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Social Fabric; Clothing in a Free Society.

A Speculative Fiction Essay. _

Amongst the anarchists, there are great collective lending libraries of clothes, and accompanying them are great collective laundries. Most clothes that are washed in the collective laundry are held communally, and can be selected from the whole on a basis that anyone can use them, but no one is allowed to destroy them.

Those who do not wish for a great variety of clothing will often go to the seamstresses and tailors and have constructed for them a few perfectly chosen items, or will select a few items from the whole which are close enough to be made over to their needs. Often, these choice items are of a form of traditional dress; those articles that have proven themselves under the wide test of history; kimonos, saris, chitons, the great plaid and shirt, shift and petticoats and stays with an over dress, the various robes of the various monks and nuns - although, there are some more recent designs which serve the function just as well, such as the common overdress. Many of these traditional and custom dressers have very few total articles of clothing, but also rarely share them. In a majority of these styles, there is an under layer that is easy to launder, and most individuals have 2 or 3 of these under layers, and launder only them frequently and often by hand or in smallbatch guilds, creating little strain on the great laundries of the clothing libraries.

With these two main ways of organizing one’s dress, the society manages to keep overall production rather low. Those who wish for variety hold their variety in common. Those who wish for more custom design tend to need little more in the sake of variety. In any case, the total number of clothing articles someone from either group may be using at any one moment is fairly comparable.

Those in society who are at the outlier of size and shape interact similarly to the rest, just in an expansive system of time. New articles of clothing are almost always brought into the fold because an individual cannot find something that suits their exact desires or needs, and there is nothing available which would be appropriate to make over and reshape for the wearer. Items are returned when they are no longer suited, and then they are kept in common till they are suited to another, or made over, or worn out. When one is very large, or needs medically assistive clothing, or is very tall, they have clothing made if there is none available. However, because there is less of a demand on these more specific articles of clothing, they are also worn out less, and take up relatively little in storage space. And so, the clothing of these outliers is also in the library system, just checked out less often- just as a specialized book might be. If something is so particular that after a few generations it still sees no use, it can be made over completely or scrapped for stuffing, and new items can be made for those who come along.

Due to the nature of bodily change; that we will grow, that we will shrink, that we will convert to new religions and reembrace old ones; that we will give life and be taken from it, there are always a fine number of perfectly crafted custom clothes being returned to the share houses and clothing libraries.

Having worked in the laundry, and having worked in the cotton fields and flax thrashery, and in the hunt or slaughter, and understanding of the limitations of production, those who make clothes take great care to make them to last. But that is not the only way that they ensure that their uses can be long in years and multitudinous in function. Clothing that is being made for general use is often made with removable panels to adjust the sizing, and over cloths are often pieced together and held by a great many laces, easily stripped stitches, or zippers. The sleeves are often designed such that many are in great bell shapes, with fastening cuffs that can adjust to a variety of sizes. Buttons and loops can be used to bunch or loose the large folds and plumes of fabric, or to hold them higher and short, which creates a vast array of looks and shapes and configurations of one garment. The same is true of many of the great skirts of the common overdress, which is designed to be floor length, but which can be easily folded and set to rest just past the crotch in a great petticoated cone; or nearly any length in between. These adaptations, along with the lacable panels on the bodice, mean that these dresses can sometimes be worn from child to elder in many configurations, sometimes even by the same individual across a lifetime.

The lower total articles needed by the society, and the immense length of time that many articles stay in circulation, means that garment workers can take much more time for the planning, drafting, patterning, and stitching of each garment. To assist them with this task are the vast collections of patterns, tucked away by generations of previous stitchers, and curated by the many librarians, historians, researchers, and other everyday individuals who take their interests there. There are also a great many people in the society who seek something to fill their minds and their hands, and whom are willing and eager to assist with the hand sewing and embroidery and button hole stitching; but not everything is done by hand. Where it is of no sacrifice to the garment's quality, mechanical means of stitching, riveting, and weaving are used. Those within the society are not against such machinery; they are only against its application for the sheer purpose of speed when speed is not warranted, or the purpose of abundance when clothes already abound. In this society, it is seen as the duty of everyone, the most sacred duty, to use resources in the best ways possible. To intentionally make an easily-exhausted garment is seen as a great disrespect to the cotton, linin, wool, or hide that gave itself for the production, and it is seen as a great disrespect to the others who helped harvest it, weave or tan it, stitch it, store it, and wear it.

The clothes are maintained with regularity, often by each wearer, and also by those who take their work at the laundry. At the great communal undertakings, such as a large harvest or construction, it is not uncommon to see groups take long lunches and darn each other's nipped clothes. In the community houses and eateries, there are also a great many people whose fidgeting hands turn just as gladly to mending as to creating. Objects being moved from one repository to the next are often passed along with people on the rail lines - and often, they reach the new destination having been embellished, cherished, and turned over several times by several hands looking to find where they are weary.

There are many regional variations in dress that develop to suit the climate and culture of the wearer. However, the overlays of climate and culture tend to be rather expansive and slow, not reaching sudden shifts upon some border. And so interchange between the local systems of depositories takes place in overlocking regional scales, with each library of clothing taking its exchange and refreshment from those nearby. The microcommunities of regular laundering and stitching and curating in any area tend to have some overlay with one another, and that overlay allows them to contact one another to ask for specific patterns, fabrics, skill sets, or garments to be shared or exchanged or gifted.

All members of the society participate in the production of attire, as the production of attire is a result of all the interlocking elements of the society itself. Urine collection assists in the processing of wool and leather. Leather and wools themselves are a byproduct of ecosystem management tactics. Sheep eat away at invasive and aggressive plants, and they form a coat to keep themselves warm. They do not shed the coat of their own accord, and those who assist them are left with the need to dispose of it. Not wanting to be wasteful, they turn it towards the purpose of fabric. The textile it makes is incredibly useful; it is warm when wet, it is water resistant, it can hold its shape, or it can be felted into new ones.

This is the general principle of the anarchist’s, that all society is in process, and that the meeting of one need is always in process of the meeting of others. Interlocking systems, in which each individual does what is most helpful for the least effort given their personal and social circumstances, and in which the whole of the society takes on together that work which no one likes to do very much, leads to little begrudging in labor. And the complementary design of the ever changing social systems leads to new innovations being constantly added into the system. The ecological project of invasive species removal leaves a grand number of seeds which cannot be planted; and so the largest are turned over by jewelers as beads, and rendered sterile, whereas others are pressed as dyes, or sterilized as coat stuffing. Many other parts of this flora rendered into cordage or fiber, assisting in making the body of clothes that can be selected for different purposes, but also in the weaving of baskets, which aid in the transport of many things besides the clothes themselves.

Overall, the relationship to clothing amongst the anarchists is their relationship to a great many things. It is complex, as the needs and desires of the community are complex. It is seen at scale, as the management of resources must always be done. Each individual playing their part, the day to day small scale of weaving, wearing, washing, and darning; and the social organism as a whole managing the long term store and circulation. And even then, the social organism and the individual being on the same continuum of self, each covers where the other cannot.

Basic mending skills -in relationality and in fabric- are acquired by most through mentorship, sometimes with relatives, but most often mentorships develop out of the simple connection between one who knows and one who will come to know. The communal holding of labor creates a great many opportunities to ask questions of artisan crafters, and the slow nature of production, and the abundance of skilled crafters, lends to no shortage of time for education. These mentorships often create lifelong structures of support and kinship, and can serve as a primary social means for transference and norm setting, but not all are so long term. Some last but just a single moment, in a single stitch. The informality and overlapping of the mentorship structure leads to many students and many teachers, and often one is a student of one craft and a teacher in another, reversing the roles of knowledge giver and receiver, flattening the power between. And when that is not enough to flatten the hierarchy of knowledge, the simple giving of knowledge over time, and the gathering of one’s own skill, brings the mentor and the student together in talent and regard. If one teacher is a jealous guard of their hardwon tradeskills, the student simply moves on and learns from another, or watches and interprets the actions to recreate them.

Those who are less socially skilled, or who find themselves no compatible mentor, or simply desire extra or specific training, often attend lectures and workshops and such that are arranged by other crafters. Often, these workshops are organized out of a sheer exuberance with one's work, an utter yearning to share information about it. Occasionally however, some person or group will ask of someone to share in an open setting, and this is rarely refused.

There are of course a great many people who participate little to none in the direct social production of clothing, but whose very existence, and whose feedback and desires, inform the trends and advancement of production. There are those with little use of their hands, or an inability to learn motor skills, for whom laundering and stitching and patterning are most often out of reach. The abundance of high quality garments, seamsters of all skill levels, and the length of time in which clothes can remain all lead to their being plenty extra to go around. In fact, it is in designing assistive clothing for these individuals that many crafters take their finest joys, and sharpen their design skills towards greater invention. In building a dress suited for all seasons, not abrasive to the skin, and which can be put on and adjusted with the use of only one finger, for instance, even the greatest crafters must return to thoughtfulness, experimentation, and research. For this reason, those circles of high craft and artisanry spend many meetings and byside conversations discussing the nuances of clothing the disabled. Disabled people themselves, especially those who cannot participate in social clothing, often host the most widely attended lectures and roundtables within the halls of the great laundries and pattern libraries.

Babies also do very little to participate in laundering or stitching, except occasionally bring smiles to the eyes of those doing such work.. And yet it is the babies' clothes that wear out the fastest. They often do not notice the holes to be darned, nor do they ask others to darn them. They take no care when catching the nape of their jumper on a twig, and move blithely forward regardless of the damage. Their exemplary quick growth often means things are quickly returned to the library of attire. However, babies rarely suggest new designs, or give clear and concise feedback on flaws or opportunities, and they almost never order custom designs. This is all of little concern to the stitcher, in spite of it all. Babies' clothes are easy to make, famously small, and can be incredibly entertaining. A swaddling cloth designed to look like a fish becomes, when worn, a stunning image of a baby being eaten by a fish. When the baby is sad, the baby looks sad about being eaten by this fish, and this is heart wrenching and sympathy driving. If the baby is happy, the baby looks happy to be eaten by the fish, and this is silly and jovial. In this way, design can be used to help assure appropriate reactions to the baby's behavior, ensuring socialization and emotional coregulation. The babies being dressed very funny also serves as a good impetus to look at them with regularity and rigor, forming one line of care in the overlapping fabric of child rearing. For all of these reasons, it is not uncommon for the tired milliner to lay down their dress form, and take a restful opportunity to stitch some baby clothes. There are a great many festivals and art fairs in which baby clothes are shown as fun and enriching representations of the collective’s ability. The novelty also rarely wears away, as babies grow so quickly and baby clothes are exchanged so widely that one is always seeing new babies in new fun fits, doing new silly things.

