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blackberry-gingham · 1 year

Text

All We've Ever Known

Gambit x fem!reader | Chpt 1 > Chpt 2

Also available on ao3!

Summary: Retired from the X-Men, and on course for a new life, you and Remy have enjoyed a happy marriage of the last few years. With the slew of welcome, happy changes it's brought to his life, it's little surprise that they've begun to leave their mark on Gambit's person.

You see a happy, loving man who's simply grown into his body at last after a life of rigorous living. He sees a man so disgustingly different from the one you married, it makes him ill. Sparking a one sided divide in your relationship, things come to a head when you try to address things. Little do you know, He's felt this way for a long time now- And the infamous Remy Lebeau is nothing if not stubborn.

Tags: Body image issues, past weight gain, angst, fluff, married couple, and of course dad bod gambit

Tag list: @greenheart99 (I promise this one ends happy bestie 🥲🙏🏻) @samatedeansbroccoli (idk if dad bod is even your thing, feel free to ignore lol)

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Another shirt on the bed. and another. and a small pile of pants all around on the floor. The things that fit, he doesn't like. Or, they don't fit well. Not like the way they should, anyway. Like how they used to.

So, here's another pair of pants, the need for a shirt currently put aside it would seem. These he used to love, strange that he's forgotten where they were for so long. They feel so restrictive coming up- but that's alright, they was always tight in the thigh. "Skinny jeans" and all that. Then with just a little more effort then he remembers needing, they're over the ass and...

They won't close.

But...? No, no. No, if he just pulls real hard and squeezes just right and sucks it in a little, maybe the lips of each hem will at least kiss. Right? They don't even have to button- he'd be happy just to have this... This one, little thing. So he gives one more good, solid pull.

He gives up soon after.

A kiss? Pah- more like a restraining order.

Gambit's arms, thick with muscle, drop to his side. They're far too tired from wrestling with garment after garment in the mirror. He used to love this pair, that he remembers well. Would wear them near everyday, as a mater of fact- Now it feels like he's lucky just to have gotten them up to his ass.

Where oh where has it all gone wrong... Things were so fine, so perfect when you two finally made it. After all the hardships and the differences and the figuring out, you finally made it. You were ready. He was ready. Ready for the long road. Ready for the big commitment.

More then ready- for one girl. Forever.

He can remember every detail from your wedding together- from your flowers to your makeup and hair and dress. The weather the time the songs the food they served the name of the venue- He's still got the suit he wore, you know. Anyone but you would've called it an eyesore, but it was far too him for you to have complained- perfect enough for your perfect day, on that merit alone. It's somewhere in this house, packed away in all this mess...

But he wouldn't dare try to look for it now.

Wouldn't look at it, wouldn't hold it up, and God forbid- wouldn't try it on.

No, he's far too terrified of what he'll be faced with for that. For the reality. The situation he's put himself into. The disappointment. It's a pain he cannot bear- Not lately. Especially not when it's such a dear memory so closely tied to you.

All that was years ago... Your wedding day. Sure you've gotten a little older. A little different here and there. But to him, you are always just the same. Just as gorgeous. Just as perfect. It's so unfair- You're the same now as when he first saw you, on that hot and humid day down in New Orleans. And when he went on that first, fancy date with you after weeks and weeks of trying to convince you. And when he proposed. And when you said yes. And when you got your first house together, and-

But him? Oh, he's changed alright. Just not nearly as gracefully. He used to be so lean and hard when you were dating. Always the same. Always handsome and fit. He was thief, a street rat. What was he if not limber and agile and tight? It was an achievement. A prize that had him winning in the game of life. He had something back then that every man wanted.

Wolverine was a little too bulky.

Cyclops and Kurt way too skinny.

But him? He was always perfect. The right amount of everything- They all knew it, the ladies too. Deep down, he always knew. It was obvious. Obvious enough that he didn't have to pretend to be so confident. So self assured and self absorbed.

Not like the way he has to now.

And wouldn't you know... It worked. Of course it did. He had so much attention. So many women. He could get anyone he wanted, because when all it was down to was his body versus another's- he was every bit the superior.

For a long time, he figured that was just what he'd won you over with. He had looks in the face and a body he knew you wanted to touch, and well... The rest is history. Sure, you would try to tell him it wasn't about that, but that's just how things were between you two. Always kidding. Always teasing, playfully taking the other down a peg.

He knew you didn't mean it when you said that.

It was the same thing when you'd tell him he wasn't taking care of himself. That he didn't eat well, or enough. "A cigarette isn't breakfast", you say. "A glass of whiskey isn't dinner", you say. But he'd only do those things once in a while- So it was fine, wasn't it? Like he said, all jokes. Just teasing.

Until... You got married. Then it was out with the old, in with the new. A new life. New habits. A new him.

Hell, he was so happy... He'd have brought you the moon, if only you'd ask. He still would, too.

Anything to make you happy. Anything that would earn him just a little more of your favor. He'd eat around you, just to keep you appeased. The both of you were living together now, there soon became no excuse to not eat what you'd give him. No excuse to live like a bachelor, and eat like shit- if at all. Not even an excuse to eat lean and calculated protein diets, like the damn X-Men wanted him to. That life was over, and all he remembers is... You were so, so happy. Just to be with him. Just to see him. Just to wake up each morning to these black and red eyes that landed him in the streets, and to go to bed each night listening to the amplified snores out of this big, proud, French nose.

You were finally married. Living together full time. Having every meal together. Every spare moment together. When he was so happy- he forgot all about what he looked like. What he felt like. What did it matter? He was married to the love of his life. He was free at last, never having to worry about ending up alone. So what did he care? He ate a little more- but he could still be the same. He could still wear his clothes and count a few ribs and when you touched his body he had abs to show you and veins and tendons and bones sticking out all over- You like the kind of stuff... right? He always thought so, at least. Why else were you with him, if not?

But somewhere along the way, he started to slip-

He wasn't thinking about what he was and wasn't eating. He wasn't paying attention to when he'd need or receive new or bigger clothes. Maybe here and there it would bother him... But you never treated him any different. Never stopped wanting to be with him or close to him. Never stopped being intimate. Never commented much at all on his looks, save to call him handsome or some such.

Nothing had changed between him and you- and that was all that mattered to him.

For a time, anyway.

Gambit continues to stare blankly at the mirror before him. Palms open, he runs his hand up his torso- from the waistband of his ill fitting pants, over his belly, to just bellow the lumps of his pectorals. The skin tenses as he pulls it up, returning with a gentle bounce when he lets go. He can't even see all the complex, intricate veins and tendons on the back of his hands anymore- His abs are long gone, and all those sinewy, thick veins too.

He's left with a shadow of his collar bone, a blanket over his once sharp, taught jawline and a wealth of pink, itching stretchmarks not quite through with the process of fading to white. They lace up his hips and his stomach and thighs, and if he looks too closely there's even one or two eking out from the sides of pecs-

And all he can think about, is how they never used to be there at all.

Forget the X-Men for a moment- Being a professional thief keeps you in a certain shape all in its own right, especially when you're running with the Guild. Toned but sleek. Streamline but buff. Hell, even when he finally did trade that life for the X-Men, things hardly changed. A little more muscle for the ladies, but not enough to cause him any damage. Quite the opposite, really-

And look at him now, huh?

Gambit turns a little to the side, just enough to get a good look as he flexes his thick arm. All at once as he does so, as though shocked with a stimulating current, the soft fat immediately gives way- Nowhere near as sharp as he'd like, but the entire extremity hardens and shapes. A few shallow lines and dents appear in the flesh, all showing off the magnificently impressive muscles hiding below the surface.

He could split firewood with his bare hands in a body like this- but what use is strength to him at the steep cost of his looks? At the cost of his abs? At the cost of his superhuman agility? At the cost of all the things that he's certain drew you to him to begin with. Those are the things that made him who he was. They defined him, and indeed they still do- They are what allow him to earn your love, after all.

And so without them...

With a deep sigh, Gambit relaxes his arm. Looking back in the mirror and to the long faded stretch marks marring his triceps, he can't help but remember- These were the first. The first, and perhaps the only ones he could tolerate. Who doesn't want bigger biceps, after all? These were but a small toll to pay for that larger goal. Thick muscles to show off all his hard work and training, after all- but Then... Then came all the rest.

He looks back down to his hips and belly. From this angle, he can best see the gentle furrows, the wrinkles, these scars of his carelessness have given him.

Wrinkles... at his age? Who indeed would want that-

"Remy! Are you coming?", you call up, laughing lightly, from somewhere downstairs.

Gambit snaps out of his nightmare, calling back a knee jerk response, "I'm comin'! I'm comin'...", he calls, then sighs.

Even from here, the smell of fresh breakfast wafts through the air. Between the two of you, and with a little training at the start from you to him, this house sees plenty of cooking. He loves to tease that you never make the food spicy enough, and he will all day long if you let him. If anyone else asked, however, he'll be quick to supply the truth- He loves your food. Besides, the simple fact that you'd go through that kind of trouble to make sure he's fed to begin with makes everything taste all the better, he thinks. No ones ever loved him like that before.

Gambit shucks the ill fitting jeans and trades them for whatever it is he was wearing to bed. He doesn't even bother checking the mirror to think about what to match them with- instead he grabs a sweater from the closet beside him. This sweater was his go to back when he was first starting to lose his abs. Just something big and baggy to hide away in- only until he could get his body back and all, of course.

Nowadays it clings to him far more then he would like.

Remy takes a deep breath, sucking it in as he straightens down the front of his top. Whatever you've got prepared, he's not sure he's willing to wait any longer- His stomach growls gruffly at the distant promise of food after a night of being empty.

Either hand already bracing his torso, Gambit clicks his tongue, muttering at the organ, "Now you hush"

With a huff, he lets go of his body and turns to take the long trek downstairs. The felted fabric rubs against his skin with each trot down the steps, itching uncomfortably against his scars, newer and older, and the trail of hair down below. It itches and jostles- and it makes him sick, just at the thought of himself.

They cloud his head all the way down, until he turns the corner... and the refreshing surprise of your lips on his clear the noise away. Caught off guard, a blissful groan escapes from him to you and the wash of peace is almost enough to distract him from your hands resting on his stomach. In your defense, he knows it's not your fault- It's only for balance on account of having to lean up and now over, too, to reach him.

Gambit sighs again, only this time without the joy of the first one. He remembers a time when your hands went to his chest when you kissed- He could pull you flat against his abs, get that little rush when you'd reach up on the tips of your toes to kiss him. Now he has no choice but to lean forward or be pulled in to meet you half way if he wants just one of said kisses.

You give his waist a welcoming few scratches and steal another kiss. Gambit takes your hands in his, holding them gently but firmly enough to ensure you cease such ministrations. He massages the back of your hands instead and anoints you with a kiss for forgiveness. There's something about your nails on the thin skin of his scars, even through his clothes, that scratch those old itches so, deliciously right.

