sorry to keep milgramposting but i think if we are speculating that kazui's arc is about being gay in a comphet marriage we should also be taking a closer look at mahiru's arc through that lens 🤨🏳️‍🌈 imo.

So the Labenda Swamp/Berleben episodes, while they had plenty of stand-out moments (KIRI! CALI! Shaving with a greatsword! Awkward hug!), weren’t exactly my favorites this campaign. Intra-party tension, lots of combat, lots of single-minded focus on their job (...their purely mercenary job for a crime boss, with no element of emotional investment or even a whiff of heroism). Basically, they had the generally grim atmosphere that you’d probably expect from a shitty swamp town. By the end of ep. 23, I was really craving some downtime for the group, some richer, softer interactions, juicy character development, and maybe an altruistic side quest that would help me really root for the Mighty Nein (much as I adore their shadiness).

...I cannot express how hard Hupperdook delivered on all of this. I loved this episode so much, you guys. SO MUCH.

Highlights:

There was so much goodness that I think I’m going to have to divide this up based on characters. Starting with...

CALEB

This episode was like the grand payoff for all of Caleb’s conflicts with the others about his inability to integrate with the group. Practically every little thing he did confirmed his affection for them and his determination to be kind and playful and fully present for them, to shed his sad-loner persona and become a team player:

-Magically lighting Beau’s firecracker for her with no hesitation, even though they’re both well aware of his issues with fire

-Encouraging Nott in her dance plans with Jester--i.e. encouraging her to enjoy herself with someone other than him, which feels incredibly healthy for both of them

-Hasting Jester to improve her piano-playing, and tossing gold in the “tipping hat” for her

-Having a civil (and hilarious) conversation with Fjord about the hazards of rooming with Molly in a party town--and actually inviting Fjord to share a room with him and Nott, which I kind of wish we got to see, although the way things actually turned out was equally satisfying

-Telling Yasha he was sorry she wouldn’t be going out with them because he counts on her as his social-anxiety buddy

-Gently checking up on Fjord re: his flirting anxiety (more on that later)

-Participating in the drinking contest--again, with no hesitation (and killing it!). This went against so many of Caleb’s usual scruples (not spending money frivolously, avoiding crowds and social interaction), not to mention making him extremely vulnerable, both physically and emotionally. He had to know that some of his closely guarded secrets might come out, and he had to extract a promise that they wouldn’t let him pass out in the gutter...but he went through with it anyway, trusting the group to take care of him. And they (specifically Jester) justified his trust.

-THE DRUNKEN SINGING. Counting and singing both seem to be compulsions for Caleb, especially in stressful situations (we’ve seen him sing a version of that “Mighty Nein” song on the battlefield, haven’t we?), but even after the heartbreak of the waltz scene, nothing can quite beat, “One of those things is true...aaand you are blue.”

-Speaking of which...

JESTER

-That waltz honestly might have been the saddest (and sweetest) scene of the entire campaign. In a situation that would normally be ripe for high comedy (the most awkward, inhibited member of the party gets super drunk and agrees to dance with Jester, trickery cleric and perpetual agent of chaos), we got a quiet slow dance and a line so poignant in context and delivery that I’m tearing up just thinking about it. The way Laura/Jester’s face instantly crumbled (even though Jester knows nothing of Caleb’s backstory). Her instantly softened tone, the complete lack of teasing. Caleb’s broken little “Oh, I’m sorry. I’m...I’m sorry.” His sudden reversion to Sad Loner Eternally Punishing Himself, as he walked away to seek out solitude in some filthy gutter. Jester’s determination to Not Let Him Do That, to keep her promise and get him into bed. “I’m sure Astrid loves you very much.”

...Yeah, I’m not sure how to do that scene justice other than crying about it.

Moving on to somewhat lighter tidbits...

-“I go over and give Caleb a kiss on the cheek.” 😊 (I need to make a whole separate post at some point about Caleb and touch.) (...About everyone and touch, for that matter.)

-Jester has never been drunk. I always kind of figured that her habit of ordering milk was just an in-joke about Laura’s pregnancy, like the pickles--but no, it’s a legitimate character detail stemming from her sheltered upbringing. I felt sorry for Jester and Laura when she was the odd tiefling out in the drinking contest, but in retrospect, it’s really good (for Caleb’s sake as well as their finances’) that they had a Sober Friend on deck.

-Her conversation with Caleb about “hidden skills” made me wonder, not for the first time, whether she’s actually had a lot of sexual experience as she often implies, or whether her childhood surrounded by courtesans (and her habit of spying on their clients) has simply made her feel qualified to speak on the subject. Passing the written exam but not the practicum, as it were.

-Her frantic (and mostly futile) attempts to get her teammates to say who they’re attracted to while under Zone of Truth were good fun, but her frantic attempts to get them to say whether they like her held a bit more weight, I think. Jester is, without a doubt, the best-liked member of the Mighty Nein--I don’t think there’s a single teammate who couldn’t have truthfully answered that question with a resounding “Yes”--but Jester, with her history of isolation, her social inexperience, her lingering fears of being left alone again, still feels insecure about whether her friendships are sincere. Give Jester hugs, is what I’m saying. Give her ALL the hugs.

-Jester’s concern for Kiri gets more adorable each episode. I especially like how emphatic she is about the fact that Kiri is a person, appearances notwithstanding (“She’s like you, she’s a little girl, not a pet”). Laura said in a Talks episode a while back that Jester thought of Kiri like a doll, but I definitely think her views have evolved. There was something especially touching about the music-box scene. Hupperdook seems to present several options for safe and wholesome environments in which they might leave Kiri, but I’m kind of rooting for Rissa and her father to take her in.

