#also the idea that they will never gain power is an inherent misunderstanding of the structure of a dnd campaign

[disastergenius]

I keep seeing arguments that Bell's Hells at the end of the campaign are still largely powerless in the world, have no privileges (at least not on the scale of the other parties), and are not trusted to handle the problems of their own campaign and are instead pushed aside in favor of letting previous PCs fix things. And that is odd, since that argument is simply not supported by the text of the campaign (nor on a meta level).

For all that Bell's Hells starts as nobodies, the side characters in someone else's stories, the could-have-easily-been-NPCs, this isn't a distinction that BHs hold as a party. This is quite literally the premise of most TTRPG parties, we can see that with the previous CR parties. It's cool to see at the beginning of the campaign while they find their footing as a group, but at some point that becomes untrue as they gain power. And Bell's Hells never quite seems to grasp that they are no longer the underdogs, or at least that the power gain has given them true influence in the world.

For what it's worth, Dorian while estranged from his parents/the Silken Squall still comes from a position of privilege, Orym was a guard to the Voice of the Tempest, Ashton has a beacon in their head, Imogen is tied to Ruidus with a mother in high command in the opposing force, Fearne has a good relationship with the Fate Stitcher, Laudna has a previously known evil necromancer granting her power, FCG is an aeormaton. Again, this is pretty common for a DnD party to have mysterious backstories and strange ties to be explored within the campaign, those are plot hooks! But it does not make them unique among the other CR parties nor dnd parties in general, and saying that they were uniquely disadvantaged or started from worse places really doesn't hold up. They are on par with the previous parties, and the only difference that they hold is a Doylist one that ties them to previous campaigns and thus alters the audience perception, but this doesn't undercut them on a Watsonian level.

The idea that they have essentially "pulled themselves up by their bootstraps" is also not supported. They acquire a rich and highly skilled patron by Episode 2 (Estheross) who supports them through most of the early campaign. While he later dies (rip to mentors, statistically unlikely to survive stories) he still gifts them an entire airship while they are Level 7, granting them the ability to travel far and easily while still relatively low-level. They have Ira on their side, and despite how tenuous that relationship is, this is still a relatively high-powered entity that they encounter early. They invoke the idea of Nana Morri early on as a potential avenue for help, and Planerider Ryn takes interest in them early as well through Hondir as part of the Grim Verity.

There are a few arguments floating about regarding the gathering of information during this campaign, specifically that it was gatekept and difficult. In contrast to M9 that had access to Cobalt Soul libraries, information was more difficult to attain during this campaign comparatively, but not in the understanding of a DnD campaign. Investigation checks exist, and gathering of information from shadowy hidden sources and secret societies is the stuff that DnD (and fantasy as a whole) have been built on, so this doesn't stand out as something that should have been a problem from that perspective. Instead it is Bell's Hells as characters that show little interest in pursuing that information via those means (high int parties are a boon in this regard).

Similarly, the artifacts they acquire at low level are destroyed via character choices (with some meddling from the DM). The gnarlrock is never followed up with after Delilah absorbs it, so we never found out what it did. Ashton shatters the green lens thing so we never figure out what it's use is either (and from the way it went, it might have been important?)

They have Keyleth on speed-dial to try and resurrect Laudna, and when she can't, she calls in the rest of Vox Machina, so Bell's Hells have now gained recognition of very powerful people who are willing to help them then and offer help later. Powerful aid in Whitestone is not something that previous parties ever would have been able to call in (easy example: part of why Molly couldn't be resurrected).

While it is still very much under the radar, they are tasked with destroying one of the Malleus keys by Planerider Ryn. They are later tasked with helping at the Tishtan site by Beau and Caleb, who we also know wield influence in the world (via the Cobalt Soul, though I think this is still considered relatively under the radar as well given the way we see them working in M9 Reunited and EotRS). Trusting BHs with such a mission while not knowing them is instilling quite a bit of trust in them as a group (Watsonian explanation), so to say that they hold no recognized power at this point is laughable.

Fearne and Ashton acquire the Titan Shards. They gain the funnel harness to siphon extra magical items into in exchange for feats. Imogen and Laudna continue to feed into strange forces to gain power. Power gained never seems to register for BHs, instead they stagnate and believe they have limited ability to affect change.

Bell's Hells are tasked with doing Ruidus reconnaissance by a war counsel that includes many of Exandria's most powerful. This really undercuts the argument that they are not trusted to handle important tasks. This is Exandria's first real contact with the red moon, and they are trusting BH to go in and report back while not actively causing more issues.

I know a lot of the BHs defenders really hate him, but Essek being the M9 emissary and taking them to Aeor where we know there are many interesting things to explore is another indicator that they are trusted by M9. This connection also becomes important later.

Once back from the moon, BH are once again privy to several war counsels with an even larger number of Exandrian leaders in Vasselheim (the Exandrian UN if you will). They are granted time to speak on their experiences and weigh in on what they believe should be done. Largely, their suggested plans are accepted and adapted. At this point, Bell's Hells have comparable notoriety to Vox Machina in C1. Notably, M9 are not even present for these counsels and are vouched for by Allura and the Kryn, and most of the leaders don't seem to know who they are (truly the heroes no one knows). Bell's Hells are then given the task of taking down Ludinus, who has been the face of the villainy in Exandria (as the orchestrator of this plan) and the campaign. This is a huge task for Bell's Hells to be entrusted with; VM is basically running interference and M9 is taking down a side villain organization, BH is being given the ultimate task. This does lean a bit Doylist in the sense that this is their campaign, what else were they going to do, but on a Watsonian level, for the Exandrian leaders, this is the ultimate end result: to take down Ludinus and stop whatever other plans he and the Ruby Vanguard have.

Bell's Hells naturally draw the attention of the gods, given that it is their fates that they are deciding. They are offered many perspectives and notably not immediately smote down in the way that some party members thought might happen. This is comparable again to C1's many interactions with the gods.

Here is where it really gets fun: the finale to C3 and the trilogy of long-form campaigns. Bell's Hells are the ultimate deciders of the fate of Exandria when they decide to take in Predathos and hold counsel with the gods. At this point, the idea that they have no power is absurd. Bell's Hells isn't shy about showing that off either as they march back into Vasselheim and demand an audience with the gods while telling everyone else to fuck off because they now hold the power to call the shots. And they get their way because of it! The second they are challenged they are shown to be the ones holding all the cards (ie the threat of Predathos).

In invoking powerful people, Bell's Hells are the ones who actively call out help from both Pike, Caleb, and finally Essek when trying to revive Ashton, which has reverberating consequences for Essek (and Caleb and the rest of M9 with the Kryn), but are never addressed by BHs. This has a more Doylist answer where the cast simply needed someone to intervene and Essek was the closest after Pike and Caleb couldn't; the alternative is letting Ashton die, and they rightfully aren't willing to let him go that easily. But it requires that they ask for help, and it is not a DM deus ex machina that saves them, but characters they also control, so this push of responsibility is their decision that they could have simply not taken.

After they resolve Predathos, the idea that they are pushed aside to let previous PCs who are privileged (in ways other than the ways that BHs are not) fix everything is simply untrue. Bell's Hells go to advocate for the Ruidus citizens coming to Exandria, which is the current most pressing issue that they can speak to, given that they do not care about the followers of the gods handling the resulting fallout and BHs are not leaders in Exandria and thus will not be directly involved in the task of having to rebuild on this scale. This fits within their contexts as characters and place in the world, it does not show them as being unimportant in ways that diminish them at the end of their campaign. They will not be seeking out the gods in their mortal forms, they will at best be acting as emissaries as relations form between Ruidus and Exandria, and even then, we see them do this in a very limited capacity (if at all). Laudna and Imogen help the immigrating Ruidians for an indeterminate amount of time and then settle down in their cottage. Bell's Hells as a whole are more interested in taking a break, which is fair and well-deserved, but does live in stark contrast to the way that previous parties realized there was an endless amount of work to still be done at the end of their respective campaigns.

Bell's Hells end the campaign with their power sets largely intact and go back into the world holding that same level of power, like the parties before them.

In comparison to the other campaigns, they end on a relatively similar level to the Mighty Nein, as people who may have some level of power that can be used (and open-ended enough to leave room for their return and for fans to fill in the gaps to their hearts' content).

They go back to their lives and settle down in many respects, or at least what passes as settling down for former adventurers. The characters actively choose not to pursue anything related to the rebuilding of Exandria with the gods no longer behind the Divine Gate. Laudna and Imogen helping with the Ruidian immigrants for an unspecified amount of time before settling down away from that, and after that, the closest we get is Orym remaining as a Tempest Blade before deciding to leave that, and Fearne starting to take lessons with Nana Morri which positions her to have a powerful role in the future (again, knocking the argument that they end with no power either).

The members of Bell's Hells did not pursue power and influence at the end of the campaign, and if they wanted to, I'm sure there would have been space for them to do so. But the lack of political/worldly influence at the end of the campaign is purely the decisions of the players, not because they were pushed aside by other PCs. Bell's Hells gains through the campaign grant them the same level of privilege and power that the other campaigns essentially ended on, and trying to position them as diminished or lessened during or at the end of the campaign is not supported by the show.

[fights4users]

We would’ve made a great team-

Sark’s borderline obsession with Tron is so interesting. He both admires and fears him, understands him perfectly but misunderstands him on a fundamental level. Both stand on opposite sides of the extreme, similar to each other in strength and ferocity but departed on a base level. The idea of them teaming up brings a interesting au to mind and several things to explore, however It would never happen unless Encom! Rinzler would become a thing. Teaming up with Red Elite would never be done willingly on Tron’s end while for Sark it might begrudgingly work with Tron.

There has to be a way to break him-

Sark has a morbid fascination with finding Tron’s breaking point. He keeps upping the stakes and throwing him into games more often, unwittingly making the weapon that would be his doom.

While he enjoys testing him there’s almost a jealousy to it, Tron hasn’t died yet and he hasn’t given in. Surely he must give in , toss aside his ridiculous beliefs and take what’s offered. Why isn’t he taking the obvious path for survival? How dare Tron be better than him. “I broke, why won’t he?” Holding on so tightly to morality when you tossed aside everything for power… how dare he be a better person.

