#she's a straight up racist and it should not exactly be shocking why. for example.

[supercantaloupe]

nah instagram keeps recommending an acct to me whose entire shtick is that our very catholic college is not catholic enough, with such delightful posts as "genuinely comparing being pro choice to racism" and "the secularists are trying to destroy religion on campus by cancelling a guest speaker"

[renegadewangs]

Van Zieks - the Examination, part 4

Warnings: SPOILERS for The Great Ace Attorney: Chronicles. Additional warning for racist sentiments uttered by fictional characters (and screencaps to show these sentiments).

Disclaimer: (see  Part 1 for the more detailed disclaimer.) - These posts are not meant to be taken as fact. Everything I’m outlining stems from my own views and experiences. If you believe that I’ve missed or misinterpreted something, please let me know so I can edit the post accordingly. -The purpose of these posts is an analysis, nothing more. Please do not come into these posts expecting me to either defend Barok van Zieks from haters, nor expecting me to encourage the hatred. - I’m using the Western release of The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles for these posts, but may refer to the original Japanese dialogue of Dai Gyakuten Saiban if needed to compare what’s said. This also means I’m using the localized names and localized romanization of the names to stay consistent. -It doesn’t matter one bit to me whether you like Barok van Zieks or dislike him. However, I will ask that everyone who comments refrains from attacking real, actual people.

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3

It’s time to take a close look at Episode 2 of the second game, The Memoirs of the Clouded Kokoro!

Episode 2-2: The Memoirs of the Clouded Kokoro

Remember how in the last episode we vaguely got Barok on our side near the end of the trial by proving Mrs. Garrideb was actually involved in the crime? … Yeah. Forget that progress. It's being undone. Case 2-2 is the first case of the second game which features Barok, which unfortunately means he needs to be 'reintroduced' to the audience and it takes him back several steps in his growth. It makes sense, I suppose, it would've been weird starting a new game with him already being lightly on Ryu's side. Even so, it's a bit insulting how this case acts as if the chronologically previous one accomplished nothing.

So anyway, this case flashbacks to something which supposedly happened right after the first game's fourth case. The day after Soseki's acquittal, even. Turns out, Soseki awoke to find one of the other tenants in his building dead and asked Ryu for help, but (S)Holmes tagged along. Gregson is at the crime scene, keeping an eye on the place and on Soseki in particular since he's suspicious. (Sure, Gregson. Sure. Has nothing to do with the Reaper's curse, probably.) After some investigation with (S)Holmes, Gregson has enough evidence to actually arrest Soseki, which definitely feels like a step backwards. A bit later, it turns out the victim is Not Actually Dead Yet. Again! The Great Ace Attorney really enjoys throwing us for a loop by pretending we're in for another murder case.

Anyway, during the course of the investigation, I found two mentions of Van Zieks. The first is when you investigate the broken glasses and bottles in the victim's room. Susato is immediately reminded of Lord van Zieks.

And when examining Garrideb's old army uniform, Susato points out it might suit Lord van Zieks.

Haha, as if his usual outfit isn't ostentatious enough already. So we learn that Susato doesn't have a very high opinion of him at all, and I should hope it's not still related to that time he called detective novels pathetic. It's fun of them to refer to him in an investigation that he's not involved in in any way, especially when they don't know yet that he's the prosecution again.

Speaking to Soseki in the gaol, we're once again told that he's had a dreadful time in England so far. He sees foreigners everywhere and he's sure they're all laughing at him. He's been so on edge the past year that he's moved 'more times than he can remember'. So once again, we're reminded that racial prejudice in 1900s England is a focal point of this game's story. Once the conversation is over, Gregson appears to let the gang know that the victim has regained consciousness and is accusing Soseki of poisoning him. We're going to trial for an attempted murder charge, y'all!

The next day, in the defendant's lobby, Susato comes bursting in with the dreadful news that Barok van Zieks has once again taken on the prosecution. It's definitely safe to assume now that either Ryu or Soseki is the reason he's taking on these not-really-murder trials when he normally wouldn't. As I mentioned before, this is his reintroduction in the second game and so the game feels compelled to remind the player of what went down in case 1-4:

He sure did! The game also once again reminds us what the Reaper's Curse entails, and that perhaps that's the reason why Soseki is on trial yet again. He's doomed, perhaps. Susato also informs us that (S)Holmes is running late, just as he was two days ago, and Ryu thinks that's a good thing because if the Great Detective were there, Ryu might come to rely on his help.

… I suppose? He already relies on Susato for help and I feel like that would warrant far more 'preying' from Van Zieks than relying on a male, adult British detective for help. Though knowing (S)Holmes, he'd end up stealing the show and taking the words from Ryu's mouth, but that doesn't seem to be what Ryu's worried about here. I suppose the main point to take away from this remark is that Ryu wants to do as much as he can by himself. He wants to appear strong in front of Van Zieks to avoid presenting an easy target, and I think this might actually be the first time we see a sentiment like that from him. Is he afraid of Van Zieks? Does he actually care about the man's opinion? Anyway, he swears to show Van Zieks what a Japanese lawyer can do.

Inside the courtroom, Van Zieks does the usual prosecutor spiel about how the defense needs to be ready for defeat. Ryu thinks to himself that Van Zieks has a particular animosity towards Japanese people for some reason.

Good thing we got a second game in the series, eh? So because the defendant was on trial only two days ago, the same jurors were chosen where possible. The only juror not returning is Mrs. Garrideb, who's too busy being in prison. Her spot is now taken by a very fancy lady we later learn to be the wife of the Altamont Gas Company's owner. She may as well be the CEO herself with how she's acting, though. Anyway, Van Zieks addresses the jurors directly.

“However, the innocent verdict afforded to this eccentric Nipponese before... has had dire consequences. Did the accused repent for his wrongdoing in that affair? Far from it. Instead, he used his freedom to perpetrate a most blood-curdling crime!”

Van Zieks makes record time by taking off his cloak immediately after this line. He's gone straight into overdrive. The witnesses summoned this time are Inspector Gregson and... Soseki? It's very irregular for the defendant to be testifying, especially this early in the trial and especially by the prosecution's request. I can't really make much of it. It feels like the only reason Soseki is testifying is for this joke:

Also found when examining the testimony is a remark from Van Zieks that I honestly found shocking in how ferocious and scummy it is.

Unnecessary, that remark. It didn't need to exist at all in my opinion. So after Ryu shatters the testimony and scatters Gregson's fish 'n chips, Van Zieks calmly pours himself a glass of wine. I have to be honest, by now whenever he does this I'm left wondering what he'll do next. Will he crush the chalice? Will he throw it? Will he actually take a sip? The versatility of the action and unpredictable nature of Van Zieks add a bit of suspense. Turns out, his mind wandered during the testimony.

And then he ends up crushing the glass in his hand anyway. Alas, poor chalice. We knew it. So after a bit of debating back and forth about whether Shamspeare drank the supposedly-poisoned-tea after Soseki left the room, Van Zieks suddenly falls silent. We get three different, consecutive frames of him going “......” and when the judge asks what's wrong, he says this:

Supersonic hearing, this one. That is, unless the carriage entered the courthouse and literally pulled up in the hallway outside the room? Haven't we learned our lesson from the last time a carriage was driven into the Old Bailey?! So Shamspeare was apparently subpoenaed by the prosecution and has shown up to testify (with his doctor's permission). Bad news for us, since he's the one accusing Soseki in the first place. There's also a second witness to support Shamspeare's insistence there were no other visitors to the room and therefore only Soseki could have poisoned him. After that testimony is over, Van Zieks gets his wish and all the jurors vote guilty.

Van Zieks really seems to think that Soseki is a terrible person deserving of justice, huh? He was right there during the previous trial, saw Ryu prove without a shadow of a doubt that Soseki was innocent and still insists that justice will be done “this time”. Calm the heck down man, you're the one who sided with us when Mrs. Garrideb needed to testify, remember? And here comes another example of the game pretending the previous trials didn't leave an impact; when the Summation Examination is brought up, it's with disdain and this remark:

Bro, we used the Summation Examination successfully like five times already. Sit your butt down and watch the show. The jurors once again give prejudiced reasons for their decisions:

And unfortunately, instead of changing their minds by proving Soseki is a morally upstanding, innocent citizen, Ryu instead gets through this Summation Examination by basically proving Shamspeare is a worse person than Soseki. That's... not the direction you should be taking here, narrative. After convincing four of the jurors that Shamspeare is a fishy liar, Van Zieks flings another chalice of wine in frustration. The judge still thinks he could technically pass a ruling on the trial, since the new information didn't exactly disprove that Soseki is the culprit, but the jurors have been influenced so thoroughly that they can't let this new info go ignored. Testimony from the Altamont Company is allowed! Van Zieks thinks it's a waste of time, of course, and if this were reality it would be. Since it's an Ace Attorney game, we know Shamspeare's gas thievery is bound to somehow be related to the incident. Van Zieks flings yet another chalice after hearing the testimony (how many has it been already? Five?) and very shortly after, he tosses the entire bottle over his shoulder. Susato points out that he seems to be in a violent mood. I feel like someone must've pissed in his oatmeal that morning, because I've got no real explanation for why his character regressed this badly in the course of what chronologically was only two days.

Van Zieks flings two more chalices as the testimony progresses to prove that Shamspeare made fake coins to fool the gas meter. At the end of it all, he supposedly 'throws his hand up in despair and happened to catch his hallowed bottle along the way', flinging yet another one of those into the gallery. I'm starting to feel very bad for the people seated behind him now. Is the game overdoing these quirky animations to compensate for his regressed attitude? Because I'm not sure it's working... Van Zieks continues to insist that the situation hasn't changed and only Soseki could have poisoned the victim, so he calls for immediate adjucation. The game gives Ryu the option to either object or wait and see, and I have to be honest, this gave me pause. After what happened with the penalties in case 1-4, I was sure Van Zieks might dish out more punishment for waiting and seeing. Turns out, he doesn't. Ryu points out that Shamspeare likely used the tea to make these fake frozen coins of his, meaning there's still tea left at the scene of the crime which can be tested for poison.

Head in my hands right now. Again, I get it, they basically had to reintroduce Van Zieks to newcomers of the game (however few there might've been) so they had to regress him a bit, but I really don't like this. He honestly felt like he'd grown at the end of 1-4 and the game's not only undone it, it feels like they've made him even more of a scumbag. This line and this gesture honestly doesn’t quite correspond with the character established in the previous game. Anyway, court adjourned till the next day so the police can test the tea for poison.

During the investigation segment, we get a conversation that I'd quite honestly forgotten even exists. Turns out, (S)Holmes and Van Zieks are acquainted! ...or are they? (S)Holmes says he 'must pass the time of day with Mr. Reaper again, as it's been too long' and when asked whether they're acquainted, (S)Holmes replies that there isn't a person in the world who doesn't know his name, expertly dodging the question. Naturally, a new conversation topic opens up about it, so we can still attempt to needle more details out of him.

