#as opposed to. like. aspiring to be like Jesus.

[dailyanarchistposts]

A.3.7 Are there religious anarchists?

Yes, there are. While most anarchists have opposed religion and the idea of God as deeply anti-human and a justification for earthly authority and slavery, a few believers in religion have taken their ideas to anarchist conclusions. Like all anarchists, these religious anarchists have combined an opposition to the state with a critical position with regards to private property and inequality. In other words, anarchism is not necessarily atheistic. Indeed, according to Jacques Ellul, “biblical thought leads directly to anarchism, and that this is the only ‘political anti-political’ position in accord with Christian thinkers.” [quoted by Peter Marshall, Demanding the Impossible, p. 75]

There are many different types of anarchism inspired by religious ideas. As Peter Marshall notes, the “first clear expression of an anarchist sensibility may be traced back to the Taoists in ancient China from about the sixth century BC” and “Buddhism, particularly in its Zen form, … has … a strong libertarian spirit.” [Op. Cit., p. 53 and p. 65] Some, like the anti-globalisation activist Starhawk, combine their anarchist ideas with Pagan and Spiritualist influences. However, religious anarchism usually takes the form of Christian Anarchism, which we will concentrate on here.

Christian Anarchists take seriously Jesus’ words to his followers that “kings and governors have domination over men; let there be none like that among you.” Similarly, Paul’s dictum that there “is no authority except God” is taken to its obvious conclusion with the denial of state authority within society. Thus, for a true Christian, the state is usurping God’s authority and it is up to each individual to govern themselves and discover that (to use the title of Tolstoy’s famous book) The Kingdom of God is within you.

Similarly, the voluntary poverty of Jesus, his comments on the corrupting effects of wealth and the Biblical claim that the world was created for humanity to be enjoyed in common have all been taken as the basis of a socialistic critique of private property and capitalism. Indeed, the early Christian church (which could be considered as a liberation movement of slaves, although one that was later co-opted into a state religion) was based upon communistic sharing of material goods, a theme which has continually appeared within radical Christian movements inspired, no doubt, by such comments as “all that believed were together, and had all things in common, and they sold their possessions and goods, and parted them all, according as every man has need” and “the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and of one soul, not one of them said that all of the things which he possessed was his own; but they had all things in common.” (Acts, 2:44,45; 4:32)

Unsurprisingly, the Bible would have been used to express radical libertarian aspirations of the oppressed, which, in later times, would have taken the form of anarchist or Marxist terminology). As Bookchin notes in his discussion of Christianity’s contributions to “the legacy of freedom,” ”[b]y spawning nonconformity, heretical conventicles, and issues of authority over person and belief, Christianity created not merely a centralised authoritarian Papacy, but also its very antithesis: a quasi-religious anarchism.” Thus “Christianity’s mixed message can be grouped into two broad and highly conflicting systems of belief. On one side there was a radical, activistic, communistic, and libertarian vision of the Christian life” and “on the other side there was a conservative, quietistic, materially unwordly, and hierarchical vision.” [The Ecology of Freedom, p. 266 and pp. 274–5]

Thus clergyman’s John Ball’s egalitarian comments (as quoted by Peter Marshall [Op. Cit., p. 89]) during the Peasant Revolt in 1381 in England:

“When Adam delved and Eve span, Who was then a gentleman?” The history of Christian anarchism includes the Heresy of the Free Spirit in the Middle Ages, numerous Peasant revolts and the Anabaptists in the 16th century. The libertarian tradition within Christianity surfaced again in the 18th century in the writings of William Blake and the American Adam Ballou reached anarchist conclusions in his Practical Christian Socialism in 1854. However, Christian anarchism became a clearly defined thread of the anarchist movement with the work of the famous Russian author Leo Tolstoy.

Tolstoy took the message of the Bible seriously and came to consider that a true Christian must oppose the state. From his reading of the Bible, Tolstoy drew anarchist conclusions:

“ruling means using force, and using force means doing to him whom force is used, what he does not like and what he who uses force would certainly not like done to himself. Consequently ruling means doing to others what we would not they should do unto us, that is, doing wrong.” [The Kingdom of God is Within You, p. 242]

Thus a true Christian must refrain from governing others. From this anti-statist position he naturally argued in favour of a society self-organised from below:

“Why think that non-official people could not arrange their life for themselves, as well as Government people can arrange it nor for themselves but for others?” [The Slavery of Our Times, p. 46]

This meant that “people can only be freed from slavery by the abolition of Governments.” [Op. Cit., p. 49] Tolstoy urged non-violent action against oppression, seeing a spiritual transformation of individuals as the key to creating an anarchist society. As Max Nettlau argues, the “great truth stressed by Tolstoy is that the recognition of the power of the good, of goodness, of solidarity — and of all that is called love — lies within ourselves, and that it can and must be awakened, developed and exercised in our own behaviour.” [A Short History of Anarchism, pp. 251–2] Unsurprisngly, Tolstoy thought the “anarchists are right in everything … They are mistaken only in thinking that anarchy can be instituted by a revolution.” [quoted by Peter Marshall, Op. Cit., p. 375]

Like all anarchists, Tolstoy was critical of private property and capitalism. He greatly admired and was heavily influenced by Proudhon, considering the latter’s “property is theft” as “an absolute truth” which would “survive as long as humanity.” [quoted by Jack Hayward, After the French Revolution, p. 213] Like Henry George (whose ideas, like those of Proudhon, had a strong impact on him) he opposed private property in land, arguing that “were it not for the defence of landed property, and its consequent rise in price, people would not be crowded into such narrow spaces, but would scatter over the free land of which there is still so much in the world.” Moreover, “in this struggle [for landed property] it is not those who work in the land, but always those who take part in government violence, who have the advantage.” Thus Tolstoy recognised that property rights in anything beyond use require state violence to protect them as possession is “always protected by custom, public opinion, by feelings of justice and reciprocity, and they do not need to be protected by violence.” [The Slavery of Our Times, p. 47] Indeed, he argues that:

“Tens of thousands of acres of forest lands belonging to one proprietor — while thousands of people close by have no fuel — need protection by violence. So, too, do factories and works where several generations of workmen have been defrauded and are still being defrauded. Yet more do the hundreds of thousands of bushels of grain, belonging to one owner, who has held them back to sell at triple price in time of famine.” [Op. Cit., pp. 47–8]

As with other anarchists, Tolstoy recognised that under capitalism, economic conditions “compel [the worker] to go into temporary or perpetual slavery to a capitalist” and so is “obliged to sell his liberty.” This applied to both rural and urban workers, for the “slaves of our times are not only all those factory and workshop hands, who must sell themselves completely into the power of the factory and foundry owners in order to exist; but nearly all the agricultural labourers are slaves, working as they do unceasingly to grow another’s corn on another’s field.” Such a system could only be maintained by violence, for “first, the fruit of their toil is unjustly and violently taken form the workers, and then the law steps in, and these very articles which have been taken from the workmen — unjustly and by violence — are declared to be the absolute property of those who have stolen them.” [Op. Cit., p. 34, p. 31 and p. 38]

Tolstoy argued that capitalism morally and physically ruined individuals and that capitalists were “slave-drivers.” He considered it impossible for a true Christian to be a capitalist, for a “manufacturer is a man whose income consists of value squeezed out of the workers, and whose whole occupation is based on forced, unnatural labour” and therefore, “he must first give up ruining human lives for his own profit.” [The Kingdom Of God is Within You, p. 338 and p. 339] Unsurprisingly, Tolstoy argued that co-operatives were the “only social activity which a moral, self-respecting person who doesn’t want to be a party of violence can take part in.” [quoted by Peter Marshall, Op. Cit., p. 378]

So, for Tolstoy, “taxes, or land-owning or property in articles of use or in the means of production” produces “the slavery of our times.” However, he rejected the state socialist solution to the social problem as political power would create a new form of slavery on the ruins of the old. This was because “the fundamental cause of slavery is legislation: the fact that there are people who have the power to make laws.” This requires “organised violence used by people who have power, in order to compel others to obey the laws they (the powerful) have made — in other words, to do their will.” Handing over economic life to the state would simply mean “there will be people to whom power will be given to regulate all these matters. Some people will decide these questions, and others will obey them.” [Tolstoy, Op. Cit., p. 40, p. 41, p. 43 and p. 25] He correctly prophetised that “the only thing that will happen” with the victory of Marxism would be “that despotism will be passed on. Now the capitalists are ruling, but then the directors of the working class will rule.” [quoted by Marshall, Op. Cit., p. 379]

From his opposition to violence, Tolstoy rejects both state and private property and urged pacifist tactics to end violence within society and create a just society. For Tolstoy, government could only be destroyed by a mass refusal to obey, by non-participation in govermmental violence and by exposing fraud of statism to the world. He rejected the idea that force should be used to resist or end the force of the state. In Nettlau’s words, he “asserted … resistance to evil; and to one of the ways of resistance — by active force — he added another way: resistance through disobedience, the passive force.” [Op. Cit., p. 251] In his ideas of a free society, Tolstoy was clearly influenced by rural Russian life and aimed for a society based on peasant farming of communal land, artisans and small-scale co-operatives. He rejected industrialisation as the product of state violence, arguing that “such division of labour as now exists will … be impossible in a free society.” [Tolstoy, Op. Cit., p. 26]

Tolstoy’s ideas had a strong influence on Gandhi, who inspired his fellow country people to use non-violent resistance to kick Britain out of India. Moreover, Gandhi’s vision of a free India as a federation of peasant communes is similar to Tolstoy’s anarchist vision of a free society (although we must stress that Gandhi was not an anarchist). The Catholic Worker Group in the United States was also heavily influenced by Tolstoy (and Proudhon), as was Dorothy Day a staunch Christian pacifist and anarchist who founded it in 1933. The influence of Tolstoy and religious anarchism in general can also be found in Liberation Theology movements in Latin and South America who combine Christian ideas with social activism amongst the working class and peasantry (although we should note that Liberation Theology is more generally inspired by state socialist ideas rather than anarchist ones).