Sark treats Tron as a plaything while acknowledging how powerful he is as an adversary. (The match we saw him in was 4-1) He battles with wanting to kill him outright and wanting to face him himself. It took most of his resources to capture Tron- going against him would be a actual challenge, as we see in the beginning of the movie he’s getting bored.

While they share combat prowess their thought process could not be more different. Everything that he’s put Tron through has only succeeded in strengthening his beliefs. Where Sark thinks he should break down , he sees confirmation of the User’s power. It’s fascinating (I really recommend the novelization- that’s my thing at this point lol but it adds a lot).

Chosen warriors-

It’s easy to forget that Sark too is a gods chosen warrior. The MCP is a god to him and on the path to literally becoming one in their world with the power it accumulates. He has been bolstered up and admired by his side, though his position is one built more on fear than equal admiration. We see again they’re on the opposite sides of the two extremes.

The loyalty, drive and sense of justice etc that’s naturally apart of Tron’s code had to be forced into Sark. He had to build upon what was already there, it’s implied that the only reason he’s a command program is the MCP just like Dillinger without it he is nothing. There’s that jealousy when he sees someone else naturally have this sort of power. His belief in the MCP is not inherent , he believed in the Users once and deep down he still does- the new belief comes from where he can gain that power. Like Dillinger he is desperate to get to the top by any means, and he did that. He’d rather die than return to nothingness- a state of unimportance- where as Edward is much more fretful. He doesn’t want to loose what he has but jail still scares him.

He is also physically dependent on the MCP - getting a high from the power and I think now he has to get a constant stream to survive. The amount put into him on a regular basis is far to much for a regular program to take in and keep online… if he stops getting it I can only imagine. He’s being held captive by his god and I think he can resent Tron for that- for still having the “pure” relationship with his.

Power, fear and relevance-

I talked about it above with how Sark has done everything in his want for power tossing away all morality for the sake of being important. It makes me wonder what his original function was, with the way he is I can imagine it being a good position but not enough for him. He relishes in the destruction of User believers and finds crushing them on the game grid entertaining, again to parallel Dillinger taking others work, crushing and absorbing smaller companies into Encom with glee.

Tron is a direct threat to that importance, that position and acclaim he had destroyed so many for. He was loyal! He did all that he was asked and here struts in a program naturally strong and exacting— he knows if Tron ever chose to join them he is done for yet his pride and curiosity keep him from outright killing him to save his own skin (how unlike him in any other circumstance).

This fear doesn’t extend to Alan as Ed is well aware… good guys rarely win in the real world. He’s cocky, he knows a guy like that is a straight shooter, he follows the rules and wouldn’t dare stoop to his level to stop him. What he didn’t count on was Kevin Flynn.

[shysurvivor]

Gender identity is what you identify as, (such as male, female, neither, both) and gender roles are the ideas of masculinity and femininity that society has created like women are supposed to get married, have children, take care of the children, be emotional amd fragile etc and men are supposed to be strong, brave, make a living for hia family, never cry etc. Have a great day!

Okay some thoughts on this. We live in a material world that means we tie meaning to material things. If I say 'stone' you all know that I mean a hard sometimes round thing that is made out of some minerals (i am no geologist so if you have a better definition you're welcome to share it with me :)).

Sometimes my mom and I misunderstand each other when it comes to colours. We have the same talk everytime we see some teal/turquoise colour and my mom calls it green and I blue and in the end we settle on turquoise. And it is usually settled by me grabbing/pointing at whatever thing we talk about to make sure mean the same thing. So that's how talking works right? That's why we have dictionaries and definitions and everything.

So the fact is that mammals can be divided into three categories. And the third is so tiny that it does not discredit the existence of a binary. Each mammal species reproduces by sexual intercourse between male and female. That's how life is created.

Male and Female describe some material reality. Yes, every genital looks different. Yes, not every male has exactly the same body BUT even though it might look different we can still clearly define male and female members of a species by external factory.

(btw this does not under any circumstances exclude trans people and their lived reality as they also have a body and also can usually be categorized as female or male)

Okay so we all know the colour red. But let's say I don't identify it as red but as blue. And I go around and talk about 'blue' things and point to the red things when people are confused. Conversation is difficult as nobody understands me. And it complicates even more if another person comes along, point to the red thing / 'blue' thing and calls it 'yellow'.

Red, blue, yellow are all colours. So regardless what word you use, you still indicate a colour with it. But if you use the word 'windy' to describe the colour of a red ball, you get even more confusion as people don't know what the hell you are talking about.

Language only works if we have clear definitions of the words we use. That's why people introducing new concepts / words have to explain them in detail.

Gender roles and gender identity both use the word gender, that means, gender itself has a meaning. That means that gender is a specific role and a specific identity. Identities are usually ascribed due to external features. I can be identified as blonde because of my hair colour. I can be identifies as right handed because I write always with my right hand.

Gender once meant male / female. And male / female once meant that someone had a male body AND because of that HAD TO behave masculine / live up to the masculine ideal. Masculine was the adjective to describe a male human beings behaviour. And this behaviour was not really something that came naturally to the male bodied person but something that needed to be taught.

So feminists (both male and female) came to the conclusion that masculinity and femininity was not something natural or really tied to the genetic make-up of a person. Hormones didn't make you submissive and a homemaker. So they decided to split the word 'gender'.

Gender - Masculinity and Femininity.

It describes the way female and male humans have to behave. It is in itself oppressive and a tool of the class society to control the people, secure unpaid domestic labour by teaching females femininity and keep the lower classes from power by keeping them busy through masculinity and its ideas of the bread winner.

And then we have

Sex - Female / Male (and intersex I would argue)

Sex is the head category of female and male. Female and Male are words that describe a specific set of body parts and functions like the production of sperm OR ova, the ability to carry a child in the uterus, the lack of a uterus and what not. (i am no sexual health educator nor biologist but I think you all get the idea)

But now people muddle these very distinct words and by that their very distinct meanings together when they use 'gender'. Because from context they don't mean femininity or masculinity. Because nobody inherently identifies as feminine or masculine. Because you can only be feminine or masculine of you behave feminine or masculine. That means, when others can see your behaviour and label it accordingly. Just as we all see red and label it accordingly.

So you don't mean gender as in masculinity or femininity, you mean male and female. But again, I cannot identify myself as something. I cannot identify myself as French when I never ever lived in France and have no family ties to it. I cannot identify as a person of colour when I am the best example for a white European and have no, absolutely no connection (genetic or cultural or whatsoever) to back up that claim.

Female and Male (or intersex) is nothing that I can identify as. It is something that I simply am based on my body.

And again, this has nothing to do with transsexuals / transgenders (whatever gender means in that context) because this is about language AND the fact that the majority of humans can be categorized into female or male or rarely as intersex.

So yeah, gender is not the same as sex because gender is a tool to oppress people, to keep them in line and to keep them from challenging the class system and through that, from gaining power. If you want to help society, abolish the notion of femininity and masculinity. Abolish the class system and by doing that, you will also abolish free market economy, racism and antisemitism. And reach real equity.

But to do all that we need to understand each other. So if you use the word 'gender' please, take the time to explain in what context you use it. And if you validate femininity / masculinity, be aware that you are validating a tool of oppression.

Thank you for your patience :)

[allbeendonebefore]

a crackship concept: ralph x oliver. (am i kicked out of the fandom yet? lmao) but since you’ve lived in both provinces for a while, any input on this?

It’s not a crackship by a long shot since they both regularly interact (i mean... they should anyway) (are we judging who interacts with whom by what standard at this point lmao)

I have a lot of mixed feelings about it because while I appreciate them as characters and I think they have a good dynamic, I also find the historical imbalances really annoying and hard to shake. I personally prefer to see them as unlikely friends than as romantic partners just because for me as a westerner theres this power imbalance and (mutual!) misunderstanding that leaves a bad taste in my mouth. And I really don’t like it portrayed as ‘the petty anglos who hate quebec’ pairing either. I’m not saying at all that its not impossible or that it’s somehow inherently wrong (or that i’d never draw it), just that its not my cup of tea. 

but let’s return to them as characters for a moment rather than vessels for my own historical baggage in a universe where oliver didnt view the prairies as property and the people in them as second or third class citizens of the country he pulled around him out of his own paranoia and selfishness aka ideas that i still see repeated by ontarians today and then watch as albertans with only a foggy idea of the full context take those sentiments personally and then these separatist assholes co-opt and stoke those negative feelings instead of resolving them [deep breaths] [exhale]. 

I really like thinking of them as competitive friends or as driven debate partners i guess? and i feel that in their case it doesn’t translate well into romance. Oliver is horribly sheltered and self centered and says things without thinking constantly, or he is passive aggressive and hard to read. He treats Ralph like a child or an idiot or both and doesn’t consult him on his feelings or opinions and then acts shocked and surprised when Ralph loses it on him. Ralph likewise acts like the sort of person who is a straight talker and straight shooter, but his actual behaviour tends to be avoidance rather than confrontation. He explodes in a reactive way later instead of thinking after he bottles his feelings because That’s Macho, and his whole self perception is built on Refusing to be perceived as this hippie dippy liberal urban elite bastard and wait why DOESN’t oliver think he’s progressive?! And how come the easiest emotion around him is always anger?

but yeah you can see that it’s difficult for me to separate my complicated political feelings on the subject. I really enjoyed my time in Ontario and I met so many different kinds of people there, but there were also a lot of these... little subtle things that add up and grate on me. Like looking at the monument to the Ontarians who died in the Red River and Northwest “Rebellions”, or having someone say “The setting is Alberta but clearly urban” as if those things were mutually exclusive, or the assumption that Of Course you moved to Toronto because IMAGINE being a queer person seeking higher education in ALBERTA of all places, or people who just outright hated Alberta because all they see in the news is Alberta hating them for apparently No Reason. I really had to stop and think several times about these little innocuous comments and things that I was constantly encountering from people about what Alberta was supposedly like, and it’s hard to explain to people that when you make comments like this it does nothing but add fuel to the fire of anger and hatred towards central Canada back home - and trust me there’s just as much misunderstanding in Alberta about what Ontario is as there is there and that gets used for political and economic gain. 

tldr i would take a lot of convincing to see this as a romantic pairing precisely because of my lived experience in both provinces and because of my historical background. It’s actually easier than I make it out to be because they actually do have TONS in common besides being the two loudmouth money-and-power-hungry anglos, if oliver could get off his high horse for two seconds and ralph could drag himself out of the tar pit he’s always wallowing in, maybe they could go somewhere interesting. I’d be curious to see it. one thing i really liked about both provinces was the thunderstorms... trap them in a cabin in a thunderstorm and just let them go at each other emotionally until they’ve gone through and got it all out maybe, haha.

