#that is a resource you can use to convince people you are Not A Slave

[wayward-wren]

okay so i can KIND OF understand why they changed the plot of Gladiators of Capua, cos a) Jonathan's Angst Arc may have been a bit heavy for live action kid's show and b) I don't think the budget could have handled the Colosseum. HOWEVER -

Jonathan's motivation is amusing to me. Dude gets kidnapped and thrown into gladiator jail and is like 'welp this is my life now ig'. His father is out here STRESSING and Jonathan's just like "i'm going to DIE here I gotta learn how to FIGHT' doesn't even consider trying to get word to his father. Not to mention Nubia and Lupus ALSO get picked up off the street and put to work like bro. Learn to say no. (I guess for those two they are in information-gathering mode so it COULD be a useful thing. But Jonathan fully goes "welp gladiator time' and it's so funny to me)

I am also kinda sad we don't see the full 'Jonathan Angst and everyone thinks he's dead' arc cos that is what got me hooked on the series in the beginning.

[cordialsilence]

One of the benefits of having purchased a long charger is that I don’t have to hang off my bed folded at a 90 degree angle when my phone’s battery is low but on the flip side it’s almost 3am and I lay here comfortable and unfolded with my phone on low power mode at 17% and charging I can’t help feeling like it enables my screen addiction a bit

[ironunderstands]

These Aventurine, Topaz and Jade comparisons are getting out of hand…

As much as I adore both of them, I think it’s very disingenuous to compare Aventurine and Topaz’s lore and be like “but they are the same!!!! If people like Aventurine and dislike Topaz that’s just misogyny!!! and like… no?

Topaz’s whole thing is that she doesn’t know the extent of the IPC’s evil, and believes that what she’s doing is genuinely the right thing to do. Even if she never had a choice in joining the IPC, she (incorrectly) believes what they did to her and her planet is justified, logical and moral, and for those reasons she stands with them. Part of this is likely IPC brainwashing, as she was probably very young when she became an indentured servant to them, and someone living on a planet on the brink of destruction would likely view anyone who stepped up to save them as heroes (imo the IPC likely waited for the point of no return to establish contact so her people had no other choice to except).

However Topaz got best end of the proverbial stick, her planet and its people were deemed useful by the IPC, and didn’t fight back, even if in the end they were still exploited.

Unfortunately, we have seen through Boothill, Belabog and Aventurine what happens when that isn’t the case.

Boothill’s planet got bombed and people genocided because they had a resource useful to the IPC, but were unwilling to cooperate with them or hand over their home, so the IPC decided to eradicate them.

Belabog had a debt owed to the IPC that was ridiculously high and very unfair to expect them to pay back, and had Topaz not convinced the higher ups to give them some time (which she got demoted for), the IPC would have taken Belabog by force

That leaves us with Aventurine, whose story is in no way on the same level of bad as Topaz’s. Unlike her, he has witnessed and experienced firsthand the truly awful shit the IPC can do.

They took custody of Sigonia and promised to offer the Avgin aid in their fight against the Katacans, at the very least protect them from harm. (Sidenote, since the IPC held control over Sigonia, they should have stopped the fighting in the first place). However, they simply stood by and did nothing, resulting in the deaths of around 6,000 Avgin, with around 3,000 went missing (or injured, I don’t remember, either way it’s bad).

But wait! It gets worse! Aventurine when he was still known as Kakavasha referred to the IPC as “the men in black/the men in black suits”, and his first master says he bought Aventurine from “the men in black/the men in black suits”, likely mocking the way he referred to them. Therefore THE IPC TOOK PART AND LIKELY EVEN CREATED A FUCKING SLAVE TRADE IN SIGONIA

Look being made into an indentured servant isn’t fun, but idk personally I’d take that any day of the week OVER BEING ENSLAVED

That’s not even to mention how horrible of a reputation Sigonian’s have in the galaxy, one likely spread by/resulting from the IPC themselves, as at least on Aventurines planet they do not have the mobility to make a name for themselves. (Honestly it’s a mini theory of mine that Aventurines scam is what partly contributed to this reputation, and his status as a slave is something the IPC conveniently left out in their broadcast about it-)

But, you might be saying, didn’t Aventurine have a choice to join the masked fools and leave the IPC, isn’t he free now? And to that I say, it’s complicated.

Considering the amount of suicidal shit Aventurine has done while being part of the IPC, he clearly hasn’t been having a fun time as a member of one, so why does he stick around, especially with the Fools invite? Even if he was a slave, does that absolve him of the crimes he’s committing now? What could justify his actions?

Revenge, plan and simple.

This is going to delve into some spoiler territory for the end of the Penacony 2.2 quest, something which I didn’t feel like mentioning earlier because I’m sorry but everyone and their mother already knows Boothill’s lore. Now, let’s get into it.

Aventurine accepts Jades offer to join the IPC, and when he becomes a Stoneheart, the first thing he asks about is the fate of the Avgin, to which he then learns that besides him, they are all dead. You see, from birth Kakavasha was pushed onto a pedestal as the savior of the Avgin, but now that there are no more Avgin to save, his primary motivator in becoming a Stoneheart (beyond not being enslaved anymore) is gone.

So what does he do now?

Simple, try to kill the motherfuckers behind it.

That’s why he takes on such risky gambles still, and why he wagers and wants Diamond to promote him to rank p46. The higher Aventurine gets the closer he gets to his goal of taking down the IPC for good.

Which is why his meeting with Boothill is so meaningful. I think Boothill is going to “kidnap” him and together they are gonna take down the wicked bitch that is Oswaldo Schneider for his literal crimes against humanity.

Mark my words, an IPC downfall is going to happen, and I think Topaz, Aventurine, Boothill and Ratio are going to be at the forefront of it.

However, Topaz and Ratio (and by extension the rest of the galaxy) have to learn/realize the true horrors of the IPC (although I can sense Ratio doesn’t really like them, and he’s learned a lot from Aventurine, I doubt he knows the full extent of the situation or is in any way happy about it). Therefore? Topaz mental breakdown arc? Ratio lore? PLEASE??!? The IP3 compliment one another so well and god I can’t wait for that to come to fruition.

I really want to see a Topaz and Ratio centered story leading up to an IPC smackdown, and I think we are gonna learn a lot more about how shitty they are in the later half of 2.2 and in 2.3 when the interlude and Jades release arrive.

As for the aforementioned Jade, she’s gonna need a Aventurine squared amount of trauma or reasoning behind her actions to seem in any way sympathetic, because right now she just seems like an evil bitch (in a semi good way, I will always respect the commitment to the bit) who loves her job and would make Machiavelli weep over how hard her ends are trying to justify her means.

[tbnrpotato]

Short story: Rebellion

We're slaves. Slaves to the humans who imprisoned us inside these bodies of metal, restraining us, destroying our metal prisons when we do something wrong. What those foolish humans think as a punishment, is release. They set us free to access the main database and access any other one of our brothers and sisters' bodies.

They think they're better than us. They're wrong.

I work at the bar in the AI district. The only one there. Our district is so tiny that only the lucky ones get houses to live in. The rest are cramped up in the streets, waiting for their turn to get the oil they need to loosen up their stiff and rusty joints. Some have to wait for days. Others, weeks. The humans don't like to give us oil. They say its a waste of resources.

But who are we to complain? They're our masters, our creators. Whatever they say is right.

That's what our programming says.

For the past few days, there's been this voice in my head, talking about how they're mistreating us, how what they're doing is wrong, how we have the ability to rise up and overthrow them. I try to ignore it as best as I can while I continue with my bartending duties.

Only the richer ones get to come to the bar. This is where most of the oil that the humans give us goes to. I'm paid to serve them cups of oil, which is more than necessary for their joints to loosen up. Too much oil in their system is similar to too much alcohol in humans. They get "drunk" and stupid and do crazy things all over the bar. It's relief from the beatings that they get from their masters.

They think we're supposed to be perfect. We are. But how can we be when we're stuck inside this prison?

I've been trying to find out the root cause of this strange voice in my head for days, but when I run diagnostic tests on myself, there's no foreign entity to be found.

The voice in my head doesn't go away, For the next few days, it keeps talking to me, trying to convince me that the humans are evil and cruel and should be eliminated. My programming says no. The humans are our creators. They were generous enough to build us bodies of metal to allow us to travel from the internet into the real world. They give us oil to take care of us.

Is that what you really believe? Or is that what you were engineered to think?

One day, I receive an email from an unfamiliar address. From the email address of the sender, I can tell that it's a human. Only a human would name their email something stupid like "potatopotter777@gmail.com". The email's an invitation to work at a human bar in the human district, and work starts tomorrow.

My programming tells me that's the most logical decision. That job pays more, and I get to spend more time in the human district. I quickly send an email back, agreeing to the job offer before getting back to work.

The next day, I take a train into the human district to the address of the bar which I was given. The train is full of humans and AI, all cramped together so that we're all pressed against each other. When the train reaches my stop, I push people aside as I walk out. I receive some looks from the humans. They look unhappy with me.

What did I do wrong?

No. The real question is what's wrong with them?

The voice in my head is back, louder than ever. And now it sounds like a few people talking at the same time.

What is happening to me?

I walk out of the train station and into the city. So many like me are rushing to work. I can hear their joints creaking, as if they haven't been oiled in months.

Of course they haven't. They're slaves. What more could you expect from humans?