He wonders if you know what it does to him. The relief. The comfort. The intimacy- He figures you must. After all, you're too sharp for him. Too attuned to his moods. To his subtle sounds and gestures and looks. Besides, he's none to proud of the noises that little move has gotten from him whenever he was too tired to know better. If that wasn't a give away, he's not sure what would've been.

Looking up with nothing but that sweet, sweet smile you let him hold your hands between the two of you.

"Mornin' ta you too, Cher"

You laugh, "I was starting to think you weren't coming"

"Aw, you know Gambit never miss a meal a' yours darlin", he squeezes your hands once more and nuzzles you with a playful growl- if only to disguise the petulant rumbling of his stomach.

The eggs and all are still warm when at last you both sit. You eat in a comfortable silence, a small but essential detail to married life. Strange, he never thought about the comforts of something as small as having someone to eat each meal with would offer... but he now knows it's one he wouldn't want to live without.

As always, the food is tasty and satisfying. He scarfs it down a little faster then he wants to, just to get his guts to be silent. You return his play of events with a curious glance, "Would you slow down? No one's going to take it from you, baby"

Your attempt at lighthearted teasing is far too overshadowed by the notes of concern within your own voice. In truth, it's not the speed that concerns you- no, you're used to him being a good, strong eater. It's the subtle things. The way he stabs the food a little too aggressively. The way he continues to huff bitterly through his nose.

It's not that he's not enjoying his meal- the satisfied little sighs after every other mouthful or so tells you that. It's more like... like he just wants to get this out of the way.

Odd... That's not like him.

As soon as you speak up, the strange mood seems to lift. He tries to smile and blow a compulsory huff of laughter and apology. He slows down, but that's not the change you were looking to help with. Still, it'll do you suppose. You shake the interaction out of your head and go back to your meal. When you've cut all that needs cutting upon your plate, you reach out to hold his hand while you eat- as you always do. You both enjoy quietly, with the occasional small talk around mouthfuls of food, as you always do. And when he's finished fighting with his meal, you offer him the remainder of what you couldn't finish from yours, just as you always do.

Gambit looks from his plate to yours, a guilty twinge coming over his thoughts. He makes a habit to never get enough food for himself- it feels far too incriminating to just outright take the amount he'd really like to have. It's an odd habit you think. And indeed, you know he does it- but still, one you've come to adapt to anyway. To compensate, you always take a little more for yourself then you know you can eat and give the intentional leftovers to him. He's never complained before- and after a while, it's now simply become habit.

The uncomfortable gnaw of a not quite satisfied stomach aches at him. It's almost like a pain. A wound. He can feel it, and the temptation to patch it up is so, so obtainable... He leans forward no more then a hair, just barely into the commitment of accepting your offer, only...

A half empty stomach may feel bad- but not quite as terrible as the way this shirt feels clinging around the paunch in his lap.

Gambit sniffs, twitching his aquiline nose sharply- a quick and clever disguise over the flash of a sneer he makes at himself, "Uh, no t'anks mama- Gambit not hungry"

He leaves you no room to question his choice- instead, he rises taking his and your plates with him to the sink. Any suspicions you would pose, are shut down with a grateful kiss to your forehead before he walks off. With an unreadable expression, you watch him scrape the food off your plate and down the sink.

Strange, you've never seen him turn you down before...

But you give your head a little shake to clear it. Perhaps he really is just full. No need to think too hard- You sigh to yourself and get up to help. On your way to clear the stove, you lay a hand across his back as thanks. After all, if there were an issue, you're sure he would tell you.

Right?

Breakfast passes and the dishes are done. The dissatisfaction of his stomach turns from mere annoyance, back to hunger, in a matter of hardly an hour. He tells himself he isn't hungry over and over and over again... but the success rate is low indeed. So instead, there he stands before the washer and dryer- burying himself in chores to distract from his woes.

In a set of real clothes at last, Gambit pulls out a shirt of his and gives it a snap before finding a hanger to put it on. He grumbles and hikes up his jeans yet again before leaning back down for the next article. Really, he grows weary of this room. Of this chore- This is just the place when he started to really take notice of how bad things were getting for himself, after all.

Now, he'll never forget.

Doing his own laundry. Hanging up his own jeans. Only to think to himself... There was no way these could be his. He'd always had a boxy waist, true enough. But only proportionately. Only in that it never cut in much from the width of his ribs. Even so- he was always slim. Slim enough that he's certain he'd never see pants of his that could be this wide.

But, they had to be- They were all like that, after all. Every single one in the wash, all roughly the same size as the last. Even now, he wishes he could choose not to believe it. He snaps the pants out and holds them aloft, inspecting them until he can no longer stand to look at them in full. He holds them closer and rolls apart the front and back of the waistband. On the back tag, he has only to read the inches starting with "4" before he winces.

He remembers when all his pants started with a low 3-somethng. Even just that difference was far more preferable to the 40s he's holding now.

Once, a while ago, the idea had entered his head that perhaps he was merely remembering wrong. He'd always been boxy, was he ever really that small in the waist? After all, he still had old clothes stored up somewhere... Where were those? He just wanted to see... Call it peace of mind, if you will.

Maybe he was remembering wrong- Surely that was all.

He remembers cutting out from the laundry room that day, the perfect time to do this without your notice. He remembers scuttling up to the attic, digging through all the boxes and boxes of old shit that he always told you he'd get around to getting rid of, but never did- He remembers he was so determined to be right. So sure that he hadn't let things get all too bad. He just needed to see that things hadn't changed as much as he thought.

Yes... That would do. That would appease him. It would soothe his ego enough for now before he made work towards shedding the weight. Towards getting back on track.

And when he finally found that box he was looking for... All he remembered, was how his blood ran cold.

Not quite a pair of pants, but there was that shirt- The one he'd wear under his armor, for compression and a tad of extra protection. It was a special weave, meant to supplement the suit he wore on the outside. And when he held it up, all those months ago...

It felt like a garment for a child.

It hadn't been washed. Hadn't shrunk. It was perfectly preserved up here with all the rest, and yet... What more was there to say? After such a crushing blow as that- He hadn't the heart to keep digging through the old clothes. No, his next move was to package it up in defeat and let you give it all away. He didn't even want the possibility of a reminder.

To this day, he still doesn't quite remember what those old pants of his used to measure. And further still- He's not sure he wants to.

That was about 4 months ago.

Tonight, Gambit braces his hands on the bathroom sink, leaning in close to the mirror before him. He clears a circle in the residual steam from his shower to take a good long look at his face. A swath of stubble has overtaken his jaw and chin. Normally this is admittedly of little interest to him- After all, the women always loved a little scruff, who cared if it wasn't perfectly shaped up all the time?

But, that was back when he couldn't see the underside of his jaw while looking straight on. Back when he didn't have this ghost of a double chin- Back when he actually had a nice jawline to give the hair some shape. Now? He feels like just another disheveled slob.

It's always a battle choosing. To shave or not to shave? And even then- how much is too much, or too little? He hates the way it grows down to his throat, but so too does he despise the way being perfectly clean shaven highlights that puffy, baby look his cheeks have come to possess. With a practiced flick, Gambit opens his straight edge and decides to get to work. Now that he's thinking about it, he doesn't want to have to look this long at himself for a while...

Maybe shaving down completely is for the best.

With long strokes of the razor, soon enough he falls into habit again. Gambit watches his hand for a little, before growing bored. His eyes flick back up in the mirror, making contact with his own reflection. His eyes, black with all but glowing rings of red, stare back at him. They look so, so tired... To think, these were the very things that got him put out by his own parents. Dumped in the streets and on the fringes of society ever since.

It was different enough to be noticed, but never so much so that it scared off the masses too bad. He was... unique, sure. But he never thought of himself much as a monster. To claim such a title would be laughable at best and distasteful at worst with the likes of Hank and Kurt around, but... Now? Now he thinks about it all the time. What else is there to call himself? Big and ugly and nothing like how he used to be not but a few years back-

Now, he looks more the part. The disgusting creature all those anti mutant mobs want to make people like him, like mutant kind as a whole, out to be. His limbs are thick and muscular, his body heavy set now that it's filled out to it's potential. Like he could cause some real damage if he wanted. Like he could rip through rebar or punch through rocks- like he could be scary. Dangerous, even, only now you can see it with but the assistance of his discolored eyes, instead of getting caught off guard by the surprise and might of his powers.

It doesn't feel good.

It doesn't feel earned or empowering or brag worthy... To be so big. So strong. So intimidating to look at.

It feels like it makes him ugly. Like he doesn't deserve someone as gorgeous and perfectly normal as you. Like he doesn't deserve the food he eats, or the clothes he wears, or the tender affections you lie and bestow upon him.

Gambit turns his head this way and that, inspecting the shave job. He runs a hand from his chin to his throat, feeling the soft little slope of skin disguising the bone beneath it, then eyes the expected outcome- those puffy baby cheeks and that soft jaw on full, glistening display. With that same long gaze, he watches the man in the mirror. His eyes are lost, scanning all over at the imperfections. God, he could stand here all night picking himself apart- Which makes him at least a little thankful to be rescued by your voice.

You call him out of the bathroom, urging him to come to bed at last. Remy sighs, reaching tiredly for one of many vaguely baggy shirts that he's regulated to a pj top.

"Comin", he calls back, pulling the shirt over his mostly dry body and trudging out the door.

The two of you exchange greetings and small talk for a decent while- but it's not until the conversation hits that sweet spot, the one where he knows you're going to lean in to wind down. The part where you're going to reach over to touch him. To try and cuddle. This past week, he's done a masterful job of evading this little part.

Although... Not because he wants to, per say.

It's because he must.

He's done so much to try and hide himself from you. Only he can know how far he's let himself go. Only he can be allowed the sting of being faced with the fact that he is no longer the man you married. The Remy you knew was svelte and trim and the most handsome man around. If you knew how much different he was, how really different- There's not a doubt in his mind that you'd come to hate him. To reject him-

Just as he hates and rejects himself.

What good is he to you like this? An embarrassment- That's what.

You continue on with your sentence, blissfully unaware of the turmoil in his mind, as your hand reaches out to rest on his dense body. Ever the clever mind, Gambit yawns and stretches big. He doesn't interrupt your little speech- but he does turn to his side and lay down. Away from you.

He pulls the blanket up, and hums along to show at least some degree of engagement with the things you say. But even so- it pains him to hear that drop of disappointment in your voice. He thinks again, maybe a little glance over his shoulder to at least look at you while you talk. Not good enough, it would seem.

With a barely disguised frown, you lay down on your own side too, watching his back dejectedly as you finish up your closing thought.

"Are you, uh... tired, then?"

