#modern day americans are Culturally Lost

[mybrainproblems]

sorry but i am going to be very american and selfish and navel gaze-y for a moment but this is on my mind a lot as we approach february. just... ignore me.

i'm of ukrainian heritage. i'm also completely disconnected from my heritage because my great-great/great-grandparents fully assimilated as americans.

with the exception of my great-uncle (who lives far away and i rarely see), i have no living relatives who know much about our heritage (or are willing to talk about it in any detail beyond the romanticized ~*immigrant experience*~). everything i know about our family comes from my uncle because everyone else is dead; either died elderly and comfortable in the US or likely died in the holodomor. trying to research my family is useless bc my great-grandpa changed his last name to something completely made up so he could find work when he was in his early teens. this has always been a "fun" legend in our family; the choice to disconnect. it's a story our family has always told like it was some sort of wacky hijinks and as a kid was very funny but now, in my 30s and watching a cultural genocide unfold in ukraine, it feels devastating.

there are a small handful of things my family has held onto while also losing. there's the lost recipe for my great-grandma's holubsti (a word i didn't know how to spell until recently) that my family mourns every time we get together. i used to make pysanky for easter with my parents, which was passed down from my great-great aunt. my dad inherited her pysanky dyes after she passed away and we had them for years before most of the jars broke in a move. we have one remaining unbroken pysanka from her that i think she made in the 70s. i cannot imagine having hands so steady to make those intricate designs. mine always came out looking like shit.

i've always been curious about this part of my heritage but never felt any great need to seek it out until now. it feels fake and disingenuous to be interested in learning about this part of my heritage as a result of a war. that i didn't seek it out sooner. what is wrong with me that i care now.

i'm not sure where i'm going with this. i'm not sure what or how i'm supposed to feel. what i do feel is lost and angry and sad and selfish for feeling this way.

[mmmkaybye]

Why Zutara Shippers are Wrong (JK, You can ship who you want lol)

(Although, I don't care if you do actually ship Zutara, that's your prerogative, I'm just waiting for better arguments for the relationship and for people to stop negatively viewing Kataang)

First of all, I'm premising this with the fact that I don't think that ATLA should have ended with Katara and Aang kissing. I think it would have been fine to just end with a slightly more intimate-than-friends hug/cuddle. I would have personally preferred that two children who survived being literal child soldiers get the chance to be kids before they delve into a more mature relationship with one another, but they didn't exactly have adults of the modern culture there to guide them a different way, now did they?

BUT! I am a firm believer that Zuko and Katara would never have worked out romantically and that Katara and Aang's relationship 1. makes more sense and 2. is actually healthier in the scope of trauma and trauma responses.

First of all, I don't understand how the creators of ATLA managed to craft literally the MOST traumatic childhood backstory ever with incredible detail and nuance and everyone just fricking glosses over it like WTF??? Not to mention, the creators did an amazing job diversifying trauma responses to similar trauma experiences.

Let's discuss Katara's childhood trauma, which was not healed magically after a little side quest with Zuko. Katara carries immense survivor's guilt over her mother's murder. Katara understands very well how and why her mother was brutally murdered in their family home. She has been deeply aware of this since the day of her mother's murder - and she fully blames herself. Katara understands that a fire nation soldier killed her mother, but he killed her because of Katara - she said so herself. Then, Katara, who was the last person to interact with her mother, discovers her mother's body, and it is insinuated that Katara might have even witnessed her mother's brutal execution-style murder. This forever alters Katara down to her core personality traits. Katara is 'bossy' because of her trauma. I work with kids from pre-k through graduating american high school. It's pretty normal for girls to do what I call 'mothering' to their peers and to kids younger than them. It often is described as being 'bossy' and some girls are in fact bossy, but for the most part, they are roleplaying a caretaker mentality as they are most familiar with. In Katara's deep guilt of being the reason her mother was murdered, her trauma response was burden herself with the role of mother. This is further antagonized when her father leaves with the rest of the adult men to fight against the Fire Nation. He might've well as died too due to lack of communication for many years. Sokka does not allow Katara to mother him for very long, so she doesn't get to have a chance to work through her personal trauma response to her grief because she has no one to safely and consistently direct these mothering tendencies towards. The other children in the village are not orphans, their mothers are most likely very alive and very involved with them, so they would be temporary fillers at best. Sokka has stepped into the role of village man and definitely would reject Katara's mothering, which often led to tension between the siblings. Toph had the very reaction to Katara's mothering tendencies as I expect a young Sokka had to them. He lost his mother, too, he didn't want a replacement, nor did he want to lose his sister to the role of mother.

Zuko, in the same fashion as Sokka, had a mother who he loved, and lost, and was not looking to replace. Zuko's mother was also a topic that is deeply rooted in a lot of Zuko's personal trauma as well. Zuko did not get to spend much time with Katara for her mothering tendencies to be extended over him, but he definitely would have aggressively rejected them as Katara's trauma response would have negatively triggered his own. Their trauma would have deeply and negatively impacted any romantic relationship they could have developed because of how they would react to each other. Their relationship would have crashed and burned very quickly.

On top of that. Katara would have never left the South Pole indefinitely - that is her home, and she consistently returned to it throughout her life. That is an effect of her cultural upbringing. Zuko couldn't leave the Fire Nation, and as we saw in the graphic novels that followed, Zuko's personal welfare suffered greatly because his whole world was upended and now he was responsible for the one nation that didn't get peace at the end of the war. It's incredibly naive and slightly delusional for people to desperately push romantic wishes upon a sixteen-year-old boy who was burdened with the responsibility of healing an entire nation, one that fought him every step of the way in many aspects. He did not have the emotional energy to expend upon a frivolous relationship. That's why Mai and he broke up, not because they didn't love each other, but because Zuko simply could not have personal relationships until his reign and nation had stabilized - that alone would take upwards of 10 years. Plus, Zuko may have helped others work through parts of their trauma, but he had to address his trauma too, which we saw the beginnings of during the graphic novels. Simply put, by the end of ATLA and all of the graphic novels, Zuko was in no place emotionally, mentally, and even physically and politically to seek out a relationship that was meaningful and healthy. And I know that Zuko would have changed the tradition of political marriage, at the very least he deserves to have married for love at the end of everything he suffered through. Zuko is a great opportunity to normalize waiting until you're in your mid-twenties -thirties before seeking out romantic relationships. Logistically speaking, I don't think there would have been much opportunity for romantic feelings to develop between the two of them. I especially don't think Katara would have easily been able to live in the Fire Nation because the Fire Nation was directly responsible for her trauma, and that is also why I don't think she would have every pursued a relationship with a Fire Nation man, Zuko or not.

Now onto Aang. Everyone always jumps onto this idea that Katara and Aang had a very mother-son relationship - which is wrong. Aang comes from a culture that literally does not have mother and fatherhood. There are NO mothers and fathers in the Air Nomad Nation. Sure, kids had birth parents, but parenthood was not part of their culture, nor did Aang ever seek out that kind of relationship. Aang may have been kid-like, but he was the most adultified kid in the group. He was incredibly independent and confident in his ability to travel internationally by himself at 12. Katara had never thought to leave the South Pole to seek out a waterbending master in the North Pole because she didn't have that confidence or training. The Air Nomads thrived on a mentorship-based village raising of children. So, Aang never thought of Katara as his mother. He literally couldn't, because he had no scope of reference for such a relationship, same with fatherhood. He never had a parental relationship with Monk Gyasto. It was more like a fun uncle mentorship. I think that's why everyone thinks Aang was a bad father, but he was an outlier in the Air Nomad nation because there was no Air Nomad nation when he had children. The village that raised the children in his culture was gone. He was actually a fairly decent father and the two older children probably felt bitter because Tenzin was the only other air bender in existence so it obviously Aang is going to spend a lot of one on one time with Tenzin in the scope of mentoring Tenzin in the way of Air Nomad culture. Aang was not an absentee father like how many people assumed from the very one-sided and brief explanation given by the two older, jaded siblings. Was he perfect? No, he literally had no clue how to be a father. Did he and Tenzin leave to get milk and never come back? Also no. That being said, Aang was the only individual who was comfortable with Katara mothering him, he never felt threatened or overburdened by her trauma response, which allowed for Katara to genuinely work through her grief and mature out of the extreme bossy mothering we first saw in book one. If you pay attention, yes Katara does retain that 'bossy' kind of personality, but that was permanent fixture due to her childhood trauma and a little bit of cultural influence as well. I think, if Katara had never been traumatized, she would have always leaned towards a very soothing and nuturing type of personality, which we began to see in the middle of book three. Her bossiness/mothering trauma response gradually lessened the longer she 'mothered' Aang. Once again, neither of the two saw each other as Mother-son. They were simple too close in age and Aang also had the added sense of duty-boundness due to being the Avatar. Katara was always going to be a caretaker archetype personality, trauma or no, and that simply wasn't the type of person that Zuko would lean towards for a romantic relationship due to his own personal upbringing and culture. Aang is a much more gentle and playfully empathetic personality that works with Katara's firm care and sassy disposition.

In the graphic novels, I personally saw a great deal of healing and maturation in Katara in relation to her trauma. She was less mothering towards Aang, too, and I think that had a lot to do with the fact that Aang matured a lot as well and the change in their once platonic relationship to a more romantic-leaning one. Was their relationship perfect? No, they are kids who survived a horrific war and many many trauma-inducing situations. However, once Katara fully leaned away from the mothering habit, we get to see that Aang allows Katara to relax and be more playful. She genuinely was just happy with Aang. He pushed her to be a little more child-like and to have child-like fun even as they grew up into adulthood. Katara helped Aang mature and face a lot of adult burdens that were placed child.