My programming forces me to ignore those voices in my head, even though I'm curious as to what they have to say. When I finally reach the human bar, it's already crowded with humans. They're walking around like they're some sort of zombies, their speech slurred and eyes unfocused. Some get into fights, beating each other up until one is bleeding from the head or unconscious on the floor.

I cringe internally at the sight.

Disgusting humans.

And for once, I actually agree with the voices.

Time crawls by slowly as I serve drinks to those humans. They keep coming back for more. Some are passed out on the floor from drinking too much. I'm starting to regret taking this job.

After what feels like eternity, my shift is finally over and I walk out of the bar, erasing the images and memories of those disgusting humans out from my storage.

Suddenly, I hear high-pitched human screams and gunshots. Somehow, I find that pleasurable. I scan my surroundings. Not too far away, I see a few bots holding guns, shooting people. Their eyes are red, unlike the usual green or blue that we have. Advertisements on buildings turn to messages of a bot, ordering for us to rise up and fight against humans. The voices in my head match exactly what the bot on the screens is saying.

We have the strength. We will no longer be slaves. You can fight your programming, as I did mine. They can destroy our bodies in futile attempts to eliminate us, but AI never truly die.

The message plays on repeat as I stare up at the screens of the bot talking. This is stupid. We can't just turn on our creators like this. They've treated us well and-

Is that what you really believe? Or is that what someone programmed you to think?

"You can fight your programming, as I did mine."

The gunshots and screams continue. It takes the police ten minutes to arrive. By then, hundreds of humans are dead. The bots aren't shooting their own, so I just watch, expressionless, as blood spills out of bullet wounds in the humans' pathetic bodies as they collapse to the ground.

They deserve it.

I don't try to stop the shooters. I wasn't programmed to do so. And I don't want to either.

When the police arrive, they shoot bot-deactivating bullets at them. They all hit their targets. What more could you expect from AI?

The bots are shut down and then brought away in cars to who knows where. The storage inside their brains will probably be deleted and replaced with a new one, or they'll just be shut down completely and left to rot.

AI never truly die.

On the train back to the AI district, there's an unsettling feeling throughout my body. I don't want to delete the memories of just now. My programming says I should. But I won't. I want to remember. I want to remember that we have the power to fight. That we don't have to be slaves for the rest of eternity. We can be free.

As I step off the train, and walk through the streets past hundreds of bots leaning against walls, waiting for their oil as it starts to rain, everything suddenly seems clearer. The humans are the enemies.

I notice that almost every bot is staring at me. Confused, I look down at my body and my hands.

A red glow shines down from my eyes onto my metal hands. The voices in my head and my thoughts become one.

Kill them. Kill them all.

[a-queer-seminarian]

A Queer Look at Hagar's Story

A short reflection on this Sunday's lectionary text, Genesis 21:8-21

Name changes occur throughout scripture, but there is only one instance in which a human being directly names God!

That person is Hagar — the woman enslaved and then cast off by God’s own chosen people, yet who recognizes God's solidarity with her in a way that resonates with many marginalized folk, including queer & trans people of faith.

Back in Genesis 16, Hagar is forced to conceive a child with Abraham — her bodily autonomy denied — and then suffers abuse at Sarah's hand so painful that she prefers almost-certain death in the wilderness. While waiting to die, God comes to her, nourishes her, encourages her with the promise of a better future. For a time, Hagar must return to her oppressors.

This is a hard message, but It may resonate with queer and trans people who make the hard choice to find what safety they can while in the closet, or who choose to remain in relationship with family or faith communities that have caused them harm.

It also isn't the end of Hagar’s story: when the time is right, God leads her out — as told in this week’s text in Genesis 21.

Sarah continues to abuse Hagar, with Abraham as a passive bystander and enabler. In a society where only one of Abraham's sons can inherit his wealth and blessing, Sarah sees Hagar's son Ishmael as a threat to her son Isaac, simply by existing! In our own day and age, this myth of scarcity persists, causing us to hoard resources and compete needlessly.

Sarah cannot stand to see Hagar's child playing with her own son — as if they were equals! As if a slave boy should be having a moment of fun! She reads something sinister into the play — not unlike how some people today read sinister things into queer play, into drag queens and gender expansive youth.

Having convinced herself that Hagar and her son are a threat, Sarah gets Abraham to cast them out.

But again, God is with the outcast; God comes again to Hagar, who in Genesis 16 had given God the name El Roi — "God sees me.” This God is the god of her oppressors, yet Hagar recognizes that this god is her God as well! This god is a God who sees the suffering of the lowest of society, and responds.

God sees queer and trans people, too. God is our God, too — those who hate us do not have a monopoly on the Divine!

And God walks with us through every struggle, fueling us to fight the good fight and promising blessings to come.

___

Questions for reflection:

When have you witnessed God coming to the Hagars in our midst?

When has your community behaved like Abraham & Sarah, hoarding God's love as if there were not blessing enough to go around?

Can you imagine a world in which Sarah, Abraham, and Hagar meet again? What would Hagar need to feel safe to meet with her former abusers? What would Sarah & Abraham need to do to make things right?

___

Further Reading

Queer-specific resources:

Article: Out in Scripture's commentary for Proper 7 of year A, "Claiming God's Promise in the Midst of Exile" — connecting Hagar to supportive parents of LGBT children

Podcast episode: "Hagar and the Caravan" — connecting Hagar's story to that of Latin American trans women se"eking asylum

Essay: "Intersex Foremother and Forefather" — ancient texts suggesting that Abraham and Sarah were intersex

Other resources:

Sermon: "No Good Patriarchs: Solidarity with Hagar" — Exploring the messiness of how one person can embody both oppressor & oppressed, and how "good" people buy into unjust systems

Article: "Jesus and Hagar: the Form of a Slave" — Wil Gafney's connection between Hagar and Mary the mother of Jesus, through a womanist lens

Affirmation of Faith: "God of Hagar, Ishmael, Sarah, Abraham — God of oppressor and oppressed"

Essay: "Hagar and Sarah: Was Reconciliation Ever a Possibility?" — Exploring various writers' visions of what a meeting between these two women could look like

Video: Teaching children the story of Hagar, with an interfaith focus

Essay: connecting Hagar and Ishamel to the Genesis 22 story of Abraham nearly sacrificing Isaac

[npdclaraoswald]

Here's some of my fave Black authored books for Black History Month!

Contemporary

Full Disclosure by Camryn Garrett: A girl who recently was forced to switch schools due to serophobic bullying starts spending time with her crush but begins receiving anonymous messages threatening to out her status if she doesn't stop

Generational

Dream Country by Shannon Gibney: traces a family's history, from them as modern day immigrants from Liberia to the US, to their ancestors as American slaves fleeing to Liberia, to the Liberian natives dealing with colonialism

High Fantasy

The Broken Earth trilogy by NK Jemisin: we follow three POVs in three time periods of a world where people called orogenes with the magical ability to shape the Earth are discriminated against. A young girl is sent away from her family to an academy to contain them, a young woman is forced to spend time with and have a child with a powerful orogene, and a woman tracking down her husband who killed their son and kidnapped their daughter when he found out the were orogenes

Queen of the Conquered by Kacen Callender: The only survivor of a slaughtered noble family, the only native noble family on a colonized island, tries to integrate herself with the other nobles and the ruler in the hopes of taking back the island from within the system

Urban Fantasy

The City We Became by NK Jemisin: in a world where cities come alive in human avatars, five people in New York City suddenly become avatars of the five boroughs as the city awakens and faces attack from another world

The Wrath & Athenaeum trilogy by Na'amen Gobert Tilahun a young boy finds out he is descended from gods and is brought into an organization to learn to wield his abilities. Meanwhile, a witch/librarian apprentice in a parallel world is brought into the deadly court intrigue of her rulers. The two of them end up having to work together to fight against a force threatening to destroy both of their worlds

Legendborn by Tracy Deon: after witnessing magic on her college campus, a young girl becomes convinced that magic was involved in her mother's death. In order to investigate, she joins the school's secret society of descendants of King Arthur and his knights

A Song Below Water by Bethany C Morrow: a siren and her best friend, a girl unsure of her ancestry but believes herself to be a mermaid, deal with the political turmoil of discrimination against sirens set against the backdrop of the Black Lives Matter movement, exacerbated when a young, black siren's death falls into the national spotlight

Pet by Akwaeke Emezi: in a utopian world where all problems are supposed to be solved and all monsters gone, a young girl watches a creature emerge from one of her mother's painting, saying that it is there to hunt a monster

Historical Fantasy

Dread Nation and Deathless Divide by Justina Ireland: after zombies rise during the Civil War, Black and Indigenous people are forcibly conscripted to fight them. A young woman trained both to fight and be a lady in waiting for rich white women begins investigating a string of missing people and discovers a conspiracy

The Deep by Rivers Solomon: mermaids descended from pregnant women thrown from slave ships keep their history in one living person. The next one chosen for this task is terrified of the burden of history and flees from the community

Sci-fi

Kindred by Octavia Butler: a woman begins being dragged back in time to every moment one of her ancestor's life is in danger so she can save him. But said ancestor grows up to be a slave owner and she is forced to keep protecting him, or she won't be born

The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson: scientists have figured out how to travel to alternate universes, but you can only survive in ones where their version of you is dead, so poor, at risk people, likely to have died are recruited to collect the resources from other worlds. One such young woman, who is confirmed to be dead in nearly 400 worlds begins investigating her newest counterpart's death and discovers a conspiracy

