#why must humanity be fundamentally separated in this way

[spontaneousmusicalnumber]

ough why do i only become a lesbian after 9pm

[transmutationisms]

from a non-academic, i find parts of comphet to be useful (heterosexuality becomes compulsory when you’re raised in a heterosexual society) but the foundations . suck. what do we do with theories like this, that have touched on a truth but also carry a lot of garbage? can we separate the truth from the founder?

i have to be slightly pedantic and say that i don't think rich's essay is an example of this phenomenon. my central issue with her formulation is its bioessentialist assumptions about human sex and therefore also sexuality. if i say "capitalism includes economic mechanisms that enforce heterosexual behaviour and exclude other possibilities", then what i mean by "heterosexual" is plainly not the same as what rich means—and for this reason i would seldom formulate the statement this way, without clarifying that i am talking about the enforcement of heterosexuality as a part of the creation and defence of sex/gender categories themselves. so rich and i do not actually agree on the very fundamental premises of this paper! rich was not the first or only person to point out that economic mechanisms as well as resultant social norms enforce heterosexual pairings; i actually don't even think the essay does a very clear job of interrogating the relationship between labour, economy, and the creation of sex/gender; she means something different and essentialist to what i mean by sex and sexuality; and i think her proposed responses to the phenomenon she identifies as 'compulsory heterosexuality' are uninteresting because they mainly propose psychological answers to a problem arising from conditions of political economy. so, in regards to this specific paper, i am actually totally comfortable just saying that it's not a useful formulation, and i don't feel a need to rescue elements of it.

in general, i do know what you're talking about, and i think there's a false dichotomy here: as though we must either discard an idea entirely if it has elements we dislike, or we accept it on the condition that we can plausibly claim these elements and their author are irrelevant. these are not comprehensive options. instead, i would posit that every theory, hypothesis, or idea is laden with context, including values held and assumptions made by their progenitors. the point is not to find a mythical 'objective' truth unburdened by human bias or mistakes; this is impossible. instead, i think we need to take seriously the elements of an idea that we object to. why are they there? what sorts of assumptions or arguments motivate them, and are those actually separable from whatever we like in the idea? if so, can we be clear about which aspects of the theory are still useful or applicable, and where it is that the objectionable elements arise? and if we can identify these points, then what might we propose instead? this is all much more useful, imo, than either waiting for a perfect morally unimpeachable theory or trying to 'accept' a theory without grappling with its origins (political, social, intellectual).

a recent example that you might find interesting as a kind of case study is j lorand matory's book the fetish revisited, which argues that the 'fetish' concept in freud's and marx's work drew from their respective understandings of afro-atlantic gods. in other words, when marx said capitalists "fetishise" commodities or freud spoke about sexual "fetishism", they were each claiming that viewing an object as agentive, meaning-laden in itself (ie, devoid of the context of human meaning-making as a social and political activity) was comparable to 'primitive' and delusory religious practices.

matory's point here isn't that we should reject marx's entire contribution to political economy because he was racist, nor is it that we can somehow accept parts of what marx said by just excising any racist bits. rather, matory asks us to grapple seriously with the role that marx's anthropologically inflected racism plays in his ideas, and what limitations it imposes on them. why is it that marx could identify the commodity as being discursively abstracted and 'fetishised', but did not apply this understanding to other ideas and objects in a consistent way? and how is his understanding of this process of 'fetishisation' shaped by his beliefs about afro-atlantic peoples, and their 'intelligence' or civilisational achievements in comparison to northwestern europeans'? by this critique matory is able to nuance the fetish concept, and to argue that marx's formulation of it was both reductive and inconsistently applied (analogously to how freud viewed only some sexuality as 'fetishistic'). it is true in some sense that capital and the commodity are reified and abstracted in a manner comparable to the creation of a metaphysical entity, but what we get from matory is both a better, more nuanced understanding of this process of meaning-making (incl. a challenge to the racist idea of afro-atlantic gods as simply a result of inferior intelligence or cultural development), and the critical point that if this is fetishism, then we must understand a lot more human discourse and activity as hinging on fetishisation.

the answer of what we do with the shitty or poorly formulated parts of a theory won't always be the same, obviously; this is a dialogue we probably need to have (and then have again) every time we evaluate an idea or theory. but i hope this gives you some jumping-off points to consider, and an idea of what it might look like to grapple with ideas as things inherently shaped by people—and our biases and assumptions and failings—without assuming that means we can or should just discard them any time those failings show through. the point is not to waste time trying to find something objective, but to understand the subjective in its context and with its strengths and limitations, and then to decide from there what use we can or should make of it.

[ko-existing]

"THAT" is experiencing "ITself"

The seeming appearance is chosen by "THAT" (you, IS-ness), the seeming appearance is changed by "THAT" (you, IS-ness), the seeming appearance is experienced by "THAT" (you, IS-ness) – "THAT" is the experience. It's not the person you think you are, because what you call "ego" doesn't exist; there is nothing except "THAT, IS-ness" Whenever you experience XYZ, it's not with the intention of obtaining it, but as an unfolding event, because "THAT" is experiencing itself.

read that again!:

EXPERIENCING 'XYZ' IS NOT WITH THE INTENTION OF OBTAINING IT, BUT AS AN UNFOLDING, PRESENT EVENT!!

@infiniteko // Dawa🎑, Chichi🐙, Koda📿

You don't experience "life" with your senses or awareness of the senses; it has always been and continues to be "THAT" experiencing "THAT." Because fundamentally, when you strip away labels, everything is "THAT." Meaningless thoughts categorize an experience as "i am feeling & seeing this" etc etc. But is that really the case?

However, you might feel it's too simple:

"It can't be *this* magical, right? If that's the case, I shouldn't feel this way. Why is there discomfort? Shouldn't I be blessed? This isn't the same as last time; I must have done something wrong".

These are all illusory thoughts; there's nothing to do. When you focus on these beliefs, you miss realizing all happiness, freedom, and peace – you are already here. Beliefs can be shaken, Knowing cannot. Do you believe you exist or do you KNOW "you" exist? Can you ever shake of that feeling of "BEING" or "IS-NESS"? If you exist now, then everything you seek is also present because you exist constantly. "THAT, IT, IS-ness" is never absent.

@infiniteko // Dawa🎑, Chichi🐙, Koda📿

Waiting for "something" to "change" is futile because "IS-ness" always "IS", it's not "WILL" or "WAS", it's "IS".

Whatever you're looking for is, in fact, searching for those thoughts; that's why you can't find yourself, as you were never lost. It's not about searching; it's about gradually discovering that I've already realized all freedom, peace, and happiness. Only by going deeper inward can you know that you have always had everything; and this is how you discover they are both illusion and "THAT." "Sink into" this emptiness, is-ness, and you will lose the (illusory) feeling of being an imaginary "human," replaced by being invisible "space", Being, Is-ness! In the stillness, feel your true self; in your quietude, when you look beyond "mind", "thoughts", "words", you are "THAT."

Can you ever separate "Awareness / Is-ness" from what is being experienced?

In this harmless dream, peacefully experience yourself; transcend any apparent appearances!

a small piece of the Heart Sutra♥️

@infiniteko // Dawa🎑, Chichi🐙, Koda📿

[drbased]

So much of mental health advice feels like grasping into the dark: when I did CBT I did all these various exercises and in hindsight so much of it feels like the placebo effect, and I can see why people get sucked into cults. Not saying therapy is a cult at all, but when I think about how one of the exercises was to imagine a manifestation of my bad thoughts and then physically close the door on it - what was that supposed to achieve, exactly? The buzz of motivation you get from these therapies can seem like progress, but a lot of the real value - the honesty about yourself and what you value - is entirely lost through gimmicks.

And it's really sad because in my experience, actual acceptance can be incredibly quick, so much so that it feels like a cheat code, a 'life hack' if you will. But acceptance is what 'mentally healthy' people do all the time - that's why two people can go to the exact same job and one can be chill whilst the other is depressed. As a depressed person who never understood the former type, I was always curious at exactly how those people lived - I assumed they must be vapid, that they couldn't be as deep with me, that any problems they had in their life were much more trivial than mine. I was fascinated by people who, when going through experiences I considered life-ruining, would shrug and say 'it is what it is'. I assumed once again that they must just not be as deep as I am, or feel as strongly. The deeper assumption was always that there's something fundamentally different to my make-up that separates me from the 'normies'. The narcissism of this is not lost on me; I used to flip-flop back and forth between 'I'm right' and 'they're right'. I now understand this to be value system that my depression was built around, and I don't have that maddening argument in my head anymore.

The depression was always both the cause and solution: there always had to be a justification for my sadness that was more than simply 'I don't like this' - that way I could cling to it; I could defensively make it a part of me, whilst secretly embarrassed that other people would be able to handle a similar situation better than me. The key to acceptance is to face that embarrassment head-on and say, actually the reason this thing bothers me so much is because I value it not happening more than I value my happiness and comfort. The point of acceptance is where I realise that my happiness is something I can choose internally regardless of my external circumstances; that that's what everyone else has been doing this whole time and therefore I am not a freak nor am I the messiah. I can be just like everyone else and it's not embarrassing to be a mundane, alive human being. But also, I have to overcome the embarrassment of being miserable under a sunk-cost fallacy - so for that, I have to, once again, understand why I valued the narrative justification so much, and so I can accept that too, all as valued, loved, and cherished parts of myself. It's all about understanding and acceptance at every stage, at every layer of the psyche.