[pepsimayo]

People using an aspect of their identity that is usually oppressed, as a weapon against other members of the oppressed group (their own included, but mostly others) in order to gain inclusion to the inner group of the oppressors is prevalent, and not just in fictional media.

In white feminism, you get white women using their womanhood as a means of oppressing other women - frequently WOC or women in poverty - and other oppressed groups, such as people of colour, queer people, disabled people etc. Thatcher is a good example of this - she lent her womanhood to the oppressors as a tool to silence criticism. Even today people struggle to comprehend how she could be such an oppressive force, when she was a woman in a deeply patriarchal society.

Emmeline Pankhurst is also a good example - she was terribly racist, as was the Women’s Party. Most of White British feminism was formed alongside imperialist ideas - and with a comparison between the rights of white women and emmanciption, with the idea that a white woman with rights would be of greater benefit to society. The refusal to allow black women to join as part of the movement for instance. And yet she famously was quoted as saying “I’d rather be a rebel than a slave” in a direct comparison to African slavery in America; a quote that was then repeated and idealised by the film suffragette, which glorified this early movement, and failed to explore the racism inherent in it. British white feminism still suffers from ideas of imperialism, whilst effectively ignoring the diversity of suffrage movement that existed from WOC, most notably the Indian suffrage movement, and even the Irish suffrage movement, all based around anti-colonial ideas. But she is excused, because people don’t like to consider that someone can be both the oppressed and the oppressor; and they can use their own oppression as a tool to target others.

White women have also used their womanhood frequently against POC, particarly black men. The amount of black men killed by the police in America, which started because a white woman called the police for a minor, often exaggerated, perceived sleight against them.

I don’t want to move the topic away from white feminism, but just briefly I’m going to mention that this happens in a lot of oppressed groups - choosing to be accepted by the oppressive majority as a reward for betraying their own oppressed group and helping uphold the status quo. That’s why diverse cops don’t help the situation in America. It’s why sometimes the most sexist people you deal with are other women - and usually women in position of power, because the only way they rise through the ranks is to accept and uphold the oppressive status quo. Where you cannot exist in the default state of the oppressor, you may artificially ally yourself with the oppressor and gain certain privileges, by establishing yourself as a willing agent for them, even to your own personal cost. It’s why saying “well this member of a minority group disagrees with the movement, so there!” doesn’t work. And sometimes someone’s bigotry and hatred of another group is enough to outweigh their own sense of personal preservation - gays for trump, the majority of white women who voted choosing to vote for trump, etc.

Part of the issue is that a lot of feminism, especially early 2000s feminism, focused on shifting the script whilst still upholding gender roles. You get a lot of media which carries the message “yes, men are stupid, helpless babies, who need a woman to look after them, and women are smart and wonderful; they’re princesses, and that’s why the woman has to do all the housework, because men are children,” which was primarily coming from characters written by men. Which was a deep misunderstanding of feminism and the problem with misogyny; from that, we then get the development of a “strong female character” being a woman with a gun and who has witty retorts when experiencing sexism - yet never felt angry, upset, or frustrated by her experiences of sexism. And now we’re struggling to move away from the idea that violence = female empowerment.

Violence = empowerment is a problem throughout fiction to be entirely honest. But especially with white feminism, and part of the issue is that this narrative role reversal doesn’t even work for WOC. An Asian woman with violence and weapons is “exotic” - and I’ve rarely seen an Asain women using a weapon that isn’t a blade or staff; the only real times I see them using guns is if they’re gang related. And then they’re rarely operating under their own agency. A black woman being violent isn’t progressive, because it lends itself to racist narratives - one, that black women don’t feel pain, and two, that black women are masculine and aggressive.

There’s also been an adoption of the narrative that stocicism and being cold and detached is progressive for a woman character. More troubling when that extends into a woman with a lack of empathy entirely.

It’s like we’ve taken aspects of toxic masculinity - a glorification of violence , a demonisation of emotions outside of anger, a lack of communication, and a rejection of empathy- and painted them as the idea of what empowerment looks like. But they’re really tools of oppression:

Black women experience the opposite - they are painted in violent roles that are used to demonstrate their masculinity and ‘savagrery’, they can’t express anger without feeding into the angry black woman trope, and they’re expected to nurture and coddle others with deep compassion - they’re not allowed to glorify violence or anger, they’re not allowed to reject empathy or nurturing emotions, and it’s not coincidental that this occurs alongside the “strong female character” thing that white feminism has going on.

I’m not sure I can fully reach a conclusion on what I’m saying, just that right now, white feminism seems to be focusing on elevating white women to the same position as white men, but that’s not the goal of equality. The goal of equality isn’t to broaden who is included in the oppressors - it’s to remove the oppresion entirely. And I suppose if your activism is only based on your self, with no consideration for equality, justice, and empathy towards others, then you’re doomed to upholding oppression yourself.

i know this isn’t a hot take what so ever but what happened to gone girl and midsommar is what happens whenever you give white women a narrative about another white woman who enacts terrible acts of violence on other people. yeah, amy’s husband was a fucking asshole for cheating, but amy was consistently terrible to other people in her life—accusing people she didn’t like of rape, pushing down girls down the stairs, and even her whole “cool girl” speech has a vague undercurrent or misogyny under it in the movie as she says this whole speech driving by women who are living their lives and there’s literally no men next to these women. she uses the fact that she’s a white woman to her advantage so heavily in the book to be a terrible person.

in midsommar, christian is a grade A asshole who’s too much of a coward to break up with his girlfriend right before he leaves. and this is rewarded in the movie by having him be drugged and sexually coerced, and dani punishes him for this by burning him alive while he can’t do anything about it. it’s not a revenge fantasy in any way—just pure tragedy, but because there’s this existing idea that empowering white women means callousness, means fucking over everybody, both of these narratives get adopted and twisted into something that they are not.

through the lens of popular white feminism, gone girl stops becoming a story about a terrible woman and her terrible husband, and midsommar stops becoming a story about a cult that indoctrinates the emotionally vulnerable and enacts horrible violence. it’s how you get takes like “amy dunne did nothing wrong” or “the real villain of the movie was christian”. consuming media through the lens of pop and white feminism just…does this. like it’s weird and it’s irritating and i just wish people would STOP losing all sense of nuance when a white girl is involved

[professorspork]

I sometimes wonder if within the Star Wars universe, bringing balance to the force means being able to use both the Light and the Dark without falling 100% into either side. Like, Rey being pulled to the Dark because it has something she needs, but maintaining her moral compass and compassion and urge to do good. idk it always seemed odd that an order all about balance only placed emphasis on one side of the spectrum 1/2

Tho it might just be a misunderstanding on my part. Is the Dark a separate part of the Force that Force-sensitive people can manipulate, different from the Light part? Or is that just what it's called when you use the Force for purely selfish reasons? 2/2

oh my friend you have unleashed such a can of worms i am so sorry please bear with me.

there are two answers to your question, one of which is “what we get from the series so far” and the other one being My Obviously Correct Headcanons And Opinions.

In the past, the Dark Side has been pretty much exclusively categorized as “what happens when you use the Force for purely selfish reasons.” That power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely, so the more you let your anger and resentment and personal need fuel your use of the Force, the more twisted you and it will become. that an act of weakness CREATES a darker seed of weakness within, to be continually exploited.

but that’s always been an inherently unsatisfactory definition--not because of what it implies about corruption, but because of what it identifies as the root of that corruption. it’s been frustrating as far back as Yoda’s lessons on Dagobah, where he told Luke that interfering in order to save his friends would make him vulnerable to the dark side for ???reasons??

It’s wrong to lash out in fear. It’s destructive to let your negative emotions be the sole source of your strength. all of that makes sense.

but where do you draw the line between selfishness and selflessness? Where do you find the boundaries on the spectrum from compassion, to caring, to possessiveness, to obsession?

the OT and PT never really gave us satisfactory answers to these questions--only vague pseudo-buddhist notions about how wanting things will make you miserable and terrible, probably, and that true balance means neutrality. means never having personal investment. and that’s just not how people work. so if we’re going by the idea that that’s the Jedi way, then yeah-- the Jedi do need to end.

but as Luke said-- the idea that the light side of the force will go away if the Jedi Order becomes obsolete is ridiculous.

so where does that leave us, in canon?

well, if the light side of the force stands for life, growth, connection, and peace, then that would seem to imply that the dark side must stand for death, decay, fractured society, and violence. this means that balance of the Force isn’t just some neutral value, because the Force itself isn’t value neutral. the Force isn’t weather--the Force is the collective intention and interconnectedness of all sentient consciousness. you can’t blame a hurricane for killing people because that’s just what hurricanes do. Hurricanes can’t decide. but people DO. and that’s what makes it the Dark Side of the Force--it’s the decisions behind the actions.

and yet.

so much of where the PT failed was that it did such a poor job of showing us what it actually set out to show us: how a good man, Anakin Skywalker, became corrupted by the dark side. what the PT ends up saying is “he wanted to end slavery so much that he became a fascist; he loved his mom and his wife and that made him Terrible.” which-- what the hell kind of lesson is that? We never actually saw that thing click in his head where it suddenly became okay for him to kill younglings. We watched it happen, but I never bought a moment where he gave in, because I never saw how his weaknesses as a good man--how his desire to protect and defend made him selfish and possessive--turn into something outright violent against people who had nothing to do with him. they never sold me on the connection.

but the sequels... they’re doing something different.

the consensus in the OT and PT seemed to be that it’s terrifyingly easy to succumb to the dark side. that you could be minding your own business having friends and wanting good safe things for them and one day you could trip and fall and that would turn you evil. i never vibed with that.

the ST, though... over and over again, what I see it saying is that it’s hard to be evil. It’s hard, and it sucks, and it kills everything good in you. that’s why Finn rejects it; that’s why Kylo Ren is so fucking miserable all the time. but it also demonstrates that there’s something so inherently compelling about using the Force to get what you want that once you’ve gone far enough, the idea of losing it is so incomprehensible you’d do anything--you’d do the worst thing--just to keep it from happening.

