#and it's a white supremacist fantasy without any root in reality

[middle-earth-mythopoeia]

Tolkien’s canon supports a racially diverse portrayal of Middle-earth

I’m tired of people complaining about diversity in depictions of Tolkien’s work, and I’m tired of these people calling themselves “Tolkien purists”, as if they have canon on their side. They don’t. 

People who are actually Tolkien purists: have strong feelings about what the LOTR movies changed and omitted from the books; can quote the source material with scary levels of accuracy; have extremely strong opinions on obscure topics; probably taught themselves how to read tengwar... things like that.

People who are not Tolkien purists, and should never be called Tolkien purists: anyone arguing that all of Tolkien’s characters have to be portrayed by white people.

To start off with, most people already know that some characters in Tolkien’s works, like the Haradrim, are coded as people of color. But they’re generally unnamed antagonists and they appear in the story briefly. I want to talk about whether or not there are people of color among Middle-earth’s protagonists. And the answer is yes. 

So-called “Tolkien purists” often dismiss the idea that people of color exist in Middle-earth because, they argue, it’s a sort of “fantasy Europe.” The problem with this argument is that Europe has never been 100% white. So, this line of faulty reasoning can be ignored completely.

Second, Tolkien never stated that all of his heroes were white. Some of them, for example some of the hobbits, are described as having brown skin, which could apply to people of a variety of ethnicities. Others, such as the Elves, are described in ambiguous ways that could also describe people of various ethnicities. Other characters have no visual descriptions at all. People who think that all of Tolkien’s heroes must be white don’t actually have any grounds to prove it, and it reveals a lot more about them than it does about LOTR.

Third, people dismiss the idea that people of color exist in Middle-earth because, they argue, Tolkien based his stories on Northern European myths and cultures—and he did, although they should refer back to my first point: Europe has never been 100% white. But if you’re one of those people who says, “There can’t be people of color in Middle-earth, because Tolkien based his stories on myths from Northern Europe, and wanted to write a mythology for England!” then you’ve just revealed that you actually know very little about Tolkien’s worldbuilding.

Because, yes, Tolkien did draw inspiration from many Northern European myths, cultures, and languages, but he had other inspirations as well. According to one of his maps, Tolkien envisioned Gondor lying at about the latitude of Italy. Do you really think there’s no one of African or Middle-eastern descent in Italy? And that’s just the beginning. Tolkien also based the crown of Gondor on the crown of the Pharaohs of Egypt, and likened its architecture to Egyptian architecture—that means Gondor canonically takes aesthetic and cultural inspiration from an African kingdom. In a letter, Tolkien also identified Minas Tirith with the Byzantine Empire, which at one time included parts of modern-day Italy, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Serbia, Kosovo, Albania, Greece, North Macedonia, Bulgaria, Romania, Crimea, Turkey, Cyprus, Crete, Sicily, Sardinia, Spain, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria—if I haven’t missed any. He also drew inspiration for Adûnaic and Khuzdul from Hebrew. 

You can’t have it both ways: if you believe that Tolkien’s inspiration from Northern European myths, cultures, and languages means his characters have to be white, then you are forced to concede that if he also drew inspiration from North African and Middle-eastern civilizations, cultures, and languages, then some of his characters have to be people of color, too. You can’t use canon to prove that all of Tolkien’s protagonists were white, because he never said they were, and if you do some research, you’ll just find more and more evidence that actually fully supports a diverse Middle-earth. There is an undeniable influence on Tolkien’s worldbuilding from places outside of Northern Europe, and all of this would suggest that he envisioned at least some of his protagonists to be North African and Middle-eastern. Not only that, but people move around; the Byzantine Empire traded with China and India, and was most likely full of people from all over the place. 

I want to add that, although this post was sparked by the discussion going on about The Rings of Power, don’t mistake this for a gesture of support for the show. While I’m strongly in favor of more diversity in portrayals of Middle-earth, Amazon systematically discriminates against people of color and has sold racist material on their website for years, so they shouldn’t receive praise for doing the bare minimum to create a diverse cast. They’re selling the aesthetic of diversity in a fantasy world while remaining hostile to it in reality.

And I’ve said a lot about Amazon elsewhere, but the main point of this post is that people have no right to call themselves Tolkien purists if they think all the heroes of his stories have to be white. I will also note that so-called Tolkien purists are up in arms over the very idea of a Black Elf, but they don’t seem very concerned with Amazon’s significant changes to Tolkien’s actual stories—compressing the timeline of the Second Age, for instance, which is an extreme departure from canon. Anyone who’s more upset about people of color playing Elves and Dwarves than they are about changes to actual canon is not a Tolkien purist at all, and they don’t know very much about the canon they claim to respect.

As a final addition, I don’t think readers need permission from the source material to interpret the characters the way they want to. If you want to draw Tolkien’s characters as people of color, you don’t need to write a dissertation with footnotes proving that it’s exactly what he intended. But I do see a lot of people creating diverse fan art and saying, basically, “I don’t care if this contradicts canon!”—and there’s nothing wrong with that approach, but are you sure it contradicts canon? Or is canon actually quite vague and open to interpretation when it comes to characters’ ethnicities? It’s important for Tolkien fans to remember that the actual source material here is way more friendly to these interpretations than a lot of people believe, and we need to reject the exclusionist rhetoric of the so-called “purists” who think canon is on their side when they claim that Middle-earth is exclusively white. They’re wrong. Canon is not on their side.

#LOTR #Silmarillion #Tolkien #my writing #rings of power #<- tagging for blacklisting purposes #I've been wanting to write this post for a while #I saw another racist calling themselves a ''Tolkien purist'' and it made my blood boil #this whole nonsense of ''but but but Middle-earth has to be white because it's fantasy Europe!'' #is just racism trying to dress itself up as historical accuracy and failing #the idea that Europe has ever at any point in its history been EXCLUSIVELY white--that's the fantasy here #and it's a white supremacist fantasy without any root in reality #oh and also #this post isn't to say that Tolkien himself didn't have racist beliefs #he definitely had biases which manifested themselves in his writing--just look at the racialized descriptions of the Orcs #but I do think that canon supports interpreting many of the protagonists as people of color

[ruminativerabbi]

Hatred, Fear, Hope

Like most Jewish Americans, I was caught off-guard back in 2017 by the sight of white supremacists marching in Charlottesville, Virginia, and carrying aloft the flags of the Confederate States of America and Nazi Germany. (That they were also carrying the so-called Gadsden Flag that was originally used by the Continental Marines during the American Revolution—the one designed back in 1775 by Christopher Gadsden featuring the words “Don’t Tread on Me” beneath a coiled-up, scary-looking rattlesnake—struck me primarily as a sign of how little these people know about the values upon which the nation was founded in the first place.) The sight of those flags being held aloft proudly and defiantly was beyond upsetting, but not particularly confusing. But what was confusing—to me and I suspect to most—was the chant “Jews will not replace us,” which I hadn’t ever heard before and which I now realize I misunderstood, taking it to mean something entirely different than what it apparently does mean.

Taking the slogan at what I thought was face value, I understood the marchers to be declaring their determination not to allow themselves to be replaced by Jews eager to take over their jobs and leave them without work and eventually destitute.  In other words, I imagined this somehow to be tied to the marchers’ skittishness about the job market and their need to find someone to blame in advance for losing jobs they fear they only haven’t lost yet and in which they fear they will eventually, to use their own word, be “replaced.” It hardly seems like a rational fear, but that’s what it felt like it had to mean, and so I ended up taking it as just so much craziness rooted not in anything corresponding to actual reality but in the malign fantasy that, left unchecked, we Jewish people will somehow take over the world and install our own people in whatever jobs we wish without regard to where such a move would leave the people currently holding them. And that is what I sense most Jewish people—and maybe even most Americans—hearing this chant took it to mean.

