#because it's the right one. Like saying Christianity only spread so far because people genuinely enjoyed it

[ruthlesslistener]

(Genuine question, not hating or anything) whys it bad that The radiance has lots of ties to Christianity? Team cherry wrote from their personal perspectives as white guys probably raised in western culture which is heavily seeped in Christianity and therefore their background influenced their work, consciously or not. The game never tries to justify her actions or defend her actions and it never says "ah boo hoo poor us!! We were the one good true religion who were destroyed by the nasty worm :(" like it doesn't glorify her or the Christian motifs in any way and none of the actions of any of the gods are defended. I personally feel that the game had a pretty good neutral perspective. If anything the whole thing seems like a powerful allegory for the flaws in organised religion in general and I agree with you saying they're more similar to the Greek gods in that they're all flawed being etc. Also I agree that saying the moth tribe are meant to represent any real life native population feels very uncomfortable but I don't think TC intended for this to be the case anyway. (For reference I'm non-white, ex protestant turned atheist raised in a western country with protestant family and I've also studied religion for a few years in the past)

Honestly, on its own? It really isn't a problem! Because I agree with you in that TC's narrative is pretty solid in making both the Pale King and the Radiance clear antagonists, and they really didn't feel like they were trying to make the Moth Tribe an allegory for native populations, or to write either the Pale King or the Radiance as colonizers- if anything, Hallownest gives me more of a 'Europe during the Middle Ages' vibe, where neighboring countries are all squabbling and borders/who's in power switches around in a cycle of violence that never ends, with little care for the people trodden beneath them. I think they nailed it on that front, and neither the Radiance nor the Pale King's actions are depicted as okay, despite there being pretty compelling evidence pointing to why they acted the way they did. But it's still a story where the major plot points all are derived from a Christian perspective of holiness and religion, which means that its intended themes and lessons tend to get far murkier when people try to ignore that fact.

(Disclaimer: I'm an Iranian-American who was raised in an Islamic household, so everything I'm talking about beneath the cut are from that perspective.)

HOWEVER, it shows its flaws when people try to divorce the concept of the gods from the source material in their interpretations, because it was written with a Christian cultural perspective, and ignoring that makes things turn really uncomfortable real quick. For example, the main reason why people claiming that PK and WL colonized the moths makes me uncomfortable is because the Radiance herself has a very strong angel aesthetic/ Old Testament god vibe going on with her actions, and irl Christianity has been used as an excuse for both literal and cultural genocide. Pair that with the fact that radicalized Christians are basically trained to have a victim/savior complex to spread that ideology, and you get a situation that's really fuckin' uncomfortable for people from other religions because you're essentially painting the Radiance as the victim here.

Like, when I was going through the game, the preaching of the Moss Prophet reminded me of a guy who used to scream about people repenting and worshiping Jesus on my mom's college campus who ended up shooting up a synagogue, and when I saw the Radiance the whole 'oh she's a metaphor for toxic Christianity and the Pale King is a metaphor for the dangers of people using the Divine Right of Kings' was the first thing that popped into my head. Her entire problem reeks of the whole 'THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE TRUE GOD AND YOU MUST WORSHIP THEM OR DIE' thing that leads to Muslim and Jewish people dying horribly against crazy assholes. Ignoring how strongly those vibes shine through and then claiming that the Radiance is the victim of the Pale King attempting to colonize her lands not only completely ignores the uncomfortable implications of all the shit that she did, it's also pretty damn insulting to equate all the suffering and cultural destruction that irl people faced with a fuckton of fictional bugs- ESPECIALLY since the moths apparently CHOSE to worship the Pale King. Ignoring that feels like it's making light of all the heavy suffering BECAUSE so much of their interactions have that heavy Christian influence to them. Hell, I've never stepped foot inside a church and even I can make an argument that PK's whole shtick was modeled to represent the snake in the Garden of Eden luring the moths away from innocence, simply from what I've scraped together living in America. I don't have any stories from my Persian relatives/what I was raised with that can specifically relate to PK or the Radiance in any way that matters.

There's also the fact that the big 'you must worship only one god or you are a sinner and inhuman' thing is another pretty big issue with the weaponized version of Christianity used to excuse colonization, genocide, and forced conversion. I'm not saying that all religions are free of this, bc people are assholes, but the Church has the most blood on their hands with this ideology. Both the Pale King and the Radiance are guilty of this, just in different flavors of it, and their struggles are way closer to different sects of the church duking it out than anything else. The fact that the issues critiqued in Hollow Knight are specifically issues that arise within the different sects of Christianity and their beef means that dividing them from that cultural perspective completely mucks up the storyline, as well as is terribly uncomfortable to people who aren't Christian and took comfort in the story picking out all those problems with the religion and going 'hey see this shit? This is terrible. Don't do it.'

This isn't intended to diss on Christianity or the story of Hollow Knight, btw! Christianity isn't an inherently bad religion, ALL religions have a lot more overlap than you think, and lots of stories written from a culturally Christian perspective slap. It's just that the specific wrongs that the gods do when duking it out are very, very strongly Christian, and when you remove that, the story ends up skewed. It's a good moral lesson, but you have to be aware of it to get the whole picture, which makes it a weakness.

So tdlr: Hollow Knight being written from the perspective of people who are culturally Christian isn't actually a bad thing, the issue is that if you try to divorce the story from that perspective shit gets really fuckin' uncomfortable and messed up really fuckin' fast.

(Also, maybe don't use the whole 'organized religion' thing? I'm hardly one to tell you how to deal with your religious trauma, but pretty much all of the issues with 'organized religion' I've heard are entirely Christian ones, which kinda makes shit awkward when you're Muslim or Jewish. We def. have issues but lumping them in with all that shit is like chucking recycle into the trash bin, or visa versa)

[houseof-harry]

Christmas Miracle | G.D.

A/N - anddddddd I’m back! Idk why, but I thought it was necessary for us to have a cheesy ass, Hallmark ass one shot that is filled with all the fluff and cuteness. So I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday moment and you enjoy the disgusting fluff I’m offering up

Word Count - 7.4k

Summary - Christmas in New York can be seen in one of two ways. It’s the most magical time of the year, snow falling, lights glimmering, joy rampant in the air. Or, the influx of tourists and people trying to sell you things ruins the entire month of December. Y/n tends to lean towards the latter. That is, until she get’s her Christmas miracle.

***

Your friends were lucky you loved them.

When they had first brought up the idea of you showing them around New York City during one of the most popular times of the year for tourism, you shut them down immediately. The holidays were difficult enough without leading around a group of lost puppies who would be acting like they had never seen Christmas lights before.

But they were convincing people, and were quick to offer you the many ways in which they could brighten your few weeks at home and possibly even change your view of the last few weeks of the year.

So, as you balanced finals and all of your other responsibilities as the semester came to an end, you and your friends planned out a trip through NYC that could honestly make a pretty decent Hallmark movie. They even convinced you to spend New Years in Time Square, despite your continued protest. You never saw the appeal of being packed into small gated areas for hours with a bunch of strangers to watch a ball drop, but they claimed that it was necessary to get the full experience. You also bargained that you would get to pick where spring break was if you went through with all of their plans.

You never liked feeling like Scrooge, but the holidays never brought positive memories back for you. Everything felt somewhat fraudulent to you. Fake smiles, meaningless gifts, ignoring the happenings of the rest of the year to act as though family was more important than anything, everyone suddenly devout Christians. You were a big advocate of always being true to who you are, and how you feel, year round. Not just when it is socially expected to do so in some performative, public way that puts up the facade that your life couldn’t be better.

You hoped your friends were right, that they could change the way you felt about the holidays. That maybe it would somehow feel more genuine with them.

So far, they've had some almost successful attempts. You indulged in gingerbread cookies, wore your fluffy winter jacket as you walked around with them to shop for your secret santa. You could even feel a bit of excitement as you picked out the perfect gift for Gia. She’d always say how much she loved leather watches, that she hoped to be able to afford one after graduation to wear to her first job. The smooth brown band you picked out earlier in Saks sat safely in your bag as you led everyone to one of the main attractions of their visit.

Soon enough, the massive, lit up tree came into view.

“Welcome to Rockefeller Center,” you announce as you turn to face everyone, hands held out as you watch them marvel at the scene in front of them, a scene they’ve only seen through screens.

“Wow,” Colin mutters under his breath. You swear you can see the lights from behind you twinkling in their eyes, and you can understand better why they wanted to come on this trip. Maybe you had become a bit numb to the Christmas happenings of the city after so many years of being around it. The obvious wonder on everyone’s faces made you wish you could see the tree for the first time all over again.

You turn to walk forward, afraid of bumping into the swarms of people that stand between you and the tree. As you do so, you feel Gia’s arm wrap around your shoulder to fall in step next to you.

“I knew we’d be able to get a smile on your face,” she teases as her free hand comes to your face to squeeze your cheeks.

You chuckle, wrapping your arm around her waist to keep her close as you squeeze your way through the crowd to get closer to the tree. “Just because I hate the holidays, doesn’t mean I don’t like seeing you guys happy. Even if it’s for a stupid tree.”

“It’s not stupid and you know it.”

You let out a dramatic sigh, your rebuttal interrupted when you hear a squeal from behind you.

“We need a family picture in front of it!”

You turn around at Jo’s request to see her already getting her camera out from under her jacket.

“Here, I’ll take some,” you offer, holding your hand out.

“But then you won’t be in it,” she pouts.

“I have so many pictures of myself in front of this tree, I don’t need any more.”

She huffs, but knows you’re too stubborn to change your mind. She turns back to your group, who now stand in front of you, positioning everyone next to each other.

You bring the camera up to your face, making sure to get everyone in the frame, along with the tree. You start taking pictures of your friends, and you can’t stop the smile that spread across your face as you watch them genuinely enjoy the moment.

“I can take pictures of all of you if you want,” a gruff voice comes from your left, and your attention goes from the camera to the person standing close to you now.

Your eyes have to drag up from the man’s chest, him having a significant height advantage over you. He has a five o’clock shadow that covers his chin, a sharp jawline underneath. His smile shows off his white teeth, that same smile causing the corners of his eyes to wrinkle. Those same warm eyes are looking at you still, waiting for a response.

“Uh, I don’t-”

“Yes!” Jo responds for you, swinging her hand at the two of you standing there.

He holds his hands out, and you carefully place the expensive camera in his hands.

“Don’t drop it.”

He nods at your command as he inspects the buttons.

“Or steal it.”

This breaks his attention from the camera, his smile spreading wider as he chuckles. “I won’t.”

You let out a huff as you nod once, crossing your arms and turning to walk to your friends. You go to the end of the line, tucking yourself under Colin’s arm.

“Don’t drool all over me.”

You scoff, looking up at him. “What?”

“You’ve got heart eyes for our photographer, I’m surprised you couldn’t feel your jaw dragging on the floor as you came over here.”

“Shut up,” you mumble, hitting his chest as he laughs at you.

“Stop talking and smile!” Jo chastises, and you listen in the hopes of Colin dropping it.

You look back at the man who has the camera, and feel your cheeks blush as you make eye contact with him. You opt to look at the camera instead, trying to forget the fact that his eyes were undeniably on you.

He snaps a bunch of pictures of you guys, and as the mom friends Jo even made you do what she deems a “silly” one.

Once Jo is satisfied, she runs up to him, grabbing the camera with a quick and uninterested ‘thanks’ as she immediately starts scrolling through the pictures. Everyone gathers around, laughing and pointing at each other on the tiny screen.

“Thank you,” you say, standing next to him as you watch your friends leaning over Jo’s shoulder.

“No problem,” he smiles, also watching your group. “I hope they’re good enough for a Christmas card.”

You laugh, probably too loudly for how lame of a comment it was, but he seems to appreciate it.

You shake your head. “Knowing Jo, I’ll have an entire book of pictures by the end of this that she’ll insist I keep on my coffee table the rest of my life.”

He chuckles, his hands sliding into the pockets of his jacket. He’s got a beanie covering his ears, and you can’t help but notice he looks better in it than you ever could.

“It’s nice having friends that feel like family. I’m glad you get to have them around for the holidays.”

It’s weird how that comment seems to sit with you. He knows nothing about you, but he’s right. How he knew you needed to hear that, you don’t know.

“Yeah,” you nod, biting your lip as you take in a breath through your nose to ground yourself. “Thanks again, uh…”

“Grayson.” One of his hands leaves his pockets, hanging in the air between the two of you. You take it, letting his fingers fold around your own hand. His skin is warm against yours, a nice change to the cool winds that have been gusting around you the entire day.

He raises his brow at you, and for a second you don’t know what he wants. He keeps your hand engulfed in his, and it hits you that he’s waiting to hear your name.

“Y/N.”

“Y/N,” he says, almost testing it out as he lets your hand drop. “I like that.”

You giggle, your cheeks blushing as you realize the involuntary reactions he’s pulling from you. You’re not a giggler.

“Yo Gray!” Another deep voice comes from over your shoulder, and you turn to see someone who could be a clone of the man standing in front of you. “We gotta go.”

You’re not sure if you make up the sigh you think you hear come from his lips, hoping he was disappointed he had to leave, too.

“I hope you like the pictures.”

And as suddenly as he had appeared next to you, you were watching him jog over back to his own group of people as they disappeared behind the crowd.

“Don’t worry,” Colin’s grip was on your shoulder again as he stepped next to you. “Love is in the air this Christmas season. If it’s not him, it’s someone.”

“I’m Jewish.”

“And Christmas is barely about being Christian anymore. Everyone gets some Christmas joy.”

“Yeah, whatever,” you shake your head, leaning into him a bit. You appreciated his positivity, despite your pessimism. If Christmas miracles were real, your life would have played out very differently.

***

Cold.

That was all you could feel, think, see.

After your adventure at the tree, you planned to go ice skating. You had to, according to Jo. It would be a waste to be there and not go.

When you tried to get out of it, claiming to want to keep Kam company seeing as he had an ankle injury and couldn’t skate, everyone including Kam called you on your shit and made you get out on the ice.

Which you were pretty sure they were regretting now.

You’d never been confident on the ice, only skating a few times in your life. You couldn’t leave the edge, holding onto the side for dear life as you moved slowly around the rink. Your friends took shifts staying with you the rest skating at a more reasonable pace as they continued to lap you.

That is, until Colin and Gia start arguing about who’s better and decide to race, Jo trailing behind them to make sure they don’t knock any children down.

Despite your tight grip on the wall, without the help of your friends your balance fails you and before you knew what was happening, your feet were flailing beneath you. You’re surprised the ice didn’t crack as you fell, your body colliding with the cold, hard ice as your hand trailed down the wall.

You laid there a moment, partially in shame but mainly from the exhaustion of trying to keep yourself upright. You only open your eyes when you hear a chuckle from above you. When you do open them, however, you’re met with an unexpected sight.

“You alright?”

That same charming smile was looking down at you, Grayson’s hand held out in front of him in an offer to help you up.

You scramble to sit up, taking his hand, the other going to the ice as you start to slowly stand up. What you don’t expect is the amount of force he would use to help you, feeling the tug on your arm as he quickly gets you back to your feet.

It’s so quick that you can’t seem to get your footing, your skates scrambling on the slick ice again. Before you can take another tumble, though, his hand is leaving yours as you feel his grip on your waist. He manages to steady you, your palms resting on his chest to do your best to stay still for a moment. Your breathing is a bit jagged as you try to collect your thoughts, your brain jumbled from the events of the past minute, the close proximity to Grayson not helping.

“Uh.” Your mind is racing a mile a minute in order to catch up to where you were right now. Still against Grayson’s body, his face close to yours with a concerned look. His eyes seem to be tracking your own expressions as he tries to figure out if you’re hurt. “Yeah, think I’m good.”

You lean back against the wall, and he takes it as a sign to let go of you. Despite your multiple layers that separated your skin from his hands, you somehow feel a bit colder without him touching you.

“Bit of a hard fall there.”

“Yeah,” you chuckle, nodding your head as you flush, realizing he saw the whole thing happen. “I’m not the best skater.”

“Interested in a lesson?” He holds his hand out to you.

You raise your brow, not moving from the safety of the wall. “You want to teach me?”

“Yeah, Y/N.”

You’re not sure why hearing your name from his mouth unprompted affected you so much, but you felt almost as if you were in a trance. It was like you couldn’t control yourself anymore, your hand falling easily into his.

“Why?”

For the first time since you met him, Grayson seemed to be a bit flustered. “I, uh, think it’s important everyone knows how to skate. It’s definitely a life skill,” he justifies, nodding and pursing his lips. “Plus, I used to play hockey. So I know what I’m doing.”

“I’m not looking to learn how to body someone on ice.”

His laughter is loud as he leans forward a bit, his body closer to yours once again. His grip on your hand tightens, and it’s suddenly hard to believe you’ve gone your whole life without hearing him laugh. You can’t help your own laughter that falls from your lips in response to him, your eyes unable to leave his face.

“I’m just gonna teach you how to not fall,” he reassures through his smile. “I’ve seen people get seriously hurt falling.”

The reminder of possible injuries not only makes you aware of the dull ache you were feeling from your most recent fall, but also of the fact you were far away from the door of the rink.

Grayson notices the change in your attitude, his smile quickly fading. “Or I can just help you off the ice.”

His voice brings you back to reality as you take in a breath and look up at him. Despite the fear bubbling inside of you, the tendinitis in your joints screaming for you to stop, you can’t help but think about what Colin said before. Maybe this was your Christmas miracle.

“No, you’re right. It’s totally a life skill.”

The corners of his mouth turn up as nods before situating himself sideways next to you. “Alright, first things first you gotta remember to bend your knees.”

You uneasily push your body off the wall, your hand still gripping it. “Actually, first things first I have to turn the right direction.”

He chuckles and nods, standing there expectantly. You realize he’s waiting for you to do it yourself.

“I don’t know how.”

“Oh.” He switches his hands so you’re holding one farther from you. His now free arm reaches around your waist. “Can I?”

You nod, and you feel his firm grip on you once again. As soon as he starts to maneuver you, you squeal, tightening your hand on his as your other flies from the wall to cover his grip on your jacket.

“Sorry,” you mumble. “I’m not usually such a little bitch.”

He laughs, and that’s when you realize how close you are again. You can feel his warm breath on the side of your face, and you can’t bring yourself to look at him in fear of totally freezing from making eye contact. You can’t remember the last time someone made you feel so nervous yet so comfortable at the same time.

“You’re not a little bitch, you’re just getting used to the ice. You’ll be lapping me in no time.”

It’s your turn to laugh as you shake your head. “Thanks for the vote of confidence, but I’m pretty sure my only goal should be to not eat shit.”

“We got this, then.”

Surprisingly enough, you guys managed to stay standing the whole time. After your first lap around, and partially to your disappointment, you were able to skate without his arm around you, the only support you needed coming from holding his hand and the occasional grip of the wall. The only time you came close to falling was when he taught you how to pick up speed, but even then you managed to stay on your feet.

What caught you most off guard, however, was how easily being around him was. Somehow it felt like you had known each other for years, your comfort level increasing every minute you spent together. You were able to laugh together, never a dull or quiet moment as he continued to guide you around the rink. You lost track of where your friends even were, nevermind how the lights around the rink were seemingly getting brighter as the sun went down.

“So who was that guy from before that looked like you?”

“My twin brother Ethan.”

At this point you two were skating at a normal speed, staying close to the wall for your sanity, but the only support you needed was him holding your hand.

“You guys are close?”

“Oh my god,” he laughs, shaking his head. You look over at him, smiling as you watch him try and put into words what he wants to explain. “Probably too close. We do everything together.”

“That’s gotta be nice, though.”

“It is. It’s good to always have someone like that,” he agrees. “Do you have any siblings?”

You nod, looking forward again. “Yeah, two brothers.”

“So you already know how to body people, it was just the on ice part you struggled with.”

You laugh. “Exactly, you just caught me in my moment of weakness.”

“Oh, so you would have bodied me otherwise?”

You look back over at him, letting your gaze go up and down his body as if you’re sizing him up. “Totally.”

Before he can respond, your body is being jerked as you feel Gia’s arm fall over your shoulder. You grip Grayson’s hand hard to stay standing.

“As much as I hate to be the party pooper, I’ve gotta steal you away. Jo’s freaking about us being late for the dinner res.”

Both Grayson and Gia stop skating, but you move forward with the momentum you had built up. Stopping hadn’t been a part of the day's lesson.

You fall backwards between the grip they both had on you. You’re not even sure what your hands start reaching for as you flail around, expecting the cold of the ice under your body just like before.

Instead, you feel two strong arms under you. When you open your eyes, Grayson’s face is so close to yours you’re sure you would see any imperfections if he had them. His eyebrows are high on his forehead as he searches your face just like last time, looking for a status update.

“Oh my god, I’m totally ruining the Christmas miracle right now, aren’t I?”

Grayson does what he can to keep a straight face due to the concern he still had for you, but he can’t stop the snort that comes from him as you groan and cover your face in embarrassment from Gia’s comment.

“Giovannina, I swear on my life, I will literally-”

“I’m sorry!” Grayson stands you back up making sure you’re steady on your feet before letting go of you. “Jo’s got her murder eyes, you know the ones, and she’s been looking forward to this restaurant all week and we waited as long as possibly because-” she looks at Grayson. “You seem fabulous, truly. So cute. But,” she looks back at you, puppy dog eyes fully activated. “You know how Jo gets.”

You let out a sigh, nodding your head. “I do.”

She sheepishly holds her hands out for you, and you bregudgely take them, making sure you exaggerate your frustrations. It’s not Gia’s fault, or even Jo’s that your time with Grayson had to get cut short, but that doesn’t mean you won’t throw a fit about it.