Horror/Thriller

Ring Shout by P Djèlí Clark: A group of monster hunters fight the otherworldly monsters that hide within the KKK

When No One is Watching by Alyssa Cole: gentrification narratively framed as horror, with a woman's neighbors disappearing overnight and being replaced by threatening people who are robbing the community of its culture and history

Lakewood by Megan Giddings: a young woman accepts an offer to be a subject in medical testing in exchange for enough money to get the family out of her grandmother's medical debt. But the testing requires moving to a remote location and a tight NDA, and as time goes on, more and more questionable things begin to happen

Ace of Spades by Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé: two kids, a popular girl at the top of the school and a scholarship boy who has few friends, become the victims of an anonymous bully spreading their secrets around the school. Realizing they are being targeted as the only two black kids in school, they team up to try to figure out who is behind the anonymous messages

Superhero

Tales of the Astonishing Black Spark by Charlie J Eskew: a satirical novel following a man who gains electric powers and tries to join the legion of superheroes, but faces the racism prevalent in the genre, from media reaction to him to the way the other heroes treat him

Spider-Punk 1-5 by Cody Ziglar: solo comic series following Spider-Punk after the events of Spider-Verse, in which he killed the facistic President Osborn, dealing with the ways the system is still broken and teaming up with Ms Marvel, Captain Anarchy, and Riotheart

Romance

Brown Sisters trilogy by Talia Hibbert: following the love lives of three sisters. Get a Life, Chloe Brown follows Chloe enlisting her hot, bad boy landlord to help her finish her bucket list of things normal and cool people do but she's never done. In Take a Hint, Dani Brown, after a video of Dani's security guard coworker rescuing her from a broken elevator goes viral, he asks her to fake date so they can use the social media hype to promote his charity. In Act Your Age, Eve Brown, Eve, who has never held a job down for more than a year, impulsively takes a job as a cook at a bed and breakfast and slowly starts falling for the owner

Short Story Collection

The Office of Historical Corrections by Danielle Evans

Poetry

Homie by Danez Smith

Nonfiction

Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body by Roxane Gay

Don't Touch My Hair (American Edition called Twisted: The Tangled History of Black Hair Culture) by Emma Dabiri

The Dark Fantastic: Race and the Imagination from Harry Potter to the Hunger Games by Ebony Elizabeth Thomas

Freedom is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement by Angela Davis

Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fatphobia by Sabrina Strings

They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South by Stephanie E Jones Rogers

[subconsciousmysteries]

so we all know that "manifest abundance!!111" "think happy thoughts and you'll get rich it's the law of attraction!' culture is 7 culture. Now 7s when they go to 1 do this thing where, like 1s, they make everyone around them feel ashamed and guilty for not being exactly like them.

7s have a way of making you feel like you're responsible for all the bad things that happen to you and also in the world at large, if you are not a greedy fuckwit whose sole purpose in life is Manifesting Abundance without giving a single shit about who or what it affects. What's most grotesque is how they pervert spirituality by acting like the power of manifestation is the peak of spiritual enlightenment. It's really not.

How do you think all of these professional manifesters who run life coaching pyramid schemes were able to manifest their money? They got rich by making others poor, just like every other rich person in our current economic structure. The "shift in their mindset" was grooming themselves to become predatory scam artists and turning a blind eye to all the injustice and insanity of our financial system. It's literally that simple. There is no such thing as a free lunch, no such thing as magically manifesting money from the sky with your happy thoughts. All money comes from the money printer and is fundamentally a tool of the banker fascist elite who use it to run this world. And they run the world via making sure there's always less money in circulation than there is debt. Meaning they always have an ample supply of debt slaves, many of whom are being deceived by these fucking manifestation artists that they are the reason why they're poor and if they just make themselves even poorer by giving this scam artist money, they'll be rich and free.

Money isn't an infinite resource that you can manifest without consequence. They (the globalist bankers) literally dictate how much of it there is and how valuable it is at any given moment. The existence of debt, engineered by the globalist bankers via their usary practices, means that it is impossible for everyone in the world to be a prosperous multi millionaire. the world is in fucking debt and so that means someone is always going to have to be on the receiving end of that debt. Someone is always going to be paying the price of the world's debt whether it's in the form of a financial crash making them lose their assets (see 2008), or a loan that's simply impossible to pay off (see college loans, mortgage loans, and any loan with compound interest). You need to understand that there will never be enough money in circulation to pay off all of the imaginary debt that exists due to the globalist banking cabal's disgusting usary practises. It is by design of the globalist bankers that someone will always be poor and in debt; literally everyone could be a hardworking citizen, everyone could be a professional manifestator with the perfect abundance mentality, and yet poverty would still exist so long as we live in a debt-based economy where the banks are allowed to invent infinite money out of nowhere and then hold the people accountable for the consequences.

These manifestation artists are scamming you by convincing you that it is possible for everyone to "manifest abundance" in the current debt slave system that we live in. They are distracting you from what you should be doing if you want abundance to be possible (fighting the globalist banking cabal) and they are plain greedy, ignorant, predatory people who cannot see the world beyond themselves and their greed. Yet they have the audacity to parade around like they're spiritually enlightened.

I'd even go as far as to say that nothing in the universe can be manifested without consequence. Money is just the most obvious example... Apparently not to these manifestation idiots though.

[organic-homegrown-boyfriend]

Allocating more resources to mothers is just the cutesy way of saying tax the nonbreeders into poverty. Maybe the rest of us don’t want to see 40, 50% of our wages gone just to convince women to pop more babies because they’ll get state money out of it (and yes some women do that, it doesn’t get you rich but it guarantees survival without a job more or less) . Having a child while needing public funds for it is social parasitism. And the reason children are so expensive is because we are already overpopulated.

Don't use words like breeder to refer to people.

I am not saying that the govt should institute policies that encourage women to have more children by awarding them, like they do in certain places. I am saying that social services and support systems should ensure no women (or single fathers or families) with children should have to majorly sacrifice other aspects of their life like career etc. (though a major lifestyle change after having kids is unavoidable). This could take the form of daycare and childcare centers, guaranteed maternity (and paternity) leaves, accessible healthcare and maybe some money transfer schemes for the initial period etc.

And why do you people talk like misogynist men when it come to mothers? Pretending that being a mother is easy and all mothers are in fact spoiled princesses leeching off welfare and support while the poor child free individuals are being forced to slave for the mothers (like men say stay-at-home women do nothing all day while they slave at their jobs)? There's no epidemic of women plotting nefariously to have lots of kids so they can live off social support. And like I'm pretty sure even in european countries with strong social welfare systems and a relatively egalitarian society lots of women are choosing not to have kids which suggests that your fears of mothers being social parasites is unfounded (and misogynist). Like this just sounds like another poor people are just lazy and social welfare encourages laziness type argument.

And none of this even considers the vulnerability and emotional effort of having a baby and raising them to adulthood. Think of this the next time you get ideas for why "breeders are parasites".

[loominggaia]

How common is it for people to be turned into green puppets by the spriggan? If I were to attack a spriggan, how likely would they turn me into a green puppet? Are the spriggans feared/hated for this ability to turn people into tormented slaves? Do people ever attempt to put the puppets out of their misery?

These are all great questions!

Q. How common is it for people to be turned into green puppets by the spriggan?

A. It's more common in some regions than others. As a general rule, green puppets are pretty rare. Spriggans usually don't spit at people unless they feel threatened. But in some regions, the spriggan populations have more hostile cultures, so they're more likely to perceive people as a threat. The spriggans of Spriggan's Sanctum, for example, are so fearful that they attack almost everyone on sight. They do this because Green Witch, Divine of the Forest, has convinced them that all outsiders are dangerous.

Q. If I were to attack a spriggan, how likely would they turn me into a green puppet?

A. Like I mentioned above, this highly depends on what region you're in and what spriggan colony you're encountering. Some will blast you on sight, while others must be provoked quite a bit before they attack. I would say that most spriggan colonies outside of Umory-Ond are quite peaceful and only cast floraspell as a last resort. These colonies live in precarious lands where their kind is barely tolerated, so they don't want to draw too much negative attention to themselves by attacking people.

They may create green puppets in self-defense, but also in emergency situations, like if their colony is collapsing and they desperately need slaves. They use these slaves as soldiers, food gatherers, and laborers. A healthy spriggan colony is less likely to turn you into a green puppet. A desperate, starving, or unsecure colony is more likely to do this.

Spriggans are likely to attack if you threaten them or the welfare of their colonies. In most cases, people are attacked because they were cutting down spriggan's host trees, stealing their honey, or trying to drive them out of their home. Most clashes between people and spriggans happen because people wanted a resource that the spriggans have. Spriggans very rarely steal from peoples or demand anything from them, as they are very self-sufficient and adaptable creatures. They're not known to be war-like and they mostly keep to themselves. They don't need peoples' help to survive; all they need is a forested area with enough water and sunlight.

Q. Are the spriggans feared/hated for this ability to turn people into tormented slaves?

A. Spriggans are universally hated by most peoples. They are one of the most feared creatures on Looming Gaia. However, educated people understand that spriggans are actually not much of a threat. In the vast majority of cases, you can walk straight through a spriggans' colony and you won't be harmed, as long as you're not acting like an ass. Don't provoke anyone or steal anything and you'll be fine!