But now that I’ve read more, I see that that is specifically not what “Jews will not replace us” means and that the slogan specifically is not about Jews replacing Christians at work at all. Instead, the chant encapsulates the marchers’ fear that we Jews are working not to take over their jobs ourselves but to replace them at work with third-party others chosen specifically to deprive them of their livelihoods and their places in society. And who might these other people be? That, it turns out, is where anti-Semitism and racism meet: the hordes of jobseekers the marchers fear turn out not to be Jews at all, but hordes of dark-skinned immigrants feared already to be pouring over our borders and insinuating themselves into an already-tight job market. And it is those people who, because they are presumed ready to work at even the most menial jobs for mere pennies, are imagined to be threatening the white (i.e., non-immigrant) people who currently hold those jobs and who earn the American-sized salaries they use to support themselves and their families.

To say this is crazy stuff is really to say nothing at all. Yes, we have a huge and so-far-unresolved issue in this country with illegal aliens living in our midst and I’m sure that those people do take jobs that legal residents might otherwise have. And lots of non-crazy people, myself definitely included, are eager to find a way out of this morass that we ourselves have created by failing to police our borders adequately and by allowing the number of undocumented illegals in our midst to grow from a mere 760,000 or so in 1975 to something like 12.5 million today with no obvious solution in sight.

So wanting a reasonable solution to be found—one that is fully grounded both in settled U.S. law and in our national inclination to be just, fair, kind, and generous, and one that doesn’t make after-the-fact chumps out of all those countless millions of people who followed all the rules and immigrated here fully legally—is not crazy at all. What is crazy is the fantasy that Jewish Americans somehow possess the secret power to order Walmart’s and Costco and every other American business to fire specific employees and replace them with pre-selected others regardless of whether those others are or are not here legally. Crazier still is the contention that American Jews somehow control American immigration policy, and that we are somehow able imperiously to issue instructions that must be obeyed both to Democratic and Republican administrations. But craziest of all is the belief that, precisely because American Jews are so supremely powerful, we must be attacked violently before we order the administration to let even more immigrants into our nation. That, after all, was the specific reason the Pittsburgh shooter gave for his savagery in a comment posted online just before the attack: to give the officers of HIAS pause for thought before they work to bring in any more “invaders [to] kill our people.” My post-Pittsburgh proposal is that we stop dismissing that line of thinking as aberrant looniness that no normal person could actually embrace and start taking it far more seriously.

It feels natural to consider the various kinds of prejudice that characterize our society as variations on a common theme. And in a certain sense, I suppose, that is true. But these pernicious attitudes are also distinct and different, both in terms of their root causes and the specific way they manifest themselves in the world: misogyny, racism, and homophobia, for example, are similar in certain cosmetic ways, but differ dramatically in terms of the specific malign fantasies that inspire them and thus should (and even probably must) be addressed in different ways as well. And we should also bring that line of thinking to bear in considering anti-Jewish prejudice: similar in some ways to other forms of prejudice, anti-Semitism also has unique aspects that it specifically does not share with other forms of bigotry. Indeed, the fact that the anti-Semitism put on public display in Charlottesville was rooted in the haters’ groundless yet powerful fantasy about the almost limitless power imagined somehow to have wound up in the hands of the hated is all by itself enough to distinguish anti-Semitism from other kinds of prejudice. And not at all irrelevant is that it appears not to matter at all how impossible it feels to square that fantasy about Jewish powerfulness with the degree to which powerless Jews have suffered at the hands of their foes over the centuries, and particularly in the last one. In that regard, I would like to recommend a very interesting essay by Scott A. Shay, the author and Jewish activist, that was published in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette a few days after the shooting at Tree of Life Synagogue and which readers viewing this electronically can access by clicking here.

Nor is this a problem solely of one extreme end of the political spectrum. In the wake of Pittsburgh, the spotlight is on the anti-Semitism that characterizes the extreme right, but the same light could be shone just as brightly on the anti-Semitism of the extreme left…and particularly when it promotes hostility toward Israel’s very right to exist and to defend itself against its enemies. Indeed, the assumption that Israel—instead of being perceived as an outpost of democracy smaller than New Jersey trying to survive in a region in which it must deal with nations and political terror groups that openly express their hope to see Israel and its Jewish population annihilated—is perceived as an all-powerful Goliath seeking to eradicate its innocent opponents militarily rather than to negotiate fairly or justly with them, is part and parcel of this fantasy regarding the power of the Jewish people. Coming the week after Hamas fired over five hundred missiles at civilian targets in Israel, each capable of killing countless civilian souls on the ground, the image of Israel as the aggressor in its ongoing conflict with Hamas sounds laughable and naïve. But maybe we should stop laughing long enough to ask ourselves how this myth of Jewish power—whether focused on American Jews imagined to be in control of American foreign policy or Israeli Jews imagined to be intent on crushing their innocent victims for no rational reason at all—perhaps we should ask ourselves how we might address, not this or that symptom of the disease, but the disease itself.

Distinct (at least in my mind) from theological anti-Semitism rooted in the supersessionist worldview promoted for so long by so many different Christian denominations, this specific variety of anti-Semitism seems rooted not in messianic fervor but in fear. And that, I think, is probably how to go about addressing it the most effectively: by pulling that fear out into the light and exposing it as a fantasy no less malign than inane. By forcing young people drawn to the alt-right to look at pictures of the innocents murdered in Pittsburgh and to ask themselves if they truly have it in them to believe that U.S. government policy was until two weeks ago being dictated by 97-year-old Rose Mallinger or by Cecil or David Rosenthal, both gentle, disabled types whose lives were built around service to their house of worship. By forcing young people poisoned with irrational hatred of Israel to look at the portraits of the 1,343 civilians murdered by Palestinian terrorists since 2000 and to see, not predators or fiends, but innocent victims of mindless violence. By insisting that young people drawn to fear Jews and Judaism be exposed to the stories of Shoah victims—and, if possible, to surviving survivors themselves—and through that experience to understand where groundless prejudice can lead if left unchecked and unaddressed.

To hope that no one is drawn to extremism is entirely rational, but it really can’t be enough. Just as young people who seem drawn to a racist worldview should be forced—by their parents and their teachers in school, or by society itself—to look into the eyes of those poor souls gunned down in the Emanuel A.M.E. church in Charleston on June 17, 2015, after welcoming their murderer into their midst for an hour of Bible study, so should society itself rescue young people from themselves once they are perceived to be embracing the kind of anti-Semitism that led directly to Pittsburgh…and be forced to confront the bleak hatred that has taken  root in their hearts and to see it for what it is: a fantasy rooted in fear that can be overcome and eradicated by anyone truly willing to try.

#anti-Semitism #racism #Pittsburgh synagogue massacre

[narrowtriangle33-blog]

Quotes by people from comment section, I pasted their quotes because they are of great importance.

"In “Eyes on the Prize II,” Floyd McKissick notes that the frightening thing about “Black Power” for many folks (read “white folks”) was that they could not separate violence from power. It was clear that he was referring to the chants of “white power” that had been shouted by white supremacists in the KKK and other groups. That is, I believe, at the heart of this “reverse racism” nonsense. People are frightened that, as Stokley Charmichal/Kwame Ture once put it, the chickens are coming home to roost."

"White privilege was not free - it was a loan that at some time in the future would need to be paid off in the currency of real racial equality. The longer that debt stayed unpaid, the steeper the cost. The cost is now high, but that is not the problem of POC. 1865, 1877, 1894, 1919, 1929, 1933, 1954, 1964, 1965, 1968, 1976, 1992, 1994, etc. There have been plenty of opportunities to pay off the debt, but too many on power said no, so the debt accumulated interest. It looks like there is a balloon payment coming due now, but I fear the rest will be pushed down the road."