-Jester got to throw around her magic a lot in fun, non-combat ways this episode. Loved the Thaumaturgy cheers for Beau, and the Infernal whispers surrounding the blacksmith kids. But that Locate Object spell not only single-handedly saved their asses, financially speaking, but also changed the entire direction of their current adventure when it led them to that final scene, with the kids in the boarded-up shop.

-It was kind of amazing to see the different ways and specific moments in which each member of the Mighty Nein was affected by the kids’ story. For Jester, of course, it was when they said their parents were thrown in jail for “idol worship.” It is killing me (in a Very Good way) how we’re gradually finding the cracks in the Nein’s cynical, mercenary armor--the emotional buttons that can be pushed to lead them to propose (or support) an actual altruistic quest, despite their much-cherished self-identity as “a bunch of assholes.” Which, of course, leads me to...

FJORD

Holy cats, did this episode radically transform the way I see and feel about Fjord. I haven’t done such an intense 180 on a character since Beau’s one-on-one scene with Dairon back in the day. That was the scene that 100% hooked me on Beau. I went in feeling lukewarm and iffy about her, and came out finding her lovable, secretly vulnerable, and generally fascinating...and this episode had the exact same effect for me re: Fjord.

-His flustered reactions to flirtation have always seemed funny before, and they were funny in this episode too, up to a point...and then, as Travis played it up, it began to feel like something more. I love that it was Caleb, of all people, who sensed Fjord’s genuine discomfort and asked if he was okay. Whether that discomfort just stems from virginity/inexperience or from some kind of bad experience, it makes Fjord’s relationship with Jester--who defaults to flirting as a standard form of social interaction, because of her upbringing--a lot more interesting to me than it’s ever been before. Her offer of sex lessons would have felt like simple comedy in an earlier episode, but now it felt like a case of fundamental miscommunication, a clash between two people with very different backgrounds and worldviews when it comes to sex and romance...and I am All About It, I am so on board for that ride, it appeals to me so much more than Jester’s simple romance-novel-fantasy version of their relationship.

-In my notes on last week’s episode, I forgot to even mention Fjord confiding in Molly about the eyeball on his sword (and Molly’s poorly-timed and poorly-executed Charm Person spell), but Fjord and Molly’s relationship always intrigues me. In this week’s installment of their roommate shenanigans, we got Fjord’s rather jaw-dropping line “Half of me’s interested, the other half is terrified” (I could just hear the fics being written on the spot). My shipping compass is all over the place at this point. On the one hand, Fjord has low wisdom and an occasional tendency to jump on board with crazy scenarios just for the hell of it. On the other hand, I could swear sometimes, looking back over the whole campaign, that the only people in whom he’s shown anything like romantic interest are Caleb and Molly. (If you want to get all metaphorical-innuendo with this, they’re the only two teammates he’s almost allowed to hold/examine his sword...yet, in both cases, he decided to refuse/hold off.)

-Fjord coaching Beau on behavior and facial expressions never, ever gets old. And for once, instead of trying to help her be more courteous and less off-putting, he got to help her ramp up her intimidation to a whole new level (for a couple of teenage punks! 😂). Molly and Caleb doing good cop/bad cop last week was a delight, but Fjord and Beau pulled it off just as brilliantly. (Are we ever going to hear what became of those kids, as they spent a day frantically searching for the thieves the Mighty Nein had already found? ^_^)

-And finally...HOW ABOUT THAT BACKSTORY, THOUGH!?

No, it’s not the first backstory drop we’ve gotten for Fjord; in fact, it’s one of the briefest. We knew about the kids who made fun of him for his tusks and drove him to file them down. We knew about his sailor background, the shipwreck, his near-drowning experience, and that he presumably made a shady deal with his patron (whether he remembers it or not). We knew about his mentor, Vandren, whose fate is still up in the air. Yet somehow, none of that had anywhere near as much impact on me as that one little line, that achingly hesitant response to the question of whether he’d ever been in an orphanage: “Yes. I was. They’re terrible fucking places.”

I’ve actually thought a lot over the course of this campaign about why I’ve had more trouble connecting to Fjord than to the other characters, and I realized that a lot of it boiled down to the fact that he’s just never seemed to have the same vulnerability. Yes, his backstory was painful, even traumatic, but there was a certain macho romanticism to it--explosions, shipwrecks, a shady kraken-esque magical patron, even the fact that the loved one he lost was a surrogate father. It was all a little bit too “classic hero” for me to really feel it down to my bones...and honestly, that also applied to Fjord in general. He was always so smooth, so polished, so badass and confident and leader-like. I never heard the same raw desperation in his voice as I did in Caleb’s when he talked about his parents, or Nott’s when she talked about her goblin heritage, or Molly’s when he talked about rejecting his forgotten past, or Jester’s when she begged the Traveler to appear, or even Beau’s (downplayed as much as she could!) when she was seeking Dairon’s approval.

But with that one line about his childhood, regardless of the specifics, Fjord has joined the club for me. I’m all in. I’d die for him as soon as I would for any of the others. ...And this turned out waaay longer than I expected. 😳 Moving on!

-Everything about Fjord during that last scene (and actually, everything about that scene in general) was pure gold. Fjord was so soft toward those kids; he gave us the gentlest rendition of the line “I’m the one asking questions” that I’ve ever heard. His quiet, eloquent, persistent appeal to the others to join him in a dangerous, unpaid, purely altruistic rescue mission did such a number on my heart.

-Also?  “I would really like the opportunity to leave this place better than we found it” was a direct quote from Molly when he talked about his circus days under Zone of Truth--and Molly definitely noticed. I love, love, love that the members of this chaotic-neutral trash group are learning to appeal directly to each other’s backgrounds, issues, and specific values, not just to get a rise out of each other, but to activate the compassion that every one of them has buried beneath a hundred layers of cynical self-interest.