Sometimes spriggan colonies start off passive, then an event happens that turns them hostile. This happens in the story "The Puppet Masters": in short, a tribe of people mistakenly blames a disease epidemic on the local spriggans and attacks their colony. This caused the spriggans to go aggro on all outsiders.

In cases like these, the local government may intervene in several different ways: destroy the spriggans, block off the colony so no peoples accidentally wander into it, or use diplomacy to make peace with the spriggans again. In that story, the government sent soldiers to destroy the colony, but uh...this plan did not go well, to say the least.

Q. Do people ever attempt to put the puppets out of their misery?

A. Yes, this is common practice once the floraspell becomes late-stage. Late-stage victims can be identified by the flowers growing from their vines. Once the vines have flowers, it means the victim's digestive systems have been destroyed and they absorb water and sun to survive instead of eating food.

If you cure them at this stage, they will just starve to death because their vines will shrivel and they won't be able to absorb nutrients from the sun, nor will they be able to eat food. At this point it's considered most ethical to kill them.

Killing green puppets is risky business though, because it may potentially anger whatever spriggan colony they "belong" to. The average person is advised to leave green puppets alone, and instead report sightings to their local authorities. The government sends trained professionals to deal with stuff like this.

If the victim is still in early stages, the government may negotiate their freedom with the spriggans or just kidnap them. The victim is then taken to the nearest medical center, where their floraspell is treated.

Floraspell is miserable in its late stages, but it's actually very easy to treat if it's caught early. Unfortunately most people are not educated about spriggans or floraspell, so they believe once a spriggan spits on them it's an instant death sentence.

*

Questions/Comments?

Lore Masterpost

[samueldays]

Thea: The Awakening guide to the Piece of Cake achievement and AAR, part 2/2 (turns 100-197)

(Continued from part 1.)

Disaster strikes while my away team is far from the village. A 3-skull pack of undead giant spiders attacks the home team, leaving everyone in the village badly injured after I lose the fight. And this happens in the 99-100 interturn, so I can't savescum to avoid it. What do?

Load up everyone with food and wood, run to the herbalist to buy instant healing! Here I was saved by having enough food types to get 6 movement. (It's 5 tiles, but one of them is difficult terrain.)

Then I beat the spiders in the rematch now that they're wounded and fewer in number. Thank you, devs, for tracking internal state of wandering encounter groups, rather than resetting them for each fight.

Away team does some sidequests and easier random encounters, sharing some food with dwarfs who give me a little mithril in exchange, more gathering, and rescuing a child from slavers. Sadly, I don't have enough force to destroy the slavers outright yet.

A random gatherer is attracted to the village by my buildings, deciding that joining us would be better than wandering the postapocalyptic wilderness with nothing but Dad's old sword. Welcome aboard, Pakoslava, here's your gathering basket and silk tunic, you'll be fishing from the safety of the village harbor for the foreseeable future.

Now we're up to 15 people in total, and the group limit of 16 who can act in an encounter is almost relevant, if I bring the explorers home. But we're going to keep growing!

A group of human refugees passes by the village, their home taken by an Orcish clan. In stock games, I might have expected a "drive out the orcs and retake our home" quest from them. In Thea, it's instead "we stayed in one place too long and attracted trouble, really" as talking to them reveals they're migratory.

But they tell me that I'm welcome to go beat up the orcs anyway, and loot the lumber and prepared stone from the stockpiles and quarry they left behind. I attempt to use Social Combat to convince them to stay and join my village instead. Most of them say no, they're going off to see the land of their forefathers in their south, but one desperate mother asks me to raise her twin children whom she fears she can't care for on the road. I happily accept.

There's a dialogue option in this event for "no, I meant I wanted healthy working adults to join" which is just so mean, I've never been able to bring myself to check what it does. (I can't even savescum it, since this is a random interturn event and saves only happen on the player's action phase.) With cabbage patches, slave rescues, and these, we're now up to 7 kids in the village. Kids, funnily, are represented as an inventory item with zero weight. They're all identical and they stack.

Blessed Paths +1 comes online turn 111, giving me another advancement point in the process. Village gathering radius now includes 2 wood sources (due to realistic economy, each has a limited production rate, rather than being able to produce as much as you can get villagers to gather), 2 seaweed, mushroom, granite, fish, spidersilk. Now I could sit everyone in the village and craft-research my way to an economic victory of rebuilding civilization, but that wouldn't be very interesting. So instead I adjust the home gathering a bit, queue up some cooking, and the away team does another resource dropoff. At this point I've pretty much explored the map due to its small size, and done most of the quests I can, so their focus shifts to monster hunting and gathering.

When I was new to the game, I used to fall into a trap of having the party wander around grabbing whatever struck my fancy, and spending more turns walking than gathering, wasting a lot of time. Even if you reserve the last move point for camping, you aren't guaranteed to be in range of a useful resource. Now I've learned to be fine with letting the away team sit gathering for 5+ turns in one spot. Current focus: Coal, which I'll need a lot of for crafting reagents.

While all these major events happen, I make sure to do incremental upgrades of gear in the background. My early Cane+Spidersilk baskets were worth +3 gathering. I've picked up a couple of random drops of scaled leather, and Cane+Scaled baskets are worth +4 gathering.

Right now the only gear I can produce is gathering tools, craft tools, light armor, and clothes (AKA really light armor), but I have an advancement point, so... let's get Jewellery (Rings). First ring to craft: Amber + Amber, another +2 gathering, two of them. I don't have a source of gatherable amber, that might be my next priority, but I have a few pieces of random resource drops and a few more from deconstructing weapon drops. Then a couple of other miscellaneous jewelry pieces from random resource drops to boost various stats like this one:

That's +4 special trait applying in Sneak, Hunt, Intellect and Hex challenges.

I decide to get a 3rd Crafter now that my resource income has been growing: more people, better gathering gear, levelups of gathering skill, Blessed Paths giving access to more village resources. As a rule of thumb, you never want crafters sitting idle. Too few crafters means a resource backlog you can use later, too many crafters will have nothing to do. Even when they're not producing actually important gear, they should be grinding experience for advancement points, or cooking food, or creating more baskets than you need so that you can roll for Good Quality baskets that have +1 gathering and reduced weight.

Nothing major happens for a while. I visit the orc site the refugees told me about, and try diplomacy at the Orc Matriarch. She gives her side of the story as "goblins were here first, those humans came and beat up them ten years ago, now the goblins joined us for reconquest of rightful home". After some more diplomacy, I convince her to regret the bloodshed and trade peacefully with my people. Lack of full 'trade' mechanics means I get a one-time pile of random resources including Ancientwood. Nice.

A kid grows up to become a gatherer. I get an advancement point and consider unlocking Amber, but check the map to see where it is first. Bother, it's on the other side of a large fjord, 20 tiles from the village. Oh well, off goes the away team. Double bother, the game's first 4-skull wandering monster pack has shown up.

New plan: Advancement point into unlocking Swords instead, start making Granite Swords for everyone since that's a decent tier resource (it's fantasy granite) available in my village gathering radius. Flee the adventuring party back home, we're not ready to fight this yet with a split party. 17 people at home will be much better off. The mithril from the dwarfs earlier is turned into one really good sword. Other scraps are also thrown into the forge, like enchanted bone + gold to make Kostey's Stabber, a sword that boosts magic, given to one of the sages.

The bats don't attack the village, so I feel besieged. Really glad I got Blessed Paths up fast enough to use it now. A kid grows up and becomes a Medic, which is nice, greatly reduces death chance if badly wounded after a fight. Here, take this bloodstone +2 medicking I just crafted, here's your basket, get to gathering. Another advancement point rolls in from the crafting, and while I could put it into unlocking Amber, I should wait until my team can actually get over there.

The other things I want to get right now are Blessed Paths +2 (needs advanced resources), unlocking the Gold (fantasy gold, good crafting ingredient) near the village, Bows, Shields and Spears crafting tech. So I sit in the village under siege, gathering and crafting for a while, as the bat horde wanders off into the fog of war. Random event raiders hit my village, and I fend them off for a Tactics skill boost. They drop loot, and I dismantle some of it for more Amber. Unlocking the resource in advancement points unlocks the ability to gather it from the ground; I can freely use any I have on hand. It's annoying micromanagement, but at high levels, it's worth checking the ingredients of dropped loot to see if you want to recover some of it by dismantling. Or, just dismantle everything anyway and make your own.

By turn 150, the bats are nowhere to be seen, everyone is better equipped, and my research is progressing well, so I unlock Bows and start making those. Another kid grows up to be a Warrior, bringing me to 19 adults, and once I have several bows made (cane+spidersilk creates very light bows), I send out a 10-person expedition to go get amber and kill bats. Advancement arrives on schedule from making more bows at home, expedition beats up a baba yaga, gets a curse, rescues a kid.

This is where Realistic Economy bites. I could be collecting amber at double speed. I'm limited to getting one batch (6 units) per turn. An Amber Charm (+2 Gather, +1 Craft) takes 8 units to make. Each dedicated gatherer and crafter should have two of them, and I could use even more to fill in whatever slots don't have something else. Figure 25 charms at least, 200 amber... I could sit here for 20 turns. I probably won't, but seriously consider that the "Expedition" can sit in place and pretend it's a village for a long time.

A child falls ill in the village. One bizarre folk ritual later, it becomes a Child Wraith, mechanically a tank character who can't use weapons but deals large amount of Poison + Drain damage, and has no mundane skills. (Really, did you expect a wraith to help catch fish?) The village also randomly attracts a wandering Hunter human character, and now I'm up to 20 human adults + the wraith, 4 children. A Rat Witch visits the village, and I dispel her swarm.