"What if the guilt and shame of five centuries of abject dehumanization has unknowingly been cumulative the whole time? And also, what if that cumulative five centuries of guilt and shame has also unknowingly distorted the minds of each ensuing generation with greater and greater levels of fear and paranoia, of the eventual consequences of the nonstop inhumanity that they’ve inflicted? And finally, what would five centuries of ever-increasing fear and paranoia cause those descendants to do, in order to try and escape the never-ending psychological torture of the debt that they know they owe for the crimes they’ve committed?"

"How bizarre would such a tortured society eventually become? Bizarre enough to elect a madman, fight to ignore 3 million people infected with a worldwide plague, and also pretend that everything’s going to soon be fine, even as 50 million people are out of work?

Is such a tortured image more enraging or more pitiable?"

"The fact that in spite of all the fuckery and evil white people have perpetuated against every other race than lily-white,  y’all simply wish to just *live* equally is why white people are afraid. That’s behavior we don’t grasp because historically that is not how persons and governments conduct themselves. White people being white people is why we’re afraid-we have never treated any ‘other’ we’ve come upon with anything but hatred and genocide, but with lots of torture first."

"And that what terrifies them to their core. Yet, they also seem hell bent on punishing black people as a whole to do so. Some of them see that happening in the future and stock up on weapons, because they want the chance to live out their fantasies, their unjustified rage and not go to jail for the rest of their lives for killing black people."

"Others simply can’t imagine a USA where whites and people of color are on equal footing on all levels. They may not ‘hate’ POC outright, but see them as inferior to them. They enjoy their lot in life and the idea that a POC might be treated as them or worse might rise up beyond them without all of the heavily integrated roadblocks designed to make a POC have to work 20-30 times harder then a typical white people."

"Yet, for all of their bullshit, they know within the next 40 years, if not sooner, POC will overtake them, but they are so bound up in their bullshit, they refuse to reach equal terms. To some of them, making POC’s lives harder is a grand game. Those are the most fearful ones and with good reason, black folks don’t forget stuff. They may put up with it and shrug and move on, but they don’t forget."

White people you better come to grips with reality, equality is not a zero sum game.

#blacklivesmatter #black lives matter #blacklives #blm #blm 2021 #blm2021 #blm movement #black lives fucking matter #sharetheword #sharethis #spread awareness #please spread this #spread this #spread the word #spread the message

[i-am-very-very-tired]

The fantastical HBO series imagines white supremacists as literal monsters but fails to make its Black heroes as compelling.

HANNAH GIORGISAUGUST 14, 2020

Like many young people, the protagonist of the 2016 novel Lovecraft Country devours entertainment that his father finds foolish and reprehensible. Atticus loves reading science fiction, fantasy, and horror—genres that, as his dad points out, are dominated by white authors and full of racist stereotypes. The tension inherent in Atticus’s fondness for such writers drives much of Lovecraft Country, which is set in the 1950s. And no author looms larger in Matt Ruff’s book, or in the HBO adaptation that premieres Sunday, than the one for whom it is named. Early in the novel, Atticus recalls a night when his father handed him a poem by H. P. Lovecraft called “On the Creation of Niggers,” which describes Black people as “semi-humans” and “beasts.” The verses are a departure from the late author’s hugely influential brand of cosmic horror and a succinct illustration of Lovecraft’s bigotry.

But Lovecraft Country inverts the xenophobic preoccupations of its titular author, suggesting that white racists—and not Black people—are the real beasts. Considering the long history of Black people being depicted as monsters throughout American cinema, especially in sci-fi and horror, this is an admirable premise that is often rendered vividly. When terrifying creatures appear on-screen in the HBO series, the threat they pose to the story’s heroes feels urgent and visceral. Like the novel, the show follows Atticus (played by Jonathan Majors), a young Korean War veteran on a quest to find his father, Montrose (Michael K. Williams), who disappeared en route to Massachusetts. Setting off from Chicago, Atticus is joined by his Uncle George (Courtney B. Vance), as well as his childhood friend Letitia (Jurnee Smollett), whom the series promotes to love interest. Along the way, the three face dangers both mundane and otherworldly, from encounters with Jim Crow–era racism to battles with bloodthirsty behemoths resembling the shape-shifting “shoggoths” of Lovecraftian lore.

Read: ‘Political correctness’ won’t ruin Lovecraft’s legacy

But although the book dramatizes the wickedness of white supremacy without losing its Black characters’ interiority, the adaptation bears down on the cartoonish villainy of its white antagonists. Again and again, Lovecraft Country reminds viewers that ordinary racists can be transformed into something even more grotesque. In many cases, these sequences are literal: In the first episode, a white sheriff stops the central trio to inform them that they’re driving through a “sundown county,” a reference to the segregated towns where Black people seen after dark were often killed. After humiliating Atticus, the slur-wielding sheriff and two other white officers force all three Black characters to the ground and accuse them of robberies. That’s when monsters emerge from the forest, ripping one officer’s arm clean off his body and later turning the sheriff into a beast just like them. The sequence is satisfyingly pulpy, with dynamic pacing that builds legitimate intrigue and sometimes even dread.

It is unclear what animates Lovecraft Country’s main Black characters—Atticus, George, and Letitia—when they’re not fighting racists, whether man or beast. (Elizabeth Morris / HBO)

The HBO series, which was written and developed by Misha Green, has received heaps ofearly praise from critics, many of whom cite itsusage of horror to dramatize the ugliness of racism. But Lovecraft Country stops short of deploying horror to convey new insights about the perils of white supremacy. Across the five episodes made available to critics, the show spends so much time focusing on its white characters’ near-comic monstrousness that it undercuts the development of its Black leads. It’s clear that the series thinks racism is evil, more so than even Lovecraft’s shoggoths. Through a convoluted subplot about a cult-like family of bigots known as the Braithwhites, the show also makes clear how intimately racism can figure into Black people’s lives. But halfway through the series, I’m still left wondering who Atticus, George, and especially Letitia (a classic “Strong Female Character” archetype) really are. What animates Lovecraft Country’s Black characters when they’re not fighting racists, whether man or beast?

It’s not enough to ask that viewers root for Atticus, George, and Leti just because racists are bad. For Lovecraft Country to be a series that successfully melds genre tropes and social commentary, the show needs its characters to be compelling even absent the threat of a sheriff’s loaded shotgun or a monster’s bloody jowls. As is, the show inadvertently simplifies the realities of white supremacy with its monster allegory, while treating the Black cast less as characters in their own right and more as vehicles for a sweeping critique of American racism.

To be fair, some of this disconnect isn’t necessarily the fault of the series. The dystopiandynamics of the current national reckoning on racism can make any supernatural depiction of bigotry feel underwhelming. Though white supremacy was certainly a danger at the time of the book’s release, daily life without a deadly pandemic and a virulently racist president felt altogether less eerie. When Ruff, who is white, published Lovecraft Country in February 2016, the country was in the twilight of the Obama years, only 18 months removed from the start of protests against police violence in Ferguson, Missouri.

The book also preceded a series of what one might call “racial-justice entertainment.” In the time since Lovecraft Country’s publication, an entire cottage industry of Black Lives Matter–adjacent books and productions have captured audiences’ attention by wrestling with the threats that institutional racism poses to Black life in America. These works have spanned genres and media—there are young-adult novels such as The Hate U Give and Dear Martin, police dramas such as Blindspotting and BlacKkKlansman, and period pieces such as Green’s TV series Underground.