He explains the history of the Reaper's curse a bit more. Previous defendants found not-guilty would 'disappear from the capital' by falling under a passing carriage, drowning in the Thames, succumbing to a sudden fever... Etc. Susato points out that if those rumors are true, then surely the obvious conclusion would be that they were killed by Van Zieks's own hand. (S)Holmes points out that's impossible, since Van Zieks was already investigated on the matter before and for every single incident, he had a solid alibi. (This... doesn't disprove Van Zieks had anything to do with it, but okay (S)Holmes. Sure.) (S)Holmes also rubs it in yet again that Van Zieks retired from the courts five years ago and didn't return until the day Naruhodo arrived. I honestly don't know why they keep bringing that 5 year hiatus up in every single case, because as far as I can recall it was never fully explained or relevant.

I love how “foul smell” is wedged in-between those two topics as if it's also related. Anyway the conversation continues when Ryu brings up that Van Zieks seems to have a particular disdain for Japanese people. Susato demands to know whether (S)Holmes knows a bit more about it and while he's silent at first, he relents and tells us a tale (which will apparently be forgotten by Ryu and Susato in case 1-5). Van Zieks “chose to enter the legal profession ten years ago, but before that time, the man's closest companion hailed from the empire of Japan”. Which is a wording that baffles me, because it implies that Van Zieks chose to enter the legal profession at the same moment that Japanese person betrayed him, which we know is not the case. He was already in training to be a prosecutor before that, otherwise how could he possibly have prosecuted the Professor trial? Ryu is shocked and asks to know more, but (S)Holmes says the veil on the events from the past will be lifted soon enough. I'll get back to the implications of what this means for Van Zieks's backstory when we hit this exact same reveal in case 1-5.

Van Zieks is mentioned very little in the rest of the investigation segments. We only learn that he tasked Gregson with finding new clues, much to Gregson's dismay, as there isn't much to be found. The Inspector does immediately leap at new information when we uncover it, which implies he's eager to either please Van Zieks or avoid being scolded by him. I'm assuming the latter, but it's also possible Gregson feels guilty over the whole Reaper thing and Klint's autopsy, and is now compensating by working his hardest to fulfill Van Zieks's requests.

At the very end of the investigation, when evening falls, (S)Holmes reminds us that “it'll be hard to escape the grip of our friend, Mr. Reaper”. The next day, in the defendant's lobby just before the trial begins, Ryu thinks to himself that he doesn't believe in the legend of the Reaper any more than he believes in the convict's curse Soseki keeps mentioning. What's interesting here is that Ryu isn't dreading the confrontation anymore. After the McGilded trial he seemed genuinely intimidated by the concept of going up against Van Zieks (not because of the racism but because of what happened to his first defendant), but now he's not so hesitant anymore. He's beginning to see that Van Zieks can be defeated, that the Reaper thing is nonsense and that protecting his client is a fight worth fighting.

Into the courtroom we go for day 2 of the trial! When the judge asks about the results of the tea test, Van Zieks is silent for a moment. He pours himself a glass of wine, asking for a moment to “savour a liquid of a more sanguine hue”, then refers to Gregson for the full report. Gregson confirms no poison was found in the tea remains, but the prosecution wouldn't be the prosecution (and the game would be pretty boring) if they didn't have a backup plan. When Ryu proclaims Soseki is innocent, Van Zieks accuses him of jumping to conclusions, “a typical Nipponese reaction”. It's also a typical prosecution reaction to be hypocritical, no surprises here. He throws his chalice (first one of the day) and summons Shamspeare back to the stand to testify about how Soseki's unpoisoned and undrank cup of tea had been used to make the ice coins.

There's some lines here that I thought I might as well include:

“Yet on occasion, tedium distracts me and I pour more times than I intended until the bottle is dry.”

You know, it occurs to me that this drink is pretty much confirmed to be wine. He's very extra when talking about it himself, but he had his silly little wine analogies in the previous case and Susato referred to his glasses as “wine glasses”. And you would think it's obvious that it's wine, but we know Ace Attorney's long history with 'grape juice'. Either way, this dialogue leaves a pretty harsh implication that Van Zieks drinks alcohol simply to distract himself from troublesome moods. Sure, he says “tedium”, but this is a stoic prosecutor in the year 1900. They referred to depression as “melancholia” back then, and since he doesn't appear to have any friends, I expect he experiences “tedium” quite often outside the courtroom. He apparently set a rule for himself not to fill his glass more than seven times during a trial which, in turn, implies he's aware any more would cause problems. All of this is moot, of course, since 80% of the wine he pours for himself ends up on the floor between shards of glass. Still, though... Zieks, are you okay?

I don't think he is, because he pulls a very dirty trick here. Ryu proves Soseki drank all his tea and therefore it couldn't possibly have been used, so Van Zieks insinuates to Shamspeare that perhaps he misremembered using the tea from Soseki's cup and instead used tea still left in the teapot. An excuse Shamspeare happily takes, of course. Not gonna lie, I got angry, not because it's a dirty trick but because it's inconsistent. This is the very same character who all but dragged Mrs. Garrideb down from the juror bench to testify when it became clear she likely threw a knife out the window. And now he's feeding slippery excuses to a man who's very clearly lying about all sorts of things? What??? And remember this incident, because I'm going to be referring back to it later.

He crushes another chalice, removes his cloak and continues to insist that we should believe this thieving liar at the witness stand. The jurors for some reason buy the baloney served to them on a tinfoil platter and even twist Ryu's sentiments around, with some bloke going as far as to interpret the situation as 'the lawyer lad believes anyone who steals gas deserves to be poisoned'. Summation Examination gets very funky this time around, with the outcome being that Shamspeare probably blew the gas pipes (s-snerk) and the poison was laced on the pipe.

Van Zieks pours himself a glass of wine and pretty much immediately flings it, saying these are all empty assertions without a shred of proof. When Ryu presents the picture with the skin prints, Van Zieks once again breaks the rule of the prosecution staying silent during Summation Examination to point out that skin prints cannot be used as evidence, since that method is not recognized by the court (yet). Aaand he crushes yet another chalice in his hand.

Susato claims it was never meant to be used as official evidence, it was only a tool to demonstrate a new possibility to the jury. Jumping through some loopholes here, we are, since the picture is clearly in our Court Record as evidence. But, well, the prosecution cheats too so what's the harm? Some jurors vote not-guilty, but there's still one more that needs convincing on order to keep the trial going. Ryu says he has a witness who's already testified that the pipe-blowing incident did indeed occur that night, as Soseki stated the other day before the court that his stove went out in the dead of night. (Hang on, is this why the narrative made him testify alongside Gregson?) With that the majority of the jury votes not-guilty and the trial has to continue, but Van Zieks is extra rattled now. (Another bottle goes soaring.)

He once again reminds the court that skin prints aren't admissible evidence and therefore, there is no real proof Shamspeare put his mouth to the pipes (ghghhh I'm sorry this is such a silly thing to have to type out). Ryu asks for an investigative team to test the mouth of the gas pipe for poison, but since it would've evaporated by now, that's a no-go. Also, Van Zieks says that “what appears to be simple is my Nipponese friend's mind” and that's a scumbag point. Ryu attempts to turn the trial around by claiming that Shamspeare attempted to kill Soseki, making the defendant the victim, but Van Zieks ain't having it. The aggrieved being the accused is an interesting notion, but doesn't change what actually happened. In fact, if anything, it establishes a motive for Soseki to lay a trap for Shamspeare. Because who else could have known about the gas pipe trickery and put the poison there, right? Why, the true culprit, of course.

Our man Van Zieks really doesn't like (S)Holmes, huh? A tidbit which the games will never bother to explain! Either way, Ryu raises the name of Olive Green, the victim of the previous case. And I gotta say, I do genuinely like the way they integrated these two Clouded Kokoro cases together. The chronology of everything that went down is very fun to decipher, but long story short, Olive Green was at Briar Road the day she was stabbed for a reason and knows more about the 'convict curse' Soseki and Garrideb kept mentioning, so let's drag her into court! Van Zieks agrees to subpoena Miss Green in order to 'see his Nipponese friend's farce through to its conclusion'.

So during intermission some more evidence is handed to Ryu and when trial resumes, Van Zieks continues to be his usual self.

“The prosecution has tried to extend every courtesy to this amateur newcomer from dubious Eastern shores.”

Ryu sweats bullets as he meekly thanks Van Zieks “(for his backhanded consideration)”, but once again the judge is the one to call Van Zieks out on his attitude.

Amazing. It's so refreshing to see a judge who actually disagrees with the prosecution's haughty attitude problems and acknowledges it has no place in a courtroom. Nothing against Udgey, because we all love Udgey (and his Canadian brother), but this man actually grows and learns. So Olive Green takes the stand alongside Shamspeare (maybe not the best idea since Ryu just accused her of trying to murder this man) for dual testimony. When Green brings up what a dreadful ordeal the knife to her back was, Van Zieks says this:

Hang on, empathy? He's giving her advice? This reeks of humanization! Green seems taken aback and thanks him for his words, so the sentiment was genuinely accepted. This in itself is a very nice scene to see in action, similar to Van Zieks allowing Roly Beate to keep his job. Unfortunately, Van Zieks's character is in a wild rollercoaster of moral inconsistency during this particular case which sours the experience somewhat. Case in point:

YOOOU hypocrite! This actively angered me, because at the very start of this same trial day he was personally feeding lies to Shamspeare. Now he's warning Green not to lie? It gets even worse a bit later on when Green gets cornered about stealing the note, she asks him whether it could all be some sort of misunderstanding, and he says:

ACTIVELY FEEDING SHAMSPEARE A LIE. THE VERY SAME DAY. I'm all for prosecutors using dirty tactics. It helps to juxtapose them further to the honest defense attorney we play as. However, it needs to be consistent. Either a prosecutor condones a witness's lies to help their case, or they feel that they're above it. The third, most used option is for them to start off condoning it, only to learn that truth takes priority over victory. This sloppy back-and-forth morality that Van Zieks has going on here is insanely frustrating, so it's no wonder some players end up disliking him. It honestly feels as if they rewrote this case so many times, they screwed up the exact growth trajectory Van Zieks has.

