#there are many things where my family and i clash mostly in ideologies but they support me wholeheartedly and i love them

[moonraccoon-exe]

Hello raccoobos!!

I’m still trying to catch up with many PMs, and still some asks (and adding tags to some artworks, I swear I haven’t forgotten <’3), but I’ve been either busy or tired ahahah ;w;

But I do am getting to it. I’m not ignoring anyone, and I hope you know that. <3

I’m not going to be home on most if not all of tomorrow friday (today as this post reblogs itself), but I’ll be reading you, and trying to catch up, promise <3

Hope you’re having a most fantastic day or night!!! :3

[bloodbenderz]

Can I ask what your season 1 Lok reboot looks like?

this is about 3k words i checked lmfao dont say i didnt warn u

a key part of the whole thing is that korra gets way more perspectives and more experiences representative of like, normal people in republic city bc i think something that really defined what a good avatar aang was was how many people he met and got to know and how he didnt exclusively or even mostly associate w cops and bureaucrats and leaders. so mako and bolin. well first of all their backstories are a little more fleshed out and we get a less black and white view of the “triads” (lol) and mako and bolin’s experiences w them. cuz the show very much does the whole thing of like Criminals Bad but dont worry even tho mako and bolin did commit crimes theyre not Criminals!! so just a little more nuance on the alleged gang problem and the poverty in the city

korra does start out very naive w very black and white ideas (ex. “you guys are CRIMINALS?”) i think a really good way of developing her away from her sheltered naive worldview is putting her in whats clearly an incredibly complicated city w an absolute cesspool of political conflicts, ethnic tensions, the lasting effects of colonization, etc and having her try and understand the needs of “the people” in a more complicated way than “i have to save the good guys from the bad guys” ykwim? and i think the absolute WORST way to do that is what they did. bc we get mako and bolin who could contribute genuinely compelling thematic elements to the story: one parent who was indigenous and one who was from a colonizer background in the decades directly following the end of the war, kids who grew up in poverty apparently without any familial support, and who now are trying to be “respectable” members of society (especially mako). and then most of that is pretty much tossed aside bc asami swoops in w her capitalist dad and her piles of money and the class issue is just never talked about again.

so the way i’d fix all that is like. introducing more, like, normal people. some nonbenders, more workers, more immigrants, etc, to show what daily life is actually like for people. because. we dont know! we dont have any context about whether the nonbender oppression thing is actually an issue bc we dont KNOW any nonbenders with normal lives! and spoiler: the nonbender oppression thing is not an issue. bc it doesnt make historical sense. lok is set 7 decades after the end of the war. that is not by ANY stretch of the imagination long enough to heal from the scars of imperialism, ESPECIALLY not when lok is also set in a settler colonial state. like that fact should have featured PROMINENTLY in the political and social setting! realistically, nonbenders arent an oppressed class, earth and water nation people are, regardless of bending status! as in all settler colonial states, the colonizers and their descendants (in this case fire nation people) retain most of the financial and political capital, leaving the colonized and racialized immigrants (in this case earth kingdom and water tribe people respectively) generally impoverished and politically suppressed. like aside from the fact that theres no way toph would have become a cop, it’s so ridiculous to think that an established privileged class of fire nation colonizers would EVER accept being policed by earthbenders!

imagine how much more nuanced and interesting it would be to set republic city as a remnant of a colonial past still fraught w the violence and tension that colonialism and the associated ideology imposed?? instead of some vague ideas of criminal who wear 1920s outfits and harass shopkeepers think about why extralegal and violent groups like that might form! earth kingdom people trying to push for the reclamation of their land? ethnic groups protecting themselves against corrupt cops? ESPECIALLY w the history that the fire nation has of SPECIFICALLY jailing and killing earthbenders and waterbenders BECAUSE of the potential they have to resist against fire nation imperialism like it just makes no sense at all that earthbenders would be privileged on land that, 70 years ago, they would have been imprisoned on! like these various paramilitary groups falling along these different ideological or ethnic lines, fire nation or earth kingdom or water tribe, pro colonization or anti colonization, pro cop or anti cop, pro immigrant or anti immigrant, and then you juxtapose that w depictions of a govt thats failing to keep this all under control w tenzin trying desperately to keep it together despite the fact that it’s becoming increasingly obvious that the state has no interest in taking the conflicts seriously and would rather just point vague fingers at criminals and gangs? and THEN you bring in korra, who has no idea about any of this and thinks that all its gonna take is kicking some ass every couple days, meeting normal people who offer all kinds of different opinions abt the efficacy of the state and the different violent or nonviolent groups and ideologies clashing in the city and the way all this shit is affecting people’s lives and livelihoods and relationships w other citizens??

theres so much good shit there so many incredible things u could do w that like Where do we go after colonial atrocities? is it possible for a settler colonial state to take revolutionary or indigenous ideas seriously? is liberal reform enough in a state like this? and then all the growth that korra could do going from a simple black and white life about mastering the elements to this messy complicated sociopolitical knot of a city? and all the different kinds of characters u could introduce in this city? like why would u EVER think that the most interesting characters that this story has to offer is a police chief a congressman and a billionaire????

but anyways. that’s what the Setting of my idealized version of lok is. as for the actual plot, it is as follows

it starts out similarly as the show. republic city is MUCH more fraught w political tension and violence and korra knows this but assumes that it’s just a matter of throwing a few gang leaders and corrupt officials in jail. tenzin manages to come see them in the south pole and intends give korra real lessons while he’s there but they receive news of a terrorist attack in republic city only a few days after he gets there so his family has to pack up and leave again.

korra stows away to republic city (katara catches her leaving and gives her blessing im a SUCKER for that moment). she does have a hard time adjusting but she doesn’t do what she did in the show lol the first person she meets in the city is this older woman who works on the docks, directs her to a place where she can eat and gives her a roof to sleep under for the first night. so korra’s first exposure to republic city is just about forming connections w ordinary people like ship workers and a family owned restaurant and people practicing their bending in the park. and by the time she reaches air temple island a day or so later her head is spinning w all this new information and the way that nothing is really what she expected it to be. tenzin gives her his own perspective on everything and pema gives her her own perspective on everything and even those two seem wildly different from all the people she’s already met. and so korra starts to get a kind of outline of the conflicts plaguing the city as extremely complex and a lot more influenced by older ideas of fire nation imperialism and earth kingdom land reclamation than she had any idea about.

mako and bolin are still pro benders but not like. super famous like they are in the show. korra’s picked up a couple friends by now and one of them takes her to a gym where a lot of amateur pro bending (is that an oxymoron? lol) matches happen and thats how she meets mako and bolin and joins their pro bending team. Unfortunately for korra, this gym is run by lin beifong, and also has the distinction of being one of the most notoriously anti settler state organizations in the country. lin beifong is NOT a cop but she runs this gym (and the pro bending league) as a way to offer support to local earth kingdom/water tribe youth, teach self defense skills, a center of community organizing, and sometimes to act as a front to hide revolutionary/combat organizing against the pro fire nation paramilitaries/police force. tenzin is DISTRAUGHT that korra does this and this is where the friction btwn them comes from bc (from tenzin’s perspective) she does things like this without thinking or even fully understanding the context behind them and tenzin will have to deal w the political fallout of the avatar openly aligning herself w a very divisive figure in the community and (from korra’s perspective) tenzin is too unwilling to take sides in a conflict that’s claiming lives and when the state is clearly not taking sufficient steps to protect people well then why the hell shouldnt she align herself w lin beifong, who IS taking steps to protect and support people?

as korra more fully integrates herself into the city and learns more abt how different people think abt everything going on this is where the real exposition abt the equalists begins. they’re a paramilitary group w an ideology thats gaining increasing support among middle/upper class fire nation people, esp nonbenders. on the face theyre abt putting checks on “bender oppression” but really it’s an excuse to persecute and surveil earthbenders waterbenders and airbenders, bc fire nation people have all this leftover fear about benders who arent fire nation Rising Up Against them and these people who r using their Savage Excuse for Bending to terrorize good innocent (fire nation) people. theres all too frequent terrorist attacks that the equalists claim credit for mostly against monuments to earth/water/air nation people and earth/water nation community centers (one like it was the event that forced tenzin back to republic city) but also like the govt doesnt take a lot of these seriously or if they do only a couple people are charged without doing damage to the entire organization

this is also around the time that they meet asami and she becomes part of their friend group. asami likes pro bending but her dad HATES it so she sneaks out to watch matches at lin beifong’s gym (korra says ironically like don’t u know how ~divisive~ that is and asami answers that the only reason its Not divisive is that gyms like beifongs are the only place where nobody recognizes her). and asami alongside korra is also kind of developing a more nuanced perspective on the city that she lives in cuz obviously the only worldview she’s ever been exposed to is her father’s right? and she keeps pushing it off making excuses not to bring mako and bolin and korra around to her house or even not to be seen w them in certain neighborhoods until they call her on it and she’s like Well honestly my dad might do something awful to u! and i dont wanna risk it!

and as time goes on we see more abt asami’s home life like her father’s hyper conservative politics and asami keeps these secrets abt her hobbies and her friends from him but she’s still clearly under his influence and mako bolin and korra r getting increasingly worried abt it cuz like...asami seems to tend to make excuses for him so that she wont have to be drawn into conflict and originally they think its just her being privileged and thats def part of it but the more they find out abt it the more they realize what a tight fucking grip he has on her and the way that like. asami sneaking out once or twice a week is the Only thing she does for herself. and it really starts freaking them out how influential this billionaire is and all the information theyre getting from asami abt what a piece of shit he clearly is. and so that whole plot thing comes about and shows us how deeply embedded these “equalist” ideas are in conservative republic city politics and how much influence theyre actually having in policy making and law enforcement.

asami suffers in the aftermath of this like being forced to truly confront the harm her father is doing both to the city and to herself. and she ends up leaving home when this discovery really breaks. but bc of the deep corruption in govt and police sato isn’t really....dealt with? like this big story breaks and everyones like Oh, My God! Hiroshi Sato Is Funding An Illegal Paramilitary Group! and theres all kinds of inane political discourse about it and he’s arrested but he bails himself out immediately and his finances are examined but he maintains control over them and after a few weeks the gang (bc they Have become close among all this w much less interpersonal drama lol) has to admit that this news story hasnt done what they thought it was going to it hasn’t dealt the equalists a real hit its just given them a very high profile ally

and this is when things really start to ramp up in terms of action like up until now korra’s daily activities are mostly like hanging around in the city w her friends  (which in part entails doing little avatar stuff that people dont feel comfortable going to police with, like Can you help me my ex husband wont pay child support or Please help i got robbed and i really needed that money for rent next month or Help my son keeps skipping school can you talk to him cuz im worried abt him being safe and doing well in school) and pro bending and airbending lessons (which i know ive neglected this part of the story in terms of her whole spiritual/physical conflict but it’s more of a subtle thing like it’s one of tenzin and korra’s more frequent arguments like tenzin says she needs to focus on spirituality and korra asks why she even needs to bc republic city is a sociopolitical problem not a spiritual one) but now the equalist threat seems to really be looming on every level of society like the storyline of equalists preventing pro bending matches happens here and everyones just at a total loss of what to do next. plus increasing and scary rhetoric about tenzin and his family that destroying the last airbenders is necessary to preserving the integrity of the united republic

and so theres the equalist takeover of the city. the people who are mostly resisting this are lin and ragtag group of people who have been resisting colonial rule for a long time (including suyin, who is part of a communist anti colonial community outside the city, because i said so and i think it would be fun), people who have been visiting her gym for years, members of her amateur pro bending league, plus asami and korra and tenzin. korra and tenzin have a sweet moment (bc they do genuinely care abt each other a lot even if their relationship has been marked w a lot of tension and arguing) where tenzin says like you know i think that ive lost focus on the kind of spirituality that might actually help you. korra says what do you mean? and tenzin kind of gestures to where theyre sitting with people buzzing around organizing to take care of innocents and civilians and to fight the equalists and he says this is a kind of spiritual too, isnt it?

and something something plot plot blah blah i havent decided on the details of the plot climax yet but that’s the climax of korra’s character development and what helps her connect w her spiritual side in order to protect the city: the realization that community is its own kind of spirituality. and it kind of represents the real development that i want her to have going from somebody who thinks that the world is divided into criminals and victims and she has to save the victims Into the kind of avatar who understands the people that she’s bound to serve. she becomes an avatar of the people!

and then happy ending lol korra and asami get together lin and tenzin reconcile after years of being at odds the show ends on a hopeful note that the inhabitants of republic city and the united republic as a whole Can move on from the scars of colonialism by reckoning w the remnants of fire nation colonial ideology and reparations to the earth kingdom people whose land this is and destruction of colonial systems that have maintained and enforced colonial violence all these years

[jadelotusflower]

Robin Hood Rewatch: 2x08 Get Carter!

This is actually one of my favourite episodes of the season, partly because I really enjoy relationship angst, but mostly because we get multiple characters dealing with their trauma/grief. If we can't get these guys and gals into therapy, at least we get to see them talk (and hug) it out.

Also the best episode title they're had for a while - I have no doubt one of the writers is a fan, and Carter is so named only because they wanted to make this reference. The assassin seeking revenge for a dead brother is wholesale lifted from the plot of the film, and Joseph Kennedy almost has a passing resemblance to Michael Caine's look in that role.

"Get Carter - before Carter gets you!"

Carter is one of the only guest stars they actually will bring back later, and for good reason.

"Why don't you ever kiss my ring?" Vaisey, always making things creepy.

Marian is simmering with unrestrained anger, eager to get into the fight, while Robin is the one advocating for the watch and see approach, and it’s quite the role reversal.

The gang's reaction to her charging off is quite funny though, she knocks John over completely and Djaq throws her hands in the air.

Robin’s now getting a taste of what the rest of the gang have to put up with dealing with his recklessness.

Tying Marian up in the middle of a melee, however, is disgusting behaviour - while Marian was hot-headed throwing herself into the fight (nothing Robin hasn't done before himself), he knows that she can hold her own with a sword and doesn't need protecting. Tying her hands is the absolute worst thing he could have done, because how is she meant to defend herself? I can somewhat understand where Robin is coming from in this episode (even if he goes about it badly), but this is unjustifiable.

Clearly she gave that guard she clanked on the head amnesia, because he never reports back that Marian was fighting with the gang.

“I owe you my life”/“I won’t take it just yet.” Nice.

Scimitar is still missing in action.

Robin doesn’t want Marian to be seen in case she needs to return to the castle, when he’s spent the whole season urging for her to join the gang. I think he realises he made a mistake asking her to flee last episode without giving her time to deal with her grief, and wants to leave her options open. But telling her that she’s not ready to make the decision (about whatever she wants to go back), however correct, is patronising.

There's a fundamental conflict that Marian wants to be treated like a member of the gang, but doesn't want to cede to Robin's authority like the rest of the gang - in turn Robin expects her to follow his orders like the others, but isn't treating her like he would the others either - he would never tie them up to keep them out of a fight, and Marian has every right to pissed at him about it.

Djaq and Much having a little tête-à-tête about Carter - I just really enjoy that they’re often paired together in these gang scenes, they balance/play off each other so well. Just this pure platonic frazzled vs calm vibe.

Much just has this really great memory for faces - he was able to recognise fake Richard last season just from his profile despite wearing a helmet, and now he knows he remembers Carter's face from somewhere (or as it will turn out, Carter's brother).

Much really just does not let up, and I love that about him. "You'll be disappointed though, with uh, today's wound. I mean if you're planning to go back to the Holy Land and, uh, kill him." That not so subtle probing for information and Sam Troughton's delivery is always perfect.

"Wasn't me, was it?" Oh Much, so close.

“The crusty one” - lol

It's not explicit, but implied that Vaisey and Guy believe Edward was the one passing information to Robin, and Marian is cleared of any suspicion (paving the way for her return). Guess Guy never showed the Sheriff that hair dagger after all.

Vaisey is actually giving Guy some really good advice here, albeit laced with his usual cruelty and getting all up in Guy's personal space.

"Grow up Gisborne" - now I don't think it's deliberate on Vaisey's part to invoke a Marian parlance, seeing as she really only says this to Robin (and once to Much), but it's a nice little callback, however unintentional.

Marian asks for an apology (and deserves one), but Robin doubles down and doesn't come out of this exchange well.

Because his delivery is terrible, but he's otherwise quite correct - as skilled as Marian is, she’s used to relying on (and having to worry about) only herself and not work in a team, and look to a single point of command. But both of them have their backs up - they're two strong personalities and neither is going to give ground, reverting to the ideological clashes of season 1, except now in much closer quarters.