“Thank you for finally teaching her how to skate. She’s a woman of many talents, but being on ice is not one of them,” Gia chuckles, her smile genuine but your annoyance only building. Gia’s intentions are always pure, but god damn she was a bad wingman.

Fortunately, Grayson smiles in agreement as he looks at you. “It was a rough beginning, but I think you’ve got potential.” He nudges your shoulder with his lightheartedly, but you tense in fear of falling over.

“Sure, lots of potential,” you mumble, letting Gia slowly start to pull you to the exit.

“Hey, is there any way I could-”

“Y/N!”

You all turn to see Jo standing in front of Colin and Kam, and you’re pretty sure you can also see the vein popping out of the side of her neck in distress as she tries to rush you along. You make a mental note to figure out who has her for secret santa to tell them to get her a voucher to a spa.

You turn back to look at Grayson, both of you standing there somewhat speechless, not sure what to say and not wanting to speak over the other.

“Thanks for looking out for her again!” Gia interrupts, tugging you along and forcing you to turn back around.

You let her pull you along in silence, disappointment quickly settling in the pit of your stomach.

This wasn’t you. You were very intentional with who you let in your life, and even more intentional with who you liked. You were notoriously single, always prioritizing everything and everyone before putting yourself in a position to get hurt. You let rationality rule, emotions only ever proving to cause pain and heartbreak.

So why the fuck were you so caught up in Grayson?

***

You did your best to not think about him, the illusive man you met one day two weeks ago. You had so much to distract yourself with, too. Between the Christmas celebration you guys did, the other activities Jo had planned around the city, and just spending time with people you loved, you should have been able to forget Grayson in a day, go back to how life was before he offered to take pictures for you.

Even Jo picked up on how you were off. You were going through with every stupid craft or activity she made you do, without a complaint. She knew something was up.

Which is why she conceded on one of her biggest wishes, one she knew you were not looking forward to.

“So I found us a house party for New Years.”

You look up from your phone at her declaration, brows furrowed. “What?”

“Instead of going out on the street for New Years, we’ll go to a party in one of the apartments nearby.” She’s got everyone's attention now, Kam pausing the show on the TV to listen. “We’ll still be able to see the ball drop, but we’ll be inside.”

“How’d you find a party? Those apartments are mad nice, only rich people live in them.”

“You know how my sister’s out in LA trying to be a model?”

You nod.

“Well, it’s kind of working. She’s gotten herself a group of influencer friends, successful ones. They’re here for New Year’s, so she got us on the list.”

“Holy shit,” Gia mutters.

“Is Madison Beer gonna be there?” Kam asks.

You laugh, shaking your head. “Dude, even if she is, there’s no way she’d fuck you.”

Kam scoffs, flipping you off. “Don’t be an ass just because your Christmas miracle was a fail. Some of us don’t hate the world.”

“There’s no such thing as Christmas miracles, Kam. Plus, it’s past Christmas.”

“Alright, alright,” Colin interrupts, holding his hands up between the two of you. “First off,” he points at you. “Christmas miracles are definitely real, you’re just a Grinch. And,” he turns to point at Kam. “Madison Beer is way out of your fucking league.”

“Ha!”

“However,” Colin cuts you off. “If she did fuck you, I would classify that as a Christmas miracle because it is still holiday time and therefore the rules of Christmas miracles still apply.”

You throw your hands up in confusion, but Jo beats you to it. “What are the rules of Christmas Miracles?”

“Oh jesus,” you mumble under your breath as Colin sits up straighter and clears his throat.

“The rules are as follows,” he holds up a finger. “If you can find a shitty, holiday themed movie on the Hallmark channel, it’s Christmas-time and therefore a Christmas miracle can happen. They usually run through New Years, so you both-” he points at you and Kam, “have the opportunity for your Christmas miracles.”

“I cannot believe-”

“Second,” he interrupts you, holding up a second finger. “Christmas miracles come to people who deserve them.”

“Oh, so that’s why Y/n’s didn’t work out?” Kam murmurs, and you flip him off.

“Kam, your already low odds of fucking Madison Beer are dwindling by the second.”

“Fine,” he holds his hands up in defeat. “Keep going.”

“Y/n is totally deserving of a Christmas miracle,” Gia defends you. “She puts so much time into making sure we’re happy. Just because she doesn’t like Christmas, doesn’t mean she’s not deserving.”

“Exactly G,” Colin nods in approval, before putting up a third finger. “And lastly, you have to believe you deserve the Christmas miracle.” It feels like he’s staring into your soul when he says that one.

You all sit there in silence, individually deciding how much you want to believe what Colin is saying.

Of course it sounds like a load of horse shit. But, it didn’t feel like horseshit when you were with Grayson.

“Whatever,” you declare, standing up. “I need more.” You swirl your now empty mug, walking over to the hot chocolate and peppermint vodka on the counter.

“A little joy never hurt anyone, Y/n,” Kam comments, holding his empty mug out to you as you walk by. You take it from him, putting them down on the counter once you reach it.

“You’d be surprised.”

***

You’re not sure how Gia convinced you that a skimpy outfit was the perfect idea to wear for New Years, yet here you were, shivering to the bone as you walked down the street.

You don’t even like wearing heels most of the time, out of fear of falling down. Gia claims you look confident when you wear them, which you reveal to her is fake. That’s always been your motto: ‘fake it ‘till you make it.’ That didn’t seem to sway her, though, so the stilettos that now dug into your pinky toes were what you committed to for the entirety of the evening.

Colin’s arm around your shoulder wasn’t helping to warm you any, your faux fur coat letting the cool breeze still brush against your skin. Your small black tank top tucked into your matching black jeans were not made to be worn in the 20 degree weather. You kept your body close to him, your arm wrapped around his waist with your free hand in Gia’s.

“We’re gonna have the best night!”

You smile at Gia’s excitement, her eyes seeming to sparkle with the lights that line the street. Other groups of partiers and New Year’s Eve celebrators make it hard to hear her over their loud screaming and excitement, and you can’t help but let that energy invigorate you a bit. You guys were getting closer to the end of your break, reality would be setting in soon, and you’d be buckling down with school again. You wanted to enjoy the time you had left with your friends.

“I’m so excited to see who’s there,” Kam agrees.

“You can’t be weird about it, though,” Jo warns. “My sister said we have to act like we’re supposed to be there. This is a private thing, they want to have a normal New Year’s Eve.”

“I promise I’ll be my normal self,” Kam holds his hands up in defense, a smirk on his lips.

“Yeah, that’s what I’m worried about,” she mumbles, causing Kam to give her a light shove as you continue to make your way down the street.

When you finally reach the entrance of the building Jo’s sister told you to come to, you’re all speechless. You could see the lobby of the building through the glass doors, and it was fancier than any hotel you’d ever stayed in before.

Jo makes the move first, opening the door and walking in. Kam grabs it from her, holding it for the rest of you as you file in behind her, like a group of ducklings following their mom blindly across the pond.

She speaks with the woman at the front desk, who points you to the hallways where you assume the elevators are. None of you speak as she walks you over and presses the button.

When an elevator finally arrives, there’s an attendant waiting for you inside. You’d had the opportunity to indulge in many extravagant things in life, and have taken those opportunities, but this was a whole other level of fancy.

Jo has a similar conversation with the attendant that she did with the woman at the front desk. He does something on his Ipad before smiling at you all and pressing a button that prompts the doors to close.

“Holy. Fuck,” Colin whispers in your ear, and all you can do is look at him with wide eyes and an open mouth.

When the doors open in front of you, the silence from the ride up in the elevator is immediately permeated by the bustle of the party in front of you.

“Have a good time!” The attendant says as you all slowly step across the gap in the floor and into one of the nicest apartments you think you had ever seen in your life.

There’s a few dozen people working their way around the room, no more than 50. You can appreciate the smaller crowd, knowing that being on the street would have been significantly more uncomfortable with the amount of people who gather there every year.

“Jojo!” Katherine’s high pitched voice breaks through the music as you see Jo’s bubbly sister make her way over to you guys.

“Hey Kath,” she murmurs, already being suffocated in a hug.

Katherine pulls away, keeping her hands on Jo’s shoulder in order to keep her close. “How are you? Haven’t seen you in forever!”

“I know,” Jo grimaces. “That’s what happens when you move across the country and rarely call anyone.”

Katherine almost misses a beat, but instead turns to the rest of you.

“It’s so of nice you guys could come! I can’t imagine what it would have been like...out there,” she trails off, looking towards the large windows that overlook Times Square.

Jo mutters ‘“authentic” under her breath as Gia cries out “cold!”

“Exactly!” Katherine turns back to you guys. “I knew I always liked you, Gigi.”

“It’s Gia.”

“Whatevs, Jojo. Go in and get cozy! And don’t embarrass me, please.” It’s scary the smile Katherine has on her face as she disappears back into the crowd. It would look genuine to the naked eye, but she almost looked dead inside when you took a closer look. But, in the wise words of Katherine herself, ‘whatevs.’

“I see the bar,” Colin nods his chin in the opposite direction that Katherine went, and you’re grateful you won’t have to see her so soon again.

“Please,” is all Jo squeaks out before making a beeline for the counter where the bartender stood.

You chuckle, following closely behind.

“The usual?”

You shake your head, stepping up next to Jo to order your own drink instead. “A moscow mule, please.”

You can feel all eyes on you, curiosity peaking at your change of heart. You never strayed from your normal order.

“What?” You ask defensibly, as you turn around to confront their questioning looks.

“Going rogue?” Kam asks.

“Trying out the holiday joy you suggested, Kam. Any objections?”

“Nope.” He pops the ‘p,’ his smile widening as he realizes you’re letting your walls down for once.

That doesn’t last long after your drink is in your hand, however.

There’s Grayson. Your Christmas miracle. Sitting on the couch, a girl in his lap and a smile on his face. He looks good in a turtleneck, you note, but that doesn’t stop the queasiness settling in your stomach. You knew Christmas miracles were horseshit, but this just felt like a cruel trick.

“What’s with the frown?” Kam asks, standing next to you as everyone else situates themselves with a drink.

“Don’t look right now, but behind you is my supposed Christmas miracle with a girl in his lap.”

Kam whips his head around, scanning the room.

“Dude are you kidding? I said don’t turn,” you grip his arm, forcing him to turn back, but not before he’s spotted the cozy couple. The look of pity on his face unsettles you.

“I’m sorry.”

You shake your head, taking a sip from your drink. “Don’t be, I knew him for an hour. I will, however, be calling Colin on his shit later.”

“What shit?” Colin asks, coming to stand next to you.

“Your Christmas miracle bullshit.”

A laugh bubbles up from his chest as he quirks a brow. “Oh really?” “Yeah, Grayson’s over there with a girl-”

“Damn, for how quickly obsessed you became with the kid, you really are forgetful.”

You give Colin a question look, waiting for him to continue.

“He has an identical twin. Your Christmas miracle is standing against the staircase. He’s been looking at you since we got to the bar.”

Your turn your head and sure enough, your eyes are locked with Grayson’s. He’s just as captivating as last time, his warm smile on his face once he realizes he’s been spotting. Unlike last time, however, instead of shying away from the eye contact, you can’t seem to stop looking.

“Remember, you have to believe you deserve the Christmas miracle,” Colin whispers in your ear before giving you a not so gentle shove in Grayson’s direction.

“You’re lucky I’m not a violent person,” you say over your shoulder, before making your way over to him. You can feel the excitement tingling in your fingertips that grip your drink as you do your best to be polite to the people you bump into on your way.

Once you’re close enough, Grayson pushes himself off the banister, creating a space for you to stand between the wooden sticks and his large body.

“Fancy seeing you here.”

His voice is deeper than you remember, more delicious if possible. It feels familiar hearing him speak, a comfort you didn’t know you had been missing.

“You’re supposed to say that when you expect to see someone, not when you’re actually surprised.”

He lets out a low laugh, nodding in defeat. “Okay, true. It’s a good surprise, though - at least for me.” He seems a bit less smooth than last time, too. You can feel the nerves coming off him, his confidence lower. You wonder if it’s got to do with the environment you’re in.

You smile up at him, licking your lips in order to drag out the unknown a bit longer. You can’t give it all up right away.

“Yeah,” you finally agree. “A real good surprise.”

“Good.”

“Although, you know I gotta ask it.”

His smile falters as he raises his brow. “I think I gotta ask the same thing.”

“You first,” you nod your chin at him, crossing your arms.

“Ethan and I are a friend of a friend to one of the host’s friends. We’re normally not in Jersey for New Year’s, so when they found out we’d be celebrating alone in our mom’s house, we got an invite.”

“A Jersey kid?” You feign disgust, making him laugh as he leans his arm over your head. He smells good, his scent overriding your thoughts for a moment.

“Is that a bad thing?”

You shrug. “Usually. I guess I’ll overlook it, though.”

“Don’t knock it ‘till you try it,” he answers cockily.

You giggle, shaking your head at the cheesy comment. “Are you offering me somewhat of a free trial?”

“More like endless coupons with no expiration date.”

This makes you fully laugh, him chuckling with you as you feel your cheeks heat up at the implication of his words.

“You barely know me,” you counter, still unable to look away from his eyes. “What makes you so sure about offering such a good deal to me?”

He shrugs. “Call it a gut feeling.”

You feel your own stomach go crazy at that, the confirmation that he was feeling what you were only heightening how his warmth seemed to radiate off him, everything Grayson flooding your senses.

“Your turn.”

“Hm?” You hum, bringing your drink to your lips.

“What’s gotten you into Madison Beer’s apartment?”

You choke on the liquid you intended on swallowing, coughing to clear your throat. His brows furrow as he brings his hand from above you to your back, rubbing it.

“Oh my god - sorry - I just,” you take in a big breath before standing up straight again, more confident in your lungs. “This is Madison Beer’s apartment?”

“Yeah,” he chuckles, looking around the room. “You didn’t know?”

You shake your head. “Jo’s sister -”

“Murder eyes Jo?”

“Exactly. She’s been out in LA modeling. When she heard we were gonna be in New York for New Year’s she got us in. This -” you gesture to the room, noticing the more familiar faces you’re seeing now that you’re paying attention. “Totally not my normal scene.”

“So you’re giving everything new a shot right before the year ends?”

“Mhm,” you bring your gaze back to him. “In case I want to take it back and act like it never happened.”

He laughs, licking over his teeth. “Sounds like a solid plan.”

***

It was stupid how well you got along. You didn’t even see any of your other friends the entire night, Grayson keeping you tucked in the corner. You hoped Kam had somehow ran into Madison at some point, but you weren’t inclined enough to leave Grayson to help him with it.

It felt like you guys were somehow meant to be there that night together. Maybe Colin was onto something, maybe this was your (belated) Christmas miracle.

“It was total fate, I’m telling you. The odds we were able to get Mando on our team in the first place, nevermind him being one of the most important people in our lives now.” Grayson shakes his head as he recalls the memories, a reminiscent smile on his face. “You believe in all that, right?”

“What?” You hum, admiring his positivity. Every story, every glimpse into his life he’s given you throughout the night, has all ended in a positive twist. He managed to see the bright side of every situation, despite the horrible shit that’s been thrown his way.

“Fate.”

You sit up a bit straighter, your elbows leaving where they rested on your thighs. Your knee was touching his, your proximity close on the couch due to the amount of people who were sitting there with you. You felt like you were in a bit of a bubble, though. Despite the loud chatter from all around you, the only thing you could pay attention to was Grayson.

“I’m not gonna lie to you,” you set your cup down before leaning back against the cushion. His arm that was resting on the top of that cushion drops, landing on your shoulder casually, but you can feel the warmth it immediately brings. “I never really did. I’ve always been the pessimist of the bunch. However,” your eyes find Colin, who’s sat to Grayson’s back. He gives you a wide smile and two thumbs up. You can’t help the smile that makes its way onto your own face as you look back at Grayson. “I’ve recently become a bit of a believer. Why?”

He shrugs. “I mean, what are the odds we not only had the same skate time at one of the most popular skating rinks in the world, but we also then end up at the same New Year’s Eve party?”

You huff, starting to think. “Well, statistically speaking -”

“No,” he laughs, nudging your leg with his own. “Fate isn’t about statistics, or probability. There’s nothing explainable about it.”

“My friend Colin is calling it a Christmas miracle,” you admit.

“So that’s what your friend meant when she interrupted us on the ice?”

“Oh god,” you groan, covering your face in the same manner as last time, shaking your head. “Don’t remind me.”

“Hey,” he chuckles, grabbing one of your wrists to expose your face to him again. “Don’t worry about it, it was funny.”

“It shouldn’t have been funny, though,” you whine, a pout forming on your lips.

He cocks his head to the side, a smirk settling on his face. “What should it have been?”

Before you can respond, the countdown from 60 begins, and suddenly everyone is standing and chanting around you, buzzing to start the new year.

58, 57, 56, 55

Grayson stands, holding a hand out for you to take. You place your hand in his, standing right next to him, there being little room for you two between the couch and the coffee table causing your chests to be pressed against one another. You look up at him, the same warm eyes he’s had for you meeting your gaze again.

“Romantic.”

“Huh?” He leans closer to you, his ear so close to your mouth that you were tempted to nip his earlobe.

“It should have been romantic.”

24, 23, 22, 21

He lifts his head so he can look at you again, close enough for his nose to brush against yours. One of his hands reaches around you, finding a resting spot on your lower back. His other hand comes to your cheek, his thumb rubbing the skin there. You grip his sweater at his sides, keeping him close to you.

“Ten, nine, eight,” Grayson starts counting down with the rest of the party, and you follow suit.

As everyone screams around you, celebrating the new year, you feel Grayson’s lips on yours. It feels like a movie, like the world is celebrating how amazing you guys feel right now as you finally physically connect with the person it feels like you were always meant to be with.

His lips are warm and smooth against yours, his every intention clear as he kisses you with a passion you’ve never experienced before. Your every nerve is on fire, your heart in flames as you keep yourself grounded by the grip you have on him.

He only pulls away as you feel champagne fall on the both of you, the confetti that was launched now sticking to you from the liquid. You can’t help the laugh that comes out of you at the craziness of it all, the fact that you just kissed the man in front of you, the man still in your grip, the man who still had his hands on you hard to comprehend.

Colin was right. Christmas miracles were most certainly real, and you deserved this one.

Grayson smirks down at you, leaning down to peck your lips once more before speaking. “Romantic enough for you?”

[ghost-in-the-stalls]

Since the hiatus is over, I'm gonna rant a bit about Stand Still, Stay Silent and how the author's take on her new religious views are impacting things.

So if you don't read that webcomic,sorry for this. I'll put it under a read more if it gets long (which it probably will).

So first of all, I'll clarify that these are my views and I know this is a HEATED thing rn and I'll basically just say I'll be willing to like... debate about it with anyone who wants to but I also personally reserve the right to turn off anon/block you if you get nasty with me or if it sounds like you aren't actually interested in hearing what I'm saying so much as spreading your own beliefs around.

Secondly, I want people to understand that I personally am American. I am speaking from an American perspective. I understand that Minna is not American. I may be conflating our experiences in a way they cannot be. However, I also recognize that author intent and audience interpretation are two very different things. With this in mind, I also recognize and understand that intent is nothing when compared to impact. So though I may be speaking from an experience that may not be true at all for Minna, I also recognize that my feelings and perspectives are valid as an American audience member. Something being written by a Finn does not negate the fact that it is available to read regardless of geographic location, and that it's impact will ultimately reach further than just her own bubble. So this post is me speaking about impact on myself as an American audience member, not intent on her part.

First I'll say that the bunny comic - Lovely People - is, in my opinion, objectively in poor quality and taste. Not even taking into account my own views on religion yet. It was very tone deaf about the history of Christianity and oppression and completely ignored how Western Christianity plays a major part in a lot of modern oppression and social problems that the comic tries to address. The pseudo-apocalyptic theme of the social credit system had the potential to be a very interesting and thought provoking direction! Social media has fucked with our society and our mental health in a way that we really need to address!

However, the comic made the Christians the only group we see experiencing oppression from this system in the story. This effectively does two things in tandem. One, it fails to address just how negative of an impact the social credit system would have on us all. Looking around at our way of interacting with the world now, we're still almost all of us suffering for the way things are. We have incredibly high social anxiety, people are encouraged from a young age to conform aggressively to beauty standards and share all their personal details online, and - most notably to my next argument - anywhere an individual lacks privilege is exploited by our society and they are put under a microscope, and are ultimately aggressively punished for being part of a marginalized group. Not born with the physical traits considered acceptable by Western standards of beauty? Tough luck. Not physically or mentally able to participate in the current system in place? Tough luck. Not willing to conform to strict gender roles? Identify as a marginalized gender or sexuality? Not willing to be quiet and secretive about it? Tough fucking luck. But the ONLY group that is shown to be oppressed at ALL in the bunny comic is Christians.

What makes this even more tone deaf is that, Two, it is thus completely blind to how Western Christianity has played a direct and aggressive role in supporting the oppression of these other group in our current fucked up system. I'm NOT saying Christianity is evil or that anyone who practices the faith is bad. Not at all. Religion is, at it's core, a beautiful thing. But the fact stands that MANY people in positions of power have used their Christian beliefs as a tool to oppress others. In America especially (yes I'm speaking as an American and I acknowledge that) Christianity is THE mask used by the far-right and the oppressors to spread their ideologies. Even white supremicists and nationalists ultimately will try to argue that white people and the US are God's Chosen Ones which is why they're TOTALLY RIGHT in doing the terribly things they do.

