#and then start posting about the Civil War or Western history at random | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

earlgreytea68 · 1 year

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I posted 905 times in 2022

342 posts created (38%)

563 posts reblogged (62%)

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I tagged 587 of my posts in 2022

Only 35% of my posts had no tags

#fall out boy - 252 posts

#bandom - 249 posts

#fob - 248 posts

#peterick - 181 posts

#pete wentz - 35 posts

#writing - 26 posts

#our flag means death - 20 posts

#long post - 17 posts

#sherlock - 16 posts

#personal - 14 posts

Longest Tag: 133 characters

#we were having a conversation about how the creature in frankenstein is described as so revolting that nobody can bear to look at him

My Top Posts in 2022:

I have never really understood what this saying means? What kind of woman is this? Like, if the devil is upset you're awake, is it because you're the kind of woman who's incredibly pious?? If they mean that you're a rebellious woman, wouldn't the devil be happy you're awake? Are we just meant to think that you're a woman who everyone says, "oh, she's such a deeply, profoundly good woman" about? In which case why have this thing about the devil to get that point across? I just feel like if someone said this was the kind of woman I was, I would have no idea how to take it. Is it a compliment or an insult lol

151 notes - Posted November 12, 2022

I Read Bruen So You Wouldn’t Have To

You might not know this about me, but in my spare time, I’m kind-of-sort-of a U.S. lawyer. I have a law degree, at least. So sometimes maybe you want to know how a lawyer would read some of these Supreme Court cases. So I read the recent Second Amendment gun control case called Bruen, so you wouldn’t have to. And trust me, you should be grateful for that, because the majority opinion is a 60-page slog through the esoterica of some random British law from, like, the British Civil War era???? And then some stuff that “the Western Territories” did??? Because this is apparently how we make “law” in this country now.

In theory, the case is about a law -- more than a hundred years old -- under which New York requires people to show a reason why they should be given a license to carry a weapon concealed in public. The question is whether New York is able to make such a law (even though, again, the law has been the books since 1911).

The majority opinion answers this question, as I said, by literally spending 60 pages telling me what Oliver Cromwell thought about gun control. You think maybe I’m exaggerating? I am not. I am very much not. You might not care very much about what Oliver Cromwell thought about gun control as a reason for guiding 21st-century U.S. legislation, and I wouldn’t blame you, so I’m not going to walk you through the 800 years of history that the majority opinion provides in great detail. (Seriously, it starts with the Magna Carta, and frankly I’m surprised we didn’t try to figure out how the very first humans handled “very big stick” and “very heavy stone” control.)

I say that in theory this case is about a New York law, because in actuality what this case is about is part of this term’s concerted effort to establish originalism as the only permissible way to interpret laws in this country. And what’s astonishing is...how absolutely terrible it is. How blatantly it shows that originalism is nothing more than a fancy word for “words mean whatever I say they mean.” Like, it doesn’t even try to hide that. The assertions that the case makes, flat-out, are pretty astonishing.

The holding of the case (meaning: the ultimate conclusion) is that courts must “assess whether modern firearms regulations are consistent with the Second Amendment’s text and historical understanding.” Uh-huh. We cannot regulate guns unless people in the eighteenth century would have been okay with the regulation. And how do we know what people in the eighteenth century were okay with? In theory, this question is supposed to be answered by looking at ~~history. I put that in sarcasm font, because...yeah. Even the majority opinion acknowledges that “historical analysis can sometimes be difficult and nuanced,” but, it insists, it’s “more legitimate” than any other way of deciding what laws the country can establish. Yes, relying on made-up stuff about the Founding Fathers is, the court has concluded, the most legitimate way to pass a law.

This is all an elaborate piece of theater that means absolutely nothing, as the opinion itself literally acknowledges:

To paraphrase: The respondents must prove that the law in question would have been passed by other people in history. To do so, the respondents provide 700 years’ worth of examples. But, the court says, “not all history is created equal.” What a turn of phrase, huh? Indeed, it is not.

Again, the opinion isn’t even shy about how originalism is just a series of moving targets that you will never be able to hit because there’s a foregone conclusion. The respondents give the Court a bunch of stuff on English history. And maybe, you might say, that’s not super-relevant to American law. Except that, in a previous Second Amendment originalism case, the originalists then were all about the English law and the English ancestors blah blah blah. So the respondents come in with all this English law stuff and here the majority opinion wrinkles its nose and says, “We find that ambiguous.”

See the full post

173 notes - Posted July 5, 2022

I have a question that I hope won’t cause offence, because it is genuine and not meant to be leading or shaming or anything like that.

I love, love, love your series “Swan Song”, and partly that’s because I love music and band culture and well-written fic. So I should read your Peterick stuff right? Because it’s different characters, but still music and band culture and well-written fic, and I already know I love your fic and writing style.

My concern is this: although I am of the generation who feels that everyone should write what they like, if you don’t like something, you shouldn’t read it, and there is no justification for forcing one person’s personal moral boundaries on the wider population *in fiction writing* (obvs in terms of real life actions, real people have to be forced to toe a certain moral line. Obviously. Just not in fic.). I am not sure how I feel about RPF. I mean, I feel people should write what they want, that’s not in question. However, I want to read your fic, but I’m not sure how I feel about reading RPF.

I think what I’m asking is, how do you look at the ethics of RPF - of writing real people with real names, lives, connections, internet access - as fictional characters? How do you reassure yourself that you’re definitely writing fiction and not being weird or presumptuous about the real celebs? Again, I want to be clear, I’m asking this because I love your writing and I really want to be convinced by your ethical argument, so that I can read your band fic without feeling ethically itchy and uncomfortable. I know there’s a ton of holier-than-thou shaming, but I genuinely am not trying to do that.

No pressure to answer if you are over this discussion, I would just like to know, if you feel like answering.

Hello! This is not offensive to me and I'm totally happy to answer this. I am old enough to remember endless RPF discourse on LJ, let me tell you.

First let me say -- I'm with you: People should write what they want to write and other people should read what they want to read.

How did I come around to RPF? Tbh, it started when I realized that, well, it's EVERYWHERE. My favorite movie, for instance, is "The Social Network." That is RPF: a fictional construct around the lives of real people. "The Social Network" lost the Oscar to "The King's Speech," which is more RPF: fictional construct around the lives of real people. And it's not like that year was an outlier: Every year, many of the movies nominated for Best Picture Oscars are fictional stories shaped around real people. So, for instance, last year we had "Judas and the Black Messiah," "Mank," "The Trial of the Chicago 7." This year in the running we have "Tick, Tick...Boom!," "King Richard," "Being the Ricardos." If you define RPF as "fiction about real people," then all of these fit. None of these are exactly true, nor are they even trying to be. And they're not only perfectly legal, they are lauded and held up and admired as virtuoso storytelling.

Once I realized exactly *how pervasive* RPF is, the less I felt guilty about the fic edition of it, because I think fic writers are constantly made to feel lesser in all of their art, and this seemed like another version of it to me.

Now there are lots of lines people draw about RPF: Some are more okay with it if the people are dead, so, for instance, "The Gilded Age" is okay. But as the above examples make clear, non-fic RPF doesn't limit itself to dead people. Nor does it de-sexify these people, such that non-fic RPF is chaste. There's certainly sex lurking in "The Crown."

So, I personally decided that if I was going to be okay with non-fic RPF, if I was going to think "The Social Network" was genius, if I was going to watch "The Crown," then I wasn't going to treat fic RPF differently. Again, everyone can make a different choice for themselves! That might not be persuasive at all! But you asked how I came to my decision, and that was how.

I draw a line myself in what I write and in what I'm comfortable reading. I don't write about their RL kids or partners and I don't tend to read about them, either. But I think that's because of the second part of your question: I am not actually writing about either one of them, and I know that. I am writing about them as archetypes of a certain type of character. So the real details of their lives aren't important to me. They're just inspiration. (I assume this is how the people who write non-fic RPF view it as well, incidentally. Like, I assume they don't think they've written the *actual* conversation Prince Charles and Princess Diana had about Camilla. They're just using what they know to write character archetypes. "The Trial of the Chicago 7" ends with this powerful moment and I looked it up and it was completely made-up lol.)

Now, can there be people who blur the line between fiction and reality, and think that what they are writing is real? Yes, but I think that in that case the fic is a symptom and not a cause. I think the majority of people who write and read RPF don't get confused. In fact, much of the time fic RPF is much more deliberately, outrageously fictional than non-fic RPF, which often pretends to be telling some version of the truth. And to me that makes it, in its way, somewhat less potentially offensive than non-fic RPF, in that it is not often touted as being about exposing these people's inner lives.

Writing fiction about real people is actually one of our pervasive ways of telling stories. We've done it forever, and we've praised it forever. "Here are real people who lived, let me tell you about all their drama," said Dante and Shakespeare and Chaucer. (Sorry, my degree was heavily Western-literature-based.) This New Yorker article described Virginia Woolf as "describ[ing] the impulse to imagine the private lives of others as the art of the young—a matter of survival—and of the novelist, who never tires of this work, who sees an old woman crying in a railway car and begins to imagine her inner life."

So anyway. You may never be comfortable with fic RPF, and that is totally okay, not everyone is or has to be. But this was my journey to it.

230 notes - Posted January 28, 2022

There are a whole plethora of reasons why Elon Musk is Not A Nice Person and why I don’t want his takeover of Twitter to be a success (which is sad, because I otherwise like Twitter and miss it terribly), but among them is this phenomenon whereby he fired his employees for not wanting to accept his deranged, abusive, demanding terms of employment...and now people are being encouraged to go work for him FOR FREE because it’s such a “great opportunity” and he’s such a great person to learn from and blah bah blah

No. NO. We cannot have Elon Musk make a success of Twitter by firing paid employees to hire unpaid interns, argh argh argh!!

321 notes - Posted November 22, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

So, a thing I was thinking about FOB8, is I’m pretty sure they don’t have any contractual obligations at this point, right? Like, they finished their contract with Island when Mania came out and the last we heard from them, they were happy not to have a label and they were just going to go it on their own. And I haven’t heard anything different, and the length of time it took them to come out with this album leads me to believe that yeah, they don’t have any kind of label breathing down their neck.

So, for one thing, I’m so deeply curious and excited for this album that presumably is exactly what they want it to be because they didn’t have any other cooks in the kitchen but them and who they specifically invited.

But, for another thing, that means that their crack publicity team of, like, Pete Wentz, his teenage son, and a squirrel are running this album’s promotion and I can’t stop laughing over what a wild ride I expect this to be. like.

Pete Wentz circa 2018 in many, many, MANY interviews: We are very excited not to have any record label contracts anymore! We’re going to be free and clear to do every crazy thing we want to do!!!!! The sky is the limit!!1!!!1!!!! UNLEASHED FALL OUT BOY TIME!!!!!11!!!!!!

Pete Wentz in 2022: Let’s take out a full-page ad in the Chicago Tribune.

542 notes - Posted November 30, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

#tumblr2022 #year in review #my 2022 tumblr year in review #your tumblr year in review #long post

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cynicaldesire · 2 years

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We’re back in Texas to visit my husband’s family and collect a vehicle they kept around for him. We figured while we were here, we’d meet up with the old DnD gang and play a really short campaign. My husband decided to DM. Everyone loved his alternate history 1920s campaign, so he decided to run another AH campaign. He set this one in 1865, just before the end of the Civil War, because he was going through all his old boxes of stuff and he has a lot of gear from his family’s college fraternity, established 1865.

The hook and more below.

In 1865, the Couth was staring down the barrel of an inevitable Confederate defeat. Nathan Bedford Forest, Southern General and future head of the Ku Kl*x Kl*n, utilized ancient occult magics to summon forth a calamity.

By his hand, a deadly eruption under the Teton fault (modern day Yellowstone) sundered North America in twain. The occult ritual that caused the eruption brought forth never before seen horrors, broadcasting a Psychic Weirdness across the populace of our world. The American landscape became covered in a transformative ash. Magic and monsters, as if stepping from the myths and legends the world over, became commonplace.

The Civil War ended in a Cease Fire as both sides scrambled to recover from the fallout. In the wake of it all, contact has ceased with the western states of Oregon and California. You and your companions make up the forward scouting party, commissioned directly by the desk of President Abraham Lincoln. Your are tasked with establishing contact with the Western States and beginning the process of remapping the area, post-destruction. You will have to fend off the new mysterious monsters that roam the land and perhaps make deals with the surviving natives. But don't forget, you won't be the only ones reclaiming the land. The limping Confederacy, Canada, and even Mexico all have a stake in the future of the Lost States of America.

He started the campaign with the intention of reworking some Kingmaker stuff and mixing it with Oregon Trail stuff. Our players ended up playing so differently than what he anticipated that he had to change so many things.

First session was meant to be a session zero. We met up and established characters and started the process of explaining the setting and the rules of guns and such, but then everybody expected to be able to just play? But they didn’t want to do the thing of starting in the land we’re mapping, meeting with the Oleg equivalent, finding out about the Stag Lord, etc. We started with Robert Lincoln drowning his sorrows at a bar, getting collected by a Secret Service Agent to go talk to his father about the mission, and then the rest of us meeting together to discuss the mission, then setting off to collect the money and equipment. President Lincoln provided his son and Secret Service man with 20 Magical Rods of Scrying to place along the Oregon Trail to be used to map out the Lost States.

We ended up fighting some random guys, one was a Vampire Spawn (because of the characters that were made) and then we ended the session. My character was meant to be a student of Clara Barton, the first really successful battlefield nurse in the Civil War. I wanted her to be a nurse, a woman of science, attempting to navigate this magically new setting. We were playing Pathfinder so I made her an alchemist. This meant I had like 3 bombs a day and a couple casts of Cure Light Wounds. I took the Healing Bombs Chirurgeon Archetype. But being a nurse, I had no real intention of fighting, like that was the character I made. I’m a healer, capable of bandaging men on the battlefield, but not really in the business of killing them. Had this idea for a little scene in which she travels with her parents, away from the main line of Union soldiers because she was meant to be interracial, and runs into a dying Confederate soldier. She still works to patch him up, despite his protestations, because of her ideals. Hippocrates and all that.

We had the guy that has to be the main character in the group, so he was mad that I wasn’t throwing my three bombs and was instead trying to calm one of the character’s horse and then hiding and not attacking. This lead to me consulting with my husband for advice on how to get more actions in combat so that I didn’t have to upset that guy anymore.

Quick character rundown: Jeffery Steward, One of the first Secret Service agents - Rogue Robert Lincoln, Monster Hunter - Inquisitor/Gunslinger Henry Ward Beecher, Texas Preacher - Paladin Priscilla Thibodeaux, Battlefield Nurse - Alchemist/Sorcerer (Sage)

Next session, we get an extra player, fresh from a bad breakup and getting their stomach stapled. They keep falling asleep at the table and such, because of all those aforementioned things, but they’re a Gunzerker, so they do good damage and get to feel cool.

Added to the party: Virgil Cane, Mercenary - Barbarian (Savage Technologist)

In the next session, we get to the port town, Independence, and start collecting our supplies. Rations, carts, horses, a portable alchemy lab, a dog, etc. While shopping, we stumbled upon some ne’er-do-wells discussing an ambush on our party. Jeffery, being an upstanding man of the President, couldn’t just let this go and discussed with the rest of us ambushing them back. We attempt to do so and quickly get overpowered by a group of like 6 doppelgangers. We manage to finish them off, but it was pretty difficult. We finish our shopping and the session.

Next session, our extra player heads into a facility because they were contemplating self-harm. We arrive at Fort Laramie and run into 3 folks: Old Man Taylor, Arapaho, and Famous Actor John Wilkes Booth. JWB Had some kind of cart and a bunch of stuff on there he shouldn’t have, and asked for us to escort him to a shortcut he found. All our players immediately had their hackles raised, because JWB, so no one liked or trusted him. I was still suffering from psychic damage (anxiety) about our friend that is hard to play with, so I didn’t know what to do to RP with this NPC. so I didn’t really.

Our Inquisitor had taken a feat or a trait or something that gave him an heirloom weapon, which was stolen by some big Yeti guy who told him Fort Hall. So my husband put in a new magical(cursed) weapon called Rectitude. But Robert Lincoln’s player was also experiencing some psychic damage (anxiety) about the difficult player, so he wasn’t really interacting with the game either. Jeffery went into the General Store and tried to get some bullets out of Old Man Taylor, but it turned out, in the Lost States, money had no real value, only bullets. And Jeffery wasn’t willing to part with bullets for subpar guns or a Musket Axe(???).

But during this session, because Jeffery was turning his nose up at the musket axe meant for Robert Lincoln, when the DM went to the bathroom, I looked to Robert’s player and said “I will highly encourage you to pick up this weapon.”

The rest of the session was arguing with John Wilkes Booth and trying to stop him from escaping in the night after being repeatedly threatened by the party.

Between sessions, we level up to 3. I took a level of Sorcerer at this point, having my nurse’s bloodline be awakened while sleeping in the Lost States and having crossed the new sea or whatever.

Next session, Virgil returned and joined us on the journey to Independence Rock. He also stole booze from the General Store. Our Paladin, Henry Beecher, keeps using Detect Evil and it becomes a gag that he did, in fact, detect an evil presence! It’s John Wilkes Booth.

We’re on the Oregon Trail at this point, which means my husband has us all roll a few times on a table to determine what happens to us. Illness, break an axle, lose some rations, etc. We roll on the table, we roll a d6, and it comes up to Robert Lincoln like every time. The first time, he gets off the wagon to take a leak and a snake springs from the grass, fangs extended, and tries to bite your... leg. We all have a laugh and Robert makes his reflex save. We continue and it comes up to Robert again. Same encounter tho, so he goes to water the horses and wouldn’t you know it, a snake flies out of the underbrush to bite your... leg. We laugh and Robert says I’m not gettin’ off the wagon anymore. Someone else do it next time. Except next time, a wagon wheel gets broken! On Robert’s wagon! He jumps down to start the process of fixing it and a snake- Haha, no, it was just a rock and he drove over it. He takes a couple extra wheels from JWB and his wagon ends up a little crooked, but he’s good to go.

There was also a joke that it was the same snake both times, and when he went to track it, the snake tracks disappear at some point. I knew it, it was a druid! Larf larf larf.

We continue to Independence Rock where JWB has us move into a cavern while he does whatever will activate the shortcut. While we’re in the cavern, Detect Evil. You sense an Evil presence! It’s moving around the Rock! It’s John Wilkes Booth. Jeffery stealthed and followed JWB around to track his actions and... Booth does what he said he would do: activates whatever spell on the rock. They return to the cave and Independence Rock rises from the earth on four big legs and becomes basically a big turtle. It walks slowly to the West, along the Oregon Trail, headed for Soda Springs, Booth’s destination.

We encounter some thylacines, some minor wolves, and everyone discusses what to do about them. My husband suggests I use the new Smoke Bomb discovery I took to introduce the ability to the party. (I had tried to use it earlier in a fight and it would’ve made things worse, so I didn’t do it.) I use a smoke bomb and it scares off the chupacabra.

We land at Soda Springs and my character, now awakened to first level spells, is compelled to perform certain actions and shake JWB’s hand. I took a very specific spell to determine if someone is a doppelganger and the DM waves his hand on the specificity of it’s wording and says you can tell this is a doppelganger. Priscilla freaks out silently. She goes to Robert Lincoln, because Jeffery and Henry are having some kind of moment with a chupacabra, and Robert is the President’s son, and tells him. We tell Virgil. It is decided to keep a closer eye on him.

We head into Soda Springs and find Mildred Lee, Robert E. Lee’s daughter. She brought her sister Anne to rest in the rejuvenating waters. But there was a cave-in. Everyone works together to use Priscilla’s bombs to blow open the cave-in to get access to save Anne. When we go in, Robert detects a magical presence and Priscilla detects a disease and gets to work on healing her. Henry, being a preacher, determines that Anne is undead and she needs to be cleansed, but Priscilla starts the process of mixing up a potion to fix her up. It needs mercury though, something she doesn’t have. Doppelganger blood is mercury, though, so she suggests we get it from JWB, he might have some on his cart. Virgil is tasked with asking JWB for the mercury, who then goes around the cart and cuts himself. While this is happening, monsters spring up out of the springs!

Priscilla gets grabbed by the monsters, but won’t stop trying to mix the potion she needs to save her patient. Even after it dies, explodes poison on her (she resists), and she ends up in acidic water (she takes a couple points of damage). But she barely succeeds and treats the undead girl. She’s alive (though the real Anne Lee died like 4 years prior), and is unconscious but recovering.

JWB only wanted to rescue the Lee sisters and encourages them to get back in the turtle and run. But they’re Confederate and General Custer (yes, that one), currently has Fort Hall, a bunch of mystical artifacts, and killed a lot of her men and continues to terrorize the natives because he’s a racist fuck. We were headed to Fort Hall anyway, so we offer to bring them. She wants to go but doesn’t want to fight and JWB doesn’t want them to go at all. We end the session around here because we have to turn back into pumpkins.

