#obligatory i hate florida

[comrademango]

making a cake so not able to watch the rangers, thus sparing my nerves

#hockeyposting #or not #obligatory i hate florida

[us-costco-official]

when he hates your wife but its ok bc you hate his food

#im DONE i HATE in trousers sigh #from the shelves of costco #in trousers #marvin gardens #whizzer brown #<- he sure is. going down. #obligatory “to florida?”

[selfinsertmadness]

i have a really cool prompt

hope you like my idea,

could you perhaps write a story about the current logan situation with loganxy/n ??

i love your blog soooo muchhhh

Logie and the Australian car incident

pairing: AstonMartin!y/n x Logan Sargeant (can be read platonically or romantically)

author's note: I haven't written any fanfic stuff in literal years (middle school me is quacking) but I tried my best with that one. Looking forward to any suggestions or critiques you may have :) (insert obligatory English is not my native language here) (please send promts!!!!)

The day starts off as any other day on a busy race weekend would and you are busy running around the Aston Martin garage making sure everything is in order before you return to your place at the back of the garage. You let your gaze sweep over the garage one last time before getting out your work phone and texting your boss, Lawrence, that everything is in order. The cars seem good, the mechanics had no complaints and Lance and Fernando were reasonably happy with everything. A satisfied smile washes over your face, your job was busy but reasonably easy, as the team caretaker your sole mission was to make sure the team was happy, the drivers taken care of, and the PR supervisors were not losing their minds running after their drivers while also texting Lawrence even the most minute details about his son and the other driver.

It seems quite redundant to you, but Lawrence Stroll pays well and who are you to turn down a job as a glorified team nanny.

You take a seat at the back and watch the first practice session absentmindedly, letting your gaze wander down to your phone occasionally, and scrolling through Twitter, scoffing at all the hate towards the current grid. It never ceases to amaze you how people can be so hateful, but then again, some people are just unhappy about their own lives. Looking up at the screen you watch a Williams car hit the wall on the right before sliding across the track and grinding its way to a stop on the left barrier. You gasp as you jump up, the rest of the garage wincing in sympathy as the car finally stops. You quickly turn to a mechanic nearby. “Who was that?”, you ask a little panicked as you watch the red flag fly and a driver in a Williams race suit climb out of the cockpit. “Albon, I think”, the mechanic replies helpfully as you try and suppress a relieved sigh. You still feel sorry for Alex but simultaneously thanking your lucky stars that Logan was not the one in an accident this time.

When Logan first got signed by Williams you both were ecstatic, you had met years ago when your parents had taken you on a vacation to Florida where you met Logan and you’ve kept in touch ever since. You had already been working for Aston Martin when Logan started in F1 and the fact that you could spend a lot more time together now served as further motivation to both of you to give it your best. You quickly shoot him a text, knowing he won’t be responding until later, before sending your boss a quick update and making sure the crash had not affected your team.

You honestly had forgotten you texted Logan in the first place as you watch the cars head out for the second practice session, Alex staying back in the pits, watching his teammate drive. You smile as you send Logan some memes you had found on twitter, knowing he would have a laugh once he got back to his room after the strenuous practice sessions of the day. Aston Martin, for once, had no major issues you had attend to and you could lean back and relax, as much as one in a Formula 1 garage can relax, in your seat while harassing the Aston Martin Instagram Admin with Memes you think they should be posting asap.

As the second practice session ends you help the team pack up and prepare for the next day as the drivers attend to their media duties and you stretch in relief as the first day of the Australian Grand Prix comes to an end.  After having everything sorted you get out your work phone and sign off for the day before taking out your personal phone and responding to some texts before checking your chat with Logan, seeing that he had read your messages but not responded. ‘You ok?’, you send him before shrugging off any worry you might have. Surely, he was just busy, after all, he was the only Williams driver that would be starting on Sunday. You really wouldn’t want to be in his shoes, the weight of the entire team and all the fans’ expectations resting on your shoulders. You might have a lot of responsibility but at least you were free of the expectations fans place on the drivers, mechanics and team principals.

You quickly slip into the shower of your private hotel room, a perk you were eternally grateful for, and put on some pajamas before order room service. You had earned it after all and looking after your figure was thankfully not a concern you had. ‘Ignoring your bestie? That’s not how I know you Loggie!’ you text Logan as you open the door for the food you had ordered and sit down before digging into the pepperoni pizza you had been craving for a week.

You startle as you hear a knock from your hotel room door. You shoot a quick glance at your phone, 11pm. You quietly approach the door and look through the peephole cautiously. Who would disturb you that late on a race weekend? Looking through the hole you see Logan at the door, his face unusually pale and his expression unnervingly neutral. Quickly you reach for the doorhandle, pulling the door open. “Logie? What got you a-knocking that late?”, you ask jokingly but the lighthearted smile on your face quickly fades as he stands on the swell of your door like a man lost, his eyes suspiciously watery. “Oh dear”, you mumble as you quickly pull him into your room and heard him towards your bed, letting him sit down before standing before him and looking at him with a stern expression. “What’s wrong?”, you ask, concern written all over your face.

He sighs, falling back onto the bed. “They’re taking my car.”, his voice sounds wobbly as he explains. “Who is taking your car?”, you ask, your voice confused.

“James. He said Alex has a higher chance of scoring and I get it, but I tried so hard, you know? They said they trusted me, and I was ready to proof how much I have improved and now I can’t drive at all. I didn’t crash the car! It’s not my fault! I didn’t do anything…”, he rambles, his voice flowing between sadness, anger and betrayal before ending in defeat. You look at him, he still has his upper body lying on your bed, his feet dangling off the side as he continues explaining what had happened. Quietly you sit down next to him on the bed and gently stroke through his hair as you let him talk out his frustrations. “y/n? What do I do now?”, Logan asks as he looks up at you, his eyes still wet but trying his hardest to not shed a tear.

“I will put the fear of God into that good-for-nothing son of a bitch.”, you explain very matter of factly. “I’m gonna walk down to the Williams hospitality and I’m gonna scream at your team principal!”, you declare with a huff as you get off of your bed and towards where you kicked off your shoes when you came back from the paddock earlier that night.

“Y/N, do NOT do that.”, Logan warns as he gets up and grabs your hand. “That is just going to make it worse.” “Okay but it’s also gonna make me feel a lot better ‘cause who does he think he is? Taking your car and giving it away. I’m gonna make him regret this entire week” you say angrily as you look up at him with determination and the wrath of someone who’s best friend was just wronged in your eyes.

“Please don’t”, Logan asks with sad eyes, gripping your hand even tighter. “Please just stay with me tonight, I feel sick. I just want to cry.”, he admits to you as you feel your resolve break. “But- “, you trail off as you watch him stand before you, his hand still tightly gripping yours. You sigh in defeat before squeezing his hand. “Right but only ‘cause you asked me to, if it was up to me…”, you stop, leaving the threat hang in the air of your hotel room as you head towards the small desk. “Pizza”, you declare as you shove the leftovers of your pizza into Logans hands. “My TV has Netflix, what do you want to watch?”, you ask as you throw yourself into the hotel room bed and turn on the flatscreen TV hanging opposite it.

Logan lets out a surprised laugh and sits down next to you, the pizza carton still tightly in his hands as he gets out a slice and lets you choose whatever show you find on the homepage. The evening continues in relative silence as Logan finishes the pizza and you sit in the bed, leaning onto each other. “I’m still sending him negative vibes, like spiritually”, you grumble as he giggles before slipping off to sleep for the night.

#logan sargeant #f1 x reader #f1 fanfic #f1 imagine #x reader #logan sargeant x reader #f1 x you #f1 x y/n #f1 x oc #first fic in a long time #ls2 x reader #ls2

[feistyskins]

I can’t even properly convey how personal this Eastern Conference Final is for me because I’m a bitch who holds a grudge.

I was a ride or DIE Canes fan through all of the playoff drought years but the new management chased out any player worth rooting for and for the past five years there has been no team I hate as much as I hate them now.

And then you have the Florida Panthers who I never in a million years would I have thought I’d root for but this team is so incredibly near and dear to my heart and will be forever because I was genuinely afraid as all of my players started retiring I wouldn’t feel as invested in hockey as I have my entire life. But Matthew Tkachuk and a rag tag bunch of guys I liked decently well on other teams some how miraculously ended up playing hockey on the beach together and it is the most fun I’ve EVER had being a hockey fan.

And now after a complete underdog start to the playoffs, after dispatching the greatest regular season NHL team and as a West Coast Canadian girly, my obligatory Canadian rivals, my team is off to settle this grudge.

Siri, play Bad Blood by Taylor Swift. Let’s fucking gooooooooooooooo!

#nhl #matthew tkachuk #florida panthers

[acaplaya-musings]

Voiceplay Visuals: Dream On

Perhaps a bit of a shorter post than some of my recent/previous ones, but Voiceplay's video for Dream On is certainly far from dull, and the arrangement (a collaboration between Rob Dietz and Geoff) is absolutely killer!

The video for Dream On was released on the 9th of April, 2022, and features Omar Cardona, back again!

Don't have a ton to say about outfits/costuming in this one (though shoutout to Geoff, who is credited with "costuming look", as well as co-direction and overall video (he's a polymath genius I swear)), but might as well "shine a spotlight" on everyone individually, since I don't expect to have a lot to say for this video otherwise, and the vocalists all start off by themselves in the video before "banding together".

Hey Geoff isn't the only one with exposed shoulders for once! 😝

Cesar is, yet again, a style icon. And according to an interview he did with Mortius (that was simultaneously a reaction video for Dream On), the little "smoky eye"/eyeliner look he's got going on here was his idea! Love that for him!

(Also shoutout to Rick Underwood for yet again being a makeup whiz!)

Actually wait I forgot, uncovered shoulders actually outnumber covered shoulders in this one!

(Also this was filmed in some old school I believe? I think maybe Cesar's old school or something?)

There he is! <3

(Also love the fingerless gloves 👌)

Random fun fact: I used this shot about a month ago (though for you reading this it'll be more like 2-2.5 months ago) as a pose/proportions reference!

(And peep the little white-grey streak of hair framing his face <3 )

And of course I haven't forgotten about Layne! (No clue what he's wearing over his shirt, but my brain always thinks of a bulletproof vest, though that's obviously not correct)

(Also it's getting frankly a little embarassing now that back in my This Is Halloween post I was like "hey is that tattoo on Layne's wrist real? I've literally never seen it before", when apparently it has been visible at least a couple of times since, and I'm obviously not always as observant as I like to think I am 😅)

Fun fact: apparently Omar and Cesar are good friends, stemming from the fact that they used to be roommates? And now one of them is a permanent Voiceplay member, and the other is a frequent Voiceplay collaborator? (And had sung with them before Cesar joined the group, even). What are the odds? Like how freaking close-knit is the singing/acapella community in Florida?

(Btw that is one hell of a mohawk, Cesar! Go off!)

Group shot! (Also peep the book just behind Eli and Omar (that I only just noticed) - is that the same one Eli was holding/drawing in earlier?)

(Cesar matching Geoff with the fingerless gloves!)

"So how many lines and textures do you want in your clothes for this one?" "Yes" (No seriously, there is a lot going on with the outfits in this one. I'm not judging or criticising, but I would hate to try and draw them!)

Very brief but very cool distortion effect!

Obligatory "he's so pretty" screencap 😁

Screw it, have another Geoff hair study!

(I'm amassing a fair collection of these now, though I'm contemplating going and doing some more for older videos at some point so I can have a better visual representation of the main stages of growth, before it reached shoulder-length)

Is Layne in the freaking boiler room or something? (I'm not super familiar with boiler rooms (not super common in Australia, that I know of), but that looks like that would be an example of one!)

The "tenor trio" absolutely giving this performance their all! (As they always do, of course)

I'm doing this post on the same day (or well, night now) as the post I did for The Dragonborn Comes, so I'm still eagerly awaiting the video for Omar's newest collaboration with Voiceplay, and I can barely wait! It's gonna be amazing, I can feel it!

#voiceplay #acapella #dream on #dream on aerosmith #geoff castellucci #eli jacobson #layne stein #cesar de la rosa #omar cardona #acaplaya analysis #voiceplay visuals

[shinobicyrus]

In a craven, pathetic, cynical, and transparently desperate ploy to energize his torpid 2024 campaign and match his rival Desantis, Twice-Impeached Ex-President Trump has shuffled out of his Florida tanning tank to join the gibbering chorus of Far-Right trans-panic by releasing a video on Truth Social. The full statement amounts to a hate-ridden, incendiary rant that proposes nationwide federal action that would threaten the health and well-being of trans people, in particular trans children, and will use the law to enforce a rigid, hetero-normative, cisgender social order.

You can watch the full video here on Forbes  if you choose to. I advise against it, personally. The years since his removal from public office and most social media seems to have had atrophied my tolerance. It’s probably why I was somehow shocked at how a video less than four minutes long can cram so much ignorance, falsehoods, hateful invective, and unhinged demagoguery in such a short period of time.

Pages of ink could be spilled breaking down every ranting tangent, from threats to prosecute doctors and hospitals providing gender affirming care, the distasteful novelty of calling trans children mutants,  inventing a conspiracy of pharmaceutical companies selling unsafe hormones and puberty blockers to children, and proposes using the federal government to “promote” aka enforce “positive education of the nuclear family” and the “role of mothers and fathers,” sprinkled with some good old fashioned sex-based bio-essentialism.

The crescendo, the real red meat dripping with bloody doctrine, is at the end:

“I will ask congress to pass a bill establishing that the only genders recognized by the United States Government are male and female and they are assigned at birth.”