Making a comic about how a social credit system causes oppression and then showing that oppression as EXCLUSIVELY happening to Christians is not only in EXTREMELY poor taste, it is directly harmful. It is the same message and behavior that a lot of Christians use constantly to gaslight marginalized groups that they are against. "Oh I'm oppressing you? No actually I'M oppressed because I'M CHRISTIAN and you just can't handle the fact that you're going to hell for not repenting for existing!"

Even if those are your true beliefs. Even if you genuinely think that Christians are oppressed and that anyone arguing against you is refusing to repent. Does spreading information in that way really seem effective to you? Does it really seem loving and caring to you? To sit there and talk about how others are always hurting you, but you aren't hurting anyone else at all by telling them they're going to hell for being?

I'm digressing. But my point here is that the comic is in incredibly poor taste, and I genuinely will never understand why people expect non-Christians to take the message of "you're going to hell if you don't conform to my beliefs and also I'm oppressed" positively.

Moving on to Stand Still, Stay Silent...

She has said several times that she does not intend to change the path SSSS has been on from the beginning. This is honestly not comforting whatsoever.

First, this is definitely because - even before the recent developments - SSSS was always very shallow imo. I loved it! Don't get me wrong! But a major part of that love was because I genuinely thought it was building up to something bigger; I thought it was eventually going to go deeper. I now understand that that was never the case. It's a shallow story with a lot of potential that I don't think was ever going to get fully explored.

Now here's the thing. Part of me is really upset about that. What I thought the story was going to be I now see will never happen. But a bigger part of me is frankly happy about that now. Because, like I said up top, intent and impact are very different. If she were to suddenly go unexpectedly deeper than the story has been, I wouldn't trust that there wouldn't be shitty subtext and more of the same tone-deafness as the bunny comic. Whether intentional or not.

And even if she hadn't recently converted to Christianity. The fact that she is someone who is susceptible to these ideas and values tells me what kind of a person she really is anyway, regardless of religious identity. Which, frankly, would mean the subtext would still be shitty. I don't trust it. I don't trust her.

So frankly, people have every right to be suspicious of how SSSS may be impacted going forward. She can say that it won't be all she wants. But either the story will go deeper - like I had always hoped it would - and there would inevitably be an inseparable link between her values and beliefs and the themes of the story, OR the story will never go deeper at all which would mean imo that it would ultimately fall flat as a story.

People are allowed to be disappointed by this. People are allowed to be suspect of how she may potential work harmful themes into the comic going forward - whether intentionally or not. I'm allowed to be wary of this, especially as someone who has had VERY bad experiences with Christians who have tried to tell me the same things she made clear in her bunny comic.

[heavenaintaniceplace]

so i found my mother’s copy of the jw (new world translation) bible and i decided to yoink that shit for disposal but not before i realized there is a lot of lines highlighted in the book from when she was being manipulated by the jw lady that convinced her to do “bible study” for years. and what do you know if the lines the lady had my mother highlight weren’t the same lines that jws use to justify their cult beliefs! all the lines are cherry picked, no actual study, just the lady manipulating and priming her to accept their beliefs by presenting so called “biblical proof.” so here is some of the things that stand out before i finally rip this thing to shreds and through it away.

literally the whole book replaces every instance of the tetagrammaton with “jehovah” because they want people to believe its been “removed from the bible thousands of times because they don’t want you to know the true name of god”. the whole thing is translated with an agenda to make them look right and everyone else wrong and to make people believe they have some secret hidden knowledge (they don’t they’re liars). putting this under a read more because its very long.

heavy TW for everything related ro religious trauma, the jehovah’s witnesses, bible passages and christianity. incredibly long post. i plan on burning the jehovah’s witness copy of the bible, no joke.

the imago dei part of genesis to try and convince her that humans were super special to god

genesis chapter 3, the serpent convincing eve to eat the fruit of knowledge so that she would accept their version of the original sin doctrine and that women are cursed

chapter where cain kills abel to convince her that this was the first murder in human history (obviously incorrect)

highlighted the part where god kills everything on earth with a flood to groom her into expecting god to do it again later and seen as fair and just and part where god “gives” noah every living creature (because fuck other organisms apparently)

part of leviticus where (in their version) theyre like “no soul must eat blood” (what the fuck) to justify not allowing life saving blood transfusions

deuteronomy part about “jehovah being one” to justify being non trinitarian (they don’t believe jesus is god or that the holy spirit is god, this is meant to lure people who are already christians away from their denoms and into theirs)

“thou shall not kill” is highlighted for some reason and i don’t know why

highlighted job 1:12 to emphasize that they believe satan is in control of the world because god allows it and job 26:7 that has a note saying “the earth hangs there” when talking about sheol to convince her of where earth is relative to “heaven” and using a bunch of “face of the waters” creationist language to make it vague as possible. job 27:5 to make her believe that “no one is righteous” and that saying so is sinful

part in psalms that assures that “wicked people will be no more if you just wait a little while longer” (this is the apocalypse imminent narrative they use to groom people with fear of dying or leaving but also to get them warmed up to the idea of mass death). “the righteous will inherit the earth and live forever” narrative so they believe that jws will live on earth forever after being resurrected while everyone else (whos not a jw) is killed by god

psalms 91 to drive home the fact that these people think theyre invincible in every meaning of the word, to natural disasters and disease etc

proverbs 6 part about “false witnesses”. jws believe that three jehovah’s witnesses have to be present to verify that a crime (like domestic or sexual abuse) actually happened or the governing body and elders don’t care. literally. the “false witness” narrative is used against survivors and people they want to silence in their organization and emphasizes how much jehovah hates “false witnesses” aka people brave enough to talk and victims

proverbs 12:18 about “wise and unwise tongues”, basically anyone that speaks out against the jws are “unwise” and harmful

proverbs 22 about raising children (”train up a child”, if you don’t know it already this is a child abuser dog whistle) that implies that indoctrination will last until adulthood if done right. this is especially bad because this copy is from the early 2000s when i was in kindergarten. this woman had been lurking on us since i was an infant.

proverbs 27 about how neighbors near is better than brothers far away. the implication here is that fundamentally family who aren’t jws don’t matter

ecclesiates 5. i genuinely think its warning people to not ask too much of god or risk his anger, thats the vibe im getting here because the wording is confusing as fuck

isiah 40:22 trying to hammer in the notion that god is greater than anything especially “worldly” governments (except the governing body ofc /s). isiah 43:10 the “you are my witnesses” to justify the name “jehovah’s witnesses” and shoehorn the idea in

daniel 2:40, the idea of an indescribable kingdom, the whole kingdoms in the “last days” conspiracy they use to convince people the “last days” are coming

matthew 4:8 where jesus is persuaded by satan by offering every kingdom on earth. the point in text is “don’t worship anyone except god” but the point of the jws is that nothing on earth actually matters

matthew 6:9 (nice), the our father, meant to make the reader to ask god to hasten the kingdom of god or as we ex-jws know hasten the apocalypse and the death of people they dont like

matthew 16:24, meant to convince people to leave everything behind and join the jws, “disown yourself” aka “die to yourself” toxic bullshit repackaged

matthew 19:9, to convince people that divorce even in instances of domestic abuse is wrong because the governing body won’t allow it and loves to control women

matthew 24:4-14, “anyone who doesnt speak for the jws is a false prophet” and warms people up to the notion that war is necessary; also that evidence of war is a sign of the “last days” and that this is supposed to be good news. ongoing war and the hope for global genocide is “good news” to them.

matthew 24:21. this one is meant to make people feel the apocalypse could happen at any time and to be afraid of it, a great war is coming and only the “chosen ones” (jehovah’s witnesses) will survive when everyone else dies. there’s a paper bookmark on this page. makes me wonder.

mark 8:34. the “die to yourself” bullshit, the idea that the cross was a “torture stake” because jws believe that wearing crosses is idolatry and they want other people to believe their quirky beliefs so they accept heavier things

matthew 10:28, “anyone who follows jehovah and jesus will literally live forever!” but also that “no one is prepared to leave their family for jesus and thats shameful because you should want to sacrifice your entire family!”

mark 11:24 “anything you pray for earnestly you get”. this is spiritual bypassing btw. and :25 “ask for forgiveness and be automatically forgiven no matter what you did” is also fucked

matthew 15-23: jesus (almost) gets wasted while being crucified etc, not sure why this one is highlighted unless im missing some jw bullshit here

luke 20:27. don’t understand this one but they’re threatening “heavier judgement” on people

john 5:28, promising resurrection through jesus after people die but only for the Good tm people (the jws)

john 6:15. how jesus is about to be arrested but goes to a mountain. dunno why this on is underlined

john 11:24. bringing home the same “jesus will save you from dying if youre a jw” bullshit. john 14:6 “jesus is the ONLY way ever! there can’t be anything else except jesus” indoctrination tailored to make you co-dependent. john 17:3, hook line and sinker of promising resurrection and “eternal life” again

john 17:15. here is the “we aren’t of the World tm” shit meant to make you feel outcast from everyone else who isnt a jw, setting up “the world” (everyone else) as other

acts 15:25. “follow the jw rules because the holy spirit you to”

romans 10:10, spread jw beliefs and witness as much as possible. romans 12:9 “hate everything jehovah hates so you’re not a hypocrite” basically means hate other people the jws don’t approve of

corinthians 6:9 (nice but not so nice this time) “anyone we don’t like won’t inherit the earth” translation: anyone we don’t like won’t survive the apocalypse thats definitely happening soon so always be afraid. “homosexuals” are changed to “men kept for unnatural purposes for this one.” still homophobic.

corinthians 7:6, the idea that everyone has a gift that needs to be exploited and used by the jws

corinthians 15:33. “don’t participate in any activities with any outsiders because it will lead you away from jehovah!! fun is ‘drunkenness’, you’ll loose your resurrection if you do!! non jw people are bad influences!!”

2 corinthians 7:1. your body and flesh is defiled, you need to be cleansed in order to be good

galatians 5:20. “having human emotions is sinful! struggling is sinful! being angry is sinful! having a bad day is sinful!” basically that being human is inherently wrong or something

ephesians  3:14. tries to make people believe everything is owed to god only and that obedience is good so they fall for cult power structures later. 4:28 here is just the top of the page being labeled “new personality” and thats all we need to know about indoctrination and cult personality vs actual personality. also “let not the sun set with you in a provoked state” being used against people still angry about being wronged and hurt by others and its been used against me a lot of times

ephesians 6:4. make sure the jw fathers provide the most discipline to children, literally uses the phrase “mental regulating of jehovah”. it couldn’t be more cult like at this point.

timothy 5:8 makes people believe that men alone are expected to provide and if they don’t they’re worse than “those without faith”. no pressure though!

timothy 6:19. wants people to neglect everything actually happening in favor of the “real life” (”eternal life”) instead and to constantly prepare for that instead of actually living life. dedicate your whole life to jw activities

titus 2. women need to be subjects to their husbands but also homemakers, live to glorify their husband, chaste and definitely not mentally ill or showing any symptoms. what the fuck is titus i never heard of this shit until today.

hebrews 1:7-14, trying to convince people that angels live to serve god but also has some superseccsionist/replacement theology (antisemitism) vibes going on

james 2:23, wants people to believe that god “putting people to the test” is actually a way to become “jehovah’s friend” and that being put to the test (read: suffering) is actually a good thing because it primes them to accept suffering as their fault later on. james 4:7 “everything evil will vanish if you rebuke it long enough!!”

peter 3:9 the “god’s timing is always right” gospel bs and encourages people not to do things themselves but to wait and also that jehovah will be on time when its time to start another global genocide. how encouraging! peter 3:13, the same “end of world near” scare tactic, “new heavens new earth” promise to eradicate everyone the jws dont like as that is jehvoah’s “promise” to the witnesses

1 john 3:8, their version of the original sin doctrine, the devil is the source of all evil scare tactic etc

short detour: every instance of “servant” is replaced with “slave” in this version. it makes me feel ill.

revelations 7:16, wants people to believe that god will take away all their pain and that they won’t need food or water to survive anymore (bullshit). also the jehovah’s witness 144,000 chosen people bullshit is here too but not highlighted

revelations 12:7-13, a depiction fo michael drop kicking satan and the implication that satan has always been in charge and not god because they want people to believe that. also that the devil will fall to earth and try to eat jws

revalations 14-4: virgins get dibs on heaven and god i guess. i dont know what the fuck is going on. 14:6 an angel yelling fear god from above, probably where the jws get most of their apocalyptic imagery from that they use to scare children into believing they could die at any minute

so now that we finally got to the end of that mess, their version of revalations ends with jesus saying “yes, i am coming quickly” and “may the undeserved kindness of jesus christ be with the holy ones.”

joking aside, everything highlighted in this copy of this book has been used against me and my mother for years and is a huge part of the reason i have religious trauma now. everything she was told or encouraged to highlight aided jehovah’s witness indoctrination and propaganda, her own indoctrination and eventually mine which apparently started even earlier than i thought.

[comfyswitcherblanketfort]

Absolutely

Look. I was in a mood. I usually feel a little weird about posting smut bc that good ole christian repression and guilt and I’ve been sitting on this for a minute but fuck it. It’s time to post. 

Pairing: Geralt x fem!plussize!reader

Warnings: smut. hella smutty. subtle ‘I don’t like my body all that much’ vibes but its minimal

Summary: It’s been too long since you've had a good shag and Geralt picks up on it. 

Traveling with these idiots was usually great. As much as Geralt pretended to be a hardened brute, he was funny as hell and rather sweet. Jaskier was, with no better way to phrase it, himself, and you got along with them quite well. 

However. 

By the fifth town you had to nearly flee because Jaskier slept with the wrong person or the people were just royal ass holes, you were getting agitated. It had been three months since you'd had sex and a good couple weeks since your last orgasm because you weren't ever alone. Not for lack of trying. You tried making excuses to go to bed early when you were sharing rooms and did your damnedest to find lovers for a night. It just took a little more time for you to find someone in a tavern who enjoyed your fuller figure than it did for the boys. Partly because you had to be more careful, men were far more dangerous than most of the women they chased, but partly because you knew you were selling to a niche market. By the time you've got a sure target, some kind of shit hits the fan and you're tugged away from your night without the dynamic duo of chaos.

On week three with no genuine 'me time' you woke from a vivid wet dream to Roach sniffing your hair and wanted to scream. 

"Good morning sunshine!" Jaskier called, already packing up camp. 

You sat up, glaring at him, "Is it?"

He frowned at you, "Geralt though you might be grumpy today. Did you accidentally mind meld with him again?" 

You forced a laugh, "Fuck I hope not." The dream was absolutely about him. 

You went about your business trying to keep from being outwardly angry.

When you and Jaskier had everything packed and ready to go you looked around, "Where the hell is Geralt?" 

Before Jaskier even had time to turn and look at you, you were being lifted in the air. 

"Right here." Geralt answered, swinging you over his shoulder. 

This was not helpful to your plight. There was nothing you wanted more at the moment than for Geralt to pick you up and pin you against a wall, or tree if need be, with your legs over his shoulders and eat you out until you came so hard you couldn't breathe. 

"Put me down!" You squealed, feeling your body react involuntarily. 

He plopped you on your feet, giving you an inquisitive look, but keeping quiet. It always made you suspicious when he didn't ask questions.

"She's cranky, just like you thought." Jaskier explained. 

The trek into town was longer than you had hoped but, thankfully, Geralt had let Jaskier hitch a ride so you could make better time. If you'd had to have him riding double behind you, with his complements and natural flirting nature, you might have lost it. 

On entering the pub of the inn you'd booked you just sighed and ordered a stiff drink. The pest problem must have been nocturnal because there were barely any patrons. You eyed a group of men in the corner but upon catching some of their conversation you gave up. Though, Jaskier was getting on swimmingly with one of the barmaids. 

You scoffed and drained your drink, better to be numb with alcohol than this ridiculously horny. 

"You alright?" Geralt asked. There was an edge to his voice that you couldn't quite describe and it concerned you. 

"Define alright." You set your empty mug at the end of the table and crossed your legs.

He just raised his eyebrows at you.

You slapped a coin on the table and shot him a defiant glare, "I'm going to bed." You hoped to Melitele that he would leave you alone.

You didn't hear him following you until you'd made it halfway to the door of your room.

"What the fuck Geralt!? Can't a woman have a few minutes alone!?" 

There was a small smile playing at the edge of his lips as he walked past you to the door, "Is that really what you want?" 

Your eyes went wide for a moment before narrowing and following him into the room, pressing your back against the door as you closed it, "What's that supposed to mean?" 

"Anyone ever told you you talk in your sleep?" He hadn't turned around to look at you yet, clearing his armor and bags off one of the beds.

Your ears were almost ringing and you felt that familiar light tug in the pit of your stomach, but you did your best to remain cautious, "No…" 

"Hmmm. Well you do." He finally turned to look at you, face completely unreadable, "Usually you just mumble incoherently, but this morning…" 

You swallowed hard, not sure whether to be embarrassed or apprehensive, "So what did I say?" 

He grinned and closed the distance between you, his hands came to rest on the door on either side of your head as he leaned down to whisper in your ear, "My name… 'harder'... make me cum for you…" 

Your whole body tingled at his words, your fingers twitched, wanting to curl around his collar and wind through his hair. There was no hope of dignity as you felt your heart rate spike when he leaned back to look you in the eyes.  

"Do you want me to? Make you cum for me? Over and over?" You could have sworn you felt his voice reverberate over your whole body.

Your own voice was breathy and desperate when you finally found it, "Fuck yes." 

His pupils dilated as he tucked a stray lock of hair behind your ear, running his fingers down your jaw, then neck with the lightest touch, "Are you sure?" 

You hooked your fingers through his belt loops and pulled him to you, "Yes." Your voice was firm and decisive, your brain finally catching up to your body, "Are you?" 

He chuckled softly, "Absolutely," he hooked a finger under your chin to hold your head steady as he kissed your forehead, cheeks, eyelids, nose, anything but your lips between every word, "You… drive… me… crazy… every… fucking… day… I've… wanted… you… for… months." 

You moaned in frustrated pleasure at the way only his words were affecting you, tugging at his belt blindly, "Such a tease…" 

With that he was gone, you opened your eyes to find him leaning against the bed frame, staring at you with a hungry expression, "Strip."

You unhooked your dress in the front, embarrassingly fast if you were honest, letting it fall to the floor leaving just your slip and stockings. Normally you'd be nervous, even with previous repeat lovers you'd been worried about showing all of you. But Geralt had treated wounds all over your body, he knew exactly what he was getting and the growing bulge in his pants told you he liked it. You tugged the silky straps of your slip over your shoulder and shifted just enough that it too pooled at your feet with your dress. 

"Shit…" he breathed, eyes roaming over your body like a man starved. 

You stepped out of the dress and your stockings and underwear, suddenly thankful your boots had a tear in them so you didn't have to fight to get them off. Standing between his legs you tugged at his shirt as you kissed him, surprised by how supple his lips were. He broke the kiss only to rip his shirt over his head, pulling you back to him immediately. You ran your hands over his chest, gripping the dark hair there with one hand while the other cupped his jaw. He uttered a low moan that sent fire through your body, your pussy absolutely aching for him. 

You gasped when his hands gripped your hips and held you to him as he fell back onto the mattress. He didn't miss a beat, rolling over you and pressing an urgent kiss to your lips.

"Geralt," you whined, helplessly grasping at his shoulders.

"What do you want?" He asked, more teasing than anything, kissing down your neck and across your collarbone.

"Make me cum. Please. I don't care how." You were almost embarrassed that you were already begging. 

He continued pressing kisses down your body, pausing to bite the skin beneath your breast, something you'd specifically told him you were less than pleased with about yourself, "Yes ma'am." He licked over the sting left behind by his teeth and continued his path down between your legs. He took his time making a trail of bite marks down your abdomen and across the inside of your thighs.

"Fuck Geralt. Please." You bucked your hips to him, desperate for his touch. 

He finally obliged, spreading your folds with one hand and gripping your hips with the other, "mmmm so wet for me." He almost said it to himself and the reverence in his voice was too much for you. 

Before you could say anything though he licked a stripe up your folds and you shivered as you moaned. His tongue found your clit as your hands gripped his hair, doing your best not to pull too hard. He moaned into your pussy, making you buck your hips against his arm. After so long with only your hands for pleasure your body was quick to respond. He picked up on this as he watched you writhe underneath him and inserted two fingers, devastatingly slowly. 

"Oohhh damnit Geralt. More." You begged, not caring who may hear through the thin walls. Immediately he added another finger, pumping and curling faster, in time with the flicks of his tongue at your clit. 

You felt that frenzied rush that comes right before bliss and tugged at his hair again. His groan sent you over the edge, shaking and praising his name like a sinner saved. 

He held your hips down, stroking and licking at your clit until your trembling subsided. 

You untangled your fingers from his hair and hooked your finger under his chin, guiding him back up to kiss you as you basked in the relief your body felt. The taste of you on his lips only reigniting the fire. 

"Feel better?" He ribbed, lying next to you and running his hands all over your body. 

You giggled as much at his words as the way his light touch tickled your skin, "Much." 

His hands squeezed your ass, pulling your thigh up over his hips, "Up for more?" 

You leaned into his kiss, palming his bulge beneath the fabric of his pants, "Absolutely." 

When his breath caught in his throat you beamed with pride, knowing this powerful man was putty in your hands. You unbuckled his belt and slowly pulled it from it's loops, tossing it somewhere behind you before you, making sure to look directly in his eyes. You bit your lip and brushed a hair from his eyes, enjoying the slight dilations and narrowing of his pupils as you moved on to the buttons at his waist. You had meant to tease him like he'd teased you but he rolled back and swiftly removed every last stitch of clothing before you could protest. 