Final session is a busy day. Henry Beecher’s player wanted to go to an anime convention that day and then play the last session that night. The rest of the week, we set up a plan to go to the convention in the morning/afternoon and then head to Robert’s place for the game. But then Jeffery has plans and won’t make it, then Virgil has plans and won’t make it, and then Henry - the one that planned the convention visit - has to tap out because he couldn’t sleep. The only people that go to the convention are Robert, his wife, me, and my husband, the DM. We show up for an hour, drinking coffee and chatting, and then head back to Robert’s place to eat tacos and play the final session.

We were supposed to have leveled to 4, so everyone spends time doing that while Robert cooks the tacos. (I had fallen into a bad mood due to many factors so I took one more level of Sorcerer just because it didn’t give much of anything, so all I had to do was add one to some stuff. And the DM suggested I take the Light cantrip.) We head into a cellar found while stealthing around, encounter a bunch of traps that Jeffery disabled, then encountered our Yeti (Were-Sasquatch) friend. He didn’t have the gun, but Fort Hall also had General Custer that we were meant to stop. We make a bargain with him, William A. A. Wallace, Texas Ranger, nicknamed Bigfoot, and try to stealth into the fort.

We peak out of the cellar hatch and can see Custer talking to JWB(?) on the balcony of a building. JWB? hands over Robert’s gun to Custer and they continue talking.

Remember those magical scrying rods? Robert did, and chose to stake one into the ground at that precise moment. It activated and alerted Custer to our presence. He proceeds to tell all the men in the fort to attack and now we have a shootout on our hands.

JWB? runs way into the building. Priscilla hands a bunch of bombs (4 of 6) to JWB and Mildred Lee to defend themselves should the need arise and heads up with everyone else. They all disperse and start shooting and taking cover. Custer throws a Fireball in the middle of us, Priscilla being the only one to make the Reflex save.

Robert Lincoln gets a crit on Custer (44dmg), and Wallace goes on a big rampage. Priscilla, having come to realize she was a combatant now and not just a nurse, throws a smoke bomb. From below, she hears a bomb go off and while everyone else is fighting, heads back down to check on the NPCs. No one is down there.

Wallace makes his way to Custer while fighting off Custer’s attempts to Dominate him with whatever magical artifact he’s acquired. Custer attempts to run and runs directly into Henry Beecher. Henry, being a paladin, can sense the undeath on Custer and proceeds to Smite and Lay on Hands him for a bunch more damage. Custer Dimension Doors away.

Wallace, having a grudge against JWB?, proceeds to fight him alongside Beecher.

While moving around the buildings to get another good shot on Custer, Robert runs into Notorious Outlaw, Jesse James emerging from an outhouse. Robert remembers this man is also a Notorious Vampire and engages him with a blast to the man’s chest. Jesse James, however, is wearing plate, including a bucket on his head with a hole cut in it. Jesse James retaliates with a magical shotgun of his own that spews a cone of flames. (This was supposed to be a flamethrower but the DM settled for shotgun shell-Burning Hands.) Notorious Vampire Jesse James is a Gun Tank.

Virgil and Jeffery engaged with soldiers and do their best. Nothing super exciting there.

When Custer Dimension Door’d away, he teleported into the cellar, right next to Priscilla. He had gotten pretty solidly walloped before he teleported, so when he pops in, expecting a private place to begin his retreat, Priscilla screams and accidentally sets off an Arcane Bolt. This kills General Custer.

When he dies, he drops a strange orb. Priscilla, sensing this thing is magical in nature, wants nothing to do with it and kicks it away.

Due to the last people she left alone running off, she grabs the man’s ankles and starts to drag him out of the cellar to make sure she can keep an eye on this one. Because he is a Lich, once he has died, he disintegrates in her hands. She screams, not ready for all this magical bullshit, and starts screaming for Mr. Lincoln. Mr. Lincoln, however, is engaged in mighty combat with Notorious Vampire Jesse James.

It takes some doin’, but we kill him as well. Robert used his one spell to Disrupt Undead and got the killing blow. With every named NPC dead, General Custer emerges from the basement.

Priscilla starts screaming again, having watched the man turn to ash alone in the cellar. He tells everyone to stand down, though he doesn’t seem to have his accent anymore.

Turns out, JWB, the doppelganger in the cellar with the Lees, has taken on Custer’s visage. We take the orb from him and thank him for all his hard work. He reveals himself to be the doppelganger, not JWB at all, the other Booth that Wallace and Henry killed being more probable to be the real Booth, and says he just wanted to save the Lees. He was one of their slaves, you see, one of the ones they illegally taught to read. When magic changed him into a doppelganger, he used his power to become the most famous and beloved white man in America. But the Lees were scared of him, not because of his skin color, but his blood.

(He tried to have a moment with my character, a mixed race woman, but I was too busy thinking of Priscilla as being overwhelmed by her own magic and the magic all around her, that when “Custer” starts talking to her like a friend. He was ash a second ago??? ????)

Campaign over.

There’s some other little tidbits, like Robert’s player having terrible rolls and at one point I said “It’s fun to try!” and it became a thing. Or the Detect Evil thing. Or the curse on the Musket Axe Rectitude causing Robert to chop down trees if he failed his Will save. Or being worried about Jeffery’s horse Beethoven. We had a good time, overall.

#about me #dnd #story #it's long

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kotofvi · 4 years

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THE MEGA RP PLOTTING SHEET / MEME.

First and foremost, recall that no one is perfect, we all have witnessed some plotting once which did not went too well, be it because of us or our partner. So here have this, which may help for future plotting. It’s a lot! Yes, but perhaps give your partners some insight? Anyway BOLD what fully applies, italicize if only somewhat.

Mun Name: Leo Age: 27 Contact: IM, Inbox, Disco

Character(s) I rp: Canon: Shiro, Sebastian, Dirk, Kyoya, Kurama, Nelliel, Maka, Dwicky. OCs: Hades, Google, Emogene, Dominic, Seirios, Iso, Felix, Reeves, Nyx, Zeru, Ren, Charlie, Dakota, Nemo, Bluejay, Koko, BD, Raven, Cora, Sammie, Lucie, Poppie, Ollie, Alphie, Bambi, Abbigail, Hiraeth, Bonnie, Rei, Rory. Which muse(s) inspires you the most atm?(for MM): Nelliel, Shiro, Rei, Bonnie, Hiraeth. Current Fandom(s): Bleach, V/LD, Naruto. (I’m not deeply involved in the fandoms themselves anymore.) Fandom(s) you have an AU for: Uhhhhh.. I basically have an AU for any fandom if I know it well and am asked for it. My language(s): English. (I’m learning other languages but I don’t RP in them unless it’s just a sentence or two.) Themes I’m interested in for rp: Fantasy / Science fiction / Horror / Western / Romance / Thriller / Mystery / Dystopia / Adventure / Modern / Erotic / Crime / Mythology / Classic / History / Renaissance / Medieval / Ancient / War / Family / Politics / Religion / School / Adulthood / Childhood / Apocalyptic / Gods / Sport / Music / Science / Fights / Angst / Smut / Drama / etc. Themes/Genres you have an AU for: Modern, Mythology, Medieval.

Preferred Thread length: one-liner / 1 para / 2 para / 3+ / novella. (I legit love all lengths, tbh, it’s more so with one-liners I tend to lose interest if there’s no substance to further it.) Asks can be send by: Mutuals / Non-Mutuals / Personals / Anons. Can Asks be continued?: YES / NO only by Mutuals?: YES / NO. Preferred thread type: crack / casual nothing too deep / serious / deep as heck. Is realism / research important for you in certain themes?: YES / NO. Are you atm open for new plots?: YES / NO / DEPENDS. (I’ve admittedly been v busy, so if you’re fine with me takin’ forever-- YES) Do you handle your draft / ask - count well?: YES / NO / SOMEWHAT. How long do you usually take to reply?: 24h / 1 week / 2 weeks / 3+ / months / years. I’m okay with interacting: original characters / a relative of my character (an oc) (It really depends here.) / duplicates / my fandom / crossovers / multi-muses / self-inserts / people with no AU verse for my fandom / canon-divergent portrayals / au-versions (as main or only verse). Do you post more ic or occ?: IC / OOC.(I post more IC, but the gaps between IC and OOC make it seem like there’s more OOC at times???) Are you selective with following others?: YES / NO / DEPENDS. (This is entirely because half the fandoms some of my muses come from are absolute shit so I have to be careful.)

Best ways to approach you for rp/plotting: IM or Inbox-- tbh, Just kick my inbox in and screech that you wanna plot/rp with me so long as you’re a mutual. I’m honestly so laid back?? Sure, it might take me a minute but this is entirely because IRL things and not because I’m putting anyone off.

What expectations do you hold towards your plotting partner: Having fun? Having ideas? I guess, just, mutual interest? I mean, I’m here to write! I’m here to have fun! If you’re not interested in that much alone then?? I guess bye?? ‘Cause I’ll become very annoying to anyone who doesn’t have an interest purely because I’ll randomly ambush my partners with excitement and ideas.

When you notice the plotting is rather one-sided, what do you do?: Oh I’ll just straight up ask if they want to continue the thread or start a new one! I mean, I get it, you can lose interest or otherwise just not feel it anymore and that’s fine! If you’re not interested in that particular thread, then no worries, we can always start more! If you’re just being one-sided in general, however?? I’m not gonna be interested at all and I’ll likely tell you as such.

How do you usually plot with others, do you give input or leave most work towards your partner?: Normally it’ll just happen? I’ll do my “Hey what if they ___” thing and then a rapid bombardment of inquiries and excitement later, there is a thread. It’s usually mutual, the involvement of creating this plot, but sometimes it’s just me being excited and them being excited and then suddenly BAM THERE BE THREADS. S’all good over here!

When a partner drops the thread, do you wish to know?: YES / NO / DEPENDS. - And why?: I mean?? I’d like to know, yes! But I get that sometimes it’s incredibly anxiety ridden trying to tell someone that you’ve lost interest in a thread. It’s alright if you don’t tell me, but if you can muster up the courage to do so I’d appreciate it! I’m not gonna be upset at you for losing interest/muse in a thread! If I cared deeply about the story, I might poke at you and then you can tell me?? Either way it’s fine and tbh, I don’t mind. However, please let it be known that you can take forever on a reply as well so don’t worry about just hoarding a draft too! Tbh, I had someone reply to a thread literally a year later and I was still excited for it! - What should your partner do when dropping a thread?: Just shoot me an IM or hell, make a list of threads you’re dropping and tag me in it??? Which ever! Or don’t even tell me at all, whatever works for you sugar!

What could possibly lead you to drop a thread?: Hmn, being overwhelmed-- I tend to accumulate a lot of drafts and 90% of them are long so sometimes I’ll drop a thread or two to help myself get by. Also lack of muse/interest is a factor. I won’t drop a thread purely out of being overwhelmed unless I just can’t muster up the muse to respond to it. - Will you tell your partner?: YES / NO / DEPENDS. Sometimes I get overwhelmed myself and I’ll drop a thread, forget to tell my partner, etc. Other times I’ll tell them before I even delete the draft!

Is communication in the rpc important to you? YES / NO. - And why?: Yes and no~ Yes primarily! I get that others can take a minute to muster up the courage to talk to others and would just prefer to keep things to a few sentences at first! However, I can and will ambush you with conversation and interest nonetheless. Because communication is important. If you’ve got something you wanna say to me, say it! I’m here for it! - Are you okay with absolute honesty, even if it may means hearing something negative about you and/or portrayal?: Yup! If you’ve got an issue or something that might come across as criticism to say, say it! Civil discussion is absolutely wanted here and I would like to work out any issues you may have with me or my portrayal. - Do you think you can handle such situation in a mature way? YES / NO.

Why do you rp again, is there a goal?: To write and have fun! To explore in depth the characters I create or take on! I mean, c’mon, lbr here-- my gremlin ass muses require some more in depth speculation and investigation into their characters! I love the creativity, the world building, the constant drive to do better and to make others feel something from words alone. The capability to rend emotion from another living being simply from reading and reacting to something I created is amazing and I want to make others cry, laugh, smile and think. I want to create.

Wishlist, be it plots or scenarios: Oh man, there’s an endless supply of things I’d like to do! I want to explore the depths of my muses’ histories more?? Like Shiro, I want to write out the things he must’ve seen, felt, experienced. How Nelliel was when she was alive, how Shiro fared in the Arena when he wasn’t fighting, Seb’s life torn between the various throws of data and reality-- there’s so much! And ALL THE AU’s!!!! All of them!!!

Themes I won’t ever rp / explore: Sure, I work with a lot of darker themes like torture, gore, etc-- but I will not write Rape, sexual abuse, nor will I write child loss.

What Type of Starters do you prefer / dislike, can’t work with?: I can work with most starters! However, if I’m randomly given a starter that I can’t work with for the muse selected, I’ll inform the person who wrote it! I appreciate the effort given but don’t expect me to be able to reply to every random starter given! Sometimes, they don’t even show up in my tag.

What type of characters catch your interest the most?: Okay, I’m a sucker for the underdogs, aggressive folks and the villains. I’m not even going to try and lie and say I don’t immediately look at the Aizens and Kenpachis and go ah yes, those fucking gremlins, give me ten. I also love the background characters? The side characters in a show that seem so unimportant but have a crucial role? I love characters that have such an obscure involvement that you have to stop and ask why and how their involvement was crucial. I also love the soft beans? The ones who are so hyped with positivity and gleaming interest that they just can’t be ignored?? But then turn around and whoop some poor sap’s ass with that sparkle sparkle smile. Also love the upstanding moral types that also acknowledge that some things can’t be avoided and that morality is a grey area dependent on the perceptions of the individuals themselves.

What type of characters catch your interest the least?: Hmn-- I guess the kind that don’t seem to have much substance to them? The ones that are just uncharacteristically too kind. Yes, I love the overwhelmingly positive types but?? Also?? The ones that are too kind and without flaw just?? Don’t strike me as interesting. Also the ones that are just cruel for some obscure reason just to give them a reason to be villains. I mean I understand but also?? Villains don’t have to have a reason?? They can be cruel just to be cruel. Idk that’s always just been a thing with me.

What are your strong aspects as rp partner?: I guess that I’m fairly laid back? I don’t mind if you take 10 years to reply, I’m going to get excited if you message me with some random idea, I’m not going to be bothered by any ideas you suggest?? I can also sometimes give u doodles?? I don’t have time to doodle a lot but sometimes, once in a blue moon, you’ll get a random offering of doodled booty for ur blessing. Also gonna hit you up with random HCs, ideas, threads, etc?? Always?? Idk, I’m not too good at thinking about positive aspects of myself lmfao.

What are your weak aspects as rp partner?: Hnnn, I’m too laid back at times. I take too long to reply and I’m busy af IRL. I’m often goaded into being irritated by some asshole or another so I can come off aggro af too when I don’t mean to be. Sometimes I can get overwhelmed and disappear for a week, other times I can end up overwhelming someone else by being too excited? I tend to watch how much I do and say because I feel like I might come off as smothering and am too used to being shut down and told to shut up so I just don’t?? Do anything sometimes. I’m also not very good at initiating contact sometimes so I tend to go days and weeks without speaking to others.

Do you rp smut?: YES / NO. Do you prefer to go into detail?: YES / NO / DEPENDS. Are you okay with black curtain?: YES / NO. - When do you rp smut? More out of fun or character development?: Usually only if it’s developmental for the characters involved. Sometimes it’s just fun to do! It really depends on the characters involved + if I have any muse in general for it. - Anything you would not want to rp there?: ???? Kinda vague, Idk? I mean if I don’t wanna rp somethin’ I’ll say so.

Are ships important to you?: YES / NO. Would you say your blog is ship-focused?: YES / NO. Do you use read more?: YES / NO / SOMETIMES. Are you: Multi-Ship / Single-Ship / Dual-Ship — Multiverse / Singleverse. - What do you love to explore the most in your ships?: The relationship, the depth of two muses who can be wildly different or even similar. The multifaceted involvement of others to that relationship, the angst, the arguments, the sad moments along with all the happy things and how hard one might try while the other is cold-- etc. I don’t just want happy dates and sunshine, that’s not how relationships work after all! - What is your smut tag?: Kettledrums

Are you okay with pre-established relationships?: YES / NO. - And what kind of ones?: I like a lot of pre-established relationships! However, I can be a tad wary of child muses? Aka: The ones who are children of one of my muses. Reason being, sometimes even I don’t know how they’d raise a child so the muse in question would be off putting to me because it’s out of my realm. Beyond that, I’m down for just about everything!

► SECTION ABOUT YOUR MUSE.

- What could possibly make your Muse interesting towards others, why should they rp with this particular character of yours now, what possible plots do they offer?: Since I have so many damn muses, I’mma just go with Shiro for all of this-- I suppose what they could find interesting is his very multifaceted dynamic as a soldier, human, technical non-human (Zombae), war worn, space exploring person. He can be rainbows and sunshine but also can suddenly become incredibly aggressive and cold. He’s not one or the other, he’s all and everything that he’s learned and encompassed while still remaining fragile and human in the end. Writing with him can be inspiring and can be soul wrenching, depending on the thread. As for plots, dude your character could be in space in one thread if the otherwise couldn’t be. There’s so many ways to go about writing with him?? He’s such an amazing character and the plots he can be instilled in are almost limitless with just his main verse.

- With what type of Muses do you usually struggle to rp with?: Hmn-- I guess the main one I have issues injecting him into place with would be the ones who are strictly non-tech oriented?? I mean, I can still have him there but getting him to fit is just?? Really difficult. Also with people who RP villains of his fandom and expect him not to be volatile. I’m sorry, but if you’re writing a S.endak or a Z.arkon-- you’re not going to get roses and butterflies with Shiro, plain and simple. If that’s something you can’t accept then don’t approach him with those muses. - With what type of Muses do they usually work well with?: He works really well with most anyone! So long as one goes into it knowing he can be hostile with soldiers, Galra, etc; then he can be used no matter what. He’s one of my most capable muses that doesn’t have much of an issue when it comes to responding.

- What interests your Muse(s) in general: Space, mechanics, biomedical engineering, people, freedom, fighting for a cause, flowers, his mother, violin, cats, sparring, getting stronger, constellations, nebulae, engineering, literature, alien languages, cooking. - What do they desire, is their goal?: The safety of others, the freedom of others, the ability to choose, hope-- he wants to make sure those he cares for and all others are free and safe from the Galra take over. - What catches their interest first when meeting someone new?: How they look at him. If they show signs of pity, of fear, he tends to walk away from any possible meeting with them. Otherwise, their appearance is what first catches his eye. How they dress, how they respond to him, how they talk and if he can make them crack a smile with an awkward joke. - What do they value in a person?: Hope, Strength, Loyalty, Purpose, Honesty, Patience. - What themes do they like talking about?: Shiro’s more of a listener than a talker, but honestly he’ll talk about anything of interest and question anyone’s as well to get them to talk about it. It’s what makes conversation with him easygoing most of the time. - Which themes bore them?: Himself. He’ll try to avert any conversation about himself if it’s too personal or too close to something. It’s not so much that it bores him but that type of talk is reserved for those insanely close to him. Also talk of command bores the FUCK out of him. He’s never been one to really like rank.

- Did they ever went through something traumatic?: So. Fucking. Much. Between being a prisoner of a war he was never involved with to being told he was a leader of a rebellion for said war, being a prisoner in the Arena and forced to fight and kill others, being held down and sedated as he tried to warn the others, DYING-- this boy has been thru too much. - What could possibly trigger them?: Certain noises, textures, Galra, medical equipment, certain lighting. - What could set them off, enrage them?: Galra, someone protecting him. - What could lead to an instant kill?: Any bloodlust towards him or those he cares for. Most of the time, he has this under control and tries to be merciful, give them a chance; but sometimes, especially during an episode; there’s no stopping him from gunning for someone’s throat if they had any intent to harm another or himself.

- Is there someone /-thing they hate?: Z.arkon, S.endak, L.otor, H.aggar, Druids, himself a lot of the time. - Is there someone /-thing they love?: The paladins, space fam in general, his mother, his friends, people in general.

Is your Muse easy to approach?: YES / NO. - Best ways to approach them?: Just approach him? Honestly, Shiro’s one of the easiest persons to converse with and get near. That doesn’t mean his guard is dropped, but he’s very easy going a lot of the time outside of battle. So long as you have a reason to approach him (even simpler ones like: his appearance, his arm, etc) then you’re set. - Where are they usually to find?: Oof, honestly? Anywhere. Space, Earth, other places-- he’s constantly on the move. If you want a set place, just say somewhere on Earth and I can work with that.

Something you may still want to point out about your muse?: Shiro is certainly easy to get along with, but he is not without flaw or issue. He has a plethora of issues even after the fall of the Galra Empire. He’s not without his scars, physical and otherwise. Approaching him is easy but getting close to him is not. Don’t expect him to be an open book. Just because he can talk about war, battle, fighting with a straight face doesn’t mean he wasn’t effected by it. He has suffered greatly and it will show the closer you get to him.