The recent resurgence of Black horror and speculative fiction offers perhaps the most useful lessons for Lovecraft Country and future productions like it. Most obvious, Get Out, which was written and directed by the Lovecraft Country producer Jordan Peele, was an effective and entertaining film not just because of the brutality its protagonist faced, or even because of its allusions to contemporary and historical racism. The “monsters” hunting the film’s hero, Chris (Daniel Kaluuya), weren’t pure evil. Unlike Lovecraft Country’s Braithwhite family, who are styled to look so Aryan that they nearly resemble demonic elves, the Armitages concealed their dark predilections under the veneer of NPR-loving, Obama-voting liberal niceness.

Read: What made that hypnosis scene in ‘Get Out’ so terrifying

Chris, for his part, didn’t relate to other Black people only when targeted by white violence, nor was he sympathetic only when faced with the threat of a bodily takeover. When police lights flash on Chris at the end of the film—as when the Black hero of George Romero’s 1968 classic Night of the Living Dead is killed by the white mob in that film’s final scene—the intractability and weight of racism are communicated without relying on horror conceits. Even Atlanta, Donald Glover’s Twin Peaks–esque FX series, toys with the supernatural and the surreal to underscore points about race made in its quieter moments. The mystical elements heighten and complicate existing dread; they alone don’t create it.

Racial horror is most effective when the central characters feel rich and fleshed-out, when audiences are invested in them not just out of implied moral obligation. For Lovecraft Countryto simply flip the usual script with new creatures, then, isn’t enough. The series needs to double down on its most spirited scenes, such as when it navigates a beautifully staged 1950s Chicago, where a broad range of Black characters populate the screen and make the story feel most alive. Spending time with Atticus, George, and Leti in more earthly realms—where the relatable challenges they face add as much to the story as the ravenous aliens do—would make the dangers lurking in Lovecraft Country feel more real, monsters and all.

We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to [email protected].

Hannah Giorgis is a staff writer at The Atlantic, where she covers culture

[thedeadflag]

Hey, as an ace-hetero person; fuck you. You have no right, no damn right to tell me where I belong. I don't think you understand how isolating it feels to be ace-hetero, and that's not to discount the struggles of those on the LGBTQ spectrum because there's no denying they deal with a hell of a lot, but that does not mean we don't deal with shit too. Being ace-hetero, I've always felt indescribably different from everyone I know.

My hetero friends wouldn't understand and my LGBTQ friends don't want me. It's like being inches away from two sides of a cliff but you can't reach either. And to have people like you, arrogant assholes who overestimate the extent of their knowledge, constantly discredit who I am hurts more than you could imagine.

The LGBTQA+ community isn't for you to decide who belongs and no, accepting ace people wouldn't take away from other issues, because being ace is not an issue and, although i can only speak from my own experience, most ace people just want to be accepted, and when people like you decide we can't be, it fucking sucks.

I’m gonna be nice and not air out your username, since your first message was on anon and the rest weren’t, and you might have genuinely misunderstood my stance on this. I’m also sorry you haven’t had good experiences in getting support.

I’m not sure how you got that I don’t accept or support ace folks, though. I absolutely do, I just use an understanding of power to establish my priorities when it comes to LGBT+ spaces, who is welcomed into them, whose voices should matter, who resources should be directed towards and made more accessible, etc. and that necessarily excludes cishet aro/ace folks because when I have to choose between their inclusion and the more marginalized people their inclusion would exclude, I’m going to stand with the latter. I’m going to support people who need those spaces and resources because they literally do not have anywhere else, whereas people with more power can find some semblance of what they seek elsewhere.

Here’s a bit of what I’ve said in the past

I’m saying that aro/ace folks are, and have always been, part of the community. Anyone who is out of their teens and has been active in meatspace LGBT+ spaces will be able to tell you that.

But my stance is that certain groups of people within the community who wield violent, oppressive power, regardless of their membership, should be removed from spaces and resources whenever possible.

This includes TERFs, white supremacists, cishet folks, among others, but the aforementioned three are pretty easy examples of groups that historically wield violent oppressive power to and within our community.

It’s not that they aren’t LGBT+, necessarily, it’s that they cannot be trusted as a group to not reproduce violence against the most marginalized of us, and we cannot weigh ideals and utopian goals of what we’d wish the community to be like, over the material realities of what the community currently is.

That, IMO, would be like SWERFs who want to abolish sex work and don’t care about the material impact their policies have on real living sex workers right now. Maybe in a fantasy world, a world without sex work could be better, but right now, there are people who need our help, and harm prevention needs to be the top priority. Allowing harmful groups to remain in our spaces, and in control of our resources, will only end up excluding those community members who need support, spaces, and resources the most. Like, any space that is welcoming to TERFs is automatically trans-exclusive, for example. That’s just a fact. Any space with white supremacist leadership would be poc-exclusive. Just a fact.Due to violent groups’ presence and power in the community, they wouldn’t be safe in those spaces and in accessing those resources and for many of them, there is literally nowhere else. Not potentially some places where they can manage to cobble some degree support or resources, even if it’s sometimes not ideal or sometimes isn’t quite enough, like cishet folks can, but literally none.

So, for your example, cishet aro/ace folks are indeed inherently LGBT+. But as a category, they wield too much violent power and oppression to outweigh any gains that could be made of allowing them to remain active in those spaces. Education is not a viable strategy to fixing that(it hasn’t worked for PoC, it hasn’t worked for disabled members, it hasn’t worked for trans members, it hasn’t worked for intersex members, etc.), but working to help develop resources outside of the community that might serve them better is viable and has been effective.

For instance, a lot of sexual support services have gotten material from within the aro/ace community as well as from within the broader LGBT+ community to help expand their services like sex ed, their hotlines, etc. to cover a more diverse population. I fully 100% support this endeavour, and I’m happy to know that gains are being made on aro/ace information and outreach and support in that sector in north america. That way, cis het aro/ace folks could get support, spaces, and resources they need without exerting violent, oppressive power against anyone. It’s a win-win. Just like LGBT+ TERFs being able to contact The Trevor Project is a win-win because that allows them to receive aid without running the risk of encountering anyone they oppress or spreading their oppressive bullshit in our communities.

Worst case scenario when some individual cishet aro/ace folks absolutely, for whatever reason, literally cannot get any aid elsewhere…yeah, cut them some slack. But they should never occupy positions of power. They should not be able to vote on resource allocation. They should never lead educational workshops. I’ve seen too many people wielding violent, oppressive power sneak into those positions of power/authority, and use their influence to shift voting towards outcomes reflective of their oppressive views/perspectives, or disregard certain forms of harassment inside the community, or promote certain harmful views in community events, or facilitate the social ostracism of unwanted outspoken marginalized people who are rocking the boat too much (often trans folks, poc, disabled folks, etc.), so IMO, it’s too dangerous to let them take root like that. They have too much oppressive power to be trusted to take up permanent space. It really isn’t much to ask that they be aware of how dangerous and distressing their presence can be to more vulnerable folks.

I say this as someone who has spent over half my life in and around these spaces, and having overwhelmingly heard similar stories elsewhere. Power is real, it functions in predictable patterns, and it needs to be accounted for when discussing how to run and facilitate our spaces and resources. Spaces and resources where violently oppressive groups are allowed access and to set down roots? Those end up growing toxic and exclusive against those who need help the most. Maybe one day things will be different, but right now? We can’t afford to let violently oppressive people remain in our communities.