“The Bill will also make clear that Title 9 prohibits men from participating in womens’ sports and we will protect the rights of parents from being forced to allow their minor child to assume a gender which is new and an identity without the parents’ consent. The identity will not be new and it will not be without parental consent.”

“No serious country should be telling its children that they were born with the wrong gender, a concept that was never heard of in all of human history - nobody’s ever heard of this, what’s happening today - it was all when the radical left invented it just a few years ago.”

He ends it all with a chilling conclusion. “Under my leadership, this madness will end.”

I’ve done my best since his departure from office to avoid talking about this sad orange failure puttering around his private golf course while lawsuits and legal investigations pile around him. But I’ve heard little mainstream discussion of this announcement; how Far-Right transphobic rhetoric is being elevated to the level of presidential politics.

While Trump was never friendly to the LGBTQ community, he was also prone to mocking the likes of Pence for his desire of wanting to “hang the gays.” Did his Administration do harm to the queer community? Yes, undeniably so. But to me it felt obligatory, with little energy or drive behind it, as Trump ultimately didn’t care. The callous apathy of an incurious narcissist.

Now, whether he believes the nonsense he’s spewing or not, Trump sees that the Republican base has been driven to a mad fervor over the existence of trans folks. So, like the cynical, amoral opportunist he is, he will regurgitate the vile hateful garbage his speechwriters feed him for political and financial gain.

Whether he gets the nomination or not, this announcement will set the tone for the entire Republican presidential primary of 2024.

#Transphobia #Trans Panic #Donald Trump #Fascism #Queerphobia #LGBTQ Rights #I remember during the 2016 campaign #Trump had said to a room of Republicans #''To protect our LGBTQ citizens from the violence and oppression of a hateful *foreign* ideology.'' #to thunderous applause #because of course it was all an excuse to spread Islamaphobia #a way to assuage themselves into believing they weren't bigots #''Well we're not stoning and shooting them! we're nice *reasonable* people! Not like those foreign *Monsters*.'' #Trump even has to say 'LGBTQ' with such halting awkwardness because it's just a thing he doesn't know or care about #you can even hear it in the video announcement #the little awkward asides he makes that breaks the flow of the speech: #''Very Simple!'' #''Can you believe this?'' #''Ridiculous!'' #and of course the ''Nobody’s ever heard of this what’s happening today.'' #this is his tell #*He's* never heard of it #all of this is a subject he knows nothing about #so all the info he has is what his handlers feed him #and is just parroting the pre-existing rhetoric #I'm not saying he isn't a bigot - what I'm saying is he's the worst kind of enabler #a know-nothing buffoon who is just catering to the worst common denominator for his own personal gain #with zero regard for the harm it will cause #and honestly? it doesn't matter what he does or doesn't believe #all that matters is that he's spreading it and trying to profit from it

[otra-dimension]

I am curious, interested and very keen to know-

I AM ASKING PLEASE TELL

[context: i said that universal should replace h*rry p*ter w demon slayer and now everyone hates me bc im once again not shutting up abt universal]

ANYWAYS TYSM FOR ASKING BC THIS HAS BEEN IN MY HEAD 5EVER

Okokokokok so I actually don't know that much abt universal's format in florida so uh rip lmao. While I originally said that it should be replaced w the mugen train I realized that for florida they can replace the whole area with the entertainment district and maybe later on add another section based on the swordsmith village

Back to the actual redesign one of the ways to get to that section of the park is by riding the train that's appears on the movies

ex.

So idk if you're catching my drift (or if you know demon slayer in general) but I was thinking that this could easily be replaced with the mugen train.

Would this make sense canonically? No. Is it cool to think abt? Yes.

Even then if they were to replace the train it wouldn't cost that much seeing how both of the trains are similar models and at best would need a refurbishment inside and out.

The reason why I'm pushing so hard on this to be the mugen train is bc if I remember correctly the train also doubles as a ride. As far as ik when ppl go inside it references/replicates a scene from one of the movies.

Again to save budget they can slap a replica of inosuke and tanjiro's fight against enmu :)

NOW BACK TO THE ACTUAL PARK.

Train stops. You're at the station (wow so cool) *insert obligatory cash grab while selling bento boxes like rengoku bought* You countinue walking forward into the main section and *vine boom* instead of seeing this

you see this instead

I was thinking that in certain areas there would be damaged walls with pieces of the sash from Daki's outfit but the closer you get to the actual ride the more the pieces become into actual proper sashes.

I'd go into more detail but like I'm a mess atm srry 😭😭

#srry if these dont make sense im trying my best gnrdskjgndrskjgnrs #[incoming transmission] #zimmerman1 #again tysm for asking <33

[ffb6c1lover]

thoughts on my ttpd first listen

Fortnight (feat. Post Malone): I've been saying her relationship with alcohol was not healthy bruuuh. I love how she takes her life, which the vast majority of her listeners would not be able to relate to, and makes an "understandable" metaphor out of it. But it must break her to do so. Love Post Malone's voice here, he really compliments her well. THE MV THO with the dead poets <3<3<3<3<3

TTPD: girl go get your lover tf 😭😭😭 whole era dedicated to this muse, incredible.

My Boy Only Breaks His Favourite Toys: getting mad MATHP vibes from the storytelling here.

Down Bad: now I'm starting to really get dragged in the album. The first verse rewired something in me, Idk. also if I speak about the muse... The New Romantics mention, I died dead. Also someone needs to edit kenstewy to the "hostile takeover" bit.

So Long, London: my favourite so far, I am in love with this vibe. It's giving YLM. Also I love the style of the intro, it's channeling the waves in a way, up until this point the album has a very distinct "look" and I can see it so clearly. My real question atp is how are we supposed to just, go on as normal after this album. She is baring her soul in a way she's never done before and it's not a happy soul, so how is just going to go on keeping her happy persona at Eras and how are we going to let her. I think the management is probably gonna make the last songs be happier ones to get back a bit of the persona. Like atp I'm not convinced the 5 stages of grief was her idea and I don't think this mental state is related to a specific breakup or a specific event, this is a cluster of stuff she's been carrying.

But Daddy I Love Him: "growin' up precocious sometimes means not growin' up at all" holy fuck, mood. My heart aches for her, this anger and resentment must have been burning holes through her and people are still probably not gonna see her as she wants to be seen even after this. She couldn't make this pain any clearer and tomorrow she is still gonna have to play pretend.

Fresh Out The Slammer: still breaking these chains!! If anyone at all is listening, there is a Taylor before this album and a Taylor after. Full stop, no going back.

Florida!!!: I LOVE THIS COLLAB I NEED A FULL ALBUM.

Guilty as Sin?: looove the beats on this one.

Who's Afraid Of Little Old Me: "don't you worry folks we took out all her teeth" and the circus life, I am broken. This album is supposed to be her breaking her chains and the general reaction is "what ex caused this". I wouldn't be surprised if she committed mass murder.

I Can Fix Him (No, Really I Can): this song is giving cowboy - Lana Del Rey - old americana vibe and I'm into it. It's a new thing for Taylor but it suits her well, especially with her country past.

loml: feeling the "All Things End" by Hozier vibes. Now that I think about it the whole album is kinda Hozier-y, like very heavy on lyricism, dark storytelling and kinda giving whiskey/soil/heavy clouds. I am obsessed.

I Can Do It With A Broken Heart: girl go to therapy I am begging you.

The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived: THE SOUND!! THE WORDS!! THE TRUST ISSUES!! I love this song.

The Alchemy: psych ward mention in the obligatory football song, I see you, Miss Swift, trying to see who's actually listening. Well, I am.

Clara Bow: Nothing New bridge meets The Lucky One. I don't think anyone wants to be part of the industry after listening to this album, Tay, but we appreciate the sentiment.

The Black Dog: okay MsKingBean89. Also the location, she is hilarious.

imgonnagetyouback: bpdlor shining through, love you queen.

The Albatross: she hates her fans, and she is right. The Matty thing was heinous.

Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus: beautiful song. I don't have many thoughts about it, it's deeply personal for the people involved (like much of the album), and since I'm not one of them I can just say she evokes images so beautifully with her words. She is extremely skilled and talented.

How Did It End?: the sound really captures the image of someone lost in thought at the grocery store, idk what else to say.

So High School: was she sick while recording this?

I Hate It Here: my anthem. me. myself. I.

thanK you aIMee: cute metaphors

I Look In People's Windows: Ebenezer Scrooge-ass anthem (I am crying does anyone remember my "on the glass wall" post, I'm adding this song). I know it doesn't make sense, but to me it sounds like she hadn't been singing for a while and she is incorporating vocal exercises in her songs, Idk why. (like "oh this exercise sounds fun, should insert it in a song").

The Prophecy: oh boy, oh boy, this one hit hard. Like really hard. "Shades of greige" is the perfect way to describe this album, it's rather monochrome and monothonous like sadness often is.

Cassandra: I love me a good Greek mythology reference. Incredible imagery. Bruno Madrigal's anthem.

Peter: yes. yes. this. Peter Pan imagery + Daisy Buchanan vibes, I died dead.

The Bolter: called me tf out. The leaks in the rowboat, my God...

Robin: not crying, you are.

The Manuscript: that's the ending I was talking about. There is no real happy closure, she had to go back 15 years to find a past that doesn't haunt her anymore, that's disheartening. I guess we'll see how this plays out, but I'm afraid she's not all that better. Hope she can take a break and get better soon.

Overall, I loved this album so much. It's everything I hoped Midnights would be and Midnights is in my top 3, so that's saying something. Considering how wordy it is, I think most songs will grow on me even more, looking forward to that.

#ttpd #ts #🌙 #taylor swift #the tortured poets department

[mothmomma69]

OC fun facts

Rosa helps Beth with dyeing her hair, she has also let Beth dye a strip of her hair blue back when they were younger for Rosa's 18th birthday

Beth is a brunette like her mom!! She started bleaching and dyeing it red when she got into middle school though, and cut it to be a lot shorter

Rosa and Beth obligatory emo phase, mostly having Rosa play along with it to support her sister through the whole situation she was going through

Beth does have an ex girlfriend. She doesn't like talking about her much though (Only person Rosa has ever called a bitch and the first time Beth saw her sister be completely different from her normal nature. Guess you can say she has her father's anger :3 also she beat the shit out of that ex for Beth since the ex used her to get a more popular status in school)

Rosa hates swearing but will do it if she feels it's necessary to emphasize a point (Or if she is pissed off) and then there is Beth who swears a LOT. Rosa doesn't mind it though, she just knows her sister is on edge a lot

Beth has a job as a programmer, mostly giving me an excuse for her to be working from home

Rosa is very very aware of other's emotions, but doesn't know how to really handle them unless its someone extremely close to her. She also keeps a punching bag in her barn for herself and Beth when they're mad

Since Rosa is mainly helping on her Aunt's farm, she is pretty strong. She also likes animals a lot and has tried to convince her aunt to let her keep all sorts of stuff. Her aunt made a "No outside animals inside" rule after Rosa had brought a snapping turtle from the pond down the road into the house :sob: in her defense "Hes just a bit of spice to him, other than that and the fact his bite could literally break my fingers, hes pretty cute!!" (Florida energy fr)

Beth found said snapping turtle in the bathroom the next day and freaked out which is how the rule got made in the first place

Beth gets overstimulated easily and Rosa is CONSTANTLY fidgeting with something or just moving her hands in some way. Basically one who can't stay still and the other who can't move or they can feel EVERYTHING

Venus grew up with Lust in hell after her mother abandons her, knowing Venus should've been half wrath if she was born to who should've been the father. Lust is not a gentle woman but she also isn't COMPLETELY heartless

Venus is a very strong and intimidating imp, her colleagues fearing her due to her ability to so easily get humans to have their souls be corrupted and harvested.

She HATED wrath when he first fused with the old wrath. eventually she learned to tolerate him but there was just something about how he described his death to her that didn't sound right...

Anyways I hope you liked my silly lil dump

#artists on tumblr #writing #ocs #original character #my ocs #my ocs my beloved #my characters #Rosa is definitely neurodivergent

[blue-eyed-bloodstains]

Are either of your parents engaged but not married yet? my mom's been single since her and my dad split in 2007, which is when we found out my dad was cheating on who is since been my stepmom. my dad and stepmom are married.

Do you cuddle with your pet (if you have one)? all the time yeah, any time I've had pets in my life no matter what kind. we have a cat that we've had for 7 years and we always cuddle when she's not hounding for food

What college did you want to attend as a kid? I took one semester at a local community college in 2012, but unfortunately had to drop out and I would love to go to college and get a degree someday...

Do you have a pet gecko? no

Are you scared of reptiles? I mean, the ones that make sense to be like gators, crocs, snakes yeah...but most of em not really

Honestly, have you ever eaten raw cookie dough? of course it's the best!

Where would you most like to go in your state, etc that you haven’t been? probably part of the Appalachian Trail, and a full road trip visiting all the wineries and taste the wine

Who was the last member of the opposite sex you laid in a bed with? Zach, my fiance

About what things are you most selfish? more than I mean to be, most of which somehow come across that way when it's the complete opposite and I hate it...

Are you camera shy? Why/why not? yeah, majorly insecure

What is one small thing your significant other does that makes you happy? If you are single, what is one small thing a friend does to make you happy? he makes me laugh even in the darkest, lowest moments in my severe depression I've had all my life which no one really can do...

From inside of your house, how many doors lead outside? two, front and back

Who was the last person to give you flowers? my fiance

What do you think would be the hardest thing for you to give up? since I already had to do alcohol I'd say cigs, music, sushi (any seafood for that matter)

Do you like BBQ sauce?

