#also we’re having one hell of a lightning storm rn

[tarantula-hawk-wasp]

Sent in the job application so now we’re back to watching jcs 2000 for the idk thirty-fifth time

[goosefeathercore]

14 days until The Broken Code book 4!!!

OH MY GOD WE’RE DOWN TO 2 WEEKS. excited cat noises. Idk if I need to say this but??? all of my countdown has broken code spoilers lol! Alright readers of cat books do y’all think Mistystar is gonna die in this arc?? I love Mistystar so much, but she has been alive longer than any other cat (since before the first arc!) and I think the Erins have stated that she only has one life left? Since Riverclan barely gets any attention we lowkey have no idea what the hell she’s been doing all this time and there haven’t been many conflicts to make her lose a life. I’m also pretty sure that the reason this has happened is because the Erins have a habit of losing track of all of the cats in their universe (which is kinda fair lol I know that not everyone is as serious about warriors as I am) and it seems that they have mistaken Mistystar for Graystripe’s daughter at some point? I think some other tumblr users have pointed out exactly where it happened but it makes sense because Stormfur and Stonefur are easy to mix up and Bluestar’s other kits have been dead for a long time. But she’s estimated to be 16.3 years old!! Mistystar’s omen and Mothwing’s secret were bomb af we Mothwing kinnies are eating good, but she’s lived wayyyyy longer than any other leader and we really need to see the opportunity for a new leader in Riverclan!

A refresher since I forgot most shit in Riverclan- Reedwhisker is current deputy and he’s also kind of old (and happens to be Mistystar’s kit) but I wouldn’t be opposed to seeing Reedstar happen at all if he actually loses lives at a normal rate to keep the plot going. He’s kinda boring rn along with most of Riverclan but when he was a kit, he was saved by Fireheart and Graystripe and was later saved from drowning by Leafpaw. He was also deputy during the Darktail arc! During the initial attack, he actually fought one-on-one with Darktail after protecting Mistystar and preventing her from losing a life. He’s defeated and taken prisoner along with the other injured, but insists that Mistystar must leave him for the survival of the clan. He’s one of the injured cats held captive by Darktail and he remains defiant, refusing to give in to Darktail. This ultimately leads to him being starved, but Violetpaw sneaks the prisoners enough food for them to survive and they plan an escape. He even insists that he’s well enough to join the leaders and other cats who go to confront Onestar, despite just barely having escaped his torturer.

 In The Broken Code, Reedwhisker is one of the main cats to doubt Shadowpaw’s visions and abilities, but he has good reason. He is skeptical that Shadowpaw was struck by lightning which kind of sucked for Shadowpaw but it makes sense because Reedwhisker’s camp had just recently been struck and he helped evacuate everyone but ended up being separated temporarily from everyone in the disaster. He argues that if lightning had hit Shadowpaw, the apprentice would have died, which is a valid thought because he’s correct, any normal cat absolutely would have, Shadowpaw just went through some crazy shit with ghost cats so it was not a natural storm. He is also extremely skeptical and uneasy about Shadowpaw’s plan to ‘cure’ Bramblestar. At the time I was like damn he’s kind of an asshole, but he was so right it literally did end up being a trap!! It’s not Shadowpaw’s fault that he was manipulated of course, but Reedwhisker was still hella big brained to be on to something the whole time.

Reedwhisker is also the injured cat in Mistystar’s omen!! Before doing research on him rn I totally hadn’t realized that this was the same cat from all these situations. But he’s the cat who is bleeding out and Mistystar forbids Mothwing from helping her son because she doesn’t trust Mothwing to do it after finding out she’s an atheist. When Mistystar receives an omen from Stonefur to express Starclan’s approval of Mothwing, she gives Mothwing her trust again and Mothwing is responsible for saving Reedwhisker’s life then!!