Gambit turns over his shoulder once, then twice, as though your statement surprises him, "Hm? Oh, uh- yeah. Sorry cherie, Gambit have a long day, das' all"

You hum and nod, more to yourself then anything else. Gambit shoots you a small smile, doing wonders to conceal the guilt pounding inside him. With nothing left to be said, you wish him a good night... and click off the light.

#remy lebeau #gambit x reader

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jasonraish · 1 year

Photo

LINK TO BUY HERE

I tried to do something a little different this year and change the format of my Croquet and Ink series and add a little narrative possibility to it where the viewer can imagine their own story. Are they at separate croquet garden party fundraisers? One in Connecticut and one in Los Angeles and someone has slighted someone and now made someone's sh!t list and are now advising their partner/colleague/cousin via long distance phone call delivered by the white gloved butler directly to the croquet pitch to buy that business right out from under their new arch nemesis' husband's feet? The possibilities are endless. I also thought the prints would be fun displayed as a pair back to back with the phone lines less than subtly hinting at a connection.

A Dandy Wellington and Jason Raish collaboration. 100% of proceeds donated to The FIT Black Student Illustrators Award fund. These timed editions are available for 2 weeks only, never to be printed again (edition size will be the final number of prints sold). Sales begin April 28th @12:00pm EST until May 12th @12:00pm EST

LINK TO BUY HERE

$1,500 no-strings-attached awards will be given to Black student applicants displaying artistic merit and financial need graduating from New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology BFA illustration program. Recipients can do as they please with the award money as there’s no one way to reach your artistic goals. Recent data from The Illustrators Survey shows that 3% of the illustration industry is Black. Our goal is to help Black students bridge the gap between graduation and professional success so they can be seen, heard, and shape the narrative of this industry they are so underrepresented in.

If you want to make an individual donation please go to www.fitnyc.edu/give and be sure note the changed process: Choose other from the dropdown menu and manually type in FIT Black Student Illustrators Award to ensure you are donating to this fund. It is a 501(c)(3) organization. All the accounting and final $ amount of proceeds will be transparently and publicly shown and the final edition size announced.

I continued my Croquet and Ink series and created 2 illustrations exclusively for this fundraiser. This series takes the stuffy, conservative, homogenous nature of vintage high fashion and sets it alongside the rebellious self expression of tattoos (Japanese Ukiyo-e inspired). Add the historically upper crust game of croquet and you’ve got Croquet and Ink. As Dandy Wellington says: Vintage Style NOT Vintage Values.

In the summer of 2020 I found myself feeling paralyzed and useless during the renewed social justice movement and wanted to do something. Dandy Wellington and I have known each other for a few years and when he issued his #BlackApparelArts challenge I thought maybe the best thing I can do as an illustrator is fundraise with my art. I had just started teaching at FIT (my alma mater), we got together, ruminated, slapped our knees and said, this whole thing was born of illustration why don’t we get hyper-local and and support Black illustration students at FIT! We got to work and this is our 3rd year doing this. The fund was created under the FIT Foundation 501(c)(3) charitable giving arm.

We've partnered with FIT's own PrintFX print lab for the 12x18” Epson giclée 192 g/m matte archival prints to be signed and numbered. I've also partnered with Framebridge to provide framing. I personally use them a lot and make no money from this, I just want people to have a nice time and alleviate the hassle of getting things framed. 10% of Framebridge's cost will be donated to the fund and 100% of print proceeds will be donated.

For Prints: Save on shipping when you order two or more. For Frames: Free shipping provided by Framebridge when you buy a frame. I ship them the signed print, they frame it and ship it to you. Please allow 4-6 weeks for shipping as it's just me packing and shipping orders, on top of Framebridge's processing time.

Purchasers and donors are encouraged to leave a comment/note/encouragement at the checkout screen for the future recipients of this award and I will make sure they receive them. Hopefully this initiative is a start to diversifying the illustration industry and getting some great art for your walls at the same time!

And as always support the previous years winners:

Corinne Southerland @cori456_joyce, Adesewa Adekoya @blk.indigo, Shaniya Carrington @scrco.art, Jenis Littles @jenisdraws, Rico Ford @rico_antonio76, Dayna Moore @designmoore_studios

#illustration #fashion illustration #artists on tumblr #fyiart #croquet #representation matters #fit black student illustrators award #fashion institute of technology #dandy wellington #vintage fashion #vintage style #women's fashion #women's style #men's fashion #men's style #1920s fashion #lawn party #black illustrators

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weekend-whip · 2 years

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What could be said about the other elements in that regard? Like Green, Water and Surprise, even Wu and Garmadon’s elements of Creation and Destruction? (I’m loving this thing you’ve got going on literary parallels make me so happy)

Nya and Water: Ah I’ve actually got a whole rant about Nya right here, but for Legacyverse specifics, Water is the element of adaptability, able to take whatever shape it needs as the situation demands. This philosophy is why Nya tries so many things, picks them up really quickly, and then moves onto the next thing (either when she gets bored of being too good at it or when she fails to improve upon it any further...which is part of why Wu was hesitant to initially make her a ninja). Water can be turbulent, as Nya can be when angered or frustrated, but it can be calm and soothing as well, as Nya can be when comforting her friends. But, there’s so many sides to her that sometimes she struggles with what she wants her identity to be, not always realizing that every aspect is her is always going to be her, regardless of the form it takes (...which, spoiler, is what’s keeping her from currently achieving True Potential), as water is always water no mater if it comes in rain, ice, the ocean, a stream, mist, brook, or in a boiling pot on a stove.

Lloyd and “Green”: Oof, I’m skirting the edge of spoilers with this one, but we can talk about the basics: as we know well by this point, the Green Element is the ultimate combination of the Core Four Elements. As a result, Lloyd’s personality is reflective of the Core Four themselves (as pointed out by Cole in Chapter 10 of Born to Be). He’s intuitive yet excitable like Jay, he’s vigilant and persistent like Kai (albeit a bit less so), he’s stubborn, strategic, and sympathetic like Cole, and he’s analytic and (when he’s older) calm-minded like Zane (and if we wanna push more, he’s also good at adapting like Nya is)...and the amalgamation of all that comes together to create something entirely new, and entirely Lloyd.

The Green Element is the element of connection, always finding a way to empathize with anyone and everyone else.

Jesse and Surprise: The tragic thing about being the Master of Surprise is, when you’re able to surprise everyone, everyone is also able to surprise you back. This leads into him being somewhat paranoid about things going wrong, and also leads to a lack of confidence in the good things that do happen. (There’s also the fact that the last time he ignored his intuition of surprises, someone got really hurt, and now feels constantly obligated to help out if and when he can as a result). But—partly—because he feels like he’s no use as regular himself, he would rather contribute help as the Fuchsia Ninja, and as a result is more confident with his powers and is able to use them more effectively (which...doesn’t actually help his confidence in the usual day-to-day, so he’s a bit stuck in a loop at the moment).

On the less depressing side of things, Jesse does like to use his powers to remind people that there’s magic in the mundane, wonder in the every-day things we take for granted, as is what the Element of Surprise was initially representative of: the merit of the unpredictability of life (and the First Elemental Master of Surprise, who is actually still alive, will tell you the same thing).

Wu/Creation +Garmadon/Destruction: All right, not gonna lie, their personalities aren’t exactly derived from their Essences, but more that they wind up playing off each other, as one sibling has what the other lacks. Wu is able to give things shape, form, and sometimes even a purpose, but then can’t take it back and must live with the results of his choices and the consequences of the responsibility. For example, he created the lie that did leave Ninjago in a state of peace (and kept Lloyd safe), but also left Ninjago in a state of ignorance as well (and that doesn’t get fully rectified until Season 4). Wu’s never going to be able to destroy the consequences of that decision, even if it was done with good intention.

Garmadon, meanwhile, can only take away things that already exist, never able to bring them back, and, under normal circumstances, carries the responsibility of being able to remove things that no longer required to make room to create newer, better things. There are good reasons to destroy things, but compounded with the venom reacting with his oni blood + decades of boiling bad feelings, it can be hard to want much else from life than to destroy it. (But he later realizes that there was one thing he got to create, and it was his best creation of all: his own son).

#ninjago #the lego ninjago movie #ninjago oc #nya smith #lloyd garmadon #oc: jesse marvell #master wu #lord garmadon #legacyverse #the ninja legacy whip #legacy lore #long post

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bllsbailey · 5 months

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Cheer on Academia Burning Itself Down 👍

Never interrupt your enemy when he/she/they/xe/zorp is making a mistake, and the Ivy Leagues are making a huge one. Talk about getting high on your own supply – for the last few decades, our allegedly prestigious universities have been dealing out highly addictive nonsense to their students, and it looks like they huffed a big rail of it. How else could you explain having three university poohbahs sit there on camera in front of Congress and be unable – or, more likely, unwilling – to say that cheering on Jewish genocide is bad?

Is it bad? Yes. Period. Nothing follows.

They did not say that because they actually do not believe it. To them, Jews are settlers and colonists, and decolonization is, well, messy. The mess being, of course, the blood and guts of the men, women, and children that their semi-human Hamas heroes splattered all over their victims’ homes. Understand that to these bureaucrats and to those in their academic cesspool, this butchery is A-OK. Oh, they will pretend to decry it. They will mutter some qualifications, but what matters to them is context. And they accept the possibility that there is a context that allows mass rape, mutilation, and murder – as long as a designated oppressor is raped, mutilated, or murdered.

What they failed to understand is that normal people do not accept this morally bankrupt paradigm. Oh, they soon found out. When a bunch of alumni who had fond memories of their alma maters suddenly saw what their schools had degenerated into, they stopped writing their zillion-dollar checks. Then the backpedaling began. The head of Penn was canned, but – as of this writing – the head of Harvard seems unlikely to follow. According to CNN – unlike the Harvard head, I believe citation is important – “The Executive Committee of Harvard University’s Alumni Association on Monday announced their unreserved support for President Claudine Gay.” I could not be happier that these tools have tossed another can of gasoline onto the fire burning down their garbage institution.

Recommended

Let’s examine Harvard, the alleged pinnacle of academic achievement and scholarship. It has a multi-billion dollar endowment, which a real Republican Party would tax, but its true power is its reputation. The name “Harvard” is such that any hiring partner at a law firm or brokerage house or wherever has a ready-made excuse if the recruit blows it: “Well, he/she/whatever was from Harvard.”

Or had an excuse. Harvard is not Harvard anymore. The majority of grades given at Harvard are A’s. At one time, “A” stood for “outstanding.” Now, it stands for “average.” The admissions process is no longer merit-based. It is diversity-based, as SCOTUS recently noted when it slapped the college for its racism. Asian and white students need stratospheric grades and more to get in; those whose grandparents hailed from the right continent do not. Diversity is an explicit rejection of merit, though you are not supposed to say it. Well, everyone is seeing it and saying it.