Did the last person you kissed ever give you a hickey? many times

How many subscribers do you have on your YouTube channel? I don't think any actually, I don't do content or anything I just use it to watch vids and listen to music

If you could have a car in any color you wanted, which color? black or silver

What is your favorite Avril Lavigne song? ugghhh wayyyyy too hard to pick man! been a fan since day one and so many relate for so many reasons

What was the last thing you were mad at a doctor about? m doc's office switched me to a new PCP twice this year, both I only met once so after several years of my original one it's frustrating

Is your mother a lesbian? no

Do any of your close friends NOT have a Facebook account? not that I know of, they all have it

Would you ever consider getting dreadlocks? no

When was the last time you swam in a pool? too long! I wanted to so bad all summer and never got to, gotta wait till next year dammit :|

What was the last thing you said out loud? random talking to myself under my breath while he's sleeping

Have you ever wanted to be a nurse? no, I'd never be able to handle it

Who or what do you worship? I've never been religious, I'm more spiritual and have my beliefs

What was the last song you listened to on repeat? Unlive by Jelly Roll feat. Yelawolf

What song do you want played at your wedding? I gotta decide on an important one for my dad and for my mom, but I know our song (fiance and I) for our dance is Heaven by 3 Doors Down. during the reception it'll mostly just be a playlist of songs we always listen to and definitely make sure some throwbacks and fun ones are in there for the dance floor

What are three of the most painful things you have ever stepped on? aside from the obligatory lego response, umm..a thumbtack, fire anthill, pointy rocks

If applicable, what song are you listening to right now? I'm not, I have tv in the background

If you could choose three US states to visit, which three states would you pick? Florida, Hawaii, Texas

Have you ever donated blood? just during blood drives at school

Would you rather attend a yoga class or a Zumba class? never tried either but physically would be easier on me to do yoga

Have you written anything down today? no

Do you own a pair of pink pants? no

Do you normally eat healthy? hell no

What is the best compliment you’ve ever received? can't remember word for word but basically anything regarding I'm good enough..

Do you believe in miracles? yeah

What are three ways in which you are not normal? The fuck is normal?

Which genre of music do you listen to the most? I listen to pretty much everything so

Last person you kissed, are they into any type of sports? Which ones? my fiance used to ride his bike a lot to and from school and did a lot of bmx tricks and we bowl, but other than that I've never really seen him do much sport type stuff.

Does your best friend have a job? yeah

Do you ever visit people at work? I haven't worked in five years...

When you move out your house (or if you already have moved out) do you plan on still visiting your parents’ house? I try to visit my dad and stepmom when I can in NJ (we're in PA), mostly the holidays and the occasional birthday bbq or Father's Day. my mom lives in CO so that's a lot harder.

Do you usually take home leftovers if you eat out in a restaurant? pretty much always yeah

Have you ever ghost rode the whip (put your car on auto and dance next to it as it’s moving)? Do you want to? hell no and hell no

Why did you stop liking the last person you liked? he broke up with me to go back to drugs so..it hurt for awhile and I moved on and few years later met my fiance

What do you think of long-term relationships? this is the longest I've ever had and same goes for him (7 years so already long term) and I love him with everything I am and pray every single day that it's forever...

Do you have a lot of social media accounts? Do you update them all regularly? I'm mostly on FB and I rarely post a status or pics, I mostly just share things on my feed and comment on things/tag people/comment back and forth with friends and fam. I have Instagram too but same thing

When you’re in trouble, do your parents ever “middle name” you? my mom did yeah

When was the last time you got a new tattoo or piercing? Do you have any plans to get either in the future? vacation of 2016 I got my first tatt and he got another one himself with me. oh hell yeah I want more of both

Are you patriotic at all? Why/why not? not really, I just...never really got into it I guess. I mean I love and support the military and things like that, my family is riddled with vets, my fiance is one, I've had exes who are and friends who are still current but other than that I'm not all like "AMERICA!" type thing

Are you any good at packing a suitcase? I lived out of one for so many years, don't mean I'm real good at packing it though haha

Have you ever had a white hot chocolate? What did you think? I don't think so but sounds delicious

Do you ever get eczema? no

Have you ever mowed a lawn? he started teaching me this summer but...got a lot more practice to go next summer to be able to do it on my own (it's a ride mower given the property we're on, it's a lot of grass we gotta do which was part of our lease for a lower rent when we moved in)

Is there anyone you would do literally anything for? yes

Have you ever done a “knock-and-run” prank? no and what the hell? it's called ding dong ditch lol

Have you ever stabbed a friend in the back, intentionally or not? I wouldn't say stabbed in the back but messed up/hurt, sure and it was completely unintentional

What’s the longest you’ve ever slept in one go? umm I think it was like, 16 hours straight? something like that and that was a lonnnng time ago..no way no matter what could I ever get even a fraction of that after having insomnia for so many years

Have you ever dated someone with an accent different than yours? no

Have you ever worked two jobs at once? yep...the last time I worked 5 years ago and lost both within two weeks of each other...

Who does most of the housework around your house? honestly we both just get overwhelmed especially me cause he's gone more than he's home and it just piled and piled the last several years...but we've recently started slowly little by little trying to work on it together

Do you enjoy the smell and taste of cinnamon? yeah

#bored #survey #about me #personal

[mosstliest]

mcyt movie night headcanons!

(cc!) Dream , George , Sapnap , Technoblade , Wilbur , Eret , Fundy , Nihachu , Quackity , Karl

requested? yes / no

pronouns used : they / them

cw! light nsfw (Dream) , mentions of jumpscares (horror films)

Dream

he is a big fan of a good old netflix and chill session

something about the warm, dark living room only illuminated by the moving images on the screen, your silhouette barely visible under a blanket and whatever snack you’d found on his cupboard on your hands gets this man in a raunchy mood

he’ll pull you to his lap or slide next to you and start pecking at your neck

“But it’s just getting to the good part”

you stretch your neck to give him more room anyways

“Oh we’re about to get to the good part”

you chuckle and bite your lip to stifle a sigh as his lips begin to trace your jaw

the movie gets paused is what I’m saying

he refuses to buy any snacks from the candy shop  whenever you do go to the cinema

“It is unnecessarily expensive!”

“You have twenty million fucking subscribers!”

“BUT FOUR DOLLARS?!”

he has the most creative ways of smuggling sweets

it started with a classic tote bag

it’s become sort of a game

once, he bought the most ridiculously bulgy jacket and wore it in scorching florida weather solely for the purpose of hiding crisps

he laughs easily at movies and his wheeze has made you get kicked out of a movie theatre at least once

will talk about his favourite parts of the movie for hours after it’s finished

will laugh whenever he thinks about the funniest parts for days

George

(sort of George with a film buff s/o)

he doesn’t talk during movies and actively dislikes people who do

will complain if he doesn’t like the film but only in quiet whispers and not if he suspects you are particularly enjoying it

you made him watch a Tarkovsky film one time

he swears he didn’t fall asleep

he did

but he tried his best <3

can’t choose the movie for the life of him so you always end up having to pick

every time you try and analyze color symbolism he’ll chime in

“I’m colorblind”

before you can finish

you bait him honestly

he likes listening to you talk about your favorite movies and all the films you want to show him

he’ll look up facts about your favourite directors and will make fun of your least favourite ones with you

makes a great snobby-tarantino-fan “you’ve not known real cinema until you’ve watched pulp fiction”  impression that never fails to make you cackle

he is not a fan of horror films

you tried to make him watch one once

“I don’t really like horror movies but you said this one was good so- WHAT IS THAT?!”

turned it off immediately and you ended up watching the hobbit

Harry potter marathons are a must

he can imitate maggie smith’s accent to perfection

Sapnap

you watch anime together

I don’t give a fuck if you don’t like it

he doesn’t either

he’ll make you watch it

he has good taste though, so you end up enjoying it

cuddles with Sapnap cuddles with Sapnap cuddles with Sapnap

movie playing on the tv, your head in his chest and his hand in your waist, blankets wrapped around you and the AC running just a little bit too cold = his absolute definition of happiness

you binge watch shows in one sitting and then get sad when they’re over

he always burns the goddamn popcorn

daily movie nights!

you order in and eat a late night dinner in bed

Your pick monday, wednesday, friday

his pick tuesday, thursday, saturday

a full on debate on sundays trying to figure out a good middle ground

Whenever the movie runs late and you end up falling asleep, he’ll turn the tv off and quietly pull the blankets over your body before kissing your forehead in the sweetest way imaginable

he yells at the screen

he loves watching horror movies but gets jumpscared easily

“Awww are you scared baby?”

“Shut up y/n I’m only holding you so you don’t get scared”

“I won’t :)”

“...I’m not letting go if that’s what you’re fucking thinking”

Technoblade

(take a shot every time popcorn is mentioned and pass out)

one of your first dates was actually a movie date

he turned and whispered in your ear whenever a clever wip popped in his head and his commentary was so funny you had to bury your face in your hands so your laughter didn’t disturb the other people in the theatre

he talks during movies, he can’t help it

"heh?!"

he doesn’t like cinema popcorn and will exclusively buy chocolate

you didn’t get it until the day he made you try his trademark-techno-popcorn and wow

“holy shit this is great!”

“I know”

he’s completely ruined popcorn for you

“please don’t ever leave me, I don’t think I’ll be able to eat normal popcorn after this”

“wasn’t planning on it”

he is secretly into romcoms

you watch movies in bed, laptop propped in his legs and an obligatory bowl of popcorn in your arms

he plays with your hair for the whole time

you hate-watch bad movies all the time and your chests hurt from laughing by the end

he can easily memorize entire scenes and will repeat them to you in a totally monotone voice

It’s great

has never cried during a movie, is dreadfully proud of himself for it

sometimes he’ll get distracted and just stare at you, movie reduced to white noise in the background

“you’re so pretty”

Wilbur

makes dinner for you whenever you have a movie night

his snack game is kind of weak though, as much as I hate to say it

water and dark chocolate only

if you think he doesn’t insist on rewatching hamilton at least once every two months you are wrong

he is a goddamn hamilton kinnie and he likes the fucking songs okay?

constant change of cuddling positions

you made him sit through the entirety of the twilight saga “as a hate watch”

he now quotes it on a daily basis (never on stream, chat would eat him alive)

“Whaddaya mean team jacob? He’s a glorified furry!”

you watch a lot of documentaries

the way he concentrates on taking in every single bit of information is almost more entertaining than the actual film

he’ll tell you random facts he learnt watching the documentary and you’ll have to remind him that you watched it with him

you act out iconic romance scenes and he gets so into it

he can be anything from Jack Dawson to mr. Darcy and William Thacker and it gives you butterflies every time

you’ll stand up whenever characters are slow dancing and dance along with them

You’ve tried to watch shows together but you always end up forgetting or one of you will binge an entire season and

he’s insufferable when he doesn’t like a film but will refuse to change it

he criticizes the smallest details in a way that would make Anthony Lane look like an absolute sweetheart

you dance to the end credits theme

Fundy

(long distance!)

Netflix parties ALL THE TIME

+ discord calls / facetime

you coordinate snacks

sometimes you’ll switch whatever you’re watching to dutch for a second so he can make fun of the god awful translation

most times,you fall asleep together after the movie ends even if your time zones are far apart

you watch entire shows together, the longer the better

four or five episodes at a time

You both get super invested and will have heated discussions about whether rory should have ended up with logan or jess

whenever you talk about meeting up, watching a movie and actually cuddling comes up

he used to be kind of quiet during movies

he won’t shut up now, it’s fun, having his voice in your ears with whatever film you’re watching in the background makes it seem like he's in bed next to you

his voice would be easy to fall asleep to if he didn’t yell so often

he can guess the precise plot of every single horror movie

like word for word, scene for scene

he gets scared anyways

he sent you one of his hoodies once, after you begged for weeks

you wrap it around a plushie or pillow and cuddle it whenever you watch something together

“can’t believe a fucking sweater gets more action than me”

“oh shut up you big baby”

Eret

lots and lots of movie dates

he has excellent taste in films and shows so you let them choose most times

stacking up on cinema sweets and a huge bucket of popcorn when you go to a theatre

buying tons of crisps and candybars when you hang out at home

not the biggest cuddler in this specific setting

would much rather have her arm around your shoulder and your legs up on their lap

you watch award shows solely for the purpose of roasting the outfits

bed/couch absolutely crammed with plushies and pillows

you always make milkshakes together

not smoothies

not frappes

milkshakes

with syrup, whipped cream and a cherry on top

the night isn’t complete without them

you watch a lot of period films

“you’d look great in that”

“who are you pointing to again?”