-Of course, Fjord and Molly weren’t the only people having their buttons pushed in that discussion, and Fjord’s wasn’t the only big backstory drop this episode! Which brings me to...

BEAU

-Though I was initially disappointed that the gang didn’t set off a whole bunch of them in the streets of Hupperdook, I am now thrilled and terrified at the thought of all the firecrackers she still has in her possession.

-Everything about Beau and Jester’s friendship is pure as the driven snow, and Beau getting Jester a flower necklace was no exception.

-Beau: *tries to snatch Molly’s tip for a dancer out of midair; rolls a natural one* Dancer: *grabs the coin, kicks Beau in the face, and winks at her* Beau: “I wink back. You know, I kind of liked that. That was kinda hot.” Me: This is the most quintessentially Beau moment I have ever witnessed, and I love her more than air.

-Low-charisma Beau and Molly leaning on the bar, totally ignored, for 15 minutes, was beautiful...but Beau’s “Sorry to interrupt your incessant flirting, but can I please have a drink?” is everything I have ever wanted from Beau and Molly’s frenemyship. I feel so fulfilled.

-Beau’s brief involvement in Jester and Nott’s dance plans (“Yeah, I know, I’m your second choice” / Nott: “No, third” 😂). Beau gets a lot of flak for arrogance, but honestly, her self-deprecation game is almost as strong as Caleb’s, and it is both hilarious and kind of poignant every time.

-Her defense of Nott from the racist (species-ist?) firecracker salesman. “Hey, don’t ever apologize for who you are, man.” Also telling her that Caleb is “a good guy”--which, coming from the one person who (a.) knows Caleb’s full backstory and (b.) isn’t Nott, is kind of huge.

-BEAU BACKSTORY DROP. BEAU BACKSTORY DROP. I wanted it SO BADLY, and I got my wish!! There was nothing about it that I didn’t love, starting with the fact that she confided in Nott. Out of all the Mighty Nein members, they’re probably two of the people with the fewest interactions, but it makes sense that the weird Caleb/Beau/Nott bond formed during Caleb’s backstory drop continues to strengthen.

-“Are you evil? Are you a bad guy?” / “No. I don’t...I hope not. I think it differs from day to day, depending on what I’m doing. Do you think I’m a bad guy?” This said so much about Beau herself, and also Beau’s self-image--and how heavily it depends on how other people see her, despite how vehemently she’d like to claim otherwise.

-Beau’s story wasn’t shocking or even surprising--it basically just tied together a lot of the hints we’ve already gotten--but there were so many little touches that killed me:

Her painfully realistic reluctance to pronounce her father a bad person

The fact that he hired the monks to straight-up kidnap her like some kind of horrific “scared straight” stunt (which is a thing that real parents do to real children, and that’s all I’m going to say about that)

The pained sarcasm of her, “Sure. Great,” when Nott asked if she was okay...and the brief dropped eye contact when Nott asked, “Was it hard?”

The looong pause and deeep breath between, “He was hoping...” and, “...they were gonna beat my indiscretions out of me.”

“I think all of the things that my father saw in me that he hated, the monks saw as a potential advantage.” I’ve always known that Beau’s first scene with Dairon felt raw and emotional and Important, but this scene finally gave us the context to explain why.

And, more than anything, the way her voice broke and dissolved into pained laughter when she said, “In fact, he told me he never wanted to see me again.” ...If this guy is still alive, the Mighty Nein had damn well better hunt him down and give him the full Syldor Vessar or Howaardt Darrington treatment.

...I have to note that amid all those dark emotions, something about Beau’s deadpan delivery of “I worked at a library” sent me into hysterics. (Also, “That had to do with the job that I had before the job that I had--”)

In short: For her first big backstory drop, this was deeply satisfying, but there are still so many things we don’t know! Why was her childhood “meant for someone else”? What about “I came to hate the town I was in and the system my father was a part of”? That seems related to her previous confession to Caleb, that she watched her father give up everything for the Empire and get screwed over somehow. And what about her comment to Dairon ages ago about how her father’s money (for her upkeep) must not be coming in anymore? Is he dead? Missing? In prison? I WANT TO KNOW EVERYTHING.

Still not the end of the Beau moments, though:

-Beau getting Fjord out of awkward sexual propositions by pleading erectile dysfunction on his behalf. Best/worst anti-wingwoman ever. (Bonus: Fjord’s Very Southern, Very Offended, “She doesn’t know me like that.” 😂)

-She finally followed through with her long-ago threat to slap Caleb! (Caleb, luckily, was not in a state to care.)

-“I will fucking punch you if you try and kiss me.” Literally could not ask for more with Beau and Molly. Could. Not. Ask. For. More.

-Her anguished “NOOOO!” when Molly literally pulled the alcohol out of her body...and of course, ”Did you touch inside of me!?”

-Despite finally dropping backstory of her own, Beau is still #1 when it comes to digging out other people’s: “I mean, Nott’s over here trying to pull my heartstrings, but it seems like you should be the target. Do you have a thing with kids in orphanages?”

Speaking of heartstrings...

NOTT

-So happy to see more of her friendship with Jester (“Do we need choreography!?”), and an attempt to revive their Detective Duo dynamic.

-It’s been a while since we saw Nott deal with racism (species-ism?). Still as much of a gut punch as ever.

-I loved seeing her gratitude to Beau for taking care of Caleb, along with her determination to make sure Beau is doing it right. I’m still not sure how I feel about Nott’s whole “I am the parent” attitude, but she’s certainly a better ‘parent’ than most of the Mighty Nein have ever known.