Still, though, the novelty and sweetness of a babe does little to assuage the dread of laundering the baby's diapers. There are a few in the society, however, who don’t quite mind the smell, or who cannot smell it at all. They cannot alone handle the masses of baby breech clothes, but as everyone does what is most helpful for the least effort, there's a lot of effort left over for the more difficult and undesirable tasks. When each knows it has been done for them, and -should things go well enough into age- will be again, it is not hard for most to swallow their pride. But still, some cannot handle it, and turn themselves to other unloved tasks to take their share in the whole.

The menstrual pads and rags and cups are much less challenging, as most can be rinsed or boiled and then washed aside the rest. The blooded water is often boiled down for meal, to be used in the fertilization of soils, just as the wastewater of the babies and the incontinent are processed into the greater waste treatment for ecological return. All things, even the least desirable things, are revitalized to make part of a complete system. The laundering can circle back to the growing of the very fibers from which the laundry came, making them thrive alongside their niche neighbors and other biologic users, such as the butterflies and flowers and vines that form the very dyes that are then represented again in the clothes embroidery and patterns.

There are, of course, some items of particular sizing and customization which must reliably be returned to each individual for whom they were made, until such time that they are no longer of direct use to them. The low sorting pressure applied from the communality within other aspects of the laundry system leaves this a much less daunting task. Those working in the laundries do not have to return each item to its preferred wearer; infact, relatively few and relatively small items are returned. Injury preventing daily support items like bras and corsets, and medical assistive items like splints and braces, take the first priority in both washing and in sorting. Many of these items are also designed to need fairly irregular washing, but the labor required to make them, and the changing nature of the body, often means that wearers rarely have multiples that suit their exact specifications. In this case, the library laundries also keep on hand more general purpose items that perform the same functions, if not quite as specifically. General adjustable braces, a selection of corsets that previous users have given over to the system, a variety of wrap bras, compression bras, and retired bras all serve the intermediate function whenever a custom item is in the wash, awaiting repair, or under construction. The sorting of other items is not unavailable, just rarely used. The most common requesters for this are those who wear underdresses and undershirts, and these being relatively easy items to launder and to sort, this request is most often obliged by simply placing a hold on the item in question. However, something given over to the larger system always has some risk of being missorted, or mistakenly checked out to another, and this is understood by those who choose to handover such important items for general laundering. Hand laundering or small batch laundering are often tactics used to mitigate sorting pressure and ensure diligent return.

Small batch laundering forms a layer of communal organization and laborsharing that is far more personal, and used for more personal items. Crotched underwear is one item for which many wearers have their own personal or near-personal supply. Except in the coldest of environments, these items are rather small, and not difficult to hand wash or small batch launder. These items are often shared between small groups of friends, family, or partners, but just as often held individually. Within the larger laundry system, there are often undergarment guilds which co wash and sort together. This smaller scale tends to provide more comfort and ease than sharing such personal items with a whole library's worth of users, but also helps benefit from the pooling of labor. Still though, there are those who hold these garments in full commons, taking from the library whatever will fit their body and their use, and returning it with no desire for privacy. It is the nesting of larger scale and smaller scale systems that makes the meeting of all of these seemingly conflicting needs simultaneously possible.

There are also some for whom crotched underwear is rarely worn, such as those who primarily wear skirts and underskirts, or shifts or other underdresses, and they often hand launder out of a sense of ease. A couple shifts can take only a moment to rinse, and are often set in soapy bathwater, then rinsed in clean water, then hung to dry. This process fits so neatly within the routine of many wearers that it forms almost no extra labor. However, any particular stains or longwear smells are often requiring of a more specialized removal, and so shifts are then sent to the laundries. This rare return makes individualized sorting somewhat unnecessary. In the great rooms and halls and closets of the libraries, there are sections for different categories of items. One room or wall may be devoted to underdresses, with each section sorted by color, then circumference of the garment's fabric at its waist point, and then from shortest to longest. The measurements of each are typically then sewn in tags to the outer hem. This creates an ease for those seeking to find something in their particular size and use, often such ease that one can find the exact item they left to be laundered just days before. One can even send a message ahead to hold an item, and each item’s tag has a unique identifier. Occasionally these are barcodes, but most libraries have their own systems of identification tagging. The selection of underdresses may be large, but the selection which meets one's needed measurements is often concentrated to a few racks per type of clothing item. In this way, very little time is needed to actually find desired items, especially considering most members in any given community have worked at least a few hours stocking their library’s shelves and becoming familiar with its methods and its collections.

Perhaps the most abundant particular clothing item is socks. In appropriate climates, many individuals wear sandals and slides much of the year, but even so, socks add that extra layer of friction and size adjustment which allows for wear during even hard labor. The greatest extent of clothing mechanization takes place in the weaving of these thinner, warm weather socks. These wear out extremely quickly. A pair of thin socks may only last the dedicated wearer 5 or 10 years, and then, that is with less than weekly wear. Those socks held communally often last even less time, being worn near daily, and get worn out in about a year. The society does have an ethos of repair; however, these items being so thin, and also so easy to produce, they are one of very few items in the society where repair is less sensical than disposal. This quick disposal does form an abundance of easy rags. The society does also have purpose made rags, often those made of old clothes converted to new lives, but the socks fill a different role, especially in cleaning those things that are rather unpleasant. It is no great loss if they are sent to an early life in the compost, but many are used and reused as rags for longer than they ever survived in their intended purpose, as is with many things. The abundance does also lead to them being seen as wonderful test items and craft supplies. A learner trying out a new stitch may use an old sock, and worry less about ruining it and more about learning. This allows breathing room for mistakes within a society where the proper use of resources is the most prized social virtue. These socks are often embroidered with strange frills, and are taken with the others and made into craft items. Dolls of sock are a common children's craft. Sock coats and capes are a pleasant and fashionable adornment, especially for the many festivals, which themselves are lined with sock garlands.

The abundance of socks, however, does not speak to a great uniformity of them. Many cuts, shapes, sizes, thicknesses, and materials are used. For the purpose of laundering, socks are separated from the rest of the clothes, and then themselves are split into batches by cut. From there, they are sorted by size. Different localities have their own standardizations of sock sizing and therefor their own sorting methods. One of the most common methods is that socks of a certain size have a certain number of horizontal lines across the toe. This method makes machine storting and hand sorting both fairly simple and reliable, as well as adding little extra to production. It does sometimes clash with other intended designs of the sock, however, and so is not universal. The interchange of people can also occasionally cause socks of one standard to enter into a sorting system of another standard. These tend to be placed in their own sections at the clothing library, and those who wish for a little more variety in their life often spend time digging through these to find the most different and unique examples, often saving them as personal items to hand launder. Most of the rest, though, are sorted by system type, and, if feasible, used as packing material when a shipment is made to a nearby area that uses that system. If there is no shipment to be made, or if there is more relevant and needed resources to be sent as packing material, then the socks are simply retired early. Even a near wasteless system must balance between reuse, return, and efficacious material and energy management. In such a case, having a few select categories of items which are generally exhaustible and low priority can free up the system to more easily prioritize everything else.

The rest of the worn out clothes are not treated with such abandon as the humble summer sock. The respect of the labor put into them creates little incentive to waste. Trimmings and leavings, the cabbage of the patternmaker, is used to stuff sleeping pillows and mattresses or coats, still being of high quality and not inundated with allergens. Old clothes worn to thinness find new homes in the cookeries and kitchens, assisting in the straining of broths and cheeses, or as the cover of steaming vegetables. The leftovers of cloth, after spending many years in their function with the body, can continue to serve for even longer after. The stuffing of seating, the control of erosion, the wrapping of fruit trees in a harsh winter, lining, all are beloved uses of the clothes of a great granfparent's generation. Work clothes are drawn from those items who are close to being put to these purposes, but whom still hold some rigor. Those tasks which may be most compromising to the cloth are often done in near dressup, emulating the visages of the past. This occasionally leads to rips and tears in the clothing, but it is seen as no great waste, and in the lack of worry, laborers are able to take joy and laughter in the mild embarrassment of a crotch seam bust open. Otherwise, many of those fabrics which are beautiful -but well worn- are turned towards quilting, or used as patches. This creates a fine degree of adornment and expression, with those who do keep personal garments being able to customize to the extreme, and with those socially held garments each having their unique quirks and flourishes.

It is the entropic nature of things to decay, and decay does reach the usufrutuctian society. However, this decay is made use of, slowed, understood, and worked with. Each moment where material reality causes a breakdown in the system becomes an adaptation within the system, increasing complexity and diversity, preparing for the next breakdown, and innovating for new uses. Moments of waste are turned over to become the foundation of other systems, or to be used as input. The very waste of death; that we may die and leave behind that vessel which has made us, is undone in its revamping towards use. The body is processed, with that which is meat serving the ecological role in carnivore rehabilitation, or in feeding those animal domestics which require it. The skin is turned over to leather, often making up shoes, or strong gloves. The same is done with those animals which must be harvested, either for the purpose of ecological management, medicine, materials harvest, research, or cultural use. Those items which would be contaminated if made from one another are made from the other living things; bog tanned hide and organ bags for food and water storage being the most common need. The usufructians do not harvest from animals what they will not harvest from their own dead, feeling no justification in holding only one species’ life sacred. Still, however, the human body does not provide for all services, and the death of animals is inherent to ecological systems. Some, not wishing to take life, utilize glass for drinking and food storage purposes, and avoid all leather whenever possible. But those who can not bear such heavy material,, often require the use of the more light and durable animal derived bags and wraps. These items are treated with even greater care than the fabrics. It is not uncommon that when one sees people sitting down to eat on the sides of the lush walkways, one will notice them spending more time looking over their packing materials than actually eating from them.

The use of animal products, human and otherwise, is treated with both graciousness and solemnity. A great deal of meditations and spiritual practices revolve in part around this posthumous use of the body. Usufructian funeral services are varied, with hundreds or thousands of regional, cultural, individual, and religious options to discern between; but even so, a great majority of them speak of the return. Not all return their body through leather and fed flesh; a great many are composted, returning to the soil which fed them. Some are burned in the great forest fires that bring the flowers. Bones are turned to field powder. All things that come from return to. From ashes to ashes, from life to life, from body to body, from soil to soil, from all to all; to be a usufructian is to eternal only borrow, to never completely own. The anarchist takes what they need, and gives to their ability; and in death, there is alway the last giving.