And from that acceptance I can recognise that my depression was a noble goal in some ways; a core facet of my belief used to be that I'm just one person, and everything else is everything else, so my value system should logically be skewed outwards. But I now understand that martyring myself for the 'greater good' is a thankless task and also, whilst everything else is bigger than me, I'm the one who experiences that everything, so my value system should be focussed on me. Feeling good feels good, and that's enough.

I understand that the process of true acceptance is a really tough thing to do, and it's cosmically upsetting how unfair it is that people who never have a mental illness (or have one that is so accepted by society that they never have to consider it one) don't ever have to do this manual process of self-reflection - but at the same time, my honesty about myself has become something I now value greatly as it allows me to make meaningful choices to demonstrate self-love and rebuild trust in myself after a decade of believing that 'because I want to be happy' isn't justification enough. And since I discovered this whole process, so much of mental health advice just seems to me like the equivalent of putting a jelly bean on a paragraph in a book to incentivise you to read to that point: you're a fully grown adult and you're not stupid, so eventually some part of you is going to go 'but I can eat the damn jellybean at any time!'

From having learned just how much the brain is paying attention to everything I do, it's hard to justify doing these typical therapy exercises knowing that the value system they espouse is entirely the opposite to my own: they're fundamentally dishonest and kick the mental health can down the road, treating your psyche as an inconvenience and an obstacle to achievement (which is implicitly believed to be 'real'). Slamming the door on my negative thoughts:

Creates a symbolic narrative that through this I can be 'cured'

Posits that my negative thoughts, despite being a product of my literal brain, have nothing to do with how my brain works

Posits that those thoughts can be severed from me (with one dramatic gesture)

Looking back, this such a patronising way to approach my own personhood; this qualified mental health practitioner was agreeing with the mental illness that brought me to him in the first place that I am fragmented and that parts of me are 'wrong'. Acceptance says that no, no part of me is 'wrong' because that's an entirely false concept: there are only actions and consequences, and I decide if I value those consequences. The only 'reason' I 'shouldn't' have those negative thoughts is because they hurt me - but also, as they are a part of me, they can be addressed and they can be reasoned with. Accepting their point of view as my own has done so, so much more for my mental health than treating that point of view as a terrifying aberration on my psyche to be forcefully removed.

Society is always surprised at how people who commit atrocities rarely have a mental disorder; but that's that implicit belief about 'mental health' in action. There's a societal need for mental health to be some reflection of logical and moral 'correctness'; after all, there is existential terror in the realisation of of psyches as floating entities, universes isolated from material reality. I, too, feel this terror, but as someone who used to feel a great need to be under the scrutiny of The All-Knowing Watcher who could justify all my behaviours, thoughts and feelings under some objective standard, there has been a paradoxical freedom in recognising that I alone am responsible for constructing my morality and value system. Those 'mentally healthy' people who commit atrocities simply have a value system that does not care about the harm they have done; and, as a result, they have accepted themselves (in a way I couldn't even accept about that Portal 'Companion Cube' plush I bought for £30 over a decade ago and immediately regretted yet still can't throw away). This can be hard to swallow for people who need to believe that we all live under the same objective standard and that mental illness is merely an aberration. The idea that I'm more mentally ill than a murderer feels wrong; from this alone it's clear that the whole idea of what mental illness/health even is is still in its infancy - and mental health treatments - which have undergone much revision, making it possible that nobody does that CBT exercise anymore - are reflecting that dearth of understanding.

[st-whalefall]

I’m taking a big ol’ swing with this one so everyone please keep your limbs inside the vehicle until we reach our destination (let me cook)

So, what happened here? For this to go from-

Goofy ass grin <3

Summer: “Trust me..”

To this-

Raven: “The creatures of Grimm have a master named Salem. She can’t be stopped, she can’t be reasoned with, and she will not rest until humanity crumbles at her feet.”

Raven: To Ruby with disdain, “You sound just like your mother.”

Let me lay some of my cards on the table. I’m in the “Summer is still alive” camp and I got thoughts on: if Summer is still alive, why has she not been in Yang and Ruby’s life?

Not even a peep? For 14 years?

Something BIG had to have happened to her to keep her away from them.

Now, a lot of folks will go straight to where Ruby jumped to: Summer got Grimm hound-ed by Salem

But I think that’s takes a lot of agency away from Summer and the building revelation of her character and the purpose she serves in the narrative.

If Summer has been grimmified, I posit it was by her own doing, by choice. And her choice alone.

Qrow: “You’re special the same way your mom was…The creatures of Grimm were afraid of those silver eyed warriors.”

Salem: “Do you feel it? Don’t fight it girl. It can sense your trepidation. You must make it dread you.”

How does Salem illustrate the melding of Cinders flesh with the Grimm arm and mastery over it?

In the few instances we get, how are silver eyes described in their effect on Grimm? Obliteration, yes. Resistance to their influence? Possibly (see Ruby & the apathy). But command over them? Let’s explore that.

We are working with a pretty small dataset here, so you’ll forgive me for mostly drawing from Cinder for this (separate post I think the hound is a reanimated corpse and so different from true living hybrids like Cinder (& hypothetically Summer)).

Grimm evolve and Grimm hybrids, like Cinder, adapt.

From vol4 to vol8, Cinder’s Grimm arm grows. It spreads. And she becomes more comfortable with it as time progresses.

Cinders Grimm arm has become an integral part of her and, side note, I dislike theories that revolve her hypothetical redemption around her being purified of evil (Grimm) by silver eyes.

[But that’s just me, I want the monstrous to stay monstrous rather than erased or watered down for easy digestion. Let the monster stay a monster in its appearance and still be worthy of love, and so on and so forth.]

So, we come back to Summer Rose.

Summer confronted Salem, learned something earth shattering, destroyed Raven’s faith and trust in her, and did something that prevented her from returning to her daughters for more than a decade.

What did Summer do? Agency, we’re thinking strong choices here.

Choices that are radical but in line for a character with strong convictions, an alluded to pedestal she stands upon and all the complexes that comes with, perhaps a little self destructive, and a big heart. Big enough to sympathize with the devil and do something about it.

The thing that could be preventing Summer from returning home could be as simple as:

After she learned the truth about Oz’s shadow war, she joined Salem’s side, and won’t return until she’s seen it through to the end.

But I want to put some spice on there because what if:

After learning whatever it was Salem told Summer, that turned her world upside down, Summer looked down into the pools of black and took the plunge

To understand Salem on a molecular level

To be Grimm as Salem is Grimm

To be a world changer

In the world of Remnant, that’s what the Grimm are. A force of destructive change, like hurricanes and wildfires, they shape the world through calamity. Disaster doesn’t feel any one way about you, it just is. It is devastating, but it doesn’t hate you. And it doesn’t love you either.

So, what would that make Summer?

How do you think that’s changed her, fundamentally?

Bloody evolution indeed.

And that’s why she stayed away. Summer changed, and now she looks a little more on the outside how she feels on the inside. But to the rest of the world, she is something horrifying. Unspeakable.

She didn’t want to give her girls nightmares.

Yeah, Summer was the inspiration for the Hound, and Cinder’s Grimm arm. But not in the way Ruby thinks.

[actual-changeling]

I agree with you that Crowley cares about humans on a more personal level, whereas Aziraphale more cares about humans in the more vague sense.

Perhaps because he thinks it's what a good angel should do. As we know, Heaven (and the high ranking angels) have never cared about humans. But Aziraphale does, at least to some extent. So this must come from his own goodness (and the influence of Crowley, probably), right? He thinks Heaven should care because he cares, and knows it the right thing thing to do.

Of course, he needs to realise that he can't just pretend that Heaven is good by pretending God doesn't want whatever bad stuff Heaven is doing to happen, for himself and to be with Crowley.

(Also, I'm sorry if this comes off rude. I genuinely don't meant it to.)

(Dw, you're not coming off as rude!)

I think with Aziraphale it's kinda half/half.

A part of him genuinely cares about humanity because he just has those thoughts and feelings as a person. However, there's also a part that cares about humanity because he thinks that's what a good angel is supposed to be like. To Aziraphale, heaven is fundamentally good, and that any cruelties and uncaring angels he has seen are an exception to the rule—get rid of a few bad apples, and heaven will be perfect, right?

It's why he thinks that being the Supreme Archangel will "make a difference", because the thought the problem were the people in charge. But if he is the one in charge then everything will be great.

The mistake here is that Aziraphale does not understand that heaven is not good and never has been. He sees Crowley's fall as a mistake because he's seen Crowley do good things, so deep-down he must still be an angel since demons are Evil and Bad.

Crowley and all the other demons falling was the system working as intended, there's nothing to fix or change. Once he actually understands that, we will finally get somewhere.

Humanity and him have had the same relationship since Eden: He is standing on a wall above them, caring in a way an angel is supposed to while staying separate and in a superior position. Giving Adam the sword was a one-time thing, a spur of the moment decision (he's very prone to those), and while he helps the individual human every once in a while, overall he doesn't engage with them.

[lemonhemlock]

THANK YOU I AGREE WITH YOUR AEMOND POST 1 MILLION %. Some of the replies are so frustrating, all you were doing is discussing the writers' decisions this season regarding Aemond, and how simplistic it would be for Aemond's motivations to betray Aegon to be based on the brothel scene. You put into words everything wrong with Aemond's arc this season and I tremendously agree! I feel that the writers are flip-flopping with Aemond and Aegon's relationship, first they were enemies as children, then Aemond lost his eye and they seemed to be on the same page, then AEGON'S SON WAS VICIOUSLY BRUTALLY MURDERED AND AEMOND IS (besides showing no character evolution driven remorse to speak of) BACK TO HATING AEGON AGAIN?! THAT'S HIS BROTHER. HIS NEPHEW. HIS SISTER'S KID. Aemond had zero fucks to give!