-She did a fantastic job bringing out Beau’s backstory without overshadowing Beau, but she still got off some great lines in that scene: “So wait. Little townsgirl, her parents are wine-makers, now you’re a brutal assassin martial artist who can kill anything...what happened in between those two things?” and  “You were bootlegging your old man’s hooch!?”

-“I never thought of you as an optimistic person, but that’s a very positive way of looking at it.” Okay...I may finally, finally be letting go of my cherished image of Scrappy Urchin Child Nott, and warming up to Maternal Nott. Watching her earnestly encourage her ever-growing collection of adopted children is kind of the best. (She was also great at “pulling Beau’s heartstrings” during the final scene, though I couldn’t help thinking that a lot of her “Don’t you think the children should be with their loving parents!?” rhetoric would’ve hit home for Caleb as well.)

-The drinking contest was a delight from start to finish, but Nott’s match was probably my second-favorite. (Nothing could beat “little Caleb” triumphing over his mild-mannered opponent.)

-It was a small moment, but it made me inordinately happy to see Nott and Molly profusely congratulating each other after the contest and then DANCING TOGETHER. They’ve barely exchanged a word since (1.) Molly wrenched deeply personal confessions out of Nott with Charm Person, (2.) They clashed in the aftermath of Scrollgate, and (3.) Nott offended Molly pretty seriously during his Zone of Truth backstory. Every single moment of Mighty Nein friendship/concern/camaraderie in this episode gave me so much life, but these two were a highlight.

And, speak of the devil...

MOLLY

It’s been quite some time since Molly got a big chance to shine. I’m mildly concerned about that, but that’s a matter for another post. (And it will probably get cleared up soon anyway--I think Tal just has a somewhat quieter play style, and takes a while to settle into his characters.) That said, the Molly moments we did get in this episode were absolute gems:

-Straight-up knight-in-shining-armoring Rissa with the punks who were harassing her. Nothing will ever be quite as gloriously creepy as blood maledicts.

-“Do I have masculine wiles!?” / “You have...pan wiles.” / “I’m into it.” (There’s this very specific voice Molly uses once in a while, this tone of pure childlike wonder, that sends my Molly love into overdrive. The lines that come to mind are, “Can I!?” back when Fjord joked that Molly could take the mirror from Pumat Sol’s shop, and “I won a strawberry!” back at the Harvest Close festival. I love that I can now add “Do I have masculine wiles!?” to the list.)

-Drawing alcohol out of Beau with his blood-hunter powers to ease her hangover

-“Whatever team you’re on, I don’t think I play for that one...It’s Team Fuck-Off, I’m well aware.”

-Throwing up on Fjord, and then tenderly bringing him to bed (...not that way)

-His “Say no more, I’m in” as soon as Fjord made it clear that the quest to break the kids’ parents out of jail was personal for him. In perfect accordance with his carnie past, Molly often walks this delicate line between “keep your head down, don’t make trouble” and “be the chaos you want to see in the world,” and I love that a friend’s Strong Feelings can single-handedly push him from one side to the other.

-I feel like there are probably more Molly moments I’m forgetting because I’m at the tail end of a post the size of Mt. Everest here, and I am most sincerely sorry.

BONUS

Yasha was barely there this episode, for obvious reasons, but I still desperately want art of her cuddling with Kiri!

IN CONCLUSION

This episode was amazing and I cannot wait for next week.

Oppression is not an attitude, it’s about systems of power.

by Lierre Keith / Deep Green Resistance.

At this moment, the liberal basis of most progressive movements is impeding our ability, individually and collectively, to take action. The individualism of liberalism, and of American society generally, renders too many of us unable to think clearly about our dire situation. Individual action is not an effective response to power because human society is political; by definition it is built from groups, not from individuals. That is not to say that individual acts of physical and intellectual courage can’t spearhead movements. But Rosa Parks didn’t end segregation on the Montgomery, Alabama, bus system. Rosa Parks plus the stalwart determination and strategic savvy of the entire black community did.

Liberalism also diverges from a radical analysis on the question of the nature of social reality. Liberalism is idealist. This is the belief that reality is a mental activity. Oppression, therefore, consists of attitudes and ideas, and social change happens through rational argument and education. Materialism, in contrast, is the understanding that society is organized by concrete systems of power, not by thoughts and ideas, and that the solution to oppression is to take those systems apart brick by brick. This in no way implies that individuals are exempt from examining their privilege and behaving honorably. It does mean that antiracism workshops will never end racism: only political struggle to rearrange the fundamentals of power will.

There are three other key differences between liberals and radicals. Because liberalism erases power, it can only explain the subordinate position of oppressed groups through biology or some other claim to naturalism. A radical analysis of race understands that differences in skin tone are a continuum, not a distinction: race as biology doesn’t exist. Writes Audrey Smedley in Race in North America: Origin and Evolution of a Worldview,

Race originated as the imposition of an arbitrary value system on the facts of biological (phenotypic) variations in the human species.… The meanings had social value but no intrinsic relationship to the biological diversity itself. Race … was fabricated as an existential reality out of a combination of recognizable physical differences and some incontrovertible social facts: the conquest of indigenous peoples, their domination and exploitation, and the importation of a vulnerable and controllable population from Africa to service the insatiable greed of some European entrepreneurs. The physical differences were a major tool by which the dominant whites constructed and maintained social barriers and economic inequalities; that is, they consciously sought to create social stratification based on these visible differences.3

Her point is that race is about power, not physical differences. Racializing ideology was a tool of the English against the Irish and the Nazis against the Jews, groups that could not be distinguished by phenotypic differences—indeed, that was why the Jews were forced to wear yellow stars.