Robin's also not used to being challenged in this particular way, and in his frustration is reacting like a captain disciplining a soldier, not a lover helping their partner through their grief. I do wonder if the conversation would have gone differently if they'd been alone.

lol at the gang awkwardly standing around listening to Robin and Marian fight. Djaq trying to busy herself with her mortar and pestle as Robin and Marian argue around her.

A really great scene between Marian and John aka the camp dad. Marian really just needs someone to listen to her and appreciate what she's going through - Robin is too fixated on the dangerous way she's channeling her grief and not even trying to address the root cause. He trying to tell her what to do, not listen to what she actually needs.

On the other hand it's probably better coming from John, a neutral party without the emotional baggage she has with Robin.

Because Robin and Marian are really being driven by completely different motives - Marian by grief and therefore loss, and Robin by trauma and therefore fear. In her sorrow, Marian has lost all her fear of being discovered, in fact she wants to make it know she's with the gang, to finally be free to say which side she's on and fight openly, to make her father's death worthwhile, and can't understand why Robin is trying to stifle that.

"I thought you used to have your own men Little John?" So someone remembers Forrest and Hanton!

After Carter takes down the gang one by one, Robin takes down Carter in three seconds (including catching the long dagger Carter throws at him, and flinging it back) and it's lights out. Can you believe it's the first concussion of the season? (Notwithstanding the multiple head injuries Allan sustained last episode).

While Marian has been known to be punch-happy, the "he'll tell us more if he knows we're willing to hurt him" is just so (intentionally) out of character - it is however somewhat reminiscent of Robin in 1x08, wanting to get his punch and torture on with Guy. However rather than understanding where Marian is coming from, he pushes her away with the "go and cook something" jibe. This almost feels like he was going for familiar banter and miscued, but is also an asshole thing to say. When their positions were reversed in 1x08 Marian at least tried to reason with him - Robin is seems to be ill-equipped to do the same.

Allan just having a little snooze against the castle wall. He really seems defeated and depressed after last episode.

Marian's corset has a pouch to hold a dagger - or at least I hope there is because otherwise it's ouch time.

Leaving Marian at the camp is again a mistake on Robin's part - it excludes and isolates her from the gang, rather than trying to involve her so she can bond with them, engaging in their outreach to the peasants - who she helped as the Nightwatchman, but never really had the opportunity to come to know. It would remind her that they are not just fighting against the Sheriff but for the people, which in her frenzied grief she has perhaps lost sight of.

Instead, Robin's focus is on Carter, who he rather identifies with and so finds it easier to address his motives, and try and change them.

Carter is in many ways Robin’s dark mirror, what he could have become in the Holy Land if he chose a different path. It’s important that this happens right when Robin is backsliding - he’s trying to save his own soul as much as Carter’s.

Okay, let's talk about Marian’s forest gear - fashioned from the outfit she wore when she fled the castle the previous episode - but dear me it's awful. The grey culottes, rather than becoming trousers have now been turned into that corset, and her vest/skirt overlay have now become those trousers. Just baffling.

“I’m good with nuns” followed by Allan straight up knocking the Mother Superior over and stealing her ring is iconic.

Much gives Robin a sword to use going after Carter - still no scimitar.

I really love the confrontation/fight scene between Robin and Carter - it's very well choreographed and written, but we also see the best of Robin's character (after seeing some of the worst earlier).

Carter's brother is called Thomas - Allan's brother was called Tom. Lots of dead brothers in this show (including Djaq's).

The story of Carter's brother Thomas dying because he "stopped listening" and led a raid against orders is a little on the nose, but gives context to Robin’s fear for Marian’s safety in part triggered by his war trauma - someone charging in against orders and then dying in his arms.

But it shows Robin as a man who, even when Thomas' recklessness had cost not only his own life but others of Robin's men, was still moved to instruct the stretcher-bearers to make Thomas the hero, and himself the negligent captain, in order to comfort his family.

The fight is fairly even, and although Robin gets the upper hand in the end, it's only partly his skill - rather his true strength is in reaching the man inside the assassin, and then surrender and allow Carter to take his revenge if that's what he wants, and despite his fear, trust that there is good still in him, and that he can leave behind the life as a killer as Robin has done (tried to do).

This scene is the core of why I really love Robin as a character. He's riddled with PTSD and a reckless bravado, he's at time emotionally stunted with those he loves, makes terrible mistakes and often says the wrong thing, but he also has this great heart and compassion that allows him to reach people, to understand and help them, even at the risk of his own life. He's trying.

"He was a hero - just not on that day" is quite a poignant line.

Much and Djaq together again, just saying.

Robin finally finds out that Roger of Stoke was intercepted. I had assumed he'd figured that out once he knew Allan was a traitor but okay.

Poor Much crying out for Robin's attention - he's got his own trauma from the war and wants to talk about it, to commiserate with Robin about what they went though, but Robin can only cope by not talking about it, not even thinking about it.

Much makes a good point that Robin should have listened to him about recognising Carter, but it comes across as jealously over Marian and Robin misses just how deeply Much carries his hurt.

One of Robin's biggest flaws is that he's overwhelming in his affection, compassion, and understanding for strangers, but takes those he loves for granted - Carter's response to grief was the same as Marian's, but Robin listened to Carter, consoled and comforted him, while keeping Marian at arm's length. Perhaps because strangers don't ask for anything beyond that - it is the granting of kindness, but not the sharing of self. It's the latter Robin truly fears, but what Much and Marian deserve (although tbf Marian has problems with this as well).

“Either I’m part of your gang or I’m not” is a valid point, and Robin's still not happy even when she agrees to stay behind!

But she disobeys him, and saves his life. It's a rite of passage - almost all of the members of the gang have this.

Allan looking rather distressed as Guy is about the chop off Robin's head, and he makes a small movement just before the swing (as does Much).

Guy again pushing Marian past the point of discomfort - she left, wrote him a letter asking him to leave her alone, straight up told him to his face to leave her alone, and still he persists.

Her kissing Guy (to distract him from seeing Much and Will) is really the only time she sends mixed signals, but Guy's whole energy seems to be just to wear her down until she agrees to be with him and it's gross. It is however kind of amusing that he tries to be authoritative and forbid her from leaving, and she immediately walks away.

Robin and Marian are back in playful banter mode, although I wish there had been a deeper discussion (and that Robin had apologised in return). It doesn't quite feel like the conflict between them has been resolved, it really is just a "truce".

But I do like that it's Marian who reaches out to Robin at the end of this episode, because up until this point it's Robin who has been (somewhat) the one making overtures - asking her to join the gang, telling her he needs her, telling her he loves her, while Marian's been more reserved. This feels like her acknowledging that sometimes she needs to take the first step.

This was a long one - but as a I said, I really love this episode!

[ariainstars]

Star Wars or Why Rebellions Are Necessary

There was a lot that irritated me with the ending of the Star Wars sequels, among other things considering that they were supposed to be a wrap-up of the saga. But you know what… Looking back now, one of the things most I miss is the rebellion.

In many ways, the saga is a coming-of-age story through three generations; but it seems that in the case of the third generation, the journey to adulthood was aborted. (Is it a coincidence that the erstwhile Rebellion, under Leia Organa’s leadership, is called not Rebellion but Resistance?)

Every generation - this also applies to our own world - has and needs dynamics of some kind. The world keeps changing, and we need to change accordingly. Many people unfortunately adopt some mindset or other (of their own, or instilled into them by people they trust) and stick with it for the rest of their lives. This is one of the main reasons why children and their new, fresh points of view are so extremely important.

“I believe that you are redeemed by your children.” George Lucas

Prequels

Anakin Skywalker is often accused of being a whiny, perpetually dissatisfied brat both by the Jedi Council and by the audience.

But on watching the prequels again, after some years and distance, the Old Republic gave me the distinct impression of a stagnant society on the verge of its breakdown, very far removed from the peaceful world Obi-Wan Kenobi had described to Luke when they first talked on Tatooine. And Anakin rebels against it right from the start. 

Anakin repeatedly chafes against the restrictions of the world around him. He wants to be free and also to free his mother; the Jedi’s strict code of non-attachment paired with their conviction of being always right drives him downright mad. This reaches a painful peak on the terrible night he has to watch his mother die a cruel, senseless death.

The unpopular truth is that Anakin is right when he accuses Obi-Wan of holding him back. This may be jealousy the way he claims (and indeed Anakin repeatedly proves to be stronger than his master); in any case, Obi-Wan is clearly not much inclined to compassion. He is a dutiful man and he knows that the Jedi’s eyes are on him as the master of the boy they didn’t want in the first place. He and the other Jedi know almost nothing besides their Code, having grown up in the Order from infancy. So, they struggle to keep things under control and to preserve the world they know the way it is. 

But this world also contains a lot of injustice: the Separatists do not want to leave the Republic without reason. The Jedi use the Force for their own purposes, instead of teaching the populations of the galaxy faith in it. Anakin is deliberately held back, kept down and even humiliated by the Jedi, the cunning Palpatine being the only one who shows him some respect. In the end, he is even denied the title of “master”, although he more than earned it (apart from everything else: risking his life over and over on the missions they sent him to). It is not hard to see that “he is too young” is only a lame excuse contrived by the Jedi to hide what Anakin suspected all along: that they don’t trust him. Anakin has an uncanny talent for seeing through the Jedi’s hypocrisy, and being both honest and bold, he often says what they don’t want to hear.

Created by the Force to bring Balance, Anakin derives his enormous power from both the Light and the Dark Side. The Jedi, who have made it their task to dedicate themselves to the Light Side only (completely ignoring the Dark Side), fear and shun him and never seem to ask themselves what is actually meant with the “Balance” of the old prophecy and why this must be “brought” from the outside. Obi-Wan’s last words to Anakin clearly say that according to him, the Dark Side has no right to exist. 

“You were supposed to destroy the Sith, not join them!” Obi-Wan in Revenge of the Sith 

The Jedi seem to have forgotten that the Force actually does not belong to them but the other way around; meaning that the Jedi are not automatically the Light Side and the Sith the Dark Side. They derive their power from these, but they do not embody the Force at any moment. 

The only act of rebellion Anakin manages to perform is his secret marriage to the woman he loved ever since he was a little boy. It is an insubordination that would cost him his status of a Jedi if it was known. Anakin, having lost his compassionate mother who taught him always to help others, and being is repeatedly told that he must do what the Jedi order him no questions asked (mostly actions designed to make them preserve their status and their political power) instead of helping who is actually in need, chooses to marry a woman who is compassionate herself.

This leads at least to some years of balance for him, and the children he generates are the future hopes of the galaxy; so Anakin’s rebellion to the Jedi Code, though secret, causes a lot of good.

The trouble is not Anakin’s rebellious nature; it is, like with most teenagers, not that he sees what is going on but that he doesn’t quite understand why ongoing things are never to be questioned, and that he doesn’t find the right words or actions to articulate his anger and disappointment. Nor does he know what needs to be done to make things better. In the end, the only tragic solution he comes up with is literally burning the house down.

At the other end of the scale, there is Padmé: the daughter of an influential and obviously affluent family of Naboo, she is not a rebel because she sees no need for rebelling. She does want to make things better, though not in such a harsh way as her husband: and this is where they ultimately clash. While Anakin sees through the evils of the Republic and the Jedi and decides to put a radical end to them, Padmé begins to doubt the justice of her mission just shortly before the world she knew is destroyed by the hand of the very person whom she loves most. 

“What if the democracy we thought we were serving no longer exists, and the Republic has become the very evil we have been fighting to destroy?” - Padmé in Revenge of the Sith 

Anakin, though, had his own ideas about rebellion: he executes Order 66 as per Palpatine’s order, but when his wife comes to find him on Mustafar he tells her what he actually wanted all along, which was not, ultimately, to be the Chancellor’s minion. 

Anakin: “I am more powerful than the Chancellor, I can overthrow him. And together you and I can rule the galaxy. Make things the way we want them to be!“

Padmé: “I can’t believe what I’m hearing!” Revenge of the Sith 

The most powerful couple of the galaxy breaks apart over their different ideologies. Anakin is misusing his newfound powers, and his appalled wife must learn that he expects her to be on his side. He believes his care for her is leading him, when in truth it’s his fear; if he truly cared for her so much, he would not do things which he ought to know she would utterly disdain and be horrified by. 

It is interesting that despite the chasm in their attitudes, their emotional bond still stays strong. Padmé manages to reach through to her husband’s heart one last time, almost succeeding to make him leave Mustafar with her. Then unfortunately Obi-Wan interferes, pushing Anakin into his head again: he realizes that Padmé loves him despite his choices, not because of them, and that Obi-Wan wants to take him to account. Seeing his rebellious acts coming apart, Anakin lashes out setting the final seal on his destiny. 

And this is where Palpatine, the future Emperor, steps in. He neither openly rebelled nor tried to improve the galaxy’s order while preserving it, but planned his putsch on the long run for decades. His usurpation at last puts an end to the clone wars, which is why the former Republic, tired of the fighting, destruction and deaths, welcomes him as a peacemaker before realizing that it exchanged one evil for another, much worse one. 

  Classics 

The original trilogy is the story of a rebellion at its very core. By the time Luke and Leia are grown the Empire has become so powerful and ruthless that the populations of the galaxy feel oppressed and welcomes Luke and Leia’s, and their allies’, struggles to overthrow it. 

Leia speaks up against Tarkin, Emperor Palpatine’s deputy, and Darth Vader right from the start, without even knowing that Vader is her biological father. She does not need this knowledge to be aware of his wrongdoings. Leia’s rebellion is justified and her own adoptive parents, a queen and a senator, actively assist her with it.

At first, Luke rebels against staying on his desert planet without any prospects for the future; then he is sucked into the vortex of politics (Rebellion) and religion (Jedi) and dedicates himself to both.

Luke rebels against his father to the last: even trapped, maimed, isolated and traumatized he chooses rather to jump into an abyss, narrowly escaping death, than accepting to be his ally.

His ultimate act of rebellion takes place before the Emperor: again, Luke faces almost certain death rather than the corruption of his ideals. 

“You lost, your highness. I am a Jedi, like my father before me.” Return of the Jedi 

Though Darth Vader does have plans of his own (corrupting his son and overthrowing the Emperor), he always obeys his master. Only at the very last moment he rebels, saving his son at the cost of his life. 

Whatever they do, Luke and Leia never give up on rebelling. Before Tarkin, Vader, Palpatine or Hutt, they always speak their minds and if they are afraid, they do not show it in their least. Their faith in their ideals makes them bold. 

Rebellion wins. A family is formed, peace ensues and stays in the galaxy for many years.

 Rogue One, Solo, The Mandalorian

 “Rebellions are built on hope.” Rogue One

The heroes of Rogue One rebel because, each in his own way, they have nothing left to lose; contrarily to Anakin who had everything to lose. But that is not entirely true: we see glimpses of friendship and love in the members of the Rogue One mission, and they all still have their lives. But instead of making something of what they have, they all decide to risk (and indeed lose) what little they have for a greater good.

The world needs rebels because it needs hope. Without hope, there is only the stagnancy which we can so clearly see in the Old Republic before its fall. Yet Rebellion does not only need a cause, it also needs an aim.

Han, whose story mirrors Rogue One’s, knew he wanted to escape from slavery and later he found out what he wanted to do with his new freedom: help Luke and Leia, to whom he had become attached. It is not coincidental that he’s the most mature of the bunch.

This is what we can see in The Mandalorian: he belongs to the guild of bounty hunters and then he also rebels - though he ought not to take interest in a bounty and not to ask any questions, he stands up against leaving the unprotected Child behind.

  Sequels

The first person we see rebelling in the sequels is Finn. Appalled by the ruthlessness of the First Order, he decides to leave. His choice at first is a selfish one though, he only thinks of escape, not of any greater good. He has to meet Rose and DJ and to make his experiences at Canto Bight to understand that it is important to rebel for a cause.

Phasma: “You always were scum.” Finn: “Rebel scum.” The Last Jedi

Though commonly seen as modeled upon Luke’s character, Rey lacks one major trait that he had: instead of actively looking for her fate, she remains passive, merely surviving, her attitude and looks the same she had when she was a little girl.

Rey is not willing and impatient to leave her home world and embrace her destiny. On the contrary, she waits and waits for a family which, as we later learn, she unconsciously knew would never come back to her.

