#i CAN truly say that my campaign has been one of only two tethers to my sanity and resolve against the turmoil of my life since his passing

[aeroknot]

whenever my dad would check in on my dungeons & dragons campaign he would listen with a smile and then unironically say “i think it needs more dragons”

well, dad: we met and made friends with a dragon last session, and he owes us a favor now, so we’ll probably see him again. i miss you. i hope it makes you happy.

[arclundarchivist]

C3E43 SPOILERS!

Turn back!

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NOW!

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Finally! Truth revealed! Lore beheld! Mysteries deepening! And Ashton missed it all due to “things.”

The first true appearance of Planerider Ryn, awesome!

The reveal that Otohan/Cerberus/Unseelie Plot have made three devices that act as “anchors/tethers.” Worrying. Are they trying to pull Ruidus to them, tie themselves to it, or pull, and pull, and pull until everything comes the fuck apart.

And how does Ira, who stated he believes they will fail and has his own intentions for the Solstice possibly fuck it all up?

Imogen’s mom is with the baddies…can see that ending in all sorts of tragic ways.

But that only moves forward if they get outta the damn basement unaccosted.

It felt for so long like this campaign was bull-rushing towards a confrontation that admittedly felt like the End Game. Not sure if anyone felt like that? But now…with how Matt has panned it out, I think the confrontation in the Valley during the Solstice will be a similar climax to the “war” with Obann but part of me also sees Exandria getting changed in some vast unexpected way. Likely Otohan and Ludenis will return when they’re in the double digits, and the dangers *on* Ruidus beyond that.

Speaking of which.

Predathos, Ethedok, Vordo. New names but ancient ones. What befalls an eaten god? Is their death for certain, or are they trapped within this ancient predator?

This opens so many more questions. What were the Gods original, to have a Predator? Survivors of another world given intent. Multiversal Travelers. Victims Fleeing Extinction? How does Predathos compare to Tharizdun? To the Luxon?

Is it not odd that the first mortal two ascend, a Ruidusborn arose to claim the portfolios of of said fallen Gods? Fate and Winter, tied to Death? Who was she…what did she know? Did she know anything at all about the Red Moon? What did the other Gods think to see said Mortal snap up the domains of their long lost brethren?

The Deities and the Titans, historicized as enemies until Betrayal split the former United, the Travelers and the Children of the Luxon, to lock away this vast being. Who succeeded where *Tharizdun* failed.

So then, as Brennan said Asmodeus lied very little 8 centuries ago in his rants to “The Holy Man”.

A Promise had been made, a bond forged in fear and necessity and the mores of survival.

And the Prime…threw it aside because of *one* mortal. Again I ask, who where they, to be so beloved of the Gods?

Also if the city is truly home to only the Children of Predathos. Then we’ve got Aliens folks.

Also sudden thought.

Predathos is like a weird in between of Tharizdun and The Luxon, two beings that are also old and eldritch and not truly part of the main pantheon.

The Luxon is Life, Boundless Life and Light and Moment, carrying on and on, bringing back the deceased to live once more. Eternity.

Tharizdun is Destruction, an endless consuming hunger and darkness that gives nothing back but madness. It can not create only Warp. Entropy.

Predathos, Consumes Yet Gives Life. It Shatters Minds But Enlivens Their Potential. It is a Lightning Strike Competing Light and Shadow, Intensity and Finality.

One Gives, the Other Takes, the Final Makes.

Can’t wait for next time, as we delve into Fey or Shadow, Chaos or Victory. I say, Nevermind, that Blood Red Moon, the Night Will be Over Soon.

It’s been a fantastic year offering my transcriptions, theories and tales to you all! Have a Merry Holiday, and a Happy New Year!

Can’t wait for it to be Thursday Again. See y’all then.

PS: The fuck is up with that bird?

[unluckyadept]

Character Journal Entry: Felix

{July 15th, 2021T}

[The page is marked in a very unusual way:

The (bright red) symbol of a (the, rather) Dragon with arrows pointing up on either side and two lines underneath it, followed by a dash, and then the numbers “26-1021”.]

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

It’s Another Long Story.

As I look back on the last year or so, I feel as though I have greatly [aged/grown/matured/wearied]. So much has been stolen.

But I think, to properly tell the story, I must start from where the first one left off.

It’s A Long Story, but you know that one, don’t you? The story of my destiny.

Destiny is the mark you leave on the world…

…and Fate is the mark the world leaves on you.

You can defy destiny, but you cannot fight fate.

=-=-=-=-=

[He was very glad he was able to see again. It was still taking some getting used to, particularly since his sight was not exactly stable; the imbalance of energy that caused the blindness was still an issue, particularly under fire in the battlefield.

Still—it was a great improvement from where it was before.]

=-=-=-=-=

You know, the reason that I needed to tell that story in the first place was to explain how the death of Prox’s last Warriors of the Dark Age

=-=-=-=-=

[The memory was all too vivid in his mind.]

[He could still remember those final words.

He crossed out the line and started over.]

=-=-=-=-=

You know, the reason that I needed to tell that story in the first place was to explain how the death of Prox’s last Warriors of the Dark Age

My relationship with the Proxans has always been a bit complex, at least in my mind. Other people view it differently. I know Jenna and Sheba in particular always held a very different view on my relationship with Saturos and Menardi in particular… and I won’t offer excuses for what any of the last four of the great Warriors did… to me or anyone else.

It’s no secret that I disagreed with their methods, and we argued—outright quarreled, in some cases. 

But the whole truth is important to know. Context is necessary to explain to other people why it is that I have the outlook I do—to show them on what I base my opinions.

That’s why I needed to explain—I needed to explain why I was distressed at their deaths, even though they had come very close to killing me.

And to do that, I needed to start with when I first came to Prox—and, well, to go back that far?

It’s A Long Story.

=-=-=-=-=

[And he hoped that someday he would have the time to tell it in full, before his connection to his younger years faded from vivid memory. It was much harder now to remember his boyhood than it was ten years ago… and he knew that the memories would only grow more and more faded as his mind and heart were tethered to his adulthood rather than his childhood.

Yet another intellectual casualty of violence and anarchy…

Once the war ended and order was restored to the continent, he could turn his focus and energy to personal matters… and the completion of his memoirs among them.

The Venus Adept shook his head and returned his focus to the letter.]

=-=-=-=-=

That story is a tale of how I was forced to adapt to a role I had initially rejected—

Well, the first of such times where that sort of thing happened. Or would it be more accurate to say I was never given leave of the role, and it took me a while to accept that fact? That would probably be closer to the truth.

It’s A Long Story. Just one of several. That story began the Year of the Storm—the night I almost drowned in the river (again) and was rescued by Saturos.

I’ve read his journal entry on what happened, and I must say: it was very evident that the loss of so many of his peers had a profound impact on the man. And it was the death of the Kalt Islander that hit him the hardest, for that man was an ally who had chosen to aid them in good faith out of loyalty and solidarity; he was a respected outsider, but still an outsider… not under any obligation to risk his life for their sake, let alone lose it.

Before the storm, it was my dream to become a miner and work with Isaac in the Altin Mines. We would use our Psynergy in secret to accomplish more than a non-Adept ever could, and boldly face danger in the “outside” world, rather than keep to ourselves in the shelter of Vale.

I don’t judge those days harshly; I was only a child, and had no exposure to life outside of Vale except through Kraden, and he focused on literacy and mathematics more than anything else… at that point, anyway. The truth is that we were taught to look down upon “outsiders”; we were taught that we were superior because we had power, and that underlying attitude lent itself to Pride.

Combine that with a child’s limited understanding of the world and a boy’s dreams of independence and strength… and such a mindset was probably the best one could realistically hope for, as it was still based in a desire to protect and to serve.

