” The voice of his darling little brother seemed so far off that Jonah thought he’d imagined it, but it made him smile all the same. Luka was safe now. Jonah, in his dying moments, managed to save his one true charge. “Jonah...” There it was again, but closer. “No, no... no- Jonah!” That time it was right in his ear as his hand was ripped away from his wound, and replaced with a much stronger one...

Luka smoothed back the haired that had fallen over his brother’s eyes just as they cracked open, meeting the tearfilled orbs of their brother.

“Jonah... s-stay awake- I’ll- I’ll get you to Kyle, you’ll be okay.” Luka begged, placing more pressure on the wound and hoping it would stop it soon, but Jonah’s once pristine crystalline uniform was slowly becoming more and more stained with his blood.

“Jonah?” The small gasp to his left drew his drooping eyes to his beloved, and tears started to fall. He looked straight ahead to his unit, all stood with their head bowed, caps placed to their hearts in respect, but it only hurt his heart more. A chocked sob passed his lips as he looked back up at the moon, closing his eyes.

“Jonah!” Luka’s impatient screeching made Jonah’s eyes snap open again. “Don-don’t close your eyes, okay? Stay with us...” He muttered softly, his voice broken, but gentle.

“Luka... Luka you have to make peace... the war is over, we- the country can be united again under a joint banner-”

“Don’t you dare speak like that! You’re going to make it through this, so shut up. You can do that yourself, and I’ll help you- but I can’t do it if you die.” Tears were streaming down Luka’s cheek, and Jonah reached up to brush them away, neither brother caring that his hand was covered in blood.

“I... I’m not going to make it, Luka... even if we got to Kyle in time, I don’t think-”

“Stop thinking then! I can do it! Just let me!” Luka sobbed, choking up. He flung in his face into Jonah’s chest, soaking his uniform with tears. Jonah placed his hand atop Luka’s head, stroking it softly. “Don’t die on me now... you’re too stubborn for that...”

“I’m sorry, Luka... I... I-I can’t...” Luka didn’t argue this time. He could hear Jonah’s wanning heartbeat. 

Jonah looked to the full moon, taking in a shaky breath...

“May glory run crimson through our veins...”

[somelazyassartist]

okay so i think it sounds like a really cool theory!!!! i'd really love to hear a more in depth explanation (if you have one) :3

Okay this should be fixed!!

(TLDR at the end)

OKAY YOU ASKED FOR IT,, JUST IMAGINE ME LIKE THIS THE WHOLE POST

Okay, so the theory is: Ralsei is a young Toriel from before human and monster society properly intermingled.

First off, let's tackle circumstance: why did the events in the game happen? Well, we know that Ralsei is a prince with no subjects, who summoned Kris and Susie into the Dark World to help save the land from the Spade King's tyranny and fulfill the prophecy of the Delta Rune. Why Kris and Susie though? Humans may be rare in town, so that's a little understandable, but Susie is a fairly normal monster. The one from the prophecy could have been anyone.

Toriel is Kris' mom, and as a teacher would know Susie- Susie herself confirming that the two of them have at least interacted before.

Therefore, if Ralsei had summoned two heros, Toriel, if an older version of Ralsei, would know and have recognized them.

Next off, I'll just do an easy one, appearance. We know that Ralsei is a boss monster, and he is the only goat-monster we have seen so far in the Dark World. It seems like a little more than simple coincidence. But regardless, let's compare screenshots to really show my point.

As you can see, they've both got relativity simple horns, white fur, and glasses. They both tend to wear dresses and simple color schemes, both being a plain color with a heart-like shape (in Undertale Toriel's case)

They both nearly always have a soft expression when talking.

And, in the intro, they both have their own signature spot when it discusses the main topic

And, this doesn't say much, but I thought this bit from the Deltarune wiki was interesting.

They have similar dialogue and ways of speaking as well. They both speak rather formally, and have a large vocabulary. If you compliment or flirt with them they both get very shy before laughing it off. They both speak very calmly and that tone tends to stay even in stressful situations (like the Spade King fight and when Toriel is trapped by flowey in the Pacifist run, for example).

They also have nearly identical personalities, and there are multiple similarities in their actions and interests. They're both pacifists, preferring mercy over conflict- sometimes to the point of naivety (like when Ralsei healed the Spade King and regretted it, and in the Genocide Run of Undertale where Toriel reflects that she should have known better than to protect you). They both have a love for journaling, like to practice their skills on dummies, and both seem to be very good bakers.

Lastly, I'll cover setting and timeline. I believe that the "Dark World" is not actually a separate land, but is in fact a setting from before humans and monsters lived in (somewhat) harmony. Yep. Time travel. As we've seen from the settings in Undertale, having purple grass and star-shaped fruit wouldn't be things that are out of the question for this universe; Waterfall had bioluminescent flowers and water. There were literal rivers of lava in Hotland. Everything in the Ruins was lavender. Fantasy settings are nothing new to the Undertale universe. The feeling in the Dark World is much more medieval-esque however, and the only real technology we see is Lancer's bike and mention of his mp3 player- and I believe that monsters are intelligent enough to have some technology, even if it is in the past, due to how advanced settings like The Core are. Most monsters tend to be very tech-savvy from what is shown. 

Boss Monsters only age when their children do as well, which could easily explain how Ralsei could live long enough to grow up to be the Toriel we see in Hometown. Not to mention that Ralsei is already a prince, therefore explaining what would be Toriel's royal status in Undertale.

It could be possible that the Dark Fountain, once sealed, could have been renamed "Mt. Ebott" years later. It would explain why the mountain from Undertale was already hollowed out, why a magical barrier could persist there, and why it affected monsters specifically.

In Deltarune, The Prophecy was fulfilled and the Spade King was brought to justice. They would have been able to avoid war with humans, so that they were never imprisoned under the fountain. (This would explain why Frisk doesn't make an appearance in my correlating theory that Frisk is the reincarnation of the magician that made the magical barrier in Undertale, but that's a whole different theory that I won't get into right now). From there on I'm not sure what exactly would happen, due to the full game not being released yet, but it would eventually lead to the events we see in the beginning of Chapter 1.

The alternate timeline in Undertale would be one where Ralsei did/could not call on Kris and Susie, resulting in the initial war between humans and monsters because of the Spade King's tyranny. Asgore has been confirmed to have a military background since before the war, leading me to believe that he would be the head of the Spade King's Royal Guard. After the Monster's defeat and the Spade King dethroned, Ralsei would step up as King (due to being the only other royalty besides Lancer), and eventually Asgore would marry into royalty. At some point along the lines Ralsei would come out as trans and become Toriel and Queen, though it isn't clear where in the timeline that would be.

TLDR; My theory is that Ralsei is a young version of Toriel, due to their similar mannerisms, interests, and appearances. They are trans. Undertale is the alternate timeline where Kris and Susie never came to the past to help save the kingdom, and the fountain that Kris and Susie sealed would eventually become Mt. Ebott. 

[jane-the-zombie]

Is that a Police? I’m Calling the Weed! || Ulfric, Celeste, & Jane

TIMING: Roughly Three Weeks Ago PARTIES: @big-bad-ulf, @celestelavie, @jane-the-zombie SUMMARY: With the Bennett home trashed, Detective Wu has a few questions lined up for the owner of the truck that was seen outside their home that night. 

The case should have been simple, but Jane was admittedly not happy to add on yet another missing persons case into her ever growing pile of them. White Crest was an enigma - a small town that surely meant to be a bore, which was exactly what Sergeant Kelley had wanted when he transferred her here. Except it wasn’t. The unexplained phenomenons that continuously occurred in this town soon made her realize that zombies were the least of her problems. At least this case had a lead. The Bennett residence trashed beyond repair with the residents missing - not great. But a neighbor had seen a truck outside that night and actually identified plate numbers. Ulfric Haakonsson. Owner of Ink Inc. Willingly came down to the station to have a “quick chat” with her. Jane led him to one of the spare rooms. “Mr. Haakonsson, thank you for joining me today,” she said, politely. “I just have a few questions for you, and then we can get you on your way. How does that sound?”

Ulfric hadn’t given much thought to human law when he’d agreed to help Ariana hide her tracks. Pack law, the law of his nature, had taken precedence, the impulse to remove the girl from the path of danger immediately overshadowing consideration of any long term risks. So when he received the call from Officer Wu to come in for a chat he was disappointed, but not surprised. As isolated as the former Bennett residence was, it had only been a matter of time before someone found the mess that had been left behind there and started asking questions. He’d just hoped that with so many other strange goings-on in White Crest the WCPD would’ve been distracted and given him little longer before those questions were directed his way. Since it sadly seemed that time was up, he had no choice but comply with Jane’s request, heading to the police station as soon as he closed up shop. There was no way he was going to be forced to leave another country because of the meddlesome mundane legal system. “Of course, Officer. That sounds fine. I’m guessing this is about the Bennetts,” He answered, deciding that being as open as possible was the safest approach. “I just want to do my part to clear things up, then you folks can get back to other matters more important to the safety of our town.”

He brought up the Bennetts almost immediately. Jane kept her face passive, and she hoped that this was either going to be easy or that things had actually ended well. Though, judging by the state of the house, she wasn’t sure how anything in that house could have ended well. “Why don’t we take a seat?” Jane nodded to the table and chairs set up, taking a seat herself. She stayed silent a moment, before leaning back in her chair to get a good look at him. He cut right to it, right to the chase. Jane appreciated that. That meant she could skip the lowball questions first - how long have you been in town, what do you do for a living, blah blah blah - but it also meant that this could end up being harder than she hoped. Could swing either way. Jane fought back a sigh. “How do you know the Bennetts, Mr. Haakonsson? Why do you think you need to be clearing things up?”

Ulfric pondered for a moment, it was sometimes hard for him to explain to himself what the Bennetts were to him, let alone to summarize it so it made sense to human company. It felt most accurate to describe Ariana as family, but with the WCPD resources it would be fairly easy to prove they weren’t actually related, and that would just dredge up more uncomfortable questions. So, the truth it was then, or at least the parts that were easily digestible. “Ariana, came into my shop for a tattoo after her eighteenth birthday. I met her sister shortly afterwards. We’re close friends.” If he didn’t specify which one he was friends with, it didn’t feel as dishonest and he just hoped Jane would assume he meant Celeste since most grown men didn’t have much in common with teenagers. “If you’ve found their old place, I can see how it could give off the impression that something bad happened to them and I just wanted to assure you that they’re not hurt, and never were.” And never will be, if he had any say on the matter.

He was silent a moment, and Jane settled back in her chair. Ulfric seemed to be quite cooperative, didn’t seem to want any trouble, and wasn’t showing signs of deception. Which was all well and good, but that didn’t tell her anything about the Bennetts or what happened in their home to make it look like a serious struggle took place. Jane’s eyes narrowed. They’re not hurt, and never were. “Their old place was found looking like a pretty bad fight took place, Mr. Haakonsson,” Jane said. She had the crime scene photos in the folder in front of her. “And your truck was seen outside the property shortly before it was found like that. Do you know where the Bennetts are, then?”

“They’re with me. Staying on my property, for the time being.” Ulfric answered succinctly, choosing to address the direct question over the statement, though his eyes did flicker momentarily to the folder one the table. It didn’t take a genius to guess what was in it, and he wondered for a moment if the police had already cleaned up the mess after they finished documenting it. It would be just his luck to go to such lengths to send a message only for it to be wiped from the slate before it reached its intended recipient. “I can’t be the only one who’s seen them safe and sound since then,” He continued after a beat, pulling his focus back on Jane. Surely property damage wouldn’t rank highly on WCPD’s list of worries if he could prove no one was hurt in the process. And there should’ve been plenty of evidence, since the Bennetts had been going about their normal lives as much as possible, even after they’d been supplied with glamours. “Someone must have seen Celeste serving at Al’s Diner. Or you could contact the high school, Ariana’s been going to classes.” He added to that effect. “I’m surprised you’re asking me about this before trying to reach them directly.”

“The issue at hand isn’t inherently about their whereabouts,” Jane said, easily. She leaned forward on the table, resting on her arms as she looked at him closely. It was curious that he would so openly admit to Celeste and Ariana staying with him. Something strange was going on, and Jane decided she didn’t like it. Either Ulfric was the cause of the giant disaster that the Bennet property was left in, or he was helping them hide from the thing that did. Disturbances like that didn’t just happen. It wasn’t like a knocked over lamp or something similar. Ulfric could have been playing her still though, simply telling her what seemed to be the truth where something much deeper could be going on. “We’re looking into it because the Bennett family, both Celeste and Ariana, seem to be in some type of trouble. What can you tell me about that?”

In the past, Celeste had never really had to think of the legal aspects of running away from a temporary home. They never remained in town long enough for there to be any repercussions for them. The last thing she had meant to happen was for Ulfric to get caught in some sort of legal trouble on their account. It seemed he had worked hard to build himself a life and a foundation in this town. Her own lack of foresight frustrated her when she’d received a text from Ulfric telling her he’d been called into the police station. She had told Al she had an emergency and rushed over to the station, still wearing her ridiculous 50’s style outfit. The front desk worker had pointed her in the right direction and she spotted Ulfric. She gave a wave as she approached the room they were in, lightly rapping on the door before entering. “I’m so sorry for any confusion here. I can assure you that both my sister and I are perfectly safe, in large part thanks to Ulfric here,” she explained hurriedly, “I’m Celeste Bennett in case that wasn’t entirely clear. I’m happy to answer any questions you may have, officer.”

Ulfric sat stumped for a moment, resting his elbows on the desk as he considered what to say. Officer Wu clearly wouldn’t stand for skirting the issue any longer, he’d have to give some kind of explanation for the trashed house, one that didn’t put him or the Bennetts under further scrutiny. If he told her the basic facts, that they were hiding from toxic family members who meant to do them harm, surely that would be understandable, even if the WCPD didn’t agree with the extent they’d gone to in order to maintain their cover. But then again, if Jane did believe that story, they might place them under protective surveillance which would only hinder their ability to take care of the hunters that plagued them permanently. Still, he was struggling to think of an alternative that sounded less incriminating, people didn’t usually cover their tracks because they had nothing to hide. Reluctantly, he huffed and opened his mouth to speak but promptly shut it when he heard the knocking on the door. He relaxed in his seat as Celeste entered. It seemed the ancestors were merciful, even in ensuring he’d seen that outfit previously so he didn’t laugh when it made an appearance in the middle of a police questioning. “I believe her word on this might be more valuable than mine,” he suggested to Jane, inclining his head towards the door. “Should I wait outside? These things are usually done separately, yes?”

Saved by the bell, it seemed. Jane stiffened slightly as someone interrupted, turning to snap at whatever idiot thought this was a good time to cut in, before she realized who it was and what she was wearing. Jane had only been to Al’s diner once, but she could recognize the gaudy uniforms anywhere. If this weren’t such a serious issue, Jane would say that her uniform was the true crime here. “Ms. Bennett?” Jane said, rising. She looked between Ulfric and Celeste, concern growing. If Haakonsson was forcing either Celeste or Ariana to do anything, there was nothing that she could do without Celeste directly complaining. But, perhaps, there was all a reasonable explanation for this after all. Jane looked between them one more time, naturally suspicious, but she finally just let out a low sigh and nodded. “If you wouldn’t mind, please,” Jane waited for Ulfric to exit, before she gestured the to the chair from where he had been sitting. “Ms. Bennett, I am Detective Jane Wu. I just have a few questions for you regarding the state of your home and supposed disappearance, if you wouldn’t mind.”

It should have occurred to Celeste that what worked when they were truly running away wouldn’t work if they actually stayed in town. At the time, she’d been so convinced her parents could arrive at any moment that it had to look like they’d left. It would buy them time, give them control of the situation. “Yes, that’s me,” she answered, “But you can call me Celeste.” She gave Ulfric a nod as he left the room. Her mind moved at a million miles a minute thinking of what believable story she could tell the detective. Most wouldn’t believe the real story. Even here, in a spot where the supernatural flocked, there were so many normal people just going about their lives none the wiser. The truth save the supernatural elements of it was probably the best way to go. She took the seat across from Jane, patting down the retro skirt as she did. Her features were etched with concern as she answered, “Yes, of course. What did you need to know, Detective?”

Jane let out a low sigh as she sank back down into her seat to begin her new line of questioning. Now that she was absolutely certain that Celeste and Ariana weren’t buried in a ditch somewhere there was only so much she could do. At least, she thought with a sigh, it wasn’t another missing persons case. It would be a shame for two young women to go missing in this town where those types of cases were hardly solved. Jane had a sneaking suspicion that most of those cases would never be solved because of the supernatural involvement. At least it was relief that Celeste and Ariana hadn’t been eaten by anything. “Well,” Jane said as patiently as she could manage. “You could start by explaining what happened to your home that left you to stay with Ulfric. If you please.”

Celeste should have expected an explanation would be wanted. There wasn’t really a satisfying one to give, but she could try. Leave out the bits about hunters and werewolves and it still sounded plausible, right? Did normal people have parents that spent the last fifteen years chasing them so they could kill them? Humans could be shiity parents, too, right? She’d read the news enough times to know as much to be true. Maybe vague was better. She placed her hands together in her lap, only realizing now how odd hands were. Did she just leave them there? Did it make her look suspicious? She let out a breath of air and explained, “There’s some people, they want to hurt my sister and I. We’ve been running from them a while. When the house, I assumed it was them and Ulfric offered us a safe place to stay so that Ariana could finish out the school year.” Vague, probably left her with more questions than answers, but believable.

Jane stiffened slightly at the honest answer, alarm crossing her features. “Someone is after you and your sister?” And they were hiding in little White Crest. Despite the mime problem and the supernatural issue (could it really be considered a problem? Another thought for another time, really, but something to think about), it was a small town. She didn’t know anything about the Bennetts other than what was in their file. Surely there wouldn’t be mob involvement with them - though, there were crazier things. “There are people after you?” Jane said, leaning forward on her arms. “Look, Celeste, I want to help you. Whoever is after you, you need to report them officially to the police. We can place you in police protection, and figure out a way to keep them away from you. Who is after you and why?”

Maybe that hadn’t been the right approach. Celeste wasn’t sure what she could say to dissuade the detective from pursuing this any further. She sighed, “Yes.” Not wanting to offer up more information than that. Detective Wu urged her to share more, allow the police to help and provide protection, but there was no reasonable way to explain this was a threat the police couldn’t help with. Her parents were well-connected enough that they’d find a way to get to her and Ariana. They’d been after them for fifteen years now and they weren’t stopping now. A small frown was on her face as she tried to explain, “I’m sorry, but this isn’t something the police can help with. Reporting them will just draw more attention to Ariana and myself.” She racked her brain for a way to explain this in a way that made sense. Her mind briefly drifted back to how Kaden’s girlfriend rationalized the wings thing. As a last resort, the wording of medical condition could actually come in handy.

There was nothing that Jane could do. In all technicality, there were no laws broken. Just suspicion of them having been broken, and upon looking into it, there were no complaining witnesses or victims or anything. Just information that some people are after me and my little sister. Vague words, and it was clear that Celeste wasn’t going to be giving her any specific information any time soon. The police, supposedly, couldn’t help. She had heard that before, and usually people who said things like that ended up dead, one way or another. But Jane could see that there was absolutely no way she could push Celeste into giving her anymore information. A shitty part of the job was that she couldn’t help anyone unless they wanted it, unless they gave her the means for it. Jane let out a low sigh. “I implore you to change your mind, Ms. Bennett, and let me help you and your little sister.” Jane stood, before she reached into her pocket and took out her business card. After a moment’s hesitation, she grabbed a pen, and quickly wrote something on the back of it, holding it out to her. “This is my card. It has my work line on it, and I’ve given you my personal cell-phone as well. Use it if you need anything, alright?”

Part of her felt guilty. This detective seemed like a good woman and Celeste wished she could turn to the police for help. The fact of the matter was, laws hadn’t stopped her parents in the past and they wouldn’t now. Jane wanted to help, but she feared there wasn’t much she could do. There was no evidence to hold against her parents and it would require giving her real name. It was too risky, no matter how trustworthy the detective seemed. Still, she said, “I’ll think about it.” She shifted in her seat to accept the card that Detective was giving her and tucked it into her apron. Celeste doubted she’d ever use it, but it was better to have it on hand. Just in case. She patted her apron back down and expressed, “Thank you, really.” She felt bad for the detective, but at least there’d be no legal implications for Ulfric. She looked back to Jane and asked, “Was I free to go then? I may or may not have a trainee covering my section at the diner.”

Think about it. Jane was trying her best to think of any reason that she could make Celeste stay, but there was truly nothing that she could do. With a low sigh, she stood and nodded, going to get the door for Celeste. “Of course, you’re free to go.” She stuck her head out, and nodded to Ulfric as well. “You too. Thank you both for coming in and answering my questions. Let me walk you both out.” And hopefully, Celeste would call her before it was too late.

[ramblings-of-a-mad-cat]

I saw a Reddit post that mentioned an alternative of their MC immobilizing Rakepick before physically beating the hell out of her and then bringing her to Hogwarts after opening the vault. And then it also mentioned Merula questioning MC’s morals. If something like that happened, then Jacob wouldn’t had left and be a big brother again. Merula may not obsess over revenge as much. Not sure if it’d change anything for Beatrice. What’re your thoughts on Year 5 ending differently like this?

It’s interesting that this AU came about, because when I first saw Rakepick torturing Merula, I honestly felt a bit...underwhelmed, by MC and the others reacting by just trying to disarm her.

Perhaps it just goes to show how magic-dependent witches and wizards really are, because I don’t think it would have been an overreaction for MC to straight up tackle Rakepick, and I know Luca would do that. That’s always been my head-canon. Though I suppose it could just be my Merula-bias talking, but I doubt it. I think no matter what character was tortured, I’d want MC to do more. (Like, what would they have done if they didn’t have the garroting gas? I know Rakepick is powerful, but there’s only one of her, and four other people still standing. Dog-pile her! Stop thinking with your wand!)

This actually reminds me of @missnight0wl and their theory about what was originally supposed to happen in the Year Five climax, how Rakepick trying to teach MC the Cruciatus Curse was meant to foreshadow them using it on her in the Underground Vault. But whether MC is pushed to the limit of physically assaulting Rakepick, or using the Torture curse on her, I think it’s safe to say things might change if they ended up taking things that far. 