"If you keep teasing me with that look in your eyes we'll never get there." 

He rolled back over top of you, swallowing your soft gasp in a kiss as his cock pressed against your thighs. You wrapped your legs around his waist and gripped his shoulders, any thought of taking your time completely forgotten. He lined himself up so he was sliding through your folds, slick and throbbing in anticipation. 

"Fuck…" he gasped, falling down to one elbow. 

You brought a hand to the nape of his neck and kissed him gently, whispering against his lips as he panted, "Fuck me Geralt. Hard." 

A shiver ran over his whole body but he wasted no time guiding his head to your entrance, slowly pushing in. 

"OH my gods…" your fingers dug into where they gripped him, completely losing control at the sensation of being so full. You clenched around him, pulling a moan from his lips as he bottomed out against your cervix. He stilled except for his chest heaving over you, giving you time. 

After a moment you kissed him again, biting his lower lip as you pulled away, "Go." 

His hips drew back immediately at the command, snapping forward with a force you'd only dreamed of. He pressed a kiss to your nose, searching your eyes for any sign of discomfort. You answered by thrusting your hips up to his, and tugging at the hair at the nape of his neck.  

He picked up a brutal pace, making your toes curl and turning your moans into grunts with the sheer force of his thrusts. You arched your back, pulling him as close to you as you could. His forehead pressed against yours, both of your eyes shut as your bodies were overwhelmed with the pleasure from the other's touch. 

"Just perfect for me." His voice was barely audible, picking up the pace even more than you thought possible. 

"I'm all yours darling." You thrust your hips up against his, finding the rhythm he'd set, "Harder, I can take it." 

He growled, the sound vibrating from deep within his chest as he slowed his pace but did exactly as you'd asked. His thrusts were pushing you up the bed, slamming the headboard against the wall with a force you thought might put a hole in it. 

You screamed his name, so close that you were seeing stars. 

Geralt fell to his other elbow, growling in your ear, "Cum for me."

The tension in your gut snapped as you writhed through your orgasm. Raking your nails down his back, you felt his hips stutter in one final thrust as your walls fluttered around him before he came, all growls and curses. If you'd been conscious of them, you might have been embarrassed by the senseless whines that escaped you. His thrusts slowed as you both slowly came down from the high, savoring every bit of the moments you could.

When you finally opened your eyes, his were still shut. You brushed your finger over his brow, almost amused that this would be the only time you didn't see them drawn together, letting yourself indulge in tracing his features. You let your legs fall from his hips as he slowly slid out of you and a sigh left your lips, happy and calm. His eyes finally opened when you tugged the tie out of his hair from where it was barely hanging on to a handful of strands. The way he looked at you made you want to melt, a mix of concern and awe that you'd never seen before. You smiled at him, giving his hips a gentle reassuring squeeze as if to say 'no you haven't broken me, and yes I'm better than fine'. His hair brushed your cheeks and neck as he leaned down to kiss you, slow and deep. You cradled his jaw in your hands, taking everything in with the nagging fear that he might pull away and leave you there. 

When he eventually did pull back it was only an inch or two, a shit eating grin plastered on his face, "Did I make your dreams come true?"

You rolled your eyes, swatting at his shoulder as he shimmied down your body just enough for his cheek to rest between your breasts.

"Sarcastic little shit..." you whispered, reveling in the comforting weight of his body on yours. He hummed a response and extended his arms up your torso,  caressing all the parts of you he could reach before settling on holding you close.

You rubbed the tops of his shoulders, his biceps, his back, kneading out knots when you came to them, willing him to relax. 

As you laid there, murmuring jokes and small vulnerable allowances, a voice in your head suggested you could be happy with each other, but you shooed it away. You'd rather enjoy it for what it was than get your hopes up. 

[matthewstiles]

Placing Mianite’s Gods on an Ideological Spectrum (but not taking it too seriously)

It sucks to be dead center on an an ideological spectrum. Opinions pull at you from both sides. Politically and religiously, I’m – well, I wouldn’t say I’m a fence sitter because that implies hesitation – but I’m grounded between camps. I’ve been Christian, I’ve been conservative, I’ve been liberal, and now I’m realizing that none of the labels fit me. But I know what does. I like being able to wrap my head around as many viewpoints as possible. I like bringing conflicting ideas together and helping people find common ground. Sure, I voted Democrat this election (and please tell me you did, too). No, I don’t believe in the Christian God. But if you’re a Trump supporter, we can have lunch. If you’re an old friend from church, I miss you and would like to catch up. It struck me today that I might be an Ianitee irl. This is all on a whim, of course. I’m not trying to “sort” myself into her “house” or assign anyone else a Mianite god, for that matter. My point is not to assign a label, but to explore an idea.

The goddess of balance walks a tightrope. She holds a scale. She is both light and dark in a photograph—and therefore, she can also be grey. She’s an impartial judge. Her job, although far grander in scope than mine, isn’t totally unlike what I do for my tiny group of friends on the internet. Her followers might be people who struggle to navigate the warring dualities of their worlds. This makes Prince Andor a bit of a chaotic Ianitee if you think about it. It comes naturally, of course. If the balance leans toward Mianite, then Dianite must bleed into Ianite for the brothers to equalize. The goddess of balance wields both order and chaos. If Mianite reigns, the neutral sister stands with Dianite in bringing chaotic revolution to the doorstep of tyrannical order. Likewise, if Dianite has plunged the world into darkness and fire, Ianite joins with Mianite in building armies and sanctuaries. “We are not pacifists, nor are we vindicators,” Andor said. “We are nature. We are whatever balance demands. We are void and we are hurricane. We are the healer. We are the warrior.” If Dianite had ravaged Ruxomar and Mianite had lay dormant for ten years, a blade in his chest, both Helgrind and Andor may have preached quite different yet still conflicting ideas. As a psychological note, an Ianitee will have a hard time if they’re conflict-avoidant, but they’ll go through Hell if they’re ill-tempered. The magic word is temperance. (See the Temperance arcana in Tarot.) I suppose I might as well go ahead and draw the comparison between an Ianitee and a centrist, a term which may hold some emotional charge for you if you follow politics. Put simply, a centrist holds moderate political views. I don’t identify as a centrist, but the term does describe me, and my refusal to accept the label might serve only to exacerbate the problems a centrist already has. My problem – which a certain type of Ianitee might share – is a lack of belonging. Few people consider you their ally because few have the time or interest to let you engage in the long, convoluted process of proving your character and earning their trust. On the surface you might seem – as I said before – like a fence sitter or even an enemy simply because you refuse to accept a proposed solution. Most people wish even their enemies some amount of good, but when it comes to choosing between friends and enemies, most will choose friends. You might not want to make that choice. You might want to save everyone. If you can’t, you won’t. Your stance may sound sensible once you’ve had time to parse it out, but it’s far smoother on paper than in practice, and it’s nigh impossible to preach “love thy enemy” to a wounded wolf. On the other hand, maybe you are a fence sitter. Maybe you genuinely don’t know right from wrong. Maybe you’re a bit of a nihilist. “Is all this conflict really worth it? Return it all to nothing. Void.” (In your local RP group, ever thought of playing an Ianitee who wants to “End It All?”) But hopefully, you’re more of an existentialist. You see meaning vested in people and their accomplishments. You want to help them find the best meaning for them and you don’t think they’ll do it by veering blindly toward every impulse. Extended streams of impulse gratification can lead to extreme ideological thinking, such as totalitarianism. You don’t want a world full of people who all think the same thing. Again, the magic word is temperance. There’s real importance in having two sides to a system. Take, for instance, the political structure of the United States. Democrats and republicans are ever at war, but what are they really doing under the surface? What are they intended to do? Well, that’s up for debate (some might say “kill each other”), but if we take a broad look at history, a pattern emerges. One party – the party of order, you could say – establishes hierarchy. It defines who is who and who gets what. It puts competent people in positions befitting them and treats the less competent with compassion. That’s if all goes well, but the party of order isn’t impervious to corruption. People who tout themselves as servants of God and the State turn out to be monsters who ravage the environment, the economy, the rule of law, and each other. That’s when – take this with a grain of salt – the party of chaos steps in. At first it calls for change. It articulates and expresses visions for a better order. It doesn’t seem so chaotic now, but as the corruption spreads, unhearing and unyielding, moderates and liberals become radicals. Calm discussions become battles for sweeping change. The rebels rage for equality and take it by massive persuasion or by force. They break up the calcified structure of the old order and drag it back down into the primal, bloody sea from which new order springs. (I’m dipping into Mesopotamian mythology here, and if you’re familiar with the Enuma Elish, you’ll know the significance of what I’m about to say.) Order will return, but it must be guided. Someone must ensure that the reborn world is more just and peaceful than the dead one. We need order within chaos—Yang within Yin—white dot within black swath.  I’ve just tried – and perhaps failed – to describe the eternal cycle of order and chaos in terms of real-world society. Now let me place it in a simplistic Mianite shell. Mianite builds hierarchy, Dianite tears it down, and Ianite stands in the middle, bearing two communicating vessels, ensuring that neither too much nor too little blood is spilled in the process of transformation from old to new. 

[jeanjauthor]

In mediveal times how long did a noble family have to exist for to be considered noble and not new money? 10 year, 50 years (son/grandson), 100 years (great, or great-great-grandson), or something so big like 200 years?

I'm going to be bluntly honest.

I have no frikkin' idea.

But we can think it through logically, at least a little bit, as well as draw parallels to modern or recent-era situations that are similar.

(This post ended up rather long, so I’m inserting a Keep Reading cut for the rest of y’all...)

We have a lot more writings on the Georgian/Regency eras (1700s onward) regarding the newly rich versus old money...but that's because there were more opportunities to garner new wealth, through the exploitation and colonization of explorers in the Americas, merchants traveling overseas over much longer distances due to better ship design and navigational charts, etc.

We have complaints about sea captains buying noble titles, giving money to their sovereigns who, for whatever reason, needed more income than they garnered from taxes, etc. People who were ennobled for enslaving foreign regions and extracting local resources for European consumption, so on and so forth.

Part of that was because prior to the boom in exploitative exploration & colonization, there was literally only so much land that could be parceled out to heirs or sold to the newly wealthy merchant classes, and land was still seen as the biggest economic stimulus point (the constant need for herds and crops to feed everyone, etc).

Even mining operations and foundries for smelting iron, etc, were still not advanced enough to be productive enough, because science and technology weren't far enough along for these things to provide enough metal to spark the Industrial Revolution until the turn of the 1800s and later.

We can conclude that the means to amass a lot of wealth was, therefore, difficult to acquire prior to colonization and industrialization. This was not to say that it didn't happen! There were always wars against one's neighbors, there was cross-country trade that could make one rich, someone could stumble across a gold mine (literally, a source of precious metals), so on and so forth. The Crusades were initially about Christian religious fervor...and the acquisition of the wealth of their supposed enemies, the Muslims (who weren't enemies to begin with, btw).

People in the Middle East were literally sitting at a crossroads of trade between Europe, Africa, and Asia, so yes, they had access to a lot more cross-continental commerce than anywhere else. And when the invading crusaders brought back some of that wealth--spices, silks, exotic jewels, dyes, decorative objects, and ideas (yes, those can be a source of wealth! Cross-pollination between different groups sharing ideas almost always leads to new innovations!)--it sparked avarice in the hearts of a lot of people who saw a potential opportunity for acquiring more wealth.

Those who came back with that wealth...possibly bribed their sovereigns, bought lands, became the newly rich...except back then there wasn't quite the same class divide barrier to break. Because those who could afford to go to the Holy Land to conquer & rob it of its wealth had to be able to not only walk themselves there, with enough funds to provision themselves along the way, but needed the equipment to be able to successfully capture rich targets. Horses, armor, weapons, so on and so forth.

They'd also have to attach themselves to some noble's entourage if they weren't noble themselves, and that meant they'd have to share their plunder, etc...or be counted a brigand at best. (Let's be blunt, the difference between sanctioned plundering and brigandry is having the approval of a big group of people regarding your actions.) This meant that most of those that made their wealth off of the Crusades often did so as second and third and fifthborn sons, who weren't going to inherit much anyway--or bastard sons, who by law couldn't inherit without their family jumping through legal and liturgical hoops.

The ones who profited the most off of these plunder campaigns were therefore most likely already a part of the ruling class--or at least the mounted warrior class, which was seen as close enough to being the same thing. Compared to the long-distance merchant classes, who rode or sailed long distances to trade items only produced locally (and thus rare elsewhere) for exotic ones they could bring back and trade at home, the bastards and fourth-born sons had an easier time getting to be acknowledged as "acceptable new money."

Most merchants who did get wealthy tended to do so in free cities, or in city-states that were already mostly democratic (albeit the kind confined to wealthy male citizens) in nature, such as Venice and Genoa, where they did not have kings, or did not have a strong kingly or nobility presence (unlike Paris or London, etc, which were the seats of monarchial power).

But there is one more factor to consider: The Black Death.

Prior to the first major sweep of bubonic plague through Europe in the 1340s, the vast majority of European medieval life was pastorally centered, with the vast majority of people being serfs legally obligated to work the farms for the local lords, a few freemen, the clergy (who were slowly focusing on attaining lots of wealth themselves), and the nobles who were supposed to watch over and protect everyone from outside marauders, etc (to various degrees of belief & efficacy; some were genuinely good leaders who wanted to protect and share the wealth, while others were exploitative SOBs, and most were at some stage in between those two extremes).

When a quarter to a third of everyone died, however...that left crops rotting in the fields, people were weakened and devastated, whole reams of knowledge were lost with the deaths of those who were the masters of their crafts, and...well, the wealthy staggered under the weight. IF they survived themselves, of course.

The vast shift in the availability of workers meant the surviving workers started demanding many of the freedoms they had been previously denied--they literally took their possessions and left their serf-bound homes to go work for anyone who was willing to pay them a lot more and give them more legal freedoms. (Modern folks really need to take notes!) And because all ranks and stations were being hit more or less just as hard as any other caste level, that meant those who could have enforced the peasants staying on their lord's demense-lands were unable to bring enough of them into play to herd the wayward serfs back to their quasi-slavery.

After all, if you had 100 warriors, 50 of which were needed to keep a watch out for brigands and guard the castle, you could afford to send out 20-30 of them to spread out, search for, and round up a stray serf who had run away, while keeping the remainder in reserve. (Remember, serfs who ran away to free cities and stayed there successfully for a year-and-a-day were considered free men and could not be dragged back to their farms...but that left 366 days in which they could be caught and dragged back.)

But if you lost 30 of your warrior-class, you'd still need 50 to guard the castle and its lands--possibly more in such restless times!--and you'd only have 20 to spare, period. Which meant in a practical sense that you'd only have 5-10 at most you could send out (needing to keep a reserve at your home base), which meant searches for runaways were far less efficient--either they'd have to search fewer areas with large enough groups to capture and return, or they'd have to split up, find the serf, run for help, and hope the serf was still in that same area when they got back with enough forces to capture the serf without risking injury to themselves or to the peasant in question.

Prior to the Black Death, upward mobility was a rare thing--you practically had to save the life of the king in battle, etc. This was of course easier to do in the 700s than in the 1200s, but still not an easy thing. And even then, you'd have to prove you were "noble enough" to be accepted by the upper classes. We know this upward mobility of the wealthy-but-not-noble was restricted because we do have increasingly stiff sumptuary laws--aka what non-nobles were allowed to wear.

Literally, wearing winter ermine--the white fur of the ermine mustelid with the black-tip tails--was reserved for royalty and very high ranked clergy and sometimes very high ranked nobility depending on timeperiod and culture. Indeed, a lot of furs became increasingly social-rank-dependent, to the point that only squirrel fur was considered "open for everyone." Yes, only squirrels, because even rabbits were considered to "belong" to the local lord, and poaching them for eating, never mind for wearing, became a punishable crime.

You had to have permission from your social betters to wear luxurious furs and other items....so we can conclude that upward mobility was not much of a thing...up until the devastation of the Black Death upended social order, and the vast majority of people seized back many of their natural rights and forced social status mobility upon those who held all the wealth and the power. (*ahem* Do Take Notes, People. *stares in Covid Pandemic* (Yes, I have no chill on this point, there are TOO MANY PARALLELS to what we're suffering today, socio-economically.))

Anyway! if you're thinking medieval pre-pandemic, there wasn't as much social mobility. Post-pandemic (and there were several waves of the Black Death and other plagues, btw, including a devastaing plague in 1655, not just the most famous one of the late 1340s/early 1350s), there was a lot more elbow room for jostling your way toward the top.

However, the best hope one could have for social mobility was to buy into a noble family. Usually via a marriage contract, wherein the non-noble brought in a great deal of wealth to a potentially impoverished noble family, with their offspring to be considered part of the noble family.

This was often done by someone with an ongoing source of wealth, such as merchant enterprises, or someone who could, say, create exceptional glassware, or whose family line held trade secrets in a lucrative profession, such as the thread-of-gold makers in London, ladies who were taught the secrets from an early age and whose skills were sought far and wide--or the lacemakers of certain regions in France, the Low Countries, southern England... Though to say it was "often" done isn't exactly an indication that it was done often, just that it was more likely a means to acquiring social status than saving the life of a king, etc.

So those are several of the possible ways to become wealthy and high in social status. As for "new rich vs old money"...that's a complex and lesser known subject. Most of the records we have from the medieval era were from legal documents and/or household ledgers, neither of which lend themselves to including personal annotations on things like, "A suckling pig and 2 pounds 16 shillings - Mercantile Atteborough paid this much to be included as an honored guest at the Feast of St. Barnabas in my southern manor keep."

Or maybe, "Goodwife Ashton paid 20 shillings to be able to wear a mantle lined with sable marten fur throughout the winter despite it being above her station, the rude hen" or "My son decided to give a length of silk to the village baker's daughter, even though I told him that she had no right to wear such things until after they were wed and elevated into the family fold..."

We do have a few sources mentioning such things from earlier eras, but writing was such a laborious process, the materials so costly (parchment is literally the inner shaved skin of an animal, often a goat or a sheep, and nowhere near as cheap as paper to produce...but paper breaks down so much faster than parchment over time), that most people tended to not meander about various subjects, but instead saved writing for "truly important" subjects--keeping monetary accounts, tallying things for tax-time, writing about God, and for those few scholars who had the wealth and support system, writing about the natural world, the dawning of science and reason, so on and so forth.

So we don't know how much these things were considered, only that they were considered to at least some small extent.

With all that said, we do know that the longer a family bloodline remains in power, the more determined they are to keep that power, which means concentrating it in the upper classes. (This is dangerous biologically, as inbreeding is...um...yeah. BAD.) In later years, those being allowed to join by marriage would be under heavy expectations to fit in, obey the head of the household/bloodline, and copy the manners and traditions of the class they were joining. But again, not many records of this.

Not all marriages were made for love. We see love as a marital concept among the higher classes only being developed after the rules of Courtly Love had been established for long enough that love as a possibility for high-ranked persons was considered possible. Prior to that, it had been as much or more a business transaction to increase familial power and wealth. But while for the common peasant a marriage was often made based on love and/or compatibility/mutual respect, there were still plenty of families in the in-between ranks who insisted on deliberately matchmaking or at least vetting "prospects" by how much wealth or social power each party or family held.

Again, we don't know how much the consideration of depth of a family's noble or wealthy lineage played into these calculations in the Middle Ages. We do know from the post-colonial era that many noble families back in Europe were scandalized by colonists & other overseas exploiters making loads of money and then not only trying to buy themselves a noble title, but in trying to act like they were the social equals ot the nobility.

"American heiresses" (or anyone from any overseas colony) would come to places like London to enjoy "high civilization." When they did so, their wealth would attract prospective grooms, but their breeding (aka, lack of it) would almost invariably scandalize the prospective groom's social peers and/or family members...until the Industrial Revolution created so many rich "commoners" that the nobles actually lost most of their social status power.

This nobility clout faded especially when America came to economic and cultural prominence on the world stage--a land that prided itself on having zero nobles...but that was not to say America didn't (and doesn't) have a ruling class. We just use different names, and we still have our own Old Money groups, who hoard the reigns of power for themselves and their heirs. Rockefeller is a family name known throughout the nation, as is any politician named Kennedy, for example--and now we have names like Gates and Bezos and Musk...though Gates is technically more old-money than the latter two. (Slightly.)

Unfortunately for the Old Money groups, it is now far too easy for "upstarts" to make billions, diminishing the Old Family names...but make no mistake: Most of these new billionaires still come from money, because they've leveraged their older family ties and associations to wedge themselves into these positions of visible economic power. (Musk bought himself into Tesla; he didn't actually found it. Gates, on the other hand, actually did found MicroSoft and did a lot of the actual programming work in his early days.)

...With all of that said, we only need to look at one more item to determine how long it would take Newly Rich to become Old Money: Time. Depending upon the region and the era...? About 3-4 generations would be my best guess.

Life was short and hard for many people in the Middle Ages, due to the lack of advanced healthcare, with a lot of people dying fairly early on from infections, illnesses, injuries, and the like. While the upper classes would have a lot more access to good food and be less likely to suffer from famines, giving them a better chance at a longer life due to having their nutritional needs met and their bodyfat being a little higher (it's a cushion against ilnesses and injuries, folks; stop being fatphobic!), they would still suffer, and often die much younger than a typical modern-day person might, even one living in modern-day poverty. (Wear your goddamn masks, people!! *ahem*)

When you live in a world where getting to live to be a grandparent or even a great-grandparent is a solid accomplishment, changes will be accepted much more quickly by each successive generation. Mostly because "that's the way it's always been" will have a shorter timeframe needed, due to the lack of grandparents raging on and on about "...that old upstart Timothy bought himself land and the funs to put up a keep on it! He's no more a lord than George the Goose Boy!"

