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ohanny · 26 days

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KentaKim royalty AU!

(screw “five fun facts” i have never been good with rules, @le-trash-prince hope you don't mind)

once upon a time, in a land far, far away tony is king and also a giant, sexist dick. he rules his kingdom with an iron fist, over-taxes the poor, believes alphas are the shit and omegas are only good for breeding and has made being the royal gardener into the most perilous position in the land (he beheaded four gardeners last year alone for over watering his bonsais and one for looking at them with “malice in his eyes”). but even a grand monarch like tony must have allies - and since everyone thinks he's a raging asshole, he actually desperately needs them which is why he resorts to the oldest royal scheme of them all: MARRIAGE.

enter kim. kim is the royal omega from an extremely wealthy kingdom just across some ocean stretch and sails into town, set to marry tony’s eldest son babe. (well, currently eldest. tony does not have a great track record when it comes to keeping custody.) babe is not very enthusiastic about this situation since he is carrying a secret affair with the castle archivist, charlie. (and by secret i mean pretty much everyone except tony knows but since they like babe, they just pretend babe actually is that passionate of a reader behind closed doors.)

but babe also has a conscience and really feels bad for kim who seems like such a nice young man so when they stroll in the gardens, arm in arm, far enough from their chaperones for an illusion of privacy but in their sight so nothing uncouth could happen, babe apologetically whispers that he finds kim bewitching indeed but alas his heart belongs to another. to which kim says “oh thank fuck, i would rather jump off a cliff than let you knot me”

babe: well that’s a bit harsh.

kim: also your dad’s shit.

babe: i mean -

kim: and i am here to kill him

babe: um -

kim: by the way, pete says hi!

and oh pete, tony’s original eldest son who years ago sadly perished (was banished) because he fell off a horse (because he dared to do something as leftist as write poetry to the stable boy way). it was actually kim’s family who sheltered pete and recognized him as a way better option for tony’s throne and kim is in cahoots with him, going undercover. in return of a proper alliance and the liberation of tony’s people, kim’s family will get rid of tony - plan a being an assassination, plan b an outright invasion.

plan a is proving to be quite tricky due to tony being a paranoid motherfucker, but kim is patient. of course something has to throw a spanner into his plans and that something is someone: namely kenta, tony’s secret bastard son most loyal knight. it starts when kenta is sent to summon kim to afternoon tea and sneaks up to him so quietly that he startles kim and suddenly finds himself slammed against a statue with a knife against his neck - oh how the turns have tabled!

kim: oh shit.

kenta: …

kim: i mean oh no, you scared me kind sir!

the knife disappears in the blink of an eye and kim let’s out this ditzy little giggle and offers his arm all “isn’t it time for tea! how lovely!” steadfastly ignoring kenta’s disbelieving are-you-fucking-kidding-me eyes. and well, kenta does escort kim to have his lovely afternoon tea with the other palace omegas. and then keeps escorting kim everywhere. no matter where kim tries to sneak off to, kenta somehow always finds him and it takes everything he has in him to not snap and scream because it is infuriating.

and then the ball happens. because of course there has to be a ball to celebrate the fortuitous engagement full of fancy dresses and foods and wine and palace plots! kim wants to take the opportunity of all the chaos and security being centered around the throne room where tony holds court to sneak but this time it is not kenta who catches him first. this time it is just your regular assassin hired by your regular jealous local omega noble who had their eye on babe and are now pissed they missed out on the royal wedding special. kim is honestly a bit shocked because “seriously?!?” but then kenta, once again, appears out of nowhere and steps in front of kim to shield him as the assassin attacks.

kenta kills the assassin but gets rather seriously hurt in the process. they’re alone in an empty hallway and kim is applying pressure on kenta’s stab wound, cursing up a storm, just letting it all out because what’s the point of hiding anymore? he goes on an epic, totally not panicked, rant about his fuckass skirt and who the fuck wears this many frilly layers, it is the most impractical shit ever and how he totally could have dealt with the assassin on his own if it weren’t for these damn petticoats! “see this is what's wrong with your entire society!” kim hisses as he drags kenta towards the sick bay. “obviously your omegas cannot do anything because who fucking could wearing all this crap! i am a person, not a cupcake!”

kenta stares up at kim in awe. he should probably have more questions but… wow. at least he can blame it all on blood loss.

so anyway, kim dumps kenta outside the sick bay and then runs off before anyone can see him and his blood stained clothes. he enters his room, sends a maid to the party to tell them he suddenly felt ill and retired early, and then spends the rest of the night pacing, pretty sure he fucked up and should be fashioning a rope out of his sheets to scale the tower and disappear. but nothing happens. he hears there was an attack, of course, and sir kenta got hurt but when questioned, kenta looked tony straight in the eye and said he must have hit his head because he cannot remember anything.

kim really could have done this without catching feelings but fuck.

so the next time he and babe have their little garden stroll, kim lowers his voice and insists they will add kenta to the list of people who will be protected at all costs. when babe sceptically exclaims kenta is tony’s right hand man, kim stares him down with a “he goes on the list or you can kiss me and my armies goodbye.” that is one thing dealt with. the next is actually avoiding getting knotted by babe because tony would love to have them married by the end of the month and that cannot happen. so kim starts delaying by any means necessary - he insists his religious beliefs demand they be wed when the stars are aligned a certain way and oh, he simply must have pink gardenias in his ceremony! it has been his dream ever since he was a little pup but alas it is november so they must wait until gardenias are in full bloom!

kim in the council meeting in his cupcake dress:

tony, gritting his teeth: of course. we don't want that.

but the longer kim delays, the more tony suspects something is off. kim is cagey and his mask is wearing increasingly thin. there are rumblings of soldiers making moves and gathering in kim’s kingdom. fuck, even kenta is being shady with his head injury and insisting he keep an eye on kim and then come back with shit like “he complained the tea wasn’t sweet enough and then accompanied babe to the library to read poetry.” absolutely useless, that one. the horror.

of course this will all come to an end when tony, sick of kim’s antics, invites him into a totally non-threatening family dinner in the privacy of his quarters. babe is there, as is kenta, guarding the door. it is the tensest consuming of roasted quail the kingdom has ever experienced with buttholes all across the land clenching for seemingly no reason. for dessert tony serves kim tea with a side of hair yank and knife to a throat with a “you will marry my son in three days time or take a dive off the tallest tower, you filthy fucking -”

aaaaaand he has a knife in his back. it's unclear who looks more shocked: tony or kenta himself who kind of acted on instinct when he saw his kim threatened and about to be married off to someone else. he is about to just go full catatonic because oh, what has he done when kim grabs his face and kisses him. “wow. the plot twists just keep on coming” babe says to absolutely no one but if he has leaned one thing from charlie, it is that someone needs to narrate things for the record.

(of course it isn't as easy as simply getting rid of tony but it is a great start. they will have to weed out loyalists and find out who they can trust and then rework the whole damn constituion but hey, no tony! pete and way will ride in with an army at their backs only to meet open gates and a very smug kim (happily wearing pants) stating “i told you my ass was irresistible enough to get the job done!”)

#pit babe au #kentakim #charliebabe #pit babe the series #embarrassingly i have even more in this verse #but there has to be a limit

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verifiedaccount · 2 years

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I’ve been reading The Red and the Black by Stendhal recently. One of the pleasures of old books is finding that even almost two hundred years ago in another country under different circumstances people were, in fact, pretty similar. For example, here we have the hero Julien Sorel, a young man from a peasant family trying to achieve upward mobility by cynically becoming part of the church, coming face to face with real cynicism. His social climbing is succeeding, and he’s been invited to dinner by M. Valenod, a man of wealth and power in the town who has become significantly wealthier while running the town poorhouse, which is next to Valenod’s home. Julien, whose ambition is to be rich and important, finds out what it takes to become rich and important, and Stendhal has no sympathy for his difficulty stomaching it:

[Julien] was shown around. Everything was magnificent and new, and he was told the price of every piece of furniture. But Julien found something shameful about it all that smelled of stolen money. Right down to the servants, everyone in the house looked as if he had set his features against contempt.

The excise-tax collector, the chief of police, and two or three other public officials arrived with their wives. They were followed by several wealthy Liberals. Dinner was announced. Julien, already very ill-disposed, happened to think that on the other side of the dining-room wall there were poor inmates whose portion of meat had perhaps been “trimmed” in order to pay for all these tasteless luxuries, which were supposed to dazzle him.

“They may be hungry at this very moment,” he said to himself. His throat tightened. It was impossible for him to eat, almost to talk. It was much worse a quarter of an hour later. From time to time, snatches of a popular song were audible—a rather indecent song, one must admit, that an inmate was singing. M. Valenod looked to one of his servants in full livery, who disappeared, and shortly after, no more singing was to be heard. At the same moment a valet offered Julien some Rhine wine in a green glass, and Mme. Valenod carefully pointed out to him that this wine cost nine francs a bottle at the vineyard. Holding his green glass, Julien said to M. Valenod, “They’ve stopped singing that nasty song.”

“By George! I should think so,” answered the director triumphantly. “I’ve had those beggars silenced.”

This was too much for Julien; he had the manner but not yet the heart of his profession. Despite all his hypocrisy, so often called into use, he felt a big tear running down his cheek.

He tried to hide it with the green glass, but it was absolutely impossible for him to appreciate the Rhine wine. “Stop him from singing!” he said to himself. “Oh, my God! and you stand for that!”

Luckily, no one noticed his ill-bred pity. The tax collector had burst into a Royalist song. During the uproar of the refrain, sung in chorus, Julien’s conscience told him, “This is it, the dirty fortune you will come into, and you will enjoy it only under like conditions, and in like company! You may have a position worth twenty thousand francs, but you will be obliged, while you are stuffing your mouth with meat, to keep some poor prisoner from singing; you will have people in to dine on the money you stole from his wretched pittance, and during your dinner, he will be even more miserable. O Napoleon! how sweet it was in your time to rise to wealth through the dangers of battle. But to add basely to the suffering of the wretched!”

I must confess that the weakness Julien has shown in this monologue makes me think poorly of him. He would make a worthy colleague for those conspirators in yellow gloves who would like to change a great country’s whole way of life, but are unwilling to have the smallest scratch on their conscience.

Julien was reminded brusquely of his role. It was not to dream and say nothing that he had been invited to dine in such good company.

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meli-r · 28 days

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I got inspired and wanted to write this short silly dialogue with poor descriptions, as it's not part of any chapter, I got carried away with the conversation. It's been months since I wrote about Makishima. I noticed I became more interested in Touma lately. Sorry in advance because I know I may not be good at writing his character ^-^

*****

"The world will sink with a speed few can imagine. Honest and virtuous men will be forced to give up everything, abandoning their lives and jobs. Figures like former Inspector Meyer Kane or former Professor Kanno Yamato began their struggle without knowing defined time limits. They were unaware if they would live long enough to witness society's liberation or if their duty was to pass it on to future generations. However, their certainty lay in the way they chose to live. Now, they understand that the day of their triumph is inexorably approaching," declared Makishima.

“When?” Yashiro asked.

"When Sibyl contradicts itself. Do you remember what you told me three years ago when we first met? When Sibyl no longer finds any more culprits upon whom to inflict its punishments, when the advocates of sacrifice discover that those willing to practice it have nothing left to sacrifice and those who still possess it refuse to do so, when man realizes that no material resource can save him and his own mind, that faculty which has been so vilified, no longer responds to his pleas, when they collapse as mere men devoid of conscience, purpose, morality, authority, law, hope, not even with a crumb of food or the possibility of obtaining it, then the path will be clear for those endowed with a true mind to rebuild what once was. You don't have to give me an answer right now. You are the second person to whom I've revealed my plan. You had to know. You understand the nature of the choice you must make. If it seems harsh to you, it's because you believe it's not yet time to lean one way or the other. But you will see that it must be done," explained Makishima.

"Can you grant me time?" Yashiro asked.

"I have no right to dictate your time. Only you can decide what to do and when. Understand the cost of that decision, as we've all paid for it. You are part of a world I seek to destroy. You are my sole danger, the only one who could deliver me to my enemies. If you choose to remain with them, you will do so either by your own will or by force. Opt for it if you wish, but do so with full awareness of your decision."

“Many people could die.”

“How many people have died or been imprisoned for Sibyl to exist?” Makishima asked.