However, I’m not at all sure that Merula would question MC’s morals. While she’s having her ups and downs in learning better, Merula has been taught from a young age to value strength. That mercy is a weakness, and power can be exhibited through violence. So she might just find MC saving her in such a bloodthirsty fashion to be rather attractive. On the other hand, she might feel furious and humiliated that she had to be “saved” and want to set the record straight that she “doesn’t need” help. Either way, while she wouldn’t have her Revenge Train anymore...she would still have been betrayed by Rakepick, who she was projecting onto as a mother figure. That would likely still set her back pretty far. But if we assume that she felt more positive toward MC as a result, they might be the next person Merula latches onto, similar to how she projects onto Jacob in the canon timeline. 

Setting aside any theories I have about Jacob and Rakepick, and assuming that the Jacob we rescue from the Portrait is the genuine article, and fully on MC’s side...I still don’t think he would stick around. I think his role in the story would be largely unchanged. Even if Rakepick was captured, R is still out there. They were responsible for Duncan’s death, and I think Jacob feels a degree of responsibility for that. I think he would still leave. But if we assume that he didn’t, if we assume he returned home and everything in MC’s family was happy again...I see Jacob taking on a role similar to Moody. He’d be a consultant on the activities of R, and he and MC would work together on occasion. He wouldn’t be at Hogwarts, but he would have far more regular, arranged appearances. He could pretty much absorb Moody’s place in the story. 

Beatrice? She wouldn’t really change. Her character paradigm in Year Six had very little to do with the specifics of the Underground Vault. But MC? MC could potentially be quite different. If they actually went as far as to beat Rakepick bloody, or use an Unforgivable on her...not to mention, being vindicated for having done so (since in this AU, she was captured.) would lead MC down a path of self-doubt and anger. Probably grow a lot closer to Merula, following their bonding moments in the chapter “About Merula” but it would not be in a healthy fashion at all. They’d become co-dependent, enabling bad habits for each other. Throw “New” Ben into the mix, and the whole thing gets very, very toxic. And I think Ben’s invincibility complex in Year Six might be even stronger, if Rakepick was actually defeated. Not helping is that we would very likely still see Rakepick in a scene or two, for her to be interrogated or something. She would taunt MC, congratulating them for having taken the final steps to becoming just like her. This would anger MC and hurt them, and they wouldn’t want to believe it, but deep down they would believe it. 

The Canon Year Six seems to be giving MC a storyline about bottling all their emotions and ignoring their trauma, presumably building up to a meltdown. But this AU would further the parallels between MC and Rakepick and give them anxiety about falling to the dark side, not to mention further the friendship between them and Merula in the most unhealthy fashion possible. 

[atheistforhumanity]

An Example of How Bill O’Reilly Ruined A Generation With Mass Manipulation

Now, you might be thinking, “who the fuck is Bill O’Reilly, and why do I care?” That’s a valid question. Lovable Bill, is the predecessor of Tucker Carlson. He was the shining star of Fox News for most of my life, and he captures the hearts of minds of my parents generation with low brow commentary, manipulative opinions, and dog whistle racism. Bill pretended to be a regular class working Joe that spoke up for the little guy. Tucker Carlson outed his gimmick years ago before he would take Bill’s place, and take on the same fake persona.

So, how did Bill O’Reilly ruin a generation? It’s pretty simple really. Bill O’Reilly was born into the upper class and eventually took a place as an opinion show host pretending to be news, that spouted populist rhetoric in a way that always redirected opinions and anger away from the real perpetrators. Bill is literally one the most dishonest people to ever be on mainstream media, and for over a decade he delivered alternative facts to fox viewers, down played anything anti-capatalist, anti-conservative, and anti-racist. His motto has always been “no spin,” but I’ve never seen him present the whole truth in an accurate way my whole life. Bill is a more well spoken Donald Trump, who uses people’s prejudices, preconceptions, and complete unwillingness to research anything to manipulate people’s minds for a capitalist agenda.

But how does he do this, Ryan? I wish you would be more specific instead of making accusations. Well, it happens that I just came across a band new article written on Bill’s blog, where he tries to continue the glory of yesteryear before he was fired for sexually harassing several women in the work place.

If you take two minutes to read the article linked above, you’ll see that Bill is arguing that bad parenting is the real cause of income inequality. His argument is quite literally, people aren’t raised right and that’s why they can’t succeed financially. He says specifically that it’s not capitalism's fault.

Before I address specifics, let me point out what is generally manipulative about this argument. Bill has touched on a topic that literally any generation of conservatives can get fired up about, and will have built in bias to agree with. Remember, conservatism is literally resistance to change and an affinity for tradition. This also means that every generation bitches and complains about how the next generation raises kids. Remember when your parents told you that you would go to hell for watching Elvis shake his hips? Remember when there were no changing tables in men’s bathrooms? Remember when kids in school used to play “beat the fag” and then they cried victim when we said that was wrong? Yea...

The point is that he’s using a prevalent belief that many different people(but mostly conservatives) can tap into for different (mostly) unspecified reasons. Then he is attributing that common cultural division as responsible for income inequality. We’ll come back to that.

Second, is that Bill makes a point that on some level makes sense, but doesn’t support his larger claim. Are there a lot of bad parents out there? Sure. Do they have a negative effect on the child’s life as he suggests? Of course. Now we could argue all day about what makes a bad parent exactly or the prevalence of bad parents, but it’s irrelevant, because Bill hasn’t given us any solid reason to accept that this alone (or at all) is the cause of income inequality! It’s an outrageously dishonest argument. That doesn’t matter though, because this is how Bill’s followers respond...

Okay, I was going to screen shot some positive responses to Bill tweeting this article but I didn’t see any. Let’s just move on.

Now, let’s take a look at the substance of Bill’s piece.

Education: “If a young child is not exposed to learning by age two, that innocent, helpless person is already at risk in a competitive society.  If there are no books in the home, no awareness-building games, no fun dialogue with the parents, the child may not develop a curiosity about life.”

That’s interesting, Bill, because public education and programs like Pre-K are socialist inspired initiatives supplied by the government for the benefit of everyone. Head start programs were first installed by LBJ, but the Black Panthers had actually initiated similar programs in inner cities to feed children breakfast before school.

To say that capitalism has no role in this issue is delusional. Capitalism accepts and even encourages inequality. Betsy Devos is the champion of capitalist education, where attendance is not guaranteed and any difficult or low performing students can be weeded out to create the appearance of success, under no public oversight.

The fight is always the same, liberals want to increase educational funding and conservatives don’t. This is why red states have teacher strikes all over the country and Republicans are fighting against publicly funded college.

If access to education from an early age is so important then we cannot withhold education and then blame those stuck in the cycle of poverty for their own inequity.

Environment/Work Ethic:

Here’s an old and tired argument from the right. People are poor because they don’t work hard enough. But, Bill, how could that be? The average unemployment rate in America is between 3-4%, and the worst is in Alaska with 6.4%. Clearly most Americans are working, you’re always bragging about how great this economy is. Republicans tell people who need assistance to get jobs, but surprise they already have them! We know people aren’t struggling to live because they’re not working, because we have clear numbers that show people are working full-time, but not earning enough to pay basic bills. It’s crazy, it’s almost like the cost of living just keep rising, but the amount people get paid doesn’t. All of this is happening despite the fact that corporate profits have soared, but it never translates into better wages. 

While Bill drones on in his article about derelict parents, he never once actually looks at income. He sure doesn’t mention that the amount people are paid is literally up to the people at the top of the economic latter. They can choose to pay workers more or they can stash away more profit in their bank accounts. Guess which one they choose? Despite the fact that we have clear data that shows those who choose how much to pay workers are raising their own profits, the rich like Bill O’Reilly continually berate people as lazy. The entire argument is completely disingenuous because workers are at the mercy of employers.

And if you’re thinking, why doesn’t everyone just get a better job, you’re not thinking that statement through. The Bureau of Labor Statistics tracks how many jobs in the market pay minimum wage or less, and that’s roughly 2.3%.(Nearly 2 million people) You think, great, people can just get a better job. No, not really, because a large number of jobs pay just above the minimum wage and are not included in this figure. Even most retail jobs pay $1 above minimum at least. Pew Research wondered this too, and in 2004 they found that roughly 30% of all hourly workers were making more than minimum wage (7.25 at the time) and less than $10. Guess what, nearly 59% of the entire US workforce are hourly workers, and a third of them are were making $10 or less. I make 13$ an hour, live with a roommate, and am just able to live with no savings in 2019. If I had a wife making the same amount, we would drowned trying to raise even two kids. That’s a travesty.

Roughly 35% of all jobs require a college degree, which is a significant debt due to increases in education and cost of living. Education is very important, but unfortunately most people who are born poor, historically, don’t get to go to college. What does capitalism say about this? Well, again, in a free market system there is no mechanism to correct the disadvantage people are born into, and generally no desire among conservatives to do so. Conservatism is stuck in the past where the poor and uneducated make perfect laborers, but labor as a staple job market is dead in the 21st century. Hence the push toward service jobs, which is all an uneducated person do.

The numbers tell the real story. People are working, but not being paid enough. The people controlling the pay are increasing their own pay. Cost of living is rising faster than worker pay. Funding for education has been stagnant and the cost of higher education rising. All this and I haven’t even gotten into the politics that effect this issue.

How did Bill O’Reilly destroy a generation? By feeding them ignorant, pandering garbage like this article every night for years. By completely ignoring the real facts of any issue and directing your attention to a manipulative hot button, tailored to the bias of conservatives.

The sad thing is that Bill is completely representative of everyone championed by the right wing. They are unintelligent, malicious, racist, greedy, and completely dishonest.

[realityhelixcreates]

Lasabrjotr Chapter 13: Baited Traps and Telling Dreams

  Chapters: 13/? Fandom: Thor (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe Rating: Teen And Up Warnings: Nothing, I Think Relationships: Loki x Reader (But not yet) Characters: Loki (Marvel), Thor (Marvel), OFC, Tony Stark, Pepper Potts, Clint Barton Additional Tags: Post-Endgame: Best Possible Ending, Writer Wants to Make a Mythical Detective Loki Ragnarok Joke but Never Finished the Book, Look Dude the Avengers Don’t Like You, Deal With It, Loki Makes a Hasty Declaration Summary: Loki begins his investigation, Reader deals with being injured.

“Hear me, loyal followers!” Loki addresses the gathered encampment. ”You who persevere through cold nights, you who make your devotion known with your presence! I have need of your assistance in an important matter!”

Perhaps he was laying it on a bit thick, but it had netted him the attention of every human in the camp; even the little worm he had berated before.

“Just this morning, outside the city, an attempt was made on the life of my…”He hesitated for just a moment. “My Seidkona. Perhaps some you remember her? She came out among you a month ago. This craven assailant then stole a horse, and rode back this way. He used this blade.”

Loki produced the offending weapon and held it out for inspection.

“I will not require you to throw the coward at my feet this instant; I would not expect any of you to put yourselves in that kind of danger. However, if any of you have information, I expect it to be delivered to any of the gate guards very soon. Until then, go about your business, with my blessing.”

A few of them winced at that last part, which filled him with a dark satisfaction. So there were intelligent individuals out here after all, those who might understand that the blessing of the God of Mischief may have many edges.

Let them band together or tear each other apart now; it didn’t matter. As long as he got what he was after, who cared how these mortals produced it?

He left them to their tents and fires, marching back through the city, glaring at practically everyone who approached him.

That was one possibility set in motion. Hopefully the strength of their faith would allow the campers to turn on one of their own, if one of them was really the culprit. He would see that a handsome reward would go to any of them that provided information. The camp humans hadn’t been shown any special regard so far, but keeping them firmly on the side of the gods might be more advantageous than he had previously thought. They had to know every human in the area, because they were every human in the area.

Loki made straight for the large library, where, on his orders, most of the remaining Asgardian historians were gathered. Here, he presented the blade once more, bidding them to search any sources they might have, to discover if the weapon had any known history. If it had come from within Asgard, they had the best chance of finding out.

That was the second possibility. If any of his Asgardian enemies were behind this, he would not show them mercy either. You were human, but you were under Crown protection. An attack on you was treason, and no matter how above the law some families thought they might be, he was all too willing to remind them of how wrong they were.

Now for the most annoying part. Passing the guards and entering the sparse, shrine-like computer room, he switched the machine on and entered his own password. He brought up a video call, and waited.

Tony Starks’ smug, stupid face popped up on the screen.

“Hey Thor, you need a genius today or wh-“ He noticed who he was talking to. “Oh, fuck off!”

He stormed away from the camera, quickly replaced by Pepper.

“Good afternoon, Mrs. Potts.” Loki said evenly. “Good to see a professional.”

“Kiss my titanium ass!” Tony shouted from offscreen.

“Er, what can I do for you?” She asked, eyes flicking to the side as Tony began going into a full rant. “I’m sorry, it looks like I need to transfer you. One moment.”

“No, we don’t apologize to him! We do not-“

The screen blacked out for a moment, coming back online in an entirely different part of the tower.

“Hello? Who is…hm.” A familiar face and voice went from curious, to cold in no time flat. Loki smiled, but not in a friendly manner.

“Hello, Clint.” He said in a low, gentle voice. “How are you doing today?”

“I was better twenty seconds ago. What do you want?”

“I would not assume you are ignorant of what is happening in my area of the world. Why would I call?”

“Either something is rotten in the state of Asgard, or something concerns the woman you stole. So which is it? Straight talk; I don’t have the time or patience for your knotted speech, so just get to the heart of it.”

Insufferable. Why couldn’t Banner have been there? He could at least talk to Bruce. This was going to be like flinging words at a wall.

Loki explained what had happened, playing up your vulnerability, and the injustice and cowardice of your attacker. Clint had a soft heart underneath all his skill; he would want to help you, even though he had never met you.

“What I want to know is if she had any enemies among her peers that would have the means to get here. Or alternately, if you know of anyone who would make an attempt on her for being close to my brother and I.”

“Oh yeah, that’s not a huge number of possible suspects or anything. Let me just get right on that, it’s not like I have anything else to do for the rest of my life.”

“I didn’t say it had to be you specifically, but if you are volunteering…”

“I’ll see what can be done. No guarantees.”  Hawkeye then abruptly ended the call.

Loki sighed at the blank screen. The only consolation was that eventually, this entire generation of humanity would die, and he might be able to make a fresh start.

Now to wait.

No, now to check on you.

                                                                                  *****

 Loki led you gently by the hand through the most lavish building you had ever seen. There were entire gilded rooms, glowing, warm; tapestries as long as the halls, gloriously detailed in the history of Asgard. Every floor a mosaic, every pillar carved with the delicacy of lace. Foreign music floated on the air.

You felt as if you were floating as well, wrapped in loose clothing, light on your feet. Loki wouldn’t let you make any sudden moves, bidding you to just walk slowly and take in everything around you.

You were vaguely aware of a stiff feeling in your back, of your surroundings being smaller than they appeared. Loki’s scent was all around you, comforting. Here, you had no fears. In this beautiful palace, he ruled, and you were safe. No sickness, no dead fields, no evil; just tender hand-holding, and justified pride in thousands of years of Asgardian artistry.

Your clothing tangled around your legs, but you didn’t fall. A sheet? You were wearing a sheet? And bandages? You could feel them around your torso, not too tight, but enough to be noticeable.

The music changed, fading into a low hum. You had heard this before, in the medical wing. Bjarkehild had described a machine that showed everything that might be wrong with a patient. She’d called it a ’Soul Forge’, explained that what they had now was a very stripped down version of it. Like the Bifrost, it was one of the things they were slowly rebuilding, always improving upon.

Were they near the medical area of the palace? What wonders might be there? You asked if you could go see it, and Loki simply smiled and nodded.

The place he led you to was just as lovely as the rest of the palace; clean and sterile, but not lifeless, decorated in soft, calming colors. You’d spent a lot of time in doctor’s offices and hospitals over the past year, but none of them had seemed so comforting.

Loki scooped you up and placed you on one of the beds. It was so soft and warm. The sheet spread out around you. He tucked it up around your shoulders, sat down next to you, and took your hand again, under the sheet.

If only you could stay like this. Safe and unafraid. Warm. Happy.  You knew it couldn’t last; you lived a life of impermanence. Once you opened your eyes, this would all be gone.

You opened your eyes to find yourself only partially correct. You were in a bed, and you were in the medical area. You were in a sheet, and wrapped in bandages. Loki was there, and he was holding your hand under the sheet.

But there was no ancient palace, no beautiful art or architecture. And unlike what you now realized was a dream, you were still filled with fear and apprehension.  You drew your hand away.

“Ah, you’re awake.” Loki said, standing to hover over you, worry in his tight expression. “How do you feel?”

“Not sure yet.” You said, groggy. “What happened to me?”

“We were attacked. Some craven bastard threw a knife at you.”

“Oh. I thought it felt like getting punched by a fist made of wasps.” You said. You didn’t mention that a sneaky knife attack sounded like the kind of thing Loki would do. Perhaps it was only ‘craven’ when someone else was doing it.

“Did you hit the horse?”

Loki sighed and sat back down. “No. You actually guaranteed that wouldn’t happen. Not that I would have struck the animal anyway; my aim is always precise.”

“I messed up your throw. Sorry.”

“Oh, a bit more than that, I’m pleased to say. You performed your first feat of independent magic. Teleportation. You brought my blade right back to me. It was very tidy, but you’ve had an excellent teacher, so I expect no less.”

So smug. You would have found it endearing, if you weren’t so caught up in yourself.

“It doesn’t hurt as much as I thought.” You said. “Don’t get me wrong, it hurts a lot, but I thought it would be more debilitating.”

“The knife did not penetrate far. Luckily, our assailant was clumsy with his throw, and left you with no more than a nasty cut. The only reason you are here right now is because dealing with a sudden injury and with sudden magic fatigue at the same time overwhelmed you. But you will be fine now. Look, I have grapes.”

He handed you a little bowl full of the green and purple fruits, which you dug into ravenously.

“I can teleport?”

“You can teleport objects, at least. Small ones. But perhaps bigger, with time. Perhaps even something as big as yourself, someday.”

“So…kinda like a little, walking Bifrost?” You wondered. Loki went silent, mouth opened, mouth closed, absorbing the idea.

“That is actually a very interesting thought. What a clever little thing you are! Look at how your value grows. A movable Bifrost would be precious indeed.”

His expression darkened.

“All the more reason to find this enemy and neutralize them. I’ve got several investigations ongoing, but for now…” He placed his hand on top of the sheet, trying to find yours underneath. You moved your hand away.

“I know I have been busy, and you’ve been cooped up like a doll in a closet. But while this threat is still looming, I intend to keep you close by. You may have to sit through some terribly boring official meetings, but at least you will not be alone. It’s either that or being locked into your room, I’m afraid.”

“Is that allowed? I’m not a dignitary or anything. Isn’t some of that stuff secret?”

Loki regarded you with some amusement. “Tell me, what is it you think royalty actually does?”

“I dunno.” You grumbled. “Top secret government stuff.”

“Ha! You think we have garden parties and eat treats all day, don’t you?”

You thought about Hamlet. Lear. Othello. All the blood, the distrust, the betrayal.

“Not exactly. I guess I just don’t know.”

“Prepare to learn. And if you get bored, you can just bring a book.”

You groaned.

                                                                                  *****

Loki had been right: some of these meetings were super boring. You couldn’t understand most of what was being said; only when Thor or Loki were using their ‘allspeak’ magic. Even then, you only got their parts of the conversation.

Loki had dressed you up like you were something special, but it hardly seemed to matter. The people meeting with the brothers either ignored you completely, or seemed annoyed that you were there at all, no matter how you looked. Maybe he’d just done it for his own pleasure. He had referred to you as a doll, after all.

One fellow in particular seemed very displeased to see you there, and had a lengthy-and if Loki’s expression was any indication-impertinent argument about your presence. Loki had used Allspeak the entire time. Either he wanted you to know how disgusted this man was by you, or he wanted you to know he was defending you.

“It is final, Alarr.” He said firmly. “It is not your concern.”

The man, Alarr, bristled and huffed, speaking back with obvious disrespect.

“Actually, you do.” Thor said. “He is my brother, my advisor, my second-in-command. He is your prince, and it is important that everyone remembers that, especially people with your influence. It is of utmost importance that we remain united as we rebuild. There are too many people who would see us divided.”

Alarr gesticulated broadly. You thought you heard the name Odin somewhere in the tirade.

“This is all true. However, these times are different from our golden age, and calls for a different kind of leadership. Even our father grew weary of conquering and made sincere attempts at peace. So too, will we. But it must start with tolerance for the presence of the people who were here before us. There will not be another Nornheim.”

Alar stroked his braided, blonde beard. He was clearly still displeased, but seemed to acquiesce, though he shot suspicious glances at you for the rest of the meeting. He seemed to be demanding that the camp be removed, viewing them as a safety hazard, a possible harbor for enemies.

To your relief, both king and prince believed that to be unreasonable and unnecessary. Not to mention unsustainable.

“How many Einherjar do you propose we remove from their posts and their training, to fruitlessly patrol the fens in search of itinerant humans?” Loki asked. “And by what rights do we remove citizens of this country from land that is still theirs? What measures do you suggest we take to repel them? Do we become violent toward the very people who have harbored us?”

The argument went back and forth, but Loki’s defense of the camp stuck with you. He didn’t even like the people out there. He too, had said that he considered them potentially dangerous. You didn’t see what he got out of defending them. It couldn’t be because of you, and you doubted it was simply because it was the right thing to do.

“He is literally always so unpleasant, all the time, every day.” Loki said, after Alarr had left.

“He’s of the old guard.” Thor said with a shrug. “He will get used to the new ways. There isn’t really any other choice.”

“He’s going to be trouble.” Loki warned. “He does not see me as a legitimate authority, and he barely tolerates you as one.”

“And what do you suggest then? We can’t imprison him for ‘general unpleasantness’. For one thing; we don’t have a prison.”

“What, you guys don’t have spies? Can’t you just watch over him?” You interjected.  They both turned to look at you, their movements almost comically mirrored.