Anyway, it seems Van Zieks is suddenly fully on our side now to help Ryu prove that Green was in Shamspeare's room and laced the gas pipe with poison. And I mean help help. When the judge points out that if Green had laced the pipe the very same day she was stabbed, the attempted murder would have happened six days ago. Van Zieks is the one to say “Perhaps not, My Lord” and explain Briar Road was full of police at that time. At this point, Van Zieks and Ryu (and also Susato) actively start to take turns to explain the proper chronology of events. So the defense and the prosecution are in perfect sync right now, working together to explain the whodunnit. This is the ideal outcome to any trial, usually not seen until the last case of the game, so it's curious that this dynamic abruptly shows itself in a case like this. Van Zieks does still have one moment of gaslighting when he claims Ryu may have inhaled some dubious gas, causing his judgment to be clouded, since there's no motive behind Shamspeare's attempts on his fellow lodgers. A matter that's very easily resolved, of course. Once the name of Selden is brought up, Van Zieks continues our little game of back-and-forth-truth-reveal until (S)Holmes shows his face.

“Your usual haunts are the filthy backstreets of the capital, are they not?”

To which (S)Holmes replies that it's been too long, and Van Zieks's complexion has worsened since last they met. Alright, so Van Zieks and (S)Holmes definitely have met in person before, some undetermined amount of time ago. You'd think that going by (S)Holmes's friendly attitude they might've even been friends once, but our great detective is like that towards everyone. This is evidenced by an earlier encounter with Gregson where (S)Holmes insists they're friends and Gregson says that they're not friends, to which (S)Holmes quietly agrees. So really, this little exchange tells us nothing about the history between the great detective and the Reaper.

Some shenaniganry, a breakdown and admittance to guilt later, the court is finally ready to deem Soseki innocent. Van Zieks once again has some interesting lines here:

“And one I certainly didn't envisage walking... with you.”

Considering he attempted to trip us up for most of this walk up until the very last stretch, I don't like this remark very much. It feels very unearned. This is another one of those things that would've been more suitable in the last case of the game, but instead it's being crammed into a messy mid-game moment with the pretense that Van Zieks learned a lesson about being our ally.

In the defendant's lobby, the game basically gives the exact same dialogue as at the end of the original Clouded Kokoro case; that Soseki is returning to Japan and hopes to pen his own literature there, with the rest of the cast pointing out that the Reaper's Curse must factor into his decision to some degree. So we're still holding onto that question of whether Soseki will escape an untimely death or not. Anyone who's already played the last case of the first game will know the answer, of course.

So to summarize... I genuinely didn't enjoy Van Zieks's portrayal in this case. It really feels as if something went horribly wrong and they got some notes mixed up about where his character was already headed in the previous game. It's a crying shame. There was a lot of potential for a case set between 1-4 and 1-5, but they really dropped the ball when it comes to consistency and I've no doubt that it reflected badly on people's opinions of him. Though I think when we return to the first game for The Unspeakable Story, everything will right itself out again to some degree. Stay tuned!

[sokumotanaka]

Adressing this “Atlas is falling!” nonsense.

Originally I was gonna wait till I was up to try and get a good rest and maybe hash my thoughts out a little more but now I’m wired and want to talk about something people seem to have issues with from perspectives given to me and my own.

So atlas is falling and originally I saw many different takes on it people outright saying they wish they die, people saying that because rich people reside on it they dont care and more oddly nuanced thought processes, now I use the word nuance cause I want to address a elephant in the room; when I say nuance or hell anything it isn’t instantly to try and insult another person, what’s nuanced to me is my own understanding on what level of discussion is brought to the table, as long as it’s interesting it’s nuanced to me. (and I’ll admit I should of explained it better but at the time I wanted to end it and sleep but I have a bad habit of adressing people who continue talking to me on this site cause sometimes I get weirdly invested thinking it’ll lead to something interesting; no that’s not a dig I just like talking about media.) 

Anyway vv Read more vv

Alot of people who know me or know of me will get this but I wanna clarify it for those who dont and this will also be a great post to point to in the future so I dont accidently burn more bridges, but also understand I’m used to dealing with snide assholes so what you view as sarcasm and harmless cause the people using it are either friends of yours so you dont care; or share your viewpoint so you dont care. either or alot of twitter racist idiots like to use this and alot of rwby stans are straight out stupid so dont try to be snide and quipy.

A close friend of mine told me about Atlas falling apparently the upper plate is going to fall on innocent people, honestly I couldn’t bring myself to care, but I asked her why she didn’t care the plate was gonna fall out of curiosity and the recent drama around this; she point out one of the biggest flaws in rwby that I found myself kinda nodding with. “Weather the plate falls or not I can’t find myself to care about the people in atlas because well...RWBY doesn’t make the background civilians feel real, the characters dont care so I start not to care as well.”

I brought up the last time I felt that was SU and Avatar, a show we could both talk about and know exactly what the other was talking about.

“Exactly! not to mention this isn’t like Avatar where you got to see background characters, live thrive and root for them, Beacon fell and we never saw people from there struggling to live or talking about being displaced etc; Team RWBY just walk away from major problems and we just assume their solved, no one mourns Leo? no family? friends? team? There’s never moments in nations that affect the civilians greatly; hell Oscar’s aunt doesn’t even factor in to his mental state or memories or anything.” Honestly she had a point and it kinda bugged me more cause I never thought of it; I quit vol 6 and the last thing I remembered was a town guard being ripped to shreds asking  where cordova was.

To her it was just an artificial number of mannequins, it wasn’t black and white like “kill them” It was just “I dont care, the writing does them a diservice; RWBY doesn’t have so many “I dropped this.” “RWBY is bad.” videos for nothing, even fans can realize that to alot of them this is just emotional manipulation of the audience, and alot of them have better stances beyond “Just die.” “The writing just takes me out of the scene.” is much more interesting!  And when I talked to alot of people about this they agreed, hell I even got some people to swtich their stances. But I’m losing the forest for the trees, back on topic.

Despite people standing outside including jaune’s sister and her wife and child Jaune doesn’t bring them up or worry as far as my friend and many other eagled eyed people have told me. My friend’s stance isn’t as simple as “let them all die” and yeah I can’t predict everyone’s mindset. (Surely some people think that way. But not all and if they conversation ends in “Yeah but some people think that way. Then the intrique and dicussion is fruitless.) I rather challenge a mindset into thinking about different prespectives than just go. “Well I guess we have to agree we have feelings on subject.” Like a robot.

 Some people just dont care. MY theory about that and my personal reasoning for that is maybe people stopped caring cause either or RT is gonna destroy it and faceless people will die for angst but also it’s a poorly crafted narrative; Pyrrha died and people were like “well that was a thing.” Shock value doesn’t work on people anymore so people just roll their eyes and go “sure RT do what you gotta.” yeah maybe alot of people are like “eat the rich.” I can’t blame them, current events are wild man, and yeah they shouldn’t take it out on fictional characters but at the same time, they’re just that...fictional, someone saying “good let it fall.” isn’t a sign of how people’s perceptions of real life are, that’s ridiculous to think over a cartoon.

So that’s my stance and mine was also altered and challenged by talking to a person about it and not having their passive aggressive friends throw snide remarks and be allowed to while their friend preached for your respect.

The TLDR version is there are many nuanced, detailed and vast takes out there, try not to let it bother you, and using atlas citizens as an example doesn’t work if you use the racist;  Be good to yourselves out there and others; don’t let your friends send death threats to anyone on anon.

[arcticdementor]

Veteran NRx blogger AntiDem has been beating the drum for his message of escaping the cities while we still can on Gab (basically a right-wing Twitter clone). A small sample:

Stop comparing getting "canceled" by the Twitter mob to the gulag, you fags.

You have a way out. People in the gulag didn't.

Leave the big cities. Move to a small town in a red state. Work a blue collar job or open your own business. Now the Twitter mob has no power over you.

If you don't want to do that because you want a cushy, well-paid office job more than you want freedom, then I have no sympathy for you.

Blue collar bosses don't give a shit about the Twitter mob. If some SJW from Portland calls Gary's Auto Body in Guthrie, Oklahoma to tell them they've got a racist working for them, they'll get told to fuck off and hung up on.

Work for Gary, and you're safe.

Look, I'm not a huge fan of Atlas Shrugged, but there were a few points in it that were really good. One involved Hugh Akston, who works as a cook at a diner, but used to be a university professor before he got canceled for wrongthink. He works his blue collar job because he can't be canceled from it, and still gives out wisdom to those who ask. Unless you're willing to do the same, and insist on staying married to your cubicle job, you're a LARPer.

And on his blog:

And so, dear reader, I challenge you: It is time for you – for us all – to do something. Perhaps you can save the world. If so, I hope you do. But if you can just save the people around you by becoming a contributing member of a sane, stable, shock-resistant, and sustainable community, then you will have done a great service. Here is where I believe you should start.

The first thing you should do is to get out of the big cities, which history shows us are deathtraps in times of disruption. Here, a lot of ignoring of fools will be necessary on your part. First, you’ll have to ignore the leftist press and academia, which is already trying to gaslight the public into thinking that the coronavirus pandemic is a particular problem of the rural south instead of the big coastal cities like New York, a bit of ludicrous wishful thinking that a moment’s glance at actual data disproves. Second, you’ll have to ignore the fools who will try to convince you that big cities are the safest places to be in times of disruption, based largely on some 20th century examples of tyrannical regimes disarming the peasants and then taking the fruits of their labor by force in order to feed the cities. There are a few key fallacies involved in this thinking.

First and perhaps most obvious is the fact that in the United States (as opposed to Cold War-era communist states), the countryside is armed to the teeth and the cities are not. The late 20th and early 21st centuries provide no lack of examples of what happens when a traditional 2nd Generation army sets itself up in a nation’s big cities and tries to impose its rule on an armed and hostile countryside; as you are not fools, I need not tell you what the results of that have been. Second is the fact that the big cities are run by elites who hate you and want you dead, so turning to them for protection is plain suicide. Perhaps in a different era – say, in the East Germany of 1967 – you could have survived by keeping your head low and pretending to go along with the official ruling ideology. But we do not live in that age anymore – your skin is your uniform, and when trouble comes to the diverse big cities you will be targeted mercilessly for wearing it...

There’s a reason why smart elites in functional societies (as opposed to what we have now) have always kept country estates they could retreat to when chaos and disruption reared their heads. Heed their wisdom.

If any of you think I’m directing scorn at the mainstream media for their counterfactual attempts to convince people that the cities are safer than the countryside, I say: on the contrary, I welcome it. The more fools there are who stay in the cities believing that they’ll be protected from the effects of disruption, the better things will be for the non-fools who know better. When trouble comes, we’ll have enough of our own to care for without being saddled with saving big-city fools from the entirely predictable consequences of their own poor decisions. Let them stay where they are. And while I’m giving out counterintuitive thanks, I’d like to offer some to all of the Social Justice Warriors who have worked tirelessly to throw the Dissident Right off of social media, to get them fired from their urban cubicle jobs, and to render them unemployable anywhere except in the rural sections of deep red states. I know that for those who fear being “hurled into the void”, as the Zman puts it, this seems like the worst fate imaginable. But nothing could be further from the truth. What we on the Dissident Right need to do now more than anything else is to disconnect from the corporate and consumerist, to stop spending too much time on the internet, to get out of the diverse, polluted, crime-ridden, disease-prone, and degenerate big cities, and to start making things real in genuine communities full of people like us.