(Worth noting: the first Force power Rey ever uses is the Jedi Mind Trick. the first thing out of her mouth when Luke asks her what the Force is is “a way to make people do what you want.”)

it would be the easiest thing in the world for Ben Solo to be the golden boy of the Republic. that life was handed to him on a platter--all he had to do was stay there. all he had to do was take it. even now, Rey is still telling him: the door is open. the life you left behind is right there, waiting for you, needing you, if only you’d be willing to do the work to take it back.

so much of Kylo’s dialogue is talking about how he feels conflict, the pull towards the light, how his only goal is to kill the good in him, kill the past, kill all his ties to his obligation to morality. but it’s a constant fucking struggle for him. you don’t just trip and fall into evil. you have to choose it, every day.

and if that’s true--that tells me so much more about “the dark side” than the other films ever did. it’s not that caring is a curse, because Ben Solo killed his caring a long time ago. it’s that once you’ve had a taste of whatever it is that made Kylo Ren powerful enough to stop a blaster shot in midair and hold it there for five minutes, while carrying on an entire, quite distracting conversation--that once you have that, it digs so deep in you you can’t give it up. it’s a disease, the same way that an addiction is a disease. and with the Force behind it, it has the power to feed itself.

and you’ll never get well from an illness you have no interest in a cure for. so you keep digging deeper into the dark, because even if it’s hard, even if it tears you apart inside, the dark can give you things the light never will. and most of all, it’s convinced you that those are the things you should want.

what i think we might be heading towards--what i would LOVE to see us heading towards-- is the conclusion that we’ve been incorrectly defining the Dark Side this whole time.

if I have a rope, I can use it as a lifeline or as a noose. that doesn’t tell me anything about the rope. it tells me about me. 

Evil corrupts. Malice makes you strike first, strike hardest, strike in arbitrary anger. Trauma warps your sense of reality and makes it hard to distinguish between healthy and unhealthy, between acting for for your own survival and actively undermining your own self-interest. Wrath makes you act so that the punishment far outstrips the crime. Jealousy tells you that the things you love belong to you. Hate makes you want to destroy the things you don’t understand. Vengefulness makes you mistake personal satisfaction for justice.

but the Force... I don’t think the Force does any of that. it can be used as a vehicle to get you there faster, but that doesn’t mean that part of the Force is dark and used for dark things only. It means that you MAKE it dark when you USE it for the dark. 

Balance means harmony, not discord. the Force in balance needs must tend toward the light not because death is evil and must be avoided at all costs, but because life, uninterrupted until its natural end, is life as life was intended.

death isn’t the dark side. death is the Force in balance.

murder is the dark side, because it’s using the Force for something it was never meant to be used for, on purpose, for wrong, for personal gain. and no wonder it’s powerful, because the Force is always powerful--it’s all life and thought and spirit that exists! but that doesn’t mean the Force wants you to do a certain amount of bad things and the universe would fall apart otherwise. it means the Force needs people to tell the difference, because that’s all the Force has ever been: the interconnectedness of sentience.

the Force doesn’t tell us what to think. we tell it what to think. and the Force doesn’t need murder any more than people do. 

*collapses.*

[nicolethewitch]

The Celtic Tree Zodiac is based on the ancient idea that the time of our births is pivotal to the formation of our personality and behavior. The spiritually savvy Celts, particularly the druids were expert observers. Over time, they recognized that a child born within a certain season would develop certain qualities. Further, the druids observed patterns in the color and shape of a persons life according to the motions of the moon (their calendar being based on a lunar year being 13 months) and the season in which we are born. Below is listed the Tree characteristics of each Tree.

Birch - The Achiever

December 24 - January 20

If you were born under the energy of the Birch you can be highly driven, and often motivate others they become easily caught in your zeal, drive and ambition. You are always reaching for more, seeking better horizons and obtaining higher aspirations. The Druids attributed this to your time of birth, which is a time of year shrouded by darkness, so consequently you are always stretching out to find the light. Birch signs (just like the tree) are tolerant, tough, and resilient. You are cool-headed and are natural-born rulers, often taking command when a situation calls for leadership. When in touch with your softer side, you also bring beauty in otherwise barren spaces, brightening up a room with you guile, and charming crowds with you quick wit. Celtic tree astrology Birch signs are compatible with Vine signs and Willow signs.

Rowan - The Thinker

January 21 - February 17

Celtic tree astrology recognizes Rowan signs as the philosophical minds within the zodiac. If you were born under the Rowan energy, you are likely a keen-minded visionary, with high ideals. Your thoughts are original and creative, so much so, that others often misunderstand from where you are coming. This sometimes makes you aloof when interacting with others as you feel they wouldnt understand where you are coming from anyway. Nevertheless, although you may appear to have a cool exterior, you are burning within from your passionate ideals. This inner passion provides inner motivation for you as you make your way through life. You have a natural ability to transform situations and people around you by your mere presence. You are highly influential in a quiet way and others look to you for your unique perspectives. Rowan pairs well with Ivy and Hawthorn signs.

Ash - The Enchanter

February 18 - March 17

Those born under the Celtic tree astrology sign of the Ash are free thinkers. Imaginative, intuitive, and naturally artistic, you see the world in water-color purity. You have a tendency to moody and withdrawn at times, but thats only because your inner landscape is in constant motion. You are in touch with your muse, and you are easily inspired by nature. Likewise, you inspire all that you associate with and people seek you out for your enchanting personality. Art, writing (especially poetry), science, and theology (spiritual matters) are areas that strongly interest you. Others may think you are reclusive, but in all honesty, you are simply immersed in your own world of fantastic vision and design. You are in a constant state of self-renewal and you rarely place a value on what others think about you. Ash signs partner well with Willow and Reed signs.

Alder - The Trailblazer

March 18 - April 14

If you are an Alder sign within the Celtic tree astrology system, you are a natural-born pathfinder. Youre a mover and a shaker, and will blaze a trail with fiery passion often gaining loyal followers to your cause. You are charming, gregarious and mingle easily with a broad mix of personalities. In other words, Alder signs get along with everybody and everybody loves to hang around with you. This might be because Alders are easily confident and have a strong self-faith. This self-assurances is infectious and other people recognize this quality in you instantly. Alder Celtic tree astrology signs are very focused and dislike waste. Consequently, they can see through superficialities and will not tolerate fluff. Alder people place high value on their time, and feel that wasting time is insufferable. They are motivated by action and results. Alders pair well with Hawthorns, Oaks or even Birch signs.

Willow - The Observer

April 15 - May 12

If you are a Willow sign, you are ruled by the moon, and so your personality holds hands with many of the mystical aspects of the lunar realm. This means you are highly creative, intuitive (highly psychic people are born under the sign of the Willow) and intelligent. You have a keen understanding of cycles, and you inherently know that every situation has a season. This gives you a realistic perspective of things, and also causes you to be more patient than most tree signs. With your intelligence comes a natural ability to retain knowledge and you often impress your company with the ability to expound on subjects from memory. Willow Celtic tree astrology signs are bursting with potential, but have a tendency to hold themselves back for fear of appearing flamboyant or overindulgent. It is your powers of perception that ultimately allow your true nature to shine, and what leads you to success in life. Willow signs join well with the Birch and the Ivy.

Hawthorn - The Illusionist

May 13 - June 9

Hawthorn signs in Celtic tree astrology are not at all what they appear to be. Outwardly, they appear to be a certain persona, while on the inside Hawthorns are quite different. They put the term never judge a book by its cover to the test. They live seemingly average lives while on the inside they carry fiery passions and inexhaustible creative flame. They are well adjusted and can adapt to most life situations well making themselves content and comforting others at the same time. You are naturally curious, and have an interest in a broad range of topics. You are an excellent listener, and people seek you out as an outlet to release their burdens. You have a healthy sense of humor, and have a clear understanding of irony. You tend to see the big picture, and have amazing insight although you typically wont give yourself enough credit for your observations. Hawthorn signs match up nicely with Ash and Rowans.

Oak - The Stabilizer

June 10 - July 7

Those born under the Celtic tree astrology sign of the Oak have a special gift of strength. They are protective people and often become a champion for those who do not have a voice. In other words, the Oak is the crusader and the spokesperson for the underdog. Nurturing, generous and helpful, you are a gentle giant among the Celtic zodiac signs. You exude an easy confidence and naturally assume everything will work out to a positive outcome. You have a deep respect for history and ancestry, and many people with this sign become teachers. You love to impart your knowledge of the past to others. Oak signs have a need for structure, and will often go to great lengths to gain the feeling of control in their lives. Healthy Oak signs live long, full, happy lives and enjoy large family settings and are likely to be involved with large social/community networks. Oak signs pair off well with the Ash and Reed, and are known to harmoniously join with Ivy signs too.

Holly - The Ruler

July 8 - August 4

Among the Celtic tree astrology signs the Holly is one of regal status. Noble, and high-minded, those born during the Holly era easily take on positions of leadership and power. If you are a Holly sign you take on challenges easily, and you overcome obstacles with rare skill and tact. When you encounter setbacks, you simply redouble your efforts and remain ever vigilant to obtain your end goals. Very seldom are you defeated. This is why many people look up to you and follow you as their leader. You are competitive and ambitious even in the most casual settings. You can appear to be arrogant but in actuality youre just very confident in your abilities. Truth be known, you are quite generous, kind and affectionate (once people get to know you). Highly intelligent, you skate through academics where others may struggle. Because many things come to you so easily, you may have a tendency to rest on your laurels. In other words, if not kept active, you may slip into an unhealthy and lazy lifestyle. Holly signs may look to Ash and Elder signs for balance and partnership.