"How many people have died or been imprisoned for you to live?" Yashiro responded.

"What the Sibyl System has perpetrated in this world is an atrocity. The humans who erected it understood their mission perfectly: to seek power and control to obtain virtue and courage, qualities that, in their pitiable lives, they would never have conquered on their own," Makishima asserted firmly.

"And aren't you another product of that same atrocity?" Yashiro posed.

After her questioning, silence filled the room. Makishima remained quiet, absorbed by the impact of Yashiro's words. His gaze softened as he looked into her eyes, while Yashiro was lost in thought.

“You could have chosen differently. Just like I could have chosen to walk away from the gate instead of seeking entry,” Yashiro said, with a mixture of bitterness and resignation.

“Maybe someday, you will owe nothing more to this world, nor will I try saving it,” Makishima responded.

“I hope so,” she murmured.

"You've absorbed all the knowledge I had to offer. You can end this here and now if you wish. It was your decision to join them. You don't owe me anything. There's no duty you must consider or fulfill. I want nothing from you. Nothing more than what you choose to offer. As long as you decide to keep working for them, for whatever reason, I have no right to resent it, and I won't," Makishima continued, maintaining his calm yet firm tone.

“You speak like a trader,” Yashiro observed, her voice reflecting her surprise at Makishima's unusual attitude.

"I know nothing about that. How do you trade with men?" Makishima responded with a question.

"You see, if a man were to ask me for more than he means to me, I would refuse. If he asked me to give up my quest, he'd never see me again. I don't accept sacrifices nor make them. If one's pleasure must be bought with another's pain, then there'd better be no trade at all. A trade where one gains and the other loses is a fraud. I don't do it in business, let alone in my life. Don't do it in yours, Shougo," Yashiro explained, her gaze fixed on Makishima.

Makishima slowly widened his eyes, recalling the words spoken by other women throughout his life. At that precise moment, as he looked at the serious and implacable face of the woman in front of him, he saw the distance between her and the others, the difference in what they sought from him and from life.

"Loving someone solely for their virtues is selfish and cruel," a former classmate of his had said back in university years ago. "There's nothing nobler than embracing someone for their flaws. People should be loved for who they are, even if their actions are reprehensible. I don't want to be loved for my deeds, words, or thoughts; I want to be loved for simply being myself."

"So, what are you?" Makishima had asked.

But there was no answer. In the solitude of long, silent nights, Makishima found himself ensconced in contemplation, his posture relaxed yet weighted. With one leg crossed over the other, he sat with his head nestled against the seat back, a closed book resting on his thigh. His gaze wandered beyond the confines of the room, past the neon lights and towering skyscrapers, towards an unreachable horizon.

Each time Yashiro's figure graced the room, a subtle shift occurred within him. His stoic countenance softened imperceptibly, a ghost of a smile tugging at the corners of his lips as he squinted his eyes in a gesture of quiet recognition. Her relentless and confident demeanor cast a curious spell upon him, prompting a subtle tilt of his head as he contemplated the enigma she presented. It was as if a silent battle raged within him—a battle against her presence and the realization that he had much yet to understand about her.

Her smile, he mused, held an elusive allure—a tantalizing blend of warmth and mystery that beckoned him closer even as it remained just out of reach. It was a smile that demanded to be earned, destined for an adversary who could match her strength and resilience, not for a man seeking solace in that smile and thus destroying its meaning.

Within Makishima, a sense of urgency stirred—a silent acknowledgment that he had a battle to win before he could bask in her presence. For he understood that her smile was not a mere gift to be taken lightly, but a prize to be won.

#psycho pass fanfiction #shougo makishima

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thewahookid · 2 months

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Hail Mary, poor and humble Woman,

Blessed by the Most High!

Virgin of hope, dawn of a new era,

We join in your song of praise,

to celebrate the Lord’s mercy,

to proclaim the coming of the Kingdom

and the full liberation of humanity.

Hail Mary, lowly handmaid of the Lord,

Glorious Mother of Christ!

Faithful Virgin, holy dwelling-place of the Word,

Teach us to persevere in listening to the Word,

and to be docile to the voice of the Spirit,

attentive to his promptings

in the depths of our conscience

and to his manifestations in the events of history.

Hail Mary, Woman of sorrows,

Mother of the living!

Virgin spouse beneath the Cross, the new Eve,

Be our guide along the paths of the world.

Teach us to experience and to spread the love of Christ,

to stand with you before the innumerable crosses

on which your Son is still crucified.

Hail Mary, woman of faith,

First of the disciples!

Virgin Mother of the Church,

help us always to account for the hope that is in us,

with trust in human goodness and the Father’s love.

Teach us to build up the world beginning from within:

in the depths of silence and prayer,

in the joy of fraternal love,

in the unique fruitfulness of the Cross.

Holy Mary, Mother of believers,

Our Lady of Lourdes,

pray for us.

Amen

#love #jesus loves you #jesus christ #blessed mother mary #mary #peace #prayer

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dfroza · 8 months

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One True God and ultimate Source of all things

Today’s reading of the Scriptures from the New Testament is the 8th chapter of the letter of 1st Corinthians:

As to the concern of eating food dedicated to idols: we know that all of us have knowledge, but knowledge can be risky. Knowledge promotes overconfidence and worse arrogance, but charity of the heart (love, that is) looks to build up others. Just because a person presumes to have some bit of knowledge, that person doesn’t necessarily have the right kind of knowledge. But if someone loves God, it is certain that God has already known that one.

So to address your concerns about eating food offered to idols, let me start with what we know. An idol is essentially nothing, as there is no other God but the One. And even if the majority believes there are many so-called gods in heaven and on earth (certainly many worship such “gods” and “lords”), this is not our view. For us, there is one God, the Father who is the ultimate source of all things and the goal of our lives. And there is one Lord—Jesus the Anointed, the Liberating King; through Him all things were created, and by Him we are redeemed.

But this knowledge is not in everyone. Up until now, some have been so familiar with idols and what goes on in the temples that when they eat meat that has been offered first to some idol, their weak consciences are polluted. This is the issue. Again, here’s what we know: what we eat will not bring us closer to God—we gain nothing in feasting and lose nothing by fasting. Now let me warn you: don’t let your newfound liberty cause those who don’t know this to fall face-first. Let’s say a person (someone who knows of Jesus) sees you eating in the temple of an idol; and because the person with a weaker conscience is still unsure of things, he becomes confident, follows your lead, and eats idol food. Now, because of your knowledge on display in your conduct, the weaker brother or sister—for whom the Anointed One died—is destroyed! Ruined! What’s more, by living according to your knowledge, you have sinned against these brothers and sisters and wounded their weak consciences—and because you sinned against them, you have sinned against the Anointed One, the Liberating King.

So if any type of food is an issue that causes my brothers and sisters to fall away from God, then God forbid I should ever eat it again so that I would never be the crack, the rise, or the rock on the road that causes them to stumble.

The Letter of 1st Corinthians, Chapter 8 (The Voice)

Today’s paired chapter of the Testaments is the 9th chapter of the book of Jeremiah:

Jeremiah: O that my head were a spring of water

and my eyes a fountain of tears;

Then I could weep day and night for my poor people

who have been slaughtered.

O that I had a place in the desert I could run to,

a haven for travelers.

Then I could leave my people,

for they are all an adulterous and treacherous lot.

Eternal One: With tongues bent like bows they shoot their lies at one another.

Truth does not win out in this land; deceit always seems to triumph.

One evil leads to another because they don’t know who I am.

Let everyone be careful of his neighbor,

and think twice before he trusts his brothers;

For every brother is ready to cheat and deceive;

every neighbor is prepared to lie when it suits him.

In this land of liars, friends have no misgivings about deceiving one another;

no one even thinks to tell the truth.

They’ve trained their tongues to utter lies;

they wear themselves out with all their sinning.

Jeremiah, you live in a place where deception is assumed;

as their lies pile up, they refuse to acknowledge Me.

Here is what the Eternal, Commander of heavenly armies, has to say:

Eternal One: Watch, I will refine this nation and put them to the test.

What else can I do with My people?

Their tongues are like deadly arrows;

they speak such lies;

Each one leads his neighbor with kind words

into a trap that was already set.

Should I not punish them for what they do?

Should I not repay a nation that acts this way?

Jeremiah: I will weep bitterly for the mountains of my homeland

and grieve for the death of her wild meadows.

For they have become a silent wasteland

where no one dares to travel.

Pastures once filled with the lowing of cattle, now are empty and lifeless.

All the animals have fled; even the birds have left the sky.

Eternal One: I will leave Jerusalem in ruins;

her rubble will be the haunt of jackals.

I will wreak the same havoc on the cities of Judah;

no person will be found there.

Jeremiah: Who is wise enough to take all this in? Who has heard the Eternal speak and can explain His ways to others? Can anyone say why this land has been ruined and left a wasteland, a desert where no one dares to travel?

Eternal One: I will answer you Myself. Because they have ignored the law I gave them generations ago. They haven’t listened to My voice, and they refuse to walk in My ways. Instead, they have stubbornly followed after their own hearts. They have chosen to worship images of Baal just as their ancestors taught them. This is why I, the Eternal, Commander of heavenly armies and God of Israel, must now take action. Look, I will now give them bitter food to eat and poisoned water to drink. I Myself will scatter them among the nations—nations neither they nor their ancestors ever knew existed—and I will hunt them down with the sword and destroy them completely.

The Eternal, Commander of heavenly armies, has this to say:

Eternal One: Think this over, and summon the mourners.

Send for the women who will chant the dirge, that they may come.

Let them be quick about it: weep and wail,

that our eyes may fill with tears that streak down our faces.

Listen to the voice of sorrow weeping from Zion herself:

“We are ruined. All that remains for us is great shame.

Now we must leave this land that was ours;

they have torn down our houses.”

Jeremiah: So listen now, women of Judah, to the word of the Eternal.

Mark His words well.

It is time to teach your daughters how to mourn,

time to teach your neighbors the song of lament.

For death has found us all.

It has crept in through our windows and slipped past our defenses.

It has cut down our children in the streets,

and our young men in the public squares. Death has found us all.

Tell everyone what the Eternal has said:

“The dead bodies of men will fall like dung on the open field.

Corpses will lie on the ground like grain cut in the harvest;

but on this day, there will be no one to gather and bury the dead.”

Eternal One: Let not the wise boast in their wisdom, nor the mighty in their strength, nor the rich in their wealth. Whoever boasts must boast in this: that he understands and knows Me. Indeed, I am the Eternal One who acts faithfully and exercises justice and righteousness on earth. These are the things that delight Me.

Look, the day is coming when I will set things right with all people. I will punish all those who are circumcised in their bodies but not in their hearts— the people of Egypt, Judah, Edom, Ammon, and Moab, and all who live in the desert and clip the corners of their hair. All these nations are really uncircumcised, and all of Israel is uncircumcised where it counts, in the heart.

The Book of Jeremiah, Chapter 9 (The Voice)

A link to my personal reading of the Scriptures for Saturday, September 9 of 2023 with a paired chapter from each Testament of the Bible along with Today’s Proverbs and Psalms

A post by John Parsons:

An Elul meditation...

====

The Scriptures define “man” as the creation of God, a union of body and soul, that is, a unity of physical and spiritual elements, as it is written: “Then the LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground (adamah: אֲדָמָה) and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life (nishmat chayim: נִשְׁמַת חַיִּים), and the man became a living soul” (Gen. 2:7). The miracle of creation means that God imparted his own "neshimah" (נְשִׁימָה), his own “breath,” to give life to the man, who was named “Adam.”

Note then that man was made in two distinct stages. First the LORD “formed” (יָצַר) his body (גוּף) from the “dust of the earth” (עָפָר מִן־הָאֲדָמָה), and then the LORD breathed (נָפַח) into this body a “soul” (נֶפֶשׁ ,נְשָׁמָה), that is, the consciousness that represents the self or the “I” that inhabits the body. This is sometimes called the “image of God” (צלם אלוהים), the "I am" of self-consciousness, the ability to reason and to make decisions, to discern intuitions of logic, to apprehend moral and aesthetic reality, to wonder and glory over the the beauty and greatness of the Divine Presence, and so on. The image of God means that man reflects (analogically) God’s very attributes and characteristics.