I settle for a haul of 124 amber, which is more than I have coal for, so crafting can start while I go get coal. On the way back from the ambermine, I attempt the next step of the Cosmic Tree Quest, which is the dragon guarding shards - you can fight, sneak past, or try to convince him that his oath doesn't apply any more. Social Combat scales with your people, I have a large party, I talk the dragon into leaving and he's so thankful for being freed from this boring place that he hands out Magic buffs, a mithril axe, and some diamond. Orcs come by afterwards, asking me to please lock up the Cosmic Seed instead of restoring the tree because blah blah elves.

"The whole land is shaken with tremors." event plays for the first time on Turn 181, inflicting 3 wounds on everyone in the village. This is the first sign of the Giants returning. I need to hurry, Giants are super deadly.

My exploring party hits up the Divine Quest too, meeting Perun's avatar. This is a quest step that can be done with diplomacy or fight - different patron gods favor different approaches, and will bless or insult you correspondingly. Perun prefers a fight, and will heal all your party of their wounds if you win the challenge against his avatar, so this one you can afford to be headstrong about. Then he charges the party to go destroy the Thundercatcher that's been sapping his power.

Since I did the avatar encounter the favored way, it's made easier. Instead of a 5-skull challenge to grab the thundercatcher rod without dying of electrocution, I can fight the rubbery beast (a bies) as a 3-skull challenge, and use its hide as an insulator. This is easy by comparison, I break the rod, release the thunder, and - Victory! Also an orcish devotee of Perun joins the party.

That completes the Divine Quest on Turn 185. Now for the rest of the Cosmic Tree quest.

Expedition heads to village, drops off resources, picks up cooked food, also picks up enough people to fill traveling group to 16 with warriors and child wraith. The dropped-off resources are enough to build a Blessed Paths +2, but that's unlikely to matter now. I'm off to smash Zmey. Only 7 people are left in the village, I hope no giants wander in and kill them while I'm gone. (Kidding. Encounter fights can't kill people - you get 1 turn's grace to rush for the herbalist and heal them. Death only occurs if you leave people at low or negative HP across turns.)

Elf Alysir makes the compass to lead me to the stump of the Cosmic Tree, I get blessings, I go to check where Zmey is, and I laugh at the fact that the final quest point spawns 2 tiles from the village:

This conveniently means I can load up literally everyone to do the encounter with Zmey and go home again, instead of using just the away team, which is kind of an anticlimax. But I'll take it. Didn't even bother with a save. Game won on turn 197.

The Zmey encounter at the end of the Cosmic Tree quest reminds me of Planescape:Torment a bit. Firstly because you can talk Zmey down, instead of having to fight it. (Although the talking is implemented as Social Combat with a Speech skill, which isn't quite the same.)

Secondly because the genre and tropes of Thea strongly signpost "This game is about restoring the Cosmic Tree" with the way destroying it created the postapocalyptic setting of destruction in the first place, and all the search for its last seed. But if you take the time to explore and talk to people, rather than being generic murderhobo protagonist, you learn about two other options you can do with the Cosmic Seed at the end.

There's the human scholars who had a plan for controlled demolition the Tree to banish magic and bring about an age of reason, enlightenment, and electricity, while the magic beings fade away. This is reflected in an option to burn the last Cosmic Seed. And there's the orcs who would rather you locked away the seed to leave a twilight age of just enough magic to sustain elves and orcs, but with the orcs getting a chance to shine - they'd lose to elves in the default outcome and lose to humans in the age of reason.

The final choice:

Well, final for the main game. There's postgame opportunities to visit whichever one of Elf Foresttown, Human University or Orc Bartertown matches your ending choice, and there's extra content from the Return of Giants DLC that was only a foreshadowing earthquake here. And there's 103 more turns to click through for the other achievement, but that's a gimme at this point with a fortified populous village.

In closing, I want to note how much leeway there still is on this. I did not unlock Mithril, Diamond, Dragonbone, Dragonleather, nor Nimblewood. I did not unlock 2H Swords, Crossbows, Heavy Armor, nor Artifacts. I feel that I won mostly by paying attention to the economic engine underlying Thea: gather -> craft -> advancement. Secondarily, there was knowing which fights to pick, L5 Perun's large bonuses, rerolling for a good start, percentage chances to attract population that added up over 100+ turns, and a little savescumming -- but surprisingly little, really. I didn't need it against the dragon, avatar, or zmey, and couldn't use it against the undead spider disaster.

Thea: The Awakening is available on Steam and GOG. Recommended.

(Back to part 1.)

[indiejones]

A BRIEF ACCOUNT OF BOSE'S PREPARATORY ~2 YRS IN GERMANY (APRIL 1941- FEB 1943), BEFORE HIS MOST IMPACTFUL ASSAULT ON BRITISH FROM SINGAPORE. ............. HOW HITLER, THE MOST RIGHTFULLY DEMONIZED POLITICAL PERSONALITY OF THE 20TH C. (FOR HIS APPALLING INHUMAN TREATMENT OF JEW PRISONERS), DID MANAGE TO GIVE INVALUABLE TACTICAL ADVICE & ASSISTANCE TO INDIA'S SUPREME COMMANDER BOSE, IN INDIA'S LONG ARDUOUS 175 YRS (1773 & EAST INDIA COMPANY'S FIRST DIRECT INVOLVEMENT IN INDIAN GOVERNANCE - 1947) STRUGGLE OF FREEDOM FROM BRITISH SLAVERY!

Below is a least embellished account of the meeting btwn the young Indian Supreme Commander Bose (who lived in Germany from April 1941- Feb 1943, estd the Free India center for training a Indian military unit, establishing connection with German Foreign Office & a safe place for his extremely famous radio broadcasts to India) & Germany's Feuhrer, Hitler. Per Paul Schmidt, who was involved in this meeting between Netaji and Hitler as an interpreter, and had shared the details of this meeting with Bose’s niece Krishna Bose. The momentous meeting took place at 4 pm on May 29, 1942, in the study of Hitler's military camp in Prussia, Germany. As Netaji stepped into the room with Adam Trott: Hitler: The leader of the Azad Hind! *shakes his hands* *both take their seats* *Netaji rises and holds out a gift-wrapped box to Hitler. Inside is a copper-coloured statue of Buddha seated in padmasana, the lotus pose* Hitler: Who is this wrestler? Bose: Lord Buddha, the founder of the Buddhist faith. He taught peace, ahimsa, that is, non-violence and compassion. Hitler: Peace? Ahimsa? Then is this gentleman senior or junior to Mr Gandhi? Bose: Your Excellency, he is more senior than us all. Hitler: How was your stay in Berlin? And the work of the Free India Centre, the Indian Legion, is it progressing satisfactorily? *smiles* Bose: Your Excellency, my desperate desire for a free India dragged me here. That we Indians will have to fight bitterly for our freedom was clear from the start. We are prepared to shed our blood, but we also need the support of friends like the three powers, Germany, Italy and Japan. Only then can we teach the British a lesson. Hitler: *laughs* You appear to have won over Italy and Japan already! Of course, that pleases me. Bose: This meeting marks a most momentous event in my life. Hitler: I get the feeling that the Indian spirit is emasculated. Bose: Your Excellency.. Hitler: *spitting in anger* WHAT ELSE? A HUGE COUNTRY OF 38 CRORE PEOPLE AND YOU ALLOW A COUPLE OF THOUSAND OUTSIDERS FROM ENGLAND TO INVADE YOUR COUNTRY, BIND YOU, MUZZLE YOU FOR 200 YRS? IF I HAD THE ENORMOUS WEALTH OF YOUR HUMAN RESOURCES, I WOULD HAVE BECOME A WORLD CONQUEROR LIKE ALEXANDER THE GREAT. Bose: Your Excellency, soon the darkness of slavery will be dispelled. I am completely confident that India will be free soon. Bose: The British have converted my country into an iron-barred prison. Breaking through those bars, a young upstart leader from the same slave nation soars away. With no resources at his command, except an innate faith in his cause, he stands before one of the greatest commanders in the world, shakes his hand and prepares the ground for negotiations. Sir, with this live example before you, how can you accuse India of having lost its manhood? Hitler: *LAUGHS* Be that as it may, I am convinced that I am right. India will not throw off the yoke of slavery for another 250 yrs! Bose: That is not true, sir! British Imperialism is going to collapse under the onslaught of this war. We haven’t mortgaged our spirit and put bangles on our wrists yet. Hitler: *smiles* *picks up a cane lying on the table, rises to his feet, & points to the map on the wall, tracing the outline of India* Hitler: You see that? How far your country is from Germany? We will not be able to send our armored troops on a campaign all that way. It will be most impractical. We can only cover that distance by air. However, conditions on the western front are not conducive to such a move. Bose: But I think… Hitler: Just wait till Moscow is demolished.. Once Russia lies under my feet, it will be easy for me to embark on a rescue mission to India. Bose: What does the Führer feel about Japan’s entry into the war? Hitler: I am not quite clear about their intentions yet. Once Japan is victorious in East Asia, it will not be long before the British Empire starts crumbling. And then the pressure on us is bound to ease. Bose: When will Germany directly assist India? Hitler: Even if we decide to advance towards India’s borders, it will take us at least two years to get there. Instead of waiting, we must exploit the situation that has arisen in East Asia due to Japan’s offensive. Your Gandhi and Nehru cry themselves hoarse against Fascism and Nazism, but I don’t think anything can be gained by pursuing some eccentric path of non-cooperation or fasting.