After the storm—or rather, after I recovered from the storm… I was forced to accept reality, and the reality of the world was far more demanding than my imagination was ever prepared to consider.

When I first came to Prox, we didn’t know what would happen to us. We didn’t know what they wanted of us. And the only thing I knew was that it was my fault to begin with—if I hadn’t been so stubborn and overconfident in my abilities, we would have been far clear of the boulders and no one would have been at the docks when THE Boulder came crashing down.

It was a bitter weight for a child to carry—to know his actions had cost everyone around him so greatly, and may have been the death of his younger sister.

=-=-=-=-=-=

[He paused for a moment, glancing up in thought.

He was getting distracted, wasn’t he?

…Well, so what if he was? He was under no obligation to censor himself on such matters.

Still—he would keep talking in circles if he didn’t keep the point he was getting at in mind.

And he had to let out a huff of amusement at the reminder—

Because that was why he needed to tell that story in the first place; it had all been building up to that moment in Mars Lighthouse.]

=-=-=-=-=-=

It’s A Long Story.

The story of how I came to be in that moment, that dark hour, at Mars Lighthouse. Why I was there, what I wanted, why I cared.

I don’t know if I’ve ever had the chance to state that outright—and it is rather important, so I suppose I best state such things plainly.

=-=-=-=-=-=

[He hesitated for a moment, frowning. A bit of ink bled into the page at his extended reluctance to say the first thing that came to mind.

And even now…]

+=+=+=+=+

"Too slow!”

[Felix looked up angrily, biting back a remark. Karst looked down at him, lowering her scythe to rest against his throat.]

“Always too slow! How you ever managed to catch a Talon Runner is beyond me.”

[Felix was silent. The bruise from the day before was still darkening. He knew another slap might cause permanent injury; Proxans were far stronger than they realized, and did not understand how much damage they caused against someone who didn’t have their perpetual leather-hide armor…

…not that he felt THIS pair would have cared, even if they did truly know it.]

“Let him go, Karst.”

[The touch of death’s blade lifted, the chill of steel leaving him. The unlucky Adept tried to breathe steadily, waiting for permission to bandage his bleeding arm.]

“Now… Felix… tell us what you did wrong.”

[The boy gritted his teeth and spoke sullenly.]

“I tried to block her from hitting my face by bringing up my arm to protect me.”

“Heal yourself before you bleed all over the forest.”

[Felix didn’t need to be told twice. He felt very irritable as he got to his feet—

But Mendari grabbed his cape, jerking the Valean forward as he used Cure on his injuries, briefly startling him in the process.]

“I never said you could stand.”

[He glared back silently.]

“At least you are learning to hold your tongue, I see.”

+=+=+=+=+

[Felix grimaced ever so slightly, placing a hand to his cheek.

And ever so briefly, it brought another memory to mind—]

+=+=+=+=+

[There was a harsh noise as his captor suddenly lashed out—literally—and streaks of pain sliced across the left side of his face. He had unwittingly cringed and recoiled against the pain, so his shoulders and wrists were also left sore, and his sense of dignity damaged as blood ran down his face.]

+=+=+=+=+

[He forced himself out of such thoughts by clumsily getting out of his chair and walking over to the door to lean against it.

It took a moment for such thoughts to run their course enough to come back to the present, and he sighed.

It was considered offensive—not that that meant much in and of itself, given those who found literally everything offensive were far more prolific and prevalent than he had the patience to grovel to—to even mention the existence of such experiences. And certainly, he had a deep empathy for those who had suffered in such a way.

But he didn’t have the patience to keep silent anymore; it was a dark scar of the past, and he would not censor it for the sake of those who would demean him for exposing the damage caused by how he had been treated.

Leaving the writing aside for a moment, he made his way over to a window and contemplated the whole situation.

It had been almost a fortnight since they finally destroyed the outpost at the Gondowan Passage. They had been at open war with the Tolbi Empire since the night they bombarded the city in an attempt to rush in from the flank and overwhelm their prey.

He had since heard that there was a word for such a tactic, as described in the languages of the mountains—

And he had to say, having been on both the receiving end and the initiating end of such a “lightning war”, he was very relieved that his OWN recent military campaign had been successful.

Suffering through the sudden attack on the Western domicile of Lalivero’s capital city was a literal nightmare—his body could sense the large boulders being hurled down at them, prompting his mind to inflict him with reliving the day of The Storm. The enemy was well underway in destroying civilian residential districts by collapsing buildings and setting the streets aflame—well underway by the time he was able to pull himself together well enough to take to the skies with Arizona and go after their war machines they were using to demolish the city before sending in their ground forces.

He hadn’t quite had the experience to serve as context to explain his instinctive UNDERSTANDING at the time, but… when he had seen just how much manpower they had brought with them near Lalivero for the purposes of simply overrunning the city to take a swift victory, he understood that they would not withstand very long if the Tolbi could conduct these “lightning war” tactics via unfettered access to the region. No… they had a massive army, and had deployed a much greater force than Lalivero was prepared to handle. The region was meant to be protected by the river and the desert; bypassing the desert and neutralizing the river in order to swiftly strike at the cultural and economic capital of the only free peoples in that part of Weyard would have been a guaranteed total victory, if it had not been made impossible.

Having learned more about the wars of other worlds, he had a better understanding now of such matters. It was a risky strategy, one that relied very heavily on proper communication and firm discipline—one that was high risk-reward, especially when conducted in a setting where the transport of supplies would be a critically deadly weakness in the case of failing to shatter an enemy’s defenses. 

He was lucky that he was able to take advantage of the downsides of such a tactic, back then; they were not prepared for a counterstrike and were ill-equipped to withstand a counterattack. It was for that reason that he was not only able to quickly destroy the smaller force actually attacking the city, but also cut off the larger force that was stationed at the ready only a few hours away.

It had been an altogether horrible experience, especially considering what happened after the Tolbi got their hands on him. And it was not one he would be willing to try on enemy soil; otherwise, he would not have DESTROYED the outpost at the Gondowan Passage… but rather, seized it for his own.

No; he was willing to take advantage of taking them by surprise in order to cut off their supply chain, but he had no intention of risking any more than that. Not with the current situation.

The unlucky Adept slipped his fingers into his hair, feeling like his eyes were weary. Perhaps that was due to the strain from the blindness, but it almost just felt like he had seen too much in his time, and his own eyes felt exhausted at recalling such visions of terror.

Because he could remember—]

[He could remember the screams, the fire, and the overwhelming sense of all-consuming evil.

He could vividly recall the helpless terror of those around him.

He could remember.

He would never forget. Never.

Two decades from now, and he would still remember that terrible autumn day—

The day they were dragged into war against an enemy that hated them just for existing, and would stop at nothing to terrorize them into submitting to a ruthless, intolerant, brutal, murderous regime of hateful Pride.

He would never forget.

And he would make sure no one else forgot it, either.]

[It took some while for the weight of it to fade, and then he just felt contemplative.

It wasn’t until after eating some dinner and washing up that he returned to his desk; at that point, he just stared up at the ceiling for a while.]

It’s Another Long Story…

[…But right now, there was only one thing on his mind.]

+=+=+=+

"{Keep your spirits up, lad. Too much for you to do to be dwelling in darkness.}"

+=+=+=+

[…Almost five months to the day—not that he learned about it until weeks later—

And he still…]

({…I just want to hear your voice again. Just… just one more time. Just one more time…})

[swordoforion]

Orion Digest No. 1 - An Introduction to The Future

It has come to my attention in the last year that the world has reached a tipping point. We have seen many tumultuous periods of human history before, periods in which the fate of all the future seemed to hang on our decisions, and as we are still alive and partially free, I'd like to think we made the right ones. But while our world becomes more and more enlightened with the passage of time, a fact I take great joy in, the world also becomes more and more dangerous. Those that would stand for progress are opposed by systems of tyranny and oppression, and blindness at the captain's wheel leaves our lone ship in the vast ocean of the cosmos careening towards rough waters.