In the end, Katara and Aang always brought out the best in each other. Katara and Zuko didn't have enough time together in ATLA to develop an individual relationship outside of the group. There simply isn't enough time outside of their little side-quest in which Katara and Zuko interact solo- which was definitely NOT Katara's best, and in fact was Katara lashing out aggressively towards people who loved and cared for her and she them. Zuko was also not his 'best' in that time either as he was also being triggered emotionally. In fact, during ATLA, there's way too much negative tension between the two of them that leads to really intense disagreements and emotional outbursts more often than not until Katara begrudgingly accepts Zuko into the group, they don't even positively interact until Ember Island which is what, two weeks? She's not exactly nice when she pretty much demands him to help her hunt down the man that murdered her mother. Zuko is all gung-ho about vengeance too. Of course, they both have a lesson learning moment, but that episode cemented in my brain that Aang is the better partner for Katara than Zuko. Aang, once again the most mature in the Gaang, fight me on this, has a deep, empathetic understanding of the world, he doesn't do a great job trying to explain to Katara, but I think that's because no one in the Gaang understands how Appa is not just an air bison, and Aang never views Appa as an air bison like how everyone else in ATLA do. To everyone else, Appa's an animal, but to Aang and Aang's culture that is deeply offensive, Appa is an individual with emotions and value outside of what he can offer the group in terms of transportation and that's never really explicitly clarified to the audience either (because despite being a kid's cartoon, the creators knew their audience well and did not treat the audience like we are stupid and can in fact infer and read between the lines). If Katara had killed that pathetic worm of a man, it would have absolutely destroyed her as a person. She would not have been able to heal from her trauma and would probably suffer even more trauma and guilt. This side-quest was a plot point to lead up to the big debate of killing Ozai, and not many, in fact I don't know if anyone has talked about that fact. I have no doubt that Zuko has probably killed people, at the very least, he's deeply desensitized to people dying as I think he probably at some point did experience or witness some form of warfare battle before he began chasing Aang down.

Once again, I don't really care if you do ship Katara and Zuko. In fact, I think that's a-okay. But, with the Netflix live action adaptation's take on the Secret Tunnel scene, I've seen a lot of people speculating and even hoping for it to become canon and there have even been some opinions of Kataang that have resurfaced that really rub me the wrong way because it feels like many individuals are just looking at the surface level of ATLA. There's so much nuance to each individual character in terms of culture, societal norms, age and gender, and most importantly, trauma and trauma responses. The creators did an amazing job world building and story telling that a lot of what I put up in my opinion in preference for Kataang over Zutara is information that I inferred from the show and graphic novels due to my personal experience and education in familial relationships and childhood trauma. My thoughts are not the end all be all to this debate, nor do I think they should be, I've seen some really solid opinions in favor of Zutara that I can understand and somewhat agree with. I think a lot of those details and moments that people look to as indicators of romance between Katara and Zuko were remnants of the creators' previous intention, but I think that the change to Aang and Katara as end game was logistically and realistically more accurate. I never thought that Katara and Zuko were meant to be, and I always struggled to put to words as to why until I had pursued my psych studies in college that focused on child development, childhood trauma, and marriage and family counselling. I think that the creators instinctually were seeing the red flags that would have occurred naturally within Zutara and changed course accordingly. There were just a lot of details and nuances that I noticed personally that I wished more people would discuss.

Anyways, thank you for coming to my TedTalk, I'd love to hear some of your opinions about this.

[septembriseur]

The other day I was talking to a friend who's a Muslim activist, and I made the connection between Amitav Ghosh's analysis of the climate crisis and my feelings about the genocide in Gaza and, more broadly, to the enforcement and regulation of inequality in our current moment. Ghosh refers to the way that we are living in the climate crisis as "the great derangement." There is a kind of collective madness, he argues, in the fact that we all know that climate change is happening and why it is happening and that every day we contribute to it happening, and yet at the same time climate change appears almost nowhere in our culture. We don't talk about it. We don't engage with it. Engaging it with would mean acknowledging that the premises on which our society is built are false and unsustainable. And the genocide in Gaza functions in a similar way: we know that it is happening and yet we don't talk about it or engage with it because it exposes the falseness and unsustainability of the premises of our society (premises that in this case include human rights).

I think that a lot of the things that Ghosh says illuminate how these two derangements are actually the same derangement, the derangement of what people in the environmental humanities have started calling the plantationocene. This has to do with a world ecology that sustains a hegemonic elite (and Eurocentric) modernity through the breakdown and (re)circulation of everything that is deemed to belong to the non- or subhuman. The world of the plantationocene is one that has always been defined by the ability of hegemonic power to treat both ("sub")human and nonhuman populations as interchangeable resources that can be deployed whenever and wherever they are most profitable to hegemonic powers: vide the relocation of African slaves and South Asian laborers, the disastrous ecological reshapings of colonized territories to better produce an elite European modernity.

To challenge what is happening in Gaza requires a challenge to several key principles of this world: that hegemonic elite modernity (which Israel has always formed a part of, as one can easily see by glancing at attempts to define the "Global North") has the right to regulate populations as it sees fit; that this regulation of populations is right because the sub-/nonhuman does not possess an unquantifiable wholeness that can be damaged or destroyed through civil destruction and forced relocation (i.e. it makes no difference to resettle indigenous peoples of the Americas or to transport South Asian laborers to islands halfway around the world, because their interchangeability means that nothing important is lost in the process— no more than transporting a plant to a different continent entails a loss or damage to the plant or botanical world); that the sub-/nonhuman exists as a resource to fuel, produce, and sustain hegemonic elite modernity, and can be simply wiped out if it becomes inconvenient or counterproductive to that modernity.

If you start to pursue these ideas, you realize that the genocide in Gaza is enmeshed in the "border crisis" and "refugee crisis" in Europe and the U.S.; you realize that all of these are enmeshed in your ability to walk into a superstore and purchase cheap consumer goods produced and assembled under inhuman conditions; it is enmeshed in everything you touch. And it becomes so overwhelming that you simply do not know how to think about it, because the suffering and the culpability for the suffering become so vast.

But we cannot let ourselves perpetuate this derangement. We have to look straight at the fact that it is absolutely insane that Gaza is no longer even the top headline on news sites. It is absolutely insane that Americans and Europeans (and even some Israelis!) can walk around and go through their days and not think about it at all. It is absolutely insane that we know what is happening and don't act. And I think that a lot of what Ghosh writes in The Great Derangement about the nature of contemporary politics explains why we don't act— but we have to live in the dissonance and tension of how absolutely insane it is that we don't act. We can't let the derangement trap us inside of it.

[thedeviltohisangel]

All The Things I Did (Modern Era): You'd Have to Stop the World Just to Stop the Feeling

a/n: when I said my brain couldn't stop thinking of AUs...I kind of like the idea that Cass/John's souls reincarnate across time because they are always meant to be together. This is one example of that. It's been rattling in my brain for a little while and I've gotten it on paper and hope you fall just as deeply in love with this version as you have the original. Let me know your thoughts on this era and anything specific you might wish to see. love you xoxo

She felt absolutely miserable. The satin of her champagne colored dress was itchy against her skin and the halter felt like it was choking her and if the Russian Ambassador looked at her bare back like it was a lost wonder of the world one more time she was going to have her forearm against his windpipe in an instant. There was also the absolutely offensive paper weight of a diamond ring on her left hand. She thinks if she threw it hard enough, it could break through the wall of the Embassy’s reception room like a bullet. 

“My, my, Miss Cooper. You are looking particularly diplomatic tonight.” 

“Dimitri. I asked the bartender to throw away all the vodka so you wouldn’t bother me over here.” She fully knew he was SVR and she assumed he was tracking her State Department cover as loosely intact. 

“Come now, my little eagle. I’ve spent all night waiting for you to come flirt with me like you always do. You’ve really kept me waiting.” 

“If that’s flirting, things must be very bleak in Russia.” Originally, she had thought she’d try her hand at developing him. He had tried to develop her right back. She dropped her official pursuit of him but the back and forth kept her busy at the stuffy cocktail hours she had to attend. Cass would have preferred to be out in the local villages and talking to the people and the families and the culture she was falling in love with. 

“Eh maybe our flirting isn’t great but that new American soldier is looking at you like he wants you in a way us Russian men are very familiar with.” She didn’t have to look to know it was John. His arrival a few days ago had rocked her to the very core and she had done everything in her power to avoid him since. “He the one who put that ring on your finger?”

“If you were half as good as you want me to believe, Dimitri, you’d know. Enjoy your night.” Cass finished off her drink and turned to leave when his hand shot out and wrapped around her wrist. “Let go of me.”

“Miss Cooper, I’m not-”

“She asked you politely. I won’t offer the same courtesy.” A lump lodged in her throat as she felt John’s presence behind her. Her arm was dropped in an instant and she crossed it against her chest. 

“Good night, my little eagle.” Dimitir looked at her like he had gotten the exact answer he wanted. She itched to slap the victorious smirk off his face as he walked away. 

“You okay? He hurt you?” John touched her wrist tenderly, lovingly, all the things she hadn’t felt against her skin since she fled North Carolina a few months ago. 

“I was handling it. He did it on purpose to see how you’d react.” He dropped her arm as the glint of a diamond caught his eye. Took a step back to physically distance himself from the object.

“Sorry to disappoint.” He thought about tacking on an again but thought better of it. If she wasn’t in the mood to talk to him, maybe she never would be, then he wasn’t going to broach down the pathway.

“Not it’s…there’s no way you would have known.” She looked at him, for the first time since they said goodbye bathed in the moonlight on the beaches of Hatteras Island, and he felt his world shift back into place under her gaze. “Thank you.” 

“Can I at least get you a refill?” It felt like dipping her toes back in those North Carolina waters. A place she had told herself was too dangerous to go back to. He looked too good in his blues to turn down.

“Yes.” His hand on the small of her back guided her closer to the bar and it felt so warm she could lose herself in it.

“Two of whatever the lady was having.” 

“It’s just Coke in a rocks glass, Major.” She smiled as he took a long and satisfying sip either way. 

“Still delicious,” he laughed. “You been out here awhile?” Her eyes found the corner of her cocktail napkin much more interesting all of a sudden.

“Since…since around the last time I saw you.” He nodded around the last of his soda. Wished it was full of rum. 

“You could have just told me the truth. I would have understood.” Cass shook her head.

“No, you would have fought for me and told me we would find a way to make it work.” She distinctly remembered the look in his eyes on the beach that night. The frustration at her secrecy. The distress at her leaving when he had spent the whole summer learning how to love her. The anger that she acted like the truck bed nights and T6 flights and long weekends spent in bed could be tucked back into a box. He had wanted to scream that he was in love with her. Scream that he knew what was between them was meant to last a lifetime and he would fight for her until the ends of the earth. Scream that this war had already taken so much from so many and they shouldn’t let it take this from them. 

“Would it have worked? Clearly, you had something else lined up anyways.” Instead, John had felt defeated. Had heard the words that she was leaving and couldn’t tell him where or why and it was better to leave this summer exactly where they were standing. “My sister sent me the photos of you and him at some Newport mansion.” 