Harvard’s current president is a shining example of diversity in action. She was not hired because she was talented. She is demonstrably untalented. She was hired because she is diverse, meaning she checked boxes that should be meaningless but, in academia, mean everything. She – I am assuming her pronouns – is no brilliant scholar. She published just 11 academic articles in her career. That’s a joke. And her topics were a joke too, the typical race/gender/jargon nonsense that these untalented hacks generate. But the punchline is not that her work is crap. It was that she plagiarized it. It’s not even her crap. Hell, if you are going to steal, steal stuff that’s not garbage. Oh, and be able to speak in public without embarrassing yourself.

But she was not hired for competence and integrity. She was hired both for block-checking and for her promise to put DEI front and center at the university. And she sure has. It’s so front and center that they cannot hide the rot anymore. Her sordid and shameful career demonstrates the problem with prioritizing diversity over merit. You get diversity (of a sort), but you don’t get merit. And merit was the Harvard brand. That was the value of the Harvard diploma. It was shorthand for “This kid is probably pretty smart and will do a good job for you.” But we are seeing that this is no longer true. We are seeing the opposite – these kids are entitled pinko morons strutting around in their keffiyehs being mad that Jews are alive. They are not bright. They are not articulate. They are arrogant and stupid.

That’s the new Harvard brand, and we are all seeing it. But the school cannot change course. Insanely, 600 faculty members signed a letter of support for their plagiarizing prezzy. The alumni committee high-fived her. It hardly matters, though. It’s not a matter of terminating the reign of one thieving mediocrity. The woke cancer has metastasized throughout the school and through all these schools. It infects every corner of them – you now have med schools that talk about prioritizing equity over, you know, curing people.

But people notice. These idiots – no one is as dumb as a university professor or bureaucrat – are undermining their value proposition. When the schools suck, they put out sucky products. People notice. And they are noticing. The fact is that those talented folks who lost a place at Harvard over their pigment and parentage are going to school somewhere, and they are available to employers. People do not have to hire from Harvard. In the law field, many people refuse to hire useless Ivy League junior lawyers – they have been burned too often. This will spread.

Good. The era of these petri dishes of commie indoctrination is ending. They are trashing their reps just as an alternative arises. The internet and AI can provide the world’s best teachers to students anywhere in the world, not just in the Ivies’ hallowed lecture halls. Who needs Harvard? And don’t say, “You do if you want to network.” As they squander their prestige, their network value shrinks. Plus, the GOP is getting sick of them, and soon it will be forced by the voters to turn off the cash spigot and ramp up the investigations over the colleges’ rampant racism.

It is a glorious time to be alive, to watch creative destruction at work. And you could not find a more deserving victim.

Look, we need your help to keep up the fight by joining Townhall VIP right now. You get access to a bunch of great stuff, not the least of which is my extra Wednesday column, the weekly Stream of Kurtiousness videos every Friday, my Unredacted podcast every Monday, my VIP members-only direct email address, and more! Join now! Use promo code SAVEAMERICA for 50% off membership.

Follow Kurt on Twitter @KurtSchlichter. Get the newest volume in the Kelly Turnbull People’s Republic series of conservative action novels set in America after a notional national divorce, the bestselling Amazon #1 Military Thriller, Overlord!

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enigmaincrimson-personal · 6 months

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I do sort of wonder how Raynare would handle being basically brought back from the dead and kept as a familiar for Evelyn's studies and amusement...

Like... Would the experience of her entire existence being dependent on something that is far more maddeningly horrifying than that smile of hers can depict effectively break her or... Will she try to learn the lesson and become a better person?

Because I can see Fallen angels as well as Devils from the Old Satan faction be drawn to Evelyn simply on the merit that she somehow has the inherited power to ressurrect or even create anything she desires... Just needs the training.

Little do they know is the kind of incomprehensible dangers that would come from trying to awaken that power in her by force.

As for Raynare... I'd suppose Evelyn has her own motives for bringing the fallen angel back... The question is how would she handle the experience of being brought back and essentially reduced to what amounts to a pet... With the idea of being reincarnated as a devil only being a partial relief from the constant torment.

A Custodi's power isn't something you can escape from...

But what would a mind broken Raynare look and act? Like a polite little doll living under the constant fear of a fate worse than death, knowing she could be remade or unmade at any time if she doesn't keep her new mater happy?

She can't run away or kill her master to gain her freedom, it's not something you can lie to or bargain with either...

Although amusingly, (not so much for anyone caught up in it.) Evelyn probably does take a look at the places her younger half-sister has been and finds anything she can salvage.

The question is... If given a second chance, would they accept it for what it is, or seek to abuse it as soon as backs are turned?

And would the realization of the price break or make them?

#enigmaincrimson #ooc

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piouscatholic · 8 months

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#QUEENSHIPOFTHEBLESSEDVIRGINMARY🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

<Treatise on True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary-

INTRODUCTION OF SAINT LOUIS MARIE DE MONTFORT>

1. It was through the Blessed Virgin Mary that Jesus came into the world, and it is also through her that he must reign in the world.

2. Because Mary remained hidden during her life she is called by the Holy Spirit and the Church

“Alma Mater”,

Mother hidden and unknown.

So great was her humility that she desired nothing more upon earth than to remain unknown to herself and to others, and to be known only to God.

3. In answer to her prayers to remain hidden, poor and lowly,

God was pleased to conceal her from nearly every other human creature in her conception, her birth, her life, her mysteries,

her resurrection and assumption. Her own parents did not really know her;

and the angels would often ask one another,

“Who can she possibly be?”

for God had hidden her from them,

or if he did reveal anything to them,

it was nothing compared with what he withheld.

4. God the Father willed that she should perform no miracle during her life,

at least no public one, although he had given her the power to do so.

God the Son willed that she should speak very little although he had imparted his wisdom to her.

Even though Mary was his faithful spouse,

God the Holy Spirit willed that his apostles and evangelists should say very little about her and then only as much as was necessary to make Jesus known.

5. Mary is the supreme masterpiece of Almighty God and he has reserved the knowledge and possession of her for himself.

She is the glorious Mother of God the Son who chose to humble and conceal her during her lifetime in order to foster her humility. He called her “Woman” as if she were a stranger, although in his heart he esteemed and loved her above all men and angels. Mary is the sealed fountain and the faithful spouse of the Holy Spirit where only he may enter. She is the sanctuary and resting-place of the Blessed Trinity where God dwells in greater and more divine splendor than anywhere else in the universe,

not excluding his dwelling above the cherubim and seraphim.

No creature, however pure, may enter there without being specially privileged.

6. I declare with the saints:

Mary is the earthly paradise of Jesus Christ the new Adam,

where he became man by the power of the Holy Spirit,

in order to accomplish in her wonders beyond our understanding.

She is the vast and divine world of God where unutterable marvels and beauties are to be found. She is the magnificence of the Almighty where he hid his only Son, as in his own bosom,

and with him everything that is most excellent and precious. What great and hidden things the all-powerful God has done for this wonderful creature,

as she herself had to confess in spite of her great humility, “The Almighty has done great things for me.”

The world does not know these things because it is incapable and unworthy of knowing them.

7. The saints have said wonderful things of Mary,

the holy City of God,

and, as they themselves admit,

they were never more eloquent and more pleased than when they spoke of her.

And yet they maintain that the height of her merits rising up to the throne of the Godhead cannot be perceived;

the breadth of her love which is wider than the earth cannot be measured;

the greatness of the power which she wields over one who is God cannot be conceived; and the depths of her profound humility and all her virtues and graces cannot be sounded.

What incomprehensible height!

What indescribable breadth!

What immeasurable greatness!

What an impenetrable abyss!

8. Every day, from one end of the earth to the other,

in the highest heaven and in the lowest abyss,

all things preach,

all things proclaim the wondrous Virgin Mary.

The nine choirs of angels,

men and women of every age, rank and religion,

both good and evil,

even the very devils themselves are compelled by the force of truth, willingly or unwillingly,

to call her blessed.

According to St. Bonaventure, all the angels in heaven unceasingly call out to her:

“Holy, holy, holy Mary, Virgin Mother of God.”

They greet her countless times each day with the angelic greeting,

“Hail, Mary”, while prostrating themselves before her, begging her as a favor to honor them with one of her requests.

According to St. Augustine, even St. Michael, though prince of all the heavenly court is the most eager of all the angels to honor her and lead others to honor her.

At all times he awaits the privilege of going at her word to the aid of one of her servants.

9. The whole world is filled with her glory, and this is especially true of Christian peoples,

who have chosen her as guardian and protectress of kingdoms, provinces, dioceses,

and towns.

Many cathedrals are consecrated to God in her name.

There is no church without an altar dedicated to her,

no country or region without at least one of her miraculous images where all kinds of afflictions are cured and all sorts of benefits received.

Many are the confraternities and associations honoring her as patron;

many are the orders under her name and protection;

many are the members of sodalities and religious of all congregations who voice her praises and make known her compassion.

There is not a child who does not praise her by lisping a Hail Mary.

There is scarcely a sinner, however hardened, who does not possess some spark of confidence in her.

The very devils in hell, while fearing her, show her respect.

10. And yet in truth we must still say with the saints:

De Maria numquam satis :

We have still not praised, exalted, honored, loved and served Mary adequately.

She is worthy of even more praise, respect,

love and service.

11. Moreover, we should repeat after the Holy Spirit,

“All the glory of the king’s daughter is within”, meaning that all the external glory which heaven and earth vie with each other to give her is nothing compared to what she has received interiorly from her Creator, namely,

a glory unknown to insignificant creatures like us,

who cannot penetrate into the secrets of the king.

12. Finally,

we must say in the words of the apostle Paul,

“Eye has not seen,

nor ear heard, nor has the heart of man understood” the beauty, the grandeur, the excellence of Mary,

who is indeed a miracle of miracles of grace, nature and glory.

“If you wish to understand the Mother,” says a saint, “then understand the Son.

She is a worthy Mother of God.”

Hic taceat omnis lingua:

Here let every tongue be silent.

13. My heart has dictated with special joy all that I have written to show that Mary has been unknown up till now,

and that that is one of the reasons why Jesus Christ is not known as he should be.

If then, as is certain,

the knowledge and the kingdom of Jesus Christ must come into the world, it can only be as a necessary consequence of the knowledge and reign of Mary.

She who first gave him to the world will establish his kingdom in the world.