The longer something goes unchallenged in the day-to-day lives of the people experiencing it, the more it seems like it should exist that way. (*STARES HARD AT THE LAST 40 YEARS OF ECONOMIC SUPPRESSIONS.*) And by that metric, given the average shorter lifespans even if you don't count early childhood deaths in mortality statistics across the broad span of medieval times in Europe...it wouldn't take more than 60 or so years for everyone locally to accept that New Money is now Old Money.

...Or that acceptance could happen even faster, if the New Money is clever enough to "share the wealthy" by investing their time, money, and effort in building good relations with their wealthy/high-class "neighbors." This would include publicly deferring to "their betters" and copying the social mannerisms of the upper class without mockery and without overstepping the bounds of what they could reasonably be allowed to do with their newfound status. Truly savy social climbers would be cautious and smart about flaunting their new power, planning for the long term haul rather than reveling too much in the moment.

Note that this statement is building good relations, not spending absurd amounts of money on lavish parties, ostentatious clothing, etc...which brings us to the Old Money side of the equation. Again, this is based in my observations on various peripheral socio-economic factors, and not on direct evidence.

The one thing that would irk the Old Money types pretty much every single time is newcomers being overly flamboyant with their wealth. Especially since the flamboyantly wealthy often end up the stupidly impoverished within a short span of time--to be accepted, the newly rich would have to understand the balance between claiming their wealth and status, and investing it to maintain that power. Wasting it wouldn't be viewed well by those who were raised generation after generation with lessons of how to maintain, expand, and increase their family's wealth and power.

It would be far better for a rising family to absorb and adopt higher-ranking privileges slowly and steadily, rather than greedily grabbing at all of it, all at once. And if they reach out to a neighboring Old Money family "for advice" and show some humility, moderate amounts of flattery (again, not in excess), asking to be treated like a nephew or niece in need of a mentorship, the Old Money family might actually take a proprietary interest in this upcoming family, giving them lessons, helping them get better access to things that were reserved for the upper classes.

Flattery is only good in the long term if there is some genuine sincerety behind it (or the one you are flattering is a narcissist, but they rarely hold onto power for long without serious help from outsiders). Instruction can be obtained with flattery, but also by in being respectfully attentive. And making sure you're not a rival to the Old Money neighbors around you can go a long way toward gaining their acceptance, too. By handling one's rise to power with these things in mind, it could actually allow the Newly Rich to be accepted that much faster, to within a matter of years or decades (with a great deal of luck), if not by one or two generations sooner than usual.

As mentioned above, sometimes Old Money doesn't actually still have the wealth that everyone assumes they have, and they need to accept New Money into their family--aka via an economically advantageous marriage. Sometimes they do have that money, but the sources of reliable wealth and political power are shifting, and the Old Family wishes to diversify its portfolio (so to speak). And sometimes they just want to diversify their power structure. This can include gaining access to up-and-coming industries, being able to have a say in how and where they're used (iron smelting, for example).

Just be aware of the fact that most of the time, if anyone accepted Newly Rich into their Old Money family, it was often an established male accepting a rich but socially-lesser female--aka the "American heiress" syndrome mentioned earlier. While the heiress wives would be...tolerated...if they toed the line, only their children would be considered "much more socially acceptable" because it would be presumed their fathers were raising the children in the Old Money Ways.

(Keep in mind that this is a worldwide trait for patriarchal cultures, not just European in nature. For far too many years, India's caste system allowed women from a lower caste to marry into an upper caste rank, but men were not supposed to marry a woman from a higher caste. This was a method used by the upper casts to deliberately focus familial power higher and higher on the social ladder. And, of course, it allowed high-caste males the social access/right to marry gorgeous low-caste women.)

Most females in a patriarchal society would not get the chance to marry into New Money unless they genuinely had a choice. Most often, they did not, because their families would want to continue concentrating their influence (including matrilineal! revisit this video I posted a while back on just how much influence a matrilineal family line could have on European politics: https://youtu.be/sl4WtajjMks ) into known avenues of power and influence.

...One last caveat: prior to the invasion of the British Isles by the Normans, who treated the local Anglo-Saxons, Celts, etc, as conquered peoples, replacing their nobility with incoming Normans who fight alongside William the Conqueror, many of whom were literally ennobled and given titles and lands etc, practically on the spot just for being a fellow Norman fighter...social mobility into the ranks of the nobility was easier.

If you had the money, the resources, the horses, etc...boom, you were a part of the local power structure. Afterward, there was a stronger incentive to diminish local power & wealth in favor of emphasizing incoming invaders' power and wealth, to be able to subjugate away those who were the original locals. This led to a lot of suppression of social mobility in order to retain power. Not just in the British Isles but elsewhere, as other regions heard of what the Normans were doing, and decided to do it themselves to their own people.

Prior to the 1066 invasion, it was possible for a warrior of commoner birth to go off raiding and looting, bring home a lot of wealth, and be lauded for his (or her!) rise in socio-economic standing. (Whether or not they were Northmen who went a-viking, since plenty of peoples did go raiding for wealth, etc; Scandinavians were just really good at it, far more so than most of the peoples they raided.)

Post-invasion, those in power started to choke down on who could do what, when, how, where, and with whomever else in order to consolidate their socio-economic power. (Seriously, sumptuary laws are mostly a post-1066 thing, along with strict laws of serfdom, up until the Black Death turned everything upside-down.)

So if you're writing a story set prior to the 1000s, there'll be much more opportunity for wealth-based social mobility and its acceptance. But afterwards, much less. But this exists on a continuum/spectrum that varies not only depending on what timeframe the story would exist in, but also where in terms of location, and what kind of social rise-to-power avenue is taken.

After all, someone gaining a lot of money in Genoa or Venice through trade would be heavily lauded by their home society, whereas someone doing the same in, say, Krakow (deep-continent) would be viewed far less companionably by the upper-classes, because trade was not as huge a part of their local culture--trade existed, but it wasn't central to how the locals & their rulers viewed themselves.

Like I said, I don't frikkin know for sure; there isn't enough hands-on documentation in common circulation. But humans have been humaning since before written records began, and we can make some reasonable guesses to help fill in the gaps.

(And if anyone claims you got it wrong, just cry "--IT'S FICTION!! It doesn't HAVE to be that accurate!!")

[incarnateirony]

I think the issue with death as a happy ending (to a story, I should point out - death can be many things in many places, but I’m specifically talking about it in fiction) is that it’s usually written so badly that it doesn’t feel like a happy ending and it just feels like shit. There’s a very limited number of fictional works that I’ve seen actually manage it well - though in saying that, I have a very limited range, and I don’t really enjoy new things because (reasons). The ones I do recall, it’s because they were just that good and bittersweet is exactly the way I would describe them as a happy ending.

Firebringer was a novel I read when I was 12 or 13, and I still recall it. It was about a deer and it was his entire life - birth to death - and it was a happy ending. I cried through the last few chapters. Then I reread it and cried some more. It was good.

There’s also a fic I want to mention, because it’s on the topic. It’s called The white whale. and it’s by an author named orange_crushed. The entire premise of the fic is that Dean (and Sam, but it’s a destiel fic) is already dead. He died years ago. The title itself should say a lot, and the fic itself is about finding peace. It’s brilliant and beautiful, and I love it.

My perspective on death is a bit. Odd, maybe? I grew up somewhere between Christian (mum and dad and church, a mix of Baptist and Anglican) and animist (local indigenous spirituality), and while bit of both inform my interpretation, I’m very nearly atheist.

I don’t really believe in an afterlife, or rebirth, or anything like that. I believe that this is it. We get one shot at being who we want to be and acting as we choose with what we’re given. (“And isn’t it so wonderful, that we were alive at the same time?”)

I first heard the Freedom From vs Freedom To argument when reading the handmaid’s tale in my English class at school. It wasn’t even presented as an argument, everyone just seemed to agree that freedom to is better. I believe that, too. But freedom from has structure. It’s not “peaceful” and it can’t be when it is enforced, but it is informed by rules, and there it has expectations and is reliable (where reliable means we know what the consequences are, even if they’re awful). Freedom to is anarchy (which I have come to appreciate more). But neither freedom is peace.

There’s a quote I really love, and I can never recall it properly and it goes something like this: “War is an ugly thing, but it is not the ugliest. The decayed and degraded state of moral feeling which thinks nothing is worth war is much worse. A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing more important than his own personal fucking safety, is [the worst thing]” clearly I don’t recall it very well. It’s from an old bit of hp fanfic, of all things, a very violent and disgusting version of civil war - as war is. It was the beginning of why I’m not a pacifist.

I dunno. I guess I really feel like peace - true, genuine peace - can’t be done. It’s certainly worth striving for, worth trying, but peace is either isolation and loneliness or death. Peace is knowing you’ve done everything you can, that it was enough, and being able to let it go.

Any way I think I had a point somewhere in this, maybe something about being unable to put down a fight while you’re living, maybe something about how death can be kind, maybe something about how good writing can make sad things happy, maybe that bittersweet is still sweet. Idk.

Feel free to reply to this mess of ideas or not - or pick and choose what you want to reply to, if you’d like to reply to specific parts. I mostly just wanted to share (I can do discussion, but idk if I’m still gunna have any focus later to do so, or if I’ll even see a response) some thoughts and you’re usually the only person I see on my dash with this sort of ~vague philosophy things~.

Woah when did anons get to let someone submit something so long.

Either way, a few points on this.

1. a thoughtful piece, this is a philosophy piece I will gladly entertain. However, if we are entertaining philosophy we must

2. acknowledge this is a nihilistic piece contingent on your personal world views, that while valid, and I will not take any effort to undermine on a personal belief system level

3. do not have much to do with (dependent on fringe atheism or, perhaps, agnosticism) a piece that is far from secular and atheistic while also

4. relying on the idea that “I really feel like peace - true, genuine peace - can’t be done. It’s certainly worth striving for, worth trying, but peace is either isolation and loneliness or death.”, which is itself the very nihilistic idea imparted by Chuck’s matrix but, whether you believe it in the real world, is the active target of subversion within this fantasy world, (eg, a heaven revolution where the doors are opened just like they were in hell.)

5. Finally, presumptuous that it would not be ‘well written’ and predesignating a potential discontent with the delivery that would sour it, especially with the previous points.

That said, while I’m not going to argue directly with your real life belief system -- even if they clearly disagree with my own -- I do remind you--falling back to your point that you do not believe in an afterlife: we know this fictional story does not hold this belief, ergo using that as a judgment for how it would deliver the concept of eternity is itself already wounding oneself to receiving the moral of the canon. One can not suddenly expect SPN to become a secular show just because a viewer has secular and atheistic beliefs. It is inherently asecular, theistic, and gnostic in its bones and the story will thus tell itself within that structure, which then begs if one is willing to suspend a personal belief system for a fictional canon setting they are digesting the story of.

Similarly-and-so, this is contingent on believing that the heroes’ journey will end with them maintaining the current status quo, rather than making a world where--in this fictional world in which an afterlife exists--death does not itself mean loneliness, but rather reunion.

If we can suspend our beliefs in some shows with fighting dragons or farting lightning bolts (after all, nonnie references HP fanfic), I would hope people could suspend them in regards to a moral telling of found family and the sovereignty of man in a divine and moral play.

If one were to demand SPN have entirely atheistic storytelling, the only real way to handle an ending would be to have one of the characters wake up from a 15 year coma where none of it was real and it was all a dream or something to that affect which--lol, we’re not doing, I promise. I’m sorry, but we’re not.  We’re not taking the “none of it mattered because none of it happened” angle. We’re not going to a world where angels and the afterlife don’t exist, we’re not going to collapse it where suddenly death IS the true end and life sucks and then you die, it’s just not going to happen.

So the point then is an active choice on the part of the viewer: is this suddenly the line you draw after watching a theistic show for 15 years, doubling down that this specific theistic point is the one thing we can’t accept (despite it existing in the past already), or do we continue to watch a theistic show and interpret its theistic points as the story is trying to depict? And if it’s the “drawing the sudden line,” that is, quite frankly, a personal choice to have spontaneous discontent with a critical part of a canon story’s telling at a very sudden drawn line in the sand. 

The point to exit would have been pilot 1.01 if we were going to have fundamental problems with spirits and an afterlife as crucial elements of a story. And if not then, 4.01 with angels. And if not then-- you see where this goes on. There were multiple exit ramps if the idea of an afterlife, which became more and more directly explored, was going to be an issue in reception of or enjoyment of a text. So now we’re 15 years later, and we can’t expect the highway to reroute just because we didn’t take the other 100 ramps.

SPN will tell the full spread of its moral and divine play within the full spread of its moral and divine sandbox, which someone has--to reach the ending--accepted for fifteen years at this point. If one has a fundamental problem with the entire premise of the show, it is not an obligation to any writer to cater to someone who intrinsically disagrees with the entire structure of the body of work to fulfill something within a completely different paradigm. It’s not.

Am I lucky in that it matches my beliefs? Maybe. Also cursed. Very very cursed. Because it’s led to being Through The Looking Glass for two years to the point there’s a segment of fandom that treats me as a magic 8 ball--and sometimes rightfully so, not to sound like I’m tooting my own horn or whatever. It just knows I get the structure in play to a fault. But cursed knowledge aside -- and trust me, it’s cursed as FUCK most of the time -- in the end, even when I watch shows that don’t match my personal theology, I don’t sit here and suddenly expect them to do so. There’s plenty of shows I completely suspend my beliefs in to enjoy within the sandbox they were designed in the constraints of so I find it very weird to project a discontent with a body of fictional canon presenting ideas within its own rule set based on personal beliefs in a real life lens. I mean, I don’t believe dragons exist, but if I watch the Dragon Prince for many seasons, I can’t suddenly expect the ending to have nothing to do with Dragons?

I mean, the show is literally called Supernatural. It's right there in the name. There are going to be supernatural elements about the show. My banner image is literally a reborn soul floating down the aisle. This isn't gonna suddenly be irrelevant at the end.

[bloopbyoop]

weep woop

ayo. ive read my scheduled email and its time for freewriting shit again. lmao. I want this post to be like a small light from a lit match stick inside a very hollow, icy, and numbing cave. (sounds cartoonish right? I know. Im obsessed with Adventure Time.) I want all people to be genuinely happy.  Spiritually, emotionally, and physically. Upon reaching my 24th anniversary in this world, I finally learned how to truly embrace all my emotions. Some are more overwhelming than the other, but we have to heed in our treacherous yet perplexing minds that everything is fleeting and we are in control. The feeling of extreme sadness fades, but so does joyful states. Everything can change in a matter of minutes or years. You are in control of all your emotions. You are in control of all your life choices. Your actions. Your words. Your perspective. It feels weird to actually write about it. I've wanted to talk about it. I never wanted help from anyone as I firmly believed that I was alone. Sure, I have a family and friends, but it is hard to see that when your head is clouded with negativity. I've even come to the point where I was too overwhelmed, I found being physically hurt less painful. The pain I felt distracted me from what I was thinking. My mind tended to go bonkers. lmao. But bro, I was so good at concealing my bonkers mind. It's easy to fake any emotion that you have. Slap anything sunshine-y or happy to anything and people would believe you. It went on for years. Long story short, thousands of bracelets collected, it became worse. The physical pain could no longer withhold the emotional pain. Couldn't sleep. Couldn't stop thinking. And voila! I found a good amount of self help books (from tumblr) and novels. Novels that brought me to different places. Self-help books that made me understand what I feel and what to do. I've read that taking the easy way out will leave everyone sad. AND IN THE FIRST PLACEEEEEE, I NEVER WANT THATTTTTTT. I want everyone to be happy. I would act foolish and do dumb shit to make everyone happy in a heartbeat. So, that idea made me push a few more years. Later on, the crippling shit came crawling back again to my head, sooooooo I needed new shit to keep me distracted again. Films, series, music, and short clips from YouTube helped me out a lot. Every single time that my mind is going to think like anything that can think of, even to the point that I was just going to think that I might be hungry, I'd watch something. There's just something about silence for me. Because of this new habit of mine, I've learned more about myself. I love different types of things. I like horror. I like thriller. I like comedy. I like romance. I love all types of films, but there is something about the horror genre that interests me. I still can't point out what, but I love watching horror films. With regards to music, I've learned that I love Indie, Punk Rock, Rap, and Pop. We all can't like a specific genre. It's stupid to ask "what genre of music do you like?". It's not actually stupid-stupid, it's just stupid. Ya know? Anyway, passing this phase, I needed to find something again because it's not doing the shit that it was supposed to, I tried investing more time on video games. By investing more, I mean a whole shit lot. I love video games since I was young cuz.... u know.... they keep u... try to guess it! oh yeah. you got that right! distracted! I love the aggressive plays and trashtalks that my friends and I make. The short stories we tell one another. The rants. The lame jokes. The late night we sound drunk but we are not drunk jokes. The roleplays. The lame jokes. The memes. And once again, The lame jokes. Something about lame jokes and the laughs and curses after that always gets me every single time. Oh shoot. Yup Yup. Few years later, I finally noticed the pattern that my sadness is temporary. I got over it one way or the other (or another. depends on how you wanna read it. i dont wanna say another cause i might write about one direction like what im doing now so-). Happiness is temporary as well. But, we are the ones who are actually in control of our emotions. If you wanna feel sad, be sad for a while. You're getting too sad? Try hanging out with your funny friends. Can't do that? Find an alternative. Watch a movie, knit a sweater. Anything your mind could think of as long as it will keep you mentally distracted from being physically and mentally hurt. I do have a few notes though. We cannot and should never assume what people are going through. It may be petty for you, but it may be very crucial to them. So never everrrr say things like: -Some people have it worse than you -At least you have ..... These sheetsss are annoying as heckkk and could really down someone. I know it is not your intention to annoy but people react differently. alsooooooo, it is not okay or normal to hate on things for bandwagon. that is just plainly crazy and stupid. let people enjoy things. anddddddd never suppress your emotions. admit what you feel inside and try to think of a way to resolve ittttt. keeping it to yourself will just make it worseeeeee. find your own outlettttttttt. hihihi ️ alsooooo. being more spiritually full with God's words and ideas really help me to be spiritually happy. ps. im christian but i dont discredit other religion and even applaud other religion's ideas and beliefs. this is a really long, selfish post so i might as well recommend some things I like : Songs with their lyrics that made me go through life. “I’ve got soul but I’m not a soldier” -All These Things That I've Done, The Killers “It's not too late, I'm still right here” -Breaking Your Own Heart, Kelly Clarkson "And the salt in my wounds / Isn't burning any more than it used to / It's not that I don't feel the pain / It's just I'm not afraid of hurting anymore / And the blood in these veins / Isn't pumping any less than it ever has / And that's the hope I have / The only thing I know that's keeping me alive" -Last Hope, Paramore “There is not a single word in the whole world / That could describe the hurt / The dullest knife just sawing back and forth / And ripping through the softest skin there ever was / How were you to know?” -Hate to See Your Heartbreak, Paramore "It's holding on, though the road's long / And seeing light in the darkest things And when you stare at your reflection / Finally knowing who it is / I know that you'll thank God you did" -1800, Logic "Did some things you can't speak of / But at night you live it all again / You wouldn't be shattered on the floor now / If only you had seen what you know now then" -Innocent, Taylor Swift (My bb) "10 months sober, I must admit / Just because you're clean don't mean you don't miss it / 10 months older, I won't give in / Now that I'm clean I'm never gonna risk it // Rain came pouring down when I was drowning / That's when I could finally breathe / And by morning gone was any trace of you, I think I am finally clean" -Clean, Taylor Swift “I guess I always knew / That I had all the strength to make it through.” -Believe in Me, Demi Lovato "I'm addicted to the madness / I'm a daughter of the sadness / I've been here too many times before / Been abandoned and I'm scared now / I can't handle another fallout / I am fragile, just washed upon the shore / They forget me, don't see me / When they love me, they leave me" -I Hate You, Don’t Leave Me, Demi Lovato “I'm overwhelmed / I need a voice to echo / I need a light to take me home / I need a star to follow / I don't know” -Nightingale, Demi Lovato "I'm a walking travesty / But I'm smiling at everything. // Arrogant boy, Love yourself so no one has to." -Therapy, All Time Low "I tried it once before but I didn't get too far / I felt a lot of pain but it didn't stop my heart. / But maybe I'm alive 'cause I didn't really wanna die / But nothing very special ever happens in my life / Take the blade away from me I am a freak, I am afraid that / All the blood escaping me won't end the pain / And I'll be haunting all the lives that cared for me / I died to be the white ghost / Of the man that I was meant to be" -Ghost, Badflower "Are the pieces of you / In the pieces of me? / I'm just so scared / You're who I'll be / When I erupt / Just like you do / They look at me / Like I look at you" -DNA, Lia Marie Johnson Movies and series to try : -The Perks of Being a Wallflower (The book is bomb af. if yall havent tried, ur missing out) -The Kings of Summer -Never Let Me Go -The Art of Getting By -Silver Linings Playbook -Winter’s Bone -The Lovely Bones (The script. The words) -Me and Earl and the Dying Girl -American Horror Story -Black Swan

pps. remember that every one has their own pace and point of view. don’t push yourself too hard, and don’t overthink. give yourself time, and respect all your emotions. analyze them but not more than like 5 minutes as anything beyond that might cause you to overthink and be sadder. and sad is not rad. hehe. you got this. you got you. self love is the best even though it can be tricky to do. nobody else is like you. you’re the only one of you (i just remembered me.......... i might have hummed it while typing it mid sentence). consider other people’s opinion but do not let it cloud your own judgement as you know yourself best. dont let other comment’s define you. spread love. vibe people you vibe with. ayeeee lets go!!! 

ppps this is my last post bc im happier now and know myself better. i no longer limit myself on the age that I want. I want to live as long as how God wants me to be. hehe. 

x :D

[probably-writing-x]

After Her.

