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tehuti88-art · 2 years

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8/5/22: r/SketchDaily theme, "Free Draw Friday." This week's character from my anthro WWII storyline is Gertraud "Trudi" Detzer. She's one of the LGBT+ characters in the story (I've actually posted a few others); given the time period, though, she has to hide this fact. She has an unusual advantage that aids her in helping the resistance Diamond Network. There'll be more about her later in my art Tumblr and Toyhou.se.

Regarding her design, you can't really tell but she's a cream-colored poodle (just doesn't have a weird poodle haircut). Yes, the poodle is a German dog. Her hair is wavy and kind of flares out at the bottom though you can't really tell that here, either.

TUMBLR EDIT: Most of Trudi's backstory is still vague and unlikely to be highly developed (unless she decides to step forward and spill things), since she's more of a secondary character. I do know that she was born Gerwin Detzer--biologically male, yet intersex, possessing genitalia of both sexes--functional external genitalia of both, though he requires surgery for undescended testicles and to open up the vagina. (Sorry if this is TMI. Even sorrier if I get any terminology wrong, which is likely but unintentional.) As the boy gets older he realizes he feels like a girl, and his appearance--including developing breasts (gynecomastia)--just strengthens this feeling--so he begins to dress and present himself as female, taking the name Gertraud. Trudi Detzer is born.

(An aside. The closest thing I've been able to find to this specific situation is a condition called "Persistent Müllerian Duct Syndrome," though as I warned, I might be getting details wrong, so the specific name of the condition is never given in the story. In fact, given the place and time period--Nazi Germany--lots of outdated and downright offensive language is used as a matter of course, even by "good guys" and those who fall under such labels themselves. Some examples being the homosexual Klemper repeatedly using the pejorative "Schwuchtel" to refer to other men hitting on him, and Diamant using this term when mentioning that Commandant Dannecker definitely isn't gay despite using an overtly sexual gesture to intimidate him (Diamant isn't intentionally homophobic, he just doesn't really "get it" since it's outside his personal experience); Didrika and Lukas Mettbach occasionally refer to themselves as Gypsies or even Zigeuner (the now-pejorative term the Nazis used) as they know these are the terms others know better than "Romani" or "Sinti"; Lukas uses the term "ladyman" when referring to Trudi since that's the term Dr. Mengele used when asking him about intersex people in his own family, plus he's just trying hard to understand what to him is a very strange concept; etc. For the most part, these characters either aren't trying to be offensive, or, when they are (Klemper, e. g.), they're just making use of what was generally acceptable back then. Ignorance is the main issue. I know my story is unrealistic, but it'd be REALLY unrealistic if, every time somebody uses an insulting term for gays or Roma or Jews or whatever, somebody else would be all, "That's really offensive, you know!" So, tl;dr, expect insulting terminology, just please don't think it reflects my or even my characters' true opinions. Except many of the Nazi characters, they really are just bigoted a-holes.)

I don't know the story with Trudi's dad, he seems absent from the story. Her mother, obviously, is supportive (she's the one who approved and funded the surgery, after all), and accepts Trudi as a daughter, also trying to protect her identity in the face of the Nazis' rise to power. This isn't terribly difficult at first--Trudi is lucky in that she's naturally feminine in appearance, and although her voice is a bit deeper and huskier than usual, it passes as well. But somehow, for reasons I haven't figured out yet, she has the misfortune to become acquainted with Dr. Erich Arzt.

Dr. Arzt--or even more accurately, Captain Arzt--is a Hauptsturmführer and physician in the Waffen-SS. He's instrumental in helping Lt. Hesse obtain a transfer from the Waffen-SS to the Allgemeine-SS after he's wounded, and later in the story plays a pivotal role in the assassination of SS intelligence chief Rupprecht Heidenreich. But for most of the story he's more of a background character, a polite, sociable doctor who likes to pass time at General Vincenz Immerwahr's estate with him and Capt. Oskar Ettlinger. The three of them have an occasional, casual thing going--Immerwahr and Ettlinger are both gay (the latter married and in the closet), whereas Arzt would probably best fit the definition of pansexual--he's easily attracted to men and women, and although the concept of any genders other than that is a very strange and taboo one for the Nazis, he's willing to try almost anything at least once. He's perpetually curious about his fellow humans, viewing every interaction almost as a sort of "experiment," and sex, especially, falls under this description. He's almost certainly a sociopath (note for anyone who might pick at this, I go by the accepted psychological terminology for antisocial personality disorder--sociopath--and don't make a distinction between this and "psychopath," which isn't an official diagnostic term), albeit a well-controlled, highly functioning one. He doesn't take things personally or bear grudges, not because he's magnanimous, but because he just doesn't care what others think of him, they're not worth the bother. He's handsome and intelligent and charming, which means women and men are drawn to him, and he doesn't mind that at all because he gets bored easily, and "experimenting" with other people wards off the boredom. He's viewed as kind of a playboy with a bit of a reputation, but unlike Immerwahr, who doesn't bother trying to hide such things anymore, he manages to keep the details of his sex life discreet, so there isn't much scandal surrounding him. And for some reason, nobody's really interested in spreading stories about him. Meaning he gets to be as promiscuous and pervy as he wishes, with few repercussions.

In a manner I haven't figured out yet--perhaps she gets injured somehow and needs emergency treatment, and he's the only doctor available?--dunno--Arzt comes into contact with Trudi Detzer. And finds out her secret. Trudi is filled with dread, as she knows very well what she's considered to be by the SS. A freak of nature, a life unworthy of life. At best, she'll be an experimental subject, before she'll end up gassed to death in a camp. At worst, well...that's not worth mentioning.

Arzt, though, is more interested in something else. He offers Trudi a deal. He'll keep her secret, and protect her from the rest of the Schutzstaffel, and even provide her a safe place to stay, with him. All she has to do is keep house for him...and take part in his experiment. Trudi understands the implications perfectly. She weighs her options: the camps, brutal work and brutal experiments, and possibly many men, followed by certain death...or a decent house, simple work, and this one man, plus the chance to live. After stipulating that her mother will be protected as well (Arzt concedes), she agrees to Arzt's proposal.

It...doesn't go entirely smoothly, as expected. Although for the most part Trudi "consents"--if you could really call it that (technically, you can't)--to whatever weird stuff Arzt wants to try with her, there are a few things that make her uncomfortable and she refuses to do, though suffice it to say that doesn't stop him. There's some very clear NONconsensual activity in the arrangement, also. Sometimes Trudi fights back, sometimes she doesn't, the result is always the same because he's bigger and stronger than she is and has training. Oddly, he never beats or threatens her--because he sees no need to. He never even hints that, if she breaks the agreement, he'll turn her over to the SS--he just won't protect her if she gets caught. Trudi fighting back is just another part of his experiment. She manages to turn the tables a few times and try things out on him instead--the first time out of rage for him (unintentionally, but also without any concern) hurting her--and he even goes along with that, because it's something different. (He takes no offense that she feels the need to go shower every time he's finished with her, either.) The rest of the time is spent with her answering his endless invasive questions about her, and taking care of his house when he's working. He has a single stipulation, that she keep out of his study. She has the run of the rest of the house, and can even come and go as she likes as long as she returns at night. Trudi's a practical sort. Aside from Arzt's "experiment," it's a decent life, considering the alternative.

Then one day while she's at home alone, she catches an intruder in the act of rifling through Arzt's study: A petite, prim, beautiful young woman in a black dress and tall black boots, with big blue eyes, long blond braids, and an SS honor sword almost as long as she is tall. The two of them gawk at each other for a brief moment, before Arzt enters the house and calls out for Trudi. Trudi hesitates just briefly before leaving, making some excuses why she was looking in Arzt's office and distracting him long enough for the other young woman to escape undetected. Trudi has just met Margarethe "Gret" Dannecker of the resistance movement Diamond Network, and is instantly smitten.

Gret, for her part, hastily returns to her Diamond Network allies, cursing and panicky that she's been caught. It takes Network leader Josef Diamant a bit to get the story out of her, she's so upset. (Gret doesn't tend to freak out easily, so he knows it must be serious.) Diamant and fellow member Lukas Mettbach are mystified about the presence of this strange young woman in Arzt's house, and especially why she would let Gret go. Something similar happened in the past, however: Not too long after the formation of the Diamond Network--when Gret was especially wanted for death by the SS due to her involvement in the murder of her stepfather, camp commandant Ernst Dannecker, and Josef Diamant's escape--she was spotted in public by Dannecker's chauffeur, Andreas Cranz--who was obviously stunned to see her, yet did nothing to report her to the authorities. While waiting for the other shoe to drop, Diamant did some digging, learning that Cranz--who works FOR the SS yet isn't a MEMBER of the SS--lives in a tiny city apartment with his mother, who's chronically ill. Cranz, who was originally a cab driver, took a better-paying job chauffering Dannecker and other members of the SS-Totenkopfverbände to and from the camp so he could pay for his mother's medicine and doctor visits. Diamant saw a clear opportunity to gain access to sensitive SS information, and paid Cranz a visit, offering to pay him to spy on the SS--while Cranz continued working for, and getting paid by, the SS. He would get paid twice as well for pretty much doing the same work. Like Trudi, Cranz is a practical sort, and despite his anxious mother's misgivings he didn't need to think it over long. The camp commandant's own personal chauffeur was successfully recruited by the Diamond Network and became a valued asset, given how much the SS members like to gossip while riding around. (A mildly edited account of how he explains this to Adelina Dobermann in a story of mine: "Here's the thing, though. People get in a car, they want to talk, kinda like we're doing now. That includes SS guys. They love to talk. They're no good at keeping secrets, though. They'll have a nice private chat, then they'll rat each other out to their superiors the first chance they get...them more than anybody. So, they have an SS driver, they have someone who listens to everything they say then rats them all out. Now, they have a driver like me, they talk, I listen, I keep my mouth shut, they pay me. Win for everybody." Of course, he doesn't tell Addy that HE then rats out the SS to the Diamond Network...)

After several days pass and nobody comes gunning for Gret any harder than they already have been, Diamant decides it's worth the risk trying to recruit the young woman staying in the SS doctor's house. He just needs to find out who she is and why she's there, if, like Cranz, she has any weaknesses he can exploit. Although Cranz technically works for the SS-Totenkopfverbände--a branch different from the Waffen-SS--members of the Waffen-SS often transfer out to the SS-Totenkopfverbände to guard the camp, so Diamant requests Cranz to try to wheedle out some information regarding Capt. Arzt. Cranz reports back that the young woman is named Gertraud Detzer, and she's been living with Arzt while he treats her for a "medical condition." Her only known relative is her mother. It isn't much to go on, but Diamant tries to make do; he figures there must be something more going on, because what sort of "medical condition" would interest an SS physician like this? He attempts paying Trudi's mother a visit, similar to what he did with Cranz, but she's even more skittish than Frau Cranz (I guess that's how she'd be called?--heh) is, and when Trudi herself arrives, she outright threatens Diamant to get lost, pulling a gun she took from Arzt's house to protect herself with. His initial recruitment effort is unsuccessful, but Diamant's positive now that he wants Trudi in the Network--her attitude, and lack of apparent fear when dealing with him, are good signs. He takes the next logical step, and sends Gret.

Gret is extremely skeptical, but waits until Arzt is gone before again breaking into his house and deliberately confronting Trudi. Trudi is again surprised to run into this strange woman in Arzt's house, but is much more willing to listen to her plead her case for Trudi to join her efforts. She can't really understand why the Diamond Network is interested in her, and to Gret's confusion, is reluctant to turn on Arzt. Gret is a victim of repeated sexual abuse herself--at the hands of her stepfather--and so easily guesses what sort of "arrangement" is going on between Arzt and Trudi. Why on earth would she want to stay with him? Trudi explains that he's the only protection she has from the rest of the SS regarding her medical status. So, what sort of special medical condition does she have, that she needs Arzt to protect her, Gret wants to know? Trudi replies simply that her real name is Gerwin. Takes a moment or two for Gret to catch on, at which Trudi briefly describes her situation, and why she relies on Arzt's protection. She's open to talking to Diamant now, however, knowing that Gret works with him. "You're very beautiful, you know," she tells Gret as she gets ready to leave, and smiles. "Dan...ke?" Gret replies, and, suddenly feeling very flustered and confused, departs.

(Gret tries, by the way, to explain exactly "what" Trudi is to the other core members of the Network, Diamant and Lukas and Arno Spiegel. Diamant's basic response: Uh...what? Arno's basic response: Well that's odd, but anyway. Lukas's basic response: So, she's a boy, with the parts of a boy and a girl, who thinks she's a girl, and likes girls?--does she have any supernatural powers?--because where he comes from, people like that have supernatural powers, obviously.)

Diamant manages to meet with Trudi, and pleads his case for her to join them. Once she understands what their mission is, she expresses interest in participating, but still refuses to leave with him. She gives the same explanation, Arzt protects her and her mother from an even worse fate. Diamant promises that the Network will protect her as well, but she's skeptical that they can ensure such a thing; if she goes with him, she'll have to stay in hiding like the rest of them, and won't be able to move about freely like she does now. Besides, she adds, as long as she stays with Arzt, she has a direct link to information on the SS: She's literally in the lion's den, and sometimes, Arzt likes to talk. She bets that if she's careful yet convincing enough, she can get him to talk more. Diamant says he can't ask her to risk her safety like that, to which she replies, "You don't have to. I already am."

So, Trudi officially becomes a spy for the Diamond Network. Diamant arranges methods, times, places, certain signals to meet with other members and update them with new information, and Trudi works on gaining more of Arzt's trust. Arzt isn't stupid--he's naturally suspicious of everyone, and never gets very close to anyone--but sex is a good motivator, and Trudi makes use of it. He never divulges any sort of top-secret info to her, but he does let slip occasional details which are mostly meaningless to him yet quite useful to the Network, for example, occasions and locations where the SS plans to gather.

Like I said, though...Arzt isn't stupid, and he trusts no one. Despite his lenient attitude, he still keeps an eye on Trudi, and occasionally has other officers keep track of what she's up to. One day she meets with a Network member yet tells Arzt she was visiting her mother; an officer had been watching her mother's house, and knew she wasn't there. For the first time, Arzt physically threatens Trudi, pressing a kitchen knife to her neck and asking what she was really up to. And Trudi decides to tell him the truth: The Diamond Network reached out to her to recruit her, she explains, and instructed her to gather info from him and report back at specified times. When Arzt's grip on the knife just tightens, she adds that this is what she WANTS the Diamond Network to think she's doing--the truth is, she's actually gathering info from THEM, to give to HIM. Skeptical, Arzt asks why she would do that?--to have something else useful to offer him when what she usually offers isn't good enough, she replies. So, why has she kept this secret from him?--she wanted to have something concrete to offer first, as she wasn't sure how he'd respond. So...why hasn't she offered any info, yet?--she's still trying to earn the Network's trust enough to offer him something REALLY good, she says. She has a reasonable answer for every question he asks, and he finally lowers the knife. He still doesn't really trust her, but agrees to let her continue with her outings, as long as she starts reporting to him whatever she finds out. As long as he gets his officers to back off--they'll spook the other Network members if they're seen--she promises to do so.

Diamant is beyond incensed when Trudi reports the situation back to him, so she has to explain what she's doing: She's living with Arzt, while working for the Diamond Network, spying on Arzt, while pretending to him that she's spying on the Network. I. e., she's effectively made herself into a double agent. Diamant can't believe it, but it's true, and it means that now Trudi can meet with Network members without the fear of Arzt's officers catching her in the act: All she has to do is keep providing seemingly useful information to both sides to remain indispensable. The Network is the side she's chosen, though. Diamant can't quite bring himself to trust someone so naturally deceitful--Trudi seems to have a knack for it--but Gret trusts her, and even the especially paranoid Lukas decides the risk is worth it (maybe because he's pretty deceitful, himself), and Arno's on board, so he agrees to start providing Trudi with leads to feed to Arzt. Arzt, meanwhile, does the exact same thing, and Trudi passes effortlessly from one side to the other, giving the SS just enough truthful--yet ultimately insignificant--info about the Diamond Network to keep them hanging on, while also giving the Diamond Network everything she knows about the SS.

Trudi's involved in an incident that only just popped into my head and developed as I was writing this up. She returns to the house from an outing one day to find a strange man there, and he's not a member of the Diamond Network--he's wearing a Nazi armband. He's surprised to learn of her staying there, and claims he's a friend whom Arzt asked to stop by and pick up something, but Trudi knows this is a lie, because Arzt allows NOBODY in his study without him. The man soon grows threatening and Trudi ends up having to fight him off; she injures him enough to slightly incapacitate him, then manages to get hold of him from behind and strangle him with a cord. This takes considerably longer than it does on TV, of course, and Trudi is thoroughly rattled by the time she's sure he's dead. Even though she killed him, it was kind of in an adrenaline-fueled haze, and now she's left with a body and no idea how to handle it so she does all she can think of, and calls Andreas Cranz. (Diamant gave her a telephone number with which to reach him at the place he gets dispatched from, though of course this involves going through an operator, and hoping he's actually there to receive the call, and having to wait for him to return if he's out. Ah! The good old days!) Fortunately, Cranz isn't out on a drive, and when Trudi tells him it's an emergency he comes out to the house. The two of them bundle the body into the SS limo and, reassuring Trudi that he "knows a guy," Cranz takes the dead guy away. Before they do this, however, they rifle through his clothes for identifying information and anything that may be of use. Trudi finds an image of an odd-looking swastika and asks Cranz if he knows what it is, since she saw a similar design among Arzt's belongings. Cranz has no idea, and brushes it off as more Nazi nonsense before departing. The man's disappearance makes minor ripples since it turns out Arzt actually DID know him, though yes, he certainly didn't invite the guy to visit his place while he was gone. Arzt shrugs this off too and life goes on. Trudi forgets about the strange symbol, which is a broken sun cross swastika, the emblem of the Thule Society. (BIG OL' SPOILER ALERT.)

Trudi is literally right in the middle of the Heidenreich affair when it erupts. Eva, the wife of Rupprecht Heidenreich, the chief of the Allgemeine-SS's intelligence division, grows fed up with his constant philandering and starts having affairs of her own. Most of Heidenreich's fellow SS officers are far too reluctant to get involved with his wife, but Capt. Arzt has no such qualms. In fact, realizing how dissatisfied she is, he makes a move on her, first. Eva accompanies Arzt to his home a few times for an afternoon diversion while Heidenreich is at work, and of course, Trudi is there. The first time Eva visits, she's startled and dismayed by this--even though Arzt, and even she, made it pretty clear this is nothing serious and is plainly an effort to get back at her husband, still, she feels a pang of jealousy and spite seeing this attractive, much younger woman there. Arzt introduces them and Trudi politely says Guten Tag. Eva and Arzt then head off to his bedroom and while Trudi sits in the parlor eating a snack and trying to read she instead finds herself distracted by all the noise. o_o; Afterward Arzt even asks Eva, "Are you jealous of Fräulein Trudi...?" When Eva, flustered, wants to know why he'd ask, he replies that she yelled quite a bit more than usual. So, yeah...she's kind of jealous, and wants Trudi to know.