“doesn’t matter, you’d look great in everything”

(you’ll get them to wear a corset if it’s the last thing you do)

he turns to kiss your cheek every fifteen minutes

Nihachu

you bake cookies before movie nights and decorate them specifically for the theme of the film

you did a horror marathon once

(it may have been a sneaky way to get her to hide in the crook of your neck but we don’t talk about that)

the plate of cookies flew out of her hands in minutes

she got so worried

“but you worked so hard on the decorations :(“

“it’s fine babe, we’ll just eat the plain ones”

she wrapped her arms around you and kissed your cheek so it was totally worth it

the decorations were kinda shit anyways

you watch a ton of coming of age movies and will listen to the soundtrack for days after

she’s so funny during movies

sometimes a character will do something stupid and her remark will be so absolutely stingy both your hands will fly to your mouths and you’ll stare at each other, eyes wide, before falling into a fit of giggles

simping over powerful women with Niki

you have a huge watchlist of gay films and high five everytime you cross one off

cuddling under a huge pile of blankets

switching sweaters

Zuko climbing unto the laptop and pausing the movie at the most inconvenient times

Quackity

he eats dry cereal during movies because he’s just chaotic like that

you sit on the floor with your backs to the couch and eat takeout and drugstore snacks

the amount of times you’ve watched the fucking bee movie

you like watching things in spanish

everything from crappy soap operas to almodovar films

he likes to translate things and can do it super quick so you never really need subtitles

you watch a lot of superhero movies and he has made you watch Adam Sandler’s entire filmography

the floor always ends up messy and cleaning up afterwards is almost as funny as the film itself

sitcoms!

lots and lots of sitcoms

Karl

pillow fort is obligatory

monster energy drinks and a huge variety of candy

microwave popcorn with too much butter

hot cocoa with too many marshmallows

you mostly watch cartoons and 2010’s nickelodeon shows

scream singing the iCarly theme song and hating on tori from victorious

getting really into the adventure time lore

tickle fights when the film gets boring

he takes recommendations from “indie film” tiktoks and you mock him for it endlessly

he has weirdly obscure knowledge on every show you watch

he has a big colección of dvds/videotapes so you get to watch some oldies

he falls asleep with his head in your lap or your shoulder

he gives you a sweater or hoodie to wear and lends you plaid pyjama pants

you quote movies on stream and have ton of private jokes

can you tell I got lazy at the end?

likes and reblogs are always appreciated and have a wonderful morning/day/afternoon/evening/night <3

#oxeye daisy #mcyt headcanons #mcyt x reader #mcyt x you #mcyt x y/n #dream smp x reader #dream smp x you #dream smp x y/n #dream x you #dream x reader #georgenotfound x reader #georgenotfound x y/n #sapnap x you #sapnap x y/n #techno x you #techno x reader #wilbur x you #wilbur x reader #fundy x reader #fundy x you #nihachu x reader #nihachu x you #eret x y/n #eret x reader #quackity x y/n #quackity x reader #karl x reader

[peonycats]

do you have any state ocs?

Hmmmm okay so like I have complicated feelings on American states and the US as a whole tbh 

(Obligatory Disclaimer: none of this is hate or trying to incite hate on other ppl’s state ocs!!! I like seeing em and think they’re really cool! this is mostly me talking about nationhood, culture, and American Imperialism in North America!)

From how I personify nations, I would say that for a nation personification to arise, a group would need a cohesive and distinct identity, whether it be cultural, social, political. Already, this is pretty complicated- how do you judge whether or an identity is distinct or cohesive enough to warrant personifying and by what metrics? Can’t a previous representation just represent them all? I judge it case by case, but this is also the sort of thing that requires the hindsight of actual centuries to decide whether said identity ends up becoming substantial enough, and even then we’re still gonna have the same argument of when exactly a nation came into being- for the US, at most you’re gonna have the hindsight of 500~ years, and you gotta also remember that nations and their identities change over time and continue to change to this day.

If we’re working from the logic that nations start as a distinct socio-cultural group, by personifying states in that manner, I would be essentially agreeing with the divisions of these states, affirming that “yeah, this state’s identity is cohesive enough that there could be a personification for it” when in reality, many (though not all!) of these divisions were created to carve up stolen land and give it to settlers, and not really based on any cultural divides. A white Anglo settler from, say, Indiana would have a lot more in common with a white Anglo Settler from Missouri, than they would with a Potawatomi who lives in the same “nation” (in the sense of a cohesive identity) as Anglo settler no. 1. In certain cases, states were divided up on the basis that it was just too hard to govern all that stolen land from one political center (see the Carolinas)

It’s also worth nothing that state identities aren’t super strong in a lot of cases- You got Texas over there, but there’s not exactly a very distinct Iowan identity; at least, not one that’s very different from the general midwestern identity? (I’m gonna make some Midwesterners mad and firstly, I’m sorry, but secondly, it does really show you how controversial and inherently political and biased it is choosing what nations/peoples to personify and which to not) And don’t even get me started on cultural distinctions and divisions within the states themselves! (See North Florida vs Southern Florida, as well as Norcal vs Socal)

These are the primary problems I have with going the route of personifying states by making them embody the “dominant” group of a state. Many times, I’ve found myself with the question “Do I really need the umpteenth white settler personification?” (and sometimes, the answer to that is yes! The Puritans from England that settled the New England Region are very different from the Mormons that moved out west) This route also runs the risk of making it look like the contributions of non-white groups are being diminished without supplementary personifications.

Some may go another route of having another, preceding group, say an Indigenous American people, represent the state in order to build off a different cultural identity and avoid the problem of redundant personifications, and there are certain cases where I think it works! (See Hawaii) But for others, not so much; said Indigenous American people or other peoples might not feel any connection or kinship with the wider state (see Utah and the Ute people) 

I guess what I’m saying at the end of the day is that a lot of these boundaries and lines that make up states are ultimately hollow and don’t have much meaning, at least socio-culturally, and that it feels anachronistic to me to reach back in time to personify something that really didnt have a distinct identity and contort that personification to fit in these artificial and meaningless boundaries  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯  Honestly, this problem extends far beyond states and even towards other countries.

.... and despite everything I’ve said above, I will say I do have some state ocs! I have a Hawaii, Texas, New Mexico, California, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, and more, but these are the ones I’m most confident abt. For some states, I’m not sure about how to or even if personify in the first place. 

On a similar note, I also have ocs for the Comanche/Numunu and Navajo/Diné! (I’m interested in early American Southwest history if you couldn’t tell sghdfjs)

#Anonymous #hetalia #???? i guess #fun factoid for the fellas reading the tags #the only reason south dakota separated from north dakota was because they had enough of a population to become an individual state by thems #lves and thought the northerners were all backwards fur trappers embroiled in conflict with the indigenous people #u were prbly expecting some nice drawings and i just wrote an essay rip #thoughts tm #long post #tw imperialism #tw manifest destiny #i am of the opinion that more indigeneous american nation tans in general should be present #hella #hetalia ocs #metatalia

[creepingsharia]

Thanksgiving on the Net: Roast Bull with Cranberry Sauce

Debunking revisionist history about Thanksgiving. Take the time to read it all, print it,  and share it with your children no matter what age they are.

EDITORS NOTE: Due to the length of this article it has been presented here in three (3) parts. You may access the other pages by clicking the links at the bottom of this page or from the 'Related Links' section in the right column of the page.

http://www.sail1620.org/discover_feature_thanksgiving_on_the_net_roast_bull_with_cranberry_sauce_part_1.shtml

Thanksgiving on the Net:  Roast Bull with Cranberry Sauce Part 1

by Jeremy D. Bangs

Jeremy Bangs (Ph.D., Leiden University), a Fellow of the Pilgrim Society, is Director of the Leiden American Pilgrim Museum, having previously been Visiting Curator of Manuscripts at Pilgrim Hall Museum, Chief Curator at Plimoth Plantation, and Curator of the Leiden Pilgrim Documents Center. Among his books are "Pilgrim Edward Winslow: New England's First International Diplomat" (2004); "Indian Deeds, Land Transactions in Plymouth Colony, 1620-1691" (2002); and "The Seventeenth-Century Town Records of Scituate, Massachusetts" (3 vols, 1997-1999-2001), all published by the New England Historic Genealogical Society. He has written many articles about the Pilgrims and Plymouth Colony, and is currently completing the manuscript of a book about the Pilgrims and Leiden. He was awarded the Distinguished Mayflower Scholarship Award by the Society of Mayflower Descendants in the Commonwealth of PA in 2001. Bangs is among a small, select number of historians of the Pilgrims (those who have no family relation to them whatsoever!). He has also published articles and books on Dutch history and art history of the 16th and 17th centuries.

Setting people straight about Thanksgiving myths has become as much a part of the annual holiday as turkey, cranberry sauce, and pumpkin pie. But should historians bother? Jane Kamensky, a professor of history at Brandeis, thinks not. She asks on the website "Common-Place" (in 2001) whether it's worth while "to plumb the bottom of it all - to determine, for example, [...] whether Plymouth's 'Pilgrims' were indeed the grave-robbing hypocrites that UAINE describes [i.e. United American Indians of New England]. [...] Was the 'first Thanksgiving' merely a pretext for bloodshed, enslavement, and displacement that would follow in later decades? Combing period documents and archaeological evidence, we might peel away some of the myths [...] But to do so would be to miss a fundamental point of these holidays. [...] in this new millenium, these sacred secular rites are once again pressed into service - this time by new nations, with new visions of the present, to be reached through new versions of the past. In place of one origins myth, the inventors of Indigenous Peoples' Day [intended to replace Columbus Day] and the National Day of Mourning [intended to replace Thanksgiving Day] invoke another. One in which all Europeans were villains and all Natives, victims. One in which indigenous peoples knew neither strife nor war until the treachery of Columbus and his cultural heirs taught them to hate and fear. To ask whether this is true is to ask the wrong question. It's true to its purposes. Every bit as true, that is, as the stories some Americans in 1792 and 1863 told about the events of 1492 and 1621. And that's all it needs to be. For these holidays say much less about who we really were in some specific Then, than about who we want to be in an ever changing Now."

"And that's all it needs to be"? I disagree. I think that anyone who wants to approach the question of Thanksgiving Day as a historian in the "ever changing Now" will need to ask "the wrong question" - what of all this is true?

Surveying more than two hundred websites that "correct" our assumptions about Thanksgiving, it's possible to sort them into groups and themes, especially since internet sites often parrot each other. Very few present anything like the myths that most claim to combat. Almost all of the corrections are themselves incorrect or banal, and otherwise not germane to the topic of what happened in 1621. With heavy self-importance they demonstrate quite unsurprisingly that what was once commonly taught in grade school lacked scope, subtlety, and minority insight. The political posturing is pathetic.

Commonly the first point scored is that lots of people gave thanks before the Pilgrims did it in 1621. Local boosters in Virginia, Florida, and Texas promote their own colonists, who (like many people getting off a boat) gave thanks for setting foot again on dry land. Several sites claim that Indians had six thanksgivings every year; at least one says that every day, every act, every thought was carried out with thanksgiving by pre-contact Indians. (My thanksgiving is bigger than your thanksgiving?) Among many examples:

* http://www.new-life.net/thanks01.htm

* http://www.oyate.org/resources/shortthanks.html

The Text

Many sites point out in a rankly naive sort of way that only one brief documentary account records Plymouth Colony's 1621 harvest festivities, the specific descriptive words of Edward Winslow, while additional information can be derived from the seasonal comments of William Bradford, who mentioned that the Pilgrims ate turkey among other things. See, for example, Pilgrim Hall Museum's website, which is consistently informative and of high scholarly quality:

Reporting on the colonists' first year, Winslow wrote that wheat and Indian corn had grown well; the barley crop was "indifferently good"; but pease were "not worth the gathering." Winslow continues: "Our harvest being gotten in, our Governor sent foure men on fowling; so that we might after a more speciall manner rejoyce together, after we had gathered the fruit of our labours. They foure in one day killed as much fowle as, with a little help besid, served the company almost a weeke. At which time amongst other Recreations, we exercised our Armes, many of the Indians coming amongst us, and amongst the rest their greatest King Massasoyt, with some nintie men, whom for three days we entertained and feasted. And they went out and killed five deere, which they brought to the plantation and bestowed on our Governour, and upon the Captaine and others. And although it be not alwayes so plentifull, as it was at this time, with us, yet by goodnesse of God, we are so farre from want, that we often wish you partakers of our plentie."[1]

Governor William Bradford, in Of Plymouth Plantation, reported that fishing had been good all summer, and, in the fall, "begane to come in store of foule, as winter approached [...] And besides water foule, ther was great store of wild Turkies, of which they tooke many, besids venison, etc."[2]

Archaeologist James Deetz made much of the fact that Winslow did not name the turkeys Bradford mentioned.

This startling revelation (that in this case one should ignore Bradford's general comments and suppose that Winslow was providing a complete menu listing) recurs in various websites, such as the 2002 article posted by the Christian Science Monitor.

More frequently repeated is Deetz's emphatic reminder that Winslow did not use the word "thanksgiving" - drawing the conclusion that therefore the 1621 event was not a thanksgiving but some sort of traditional English harvest festival he characterized as "secular."

I've discussed this oversimplification previously in an previous article.

Further, see "Re-bunking the Pilgrims" [subscribers]

On the one hand, whatever their folk customs may have been, harvest festivals in England with which the Pilgrims had been familiar were not "secular." (The Elizabethan and Jacobean-period Anglican Book of Common Prayer included an obligatory harvest thanksgiving prayer among the prayers whose use was increasingly enforced in the early seventeenth century.) On the other, Winslow's description includes biblical phrases referring to texts whose completion includes thanksgiving (particularly John 4:36 and Psalm 33). Winslow's contemporaries, unlike modern archaeologists, caught the meaning of the full texts to which he alluded. They knew their Bible.

But Deetz's assertion that there was no thanksgiving in 1621 is repeated in numerous websites. Often authors explain that what took place was so unlike later Puritan thanksgivings that it couldn't have been a true thanksgiving (usually citing, for the definition of what that would have been, William DeLoss Love, The Fast and Thanksgiving Days of New England (Boston, New York: Houghton and Mifflin, 1895), a book whose title alone seems to have inspired the common web article notion that in New England people fasted as an _expression of thanksgiving). For example, in "Top 10 Myths About Thanksgiving,' Rick Shenkman announces that Thanksgiving was not about religion.