CONGRATS!!! You managed it, now tag your mutuals! ♥

Tagged by: @skyvar [ <3 ] Tagging: IF YOU WANNA PARTAKE IN THIS INSANITY, PLEASE DO AND TAG ME IN IT SO I CAN READ IT!!!

#Thx Snow I'm dying now #I think I just filled my word quota that I didn't even have #Dash Games;#Long post //#Shiro;#Shiro Tidbits;#But tbh this was fun to do!!

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whatsthepointofphilosophy · 4 years

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Zeitgeist Disease

Something a bit different today. Paul Graham describes himself as “a programmer, writer, and investor”, although he studied philosophy in university. In January of 2004 he wrote a blog post, and I’m posting the entire thing here. Again, I didn’t write any of it, apart from this opening bit, and it’s fifteen years old.

It’s fundamentally a vigorous defence of philosophy and it’s more relevant now than ever before. I’ve called this post Zeitgeist Disease, but he calls it What You Can’t Say.

What You Can’t Say

Have you ever seen an old photo of yourself and been embarrassed at the way you looked? Did we actually dress like that? We did. And we had no idea how silly we looked. It's the nature of fashion to be invisible, in the same way the movement of the earth is invisible to all of us riding on it.

What scares me is that there are moral fashions too. They're just as arbitrary, and just as invisible to most people. But they're much more dangerous. Fashion is mistaken for good design; moral fashion is mistaken for good. Dressing oddly gets you laughed at. Violating moral fashions can get you fired, ostracized, imprisoned, or even killed.

If you could travel back in a time machine, one thing would be true no matter where you went: you'd have to watch what you said. Opinions we consider harmless could have gotten you in big trouble. I've already said at least one thing that would have gotten me in big trouble in most of Europe in the seventeenth century, and did get Galileo in big trouble when he said it-- that the earth moves.

Nerds are always getting in trouble. They say improper things for the same reason they dress unfashionably and have good ideas: convention has less hold over them.

It seems to be a constant throughout history: In every period, people believed things that were just ridiculous, and believed them so strongly that you would have gotten in terrible trouble for saying otherwise.

Is our time any different? To anyone who has read any amount of history, the answer is almost certainly no. It would be a remarkable coincidence if ours were the first era to get everything just right.

It's tantalizing to think we believe things that people in the future will find ridiculous. What would someone coming back to visit us in a time machine have to be careful not to say? That's what I want to study here. But I want to do more than just shock everyone with the heresy du jour. I want to find general recipes for discovering what you can't say, in any era.

The Conformist Test

Let's start with a test: Do you have any opinions that you would be reluctant to express in front of a group of your peers?

If the answer is no, you might want to stop and think about that. If everything you believe is something you're supposed to believe, could that possibly be a coincidence? Odds are it isn't. Odds are you just think whatever you're told.

The other alternative would be that you independently considered every question and came up with the exact same answers that are now considered acceptable. That seems unlikely, because you'd also have to make the same mistakes. Mapmakers deliberately put slight mistakes in their maps so they can tell when someone copies them. If another map has the same mistake, that's very convincing evidence.

Like every other era in history, our moral map almost certainly contains a few mistakes. And anyone who makes the same mistakes probably didn't do it by accident. It would be like someone claiming they had independently decided in 1972 that bell-bottom jeans were a good idea.

If you believe everything you're supposed to now, how can you be sure you wouldn't also have believed everything you were supposed to if you had grown up among the plantation owners of the pre-Civil War South, or in Germany in the 1930s-- or among the Mongols in 1200, for that matter? Odds are you would have.

Back in the era of terms like "well-adjusted," the idea seemed to be that there was something wrong with you if you thought things you didn't dare say out loud. This seems backward. Almost certainly, there is something wrong with you if you don't think things you don't dare say out loud.

Trouble

What can't we say? One way to find these ideas is simply to look at things people do say, and get in trouble for.

Of course, we're not just looking for things we can't say. We're looking for things we can't say that are true, or at least have enough chance of being true that the question should remain open. But many of the things people get in trouble for saying probably do make it over this second, lower threshold. No one gets in trouble for saying that 2 + 2 is 5, or that people in Pittsburgh are ten feet tall. Such obviously false statements might be treated as jokes, or at worst as evidence of insanity, but they are not likely to make anyone mad. The statements that make people mad are the ones they worry might be believed. I suspect the statements that make people maddest are those they worry might be true.

If Galileo had said that people in Padua were ten feet tall, he would have been regarded as a harmless eccentric. Saying the earth orbited the sun was another matter. The church knew this would set people thinking.

Certainly, as we look back on the past, this rule of thumb works well. A lot of the statements people got in trouble for seem harmless now. So it's likely that visitors from the future would agree with at least some of the statements that get people in trouble today. Do we have no Galileos? Not likely.

To find them, keep track of opinions that get people in trouble, and start asking, could this be true? Ok, it may be heretical (or whatever modern equivalent), but might it also be true?

Heresy

This won't get us all the answers, though. What if no one happens to have gotten in trouble for a particular idea yet? What if some idea would be so radioactively controversial that no one would dare express it in public? How can we find these too?

Another approach is to follow that word, heresy. In every period of history, there seem to have been labels that got applied to statements to shoot them down before anyone had a chance to ask if they were true or not. "Blasphemy", "sacrilege", and "heresy" were such labels for a good part of western history, as in more recent times "indecent", "improper", and "unamerican" have been. By now these labels have lost their sting. They always do. By now they're mostly used ironically. But in their time, they had real force.

The word "defeatist", for example, has no particular political connotations now. But in Germany in 1917 it was a weapon, used by Ludendorff in a purge of those who favored a negotiated peace. At the start of World War II it was used extensively by Churchill and his supporters to silence their opponents. In 1940, any argument against Churchill's aggressive policy was "defeatist". Was it right or wrong? Ideally, no one got far enough to ask that.

We have such labels today, of course, quite a lot of them, from the all-purpose "inappropriate" to the dreaded "divisive." In any period, it should be easy to figure out what such labels are, simply by looking at what people call ideas they disagree with besides untrue. When a politician says his opponent is mistaken, that's a straightforward criticism, but when he attacks a statement as "divisive" or "racially insensitive" instead of arguing that it's false, we should start paying attention.

So another way to figure out which of our taboos future generations will laugh at is to start with the labels. Take a label-- "sexist", for example-- and try to think of some ideas that would be called that. Then for each ask, might this be true?

Just start listing ideas at random? Yes, because they won't really be random. The ideas that come to mind first will be the most plausible ones. They'll be things you've already noticed but didn't let yourself think.

In 1989 some clever researchers tracked the eye movements of radiologists as they scanned chest images for signs of lung cancer. They found that even when the radiologists missed a cancerous lesion, their eyes had usually paused at the site of it. Part of their brain knew there was something there; it just didn't percolate all the way up into conscious knowledge. I think many interesting heretical thoughts are already mostly formed in our minds. If we turn off our self-censorship temporarily, those will be the first to emerge.

Time and Space

If we could look into the future it would be obvious which of our taboos they'd laugh at. We can't do that, but we can do something almost as good: we can look into the past. Another way to figure out what we're getting wrong is to look at what used to be acceptable and is now unthinkable.

Changes between the past and the present sometimes do represent progress. In a field like physics, if we disagree with past generations it's because we're right and they're wrong. But this becomes rapidly less true as you move away from the certainty of the hard sciences. By the time you get to social questions, many changes are just fashion. The age of consent fluctuates like hemlines.

We may imagine that we are a great deal smarter and more virtuous than past generations, but the more history you read, the less likely this seems. People in past times were much like us. Not heroes, not barbarians. Whatever their ideas were, they were ideas reasonable people could believe.

So here is another source of interesting heresies. Diff present ideas against those of various past cultures, and see what you get. Some will be shocking by present standards. Ok, fine; but which might also be true?

You don't have to look into the past to find big differences. In our own time, different societies have wildly varying ideas of what's ok and what isn't. So you can try diffing other cultures' ideas against ours as well. (The best way to do that is to visit them.)

You might find contradictory taboos. In one culture it might seem shocking to think x, while in another it was shocking not to. But I think usually the shock is on one side. In one culture x is ok, and in another it's considered shocking. My hypothesis is that the side that's shocked is most likely to be the mistaken one.

I suspect the only taboos that are more than taboos are the ones that are universal, or nearly so. Murder for example. But any idea that's considered harmless in a significant percentage of times and places, and yet is taboo in ours, is a good candidate for something we're mistaken about.

For example, at the high water mark of political correctness in the early 1990s, Harvard distributed to its faculty and staff a brochure saying, among other things, that it was inappropriate to compliment a colleague or student's clothes. No more "nice shirt." I think this principle is rare among the world's cultures, past or present. There are probably more where it's considered especially polite to compliment someone's clothing than where it's considered improper. So odds are this is, in a mild form, an example of one of the taboos a visitor from the future would have to be careful to avoid if he happened to set his time machine for Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1992.

Prigs

Of course, if they have time machines in the future they'll probably have a separate reference manual just for Cambridge. This has always been a fussy place, a town of i dotters and t crossers, where you're liable to get both your grammar and your ideas corrected in the same conversation. And that suggests another way to find taboos. Look for prigs, and see what's inside their heads.

Kids' heads are repositories of all our taboos. It seems fitting to us that kids' ideas should be bright and clean. The picture we give them of the world is not merely simplified, to suit their developing minds, but sanitized as well, to suit our ideas of what kids ought to think.

You can see this on a small scale in the matter of dirty words. A lot of my friends are starting to have children now, and they're all trying not to use words like "fuck" and "shit" within baby's hearing, lest baby start using these words too. But these words are part of the language, and adults use them all the time. So parents are giving their kids an inaccurate idea of the language by not using them. Why do they do this? Because they don't think it's fitting that kids should use the whole language. We like children to seem innocent.

Most adults, likewise, deliberately give kids a misleading view of the world. One of the most obvious examples is Santa Claus. We think it's cute for little kids to believe in Santa Claus. I myself think it's cute for little kids to believe in Santa Claus. But one wonders, do we tell them this stuff for their sake, or for ours?

I'm not arguing for or against this idea here. It is probably inevitable that parents should want to dress up their kids' minds in cute little baby outfits. I'll probably do it myself. The important thing for our purposes is that, as a result, a well brought-up teenage kid's brain is a more or less complete collection of all our taboos-- and in mint condition, because they're untainted by experience. Whatever we think that will later turn out to be ridiculous, it's almost certainly inside that head.

How do we get at these ideas? By the following thought experiment. Imagine a kind of latter-day Conrad character who has worked for a time as a mercenary in Africa, for a time as a doctor in Nepal, for a time as the manager of a nightclub in Miami. The specifics don't matter-- just someone who has seen a lot. Now imagine comparing what's inside this guy's head with what's inside the head of a well-behaved sixteen year old girl from the suburbs. What does he think that would shock her? He knows the world; she knows, or at least embodies, present taboos. Subtract one from the other, and the result is what we can't say.

Mechanism

I can think of one more way to figure out what we can't say: to look at how taboos are created. How do moral fashions arise, and why are they adopted? If we can understand this mechanism, we may be able to see it at work in our own time.

Moral fashions don't seem to be created the way ordinary fashions are. Ordinary fashions seem to arise by accident when everyone imitates the whim of some influential person. The fashion for broad-toed shoes in late fifteenth century Europe began because Charles VIII of France had six toes on one foot. The fashion for the name Gary began when the actor Frank Cooper adopted the name of a tough mill town in Indiana. Moral fashions more often seem to be created deliberately. When there's something we can't say, it's often because some group doesn't want us to.

The prohibition will be strongest when the group is nervous. The irony of Galileo's situation was that he got in trouble for repeating Copernicus's ideas. Copernicus himself didn't. In fact, Copernicus was a canon of a cathedral, and dedicated his book to the pope. But by Galileo's time the church was in the throes of the Counter-Reformation and was much more worried about unorthodox ideas.

To launch a taboo, a group has to be poised halfway between weakness and power. A confident group doesn't need taboos to protect it. It's not considered improper to make disparaging remarks about Americans, or the English. And yet a group has to be powerful enough to enforce a taboo. Coprophiles, as of this writing, don't seem to be numerous or energetic enough to have had their interests promoted to a lifestyle.

I suspect the biggest source of moral taboos will turn out to be power struggles in which one side only barely has the upper hand. That's where you'll find a group powerful enough to enforce taboos, but weak enough to need them.

Most struggles, whatever they're really about, will be cast as struggles between competing ideas. The English Reformation was at bottom a struggle for wealth and power, but it ended up being cast as a struggle to preserve the souls of Englishmen from the corrupting influence of Rome. It's easier to get people to fight for an idea. And whichever side wins, their ideas will also be considered to have triumphed, as if God wanted to signal his agreement by selecting that side as the victor.

We often like to think of World War II as a triumph of freedom over totalitarianism. We conveniently forget that the Soviet Union was also one of the winners.

I'm not saying that struggles are never about ideas, just that they will always be made to seem to be about ideas, whether they are or not. And just as there is nothing so unfashionable as the last, discarded fashion, there is nothing so wrong as the principles of the most recently defeated opponent. Representational art is only now recovering from the approval of both Hitler and Stalin.

Although moral fashions tend to arise from different sources than fashions in clothing, the mechanism of their adoption seems much the same. The early adopters will be driven by ambition: self-consciously cool people who want to distinguish themselves from the common herd. As the fashion becomes established they'll be joined by a second, much larger group, driven by fear. This second group adopt the fashion not because they want to stand out but because they are afraid of standing out.

So if you want to figure out what we can't say, look at the machinery of fashion and try to predict what it would make unsayable. What groups are powerful but nervous, and what ideas would they like to suppress? What ideas were tarnished by association when they ended up on the losing side of a recent struggle? If a self-consciously cool person wanted to differentiate himself from preceding fashions (e.g. from his parents), which of their ideas would he tend to reject? What are conventional-minded people afraid of saying?

This technique won't find us all the things we can't say. I can think of some that aren't the result of any recent struggle. Many of our taboos are rooted deep in the past. But this approach, combined with the preceding four, will turn up a good number of unthinkable ideas.

Why

Some would ask, why would one want to do this? Why deliberately go poking around among nasty, disreputable ideas? Why look under rocks?

I do it, first of all, for the same reason I did look under rocks as a kid: plain curiosity. And I'm especially curious about anything that's forbidden. Let me see and decide for myself.

Second, I do it because I don't like the idea of being mistaken. If, like other eras, we believe things that will later seem ridiculous, I want to know what they are so that I, at least, can avoid believing them.

Third, I do it because it's good for the brain. To do good work you need a brain that can go anywhere. And you especially need a brain that's in the habit of going where it's not supposed to.

Great work tends to grow out of ideas that others have overlooked, and no idea is so overlooked as one that's unthinkable. Natural selection, for example. It's so simple. Why didn't anyone think of it before? Well, that is all too obvious. Darwin himself was careful to tiptoe around the implications of his theory. He wanted to spend his time thinking about biology, not arguing with people who accused him of being an atheist.

In the sciences, especially, it's a great advantage to be able to question assumptions. The m.o. of scientists, or at least of the good ones, is precisely that: look for places where conventional wisdom is broken, and then try to pry apart the cracks and see what's underneath. That's where new theories come from.

A good scientist, in other words, does not merely ignore conventional wisdom, but makes a special effort to break it. Scientists go looking for trouble. This should be the m.o. of any scholar, but scientists seem much more willing to look under rocks.

Why? It could be that the scientists are simply smarter; most physicists could, if necessary, make it through a PhD program in French literature, but few professors of French literature could make it through a PhD program in physics. Or it could be because it's clearer in the sciences whether theories are true or false, and this makes scientists bolder. (Or it could be that, because it's clearer in the sciences whether theories are true or false, you have to be smart to get jobs as a scientist, rather than just a good politician.)

Whatever the reason, there seems a clear correlation between intelligence and willingness to consider shocking ideas. This isn't just because smart people actively work to find holes in conventional thinking. I think conventions also have less hold over them to start with. You can see that in the way they dress.

It's not only in the sciences that heresy pays off. In any competitive field, you can win big by seeing things that others daren't. And in every field there are probably heresies few dare utter. Within the US car industry there is a lot of hand-wringing now about declining market share. Yet the cause is so obvious that any observant outsider could explain it in a second: they make bad cars. And they have for so long that by now the US car brands are antibrands-- something you'd buy a car despite, not because of. Cadillac stopped being the Cadillac of cars in about 1970. And yet I suspect no one dares say this. Otherwise these companies would have tried to fix the problem.

Training yourself to think unthinkable thoughts has advantages beyond the thoughts themselves. It's like stretching. When you stretch before running, you put your body into positions much more extreme than any it will assume during the run. If you can think things so outside the box that they'd make people's hair stand on end, you'll have no trouble with the small trips outside the box that people call innovative.

Pensieri Stretti

When you find something you can't say, what do you do with it? My advice is, don't say it. Or at least, pick your battles.

Suppose in the future there is a movement to ban the color yellow. Proposals to paint anything yellow are denounced as "yellowist", as is anyone suspected of liking the color. People who like orange are tolerated but viewed with suspicion. Suppose you realize there is nothing wrong with yellow. If you go around saying this, you'll be denounced as a yellowist too, and you'll find yourself having a lot of arguments with anti-yellowists. If your aim in life is to rehabilitate the color yellow, that may be what you want. But if you're mostly interested in other questions, being labelled as a yellowist will just be a distraction. Argue with idiots, and you become an idiot.

The most important thing is to be able to think what you want, not to say what you want. And if you feel you have to say everything you think, it may inhibit you from thinking improper thoughts. I think it's better to follow the opposite policy. Draw a sharp line between your thoughts and your speech. Inside your head, anything is allowed. Within my head I make a point of encouraging the most outrageous thoughts I can imagine. But, as in a secret society, nothing that happens within the building should be told to outsiders. The first rule of Fight Club is, you do not talk about Fight Club.

When Milton was going to visit Italy in the 1630s, Sir Henry Wootton, who had been ambassador to Venice, told him his motto should be "i pensieri stretti & il viso sciolto." Closed thoughts and an open face. Smile at everyone, and don't tell them what you're thinking. This was wise advice. Milton was an argumentative fellow, and the Inquisition was a bit restive at that time. But I think the difference between Milton's situation and ours is only a matter of degree. Every era has its heresies, and if you don't get imprisoned for them you will at least get in enough trouble that it becomes a complete distraction.

I admit it seems cowardly to keep quiet. When I read about the harassment to which the Scientologists subject their critics, or that pro-Israel groups are "compiling dossiers" on those who speak out against Israeli human rights abuses, or about people being sued for violating the DMCA, part of me wants to say, "All right, you bastards, bring it on." The problem is, there are so many things you can't say. If you said them all you'd have no time left for your real work. You'd have to turn into Noam Chomsky.

The trouble with keeping your thoughts secret, though, is that you lose the advantages of discussion. Talking about an idea leads to more ideas. So the optimal plan, if you can manage it, is to have a few trusted friends you can speak openly to. This is not just a way to develop ideas; it's also a good rule of thumb for choosing friends. The people you can say heretical things to without getting jumped on are also the most interesting to know.

Viso Sciolto?

I don't think we need the viso sciolto so much as the pensieri stretti. Perhaps the best policy is to make it plain that you don't agree with whatever zealotry is current in your time, but not to be too specific about what you disagree with. Zealots will try to draw you out, but you don't have to answer them. If they try to force you to treat a question on their terms by asking "are you with us or against us?" you can always just answer "neither".

Better still, answer "I haven't decided." That's what Larry Summers did when a group tried to put him in this position. Explaining himself later, he said "I don't do litmus tests." A lot of the questions people get hot about are actually quite complicated. There is no prize for getting the answer quickly.

If the anti-yellowists seem to be getting out of hand and you want to fight back, there are ways to do it without getting yourself accused of being a yellowist. Like skirmishers in an ancient army, you want to avoid directly engaging the main body of the enemy's troops. Better to harass them with arrows from a distance.

One way to do this is to ratchet the debate up one level of abstraction. If you argue against censorship in general, you can avoid being accused of whatever heresy is contained in the book or film that someone is trying to censor. You can attack labels with meta-labels: labels that refer to the use of labels to prevent discussion. The spread of the term "political correctness" meant the beginning of the end of political correctness, because it enabled one to attack the phenomenon as a whole without being accused of any of the specific heresies it sought to suppress.

Another way to counterattack is with metaphor. Arthur Miller undermined the House Un-American Activities Committee by writing a play, "The Crucible," about the Salem witch trials. He never referred directly to the committee and so gave them no way to reply. What could HUAC do, defend the Salem witch trials? And yet Miller's metaphor stuck so well that to this day the activities of the committee are often described as a "witch-hunt."

Best of all, probably, is humor. Zealots, whatever their cause, invariably lack a sense of humor. They can't reply in kind to jokes. They're as unhappy on the territory of humor as a mounted knight on a skating rink. Victorian prudishness, for example, seems to have been defeated mainly by treating it as a joke. Likewise its reincarnation as political correctness. "I am glad that I managed to write 'The Crucible,'" Arthur Miller wrote, "but looking back I have often wished I'd had the temperament to do an absurd comedy, which is what the situation deserved."