I love aro/ace folks. I do. But power is something that has to be acknowledged, especially when it is directly tied to violence against community members. And those who wield violent power and oppress should not be welcome, and should be exiled by any means necessary, regardless of their identity or position

Ultimately, what it comes down to is whether I choose other trans women, or cishet aro/ace folks, and I will always, always chose trans women. If that makes me a bad person in your eyes, so be it I don’t mind. I know I’m not a bad person, and I’m doing what’s right for people like me. I don’t have the luxury of not being realistic about the generally predictable power dynamics in the LGBT+ community. 

My activism is all about harm reduction. Reducing harm is pivotal, and that means finding ways to make communities safer and resources more accessible to everyone, and that includes helping folks understand where they can appropriately take up space.

My top priority when it comes to organizing, shaping, and navigating our communities is to make community more accessible for trans women of all stripes because we’re a demographic with appallingly low community support and accessibility to resources, and that has to change. Trans women need to feel safe.

When communities bring in people with more oppressive, harmful perspectives, it passively and/or actively pushes more marginalized members out. I cannot abide that, and while I will do what I can to help aro/ace folks of all stripes, I cannot pretend that the inclusion is cishet aro/ace folks is not a zero sum issue because it absolutely is, whether people want to accept that or not. It’s a silent choice people are faced with...you can hate me for answering vocally but that doesn’t change that I had to choose, and I choose my people.

I will not be ashamed or feel guilty about prioritizing trans women when no one other than trans women will. I’m not arrogant for doing so or pushing for certain people to not take up space in our communities as a means to keep those spaces safer and more accessible to those who need it more. Because frankly, the most marginalized in the communities do need those spaces the most, and need to be prioritized. Ideally, everyone would have their needs met and would be safe and supported, but that’s not reality. That’s not how it goes down, not locally, and not online, so I need to be realistic. I need to prioritize.

My prioritizes don’t include cishet aro/ace folks when it comes to maintaining and operating in LGBT+ spaces. I trust the aro/ace community and general sexual support services to understandably pick up that slack, which they generally do well with. I want everyone to get the support and resources they need, but when the inclusion of one group virtually always raises obstacles for members of my group to access those spaces, the support they need, and the resources they need, I need to have their backs in that. Maybe that’s ‘ruthless calculus’ as Garrus Vakarian would call it, but like I said, no one else is looking out for trans women except trans women, so I don’t have the luxury of caring about anyone else when my people are put at risk of complete isolation (which can often lead to death for us). 

#intracommunity issues #intracommunity violence #transmisogyny #transphobia #long post #Anons

[jomanuworld]

The Hebrew Bible ("Old Testament"): Its Roots in Ancient Near Eastern My...                 I'M SCARED TO DEATH!! THE MORE I LOOK INTO THE HOLY BIBLE, I GET MORE CONFUSED.  MORE LIES AND MORE CONTRADICTIONS. I'M DIVING INTO MY THIRD EYE TO REALLY FIND OUT WHO IS THE CREATOR OF THIS PLANET AND WHAT IS INSIDE OUR BRAIN THAT MAKES US THINK AND BELIEF IN A SUPREME GOD, A CREATOR OF THE UNIVERSE. THA'S WHY I AM  TRACKING AND DECODING THE HEBREWS, MOSES AND THE YAHOO - YAHWEH GODS!!!!! TRACKING YAHWEH'S LIES AND THE CONTRADICTIONS OF THE BIBLE. TRACKING, DECODING THE JESUS ENIGMA/PARADOX AND THE PAINFUL EVOLUTIONARY PROCESS FROM HUMAN TROGLODYTE TO HUMAN GOD BECAUSE PRAYING FOR A GOD WHO WASN'T THERE NOR ANYWHERE IN THE UNIVERSE TO SOLVE OUR HUMAN DILEMMAS IS NOT A WAY OUT TO SCAPE FROM OUR REALITY! DOES YAHWEH UNDERSTAND CONSCIOUSNESS? ACCORDING TO KARL MARX, "GOD IS NOTHING MORE THAN A PROJECTION OF THE IDEAL HUMAN." THE PERSON WHO CAN'T FULFILL HIS ESSENCE IN THE REAL WORLD, ACHIEVES IT IN THE GREAT BEYOND AND THIS FANTASY LETS HIM BEAR THE MISERY OF HIS DAILY LIFE. KARL MARX CALLED RELIGION, THE OPIUM OF THE PEOPLE. BECAUSE IT LOADS PEOPLE INTO A PASSIVE FORGETFUL STUPOR. Sabbath-breaking Punished: "32 Now while the sons of Israel were in the wilderness, they found a man gathering wood on the sabbath day. 33 Those who found him gathering wood brought him to Moses and Aaron and to all the congregation; 34 and they put him in custody because it had not been declared what should be done to him. 35 Then the Lord said to Moses, “The man shall surely be put to death; all the congregation shall stone him with stones outside the camp.” 36 So all the congregation brought him outside the camp and stoned him to death with stones, just as the Lord had commanded Moses. 37 The Lord also spoke to Moses, saying, 38 “Speak to the sons of Israel, and tell them that they shall make for themselves tassels on the corners of their garments throughout their generations and that they shall put on the tassel of each corner a cord of blue. 39 “It shall be a tassel for you to look at and remember all the commandments of the Lord, so as to do them and not follow after your own heart and your own eyes, after which you played the harlot, 40 so that you may remember to do all My commandments and be holy to your God. 41 “I am the Lord your God who brought you out from the land of Egypt to be your God; I am the Lord your God.” The Sign of the Sabbath: "12 The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, 13 “But as for you, speak to the sons of Israel, saying, You shall surely observe My sabbaths; for this is a sign between Me and you throughout your generations, that you may know that I am the Lord who sanctifies you. 14 ‘Therefore you are to observe the Sabbath, for it is holy to you. everyone who profanes it shall surely be put to death; for whoever does any work on it, that person shall be cut off from among his people. 15 ‘For six days work may be done, but on the seventh day there is a sabbath of complete rest, holy to the Lord; whoever does any work on the sabbath day shall surely be put to death. 16 ‘So the sons of Israel shall observe the sabbath, to celebrate the sabbath throughout their generations as a perpetual covenant.’ 17 “It is a sign between Me and the sons of Israel forever; for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, but on the seventh day He ceased from labor and was refreshed.” 18 When He had finished speaking with him upon Mount Sinai, He gave Moses the two tablets of the testimony, tablets of stone, written by the finger of God." IN CONCLUSION, IN MY JOURNEY LOOKING FOR A DIVINE ENTITY, I ONLY FOUND WARS, HUMAN LIES DESIGNED, FABRICATED AND EXTRAPOLATED TO MANIPULATE HUMAN PUPPETS. HUMAN TROGLODYTES CONTROLLING THEIR ENVIRONMENT IN ORDER TO IMPOSE THEIR AUTHORITY AND GOD'S AUTHORITY TO CONTROL OTHERS. YES, AN EYE FOR AN EYE, VINDICTIVE  AND ILLUSIVE YAHWEH. NIETZSCHE FINALLY KILLED GOD IN HIS BOOK. "GOD IS DEAD" AND THEN ADOLF HITLER CAME FEW YEARS LATER TO TRY TO EXTINGUISH THE JEWISH RACE AND OTHER INFERIOR HUMANS IN THE NAME OF HIS NAZI BIOLOGICAL CLEANSING THEORY. SO, MY FINAL QUESTION IS. WHERE WAS YAHWEH AND THE WHOLE HIERARCHY/ARMY OF DEMIGODS WHO WERE CREATED IN MESOPOTAMIA WHEN HITLERS WAS TURNING THE JEWISH RACE INTO ASHES IN ORDER TO CREATE A NEW WORLD OF PURE  GERMANIC RACE, THE UBERMENSCH, THAT WILL BE CONTROLLED ONLY BY THE WHITE GERMANIC SUPREMACISTS? IN MY OPINION, THE BIBLE SHOULD BE DOWNGRADED FROM THE WORD OF GOD STATUS TO A COMPILATION OF DISORGANIZED HUMAN IDEAS, REALITIES, AND FANTASIES. THE HUMAN BIBLE CREATED BY HUMAN TROGLODYTES IS OUR ATTEND TO RECORD EVERY HUMAN EXPERIENCE IN A CHAOTIC WORLD. A WORLD WITHOUT LITERATURE. THE BIBLE IS JUST THAT, A COMPILATION OF DISORGANIZED PRIMITIVE LITERATURE. YES, THE FIRST COMPLEX HUMAN NOVELLA USING GOD AS OUR CREATOR AND THE CREATOR OF THE UNIVERSE. NOW I UNDERSTAND, ADOLPH HITLER SPOOKY EXPERIMENT WITH THE JEWS AND REDUCING THE HEBREW RACE TO NOTHING. YES, TO LESS THAN A VEGETABLE BY DESTROYING THE JEWISH COMMUNIST POPULATION AND TO CREATE NEW JOBS FOR THE UNEMPLOYED GERMANIC RACE. YES, ADOLPH HITLER EMBRACED CHRISTIANITY, THE ROMANS MEGALOMANISTIC BEHAVIOR AND FINALLY THE IDEAS OF FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE TO EXTERMINATE THE HEBREW RACE TO CREATE THE NEW GERMANY WITH PURE WHITE GERMANIC SUPERMEN THAT WILL CONTROL THE WORLD WITHOUT A MONO-UNIVERSAL GOD.