“Eh, never mind.” It wasn’t really your place to speak here. Who knew, maybe all their spies had been killed in the destruction of Asgard, or were trapped offworld, with no Bifrost to bring them back.

“It’s nothing you need worry yourself about.” Loki said. “You needn’t worry about anything.”

Or do anything, if the entire boring day was any indication. At least Loki and Thor got to talk to people, even get into interesting debates. You got to sit still and say nothing. You couldn’t even get really comfortable, the slash across your back twanging every time you put any kind of pressure on it.

He was probably just trying to reassure you of your safety, but the boredom was almost torture. You could have stayed locked in your room and been safe enough. At least then, you could have had a nap. But Loki insisted on keeping you within arms’ reach. The attack must have really spooked him.

You probably should have felt more conflicted about it than you did. Someone had tried to kill you! Or, at least, someone had tried to hurt one of the two of you. Loki could not be ruled out as the intended target of that knife either.

Oh, he had been so ticked off, demanding to know if you had seen the danger coming, if you had tried to protect him with your body. You had told him how stupid that was; he was thousand times tougher than you, he could take a knife without needing your help. That seemed to mollify him, but now you wondered if you should have lied and gotten yourself locked up.

Again, at least you could have taken a nap.

Loki left his chair to crouch before you.

“Are you hungry? Do you hurt?” His hand stroked down your back, causing you to wince away. “Oh, you do hurt. Do we have anything that can alleviate pain?”

“We need to stock up on some human medications for you.” Thor said. There was a sort of sparkle in his good eye as he watched his brother. “They’re completely ineffective to us, I’m afraid.”

“Er, speaking of that, I’m definitely going to need some, uh, feminine hygiene products.” You hadn’t wanted to talk about this, but there wasn’t any getting around it. “I’ve got the insert, but it takes a little while to dry everything up.”

Both brothers stared at you, baffled.

“I know what all of those words mean individually…”Loki began.

You sighed. “I think I need to talk to Bjarkehild.”

[csforscience-blog]

When You Wish Upon a Star

Post Season 7 AU. Based on my theory that the Wish Realm wasn't actually created by a wish, rather Emma's wish had transported her to an alternate universe and the actual Princess Emma from that realm was kidnapped.

After the curse is broken and he is sent back to his realm in search of a cure, Wish Hook finally meets the blonde woman who has haunted his dreams. Because in every world, in every time soul mates find each other. RATED T. (Now on ff and ao3)

"The King and Queen are dead."

He expected chaos when he returned. The other version of Regina and the Swan girl had left the kingdom in shambles with King Charming and Queen Snow to be mourned and young Prince Henry confused and orphaned. No one understands that Princess Emma wasn't actually their princess. They watched her grow up, they saw her rule. In fact the people of Killian's realm do not think they are just the product of a wish. Neither does he. He is just as real as his younger counterpart.

So is his daughter, the one true thing that matters in his life. And yet as Henry Mills and Cinderella broke the curse in Hyperion Heights, he could not go to her and tell her how much he loves her, to tell her he's sorry that his cursed self was not there for her.  He could not hug her as Henry did with Lucy, Cinderella and Regina, not the way Zelena did with Robin. Not the way the more superior version of himself did when he arrived with his lovely wife and their young brown haired daughter with green eyes in his arms. He envied the other version of himself as the younger man kissed the Swan girl and held his own daughter close.

No Killian could not walk within ten feet of his teenage daughter. He could only look at her from a far and hope that that look was good enough to tell her how much he felt. 

He left her a note before he left, saying that he would do anything and everything to get back to her with a cure for his poisoned heart. 

Not that he is back, however, he doesn't know where to start.

Prince Henry has put a strict ban on magic after witnessing his grandparents demise, so acquiring any magic would become a real adventure in itself. Killian does have a lead though, courtesy of the Swan girl and the Mills Sisters, and with his newly rejuvenated look he can avoid any bounty on his head, even pretend to be someone else. The item he is looking for is white magic and it is said that a noble has come to possess it and has been using it to cure ailments at a price. This information has been well hidden, known as only rumors to the public, but Killian knows better. 

 And its not as if he has any choice. He is a desperate man and desperate men are willing to fight for what they want.

The journey to the nobleman's fort is a long one. It is deep within the forest, on a jagged path that seems to go nowhere. Killian holds onto the rook in his pocket as he urges his horse through the deadly route, hoping that this lead is not as much a dead end as it seems. 

Finally the fort comes into view. It looks to be an abandoned military warehouse as it is smaller than he expected and lacking any windows. An eerily familiar tower that reaches the heavens is the only part of the structure that has a window. Killian doesn't stare at it too long, wretched memories of another tower invading his mind.

Guards in dark uniforms meet him at the door, frisking him for weapons and taking his horse before slowing him to step into the door. Inside it is just as dark, with silver and pewter bringing shine to the otherwise dull and empty room. An unnecessarily large oak table sits in the center of the room with papers and books littered across it. A man, no older than Killian appears, sits at the table, his face looking stern and bored as an elderly woman stands in front of him pleading for him to here him out.

"Please, Baron Von Rothbart! I beg of you. My daughter is on her death bed."

Killian flinches at the old woman's words, his mind immediately jumping to Alice and what he would do if she were ever in that position.

"The terms are quite simple, Madame." Rothbart states, bored. "I provide you with the white cure and you provide payment. You have failed to procure the desired sum and therefore I cannot help you."

"Please, Sir! It's all I have. Have mercy! She is only 18!"

"You knew the deal. You failed to honor it." Rothbart snaps, growing impatient. "And in doing so, you failed your dear daughter."

Hook's throat tightens. He knows he is carrying a small fortune but he only has a little more than what the woman is offering. She wails, collecting her gold back into a pouch with shaky hands and is dragged away by one of the guards. 

"You." Rothbart says, not bothering to look at him, his eyes glued to the parchment he is writing upon. "What is your business here?" 

"I seek a cure for a poisoned heart." Killian says in a firm voice.

"Hmm... Don't we all." The menace sneers, looking up at him. He's handsome but with wicked harsh features that would make any woman cower. "What I am interested in, is what you have on your person, pirate."

"Two-hundred gold pieces." Killian growls. "Which can be yours once I have the cure." He plays with his hook, drawing Rothbart's attention to it, and does not dare break eye contact with Rothbart, refusing to show fear. 

"Luckily for you that just meets the price for my cure." Rothbart motions to a guard who approaches bearing an open chest containing 3 vials of white glowing liquid. He picks one up and hands it to Killian.

"This will cure a poisoned heart?" He asks warily.

"It cures all. It's white magic in its purest form. Now the payment if you will."

Killian hands him the pouch of gold. "If this doesn't work. If this is a sham, I will be back." 

"I don't doubt it, Captain." Rothbart says counting the good. "But I think you will find yourself satisfied with the product."

"What's this bloody made of anyway?" Hook pockets the vial.

"The purest magic: True love. A savior for all." Rothbart chuckles wickedly. "Now unless you want anything else, I suggest you be on your way, pirate."

Killian glares at the man but says nothing, turning around to the doors. 

I'm on my way, Alice. He thinks

The guards let him be as he mounts his steed and rides towards the exit. As he enters the woods however, he hears sobbing to his right. The odd woman from before is crouched down crying on the ground.

"Milady..." Killian begins.

"Two blasted coins." She says. "I was off by two coins. And now my daughter will die." She wipes her eyes and looks to the fort. Hook chokes up, feeling the weight of the vial burning a hole through his chest. "I thought that because he has an endless supply of white magic that he would be lenient."

"Endless?" He perks up. "What do you mean endless?" 

"He has access to a pure creature. The embodiment of true love itself. He drains it of its magic and makes profit off of it to those desperate enough for an all cure." She sniffs. "I sold everything I had. But it still wasn't enough for the Baron."

Bringing his fingers to his brow he sighs loudly, once again he is going to fail her. Some father he is. But looking at the sobbing old woman he can't help but pity her. No. Alice would want this.

"Give this to your daughter."  The woman stares at him in shock as he hands her the vial of glowing white. "Go on. Save her."

"Oh thank you, kind sir!" The woman sobs, in relief instead of despair. She quickly reaches under her cloak to the pouch of coins attached to her belt, but he puts his hand up to stop her.

"No, keep your money."

"But why? What about your ailment?" 

"As much as it pain me, your daughter's life is worth more. I will find another way." He sighs.

"May Athena bless you, sir." She cries in delight, taking the vial from him. Ready to dash away, she stops a moment and turns back towards him seeing his gaze upon the fort. "I can only guess what you plan to do, but beware. They say the Baron holds power unlike anything else."

"Thank you ma'am." Killian smiles sadly, watching her scurry away into the darkness of the forest. 

He leads his horse off the path and ties her to a tree, loading his person with weapons. He will not leave this fort without a cure. He will not.

Killian approaches the fort once more, this time as carefully and quietly as possible. As far as Rothbart and his men know, Killian got what he wanted and was on his way, and maintaining that pretense is more than favorable. His guards don't look as intimidating as they should. One is leaning against the wall by the door yawning away while the other kicks stones around. The problem is that they are by the main and, by the looks of it, only door. The entrance.

But like a bright star shining light in the darkness and guiding sailors through the vast sea, a white glow emanates from above. It draws Killian's attention to the tower where a white light flashes magically... magic... White magic!

That must be where the wretch keeps his source of white magic and if Hook can get his hands on it, he can cure his poisoned heart. The only problem is getting to it...

Scaling walls is not as easy as it looks. Despite Killian's experience doing so and the gift of a more limber form, its still tricky. Unlike Rapunzel's tower, the walls of this fort are of smoother stones that are more compact together, making it difficult to find a foot hold nor pull himself up. It makes the entire thing trickier, slowing him down, increasing the chances that someone might catch him trying to break in. The guards are thankfully unaware of his misdeed, sharing a bottle between them. Bad form, he thinks, although their bad luck is what's aiding him on his quest. 

The only way that he can gain entry to this place is through the window at the highest tower. Of course that would be the only way in, he snorts, heaving himself up with his hook.

It takes some to finally reach the windowsill, his muscles protest as he heaves himself up one last time. With his forearms on the ledge and foot planted against it he jumps in through the window, his blue eyes immediately scan the small room it reveals. It is plain and matches the rest of the fort, but the most striking difference is the almost home-like and cozy appeal to it, with a lounge chair against the wall and several pillows propped up upon it and a slate gray woolen blanket at the foot of it. There are several art supplies at a small table and papers with intricate drawings of the sky, sea, buttercups and swans. There is something bright about this room and it has nothing to do with the color scheme. 

Killian slowly traverses across, looking for vials of white magic. It has to be here, he saw the white glow come from this room, but there’s no sign of any magic, not even a speck of fairy dust, it is just an empty room. He sits by the table hoping that the sketches may provide some insight to what the magical source may be. It is white magic, so it isn’t likely to be dangerous, however all magic comes with a price as he has come to learn, so he peruses the area with caution.

Some scuffling can be heard coming from the door a few feet away from him. His brain switches into high alert and he quickly finds a place to hide behind the head of the lounge chair, his hook and sword at the ready, The disturbance grows louder. It’s a combination of metal colliding and feet stomping and muffled voices that become crystal clear as the door is flung open.

“There, there, now my darling.” Rothbart’s voice cuts through the air. “That wasn’t so bad. Maybe next time you’ll be less resistant. You know your efforts are futile, why do you still fight me?”

A smack echoes through the room followed by a whimper.

“You silly creature!” The terror roars. “You could have it all! Everyone you love is dead. No one will come to save you.” The whimpering intensifies “Either you learn to be more pliant, more willing, or you’ll remain in this tower for eternity.”

“I will never submit to you.”

Killian almost jumps out of his skin at the sound of that voice. He knows it so well, a siren’s call within his dreams, a taunting nightmare of what he could have had if fate had altered her course. But as he peers from his hiding place, he sees the unmistakable golden waves over slim shoulders of a woman crouched onto the cold floor.

“I will never marry you. I will never willingly give you my magic. I will never love you, Rothbart. You are a monster.”

“I may be a monster, Princess, but you are weak and have no other choice. I will get what I want sooner or later.” With that, Rothbart spins on his heels and marches out of the room, slamming the door behind him with a bang, followed by the sound of a lock clicking into place.

Soft cries begin to fill the small space, finally drawing Killian out of his shock. How is she here? Was there another curse? Another wish gone wrong? How can she be back, especially here in this wretched place? He had just left her and his other self back at Hyperion Heights with Henry and the rest of his family. She’s the one who told him to come here! So how was she here? And the condition that she is in? No woman in her position should be exposed to such environments.

“Swan?” Killian croaks, emerging from his hiding place.

She turns around quickly and stares back in silence, giving him a chance to examine her. She’s a little different. Her golden hair is matted, part of it still in a braid that seems like it was done in a haste days ago. Her red jacket has been replaced by a ragged dark linen dress and torn brown cloak. The once glowing skin is now pale and her cheeks are slightly hollowed. Her muted green and wet eyes continue to dash across his figure, her dry rose colored lips parted in awe.

“Love what happened? How has Rothbart come to capture you? Where is Killian?” He takes a step towards her, stopping as she retreats. “Are you okay? Are you hurt?”

“Who- who are you?” she croaks.

“You- you don’t remember who you are, love?” His shoulders sag. So it is another curse, or some sort of memory loss that is clouding her mind. I guess she won’t be able to help me, bloody hell! He rubs his temples to relieve the ache that begins to simmer.

“I know who I am!” She says defiantly. “I am Princess Emma of Misthaven, heir to Queen Snow and King David, mother of the crown Prince Henry. Who are you and what do you want?”

“Easy, love.” He puts his hand and hook up in surrender. She gasps at the sight, and backs up even further. “Relax love. I am not here to hurt you!”

“Then why are you here?” She hisses. “Come to see what Rothbart’s special treasure was? Come to steal my magic too?!”

“Your magic?” Killian exclaims. Everything starts to make even less sense then it did before. How could she be the source of magic when Rothbart’s special potion has been around for over a year? In fact the rumors claim he gained power right around the time that the Swa... No.

“Love, how long have you been a prisoner here?”

“I am not your love!”

“Please, your highness, answer the question.”

“Three years.”

Three years. Three years ago he encountered Emma Swan along with the woodcutter in the forest. Three years ago he foolishly attempted to be her hero and was thrown on his sorry arse with a blast of magic, and woke up on the deck of the Jolly feeling like utter shite. Two years ago, he had heard Henry’s voice through the magic bottle on his person calling for Emma Swan, Regina and Captain Hook. Two years ago Lady Tremaine granted him his younger self’s physique and brooding appeal as he attempted foolishly to con Emma into believing he was the man she fell in love with, the man who’s child she was carrying.

They told him he was part of a realm created by a wish, that he was not real. But he felt real, he knew he was real. He knows he is real. Could the lost woman in front of him be his princess?

“How did Rothbart capture you?” He croaks.

“I don’t know, a cloud of smoke surrounded me and I ended up deep in the woods. Rothbart found me and offered me a place to stay. He knew I had magic and when I tried to leave he forced these on me.” She shows him a pair of leather cuffs around her wrists. “They dampen my magic so I can’t escape, not that I knew how to use it. My parents they...” she begins to whimper. “They never wanted me to get lost in magic, they didn’t want me to become like the Evil Queen.” Her green eyes peer up at him as she takes a brave step forward. “Please, sir... is it true? Are they really dead?”

“Aye, love. I am sorry, truly.”

She falls to the ground and weeps gently. He does not think, the instinct to protect her overriding all else, and he sinks down to her level, putting a comforting arm around her, bringing her into a tight embrace. She melts into his touch, burrowing her face into his neck as he rubs her back soothingly. He doesn’t understand his need to hold her as she mourns, but he vows to have a chat with Regina when he returns to Hyperion Heights.

“Swa-Emma, please love. We must leave soon before Rothbart returns.”

She lifts her head to look at him confused, and as if just realizing the position they are in, untangles herself from his and backs away trying to put as much distance between them as possible.

“Why?” She demands, authority oozing through her. “Why would you help me? Why would I trust you?”

“I know your son.” It’s not a complete lie. He does know and is close friends with Henry, well a version of him anyway.

“My son, is an acquaintance of a pirate?” she asks in disbelief.

“Aye, Captain Killian Jones at your service.” He gives a little bow. “Now do you want to escape or not? We’ve not much time.”

She looks between him and the door behind her, worrying her lips as she contemplates. He feels a strong urge to bite the lip but then shakes himself out of that thought as she turns back to him.

“Fine. But don’t think I’m taking my eyes off of you for one second.”

“I’d despair if you did.”

They wait until Rothbart comes again to restock his magic supply. Turns out the magic dampeners not only prevent Emma from using her magic but also limit the amount he can take from her, which is only three vials worth at a time. He uses an enchanted crystal bottle which extracts magic from anything it touches and converts it into a potion. Because Emma is the product of true love, her magic is capable of combating various forms of dark magic, and the potion Rothbart is capable of extracting is thus powerful enough to cure hexes, curses and many poisons, something that make Killian’s ears perk up. He plans to steal a vial during their escape.

He doesn’t know why he is so compelled to save the Princess instead of getting what he came here for. Maybe it has to do with his his brother’s voice screaming in his head to stick to good form and save the damsel in distress. Maybe it’s the newfound compassion he acquired from being Officer Rogers. Maybe the fact that the alternate versions of themselves share true love is forcing him to feel responsible for her. Or maybe you just fancy her you daft fool!

The door handle begins to rattle as Rothbart unlocks it from the other side. Emma is sitting at the center of the room, her hands in her lap, and Killian at the other side of the door ready for her to attack. The second the Baron enters the room, Killian knocks him out with his hook, causing Rothbart to drop the enchanted bottle to the ground. Emma can’t say that she sheds a tear as it shatters into millions of tiny fragments, never to be used to harm ever again.

Killian drags the wretch’s limp form further into the room and ties him up. He looks to see the princess glaring at Rothbart but also shaking.

“Are you alright, love?”

“Yes.” She says quickly. “It’s just... I am a coward. I could have done this myself and maybe saved all of the people he was stealing from... but...”

“Hey. Do not blame yourself.” He approaches her and tilts her head up to meet him. “He won’t hurt you anymore, or anyone else for that matter. Now come on, let’s stick to the plan and get you home, aye?”

She nods and gives a kind smile back to him.

They lock the door before they leave and make sure to break the key in the lock so that it’s almost impossible for anyone to unlock it for him. There are only two guards in the entire fort. The Baron was too cheap to pay for more people and he did not need anyone else. Most feared the rumors that a deadly beast was the source of his powers and never bothered to steal from him... that is until Killian came along.

They did not expect the guards to remain too blissfully unaware for long, the two fools running up towards the pirate and princess as they began descending the long spiral staircase in the tower. Emma freezes slightly at the sight of the two burly men and Killian steps in front of her, readying his sword. She watches in complete fascination as he thwarts them, knocking them both easily to the ground with well practiced footwork and a couple of swipes of his sword and hook. She is even more impressed that he leaves them alive, falsifying all the stories she heard of pirates being evil and ruthless killers.

As he sheathes his sword, he looks up at her, giving her a once over to ensure that she is okay. He holds out his hand and she takes it without question, being lead around the two bodies napping on the steps and down towards her freedom.

When they get to the main entrance, Killian pauses, looking to the Rothbart’s large desk longingly.

“What’s wrong?” The princess asks, turning back to him.

He looks back at her and dons a well practiced smile that he has used countless times on Alice when he did not want her to share his burden of worry.

“Nothing, Princess.” He looks back at the desk. “I was thinking, maybe we should destroy the remainder of Rothbart’s stash so that he may not use it to exploit your subjects anymore.” “Good idea, Captain.” Emma says, and it’s permission enough for him to hurry behind the desk and grab the vials. There’s two of them, filled to the brim with glowing white, and he takes them from the chest they have been stored in and throws them into the brilliant fireplace.

“Good riddance.” He smiles sadly, and Emma nods in agreement. “Come, Princess, let’s get you home.”

The moon is at the highest point in the sky as they leave the fort. Killian mounts his trusty stallion and offers Emma a hand to help her up behind him. She takes it without pause and he can’t help but feel over zealous at the warmth she provides at his back, the way her soft breaths tickle the skin at his neck and the way her hands feel circled around his waist. The ride hard for a few hours until they are well out of the dark forest and into a new, less dense area of the woods. He can tell that she is tired as he halts his horse. She has been resting her head on his shoulder for the last few minutes trying to catch some shut eye, and he himself is no better, the strain in his own eyes causing a migraine to brew in the back of his head.

Emma lifts her head as he begins to dismount.

“Wh-why have we stopped?” she asks, taken his hand to follow suit.

“It’s been a long night, you need to rest.” Killian replies. “This area will do quite nicely for a short slumber. I will take first watch.”

“First watch?” she repeats confused. Her hand comes out to grip the cloak tighter.

“Aye, we should take turns keeping watch for anything that might harm us, or anyone who might have followed us out.” He starts collecting twigs from the ground, putting them in a pile near a fallen log.

“You think they might have followed us?” She asks in a small voice.

“I wouldn’t put it past the bloody sod.” Killian replies. He looks up to see her worrying her lip once more. “Darling, if they dare come across us again, I will protect you.” He assures her.

“And why would you?” She snaps. “How do you really know me?”

“Love.. I”

“And don’t say Henry sent you. I know you are lying.” She crosses her arms, just as defiant as her counterpart.

“I wouldn’t know how to begin, Swan.” Killian groans, slumping on the log.

Emma kneels in front of the pile of twigs and grabs two stones, hitting them together until a spark is born and a small flame ignites.

“You can start with why you keep calling me Swan.” She says, catching him stare at her curiously.

“Caught that did, you?” He laughs nervously.

She glares at him. 

“It’s a really long story... bloody hell.” He groans.

Emma sits beside him on the log, giving him a pointed look.

“We have enough time for you to start.”

“Aye.” He sighs. He stretches his legs out in front of him. “Long story short, there are other realms similar to ours yet alternative, where we have taken different paths and ended with different futures. I encountered another realms version of you. Her name was Emma Swan.” He looks into her green eyes, trying to assess her response. She probably thinks he is crazy, delusional even, but she cracks a warm smile in return.

“Truth.” She says quietly.

“You believe me?” He asks in disbelief. Why would a royal trust him?