This past year specifically has shown many of us the fact of the matter, which is that we cannot write off the affairs of the human world as "business as usual" any longer. Things are changing, and a pandemic may be the first waves of a series of changes that the world will be rocked by. To say that 'the end is coming' would be counter-productive; the world will go on spinning as it always has in a hundred years. But it would be just as foolish to deny that 'changes are coming', or perhaps a more accurate revision to the above, 'an end is coming.' I believe that as we discover more about ourselves as a species, we are transitioning into a new, and hopefully bright, era of human history.

But enough about the ominous, eh? I'd like to get down to business, to roll up my sleeves and write a series of precursor documents to the era to come, or a series of essays explaining the path forward. I would hope that the world would naturally tend in the direction most benefitting humanity, and that I could kick back and relax, assured that things would be alright, but history and reason tell me that will not be the case. The world will not get better unless action is taken, not by those who have stepped up first and hold the line whenever the world is at risk, but by even those who sit comfortably and assume themselves safe, assuming the problems to already be solved. No, to build a world where we all benefit, we all must contribute in our own way. There has never been a situation more befitting of the term 'all hands on deck.'

So, I intend to write in such a frequency and passion as to stir the hearts of others to our cause, to ride through the streets and rally the cause of the world. I offer the gift of information freely and request support in exchange, and it is my sincere hope that others will join the trail, riding with me into the future.

The first manner of business is that of unity. Throughout human history, we have expanded all throughout the world, adapting to new and perplexing landscapes and developing cultures, languages, beliefs all of our own. Inevitably, when long separated tribes would at last encounter each other, they would be confused at what they saw and fight against each other, creating deep wounds that still leave scars on the faces of nations today. Resentment runs high from wars old and new, and these lines that have been drawn between nations keep us from seeing the underlying humanity that connects us all, the one nation of Earth that we all are citizens of underneath.

In a world going forward, we must make decisions that concern all of us together, for no one nation that does not consider all people its citizens can speak for the world as a whole. Our day and age stands in the midst of several issues that are a matter of the lives of every citizen, and thus what we have in common is much more important now than what divides us. I have met many who share these sympathies, concerned about how a divided world could cause continuous infighting within a global family.

The second matter, concurrent with the first, is the matter of making sure that when nations unite, it is not under the banner of tyranny, but of equality and freedom. Humanity has never truly flourished when it is caged; together we are only as free as our most oppressed citizens, which means that we must work to protect all from injustice and discrimination. We cannot change the past, but we can learn from it, and learning how to respect our fellow humans regardless of their identity is a necessary foundation for a strong future.

When I speak of the chains of tyranny, I acknowledge that there are many links of many different types in that chain. Tyranny sometimes show its face in the corruptive influences that plague governments. It sometimes makes itself known in the intolerance of citizens, conditioned in that age old lie that all who are born cannot coexist on the same world. It can be systems of greed that leave some in high towers and luxury and others begging on the streets. To move forward, we must set things right by destroying these chains, by seeing through the undoing of tyranny and the encouragement of freedom and justice.

These are the obstacles that prevent us from laying down the foundation of the future, the various debris from past conflict and hatred that lay in our path and hinder our journey to prosperity. They may seem too insurmountable and ingrained to ever get past, but I ask you, was it not humanity that mapped the great wide world? Was it not humanity that made steel move and electricity sing? Was it not humanity that found peace on battlefields and brought kindness in the darkest of times? Was it not humanity that broke the Earthly tether of gravity and journeyed to another celestial body?

To return to my original point, I am confident that given time, we will overcome the dangerous times Earth faces, and I think in this new era of human history, we will walk forward truly together, understanding what makes us different but with bonds made strong by what we have in common. That does not mean I am not prepared to fight, letter by letter, protest by protest, brick by brick for the planet and people I hold so dear. So, with the foundation of this first essay, I introduce you, reader, to the Orion Digest, a series of essays I and any who join my cause will produce until this end is met.

I will start with the first two subjects of my study, dissecting what it means to have a world united and who has been fighting for it throughout history, as well as what intrepid supporters can do to accomplish said goal. The next issues of the Orion Digest will not have a set order, but will discuss at length the general concepts and philosophy of world federalism to provide a grounds for later discussions of how to achieve such a goal. I wish these essays to provide both a description of the Sword of Orion's cause, as well as an informative series with a slant towards beneficial human progress.

Until I delve into these topics, I would recommend looking into the UNPA Campaign, as well as wonderful organizations such as the Young World Federalists, Democracy Without Borders, the World Federalist Movement, and so on. Certainly an inspiration to me, they have pioneered the fight for a world brought together.

- DKTC FL

[mswyrr]

One more Rey/Reylo meta post

Part of my resentment over the anti thing was feeling for so long (though not as long as people who got the worst of the anti campaign) like I had to actually *hide my thoughts* on a story, like... wtf. But the trailer fits pretty well with how I see Rey’s 3 film arc, so here’s one more meta post from 2018 I was keeping off my main screen name until now:

I really connected with Rey a lot more in TLJ because of the way Rian played Rey Nobody as a strength *and* a sign of deep brokenness. Heroic people are, by their nature, people of extremes, and I like the "balance" involved in someone's great capacity for good also being a great capacity for failure. It's great to have a heroine who has so much difficult stuff going on beneath the surface.

And, yes, TLJ really knocks the stuffing out of the Mary Sue argument! Rey's life is so dark she wishes she were a Mary Sue--the daughter of some long lost, mythical father like Luke who will love her as her own didn't--which is very different than actually being one!

And yet parallels Luke's journey nicely: he finds out he comes from a powerful lineage, but his father is a monster and he has to wrestle with that the rest of his life, the way that legacy infects things (including his terrible moment of fear with Ben); Rey finds out she comes from "nobody" and has to try to create her own meaning for herself. There's always a downside, never a perfect version of finding out you’re the child of the wonderful good king or something. Since Ben's tragedy is linked to that larger Skywalker tragedy, it makes them perfect opposites of each other too.

They're both living two different visions of hell: unbearable heaviness and unbearable lightness, respectively. Ben has been buried under the weight of the past/legacy. It weighs him down so much that it's nearly crushed the light out of him entirely until Rey comes along; it was the reason Snoke targeted him. He's never been free to be himself, only a pale shadow of the past, feared by his family for being too much like Vader and only allowed pride by Snoke in being like Lord Vader. All he wants to do, now that he's discovered he can be free of Snoke because of Rey, is chase after a life like hers and burn it all down. To have the "freedom" that Rey possesses.

But that has been a hell for her: she's so free she floats away from the earth, unable to touch or connect, absolutely free and absolutely abandoned.

She's been sustaining herself with a starvation diet of dreams and quarter portions of food.

She's been lost in the vacuum of space emotionally since she was a small child. The terrible abnegation of the most basic love.

She's had to manufacture some tethers to the ground or she'd have gone stark raving mad a long time ago. At these far ends of the poles of experience, I think that TFA comes at a moment where they both could, if they continue on the path they're walking, be totally blotted out by their situation. Ben's "education" by Snoke is nearing completion as Snoke pushes him harder and harder. Without an intervention he would have broken entirely, the last bit of light extinguished. And Rey looks at the older scavenger woman that might be her future self and sees no way out. The emptiness that awaits her is quieter and less dramatic but no less absolute, wind blowing the sands up over her body until there's nothing left of her.

Not even anyone who cares to remember that she lived.