ABQ

A Dutch friend says I should use Holland as an example of a tolerant society. It's true they have a long tradition of comparative open-mindedness. For centuries the low countries were the place to go to say things you couldn't say anywhere else, and this helped to make the region a center of scholarship and industry (which have been closely tied for longer than most people realize). Descartes, though claimed by the French, did much of his thinking in Holland.

And yet, I wonder. The Dutch seem to live their lives up to their necks in rules and regulations. There's so much you can't do there; is there really nothing you can't say?

Certainly the fact that they value open-mindedness is no guarantee. Who thinks they're not open-minded? Our hypothetical prim miss from the suburbs thinks she's open-minded. Hasn't she been taught to be? Ask anyone, and they'll say the same thing: they're pretty open-minded, though they draw the line at things that are really wrong. (Some tribes may avoid "wrong" as judgemental, and may instead use a more neutral sounding euphemism like "negative" or "destructive".)

When people are bad at math, they know it, because they get the wrong answers on tests. But when people are bad at open-mindedness they don't know it. In fact they tend to think the opposite. Remember, it's the nature of fashion to be invisible. It wouldn't work otherwise. Fashion doesn't seem like fashion to someone in the grip of it. It just seems like the right thing to do. It's only by looking from a distance that we see oscillations in people's idea of the right thing to do, and can identify them as fashions.

Time gives us such distance for free. Indeed, the arrival of new fashions makes old fashions easy to see, because they seem so ridiculous by contrast. From one end of a pendulum's swing, the other end seems especially far away.

To see fashion in your own time, though, requires a conscious effort. Without time to give you distance, you have to create distance yourself. Instead of being part of the mob, stand as far away from it as you can and watch what it's doing. And pay especially close attention whenever an idea is being suppressed. Web filters for children and employees often ban sites containing pornography, violence, and hate speech. What counts as pornography and violence? And what, exactly, is "hate speech?" This sounds like a phrase out of 1984.

Labels like that are probably the biggest external clue. If a statement is false, that's the worst thing you can say about it. You don't need to say that it's heretical. And if it isn't false, it shouldn't be suppressed. So when you see statements being attacked as x-ist or y-ic (substitute your current values of x and y), whether in 1630 or 2030, that's a sure sign that something is wrong. When you hear such labels being used, ask why.

Especially if you hear yourself using them. It's not just the mob you need to learn to watch from a distance. You need to be able to watch your own thoughts from a distance. That's not a radical idea, by the way; it's the main difference between children and adults. When a child gets angry because he's tired, he doesn't know what's happening. An adult can distance himself enough from the situation to say "never mind, I'm just tired." I don't see why one couldn't, by a similar process, learn to recognize and discount the effects of moral fashions.

You have to take that extra step if you want to think clearly. But it's harder, because now you're working against social customs instead of with them. Everyone encourages you to grow up to the point where you can discount your own bad moods. Few encourage you to continue to the point where you can discount society's bad moods.

How can you see the wave, when you're the water? Always be questioning. That's the only defence. What can't you say? And why?

#philiosophy #heresy #morality #fashion

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buzzdixonwriter · 6 years

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Vietnam: There & Then, Here & Now

I just finished watching Ken Burns’ Vietnam War documentary.

Quite an experience.

Vietnam was my generation’s war, the baby boomers’ war (i.e., those born between 1946 and 1964). I lived through the era of most of the events of the war, being old enough and cognizant enough to follow what was going on in the world around me.

From a historical POV, the Vietnam War documentary offers little new information, mostly puts everything we already knew in perspective and fairly linearly.

A few things did surprise me, such as the revelation that Nixon in order to keep the war from becoming even more unpopular, wouldn’t let draftees be sent to Vietnam unless they volunteered.

People were still being drafted (I was) but instead of being sent unwillingly to a combat zone, we were sent to foreign bases to replace enlistees who went to fight in our place.

I feel bad about that.

Nixon’s political logic was sound -- enlistees and draftees who volunteered couldn’t say they were going against their will and thus the potential for desertion and the general populace turning against the war were lessened -- but it doesn’t make it any easier to bear.

It’s one thing if everybody’s name is put in a hat and assignments are handed out at random.

It’s another if the names are put into two different hats (but then again, nobody’s name went into the Vietnam hat without their consent…).

Watching the series, it struck me that people analyzing the current American political scene are wrong when they liken it to the Civil War or the rise of Nazi Germany.

No, it isn’t.

It’s like the 1960s all over again.

Let’s back track a bit and start afresh.

From time immemorial, there has been conflict between those who think for whatever reason they should be on top and those whom they think should be under them.

The average human being just wants to be left alone to live their own life. We really don’t care what kind of socio-economic political culture we live under so long as it’s reasonably stable, consistent, and fair.

We have no problem with some people being very, very wealthy.

We just don’t want their wealth to come at the expense of everyone else.

By the 18thcentury, the first trade guilds were beginning to appear in Europe.

They were crushed by the aristocracy of their day, both the nobility / landed gentry and the financiers.

In the early 19thcentury the working class tried again with various trade unions. Again the aristocracy (more industrialists this time) crushed them.

The working class tried a third time in the late 19thcentury with socialism , again it was crushed.

Finally in the early part of the 20thcentury, communism came forth, and it was successful…at least for the better part of the century.

(Yes, I am grossly over simplifying a lot of history here, but I’m doing so to make this point: Every time labor got slapped down, it came back with something stronger until finally it won and -- in an effort to forestall communism -- the rest of then world more or less adopted some for of socialism.)

We ignored the plight of the Vietnamese prior to WWII because we (i.e., the Western democracies) only cared about the political and civil rights of white skinned people. We begged their help during WWII to fight the Japanese again, but afterwards we reneged on our deal with them because the French threatened to go communist if they lost their lucrative colony (spoiler: They eventually did lose their colony and, no, they didn’t go communist).

When the Vietnamese defeated the French, the United States viewed this as another domino falling in communism’s plan for worldwide dominance.

Since our internal domestic politics were consumed with a paranoia against communism -- because communism would keep us from going to church or owning guns and cars and houses or reading books, etc., etc., and of course, etc. — we could not let them succeed anywhere.

We fought communist forces to a bloody standstill in Korea.

We faced them down in tense situations in Europe and the Middle East.

And we were damned if we’d let them topple the first domino in South East Asia.

So, even though we knew we had no popular support among the South Vietnamese people, and even though we knew their leadership was too corrupt and inept to defeat the North Vietnamese, we backed them with money, materiel, and men in the form of “advisors”.

It didn’t work.

The situation rapidly turned into a huge hot steaming turd pile and nobody -- NOBODY!!! -- in either party could see a reason for being there except if we weren’t there, the other side would blame them for “losing” Vietnam.

The same way the GOP blamed the Democrats for “losing” China…when it was never theirs to begin with.

We refused to deal with communist governments because we’d be damned if we were going to deal with the likes of “them”…not when we could prop up a puppet of our own to run the show.

And we made this mistake again and again and again everywhere, refusing to cut deals or honor agreements because we weren’t going to bolster communism because we wanted to keep our God, our guns, and our gold.

Oh, yes, let’s talk about money.

When you analyze anti-communism, for all the high-falutin’ language about human dignity and freedom and whatnot, it really boils down to people being able to make money and not have to pay any of it to the government.

And if some people make more money, well, that just means they’re better people than those who make less.

Isn’t it?

So the U.S. fight against communism was to protect the rich, the corporations, the moneyed interests.

The Vietnamese were ancillary to this goal.

…if they were considered at all.

So we wound up digging ourselves deeper and deeper into a morass that we couldn’t win because our enemy, while quite easily defeated, simply couldn’t be beaten.

(The North Vietnamese were communists by default; there was no ideological purity to their struggle, at least not the beginning. They were nationalists first and foremost, and when the capitalist Western democracies ignored their desire for independence, they turned to the Russian communists. If Chicago baseball fans had offered them more support than the Bolsheviks, the North Vietnamese would have been Cubbies.)

This is all a long winded way of saying that even though every White House administration from Kennedy forward (and perhaps as early as Eisenhower and Truman) realized South Vietnam was a doomed proposition, they nonetheless kept funding the war because they feared they lose power if they didn’t.

Domestically, Americans were so terrified of communism and what they were told was its first cousin, socialism, that they would respond negatively to anyone accused of appeasing those God damned commie simp pinko bastards.

It was a recipe for disaster, as Ken Burns points out repeatedly.

But this post isn’t about the Vietnam era, it’s about what’s happening in the here and now, and to look at that we need to hit the major highlights of the Vietnam Was as perceived by the average American citizen (read average white Christian American citizen).

In the aftermath of Kennedy’s assassination -- and his killer being an on-again / off-again USMC deserter / defector to Russia who joined a bunch of iffy political movements when he returned to the U.S. sure didn’t help things -- Americans were shocked again when it was reported the North Vietnamese had attacked two U.S. destroyers.

To this day it’s still impossible to discern what really happened in the Gulf of Tonkin with any sense of accuracy.

Suffice it to say something happened and the North Vietnamese navy came out all the worse for it but nonetheless Johnson treated the incident as if the gawd damned commies were about to start invading New Orleans and the next thing we knew, the war had escalated from a few hundred American “advisors” to a couple of thousand active combatants.

This was in 1964.

The next big event to lodge itself into the American psyche was the Tet offensive of 1968.

The North Vietnamese and their Viet Cong allies (not one and the same!) launched a massive series of attacks across Vietnam in the hopes of spurring a popular uprising.

The tactical portion of the Tet offensive failed, but the strategic one worked perfectly (although it took seven years to see the payoff).

The reason the strategic part worked was that for the intervening 4 years between Tonkin and Tet, the U.S. had promised its citizens again and again and again that victory was just around the corner, we could see the light at the end of the tunnel, and we were winning by breaking the resolve of the enemy.

Well, Tet put the lie to that PDQ!

The most shocking thing about Tet was the photo and TV news footage of South Vietnam National Police Chief Nguyen Ngoc Loan blowing the brains out of Nguyen Van Lem, a member of a Viet Cong assassination team who had just killed some police officers and their families.

Look, let’s be honest, Van Lem richly deserved his fate under the rules of the Geneva Convention since he had killed innocent civilians while disguised as a civilian, and as such had lost all protections under international treaty.

But it’s pretty damn shocking to see him being executed again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again thanks to the miracle of television, and while most Americans still supported the war, God love ‘em still supported the troops, and agree Van Lem deserved death for his war crimes, it’s still a pretty damn shocking scene to see.

Most Americans supported the war.

But most Americans also wanted it over.

About a year later, Americans were shocked even more. Information on the infamous My Lai Massacre, which occurred in the aftermath of the Tet offensive in 1968, became public, including photos of women begging for their lives and the lives of their children, and the revelation that Americans had gang raped Vietnamese women and children before killing them.

Again, predictably, most Americans sided with the troops who committed these crimes, and continued to support the war, but despite that, one can’t shake the images of weeping women futilely trying to protect their children, or the piles of bodies just a few seconds later.

The anti-war movement, which had aligned itself with the civil rights movement and the nascent feminist movement (and, boy howdy!, is that a tale to tell but not in this post; stay focused) began opposing the war in more and more successful, and in larger and larger protests.

American presidents Johnson and (soon-to-be) Nixon did not want to lose any elections, and since the majority of Americans still supported the war -- whatever doubts they might possess about it -- they weren’t about to give any serious attention to the protestors demands.

(And, truth be told, there were a lot of show boaters among the anti-war protestors, bozos who just wanted to watch things burn.)

As protests mounted, Nixon (who became president by sabotaging Johnson’s attempt to negotiate a peace agreement in time for the 1968 election which, if bigoted George Wallace hadn’t acted as a spoiler, would have gone to Hubert Humphrey) fought back in an increasing number of ways, some quite petty, others quite deadly.

Among the deadliest was the Kent State protests in 1970 which resulted in the deaths of four college students, two of them innocent bystanders walking away from the direction of the protest on their way to class.

While shocking, again the majority of Americans defended the National Guard troops who slaughtered four students and wounded a dozen more, crippling one permanently.

But you can’t unsee an image, and though Americans hardened their hearts, they couldn’t forget the image of Mary Ann Vecchio over the body of Jeffrey Miller anymore than they could forget the image of Nguyen Ngoc Loan killing Nguyen Van Lem.

Like the Tet offensive, the battle may have been lost, but the war was being won.

More shocking turns awaited the average American. Vietnam Veterans Against The War was a surprisingly effective antiwar movement. They, along with the Winter Soldier congressional hearings in 1971, put the lie to the claim that it was only hippies and communist agitators who opposed the war.

Nixon and his vice president Spiro Agnew went on the offensive, denouncing anti-war protestors and appealing to the so-called “silent majority” of law abiding, church going, conservative, and -- dare we say it? -- white Americans who continued to support the war.

Nixon and Agnew (who had to resign due to scandals entirely unrelated to his role as Nixon’s vice president) stirred up class animosity in America, pitting working class Americans against the so-called “liberal elite” including college students and professors, preparing the soil for the coming campaign of ignorance that would devour the country in the post-Vietnam era.

But even though the average “silent majority” American continued to support the war, the vocal protestors were gaining ground, winning hearts and minds, and the images were searing themselves into the American psyche.

Also in 1971, the Pentagon Papers were released, documenting mistake after mistake after mistake the U.S. had mad, all the while acknowledging that was simple no way we could possibly win in Vietnam.

But still the fighting continued.

Nixon’s paranoia and pettiness proved his undoing,

As he and his underlings committed more and more brazen crimes to solidify their base, the Vietnam war continued unleashing horror after horror.

In June of 1972, 9 year old Phan Thi Kim Phuc was photographed running naked down a road, screaming in pain after 30% of her body had been burned by a South Vietnamese napalm strike.

Try as they like, the pro-war apologists (same rat bastards as today’s trolls) could not find a way of blaming her for her own misery.

By January, 1973 the U.S. started withdrawing in earnest and for America the war of over for all intents and purposes.

On March 8, 1973 the last official U.S. ground troops left Vietnam.

On August 8, 1974 Nixon resigned.

On August 15, 1974, the U.S. congress said “Hold! Enough!” and effectively cut off military support to South Vietnam.

On April 30, 1975, Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City) fell, and the end that everybody knew would arrive sooner or later finally came.

All that…for nothing…

As noted above, the Vietnam war did not occur in a historical cultural vacuum, and there was not only the dread of an existentialist threat of a grossly misrepresented communist bogeyman to what the average white conservative Christian American held near and dear, but also the much more palatable fear of losing white supremacy to racial equality with…with…negroes (to use the term of the day), not to mention the first stirrings of the feminist movement, the first hint of a gay rights movement, and the hippies themselves, perceived as a great unwashed mob of dope swilling anarchists.

As the song goes, the dirty fucking hippies were right.

Ken Burns’ Vietnam War presents Vietnam to us in that context, a major component of a much broader picture, a picture that threatened the very soul of America.

Small wonder the reaction was the disco era and yuppies replacing hippies and cocaine going through the roof and Reagan replacing Carter as the latter tried to struggle with the economic bill come due after decades of reckless military spending.

Reagan, of course, devastated American in his own way, the opposite of the Tet offensive, in which he seemed to win easy victory after easy victory only now that he’s dead and gone we see those so called “victories” were actually a betrayal of everything America used to stand for.

America, at least in part, has always been a progressive nation.

The founding fathers may have been slave holders, but they left a mechanism in place that could deal with the issue of slavery.

The reactionaries came back against the founding fathers, even while claiming to honor their spirit, with Andrew Jackson, as vile a racist as one could hope to imagine, but they were countered by the abolitionists of the Civil War.

The same progressive spirit that made abolition possible also made labor unions possible, and pure food and drug laws, and trust busting under Theodore Roosevelt.

And when bad reactionary / financier / industrial policies brought the U.S. and the rest of the world to financial ruin, Franklin Delano Roosevelt fought to use progressive policies to save the country.

The reactionaries have been waging a war against America since the end of WWII.

They lost ground in the 1950s and 60s despite their successful promotion of anti-communism, but regained that ground in the 1980s to 2008.

There were a few brief respites with Clinton, as flawed a human being as one could imagine, and Obama, who became the target of the mindless white racism simmering beneath the surface of what passes for conservative thought in this country.

Now, as we near the end of their era ///and they know it///, the reactionaries and the 1% want to stack the deck as much as possible against the march of progress.

The march of humanity.

The march of the future.

We are not in a second Civil War or a second Nazi movement (though there are elements of same present).

We are in a second 1960s, only there aren’t the obvious clear crusades of Vietnam or civil rights to rally around.

We have just had our Gulf of Tonkin incident with the election of Trump.

We may have had our Tet offensive public execution photo with the appointment of Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, a short term tactical victory that will spell doom for generations to come.

But I’m afraid we’re still quite a ways away from our My Lai, our Kent State, our Winter Soldier, our badly burned girl.

I want to tell you, as someone who lived through the 1960s, as someone who was drafted at the end of the Vietnam war, we will survive this.

And we, the decent people of the United States, the people who truly believe in liberty and justice for all, will prevail.

It won’t be pretty, and it won’t be easy, but we will win.

#Vietnam #communism #capitalism #Christianity #white supremacy #racism #history #GOP- Republicans #Trump #morals #ethics #politics

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aion-rsa · 5 years

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Author Tochi Onyebuchi Brings Anime-Inspired Giant Robots to Nigeria in War Girls

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We talked to speculative fiction author Tochi Onyebuchi about novellas War Girls and Riot Baby.

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Tochi Onyebuchi brings a keen eye for world-building and momentum-filled action scenes to his young adult novels. From the Pokémon-like Beasts Made of Night duology to the upcoming fantasy novella Riot Baby, he’s making waves. At NYCC 2019, we sat down to talk to him about pop culture influences, the process of building a novel, and how he wants to push back against Western perceptions of African countries.

Riot Baby will be available from Tor.com in January 2020. War Girls comes out on Oct. 15 from Penguin Random House.

Den of Geek: Your latest book, War Girls, is a post-apocalyptic story involving both catastrophic change and nuclear war. What draws you to writing apocalypse while the real world feels so apocalyptic?

Tochi Onyebuchi: Part of it is coping! Part of it is trying to imagine my way through crisis. Because the thing about climate change, or at least the discussion as it is happening now, has been very much dominated by Western voices. It has been very much focused on climate change in parts of the U.S., for instance. Or efforts to combat climate change in Western Europe. Whereas a lot of the really averse effects of climate change will most viscerally be felt on the African continent.

We’re already seeing it. You see the desertification of the Sahara. And that is pushing people on the lower end, particularly nomadic tribes, further down into densely populated countries. And so you see all this unrest that’s happening right now in northern Nigeria, because you have pastoral Fulani tribes that are being pushed down into farmland that is already populated by people. So all of a sudden there are these new clashes over land rights that would not necessarily have happened were it not for climate change.

There are islands in the Pacific that are sinking. That won’t be here in 12 years or 20 years. So I was very interested in what people in those places would consider with regards to climate change. So that was why it was particularly interesting to think about issues of climate change and post-nuclear disaster in Nigeria.

Tell us about the two sisters at the heart of the book. What made their story compelling?

They both carry aspects of my mother. War Girls very much has its genesis in stories that I would hear from her of her time as an internally displaced person in the Biafran war, the Nigerian civil war, that waged in Nigeria from 1967 to 1970. She was either just finishing or just getting ready to start kindergarten at the outbreak of the war. She was a child living through this! That in many ways was the genesis of the book.

I wanted to also write in a way about a lot of the other civil conflicts that raged throughout African countries in the 1990s and early 2000s and mid 2000s, and that’s where the issue of child soldiers comes in. Child soldiers weren’t necessarily prevalent in the Nigerian civil war in the 60s and 1970, but in a lot of the later conflicts in the 90s and the 2000s you saw prevalence of the instances in which adolescents and teenagers would be drawn into the conflict and faced to fight, forced to kill. I think particularly of the story of Beasts of No Nation by Uzodinma Iweala, which was made into an extraordinary movie starring Idris Elba. It’s that sort of thing.

How do you deal with that afterwards, too? As a society, but also as the person who did those things. Because there is an after. There will be an after. What does that look like? Those are very fascinating questions to me.

War Girls is set in an alternate Nigeria. What kind of research or experiences lead to the way you portrayed it?

While I did a lot of research on Nigeria, particularly the Biafran war, I also wanted to do a lot of research on other African countries. But one thing I wanted to make sure of was I wanted to write a specifically Nigerian story. And part of that entailed researching both conflicts and histories of other African countries.

One thing that I wanted to do also was make sure this wasn’t a doom-and-gloom, ‘everything is horrible in Africa’ story. Because a lot of the popular perception of Africa is it’s this entire uniform place that’s universally afflicted by starvation and civil war. It’s the picture of the kid with flies on their face and the bloated stomach from malnutrition. But there are 50-plus countries in Africa, many of whom have exponentially more ethnic identities in them. There are over 200 tribes in Nigeria alone. So that speaks to the diversity on every scale, whether it’s economic, social, tribal, what have you. It speaks to the overwhelming diversity of the continent. And that was something I wanted to get at.