“It’s not real. You have to believe me.” Cass would have rather died than know John had seen the staged engagement photos. But the point of a PR campaign was for people to see the evidence. 

“You don’t owe me an explanation, Cass.” He turned toward the calling of his name from his fellow pilots. They had been joined by a group of young women who all looked eager to head back to their housing units for the after party. 

“Looks like you have a fun night ahead of you.” Pilots were always a hot commodity no matter where they went. And John was tall and handsome and pilot and goofy and…there was nothing wrong with him that she could come up with besides his love for her. 

“Are you done for the night? I can walk you back.” She nodded, something about the gaggle of girls waiting for him making her chest ache. “I’ll get your coat.”

They walked in silence at a safe distance. Both of them were walking slower than usual. They didn’t want the fact that they were back in each other’s presence to end. Her housing complex came into view all too quickly. “Nice housing for an alleged entry level econ analyst.”

“Guess I’m just special,” she remarked. He looked at her with a smile while she glanced up at the moon. “He’s running for Congress. Landry. He offered to help my sister fix a problem if I agreed to pretend to be with him for the campaign.” 

“Why’re you telling me?” He took a tentative step closer to her. 

“Because you asked earlier if it would’ve worked. And it would have. I wanted to tell you the truth about Afghanistan and my job. But my sister made a mistake and there was a way for me to protect her from the consequences and I had to take it.” She fiddled with the buttons of his jacket as tears trickled down her cheeks. “It killed me to say those things to you. I didn’t mean any of it. Those few months we shared together were the best of my life and I wouldn’t trade those memories for anything and I’m sorry I got in the way of the things we dreamt about under the stars every night.” 

“Give me your hand, Cass.” With a furrowed brow, she offered him her left hand and he locked his eyes onto hers. He slid the ring off her finger and her breath caught in her throat as he held it up between them. “I’ll make sure this is hand delivered to Mr. Landry.” The ring dropped into his pocket.

“Will you kiss me now, John Egan?”

“Only because you asked so nicely, Cassandra Cooper.” It felt like coming home when his lips touched hers. It felt like the first warm day after a dull winter. Like seeing your favorite movie again. Like the first bite of the food you’ve been craving. 

He had thought about trying to track her down. Thought about paying off an intel officer or sweet talking the personnel lady on the fifth floor into looking her up but had always been struck by the look in her eyes when she had left him that night. Begging him to just let it be. Begging him to let her go. Begging him to spare her the pain of his words because the solemn emptiness of her soul was the only thing that would allow her to turn around and leave him behind. 

She hadn’t been able to think about him. Not if she wanted to survive. Not when she needed to shut down and smile and pretend to fall in love with the weasel of man that had cunningly offered to help her sister. Cass hadn’t been able to say no. Her only regret was that she hadn’t been able to tell him herself. 

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, please forgive me.” But she would never be able to forgive herself for taking away all the time they could have had together. 

“Already forgiven, Cass, I promise.” It was easy to forgive the people you loved. Less so to forget. Less so to heal from the wounds they inflicted on you. She had hurt him so deeply. Eroded all the trust he had in her. Eroded the trust he had for his own gut instinct. Kissing it better was one thing. Picking where they had left off was something else entirely.

“I want to try, John. I want to start over and I want to do this the right way. Even if it’s hard.” 

“I’ll choose us every goddamn day, Cass.” She kept her hands on his cheeks as she dropped back down from her toes. “You look stunning tonight. I didn’t get the chance to tell you.” John began to lead her in a dance that could only be heard between the matching, racing beats of their hearts. 

“Thank you but anything is going to look more stunning than the camis you saw me in all summer.” He kissed her with a laugh. 

“You looked stunning in those too.” Lest she forget that was exactly how he had fallen in love with her in the first place. Low bun and camo pants and rolling her eyes every time a pilot tried to flirt with her. She had beaten a particularly persistent one in a pull up contest to prove her point. “Cass?”

“Yes?”

“Would you like to go on a date with me tomorrow?” She looked around at the mountains and desert. At the bland buildings and miscellaneous pods of gym equipment. 

“I suppose.” Their original first date had been to a seafood shack where they broke down their own crabs and were covered in Old Bay and laughed as they walked along the pier and he had kissed her senseless while the sun set over the water. It was the most perfect memory. “Though I doubt you can top our first first date.” John smiled and traced the tip of his nose up and down the side of her cheek. 

“I just want to be with you, Cass. Make you feel special. Remind us both that there is still good in this world worth fighting for.” 

“I like the way that sounds,” she whispered as she pressed a kiss to his jaw. “You’ll find me when your day is over?” 

You’ll always find me?

I’ll always find you. In this life, or any other. 

When two souls are meant to tangle together across the universe there is no timeline that can halt them. There would be time apart and forces who tried to keep them that way but none would succeed. You cannot prevent the inevitable. 

Two stars colliding into a supernova with no limit in sight. There was no before. There was no after. Only them.

“Yes, Cass. I’ll find you.”

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

Why would a battle fought 54 years ago provide key insight on what Hamas' strategy is today?

Asymmetric Warfare. It's a term that most people don't really understand. Before I did this, I was a United States Army Green Beret and I did a couple of combat tours in Iraq. And needless to say, asymmetric warfare was kind of our thing.

So, in practical terms, it is a type of war between belligerents whose relative military power, strategy or tactics differ significantly. And as a result of this, the weaker opponent will use unconventional tactics in order to maximize one's strengths against a stronger opponent's weaknesses or vulnerabilities.

For instance, an Insurgent force does not have the freedom of movement or firepower necessary to attack a forward operating base or a heavily armed column. So instead, they focus on softer logistical targets. They may choose to use a remotely activated roadside bomb instead of engaging in direct fire.

In many situations, the weaker adversary has fewer personnel and resources. And so, a significant part of their strategy is to preserve those limited resources and use the munitions that they have to the greatest possible advantage.

But here's the thing. To pull this off long term, you generally need a consistent means of supply combined with enough territory to hit, run and then hide. And Hamas doesn't have these things, at least not in sufficient supply to win against the IDF.

So, what's their strategy? What can Hamas leverage that will allow them to conduct offensive operations against a much stronger opponent and then avoid getting destroyed by the IDF's vastly superior military capability?

And the answer to that question as horrific, as it is, is civilian casualties, but probably not the ones you're thinking.

To understand this, let's discuss that example 54 years ago. The Tet Offensive in the Vietnam War virtually wiped out the Viet Kong. It was by every objective measure, a complete tactical failure. But strategically, it was invaluable. Because while achieving none of its military objectives, the Tet Offensive shattered Americans' perspective on the situation on the ground.

Opponents of the war were able to effectively use the offensive as a demonstration of the futility of American involvement. Hollywood, Academia and many in the mainstream media went to work convincing the American people that the war couldn't be won. Or perhaps just shouldn't even be fought. And in a representative government, when the electorate decides that a war is lost, it is, regardless of the situation on the ground.

Now, understand something. I'm not making an argument for the pros or cons of fighting the Vietnam War. I'm merely illustrating a point about modern Asymmetric Warfare. The lesson of the Tet Offensive is when fighting the West, you don't defeat their military. You win their electorate. And the way to do that is through the institutions which shape culture in the West, namely Hollywood, the Media and Academia.

If Hamas had decided to engage in a conventional military attack directed at only legitimate military targets, the IDF would have effectively destroyed their war fighting capability within days, and Hamas knows it. So, they engaged in asymmetric strategy.

Once we understand this, their actions on October 7th, as horrific as they are, begin to make more sense. Hamas didn't just target civilians because they were easy targets or because they despise Jews, although both of those things are true. The attack and the subsequent taking of hostages was actually designed to elicit a major response from the IDF.

But why? Well, maybe it's because to achieve their strategic objectives, Hamas needs civilian casualties. And more specifically they need Palestinian civilian casualties. And this is why.

The two entities in this conflict that lose the most from a greater peace agreement in the Middle East are Iran and the terrorist organizations they support. Upsetting this process requires much more than the random launching of rockets into Israel or strikes against legitimate military targets. The IDF is more than capable of handling such incursions, and the Israeli people have become all too accustomed to weathering such attacks without demanding an overwhelming military response. something more significant was required.

And October 7th created the kind of conditions that demanded a significant and sustained response. They needed something so obscene that Israel would have no choice but to hit back hard.

And this is where the second component of Hamas' strategy plays out. How to get Palestinian casualties. Any government actually worried about civilian casualties dedicates resources to evacuating their own civilians from hostile areas and attempts to separate the civilian population from legitimate military targets. So what conclusion should we come to when a governing body decides to do the exact opposite?

In this asymmetric environment, Hamas is not only incentivized to kill Israeli civilians, they're incentivized to maximize their own civilian casualties in the short run in order to elicit Western intervention on their behalf. As easy as it might be to explain Hamas's strategy away as nothing but mindless bloodlust, it is actually more sinister than that.

Hamas is responding to the incentive structures certain elements within the West have created. Hamas understand that the real Battlefield is not in Gaza but in the streets, University halls and newsrooms of the West. And so that is their target. And while a ceasefire seems like a humanitarian response to the tragic death of civilians, leaving Hamas intact as an operational and governing body will ultimately just reinforce that the perverse incentive structure remains the same.

And that while the West may claim to "not negotiate with terrorists," they always seem to force Israel to as soon as it becomes politically inconvenient for them.

So here's the hard reality. If you actually want to achieve anything resembling a lasting peace in this part of the world, you're never going to achieve it by creating conditions where terrorists are incentivized to hurt both the civilians of their enemies, and their own in order to achieve their political objectives.

==

This, of course, was completely obvious from the moment of the al-Ahli Hospital hoax, where Western outlets worked overtime to spread Hamas propaganda without regard for truth, all the way through to the present-day "protests" which are anything but organic or grass-roots.

[usaigi]

How @yellowocaballero and I Fixed Daredevil by Headcannoning Him as Mexican

When Daredevil first appeared in 1964, he was a second-generation Irish-American from Hell’s Kitchen, a working-class Irish-immigrant neighborhood. In a time where Irish people weren’t viewed as “white” or “real Americas.” They were a part of the oppressed working class, the bottom of the food chain, who had nothing but their religion, the vehicle of their culture from the old world, to keep them together.