Rey thought she was seeking her own legacy, but she's actually been "lifting"/sharing burdens from Ben's excess of them: the Skywalker lightsaber, the Millennium Falcon, his parents and Chewie, the journey of having "raw power" and being feared for it, and becoming the Jedi his family wanted him to be. She explicitly says she will succeed where Kylo failed; there's a totally understandable greed in her heart for what he has. She's not just doing all of this out of the kindness of her heart, though she is a heroine and kind. She acquires some of the heaviness she desperately needs and simultaneously lifts some of the weight crushing Ben, sharing some of her light/lightness. And she takes on some of his darkness: digs deeper and finally gets angry at these failed parental figures (she attacked Luke!! lol) instead of being on such a starvation diet of connection that she has to idealize the jerk-offs who sold her for drink money.

It's really not a story of a girl having to go out of her way to do all this work to save a boy; it's far more equal than that.

The stereotype of Rey as a "precious cheerful cinnamon bun," where people are only taking the surface and not seeing it as a sign of her deep damage and saying the only thing she sees in Ben is someone to pity because she's just so kind-hearted, really annoys me!! She wants her prince who's sweet to her, she wants *his family*, she wants to be special and matter and do something important rather than disappear into the sand, she wants connection, she has unexpressed depths of resentment and anger that connecting with him helps her get in touch with and integrate. When people hate on him and dismiss their connection as some kind of anti-feminist insult to her they rip out the darker, more complicated guts of her characterization because Rey and Ben mutually define and interrelate with each other and that's intentional on the part of the writers, whether people like it or not.

All of this is why the force bond presents a unique temptation to her. If she gives into it and joins him she'll never, ever have to feel alone again. It explains how quickly the connection has a powerful effect on her. It's a shot of pure connection after a lifetime without.

It also highlights the courage of her refusal to join him.

It’s only a truly heroic moment if Rey is truly *tempted* in that moment. The pure saintly icon people want to pretend she is... how can she ever be truly heroic, if nothing temps her, if there’s no darkness inside for her to struggle with??

[solutionspotlight]

The Love She Waged from a Prison Cell

How environmental justice activist, Siwatu-Salama Ra, dug deep while incarcerated, and the community that lifted her up.

When Siwatu-Salama Ra arrived at the Huron Valley Correctional Facility last year to serve a two-year mandatory sentence, she was in shock, six months pregnant, and not sure how she would live through the ordeal. She spent her first days in an isolation cell staring at the wall. And yet, somehow, through the harrowing nine months that she was there, she advocated for Muslim incarcerated women, organized around birthing and parenting rights for herself and others in the pregnant and postpartum unit of the prison, and convened a poetry group where women inside wrote and shared their deepest selves. 

Now, after being released on bond since November 2018 with a GPS tether on her ankle for almost a year, Siwatu’s conviction was reversed on August 20, 2019, and the tether finally removed in late October. Her legal team is urging prosecutors to dismiss the case and not recharge her. Her next hearing is scheduled for November 15, 2019, and the tentative trial date is February 18th, 2020.

The environmental activist has spent much of her life as a community organizer. As a teen, she worked with other youth to tackle environmental concerns affecting their local communities and later became the co-director of the East Michigan Environmental Action Council, where her voice and ability to resonate with people was crucial. She was following the footsteps of her mother, Rhonda Anderson, who has been an environmental justice organizer for the Sierra Club for almost two decades. In her interviews, she expresses how being convicted of felonious assault and felony firearm was not like anything she’d ever experienced in her life or could have been prepared for. 

Michigan’s Stand Your Ground

The details of Siwatu’s case were reported by many including dream hampton in Essence, the New Yorker, and Democracy Now! as it became clear that pieces of the case weren’t adding up. 

In July 2016, Siwatu was visiting her mother at her Detroit home with her two-year-old daughter when a young girl came by to visit Siwatu’s niece, who also lived in the home. The family became concerned about the presence of the girl as the niece was recently jumped by her at school. They decided it was best she leave. The girl’s mother, Chanell Harvey, arrived to pick her up, infuriated that her child wasn’t welcome. 

Siwatu testified that she’d asked Harvey repeatedly to leave the premises. Harvey then drove her car and rammed into Siwatu's parked vehicle, where Siwatu’s two-year-old daughter was playing inside. Then she tried to hit Siwatu's mother—she’d forcefully brought the car within a hair of her. At that point, after taking her daughter inside, Siwatu reached into her car's glove compartment and brandished her licensed, unloaded gun to demand Harvey leave. 

Harvey took snapshots of Siwatu, took the pictures to the police, and filed a report that Siwatu had assaulted her and her daughter by pointing a gun at them. Siwatu dropped off her daughter and picked up her husband from work, and arrived hours later to report the incident as an attack on her family by Harvey. One day, after over a month with no response from police, Siwatu’s home was surrounded by police who arrested her because Harvey’s report, in which Siwatu had been named the aggressor, had been on file first.  

Of the many controversial details of Siwatu’s case, the most impactful one is the fact that Michigan is a self-defense "stand your ground" state, which gives a legally licensed, law-abiding gun owner the right to use deadly force if they believe it is necessary to prevent death or great harm to themselves or another person. 

Siwatu was a licensed gun owner with a concealed carry permit and her gun was unloaded. And Michigan law has consistently interpreted aiming an unloaded gun as non-deadly use of force, according to Wade Fink, one of Siwatu’s attorneys appealing the case. He also states that her case should have hinged on whether Siwatu used reasonable force to meet the threat posed by Harvey, rather than whether or not she feared for her life. 

Another issue, Fink points out, is that at the time of the event Harvey was on probation for assault; it was her third felony, and violating probation would have gotten her into trouble. Fink contends this could've been a valid motive for lying. But the defense wasn’t allowed to pursue this line of questioning. 

A YES! article that details the rise in Black gun ownership despite the racist origin of the second amendment, explores the perspective of Black gun groups who view the right to self-arm as basic for self-defense in a climate of constant violence. Yet, we also see where laws like Stand Your Ground don’t always work out positively for people of color, as we saw with Trayvon Martin and Marissa Alexander. 

As reported by Vox, the Urban Institute found that Stand Your Ground laws seem to worsen racial disparities. When the shooter is Black and the victim is white, only 3 percent of deaths are ruled as justifiable versus the 34 percent when the shooter is white and the victim is Black.  “Even when black shooters kill black people,” the article states, “those shootings are less likely to be deemed justifiable in a court of law than those involving white shooters who kill white people.” 

The dominant, false narrative that Black people are intrinsically violent obscures genuine issues of equity. It’s why we can have a criminal justice system that operates on implicit biases, even when all persons concerned are Black. 

Siwatu’s jury had to ultimately decide, based on Michigan self-defense law, whether Siwatu was truly afraid in that moment to warrant invoking self-defense. Despite the question as to why a woman whose daughter and mother are being endangered by a vehicle would not be afraid and feel a basic human need to protect, the jury ruled guilty because they didn’t believe Siwatu could be afraid, only angry. And the felony firearm charge, which means that a firearm was used in an assault, came with a two-year mandatory minimum. 

The power of a community

As she details in conversation with adrienne maree brown on The Practice of Freedom: A Conversation with Siwatu-Salama Ra and Rhonda Anderson on the How to Survive the End of the World podcast, when Siwatu learned that she was having charges brought against her for, essentially, acting within what she believed were her rights to defend her family, she couldn’t wrap her mind around how to continue. But then community showed up.

Siwatu was showered with love. Fellow activists, co-workers, and friends poured in. They showed up at her house asking what they could do to help. There were so many people coming to meetings that were organized on her behalf that they moved gatherings to the larger home of a friend.

At one point in The Practice of Freedom, Siwatu's mom remarks that what was truly notable was how many of the people that came to support were women with children. 