Ironically it is Kylo Ren, the alleged bad guy, who is the main rebel of the sequel trilogy. We learn that he is our hero’s son and nephew and that he turned his back on them for unknown reasons; and he always has his own agenda. His temper tantrums are not there for a good joke: they show that he is interiorly conflicted and not really committed to the First Order. All of his acts are rebellious in one way or another.

Kylo searches for the map leading to Luke because he wants to confront him by himself: Snoke’s intentions only happen to have the same aim. (He indeed kills Snoke when he no longer needs him, the way Vader had wanted to do with Palpatine.)

Kylo unexpectedly kidnaps Rey on Takodana, and at first, instead of reading the map in her mind he tries to get to know her.

Kylo kills Han, coerced by Snoke, and we see him unhinged and deeply upset right afterwards, showing how he hated what he did.

 On seeing him first in The Force Awakens, I remember thinking repeatedly: “What’s the matter with this guy?”

Kylo (Ben) only has one chance to open up to Rey and tell her at least a part of his story from his own point of view, i.e. the fatal night at Luke’s temple, during one of their Force connections. And that is not nearly enough. One of the sequel’s biggest mistake was, in my opinion, telling us next to nothing about what had happened to the Skywalker-Organa-Solo family after the rebellion had ended in victory.

The other big mistake was not to show the road for a better future for the galaxy. Ben Solo comes back “home” in death, which is not a satisfying conclusion for his story. He is practically regressing to childhood, and his rebellious acts led to nothing except pain and death and ultimately, the rise of the girl of Palpatine blood.

Now this would still be acceptable if Rey had proven to be a deserving heir to the Skywalker family’s legacy. But she isn’t.

Why?

Because whatever Rey may be, she’s not a rebel. She was introduced to us as a scavenger, and she remained one to the very last - searching for old artifacts and legends and cherishing them never knowing their actual meaning and history.

For me, this is one of the many reasons why she ends alone on a desert planet. Rey did not grow up. She did not experience the painful but necessary process of coming of age that the heroes of the classic trilogy went through. If anything, it’s still ahead of her.

Rey wanted a family, though obviously not one of her own with a partner and children. The only person we ever see her feeling anything intimate for is Kylo / Ben; but with few exceptions, she adamantly pushes him away. He obviously terrifies and angers her, although since she is a child of Darkness herself, she ought to have no reason for that. Also, she quickly realizes that she is not powerless before him; that he both wants to keep her near and that he acknowledges her power and listens to her. But he always brings out her true self apart from the “good little girl” she wants to be; the good sides together with the bad sides. 

“You need a teacher - I could show you the ways of the Force!” The Force Awakens 

And Rey’s own authenticity frightens her. She seems afraid not so much of Kylo but of her own burgeoning adulthood and femaleness. Having been sold into slavery, she did not get the chance to have a normal, protected childhood and adolescence; her personality did not grow into womanhood, and she is aware of this lack, searching in all places for parental figures who will “show her her place in all this”. 

Rey briefly glimpsed a different kind of life sometimes, like on Takodana, or Pasaana (an odd symphony with the planet’s names, too) where she realized she wanted to live on a green planet, and to have children of her own. Also, Kylo saw her dreaming of an ocean. However, those remained vague dreams.

Unpopular opinion: maybe Rey did not want her dreams to come true. Hers is the story of a girl who first and foremost has needs, not dreams. When we first met her she was alone, enslaved, abandoned, overworked and hungry. As the audience, we expect as a matter of course to see a protagonist following his dreams and reaching them, and she didn’t. Rey’s needs were fulfilled during the course of this story, the way she wanted; nothing more. 

  Sacrifice Is Necessary, Too

So the question is, why does the saga end like this? It doesn’t feel like a fitting ending to a story that was always about rebellion. As I already said, rebelling itself is not enough: one must also know to what end, and the sacrifices one is ready to make.

The Jedi, as well as Padmé and Anakin, wanted to keep their cake and eat it, making a better world without having to give up anything that was dear to them.

The middle generation of Skywalkers did rebel but did not follow rebellion through: they longed for the seemingly beatific Republic before the rise of the Empire. Yet watching the prequels, as the audience we clearly see that it wasn’t quite that good. So our heroes fought, unknowingly, with the aim of restoring something that would have needed to be improved in their first place, and their “happy ending” did not last very long.

Luke read the ancient Jedi texts and wanted to rebuild the Jedi Order the way it was. Leia, the princess, probably learned about the Old Republic from her adoptive father, Senator Bail Organa, and wanted to restore it. But when we see them again, both twins are disillusioned and tired. Their own son and nephew destroyed whatever they had achieved with their efforts - and at least Luke is aware that he was partially responsible for it.

So the question arises, what are rebellions good for if they lead to no better future? What good is fighting for without asking how things could come so far in the first place, and without wondering about how to make things better? Ben Solo is repeatedly depicted as someone who has doubts, but it is also obvious that his doubts were not taken seriously and that he was just expected, both by his family and Snoke, to meet expectations. And like his grandfather, he had other things in mind: something new. Ever since their first Force vision (when Rey touched Luke’s light sabre in Maz’ castle) he knew that Rey was his other side in the Force. The moment he learned she was on Takodana he relentlessly pursued her, and no matter what happened, and despite everything she did to him, he was adamant to keep her by his side.

“We can rule together and bring a new order to the galaxy!” Kylo Ren in The Last Jedi

Rey rejects his offer, disappointed that he will not turn the way she expected him to. Maybe she was afraid that he was trying to lure her to the Dark Side; but given the wording, he wasn’t. Ben knew that with Rey he could find Balance, and he wanted to do so and to offer this Balance to the galaxy. At no time did he speak to her about the “power of the Dark Side” the way Vader had with his son; Ben obviously appreciated Rey’s strengths and did not want her to turn for him but to stay by his side, to create something new. Rey, ever the scavenger, does not want anything new; she longs for the past, so she unknowingly turns her back on Balance.

The sequel trilogy ends without leaving anyone with a feeling of hope exactly because the coming of age of both protagonists failed: Ben’s rebellion came to no satisfying conclusion, and Rey’s rebellion didn’t even get started. Though many fans interpreted her as such, she is not and never was a new interpretation of Luke Skywalker but his inversion: first she did not want to leave her desert planet and now she is on another.

By the time The Rise of Skywalker comes to a closure, Kylo / Ben, the last of the Skywalker blood, has not brought Balance to the Force; Ben’s journey ends because he has learned to let go. Anakin learned this important lesson only when he had already been Vader for many years; Luke learned letting go much earlier - losing his home on Tatooine, his mentor Obi-Wan, giving up his crush on Leia realizing that she had fallen in love with Han. But Rey did not; we never see her give up anything or anyone dear to her. Her journey feels unfinished and even more - it feels like it didn’t begin yet.

“Ben is someone who has hope. ... For the first time, someone who has never had the answer, now finally knows his purpose or destiny. He has to let her (Rey) know that they’re together. But I don’t know that he entirely is sure of what’s going to happen from there, nor do I think he cares. I think, it’s so long as he is with her, he is on the right path.” (Adam Driver)

Ben, who was named after Obi-Wan Kenobi, princess Leia’s “only hope”, the rightful heir of the Chosen One, is supposed to be dead and gone for good right after having found his way? Sorry, I can’t believe it.

Also, given the parallels between Padmé and Rey, it is to be hoped that maybe Rey will go her way - that she will want to make a better world without using violencev.

And I for my part wholeheartedly rebel to believe that this is supposed to be the ultimate ending. 😊

[novicetypewriter]

Religion: what it is supposed to be and what we have made it

Religion is supposed to be an intimate guide of a person, extremely personal and beyond the reaches of anyone else than the person itself. This would’ve been my ideal judgment of the affair had it been similar to its definition in real world.

A religion expresses a person’s ideal code of conduct as an individual and a part of the society. It shapes the conscience, morality, conduct and lifestyle of any person. We have tons of religions in our world that means we have tons of codes of conduct which may be complacent or conflicting with one another. This also means that we as humans have an inalienable choice to make, of either choosing any religion or none at all. It should not be of anyone’s concern as to why a person is following that religion and not mine; hello…it’s none of your business because it is what that person feels is right for them.

My own opinion is that this whole complex tangle of religion is abhorrent. As mentioned earlier, there are so many religions that are out there, mostly with conflicting views, or so it seems pragmatically. This leads to hatred among the followers of somewhat “polar” religions (mind it, they may not be polar in their ideals but have been made so by most of the preachers) and then, follows a race of establishing superiority of one over the other. I think most of the conflicts in the world, particularly in the Middle East and South Asia, definitely have an attribute of religion too, that keeps the fire burning. This also brings me to my conjectural conclusion that conflicts over religion mostly occur in places where at least one religion has its origin at.

I absolutely have no interest in discussing religion because I consider myself an atheist. But it disturbs me listening to instances of violent, communal riots, especially in my country which is a fucking developing country and all people talk about is this smallest aspect of one’s fucking personal life. This has a lot of reasons such as illiteracy among the citizens (especially, men; I will justify this later), obsolete yet unconditional love towards the religious preachers (not the religion, but the preachers because as it turns out people assume that they connect with them and the preachers teach the ideals, which is mostly not the case), and the most powerful of all, ‘people in power struggling to make religion a public issue and shamelessly declaring their religious identity in space and slandering other religions’. There are a lot of other reasons too, but these are issues I consider are at the forefront of them.

In most of the cases, the conflicts are seen in the developing world that is struggling to develop using available resources. And since, these countries comprise a huge share of illiterate population, there are certain popular arguments which are used against minority groups. One of them is xenophobia. The minority groups are often of foreign origin or from regions in the peripheral areas. The majority (that, mostly, comprise the native religion) feels this unjustifiable superiority complex that they are the sole inheritors of the land they live in. This theory itself reflects roots of illiteracy because these are given by people who are struggling in the country, and who hence, may not be having access to better education. To further bring the perspective of feminism in this argument, we need to know the fact that the modern religions (and this time it is the ideal concept of almost all the religions, besides the accentuation by the preachers) have their origins in a society dominated by men. The modern religions are simply anti-paganistic; be it Christianity, Islam or Hinduism. Each and every religious epic was written by men, with men protagonists and addressing men solely. Women were just represented symbolically, and that too reinforcing the fucking ideas of fragility, subordinance, and for the pleasure of men protagonists. It is very rare to see strong women in these epics as compared to zillions of men counterparts and that too probably, just to satisfy feminists. But guess what: this is not helping feminism even a bit. Firstly, men think that the women gods are superior to real women in the world, thus having an unanticipated effect; those gods are majestic which women in real world are not, logically, yes fuckers, because this is real world and that’s why they are fantasies. Secondly, a more direct consequence of the representation of women as fragile and delicate creatures in these epics has made men to believe that women NEED men to protect them and that their honor is central to men’s honor and courage. This really pisses me off because again fuckers, those epics are fantasies, women in the modern world are not those women, you are really backward, women know how to protect their own honor, they do not give a fuck about your honor and you are the ones we need protection against, so won’t it be a simple task to control your testosterones and remain within your boundaries. If we compare men and women living in exactly the same conditions except for their genders, women are much more aware of this fact and they do not need men to interfere in their affairs; they are being toxic. For example, in India, honor killings are a widespread practice in some of the rural areas. It arises when a woman marries a man, consensually, but the family of woman thinks that the man trapped her. Unsurprisingly, this would not have been a problem if the man belonged to the same religion or caste as the woman. It becomes a problem if the man is of an alien religion, mostly a Muslim, or of a lower caste. Then the family, without asking the woman for her fucking conviction, goes on to kill the man through mob-lynching and surprisingly, the woman is killed too because she was being difficult and rebellious. And mind it that things never even reach to this point; even if the woman is seen with a man of the same kind as mentioned above, the man will be lynched and woman confined to the house. Rumors are spread that a woman of one religion was raped by the man of another religion and the man is lynched. In the backdrop of all of this, is the man’s political dream of being masculine as preached by their religion; but YOU ARE BEING FUCKING LEECHES ON WOMEN AND WE DON’T LIKE IT, SO FUCK OFF AND DIE SOMEWHERE FAR.

The second important issue is the personality cult around the priests and preachers of different religions. People are illusioned in front of these “mystical” leaders who know this fact and use this to facilitate hatred among religions. When I wrote about the feministic problems earlier, it must be noted that the men with those toxic beliefs are disciples of these preachers. So, ultimately, the preachers are the overlords. They just need to speak a word slandering any other religion and this rat race of disciples start to run behind it. These preachers are in no way propagating religion and they have absolutely no idea what a religion is. They are bestowed upon the responsibility of interpreting the religious texts in accordance to present context and try to accommodate different religious ideologies so as to attain overall peace and harmony. This is exactly what a religion should do- peace and harmony. But this may come as a surprise to almost everybody, as this is not what religion in the real world means. It more likely to be a phenonmenon upheld by a group of fanatics, radicals, bloody orthodox terrorists. That’s what a religion is today. (again this is a general idea; there are many people within these religions who are against this mainstream approach, including some priests too)

Any sensible person will not believe wholly in any one religion; rather they would consolidate the good virtues of all religions and create their own personal religion. Every other insane person will be wholly devoted to a particular religion and act as a robot in the hands of fanatic overlords.

The last yet the most worrying issue is the knowledge of the religion of people in power and their open declaration about it. Democracy is supposed to be a consolidating force and the people in power should be symbols of this consolidation. This means that they need to suppress their personal opinions and act as an absolutely neutral person. But guess what threatens this argument: the people in power being more personal than public and in the worst case, BLOODY PREACHERS BEING BROUGHT TO POWER. Can you believe this? The fundamentals of secularism, fraternity, liberty, freedom, equality, and every other political principle being endangered by giving the power in the hands of these people. This scenario is an extensive combination of all the other issues I have mentioned in this article; think about it. And this is the only reason my country is observing so many riots, communal clashes, police brutality, women objectification, and loss of hundreds of thousands of innocents lives every fucking year.

This is my take on religion and again, I personally do not give a fuck about religion. But those who do, please know what a religion is supposed to be and what we have made it. (and for those leeches, get your act straight otherwise you are the ones who’ll need protection; FUCK YOU AND YOUR FUCKING DIRTY LIVES.)

[newstfionline]

Tuesday, February 2, 2021

Difficult Times for Flight Attendants (NYT) One flight attendant needed medical attention for a crippling migraine brought on by confronting a passenger who refused to wear a mask. Aviation safety officials have received dozens of confidential complaints in the past year from attendants trying to enforce mask safety rules. The reports, filed in the Aviation Safety Reporting System database, at times describe a chaotic, unhinged workplace where passengers regularly abuse airline employees. The coronavirus pandemic and political divisions of the past year have caused fear, economic pain, and social and family rifts around the country, but for airline workers, and flight attendants in particular, the unease and tension have often converged in a tiny cabin space. The tension is at a level flight attendants have not seen before, said Paul Hartshorn Jr., a veteran attendant and a spokesman for the Association of Professional Flight Attendants union. “I think we’re pretty well trained on how to handle a disruptive passenger,” said Mr. Hartshorn, 46. “What we’re not trained to do and what we shouldn’t be dealing with is large groups of passengers inciting a riot with another group of passengers [over political differences].” “It’s insane,” he added.

Fight The Man: What GameStop’s surge says about online mobs (AP) It’s a fable for our times: Small-time investors band together to take down greedy Wall Street hedge funds using the stock of a troubled video-game store. But the revolt of online stock-traders suggests much more. The internet is shifting society’s balance of power in unanticipated ways. In the world of pseudonymous internet message boards, pranks-gone-wild and logic turned upside down amid a global pandemic, revolts come in all shapes, sizes and aims. Last week they gave us the Great GameStop Stock Uprising. Who knows what this week will bring. “The internet can democratize access, upsetting power dynamics between the people and traditional institutions,” tweeted Tiffany C. Li, a law professor and tech attorney focusing on privacy and technology platform governance. With GameStop, she added in an interview Friday, the goal was to upset the interests of a few large hedge funds. “But in other places the goal can be more nefarious. Online spaces are being used to radicalize people toward extremism, to plan hate crimes and attacks,” she said. “The internet isn’t really the villain or the hero.”