So there is a minority tradition within anarchism which draws anarchist conclusions from religion. However, as we noted in section A.2.20, most anarchists disagree, arguing that anarchism implies atheism and it is no coincidence that the biblical thought has, historically, been associated with hierarchy and defence of earthly rulers. Thus the vast majority of anarchists have been and are atheists, for “to worship or revere any being, natural or supernatural, will always be a form of self-subjugation and servitude that will give rise to social domination. As [Bookchin] writes: ‘The moment that human beings fall on their knees before anything that is ‘higher’ than themselves, hierarchy will have made its first triumph over freedom.’” [Brian Morris, Ecology and Anarchism, p. 137] This means that most anarchists agree with Bakunin that if God existed it would be necessary, for human freedom and dignity, to abolish it. Given what the Bible says, few anarchists think it can be used to justify libertarian ideas rather than support authoritarian ones and are not surprised that the hierarchical side of Christianity has predominated in its long (and generally oppressive) history.

Atheist anarchists point to the fact that the Bible is notorious for advocating all kinds of abuses. How does the Christian anarchist reconcile this? Are they a Christian first, or an anarchist? Equality, or adherence to the Scripture? For a believer, it seems no choice at all. If the Bible is the word of God, how can an anarchist support the more extreme positions it takes while claiming to believe in God, his authority and his laws?

For example, no capitalist nation would implement the no working on the Sabbath law which the Bible expounds. Most Christian bosses have been happy to force their fellow believers to work on the seventh day in spite of the Biblical penalty of being stoned to death (“Six days shall work be done, but on the seventh day there shall be to you an holy day, a sabbath of rest to the Lord: whosoever doeth work therein shall be put to death.” Exodus 35:2). Would a Christian anarchist advocate such a punishment for breaking God’s law? Equally, a nation which allowed a woman to be stoned to death for not being a virgin on her wedding night would, rightly, be considered utterly evil. Yet this is the fate specified in the “good book” (Deuteronomy 22:13–21). Would premarital sex by women be considered a capital crime by a Christian anarchist? Or, for that matter, should “a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother” also suffer the fate of having “all the men of his city … stone him with stones, that he die”? (Deuteronomy 21:18–21) Or what of the Bible’s treatment of women: “Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands.” (Colossians 3:18) They are also ordered to “keep silence in the churches.” (I Corinthians 14:34–35). Male rule is explicitly stated: “I would have you know that the head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God.” (I Corinthians 11:3)

Clearly, a Christian anarchist would have to be as highly selective as non-anarchist believers when it comes to applying the teachings of the Bible. The rich rarely proclaim the need for poverty (at least for themselves) and seem happy to forgot (like the churches) the difficulty a rich man apparently has entering heaven, for example. They seem happy to ignore Jesus’ admonition that “If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me.” (Matthew 19:21). The followers of the Christian right do not apply this to their political leaders, or, for that matter, their spiritual ones. Few apply the maxim to “Give to every man that asketh of thee; and of him that taketh away thy goods ask them not again.” (Luke 6:30, repeated in Matthew 5:42) Nor do they hold “all things common” as practised by the first Christian believers. (Acts 4:32) So if non-anarchist believers are to be considered as ignoring the teachings of the Bible by anarchist ones, the same can be said of them by those they attack.

Moreover idea that Christianity is basically anarchism is hard to reconcile with its history. The Bible has been used to defend injustice far more than it has been to combat it. In countries where Churches hold de facto political power, such as in Ireland, in parts of South America, in nineteenth and early twentieth century Spain and so forth, typically anarchists are strongly anti-religious because the Church has the power to suppress dissent and class struggle. Thus the actual role of the Church belies the claim that the Bible is an anarchist text.

In addition, most social anarchists consider Tolstoyian pacifism as dogmatic and extreme, seeing the need (sometimes) for violence to resist greater evils. However, most anarchists would agree with Tolstoyians on the need for individual transformation of values as a key aspect of creating an anarchist society and on the importance of non-violence as a general tactic (although, we must stress, that few anarchists totally reject the use of violence in self-defence, when no other option is available).

#faq #anarchy faq #revolution #anarchism #daily posts #communism #anti capitalist #anti capitalism #late stage capitalism #organization #grassroots #grass roots #anarchists #libraries #leftism #social issues #economy #economics #climate change #climate crisis #climate #ecology #anarchy works #environmentalism #environment #solarpunk #anti colonialism #mutual aid #cops #police

[nerianasims]

Hamas is a death cult that literally says they're a death cult and that they will rape and torture more people to death given half a chance. They've been doing it to Palestinians for a long time -- that's how they hold power in Palestine. People ignored that. Then they did it to Jews and people cheered.

Hamas explicitly says that they like killing, and that they will use civilians as human shields forever because they like death. And they explicitly say this is opposed to Jewish ideals, philosophy, and way of being, since Jews care about life and the living.

Hamas regularly does the most out-there full on villain monologues and PEOPLE ARE CHEERING THEM.

It's making me think of those WWJD bracelets that got big when I was in high school. I was still Christian then, and they struck me as hugely blasphemous. You cannot do what Jesus did. There will be no walking on water or bringing people back from the dead for you. And you know what else Jesus eventually did? Died horribly at the age of 30. Don't try to emulate that, what's wrong with you? Being tortured to death is not aspirational. Some atheists would say and do say that Christianity is a death cult and I'd be like oh come on, no it's not. Because that was not the way I was raised.

But it's become very clear that it's the way many Americans and other Westerners were raised. And no matter how much they say now that they're atheists or witches or pagans or whatever -- they've kept the death cult part. And of course the antisemitism, since that's foundational.

#hamas is a death cult #why yes I am furious and no I will never stop being furious #antisemitism

[stormblessed95]

Hey Storm

I was wondering if you can help me out with some claims I'm seeing circulating from a certain tiktok video...personally I know it's all wrong except but I don't how to correct this information without having sources of the truth......I don't know if you'll see this...

Well Jesus. @/savejungkook9 on tiktok should be reported for mass spreading misinformation. And trigger warning for mentions of suicide.

Namjoon has never had a heart condition?? And the only surgery he had was a septum deviation surgery on his nose. It went smoothly and his life was never at risk?! And the band + bang pd played a prank on him in the early years where he got "scolded" as BTS's leader and was asked for his last chance if he would like to go solo because he could make it solo or stay with BTS. And he choose BTS. You can watch that video here, its from 2014 from Mnet

Jin stopped Suga from committing suicide.... in their fictional universe during HYYH BU.... Nothing to do with real-life, just their fake CHARACTERS. Good lord. My post over hyyh bu here for anyone who wants to read more about it.

Yoongi did have a car accident pre-debut. He was hit by a car while he was riding his bike doing his delivery job. It's what caused such bad damage to his shoulder at the time and what he ultimately had shoulder surgery for to give him more mobility and help with his pain at the end of 2021. His parents weren't supportive of his rapping career aspirations at first, he spoke about that as well before, but they are very proud of him now. And he alluded to struggles with suicide or self harm, at least major depression, in the past during his song The Last. That's what that flatline sound many believe is what that means. He also mentioned his shoulder injury in that song too.

Jhope has never said that his dad thought he was a disappointment. He did say that his dad opposed his doing nothing but dance practice at first when he was younger but his mom supported him during his song MAMA. And he did talk during a vlive about how his dad wanted him to focus more on his studies and less on dance and that he once danced in front of his dad with no music for him to show his passion when his dad asked, but that now more than anyone he is supportive. About 57 minutes into the vlive here

Jimin had some concerning diets and issues with wanting to lose weight and the idea of needing to keep his perfect abs, but he didn't starve himself to almost dying. That's an incredible exaggeration. They ALL also did some concerning diets in those earlier years. Jimin took it a bit farther, but nothing like that. And idk what they even mean by Tae's. Changed because of Jhope getting hate? I've never heard anything like this. Of course when Hobi was going through a hard time, he was there for him and supportive and encouraging and of course Tae had grown and changed through the years, but idk what implication is being attempted here but it's an odd thing to say. Lol and for JK, "for his family?" Again, what does that even mean? Of course he left his home at a young age, he became a trainee at 13 years old and was there through his MIDDLE SCHOOL GRADUATION. That's young AF, but it wasn't FOR his family, it was to chase after his dreams of becoming a singer?? Again, what's with the weird implications here??

What an odd tiktok to make. Why is that app so full of misinformation or half information? Just to confuse people? 😭

[sweagen]

EVERY1 always neglects praying for Holy Spirit or like thinking about it but it's super essential cuz it's like.... the 'in-between' between God and humans and you may feel empty without it...

God wants us to do good and our spirits to be inclined towards Love for Yahweh + one another and if you aren't allowing the Holy Spirit to work through you everything will be 100x harder!!!!!

So here is the best Holy Spirit Prayer I could find in a few mins of searching on the internet, it's written by a Spiritan who r literally the Holy Spirit experts in all of the Church so ya!!!!!! def try it if you're a Christian!!!!!