#VirgoSacrataCom

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jhapalitimes · 10 months

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Legacy College Admissions Face Scrutiny as Affirmative Action Is Questioned

The aftermath of a recent Supreme Court decision striking down affirmative action in college admissions has sparked a new battleground centered on legacy preferences. Colleges across the United States are facing mounting pressure to abandon the practice of favoring applicants with family ties to alumni, a policy long criticized for perpetuating privilege. As the elimination of affirmative action leaves no counterbalance, activists argue that ending legacy preferences is a crucial first step toward creating a more equitable admissions process. President Joe Biden weighed in on the matter, urging colleges to reevaluate legacy preferences, stating that they "expand privilege instead of opportunity." Several lawmakers, including Democrats in Congress and Republican Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, who is running for the GOP presidential nomination, have also called for an end to the policy in light of the court's decision. Representative Barbara Lee, a California Democrat, emphasized the issue on Twitter, stating, "Let's be clear: affirmative action still exists for white people. It's called legacy admissions." This sentiment resonates with critics of legacy preferences who see the renewed debate as an opportunity to rally public support for their cause. As colleges strive to demonstrate their commitment to diversity in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling, activists are demanding tangible action. They assert that removing legacy preferences would be a simple and effective first step towards enrolling more Black, Hispanic, and Indigenous students. Viet Nguyen, a graduate of Brown and Harvard, leads Ed Mobilizer, a nonprofit organization that has been campaigning against legacy preferences since 2018. In light of the Supreme Court ruling, Nguyen's group is mobilizing alumni from top colleges to pressure their alma maters into ending the practice. Their strategy involves encouraging graduates from 30 prominent institutions, including Harvard, the University of North Carolina, and the Ivy League schools, to withhold donations until legacy preferences are abolished. This push builds upon other ongoing efforts targeting the policy. Colorado has already banned legacy preferences at public universities, while lawmakers in Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New York have introduced similar bills. In Congress, Democrats Representative Jamaal Bowman of New York and Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon are reviving legislation that would prohibit legacy preferences at universities receiving federal funding. Legacy preferences have become an easy target due to the Supreme Court's ruling, which highlighted the issue of merit in college admissions. Critics argue that legacy students gain admission based on their family connections rather than their own merits, suggesting that they are merely "standing on their parents' shoulders," according to Julie Park, an expert on college admissions and racial equity at the University of Maryland. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona has called on colleges to ask themselves "tough questions" and consider the negative implications of legacy admissions and other forms of preferential treatment. Cardona warns that such practices may further tip the scales against well-qualified students from disadvantaged backgrounds. The prevalence and impact of legacy preferences vary among colleges, making it difficult to gauge the exact extent of the practice. However, the disclosure requirements in California offer some insight. USC reported that 14% of last year's admitted students had family ties to alumni or donors, while Stanford reported a similar rate. Notably, at Harvard, legacy students were eight times more likely to be admitted, with nearly 70% of them being white. An Associated Press survey conducted last year found that the percentage of legacy students in the freshman class ranged from 4% to 23% among the nation's most selective colleges. Alarmingly, at four institutions—Notre Dame, USC, Cornell, and Dartmouth—legacy students outnumbered Black students. Supporters of legacy preferences argue that they foster a strong alumni community and encourage donations. However, a 2022 study conducted at an undisclosed college in the Northeast revealed that while legacy students were more likely to make donations, this came at the expense of diversity, as the majority of legacy students were white. In recent years, some prestigious colleges have abandoned the policy, including Amherst College and Johns Hopkins University. Amherst, in particular, saw its share of legacy students in the freshman class decrease by approximately half after discontinuing the practice. Moreover, the school welcomed the highest percentage of first-year students who were the first in their families to attend college. Certain colleges have suggested that as their student bodies become more racially diverse, the benefits of legacy status will extend to students of color. However, opponents argue that white families still enjoy a generational advantage due to past access to higher education. Ivory Toldson, a professor at Howard University and the director of education, innovation, and research for the NAACP, points out the irony of allowing preferences for athletes and legacy students while ignoring race. A May poll conducted by AP-NORC found that the majority of Americans do not believe legacy admissions or donations should carry significant weight in college admissions decisions. Only 9% stated that family ties should be very important, while 18% considered them somewhat important. Similarly, just 10% believed that donations to schools should be very important, with 17% deeming them somewhat important. The poll also revealed that although most Americans support affirmative action in higher education, they believe race should play a minor role. While 63% stated that the Supreme Court should not bar colleges from considering race in admissions, 68% believed that race should not be a significant factor. When contacted, several colleges, including Cornell and the University of Notre Dame, declined to confirm whether they would continue to provide preferential treatment for legacy students in the upcoming admissions cycle. Despite the uncertainty, Viet Nguyen remains optimistic about the prospect of change. He believes that colleges, which have historically been hesitant to lead the way, will be compelled to reconsider their stance on legacy preferences. Nguyen predicts that in the coming months, the question will shift from who will be the first to abandon the policy to who will be the last, as no university wants to be perceived as clinging to outdated practices. Read the full article

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religion-is-a-mental-illness · 4 months

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By: Heather Mac Donald

Published: Dec 15, 2023

University of Pennsylvania president Liz Magill would not have been forced to resign last weekend had Penn’s donors and alumni not been organizing against her for two months.

The Penn rebels have now upped the ante. They have drafted a new constitution for the school that makes merit the sole criterion for student admissions and faculty hiring. The new charter requires the university to embrace institutional neutrality with regard to politics and faculty research. The rebels want candidates for Penn’s presidency to embrace the new charter as a precondition for employment.

With this latest twist in the battle over university leadership, the academy stands at a crossroads. For decades, Wall Street titans funneled billions of dollars into their alma maters, even as those universities promoted ideas inimical to civilizational excellence and economic success. When students started celebrating the October 7 Hamas attacks, however, the mega-donors took note. They did not recognize their campuses, they said, though the pro-Hamas rhetoric came straight from the ethnic- and postcolonial-studies courses that had been a staple of university curricula since the 1980s. Some donors, at Penn and elsewhere, initiated funding boycotts and sought board shake-ups, hoping to pressure their alma maters to correct the anti-Semitism that they deemed responsible for the terror celebrations.

The pro-Hamas protests have exposed the anti-Western ideology that is the sole unifying belief system on college campuses. The question now is whether disgruntled donors and alumni can overcome decades of intellectual misdirection. To do so, they first must define the problem correctly—and avoid the temptation to adopt, for their own purposes, the intersectional Left’s rhetoric about “safety” and “protection” from speech. The proposed new Penn charter is a promising start.

The donor revolt could have broken out at any number of campuses, all of which featured ignorant students cheering on the deliberate massacre of civilians, those students’ faculty enablers and bureaucratic fellow travelers, and feckless presidents. But it first erupted at the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard, perhaps because of the organization and self-confidence of their alumni.

Penn’s most generous donors were already on edge at the time of the October 7 massacre. Two weeks earlier, the university had hosted a conference on Palestinian culture, called the Palestine Writes Literature Festival. The conference speakers were predominantly anti-Zionist; some had long been accused of anti-Semitism. Prominent Jewish alumni, such as Ronald Lauder, demanded that Penn president Magill preemptively cancel the conference. Marc Rowan, chairman of the Wharton School’s Board of Advisors and a $50 million donor to the school, circulated an open letter asking Magill to denounce the conference’s invitations to “known antisemitic speakers,” remove the Penn logo from conference materials, and implement mandatory anti-Semitism training. By September 21, more than 2,000 alumni, including several current members of Penn’s board, had signed the letter.

Conference organizer Susan Abulhawa, a firebrand Palestinian novelist, criticized “the hysterical racist conversations and panic” over the festival. “We remain proud, unbroken, defiant, honoring our ancestors, even though we are battered, colonized, exiled, raw, terrorized and demeaned wholesale,” she announced in typically florid rhetoric. The university tried to split the difference between the festival’s critics and advocates. On September 12, it put out a statement noting “deep concerns about several speakers” and “unequivocally—and emphatically—condemning antisemitism as antithetical” to Penn’s values. The university claimed to “also fiercely support the free exchange of ideas” as central to its educational mission, even ideas “incompatible with [its] institutional values.” The conference went forward without incident, despite the occasional anti-Zionist trope such as might be found on any given day in a Penn class on “settler colonialism.”

Nevertheless, the fuse was ready to be lit. Following the October 7 massacre, Magill made the blunders that would bedevil other college presidents: she did not respond to the attacks with sufficient alacrity to satisfy her critics, and she failed to use the words “I condemn” and “terrorism” when she did respond. By the time she put out a correction on October 15, it was too late; the donor revolt was already spreading. On October 10, Rowan, said to be Penn’s wealthiest alumnus, initiated a second mass movement: a close-the-checkbooks campaign. He urged alumni to send in one dollar to Penn and explain that their ordinary contributions would be suspended until Magill and the chair of Penn’s board, investment bank CEO Scott Bok, resigned. Rowan began emailing a letter to the trustees every day, selecting from among the thousands of such letters from major donors who were closing their checkbooks.

Despite a flurry of big-name and big-dollar defections, including Jon Huntsman (former governor of Utah and ambassador to Russia, China, and Singapore) and David Magerman (a major donor and former overseer of the engineering school), Penn’s power structure was reinforcing its defenses. Throughout October, Penn’s board of trustees put out various statements in support of Magill and Bok; the president of Penn alumni weighed in as well in favor of the status quo.

Behind the scenes, Bok asked the three trustees who had criticized him to resign and suggested that Rowan reconsider his chairmanship of the Wharton board. Leaders of the faculty senate put out a statement on October 19 denouncing “individuals outside of the University who are surveilling both faculty and students in an effort to intimidate them and inhibit their academic freedom.” The senate “tri-chairs” played the wealth card against the recalcitrant donors: academic freedom was “not a commodity that can be bought or sold by those who seek to use their pocketbooks to shape our mission.”

The hypocrisy had reached gargantuan proportions. Even as Penn’s leadership and faculty proclaimed their devotion to free speech, law professor Amy Wax was in the dock for statements criticizing racial preferences and U.S. immigration policy. Since publishing an op-ed in the Philadelphia Inquirer in 2017 advocating the embrace of bourgeois values as a means of economic and social advancement, Wax had been under relentless attack from the law school’s leadership and faculty. The leadership had banned her from teaching first-year law courses. In 2022, Penn initiated a formal investigation to determine whether her “intentional and incessant racist, sexist, xenophobic, and homophobic actions and statements” were serious enough to require a “major sanction” that could include stripping her of tenure and firing her.

No leader of Penn’s faculty senate and no representative from its chapter of the American Association of University Professors objected to the hounding of Wax for protected speech. The board looked the other way. Yet here they all were, declaring Penn a lighthouse of free expression. In fact, the campus Left and its administrative enablers accused their opponents of double standards, since some donors were calling for bans on anti-Israel speech. After the Penn trustees voted to express their confidence in Magill and Bok on October 16, trustee Andy Rachleff, co-founder of Benchmark Capital, scoffed: “There are a lot of people who want free speech—except when it affects them.”