The fandom's reaction to Aemond has been so embarrassing! Why is he not held accountable for ANYTHING. EVER. I defended Aemond all through S1 and will always defend him from TB but HE'S A GROWN MAN NOW. He just doesn't show empathy for Aegon after Jahaerys' death, your brother is grieving and he swears Aegon is his King and he's his hitman and he will always serve his ass. IF THEY HAVE AEMOND MURDER AEGON BECAUSE HE TEASED HIM IN A BROTHEL WHAT EVEN IS THIS. Really bad writing. Really cringe too.

So don't worry there are some of us who whole heartedly agree with you and don't coddle Aemond a grown man, with the same standards season after season and hold him accountable for the sin of hoping he grows as a character even if he is heading for a darker turn.

thank you so much, anon, for this unexpected reply, as i'm hanging out at the airport with not much to do 😅

yeah, i think that, ON PAPER, aemond turning on his brother as a result of years of bullying is believable, sure, BUT. the bullying truly needs to be horrific to explain away the urge to commit basically three of the most grievous crimes in westeros: kingslaying, kinslaying and usurpation. like. no one takes those things lightly. and, i'm sorry, but teasing just doesn't cut it. i think that a lot of people may be kind of projecting their own personal grievances with school bullies onto aemond, which is natural to an extent, but they have to step back a little and realise that being rude or hurtful to someone just doesn't, in any way, merit a reaction so disproportionate that it amounts to soul-drenching crimes

in that regard, last season i was 100% on aemond's side as well, because, well, MUTILATION might warrant such an escalation in violence. compared to all that pent-up anger aemond felt for luke, the aegond rivalry is just not really well done. it COULD have been, but, without having seen ep 4, it feels very milquetoast and, most of all, unearned.

honestly, i think gwen emphasized really well the fact that we're in a fandom obsessed with their headcanons and brainrot, to the extent that it becomes difficult to separate the backstory one has created for some character with what has actually appeared on screen. what we've seen so far has only been mockery, and i get that, when you're a kid, it's very difficult to go through, but we are talking about murdering your sibling here. i mean, no, i don't think "it makes perfect sense". ALSO. pointing that out doesn't mean you're invalidating the trauma of bullying victims, let us please separate people's real experiences from fictional experiences, which 1. are fake and 2. can be improperly presented in media, which is what we are critiquing in the first place

on a final note, i have had people on my post clinging to this idea that, just because the writers had aemond say (in the most bored tone in existence) that he regrets "the business with luke" (or however the hell he phrases it) means that the writers want to communicate to us that he feels sorry over jaehaerys. please. they must either be aliens that are just now learning about human emotion OR they want to relay that aemond isn't really all that bothered fundamentally. his reaction is basically the stoned out version of this gif!

but, anyway, as dumb as aemond's reasons are or aren't, what ultimately brings the whole rivalry down is that they really didn't invest in creating any dramatic tension between these two. think of the scene at storm's end, it's the literal version of "you could have cut the tension in the room with a knife" and it's only a few minutes long. so it can be done. they just don't care OR, because of this stupid trend of reducing the number of episodes in a season, aegond was just one of those things that hit the cutting room floor. so we can all blame capitalism for rook's rest. 😅

[valle-de-sombra-de-muerte]

Homestuck Reread: Act 4, Part 4/4 (p. 1865-1988)

Read the previous post here.

Oh boy it's the final stretch for this Act. I want to take a moment to express my appreciation for all the new followers I've gained over the course of this reread. I have 60 now, which is incredible. Thank you all!

With that said, this post will contain some... sticky subject matter. I wonder how many of you will choose to dip after this.

[CONTENT WARNING: Discussion of incest starts below the second image]

Oh my fuck it's the ectobiology section. Out of all the convoluted and frivolous mechanics in Homestuck, this one might be the worst in my opinion. Worse than the adventure game jokes cribbed from Problem Sleuth, worse than the punch card alchemy and other ponderous Sburb mechanics... I'd say it's worse than the time travel shit, but this is actually more of a subset of that. So yeah, time travel continues to be the worst thing about Homestuck, and shit like this and the bunny subplot are prime examples of that. But my ire is fully directed at ectobiology at this moment.

The stuff I mentioned before at least has a purpose; they parody needlessly complicated video game mechanics. But ectobiology doesn't have a purpose. It's not funny, nor does it serve the story in a meaningful or even interesting way. So why does it exist? Is it to drive home the point that these select individuals are the "chosen ones" by Sburb? If I had to hazard a guess what Hussie meant by that...

Earth is a vile place and must be destroyed, so sayeth Sburb. Everything living on it is flawed by extension, so its chosen destroyers must be fully disconnected human society and the planet itself. These destroyers have been plucked from the aether and reconstituted from bullshit plot slime in a faraway part of time and space, ensuring that they are unquestionably divorced from anything from Earth, and therefore pure.

Now that I type all that out, it's no wonder none of the kids were all that shaken up about bringing about the apocalypse. Considering that they're essentially game constructs with no actual ties to humanity, it really throws away any sort of conflict and sense of sacrifice brought about by destroying the planet. All the innocents who perished in the meteor showers? Eh, fuck them! They were all NPCs anyway. All hail the slime people!

Okay, I'm sure this wasn't Hussie's actual intent, but if there's no grander symbolism at play, what else is there? None of this adds anything to the plot. The fact that the main cast are non-humans is never touched upon and the whole thing reads as superfluous sci-fi garbage. The only significance the meteors carrying the babies had was that John's Nanna died from a meteor strike. But it was already suggested way earlier that she died because she was crushed by the Colonel Sassacre book.

That was a perfectly serviceable, slightly comedic death befitting of a family of jokesters. There's no need to escalate it and involve a giant meteor.

One other thing I take umbrage with: because the cast were all birthed from the same slurry, this means that Dave and Rose are now """related""". They aren't related by blood, no, but by slime. Which, in the eyes of Hussie and the fandom at large, means the same thing, I guess. Even though they never grew up as siblings, lived separate lives in different parts of the country, and only met online as strangers before developing a (very flirtatiously charged) friendship, the fandom treats them as if they're flesh and blood brother and sister. It boggles my mind. Why is this being treated as legitimate? Did Hussie plan all along to take the two characters with the best chemistry only to pull a Luke and Leia on us? Why would he write them like that if this was his endgame? Does he just have an incest fetish?

I wouldn't doubt it because themes of incest are actually quite pervasive within Homestuck. And that's without even mentioning how Hussie developed an alien race that fundamentally relies on incest to reproduce. Ectobiology creates several relationships, incidental or otherwise, that tie nearly the entire main cast in a complicated web of pseudo-familial dynamics. Like John is actually the kids' progenitor/father because he's the one who brought them all into existence. So even if he isn't related to Rose or Dave by genes or slime, he still gave birth to them in a sense.

I've even seen people say that since Betty Crocker/The Condesce was Nanna's adopted mother, that makes the Egbert/Crocker/Harley/English family tree "related" to the Peixes trolls, so any ship with that combination is "incest." What if I told you that Feferi is related to all the other trolls via bullshit slime mechanics as well? I guess that makes Johnkat incest too. And if John is Dave's father... gasp! Davekat is also incest!? It's over folks, burn everything down.

Anyway, I don't acknowledge Rose and Dave as biological siblings because I don't treat being born from a vat of slime as the same as being birthed from the same womb. That would be treating ectobiology as valid and sensible, which I refuse to do. I don't want to lend Hussie's fixation on incest any amount of approval. All I know is that the trolls are made of the same stupid plot sludge and nobody cares if you ship them. There are no humans and trolls: only slime constructs. Either everyone is related or none of them are. You can't have both.

In the end, none of this matters. The world would be a much happier place if we all collectively agreed to forget ectobiology's existence. If this ruffles your feathers, just block me. Don't come at me because I'll just ignore you.

So Grandpa Harley had time-traveled forward to the future and into Sburb before returning to the past, living out his life on Earth, and dying. Fucking okay I guess!

At least this answers the question I had that yes, Mom Lalonde knew what she was doing before entering the game because Grandpa told her everything. Same with Bro and Dad, it seems.

Ah yes, Dad x Mom. A relationship that ends nearly as soon as it begins. Let's put this right alongside the Exile love triangle and DaveTav in the "relationships that are teased but never manifest into anything meaningful" pile.

"Ackshually, everyone was born from a vat of slime on a distant meteor and sent back to Earth to live out their lives!" - the ramblings of an utter lunatic.

Like god fucking forbid the kids be normal people placed in extraordinary circumstances.

The babies all gravitate to the things they'll have a connection to in the future. Nanna gets her son's hat, Bro gets Cal, etc. Dave clings to Maplehoof, which doesn't seem like a clear connection. Except... that's Rose's horse, isn't it? Ohhh. It all makes sense now. 😏

This exchange is a top 10 Karkat moment for sure.

The supposed saviors that will revive the human race aren't even human, they're slime creatures! Beyond the fact that none of them are human, the Superman analogy falls flat because none of these kids are humanity's protectors. They're just following the whims of a game that ultimately does not give a fuck about any of them.

I need "JOHN EGBERT, YOU HAVE ASSASSINATED MY PATIENCE." emblazoned on a banner or something.