Pandemic Pushes More Parents to Go All-In for Home Schooling (WSJ) As parents grow increasingly frustrated with remote learning during the pandemic, some are deciding to pull their children out of school and try teaching on their own. In North Carolina, the state’s home-school monitoring website crashed on the first day of enrollment, and more than 18,800 families filed to operate a home-school from July 1 to Jan. 22—more than double the school-year before, according to the state Division of Non-Public Education. In Connecticut, the number of students who left public schools to be home-schooled jumped fivefold this school year, to 3,500. In Nebraska, the number of home-schooled students jumped 56%, to 13,426, according to state education officials. “The vast majority [of parents] are saying, ‘We’ve been really trying to do what the schools are asking us to do, but we just can’t do this anymore,’ “ said J. Allen Weston, executive director of the National Home School Association, which has been fielding inquiries on the topic. Vanderbilt University’s Joseph Murphy, who studies home schooling, said “We are in a major shift from how we thought about teaching children and running schools for 100 years. Parents have shifted to the place where they feel they need more direct involvement and greater responsibility for what happens with their children.”

Vaccine skepticism lurks in town famous for syphilis study (AP) Lucenia Dunn spent the early days of the coronavirus pandemic encouraging people to wear masks and keep a safe distance from each other in Tuskegee, a mostly Black city where the government once used unsuspecting African American men as guinea pigs in a study of a sexually transmitted disease. Now, the onetime mayor of the town immortalized as the home of the infamous “Tuskegee syphilis study” is wary of getting inoculated against COVID-19. Among other things, she’s suspicious of the government promoting a vaccine that was developed in record time when it can’t seem to conduct adequate virus testing or consistently provide quality rural health care. “I’m not doing this vaccine right now. That doesn’t mean I’m never going to do it. But I know enough to withhold getting it until we see all that is involved,” said Dunn, who is Black. The coronavirus immunization campaign is off to a shaky start in Tuskegee and other parts of Macon County. Area leaders point to a resistance among residents spurred by a distrust of government promises and decades of failed health programs. Tuskegee is not a complete outlier. A recent survey conducted by the communications firm Edelman revealed that as of November, only 59% of people in the U.S. were willing to get vaccinated within a year with just 33% happy to do so as soon as possible. Health experts have stressed both the vaccines’ safety and efficacy.

As Biden prays for healing, Catholics clash over president’s faith (GMA) On his quest to heal a divided America, Joe Biden may first have to confront bitter division over his presidency from within his own church. Since his inauguration two weeks ago as the nation’s second Catholic president, Biden’s devout Christian faith has become a new flashpoint within the church. While millions of Catholics have celebrated the ascension of one of their own to the White House, some have been publicly questioning whether Biden should be considered a model of their faith. Many Catholic clergy and faithful are passionately fixated on Biden’s support for abortion rights, which the church staunchly opposes and considers an issue of “preeminent” importance. Biden opposes abortion as a personal matter, but wrote in his 2007 memoir that he doesn’t “have a right to impose my view on the rest of society.” One in five Americans identifies as Roman Catholic, the largest Christian denomination in the U.S., according to Pew Research Center. While the faithful have long been divided in matters of theology and politics, Catholic values aren’t exclusively red or blue.

Russia Protesters Defy Vast Police Operation as Signs of Kremlin Anxiety Mount (NYT) The Kremlin mounted Russia’s most fearsome nationwide police operation in recent memory on Sunday, seeking to overwhelm a protest movement backing the jailed opposition leader Aleksei A. Navalny that swept across the country for a second weekend in a row. But the show of force—including closed subway stations, thousands of arrests and often brutal tactics—failed to smother the unrest. By late Sunday evening in Moscow, more than 5,000 people had been detained in at least 85 cities across Russia, an activist group reported, though many were later released. Previously unseen numbers of riot police officers in black helmets, camouflage and body armor essentially locked down the center of the metropolis of 13 million people, stopping passers-by miles from the protest to check their documents and ask what they were doing outside. “I don’t understand what they’re afraid of,” a protester named Anastasia Kuzmina, a 25-year-old account manager at an advertising agency, said of the police. Referring to the peak year of Stalin’s mass repression, she added, “It’s like we’re slipping into 1937.” The large-scale police response signaled anxiety in the Kremlin over Mr. Navalny’s ability to unite Russia’s disparate critics of President Vladimir V. Putin, from nationalists to liberals to many with no particular ideology at all.

In Myanmar coup, Suu Kyi’s ouster heralds return to military rule (Washington Post) Aung San Suu Kyi defended Myanmar’s generals against genocide charges at The Hague. She praised soldiers as they unleashed artillery against ethnic minority settlements. She took only modest steps toward democratic changes that would chip away at the army’s political power. It wasn’t enough. On Monday, Myanmar’s military seized power in a coup, detaining Suu Kyi, elected ministers from her National League for Democracy (NLD) party and others in a predawn raid. Though condemned internationally for defending the military and its campaign against the Rohingya minority, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate who spent 15 years under house arrest until 2010 now finds herself again at the generals’ mercy. The coup underscored the fragility of Myanmar’s decade-old, quasi-democratic transition that many assumed, despite imperfections, would continue with Suu Kyi as head of the civilian government and still-entrenched powers for the military, led by Min Aung Hlaing. But the military was never comfortable with its enduring unpopularity and Suu Kyi’s godlike status among ordinary Burmese, analysts said, despite its role in engineering the country’s opening after half a century of isolationist rule.

Survivors of Beirut’s explosion endure psychological scars (AP) Joana Dagher lay unconscious and hemorrhaging under a pile of rubble in her apartment after the massive Beirut port blast in August, on the brink of death. She survived because of the courage of her husband who got her out, the kindness of a stranger who transported her in his damaged car and the help of her sisters during the chaos at the overwhelmed hospital. But Dagher doesn’t remember any of that: The 33-year-old mother of two lost her memory for two full months from the trauma she suffered in the explosion, including a cerebral contusion and brain lesions. “I lost my life on August 4,” Dagher said. “I lost my house, I lost my memory, I lost two friends,” she added, referring to neighbors killed in the explosion. “I lost my mental health, and so I lost everything.”       The Beirut explosion, which killed more than 200 people and injured more than 6,000, caused wounds on an even wider scale on the mental health of those who lived through it. Even in a country that has seen many wars and bombings, never had so many people—tens of thousands—directly experienced the same traumatizing event at the same time. It came on top of the stress that Lebanese were already feeling from multiple crises, including an unprecedented economic meltdown, the coronavirus pandemic and a feeling of helplessness after nationwide protests against corruption that failed to achieve their goals. “There are very high levels of anxiety and worry across the population,” said Mia Atwi, psychologist and president of Embrace, an organization working on mental health awareness and support. “There is a low mood bordering on clinical depression for the majority of the population.”

[werevulvi]

I don't think I've ever made an in depth post here about where my views really lie, in terms of not just gender identity/trans stuff, but gender and sex as a whole in society. Where my radfem views basically kinda mesh with MRA views. Because it's kinda difficult to put into words. But I want to try. So that you all will know who it is you're actually following. So, I wanna start off with a disclaimer that I will be using certain words and terminology that might make you frown, but please try to see those words as loose descriptions rather than as fixed labels.

I still think that radfem is what lies closest to what my views can be labeled as, if any label at all, as I agree with majority of it. However, there is an MRA twist to them. So to start off... I dunno where to start, but... patriarchy? Yes, how about that! Then let's just ramble on from there. Do I think there is a patriarchy? Yes, I do. I think what's generally called "male socialisation" is inherently destructive to women as a class, and that "female socialisation" is also inherently destructive to women. It raises men above women which takes away our agency and much of our freedom. It exploits us sexually and makes us not only get the short stick biologically but also socially. This is what I generally view as patriarchy. A world of men dominating and controlling women, a rape culture, if you may.

However, what I see, that I don't think most radfems even acknowledge, let alone agree with, is that this patriarchal system is almost as bad for men as it is for women. It assumes men as inherently awful with no chance of redemption, perpetuating basically what's called "original sin" - yet men are taught that they're disposable, only useful if they make a ton of money and sacrifice themselves and their livelihood for women and children. That is an immense burden, and this is where my MRA views come in. I view the world of men and women kinda like this: Imagine an inner circle and an outer circle. In the inner circle are women, protected yet exploited by men, objectified and hold to lesser value, as housewifes, sex objects and baby-making machines, yet don't have as high expectations to contribute in the world. They don't have to go to war, or work themselves to an early grave, they don't have to sacrifice their lives for the opposite sex. But they do have to sacrifice their freedom and their bodies, for men and for reproduction. This is a heavy burden for women to bear.

And in the outer circle are men, having more freedom, yet higher expectations to contribute in the world, as money-makers, disposable soldiers, etc. They are expected to keep the world running and never complain. They are equally as useless unless they perform their reproductive role too, and as disposable slave workers. They are less likely to face sexual and emotional abuse, but are far more likely to face virtually every other kinda abuse. They have tried to fight this injustice, like women have fought against theirs, for as long and as relentlessly, but there is less empathy for men. There always has been. Their struggle is not taken as seriously, because it is less visible. They appear to have it all, but they really don't, and those who do, fought through hell to achieve that.

Men have a biological and social advantage, yes... but for a very heavy price. A price which I don't see many women particularly willing to pay, for those advantages. A MGTOW on youtube once explained that "inner vs outer circle" thing, and... it changed my world view. Since that point I've been on and off between feminism and MRA, because deep down I know he was right. Both MRA's and feminists are right, and that's probably why they cannot work together, nor fold for the other. Nor should they! Maintaining these ideologies as opposites, as enemies, is causing far more problems than either of them are solving, I think.

On a personal note... I am willing to pay that price, for getting the opportunities that men have. Since my transition, I have been made gravely aware of that price that men pay to be successful and considered valuable. Men are NOT seen as more valuable than women. They gain value by working their asses off and making huge sacrifices along that way. If they don't... they're useless neckbeards, "beta males" or homeless with nothing at all. Women also have to put work in and make huge sacrifices to be seen as valuable. Namely, they have to sacrifice their autonomy and their dreams to be caregivers and mothers. That's a heavy price too, but women can't ever become as useless and without value as men can. Albeit horrific, women have intrinsic value in our reproductive ability, but men (according to patriarchy/society) do not have any intrinsic value. They HAVE TO work for their value.

Having said that... I no longer give a shit who has it worse, men or women.

Both suffer under this horribly dehumanising system, which is patriarchal, yes, but it's more so heteronormative. Because it all comes down to our crap biology. Because here's the thing and you may not like reading this, because this where I think MRA's are especially right, which is where I’ll probably lose most feminists: Males are biologically driven to reproduce fast and effectively. They make a ton of sperm and if they don't try to knock up as many females as possible, their genes will get lost and they'll have no family to raise. Their biological value as individuals is dependent on this. Their biological role is miniscule when it comes to breeding, so they try to make up for it by being financial providers and offering protection to females whom are physically weaker and more susceptible to harm.

Females are biologically driven to be selective with their reproduction, because if they're not, they'll go through traumatic pregnancy and childbirth for basically nothing. Females really need to make sure they pick the best genes, and their biological value is dependent on this. Which creates a huge clash between male and female goals, a constant battle hunt of prey vs predator. And that is what creates a rape culture, of males aggressively hunting females for their vaginas, and females desperately protecting their vaginas from useless genetics, bodily harms and getting pregnant too much for their bodies to handle.

This is not just about humans, hence why I wrote males and females, but practically all mammal species. What happens with humans is that we've evolved a little from our primal instincts and intellectualise our existence, and what's the meaning of life. But we still have our biological instincts, and this is what led us to create more complex societies than other mammals do, but these societies are still very similar to most other mammals' equally patriarchal, heteronormative, systems of gender roles. Men did not create this. Nature did. Beautiful, flawless, wonderous... mother nature, damned us all. Patriarchy is not a coincidence, nor a human creation at all. Our societies may be social constructs, but they are based on our reproductive instincts, which have been with us since long before we even became homo sapien.

I get angry when I write/think about all that. Not because "you're all dumb to not get this" or anything like that, but because this hierarchy seen in almost all mammals, including humans... is unavoidable and cannot be fixed. It's an unfortunate outcome of how sexually dimorphic species are biologically built to breed and continue their species. And that is what makes it so upsetting, so aggrevating, so insidious. Because no matter how much feminism, men's rights movements, LGBT communities, humanitarians, socialists and whatever the fuck it all... females will always be at a biological disadvantage, and males will always be at an biological advantage. We can't fix that. Which means, we can't fix patriarchy. Then why even bother? Why try to fight for female liberation, if patriarchy and rape cultures are unavoidable and unfixable? That's what comes down to morals, values, what we want and wish and dream. That matters, it always will, no matter the outcome! I think the world can still be made better than how it is today, especially in third world countries, and that male aggression can be better controlled. I think more choices can be opened up, for both sexes, and that the gender roles can be made less restrictive. And I think that's worth fighting for, even if it's a far cry from feminism's ultimate goal. But I need to also stay realistic and have a plan B, which is to figure out how to thrive, as an individual woman, in this patriarchal rape culture.

And my way of doing so is to try my best to live mostly as a man, taking all the shit men get, for the price of climbing higher up the ladder and avoiding (some of) the disadvantages of being recognisably female - but still take on the female roles that I want for myself, such as motherhood, and take the risks that come with that too. I don't have everything figured out yet, and I don't know what kinda relationship I want yet. But I'm starting to think that maaaybe I would benefit more from taking advantage of the straight privilege I have with my bisexuality, a more pragmatic approach... and get myself a decent househusband, for more convenient breeding. I would like to date another woman again, don't get me wrong, but that feels a bit unfit for my goals, unfortunately. I don’t wanna make hard shit even harder for myself, when it can be avoided.

Love... isn't my main driving factor in relationships anymore. Although I'm gonna need to think it through VERY properly, if I really think that setting love aside for a more practical partner arrangement, is actually a good idea. Regardless, however, I do have attraction to men, but even straight women can marry for practicality and end up miserable and abused because of it. So it has nothing much to do with sexual orientation on that point, but it does in the sense that homosexual marriage can't really be made for practicality. Marrying for practicality is an extremely heteronormative move to make, and one that has been used against homosexuality for centuries, to force gay people into straight marriage. This makes me... extremely uncomfortable and angry, on behalf of all gay people out there, of course.

Yet... I am intrigued by the idea for myself only, as I see the option of marriage from more angles than I used to. I still think marriage should of course be for love as well, and I would never want to choose for others why or whom they should marry, or not marry. That whole dream I have might also be taking on a way too heavy burden and responsibility on my already crumbling shoulders, to aim at being both the provider and a mother, but I want both those things, so it might be worth it. And with that said, having a useful, good, respectful and resourceful husband might be more important to me personally, than any cute frumpy lump of a dude that I just so happen to fall in love with. (But I also wanna point out that my goals and dreams have been switching a lot lately, so please take this sudden, baffling idea of mine with a grain of salt. I'm gonna focus on getting my own ass together first, before I even consider handing it over to someone else again, and I have a lot to work on.) However, say if I'll end up going that route, that is me basically playing into the hands of patriarchy, for the price of getting the best life I can give myself in a broken world which cannot be fixed. I'm not saying my goals are in any way somehow universally favourable. You do you, I do me.

But at the same time I also wanna be inspirational, especially for other women, but in general too. I'll prove to the lot of you that despite being considered a "hopeless case" irrevokably mentally disabled, I'll goddamn make myself into a money-making baby-maker AND a goddamn awesome one at that. I won't give up on my dreams of having a job, financial and emotional stability, and a child. I also won't "correct" myself to fit into the beauty norms of women. I will continue to refuse getting fake tits, laser hair removal, feminising voice training, feminine clothing, makeup, etc. I'm slowly accepting, embracing and coming to terms with being a manly, masculine or even transmasculine, proud woman. And you wanna know why it matters to feminism? Because if I can be a woman, looking like this, living like this... then ALL other gnc females can too. Because not to brag or anything, but I don't think anyone else has taken being gnc quite as far as me before. Almost everywhere I go, I am considered "too masculine" to even be a woman, despite being female, which is a problem that to varying degress affects all gnc females, but I will work hard to change that. And if I succeed to... I'll be paving one fuck of a path for all gnc women after me. You're welcome, sisters.

Furthermore, regardless of my own heterocentric breeding fantasies and whether I make them real or not, I will absolutely continue to stand up and fight for gay, and especially lesbian, rights. No one should be forced, coerced or otherwise shoved into heterosexual stuff against their will, including "girldicks" and "boypussies" - and yes, I will die on that hill. I listen, I hear you, and I will help you spread your word. To wrap it up: So I do CARE about feminism, and trying to make the world a better place by trying to reduce the harm and being a good example in some ways, and I take a very similar approach as radical feminists. I just have a bit of an MRA leaning to my view on patriarchy, which does NOT make that patriarchy any more favourable. I also have a heck of a lot more pessimism about the future prospects of humanity's... own goddamn demise. I'm a nihilist at heart, what can I say? I may love women more... but I don't hate men. No matter how badly many of them have hurt me. No matter how much my c-ptsd makes me fear them. I wanna work with men for a better world that should benefit all of us, not work against them. Yes, I will sleep with the enemy... both figuratively and literally.