Had it been, he says, "the Pilgrims never would have invited the Indians to join them. Besides, the Pilgrims would never have tolerated festivities at a true religious event. Indeed, what we think of as Thanksgiving was really a harvest festival. Actual 'Thanksgivings' were religious affairs; everybody spent the day praying. Incidentally, these Pilgrim Thanksgivings occurred at different times of the year, not just in November."

Responding to this in reverse order: (1) that Thanksgivings were not limited to November does not mean that the first one held by the colonists in Plymouth (which incidentally was presumably in September or early October) was not a thanksgiving. (2) The modern idea that in a religious thanksgiving "everyone spent the day praying" is inconsistent with the only description of the specific activities of a definitely identified thanksgiving day in early Plymouth Colony - the thanksgiving held in Scituate in 1636 when a religious service was followed by feasting. (See my book The Seventeenth-Century Town Records of Scituate, Massachusetts (Boston: NEHGS, 2001), vol. 3, p. 513.) (3) That "what we think of as Thanksgiving was really a harvest festival" (as if that meant it could not have been a thanksgiving) repeats Deetz's incorrect opinion that an English harvest festival was non-religious or even irreligious. (4) That the Pilgrims "would never have tolerated festivities at a true religious event" presumes a narrow definition of what a true religious event was before arriving through circular argument at a denial that what the Pilgrims did was such an event, because it differed from the axiomatic definition. (Ever been to a midwestern church picnic? Did tossing horseshoes and playing softball make it non-religious?) (5) As is repeatedly demonstrated by the writings of the Pilgrims' minister John Robinson, the Pilgrims attempted to pattern their religious activities according to biblical precedent. The precedent for a harvest festival was the Old Testament Feast of Tabernacles, Sukkoth (Deut. 16: 13-14). This harvest festival (as described in the 1560 Geneva translation of the Bible, used by the Pilgrims) was established to last "seuen daies, when thou hast gathered in thy corne, and thy wine. And thou shalt reioyce in thy feast, thou, and they sonne, and thy daughter, and thy servant, and thy maid, and the Levite and the stranger, and the fatherles, and the widow, that are within thy gates." The biblical injunction to include the "stranger" probably accounts for the Pilgrims' inviting their Native neighbors to rejoice with them, although Winslow does not explicitly say anything about invitation. Besides Sukkoth, the Pilgrims' experience of a Reformed Protestant thanksgiving every year in Leiden probably contributed to what they considered appropriate. Leiden's October 3 festivities commemorated the lifting of the Siege of Leiden in 1574, when half the town had died (an obvious parallel with the experience of the Pilgrims in the winter of 1620-21). Lasting ten days, the first Leiden event was a religious service of thanksgiving and prayer, followed by festivities that included meals, military exercises, games, and a free fair. To summarize, the common assumption that the Pilgrims' 1621 event should be judged against the forms taken by later Puritan thanksgivings - whether or not those are even correctly understood - overlooks the circumstance that the Pilgrims did not have those precedents when they attempted something new, intentionally based not on old English tradition but on biblical and Reformed example.

Shenkman has not invented these views. Attempts to be accurate frequently make the same assumptions. For example, the History Channel states that, "the colonists didn't even call the day Thanksgiving. To them, a thanksgiving was a religious holiday in which they would go to church and thank God for a specific event, such as the winning of a battle. On such a religious day, the types of recreational activities that the pilgrims and Wampanoag Indians participated in during the 1621 harvest feast - dancing, singing secular songs, playing games - wouldn't have been allowed. The feast was a secular celebration, so it never would have been considered a thanksgiving in the pilgrims minds."

The identical text is copied without credit on the webpage of the International Student & Scholar Programs of Emory University:

It's worth pointing out that Winslow says nothing about "dancing, singing secular songs, [or] playing games." Those might be intended among Winslow's general term "recreations," but to specify and cite them as proof that the Pilgrims' day was "a secular celebration" is over-reaching.

Thanking Whom?

Assuming the nature of the festival was non-religious, some sites proclaim that there was a thanksgiving, but that the Pilgrims were not thanking God. Instead they were thanking the Indians for the help that had contributed to the colonists� survival during the first year. For example, "Rumela Web" says, "The Pilgrims of Plymouth Rock held their Thanksgiving in 1621 as a three day 'thank you' celebration to the leaders of the Wampanoag Indian tribe and their families for teaching them the survival skills they needed to make it in the New World."

A site that provides Thanksgiving Day recipes and menus says, "The Pilgrims invited the Native Americans to a feast to thank them for all they had learned."

Another site [member account required] provides a psychological analysis: "Not only was this festival a way to thank the Wampanoag, but it also served to boost the morale of the remaining settlers."

Such redirection of the thanks is consistent with the modern assessment expressed in "The Truth about the First Thanksgiving," by James Loewen, "Settlement proceeded, not with God's help, but with the Indians'."

We think the Pilgrims should have thanked the Indians. Nonetheless, while most modern historians explain events without dependence on providential intervention, it is still inaccurate to bend the evidence to suggest that the Pilgrims' attitude was not predominantly providential, and did not result in thanks to God for help received from the Indians.

Bending evidence, plus inventing details found in no historical source, is not a monopoly of the secular interpretation. For example, Kathryn Capoccia's online Sunday School lesson, "American Thanksgiving Celebrations," displays an incredibly imaginative disregard for historical evidence:

"Two weeks before the celebration was to take place a proclamation was issued stating that a harvest festival was to be held, which would be preceded by a special religious service and would be open to both Separatist church members and nonmembers. Everyone was urged to publicly offer gratitude for God's provision. The invitation was also extended to chief Massasoit." [...] "In response to the invitation Massasoit appeared in camp with three braves. Two days later he was joined by ninety other braves who provided five deer, a flock of geese, fifteen swordfish and small sweet apples for the celebration. The ceremonies began on the last morning of the festival [sic] with a worship service led by Elder Brewster. Then ground sports, such as foot racing and wrestling were held, as well as knife throwing contests. The settlers demonstrated musket drilling and shot a cannon volley. Then the feasting began in mid-afternoon at the fort. Everyone was seated in the open at long tables. At the end of the meal the settlers toasted the Indians as friends. The adults exchanged gifts with each other: Massasoit was given a bolt of cloth by Bradford, the warriors received cooking pots and colored beads in strings. The Indians reciprocated with a beaver cloak for Bradford and several freshly killed deer that could be smoked and stored for winter. The Indians presented the children with lumps of candy made from sugar extracted from wild beet plants. When the ceremonies were completed Elder Brewster quoted the Bible as a benediction, 'I thank my God upon every remembrance of you'". This level of fabrication is rare. It recalls the oratory of a century ago, that inspired the balloon-pricking emotions of countless would-be debunkers.

Colored Clothes, No Buckled Hats! My Goodness!

Similarly disconnected from Winslow's version are the common corrections to misconceptions about Pilgrim costume. Numerous sites let us know that the Pilgrims did not always wear black, and some even assert excitedly that it is important that we know about this discovery.

Timothy Walch, writing for History News Services, says, "Finally, it's important to dispel one last Thanksgiving myth — that the Pilgrims dressed in black and white clothing, wore pointed hats and starched bonnets and favored buckles on their shoes. It's true that they dressed in black on Sundays; but on most days, including the first Thanksgiving, they dressed in white, beige, black, green and brown." Surprisingly, Walch talks about buckles on shoes, instead of the common cartoon iconography of buckles on hats (itself an anachronism derived from a brief fashion in the 1790's). While Walch's point about color in workday clothing is true, I'm not sure it can come as a surprise to very many people. Nowadays most illustrations show Pilgrims in multi-colored clothing, often using photographs of the colorful actors at Plimoth Plantation. Even children now in their thirties will have learned about the Pilgrims from pictures showing varie-colored clothing. It wasn't always that way (cheaper books once were restricted to monochrome illustrations), but none of the websites gives a good explanation of the origin of the stereotype - the error is paraded simply as yet another example of inherited ignorance.

Only one genuine portrait of a Pilgrim exists - that of Edward Winslow (now in Pilgrim Hall Museum). Painted in 1651 in London, where Winslow acted as a diplomat representing the interests of New England colonies before various government committees, it shows him dressed appropriately in the very expensive black formal wear that most Pilgrims could not afford. From his portrait, as well as from other 17th-century portraits (that tended to show rich people) history painters of the early 19th century derived some ideas of costume. But they did not restrict their research to portraits of the rich, they also looked at pictures of common people in Dutch genre paintings. In romantic visions of historical scenes, the 19th-century history painters showed Pilgrim leaders in black, but others in a variety of colors. None of the dozen or so history paintings on Pilgrim themes at Pilgrim Hall Museum (the foremost collection) shows the Pilgrims uniformly in black - most wear scarlet, russet, green, ochre, grey, blue, or brown.

However, 19th century Americans became familiar with the Pilgrims through black and white stereoptype engravings, not paintings. At the same time, black clothing had become cheaper to produce and was expected for Sunday-best attire, not just among the wealthy. It was easy to imagine that the Pilgrim leaders as seen in black-and-white engravings were dressed in a way that was nearly familiar.

And, yes, they did call themselves "Pilgrims."

Almost as frequent as remarks about the color of their clothes are the website assertions that these colonists did not call themselves "Pilgrims." James Loewen, in "The Truth About the First Thanksgiving," writes that "no one even called them 'Pilgrims' until the 1870s."

This sort of belief is derived from a common misconception that because the manuscript of William Bradford's journal "Of Plymouth Plantation" was lost from the late 18th until the mid 19th century, no one was familiar, until the rediscovery, with his famous phrase, "They knew they were Pilgrims." The discovery of that phrase is thought to have appealed strongly to the Victorian imagination and to have led to the term "Pilgrims" as a designation for the Plymouth colonists. Bradford, however, was not the first to apply the name in print to these colonists - that was Robert Cushman in 1622 (in the book now called Mourt's Relation). Bradford's own words were excerpted and published by Nathaniel Morton in New England's Memorial, first printed in 1669 (and reprinted in 1721, 1772, and twice in 1826). The term Pilgrim, never forgotten, was used repeatedly in the later 18th century and throughout the 19th century, at celebrations in Plymouth that attracted attention throughout New England if not farther. If Mr. Loewen thinks the word "Pilgrim" was not applied to these people before the 1870's, one wonders what he thinks the local worthies of Plymouth were doing when in 1820 they founded the Pilgrim Society.

The Plymouth colonists considered themselves and all other earnest Christians to be on an earthly pilgrimage to a heavenly goal. Most of them were serious about their faith and puzzled by the presence among them of a few who demonstratively were not. Referring to themselves in that context they used the New Testament image expressed in print by Robert Cushman in 1622: "But now we are all in all places strangers and pilgrims, travelers and sojourners [...]" The full Bible citation, which these people knew and recognized as a text that gave re-assuring self-identification, was this (Hebrews 11:13-16, Geneva translation, 1560):

"All these dyed in the faith, and receiued not the promises, but sawe them a farre of[f], and beleued them, and receiued them thankefully, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrimes on the earth. For they that say suche things, declare plainely that they seke a countrey. And if they had bene mindeful of that countrey, from whence they came out, they had leasure to haue returned. But now they desire a better, that is an heauenlie: wherefore God is not ashamed of them to be called their God: for he hathe prepared for them a citie."

The foregoing unifying phrase - strangers and pilgrims on the earth - is misunderstood as a dichotomy in George Willison's book Saints and Strangers (New York: Reynall & Hitchcock, 1945). Willison�s Hegelian analysis of Pilgrim history as a conflict between religious fanatics he calls "saints" and disinterested, economically motivated opponents to them, whom he identifies as "strangers," has become a rarely questioned presumed truth, never doubted on the internet. It is basic to Willison's dismissive interpretation of the Mayflower Compact as an instrument of minority control. For Willison, the dialectical tension was resolved by a happy synthesis that bore similarities to the democratic triumph of the American common man over tyranny at the end of World War II. Willison was speaking to people who saw themselves in his description of the Pilgrims, as people who "were valiantly engaged [...] in a desperate struggle for a better order of things, for a more generous measure of freedom for all men, for a higher and nobler conception of life based upon recognition of the intrinsic worth and dignity of the individual." Stirring words, they introduce Willison�s description of the process of conflict that was for him the meaning of being a Pilgrim.

For the Pilgrims themselves, in specific contexts other identifying terms were useful. In their application to move to Leiden, they said they were members of the Christian Reformed religion - thus indicating that they were the sort of people Leiden wanted as immigrants. Distinguishing themselves from Puritans who stayed in the Church of England, they called themselves Separatists. In New England, for legal purposes connected with rights to distribution of the common property and land, the colonists referred to anyone who had arrived before the 1627 division as "Old Comers" or "First Comers." Their general self-identification, however, was "pilgrims" in the New Testament sense. Their first use of the term in America is seen in the name given the first child born in the colony - Peregrine White. "Peregrine" comes from the Latin peregrinus meaning "pilgrim" or "stranger."

[1]Mourt's Relation, published in cooperation with Plimoth Plantation by Applewood Books, Bedford MA, Edited by Dwight B. Heath from the original text of 1622 and copyright 1963 by Dwight B. Heath, p. 82.

[2]Of Plymouth Plantation 1620-1647 by William Bradford. A new edition by Samuel Eliot Morison; First published Sept. 19, 1952; 21st printing Jan. 2001, p. 90.