In my opinion, the coolest deputies with the most potential to be good leaders are the ones who have had the most individuality in events. Some deputies we really only see in battle, on the border, or at meetings and they’re always just focused on the usual clan rivalries and drama. Deputies who have been involved in their own unique plot points and who have had verbal characterization are always the ones that stick with you. No one could forget deputy Bluefur, with her many tragedies and giving up her kits to stand up against Thistleclaw, or deputy Stonefur who watched his mother die minutes after he learned that he was her son and was slain defending Graystripe’s kits. Even deputies who served for a short time like Whitestorm are memorable because of their interesting upbringing and the surprise of being made deputy. Even if Whitestorm never got to be leader, him dying and telling Firestar that Graystripe was destined to be his deputy will always be a vivid memory of mine. Reedwhisker has so much cool lore and he has a ton of personality; he is seen many times speaking from his own mind! Because of the neglectful writing for Riverclan, I had totally forgotten about all of this cool shit! But, if he became leader and we actually got to read about him then it would all come back! They could even have a recap for those who are new or forgot like me, if we saw his nine lives ceremony, you could incorporate everything into it. There’s tons of cats who could give him lives for the tragedy of the kin! And Stonefur can give him a life in reference to Mistystar’s omen!! Reedstar please Hunters!!!

[quranreadalong]

#196, Surah 40

THE QURAN READ-ALONG: DAY 196

It’s ya boy Moses. Again. There are actually some new, never-before-seen details in this section--details that barely impact the outcome of the story at all. GET EXCITED!!

40:24 re-introduces some of the secondary characters we’ve seen in various versions of the Exodus story thus far: Moses was denied by the pharaoh, Haman, and Korah, who “said: A lying sorcerer!”.

Y’all remember the pharaoh, obviously, and hopefully you remember Haman, the evil advisor accidentally transplanted from the Book of Esther into the Quranic Exodus. Korah is a Hebrew guy from that one story in surah 28 where he was greedy and Allah made the earth swallow him up. He was called a disbeliever in that story, but I think this is the first time we’ve been told that he accused Moses of being a liar. Hey, a new detail!

Another new detail is this:

And when he brought them the Truth from Our presence, they said: Slay the sons of those who believe with him, and spare their women. But the plot of disbelievers is in naught but error.

(I’m ignoring that last sentence because I want to talk about something else rn, DAMN IT MOHAMMED!)

When Moses starts his prophet gig, the pharaoh declares that Hebrew boys will be put to death. But the Exodus story (in the Bible and the Quran) starts with the pharaoh killing Hebrew boys, which is why Moses’ mother sends him away. From surah 28:

Pharaoh exalted himself in the land and made its people into factions, oppressing a sector among them, slaughtering their [newborn] sons and keeping their females alive. Indeed, he was of the corrupters. And We wanted to confer favor upon those who were oppressed in the land and make them leaders and make them inheritors And establish them in the land and show Pharaoh and [his minister] Haman and their soldiers through them that which they had feared. And We inspired to the mother of Moses, "Suckle him; but when you fear for him, cast him into the river and do not fear and do not grieve. Indeed, We will return him to you and will make him [one] of the messengers."

So this seems to be a second incident of Hebrew-boy-killing, taking place when Moses is an adult. (Pharaoh and Haman have been around for quite a while, evidently.) This part is not in the Bible, nor in any other suwar, and I can’t find any basis for it in Jewish or Christian texts. None of the tafsirs have much to say about it, beyond noting that it happened. So I have two theories for what happened here:

1) Mohammed just fucked up and accidentally changed the chronology in this surah--there was supposed to be only one kid-killing incident, at the intro to the Moses story.

2) Mohammed either misunderstood the “death of the firstborn” incident from the Bible (where YHWH kills all the Egyptians’ firstborn sons) or did understand it, but disliked it and therefore changed it so that the Egyptians were the ones killing kids.

The plagues that Allah/YHWH sends upon Egypt are mentioned in an ayah back in surah 7. Locusts, (water turning into) blood, lice, and frogs are all named, as in the Bible. One additional plague is mentioned--tufana, which seems to mean “flood”. There isn’t any flood mentioned in the Exodus version, but there is an enormous storm with lightning, thunder, and hail, and it’s probably supposed to refer to that. The Passover incident involving the deaths of the firstborn sons (and four other plagues preceding it: darkness, boils, diseased livestock, and a swarm of deadly animals) is not mentioned in the Quran.