Trudi informs the Diamond Network of this odd turn of events, though that's all it appears to be at first, an odd turn. Diamant files it away as potential extortion material and that's all they think of it for a while. Until somebody sends a bomb to Heidenreich's home office and blows him to smithereens, that is. The now-rudderless Allgemeine-SS nonetheless starts cracking down in its pursuit of Diamond Network members, so Trudi lies low and watches. Cranz, still uncompromised, fills her in that apparently the Network wasn't behind this. Trudi obviously has her suspicions, especially since Arzt and Eva have had a few extended conversations in his room. That's all they are, though, suspicions; she has nothing concrete to offer either Diamant or Lt. Gunter Hesse, the Allgemeine-SS officer who temporarily assumes Heidenreich's post to lead the investigation. (He questions everyone who knew Heidenreich, meaning a stop by Arzt's place and a few words with Trudi, whom he's puzzled to find living there.) Hesse, obviously, despises Diamant, so here's Trudi, answering questions on both sides of the incident. She does get the feeling that even Hesse has his doubts the Network is the culprit, since apparently the bomb in question didn't quite match the types of explosive devices Diamant manufactures, plus the MO--bombing a private residence--doesn't fit, either. She's not very surprised when Eva Heidenreich is implicated in her own husband's murder and executed by the SS; not surprising, either, is when Arzt's connection to the assassination is uncovered. Those discussions with Eva were plans for Heidenreich's death, just as Trudi suspected; Eva had asked if Arzt, being a doctor, could give her any information about poisons, at which he convinced her to use a bomb instead, and pin it on the Diamond Network. Arzt constructed the bomb partly utilizing a personalized pocket watch of his, which Hesse succeeded in tracing back to him. Arzt is an old acquaintance of Hesse's, being the doctor who treated his injuries when he was wounded serving in the Waffen-SS and then helped facilitate his transfer to the Allgemeine-SS, so Hesse is unhappy having to arrest him.

Arzt is away from the house at the time, so only afterwards does Trudi learn what happened when Hesse and another officer went to take him into custody. He fully admitted to his role in the murder, denied that anyone but Eva and himself was involved, and accompanied them to their car without protest, even giving them the number to his safe and asking that they not "molest" Trudi when they visited his house. Hesse found him providing this information before they'd even set out to be odd, but brushed it off, until Arzt started frothing and convulsing in the car. He died--likely suicide by cyanide capsule--before they could get him to the hospital. Trudi is stunned when Hesse stops at the house to relay this information, but grants him access to the study to search for evidence of anyone else being involved. Hesse opens the safe first, among other documents finding an envelope with Trudi's name on it; within he locates Arzt's will. He's left his house and all his legal possessions to her. Trudi is even more confused by this information: "But--why? We weren't lovers. We weren't even friends. Why would he leave it to me?" Hesse doesn't know, but says that after they finish searching the study they'll let her be.

Trudi says nothing, goes to her room. Arzt's house is nice to live in, but she knows it won't be safe anymore. She packs a small case with a few clothes and necessities, keeping her ears open to the conversation the SS officers are having as they search, and quietly makes a phone call. She slips out of the house unnoticed and hurries off while they're still searching the study. By the time they find her medical records and Arzt's notes on her--which fully explain exactly why he was so interested in her--she's long gone. Hesse is pissed--that's two people he lost in one day--but there's nothing he can do. Trudi, meanwhile, makes it to her pickup point, where Cranz collects her and shuttles her off to safety. Trudi effectively disappears into the Diamond Network.

There's at least one other scene Trudi is meant to appear in, though the details haven't been worked out yet. The basics are that the Network is fighting off a Nazi or SS member and he fatally shoots Arno Spiegel, though not before Arno manages to seriously injure him first. Although he spent some time in a camp, Arno is known more for his brain than his brawn: He's very intelligent, good with numbers (he used to be an accountant), planning, and strategy, yet is also quite meek and mousy, soft and chubby and unassuming--fighting, like the other core members of the Network are skilled at, definitely isn't his strong suit. He always worries he's dragging them down. Here, though he's already proven his own skills numerous times, he badly injures an enemy and finally proves himself to be a fighter as well. Trudi, witnessing this, finishes the guy off before hurrying to Arno and lifting his head and shoulders into her lap. When he asks if he managed to kill the guy, Trudi says he did and that this action likely saved others' lives, and adds, "You're very brave." Arno expresses contentment that he was at last able to be of use, and passes away. Trudi stays holding him in her lap until the others arrive, and she again gives him the credit.

Trudi is still very much a WIP, so there may be more about her in the future, including what happens to her at the war's end and beyond. She isn't expected to play a role in Ultima Thule, for example, though that could always change; I know that, as things currently stand, she does survive the end of the war. Obviously there's lots of potential for other things to happen.

[Gertraud Detzer 2022 [‎Friday, ‎August ‎5, ‎2022, ‏‎4:00:07 AM]]

#artists on tumblr #ibisPaint x #SketchDaily #original characters

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southeastasianists · 5 years

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Everybody loves a ghost story. Really, everybody. All cultures have some variety of ghost story, by that name or another. But some are more pervasive and deeply ingrained than others. It isn’t really possible to identify the most ghost-heavy culture on the planet—there’s no clear metric for how one would judge such a thing. But few ghost cultures are as powerful and varied as the ones found in Malaysia. The modern English and North American conceptions of ghosts—from the ones under bed sheets to Victorian-garbed, translucent shades to the poltergeist that makes things go bump in the night—feel downright embarrassing in their limits when compared to the great world of Malay hantu.

Hantu is the general term for all ghosts, spirits, and otherworldly beings in Malaysia and among the Malay people of maritime Southeast Asia and its diaspora. There are hundreds, probably thousands, of them, ranging from natural spirits (representations of individual rivers, trees, and lakes) to vampire-type ghosts to leprechaun-like tricksters. Some are good, some are bad, some are to be avoided, and some are like partners to the living. And they coexist with wide range of religions observed by the very diverse people of Malaysia.

With a strategic location straddling the South China Sea, the land of the Malays has been a fluid and multinational place for thousands of years. Malaysia, known by that name or not, has been a vital trading post for huge empires: China, India, the Arabs, the Netherlands, Portugal, England. The indigenous people of Malaysia, called the Orang Asal, practice what the state (and researchers) tend to classify as a type of animism, with various natural objects held as sacred.

And all of those empires left their religions—and their more spiritualist aspects—behind, too. Today Islam is the most-practiced faith in country, but there are substantial numbers of Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, and others. (There were Jews for a long time, too; today, not so much. And ethnic Malays enjoy advantages that starkly stratify society there.) Malay ghost culture is, therefore, a hybrid of spirits, spooks, and haunters from around the globe.

“It certainly has a very big place in the culture,” says Cheryl Nicholas, an ethnographer at Penn State Berks who was born and raised in Malaysia and who has made Malay ghost culture a central part of her research. “Whether or not that continues in the more modern era, I don't know. I still feel the presence whenever I go back.” These ghost stories that imbue the culture of Malaysia seek, as many supernatural or religious stories do, to explain the mysteries of life and help lead a person to a more successful, longer, or more profitable one. Ghosts or spirits vary throughout the country and the culture, but there are some particularly popular individual types or broader categories

One of the most popular types is a sort of vampire-ghost. The pontianak is one that emerges upon the death of a woman during pregnancy or childbirth. She has the shape, usually, of a demonic woman capable of flight, who targets the blood of young children. (Alternatively, the pontianak may prey on men; these stories vary by region and teller.)

There are, in fact, a wide variety of ghosts floating around the concepts of birth and young children. There’s the hantu tetek, a ghost with pendulous breasts who likes to kidnap children just to play with them for awhile. She is used to explain why sometimes a child is found, unharmed, in a weird place, like deep in a bush or up a tree.

My favorite is the toyol, which is usually described as looking like a naked baby, though sometimes as more of a gremlin-baby. The toyol is very different from Western ghosts in a specific way: You can buy one.

Typically one purchases a toyol from a bomoh, or medium. It wouldn’t quite be described as a purchase, since you’d be paying the bomoh for connecting you with a toyol and the spirit itself would be free. Toyol are childlike: mischievous, a little clumsy, a little needy, easily distracted. But they are known as excellent thieves. You can have your toyol go out and steal for you, though Nicholas says it’s sometimes believed that a toyol will only steal up to the dollar amount you paid for it.

“The people in the village use that to explain petty theft,” she says. It also explains why you might see some shiny toys or marbles in front of rural Malaysian houses: countermeasures to distract a thieving toyol and give it something to play with. Nicholas says the best place to find a toyol isn’t in Malaysia, but rather near Mecca, Saudia Arabia. Muslim pilgrims have to discard all the bad influences in their lives for the Hajj, and though toyols aren’t exactly evil, they’re not what one would consider a force for good. In any case, you’ll find toyols near Mecca in the same way you’ll find stained Ikea furniture on move-out day at a college dorm.

The idea of owning a ghost of your own splits particularly hard with the Western conception of spirits as either barely aware of the modern world, or preoccupied with scaring people, or in search of eternal rest. Some Malay ghosts are more like partners to living humans, working side by side as protection—or to do one’s dirty work. Take the hantu polong, a sort of attack ghost used to inflict harm. It must be fed with blood from one’s fingers.

Nicholas’s work cataloging the wonders of Malay ghost culture has turned up dozens of species. There are some that cause specific health issues: The hantu buta causes blindness, hantu cika causes colic, hantu kembung is behind stomach aches. Some are more innocuous: Hantu apu is a party ghost, and so is hantu jamuan, though if it is not invited, it will wreck the festivities. Note to self: Remember to invite the hantu jamuan.

Another interesting aspect of many of these ghosts is the interaction, acknowledgement, or maintenance they require. Hantu lembong is a spirit of swollen growths on trees. Nicholas related a story she had been told about a man who had to formally apologize to this ghost after peeing on one of its trees while on a hike in the forest. If you disturb the soil, you might want to make an offering to hantu jembalang, a spirit of the earth. There are gigantic ghosts who get bigger the closer you get to them, ghosts with the head of a dog, ghosts that break traps to set animals free, ghosts of the moon and the sun and the sea. There are powerful elemental ghosts who should under no circumstances be messed with, and ghosts who throw stones at people for kicks.

“Ghosts are always a plausible explanation for Malaysians,” says Nicholas. A prominent urban bomoh even made international news following the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. He eventually claimed the plane was being hidden somewhere in Southeast Asia by the orang bunian, sort of like invisible supernatural elves.

The robust ghost culture only occasionally runs afoul of modern globalist culture of the industrialized nation. “There is a very distinctive negotiation between the public and the private” regarding ghosts in Malaysia, says Nicholas. When she traveled around the country seeking ghost stories, many people would repeatedly explain, and demand that she understand, that they are good Muslims before acknowledging and revealing all their great ghost stories. But ghosts are simply too entrenched in Malay culture to go away. There are tremendously popular ghost movies released all the time. A Malaysian rapper recently offered a reward for the name of the bomoh responsible for a curse put on him. Bomohs are sometimes used to find missing people.

In Malaysia, it seems, you’re never too far from a ghost. It’s not inherently good or bad, it’s just in the air.

#Southeast Asia #Malaysia #Culture #Traditions

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wonderfulworldofmichaelford · 4 years

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Psycho Analysis: Christmas Special Villains

(WARNING! This analysis contains SPOILERS!)

Much like I did for Halloween, I wanted to do a bunch of one-shot or at the very least minor Christmas villains, which presented me with an interesting problem – most Christmas specials don’t really have villains. Usually the main obstacle to overcome in any holiday special is some sort of emotional fault of the main character, a lack of belief in the spirit of the holiday, or something to that effect, and when there is an actual villain, it tends to just be ones from the show at large with a Christmas-related scheme. Like I’m not doing Princess Morbucks or the Kanker sisters for this.

Luckily, There were a few I was sure on, and I managed to scrounge up a few more to deliver five lovingly-wrapped holiday villains. We have:

Mrs. Claus from The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy

Ghost Writer from Danny Phantom

Robot Santa from Futurama

Edna Jucation and the Faculty Four from Codename: Kids Next Door

The Woodland Critters from South Park

Here’s the most interesting thing: Despite Christmas stories tending to lean more towards internal conflict and self-reflection, when they do have actual, tangible threats like these, they tend to be honestly and genuinely great. This is in stark contrast to A lot of the villains from the Halloween specials, who tended to just be big scary baddies without much oomph to them.

Actor: Mrs. Claus is portrayed by Carol Kane, an incredibly prolific actress who you may know best as Valerie, the wife of Miracle Max from The Princess Bride. And much like in that film, she manages to be as enjoyable and funny as the guy playing her husband, which is a tall order indeed – in that film it was Billy Crystal, and in the special it’s Gilbert Gottfried.

Ghost Writer is portrayed by Will Arnett of all people. This was post-Gob Bluth but pre-Batman and BoJack, so while not unknown by any stretch it’s definitely weird to go back and see him in a Butch Hartman action cartoon of all places. He does a great job, as to be expected; when has he ever done poorly?

In his first appearance, Robot Santa was voiced by none other than John Goodman. Normally I’d say Goodman would be perfect for the role of Santa, but… this one’s a maniacal robotic serial killer. It’s a wonderfully jarring juxtaposition. After that, John DiMaggio gave Robot Santa a voice for his other appearances, and he does a good job for sure. Obviously he’s no John Goodman, but really, who is?

Edna Jucation is voiced by Candi Milo, and the Faculty Four are played by Dee Bradley Baker and Darran Norris; Baker is the Unintelligible Tutor and Thesaurus Rex, while Norris is Mr. Physically Fitastic and the Human Text. These are all top-tier veteran voice actors, and they do a fine job, but I can’t particularly say they really make any of these characters stand out or be memorable, which is a shame.

As to be expected, the Woodland Critters are voiced by Trey Parker and Matt Stone. Big shock there. Even less shocking is that they are perfectly funny as these depraved animals.

Motivation/Goals: Out of all of these, I think it’s really fitting that Mrs. Claus is the one with the best motivation. As the HEAD head vampire in the North Pole, she has turned Santa into a vampire and put a halt on Christmas because she is overworked and exhausted, having to do all the household chores all year while Santa only works one night. It is absolutely, perfectly understandable that she snapped… but apparently this isn’t even the first time, as Santa mentions at the end this has happened on multiple prior occasions. You think he’d treat her better after the second or third time, but then we wouldn’t have a plot.

I’d say that Ghost Writer and the Woodland Critters are tied for the next spot; both of them have solid reasons for doing what they’re doing. Ghost Writer was just a humble author trying to finish a Christmas story in time for Christmas, but unfortunately this caught the eye of the extremely Scroogey Danny Phantom, who absolutely hates Christmas due to traumatic events caused by his family fighting on Christmas in the past. Danny, in a moment of incredible callousness, blasts the poor ghost’s manuscript to bits and then proceeds to rub it in, which drives GW to breaking the annual truce and using his powers to torment Danny by trapping him in a Christmas story where he and everyone else can only speak in rhyme. It’s honestly hard to feel sympathy for Danny here, but GW does take it a bit too far.

The Woodland Critters, on the other hand, are just utterly depraved… but that’s to be expected seeing as they are the creations of Eric Cartman, inhabiting a Christmas story whose sole reason for existing is to make Kyle look like a tool. In the story, they get Kyle knocked up with the Antichrist. You see, there master is Satan, and they want nothing more than for his spawn to be born into the world. They really just exist as a reason for Cartman to rip on Kyle for being a Jew at Christmastime, as Kyle himself points out in their debut episode.

Edna and the Faculty Four are a bit simple and amusing, as is befitting of a gimmicky villain from The world of the KND. They team up with the Delightful Children because Substitute Teacher’s Day is virtually unknown compared to Christmas, the kind of absurd, wacky reason for villainy you’d expect from a world where some of the most feared supervillains include an evil dentist and a vampire who spanks people. Robot Santa is likewise extremely simple, yet effective: every Christmas he flies down to Earth to punish the naughty – which is everyone except Zoidberg. This is due to a programming oversight that left his standards set way too high, so no one can ever measure up. Except Zoidberg. There’s really not much more to him than that, but really, does their need to be?

Final Fate: Mrs. Claus is redeemed at the end of the special thanks to Billy, who helps her understand the true meaning of Christmas and who heals her husband so that he can apologize. Things seem like they might work out for real this time because now Malcolm McDowell’s vampire is around to help with tidying up, so hooray! Happy ending here!

Ghost Writer gets thwarted because Danny picks up an orange; as Ghost Writer never watched Drake & Josh and thus didn’t realize that “door hinge” is an acceptable rhyme, he was unable to continue writing his story and got beat up by Danny and his rogues gallery and then thrown into Walker’s prison for breaking the yearly truce in the Ghost Zone. At least he got to complete his book?

The Woodland Critters go out when Santa comes in and blasts them away with a shotgun… but since they are technically fictional characters, they show up in Imaginationland to cause problems. Still, it’s reassuring to know they can be taken out with simple firearms.

Edna Jucation, the Faculty Four, and Robot Santa really don’t have any canonical final fate; they just get defeated and then go on their merry way. In Robot Santa’s case, he actually showed up quite a few more times after his initial appearance to wreak havoc, but the Faculty Four and Edna were entirely oneshot antagonists.

Final Thoughts & Score: Christmas honestly fares a lot better than Halloween does as far as I can see. The villains tend to be a lot more thematic, or at the very least they have more personality and thematic function. Halloween doesn’t really have any sort of core themes to work off of as opposed to Christmas, which has a lot of reoccurring themes in works based around it. Still, most of these characters just settle on being funny.

Mrs. Claus and the Woodland Critters are the best of the bunch here, and both earn themselves a spot on the Nice List with a 9/10 each. Mrs. Claus is just a lot of fun, mostly because of the fact she has legitimate grievances on top of being a unique twist on the character. Mrs. Claus as a vampire overlord who commands hordes of vampire elves? That’s the sort of creative wackiness that Billy & Mandy delivered on. The Woodland Critters are just funny, plain and simple, acting as the sort of amusing subversion that could be expected of from South Park in its glory days as well as being totally in line with Cartman’s personality. These are the exact sort of original characters I’d expect from a guy who ground up a kid’s parents and made them into chili, what with their blood orgies and ultraviolence. Amusingly enough, they score a point higher than Cartman did in his own Psycho Analysis, which is mostly due to their limited appearances meaning that they stay remarkably consistent, where Cartman tends to be whatever an episode needs to be, be that hero, anti-hero, or villain.