Also Karkat calls Superman a "Caucasian alien" and he also refers to a genie as an "Earth Arabian" in an earlier log.

He really knows a lot about different human ethnic groups, for some reason.

I think about "you always call jail the slammer when you are extra angry" on a somewhat regular basis.

Sassacre is killed, but since he was a human, his death is inconsequential. Grandpa, a slime homunculus just like Nanna, is given new life, which is a cause for celebration. This whole sequence is quite morbid with Sassacre's bloody corpse just hanging out in the frame.

But wait, if Nanna and Grandpa are adopted siblings, and John and Jade are their "genetic children"... augh, never mind! This is what I mean when I say ectobiology produces all kinds of unfortunate relationships. I don't want to think about any of this pseudo-incest anymore. How are there people who make it their whole online careers to dissect this garbage so they can harass people about this shit? Don't they get tired? It's giving me a headache.

Rose is even referred to as John's "daughter" in the title of this flash. I'm not just blowing smoke when I say that John is everyone dad. That's literally what just happened.

Now that we're finally done with this segment, I'll cap it off with this: Nothing of value was added with the inclusion of ectobiology. I know I've been throwing around the phrase "waste of time" in these posts, but this bit of worldbuilding is unequivocally, without a doubt, the biggest fucking waste of time in this entire comic.

Woof. Shall we move on?

While Davesprite and Terezi sort of reconciled in their conversation and formed a bit of a bond, Dave doesn't receive her nearly as amicably. Why is she doing the "1S TH1S YOU" joke with Dave when that was a bit she did with Davesprite?

Oh right, because she thinks that same relationship will carry over to "real Dave". She sees them as the same person just like everyone else. Lovely.

Dave thinks he can burn Terezi by repeatedly insulting her blindness, even though it's clear that it doesn't bother her at all. This is really weak, especially when compared to his log with Tavros where he forced Tavros to block him.

Terezi seems to have completely given up on John and now wants to be annoying and nasty to Dave instead. She has officially been downgraded from minor antagonist to obnoxious interloper.

Tavros could only ever enjoy himself when he could escape to Prospit, be mobile, and most importantly fly. Nobody ever wants to talk about how Tavros has a lot of avoidance issues, how he always shrinks away from action and confrontation, and how he copes with adversity through escapism (both in a figurative sense through his interest in fantasy, and in a literal sense when he dreams on Prospit). A big part of his character comes from Peter Pan, the archetype of childlike escapism! IDK man, it sucks to see people reduce him to this lovable, pure-hearted woobie while ignoring the key part of his character.

Just like with Davesprite, Terezi just needed to send the right drawing for Dave's opinion of her to flip. Fantastic conflict resolution right there.

[S] Descend is the End of Act flash for Act 4. It might be the most ambitious flash up to this point. Lots of guest artists contributed here, and it's at this point where Homestuck really begins to feel like a much more collaborative project instead of solely Hussie's work. I don't mean to discredit the music team when I say that, because they've been around since the start, but this feels more substantial since Homestuck is a primarily visual work.

Anyway, Bro slices a meteor in half to save Dave's life, and later has his rocket board transport Dave into the game safely. Chalk that up to his list of noble deeds to try and balance out his dastardly ones.

Jack fucks shit up indiscriminately, so why does he spare WV? Feels a little out of character for him.

The brief Jack and Bro fight is pretty sweet. I'm not a shonen guy, but I'm getting that same sort of energy from this. Knowing that Bro probably knew all about the kinds of monsters he'd have to fight in Sburb, he has probably been training for something like this for most of his life. Had Jack not gotten god powers, Bro probably could've wasted him.

I like to think that Rose's merging with her doomed self is what causes her to act so destructive and nihilistic from this point on. She wants to destroy the game that killed her.

So okay... when Dave and Rose gave John their bunnies for his present, both of them clearly put a lot of thought in their gifts. Dave gifted him a piece of merch from his favorite movie. Rose restored an old heirloom using John's previous gift to her. Jade assembled "a fun and completely ridiculous thing" that has no sentimental meaning and only carries a vague sense of importance.

Does she just not know what he likes? This is less a gesture of friendship and more of her blindly fulfilling the whims of Sburb. I really struggle to see how Jade fits in this friend group dynamic. She's like the weird kid that the others let hang around out of pity.

Waow! After all that buildup with the box mystery, the bunny and Jack are going to have a showdown! Finally we can see what all the fuss is about and why this bunny is so important.

... Or Jack can just fly away and they never fight at all. Cool Hussie. It's so cool how you spent several pages devoted to this plot point only to let it fizzle out like this. Incredible writing.

How much time do you think elapsed between Grandpa bringing Dream!Jade's corpse aboard his airship and gutting, cleaning, stuffing, and mounting her? He probably did it all after he flew off, but I like to imagine him doing this all before that while Mom and Dad just stood around awkwardly waiting for him to finish.

Act 4 had its ups and its downs. A lot of downs. The ups also felt a little bittersweet because for every intriguing story hook like the Exile love triangle, Dave's relationship with Tavros, Rose and her mother, or anything involving Davesprite and doomed Rose, they all amount to nothing in the grand scheme of things.

Homestuck truly is a collection of fun ideas all unfortunately cobbled together by someone who doesn't know how to properly execute them in a story. The colorful art and the kickass music can only serve to cover up the flaws so much before the veneer peels and you see the ugly cracks underneath. I wish we lived in a world where Andrew "writing is easy" Hussie had an editor to salvage the good stuff and throw shit like ectobiology into the garbage.

If it sounds like I'm wrapping things up, think again. This journey isn't over yet. It's time for Act 5! People like to joke about how you should skip all the way to that one, but after everything I've read so far... I wouldn't blame anyone if they did.

Read the next post here.

[writing-for-life]

Nuance in (The Sandman) Fandom

Send me asks about everything Sandman-related!

I thought a lot over the past few days, partly prompted by discourse on here, partly due to a couple of “interesting” asks and messages I received (the type you don’t answer). I *think* they might have been prompted by engaging in discourse on topics like anti-blackness/racism, misogyny/sexism, TERF characters etc in The Sandman.

Fandoms are always getting super sensitive if someone shines a critical lens on their favourite works, authors and characters. So to make this clear (in case it isn’t already obvious from my brain-rot blog):

I love The Sandman. I love Neil Gaiman. I have an extremely soft spot for Dream (and Desire btw, who deserves a lot more character analysis than just being summed up as “villainous, sexy bitch”. One day, perhaps ;)).

I can read The Sandman and just get lost in the story, even after decades and many rereads. 

But I can also view it through a critical lens—these things aren’t mutually exclusive.

Not critical enough or too critical?

As fans, we can get trapped in certain thinking patterns, like:

“My blorbo can do no wrong”-syndrome 

“Characters with flaws are inherently problematic and imply authorial endorsement of those actions” 

“Characterisation and problematic subtext are one and the same” (aka overanalysing and looking for problems where there are none is the death of every story, but failing to see problematic patterns where they are clearly visible is a problem, too).

Don't say anything bad about my favourite character

I think this doesn’t need much further exploration. It’s not my personal way of looking at stories through permanently rose-tinted glasses (I always feel it stalls my experience, but my experience is not everyone else's). Some people prefer that type of escapism, and I’m good with that (although the downside is of course that by not willing to engage with issues, we can unwillingly perpetuate them). Live and let live, ship and let sail. But please, for the love of god: Don’t insult people via their inboxes or messages just because their opinions and preferences don’t align with yours. I’m not going to sugarcoat it or phrase it “nicely”: It’s infantile (and a form of bullying btw), end of.

How can you even like a character who's so horrible? And that author must be equally horrible, too

We have to separate flawed characters, even those who are written to be really problematic, from real-life endorsement of these actions. 

Author, narrator and character are three fundamentally different things, and don’t overlap as much as some people seem to think. 

We can write vile, despicable characters to make a point (for me, Thessaly was always a prime example for this, and I explained why here). We probably hate them as we write them. I don’t know what else to say, but this facet of writing seems to get more and more lost on people, and it’s a worry. Crying for sanitised characterisation is one step away from censorship. We explore what is problematic about people and humanity through story. That’s how we process and learn. It’s nothing new, but it becomes impossible if we can’t write flawed and even disgusting characters. 

Face value…

Since I’m mostly in The Sandman fandom, I often read that its ending is hopeless, and that’s supposedly the entire message. 

It is agonisingly sad, yes. But is it truly hopeless? I personally see it as quite the opposite, but of course that’s my opinion, coloured by my life experiences.

I also get that show-only fans often haven’t read the comics, or at least not the whole arc. And as such, their outlook from what they’ve seen so far (and choose to focus on) has to be different by default. I also understand that many people are quite new to the comics, even if they have read them in their entirety. I’ve sat with them for 30 years, and I still find new things on every reread (and I read it more times than anyone should 🙈), and I still don’t feel like I’ve understood it all. Perhaps because I still haven’t fully understood myself (and it’s unlikely I ever will). If there’s one thing The Sandman isn’t, it’s one-dimensional and easy to grasp in its whole depth.

I just wrote a ginormous meta on it, if you’re interested, it’s here:

Subtext, (not so) glorious subtext

This is where it gets complicated:

We shouldn’t mix up characterisation and story subtext. Overanalysing every line to death will always make us find something that’s “problematic”, when it really isn’t in the wider context of the story.

Zooming in is NOT always a good thing. Sometimes, we actually need to zoom out. 