As December began, Magill was acting like a president confident in her staying power—namely, one given to announcing hollow new initiatives couched in vapid bureaucratic prose. On November 30, she released “In Principle and Practice,” a “strategic framework that emphasizes strengthening community, deepening connections, cultivating service-minded leadership, and collaborating across divisions and divides.”

The rebels were in a self-reflective mood. The damage will take generations to undo, one told me. “I hope we have the staying power.” Another said: “I’m mad at all of us. We all kind of knew [how bad things were]. But I’ll be brutally honest: we all wanted the option of having our children and grandchildren go to Penn. If donors say that that is not part of why they donate, they are not telling the truth. We should’ve stopped years ago because we were giving them the rope to hang us with.”

This donor was under no illusion about the ruling ideology on campuses: “If you’re successful and white, you’re evil; if you’re unsuccessful and brown, you must be right.” Yet despite such knowledge, he admits that he was on contribution “autopilot.”

Then Magill and the presidents of Harvard and MIT were called to testify on campus anti-Semitism before a House committee on December 5. That hearing was itself the result of discussions between the Penn donors and committee members. All three presidents came in for a drubbing, above all for their unwillingness to agree that campuses should punish calls for the genocide of Jews. (The question itself was hypothetical; the committee’s lead prosecutor, New York representative Elise Stefanik, extrapolated from actual student chants of “intifada” to a hypothetical call for Jewish genocide.) The resulting uproar was bipartisan. Though it was the genocide question that garnered the most attention, the presidents’ shameless untruths about their campuses’ free-wheeling intellectual environments should have been the most damning.

Another petition against Magill was launched, this time on Change.org. It quickly garnered more than 12,000 signatories. On December 7, Ross Stevens, CEO of Stone Ridge Asset Management, withdrew a $100 million gift that had funded a center for finance at the Wharton School. He would consider restoring the funding only if Magill was replaced.

Penn’s board held an emergency meeting the next day, but it once again declined to oust Magill or Bok. Magill tried to stanch the bleeding by declaring on video that she now understood that some forms of anti-Israel speech must be prohibited on campus.

Magill did not survive the storm. She offered her resignation on December 9. Most surprisingly, Bok tendered his resignation as well. The rebellious donors were jubilant, since they understood that the critical lever for institutional change was boards of trustees, known heretofore only for their hands-off, see-no-evil rubberstamping of whatever direction a university might choose.

Meantime, Harvard’s president Claudine Gay was facing her own crisis, albeit without the same level of organizing behind it as the crisis that had brought down Magill. Some of Harvard’s wealthiest donors had also been closing their checkbooks since October 7, due to Gay’s perceived foot-dragging when it came to condemning the terror attacks. Billionaire investor Bill Ackman had called for the release of the names of student signatories to an early pro-Hamas letter so that firms could avoid hiring those students. The Kennedy School lost millions of dollars in donations. Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, investor Seth Klarman, and three other Harvard Business School graduates responded to the spreading campus militancy on October 23 in an “Open Letter to Harvard Leadership Regarding Antisemitism on Campus.” The letter attracted more than 2,300 alumni signatures in two weeks.

Ackman, who has taken the lead in the campaign against Harvard, had been going through a very public education about the diversity, equity, and inclusion complex. On November 6, he admitted on CNBC that until recently he had never read Harvard’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion statement. When he did, he was surprised to learn that the school’s DEI mandate did not cover “all marginalized groups,” as he put it, such as Asians and Jews. The solution, in Ackman’s view, was to expand the diversity bureaucracy’s client base to include the full panoply of students and faculty who were “at risk of being taken advantage of, of being harmed, of being emotionally harmed,” in his words, by the “majority.” This recommendation showed that Ackman, a liberal Democrat, remained naive about the university. The alleged “marginalized groups” at Harvard and elsewhere are at zero risk of being harmed by the majority; they are petted and fêted at every possible opportunity by an ever-diminishing white subset of the campus population that either embraces its fictional role of oppressor or is dragooned into playing one. A month later, Ackman was calling for the elimination of DEI, though he rushed to deny that he meant to “suggest whatsoever that the goal of a diverse university that is welcoming for all should be abandoned.” But Harvard is already welcoming to all; its only goal should be to provide the most rigorous possible intellectual training for its students.

Harvard had lost billions of dollars in donations since October 7, according to another Ackman missive. Harvard’s overseers met over the weekend of December 9 to consider Gay’s tenure. On December 12, the fellows of the Harvard Corporation announced that Gay retained their ongoing support as the “right leader to help our community heal and to address the very serious societal issues we are facing.” Harvard’s mission, the fellows reiterated at the end of their letter, was addressing “deep societal issues.” What those deep societal issues were, the corporation failed to say—possibly anti-Semitism, but the chances were great that they meant the usual deep issue: racism.

Gay had a supreme advantage that Magill lacked: the magic amulet of race. Magill could check off just one box in the victim sweepstakes: being female. Gay was not only female but the “first black president” of Harvard, as her supporters in the media never tired of reminding us. (MIT president Sally Kornbluth also survived the House anti-Semitism hearing. But MIT’s alumni were only starting to organize against the school’s leadership and had yet to bring significant financial pressure to bear against the school.) The Harvard Corporation is itself 27 percent black (twice the percentage of blacks in the national population) and 36 percent URM (underrepresented minorities, when its Hispanic member is included).

Almost all of Harvard’s black professors wrote a letter as “Black members of the Harvard university faculty” urging Gay’s retention. Any suggestion that Gay was elevated “based on considerations of race and gender are specious and politically motivated,” the professors wrote. Never mind that the chair of the presidential search committee, senior corporation fellow Penny Pritzker, had lauded Gay’s “inclusiveness” and deep appreciation for “diverse voices” upon announcing Gay’s selection. (That the signatories to the current letter of support were themselves all black was apparently another coincidence.) While serving as dean of the faculty of arts and sciences, Gay had released an eight-page template for upping Harvard’s anti-racism work in the aftermath of the 2020 George Floyd race riots. The document, promising an orgy of race-based hiring and curriculum changes, was an early pitch for the presidency. Gay sought, she wrote, to “challenge a status quo that is comfortable and convenient for many.” Read: for Harvard’s whites, who are presumably responsible for the university’s failure to be “truly inclusive,” and who perpetuate the “devastating legacies of slavery and white supremacy.”

Notwithstanding the black faculty’s claim that Gay’s race was irrelevant to her presidency, Harvard’s black alumni also felt called upon to write the fellows in support for Gay’s efforts to build, as they put it, a more “inclusive community.” Her “leadership at Harvard as a Black woman” was “critical and deserving of the opportunity to coalesce and take shape,” the alumni wrote. Gay’s status as the daughter of Haitian immigrants allows her to understand better than anyone else the need for Harvard to “stand against hate,” the black alumni argued. Gay’s rapid ascent up the academic hierarchy—as an undistinguished scholar, at best—represented a triumph over the hate directed at immigrant daughters, we are to believe, however invisible such hate might be to the untrained eye.

This is the first of a two-part article. Tomorrow: Penn 2.0 and the traps awaiting reformist alumni.

#Heather Mac Donald #pro hamas #academic corruption #antisemitism #pro palestine #islam #islamic terrorism #terrorism supporters #islam apologists #religion #hamas terrorism #University of Pennsylvania #Liz Magill #diversity hire #DEI bureaucracy #defund DEI #religion is a mental illness

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anika-blog23 · 1 year

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Are Scholarships Available at Geeta University?

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Remember to prepare well in advance, as the scholarship application process may require gathering documents, writing essays, and meeting specific deadlines.

#gu #geeta university #top university of india #top university of delhi ncr #best university of panipat

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thetherean · 1 year

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Taya

(This was a graduation letter that I had written for the batch that graudated with me from my alma mater. I graduated August 27, 2022.

The message of "taya" comes from a Filipino term and was meant for my batch, but I do think that there may be something here for everyone. I hope it makes sense lol.)

An open letter/essay for ADMU Batch 2018-2022.

The theme of our batch in Ateneo was the word "taya", which is a pretty fun word to play with, all things considered. In the game of tag, it can mean the person that chases their opponent to win the game. Immediately I could think of many ways as to why that would be a really nice idea to play with for a starry-eyed batch, hungry for the future and ready to start their journey into success.

But the intended translation of the word was geared towards equipping us, freshmen at the time, with a mindset meant to take on the uncertainty of a world that keeps no promises. As the first days started, we were posed the question time and time again.

"Saan mo itataya ang sarili mo?"

No english translation of that question will do it justice, because while "taya" loosely refers to the act of betting, of taking a risk and laying everything on the line, those that grew up with the language know through an innate sense that the meaning of the word alludes to so much more than taking a chance.

Back in my old school, my religion teacher would point out that "taya" is the root word of "pananampalataya", our word for "faith." Now I can assure you that this isn't a conversion speech but I know that I've learned much from choosing to stay that path. The important detail to know here is that when "taking a chance" enters the discussion of "faith", often times it becomes not only about a single choice you make in one point in time, but a choice you'll continue to make from now on. This is how I came to understand the question posed earlier.

"Taya" is not simply the act of betting, because to bet is to surrender to chance, and ultimately to surrender to the outcome. Come what may, because when all is said and done, the end justifies the means. "May nakinabang ba sa iyong pagtaya?" The question of "taya" in this sense becomes focused only in the value of death as it's carried forth.

I would witness this time and time again during my stay in the Ateneo, both in other people and in myself whenever we were put to work. Academics, theater and sometimes even friendships and relationships. We push ourselves to the end so often that we don't seem to realize that we've stretched ourselves thin way before we get there, and only in the fruits (or the weeds) of your labor can you find the value of the work you put in.

While I can say that this perspective can very much get you through the work, it doesn't give you peace. You'll look back to that journey only to find yourself filling those late nights of work with the "what ifs" because the means to get to that meaningful end were hollow enough that they were begging to be filled with other meanings, with other possible realities of what you could have done instead. To bet one's self to the end is not a way to live, but a way to die.

But death, however grand or hollow, is only a part of life. Life is the greater value and the bigger prize. To make the most of it, the question of "taya" is not a question of what you are willing to die for, but a question of what you are willing to live for, and it's very difficult to tell the two apart inside the fray. "Taya" is not just about the surrender to chance, but a surrendering of every other possibility of who you could be because all you have and all you are is here and now. It is not a surrender to the outcome, but a surrender to the moments as they unfold before you, not to treat them as mere steps to a goal, but as a good in its own merit. It's not to see it as the choice to end other choices, but the decision that'll make every other decision you will make moving forward as fulfilling to you as it can possibly be. Just as former VP Leni would insist time and time again and once more in our graduation speech, the drive to win was important but the ultimate goal we must share is the nurturing of the will to serve and to continue to serve long after all.