[polar-stars]

If you could've furthered any plotline intro'd either before or during the BLUE arc, what would they be? I know what you think the BLUE plotline, (I personally give it a C+), but was there anything you think that could've been furthered elaborated on? I thought some ideas were better then others, but the execution was off. I blame Shueisha's poor business model. SnS could've gone 400+ chapters (along with some other titles)

If I could ask for an arc to be redone and overworked, it would be Central Arc tbqh. 

This might be a contentious point to have, as many fans regard Central Arc to be the point where Shokugeki began to crumble, as the sudden usage of actual villains instead of normal rivals was something that many considered not fitting for the tone Shokugeki held before Azami’s introduction. 

I do understand that criticism, but personally I do actually like Central Arc’s premise. Establishing an totalitarian regime and putting the protagonists in a position of struggling revolt is just an interesting conflict for me that also holds a lot of potential for intriguing clashes and compelling drama.

My problem is how it was executed and that the execution of the premise did not live up to the potential that said premise has imo.

Central vs. Rebels ultimately became very generic Good vs. Bad. For the most part we’ve just been told that Central is bad and has to be taken down, instead of being shown that it is. I mean, look at how Central was established: Members of the Elite 10 voted Azami into power. But who exactly were the members that voted for Azami? Eishi, Rindou, Somei, Momo, Nene and Eizan. The members who were against it? Megishima, Isshiki and Kuga. My point here is that, Isshiki is out of all the Elite 10 members the most familiar one to us (save for Erina) as he’s been introduced somewhere in the most earliest chapters. We know him and he is someone trustworthy to us. Then there’s Kuga, who got at least some insight during Moon Banquet Festival and while not overly familiar to us at that point, because he was still relatively fresh, he was still a lot more familiar to us than most of the characters we had on Central’s side. Somei, Momo and Nene had barely any characterization back then. They were pretty much strangers to us. Eishi and Rindou got a bit to do before Central’s establishment, but still had a mysterious aura to them. The truly most familiar to us who voted Central into power is Eizan, as he was also established a lot earlier. Eizan admittedly did not do all too much in the series at that point, but the things he did indeed do were not really the actions of a good guy. He threatened Soma and was also the one to orchestrate the whole Mimasaka-situation in the Autumn Elections, a situation that put one of the fan-favorites, Takumi, through strong suffering. So yeah, Eizan is not what you could call a sympathetic character. And that’s the point; the people against Central were the more familiar one to us who we come to trust, while the people who ultimately got Central into power were a bunch of mysterious strangers to us + the one guy who we’ve already come to know as jerk and antagonist. That all is just a very blatant way to establish Central as the “evil side” and to have the reader root for the rebels instantly, because that’s the characters we know and love, right?

Based on it’s premise, I always thought of Central as an ideology-war. However, that requires to actually explore the ideology and convince the reader that one ideology is better than the other. But what we got instead is that the people who are responsible for this arc happening in the first place (The Traitor Elites) barely ever actually talk about the ideology they supposedly stand behind. The individual reasoning for voting Azami into the position of headmaster was not really explored for most of the Elites, so it all never felt all too convincing to me. The major change we see Azami make on Totsuki is getting rid of clubs in such, but most of his reformation is also not really shown on us. (It’s an overall theme in Shokugeki that Tsukuda dismisses the show, don’t tell rule to be perfectly honest) Meanwhile the Rebels are presented to be 100% in the right, as if the old system of Totsuki truly was absolutely perfect. I would have liked an exploration on good and bad on BOTH sides. How the old system DID have flaws, how there’s possibly some good ideas in Central’s regime but their actions are overall terribly unjust or they take things to the extreme. It requires a lot of writing skills, I’ll admit that and I don’t think I’d be able to write such a thing….But Tsukuda is a guy who makes a living out of writing, if I am not mistaken. 

Maybe he should have actually make an detailed “Survivor’s Hunt”, instead of just showing us one battle and nothing else, to get a lot more substance and character into the Central-Regime than just “baddies, that’s all you need to know”. 

Central gets concluded through the Regiment de cuisine which is therefore still part of the overall Central storyline, despite being counted as its own arc, so that should be redone as well.

RDC is something I view as even more critical. 

I like Central’s premise as I said, but RDC’s premise is something I’ve always seen as rather problematic and here’s why: RDC’s end goal is to have the Elite 10 defeated and that’s kinda were I am already frowning. The thing is that the Elite 10 had more build up than anything else in this series and ever since Shokugeki started they’ve been made out to be the ultimate, competent GODS of their universe. And then just this arc has as end goal that said GODS will be defeated within just one arc by mostly first-years. 

So yeah, that was just a problem for me and as the rebels ultimately won, in the process only Eishi and Rindou got to look like actually competent while the rest felt a lot more like normal rivals which is a shame and disservice to the build-up that the Elite 10 received over the course of the entire series. I mean, not even the Elites on the Rebels side got to do stuff that would be justice for them: Kuga lost his only battle in it, Megishima (*cough* former third seat, that’s a high number) got a win against a character with little to none characterization but lost his next fight and Isshiki also just got one win against a newly-established character who was not even made out as very competent but also lost the follow-up fight. 

For me, there’s two ways to possibly fix RDC:

1. Arena 51 Raid, they can’t stop all of us: Don’t get rid of half of your cast for cheap tension and actually have a much huger mess face the Elites. The number of people participating in a Regiment de cuisine does not have to be equal, so do not make it equal just to add tension. Have more people on the rebels side, because that would have make a victory of the rebels over the Elites possibly a bit more realistic to me. DONT SHOW ME MIYOKO AND NAO IN THE AUDIENCE SMILING ABOUT THE REBELS APPROACHING VICTORY BECAUSE NOW I AM FORCED TO ASK WHY THEY WERENT APPROACHED BY SOMA TO PARTICIPATE IN THE RDC. The rebels should have recruited everyone they could get in their boat, it’s the Elite 10 they face off against for heaven’s sake. 

2. Lower the stakes and actually have Central win: Another problem with RDC are the ridiculous stakes for the rebels. Like damn, in case the Elites loose they loose their seats (which they can obtain again anyway, as presented to us by Nene and Eizan in 3rd year) and Central would have to dissolve. Which yeah, I guess, does kinda suck for them? But it’s not really something comparable to Erina and Jouichiro giving up their freedom as people to be in Azami’s clutches forever, plus Jouichiro closing the place that belongs to his wife’s family and all of the kids having to leave Totsuki forever. Given how immense the stakes were for the Rebels, it was pretty much inevitable that they’d win and therefore sucked out a lot of tension. So yeah, make the stakes something that does suck greatly (I mean, expulsion could still remain one I guess) but is not an ultimate destruction of an individual. And then, as I said, have Central actually being victorious in the Regiment de Cuisine, showcasing what actual monsters they are. What would follow up is the Rebels throughout 2nd year trying to win back the school, through other ways that could possibly interesting. Especially if they are possibly thrown off the school, but still don’t give up and seek their ways to make moves even from the outsides. 

MEEP

So yeah, I believe Central as well as RDC could have been done well and be interesting but ultimately were written very clumsily. I’d love to see a good rewrite of Central Arc. I’d to it myself, but I don’t consider myself skilled enough for it. However “Shokugeki no Kimiko” will have two arcs that very  strongly reflect what I would have wished for to be done with Central and RDC.

I hope that this ramble did make sense, although it was probably just insanely uncoordinated as always ; 7 ; And also me, not knowing how to word stuff properly. 

-

Aside from that, if you are to ask me, if there’s any arc Post-RDC I’d like to see redone, I’d say the Beach Arc should be stretched out a little as I think it was much too short but actually a very fun idea. 

[emmvxnce]

i didn’t know i was a p h o e n i x                                TILL I LEARNED HOW TO S P E A K

𝖖 𝖚 𝖔 𝖙 𝖊 𝖘

"Without losing a piece of me, how do i get to heaven?  Without changing a piece of me, how do I get to heaven?  So if I’m losing a piece of me, maybe I don’t want heaven.” — Troye Sivan, Heaven

“She had a strange feeling in the pit of her stomach, like when you’re swimming and you want to put your feet down on something solid, but the water’s deeper than you think and there’s nothing there.” — Julia Gregson

“The worst thing in the world next to anarchy, is government.” — Henry Ward Beecher

“I’ve left my fingerprints somewhere. And that’s good enough.  And I am my own person. And that’s good enough.  And… I stand my ground. And that’s good enough.” — Morrissey

𝖇 𝖆 𝖘 𝖎 𝖈

NAME: Emmeline Glenys Vance NICKNAMES: Emme, Em, Vance AGE: Twenty Two BIRTHDAY: 10 September 1957 GENDER: Cis Female PRONOUNS: She/Her SEXUALITY: Homosexual ETHNICITY: English, Welsh, Chinese

𝖋 𝖆 𝖒 𝖎 𝖑 𝖞

MOTHER: Jìngyi ‘Jenny’ Vance, née Ling (44) FATHER: Raymond Thomas Vance (46) SIBLINGS: Charles Vance (23), Margaret Vance (20)

𝖕 𝖍 𝖞 𝖘 𝖎 𝖈 𝖆 𝖑 𝖆𝖙𝖙𝖗𝖎𝖇𝖚𝖙𝖊𝖘

FACE CLAIM: Chloe Bennet BUILD: Naturally slim, of average height.  Several years of training have lent an athletic edge to her body.  Solid bone structure, thin but not waiflike. HAIR: Shoulder length, thick, and wavy. Typically pulled back off her face in some way or other.  Often twisted up with her wand which backfires when she is forced to pull her wand and her hair comes falling around her face.   HAIR COLOR: Dark brown. EYE COLOR: Typically brown, nearly black when she’s upset or angry but lighter when the sun is bright or her mood is up. SKIN COLOR: Beige with warm undertones. DOMINANT HAND: Right. ANOMALIES: Broken nails from years spent biting or picking at them.  A scar on her hairline on the right side of her forehead from where she fell when she was eight and cracked her head on the coffee table in the living room.  Various minor scars from several years with the Order.   SCENT: Honey and lilac from her shampoo, a touch of something floral if she’s decided to put on perfume which is rare and reserved for the most special of occasions.   ACCENT: RP but with traces of welsh from years listening and speaking with her dad who is from Cardiff.   ALLERGIES:  Pollen and blueberries. DISORDERS: Mild anxiety triggered in the last several years by the worsening war FASHION: Leans to muggle fashion, typical late 70′s clothing.  Bell bottoms, high waisted jeans, crop tops, the occasional leather jacket, over sized men’s shirts paired with leggings.  She prefers pants to skirts as often as possible.   NERVOUS TICS:  Biting and picking at her nails, toying with any jewelry she may be wearing, usually a necklace, twirling hair at the base of her neck or from her ponytail.  In general her hands are usually fidgeting in someway, she has a hard time keeping them still. QUIRKS:  She doesn’t like silence and sometimes will hum to herself if there is no other sound just to fill the empty air, she almost always sits with her legs pulled up either under or in front of her.

𝖑 𝖎 𝖋 𝖊 𝖘 𝖙 𝖞 𝖑 𝖊

RESIDES: Plainview Point BORN: Cardiff, where her parents lived in the earliest years of their marriage before moving to a village just outside London.   RAISED: Shere, a village in Surrey, about an hour southwest of London.   PETS: Persimmon aka Persy, a ginger cat she met in an alley near St. Mungo’s who took a liking to her after she shared her turkey sandwich one day and followed her home.  

CAREER: Healer, specializing in spell inflicted damage and working on the fourth floor of St. Mungo’s. EXPERIENCE:  Member of the Potions club in her fifth through seventh years at Hogwarts.  OWLS and NEWTS in Charms, Potions, Herbology, and Defense Against the Dark Arts.  Entered the Healer training program upon graduation from Hogwarts, rotating through each floor and specialization at St. Mungo’s before choosing to specialize in spell-inflicted damage.   EMPLOYER: St. Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries

POLITICAL AFFILIATION: Order of the Phoenix BELIEFS: Equality, in all shapes and forms.  Being a muggleborn, a woman, the daughter of an immigrant, and a lesbian have given her a unique viewpoint into so many of the ways that society is stacked against certain people.  She does not have a strong religious or spirtual practice or belief but adds it to the list of things she believes people should be allowed to choose and practice without judgment or intercession. MISDEMEANORS: Breaking curfew, pilfering from the potion supply closet in school and a little bit from the hospital when it’s not something she can get at the apothecary FELONIES: None on the record, only in service of the Order DRUGS: Marijuana, both inhaled and ingested.  Girlfriend makes a hell of a pot brownie. SMOKES: Marijuana, yes.  Cigarettes, no. ALCOHOL: Beer mostly, the occasional whiskey when someone else is in charge of choosing it.  Never wine or cocktails.  Too sweet for her taste. DIET:  Mostly simple meals, usually with a bit of a Chinese foundation.  Rice as a staple, a lot of stir fry because it’s simply and quick and can be made in large quantities to last her for many days or to feed a multitude of people.  

LANGUAGES: English, Welsh, Mandarin

PHOBIAS: Fire, losing those she loves and being left alone.   HOBBIES:  Brewing potions, listening and collecting muggle music TRAITS: { + }: compassionate, self-assured, determined, hard working, pragmatic { - }: blunt, ineloquent, inflexible, stubborn, temperamental

𝖋 𝖆 𝖛 𝖔 𝖗 𝖎 𝖙 𝖊 𝖘

LOCATION: Her flat.  She’s turned it into a haven with couches you can sink into, nooks where she can curl up, candles and warm smells, even a fireplace she and Persy like to lie in front of until they fall asleep on the poufs she has as extra seating.   SPORTS TEAM: Chelsea Football Club, Holyhead Harpies (football first and then quidditch) GAME: Rummy, card games in general MUSIC: Muggle rock and punk - Queen, David Bowie, Blondie, The Clash MOVIES: Star Wars, The Godfather (just the first one), Superman, The Exorcist FOOD:  Chinese food but actual Chinese food like her mother makes, not what you can get in the shops.  Not that that’s bad - it’s just not her favorite.   BEVERAGE: Chocolate Milk.  Yes she knows she is a child.   COLOR: Deep gold.  

𝖒 𝖆 𝖌 𝖎 𝖈

ALUMNI HOUSE: Hufflepuff WAND (length, flexibility, wood, & core):  9 ¼ inches, ash, phoenix feather core, slightly springy.  The saying goes that ash wands are stubborn but it isn’t the arrogant or crass type of stubborn that attracts this wood.  It is drawn to a person whose beliefs are held strongly in their mind and deeply in their heart.  Combined with a core of phoenix feather and it’s slightly springy nature, Emmeline’s wand is particularly loyal and becomes finnicky in the hands of anyone other than it’s owner. AMORTENTIA:  Fresh baked pastries, cinnamon, twilight air in the summer PATRONUS:  Brown Bear - social creatures who find strength in sharing resources and who are known for their protective instincts.  Bears are also closely associated with healing in some cultures.   BOGGART:  Darkness.  The kind of darkness that envelops your senses.  Instead of becoming stronger, it dulls each sense so you cannot see but you also cannot hear or feel or smell.  You are isolated, alone, helpless.  Seconds become eternities as you seek any anchor to hold on to to pull yourself back to the world.  

𝖈 𝖍 𝖆 𝖗 𝖆 𝖈 𝖙 𝖊 𝖗

MORAL ALIGNMENT: Neutral Good MBTI: ENFJ-A (Extroverted, Intuitive, Feeling, Judging, Assertive) MBTI ROLE: The Protaganist ENNEAGRAM: Type 2 ENNEAGRAM ROLE: The Helper TEMPERAMENT: Sanguine WESTERN ZODIAC: Virgo

Virgos are always paying attention to the smallest details and their deep sense of humanity makes them one of the most careful signs of the zodiac. This will lead to a strong character, but one that prefers conservative, well-organized things and a lot of practicality in their everyday life. These individuals have an organized life, and even when they let go to chaos, their goals and dreams still have strictly defined borders in their mind. Their need to serve others makes them feel good as caregivers, on a clear mission to help.

CHINESE ZODIAC: Rooster

Roosters are smart, charming, witty, honest, blunt, capable, talented, brave, and self-reliant. They are known for their ability to do astounding things with extremely limited resources. Their way is always right (in their mind, at least), and they love to debate their stance. Roosters are extremely sociable and bask in attention and praise.