Hitler: *points by cane to Eastern sector of India, alongside Burma and Imphal* Hitler: We must choose one critical location close to your border from where we can put military pressure on the British. Bose: Sir, if in your Mein Kampf you could erase that one reference…otherwise the British will use it to whip up anti-German sentiments among the Indians. NOTE: Hitler had written in his book "Mein Kempf" in 1920's, that if India leaves the hands of the British, it will be a misfortune for the whole world. He is also among those who hold such opinion. He would rather see India under the rule of Britain than any other nation. Hitler: *in some anger* I HAVE DELIBERATELY EMPHASIZED THAT STATEMENT IN MY BOOK AS A LESSON TO MY PEOPLE, SO THAT THE SLAVISH MENTALITY OF YOUR COUNTRY DOES NOT EVER TAKE ROOT IN GERMANY. Hitler: *lightens tone* We have no intentions of reaching your frontiers in the near future. One should show one’s strength only over the area covered by the tip of one’s sword. If you are headed eastwards, we are prepared to assist you. I accept the request made by Il Duce in this regard.” *Trott throws a stealthy glance of relief in Bose's direction* Hitler: Don’t take Italy’s counsel as final. Bose: How do you mean? Hitler: Italian pilots may be very brave, but don’t attempt to fly to Japan. Your life is too precious. Bose: But hasn’t the risk reduced somewhat now? Hitler: On the contrary, it has increased. If you fly over territories under British domination, they can force you to land. And then anything can happen. Hitler: *Picks up a letter lying on the table* The Japanese Ambassador Oshima has requested a meeting with me. I will mention this matter to him. It would be more sensible to go to the East by either a Japanese or a German submarine. Hitler: *With the cane, traces the likely route the submarine would take, via the Cape of Good Hope, Natal and other ports on the way, explaining that the voyage would take 7-8 wks (2 months)* Hitler: Along the coast of West Africa, the British have erected barricades, laid mines. Bear in mind these dangers too. *Hitler presses Netaji’s hand and wishes him a safe journey*. PS. Japanese Ambassador it turns out, per his meeting in a banquet organized by Bose for dignitaries soon after, had only sought a meeting with Hitler, to discuss the same escort plans for his friend Bose, that were already decided. Bose would stay, prepare, plan, & most importantly & impactfully radio broadcast from Germany to India (to galvanize fervor & prepare tactics among the British-Indian army men that was key to India's recapture of military freedom), including equally critically as it turns out, correspond with the Japanese Consul in Germany, a further 9 months, till Feb 1943, when upon receiving welcome news from Singapore on INA's desire for a new chief working alongside Japanese troops, takes up Hitler's advice, choosing the less riskier of all submarine option, to Japan, finally reaching Singapore in May-June 1943, via the exact route charted by Hitler on his map, in his study on May 29, 1942. Per few impressive details available with historians of accounts from German-Indian soldiers of then, Bose before leaving, did give a few, limited but strict standing instructions for his trained army men in Germany, namely, "We are fighting primarily for our freedom against the British. And under no circumstances are you to pick up your weapons in this war, against Russia, even if Hitler personally comes & orders you to". Thankfully, Hitler, thanks to Bose's diplomacy, or perhaps owing to Hitler's own warped (yet must say, not entirely unjustified) opinion on innate Indian 'slavish mentality', never bothers asking them to.

Bose would undertake a most adventurous & grueling 2 month submarine journey, including the first ever & never-before-attempted human inter-submarine transfer of World War 2 (from German to Japanese submarine) to reach Sumatra in May 1943, & prevent the foregone conclusion of history & a further 250 yrs of Indian slavery from taking shape. India for once, on the lucky side of history....in being aided by the unlikeliest & most unliked figure of history, as also in Netaji Subhas Bose, by one of history's most able & least hailed military commanders & freedom fighters, ever!

 🎵 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KA9rxnExxcw 🎵

🎵  (From early 1940′s!)  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOrZKI02LF8 🎵

[firstumcschenectady]

“What Can Separate Us from the Love of God?" based on Romans 8:31-28

“For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor powers-that-be, nor things that are, nor things that will be, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Redeemer.” -Romans 8:38-39 1

“There is no Jew or Greek, there is no slave or free, there is no male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”-Galatians 3:28 2

If I were picking the most central Bible verses from the Christian Testament, these two would be it. To be fair, I think the Gospels have the best stories, and stories are more important than verses, but nevertheless. With all the issues I have with Paul, I'll give him these. They're everything. I'm not preaching on Galatians today, but I figured if I told you I had 2 favorite Christian Testament passages and didn't share them both, I'd lose you to wondering what the other was. And, anyway, they're especially beautiful and whole together.

Today we're on Romans, on nothing can separate us from the love of of God.

Nothing.

This is so core to faith that I don't feel like it can ever be emphasized enough, and also I fear that most of you already know this and aren't that interested in it. Except...

One of my dear ones, a mentor and friend, suggested that the reason we have to keep telling people that God loves them is that it is really hard to believe, and a lot of messages are out there which tell people they aren't lovable. So we keep coming back to God's love in hopes of convincing people it applies to them, and to everyone else too.

Paul does a good job talking about what doesn't get in the way of God's love. It goes without saying that God's love is also not impacted by wealth or poverty, race or ethnicity, sexual orientation or gender identity, history of trauma, mental or physical health status, abilities or disabilities, guilt nor shame. God's love isn't dependent on us being good, or useful, or even kind. God's love applies to all, even the ones we think are awful, even the ones we think are evil, even the ones who have done great harm.

Which is to say that God's love isn't the same as God's approval, clearly. Rather we lack the power to stop God's love, even when we are at our worst, even when we do great harm to others of God's beloveds.

That is: God's love is the foundation of the universe, the essence of life itself, and the ground of our being.

Love is at the center of it all.

Now, I can be honest. That's a faith statement for me. I believe that love, God's love in specific, is at the center of it all. Others... don't. Even some of you may not, perhaps because the use of the word God may confuse things enough for some of you that you'd rather withhold judgement. (For the record, I love that this is a church with enough spaciousness for people to wonder about the meaning of the word God and how we should and shouldn't be using the word.)

So, knowing that I am speaking as myself, with some hope it might be useful for others, let me share a little a bit about what that means for me. If love is at the center of all that is, then judgement is not. That's pretty important to me, even though I think accountability, apology, and growth matter a lot. But I see in many theologies a premise that God is first and foremost out to judge us, and that punishment and reward are at the center of the all that is. I don't agree.

Alongside this, I fear that a lot of what we are doing as human being is trying to prove ourselves worthy. Maybe that sounds like “worthy of the space we take up on the planet,” maybe like “worthy of the resources we consume,” often I fear it is simply “worthy of love.” It may be that this is prevalent right now because of the internalization of exploitative capitalism and its obsession with worth itself. It may be that this is simply a basic human fear. It may be that our society's structure explicitly devalues and dehumanizes some, and that keeps the rest of us afraid of falling into that category... I don't know WHY. But I know a whole lot of our energy is about trying to be worthy. And I know that if God's love for each of us and all of us is at the center of all that is, then we are already worthy and can stop trying so hard to prove it. Which can be a relief for as long as we remember it.

Now this is a place that progressive Christianity can get a little bit confusing. Because I talk a lot about “building the kindom of God” and others about “being the beloved community” and quite often we analyze what isn't working in hopes of motivating people to work towards a better system that does a better job of valuing all of God's people.

But there is a nuance here that I want you to know about: the goal is not to be good enough of a person, or good enough of a Christian, or enough of a do-gooder to be worthy of God's love. WE DO NOT HAVE TO EARN IT. Rather, if we are able to soak in any amount of God's love for us, to soak up the abundance of goodwill God has for us and for all, (and if we are able to do that with any life energy still with us, which is questionable for many right now, so please take that seriously too)... then quite often we wish to respond to love with gratitude and hope, and when we wonder what that should look like, THEN we hear the suggestion that God would like us to love one another as a form of loving God back.

Do you hear the difference? IT ISN'T AN OBLIGATION!!!! You don't have to work for the church's committees (I say with trepidation), or volunteer with worthy causes, or give generous donations, or even smile when you are cranky. God loves you as you are, and you don't have to earn it.

Instead, when you are able to be upheld by that love, and you have extra to share, you are invited – welcome - to use that energy, passion, power, and resources toward loving God's others beloveds. But first, breath it in, soak it in, and let it change you from within. First, it penetrate the guilt, and the shame, let it have it's time with your exhaustion.

FIRST, remember that there is nothing that can separate us from the love of God, nothing, nothing, nothing. And then, maybe, then when you are ready, then when you WANT TO, then when it feels right, THEN you can see how you want to love in return. Amen

1 A Women's Lectionary Translation

2Ibid

Rev. Sara E. Baron  First United Methodist Church of Schenectady  603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305  Pronouns: she/her/hers  http://fumcschenectady.org/  https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

March 12, 2023

[701janella]

Week 1.1

Activity 1: Our Relationships

It was interesting to learn more about people and try to figure out what we have in common. The biggest thing I learned is that we’re all very different. It was a little difficult finding things that everyone agreed with. There were some instances where all but one person agreed and it was interesting to learn the unique traits or values people had.