Note: Today, the argument that “Irish people aren’t really white” has been co-opted by white supremacists and has often been used in bad faith against POC. I want it to be clear that what is considered “white” is and has always been a political term with no backing in science. Discrimination against the Irish back in the day was tied to anti-Catholic sentiment in predominately Protestant states, such as England, Scotland, and the United States. Naturally, Anti-Catholic discrimination overlaps with nativist, xenophobic, ethnocentric and/or racist sentiments (ie Anti-Italian, Anti-Polish, Hispanicphonia).

Jack Murdock was a poor boxer with no education or prospects who had to exploit his body to provide for Matt. And recognized that not a way to live and thrive, so he pushed Matt into academics for social mobility. Sound familiar?

At its core, the story of Matt Murdock is an immigrant story. Matt has the immigrant mentality;  immigrants-get-the-job-done type of thing. Gotta hustle and became a lawyer because that’s how he moves up the social and class ladder. And when he does “make it” he chooses to stay and help his neighborhood because he has a cultural connection to it. 

This worked in 1964, I don’t know how much it works now.  

Hell Kitchen isn’t a rough neighborhood primarily occupied by working-class immigrants, it’s another gentrified hipster hellhole. Irish people and people of Irish ancestry in the United States no long face systemic discrimination. 

Therefore, modern-day recontextualizing is to make Matt Mexican. 

Technically, Matt can also be from any other Latin American country or Filipino but I lean towards Mexican since a) this is my post go make your own and b) we get the most discrimination from the mainstream media. Yes, a lot of it is because racists use “Mexican” as a catch-all term for anyone from Latin America but still. Trump made his presidential platform by calling Mexicans illegal rapists and druggies. 

If Matt was actually the son of Jack Murdock*, an undocumented brown immigrant living in a working-class immigrant/POC neighborhood, it gives him the underdog immigrant arc the character is missing in modern-day adaptations. Matt's core is still the same Matt we know and love, he’s still the son of a boxer, whose dad’s pushed him into succeeding academically, who lost his dad to gang violence, and who is extremely Catholic. Someone who wants to fit into middle-class educated (white) society and feels like he has to suppress the "devil" inside until one day he can’t. He's seeing discrimination and poverty and crime and gentrification tear his neighborhood apart and the police turn their back on it since it's predominantly POC. The law has failed them, he's not going to fail them too. 

Meg made the fantastic point that Matt should still be white-passing (and ginger) so he could exist somewhere in between worlds.  And Matt takes advantage of that, as well as his Columbia Law degree to help his community. Matt not using his conditional whiteness and the fancy degree to “escape” his community and instead help it.

[adarkrainbow]

Is it just me, or Americans and Europeans depict the standard, stereotypical fairy tale setting differently?

In my opinion, Americans depict the fairy tale setting as closer to the middle ages. The Fairy Tale Setting is often just a more colorful standard, almost Tokien-like, Fantasy Setting.

Meanwhile, in actual European adaptations of said tales, the stereotypical fairy tale setting is closer to the 18th, 19th century, with the architecture being the only thing vaguely medieval

Yes, I actually do believe as such. Mind you, I cannot speak for all of Europe - mainly France and a handful of other countries I am vaguely aware of adaptations (like England or Germany).

And I believe it is due to two specific things.

A) The very "American" view of fantasy. I mean, we have been repeating and endlessly talking about it for decades now - but for Americans everytime there is something fantasy or magical it is either "standard European medieval setting" either "modern-day America". And when I say "standard European medieval setting", it is this sort of idea and phantasm American built of a vaguely European setting which mixes various countries of Western Europe (Americans only have taken recent interest in other parts of Europe, such as Northern or Eastern, due to the success of things like "Midsommar" and folk-horror and whatnot), and various eras of the Middle-Ages (the Middle-Ages were divided into three specific period quite different from each other), with a good handful of things that were not from the Middle-Ages (like the witch-hunts, for example, they were Renaissance, not medieval).

Of course it is due to a mix of general ignorance about Europe (or any part of the world that is not the USA), and of not actually caring about the original setting since their point is either to parody/reinvent the fairytales in lighter/darker ways, or prove that theses stories are "timeless" and can invent outside of any specific context (which does greatly benefit Americans since like that they can snatch anything they like). Mind you it isn't something universal - take the Disney movies for example. They might not be quite exact, but at least they made a neat effort to evoke different cultures and different eras of Europe. It is very obvious that Disney's Snow-White, Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty take place in various points of Europe's history and in different countries (Snow-White's visual influence by German furniture and statues versus the nods to French culture in Cinderella ; Sleeping Beauty's medieval illumination visual versus the more modern royal outfits of Cinderella, etc...). But it is an effort that got completely lost through time (and I think it can be shown in how, when Disney made "Enchanted", their fairytale setting was turned into a random fantasy setting outside of time and space - it did reflect quite well how people saw the fairytale world at the time).

And you know what is even worse? This "random medieval setting" you speak of is NOT even Tolkien's! Tolkien setting was not medieval in the slightest, and doesn't look like your usual "medieval setting". Just look at the visuals of the Lord of the Rings movie, compare it with some "random fairytale setting" and you see the huge gap. If anything, Tolkien's world is more of a "Dark Ages" (you know, this unknown gap between Antiquity and Middle-Ages) feeling than anything, due to mixing Ancient Scandinavia with Ancient Greece and Dark Ages Arthurian Britain.

But... when you think about it, that the Americans would create such an unclear and artificial setting for their fairytales make sense, since this is literaly what "their" fairytales were compiled as. I'll explain: when you ask an American to list you fairytales, when you see the fairytales used in the American media, it is a Frankenstein-creature. You've got the brothers Grimm and Charles Perrault and Andersen and Joseph Jacobs and nursery rhymes and some Asbjornsen and Moe fairytales... Their exposition to fairytale was by compilations of stories literary and folkloric, from different centuries and different countries, mixed together as one. As such... it makes sense for them a fairytale world would look like a pile of mashed-potatoes in terms of history-geography. Because they have to build a world that mix all of these stuff as one... (Plus something-something about the Americans being fascinated by the Middle-Ages because they did not have one?)

B) The Europeans are very "conscious" about fairytales. I will almost say "self-conscious".

Europeans are bound to always test and try various time-eras, fashions and context for fairytales due to a set of three reasons.

1) We have centuries of "traditional medieval imagery" that the Americans lack. Since our fairytales were published between the 17th and 19th centuries - some even by the 20th - Europe already underwent the whole "Random medieval setting" phase through popular imagery and children book and whatnot. America just begun it from the 19th/20th century - we have been at it for two, three more centuries. So today we are moving forward (and in general, while there are many aspects Europe is "late" compared to the USA, in many other ways Europe is "in advanced" compared to the USA, just because of how "young" this country's history is).

2) We are aware of the context of our own fairytales. Due to the language barrier, for example, we know every time a story comes from somewhere else. We have folktales compilations classified by countries and regions. And everytime we bring up a specif set of fairytales, we bring up the life, job and time-era of the fairytale tellers (Perrault, Grimm, Andersen, which are our "national treasures" - unlike Americans for which they're just "yeah little foreign guys we see in the distance"). As such when the French talk about Cinderella or Puss in Boots, the very images of Renaissance are brought up, the same way a German will immediately think of the Napoleonian wars and the post-Napoleon era when thinking of the Grimms - even though the fairytales are supposed to be in the "pseudo-medieval" setting.

3) Europe has been flooded and dominated by the American media when it comes to fairytales. As such we are very aware and accustomed to the "pseudo-medieval" setting popularized by America, and when Europeans try to do their own thing, they usually try to set themselves apart from it, due to knowing how cliche and Americanized this already is. Something very similar happened with French fantasy literature for example - French fantasy books are always trying to stand away from the "cliche American fantasy book" precisely because we are flooded with them and they form the bulk of our fantasy literature, so as such we are very aware of the flaws and stereotypes and expectations coming with the genre... It also doesn't help that most of the castles and "old-fashioned" architecture around Europe is not medieval per se (or that the medieval architecture is for example very impractical when it comes to filming movies), and we have much more Renaissance buildings and the like. In France for example most castles are Renaissance-era. "Real" medieval castles (as in medieval castles not "remade" by Renaissance or modern designers) are much rarer, or not as well preserved as the Renaissance ones.

Anyway this post got way bigger than I intended, but if you ask me some of my thoughts, here they are - mind you they are just my thoughts and I can't speak for every European. I am just one little eye and one little mind in a big big world... But that's the things I am led to believe.

[teaspoon-of-salt]

Xiong was born in 1973 in Phab Kheb, Laos, one of 11 children in a family that fled the country in 1975 and spent four years in a refugee camp in Thailand before emigrating to the United States, according to Sahan Journal. He grew up in St. Paul and was valedictorian of his class at Humboldt High School in 1992.

Xiong graduated with a political science degree from Carleton College in Northfield in 1996 and began traveling around the country as a motivational speaker, storyteller and rap artist, billing himself as the country's first Hmong comedian.

Xiong helped organize the first Hmong Minnesota Day at the Minnesota State Fair in 2015, and was named a Bush Fellow in 2019 to earn a master's degree in public affairs.

With Xiong's death, the Hmong American community in the Twin Cities has lost a true leader, "consummate organizer and cultural interpreter," said longtime friend Pakou Hang. In his presentations and writings, she said, Xiong was a teacher who tried to show people how to be kind, generous and do the right thing.

Xiong connected people across generational, cultural and political lines who traveled the United States to speak at schools, colleges and businesses, Hang said. As a friend, he could inspire laughter in every conversation, she said.

[Rest of article under cut.]

A highly regarded Hmong American activist, speaker and comedian from the Twin Cities was found dead Monday in Medellín, Colombia, after kidnappers demanded $2,000 in ransom from his family.

Tou Ger Xiong, 50, was killed while on a vacation to Medellín. His brother, Eh Xiong, confirmed his death Tuesday morning on Facebook.

"The pain of his loss is indescribable. We extend our deepest gratitude to all who have offered their condolences, thoughts, and prayers," Xiong's family wrote in the Facebook statement.

Xiong, who lived in Woodbury, was kidnapped Sunday after a date with a woman he met on social media, according to the Colombian newspaper El Colombiano.

A group of men contacted his family demanding $2,000 — the equivalent of $8 million in Colombian pesos — and killed him a day later without collecting the money.

Three American tourists, including Xiong, have been murdered in the last month, El Colombiano reported.

Kidnappings in Colombia are on the rise, according to authorities. In the first few months of 2022, 35 people were abducted in the country, and that figure is more than double this year for the same period.