They formed the Siwatu Freedom Team and have not only accompanied Siwatu on her journey for full freedom and justice, but also collaborated with a broad coalition on several campaigns including: developing a set of bills to fight for the rights of incarcerated pregnant and postpartum mothers, parents, and caregivers in Michigan; working to end the felony firearm mandatory sentences that disproportionately criminalize Black people in Michigan; and continuing to support and work in solidarity with women Siwatu met inside prison as they return home. 

Finding a way through madness

From the moment that charges were brought against Siwatu—through her court case and eventual sentencing, right up to her release and the reversal of her conviction, and now as her legal team works to put this case to rest completely —countless people have poured enormous dedication towards supporting her, spreading the word about her case, raising legal funds, writing letters, and organizing meetings. In prison, however, she was alone, facing close walls and prison bars. The letters that poured in from community across the country were like beacons of light in the darkness. 

In the isolation of her experience, she stumbled across a book called Deep and Simple, by Bo Lozoff, who had co-founded the Prison-Ashram Project and worked for 20 years guiding people behind bars to reach their own inner peace. “He was able to steer men and women who were inside of a prison to that oneness,” Siwatu says in The Practice of Freedom. “My community, Bo, my mom, literally saved my life in prison.” 

“I remember reading this book and being just so blown away...it was answering the questions I had, the why me, the what do you want, what am I supposed to do?” Then one day she noticed a copy of Deep and Simple on her pregnancy counselor’s office desk; the counselor offered her all the Bo Lozoff books she had in her office. 

Siwatu reflects that in prison, a person is stripped of everything and anything that could offer them comfort. Reading Bo Lozoff helped her reach a place of peace inside herself despite the deep sadness all around her. “If anybody walks out of a prison...who is enlightened,” she says, “it is the work of themselves, and it is despite of the prison. Bo helped me take advantage of that hell.” 

She also witnessed the spirit of fellow inmates around her. They inspired her. She said in a recent interview with Earth First! “You normally see women on the frontlines fighting, and you saw the very same thing inside the prison: women fighting to hold on to some of their dignity and humanity to say, ‘This is not how we will live.’” 

She says there were women working on so many issues—from trying to get treatment for the yellow water coming out of prison pipes to making sure the food on their plates was sanitary.

When Siwatu learned that her challenge getting a hijab, a Quran, and the meals she required for the daily practice of her faith was not her challenge she faced alone, she led other Muslim women prisoners in organizing for religious rights that legally should have been accommodated by the facility. Her efforts attracted attention from the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Michigan, which filed civil rights complaints on a number of the prison’s practices regarding religious freedom.

Disheartened by the ways in which life behind bars was designed to cut down a person’s humanity, Siwatu also created a poetry group and fostered close bonds with the women around her as they co-created a space of beauty, where poetry offered gateways to emotional freedom.

Finally, her harrowing experiences of pregnancy and birth in prison led her to inform herself of her rights as a parent and mother, which she then shared with other prisoners. At the time of Siwatu’s delivery, the Michigan Department of Corrections did not allow loved ones to be present at labor or delivery although Siwatu’s family, community, and other activists and organizations made every effort to get the MDOC to humanely shift its position. 

In early October 2019, as a direct result of this organizing, the Michigan’s House Appropriations Subcommittee on Corrections added new language to the budget bill that states that anyone in prison due to give birth in prison can consent to one visitor being present during labor and delivery. The language states that person must be an “immediate family member, legal guardian, spouse, or domestic partner.” It’s a signal that change is happening. 

A more humane and discerning system of justice

For every person that is able to have a protest, or national news attention, or a community of devoted people call out that a wrong be brought to light, there are hundreds more sitting in a jail cell without any of these options. 

Siwatu, speaking to Earth First!, said that knowing she was innocent only made it easier for her to see how many more women were likely in prison unjustly. 

“...You have a large population of women who will be returning citizens who have literally been face to face with the very beast we’re fighting,” she said. “They are walking out of that prison cell, out of custody, with much knowledge, so resilient, and so beautiful. I encourage that everybody support women and men coming out of these prisons because they have seen so much. They know what it will take to win this.” 

When asked how being incarcerated changed her perspective on environmental issues, she explained how it strengthened her belief in looking at how different issues are connected.

“It took me to literally be taken away from my family and taken away from my children and placed in a prison cell to understand we have to step away from... self-identified work and dedicate our entire selves to a better world.”

“You have to look at everything,” she said, “and take everything into consideration of how all these injustices are interconnected and feeding off one another.”

And then what could justice look like? Life-valuing structures that value healing more than they value practices that dehumanize, and where deeper understandings of history and social problems are incorporated, so that there are sustainable options for actual accountability, wellness, and growth in communities. 

Showing up to speak, listen, learn, share, and organize wherever and whenever possible is essential for this shift to take place. We can learn from and build upon cases and experiences like Siwatu’s.

ACTIONS:

Support Siwatu’s legal fees as her hearing approaches on November 15, 2019, help sustain her family throughout this arduous process, or support continued organizing Siwatu’s freedom and policy changes, by donating here. 

Go to FreeSiwatu.org to learn more, stay posted, and find more ways to get involved.

Host a house party or community gathering to share Siwatu's story, have discussions, process the impact of this and similar stories, and brainstorm organizing ideas.

Get involved with local groups in your area fighting for prison abolition, environmental justice, and supporting people directly impacted by the prison and criminalization industrial complex who are working for liberation.

[miragerules]

I suppose it is a both good and bad that Tumblr had so many fandoms and Shippers on its site. People find other people who love a show, character or a couple as much as they do, and then they can talk, share fan art/fanfiction, and support one another. That is the good part of Tumblr.

However the unfortunate bad part of Tumblr is this rabbid fandom sometimes leads to blind hate if thing don't go your way on a show or in a film. I am not going to get in all the ways fandoms can be bad. You can just look around on Facebook, Twitter and here on Tumblr.

One way upset fandoms try to destroy a show when a show or ship does not govthe way you want is to blame the writers saying the writing is terrible even though the writing was really good, and has been good if not excellent for 8 seasons. That is apparently what is happening inside the Game of Thrones fandom with fans of certain characters or ships. I am a fan and a shipper. I do ship or have shipped Root/Shaw (Person of Interest), Jason/Elizabeth (General Hospital), Katniss/Peeta (Hunger Games), Geralt/Triss (Witcher games), Bruce/Natasha or Matt Murdock/Natasha (Marvel Films/Marvel Comics) to name a few and I love tones of characters like Tyrion, Jamie, Davros, Arya, and Jon on Game of Thrones.

However I don't let that love of a ship or character ruin my love of a show or film just because said film or series does not go the way I want it to especially if show or film is still good if not excellent like Game of Thrones. One example is Bruce/Nat. Bruce and especially Nats story arcs throughout the Marvel films were not handled that well, but that disappointment does not blind me to how pretty good to great Endgame was and the Marvel films were. As for the Game of Thrones fandom I guess people have not truly read the books or have really watched deeply into each episode of Game of Thrones or cetain Game of Thrones fans would not be complaining nearly as much. Of course I am not happy with everything on Game of Thrones. Many times in season 7 and 8 the writing felt rushed like the writers decided how can they end the show as quickly as possible. HBO could have drawn the series out for a 9th or 10th season to make itva fuller fleshed out experience to reach the point we are, but that complaint does not change the fact the producers, directors, and writers still have consistently done a good job with the series. Do not let you fandom and shipper disappointment blind you to that fact.

Wow I talked for a long time when all I wanted to do was share a link/review by the A.V. Club that does an excellent job of getting into last nights episode of Game of Thrones. Still it felt good venting a little bit.

Any way below is the full review of "The Bells" I copy and pasted from the link above. Hopefully the fans who are blindly bashing last nights episode will have a better understanding of the episode and series in general.

-----------------------------------------------

Westeros faces a disastrous final battle on the penultimate Game of Thrones

By Alex McLevy

Yesterday 9:20pm

Well, this all seems...horrible. 