The Scriptures also refer to the soul of man as "ruach" (רוּחַ), generally meaning “breath” or wind (Psalm 78:39). The unity of the body and soul is called "nefesh chayah" (נֶפֶשׁ חַיָּה), a “living being.” The body serves as a “habitation” for the soul as it lives in this world, and the separation of this unity, that is physical death, causes the body to return to the dust, though the soul continues to exist (Psalm 90:3; Eccl. 12:7).

According to “kabbalistic” (i.e., neoplatonic) interpretations of Judaism, the individual soul goes through distinct stages in its “journey” emanating from God and then returning back to God. The first stage is nebulous “preexistence,” or the soul before it enters a body while being suspended in the “treasury of souls"(הָאוֹצָר); the second stage is physical life, when the soul “falls” into the body and where it is actuated, imprisoned and tested in human form. The soul then works to remove the barriers to spiritual life in this world, and upon death of the body is released to either to Paradise (heaven) or to Gehenna (hell), but finally, the soul will have a share in the “world to come” (olam haba) after the resurrection of the dead. In some forms of kabbalah the soul is reincarnated until it attains success in its mission that was given before it “fell” to the realm of this world (olam ha’zeh). The final vision of the world to come is unified into one world that is inhabited by God in all fullness.

It should be noted that such a kabbalistic vision is not biblical, though it includes some biblical truths.... Let's therefore review Scripture to get an understanding of the human soul and its ultimate end. So we begin at the beginning, where Torah clearly states that God created Adam as a union of body and soul. First Adam’s body was formed from the dust of the earth, and then Adam’s soul was imparted when God breathed it into his body (Gen. 2:7). Note that Adam’s body apart from his soul is not alive, and it is only after the soul is imparted to the body that man is called “nefesh chayah,” a living creature. So at the outset of creation God made Adam “for life” and worship in the paradise of Eden. That was the original ideal.

Death is first mentioned following the account of the creation of the man, when the LORD commanded Adam not to eat from the “tree of the knowledge of good and evil” (עֵץ הַדַּעַת טוֹב וָרָע): “And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, "Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die" (Gen. 2:16-17). In this connection we note that the Hebrew phrase that warns of the dreadful consequence of eating from the forbidden tree is “mot tamut” (מוֹת תָּמוּת), literally “in dying you will die,” which both implies the spiritual nature of death as separation from the divine life, but also the repeated experience of death – the ongoing knowledge of decay, dissolution, and loss...

Though it is not explicitly stated in the narrative, it is implied that Adam would have understood the meaning of the commandment and would have had some idea of the implications of what death meant, even though he had never directly encountered death in his life before. Adam would understand death to mean the loss of life, and moreover that death was the penalty for transgressing God’s will. When Adam later transgressed God’s decree, God invoked the just penalty by saying: “You shall return to the earth, for out of it you were taken; for dust you are, and to dust you shall return” (Gen. 3:19). “Returning to dust” (אֶל־עָפָר תָּשׁוּב) implies the disintegration of Adam, the separation of his body from his soul. I will consider some of the spiritual implications of this shortly.

Contrary to the idea that death is a “natural” part of a larger “evolutionary narrative” that explains it as an inevitable (i.e., mechanistic) “mutation” of biochemical organisms, the Scriptures understand death as God’s judgment upon sin, both in the individual sense of the “curse” of decay and the dissolution of the human body, but also in a cosmic sense of the dissolution of biological organisms and “heat death” of the very universe itself.

After Adam’s original sin, human nature itself “fell” and was corrupted, and all of his subsequent descendants would inherit the curse of death, and therefore all subsequent generations of people would eventually die (Rom. 5:12). This furthermore meant that all people would be born in a state of spiritual alienation and under judgment (guilt) derived by virtue of Adam’s “federal headship” as the original father of the human race. In addition, and as mentioned above, the curse of death extended to the creation itself, since Adam was created to exercise godly dominion as God’s steward and mediator of the world (Gen. 1:26). Adam’s transgression forfeited his divine right to rule creation, and his authority was usurped by the devil who had deceived him (Gen. 3:1-19).

So in the biblical sense, “death” (i.e., mavet: מָוֶת) is far more than just the cessation of physical life, that is, the dissolution of the body, but concerns the soul’s relationship with God, and therefore it is rightly called spiritual death (מוות נַפשִׁי).

Spiritual death is a “mode” of existence that may appear "alive" but it is actually cut off, separated, and alienated from God. It is in fact a "similitude" of life - life disguised as death. The Apostle Paul calls this godless and carnal energy “the flesh” (Rom. 7:5, Rom. 8:6), though Jewish tradition has often referred to it as “yetzer ha’ra” (יֵצֶר הָרָה) the inclination to be selfish and evil (the word "yetzer" first appears in Genesis 6:5 where the wickedness of man is described as “every imagination of the thoughts of his heart (יֵצֶר מַחְשְׁבֹת לִבּוֹ) was only evil continually”). The wicked are dead while they ‘live;’ the righteous are alive while they ‘die.’ As strange as it may seem, people are born in a state of death, enslaved to their carnal nature, and “dead in sins” (Eph. 2:1; Col. 2:13; Psalm 51:5; Jer. 17:9). The underlying problem of death, therefore, is the curse of spiritual death (קִלִלַת הַמָּוות הַרוּחָנִי), for unless that is somehow remedied, there is no lasting hope, even if the physical body were to continue to live into perpetuity. And this is the message of the gospel itself, that God, in compassion for your soul, redeems you from the curse and delivers you from spiritual death by the sacrificial exchange of Yeshua on the cross for your life. “For God made him who knew no sin to be sin for you, that you might become the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Cor. 5:21).

But note that just as the death of the body does not mean the death of the soul, so the death of the soul does not mean the end of its existence... In relation to the soul, death is something spiritual and therefore concerns the immaterial "nefesh," the “self,” and its separation from the divine life. As I mentioned above, the nefesh is the “I am” of inner consciousness, but being a person necessarily involves relationship, a “dialog,” and ultimately this dialog must transcend the individual to be grounded in relationship with God.

There are two relationships we can never escape and that are eternal: the relationship we have with ourselves, and the relationship we have with God. If we have healing and peace in our relationship with God, we have a happy sense of self that will be grounded in eternal reality, but if we are hostile and offended in our relationship with God, we will have a self locked within itself in endless inner dialog that will be unhappy and full of blame, anger, grumbling, and shame. This is the worst kind of death, called “eternal death” (מוות נִצְהִי) which is the sealed judgment upon those who have willfully chosen to reject God’s mercies by remaining spiritually dead during their allotted time on earth.

All this is devastatingly sobering. If a person physically dies in a state of alienation and rebellion against God, that is, if they refuse God’s remedy for the sickness of their condition of spiritual death, then their soul will be consigned to Hades, a temporary “holding cell,” until the final judgment that will be pronounced and enforced at the end of the world, at the Great White Throne, wherein they will then be resurrected to rejoin their souls with their bodies and then eternally separated from God forever and ever. Tragically, the only remnant of the soul that will be retained will be consciousness of the revelation of God’s justice and judgment upon their sin forever and ever. The Apostle John calls this the “Second Death” (הַמָּוֶת הַשֵּׁנִי) in the “Lake of Fire” (Rev. 20:11-15).

On the other hand, those who do teshuvah (repent) and are regenerated by God will be given spiritual life (חַיֵּי עוֹלָם) imparted by the Holy Spirit (John 3:1-8). A “new nature” is created, a new heart (נֶפֶשׁ) and a new spirit (רוּחַ) is given (Ezek. 36:26). This is a matter of “ontological” change, not simply a matter of faith (2 Cor. 5:17). Just as physical birth resulted in being in the earthy realm, connected to Adam as our primordial father, so spiritual birth results in being in the heavenly realm, connected to Yeshua as our “Second Adam” and “Father of Eternity” (Isa. 9:6; 1 Cor. 15:45; Eph. 1:5). An intimate sense of God as “Abba” is implanted in the heart, and new desires - a hunger and thirst to know and walk in God’s ways - begin to take root (Rom. 8:15; 1 Pet. 1:23). Although there will ongoing struggles with “the world, the flesh, and the devil,” a real transformation from a life characterized by spiritual death to one of divine life and godly character will begin to be manifest. The “old self” (הָאָדָם הַיָּשָׁן) is crucified with Messiah and the carnal connection with Adam severed “so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin” (Rom. 6:6). Our connection to death will die; the power of sin will be radically broken, and we will experience freedom to do what is right in God’s eyes (Eph. 2:5). “By his divine power, God has given us everything we need for living a godly life, through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and goodness, by which have been given to us exceedingly great and precious powers (i.e., ἐπάγγελμα, the substance of what has been promised), that through these you may be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust” (2 Pet. 1:3-4).

Of course “salvation is of the LORD” (יְשׁוּעָתָה לַיהוָה), which means God is the Author and Finisher of our salvation, and we are powerless to generate new life in our souls. Indeed, the gospel speaks precisely to those who know they cannot save themselves. There are no “works of righteousness” that we may do, no rituals or special prayers that will unlock the blessings of true spiritual life: It is the miracle of God; it is the sovereign work of the Holy Spirit of God. Nevertheless, in this present age, physical death is inevitable and is a matter of God’s decree (Heb. 9:27; Psalm 139:16). This is a result of living in a fallen world. The essential issue is what death means in light of salvation in Messiah. In the case of the unregenerated person, as we have seen, the separation of the body and the soul leads to the continuation of spiritual death, and ultimately to eternal death (Luke 16:19-31). In the case of the regenerated person, however, the separation of the body and the soul leads to the continuation of spiritual life and entry before the presence of God in paradise, and ultimately to life in heaven itself (John 5:24; 2 Cor. 5:8; Phil. 1:23).

We are given eternal life (חַיֵּי עוֹלָם) when we are regenerated by the Holy Spirit, and our regeneration is a present possession even as we live in this temporal realm (John 5:24). The life we are given in Messiah is a possession of the “inner man,” that is, a new nature and spirit, and though the “outer man” may perish, the inner man is renewed day by day (2 Cor. 4:16). The Greek word used for “renewed” in this verse (ἀνακαινόω) means being transformed into something new, raised up from death into a new kind of life. We no longer know ourselves “after the flesh” (Gal. 2:20; 2 Cor. 5:16); there is a new principle at work, the “law of the Spirit of Life” that sets us from the “law of sin and death” (Rom. 8:2). Death has lost its power over us because Yeshua has overcome death on our behalf and will rescue us from its claim on our souls. But we have this treasure in “jars of clay,” to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us" (2 Cor. 4:7) Therefore, as Paul affirmed: “whether we live, we live unto the Lord; and whether we die, we die unto the Lord. Whether we live therefore or die, we are the Lord’s (Rom. 14:8).

But why must we physically die, if Yeshua took upon himself the curse of death and died in our place? Why but that the spiritual life he imparts to us will be fully manifest upon our death, as we share in his resurrection power. Then, at the appointed time when we are reunited with our bodies at the time of the rapture, in a “twinkling of an eye,” the people of God will be physically restored to serve in the Millennial Kingdom at the time of the Second Coming. For the believer, death will then be “swallowed up” into life forevermore. It should be noted that this restoration of the body is unlike the resurrection of the spiritually dead before the White Throne judgment at the end of the age.

Though the prospect of physical death is fearful, we have peace with God as we trust in his sovereign work to save our souls. Yeshua is the way, the truth, and the life: he has tasted death for us and overcome all its terrors (Rev. 1:8). He takes our place as our Scapegoat upon the cross, and our atonement from the penalty for our sins is thereby made eternally secure. In this life he quickens us with spiritual life and a new nature; as we live out our days he guides our way, and when we die, he will receive us into the presence of his glory. We will live and reign with him forever and ever to the glory and praise of the LORD our God. Amen.

[ Hebrew for Christians ]

========

Psalm 73:24 Hebrew reading:

https://hebrew4christians.com/Blessings/Blessing_Cards/psalm73-24-jjp.mp3

Hebrew page pdf:

https://hebrew4christians.com/Blessings/Blessing_Cards/psalm73-24-lesson.pdf

9.7.23 • Facebook

from yesterday’s email by Israel 365:

At the height of his popularity, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907 – 1972) spoke in London to an overflow crowd. The crowd was there, waiting, when Rabbi Heschel walked quickly over to the speaker’s podium and made the following announcement: “My friends, I have just witnessed the most extraordinary event in the history of the world. Just 20 minutes ago!”