Conservatives actively embrace biological explanations for race and gender oppression. White liberals usually know better than to claim that people of color are naturally inferior, but without the systematic analysis of radicalism, they are stuck with vaguely uncomfortable notions that people of color are just … different, a difference that is often fetishized or sexualized, or that results in patronizing attitudes.

Gender is probably the ultimate example of power disguised as biology. There are sociobiological explanations for everything from male spending patterns to rape, all based on the idea that differences between men and women are biological, not, as radicals believe, socially created. This naturalizing of political categories makes them almost impossible to question; there’s no point in challenging nature or four million years of evolution. It’s as useless as confronting God, the right-wing bulwark of misogyny and social stratification.

The primary purpose of all this rationalization is to try to remove power from the equation. If God ordained slavery or rape, then this is what shall happen. Victimization becomes naturalized. When these forms of “naturalization” are shown to be self-serving rationalizations the fall-back position is often that the victimization somehow is a benefit to the victims. Today, many of capitalism’s most vocal defenders argue that indigenous people and subsistence farmers want to “develop” (oddly enough, at the point of a gun); many men argue that women “want it” (oddly enough, at the point of a gun); foresters argue that forests (who existed on their own for thousands of years) benefit from their management.

With power removed from the equation, victimization looks voluntary, which erases the fact that it is, in fact, social subordination. What liberals don’t understand is that 90 percent of oppression is consensual. As Florynce Kennedy wrote, “There can be no really pervasive system of oppression … without the consent of the oppressed.”4 This does not mean that it is our fault, that the system will crumble if we withdraw consent, or that the oppressed are responsible for their oppression. All it means is that the powerful—capitalists, white supremacists, colonialists, masculinists—can’t stand over vast numbers of people twenty-four hours a day with guns. Luckily for them and depressingly for the rest of us, they don’t have to.

People withstand oppression using three psychological methods: denial, accommodation, and consent. Anyone on the receiving end of domination learns early in life to stay in line or risk the consequences. Those consequences only have to be applied once in a while to be effective: the traumatized psyche will then police itself. In the battered women’s movement, it’s generally acknowledged that one beating a year will keep a woman down.

While liberals consider it an insult to be identified with a class or group, they further believe that such an identity renders one a victim. I realize that identity is a complex experience. It’s certainly possible to claim membership in an oppressed group but still hold a liberal perspective on one’s experience. This was brought home to me while I was stuck watching television in a doctor’s waiting room. The show was (supposedly) a comedy about people working in an office. One of the black characters found out that he might have been hired because of an affirmative action policy. He was so depressed and humiliated that he quit. Then the female manager found out that she also might have been ultimately advanced to her position because of affirmative action. She collapsed into depression as well. The emotional narrative was almost impossible for me to follow. Considering what men of color and all women are up against—violence, poverty, daily social derision—affirmative action is the least this society can do to rectify systematic injustice. But the fact that these middle-class professionals got where they were because of the successful strategy of social justice movements was self-evidently understood broadly by the audience to be an insult, rather than an instance of both individual and movement success.

Note that within this liberal mind-set it’s not the actual material conditions that victimize—it’s naming those unjust conditions in an attempt to do something about them that brings the charge of victimization. But radicals are not the victimizers. We are the people who believe that unjust systems can change—that the oppressed can have real agency and fight to gain control of the material conditions of their lives. We don’t accept versions of God or nature that defend our domination, and we insist on naming the man behind the curtain, on analyzing who is doing what to whom as the first step to resistance.

The final difference between liberals and radicals is in their approaches to justice. Since power is rendered invisible in the liberal schema, justice is served by adhering to abstract principles. For instance, in the United States, First Amendment absolutism means that hate groups can actively recruit and organize since hate speech is perfectly legal. The principle of free speech outweighs the material reality of what hate groups do to real human people.

For the radicals, justice cannot be blind; concrete conditions must be recognized and addressed for anything to change. Domination will only be dismantled by taking away the rights of the powerful and redistributing social power to the rest of us. People sometimes say that we will know feminism has done its job when half the CEOs are women. That’s not feminism; to quote Catharine MacKinnon, it’s liberalism applied to women. Feminism will have won not when a few women get an equal piece of the oppression pie, served up in our sisters’ sweat, but when all dominating hierarchies—including economic ones—are dismantled.

There is no better definition of oppression than Marilyn Frye’s, from her book The Politics of Reality. She writes, “Oppression is a system of interrelated barriers and forces which reduce, immobilize and mold people who belong to a certain group, and effect their subordination to another group.”5 This is radicalism in one elegant sentence. Oppression is not an attitude, it’s about systems of power. One of the harms of subordination is that it creates not only injustice, exploitation, and abuse, but also consent.

Subordination has also been defined for us. Andrea Dworkin lists its four elements:6

1. Hierarchy

Hierarchy means there is “a group on top and a group on the bottom.” The “bottom” group has fewer rights, fewer resources, and is “held to be inferior.”7

2. Objectification

“Objectification occurs when a human being, through social means, is made less than human, turned into a thing or commodity, bought and sold … those who can be used as if they are not fully human are no longer fully human in social terms.”8

3. Submission

“In a condition of inferiority and objectification, submission is usually essential for survival … The submission forced on inferior, objectified groups precisely by hierarchy and objectification is taken to be the proof of inherent inferiority and subhuman capacities.”9

4. Violence

Committed by members of the group on top, violence is “systematic, endemic enough to be unremarkable and normative, usually taken as an implicit right of the one committing the violence.”10

All four of these elements work together to create an almost hermetically sealed world, psychologically and politically, where oppression is as normal and necessary as air. Any show of resistance is met with a continuum that starts with derision and ends in violent force. Yet resistance happens, somehow. Despite everything, people will insist on their humanity.