It’s not that Tyrion’s plan worked, exactly. Jaime didn’t make it to Cersei in time, didn’t give the order to ring the bells and surrender the city. But his hopes nevertheless came to fruition; the soldiers of King’s Landing surrendered, throwing down their swords, the bells rang out, and all was won. Or so it seemed. Immediately thereafter, Daenerys Targaryen ignored the sound of supplication and laid waste to the city, burning innocents by the thousands, bringing half the buildings crumbling to the ground, all while Grey Worm led a bloodthirsty slaughter of the populace, far beyond the soldiers forced to abruptly pick their swords back up and defend themselves. It was cruel, capricious, and wholly avoidable. Varys, sad to say, was right.

GAME OF THRONES SEASON 8

A-

"The Bells"

EPISODE

“Ask not for whom the bell tolls,” goes the famous paraphrasing of John Donne’s sermon. “It tolls for thee.” The bitter truth of this aphorism—that the loss of any life is a loss for all—gets a brutal workout in the aptly named “The Bells,” arguably the best representation of George R.R. Martin’s deconstruction of fantasy tropes we’ve seen in several seasons. The bells of King’s Landing, it turns out, don’t toll for the loss of Cersei’s authority. They toll for the loss of everyone in the city, quite literally. This story began as a way to invert the cliched stereotypes of the hero’s journey, to twist the traditional narrative of swords and sorcery in a radical way and rethink how such epics are delivered. This episode brings that philosophy home. There are no good wars; any battle that begins with hearty cheering should end with somber melancholy; it doesn’t matter who the good guys and bad guys are in the face of death; nobody wants to die; the chaos of war makes villains and victims of us all.

The simplest rejoinder to all of Daenerys’ justifications is that this bloodshed could have been avoided. She was given a moment to choose, and she chose blind vengeance, the kind that eliminates any benevolence she hoped to bring to the seven kingdoms by burning it right out of the minds of anyone who saw her astride Drogon, mowing down men, women, and children with abandon. It gives the lie to her name for this fight, “The Last War.” There will be another, of course—maybe it will be led by the child who watched as her mother’s throat was cut in the streets by the so-called liberators of King’s Landing. Violence begets violence, and the only people still remaining will do the very thing that the living were fighting to preserve during the battle against the Night King: They’ll remember, and keep the memory of this bloodbath alive.

The progression from exhilarating hope to tragic denouement was skillfully executed by director Miguel Sapochnik, demonstrating a much better command of large-scale choreography here than we got to see in “The Long Night.” Honestly, the pivot from “fuck yeah!” (Daenerys laying waste to the Iron Fleet, then blasting the front gate of the city open from the inside, demolishing the lion’s share of the Golden Company in the process) to “Oh, dear god, no” (Dany and Grey Worm laying waste to everything after) was as solid a rug pull as could be hoped for. The build-up to Daenerys’ heel-turn this season hasn’t been as effective as it should have been given the way its foundation was laid during the mess in Meereen in previous seasons, and it was a bit simplistic to see her pin her sole hopes for optimism on the idea that Jon Snow still wanted to get it on with her (really? “Fear it is, then” because your nephew doesn’t have sex with you any more?), but Emilia Clarke sells the desperation. The younger Targaryen feels as though she’s lost any intimacy that tethered her to compassion and humanity, and so all that remains is the imperious need to rule that has driven her all these years, now bereft of the warmth that previously tempered her. When she hands Grey Worm Missandei’s old collar and he tosses it into the fire, Dany’s last thread of empathy burns as well, snuffed out even before Jon rejects her and ends her last-ditch plea for affection.

Varys would hate to have been proven right, but probably not as much as Tyrion hates himself right about now. After the Master Of Whisperers starts composing his written testimony about Jon being the rightful heir to the throne, Tyrion turns on his old friend and offers him up to Dany. It’s unsettling to see the presumable queen’s first assumption be that someone has betrayed her, but it’s even more telling that her first guess as to the betrayer’s identity is Jon. Varys even leans on Jon to assume the Iron Throne, which means he very well knew he wasn’t going to be around much longer, if he’s openly advocating others commit treason as well. But Tyrion can’t let Varys die thinking it was anything but their conversation, admitting to the spymaster that he turned him in. The moment when Tyrion firmly grabs his friend’s arm just before Dany utters the cue for Drogon to burn the eunuch alive is affecting, because it conveys both how much Tyrion cares for his friend, and also how much this is costing him. He’s pinning everything on his new queen, in hopes she’ll do exactly the opposite of what she does. (“I hope I deserve this, I truly do,” Varys even offers.) Whoops. The best of intentions, and all that.

Instead, Tyrion’s last genuine connection turns out to be his final conversation with his brother. Peter Dinklage and Nicolaj Coster-Waldeau have always had good chemistry, and Tyrion springing his brother free in what turns out to be a futile hope of preventing bloodshed and saving his sibling’s life is affecting in a way that Dany and Jon’s exchange lacks. “Cersei once called me the stupidest Lannister,” Jaime admits, and his world-weary resignation pairs well with Tyrion’s frantic hope for keeping his older brother alive. Commanding Jaime to try and escape with Cersei through the underground tunnels in order to escape to Pentos and start a new life—while ringing the bells of surrender on their way out, of course—gives the two one final chance to embrace. Tyrion’s tears contain the symbolic weight of his whole life; he wouldn’t be here if not for Jaime, as he admits, and his last hope is to give the man who risked everything to help him survive the same chance. Tyrion knows it’s a death sentence from Daenerys to betray her in this way, but he no longer cares.

And Jamie’s arc takes him from the heart of our heroes’ campaign to the arms of Cersei Lannister, with a brief stop along the way to put an end to Euron Greyjoy. The gleefully sadistic killer pushes Jaime into a fight, telling him that he slept with Cersei, and after a protracted struggle, even sinks his blade into Jaime’s side. But it turns out that a metal hand can be valuable in battle, after all, and Jaime uses it to help sink his own sword into Euron’s stomach. The irony of the manic Greyjoy’s final thoughts—“I’m the man who killed Jaime Lannister”—isn’t just that no one is around to bear witness. It’s that Jaime doesn’t die by his hand, but rather the crumbling bricks of the Red Keep.

Those final minutes with Cersei and Jaime are strong, mostly for how they upend the expected revelry of seeing one of the show’s true villains get her comeuppance. Stripped of all bravado, Cersei breaks, and shows the very scared, vulnerable woman who has kept her emotions at bay. “I don’t want to die,” she whimpers, “Not like this.” It’s all the more moving for coming from a character who built her identity on steely resolve and contempt for such hoary conceits as fear. The staging of their reunion is superb: Cersei standing on the map she created of Westeros, reeling as the citadel comes falling down around her, while the one man who actually still cares for her helps her sink beneath the surface of the city for a few moments of closeness before death. The odds were never good she was going to survive, but in being buried under the rubble of her failed ambition, she achieves a kind of pathetic grace in her downfall.

But enough pathos. On the opposite end of the emotional spectrum: CLEGANEBOWL! It’s the match the show has been teasing almost from the beginning, and overall, it didn’t disappoint. The Mountain versus the Hound played out entertainingly, with the elder Clegane still outmatching his younger brother pound for pound and blow for blow. Being turned into a walking zombie of sorts didn’t just amplify his strength; it essentially obviated the need to parry blows, as even Sandor sinking his sword deep into his undead brother didn’t seem to slow him down in the slightest. There’s a tense, horrifying moment when it looks like we’re going to get a replay of the Viper’s fate, as the Mountain starts to push his thumbs into Sandor’s eyes, and I cringed, awaiting the head crunch. But Sandor shoves his knife through his brother’s head, and when that doesn’t stop him, he sacrifices himself to kill his sibling, knocking them from the tower and plunging into the blazing fire below. R.I.P., Sandor Clegane and your malevolent brother.