Hazel - The Knower

August 5 - September 1

If you are born under the energy of the Hazel, you are highly intelligent, organized and efficient. Like the Holly, you are naturally gifted in academia, and excel in the classroom. You also have the ability to retain information and can recall, recite and expound on subjects youve memorized with amazing accuracy. You know your facts, and you are always well informed. This sometimes makes you appear like a know-it-all to others, but you cant help that; youre genuinely smart and usually know the right course of action because of your impressive knowledge base. You have an eye for detail, and like things to be just so. Sometimes this need for order and control can lead to compulsive behaviors if left unchecked. You have a knack for numbers, science and things that utilize your analytical skills. You like rules, although you are typically making them rather than playing by them. The Celtic tree astrology sign of Hazel joins harmoniously with Hawthorn and Rowans.

Vine - The Equalizer

September 2 - September 29

Vine signs are born within the autumnal equinox, which makes your personality changeable and unpredictable. You can be full of contradictions, and are often indecisive. But this is because you can see both sides of the story, and empathize with each equally. It is hard for you to pick sides because you can see the good points on each end. There are, however, areas in your life that you are quite sure about. These include the finer things of life like food, wine, music, and art. You have very distinctive taste, and are a connoisseur of refinement. Luxury agrees with you, and under good conditions you have a Midas touch for turning drab into dramatic beauty. You are charming, elegant, and maintain a level of class that wins you esteem from a large fan base. Indeed, you often find yourself in public places where others can admire your classic style and poise. Vine signs pair well with Willow and Hazel signs.

Ivy - The Survivor

September 30 - October 27

Among other cherished qualities of the Ivy Celtic tree astrology sign, most prized is your ability to overcome all odds. You have a sharp intellect, but more obvious is your compassion and loyalty to others. You have a giving nature, and are always there to lend a helping hand. You are born at a time of the waning sun so life can be difficult for you at times. This sometimes seems unfair because it appears that obstacles are coming at with no prompting on your part. Nevertheless, you endure troubling times with silent perseverance and soulful grace. Indeed, Ivy signs have a tendency to be deeply spiritual and cling to a deep-rooted faith that typically sees them trough adversity. You are soft spoken, but have a keen wit about you. You are charming, charismatic, and can effectively hold your own in most social settings. Ivy signs are attracted to the Celtic tree astology sign of Oak and Ash signs.

Reed - The Inquisitor

October 28 - November 24

Reed signs among the Celtic tree astrology signs are the secret keepers. You dig deep inside to the real meaning of things and discover the truth hidden beneath layers of distraction. When there is a need to get to the heart of the matter, most certainly the Reed sign will find the core. You love a good story, and can be easily drawn in by gossip, scandals, legend and lore. These tendencies also make you an excellent historian, journalist, detective or archeologist. You love people because they represent a diversity of meanings for you to interpret. You are adept at coaxing people to talking to you, and sometimes you can be a bit manipulative. However, you have a strong sense of truth and honor so most of your scheming is harmless. Reed people join well with other Reeds, Ash or Oak signs.

Elder - The Seeker

November 25 - December 23

Elder archetypes among Celtic tree astrology tend to be freedom-loving, and sometimes appear to be a bit wild to the other signs of the zodiac. In younger years you may have lived life in the fast lane, often identified as a thrill seeker. At the time of your birth the light of the sun was fast fleeting and so you take the same cue from nature. You are often misjudged as an outsider as you have a tendency to be withdrawn in spite of your extroverted nature. In actuality, you are deeply thoughtful with philosophical bent. You also tend to be very considerate of others and genuinely strive to be helpful. These acts of assistance are sometimes thwarted by your brutal honestly (which you openly share solicited or otherwise). Elder Celtic tree astrology signs fit well with Alders and Hollys.

The Mind Unleashed

www.TheMindUnleashed.org

Post via Wicca Teachings

[primordial-soupism]

I'm sorry, op's post seems like it's coming from a place of misunderstanding and ignorance.

Erase the idea that wifmen (females) who like dresses, the color pink, makeup, high heels, princesses, etc are girly. "Girly" in this context implies that these interests are inherently female. Not only that, the term "girly girl" is infantilizing because it's widely used for and by grown wifmen too.

Being soft spoken is not a bad thing, but by critically examining society, we can see that those behaviors are not always natural for wifmen. Most of the time, girls are TAUGHT to be soft spoken, as it is deemed "feminine" by society.

Doing your hair and makeup can be done with artistic intentions in mind. But, these beauty standards imposed on wifmen are harmful. Wermen (males) are not held to the same standards and are not expected to place their entire worth on their beauty. In order to conform to these standards, wifmen are expected to perform ritualistic beauty routines. This pays industries that don't have wifmen's best interests in mind, they profit off of our insecurities. Not to mention, the obsession with beauty plays into objectification. We are not ornaments to be painted and decorated. We are human. In order to dismantle the Patriarchy, wifmen should be encouraged to pay no mind to the judgement of society. Feminists simply encourage wifmen to find interest in what makes them human! After being objectified for so long, a focus on gaining life experiences and gaining knowledge will increase the livelihood for thousands, if not billions of wifmen.

The stay at home mom and breadwinner dad is a patriarchal concept. A concept that has stopped wifmen from pursuing their own dreams. Not to mention, it's a dangerous one, depending on your partner for all the money raises the risks of abuse. As shown by history, a wife can't run away if she depends on you for survival. It also raises the risk of homelessness, with no college degree, what if something happens to your partner?

You don't have to be athletic or physically strong. But by critically examining society, we know that wifmen are discouraged from being physically strong because of misogynistic beauty standards and to keep the power imbalence. Wifmen who are weak are easier to take advantage of and easier to keep in control.

Being kind and tender is not bad. But by critically examining society, we know that wifmen are forced to take on this role, held to higher standards for it, expected to take more, and expected to do unnecessary shit for people. A wifman who speaks her mind is mean, wifmen who reject wermen are mean, wifmen who don't codle wermen are mean, etc etc. It's detrimental for your mental health to constantly be expected to validate people and never taking the time to worry about yourself.

Waiting for marriage is not a bad thing. But by critically examining society, we know that wifmen are pressured to do this because of the concept of "purity." Wermen are usually not ridiculed for having a lot of partners, it's a win for him, but for a wifman it's a lost because her partner's feelings matters more than her freedom to enjoy life.

Religion, especially Abrahamic religions, are misogynistic and have always been. It perpetuates the idea of purity and almost all of the patriarchal concepts I mentioned. Wifmen who are deeply religious are so much more likely to internalize misogynistic notions which puts their mental health and safety in danger.

Wifmen are expected to cry while the werman protects and does the job. The dependance is the issue here. If you're expecting others to always fix your own problems, it will keep you vulnerable and unable to learn from your past mistakes.

Namecalling defeats the purpose, because it's not the individual that's the problem, it's this Patriarchal society. There's no such thing as masculine behaviors, this implies that being physically strong, not paying attention to appearances, and demanding respect loudly, is inherently male.

if your feminism has no room for “girly girls”, get tf out of my face with it

same goes for girls who are soft spoken and don’t like to yell or be crass

same goes for girls who like doing their hair and makeup

same goes for girls who aspire to be stay at home moms

same goes for girls who unapologetically love the men in their lives

same goes for girls who aren’t physically strong

same goes for girls who are kind and tender

same goes for girls who don’t wear makeup and dress modestly

same goes for girls who want to wait for marriage

same goes for girls who are deeply religious

same goes for girls who cry easily

If you make fun of these women, if you laugh at them and say they’re dependent, stupid, weak, and can’t think for themselves, don’t you dare call yourself a feminist. We do not have to be masculine to deserve respect. Despite what the common trend in Hollywood seems to insist, MANY MANY girls and women do not want to be tough, or leaders, or warriors, or businesswomen. AND THATS OKAY.

Not all girls want to be the knight in shining armor. A princess can be a hero without wielding a sword.

[ratmor]

Fairytale Lies Along (Russian Fairytales in OUaT)

5. THE NIGHT

Spending the night in the backseat of our Beetle is not something to expect from a seemingly normal ending of the evening with a relatively pleasant conversation with the mayor of a small town in the wilds of Maine, is it?

As a result, Emma and I - she’s a little tipsy, and I’m a little discouraged - we are going on sly through the town. It all seems suspicious, you know. When Regina Mills subtly asked if she should worry about Henry's father, I literally forced my dear ward to say that she could call the boy's father if this a little bit imbalanced woman would like so.

Sometimes Emma can be a huge slowpoke when it comes to such a long con, like the one I thought of, making this Mills think that Emma can still somehow claim to be Henry’s mother, despite all our assurances that this won’t happen. After all, if Mills does not twitch, then all our stay here really ends extremely unproductive and quickly. Emma won’t stay if she feels the kid is loved. True, Emma very much regrets putting the kid for adoption, but it was too long for us not to cope with her self-blame much earlier than the kid showed up. So, on the part of Emma, Regina never really had a problem, and we would quickly ride back to Boston, regardless of the strange town and its inhabitants, and I urgently needed to come up with something to keep us here for a longer time. A confrontation with the adoptive mother of this tiny piglet, who, by a misunderstanding, considers himself our son, would be reason enough for Emma to stay. She is a keen and stubborn person.

Here in this town I need time to find my salvation from being only nearby the body of my ward, because I don’t really want to kill her if that heroism I've been waiting for begins. Well, I just could not wait for twenty eight years of her life for it to begin but…

Everything is too strange, because I definitely remember, and Emma just didn’t yet add the pieces to the puzzle. The little Us happened to be found in this particular area in the state of Maine.

As soon as it reaches Emma’s dimwit brain, it will be even easier to convince her to stay here, leaving her not quite miserable life in Boston and moving into these still waters with magical stink.

After all, I still feel this... Not just some obscure strangeness of this town, I kinda recognized something dormant and at the same time immensely familiar. I felt it a long time ago while in my travels as still a disgraced prince I wandered into the City of Masters on the border with the Infinite Forest and couple of Distant Kingdoms.

It housed a rarely used portal supposedly leading to other realities and parts of the world, but usually it was connected to the Tower of Silence, which was used at that time to expel those who had problems with those who were in power in my realm. That tower actually belonged to the Princess Nesmeana, the One Who Never Laughs, the great grandmother of mine, The Immortal Stone Princess.