Prayer to the Holy Spirit

O Lord Jesus Christ, Who before ascending into heaven, promised to send the Holy Ghost to finish Your work in the souls of Your Apostles and Disciples, deign to grant the same Holy Spirit to me, that He may perfect in my soul the work of Your grace and Your love. Grant me:·  the Spirit of WISDOM, that I may despise the perishable things of this world, and aspire only after the things that are eternal;

· the Spirit of UNDERSTANDING, to enlighten my mind with the light of Your divine truth;

· the Spirit of COUNSEL, that I may ever choose the surest ways of pleasing God and gaining heaven;

· the Spirit of FORTITUDE, that I may bear my cross with You, and that I may overcome with courage all the obstacles that oppose my salvation;

· the Spirit of KNOWLEDGE, that I may know God and know myself and grow perfect in the science of the Saints;

· the Spirit of PIETY, that I may find the service of God sweet and amiable; and

· the Spirit of FEAR, that I may be filled with a loving reverence towards God and may dread in any way to displease Him.

Mark me, dear Lord, with the sign of Your true disciples, and animate me in all things with Your spirit. – Amen –

#Holy Spirit #Christianity #Catholic #Prayer #Kinda weird to pray for the spirit of fear #Spiritan #God #but it's like a fear towards failing to do good and serve Love in the world which is p fair #but ya i was feeling a bit lost today #forgot how important holy spirit was #soo uh do not forget #get refreshed and let God work through you #don't try to do everything through human effort alone #that is not the way.

[martial-law-architecture]

A Shrine for the People's Power

By: Hannah De Guzman

The EDSA Shrine is arguably the most significant landmark to have appeared in the metropolis in the nation's post-EDSA 1 history since it serves as a reminder of the success that Philippine democracy has brought, both locally and internationally. It was built in 1989 to commemorate the People Power Revolution. Since it was a "peaceful revolution" that was thought to evoke the reality of her presence at EDSA during the event, it was established that the monument would be a shrine dedicated to Mary, the mother of Jesus as the "Our Lady of Peace."

According to Architect Mañosa’s wife, Denise Mañosa, the project's intended location was a 5,000 square meter piece of property inside Camp Crame when Cardinal Sin first approached Mañosa with the idea. However, it was discovered that any church constructed on government property had to be ecumenical and could not be exclusively Catholic. As a result, the location was changed to the intersection of Ortigas Avenue and Edsa on land given by the Ortigas family. It was then that to offer greater space, John Gokongwei donated more land.

The vision of the shrine was a “People’s Basilica” with the structural outline of the Bahay Kubo. Mañosa had a different vision for the structure that wasn't like the one that was existing. The architect's concept for the shrine, which he called the "People's Basilica," is an expanded version of the Bahay Kubo. The original plan intended to frame a figure of the Virgin Mary with seven pitched roofs. One influential committee member, however, opposed the plan and preferred a Spanish colonial design for the EDSA Shrine and Cardinal Jaime Sin only persuaded Mañosa to stay committed to the project and provide the design for the existing edifice when the architect thought of withdrawing from the project.

 Lyrics of Handog ng Pilipino sa Mundo are written on the wall of the shrine. After the revolution, when Cory Aquino was only a few months into her presidency and the nation aspired to re-establish the democracy it had lost, the idea for Handog ng Pilipino Sa Mundo developed. It was a song written by APO Hiking Society member Jim Paredes, who was inspired by the People Power Revolution's triumph. The song's lyrics are etched on a wall of the Our Lady of EDSA Shrine, which served as the center of the bloodless uprising that toppled President Ferdinand Marcos after 20 years in power.

The Shrine of Mary, Queen of Peace was recognized as an "Important Cultural Property" by the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) in 2019, allowing the government to provide funding for the preservation and restoration of the shrine. The 1986 People Power Revolution memorial was "uniquely designed in terms of function and form which can be easily recognized as the National Artist's work," according to NCCA. “His dedication to Philippine vernacular architecture has made him the Philippine state's top choice for designing its pavilions at expos and fairs around the world”, they added. The architect's battle cry was, "I design Filipino, nothing else" was noted. 

Sources:

Mañosa, D. (2017, February 25). Things you didn't know about the EDSA shrine. INQUIRER.net. Retrieved September 21, 2022, from https://business.inquirer.net/225232/5-things-didnt-know-edsa-shrine

NCCA declares EDSA shrine an 'important cultural property'. Inquirer Lifestyle. (2019, April 21). Retrieved September 21, 2022, from https://lifestyle.inquirer.net/332581/ncca-declares-edsa-shrine-an-important-cultural-property/

The Story of EDSA Shrine. EDSA Shrine - Shrine of Mary, Queen of Peace, Our Lady of EDSA. (n.d.). Retrieved September 21, 2022, from http://www.edsashrine.org/2016/08/the-story-of-edsa-shrine.html

#never again #neverforget

[georgeeliotworld]

Felix Holt, 1866. I thoroughly enjoyed this big, rich, “baggy monster “ of a novel. It takes some time to get the story set up, and the pace in the first half is admittedly slow, but I enjoyed the opportunity to track down Eliot’s historical, literary, religious, and legal references in my annotated Penguin edition and do some reading about historical events of the time. In contrast, the second half is eventful and dramatic on a more personal level and very fast paced. The pervading storyline is the electoral contest between progressives advocating to make voting and representation more equitable and the resistant conservative forces on the eve of the Reform Act of 1832. Another involves the complex history of Transome family whose heir, Harold Transome, breaks with Tory family tradition and runs for office as a Radical. The inheritance of the Transome estate is a labyrinthine and dramatic legal subplot. There is also a love triangle: affluent and genteel Harold Transome and poor, idealistically progressive Felix Holt, vie for the love of Esther Lyon, daughter of a poor Dissenting minister. Finally there is Esther Lyon’s thought provoking coming of age story. I loved Eliot’s ever beautiful prose, the views of the different strata of society, and how she interweaves individual and historical events. I recommend it!

Spoilers Alert:

I finished volume 1. It lays out the cast: The Transomes, a Tory family whose heir, Harold has returned home from many years abroad and much to his mother’s disappointment has declared himself a Radical candidate for office. The Debarrys, another Tory family whose heir, Philip is a Tory candidate. There’s also the Dissenter Rev. Rufus Lyon and his daughter Esther and finally their acquaintance Felix Holt, a supporter of the Radical cause. Class division between the conservative Torys vs the liberal Whigs and Radicals is obviously a major theme, see opposing views expressed by the conservative and liberal newspapers, pp 108-109. The divisions can also be seen in church affiliation: conservatives with C of E and liberals with the dissenting church generally. Even the hotels had their political allegiances, p204 !

In book two there is a burgeoning closeness between Esther Lyons and Felix Holt along with her maturation. She grows from self centeredness and superficial interests to an increasing appreciation for her father and aspiration to the idealism of Felix Holt. We also learn the true history of Esther Lyon which sets off an inheritance legal drama. This drama is initiated by Mr. Jermyns, a conniving lawyer, for his personal gain and complicated by the competing interests of Mr. Johnson, his underling and Mr. Christian, the servant of Mr. Philip Debarry. Finally, there is an alcohol fueled riot on Election Day in which Felix Holt is wrongly imprisoned for serious crimes.

In volume 3, the Transome inheritance drama comes to a head. Esther is torn between the sensibility of accepting Harold Transome and her more passionate feelings towards Felix. Felix Holt’s trial plays out, and Harold Transome’s unexpected history comes to light.

Memorable excerpts:

There is much pain that is quite noiseless; and vibrations that make human agonies are often a mere whisper in the roar of hurrying existence. There are glances of hatred that stab and raise no cry of murder; robberies that leave man or woman for ever beggared of peace and joy, yet kept secret by the sufferer – committed to no sound except that of low moans in the night, seen in no writing except that made on the face by the slow months of suppressed anguish and early morning tears. Many an inherited sorrow that has marred a life has been breathed in no human ear.

Why do they build churches and endow them that their sons may get paid well for preaching a Saviour, and making themselves as little like Him as can be? If I want to believe in Jesus Christ, I must shut my eyes for fear I should see a parson. And what’s a bishop? A bishop is a parson dressed up, who sits in the house of lords to help and throw out reform bills. And because it’s hard to get anything in the shape of a man to dress himself up like that, and to do such work, they give him a palace for it, and plenty of thousands a year. And then they cry out - “The church is in danger,” - “the poor man’s church.” and why is it the poor man’s church? Because he can have a seat for nothing. I think it is for nothing; for it would be hard to tell what he gets by it. If the poor man had a vote in the matter, I think he’d choose a different sort of a church to what that is. But do you think the aristocrats will ever alter it, if the belly doesn’t pinch them? Not they. It’s part of their monopoly. They’ll supply us with our religion like everything else, and get a profit on it. They’ll give us plenty of heaven. We may have land there. That’s the sort of religion they like – a religion that gives us working men heaven, and nothing else. But we’ll offer to change with ‘em. Will give them back some of their heaven, and take it out in something for us and our children in this world. p290

To be right in great memorable moments, is perhaps the thing we need most desire for ourselves. p309

Examples of Victorian parlance: “Enlarge not your grief by more than warrantable grounds.”In modern parlance: Don’t worry too much at this point.😁

“let’s go to my study and consider this writing further.“ In modern parlance: let’s go to my study and read it again.😁

Under the stimulus of small many-mixed motives like these (men like Jermyn, Christian, & Johnson), a great deal of business has been done in the world by well-clad and in 1833, clean-shaven men, whose names are on charity-lists, and who do not know that they are base.“ p359

And ‘tis a strange truth that only in the agony of parting we look into the depths of love. p428

If there’s anything our people want convincing of, it is, that there’s some dignity and happiness for a man other than changing his station. p435

To be continued…

#george eliot #felix holt

[vincentcheungteam]

You need to confront your church and call the leadership to repent, or you need to take your support to another church, which is not another, since yours is not a church in the first place. You must not support a church that refuses to turn people away from sin, since that should be one of its chief duties. This is not an insignificant difference of opinion – revolt or leave, but do not share in its guilt.