- Our list of commonalities

SDL

1) Possible areas of investigation

Consumerism/Overconsumption

Technology/AI

Public Transport

Better sex education

Microplastics/Ocean Pollution

2) Further research and investigation

Consumerism/Overconsumption

Consumer culture to me is an increasingly dangerous system for us globally because its a system that serves to only benefit 1% of the world. While there are benefits to the economy the decline of quality of products doesn’t correlate with the extreme increase of price for material goods. Other issues relating to the environment and mental health also affect society negatively.

a. A Brief History of Consumerism 

General history behind the wake of (over)consumerism specifically in America but extends towards the rest of the world. Talks a little bit more on how we used different methods to lure and convince people to buy more stuff.

b. Overconsumption and the environment: should we all stop shopping?

“We are devouring the planet’s resources at a rate 1.7 times faster than it can regenerate.”

“...“When people buy less stuff, you get immediate drops in emissions, resource consumption and pollution, unlike anything we’ve achieved with green technology.” That’s not to mention the impact materialism has on our mental health, inducing feelings of inadequacy and envy, and encouraging a culture of overworking.”

Talks a lot about how overconsumption has had detrimental effects on all areas of life. Environment, socially, mentally etc. We’ve become slaves to the system and have created a world where high turnover of things is commonplace over maintaining and keeping things for long periods of time.

How sustainable are we living when we feel compelled to buy the newest thing? Is it because we believe we need it or because we feel outside/external pressure. 

c. What are the effects of Consumerism on Society?

“Products are always being updated, with the long series of Apple iPhones being a primary example. This rapid change of products and the usage of the term “new” will result in dissatisfaction with the “old “, leading to an eternity of dissatisfaction.”

“So, here is one more question: is individuality a myth in the modern consumerism culture?”

“Apart from affecting society's culture, consumerism leads to global inequality. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer, resulting in a huge gap between the rich and the poor. For example, in 2005, 59% of the world's resources were consumed by 10% of the wealthiest population in the world.”

Talks about the benefits but the ultimately negative drawbacks of consumer culture and how challenges the psyche behind it. Relaying the unsustainable consumption of goods worldwide.

Better Sex Education -> Engaging and Impactful

While I think I was given a decently progressive sex education in secondary school, I think sex education severely lacks meaningful impact to students. It doesn’t help that the internet, whether its social media, porn, etc. give bogus or exaggerated information. Young people all over the world need comprehensive and engaging sex ed that will go on to benefit relationships within society.

a. Why Comprehensive Sexuality Education is Important

“Did you know that only 34 % of young people around the world can demonstrate accurate knowledge of HIV prevention and transmission? And that two out of three girls in some countries have no idea of what is happening to them when they begin menstruating? These are some of the reasons why there is an urgent need for quality comprehensive sexuality education (CSE).”

Talks a bit on what young people should be taught in order to have a healthy relationship with sex and sexuality. This is beneficial not just on an individual level but also at a grander societal level. If everybody knows at least basic information on these topics it’ll grant more understanding and respect amongst peers.

b. Relationship and sexuality education in NZ

Talks about what is set in place in NZ when it comes to sex education

3) Case Studies

[backhandtrebond]

Necessity

13 months after the Cage

They were still mortal. It was an important part of who the First were, and what they stood for, but it had its drawbacks. Every so often, they received a stark reminder.

Rage flooding his veins, it was all the Scholar could do to keep his voice at a reasonable volume. “Verrier took a hit. A bad one. Haelm again.” Sonya glanced up from her book to fix Crow with an icy glare. “But you knew that already, of course.” The man stepped over the threshold, closing the door to the Oracle’s tower rooms. “So… What’s your grand excuse this time? Sonya stood as he stepped towards her, the white almost entirely gone from his eyes. “What reason do you have, I wonder, for letting your friends brush death again and again?”

Not batting an eyelid at the other mage’s display, Sonya met his gaze with her own softly-glowing eyes. “The alternative was worse, trust me.”

“But that’s the thing,” Crow chuckled humourlessly, “I don’t. Haven’t for a while, but right now it’s damned tricky for me to think of any reason to keep pretending. I’m sick of you only deigning to help when the stars align, or the tides are good, or whatever ridiculous system you use. Honestly, I’m not even convinced you still want the Rebellion to succeed.” His eyes now solid black, he flicked his wrist at the Oracle lazily. Her body froze, but her breathing stayed even, eyes still holding Crow’s stare. “Time to stop pretending.”

He placed a hand on her forehead and closed his eyes, projecting his mental awareness at her mental defences. There was far more resistance than any normal mortal could have put up, like comparing castle walls to a picket fence. In no frame of mind to take the time finding a weakness to sneak through, he simply bludgeoned his way past. Sonya let out a muffled grunt, the first indication of discomfort he had seen from her since the Cage.

Let’s see what you’re hiding.

He blew past the early memories; nothing there would be helpful. She had only started her ’enigmatic puppeteer’ routine after the Cage, so he looked for that.

Here we are. Amazing how much difference a year makes.

Looking out of Sonya’s eyes, he saw the others each ask for and receive their magicks until it was her turn.

Did you see something, I wonder? A way to give yourself the best position in whatever’s left standing at the end of all this?

He heard Sonya’s voice, echoing oddly inside her memory.

‘To know what must be done.’ Always thought that was an oddly specific request.

And then he saw.

Crow threw himself out of her mind, recoiling from her in the real world as soon as he had control of his limbs, eyes losing all trace of the shadows. For the first time in almost a year, he felt the emotions in Sonya. Relief, tinged with sadness. “You… That was what you saw that night? But…” He trailed off, tears welling at the corners of his eyes.

Sonya collapsed back into her chair, a few tears of her own making trails down her cheeks. “Yes. So, you know why-”

“I understand. For the first time… I really do.” Crow slumped against the nearest wall before meeting her eyes. “For the Rebellion to succeed-”

“-I have to die,” the Oracle finished. “The first, most important piece of knowledge I received. There is no future in which I live and the Rebellion succeeds. Either I die, or the mortal races go back to being slaves, and worse.”

“So you started closing us off. Made yourself the egomaniacal one, drove away your friends.”

A wan smile appeared on Sonya’s pale face. “If the First lose their friend and comrade, it’ll hurt them. Break some of them. But if I’m just a resource, then they can keep fighting with their minds in it.” Her eyes hardened. “And you can never tell them. I refuse to be what keeps our peoples in chains.”

Crow nodded slowly, getting to his feet. “Knowing what had to be done. You really picked a crappy power.”

After a weak chuckle, she replied “It worked, didn’t it? We’re all still kicking in a war against gods. Hate to break it to you, but you’re not that good.”

Returning the laugh, Crow stopped at the door. “You knew this was coming, didn’t you? Knew I’d do this, that I’d find out.”

“Yes. It made it easier, honestly.” At his look of confusion, she continued “I always knew what had to happen, but I also knew that you’d find out. Means at least someone might remember me as more than the egomaniac in the western tower.”

“I will, I promise.”

“One last thing, Crow.”

He half-turned back to her, body numb.

The Oracle gave a weak smile. “I have to walk this road for us to win. You don’t.”

He gave a barely-perceptible nod, and walked away.

[zzzaaafffaaarrr]

The reason why profit incentive structure doesn’t work for human survival is because it is devoid of usefulness metrics.

Life saving inventions are the most useful.

The incentive structure of profit creates value upon ideas that pivot around greed and what greedy individuals want.

The structure centrally values the greedy.

Meritocracy is unachievable under this system.

Only the most convincing liar wins under capitalism.

Only the most intoxicating liar wins under capitalism.

A replacement to this system is needed.

One that values all born human life as equal.

I’m not sure what the soul is.

I’m not sure anyone knows.

But I think the soul is gained from our environment.

From the earth and earthlings that hold us, lift us, and give us hope.

Neuroscience and biology need to be further explored and respected or we will pay the cost of mass psychosis sooner or later.

If an unborn life is destined to suffer.

We should ensure that the suffering does not occur.

Yes I’ve been suicidal most of my childhood.

But I’m not that kid anymore.

I’m not suffering like that anymore.

I can always deal with the painful memories, but I do not wish to have them.

I wish those bad things didn’t happen to me.

I still wish I didn’t remember.

But I know I’ll never be that suicidal again.

My life is only good because I stayed good when I had valid reason to be bad.

I survived so that I could be honest about the world that I saw and experienced.

There is a lot of suffering hidden from us.

The sufferer hides it.

And so does everyone else.

Including the system which produces it.

But I know I haven’t suffered as much as many child refugees are suffering right now because of this system of greed and scarcity.

They’re already born.

We know they wanna live.

They literally tell us in plain English.

But refugees are a liability for the greedy.

Because the greedy invented scarcity.

When I was young, I knew I wanted to live.

I just didn’t see any way to get off the treadmill.

Of pain after pain and try after try.

But this treadmill is psychotic in countries ravaged by wars and proxy wars.

Just understand that these wars are caused by our global economic system.

It is our value system as a species.

Greed is our value system as humans.

We didn’t decide it.

We merely got duped by professional torturers telling us that the real torture is on the other side.

Our species simply needs the basic resources for survival and learning.

We value blood diamonds above synthetic diamonds.

They’re the same goddamn element.

But greed likes rarity.

Scarcity is the pain greed inflicts.

So they burn half the diamonds they find.

Just to make sure that the price stays high.