Next up are Ghost Writer and Robot Santa, who both get 7/10. Ghost Writer is a very amusing oneshot, but it’s honestly weird that out of all the Villains from Danny Phantom, he’s the first one I talked about. You’d think it would be Ember or Vlad or something… at any rate, he’s an amusing antagonist, but he’s also one who it’s hard not to view as being in the right, especially since Danny was just a jerk to him completely unprovoked due to his own personal hangups with the holidays. As usual with fun ideas on the show though he was only ever used once, which is a real shame but at the same time understandable; his gimmick really only works with Christmas, so it would have been weird shoehorning him into another episode’s plot. For what he is, he’s fun.

Robot Santa has a similar problem, not really being able to function outside of Christmas specials, but his few appearances leave him as an amusing antagonist who never really overstays his welcome. He’s not as entertaining or engaging as, say, Mom, but he definitely offers some laughs with his hilarious concept and his ridiculous levels of bloodlust. Points t him for helping out the heroes in the first Futurama movie too.

That just leaves us with Edna and the Faculty Four, and the Faculty Four just manage to scrape onto the bottom of the Nice List with a collective 5/10. They don’t really have much character or personality, especially when compared to the heroic Marvel pastiche that is Elfa Strike, but as brief amusing gag villains meant to pay loving tribute to the Fantastic Four, I think they’re decent. Edna is not so lucky; she’s a bit obnoxious, shrill, and doesn’t really correlate to any sort of Marvel character, which is baffling since the entire episode is one big love letter to Marvel comics. Sad to say, but she’s landing smack dab on the Naughty List with a 2/10. She doesn’t even have a cool gimmick!

I suppose that wraps it up for Christmas special villains. Doing something like this is tough, because it really makes you sit back and wonder what sort of Christmas villains you should put on. Obviously I avoided any theatrical film villains, but that did leave one particularly glaring omission of a villain from a holiday special… a big, green, unpleasant omission. He’s a mean one, for sure...

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qm-vox · 5 years

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The Far Realms vs. Obyriths: Cosmic Horror in D&D

Shout-out, once again, to Afroakuma, from whom I learned most of the material I’m about to explain and with whom I’ve had many fascinating discussions about this topic.

It’s ya boi Vox, back at it to complain about RPG shit in an educational fashion again. Remember when I did a whole article about (evil) gods in D&D, arguing that they have more potential than to be used like supervillains? We’re gonna do that again, but this time with incorporating cosmic horror elements into your D&D campaign. Some of this advice may also be useful for games similar to D&D but for the sake of my own sanity I’m gonna confine myself to the one system or I’m gonna be here until my kids are in college.

This article will be broken down into three parts: an overview of cosmic horror’s origin and original thesis (in which we travel my favorite magical land, Full And Complete Context), a breakdown of the Far Realms in D&D (including older takes from late 2e & 3.5, how those changed in 4e, and their ambiguous state in 5e) & how you might use them for a cosmic horror campaign, and a breakdown of Obyriths in D&D and how you might use them in your campaign.

No discussion of cosmic horror is complete without some Content Warnings. Right up front: cosmic horror has its roots in extremely racist fiction, and I’m going to be talking about that straight-up. Also included in this article will be body horror, descriptions of mind control and mental corruption, supernaturally-induced madness, violence, and medical horror, among other things. This is a genre that hit the ‘fuck shit up’ button with its face on fuckin’ Zero Day and does that but again every time we successfully write something in it. Additionally, spoilers for some of Lovecraft’s work will be in here, with absolutely no tags and no warnings before they happen. You have been warned; do as thou wilt.

HP Does A Racism - Origins Of Cosmic Horror

Yeah, I’m about to be like that about it.

In the beginning there was Howard Phillips Lovecraft, an absolute garbage fire of a human being whose personal issues are such a knotted mess that I’m half-sure that the concept of the Ouroboros is just the echo of his bullshit reaching backwards through time. Like many authors of his time, Howie Love here was born into significant wealth, and while his education would be cut short (he had some manner of health problem in high school that ended his attempts at schooling) it was pretty high-quality, as it tends to be when you’re rich and white in the late 1800s. When he began writing his most famous body of work, Lovecraft had three attributes which would shape it: EXTREME racism, an incredible love for the works of Edgar Allen Poe, and every fucking phobia ever turned loose on God’s green Earth.

If you want to know more about that first point, try looking up what he named his cat; Lovecraft was so racist that even other racists thought he was too racist. Mother fucker was so racist that he wrote about the dangers of contaminating one’s bloodline with French-Canadians. His racism made it into all of his works in some way, shape, or form; many had themes of miscegenation, plenty included people of color only as deranged cultists of terrible powers, and as we’ll get into later in this segment the very racism that caused him to do these things also made him write the...let’s say ‘villains’ for lack of a better term, of his ongoing body of work as thinly-veiled stand-ins for white people.

No, really.

Lovecraft’s early work included a few short stories in the American Gothic style, the most famous of which is The Rats in the Walls. It’s a fairly classic story as far as those go, but Howie Love would soon abandon American Gothic for the genre he founded and defined: cosmic horror. Keep the racism and phobias in mind going forward, they’re about to become real important.

Howie Love Clowns On Himself - Themes And Thesis Of Cosmic Horror

While Dagon is generally accepted as the ‘first’ cosmic horror story, I prefer The Colour Out Of Space as the definitive example of the original thesis of cosmic horror at its most clean and clear (it’s also the work of Lovecraft’s that has aged the best; I highly suggest it if you haven’t read it yet!). In it, an alien presence - arguably but not necessarily an entity - crash-lands outside the fictional town of Arkham. Our narrator, a surveyor, coldly investigates the horrors that occur after and learns the sorry tale of a family destroyed by this alien presence as it blights their land, corrupts their bodies, and drives them to madness. The presence leaves, but not wholly; a fragment of itself remains behind, alongside the chilling possibility of a repeat performance.

The Colour Out Of Space, and indeed most of Howie Love’s work, was written at a time in the United States and the United Kingdom where human exceptionalism was the norm. Humans were not merely important, but special, chosen, exalted in nature and placed in a universe whose sole purpose was to be the stage for our domination. The Colour Out Of Space proposed a different idea: that we ain’t shit. Not only is humanity not exalted, but humanity is insignificant, existing at the mercy of fate, able to be casually annihilated at any time by forces we do not understand. It was a shocking proposal when it was published, and though the zeitgeist that gave it power has faded (most people realize we ain’t shit these days, can’t imagine how that fucking happened) it still resonates with many people.

The later works that defined the Cthulu Mythos would build on this theme, introducing powerful beings which claim dominion of Earth or of all reality. You’ve probably heard of most of them - Cthulu is the big one, of course, but there’s also Yog-Sothoth (The Dunwich Horror), Azazoth, Catboi Slim (Nyarthalotep), and many more, not all of which were written by Lovecraft himself. These beings are gods, or else so far above humanity that the difference is academic, and this brings us to the second defining theme of cosmic horror that Lovecraft would lay out, that of forbidden knowledge.

Protagonists in Howie Love’s stories have a tendency to lose their minds. Later authors would chalk this up to the idea that witnessing these gods or their works is so inherently horrifying that the mind simply snaps in their presence, or even that these gods are bound up in the concept of madness (this second one is a rather incompetent reading, not that I’m thinking of any PAIZO in particular that just ran with it in their RPG setting), but Howard’s own work doesn’t always bear that out. The protagonist of Call of Cthulu is not driven mad by that being - he is driven towards the brink by the realization that the Cult is still out there (and coming for his life), and that Cthulu will only rise again. Our viewpoint character in At The Mountains Of Madness realizes he has committed unspeakable atrocities on living beings much like himself by mistake, and that if further explorers come to disturb their slumber they will only repeat the same errors and lead to mankind’s annihilation. It’s not just that these ancient powers are terrifying or even that they are alien, but that to comprehend them is to understand that humans are so far beneath them that their attitude towards us cannot be thought of as ‘benevolent or ‘malevolent’, because we are beneath their notice, lesser in comparison than even a bacterium. In such a context, all humans do is consume resources better used by our superiors, and thus our existence is a profanity upon the divine. The only moral action, the stories argue, is self-annihilation; only ignorance permits us to justify our own existence to ourselves.

Sound familiar? Almost like this is the exact argument chucklefuck racists make about the existence of people of color, Jews, and anyone else they happen to not like? Yeah. This is the part where Lovecraft accidentally made himself the villain of his own work. Congratulations Howie, you played yourself. And since his audience was largely fellow white men also hard up on that whole racism thing, this idea of human profanity tapped a deep well of anxiety. I’m not about to argue that racism is over (it isn’t) and that’s why this vision of cosmic horror is less popular; indeed, it’s retained a pretty solid cult (heh) following, in part because the idea of such beings is inherently kinda terrifying. But I’d be remiss not to bring up the fact that this terror has its roots in racism, so...there you have it.

Other authors also built on the Cthulu Mythos, with Lovecraft’s enthusiastic blessing. These days their works tend to be mistakenly attributed to Howie Love himself, but that’s not actually his fault; they were published on their own, under their own authors’ names, and as far as we can tell Howard never tried to take the credit. These other authors had a tendency to substitute the indifferent divinity and corrupted humans of Lovecraft’s work with direct malice; their vision of these god-like beings was one in which they noticed humanity and did harm to it, creating a movement away from Howie Love’s original thesis (”human insignificance will lead to the unimportant and unmarked event of our destruction” & “seeking knowledge can only lead to self-annihilation”) during his life which only picked up momentum after his death. Indeed, most modern attempts at Lovecraftian horror mimic this overt malevolence, often without even lip service to the original thesis. It’s not necessarily an unworkable angle of horror, and it definitely has bones in with its origins; “God is real and He hates you personally” is a terrifying idea! But this movement away from the cold indifference of stories like The Colour Out Of Space definitely contributed to the current climate of...sloppy adaptations, let’s say.

Not that I’m thinking of any Paizo in particular.

So Should I Use Mythos Content Directly In My D&D Game Or What?

No, because I will cry and tell everyone that you punched my children and kidnapped my girlfriends.

More helpfully, probably not. The presence of other divinities, but especially evil divinities like Erythnul (Greyhawk) or Malar (Forgotten Realms) makes the thematics of cosmic horror pretty fucking weird. If you really wanted to, your best bet is to not use the published system of divinity at all (see the previously-linked article, up at the top of this one) and instead make Lovecraft’s gods the setting’s only gods. That means asking yourself some hard questions about clerics in your game world and possibly divine magic in general - that’s a separate article though - and even then you’re in for a rough row to hoe. D&D’s characters tend to be competent, dynamic, empowered - a far cry from the educated but otherwise fairly helpless protagonists on which cosmic horror tends to trade. Themes of futility in the face of incomprehensible beings don’t really make for good D&D most of the time, not when so much of the system (any edition, it doesn’t matter) is set up to create and reward cunning and heroic struggle. Classic cosmic horror, in the original proposed form, is not a good fit.

Thankfully, we have two solutions to give you what you crave in-house. Let’s start with the one that is somehow both the closer fit and the further fit.

You Have Fucked Up - The Far Realm Overview

Originally introduced in late AD&D 2e, the Far Realm as an idea hit its stride during 3.0/3.5 before getting a major rework as part of 4e’s cosmology, where it became the source of most/all aberrations. We’re gonna go ahead and pretend 4e didn’t happen, not because 4e is bad (and for the love of fuck please don’t start an edition war on my cosmic horror post) but because 4e’s cosmology just doesn’t really fit in with any of the rest. 1e <-> 3.5 is more or less coherent and you can beat 5e into line with a wrench and some harsh language, but 4e...well, anyway.

The Far Realms is outside reality. No, not in another dimension, we know what those are - those are the Planes. It’s outside reality; it is Somewhere Else. “It” is probably even the wrong term, since by definition any place (”place”) that isn’t the multiverse as D&D knows it is the Far Realm. To paraphrase Afroakuma, if the Great Wheel is a Lego brick, the Far Realm is a giant squid; if the Great Wheel is a bowl of Fruit Loops, the Far Realm is the theory that intelligences from Pluto rig the results of major sporting events. The contexts are not compatible. These two things do not go together in any way. Combining the two can only end in sorrow and woe.

So mortals try to combine the two all the time, because we’re dipshits like that.

Every now and again, some truly, monumentally stupid person - usually but not always someone inside reality - breaches the skin that contains reality inside itself, and lets in the essence of Outside. This is a phenomenally bad idea; the immediate result is corruption in both directions as the essence of each form of reality bleeds into the other. Both attempt to ‘scab’ the breach, translating the foreign substances and beings into something more like the reality they have moved to. If a breach happens, there is one of three outcomes. If you are very, very lucky, no being on the other side notices the breach, and you’ve ‘merely’ blighted and corrupted a vast stretch of land, tainting it with something sort of like, but not enough like, Chaos and Evil for millennia to come - maybe even forever. If you’re not lucky, a being on the other side notices the breach and acts to seal it, the ripple of which causes you to not have a nation or continent any more as said corruption absolutely consumes the lands in which you live. And if you are phenomenally unlucky, the being on the other side is just as stupid as you are, and it comes through. The last time that happened the original Gnomish pantheon got murdered. Their homeworld doesn’t exist any more.

There is no ‘good’ outcome. This is the repeated and absolute theme of the Far Realms; whatever your reasons for getting involved with them, whatever you wanted, whatever you were seeking, you don’t get it. Mortals fuck with the Far Realms because our inability to comprehend them leads us to think of them like things we can experience. The scabbed-over beings we meet that are from there (Psuedonatural creatures; see the Alienist prestige class in Tome & Blood and Complete Arcane, as well as the bigger version in the Epic Level Handbook) are Chaotic Evil because that is how reality translates them. They aren’t Chaos, they’re another reality, and their unwilling and unwitting corruption of all around them gets redefined as Chaotic Evil in order to reduce their damage to all of existence to a manageable fucking level. Were you seeking the Far Realms in order to harness power for great change? Get fucked, you can’t control what happens. Were you seeking magical power? Get fucked; the reason people go mad when exposed to the Far Realms isn’t just that the knowledge they gain makes no sense, it’s that the complete lack of context means all of the stuff you killed and stole and lied and cheated for is more or less completely goddamn useless. Trying to escape existence for some reason? One, death is faster, but two, hope you enjoy suffering the entire time you die - and that’s if the breach stays open long enough for you to be able to enjoy death as a concept before you get sealed away in a place where mortality doesn’t meaningfully exist.

You don’t get what you want. This was a bad idea. You fucked up.

5e, the most recent edition of D&D, mainly continues this trend. It has suggestions of the lazier interpretation of Lovecraft’s work tied to the Far Realms, which I heartily suggest you ignore, but some of the other ideas are phenomenal. The Great Old Ones Pact for Warlock has one in particular that I like quite a bit, which suggests that the Warlock-to-be created an unintended connection to a Far Realms intelligence and gained power against both of their wills and possibly without the intelligence in question even noticing. You don’t need to change a lot in 5e’s run to bring out the extant themes of the Far Realms - though admittedly this is greatly assisted by the fact that 5e barely has any Far Realms content to begin with, so there’s not a lot to edit. That also means there’s not a lot to use, so if you want to use Far Realms stuff in 5e you’re gonna have to get ready to spend a lot of time making your own. Which brings us to...

Who The Fuck Funded This Research?!? - Using The Far Realms In Your Game

Considering that all-important theme - “this was a bad idea” - the Far Realms are likely to be antagonistic in nature in your game, even if ‘antagonistic’ isn’t the right term. Published adventures have used Far Realms content as a sort of backdrop (Firestorm Peak comes to mind here) before, and you can easily make Far Realms creatures a more direct problem for your PCs by centering the campaign around a cult or research team attempting to cause a new breach. This could be a great time to engage with player-side themes such as the ethics of magic use, the cost of power, and the burden of responsibility for said power, assuming your group is down for it. Even if they’re not, horrifying monstrosities that by definition have no place in this universe are great to kick in the head(s).

What motivates people to cause a breach? Mainly stupidity, but the special kind of stupidity you only get when someone is highly educated and deeply intelligent. For awhile, in the real world, there was a burst of designers making D20 heartbreakers - successors to D&D 3.5 meant to fix its many catastrophic flaws. Each person thought they had it, the secret to make the system they both loved and hated finally function, and they were all wrong. Causing a breach into the Far Realms is like that. Every sign points to it being a bad idea. Reading the research and spells of the last people who tried it reveals that it’s a bad idea. All of the diaries and primary sources of those who did it and those who stopped them say it’s a bad idea, but that’s okay because I, Wizardhat von Dipshit, am not like those fools. I will be more careful, and the power to reshape the Planes will be mine!

The easiest way to make Far Realms creatures for use in your campaign is to start with an existing monster and fuck it up; rearrange its abilities (adding or emphasizing mental attacks and psychic damage, if you can), alter its physical form, and generally just make that shit wrong and fill its blood with spiders. If you want to get more alien from there or make something original, the best guideline I can offer for you is that aboleths were the result of Far Realms taint in the beginning of this reality (it’s telling that the closest thing reality could translate their progenitor into was a Greater Deity).

No one wants power for its own sake, of course, but what your antagonist actually wants is more or less irrelevant because the important bit is that they had every chance to know better and they’re about to make this bad decision on purpose anyway. This is how the Far Realms brings out cosmic horror themes in a heroic context; power that is beyond both mortal comprehension and control, which has no place in this reality and recoils from us as violently as we recoil from it. Like Lovecraft, whose stories revealed a deep cynicism about knowledge and science, your antagonists will be erudite individuals whose ruinous plans are only possible because of what they have learned and, in turn, chosen to ignore. If nothing is done, unstoppable catastrophe will be unleashed, and with it will come madness and desolation. If only some heroes were on hand, eh?

The disconnect the Far Realms has from classic cosmic horror is also the source of why they fit; they don’t belong here. In Lovecraft’s work, it’s humanity that doesn’t belong - we are a blight upon the rightful property of higher beings. The Far Realms are instead an intrusion, something from Elsewhere which doesn’t want to be here as much as we don’t want it here. That helps those classic cosmic horror themes work much better in this context, but maybe you’re looking for something else, something from here. Do the Planes have cosmic horror from within the shell of Reality?

Yes. Oh yes, they do.

Ancient Evil Survives - Obyrith Overview

In the beginning, there was war.

The primordial War of Law and Chaos is the greatest conflict to have ever rocked the Planes. It was so destructive, so all-encompassing, that it consumed entire Material Plane worlds, reshaped the nature of the Planes themselves, and is still happening, even now. It began in the early days of the Great Wheel and was prosecuted by Chaos, led by the self-styled Queen of Chaos, over a single question: should reality be real? Should effects follow causes, should gravity exist, should fire burn and light reveal, should things age and die, should...