I moved out of the big cities a couple of years ago, and I can tell you from firsthand experience: It’s pretty comfy out here in the void. So come home, white man. Get out of the cities as soon as you can. Take a massive pay cut if you have to. Change careers if you have to. Stock shelves on the night shift at Walmart if you have to. But get yourselves and the people you love out of the cities before it’s too late – if it isn’t already.

(Yes, I understand the desire to stay in the cities. I lived in Silicon Valley for 25 years. I loved it dearly, and I desperately miss the old Valley of the 90s and 00s. But that world is gone, and it’s never coming back; we tread that path but once. And if nothing else, I can’t imagine trying to get through this crisis in my tiny old city apartment instead of my cottage with its yard out back and a hayfield out front.)

Which is all well and good, but I think he has forgotten one thing, and it is the most important thing of all: women.

Women are hypgermous; they marry up, not down. And no woman is going to marry a man who stocks shelves at Walmart on the night shift. Even if you can get a decent blue-collar job at Gary's, she is just going to divorce you eventually, as Nabil ad Dajjal explains:

I don’t know much about factory work but my dad was an HVAC mechanic for most of his working life and as much as I respect him I wouldn’t ever consider doing the same.

Skilled tradesmen like plumbers, carpenters, electricians, HVAC, etc can make solid money even without advanced degrees. In theory, you could support a family on that income. In practice, all that money you earn will go straight to alimony and child support since even a woman who dropped out of college herself will look down on you for doing manual labor and eventually divorce you. A college degree and an office job might pay less but it’s less embarrassing for your wife to tell to her girlfriends and in our family court system that counts for a lot.

Assuming that you can find a loyal wife, there’s another problem in the form of career advancement or the lack thereof. It doesn’t seem like there’s much room to climb the ladder: you can gain seniority within your job but it doesn’t seem like many tradesmen make it into management.

And:

Nobody has told you that, at least not that I’ve seen.

Blue collar guys get laid and most of them get married too. The difficult part for them is in staying married. Obviously divorce isn’t a certainty but you’re taking a substantially increased risk.

Money without social cachet isn’t much of a defense, as between alimony and child support most of that money would go to the ex-wife anyway along with the primary residence and car. Every marriage has ups and downs but with no fault divorce those downs can easily end up destroying your family and wiping you out financially. When accounted for properly, that’s a pretty substantial cost.

Now, AntiDem has pretty much gone full MGTOW after a series of disastrous experiences with women, so I guess he doesn't mind. And, believe me, I totally understand where he's coming from (especially with this, which is exactly what happened to me). But as long as there is a filial duty to reproduce in order to repay the debt to one's ancestors and carry on one's family name and bloodline, as well as a biological imperative to pass on one's genes and avoid becoming an evolutionary failure, on top of the cultural argument for having children ("the future belongs to those that show up"), we have a problem.

What, then, is to be done?

[mobius-prime]

121. Knuckles the Echidna #22

Dark Alliance (Part One of Three): You Say You Want a Revolution…

Writer: Ken Penders Pencils: Jim Valentino Colors: Barry Grossman

So fair warning - this arc is very politics-heavy. I've already criticized the inclusion of politidrama plotlines in the comic before, despite my own personal interest in them, so I won't go over it again. What I will go over is that this arc also includes quite a few tasteless references to the Nazi regime of World War II, starting with the intro page. See, every issue in this arc begins with, rather than the traditional intro page that recaps past events and introduces plot points to come, instead a speech or quote relevant to the current story. This one is a parody, if you will (though played completely straight) of the "First They Came" poem by the German pastor Martin Niemöller, referring to how many people stayed silent while the Nazis oppressed and enacted genocide upon groups that those in silence didn't belong to. In this altered version, "Anonymous" claims that Robotnik came for hedgehogs, squirrels, rabbits, and foxes first, during which the speaker stayed silent as they were an echidna and didn't want to get involved, and so by the time he came for the echidnas there was no one left to speak up for them. Of course, quite aside from the fact that this is completely disrespectful to the real-world situation that the actual poem describes, that's not even how the Robotnik coup went down. Robotnik, upon dethroning King Acorn, pretty clearly just started roboticizing all Mobians indiscriminately without regard to their individual species. Not only that, but he didn't even get a chance to start on the echidnas, as all of them were either contained in their pocket universe on the Floating Island, or hanging out in Albion, which it appears Robotnik never even knew existed. I don't know, the whole thing is clearly an attempt to seem really intellectual and deep on Penders' part, but it just comes off as insensitive instead.

Anyway, onto the actual story. We open in the house of High Councilor Pravda, who appears to be the main political leader of the city. In the dead of night, Pravda is awakened by a window smashing downstairs, and angrily stomps down to confront the intruder, believing it to be "dingo trash up to no good." Instead, he is dragged out of his house roughly by several Dark Legionnaires, while the leader, called Kommissar (her title, not her name), admonishes him for his apparent hypocrisy regarding his anti-technology stance.

Well, she seems lovely! As she has her people drag him away, we pan to Haven, where Knuckles is demanding answers from his grandfathers on his father's whereabouts. To his credit, Sabre is genuinely apologetic to Knuckles, believing that they should have been a lot more forthcoming with him a lot sooner, but Knuckles really isn't having it, and can you blame him?

As a side note, this is about the point in the comic where the eyes of characters such as Knuckles and Tails, formerly depicted as black pupils as in the classic games, start to gain some color. We already saw it with Tails a little while back during the Sand-Blasters two-parter, and it's very inconsistent between issues (for example, you'll notice his eyes are blue instead of purple up there), but you'll start to notice it in screenshots from here out before their designs finally stabilize to their modern forms, similar to their designs from the games.

While Knuckles continues to demand to see his father, we ourselves see Locke, who is dropping off Remington, Julie-Su, Lara-Le and Wynmacher back in Echidnaopolis. Remington asks him how things went with Lara-Le again, and Locke acts like he's all regretful that he couldn't woo Lara-Le back to him or something, which like, really man? You're divorced and haven't spoken properly in years, and she has a new fiancé now, did you really expect to just manage to sweep her off her feet again and get remarried? Julie-Su tries to approach Locke to thank him for saving the whole group, and finds herself recognizing his appearance somewhat. Upon asking, she's shocked to find out that he's Knuckles' father, and asks him about Knuckles' whereabouts. Remington ushers her away before they get a chance to speak further, probably to protect Locke's privacy, and as he jokes with her that it seems like she actually cares about Knuckles, Locke muses to himself that his son is likely furious with him, which, yeah, not far off there buddy. He has an idea of where his son might have gone, and as he speeds off in his air vehicle, we jump over to the Kommissar, who has by now dragged her captive all the way back to the Dark Legion's current hideout… and oh boy, inside we get to see a familiar f- …uhh… okay, well, I won't call him a familiar face, because we've never seen him looking quite this messed up before, but it's Dimitri, okay? It's Dimitri back on his BS.

Guess he had to have some, uh, extensive reconstructive surgery after his rather literal fall from grace. And unfortunately for everybody who doesn't want to be ruled over by a cyborg'd up monstrosity of a dictator, he's got a new takeover plan in mind for the city!

Back in the more civilized areas of Echidnaopolis, Remington is having his driver take Wynmacher and Lara-Le back to their apartment when they find the streets blocked by a protest from dingoes, agitating about their lack of housing and accommodations within the city. Remington tries to resolve the situation peacefully by requesting that if they must protest, to at least let traffic pass while they do, but at that moment a giant flaming fireball comes out of nowhere and starts wrecking the place, and the whole thing devolves into a big brawl between the protesting dingoes and the watching echidnas.

Remington calls Haven for backup, and while I'm not sure who exactly in that nest of grandpas he expected to go rushing out of there for something as simple as a protest gone wrong, luckily for him he mentions Lara-Le over the comm, and Knuckles immediately enlists Archimedes' help to poof him out there to help his mom. Meanwhile, we get to see that Locke has completely, thoroughly misjudged where Knuckles would be hanging out at this moment, having thought for whatever reason that he would be brooding inside the Chaos Chamber next to Mammoth Mogul's ugly frozen mug.

Now this is some well-appreciated character development from Locke. I've been heavily criticizing him this entire time for how he's handled his interaction, or lack thereof, with his son, and I'm glad to see that Lara-Le's admonishments seem to have gotten through to him. While he won't get a chance to catch up with his son right at the moment, at least we know the big talk isn't that far off in the future.

Knuckles and Archimedes poof into the fray on the streets, and Knuckles begins throwing punches at whoever gets close enough, which as everyone knows is the single best way to end a violent brawl - by participating! Despite being an echidna himself, he doesn't hesitate to throw punches at other echidnas in the bunch, with Archy adding some of his own fire breath into the mix. If anything, I'd say he accurately judged the situation, which is that the dingoes were peacefully demonstrating and it appears to have been an angry, racist echidna who threw the first molotov. General Von Stryker makes his entrance, and despite him predictably acting aggressive and blaming echidnakind in general for the dingoes' treatment, Knuckles actually agrees with him that the echidnas are being really crappy, and offers a truce so they can discuss what went wrong and how to resolve it. Meanwhile, back in hell - I mean, the Legion's hideout…

This is probably the single most disturbing page in the comic so far, if you ask me. This guy is begging, screaming, for mercy and they put him under like nothing's wrong and start doing surgery without his consent (obviously) on his brain. Dimitri, watching the proceedings, starts mwahaha'ing to himself about the whole affair, as apparently Pravda is the direct descendant of Menthor, the councilman who denied his and Edmund's proposal to use the Chaos Syphon all those centuries ago. He's determined not to get careless with his power again in the future, and now that he's defeated death by old age through the sheer power of adding more and more cybernetics to his failing frame every time something goes wrong, he's ready to get his long-due revenge.

In another part of the city, Knuckles and Archimedes poof right into the middle of the Chaotix, who are pleased to finally see him and hopefully get a chance to catch up. As he explains what was going on with the protest, Julie-Su arrives and gives him the "why" he was looking for, which is that, naturally, Pravda was kind of a racist ass and wasn't working very hard to ensure the dingoes would have housing built for them in a timely manner. However, elections for the position of High Councilor are coming up in a few days, and Pravda has ever-so-mysteriously been missing since the previous night, with his traumatized wife too messed up to be able to talk about what she saw. She slyly mentions when questioned that "a little birdie" gave her all this information, leading Vector to rather rudely blame her for "having friends in low places" and generally acting as distrustful of her as ever. Seriously, Vector's been kind of a jerk to her ever since she left the Legion, and you just know that situation is gonna come to a head sooner or later. But enough of them - let's head back to the Kommissar, who's having her people reenact Kristallnacht in the streets of Echidnaopolis! (Told you this arc is full of tasteless references to WWII…)

She reports in to Dimitri, who is pleased to hear about her progress on the senseless property damage and random citizens she's beating up for no reason. Like, the regime seems cacklingly evil enough to want to do this kind of stuff, sure, until you hear Dimitri's actual plan for takeover this time - he's implanted control chips into Pravda's brain, and is going to use him as a mouthpiece for the Legion's ideals in the upcoming election!