But subtext *can be* (accidentally) problematic. Even in stories we love. And none of this negates what I previously wrote.

Stories have real-life implications of sorts, and we need to be able to talk about it. That’s where those slightly flabbergasting, hostile inbox messages come in, and I want to expand on that "topic of contention" a bit:

Neil himself confirmed that the Endless basically warp reality, and that this is why, after Dream’s failed relationship with Nada, many black women in his vicinity suffer terrible fates (Ruby and Carla in particular). And that this spell is only broken when he dies, and that it is the reason why Gwen doesn’t suffer the same fate. And said Gwen then gets used as a plot device to basically absolve Hob (who canonically really is a problematic character, whether show-only fans like it or not) from his slaver past. Once again, very clearly: No one is making this up. Neil confirmed it (for the comics, and that was over 20 years ago. It remains to be seen if his stance has changed as we move into that arc in the TV show).

I don't think it is correct to imply that Dream as a character is racist (I've read that, too) because he logically can’t be. He holds *all* the collective unconscious. He is also, strictly speaking, not white. He is everything and nothing, and he shows up in many different ethnicities throughout the whole arc, depending on who looks at him. But Neil played with a subtext here (reality warping due to a bad relationship which then affects everyone with similar physical traits) that will read very differently to a black person than it reads to a white person, and we have to understand why that is an *extremely* slippery slope.

Plus, we are supposed to see Hob, who *was* a racist at some point (you can’t not be if you’re a slave-trader—it’s impossible by default) as redeemed. And yes, he *does* regret deeply, good for him (and if I were saying this aloud, you would hear the sarcasm in my voice, because it is indeed all about him. We are to sympathise/empathise with him and his character growth while there isn’t much mention of the people he maltreated). But also: it was a black woman who basically forgave him (with dialogue that personally makes me cringe). And that black woman who offers forgiveness is not truly a black woman—she is a character written by a white man. And as much as author and character are not the same (see above), there is an inherent sensitivity in that power imbalance that we can't brush under the carpet.

I don’t think Neil is racist. Probably quite the opposite, and I can even see that his intentions were good from a storytelling point of view. BUT intention and impact are two fundamentally different things, and telling the story this way (comic version) betrays blindspots only white people have. Just like women have blindspots when they tell stories about men, and men have blindspots when they tell stories about women (and there are a few of those in The Sandman, too). And and and…

As storytellers, we can’t always speak from lived experience. It’s impossible. And that also means we occasionally make mistakes that look bad in hindsight, even if our intentions were good.

I guess the proof is in the pudding: What do we do when people who *have* that lived experience tell us it looks bad? If they inform us why it is hurtful, plays into old stereotypes etc?

Are we willing to listen and yield (both are the foundations of allyship btw), or are we insisting that our viewpoint as someone *without* lived experience is right? That lived experience extends to all lived experiences (sex/gender, sexual orientation, age...), and from all we’ve heard from Neil so far, it seems important to him to rewrite what he sees differently today. Whether they’ll always get it right for the show—we’ll see. At the moment, it looks a lot better than in the comics, and certain issues are already being handled with a lot more sensitivity, but a few problems remain.

Pushing back on criticism that comes from people with lived experience is problematic—I’d encourage us to think about what it looks like if a white majority in the fandom is basically saying that the opinions of POC are essentially “overreactions” (and yes, that happened).

It’s complicated. The Sandman was written in a different time, and I think we have to distinguish between things that weren’t really problematic at the time but have aged poorly (again, Thessaly springs to mind, and I have lived experience as a queer person during that time, so I can see it in context while at the same time acknowledging that I would make changes to bring it to the present day), and things that were always a problem due to blindspots. They were a problem in 1990, and if they don’t get changed, they are still a problem today.

This fandom is generally so much more open and nicer than others I know. But that doesn’t mean it’s infallible, because it’s full of humans. 

Nuance is sorely needed, in both story interpretation and interaction between said humans.

[khorneschosen]

Why the claim like that of extra credits that fantasy races have a good/evil alignment being wrong, so wrong that it can't be applied in media, is itself wrong, is what I am going to argue here.

I think what is necessary to fundamentally express why their opinion is wrong, is the background of why they made it. They made it aligned with the academic view that man is purely a blank slate, with no rationality, no genetics shaping him in anyway, and are ultimately a product of their nurture rather than nature.

One aspect I want to point out is they often claim, "this is morally flawed" only because they try and relate them to real kinds of people. Or that "this is boring" or "this is lazy writing" or some other claim.

It isn't because they believe these things are argued on that basis, because they don't as they don't argue on that basis, it's because claiming its boring changes the debate from them applying their ideology directly to an issue as in "my ideology, which you don't practice says this is wrong" to "this is boring" which is an aesthetic debate rather than the naked policing of other people.

I am not adding what they are policing people on. Which you gain the police someone on their hobbies you do it on the rest of their life as well.

Fantasy races, are not just some endless variations on human. Whether defined by evolution, science fiction, magic and etc, they are different from humans, in both form and/or nature in some way.

This is why you make a fantasy race to show, create and strain the contrast that comes in comparing the fantastical to what is human.

It's why humans are often the everyman of every setting because while human nature can be complex, the fantasy race is the contrasting element, the nature of the contrast can change by degrees but not that it is a contrast.

They fundamentally must be of a different nature to us, even if we are blank slates which we aren't, that fact alone provides the contrast. You could do culture differences but then you have to constantly deal with the fact that contrast when it erodes the very second that race is separated or living in shared space. The inherent to the species implies the constant application of that contrast and how the human deals with it.

In short, their series of videos on the topic are just wrong. Races of evil or good nature are not boring, lazy, or whatever aesthetical judgement they are pretending it is, and the view of humanity in regards to the blank slate is fundamentally wrong.

[sparksinthenight]

Have a Heart Day 2024

This is a letter I wrote to the Canadian Government for Have a Heart Day 2024. I am asking the government to stop discriminating against First Nations children, to stop giving them inadequate services, education, and support, to stop treating them unequally compared to non-Indigenous children, and to stop taking them away from their loving families. I really hope that you read my letter and that you either copy paste it or write your own, and email the Canadian government yourself.

Hello. Our names are ____ and we are people from various parts of so-called Canada. We are writing to you to ask that you ensure the government stops discriminating against First Nations children, by signing a Final Settlement Agreement on Reform that meets and goes beyond the Agreement in Principle on Reform, and by following the Spirit Bear Plan and enshrining it into law. 

First Nations children and families on reserves are being discriminated against in many ways. Most communities do not receive the same amount of and access to social services that non-Indigenous people receive. Most communities do not receive as good quality social services as non-Indigenous people. While there has been progress, Jordan's Principle, which is about meeting children's needs, is still not being properly applied. Most children don't have access to an equal quality of education as children off reserves, and many children receive very inadequate education services. And, very horrifyingly, children are being separated from families who love them and want to take care of them. This all needs to stop. We need to make, follow, and enforce laws that stop this discrimination. 

First of all, let's talk about the fact that social services are inadequate on most reserves. As you know, the federal government funds services on reserves that the provincial or municipal governments fund elsewhere. The government generally funds services on reserves far less than services are funded off reserves. These include education, water infrastructure, housing, financial assistance, transportation, basic infrastructure, utilities, healthcare, mental healthcare, addiction support, job training, childcare, youth programs, cultural programs, recreation programs, libraries, child welfare, and more. These services are human rights and should be well-funded for everyone. It's not fair that non-Indigenous people have better services to better meet more of their fundamental human rights and basic needs while people on reserves don't. 

The fact that people don't have access to the services they need is part of why there are high levels of poverty on reserves. Ongoing and historical racism, trauma, and discrimination have caused a lot of people on reserves to be poor. And this lack of services is part of that discrimination that is causing people to be poor. If people had the healthcare, education, housing, childcare, mental healthcare, addiction support, cultural support, job training, basic food and water, disability support, and other things they needed, they would be able to have the peace of mind, mental strength, knowledge, support, and resources necessary to pull themselves and their communities out of poverty. Also, since there is so much poverty on reserves, these communities need even more services to help meet their basic needs and human rights. 

Services delivered need to be good and effective for the communities they are delivered in. This means that services need to meet each community's different needs. Because each community has different needs due to different connectivity to the outside world, poverty levels, local prices, etc. Service providers need to first see what services people need and how to best deliver them, then work out how much money is needed. Money should be the last thing considered. What each person, family, and community needs should be the first thing considered. And of course, services must all be culturally sensitive and relevant. 

And part of why services are so low quality, as well as part of why so much discrimination and cruelty happens, is because Indigenous Services Canada has biases in its systems and people, and must be reformed. Indigenous Services Canada doesn't listen to experts about what communities need and how things should be done. They don't try to do their actual job, which is ensuring good services are provided to Indigenous people. They need to be reformed and communities need to lead their own service provision. 

The Spirit Bear plan must be properly implemented and properly followed. It must be enshrined in law and the law must be completely enforced. The Spirit Bear Plan is the following:

"Spirit Bear calls on:

CANADA to immediately comply with all rulings by the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal ordering it to immediately cease its discriminatory funding of First Nations child and family services. The order further requires Canada to fully and properly implement Jordan's Principle (www.jordansprinciple.ca).

PARLIAMENT to ask the Parliamentary Budget Officer to publicly cost out the shortfalls in all federally funded public services provided to First Nations children, youth and families (education, health, water, child welfare, etc.) and propose solutions to fix it.