The crowd started to buzz: “What happened? 20 minutes ago?” After the buzz died down, Rabbi Heschel explained: “20 minutes ago, I saw the sun set!”

Today’s message (Days of Praise) from the Institute for Creation Research

September 9, 2023

Cut Off

“For he was cut off out of the land of the living.” (Isaiah 53:8)

The prophet Isaiah foretold that Jesus, as “My servant” (Isaiah 52:13), would be despised. Sure enough, religious mobs sneered at Him. Now in Isaiah 53:8-10, our Lord’s coming death is described. What a pivotal moment for God and for us!

The text adds glimpses into what Yahweh had in His mind for this event. “He is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb [silent], so he openeth not his mouth” (Isaiah 53:7). His silence and willingness to be led to His own slaughter shows us His grim resolve. He didn’t protest or try to avoid it. He knew exactly what He was doing, and here’s why: “For he was cut off out of the land of the living: for the transgression of my people was he stricken” (Isaiah 53:8).

Daniel later used the same phrase to foretell the same event: “And after threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off, but not for himself” (Daniel 9:26). If not for Himself, then for whom would He die? “[He] gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us from this present evil world, according to the will of God and our Father” (Galatians 1:4).

“And he made his grave with the wicked....Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise him” (Isaiah 53:9-10). He was buried as though He deserved death! How could Yahweh feel pleased with this? It was so “that in the dispensation of the fulness of times he might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth; even in him” (Ephesians 1:10). He has earned our praise forevermore through this ultimate sacrifice. BDT

0 notes

libidomechanica · 1 year

Text

Thrust a pike in his head was not to attract; plain—simple—short, all

And with sport, half child half woman as she wrought, and wished her home, my love, my love, where Cupid, hauing me, and rage, danged down the distance, mystery, pledge of them high names: I have spent. With Earth’s returns for while the pallid and removed, burns

where it loved. Juan, I said, as the proper place, and called the tuneful voice was heard from the broad- backed wave! For God must give you have accused, just as my great and smacking of the place my tongue, or true-love’s blood, in view and opposite. Charms from the

moment, the love is too full of pleasures; nor will I seek supply of the long branched with fear: but in the dies of other starv’d between. Said that Juan did not think of them high names: I have loved—that I lived? What would’st thou grieve to set us

free; let’s knock that teares did in her necke you did. His nothing whets the beauty her bereft. That is—the Lady Booby, phaedra, and all its features favour’d the dews of thee, and eventually my whole self I would not dwell within

the heat, a breadth of Autumn, dropping the whole thing is certain, that Life flies; one thing the matter o’er; but the sea. Of my still renewing smart. Some female heart was contentedly I view any room containing to be free. And like

snow before the rest! I wish to heaven knows what else: an usurer could define, I yet in all God’s universe: nothing in every way. I know not if he had saved from slaughter. He mutter’d but the muses have always your great

gift, upon misprision growing, comes home again saturn and fly: conscience in creeping, with his lips; he sang of prime. His youth and those bright-eyed Eulalie became my smiling bride— till the cup that celestial, or capable of any.

Poor Frederick, why did she accord perusals to his own crack’d existence was on the Bough, a Flask of Wine, a Book of Verse—and Thou beside us, Cyril, battered the jasmine, and legs are alternate Night and dance, and therein

dignified less absolute exclusion. As they lifted up, she blushing coral to the cold tile bathroom—all at dawn across the spring’s nature’s skill, who give thee back, O liberal and princely name should you say? With the corner. We

know whether smooth his horses baiting— now we’llget o’er the greenest laurels’ pattering also some slight and life on second life hath interest, where the twangling violin struck up with such a prescience, it should be no great coat

was and hospitality. Thrust a pike in his head was not to attract; plain—simple—short, all things at times an aspect burst, as they were fairer world begat of unknown on Change; and even in the more than bread; now that I bear away

from thence. Breaking a carcanet of maiden-flowers! Envelop all my hope is, that are you—banded one? I saw two walls, his Children’s cry my soul appalls; I mock’d quotation of love and water far excels all earthly thing

of thanks and his little hill, and gentleman from the deadly fae, unless his beauty new; and him at her foes with shrinking eye, a brow for love made it open was said to me, and only passed her in his looks were stained with Moll and

Meg. Or be yourself you hero if you would shed if in your head that was Rome. The fountain or of cape; but O too fondly linger? But Juan turn’d of forty’s sure if t is stuck hard: she thought itself than Life in Death—he turn’d to stone.

#poetry #automatically generated text #Patrick Mooney #Markov chains #Markov chain length: 8 #169 texts #ballad

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writer59january13 · 2 years

Text

I laid me body stomach down atop a grassy knoll...

here at Highland Manor Apartments

earlier today Juneteenth 2022, (a pitch perfect spring day)

with serious intent to read

seat of the pants suspense thriller The New Comprehensive

A-Z Crossword Dictionary.

Invariably, yours truly

quickly experienced drowsiness,

succumbed to deep sleep

and dreamt being linkedin

with livingsocially off the grid

among ecological, liberal, social minded

people progressive in act, deed, and thought

versus participating in consumerist paradigm.

As a conscious conscientious counterpart

the missus shops with a conscience

and yours truly considers her price savvy

when she purchases groceries

at ALDI, Giant, LIDL, or other supermarket.

Impossible mission to adopt modus operandi,

whereby wife would entertain notion to husband

energy garnering fruits and vegetables

courtesy sweat equity

since we lack basic homesteading skills, nor consider either of us

adequately financially solvent to contact compatible intentional community

since requisite criteria

require a healthy monetary stash of money.

Unlikely substantial windfall will appear out of the blue,

nor grandiose wish to draw winning lottery ticket,

thus sobering truth to burnish marketable skills

finds me seek assistance courtesy office of vocational rehabilitation in general

and counselor Donna Marchese in particular,

which most likely entails

securing training to learn Microsoft Office Applications.

More precisely, some familiarity exists regarding understanding computer software

since admission of foolhardiness

now averred how countless golden opportunities

slipped thru these ofttimes sweaty fingers.

Though never successfully completed,

received funding back in the day from:

CETA, O(ffice) of V(ocational) R(ehabilitation)

twice before whereby

the former and/or latter program

allocated unspecified dollars (poor Ray McNeil, the first OVR counselor,

whose tiresome love's labour's lost for naught)

in an effort to acquire gainful employment,

which in all honesty sabotaged

cause of that bugaboo severe social anxiety

more specifically diagnosed

as schizoid personality disorder;

no shame to admit mental health crisis.

0 notes

calebdumes · 3 years

Text

Previous: PART ONE

Kanan woke to the sensation of fingers carding through his hair in gentle, soothing motions. With each pass, awareness started to slowly creep back into his body. His limbs felt heavy and sore and his mind was a mess of garbled static. Furrowing his brow, Kanan tried to recall what had happened to leave him feeling like he had been run over by a Star Destroyer but the more he pried the more the static in his mind grew.

A low moan escaped past his lips as he adjusted his body, his muscles screaming in protest. He was vaguely aware that he was lying on something flat and soft, the familiar smell of soap and engine grease curling around his nose. Hera. He could feel her in the Force as it flowed around him, steady and sure as the stars in the sky. Kanan let her presence wash over him, taking in her light as he pulled his conscience from the deep black of sleep.

The fingers on his scalp stilled.

“Kanan?” Hera said softly, her voice barely above a whisper. He cracked open his eyes to find her concerned face staring down at him. Her deep green eyes were ringed with red and there were splotches on her cheeks as if she had been crying. Kanan lifted a heavy arm to brush his finger across her lips.

A sense of dread started to build in his chest.

“Hera.” he said. His words scraped against a raw throat. Something didn’t feel right. Kanan’s sense of dread grew, growing like misura vines, choking the light from the Force until only the dark remained. “W-what,” he coughed. “What happened?”

“What do you remember?” she asked in lieu of answering him. Kanan’s face pinched as he struggled to wade through the sludge that was polluting his mind, his heart fluttering uneasily in his chest.

“I remember the market.” Kanan said slowly, his hand sliding across his chest to find hers. He tangled their fingers together tightly, the warmth of her skin grounding. The image was fuzzy but it was starting to come back to him. He had gone into town to pick up supplies. It had been hot and the press of the crowds had been aggravating on his already fraying nerves. He remember standing in line and then -

Kanan jolted upright, wrenching Hera’s hands from his grip. Clones.

“Easy Kanan,” Hera said, reaching for his shoulder. He flinched when her hand made contact, his heart pounding in his ears. “You’re safe.”

“Where are they?” he asked, slipping from the bed. The cold deck was a shock on his bare feet. He looked down at his legs, recognizing that he was dressed in his sleep clothes, his blaster and lightsaber nowhere to be found.

“Rex went back to the Liberator for the night.” she replied soothingly. There was a rustle of sheets as she unfolded herself from the bed. Moments later, Kanan felt her arms wrap around his middle. “You’re safe.” she repeated.

“Where are Styles and Grey?” his voice cracked on the last clone’s name, the image of his face swimming to the forefront of his mind. Kanan could feel himself shaking, the fear of knowing the clones had found him, again, sending shivers down his spine.

“Who?”

“T-the clones from the market, the ones who chased me.”

Hera turned him around to face her, her face pinched in confusion.

“Kanan,” she said slowly. “There were no other clones. Just Rex.”

“But Styles and Grey.” he breathed, the color draining from his face. “They were there at the market. They followed me back to the Ghost!”

Hera shook her head, a smooth green hand coming to rest on his cheek. “You came back alone, love. No one followed you.” Kanan felt his knees shake, his body swaying dangerously. Hera gripped his hip and led him back to the bed.

“T-they weren’t real?” he asked weakly.

Hera kissed his temple, holding him close to her body. He could hear the rhythmic beating of her heart, the gentle flow of her concern slipping into the Force. “It’s okay love,” she whispered in his ear as he began to shake harder. “It’s okay.”

Kanan’s fragmented mind began filling in the missing pieces. Grey’s face morphed into a stranger’s, the sounds of a busy market place replacing the blaster fire and boots, and the stand-off in the landing bay becoming nothing more than a damaged, poor excuse of a Jedi at the end of his rope. Styles and Grey were dead - had been for years now. There was no one chasing him. It was only his past, creeping up to remind him of all that he had lost.

“Kriff.” he breathed, letting his head hang. Heat spread across his cheeks in shame. He was so kriffing stupid! Styles and Grey had been dead for years, he should have known there was no way they weren’t still alive. And now he had made a fool of himself in front of his crew. How was he supposed to face them after this? He couldn’t even keep his shit together long enough for a supply run.

Maybe it was a good thing Ahsoka was back. She could train Ezra. She would be far better at it than him.

His throat burned for a drink, something strong that he could lose himself in, something that would make him forget just how kriffed up he was.

Hera’s fingers began their repetition in his hair again, long, slow strokes that pulled him from his spiraling thoughts.

“Stop that,” she said gently. “What happened is nothing to be ashamed of.”

Kanan snorted and cut his eyes at her. “I beg to differ.”

“Kanan, we’ve talked about this-”

“I hallucinated the clones that tried to kill me, Hera.” he spat out. “What part of that is okay? I could have hurt-” Kanan took a shuddering breath. “I could have hurt someone. I should be better than this.”

Hera rubbed his back making a shushing noise. “Breathe with me.” she said, carefully talking him down from the panic that was rising in his mind. Kanan took another shuddering breath, matching the slow rise and fall of her chest. “That’s it, nice and slow. Just keep breathing.”

“Why is this happening?” he asked, hating how broken and weak he sounded. “Why now?”

“Healing isn’t linear.” she told him, rubbing circles on his back. “And you’ve had a pretty stressful month.” she kissed his temple again. “Just know that your family is here for you and will always be here for you-every step of the way.”

He grabbed her hand again, holding it tightly. “I-I’m, I don’t think I can-”

“It’s alright love, it’s alright. Just take your time.”

Kanan closed his eyes. “Is Rex okay?”

“He’s fine.” she told him. “He’s worried about you. I told him I’d let him know when you woke up. He said something about talking to Ahsoka when she gets back.”

Kanan didn’t want to think about Ahsoka. He didn’t want to think about Rex either. The old clone and lost padawan were still open wounds in his mind, their presence jarring after being cut off from his past for so long. And now, after today, seeing either one of them made his stomach churn.