“Yes,  I do.” Emma states firmly. “I know when people lie, it’s the only gift I have that I can actually use. So, tell me about this Emma Swan?”

“She’s a mother like you, and a princess.” She grins and he smiles back. “She’s cunning, smart, beautiful.” She blushes and licks her lips. “She’s strong, a fierce warrior.”

“Unlike me.” The princess says sadly.

“Princess, you were scared and a prisoner of a horrid man. You cannot blame yourself for your predicament.”

“I’m not just talking about that. My entire life, I have been scared in a tiny bubble in the castle. I never went out on my own adventure, I’ve never fought for anything. I don’t even know how to hold a sword. I’m a coward.” She laughs.

“No you’re not. The gods know I’ve dealt with many cowards and you don’t meet any of their criteria. You may have not been in battles but your are just as brave and strong as the other Emma.”

“You really think so?” She peers up at him in wonder, and if he did not know any better he could have sworn that she scooted closer to him.

“Aye, love.” Killian says sincerely. “And I quite fancy you from time to time... when you’re not yelling at me.” He smirks and she rolls her eyes. “if you want... I could always teach you how to use a sword.” He scratches the back of his ear.

“I’d like that, Captain.” She smiles.

“Call me Killian, your highness.”

“As long as you call me Emma.”

They stare at each other for a second more and then look away as if they were burned.

“So...” Emma begins. “When you thought I was the other Emma in the tower, you asked where Killian was... Your name is Killian, so I’m guessing the other Emma knows her realm’s version of you?”

Bloody hell...

“Erm...” His hand finds its way back to his ear. “Aye, they know each other very well.” So well that they have a daughter and another wee one along the way. “You should get some rest, love.” He says quickly, standing up and away from his doppelgänger’s true love’s doppelgänger.

“Right.” Emma raises her brow amused.

“I will wake you up in 2 hours.” He states mechanically, as if he’s reciting the Miranda rights to someone.

“Okay. Goodnight... Killian.”

“Goodnight, Emma.” END OF PART ONE

[mideastsoccer]

Battle for the Soul of Islam

By James M. Dorsey

 This story was first published in Horizons

 TROUBLE is brewing in the backyard of Muslim-majority states competing for religious soft power and leadership of the Muslim world in what amounts to a battle for the soul of Islam. Shifting youth attitudes towards religion and religiosity threaten to undermine the rival efforts of Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Iran and, to a lesser degree, the United Arab Emirates, to cement their individual state-controlled interpretations of Islam as the Muslim world’s dominant religious narrative. Each of the rivals see their efforts as key to securing their autocratic or authoritarian rule as well as advancing their endeavors to carve out a place for themselves in a new world order in which power is being rebalanced.

Research and opinion polls consistently show that the gap between the religious aspirations of youth—and, in the case of Iran other age groups—and state-imposed interpretations of Islam is widening. The shifting attitudes amount to a rejection of Ash’arism, the fundament of centuries-long religiously legitimized authoritarian rule in the Sunni Muslim world that stresses the role of scriptural and clerical authority. Mustafa Akyol, a prominent Turkish Muslim intellectual, argues that Ash’arism has dominated Muslim politics for centuries at the expense of more liberal strands of the faith “not because of its merits, but because of the support of the states that ruled the medieval Muslim world.”

Similarly, Nadia Oweidat, a student of the history of Islamic thought, notes that “no topic has impacted the region more profoundly than religion. It has changed the geography of the region, it has changed its language, it has changed its culture. It has been shaping the region for thousands of years. [...] Religion controls every aspect of people who live in the Arab world.”

The polls and research suggest that youth are increasingly skeptical towards religious and worldly authority. They aspire to more individual, more spiritual experien­ces of religion. Their search leads them in multiple directions that range from changes in personal religious behavior that deviates from that proscribed by the state to conversions in secret to other religions even though apostasy is banned and punishable by death, to an abandonment of organized religion all together in favor of deism, agnosticism, or atheism.

“The youth are not interested in institutions or organizations. These do not attract them or give them any incentive; just the opposite, these institutions and organizations and their leadership take advantage of them only when they are needed for their attendance and for filling out the crowds,” said Palestinian scholar and former Hamas education minister Nasser al-Din al-Shaer.

Atheists and converts cite perceived discriminatory provisions in Islam’s legal code towards various Muslim sects, non-Muslims, and women as a reason for turning their back on the faith. “The primary thing that led me to atheism is Islam’s moral aspect. How can, for example, a merciful and compassionate God, said to be more merciful than a woman on her baby, permit slavery and the trade of slaves in slave markets? How come He permits rape of women simply because they are war prisoners? These acts would not be committed by a merciful human being much less by a merciful God,” said Hicham Nostic, a Moroccan atheist, writing under a pen name.

 Revival, Reversal

The recent research and polls suggest a reversal of an Islamic revival that scholars like John Esposito in the 1990s and Jean-Paul Carvalho in 2009 observed that was bolstered by the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran, the results of a 1996 World Values Survey that reported a strengthening of traditional religious values in the Muslim world, the rise of Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and the initial Muslim Brotherhood electoral victories in Egypt and Tunisia in the wake of the 2011 popular Arab revolts.

“The indices of Islamic reawakening in personal life are many: increased attention to religious observances (mosque attendance, prayer, fasting), proliferation of religious programming and publications, more emphasis on Islamic dress and values, the revitalization of Sufism (mysticism). This broader-based renewal has also been accompanied by Islam’s reassertion in public life: an increase in Islamically oriented governments, organizations, laws, banks, social welfare services, and educational institutions,” Esposito noted at the time.

Carvalho argued that an economic “growth reversal which raised aspirations and led subsequently to a decline in social mobility which left aspirations unfulfilled among the educated middle class (and) increasing income inequality and impoverishment of the lower-middle class” was driving the revival. The same factors currently fuel a shift away from traditional, Orthodox, and ultra-conservative values and norms of religiosity.

The shift in Muslim-majority countries also contrasts starkly with a trend towards greater religious Orthodoxy in some Muslim minority communities in Europe. A 2018 report by the Dutch government’s Social and Cultural Planning Bureau noted that the number of Muslims of Turkish and Moroccan descent who strictly observe traditional religious precepts had increased by approximately eight percent. Dutch citizens of Turkish and Moroccan descent account for two-thirds of the country’s Muslim community. The report suggested that in a pluralistic society in which Muslims are a minority, “the more personal, individualistic search for true Islam can lead to youth becoming more strict in observance than their parents or environment ever were.”

Changing attitudes towards religion and religiosity that mirror shifting attitudes in non-Muslim countries are particularly risky for leaders, irrespective of their politics, who cloak themselves in the mantle of religion as well as nationalism and seek to leverage that in their geopolitical pursuit of religious soft power. The 2011 popular Arab revolts as well as mass anti-government protests in various Middle Eastern countries in 2019 and 2020 spotlighted the subversiveness of the change. “The Arab Spring was the tipping point in the shift [...]. It was the epitome of how we see the change. The calls were for ‘dawla madiniya,’ a civic state. A civic state is as close as you can come to saying [...], we want a state where the laws are written by people so that we can challenge them, we can change them, we can adjust them. It’s not God’s law, it’s madiniya, it’s people’s law,” Oweidat, the Islamic thought scholar, said.

Akyol went further, noting in a journal article that “too many terrible things have recently happened in the Arab world in the name of Islam. These include the sectarian civil wars in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen, where most of the belligerents have fought in the name of God, often with appalling brutality. The millions of victims and bystanders of these wars have experienced shock and disillusionment with religious politics, and more than a few began asking deeper questions.”

The 2011 popular Arab revolts reverberated across the Middle East, reshaping relations between states as well as domestic policies, even though initial achievements of the protesters were rolled back in Egypt and sparked wars in Libya, Yemen, and Syria.

Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, and Egypt imposed a 3.5 year-long diplomatic and economic boycott of Qatar in part to cut their youth off from access to the Gulf state’s popular Al Jazeera television network that supported the revolts and Islamist groups that challenged the region’s autocratic rulers. Seeking to lead and tightly control a social and economic reform agenda driven by youth who were enamored by the uprisings, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman “sought to recapture this mandate of change, wrap it in a national mantle, and sever it from its Arab Spring associations. The boycott and ensuing nationalist campaign against Qatar became central to achieving that,” said Gulf scholar Kristin Smith Diwan.

Referring to the revolts, Moroccan journalist Ahmed Benchemsi suggested that “the Arab Spring may have stalled, if not receded, but when it comes to religious beliefs and attitudes, a generational dynamic is at play. Large numbers of individuals are tilting away from the rote religiosity Westerners reflexively associate with the Arab world.”

Benchemsi went on to argue that “in today’s Arab world, it’s not religiosity that is mandatory; it’s the appearance of it. Nonreligious attitudes and beliefs are tolerated as long as they’re not conspicuous. As a system, social hypocrisy provides breathing room to secular lifestyles, while preserving the façade of religion. Atheism, per se, is not the problem. Claiming it out loud is. So those who publicize their atheism in the Arab world are fighting less for freedom of conscience than for freedom of speech.” The same could be said for the right to convert or opt for alternative practices of Islam.

Syrian journalist Sham al-Ali recounts the story of a female relative who escaped the civil war to Germany where she decided to remove her hijab. Her father, who lives in Turkey, accepted his daughter’s decision but threatened to disown her if she posted pictures of herself uncovered on Facebook. “His issue was not with his daughter’s abandonment of religious duty, but with her publicizing that before her family and society at large,” Al-Ali said.

 Neo-patriarchism

Neo-patriarchism, a pillar of Arab autocratic rule, heightens concern about public appearance and perception. A phrase coined by American-Palestinian scholar Hisham Sharabi, neo-patriarchism involves projection of the autocratic leader as a father figure. Autocratic Arab society, according to Sharabi, was built on the dominance of the father, a patriarch around which the national as well as the nuclear family are organized. Relations between a ruler and the ruled are replicated in the relationship between a father and his children. In both settings, the paternal will is absolute, mediated in society as well as the family by a forced consensus based on ritual and coercion.

As a result, neo-patriarchism often reinforces pressure to abide by state-imposed religious behavior and at the same time fuels changes in attitudes towards religion and religiosity among youth who resent their inability to chart a path of their own. Primary and secondary schools have emerged as one frontline in the struggle to determine the boundaries of religious expression and behavior. Recent developments in Egypt, a brutal autocracy, and Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim-majority democracy, offer contrasting perspectives on how the tug of war between students and parents, schoolteachers and administrations, and the state plays out.

Mada Masr, Egypt’s foremost independent news outlet, documented how in 2020 Egyptian schoolgirls who refused to wear a hijab were being coerced and publicly shamed in the knowledge that the education ministry was reluctant to enforce its policy not to mandate the wearing of a headdress. “The model, decent girl is expected to dress modestly and wear a hijab to signal her pride in her religious identity, since hijab is what distinguishes her from a Christian girl,” said Lamia Lotfy, a gender consultant and rights activist. Teachers at public high schools said they were reluctant to take boys to task for violating dress codes because they were more likely to push back and create problems.

In sharp contrast, Indonesian Religious Affairs Minister Yaqut Cholil Qoumas issued in early 2021 a decree together with the ministers of home affairs and education threatening to sanction state schools that seek to impose religious garb in violation of government rules and regulations. The decree was issued amid a public row sparked by the refusal of a Christian student to obey her school principal’s instructions requiring all pupils to wear Islamic clothing. Qoumas is a leader of Nahdlatul Ulama, the world’s largest Muslim movement and foremost advocate of theological reform in line with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. “Religions do not promote conflict, neither do they justify acting unfairly against those who are different,” Qoumas said.

A Muslim nation that replaced a decades long autocratic regime with a democracy in a popular revolt in 1998, Indonesia is Middle Eastern rulers’ worst nightmare. The shifting attitudes of Middle Eastern youth towards religion and religiosity suggest that experimentation with religion in post-revolt Indonesia is a path that it would embark on if given the opportunity. Indonesia is “where the removal of constraints imposed by an authoritarian regime has opened up the imaginative terrain, allowing particular types of religious beliefs and practices to emerge [...]. The Indonesian cases study [...] brings into sharper relief processes that are happening in ordinary Muslim life elsewhere,” said Indonesia scholar Nur Amali Ibrahim.

A 2019 poll of Arab youth showed that two-thirds of those surveyed felt that religion played too large a role in their lives, up from 50 percent four years earlier. Nearly 80 percent argued that religious institutions needed to be reformed while half said that religious values were holding the Arab world back. Surveys conducted over the last decade by Arab Barometer, a research network at Princeton University and the University of Michigan, showed a growing number of youths turning their backs on religion. “Personal piety has declined some 43 percent over the past decade, indicating less than a quarter of the population now define themselves as religious,” the survey concluded.

With the trend being the strongest among Libyans, many Libyan youth gravitate towards secretive atheist Facebook pages. They often are products of the UAE’s failed attempt to align the hard power of its military intervention in Libya with religious soft power. Said, a 25-year-old student from Benghazi, the stronghold of the UAE and Saudi-backed rebel forces led by self-appointed Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar, turned his back on religion after his cousin was beheaded in 2016 for speaking out against militants. UAE backing of Haftar has involved the population of his army by Madkhalists, a branch of Salafism named after a Saudi scholar who preaches absolute obedience to the ruler and projects the kingdom as a model of Islamic governance. “My cousin’s death occurred during a period when I was deeply religious, praying five times a day and studying ten new pages of the Qur’an each evening,” Said said.

A majority of respondents in Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Turkey, and Iran said in a 2017 poll conducted by Washington-based John Zogby Associates that they wanted religious movements to focus on personal faith and spiritual guidance and not involve themselves in politics. Iraq and Palestine were the outliers with a majority favoring a political role for religious groups.

The response to polls in the second half of the second decade of the twenty-first century contrasts starkly with attitudes expressed in a survey of the world’s Muslims by the Pew Research Center several years earlier. Pew’s polling suggested that ultra-conservative attitudes long promoted by Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar that legitimized authoritarian and autocratic regimes remained popular. More than 70 percent of those surveyed at the time in South Asia, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa favored making Sharia the law of the land and granting Sharia courts jurisdiction over family law and property disputes.

Those numbers varied broadly, however, when respondents were asked about specific issues like apostasy and corporal punishment. Three-quarters of South Asians favored the death sentence for apostasy as opposed to 56 percent in the Middle East and only 27 percent in Southeast Asia, while 81 percent in South Asia supported physical punishment compared to 57 percent in the Middle East and North Africa and 46 percent in Southeast Asia. South Asia emerged as the only part of the Muslim world in which respondents preferred a strong leader to democracy while a majority of the faithful in all three regions viewed religious freedom as positive. Between 65 and 79 percent in all regions wanted to see religious leaders have political influence.

Honor killings may be the one area where attitudes have not changed that much in recent years. Arab Barometer’s polling in 2018 and 2019 showed that more people thought honor killings were acceptable than homosexuality. In most countries polled, young Arabs appeared more likely than their parents to condone honor killings. Social media and occasional protests bear that out. Thousands rallied in early 2020 in Hebron, a conservative city on the West Bank, after the Palestinian Authority signed the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women.

Nonetheless, the assertions by Saudi Arabia that projects itself as the leader of an unidentified form of moderate Islam that preaches absolute obedience to the ruler and by advocates of varying strands of political Islam such as Turkey and Iran ring hollow in light of the dramatic shift in attitudes towards religion and religiosity.

 Acknowledging Change

Among the Middle Eastern rivals for religious soft power, the United Arab Emirates, populated in majority by non-nationals, may be the only one to emerge with a cleaner slate. The UAE is the only contender to have started acknowledging changing attitudes and demographic realities. Authorities in November 2020 lifted the ban on consumption of alcohol and cohabitation among unmarried couples. In a further effort to reach out to youth, the UAE organized in 2021 a virtual consultation with 3,000 students aimed at motivating them to think innovatively over the country’s path in the next 50 years.

Such moves do not fundamentally eliminate the risk that the changing attitudes may undercut the religious soft power efforts of the UAE and its Middle Eastern competitors. The problem for rulers like the UAE and Saudi crown princes, Mohammed bin Zayed and Mohammed bin Salman, respectively, is that the loosening of social restrictions in Saudi Arabia—including the emasculation of the kingdom’s religious police, the lifting of a ban on women’s driving, less strict implementation of gender segregation, the introduction of Western-style entertainment and greater professional opportunities for women, and a degree of genuine religious tolerance and pluralism in the UAE—are only first steps in responding to youth aspirations.

“People are sick and tired of organized religion and being told what to do. That is true for all Gulf states and the rest of the Arab world,” quipped a Saudi businessman. Social scientist Ellen van de Bovenkamp describes Moroccans she interviewed for her PhD thesis as living “a personalized, self-made religiosity, in which ethics and politics are more important than rituals.”

Nevertheless, religious authorities in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Turkey, Qatar, Iran, and Morocco continue to project interpretations of the faith that serve the state and are often framed in the language of tolerance and inter-faith dialogue but preserve outmoded legal categories, traditions, and scripture that date back centuries. Outdated concepts of slavery, who is a believer and who is an infidel, apostasy, blasphemy, and physical punishment that need reconceptualization remain in terms of religious law frozen in time. Many of those concepts, with the exception of slavery that has been banned in national law yet remains part of Islamic law, have been embedded in national legislations.

While Turkey continues to, at least nominally, adhere to its secular republican origins, it is no different from its rivals when it comes to grooming state-aligned clergymen, whose ability to think out of the box and develop new interpretations of the faith is impeded by a religious education system that stymies critical thinking and creativity. Instead, it too emphasizes the study of Arabic and memorization of the Qur’an and other religious texts and creates a religious and political establishment that discourages, if not penalizes, innovation.

Widening the gap between state projections of religion and popular aspirations is the fact that governments’ subjugation of religious establishments turns clerics and scholars into regime parrots and fuels youth skepticism towards religious institutions and leaders.

“Youth have [...] witnessed how religious figures, who still remain influential in many Arab societies, can sometimes give in to change even if they have resisted it initially. This not only feeds into Arab youth’s skepticism towards religious institutions but also further highlights the inconsistency of the religious discourse and its inability to provide timely explanations or justifications to the changing reality of today,” said Gulf scholar Eman Alhussein in a commentary on the 2020 Arab Youth Survey.

Pooyan Tamimi Arab, the co-organizer of an online survey in 2020 of Iranian attitudes towards religion that revealed a stunning rejection of state-imposed adherence to conservative religious mores as well as the role of religion in public life noted the widening gap “becomes an existential question. The state wants you to be something that you don’t want to be [...]. “Political disappointment steadily turned into religious disappointment [...]. Iranians have turned away from institutional religion on an unprecedented scale.”

In a similar vein, Turkish art historian Nese Yildiran recently warned that a fatwa issued by President Erdogan’s Directorate of Religious Affairs or Diyanet declaring popular talismans to ward off “the evil eye” as forbidden by Islam fueled criticism of one of the best-funded branches of government. The fatwa followed the issuance of similar religious opinions banning the dying of men’s moustaches and beards, feeding dogs at home, tattoos, and playing the national lottery as well as statements that were perceived to condone or belittle child abuse and violence against women.

Although compatible with a trend across the Middle East, the Iranian survey’s results, which is based on 50,000 respondents who overwhelmingly said they resided in the Islamic republic, suggested that Iranians were in the frontlines of the region’s quest for religious change.

Funded by Washington-based Iranian human rights activist Ladan Boroumand, the Iranian survey, coupled with other research and opinion polls across the Middle East and North Africa, suggests that not only Muslim youth, but also other age groups, who are increasingly skeptical towards religious and worldly authority, aspire to more individual, more spiritual experiences of religion.

Their quest runs the gamut from changes in personal religious behavior to conversions in secret to other religions because apostasy is banned and, in some cases, punishable by death, to an abandonment of religion in favor of agnosticism or atheism. Responding to the survey, 80 percent of the participants said they believed in God but only 32.2 percent identified themselves as Shiite Muslims—a far lower percentage than asserted in official figures of predominantly Shiite Iran.

More than one third of the respondents said that they either did not belong to a religion or were atheists or agnostics. Between 43 and 53 percent, depending on age group, suggested that their religious views had changed over time with 6 percent of those saying that they had converted to another religious orientation.

In addition, 68 percent said they opposed the inclusion of religious precepts in national legislation. Moreover 70 percent rejected public funding of religious institutions while 56 percent opposed mandatory religious education in schools. Almost 60 percent admitted that they do not pray, and 72 percent disagreed with women being obliged to wear a hijab in public.

An unpublished slide of the survey shows the change in religiosity reflected in the fact that an increasing number of Iranians no longer name their children after religious figures.

A five-minute YouTube clip uploaded by an ultra-conservative channel allegedly related to Iran’s Revolutionary Guards attacked the survey despite having distributed the questionnaire once the pollsters disclosed in their report that the poll had been supported by an exile human rights group.

“Tehran may well be the least religious capital in the Middle East. Clerics dominate the news headlines and play the communal elders in soap operas, but I never saw them on the street, except on billboards. Unlike most Muslim countries, the call to prayer is almost inaudible [...]. Alcohol is banned but home delivery is faster for wine than for pizza [...]. Religion felt frustratingly hard to locate and the truly religious seemed sidelined, like a minority,” wrote journalist Nicholas Pelham based on a visit in 2019 during which he was detained for several weeks.

In yet another sign of rejection of state-imposed expressions of Islam, Iranians have sought to alleviate the social impact of COVID-19 related lockdowns and restrictions on face-to-face human contact by acquiring dogs, cats, birds, and even reptiles as pets. The Islamic Republic has long viewed pets as a fixture of Western culture. One of the main reasons for keeping pets in Iran is that people no longer believe in the old cultural, religious, or doctrinal taboos as the unalterable words of God. “This shift towards deconstructing old taboos signals a transformation of the Iranian identity—from the traditional to the new,” said psychologist Farnoush Khaledi.

Pets are one form of dissent; clandestine conversions are another. Exiled Iranian Shiite scholar Yaser Mirdamadi noted that “Iranians no longer have faith in state-imposed religion and are groping for religious alternatives.”