So, in researching other countries and other traditions, it became easier for me to pick bits from other cultures but use them specifically, and not just have them be this background of ‘African traditions’ and what not thrown into the story. It was very important to me that the story was specific, the references were specific, the geography was specific. That is a lot of what drove the research that I did.

War Girls is marketed as Black Panther inspired. Tell me more about this connection and about what pop culture influences you.

One of the reasons Black Panther was so important, particularly to War Girls, is that it provided a reference point for a lot of people that might not have been familiar with a lot of the things that are going on in that book. War Girls is very much more inspired by Gundam Wing. I’m a huge, huge Gundam fan, so this book is very much a love letter to Gundam. When I pitched it to my agent, it was ‘Gundam in Nigeria.’

But at the same time I recognize that there’s a maybe somewhat limited fandom for Gundam. I feel like in the United States more people would recognize Black Panther. One of the beautiful things about it was that people could see Black Panther and have a reference point for this depiction of Africa as technological advanced. That, I think, was new to a lot of people. To see an Africa that maintains fidelity to certain traditions, and had high speed rail. That had hover cars. That had spaceships and what not. But also had specific music and dance traditions and fashion sense.

So, in crafting a society that had all those things, it’s easier for people to understand.

What is the idea at the core of Riot Baby, your upcoming novella?

Riot Baby is the story of Ella and Kev, two siblings that grow up in the shadow of the L.A. Uprising in the 90s. Their story takes them from South Central, to Harlem, to Riker’s, and back to the Watts, and they have to deal with institutional racism and police violence and issues surrounding mass incarceration, while slowly discovering superpowers.

What have you learned about writing in the course of publishing four novels?

I’ve gotten much better at my act threes! [Note: Some of the audio in this section was disrupted. The author goes on to discuss gaining sensitivity to the quality of his own writing.]

You can write something and you can feel that it’s right, even though you may not necessarily be able to articulate all the ways in which you feel it’s right, or why this particular choice is the correct one. You can direct the plot a certain way and feel you’ve made absolutely the right choice without necessarily knowing why. Developing that intuition after having internalized so much of the craft is very important. That’s an aspect of writing I’ve grown in.

What is your process like? Do you outline?

It often differs by book, and also by the relationship with whichever editor I’m working with at the time. Riot Baby came together in part out of disparate pieces of existing work, and then when it coalesced it grew more of itself. There wasn’t necessarily an outline involved in that. It started with writing pieces of it and the spine of the narrative came together. Then, the rest was a result of growing it out.

Whereas with War Girls it was very schematic. I had the idea, I had a bucket of particular images in my head I wanted to figure out how to dramatize. Out of that came the outline, which of course changed shape over the course of the drafting. So I had the initial outline and then a revised outline. Then I started drafting, and events changed as I was writing.

Would you say to an aspiring writing that process matters? Do you need to write a certain way, or do different ways work for different people?

Whatever works, works. I think that’s the way to go. There is the temptation to fall prey to a lot of the dogma early on, particularly when you’re trying to figure yourself out with regards to voice, process, how to make this writing thing work.

We hear people say write every day. But that’s not feasible for a lot of people. Whether it’s their school schedule, whether it’s child care, whether they have a particular job that doesn’t allow for that. People are dealing with different realities, so writing every day isn’t necessarily universally applicable.

The only thing I feel confident in terms of advice to aspiring writers is to love writing. Whether it’s the act of putting sentences together, playing with that, or whether it’s the larger discipline of storytelling, certain aspects of that—if that gets your heart racing, if that gives you the same feeling as when you see your crush from across the room, that’ll get you so far in this. Because there’s so much nonsense you have to deal with in this, and so much conflicting advice. If at the end of the day you love doing this thing, hold on to that. That’s why you do this.

You can find out more about Tochi Onyebuchi here.

Read and download the Den of Geek NYCC 2019 Special Edition Magazine right here!

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Interview Megan Crouse

Books

Oct 10, 2019

from Books https://ift.tt/2q3NW7P

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walaw717 · 7 years

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10/07/2017

One of the main thing social media does is get us into the habit of knee jerk responses about events or even statements that appear in front of us. I have been working on disengaging from this kind of response because it is hard to not express one’s emotions as they occur. I have posted and reposted many stories of the heroism displayed in Las Vegas because it does elicit an emotional response for me. After all I was raised with the idea that no greater love has a man than to give his life for his friend, or even stranger.

However, I wanted to step back as much as possible because I knew however that a huge knee jerk emotional response would be coming regarding gun control and a great deal of very inaccurate things would be said about violence, lone wolf white gunmen and public safety.

I want to begin with a simple idea. In spite of guys like this and terrorists’ groups, we actually live in the safest time in human history. Yes, we have a looming nuclear war as two mad men throw sixth grade barbs at one another and yes, it is horrible that over five hundred people were wounded and fifty-eight were killed. But would you rather live during the period of the hundred years’ war when small roving bands raided villages in Europe at random like some nightmare dystopian society from a modern novel. Or perhaps in just about any previous period of human history when Roman, Mongol, or any society you can name could raid your home and burn your society to the ground?

I think our reactions to much of this comes from a lack of a clear reality based understanding of human history. Humans are by nature very violent, some more than others and from time immemorial we have killed each other indiscriminately. Even the mummified remains found in the Italian Alp’s of a 5000-year-old man have revealed he died either from murder of a fight in an isolate place in the mountains.

This is not to say that the Las Vegas shootings were not horrifying. They were because it is so out of step with what we chose to believe about who we are as people. Sadly, it is more realistic about who we are as people. Everyone has a breaking point; everyone has a moment in which they either become the snarling animal fighting back or the victim. We may never know the motivations of this man and it is only because we are a psychologically tuned society that we even really care. We believe that if we know why it will give meaning but the fact remains that violence really has no greater meaning. As a counselor I do know that pain is our fundamental motivator and just like some villager in the middle east who takes to terror is motivated by pain most of our violent actions are motivated by pain, fear of pain or a desire for meat/plunder. I doubt if this person planned to eat or steal from his victims. What we keep hoping for is that if we know "why" we can prevent further violence. Until we live in a world where people do not feel pain and fear and hunger you can actually put the idea of a violent-free world into the category of a pipe dream.

As for the current silliness of the lone wolf white guy. I have lived to see a time that when being a white male has become the social equivalent of the early twentieth century concept of “nigger”, you know the curse of society. Of course those who focus on white men being the problem fail to realize that that is the equivalent of calling the black man, the Asian man, the Mexican man or whoever the problem. People do like their scapegoats.

The reality is that this man may or may not have acted alone. The investigation is still out on that. At first it was thought Tim McVeigh was a lone wolf. Later investigation revealed he was working with Bobby Nichols, white supremacists and Islamic terror groups in the Philippines. There was nothing lone wolf about it.

Sadly some in our society think its ok for a terrorist to be a terrorist as long as they are not white but brown. The reality is that terrorism is terrorism no matter the color of the person’s skin.

Again there is that complicated desire to find the scapegoat the person responsible. In some quarters the western white man is responsible for all the terrorism in the history of mankind. Tell that to the Africans who saw the Arabs start the African slave trade. Tell that to the “Persians” who saw the Mongol hordes burn an entire culture because they believed cities were the root of evil. Again in our simplistic emotional ways we find those who we want to scapegoat.

Our troubles have to be some evil force embodied – today it is white males, a couple hundred years ago it was women who were witches. Sadly, the people who do the scapegoating on the left and the right see themselves as the civilized and the most enlightened when in fact they are projecting their fears on some created boogey man who really does not exist and behaving like those throughout history who were the ones they now condemn. We like to name our fear and localize it hoping then we can control it. That has never worked.

And finally, the most obvious and local evil of course has to be the gun. I have yet to see a hue and cry to ban automobiles because drunk and drugged drivers kill people, sometimes in mass numbers.

Every day, almost 30 people in the United States die in motor vehicle crashes that involve an alcohol-impaired driver. This amounts to one death every 51 minutes. That is roughly 11,000 deaths per year. In the United States the rate of firearm deaths is 10 people per 100,000, while for traffic accidents it was 12 per 100,000. Firearm-related deaths total roughly 31,000. And though fire arm deaths were higher most of these were the result of the mishandling of the firearm. Not the actual shooting of another person with malice. In fact, 20,000 of these gun deaths are from suicide.

It is easy and convenient to blame the tool and not the user. And that points to the ultimate hypocrisy of America today, a failure to hold accountable the person. It is an endemic problem. Blame a miss interpretation of psychology. We seem to believe that if we are messed up it is not our responsibility – it is our parents, our neighborhoods our society. It all begins with a gross misunderstand of Freud and his theories of motivation.

The fact is that at some point, usually in our late teens, though I personally think much younger, we make very clear choices about what we do with a clear and certain understanding of what is right or wrong in our social order. We act driven buy a narcissism of toddler-hood we have either failed to grow out of or chose to remain in. An inanimate object is not the thing responsible for its miss use. So to blame guns is frankly foolish and irresponsible. The Las Vegas shooter apparently acquired all of his guns legally and passed all background checks. So where does the responsibility really lie? Quiet obviously with his choices. The guns were not jumping up and firing themselves.

It is human nature to want simple answers and simple solutions to our pain. The Las Vegas shooting was and should be quite painful for us if we are any kind of decent human. And now is the time to reach out to the "victims" to help them heal if they can, though healing from trauma is no simple task and involves a renewed sense of personal empowerment and responsibility so we can stop feeling the victim.

And that brings me to the Heroes of the day. Most of them were military, ex-military or first responders, people tasked to deal with the tragedy of violence and to respond to violence in responsible and thoughtful ways. Do not think for a minute that these men and women are not impacted by the pain of violence but they approach violence and tragedy from a different perspective. They take charge of self and other care, they do not see themselves as victims and they move forward to address the violence in useful and practical ways, ways that politicians and academics in their safe and isolated bubbles never can or do.

The reality of this event and events like it is simple. How do we choose to cope?

Do we learn how to take responsibility for our feelings and find ways to empower ourselves or do we sit on the side and try to control what is outside of us to feel better inside of us. As a counselor I can tell you that is the solution of the addict, alcoholic and co-dependent. Simply put – if you behave differently then I will - be safer, feel better, be happier - you fill in the blank. My (meaning all of us) feelings should never depend on your behavior. To take a position of blaming the environment is to effectually give up your personal freedom and personal responsibility. So no it’s not the guns, and no we are never really safe we can only hope for the illusion of safety because there will always be some person who strikes out in his or her pain and we can never predict who that will be.

As I write this I ask myself “why bother” to say this, after all people are pretty entrenched now in their emotional and ideological reactions. And frankly we live now in a culture of personal attack so I suspect that will be the main reaction to this (instead of a dialouge of ideas).

I guess it is the same reason I bother to stay in mental health work. Having been on the other side, having lived hurt and blaming others for the way I felt and having finally been helped by my own therapist to understand the concept of personal responsibility I know that people do need help in maturing and finding the path to real personal responsibility and real emotional and spiritual freedom. Somewhere in the last 40 years our society has lost its way on that and I do know that throughout history that voices do cry in the wilderness to bring us to sanity.

I would say to you as I would say to any person presenting in my office – how has this affected you and what are you going to do to deal with how it affects you? If you tell me you are going to change the world I will remind you that the world really won’t change, the only thing you have the power to change is you and you do this by stepping from emotionally triggered responses to a place of reasoned knowledgeable personal responsibility. I eventually have told all my clients I really do not care how you feel on a practical level, I want to know what you are going to do. Feelings change like the sky in stormy weather.

One final thought. Social media can actually be a good thing. However, if all you do is use it to be reactive and emotional then it is probably a bad thing for you. It will allow you to flail thoughtlessly and emotionally and in the end makes you not much better that the guy in the window in Las Vegas with a bump stock killing people. After all wasn’t his reaction simply an acting out of whatever emotion he was feeling and not in the end very reasonable. It is easy to blame others for how you feel or to wallow in how you feel, it is hard to live in a personally responsible emotional manner. Those guys who were heroes probably do a much better job of that than most people.

So who do you want to be, the hero or the victim. I know, it is much easier to wallow in your fear and reactiveness than it is to be the responsible one and to rant on social media. But really once you have done that in your simple bumper sticker posts and memes and 140 character expressions what have you accomplished?

Maybe you will sound presidential. I sure hope that is not as thoughtful as we are or can be.

W. Law, M.A. LPC

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phosphorescent-naidheachd · 7 years

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OK, so let’s discuss this. Or rather, part of it.

(And OP, if you see this and want to talk, I’m completely up for it. I just made this a separate post because A. I didn’t want to start Discourse(TM) on what was clearly meant to be a fun post, and B. I genuinely don’t think you meant anything by what you said. BUT... I really couldn’t let this particular popular perception of the Tuskens/Sand People* in the SW fandom go by without comment either.)

We learn very little about the Tuskens/Sand People in the films, and what little we do learn is from obviously negatively biased sources (i.e. settlers).

Almost all information we have about the Tusken people is from the EU and now considered Legends. So for the purposes of this post, we’re talking more about Legends canon than we are canon proper or the new canon EU materials.

Enjoy it though I do, the EU is inconstant and unwieldy. Only a few SW materials say that the Tuskens tortured settlers “just because they could” and because “they believed that all other sentient life was a blight on the planet”.

One thing that the EU does largely agree on, however, is that the Tuskens were on Tatooine long before any “civilized” settlers arrived from other planets.

Hmmm, what could this possibly remind you of?

The Tuskens are pretty clearly coded as “savage” indigenous people -- they’re nomadic tribal warriors who live in tents, they have less technology than the settlers (ex: gaffi sticks rather than blasters), their stories are oral rather than written, they have a “mystical” bond with certain local animals, and so on. They’re “easily frightened” and fooled, but are also shown to possess a certain brand of cunning, and frequently commit acts of seemingly random violence against settlers.

The abduction and torture of Shmi is a classic captivity narrative, with the role of the Tuskens played by indigenous peoples (Native Americans, First Nations peoples, Bedouin, etc.) and the role of Shmi played by any innocent white woman. Captivity narratives -- which also include variations where the abductee eventually becomes part of the tribe -- were exceedingly popular in the U.S. and in Europe from the late 17th century up through the mid-20th. Sometimes these narratives were based on true events, but sometimes they weren’t... and even when they were, they generally (albeit understandably) didn’t provide a lot of context for their captors’ actions and often sensationalized everything for better sales and/or to serve a settler agenda.**

The Tuskens are canonically dehumanized (debeingified? desentientized? language is tricky when dealing with a universe that contains sentient beings besides humans!) throughout the films and EU materials. They’re referred to as “animals” and “vicious, mindless monsters”, as well as made visually foreign -- and thus presumably frightening -- with their masks and wrappings, all of which hide any trace of who or what might be behind them. (This also, incidentally, codes the Tuskens in such a way as to play into Orientalist and Islamophobic tropes.) Whether the Tuskens are literally humans or are some form of sentient alien lifeforms -- which Legends canon suggests at multiple points -- is beside the point.

With all of this in mind, I suppose it shouldn’t be surprising that fandom often dehumanizes the Tuskens too (ex: “those things”), but... that doesn’t mean that I have to like it.

Long story short, the Tusken people have been majorly screwed over within the Star Wars franchise both from a Doylist and a Watsonian standpoint.*** If we go by Legends canon, they were enslaved at one point in their history but survived and managed to gain their freedom, only to later have their planet “discovered” and subsequently colonized****, with its limited resources -- some of which the Tuskens held as sacred -- raided by the settlers. As if that wasn’t enough, they were studied by the colony’s Bureau of Ethnicity and Socialization (and I don’t know about you, but that name sets off a lot of alarm bells in my mind) and betrayed by settlers who had pretended to be their allies. With this kind of a history, is it any wonder that the Tuskens are, to quote the Wookiepedia article, “extremely xenophobic & territorial of their native resources”?

I’m not saying that every piece of fanfiction set on Tatooine needs to deconstruct the treatment of the Tuskens or delve into their society and motivations, but it would be nice if fandom as a whole was slightly more aware of the tropes that they’re evoking when they uncritically accept and repeat what Star Wars -- both canon and Legends -- tells us about the Tuskens.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

*I use the term Tusken(s) throughout this response instead of Sand People partially because that’s the term OP used, but also because Sand People sounds way too close to some real life derogatory terms for desert peoples. That said, if we go by Legends, the Sand People seem to call themselves the equivalent of “Sand People” in their own tongue, while “Tusken Raiders” is a term that came into use for them (by settlers) after their raid on Fort Tusken. YMMV for which terminology you prefer to use for them; neither is exactly ideal from both a real life and in-universe perspective, so I’ve erred on the side of respecting real life peoples over fictional ones in this instance. That said, if I ever write fic that includes Tusken characters and/or culture, I’ll probably have them use the term Sand People, if that makes any sense? Once again, I make no judgments on whichever term you prefer to use. For all I know, my own opinions on this subject may shift over time!

According to Wookiepedia, “specialists studying the past of the Tusken Raiders” also used the term “Ghorfa” for the Tuskens, but #1. Very few people in the fandom would have any idea who I was talking about if I used this term, and #2. this brings us back to the alarm bells that went off for me the moment I heard the phrase “Bureau of Ethnicity and Socialization.” Once again, YMMV.

**This isn’t to say that Native Americans, First Nations, or Bedouin never acted as oppressors themselves -- life isn’t as straightforward as that, and these are very broad terms that encompass a wide variety of different peoples who had very different relationships with outsiders and fell and rose in power at different points in their respective histories -- but for the sake of this post, we’re talking about their relations with white settlers and about racist Western (European) captivity narratives, which certainly don’t make any such distinctions. I’m not wording this as clearly as I’d like, but I hope you take my meaning?

***Star Wars does occasionally show glimmers of realization of the unfortunate implications of this kind of in-text treatment of the Tuskens. Probably the closest the series ever comes to addressing it is in John Jackson Miller’s novel Kenobi (and to a lesser degree in the Dark Horse Star Wars: Republic comics).

****According to Star Wars Propaganda (which is a part of the new canon EU),

“With eyes toward expansion into the uncharted reaches of the Outer Rim, the traditions of the Core became passé. Opportunity beckoned from beyond the borders of the Mid Rim worlds. The congested planets of the interior were saturated with messages of promise lying outward, a reversal from long-held notions that Coruscant represented the icon of advancement. Republic wordsmiths and artists collaborated to create a sense of civic duty, of manifest destiny, and of deep obligation to spread the Republic banner from Rim to Rim.

For the well-settled and wealthy elite of the galaxy’s most crowded centers, such notions were quaint but uninspiring. It was the citizens of the Inner Rim, those who had been crowded out of opportunity in the Core, who answered the call for new life in the frontier of the Outer Rim.”

Here’s an image from the book that strongly evokes those Manifest Destiny vibes:

[A poster that bears the words “The OUTER RIM. Begin Again In A Golden Land of Opportunity! Republic incentives for the brave and hardy! New colonies and adventures await!” The poster depicts two humanoid figures -- presumably a man and a woman -- standing under a canyon arch on a desert planet. Two suns are visible in the wide sky in front of them.]

#a week and half later i FINALLY post this #wherein i am THAT 'politically correct' buzzkill #sorry... but also not sorry #tatooine #tuskens #sand people #ghorfa #star wars meta #sw meta #fantastic racism #critical analysis is always relevant #meta #star wars #things done by phos #long post #torture #dead mother #death #murder

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topfygad · 5 years

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How to travel to Syria in 2019 – Everything you must know

This travel guide to Syria is being reviewed and updated constantly. All the info you can find here is the latest from 2019

In December 2018, I decided to travel to Syria.

The country had been in my plans for a very long time and, finally, they started to make it easier for travelers in 2018.

I spent 1 week there traveling independently and visited Damascus, Homs, and Aleppo.

It was an amazing experience.

On the one hand, very enriching, as I met loads of Syrians who told me their side of the story, plus I got to visit ancient, marvelous sites that were a real blessing to my eyes.

But, on the other hand, here I witnessed one of the worst humanitarian crisis in the 21st century and visited hair-raising places that may require a lot of cold blood, if you don’t want to breakdown in tears, and will make you be sensitive and empathize with the many beautiful Syrians.

Long Live Syria.

This guide contains everything you need to know for traveling to Syria independently, including plenty of tips regarding visas, safety, transportation and much, much more!

If you want to keep track of all my current travels and photos, don’t forget to follow @againstthecompass on Instagram

Here you will find

Why travel to Syria Recommended books How to get a visa Travel Insurance for Syria How to get to Syria Is Syria safe? The people How to move around Money in Syria Responsible tourism and ethics Taking photos Don’t get off the beaten track Where to stay The food Internet and mobile

Do you know what a VPN is? A Virtual Private Network allows you to access blocked sites when you travel, as well as it lets you access content only available in your home country (like Netflix), plus it prevents hackers from stealing your personal data. Learn here why you should always use a VPN when you travel

Why should you visit Syria now?