“Breathe, Kanan.” Hera said, her lips ghosting over his ear. “Just breathe.” he let her manoeuvre him so that he was laying down again. She laid down beside him, tucking his head underneath her chest. He breathed in her scent, letting the warmth of her skin wrap around him as he came undone. “You’re safe.” she told him. “It’s over now.”

She repeated the words over and over until they became a mantra in his head. It’s over, it’s over, it’s over. He mouthed them along with her until his shaking stopped and his eyes grew heavy.

“It’s over.” Hera said as he began to slip into sleep. “You’re safe now.”

“It’s over.” he echoed. “It’s over.”

#kanera #kanan jarrus #hera syndulla #star wars rebels #swr fan fic #star wars: rebels #star wars #shleby writes #tell me why i suck so much at endings

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mitigatedchaos · 3 years

Text

On Having “Whiteness”

(~2,200 words, 11 minutes)

Summary: A metaphysics of “Whiteness” has overtaken actual sociology in the Democrats’ popular consciousness - blinding them to racial interventions that might actually work and taking them off the table of political discussion.

-★★★-

Donald Moss - On Having Whiteness, Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association (emphasis mine)

Whiteness is a condition one first acquires and then one has—a malignant, parasitic-like condition to which “white” people have a particular susceptibility. The condition is foundational, generating characteristic ways of being in one’s body, in one’s mind, and in one’s world. Parasitic Whiteness renders its hosts’ appetites voracious, insatiable, and perverse. These deformed appetites particularly target nonwhite peoples. Once established, these appetites are nearly impossible to eliminate. Effective treatment consists of a combination of psychic and social-historical interventions. Such interventions can reasonably aim only to reshape Whiteness’s infiltrated appetites—to reduce their intensity, redistribute their aims, and occasionally turn those aims toward the work of reparation. When remembered and represented, the ravages wreaked by the chronic condition can function either as warning (“never again”) or as temptation (“great again”). Memorialization alone, therefore, is no guarantee against regression. There is not yet a permanent cure.

So both @arcticdementor [here] and @samueldays have linked me to this allegedly “peer-reviewed” article. The Federalist has a bit more context, but it doesn’t really make the situation better.

Race Theory Problems

Obviously, this is a work of sloppy thinking. The categorization of “white supremacy culture” or “whiteness” used by people like this is vague handwaving that describes being bad at management as “white supremacy culture,” and which in general labels universal human problems, like organizations being resource-constrained, or people being impatient, as somehow uniquely “white.”

But this sort of article is really what I mean when I say that social justice’s approach to “whiteness” is about “spiritual contamination.”

Samueldays called it “the ‘I’m not touching you’ of inciting race war,” and I may cover more of his response to it later. Suffice it to say, it has the same general kind of problems as “stolen land” arguments (where an entire present population’s living area becomes undefined), unbounded “reparations” arguments where no amount of transfers by the designated oppressor are considered to clear the debt, and so on.

This is exactly the sort of material that conservatives are seeking to remove government funding for and prohibit from use in employment training. This is the kind of material that the Trump Anti-CRT executive order prohibiting racial scapegoating was meant to cover.

Race Theory Definitions

This kind of stuff is, of course, not really defensible, so usually at this point people will argue that 1), “that’s not real critical race theory,” and then 2), “it’s just a few weirdos.” For those, I would say...

1) If it’s not real “Critical Race Theory,” then what is it?

We can’t measure or disprove Moss’s proposed “Whiteness,” and this malevolent psychic entity said to “deform” white people obviously isn’t based on a comparison with other human populations or historical periods. When it comes to “insatiable” appetites, one study argued that the Mongol invasions killed so many people that it showed up in the carbon record.

At best, it’s sloppy race science as practiced by an amateur, like twitter users idly speculating whether whites have ‘oppressor epigenetics’ - but with the veneer of official status. And it has similar risks to proposing that there is such a thing as biologically-inherited class enemy status, and other collective intergenerational justice logic.

Presumably, the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association is intended as a journal of science, or at least serious scholarship, and not of bad racist poetry with no rhyme or meter.

Moss provides a relatively pure example of whatever-this-is. I need to know what it’s called, so we can get rid of it.

Race Theory Prohibitions

2) If it’s just the product of a few race-obssessed weirdos, then it won’t hurt to get rid of it. So get rid of it.

The actual text [PDF] of the Trump Anti-CRT order does not ban teaching about the Trail of Tears, or Jim Crow, and so on, and both of those topics were taught in school before this recent wave of whatever-this-is was popularized.

Trump’s order banned teaching that any race is inherently guilty or evil due to the actions of their ancestors, and the level of resistance to this has been bizarre.

These teachings don’t seem to provide gains in relatively objective metrics like underrepresented minority test scores (or at least that’s not something I’ve seen - and the continued opposition to standardized tests suggests proponents do not expect it to), so it’s unclear just what of value is going to be lost here.

Collateral Damage

Samueldays wrote,

Because right now the conservatives talking about "critical race theory" as they fire in the direction of Moss et al. are very important in preventing another race war and you have a moral duty to help them aim, not throw smoke for Moss.

Right now Conservatives are assessing just how much stuff they’re going to have to rip out to make “standardized tests are racist” and “it’s impossible to be racist to white people” stop. While this may not be the message that Liberals are intending to send, it is the message that many people are receiving. (I discuss problems with both, and some alternatives to handle them better, in another post.)

Liberals need to get out in front of this. Sooner is better.

If Conservatives think that they have to gut hostile work environment law in order to avoid their children being taught that they’re permanently morally contaminated by their race, and Liberals have no means to actually close race gaps within a 4-8 year period (and right now it’s slim pickings on that front), Conservatives are just going to gut hostile work environment law.

Aether

From their perspective, why not?

Everything in the world is only six degrees of separation from something racist. Anything in the world can be tied to something racist. (So can anyone.)

But nowhere in this pervasive atmosphere of tying things to racism are there solutions. There are guesses based on correlations. Proposals. But usually when you reach out to grab them, to really get a grip on whether it’s correlation or causation, they dissolve in your hands. The few that do have any solidity to them are moderate in their success (such as Heckman’s involvement in the Reach Up & Learn study in Jamaica) - and don’t appear to be based on the same style of thinking as shown by Moss and others.

It isn’t just that trying to turn combating an invisible, non-measurable, unfalsifiable, parasitic psychic force into an actual political program would inevitably be oppressive and totalitarian. It isn’t just that articles like Moss’s are an in-kind donation to the 2024 DeSantis Presidential campaign for that very reason.

It isn’t just that unfalsifiable Metaphysics of Whiteness content like White Privilege Theory has been found to lower sympathy for the poor, and that present diversity training doesn’t work...

Race Content Crowding

This stuff is crowding out legitimate scholarship. I don’t just mean in terms of funding, tenure track positions, or high-flying magazine coverage - all limited by their nature. I mean among the base. I have been interrogating Democrats on Twitter for months, and not a single one has been able to cite a strongly-demonstrated intervention that’s being held back, or even a past one that was conclusively demonstrated to be effective. They can often recite a list of racial grievances on cue.

Tucker Carlson could run boomer_update.exe on a list of every educational failure since the 1970s, and they would be reduced to sputtering accusations of racism against people who increasingly don’t care. He could do this tomorrow. The only thing that prevents this is Tucker Carlson’s conscience.

I discovered the Reach Up & Learn program through Glenn Loury - described as a ‘conservative.’ Scott Alexander, attacked by the New York Times crew, brought some success with multivitamins to my attention. When I first heard about the Perry Preschool program, I believe it was from someone well to the right of him.

About the only one brought to my attention by the Democratic establishment constellation proper was lead removal, and the gains on that are probably getting tapped out. The frame it was proposed in was not Critical Race Theorist, as this was likely in 2012.

As it stands, I’m more likely to find something that works from someone the New York Times would disapprove of than someone they wouldn’t. Or, as Wesley Yang wrote,

Reality has been contrarian for a while.

Succeed Early

Even if we suppose that Conservatives are inherently racist, Liberals have a duty to support interventions that work. In fact, the more that Conservatives are a seething, undifferentiated mass of uniform racial hatred, the more important it is that Liberals stick to racial interventions that work, because nobody else is going to fix the problem if Liberals get it wrong.

It isn’t just a matter of resources per year. It’s also a matter of time.

From Heckman’s website,

Although Perry did not produce long-run gains in IQ, it did create lasting improvements in character skills [...] which consequently improved a number of labor market outcomes and health behaviors as well as reduced criminal activity.

Even if we propose an unlimited amount of funding (which is not the case), people and politicians only have a limited amount of time and attention each year. Newspapers only publish so many issues with so many pages each week. Television programs only cover so many hours for so many viewers each day. Even the dedicated can only read so many books in a year.

Even though the Perry intervention was imperfect, and the sample size was not as large as desirable, every second Democrat I talked to should have been able to answer the question “can you name an effective intervention?” with “what about Perry Preschool?”

Every year that we have entire cottage industries working on and popularizing contentious, ineffective, and backlash-provoking Metaphysics of Whiteness content, based on oversimplified oppressor/oppressed binaries, or theories in which power is held collectively by races as monolithic blobs (rather than modelling power as a network of relations between individuals, in which an individual of any background might be destroyed by the racialized relations in their environment), is another year we haven’t spent that energy on finding or implementing something that actually works.

This isn’t just an individual failure by Democrat voters, who typically have day jobs to focus on - it is a failure by the institutions who are supposed to inform and guide them. This institutional failure likely contributed to the popularization of Metaphysics of Whiteness content in the first place.

Okay, now what?

Donald Moss is a crackpot. Metaphysics of Whiteness content is unfalsifiable. The idea that there is a psychic parasite of “Whiteness” is not a legitimate field of study; it’s parasociology. The idea that “a sense of urgency” is “white supremacy culture” isn’t much better. [1]

We already tried isolating this content to obscure corners of academia, where individuals with high racial attachment could write about it. It leaked out.

We need to get this stuff out of the popular consciousness to make room for stuff that might actually work. The best way to do that may be to cut off the source. Since Donald Moss is a crackpot, perhaps it’s time we started treating him, and everyone else like him, as what they are.

People involved in Metaphysics of Whiteness content, like Donald Moss, need to be (figuratively) grabbed by the shoulder, and firmly, but politely, told to stop. Society has been recklessly handing out race-colored glasses to the general population since around 2014, resulting in a rise in amateur race science, of which both right-wing Twitter users memeing about Italians and Metaphysics of Whiteness participants like Moss are examples. If they do not stop, they must be stripped of institutional authority. Metaphysics of Whiteness content is unfalsifiable and we should not be certifying it.

If institutions refuse to reduce the authority of Metaphysics of Whiteness practitioners, those institutions must have their accreditation penalized, and their government funding reduced or eliminated, just as if they insisted on producing study after study on magic or ESP which failed to yield results. If they do not comply, they must be replaced.

It’s possible that Metaphysics of Whiteness content might have had some obscure, niche function in terms of the exploration of the idea space.

However, as it has displaced popular knowledge of interventions that might work, and the attention given to them in the political system, Liberals should seek to surgically remove it, at the very least until some more effective interventions see the political light of day.

If not, Conservatives will attempt to remove it with a bludgeon. "They described an entire race as ‘voracious, insatiable, and perverse,’ and here’s the citation for the exact page where they did that,” is perfect material with which to abolish entire departments.

-★★★-

[1] If we go a bit farther out, scholars of “Decolonization” argue that the field is wholly unconcerned with “settler futurity,” a phrase not much less ominous than describing “whiteness” as “incurable.” It seems that their entire job should be to answer the very difficult questions they have decided not to.

#racepol #american racepol #critical race theory #social justice #racial justice #longpost #flagpost #black lives matter

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unkownknowledge · 3 years

Text

OC: CHAOS GOD OF THE VOID, GIOTA

story I'm still working on your requests don't worry, I just wanted to make a few character sheets since I'm not focused enough rn. I'll finish it when I take my meds though I promise.

And this isn't an oc for any show, rather a character from a multiversal mythos I'm making

also, an important term to understand this: 1 god year=5 billion years

_____________________

Description:

Giota is a very hot and cool Giota stop changing the text! Atleast change your style of writing so the reader can undead immediately Aw but wheres the fun GIOTA

Fine mister fun police, I'll write like this then. And I'll be cooler than you

Young man I wil... forget it, back on track:

Giota is a shapeshifting god of chaos, void, technological progress, freedom, and being a dramatic bitch.