GOVERNMENT to consult with First Nations to co-create a holistic Spirit Bear Plan to end all of the inequalities (with dates and confirmed investments) in a short period of time sensitive to children's best interests, development and distinct community needs.

GOVERNMENT DEPARTMENTS providing services to First Nations children and families to undergo a thorough and independent 360° evaluation to identify any ongoing discriminatory ideologies, policies or practices and address them. These evaluation must be publicly available.

ALL PUBLIC SERVANTS including those at a senior level, to receive mandatory training to identify and address government ideology, policies and practices that fetter the implementation of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's Calls to Action." This information is from the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society. 

Another huge factor contributing to the inequality faced by many First Nations children is the fact that Jordan's Principle isn't being properly implemented. 

The federal government, not the provincial government, typically pays for the services on reserves. But many times disputes arise about who should pay for a service, and the children don't get the services non-Indigenous children would get as a matter of course. Jordan's Principle is named after Jordan River Anderson, a young disabled boy from Norway House Cree Nation who passed away in the hospital after the provincial government and the federal government couldn't decide which one should pay the costs of his healthcare. The Principle states that if a First Nations child needs something for their well-being, they need to be given that service first and payment disputes should get addressed later. This includes medical, psychological, educational, cultural, disability, and basic needs support. Non-Indigenous children get these supports without having to ask because they have access to many more and better services. These supports are human rights that everyone deserves, especially children going through generational and contemporary trauma. 

Jordan's Principle is not being properly implemented, and this is hurting kids. Though there has been much progress, Jordan's Principle requests, which are for things children need, are often denied, which goes against children's rights. Indigenous Services Canada, which runs the Jordan's Principle approval process, doesn't have an adequate complaints mechanism to hold to account its provision of the Principle. The government isn't making data available on whether they're meeting children's needs. Many children have delays in getting help, including time-sensitive medical, psychological, educational, and development help. 

The application process, though easier than before, is still difficult and many families don't have adequate help and guidance through it. As well, most doctors don't know which children are eligible for Jordan's Principle supports, 40% don't know which services are covered, and ⅓ don't know how to access funding through it.

Long term reform is needed. An Agreement in Principle on long term reform has been drafted by the government and First Nations advocates, and it looks promising. It talks about increasing funding for Jordan's Principle services and trying to root out prejudice in the system. But the Agreement in Principle is not legally binding. It's not something the government has to follow, or is following, but rather what they claim they might do eventually. Negotiations for the creation of a Final Settlement Agreement based on the Agreement in Principle were underway but have been on standstill for months. A Final Settlement Agreement would be legally binding and would if done right increase the chances of achieving change. 

The school system is also horribly unfair. Many First Nations schools on reserves get less funding than schools off reserve, with an average of 30% less funding per school. They don't have adequate funding for computers, software, technology, sports equipment, field trips, labs, lab equipment, extracurriculars, cultural learning, job training, and the list goes on. They don't even have enough money to have adequate heating, good quality infrastructure, adequate and safe ventilation, enough textbooks, and reasonable class sizes. Many schools don't have a safe and appropriate learning environment. All children, including First Nations children, deserve good education. 

There is no clear plan to eliminate education and employment gaps.

The government claims it's negotiating with Indigenous groups but there's no evidence that they're actually doing anything to lower inequality. They also claim that they're funding education on reserves equally but all the evidence says they're not. You need to actually, genuinely fund education on reserves adequately and equitably, and make sure that children on reserves are actually receiving a good and equal and equitable quality of education. 

A lot of communities don't have self-determination over their own education systems, meaning they can't teach about the history of their people and other important cultural knowledge. First Nations children need and deserve to learn about their culture, about the ecosystems their people are connected to and how to interact with those ecosystems, their history, their language, their traditions. And if communities have self-determination over their own education systems, and they have adequate resources and funding from the government, they'll be able to teach these things so that children grow up proud of who they are. 

And what is perhaps the most horrible thing is that so many children are being separated from families who love them. This is the most traumatic thing that can happen to a child, and all children deserve and need to be with the families who love them. 

At the height of residential schools, many children were separated from their families. Currently, 3 times as many children are in foster care, away from their families. One tenth of First Nations children have been in foster care. Children in foster care experience higher rates of physical and sexual abuse and do not get as much cultural immersion. Not to mention, even in the best circumstances, they're away from their families. 

Most Indigenous children in foster care have loving families that try their best to take care of them, who they want and need deeply. But their families are poor or mentally ill or disabled, or have other factors that make it hard for them to meet their children's needs. Preventative support like financial, housing, health, and mental health aid could keep many families together. If child and family service agencies have the resources and the empathy to help families with what they need so that families stay together, that would be a great relief. Child and family service agencies need adequate money, infrastructure, and personnel to give families real help instead of taking children away. Most agencies do not have these. Programs that help the wider community such as healthcare, financial aid, housing services, mental healthcare, parenting classes, food support, community programs, youth programs, cultural programs, pregnancy support, and others would greatly decrease the number of children taken from their homes. Most communities do not have adequate levels of these programs. 

Child and family service agencies need to be completely reformed, and should be led by First Nations communities themselves. Most child and family service agencies are not. This is especially important since there is bias against First Nations people in many agencies. Some communities are getting the opportunities to start their own child and family service agencies, but most communities do not have this opportunity. Canada needs binding laws to ensure child and family service agencies are led by First Nations communities and are based in the unique culture of each community, which they often aren't. Each community has unique needs depending on local prices, remoteness, poverty levels, and other factors. The way child and family services should be funded is by first seeing what services the children truly need, then seeing how to best deliver them, then determining how much money will be needed. 

There is a promising Agreement in Principle on Reform, created by the government and First Nations advocates. It discusses increasing funding for child welfare services and trying to root out prejudice in the system. However this is not a legally binding agreement that the government has to follow. It's just something that they claim they'll maybe do in the future. A Final Settlement Agreement based on the Agreement in Principle would be legally binding. It would, if done right, enact more funding and reform. But negotiations for this have been on pause for months. Canada needs to implement evidence-based solutions to keep kids with their families. This means creating a legally binding and well-enforced Final Settlement Agreement on Reform that meets and goes beyond the Agreement in Principle on Reform. 

Some communities are trying a new funding model for child and family services that may give more funding, allowing them to do more preventative services instead of taking children away. However, the results of this new funding model are not clear yet, and most communities do not have the opportunity to be funded by it. And there is no guarantee that the new funding model will be applied to all communities if it indeed does work. There is no guarantee that enough funding for prevention services will be given to all communities, whether or not the new funding model works. 

The government often promises to create reform or adequately fund things, but they don't follow through on those promises. If the government does make progress, safeguards need to be in place to stop them from backsliding. 

So here are our asks for you: 

-Implement the Spirit Bear plan and adequately fund all social services on reserves. 

-Make sure all services are available de facto just like they are off reserve. 

-Fund cultural services and make sure all services are culturally-rooted. 

-Eliminate all discrimination and bias in service providers. 

-Listen to experts such as doctors and teachers, the community, and community-led service providers. 

-Allow and help First Nations communities to lead their own social services rooted in their own cultural values. 

-Keep funding flexible and adaptable to changing needs. 

-Have adequate accountability measures for all service providers. 

-Make a binding law to adequately fund all social services and have communities lead social service provision. 

-Create a binding law to ensure that once you start adequately funding social services you don't stop. 

-In a reasonable timeframe, reach a Final Settlement Agreement on Long-Term Reform that meets and goes beyond the Agreement in Principle. 

-Make sure all Jordan's Principle requests in the best interests of children are accepted. 

-Give presumptive approval for Jordan's Principle requests under $250.

-Support organizations and communities already providing Jordan's Principle services. 

-Accept urgent requests within 12 hours and non urgent requests within 48 hours. 

-Don't require more than one document from a professional or elder for making requests. 

-Make data available on Jordan's Principle provision effectiveness. 

-Make sure all supports are given in a timely manner without delays. 

-Make it easy and convenient for families and professionals to make Jordan's Principle requests. 

-Fund schools on reserves as much as schools off reserve. This includes funding for computers, libraries, software, teacher training, special education, education research, language programs, cultural programs, mental health support, support for kids with special needs, extracurriculars, ventilation, heating, mold removal, vocation training for students, and more. 

-Make sure all schools have the resources, funding, and support necessary to teach culture. 

-Make a clear joint strategy to eliminate the education and employment gap.

-Make sure all school staff are non-discriminatory. 

-Make sure communities have self-determination to create culturally rooted education. 

-Adequately fund child and family services on reserves, and make sure they can hire enough people and have good infrastructure.

-Stop discrimination within child and family service agencies. 

-Allow and help all First Nations communities to lead and run their own child and family service agencies that are based on their cultural values. 

-Enact evidence based solutions to keep families together. 

-Don't take children from families that love them. 

-Have and fund adequate preventative services so families can take care of their children and no child is taken away.

-Keep funding for child and family services flexible and responsive to each community's needs, and listen to communities to learn what their needs are.

-Have adequate accountability in child and family services so that any underfunding, discrimination, or failure is stopped and remedied. 

-Family support needs to start at or even before pregnancy.

-Fund culturally-based healing of people who have been harmed and are being harmed by the government's discrimination. 