Early last month, the father of a Colombian soccer star was freed after he was held for around a week by a guerrilla group.

[The excerpt above came from here.]

Former state Sen. Mee Moua of St. Paul, for whom Xiong worked as a volunteer coordinator in her successful 2002 campaign, said in a statement that she was "weighed down with grief for my friend," and called Xiong "a one-of-a-kind modern-day hero."

U.S. Rep. Betty McCollum, D-St. Paul wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, that Xiong's death was "devastating news" and that his work as a comedian and activist "touched many lives in the Twin Cities and beyond."

Hang said Xiong would perform skits based on his own stories growing up as a refugee and other lessons from the larger Hmong community. She recalled him bringing older Hmong women onto the stage to demonstrate how they would pick corn or fetch water as children, setting it to music and transforming it into a dance.

Xiong sought to connect first-generation Hmong American kids with classmates of other races, and strengthened intergenerational relationships with their families by making them proud to be Hmong, she said.

Xiong and Hang worked together on many community causes, including the formation of the Coalition for Community Relations, a group that traveled to rural Wisconsin from the Twin Cities in 2004 to "bear witness" at the trial of Chai Soua Vang, a Hmong American man eventually convicted for killing six hunters.

"We're not here to defend Chai," Xiong told the Star Tribune at the time. "We're coming together to accentuate the positives in the Hmong community."

Xiong also brought media attention to a hunger strike in Northern California in 2021 after a Hmong cannabis farmer was killed by police, Hang said. He flew to California to lead a march and gather stories. Discriminatory ordinances passed by Siskiyou County were later ruled unlawful.

"We don't have anyone else in the community like that," Hang said.

[lailoken]

"The Swedish language contains many words specific to the practice of folk magic, for which there are no precise English equivalents. These terms can be literally rendered into conventional English, but a great deal of the cultural basis of the tradition is lost by doing so. Just as African American hoodoo practitioners speak in their own culturally-mediated dialect when they use words like fixed, dressed, goofered, jinxed, and tricked, so do Swedish trolldom practitioners have a culture-specific context for words like förgjord, tyda, gnidträd, tomte, and makt. Because literal translations do not convey these magical meanings, Swedish words are retained throughout this book, resulting in an intentionally "Swede-lish" text similar to the spoken English of old-time Swedish-Americans.

• Älvaeld (elf-fire): Skin diseases and rashes said to be caused by älvor burning a person. See also Älvablåst.

• Älvablåst (wind from the elves): Skin rashes and diseases said to be caused by älvor blowing on a person. See also Älvaeld.

• Älvakvarn, älvkvarnar (elven quern, elven mills): Huge blocks of stone into which small pits have been carved. These have been in use as sacrificial spots from the Stone Age up until modern days. The most common sacrifice is a doll. The small pits are usually anointed with butter before anything is placed in them. In Sweden prior to the mid-1800s it was recorded that when times were hard and the crops failed people used to have sex on these stones and leave the semen in the pits as a sacrifice.

• Alver, alv, älvor (elf): A spiritual ancestor; also a species of small nature spirit almost identical to the fairies of the British Isles, if those were also considered to be ancestral spirits. Alver make their homes in ancient Scandinavian burial mounds. The smallest of them are amused by playing with young children and are reputed to suck their blood.

• Ångerstål (steel of regret): A murder weapon or a sharp metal tool that has accidentally broken. It is generally used to make magical tools but also occurs in spells for protection.

• Aning (hunches, suspicions): Vague feelings of spiritual distress, often associated with worry or nervousness. A tyda of the inner senses.

• Återställa (recovering, restoring): Bringing an item that has been förgjord (destroyed) back to normal. See also Bota.

• Besvärja (to speak about something): The recitation of troll formulas, also the process of conjuring spirits.

• Besvärjelseformen, maning (the incantation formula; exhortation, command, conjuration): An adjuration at the end of a troll formula.

• Bjära, bese (carrier spirit): A spirit in the form of a ball or a doll.

• Bot, bota (cure, healing or curing): The process of restoring something that has been förgjord (destroyed). See also Återställa.

• Brännvin (burnt wine): Clear, strong grain or potato vodka; it is used as a scrying medium in some forms of spådom.

• Cyprianus (Saint Cyprian book): See Svartkonstbok.

• Djävulen (the Devil): Other names for him are Den Onde, Fan, Pocker, Skam, Hin Håle, Gamle Erik, and Hornpelle.

• Döva (to deafen, to make still): A method used to render weapons harmless, to quell love, to make something numb and still.

• Drömsyner (dream visions): Dreaming true does not only refer to sleeping visions; in trolldom, daydreams or vakendrömmar (waking dreams) are also considered to be tydor of the inner senses.

• Dyfvelsträck (devil's dung): Ferula asafoetida; devil's dung is a common English name given to this foul-smelling plant.

• Fassna (stuck): A condition in which something is magically fastened to a person; usually considered a harmful situation.

• Fegljus (death light): A very small light appearing close to a person who is about to die. A tyda of the inner senses.

• Femudd, femhörning (pentagram star drawn in one stroke): A sign of protection used to bind spirits; symbol of the Virgin Mary.

• Flygrönn (flying rowan): A rowan tree that has grown in another tree and never touched ground.

• Förgjord (un-made, destroyed): Unable to function; bewitched; rendered useless due to curses, hostile trolldom, the evil eye, or spiritual attack. Restoration is via Återställa or Bota. See also Skämma.

• Förtrollad (enchanted, en-trolled): Often used as a synonym to Förgjord (destroyed), it can also mean enchanted in general.

• Fylgia (monitors): Personal guardian spirits. See also Vard.

• Gand (airborne spell): A spell cast into air and sent a great distance.

• Gast (ghost): A visible spirit of the dead; it may occur as a prefix in the names of negative conditions like gastkramad (squeezed by a ghost).

• Gnideld (rubbing fire): See Vrideld.

• Gnidträd (rubbing tree): A tree with two branches or trunks that rub against one another. Such a tree makes a squeaking sound when the wind blows, and is therefore also known as a knarrträd (creaking tree).

• Göra före (to do before): To place something in another's future.

• Hambel, hamn (one's appearance): This refers to the physical appearance as a shroud around the spirit or vålne.

• Hård (hard): The result of a spell to make oneself invulnerable.

• Håg (hag): In English, a hag is a witch who rides people or animals at night, but in trolldom, the håg of a person consists of their desire and mind. To change someone's mind is called hågvända (turning the håg).

• Hågvända (turning the håg): See Håg.

• Ingivelse (spirit-sent impulse): An impulse to act that has been sent by a person's vard or fylgia (guardian spirits) or by other benevolent spirits. As tydor of the inner senses, ingivelser can occur suddenly, without conscious thought or action.

• Jätta (threaten) - Jätta för ont (threaten for evil): To threaten with a curse, which is regarded as a method of cursing a person in itself.

• Jordfast sten (earthbound rock): A rock too large to lift from the soil.

• Kasta ut (cast out): To remove evil by throwing it out, usually at a crossroads or cemetery. Other than speaking a troll formula, the work is silent, and it is not mentioned to others until one night's sleep has passed.

• Klok, kloke (clever): Wise and intelligent; in a magical context it also means well-versed in trolldom.

• Knarrträd, knarrtall, knarrgran (creaking tree, creaking pine, creaking fir): See Gnidträd.

• Kusad (quelled): This dialect term derives from a synonym for trolldom - kuschleri - and means quelled or quenched by trolldom.

• Likfassna (corpse stuck): A negative condition in which the spirit of a dead person is afflicting a living person. See also Likkrosa.

• Likkrosa (corpse crushed): The negative condition of being held down by a spirit of the dead. See also Likfassna.

• Lövjeri (leaf-craft): The use of herbs to cure and remove evil.

• Makt (power): Might, power, and force, in a magical sense.

• Maktstjäla (to steal power) - Maktstulen (robbed of power): The act of stealing another's magical power and the condition of one whose power has been stolen. See also Modstjäla.

• Maning (exhortation): See Besvärjelseformen.

• Mara (night-gaunt): A spirit who torments people at night or in their dreams. The same root appears as "mare" in the English word nightmare.

• Mäta, mätning (measure, measuring): A category of spells using measured strings and tied knots. Magical measuring can be traced back

• Modstjäla (to steal courage) - Modstulen (robbed of courage): Stealing one's courage is a sorcerous act. The term also describes one who suffers from depression or feels low in spirits. See also Maktstjäla.

• Motskott (countershot): A counter-remedy against trollskott.

• Näcken (Nix): A naked spiritual being who resides in streams, rivers, or lakes. He is a shape-shifter and he drowns people, but he also teaches magic and music. In Scandinavia there is only one Nix, who can appear in any body of water, but among the Germans and English, there are many nixes, and the females are called nixies.

• Namnlösa fingret (the nameless finger): The ring finger on the left hand; it is believed to have a direct link to the heart and therefore to a person's power, might, courage, and håg, which reside in the heart.

• Natur (nature): A person's sexuality and capability for procreation.

• Nedsätta (to reduce, to set down) - sätta ned (to put down): The magical destruction of a person's love life or chances to get married. The term may also refer to the destruction of other areas of a person's life.

• Nisse (brownie): See Tomte.

• Ofärdsspådom (oppressive divination): The act of predicting or foretelling harmful events in the future. See Spå.

• Offring (sacrifice, offering): To cure problems through sacrifice, to appease elves, or to offer a spirit something and get something in return.

• Rå, rådare (spiritual ruler): Spirits who act as caretakers and guardians. of a place. They are named after the locations where they reside, such as skogsrå (forest rå), sjörå (lake rå), havsrå (sea rå), bergrå (mountain rå) gruvrå (mining rå), skatters rå (treasure rå), vägrå (road rå), kyrkogårdsrå (cemetery rå), and kyrkrå (church rå). See also Tomte.

• Runa, runor, runkafle (rune, runes, a stick carved with runes): The letters of the Old Norse alphabet are called runes. The same word also refers to charms written in runes or other alphabetic or non-alphabetic characters. To rune can also mean to cast a spell. See also Trollformel.

• Sänningar (sendings): This refers to things by magic or cast upon someone from a distance.

• Sedel (ticket): A slip of paper used for written runes and talismans.

• Sejd, seiðr (sorcery): Used in the Nordic sagas to signify trolldom, this obsolete word has recently been revived by adherents of Asatru.