If your church is not founded on the perfection of the Bible, its inerrancy and infallibility, it should die. If your church denies the sovereignty of God, that God is God, it should die. If your church shuns the penal atonement of Christ, that he died a bloody death at the hands of the Jews to pay for the sins of his people, it should die. If your church shrinks from the doctrine of hell, a place that punishes all unbelievers with acute and extreme agony forever, it should die. If your church does not practice church discipline, calling out sinners for their sins, imploring, admonishing, rebuking, threatening them, and expelling those who refuse to repent, it should die.

And if your church endorses abominations like abortion, homosexuality, divorce and remarriage, and other such things, it should die. If your church holds yoga classes, palmistry workshops, and astrology seminars, it should die. Churches are called to fight these things, not to teach and applaud them. Churches are called to confront sinners, and to shame those who refuse to repent, and not to glorify them, or to make them into heroes. God's wrath is poured out upon all those who practice evil, and also on those who approve of these people.

These are only some of the necessary characteristics of a true church, and to fulfill them makes one nothing more than a minimally faithful congregation. It is a description of a normal church. It is how every church should begin and continue, and not some extraordinary spiritual height to be aspired to and attained after many years, if ever. Yes, most churches should probably die. Today. Let it not be your fault that they live one moment longer. Whether any given church survives is God's hands, but your duty is to support those that are good and oppose those that are evil.

Good churches suffer partly because bad churches thrive. Bad churches thrive because people are gullible and rebellious. And people are gullible and rebellious because most of them are not even Christians. They support leaders and churches that tell them what they wish to hear, so that they may appear to seek God, but still believe and behave the same as before. And they are able to get away with this because Christians have failed to declare God's inflexible standard with clarity and boldness.

What you sow, you will also reap. If you support unfaithful churches, they will grow stronger, and you will reap destruction. If you sow fear and compromise, sins and heresies will increase. But if you support faithful churches, those that preach, apply, and enforce the doctrines of Jesus Christ, and if you join them in doing these things, then the Christian faith will thrive and take root, and the harvest will be peace, righteousness, and prosperity.

Vincent Cheung, Sermonettes - Volume 1 (2010), p. 44-45.

[askchua]

Society and civil leaders advocate for liberty of conscience and inclusiveness but seem increasingly intolerant of people with opposing views. Freedom of religion to a growing number of people requires religion to follow the changing values of society. Why are ‘Christian' churches expected to demonstrate their inclusivity while nobody would ask or demand a leader of another large faith group to come out declaring a pro-homosexual stance… in fact, some football codes praising a player/s for making a stand?

Jesus is widely recognised by both those within and outside the church as a model of unconditional love, crossing cultural, gender, bodily, economic and other societal expectations and laws to embrace those often forgotten, powerless or hated. Jesus was radically inclusive, choosing unexpected people as his 12 named male disciples and other women in his regular entourage. Coming seemingly from nowhere special, Jesus was a viral sensation of his time.

Jesus also showed continued intolerance towards a certain group of people, being highly critical about certain views they held and often publicly viciously slagging/insulting them (even inventing the term hypocrite to slam them). His targeted group were various privileged and entitled sectarian religious leaders within his ‘religion’ - the Pharisees, Sadducees, other teachers of the law and the executive priests (and at times their agents). However, Jesus didn’t paint these religious leader all as one-dimensional villains, but encouraged others to emulate some of their examples, and Jesus accepted their social invitations, welcomed interactions with them and even gave them some personal blessings/miracles. But there is no hypocrisy or disconnect between Jesus being wholly inclusive and still finding the views and practices of these people offensive, especially when they impacts the rights and freedoms of others and how others view who God favours.

Beginning as a land that was first populated by the ancestors of modern Indigenous Australians, and then much later invaded/colonised by the British, who brought their colonial form of Christianity with them, contemporary Australia is now a democratic, secular, liberal and aspiring-pluralist country with laws, governance structures and expectations evolved from that British base. As such, Australia has many differences to other countries like the US, for example, Australia does not have an explicit statement protecting freedom of speech.

Think about a state school as an analogy for the state and the principal akin to the Prime Minister or a state premier. Despite the claims made sometimes by the private school sector, state schools are not value-free nor value-denying places but promote and enforce certain values based on the common laws of society and have aligned behavioural expectations of all those within their school.

Whereas most private schools have exclusionary selection of students and staff and idiosyncratic value systems depending on their main donor bases, state schools are open to all that wish to attend it (zoning pending). As a pluralist community, consideration to allow freedom for the expressions and practices of various beliefs and ideologies are usually accommodated (e.g. personal choices to pray at certain times in a private setting, clothing choices, celebration of certain festivals). Students can hold and express whatever views they wish as individuals and also practice them… but not everything is acceptable.

The freedom to express also means the freedom to disagree. You can express any views in a school but don’t always expect to have a ready audience nor be applauded. Particularly for certain individuals not used to others disagree with them, being in a pluralist community can be a difficult adjustment.

And then there are certain views and practices - especially if they are unaligned to common law - that just will not be tolerated by the leadership of the school. As such, state schools are not permissive about everything.

An example of this is with the ‘traditional misogynistic views’ often expressed by certain boys regarding sexual consent. It doesn’t matter whether those views/beliefs are rooted in long-standing sporting traditions or certain religions, in most/all state schools, they are no longer approved of nor tolerated.

Now certainly the school does not require everyone to personally believe in line with the school’s views/practices, but everyone has to acknowledge them and accommodate themselves to them. And the common values of the school are expected to be espoused and promoted by their leaders. Of course, school leaderships can and do make mistakes but these are often resolved in the court of public consensus.

Similarly, government leaders never claimed to be value-free and often are expected by the public to make comments on whether government decisions or other organisations/corporations are acting in the ‘public interest’ and consistent with expected values of modern society and laws. In fact, politicians and government leaders - such as the current prime minister and the opposition leader - are voted in precisely because of their stated values and priorities (even if they only cater to certain sectors of the Australian population). In their leadership roles, however, whatever their personal beliefs, they need to act consistent again with society’s common laws or trajectories.

The AFL and the NRL (and all other organisations) are brands focused on selling products that carries certain values. Sporting organisations have not been value-free for a long time but instead promote themselves as an all-aged unifying-society-force where all is welcomed and included (hence the public scorn for a club’s racist practices). Every paid AFL/NRL player and leader is an employee/ambassador that has to assent to the values of the corporation they choose to work for - they don't have to believe in it themselves but they have to acknowledge that is what they have signed up with. For many employees and volunteers, we often treat code of conducts or our organisation’s values statements like online account signup agreements, that is, we just want to get what they offer rather than always read what we have actually pledged our lives to, but that still doesn’t mean we can claim ignorance if we suddenly find ourselves on the wrong side of that agreement.

In our secular pluralist society, there is freedom of religion - that is, everyone is able to believe and practice whatever they want as long as it is consistent with the law of the land. Accommodations have been and continue to be made to how the legal and other system operates for certain cultural and religious groups, but as long as the overall intentions of the law are largely maintained. Allowance is also often made for conscientious objectors, that is, someone can excuse themselves from participating. These do not oppose the community, they merely step to one side to allow that community to proceed.

Because of the British base of law, Christian organisations have been traditionally favoured but increasing efforts to equalise opportunities for other religions and diverse beliefs have resulted in losses of previous exclusive privileges. Additionally, allowing others to have an equal voice in contrast to traditional bases of power, means that those claiming to speak for Christianity are increasingly finding vocal disagreement by others that previously didn’t have a voice or platform. Additionally, where secular government funding is involved, greater demands for accountability and transparency means any body that wishes to receive public funding needs to be more aligned with public expectations for their practices and who they serve. When Christian figures are questioned about what practices core to their faith are being lost (that are not related to exclusionary practices or imposing their beliefs on those outside their membership), very few specifics are given. To the privileged, equality feels like oppression.

In a pluralist secular society, all religions are not required to be pro-something that is against their core beliefs. But if a religion continues to promote certain beliefs and practices (whether core or not) that violate others’ legal rights or standing and they receive public funding/accommodations, that religion might not want to go out of their way to actively promote those practices nor expect public approval if they do. And particularly when it comes to sexual diversity, there is no universal agreement across Christianity that it is a core aspect of their faith, that is, central to the gospel of Jesus, nor has historical emphasis (unlike Christianity’s greater continuous targets against the sins of idolatry, pride, greed, inhospitality or lacking compassion for the powerless, shunned and despised).

Historically, all modern-day religions have evolved since their initial founding. The Apostle Paul would be very shocked and find the experience and life of any contemporary Australian church unfamiliar.

The God of the Bible, in fact, seems to continually push all God’s people from the first couple to the various New Testament churches, into new cultural contexts and is pleased with the evolution of expressions and practices and trajectories of inclusiveness for more and more people and practices previously shunned and condemned. In fact, until relatively more recently the Christian Church and theology were widely credited for the many victories of increasing freedoms and rights for all, especially those outside its membership. These days, society tends to view the Church as prioritising its membership and its privileges over the rights of others.

In some ways, one could say the church is returning to the also pluralist liberal days and circumstances of the New Testament society in which the Christian Church was birthed and had limited standing, influence or favour. Maybe God has ordained once again the circumstances so that God’s people can return to resembling the humility of a rural tradie’s bastard son in an urban metropolis without privilege, entitlement or institutional authority to engage once again with radical inclusiveness and proclaim the good news that God is focused and interested in people anew no matter their identity, standing, circumstances or behaviours, and whose only main intolerance is against those that deny that God wants the very best fullness of life for every single human and the rest of creation.