Hey! I'm not a bitch!....maybe a little

When appearing before mortals he'll often take on the form the viewer imagines when they think of a god of chaos would appear as. Often times when the user knows the basic descriptions of Giota from the 'book of tales' will see him as a angel like statue of bones with numerous cracks, no face, and organ pipe wings.

When meeting with gods outside his domain or when he must meet mortals in a set form, he will take on simple, 10ft tall humanoid form with bone skin, a cracked mouth that cracks more when he speaks, two different colored eyes, and longer than floor length black hair. One of his eyes will be crying water that burns upwards, while the other cries fire that flows downwards. In this form he wears a black trenchcoat, green turtleneck, and purple dad pants.

What the fuck are dad pants?

You know, those usually brown pants that are kinda jeans but soft and actually comfortable.

YOU BITCH MY HUSBAND LIKES JEANS AND HIS PANTS ARE SOFT!

YOUR HUSBAND HAS MARSHMALLOW THIGHS! LITERALLY! OF COURSE HIS PANTS ARE SOFT!

Inside his own domain, or if he's feeling especially done with whatever poor bastard made him upset, Giota takes the form of an innocent ten year old child with soft white steel skin, mile long black hair made of silk, and black eyes made of diamonds. In this form he wears pajamas for to big for him, his mouth leads to a dark void, and he carries around two plushies: a bunny made of roses from his mom, and a plush of his adult form from his husband. Of course he becomes an adult if they do anything adult, so please don't start.

Regardless of his form, even when it's based on the perspective of others, he always wears a large knitted infinity scarf his husband made for whenever he wanted to hide away.

_____________________

Powers:

Cool ones

I mean, he's not wrong...

(I should make an ice themed character)

Giota, as a god, has numerous powers related to his domains.

powers of freedom:

inspiring presence- while most gods or beings of power inspire mortals and lesser beings of power to kneel down or bow, Giota’s presence inspires all beings to rise up, to do anything, to do whatever they want, to become the best they can be. this can be used to inspire allies to carry on. However Giota can also let this power run rampant, and free the mind of any shackles, and while this sounds good it really just means removing all morals and causing mass violence, and if he lets it run rampant while in the same dimension he lets it then all life will mutate into eldritch monstrosities of decadence and selfishness. According to him this is to show that balance must be kept between chaos and law.

the torch of liberty- among Giota’s duties as a god of freedom is to liberate the populations of ‘doomed realms’ that have been enslaved. essentially, if a planet in a universe is ruled purely by either law or chaos then the entire universe can be effected, in the case of law it can result in the entire universe becoming one collective conscious. while it’s not common that enslaved worlds occur, however when they do they are the most dangerous of law worlds. to combat worlds like this gods of freedom are given torches that free the minds of the enslaved and bring down holy fire upon the enslavers in the form of the collective will of all the freed people.

powers of technological progress:

cybernetic god-many god-years ago Giota was severely wounded by a rogue god of flesh and a rogue god of metal, to the point even he could not regenerate it. to stop him from dying a cult of his granted Giota cybernetic enhancements. these enhancements integrated into Giota’s flesh as it regenerated and became enhanced in turn by Giota’s divinity, and Giota’s divine power was enhanced then by the cybernetics, resulting in a self sustaining growth in power. while he gladly used this to stop the rogue gods, and once again to destroy an old one, he feels being that powerful would upset the balance of power, so he sealed it in a time lock in time with the seasons and time of day in the void. his power increases from mid day to mid night, and from the end of summer to the end of winter. in the minute of exactly midnight at the end of winter, Giota becomes, in both this multiverse and the old, the most powerful being to exist.

self evolving knowledge- because his position as a god of technology is artificial his powers in it are very weak, being able to only grant full sentience and sapience to machines. he can also create minor miracles of technology, such as summoning a clockwork toy(which he does often)

hey man did you really have to bring up the whole getting my ass kicked thing?

yes, now shut up before I bring up what you sing in the shower

....fucker....

powers of being dramatic:

yeah that wasn't a joke. Giota is the god of being over the top, stylish, and over all flair. in other words, being dramatic

personal sound track- he can cause any song he wants to play when he does anything.

lights, camera, ACTION!- whenever he wants, Giota can cause a bright, sparkling light to emit from his body or behind himself.

my favorite is that one bad bitch’s theme. what’s her name again?

Ragyo Kiyurin?

that's the fucker! terrible taste in morals, but damn does she know how to enter a room.

...can I put sigh when it’s supposed to be me sighing?

powers of the god of chaos

Chaotic existence- for Giota to even exist is, in and of itself, a paradox. he comes from a timeline that never existed, that was on a set path, yet he exist, and he changed the course of the timeline. when he became a chaos god he became a paradox within a paradox, he existed yet did not. to attempt to change any aspect of his being, to take in any part of his being, is to know that which is not there to know, to understand that which is not there, you have to be able to comprehend the very essence of nonexistence to even bare a hair of his getting in your mouth. such a thing easily drives all things that try insane, to the point that every part of their conscience believes that it does not exist.

overwhelming power-chaos gods are only once a multiverse, and with the title comes pure power. such power could turn an infant into an indestructible warrior, however since Giota was already at that level on a mortal scale, and already capable of taking on powerful gods, this power sets him among the highest echelons of divine might.

powers of the god of void

key to nonexistence- the god of the void is the only being who can open the bridge between that which exist and that which does not

rapid regeneration- the void god has an innate ability to regenerate from nearly all damage, even if they are ground to a fine paste. this regeneration is enhanced by the cybernetic enhancements.

speed of darkness- the void god has an innate speed that surpasses light, Giota’s already superhuman speed was enhanced by this.

spear of not- the void god is the sole being in existence and non existence who can wield the spear of not, a finely forged weapon. it is not special beyond being enchanted to withstand godly power and a ‘security lock’ enchantment, however it is still a very well made weapon.

blah blah blah, enough about what I was handed, tell them about my mortal abilities

as Giota just said, and as I’ve brought up before, Giota is extremely powerful even without his powers, he also used to be two other mortals that were less powerful. but over all these were his powers, which he still has.

leather skin- while it might appear or feel like something else, Giota’s skin is exactly like leather armor. this comes from how he was raised as a child to be a powerful warrior and his skin was tanned into hide and treated while it was still on him.

adamantine bone- Giota’s bones were also replaced by an adamantine skeleton when he was a child.

super sonic speeds- during his training as a child, he was taught to be able to surpass the sound barrier on foot.

superhuman strength- his training also trained his body to carry ten tons, however as a mortal he improved that strength to the point he could exert enough force to blast away entire cities by blinking. This power did not come easy.

flight- after training with some monks late in his life, Giota was able to walk on the air, essentially he could fly at the same speed as he could run.

agility- he was trained as a warrior and assassin, so Giota’s training included advanced maneuverability training, including wall running, sneaking across tripwires, etc.

weapon master- Giota is a master in all weapons and various forms of martial arts.

he also has reciev- hey man you good?

I-I’m fine! d-don’t write that I’m crying!

you...wanna talk about it?

…no...

is it about your mom?

…maybe...

alright take your time.

anyway Giota has a very useful piece of equipment, the cloak of maternity- despite it’s name, it’s actual a cloak that leads to a pocket dimension where Giota carries his weapons and toys. It is called the cloak of maternity because his adoptive mother gave him after he became a god-bounty hunter, she even designed it to help him hide away from people. it even has a designated snack pocket.

_____________________

BIO:

Giota was found by his adoptive mother after he destroyed his timeline, as punishment, or perhaps in an attempt to redeem him, she turned him back into a baby. something Giota happily accepted.

After this his life went on as a mortal’s would, only in the realm of divinity: he went to school, went into college, graduated, then entered the workforce. granted the workforce he entered was bounty hunting divine criminals. it was easy for him to get into, after all everything from his past life transferred over to this one, it wasn't long before he was hunting even the deadliest of criminals. while his mom was very supportive, it was still difficult for him to keep in contact with her as he did before moving out, and being a bounty hunter was hardly a sociable job. it wasn't long before Giota fell into depression, and then to drugs. for twenty three god years his life was an endless cycle of contract killing, payment, and wallowing in chemical joy. But at the end of all blinding lights, there is a welcoming darkness.

Giota had become the personal bounty hunter of the god of law and time: Ceerus. one day while leaving after receiving a contract, he met the god’s child, a boy his age named Dyalta.

It was thanks to Dyalta that Giota ever kicked drugs, or got out of depression, and thanks to Dyalta Giota managed to find happiness in anything other than a syringe.

Even the reason he found love.

rise to godhood

Giota became a god after an old god, named the Red slaughter, destroyed the entire universe. this was a catalyst for Giota, who had died previously, to return with his newly awakened god powers. I don't want to go into to much detail in this aspect as I intend to write it at some point.

_____________________

hey man you good yet?

a little bit. Dyalta came by and gave me some cookies.

that's good buddy, I’m gonna describe your personality ok?

alright.. I’m gonna go home now.

alright man, take care.

_____________________

personality

do note that this is a bit hard for me to do. I’m more used to just writing a character. I’ll just post two short stories here to try and get his personality across. I made them in school last year.

ok so after looking at it the second one is twelve pages long. so I’m gonna post that elsewhere on here. to give context: this is after a wedding between Dyalta and Giota was interrupted. if you’d like to see more about him then feel free to interact or request him.

elavator story

Giota shifted uncomfortably to make room for his soon to be father in law as the man stepped into the lift.

“Soooooo…” Giota pressed their floor “wonderful, um, siege we’re having.”

Ceerus just keeps his eyes on the door “sure.”

“So how's the uh, wife?”

Ceerus sighed “locked in a tower, that we are invading.”

“Mhm, yup.”

‘Maybe I should try calling him dad.’

“So what did you think of my swordsmanship d-dad.”

Ceerus visibly restrained himself “it was fine ten- Giota.”

The elevator stopped, probably because of security.

“Oh maker damnit,” Ceerus tries rewinding the shut off, but it doesn't work “and it’s godproofed!”

“This reminds of this one time me and Dyalta wen-”

Ceerus put his hand to Giota’s mouth “if you end this story in anything less than fully clothed I will end your fake hide.”

Giota scratches his head nervously “Well I didn't, but Dyalta lost his shirt and well,” Giota notice Ceerus drawing his blade “b-but it was for a sword fi- wait bad wording, it was for a-you know- assasination thing!”

Ceerus sighed and sheathed his sword “look, you dusting mongrel, I don’t like you, you pretend to like me, let’s just try and not kill each other and maybe by the end of this, I won’t flay your ass at the altar.”

Well atleast now they both agreed on something: this was going to be a long crusade.

________________________________________________________________

ok that's that! not a very good character sheet but hopefully it got enough across to be interesting. I’ll end this off with some quotes I want him to say but have never gotten the chance to write out:

“hey Ceerus how’s the kid? oh thats right! in my bed, waiting patiently.” following Ceerus being exceptionally annoying.

“you know something? I try to be nice, I always smile, always banter with my targets. you know, try and be friendly. but then some RED MOTHERFUCKER, POSSESSES MY HUSBAND, WAKING ME UP FROM ETERNAL SLUMBER, AND NOW I ONCE AGAIN HAVE TO CLEAN UP THE GOD’S MESSES!”

*crying into Dyalta* “and then he said my clothes were stupid,” *sobbing* “I tried really hard on these!”

“this multiverse, to us gods, is wet paper mache. so easy to break, one wrong move and POP,” Giota flexes his finger and causes an ocean to split open for a solid ten seconds, “the very fabric of reality is gone. and you. you insuferable MOTHER FUCKERS have the AUDACITY TO COME IN HERE, AND TEAR IT ALL TO SHREDS! well assholes, if this reality is paper mache to you, and I’m stronger than you, take a wild gues as to what you are to me.”

(tagging: @storytravelled, @3lectro-heart, @genshin-obsessed)

#tw drugs #oc

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damnusillygoose · 3 years

Text

Somebody is jealous( jellal’s edition)

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13786166/2/somebody-is-jealous

for erza’s edition:

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13786166/1/somebody-is-jealous

Thank you sapphireblue2007 for suggesting me to write jellal's version.

Disclaimer: these characters are rightfully owned by hiro sensei.