Polo x Reader

Request by anon: HI!!! Your writing is so good i can’t stop reading 😩 big fan of elite and went through all your stories in a day! could you write one about polo!? maybe circus season one pre murder 😅 thank you for writing for us!!!!

Request by anon: can i request a polo imagine where even though he has reader besides him he still can’t forget about carla, so he says hurtful things to reader but then there is a happy ending

Gif is not my own

Requests are open 🤍

“Morning,” You yawn as you flutter your eyes open to find Polo laying beside you already awake, “What time is it?”

“Just after eight,” He comments, “I turned off your alarm, you looked too peaceful.”

You laugh and snuggle into his chest, “We’ll be late for school, you know?”

“I’m sure we won’t miss much,” He mumbles, brushing a hand through your hair and leaning down to press a kiss to your forehead, “Did you sleep well?”

“Yeah, clearly,” You chuckle, “Did you?”

“On and off,” He shrugs, “You still talk in your sleep so that kept me entertained when I was awake.”

You hit at his chest and laugh, pushing yourself up so you’re leaning on your elbow as you look at him. His hair is astray after the night and he always manages to look so much younger in the mornings before he was ready for the day. The two of you had been dating for a couple of months now, after he’d split up with Carla. It wasn’t long after the new boy, Christian, started at school that things started going south for those two. She was quick to drop Polo and move onto Christian as though there was never anything between her and Polo anyway. He’d confided in you, one of his best friends, and things had eventually led to where they were now. Sure, people said that you had to be cautious - he’d loved Carla and those kind of feelings wouldn’t just be gone in a second. But you’d found someone truly good in Polo and he had promised you that you weren’t just a rebound. That was enough for you.

“Come on, handsome, let’s get ready,” You say, leaning in to press a quick kiss to his lips.

He holds you there for a moment longer and kisses you deeper, “Are you sure about that?”

You laugh and push at his chest, “Polo, you’re a terrible influence.”

“That’s not what you said last night,” He smirks and you hit at his bare chest again.

“Get your ass out of my bed.”

- - - - - -

“Good morning guys,” You smile as you walk into the classroom with Polo.

His hand is laced with yours and he’s carrying your books with his in his other hand.

“Morning darlings,” Lu returns from where she sat beside Guzmán, his arm over the back of her chair, “Nice of you to finally show up.”

“Yeah, we’re a little late this morning,” You laugh, “You can blame Polo for that one.”

“I don’t doubt it,” Guzmán smirks at his friend, greeting him fondly as the two of you sit in the seats in front of them.

“Are you guys coming to the club tonight? We’ve hired it out,” Guzmán mentions, “It’s been too long since we were all there.”

“Yeah, we’ll be there,” Polo nods, settling one hand on your thigh, “Right?”

“Definitely.”

They continue to chatter about the evening ahead as you watch Carla walk into class with Christian in tow. She looks at you and Polo with a smirk on her face but you try your best to ignore it, as you’d been told to do by all of your friends.

“I still can’t believe she seriously feels anything for that street rat,” Lu scoffs, leaning back in her chair as she watches them too.

“Come on, you know what she’s like,” Guzmán rolls his eyes, “She’ll have her fun and toss him aside in a few months.”

You turn to Polo who doesn’t respond, but is instead keeping his eyes focused on the pair of them - maybe more so focused on Carla than the boy who had taken his place. You try to swallow the lump in your throat and squeeze the hand that he had placed on your thigh like you were trying to reassure him you were there. He snaps back to reality and looks at you, a smile spreading onto his face as he leans in to kiss you. You return the gesture but can’t help but wonder whether he was doing it for you or for the girl that would’ve been sat in this exact seat only a matter of months ago.

- - - - - -

That night, you’re at Polo’s getting ready for the club. You’d asked Polo to choose what you’d wear and he’d decided on you wearing your simple marroon dress with a bunched neckline and thin straps, it fit you perfectly and you’d paired it with a simple pair of heels and a black bag.

“Does this look okay?” You ask, fixing your hair once again in the mirror before turning to Polo.

He glances up momentarily before looking back down to slip on his shoes, “Yeah, you look great.”

You deadpan as you look at him, evidently not getting the kind of reaction you’d hope to get from your boyfriend, “What’s with you?”

“What do you mean? I’m fine,” He shrugs, “I said you look great.”

“Not just that, you’ve been quiet ever since we left school,” You sigh, walking over to stand in front of him, “What is it?”

“Nothing, honestly, nothing,” He encourages, “I’m fine, you look beautiful.”

He reaches his hands out and squeezes your waist, nuzzling his nose into your neck.

“Maybe a little too beautiful for us to be going to the club.”

And just like that, he’s back to being the normal charming Polo that you’d learnt to adore. The one that managed to say the right things and kiss all the right places. And every worry seems to slip quickly away, maybe a little too quickly.

Eventually, the two of you make your way to the club and end up being the last two there. Guzmán laughs when he sees you and makes a comment about Polo once again to which Polo hits him on the arm. Lu makes a surprisingly genuine compliment about your dress and even asks where you got it. Polo buys you your first drink of the night and wraps an arm around your waist. You find yourself settling comfortably into the night until you realise you weren’t in fact the last two to show up for the night. Carla and Christian walk through the door, her managing to look even more effortlessly elegant than she did on any normal day.

“Nobody told me they’d be here,” You mumble to Ander who was stood beside you, “What’s she doing?”

Ander glances over and rolls his eyes, “I’m not surprised, you know what she’s like.”

You watch as she walks past and leaves Christian at the bar, heading straight to the toilet. It’s a weird sort of instinct when you follow her, taking a swig of your drink and wincing at the taste.

Carla is fixing her lipstick in one of the mirrors as you walk in, standing beside her and setting your glass down, appearing as nonchalant as possible.

“What are you doing here Carla?” You ask her as she smirks at your appearance.

“What are you talking about?” She scoffs, “Are you that threatened by me being around your little boyfriend?”

“Come on, don’t play dumb with me - you and I both know you have intentions that go far beyond you just being here to enjoy yourself. What are you playing?”

“Did Polo choose that for you to wear tonight?” She cocks a brow, “He has a thing for that colour, doesn’t he?”

You look down at your outfit and swallow the lump in your throat, unable to say anything more.

“Honey, you can flaunt around and try to replace me in whatever group you find yourself in. You can sit next to him, gossip with Lu, act just as fake as I had to - but you know you’ll never properly replace me. Deep down, beyond all of this facade you put up, you realise more and more that Polo will never truly be over me. And no matter how much you pretend, you’ll never be good enough for him. He still can’t stop thinking about me, honey.”

With that, she walks past you and you turn to follow her path. You want to not believe her, you want to completely disagree with everything she’d said. But it’s impossible. And when you watch her leave the restrooms and Polo is unable to tear his eyes away from her, that realisation sets in more and more and more.

You down the rest of your drink and force yourself to act once again, pretending like you’re fine for the rest of the night - for as long as everyone else’s prying eyes were still around.

- - - - - -

Eventually, having not remained tipsy enough in the night to have actually enjoyed yourself, you and Polo return back to his home. He’d been somewhat fine all night but you’d attempted to keep your distance as much as possible, too mind-numbingly aware of Carla’s comments to want to spend much time with him.

“What’s going on (Y/n)? You said I was off earlier, but you’ve not been yourself since we got to the club,” Polo comments as the two of you reach his room.

“Just something Carla said.”

“You’re listening to her?” Polo scoffs, “Come on (Y/n), you know she’s full of shit.”

“See, I did think that. I thought that every time you convinced me to think that. But I’m not blind anymore Polo. I see the way you look at her, how your jaw clenches when you see her with him, how you take a second to look at what she’s wearing like you’re looking to see for any change, how your eyes always flick to her when you think I don’t see you. I see it all. I’ve tried to convince myself every day that it’s not something I should be worried about - that you picked her over me, right? But that wasn’t what happened. She just picked him over you.”

“Babe where is this coming from?” He sighs, “I’ve told you, she’s in the past. I care about you, and I don’t want to be with Carla anymore.”

“I think you’re convincing your head of that, but somebody needs to tell your heart,” You push his chest, “Because you need to realise what you’ve got in front of you, rather than wanting somebody who doesn’t want you anymore.”

With that, you storm out of his room and head down the corridor to find your way out of his house. You vaguely hear him call your name behind you but you’re out of the front door before you can give in and turn back.

- - - - - -

The next morning, Polo has called you enough times and been left with enough voicemail beeps to be certain that you didn’t want to hear from him. He settles his phone back onto his desk and runs a hand through his hair, regretting everything he hadn’t said the night before.

He’s just about to reach to call you again when he notices a figure at his door. And to his complete surprise, it’s you.

“Your Mum let me in. I didn’t think this was a good conversation to have on the phone,” You explain quietly, puffy eyes suggesting you’d had as little sleep as he’d had.

“Thank you, thank you, I need to talk to you (Y/n),” He stands up abruptly, “Theres so much I need to tell you.”

You fold your arms over you and nod, “Go ahead.”

He shrugs his shoulders, “I don’t love her (Y/n), and I don’t think I ever did. We were together for ages, yeah, and I convinced myself in that time that I loved Carla. When we split up, it felt like an instinct to be heartbroken. But in amongst that, I found somebody I’d never expected to find. Somebody who cared for me more than anybody ever had, that made me laugh, that understood me, that was willing to wind me up and argue with me. And I had no idea that it was possible. People thought it was fast to move on but I couldn’t imagine giving up that chance to actually find somebody I could love.”

“That doesn’t explain the way you’ve been looking at her, the way you haven’t been yourself, everything,” You shake your head, “I can’t let myself believe that you don’t feel anything for her.”

“No, you’re right, maybe I do still feel some sort of way for Carla. But it’s not love and it’s nowhere near what I feel for you. But she hurt me, and it’s going to take time to get past that,” He admits, “But, if you’ll let me, I don’t want to lose this - I want to keep what we have, and work through all of this together.”

His eyes express such an emotion that it’s almost impossible to think of saying no. You’re reluctant of course. But everybody deserved a second chance, and giving up on him now would likely one of the biggest mistakes of your life.

“Okay, but Polo you need to promise me to communicate. Tell me how you’re feeling, admit if you feel anything for her - because I don’t want to be some sort of pawn in your game to get over her.”

“I promise you, okay? I promise you with every bit of me,” He smiles, reaching out his hands to grab yours, “I promise.”

“Okay,” You smile, “But I swear to god Polo if yo-“

He silences you with a kiss that seals the deal enough, that tells you everything his words couldn’t. Sure, this wasn’t exactly perfect. And it was confusing and people would say it wouldn’t work. But you had to convince yourself that it would work, your heart had already fallen too deep for you to just give up on him. And hopefully you could be the one to prove exactly what it meant to love someone.

[monkey-network]

My Issues with Butch Hartman

Call this the sequel to my post on Mr. Enter. But honestly compared to Enter, Butch Hartman has made himself look far worse in so little time. Not only with how he uses his influence, but he basically showed his true colors not long after he left Nickelodeon. With Enter, the worst you can say about him is his opinions on media and his politics. With Hartman, there is a surprisingly lot more under his belt that made the hate towards him .

To preface this, while I’m gonna shit on this dude, I’m not shaming anyone who still likes his past content. With that said, bibbity Boppity boopity. Let’s look at the fucking scoopity.

The Telltale Oaxis

This really takes the cake as the scummiest thing Butch has done. Words and opinions can be one thing, but using your platform to basically trick some people out of their money for a project you abandoned for the most part grinds me gears a lot more. As bad as his marketing strategy was, at least Enter provided effort in his indiegogo project beforehand for god’s sake. Oaxis is one of the most pitiable crowdfunded projects I’ve seen.

It’s nearly two years since Butch got Oaxis funded and what have gotten beyond pure dead silence. Nearly two years and little to no significant updates for Oaxis’s Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, his Youtube, or the site’s official account. No wait, that last part’s kind of a lie. They had monthly updates on the official site up until September 2019. Could’ve posted this on their social medias but you take what you can get. 

The major takeaway from the updates, in all fairness, was that the kickstarter wasn’t enough and they still need to raise more funds for the service. The “capital-building” stage he calls it where he’s looking for more investors in addition to getting actual programs onto the service. That and Oaxis is a big vision for Butch and his wife in spite of not only giving up the monthly updates and basically secluding any mention of Oaxis from any place else. That’s basically it and I legit feel sorry for everyone that couldn’t get their refund back.

This isn’t HBO Max or Disney+ where you just expect them to have something together after their initial announcement because they’re already media conglomerates, this is an independent project. One that people, your fans included Butch, put over 200K thinking you would at least give people something. But beyond a “sizzle reel” that said nothing aside from Oaxis going to be a thing, you have presented jack after two years. I don’t expect the ins and outs of every business meeting with executives, but staying silent about everything except for monthly newsletters that offer very little encouraging progress and hasn’t updated since September of last year is not a good sign. And I’m especially hard on this topic, Butch, because this is the biggest point where it is seriously hard to trust you. It’s not criticizing your ego when after having too many cracks in your story, you really haven’t put your money where your mouth is.

I don’t wanna presume the guy’s given up on it, hoping everybody would forget it after a while, but he’s really put the effort in to make Oaxis feel like a afterthought. I’m not an expert in business, but even I can believe that after his non-apology for not being upfront with his initial intentions, that he’d try to provide updates on the project to not come off as the scam artist people have accused him as. Even with his Youtube channel that I’ll get to later, I don’t think it’s hard consistently posting about your so called vision if you have that much faith in its success. You’ve already gotten thousands of bucks initially with the crowdfund, people deserve more than your pitiful wishful platitudes and I unfortunately can’t believe you’ll have anything after a few years. It’s not that everyone forgot about it, but you mostly took the money and ran. If Butch pops up with something if he sees this somehow, I’ll eat that crow, but I sincerely doubt it after this long. Like at least post something on the Twitter, I get depressed just looking at it; that account is the textbook definition of famine.

The Childhood Reposter

I’ve brought up Butch’s youtube channel a couple times, and it’s when every time I look at it, it’s a little sad. When it comes to major creators, I typically think that after finishing their projects they’d move to newer things. People like Lauren Faust, Mike Judge, CH Greenblatt are all continuing to make new works under differing studios while new creators are getting the spotlight. Butch though? I mean, he has a new cartoon that I swear you’ve never heard about but other than that, the dude looks like he has little to say for himself nowadays beyond the 2 shows he’s famous for, Fairly Odd Parents and Danny Phantom. I would’ve added TUFF Puppy and Bunsen is a Beast but I can see that those two aren’t his major players seeing as how they’re rarely ever mentioned on the channel.

If it’s not some watchmojo level meme video, almost every other video is about either two of those shows in some varied fashion. I get that he “created your childhood” and made credulous bank from Nickelodeon, but it’s like Danny Phantom is all that stands between him and having an audience. That and drawing anime characters in his style which is... y’know, I’ll leave that to you. It’s like he retired and yet goes on about the good old days like a fluctuating ego. He’s still making a cartoon but to him that’s hardly a factor compared to his known successes.

Personally, I wouldn’t want to just be known as the guy who made two of your countless beloved cartoons. Not that that’s all he talks about, but it’s the insistence of his legacy that unfortunately gives me Bojack Horseman vibes. He no doubt has a good thing going but I believe that this isn’t gonna last. Just saying, dude has 850K subscribers and unless it’s a real hook like with the recent Danny Phantom/Jake Long death battle, he’s hardly getting a good fraction of views anymore. There’s only so many times you can milk Danny Phantom as your masterpiece before everyone moves on.

The Holy Boast

I wanna make this short because I’m not a huge talker of religion, but I stand to say that you should NOT, under any circumstance, believe BPD, PTSD, autism, fucking heart & kidney failure can be “cured” or “healed” through sermons of prayer. This here? This is genuinely something else.

https://www.healingjourneys.today/

For clarity, this was a gospel conference hosted by Butch and his wife and yes, they openly proclaim that BPD, austism, and heart disease can be cured through prayer of holy worship.

Now, I’m gonna give a full disclosure right here because this most certainly biases my point here, like I’m gonna own this. But my grandpa was a religious man that suffer from health problems. He notably prayed to carry on, yes, but at the same time he sought medical help. Even he told me that prayers wasn’t gonna keep the pacemaker going, he went to the doctors and actually did more than read the bible to improve himself. He unfortunately passed, but he was in his 70s and I honestly couldn’t believe, as hard as I try, that he was gonna live forever. My grandpa would’ve no doubt died far earlier if he followed this conference’s logic.

My point is that this is personally unsettling. I seriously cannot believe this is how autism and religion works and it blows my mind that him and his wife thought this conference was a suitable idea. I’m not bashing them as christians, but thinking mental disorders and bodily diseases can be done away with motivational seminars because that’s basically what they are is a legit slap to the face. And the seedling idea that they’ve done this before blows my mind.

The Financial Flaker

This is very recent and everything is generally explained in the 12 minute video but long story short: Butch hired an artist and never paid them for their work. The artist in question, Kuro, describes what happened between him and Butch in this video and provides receipts. Can’t really add anything to this myself beyond this just builds to the idea that Butch cannot be trusted as a professional business maker. I believe he still has people working for him but from this video, it tells me that Hartman will gladly use those lower than him in favorable pursuits and will gladly throw ignorance when he wants to because his cartoon veteran status presents that shield from thinking he can do no wrong, which can mean throttling his hires.  Let’s end this.

The Conclusion

When I get down to it, Butch is almost a Machiavellian character in a way. It’s amazing how much the trust people have had with Hartman have evaporated in less than a couple years. It’s amazing how much his ego has truly shown after he stopped being a namestay in Nickelodeon. Haven’t even mentioned the times he arrogantly deflected criticism because he was a namestay at Nick and how a couple who’ve worked with are well aware of his ego. I can’t help but believe that even after everything, he claims ignorance to his fall from grace and keeps going. Even when more and more are knowing his true self, he’s mostly just doing what he’s been doing for the past few years.

It’s respectable in a way, but shows that the world will move on without him. Again, if you like Danny Phantom and Fairly OddParents, I won’t judge you for it nor say you should be ashamed. This isn’t about cancelling Butch, or get him to stop spreading whatever wacky things he believes in. It’s my personal take of how this man whom I once respected because of what he made before has lost every bit of that from me. It really feels like he grew up with that “I Created Your Childhood” mentality being a 4 time showrunner for almost a couple decades. And when he finally left Nickelodeon, I guess the chance to be that stand out self-made success got to his head and he finally showed his true colors. I now find it hard to believe Butch cares about the little guy that were his fans as much as he rides off his success and others who tolerate him. As such, like JK Rowling, more are seeing this side of him and leaving him behind. Meanwhile Butch is gonna chug on until he just loses steam. It’s kinda like Icarus where the guy will make every effort to fly to the sun. But sooner or later, he’s gonna fall, and in the end I doubt anyone’s gonna care to see it. I know he won’t.

[khiphop-stories]

Getting Off The Wrong Foot

[Christian Yu | Chapter VII]

Previous Chapters: Chapter I | Chapter II | Chapter III | Chapter IV | Chapter V | Chapter VI

You were one of the first people to arrive at the filming site. It was an outdoor location today, but the weather looked awful. According to the weather report it was supposed to be sunny day with no precipitation. But in reality, it was the exact opposite. Thick grey clouds hung over the rooftops, darkening the sky. You could hardly even see any blue and only a few rays of sunlight streamed through the cracks in the cloud layer. As you looked up the sky, you felt a single rain drop fall on top your forehead. You knew it was only a matter of time it started pouring down the sky.

As if your hand moved on its own, it dived into your bag and fished out your phone. You quickly made a few calls, informing the staff that the shoot was cancelled until further notice and asked them to spread the word. You also sent home the crew members that were already at the filming site. The only ones left to call was Christian and his team. You dreaded this moment. After what had happened yesterday, you didn’t have the confidence to talk to him. But in the end it didn’t matter what you wanted to do or didn’t want to do, you had to keep up your professionalism. You couldn’t just stop working with someone because you had some differences. If that were the case you would already be unemployed. You called their manager’s number first, hoping you would be able to avoid directly talking to Christian. It was a cowardish move, but you didn’t care. Joo Won was friendly and understanding. He assured you he would let the others know.

Just a few minutes later you received an incoming call from Joo Won again. “Hey Minhee, I can’t reach Christian. He’s probably still driving that’s why he’s not picking up. He left early, so he should be there soon.“

“Ok, I’ll wait for him and tell him myself then. Thanks, Joo Won.“

Well, your plan to avoid him as long as possible was just flushed down toilet.

~*~

Christian arrived shortly after the call. He let his eyes wander around the location, before they rested on you. Since he didn’t see any staff members nor any props around, he already guessed it. 

“Shoot’s cancelled, huh?“ 

“Yeah, the weather’s too bad. I don’t think we can shoot under this condition and it’ll probably start raining soon.“

Just as if the rain was waiting for you cue, it started pouring it that very moment. Without exchanging further words, you both quickly looked for shelter under a building. 

The awkward silence that surrounded the two of you was killing you. It made you even more uncomfortable than you felt before, if that was even possible.