#Church #secular society #good citizen #Jesus #humility #pluralist #intolerance

[thebookworm0001]

hey anybody remember how Christians took the Columbine shooting and turned that into a message about how all American Christians will one day face a gun to their head, probably as a child in school, and it’s their duty as a follower of Christ to die instead of denouncing Jesus

#anyway that wasn’t traumatic at all #like. putting aside the fact that people do attack schools and churches #I had a teacher who was in a church when a shooter came in that’s very much a threat #but anyway #I’m thinking that might have a massive impact on how Christians are dealing with covid #they see covid as a singular bullet to their head #as opposed to the actual transmittable virus it is #also the fact that so many people equate Christianity with Going to Church #as opposed to. like. aspiring to be like Jesus. #so you have all these people seeing the request not to gather in large numbers as a specific attack on their faith #instead of the request to protect their communities #because Christians are much more willing to die for Christ than to live for him

[thequietmanno1]

Thelreads, MHA 253, Replies Part 2

1) “Oh man, Mic is a bit pissed, this is… Well, this is worrisome, to say the least. Jesus, what happened that you had to get Mic to go with you man? “- Aizawa dealt with his grief by embracing it and allowing it to mould him into somebody with a self-destructive outlook, in effect projecting his grief into a dour, snarky attitude with a hint or two of cynicism behind his gloomy exterior. Mic, by contrast, was always the light-hearted extrovert between them, and when Kumo died the first time he felt obligated to pull double-duty on that front to help keep Aizawa’s mind-set from becoming too self-destructive, doing what he could to keep his partner-in-mourning from losing himself to his worst impulses even at the cost of supressing his own grief and avoid dealing with it at all, putting on a happy front in order to hide how he was really feeling, which means that for him, a lot of the trauma from Kumo’s demise is still unresolved, and this is tearing the old wounds open again, leaving them nice and bloody.

2) “wait

are we- Are we talking about… the traitor?  Are Aizawa and Mic going to go after the traitor? Oh god oh fuck- By the way he`s talking about it it must be a teacher. Oh fuck oh no”- Well… technically, Kumo did betray the old dream and career they once aspired to have together, but does it really count as betrayal if you’re forced into it and have no idea what you’re really doing anymore? If your mind is so heavily remixed and remodelled to suit another’s whims you might not even have a sense of self to object with at this point? All For One would have a good hearty laugh over the situation in either case, since to him, this would prove the folly of wanting to become a hero if all it takes is some minor tweaks to your thought process and you become equally capable of great villainy.

3) “…

Is that

Is that Tartarus? Wait no- is the traitor already in jail and they there to interrogate them? No, it  can`t be, Hori wouldn`t cut a conflict like this, then what the hell are they coming here for? Are they going to talk to All for One or something?”- They’re here to catch up with an old friend who doesn’t even know he’s their friend anymore- and maybe never will again. Does it still count as Kumo if the mind inside him bares no resemblance to his old self anymore? How much of a man can you cut away before what’s left is another person entirely?

4) “oh okay, a random exposition to remind us what Nomus are, I`m sure this is just small talk without any plot relevance whatsoever did they caught a nomu or something?”- Oh they’ve caught this Nomu as long time ago- In fact, I think they probably still have the OG Nomu in custody somewhere, even if he is absolutely inert until he receives the appropriate commands. Oh, and can’t forget Hood’s charred corpse on Ice somewhere, possibly stored alongside the Hosu Nomu and the remains of Izuku’s old friend- sure feels awkward remembering those guys now after Ending tried using them as a justification to legally murder him a few chapters ago. If they’d had the capacity to restrain them without killing them, then maybe the damage done to their brains might have been fixable, as opposed to Kumo, who seems to have had far more extensive mental re-mapping done to him in exchange for him retaining his ego. But those were simply too powerful and dangerous to restrain- plus, people weren’t going to hesitate giving a lethal attack to something non-human, which feels worse now when you know there was probably somebody on the inside of those monsters all the time, perhaps trapped in the sunken place and begging for help than nobody wanted to give them…

5) “Gran Torino here as well? Man, been a while since we saw turbo yoda there, but I think he was with Phelps as well. Huh. Okay, I have no fucking clue where this is going now, but I`m starting to suspect we`re gonna go down the Nomu plot once again.”- Since he was the one to bring him in, it makes sense he’d be involved in looking after his ‘suspect’- plus, Torino is proverbial boot on the ground trying to hunt down the league whilst Phelps runs support and logistics, and since this is the best and only lead they have, given how absolutely the PLF have concealed their plans, they’re both out of options beyond praying for a miracle with getting some piece of useful intel out that Aizawa and Mic can coax out of their deceased colleague’s cadaver.

6) “That would definitely explain why you`re going over stuff we already know about, and have known about for almost 200 chapters by now, not counting the Vigilante ones.”- Well, that, and the fact that overturning that assumption by hoping some piece of Kumo still resides inside his shattered mind and can communicate with them is the plan they’re going for, painful as it is for Aizawa and Mic.

7) “Alright, you know, I`m not gonna get in the merit of “we already knew that goddammit” because I don`t know how far Vigilantes had got by this point, but we already knew that goddammit, McBee showed that Nomus could be way more than simply automatons if needed, and now with Shigaraki about to become a nomu it gets even more obvious.”-Well, we can safely say for sure that we were past a certain chapter by now…

8) “Oh jesus, Mic is really not okay right now, and the way Phelps phrased that- I don`t feel like I like where this is going.”-Both men are barely holding it together, and can you really blame them? This not only overturns the nature of the enemy that’s been harassing their student and helped brutalise Aizawa, giving him permanent scars, but the last who-knows how many years of their lives since high school, realising that all along, all the time they were training to be heroes and helping others in Shirakumo’s memory, his reanimated cadaver had been dug up, stuffed with science beyond the ken of normal men and was walking around like a sick puppet at the whim of a malicious monster in mockery of all that he hoped to one day became. And the worst part is, it appears to have been completely random. There wasn’t any special reason that Shirakumo was chosen to be one of the bodies chosen for AFO and Ujiko’s experiments with what would become the Nomu, he was merely just a convenient corpse they happened to come across when they were looking for a body that nobody would miss- in fact, it’s very likely that he was far from the first one they did that to.

If you can turn even dead bodies into Nomu, then it’s a far more convenient method of acquiring the physical parts you need for the monster than by kidnapping living people off the street- less people looking for the missing person afterwards for one thing. After all, it’s not like you could imagine a corpse would get up and walk around on its own after breathing its last breath, right? But then again, Quirks make the impossible, possible, and heinous as he may be, Ujiko is undoubtedly the man on the cutting edge of quirk science. The messy, bloody, unethical edge far beyond the boundaries of decency and morality, but the cutting edge nonetheless.

9) “wait

wait a moment

Am I losing my mind or are they implying that Kurogiri is also a Nomu?”- 

Sure is a similar eye shape they both have there, huh? Rather than Hood resembling Kurogiri, Kurogiri actually resembles a High-end Nomu, so I think one of the uniform identifying traits of the high-ends must be a similar eye design, in addition to the whole exposed brain deal. Kurogiri’s smoky form probably just obscures his physical alterations underneath all that smog. That said, Hood seems to be a great deal less stable that Kurogiri, despite being able to communicate and follow orders, in part apparently because he’s far more powerful than Kurogiri in a combat sense, but accordingly, in a similar manner to Izuku needing to build up his body to use all of OFA’s multiple powers at their maximum, his multiple quirks put a greater strain on his mental faculties, and getting pushed too far in a fight trying to put Endeavour down apparently pushed his mind to the breaking point, causing him to devolve into a feral beast in the final moments from having too much power being controlled by a mind who couldn’t withstand the strain of it, even if his body had been physically remodelled to handle more power than God intended he be born with. 

Kurogiri, meanwhile, is much weaker, and actually doesn’t even have any direct combat applications with his quirk besides the situational portal cut function, something he indicates would be unpleasant for him to experience, but his mind is far more stable, and he’s even been able to form a completely different personality and mentality compared to his old self. In fact, it’s a little jarring to realise how ok Kumo was with killing a person in such an intimate manner in hindsight, even if there was likely a component of him being unable to ignore AFO’s direct orders on the matter. Kurogiri is a support-type Nomu, there to protect Tomura and offer him a way out until he’s adequately prepared to start taking the fight to the heroes and can be given access to the more hard-core toys AFO stashed away for a rainy day, like the high-ends and Machia. By the time he reached that point, Kurogiri’s role had run out, and accordingly, he’s effectively abandoned by his ‘masters’ now his purpose has been served and to help further push Tomura into becoming the symbol of Fear, taking away the safety and security afforded by his warp gate function.

10) “Okay, it must be that, right? But what the fuck, Kurogiri doesn`t even have multiple quirks, at least not that we`ve seen. But it must be him that they are talking about, Gran Torino captured him”- Kurogiri takes the opposite approach to the typical Nomu. Whereas they have multiple individual quirks stuffed within a vessel modified to be tough enough to take the strain, he has multiple quirk factors merged together to form a single, powerful quirk, in a similar manner to how OFA first formed. It’s heavily implied that this is because Kurogiri is actually the first Nomu, or first of that line of quirk-enhanced monstrosities that Ujiko and AFO created once they’d perfected the method. Before they started on making bodies strong enough to hold multiple powers, they went for making a specialised individual power out of multiple ones in order to both create a highly-useful trump card and figure out the baseline level of power a body could hold whilst still retaining its intelligence and ego, and from there making more combat-applicable ‘tanks’ that didn’t require higher brain functions too much because they’d just be disposable weapons to be unleashed at a target and only needed enough mental power to process commands.