She was called such a nickname in ancient times, when the curse of the Stone Heart was in action and it fettered her feelings, when she was the sovereign of the Dark Forest, she was the daughter of one of the ancient Yaga and the strongest witch of her time, and of mine too actually. By my time she had already settled down and turned soft, it became possible when she returned her fiery heart and felt the heart-ache for the first time in hundreds of years. That story is long and I don’t have much to say about it, I was not there and I did not eat bread there, as they say in The Thirty Realms. [ Authors Note: that’s the saying you say if you want to admit that you have no idea what you’re talking about but you still try. It’s related to the other saying that shows that you’re going to tell something that’s hard to believe in but you still try. “I certainly was there, Mead and wine I drank, I swear; Though my whiskers bathed in wine, Nothing passed these lips of mine.” ]

That blood relation to the Princess, by the way, once upon a time allowed me to positively participate in the skirmish that was extremely profitable for me at that time and also allowed me to receive the support of the City of Masters in my claims for throne in the Distant Kingdoms. I managed to save those who were in opposition to the acting regional government of one of sovereigns, they still existed those days.

It was from the City of Masters that my conquest began at the time...

Meh. Well, this is not what I’m talking about right now. The city of Masters was at the crossroads of worlds and, as we the poor inhabitants of a world without magic say, it was more magical than real. Here everything seemed diametrically opposed, although in its own way similar - the fairy tale was only in the air, and now it wasn’t so unattainable to get to Magic.

The portal to the Tower was through the well, and I never tried to go to other worlds - I had other things on my mind, but it is worth looking for something similar to that well here. Here's the problem - as long as I'm so tightly attached to Emma it's just hard to do. And the last time I separated from her …

First of all, everything did not end too well, and I still think that partially I was to blame for what happened with that jerk Neal and with that giving the child up thing. After all, if I had not disappeared for such a long time after she fell in love with that dull dude …

And I would not have disappeared if it weren’t for that very “second of all”, which goes after “first of all” by the default.

Second of all, I tried to seize Emma’s body. As you can see from the result, I did not succeed.

I remember, it was also a restless and half-drunk night …

***

“Well, hello, Emma,” - I said to Swan, who had not yet realized anything, while she peered into my eyes with all curiosity she had in her and tried as if to absorb my face in her memory.

“Hi ... You are ... Old man, right? Don’t look like the old one. Why you never correct me if you look like thirty years old? Where are we?” - she bombarded me with questions, looking around, but I looked at her point blank until she finally stopped talking and looked back, asking the most important one. - “Why are we here?”

A green steppe stretched around us, an almost boundless and life-giving plain, familiar to me from times of travel and conquest. The steppe united three states - the Golden, Silver and Bronze Realms. Where the Three Wise Lady-Sorceress ruled since time immemorial, and that land was called Wonderful, because their castles were - one’s more beautiful than the other and besides in the colors inherent in the name of each kingdom, and in the castles those were gardens of magical plants, and in the middle of that steppe was the source of healing water, it was also called the Death Water. A tidbit, if you look at it like that ... Meh, wasn’t going to go there now.

“Because I'm sick of enduring it,” - I came closer to her, without meeting the slightest resistance of the surprised girl, and put my hand into her chest, squeezing the pulsating heart with the usual gesture.

She looked back with pain and incomprehension, so vaguely familiar and unpleasant to me, that I decided to remain silent and finish it as quickly as possible, tugging at the focus of her power.

The next moment I was blinded by a bright light, and the steppe turned around, then whitish magic began to shimmer, cast in gold, but cold ... And then I discovered my spirit, barely dense and quite visible, outside of my girl’s sleeping body.

Next to Emma, Neal Cassidy slept, whom I hated with every bit of my soul, because it was because of him that I made the decision.

She wasn’t even eighteen yet - it was not by my rules. She should’ve never fallen in love so much. My reaction even reminded me of some kind of irrational jealousy. Irrational because I was dead for a long time and never even supposed to respond to the romantic relationship of my, let's say, random transit point, but no, I was ready to devour her and kill her just because of that relationship. It would be extremely strange if it weren’t for the constant vague feeling that slipped into me gradually… I had to prevent the continuation of that relationship, because I was seized with fear every time I imagined that I’d stop playing the primary role in her life, she would gain more power and get rid of me.

And now she knows that I am not her friend anymore, and I don’t have much magic left.

I touched her forehead and measured exactly half of the remaining mana on the spell.

The condition is… She will remember only when she finds true love and a dear soul in the world, which is saturated with magic no less than my own, and will share the kiss of true love with that person. It will never happen, will it? Indeed, in this world there is almost no magic.

My limbs grew dim, and I became fully disembodied again. But it's worth it - I now have where to come back. And now I’ll let her be alone. Now she remembers only that we shouted at each other, and I left her, promising to return someday.

And I came back when she called. And then, too, was the night. That night Henry was born.

“His father’s name is John,” Emma said, noticing me behind the midwife who was holding the baby — I was only visible to her, and she looked into my eyes with regret and pain, so that my heart would have sank in if I had a the body and the heart. - “John Oldman.”

“You screwed up my name,” - I said and smiled like I shouldn't have smiled.

I looked at her face with an undoubtedly noticeable painful tenderness I felt, and she smiled encouragingly at me - even now she remained the same Emma, whom I would never touch or try to do what I did, my baby Emma, whom it was impossible not to adore. And I touched her cheek.

She began to cry, still smiling shyly, and she snuggle up to my hand, forgetting that I’d been dead long ago, and the child had been taken away - I had not even looked in his direction.

“Honey, hush. Hush, do not cry. We'll figure something out. We always come up with something.”

“I gave up the kid,” - she whispered. - “I didn’t think you’ll appear. Together we’d come up with something.”

“I also didn’t think I’d appear,” - I touched her forehead with my lips and then pressed my palms to her cheeks, looking into her dilated pupils. - “Take me back again. Forgive me. Is he already impossible to?..”

“Impossible,” - she closed her eyes and began to cry softly again, barely sobbing and swallowing tears.

I hugged her and disappeared again, losing my freedom.

Before that I looked through the prison hospital window.

There was a moonless night

[kuralaw]

Romer v. Evans Law Reviews

Law Review V

    In The Odd Couple: How Justices Kennedy and Scalia, Together, Advanced Gay Rights in Romer v. Evans Tobin A. Sparling makes a convincing argument that the effect of the court’s decision in Romer v. Evans was not only due to Justice Kennedy’s poetic majority opinion but also Justice Scalia’s fiery dissent.  The two opinions, while seemingly polar opposites, worked together to heighten awareness of gay rights moreso than either one of the opinions could do individually.

    The precedent case of Bowers v. Hardwick is essential to understanding Romer.  Coming only ten years before, the court upheld the constitutionality of statutes outlawing sodomy with strong language specifically against homosexual sodomy.  What was once a right-to-privacy case was now being heard as a right-to-sodomy case.  The relationship between privacy and private sexual encounters was not considered, homosexual acts were not thought to have a relationship with “family, marriage, or procreation” and Justice Burger even mentions the historical analogy of homosexual sodomy to rape.  

     So how did so much change in a mere 10 years?  The court’s decision in Romer is a complete 180 from Bowers, championing the dignity of all people including marginalized groups.  Did the social attitude and climate shift completely in 10 years?  Not exactly, as Justice Scalia’s dissent clearly shows.  Kennedy employed a few strategies to “soften the blow” of the decision.  First, he appeals to morals and human dignity and refrains from mentioning gay people specifically.  It seems that Kennedy wanted to elevate the conversation beyond the “culture wars” happening at the time of the decision, not mentioning homosexuals, gay men or women, but rather disadvantaged groups and classes.  Rather than speak to specific law and tests of law, Kennedy chooses to appeal to fundamental human qualities of dignity, self-fulfillment, and reaching one’s potential.  Kennedy wanted a clean fight “above the fray”, appealing to immaterial mortals rather than specific tests of law.

    Scalia unapologetically wanted to fight in the fray, he wanted to fight the culture war, and he used writing tactics that were opposite to what Kennedy employed:  Scalia’s tone was immediate, present, and specific.  Scalia was emotional and angry, as opposed to Kennedy’s calm assuredness.  However, Sparling’s argument in his article is that Scalia’s tactics may have worked against him in many ways.  First off, while Kennedy tried to elevate his opinion and not talk about gay rights, or homosexuals, Scalia made his opinion all about gay rights.  In a way, Sparling argues, Scalia is the one who made this entire case about gay rights.  Scalia was the one who pointed out the contradiction in Bowers and Evans, and Scalia was the one who mentions that Evans possibly weakened the Bowers decision.

    Secondly, Scalia’s fiery style of hyperbolic writing may have helped further the cause he was trying to argue against.  Using such a bombastic style in the first place seems to delegitimize the argument, but compared to Kennedy’s calm reasonability Scalia looks downright bumbling.  In his dissent he writes, “(The) Court has no business imposing upon all Americans the resolution favored by the elite class from which the Members of this institution are selected, pronouncing that "animosity' toward homosexuality … is evil."  Despite Kennedy never writing those words, Scalia’s hyperbolic revision gave Kennedy’s words an extra edge and meaning that gay rights activists picked up on.  Kennedy’s opinion can be criticized as idealistic and fuzzy, but Scalia’s dissent turned those criticisms into power.

    So who’s argument was stronger?  Sparling assesses that Scalia’s argument will be remembered more strongly, due to the use of strong, immediate language and a stronger overall argument (refuting the points of the majority opinion).  Kennedy’s opinion “aimed for immortality” and uses fuzzy logic, making it less immediately memorable.  Scalia’s argument gave proponents of gay rights a villain and someone they “love to hate”, and articulated the change in consciousness over gay rights much better than anything Kennedy wrote.  With his intense negative reaction to the mere idea of gay equality, he actually validated the idea that gay equality was possible.

    Kennedy’s “majestic phrases” were beautiful but had no tooth.  Scalia’s dissent gave the elevated morals of Kennedy’s opinion the tooth through the concept of gay rights.  Without both the enumeration of fundamental human dignity of homosexuals, and the intense backlash against the concept of homoseexuals as having dignity at all, the conversation could not have moved forward.  The decision in Romer elevated consciousness and opened the door for frank discussion about homosexuality.  Of course, there was probably a lot of Scalia-esque backlash to the ideas, which is natural, but without Scalia’s angry fire the gay rights movement may have fizzled out before it got started.