“Christian…,” you decided to break the silence. It wasn’t going to work this way. You wouldn’t be able to work together if there was still this awkwardness lingering between you.  He turned his attention away from the sky and looked at you, his eyebrows cocked up.

“Look, I’m sorry—“

“You don’t have to apologize...not for his bevahior,“ he quickly cut you off, the frown on his face easing up and the corner of his lips raised to a smile. You blinked your eyes at him in confusion, not understanding where the sudden change was coming from. What he was saying now wasn’t making any sense, considering how the last conversation you had with him ended.

“Bu you were really angry yesterday...“ “I was angry,“ he admitted with a nod, yet his voice was tender, not an even ounce of animosity could be found. “But not at you. I was just mad that we lost the deal and I lashed out at you.“

“But it kinda was my fau—“

“No, it wasn’t. I overreacted.“

“But maybe you were right. I blamed it all on Kiseok, but maybe the problem was me all along? Maybe I sucked at being the girlfriend and that’s why he cheated on me. Maybe I deserved it.“

The expression on Christian’s face turned serious. His gaze pierced through you and he spoke slowly as though you were having a hard time understanding him.

“You are not responsible for the way he acts. Don’t even think for a second it’s your fault. I said stupid things yesterday because I was angry. I didn’t mean it.“

You remained silent for a while, letting his words sink in. You replayed everything that had happened the past few months, trying to understand where things went wrong. 

��Min,“ he called you softly, pulling you back to reality. 

“It just doesn’t make sense,“ you shook your head. You were so deep in thoughts, you didn’t even notice how your vision had slowly blurred as tears shot into your eyes.

“Come here.“ Christian reached out and gently pulled you into his embrace. He wrapped his arms around your shoulders and pulled you close, rubbing your back comfortingly. The feel of his body so close to yours soothed you more than you had expected. 

“I’m sorry,“ you mumbled into his chest. “I don’t know why I always break down in front of you.” You exhaled slowly, trying your best to calm yourself. You weren’t usually that emotional. You were the type of person who wouldn’t even shed a tear during the most emotional scenes in movies. But lately, all you did was having emotional breakdowns, most of them in front of Christian.

“It’s ok, I don’t mind,“ he chuckled softy as he ran his fingers through your hair.  He must have thought you were a pathetic crybaby, but there was something about him that made you feel so reassured, that you didn’t have to be ashamed of your feelings and that you didn’t have to hide them in front of him. “You must think I’m a huge mess,” you let out an embarrassed chuckle. “Yeah...well, but we all are in some way or another.“ His words were comforting to hear. When he noticed that you had somewhat calmed down, he released you from his hug. 

“Did you already have breakfast?“ He asked you out of the blue. You shook your head in response

„Let’s grab something to eat then.“

~*~

[Time leap]

“I got the pictures from the shoot,“ you told him as you were waiting for your orders.

“How did they turn out?“ He asked you excitedly, his full attention on you. You liked his enthusiasm, it seemed as though he was just as excited as you about all the good things that were happening to you. But it wasn’t that fake interest people always showed you, he seemed to be genuinely happy for you. “Well, I barely recognize myself with all the photoshop, but they look good...just not like me,“ you joked with a chuckle. You took your phone that was lying on the table into your hands and scrolled through your photos to show him the pictures. “They want me to choose some, but they kinda look all the same to me. I might need a professional pair of eyes.“

“Show me,“ he held his hand out. You gave him your phone and watched him quietly as he looked through the pictures. You grew a bit nervous as he wasn’t commenting on any of the pictures. You expected him to at least make fun of you a little bit.

“I would have done it differently,“ he remarked, his eyes still fixed on the screen of your phone.

“How?“ You asked while you were preparing yourself for all the criticism that would probably be coming your way. But instead of criticizing you, he analyzed the work of the photographer. “Well, for starters I wouldn’t have put that much photoshop. You’re pretty as you are. You don’t need that shit. And I would have tried to shoot with natural, warmer light, because that enhances your features,“ he said it so nonchalant, as though he was talking about the weather. Those compliments always left his lips like they were nothing. Maybe he didn’t mean anything either, maybe he was just passionate about photography and he was commenting from an objective point of view. Maybe he was just a professional critiquing someone else’s work. “You should have shot me then,“ you said jokingly with a laugh.

“I would love to,“ he smiled, his eyes turning to you. The look on his face was so soft, it made you feel so comfortable around him, but at the same time it also made you feel  incredibly nervous. You could feel the blood rushing through your veins, heating up your body. Your cheeks felt awfully hot, you were probably as red as a tomato by now.

“Well, I still need to choose some pictures,” you tried to guide the conversation into a different direction before he would notice how embarrassed you were. “This one is the best,“ he pulled his chair closer to you and showed you the photograph.

“This one? Really?“ You looked at the picture and then turned your eyes to him, giving him a look of disbelief. You definitely wouldn’t have chosen that one as your favorite.  “You were a bit stiff, but this one looks the most natural. I like your smile there“ “I know, I’m not a model,“ you accepted his criticism with a laugh. “You could be with your face and measurements.“ “How would you know my measurements?“ “I saw you naked, remember?“ He wriggled his brows at you playfully. “Ok, you need to stop, Christian. You making me blush.“ You pressed the back of your hands, which where still cold from standing outside, on your warm cheeks, trying to cool them down.

Christian licked his lips as a grin appeared on his face, his eye following every of your movements. He loved teasing you, because of the reaction he always got from you. He liked being the one making you blush.

“I’m just saying the truth. You’re not that used to getting compliments, are you?“ “You’re doing it far too often,” you argued.

“Really? I’m even holding back right now. I mean could go on and on how pretty you look in that picture and how beautiful you look right now.“

“You’re a real smooth talker, Christian,” you rolled your eyes. You didn’t take his compliments serious any more as you assumed he was only teasing you.  “That’s why girls like you, because you make them feel special and important.”

“You didn’t receive many compliments from him, did you?“

You shook your head in response. You did get compliments from Kiseok sometimes. But most of the time he either wanted a favor from you or he wanted to get into your pants. So those compliments never really meant a lot to you.

“Man, Kiseok must have really fucked you up. If you were my girl, I would tell you how beautiful you are every single day.“ You felt your heart skip a beat, almost as though it would jump right out of your chest. You stared at him. For a brief moment, you imagined what dating him would be like. Never did it even cross your mind that you would ever start something serious with him. But now that you were visualizing it, you didn’t hate the idea that much either.

„Ok, that’s enough. Shut up, Christian,“ you rolled your eyes at him, letting out a nervous chuckle.

~*~

You resumed shooting two days after and lasted for another two days. The shooting went by smoothly and you wrapped up early. It was very apparent that Dabin had experience in shooting music videos. He was comfortable in front the camera and his acting was good as well. He seemed to trust Christian completely. He followed his instructions well and never questioned his direction. As you finished filming the last scene, one of the crew members suggested to go out for drinks to celebrate the past days of hard work. You liked the idea and encouraged your own team to join them, but you didn’t have that much interest in going yourself. You were tired from the lack of sleep and your legs were hurting from standing all day. You just wanted to go home, take a long hot bath and then go straight to bed. Despite your initial reluctance you somehow let Christian and Dabin talk you into joining them. Since you didn’t have to work tomorrow as it was a Sunday, you didn’t have much of an excuse not to go.

So, now here you were, at some bar in Hongdae chatting and playing drinking games which you obviously sucked at, knowing that this would end in a bad hangover the next day. Nonetheless you were having an awful lot of fun. You were almost sad that you would probably not see this team again after this evening since they were people Nike hired and employed. You had grown quite fond of them. 

Since there way way too many people in the team, you had to spread out to different tables. You sat with a few DPR members and the hair and makeup team. Christian, of course, got dragged to the models’ table and he seemed to be enjoying the attention he was getting there. You didn’t pay much attention to him. You were immersed in the conversations you were having, however occasionally, your eyes and his would meet. He held the gaze and every time his lips would curl up into a warm smile. You were always the first one to look away. You didn’t really like what you were seeing. It wasn’t jealousy, at least that’s what you believed. It was the way he was acting. He did his reputation full justice - the charming ladies’ man who could talk is way into anything he wanted. Right now he was behaving like someone who you would naturally avoid. You were judgmental when you first met him, yet he made you quickly let your guards down. However, seeing him like this, made you question him once again. Just what kind of person was he?

The conversation at your table had taken another direction and now the girls were talking about men they found attractive while the guys were trying to understand their taste, albeit not agreeing. 

“Objectively, Christian’s hella good looking fella,“ Scott then said when asked to give an example of whom he taught was good looking. All the girls at the table agreed in unison swooning over him, but you.

“You don’t think so?“ Dabin gently nudged your ribs teasingly. “You’d be the first.” “I mean, yeah he’s hot, but not the type of guy I personally would date,“ you shrugged your shoulders nonchalantly. “Why not?“ You heard Christian say. You quickly turned to the direction of his voice, your eyes widening in surprise. He was standing right next to you, his eyes staring down at you. He took a chair from another table and placed it down next to you, as he took a seat.

You didn’t get the chance to answer as the topic was changed again. But Christian wouldn’t let you off the hook so easily. “So…why not?“ He asked you again in a lowered voice, so only you could hear.

“You’re not really boyfriend material.“

“Why not?“ He insisted. 

“Well, you’re too popular with girls, I wouldn’t be able to trust you.“ “I’m not Kiseok.“ “I know, I-I just…“ you stuttered, not really knowing what you were even trying to say. “I mean you’re not even looking for something serious. You’re the fleeting type of guy.“ “So your opinion on me still hasn’t changed, huh?“ The tone in his voice sounded bitter.

“That’s not what I meant, Christian,” you quickly threw in, worried that you might have hurt his feelings.

“You’re an amazing friend. You’re sweet, attentive, a good listener. I just don’t see you settling down any time soon and I just don’t see myself starting a relationship with someone who’s not ready yet. Nothing against you... a-and this is just hypothetical anyway. It’s not like anything’s gonna happen, right?“

The expression on his face suddenly changed, a huge grin covering the lower half of his face. “I’m just playing with you,“ he broke out into a hearty laughter. “You don’t need to explain yourself.“

You rolled your eyes and punched his arm in retaliation. For a brief moment, you really thought you had hurt his feelings. 

~*~

Although you didn’t want to be here in the first place, you were one of the people who stayed the longest. The bar slowly emptied and there were only a few people left. Christian was one of them, but he was also about to head home. He bid goodbye to the team and then walked up to you.

“Want me to drop your off at home? You drank quite a bit.“

“I drank way too much,” you giggled. “But you did too, you can’t drive.”

“I drank one beer when we first got here and then I had soda.“

“Really?“ You furrowed your brows at him skeptically. You were under the impression that he had drunk a lot. There were so many empty bottles at the table he sat at. 

“I wouldn’t drive under the influence.” “If that’s the case, then yes,” you smiled at him from eye to eye.

~*~

Christian dropped you off in front of your house. You turned around to watch him leave, but it turned out he was still parking at the same spot. You waved at him and motioned him to roll down the window which he did.

“Why are you still here?” “I won’t leave until your ass passed that door,” he pointed to the entrance. “What? You think I’m gonna get abducted here? In this few seconds?”

“Just go,” he smiled.

You walked towards the door, one hand rummaging through your back in search for your keys. But they were not where they were supposed to be. 

“Shit,” you cursed as you kneeled down, placing your bag on the the concrete floor, using both of your hands to search for your keys. Knowing that Christian was still there and most likely watching you, made you even more nervous. Your desperation grew as you just couldn’t find them. That’s when you remember where you had put them. They were still on your desk in the office.

“Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.” You muttered under your breath. With a long sigh of defeat, you got up and walked to his car. Upon seeing you approaching, he rolled down his window again.

“I forgot my keys in the office,” you muttered under your breath, your cheeks turning a pinkish hue out of embarrassment. You bit down on your bottom lips, avoiding his gaze.

“Your office is like on the other side of the city,” Christian remarked drily.

”I know, I know. You don’t have to drive me, I’ll just take a cab.” ”Not an option,” he shook his head firmly. “Get in.”

Before he started the engine, he turned to you again as though a bright idea had just come to his mind.

“Wanna crash at my place?”

[bi-any-chance]

I'm a Christian. I promote love and respect and equality. But I could be put to death all of that if I break one of the 10 commandments?

I mean, some of them make sense.

Don't kill people. Don't cheat on your spouse.

But one I have broken is the one about not working on the Sabbath day. So I work on a Saturday and then am put to death (according to religion) for doing so? What if I'm working for a charity that helps the homeless? Is there no Grey area?

Also I understand no worshipping of false idols but I have to admit confusion (even though He knows my thoughts anyway). If God is perfect, and He is a "jealous God", then is jealousy a good trait? Traditionally jealousy has been viewed as negative. Or at least not positive.

Also, if God is perfect in general, then he makes bj o mistakes, and if He is responsible for creating people then the gays are certainly not a mistake. Also He, being perfect, would be full of love and compassion, and I feel like judgement would be based on the person as a whole. I feel like you could follow the Bible to the tee and still be a crappy person. I also feel, and know for a fact, that there are tbousands of atheists who are better people than I will ever be. Do they honestly deserve eternal damnation for not believing in God, if they have a life dedicated to spreading love and compassion throughout the land? I wouldn't think so.

If God is perfect, then He would not want to be worshipped, in my opinion. I feel like wanting to be worshipped by people isn't exactly a good thing? I feel like thinking you are deserving of worship because you don't destroy your subjects is a little bit of a low bar. Even if you want to be worshipped because you created the universe. The universe is a work of art, but in my opinion most good people are not going around saying they should be worshipped for how good their art is. It's kind of arrogant.

Again, I am Christian. I hope I'm not condemning myself to eternal damnation for questioning God, because I genuinely do wonder these things.

My thought is that the Bible was written by man. It's a good guide, but I don't think it is entirely accurate. I think how things really are, well, they may be too complicated for just one book. So the Bible is just an oversimplification of things, meant to guide but not control. The word of God is a light unto thy feet, not a glowing green arrow on the floor.

I think a perfect God would trust each person to do what they believe in their heart is right, and to follow a path of life with love and compassion, living life as He would himself. Only the truly evil would be damned, but even then, they would be punished, but maybe even redeemed? I personally believe that some people are far from redemption worthy, I know a few who have hurt me and others who I feel deserve eternal damnation...

But a perfect God would know exactly whether or not there was a shred of hope of redemption. I feel He would judge based on the life lived, and then acknowledge that maybe an eternal damnation can change a soul.

I don't know anything, just what I feel. And I feel that even if I make a lot of mistakes, or break one of the less-serious ten commandments (murder and not honoring your parents are NOT equal, and murder is a worse crime than theft), if I live a life of love and compassion, a perfect God would be proud of the light I try to spread.

If you've read this long, thanks for reading. My essay of religious pondering is over and you may now return to your regularly scheduled Tumblr feed. :)

[theguardian6]

Assistance for Isis much better in Persia web 2 . in Europe when compared to inside Syria

theguardian.com

Sustain for Islamic Declare (Isis) among Arabic-speaking social media clients with Belgium, Britain, England and also the US is usually greater than in the militant group’s heartlands involving Syria together with Iraq, a global analysis associated with across 2m Arabic-language online posts has got found.

theguardian.com

In what exactly understood to be the primary arduous mass analysis of the with regard to and about the world’s largest jihadist organisation, Italian teachers found which in a very three-and-a-half month interval getting into in Come july 1st, content posted as a result of Arabic-speaking Europeans with Twitter and additionally Squidoo was more beneficial to be able to Isis compared to content posted within those countries over the frontline in the discord.

In Syria, Isis is dramatically melting away the battle meant for hearts and opinions with more as opposed to 92% of tweets, blog in addition to forum reviews hostile to the militants who have rampaged on the east with the region and western Iraq, confiscating large tracts of territory along with declaring the store of a christian declare.

The jihadist militants are notable for operating a good slick propaganda piece of equipment - managing via the internet distribution for you to systematically evade content manages, piggybacking popular internet conversations and galvanising thousands of global enthusiasts into growing your message.

Their projects look like having a consequence. Outside Syria, assistance for Isis, at all times a tossing amongst online communities, rises substantially. Forty-seven per cent from studied tweets together with posts from Qatar, 35% with Pakistan, 31% from Belgium and additionally almost 24% of posts because of UK and 21% from the YOU ended up classified as being supporting for the jihadist setup compared with just under 20% in Jordan, Saudi Arabia (19. 7%) and Iraq (19. 8%).

Dr Luigi Curini from Suggests from the Blogs, an agency set up simply by teachers from Milan Or even which is pioneering completely new forms of large-scale examination of online feedback, known as message exploration, says the research is actually wonderful evidence for ones proposition that to understand Isis up close is planned to be hostile to your potential customers.

Your team, including statistician Teacher Stefano Iacus, political scientist Andrea Ceron, and translators, found there seems to be moreover an intense battle flaming above Islamic State’s religious legitimacy.

Out from the vastly larger quantity of anti-Isis suggestions in the posts undertook studies, 1 out of some (32. 8%) criticises Isis for destroying Islam in addition to when using the faith as a include to get pursuing strength and other “private” pursuits.

One tweet stored by the organization at 23 September go through: “They are tyrants and have marred Islam. Everyday Isis will make Islam dress in your mask of a barbarous intimate monster. ”

Almost a third (29%) of anti-Isis reports expressed scary or simply outrage towards the group’s thrashing methods as well as a further 17% broadcast fears of the group’s hostility to help spiritual and political freedoms, the research found.

In the meantime, nearly all of the scaled-down global community with Isis proponents - making up just finished 20% of the 2m posts - championed the group designed for defending and “unifying” the global city involving believers and also spreading their trust.

Perhaps counter to help you western targets, solely 8. 3% associated with pro-Isis posts had been supportive of the crew for being an opposing forces of the western side.

Curini said it was nice thing about it this Isis had been massively attacked on line over its assert to be Islamic, because it demonstrated just how fragile their particular theological standing upright was among on the internet Muslims. “I’d be a little more worried if perhaps families, when they attack Isis, should they say a product negative about Isis, they talk just terrorism, or even assault … and they weren’t for the religious difficulty. ”

The fairly new science from sentiment study - the automated exploration with opinion - has been dogged from the difficulties of getting pc systems to understand a difficulties of natural speech.

A subtleties involving jokes, sarcasm, slang and general situation can show problematic for algorithms so that you can categorise and help make any nonhuman study of a collection of views prone to huge amounts of error. There is also a possibility of which sentiment is normally influenced by people who shout loudest and many frequently inside of a discussion, but this can be mitigated by way of gathering gigantic volumes of material.

The Italian company say they've got presented a number of innovations to relieve inaccuracies. Rather than routine a computer to understand that complexities of dialect itself, these people “hand train” an criteria to be able to acquaint this with hundreds of great and negative thoughts and the compact groups of words along with mini-phrases they are made from.

The team subsequently get the algorithm to see the likelihood of thoughts and opinions within the total amalgamation associated with articles or blog posts. The group say their fellow reviewed methods have got a 95%-98% precision speed.

Trawling for Isis-related words and phrases such as Syria, the caliphate, plus the name of the group’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the power team have the ability to collect 3, 195, 000 open posts on social media marketing, 93% that originated from Twitter and the remainder coming from public Zynga pages, forums together with blogs. Posts of which did not specific any kind of clear opinion ended up being forgotten.

Form 1 July until twenty two October, the study monitored shifts around idea over some of the most extraordinary functions of Syrian conflict this year, such as Isis’s attack to the Yazidi fraction and the swift advance around american Iraq, this publication of video lessons showing the beheadings of hostages, your bombings of Isis roles by the YOU AND ME and a consortium from other Arab lands, and the duress within the Kurdish town with Kobani.

Violence generally seems to mobilise people resistant to the perpetrators, the study uncovered. The beheading involving British aid staff member Jake Haines concerning 13 September as well as the start of US-led bombardment associated with Isis positions in Syria upon 23 Sept were followed by massive anti- then pro-Isis reactions.

Curini talked about the apparent deviation inside opinions failed to necessarily show individuals were changing their opinions, but much more likely showed the mobilisation from revealed supporters or simply opponents following huge events. “The insurance plan increases, therefore you use the and you post far more issues, ” Curini said.

The organization also collected and additionally analysed around 95, 000 Arabic-language current information reports to do a comparison of the social media blogposts against. They noticed the news articles or blog posts to get hostile to Isis eight times from 10 and no record correlation between the a pair of, suggesting genuine and the most useful state-controlled media cant be found handling opinions via the internet. “By analysing web 2 . 0 we can see there isn't always this particular homogenous sentiment against Isis, ” Curini stated.

• Additional revealing by Mona Mahmood News can be according to threat …

… only just when we require it the most. Millions of subscribers around the world are flocking to the Mom or dad looking for honest, authoritative, fact-based credit reporting that can help all of them understand the biggest concern we have faced in this lifetime. However , at the crucial moment, press companies are confronting a cruel fiscal double blow: by using fewer consumers in a position to leave their houses, in addition to fewer thing vendors in operation, we’re seeing a reduction in rag sales over the USA. Advertising revenue is constantly on the tumble steeply in the meantime as businesses have the pinch. We need you help enter into a gap.

We trust each of us is deserving of equal access to necessary public service journalism. So , dissimilar to a good many others, we made some other personal preference: to keep Guard journalism open for, regardless of where they are located or what exactly they're able to afford to pay. The best selection not really be potential without financial advantages from those who is able to afford to pay, exactly who right now support our get the job done out of 180 international locations around the world.

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We need your sustain thus we can preserve delivering quality journalism that’s open along with independent. And that is exactly at this point for the long term. Every last site reader contribution, still big or modest, is so valuable.