The forces of Law said yes to these questions and fought to establish and maintain an order and logic to reality. Chaos fought for an unbound reality, one in which each individual would be completely free to express their own true essence as tangible changes in the existence around them. The War was never truly won or lost, but the imprisonment of Miska the Wolf-Spider broke the backs of the Chaotic coalition and brought the War to a stalemate of sorts, in a reality which, if not dominated by Law, is definitely Law-leaning. Mortals are familiar with the terrible demons used as footsoldiers by the Abyss, the Tanar’ri, who reign yet in that terrible place. But it was not the Tanar’ri in command of Chaos, and not the Tanar’ri who prosecuted that terrible War. Indeed, the beings we now recognize as demons rose up against their creators, the Obyriths, after the imprisonment of Miska. They overthrew the Obyriths in a great slaughter and replaced them as the dominant exemplars of Chaotic Evil.

The Obyriths are not dead. They plan, and they wait, and they wage war and slaughter upon their wayward slaves in the Abyss. Every last one of them burns to reignite the War and achieve their vision of unbound reality, free of the wretched Law and all too weak to survive without it.

Prisoners Of The Flesh - Obyrith Nature

So what are Obyriths? The easiest answer is that they’re demons - the first demons, in fact, which preceded the more famous Tanar’ri (when you think of demons in D&D chances are you’re thinking of a Tanar’ri), and while this answer is entirely correct it is not the whole story. Tanar’ri are famously Chaotic Evil; they revel in corruption and destruction and are driven to maliciously annihilate or taint all they come across. A demon army marching across the land will stop to personally kick every puppy between point A and point B and they will absolutely mutiny against you if you try to stop them from doing so. What is good and pure must be soiled; what exists must be made to not exist, its foundations shattered, its virtues turned against themselves, its values abandoned. Tanar’ri respect only raw might, and only as long as they think they can’t defeat it.

But Obyriths, their progenitors, are Evil Chaos.

Let’s have some examples. This little guy is a draudnu, a kind of Obyrith made from the bones of chaotic celestials which post-dates the ‘end’ of the War by a pretty significant amount of time. They’re on the weaker side for Obyriths.

(You’ll find this boi in Monster Manual V for 3.5 incidentally.)

Take a nice long look. Really take it in - because that’s not the draudnu. That’s the prison of flesh, the scab, that reality has forced on the draudnu, that the terrible Law has locked it within. The actual draudnu looks like it’s inside me God it’s inside me I can feel it growing and twisting it HURTS get it out, it’s seeping into my blood it’s inside me it’s INSIDE ME -

Let’s have another example. This is a sibriex, recently re-published in Mordenkeinan’s Tome of Foes for 5e with no mention of Obyriths, which is a damn shame. They were instrumental in defining the forms of the common breeds of Tanar’ri.

Fun, right? But again, that’s not a sibriex; the actual form of a sibriex is perfection. Absolute beauty and grace. I am nothing compared to this perfection. I am no one in the face of this perfection. My existence can only profane this perfection. I must serve the Perfect One. I must let it remake me and reshape me, I must appease it, I must make amends for the crime that is my trespass upon the reality made for the Perfect One.

Those two are ‘common’ Obyriths, examples of that race of demons which have peers who are much like themselves, but the Obyriths still have extant Demon Princes. The Queen of Chaos is still alive and nursing her ancient hate. Pale Night’s true form is so profane that reality cannot stand its existence; when she reveals it to you, the multiverse destroys your soul so that knowledge of her truth does not exist. Obox-Ob, murdered by the Queen of Chaos, yet exists as an Aspect of himself - and the Planes live in fear of the rise of the Prince of Vermin, whose truth is agony, rot, and corruption, such that even if you magically remove memory of it from your mind you continue to die from the soul outward.

And Dagon plots within the depths of his palace, sponsoring and advising Demogorgon - the Prince of Demons - and contemplating unimaginable lore of evil. The Demon Prince of Depths looks like this.

This is the form carved on blasphemous altars in the depths of the oceans, where sunlight has never reached. This is the form worshiped by mortals who delight in corruption, destruction, and fear, who dream of a sea where vision is a distant memory and predators hunt by the scent of blood. It is the form sought by those who lust for ancient lore, kept in places far from mortal sight and utilized by an evil older than many gods and mortal races, a form whose mere touch can taint a body of water, mutating & mutilating all within and unleashing their fury, their terror, their slaughter, for ages to come. And it is not Dagon. Dagon’s true form, imprisoned within that flesh, is I’m drowning in the cold dark, I can feel my bones breaking, my eyes are bursting, I’m blind and I’m drowning and I can’t die, my lungs are gone, the water is seeping into my blood I’m drowning and I just want to die make it stop I’m DROWNING.

It’s telling that witnessing Dagon’s true form, his Form of Madness, can give even creatures that breathe water, or which do not breathe at all, crippling hydrophobia.

The true forms of Obyriths are not flesh or matter; they are not, by nature, Material beings the way other Outsiders and mortal things are. Their true forms are that you, personally, are going mad. You, personally, are being assaulted, violated, and infected; you, personally, are being victimized, corrupted, consumed, and betrayed. Imagine if the act of pouring flesh-eating beetles into someone’s eyes had a personality, will, and desires - not the person doing it, the act itself - and that’s an Obyrith. They are evil because what they are is evil, much in the way Erythnul is evil. Unlike their creations, the Tanar’ri, Obyriths aren’t in it to kick every puppy that has ever existed. They want to throw off the yoke of the Law and release their unbound forms. They want an existence of darkness and isolation in which all beings are free to express their true essence to the limit of their might and their will.

They just wanna be themselves.

No matter who has to die.

The Foes Of All Reason - Using Obyriths In Your Campaign

Do you enjoy life’s little conveniences, such as cause-and-effect, linear time, predictable & observable physical laws, not having your body boil away beneath the agonizing will of some random asshole, and the capacity to recognize patterns in nature? Then Obyriths are your enemies. As demons, Obyriths can be summoned and are thus easy to use in the sort of ‘guest star’ role that Tanar’ri are often used in, even if it takes a moon-sized pair of brass balls to decide you can contain one. However, this use - while valid - is not a good way to bring out their cosmic horror themes, and since you decided to read an article about cosmic horror in D&D this far down I’m going to go ahead and assume you’d like to do that.

As one of the Planes’ most ancient and active evils - arguably the most ancient one that hasn’t died or otherwise fucked off - Obyriths are absolutely prime for campaigns that deal with ancient lore, primordial conflict, and unreality. If you like the idea of long-burn plots by masterminds with the patience of aeons, Obyriths are definitely for you. For an example of one such story, check out The Tale of the Whale, written by Afroakuma. The downside to using Obyriths in this way is that if you want to do so in canon settings, you need to be prepared to do some absolute fucking deep dives on the lore, which may require access to books or PDFs as far back as 1e & 2e. If you’re using your own setting this problem is lessened, though at that point you do have to manage to sell the ancient nature of such beings in a way that makes them feel suitably eldritch.

For more...let’s go ahead and say modern for lack of a better word, takes, keep in mind that Obyriths are not Tanar’ri. They do not scheme to overthrow the government of a nation; your pale, fleshly shadow of the Law is nothing to them. The plots of Obyriths upend the Laws which underpin reality itself. Could the great contract that details the alliance between the tribes of Men and Cats be found and perverted, turning each against the other in all reality? Could the insects of this realm be infected with the essence of Obox-Ob so that the Demon Prince of Vermin can feast on mortal souls and effect his own return to power? Could a bridge linking the Deep Ethereal to the Abyss be constructed, permitting the sibriexes and their master, the Prince of the Chrysalis, to shape new slaves from the very essence of raw Potential? Obyriths pervert what is and should be, not just because it suits their end goal of chaos unbound, but because corruption and violation is their very nature. It’s how they think, how they move, what they believe in, love, and value.

Obyriths have a lot to suggest for them when it comes to cosmic horror stories in D&D’s context. They bring out direct themes of madness, terrible truth, malign alien intelligence, and reality-unreality. You can comprehend their motives and even their nature, sort of, but their end goal is completely alien to mortal beings; the reality they want would be completely unrecognizable to the denizens of the current one. They are evil as mortals understand the concept, but not in a way that matches or even relates to their peers, which means they act in surprising and unpredictable ways.

All of this of course damages their ability to fulfill the classic cosmic horror thesis, but there’s something to be said about the idea that an alien intelligence, to be horrifying, needs something humans can attempt to relate to. It certainly makes writing for them easier.

If you’re using Obyriths in 3.5, you’re set to go; look for them in the various Monster Manuals, as well as Fiendish Codex. If you’re attempting to use them in Pathfinder, good decision but you’re gonna have some stat block converting to do. Trying to use them in 5e is gonna be the absolute bitch of a job, and I’m not sure where to even start on those suggestions except to note that the signature trait of Obyriths - the thing that makes them them, mechanically - is a Form of Madness ability, where they reveal their truth to their victims. Forms of Madness are mind-affecting abilities which hit all non-demons near the Obyrith, tainting them in some way. You can see some example ideas above, and the ones from 3.5 in the published books I just mentioned, but here’s hoping I can find an expert on 5th Edition’s mechanics kind enough to lend me a hand here.

I hope this article proved helpful to you! As with all of my work, questions and critique are welcome. Thanks for reading!

#D&D #planescape #far realms #demons #obyrith #cosmic horror #body horror #advice #I'm Not Sure How To Use Tags #reblogs welcome #critique welcome

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toldnews-blog · 5 years

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New Post has been published on https://toldnews.com/united-states-of-america/howard-thurman-the-overlooked-civil-rights-hero/

Howard Thurman: The overlooked civil rights hero

“Don’t ask what the world needs, ask what makes you come alive, and go do it,” Thurman told him. “Because what the world needs are people who have come alive.”

Thurman’s response went viral before the term was invented. It’s been cited by everyone from cultural icon Oprah Winfrey to countless inspirational speakers. It’s even become an internet meme. But what makes those words stick is that Thurman validated them by the way he lived.

Thurman forged a connection between Mohandas Gandhi and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. that gave wings to the civil rights movement. He wrote a bombshell of a book that revolutionized the traditional portrait of Jesus. And he still inspires leaders as diverse as civil rights icon John Lewis, the Democratic congressman from Atlanta, and Barbara Brown Taylor, a celebrated author and speaker.

“Howard Thurman was a spiritual genius who transformed persons who transformed history,” is how Luther E. Smith, Jr., author of “Howard Thurman: The Mystic as Prophet,” once described him.

Now a broader audience is being offered their own chance to meet Thurman. Starting Friday, PBS stations will air “Backs Against the Wall: The Howard Thurman Story.” The 55-minute film explores how Thurman went from a lonely African-American boy who talked to an oak tree for companionship to a man who still speaks to spiritual seekers nearly 40 years after his death.

Martin Doblmeier, the film’s director, said Thurman’s voice is needed even more today because of pervasive political and religious tribalism. Thurman constantly sought common ground with people who were different.

He calls Thurman the “patron saint of those who say I’m spiritual not religious.”

“He can put angry hearts at ease,” he says. “You can’t read Howard Thurman and come away with an angry heart.”

Thurman’s deep connection with MLK

He also took risks.

He was the first pastor to co-found an intentionally multiracial and multifaith church in the United States.

He was the first African-American pastor to travel to India and meet Gandhi. (Gandhi ended their meeting by asking Thurman to sing a Negro spiritual).

And he was one of the first pastors to inspire King to merge Gandhi’s philosophy of nonviolent resistance with the civil rights movement.

Thurman’s connection with King went way back. He was a classmate of King’s father, “Daddy King,” at Morehouse College. And he became dean at Boston University’s Marsh Chapel while King was enrolled at the university. While King was studying for his doctorate at the university, he would attend chapel service and take notes while Thurman preached.

King would often stop by Thurman’s house on Sunday afternoons for another ritual: watching Jackie Robinson play baseball on TV.

“There’s this fatherly sense, this spiritual mentorship that Thurman provides to Martin Luther King, Jr.,” Doblmeier says.

King quickly got a chance to apply the lessons he learned from hearing Thurman preach. Six months after earning his doctorate, he led his first nonviolent mass protest in Montgomery, Alabama. Thurman’s concepts about nonviolence and Jesus are peppered through some of King’s writings.

“One cannot understand King’s philosophy and theology without first understanding Thurman’s work and Thurman’s influence on King and other civil rights leaders,” says David B. Gowler, co-editor of “Howard Thurman: Sermons on the Parables.”

Gowler called Thurman one of the overlooked heroes of the civil rights movement. Yet he wasn’t a traditional preacher-activist. One pastor in the film quipped that many expected Thurman to be a Moses, but instead they got a mystic.

The essence of Thurman’s message

Thurman embodied what some call a “prophetic spirituality.” He talked constantly about the “inward journey.” But he wasn’t interested in any theology preoccupied with the self. He thought personal transformation should be accompanied by a “burning concern for social justice.”

Gowler calls Thurman a “spiritual activist.” So was Thurman’s wife, Sue Bailey Thurman,

“He was fundamentally both a teacher and pastor to others in the civil rights movement,” says Gowler, a religion professor at Oxford College of Emory University in Georgia.

Thurman was also another type of pioneer, the film shows. Long before the term “interfaith dialogue” became common, Thurman worshiped with people of other faiths and warned about the dangers of religious fundamentalism.

He once told the BBC that “theologies are inventions of the mind” designed to “imprison religious experience.” But the religious experience itself will always be one step ahead of dogma because it is “dynamic and fluid.”

“Whether I’m black, white, Presbyterian, Baptist, Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim — in the presence of God all of these categories by which we relate to each other fade away,” Thurman says during another interview in the film.

The film also explores Thurman’s best-known work, “Jesus and the Disinherited,” which was published in 1949. The book was a condemnation of an “otherworldly” Christianity, which Thurman said was far too often “on the side of the strong and the powerful against the weak and oppressed.”

A person can’t grasp Jesus’ message without first understanding the anger and fear that he grappled with as a member of a despised minority under Roman occupation, Thurman argued in the book.

“Jesus was a Jew. Jesus was a poor Jew. Jesus was a poor Jew from a minority group. Thurman makes the point that if Jesus were kicked into the ditch by a Roman soldier, he would be just another Jew in a ditch,” Gregory Ellison II, an activist who is working on a book on Thurman, says in the film.

The ‘sound of the genuine’

Thurman knew what it felt like to be despised. He was born in 1899 in Daytona Beach, Florida, during the “nadir” of race relations in post-Civil War America. Lynching was common, discrimination legal and the Ku Klux Klan was so popular it held a massive march on Washington when he was a young man.

He was 7 when his father died. He was raised in part by his grandmother, Nancy, who had been enslaved. She was illiterate, but he saw her as his first spiritual genius.

“I learned more, for instance, about the genius of the religion of Jesus from my grandmother than from all the men who taught me all … the Greek and all the rest of it,” he once said.

Despite Thurman’s influence, he’s not commonly known today. Many classic civil rights books and documentaries fail to mention him. Part of that may be because Thurman was so hard to define. Even his preaching style was unconventional. He didn’t throw down like a traditional black pastor with foot-stomping and shouting.

In the book, “Howard Thurman: Essential Writings,” Smith describes Thurman’s peculiar preaching style:

“He was a master in the use of silence. At times, he would be so overwhelmed by an understanding that he seemed to be in a trance.”

Thurman’s relative obscurity is part of what drove Doblmeier to make his film.

“My big fear is that Howard Thurman’s name might get lost in history,” he says. “We want to use this moment in history to get the word out.”

Others are taking up Doblmeier’s cause. The director Arleigh Prelow is nearing completion of another film on the minister and mystic entitled, “The Psalm of Howard Thurman.” And a biography, “Against the Hounds of Hell: A life of Howard Thurman,” is set to be published next year.

Thurman may finally get mass recognition. Not that it would matter to him, though. He was interested in something else.

In 1980, a year before he died, he gave a commencement address at Spelman College in Atlanta, where he talked about what he called “the sound of the genuine.”

He described it as something that “flows through everyone” but can be rendered mute by ambition, dreams and the daily tumult of life.

“You are the only you that has ever lived; your idiom is the only idiom of its kind in all of existence,” Thurman said. “And if you cannot hear the sound of the genuine in you, you will all of your life spend your days on the ends of strings that somebody else pulls.”

So what is the sound of the genuine? The meaning is elusive but tantalizing, like much of Thurman’s work. Ask four Thurman scholars and you’ll get four different answers.

But virtually all of Thurman’s devotees agree on one point. The Rev. Otis Moss Jr., a civil right activist, says it best near the end of the film.

“If you are a serious person about your own journey,” Moss says, “especially if you are in the struggle for human rights, then you’ve got to meet Howard Thurman.”

#Howard Thurman: The overlooked civil rights hero - CNN #united state news #US #us headlines #us latest news #us local news #us national news #US news

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jewpacabruhs · 6 years

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I was reading your tags and please, for the love of God, write a Mafia AU. I haven't been able to find any good ones.

i wanna so bad! i find organized crime fascinating, & i’m also a big movie nerd, with crime films being my fav genre, so im super into that sorta thing. definitely would love to see it, but o boy, maybe ill jus write it myself?? gotta do everythin myself haha

i’d def go the historical route, so it’d be interesting to try to both apply characters that are firmly rooted in 90s/2000s behaviors & beliefs, and stick them in the 1900s. oh, boy, writing historical stuff is a pain. so much research. worth it tho, if it’s done well. aye, and it’ll be cool to try to keep it as nonfictional as possible. like, attempting to insert the kids (as adults, obvs) into crime history. i wonder if i could do tht? it’d be fun. it’s definitely uncharted waters. there’s a lot of potential there.

but, hmm, i think mafia aus are so rare in fandom (not just the sp fandom, but across the board) bc they contradict everything that’s popular in fanfic. mob aus would feature violence, business, finances, and corruption. whereas fics prefer cuddles, leisure time, a world where money aint an issue, and wholesomeness. and considering the majority of fic is written by horny and/or love-starved teenage girls who dont know or care about the aforementioned subjects, it makes sense. kinda a bummer, but understandable. in the defense of like everyone, lmao, those sorta fics take a lot of planning, & aint nobody got time. so i get it.

oof i think a major thing too is how gay-centric fic/fandom is, when the mobster world is undeniably a heterosexual one. thats an issue. shit, i wonder how many gay characters i could get away with while keeping it realistic. i mean, im sure there were gay mobsters, in fact i’ve read about a couple, but the lifestyles did not go hand in hand, lol.