Law Review VI

    In his article Wigstock and the Kulturkampf: Supreme Court storytelling, the culture war, and Romer v. Evans Richard Duncan makes a sympathetic, but dated, argument for Scalia’s dissent in Romer v. Evans.  The article was published in 1997, during the height of the culture wars, when gay rights were entering the public consciousness, and almost 10 years before any states had legal same-sex marriage.  While Duncan does make a compelling argument as to the legal rationale that Scalia uses, he also sympathizes a bit too much with fundamental misunderstandings Scalia has of the nature of the case.

    Duncan begins by noting the lack of specific law issues in both opinions, with scrutiny tests being briefly mentioned, but the majority of the opinions are more general and thematic.  The lack of new legal jurisprudence is emphasized: the court did not reverse Bowers, it did not make any new holdings, and it did not conjure any penumbras.  The case was a facial challenge and did not give any strong basis tests or strong foundational jurisprudence to future cases, it did not expand LGBT rights and the only legal holding that arose dealt with facial challenges to over-broad legislation.  The most illuminating thing it did, according to Duncan, was highlight the ongoing culture wars and the role the court played in both of them.

    Kennedy is described as a “homosexual fundamentalist”, which is the first time I’m coming across this term.  The author, along with Scalia, seem to consider rights as a zero-sum game.  That is, one group gaining rights must mean another group loses some sort of rights.  The arguments that both the author and Scalia make are laughable today, a mere 25 years after the arguments were originally made in good faith.  For example, both agree that “laws that list sexual orientation as an impermissible ground for private discrimination have the educative effect of equating the moral disapproval of homosexual conduct with racial and religious bigotry”, saying this like it’s untrue or a bad thing.  How funny it is that 25 years later, the close relationship between homosexual discrimination and religious zealotry is taken for granted.  In today’s modern times, it’s almost a requirement of a religious fundamentalist to be unaware and uncompassionate to LGBT issues, but Scalia and Duncan both scoff at the mere idea that “normal” homosexual discrimination is anything like “bad” racial discrimination.

    The team of Duncan and Scalia continue:  “When a state or local government codifies the sexual revolution by treating sexual lifestyles as protected categories under anti-discrimination laws, it stigmatizes, marginalizes, and silences religious and moral traditionalists and fences them out from authentic participation in the economic and social life of the community”.  This is so tone-deaf that it’s unbelievable that Scalia is writing this with conviction.  The immediate argument is that marginalized groups are the ones being “fenced out” from authentic participation, that they have been fenced out for generations if not centuries, and that “religious and moral traditionalists” are a privileged, entitled class that has never experienced stigma, marginalization, nor invalidation.  And another zero-sum line of reasoning exists here: positive protection under anti-discrimination for one group inherently disadvantages another group.  

    Duncan argues that Kennedy’s position blinds him to seeing anything but hate for homosexuals, and that Scalia’s enlightened separation of civil rights from the sexual revolution is reasonable.  Little did Duncan know that the sexual revolution and civil rights are intrinsically linked, and that within a decade from the Romer decision most of the states would have laws allowing for same-sex marriage.  As of the time of the writing, Duncan was not incorrect in judging the social atmosphere.  His misstep came in not projecting forward and not connecting the idea of civil rights and liberties for all, with homosexuals as people.  It makes sense that Duncan would be sympathetic with Scalia’s dissent: they are both stuck with an unevolved worldview that has no consideration for the humanity of entire classes of people, so how could they be concerned with the humanity of the entire race, as Kennedy strives to do?  Only after they evolve a little bit more, will they be able to see the beauty of Kennedy’s opinion.

        Sparling, Tobin A. - The odd couple: how Justices Kennedy and Scalia, together, advanced gay rights in Romer v. Evans.(Supreme Court Justices Anthony Kennedy and Antonin Scalia) Mercer Law Review, Wntr, 2016, Vol.67(2), p.305-329

Duncan, Richard F - Wigstock and the Kulturkampf: Supreme Court storytelling, the culture war, and Romer v. Evans Notre Dame Law Review, Jan, 1997, Vol.72(2), p.345-372

[kalkidas]

On re-initiations and compromised Guru’s standards

[5:06 PM, 9/11/2018] Gaura Keshava Das SP: Someone asked this question: [5:06 PM, 9/11/2018] Gaura Keshava Das SP: Jay Sriman Narayan, dear swamiji, pranams, according to sastra when the spiritual master brake his sannyas vows and engage in sensual contact with women against their will, and manifest an adharmic behavior what happened with the diksha mantras and upavitam? Does a disciple needs to take initiation again in those mantras from another guru? What about his own sannyas disciples? Does they to need to retake sannyas? Thank you 🙏 Namaskaram

My answer:

There is only one reason why someone will take Vaisnava diksha and mantras again after taking it once already according to sastra:

avaiṣṇavopadiṣṭena mantreṇa niyama vrajet purnas ca vidhinā saṁyag grāhayed vaiṣṇavād guroḥ Hari Bhakti Vilāsa 4.366 (from Nārada Pañcarātra)

"One who is initiated in the chanting of a mantra by a non-Vaiṣṇava must suffer in hell. Therefore, such a person should be initiated again according to the rituals by a Vaiṣṇava guru."

Different people make different interpretations of what it means to be a Vaisnava guru. However in the same book Hari Bhakti Vilasa Vaisnava is simply a  person who himself has taken diksha from a Vaisnava and who worships Lord Visnu. The disciples mantra is not effected by any actions of a Vaisnava guru after diksha. It is the disciple that has to chant and meditate on the mantra. Therefore in my opinion there is no sastric rule to do anything except if one needs siksha take shelter of appropriate siksha guru(s).

Some people suggest that an immoral or doctrinally wrong Vaisnava guru is to be considered as a non-Vaisnava. I don't agree. He can be considered a fallen or neophyte Vaisnava but how is a fallen or doctrinally off Vaisnava considered a non-Vaisnava. In Hari Bhakti Vilasa when the positive simple definition of Vaisnava is made also non-Vaisnavas are also defined. The definitions are Buddhists, Atheists, Jains, etc. So it is pretty clear that in context none of these people are non-Vaisnavas.

There is a common misunderstanding in ISKCON that re-initiation either Vaisnava or Sannyasa is an option. I don't agree. Show anywhere in sastra where it is suggested? There isn't anywhere. The ONLY sloka that deals with taking a mantra again is the one I just quoted and it is pretty simple. Of course if one wants to interpret non-Vaisnava to mean anyone who acts or says something not accepted by oneself that is their business. But if we make the definition of Vaisnava so specfic then how do we know when approaching a guru to take diksha whether he is a Vaisnava or not? If secretly he is fallen even within his mind or heart and this is considered to make him a non-Vaisnava then how can anyone judge a bonafide guru?  The simple straight forward meaning of the sloka is to be taken unless someone can give other sastric evidence in context of this quote. I have done that above and I can cite the definition of Vaisnava and non-Vaisnava in HBV if needed. Other people just give their opinions but where is the sastric explanation of their ideas? There aren't any.

Brahma Muhurta: Thank you for this. The only thing I was wondering about on this subject was when the guru has given but hasn’t attained Siddhi in the mantra. But, say for instance they have attained Siddhi and then have some sort of fall down later after giving the mantra. The mantra Siddhi/purascarana has been attained by the guru and been given accordingly it can retroactively be pulled back. Now the disciple is a caretaker of the mantra. It seems to limit the ability of the mantra to live if it is retroactively “de-activated”

GKdas: Mantras have inherent power. Naturally one might search for a siddha or person perfected in the mantra one wants to take mantra diksha from. However whether the guru is a siddha of the mantra or not, the sisya still has to himself practice the mantra and become siddha. The idea that some sisyas mantra can be deactivated by something a guru does or does not do, I've never heard before. If there is any sastra pramana for this I don't know of it.

There is a common pramana amongst Gaudiyas:

avaiṣṇava-mukhodgīrṇaṁ pūtaṁ hari-kathāmṛtam śravaṇaṁ naiva kartavyaṁ sarpocchiṣṭaṁ yathā payaḥ

"One should not hear anything about Kṛṣṇa from a non-Vaiṣṇava. Milk touched by the lips of a serpent has poisonous effects" Quoted in Hari Bhakti Vilasa from Padma Purana

Note the words hari-kathāmṛtam means "talks about Hari" and certainly one should not hear the words of Advaitins or others who give wrong siddhanta about the Lord. Mantras are not specifically stated. However Mantrārtha or the meaning of mantras should not be heard from Advaitins or others with wrong siddhanta. This is sometimes quoted by people as a reason not to hear a mantra from anyone but a siddha in that mantra. However in Gaudiya Vaisnavism the system is Hari Nama Sankirtana. Or Congregational chanting of the name of Hari i.e. Krsna. We have to ask if the chanting is supposed to be congregational, then does this mean one has to only chant with siddhas? The fact is that Caitanya mahaprabhu took the chanting to the streets of towns and villages of India and spread it amongst people who were not siddhas of the mantra. So did Ramanuja spread the mantra from the top of the Gopuram to all and sundry not just siddhas. They wanted everyone to take up the chanting and meaning of the mantras. They wanted people to become siddhas of these mantras. But no one was restricted by them from spreading these mantras on the plea of not being siddhas of them.

The Narayana Upanisad clearly states om namo narayanayeti mantropasakah vaikuntha bhuvana lokam gamisyati. The worshiper of om namo narayanaya mantra will go to Vaikuntha. The mantra has this power. It never says that only the hearer of this mantra from a siddha will go to Vaikuntha.

BMdas: What exactly do you mean by "say for instance they have attained Siddhi and then have some sort of fall down later after giving the mantra. The mantra Siddhi/purascarana has been attained by the guru and been given accordingly it can retroactively be pulled back."The guru does not give mantra siddhi. As you mentioned the system of purascarana or purascarya is for the sisya to perform to attain mantra siddhi. So if gurus gave mantra siddhi then why would the sastra have these systems of purascarana or purascarya? What I mean is that the guru attains Siddhi through purascarana then gives mantra to his or her sisya. After this happens the guru has a fall down. Now of course the sisya needs to attain perfection in the mantra themselves,but the acts of the guru don’t retroactively affect the mantra. It was given and now the actions of the guru should not affect the mantra. The sisya can still go forward with their sadhana and perform purascarana of the mantra.