[anautisticdragon-blog]

An Evil Race; A Lesser Race? Not in The Adventure Zone!

This piece of art sets the scene for what I want to talk about, here. What I feel most fantastic settings do wrong, versus the ones I'm so fond of that actually get it right (can you already guess what one of those might be?). It's by the very talented Rory Lane Lutter, and you can find the original [[HERE]].

I know I've spoken about this before, but... I'd like to talk about this again, I feel it's important. It's so problematic that I feel it really does need a spotlight shone on it. Especially when you consider the reaction to this particular article about Doom.

Just have a read of those comments.

Anyway, this is the problem I'm often presented with when it comes to video games and fantastic settings (a term which I use to encompass any kind of setting which isn't contemporary earth). I just don't see it talked about, much, and it does kind of get under my skin a little bit.

Let's consider how often we see the term 'Lesser Races' in fantasy.

"Why are they lesser races, pa?" "They aren't good, gods fearin' folk like we is, son." "I see, pa."

So, if that kid is then exposed to White Supremacist thinking? "They're inferior because they're not like me, they're not as white and good as I am. Okay, it's just like that game I liked. Yeah, that tracks!"

The usual retort is that 'one can tell the difference between fantasy and reality.'

Yes, well. But can they? What I mean is that on a subconscious level, are you sure that you're never influenced by the powerful stories you experience in a fantasy setting, where you're the hero and the world revolves around you? Can you honestly say that they haven't affected you in any way? Now, how much more powerful of an effect do you think that would have on kids?

Also, let's face it, in almost all fantastic settings? Humans are represented as being as white as a sheet, with little variation.

So it's just.. "A bunch of white guys! Invariably good dudes!" and "The lesser races, so evil."

So a kid is being exposed to this, yeah? And what's worse is that some races are naturally evil, too. So let's say that you have some orcs in a setting, yeah? They're an 'evil' race, they're a 'lesser' race, and... What separates them from humans, again? Oh, right, it's mostly the colour of their skin. This never has any effect on children, you think? Really? You sure about that?

Think of it this way: Would you sit your young, impressionable kid in front of a show that you knew had racist elements? No? Then why would you expose them to obvious allegories of racism which create the frameworks of prejudice in their minds? Now, instead of being angry, ask yourself: Is this a good question?

If you can calmly say it isn't, that it isn't fair? Fine. Logically, though, I think it's pretty fair. I think it tracks.

I mean, sure, it seems innocent to laugh at the white guy sending the goblins off, running away, and on fire but what kind of image does that convey? White power over lesser beings. I don't like this, I'm sorry.

It's also a reason why I'm actually glad that Griffin McElroy threw the D&D lore book out of the window with The Adventure Zone and did his own thing. He didn't care whether the colour of a dragonborn's skin 'says they should be evil by lore.' He just made cool characters that were good or bad according to their very nature, not according to their species.

Whereas D&D itself has dragons separated into good or evil by the colour of their hide. I wish I was joking about that. I really, really hate that because red dragons are naturally evil. Why would this bother me? I hail from Cymru (Wales). We invented the Western dragon, the red. Our druidic ancestors envisioned them as kindly, wise, ancient, and helpful. Similar to Eastern dragons. There are some that cite heraldry to evidence the evil of Western dragons, but hey, guess what? Our heraldry is way more ancient than theirs is. By comparison, their heraldry is the hip, young teen with the backwards baseball cap. Hardly a point of authority, that.

Sure, this got perverted by Christianity, of course, because organised religion in the dark ages absolutely loved perverting the beliefs of the 'lesser peoples' to convert them to their faith. I hate missionaries. Not to ever say that Christianity is all bad, but I might say two things as a gay person. a.) The Christian God is okay but I'm not a fan of his fan club, they won't even acknowledge other gods and I'd imagine that he's not okay with that; b.) There's a lot of really genuinely skeevy, scary shit in Christianity's history that shouldn't be ignored.

Christianity today, of course, is a different beast. Lots of cool Christians out there making something genuinely good out of their religion and I support them wholeheartedly. It's not like it's innately bad, after all. No, people just can make it bad. Like with any institution or ideal; like patriotism, for example. It can all be tainted by toxic notions and depraved exploitation.

I think Clint McElroy, the McElroy dad, is likely Christian. And he's verifiably a Cool Dude™. He might just have had a Christian background of course, but it seemed relevant in his Adventure Zone run so I'd think that this is probably relevant to him. So if he is, I could point at him as an example of why I know things can change for the better.

Things can always change for the better.

Anyway, yeah. Christianity, back when they were doing shady shit, perverted the notion of dragons the druidic Welsh people had in an attempt to convert them. "Hey fuckers, dragons are unambiguously evil! Here's this list of evil shit they totally did!" That's why Western dragons are perceived as greedy and evil today. The more you know, ding ding ding ding.

You have Christianity's shady period to thank for that one. Still, I want you to keep in mind that the Christianity of then is a very, very different beast to the Christianity of now. No hating.

So, yeah. In Wales, you can find the original perception of red dragons and their innate goodness. Sadly, in the wonderful world of Dungeons & Dragons? Reds are evil because of the colour of their hide. And that's really, really problematic. I wouldn't ever expose a kid to that because that's just such a toxic idea. Good or evil is defined by one's personality, identity, motivations, and ambitions. NEVER, NEVER by the colour of their skin.

Allow me to say one more time that I absolutely adore Griffin for tossing out the D&D lore book in his Adventure Zone run. How do I know this? Blue dragons in D&D are defined as innately evil beings full of wrath, they're fiercely territorial in the worst ways imaginable, they're vain, prideful, and arrogant, and just not all that nice. This is all due to the colour of their hide, you see.

Does this describe the Fangbattles, do you think? Does this describe Carey Fangbattle to you? Ha, no. Griffin doesn't give a shit what D&D's questionable lore. And having listened to enough of him and his brothers, I'm more than well aware that even if he knew all about it? He still wouldn't care, he knows better than to ever assign good or evil based upon the colour of skin/hide. He likely already gets this shit and why it's so problematic.