11) “Ah damn, now I know it can`t be McBee, he wouldn`t shut the fuck up about his master plan, he would`ve given AfO plans away the moment he got caught, just so he could gloat how the plan couldn`t be stopped”- This puts Kumo’s situation in bleaker terms- it’s not that he’s ‘willingly’ aiding the league after having his memories and mind tampered with, it’s that he literally can’t think of not helping them. Any thoughts that might lead to rebellion or non-compliance with AFO’s commands literally shut his mind down like a robot who receive an incorrect command code, and he ‘powers up’ again shortly afterward like a blank slate, unaware of what was asked of him. 

In exchange for being allowed to have his own ego and mind-set, it seems that the cost that came for Kumo’s conversion into a Nomu isn’t a loss of mental functions and his body becoming grotesquely warped into an inhuman form, but a greater and more extensive mental remapping of his brain, ensuring said mind will never turn on AFO, even if he has every reason to want to. He’s had his Id and Personality scooped out and put back together in ways that benefit a loyal soldier of AFO and he literally can’t imagine being anything else, or his mind cuts out. Even if he can be conversed with, it’s possible that Kumo’s modifications are so extensive that there’s even less of a chance of him regaining his humanity than the other Nomu.

12) “Huh… No, also is implausible, he doesn`t have the speed and strength, he just teleports things around, and apparently that is just the result of multiple quirks coming together. The most probably explanation is that Kurogiri, like a lot of babies, was merely an accident, and then they refined him when they saw the potential that not having to pay for Uber would entail.”- Less an accident, but more a deliberate creation designed to create a ‘base’ Nomu Ujiko and AFO could expand upon. It was outright stated how convenient Kurogiri’s portal powers were when he first appeared and how unfortunate it was that a highly-useful power like that was in the hands of villains. In retrospect, it was too convenient a power to be a naturally-born one. Every single quirk we’ve seen had some kind of limitation or drawback to it- in fact AFO himself has another warping quirk that he used to save the league at Kamino once Kurogiri was knocked unconscious, but he himself admits it’s inferior, as he can only warp people to and from him and to places he’s familiar with- but Kurogiri’s power alone seems to contain no drawbacks to it, nor any limit to what he can do with it beyond needing precise coordinates to reach a location he can’t see. Now we can see that the drawback for having such a power was him losing his mind and willpower to become nothing more than a mindless puppet of AFO’s at a single command, in mockery of all he once hoped to be.

13) “WHT NO NO WAY NO FUCKING WQAY WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU NO

NO

NOPE NOPE FUCK YOU NOPE HORIKOSHI NO I REFUSE TO NO NO ABSOLUTELY NOT HOW COULD YOU “

Horikoshi’s face right now.

14) “So that was the connection that people wanted me to see. Not the whole “how Aizawa became who he is” shit, oh no, it was not about how he became a hero and why he expelled all students that didn`t met his high standards and all that, oh no, it was all so the punch here would come ten-fold.

Kurogiri, one of the first villains we got to know from the League, AfO`s right hand man, was in fact not only a high-end Nomu, but a Nomu made out of Aizawa`s dead friend.”-Aizawa’s so committed to his Ninja aesthetic that he even has his own Sasuke… ok, there’s another character who’d fit the comparison even better, but naturally their identity is as spoilerey as Kurogiri’s true name.

15) “I want to be mad, I really want, but I`m just baffled, completely speechless. So that`s why that arc back on Vigilantes was miles above all the others, because Horikoshi literally had a choke-hold on Furuhashi and how the plot should go. It wasn`t only something like why Aizawa is how he is, it was also because it was set-up for one of the biggest plot twists of the series so far.

holy. shit.”-

I actually quite like that this relied on Knowledge from the Vigilante spin-off. I sorta see it as similar to the Marvel Netflix series in that events from one film can interact with the series and sometimes the series can make cameo appearance in the films and other shows, but you don’t need to actually know who they are, nor do they significantly impact the plot of said films, but it does show how the universe they live in is one with many stories and many heroes, and they can interact in ways you wouldn’t expect. Checking out the plotting of MHA so far, it’s actually been really tight and fast-paced- this last arc has only been 10-ish chapters so far, and everything’s been building up on a tight schedule, so taking time to properly flesh out Aizawa’s backstory would not only have slowed the pacing, it would have allowed savey viewers to pick up on the fact that Kumo was likely to be more important than just a disposable character to galvanise Aizawa’s character progression. By putting the backstory in the spinnoff, it made it seem irrelevant to MHA’s plot, beyond merely being character explanation for Aizawa’s behaviour so far, and thus the impact of the twist is magnified when all of a sudden that side-character you thought you knew about turned out to have been involved with the story all along, in an unrecognisable form to the point you never saw it coming.

16) “And now that I`m finished I finally got to see what the cover page was. Can you guess what the tittle of the chapter was? Take a fucking guess”- So, what happens to Shirakumo (White Cloud) when it gets dragged down to earth, muddied and corrupted from the pure form it used to be into an agent of a malevolent will to serve it unquestioningly as a mockery of all it once hoped to be?

It becomes Kurogiri (Black Mist). @thelreads​

#bnha #thelreads #chapter replies #my hero academia #mha253

[go-redgirl]

Joe Biden was the perfect presidential candidate.

It’s likely that no other plausible Democratic nominee would have defeated Donald Trump in 2020. Biden’s friendly and decent demeanor was the perfect contrast to Trump’s malignant, vulgar image—and that made it nearly impossible for Trump to demonize him like he did Hillary Clinton. If shamelessness was Trump’s superpower, Biden’s was being utterly likable. Likewise, Obama’s faithful number two—who was too old and out of touch to be aware of, much less fall for, “woke” Twitter—was uniquely able to thread the needle by appeasing the left of his party while assembling a “Biden coalition” of white men. Lastly, and as macabre as it sounds to say this, name any candidate who would have benefited more from a pandemic that forced him to campaign from his basement. In short, Biden was perfectly cast to defeat Trump in the weird year that was 2020—and even then, the election was still too close for comfort.

But being the right candidate to beat Trump did not make Biden the right candidate to actually become president. If this wasn’t already clear, it is now. The hopes and dreams of a Biden presidency that would remake America are beginning to crumble. Talks of being the next FDR now seem naive and hubristic. Indeed, my warnings about aspiring to be LBJ suddenly look eerily prophetic (be careful what you wish for). Trump’s evil insanity made many people cling to the hope that Biden would be some “Jesus meets JFK” savior, as opposed to a predictable rebound relationship.

I took a lot of grief for saying I couldn’t vote for either man in 2020, but what is happening in Afghanistan right now demonstrates why the judgment of both men disqualified them. Biden has been laughably wrong on every major foreign policy decision for decades, so why would we expect him to get this right? When you consider his many previous gaffes (“you cannot go to a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin’ Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent”) and mistakes (“Stand up, Chuck!”), Biden was a more innocuous Trump before Trump one-upped him. What is happening now is what we should’ve expected. Just as the Taliban are doing Taliban things, this is Biden being Biden. It’s what we might have expected had Trump not burned out all of our outrage receptors and shifted the window of acceptable behavior.

Joe Biden’s Surrender Is an Ugly, Needless Disaster

On Monday, Biden took a break from his Camp David vacation to give an address at the White House that hardly acknowledged the disaster unfolding on his watch and live on our screens. Instead, he blamed his predecessor, saying: “The choice I had to make as your president was either to follow through on the [Trump] agreement to draw down our forces, or escalating the conflict and sending thousands more American troops back into combat and lurching into the third decade of conflict.” He also blamed “Afghanistan political leaders (who) gave up and fled the country”—and an Afghanistan military that wouldn’t fight for its own. It was a transparent attempt to change the subject from Biden’s bumbling and humiliating retreat to whether we should be in Afghanistan in the first place.

Biden isn't Trump, but like Trump he made a reckless recision that ignored the advice of military leaders and then gave a speech that demonstrated belligerence and stubbornness while insisting Americans should believe him, instead of their lying eyes. Biden vowed he wouldn't allow another Saigon on his watch, and now it's happening though you'd never know it listening to his speech on Monday before he walked off to return to Camp David without taking questions.

Defiant Biden Doubles Down on Afghan Withdrawal: ‘I Stand Squarely Behind My Decision’

It’s amazing how quickly Biden’s aspirations appear to be falling apart. With the infrastructure bill passing the Senate less than a week ago, there was some optimism. But “hot Joe summer” is already a mess, and winter is coming. Even if, after 20 years, the American public is indifferent to the plight of Afghanistan (or will be by the time 2024 comes around), I have been documenting looming problems like inflation, violent crime, and an out-of-control border—problems Biden initially dismissed as “transitory” or “cyclical.” There was also his “Independence from COVID-19” remarks that, with the rise of the Delta variant, feel like a wildly premature “Mission Accomplished” declaration.

Until now, the public and the media have largely given Biden a pass on all of this. As I noted a couple of weeks ago, Biden ducked a reporter’s question about Afghanistan, saying: “I want to talk about happy things, man.” But the fall of Kabul may be the point where Americans look at this kindly old man who, in essence, keeps saying, “Trust me. Everything’s going to work out,” and quit believing him. After that, there’s no going back.

For now, Biden is in danger of getting bogged down by COVID-19 and Afghanistan. The amazing thing is that Trump is largely to blame for both of them. It’s possible that problems Trump helped create will blossom under Biden, creating an ironic rationale to boot Biden and elect Trump. That would be a truly bizarre feedback loop, but the public blames the guy on duty at the time.

If going from Trump to Biden was out of the frying pan into the fire, imagine the insanity of a country going from Trump to Biden and then back to Trump. It could happen, largely because of the inherent vagaries of our nominating process and the two-party system. This is really no way to run a railroad, much less a country.