PRIMAL SIGN: Corgi

Loyal, observant, and analytical, those born under the Primal Zodiac sign of the Corgi are devoted friends and family members who take on the role of caretaker with great passion. Few others are as eager to jump in and help a friend in need, and Corgis take great pride in this. More so than other signs, members of this sign like to fill a very specific role in the lives of other people, thus getting the majority of their own personal fulfillment through their service to others.

TAROT CARD: Justice

The Justice Tarot card has to do with moral sensitivity and that which gives rise to empathy, compassion, and a sense of fairness. Since the time of Solomon, this image has represented a standard for the humane and fair-minded treatment of other beings.  This card reminds us to be careful to attend to important details. It's a mistake to overlook or minimize anything where this card is concerned.

SONGS: coming soon, i suck at this

IDEOLOGIES: Doesn’t believe in wallowing or living in the past.  Mistakes get made and bad things happen and the only way to get past it all is to pick yourself up and keep on walking.

Tea over coffee.  Fight her about it.  Get yourself some black tea if you need the caffeine.  

There is exactly nothing that can’t be made better by a dance party around the flat with the music so loud that you can’t hear your own thoughts anymore.  

There is no excuse for inequality.  People are people and the only way to get through this life is to care about the people inhabiting the world around you.  Most common thought - “I don’t know how to explain to you that you should care about other people.”

[glutenfreekdramas]

Newsflash: White Supremacy and Christianity Are Incompatible.

White supremacists often claim to be Christians and try to use the Bible not only to excuse their racism, but to give merit to it. To make their racism morally right. I’m fed up with it. You literally cannot be a white supremacist and a Christian at the same time. People who claim to be need to do some soul-searching and actually crack open their Bibles to see what they have to say on the matter. Once they do, they’ll find the two ideologies clash entirely -- they’ll either have to choose one or continue lying to themselves and the world. 

So, I’m going to give just a few examples as to why the Bible doesn’t support any sort of racial supremacy, let alone white supremacy. 

First off, oftentimes I hear verses in the Old Testament, like Nehemiah 13:23-27 as a baseline for their claims. I won’t quote the whole thing here, you can look it up yourselves, but verses 26-27 give you a taste: 

“...Nevertheless, foreign women made even him [Solomon] to sin. Shall we then listen to you and do all this great evil and act treacherously against our God by marrying foreign women?” 

Sounds kind of bad, right? Once you actually put the verses into context, the issue with such marriages was that the Jewish people -- and Solomon in his specific case -- married pagan women. It wasn’t because they were of a different race; it was because they belonged to a different religion, thus tempting the Jewish people (and Solomon) to fall to idolatry. That was the problem. If you look in the Old Testament, it sets up rules for allowing people of other races/ethnicities convert to Judaism. There’s no issue with race itself -- only religion. 

In fact, in Numbers 12, Miriam criticizes Moses for marrying a Cushite woman (she was black, from modern-day Ethiopia, if memory serves). Numbers 12:1 literally says, “Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the Cushite woman whom he had married.” And do you know what God did? He gave Miriam leprosy and had her kicked out of the camp for a week. That sends a pretty strong message. 

Another Biblical example of interracial marriage involves Ruth. She was a Moabite, a people group which does have ties to the Israelites but which broke off a very long time before Ruth and were polytheistic. However, she served God and is lifted up as an example of a faithful, godly woman. No one brings up any sort of issue with Ruth marrying Boaz despite her heritage -- because she served God. 

The law prohibited marriage with someone of a different religion because it may cause people to fall into idolatry, and therefore to sin. There was absolutely no issue with interracial marriage in and of itself and there are plenty of examples where interracial marriage is seen as 100% okay. 

Secondly, white people are gentiles. I repeat: White people are gentiles. Judaism was not our original religion. We had to be specifically included in the message of salvation. Even during Jesus’ lifetime, the message of salvation was mostly for Jews. It was only after His death on the cross that the veil was torn and the disciples were told to get rid of their own prejudices and preach to gentiles. By this time, as it is mentioned in Acts 10:28, it was unlawful for Jews to associate or eat with gentiles (”anyone of another nation”) -- you’ve got to love the laws the Pharisees put in place! (And, may I add, laws like that that the Pharisees put in place were part of the problem and Jesus made a point to make sure people knew that.)

But in Acts 10, Peter has a vision in which God tells him not to make unclean what He has made clean. Directly after this, Peter is called to a centurion’s house to preach to a bunch of gentiles. In Acts 10:34-35, Peter comes to the realization that salvation through Jesus Christ is not just for Jews. He says, “...Truly I understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears Him and does what is right is acceptable to Him.” 

He proceeds to start preaching to the gentiles, who accept salvation, and Peter gets flack for this. I just think this is so important, so I’m quoting two chunks of the exchange found in Acts 11:2-4, and verses 15-18: 

“So when Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcision party criticized him, saying, ‘You went to uncircumcised men and ate with them.’ But Peter began and explained to them in order...‘As I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell on them just as on us at the beginning. And I remembered the word of the Lord, how He said, ‘John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.’ If then God gave the same gift to them as He gave to us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I should stand in God’s way?’ When they heard these things they fell silent. And then they glorified God, saying, ‘Then to the Gentiles also God has granted repentance that leads to life.’”

Peter left behind his prejudices and began preaching to gentiles. He realized that he didn’t have the right to withhold salvation from people God intended to bless with it. Once the circumcision party hears this, they pause and then immediately start praising God. Salvation is for more than one race of people. It’s for more than just Jews, and certainly more than just white people. If God had never allowed other races to convert and be saved (in the Old Testament as well as the New Testament), white people would be left out. But luckily for us, everyone is invited to the party, no matter your race or background.

This is a sentiment that is repeated throughout the New Testament. Galatians 3:28 says, 

“There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise.” 

Let me spell it out for you: Everyone is equal in Christ. Racism, sexism, etc. are not compatible with the Gospel and its message. I have no idea why so many people are obsessed with trying to use the Bible to lend merit to their racism, their sexism, their homophobia -- any of their prejudices. None of that is Biblical. It’s not the point. 

As for y’all white supremacists, white people were grafted into the family of Abraham through Jesus Christ, anyway. No race is superior to any other. The Bible literally spells that out for you, multiple times. We were all created in God’s image, and we all have an equal invitation to salvation. 

Besides, our Savior, Jesus Christ, is Jewish. In case you forgot. He’s not white. So if you are a white supremacist, you’re not just claiming that you’re superior to all the other races (which in and of itself is unbiblical, morally wrong, and just outrageous), but you’re claiming that you’re inherently superior to Jesus Christ. Who you claim to worship. 

I pulled all of this off the top of my head, and I’m not even a Bible scholar. There’s plenty more evidence as to why white supremacy and Christianity cannot coexist -- all you have to do is open up your Bible and look for it. 

So stop kidding yourselves. You are either a white supremacist or a Christian. Not both. Sit down and figure out which one you’d rather be. 

I know which side I’d rather be on. 

[ceies]

The Struggle of the Hufflepuff Primary in Vinland Saga

Whenever I finish watching a story I start going back to my roots. My roots are the Harry Potter Fandom and a few years ago a good friend of mine showed me the hogwarts house system of @sortinghatchats​ / @sortinghatchats-deactivated​​. Give their system a look, it’s really interesting and well-thought out!

I’ve recently finished watching Vinland Saga, and I really loved it... So, let’s do this! My first sorting I want to publish on Tumblr and as I am unable to put all my thoughts into a single Tumblr post I try to keep it as short as possibe while still dedicating enough time to the important characters.

So what is the Sortinghatchats Sorting system?

With this system characters are placed into two Hogwarts houses. “WHY do they act?” For example, do they act out of loyalty -> Slytherin, or Hufflepuff or do they follow an ideology -> Gryffindor or Ravenclaw. That is the Primary House. The Secondary House is based on “HOW do they act?” (Secondary House). If you want to know more about the details head over and read their posts on the matter. Recently, they also have a quiz that can help you sort yourself if you’re interested.

The Characters of Vinland Saga

Placing Vinland Saga characters more than ever I had the problem, that the characters often undergo such a fundamental character evolution that their primary motivation over great parts of their lives can suddenly change. It also seems to be very much a ‘coming of age’ story for the younger characters such as Thorfinn and Canute. So I decided to – in many situation – treat this evolution of the character’s motivation as some sort of “Awakening“ of the Primary House. So, just keep in mind that some of the actions of a character before that “Awakening” may not always fit with the primary I assign to them.

I have called this Post the “Struggle of the Hufflepuff Primary” after I realized that a big junk of the show seems to address a very Hufflepuff-ish mindset that is almost doomed to burn in a world as wartorn and brutal as the Viking era. The desire to simply HELP people in a world where not focusing on your own interest may get you and your loved ones killed. This is a struggle that we will see again and again with many of the themes and characters in the show.

In any case, feel free to agree, disagree and discuss this to your heart’s content.

Thors

Thors is a Hufflepuff Primary. This could be hardly any more obvious. I’ve thought a bit about whether there is maybe a Gryffindor in him, as his broad almost “constitutional” declarations sound idealistic, but I decided that the specific wording was far too Hufflepuff to put my money on anything other than that. The most telling part is when he tells Thorfinn that “There is nobody you can kill. Nobody is you’re enemy. Nobody has enemies.” While at the end of the day it makes no difference whether you tell somebody “You cannot kill” or “There is nobody for you to kill” the wording seems to put specific emphasis on people more so than even the general prohibition of killing. It’s not so much “you cannot kill” and more “there are no PEOPLE you can kill. There is not a single PERSON that is your enemy.” In many ways Thors doesn’t tell Thorfinn not to kill, he tells him not to have enemies, or in other words he tells him to LOVE everybody. So this seems to be a loyalty Thors feels for humans in general. And it’s not limited to a specific circle of people. At one point he sells eight sheep to free an already dying slave. And even when the slave died shortly after, he did not regret it.

Thors more than anybody is one of those “awakened” characters. Before said awakening he spent most of his life fighting, killing without any empathy, or really emotions of his own. He was a killing machine. It was only his daughter – and not even so much the birth of his daughter but rather the act of NAMING her – that made him fear battle. He feared leaving his family behind. That sounds rather Slytherin-ish, but it seemed to have almost immediately evolved into a general empathy for all people.

About his Secondary he seems to be rather passive during his time on Iceland. That may be due to a general satisfaction with his quiet life – something his son for example doesn’t share. He seems to have come to the conclusion that to not hurt anybody it is best for him to move away from crisis to an isolated island where he can raise his family in a peaceful environment. He is not going out to actually do something against the cruelty in this world which makes it really difficult to decide on his secondary. Mostly he seems to be reactionary, meaning we can only see his reactions to plans other characters put into motion. The only thing I can really exclude here is the Slytherin. He is very honest and Askeladd essentially defeated him just by being dishonest. Overall it seems like other characters like Floki and Askeladd are quite effectively scheming their way around Thors in a way that the best Thors can really do is protecting the people around him while giving these people what they want. There is some strategical thinking to his actions in how he planned to safe his men both from war and later from Askeladd, and while he did charge at Askeladd’s men jumping into action quickly, he did so mostly out of necessity. So, I’m kind of split between a Gryffindor and a Ravenclaw secondary. Ultimately, I choose the Gryffindor Secondary because of how honest and direct he is in his approach even calling upon his enemy’s honor to try and safe his men.

Thorfinn:

Thorfinn’s single minded and stubborn pursuit for revenge is very Gryffindor. Here we have a prime example for a Gryffindor Secondary. However as far as the prologue goes his Primary is very jumbled and garbled together. It’s very obvious that this is a boy who wanted to go on an adventure and see the world and then utterly lost his way. His pursuit of revenge could just be a surface motivation hiding away his true purpose in life, which makes it difficult to judge what he is about or what he will do in the future. However just looking at what we see, his pursuit of revenge seems to be motivated by a Slytherin Primary (possibly a very strong Slytherin Primary model). He seeks revenge for his father’s death because he can’t live with the idea that his Dad’s murderer might still run free. It is something he does for his father even though he knows his father would not want this. Even the way he goes about it – doing it the honorable way – is in loyalty to his father because he does not want to dishonor him by being a dishonorable son. This also makes Askeladd’s death in the finale very hard for him to accept, because Askeladd somehow over time snuck his way into Thorfinn’s inner circle. As I said, it’s very possible that this is just a model that he may strip in the next few seasons, but it could also be his actual primary.

Leif:

Although Leif did not appear that much in the story, I wanted to include him, because I think he is a very important character, but there’s not really much to go by. I think he is a Ravenclaw Primary. That fits very well with his role of being a very established explorer of the sea. At times he acts a little bit like a Slytherin who acts out of loyalty for his friends, but there seem to be moments when that is refuted. While he absolutely loved and adored both Thors and Thorfinn, ultimately, he goes to look for Thorfinn not so much out of loyalty for these characters themselves, but because he owes Thors. It’s something he does more because of honor than loyalty. There is also this story he tells about when all six of his comrades died on Greenland, which seems to me an experience that would utterly devastate a Slytherin but to him, while surely traumatizing at the time, he tells it more like the successful story of his own survival. As I said we don’t have much about him yet in the Anime, so I’m waiting for season 2, but for now I’m assuming he is a Ravenclaw Primary/Hufflepuff Secondary. Hufflepuff because he seems to have friends everywhere.

Floki

Again, a character we have not seen much about. So far, he seems to be a very sneaky character who first lures Thors out of his home and then sets an assassin on his tail. So, this looks rather like a Slytherin Secondary but he’s missing a certain aspect that makes a Slytherin a Slytherin. He doesn’t improvise, and if he does not very well. This is seen most effectively when he ultimately clashes with Askeladd. So, he’s either a very bad Slytherin, or not a Slytherin at all. So, I’m putting him as a Ravenclaw Secondary who moves his pieces across the board but is really shocked whenever one of those pieces suddenly appears where he did not see them coming. I don’t want to talk too much about his primary, as it is very much in the air as long as we don’t know why he wanted Thors dead. Was it in fact because of the (perceived) “code” of the Jomsvikings that Thors broke – then he would be Ravenclaw – or was it out of purely personal dislike – than he’d likely be a Slytherin? We cannot quite deduce that from the story. For now, I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that he acts out of his own ideal version of honor, what it means to be a Jomsviking and a servant to his king. As I said I am willing to accept a Slytherin/Slytherin for him, but for now, I go with Ravenclaw/Ravenclaw.

Askeladd

So… My favorite character. Also, likely the most complex and most difficult to place of the main characters in the show. Askeladd wants to protect his homeland Wales, he hates pretty much everybody, but especially Danes, Saxons, Vikings, Warriors in general, Christians, stupid people, weak people and himself. So… just about everybody and then some. But he loves Wales. He is firmly loyal to Canute – which is a loyalty which seems to come out of nowhere but is actually really complex in how it came to be. He was waiting for a fabled king for decades that he wanted to serve, and when that king did not come, he essentially took a young and weak Prince with some potential and “made” him into his perfect king. He’s very judgmental, meaning he essentially looks at people and immediately know what they are about. He’s very much faking his personality, putting on the mask of a nonchalant, careless, and really cruel Viking leader – which even at the end we can never be quite sure about how much of that was fake. And he’s extremely intelligent! So… That’s just the briefest overview of his character. Let’s talk about this.