This is a very good question, one I have been asked a lot recently.

The truth is that reasons vary.

First of all, in the last couple of years, I have been traveling all across the Middle East, so visiting Syria, one of the most fascinating countries in the region, had been in my travel plans for a very long time.

I actually attempted to travel there from Beirut back in 2016, but the Syrian embassy said they were not issuing visas at that time.

Another even more important reason is that Syria is a great country, home to one of the oldest civilizations ever, so visiting Syria from a tourism perspective is a must-do.

The beautiful Omayyad Mosque in Damascus, one of the oldest and largest mosques in the world

However, most people asking that question tend to refer more to the ethical aspect of traveling to Syria, as this is a war zone from where many people have been forced to escape in order to save their lives.

Well, I want you to know that I fully understand why someone would not want to visit a post-war zone because, truth be told, destroyed buildings and misery are not pleasant things to see.

Nevertheless, the first thing you need to know is that I travel to learn and become wiser and, yes, I am interested in visiting a post-war zone, because this is living history and I wanted to see it with my own eyes, and not through a biased newspaper.

Hey, have you ever wondered how I make a full living from blogging? Learn here how I started monetizing my blog and get over 200,000 monthly page views in less than 3 years

I also think that traveling to Syria with the sole objective of empathizing with the locals is a good thing and, as long as you are absolutely respectful about the crisis, there is nothing wrong with it.

But in the end, we should ask Syrians what they think about it and I can assure you that, since Syria used to be a major touristic destination, today Syrians are very happy to see that tourists are coming back because this is a real sign of recovery.

For more information, read the Responsible Tourism section of this article.

The views from the citadel in Aleppo… No words needed – Is it safe to travel to Syria

Recommended books for traveling to Syria

Syria travel guide by Bradt – There are no updated guidebooks of Syria, but Bradt Guides has the only exclusive travel guide to Syria, updated as of 2010. Still, it is a good source and a nice introduction to the country

CLICK HERE TO CHECK THE PRICES ON AMAZON

The Rise of the Islamic State by Patrick Cockburn – A must-read book. Written by one of the world’s top experts on the Middle Eastern conflict. In this book, Cockburn gives a very comprehensive explanation of the origin of DAESH, with many references to Syria. A very useful book to understand the complexity and origin of the conflict.

CLICK HERE TO CHECK PRICES ON AMAZON

Tourist visa for Syria

Updated September 2019

(If you have any more information, kindly let us know in the comments section)

Getting a Syrian visa nowadays is a confusing process.

Here’s the thing:

Prior to November 2018 (and from the beginning of 2018), you could get a Syrian visa by paying 300-400USD to a tour operator and then you could travel around the country independently.

However, in November 2018, an independent German backpacker got into some sensitive areas where tourists were not supposed to go and he was arrested for a week.

Since then, the Ministry of Tourism has dictated that all travelers who want to get a Syrian tourist visa must book a full tour with a valid tour operator. I recommend the guys from Marota Tourism (more details below).

This means that, unfortunately, Syria is not ready to receive tourists yet, so we will have to wait for a while.

Attention – If you have done some research, you will probably know about 2 different people that sell tours to Syria: Sawsan from Anat & Basel from the Travel King – They are liars and scammers who will charge you exorbitant amounts for really budget tours. Don’t go with them, absolutely not.

How to get a Syrian visa directly from a tour operator

The first thing you need to know is that travel agencies don’t issue tourist visas for Syria but a security clearance (a background check), which you need to show at the customs. Actually, you don’t even need to show it because you will appear in their database.

By the way, this is how the security clearance looks like. Usually, it includes several random people:

Cost of security clearance:

Until recently – Since you didn’t really need to book a full tour, travel agencies just required you to pay them 300-400USD. If you had a British or American passport, you would have paid a few more hundred.

Today – Since you need to book a full tour, agencies won’t really tell you what is the cost of the security clearance because it is all included in the package.

How to pay for your visa: Note that the Syrian banking system is blocked so, in most cases, you will need to send the money via Western Union. However, some companies have foreign bank accounts, so you may be able to pay via PayPal or direct bank transfer.

Time: Again, it depends on the agency. In my case, I got my security clearance in less than 24 hours but, today, they are averaging 10-15 days. For Americans, it may take up to 1 or 2 months, even more.

Validity: It has a 90-day validity, starting from the day you received it.

Once you have your security clearance, you can buy your visa at the border.

EU Passport holders: 72USD Australia and New Zealand: 130USD United Kingdom: 140USD USA: 160USD

The tourist visa for Syria is valid for 10 days. According to the migration officer, you can extend it at the Immigration Office in Damascus, but who knows whether this is true or not.

You will also have to pay an exit fee of 2,500SYP, which is around 5USD.

My visa for Syria and my Lebanese stamps

Which Tour Operator I recommend?

For the last few months, I have been contacting several tour operators, trying to figure out which one would be best to recommend, so after having a few discussions, I strongly think that Mr. Ayoub from Marota Tourism is the best option. (actual website coming soon).

Why?

Because they offer the most competitive prices (really, you won’t find cheaper)

They are very responsive and professional

You don’t have to pay anything before getting your visa

For the tour, you can pay upon your arrival

Moreover, they accept direct bank transfers in € and, if you are from outside the EU, you can pay them via Paypal, whereas with other people like Sawsan or Basel, you need to do some dodgy Western Union transfers.

As I said, you must avoid booking a tour with either Basel and Sawsan. I personally had a really bad experience with Basel (more on that below) and Sawsan is just charging thousands of dollars for low-quality tours, really. Trust me, Mr. Ayoub from Marota is the best. You can contact all of them, no problem, but you will believe me when they tell you the prices

How to contact him – You can contact Mr. Ayoub via email [email protected] or via WhatsApp or Telegram +963 954 840 021 – Tell him you found them through my website.

They can arrange your trip to Palmyra, Krak des Chevaliers, Aleppo, Homs, etc. Just email them with your special request and get your quote.

By the way, they can get your security clearance in 1 week or less.

(if you accept going with them, it would be great if you post your review in the comments section)

I traveled in Syria independently in December 2018 and January 2019, yet, I didn’t book a tour. How did I do it?

Since a lot of people ask, I would like to clarify how did I manage to visit Syria independently.

The fact is that I got my security clearance (with Basil from the Travel King, the most disgraceful person ever) in October 2018 for 325USD but, for personal reasons, I had to postpone my trip until December/January.

In mid-December, I contacted Basil to let him know that I would travel to Syria soon, most likely during the first week of January. However, he told me that the rules had changed since we last talked (because of that German backpacker), so now I needed to book a tour with him.

I told him that that was not our initial agreement and, if that was the case, I would like a full refund.

He said that he would not give me a refund, claimed that I would get arrested if I went there on my own and, after a long discussion, he threatened to cancel my visa if I didn’t book a tour.

He was an asshole, really, but do you know what I did?

I didn’t believe him for a second but I said that OK, that I would book a 1-week tour, but I needed 10 days to collect all the money.

He believed me and, while he was waiting for the money, I booked a flight straight to Beirut, crossed the Syrian border and, as I expected, I managed to travel around Syria without any problem, including going to Aleppo and Homs by public transportation and Couchsurfing.

Once I left Syria, I sent him a message and he hates me for that now.

If you have your security clearance in hand, you may still be able to travel around Syria on your own but unfortunately, no tour operator will give you a security clearance without purchasing a tour first.

How to get a visa for Syria via an embassy

Getting a Syrian visa in the old-fashioned way isn’t going to make things easier.

Nowadays, most embassies will require a Letter of Invitation (LOI), which you can only get through a tour operator, which they will only give you if you book a tour with them. For more details, contact Mr. Ayoub via email [email protected] or via WhatsApp +963 954 840 021.

Moreover, you should also know that the process can be much slower. For example, the embassy in Madrid claims that it takes around 40 days.

As per the cost, the only main difference is that you wouldn’t have to pay for the security clearance but in any case, if you book a tour, everything will be part of the same package, so in most cases, there won’t be much difference.

Each Syrian embassy, nevertheless, is a completely different world, so I suggest you contact your nearest and see what they say.

I personally called the Embassy in Madrid and they said you first need to send an email to [email protected], telling them about your intentions in Syria, so they will tell you what information they need from you, which includes a damn LOI.

After this, they will send all your information to Syria in order to get a security clearance and, if accepted, you will be able to apply for your visa, which costs 60€ (+ the cost of the tour)

Moreover, embassy rules change every single day, so just contact your nearest embassy and see what they say about it.

Read: How to travel to Saudi Arabia (Visa + Tips)

The Old City of Damascus – The columns belong to an old Roman Jupiter temple – Is Syria safe?

Travel Insurance for Syria

Like in Iran, because of all the sanctions, most travel insurance companies don’t provide cover for travel in Syria and that includes World Nomads.

The one which does, however, is IATI Insurance.

They have loads of different plans for all types of travelers and the best of it is that the readers of this blog can get an exclusive 5% discount.

BUY IT THROUGH THIS LINK TO GET YOUR 5% DISCOUNT!

How to get to Syria

How to travel to Syria by land

Beirut to Damascus – Traveling from Beirut to Damascus is the easiest way to travel to Syria. Beirut is only 115km from Damascus and the journey takes only 2 hours, including the customs process.

Currently, there is no bus service but locals travel in shared taxis.

They leave from Charles Hélou bus station, which is in a very central location, in Gemmazyeh. Shared taxis from Beirut to Damascus run all day long and I went there at 3pm and waited for no more than 15 or 20 minutes.

The cost per person is 20USD (18 if it is a 7-seat car).

Charles Hélou station – Beirut to Damascus

Alternatively, you can also book a trip with a private company like Allo Taxi, which has a similar price but I am not sure if they help you to find other passengers. If you go by yourself, you will pay 100USD.

Apparently, there is also a shared taxi service from Beirut airport to Damascus but it can cost up to 35USD per person.

Beirut to Damascus border crossing: Very straightforward.

On the Lebanese side, they barely check your passport and, on the Syrian side, they take around 20 minutes, as long as there are no people, of course.

On our way from Beirut to Damascus

First, they check your security clearance, then you purchase your visa at the bank counter and give your receipt to the immigration officer.

You only get a stamp, not a visa sticker.

After getting your Syrian visa and resuming your journey, you will go through several checkpoints, but you shouldn’t experience any problem. In fact, some soldiers were joking with me about football when they saw my Spanish passport.

Read: A travel guide to Beirut

Tripoli to Tartus – You can also travel to Syria from the border north of Tripoli. Shared taxis to Tartus cost 18,000LBP (12USD) and they leave until 8pm from this station: 34.436691, 35.837163. It is only a 65km journey, so it should be fairly quick.

From Jordan to Syria – The border is finally open but the journey from Amman is longer (200km). I have heard that there are also shared taxis but, unfortunately, I don’t know any more details, so it would be great if you could update me with that!

Turkey to Syria – Today, that border is not possible to cross legally.

How to travel to Syria by air

You can also fly in but the problem is that the international airport in Damascus doesn’t have many connections, so going from Beirut will always be easier.

In any case, check out Cham Wings Airlines and Syrian Air. They have occasional flights from Dubai, Sharjah and Doha.

Read: Lebanon – A 2-week itinerary

Somewhere in Damascus – Can you travel to Syria?

Is it safe to travel to Syria?

Is Syria safe?

Along with the visa, safety is the other big question mark for anyone traveling to Syria.

Look, the war is practically over (the city of Idlib is the last actual war zone) and cities like Aleppo and Damascus are perfectly safe.

You see children roaming around and everything seems just fine now.

Moreover, the Old City of Damascus is full of military checkpoints where they check your bag and look at anyone who seems suspicious, so there is a high level of security and nothing has happened for a long time now.

Celebrating Christmas in Damascus – How to travel to Syria

Actually, I was in Damascus for Christmas and, for the first time since the beginning of the war, the streets of the Old City of Damascus (and Aleppo as well) were filled with Christmas lights and celebration.

The atmosphere was full of joy, happiness and both Muslims and Christians were celebrating such an event with very big enthusiasm (there is a huge Christian community in Damascus).

This can only mean that even the Syrians themselves believe the city is safe.

Long story short: I personally think that Syria is safe to visit but it will depend on where you go.

Read: Is it safe to travel to Iraq

Which parts of Syria are safe to travel?

Damascus, Homs, Aleppo, Latakia, Tartus and the Krak De Chevaliers Castle.

For Palmyra, apparently, you still need a special permit. If you go on a tour, it should be easy to get one but I am not sure how independent travelers could get one. I think you would have to contact a travel agency.

You can travel to other areas, like the region south of Damascus and I am sure some places in between but that is all I know for now.

Still, keep in mind that this is a post-war zone, which means that it is highly unstable and things could change overnight. Against the Compass doesn’t take any responsibility for whatever may happen to you during your visit to Syria.

Long Live Aleppo – Is it possible to travel to Syria?

The people – The Syrians

Language – Levantine Arabic is the official language.

You should know that many English-speaking people left the country but you will always find someone who does. In any case, try to learn some Arabic before traveling to Syria.

Religion – Around 65% of the population are Sunni Muslims but, like its neighbor Lebanon, in Syria, there are many different religions, including a large Christian population. Bashar Al-Assad is Alawite, a Shia branch.

Read: Visiting a Syrian refugee camp in Iraq

Friendly Syrians, always – Visit Syria tourism

How do Syrians feel about tourism?

According to the UN, around 500,000 Syrians have been killed, nearly 5,000,000 escaped from the country and several more million who are still in the country need humanitarian assistance.

We are talking here about one of the worst humanitarian crisis in the 21st century.

Like I said at the beginning, many people are skeptical about traveling to Syria, claiming or thinking that it may be disrespectful to all the people that have been affected somehow.

Well, what I think is that, before making any judgment, we should ask the actual Syrians living in Syria what they think about it.

Throughout my 1-week journey, I did not talk to a single Syrian who was not happy at seeing a Spanish tourist interested in traveling to Syria.

The ones who spoke English approached me, asking me a lot of questions and showing their gratitude for visiting their country.

They don’t hesitate to talk to you about the crisis, the problems that it has caused, etc.

Hello, how are you?

Well, alive, thank God! – A random Syrian told me

However, I thought that wandering around Damascus as a tourist would be like being a celebrity. I mean, people were extremely nice and kind but it was not like when you travel in Pakistan, for example, where everybody stops you in the street to talk to you.

The main reason was that most people thought I was a journalist and the second was that Syrians have always had great international exposure, so seeing foreigners is something they are actually used to, with the only difference they haven’t seen many since 2010.

Long story short: Syrians are happy to see tourists.

More friendly Syrians – How to visit Syria

How to travel around Syria

You can travel around Syria by local buses and shared taxis.

I took the bus from Damascus to Aleppo, which takes more than 7 hours. The reason is that the section of the road from Homs to Aleppo is not totally Government-controlled, so after Homs, they turn right and make a huge detour to get to Aleppo.

There is not much to say here, other than the roads of Syria are full of military checkpoints, which is what you may expect.

Your driver will keep your passport and he will handle everything for you, so don’t worry about that.

I also took the bus from Homs to Damascus and it was a very similar story. From Aleppo to Homs I took a local shared taxi.

Seriously, buses run normally, smoothly and without any problem

In Damascus, this is the main bus station to go to Homs and Aleppo: 33.532449, 36.31875.

The station at Aleppo is quite far from the city center but you will see plenty of taxis just outside.

As per safety, the truth is that many people were being overprotective with me, always taking care that I was feeling safe and comfortable, so you should not worry about that. Most people taking the bus to Aleppo are from the army by the way.

Bashar Al-Assad face is everywhere – Travel guide Syria

What you need to know about money before traveling to Syria

In Syria, they use the Syrian Pound (SYP), a currency that has been fluctuating like crazy for the past 10 years.

Actually, they say that it devaluates daily, sometimes several times a day, but during my stay, I was always able to exchange at the exact same rate, which was 1USD = 490SYP.

I exchanged once at the hotel and then with random people from different shops. All of them offered me the same rate.

If you check the currency value evolution, you will see that, for the last couple of months, it has always been between 450-550, approximately.

The new Syrian bill with Bashar Al-Assad’s face on it. This is around 4USD and it is their highest bill

There are also official exchange offices that should give you a similar value, but I preferred to exchange with random people, as an excuse to have a small chat.

By the way, bring € or USD. If you don’t have any, do know that in Lebanon you can withdraw USD from most ATMs.

If you have Syrian Pounds left when you leave, you can exchange them to Lebanese Pounds or USD in most exchange offices in Beirut. Outside of Lebanon, I doubt you can.

ATMs and Credit Cards – Because of the sanctions, everything is blocked in Syria, so you must bring enough cash for your whole stay.

How much does it cost to travel to Syria?

These are the prices of the most typical things. I won’t write the € or $ conversion this time because of the continuous devaluation but keep in mind that 1USD is around 500SYP.

Lunch in a local restaurant: 2,500-4,000SYP

Food in a nice restaurant with wine: 7,500-9,000SYP

Breakfast (like hummus or ful): 500-800SYP

National Museum: 500SYP

Aleppo Citadel: 500YSP

Bus from Damascus to Aleppo: 4,000-5,000SYP

Budget Hotel in Damascus: 10,000-15,000SYP for a private room

Mid-range hotel in Damascus: 20,000-40,000SYP for a private room

Taxis within cities: 500-700SYP

Local shared taxi Aleppo to Homs: 7,000SYP

The Citadel of Aleppo – Traveling to Syria

Responsible tourism and ethics

Syria is a post-war zone, where millions of people have lost their houses and relatives, so please, be a sensitive tourist.

Don’t say war but crisis or situation instead – You will see that many Syrians themselves don’t really use the word war but they prefer to say other less harsh words.

Don’t say anything bad about Al-Assad – You will be surprised to know that most people are heavy supporters of the Al-Assad regime, so don’t give your political opinion because you may offend someone. I guess that the Syrians who are against him aren’t there anymore.

Syrians hanging out in a destroyed building in Homs

Don’t take selfies with damaged buildings – Seriously, this is one of the most disrespectful things you could ever do and you would actually be an asshole if you did it.

Empathize with the locals – When you are in an area full of destroyed buildings be polite to the people, say hello, shake hands and just be nice with them.

Collaborate with the local economy – In Homs and Aleppo, you are likely to see small businesses open among all the ruins. Do buy things from them. In Homs, I saw one small bakery shop in the practically destroyed souq; I couldn’t resist buying one kilo of sweets there, which I gave to a young boy that was looking for something among the trash.

Read: A travel guide to Iraqi Kurdistan

The streets of Homs, which is around 40% destroyed – Is it safe to visit Syria now

Are the cities really destroyed?

This seems to bring a lot of confusion, so let me explain it to you:

Damascus – Only the outskirts of Damascus are destroyed, as there was a bloody battle there. That area is off limits to tourists. The Old City, downtown and, basically, all the center of Damascus remains intact.

Aleppo – A percentage of the Old City is destroyed, as well as some areas from outside the city. Most of Aleppo isn’t damaged but some very important sites from the Old City, like the Great Mosque, are gone.

Homs – One of the most affected cities by the war. Approximately 40% of the city is destroyed and that includes its bazaar, one of the liveliest and most important souqs in the Middle East.

Palmyra – I haven’t been there but, as far as I know, ISIS destroyed a large part of it.

the Old City of Aleppo – Is Syria a safe place to visit?

Taking photos when you travel in Syria

You can take photos of everything except for one thing: military stuff.

Yes, it is very obvious but the problem is that there is military stuff everywhere, especially in Damascus.

In Damascus, it happened a few times that I took a picture of some cool building or whatever, from relatively far away, and didn’t realize there was a checkpoint right next to it.

Of course, the soldiers approached me but, after quickly checking my passport and my camera, they very kindly let me continue.

Seriously, in Damascus Old City, there are checkpoints everywhere, so pay attention before taking any photos.

I was also approached by soldiers from time to time when I was taking photos of non-military stuff but that was because they still need to get used to tourists roaming around.

Remember everything is still very recent and, in their eyes, everybody could be suspicious.

A soldier in Aleppo’s citadel

Don’t get off the beaten track in Syria, not yet

Seriously, don’t.

Don’t do it because you are going to ruin it for everybody.

Syria just started opening to tourism, so stick to the main touristic areas, which includes the centers of Damascus, Aleppo, etc.

I am telling you this because there was a German guy who went to the outskirts of Damascus to take photos of some destroyed buildings and he was put in jail for a week.

Dude, the country is still not ready for seeing Westerners hanging out in sensitive areas.

Since then, travel agencies require travelers to book a full tour, claiming that, after that incident, there is a new regulation saying that tourists need to be all the time with a guide, but it is bullshit, really.

They tell you this to save their ass because that man Basel got into trouble when that German guy was arrested. And by the way, instead of helping him, he didn’t want to have anything to do with it.

We shouldn’t blame that German guy. He committed a mistake and he already paid for it, but that should serve as a lesson for future travelers.