Thanksgiving on the Net:  Roast Bull with Cranberry Sauce Part 2

The Fake Thanksgiving Proclamation of 1623

The invented secular harvest festival augmented by the redirection of thanks towards the Indians and the assertion that "Pilgrims" was a name not used by the colonists, has become widely accepted. What's to be done? Fake it! Instead of simply pointing out that this version of the past fails to account for the Pilgrims' habitual piety and is thoroughly inconsistent with the documentary evidence, someone has felt it necessary to invent a document that replaces the 1621 purported non-thanksgiving with a celebration that does include all the sentiments and specifications that Winslow's description lacks. Many websites whose authors would like to maintain an emphasis on the Pilgrims' religious attitudes to support their own, quite different convictions now tell a fake story instead.

The cute text, widely circulated on internet sites (or excerpted, for example), is: "William Bradford's Thanksgiving Proclamation (1623)

Inasmuch as the great Father has given us this year an abundant harvest of Indian corn, wheat, peas, beans, squashes, and garden vegetables, and has made the forests to abound with game and the sea with fish and clams, and inasmuch as he has protected us from the ravages of the savages, has spared us from pestilence and disease, has granted us freedom to worship God according to the dictates of our own conscience.

Now I, your magistrate, do proclaim that all ye Pilgrims, with your wives and ye little ones, do gather at ye meeting house, on ye hill, between the hours of 9 and 12 in the day time, on Thursday, November 29th, of the year of our Lord one thousand six hundred and twenty-three and the third year since ye Pilgrims landed on ye Pilgrim Rock, there to listen to ye pastor and render thanksgiving to ye Almighty God for all His blessings.

— William Bradford Ye Governor of Ye Colony"

["Ravages of the savages" indeed! Ye, ye, ye, ye!]

This is demonstrably spurious, as my friend Jim Baker pointed out in 1999. His remarks are repeated by various people - usually without credit to Baker - Dennis Rupert, for example.

The false proclamation does not appear in any 17th-century source - not in Bradford, not in Winslow, not in Morton's New England's Memorial, not anywhere. Internal evidence suggests it is a 20th-century fraud. No mention of Plymouth Rock exists before it was pointed out in the mid-18th century, and the term "great Father" (for God) is a 19th-century romantic quasi-Native term that Bradford never used in his acknowledged writings. There are further anachronisms. For example, in 1623 there was no pastor in Plymouth Colony. Pastor John Robinson was still in Leiden, so services were led by the deacon, Elder William Brewster. William Bradford never referred to himself as "your magistrate" in years when he was governor. Bradford dated documents "in the year of our Lord" - sometimes adding the year of the monarch's reign. He never referred to landing on Plymouth Rock (not even as "Pilgrim Rock") and certainly did not use it as a date-base. The Pilgrims did not imagine themselves as seeking "freedom to worship God according to the dictates of our own conscience." They wanted freedom to worship according to their interpretation of biblical commands, which they thought was exclusively correct - and correct externally to any dictates of their own consciences. Finally, it's amusing that the 29th of November 1623 (Old Style) was not a Thursday but a Saturday (according to the tables in H. Grotefend's Taschenbuch der Zeitrechnung des Deutschen Mittelalters und der Neuzeit (ed. Th. Ulrich, Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 1960).

While it is often impossible to locate the ancient origin of such internet myths, this fraud is relatively recent. Samuel Eliot Morison was unaware of it when editing Bradford's Of Plymouth Plantation (New York: Knopf, 1952); Eugene Aubrey Stratton does not mention it in his Plymouth Colony, Its History & People, 1620-1691 (Salt Lake City: Ancestry Publishing, 1986). I have not discovered whether it appears anywhere before it made its way into William J. Federer's America's God and Country: An Encyclopedia of Quotations (Coppel, TX: Fame, 1994) and the source Federer gives - David Barton's The Myth of Separation (Aledo TX: Wallbuilder Press, 1991), p. 86. The text has been dropped from recent editions of Barton's book, but that doesn't put an end to repetition of the nonsense, especially on internet sites. A request to David Barton for information on this remains unanswered. On Barton's historical inventiveness, see:

Rob Boston, "Sects, Lies and Videotape: Who Is David Barton, And Why Is He Saying Such Awful Things About Separation of Church And State?" (Originally published in Church & State, 46, Nr. 4, April 1993, pp. 8-12).

Rob Boston, "David Barton's 'Christian Nation' Myth Factory Admits Its Products Have Been Defective." (Originally published in Church & State, 49, No. 7, July/August 1996, pp. 11-13).

Jim Allison, "An Index to Factual Information About David Barton And His Books".

Nicholas P. Miller, "Wallbuilders or Mythbuilders".

That people stressing the religious attitude of the Pilgrims use this invented 1623 "Thanksgiving Proclamation" is ironic. They might have been satisfied with the truth. The 1621 event did express the Pilgrims' religious attitude of thankfulness for God's providence and therefore should be adequate for their modern purposes. Moreover, in the summer of 1623 the Pilgrims held another special day of thanksgiving to God when they considered that their prayers for rain were answered, a drought ended, and their crops were saved. It wasn't in November and no stirring proclamation is preserved. Yet the "secular" interpretive ignorance that denies that the 1621 event was a thanksgiving had triumphed to the extent that someone from among the fundamentally disgruntled must have thought it clever to fight back. It is another question entirely, what the relation of the Pilgrims' religious attitude bears to modern understanding, that would make it urgent to use faked evidence to prove the Pilgrims were thanking God. Obviously the Pilgrims were religious - but what has this to do with anything other than an honest understanding of the past? Their religiosity scarcely provides support for any particular doctrinal viewpoint now; and no one is likely to become religious because it has been proven that the Pilgrims were.

Bartonis interest is to paint a picture of America as a particular sort of Christian nation since the beginning of its colonization. To make the Pilgrims even more religious than is indicated by their own words is dishonest. Removing the spurious quotation is a commendable step in the right direction. Considering that the Pilgrims interpreted their religion to mean that the Christian community bore responsibility to treat the Indians with respect and legal equality (see my book Indian Deeds, Land Transactions in Plymouth Colony, 1620-1699 (Boston: NEHGS, 2002)); noticing that the Pilgrims' laws proclaim that the community bore responsibility for the care of widows, orphans, the poor, and the infirm; and discovering that the Pilgrims' minister John Robinson argued in favor of cautious religious toleration and asserted that the church had no special authority over the magistrate, which he said was required to deal equitably with non-believers as well as believers, I'd be happy to see such Christian principles applied to modern America. Good luck to Mr. Barton and his colleagues in ensuring this happens!

The Libertarian's First Thanksgiving

Fred E. Foldvary has picked up the false 1623 date eagerly and given it a different twist. "The rains came and the harvest was saved. It is logical to surmise that the Pilgrims saw this as a sign that God blessed their new economic system, because Governor Bradford proclaimed November 29, 1623, as a Day of Thanksgiving." That's the opinion of Foldvary, Editor (1998) of The Progress Report and Lecturer in Economics, Santa Clara University.

So - the Pilgrims weren't thankful to God for a bounteous harvest as such, nor were they expressing gratitude to the Indians for help received. They were congratulating themselves on the discovery of the benefits of individualist capitalism!

The Ludwig von Mises Institute in 1999 published Richard J. Maybury's article "The Great Thanksgiving Hoax" (originally seen in The Free Market, November, 1985). Maybury (self-styled business and economic analyst) wants to correct our idealized view of the Pilgrims: "[T]he harvest of 1621 was not bountiful, nor were the colonists hardworking or tenacious. 1621 was a famine year and many of the colonists were lazy thieves." [...] "they refused to work in the fields. They preferred instead to steal food." [...] "The prevailing condition during those years was not the abundance the official story claims, it was famine and death. The first 'Thanksgiving' was not so much a celebration as it was the last meal of condemned men." Then it all changed: "in 1623 Bradford abolished socialism. He gave each household a parcel of land and told them they could keep what they produced, or trade it away as they saw fit. In other words, he replaced socialism with a free market, and that was the end of famines." [...] "Before these free markets were established, the colonists had nothing for which to be thankful." [...] "Thus the real reason for Thanksgiving, deleted from the official story, is: Socialism does not work; the one and only source of abundance is free markets, and we thank God we live in a country where we can have them." So there you have it - neither God's providence nor helpful Indians, just materialistic private profit.

The theme recurs in numerous imitative articles online. In 2004, Gary M. Galles, professor of economics at Pepperdine University, ended his praise of Pilgrim property with a political admonition: "Though we have incomparably more than they did, we can learn much from their 'way of thanksgiving.' But we should also remember that our material blessings are the fruits of America's system of private-property rights and the liberties they ensure, including the freedom to choose our employment and spend money as we see fit. Those rights are under constant assault today, from limits on people's ability to contract as they wish, especially in labor relationships, to abuses of government's eminent domain." Robert Sheridan, who teaches constitutional law at the San Francisco Law School, quotes the full text (from the San Francisco Chronicle) and expertly dissects Galles' underlying assumptions about modern society, in his own article "Thanksgiving Nonsense and Propaganda".

A slightly abbreviated version of Galles' remarks is published by the Ludwig von Mises Institute.

The Independent Institute's website has a similar article that was published for Thanksgiving in 2004 in the Charlotte Observer and in the San Diego Union-Tribune. "The economic incentives provided by private competitive markets where people are left free to make their own choices make bountiful feasts possible," says Benjamin Powell, professor of economics at San Jose State University. "That's the real lesson of Thanksgiving."

Elaborating on Maybury's view of Thanksgiving, Newsmax columnist Geoff Metcalf becomes even more definite: "[A]n economic system which grants the lazy and the shiftless some 'right' to prosper off the looted fruits of another man's labor, under the guise of enforced 'compassion,' will inevitably descend into envy, theft, squalor, and starvation. Though many would still incrementally impose on us some new variant of the 'noble socialist experiment,' this is still at heart a free country with a bedrock respect for the sanctity of private property - and a land bounteous precisely because it's free. It's for that we give thanks - the corn and beans and turkey serving as mere symbols of that true and underlying blessing - on the fourth Thursday of each November."

True history? Does it make any difference? As Kamensky says, "It's true to its purposes."

For the purposes of historical accuracy, nevertheless, I think it's worth mentioning that the Pilgrims' initial system of working the land by changing field assignments each year had nothing at all to do with socialism - it was the consequence of an early and unrestrained form of capitalism whereby the colony, its products, and the colonists' productive labor were absolutely and entirely mortgaged to the London investors, whose loans had to be paid off before any of the Pilgrim colonists could own free-hold property. The colony as a whole and its colonists were indentured. Their contract is now lost; probably it was among the missing first 338 pages of William Bradford's letter-book. The shift away from rotating field assignments did not result in private property, just a modification of the organization of the indentured labor. Private real property came for these colonists in 1627 when a small group among the colonists - the "Purchasers" - bought the debt and the responsibility to pay it off. A temporary monopoly on the fur trade was reserved to them as compensation for their higher personal responsibility and financial exposure.

A Cornucopia of Grievances

So if Thanksgiving was not about the discovery of private property's profitability, not about help offered to the colonists by the Wampanoag Indians, not about God's providence - what was it?

"The first day of thanksgiving took place in 1637 amidst the war against the Pequots. 700 men, women, and children of the Pequot tribe were gathered for their annual green corn dance on what is now Groton, Connecticut. Dutch and English mercenaries surrounded the camp and proceeded to shoot, stab, butcher and burn alive all 700 people. The next day the Massachusetts Bay Colony held a feast in celebration and the governor declared 'a day of thanksgiving.' In the ensuing madness of the Indian extermination, natives were scalped, burned, mutilated and sold into slavery, and a feast was held in celebration every time a successful massacre took place. The killing frenzy got so bad that even the Churches of Manhattan announced a day of 'thanksgiving' to celebrate victory over the 'heathen savages,' and many celebrated by kicking the severed heads of Pequot people through the streets like soccer balls." So says Tristam Ahtone, at 13Moon.com. There were preliminary events before this celebration of atrocity, according to Ahtone. Although the 1621 harvest festival in Plymouth was not in his opinion a thanksgiving, he informs us that "Two years later the English invited a number of tribes to a feast 'symbolizing eternal friendship.' The English offered food and drink, and two hundred Indians dropped dead from unknown poison." This echoes the words of James Loewen (quoted by Jackie Alan Giuliano in "Give Thanks - Un-Turkey Truths"): "The British offered a toast 'symbolizing eternal friendship,' whereupon the chief, his family, advisors, and two hundred followers dropped dead of poison." Loewen places this event in Virginia.

Ahtone's remarks connecting the "First Thanksgiving" with the Pequot War are frequently copied or excerpted, with slight variations. Sometimes it's not Massachusetts Bay responsible, but the Pilgrims. "The next day, the English governor William Bradford declared 'a day of Thanksgiving', thanking God that they had eliminated the Indians, opening Pequot land for white settlement." That proclamation was repeated each year for the next century." This was posted by "Ecuanduero" on the Discovery Channel.com, in 2003.

William Loren Katz, author of Black Indians, A Hidden Heritage, writes that, "In 1637 Governor Bradford, who saw his colonists locked in mortal combat with dangerous Native Americans, ordered his militia to conduct a night attack on the sleeping men women and children of a Pequot Indian village. To Bradford, a devout Christian, the massacre was imbued with religious meaning."

Clearly we should realize that these people were not nice, but just exactly how bad? "Not even Charles Manson and Jim Jones combined could compare with that murderous Doomsday cult — the Pilgrims," says a website article called "The Pilgrims, Children of the Devil: Puritan Doomsday Cult Plunders Paradise." The site calls itself the Common Sense Almanac, Progressive Pages (and claims to be a project of the Center for Media and Democracy).