Coming to a political consciousness is not a painless task. To overcome denial means facing the everyday, normative cruelty of a whole society, a society made up of millions of people who are participating in that cruelty, and if not directly, then as bystanders with benefits. A friend of mine who grew up in extreme poverty recalled becoming politicized during her first year in college, a year of anguish over the simple fact that “there were rich people and there were poor people, and there was a relationship between the two.” You may have to face full-on the painful experiences you denied in order to survive, and even the humiliation of your own collusion. But knowledge of oppression starts from the bedrock that subordination is wrong and resistance is possible. The acquired skill of analysis can be psychologically and even spiritually freeing.

Once some understanding of oppression is gained, most people are called to action.

Read more from the Deep Green Resistance book online.

The Real Reason You Should Fast for the Holidays

“It is easier to act yourself into a new way of thinking than it is to think yourself into a new way of acting.”

– Millard Fuller

  Fasting is all the fashion proper now. Depending on who you hearken to it’s both an over-hyped waste of time or the fountain of youth, able to reworking your physique and activating latent spidey-senses. Those within the pro-fasting camp cite a myriad of advantages—weight reduction, elevated insulin sensitivity, development of stem cells, illness prevention, and world peace.

    As a lot as I’d wish to provide the definitive fasting interpretation, the perfect I can supply is that it might need well being advantages. And whereas I can’t let you know with authority that fasting will do X or Y, I can attest to how invaluable fasting has been in my very own private growth. In this age of mass consumption, willingly doing the other is transformative.

  Fasting modifications your relationship with meals. This has been my very own expertise in addition to the recurring opinion of the chums, kin, and colleagues I’ve talked to over time. But what does it imply to have your relationship with meals change?

  It isn’t like anybody is altering their relationship standing to: It’s Complicated-with Food. What is the connection with meals within the first place? The finest method to clarify that is with my very own expertise.

  The Diary Of Hungry Kid

For most of my life, I used to be praised for my urge for food. I appreciated practically each meals and I had a voracious urge for food. This was pleasing to my mother and father, who appreciated that I wasn’t a choosy eater like my older brother, and to most grownup male figures.

  Anytime I’d go to associates or kin I’d be lauded for the spectacular quantity of meals I may eat. This turned some extent of pleasure that went hand in hand with my different main supply of significance—pure power.

  When I obtained to highschool and have become dedicated to getting stronger for athletics, I used to be offered the assumption that each one I needed to do was carry exhausting and “eat everything that isn’t nailed down.” Eating extra turned a testomony to my dedication and I had no motive to imagine there was any drawback with this easy worldview. Blessed with a speedy metabolism, I broke high-school lifting information whereas sustaining pace and athleticism.

  After sports activities, I channeled my want for competitors and significance into muscle-building. If I wasn’t going to be often called Shane the soccer participant, I’d be Shane the strongest trying dude within the room.

  This led me to a number of supersets, mirror-staring, protein shakes, and meals. I dedicated to consuming each three hours and would develop anxious for my subsequent feeding by the two-hour mark. I purchased into all of the get-swole adages, ensuring that I entered the gymnasium with meals in my system and that I ate a big, carb-heavy meal inside 30-minutes of leaving.

  I turned satisfied that if I had been to go greater than 5 – 6 waking hours with out meals my blood sugar would crash and I’d be bodily incapacitated. A way of panic crept in across the four-hour mark and I’d develop into an plain jerk. These patterns took form close to the time of my challenges with OCD and it’s clear upon reflection that I used to be utilizing consuming as an try to pacify my anxiousness.

    As I started my grownup life, I constructed clear consuming habits however continued to eat a ton. I started exercising twice per day so I may eat extra. I turned obsessive about my have to refill. Anywhere I went, I’d have a bag of snacks on me to forestall a meltdown. To my reminiscence, I made it by way of the whole first 26 years of my life with out lacking a meal.

  Then, a while within the again half of my 20’s, I heard sufficient about intermittent fasting that I thought-about making an attempt it. I used to be married now, much less involved about trying just like the strongest man within the room and changing into rather more involved about enhancing myself.

  I’d begun meditating and, regardless of my CSCS-Joe Kenn background, I grew fascinated by Pavel, Max Shank, the kettlebell, and the MovNat world. I learn the books Tribe and Natural Born Heroes. As a former historical past main, these resonated with me and instantly the way in which I noticed humanity and the human physique started to shift.

  We are adaptable beasts. The causes of mass psychological and bodily dysfunction stemmed from falling away from our pure dwelling patterns. It was now not regular to maneuver naturally, work for the tribe, eat actual meals, expose ourselves to the weather, or expertise prolonged bouts of starvation. By shutting myself off from these experiences I used to be reinforcing my very own fragility whereas shutting myself off from private development.

  By this level, I used to be about 215 kilos of largely lean muscle, and I used to be nonetheless consuming the next menu every day:

  Breakfast – massive omelet and fruit

Snack – too many combined nuts

Lunch – three or 4 items of meat (sure, I had an issue), combined greens, an apple

Post-Workout Snack

Dinner

A sporadic snack earlier than mattress – fruit, a scoop of pure peanut butter, and many others.

  The Insights Born of Deprivation

I set my first 16-hour quick for a busy Wednesday morning, figuring that if it grew insufferable I’d haven’t any possibility however to intestine by way of it. I completed dinner at 5:30 pm on Tuesday and didn’t eat till 9:30 am the following day.