This isn't just D&D, of course. A lot of settings do this. Tolkien's orcs are Universally evil, too. If I had to think of a fantasy setting truly free of all of this? One that actually has non-human races? Well, a lot of Japanese ones come to mind, that's for sure (Shining Force and Phantasy Star et alia). Western is much more tricky, I think that by far the most prominent example that comes to mind is Terry Pratchett's Discworld.

Honestly, The Adventure Zone was very, very Discworld. Even right down to treating non-human races equally and respecting that women can be strong. PTerry was a pretty rad dude.

The long and short of it is that I just don't like the idea of a race, species, or group of beings being 'lesser' or 'evil' based upon mere physical qualities. That defines the very roots or prejudice and that's not ever something I'd want to expose a child to. If you've got a bunch of white men talking about 'those there nefariously evil types, the lesser folk, always up to no good?' Then later your kid's exposed to the views of a group like, for example, the Alt-Right?

I can understand how that perception could cross over from fantasy into reality. I wonder how often that actually happens, I have a worrying suspicion that it's a lot. Fantastic settings do so much to confirm and reaffirm that healthy, normal, white dudes deserve to be in a Superior position, they absolutely should be granted every boon and benefit.

I pointed this out before, but I'll point it out again: If you had a merchant in a game tell you that kobolds stole his fancy merch wagon and all the gold in it; and then you found a group of kobolds with a big pile of gold? What would you do? I'd say... You're going to kill them and take that gold, right? You'll do this without even thinking about it. Kobolds are a lesser, naturally evil, scurrilous race. Whole lot of ne'er-do-wells there, right?

What if that game then chided you because the merchant had pulled a fast one on you and had you kill a bunch of entirely innocent kobolds -- who were just running an honest tanning business -- for his own benefit? And what if you were then arrested on counts of murder and tossed in a cell?

Would you be offended? Would you be angry? Would you feel like you've been misled by the game itself? Why? There are those in the world who'd totally pull a con like that. Just because the character was a white, human guy doesn't make him innately good. Nor do the kobolds have to be innately evil, either. And yet, I could just hear all the furious Alt-Right voices who'd rage and rage over this.

If there's a game developer reading this... Please consider adding this into your game. I'd love to see the results of this. It'd be a pretty great social experiment. I'm going to tag this with 'gamedev' to that end. Please do consider it.

And I have to admit, there's another layer to this...

I'm disabled. I'm physically disfigured, I'm autistic, and I haven't had a good life. As an autistic person, I've always been perceived as a 'lesser being.' That's where my ire at neurotypicals arose from, and it was so difficult to let go of that. It really was. I didn't even hate the neurotypicals in particular who'd made my life a living hell, I hated the person I'd become because of them.

That was a hard thing to face. The thing is? When you're in a situation like that, you find yourself sympathising with and even empathising with the 'lesser races' or 'evil races' of fantasy. I mean, if a bunch of angry white dudes barge into a dragon's den, slaughter it without investigation, and loot all of her shit? That doesn't seem very heroic to me. I don't see that, I don't understand that at all.

It's not like they followed a line of clues, carefully, and deduced that she was the culprit. It's not like they used non-lethal means to incapacitate her to bring her before a court of law. No, some white dude said that this red dragon stole his shit, so off go a bunch of other healthy, handsome, buff, normal, cishet, and oh so white dudes to slaughter this dragon because... dragon, I guess? It doesn't sit well with me.

I don't know why beyond that. I don't know why it's such a big deal to me. I guess, like I said, I empathise. And I can see that this can easily be transmogrified into real world racism and prejudice since all of the elements are there, the framework is all present and accounted for. Superior vs. Inferior, Good vs. Evil, and White vs. Not White. It's all there, right? And it's all deeply unsettling.

Like I said, it's not like white dudes can be all that bad in these settings. It's not like kobolds can be good, either. It's not like this gnoll here could ever be a college professor. I mean, sure, maybe in PTerry's Discworld (god I loved PTerry, I really did, I miss him), and maybe in the McElroy-run Adventure Zone. In those realities? Yeah. But in most? A gnoll just going to be naturally evil cannon fodder. I don't like that. I don't know if that makes sense.

I don't know if you'll ever understand why this bothers me, if you'll ever be able to sympathise or whether this is just going to be alien to you. Whether it's just going to be "Hey, that autistic retard can't tell fantasy from reality. Ho ho ho. Of course it's okay for a group of people to be naturally evil in fantasy."

I don't agree.

Whether in reality or fantasy, no one should be defined as lesser, greater, evil, good, or anything else by their species, or the colour of their hide/skin. In fact, physical factors shouldn't come into this at all. Nor should there be discrimination against anyone for thinking differently. It should be that if a person has the raison d'être of chasing their aspirations no matter how many die or suffer along the way should be viewed as evil.

Evil should be defined by those who cause suffering for their personal benefit, and don't even care that they're causing others pain. This has always been the definition, for me. If you find out you're hurting other people for your own good, and you don't stop because you just don't care? That's pretty evil.

Sigh.

I'm trying to be happier, lately. I'm trying to do my best to shake off my cynicism and focus on what makes me feel better in life. I'm doing my very best to focus on that and feel like humanity itself isn't just some lost cause. I want to get away from the hurt and the pain that I've been held prisoner by all my life. I really want that, but there are still some serious topics I absolutely need to handle. And this is my venting blog, so here it is.

I did feel a bit of a void in my life after PTerry died, I admit. It was hard to find good fantasy after that, a lot of it fell into the nasty pit-trap I described above and I couldn't stomach it. I'd eagerly consumed just about every little titbit of Discworld-related media that I could, and I wanted more, but there could be no more. I miss you, PTerry, you were a light in my life.

Some have tried recommending me alternatives, but few grasp what really got me with PTerry's works. It was that he had a very complete understanding that he was depicting a world, and if that world was rife with racism and prejudices, it wouldn't be a very good world. It would be a depressing, dreary, and sordid place. Utterly horrible, not worth the reader's time.

The thing is? The vast majority of fantastic settings are like that, anyway. They don't seem to care about all of the prejudices they foist uncaringly on the reader. If the reader has experienced a lot of real world prejudice, that's not exactly going to be the most inviting kind of escapism, is it? I want a fantastic setting to set an example of how a world can be better than ours, something we could aspire to be like. Not something that's far, far, far worse than earth, just so we can feel better about ourselves.

I want progressive, positive, inclusive, uplifting escapism! I want escapism where good and evil are defined by intelligent nuances, where what one might have thought as evil may just even be a different perspective. I want intellectuality, even, god damn it. I want things to be just a little bit more clever than "UNGA ME BUNGA! IZ BAD REDD DURGANZ." Is that too much to ask?

Thankfully, I got exactly the kind of cleverness I want from the Adventure Zone. And if you're going to give Griffin a hard time for not staying true to the setting? Frankly... Kindly fuck off? I don't mean to be nasty, but... Fuck off. Faerun is a fucked up, genuinely terrible place, rife with hatred and prejudice. Griffin didn't want that, he wanted the ruleset, sure, but the world he desired to work with was actually Discworld.

And Discworld does have lifts. You be as passive-aggressive about the lifts thing as you want, Griffin. I much more prefer your version of Faerun to the official version, which is a much shittier place to be honest.

So I had Discworld, and now I have The Adventure Zone. I really needed that. Thank you, McElroys. Really. Thank you Travis, thank you Griffin, thank you Justin, and thank you Clint. I mean that from the bottom of my heart. The world I've lived in has been pretty bleak, and whilst I'm climbing out of that hole I sometimes stumble and fall back in a little.

Good escapism like this helps me out, it helps me get back on my feet when I'm feeling genuinely down.

Thank you guys. You're good boys, you really are.