The story forms the foundation for stirring generalizations. "It is a serious mistake to practice holidays based on a false history," one site admonishes us. "The young people find out on their own that they are involved in a lie, and it makes them rage with fury and contempt. [...]It should surprise no one that after raising children honoring the memory of the Pilgrim fathers, that they grow up to hate freedom as much as the Forefathers did. It should surprise no one that a society that worships the Pilgrims — who ruthlessly scalped the Indians (teaching them how to do it), who indiscriminately torched Indian villages, and murdered their women, children and elders in the precursors of total war, and holocaust — should produce children who grow up to join street gangs, and who seek the experience of murdering other human beings for kicks."

The story told by Ahtone, Katz, and others is derived from a report that surfaced in the 1980's. "According to William B. Newell, a Penobscot Indian and former chairman of the anthropology department at the University of Connecticut, the first official Thanksgiving Day commemorated the massacre of 700 Indian men, women and children during one of their religious ceremonies. [...]"

This version in First Nations News is from an article by Karen Gullo that first appeared in Vegetarian Times, 1982. Newell's material is quoted over and over. Newell, who is described in one site as having degrees from two universities [wow! Fancy that!], was convinced about the solidity of his research: ""My research is authentic because it is documentary," Newell said. "You can't get anything more accurate than that because it is first hand. It is not hearsay." http://www.s6k.com/real/thankstaking.htm

What's not authentic is the claim that William Newell was head of the anthropology department at the University of Connecticut, whose faculty cannot recall him at all. When the department was founded in 1971, Newell was 79 years old. See the letter by department chair Jocelyn Linnekin. And what is completely untrue is the idea that the Pilgrims of Plymouth Colony participated in the 1637 Pequot massacre. Although asked to send military assistance, the Plymouth court did not respond until two weeks after the slaughter had been carried out by a mixed force of soldiers from Connecticut, Massachusetts Bay, and the Narragansett tribe (no "Dutch and English mercenaries"). As Bradford himself reports, the Pilgrims were told their aid was too little, too late; they could stay home. (See my book,

Pilgrim Edward Winslow: New England's First International Diplomat (Boston: NEHGS, 2004), pp. 164-168.)

Is this important? Or is the lie "true to its purposes"?

Thanksgiving on the Net:  Roast Bull with Cranberry Sauce Part 3

The National Day of Mourning

The purposes can best be understood as fitting in with the description of the Pilgrims that animates the so-called National Day of Mourning sponsored by the United American Indians of New England. "The pilgrims (who did not even call themselves pilgrims)" [yes, that again] "did not come here seeking religious freedom; they already had that in Holland. They came here as part of a commercial venture. They introduced sexism, racism, anti-lesbian and gay bigotry, jails, and the class system to these shores. One of the very first things they did when they arrived on Cape Cod — before they even made it to Plymouth — was to rob Wampanoag graves at Corn Hill and steal as much of the Indians' winter provisions of corn and beans as they were able to carry. [...] The first official "Day of Thanksgiving" was proclaimed in 1637 by Governor Winthrop. He did so to celebrate the safe return of men from the Massachusetts Bay Colony, who had gone to Mystic Connecticut to participate in the massacre of over 700 Pequot women, children, and men."

This characterization of the Pilgrims was written in 2003 by UAINE leaders Mahtowin Munro and Mooanum James, whose father Frank James (Wamsutta) made the 1970 protest speech that started the Day of Mourning at Plymouth, Massachusetts. Wamsutta spoke out against decades of inequality in words historically vague and not entirely accurate. He clearly announced the continued presence of Wampanoag Indians to a society that he thought had too often treated them as bygone relics. But his measured anger at real injustice bore little of the demonizing divisiveness championed by UAINE in later years.

From the repetition of Mahtowin Munro's and Mooanum James' remarks in countless websites associated with Native American interests, it would appear that the Wampanoag tribes consider themselves best represented by the UAINE protests. The words of Russell Peters published by Pilgrim Hall Museum contradict this.

Russell Peters, A Wampanoag leader, died in 2002. Who was he? "Mr. Peters [M.A., Harvard] has been involved in Native American issues at a state, local and national level. He [was] the President of the Mashpee Wampanoag Indian Tribal Council, a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights from 1976 to 1984, a member of the Harvard Peabody Museum Native American Repatriation Committee, a member of the White House Conference on Federal Recognition in 1995 and 1996, a board member of the Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities, a board member of the Pilgrim Society, and the author of Wampanoags of Mashpee (Nimrod Press), Clambake (Lerner Publications), and Regalia (Sundance Press)." Russell Peters expressed regret at the deterioration of the social potential of the Day of Mourning. "While the day of mourning has served to focus attention on past injustice to the Native American cause, it has, in recent years, been orchestrated by a group calling themselves the United American Indians of New England. This group has tenuous ties to any of the local tribes, and is composed primarily of non-Indians. To date, they have refused several invitations to meet with the Wampanoag Indian tribal councils in Mashpee or in Gay Head. Once again, we, as Wampanoags, find our voices and concerns cast aside in the activities surrounding the Thanksgiving holiday in Plymouth, this time, ironically, by a group purporting to represent our interests."

The 1970 event at which Wamsutta spoke was organized by the American Indian Movement, whose leader Russell Means wrote, in his autobiography Where White Men Fear to Tread (with Marvin J. Wolf, New York: St. Martin's Press, 1995), "Americans today believe that Thanksgiving celebrates a bountiful harvest, but that is not so. By 1970, the Wampanoag had turned up a copy of a Thanksgiving proclamation made by the governor to the colony. The text revealed the ugly truth: After a colonial militia had returned from murdering the men, women, and children of an Indian village, the governor proclaimed a holiday and feast to give thanks for the massacre. He also encouraged other colonies to do likewise - in other words, every autumn after the crops are in, go kill Indians and celebrate your murders with a feast. In November 1970, their descendants returned to Plymouth to publicize the true story of Thanksgiving and, along with about two hundred other Indians from around the country, to observe a national day of Indian mourning."

One of the odder results of the "Day of Mourning" is the appearance in a couple of Thanksgiving Day sermons of the unfounded claim that some Pilgrims considered having a day of mourning to commemorate those who had died the previous winter, but that instead they chose to thank God for their continued preservation. This colonization of the protest rhetoric can be seen at Presbyterian Warren [excerpted at] Trinity Sermons.

Genocide

That's a mild contrast to Mitchel Cohen's "Why I Hate Thanksgiving" (2003), now re-duplicated incessantly. "First, the genocide. Then the suppression of all discussion about it. What do Indian people find to be Thankful for in this America? What does anyone have to be Thankful for in the genocide of the Indians, that this 'holyday' commemorates? [...] all the things we have to be thankful for have nothing at all to do with the Pilgrims, nothing at all to do with Amerikan history, and everything to do with the alternative, anarcho-communist lives the Indian peoples led, before they were massacred by the colonists, in the name of privatization of property and the lust for gold and labor. Yes, I am an American. But I am an American in revolt. I am revolted by the holiday known as Thanksgiving. [...] I want to go back in time to when people lived communally, before the colonists' Christian god was brought to these shores to sanctify their terrorism, their slavery, their hatred of children, their oppression of women, their holocausts. But that is impossible. So all I look forward to [is] the utter destruction of the apparatus of death known as Amerika � not the people, not the beautiful land, but the machinery, the State, the capitalism, the Christianity and all that it stands for. I look forward to a future where I will have children with Amerika, and ... they will be the new Indians." See, for some sanity, Guenter Lewy's "Were American Indians the Victims of Genocide?"

Mr. Cohen is co-editor of "Green Politix," the national newspaper of the Greens/Greens Party USA. He's annoyed. (Who wouldn't be - loving nature and living in Brooklyn?) He's also a romantic with an ideal view of Natives living in a pristine environment, rather like the peaceful, ecologically wonderful place imagined by Plimoth Plantation's Anthony Pollard (known as Nanepashemet). "The Wampanoag way of life fostered a harmonious relationship between the People and their natural environment, both physical and spiritual. [...] fighting was just part of the search for harmony when conditions had become intolerable or justice was denied."

Lies My Teacher�s Telling Me Now

The annual clamor of the aggrieved finds significant expression in website materials aimed at providing school teachers with a balanced (meaning non-colonial) view of Thanksgiving. One of the most important and widely copied articles is an introduction to "Teaching About Thanksgiving" written by Chuck Larson of the Tacoma School District.

Originally issued in 1986 by the Superintendent of Public Instruction of the State of Washington, "Teaching About Thanksgiving" is no longer available from that State. It continues to be distributed by the Fourth World Documentation Project and the Center for World Indigenous Studies, among others. I hope it has been withdrawn by the state in response to the withering criticism it received from Caleb Johnson, whose Mayflower topics website presents much documentary material about the Pilgrims.

"The author of the 'Fourth World Documentation Project' lesson plan on Thanksgiving, published all over the internet as well as distributed in printed form, claims to have a strong background in history," writes Johnson. "But nearly every sentence of the entire lesson plan has a significant factual error, or is simply story-telling (making up stories and details to fit within a set framework of given historical facts)." Johnson's detailed, devastating line-by-line corrections attracted the attention of the New York Times. I have seen only one website for teachers that carries the Larson material and that also includes a reference to Johnson's work, and then only as if to provide an alternative to the nonsense they continue to present as the main material. But Johnson definitively destroyed the credibility of the lesson plan - why keep on providing it? Are the lies true to some purpose?

Mentioning that Johnson's work is worth looking at is, nonetheless, at least more generous than the ad hominem attack on Johnson that was mounted by Jamie McKenzie of the Bellingham, Washington, School District.

McKenzie complained in 1996 that Caleb Johnson did not list his own academic credentials that would suggest his website should be considered authoritative. Johnson had, after all, cast doubt on the value of Larson's "strong background in history." McKenzie, on the other hand, did not take the time to compare Johnson's careful quotations of source materials with the slipshod work of his academically qualified colleague down in Tacoma. (Although Johnson's essays are typically not footnoted, having only a source list at the end, Johnson has taken the trouble to re-publish the texts of many of the original documents on his site.) But McKenzie's major complaint in 1996 was that the internet in general did not provide much information about Thanksgiving, and that scholars with credentials were not creating the sites. There's certainly more now, and some of it is provided by professors. If one has doubts about the professor of anthropology William B. Newell, who's been forgotten by the University of Connecticut, there's the University of Colorado's Professor of Ethnic Studies, Ward Churchill, asking us, "what is it we're supposed to be so thankful for? Does anyone really expect us to give thanks for the fact that soon after the Pilgrim Fathers regained their strength, they set out to dispossess and exterminate the very Indians who had fed them that first winter? Are we to express our gratitude for the colonists' 1637 massacre of the Pequots at Mystic, Conn., or their rhetoric justifying the butchery by comparing Indians to 'rats and mice and swarms of lice'"?

And there's the late Professor James Deetz, who thought Thanksgiving only became associated with the Pilgrims around 1900, evidently disregarding the implications of Winslow Homer's famous Thanksgiving Day illustrations in Harper's Weekly, Nov. 27, 1858, Dec. 1, 1860, Nov. 29, 1862, and Dec. 3, 1864, as well as Thomas Nast's "Thanksgiving Day, 1863" (published as a double-page center illustration in Harper's Weekly, Dec. 5, 1863). Nast includes a vignette in the lower right corner labelled "country," whose main praying figure is recognizably derived from the representation of the Pilgrims' minister John Robinson in Robert Weir's painting "The Embarkation of the Pilgrims," completed in 1843 in the rotunda of the Capitol in Washington.

Despite its filiopietistic motivations, the huge desert of misinformation has left Caleb Johnson's work as one of a small number of oases of calm study, equalling the level of the so-called Plymouth Colony Archive Project established by James Deetz, Patricia Scott Deetz, and Christopher Fennell (which, however, despite valuable information about the colony, says nothing significant about Thanksgiving).

McKenzie also objects to Johnson�s "failing to mention some of the information which other sites provide about the Pilgrims taking the Native American corn and digging up and taking things from grave sites." In fact, Johnson publishes all the evidence there is about those issues. Because no evidence supports the inflated claims, McKenzie thinks that the Pilgrims have been "sanitized."

Unsanitized would be the word for Brenda Francis's version. She says that she "read on Binghamton University's website that the Pilgrims were starving and even went so far to dig up some remains of the Wampanoag people and eat them as a means to survival."

This directly contradicts William Bradford, who, after repeating the second-hand rumor that some Spanish colonists had been reduced to eating "dogs, toads, and dead men," proclaims that "From these extremities the Lord in his goodness kept these his people [the Pilgrims], and in their great wants preserved both their lives and healths; let his name have the praise." (Bradford's History "Of Plimoth Plantation" (Boston: Wright & Potter, 1901), p. 165: [subscribers].

The Binghamton site that is Brenda Francis' source has a student newspaper article (Nov. 21, 2003) by Rachel Kalina, who relays that the "Pilgrims were able to survive their first winter partially because of guidance by the natives and because they dug up the deceased Wampanoags to eat the corn offerings in the graves." That's not quite the same as necro-cannibalism.

Quoting from James Loewen's Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong. (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995), p. 91, the teacher of a course in "Debunking and Dissent" - Colby Glass of Palo Alto College (TX), maintains that "...the Pilgrims continued to rob graves for years."

There are three points of interest here: first, Winslow's description of examining graves (our only source of information) does not support these assertions; second, the corn found by the Pilgrims was not found in graves; third, I'm unaware of any evidence so far found to indicate that corn was included in graves on Cape Cod at all. Let alone that the Pilgrims were cannibals!