A central premise of anarchist philosophy is “From Each Their Ability, To Each Their Need”. In the world of the anarchists, the near complete overlap of hobby and labor, alongside complementary labor facilitation systems, social principles of nondestruction, and production paced to an abundant sustenance allows for this to be accomplished. “We who waste not want nothing. We who do not destroy are never led to destruction. We who meet needs are met in abundance,” goes the song the launderers sing to pass the time.

Amongst the usufructians, most beloved is the social relationship.This is the relationship of the individuals to one another, the individual to the society, the society to the ecology, and so on. The social relationship is, in essence, the whole relationality between all parts of reality, interconnected, caring and providing for each other. In this regard, all are cared for and all are accounted for. One who allows their clothes to tatter unmended will be doted upon by the community, offered a great deal of help in repairing them, and in stabilizing whatever aspects of their life must be out of order for such a tragedy to occur. One who does not maintain their leather storage wraps will be repeatedly brought food in glass containers, with many people offering to bring them food each meal, up to their mouths if needed, and to take the storage items to be cleaned afterwards. This is done with a special caution against condescension, and the work is passed amongst the abled participatory community as to not fatigue one anothers compassion. In this way, neglect is managed by understanding that it comes from a place of inability. Those few who are able, but unwilling, often find the hassle of being cared for more exhausting than caring for themselves, and tend to begin maintaining their resources once again. Unable and unwilling is rarely the case however. Most neglect comes from an inability in other respects, throwing one off of balance and out of systemic living. Those who are in greater need are offered care, and offered it with regularity and without shame. This care is like water, and sinks to the low places in them, filling them up, rendering them unneeding; needs continuously being met.

There are occasionally those who seek to accumulate, not wishing to return their clothes. This is often met without issue. A few hoarded items by a few people is not enough to break such an abundant and cared for system, and most of these individuals return their hordes eventually, after community support and care drives them to unlearn their anxieties of scarcity or fear of noncontrol. However, occasionally, one or a few people will attempt to checkout a great sum of the most desired and necessary clothing, setting themselves up as lords of such a resource, and demanding that others give to their whim in order to attain things. In the many upstartist attempts of this nature, this is thwarted simply by those users of a library going to another library for whatever items are now locally scarce. Those whom have such hoarded abundance are then denied the access to remove further items of the type they took, and are given only standards that meet whatever real gap in need they have. Eventually, their whims not being sated, and their laundering now needing to be done individually, they almost always end up returning the clothes to a laundry, and quietly returning to society as though nothing had happened. In those few cases where individuals hold out for their entire lives, the clothes are simply reclaimed upon their death. In rare instances, some small familial groups have established long lineages of holding on to hoards of checked out clothes. However, much of what they know is the library model, and seeing its practicalities, they often emulate its customs and systems. Having no input aside from their own craft, they care for the clothes just as diligently. Within a few generations, they become indistinguishable from the collective laundries and libraries around them, and begin to slowly open exchange and public services. These more isolated library systems do tend to create new systems and innovations in storage, sewing, distribution, and laundering, so, in this way, those who dissent become great contributors to library society. On the scale of time, their return is as blessed as any return to the collective while.

The same principle is applied to any area within the whole that does not seem to be in alignment with the usufructian values. There are those materials that seem more time or labor intensive than their fibers or substance could possibly be worth. However, to a utopian, one who views all society on the great scale of the fullness of time, it is known that ease comes through careful work, not through abandon. The ecologist knows that it is complementarous diversity which brings ecosystemic tranquility. The anarchist knows that it is noncontrolling complexity, each acting in their best towards a shared future, that drives all of reality into collaboration. Each being all three, they clothe themselves not just in the simplest of fibers, which are easiest to mechanize, have the most history and example, and are most comfortable. With such a great portion of labor assuaged, and such a great portion of discomfort brought low, these people find themselves with extra tolerance to bare labor, and extra tolerance to bare discomforts, and they measure these tolerances out and find ways to use them towards the greater social good, and the greater good of themselves. If there is a great waste in hickory nut shells, for instance, one may practice methods of grinding them down into a fine powder, and pressing them with adhesive to form the shape of a sandal. This is not ideal for daily wear. It is too hard and uncomfortable. But the wearer finds themselves building familiarity with the material, seeing where it chips and what surfaces it is assistive to walk on. This process is intended to be personalizing and generative. Even if hickory nut shells never become a meaningfully useful clothing material, their temporary adoption as such allows individuals to build a relationship with them as a material, and explore what they could be used for. All things and all people have their place in the society; so long as careful attention is given, with understanding of needs, through personalization and diversification of the relationships that are had with them.

The society is not, however, in any lack of materials. There are a great many fibers grown in the great many biomes, and much of global dispersement of goods is in textiles, used as packing inbetween medical components and other fragile specialities, and bedding in the rooms of travelers. The great diversity of communities - and the uniqueness of each bioregion- leads to a multitude of fabric fibers, an abundance of processing methods for each, and then still a great many more use cases constantly being developed and discarded and elaborated upon. The many cotton species in the world are referenced in guides for their strengths and weaknesses and sourcing and abundance. Yucca, nettle, wool, cashmere, linin, seagrass, straw, mulberry bark cloth, jusi, silk, river cane, and hundreds more are grown in mixed ecological systems around the world, mostly in their places of origin or long term cultivation. This variety means that crop failure, blight, or other disruptions in one area do little to depress the collective supply of textiles.

To avoid species invasiveness, new crops are introduced slowly and carefully into the ecology of desired regions. The primary focus of new introductions is to provide redundancy in local and regional food systems, ensuring that all nutrients are available in multiple forms at every time of year, preempting crop failures, and ensuring that allergies and other health conditions can be easily dietarily accounted for. However, the longscale nature of society, and the ability to selectively breed native crops towards different seasonality, nutrition, and shelf ripening, often mean that there is little desire to import new food crops. Many ecological maintenance systems are built to expect new species introduction every generation or so (with some more fragile ecosystems being on much longer time scales). While crops suiting some ecological niche besides food are also often needed, such as to hybridize a beloved blighted local species, there still, on the grand scale of time, comes moments where the opportunity to naturalize a new species for the explicit purpose of human use and human joy arises. In these moments, new base fibers for textiles are considered by the sortion selected councils and ecological research syndics, and occasionally are selected.

The clothing arts, being widely shared and thoroughly understood practices - weaving, stitching, drafting, patterning, grommeting, buttonholing, thrashing, and all the rest - all help form the shared cultural motifs by which metaphor, aphorism, and wisdom can be drawn. Young lovers first separating compare themselves often to the grommetted panels of the common overdress; coming apart, fitting together, finding their way into new patterns that suit the body. To unfold one's skirts can mean to be growing, or otherwise, to be seeking more warmth, both emotionally and practically. Similarly, to raise one’s skirt often means one is preparing for hard work, acting unencumbered and uninhibited; tho sometimes it can take on other, more sensual meaning. In the great stories of the many peoples, one often finds motifs of dress demarcating the overall plot of the story, giving character insight, or implying new layers of rich meaning. This shared understanding of material culture is often generative in individuals' attempts to further interpret their own experiences, and in the describing and shaping of relationality between one another.

In this metaphorical approach, it is said that all reality is the fabric resulting from the tension of the threads of dialectical synthesis; overlapping and informing and supporting one another. Physics is the loom. Society wears the fabric. Individual consciousness is the act of looking in the mirror. Social consciousness is the act of looking over the fabric to see how it is made, and to understand its construction. To darn is to reform. Revolution is the act of changing the drape of the fabric, often requiring the ripping of many seams, experimentation, and many practiced and skilled hands to sew it up right.

The richness of metaphors that arise from such a multi-skilled population is a driving force for innovation and communication. Familiarity with the methods of weaving allows for consistent innovation in data storage, requiring less and less resources to store more and more information, which further feeds back into the accessibility of reference material for further garment drafting. The fine motions of needlework teach movements of the hand that carry forwards into music, facilitating unique styles of plucked tremolos, allowing those so inclined to play and bring joy to the laundries with their sweet songs. Experimentation in waterproofing outerwear and soft shoes has led to the invention of canvas boats, as well as patches that can be applied to fix leaks, further assisting in the safe and ecologically sound transport of materials.

All aspects of the society overlap to form a cohesive and coherent whole. Each process is entangled with one another. The waste from one becomes the bedrock of another. Each skill learned in the pursuit of a task is then applied to the next task, and each lesson learned in the specific is then analogically applied to the general.

The society is clothed together in the great cloth of interdependence, woven in the ten thousand strands formed by the tensions of material life. It does not come to pass without thought, or planning, or intention; just as a length of flax left loose will tangle. But together, each giving and using, but none destroying, all are cool in summer, warm in winter, and cozy all year round.

#anarchism #rose baker #text post #clothing #historical costuming #utopia #library socialism #speculative fiction #anarchy #leftism #socialism #library of things #usufruct #social ecology

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racefortheironthrone · 1 year

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Kinda of random but what do you think of Alan's Moore comments about people liking comic book movies could lead into fascism? Seems like bitter old man territory but what do you think?

I think it's fair to say that fascism has been something of an obsession of Alan Moore's and a recurring although not omnipresent theme in many of his works.

While Miracleman is technically an expy of Captain Marvel, I would argue that the series is Moore's most extended commentary on Superman instead and especially the idea of the ubermensch. In Miracleman, our protagonist is initially thought to have been made into a superhero by a benevolent enlightened scientist, but eventually we learn that Miracleman is the product of an Operation Paperclip Nazi science project called the Zarathusa Project designed to create the literal Nietzschean Ubermensch, complete with a fixation on "blond gods" and a eugenicist breeding program. A superhero fight in the midle of London causes mass civilian casualties on the scale of an atomic bomb going off. Ultimately, Miracleman effectively overthrows Thatcher's government and rules as an enlightened despot before eventually leaving Earth for space.

Likewise, I think Watchmen is Moore's most extended commentary on masked vigilantism and thus on Batman. In Watchmen, the phenomenon of vigilantism is repeatedly associated with right-wing politics: Hooded Justice is a German circus strongman who has pro-Nazi politics; Captain Metropolis wanted his superhero teams to target "black unrest," "campus subversion," and "anti-war demos;" and the Comedian is a brutal nihilist who ultimately joins the U.S security state where he cheerfully follows orders to assassinate JFK and Woodward and Bernstein, commit atrocities in Vietnam, kill protesting hippies, etc. Finally, there's Rorschach, Moore's most famous mis-interpreted creation - Rorschach is a paranoid conspiracy theorist who's an anti-communist, anti-liberal, militant and militaristic nationalist, homophobe, misogynist, and avid follower of the John Birch Society-like New Frontiersman.