IM STUPID NO ONE CARES ABT THIS DUMB SHIT HERES IDEAS

i’m thinking 1940s new york. im inclined towards kyman, as u probs kno, but again, the gay thing. huh. maybe i can figure it out. maybe theyre young bachelors, and theyre business partners & fuck around sometimes. we’ll see. anyway. if we’re gonna include all characters….

cartman would pull a goodfellas - he’s of, what, german descent? hell, considering his parents, he probably wouldn’t even exist in this universe. eh. well. he’d def be from yorkville, manhattan, cuz tht was a german neighbourhood. anyway he’d weasel into the italian mob, bc he’d be into the idea of 1) exorbitant amounts of money, and 2) being feared/respected. his authoritah! psh. and someone would notice how smart he is & mentor him, regardless of nationality. he’d quickly make enemies, though, because he’s rude & brash. he’d also quickly become one of the most respected young dons (would he reach that level, without a family? doubt it. he’d have to become a made man, which i believe is reserved exclusively for italians ….. ehhhh ill figure it out. maybe he’d branch out, start his own crime family. that’d be interesting. ooo.) damn, ukno, i think the 40s would make a real interesting character out of cartman. huh. yah, that’d be cool to explore, how that time period would shape him. like i said, he likely wouldt even exist. did the denver broncos exist back then? doubt it

kyle would get wrapped up in the jewish mob (which existed, and which i’d personally l o v e to be a part of lol - if i was born 100 years ago), maybe while trying to protect ike from getting involved? that’d be cool. maybe he’d demonstrate his brains & be offered a job as an accountant or an attorney, and he’d be forced to comply, either bc 1) his fam was threatened if he declined, or 2) his fam was doing bad financially & needed it. maybe both. hell, maybe he avoids the jewish mob & gets involved with the others. MAYBE IKE IS THE ONE IN THE JEWISH MOB & WANTS HIS BROTHER BACK FROM THE ITALIANS. OOOOOOOOO also they’d be from brooklyn, likely, bc that’s where jews were primarily located back then. u kno there was 400k jews in new york in 1899?? including my great great great grandparents. that’s a shit ton of jews lol. lil fun fact for ya.

wait ok so oof this is hard now, bc the mob was primarily divided into three chunks - the italians, the jews, & the irishmen. there was also the puerto ricans, but that was, like, a different division. i’m mentioning this because nationality was important to mobsters, to all organized crimes groups actually, but south park doesn’t make a habit of mentioning what countries each character’s ancestors came from, lol. so it’d be a lot of writer interpretation. and that’s cool and all, but doesn’t give me much to work with, considering most of the kids are white and likely german/england-descended.

i could make kenny & butters irish. that’d work. i think kenny’s last names irish, actually. they could be from hell’s kitchen, which had a p hefty irish-american population. maybe i could make stan irish, too. wendy might be able to pass for italian (little italy manhattan??? maybe the bronx??? im tryna think geography lol. for scale.). that’d work, if i wanted to put some stendy in there, bc i love making stan the token het guy, haha. maybe wendys dad marries her off to stan to form an alliance between the italians & irish. that’d be interesting. maybe cartman was rallying to get wendy to marry him, bc he needed to marry someone bc of, like, societal expectations, & she was the only girl who caught his interest. maybe he declares war on stan, to win back the bride he wants. maybe kyles best friends w stan, tht happened somehow, & interjects. goes to meet cartman to discuss a way out - ohhhhh theres my kyman babay!!! oooooo!!!

omg. plot forming. this is def an interesting concept. maybe i can use it as a chance to write a plot-oriented fic that doesn’t rely heavily on ships. that’d be awesome. i’ve wanted to do that for ages.

maybe we can squeeze christophe in as a french immigrant, maybe an associate of someone. same with gregory, but, like, british. that’d be fun. craig & tweek can be somewhere in there, too. associates of cartman or something. maybe they own a brothel. oooh. who else. bebe! maybe she can be a cabaret dancer who someone falls for. nothin wrong w hetero nonsense if it’s done right & if it aint nonsense. yah? maybe she can be ken’s love interest. also maybe token & nichole can be in there somewhere, from harlem?

this sounds fun as fuck, though, def. im really obsessed with new york right now, so maybe writing this could be a love letter to its history. that’d be dope. ooh, and im from las vegas actually, born & raised, so maybe i could do a chapter set there, considering the mob was very influential in the strip’s development. that’d be rad. holy heck. im excited abt this now. gotta finish oboitd asap & get into this, haha.

o shit. i jus realized, like, just how much research i’d have to do. like, not only about organized crime, abt 40s slang & dress, abt new york, abt everything. oooh boy this is a Project

ill get on that eventually haha, im into it now. it’s 4am rn tho so ima sleep, gnite anon

#anon #fics #ref #save

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nobodysuspectsthebutterfly · 6 years

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I don't forget. Just believe that his obsession for law is for achieving justice as ultimate goal. Laws = Means, Justice = Goal. I don't think he would have followed Robert if Robert was the lawbreaker. Note: I did not put Joffrey because boy or not, he knew his power and did what he did. His hypocrisy is l-obster-ovable sometimes but not this. Edric is not at fault, why Myrcella and Tom are? If he gets Tommen at Rosby, he kills a kid??? How's that just? Stannis does bend for justice. I... HOPE.

Also his first concern with Tommen is that “Westeros needs a man, not a boy”, and the incestuous conception only second, and look how he tells it “another monster IN THE MAKING” that is, and given his experience with Aerys, to me, that he does make a rationale around it. That if you are born of incest (despite this not being so true) you are more likely to be a monster. But well, as you can note, my babbling is a HOPEFUL, too much hopeful one…

I say some fans forget Stannis’s hard view on justice because they do, I’m sorry. Notably, there is a great difference between justice and mercy.

During the High Holidays, Jews pray for God’s mercy, not his justice, because we know that under strict justice, sinners deserve death. When the shofar is blown on Rosh Hashana, there is a prayer: “Today is the birthday of the world, and all its creatures stand to be judged. Some as children, some as servants. If you see us as your children, have mercy upon us, as a father has mercy on his children. If as servants, we look to you in prayer until you temper your justice with compassion, and decide in our favor.” (The tune it’s sung with is heartwrenching, and often brings tears to my eyes, though tbf the sound of the shofar blowing has got my emotions up high already.) Note, “justice tempered with compassion” is one of the meanings of the Hebrew word tzedek… often translated as righteousness. Similarly, a word derived from that one, tzadik, is usually translated as “a righteous man”.

For Stannis, justice = executing examples of treason. Mercy = realizing those examples are innocent children and sparing them from death. Stannis is justice, Davos is mercy. That’s the whole point. That’s the whole entire point of Davos’s chapters in A Storm of Swords, especially Davos VI, where Stannis learns Joffrey’s dead, and Melisandre tries to persuade him that now more than ever they need to conquer King’s Landing by waking the stone dragon via sacrificing Edric, and Davos argues against it one last time before he reveals that he’s gotten Edric the heck out of Dragonstone and most importantly gives Stannis a better more merciful life’s mission with the letter from the Night’s Watch.

I’ve said many times the Amazon UK interview with GRRM is a favorite. That’s the one where GRRM says this terribly important statement about Stannis (and about the threat of the Others vs the game of thrones):

And it is important that the individual books refer to the civil wars, but the series title reminds us constantly that the real issue lies in the North beyond the Wall. Stannis becomes one of the few characters fully to understand that, which is why in spite of everything he is a righteous man, and not just a version of Henry VII, Tiberius or Louis XI.

People, particularly Stannis stans, seize on GRRM saying that Stannis is a righteous man, and that is true and very important to remember. However, what they fail to notice is “in spite of everything”. In spite of everything else about Stannis, his jealousy and bitterness and pettiness and regimentality and hard-assed view of law and justice, all his flaws. Furthermore, why did Stannis become one of the few characters to understand the real issue in the series is the threat of the Others? Because Davos read him the letter from the Night’s Watch.

“Yes, I should have come sooner. If not for my Hand, I might not have come at all. Lord Seaworth is a man of humble birth, but he reminded me of my duty, when all I could think of was my rights. I had the cart before the horse, Davos said. I was trying to win the throne to save the kingdom, when I should have been trying to save the kingdom to win the throne.“ Stannis pointed north. “There is where I’ll find the foe that I was born to fight.” –ASOS, Jon XI

Why is Stannis a righteous man? Because Davos made him become one. He showed Stannis the correct path was his duty and not his rights, and not merciless justice, but justice tempered with compassion and mercy.

(But note that once they separate, Stannis starts fading back away from this mercy; all the more so once he believes that Davos is dead, executed by Wyman Manderly because of the mission Stannis sent him on.)

Specific rebuttals under the cut:

“I don’t think he would have followed Robert if Robert was the lawbreaker.”

“It is every man’s duty to remain loyal to his rightful king, even if the lord he serves proves false,” Stannis declared in a tone that brooked no argument.A desperate folly took hold of Davos, a recklessness akin to madness. “As you remained loyal to King Aerys when your brother raised his banners?” he blurted.[…“T]he truth is a bitter draught at times. Aerys? If you only knew… that was a hard choosing. My blood or my liege. My brother or my king.”

–ASOS, Davos IV

Stannis does not mention lawbreaking here, only the bonds of blood vs his duty to his king. And strictly, Robert was breaking the law by rebelling against the rightful king. Yes, many fans argue that Robert’s Rebellion was just, that Aerys broke the feudal compact when he executed Brandon and his companions and their lordly fathers without trial – but Stannis doesn’t talk about that. He only mentions choosing his brother over the king who would have had his head. Furthermore, he says, “Ser Barristan once told me that the rot in King Aerys’s reign began with Varys.” He’s not even blaming Aerys for his own crimes! It’s kind of fascinating, tbh.

“Note: I did not put Joffrey because boy or not, he knew his power and did what he did.” After Stannis finds out Joffrey’s been murdered, you can see him trying to justify that in his head, and he resorts to a memory where a Joffrey as a boy showed his budding psychopathy by cutting open a pregnant cat. Stannis never talks about the cruelties of Joffrey’s deeds as a king, none of those crimes – he doesn’t mention anything about his kingship other than being undeserving of the throne as he was not Robert’s true son, as an abomination born of incest. Stannis only tries to reconcile his mind about a murdered boy, with something terrible a boy did. Again, a truly fascinating view of the world.

“Edric is not at fault, why Myrcella and Tom are?” Yes, exactly, that’s just what I was saying. Edric is not at fault for being born Robert’s bastard, but Stannis would have sacrificed him anyway for the greater good of waking the stone dragon, if not for Davos. Myrcella and Tommen are not at fault for their birth, but they are still abominations and living examples of treason, and must be scoured. And as I said, if Stannis had been able to win at Blackwater and acquired Tommen and Myrcella for execution, I think Davos would have been able to pray mercy for them, or help them escape, as he did with Edric.

“Also his first concern with Tommen is that “Westeros needs a man, not a boy”, and the incestuous conception only second”. You literally have that backwards, I’m sorry.

“Tommen is gentler than Joffrey, but born of the same incest. Another monster in the making. Another leech upon the land. Westeros needs a man’s hand, not a child’s.” –ASOS, Davos VI

“and look how he tells it “another monster IN THE MAKING” that is, and given his experience with Aerys, to me, that he does make a rationale around it. That if you are born of incest (despite this not being so true) you are more likely to be a monster.” Stannis never mentions Targaryens ever in reference to abominations. (As he should not, since that incestuous heritage is part of his own ancestry.) He never refers to Aerys in reference to Joffrey. You’re drawing a conclusion that is baseless. Per Stannis’s own letter to the lords of Westeros, he does not say that Joffrey does not deserve the throne because he was a monster (though he was), but because he was not Robert’s son… yes, an abomination born of incest, but most importantly not Robert’s true heir.

But note, when Stannis says Tommen is a monster in the making, he’s trying to justify to himself why a boy must die (despite the fact he knows he’s a very different child than Joffrey)… but most importantly, why Edric has to die, since Melisandre has convinced him it’s the only way he can be king, with a sacrifice to wake a dragon, a dragon to scour the court. Two children must die for Stannis to be king, a third if he counts Myrcella, for his “duty to the realm”. And to his credit, he hates knowing this, he’s constantly asking Melisandre if she’s sure the sacrifice will work, that there’s no other way. That’s why when Davos reveals two things – that sacrificing Edric is impossible since he’s gone, and that his true duty is not to take the throne but to save the Watch from the wildlings and the Others – Stannis leaps at the chance. A chance to change his own definition of the most just thing to do. A chance to not kill children (even if bastards and abominations), but to kill actual monsters.

The question is, if this choice comes again – if in the most desperate of straits, Melisandre convinces him a dragon must wake to fight the Others, the foe he was born to fight, and the only king’s blood sacrifice possible is his own daughter – what will Stannis decide?

Will his choice be justice tempered with compassion and mercy, or merciless justice? If his duty to the realm, to the world, to all of humanity, requires putting his mercy aside – if there is no Davos there to be the voice of mercy as before – if one child must die to save millions… what will he choose? Will Stannis be a righteous man… or a just man?

“He is utterly without mercy. There is no creature on earth half so terrifying as a truly just man.”

That should stick with you. It does with me. I hope things will be otherwise. I pray things will be otherwise. But I don’t know, and it hurts.

“But well, as you can note, my babbling is a HOPEFUL, too much hopeful one…”

Yes… well… we’ll just have to see if it is too much hope, won’t we.

#anon-foreverandever #asoiaf #asoiaf meta #stannis baratheon #davos seaworth #melisandre #edric storm #myrcella baratheon #tommen baratheon #joffrey baratheon #aerys targaryen #the others #shireen baratheon #asoiaf speculation #grrm interviews #jewish things #justice #mercy #wow this post went places sorry y'all

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glittergummicandypeach · 4 years

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Conservative Evangelical Eric Metaxas, Doing Twitter Theology, Claims ‘Jesus Was White’ | Religion Dispatches

When Eric Metaxas tweeted that “Jesus was white” on Monday the small corner of Twitter in which Metaxas is sometimes a conversation piece erupted quickly, and with wild speculation. Is he looking for attention? Being provocative? No one actually believes that Jesus is white, do they? Surely Metaxas is smart enough to know that this claim is easily refuted. But, it appears that he didn’t misspeak; he said what he meant to say.

There are a few serious issues with this tweet. The most obvious, of course, is that its central claim is patently false. Jesus wasn’t “white” in any sense of the word, and there’s no clearer way to state this. He was born and lived his entire life in the Middle East. What’s more, “white” as a category is a social construct, and a relatively recent one at that, so the claim is thoroughly anachronistic.

Of course, Metaxas isn’t the first to depict Jesus as something other than a Middle-Eastern man, and it’s a well-known fact that artists frequently take enormous liberties when they paint Jesus as a subject. Frank Wesley often depicted Jesus as having blue skin, for example, like the Hindu deities Shiva, Rama, and Krishna. Janet McKenzie’s “Jesus of the People” seems to depict Jesus as both genderfluid and mixed-race. Warner Sallman’s “Head of Christ,” possibly one of the most recognizable images of Jesus in the world, depicts Jesus as unmistakably white. In short, Jesus is very much “a messiah in our image.”

But the real issue with Metaxas’s tweet has nothing to do with “artistic license.” The problem lies in the fact that, at the heart of his statement that “Jesus was white,” is a claim of ownership that’s inextricably tied to the problem of power. “Jesus was white” = “Jesus is one of ours.” And coming from Eric Metaxas, this claim could not be more perverse or more dangerous.

Claims of ownership aren’t new for Metaxas. Those familiar with his work know that in 2011 he penned a biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German theologian who was imprisoned and executed by the Third Reich for participating in a plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler. After it was published, Metaxas’s biography was strenuously criticized by Bonhoeffer scholars around the world, and for a variety of reasons, from its failure to draw from primary source material to its misuse of German texts (a language Metaxas doesn’t speak). But among the most scathing criticisms were those who argued that Metaxas’s portrait of Bonhoeffer is essentially that of a neoconservative evangelical. Richard Weikart called it “counterfeit,” and “sanitized,” while Clifford Green concludes that a better title for the book might have been “Bonhoeffer Hijacked.”

Metaxas’s book went on to be a New York Times Best Seller, which suggests that more than a few readers were drawn in by the notion that “Bonhoeffer is one of ours.” Claims like this are thoroughly and unequivocally utilitarian in nature, whether they apply to Jesus or Bonhoeffer. They treat people as instruments and rob them of their dignity as unique individuals, instead treating them as if they exist for the purpose of bolstering those in positions of privilege and of power.

But the claim that “Jesus was white” is only the first sentence of Metaxas’s tweet. The rest is equally problematic, if not more so. The tweet is actually in response to another tweet from Neil Shenvi, an amateur Christian apologist and avid blogger, who noted that Dr. Robin DiAngelo, best known for her book White Fragility, had partnered with the United Methodist Church to explore the topic of white privilege in a video lecture.

Metaxas took this announcement as an opportunity to mock and critique the notion of white privilege: “Did [Jesus] have ‘white privilege’ even though he was entirely without sin? Is the United Methodist Church covering that? I think it could be important.”

Jesus was white. Did he have "white privilege" even though he was entirely without sin? Is the United Methodist Church covering that? I think it could be important. https://t.co/lNv67Z7g5l

— Eric Metaxas (@ericmetaxas) July 27, 2020

But here he betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of what “white privilege” actually is and what it entails. In her book DiAngelo defines it as “a sociological concept referring to advantages that are taken for granted by whites and that cannot be similarly enjoyed by people of color in the same context (government, community, workplace, schools, etc.).” And, as she also notes, “stating that racism privileges whites does not mean that individual white people do not struggle or face barriers. It does mean that we do not face the particular barriers of racism.”

White privilege is primarily a systemic issue, not an individual one. Aside from the fact that (again) Jesus was not white (and that whiteness did not exist as we understand it today), the fact that Metaxas spotlights him to ask whether he had white privilege is to miss the point entirely. It’s also curious that he ties the concept of white privilege to the notion of sin. From a theological perspective, “white privilege” could certainly be understood as a sort of “social sin,” namely, as a flawed system that white people often unknowingly benefit from and participate in. But this doesn’t fit at all with Metaxas’s individualistic misunderstanding of white privilege. This statement just further betrays the depth of his ignorance.

What he seems to be getting at is: if white privilege is sinful, and Jesus was sinless, but Jesus was also white (again, he wasn’t), then did he enjoy white privilege? If he did, then it stands to reason either that Jesus wasn’t actually sinless (a point that Metaxas is not likely to concede), or that white privilege doesn’t exist (a point that Metaxas is very likely to support).

And if Jesus didn’t have white privilege, then white privilege is something that white people can presumably “escape” or “opt out of.” The formula is a logical disaster because it rests on a flawed understanding of whiteness, of white privilege, and of Jesus’s identity as a human person.

It’s difficult to tell which of these conclusions Metaxas was actually after. It also doesn’t much matter since each is fundamentally without merit.

As I write this, Metaxas’s tweet has been severely “ratioed,” which means that the number of responses far exceeds the number of “likes” and retweets. This is generally an indication that a tweet’s contents are either deeply controversial or profoundly ignorant (or both). In short: Twitter users have pushed back on Metaxas, and they’ve pushed back hard. In response he’s deployed a Trump-ian combination of backpedaling and doubling down on his initial claim.