So, wait. You want to get your new mind-slave to cast your organization in a positive light, and at the same time you're having one of your main commanders go around smashing windows and beating people up in alleys? How is this master plan of yours supposed to work, exactly? That entire Kristallnacht page could be removed from the comic and not only would it not impact the story, it would make it make more sense than it currently does. I seriously think that it was only included to draw more parallels to the Nazi regime, because there's just no way it makes any real sense otherwise. Sigh, Penders. Why do you have to be like this?

[idiopathicsmile]

so, last week i was thinking somebody should write a comic about a shy teen superhero whose powers are fueled directly by her own sense of embarrassment

then i, uh, wrote a ten-page script for it? and wound up kind of liking it a lot?

so consider yourself cordially invited to read issue #1 of my extremely indie superhero comic, and if you wish, you can illustrate it inside your mind, using the power of imagination!

(A teen girl sits on a swivel chair in her bedroom, facing the viewer. She’s got braces and glasses. Her hair is in a messy braid.)

PONNI: Hi! My name is Ponni Murthy. I’m sixteen, and um…

(We zoom out a little. She’s wearing a T-shit that says “The Moon ROCKS!” She’s holding a cane—covered in glow-in-the-dark star stickers—in one hand, and a stuffed animal cat—wearing a sloppily homemade astronaut costume—in the other. Posters cover the walls: fantasy movies, rocket ships, Ada Lovelace, Aamir Khan, Sally Ride, etc. She has multiple posters of the solar system. She gestures dramatically with her cane-hand)

PONNI: I LOVE OUTER SPACE!

(We return to her face. She looks very earnest.)

PONNI: That’s not, uh, directly relevant to the story, I just—I love it, so much.

(She has now taken on a pensive expression)

PONNI: I love a lot of stuff. But I used to feel a little weird about that.

(She is cheerful again)

PONNI: This is the story of how I got over (some of) my shyness, and rescued a gymnasium full of people, using dark powers I only kind of understand!

PONNI: We begin last year…

(Close-up on her stuffed cat, which is now holding a title card that reads): THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF PONNI MURTHY A.K.A. SHAME-FLAME THE UNCONQUERABLE)

(We are in a high school hallway. Ponni has one hand on her cane, the other hand on a wheelie backpack. She’s wearing a T-shirt with a stylized drawing of Mars on it and the words “Seein’ red.” Hand-drawn arrows and words identify her as “Ponni Murthy, Freshman” “Only South Asian girl in the entire school” “Plays bassoon in school orchestra (entry level)”, “Favorite Mars rover: changes daily”)

(A cute boy is waving. Arrows identify him as “Westley Bolt, senior” “Plays cello (first chair!)” “Those eyelashes! Hot dang” “Favorite movement from Holst’s The Planets Suite: ‘Venus: The Peace Bringer’ (sensitive!!!)”)

(Ponni waves back.)

WESTLEY: Uh, hey…Amanda.

(Ponni turns around. He was waving to Amanda, standing just behind her.) (Arrows identify Amanda as “Amanda Nolan, senior” “Flautist (second chair)” “Favorite space-adjacent detail: unknown” “Probably a really nice person”)

(Ponni watches them walk off together.)

(Close-up on Ponni’s face, which has gone sort of blank.) CAPTION: Engulfed by a white-hot, all-consuming embarrassment, like sinking into surface of the sun! A VOICE FROM “OFF-SCREEN”: Ponni?

CAPTION: Roiling shame-waves blast in all directions, too powerful to be contained in the body of a single American teen! Can it be that my sheer humiliation has gone…supernova? THE SAME VOICE: Ponni!

PONNI: What?

(We zoom out a little. Her friend Vanessa has joined her. Oh, and also…) VANESSA: Your arm’s on fire.

(Ponni looks down and sees this for the first time.) PONNI: OH CRIPES! OH CRIPES, OH CRIPES! VANESSA: HOW DID YOU NOT NOTICE?

(The fire grows) PONNI: (Terrified but also embarrassed) Can anybody see??? VANESSA: WHO CARES, YOU’RE ON FIRE. PONNI: I couldn’t feel it! 

PONNI: I still can’t, it’s just kind of warm and tingly.

(Close-up on Vanessa) VANESSA: You’re in shock. Stop, drop, and roll, kiddo c’mon. (Arrows identify her as “Vanessa Delbeau, freshman” “Acts cool but we watch a LOT of Star Trek together” “Favorite astronaut: Mae Jemison” “Threatens makeovers sometimes but so far so good”)

PONNI: I’m not in shock! Look, it’s not even burning my skin.

(Vanessa peers at Ponni’s arm. Sure enough, her skin is fine.) VANESSA: Whoa…what even…

(The fire has vanished.) (Ponni and Vanessa stare at each other)

(They stare at each other for another beat.)

VANESSA: … “Cripes?”

(Ponni’s arm starts to smolder again.) PONNI: If I wanna start babysitting, I need to set a good example!

(Vanessa shrugs. Ponni’s arm fire goes out.)

ANDY: Hey guys! (Arrows identify him as “Andy Shin, sophomore” “Black sheep of the wrestling team” “The only other Asian kid in my neighborhood (we high-five a lot)” “Favorite planet: Uranus (lol)” ANDY: You’re not gonna believe this but they let us out of gym five minutes early and--

VANESSA: Ponni can control fire with her mind.

PONNI (embarrassed): “Control” is, um, a strong word? (Ponni holds up her arm, which is smoldering again) ANDY: Dude! That’s awesome!

(Ponni’s arms are extinguished.) VANESSA: Shouldn’t you, like, go to a doctor? ANDY: You don’t go to the doctor for superpowers! You go to the nearest evildoers and show them your wrath, or whatever!

VANESSA: So just…keep our eyes peeled for all the secret volcano lairs of suburban Michigan? PONNI: I don’t really…have wrath… A VOICE FROM OFF-SCREEN: Stop! Please!

(Andy, Vanessa, and Ponni turn to the other side of the hallway. A boy labeled “Freshman? (not sure)” is addressing two upperclassmen labeled “Bully 1” and “Bully 2.” Bully 1 is holding something above his head.) FRESHMAN: I need to turn that in next period! BULLY 1: Well duh, maybe you shouldn’t have made it out of candy!

FRESHMAN: Don’t eat my homework, come on! BULLY 2 (Affecting a snotty voice, clear from his face he’s mocking Freshman) : Yeah, come on!

PONNI: Is that… VANESSA: A surprisingly good model of a 14th century castle, built out of Starbursts? I think so. I might need new glasses. PONNI: No.

(Closeup on Ponni’s face) PONNI: Evildoers.

PONNI (striding right up to the bullies): Hey! Quit bothering that guy and give him back his castle, he probably spent a lot of time on it! BULLY 1: Or what?

PONNI: Or you’ll regret it. (Ponni holds out her non-cane arm like it’s about to erupt into flames.)

(It does not erupt into flames. Nothing happens. There is a long beat.)

(Ponni still has her free arm out)

CAPTION: Was it all just a fevered imagining? It can’t be, Vanessa and Andy bore witness as well. Unless they, too, are mere shadows, empty projections of my shattered, lonely psyche…

BULLY 2 (to Ponni) : Hey, Unibrow! Out of the way, Tiny Tim!

(Close-up on Ponni. She is almost crying)

(New panel, also a close-up on Ponni) PONNI: WHY DOES YOUR SEXIST, RACIST, ABLEIST BULLCRAP STILL SOMEHOW GET TO HURT MY FEELINGS? IT’S NOT FUNNY OR CLEVER, IT’S JUST MEAN!

(A tear slides down Ponni’s face) PONNI: YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO MAKE ME SAD! IT’S SO HUMILIATING!

(Zoom out. Both of Ponni’s arms are producing fireballs. The bullies are cowering in place, eyes wide.) CAPTION: That’s what triggers this power! My own embarrassment! Whoa, weird.

NEW PANEL: A WHOLE LOT OF SCREAMING AND FLEEING LATER…

(Andy and Vanessa are helping Freshman(?) re-assemble all his stuff. Ponni is no longer on fire) ANDY: Here’s your castle back, Trevor. VANESSA: Nice work on those turrets. (Arrow identifies Freshman(?) as “Trevor! Apparently”) Trevor: Uh, thanks. (To Ponni) Are you…okay?

PONNI: I’m fine. Are you? FRESHMAN(?): Yeah. Uh, I’m Trevor, hi. What should I call you?

PONNI: How about…Shame-Flame the Unconquerable.

VANESSA (whispering): I think he meant your name. PONNI: Oh! Ponni! (She holds out her hand to shake. There’s a flame coming off her palm. Awkward.)

PONNI (putting her hand back down) : Uh, good luck with your castle project! TREVOR: Thanks. Good luck…fighting crime?

(Ponni and Andy give Vanessa huge matching grins) New panel: Later that day, after school… (Vanessa and Andy are waiting outside Ponni’s bathroom door.)

VANESSA: Are you ready yet? PONNI (from inside) : Almost! VANESSA: Never thought I’d get to help design a superhero costume. ANDY: I did. VANESSA: Really? ANDY: Aim high, y’know? VANESSA: Ponni, c’mon! PONNI (from inside): I can’t believe people are gonna see me like this.

(The door swings open to reveal Ponni’s superhero outfit. Labels explain: “my dorkiest bike helmet”, “elbow pads”, “knee pads”, “ancient fanny pack I found in my parents’ closet”, “a wolf T-shirt (with noticeable mustard stain)”, a tutu labeled “(not sure why I had this??)”, a hideous plastic necklace “my least favorite aunt gave me this for my 11th birthday” and “sneakers with black socks.”)

ANDY: If your theory about your power is right, this is like, basically a super suit. VANESSA: The fanny pack’s a nice touch. What’s in there? PONNI: (grimly) Naked baby photos. If we’re doing this, we’re doing it right.

VANESSA: Ready? PONNI: Let’s go save the world.

Caption: For a while, everything went exactly as planned… PONNI (approaching a guy mugging a woman) : Stop right there! MUGGER: What the…what’s this kid doing here?