And then there's V for Vendetta, which I would argue is Moore's attempt to create a masked vigilante superhero with his own anarchist politics. In this story, the vigilante isn't a crimefighter but rather a revolutionary who seeks the overthrow of a fascist state and the creation of an anarchist utopia.

Moreover, his more recent comments about comic book movies being linked to fascism are arguably just part of his much longer-running commentary that superheroes as a concept are at the very least proto-fascist.

Having read a lot of Moore's work and interviews on the subject, I don't find his critique compelling. I think his definition of fascism is far too loose, I think his lens on the superhero genre is overly narrow, and I think his mode of analysis tends to neglect the vital area of historical context.

Definitions

So let's start with Moore's definition of fascism. I think Moore tends to really over-emphasize the whole idea of the Nietzschean ubermensch and the use of force to solve problems, and more recently he's been on this weird kick of saying that nostalgia and a childlike desire for easy solutions leads to fascism. I have several problems with this definition:

the first is that, as I've talked about in the past, fascism is a very complex historical phenomenon that can't be boiled down to a single idea, and in particular the idea of the ubermensch is a pretty small part of the German case (and even then how do you balance it against Nazism's more anti-individualistic aspects, like the mass party and the mass party organization).

the second is that the idea of a larger-than-life individual using physical prowess to solve problems is not unique to fascism. After all, during the 30s, you also had the Soviet Union promoting the heroic ideal of Stakhanovitism and the depiction of the heroic male factory worker in socialist realism. More importantly, the idea of a "larger-than-life individual using physical prowess to solve problems" is basically the same description for any number of literary figures from pulp cowboys to the Greek heroes of the Iliad and the Oddessy to the epic of Gilgamesh.

the third is that I think Moore's definition overlooks the actual drivers of the rise of contemporary fascism. Anti-semitism, racism, homophobia and transphobia, misogyny - all of these are real social and cultural forces that are actually motivating people to join the ranks of the alt-right, to commit massacres, to riot at the Capitol, and so forth. It is incredibly self-involved to think that superheroes and superhero movies are worth discussing in the same breath. At the end of the day, they're harmless entertainment compared to the real political issues that need to be tackled.

Moore's Model of Superheroes

Here's where I'm going to say something that's going to be a bit controversial - I don't think Alan Moore has read widely enough in the superhero genre to make an accurate assessment of its relationship to fascism. If we look at his comics work, and we look at his writings, and we look at his interviews, Moore's mental model of the superhero really only includes two figures, Superman as the representative of the superpowered ubermensch and Batman as the representative of the masked vigilante crimefighter. Notably, Moore hasn't really touched the last of the Big Three - Wonder Woman, a superhero with a strong legacy of radical left-wing politics. I do think we have to mention, given Moore's somewhat troubled history when it comes to issues of gender, that Moore's model of the superhero doesn't include any female superheroes (or for that matter, any superheroes of color or queer superheroes). (EDIT: I should clarify - Promethea is Moore's version of Wonder Woman, but she doesn't really come up in his discussions of fascism, and her thematic profile has more to do with Moore's interests in magic.)

And other than Captain Britain, Moore never worked with any Marvel character and basically ignores them.

To me, this is like having a career as a painter and never working with colors. Moore's model of the superhero leaves out the Fantastic Four and how their flawed psychologies revolutionized the industry and the whole idea of the superhero-as-explorer, it leaves out Spider-Man and the idea of the superhero-as-everyman whose central struggle is about work-life balance and altruism, and most importantly it leaves out the X-Men and the idea of the mutant metaphor.

If as a critic you're going to make grand pronouncements about something as morally evil as fascism, I think it really is incumbent on you to have read and analyzed widely rather than cherry-picking a couple of case studies. Especially if you have something of a tendency to mis-characterize those case studies by ignoring historical context.

Historical Context

So let's talk about Superman and Batman and their emergence in the 1930s. One vital bit of context is that the U.S experienced a significant crime wave in the 1920s and 1930s as Prohibition encouraged the rise of organized crime and then the Great Depression spurred the rise of kidnapping and bank robbery gangs. Moreover, municipal police forces tended to be wildly corrupt, accepting bribes from organized crime to let them operate with impunity, while not letting up in the slightest in their brutal oppression of workers and minorities.

In this context, I think the idea of vigilantism - while it has an undeniably racist legacy dating back to Reconstruction - is not purely a conservative phenomena. It's also an expression of a desire for help from somebody, anybody when the powers that be are of no help. And at the end of the day, unsanctioned use of force can equally be traced back to left-wing self-defense efforts from the Panthers back to the Communist Party's streetfighting corps to unions packing two-by-fours on the picket line - so I don't think we can simply equate punching a bad guy with racist lynch mobs and call it a day.

So let's talk about Superman and the ubermensch. I think Moore has a bad tendency to focus on his nightmare scenrio of a godlike being tyrannizing and destroying hapless humanity, while minimizing the actual ideas of Siegel and Shuster. He tends to take their use of the Nietzschean as a straighforward invocation instead of the clear subversion it was intended to be - rather than a blond god who imposed tyrannical rule with horrific violence, Siegel and Schuster made their Superman a dark-haired Moses allegory, who rather than solely fighting crime acted to stop wife-beaters, war profiteers, and save the life of death row inmates, and whose secret identity was of a crusading journalist who uncovered corrupt politicians.

To be fair, Alan Moore admits that Superman started out as "very much a New Deal American” - but because this kind of does near-fatal damage to his argument, he quickly minimizes that by saying that Superman got co-opted and thus it doesn't count. This is some No True Scotsman bullshit - Moore knows that his example just imploded so he tries to wriggle out of it by arguing that Superman sold out to the Man. If we go back to the actual historical evidence, we can see that at the outset of the Red Scare, the Superman radio show went on a crusade against the Klan, and throughout the conservative 1950s, Superman was used to propagandize liberal values of religious and racial equality:

So much for selling out.

On the other hand, Batman is a tougher case, given that his whole deal is being a masked vigilante who wages an unending war on crime to avenge his murdered parents. So is Batman an inherently fascist figure, a wealthy sadist who spends his time brutally beating the poor and the mentally ill when he could be using his riches to tackle social issues? I would argue that this version of Batman is actually pretty recent - very much a legacy of the work of Frank Miller and then the post-9/11 writings of Christopher Nolan, Johnathan Nolan, and David Goyer - and that there have been many different Batmen with very different thematic foci.

For example, the early Batman was as much a figure of horror as he was of superheroics - he fought Frankensteins and Draculas, he killed with silver bullets, etc. Then in the 40s and 50s, you got the much more cartoony and light-hearted Batman who pretty much exclusively fought equally oddball supervillains in such a heightened world of riddles and giant pennies and mechanical T-Rexes that I don't think you can particularly describe it as "crime-fighting." Then in the 1960s, you have the titanic influence of the Batman TV show, where Adam West as Batman was officially licensed by the Gotham P.D (so much for vigilantism) and extolled the virtues of constitutional due process and the Equal Pay Act in PSAs and episodes alike. You can call the 1966 Batman a lot of things, but fascist isn't one of them.

Conclusion

I want to emphasize at the end of the day that I'm a huge Alan Moore fan; I've read most of his vast bibliography, I find him a fascinating if very odd thinker and critic, I've even tried to read his mammoth novel Jerusalem (which is not easy reading, let me tell you). At the same time, it's important not to treat creators, even the very titans of the medium, as incapable of error. And in this case, I think Alan Moore is simply wrong about fascism and superheroes and people should really stop asking him about it, because I don't think he has anything new to say about it.

#comics #comics meta #alan moore #fascism #superheroes #batman #superman

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sillybumblebee · 10 months

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“[...] as long as ignorance and misery live on earth, books such as this one could possibly not be useless”

—Victor Hugo, preface of “Les Misérables”

i had this oc in my head for quite some time and i reaaaally wanted to draw him

i have an undying love for hugo's works, he is a genius, and i'm a hopeless romantic soul so yes, if i had to design a bsd oc, it had to be victor hugo

some facts about him :

—it absolutely doesn't show on this drawing but he's an ENFP

—he's a temporary member of the ADA after yosano met him in the street. he was fighting with his ability and screaming about justice

—he was basically kinda homeless before joining the ADA, but didn't really mind it, he met people and slept here and there and he liked it

—he just got his literature diploma in france and decided to go explore new countries in order to learn other cultures but he's super messy and chaotic and super super broke

—random fact about his design, i absolutely wanted to give him a gavroche in reference of a hugo's character, gavroche, that died fighting for his rights and his liberty

—kunikida's gonna question his whole sexuality and life plans and feelings when they meet for the first time

—yep, babe's gonna panic when he realizes he's in love with the french anarchist

—dazai is the first to notice (of fucking course) and proceeds to both annoy him and help him processing it

—victor's ability allows him to create a space where violence is prohibited. absolutely nobody can get hurt nor hurt anybody, the only thing allowed is talking. victor chooses who can enter and leave this space

—he is the embodiment of empathy and generosity (that's also why he's broke), he is a very sensitive soul that just wanna see inequalities and violence burn in the hell fire

—he's a huge fan of muse, cavetown and renaud

—fun fact, nobody understands a word when he's listening to renaud's songs and just assume he's relaxing but the lyrics are actually the most angry and anarchist and anti capitalist and rude lyrics you've ever heard

i could say so much more and i want to think about him even more but i'll stop there. anyway, i have some more wip of him on photoshop so i'll post about him again pretty soon (﹡ˆ﹀ˆ﹡)

kiss kiss fall in love everybody 💚

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queersatanic · 9 months

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Hail Lucifer, The Light-Bringer: A Queer Satanic Benefit Show

Lawyers are expensive, but benefit shows are fun.

"Hail Lucifer - The Light-Bringer" will be a rock show Saturday, Aug. 19, at Left Bank Books in Seattle to benefit the Queer Satanic Heretics.

DETAILS

7 p.m. to 9 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 19, 2023

At the anarchist book store in Pike Place Market

92 Pike St, #B, Seattle, WA 98101

BANDS

Hurry Up Snufkin

youtube

Dead Sonics

youtube

Molotov Juicebox

youtube

Other stuff

We're also working on having some local artists present, such as Kelly Dean Verity.

And Callan Jansen (@socks4hands).

Proceeds from the benefit fundraiser go to paying the legal defense bills of the Queer Satanic Heretics, four former members of The Satanic Temple who have been sued by TST for more than three years now in three different courts as part of an ongoing SLAPP suit designed to exhaust our finances and intimidate other critics of that abusive religious organization into silence.