Damascus bazaar is really good to visit

Where to stay in Syria

Since the crisis, the Government of Syria has introduced a dual pricing policy in all hotels, in which foreigners pay several times the local price.

This has increased the rates substantially but you can still find many affordable options.

Also, you should know that good hotels tend to be full. I arrived in Damascus without a booking and many hotels I walked by had no rooms left but, luckily, there are hotels everywhere.

By the way, you can also try to Couchsurf. I actually Couchsurfed in Aleppo.

Where to stay in Damascus

Budget – Green Hotel – Single rooms cost 15USD and double 30USD. It was very clean, there was a heater, good Wi-Fi and the guy from the reception spoke English. It was here, just outside of the Old City: 33.510168. 36.298925. You can contact my friend Mohammed (he is the only receptionist that speaks good English): +963993829946. Alternatively, you can contact the hotel directly but they may not speak English: +963112258895.

Green Hotel in Damascus. I paid 15USD for this room. It was simple but clean and everything you need!

Mid-range – Hotel Al Majed – This hotel asks around 40USD for a single room. Location: 33517188, 36.296579

Top-end – Beit al Wali – One of the best hotels in the city.

Where to stay in Aleppo

Mid-range – Palace Hotel – Like, I said, I Couchsurfed in Aleppo but I entered this hotel to ask for the price. They ask 69USD for a room. This is the location: 36.207146, 37.14857. It is next to the I Love Aleppo square and it looked a great place to stay. I don’t know any other budget options.

Where to stay in Homs

Mid-range – New Basman Hotel – This is the cheapest hotel I found in Homs. I paid around 40USD for a huge room, which included a basic dinner and a good breakfast. It was pretty good. This is the location: 34.72133, 36.711241. For a reservation, you can contact them at +963991305972.

The food and alcohol in Syria

In the last few years, I haven’t traveled to many countries that are famous for their food, but Syria definitely is.

Being an olive-oil rich Mediterranean country, the ingredients used in their cuisine are fresh and similar to the ones we used in Spain, but also Italy, France, and Greece.

The food is actually pretty much the same as in Lebanon, with their own regional variations, of course.

From the classic hummus to kibbeh (local steak tartar), different sorts of grilled meat or a typical dish of Aleppo consisting of meatballs in cherry sauce, the food in Syria is so varied.

For me, however, breakfast is the best part, as they always serve different variations of hummus and ful deep in super tasty olive oil and vegetables.

As per the alcohol, you should know that Syria has a large Christian population, so alcohol is easily available, especially in the Christian district of the Old City of Damascus, where there is a street filled with bars and many liquor shops.

You can actually buy a $1 beer and drink it in the street!

Hummus for breakfast

Internet and mobile

Wi-Fi – Internet works well across the country. The hotels I stayed at had a good connection and you can also connect in most relatively good cafés and restaurants.

Mobile – I bought Syriatel and, for 2,500SYP, they gave me 2GB and some calls but, of course, prices may change. They only asked for my passport. I recommend you go to the official store. There is one next to Merjeh Square, right here: 33.513185, 36.29777.

I hope this travel guide to Syria will help you to plan your trip. I will try to keep it updated but, if you have more updates, please let us know in the comments section. Thanks

from Cheapr Travels https://ift.tt/34y9yZF via https://ift.tt/2NIqXKN

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swipestream · 6 years

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Sensor Sweep: Conan pastiches, Crashing Suns, and lots of Star Wars

Writers (Williamette Week): You may have heard that Portland’s famous goth bar, The Lovecraft, is under new ownership after the previous owner, Jon Horrid was accused of assault. Now that the bar has changed hands, questions arose whether the new owner planned on continuing to call the bar after an author known for racism and anti-semitism, as well as his stories about unspeakable monsters.

Popular Culture (Unz.com): It is the Western—and its multiple, modern cinematic godchildren—that represents so well and encapsulates so aptly the movement of American history, the aspirations and insatiable curiosity of our citizens, and just how we as a people overcame various challenges in building what became the United States of America. It is a story of conquering frontiers as a symbol for the growth and evolution of the American nation. It offers graphically and sometimes with violence the effects of right and wrong actions, and the absolute requirement for law and order in any civilized society. And it is, at its best, a chronicle of great persons—some real, some idealized, others made up—by whose hands a nation was fashioned.

Writers (Paul Lucas): According to both howardworks.com and isfdb.com, Sword Woman was not published during Howard’s lifetime, so it’s hard to date. However, C. L. Moore corresponded with him about it at the start of 1935 – she loved it – which gives us a reasonable idea. It’s been published a few times since it was rediscovered, but the version I read was in The Second Book of Robert E. Howard, edited by Glenn Lord, published by Zebra Books in 1976.

Writers (Black Gate): Of course, you saw yesterday’s Black Gate post on Heroic Signatures, the new digital/gaming partnership, which includes the rights to about two dozen Robert E. Howard characters and stories. With the recent releases of Modiphius’ Robert E Howard’s Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed Of RPG, Monolith’s Conan board game and Funcom’s in-beta Conan: Exiles video game, Conan is a very viable gaming brand these days. And Funcom’s Age of Conan MMO (which I play) is still going strong as it approaches the decade mark. But fans of Conan’s creator, such as the contributors and readers of our recent Discovering Robert E. Howard series, are yearning for new pastiches featuring Howard’s characters. And not just Conan, but Solomon Kane, El Borak, Breckenridge Elkins and Steve Harrison, to name a few. Aside from some Age of Conan tie-in novels, the Conan pastiche market dried up when Tor finished its series in 2003 with Harry Turtledove’s Conan of Venarium.

Cinema (Forbes): Critically and commercially, it’s hard to view The Last Jedi as a failure. Furious fans fuming online is to be expected whenever a beloved franchise does anything, let alone experiments with a new direction.

The anger is predictable. But what I find really interesting are the comments left by the quietly disappointed, the tepid reaction, the newfound apathy regarding the series as a whole.

Cinema (Salon.com): Talk about the violence in Star Wars: Episode VIII The Last Jedi. Do scenes of explosions and space battles affect you differently than those of close-up, one-on-one lightsaber duels and killings? Why do you think that is? What makes more of an impact: violence or loss? Why? How does this movie handle both topics?

Who are the movie’s heroes? How are they role models? Do they demonstrate courage and teamwork?

How is diversity — and the lack thereof — used to indicate the values of the opposing sides of the conflict in the Star Wars series? Why is it notable that the First Order has very little diversity, while the Republic has a lot of it?

Games (Worthington Publishing): In the far future of the Hyades Cluster, 150 light-years from Earth, a democracy falls into civil war. Fortunately, the civilized folk of the cluster (human or not) recognize the foolishness of war, and set limits on its conduct. Consequently, no planets are destroyed, and when one side gains a distinct strategic advantage, the other side will surrender.

Crashing Suns represents that civil war. Two players, or partners, fight for supremacy in a game that typically lasts 30-45 minutes, but can be shorter or longer (partners can be longer). Wooden blocks are used to hide a unit’s identity from the opponent(s), but this is the only uncertainty in the game – conflicts are resolved deterministically without dice or other random elements. The setup is very important.

Cinema (Vanity Fair): For those who spend any given movie’s opening weekend trying to immediately determine what, if any, place it has in film history, the process has become something of a numbers game that relies upon three vital metrics. The first: what did the critics think of it? Thanks to the popular aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, you don’t even need to read reviews anymore to find out. Before the film opened, The Last Jedi’s sky-high critical score (hovering around the mid-upper 90s) became a story in itself. Second: what did the fans think of it? Here, again, Rotten Tomatoes claims to have the answer, with a controversial “rotten” audience score currently sitting around 56 percent.

Writers (Jeffro Johnson): “Burroughs garners demerits for mixing elements of multiple genres within the same novel… at a time when the dividing lines between fantasy, science fiction, and horror were considerably more blurry than we are used to today. (Keep in mind that before John W. Campbell’s tenure at Astounding Stories, the magazine featured multiple stories by H. P. Lovecraft!) Meanwhile, Argosy magazine which featured many of Burrough’s novels was not a magazine that targeted a juvenile audience by any stretch. Finally, Burrough’s hero was synonymous with fantasy and science fiction all the way through the seventies when the movie poster depictions of Luke Skywalker were specifically crafted to evoke Frank Frazetta’s renditions of John Carter of Mars. Meanwhile, Superman– the character that set the template for superhero comics for all time– was patterned after two Burrough’s most enduring creations, John Carter and Tarzan.”

Sensor Sweep: Conan pastiches, Crashing Suns, and lots of Star Wars published first on http://ift.tt/2zdiasi

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ismael37olson · 7 years

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It Was Great When It All Began

What does a theatre company owe to our art form, and to the people who love our art form? Thoughtfulness and artistry. Those of us making theatre, those of us given the great honor of being the storytellers, we all need to respect the material, and not impose our own agenda upon it. I've seen so many productions that "bring something new" to an already brilliant show by misunderstanding and short-circuiting what the show is really about, and imposing upon it a nonsensical period, setting, or other High Concepts Por ejemplo... Rocky Horror has to be set in the early 1970s because it's really specifically about how Americans reacted to the Sexual Revolution of the late 60s and 70s. Tommy has to be set in post-World War II London, because it's really specifically about Western Civilization finding itself spiritually lost after the war, while drowning in postwar conspicuous consumption. When you change the setting of these stories, either explicitly or through set and costume design (the biggest warning sign is the random use of Steampunk), you betray the work, its authors, your audience, and our art form. We may see resonance in The Rocky Horror Show for our own times, but the more specifically it lives in the seventies, the easier it can serve as a metaphor for today, allowing us to stand back from our own times and see them objectively. Frank is presented as a glam rock star because that was the only period of rock and roll during which gender was both fluid and irrelevant (the same reason Hedwig, of The Angry Inch fame, finds her home in that subgenre). The dissolution of gender roles was one of the things straight America feared the most during the Sexual Revolution. Frank’s lack of clear gender is his real monstrosity, which is why it’s always a mistake for productions to re-imagine Frank as anything other than a glam rocker. It's not just about drag; it's about gender in our culture. To take the seventies and its issues out of Rocky Horror both emasculates it and short-circuits its social satire. No one working on the 2000 Broadway revival seemed to notice that the leather and S&M themes in the costumes went exactly opposite to O’Brien’s original intentions of innocent, campy, goofy sexuality. Rocky Horror is not soft porn; it’s a satiric cartoon of sexuality at a particularly clumsy time and place in American history. But director Christopher Ashley and his designers didn’t understand that. Only the Wall Street Journal could still see Rocky’s smarts behind all the distractions, and its reviewer Amy Gamerman wrote, “The carnival atmosphere of The Rocky Horror Show is so enveloping that it takes awhile before you notice how clever the show itself is – a smartly calibrated blend of salty, sweet and sarcastic, with its pierced tongue lodged firmly in its cheek.”

Rocky is a brilliant, insightful social document, and the directors and actors who don't get that are missing everything that's really wonderful about the show. After all, modern-day Puritans weren’t the only ones who thought the Sexual Revolution was a bad thing. Others disliked it because they felt this new movement took all the mystery and magic – and most important, the romance – out of sex. In Rocky Horror, Eddie’s song “Whatever Happened to Saturday Night?”(aka “Hot Patootie”) addresses this issue of how the hippie movement and the Sexual Revolution "ruined" everything. There’s even a reference to the change (for the worse, in Eddie’s opinion) in American pop culture and music, away from the romance of 1950s rock and roll, and toward the politics and disenfranchisement and nihilism of 1960s acid rock, embodied in the image of rock icon Buddy Holly’s premature death. This song is far from the pointless interruption of the show that some people claim. You'll always look foolish if you condemn Grease, Hair, ot Rocky Horror as empty-headed silliness. Just because you may not see the substance doesn't mean it's not there... Eddie’s song is a pointed commentary on the way the Sexual Revolution (in the person of Frank) was changing sex and romance in America (in the person of Columbia), a last, metaphorical stab at stopping the tide of the Sexual Revolution, and a final warning as the show’s first half comes to a close that Brad and Janet’s world is gone. Frank and the Sexual Revolution are too strong, and they silence forever the simplicity and purity of 50s rock and romance through Frank’s act of murdering Eddie, in effect also shutting the door forever on Brad and Janet’s old-fashioned world of sexual innocence.

This is also a theme addressed, though more subtly, in the show’s opening, “Science Fiction Double Feature.” A close reading of this lyric shows a real longing for the innocence of the 1950s, when sex was all subtext and metaphor. The song starts by taking us back to that idealized time when movies told Americans what was good and bad, right and wrong, acceptable and “deviant.” And they told us all this very carefully and indirectly. But subtextual sexuality couldn’t stay hidden forever. Rock and roll would emerge, alongside drive-in movies, and these forces would change sex forever. Which is the central through-line of Grease, by the way. This opening song in Rocky Horror sets up the central conflict of the show, though like the movies it celebrates, it does so subtly. It positions open, overt sexuality as not just a threat, but also a despoiler of the innocent, sweet, teen sexuality of the 1950s, a kind of innocence that existed more on the screen than in the back row of the local movie house. In this song, O’Brien is talking about the very center of the culture of the fifties: the nexus of sex, drive-ins, and rock and roll, the forces that were changing America in profound ways. And a big part of the drive-in experience was low-budget science fiction, often in double features. “Science Fiction Double Feature” is O’Brien’s statement of purpose. This will be a story about the (false) moral perfection of the 1950s as it slams up against the wild explorations of the Sexual Revolution, here rendered "in the back row." Rocky Horror explored American sexual hang-ups, the excesses of the Sexual Revolution, and the sometimes cruel myth of the American Dream. It used as its vocabulary pop culture icons like Charles Atlas and muscle magazines, Frederick’s of Hollywood, old sci-fi movies with scantily clad women, horror movies with barely sublimated sexual fantasies, glam rock with its blurring of gender lines – all icons that represented the history of Americans hiding sex behind other things.

And perhaps it’s Rocky’s underlying condemnation of America’s sexual puritanicalism and hypocrisy that keeps the show relevant today. Rocky satirizes sex in America by personifying in Brad and Janet the two responses American society had toward the sexual revolution of the 1960s and 70s, and the revolution itself personified by the gender-vague, pansexual Frank N. Furter. In the real world, half of America (Brad) responded to the Sexual Revolution by fighting even harder than before to stop the progression of sexual freedom, to demonize homosexuality, to condemn sexual independence in women, to blame all of America’s ills on sex, to brand (or rebrand) otherwise healthy expressions of sexuality as dirty and inappropriate. The other half of America (Janet) responded with an almost manic sexual celebration and a kind of aggressive experimentation that today may seem outrageous. Both reactions in the real world probably made the early stages of the AIDS pandemic worse than it should have been. And Rocky Horror rightly satirizes both reactions. Both sides went too far. You can't transplant this story to another cultural context. The Rocky Horror Show is about a time in America when our nation stood at a crossroads. Sexual oppression was ending (or at least, beginning to fade) and America had to decide how it would move forward. But neither the people who celebrated this new era or the people terrified by it acted responsibly; neither side caused AIDS, but both sides helped it spread. Of course, Rocky Horror is not about AIDS, but it is about consequences. It was written in 1973, but it is about sexual politics in America then and now. Watching it today, we can see a moment in time when it wasn’t yet too late, when the devastation of a generation of innocent men and women should not have been inevitable. We can love the music, laugh at the jokes, and sing along with “The Time Warp,” but we should never forget that Rocky Horror is about something. Something very specific.

You wouldn't set Grease in the 80s (although the 1994 revival tried), so don't don't do it to Rocky. It's not just a sex farce or a drag show. Why some directors feel the need to impose a "vision" or a metaphor on shows is beyond me. Just tell the fucking story. And this story is about America in the early 1970s, a moment so sui generis there is no adequate substitute. So let's do "The Time Warp" again and again, but let's leave the leather harness at home. Long Live the Musical! Scott from The Bad Boy of Musical Theatre http://newlinetheatre.blogspot.com/2017/10/it-was-great-when-it-all-began.html

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prophetkristy · 7 years

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slayer of stars

Twenty years ago today, I came down the hill from my History 101 course with my brain a-whirring, made my way to the computer lab in the dungeon basement of my dorm, logged onto Usenet [1], and posted the following to alt.fan.wedge:

Subject: SW and animism From: Kristy <…@uidaho.edu> Date: 1997/08/28 Message-ID: <[email protected]> Newsgroups: alt.fan.wedge

Okay, I just got back from my History of Western Civilization class, and I have to vent. It’s no secret that GL got his ideas from other cultures and traditions. So it wasn’t too surprising when my teacher(who’s pretty awesome, IMO) was explaining animism today, he used SW as an example. (it sure made taking notes a lot easier. ::g::) Animists believe that the universe is alive, i.e., the Force is there. And they have shamans who are basically Jedi knights. I identified with evrything he was saying until he got to explaining their general classes of gods. Here’s what they have: the old father god, the young warrior god, the young goddess of war/love, and the trickster. There were parallels here to SW: trickster=Han Solo, wise father=Obi-Wan, goddess=Leia. But my teacher went on and on about how the young warrior was the coolest of all, he went off and fought battles and monsters and all the cool stories were about him. So who else would he choose for the SW parallel but Farm Boy. Bleah! I _almost_ went up to him after class and protested. Farm Boy isn’t the coolest warrior! _Wedge_ is, of course!

Yet another example of the oppression Wedge fans suffer at the hands of Farm Boy…. ::sigh:: Well, he’s guaranteed I’ll remember _that_ part of the lecture.

How about: Vote Wedge. He’s the true animist warrior god.

Thank you for listening, you’re the only people who would ever understand. :-)

–Kristy [2], off to an astronomy lab

Palpatine’s dead. Vote Wedge. –Antilles/Celchu ‘00–

From such humble [?!] beginnings was the True Animist Warrior God movement born. (Some time later I printed out a post signed with the TAWG [3] campaign slogan and taped said slogan onto my history notebook.)

This was not to bag on the history course. It was only the second day, as far as I can tell from my notes [4]. I had wanted to take the honors section of the course, but it wouldn’t fit in the schedule of other classes I was taking [5]. It turns out that I don’t regret this, as I very much enjoyed the class. It was actually taught by a graduate student, IIRC, and he was very good; he described many events in a human context with the emotions and motivations of the players. [6] Really, the worst thing about the course was that it was at 7 am—a less than ideal way, shall we say, to start college [7]. (Oh my TAWG, I’m going absolutely berserk with the footnotes! My brain keeps going off on tangents, but I don’t want to interrupt myself all the time. wheeee!)

(Interestingly, the next semester I continued on with Hist 102, which this time was taught by a professor. Who wasn’t nearly as interesting as the grad student!)

According to my heading for the Animism post in the Classic Threads section of the AFW website [8], I previously linked Star Wars to the Sumerian epic Gilgamesh–where Farmboy was Gilgamesh, taking all the credit, and Wedge was Enkidu, doing all the work. I think now this might be a little revisionist history. I can’t remember in which course I read Gilgamesh, but it’s likely that it was Lit of Western Civ that same semester (high school Senior AP English was British lit, where we watched every Jane Austen movie Ever Made *gag*). The earliest post of mine I can find referencing the two was actually the *next* week or so, in the midst of the Epic, Historical “Fantasy Toys” Thread, in response to Quiara:

> We understand you, dear. Where else could I admit to writing a Hero > essay about him in the same year that I did a book report on Rogue > Squadron?

I really want to write my Lit of Western Civ essay on the parallels between Gilgamesh/Enkidu and Luke/Wedge, but I could never get four pages out of that and have my teacher actually like it. ::pout:: [9]

Both of these posts were commenting on what I felt (still do feel, to some extent) was a sad state of affairs in being a WedgeFan. Namely, that Wedge was a lot cooler than most people give him credit for. (And, underlying that feeling, a WedgeFan’s natural disdain for Luke “Farmboy” [10] Skywalker.) This would reach its fannish culmination in the Book of Wedge, but had real-world significance in the woeful lack of a separate carded Wedge Antilles action figure. As well as the lack of Wedge awareness among those who weren’t huge pilotfans.

Despite that, 1997 was a fantastic year to be a WedgeFan. Maybe if you weren’t Quiara, Brett, or myself, it was different—we three were quite chatty—but I never heard anyone complain. ;-) [11] It wasn’t actually our most active year, but it was the beginning of what I think of as the “golden years” of AFW. The first four X-Wing books (by Historian of Wedge Michael A. Stackpole) had been released by January 1997, and Mike actually lurked and occasionally even posted. I joined in the spring of 1997 as a senior in high school (with a very embarassing post which will not be reproduced here). Quiara was in high school. Brett wasn’t being challenged too much by work or life, because he also apparently had a lot of time on his hands. Somehow the three of us had some mojo (and also probably high blood sugar content) that just led to wacky hijinks. Quiara declared Wedge’s candidacy for President in April, a story which would last well *past* the 2004 election. I declared him TAWG in August. The Fantasy Toys thread was started earlier in August, thus cementing me into the AFW madness and keeping me frequently posting even when I probably should have been paying attention to college. (eh. I gradutated.) The “the world is falling down…” thread was that year, too.