(PONNI makes an embarrassed face)

(We see the scene in silhouette—Ponni’s hands producing fireballs, the mugger jumping straight up in terror)

(We cut to Ponni foiling a bank robbery) PONNI: Give back that money right now! MASKED ROBBER: Is that a bike helmet? I…are you serious?

(Everybody in the bank stares at Ponni, who looks down.)

(There’s a hint of flames in her eyes)

(The next panel is Ponni grinning, both masked robbers raising their hands in surrender. The wall behind them is singed like she was outlining them in fireballs.)

(Cut to a very fancy-looking office. A wealthy businessman is sitting at a desk, pen poised over some paperwork.)

PONNI (from under his desk): Put the pen down! Don’t you dare put together another predatory subprime mortgage! BUSINESSMAN: Security! Security! PONNI: What you’re doing is wrong and you know it!

(Businessman stares at her. She is still balled up under his desk.) BUSINESSMAN: Listen, kid, do you even know what a subprime mortgage is? Or did you hear one thing on the news, and now you think you’re an expert? PONNI: You’re hurting innocent people! BUSINESSMAN: How long have you been under there?

PONNI: Um.

PONNI: I don’t…um…listen, I’ve got what’s called Juvenille Arthritis? And I was having a really good day this morning, pain-wise, so I thought I’d be okay down here, but now everything hurts and my cane’s at a weird angle. (she winces) Uh, I know I broke into your office, but can you help me up?

(close up on Businessman) BUSINESSMAN: …you’ve got to be kidding m—is your hand starting to smoke?

(Cut to a newspaper headline: MORTGAGE CRISIS AVERTED. The accompanying photo is Ponni sitting in a comfortable chair, giving a big thumb’s up)

CAPTION: But then things began to get more complicated. (Ponni is facing off against a Mad Scientist.) PONNI: Disarm that giant laser, right now! MAD SCIENTIST: Why should I listen to a child in a tutu and gym shoes?

PONNI: Because I’m the best darn hero this town’s got! CAPTION: Wait, what?

CAPTION: I try to summon up that rising, burning tide of self-consciousness, but I’ve done so much in this ridiculous costume, wearing it just feels good. I have to find a new path back to that terrible feeling. PONNI (beginning to panic): Uh…I get super excited when my teacher assigns us science projects! MAD SCIENTIST: Who doesn’t? (Reaches towards the laser.)

PONNI: I cried the first time I watched Shrek! MAD SCIENTIST: …each to their own?

PONNI: Stop! Stop right now, in the name of my 90,000-word Labyrinth/Harry Potter crossover fic! MAD SCIENTIST: …huh?

PONNI: I mean, Jareth had to…learn magic somewhere, right? So why not Hogwarts? The heroine is this seventh-year Ravenclaw student, who, yeah, it’s just me except she’s like, super super gifted at magic and she’s got a baby penguin for a familiar! I wound up naming my pet guinea pig after that penguin! I’ve been writing it for three and a half years. It’s got over a hundred chapters, and all the chapter titles are song lyrics!

CAPTION: I wait for the icy judgment to surface in his face. It does. I wait for the burning shame to overtake me. It doesn’t. Maybe it’s a little silly, but back before my powers took hold, working on that story was one of the few times I felt in control. It was fun to create something purely for myself. And cripes, it’s not like I was trying to destroy the world with a laser or something. I actually feel almost…proud. Uh-oh.

MAD SCIENTIST: Any last words? PONNI: Listen, if you’re going to kill me, can you do it fast? My curfew’s in twenty minutes.

MAD SCIENTIST: …your curfew is seven? PONNI: Well yeah, on weeknights! MAD SCIENTIST: Seven? You have to be home before the bedtime of most first graders?

(Flames appear in Ponni’s eyes.)

(Cut to Ponni walking away from a terrified scientist and a melted laser.) CAPTION: Way too many close calls lately. And now I only have nineteen minutes to get home. Crap. CAPTION: Then, in the middle of a pep assembly, things get worse. (A gigantic crablike monster has burst through the wall of the gym.)

PONNI: Stand down, stranger! Shame-Flame the Unconquerable is here! MONSTER: Then let me just say, Shame-Flame…

(scary close-up of the crab monster’s face) MONSTER: I respect you as an equal. CAPTION: Yikes, word’s gotten around. My foes are getting cleverer.

PONNI: How can you respect someone with a 7 pm curfew! MONSTER: That doesn’t reflect on you; it just means your parents want you to be safe. PONNI: Oh yeah? Well, I’m totally excited to take Advanced Trig next year! MONSTER: You’re preparing yourself for a job in the lucrative STEM field. No shame in that. PONNI: No, I mean, I love math for math’s sake. I’ve written little jingles about all my favorite numbers!

MONSTER: Well, that’s convenient. (Scoops up a handful of band members in one claw.) I hear music is good for the digestion.

PONNI: C’mon! Other than Vanessa and Andy, I’ve got no friends my age! Half the reason I don’t wear makeup is I don’t know how to do it right! Ever since Toy Story I talk to my stuffed animals, just in case! Doesn’t anyone want to laugh at me?

(Ponni looks around. Everyone is just panicking.) CAPTION: Cripes cripes cripes!

PONNI: Gosh, I said I’d defeat you and I can’t even summon the fire to light a birthday candle. Now that’s humiliating, right? MONSTER (pauses with that clawful of band members inches away from its terrible mouth): Not really, Shame-Flame. 

MONSTER: It’s just sad.

CAPTION: Well, that’s it. No other way.

PONNI: (cupping her hands to her mouth) Westley Bolt! Hey, Westley! (Westley is sitting four rows down. He turns around.)

PONNI: I’ve had a crush on you since sixth grade! WESTLEY: I know. I was just hoping you wouldn’t bring it up. I don’t like you back. You’re weird. Obviously.

PONNI (smiles, badass) : Oh, I know.

PONNI (turning back towards the monster) And I’ve gotta say, now that everybody knows how long I was hung up on somebody so wrong for me, it’s a little…oh shoot, what’s the word I’m looking for, here?

(The next panel is just flames)

(Then the smoke clears, Ponni’s fire is gone and the monster has fled, having dropped those band kids safely on the ground. It turns out that Trevor was also among them.)

TREVOR: That was incredible! Ponni, you saved our lives! You’re my hero!

(A tiny flame of embarrassment shoots out of Ponni’s hand.) PONNI: Oh, um. You’re welcome?  Anytime, sir. VANESSA (seeing the fire) : Ponni, your— PONNI: I KNOW.

(EPILOGUE: Ponni is back to present day, sitting on her desk chair in her room.) PONNI: Nobody was seriously hurt. Not even the crab monster, I don’t think. It took the rest of the school year to repair the gym. Andy got to switch out his PE class with an elective. He took astronomy, thinking it would be a blowoff class, but the teacher wasn’t very good so I got to explain a bunch of stuff to him! Me and Trevor dated for a few months, but he got super clingy when I left for math camp, so we broke up. C’est la vie. Oh, also I went to math camp! It was super daunting at first, and I got nervous and made mistakes. Luckily, my threshold for embarrassment is sky-high at this point, so y’know, I bounced back and enjoyed the heck out of it.

PONNI: Of course, not sure what that means for the next time some sinister force threatens our town. What happens when Shame-Flame gets…shame-proof?

A VOICE FROM OFF PANEL: No way! I found it! ANOTHER VOICE: Found what?

(Ponni looks over at Andy and Vanessa, who have been on the floor, going through a box of Ponni’s old things.) ANDY: Right here! The video of that anti-drug puppet show she did in fifth grade! PONNI: It wasn’t…for a class or anything, I was just really mega- against drugs. ANDY: Am I right in thinking it was a rock opera? PONNI: Uh… VANESSA: Ponni, what are the odds you still remember all the lyrics? CAPTION: Just kidding. That cringey feeling comes for all of us, sooner or later.

(Ponni, Andy, and Vanessa are roasting marshmallows on forks, using Ponni’s burning hand as heat.) VANESSA: Come on, one verse! PONNI: Next crab monster, Vanessa. Next crab monster. CAPTION: I guess it’s just a question of what you do with that feeling.

(Close-up of Ponni’s stuffed cat from the very beginning. It’s holding a card that says “THE END.”)

[tessatechaitea]

Team Titans #15

Team Titans is an anagram for Matte Saint.

I am now on eBay trying to get a copy of this disaster.

Dark Joker? How many writers at DC Comics have looked at the character of the Joker and thought, "Why didn't somebody make this guy more evil?" With The Batman Who Laughs, Scott Snyder must just be the latest in a long line of writers who have based all of their work on the most famous line from Crocodile Dundee. In this issue, Councilwoman Alderman's grandchild from the future has returned to the past to launch a negative public relations campaign against the Team Titans. Some of that previous sentence is speculation. But I'll assume it's true because I know comic books. The bottom line is Jeffrey Jensen (the writer!) seemed to believe that this comic book needed to be exactly like the New Titans: a group of superheroes that don't do any actual superheroing are being smeared by the press. At least the Team Titans aren't purporting to help people. They've already done their job by defeating Lord Chaos and now are just trying to live their lives. Although they did make the mistake of completely trashing a mall. I suppose the millions of dollars in damage to the mall was worth stopping the theft of one hourglass. I don't see why the media should suddenly paint them in a negative light. Except maybe for Kilowatt. I thought maybe he was a black man that was transformed into an energy being, probably because his Aunt and Uncle in this timeline were African American. Which is why I thought he was going to be in for a shock when he discovered why the Longs' neighbor was flying a confederate flag. But it turns out, Kilowatt is simply racist and was trying to make friends with another good ole boy.

I guess he has a crush on Mirage because she can just turn into a white girl?

The evil jerk plotting the Team Titans' downfall via bad press is a bald white guy in a purple suit. But he's from the future so he's not the bald white guy in a purple suit you're thinking of. Team Titans #15 Rating: Who knew comic books from the early 90s were so full of social justice?! The B-story was all about a Jewish woman and how she survived Nazi Germany with the help of a Team Titans group that Battalion doesn't recognize. I think there was some moralizing in there about how it was bad to be a Nazi. Weird how nobody was pissed off about this kind of stuff in 1993. The Internet teaming up with white guys who can't get laid has ruined everything! Even if I was bored, at least I can give this comic book a high ranking because it was anti-Nazi! The problem is that it was also boring. Maybe if Jeff Jensen had made being anti-Nazi less boring, we wouldn't have Nazis again! Fucking jerk.