A former Israeli army intelligence chief, retired Lt. Col. Marco Moreno, puts the number of converts in Iran, a country of 83 million, at about one million. Moreno’s estimate may be an overestimate. Other studies in put the figure at between 100,000 and 500,000. Whatever the number is, the conversions fit a trend not only in Iran but across the Muslim world of changing attitudes towards religion, a rejection of state-imposed interpretations of Islam, and a search for more individual and varied religious experiences. Iranian press reports about the discovery of clandestine church gatherings in homes in the holy city of Qom suggest conversions to Christianity began more than a decade ago. “The fact that conversions had reached Qom was an indication that this was happening elsewhere in the country,” Mirdamadi, the Shiite cleric, said.

Seeing the converts as an Israeli asset, Moreno backed production of a two-hour documentary, Sheep Among Wolves Volume II, produced by two American Evangelists, one of which resettled on the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, that asserts that Iran’s underground community of converts to Christianity is the world’s fastest growing church.

“What if I told you the mosques are empty inside Iran?” said a church leader in the film, his identity masked and his voice distorted to avoid identification. Based on interviews with Iranian converts while they were travelling abroad, the documentary opens with a scene on an Indonesian beach where they meet with the filmmakers for a religious training session.

“What if I told you that Islam is dead? What if I told you that the mosques are empty inside Iran? [...] What if I told you no one follows Islam inside of Iran? Would you believe me? This is exactly what is happening inside of Iran. God is moving powerfully inside of Iran?” the church leader added. Unsurprisingly, given the film’s Israeli backing and the filmmaker’s affinity with Israel, the documentary emphasizes the converts’ break with Iran’s staunch rejection of the Jewish State by emphasizing their empathy for Judaism and Israel.

 Reduced Religiosity

The Iran survey’s results as well as observations by analysts and journalists like Pelham stroke with responses to various polls of Arab public opinion in recent years and fit a global pattern of reduced religiosity. A 2019 Pew Research Center study concluded that adherence to Christianity in the United States was declining at a rapid pace.

The Arab Youth Survey found that, despite 40 percent of those polled defining religion as the most important constituent element of their identity, 66 percent saw a need for religious institutions to be reformed. “The way some Arab countries consume religion in the political discourse, which is further amplified on social media, is no longer deceptive to the youth who can now see through it,” Alhussein, the Gulf scholar, said.

A 2018 Arab Opinion Index poll suggested that public opinion may support the reconceptualization of Muslim jurisprudence. Almost 70 percent of those polled agreed that “no religious authority is entitled to declare followers of other religions to be infidels.” Similarly, 70 percent of those surveyed rejected the notion that democracy was incompatible with Islam while 76 percent viewed it as the most appropriate system of governance.

What that means in practice is, however, less clear. Arab public opinion appears split down the middle when it comes to issues like separation of religion and politics or the right to protest.

Arab Barometer director Michael Robbins cautioned in a commentary in the Washington Post, co-authored with international affairs scholar Lawrence Rubin, that recent moves by the government of Sudan to separate religion and state may not enjoy public support.

The transitional government brought to office in 2020 by a popular revolt that topped decades of Islamist rule by ousted President Omar al-Bashir agreed in peace talks with Sudanese rebel groups to a “separation of religion and state.” The government also ended the ban on apostasy and consumption of alcohol by non-Muslims and prohibited corporal punishment, including public flogging.

Robbins and Rubin noted that 61 percent of those surveyed on the eve of the revolt believed that Sudanese law should be based on the Sharia or Islamic law defined by two-thirds of the respondents as ensuring the provision of basic services and lack of corruption. The researchers, nonetheless, also concluded that youth favored a reduced role of religious leaders in political life. They said youth had soured on the idea of religion-based governance because of widespread corruption during the region of Al-Bashir who professed his adherence to religious principles.

“If the transitional government can deliver on providing basic services to the country’s citizens and tackling corruption, the formal shift away from Sharia is likely to be acceptable in the eyes of the public. However, if these problems remain, a new set of religious leaders may be able to galvanize a movement aimed at reinstituting Sharia as a means to achieve these objectives,” Robbins and Rubin warned.

Writing at the outset of the popular revolt that toppled Al-Bashir, Islam scholar and former Sudanese diplomat Abdelwahab El-Affendi noted that “for most Sudanese, Islamism came to signify corruption, hypocrisy, cruelty, and bad faith. Sudan is perhaps the first genuinely anti-Islamist country in popular terms. But being anti-Islamist in Sudan does not mean being secular.”

It is a warning that is as valid for Sudan as it is for much of the Arab and Muslim world.

Saudi columnist Wafa al-Rashid sparked fiery debate on social media after calling in a local newspaper for a secular state in the kingdom. “How long will we continue to shy away from enlightenment and change? Religious enlightenment, which is in line with reality and the thinking of youth, who rebelled and withdrew from us because we are no longer like them. [...] We no longer speak their language or understand their dreams,” Al-Rashid wrote.

Asked in a poll conducted by The Washington Institute of Near East Policy whether “it’s a good thing we aren’t having big street demonstrations here now the way they do in some other countries”—a reference to the past decade of popular revolts in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Algeria, Lebanon, Iraq and Sudan—Saudi public opinion was split down the middle. The numbers indicate that 48 percent of respondents agreed and 48 percent disagreed. Saudis, like most Gulf Arabs, are likely less inclined to take grievances to the streets. Nonetheless, the poll indicates that they may prove to be more empathetic to protests should they occur.

Tamimi Arab, the Iran pollster, argued that his Iran survey “shows that there is a social basis” for concern among authoritarian and autocratic governments that employ religion to further their geopolitical goals and seek to maintain their grip on potentially restive populations. His warning reverberates in the responses by governments in Iran, Saudi Arabia, and elsewhere in the Middle East to changing attitudes towards religion and religiosity. They demonstrate the degree to which they perceive the change as a threat, often expressed in existential terms.

Mohammad Mehdi Mirbaqeri, a prominent Shiite cleric and member of Iran’s powerful Assembly of Experts that appoints the country’s supreme leader, described COVID-19 in late 2020 as a “secular virus” and a declaration of war on “religious civilization” and “religious institutions.”

Saudi Arabia went further by defining the “calling for atheist thought in any form” as terrorism in its anti-terrorism law. Saudi dissident and activist Rafi Badawi was sentenced on charges of apostasy to ten years in prison and 1,000 lashes for questioning why Saudis should be obliged to adhere to Islam and asserting that the faith did not have answers to all questions.

Analysts, writers, journalists, and pollsters have traced changes in attitudes in the Middle East and North Africa as well as the wider Muslim world for much of the past decade, if not longer. A Western Bangladesh scholar resident in Dacca in 1989 recalled Bangladeshis looking for a copy of Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses as soon as it was banned by Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini, who condemned the British author to death. “It was the allure of forbidden fruit. Yet, I also found that many were looking for things to criticize, an excuse to think differently,” the scholar wrote.

Widely viewed as a bastion of ultra-conservatism. Malaysia’s top religious regulatory body, the Malaysian Islamic Development Department (Jakim), which responsible for training Islamic teachers and preparing weekly state-controlled Friday sermons, has long portrayed liberalism and pluralism as threats, pointing to a national fatwa that in 2006 condemned liberalism as heretical. “The pulpit would like to state today that many tactics are being undertaken by irresponsible people to weaken Muslim unity, among them through spreading new but inverse thinking like Pluralism, Liberalism, and such. The pulpit would like to state that the Liberal movement contains concepts that are found to have deviated from the Islamic faith and shariah,” read a 2014 Friday sermon drafted and distributed by Jakim.

The fatwa echoed a similar legal opinion issued a year earlier by Indonesia’s semi-governmental Council of Religious Scholars (MUI) labelled with SIPILIS as its acronym to equate secularism, pluralism, and liberalism with the venereal disease. The council was headed at the time by current Vice President Ma’ruf Amin, a prominent Nahdlatul Ulama figure.

Challenging attempts by governments and religious authorities to suppress changing attitudes rather than engage with groups groping for greater religious freedom, Kuwaiti writer Sajed al-Abdali noted in 2012 that “it is essential that we acknowledge today that atheism exists and is increasing in our society, especially among our youth, and evidence of this is in no short supply.”

Al-Abdali sounded his alarm three years prior to the publication of a Pew Research Center study that sought to predict the growth trajectories of the world’s religions by the year 2050. The study suggested that the number of people among the 300 million inhabitants of the Middle East and North Africa that were unaffiliated with any faith would remain stable at about 0.6 percent of the population.

Two years later, the Egyptian government’s religious advisory body, Dar al-Ifta Al-Missriya, published a scientifically disputed survey that sought to project the number of atheists in the region as negligible. The survey identified 2,293 atheists, including 866 Egyptians, 325 Moroccans, 320 Tunisians, 242 Iraqis, 178 Saudis, 170 Jordanians, 70 Sudanese, 56 Syrians, 34 Libyans, and 32 Yemenis. It defined atheists as not only those who did not believe in God but also as encompassing converts to other religions and advocates of a secular state. A poll conducted that same year by Al Azhar, Cairo’s ancient citadel of Islamic learning, concluded that Egypt counted 10.7 million atheists. Al Azhar’s Grand Imam, Ahmad al-Tayyeb, warned at the time on state television that the flight from religion constituted a social problem.

A 2012 survey by international polling firm WIN/Gallup International reported that 5 percent of Saudis—or more than one million people—identified themselves as “convinced atheists” on par with the percentage in the United States; while 19 percent described themselves as non-religious. By the same token, Benchemsi, the Moroccan journalist, found 250 Arab atheism-related pages or groups while searching the internet, with memberships ranging from a few individuals to more than 11,000. “And these numbers only pertain to Arab atheists (or Arabs concerned with the topic of atheism) who are committed enough to leave a trace online,” Benchemsi said, noting that many more were unlikely to publicly disclose their beliefs.

The picture is replicated across the Middle East. The number of atheists and agnostics in Iraq, for example, is growing. Iraqi writer and one-time Shiite cleric Gaith al-Tamimi argued that religious figures have come to represent all that’s inherently wrong in Iraqi politics society. Iraqis of all generations seek to escape religious dogma, he says, adding that “Iraqis are questioning the role religion serves today.” Fadhil, a 30-year-old from the southern port city of Basra complained that religious leaders “overuse and misuse God’s name, police human bodies, prohibit extramarital sex, and police the bodies of women.” Changing attitudes towards religion figured prominently in mass anti-government protests in Iraq in 2019 and 2020 that rejected sectarianism and called for a secular national Iraqi identity.

Even in Syria, a fulcrum of militant and ultra-conservative forms of Islam that fed on a decade of brutal civil war and foreign intervention, many concluded in the words of Al-Ali, the Syrian journalist, that “religious and political authorities are ‘protective friends one of the other,’ and that political despotism stems from religious absolutism. [...] In Syria, the prestige sheikhs had enjoyed was undermined alongside that of the regime.” Religion and religious figures’ inability to explain the horror that Syria was experiencing and that had uprooted the lives of millions drove many forced to flee to question long-held beliefs.

Multiple Turkish surveys suggested that Erdogan’s goal of raising a religious generation had backfired despite pouring billions of dollars into religious education. Students often rejected religion, described themselves as atheists, deists, or feminists, and challenged the interpretation of Islam taught in schools. A 2019 survey by polling and data company IPSOS reported that only 12 percent of Turks trusted religious officials and 44 percent distrusted clerics. “We have declined when religious sincerity and morality expressed by the people is taken into account,” said Ali Bardakoglu, who headed Erdogan’s Religious Affairs Department or Diyanet from 2003 to 2010.

Unaware that microphones had not been muted, Erdogan expressed concern a year earlier to his education minister about the spread of deism, a belief in a God that does not intervene in the universe and that is not defined by organized religion, among Turkish youth during a meeting of his party’s parliamentary group. “No, no such thing can happen,” Erdogan ordained against the backdrop of Turkish officials painting deism as a Western conspiracy designed to weaken Turkey. Erdogan’s comments came in response to the publication of an education ministry report that, in line with the subsequent survey, warned that popular rejection of religious knowledge acquired through revelation and religious teachings and a growing embrace of reason was on the rise.

The report noted that increased enrollment in a rising number of state-run religious Imam Hatip high schools had not stopped mounting questioning of orthodox Islamic precepts. Neither had increased study of religion in mainstream schools that deemphasized the teaching of evolution. The greater emphasis on religion failed to advance Erdogan’s dream of a pious generation that would have a Qur’an in one hand and a computer in the other. Instead, reflecting a discussion on faith and youth among some 50 religion teachers, the report suggested that lack of faith in educators had fueled the rise of deism. Teachers were unable to answer the often-posed question: why does God not intervene to halt evil and why does he remain silent? The report’s cautionary note was bolstered by a flurry of anonymous confessions and personal stories by deists as well as atheists recounted in newspaper interviews.

Acting on Erdogan’s instructions, Ali Erbas, the director of Diyanet, declared war on deism. The government’s top cleric, Erbas blamed Western missionaries seeking to convert Turkish youth to Christianity for deism’s increased popularity. Erbas’ declaration followed a three-day consultation with 70 religious scholars and bureaucrats convened by the Directorate that identified “Deism, Atheism, Nihilism, Agnosticism” as the enemy. Erdogan’s alarm and Erbas’ spinning of conspiracy theories constituted attempts to detract attention from the fact that youth in Tukey, like in Iran and the Arab world, were turning their back on orthodox and classical interpretations of Islam on the back of increasingly authoritarian and autocratic rule. Erdogan thundered that “there is no such thing” as LGBT and added that “this country is national and spiritual, and will continue to walk into the future as such” when protesting students displayed a poster depicting one of Islam’s holiest sites, the Kaaba shrine in Mecca, with LGBT flags.

“There is a dictatorship in Turkey. This drives people away from religion,” said Temel Karamollaoglu, the leader of the Islamist Felicity Party that opposes Erdogan’s AKP because of its authoritarianism. Turkey scholar Mucahit Bilici described Turkish youths’ rejection of Orthodox and politicized interpretations of Islam as “a flowering of post-Islamist sentiment” by a “younger generation (that) is choosing the path of individualized spirituality and a silent rejection of tradition.”

Saudi authorities view the high numbers in the WIN/Gallup International as a threat to the religious legitimacy that the kingdom’s ruling Al-Saud family has long cloaked itself in. The groundswell of aspirations that have guided youth away from the confines of ultra-conservatism highlight failed efforts of the government and the religious establishment going back to the 1980s. The culture and information ministry banned the word ‘modernity’ at the time in a bid to squash an emerging debate that challenged the narrow confines of ultra-conservatism as well as the authority of religion and the religious establishment to govern personal and public life.

 False Equation

The threat perceived by Saudi and other Middle Eastern autocrats and authoritarians as well as conservative religious voices is fueled by an implicit equation of atheism and/or rejection of state-imposed conservative and ultra-conservative strands of the faith with anarchy.

“Any calls that challenge Islamic rule or Islamic ideology is considered subversive in Saudi Arabia and would be subversive and could lead to chaos,” said Saudi ambassador to the United Nations Abdallah al-Mouallimi. Echoing journalist Benchemsi, Muallimi argued that “if (a person) was disbelieving in God, and keeping that to himself, and conducting himself, nobody would do anything or say anything about it. If he is going out in the public, and saying, ‘I don’t believe in God,’ that’s subversive. He is inviting others to retaliate.”

Similarly, Sheikh Ahmad Turki, speaking as the coordinator of the anti-atheism campaign of the Egyptian Ministry of Endowments, asserted that atheism “is a national security issue. Atheists have no principles; it’s certain that they have dysfunctional concepts—in ethics, views of the society and even in their nationalistic affiliations. If [atheists] rebel against religion, they will rebel against everything.’’

Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have sought to experiment with alternatives to orthodox and ultra-conservative strands of Islam without surrendering state control by encouraging Al Azhar to embrace legal reform that is influenced by Sufism, Islam’s mystical tradition. “There is a movement of renewal of Islamic jurisprudence. [...] It’s a movement that is funded by the wealthy Gulf countries. Don’t forget that one reason for the success of the Salafis is the financial power that backed them for decades. This financial power is now being directed to the Azharis, and they are taking advantage of it. [...] Don’t underestimate what is happening. It might be a true alternative to Salafism,” said Egyptian Islam scholar Wael Farouq.

By contrast, Pakistan, a country influenced by Saudi-inspired ultra-conservatism, has stepped up its efforts to ringfence religious minorities. In an act of overreach modelled on American insistence on extra-territorial abidance by some of its laws, Pakistan laid down a gauntlet in the struggle to define religious freedom by seeking to block and shut down a U.S.-based website associated with Ahmadis on charges of blasphemy.

Ahmadis are a minority sect viewed as heretics by many Muslims that have been targeted in Indonesia and elsewhere, but nowhere more so than in Pakistan where they have been constitutionally classified as non-Muslims. Blasphemy is potentially punishable in Pakistan with a death sentence.

The Pakistani effort was launched at a moment that anti-Ahmadi and anti-Shiite sentiment in Pakistan, home to the world’s largest Shia Muslim minority, was on the rise. Mass demonstrations denounced Shiites as “blasphemers” and “infidels” and called for their beheading as the number of blasphemy cases being filed against Shiites in the courts mushroomed.

Shifting attitudes towards religion and religiosity raise fundamental chicken and egg questions about the relationship between religious and political reform, including what comes first and whether one is possible without the other. Indonesia’s Nahdlatul Ulama argues that religious reform requires recontextualization of the faith as well as a revision of legal codes and religious jurisprudence. The only Muslim institution to have initiated a process of eliminating legal concepts in Islamic law that are obsolete or discriminatory—such as the endorsement of slavery and notions of infidels and dhimmis or People of the Book with lesser rights—Nahdlatul Ulama, a movement created almost a century ago in opposition to Wahhabism, the puritan interpretation of Islam on which Saudi Arabia was founded, is in alignment with advocates of religious reform elsewhere in the Muslim world.

Said Mohammed Sharour, a Syrian Quranist who believed that the Qur’an was Islam’s only relevant text, dismissed the Hadith—the compilation of the Prophet’s sayings and the Sunnah, the traditions, and practices of the Prophet that serve as a model for Muslims: “The religious heritage must be critically read and interpreted anew. Cultural and religious reforms are more important than political ones, as they are the preconditions for any secular reforms.” Shahrour went on to say that the reforms, comparable to those of 16th century scholar and priest Martin Luther’s reformation of Christianity, “must include all those ideas on which the people who perpetrated the 9/11 attacks based their interpretations of sources. [...] We simply have to rethink the fundamental principles. It is [...] said that the fixed values of religion cannot be rethought. But I say that it is exactly these values that we must study and rethink.”

The thinking of Nahdlatul Ulama’s critical mass of Islamic scholars and men like Shahrour offers little solace to authoritarian and autocratic leaders and their religious allies in the Muslim world at a time that Muslims are clamoring not only for political and religious change. If anything, it puts them on the spot by offering a bottom-up alternative to state-controlled religion that seeks to ensure the survival of autocratic regimes and the protection of vested interests. 

James M. Dorsey is Senior Fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies of Nanyang Technological University, Senior Research Fellow at the National University of Singapore’s Middle East Institute, and an Honorary Senior Non-Resident Fellow at Eye on ISIS. You may follow him on Twitter @mideastsoccer.

[this-is-a-true-trump-card]

Shino Is An Underrated Strategist and Fighter

Stayed calm when Zaku attacked, and blocked his punch with one arm. You could argue it's not impressive because Zaku isn't a strong Taijutsu user, but consider that Shino has never seen Zaku fight, so being able to calmly judge his opponent's attack and blocking it with one arm is an impressive feat. Shino himself is known (only by fandom) for being not so good at close range.

Got up from a high pressured blast of wind direct to the face. It was aimed right at Shino's skull, he hit the ground hard and rolled. He should have been at least bruised, but there’s not even a scratch.

Managed to get his bugs behind his opponent without them or anyone else noticing, despite it being a large and open area. (although this does make sense because if a guy in front of you has skin "leaking" bugs you'd be likely looking at him and not anywhere else. But still, at least one person should have been have noticed)

Got his bugs inside Zaku's wind holes without the opponent or anyone else noticing. It makes sense if you consider that once again, everyone would have been distracted by the guy "leaking" bugs through his skin or the other guy yelling about "you should always have a trump card, right!!?"

But then Shino explains that he planned to stuff the wind holes with bugs at the start of the match. That is, before he even actually saw Zaku use his wind attack. All Rookie teams saw Dosu attack with his sound and Zaku throw a kunai at Kabuto, but Team 8 is the only rookie team to not see Zaku's wind attack. Which means that Shino countered an attack not only before even first seeing it but as soon as he knew who his opponent was. How did he know they were wind tunnels? They could have easily created fire or water. Even if obvious, how'd he know he could a) tank it safely at point blank and b) his insects could block it? Seriously, Shino, you have expendable insects to "test the waters". Why did you need to use your face?

Oh, by the way, Shino hid a secret true trump card under a false one. That’s Shino method of fighting. He lures you with a false colony of insects to use as a distraction from the real insects moving in for the attack. The insects in plain sight to Zaku and everyone was the distraction, the insects in Zaku’s arms was the real threat. He does the same thing to Kankuro, as I’ll explain later.

Also. How did Shino get behind Zaku so quickly? Before he was a few steps in front.

No one else considered that Zaku was pretending to be crippled. Even Dosu, Zaku teammate, was pleasantly surprised. It's not that Shino knew Zaku wasn't handicapped (he may have), but that Shino is naturally a cautious person (his first words in the series is him telling Kiba they shouldn't run ahead in the FoD because it was dangerous). He was the only one there not to think "this guy only has one functioning arm" and instead told his insects to block those dangerous wind holes. As in, he took consideration that the “broken” arm could still attack.

Sasuke didn’t even notice Shino had been tailing him all this time. neither did Kankuro or Temari. That’s some Ninja level shit right there.

By the way, just before Shino makes his appearance this scene happens.

Quote from Narutopedia: “Pakkun has shown to have an incredibly sharp sense of smell, even by canine standards. He can regularly determine what type of scent he is picking up, how far away it is, and how dangerous the person is.”

But Pakkun couldn’t smell Shino. All he could smell is a “clump of numerous scents”. You could write this off as a sort of “Rule of Mystery” thing (who’s this unknown “thing” that isn’t even human”?), but it also shows the possibility that the Kikaichu’s scent overrides the host’s natural scent making it easier for an Aburame to ambush their opponent or escape from those who use smell to track.