When one user pointed out that Jesus was Jewish, Metaxas responded: “Exactly! Which shows how arbitrary and self-contradictory racial categories can be. Many consider Jews ‘white’ and accuse them of having ‘white privilege.’ But if Jesus is beyond racial categories, why aren’t other Jews? And what about Egyptians? And Greeks? Who gets to decide?”

Here, both Metaxas and his interlocutor fail to appreciate that “Jews” doesn’t imply a homogeneous “racial” category. The claim that Jews are “white” or even “mostly white” is as nonsensical as the claim that Christians are “white” or “mostly white.” Like Christianity, Judaism is a global religion that is socially, ideologically, and racially diverse. But it’s also curious that Metaxas proffers the claim that “Jesus is beyond racial categories,” especially since his misidentification of Jesus with a “racial category” is what started the conversation in the first place.

When another user pointed out that “Jesus likely looked like modern day Palestinians-not Scandinavian,” Metaxas responded: “So it’s about how you look? About the actual color of your skin? So most Jews today are ‘white’ & have ‘white privilege’ but some don’t? Who decides? Are Stephen Spielberg & Woody Allen not white? My point is that these identities only seem to apply when woke people say they do.” Metaxas, making very little sense here, is clearly attempting to wiggle out of the mess he’s gotten himself in. Perhaps the best response to this tweet comes from another RD contributor, Sarah Morice Brubaker, who tweeted:

“*pinches bridge of nose, sighs heavily*

A social construct, being social, exist[s] in some contexts and not others. Jesus was a 1st c. Palestinian Jew so he didn’t have white privilege, a signature style, a favorite country song, or an opinion about the designated hitter.”

*pinches bridge of nose, sighs heavily*

A social construct, being social, exist in some contexts and not others. Jesus was a 1st c. Palestinian Jew so he didn't have white privilege, a signature style, a favorite country song, or an opinion about the designated hitter.

— Philosophia Petrillo (@smoricebrubaker) July 28, 2020

It remains unclear exactly what Metaxas was after in his initial tweet. While not universal, the notion that the historical Jesus was not white, as we understand that category today, is fairly widely accepted, and this is the case regardless of religious or political affiliation. Does Metaxas really believe that Jesus was “white”? Judging from his understanding of how whiteness works, the answer would seem to be yes. And this is an assessment that he both confirms and denies in his responses, which only adds to the difficulty of determining his motivation.

The sentiments expressed in Metaxas’s twitter feed are more serious than just one person tweeting ignorantly about things he doesn’t understand. Rather, his ill-formed ideas about race and racism are indicative of a much deeper and more widespread disease. They’re symptoms of ignorance, but they also serve to invigorate and reinforce it.

Metaxas’s ignorance is especially dangerous because he has an audience eager to make sense of the world. But the vision he provides is fundamentally misguided. It’s a lie. And as long he and others remain unchallenged, this cycle of misunderstanding and hatred will continue to manifest itself. Today we see it in the vitriol directed toward supporters of the Black Lives Matter movement. Tomorrow it may take a different form. Some claim that we have lost the ability to talk charitably about race, but I would argue that we have never been able to talk charitably about race. We have done a fantastic job, however, of ignoring the issue and pretending that all is well. And all is definitely not well.

The subtitle of Dr. Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility book is “Why it’s so hard for white people to talk about racism.” When all is said and done, the true value of Metaxas’s tweet and its aftermath may be as a case in point, or at the very least, as an illustration that in terms of our collective understanding of “whiteness” and how it functions, there remains much work to be done. And there certainly is value in that reminder.

This content was originally published here.

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lewigm-blog · 4 years

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A Year In...

Published February 23rd, 2020

After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem and asked, “Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.”

When King Herod heard this he was disturbed, and all Jerusalem with him. When he had called together all the people’s chief priests and teachers of the law, he asked them where the Messiah was to be born. “In Bethlehem in Judea,” they replied, “for this is what the prophet has written: “But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for out of you will come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel.” Then Herod called the Magi secretly and found out from them the exact time the star had appeared. He sent them to Bethlehem and said, “Go and search carefully for the child. As soon as you find him, report to me, so that I too may go and worship him.” - Matthew 2

Sometimes I feel that I can relate to the Pharaoh with his fears and anxieties regarding the newborn Jesus. I don’t know about everyone else, but I find the knowledge and awareness of Christ’s existence to be both terrifying and comforting. I know that there are plenty of things that I have done or thought that need forgiveness. His presence alone is enough to make me feel guilt and even shame. While I understand that we are constantly being forgiven because of His sacrifice, it doesn’t make owning up to those errors and flaws any easier. In fact, this makes me more resistant to the call to conversion and change at times.

“But the Lord hardened Pharaoh’ s heart and he would not listen to Moses and Aaron, just as the Lord had said to Moses.” - Exodus 9:12

As strange as it sounds, I have found myself feeling less vulnerable one year into the JV-Peru experience than when I first arrived. I’m not directly saying that God has hardened my heart since coming to this land, as was the case with the Pharaoh during the time of Moses and the Exodus, but that I now find myself growing empathetic and sorry for this figure. I would like to imagine that, like most leaders, the pharaoh wanted the best for his people and that his intense desire and love for that mission was misguided and perverted slowly, little by little, without him even realizing the harm he was causing his people. By the time he realized how far it had gone, it was too late, but I suppose that this was the way it was supposed to play out for him. Perhaps this is an overly optimistic perspective on the Pharaoh, but who can know for sure?

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Nostalgic Swimming

During this Christmas season, I find myself in a similar boat as the pharaoh, or rather without a boat in the Red Sea. The transition of new and old volunteers ebbing and flowing through Andahuaylillas have begun to stir and blow away the dust from the corners of my heart that were dormant and unexplored for quite some time. I have also been thinking about what it means to prepare our hearts as a stable for Jesus. We recently had a Christmas reflection and prayer regarding this “preparation” this past Sunday, so this wasn’t a casual thought from me for those wondering.

It is currently 2:18AM on Christmas Eve and, after spending a full year as a volunteer, I have woken up with a desire to write about the preparation process of my own stable! I hope that I can somewhat describe my mini experience of metanoia or “change of heart.” At least, this is what I hope to experience regarding my frame of thinking, feeling and being for this next year.

Although this re-connection with myself and my emotions is difficult to describe, I can compare it to the feeling one has with the rediscovery of a childhood toy, film, or favorite song that makes one go “OOOOOOOHHHH MAN!! THIS IS MY ____”. It is this feeling that reunites us with old memories of tender love and nostalgia, but along with this can come traumatic emotions of fear and anxiety. Both are equally helpful to revisit from time to time as they are a part of the human experience, but this current visit has moved me, especially after being away from what was familiar for over a year now.

My current emotions are of sadness and frustration regarding the ways in which I have not yet fully immersed myself into my JV experience. These emotions have brought me back to my time in Nicaragua, and to the initial shock and awe experienced with those who were there. I remember this particularly with the children. Their ceaseless outpouring of love and affection seem to be more apparent during that time than with my daily encounters today with students in Andahuaylillas.

I wonder why I felt that these old feelings weren’t being translated or carried over into this new experience. How have I grown calloused to the injustices that I see on the street with alcoholism, violence, and child neglect? Why was simple living a seemingly achievable and reasonable concept then, when I rarely uphold that value consistently today? Where has my prayer life gone? Why do I find that community has not been helpful for engaging in this sort of discourse and keeping each other accountable? All these thoughts, or more aptly, these accusations hit harder and harder the more I reflected.

Then I began to think about my trip to Guatemala as a peer facilitator. I remembered feeling anger and frustration throughout that experience. I felt that I had failed my group because I did not meet them where they were. I was challenged by how the group wasn’t taking advantage of the experience, or at least to my liking. It was at this point, perhaps in the fogginess of the early Christmas Eve morning, in which I came to the realization that I was pushing some too hard.

I wanted to take people deeper into something they might not have been ready for. I hoped to push them somewhere in between awkwardness and un-comfortability, a hard tone to hit in any intercultural experience. I wanted others to move beyond the “lighter discomforts” of food, language, and culture shock so that they could move into questions and reflections on privilege, social inequality and access to resources among other things. I mean, what did they expect would happen? Everyone chose to be here, they chose to fundraise, and attend several of my country prep meetings to prepare! Weren’t we all expected to be open and dive into the experience? Well, the short answer is no, they were not!

Father Boyle mentions this sort of “measuring up” in Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion. He speaks about this limiting way of putting God in a box and the way that we often restrict ourselves and each other. In a lot of ways I believe that I was also disregarding and boxing people in rather than letting them surprise me with who they were and what they had to say.

I distinctly remember feeling dissatisfied by how the group talked about their experience and, without realizing it, dismissed their reflections. I thought about how they weren’t offering much on the trips. Their reflections never seemed to move beyond “surface level” discomforts (whatever that meant). Anything that wasn’t helpful to me was tossed aside, dismissed like many of the motivational posts seen on social media.

“In this place of which you say it is a waste… there will be heard again the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness,,. The voices of those who sing,”

- Jeremiah 33: 9-11 (quoted from Father Greg Boyle’s Tattoos on the Heart)

Although personally what the group shared didn’t always seem profound or groundbreaking, it was for them! In their own way, they were attempting to grasp this new reality and were greatly affected by it. I too was experiencing great change by what I was experiencing in both Nicaragua and Guatemala, but it was just different. While I may have appreciated and invited moments of existential crisis and feelings of ineptitude and solidarity, they were out finding the joy in the lives of the children in other ways. Where I thought I had found waste, they found their fruit and enjoyed sharing their struggles and laughter together.

We all came from various backgrounds with different skills and interests. I was able to lean in a because I was familiar with their language and some of the cultural norms. They were doing their best to live (for some survive) with the constant rice and beans, the quick paced gab that is Central American Spanish, and the ways in which animals on the street were treated among other things. This newfound sense of community is what brought them closer and allowed for them to be there for one another.

One of the main factors that led to my own decision to become a volunteer internationally were the volunteers at the sites in Nicaragua. They received us warmly and openly. They helped guide our group closely and allowed us to grow deeper by listening to our needs individually and presenting both challenging and beautiful opportunities to connect with the culture, people and life in the community. In Nicaragua, Lucia and the three German volunteers saw the need for my friend Kyle Hill and I to participate more with the boys at the site, since they couldn’t connect as males with the boys. My way in was through sports and language which allowed me to relate to the boys and get them to open up. Similarly, in Guatemala, I connected with the workers through soccer as well. For others in my group, it was through afterschool homework help, dance and playing tag, something that I wasn’t necessarily apt or predisposed to.

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Rediscovering the “Why”

Ultimately these experiences were all things that I wanted to live out for my own. This is what I would be saying yes to when I was applying to the JVC program, but it was also one of the first things that I would forget after a few weeks of “adjustment” and observation in Peru. As time passed on, so did my patience and I had let my heart grow harsher and unwelcoming to those around me. It became a cold place that said “No!” adamantly to Jesus and his family many times over. It wasn’t obvious to me at first, but I found this to be the case after my first year with my JV community.

I wanted to dive deeper into the tumultuous waters of intense conversation and challenge with others but didn’t realize that in this exploration and desire to have others follow, I failed to show the kindness and love that I was shown as I became a stronger swimmer, so to speak. My desire and methods to “invite others” into the deep were intense and not always pastoral or even kind. It was actually traumatic for some! I had failed to recognize the gifts in others, the variety of ways in which others swam whether that be through the breaststroke, butterfly, doggy paddle, and their various distances! All should have been appreciated in their own way and I wish I had the trust in my group (and community) described in Teilhard de Chardin, S.J.’s prayer “Patient Trust.”

Why was I seeking to bring people deeper into the world by “offering” a challenge, when it should have been the other way around? This “new” and foreign world was already doing enough of that! It was others who were offering me the challenge of meeting them where they were, to walk with them at their pace to grow. In retrospect, it was ridiculous to think that I would serve as the impetus for their change. At the time however, I thought my intentions were pure and ideal for them to lean into the experience. And to be fair, my ideas and wishes for others were good willed and honest at first, but slowly I grew to feel “above others” as may have been the case with the pharaoh.

A recent conversation with a friend from one of my retreat experiences had me reflecting on my role as a volunteer and participant in these experiences. I have always appreciated ways in which retreats helped me to become more empathetic and active listener, but I felt that I wasn’t getting much out of it at a certain point. After 10 retreat experiences it can become a challenge to be… well, challenged (I would finish college with 15 total retreats)! My friend and I talked about how now that we are beyond the “freshman” perspective of retreats and were now in more of a grad student-facilitator mindset. Our roles shifted from being sharers, to listeners, being guided principally by the one sharing. That isn’t to say that our roles are now to be valued more or placed on a pedestal, but that based on our experiences we now prefer this new role as it is helping us grow. I may have already been through the wonderful experiences of Search, Kairos, and other retreat experiences, but I experience and view them now very differently.

This conversation helped me realize that the same thing is now happening to me in the international context. Although I had been on other immersion experiences, this was something completely different. My heart was becoming hardened and calloused after “training” and forming myself within the Ignatian tradition during my time at Scranton. While I have grown more aware of different techniques to engage with others, I have also failed to adapt to the new situations and began to lose myself in the international context. I shouldn’t be too hard on myself given that this is the first time I live outside of my home with 3 “Woo” girls away from friends and family (Click here for the reference).

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End of the first year…

With all that said, I should probably describe some of the moments that I have experienced so that it might make more sense! The first moment comes from a fellow Cadis born Spanish volunteer who lived with us, Pablo Lobato. I was initially excited by the idea of having a male volunteer that was to stay with us for two years. However, once work started it became difficult to enjoy his company for a number of reasons. Having the same responsibilities at Fe y Alegria grew to be cumbersome with the amount of time we were spending with each other and when it came to organizing lesson plans that may not happen. Our states of mind and emotions influenced each other heavily. As you may remember from the previous newsletter, the challenge at Fe y Alegria was that there wasn’t a great deal of organization at the school and had I lost much interest and passion in the work. The same was true for Pablo. The situation affected Pablo so much that he was burnt out after a few months. It would lead to him ending his volunteer experience a year early.

Curiously enough, once Pablo made the decision to leave, things seemed to improve for him. He still had a few months to go and made the best of it. He joked around with folks from Fe y Alegria more and at his other worksite in Urcos. His openness and sense of humor brought him closer to those at work and even with others at the parish. He would often be out spending time with folks outside of our home and he really began to enjoy Andahuaylillas, even with its Oh Peru moments. Once December hit, the love and sadness expressed by everyone he knew was quite moving and made me think about how I would feel if I were leaving that year.

I realized that my own approach to developing relationships was perhaps a bit too cold. A few months in, I remembered pushing away a few of the local parish workers after having made plans to play soccer. I was angry because they had stood me up for over an hour on three separate occasions. So I (regretfully) called them out and told them that I wouldn’t go to anything they invited me to because it probably wouldn’t end up happening or would go on too late. In the moment, I thought that it would make clear that I don’t really abide by the “Peruvian Hour,” when it really only alienated me more than I already was as a gringo. My stable was becoming unwelcoming and standoffish, and its love, conditional. It is important to note that Peruvians and Latin Americans have an interesting concept of time. Time is a social construct where 30 minutes can mean an hour or two. This all seems to be universally understood amongst Peruvians, but it continues to frustrate me to this day.

A master of this concept and someone who helps me manage my struggle with punctuality is one of my closer friends in Andahuaylillas, Amilkar or Micky for short. He helps out at the parish and our mutual love for FC Barcelona has us meeting at least once a week to watch the game or play soccer at the Maracana turf field. We also play guitar at mass together whenever either of us can. Aside from that, we don’t spend too much of our time together discussing our personal lives. Since I play mostly on Sundays in the Temple, Micky is a part of the Saturday crew which included Pablo on the cajon or sound box. When the pastoral team at the parish and Pablo and I from Fe y Alegria had to come together to organize the kids’ First Communion I saw what the dynamics were like with Pablo and Micky.

They were constantly bagging on each other and Pablo seemed to be a much livelier person than I’d ever seen him. They would share in each other’s qualms about the lack of organization on both fronts and take joy in staying late after mass to chat about life. It was refreshing to see Pablo in this light. Once we had finished coordinating the First Communion, which took place on December 8th, we had a plethora of despedidas or going away parties. Given that 4 volunteers were leaving Mountain house, there were no shortage of cakes, meals and tears. It was quite a beautiful thing to witness and it all came to a culmination when we celebrated our final misa together.

El Estadio de Maracana de Andahuaylillas. Quite arguably, my favorite turf field with a view of the Coriorco Mountain

The Weekend Crew

So happy to have finished with Primera Comunion. It was a tough and beautiful year indeed

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Final Misa

With it being Christmas time, a number of masses had already been “booked” by other groups leaving me without a clear role at mass. It was nice to not have to play and to participate in a different way. I was able to immerse myself more fully and reconnected with my old self that wasn’t being brought out. All my motions had purpose, the readings were clear, and I felt connected with the church. Ever since I began to lead the chorus on Sundays, I have been focusing more on playing the songs well instead of listening to what the songs were saying and what the readings were for the day. I used to always find solace and a “lighter” sense of myself when at mass. When our inchoate chorus sung without confidence early on, I began to lose this magical feeling at mass.

I think my failure to pray and reflect WITH God instead of just going through the motions was affecting me greatly. Once this responsibility was lifted temporarily, I enjoyed mass once more. This is, of course, all in retrospect and doesn’t include the misas at home, which were also scarce due to Padre Gonzalo’s limited availability. I don’t know if any of you reading this have had a similar experience at mass, but I am looking for ways to stay intentional and focused during mass (so please share!). It’s challenging when playing for a folks who should believe that all voices singing to God are beautiful. This is not always the case though!

As per usual, the initial impetus comes from the Misa that was celebrated this past week. It was our last misa with a majority of the house, whom we had spent the past year or so with but also the first Misa experience for the new volunteers. It wasn’t so much the scripture readings that affected me, but the fact that this was the last misa we would celebrate as Mountain House 2019! Even with all the frustration that I had experienced the past year, there was a lot of joy and fun too. It all hit me at once when Pablo admitted that he would miss us all dearly and alluded to his regret in his decision to leave. It was a touching moment that was only made worse by my slowing down of the ofertorio song Tomad Señor y Recibid (which is Saint Ignatius’ Suscipe Prayer).

The question now is “What now?” This, like all reflections, means nothing if these “airy “topics and subjects are not made incarnado or made flesh/incarnate. St. Ignatius does ask us to be contemplatives in action after all! After a long pattern of closing up my heart and stable from others, I have begun re-open up shop. It’ll take time, but I hope that with the arrival of the new community we can start fresh and find our rhythm early on! Can’t wait to MAGA it up for 2020! Here’s to Making Andahuaylillas Great Again!