[johnhardinsawyer]

Movin’ On Up

John Sawyer

Bedford Presbyterian Church

9 / 1 / 19

Luke 14:1, 7-14

“Movin’ on Up”

(The Humbling, Yet Holy, Work of Knowing Your Place)

If you’ve ever planned a big party, like a wedding reception, you have, likely, felt pressure to make sure that everyone is sitting in the right place.  For example, you don’t want two ex-es sitting at the same table with their new partners, unless you know they’re on good terms.  You don’t want the groom’s college roommate who has a habit of telling the wrong kind of stories, sitting next to the bride’s prim and proper grandmother. Chances would be slim of the black sheep of the family sitting close to a microphone during the toasts.  And chances would likely be slim of someone, who had been invited to the wedding at the last minute, ending up sitting at the head table.  You get the idea. . .

In today’s reading from the Gospel of Luke, Jesus is at a dinner party in the home of a well-respected religious leader.  They were there to celebrate the Sabbath meal, which, among Jewish people, was – and is – a sacred, but joyful, celebration of God’s gifts.  Parties in those days had some rules, especially about who sat where.  The head of the table, where the host sat, was the place of honor.  And the farther you sat from the host was a sign of where you were in the pecking-order of importance.

But at the Sabbath meal on this particular evening, Jesus notices that all of the dinner guests try to choose the places of honor – jockeying for positions as close to the host as they can get.  When Jesus sees this, he uses it as a teachable moment about manners, and how our presumptions should not lead us right to the front of the line, or the best seat in the house, or to the head of the table. Jesus says that it is wrong for us to make such assumptions about ourselves.  If we do this, chances are good that we will be asked to move down the line.  And those who choose to sit at the lowest place will have the opportunity to move up to the place of honor.  “For all who exalt themselves will be humbled,” Jesus says, “and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”  (Luke 14:11)

This is one of those hard and odd sayings of Jesus that runs contrary to how things seem to truly work in the world.  I mean, who, in their right mind, would choose to humble themselves?  And, besides, it is pretty clear that those who exalt themselves are not always humbled and those who humble themselves are not always exalted.  There is inequality in the world.  Some people have more – more money, more opportunity, more influence. And, some people do not.  And, because of this, the “haves” make the presumption that their place just might be closer to the head of the table.  I mean, why wouldn’t it be?  And, the “have-nots”?  Well, in most cases, they aren’t even invited to dinner.  And this is just too bad, but that’s just how things go.  And yet, here is Jesus, wanting to turn all of this upside down.

I don’t know about you, but I can see some real-world implications here.  You and I might presume that because of our background or education or the people we know or where we live or how we worship that there are certain benefits that we have either earned or inherited.  Or, in keeping with the common practice of people of privilege, we might not even think about this stuff at all.  We just presume that everyone else sees things the same way we do or should share in our experience of the world because, why wouldn’t they?  But Jesus isn’t too sure about this.  Jesus wants us to think of ourselves in a different way.  And, sometimes, learning to think of ourselves in a different way can be a humbling experience.

The year before I started seminary, there was an incident that took place in the seminary cafeteria that had some racist overtones.  We never got the full story on what, exactly, happened, and it might not have been an intentionally racist act, but there were those who took offense.  So, the following year – my first year at seminary, all of the students were required to attend a racial sensitivity training event. I was appalled.  How dare anyone assume that I was racially insensitive. I was a child of the South, but I grew up with black classmates and I had black friends.  Yes, they lived in different neighborhoods from mine, but. . . I knew people.  So, I made an appointment to have lunch with one of the student organizers of the event, a lovely woman named Carol Ann.  I thanked her for meeting with me, said how bad it was that something offensive happened the year before I arrived at seminary, and then laid out my case as to why I felt that I was not a racist and not racially insensitive – you know, I had some black friends, and my ancestors didn’t own slaves, as far as I knew. Carol Ann was courteous, but – after I finished speaking – she sighed a great sigh. . .  It was a sigh that said so much – something like:

“This is not about you, John.  You’re a little too sensitive, too defensive. . . too fragile. Is this the first time you have ever had to think about all of the implications of the fact that you are white?  I am reminded of my blackness every moment of every day.  You’re making it about you, John, but it’s not about you.  This is about nearly 400 years of terrible history and all the garbage that comes with it.  And, even though you mean well, maybe it would be better if you spent more time listening instead of speaking. . .”  

In the moment, I was trying to justify myself, to feel better about myself.  But, in the years since, thinking about who I was in that moment, I have been humbled. There are times when it is so much more difficult – but also more loving and more faithful – to not speak too soon, to not make assumptions, to not get defensive, but to simply be quiet and not presume to take a more important seat, or perspective or point of view, than is called for in the moment.  This is a good rule of thumb, you know – not just for race relations, but for political conversations, marriages, friendships, parenting. . .  I am thinking about all of this because, as we commemorate the 400thanniversary of slaves being brought to America this past month,[1]and the 100thanniversary of white women getting the right to vote this past month, (black women (and men) did not get that right until 1965), it is clear that there are people who have been forced to take the lower, “less important” seats, people who have been put in their place – not by God, but by the other party guests – and this has not been of their own choosing.  These are people whose voices should have been heard, people whose gifts should have been celebrated, people whose faith just might run deeper because it has been tested in ways that those of us who presume the place of privilege know not.

I don’t know if you ever think about this stuff, but I really struggle with it.  Our entire society continues to struggle with it.  We see it in the news every day.  I am humbled by how much has been handed to me – a white male – and how much I have presumed – even unwittingly, about my place in the world.  As far I know, most people don’t like to be humbled, or moved down the table to a place where they don’t want to sit, or have someone from a lower place moved up higher than them.  It just doesn’t seem fair, does it?  But, as Jesus seems to be telling us, sometimes this is just what we need for the kingdom of God to break through.

There are some warm and fuzzy sayings from Jesus, but today’s lesson isn’t one of them.

I can imagine the fancy dinner guests gathered together for the Sabbath meal being more than a little shocked by Jesus’ teaching. I mean, the nerve of this guy! Imagine a dinner guest coming to your party and calling out the other guests on their manners.  But then Jesus takes his table talk to an even deeper level. He turns his attention to the host of the party – the well-respected leader of the Pharisees – and says,

When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid.  But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind.  And you will be blessed because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.  (Luke 14:12-14)

When we have a meal, Jesus is saying, or a gathering of people – or, if we were to expand the idea, a society, a culture, a country – what if we were to think more about those who are not gathered around our table (be it a literal or figurative table) than those who are?[2]  Who is not here that should be?  Who is not here that God wants here – the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, the gay, the trans, the straight, the Republican, the Democrat, the immigrant, the citizen, the popular, the lonely, the black, the white, the people of every beautiful color and hue of God’s wondrous creation. . . ?  In the kingdom of God, it looks different from how we might presume. In the kingdom of God, all of God’s children are welcome.  And those we would not normally invite?  Well, at God’s Table, they are the guests of honor.  This is what grace looks like – Jesus is saying – a gift that is given to us again and again, which cannot be repaid, but only humbly received.  We cannot repay Jesus for the grace that he gives us, but we can learn to share the grace he gives us.  Are we God’s honored guests?  I hope so, but the humbling thing is, so is everyone else.  And, if this is the case, why would we not work to make this so – on earth as it is in heaven?

When we come to the Lord’s Table, is there room for us? The good news is that yes, there isroom for us.  But when we come to this Table, it would be good for us to remember that access to this Table “. . . is not a right conferred upon the worthy, but a privilege given to the undeserving who come in faith, repentance, and love”[3]  We come to this table at Christ’s invitation.  He is the host of the meal and freely gives himself to us in a mysterious and holy way. There is no need for us to jockey for position to get any closer to him, because he feeds us with his very self. You can’t get any closer than that. And, as if that weren’t enough, when we celebrate this meal, Jesus doesn’t come down to feed us.  We are all raised up higher so that we can catch a glimpse of the heavenly feast[4]– a feast at which all are welcome and everyone is fed.  In other words, God invites each and every one of us to move on up – the ex-es, the college roommate, the black sheep of the family, the person invited at the last minute, you, and me. . .

When we come to the Lord’s Table, rubbing elbows and shoulders with all who have been invited, may this be a rehearsal for how we are to be in the world.  May we not presume to know our place, but may we truly know our place – as forgiven and redeemed children – on equal footing with everyone else.  And may God grant us the grace to look across the Table and see Christ at the heart and in the face of all who are gathered with us.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

-------- 

[1]https://pulitzercenter.org/sites/default/files/full_issue_of_the_1619_project.pdf.

[2]With gratitude to my friend, Amos Disasa, who used a similar turn of phrase in a sermon in late July, 2019.

[3]Book of Order of the Presbyterian Church (USA) – 2017/2019 – W-3.04.

[4]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord%27s_Supper_in_Reformed_theology#cite_note-FOOTNOTELetham200135-17.

[goth-unicorn-supreme]

I had an oddly revealing conversation today while standing in line at Walmart.  Someone made a comment about Trump’s infamous impersonation of fruit and I said, “An actual orange could run America better.” The black straight man (this will be relevant later, I promise) behind me snorted and laughed, and that’s how we got to talking. It was a long ass line, and the conversation started with Trump, so of course we did eventually get to racism and homophobia and sexism - Trump’s Three Pillars, if you will.

The man starts talking about the racism he has faced, and my heart went out to him. As a kid, he was forced to watch three teenage asshats absolutely trash his brand new bike that his mother just bought for his birthday while a fourth asshat held him. That was the only example, but I could see it was what affected him the worst. I was enraged, and I told him so. I asked what happened to them and he said, “Nothing, what did you think was going to happen? You whities don’t care.” I opened my mouth to continue to sympathize, but I paused. He pretty much just lumped me in with the bullies that did that to him. I know sometimes people trip up on speaking, I do it ALL the time, so I figured that’s what happened here. I smiled and said, “Well, I hope those fucks get their kneecaps broken at some point.” It’s my usual go-to “insert painful punishment here”, and even after everything that happened I STILL hope they get their kneecaps broken. Several times.

This point he’s enraged, and personally I believe he was probably reliving it. I can’t blame him. It’s no excuse for what came out of his mouth eventually though.

He begins ranting on how every white man, woman, and child deserves ‘it’ (he never did say what ‘it’ was, and I sure af didn’t ask). Then, he blurts out “And people think fucking Indians were oppressed! You stupid fucks don’t know what oppression is.” I let him go on about white people because in that moment I think he needed it. I think he needed to unleash all that pent up anger on a white person that he felt wasn’t going to bite back. I was more than willing to take it, right until he starts going off on Natives. I have no fucking clue where it came from, I was honestly shocked that someone who had faced such hatred could then turn around and do it to someone else.

“We’re not Indians. We’re not from India, Columbus was a dumb fuck - “ He doesn’t let me finish, now going off on how I’m not Native (still caused us Indians) and that I’m just a white bitch. I’ve had it. I hurt for this man, and under the disrespect and anger I was still hurting for this man. I was not going to let this man continue this bullshit, though.