Are these two highly flawed septuagenarians really as good as it gets? Wait. Don’t answer that.

[d00medships]

i know in my bio it says i’ll never get around to writing fics, and yet here i am, posting a fic that i wrote.

here’s to me being a liar and a fraud (cross-posted on ao3).

33 year-old Keigo is pretty sure 23 year-old Keigo couldn’t have predicted this.

In fact, Keigo is almost positive his 23 year-old self would have imagined his life ended right then and there, with the brunt of Dabi’s metal boots pressed onto his head -- suffocating Keigo entirely as the heat of the villain’s quirk threatened to burn beyond bone from above the hero’s head. 

Cornered and down for the count, it made sense why Keigo thought his destiny to die young was manifesting in that moment. With the world closing in on him and his mission seemingly complete, Keigo may not have been ready to go just yet, but he understood if it was his time.

Mission accomplished, at any cost.

Years later, Keigo now thinks his past self was a bit melodramatic.

“Why are your feet so damn big?!”

Touya turns his turquoise gaze away from the Doc Martens he had been eyeing, cool confusion written upon his face. If Keigo were a lesser man, he’d stop to admire how handsome his husband had become in recent years -- the skin grafts had taken well, and however disjointed and discolored they still may be, no one could deny Touya looked much better with healthy skin as opposed to...well, the opposite -- but alas, Keigo had already fallen for this man too many times since their first meeting. This time would not be one of them.

“Do you understand how hard it is to find shoes for you? You’re like, a fucking giant, I swear.”

Touya chuckles, a low sound that still somehow reverberates in Keigo’s heart everytime he hears it. Once it used to only elicit fear, something that could immediately put Keigo on the offensive, but nowadays --

“Well, you know what they say about big feet,” Touya offers, his attention now back on the prized pair of Doc Martens. He turns the shoe over and eyes the number on the sole, only to click his tongue in annoyance a second later. Keigo catches a glimpse of a size -- 30cm. Jesus Christ, this man was a fucking cryptid. 

Setting the shoes back down, Touya scans the store for an attendant, but it seems like he and Keigo have the store to themselves. Despite the annoyed look on his face, Keigo knows that Touya isn’t exactly surprised. Even with his skin grafts and dye-free hair, his scars still remained. Anyone with a sharp eye could put together that Touya probably didn’t have the cleanest of slates. In fact, the only saving reason why his technical ‘witness protection’ still worked is the fact that Keigo was the one who actually took his father down (in court, mind you), and to the public, Dabi was dead and buried after coming out on the losing side from a fierce three-way battle between himself, Endeavor, and Hawks.

Dabi being dead also meant Todoroki Touya stayed dead, too. Though he originally was a bit annoyed at what the implications were for his reputation and his once-master plan (to this day, Touya swears he didn’t lose that fight -- he was just that good of an actor), even Touya had to concede that Takami Touya -- average citizen, aspiring children’s social worker, randomly close confidante of the Todoroki family, and husband to No. 219 hero Hawks -- sounded better anyways.

“I don’t even know why we bothered with the mall. You’re just gonna fixate on the same damn shoe you already have at home, then get mad when they don’t have a size that’ll fit your big-ass feet,” Keigo grumbled, “meaning that we’ll have to head back with nothing and order your boots online like everyone else does in the first place.”

“I...,” Touya pauses, as his bored gaze landing on another pair of near-identical Doc Martens, “don’t like your tone.” 

Keigo smirked. Touya’s lack of rebuttal was the sign of a win in this battle.

With one last, fruitless glance at the cascading racks of black boots, Touya turns away from the sight with a huff and a roll of his eyes to level Keigo with a look. It’s not The Look™, which usually means Keigo is about to get his ass handed to him (which in a post-Touya-gets-anger-management era has either in a sexy or very much not-so-sexy context, like when Keigo blue-shelled Touya during Mario Kart), but instead one that spoke to Touya’s waning patience for this specific brand of BS.

“Well since this is pointless apparently,” Touya’s voice trails off before coming back at a ten-fold vengance, having noticed a wayward shop attendant behind Keigo who is clearly startled at having been caught hiding from the pair, “and nobody seems to be here to fucking help us,” -- Keigo groans as the shop attendant runs back into hiding; subtlety will never be this man’s strong suit -- “we should at least grab some crepes before heading out.”

“Oh, and you’re paying?”

Truth be told, Keigo actually doesn’t care if he has to pay or not. The sugar daddy aspect of their relationship never really bothered Keigo, nor did it bother Touya even after he managed to get a part-time job (in fact, Touya’s only response to the one-time Natsuo brought it up was, “eat the rich,” and BOY, if that wasn’t a double entendre). At that same dinner, Fuyumi said something about his love language being something like ‘gift giving’, which lead Rumi co-signing Fuyumi by unhelpfully offering up the fact that Keigo has his Venus in Taurus despite his seemingly cold-stone Capricorn heart (whatever that means, Keigo just had to take their word for it), but all he knows is that he likes/loves/needs Touya happy.

“Duh, birdie. What else am I going to spend this money on?” Touya asks. He holds out his hand -- still scarred, still callused, a weary yet strong reminder of what they’ve been through and how far they’ve come -- for Keigo to take.

And as always, Keigo takes Touya’s outstretched hand without hesitation. For them, this is the softest they’ll ever be in public, but it’s enough.

“Well in that case, I want two crepes...with extra fillings,” Keigo chirps, his brisk pace somehow equally matched to Touya’s lazy gait. Fastest hero living notwithstanding, Keigo still cursed his short legs.

“Oh, fuck you,” Touya laughs as he looks at Keigo fondly, and oh, isn’t his laugh a glorious thing. It’s lighter, and less rough around the edges. It’s happy, and at the end of the day, it makes Keigo feel like he’s doing something right.

Hand in hand, the two men walk out of the store and blend into the crowds of the mall. Now one with the masses, it’s hard to imagine either of them as anything more than ordinary, and certainly not once on the brink of tragedy on both sides.

33 year-old Keigo likes this new normal. Even if he could have never predicted it, he’s sure it’s a future that 23 year-old Keigo would have hoped for.

#a birthday present to me #dabihawks #toukei #hotwings #dabi and hawks doing mundane things in the future as a couple is my kink #dabihawks week 2020 #dabi #hawks #todoroki touya #bnha #takami keigo #also YES i have theories on each of their charts #let's just say dabi screams aries moon and venus in scorpio

[kasprzaks]

eddie kasprzak, reactionary extraordinaire

both   balloons   tethered   to   the   microfilm   recorder   now   read   ASTHMA   MEDICINE   GIVES   YOU  CANCER!   below   the   slogan   are   grinning   skulls. 

eddie’s characterisation flooding its way into the third person narrator in the book ESPECIALLY in eddie’s bad break is amazing and i’d die for it. his voice elsewhere in the book is very poetic and looks at things more conceptually than solidly, but the more of a grounding in this chapter while his head runs wild continues and tries to comprehend such a horrible conversation (specifically looking at his convo with mr keene in eddie’s bad break p2) succeeds so much to solidify him as a character outside of just what he says and does. i love it so here’s an entire collection that shows his reactions and the intensity he reaches as he buries himself in his brain in such a difficult situation and how it’s integrated into the prose in such a way we really feel like we’re living in his head despite the third person gap we have to cross to get there.

                 ‘Mr Keene,' he says, and his voice sounds distant to his own ears, without power. 'It was Mr Keene.'

                 'Not exactly the nicest man in Derry,' Mike says, but Eddie, lost in his thoughts, barely hears him.

... eddie always always has a whole thing of trying to be brave (and in this chapter he’s always saying something along the lines of what would big bill do?) but, in the process, manages to get so worked up he’s at a disconnect to what’s actually going on. as he starts to recall the memory with the rest of the losers 27 years later, he starts retreating into his own head because that’s simply how he is. he’s such a thinker that even the second he says it, he’s fading out. he barely hears him. this follows on as he recalls the memory and it’s contrary to the rest of the book where, normally, since we see eddie through someone else’s eyes (third person limited omniscient since the book is made up of multiple third person narrations), we only really see him being quiet as opposed to the actual physical disconnect we see when it is an eddie third person limited in complicated moments.

                 Mr Keene sat down in the swivel chair behind his desk and took one. Then he opened his drawer and took something out. He put it down next to the tall bottle of licorice whips and Eddie felt real alarm course through him. It was an aspirator. Mr Keene tilted back in his swivel chair until his head was almost touching the calendar on the wall behind him. The picture on the calendar showed more pills. It said SQUIBB. And —

                — and for one nightmare moment, when Mr Keene opened his mouth to speak, Eddie remembered what had happened in the shoe store when he was just a little kid, when his mother had screamed at him for putting his foot in the X-ray machine. For that one nightmare moment Eddie thought Mr Keene would say: 'Eddie, nine out of ten doctors agree that asthma medicine gives you cancer, just like the X-ray machines they used to have in the shoe stores. You've probably got it already. Just thought you ought to know.'

... he struggles to stay in the moment and this is just how he is his whole life. i’m gonna reference it chapter two for a second but the fact that his job in that version was a risk analyst? god send, they really hit the nail on the head for what they were trying to do in that interpretation there and i totally see how they got to it because risk analysing is just what he does. in this part where he sits down with mr keene, the convo hasn’t even begun. no one’s said a word and yet the second mr keene shows promise of saying anything, mr active imagination risk analyst eddie kasprzak has already thought up everything and dreamt himself into oblivion. scenarios exist without ever fully existing and in any given moment he’s already left reality and hopped onto another universe where the worst has just or will just happen.