———

Find your MP here: https://www.ourcommons.ca/en/members

justin.trudeau(at)parl.gc.ca- Prime Minister Trudeau

chrystia.freeland(at)parl.gc.ca- Deputy Prime Minister Freeland

patty.hajdu(at)parl.gc.ca- Minister of Indigenous Services 

gary.anand(at)parl.gc.ca - Minister of Crown-Indigenous Relations

[drdemonprince]

The Dawn of Everything is a book about the history of human inequality, and of the concept of states — that is, governments that reign over an entire body of land and the people upon it, using information, violence, and propagandistic charm in order to so. Though today state governments touch basically every corner of the planet, laws dictate how we must behave, and a sharp divide separates the wealthy and powerful from the poor and humble, there is no reason to believe humans were always going to wind up living this way, or that we should continue to.  It turns out that most gatherings of humans that have existed in history were not ruled by states. States are a recent invention, really, dating back only a couple hundred years at most — and before the entire world became covered in seemingly all-powerful state governments, leaders didn’t possess ultimate control over their subjects. In fact, subjects had a degree of choice over whether to remain subjects at all.  Henry VIII certainly wouldn’t have thought of himself as leading a state called England, for example, though we might talk about him as if he were a state leader now. Even with whatever military might, wealth, and charm he might have possessed, he could never ensure that a representative sent on his behalf would actually follow his orders. It was difficult to punish a treasonous or dishonest courtier once they were out of the king’s immediate physical grasp. Wengrow & Graeber state that in fact, this is true of most monarchs and rulers throughout human history.  To take an example from a completely different realm of the world, the societies of the Incas and Aztecs were also quite permeable; though they engaged in warfare, war games, and ritualistic killings, these and many other Indigenous American peoples couldn’t restrict the movement of all that lived within what we now call their “empire”. In fact, they didn’t really have empires in the way we typically mean that word. Individuals moved in and out of these societies quite freely at all times. There was no citizenship, there were no borders, and there usually was no standing military. Kings and chiefs had very little oversight over what was happening in their kingdoms, and people frequently left of their own accord. 

It’s difficult for modern people to imagine a life of such unbridled liberty and unauthoredness. Today, our names and histories follow us everywhere that we go. Knowledge about who we are, where we’ve lived, the kinds of jobs we’ve labored in, and even the medical issues we’ve endured can follow us everywhere we go. Even if we travel to far-away lands with different languages and cultures, we have to seek approval from multiple governments in order to do so, and we can’t be freed of our old associations if we do.  But in the past, humans could cast off their names and histories, or even have their names changed by a new culture they’d joined. Entire societies of people split off from existing cultures, and then chose to distinguish themselves from those old cultures as much as humanly possible, with hunters & raiders sometimes becoming peaceful foragers and vice versa. 

Throughout most of human history, state rule was not supreme, social rules were not inviolable, and people did have some say over the rules of the societies in which they lived. In their book, Wengrow and Graeber argue that most of humanity enjoyed three fundamental freedoms — and that the loss of these three freedoms is why we now live with deeply entrenched inequality that can’t seem to be moved.  The three freedoms that most of our ancestors enjoyed, but which most modern humans lack are:  The freedom to leave. The freedom to disobey an order. The freedom to create new ways of relating to one another.  In the remainder of this essay, I will break each of these freedoms down, provide some historical and anthropological evidence for their widespread existence in human history, and explain what the loss of them means for us today. Consider this a supercharged Spark Notes of Graeber and Wengrow’s Dawn of Everything, and a reflective review sharing some of the book’s most important take-aways. 

The rest of this essay is free to read or listen to on my substack!

[cursedvibes]

I went on @epickiya722 blog and ranted all about how I think that the womanizer characterisation of Gojo by the fandom does not make sense. The points I gave to why this man can not even be in one relationship were:

Trust issues. Gojo does not trust a lot of people due to being the target of assassination attempt since his birth.

Self isolation. He does not feel like others truly understand him or can relate to him. So, he does not truly give himself the opportunity to be close to anyone.

I could go in more detail but I already saturated, the previous blogger ask and I do not want to trigger a hypefixation that will make me write a 2000 words essay on " Gojo got no hoes: this man has a negative rizz".

Also, I'm new to the fandom, so my interpretation could be lacking a lot of elements from the manga.

What do you think? (This is a bait for you to write a loooooooooooooooooooong answer)

I forgot to add. I don't think that most Jujutsu Sorcerers are in the mental headspace to be in a relationship with all the things they have to deal with. Maybe if it is for politics, as in getting married to someone because of their abilities and how it can be beneficial for your clan.

Well, I wouldn't really say I'm an expert on Gojo, but he's definitely not a womanizer. The only reason this is even such a popular perception of his character is because of some misinterpretation of a comment Gege made before Hidden Inventory started, where they said Gojo wears sunglasses when meeting girls/a girl (Riko). And I guess fans assume because they think Gojo is hot, he must be swimming in pussy. In canon, most people seemed to be turned off by his personality and status though. Yuuta (guy who still runs around with the replica of the girl who made a pinky swear with him in elementary school) even teases him about how ridiculous him having a significant other is. Gege said that at least when they were teenagers, Geto was the more popular one. Can't say I understand that because the guy seemed like an absolute bore and always looked down on the people he considers weak just like Gojo. Gojo was being straight-forward about it and not pretending he's a nicer person than he actually is, which I can respect much more than Geto's slimy attitude.

I agree that a big problem for Gojo is the self-isolation he puts on himself that comes with being considered The Strongest. People might be intimidated, but fundamentally there is nothing keeping him from forming close relationships with others once he knows them better. He sees himself as entirely removed from others and not even having/being the same existence.

He is the one who put himself up there and who thinks that only someone on a similar pedestal like Sukuna or previously Geto could understand him because he considers them separate from other humans and closer to himself. The label "The Strongest" is a necessity for him to think he could ever form a truly equal relationship with someone. That way he is very similar to Kashimo and Yorozu, also people who tried to teach Sukuna about love and desperately tried to relate to him because they thought he was the only person who could understand them (he doesn't and he isn't) and that way they only managed to close themselves off to people who could've actually helped them.

Vulnerability also plays into it to an extent because it's no coincidence that Gojo has his Limitless on almost constantly. The thing is, to form a real personal bond with others and have a close relationship with them, he needs to make himself vulnerable and also step down from the pedestal he put himself on to meet them at eye-level. You see that very well with how Takaba and Kenjaku's fight ended. Kenjaku also used to separate themselves from others for safety reasons, suspicion and just general habit. They craved friendship, but had trouble forming the truly equal relationship friendship requires for them. In the end, Kenjaku allowed themselves to fully engage with and get involved with Takaba and that vulnerability led to their death, but it also made them happy and as they said, was one of the best moments in their long life because it fulfilled the base wish/desire that was behind all the wild experiments and merging of people and curses and whatnot.

You could say Gojo is similar and had a similar death in that he was made vulnerable, but it wasn't so much that he stepped down from his pedestal to connect with the people who were already trying to reach him and cared about him, instead he made himself vulnerable by antagonizing someone who also stands on a different pedestal. He doesn't lower his guard, he seeks out someone who could overcome it by force. Unfortunately, that person doesn't actually care about him. If he had tried to connect more with the people already next to him, he might've been happier or more emotionally fulfilled, even if that means he would have to give up his strength or lower his defence. Instead of making children into weapons in hopes of some of them also climbing on that pedestal, he could've left his. There is pressure for him to be in that high position, no question, but he is the one who separates his existence and status as a living being from others. He would've needed to unlearn that thinking first.

All in all, the last thing you said in the second ask is most important. Sorcerers, especially the ones at Jujutsu Tech, generally just don't have romantic relationships or close relationships in general. Not the type the "womanizer Gojo" people are thinking about at least. Gege avoids talking about couples, but the only sorcerers who might be in a relationship are Kirara and Hakari and they aren't part of Jujutsu Tech anymore. Yaga is divorced and we don't know anything about the others except that most of them are very lonely and depressed. Some sorcerers, particularly those in the big clans, are married, but they don't seem that happy. Maki's parents don't look like they love each other or have any joy in their life really. So if we go by canon, no sorcerer is in a committed and/or loving relationship as far as we know (like I said even Hakari & Kirara are up in the air), which makes sense because most of them will soon die anyway. Maybe some of them have sex on the side, but probably more as coping mechanism. With how hung-up Gojo is on Geto aka the closest relationship he had in his life, I don't see Gojo being one of them. Not saying he's crying into his pillow 24/7, but getting close enough for sex with others seems difficult. Plus, ideally the other person also has to like him enough to agree to do it with him and finding someone like that isn't easy either.

tldr: I agree "Gojo got no hoes: this man has negative rizz"

[pagetreader]

@honorhearted

They were known as G.risha, the people (if you could call them that) that were endowed with the ability to manipulate the matter of the world around them at its most fundamental level. Grisha referred to this ability as Small Science. Everyone else called it w.itchcraft. 

In Europe, occurrences of Grisha had been common, and all were hunted and put to death by fire. More recently, about a century ago, they’d begun to make appearances in the new world, leading to what had become known as the S.alem W.itch Trials. 

Now, in the thick of the R.evolutionary W.ar, the tyrant K.ing G.eorge had made one of these Grisha a General, leading a special legion in the R.oyal B.ritish A.rmy made up solely of his kind.

This unholy battalion turned the tides in the favor of the r.edcoats and led to the slaughter of countless P.atriots and their allies for the last two years. Humans were simply no match for those who could command the elements on the battlefield.

T.idemakers destroyed countless ships belonging to the French fleet, I.nferni set the land ablaze, and H.eartrenders damaged the internal organs of every r.ebel that dared to step their way.

Then there was the Fold, a massive swath of darkness that plagued the land in a jagged border that separated N.ew Y.ork from the rest of the C.olonies.