“The only reason I don’t have an ID card was because my FULL BLOODED NATIVE MOTHER moved across the country the second she learned she was going to have me because HER mother was a physically abusive drunk. My mother chose my safety over my Native blood, and I thank her for it every day. My father is a white ginger, I had a 50/50 shot on what I looked like.” The man’s still anger, but he’s at least letting me speak now. I didn’t disappoint.

“Do you know what has been DONE to my mother’s people? Do you know how many have lost everything, including their life? Do they not teach about the Trail of Tears anymore? Do they not teach about how the government fucked over so many tribes by taking their land and relocating them to completely inhabitable plots of shit?” Honestly, this was as far as I wanted to go. End of the day, the man faced a horror that no one should go through. He wanted to continue.

“How is that comparable to what MY people faced? We were SLAVES, at least INDIANS weren’t.”

“THAT’S BECAUSE THE WHITE MAN DIDN’T THINK WE WERE GOOD ENOUGH. THE WHITE MAN WOULD RATHER SCALP US THAN KEEP US, AND LET’S NOT PRETEND THAT US NATIVES DIDN’T GET SCALPED BY BLACK MEN EITHER. YOU CAN LOOK THAT UP. OUR SCALPS WERE WORTH MORE THAN OUR LIVES.” I’m like two steps away from shouting, and by now there’s a line that has formed AROUND us. It’s Walmart, this shit happens every two weeks. No one bats an eye.

He’s quiet, and quiet, and quiet. I start calming down, I��m think this bullshit is over, I can go home and slam back as many teas as I can handle. Nope.

He looks thoughtful for a second, and then “You’re still white.”

I wanted to cry. I try a different approach, because it’s apparent I couldn’t walk away. What would that accomplish for this man? He’d leave still thinking every white doesn’t give a fuck about him, that every white person supports racism, although I think he might feel different about Natives.

“Are you straight, by chance?”

“Yea, why?”

“And you were born with a penis, correct?”

“Um, yea. I don’t - “

“So then, you’re part of my oppression. I’m LGBT, and I have a vagina. You are my oppressor.”

“What?! Lady, I haven’t done shit to you!”

“Exactly. And I haven’t done shit to you, but you lumped me in with the four piss ants that don’t even deserve to breathe the same oxygen as you do. I was ready to cry for you, but all you saw was me as your oppressor. If every white person is a fucking racist, then every straighty is homophobic and every man is sexist. But you’re not, are you?” He’s quiet again, so I lean in enough for him to clue in that I’m waiting for an answer.

“No, my sister is a lesbian. I love my little sister.”

Now we’re both quiet, for probably the first time in maybe twenty minutes. His face was just ... blank. I don’t know what he was thinking, and really it don’t matter. After a bit, I just reached out, put my hand on his arm, and told him that I truly believe racists, homophobes, sexists, and all those alike deserve nothing but death and then just walked off to find a line a few aisles away. I was emotionally drained, my adrenaline was wearing off so I was hit with a migraine and the need to vomit, and I couldn’t help but feel I came face to face with the product of Hatred. This is what racism does - it destroys lives, whether it’s literal or figurative. You can’t process hatred, you either fight it with love or you spread it. I don’t think anyone, and I mean ANYONE, had stepped in to help this man fight so he did the only option left - spread it towards Natives.

I’m probably gonna think about this man for the rest of my life. I’m probably gonna be on my death bed, wondering what has become of him. Every time I see hatred, this man is gonna be in my thoughts. Maybe I didn’t handle everything the way I should have, I still feel really bad about the scalping discussion, because I could tell by his face that the thought of black men scalping Natives was horrifying to him. I don’t know if he believed me or not, but the thought alone must have been enough for him. But, I’m content with what happened. Hate me, flame me, call me whatever you want, accuse me of what you will, but I am content with what happened.

[oldguardaudio]

Rush Limbaugh -> CBS News Talks to Trump Voters and Can’t Believe What They Found

Rush Limbaugh Combat the Drive-By Media at HoaxandChange.com

rush obama shadow government against trump at HoaxAndChange.com

Rush USA Flag at HoaxAndChange.com

Aug 17, 2017

  RUSH: You know, yesterday on this program we made mention of the fact that on the CBS Evening News on Tuesday, the entire broadcast was devoted to Trump and Charlottesville and the whole newscast. There was not one other story. So last night — I don’t know if the suits at CBS heard us talking about that or not, but they decided to go out and try to find some Trump supporters, gave them some time maybe to balance what they had done the previous night.

They found two black and one white Trump supporter, three people, and I want you to hear what these sounded like. The names involved here, correspondent Mark Strassman, the three female supporters for Trump are Janelle Jones, Ellen Diehl and Lucretia, one of my all-time favorite female names, by the way, Lucretia, not to be confused with Lucrezia, Lucrezia Borgia. This is Lucretia, as in DeVille. Anyway, these three women, two black, one white, CBS found them to talk about Trump controversy, here’s the first bite.

STRASSMAN: Has your support for Trump lessened one bit?

HUGHES: Absolutely not.

DIEHL: Not at all.

JONES: No.

STRASSMAN: Not one bit?

JONES: No, I don’t look at him as, you know, my pastor or my moral leader. I look at him as the leader as it relates to governmental issues.

DIEHL: We’re not looking for somebody charming. We’re looking for a man who knows how to turn things around, and he’s got a track record of turning things around.

RUSH: Sound bite number two.

STRASSMAN: When you saw Charlottesville, what did that say about where we are as a country?

DIEHL: It wasn’t necessarily a completely black-white issue, but I think that the media is turning it into a black-white issue. It’s definitely a left-right issue, but it’s left fringe and right fringe.

STRASSMAN: The Confederate statues don’t bother you?

HUGHES: No. It’s history. I wasn’t born back then. You wasn’t, either. So why is that affecting us? If anything, we should grow and learn from it just like Martin Luther King said. You don’t judge people by the color of their skin. You base that on their character.

RUSH: See, these people understand something here. And these people at CBS, I guarantee you they were genuinely shocked that they were able to find them, and then what they said. Remember people in the media do not really think people like this exist. They have an arrogance about them that is just automatic. Whatever they believe and think, they assume 80% of the country is the same way, and that’s how they go about reporting these stories.

But this woman, that was Lucretia, by the way, who said, “No, I wasn’t born back then, you weren’t either. Why is that affecting us? If anything, we should grow and learn from it like Martin Luther King said.” What does she know? She knows that black people who were never slaves are fighting white people who were never Nazis over a Confederate statue or statues that Democrats put up. And now for some reason the Democrats don’t want to live with what they did and it’s now become Trump’s fault. And these people are not buying it. Sound bite number three.

STRASSMAN: How do you explain what your support is for a president, given the criticism that he’s had on this race issue?

HUGHES: I think for myself, period. Nobody’s going to tell me what to think or how to think. I’m not gullible and I’m not blind. It’s my decision if I’m going to support someone or not, not go by what other people has to say. And to me, what I’ve seen, and what I love, I’m not– he’s not going to lose my support any time soon.

JONES: I’ve been a Republican before Donald Trump. I will be a Republican afterwards. I honestly don’t think we will see this issue of racial divide addressed until we remove identity politics out of the political process.

STRASSMAN: These Republican women say if a president deserves blame for making racial tensions worse, it’s Obama, not Trump for the identity politics they say Democrats have practiced for the last eight years.

RUSH: And that’s exactly right, by the way. So there you have three Trump voters, two of them black and one white, all females, Trump voters. They’re not idiots. They’re not racists. They’re not Nazis. They’re not members of the Klan. They’re independently intelligent. They’re not mind-numbed robots being led down the path by Steve Bannon or anybody else. They make up their own minds. Exactly contrary to the way the media depicts Trump voters. The media depicts Trump voters as the people in Charlottesville, for example.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: This Bob in Spokane, Washington. I’m glad you waited, sir. Great to have you here.

CALLER: Hey, thanks, Rush. Arturo Fuente dittos to you. The press still doesn’t understand Trump and his voters. His third presser was brilliant. He came out and dangled some shiny bait in front of them and even spiced it up with, “I’m not done, fake news,” and that makes ’em angry — you can hear ’em yelling — and angry people make mistakes. If Trump had come out… He exposed fake news, and if he had come out and said, “The reason is because they’re leftists,” everybody would have pooh-poohed it. But he’s got the press self-destructing and they’re exposing themselves. When they look in the camera with a straight face and tell me there’s no violence from the left, or, “Okay, it’s understandable,” or worse yet, “It’s justified,” I know what they are. They told me, and Trump didn’t have to do it. He’s got them exposing themselves for what they are.

RUSH: I am glad you called, because I have actually been sitting here… As I watched the Trump press conference — and this is how it happens, by the way, folks. I’m watching the Trump press conference, and I’m cheering it. I will admit it, I cheered it this thing on Monday or Tuesday, the last one. The days run have together. I’ve missed the days last week. I thought last night was Tuesday night and it wasn’t. Anyway, I thought it was exactly what’s called for, not talking about any guff. Just fire right back at these people.

You know, trying to do it their way one day then not getting any credit. He went out and he condemned who they told him to condemn and they said, “It doesn’t count! We don’t think you mean it.” So he meets them the next day and basically tells them to go to hell and here’s the way it really is. “There’s violence on both sides, and I condemn it,” blah, blah, blah, blah, blah — and I just knew… Folks, I just knew Trump voters are cheering when he does this.

When they watch that, they’re cheering. But then it’s over and here comes the media, and it is an absolute crash. It is a hysteria! It’s as though Donald Trump has just created the greatest gaffe in the history of politics and everybody thinks so. I put myself in the position of Trump voter watching this, and I know that Trump voters get angrier and angrier at the media. They don’t watch it much anymore. But they’ll see something like that, and I don’t think the media has the slightest idea how they are failing at destroying Trump with his own voter base. They’re failing big time.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Let me grab Topeka very quickly, Susan, I’m glad you waited, what’s happening? What’s up?

CALLER: Hi. Mega dittos, Rush. I just wanted to make a quick point. When I voted in November, I was not a reluctant Trump supporter, but I wasn’t a huge supporter. But I also voted not only for him, but I voted against the media. And every time the media spews out some lie or accusation or speculation or has something to say and never is able to back it up, I become a bigger and bigger and bigger supporter. There’s actually I bet quite a few who are like me —

RUSH: You know what? I think that’s exactly right. And of course when the media hears this story, which I think they hear a lot, they laugh at it, take it as a badge of honor. They don’t realize how big a deal it is that they have become something about which people vote against. I wish I had more time, but I’m out, Susan. I misread the clock here by a minute. But thank you. Thank you very much for calling.

Rush Limbaugh -> CBS News Talks to Trump Voters and Can’t Believe What They Found Rush Limbaugh -> CBS News Talks to Trump Voters and Can’t Believe What They Found Aug 17, 2017…