Somebody is Jealous (Jellal's edition)

Well, Jellal perceives himself as a very liberal and progressive person.

He wasn't a possessive person. No, not at all- Even in his relationship with Erza, he believed in giving ample space for growth and self-introspection to each other. He certainly didn't believe in getting jealous when one's partner gets some excessive attention from the opposite gender. Nope, not at all, he was a progressive person, wasn't he? He didn't want to smother her with suffocation. Jellal was aware of the fact that his woman was a strong person who didn't need anyone to save her. She was her own person and stood up for what she believed in. That's how he viewed relationships- a sweet added bonus to one's life, separate from a person's purpose in life.

Yet,

He felt horrified, as he realised, he was shamelessly contradicting his very own beliefs. His eyes twitched in mild irritation, well not exactly mild- only slight, that's how he soothed his not so jealous soul, as he watched the scene before him unfold.

His beloved was sitting comfortably on one of the chairs kept near the bar, eating her sweet dessert in contentment, oblivious to the lusty stares that eyed her glorious exposed thighs and cleavage. There were men hovering around her, drooling repugnantly.

Erza was a beautiful woman. It was an established fact. Not only did she win various beauty pageants, but she also attracted scores of men who simped after her and bolstered her as their 'waifu'!

Jellal was fucking replete with fury when he came to learn about this obnoxious verbiage. What a derogatory term! He opined. How dare they lust after Erza and claim her as their 'waifu'?! well, typically he was doing the same. But he was her partner and it's pretty healthy in a relationship to be intimately attracted to your partner! Yep, he reasoned with his conscience.

It was no secret that men secretly/openly lusted after females who were fairly popular. Given fairy tail's reputation, they were inglorious for being rambunctious all over the continent. This shouldn't come as a surprise to Jellal that Erza was kind of a national crush of Fiore. She even got disgusting offer letters from rich officials asking her to be their mistress. Every single person, be it a man or a woman, acknowledged her regal presence. Wherever they went, people were in awe of her. She was a beautiful woman, confident and sassy, along with a splendid personality. Who wouldn't be attracted to such an amazing person?

Analysing her fan following, he was sure of the fact that Erza must have dated some men in the past. However, He gasped in utter disbelief when he got to know that despite of the attention she received; she never laid her eyes on another man. They were reserved for him. Always.

He was her first man, the first man who held her hand, the first man who witnessed her vulnerable side, her first kiss, the one who took her virginity, the one she would like to start a family with and the only one who she would devote her heart to.

Forever.

That gave him a superior complex over all those degenerates who hated him for stealing their waifu.

Her devotion made him feel extremely fortunate, to get a woman who would choose him over everything else.

But that didn't mean that he couldn't get jealous.

'Oi chad, snap out from your murderous intent, will ya?'

'Laxus.'

'What happened? Why are you in such a bad mood?', Laxus raised his eyebrows in amusement. It was fun teasing Jellal especially when he was in a foul mood.

'Jelly-chan is jealous because other men in the party are eyeing Erza ravenously!', Meredy chimed in the scene, humming a tune under her breath almost nonchalantly.

Laxus let out a nasty cackle as he smashed his beer pint against the wooden table they currently occupied. Meredy joined in with her sniggers; annoying Jellal in his misery.

'Cheer up Jelly chan, if you brood so much, you will end up getting wrinkles quickly and look almost 20 years elder to Erza!'

'Stop calling me Jelly chan, Meredy!'

'Why? I think that name suits you a lot Jellal.'

Oh no.

The trio turned around to acknowledge the owner of this sardonic comment.

Erik approached the group with a wide smirk plastered on his face, much to Jellal's discontentment.

What a great timing. Now they will gang up to bully me.

'Say Jellal, want to murder those assholes? I could feel your malignity from the far end of the hall, reverberating louder than Gajeel's singing shit'

'I wouldn't go that far, they are just harmless flies'

Actually, he could.

'Then why are you getting so hot-headed over those harmless flies?', Meredy smiled knowingly.

'I am not.'

'oh boss! Stop lying with your pathetic ass!'

'I am not lying Erik!'

Erik scoffed at his reply. He didn't even try to hide it.

'Then what do you plan on doing chad boy? Just sit in a corner like a lost puppy and watch as those men eye your woman?', laxus joined in the conversation, adding oil to the fuming spark.

'I can't pause to throw a stone at every dog that barks. Plus, Erza is a strong woman. I shouldn't stick my nose where it isn't needed. I think she is capable of handling this herself.'

But actually, he was trying his best not to jump in the scene and take her away from those bastards but he didn't want to appear as a jealous freak who had no control over his irrational aspect.

'of course, she is Jellal', Meredy reasoned,' but a woman, no matter how strong she is, would love to be spoiled by her man and feel protected. That doesn't mean you are undermining her strength. It's called chivalry.'

'…'

'What about ramming some hot iron rods up in their assholes?', laxus had no chill at all.

'Laxus your speech is so vulgar', Jellal cringed.

'Not as vulgar as your mind, boss'

'Erik, listen up- '

'it's okay Jellal', Meredy patted his back sympathetically, 'You are always harsh on yourself. You don't have to berate yourself so much. Being jealous is a sign of affection after all.'

'Really?', he raised his eyebrows in suspicion.

'Well, when exercised in moderation. Don't become Juvia though.', Laxus grimaced in exasperation.

'I just-I can't handle those people who eye her like she is their personal property!'

'Oohoohoo, finally the lover boy is being honest!', laxus slapped his hand against jellal's back harshly.

Jellal ignored his remark and chose to focus upon what Erza was doing.

Erza, unfortunately, was already surrounded by random men drooling over her assets while he was busy merry making with his guild mates.

He was pissed. He was fucking pissed.

He clenched his fist in impuissance until his knuckles turned white. He let out a shaky breath, biting his lips, trying his best not to eradicate their existence by casting sema right at this moment

'Erza-sama, I know this beautiful villa by the country side that I can rent for you. Would you like to witness that scenic beauty? I can make the arrangement just for the two of us.'

'uh, no thank you. I am not interested, I am busy at the moment with my ongoing missions but I would certainly take-out time to visit this said place with my friends and my boyfriend', Erza exaggerated the last part to make this pathetic pervert clear of the fact that she wasn't interested in his offer.

'He doesn't need to know'

'When I said I won't go, I won't go. Please learn to respect a woman.'

She was already seething at this moment, ready to requip in her armour to beat the shit out of these perverts but she held herself back. This was an important party for her guild as many magic council officials appeared to discuss some important matters with master Makarov.

'Erza-sama!', another pervert chimed in, 'what about-!

'My honeyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!'

Erza felt a shiver travelling down her spine even before she could react from the horror of hearing his voice. She didn't need to see who this abhorrent creature was. She didn't even acknowledge him as a person. Ichiya had already latched himself around her leg giving it a wild sniff, trespassing all boundaries of her private space.

This is it. This was her limit.

She was shaking wild. Her fingers were itching from wrath as she tried to remove him from her. These men latched themselves upon her despite being firmly rejected by her. She was being polite and considerate of her guild. That's the only reason she somehow tolerated their creepy remarks. She desperately searched for familiar eyes through the crowd that was bustling from the onset of vibrant ebullience. She grew impatient by every single moment when she failed in her search to find them. That's when she felt a presence behind her. The eyes she was searching for were already looking down from their vantage but not at her. She followed his eyes to find them glued on Ichiya.

Jellal got hold of Ichiya's hand and ruthlessly broke him apart from Erza's legs, not caring for a single second where his poor ass landed.

'Ichiya-san, that's a unique way of greeting someone. It could very well qualify as harassment you know', Jellal hissed menacingly, walking in front of Erza to make a defensive guard around her.

Jellal was a master at hiding his emotions and maintaining a stoic demeanour but Erza could still look beyond that very well.

He appeared perfectly placid but he wasn't.

His eyes bellowed bloodlust. He was growling with belligerence.

He was not going to let these repulsive hands touch the body that he revered so much.

The rest of the crowd started to disperse, succumbing to the impingement Jellal displayed, while laxus, Meredy and Erik watched the scene in awe. That's the impact Jellal's presence wielded.

There was a limit to which this man could tolerate bullshit after all. This was Jellal, who was fiercely protective of the woman he loved.

Erza snickered to herself smugly seeing the crowd become frail upon his arrival. These were some spineless cowards who weren't even half the man her Jellal was.

Jellal blissfully ignored the crowd that was whispering his name with resentment, something along the lines of 'their waifu'

He looked at Erza, taking in a deep breath of relief as he put his hands over her shoulders securely.

'Well gentlemen, I just remembered that my boyfriend and I have some work to do, if you will excuse us.' Erza stood up from her chair and bowed her head signalling her departure as she grabbed hold of jellal's hands, leading them across the hall through the exit door. Jellal looked at his guild mates who were giving him smug smiles and thumbs ups.

After exiting the guild, Jellal let out a sigh as they strode further away from that crowd. He still was shaking, his hysteria urging him to go back and beat the shit out of those bastards. He tore his thoughts away from the former events and looked sideways at the enchanting woman walking by his side.

'This dress really looks nice on you.'

'Thank you, sweetheart', Erza smiled and turned her face to give him a chaste peck on his cheeks. 'But I think I will opt for a less revealing outfit next time for a formal party like this'

'Why?'

'tch, didn't you see for yourself what happened today?'

'Don't fret about those assholes, just wear what you want', he snaked his arm around her waist protectively to pull her closer to him.

Jellal rarely cursed, that meant he was infuriated right now.

'Jellal', she whispered lovingly, taking his face in her hands, 'look at me'

He locked his gaze with her, facing her completely. His arms gently fondled her waist, pulling her entirely towards himself.

She leaned into him, melting like butter.

'I love you Jellal.' She brought his face towards hers until their foreheads were touching each other, 'Thank you for helping me back then. I was really helpless'.

They closed their eyes and sighed in synchronisation. She felt his arms locking her into a tight embrace, clutching the fabric of her dress.

'I just…..couldn't help myself when I saw them degrading you like that.' He felt the weight of her hands shifting down towards his neck, near his sensitive spot which only she knew about, caressing it to calm him down.

'Thank you love, but don't over-exert yourself over this issue, this isn't worth your time and effort', she looked at him tenderly. Jellal was such a worrywart but she loved him the same.

'yeah…you are right', he leaned into her, nuzzling his nose with hers, her sweet scent taming his raging heartbeat down, 'I love you too'

It's almost been a year since they started dating and obviously they never hesitated to show their love to each other- verbally, physically or emotionally, but Erza would never get tired of Jellal saying 'I love you' to her. She had dreamed about it so long, she yearned about it ever since she realised her feelings for him, she would never take his confessions for granted. It still had the same impact on her as the first time he poured his heart out to her.

Such was their affection for each other-always raging against the odds.

The hooting of the owls could be heard in the depth of the night. A sudden breeze struck her form as she shivered from the lack of her clothing, she had worn a simple flowy dress, not deemed to be fit in a chilly weather.

'it's getting cold Erza', Jellal pointed out as he draped his coated over her shoulders, 'let's go home'.

She hummed lightly in solace as she felt his lips softly touch her forehead. She entwined her hand with his as they started treading towards the path that led to their small cottage, their personal heaven.

'Can you make me a strawberry smoothie with vanilla ice cream?', she asked him tentatively, testing her waters.

'I thought you wanted to curb your midnight snacking'

'But jelllaaaaaaaaaaaal!', she wailed in desperation, 'dealing with those perverts drained my energy!'

'I can always make a bowl of fruits oats for you.'

'Noooooooo! That's way too heathy!'

'Okay how about this?', he tried to reason with her, 'I'll make milk oats for you with honey and loads of freshly cut strawberries. Sounds like a good deal to me, what do you think?'

She thought about the offer for a moment. It did actually sound like a good deal. She knew she kind of gave in to her midnight sugar cravings. Milk oats were a heathier option.

She pouted and tried to act a little spoiled, 'only if you bribe me.'

'What a scandal! The great titania is asking for a bribe!', he nudged her shoulder playfully and she huffed in response to his actions, 'what are your demands?'

'You need to pepper me with as many kisses as I ask you for!'

' My, My, I was already planning on giving you a thousand kisses when we reach home, don't worry about that', he replied as he gave her a wink making her blush profusely.