I don't know what to say beyond that other than I need more works in my life that buck the usual trends of fantastic settings. I want more like Discworld and The Adventure Zone. I want to be able to go into something and not be horribly disappointed by another fine example of 'this person is evil or a lesser race because skin/hide colour or species type.'

That shit gets old, yeah?

Now having read this, go back and look at the image I used for this particular piece and see if it invokes any different feelings to how you felt about it before you started reading. Yeah? Maybe? Hard to unsee when you see it, right? And it doesn't need to be that way, I don't think. I really don't. I feel that the creators of fantastic settings could do so much better.

Just take a look at Discworld, and The Adventure Zone. S'funny, I'm proud of the McElroys for doing so well but I genuinely do feel that PTerry would be more than happy to stand alongside their works, too.

So whilst I wouldn't introduce a kid to most fantastic settings, I would happily, gleefully introduce them to both Discworld and The Adventure Zone without a second thought. I'd be a very responsible dad.

#TotallyResponsibleRadDad

But I digress. Yeah, I just wanted to talk about this. It's important to me. It just is. And I'm happy that there are still at least a few good examples of both the science-fiction and high fantasy genres out there.

#thezonecast #the mcelroy bros #discworld #terry pratchett #gamedev #TotallyResponsibleRadDad #stuff #i don't know #i'm bad at tags

[jomanuworld]

The Hebrew Bible ("Old Testament"): Its Roots in Ancient Near Eastern My...  TRACKING AND DECODING THE HEBREWS, MOSES AND THE YAHOO - YAHWEH GODS!!!!! TRACKING YAHWEH'S LIES AND THE CONTRADICTIONS OF THE BIBLE. TRACKING, DECODING THE JESUS ENIGMA/PARADOX AND THE PAINFUL EVOLUTIONARY PROCESS FROM HUMAN TROGLODYTE TO HUMAN GOD!! PRAYING FOR A GOD WHO WASN'T THERE NOR ANYWHERE IN THE UNIVERSE TO SOLVE OUR HUMAN DILEMMAS IS NOT A WAY OUT TO SCAPE FROM OUR REALITY! DOES YAHWEH UNDERSTAND CONSCIOUSNESS?ACCORDING TO KARL MARX, "GOD IS NOTHING MORE THAN A PROJECTION OF THE IDEAL HUMAN." THE PERSON WHO CAN'T FULFILL HIS ESSENCE IN THE REAL WORLD, ACHIEVES IT IN THE GREAT BEYOND AND THIS FANTASY LETS HIM BEAR THE MISERY OF HIS DAILY LIFE. KARL MARX CALLED RELIGION, THE OPIUM OF THE PEOPLE. BECAUSE IT LOADS PEOPLE INTO A PASSIVE FORGETFUL STUPOR. Sabbath-breaking Punished:"32 Now while the sons of Israel were in the wilderness, they found a man gathering wood on the sabbath day. 33 Those who found him gathering wood brought him to Moses and Aaron and to all the congregation; 34 and they put him in custody because it had not been declared what should be done to him. 35 Then the Lord said to Moses, “The man shall surely be put to death; all the congregation shall stone him with stones outside the camp.” 36 So all the congregation brought him outside the camp and stoned him to death with stones, just as the Lord had commanded Moses. 37 The Lord also spoke to Moses, saying, 38 “Speak to the sons of Israel, and tell them that they shall make for themselves tassels on the corners of their garments throughout their generations and that they shall put on the tassel of each corner a cord of blue. 39 “It shall be a tassel for you to look at and remember all the commandments of the Lord, so as to do them and not follow after your own heart and your own eyes, after which you played the harlot, 40 so that you may remember to do all My commandments and be holy to your God. 41 “I am the Lord your God who brought you out from the land of Egypt to be your God; I am the Lord your God.”The Sign of the Sabbath:12 The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, 13 “But as for you, speak to the sons of Israel, saying, You shall surely observe My sabbaths; for this is a sign between Me and you throughout your generations, that you may know that I am the Lord who sanctifies you. 14 ‘Therefore you are to observe the Sabbath, for it is holy to you. everyone who profanes it shall surely be put to death; for whoever does any work on it, that person shall be cut off from among his people. 15 ‘For six days work may be done, but on the seventh day there is a sabbath of complete rest, holy to the Lord; whoever does any work on the sabbath day shall surely be put to death. 16 ‘So the sons of Israel shall observe the sabbath, to celebrate the sabbath throughout their generations as a perpetual covenant.’ 17 “It is a sign between Me and the sons of Israel forever; for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, but on the seventh day He ceased from labor and was refreshed.” 18 When He had finished speaking with him upon Mount Sinai, He gave Moses the two tablets of the testimony, tablets of stone, written by the finger of God.IN CONCLUSION, IN MY JOURNEY LOOKING FOR A DIVINE ENTITY, I ONLY FOUND WARS, HUMAN LIES DESIGNED, FABRICATED AND EXTRAPOLATED TO MANIPULATE HUMAN PUPPETS. HUMAN TROGLODYTES CONTROLLING THEIR ENVIRONMENT IN ORDER TO IMPOSE THEIR AUTHORITY AND GOD'S AUTHORITY TO CONTROL OTHERS. YES, AN EYE FOR AN EYE, VINDICTIVE  AND ILLUSIVE YAHWEH. NIETZSCHE FINALLY KILLED GOD IN HIS BOOK. "GOD IS DEAD" AND THEN ADOLF HITLER CAME FEW YEARS LATER TO TRY TO EXTINGUISH THE JEWISH RACE AND OTHER INFERIOR HUMANS IN THE NAME OF HIS NAZI BIOLOGICAL CLEANSING THEORY. SO, MY FINAL QUESTION IS. WHERE WAS YAHWEH AND THE WHOLE HIERARCHY/ARMY OF DEMIGODS WHO WERE CREATED IN MESOPOTAMIA WHEN HITLERS WAS TURNING THE JEWISH RACE INTO ASHES IN ORDER TO CREATE A NEW WORLD OF PURE  GERMANIC RACE, THE UBERMENSCH, THAT WILL BE CONTROLLED ONLY BY THE WHITE GERMANIC SUPREMACISTS? IN MY OPINION, THE BIBLE SHOULD BE DOWNGRADED FROM THE WORD OF GOD STATUS TO A COMPILATION OF DISORGANIZED HUMAN IDEAS, REALITIES, AND FANTASIES. THE HUMAN BIBLE CREATED BY HUMAN TROGLODYTES IS OUR ATTEND TO RECORD EVERY HUMAN EXPERIENCE IN A CHAOTIC WORLD. A WORLD WITHOUT LITERATURE. THE BIBLE IS JUST THAT, A COMPILATION OF DISORGANIZED PRIMITIVE LITERATURE. YES, THE FIRST COMPLEX HUMAN NOVELLA USING GOD AS OUR CREATOR AND THE CREATOR OF THE UNIVERSE. NOW I UNDERSTAND, ADOLPH HITLER SPOOKY EXPERIMENT WITH THE JEWS AND REDUCING THE HEBREW RACE TO NOTHING. YES, TO LESS THAN A VEGETABLE BY DESTROYING THE JEWISH COMMUNIST POPULATION AND TO CREATE NEW JOBS FOR THE UNEMPLOYED GERMANIC RACE. YES, ADOLPH HITLER EMBRACED CHRISTIANITY, THE ROMANS MEGALOMANISTIC BEHAVIOR AND FINALLY THE IDEAS OF FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE TO EXTERMINATE THE HEBREW RACE TO CREATE THE NEW GERMANY WITH PURE WHITE GERMANIC SUPERMEN THAT WILL CONTROL THE WORLD WITHOUT A MONO-UNIVERSAL GOD.