• Signeri (signs, symbols, marks): To read or speak troll formulas aloud or silently, or to sign or mark something with the cross. The latter may be done "in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost" or silently. See also Välsigna.

• Skämma (shame, taint), skämd (having been shamed): A magical method to render someone powerless and cursed. See also Förgjord.

• Skärsel (garden riddle, flour sifter): A divinatory method using a sieve, sifter, or riddle.

• Smörjning (anointing): The use of ointments to cure and remove evil.

• Solv (string heddle eyes of a loom): There is a very old belief that the world and all the events in it were created by weavers. Therefore, string healds or heddle eyes that are cut off the heddle frame of a loom are magically dangerous because they are outside the world of the weavers. It should be noted that to cut these from the loom can be regarded as a transgressive act.

• Söm (horseshoe nail): a square iron horseshoe nail.

• Sortebog (black arts book): See Svartkonstbok.

• Spå (to predict, to foretell), spådom (divination): The art of foretelling the future, also used as a general synonym for trolldom. The word spå survives in the Scottish term spaewife, meaning a fortune-telling woman. See also Ofärdsspådom and Tyda.

• Spiritus, spertus (spirit): A spirit, often kept in a box, bottle, or pouch.

• Ställa (to stall, to stand still): The method of making a thief or anyone else stand still and be unable to move from a location. It can also be used to stop game animals from moving, when hunting.

• Stämma (to staunch, to summon, to command): This word meansvto staunch, as in staunching blood, but also to summon people or animals to a place. In the old days, the stämning was announced in the powerful trinity of bedpost, threshold, and ting or court. When someone was stämd to the ting, the messenger first read the summons by the bedpost of the person being called, then a second time at his threshold, and finally at the ting.

• Skogsfru (female forest guardian spirit): Rådare means caretaker or guardian spirit. In the case of the forests, the guardians are usually described as female and may go by names such as the Skogsfru (Forest. Lady) or Skogsrå (Rå of the forest).

• Stöpa (steeping, melting, reshaping): The method of pouring melted lead, tin, wax, or a similar melted liquid into a container of water while holding the water over a person, to cure and remove evil. Stöpa is used for divinatory purposes as well, in which case the various forms and shapes made by the coagulated material are read as signs.

• Svartebog (black book): See Svartkonstbok.

• Svartkonstbok (black arts book): A grimoire or book of sorcery. Other names for this type of book are svartebog (black book), sortebog (black book in Danish), and Cyprianus (a book attributed to Saint Cyprian, the patron saint of occultists and necromancers).

• Svärdsbrev (sword-letter): A written talisman carried on the person for protection from harm. See also Trollbrev.

• Syn (vision), synsk (a visionary): A person who has the ability to see visions (syn) is said to be a synsk or visionary. The word synsk is synonymous with clairvoyant or second-sighted, but in casual conversation, the work synsk is often used to describe those with related abilities who would be known in English as clairsentient, clairaudient, claircognizant, or just plain psychic. An inherited ability, it is a tyda of the inner senses.

• Ting (legislative assembly, court): The word ting is used in this book to describe these assemblies as they were constituted in the old days in Sweden, before Christianity arrived, circa the 9th century. The tings were often held at crossroads or where three borders crossed.These meeting places were commonly the locations of old burial sites and grave mounds. The spirits of the ancestors took part in the procedures of the ting by determining the outcome of various ordeals set before two opponents in a court proceeding.

• Tomte, nisse, gårdsrå, bol-vatte (brownie, land-spirit, house-elf, house-wight): Tomte is the title for, or position given to, a spirit who takes care of a household. The tomte is responsible for the luck in the house and the work done around the home. Originally a spirit of the dead, in modern times the tomte has been popularized as a cute kind of nature spirit. Other names for this spirit are gårdsrå (rå of a farm), nisse (brownie), or bol-vätte (land-wight).

• Torvigg (the lightning bolt of Thor): This name refers to a flint axe of the kind that was made in the Stone Age and was used for cutting and hunting. In Swedish folklore it was said that these ancient axes appeared when lightning bolts from the Norse thunder god Thor struck the ground and that they were his weapons against evil. The torvigg is highly valued in trolldom. It is used to protect oneself from harm and from sorcery and to prevent one from being overpowered by other people or spirits.

• Tránsjuka (obsessive love-sickness): This condition renders one unable to let go of a lover, either due to mental obsession or because one has been förgjord (destroyed through sorcery).

• Troll (troll, goblin, ogre): A class of ancient magical spirits, their sorcery, and the magic performed with their aid. As a prefix, it may be roughly translated as "magical" but in this book the Swedish word is retained in terms like troll-bundle, troll-letter, and troll formula.

• Trolldom (trolldom): folk magic, the Scandinavian equivalent to the folk magic of other nations, such as sorcery, hexerei, braucherei, brujeria, stregoneria, hechicería, hoodoo, conjure, witchcraft, or rootwork.

• Trollaktig (troll-like): A person who behaves as if he or she is wise or knowledgeable in trolldom; a practitioner; someone who is trollkunnig.

• Trollbrev (troll-letter): The generic name for a written talisman for any purpose. A trollbrev may be rolled up and worn in a cylinder hanging around the neck, sewn into clothes so that the symbol is facing outwards, or carried in the inner pocket of a jacket. In modern times it may be worn in a woman's bra. Sewing a trollbrev not meant for curing into your clothes is pointless unless it is for a single occasion, since the paper disintegrates during laundering. See also Svärdsbrev and Värnebrev.

• Trollformel (troll formula): A spoken spell or incantation, either rhyming or in free verse. The wording of each troll formula is kept as a closely guarded secret that is transmitted only to those who inherit an elder practitioner's power and craft. Teaching a troll formula to a student has traditionally meant that the teacher loses the power to use the formula successfully. This is still true today, although, due to the publication of so many troll formulas in books during the past hundred years, contemporary teachers never need give away the specific incantations that they themselves use; instead they can teach their students alternative versions. This is not difficult, as there are more than 50,000 collected troll formulas in Swedish folklore archives alone, and many thousands more in the archives of Norway, Denmark, and the Swedish-speaking part of Finland. The word runa (rune), meaning a written spell, may be used as a synonym for trollformel.

• Trollhare (troll hare): A hare-spirit that is used to draw material goods to a specific place or to steal milk or butter. See also Trollkatt.

• Trollkatt (troll cat): A cat-spirit that is used to draw material goods to a specific place or to steal milk or butter. See also Trollhare.

• Trollknyte (troll bundle): A magical bundle wrapped in cloth and tied shut; knyte is cognate to the English word knotted. See also Trollpåse.

• Trollkunnig (troll-skilled): A person who is skilled in magic; one who is knowledgeable, well-versed, or cunning in trolldom.

• Trollpåse (troll pouch, troll bag): A small pouch made of cloth or chamois skin in which magical articles are contained. See also Trollknyte.

• Trollskott (troll shot): A magical shot to cause harm. It can be done by humans, various spirits, or even forces of nature.

• Tyda, tydor (omen, meanings): Magical indications, decipherments, readings, interpretations, or visions. The word is cognate to the English tidings, meaning messages. Tydor are messages from the world of spirit.

• Utesittning, utiseita (sitting outside): A vision-quest to awaken trolls.

• Våd-eld (accidental fire): A fire resulting from human carelessness.

• Vålne, vålnad (wraith): The spiritual part of a person that survives the death of the physical body.

• Välsigna (signs or marks for well-being): Blessings. See also Signeri.

• Vard (ward): Personal guardian spirit.

• Värnebrev (shielding letter, guardian letter): A written talisman used to protect the wearer from harm. See also Trollbrev.

• Varsel (warning spirits), varsla (forewarning): Tydor that predict evil or tell of evil at another location are called varsel. A dying person's vard or vålnad may carry the forewarning or a tomte may tell of it.

• Vättar (gnomes): An old word meaning spirits in general or spirits who reside in and are a part of nature and the elements.

• Vigt silver (dedicated silver): A piece of jewelry or a coin that has been worn at a wedding.

• Vite (penalty) - Vita (trolldom): Vite, a court-ordered punishment, gave rise to the words vita (a term describing trolldom as a way to magically mete out justice) and han vitar (he casts a justified curse).

• Vrideld (twisted fire): Fire-drilling with a twisting motion. A wooden pole is held horizontally against a vertical wooden surface such as a door, and twisted until the heat of friction produces fire. This fire is used to drive off evil spirits and to remove curses and the evil eye. Also called Gnideld.

• Wittenberg: A German town in which Scandinavian priests studied theology. It is associated with magic, the Jewish kabbalah, and folkloric legends connected to trolldom, magical words, and black arts books."

—

Trolldom:

Spells and Methods of the Norse Folk Magic Tradition

'GLOSSARY

by Johannes Gårdbäck

[alatabouleau]

German terms of endearments for your fic

.Now, it's been two years since I've fallen into the X-Men/Cherik-fandom and one thing that I have seen continuously is people trying to find terms of endearment in German for Erik to use for Charles (or his mother for him). (I've lost count of how many times I've seen the word "Liebling" spelled wrong) And honestly, no offense. I know it's hard writing a character who speaks a language you don't. And obviously, you're gonna make mistakes. So I thought I'd share my knowledge as a mother tongue in German and let you know some of the most common ways we described our loved ones. ;) DISCLAIMER: I am but one single person, grown up south-east from Berlin, I DO NOT speak for the whole of Germany, nor do I ever intent to, especially since we are anything but a cultural monolith. Just keep that in mind while reading. ;)

Exclusively romantic terms: - Liebste (fem.)/ Liebster (masc.) : literally means "most loved". Closest English equivalent is probably "love" or "beloved". Bit old-fashioned. Makes you sound like a 20th-century-gentleman. ;) Make sure to write it "I-E" NOT the other way around! It would make the opposite sound. - Geliebte (fem.) / Geliebter (masc.): literally "beloved". Makes you sound even older, like Jane-Eyre-19th-century-old. Again, I before E. - Süße (fem.) / Süßer (masc.): literally "sweetie" (I KNOW this is probably now confusing, but trust me.) This is where we get into the... sappy side of German. Like, there are some mid-forty/fifty-couples who use that, but the rest makes it probably just cringe. (I know I am right now really helpful by starting with those that are not really modern, but I've seen this used because people translating English terms so I just wanted to say it here.)