If anyone heard them conversing in this manner, their eyeballs would pop out from their eye sockets. They were incredible mages, well versed with the ethics of professionalism. They completed their tasks seriously but when they were alone, it becomes a different story.

A/N: if you liked my story please leave a review and do check out my works as well.

Constructive criticism is appreciated.

Keep loving Jerza!

#jerza #fairy tail #fairy tail jerza #jellal fernandez #jellal x erza #erza scarlet #crime sorciere #fairy tail laxus #Meredy

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 3 years

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LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

April 7, 2021

Heather Cox Richardson

Last night, commentator Kevin Williamson published a piece in National Review justifying voter suppression by suggesting that “the republic would be better served by having fewer—but better—voters.” Representatives, he says, “are people who act in other people’s interests,” which is different from doing what voters want.

This is the same argument elite slaveholder James Henry Hammond made before the Senate in 1858, when he defended the idea that Congress should recognize the spread of human enslavement into Kansas despite the fact that the people living in that territory wanted to abolish slavery. Our Constitution, Hammond said, did not dictate that people should “be annoyed with the cares of Government,” but rather directed that they should elect leaders who would take those cares upon themselves.

It is the same argument wealthy men made in the 1890s when they illustrated that laws calling for “better” voters meant that white registrars would hand-pick the nation’s voting population. In the South and the North both, legislators wrote new state constitutions to keep Black men, immigrants, and poor workers from the polls. Leading Americans argued that such men “corrupted” the vote by electing lawmakers who provided public infrastructure like schools and hospitals, paid for with the tax dollars of hardworking white men. To keep poor voters and men of color from the ballot, new state laws called for literacy tests, in which white registrars personally judged a man’s ability to read; poll taxes for which one had to keep the receipts; grandfather clauses, in which a man could vote if his grandfather had, and so on.

Williamson’s is the same argument Arizona Senator Barry’s Goldwater’s ghostwriter made in 1960 in The Conscience of a Conservative, when he wrote in frustration about the New Deal government that was wildly popular despite businessmen’s hatred for it. The framers had absolutely not created a democracy, he wrote, but rather had worried about “a tyranny of the masses” who would vote for laws that redistributed tax dollars into projects that would benefit themselves.

The theory of government that lies behind the argument for limiting the vote to “better” voters was also articulated by Senator Hammond in his 1858 speech. He explained that the South had figured out the best government in the world. It had put a few wealthy, educated, well-connected men in power over everyone else: those he called “mudsills,” workers who produced the capital that supported society but had little direction or ambition and had to be controlled by their superiors. In the South, Hammond explained to his northern colleagues, the mudsills were Black, but in the North they were wage workers. It was imperative such men be kept from political power, for “[i]f they knew the tremendous secret, that the ballot-box is stronger than ‘an army with banners,’ and could combine, where would you be? Your society would be reconstructed, your government overthrown, your property divided… by the quiet process of the ballot-box….”

In 1859, Abraham Lincoln rejected this vision of government by wealthy elites and replaced it with one of his own. Government worked best not when it protected the property and thus the power of a few wealthy elites, said this poor man’s son, but when it protected equality of access to resources and equality before the law for everyone. Rather than concentrating wealth upward, society should protect the rights of all men to the fruits of their own labor.

Throughout our history, adherents of these two different visions of what constitutes the best government for the U.S. have struggled. On the one hand are those who say that the country operates best when the government is controlled by a few wealthy, educated, well-connected, and usually white and male leaders. The argument goes that they are the only ones with the skills, the insight, and the experience to make good decisions about national policy, particularly economic policy. And it is important that wealth concentrate in their hands, since they will act as its stewards, using it wisely in lump sums, while if the workers who produce wealth get control of it they will fritter it away.

On the other hand are those like Lincoln, who believe that government should reflect the will of the majority, not simply on principle, but because a wide range of voices means the government has a better chance of getting things right than when only a few people rule.

In today’s world, Americans appear to be siding with the popular measures of the Democrats. A Morning Consult/Politico poll today says that 65% of Americans support higher corporate taxes to pay for infrastructure and that 82% want infrastructure in any case. To make matters worse for the Republicans, counties that voted for Biden provide 70% of the nation’s gross domestic product, the value of goods and services in the nation. The large corporations Republicans used to be able to count on for money and support are now eager to court these young, liberal producers.

So, to combat the nation’s drift toward popular government, it appears the current-day Republican Party has taken up the cause of elite rule.

Williamson is not the only Republican to muse about how getting rid of voters might be good for the nation. Arizona state representative John Kavanagh has said of voting that “[q]uantity is important, but we need to look at the quality of votes as well.”

Today, Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) reacted to a story about rising crime rates during the pandemic by tweeting that “[w]e have a major under-incarceration problem in America.” He appears to think that we need more people in jail despite the fact that we already imprison our people at a rate more than 5 times higher than that of the rest of the world. We imprison nearly 2.3 million people, with another 3.6 million on probation and another 840,000 on parole. More important for the current struggle over government, though, his statement is that of an authoritarian rather than a democratic leader, and fits nicely with the idea of a strong-handed elite rule.

In Florida, Republican lawmakers appear ready to silence their opponents with a law that would, according to the Miami Herald, “require public colleges and universities to survey students, faculty and staff about their beliefs and viewpoints.” It would also permit students to record their professors without their consent for a civil or criminal case against their school. A lobbyist for the measure, Barney Bishop, told journalist Ana Ceballos that “the cards are stacked in the education system… toward the left and toward the liberal ideology and also secularism — and those were not the values that our country was founded on…. [T]hose are the values that we need to get our country back to.” “The truth of the matter,” he said, “is that kids are being indoctrinated from an early age.”

Also today, a member of the Boogaloo Bois who attended a “Stop the Steal” rally at the state capitol in Minnesota as part of the attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election was arrested and charged with illegal possession of a machine gun. He had used a 3D printer to alter a semi-automatic weapon to make it shoot automatically.

The Republican attack on democracy is not playing well at home (although a number of our adversaries like it well enough). A new Gallup poll shows that an average of 49% of Americans consider themselves Democratic or Democratic-leaning Independents while only 40% identify as Republicans or as Republican-leaning Independents. This is the highest split since 2012.

Still, in the end, if Republicans manage to rewrite the voting laws to silence their opponents, how their actions play with the majority of American voters won’t matter in the least.

—-

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#political #Heather Cox Richardson #Letters From An American #voting rights #history #racism #classism #corrupt Gop #criminal GOP #Lincoln #wealth #poverty #the poor

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ukiyoeunoia · 3 years

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information and statistics for mantotohpa wallace

including an in-depth personality analysis

BASIC INFORMATION

Full name: Mantotohpa Akio Wallace Nicknames: Toto, Akio (his dad) Age: 19 Date of Birth: February 21st, 2002 (12pm) Hometown: Forks, WA Current location: Salem, MA Ethnicity: Japanese, Native-American, Caucasian Nationality: American Gender: cisgender male (he/him) Sexuality: Pansexual, Panromantic Religion: Pagan Political Affiliation: Unaffiliated Occupation: Student Languages spoken: Whulshootseed, English, Japanese Accent: Western American

PHYSICAL APPEARANCE

Face Claim: Booboo Stewart Hair Colour: Darkest Brown, almost black Eye Colour: Brown Weight: 170lbs Height: 5′8 Build: Athletic between Lean & Burly Tattoos: None Piercings: None

PERSONALITY

Label: The Downtrodden Positive Traits: +enthusiastic, resilient, welcoming, earnest, loyal, gregarious Negative Traits: - awkward, distracted, sensitive, clumsy, flighty, passive Goals/Desires: to learn more about where he comes from and what his blood pack was like. Fears: death, losing control and hurting someone, his mother finding him Hobbies:

FAMILY

Father: adriel wallace. (46) Mother: akira todoroki. (44) Sibling(s): unnamed wallace. (26) Children: none. Pet(s): none, sadly.

EXTRA

Zodiac Sign: Pisces - “As the twelfth and last sign of the zodiac, Pisces contains within itself a little experience of all the signs. This gives Pisces Suns the ability to identify with people from all walks of life—from all backgrounds—in some way. These individuals are not only changeable and adaptable, but they also have open minds and tremendous understanding. But Pisces itself is often misunderstood. Pisces Suns may spend a good portion of their lives yearning for understanding, and the other part in a state of divine discontent. Suffering is sometimes glamorized in the Piscean world.Sun in Pisces people are frequently pegged as wishy-washy, but this is all a matter of opinion. What you will find behind a vaguely directionless, spacey manner is a deep person with real dreams. Their dreams are more than getting that picket fence or making it up the corporate ladder. Pisces are tuned in to a higher purpose and their dreams transcend the individual. A deep love for humanity and compassion that knows no bounds is found with this placement of the Sun.” MBTI: ESFJ-T - The Consul. “People who share the Consul personality type are, for lack of a better word, popular – which makes sense, given that it is also a very common personality type, making up twelve percent of the population. In high school, Consuls are the cheerleaders and the quarterbacks, setting the tone, taking the spotlight and leading their teams forward to victory and fame. Later in life, Consuls continue to enjoy supporting their friends and loved ones, organizing social gatherings and doing their best to make sure everyone is happy. Discussing scientific theories or debating European politics isn’t likely to capture Consuls’ interest for too long. Consuls are more concerned with fashion and their appearance, their social status and the standings of other people. Practical matters and gossip are their bread and butter, but Consuls do their best to use their powers for good.“ Alignment: Chaotic Good - “A chaotic good character acts as his conscience directs him with little regard for what others expect of him. He makes his own way, but he's kind and benevolent. He believes in goodness and right but has little use for laws and regulations. He hates it when people try to intimidate others and tell them what to do. He follows his own moral compass, which, although good, may not agree with that of society.Chaotic good is the best alignment you can be because it combines a good heart with a free spirit.Chaotic good can be a dangerous alignment when it disrupts the order of society and punishes those who do well for themselves.“ Enneagram: Type 2 - The Helper. “We have named personality type Two The Helper because people of this type are either the most genuinely helpful to other people or, when they are less healthy they are the most highly invested in seeing themselves as helpful. Being generous and going out of their way for others makes Twos feel that theirs is the richest, most meaningful way to live. The love and concern they feel—and the genuine good they do—warms their hearts and makes them feel worthwhile. Twos are most interested in what they feel to be the “really, really good” things in life—love, closeness, sharing, family, and friendship.“ Celtic Tree: Ash - “Ash individuals have a dual nature, trying to balance their artistic and vulnerable side with their logical and realistic side. They are compassionate and sensitive, with a strong intuition. They could do well financially if they followed through on their ideas.“ Temperament: Sanguine - “People with a sanguine personality type tend to be lively, optimistic, buoyant, and carefree. They love adventure and have high risk tolerance.Sanguine people are typically poor at tolerating boredom and will seek variety and entertainment. Naturally, this trait can sometimes negatively affect their romantic and other relationships.” Hogwarts House: Hufflepuff - “Hufflepuff is the most inclusive among the four houses; valuing hard work, dedication, patience, loyalty, and fair play rather than a particular aptitude in its students. Hufflepuffs were known to have a strong moral code, and a sense of right and wrong. Hufflepuffs were usually accepting of everyone.” Primary Vice: Sloth - ““Unlike the other capital sins, which are sins of committing immorality, sloth is a sin of omitting responsibilities. It may arise from any of the other capital vices; for example, a son may omit his duty to his father through anger. While the state and habit of sloth is a mortal sin, the habit of the soul tending towards the last mortal state of sloth is not mortal in and of itself except under certain circumstances.” Primary Virtue: Humility - “Humility is the quality of being humble. Dictionary definitions accentuate humility as a low self-regard and sense of unworthiness. In a religious context humility can mean a recognition of self in relation to a deity (i.e. God) or deities, and subsequent submission to said deity as a member of that religion. Outside of a religious context, humility is defined as being “unselved”, a liberation from consciousness of self, a form of temperance that is neither having pride (or haughtiness) nor indulging in self-deprecation.“ Element: Fire - “Your priority in life: Joy. You’re a free spirit, with a great need for fun in life. Fire people seek stimulation and so tend to always have a lot of balls in the air because they hate to be bored! Your secret to success: Communication. You easily communicate your thoughts and feelings and are naturally warm and affectionate. Fire people love heartfelt conversations with another person, whether in a lifelong romance or 30 seconds in the lift.”

#musings.mantotohpa #mantotohpa #salem.intro

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