[writingwithcolor]

I’m writing a story in which a nation of nonhumans, having been trapped in a pocket dimension for two millenia, integrates into human society. Would it be insensitive to have them successfully argue that, as they were indigenous peoples of the Americas, they should be legally recognized as a Native American tribe with tribal sovereignty? Native Americans (specifically of the Ojibwe tribe) magically trapped them in the first place, but I’m hoping that’s ok because all humans have magic, not just

“Native American mystics” or w/e, and the character designs aren’t based off any NA myths. But they’re VERY inhuman, resembling animals, and a subplot is that they’re called “monsters” so often they begin to embrace/reclaim the term. It’s mainly just a device to deal with the logistics of integrating thousands of new people (with their own established government) into the American political system at once, so I can scrap it if needed.

Ancient Monsters Indigenous to America; Should They be Called Native?

So. There are four parts to this question, based off how you’ve worded the question. 

1- Native Americans Shunning An “Okay” Group

2- Native American Monsters

3- Imposing Monsters Where None Exist

4- What Makes Someone Native

One at a time:

Native Americans Shunning an Okay Group

If these inhuman people are a genuine threat or were a genuine threat, then this is less relevant. But even if some of them were a threat, and the whole group was shunned, you end up recreating a big piece of racism in modern day:

Natives hate outsiders “needlessly.” If only they gave this group a chance, they’d find out they weren’t that bad. But they’re too mean to do that.

The modern caution around Native and colonizer culture mixing is, as the term implies, modern. Natives didn’t necessarily shun outsiders, and as evident by how colonizers needed us to survive for awhile, they were relatively welcoming early on. In Canada, we even have a whole group of people who were born out of intermarriage between traders and Native people: the Metis.

But non-Natives tend to take this caution as an insult, because they assume they should be welcomed with open arms despite the atrocities committed. Colonizers have far, far, far exceeded the threshold for “general mistrust”, but they don’t realize it. They think everything should be fine, because schools teach only that Natives used to be welcoming, but then turned mean and jealous without saying why.

For example, when I was in my teens, my grandma went on a probably 15-30 minute rant about how my (white) cousin wasn’t allowed to work horticulture on the local reserve because it was taking jobs away from Native people. My whole family spent the next hour agreeing with her, how they really were just so closed off and mean, he was just trying to help.

Now factor in how the largest group of unemployed people in Canada is Native people, because they lack job skills from a lack of opportunity. Now consider how horticulture was actually one of our specialties and there’s still a lot of tradition around how to take care of the land. And how a white person fresh out of college with a degree was being brought in as the “expert.” And how he was doing the work, instead of helping people on the reserve do the work (which would allow them to put landscaping skills on their resume, giving them a foot in the door)

Suddenly that “unnecessary shunning” makes a whole lot more sense, doesn’t it?

I want to know why the Ojibwe sealed them off. Because I highly doubt such a drastic action would’ve been taken if they were truly a benevolent group. 

Native American Monsters

And this is where things get touchier.

I want to ask all writers who want Indigenous monsters to ask themselves one question: why do you want to tie Indigenous identity to “monster” so strongly?

It’s a fixation I see time and again: the concept of Indigenous people as inhuman, as having ties to the inhuman, as having ties to creatures who could be feared. 

If these monsters are a complex society, are intelligent, are generally… people, then you’ve fallen more heavily into the first point I mentioned (which I’m uncomfortable with) but mitigate this part. They’re shown as people-like and worthy of respect, then it might work as showing Indigenous people aren’t inhuman.

Or it might further reinforce the concept that all Indigenous people are monsters.

Which one it does depends on the writing. Either way, it’s something I’m deeply uncomfortable with, just from sheer exposure. A lot of the questions I receive are about dark, twisted, criminal, or otherwise monstrous Indigenous people. Like, about half the questions. It’s a lot.

Why are we tied so strongly to monsters? What about Native identity makes this such an easy connection? Why just the monsters and none of our healing from them?

Why?

Imposing Monsters Where None Exist

Further, it’s honestly a bit weird to me that they don’t come Ojibwe/Great Lakes legends. Because I’d assume sealing away a whole population of monsters would merit some oral legends and teachings for how to seal them back away should they return. And these monsters would bleed into other peoples’ legends, with how each creature as a concept spread across such a wide landmass and across so many peoples. So everywhere these monsters touched, there’d be some version of the story.

It’s a little too close to playing god with real religions for me. Indigenous oral legends around the globe are meticulous, and when analyzed are as solid as written history. Creating a group of monsters that are not based in our stories, that have no oral histories and legends, just has me wondering how this impacted society. 

Monsters have a place in Indigenous society. They are cautions, they are warnings, they are sickness, they teach lessons about how to care for the earth and/or yourself to starve off the monster’s approach. 

(And no, this doesn’t contradict the fixation on Monstrous Natives. Why do you fixate on the monsters and not how we heal from them? I specify “we” because there’s a tendency to make the antithesis of Native monsters Christian, which further colonizers the narrative. We had our own ways of healing)

Indigenous people, in general, have history from around the Ice Age (Australian Aboriginals have from during if not before). Two millennia is nothing for the oral history, even if you brought in the angle that the stories were genocided out in the residential school system (Which would be a very touchy subject as well). Because something that big would be spread among a dozen tribes, and would have threads that survived in whispers.

Indigenous religions aren’t a mythology playground where you can free-reign insert or remove whole concepts like sealing away monsters willy-nilly. 

I’d run this concept by somebody Ojibwe before proceeding. They might find a way to make it work, or they might tell you that there’d be a much deeper cultural impact than can be handled by an outsider.

What Makes Someone Native

Here’s the thing: being Native isn’t just about how we were here first.

There’s taking care of the land. There’s our language. There’s our unity to each other. There’s our religion. There’s so much nuance to what makes somebody Native that goes beyond just time spent on the continent. 

Each tribe has its own definition of what it means to be part of the tribe. The government doesn’t always line up with who we are, but we have our own definition. A lot of basic principles are similar (sustainability, for one), but the nuance for each people will be different.

And the government still doesn’t recognize all the tribes that were self-governing peoples before colonizers got here. That fact alone makes it a stretch to believe these monsters could successfully argue to the government they belong as Native. The only reason I could see it as successful is the government rather overtly assuming Native people are monsters, which codifies the above.

You’ve got to keep in mind that the government wants as few Natives to exist as possible. Because the more Natives exist, the more political power we have, the more resources the government has to allocate towards us, and we are seen as an inconvenience. 

Getting off the registry of Native people is laughably easy. Getting back on is notoriously hard. This isn’t a case of “have a hearing and the government gives you full status rights.” It’s “we have petitioned the government to have our claim to this land recognized for literally hundreds of years and now they’re about to bulldoze our sacred land so we have to protest to put a stop to it and suffer the arrests and deaths required to keep our land safe and hope that this protest gets enough pressure on the government to have them back off.”

(True story. The latter describes the Oka Crisis, which thankfully did have the land restored, but not until 1 death on each side, and 75 Mohawk and allies injured. And it was a long, long, long drawn out process).

Natives are, technically, wards of the state. The more Natives exist, the more people the state has to take care of. And history proves the state absolutely hates taking care of Native people.

Overall

This feels off in multiple ways, for me. It’s treating our legends as if they’re just frilly decorations that don’t deeply inform our culture, for starters, then there’s how no matter which way it’s sliced it’s reinforcing some sort of racist idea about Natives: either we shun “good” groups for no reason, or we’re tied to monsters. Then there’s the assumption our identity can be easily expanded to include a nonhuman group when it’s more complicated than that. There’s also the assumption the government would actually work to add more people it has to take care of.

You’re going to need to do a lot more research and reach out to a lot more sensitivity readers. It’s so far removed from who we are and our cultural identity I’d take a good hard look at the concept before continuing.

~ Mod Lesya

COMMENTARY:

@octopodesinmybutt

So the concept of "indigenous monsters sealed away" would actually work really well with Irish mythology about the Fae/Tuatha de Danon. They're considered the real indigenous ppl of Ireland. It's a bit more complex than that, but you could look into it.

[thoughtlessghost]

Salem ou alekoum fellow disbelievers,

I decided to write this story down because one of my friends is currently questioning Islam. She said it might be a good idea for me to share my journey to help her and others find inner peace once you have walk out of something you grew up thinking was correct. I think I will make this a 2-3 parts series depending on interest and how she deals with just part 1. There's a lot to go through, and I will try to be brief, but I do not mind elaborating on any section in the comments or private. I am very open and confident about who and what I am. Finally, I want to have at least one part dedicated to my current worldview with the hopes of helping you guys create your moral landscape.

Finally, I would like to complete this preface by saying that I know that we all have personal reasons for leaving a Religion. Some of you have left the faith because you felt as though it was too controlling; others may have felt that God was simply too cruel. I will say that in the end, those were not the deciding factors for me. In my view, only Truth matters. Therefore, for me to stop believing in a concept, it merely has to be proven untrue, whether scientifically or logically. So my journey of leaving Islam did not originate because I had problems with its takes on the world. They occurred in large part because I feel as though Islam is inconsistent with our understanding of the natural world. Given the purpose of writing this is to help people, and that most people don't make decisions based on logic, I will try and emphasize how events and not thoughts affected my worldview to help illustrate how and when the transition occurred.

1. Humble beginnings: I know everybody has a different upbringing, so I would like to give you guys some context of how familiar I was with Islam growing up as a child (4-12). For starters, I am the eldest son of first-generation Algerian immigrants to Canada. This is just to tell you I'm brown, and I went to a school surrounded by non-muslims. In school, I was a troublemaker. I was basically this brainy kid who cared so little of rules and norms that I was almost transferred to this school for a learning disability. In response, my dad would beat the shit out of me every day for not being an obedient student despite my grades being decent (during that period B to B+). Despite his sincerest efforts, I never learned or changed. I'm only saying this because it made Arabic school impossible for my parents to manage since I simply refused to do my regular homework from school. My thinking was something like this: "What's the point of going to ANOTHER school on the weekend and spend all of my time off doing pointless alphabetical exercises in a language no one other than my parents spoke?" This, in turn, limited my exposure to Islam since I didn't interact with other Muslim kids. Finally, my parents bestowed upon me few Islamic teachings or practices. For instance, I fasted, I didn't eat pepperoni pizza, I was a relatively good kid, and I knew of prayer. Still, it wasn't something we did in our household. So I basically ended up with the same amount of knowledge of Islam and Arabic as Mohammed did when he was visited by Gabriel.

2. The quest begins: By the time I reached 14, I began to change mentally (One would only hope). I had stopped being this rebellious kid and became a book worm. I read encyclopedias, watched documentaries, binged read Wikipedia and genuinely wanted to learn everything the world had to offer. Therefore, religion seemed like the next logical step. Another reason that pushed me to that position is my first adolescent trip to Algeria. It was the first time I had truly been exposed to Islam, and I felt like I got a good whiff of what it meant to be a Muslim. And so, I decided I had now come of age and was of sufficient maturity to read the Quran and become a proper Muslim. I purchased a translated version of the Holy Book and waited until nightfall to open it. I vividly remember the mindset I put myself in before opening the book. I told myself the following things:

1. Bismillah. (YAH BOY) 2. I am about to read a book written by a being that is not human. (how fucking cool is that?!) 3. It is a book of ultimate and limitless knowledge and is the literal word of God.   4. It will guide me now and forever, for it is a timeless work meant to guide all of humanity.

By the time I made it halfway through Al-Baqarah, the second chapter of the book, I was mortified. For whatever reason, God presented himself as a terrifying merciless being. So many verses spoke about how powerful God was, and for some reason, it felt weird to me. It's almost like Bill Gates flaunting billions at a homeless person or a fisherman trying to shame a fish on how it cant breathe once it's out of water. I also felt as though too many verses spoke about eternal damnation instead of collective upbringing. In essence, it wasn't the book I expected. I was hoping for the key to save my soul and help humanity. All that ran through my head was that I was unworthy and had to dedicate myself or else face the consequences. But I persevered. Over the next few days, I kept reading while trying to keep an open mind, but I was definitely feeling perplexed. What I could not wrap my head around was the following: If God can indeed do anything, why can't he have a son?  Like all this talk about how Powerful he is, but he can't have a son?

It was around this time I started to explore other religions. However, there were so many religions that existed that it would take an eternity to study and contemplate every single one. So I elaborated the following shortcuts:

1. I skipped Judaism because a "true" faith can't have fewer subscribers than the city of New York. That also threw a bunch of other religions out the window. In my view, a Divine being should do a good job of spreading his work even if he has to do it remotely. 2. I skipped polytheistic religions like Hinduism because multiple Gods seemed odd to me. 3. Buddhism didn't have a deity, can we, therefore, call it a religion?

By that flawless logic (lol), I thought that Christianity was likely to be the One True Faith. But there were inconsistencies. For starters, the faith had multiple subdivisions and multiple versions given the Bible was written after the life of Jesus. Suffice to say, I agreed with most Muslim criticisms towards Christianity's essence manipulated by men. If Christianity is the real deal, then God would have cared a little more. As a side note to my thinking, the book of Narnia really helped me appreciate Christianity. It portrayed a more merciful caring version of God that wanted what was best for his disciples and all that existed. Yet the feeling of a merciful and just God was simply not sufficient to make me convert.

And so I started to think about atheism. However, I could still feel the presence of God. In the end, I just felt discouraged. I wrapped my head around the whole thing when I realized there was a possibility I was simply too immature to understand Islam or the Quran. So, in the end, I decided to postpone my immersion in the faith until later.

3. I committed: By the time I reached 16, I had started rereading the Quran, which actually flowed better this time around. I was relieved to know that my 14-year-old self was simply too childish. Eventually, I stumbled upon a verse akin to the following: Oh, Believers look into the world, and you shall see evidence of Islam. It felt as though God challenged me to learn science and search for proof of his existence in the natural world. And so, I did.

So one thing that occurred to me growing up is that I wanted to learn everything. By the time I reached 12, I thought to myself that if I knew every word in the dictionary, I would end up knowing everything. But the dictionary was dull. So, I decided that if I know how all things came about by reading history, then I would end up knowing everything. So when I read that verse that said learn science, I was ecstatic.  I just doubled down on my readings and started to focus more on scientific theories. I read about physics and the origin of the universe. I read on chemistry and the nature of matter and atomic bonds. By the time I reached biology, Darwinism quickly became very problematic. I thought really long and hard about how to counter it. I started to read into Intelligent Design and watched Islamic Scholars debate atheists. Still, it didn't make sense to me since the evidence for evolution was just overwhelming.

I voiced some of my concerns to a Muslim friend of mine in High School, and we had this long-winded conversation in which he convinced me he was right. I wish I remembered exactly what he said, but I remember him instilling upon me enough doubt to make me not drop the faith. Following that conversation, I decided it was time to commit to Islam finally. Here are a few things I started to do: 1. I started praying 5-7 times per day. 2. I read the Quran. 3. I would watch videos daily on what it meant to be a Muslim and how I can improve on my practice. 4. I would fast every once a while. 5. I went to the mosque whenever I could since it was far from where I lived. 6. I even helped start our prayer group in High School. In that group, we would all sit and eat together. We shared food, laughter and drinks. We were a brotherhood through and through, and for a time, it was good.

Reflecting on this period, I was one standard deviation from being in a CIA hit list. I literally messaged Benjamin Netanyahu on YT, encouraging him to stop his occupation of Palestine and to seak a peaceful approach when engaging with my brothers and sisters. Despite these friendly messages, some darker thoughts flowed through me. So I will say that there definitely is some credence to the idea that the more radical a Muslim is, the more you should worry about him, especially if he is a dude.

So when I say I genuinely believed 100% of what the Quran said, I really did. Some people will say: "Well, yea, I also used to be that way too." Well, I think I took it to another degree. For instance, when I used to walk, I would think to myself there are two people next to me—these immortal, holy beings made of light were sent by God to watch over my every move. I must, therefore, walk and behave in the utmost perfect ways to not only impress them but also uphold my honour. I was 16. 

4.The Masturbation/sleep problem:

Now I'm going to say that the period mentioned above lasted about 6 months. During this period, despite my holier than thou behaviour, I was still a man, and I had urges dawg. Every once in awhile, i.e, once a week, I would lament hypothetically at my hypocrisy. Repression creates obsession; truer words have never been spoken. The more I fought my urges not to masturbate, THE MORE I HAD TO. I created this whole inner mathematical system based on the number 19 since its a particular Islamic number. Basically, I would only masturbate around times when I could calculate 19. To me, it meant God approved of my addiction. I ended up using the time since my alarm clock was next to me. Its such warped logic don't look too much into it for when there is a will there is a way and I can get creative. Here are a few noteworthy examples:

1.Its 1:09 AM. Shit that's 19 to me since all you have to do is ignore the 0, and you have 19. 2. Its 1:45 AM. You guessed it 19. 3.7:00 PM. 19. 4. 12:07 PM. Unzip. 5. 12:17. PM shit, that's 19 too. 12+(1 times 7). Guess its Time for round 2.   6. 12:35 PM. FUCK I have to again you see 1+2+35=38, which is 19 times 2. EYYYY

[Insert COOMER MEME.]

To get over this dissonance, the Devil was responsible for these intrusive thoughts. I was a holy man of God, after all. But the voice that told me to unzip my pants and wax my carrot was the EXACT same voice that told me to go bed when I didn't want too. In the end, I knew deep down temptation doesn't come from the Devil. It comes from me. I decide what I do with my life, not some off-world entity. Keep in mind for later its just this thing I noticed. The Mosque event: So the day started like any other Friday prayer. The Imam began to speak about how God has no equal. He went on about how great and awesome of a sky Chad he was. He said that although he had no equal, there was another being that was insanely powerful as well. My eyes lit up, for I loved Islamic lore. He said that among non-God entities, the strongest was Gabriel. Eventually, he went on to say how to associate any other thing to God's power was literally the worst crime a human could commit. Shirk was worse than murder, he said. It literally guarantees you a trip to Hell.

And so given that I was human when I am told not to think about something, I immediately start to think about it. So I began to think well what if Gabriel stood up to God. I do not know what came over me but I got a literal panic attack from this. [Insert meme it was at this moment he knew he fucked up]

As the Imam had so eloquently put it to associate anything to God, you just committed the worst sin ever. I kept trying to tell myself not to think about it. Still, it just kept repeating it over and over again despite my sincerest efforts. I legit left the mosque and went back home and prayed all night, hoping God would forgive me.

The next morning was wild. I was basically schizophrenic since I kept thinking God was going to smite me for I have sinned. Crossing the street was so hard since I felt God would turn a car invisible and run me over or would simply kill me there where I stood. I lived in utter fear since I felt as though I had a bounty on my head. The inner world that I worked so hard to create had fallen apart from stupid, intrusive, thoughts. How the mighty have fallen.

5.Rethinking the Conspiracies:

A few days later, I started to rethink everything inside my head once I started to calm down. I felt as though my fears were way too irrational for the type of person I usually am and that I could not regain my sanity by thinking I was unworthy. I just simply had to work my way back up to the top fam.

During this time, I also began to rethink my understanding of the political world. For starters, as far back as I can remember, I have always been anti-authority. I believed in political realism, and so large corporations or governments always used their powers to oppress others. And so, what began as a soft-hearted liberal who thought 911 was an inside job turned into a cult of devil worshippers who rule the world and are trying to get us into the End Times.

This political worldview of a small elite who use the Devil to gain off-world power was further validated my understanding of Islam. In my view, the END WAS NEAR. Eventually, people took my ideas and thoughts in High School, and it became its own thing. Just to give you context on the time here, but it was when Lady Gaga dropped Bad Romance, and Kanye West and Jay-Z dropped Watch The Throne. We would analyze the videos and look for satanic imagery, but I always felt like that was a tad bit too far. Why are they being so apparent about something that's supposed to be secret? Predictive-Programming can only go so far after all. I began to pushback on this worldview, and I went so far back that Islam was caught in the cross-fire.

This turned into a three-month-long journey. I started by revisiting natural selection, and I realized that I duped myself. I just did not understand natural selection well enough to defend my position 6 months ago. I read The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. I binged watched George Carlin, and he really helped me overcome any anxiety I had towards leaving my faith because, like him, I really did want to believe in a deity, but I started to realize all of the inconsistencies. [I will elaborate more on this in a later part]

5. The social consequences: By the time I left my faith, I was open about it. I have always been vocal about what I believe in, and I simply told all of my prayer brothers why I stopped going to prayer. Needless to say, they weren't pleased about it. Unlike Elementary School and as a result of our immigration policies, High School had more Muslims in it, and many hated or criticized me for questioning the faith. As time went on, they became more toxic and vicious in their opposition, and so I called them out on their shit. I told them that I am on a journey like each and every one of them, and if they don't want to talk to me anymore, I would not care, and if they wanted to fight me, then bring it on. It was the last time any of them said anything to my face that was negative. Some of them never spoke to me again, some spoke to me less. I respected their choice and moved on; whether they respected mine mattered not. All that I cared about was that I felt that I was moving forward in my life. Eventually, the Muslim prayer group fell apart, and everything went back to normal in my High School.

Now, all of what I wrote happened about 10 years ago, and despite standing up to my fellow peers, I still haven't mustered up the courage to tell my parents. Honestly, I'm glad I still haven't. To this day, I have a good relationship with them, and they are far more religious now than they were. It seems like an egregiously unnecessary thing to do that will not only sour my relationship with them but also with their future grandkids. That just seems too selfish for my liking despite my usual vocal tendencies.

End of part 1.