Printable

#seattle #left bank books #washington state #pike place market #satanism #satanic #satanic temple #The Satanic Temple #queer satanic #arch budzar #agenderblob #kelly dean verity #callan jansen #Youtube

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skitter-queen · 1 year

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sy: obnoxious, smug, loves lying. diagnosis: 4CHAN

lillian: anxious, wannabe professional, stem major. diagnosis: RADHAM TWITTER INTERN

gordon: only uses the internet to watch dog videos. diagnosis: JUST TYPES "DOGS" INTO GOOGLE SEARCH BAR

helen: literally designed to be inhumanly attractive, unnervingly cheerful, evil. diagnosis: HELEN GET TIKTOK

mary: loves knives. diagnosis: YOUTUBE

jamie: queer, introverted, sad. diagnosis: TUMBLR

ashton: emotionally manipulative, literally has the moral code of a children's book character, single. diagnosis: R/AMITHEASSHOLE

duncan: insufferable, self-centered, insecure, social climber. diagnosis: LINKEDIN

jessie: transgender, anarchist, sleepy all the time. diagnosis: TUMBLR AS WELL

evette: is dead. diagnosis: TRUE CRIME PODCAST SUBJECT MATTER

mauer: evangelical christian, perpetually angry, war veteran. diagnosis: FACEBOOK

lara & nora: scared, codependent, always in contact. diagnosis: TWITTER MUTUALS

percy: hates children, annoying, lonely. diagnosis: REDDIT

pierre: furry. diagnosis: FURAFFINITY

hayle: dilfy, academic professional, amoral. diagnosis: JSTOR

ibbott: deeply insecure, academic professional, mean. diagnosis: RATEMYPROFESSOR

petey: umm :/ diagnosis: DEVIANTART :(

the primordial: incomprehensible, outcome of man's hubris, constantly mutating, makes everything worse forever. diagnosis: THE ALGORITHM

#twig webserial #twig #twig spoilers #i think thats everyone i can think of something funny for up to arc 13. phew

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seancosy · 8 months

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I saw ur post in the solarpunk tag and! I think we can do better! I think nobody should have to work ever, because how do we pick who's exempt? who's making that decision? the only way I can think for it to be fair is if the person themself gets to make that decision.

bc like the system you're describing isn't hypothetical and as someone who's gone through a nightmare of uncaring bureaucracy just to be allowed not to work due to disability I can say it doesn't work and definitely doesn't feel like a utopia!

I don't follow you and not gonna come back to this so do with it what you want but yeah something to consider I guess

Points I agree with:

People should have the ability to self-determine their capacity to work, and should not be expected to work if they are unable to.

External parties should not be deciding who is able or unable to work.

Points I disagree with:

"Nobody should have to work ever"

I may be misunderstanding you, but... life is work. Someone needs to drive trains, design functional sewerage systems, deliver babies, rescue people from burning buildings, grow rice, implement grain shipping logistics, change diapers, develop vaccines, wash clothes, teach children to read, sterilise surgical equipment, provide counselling to antisocial or dangerous people, cook food for the elderly, insert urinary catheters, repair potholes in roads, pick up rubbish, code the software that checks pressure in dam walls, etc.

None of the above jobs are particularly sexy. Very few people would dream of performing any of these roles when they are growing up. But the work is necessary to maintain a functional society. What links these jobs is that they are meaningful. They help. They improve society. People can find purpose and fulfillment in these tasks because they know they are helping society, even if indirectly.

There are so many jobs in our current society that do not provide a benefit to anyone other than a select few capitalists. If we restructured to become more 'solarpunk' (which I interpret as more communist and likely more anarchist than current societies), these capitalist jobs wouldn't exist, and we wouldn't miss them. Merchant bankers, advertising executives, influencers, soldiers, funko-pop factory workers (I have a personal dislike for these products; such an overt waste of materials and for literally no benefit! people often don't even take them out of their packets?!?!), mortgage brokers, the list goes on.

If we redirected the people working in these capitalist jobs towards roles that directly help society.... everyone would work a lot less, but society would function just as effectively, if not more so. There would be fewer jobs, and more people to do them. There would be more chance to rest and enjoy leisure time. And yes, some people would probably be able to never work at all, if they chose to. But if the work is meaningful, I genuinely believe most people would want to work, and I don't think it's unreasonable to expect people to do something meaningful for others even for just a few hours a week (clean the dishes at the cafeteria or babysit your friend's kids). But no, I don't think people's work contributions should be monitored or quantified at all, unless it's to tell people to rest when they are overworked. People should work of their own volition. And of course those with disabilities or any other factors that prevent them from working safely shouldn't need to work if they are unable or unwilling.

An interesting book that portrays a world that is anarcho-communist is The Dispossessed, by Ursula K LeGuin. It details the struggle between the need for work VS personal freedom exceptionally well.

(Original post linked below)

#ask #anon #solarpunk #work #communism

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tmgefan · 11 months

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Season of the Tailor

Hi! I've been working on this little fan project of mine that pretty much summarizes what I'd love to have in Destiny 2 at the moment. So, I'm going to make a presentation in several posts. This is what will await you this month. I'm also still working to add more to it, while I have time and the passion :) Let's start!

What has been made?

Zlatah-7 as the new Annex vendor, new story, gambit map and many other things in store.

New vendor

You know Zlatah-7. This is perhaps my most detailed original character that I've ever had. And now I made a concept of his little nook in the Annex and designed him. In season of the Tailor Zlatt will have a major role. He will assist you in making exotic ornaments out of synthweave for your legendary and exotic armor, so that everyone can have even more options with their own fashion. Outside of that, he will also teach you how to use the Needlepillow - the new artifact for this season. It will let you get into places that no one invited you to. No need for the Ascendant Plane.

Story

Season of the Tailor takes time in the second half of the Defiance and the first half of the Deep. You will learn more about corruption of guardians by the Taken energy. While there is still the need to fight the Shadow leagion and secure their prisons, there is also a need in more people to help this situation. And, perhaps, a new technology. Drifter will assist you with the people. Ada and Zlatt will assist you in the latter.

Gambit Prime returns!

It's been a while since last fashionable and explosive fight like this. It's time to remember this bloodthirsty action with Zlatah-7. With him you'll have more cool guns, cool armor and even cool locations. Face that Tailor's path.

This is Zlatt's ship, politely requested by the Drifter to use for Gambit's Prime comeback! I hope, you like disco. There's enough place to even watch a movie. Take a seat, relax and get ready for "Snakebite." New action detective from Neomunian Directors with the starring our SRL champions: Marcus Ren, Enoch Bast and Ariadna Gris playing the roles of Detective, Lieutenant and The Snake.

This movie will let you find out more about Neomuni art and their style. It tells us a story about three people from the Golden Age. They follow each other in the seeking of the Diamond stolen by the Snake. Who will win in this race: The Law or The Anarchist?

What else?

Zlatt's lore and the lore of others'.

"Rifle with coward bullets" is a lore book of Zlatah's travel from the beggining of his life in the Dark age to the period of being a Shadow of Calus and betraying him before he meets The Drifter. The Book will be soon available on Ao3 both in english and russian. Several chapters a day it will come to the end. But that's not the end for the writing. There will be glimpses of lore on the armor of the Gambit Prime, guns, artifact and exotic loot. All of it will be posted. In time.

SOON... Snakebite armor for gambit prime, "Universe" title, The Needlepillow, the new exotic sniper rifle - The Lamb

I'll be posting more of this here and on my twitter (TMGefan). This will be a ride :D

#destiny 2 #my art #zlatah 7 #the drifter #my oc #yeah there's zlatt somewhere #season of the tailor

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antifainternational · 2 years

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Hi, I'm from Germany and it's bothering me that you're using the three arrows in your avatar. 1933, the german communist party called for a general strike against Hitler and the iron front who used the arrows as their symbol refused to participate, weakening something that could've been a very powerful action of all workers. One of the arrows symbolizes fighting communism, which means that the iron front rather sat and did nothing against fascism instead of working with communist. If you show up with the three arrows at an antifascist protest in germany, you get side eyed, not only by communists but also by anarchists. To us they symbolize being inactive in a time where action would've made a huge difference, and today only the party SPD is using them sometimes when they want to act like they're part of the antifascist movement while they're in reality centrist cowards that have been busy butchering worker's rights for the past 30 years. They're using the arrows specifically to distance themselves from more radical anti-capitalist groups and groups who feel that parlamentarian democracy is not enough and call for a government that makes it possible for everyone to participate way beyond voting. Some of them think talking to nazis is a good strategy. I gather that the symbol is seen differently in America, but for a worldwide antifascist group I feel like you should consider the origins

Ah, it's that time the year again when we get to school folks about the antifascist "three arrows" symbol!

The antifa “three arrows” symbol is one of the most recognizable anti-fascist symbols in the world. It originated with the Iron Front - a militant antifascist organization created in late 1931 in Germany by the Reichsbanner, the socialist SPD, and various labor organizations (Bray, Mark; Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook; pg. 23). The SPD had a lengthy history of hostilities with the KPD, the German communist party at the time, which is probably why some people have misconstrued it as an "anti-communist" symbol.

Mark Bray writes in his book that the “three arrows” symbol was created for the Iron Front by a Russian socialist living in Germany named Sergei Chakhotin. “While walking around town, Chakhotin noticed that someone had drawn a line over a swastika to cover the Nazi logo. This gave him the idea of turning the line into a downward facing arrow. After discussing it with receptive comrades, he turned it into three arrows (Drei Pfeile). In his mind, they stood for ‘unity, activity, discipline,” or the SPD, the unions, and the Reichsbanner. (Ibid, pg. 24). Let’s reiterate that last point for you, Anon: In his mind (the mind of the person that designed the symbol!), they stood for ‘unity, activity, discipline,” or the SPD, the unions, and the Reichsbanner.

Some people (like yourself, Anon, and also Wikipedia) claim that the three arrows symbol is anti-communist, but the person who created the symbol was a socialist who created it for a coalition that included socialists and trade unions and clearly did not conceive of it as an anti-communist symbol. Eighty-six years later and any “anti-communist” or even specifically socialist meaning that may or (more likely) may not have been implied with this symbol has been lost as it’s become as commonplace and recognized an anti-fascist symbol as the “two flags” symbol of Antifaschiste Aktion (which was formed by the KPD in response to the popularity of the Iron Front [Ibid., pg. 25]).