All who had been trapped within it had been twisted into heinous and horrifying flying monsters, dubbed volcra, that feasted on human flesh. The Fold made New York impenetrable.

If the C.ontinental Army continued on like this, it was only a matter of time before it was brought to its knees in inevitable surrender. 

On this night, the only thing on A.lina’s mind had been revenge – justice for her uncle S.ackett. With his killer in their grasp, she could think of little else. Adrenaline racing as the ambush commenced, Alina made a beeline for G.amble, but Benjamin was faster, tackling him in the docked boat and demanding to know the locations of the other shovers. 

It was a valiant effort, but to no avail. In self defense, he’d been forced to stab Gamble. As the bloody killer lay choking on his own blood, Caleb and Alina took their places beside their comrade and stared down at the pitiful sight. Caleb aimed his pistol and, in Sackett’s honor, pulled the trigger. 

And just like that, it was over. Gamble was gone. So why didn’t Alina feel any better? 

Sick to her stomach, Alina staggered away from the scene, collapsing to her knees on the bank of M.oodna Creek, dry sobs racking her body as she shivered in grief until finally she slammed her fists into the wet soil and emitted a guttural scream. 

That’s when it happened. Light burst forth from her very being, illuminating the area as brightly as the sun and blinding any who stood nearby.

In breathless shock, Alina was speechless and in fearful awe of the power that rushed through her limbs. Then, as quickly as it had appeared, the light vanished and Alina fell unconscious.

Hours must have passed by since then, and as she stirred by the fireside, tucked in a bedroll, she prayed it had all been some kind of nightmare.

With caution and mounting dread, her eyes remained fixed on the flames as she groggily asked, “Gamble…he’s dead?”

And did that really happen? Did I light up like a bloody lantern?

[onehundredandeleventropicalfish]

What would happen if Dream abandons his post, like Destruction did?

I know it's not in his character, but hypothetically, what do you think the consequences would be to the world?

interesting question!

i mean, to get the obvious out of the way, the first thing the universe would do would be appoint a new dream of the endless, the reason there hasn't been another destruction is bc he's been keeping his sigil on his person, refusing to abdicate fully, because he doesn't want anyone else to have to get dragged into this

but since you said like destruction did, assuming this was also the case for dream, let's start with this conversation

(and the line here that does always stick out to me is "things still change", because it really does boil down the endless to their most fundamental property - they are all vehicles of change. because life needs change and change needs life, that is the thesis at the core of sandman, that flows through almost every character in different ways, and if you have seven beings that represent the fundamental aspects of life, that means the things they have power over are the things that change people)

(i also still haven't gotten over the time when delirium asks what the word is for the thing that lets you know time is happening and dream just says "change", but now we're getting off topic)

essentially what destruction's saying here is that destruction will happen with or without him, but instead of being in the hands of one of the endless (a being with their own rules and restrictions, their own place in the cogs of the universe), it's in the hands of humanity (or mortals in general, in the comic world where alien species are a common thing)

fate is a really complicated subject in sandman, with both destiny and the fates as separate agents, and within that both can be surprised and influenced by the right person, but all the endless have some kind of connection to time through their father, and if there is a grand plan that's supposed to be fulfilled via the endless' aspects, they would be the ones to push those pieces into place. whether they're aware of it or not, there is some kind of order to how they care for their aspects, they have an instinct for the way things 'should be' (see: literally any prediction any of them have ever made based on their aspect)

and that would be what destruction is deliberately ignoring here, and instead letting every piece fall into place how it will, through the chaos of mortals making their own decisions

and that's a decision that's backed up by the story! because the other thing that sandman does like to push is that ultimately fate is nothing in the face of mortals. the endless exist because of living beings, not the other way around, as dream says to desire. and we see with lyta in kindly ones, she pushed the fates into acting against dream. they didn't go after dream because of the blood debt, the blood debt was the loophole that let them interfere, because lyta was going after dream, and she invoked their power to help her

why should the endless remain caretakers, asks destruction, if it only hurts them, and ultimately they're only needed to complete some arbitrary plan?

(dream who views everything as a story, which must by definition have an author and an ending, fundamentally does not understand this)

so if we extrapolate from there, if dream were to abdicate, there would still be a dreaming, but dreams wouldn't be crafted to serve the stories of the dreamers, people would learn nothing from their dreams, it would be chaos subject to the mind of the individual dreamer. some people still may have helpful dreams, but some people would be hurt by them, and there would be no predicting what would happen. you'd also lose a lot of the knowledge that dream keeps in the library, and there'd be no telling what would happen to all the creatures he's brought into the dreaming to be immortal

(as far as "but we saw the dreaming without dream for a hundred years" goes, i don't think that's a perfect example, because the dreaming is an extension of dream, you can't rip a being in two and expect both halves to just get on with their independent lives. they were hurting being apart, but they were still the channel through which mortals dream, which meant everyone's dreams got thrown into pain and chaos. whereas the dreaming that would be formed through mortals alone would, for better or worse, have nothing to do with the endless)

but there is another clue that throws a spanner in this whole thing so far - death. because destruction isn't the only time one of the endless have abandoned their duties. there's a really short death side comic called a winter's tale, most of which got turned into everything death says to dream in episode six, but there's one page that didn't make it into the tv show

death stopped taking souls. death did not move on without her. mortals were not able to kill each other. and if nothing dies, nothing changes, and the world is thrown into a very different chaos than if death just happened randomly.

i don't have a concrete answer for what this means in regards to all of the above? but here's some possibilities

1) everything i said about destruction holds true for all endless, but this wasn't death leaving her post, this was death deliberately rebelling against the system. she was still pushing pieces into place, but where they shouldn't be, actively holding people back from dying

2) everything i said holds true for all endless but death. because death is different to the others, she's death. the endless cannot experience their own aspect. the ritual that surrounds the lives of the endless don't apply to her, it's specifically stated in regards to the funeral shrouds that there's only six. she must be there for the ending of all things, including her siblings, she has no way out, so she can't just abdicate her post like the others could, even if she wanted to

3) it works differently for all of them. this is the one i personally think is least likely? but since i don't actually know for sure, i think we can consider it might work for dream like it does for death, rather than for destruction (the elder three do have more fundamental abilities, after all). in which case, dream doing what destruction did would have disastrous consequences. it would start with dreams you have while asleep, mortals would only be subject to already created dreams, which may also fade over time into nothingness. but the dreaming isn't the only thing dream has dominion over. stories, creativity, connection, hope, faith, these are all things that fall under his purview. if you could tear those away from humanity, what you'd have left wouldn't be humanity

[misterlemonztenth]

03-15-24 | Today in 1879 Albert Einstein was born in Wurttemberg, Germany. He would be 145 today. He died in 1955 in Princeton, NJ.

Happy Birthday Albert.

Here are some insights from the one and only Albert Einstein. He is most known as a popular scientist who dramatically changed humanity’s engagement with the world. This post illuminates some of his equally amazing insights beyond the science and beyond the physical.

“I didn't arrive at my understanding of the fundamental laws of the universe through my rational mind.”

2. “Concerning matter, we have been all wrong. What we have called matter is energy, whose vibration has been so lowered as to be perceptible to the senses. Matter is spirit reduced to point of visibility. There is no matter.”

"Time and space are not conditions in which we live, but modes by which we think.

Physical concepts are free creations of the human mind, and are not, however it may seem, determined by the external world."

“Time does not exist – we invented it. Time is what the clock says. The distinction between the past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.”

“I think 99 times and find nothing. I stop thinking, swim in silence, and the truth comes to me."

"The intellect has little to do on the road to discovery. There comes a leap in consciousness, call it intuition or what you will, the solution comes to you and you don’t know how or why.”

"A human being experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty."

"Our separation from each other is an optical illusion."

“When something vibrates, the electrons of the entire universe resonate with it. Everything is connected. The greatest tragedy of human existence is the illusion of separateness.”

“Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.”

“We are souls dressed up in sacred biochemical garments and our bodies are the instruments through which our souls play their music.”

“When you examine the lives of the most influential people who have ever walked among us, you discover one thread that winds through them all. They have been aligned first with their spiritual nature and only then with their physical selves.”

“The true value of a human being can be found in the degree to which he has attained liberation from the self.”

“The ancients knew something, which we seem to have forgotten.”

“The more I learn of physics, the more I am drawn to metaphysics.”

“One thing I have learned in a long life: that all our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike. We still do not know one thousandth of one percent of what nature has revealed to us. It is entirely possible that behind the perception of our senses, worlds are hidden of which we are unaware.”

“I’m not an atheist. The problem involved is too vast for our limited minds. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books.”

"The common idea that I am an atheist is based on a big mistake. Anyone who interprets my scientific theories this way, did not understand them."

"Everything is determined, every beginning and ending, by forces over which we have no control. It is determined for the insect, as well as for the star. Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible piper."

“The religion of the future will be a cosmic religion. It will transcend a personal God and avoid dogma and theology.”

“Energy cannot be created or destroyed, it can only be changed from one form to another.”

“Everything is energy and that is all there is to it. Match the frequency of the reality you want and you can not help but get that reality. It can be no other way. This is not philosophy. This is physics.”

"I am happy because I want nothing from anyone. I do not care about money. Decorations, titles or distinctions mean nothing to me. I do not crave praise. I claim credit for nothing. A happy man is too satisfied with the present to dwell too much on the future." misterlemonztenth.tumblr.com/archive