Google Photos Link: https://photos.app.goo.gl/3hbgZLo3USHxDDU57

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“Heaven only knows”

As a random or connected note, these thoughts and reflections come at a time when I realized that many of the songs that I had once cherished and appreciated as a child, mostly from my beloved first CD “album” Now That What I Call Music 19, released in 2005. I was thinking about John Legend’s Heaven and when I went to search for it in my files, there was no trace of it anywhere! I went to search for Ordinary and could not find that or several other songs from that time period. I was most upset to find that all things Coldplay were absent. Speed of Sound really helped kickstart my passion and love for music during my VH1 viewing days.

I mention this because music was what really helped me capture the moment in a sort of time capsule. It inspired and reaffirmed me during difficult lulls and times of change and transition. It is a categorized portal into my life, especially the ways in which I organize my own music.

Exhibit A: 2017 was certainly a coming of age year for me…I don’t know what every hashtag means, but some things definitely stand out for me.

I hope that this rediscovery of old music will also motivate me to begin the new year with some chispa and passion. Perhaps this new year and community can be an opportunity for me to take advantage of what Peru has to offer. I wish for more openness with the Oh Peru moments, less judgement and heart hardening moment and enough discipline to actually read and write often. So I bid 2019 farewell with a few lyrics from John Legend’s Heaven. Cheers to second chances and to this next year!

So will you come back to me?

Make this night the best night It's time for second chance Turn the beat up on repeat, and we can start to dance…

Heaven only knows

Our final Tiny Airport (Desk) Concert was pretty awesome

They are definitely smarter, taller and more hilarious a year later. I miss them so much!

#OhPeru

0 notes

mercenarypark · 7 years

Text

medic hcs

Em made a big hc post for heavy a few days ago [here] and ive been meaning 2 finally do the same w/ medic bcause im gay

note: while i try to be brief about the details, this post is about a gay jewish man in Germany during wwii. to set aside any initial worries, no, he is never kept in the camps- as a jewish person myself it sickens me deep in my stomach to even think of that possibility. but there’s still mentions of n/zism and antisemitism, as one would expect.

also, a fair amount of the details of my medic hcs for his childhood are based on the german side of my family, primarily my grandfather and his father. while i still only know a little about my family history[tm], details like medic’s last name, how his family were able to lay low, etc, are based on the little bits and pieces ive heard from my grandmother #antisemitism #nazism #homophobia #transphobia #satanism #long post #text heavy #tf2 #gore text #medical abuse #malpractice #experimentation mention

-Medic was born roughly around 1925- he’s in his early 40s around when the game takes place- to the name [redacted] Reichstein. the Reichsteins were reviled in their little town as mad doctors, which was at least somewhat true- they certainly weren’t shy to experimentation on body parts and [willing] subjects. but a good part of the hatred for them stemmed from Good Old Antisemitism, focusing their hate on the fact that they were an openly jewish family and saying that that must be influencing their occasionally morally dubious behavior

-for the longest time, though, people tolerated them- they were the only doctors around, after all. but as time went on, the disgusted glances turned to hate speech, turned to violent threats, and eventually, to violent actions.

-medic’s father, who had long since been debating on moving, finally packed the family up[against his wife’s wishes], and within a night, their home and lab were deserted.

-his father could tell that something terrible was coming. he brought down an ultimatum- they would have to abandon everything jewish about themselves in order to survive. medic was young, still, and didn’t fully understand the severity of why his father seemed so adamant that they never mention holidays they once celebrated, why their old family photos were torn and burned, why his mother was constantly reprimanded when her Yiddish roots showed through her accent

-medic’s father pulled a few favors, and before they moved into a new city, the family name was changed to Reich- a more acceptable, more German name. Reichstein could raise eyebrows, lead to questioning about jewish roots, but there have always been many Reichs in Germany.

-that’s also when Medic got his birthname changed to Ludwig, and he and his mother had to fight like hell for that. his father argued that the last thing they needed was another target on their back- if anyone found out that his son “wasn’t really a boy”, then that would bring the entire family under scrutiny and into danger.

-ludwig refused to take no for an answer. ludwig had always been someone who would rather die than pretend that he’s something he’s not, and this was one of the first signs of that. while he didnt fully understand his connection to judaism, yet, and thus didnt fight to keep it at the time; he DID understand that he wasn’t a girl, and by God did he refuse to pretend otherwise.

-eventually his father relented, though he never once forgot and throughout medic’s childhood, he would bring up how risky it was, how medic was potentially endangering them all.

-to clarify: his father DID technically accept his son being transgender, but he wanted him to repress it, ignore it, force it down and never bring it up, much like their jewish heritage. ludwig refused, and his father never liked that. [when ludwig grew older and became both openly gay AND became a practicing jew again, his father nearly had a fucking heart attack]

-ludwig was heavily isolated for most of his childhood after they moved, partially due to the war’s beginning, partially because his father was afraid of his son giving something away. he was homeschooled by his mother, and rarely left the house, instead spending most of his time playing with the family’s cockatoo, or in his father’s operating room, learning human anatomy

-this isolation[alongside his autism, and veritable cocktail of mental illnesses] helped contribute to medic’s general inability to understand how to interact with people- he is oblivious at the best of times, has no concept of personal space, rarely catches social cues, and has Awful attachment issues. he is overly affectionate with anyone he is even vaguely friendly with, he tends to ramble and talk about uncomfortably personal things without realizing its a bad thing, etc, etc, he is a mess and a half

-he does understand bits and pieces- for example, if he’s physically affectionate with someone, they tend to tense up, and try to get away from him, which means he’s doing something wrong. the problem is that he doesnt understand WHAT he’s doing wrong, or why it’s wrong[answer: he’s covered in blood and bird shit and holding at least one[1] human liver]

-speaking of physical affection, the first time engineer affectionately puts a hand on medic’s shoulder medic fucking freaks out because aside from his parents, NO ONE. no one has ever initiated Friendly Physical Contact with him. usually because theyre freaked out by him in some way. he has no idea how to cope with the fact that someone might actually think of him in a friendly manner to the point of expressing that physically [aside from sexually, which is a whole other story and a half]

-but im getting ahead of myself. the first time ludwig killed a man was when he was 17. a nazi soldier paid an unexpected visit to the Reichs. ludwig, scared for his family’s sake and overwhelmed with a boiling hatred for nazis that had simmered for all of his childhood, killed the man

-his father reacted violently, ranting that now they were doomed, but his mother helped ludwig destroy the body and evidence. by the grace of God, no other nazi followed up that visit- the soldier hadn’t told anyone where he was going, and there had been no witnesses to his visit. and germany was so chaotic at the time, that eventually the man's death was attributed to a previously unnoticed casualty in battle

-that was the first man ludwig killed, and also the first of many, many nazis. he spent a good stretch of his adult life hunting down nazis who had gone under the radar, trying to hide their past ties while still keeping the same disgusting views.

-as ive mentioned, in medical school, ludwig not only became openly gay, but returned to his jewish roots. no longer under his father's roof, and now that the war was over, medic saw no reason to hide aspects of himself any longer. and God help everyone who felt otherwise. especially once the most violently hateful dissenters, began to mysteriously disappear.

-throughout his adult life medic has had Multiple short term, non-serious relationships [including more than his fair share of one night stands], and maybe two serious relationships prior to heavy. neither of those ended well, citing ludwigs mental Fuckery as a big issue. speaking of, his mental fuckery has helped him get into at least a couple abusive relationships, which i wont detail beyond "he survived and healed".

-while he is Jewish, he is the kind of jew who criticizes god every step of the way. at least part of this is due to having to survive during the Shoah.

-the Shoah definitely fucked his mind up. the constant fear for his parents and himself, and the burning hatred for the nazis and everyone who agreed with them or stood back and let them take over, and just overall a horrible sense of helplessness, definitely contributed to a lot of his future mental fuckery, and to his feelings about God. as an adult, and as a doctor, he took the feeling of helplessness he had as a teenager, and flipped it around dramatically- if god didnt help him then, he’d have to become better than god. he would bring retribution where others didnt, and bring power and life to those god would not help.

-he sold his soul to satan sometime around his mid-30s. [this is a sentence that sounds really fucking weird if u dont know much about tf2.] there are a few reasons behind that, but im only gonna talk about one:

-as i've said, medic spent a lot of time murdering nazis who had tried to go into hiding. that's difficult when theyre trying very, very hard to cover up their past. medic struck a deal with satan- in exchange for the names, aliases, and locations of ex-nazis in hiding, he would kill them and send them straight to hell. his soul was just to sweeten the deal.

-ludwig does a Lot of experiments on captured and dead nazis, especially the painful ones. the ol' "removing a patient's skeleton" story was of a nazi officer medic had caught, and medical licence or not, ludwig would do it again in an instant

-medic's flock of homing pigeons, stolen from a wedding van, are like family to him. the original, stolen generation had more pretentious names, as named by their previous owner- mostly well known scientists and philosophers[Archimedes, Newton, Nietzsche, etc]. most of the pigeons he named himself have biblical, jewish names [Mordecai, Elijah, Rebecca, etc]

-ludwig is absolutely never prim, proper, or orderly. if he is wearing a coat that DOESNT have blood and bird shit on it, wait 5 minutes and check again

-he has a tendency to hyperfocus on something and forget things like "humans need food and water to live". heavy usually helps him remember

-medic snores. loudly. and it sounds fucking awful. heavy is, sadly, a very light sleeper. it takes a loooong time for him to finally be able to sleep through medic's snoring, and it winds up being one of the only things he actually CAN sleep through. god help you if you step on a creaky board halfway down the hall, though, because heavy will wake up in an Instant

-if tf2 were in modern times, ludwig's music taste would include a Lot of kesha, klezmer music, black metal, and so on. its varied, is what im saying

-medic, pyro, and soldier all get along surprisingly well together, because they all have a case of "same brain? same brain!", all of them have issues dealing with other people and have problems with processing/understanding things, have trouble w/ psychotic episodes and the like, overall their minds are all wired oddly but somehow they can understand /each other/

-scout accidentally becomes medic's unofficial adopted daughter and thats a whole post and a half on its own. suffice to say medic would do anything for her

-engie, demo, and medic are all Science Gays

-medic also does his best to help demo with his Absolutely Massive Amounts of Trauma and Self Loathing, by at least being a supportive shoulder to lean on when demo tries to drink himself unconscious to forget it all. hes absolutely terrible most of the time at actually saying anything to help, but he can be a good presence, and he has birds. birds help anything

-he has a very casual fling going with spy, since early on in their time at the base. its usually in a state of "on-again off-again", with the latter usually having something to do with how spy acts with scout.

-obviously theres a lot i could say about heavy and medic's relationship, but to put it briefly- theres a loooong time where both of them are "i dont understand social interaction" gays.

-medic is the "i literally dont understand how to act around people im attracted to or that me being extremely overaffectionate around you is due to the fact that im falling in love with you, i dont catch your vague hints towards the fact that you feel the same about me because you literally need to hit me over the head with something in order to get me to catch onto it" gay

-heavy is the "i have spent so many years repressing so much of myself and keeping quiet and not drawing attention to myself, that i physically cannot bring myself to be up front about the fact that im attracted to you. im also afraid of misintepreting signals and i am instead going to assume your over-affectionate attitude is platonic and i am misreading things" gay

-eventually they figure things out and its good and soft and gay

ok its 3 AM and ive been writing on this for at least an hour and a half and i told Em i would go to bed by now dhgfkhhj

#captain's log #ask to tag /#reblog if u want idc /#im tired hfglghjkhjh #tf2 posts

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reading-while-queer · 7 years

Text

Proxy, Alex London

Rating: Great Read/Mixed Review Genre: Science Fiction Representation: -Gay main character -Bi? supporting character -Main character is POC (unspecified) Note: This book does not contain any sexual content Trigger Warnings: Blood, death, suicide, homophobia, outing without consent, graphic torture, torture of children, recreational drug use, antisemitism, ableism (more details in review)

Proxy is a vision of Detroit in the far future. Most of the United States is toxic wasteland or desert. Detroit is the only place left, but capitalism has run its course and transformed society into a culture of extreme debt and extreme wealth. The poor are born with debt, while the ultra-wealthy buy that debt in order to execute complete control over the indebted. One such indebted person is the main character, Syd. His debt was purchased so that he would serve as the whipping boy (or, according to the book’s terminology, a “proxy”) for another child the same age. When this wealthy child breaks the rules, Syd is punished for it with torture or hard labor, which the wealthy child is forced to watch as their punishment.

Syd’s story begins when his patron, Knox, accidentally kills a girl. The punishment to Syd is so great that Syd decides it is worth it to try to escape, even though the world outside of the city is treacherous and unknown. Syd and Knox work together through their baggage as victims of a crooked system as they search for the “Rebooters,” a group of revolutionaries who want to bring about the Jubilee, the erasure of all debts.

I was captivated by London’s world. The descriptions of poverty and extreme wealth were familiar, yet well adapted to a world with new technology. Medicine, cars, drugs, school—London gives every area of life his consideration, and the world he presents is believable. His point isn’t that humanity has gone too far with new, scary technology—the problem isn’t self-driving cars or “patches” that can cure any disease. The problem is who is in control of how data is collected and used: technology serves the purposes of the ultra-wealthy by tracking people who skip out on their debts. Every person is injected at birth with bio-programming that makes them trackable. Web browsing data is collected as well, which is a familiar issue today. London takes targeted advertising just one step further: in Proxy, smart billboards communicate with people’s networked devices and change their ads accordingly. I found this vision of technology and its dangers to be completely riveting and actually scary. Unlike many science fiction stories about the dangers of advanced technology, London focuses on the systemic issues. His approach is new and reflects real concerns.

As for the plot, I was kept engaged in this novel. It’s a fast read; Syd and Knox are knocked from the frying pan into the fire quickly. There is no room to be bored while Syd and Knox are being pursued, fighting for their lives, and sneaking around in a world designed around surveillance. Proxy is a page-turner full of suspense. While this made it thrilling to read, I do think that Proxy is a little too action-oriented. It feels as if London doesn’t trust the reader to stay interested in his characters unless they are in imminent danger. There is little time, what with all the fighting for their lives, for the characters to build relationships with one another, and as a result, their intimacy by the end of the book doesn’t quite seem earned. Proxy would have benefited from slowing down the pace and really dwelling in Syd and Knox’s down time when they have it. Because of the lack of time spent on their relationship, I was somewhat let down by the ending, which relies on Syd and Knox having a strong bond. I just didn’t get to see that bond being developed.

On the whole, Proxy is an original, engaging story. I was also impressed by how London handled the Rebooters. The Rebooters’ beliefs originate in Jewish history, and I wish London had explored the Jewishness of the Jubilee and the Rebooters even further. It was a well executed concept that happily was not divorced from its religious roots. I cannot go into more detail without spoiling the plot, but I would be interested in hearing what others have to say about the spiritual angle of the Jubilee, especially considering the role tattoos play in the novel.

There were areas where Proxy was lacking, however. I wanted a little more information about the race and gender politics of the world. Classism is London’s focus, and Syd is very thoughtful about the workings of class. He understands that the cards are stacked against him, and others like him, from birth. He understands injustice. But as a person of color, we don’t really see how race exists, if it exists at all, in Proxy. Syd’s skin is dark and his hair curly; his adopted father Mr. Baram claims Syd is, like him, from the Middle East. It is not clear in context, however, whether Mr. Baram means that Syd has a spiritual quality that Mr. Baram recognizes as “old world,” or whether Mr. Baram means that Syd is literally Jewish and Middle Eastern. Racial/ethnic difference seems to be recognized: Mr. Baram is disparagingly called a Jew by other characters. Yet Syd doesn’t consider himself in a context of race. He was an orphan and doesn’t know his parentage, but presumably the city would assign him a race, and presumably he would consider himself in reaction to how he is perceived by others. London leaves a lot of questions.

Gender and sexuality also could have been explored more deeply. We know that being gay (or “Chapter 11” in the book’s terms) is looked down on, and we are given to assume that homophobia exists more or less as it does in our world. Yet we don’t see much of Syd’s perspective on his experiences. I will say that this is probably a blessing. If Syd’s world is just like ours re: homophobia, we can connect the dots. Gender is another question, however. Almost all of the characters are men, and the only female main character is the emotional bleeding heart of the team, a “Causegirl” who believes in the Jubilee. The team dynamic was boring and even frustrating as the male characters mostly just degraded her for being a privileged activist—their own worldviews being more cynical and self-centered. Outside of being a “Causegirl” we know nothing about her. She lacks personality where Knox and Syd are both developed and rounded characters. This lack of attention to the “Causegirl” friend is representative of the lack of attention played to gender in the book as a whole. How does sexism work in this world? How has gender changed with medical technology that can do just about anything? What are beauty standards like? Reproductive health? What does a nuclear family look like now? What about transgender people? Where do they fit in when there is no real way to start fresh in Proxy? While I don’t expect a book predominantly about class to stop the presses and explain every detail of gendered existence, I did feel that Proxy was unfair to its female characters.

Above all else, though, I was disappointed that the characters’ vision of the “Jubilee” explicitly excluded disabled people. Without giving too much away, the main characters recognize that erasing all debts will have the side consequence of denying life-saving care to unknown numbers of disabled residents of the city. Syd and Knox bring this up in protest—perhaps the only time I’ve ever seen disability given the time of day in a science fiction narrative—only to finally acquiesce that the disabled must be sacrificed for the greater good. This eugenic attitude comes out of nowhere at the end of the book. London engages with an important and often forgotten concern about anarchy movements only to turn and use his characters as mouthpieces to dismiss disabled people as necessary sacrifices.

I would say Proxy treads the line between good and mediocre. While it was fun to read, there were areas where I was disappointed, and for some readers, that disappointment might outweigh the fast-paced and suspenseful plot. What I liked most was the well actualized science fiction setting, but whether or not you like this book will depend on what you want out of it and what you are willing to tolerate.

For more from Alex London, visit his website here.

#alex london #proxy #gay #protagonist of color #science fiction #great read #mediocre #reviews only #ya only #mixed review

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pro-ag-gressive-church · 7 years

Text

X.C.R.I.S.I.S. will kill us if we don’t stop them NOW!

X.C.R.I.S.I.S. (Xrisitian Conservative Right In Seditious Insurrectionist States) The only "terrorist" group ACTUALLY posing a threat to the United States.

The "Conservative" movement in this country has become an unholy alliance between self proclaimed "christians" who ONLY quote the parts of Leviticus or Deuteronomy that validate their hate, and NEVER quote Jesus CHRIST (I call them Xristians to separate the extremists from the faithful), and the Cult of Ayn Rand who worship an economic fantasy from a badly written sci-fi novel that has NEVER worked in ANY practical application.

“You know the Bible says beware of false prophets. And there are people out there, you know, spreading noise about how much can get done. I mean this whole idea about shutting down government to get rid of Obamacare in 2013 – I mean, this plan never had a chance.” -Fmr. House Speaker, John Boehner

Read more at: http://www.forwardprogressives.com/john-boehners-trashing-ted-cruz-tea-party-just-proved-liberals-right-video/

The sooner we start treating Confederate Scum like the disease they are, and stop pretend they are human beings "with an opinion", the better.