  To my shock, it was not that tough. The bodily shutdown I’d predicted by no means got here. In truth, I felt good proper as much as the time I started consuming. All without delay, that perception that I needed to pacify each starvation pang or got here crumbling down. Hunger didn’t simply enhance steadily till I used to be rolling on the ground in agony. Hunger got here and went, oscillating up and down with none obvious trigger. The entire factor simply amazed me.

  I instantly started working these fasts right into a weekly construction with 16-17 hour fasts each Saturday and Sunday and a much bigger 19 hour quick each Wednesday. When I obtained children, I needed to have a household breakfast on the weekends so I removed the weekend fasts however saved fasting each Wednesday.

  Every at times I stretch this to 24 hours. Whether the fasts create superpowers or not is admittedly not the purpose. The actual energy of those fasts is how they’ve modified my relationship with meals and the way in which I reply to starvation.

  Shortly after that first quick, I removed all snacking. Not rigidly so. If my spouse needs popcorn whereas we watch a film, we’ve got popcorn. But for probably the most half, I don’t eat something however three meals per day, two if I’m intermittent fasting. It appears apparent to me now, that that is a lot.

  I shifted my exercises to the morning and I’ve discovered that I want to exercise in a fasted state. So now, on a typical day, I end dinner by 6 pm, I get up early to put in writing, exercise round 7 am, after which eat round eight:30 am.

  Without making an attempt to I fell right into a day by day construction the place nearly on daily basis incorporates a 14-15 hour break between meals. I’ve additionally reduce down the quantity of meat that I eat every day, significantly. Without having ever apprehensive about weight, I’m now anyplace between 195 and 200 kilos, a lot sturdy and with higher vitality than ever.

  My spouse has additionally match fasts into her schedule on and off for the previous few years. After a break she began once more just lately, and her remark appears to summarize the advantages of fasting finest: “It’s good for me because it changes my relationship with food. I feel less need to snack. Like, I’m good. I don’t need to eat every time I think I’m getting hungry.”

  Courtesy of Ted Naiman, MD, h/t PD Morgan

  That’s it. Sometimes we’re bored and meals looks like a great way to fill the area. Sometimes we’re really thirsty. Particularly in a world programmed for consumption, including slightly extra boundary to our consumption isn’t a foul follow. And that’s the true motive to quick every so often—as a result of you’re a human and never feeling able to going with out meals for a bit marks a drastic departure from fundamental human capabilities.

  Fasting For The Holidays

  “A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.”

Henry David Thoreau

  So a lot of the health world exists to counteract overconsumption. Consumerism is fueled by a system the place we’re at all times reminded of what we’re lacking after which pointed to one thing that’s presupposed to fill that void.

  Food and the engineering of cravings is an apparent instance. Yet, issues are hardly ever the answer to our issues. The change we’re in search of doesn’t come from including the issues we predict we want. In truth, it’s simply the other.

  We are happier once we are much less depending on exterior circumstances being good. We are happier once we want much less. That is why the rich, Stoic thinker, Seneca, recommended a month-to-month follow of self-denial. As he frames it, simply as troopers prepare throughout occasions of peace and prosperity, we should always prepare ourselves amid occasions of abundance. Well, the abundance is right here and it isn’t going anyplace.

  We’ve at all times recognized we wanted to coach. We shall be happier if we’re lively and wholesome, however this solely occurs once we flex our muscle groups and problem our our bodies on a constant foundation. In the identical means, we will construction different challenges to carry us in the direction of gradual development.

  At IHD, our Pillar Experience Calendars, are a structured methodology of pulling your self in the direction of experiences like fasting that develop your capacity to thrive by way of a problem. Each month calls you to a bunch lesson and a problem that can develop willpower and instill wholesome values. You’ll be doing these alongside a neighborhood that may share the knowledge of their very own expertise and helps one another in more healthy dwelling. This appears particularly essential in the course of the holidays.

  I like the cheer and custom of December but it surely additionally appears to be an exaggeration of some cultural patterns which might be already uncontrolled. Thus, I assumed it was the proper month to stretch myself by doubling my previous document for time with out meals.

  This month I’m going to go for 48 hours with solely water. I wouldn’t begin right here should you don’t have a lot expertise, however I do encourage you to contemplate an intermittent quick this December—possibly that’s simply skipping breakfast in the future.

  It is an expertise frequent to humankind and one that may enrich the remainder of your holidays. After all, the pleasures of life are at all times a lot sweeter after a little bit of wrestle.

The post The Real Reason You Should Fast for the Holidays appeared first on Weight Loss Fitness.

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Faith Enough to Doubt: More Questions Than You Can Handle

Living in the Kingdom of God isn’t about certainty. It’s about relationship. And relationship is founded on trust. —