Better still, all that time spent with Arya and Sandor Clegane pays off in an unexpected manner, as the Hound warns the youngest Stark off her single-minded devotion to her kill list. Rather than heading up to kill Cersei, he brings Arya up short with a pointed question: “Do you want to be like me?” In that moment, he reminds her of everything she still has that he doesn’t: Family. Friends. A purpose beyond murderous retribution. He brings her back to a moment akin to her disavowal of the House Of Black And White (“A girl is Arya Stark of Winterfell, and I’m going home.”), pushing her to realize she still has reason to live. It’s in keeping with her character: Arya has always been the one to learn lessons where others might stubbornly plunge ahead (and she paid a serious price when she didn’t), employing boldness and caution in equal measure. Clegane gives her one last gift: Cersei is going to die regardless. No reason Arya should die with her.

Besides, Arya had one more, vital role to serve this episode. She becomes the audience stand-in to bear witness to the horrors of war. For those of us who haven’t read A Song Of Ice And Fire, this nonetheless feels like the most vivid display of the philosophy Martin has been playing with since the start. Death, in the early seasons, was always harsh and brutal and often unfair. For the first time in a long time, it was again. Everywhere she turns, Arya sees scared families, dying in awful ways. The woman who helps her survive, pulling her to her feet, dies screaming, holding her daughter as Dany burns them alive. A more evocative demonstration of the cost of the North’s fealty couldn’t be imagined.

Jon, watching the chaos unfold, is in shock. A Stark in spirit if not blood, he comes to the aid of a woman before she’s raped by a fellow soldier, but mostly, he’s struck dumb by the needless violence playing out around him, eventually able to do little more than exhort everyone to fall back and flee the city. Arya, conversely, springs into action on a smaller scale, as she always has. She tries to save people, even if it’s just those who helped her. As the show nicely mirrors the beats of Sandor and Arya’s struggles, cutting between them as if one body, the difference comes in Arya’s moment of aid: the woman’s hand reaching out to pull her up. Arya Stark is saved by a random woman who then dies horribly at the hand of the woman to whom her brother has pledged allegiance.

As she rides a horse out of the city, Game Of Thrones only has one episode remaining, but the hopes of the future ride away with Arya as well. Daenerys has become the person it was believed she wouldn’t be, and both Jon and Arya observe the terrible results of that transformation. By the end, Arya, half-blind and coughing up the dust of the city’s remains (and the remains of the bodies all around her), gets a front row seat to the carnage wrought by Daenerys Targaryen. Riding her dragon and leveling fire at friend and foe alike, regardless of intent, the Mother of Dragons comes across for all the world like a vengeful deity, a god of death reigning down fire upon the world. And what does Arya Stark say to the god of death?

Stray observations

R.I.P. Qyburn. The most loyal confidante of Cersei Lannister receives the ignoble death of being thrown headfirst into rubble by a grouchy Mountain, annoyed at being told to obey his queen.

It’s a gorgeous shot of Tyron entering the city, the camera registering a static image from behind him as he stands in the blown-out rubble of the city wall, watching the devastation unfold.

Again, Sapochnik’s direction was so much more assured and elegant here. His depiction of the spatial geography of King’s Landing was excellent, ably showing the massive distance between where Jon, Davos, and Grey Worm confronted the surrendering soldiers and the Red Keep far in the distance. Touches like that help to convey the scale and layout of the conflict in a more emotionally satisfying manner.

I quite liked Jaime being denied entrance to the Keep as Arya and Sandor passed through just ahead. Forcing him to go all the way around, essentially missing everything and receiving a mortal blow by coincidence from the unexpected appearance of Euron, helped keep a sense of frustrated expectations to the goings-on—sometimes, things just don’t go your way.

Dany’s words to Tyrion turn out to be far too prophetic: “It doesn’t matter now.”

What do you think the favor was that Tyrion asked for from Davos? My first guess was the orchestration of men sneaking into the city to ring the bells, but I’m far from confident about that.

I’m very pleased to report that I have very little clue what’s going to happen in next week’s series finale. I have some guesses about what could happen, but this episode was a refreshing tonic to the sometimes conservative mode of traditional heroics Benioff and Weiss have been dishing up this season.

[theconservativebrief]

On Tuesday, the New York Times published a bombshell investigation that claims President Donald Trump — who repeatedly bragged on the campaign trail about being a “self-made” billionaire — actually inherited his wealth largely through creative, and possibly illegal, accounting done alongside his father, real estate mogul Fred Trump.

Though Trump has repeatedly boasted about using his business acumen to transform a “small loan” of $1 million from his father into billions, the Times found something quite different. When the younger Trump was just a toddler, the report says, Fred Trump began giving him part-ownership of several properties. Doing so allowed the elder Trump to funnel money directly into his son’s accounts, thus letting him sidestep the 55 percent gifts and inheritance tax. Fred Trump also gave his son at least $60.7 million in loans, many of which were interest-free and not tethered to a repayment schedule.

Some key takeaways from the report:

In 1990, Fred Trump sent a man named Howard Snyder to Donald Trump’s Atlantic City casino with a $3.35 million check, which Snyder used to buy casino chips. He left the casino without even hitting the craps table. That money was, in effect, an untaxed gift from father to son.

Beginning in 1992, Fred Trump’s real estate business began purchasing boilers, refrigerators, cleaning supplies, and other equipment from a company called All County Building Supply & Maintenance instead of a wholesaler. All County, which was owned by Donald Trump and his siblings and charged much higher rates than other suppliers, seems to have been a shell company that existed only to siphon Fred Trump’s money to his children under the guise of business transactions.

In 1995, Fred Trump began transferring ownership of his properties to his children through grantor-related annuity trusts (GRATs), a mechanism through which wealthy families can pass on property to their children without paying gift or inheritance taxes.

As the Times notes in its investigation, there’s a fine line between legal tax avoidance and illegal tax evasion. Some of Fred and Donald Trump’s actions, such as the casino debacle, are clearly illegal. Other things that sound illegal — like avoiding inheritance taxes through a network of trusts — may not be. I talked to Lee-Ford Tritt, a tax law professor at the University of Florida whom the Times consulted for its report, to help me try to make sense of it all. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Gaby Del Valle

So one thing [the Trump family] did was funnel money from Fred to Donald by giving him part-ownership of buildings. And then they set up shell companies to disguise gifts as business transactions?

Lee-Ford Tritt

The shell company that they’re talking about had two major issues. One, they could inflate the cost of capital improvement on their rent-stabilized apartments. If you put in capital improvements, they could increase those rents. So [Fred Trump] faked capital improvements. Some of that would’ve cost them, say, $20,000, and he was charging, say, $60,000. And by charging himself $60,000, marking up his own boilers and things like that, he was also reducing money out of his estate and passing it on to his children, who owned this shell company.

Gaby Del Valle

So that’s why by the time that Fred Trump died, he was worth a lot less than he was just a few years before?

Lee-Ford Tritt

All estate-planning attorneys want their very wealthy clients to die bankrupt, because they don’t want any estate and gift tax.

Gaby Del Valle

And how much of this is illegal? How do you determine what here is illegal and what isn’t?

Lee-Ford Tritt

It depends on what conclusions you take from the documents they were looking at.

A lot of this, a lot of the wealthy clients do. I think Americans don’t know what they do, and they’re shocked. I think the New York Times reporters were shocked by some of this, and I was like, “No, that’s not illegal.” Probably all uber-rich Americans do this. It’s in the statutes, the courts have approved it, they just do it.