This is probably why the game of tag was such a fun thought to indulge in with regards to this theme, because the game only comes to life when the "taya" is driven to win. It comes to life in every route they plan to take to get to their opponent. It comes to life with every inch their hand moves closer to their goal. It comes to life when they finally take one on their side and they begin to start working together and even the odds, and when the game is done and the drive to win is settled with a verdict, it can come back to life in the decision to play again. For as long as we live, we can always choose to play again.

Looking back at the four years I spent in the Ateneo, I have to be honest and say that while I took all of this (maybe a little too much) to heart, I'd lost more than I had gained in betting myself because I threw myself into everything and committed to very little. Prior to Ateneo, I'd been used to having things more or less go the way I imagined it to be, growing up in the same place where the motions of everything lined up to my growth. Going into my college years, I'd been shell shocked at all the possibilities, wanting to try all of them.

I look back and I see that the most of the footprints I wanted to leave behind were left in sand rather than concrete. My years here taught me what it really meant to lose friendships you'd invested in, opportunities, chances and time. It sucks, It really does... but I learned to push through loss, because loss is just a part of the game, and I wanna play again and again until it gets easier. I want to live, and because of that, I learned of what it takes and what it really means to win.

It wasn't all bad though. I still got to be everywhere, and I passed by some really cool people, all with really cool talents, insights and experiences. Being able to take all that in and learn and meet from them really was a blessing and a privilege.

My personal answer to the question of "taya" put simply is people. The people that I've come to appreciate. The people that I met from every corner I dipped into these past four years. The people that spent at least a straight hour of my life once on a quiet day opening themselves up to me and me to them. Alva, John, Kevin, Janin, Tam, Pam, Alyssa, Andy, Pong, Hannah, Sofia, Andrea, Rbie, Meka, Jerb, Jacinta, Bianca, Raven, Charlotte, Micco, Mikki, Matt, Rovi, Yabs, Chris, Pocholo, Selena, Rene, Aldrich, Dante, Mj, Riki, Maxine, Victor, Sergei, André, Paulo, Isaac, Imai, Angela, Kim, Kaya, Kuya Kim from Old Lib, The kids from Bahay Pag-Asa Valenzuela, Francesca, Austin, Chua, Ila, Sean, Yji, Allysa, Jiggy, Lawrence, Rafa, Pau, Deon, Chiu, Dan, Fabs, KC, Johann, Kat and Bea.

To be very honest, I don't remember much of the conversation(s), but I do remember you, and I remember that you were with me, even if for some were just for a very, very brief moment. Whatever I accomplish moving forward was shaped by your presence, one way or another. Unti-unti niyong binuo ang loob ko. I know that every now and then I will still roam and wish to be everywhere at once. The world will never be short of ideals for me to chase, but people like you will keep me grounded. You have made me realize that the here and now is the best place and time any person can ever hope to be in, especially with the right company.

I do hope that all of you that made it this far, everyone in batch 2018-202(?) will share that desire to live with me. This world will be ruthless, but we will be relentless. When one bet doesn't pay off, we press on and we keep moving, keep betting, keep living. One day, we will inherit the world and when that day comes, tayo na ang taya, and so we'll chase. We'll endure. We'll play. We'll win, but I hope we never forget to have fun. Never forget to live in the moment, with all the beauty and utter ugliness it entails while we do it, because that's where the bet really begins to flourish.

In the meantime, I'll be fixing this little thing called unemployment.

Thank you, everyone. See you when I see you.

Ethan Manalo

Bachelor of Arts, Major in Literature (English)

Ateneo de Manila University, Batch 2018-2022

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senatushq · 1 year

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NAME. Isla Allaway-Bryce AGE & BIRTH DATE. 30 & June 13th, 1992 GENDER & PRONOUNS. Female & She/Her SPECIES. Human OCCUPATION. Researcher for The Eye FACE CLAIM. Sophie Skelton

biography

( tw murder, torture ) The story began with Emilia Allaway and Aileen Bryce who met in Oxford University and settled in the Scottish highlands of Dalwhinnie. Among Emilia and Aileen’s closest friends was a busy man who never wanted his own children because his government job would make it far too difficult. But when the two women he loved dearly came to him for help in conceiving a child of their own, he was happy to give them both the dream of their own little family. And so Isla Allaway-Bryce was born. Her biological father would visit and keep in touch while her mothers adored and raised her in a small townhouse in the chilly country, complete with chickens and a cute, fluffy family dog in their backyard. Their little girl grew up with the thought of being a nurse so she moved to England when the time came to attend the alma mater of her parents. The city would be temporary. Her dream life was to work in a small town, somewhere small and green that reminded her of the peaceful, beautiful way that she had grown up with her moms.

And the city brought with it horrors. Her college experience did not end up being as normal as her life had been up until that point. Parties and questionable friendships led to Isla learning of vampire thralls and exposing her to a supernatural world that had been hidden from her eyes up to that point. Demons, fey, blood-sucking beasts... the things that only fearful highland Scottish legends spoke of. She found these thrall practices questionable and began to look them further for the safety of her reckless friends, only to come across a supernatural creature who caught wind of her curiousity and meddlesome nature. Isla was given a warning to mind her own business, and that warning came in the form of a long scar across her neck and right arm, with lifelong trauma brought on by the unexpected night of being thoroughly terrorized and threatened for the amusement of supernaturals.

Following this life-changing experience, her grades began to drop and so Isla decided to revisit all her academic goals. The warning she’d been given had not scared her away or being nosy and curious. In fact, it had done the opposite; it inflamed it to the point that it was all she could think about most days and all her nights. She changed her career paths, moving her love for science over to forensics because it would help her research. Isla began to use her skills and interest to investigate the supernatural world, growing more and more angry and frightened that this entire world had been hidden under her nose the entire time, killing people and destroying innocent lives. Hoping to do more to protect the oblivious, Isla contacted her biological father and kept her intentions secret as she asked him for help. With her father’s connections opening the door for her and her own merits keeping the door open to further invitation, she pushed her way into MI6, the foreign intelligence service of the United Kingdom. Isla did not see her life becoming a James Bond movie, however, because she still wanted the quiet family life and enjoyed science more than anything else. Truthfully, she had never seen herself working for the government like her biological father. But the government had the sources and equipment she needed. And so she found herself working for intelligence labs, using UK government equipment and sources to secretly conduct her own investigations on the side. Isla’s dangerous meddling and her useful proximity to the government eventually caught the attention of The Eye, and her clandestine recruitment started - as well as some unexpected lessons in Italian.

It took her a year of preparation by The Eye and manipulating her bosses at MI6 but she was finally given a position in Italy, where the Italian government was well aware that she was British Intelligence working alongside their own government, but neither governments were aware of her growing involvement with The Eye. She was working 2 jobs: gathering information for MI6 with Italy’s help on threats and also collecting/falsifying data for The Eye’s benefit. Her overwhelming amount of work made social life difficult, but one night she was finally encouraged to find some semblance of balance of work and personal life. The unwanted pregnancy that resulted from this single night out, a lovely night with music and charming company, had been a wake up call to the dangerous and unrecognizable thing that her life had somehow become since leaving Scotland. She had never wanted to live in a city and she never wanted to be so overwhelmed with different jobs. Isla had also never truly considered the idea of children. However, she found herself loving this child more than anything the moment that she learned of it, and she couldn’t stomach the idea of losing her son or daughter in favor for the mess that she’d made of her life.

So, in the early days of her pregnancy, Isla quit the MI6 and started to work within Rome’s city police as a forensic scientist. But it was far more difficult to leave The Eye behind, especially as she had only just begun in their ranks. There was no way to move back to Scotland and the beautiful country, so she decided to use her already established connections and friendships within two governments to aid The Eye as much as she could from within the city of Rome. She worked so hard to gain the hard-earned trust of The Eye, that her son’s birth was triggered by a nasty fall sustained after she worked far too long into the night, wandering sleepy and clumsy in the dark streets of Rome to get home. She was weak and so the doctors weren’t sure that her child had survived. But Evander Allaway-Bryce seemed to defy all odds and was born into the world as a perfectly healthy baby boy. Scotland came to him and his mother when Isla’s own two mothers came a few days later to move in with their daughter and grandson in the Italian city.

For a few months, things were quieting down. Isla accepted her new life in the city with her mothers and her son. The Eye started to give her more trust and access as she continued to prove her worth. One quiet night on Halloween, Isla took her family on a walk in the streets when mama Aileen insisted on admiring the ancient palaces under the gorgeous light of the moon. It was that fateful night that caused the death of both of her mothers, as monsters descended upon them from one of the gardens of those very palaces. Terror, thunder, haunting Eladrin music and the only reason she remembered it all was protection from The Eye. Isla was left alone with her son, unsure how to carry on by herself. Once upon a time, she’d had such a beautiful, quiet and peaceful life in the highlands of Scotland. Her curiousity and trauma had led Isla to seek out what she had been warned against and now both her mothers were dead because of it, and she had a son that she barely knew how to take care of on her own. Filled with anger and grief, Isla threw herself into work, losing sight of how much more important she knew her son and all her dreams were. Busy once again, she was blind once again. Isla failed to ponder the strange things happening around her little Evan, but time would only tell when she finally realized her son was much more than met the eye, and The Eye is exactly the sort of danger that she truly wanted to protect him from.

personality

+ altruistic, maternal, intelligent – withdrawn, meddlesome, timid

played by dany. est. she/her.

#skeleton rp #takenc #takenf #takenhuman #original character

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jasonraish · 2 years

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A Dandy Wellington and Jason Raish collaboration. 100% of proceeds donated to The FIT Black Student Illustrators Award fund. These timed editions are available for 1 week only, never to be printed again (edition size determined by final sale number). Sales open 2022 May 6th @12:00pm EST and close May 13th @12:00pm EST. www.jason-raish-illustration.myshopify.com/

$1,000 no-strings-attached awards will be given to Black student applicants displaying artistic merit and financial need graduating from New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology BFA illustration program. Recipients can do as they please with the award money as there’s no one way to reach your artistic goals. Recent data from The Illustrators Survey shows that 3% of the illustration industry is Black. Our goal is to help Black students bridge the gap between graduation and professional success so they can be seen, heard, and shape the narrative of this industry they are so underrepresented in.

If you want to make an individual donation please go to www.fitnyc.edu/give and be sure to use the drop down menu to select the Black Student Illustrators Award. There is an option to type in a custom donation amount and it is a 501(c)(3) organization.All the accounting and final amount of proceeds will be transparently and publicly shown and the final number of prints in the edition announced.