Like we always say, anti-fascism is non-partisan. It’s a big tent where people of all sorts of different political inclinations unite in their mutual opposition to fascism. We don’t believe that the three arrows design ever symbolized anti-anything besides anti-fascism and even if it once did over eighty years ago, we certainly don’t think it does in this century.

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religion-is-a-mental-illness · 6 months

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By: David Bernstein

Published: 16 Oct, 2023

Before the blood had even dried on the pavement of the Nova music festival in southern Israel, where Hamas terrorists ruthlessly murdered 260 young people on 7 October 2023, the Coalition for Liberated Ethnic Studies (CLES) began posting Instagram memes in support of “Palestinian Liberation.” The CLES is a collection of educational organizations that design curricula for US high schools. They aim to teach students about “critical consciousness” and “intersectional forms of oppression.” One of the memes they posted advertised an upcoming “Long Live Palestinian Resistance” event and another gave a shout out to “The People’s Forum,” which organizes events in New York under the banner “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be Free.” The academic activists of CLES are not first-generation immigrants from the Gaza Strip or the West Bank; they are largely home-grown ideologues who teach ethnic and gender studies at American universities and are now seeking to disseminate their ideas in US primary and secondary schools.

Even I—the jaded author of the book Woke Antisemitism and founder of a Jewish organization dedicated to countering this growing variant of the world’s oldest hatred—was stunned by their rhetoric. I would have thought that they would say that the murder of civilians was awful, but that Israel had it coming. But there was not even a token condemnation of Hamas’ violence on 7 October. Instead, the decolonizers publicly justified the bloodletting.

And then came the protests. Before a single Israeli bomb dropped in Gaza, the organizer of a gathering in New York’s Times Square celebrated the violent rampages in front of a cheering crowd. Alluding to the murdered festival-goers, he joked, “As you might have seen, there was some sort of rave or desert party. They were having a great time and then the resistance came in electrified hang gliders and took at least several dozen hipsters.”

At a massive rally on the steps of the Sydney Opera House three days after the massacre, protesters chanted “Gas the Jews.” And—among other calumnies on campuses across North America—thirty-one Harvard student groups issued a statement of solidarity with Hamas, pronouncing Israel “entirely responsible” for the terrorist group’s slaughter.

There are two distinct but overlapping camps of the social justice left. The radical decolonization camp is made up of extremist academics, anarchists, and Black Lives Matter activists. It is anti-Western, anti-American, and antisemitic to its core. It would be easy to dismiss these people as ideological quacks—if it were not for their outsized role in US educational institutions.

By “decolonization,” they don’t mean a colonial power extricating itself from a former colony; they mean the process of freeing institutions and spheres of activity from the cultural or social influences of what they perceive as the dominant white Western class. One early leader of the liberated ethnic studies movement, R. Tolteka Cuauhtin, has denounced the United States as a “Eurocentric, white supremacist, capitalist, patriarchal, hetero-patriarchal, and anthropocentric paradigm brought from Europe.” Influenced by decades of anti-Zionist Soviet propaganda, the decolonizers reserve special ire for the “settler-colonial state” of Israel, and call for the “liberation of Palestine,” by which they mean the displacement of the interloper Jews from their homeland. Witnessing the decolonisers’ zeal for obliterating the Jewish state, political scientist Wilfred Reilly quipped, “De-colonization is just ethnic cleansing, but woke.”

Those of us fighting the decolonizers have a golden opportunity to discredit them and undercut their influence in the days ahead. In their rationalizations of violence against Jews and Israelis, they’ve outed themselves as the extremists they are. School superintendents who might have seen them as credible educational partners in the new “diversity” initiatives will now have a hard time justifying their role to school boards and community members.

Then there’s the reformist, DEI camp, populated by people who have been deeply influenced by the same forms of neo-Manichaean postmodern thought, but who seek not to overthrow the capitalist system, but to reshuffle the deck of power. Unlike the decolonisers, their antisemitism tends to be latent. They insist that Jews are white, place them in white racial “affinity groups” and frequently downplay the validity of antisemitic claims as distractions from the important task of combating anti-blackness. They include mealy-mouthed university presidents and school superintendents, who see Muslims as a marginalized community and thus susceptible to “harm,” whereas Jews are a privileged minority and thus immune from such harm. These administrators are often held captive by the commitments and hires they made in the summer of 2020 during the great American racial reckoning. Some of them see Western cultural norms, such as being on time to work, as forms of white supremacy. They issue endless statements about racial justice and rightly condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but they found themselves tongue-tied when Israelis were victims of a slaughter, and their Jewish students were in obvious pain. Suddenly, they rediscovered the merits of academic neutrality and free speech. They, too, stand to lose cultural clout in the intensifying anti-woke backlash.

Two and a half years ago, I left my job as CEO of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs (JCPA), the prestigious 75-year-old umbrella body of national and local Jewish advocacy organizations across the US. As a liberal lefty myself, I worried that a radical, illiberal ideology was gaining ground in my own ideological backyard, a phenomenon I first wrote about more than twenty years ago, in a 2003 article for Washington Jewish Week entitled “Consistent Moral Message Missing.” In the wake of the George Floyd murder, I watched with dismay as Jewish organizations in my field fell in line with anti-racist pieties, desperate to remain aligned with their civil rights partners, many of whom had long ditched their liberal principles. While still employed at the JCPA, I wrote articles for Areo Magazine and other publications, expressing my concern. As soon as my departure was official, I wrote a widely circulated article “My Cheshbon Hanefesh (accounting of the soul in Hebrew) for Cowardice in the Face of Wokeness,” which sparked much debate in the Jewish community.

In May 2021, I founded the Jewish Institute for Liberal Values to fight for viewpoint diversity and against the encroachment of radical social justice ideology in the Jewish world. That very month fighting broke out in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, and some of the responses to that conflict foretold our current reality. Media coverage of the ongoing conflict since it first broke out in June 2008, and of each subsequent conflict—in December 2008, November 2012, June 2014, and May 2018, and right up until May 2021—unfolded in a predictable pattern. The stories and editorials first acknowledged that Israel must have leeway to defend itself against Hamas rocket fire aimed at Israeli civilians. Then, as casualties mounted, the coverage turned against Israel, and, within a few days, the same outlets lambasted the Jewish state for using “disproportionate force.” In May 2021—when the last round occurred—Israel was not given the usual benefit of the doubt. In even the earliest stages of the conflict, Israel was demonized as the oppressor in some quarters. “If you've been paying attention to social media over the past week, you will have seen this same attempt to redefine the Israeli–Palestinian conflict as a racial power dynamic, casting Israel as infinitely powerful and Palestinians as completely without agency,” Batya Ungar-Sargon pointed out in a Newsweek editorial. I knew then that the fight against wokeness was not just about preserving free thought, but about combating a variant of antisemitism that grows out of the same ideological conditions that stifle free thought.

I have never been entirely at ease making the case for the growth of “woke antisemitism” in liberal humanist circles. Liberal humanists like me are highly suspicious of promiscuous accusations of racism and bigotry, and oppose dogmatic declarations that only marginalized groups with “lived experience” of oppression are entitled to an opinion on social issues. Such political attitudes are the essence of cancel culture. Yet here I was arguing that the very ideology that produced cancel culture also fueled a new variant of antisemitism that sees Jews as white and privileged. In highlighting the threat of antisemitism, I was concerned that I might be engaging in the same tactics as the people I critique.

From the outset, however, I made it clear that I didn’t regard my analysis of antisemitism as beyond scrutiny. I reject the now oft-repeated claim among some Jews, who, echoing the assertions of minority political activists in other communities, argue that only Jews get to define antisemitism. I sought to discuss antisemitism in liberal, not postmodern terms, encouraging multiple viewpoints about the extent and nature of contemporary Jew hatred. But in the eyes of some fellow liberal humanists, I was still partaking in the identity politics of the day.

Now, in the aftermath of the massacre, I sense a shift. Awakened by the outpouring of Jew hatred in the wake of the massacre in Israel, many liberal humanist friends have expressed their shock. This magazine’s editor-in-chief Claire Lehmann has stated, “I don't think I ever really understood anti-Semitism until now. And it is frightening.” Skeptic Magazine editor Michael Shermer was exasperated by the hypocrisy of many:

When I left my perch at JCPA, I was immediately regarded as a heretic by a number of former colleagues. Some actively tried to prevent me from giving speeches about the topic in their Jewish communities. But, on this front, too, I sense movement. This past week, I received a surprise email from one of my chief antagonists on Twitter, Paul Hackner, a South African-born Jewish leftist who earlier excoriated me for using the term “woke” which, he insisted, “is about compassion and awareness AND you weaponized to express a fragile need to be comfortable when addressing racism.” After the massacre, he told me: “It's clear there is a revanchist left in North America that is allying with Hamas. The firestorm of hatred is raging. Hamas is a death cult. Sad to say you were right. Thanks for engaging with me. It helped me find moral clarity.”

Even among Israel’s most ardent Jewish critics, such as Joshua Leifer, a leftist writer and editor for Dissent Magazine, there’s indignation about moral callousness on the left. “There's also a deep sense that the left abroad has lost the values it was supposed to stand for,” he has stated:

I thought we were leftists because we wanted a world without war, torture, the killing of families and children in their beds I thought we were leftists because we abhor cruelty, detest violence, and believe in the inherent, even divine, worth of all human life. I thought we were leftists because our struggle was for all people to be able to live with freedom and dignity.

Leifer’s discontent might portend greater willingness among American Jews to take on their own political camp.

A local Jewish advocacy organization in my area, the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington (JCRCGW), tore into the area school superintendent who originally failed to issue a statement of support for Israel and the Jewish community and later released only a tepid one. Much to my chagrin, the JCRCGW had previously actively participated in the school system’s yearlong “anti-racism audit” and subsequent implementation of DEI training and pedagogy. But when their partnership on anti-racism failed to elicit support for Jewish students in the schools in their time of need, the normally restrained JCRCGW lashed out:

We reserve our greatest anger and disappointment for Montgomery County Public Schools … [which has] consistently ignored our agencies’ urgent appeals over the last three days to respond appropriately and sensitively … if our schools can’t call out the brutal murder of Jews right before our eyes, of what use is the Holocaust education and cultural competency that we have worked together to advance?

I believe that this dogmatic version of “cultural competence,” which rigidly ties identity to privilege or oppression, is the source of the school system’s indifference to Jewish life in the first place. But given recent events, it seems unimaginable that mainstream Jewish leaders will continue to deny or ignore the role of ideology in the callousness toward the murder of Jews and the disregard for Jewish concerns. I, for one, will do everything in my power to place the topic on their agenda.