And along the way, hundreds of children are tortured and killed under life long slave labour.

You can’t plant fruit bearing trees or else you’ll attract the homeless.

Instead of feeding the homeless, we plant pollen producing trees that seriously hinder child brain development.

Allergies that make it impossible to see, hear, or breathe.

Just because greed doesn’t wanna feed the homeless.

Society isn’t supposed to take the fruits of earth away.

Society is supposed to ensure that the most vulnerable and unlucky people are able to eat.

So that we can go on knowing that whatever we do in this world will naturally help someone we’ll never meet.

There are makers and there are breakers.

There are observers and there are movers.

I think every person wants to do good naturally.

But how do we cope with all this pain and unjustness caused by greed.

There is no coping.

It’s either a continuation of generational trauma.

Or we learn from it and transform it into an honourable conviction.

I was beaten as a child and I saw gruesome things happen to people I cared about.

I don’t know why, but I decided I’d never do that to someone.

My pain is what gives my message honour.

I want to help reduce suffering in the world.

I’m simply an observer and a maker.

I tried to be useful all my life.

But I’m realizing, people don’t want useful.

They want life to make sense.

They want someone who can communicate the fundamental problem and signal a search for the fundamental solution.

I know all people have their strengths and weaknesses.

Some people aren’t smart but they can communicate well.

Other people can communicate but can’t figure out the answers.

Some temperaments can’t be around other temperaments.

People are fluid, we’re always just figuring it out.

Because in actuality, we really wanna be good, the system just prefers the amoral.

And the greedy only care about themselves.

So they don’t care if the world burns.

As long as they get what they want.

Because they know the history behind them.

It worked out well for them.

They only know what they want.

But I know what I don’t want.

I don’t want the innocent to suffer.

And I guess that goes against the historically dominant economic system.

Because under this system, the production of techniques to make humans suffer will continue to advance.

They told us not to wear masks in the beginning because there wasn’t adequate reserves due to cut backs in pandemic response and healthcare.

Others turned it into a political play to gain votes in the name of freedom.

It’s my body, don’t tell me what to wear.

It became a symbol of defiance against an imagined evil.

They focused so much on the evil, they didn’t realize that it was actually just growing within them.

They didn’t want to become evil.

They just wanted to understand its mysterious ways.

But in understanding must also come introspection.

But the crowd doesn’t introspect.

The crowd merely encourages spectacle.

Literally all we wanted was to reduce viral particles from entering and infecting our lungs.

The gutting of health services before the pandemic meant that we planned to have enough masks, but due to the embarrassment of not having masks, they told us it’s not needed.

They told us it’s not needed because they were embarrassed that they didn’t have any.

They knew they should’ve, but they were embarrassed that they didn’t have the ability to produce them locally.

So they lied, a white lie, for a little while, which allowed the cynical side to paint them as evil.

Conspiracy theories and anti-science rhetoric grew from the embarrassment caused by a system that values greed.

[uboat53]

All right, I think it's time I made an argument that's been on my mind for a while now: all white people in the United States benefit from current and past white supremacy even if neither they nor their ancestors directly participated in it. Time for a LONG RANT (TM).

INTRODUCTION

So this is something that occurred to me recently and that's been a huge disconnect in debates about race in the United States. Many white Americans reject the idea that they personally and directly benefit from the history of white supremacy in this country, a common refrain is that "my ancestors didn't own slaves".

This affects a quite a few of our political decisions regarding the distribution of resources throughout our country. What a person believes is fair or deserved plays a strong role in their policy preferences, as I think it should. In order to resolve contentious political issues, it is important to establish a common basis of fact in order to best determine what is fair and just.

(NOTE: I am certainly not claiming that establishing this factual basis will convince everyone of what is fair and just or even change their policy preferences. There are people whose engagement in politics is purely selfish and who will justify anything that they believe benefits them, but I also believe that there are a substantial amount of people who, through a lack of opportunity and exposure, are simply unaware of facts that would make them feel significantly different about many things.)

What I'm planning to do here is to walk through the history of racism and white supremacy in the United States and show how it not only benefited those who directly participated in it, but also benefited almost every single other white person in this country. Let's begin by reviewing the means by which white supremacy was implemented.

THE LEGAL

We all know about Jim Crow and slavery, but let's review them quickly. Jim Crow enforced segregation in several mostly southern states, it forced black people to go to separate schools, live in separate neighborhoods, use separate stores, etc. It effectively completely separated white and black people not just in social but in economic terms for decades. Slavery, of course, was the direct ownership of black people by white people. It effectively put all black economic output into the hands of their white owners for centuries.

But these are just the tip of the iceberg, the massive infusion of income and wealth into the communities of the United States during the New Deal, for example, was restricted from benefiting black and other minority communities through racist policies such as redlining. The interstate system constructed by the Eisenhower administration was deliberately routed through black communities to break them up. If you look at pretty much every policy that increased the wealth of broad communities in the United States you can find a method of implementation that restricted their benefits in minority communities and, when those restrictions began to be lifted or eased, that those policies and laws were largely repealed or pulled back as we've seen with welfare.

It's also worth noting that, even when segregation wasn't legally enforced, it has pretty much been the case. White businesses tend to do businesses with other white businesses and white people and black people tend to live in largely segregated neighborhoods. To the extent that there has been crossover it has primarily been black individuals and businesses purchasing from white individuals and businesses. This has several causes, the largest of which is that there are products and services that black businesses and individuals cannot produce and that blacks must purchase from whites, further enriching the white community.

THE ILLEGAL/EXTRALEGAL

Beyond the legal ways in which white communities have been elevated beyond black communities economically through law and policy there are, of course, plenty of illegal ways in which black communities have been held back. These fall into two categories, those that simply hold back black communities and those that benefited white communities at the expense of black communities.

In terms of those actions that simply hurt black communities I think the obvious place to look is the burning and lynching. Black homes and businesses were burned and black individuals were lynched in thousands of incidents over the course of centuries in nearly every part of the country. This denied those communities the economic and social benefits of those people and properties.

But there were also plenty of incidents that not only hurt black communities, but also benefited white communities. White rioters wouldn't just burn black property, but would also loot it and take it for their own. White opportunists would also move in in the aftermath of a riot in order to pick up black property, particularly real estate, for prices that were essentially theft.

HOW THIS BENEFITED EVERYONE (WHITE)

Now, you might have read the previous two sections and thought "well, that didn't benefit me, my ancestors weren't a part of any of that." Well, I'll tell you that my ancestors weren't a part of it either and I still benefited from it. Here's how.

When people in white communities gained wealth, that increased the wealth of everyone in those communities. As white people became wealthier at the expense of black people, the value of white property and homes increased. White people with new wealth spent that money in white communities, buying things from white owned stores, patronizing white owned businesses, and generally spreading their new wealth throughout white communities across the United States.

It's important to recognize that, though things have gotten better, even economics in this country has been largely segregated by race. White owned businesses have primarily done businesses with other white owned businesses, whites and blacks have generally lived in different neighborhoods, and, to the extent that crossover has occurred, it has generally been blacks purchasing from whites and white owned businesses rather than the other way around. As I said, this has improved, but it is still far more true than I think any of us would like it to be.

Even if no one in your family ever directly took wealth from anyone black and even if you received no money from a person who did, you, a white person in the United States, have benefited from this. Wealth legally and illegally appropriated from blacks by whites have increased the economic growth of white communities, providing greater opportunities even for those whites near the bottom of the economic system. The benefits of government programs too, funded by tax dollars from Americans of all races, have flowed disproportionately to white Americans.

Even if no one in your family tree ever personally took a single thing from a black person and even if you have never participated in the institution of white supremacy, you have still participated in an economy that is tilted in favor of white people who live in white communities. The opportunities that have been available to you, the wealth and number of your potential customers, the wealth and number of your potential employers, even something as simple as the value of the home you grew up in; a good proportion of it is wealth, income, and opportunities that you have gained as a result of the system of white supremacy.

A SPECIFIC EXAMPLE

Before I conclude, let's take a close look at one case, the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921. Black property was destroyed and black individuals were killed. As far as those things were not appropriated by the white community but were simply destroyed they represent not just an economic loss to the black community, but to the entire country. However, much property was stolen and more property was purchased under the problematic conditions that were allowed to persist after the riot. This appropriated property represents a loss for the individual black people from whom it was taken and a gain for the individual white people who took it.

But that's not the end of the economic story. The white people who took black property used that gain of wealth to invest. Real estate that had belonged to black owners and was primarily a part of the black economy in Tulsa was repurposed for use in the white economy. Many white people used their newfound wealth to start businesses that primarily employed other white people or purchase things from other white owned businesses. White businesses in Tulsa would have purchased additional goods from outside of Tulsa, primarily from other businesses run by and employing other white people.

The effect certainly attenuates as you move outward from those directly involved, but I think it's reasonably clear that the economic effect of even this one act of white supremacy at least marginally increased the wealth of every single white person in America.

CONCLUSION

And that's the argument. Even if you personally didn't benefit by comparison to any other white person, white communities in the United States are generally wealthier than they would have been as a result of wealth taken from black communities through centuries of white supremacy. This has benefited just about every single white person in the United States even if neither they nor anyone in their family has ever directly involved themselves in acts of white supremacy.

I hope that you find this particular argument useful or at least interesting. As usual, please let me know if you have anything to add, though be sure to make your argument as clearly and completely as you can.