So all we can say is that the Passover story was completely left out of Islam, but we can’t really conclude why that might be. Allah doesn’t have a problem killing kids who he knows will grow up to be disbelievers (see: the al-Khidr story), so it’s not like the story violated some tenet of Islam. Perhaps Mo was still uncomfortable with it, though, and thought the unfortunate genocide would work better as a plot point if the Egyptians were the ones doing it. Mohammed did have a tendency to make the various disbelieving civilizations cartoonishly evil in some suwar, whereas they come across as just skeptical or apathetic in other suwar (see: the variants of the Saleh story). So adding a line about the Egyptians killing kids twice just to make them seem extra dickish wouldn’t be unprecedented.

This question is similar to the whole thing with the Samaritan building the golden calf--sometimes it’s hard to tell if Mohammed intentionally fucked up the story because he disliked its message, or if he just did it accidentally because he got confused by similar wording or repeated themes. We’ll never know. But in this particular case, my money is on the latter.

Regardless, the pharaoh also wants to kill Moses himself because he’s afraid that Moses will “cause confusion in the land” with his religious preaching. Moses prays for Allah to protect him from the pharaoh and all other disbelievers.

In 40:28, we have yet another new addition to the story.

a believing man of Pharaoh's family (*other translations: “of Pharaoh’s folk”), who hid his faith, said: Would ye kill a man because he saith: My Lord is Allah, and hath brought you clear proofs from your Lord? 

I guess we’re just forgetting the part where the pharaoh was initially mad at Moses for killing some Egyptian guy in cold blood. Remember that? I guess that got retconned, and the pharaoh is just mad at Moses because he dislikes The True Religion in this version of the story. Hmm.

But who is this Muslim Egyptian fellow? The Jalals suggest it was the pharaoh’s unnamed cousin, though I’ve also seen him described as the pharaoh’s treasurer. A small minority read the grammar here, tortuously, as “a believing man--who hid his faith from Pharaoh’s family--said”, meaning he may not have been Egyptian at all. No one seems to know who he was, and again there aren’t any Jewish or Christian traditions I can find that contain this scene. The cousin interpretation is the most popular one in tafsir works, so let’s call him the pharaoh’s cousin.

This gentleman tells the pharaoh that no one can stop the wrath of Allah (in reference to the punishments brought upon the people of Hud, Saleh, etc, incidentally putting all of those pre-Moses in the chronology), though the pharaoh dismisses his concerns. But the cousin continues his rant, saying that he also fears that Allah will doom them in the afterlife.

I’ve been generous by designating all of the above as neutral, given the circumstances, but his rant does contain a couple of bad lines: the typical “he whom Allah sendeth astray, for him there is no guide” in 40:33 and a line stating that these astray people, who are hated by Allah, are those who doubt prophets. That ayah contains a line stating that the Egyptians doubted the revelations of Joseph many generations ago, and this is why Allah has made them go astray. But... um... did they? Wasn’t he made the chief advisor or something at the end of surah 12, because they did believe him? I mean, yeah, they didn’t become Muslims. But as far as I recall, the only people Joseph told to become Muslims were those guys in jail. Not the population in general. Right? Whatever.

The pharaoh stares at his cousin blankly for a couple of minutes and decides to ignore everything he just said, instead turning to Haman and telling him to build the pseudo-Tower of Babel. He wants to reach the "roads of the heavens" so he can see Allah (if he exists). Allah makes the pharaoh think this is a good idea, but then makes the plan end in ruin. Questionable free will violation there, but whatever.

NEXT TIME: The pharaoh’s cousin makes a return appearance for some kuffar dooming fun times!!!

The Quran Read-Along: Day 196

Ayat: 15

Good: 0

Neutral: 12 (40:23-32, 40:36-37)

Bad: 3 (40:33-40:35)

Kuffar hell counter: 0

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