What could really turn the tide is if Jewish donors and trustees at major universities finally use the power of the purse. Marc Rowan, the chief executive officer of Apollo Global Management and the chair of the Board of Overseers of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, has taken his own university to task. “While Hamas terrorists were slaughtering Israeli Jews, university administrators were figuring out how to spin it,” he writes in The Free Press:

The responsibility also rests with many of our alumni leaders and trustees, myself included, who have sat by quietly as the pursuit of truth—the ostensible mission of our elite institutions—was traded for a poorly organized pursuit of social justice and political correctness.

“It’s long past time,” he argues, “for donors to take notice.”

It’s long past time for all of us to take notice. Let us hope that the horrors of the moment will not only be a turning point in the battle against antisemitism, but in the larger fight against radicalism and illiberalism in the West.

This was the world's easiest moral question: celebrate or condemn far-right religious terrorists who dismembered babies alive? And they got the answer wrong.

Atheists who defend Hamas lose the right to criticize the god of the bible.

Exodus 12:29-30

And it came to pass, that at midnight the Lord smote all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh that sat on his throne unto the firstborn of the captive that was in the dungeon; and all the firstborn of cattle. And Pharaoh rose up in the night, he, and all his servants, and all the Egyptians; and there was a great cry in Egypt; for there was not a house where there was not one dead.

Numbers 31:17-19

Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves. And do ye abide without the camp seven days: whosoever hath killed any person, and whosoever hath touched any slain, purify both yourselves and your captives on the third day, and on the seventh day.

Psalm 137:8-9

O daughter of Babylon, who art to be destroyed; happy shall he be, that rewardeth thee as thou hast served us. Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones.

What bible-god did is what Hamas did. You don't get to criticize the morality of bible-god while defending a terrorist organization that did the same kind of thing.

#David Bernstein #antisemitism #israel #hamas #palestine #woke #wokeness #cult of woke #wokeism #wokness as religion #islam #islamic terrorism #woke antisemitism #free gaza #free gaza from hamas #religion is a mental illness

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dailyanarchistposts · 2 months

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Chapter 3. Economy

Anarchism is opposed to capitalism and to private ownership of the tools, infrastructure, and resources everyone requires for sustenance. Anarchist economic models range from hunter-gatherer communities and agricultural communes to industrial complexes in which planning is carried out by syndicates and distribution is arranged through quotas or a limited form of currency. All these models are based on the principles of working together to fulfill common needs and rejecting hierarchy of all kinds — including bosses, management, and the division of society into classes such as wealthy and poor or owners and laborers.

Without wages, what is the incentive to work?

Some worry that if we abolish capitalism and wage-labor, no one will work anymore. It is true that work as it exists now for most people would cease to exist; but work that is socially useful offers a number of incentives besides the paycheck. If anything, getting paid to do something makes it less enjoyable. The alienation of labor that is a part of capitalism destroys natural incentives to work such as the pleasure of acting freely and the satisfaction of a job well done. When work puts us in a position of inferiority — to the boss who oversees us and the wealthy people who own our workplace — and we do not have decision-making power in our job but must mindlessly follow orders, it can become excruciatingly odious and mind-numbing. We also lose our natural incentive to work when we are not doing something that is useful for our communities. Of the few workers today who are lucky enough to actually produce something they can see, they are nearly all making something that is profitable to their employers but completely meaningless to them personally. The Fordist or assembly line structuring of labor turns people into machines. Instead of cultivating skills workers can be proud of, it proves more cost-effective to give each person a single repetitive task and put him or her on an assembly line. No wonder so many workers sabotage or steal from their workplaces, or show up with an automatic weapon and “go postal.”

The idea that without wages people would stop working is baseless. In the broad timeline of human history, wages are a fairly recent invention yet societies that have existed without currency or wages did not starve to death just because no one paid the workers. With the abolition of wage labor, only the kind of work that no one can justify to himself as useful would disappear; all the time and resources put into making all the useless crap that our society is drowning in would be saved. Think of how much of our resources and labor go into advertising, mass mailings, throwaway packaging, cheap toys, disposable goods — things no one takes pride in making, designed to fall apart in a short time so you have to buy the next version.

Indigenous societies with less division of labor had no problem doing without wages, because the primary economic activities — producing food, housing, clothing, tools — are all easily connected to common needs. In such circumstances, work is a necessary social activity and an apparent obligation from every member of the community who is able. And because it takes place in a flexible, personal setting, work can be adapted to every individual’s capabilities, and there is nothing to keep people from transforming work into play. Fixing up your house, hunting, wandering in the woods identifying plants and animals, knitting, cooking a feast — aren’t these the things that bored middle-class people do in their leisure hours to forget their loathsome jobs for a moment?

Anti-capitalist societies with greater economic specialization have developed a variety of methods for providing incentives and distributing the products of workers’ labor. The aforementioned Israeli kibbutzim offer one example of incentives to work in the absence of wages. One book documenting life and work in a kibbutz identifies four major motivations to work within the cooperative labor teams, which lacked individual competition and profit motive: group productivity affects the whole community’s standard of living, so there is group pressure to work hard; members work where they choose, and gain satisfaction from their work; people develop a competitive pride if their branch of work does better than other branches; people gain prestige from work because labor is a cultural value.[30] As described above, the ultimate decline of the kibbutz experiment stemmed largely from the fact that the kibbutzim were socialist enterprises competing within a capitalist economy, and thus subsumed to the logic of competition rather than the logic of mutual aid. A similarly organized commune in a world without capitalism would not face these same problems. In any case, unwillingness to work due to lack of wages was not one of the problems the kibbutzim faced.

Many anarchists suggest that the germs of capitalism are contained in the mentality of production itself. Whether a given type of economy can survive, much less grow, within capitalism is a poor measure of its liberatory potential. But anarchists propose and debate many different forms of economy, some of which can only be practiced to a limited extent because they are wholly illegal within today’s world. In the European squatter’s movement, some cities have had or continue to have so many squatted social centers and houses that they constitute a shadow society. In Barcelona, for example, as recently as 2008 there were over forty occupied social centers and at least two hundred squatted houses. The collectives of people who inhabit these squats generally use consensus and group assemblies, and most are explicitly anarchist or intentionally anti-authoritarian. To a large extent, work and exchange have been abolished from these people’s lives, whose networks run into the thousands. Many do not have waged jobs, or they work only seasonally or sporadically, as they do not need to pay rent. For example the author of this book, who has lived within this network for two years, has survived for much of that time on less than one euro a day. Moreover, the great amount of activity they carry out within the autonomous movement is completely unwaged. But they do not need wages: they work for themselves. They occupy abandoned buildings left to rot by speculators, as a protest against gentrification and as anti-capitalist direct action to provide themselves with housing. Teaching themselves the skills they need along the way, they fix up their new houses, cleaning, patching roofs, installing windows, toilets, showers, light, kitchens, and anything else they need. They often pirate electricity, water, and internet, and much of their food comes from dumpster-diving, stealing, and squatted gardens.

In the total absence of wages or managers, they carry on a great deal of work, but at their own pace and logic. The logic is one of mutual aid. Besides fixing up their own houses, they also direct their energies towards working for their neighborhoods and enriching their communities. They provide for many of their collective needs besides housing. Some social centers host bicycle repair workshops, enabling people to repair or build their own bicycles, using old parts. Others offer carpentry workshops, self-defense and yoga workshops, natural healing workshops, libraries, gardens, communal meals, art and theater groups, language classes, alternative media and counterinformation, music shows, movies, computer labs where people can use the internet and learn email security or host their own websites, and solidarity events to deal with the inevitable repression. Nearly all of these services are provided absolutely free. There is no exchange — one group organizes to provide a service to everyone, and the entire social network benefits.

With an astounding amount of initiative in such a passive society, squatters regularly get the idea to organize a communal meal or a bicycle repair shop or a weekly movie showing, they talk with friends and friends of friends until they have enough people and resources to make their idea a reality, and then they spread the word or put up posters and hope as many people as possible will come and partake. To a capitalist mentality, they are avidly inviting people to rob them, but the squatters never stop to question activities that don’t put money in their pockets. It is evident that they have created a new form of wealth, and sharing what they make themselves clearly makes them richer.

The surrounding neighborhoods also become richer, as the squatters take the initiative to create projects much quicker than the local government could. In the magazine of a neighborhood association in Barcelona, they praised a local squat for responding to a demand the government had been ignoring for years — building the neighborhood a library. A mainstream news magazine remarked: “the squatters do the work the District forgets about.”[31] In that same neighborhood, the squatters proved to be a powerful ally to a rent-paying neighbor who was being pressured out by the landlord. The squatters worked tirelessly with an association of old folks who were facing similar situations of chicanery and illegal eviction by landlords, and they stopped the eviction of their neighbor.

In a trend that seems common to the total abolition of work, the social and the economic blend to become indistinguishable. Labor and services are not valorized or given a dollar value; they are social activities that are carried out individually or collectively as a part of daily life, without any need for accounting or management. The result is that in cities such as Barcelona, people can spend the majority of their time and meet the majority of their needs — from housing to entertainment — within this squatters’ social network, without labor and almost without money. Of course not everything can be stolen (not yet), and the squatters are still compelled to sell their labor to pay for things like medical care and court costs. But for many people the exceptional nature of those things that cannot be self-produced, scavenged, or stolen, the outrage of having to sell valuable moments of one’s life to work for some corporation, can have the effect of increasing the level of conflict with capitalism.

One potential pitfall of any movement powerful enough to create an alternative to capitalism is that its participants can easily become complacent living in their bubble of autonomy and lose the will to fight for the total abolition of capitalism. Squatting itself can easily become a ritual, and in Barcelona the movement as a whole has not applied the same creativity to resistance and attack as it has to many of the practical aspects of fixing up houses and finding subsistence with little or no money. The self-sustaining nature of the network of squatters, the immediate presence of freedom, initiative, pleasure, independence, and community in their lives have by no means destroyed capitalism, but they do reveal it to be a walking corpse, with nothing but the police, in the end, preventing it for going extinct and being replaced by far superior forms of living.

#anarchism #daily posts #communism #anti capitalist #anti capitalism #late stage capitalism #anarchy #anarchists #libraries #leftism #anarchy works

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maribatserver · 2 months

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Valentine's Villains: Victory For Evil!

Thank you to everyone who participated in our Valentine Card Event this year, you guys had some fabulous suggestions! In the end, we received 289 valid submissions, though some of our villains got more love (and a little hate) than others. So, without further ado, our victors!