                 Mr Keene wrapped a bunched, bony, liverspotted hand around the balloon and squeezed. The balloon bulged over and under his fist and Eddie winced, trying to get ready for the pop. Simultaneously he felt his breathing stop altogether. He leaned over the desk and grabbed for the aspirator on the blotter. His shoulder struck the heavy ice-cream-soda glass. It toppled off the desk and shattered on the floor like a bomb.

                 Eddie heard that only dimly. He was clawing the top off the aspirator, slamming the nozzle into his mouth, triggering it off. He took a tearing heaving breath, his thoughts a ratrun of panic as they always were at moments like this: Please Mommy I'm suffocating I can't BREATHE oh my dear God oh dear Jesus meekandmild I can't BREATHE phase I don't want to die don't want to die oh please —

                Then the fog from the aspirator condensed on the swollen walls of his throat and he could breathe again.

                'I'm sorry,' he said, nearly crying. 'I'm sorry about the glass . . . I'll clean it up and pay for it . . . just please don't tell my mother, okay? I'm sorry, Mr Keene, but I couldn't breathe —

... gets very caught up on one thing. he does this whole whole chapter. it goes on in the next quote here ...

                'Good,' Mr Keene said. 'We have an understanding. And you feel much better now, don't you?'

                Eddie nodded.

                'Why?'

                'Why? Well . . . because I had my medicine.' He looked at Mr Keene the way he looked at Mrs Casey in school when he had given an answer he wasn't quite sure of.

                'But you didn't have any medicine,' Mr Keene said. 'You had a placebo.A placebo, Eddie, is something that looks like medicine and tastes like medicine but isn't medicine. A placebo isn't medicine because it has no active ingredients. Or, if it is medicine, it's medicine of a very special sort. Head-medicine.' Mr Keene smiled. 'Do you understand that, Eddie? Head-medicine.'

                Eddie understood, all right; Mr Keene was telling him he was crazy. But through numb lips he said, 'No, I don't get you.'

... it’s hard to understand that this is the truth, let alone why he’s being told this. obviously eddie’s determined on the fact that he’s not crazy, but the main part up until this point i got caught up on was his continued disconnect and mostly passive not wanting to change at all attitude so he can get out of there. the numb lips and the references before to having his voice being distant, him constantly disappearing off into the tangents his head brings him on. there’s few and far between moments where he actually responds in between mr keene telling him what he’s telling him, and the prose between that is him thinking (panickingly thinking), filled with him trying to dream up other things and trying to ground himself in thinks he can compare the unfamiliar to. i especially love the cut in, in the first quote that sk puts through the whole book of another narration coming straight from eddie’s head. the stream of panic to really push it through.

                Eddie said: 'My medicine does so work.'

                'I know it does,' Mr Keene replied, and smiled a maddening complacent grownup's smile. 'It works on your chest because it works on your head. HydrOx, Eddie, is water with a dash of camphor thrown in to give it a medicine taste.'

                'No,' Eddie said. His breath had begun to whistle again.

                Mr Keene drank some of his soda, spooned some of the melting ice cream, and fastidiously wiped his chin with his handkerchief while Eddie used his aspirator again.

                'I want to go now,' Eddie said.

                'Let me finish, please.'

                'No! I want to go, you've got your money and I want to go!'                 ...                'I'm not crazy,' Eddie whispered, the words coming out in a bare husk.Mr Keene's chair creaked like a monstrous cricket. 'What?''I said I'm not crazy!' Eddie shouted. Then, immediately, a miserable blush rose into his face.

... the moment the panic finally takes over and becomes enough. strangely (thought it makes total sense when thinking about how internal eddie is versus when he’s finally had enough and gets pushed over the edge) he really does lash out. he’s immediately embarrassed that he’s done it, but he does do it. he switches from the passive life line carrying on in his brain he’s hoping will carry him out of the situation, and tries to get out of it before the emotional gets too much and really tries to put a stop to it. all in good time, too, because when eddie finally does leave ...

               Eddie's brain thudded and whirled. Oh, he felt sick, he felt very sick.                 ...                 He slipped it into his pocket and watched the traffic pass back and forth, headed up Main Street and down Up-Mile Hill. He tried not to think. The sun beat down on his head, blaringly hot. Each passing car threw bright darts of reflection into his eyes, and a headache was starting in his temples.

... emphasis on the sensory and the physical manifestations of his emotions. he feels so strongly and the physical ramifications comes as a result of his anxiety. his head aches, his ‘asthma’ is acting up. of course he takes his inhaler but a few moments later and ... 

              He looked fixedly at the aspirator, unaware of the old lady who glanced curiously at him as she passed on down the hill toward Main Street with her shopping basket over her arm. He felt betrayed. And for one moment he almost cast the plastic squeeze bottle into the gutter — better yet, he thought, throw it down that sewer– grating. Sure! Why not? Let It have it down there in Its tunnels and dripping sewer-pipes. Have a pla–cee-bo, you hundred-faced creep! He uttered a wild laugh and came within an ace of doing it. But in the end, habit was simply too strong. He replaced the aspirator in his right front pants pocket and walked on, hardly hearing the occasional blare of a horn or the diesel drone of the Bassey Park bus as it passed him. He was likewise unaware of how close he was to discovering what being hurt — really hurt — was all about.

... this is straying away from the actual point of the post slightly, but, as it says, habit remains too strong. he’s a character that almost always returns to the ‘comfortable’, though familiar is actually a much better word for it. to return to the point of the post in regards to this, though this time the technique isn’t exclusive to eddie centric chapters, all of the losers get cut in moments of it, i especially love eddie’s thought process tied into this moment straight up verbatim. though it’s tragic that he doesn’t follow through and chuck the aspirator down the drain (though completely understandable too), this moment ties into everything else we see of the intricacies of eddie’s inner world and how it’s obviously a full one. he really does live up there. humouring any and all possibilities no matter how out there or terrible they may seem is something that he constantly does, it’s who he is. eddie lives in the hypothetical. i think this chapter really demonstrates that and lets eddie’s discomfort become so overwhelming that it’s so difficult to even pay attention to what’s going on which totally brings us into eddie’s psyche. concentrating is difficult when you could run upstairs and live there. it’s comfortable, it’s familiar, and it doesn’t really hurt as much as the real.

#* they'll eat me alive #essentially: eddie vc shut up i got anxiety #i just really think sk deserves credit here he really did write this chapter so well #it could easily stand alone as a short story but also manages to fit so seamlessly into the plot despite having a whole world around it #and you did this for what? #anyway just thinking about my favourite character in the world #actually at some point i'm defo gonna do something abt him and sonia in hospital i fucking loVVVEDDD THAT #so well written so well executed #long post /

[sandpaperdaisy]

I stayed up entirely too late last night making this. The funny thing was, I didn’t plan to make it beforehand at all. Not even earlier that day.

…I just up and made it. (While watching Pink Floyd’s The Wall.)

But, I think I can point to the reason I felt so compelled to create this piece in particular. I had an incredibly stressful weekend, coupled with an ever-sharpening sense of my own mortality. Locally, covid-19 cases and deaths continue to break daily and monthly records and yesterday was no exception. People got sick yesterday, plans were cancelled…and then I surprised myself by making a painting based upon Arthur Machen’s story of a deadly force of nature killing a family isolated in their house.

Since I want you to stop looking at this dumb article and go read The Terror right away, I’ll leave you with part of the chapter this scene is based upon:

“Even now I can hear the voice rolling far away, as if it came from the altar of a great church and I stood at the door. There are lights very far away in the hollow of a vast darkness, and one by one they are put out. I hear a voice chanting again with that endless modulation that climbs and aspires to the stars, and shines there, and rushes down to the dark depths of the earth, again to ascend; the word is Zain.”

The Terror CHAPTER XIII, The Last Words of Mr. Secretan, Arthur Machen

Now, I could be wrong, but in this letter (which is written by a dying, dehydrated, starving man trapped in the cottage below) he first talks about a voice singing Aleph and then refers to an apocalyptic Biblical passage. The last letter in the Hebrew alphabet is Tav, and evidently some people refer to Jesus or God as “the Aleph Tav.” It would be the same as saying “I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, says the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty.” –Chizayon (Revelation) 1:8

I think in the story, Mr. Secretan is opposing Zain to Aleph. It is, after all, the final word sung by God (or by an angelic voice) in Secretan’s visions, the word heralding the end of the human world.

If that’s the case, I’m personally feeling pretty zain right now as opposed to feeling zen, as I once did in happier times.

I actually used the characters of Aleph and Tav in the painting itself, having been unable to discover a Zain. Aleph is on the angel’s back while Tav rises from the ground to greet the angel and its moth host. They look almost like grave markers for the unfortunate family within.

Arthur Machen wasn’t the only one to include moths in a horror story. H. Russel Wakefield has some scary red moths of his own in his masterful short story Mr. Ash’s Studio. I’d enjoy doing illustrations based upon that soon as well.

The last thing I did last night was painstakingly put this painting up on Teepublic, Redbubble, society6, and Fine Art America. (And I tweeted about it…and shared it on Facebook…and documented the process on Patreon…) And that was a huge pain! But, I had to do it or eat my words.

I’m about to start drawing some tarot cards. Unless I’m so scared by the prospect of uploading them all that I give up first, of course.

In the meantime, tell me about your literary dream illustration project!

Or tell me if you’ve ever had a piece of art just force its way out of your hand without even asking you for permission beforehand.

OR TELL ME WHAT THE HECK ZAIN IS.

The word is Zain. But what does it mean? The Last Words of Mr. Secretan I stayed up entirely too late last night making this. The funny thing was, I didn't plan to make it beforehand at all.

#aleph #angel of death #arthur machen #dark art #horror #illustration #isolation #literary art #mystical #nature rebelling #quarantine #scarlet moths #tav #the terror #zodiac