Are Conservatives even people?

“What defines a person? What defines property? What’s the difference? The anthropologist and ethicist Dawn Prince-Hughes argues that the standards for personhood include self-awareness, an ability to understand complex emotions, and the capacity for empathy.” -Ted 2.

Conservatives clearly lack both the capacity to understand complex emotions and the empathy that particular definition of a "person" requires.It’s easy to see, in this perspective, how a corporation or fetus might seem like a “person” to them since they lack all but self awareness to qualify as one.

Unlike the primates Dr. Prince-Hughs studied to come up with this theory in her book "Songs of the Gorilla Nation: My Journey Through Autism", conservatives are clearly NOT people.

While that makes them property by the logic presented in the film, the truth is they should be at least considered as other primates until they can join the human race in it's otherwise unanimous understanding of those concepts.Some wild animals need to put down no matter how we anthropomorphize them, especially when they are as dangerous to society as conservatives have proven to be.

Some will see this as satire, but seriously... why are we treating these animals like humans, when they can’t provide the simple comfort of a purring cat, or loyal dog?

As the thinking and rational members of society, we have to take responsibility for letting this destructive “invasive species” of humanity loose. Like Coy fish or killer bees, we need to recognize that they are not capable of being part of society, or even the ecology in many cases, and instead of granting them membership as a right, make them earn it. Isn’t that exactly THEIR attitude with the undocumented, refugees from terror, and the poor. Do we not owe ourselves the right to hold them to the standards they set for others? Conservatives have EARNED genocide. Like poor Anne Frank, Liberals believe that all people are basically good, and just "misguided". They still haven't learned that Conservatism is a CANCER that needs to be ERADICATED like all cancer.

Just like the Civil War Criminals that we simply allowed to have all the spoils of their slavery in order to "make peace", we didn't execute the lying Conservatives who got us into the illegal wars in the middle east when we found out what they had done to us, and made us to do those nations.

Name a single liberal policy that will kill someone.

If we taxed the top 2% who make over $250,000 at a rate of 90%, do you know how many would be below the poverty line?

ZERO!!!!

Not a single one of them would have life as tough 45 million Americans live with EVERY DAY.

The fact is, in every way, the cause of Conservatism is to kill or enslave everyone not born with money.

Executing a Conservative is no more an act of violence than spraying germs with disinfectant, or taking an antibiotic.

Something is trying to kill you, slowly, but never the less it is trying to kill you.

Killing a Conservative is inherently an act of self defense.

Conservative = Cancer

You can't negotiate with cancer.

You can't reason with cancer.

You can't yell at cancer and make it behave.

You don't sit there dying and try to figure out how much of you, you will allow cancer to kill.

You poison it with chemicals. You cook it with radiation. You cut it out.

Cancer has lost its right to be part of your body because a small part of it’s “code” has become corrupt. It ignores the rules of the anatomy, and grows out of control reproducing that altered bad code jeopardizing your life.

Sometime you lose a lot in treating cancer. Especially if you've ignored it for too long and let it get out of control.

You can lose limbs. Vital organs. Lots of good cells and tissue that are NOT cancerous will die from the treatment the longer you pretend you DON'T have cancer.

You CAN be too late. You can face your final days in agony, knowing you are going die from cancer, because you didn't act soon enough.

Cancer may be a part of you, but it is a part of you that has betrayed EVERYTHING ELSE about you.

Conservative thought is social and political cancer.

We need to STOP pretending that this is a difference of opinion that can be negotiated and reasoned out, because "We The People..." are dying from it.

It looks, upon a casual examination, like it’s following the Constitution and the Bible, but it has altered a SMALL amount of those “codes” needed to keep this nation alive, and replicates that deadly code.

Isn't that what EVERY cancer does? Tries to re-write the code that keeps the system working?

In the case of Cancer the code is DNA.

In the case of society, the code is education of future generations, It needs to be treated like the danger that it is. It needs to be poisoned, cooked, and cut out of society, TO SAVE SOCIETY.

We need to try and cure it, and hope that it is not too late.

And that is going to hurt.

The question is... is the continued life of society WORTH the pain. Can we recover enough from the losses we will endure to have a life after we've killed all the cancer?

I think we can THRIVE. Unlike our bodies, removing this cancer will just make way for us to regrow the damaged parts, but only if we stop trying to talk it out, and start fighting for our lives before it's too late.

WE ARE AT WAR AND WE ARE DYING EVERYDAY.

IT'S TIME TO WAKE UP and START CAUSING CASUALTIES ON THEIR SIDE.

Killing a Conservative is not murder because CHOOSING the cause of Conservatism is not just a abandonment from American values, or betrayal of this nation...

It is a declaration of resignation from HUMANITY!!!!!

The Jews were dehumanized BY the Nazi's to justify genocide. Conservatives have DEHUMANIZED THEMSELVES, and EARNED their genocide as no Jew ever did.

JUST FUCKING LOOK AT WHAT THESE TERRORIST ARE CLAIMING!!! AND WHY?!?!??!

SO THEY CAN VALIDATE THEIR OWN VIOLENCE AGAINST US, AS "SELF DEFENSE"!!!!!

The delusion of Liberalism is that somehow they will find an acceptable middle ground with these religious fanatics.

The very act and method of embracing the ideologies and principles that these people have, DEFIES reason. There is NO amount of education or explanation that will change their mind. They are as immune to rational thought as the Muslim extremists in I.S.I.S./I.S.I.L. or Boko Haram. In fact, comparing their goals... the groups are identical save for two things.The respective books they aren't smart enough to actually read, and the amount of money they have to wage their war.

While the Islamic Extremists have access to millions, the Xrisitan Extremists in America have access to Billions!!!! Maybe even Trillions. When you can purchase rule from an unscrupulous "representative" of a democracy, you don't need overt violence to achieve your goals.

Your "Terror" to maintain control, takes the authoritative tone of POLICE BRUTALITY!

That's a hard concept to swallow. We are used to "terrorism" being an overt act that disrupts our daily scheduled lives.

In fact, there is no generally accepted definition of exactly what qualifies as terrorism, but every definition includes two common things. The use of FORCE and FEAR to obtain a goal. Daesh (ISIS/ISIL) can't buy the election processes in the myriad of countries they seek to control, so they use horror and military power to terrorize the population there.

Conservatives in America have bought our representation, and the media that can complain about it.

They use the law and daily policing as the FORCE to keep us afraid, and the ever changing media boogeyman to divert attention from their rule.

They are, by a legal definition, insane.

Under the "Model Penal code", a defendant is legally insane if at the time a crime is committed they are unable to:

1. Appreciate the criminality of his conduct; or

2. Conform his conduct to the requirements of the law

"The second question is whether the mental illness interfered with the defendant's ability to distinguish right from wrong. That is, did the defendant know that the alleged behavior was against the law at the time the offense was committed."

Tell me this does not define the actions of the Conservative movement at this time.

So how do you protect 38-41% of the nation's population from harming others, and themselves, without allowing yourself to be the victim of their insanity? THAT is the question the left needs to answer among ourselves before we can start to move forward.

Peaceful resistance can only work if you can embarrass your opponent with their hypocrisy. The "right" in America has already convinced themselves that WE deserve to die for our "sins". They will slaughter us without a hint of guilt, and thank their god’s name for having been given the opportunity. Liberals believe that "Nobody wants war." That is our fatal flaw. THESE people DO want war. They are just not rational or reasonable. Fighting back is not the choice we WANT to make, but a necessity for our survival. We need to force these extremists to accept OUR authority, or we will cede it to them.

This really comes from the fact that "American Christianity" or as I call it, Xristianity isn't a form of Christianity at all.

It is form of "Protestant Judaism" where the Old Testament is given more weight than the word of Christ.

The hate all comes from books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy.

The Xristians are really a heretical form of Judaism in the belief that there WAS a Jesus Christ, and the adaptation of Baptism as a forcible means to expand their faith, where if they just accepted the fact that they were in fact Jews, they would by tradition be required to shun converts, not seek them aggressively.

They are also a heretical form of Christianity in the denial that Christ fulfilled the Covenant of the old Testament, making the word of Christ supersede most of the old Testament.

Making it worse, there is the historical "persecution" of Christians by the Roman Empire, who ALSO considered them to be "just Jews".

The Christians of the day were at odds with traditional Judaism, and basically refused to pay the tax levied by the Romans against the Jews for worshiping gods other than the Pagan Roman gods. Something the Jews had not had problems with for centuries.

That and the fact that according to Christ, prayer should be in secret and NOT a public display made the early Christian faith a target for Roman suspicion and justice, which was then rewritten from denying reasonable demands of society that provided for, and protected most of it's citizens, into history as "Persecution”.

Today’s Xristians represent the worst of all worlds. They’ve retained the “persecution” myth while forcing people to accept their faith, all the while ignoring the actual peaceful teachings of the man their faith is named after.

They SHOULD be afraid to admit they loved Jesus if they actually READ the parts of their bible that Jesus is credited with, because Jesus preached keeping your faith between you and God.

But it is a faith that has been mutated into a political entity, which goes against the U.S. Constitution they ALSO fail to read, and forced on a group that is REWARDED for ignorance.

"WHITE HERITAGE" It's time "white" people learn what they really supposed to be "proud" of instead of what they have been sold on as "white pride".

I've never had to kick ass at 6 to 1 odds with "Black Power" people. I've had to deal with that shit with "White Power" assholes, and I'm a pasty ass, pink as shit, Irishman.

Clearly I'm NOT "white", honestly... see no advantage to being one outside of prison where I would probably be pigeon holed into being by extremists into aligning with ARYAN Nation simply because my white skin would prohibit me from teaming up other groups.

A majority of Xristianity SHOULD be under attack. The fear of Jade Helm, and Obama is a representation of their collective guilty conscience.

They KNOW they have violated the Constitution.

They know they have taken God’s name in vain.

They know they have the wrath of God coming and refuse to accept that they are the "bad guy".

They are so afraid, because they knows they have this coming, and if our roles were reversed they would gladly bring US to HIS justice.

They know… deep down, that they deserve to die. That their children need to be saved from his ideology.

War is never an agreement to violence. It is one group deciding they have they have the right to kill the other to enforce their will.

You either watch those your loved ones die, and you are victim to those trying to kill you, or you fight back.

The question is, who is trying to "kill" the "Conservative Confederate South"?

We've tried to give them Health Care. We've tried to give them an equal vote.

If anything, the "liberal media" has bent over backward to try and give these inhuman monsters an equal voice to those of sane people with, fact based, reasoning.

YES!!!! I SAY WE SHOULD ENFORCE OUR WILL ON THEM.

I SAY WE SHOULD USE WHATEVER LEVEL OF VIOLENCE IT TAKES NOW, BEFORE WE ARE THE VICTIMS OF THEIRS.

We are literally fighting to make their lives better.

If we cannot find a way to remove them politically as mentally ill, we MUST take this to a level of force before X.C.R.I.S.I.S. is a threat far worse than Daesh (I.S.I.S./I.S.I.L). could be.

I know this ends with SOMEBODY in DEATH CAMPS, and I know it's usually the person willing to compromise that walks into them, and those who look at compromise as weakness who send them, leaving us with only the worst people in the world.

https://medium.com/message/how-white-people-got-made-6eeb076ade42

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erraticfairy · 7 years

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You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught: How to Explain Hatred to Your Children

With world events occurring at lightning/frightening speed, adults who may be bewildered themselves, may feel at a loss to answer the questions their young ones may have about topics they see broadcast on television or hear about on the school bus. In the wake of the virulent rally in Charlottesville and those that have followed since, it is an even more important topic for parents to address. Children will ask questions and it is crucial for answers to be available and not brushed under the rug, as it might seem easier to do.

One such parent is Stefanie Nicolosi, a Philadelphia area photographer. In an article for Newsworks, she explains why she feels it is important to educate children about bigotry in order to create more caring human beings and a just society. The question remains about whether by sheltering our children from the news about what is going on in the world, we are doing them a disservice.

When the World Was Rocked in 1963

I recall vaguely when President Kennedy was assassinated (I was 5 at the time), I couldn’t understand why the adults on television were crying. My mother explained what happened in a way my pre-school age mind could absorb that someone did something bad and killed the president. I don’t remember if I asked why and I imagine my mother would have been hard pressed to have come up with an answer, but try she would have. When I look back at that November day, my child’s mind could have perceived that if the president wasn’t safe from a murderer’s bullet, then how could I be? To the best of my memory, it didn’t go there. I somehow felt protected.

I grew up in Willingboro, NJ (one of the Levitt communities built after WWII; NY and PA are the locations of the other two) which was not an overly diverse town at the time. That evolved by the time I was in high school. We were encouraged to have friends of all religious faiths and we sometimes went to church with them, even though our practice was Judaism. At our Passover table, each year were folks with different beliefs as well. Our Christmas eves were spent at the home of my mom’s BFF Miriam and as we woke up to their rainbow light and tinsel-clad tree with trains running around it, I often wondered how Santa knew to leave presents for two little Jewish girls (my sister and me). Each year my parents took us to an international festival at our local high school and we sampled food, listened to music and learned about various cultures. In 1964 and ’65, we headed to NY for the World’s Fair. There began my love affair with India, since we visited the Indian pavilion. It was the first time I had seen women wearing bindhi and smelled the delicious aroma of Nag Champa incense. Indian cuisine is among my favorites and kirtan (sacred call and response chanting in Sanskrit) part of my spiritual practice.

Why Would Anyone Teach Hatred?

One clear memory was listening to the Rogers and Hammerstein song from the musical South Pacific called “You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught” and questioning my mom about the meaning. I was likely somewhere around 10 at the time.

You’ve got to be taught To hate and fear, You’ve got to be taught From year to year, It’s got to be drummed In your dear little ear You’ve got to be carefully taught.

You’ve got to be taught to be afraid Of people whose eyes are oddly made, And people whose skin is a diff’rent shade, You’ve got to be carefully taught.

You’ve got to be taught before it’s too late, Before you are six or seven or eight, To hate all the people your relatives hate, You’ve got to be carefully taught!

I wondered why anyone would want to teach their children to hate and fear anyone who was different. She patiently explained that some people were so afraid themselves that they passed it on to their children. Blessedly, we were taught by example to love, without regard to differences.

In 1968, in a school in Iowa, 3rd grade teacher Jane Elliott conducted an experiment called A Class Divided which highlighted what happens when children are taught to believe that one group is superior to another by virtue of eye color.

Pro-Social Activism Is Learned

Another anecdote that reflects the values with which my mother was raised that she deeded to me came later in her life. When Barack Obama was elected for the first term, I mused with her about how amazing it was, given that I grew up in the 1960’s and witnessed the inequities that divided folks based on the color of their skin. She related that when she was 18 and her father had recently died, she and my grandmother took a bus trip from Philly to Florida. This was 1942, during WWII and the bus was filled with soldiers, sailors and marines. When the bus pulled into DC, the white bus driver yelled, “All you (and he used the N word that I won’t glorify by spelling out), get to the back of the bus.” At that, my mom stood up and said to my grandmother, “Come on, we’re moving too.” And so they did. I asked her what the driver said and she replied, “Nothing.” And, what did the other passengers say? “Nothing,” but each time they stopped along the way, the military personnel surrounded them to protect them from potentially angry white passengers. I marvel at this anecdote and the family in which I was raised.

When I look back at the past 58 years, I can honestly say that I have not faced overt anti-Semitism. My father related stories of what he experienced as a first- generation American Jewish man in the aftermath of WWII. One was when a fellow sailor examined his hair looking for horns, since this Southern born and bred man was taught that Jews had them. He had epithets such as ‘dirty Jew’ and ‘kike’ hurled at him. I often thought it bordered on paranoia at times, as I called it ‘looking for an anti-Semite under every bed.’

My parents modeled generosity as they volunteered in the community; my mom in the local hospital and with Girl Scouts (she was a cookie mom), our homerooms and swim meets and my dad as a firefighter, in our synagogue and with a young girl in our neighborhood who had Muscular Dystrophy and he did what was then called ‘patterning.’ As a result, I became a volunteer for various organizations, including our local recycling center when I was a teenager. When my now 30 year old son Adam was in high school, he volunteered for Habitat for Humanity, and now as an adult, he put his cooking talents to work for a charity fundraiser via the company he works for.

As parents, Michael (my husband who died in 1998) and I instilled in him the importance of honoring diversity and in his teens, one of his close friends was Gay and to this day, they remain in touch and he was happy for Paul when he heard he got married to the love of his life; another man. His BFF is bi-racial and we refer to him as his “brother from another mother”. At Adam and Lauren’s recent wedding were same sex couples and friends from all over the world.

Family values in our home are wrapped around love, acceptance, dialog, affection, education, activism, mutual respect, service, and celebrating uniqueness. We were carefully taught and so I taught my son. May he pass on that legacy to his children.

How to Share the News with Children

Be informed yourself by watching, reading and listening to reputable news sources.

Provide information in an age appropriate way, using concepts that your children will grasp.

Assure them that you will do your best to keep them safe.

Don’t have the news on 24/7 even if it is tempting during a crisis.

Let your children know that there are things to do to prevent a sense of helplessness, such as getting involved in the community.

There are signs that many families place on their lawns that read, “Hate Has No Home Here” that takes a pro-social stand.

Speak with them openly about peaceful co-existence with people from other cultures and religious beliefs.

from World of Psychology http://ift.tt/2wGugsi via theshiningmind.com

#World of Psychology #child psychology

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positivepsychologyinterventions · 7 years

Text

You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught: How to Explain Hatred to Your Children

When the World Was Rocked in 1963

Why Would Anyone Teach Hatred?

You’ve got to be taught To hate and fear, You’ve got to be taught From year to year, It’s got to be drummed In your dear little ear You’ve got to be carefully taught.

You’ve got to be taught to be afraid Of people whose eyes are oddly made, And people whose skin is a diff’rent shade, You’ve got to be carefully taught.

You’ve got to be taught before it’s too late, Before you are six or seven or eight, To hate all the people your relatives hate, You’ve got to be carefully taught!

Pro-Social Activism Is Learned

How to Share the News with Children

Be informed yourself by watching, reading and listening to reputable news sources.

Provide information in an age appropriate way, using concepts that your children will grasp.

Assure them that you will do your best to keep them safe.

Don’t have the news on 24/7 even if it is tempting during a crisis.

Let your children know that there are things to do to prevent a sense of helplessness, such as getting involved in the community.

There are signs that many families place on their lawns that read, “Hate Has No Home Here” that takes a pro-social stand.

Speak with them openly about peaceful co-existence with people from other cultures and religious beliefs.

from World of Psychology http://ift.tt/2wGugsi via IFTTT

#IFTTT #World of Psychology

0 notes