Pushing it to an extreme, you can get into some trouble. So, for instance, when [the Trumps] were valuing their properties, there was this one property they wanted to get a charitable deduction for, and [the appraiser] valued it amazingly high, and that was good for them because they were going to give it to charity and they get to write off charitable deductions from the income tax. Then a very similar property, they transferred it [from parent to child] and they valued it very low to get out of the estate and gift tax. That would be illegal if they knowingly submitted false valuation reports to the IRS.

I think the president’s lawyer would say, “Experts handled all of this.” Well, one, that’s never an excuse for breaking the law. And two, the Trumps, this is their business. They’re not one-time players; they’re constantly involved in the valuation and understanding of the real estate market. They would understand if these were real values or not, and that would be illegal.

Gaby Del Valle

Could they say that valuation is subjective and that’s why there could be a big difference between what one appraiser says versus another?

Lee-Ford Tritt

No two properties are exactly alike, so even though the New York Times was [comparing Trump properties to similar ones in order to determine their value], there would be differences in the properties that would have the valuations. But to have that extreme of fluctuation in valuations, especially with such a short period of time with very similar properties, is rare.

Two, [the appraisal] has to be a good-faith base, and so that’s the difference. Were these [appraisals] presented [fraudulently]? Do they have the objective, the mens rea to submit false reports, or do they actually truly believe it? Would it pass the laugh test? So they might say, “No, no, no, we truly believe this.”

It’s just the circumstantial evidence that makes it suspect. Yeah, they could always have a response, but if they were submitted falsely, that’s illegal. When the New York Times talks about the grantor-retained annuity trust, I think every estate planner will tell you all wealthy planners use GRATs. And I would say yes, they do that, and they reduce [clients’] taxes, but falsifying the valuation of the property that you’re putting into that trust, that’s illegal. That’s where they pushed it too far. They supercharged it.

Gaby Del Valle

Could you briefly talk about the different legal mechanisms for tax avoidance that the uber-wealthy use?

Lee-Ford Tritt

Giving away property for charitable donations reduces your income tax liability. For estate and gift [taxes], you could do it as well.

This would take a long time to explain, all the products that estate planners use to reduce taxes. So few people are subjected to the estate tax, and then we give those people legally a lot of loopholes. We allow people to devalue their property. So, for instance, if I owned a piece of property worth $1 million, and I gave you a 40 percent interest in it, [that stake] wouldn’t be worth $400,000. I wouldn’t be taxed for a $400,000 gift, because I’m the controlling interest of the property and you weren’t there to make any decisions on it.

We would devalue that. We would say, “That $400,000 gift is worth only $200,000.” And then I could give you another $400,000, [devalue that money], and that would still be a minority interest. And eventually, I could give you everything and never pay the full price on the gift. And then GRATs are another mechanism where we play with the value of money and the interest rates. There’s lots of things that the rich will do to avoid taxes legally.

“All my friends who are estate planners are calling me up and going, ‘What’s the big deal? We do this for all our clients.’”

Gaby Del Valle

The Times piece notes that a lot of this — even if it was illegal, it’s not like it can be prosecuted now.

Lee-Ford Tritt

There’s a statute of limitations on the estate of Fred Trump, and that would have been three years. But if [Fred Trump’s children] knowingly gave false information, that could be opened. Now, if the estate doesn’t have any money — it’s been distributed — the IRS could go after the children, the beneficiaries, to get the money back.

I don’t know what the children reported on their income taxes, because I don’t know if these transfers were sales to the children or gifts. They seem to be very complicated. So the children might be liable for what they reported on their own income taxes, and that could still be opened up, although there are statutes of limitations on some of them — if they were done with fraud, [the IRS] could open it up.

Gaby Del Valle

The Trump administration is basically saying there’s nothing here. Is there any veracity to that?

Lee-Ford Tritt

I would say 80 percent of this, 85 percent of this, would be a yawn for the uber-wealthy estate planners. Like, all my friends who are estate planners are calling me up and going, “What’s the big deal? We do this for all our clients.” And once again, that’s a different story — that’s, “Should we allow this or not? Look at what the uber-wealthy are doing.”

But if [the Trumps] falsified valuations or played really aggressively with them, that’s different. If they used these shell corporations to rig the rate increases in the rent-stabilized apartments, that’s something different. There’s smoke there — there could be serious issues there. Now, the president might say, “This is my father. If there was fraud, this was him, not me.” Except the Times has done a good job of showing that he was integrally involved in all of this.

Gaby Del Valle

Are these loopholes in the tax code, or is it just the way things are? And can the government do anything about it?

Lee-Ford Tritt

It’s funny because people talk about them being loopholes, but they’re technically not. These are literally the statutes and what the courts have said are fine. GRATS are so commonly used by the uber-wealthy, and they’re so effective. They can wipe out gifts and estate taxes, hundreds of millions of dollars.

The Obama administration tried to shut them down, but it wasn’t passed by Congress. These devaluation issues I was trying to describe to you, the Obama administration tried to shut them down, saying you can only do them for legitimate business purposes, you can’t do them to avoid estate and gift taxes. Congress didn’t pass that law either.

Gaby Del Valle

One thing that I’m pretty confused about is, at least in terms of the rent-stabilized apartments, [the Trumps] boosted the value of the apartments with inflated costs [through a shell company], but then when these buildings were appraised, they were shown as being really low in value. This just doesn’t make sense.

Lee-Ford Tritt

These are all just strange valuation issues. This is the story I got from the New York Times, when I looked at it and they said, “What was your big takeaway?” I was like, “Wow, they were the masters of valuation manipulation.”

Every one of these things — every issue that the New York Times brings up, the GRATs, these rent-stabilized apartments, every property, everything, there’s a valuation issue involved in there. They’re so blatant and brazen about it. They’re using one valuation for one purpose and they’re changing it for another purpose. And so, you know, what’s so interesting is some of the [formerly rent-stabilized] apartments, they turned into condos, and then they reappraised them for a totally different value. I understand why you don’t understand it; it’s very strange.

One of those apartments, it was in the red — it was worth negative money [on paper]. They were making hundreds of thousands of dollars a month off it.

Gaby Del Valle

So it’s designed to be convoluted?

Lee-Ford Tritt

I think so. And the IRS is so strapped for time, it’s strapped for money and employees in the estate and gift tax divisions, they just can’t catch all of this stuff. And when they do, [the property owners] usually compromise and say, “Okay, I’ll pay 10 percent more,” and the IRS is happy. But really, you were scared about paying 60 percent more, so you just won.

Gaby Del Valle

Is the IRS in a better or worse position to go after this kind of thing than they were 20 years ago?

Lee-Ford Tritt

They’re in a worse position. So few people pay estate and gift taxes. A husband and wife have to have over $20 million to be subjected to the estate and gift tax.

It doesn’t bring in a lot of revenue, plus so few people do it, and there are so many ways to get around them and reduce your estate tax burden that they just don’t have the manpower. Something really has to catch [the IRS’s] attention for them to go off of something like that.

These GRATs that they were talking about, what Fred and his wife did, those GRATs are designed to create zero gift and estate taxes. They [the IRS’s estate and gift tax division] don’t really even have an incentive [to investigate], because they’re not thinking about how the valuation was rigged.

Gaby Del Valle

Bloomberg reported that New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio is going to try to go after the unpaid taxes. Can he do that?

Lee-Ford Tritt

Yes, and so could the IRS. Even though the statute of limitations has run out and [Fred Trump’s] estate is closed, if things were done fraudulently, if they purposely misled, [the IRS] could reopen [investigations] or go after the money. The problem is the estate is closed and the money has been distributed, but there are rules within the IRS that say they can go after the recipients of the money.

This isn’t a criminal action; this is just, you know, trying to get restitution.

Original Source -> Did the Trump family’s tax practices break the law? An expert explains.

via The Conservative Brief