Nate Pyle

Faith Enough to Doubt: More Questions Than You Can Handle

by Nate Pyle, from

More Than You Can Handle

Doubt has often been characterized as the dangerous opposite of faith. Doubt, we are told, leads to questions that undermine orthodox truths about God’s character. Doubt, we are told, will lead us to abandon Scripture as the only rule for life. Doubt, we are told, will cause us to miss out on the blessings of God that require faith to experience. Whereas doubt is demonized, faith has become synonymous with unwavering certainty. Postured like this, certainty becomes an idol. If it’s necessary to be absolutely certain, if doubt is an evil to be eradicated, then faith will not save you from the evil you are facing. Certainty will. Being certain that God will keep your kids safe keeps them safe. Being certain that God will provide when you’re in need brings provision. Being certain that God will save you ensures your salvation. Being certain that God will heal you — naming and claiming — gets you the healing you’ve been praying for. Being certain that God will accept you is what convinces God you’re good enough. Certainty is an idol dressed up as unshakable faith. Whatever threatens an idol will be deemed evil. The idol of security will see risk as a threat to avoid. The idol of family will see the other as someone of suspicion. The idol of nationalism sees any identity that challenges one’s national identity as a threat. The idol of a simplistic worldview will see education as an evil. And if your idol is certainty, you will perceive doubt as the enemy. And if certainty is an idol, then we will do everything in our power to protect it. Idols are inherently weak. They exist only because we created them out of our anxiety about the world we face. To endure, they need constant tending. They need us to give them attention. They need us to give them a place in our life. They need us to fear them. Without our veneration, idols crumble. Thus they demand protection. The idol of certainty is no different. We see evidence of this throughout Christianity. Science is viewed with suspicion because it raises questions about the creation narrative in Genesis, our understanding of what it means to be human, and the miraculous. People who ask questions are labeled as dangerous wolves leading people astray. College and public education are feared because they expose young people to ideas that force them to wrestle with their faith. All of this wrestling and exploring is okay — even good — unless certainty saves you and doubt is a threat. What if faith isn’t ever meant to be defined by certainty? What if mystery and questions and doubts and learning are the fuel of a faith that is able to burn red-hot, even on the coldest, darkest nights? Some might push back against embracing our doubts, pointing to the first verse of Hebrews 11, which seems to be another call for certainty: Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. Certainty, it seems, is central to faith. But is it? As post-Enlightenment people, we think of certainty as an intellectual assent to an idea based on evidence. We are certain the world is round(ish) because there has been enough empirical evidence to justify our assent to that idea. We’re certain that our bodies are made up of millions and millions of cells because, with the help of microscopes, we can see them. We’re certain that fire consumes what it burns because we can see the ash it leaves behind. Evidence drives our certainty. It’s tempting to believe the myth of certainty. Rationally, it seems as if certitude about what God is doing or will do can provide hope in the midst of suffering. But any hope it offers is cheap. It rests on superficial claims, prematurely providing “answers” to our deepest questions by trivializing the very real pain we carry. It shortcuts the cross, negating its necessity in providing salvation by selling snake oil guaranteeing a life “free of suffering.” But the Gospel of Jesus is that in the Cross, through the suffering of the Cross, life is found. This is a profound mystery. Jesus didn’t just go to the Cross so we wouldn’t have to. Jesus went to the Cross and rose three days later so when we find ourselves suffering and crying out to God from our own crosses, we may have hope in ultimate healing through restoration. Real hope, then, isn’t some intellectual proposition to believe in. Real hope is found when our faith is hammered out on the anvil of human experience.1 Being a follower of Jesus wasn’t designed to be based on certainty. Abraham wasn’t certain where God would lead him when he left his father’s house. Moses wasn’t certain he could convince Pharaoh to let the Israelites go. And it’s likely Peter wasn’t certain what Jesus meant when he was invited to fish for people. Living in the Kingdom of God isn’t about certainty. It’s about relationship. And relationship is founded on trust. When my wife and I were married, we stood in front of our friends and family and made vows. We were young, deeply in love, and undeniably naive when we pledged to walk with each other in good times and in bad, in health and in sickness, in joy and in sorrow. The future was a mystery. We had no idea what it would hold and no ability to be certain that we would be able to fulfill those promises. We didn’t know that one day I would be fired from a ministry position. We didn’t know that we would face infertility. We didn’t know how each of us would respond to those situations. When we stood, hand in hand, facing each other and making promises about our future, there was no way to know with any certainty what we were promising. Were we certain of our love for one another? We might say we were certain, but there wasn’t enough evidence for that. No one outside of us would have had enough evidence to definitively conclude that they could be intellectually certain we would survive life’s events. What we had was trust. We trusted that whatever happened, we would get through it. We trusted that both of us were committed to the relationship. We trusted that together, we would be able to overcome anything. Faith is not intellectual certainty. It’s trust. Faith is, despite all the evidence to the contrary, an abiding expectation in the promises of God. A confidence that he will never leave us or forsake us. That no matter what we see happening around us, the God who created the universe has not abandoned it and has not given up on working good in it. Trust can handle what certainty can’t — our doubts and questions. Faith, then, isn’t the absence of doubts and questions, but it’s a relationship with such a deep commitment to one another that it can handle the doubts and questions. That’s why an evidence-based faith cannot sustain us when the helter-skelter sucks us into its whirlwind. How can you claim to know what God is doing when a young, expectant mother is told that her daughter who’ll be born in six weeks has a birth defect that may take her life? How can you be certain that you’ve got enough faith to convince God you’re deserving of healing? The only thing you can be certain of is that you are laughably unprepared to handle a situation like that. None of us are certain how we will react. None of us are certain we will know what to do. None of us are certain what it will do to our faith in a God who promises good gifts to His children. Nor is certainty going to make those situations easier. Sure, it can promise, like every idol does, to get us through, but it won’t. Its lies are cheap. All that certainty will do is separate us from ourselves. Holding on to the idol of certainty with a vise-like grip will cost us our humanity, our emotions, our questions, and our hope. Faith in Jesus is not based on empirical evidence. It’s based on a relationship. Within a relationship, trust is more important than certainty. 1. Huber, “Why Did the Schaibles Let Their Children Die?” Excerpted with permission from More Than You Can Handle by Nate Pyle, copyright Nathan Pyle.

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Your Turn

If you aren’t certain, you are in good company. If you don’t know what lies ahead, welcome to the club. If you’re wrestling with doubt and feel completely unprepared for what’s to come, you have Christian brothers and sisters around you in the exact same boat. It’s our relationship with Jesus, the sureness of Him, that counts. Not certainty and fearlessness. Come share your thoughts on doubt and questions on our blog. We would love to hear your story! ~ Devotionals Daily