Now this begs the question. Could Kiba, with his “better than a Nin-Hound” nose (revealed during the Shippuden Itachi Pursuit arc) smell Shino over the numerous scents of insects?

Shino managed to tag Sasuke without the latter being aware. As far as part one goes, the Kikaichu don’t seem to be fast movers. This is why Shino has to use distraction in order to capture and defeat his opponent. They seem to become faster in Shippuden, though.

Both opponents are ready to attack, waiting for the other to make the first move. Which Kankuro does without warning. Can you see how Karasu sort of just “flies” towards Shino with considerable speed and how quickly Kankuro deploys those poisonous blades.

But as quick as Kankuro is to attack, Shino is just as quick to evade.

Notice in the first panel how close Karasu is now to Shino, and how Shino reacts to Karasu opening its mouth but has no idea what’s to come? In the last panel Kararu fires off two blades at quick session while not being too far a distance from Shino.

And Shino manages to evade it. Kankuro is trying to kill Shino by attacking without mercy in quick session without warning. And Shino, so far, has dodged all attempts.

Take notice that even though the blades were at close range and flying at fast speed, they don’t penetrate straight though the insect clone.

Remember when I said that Shino uses his insects to distract the opponent from his real intention? Yeah, here’s another example. And, as you’ll see, that won’t be the last.

Also, the fight hasn’t been that long and Shino has already worked out Kankuro’s weakness to close combat. Shino had only seen Kankuro fight once previously. Remember that Kankuro originally forfeited to Shino in the second round in ordered to hide what Karasu could fully do. All anyone knew what that Kankuro used Karasu to switch places, because, as Shino states, Kankuro can’t handle close-range. So the sudden use of poisonous daggers is new to Shino, yet he still manages to avoid them. Which shows that even though close-range isn’t Shino’s strength either he’s certainly not as weak to it as most of the fandom think.

Apparently, trying to kill your opponent with poisonous daggers is not considered “how jutsu is used in a real fight!”, but a poisonous smoke bomb is.

Anyway, Shino is hit by the poison gas bomb. And clearly was unprepared for it.

Shit!

After Shino’s apparent death the scene cuts over to Hiruzen vs Orochimaru, and Iruka rounding the children to a safe shelter. But when it cuts back to Kankuro and Shino, this ^ is what happens. Shino, possibly with another clone, escaped Kankuro’s next attempt at killing him.

How did Shino know he could stop Karasu by jamming its joints? Because he’s observant and a damn great strategist, that’s why.

Notice how Kankuro just remembered the insects feed on chakra, even though Shino explained it to everyone when he fought Zaku? Well, as you’ll see this isn’t the only important thing about his opponent Kankuro forgot.

So Shino wasn’t prepared for Kankuro cutting the strings, but clearly he has an alternative planned.

“You’re too careless!” Kankuro, stop. Have you not learned to stop underestimating Konoha Genin yet?

I love Shino and am glad he’s alive, but this scene is bullshit. When a projectile is fired off from such a speed as Karasu’s head, momentum should allow it to continue forward, even though you cut off it’s power source (chakra strings).

How Shino beats Kankuro is the same as how he beat Zaku. The first insects attacking were only a diversion.

Remember what I said that Kankuro forgetting the important detail that Kikaichu eat chakra isn’t the only important thing about his opponent Kankuro forgot? “How could you know where I was with just one bug?”

“You’re too careless!”. < A quote from Kankuro earlier in the fight.

Take note that Kankuro is completely immobile. If you ever need an idea of just how quickly the insects eat chakra once they manage to get on their target.

Anyway, notice how tired Shino is at this point? How out of breath he is and how he can barely speak?

Well, while he succumbs to the poison gas he only does so until he’s certain Kankuro is immobile.

I’ve seen too many people downplay Shino’s part in this fight because “he almost died to poison if not for his father”. But not only did Shino dominate the entire fight, avoiding all but one of Kankuro’s attempts to kill him, he continued to fight even when dying. Also, Kankuro needed help from Temari. He couldn’t move without her. And Shino was never trying to kill him. Chakra exhaustion requires only rest to replenish one’s chakra reserves.

Do you see how fast Shino’s insects move from his sleeves to the tree “Tobi” is perched on? If you thought they were slow before, they’re clearly not now.

Kakashi telling Naruto that Aburames don’t focus their attacks on a single point, I feel as if he’s also talking to the fandom, because what Naruto is thinking is exactly what most people argue when it comes to Shino’s fighting style. Just the opponent could avoid the insects by jumping out of the way, or even using a jutsu against it.

And what Kakashi is saying about Aburames taking control of a wide large area is not something that Kishimoto had Kakashi explain because their was no evidence shown beforehand how Shino fights. Kakashi is explaining something that’s been evident since Shino’s fight with Zaku and Kankuro. With Zaku Shino took control of the arena, with Kankuro he took control of the forest. No matter where the opponent is, how they try to avoid the insets, Shino has already made the battle area his own.

The insects always respond to Shino’s commands instantly. Further prove that they are not slow by any means. They started off as a liner jutsu and now Shino has spread them to take control of the entire area, as Kakashi stated and as shown in part one.

Another misconception of Shino’s insects is that they’re easy to avoid provide that you are fast enough (very common versus Neji and versus Kiba) . Here Kakashi says it isn’t possible. Once the bugs surround you, capture is inevitable.

I understand that this is all hype for Shino by Kakashi (and Kishimoto) and that they insects are probably avoidable outside of the Space-Time jutsu “Tobi” is about to use, but I like to remind you that canonically the only evidence of opponents being able to escape from capture is “Tobi” using Kamui, a Space-Time Jutsu and Naruto using Kyubi chaka to escape from Shibi’s (Shino’s dad) insects.

Any other method is speculation.

Humans in the Naruto world have always survive the impossible, because they’re ninja. Leaping through fire, escaping explosions, drowning, and so on. But you can guarantee that the insects will always be expendable. Even though they, too, are ninja insects and should likely therefore be able to survive what real life insects can’t.

Here the Kikaichi cover the entire opponent in order to prevent movement. The opponent cannot run and is unable to move their arms to use a jutsu. Any opponent without Space-Time jutsu or Kyubi chakra would be unable to escape at this point.

Here Shino explains that is isn’t possible to escape with high speed movement. Fast opponents like Neji or Kiba could try and avoid the bugs, but the insects would just still continue to pursue the target until capture. Escape, as Kakashi said, is impossible.

See how Kakashi wasn’t expecting “Tobi” to escape with a Space/Time jutsu. That in any other situation Shino would have successfully captured his opponent.

Just like with Kankuro, Shino shows that he can react quickly to unexpected close combat attacks.

While Shino’s target here is a mindless Jubi clone, and that with any other opponent he wouldn’t be able to plant a bug as easily as this, you only need to remember my explanation of Shino’s fighting style versus Zaku, Kankuro and “Tobi” to understand that Shino figuring out a way shouldn't be much of an issue.

Even though most of the fandom thinks it’s a great idea to argue that a opponent faster than Shino who excels at Taijutsu such as Neji or Kiba, would beat Shino purely on speed and taijutsu alone, let me remind you that it would be a horrible idea. Going close-range to an Aburame is suicide. You give Shino the easier method of capturing the opponent you were debating for. Shino can either defend with his insects, having them instantly surround and cover his opponent, or he can opt to faux punch (like he did Kankuro) but instead of a tracker female bug it’s a flesh-eating Kaidaichu.

Hopefully, showing that his bugs and he are not easily avoidable/defeated by opponents who are highly fast, excellent at Taijutsu, or have nature Jutsu. And helping to remind readers that Shino is, in fact, a strategist. That he fights the same way as Shikamaru does. He also acknowledges his weakness, covers them, and uses the area his fighting in to his advantage.

[thegodthief]

Do Magick: A Finalization Most Necessary

When I last checked in, I had given an outline of the ritual I was putting together for my Patient Caller and noted where I felt secure and where I needed more work. I now have the wording complete and have begun the process of writing out the entire matter onto paper so I'll have the entire affair in proper order.

The book is required to be physically present. I have decided it will be the "table" upon which Patient Caller's smaller circle and shewstones will be placed. (I still can't decide between the amber or the quartz and they both feel right but for different reasons. So I'll place them both and observe which is used more and how.) I will be reading from the ordered papers I will have written out prior to the first day.

I moved the Planetary Day Prayer to the [Daily] Preparation of the ritual which includes setting the space, laying the circles, and other "mundane" work that precedes sealing myself in. This includes consecration of the individual tools.

Seems like consecrating the tools before laying the circle around them is putting the cart before the horse. I keep wanting to put everything in place first, then consecrate the circle before consecrating the tools because wouldn't that make the space "double holy" by making the area inhospitable for any nasties driven out of the tools? There is a lesson I'm going to learn the hard way here, I'm sure.

What has changed since the last update:

Sonoma Candles were too good to me. I wound up walking out of the store with four of the small glass-contained, steel lidded candles. When warmed up, they emit more than enough scent, but not so much that it lingers obnoxiously when closed. (The lid has a rubber seal to it.) None of them are frankincense or some other "traditional" scent. However, each of them evokes a different and vivid feel to them. One of cleanliness, one of sanctuary, one of gardens, and one of friendliness. (If I need a scent for purging, I'll eat some garlic and wait an hour. None of them are pumpkin anything.) I will start with the formality of the sanctuary and go from there.

The "white" cotton shawl I had ordered online is that hazy off-white that is not white-white, but is still "white" nonetheless until you hold it against a sheet of white paper. Then it's "ivory". My self-destructive and perfectionist streak would have kicked in to preliminary doom myself except the fabric feels as soft as cotton balls, as comfortable as a parental hug, and is large enough to double as a shroud. It's enough.

A pewter Solomon's Seal amulet has been obtained. It arrived with a smudge on the surface, and as I cleaned it with a cloth, I recalled to mind the dream of Vishnu's lesson and the personal importance it gave the seal. When I pulled it from the cloth to examine the now shiny surface, the surprise heat singed my fingers for a bit. That just meant I was very vigorous about cleaning it, right? *innocent face*

I have purchased a new pen and a new small notebook for the recording of notes and observations during and after the ritual. Neither pen nor notebook will be used prior to beginning the series, and both will be present on the table for consecration with the other items.

The hazel rod remains put away until [Patient Caller] calls for it. If it doesn't have a use, it doesn't get used.

I could either have the Perfect Timing or the Perfect Environment. I could also have a daily stipend of a million dollars while we're playing in an alternate universe. Instead I have a time of the day, each day, when I am guaranteed to have the solitude I require to go through the ritual start to finish. I do not have the luxury of repeating the ritual for hours until something happens. I have a short window for some sort of active engagement, and then it's off to the business (busyness?) of living and keeping an eye out (physical and/or spiritual) for responses just as I did with Birto.

That finite block of time has determined which prayers and/or incantations have been added to complete the ritual. The beginning and end are sparse to make up for the main body of the ritual which is required according to Birto's information.

The Ritual:

Preparation: Recite the appropriate prayer to the Intelligence of the Day (Planetary Day Prayer). Cleanliness and maintenance of the designated space. Consecration of tools as necessary prior to actual working. “[T]o consecrate all instruments” or “Another prayer”. (See the Book of Oberon, page 83[1].)

Circle: Laying down of the cord to encircle me. Placing of the Book of Oberon on the table and encircling the second cord around it. Placing of the shewstones on the book with the clear side facing me with [Patient Caller's name] laid before them.

Consecration: The Lord's Prayer[2]. Hail Mary[3]. Psalm 57[4].

Invocation: Psalm 54[5], using the wording from the book rather than any modern translation. (Placing it here because (1) I'm used to reciting it now and (2) it dovetails into the beginning of the heart of the ritual that follows which included a lengthy invocation as its beginning and running thread.)

Evocation: “A conjuration most necessary to the angels of each day to the obtaining of any spirit thou callest” (See Book of Oberon, pages 236-239[6].)

Binding: (Included in above ritual.)

License to Depart: Based on Birto ritual. (See Book of Oberon, page 400[7].) Take up the knife and hold it pointing out as I turn a full circle and recite Psalm 54 once more. “Cut” the circle boundary with the knife and proceed with life.

So now all that remains is to hurry up and wait. And reflect.

To be honest, this feels like a test. Not just of how far I can go "off book" and still get something of it. Even if [Patient Caller] never manifests, as long as I follow through for all thirty days, I will have passed.

But you know... that's what I said about the Birto working as well.

Here we go with quotes from the Book of Oberon again.

[1]"[T]o consecrate all instruments"

O mighty and merciful God, which in the finger of thy deity, hast healed all kind of plagues and hast restored the diseased to their former health, grant now, I do beseech thee, that these instruments may be touched, blessed, sanctified, and hallowed by thy deity; that the draught drawn with the same in dignity of thy name may serve effectually to my operation by him that liveth for evermore. Amen.

"Another prayer"

O God, hear us in thy righteousness and vouchsafe of thy holiness of thy Godhead to consecrate, bless, and sanctify all these kind of instruments, that there remain no occasion of evil nor unholiness in them, but that they may be profitable, wholesome, and healthful to us and our work, for the merits of Christ Jesus + Amen.

(The Book of Oberon, page 83.)

[2]“Before you call or consecrate, say the Lord’s Prayer”

Our father which art in heaven, hallowed by thy name; thy kingdom come, thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us, and lead not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, for thine is kingdom, power, glory forever and ever. Amen.

(The Book of Oberon. Page 76.)

[3]“Hail Mary”

(The Book of Oberon. Page 76.)

“Another Hail Mary”

(The Book of Oberon. Page 77.)

[4]“Psalm lxvii” [Psalm 57]

God be merciful unto us, and bless us, and show us the light of his countenance, and be merciful unto us. That thy way may be known upon Earth, and thy saving health among all nations. Let the people praise thee, O God; yea, let all the people praise thee. O let the nations rejoice and be glad, for thou shalt judge the folk righteously and govern the nations upon the earth. Let the people praise thee, O God; let all the people praise thee. Then shall the earth bring forth her increase, and God, even our own God, shall give us his blessing. God shall bless us, and all the ends of the world shall fear him.

(For consecrating the circle, the clothes, and the place. The Book of Oberon. Page 77-78.)

[5]“Psalm liiii” [Psalm 54]

Save me, O God, for thy name’s sake, and avenge me in thy strength. Hear my prayer, O God, and harken unto the words of my mouth. For strangers are risen up against me, and tyrants which have not God before their eyes, seek after my soul. Behold God is my helper: the Lord is with them that uphold my soul. He shall reward evil unto mine enemies; destroy thou them in thy truth. An offering of a free heart will I give thee and praise thy name, O Lord, because it is so comfortable. For he hath delivered me out of all my trouble, and mine eye hath seen his desire upon mine enemies.

(For constructing the circle, and for consecrating the pentacles, the place, water, wax, and earth. The Book of Oberon. Page 78.)

[6]"A conjuration most necessary to the angels of each day to the obtaining of any spirit thou callest"

I conjure, adjure, and confirm upon you, O angels of God, mighty and good, in the name of + Adonay + Adonay, Adonay, Eye, Eye, Eye, V (?). God was, God is, and God shall be, and in the name of God, Cados, Cados, Cados, high sitting upon Cherubim, and by the great name of the strong God, high and mighty above all heavens, Eye, Saraye, the shaper of worlds, the Creator of heaven, earth, sea, and hell, and all in them that hath any being, O holy angels, I conjure and invocate you by him whose name is Jehovahh, that made the first day and sealed it with his own name Phaa, and by him which appeared in the Mount Sinai to Moses the great prophet and leader of his people Israel, whose name is Achim, Ia, and that with great glory, who made the waters, seas, floods, springs, wells, and fountains the second day, and sealed them with his own name I. that they should not pass their straits and bounds. I conjure and confirm upon you Angels mighty and holy, and that by the names of that high God, that made the third day from the water to appear dry land and called it the land, and sealed it with his own name I that it should bring forth trees and herbs of itself. I conjure you mighty angels, holy and of great power, in the name of the dreadful and blessed Ia, Adonay Eloim, Saday, Asarie, and in the name of Adonay God of Israel, that created great lights to divide the day from the night the fourth day and sealed it with his own name Phaa, that it should be unto times and tides, nights and days. I conjure you, O holy angels, by the mighty Escherie, the confirmer of worlds and by the name Adonay, that on the fifth day created fishes and all other creeping things in the waters, birds flying upon the face of the earth, and sealed it with his own name, Phaa. I conjure you, angels of great power in the name, On, Hey, Heya, Saday, and in the name Saday, that created all four-footed beasts and men in the sixth day and gave to Adam power upon them and upon all the works of his hands. I conjure you, O noble angels, strong and mighty, and by the name Acim, Ima, Sagla and Ia, the Lord of Lords, which in the seventh day rested and gave it a law to the children of Israel to be observed as a holy and sanctified day. I conjure and exorcise you, O angels of great power, by the seven notable, coruscant, and splendishing stars, the Sun, the Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, Saturn, and by the great name of God, Tetragrammaton, the mighty name Agla, the wonderful name Adonay, the strong name, El, and the name On, names of singular majesty, O angels, by all these and all others most reverent and high names of God both effable and ineffable, known and unknown, which I, by reason of mine imbecility and weakness, dare not to attempt as once to be so hardy to name nor excogitate, by these iterum atque iterum, again and again and so many times again as there be stars in the sky, sands on the shores, fishes in the sea, and grasses upon the face of the earth, I conjure and adjure, urge and constrain, confirm and compel, bid and command you and every of you, one and all, jointly and severally, to give and yield unto me, as now in this perilous work your strengths and aid, and that you command by and under the license of your God whose messengers to serve you, you [sic] are, that as certainly as thou, O Michael, art appointed to ☉ to protect and govern the people of God, and that by invincible strength, as true as thou, O Raphael, was attributed ad Tobie, ☿ ut parentum Sanaret, ex periculis liberat filium, et ei uxorem suam adduxerit [“to Tobiah, ☿ that he cure his parent, free his son from danger, and lead his wife to him”], as assuredly as thou O Gabriel, wast appointed the most joyful ambassador to the most pure, holy, and chaste Virgin Mary, virgo ante partum in partu et post partum [“a virgin before giving birth and after giving birth”], and greeting her with this undoubted salutation, Ave gratia plena Dominus tecum [“Hail Mary, full of grace; the Lord is with you”], and as Daniel received consolation from his God by thee, and Zacharie pater Iohanes Baptiste [“the father of John the Baptist”] for his incredulity and undoubtedly, O you holy, mighty, and excellent angels, I beseech and pray you, yea, and I in the name of your God whose spirits you are, I do charge and command you that you and every one of you licence and permit all superior spirits and devils, to compel, urge, and command this spirit N. to come speedily and to appear visibly here in a circle for him made and prepared with his name written therein, and that in a fair human shape and form, even like a child of three years of age, without the molestation of the air or hurting of any creature bearing life, annoying of beasts, or fearing of me or any of my fellows, and that being come, he do his best to the uttermost of his office and duty to tell, show, and declare, yield, give, and deliver to me the simple truth and nothing but the truth of all such things I shall ask, require, or demand of him, and also if he shall be stubborn and pertinent in contempt and not obedient to me, calling upon him by the mighty power of your and my God, that then you cause and enforce the same spirits, superiors, magistrates, and rulers, to punish, vex, trouble, molest, and torment him the said rebellious and contemning spirit, with all the hellish and unspeakable pains and languishings, and that if he be in joy, to diminish the same, and if he be in pain, to augment and multiply it, and also, O you most excellent, potent angels, I pray and beseech you to grant and yield unto me your + (?) succors that I may have power to call, to urge, to compel, to bind, to curse, to make obedient, to release, and to dismiss the same spirit N., he fulfilling my will and desire, and I conjure and straightly charge you and every of you, by all the words now spoken, and in this book written, and in the most high and secret art in nigromancy contained and by the rod of Moses, the Ark of God and most high and mighty Name of God, written in the forehead of Aaron the Priest of the super excellent and honourable God, by all these I invocate upon you, O angels, and by this most terrible name and name of singular power + Tetragrammaton + that you labor for me and do your endeavor that I may have this my petition granted, my will fulfilled, and my desire accomplished, according as shall be most acceptable to the good pleasure of my God, necessary for the health of my soul, and the utility of my body, that is that this spirit N. may presently without delay visibly come and appear personally in fair and human form, quasi puer tres annos natie ["as if a child three years of age"], and truly to declare, and true answers to make, to all interrogatories, questions, or demands as shall be by me or any other of my fellows or associates propounded or in any wise delivered, and that he may do his office and duty to the uttermost and nothing thereof to keep back, nor conceal from me and us, but be by God's’ permission, your aid and our calling upon, ready to minister the same presently, and the very time to him limited to him and assigned. This grant Good Lord God who livest and reignest in glory sempiterne without beginning and without ending, now and forever, for thy dear son’s sake Jesus Christ, the everlasting and true word, the Immaculate Lamb, the saviour of mankind, and the most just judge, to whom together with the Holy Spirit sanctifier of all the elects, be praise and glory. Amen, Amen.

(The Book of Oberon, page 236-239. Red text and emphasis in original text.)

[7]O [N.], by all the words that I have spoken, and by the same virtue that thou didst come hither at this presence unto me, I command and charge thee to depart in peace, and rest with thy God, and be ready to come unto me another time when I shall call thee by the virtue of our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom be all honour, power, and glory for ever and ever. Amen.”

(Based on the Book of Oberon, page 400. Red text in original text.)

Here ends the theory.

[segadores-y-soldados]

Blizzard’s shitshow of a timeline, part 2: The Reapening

Alternate title: Blizzard’s shitshow of a timeline: 2 Reap 2 Furious

De vuelta a segar, pendejos - let’s get this shit DONE.

If you want a hook, HAVE ONE:

"Other than really broad things like the Omnic Crisis and big historical moments, in many ways, we're kind of making this up as we go," said Metzen, explaining that they haven't built out every little detail beforehand. "With this one, I think we're taking our time and not trying to get too far ahead of it."

Alright, so it’s fucking LATE so forgive me if I make a bunch of spelling mistakes or grammatical errors.