In the book now called Mourt's Relation, Edward Winslow wrote that the Pilgrims, exploring, found a path that took them to "certain heaps of sand, one whereof was covered with old mats, and had a wooden thing like a mortar whelmed on the top of it, and an earthen pot laid in a little hole at the end thereof. We, musing what it might be, digged and found a bow, and, as we thought, arrows, but they were rotten. We supposed there were many other things, but because we deemed them graves, we put in the bow again and made it up as it was, and left the rest untouched, because we thought it would be odious unto them to ransack their sepulchres." Passing through several fields recently tended, they came upon a house, from which they removed a European ship's kettle. Next to the house was a heap of sand, which when excavated yielded two baskets filled with Indian corn. One contained thirty six ears, "some yellow, and some red, and others mixed with blue [...] The basket was round, and narrow at the top; it held about three or four bushels." Filling the kettle with loose corn, two of the Pilgrims suspended it on a stick and carried it away. The rest of the corn they re-buried. Two or three days later, they returned for the remaining corn, also finding and taking some beans and more corn, totaling around ten bushels. The following morning they found a much larger mound, covered with boards. It turned out to be the grave of a man with blond hair, whose shroud was a "sailor's canvas cassock" and who was wearing a "pair of cloth breeches." The body was accompanied by a "knife, a packneedle, and two or three iron things." Clearly this was the body of a European. An infant's body was buried together with this man. Reburying the bodies (as was customary in Europe), they continued to look for corn but found nothing else but graves, which, considering their desire not to "ransack their sepulchres," they presumably did not disturb once it was clear the mounds did not contain baskets of corn. Having learned to recognize graves, three days later the Pilgrims avoided disturbing a cemetery. They "found a burying place, one part whereof was encompassed with a large palisade, like a churchyard [...] Within it was full of graves [...] yet we digged none of them up, but only viewed them and went our way." Mourt's Relation (1622) has been republished numerous times. Caleb Johnson has made it available online at Mayflower History.com.

Winslow's words are our only evidence. Nothing impels us to doubt his information that the Pilgrims opened the grave of a European sailor and his child, reburying them after removing from the grave a few items that to a European would not have been considered grave offerings having any symbolic significance. The Pilgrims exhibited memorable sensitivity in refraining from disturbing Indian graves, once they learned to recognize them. They did not dig up graves in order to eat corn buried as grave offerings. There is no indication they removed corn from any graves. The corn was found in baskets whose shape when packed in earth would result in domed pit spaces. There is nothing to support the idea that corn was placed in graves as offerings, although small gifts of corn have been found in graves excavated by archaeologists working hundreds of miles away (the American southwest and Peru, for example).

The amount the Pilgrims found in storage baskets - two or three bushels in the first, and three or four in the second - is a large, bulky quantity. From 1986-1991, I was Chief Curator of Plimoth Plantation. The collections at that time included all the archaeological material from excavations of burial sites in the Plymouth Colony area carried out by Harry Hornblower II and James Deetz, and others with whom they worked. I carried out a detailed examination of the thousands of items in the collections, specifically looking for corn - in hopes of having it studied scientifically so we could replicate the exact type of corn growing in the area in the early 17th century. Although some floral remains had been saved from excavations that included burial sites, there was no corn, not a single kernel. Had it been the practice to bury bushels of corn as grave offerings, surely there would have been some in the materials carefully excavated from these ten Native burials. There was nothing. Neither was any discovery of corn recorded in the careful notebooks kept by Hornblower (there were no Deetz notebooks present, and no published reports). This absence is consistent with the absence of corn among grave goods from several Cape Cod Native burials, recently transferred to Native authorities for reburial, from the Robert S. Peabody Museum of Archaeology, Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts.

Throughout the accounts of these discoveries of storage baskets of Indian corn, Winslow repeats the intention to try to meet the Indian owners and negotiate repayment for the corn that had been taken That was an intention to provide compensation for what the Pilgrims understood would be considered theft if no payment were made. (During the first year, Pilgrims stole corn; Indians stole abandoned tools.) Establishing that neither side would steal from the other was an important part of early negotiation between them. Attempts to locate the specific owner of the corn were ultimately successful and repayment was made (see Pilgrim Edward Winslow, p. 36).

In "Deconstructing the Myths of 'The First Thanksgiving,'" Judy Dow and Beverly Slapin contradict the documentary evidence. They base their comments largely on information provided to them by Margaret Bruchac, an "Abanaki scholar" working in collaboration with Plimoth Plantation's Wampanoag Indian Program. "There is no record that restitution was ever made for the stolen corn, and the Wampanoag did not soon forget the colonists� ransacking of Indian graves, including that of Massasoit's mother."

One may surmise that Bruchac was confused in making the reference to the grave of Massasoit's mother, which is undocumented. Probably what is meant is the removal later of two bearskin rugs from over the grave of the mother of Chickatabut, sachem of the Massachusetts (see my book Indian Deeds, p. 13). It is meretriciously clever, nonetheless, to turn Winslow's statement of respect for the Indians and their graves into a pronouncement about the Wampanoags' long memory of "the colonists' ransacking of Indian graves." The up-to-date construction of "memory" and "oral history" to fit the needs of current political concerns is blatant.

Dow and Slapin end their deconstruction with the remark that "As currently celebrated in this country, "Thanksgiving" is a bitter reminder of 500 years of betrayal returned for friendship."

Alternatively, Russell Peters said, "The time is long overdue for the Pilgrims and the Wampanoags to renew a meaningful dialogue about our past and look towards a more honest future."

Does it matter what of this is true? Was that the wrong question? Who do we want to be in the ever-changing Now? Intrepid demolishers of straw-man myths? Inventors of new myths to serve new political purposes? Historians?

#History #Thanksgiving #Religion #America

[squadron-of-damned-writes]

Chapters: 11/? Fandom: Supernatural, Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett, Good Omens (TV) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: Aziraphale (Good Omens) & Castiel (Supernatural), Aziraphale & Crowley (Good Omens), Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester, Castiel & Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester, Crowley & Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester, Crowley & Bobby Singer, Hastur & Ligur (Good Omens) Characters: Dean Winchester, Sam Winchester, Castiel (Supernatural), Anathema Device, Crowley (Supernatural), Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale (Good Omens), Bobby Singer, Mentioned: Agnes Nutter, Apocalypseverse Bobby Singer, Mentioned: Adam Young, Mentioned: Gabriel, Lucifer (Supernatural), Satan | Lucifer (Good Omens), Hastur (Good Omens), Michael (Supernatural), Michael (Good Omens), Ligur (Good Omens) Additional Tags: Lawyers gone wild, Resurrection, It's not meant to be a good fic, Canonical Character Death, Post-Season/Series 12, Prophecy, Jacksonville (Florida), Monster Hunters, Books, Canon-Typical Violence, canon-typical idiocy, Don’t copy to another site, Kidnapping, Character Death, Season/Series 15 Spoilers Summary: We've got Bobby and also the promised Archangel with a frappuchino. (Also I hate the word frappuchino now, but that is not related to the story whatsoever.)

Obligatory excerpt:

“What the fuck does Hastur want to do with Bobby's soul?” Sam addresses the elephant in the room.

“Bring Lucifer here,” says a woman standing behind them on the other side of the car. The crew turns around to look at her. She is white as cheese with mayonnaise, has a complicated up do which has come very wild and was probably made last Tuesday. Her soft gray pantsuit, on the other hand, is immaculate and there are drops of gold glitter on it which probably came loose from her face, as she has golden speckles around her eyes and cheekbones. Nobody dares to guess her age, because while she has plenty of wrinkles, she is also holding a plastic Starbucks cup which contains something vaguely coffee-like with a lot of ice and whipped cream and also a straw.

“Hello,” she beams at them without any cheer. “I suppose, Dean, I'm still not getting a ride, am I? Oh well, bad luck, I suppose.” she doesn't wait for an answer. “I see the betrayer is still tagging with you like a dog. Absolutely horrible to see you again, Castiel.”

#supernatural #good omens #michael (good omens) #michael (spn) #sam winchester #dead winchest #castiel #bobby singer #the night in gale

[athena1138]

NOBODY ASKED BUT HERE’S MY OPINION ON CHRISTMAS EVEN THOUGH IT’S AUGUST

It’s a FUCKING DISGRACE and I FUCKING HATE IT. 

Honestly, it’s fucking terrible. It hasn’t been about family for YEARS. It’s about money and presents and that’s fucking despicable. (Though, even if it were family-based, I’d still hate it, but that’s because I hate my family, but as a whole I could respect it a lot more.) 

You know what I see every Christmas? 

Not just in my family, but in the families of ALL of my friends, I see parents scraping together to buy gifts for their kids. And no matter how nice the present is, nor how special, it’s never enough. And god help you if you have kids with December birthdays, like both my sister’s kids. What money? You don’t need money. You need gifts. Gifts gifts gifts. 

Every single Christmas without fail, my mother weeps. I first noticed when my dad died so I thought it was that, and to some degree it was. But she’s not mourning him anymore, and every Christmas season she weeps. “I’m not doing it this year,” she says, and then every year without fucking fail there’s 100 presents under the tree and I can see the bags under her eyes and how empty her smile is. 

And it’s obligatory. You can’t get out of it. If I get anyone a gift, I have to get everyone a gift or else it’ll start drama. Now, don’t get me wrong, I fucking LOVE to shower everyone in my life with gifts. I took my best mate to Florida for spring break and paid for the whole fuckin thing. I got my other best mate and roommate a fucking Xbox One for an early birthday present. I LOVE to give. Fucking hell, if I have the money for it, I’ll leave tips bigger than my bill. 

But I don’t like being pushed to give gifts. 

And I fucking HATE that other people feel forced to give ME gifts. I don’t like it at all. I hate receiving gifts. I do, I hate it. I don’t deserve them. I don’t need them. But you do, you deserve this and this and this please accept my love in the form of possessions. Because that’s my love language outside of romantic relationships. I like to give shit. I’ll spend a week on a single drawing just to make my friends happy, and it’s the greatest fucking feeling in the world. But the second I feel like someone is giving me a gift because they feel they have to? It’s over, shut down, don’t want it, please take it back. 

But that’s all Christmas is, innit? Just fucking gifts. QUADRILLIONS are spent on Christmas every fucking year. And neverfuckingmind how SHIT the people who work retail during the holiday season get treated, because literally nobody deserves that hell. 

Where the fuck are the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future to knock the sense into the Scrooge that is this culture? They’re WELL overdo. 

#christmas #anti-christmas #fuck christmas #seriously #i hate it so fucking much #shut up becca

[helldidntwantme]

Obligatory Evangelion (1995) thoughts because I just finished it today: (spoilers)

Did I like Evangelion? Yes.

Do I think it’s good? Yes.

Is the ending just as confusing as everyone says and would I have liked a more clear ending to the plot? Yes.

Will I be watching the Eva movies? Probably not.

Will I rewatch some episodes at some point just for fun/to compare my first impression of the series with the information I have after watching if? Probably.

I know there’s more to the series than just the ‘95 anime but I kind of don’t want to watch it? Because Shinji (sort of?) gets a happy ending this way after going through hell and back. There were two very infamous scenes that I was waiting for in the anime but was confused when they never happened, only to Google it and realize that’s because they’re in End of Evangelion (1997). The movie seems like it differers tonally than the ‘95 anime and changes Shinji’s character in how his trauma is affecting him. To me he read as mostly kind to other people but just with A LOT of issues but I get the impression that the movies will have him descend into a kind of corrupted madness and starts taking his frustrations out on others and like I don’t want that for him? I don’t want my sweet boy to be ruined I just want him to be happy in heaven or whatever the hell the final two episodes were supposed to represent? Also apparently the producer made the movie End of Evangelion after being harassed by fans who hated the ending and I feel like if people weren’t literally sending him death threats he wouldn’t have made anymore? But that could be partial BS (not about the death threats but about him just making it how he felt like) and it totally could have been like a budget thing but IDK. I know authorial intent doesn’t always matter and I also feel like the criticisms of the show and especially the ending are warranted (obviously not to the point of harassing and threatening its producer) but the idea of the anime’s ending being the one that he wanted to end on just sticks with me. Like maybe all the unanswered shit in the show doesn’t actually matter and maybe it’s the characters we met along the way that mattered. Evangelion was a very emotional show absolutely filled with despair but also some hope? Shinji repeatedly defeats the angels multiple times when the people in NERV repeatedly say that shit has less than a zero percent chance of succeeding. But then as the season progresses shit starts to hit the fan and things become more dreary and dark. So maybe a darker end fits more after all? I’m still thinking about it but either way I don’t want to watch all of the movies please I heard they’re not as good the Florida man said so maybe I’ll watch End of Evangelion at some point hmmmmm mayyyybeeeee no promises either way

There’s a lot of thematic stuff going on with what it means to be human and I like that. Good shit. Got a little bit self indulgent at times but overall good shit. I meant self indulgent in the philosophy stuff not the fan service but sometimes it is with that too but honestly it’s not as bad as some anime I’ve seen so unless you have zero tolerance for that you can probably get through it. The beginning of the season very much feels aimed toward young teenage boys so I understand why there’s fan service of the girls his age but I still feel that some of it was unnecessary and could have been handled in a way that doesn’t ogle them.

Misato and Ritsuko are FINE why have I only seen merch and fan content of the underaged high school girls when you literally have TWO GROWN FINE ASS WOMEN PLEEEEASE THEY’RE BADDIES 😫

Asuka is actually the worst character she is just completely insufferable I do feel sorry for her but I do not like her you will not change my mind you can die mad about it

The gay boy doesn’t show up until like the third to last episode what the hell 0/10

#neon genesis evangelion #neon genesis evangelion spoilers #evangelion spoilers #Evangelion thoughts #long post #anime talk #gay watches anime