Let’s begin with the Secondary: Here we really have to make our choice between the Ravenclaw and the Slytherin. Askeladd is at his best, when he is using his mind. He is willing to lie and scheme and gamble and play shrewd games to get to his destination. He uses and manipulates people around him to his liking. He also is very much willing to just take the spoils with minimal effort. Compared to people like Thorfinn or Thors he even goes so far as to mock there more Gryffindorish ways to handle situations. While he has a lot of respect for Thors, he also thinks he’s stupid for having died the way he did. This to me makes it clear that he is clearly not a Hufflepuff or Gryffindor Secondary – and that he even has a bit of a dislike for Gryffindor secondaries in general. So at this point the question is only, Slytherin or Ravenclaw? He proved time and time again that he is a planner, a strategist. He plans fifty steps ahead of everybody else, and he’s doing it so well that he dances circles around his enemies. However, when those plans failed, he also proved how adept at improvising he was. While this was not his preferred situation and he was suddenly forced to sacrifice things, he wasn’t really willing to sacrifice going into the situation, he still managed to turn an impossible situation “in his favor”. So, as he seems to be both a magnificent Ravenclaw and a magnificent Slytherin let’s look at the nature of his actions and plans to distinguish what is at his core:

When Askeladd decided to take Canute from Throkell’s army all the other characters were expecting a battle, they couldn’t hope to win. But instead of fighting Thorkell, Askeladd waited for a different army to approach Thorkell, and while they got slaughtered, he put the forest on fire and sent a kid he didn’t really care about into the flames to find the prince. The prince could have died, but then at least nobody would have been able to proof it was Askeladd. This of course is a very smart plan, but it’s also kind of uncommon, as it seems almost cowardly. Immoral, as he is gambling both Thorfinn’s and even Canute’s life on this plan. There is also the way he mocks the more honest warriors, saying it’s a fool’s errand to try and kill somebody in a fair battle, when a dagger in the night has the same effect. The plan of how he murdered his father was full of lies and schemes and playing a huge charade, even faking love for his father. And when he talks about it, he doesn’t feel bad about these lies or acts. He feels even somewhat elated, accomplished. Even in the end he’s pretty much lying his way to death and seems almost satisfied with that end. So he obviously lies, and he doesn’t feel bad about it, which seems to be a clear sign for a Slytherin… Or is it? One thing, that I think I have to mention here, is that he doesn’t always lie. There seems to be a difference to when he swears a pledge on his father’s name compared to when he swears a pledge on his ancestor’s name. It’s almost as if he knows and feels, like a lie would sully the name of whatever person he swears it on, but he just doesn’t care…or maybe even enjoys sullying Olaf’s name. Overall, there are also many situations where he is surprisingly sencere. So, there seems to be at least a part of him, that realizes that lying is wrong. However I think that part is more rooted in his primary, than his secondary. So, he seems to be very clearly Slytherin Secondary, although I think he models a Ravenclaw, because he is just so good at it and it’s so useful to him, that he realized it’s his easiest way to success. Most of the time he behaves rather careless, nonchalant, as if nothing really faces him, laughing loudly, even being a bit flirtatious and acting for seemingly material gains. He purposefully hides his own skills with the sword to be underestimated until the time for him to strike comes. However, it seems quite clear that this is only a performance if at all – though maybe one he quite enjoys putting on. This is a Slytherin Performance.

His primary is just as complicated. At first, to me, he looked a lot like a Slytherin Primary, making him a Slytherin/Slytherin. His motivation for big parts of the show, seemed rather selfish. Later we find out, that his primary goal is to protect his home and his people in Wales. While this still made him look like a Slytherin at first, I think, it’s far more fitting to describe him as a Hufflepuff. The Welsh are his community, in many ways they are tied to the soil of Britain, which gives fuel to Askeladd’s hatred for the Anglo-saxons who robbed his people of their home over 500 years ago. His people’s history is very important to him. Another thing that makes him look Hufflepuff rather than Slytherin is that he does not really have a personal connection to most welsh people apart from his blood. He did not grow up in Wales, he doesn’t have family in Wales and none of the people he travels with or seemed to care about during the course of the show are Welsh. In fact it seems like the only two welsh people he has any sort of personal connection to are his mother and Gratianus. It’s more his mother’s people than it is his own, yet he loves it and the country deeply. I think it would be strange for a Slytherin to feel such deep devotion to a country, place, culture, history and people that he has so few actual connections too. It would be far more likely for a Slytherin to ultimately value the well-being of their friends, comrades, brother’s in arms or the boy he essentially (though somewhat reluctantly) raised over the well-being of a country and people he never really knew.

Then there is his loyalty to Prince Canute, who he himself raised to the throne. This however, again does not seem to be a sort of loyalty born out of love for Canute as person, but rather a deep-rooted believe, that Canute will be a good king and not just protect Wales but maybe even be a good king to the Danish, the island of Britain and on an even broader perspective. In Canute he somewhat sees the chance for a better and freed Britain – the same as he had expected of the fabled Artorius in the past and was ultimately disappointed. With Canute he puts somebody on the throne, who seems to be a rather peaceful yet strong ruler. In an odd way, Askeladd helps not just his people (the Welsh) to maybe find a period of peace but also his other people (the much hated Danes) to gain a ruler who would value his subordinates lives and is not a killer. Ultimately, he also tells Thorfinn to become a “True Warrior” similar to his father. As we’ve already mentioned, Thors father was a Hufflepuff, valuing human life. And it seems fitting for a Hufflepuff like Askeladd to tell a young and confused kid to lern “valuing life like his father”.

Askeladd overall showed great contempt for warriors because – as I believe – he sees them as nothing but killers. That seems somewhat hypocritical as he is one himself and a very ruthless one at that, but it makes sense, once we factor in how much Askeladd hates himself. Askeladd is the kind of Hufflepuff who excluded most people and himself from his community. As I mentioned before, Askeladd hates just about everybody with a passion. That makes him surprisingly similar to Thors who loves everybody. He’s like the other side of the same coin. This hatred is very much based on attributes that he gives people – often when he first sees them (Danes, Saxons, Warriors…). The interesting aspect of this however is, that while he hates Danes with a passion – all danes at that, as well vikigs and warriors - the closest and most important people in his life, all fall into these categories. So, in a way, he hates all of them. He hates Bjorn, he hates Thorfinn, he hates Canute, he hates his men, he hates Thors. Yet, in the more quite moments it’s quite obvious that while he does hate them for being Danes he also cares for them. Like with some of Torgrims and Atli’s last moments in the show, it is quite obvious that Askeladd does feel a lot of empathy for them, cares for them and even helps them out in the end.

I would say that Askeladd is very much tiptoeing the line between a rather hateful Hufflepuff and an already buned Hufflepuff. It fits, that he does exclude himself from his community. His community are the welsh, but he does not live among them. Instead, most of the time, he just hides that part of himself and lives as a Danish Viking among Vikings – an identity that utterly disgusts him. There are many things about him that just scream burned Hufflepuff. But I don’t think he is quite burned yet… He’s tiptoeing that line, but there seems to be too much purpose to his actions for a burned Hufflepuff. Maybe it was seeing Thors, that saved him from burning, or maybe he was just always like that. Because, while there seems to be a lot of self-hatred, there does not seem to be that cynicism that often goes along with the burned Hufflepuff. While he is a point where he pretty much pushed everybody and himself out of his community – his community is still fairly huge, it’s an entire country. And despite everything he had to suffer and all the hardship his people had to go through, he seems genuinely determined and hopeful that it is possible to protect them.

So to put it all together: Askladd is a Hufflepuff / Slytherin with a Ravenclaw secondary model and a Slytherin Performance.

Canute

A very comlex character, but surprisingly easy to sort: Canute is one of those characters who grow up in the show and have their awakening. Like many of the main characters so far, he is another example of a Hufflepuff Primary. And in his case a very textbook Hufflepuff who loves all humans equally. He even arrived at a point where he as willing to forgive his “father’s” murderer. The only exception to his love for all, might be his actual father, the King, but this seems to be mostly out of necessity. Like he feels this is the best for the country.

He is a Gryffindor Secondary, who – after getting over his initial shyness is very forthright in saying what he wants to a point where other more sneaky characters tell him that he may want to act a bit more careful.

Ragnar:

Ragnar is a Slyhterin Primary who’s love, and loyalty is to Prince Canute. I think he’s also a Gryffindor Secondary, and maybe Canute learned it from him. But he’s much less effective. He says and does what feels right to him, but he ultimately often lacks good arguments in any given situation to persuade somebody like Askeladd to … I don’t know; not kill an entire village? However, he does feel very bad about it – I would even say that of all the characters who showed remorse for the act, Ragnar’s remorse lasted pretty much to the end of his life, as he saw himself as partly to blame for what happened. It also fits to his Gryffindor, that when he learned he had to raise the prince, he did it with all his heart, trying to make the king happy, rather than follow the schemes of the court, which seem to be something he utterly despises, as it hurts Canute.

Willybald:

Willybald is a bit of an exception. While he has a similar outlook on life and motivation as many of the Hufflepuff primary characters, to him this was not something that came naturally, nor was it something he just suddenly realized. Instead he was seeking for this for a long time and only when he heard of Thors did his concept of “Love” manifest. It is his explanation of that concept, that first triggers Canute’s “Awakening as a Hufflepuff”. But Willybald himself is not a Hufflepuff but rather a Ravenclaw Primary. Fitting to his role as a priest I would say that he is a Hufflepuff Secondray, although I could be convinced otherwise.

Bjorn:

Bjorn is fiercely loyal to Askeladd which makes him a Slytherin Primary. He also seems to be a very straight forward character in terms of his actions, making him a Gryffindor Secodnary.

Thorkell:

Thorkell is a very brutish, almost oafish Gryffindor Secondary. There is not much thought he puts into his actions beyond just doing what feels right for him. He’s however not stupid. He’s very honest in how he goes about his life and honors the framework of a duel. He’s a warrior and a rather straight forward character. His Primary however, is more complicated, as I seem to be equally split between Ravenclaw and Gryffindor. I don’t think he acts out of any loyalty, as he has no qualms whatsoever to kill his own grandnephew and son of his best friend, or to betray his country and people and fight against them purely for the thrill of it. However, I’m not sure if his driving motivation is a hedonistic lifestyle in a more gryffindorish sense, or the search for what it means to be a true warrior. Most of the show he spent just wishing for a great fight. His wish to find out what a true warrior is, seems to lie beneath that. However, it is difficult to say, whether he wants to be a true warrior, because he just enjoys being a warrior that much and he wants to be the best at it, or whether that missing piece actually leaves a whole in his heart. As his hedonistic behavior does not change, after his acknowledgement of the search for the True Warior, I feel more inclined to put him into Gryffindor.

King Sweyn:

Sweyn I think is a Ravenclaw/Ravenclaw. His actions in regards to Canute seemed either very selfish or in a misguided loyalty to his country. However later we find out, that it was actually neither, and instead the “Will of the Crown”. This seems to me to be a constructed system of values, morals and duties, that does not come naturally. It’s the power of the crown that corrupts. And I think that will of the crown is ultimately artificial and a Ravenclaw Primary. I also think he is a Ravenclaw Primary s he is scheming and planning ahead a lot, although not always to his advantage.

tl;dr:

Thors: Hufflepuff / Gryffindor

Thorfinn: XX? (Slytherin or Slytherin Model)/ Gryffindor

Leif: Ravenclaw / Hufflepuff

Floki: Ravenclaw (?)/ Ravenclaw

Askeladd: Hufflepuff / Slytherin (Ravenclaw model, Slythein Performance)

Canute: Hufflepuff / Gryffindor

Ragnar: Slytherin / Gryffindor

Willybald: Ravenclaw / Hufflepuff

Bjorn: Slytherin / Gryffindor

Thorkell: Gryffindor / Gryffindor

Prince Sweyn: Ravenclaw / Ravenclaw

[mcollawn]

A Day Full of Fandoms

This past Sunday, February 9th, 2020 was a day to remember for various reasons. It was all brought on with the idea of the RVA Environmental Film Fest. This festival is an event where many non-profit organizations and businesses come together for the awareness of the environment. The film fest had a strong message for their support for Mother Earth especially in the films specifically showcased at the event. The message was apparent but the strongest ideology came from sightseeing on W Cary Street and being exposed to many fandoms along the way.

The day began at the Byrd Theater where the RVA Film Fest kicked off and lots of people joined in. The Byrd is an iconic theater in Richmond and is a historical landmark. I went to the theater for the second movie of the day, Five Seasons: The Gardens of Piet Oudolf, with my friend Kaitlin. The Five Seasons was about Piet Oudolf whose aspirations for gardens and art go hand-to-hand with one another. He expresses this in his film where he practices art through gardening. He takes into account the beauty of plants and how they change in the seasons. I loved the strong visuals of nature and the vibrant narrative of his passion. The documentary style of the Five Seasons captures the true essence of Piet Oudolf so much that it is like an autobiography of sorts. Piet Oudolf is an artist in his own right and deserves the recognition in a medium where it makes people grow closer to nature and act in awe.

After the Five Seasons, I was able to experience the Chop Suey Books store on W. Cary Street. Chop Suey Books is a shop where books are ever-present and pop out at you literally at times. I went with the intention to look around and somehow looking around more made me reconsider. The first book to catch my interest was Japanese decor and the interior spaces of the houses. It looked interesting for Japan stuck out and most of their culture is heavily in their homes. There was also the Golden Age of DC Comics which had a gold-like appearance on the cover. It had images of various DC Comics like for example the infamous Action Comics about Superman and among others. Though the covers were striking down memory lane, I did not buy it because the book was mostly comics and it gave the feeling of a yearbook.

I bought a book while I was there but had to go up a floor for a specific cause of why. I went to the second floor in search of reference material for a particular essay about The End of the Samurai with traditional values clashing with the counterculture of modernization in Japan. It got me intrigued; however, the book I bought was Japanese Aesthetics and Culture A Reader. Nancy G. Hume is the editor and works as an Associate Professor in Baltimore, Maryland. She does a good job of explaining the book in a scholarly fashion and understanding of Japan as a whole. There was only one book that had a similar effect on me like the Japanese A reader which was Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly. This book is about Chef Anthony Bourdain who wrote a memoir of his experience in his cooking career. According to Chef Anthony, the book describes "twenty-five years of sex, drugs, bad behavior, and haute cuisine." It was never published due to his passing before the book went on the market. The book tells a story and holds the power to appeal to someone's human side.

Chop Suey Books was a place to remember while Tokyo Market was kind of planned. Tokyo Market is a Japanese Grocery Store and has various aspects of Japan in the place. The place had things from Japanese merchandise (Pokemon Gum and the Lucky Cat collectibles) to Japanese exotic drinks and other foods. I really liked seeing mochi (ice cream equivalent in the United States), seaweed, and drinks from that culture. The funny thing about this store I was trying to find it earlier when I thought it was the Sushi Market for some reason. I struggled to find a product that I would satifised with until I stumbled across Banana Milk from Taiwan. Though, the only problem was the can did not meet the minimum price for debt so I was yet again looking for more items to buy. I frantically searched and remembered the crackers. Somehow, I bought two packages with twenty-one rice crackers and I am now planning to share them with Reynolds Anime Club. The best part was buying Banana Milk and when I drank it at lunch.

The Tokyo Market might have been short-lived but Bits and Pixels sure fixed that issue. Bits and Pixels is a Used and Metro Gaming Store. We start looking around and see many items like holographic posters with the original Kanto starter Pokemon and Fairy Tail characters (Erza, Natsu, and Gray). At different angles, you could see the Kanto starters combined between an angle of Bulbasaur and Squirtle in mid-transition of angles. I asked the clerk if they had a Pac-Man Party Wii game and the woman said she remembered it recently. I was so happy when I received Pac-Man Party, for it was one of the few games that I repeatedly played on the Wii. We headed out and reached the Byrd Theater when Kaitlin suggested them to be a possible vendor. I went back, and they are thrilled to be a vendor for ReynoCon 2020 hosted by Reynolds Anime Club. I explained the details to them to be a vendor and scored their business card to contact them.

My day was one of those days that a lot happened in a short period of time. I went to these places in 4.5 hours which included 3 stores, one restaurant, and a historic landmark. I can say that W. Cary Street has various fandom related businesses and other entertainment options. One last note, I ended the day by watching The Farmer's Footprint at the Byrd Theater. The Farmer's Footprint is a 20-minute short film but discusses crop yielding. Basically, it goes against the chemical treatment of their corn crop and keeping the family up and running for a fifth generation. Just as they are taking control of their farm, I am taking control of my blog and hope for the best.

https://i.imgur.com/hO1zRgQ.jpg

[republicstandard]

Enemy of the People: The Media Want More Dead Whites

Dear White People and White Allies,

I'm sure that you've noticed the incessant anti-White propaganda in the media- if not, where have you been? Before we get into the reasons for the media's push for Whites to become extinct, there has been a curious and timely illustration of this larger issue that has arisen through two independently posted videos. Presented first today for your delight is a happy, clappy, innocent celebration of white genocide.

New viral video "How White Is London?" openly celebrates the replacement of native Londoners. pic.twitter.com/uxP2Jx1lCk

— ❌#QFDshadowbanned Alba_Rising❌ (@Alba_Risen) July 30, 2018

Genuinely, I think this video has good intentions in that if you truly believe diversity is a strength, for only then without irony can you say;

"Places like London make me happy, because the more colors, culture, and languages you can fit into a city, the more people can call this place home. I'm not white, but in London, I feel at home!"