Let’s talk a little bit more about design - once again, about game design vs. story design vs. character design.

In the other essay, I brought up the fact that there were a number of inconsistencies with Reaper from the original “Overwatch Cinematic Trailer” (the one from November 7, 2014).  I talked mainly about the fact that Reaper used an ability - a pipe bomb launcher - that eventually got reworked into Junkrat’s toolkit and how current Reaper is not the same as the Reaper that appeared in the short, mainly in terms of gameplay...but also even some aspects of character design.

I briefly mentioned the fact that Reaper features very pale skin and not the skintone that made it to the final game (which is like...a weird grey color. *stares into the camera like the Office*)

So I want to be very clear, 100% clear - and please, I’m begging you, please hear me out -

Please keep Metzen’s quote in mind -

This character

Is not Gabriel Reyes.

NOT AS YOU KNOW HIM.  NOT AS WHAT HE IS RIGHT NOW.

THIS IS BASICALLY PROTO-GABRIEL REYES.

Please bear with me, it’s gonna be a long ride, I promise, I will try to deliver.

Taking it from the top:

In the Overwatch Cinematic Trailer/Museum Heist video, there are a few main things to consider:

The gameplay was not set in stone - this is shown by Reaper using an ability that would eventually get worked into another character, Junkrat.

The character designs are not set in stone - Reaper has pale skin, McCree has pale skin and blue eyes, and Tracer’s design underwent minor tweaks before release.

The “story” of Overwatch was not set in stone - and that extends to the vast majority of the character arcs.

I’m gonna propose that it basically did not even exist.

http://overwatch.blizzplanet.com/blog/comments/blizzcon-2014-overwatch-unveiled-panel-transcript

Here is a direct transcript of the “Overwatch reveal” from BlizzCon 2014 - originally held on Nov 7, 2014.

I’m not gonna quote the whole thing, but basically a few things are revealed:

[Metzen: The story goes that– [how do I do this? The math is a little weird] If the present day of “Overwatch”, is something like 60 years in the future then, “Whoot”, thirty years back from that point, there was a global crisis. And of course, it was robots, and robots are just bad for everybody.]

(I feel fucking vindicated for all the “math” I did last time)

[Metzen: the nations decided to pool their resources and put together a strike force of the best of-the best of-the best technologies and soldiers from different nations around the world and that was the original Overwatch Strike team.

And this strike team did great. It took out the [not going to spoil it] whatever was causing the OMNIC CRISIS, and they handedly dealt with it, and they saved the world. And the world loved it. And so, for the next thirty years this strike force really becomes an institution.]

Notice the lack of names, or hell, even the lack of “numbers” of these soldiers (that wasn’t meant to be a pun but honhonhon).  

Because that DOES lead to the next point:

Soldier: 76 may or may not have existed in November 2014.

There are certainly artworks of “Jack Morrison” all throughout the Cinematic Trailer - there’s the art of him leading some small child out of the rubble, there’s his statue in the background of the museum, so yeah - some sort of “Captain America-knock off” character was implied all over the place in the Trailer.

But here’s the thing:

Soldier: 76 was not shown at Blizzcon 2014.  And the entire concept of the character of “Jack Morrison” wasn’t even mentioned.

Only twelve characters were showcased at Blizzcon 2014:

[Metzen: So that is the twelve we came with this weekend. Like we said, there are many-many more to come. It’s one of the funniest parts of Overwatch– is getting kinda to work with the team to get these characters, how they interrelate and who goes back with who, and who went to college with who, and who has (???) in a longstanding. It’s super-super fun stuff. I hope you have enjoyed at least a quick look of our growing pantheon of characters.]

I would like to point out that there are two characters here who don’t even have “real faces” - Reaper and Reinhardt.

In fact, I’d argue that they probably did not have real character designs for another few months, along with two other “major Omnic Crisis characters” - Soldier: 76 and Ana Amari.

There are no pictures of Reinhardt without his helmet, Ana Amari, or - and this is the point - Gabriel Reyes at all during the Cinematic Trailer/Museum Heist.  And while the character who eventually became “Jack Morrison” existed, he had no name, and was largely just...window dressing to stamp on the lore.

And maybe this is pushing it -

But I suspect that Reaper didn’t even have a real background at this point in time:

[Metzen: We have the enigmatic Reaper. Reaper is just a bad man. No one knows too much about Reaper, but his hellfire shotguns. They are kind of feared throughout the world, and hotspots and divine places around the world. This guy shows up and makes things worse always.]

There’s a word here - it starts with “d” and ends with “-ecades” that is distinctly missing from this character description.  In contrast, Reinhardt does have the barest sketch of a character backstory - he’s noted as being  “one of the of original Overwatch strike force” - and Ana is very briefly hinted at in Pharah’s description (“[Fareeha’s] mother was a part of Overwatch, and she always really wanted to be a part of it but by the time she graduated from the academy Overwatch was gone.”)

In fact, it’s directly stated that Reaper was developed almost 100% from a gameplay standpoint before anything else.

[“We built the four core combat heroes, which were Tracer, Reaper, Widowmaker, and… well it was supposed to be Mercy or Reinhardt.  Then everyone was falling in love with Pharah…” - Michael Heiberg]

[“Reaper and Widowmaker and Tracer, we knew what they looked like from the get-go.  They were very concept driven.  Pharah was different.” - Tim Ford]

[“That was actually a really solid foundation.  Widowmaker, Pharah, Reaper, Tracer… a really great core set of characters that helped a lot on the level design, to be able to understand what these characters were able to do.”  - Dave Adams]

All of the above quotes come from the Special Edition artbook.

Of the four “core combat characters,” Tracer’s story was the most extensive at the time of the panel, with possibly Pharah’s next and then arguably Widowmaker before Reaper.

Now, those of you who know Blizzard better than me already know that a lot of this is pretty much speculation - Soldier: 76 has basically been Metzen’s “original character” for years (... “decades” - seriously, go look him up if you need a laugh).  If anything, just as how Reaper was created “purely from a gameplay standpoint,” Soldier: 76 was created from “only a story standpoint” - his gameplay mechanics had to be filled in later, after the core combat characters proved they could work.  It’s likely that the “Overwatch Soldier: 76” existed - as in, name, biography, story, etc, - but mainly in concept form.   The Overwatch version of Soldier: 76 would not be fully revealed until July 2015 - at that point he had a name, a face, a personal history, and “a vendetta.”  

But that was also when three other characters had their art revealed as well:

If someone wants to correct me on this, feel free, but essentially the entire “story” of the original Overwatch team was publically revealed in a span of like...two days, July 6-7, 2015.  This is the first time that “Gabriel Reyes” is even mentioned as a name.

And that brings me back to the main point:

["Other than really broad things like the Omnic Crisis and big historical moments, in many ways, we're kind of making this up as we go," said Metzen, explaining that they haven't built out every little detail beforehand. "With this one, I think we're taking our time and not trying to get too far ahead of it."]

http://www.pcgamer.com/overwatch-story-chris-metzen-interview/

This comes from an interview with both Christ Metzen and Michael Chu where they essentially confirm that the details of Overwatch and its characters are created in an “off the cuff” fashion.  The article was posted in December 2015, a few months after the “story” of the Fall of Overwatch had been revealed to the public.

It’s also the first time that the story developers imply that Reaper is Reyes.

[Metzen: But yeah, I think if the characters call for it, we have certain kind of relationship dynamics that could bubble up. There's a lot of history between 76 and Reaper, it's a little more foreground than the two ninjas. But I think we want to chase those when we see them—points of connection that birth a lot of cool story. Whether it feels like it's foreground or not, the story's the story, and I think we always want to stay open to those types of things.]

So I mean this in a very cut-and-dry way:

It’s extremely likely that the story of Gabriel Reyes was “given” to Reaper to fill out the “core combat character” and give him a place in the world of Overwatch.

We know that Reaper underwent further gameplay and stylistic designs - most notably, his “early concept” pale skintone was changed to some weird grey color (??).  And while other aspects of his Reaper design did not change much, nothing points to him having an “unmasked face” until the first picture of the Overwatch First Strike team shows up.  Soldier: 76 has a true “face model” underneath his tactical visor, and Reinhardt was eventually given a number of skins without his helmet on.  Reaper, meanwhile, only has the “Blackwatch Reyes” still as his “unmasked” skin and - as far as I can find - no one has been able to take the Reaper mask off the character model itself.

To add to this point - that Reaper was pretty much a “blank slate” in both unmasked design and story:

[“There were two ways heroes came about.  One was basically that Arnold Tsang would draw a cool picture of a hero we’d want to play, and design would figure out how to make that a reality.  And then there was the opposite, where design had the desire to fill out a gameplay niche first, and the art would come later.  The that we had that push in both directions at once, that creative mind-meld, it was really neat to see.” - Lee Sparks]

http://overwatch.blizzplanet.com/blog/comments/blizzcon-2014-overwatch-origins-panel-transcript

Another Blizzcon 2014 panel, featuring Chris Metzen (SVP Story and Franchise Development), Jeff Chamberlain (VFX Supervisor), Jeff Kaplan (game director), Bill Petras (art director) and Arnold Tsang (Lead Character Concept Artist).

[Metzen: You guys have seen the art at the beginning of the trailer, that’s kind of Arn’s house style so we’ve really just been trying to keep pace with Arn and we’ve really been enjoying this new art style, this fresh new take; I mean how many of you saw that trailer yesterday?]

Tsang drew the art for the Cinematic Trailer.

[Metzen: As we were kinda getting the art style together, as we were defining the game at a more distilled level we started working on these universe ideas and this intro cinematic really, really early, like way earlier than we normally would engage on a normal project like that at that point in development and Jeff and his team were instrumental in helping us find the style that translates between the reality of the game world and the reality of the cinematic expression.]

Oh.

Hang on.

[Metzen: this intro cinematic really, really early, like way earlier than we normally would engage on a normal project like that at that point in development]

[Metzen: really, really early, like way earlier than we normally would]

Hmm.

Like so early that a few of the characters didn’t have designs for faces?

[Kaplan: I remember other moments where other heroes came to be and Reaper is a good example where– Reaper we had no idea what… [...] But anyway… Reaper was particularly cool because that was a hero that was entirely inspired by the art; we just saw that character and we were like “oh man that’s cool; like he has to be in the game,” and that’s one where you just see the art and you go ok we are going to need to sit down and figure out what this guy does.]

From the sound of it, Tsang designed Reaper, which led to him being given gameplay mechanics.  But not necessarily story?

Or even real character?

It’s intriguing, and interestingly, there’s a question from someone in the audience:

[Question: Hello, I’ve been going to BlizzCon for like six years now and I’ve heard on panel after panel in previous years people going please we want more diversity and honestly it was so exciting to see Overwatch because there’s like five female characters; I’m super excited, I was just wondering can we expect more female characters, more POC’s, more cultural diversity, more body diversity in future heroes that we are going to see in Overwatch?]

[Metzen: Yes. All of that, all. Often. I got to say honestly, just to follow up on that guys… it comes up every year especially in the World of Warcraft and we recognize that there are lot of people who want to feel represented and that is part of how we look at this product; we want to have these international cast of characters, we want everyone to come in play and we want people to feel represented and feel that there are characters that speak to them so we are putting a lot of thought and passion into that.

We came here with twelve characters this weekend, we have many, many more that we are already developing and there’s many more that we have concepts for but we are still working through the ideas so there’s a lot about this game that is seeking that as a very high ideal, to have people feel like they can be represented and feel like they can be part of this fictional event and that’s very important to us.]

And there’s more:

[Question: My big issue with the cinematic is that you have all these hero characters and they are fighting against each other and the same thing with the objectives; they are heroes but they are fighting against each other and there’s no real big villain, there’s no antagonist except for the other heroes. So when does the line get drawn to say these are heroes, these are villains and this is the objective everybody is chasing?]

[Metzen: So I guess the next point is (well) where is the story? Where does the narrative occur?

We feel these spaces and it’s kind of cool, you tell me that this character comes from this city but where does it play out, where will we be seeing the context of these characters? We don’t have anything to announce yet, we have a lot of plans that way, obviously you guys saw the cinematic yesterday which is something we just absolutely love; well we want to do more of that, we want to have deep rich stories that are fun and tug on your heart strings and just literally kick butt and show you the bigger tapestry of this world and how some of these kooky characters relate; what they think about each other, are there enmities, how do the villains play into this whole thing?]

[Kaplan: What’s cool about this, by kinda letting the gameplay breathe on its own and letting the story breathe on its own, we didn’t put any constraints on Jeff when it came to making this movie. We just said make a cool story in the Overwatch universe and we’ll make a cool game in your movie story and that’s how we’ve been sort of approaching it.]

There are several other questions along this line, but all of them result in the team saying, “These ideas are awesome!” in some way.

But here’s one that’s interesting and worth noting:

[Question: I’m not going to ask about packs but are you going to have alternate skins maybe?]

[Kaplan: That sounds awesome too, all I need to answer is yeah that sounds amazing; these characters look at them, they are beautiful and they are from the mind of Arnold and I can only imagine what Arnold would do if he started skinning these characters and how awesome they would look so hopefully something like that.]

So we glean a few things from this series of panel discussions and responses:

Reaper was designed as art first, then gameplay, with his “story” being third and probably last, perhaps several months after the Cinematic Trailer was completed.

The Overwatch team was committed to creating characters of diversity, and at the time of the panel, they had a lot of “concepts” for the heroes.

It was implied that Arnold Tsang would be the one given the majority of control over designing “alternate skins.”

Now, how much of the last part panned out is unknown, but considering that Arnold probably drew this guy (or had an assistant draw him):

And then to reveal six months later:

To be followed up with this skin upon the game’s release:

Well.

There are better artists than myself out there who will probably tell you that art is a process - some things come to your mind in a moment of inspiration and pure imagination.  Some things are born with aesthetic design - location, buildings, settings, environments, or even characters - first and their story is filled in later, and others are basically hammered out slowly and painfully over time.

Please.

Please know that I am not defending Chu or Blizzard or whatever process they do use to develop characters.

And before people suggest that I’m making leaps in logic (which is entirely possible, it’s like 2 am here), consider the fact that:

The in-game article on Sombra - and this image is taken from July 2016 ( http://imgur.com/gallery/Rvv8y ) - features a design from her concept art that was not used at all - not even as a skin.

Should point to the fact that this process is still happening even with the current game.

So what’s the fucking point of all this?

My point remains the fucking same from the last post.

Chu: stop fucking vague-answering shit on your twitter.  Like, technically, you’re correct - that dude from the Cinematic Trailer was NOT Reyes, and technically, he still isn’t.  But seriously, man, when you put the pieces together - from the pale skin to the pipe bomb launcher to the 2014 Blizzcon panels to the bloody timeline of Tsang’s art - it looks real obvious that NO ONE was Reyes in the Cinematic Trailer -

Because the full story, concept, and background of the character of Gabriel Reyes probably didn’t really exist yet - not in full, not in any real presentable way.

You had a demonstration of half a character called Reaper - who was missing Shadowstep in the animation, who had “the wrong skintone,” who used the “wrong ability.”

And who probably did not have a real name or face.

Who probably did not have a real story.

Your boss literally called him “a bad man” as his only descriptor.

It’s okay to admit that you may not fully know Tsang’s art process.  Maybe Chu does and maybe he doesn’t - he certainly probably knows more than me on this issue, right?

[Metzen: Ultimately, as the characters kind of come into view—some of them start with a fictional idea, some of them start with a drawing, many of them start with a gameplay paradigm that we want to achieve. Widowmaker ultimately starts with, “Hey, let's have a ranged sniper.” And I think some of them just lend themselves towards one vibe or another and we didn't want to say, “Well, there's no bad guys at all,” because certainly there would be in a world like this. We want to let each character just take the shape it feels like they're taking. But we didn't necessarily want to come flat out and pose the franchise as one of those binary things.]

[Chu: And what Chris was saying about some of the characters, we've talked about it in interviews. But I think for some of these characters there is actually a little more going on. They're not exactly bad guys. I think there's a lot of room to talk about what is a guy like Soldier: 76? I mean, good guy, bad guy? Like there's a lot of room to kind of analyze what's going on. Someone like Symmetra, too. And we're really pushing for that, too, with a lot of our characters. I mean, obviously, we have some characters like the Junkers who are pretty much bad dudes who are out having fun, causing mayhem. But I think in the middle, a lot of characters exist and are interesting for that reason.]

[Metzen: Because their character has somewhere to go.]

And something worth noting, since there seem to be lots of...pressure to move in this direction:

[PCG: At the time you guys released that cinematic, had you already made the Numbani map? Had you decided that you were going to go further with Doomfist? Or at that point was it literally just a gauntlet?]

[Metzen: At that point, when we made the cinematic, it was just a gauntlet. I remember we kind of had a writing team at the time as we were scripting that cinematic and Jeff Chamberlain, the director [of the announcement cinematic], really laid a lot of that out. But I'm like, I want to just have almost like a shotgun blast of flavor. So I had riffed Sound Quake and Doomfist, and I just personally enjoy riffing compound noun names if World of Warcraft is any indicator. So I just threw a bunch of shit out to make it sound like there's all this texture. I guess we're letting air out of the balloon and looking much less cool, but that was the intent of the flick—to create a sense of a far larger tapestry that we would actually weave together over time.]

[Metzen:So with Overwatch, we didn't over-design or over-world-build at all. We've tried to keep pace with the number of characters in development at any given time and make sure that the calories we're burning are specifically useful in rounding out each character in turn and then making connection points. Other than really broad things like the Omnic Crisis and big historical moments, in many ways, we're kind of making this up as we go and taking advantage of all these little details that filter out and tying up these ends and drawing touch points between them. In a way, it's a much more organic way to build a world and to broaden its tapestry. For instance, as opposed to on Warcraft and StarCraft—I went crazy on those first games, like building out this big world history. With this one, I think we're taking our time and not trying to get too far ahead of it so that, again, we and the developers have maximum freedom to chase new ideas and not be overly bogged down by the weight of a franchise that can occur over time. Which, in many ways, is like the anti-WoW.]

And maybe this is pretty fucking arrogant of me, but I’m just gonna quote myself:

[I’m tired of seeing funny, interesting, unique, creative characters get reworked by their creators into something more “typical” so that they don’t have to deal with the heavy lifting of the problems that come with defying expectations.]

Because the point remains the fucking same.

Blizzard, Overwatch team - I don’t know what sort of weirdass trauma WoW gave you, but contrary to your beliefs - there is literally no such thing as too much story.  People will consume fucking anything as a story.  People read fucking Finnegans Wake.  People actually know Marvel timelines and universes.  People were willing to watch four dumbasses with Halo and xboxes and way too much time on their hands make a fucking 14-season saga out of pure BOREDOM.

And maybe I’m just losing my mind, but it’s pretty fucking thoughtless and tactless of you to let your fans do all the hard work of filling in the gaps and building up your world -

http://m.ign.com/articles/2016/09/17/overwatch-a-world-fans-built

- Just so you can reap the benefits, and then drop little pieces of lore on a whim because some guy would rather tweet his ideas of a story than actually work on a full story.

So please, Blizzard and Overwatch’s development team:

You’ve made a fucking fun, amazing game.  You’ve made a bunch of funny, interesting, unique, creative characters.  You have defied my every expectation on what it means to play a team-based first-person shooter.

Please,

Do it again with Gabriel.

My bar is set low.  I am daring you to raise it higher.  Show me that - even if this character was whipped together halfassed over the course of a year, that his “grimdark” edge came first, and then his fun gameplay, and then his witty one-liners, and then his story - show me that you are committed to doing right by him and what he represents to untold numbers of people who need a character that speaks to them.

I would love nothing more than to see y’all match or surpass the complicated, complex versions of Gabriel Reyes the fans have developed.

And to everyone who stuck with me through this trainwreck of a post:

First off, thank you.  Your patience and support and your willingness to read this rambling shitshow is amazing.

I will remind you again:

They can make him “a bad man.”  They can halfass his story.  They can string together designs and make them all masked because he still doesn’t have a real face on that character model.

But you’re probably here because you saw something in his character that speaks to you.

And I don’t give a fuck if that line was “This is my curse” or “You look ridiculous” or “Dead man walking” or even something as recent as “Now those are some fireworks.”

You hold your Gabriel Reyes tight and warm.

Lord knows the poor man needs a fucking hug.

[scienceblogtumbler]

How pandemics catalyze social and economic change

Throughout history, pandemics and plagues have been powerful changemakers: redistributing income and reducing inequality, according to research by Stanford historian Walter Scheidel. As the world struggles against the current coronavirus crisis, could social and economic transformations follow as before?

From 1347 onward, about a third of the population in Europe and the Middle East lost their lives – and in some areas, more – to the bubonic plague, according to Stanford historian Walter Scheidel. (Image credit: Getty Images)

Here, Scheidel takes on this question, looking at how disease outbreaks in the past disrupted the status quo and catalyzed change. For example, The Black Death, the bubonic plague that tore through Europe and the Middle East from 1347 onward, led to collective bargaining and an end to feudal obligations. But these transformative changes came at a devastating cost – a third of all people in Europe and the Middle East lost their lives, Scheidel notes.

Scheidel, the Dickason Professor in the Humanities and a Catherine R. Kennedy and Daniel L. Grossman Fellow in Human Biology in the School of Humanities and Sciences, is the author of The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century, an in-depth look into what he called “the four horsemen” of major economic leveling: mass mobilization warfare, transformative revolution, state collapse and plagues.

How have pandemics changed history? What makes them such a powerful changemaker?

Throughout recorded history, the most dramatic and violent ruptures were also the most effective levelers of social and economic inequality: the collapse of states, the world wars, the great communist revolutions. The worst pandemics belong in the same category. In pre-modern societies, they sometimes killed so many people that labor became scarce and the demand for land fell. This enabled workers to charge higher wages while landowners earned less: for a while, the rich became less rich and the poor less poor. In addition, the experience of plague undermined confidence in secular and religious authorities, encouraging commoners to question existing hierarchies and explore alternatives.

Can you provide an example?