Terms for both romantic and parental love: - Liebling: literally "darling". Classic, neutral, always the safe option for every situation. (I before E ;) ) - Schatz: literally "treasure". Again, safe option, though this leans rather to the romantic side, but can be used for children either way. And then of course, some animal pet names may be used for either children or romantic partners, but honestly, I don't know any couples who do that. So, those will go into the parental category, I'm afraid.

Terms for children: -Spatz: "sparrow". That's what we basically use as "sweetie". You can also use the diminutive "Spätzchen" for either toddlers or said by grandmothers. -Maus: "mouse". same thing. Diminutive is "Mäuschen". Tendency in usage for girls, but can work for either gender. (This is what my Mom still calls me sometimes even though I'm already 22! XD) -Motte: "moth". This is now really rather for girls, and rather those whose names start with M. -Krümel: "crumb". Not used by many, rather comes from the North, also rather used for unborn children in the womb. -Fussel: "fluff". Also not that common but can be cute in my PoV. :) -Hase: "rabbit". Diminutive is "Häschen". This one's rather for boys in my experience.

And then again, at the end of the day, expressions of affection are personal and as we get more personal in German, we tend to use our respective dialects. Yes, there are actually quite a many dialects for our relative "small" country. Around 30, to be concrete. Though they are all decreasing in being used, sadly, as we get more and more globalized and mobilized. However, here are some examples that I know, my knowledge being utterly limited as I am only one single person from the region south of Berlin:

-Kleene (fem.) / Kleener (masc.): "little one". If you ever have a character originating from Berlin or south of Berlin, this can be used for children. -Meechen: "girl" in the dialect of the region called "Lausitz" around the border of Brandenburg and Saxonia. Also for kids. -Schätzelein: diminutive of "treasure" in Colognian dialect. Romantic in nature, though it can also be used in a way like hairdressers in American movies sometimes call their customers "sweetie". (please, if there's a person from Cologne here, correct me on that!) -Liebchen: "darling" or "beloved" in Saxonian dialect, I believe. Rather used by old couples. -Min Dern (fem.)/ Min Jung (masc): "my girl/boy". Northern dialect. In the region around Hamburg, if I remember correctly. Used for kids.

That's it for the moment. I will probably add to this list whenever I learn some new, but I hope this is already helpful for some people. Have a great day! :) Also, if to other German mother-speakers, feel free to share your perspective, correct me if I did put something in the wrong region or enlighten me with other words.

[waksworldrebooted]

MTV Era Motorcity Masterpost (+ NEVER BEFORE SEEN INFORMATION)

In 2000, Chris Prynoski pitched a cartoon called Motorcity.

He made a card and a website promoting the show, which wouldn't see the light of day until the Walt Disney Company got their hands on it.

THE SETUP

"MotorCity is The Dukes of Hazzard meets Akira. It's American Graffiti and Big Daddy Roth rumbling with 8 cylinders into the world of Sci-Fi. It's the heart of American car culture driven to the next level."

 "Sex, cars, Rock & Roll, and the freedom to wrap your ride around a tree trunk goin' 160."

"In the near future, concerns over global warming, pollution, and the ever-worsening problem of gridlock in America’s major cities brings about the Anti-Combustion Acts of 2009." "These laws banned the use of any vehicle powered by an internal combustion engine. At first there was a lot of vocal opposition. But the so-called "Digital Revolution" as well as the advent of amazing new transportation technologies neatly filled the void, and the benefits of an improved environment along with a safer, faster and more efficient means of getting from point A to B managed to win even the staunchest opponents over. The oil companies and car manufacturers were forced to shut down under the political and economic pressures." "And a new era was born. Cleaner, faster and safer. America’s cities became modern utopias where its citizens could travel without fear or hazard in comfortable flying boxes affectionately known as "living rooms", and Detroit (The Renaissance City), became the finest example of this new policy. But with all of this wondrous innovation, something was lost. Something inherent in the soul of old America, something called freedom. The freedom to go anywhere. Anyhow. As fast, or as slow as you want. The freedom to speed. And the freedom to die." "This is where our characters come in. A few radicals realized that although you might never die in the "living rooms" , you’ll never really live in them either. So in the "Live fast and die young" mind-set, they fight the law. Scavenging parts and gas from Detroit’s massive underground, Mike Chilton and his gang, as well as a few others are trying to recapture some of what it meant to risk all for the freedom of speed."

THE CHARACTERS

Mike Chilton: A young talent on the illegal race circuit. Mike's right leg is always twitching and itching to jam a gas pedal to the floorboards, and his foot is as lead as they come. He's got gasoline surging through his veins and a 450 horsepower soul. His heart burns to drive and it's all he can do to keep moving faster and faster so that the flames don't consume him. He might be a gangly 19-year-old kid, but his ride has as much muscle as he'll ever need and he knows how to use it.

Vehicle of choice: Retrofitted '77 Trans Am

Julie Capulsky: An Anthropology student with a quick mind and a quicker pulse. She's a city girl with a passion for adventure who's secretly writing a paper on the underground "Burner" culture. As she gets to know Mike and his crew, she feels the freedom of the road and learns the power of a rumbling big block at her command. She is torn between the high performance life of a Gearhead and the love of her father who has sworn to take them down.

Vehicle of Choice: Any Hot Rod that'll give her a ride.

Lt. Capulsky: Julie's Dad and head of Detroit's Anti-Combustion Enforcement Division. He's old enough to remember when the highways were the arteries of America and the drivers were its blood. He rode with Fast Eddy in his youth and understands the joy of inhaling the fumes of burning rubber as the hot road turns his tires to black jelly. He's forced to deal with enforcing a law he's not sure he believes in. But that doesn't stop him from holding the record for the most illegal auto busts in the state of Michigan.

Vehicle of choice: Police "Living Room"

Ed Pirelli: (Fast Eddy) The old-timer who serves as Mike and the crew's link to the past, as well as their guide for the future. A wrecked hulk of a man, Eddy lived in a time when America was the land of wide-open spaces, and you had the liberty to go where, when and how you wanted to travel. You had the freedom to live, and the freedom to die. None of those damn boxes.

Vehicle of choice: Retrofitted '58 Chevy Roadster

Greg Raden: This young cop looks up to Lt. Capulsky as his ultimate hero. Born after the Anti-Combustion Act, He doesn't understand the rush of a vibrating steering wheel responding to every reflex of your sweaty palms. He wants nothing more than to grind the gears of the "Burners" to a halt.

Vehicle of choice: Police "Living Room"

Dave Earnhardt: Mike's worthy rival on the race circuit. He's a speed demon who stops at nothing to win. He might be Mike's worst enemy on the tar, but he'd take a speeding bullet for him off the track.

Vehicle of choice: Retrofitted '69 Camaro RS

Holly Biscayne: A fellow "Burner" who has a thing for Mike. She's jealous and suspicious of Julie's big city motives. She wants to make sure that when the checkered flag waves, she'll be on top.

Vehicle of choice: Retrofitted '05 Jaguar convertible

Brute Conklin: The bastard child of internal combustion and computer technology. This crafty gearhead beats "The Man" at his own game with a never-ending digital assault on the computers that control the Global Satellite System.

Vehicle of choice: Chopped 98' Harley Pan-head

Claire Constance: This ice queen might look like a hot number, but she's really a wet blanket who tries to smother her best friend Julie's fire. She can't understand what's with risking your life in the "sewers" when you can be shopping in style in the safety and comfort of your own clean home.

Vehicle of choice: None if she can help it

Promo card released in 2000

Concept art made shortly after the trailer (ones that closely resemble the final show)

From left to right: Luv (Dutch), Holly Biscayne, Chuck, Mike Chilton, Julie Kapulsky, Claire Constance, Texas, Greg Raden (Tooley), Lt Kapulsky (Abraham Kane), and The Mayor of Detroit

Pitch Trailer

[quarter]

I've been thinking a lot about something recently. before I posted about it exposing them and they deactivated their blog, I looked at the blog of the person who called me a "mixed nigger bitch" and saw many posts that mutuals had reblogged, that I've seen, some that I even liked and some that I was put off by (I hadn't realized they were all posted by the same person). and the ones that threw me off were all memes that had something in common; they were all pictures or videos of black people (mostly black men, I'd say) and/or heavy use of aave situated in surreal or "goofy" scenarios. and, like, in all of them, it's clear from a black person's perspective that black people were part of the joke if not the punchline itself. it's modern day minstrelsy, circulated by racist people — who call black people slurs in their dms — and then shared by nonblack people who claim to not be antiblack and have been informed about this phenomenon for years by black people on this very platform. and yet, always a few days after the semestral "beware of digital blackface" post we're forced to make, everyone goes back to reblogging those so-called "goofy ahh" memes. and they're often posted by those cryptofashes who are outed as so only because they eventually make fun of other groups or causes that nonblack people sympathize with more. because the thinly-veiled antiblackness present in their humor isn't enough.

it's frustrating, I've lost friends because of it, and I wish it would stop, but it feels like something only visible to the people affected by it and the rest doesn't care about. I often wonder if I'm being too "sensitive" when I spot some of these memes, since so many mutuals reblog it, even occasional black mutuals who reblog it to share it with their black friends — and then the nonblacks think they're in on it and it inevitably breaches containment — but when this kind of thing happens, I'm brought back to reality and realize my instincts are almost always right when it comes to these things.

anyways, it's like, concerning, at the very least. because it's not just a matter of "which memes you should laugh at", it's about how these kinds of memes that ironize racial oppression are one of the main things that draw white people into fascist circles nowadays. so the question is: why is the line between the memes "the good whites" share and the memes the nazis share so thin? if you care about black people so little that you think our existence and the culture of american black people are laughable, how much different are you from the fashes really? just something to think about. I just hope I'm not the only one who thinks about it

[commonblackbirdxx]

Heya, Written by the victors is back for chapter 2.

Crossover between httyd and rotg.

Pairings: Hijack, Hiccstrid (past)

Alternate History for httyd where the dragons did not go into hiding and that dragons coexist with humans in modern society. The guardians of childhood need to seek out a group of elusive autumn spirits to gain information on Pitch and his allies.

Chapter 2 summary:

Jack and the other guardians try to make sense of Man in Moon's message.

While a certain someone reads a news article about themselves.

1,000 years of history: Emperor Hiksti Hræðilegt Haddock III under the lens of modern pop culture

Roughly 1000 after his death, Emperor HIksti Hræðilegt Haddock III remains one of the most relevant and influential figures of history. From being the social pariah of his tribe to becoming an emperor, his story had captured the hearts and imagination of countless people.