Of all the Internet friends I have, interestingly it’s Quiara and Brett whom I’ve never met in real life. I actually haven’t heard from Quiara in years; she dropped off the radar at about the time she started college, I think, thus proving her work (study) ethic. ;-) I can’t say I really knew her all that well—AFW was almost exclusively the limit of our interaction—but I still consider her to have been an early partner in crime. I still hear from Brett occasionally, and I actually can’t believe I haven’t found myself visiting his city before now. Brett holds a special place in my memory not only for being such an integral part of that first crazy year on AFW, but also for scoring me the Wedge action figure I like to call “biceps Wedge”–the one from the Milennium Falcon carrying case, which his comics store was selling loose for some reason.

Resorting again to Google Groups (we never know, when we’re making history, that we are doing so, and as such fail to keep track of these things), it looks like I first styled myself Prophet Kristy on October 8, 1997, in a short thread titled “Random Thoughts.” [12] Quiara, bless her heart, actually accused me of being humble:

> –Kristy, Prophet of the Great One

Just a prophet? you could make Cardinal at least, if you wanted.

(Yeah, maybe I could have—I am Catholic, after all—but, y'know, “Prophetess” works better on the back of a kickball shirt that “Cardinal”. “-ess.” Er, see what I mean?)

One month later (AFAICT) I first signed a post as “Prophet Kristy”–and the rest, as they say, is history.

I could go on and on with the AFW nostalgia——but I should probably get to work on actual, you know, work. And this is getting LONG. However, I do want to mention one other thing in relation to the TAWG / Prophetess thing.

The Book of Wedge was my default icon on LiveJournal—a little cartoon made by terrathree, originally for Terra Group, that she kindly made 100x100 when I started LJing. I didn’t actually come up with the idea for the Book of Wedge—the document I wrote was largely an adaptation from “The Adventures of Wedge Antilles” written by Mike Scorsch and posted on his late web page Corellian Bloodstripes. I’d always been greatly amused by the idea of revisionist SW history with Wedge being the person behind *everything*–especially having Wedge actually blow the first DS as well as the second. Having declared myself a Prophet, I also felt it was only fair that I write a Holy Book. Thus was born the Book of Wedge, wherein Wedge not only blows up both Death Stars, but also shoots Greedo, fights off the Slave I with a blaster, and generally saves the day. In it, I declared Quiara and Brett to be Apostles of Wedge along with Jim and Marji, two others who were in the thick of AFW in late 1997. And generally had a blast being silly and fangirly.

Quiara followed this up with the Book of Quiara, a short history of the campaign and other silliness. And much later, terrathree expanded on an observation I’d made about the constellation Orion looking like an X-wing and wrote the tale of the Hunter of the Sky.

These are only a few of the many, many tales of Wedge spawned by AFW, but they are the Holiest. So sayeth the Prophetess of the Great One, Wedge Antilles, the True Animist Warrior God. *makes the Sign of the Exploding Death Star*

I imagine our old IRC chat server probably doesn’t even exist anymore (is IRC even still a thing??)–Feast Days used to always be Chat Days–but have a good Feast Day of Wedge, won’t you all? Do the Ewok Dance, drink some Ewok Juice, bag on Farmboy, and revel in the glory of the Rebellion’s Greatest Starpilot.

[1]=Yeahhhhhh, Usenet. Back in the day. [2]=As you see, I didn’t self-identify then as Prophetess; that was to come later. Wow, I’d forgotten I used to use my fanfic Knave Leader and the ASCII parked X-wing in my .sig. Nifty. [3]=I’m almost positive that Morwen was the one to coin that acronym. Once again showing us all up with her mad language skillz, especially considering this isn’t her native tongue. [4]=yes, I’m enough of a nerd that I’ve kept my freshman history notes. [5]=probably this was a good thing, since I was taking the honors sections of Chemistry 111 AND English <memfault—Literature of Western Civilization>. [6]=I haven’t been able to turn him up by Googling, but I hope he found himself a faculty position somewhere; he deserves it. [7]=I cordially loathe all those students who boast of arranging their schedules to never start before 10 or 12. I was never able to do that—there was always a class I needed that was a 7:30 or 8 or 8:30. Pout. [8]=Yeah, I know it’s gone. It needs a new server space. And its webmistress needs to pay attention to it. I’ll just have to link to Google posts here. [9]=It looks like I had dropped the Knave Leader by this time, but was still not calling myself Prophet Kristy. [10]=How much do I love that Mara always calls him Farmboy? [11]=Oh, no, that came much later, spurring the Project Boussh Polite Flame War of '01(?). [12]=this was also apparently the thread that spawned the phrase “rakish rebel scum”, which Brett quickly hailed as a great band name. And it was only a 7 post thread! aaah, for the time to just read and relive the posts of those years.

#feast day of tawg #afw #alt.fan.wedge #usenet #copypasta from livejournal #wedge antilles #star wars

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patriotsnet · 3 years

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How Many Registered Democrats And Republicans Are There

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/how-many-registered-democrats-and-republicans-are-there/

How Many Registered Democrats And Republicans Are There

As A Successful Republican New Mexico Governor 2016 Libertarian Party Presidential Candidate Gary Johnson Pronounced That He Had Slashed Taxes More Than A Dozen Times Balanced The There Are Many On The Left Who Support The Libertarian Partys Proposals To Legalize The Liberal Use Of Marijuana

39.66 percent of voters are registered with that party. The most recent poll at the time of writing gives a d+11 advantage. Even if you’d rather not commit to any particular party, you may find yourself wishing to support a specific democrat candidate when primaries come around. Once you know which party you belong to, it will be easier to decide which candidates to vote for during elections. This quiz will ask you questions about your political beliefs. However, registered republicans outnumber democrats in six of the state’s 21 counties, and there several other counties that are pretty evenly split. Over 60% of black voters are registered democrats compared to just 3% that are registered in surveys, more than half of seattle voters identified as democrat or leaning democratic. The answer may surprise you. Are you a democrat or a republican? Are there more democrats or republicans who top that list? The election of 2010 gave republicans the majority beginning in january, 2011. These are broadly generalized opinions; There are still way more registered democrats;

The election of 2010 gave republicans the majority beginning in january, 2011. Hello and thank you for registering. It was a more natural association. related: Are there more democrats or republicans who top that list? The republican party has waxed and waned in popularity and membership over the years, never quite having as many registered partisans as the democrats.

Since Democrats And Republicans Appear To Have An Inexhaustible Appetite For Political Friction In The United States The Words Democrat And Republican Are Widely Used To Mean The Two Major Lets Take A Closer Look At Where These Two Words Came From And How They Came To Be Used In The

Altogether, there are 31 states with party registration; Eric rauchway, professor of american history at the university of democrats seized upon a way of ingratiating themselves to western voters: How many wars were initiated by democrats since the beginning of the usa? Republicans were able to fend off challenges from democrats trying to flip control of state legislatures in key states. Results seemed to follow what was set out by prediction polls, with the democrats seizing control of the house of representatives and the republicans maintaining the majority in the senate. Republicans who worked with democrats were traitors in the war for seats in congress. Since democrats and republicans appear to have an inexhaustible appetite for political friction in the united states, the words democrat and republican are widely used to mean the two major let’s take a closer look at where these two words came from and how they came to be used in the. Republicans’ opinions carry less weight. How many democrats, republicans, and independents are registered? Voter registration and participation are crucial for the nation’s democracy to function properly and for the us government to provide fair representation. So, perhaps i should start with a story. Democrats did see a boost in 2008 when former president obama was elected, hitting a peak of 43.62 percent of registered voters. Democratic supporters accounted for 35% of the electorate.

This Marks The First Time Since Party Registration Began Republicans Are Also More Than Three Points Off Where They Were Four Years Earlier In 2004 When 3279 Percent Of Voters Were Republican And

Phoenix — there are more registered democrats than republicans in arizona’s congressional district 1, according to voting registration data recently analyzed by dataorbital. For decades, the word conservative have been synonymous with orange county. 39.66 percent of voters are registered with that party. There are now more registered independents than republicans, marking a first for the u.s. Ballot harvesting, a surge of illegal aliens from the southern border and middle eastern ‘refugees’ resettled in orange county by obama has shifted the. Immigration policy is about a lot more than just border enforcement or ice raids. Since 2012, more voters have chosen not to register for either. Republicans and democrats are the dominant political parties in the united states of america. But today, a survey by ballot access shows there are more registered independents than republicans, perhaps a sign that political parties. According to the register, there are now 547,458 registered democrats versus 547,369 registered republicans. It is not a straightforward question. The county has had experienced shocking losses during the 2018 midterms where democrats controlled. Suppose there are 1000 white americans in total.

Or was it just low turnout that allowed marijuana to get legalized there?

But that doesn’t mean everyone votes for their party.

There are now more registered independents than republicans, marking a first for the u.s.

Dapatkan link

But Today A Survey By Ballot Access Shows There Are More Registered Independents Than Republicans Perhaps A Sign That Political Parties

However, democrats hold a slightly larger edge in leaned party identification over republicans now than in 2016 or 2015. Noted for expanding the federal government and battling big business, teddy roosevelt was a republican before forming the progressive party later in his career. Even if you’d rather not commit to any particular party, you may find yourself wishing to support a specific democrat candidate when primaries come around. Indeed, part of the reason there are still many more registered democrats is that some southern and appalachian states have more registered democrats than republicans, even though. Altogether, there are 10 states with more registered independents than either democrats or republicans.

However, democrats actually come out ahead when it comes to fundraising for who are the richest politicians in washington? For example, in kentucky1 as of 8/15/2018, 49.8% of registered voters are democrats while only 41.6% are republicans. There are still way more registered democrats; Noted for expanding the federal government and battling big business, teddy roosevelt was a republican before forming the progressive party later in his career. There are a little more than 11,000 more registered democrats than republicans in cumberland county.

Voter registration is the requirement that a person eligible to vote registers on an electoral roll before that person is entitled or permitted to vote.

A Group Of Friends And A Few Acquaintances Were Having A Politic Many Of You Guys Can Add It Up In One Minute So Please Tell Me:

Eric rauchway, professor of american history at the university of democrats seized upon a way of ingratiating themselves to western voters: There were nine new senators and a minimum of 89 new representatives , as well as one new delegate at the start of its first session. During this time, african americans were largely disenfranchised. Get more help from chegg. The us political parties, now called democrats and republicans, switched platform planks, ideologies, and members many although what happened is complex, in many cases there was no clean sudden shift, and some voter bases and factions never switched, you can see evidence of the. How many new democrats are there? Voter registration is the requirement that a person eligible to vote registers on an electoral roll before that person is entitled or permitted to vote. Voter registration and participation are crucial for the nation’s democracy to function properly and for the us government to provide fair representation. Republicans who worked with democrats were traitors in the war for seats in congress. I’ve seen a lot where it says they’re a registered democrat . A group of friends and a few acquaintances were having a politic many of you guys can add it up in one minute, so please tell me: Republicans and democrats after the civil war. In the others, such as virginia, voters register without.

Polling Data Shows Republican Party Affiliation Is Down As Independents Leaning Toward The Democratic Party Surge

Democrats have a nine-percentage-point affiliation advantage over Republicans at the moment.

Resize icon

The GOP is losing its grip, according to the latest Gallup poll.

The number of Americans identifying as Republicans or as independents who lean toward the GOP dropped to 40% in the first quarter of 2021, compared with the number of Democrats or independents leaning toward the Democratic party hitting 49%. And that nine-percentage-point lead is the greatest Democratic advantage that Gallup has measured since the fourth quarter of 2012, when former President Barack Obama was re-elected.

Gallup routinely measures U.S. adults’ party identification and the political leanings of independents. The latest poll surveyed a random sample of 3,960 U.S. adults by phone between January and March of 2021. And while Democratic Party affiliation actually dropped by one point from the fourth quarter of 2020, to 30% — where it has hovered for most of the past eight years — the number of Americans identifying as independent rose to 44% from 38% last quarter. And this growing number of independents came at the expense of the Republican party, as 19% of independents said they lean Democrat, compared with 15% leaning Republican. Most of the remaining 11% of independents didn’t swing either way.

And several events have happened during those three months that could position the Democratic Party more favorably in voters’ eyes, the Gallup report noted.

Opinion:

Closed Primaries Are When Only Registered Democrats From January 2007 To January 2011 There Were More Democrats

This quiz will ask you questions about your political beliefs. I’ve seen a lot where it says they’re a registered democrat . 39.66 percent of voters are registered with that party. The most recent poll at the time of writing gives a d+11 advantage. It is not a straightforward question. Prove it by acing our democrat or republican quiz. What republican and democrats believe. Let’s start with this example. Altogether, there are 10 states with more registered independents than either democrats or republicans. For example, in kentucky1 as of 8/15/2018, 49.8% of registered voters are democrats while only 41.6% are republicans. The analysis in this report draws on more than 10,000 interviews with registered voters in 2017 and tens of thousands of interviews conducted in previous years (see. Being a registered democrat or republican, or for that matter socialist, green or independent, simply means that when you filled out your voter registration form you checked that box on the form. There are many pressing issues in.

Crime Statistics Show Democrat Voters Much More Criminal Than Republicans But What About Democrat Politicians

It has been know for a longtime that heavily Democrat voting areas have much higher violent crime than heavily Republican voting areas. The chart at the left takes one swing state, Ohio, then compares the Violent Crime Rate of the biggest city, Celina, in the most Republican voting county at 77%, Mercer County https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/the-most-republican-and-democratic-counties-in-america/ar-AAc7dFD#image=AAb0L46|34 to the state as a whole and then to the most Democrat voting city, Cleveland, and then to an extremely Democrat voting neighborhood in Cleveland the 96%+ Democrat Cedar Ave Area.

The Violent Crime Rate geometrically skyrockets as the percent of Democrat voters goes up. From 1 in the least Democrat area to 114 in the most Democratic area. This is all documented in the movie “Who Wins When America Loses.”

New York City Voters Shifted From Republican Or Independent To Democratic Party Ahead Of Primary

IT news

Voters

The Democratic Party in New York has consistently grown its voter base over the years and has also drawn previously party-unaffiliated and Republican voters to its ranks. In the last year alone, more than 88,000 voters who either had no party registration or were registered with the Republican Party switched their affiliation to the Democrats, potentially creating a new bloc of voters that candidates may seek to woo in races such as the crowded and competitive primary contest to replace term-limited Mayor Bill de Blasio.

According to data from the state voter file analyzed by Prime New York, a political consulting firm, 67,965 unaffiliated voters and 20,528 Republicans joined the Democratic Party, for a total of 88,493 new Democrats. In that same period, 20,136 Democrats switched over to the Republican Party.

Just 209 voters from the Republican and Democratic Parties gave up their party affiliation and became so-called “blank” or “independent” voters.

New York has a closed primary system, where only those with a party affiliation can vote in party primary elections. With 3.7 million registered Democrats in the city as of February 21, compared to just over 566,000 Republicans and about 1.08 million independents, the Democratic primaries all but decide the winner of the general election as well, at least for almost all citywide, boroughwide, and district-specific seats.

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Are You Surrounded By Democrats Or Republicans How Jersey Breaks Red And Blue In All 21 Counties

Here is a county-by-county breakdown of which political party rules in each of New Jersey’s 21 counties and how much each party gained since this time last year.

Matt Arco | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com

New Jersey is a Democratic-leaning state, and it’s getting bluer by the month.

Democrats have registered voters at a faster pace than Republicans in the Garden State. But the GOP still maintains pockets of control in some counties.

Republicans are outnumbered by registered Democrats by nearly 1 million people , according to the latest statistics from the state’s Division of Elections. As of the end of September, New Jersey had 2,307,937 registered Democrats and 1,331,102 Republicans.

Over the past year, Democrats added more than double the number of registered voters compared to the GOP , according to the data.

However, registered Republicans outnumber Democrats in six of the state’s 21 counties, and there are a few other counties that are pretty evenly split. Also, Republicans out registered the number of new Democrats in six counties from this time last year, including in three counties where the number of Ds outweigh the Rs.

The largest number of New Jersey voters — 2,378,040 to be exact — have not formally claimed any party affiliation.

“Twelve years ago, Democrats had a 290,000 vote plurality over registered Republicans statewide,” said Ben Dworkin, director of Rowan University’s Institute for Public Policy and Citizenship.

In 2021 Republicans Will Have Full Control Of The Legislative And Executive Branch In 23 States

Democrats and independents grow more diverse since 2008. According to gallup.com about 42% of voters claim to be independents. There is a big difference between a state, for example with 7000 registered greens, which had a net increase of plus 200 where 201 new voters registered in to the greens and only 1 left, compared to a situation in the same state where 5000 voters newly registered green but at the same time 4800 left the party. Currently, republicans have 51 seats, and democrats have 47 with two races still undecided. San francisco 62.61% modoc 54.46% santa clara 29.92% Their partisan affiliation was roughly split between three groups: How the county has changed since this time last year: Democrats will have full control of the legislative and executive branch in 15 states. There are roughly 55 million registered republicans. There are 517,562 registered democrats this year in allegheny county, compared to 520,135 in 2016. The counties with the 10 highest percentages of democratic party, republican party, and no party preference registered voters are: According to data from ballot access news, independents make up 29.09 percent of registered voters, while republicans make up 28.87 percent and democrats make up 39.66 percent. In 12 states, there are more registered republicans than democrats.

Are You Surrounded By Democrats Or Republicans How Nj Breaks Red And Blue In All 21 Counties

Here is a county-by-county breakdown of which political party rules in each of New Jersey’s 21 counties and how much each party gained since this time last year.

Matt Arco | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com

Democratic-leaning New Jersey is getting bluer ahead of November’s election.

Republicans are outnumbered by registered Democrats by more than 1 million people, according to the June statistics from the state’s Division of Elections. New Jersey had 2,554,293 registered Democrats and 1,464,449 Republicans.

Over the past year, Democrats added nearly double the number of registered voters compared to the GOP , according to the data.

People who have not formally claimed any party affiliation had long been the largest number of New Jersey voters. But they ceded ground to Democratic voters at about this time last year. There are 2,433,541 unaffiliated voters in the state.

There are also 78,610 voters who claimed affiliation to other political parties such as the Libertarian, Conservative and Green parties. New Jersey had more than 6.17 million registered voters as of June 1.

Democrat Gov. Phil Murphy is up for re-election this year and so are all the state Legislature’s 120 seats. Former GOP Assemblyman Jack Ciattarelli is hoping to unseat Murphy and make him a one-term governor.

Here is a county-by-county breakdown of which political party rules in each of New Jersey’s 21 counties and how much each party gained since this time last year.

However The Majority Of Monmouth County Voters Chose To Register As Independent/unaffiliated

PostedFri, Jul9, 2021 at 1:28 pm ET|UpdatedFri, Jul9, 2021 at 2:37 pm ET

MONMOUTH COUNTY, NJ — For the first time in several years, there are now more registered Republican voters in Monmouth County than registered Democrats.

The is according to the most recent voter registrant information provided by the New Jersey Division of Elections:

As of July 1, there are 491,689 total registered voters in Monmouth County:

In The 2012 Election Cycle More People Registered As Independent Voters Then As Republicans

Registered democrats have a 10,133,829 ballot request lead over registered republicans. But it’s also a sign of how centuries. There are now more registered independents than republicans, marking a first for the u.s. In the 2012 election cycle, more people registered as independent voters then as republicans. How many states are democrat and how many are republican? Does that mean the person has signed something or they’re a member of do not report comments because they disagree with your point of view. To be clear, there are still more registered democrats than republicans in all three of these states. Get more help from chegg. We’ve heard it over and over: Republicans who worked with democrats were traitors in the war for seats in congress. Neither party pursued civil rights. How many republicans switch to democrat as compared to democrats switching to republican, in public and in office. Democratic supporters accounted for 35% of the electorate.

Gallup: Democrats Now Outnumber Republicans By 9 Percentage Points Thanks To Independents

“I think what we have to do as a party is battle the damage to the Democratic brand,” Democratic National Committee Chairman Jamie Harrison said on The Daily Beast‘s . Gallup reported Wednesday that, at least relatively speaking, the Democratic brand is doing pretty good.

In the first quarter of 2021, 49 percent of U.S. adults identified as Democrats or independents with Democratic leanings, versus 40 percent for Republicans and GOP leaders, Gallup said. “The 9-percentage-point Democratic advantage is the largest Gallup has measured since the fourth quarter of 2012. In recent years, Democratic advantages have typically been between 4 and 6 percentage points.”

New Gallup polling finds that in the first quarter of 2021, an average of 49% of Americans identify with/lean toward the Democratic Party, versus 40 percent for Republicans.

That’s the largest gap since 2012:https://t.co/YpUvqBKxLxpic.twitter.com/JrNXQvisbv

— Greg Sargent April 7, 2021

Party identification, polled on every Gallup survey, is “something that we think is important to track to give a sense to the relevant strength of the two parties at any one point in time and how party preferences are responding to events,”Gallup senior editor Jeff Jones told USA Today.