She's beauty, she's grace, she'll punch you in the face! Coming in first place, with 59 submissions, was the Daughter of the Demon herself, Talia al Ghul! Her most submitted word was "Queen", and love her or hate her, she certainly acts the part of royalty!

Our second place villain has a long history of being a fan favorite; it's actually why she was brought from cartoon character to comic book staple! Dr. Harleen Quinzell, better known as Harley Quinn, received 49 submissions, with her most submitted word being anarchist! A fitting descriptor for someone who both remains on Batman's most wanted list, has largely made the switch to antihero, and hates the federal government!

Our third and final winner of ultimate Valentine Villainy is none other than Argos, also known as Félix Fathom! Our boy received 46 submissions, and we're so glad to see him strutting his stuff for us this Valentine's Day!

Now, we've got more Villains to show some love too, but for the sake of sanity everyone else will be included on a new post. Thank you again to everyone who submitted! We really appreciate your enthusiasm for these characters, and we're very thankful that the only reason we had for dismissing any submissions was that some of them weren't single words.

Shout out to @newdog14 for designing our Valentine's Cards, to @nottesilhouette for sorting out all of your submissions to make Newsie's life easier, and to @izanae for patiently listening to Newsie ask "Is this one word or two?" over and over again.

#maribat #mlb x dc #maribat server #maribat event #valentines day #valentines villains #villains #vv #valentines

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scarletpath · 7 months

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After much though, plot and character building, I decided to do a in-depth bio for my Tav. I absolutely love him and I tried to make himself as original as possible. I also designed him as not a Tav but as a Companion. Because why not.

Name: Zyn (Also known as the Harbinger Bard by others because where ever he goes, death follows him)

It's not his original nor does he know what his real name is. It was given to him. To be short, simple and easy to remember. A family name was not needed for him or the others who became under the control of the fanatical Lolth Priestess.

Race: Lolth Sworn Drow

Though, due to complications (Which will be detailed here) it's complicated for him. If anything, he's more of a Anarchist now.

Age: 124

At the age of 11 he was taken from his life by the Lolth Cult

For 105 years he had served them

And for the last 8 years, he's been trying to reclaim the life stolen from him by wondering the surface.

Appearance:

Height: 5'7

Hair: Naturally Black. Parted down the middle and goes down to his shoulders.

Skin: Dark Ash

Eyes: Red

Distinguishing marks: Marks cut into his chin that were made to identify him as one of the Priestess's assassins.

On his left side, there is a deep gash. A rather nasty scar that's raised. Caused by a vicious single stab. Memories of how he got it haunt his dreams randomly, causing him painful scar tissue pain where the wound is.

Class: Dual type: Rogue (Assassin) and Bard (Swords)

When he came to the surface, he had to find a way to climatize to his new life. He knew life wouldn't be easy if he went around as a dark imposing figure. So he picked up the Bard class to help learn about the world around him and to blend in. Also, it helps to fool others and his enemies/targets because who suspects a Bard of being a threat. It helps him to use his Assassin skills without being suspicious.

Weapons: Yes please

He has an array of weaponry at his disposal. Normally he's seen with a Rapier at his side and a crossbow. He has daggers that he keeps hidden for fast access. His musical instruments are also hidden weapons. His flute can pull apart to reveal a long stiletto blade inside and the bow of his violin pops out a blade along it's back so he can laterally slice up someone while playing it. Or use it as a hidden blade.

He also has a dagger that is always hidden on his person that he named 'Kindness'.

Interesting/Unique Perks: Poison resistance

Because he was trained and raised to be an assassin, he had to go through Mithridatism. (Building a poison resistance by taking in non lethal amounts of poison regularly.) Interestingly enough, if Astarion bites him, he to will gain a Poison resistance perk for that day.

Past:

The earliest memories he has was being grouped up with group of young Drow boys. All were stolen, sold or orphaned. The young boys were chosen due to the Matriarchal society of the Drow. They were forced through trials to weed out the weak ones. The ones that didn't make it, died through the harsh and painful courses. Poison, starvation, dehydration, you name it. Those who made it were immediately trained to become assassins.

The reason why this one Lolth Priestess gathered the boys was because of her own paranoia and thirst for power and longevity. She didn't trust her own followers to be loyal to her at all times. So she decided that the best people to protect her were those who she had control over how they were raised. So she restricted their education. They only read from books that she allowed. Had them learn how to read and write of course. But the politics, about the other races, cultures and even their own religion were all twisted and half truths. All to manipulate them and make them complacent of their position. To make sure they didn't have their own ideas, to feel curious or to have their own hopes and dreams. This didn't stop her from being cruel to them. She used them as she saw fit. Taking them to her orgies once they had grown for her own pleasure and protection. Using her abilities and using them as marionettes so she can kill without having to put herself in harms way. Her assassins had no life of their own but to serve and obey.

It was when she hired a group of Mercenaries that caused a crack to form in Zyn's tiny bubble. They were hired to help train her assassins to be better in face to face battles and not rely themselves to the shadows. Zyn wanted to prove himself to be more than capable and challenged who he thought was the strongest of the group. He had his ass handed to him obviously. So everyday he trained against him. And everyday, the bond that started between them started to grow. They started talking and opening up. The mercenary told stories about his adventures and the world around them. Zyn was completely enthralled and fascinated with everything he said. And soon, their training sessions were just them sneaking off to be in each other's arms. This was the first time he felt a lovers caress. The time came were his lover had to leave because their contract was ending. He begged Zyn to sneak off with him. He knew that Zyn was a prisoner, a slave with invisible shackles but Zyn didn't see it that way. Not use to feeling scared, he lashed out. Accusing the other for trying to make him feel weak and trying to manipulate him to question his loyalty. The mercenary, with a broken heart backed off, saying that he'll find a way for them to be together. The next morning the Priestess announced that one of the mercenaries tried to kill her and tossed their armor for everyone to see. It was his lover's. His whole world started to crack more and felt empty. Not knowing how to handle grief, he started to have mental breaks. Having to investigate what really was out there. He read the books meant for burning, snuck out to the nearby city to find his own answers and even conversed to the slaves that came from the surface. Everything spiraled for him as he finally realized that his whole life was stolen from him and he threw away his love and the freedom it came with. He broke down as a flood of emotions he wasn't allowed to feel crashed down on him. The only thing he knew he had to do was to kill the Priestess that took everything from him.

Unfortunately it ended up in disaster. She figured that he would try something and stabbed him in his side. It had a paralytic poison on it, causing his body to go limp and his heart to slow down. He was tossed into a mass grave to bleed out in and die. From here on, he barely remembers anything. The only thing he remembers is that someone showed up and saved him right as he passed out. He was healed, patched up and left by the entrance so he could live his life out there. It turns out that the one who saved him was his lover. He wasn't killed like the Priestess said. It was a fate worse than death for Drow. He was turned into a Drider. Despite everything, he still loved him and wanted him to be free and knew they couldn't be together.

So for the past 8 years, Zyn traveled everywhere. The first couple years, he focused on learning as much as he could. Throwing himself into libraries and reading whatever books he laid his hands on.

Personality:

He can be intimidating at times, especially with a resting face. Though, around people, he tries to brighten his expressions. He honestly is trying to reverse the programming that was instilled in him for the past 100 some years, but sometimes it slips out. Though, mostly when he's attacking and killing something/someone. He's very mature about his abilities and takes his skills very seriously. But it's pretty common for him to be naive over regular situations. But don't be surprised if he knows some very random and in-depth information. Unfortunately, he's a little emotionally stunted and suffers from anxiety when overwhelmed. He views his ability to kill as his nature. As a cat would kill for food or for fun. He only targets those that are deemed pests to the world. Like Bandits and Goblins. He doesn't do it to be a hero or for fame though and calling him one irritates him. Even though he has his freedom, he's still trapped by his past and doesn't really know what it means or how to be free.

The Tadpole: He hates that it's in his head. He feels like it's a ticking time bomb. He doesn't want to become a Mindflayer. To be a hivemind with no true identity. He wants to be him. To find out who he is and what he can become. To find his own hopes and dreams. Hobbies and goals in life.

The Absolute:

Hates it and the cult even more. It just reminds him of what he went through all his life. If he had it his way, he would find a way to kill every True Soul he comes across.

Likes/Dislikes:

He likes savory and bold flavors and not sweets. He's grown to really like cheese. Sometimes he drinks a bit too much. One might think it's a crutch for him for his trauma and pain. He likes books and learning new things. When playing music, he tends to avoid singing unless he feels comfortable about it. He thinks because his voice isn't as light and soft, it's not a good singing voice. (But it actually is) Hates rudeness and trying to act pleasant around irritating people. He hates it even more when those intrusive thoughts pop into his mind about how to deal with them. Because he knows that he would've done that years ago.

Approvals:

Tricking the enemy

No Mercy for the enemy

Agreeing with his ideas/ or liking them

Trusting him!

Disapprovals:

Questioning his intelligence when he offers his input that he's knowledgeable about. (It makes him feel stupid and it's a sore spot for him)

Mercy for the enemy

Siding with the True Souls without deception

Romance options: (The ones I've honestly thought a lot about. But honestly, I feel he's pretty much compatible with everyone.)

Wyll: Thinking about it, Wyll is a very good option for him because he can help him overcome his darkness and use that energy to help people. The two of them are technically Vigilantes that go around taking down evil. Wyll does it to help others while Zyn does it for himself. He can help him realize that it's okay to do something for others and not feel trapped about it. That at the end they would work together as a powerful pair and travel.

Astarion:

The two would bond over their dark pasts. Understanding and accepting the broken parts of themselves. Zyn would feel relief and feel more open around him. In the good ending, the two would help each other with their freedom and support each other. Bad ending though.. If Astarion ascends, Zyn would literally relapse back to his old ways. Astarion's offers of power and rewards makes him fold because it was something he never got from the Priestess even though promised. Deep down he always desired praise and attention for his loyalty and duty.

The Dark Urge:

In the beginning, I feel like he wouldn't really care for them surprisingly enough. Killing with no rhyme or reason rubs him the wrong way. To him, there is a order to things. Also, he's a professional killer and he would comment on the other's amateur skills and not to compare them to his skills. Though, if the DU attempts to kill him in his sleep, that won't work because Zyn would be alert and pull a dagger on them too. But seeing the struggle they're going through, he can't help but feel sorry for them and tries to help them by giving them advice and work arounds. This relationship can be very bad if you let it be. For the bad ending, he's pretty much manipulated to side with the DU and Bhaal, even though he never wants to be subservient to deities again. Making him their special Assassin.

#baldur's gate 3 #bg3 #bg3 tav #bg3 oc #bg3 drow #my tav #drow tav

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