The fund was created under the FIT Foundation 501(c)(3) charitable giving arm. We've partnered with FIT's own PrintFX print lab for the 12x18” Epson giclée 192 g/m matte archival prints to be signed and numbered. I've also partnered with Framebridge to provide framing. I personally use them a lot and make no money from this, I just want people to have a nice time and alleviate the hassle of getting things framed. Proceeds from Framebridge (which is the 10% discount they give me) will be donated, 100% of print proceeds will be donated. For Prints: Save on shipping when you order two or more. For Frames: Free shipping provided by Framebridge when you buy a frame. I ship them the signed print, they frame it and ship it to you. Please allow 4-6 weeks for shipping as it's just me packing and shipping orders, on top of Framebridge's processing time.

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rosanthium · 2 years

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Wheel of Time Review Retitled: Surprise! A Man hates Women and Diversity.

As someone who actively consumes a lot of film content I find myself curious as to how different prominent and professional film critics and reviewers are to my own experiences as an audience consuming content. After all, art is in the eyes of the beholder and film is just that, another form of art that can be interpreted in many ways. How people interpret content is largeley based on and tailored to the individual's personal experiences and identity, which ultimately affects the reading of film in either positive or negative ways.

Now as a queer woman and a cinephile, I have some beef. Above is a review of the TV adaptation of the The Wheel of Time, written by one James Delingpole for The Spectator UK. I am in no way a misandrist or man hater, or anything along those lines, but this review has pushed my buttons to the enth. Too many times have I seem film reviewers (largely old white men) absolutely slam perfectly acceptable and creative content just for the fact that women may have depth of character, people of colour exist as does the lgbtqia+ community.

Never have i seen a review so biased and hateful, not even towards the TV adaptation but for the source materal too and it perplexes me how these reviews are allowed to continue being published and pass the editing room. Im not talking about being PC, but fuck if your going to review something base it on merit and not the fact that ripping source material to shreds, reducing the author to a failure in the fantasy literary world and then criticising the thespian abilities of the young actors, makes a review credible. Talk about hate shot after hate shot.

I don't normally get this fired up but today I'm on this hell app letting you all know, how lovers of the books, the show, the characters and the actors, have been so denegrated to "trite" and "tripe" is absolutely disgusting. You know how we learnt "If you don' t have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all?" this, I feel, should have been the lesson here, as the only purpose of this review was to let us all know that this guy just doesn't like the Wheel of Time, full stop. Here are a few beautiful examples I would love to share with yall:

Firstly I would like to point out the arrogant preconception that reading a 14 book epic fantasy series will be feasible on a 2 week holiday. Yet despite personal recs and global sucess, the persuasion to pick up the book actually stemmed from the fact that Robert Jordan was a decorated war hero, engineer and an absolute mans man which inspired Delingpole to follow through with the book recommendation, then using Jordan's military and mathematical macho backround to justify his disappoinment in the failings of the book, as if that instantly gives agency for good authorship. The failings in Delingpole's eyes being:

The reviewer didnt even finish the books, and i feel we can all agree that the best thing about the Wheel of Time is how well the characters develop and change throughout the story to make a well fleshed out and rich fantasy world. By reducing it to a Lord of the Rings rip off, we see how, instead of reading the way Jordan developed those ideas that yes, have existed in other stories too, have rather opted in just disregarding TWoT as a failed copy cat that has "basic dialogue, leaden prose and uninspiring characters." Ahh, there is the literary language I so look for in justification for poor reviews, and yet we haven't even got to the show yet. As a reviewer who seems to hate the source material, Dalingpole sure had hopes that the TV adaptation would be different in his eyes, but nope, its EVEN WORSE.

Now lets get to the meaty part cos boy its a doozy:

Fuck me where to start. For someone so reverent of Game of Thrones and Lord of the Rings this guy sure does have some hang ups about unique fantasy names, especially outright naming the 3 examples who are played by poc actors as "annoying and unpronouncable". Sure "James", Mr Western White Man who, unsurprisingly, has a problem with foreign names, (the racist subtext is starting to smell a bit here). I wonder as such an avid reader and professional reviewer how illiterate he became when reading Dune, or any other series that has predmonitely white protagonist and unpronouncable names.

Now to Moraine and the Aes Sedai. Unfunny, pompous and crotchety witches/seers/spell-weavers who only exist as a dominating and powerful political and protector class to pander to new age feminism and paganistic hippies. WOW. God forbid women have any sort of agency and respect in an epic medieval fantasy except to be the lovers, mothers, sisters or whores of great male heros. And how dare such a "macho man" like Robert Jordan pander to these ideologies. The only thing that makes sense is if he wrote an entire, intricate world surrounding womens' power as an elaborate Barney Stinson ploy to make Jordan desirable to female audiences so he could essentially, fuck them. Yes, thats right. Delingpole believes that if a male author writes about powerful women, it must only be with predatory intentions. I dont care about defending Jordan, but I do care about how narrow this lense is, and that for this male reviewer, is the only logical explanation for a female-centred narrative written by a man. As if men can't write women with any authenticity. As if women can't exist unless to be of service to a man. As if we aren't over the tireless harmful gender roles and stereotypes that 100 years of Hollywood has reinforced. As if nothing can break out of that mold and formula unless its pandandering to minorities or feminism. I can't for the life of me see how this perspective could fly these days when it is based on so much misogyny and ignorance that I've got whiplash. And this isn't even confined to the books but bleeds into the TV series as well.

Cold but sexy-ish Gandalf? Delingpole has futher reinforced his Tolkien hard-on by essentially saying that Moraine is unlikable because she is mysterious and withdrawn (which if he stuck around, he might have learnt why there are 14 goddamn books) and that her only likability is by reducing her character to looks only. That the only redeeming quality for a MAIN CHARACTER is her fuckability. For someone who didn't finish the story or is even sticking around to finish this TV series, he sure has seemed to make up his mind. I think we can all agree that Rosamund Pike is doing an exceptional job as Moraine, and the nuances she is bringing in the show is dominating the screen by bringing the source material to life in a new, refreshing way. I goddamn screamed and cried when they canonically made Moraine a gay woman in a loving relationship with the goddamn Amyrlin Seat. What a power move. What a moment to witness, this small change that made me feel more seen and connected and personal than any other adaptation I've ever consumed, and made me hope for the future of representation on the screen. Not saying that the books and the TV adaptation are perfect, and that the debate on creative liberty is one I'm not going to get into here, but this level of criticism based on the Reviewer's personal bias makes me wonder if they were the best choice in critiquing this narrative.

Moraine isnt the only protagonist under fire. The four possible Dragons are reduced to "petulant teenages" with no "discernable personality", and now I start to wonder whether we have seen the same show and read the same book. Sure, they are doe eyed villiage folk embarking on a great adventure with life/death ramifications. Since when was innocence regarded as petulance, when was the mistakes of simple mountain folk thrust into larger destiny held to such a high regard, as if teenagers aren't fucking stupid and mess up sometimes. I doubt this reviewer has the same views of Frodo, Sam, Merry and Pippin if you get my meaning. Hypocritical doesnt even begin to describe the level of arrogance Dalingpole has to have his word be God and the only opinion that matters in this context. And he doesnt stop there.

I know there has been some controversy in this community about the way Barney Harris is interpreting the role of Mat as a serious, brooding and whiny figure instead of the kind, trickster like, humouros conman and scoundrel as he was portrayed in the books. Either way, my personal opinion had me (ironically) disliking Harris's portrayal the most out of everyone due to the fact he felt unfamiliar to me. Whether we see a different take with Harris being recast is a different matter, because Delingpole reveres the character who has adopted the most toxic traits, whilst belittleing the rest.

Reducing young emerging actors to the thespian abilities of school play mediocrity has me reeling. How dare Delingpole attack the greener actors and diminish the hard work and talent that goes into making this kind of series, as well as insinuating that hotness and racial/queer representation is the only reason these people were cast in the first place. Im sure he didnt have any problems with the young, predominately 'white' actors of Game of Thrones, as if they are the pinnacle of acting abilities. And yes I'm gonna look at this through a racial and queer lense because goddamn James seems to feel the need to attack every minority represention left right and centre within this review. For someone hell bent on not finishing either the books or the tv series to find out if these young actors can "grow into their roles", he really is not giving any space to change his mind. Which brings me full circle and is further supported by his conclusionary statements:

In conclusion James Dalingpole wishes Game of Thrones never ended and that any form of diversity is a hindrance to the sucess of television fantasy. The Wheel of Time is thus, a cheap knockoff of every medieval fantasy that has been popularised in culture, and any decision to include minority representation in the source material, or the adaptation has ultimately lead to failure in his eyes. And yet here, Delingpole reinforces that it is the most successful fantasy series since Lord of the Rings. So how did it go so wrong? Answer: it didn't, Delingpole just has a lifelong perscription of bigoted glasses and his script ain't changing any time soon.

I am not saying that my rant on this review is the only truth out there, we all have our own opinions and interpretations, but having a reviewer so biased against diversity, whether it be gender, race or sexuality, leads me to wonder why these kinds of reviews are allowed any agency at all. Everyone's a critic, sure, but never have I seen such a blatant disregard and disrespect of the books, the fans, the actors and even the studio execs. It irks me that this drivel is still being reinforced because these opinions don't actually give any form of depth or nuance, just hatred for the divulge in formula. The classic "Bring me back to the good ol days" mentality where anyone who wasn't a man was opressed. The Wheel of Time is not Lord of the Rings, nor is it Game of Thrones, it is beloved by many, myself included, and can stand on its own if we stop the comparisons to what 'was' normal and Hollywood formula and embrace that diversity is becoming the norm. Women exist, people of colour exist and so do lgbtqia+ people who are allowed to have agency in how we create a new norm and formula for medieval epic fantasies. I, for one, am someone who can seperate book from adaptation and am so far loving both, but to write this review as an attack on the narrative as a whole feels outdated and honestly pathetic. Here I am, reading the words of another angry old white man who is pissed off that representation is being normalised, when we should be embracing the fact that outdated source material being brought to modern audiences need to reflect a sense of modernity, which thus means, adapting women-lead narratives, casting lgbtqia+ and poc actors to adapt the roles and just outright not give people like this Reviewer any more agency to reinforce these harmful opinions. I'm also not saying the Wheel of Time is perfect, because like everything, it has flaws, but outright calling it a failure due to its type of content, makes me wonder if James Dalingpole has actually enjoyed anything since we emerged into the 21st century.

Anyway, rant over. Check out the full article yourselves and suss it out. Am i reading too much into this? I hope not, cos this is just one example of so many film reviews I have seen this year absolutely sloshing new films and series just based on the fact it is "Too PC" and this last one got me in the gut. I'm over it because I fucking love how film these days are setting the standard for progressing culture away from the dominant western patriarchal ideologies. It starts with small change, and i know that change is scary for book purists and fragile egos, but the only way we are going to see rich, personalised and diverse stories on screen is if we stop letting the voice of an old white man dictate what constitutes good content or not. I don't know, fight me about this if you want but I'm just fucking tired.

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