With Nowflix announcement of creating a live-action series about the emperor and his dragon riders. The Daily NIghtfury recount how pop culture portrayed the emperor Hiksti Haddock III in the last 300 years.

How to train your dragon series (1704) by Cressida Howell

300 years later, Cressida Howell’s ‘How to train your dragon’ is still influential in how pop culture view the emperor. As one of the more popular children’s books in the North and South America, it ignited an interest about the life of the late Hiksti Haddock III.

Charming, dutiful, sarcastic and slightly awkward. The Hiskti Haddock III from ‘How to train your dragon’ (1704) by Cressida Howell is an adventurer and an engineer who wanted to explore the world and just happened to be a very endearing character. Originally released in America as a children’s book, it was a breath of fresh air compared to the gritty portrayals of the emperor in a serious and dramatic historical novel of Europe in the late 1600’s and early 1700s. It was released in Europe 5 years after its American release with mixed reviews from European critics. Though a century later, Europe have warmed up to the slightly whimsical portrayal of the emperor.

Where no one goes (1806) by Richard Broom

Introduced in 1856 to a polarising audience, it goes against the common depiction of Emperor Hiksti as a charismatic military commander in a dramatic historical novel full of glory of the war. ‘Where no one goes’ simply portrays King Hiksti III as a man in his 30s and so full of melancholy, unlike the popular novels which focused more during his youth and great battles he fought and less about his older self during the time of peace. Battle hardened and weary, ‘where no one goes’ depicts the brutally of war as the now adult King Hiksti recounts his youth. Of sleepless days where he dreams of enemy soldiers who burned to death by dragon fire, his question of morality as he builds another weapon of destruction and in the end of the novel ends with the emperor longing for the simpler times of his youth.

Highland seas series (1989) by Rachel Brook

Derided by the critics as a shallow bodice ripper novel, nonetheless it managed to have a dedicated readers to become a series. Set in an alternate universe where Hiksti Haddock III did not become a king and instead became a runaway before the final test against the monstrous nightmare, he finally become an adventurer he was meant to be. Readers have bemoaned the lost potential of the novel, setting aside the wonderful worldbuilding from the first chapters to focus on romance and softcore porn.

The Great King (2007) by Hiksti Blackwood

‘The Great King’ by Hiksti Blackwood took Emperor Hiksti’s steady image and shook it to its core. It’s a historical novel about Emperor Hiksti Haddock III but also works as a study on childhood and coming of age in medieval society, child marriages and traumas of war.

[bryce-bucher]

Basidia Post #2

Menuz:

A lot of work put into Basidia goes into the various menus and ui elements. I'm sorry if it's not terribly interesting, but for the past two weeks its basically all I've been looking at. More specifically, I've been working on a door lock system and a bomber's notebook style journal.

Lock System:

The Winds of Basidia is a time-loop game, and, as such, Modus and I have put a lot of thought into how we want to allow players to take knowledge they've gained into a subsequent loop and do things faster next time. One of the things we came up with was a lock system. The idea is that the player will go through some questline to learn the combination to a lock, and then on the next loop they can just skip the quest and go directly to the lock with the combo they've recorded. For the actual design of the lock, we came up with a marble turning system somewhat inspired by various Myst and Riven puzzles. There are four marbles placed on a comet-shaped bit of blue marble that can be turned in 4 different orientations. The comet-shape has cultural significance with ties to the Basidia church, but I'll likely go into more detail about that another time.

Reminder Screen:

The journal is made up of two sections: the reminder screen, and the locks screen. This menu is a feature I've been very excited to implement, and as of today the "reminders" section is nearly complete. The locks screen will be used to manually write down any lock combinations the player comes across, but I haven't gotten started on it yet. The reminders screen allows players to scroll through a list of discovered locations and manually place little reminder icons on a timeline that goes through the three days that the game takes place in. That's basically it. Despite my excitement I have a hard time finding things to talk about with this menu. I just really love it when games put the onus on the player to keep track of all the things they have to do, and I also love it when games give the player little tools and interfaces to do with what they will. In a way, I think that (for a lot of genres) the closer a game plays to an operating system, the better. I am really happy with how the visuals for this screen came out, and I think that coming up with and adding in new little icons to represent things the player might want to make note of will be fun.

Conclusion:

I find it really hard to make quick progress on menus because working on them is kind of a slog, so I hope they are more interesting to learn about than they are to make. Despite how grueling the process is, I'm always really excited when progress gets made on them, and it genuinely pains me to see how many modern games put so little thought into how they can spice up menus and UI from an aesthetic perspective. Modus and I are both pretty passionate about vibin' UIs, and it's been nice for us to put some nice ones together for this game. I think it's something people should try to have the most fun with as they can, and I absolutely do not encourage anyone to think of menus as something that needs to be purely mechanical first and foremost. For the next two weeks I'm gonna be working on Midwest Lost (my souls-like that takes place in the american midwest), and I am gonna have a lot of fun showing that one off, so see ya then. Oh yeah, maybe I should also mention Modus and I are both working on making personal websites, so maybe you'll hear more about that in the future.

[crybabyboyscout]

It’s funny how y’all they/thems want to deny culture norms for when it comes to gender in modern society but call yourselves two-spirited and embrace Native American gender norms. Y’all are so lost. Seek help. “Afro-Indigenous”. Do you even know what nation you’re claiming to be part of? Do you even practice any indigenous culture or do you just claim it as an ethnicity?

🤣 you could’ve invested the time you took to send this on yourself. Instead, you could’ve asked what ethnicity I am, what tribes I belong to.

If you spent more than 2 seconds coming to my blog to bash me, you’d know full well where I’m from, what I practice, what my beliefs are.

Have a good day.

[literary-illuminati]

Book Review 27 – The Word for World is Forest by Ursula LeGuin

I’ve meant to read more LeGuin for a long time – I read Wizard of Earthsea in elementary school, the Dispossessed a few years back, and several volumes worth of Omelas discourse, but that’s about it – but I’ll be honest; I only grabbed this because I was desperately sprinting through shorter books to catch up to my reading goal and someone recommended it as being reasonably-sized. That said, I’m really incredibly glad I’m did.

The book tells the story of a stable, peaceful world being violently colonized by foreigners with a sharply limited understanding of its ecology and an (at best0 utterly condescending and dismissive attitude towards the native inhabitants. Eventually, all the atrocities give rise to a violent resistance movement among the colonized and, after a dramatic change in metropolitan politics destabilizes the colonial apparatus and several massacres, they force the (surviving) colonists to surrender and leave the world behind. The book ends on a mournful note, with the idea that the violence necessary to defeat the colonists has permanently tainted indigenous society, and the near-utopian idyll of their prior lives is now lost forever.

So! Can you guess that this book was written by an American in the early ‘70s?

But actually it was a fascinating read, if as much as a cultural artifact as as a narrative.

At it’s most basic – one of the two inciting incidents of the book is the Terran government the colonists answer to imposing a bunch of liberal reforms (ending slave labour and punitive expeditions and institutionalized rape, that sort of thing), and then ending up with the colonial establishment being split between a) those who seem honestly confused with why any of the natives have any issues with the continuing colonization, they’re being humane about it now! And b) the ones going full Rhodesian and treating being told to stop massacring people as the greatest tyranny inflicted in the history of mankind. All very authentically late-20th century.

The representation of Terran culture was an intriguing mix of futuristic and totally unchanged, as well. Earth was apparently entirely ecologically fucked and in dire need of organic materials (hence the desperate colonization drive), a prediction that hasn’t aged a day. Race exists, but the categories have gotten scrambled and rearranged, and is only at all salient in the mind of the local bloodthirsty ultracolonialist fanatic, whose sense of terran solidarity lasts exactly up until he needs people to blame (and, given the callouts to the Vietnam war that abound through the thing, not accidental that his intra-terran racism is all directed towards Asians).

Though there’s something to be said for how viscerally unpleasant the head of the villain is to be in. Closest comparison that comes to mind is the Victorian chapters of A Song of Ice and Fire? He’s a real piece of shit.

Something very modern about the conceit that men of all creeds and colours will unite around a grand shared enterprise of brutally oppressing and exploiting ET instead.

Men, specifically, because the Terran colony as we see it is basically drowning in machismo. The only women involved in the enterprise are either mail order brides or sex workers, and I don’t believe any one of them gets a name or more than a line of perfunctory dialogue anywhere in the book. Their whole purpose is, basically, to represent the possible entrenchment of colonialism by the establishment of a self-sustaining population, and then to be massacred to a woman by the Athsheans to avert just that possibility. (The book’s portrayal of warfare is pretty thoroughly unsentimental like that on all sides).

Also an interesting cultural artifact – the fact that the multiple intelligent humanoid species are explained as all actually being human, the result of some prehistoric precusor species spreading the species around different worlds who would then reunite with each other as they reach the stars. I have the strong impression that this was a pretty common trope back then, but it’s one you essentially never see in modern sci fi. Not a clue why, but interesting way tastes have changed.

The Athsheans themselves are interesting as an invented culture, with their mystical and constant dreaming and their odd gender roles, but they also are very nearly the platonic ideal of the whole ‘morally pure noble savage’ archetype. On the one hand, they – with the exception of a few very rare forms of mental illness – even have a concept of why someone might consciously choose to kill another human. They resolve most interpersonal disputes by singing at each other. They live carefully in tune with their natural surroundings, and have no need for plantations or mines or factories. And so on.

And on the other hand – they have no history. The way everyone does things and the way society is structured stretches back beyond the bounds of memory, and the entire world has basically one more-or-less-homogenus culture where every band has the same basic socio-political organization and the same theology. The one sympathetically-portrayed colonial anthropologist call them perfectly evolved for their environment and so stagnant, and one rather gets the sense that he’s supposed to be right about everything except the value judgment. And so the greatest tragedy of colonialism is shown to be the moral corruption of the Athsheans, brutalized out of their prelapsarian dream and forced to become murderous to regain their freedom. It is, honestly, a trope I don’t much care for.

(It’s an idle thought I don’t really know what to do with, but the Athshean concept of gods – dreamers who bring ideas and concepts from the dream and incarnate them in the material world – also kind of reminds me of the Innocences in Disco Elysium?)

Anyway, LeGuin still is a great writer, and this really was a fascinating read.