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Well, I suppose the minority of indigenous people -White Londoners- who are quickly being pushed out of their own city by a tidal wave of crime may not agree. There is a window into the mind of the J-Left here though; the video begs the question, if you feel at home in London having been raised in the Middle East, would White Londoners feel the same- or would it feel to them a bit like living in a Middle Eastern shithole? This question is never, ever considered by leftists, because White people are just a meme. A block to be pushed against in the name of anti-racism, until this toxic garbage of whiteness tumbles into the sea, drained of all resources and will to live. The question "how do you feel about being replaced in your homelands?" is never asked -and has never been asked- of European peoples. For the Power Elite to ask this question would be to admit there might be a problem, and that maybe, just maybe, diversity is not our strength at all, and is in fact a slow march to our extinction.

On the other side of the video-coin, a pair of English YouTubers made a video about London being a bit of a shithole. They are not lying. London is a shithole now. Why could this be? Everyone in the first video looked so happy to be in a bustling city with no Whites around. Predictably, the two content creators have been hounded by progressives until they deleted the video and crawled on their knees in supplication to Moloch.

pic.twitter.com/bTq60N66W9

— Joel & Lia (@JoelandLia) July 31, 2018

Pro Tip: Don't ever do this. It doesn't work. Look.

YouTubers @JoelandLia uploaded a video and tweeted it out that labeled many racialized and low-income neighborhoods as “dangerous.” They deleted the tweet and the video, but will they be accountable and apologize for the racist and classist dog-whistle rhetoric that they used? pic.twitter.com/c6ed7YDfmS

— Manveer Singh (@manveerssihota) July 30, 2018

Your apologies will never be enough. Communist Sikhs living in Canada will jump on your head from a great height for your racist ways. But what heinous racism did these two God-forsaken crackers perpetrate on the Melinated Peoples Republic of Londonistan? The Metro breathlessly squeals the dirt:

At other points in the video, the two claimed that people in Lewisham, South London made them ‘feel uncomfortable’, telling their viewers that ‘you would have no reason to visit.’ The pair shared a map showing ‘poor’ and ‘posh’ areas.

According to the 2011 census, two out of every five residents in the London borough of Lewisham are from a black and minority ethnic background, with it being the 15th most ethnically diverse local government in England.

As far back as 2013, Lewisham was the least safe area in the entire country. Of course, Joel and Lia made the mistake of displaying perfectly rational behavior while white. You can't say, for example, that Lewisham has a murder rate that should make you think twice before visiting, because it's mostly black people doing the murders. What are you, racist or something?

So: brown people celebrating whites being eradicated from London is good and pure and the video goes viral on Facebook. White people saying that London ain't what it used to be is the dinner bell for feeding time for the zoo and the video is consigned to Room 101.

In other words we have a double standard, which I am sure will come as a surprise to none. Through the mainstream media, we are being programmed (pun intended) to accept the idea that the world would be a better place without us. Oh, sure- White people will be needed in the near-term as taxpayers, but eventually this will no longer be necessary. Then we can go quietly into that good night, leaving an unironic epitaph written by our replacements that reads: Here lies Whitey. They Were All Racists. Allahu Ackbar.

I really didn't want this article to turn into an oh my God look at the double standards kind of deal but... oh my God look at the double standards. South Central L.A is 95% Hispanic, Latino and Black. Is that the good diversity that will save our white souls from the sins of muh slavery? Because you have an aging workforce and your population isn't growing like a virus consuming all resources in a feeding frenzy, well, there's something wrong with that. You must be replaced. If you don't like it, you are a f*cking racist.

What a headline that is-and it bears repeating that switching the races around in these progressive magazine titles provides you with content that is indistinguishable from Daily Stormer articles. Ezra Klein, who has a very high verbal IQ, uses a lot of words in this piece to quibble about why whites would worry so much about imminent extermination. Here is the main takeaway. A series of sociological experiments discovered that:

Even gentle, unconscious exposure to reminders that America is diversifying — and particularly to the idea that America is becoming a majority-minority nation — pushes whites toward more conservative policy opinions and more support of the Republican Party.

I would like all of you individualists out there to read this a hundred times. Even when you do not consciously think about your town becoming less white, you still become more conservative in the group dynamics. That's a huge realization for people who think that individual liberties are all that matter. At least we can recognize that group interest is a thing now, right? The reason why people become more conservative under the threat of demographic change is that the conservative parties of the West are, in theory, those who wish to preserve the culture. Of course, the reality is that most conservatives are globalist shills just as much as Obama and Merkel and Blair are, but, I digress. On with the show.

Imagine being descended from the brave settlers and conquerors who tamed a wild land, and then being expected to adapt to your replacements. Assimilation is no longer expected, and in fact it would be decried as a racist policy if you called for such; and so it is the white Americans who must be assimilated into the Borg/PoC mass. This is the future for white children today- sitting alone in lunch rooms with schoolmates and work colleagues they don't understand, eating food they don't like. They will be the last of us.

What follows are four stories the BBC in Britain pushed through their Twitter account in one day.

There is not one Black, Asian, or Muslim family in the UK that would fall for this utter nonsense. Remember that well.

Imagine a school that could be so intolerant of sexualizing children.

A sympathetic screening of a young white male who shot his parents. We're not saying shoot your parents but if you did, you can bank on 15 minutes of fame with the BBC.

On the BBC in just 24 hours we see the destruction of the gender identity of white children -particularly males- and a tacit endorsement of patricide. Oh, there there. No harm, no foul. It's just honkies. They don't matter unless they are the butt of a joke or a horse to beat.

In a country that has so many issues that can be lain at the feet of multiculturalism, the state broadcaster has decided that instead of pursuing the public good and fulfilling their tax-payer funded charter they will instead betray the very people who pay for the service. This is ideological, this is part of the BBC's extended (and racist) campaign against White identity, and this will only get worse as the study mentioned in Ezra Klein's Vox article replicates itself in the UK in real time. As the British people similarly wake up to the reality of group identity, the state media will be forced to double down.

Before you jump to the reasonable assessment that I'm being paranoid, this is the daily BBC post mentioning the only good thing about Britain right now.

Street art is colloquially known as graffiti and in most cases it is considered vandalism. Vandalism is our strength! In seriousness, there was not one BBC tweet for the entire day that could remotely be construed as a criticism of even an individual who happens to be non-white. That is the depth to which the neo-Marxist claw has sunk.

No matter where we look in the Western world of today, be it South Africa, Spain, Germany, Australia or the USA we are seeing very similar scenarios play out. To notice and to question these problems of clashing cultures is not permitted. As Joel and Lia found to their cost even inadvertently noticing that London is a crime-ridden shithole is racist, because there aren't many white people throwing acid in the faces of women and children, and that means that you, dear reader, might be about to have a thought which might just lead you to question this whole disgusting charade.

White people have nothing to apologize for, and increasingly it looks like we have nothing to lose. Most things that we valued have already been taken from us. All we have left is our existence- which must be secured.

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The next 30 years or so will be critical for our existence as a culture; and those that control the media know this as well as you do. This is the reason behind the relentless anti-White people propaganda; because prior to the internet being a thing, this whole demographic replacement exercise was easy. The media was so powerful that those who spoke out were dismissed by the general population as cranks or white supremacists or neo-Nazis. Those days are over, and so the Cathedral of the press and the education system has had to turn the dials up to eleven. Every piece of content discussed in this article was published in the last seven days. Donald Trump is right- the media really are the enemy of the people. I wonder which people he means.

It really makes you think.

from Republic Standard | Conservative Thought & Culture Magazine https://ift.tt/2O2oGWd via IFTTT

[theliterateape]

Let's Talk About Teacher Burnout: It's Not the Kids

By Mike Vinopal

So another school year is well underway. This year is different. For the last decade my career was teaching students with special needs of all ages. The last four years, I taught in a Chicago Public School. This is the first year that I am taking a break.

Let's talk about burnout. You've all heard of it and how it has plagued education since the beginning of time. But for clarity's sake, burnout refers to high turnover in education due to high levels of stress, long long hours, and a significant emotional load to shoulder. 

You are just as much a parent as you are a teacher or teacher's assistant. As a teacher, you spend just as many waking hours with these children that still have so much to learn about how to navigate the world. Not the world we knew as children, but this world.

Kind and compassionate people wear down overtime. Things can accelerate that erosion. Challenging kids are part of it but it's more complicated, more like a natural degradation of one's patience. Some of us are lucky to start off with more than others but we're only human. Even surplus stock can run out. 

It's not just the kids. The kids are often the joy that keeps the balance with all of the bullshit that comes with a job in education. They say funny shit that makes you laugh, things that you make a point to jot down, to tell a colleague because she cares a lot about that kid, too, and would get a kick out of it. Or kids that remark with wonder about a story you're reading or something that you teach them in science. Those little things help you get through the tough days.

Some might chalk it up to parents that undo all the good work done during a school day, that it's mostly adults that accelerate the erosion. But that's a bit self-righteous. Most of the time parents are busting their asses out of necessity, not choice, to put food on the table and keep a roof over their families' heads, breaking their backs to give them good schools, to buy them nice things. Raising a family is not like it used to be.

Sometimes you have a colleague that holds an ideology that clashes with your own, but hey, that's the way of the world. You have to work that out. And luckily, the overwhelming majority got into the education business for the same reason you did—to help people, so it's not really your coworkers either. 

Is it teacher institute days? The kind where the "professional development" in which you engage feels like a foolish waste of time, considering you've never once been able to finish all the items on today's to-do list for tomorrow? As a teacher, you are spread thin. So thin you think you might disappear entirely sometimes. You shave off whatever sliver you have left to spare for whatever you can do that day. You skip lunches. You skip preps. You do what good you can.

Is it leadership? If you're lucky you have somebody you can look up to, someone you can go to for support and guidance, and someone who will have your back when your back needs having. Leadership often started off where you were and climbed the ladder, dealing with all of the bureaucratic bullshit and politics along the way. More power to them. I couldn't do that shit. 

I couldn't do that shit precisely because there are a lot of people in control of education that are so far removed from what it's like to actually teach children, yet they are making all the important decisions. It infuriates me with a rage so thick...

And the further you go up the chain, the more convoluted it becomes. 

For the entire time I was a teacher in CPS I would ask why. I'd watch wonderful, inspiring people get beaten down by these frustrating hows and whys and the answers that eluded us. How can we prevent public education in Chicago from degrading any further? Why can we spend money on a new Ferris wheel while school budgets get slashed?

Most importantly, how is the quality of one public school to another across this city and so many others so disparate?

Thankfully for unions, teachers haven't been screwed even harder. But unions are just fighting for the teachers, not the children. The people on the ground, working their asses off to ensure quality education for the students in their immediate sphere of influence are worlds away from the CPS officials in charge of policy and still further from the local government that makes budget decisions.

If our leaders have more realistic priorities, schools will get the funding they need.

In the modern society we've created, we need more people per kid to do the job well, not less. Children nowadays don't develop the same skills of imagination, focus or patience as previous generations because it’s not required growing up nowadays. They’ve known no world other than our click culture, and so an overwhelming percentage of students have difficulty attending to mild stimuli like teachers talking since they’re getting blasted with full color and sound all the time from a device in their pocket. But still they give us less.

Governor Bruce Rauner, what the hell is the matter with you? Mayor Rahm Emanuel, you should be ashamed of yourself. Is potentially privatizing schools and making education for-profit the answer? No way! Is it too much to ask of the world for politicians to make a commonsense choice that will clearly benefit future generations of this community? Fucking act like civil servants! 

To those of you still fighting the good fight, I commend you, I support you, and I hold on to hope that all is not lost.  

Governor Rauner and Mayor Emanuel, do you want to talk about burnout? 

So yeah, it’s definitely not the kids. 

[iveclippedmyownwings]

If you care to listen, this is my opinion on allowing Syrian refugees into America.

It is sadly, like most things in life, not a black and white issue. There is no clearly defined right and wrong, and hear me out on this. As you may or may not know most Syrian citizens believe in the Islamic faith, and vast majority following the Sunni branch. (This would be essentially the same as the Catholic branch of the Christian faith) Now as I am mostly ignorant to the differences between the different branches of the Islamic faith, and pretty much the Islamic faith itself, I don't feel as if I should give a definition based on loose research. What I do know is that some in the Middle East, most of those "some" being male, use their faith as an excuse to commit "honor killings" and in more isolated and extreme cases enacting what we here in the states know only as "Sharia Law". Of course as Americans, things have to be "dumbed" down (get it?) for us, so we can make extremely vague generalizations about complex situations and ideas.

I know that the exact definition and purpose of Sharia Law is debated not only here but in the Middle East as well, but just for the sake of argument, we will use it to describe the extremist version. It more or less resembles the Christian Inquistion's laws. If someone breaks a religious idea molded into law, they are liable to get killed, usually horribly and publicly. Women are of course most vulnerable to this, as they are still treated as second class citizens for the most part. The "crimes" are usually so insignificant, especially when compared to the punishment for said "crime". "Sharia Law" and honor killings are a result of allowing religious ideas to get in the way of common sense and civil rights.

However, as sad as it is to have to explain this to the denser folks, this way of life is not agreed upon among every living being in Syria and the surrounding countries. Children are taught to be this way and most women know that they will most likely be killed for speaking against it. There of course are also men who believe it is a backwards and pointless way of life, but are liable to suffer the same punishment as women for speaking out against it. That is what drives it existence, and regardless of how big you think your balls are, most people don't want to get decapitated, or suffer at the hand of ISIS. Yes people choose to follow it, but they choose to follow it or most likely die a horrible and painful death.

(This is more opinion than fact): Since our long and continuing presence in the Middle East has caused such groups as ISIS and other extremist groups to form, these more extreme cases of fanatical religious executions are more or less our fault (Well the government and Military's fault) which has put the Middle Eastern population in a hard spot. On one hand, they see America bombing villages and murdering their families and friends indiscriminately which of course would make anyone thirst for blood, but on the other hand groups like ISIS pose an even more immediate threat, even under the guise of being solely anti-American, as they have shown to kill with the same carelessness and disregard for life. So they can choose to join these groups and risk involvement in such atrocities, as ISIS has killed many Muslims, somethings that is strictly against the general faith, or do nothing and hope that their house won't be bombed to glass from orbit.

Or of course, they can run. They can take their children and find somewhere where the constant threat of death isn't always looming over their shoulder. So here we are. Mass amounts of Syrians are fleeing from the crater that once was their home in hopes that they won't have to dig their children out from under a pile of rubble or vice versa. Unfortunately this is where is gets tricky. Mass immigration has never gone smoothly, and considering that many Muslims do still believe in more extreme ideologies, having their ideas clash with vastly different ideas in new countries has proven to be difficult to say the least. There have been many cases of mass rape and general disregard for the laws of whatever country they happen to live in, which has made some of Trumericans nervous. Whether you or I like it, there will be many problems having large amounts of third world citizens brainwashed to believe ancient and backwards beliefs coming into a modern and progressive country like America. Those men who carry age old beliefs that men are more or less superior to women probably won't like having women who are actually much much higher on the social and economical scale then them, and things like mass rapes and honor killing are bound to happen, and things could get progressively worse from there.

HOWEVER, on the other end of the scale, nothing is more hypocritical than to not allow immigrants into this county based on fears or what might happen. Most of our families came here from third world countries, broke, uneducated, and in many many cases became criminals once they got here. (The Italian and Irish Mobs, and other such gangs) Many of them didn't have much to contribute and many first-geners never bothered to even learn English, yet simply due to their presence here, America flourished. The railroads were constructed by mostly Blacks, Asians, and Irish immigrants, and those railroads were a major part in Americas expansion and economical growth. They also built most of the bridges and buildings that still stand proudly today, and my favorite and most cherished contribution was their culture. Boston itself is a monument to my great great grandparents, from the quaint and beautiful North End, to the lively and bustling streets of Soulthie. America is such a young country and as such its culture and people are a big melting pot of hundreds of different cultures and hundreds of different ideologies which come together to make a beautifully diverse country. That is why at the end of the day I fully support allowing anyone willing to come here to make a fresh start with their families and friends to join us, so together we can work towards a brighter and even more colorful future.

If you can seriously look at rows of dead Syrian children and tell me you want to protect Americas "sovereignty", especially when most of those bodies are where they are due to our illegal occupation of the Middle East, and tell me you don't want them here for whatever reason, then perhaps you should leave. At the very least don't go around calling yourself an American when your family arrived in this country 100 years ago under almost the exact same circumstances.

Everyone deserves a chance to live their life happily and safely regardless of their skin color, religion, or gender.

That is what being an American means to me.