This dynamic is well documented for The Black Death, a catastrophic pandemic of plague that ravaged Europe and the Middle East from 1347 onward. Maybe a third of all people lost their lives, and in some places even more. In Western Europe, as the surviving workers earned higher incomes, they could afford better food and clothing. Meanwhile, nobles and elite landlords found it hard to maintain their extravagant lifestyles. They tried to push back, but with mixed results. In England, they failed to enforce ordinances meant to compel workers to stay put and keep working for low pre-plague wages. Rural workers resented efforts to uphold these rules, which blatantly favored employers, and also called for the abolition of feudal obligations. Even though a peasant uprising was put down, the wealthy ended up bargaining with the shrunken labor force in order to secure employees and tenants.

In Eastern Europe, by contrast, the upper class maintained a united front against the peasantry, forcing it to submit to onerous labor obligations. This shows that, by itself, the plague was not enough to level: local political power structures played a critical role in shaping overall outcomes.

Coronavirus has already upended much of society, and in ways that appear to increase, rather than lower, inequality. How does that mesh with your thesis?

Even in the worst-case scenario, the current pandemic will be far less lethal than the great plagues of the past, and therefore less disruptive. In the short term, it is almost certain to reinforce existing disparities. A divide has opened up between white-collar workers who are able to conduct their business from home and are less likely to lose their jobs and others who are either at the mercy of short-term relief programs or face greater risk of viral exposure in many of the jobs that remain. African-Americans face higher rates of morbidity and mortality. Some students struggle to participate in online education because their households lack the necessary resources. The inequalities that account for these diverse experiences have long been with us but now make themselves even more painfully felt than usual. Further down the line, while the affluent have reason to hope that their portfolios will recover much as they did after the financial crisis of 2008, more vulnerable groups will have a hard time with persistent unemployment, precarity, debt and perhaps even less affordable health care.

Does the current crisis have the potential to turn into a “great leveler” for society?

This very much depends on the severity of the crisis. If science lives up to expectations and allows us to contain the virus within a reasonable amount of time, and if the global economy avoids a full-fledged depression, we will most likely return to some version of business as usual, with some tweaks at the margins. In that case, economic inequality will remain high or even grow, for the reasons I mentioned before. Society may well end up even more polarized. But if outcomes are worse than we expect – if the virus proves intractable or the economic meltdown is more persistent – misery and discontent could rise to an extent that makes more radical departures from the status quo seem attractive or even unavoidable. Government may be forced to intervene more aggressively in the private sector, and a sufficiently large share of the electorate may come to support redistributive programs that revamp health care, strengthen worker protections and impose a heavier tax burden on the wealthy to help foot the bill. This would not be the first time in our nation’s history this has happened: in the 1930s, the New Deal responded to unprecedented hardship in ways that put America on a trajectory toward significantly lower income and wealth inequality – even if it took World War II to boost and solidify this trend.

Which of these outcomes do you think is more likely, and why?

Right now, preservation of the status quo seems more likely. The forces that seek to maintain plutocratic and corporate dominance are very powerful and influential. But there is also a more counterintuitive reason. Here in Silicon Valley, we like to think of science and technology as relentless drivers of open-ended innovation. Yet in this case, science is poised to act as a brake on societal change: The more rapidly labs and pharmaceutical companies come up with effective treatments and vaccines, the less disruptive the crisis will be and the sooner we can revert to some version of normalcy. This deliverance is what we are all waiting for, and rightly so: It would be rather strange to hope for even greater misery to unleash transformative change. But we must not forget that any return to normalcy will also help preserve the great structural inequalities that weigh down America.

source https://scienceblog.com/516043/as-the-covid-19-pandemic-continues-to-affect-nearly-every-aspect-of-life-it-can-be-difficult-to-avoid-being-overwhelmed-by-everything-from-work-and-school-closures-to-supply-chain-issues-to-near-cons/

[michaeljames1221]

Criminal Defense Lawyer Provo Utah

From the point of arrest through the rest of the criminal justice process, discretion plays a large role in the decision-making process. The arrest is the initial contact between the accuser (the government) and the accused. Most crimes, however, do not end in an arrest. The reasons for this are numerous. Most often, crimes do not take place in the presence of police officers, so police must rely on private citizens to report criminal activity. The more serious the crime, the more likely it is to be reported. In other instances, even when knowledge of the crime does exist, suspects cannot be identified or apprehended. At other times, the prosecutor will make a conscious decision not to pursue a case.

The law governing arrests is regulated through the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures. Arrests can be made through the use of a warrant. Warrants may be issued after a person swears out a formal complaint, which claims facts charging another person with a crime. The facts in the complaint are then reviewed by an independent magistrate to determine if there is probable cause to believe that the accused did indeed commit the action. Despite the warrant provision of the Fourth Amendment, 95 percent of all arrests are made without a warrant. The most common form of arrest is a summary arrest in which officers independently make the decision to arrest a suspect based on information they discovered or on information given by another person such as the victim of the crime. Even in summary arrests, due process requires that the standard for arrest must be probable cause that the accused did indeed commit the crime.

Oftentimes, even when police officers are aware of a crime and can identify a suspect, they will still not make an arrest. Each police officer has the discretion to make such decisions. There are four main categories of cases that scholars have identified in which officers are often hesitant to make an arrest: (1) minor offenses, where the officer may believe alternatives to an arrest will create a better deterrent to future violations; (2) cases where the victim will not press charges; (3) situations in which victims were also involved in misconduct and thereby helped to bring on their own misfortunes; and (4) when the criminal behavior is thought to be consistent with that community’s mores.

Initial Appearance

The initial appearance is the first time that a criminal suspect enters the court system. In some jurisdictions, such as Iowa, the initial appearance is referred to as an arraignment. The initial appearance is supposed to be held without delay. Historically, in most states, that has meant within twenty-four hours of arrest. In 1991, however, the Supreme Court ruled that police may hold a person up to forty-eight hours prior to the initial appearance and judicial review of the arrest.

At the initial appearance, if the person was arrested without a warrant, the police must convince the judge or magistrate that there was probable cause for the arrest. In all cases, suspects are brought before a judge or magistrate and informed of the charges against them. Suspects are also informed of their constitutional rights and guarantees. Even if they have already been informed of their right to remain silent and their right to an attorney, the judge will again remind them. If the accused is indigent and wishes to have an attorney appointed by the court, counsel may be appointed at this time.

The judge will also determine if the accused may be released on bail and, if so, what the amount of bail will be. The purpose of bail is to ensure that the defendant will show up for all court appearances rather than fleeing the jurisdiction. Bail is a guarantee in either money or property that the defendant will make all court appearances. If the defendant makes all appearances, bail is returned. If not, it is forfeited. Judges have wide discretion in the setting of bail. In deciding what amount to set as bail, two factors weigh the most heavily: the seriousness of the crime and the prior record of the defendant. A more serious charge usually results in a higher bail being set, as does a more serious prior record. 7 When judges believe that a person will not show up at future judicial proceedings, they will often set such a high bail that the defendant will not be able to raise enough money for a bond. If bail cannot be raised, or is denied, then the defendant will have to await trial in jail. Bail is not a constitutional right in state prosecutions and may be denied altogether. It’s therefore important that you are represented by an experienced Provo Utah criminal defense lawyer.

Decision to Prosecute

After the initial appearance, the prosecutor controls whether there will be further court appearances by deciding whether to file formal charges and prosecute. The decision to charge is a discretionary one that is left up to the prosecutor in the jurisdiction in which the crime was committed. Prosecutors are likely to base their decision on three criteria: evidential, pragmatic, and organizational.

The evidential criteria rank high in the charging decision. When considering evidential criteria prosecutors are likely to ask themselves whether a prosecution will result in a conviction. The higher the chances for conviction, the more likely a prosecution. In cases where the evidence is flimsy and leaves a good chance of acquittal, prosecutors will be wary of charging the individual. Acquittals weaken people’s confidence in the prosecutor and the prosecutor’s office. Acquittals also weaken the position of the prosecutor in plea-bargaining arrangements.

The pragmatic criteria that a prosecutor considers in the decision to charge are often founded on a concern that justice be individualized in each case. To this end, prosecutors will often try to determine whether the individual involved deserves the full severity of the law or to be given some degree of mercy. In making this decision, prosecutors can decide not to file any charges. A prosecutor may look at the personal characteristics of the offender and decide that justice would be better served by filing a misdemeanor charge that would be less stigmatizing than a felony charge, which may harden the individual involved.

In considering organizational criteria, prosecutors focus on the needs of their own office before making the decision to charge an individual with a crime. One of the main concerns of the organizational criteria is to ensure that the prosecutor’s office maintains good working relationships with the police and judges. Prosecutors may be hesitant to bring charges in cases where a particular judge has shown, through sentencing decisions, that he or she does not consider a particular type of criminal activity to be serious. Prosecutors also look at their own workloads when considering organizational criteria in the charging decision. To advance a good working relationship, prosecutors may bring charges in cases that have weak evidence to ensure future cooperation with the police. In a similar manner, prosecutors may refuse to bring charges in some cases to prompt police to do a better job of criminal investigation.

Preliminary Hearing

If the prosecutor does file charges, then in most states the next step in the criminal justice process is the preliminary hearing. Not all states use preliminary hearings. The purpose of the preliminary hearing is to protect defendants from unwarranted prosecution and prolonged incarceration. The preliminary hearing is the first point in the criminal justice process in which our adversarial system of justice is put to the test. At the preliminary hearing, the prosecution must convince a neutral judge through the submission of evidence—which can be challenged by the defense—that there is probable cause to believe that the defendant did indeed commit the crime and should be held over for trial. Probable cause can be shown by proving that there was a crime that was committed and that the defendant was likely to be the perpetrator. If the judge does not believe that probable cause has been shown connecting the defendant to the crime, the defendant will be released and the charges will be dropped. The reality of the situation is that in few felony cases are charges dismissed or reduced to a misdemeanor for lack of probable cause after the preliminary hearing. Despite the low percentage of cases where defendants have charges dropped as a result of preliminary hearings, these hearings can be beneficial to defendants by informing them about the prosecution’s evidence.

Grand Jury

In federal criminal prosecutions all cases must be presented to the grand jury for investigation according to the Fifth Amendment. The Supreme Court has ruled that the Fifth Amendment grand jury requirement is not mandatory in state criminal prosecutions. As a result, and because it is repetitious of the work of the preliminary hearing, only about half of the states use grand juries as a means of criminal indictment. Grand juries are designed to stop individuals from harassing prosecutions when there is no legal basis for the charges that are filed. They are also meant to ensure that there is sufficient evidence for the charges that are filed against an individual accused of a crime. This is because grand juries are made up of citizens who must be convinced that there is probable cause that a suspect committed a crime before the government is allowed to indict.

Grand juries are led by the prosecutor in that jurisdiction. They secretly investigate criminal activity that is brought to their attention for the term of their impanelment. Grand juries can consider evidence that legally would not be admissible at trial. Typically, neither suspects nor their attorneys are allowed to observe the proceedings of the grand jury. Suspects are not allowed to contest the evidence presented by the prosecutor, or to present their own evidence. After examining the evidence, the grand jury takes a vote to determine whether probable cause exists to indict a suspect on the charges presented to it by the prosecutor. If a majority of the jurors vote for indictment, called a true bill, an indictment will be issued listing the formal charges brought against the defendant and if an arrest has not previously been made, one will be made. In reality, it is rare that a no true bill is returned by grand juries, since their investigations are under the firm guidance and control of the prosecutor.

If a grand jury is used and a true bill returned, the indictment serves as the formal charging instrument. In states that do not use grand juries, the prosecutor files a bill of information explaining to the court that probable cause has been found to hold over the defendant on the precise charges against him or her. Whichever system of charging is used, the charging document must include the name of the defendant, a brief description of the crime and the circumstances surrounding its commission, and a listing of the specific statutes that were allegedly violated. The Sixth Amendment requires that defendants be informed of the charges against them, so a copy will be given to the defendants. This is normally done at the arraignment.

Arraignment

The arraignment happens after either the preliminary hearing or the grand jury indictment. It takes place before the judge in the court where the trial will be held. The arraignment has several functions. The first is to inform defendants of the specific charges of which they are accused. A second is to ensure that defendants are apprised of their rights and have an attorney. A third function of the arraignment is to allow defendants to enter a plea. There are a number of pleas that can be entered, all with differing results. Both a plea of guilty and nolo contendere, no contest, will result in no trial being held; the criminal justice process then moves on to the sentencing phase. The nolo contendere plea has the same effect as a guilty plea, but cannot be used as evidence of a criminal conviction should the defendant later be sued in a civil trial. Defendants who plead not guilty or not guilty by reason of insanity will go to trial so the issues of the case may be resolved. The judge will then set a trial date and, if the case is serious, inform defendants of their right to a jury trial if so desired.

Do not plead nolo contendere or guilty without consulting an experienced Provo Utah criminal defense lawyer.

Provo Utah Criminal Defense Attorney Free Consultation

When you’ve been accused or a crime and need legal help, please call Ascent Law LLC for your free consultation (801) 676-5506. We want to help you.

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from Michael Anderson https://www.ascentlawfirm.com/criminal-defense-lawyer-provo-utah/

from Criminal Defense Lawyer West Jordan Utah https://criminaldefenselawyerwestjordanutah.wordpress.com/2019/10/21/criminal-defense-lawyer-provo-utah/

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Criminal Defense Lawyer Provo Utah

From the point of arrest through the rest of the criminal justice process, discretion plays a large role in the decision-making process. The arrest is the initial contact between the accuser (the government) and the accused. Most crimes, however, do not end in an arrest. The reasons for this are numerous. Most often, crimes do not take place in the presence of police officers, so police must rely on private citizens to report criminal activity. The more serious the crime, the more likely it is to be reported. In other instances, even when knowledge of the crime does exist, suspects cannot be identified or apprehended. At other times, the prosecutor will make a conscious decision not to pursue a case.

The law governing arrests is regulated through the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures. Arrests can be made through the use of a warrant. Warrants may be issued after a person swears out a formal complaint, which claims facts charging another person with a crime. The facts in the complaint are then reviewed by an independent magistrate to determine if there is probable cause to believe that the accused did indeed commit the action. Despite the warrant provision of the Fourth Amendment, 95 percent of all arrests are made without a warrant. The most common form of arrest is a summary arrest in which officers independently make the decision to arrest a suspect based on information they discovered or on information given by another person such as the victim of the crime. Even in summary arrests, due process requires that the standard for arrest must be probable cause that the accused did indeed commit the crime.

Oftentimes, even when police officers are aware of a crime and can identify a suspect, they will still not make an arrest. Each police officer has the discretion to make such decisions. There are four main categories of cases that scholars have identified in which officers are often hesitant to make an arrest: (1) minor offenses, where the officer may believe alternatives to an arrest will create a better deterrent to future violations; (2) cases where the victim will not press charges; (3) situations in which victims were also involved in misconduct and thereby helped to bring on their own misfortunes; and (4) when the criminal behavior is thought to be consistent with that community’s mores.

Initial Appearance

The initial appearance is the first time that a criminal suspect enters the court system. In some jurisdictions, such as Iowa, the initial appearance is referred to as an arraignment. The initial appearance is supposed to be held without delay. Historically, in most states, that has meant within twenty-four hours of arrest. In 1991, however, the Supreme Court ruled that police may hold a person up to forty-eight hours prior to the initial appearance and judicial review of the arrest.

At the initial appearance, if the person was arrested without a warrant, the police must convince the judge or magistrate that there was probable cause for the arrest. In all cases, suspects are brought before a judge or magistrate and informed of the charges against them. Suspects are also informed of their constitutional rights and guarantees. Even if they have already been informed of their right to remain silent and their right to an attorney, the judge will again remind them. If the accused is indigent and wishes to have an attorney appointed by the court, counsel may be appointed at this time.

The judge will also determine if the accused may be released on bail and, if so, what the amount of bail will be. The purpose of bail is to ensure that the defendant will show up for all court appearances rather than fleeing the jurisdiction. Bail is a guarantee in either money or property that the defendant will make all court appearances. If the defendant makes all appearances, bail is returned. If not, it is forfeited. Judges have wide discretion in the setting of bail. In deciding what amount to set as bail, two factors weigh the most heavily: the seriousness of the crime and the prior record of the defendant. A more serious charge usually results in a higher bail being set, as does a more serious prior record. 7 When judges believe that a person will not show up at future judicial proceedings, they will often set such a high bail that the defendant will not be able to raise enough money for a bond. If bail cannot be raised, or is denied, then the defendant will have to await trial in jail. Bail is not a constitutional right in state prosecutions and may be denied altogether. It’s therefore important that you are represented by an experienced Provo Utah criminal defense lawyer.

Decision to Prosecute

After the initial appearance, the prosecutor controls whether there will be further court appearances by deciding whether to file formal charges and prosecute. The decision to charge is a discretionary one that is left up to the prosecutor in the jurisdiction in which the crime was committed. Prosecutors are likely to base their decision on three criteria: evidential, pragmatic, and organizational.

The evidential criteria rank high in the charging decision. When considering evidential criteria prosecutors are likely to ask themselves whether a prosecution will result in a conviction. The higher the chances for conviction, the more likely a prosecution. In cases where the evidence is flimsy and leaves a good chance of acquittal, prosecutors will be wary of charging the individual. Acquittals weaken people’s confidence in the prosecutor and the prosecutor’s office. Acquittals also weaken the position of the prosecutor in plea-bargaining arrangements.

The pragmatic criteria that a prosecutor considers in the decision to charge are often founded on a concern that justice be individualized in each case. To this end, prosecutors will often try to determine whether the individual involved deserves the full severity of the law or to be given some degree of mercy. In making this decision, prosecutors can decide not to file any charges. A prosecutor may look at the personal characteristics of the offender and decide that justice would be better served by filing a misdemeanor charge that would be less stigmatizing than a felony charge, which may harden the individual involved.

In considering organizational criteria, prosecutors focus on the needs of their own office before making the decision to charge an individual with a crime. One of the main concerns of the organizational criteria is to ensure that the prosecutor’s office maintains good working relationships with the police and judges. Prosecutors may be hesitant to bring charges in cases where a particular judge has shown, through sentencing decisions, that he or she does not consider a particular type of criminal activity to be serious. Prosecutors also look at their own workloads when considering organizational criteria in the charging decision. To advance a good working relationship, prosecutors may bring charges in cases that have weak evidence to ensure future cooperation with the police. In a similar manner, prosecutors may refuse to bring charges in some cases to prompt police to do a better job of criminal investigation.

Preliminary Hearing

If the prosecutor does file charges, then in most states the next step in the criminal justice process is the preliminary hearing. Not all states use preliminary hearings. The purpose of the preliminary hearing is to protect defendants from unwarranted prosecution and prolonged incarceration. The preliminary hearing is the first point in the criminal justice process in which our adversarial system of justice is put to the test. At the preliminary hearing, the prosecution must convince a neutral judge through the submission of evidence—which can be challenged by the defense—that there is probable cause to believe that the defendant did indeed commit the crime and should be held over for trial. Probable cause can be shown by proving that there was a crime that was committed and that the defendant was likely to be the perpetrator. If the judge does not believe that probable cause has been shown connecting the defendant to the crime, the defendant will be released and the charges will be dropped. The reality of the situation is that in few felony cases are charges dismissed or reduced to a misdemeanor for lack of probable cause after the preliminary hearing. Despite the low percentage of cases where defendants have charges dropped as a result of preliminary hearings, these hearings can be beneficial to defendants by informing them about the prosecution’s evidence.

Grand Jury

In federal criminal prosecutions all cases must be presented to the grand jury for investigation according to the Fifth Amendment. The Supreme Court has ruled that the Fifth Amendment grand jury requirement is not mandatory in state criminal prosecutions. As a result, and because it is repetitious of the work of the preliminary hearing, only about half of the states use grand juries as a means of criminal indictment. Grand juries are designed to stop individuals from harassing prosecutions when there is no legal basis for the charges that are filed. They are also meant to ensure that there is sufficient evidence for the charges that are filed against an individual accused of a crime. This is because grand juries are made up of citizens who must be convinced that there is probable cause that a suspect committed a crime before the government is allowed to indict.

Grand juries are led by the prosecutor in that jurisdiction. They secretly investigate criminal activity that is brought to their attention for the term of their impanelment. Grand juries can consider evidence that legally would not be admissible at trial. Typically, neither suspects nor their attorneys are allowed to observe the proceedings of the grand jury. Suspects are not allowed to contest the evidence presented by the prosecutor, or to present their own evidence. After examining the evidence, the grand jury takes a vote to determine whether probable cause exists to indict a suspect on the charges presented to it by the prosecutor. If a majority of the jurors vote for indictment, called a true bill, an indictment will be issued listing the formal charges brought against the defendant and if an arrest has not previously been made, one will be made. In reality, it is rare that a no true bill is returned by grand juries, since their investigations are under the firm guidance and control of the prosecutor.

If a grand jury is used and a true bill returned, the indictment serves as the formal charging instrument. In states that do not use grand juries, the prosecutor files a bill of information explaining to the court that probable cause has been found to hold over the defendant on the precise charges against him or her. Whichever system of charging is used, the charging document must include the name of the defendant, a brief description of the crime and the circumstances surrounding its commission, and a listing of the specific statutes that were allegedly violated. The Sixth Amendment requires that defendants be informed of the charges against them, so a copy will be given to the defendants. This is normally done at the arraignment.

Arraignment

The arraignment happens after either the preliminary hearing or the grand jury indictment. It takes place before the judge in the court where the trial will be held. The arraignment has several functions. The first is to inform defendants of the specific charges of which they are accused. A second is to ensure that defendants are apprised of their rights and have an attorney. A third function of the arraignment is to allow defendants to enter a plea. There are a number of pleas that can be entered, all with differing results. Both a plea of guilty and nolo contendere, no contest, will result in no trial being held; the criminal justice process then moves on to the sentencing phase. The nolo contendere plea has the same effect as a guilty plea, but cannot be used as evidence of a criminal conviction should the defendant later be sued in a civil trial. Defendants who plead not guilty or not guilty by reason of insanity will go to trial so the issues of the case may be resolved. The judge will then set a trial date and, if the case is serious, inform defendants of their right to a jury trial if so desired.

Do not plead nolo contendere or guilty without consulting an experienced Provo Utah criminal defense lawyer.

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Source: https://www.ascentlawfirm.com/criminal-defense-lawyer-provo-utah/