GKdas: In Sri Vaisnavism both guru & sisya are prapannas. Surrendered to the Lord. Therefore whether they perform actions to gain mantra siddhi or not doesn't really matter. However for others who are followers of paths of individual efforts (non-prapatti paths like bhakti, karma or jnana yogas) they perform mantra sadhana (purascarana) to attain the perfection of the mantra (siddhi).

BMdas: [6:04 PM, 9/11/2018] Brahma Muhurta Das Ji: Sorry there was a typo. What I meant was it CANT be retroactively deactivated. [6:05 PM, 9/11/2018] Brahma Muhurta Das Ji: If mantra is given at one point it is given. It isn’t like an elastic rope that snaps back up the sampradaya if there is a problem later on if the mantra was actually given. [6:06 PM, 9/11/2018] Brahma Muhurta Das Ji: I completely agree with you Swami thank you for sharing all of this.

GKdas: All mantras are active according to mantra sastra. They have inherent power. Like wood has potential power but needs to be set on fire to release it. Similarly the mantras have inherent power but we need to know the meanings and practice the sadhanas with the mantras to get benefits. An example. A guru teaches a Vedic mantra with proper pronunciation of varna, svara, etc. The sisya learns it. Later the guru forgets it. This has no effect on the sisya.

[6:11 PM, 9/11/2018] Gaura Keshava Das SP: Another example. One dvija takes upanayanam and is initiated in to the chanting of gayatri mantra. He later performs upanayanam for someone else and gives that sisya (son?) gayatri mantra. The guru (father) might give up the chanting of the mantra later on. But still this doesn't effect the sisya (son?) who is still chanting the mantra. The dharmas sastras (see Manu Samhita) give prayascittas for a person whose chanting of gayatri has lapsed for different lengths of time. But they never state that this persons' sisyas or sons also have to perform a lapse by the father or guru. People have to perform prayascitta for their own acts of commission or ommission. Not for others mistakes. [7:01 PM, 9/11/2018] Gaura Keshava Das SP: If people are interested we can discuss Hari Bhakti Vilasa 17th vilasa which is purascarana or purascarya attaining the perfection of a mantra.

Question by Neil:

Dandavats to all. Regarding the guru and disciple topic, I believe you were discussing primarily the mantra given by the guru to the sishya. But isn’t the relationship much more than that? For example, there are discussions of the imparting of ‘dead’ mantras because of the proper siksha isn’t given along with diksha, then what is the point? What is the potency behind a mantra? Isn’t it to have the proper conception (siddhanta) of the mantra, rather than just the mantra alone? Certainly the mantras are powerful in and of themselves as the maha mantra for example is directly Krishna Himself. Yet so many unauthorized camps chant the maha mantra. Like all the apa sampradayas, sahajiyas, etc. and we see those misconceptions have entered into Vaishnav institutions as well. In other words, if one was to receive diksha from say a ‘Vaishnava’ who has regular illicit relations as a part of their sadhana, clearly such a person is not a Vaishnava by their achar. Shouldn’t such disciple seek out a real guru to receive the mantra and the proper conception of the mantra elsewhere? That last bit was simply a gross random example, but improper conception and/or practice, behavior, etc. disqualify one from being able to impart a mantra? If I’m a guru for the name, fame, profit, adoration and distinction — if I’m a guru for material reasons and I cling to many philosophical misconceptions in spite of others trying to properly guide me. Wouldn’t mantra and siddhanta given by such a guru be useless if not detrimental? And thus necessitate proper diksha, which may appear to be re-initiation? Also, going back to the first post in this regard, if one’s diksha is still valid in the case of an errant guru, wouldn’t one be obligated to continue to worship said guru, chanting his pranam mantra and other associated mantras when one does their puja, etc.? Like for a disciple of Bhavananda or Kirtanananda, what to do? Also, I would like to hear the definitions of Vaishnava & non-Vaishnava from Hari Bhakti Vilasa as well as to discuss the 17th Vilasa. Thank you for this discussion 🙏🏻

GKdas: Regarding your ideas. I have already quoted two slokas from Hari Bhakti Vilasa explaining this.First I quoted a slokas saying that if one receives a mantra from a non-Vaisnava guru he should again get it with full (vidhina) rituals from a Vaisnava guru. Then I quoted a sloka that hearing the topics of Hari from non-Vaisnavas causes poisonous effects.I said that in context in HBV a non-Vaisnava is someone like an Atheist or Buddhist. And it does not refer to someone who might have a lapse in behavior like Tondaradipodi Alwar who fell prey to a prostitute or to one devotee of Lord Venkatesvara who gambled with the Lord, or to the Pandavas who drank wine, gambled and may have also eaten meat.I will now quote the simple definition of who is a Vaisnava from HBV which is the context for the quote about not taking mantra diksha twice if one has taken it from a Vaisnava guru. You yourself have accepted that mantras have inherent power. So unless you have some sastra pramana that shows that the power of a mantra is completely negated by the giver of that mantra not being a perfect siddha then your idea cannot be accepted. I am not saying that one should not try to find a perfect mantra guru who is a siddha of that mantra. I'm just saying that the mantra has some inherent power and the sisya has to practice it no matter what the siddha or not of the guru. Some mistake by the guru cannot totally negate the inherent power of the mantra. Otherwise if we say that the power of the mantra is only coming from the guru and not anything from the mantra itself we don't find this idea given in sastra. So if you have any sastra pramana to quote to back up your idea then please present it. Otherwise I will give the simple definition of Vaisnava and non-Vaisnava given in HBV in the context of the pramanas I have already given on taking mantra upadesha.

Sri Vaisnavas continue to chant the Tanian (pranam mantra) of Tondaradipodi Alwar despite the fact that he was victimized by a prostitute. Lord Ranganatha even arranged to pay the prostitutes fee for his Vaisnava devotee. He is one of the greatest devotees. His being victimized by a prostitute doesn't change our honoring him for his deep devotion to the Lord. You ask would a person continue to praise his guru if his guru acted in such a bad way. I think I have just answered that above. The guru is always to be honored. If he makes some mistake then still we have to honor him for giving us the mantra (and correct upadesha). We do not honor any bad behavior or bad upadesha that he might do or give. Therefore we have to be grateful for what he has given which is in line with sastra and sampradaya. But we also have to discriminate as to what might be wrong behavior and\or upadesha. Ramanuja honored his first guru Yadava Prakasha even though he wanted to kill Ramanuja. He did challenge the bad upadesha of his guru in a respectful way.

gṛhīta viṣṇu dīkṣāko viṣṇu pūjā paro naraḥ vaiṣṇavo'bhihito'bhijñair itarosmād avaiṣṇavaḥ

"One who is initiated into the chanting Visnu mantras and is engaged in the worship of Lord Visnu is called a Vaisnava. Those who do contrary to this are non-Vaisnavas." Hari Bhakti Vilasa 1.55

jaiminiḥ sugata�� caiva nāstiko nagna eva ca kapilaś cākṣapādaś ca ṣaḍ ete hetu-vādinaḥ

etan matānusāreṇa vartante ye narādhāmāḥ te hetu-vādinaḥ proktās tebhyas tantraṁ na dāpayed

"Jaimini, Sugata, Nāstikas, Kapila and Akṣapāda (Gautama) are mental speculators. Those fallen souls who spend their lives under the guidance of these philosophers are counted as mental speculators. A guru should not give instructions about the worship of the supreme Lord to such people." Hayaśīrṣa Pañcarātra

Naturally such persons will not be Vaisnava gurus or sisyas. They are non-Vaisnavas.

There are some other slokas giving qualities of non-gurus (aguru lakṣanam). But they mostly are details. I will post them for completeness.

BMdas: Thank you for sharing this. Even if the Guru is not perfect, the sisya is still indebted to him/her for what good things they have been given. Namely the mantra

GKdas: Yes, and any mantrartha or meaning of the mantra also. Or any other good example or instruction. Note that Ramanuja had one guru Mahapurna who gave him the mantra, and another guru from whom he learned some inner meanings of the mantra, Gosthi Purna. It is not that a guru who only gives the mantra and not the mantrartha is honored less.

GKdas: bahvāśi dīrgha sūtrī ca viṣayādiṣu lolupaḥ hetuvāda rato duṣṭo avāg-vādī guṇa nindakaḥaromā bahu-romā ca ninditāśrama sevakaḥ kāla-danto'sitauṣṭhaś ca durgandhi śvāsa vāhakaḥduṣṭa lakṣaṇa sampanno yadyapi svayam īśvaraḥ bahu pratigrahāsakta ācāryaḥ śrī kṣayāvahaḥ"If a person accept a guru who eats voraciously, who is lazy, who is greedy for acquiring material objects, who is fond of arguing against the śāstras, who is mischievous, who is happy to expose others sinful activities, who is a blasphemer, who have no hair or too much hair on his body, who lives in a condemned state or āśrama, whose complexion is black, has black teeth, who is very cunning, who accepts a great deal of charity even though he does not require it,  then all his good fortune and opulence will become exhausted." Tattva Sāgara

[3:31 PM, 9/12/2018] Gaura Keshava Das SP: There are also many descriptions of the detailed qualifications of gurus. But we cannot say that a guru without one of these details isn't a guru. Some gurus are not expert in Vedas, Yantras, Mantras, Yagas. [3:34 PM, 9/12/2018] Gaura Keshava Das SP: Many in and around ISKCON are very very interested in analyzing the qualifications of gurus. They do not sometimes consider if they themselves are qualified sisyas.

There are 104 rules mentioned from Viṣṇu Yāmala that Gauḍiya Vaiṣṇavas sisyas are supposed to follow listed in Hari Bhakti Vilāsa 2.149-162

BMdas: Exactly we’ll put. It starts to become a thing of looking for the faults in the guru in order to flat out reject him in order to have an excuse to basically be ungrateful for anything that the guru did do. That mood won’t move well into the other aspects of a sadhakas practice

Gkdas: Gurus and Sannyasis also are like white cloths. People see any small dark spot. Whereas a black or dirty cloth one cannot see small spots. Sri Vaisnavas are lucky that the Lord and acharyas accept us as prapannas without any qualifications. 🙂