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saltintheseaa · 1 year

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The Sparrow, a review:

My main issue with this book is it assumes the colonialist white savior mindset which approves of the missionaries’ morals as pure, and suggests that God’s inexplicable betrayal was the only reason Sandoz fucked up so badly. The book implies that were it not for God choosing to torment Sandoz, the alien mission would have gone smoothly. But that is soooo not the case.

First- the alien anthropology in this book is too shallow. The book and the missionaries themselves assume they know everything about the Runa. Apparently, the Runa are just naturally less intelligent and can’t be interacted with as humanity’s equals. But that’s exactly the wrong perspective to approach/describe/create a foreign culture. You cannot establish a hierarchy of dumb/intelligent, primitive/civilized, etc— anything which assumes the superiority of one group over the other. They’re merely different, is all, neither is better or smarter or more moral than the other. You must approach with humility, with the intent to learn, not with the assumption that they are the ignorant ones who must be taught. Because they’re the ones with the knowledge of their world’s moral and social intricacies, not you.

The vapidity of the alien worldbuilding made more sense when I learned that Russell wrote this book because she was asking herself… “What if Columbus had good intentions? What if… Europeans’ rape, pillage, murder and destruction of indigenous Americans in 1492 was good, actually??”

It was never actually about aliens. If you posit that the Runa represent the indigenous peoples of Latin America- part of a long literary tradition of equating POC with animals- the racism reveals itself. The aliens aren’t a real culture. They are a convenient symbol for indigenous people, for the questions Russell is asking herself. Russell is not actually seriously thinking about the indigenous peoples’ perspective. She’s just concerned with the missionaries. The indigenous Americans are not human to her.

Russell is clearly trying to say *something* with race in the book. Emilio is Spanish and Taino, he’s descended from the colonizer and the colonized both. He’s coming to Rakhat fully cognizant of the moral and historical implications of doing so, and he genuinely believes he can overcome that past. It’s also notable that Sofia, whose people were ousted from their homeland by the Spanish, is the crew member who resists the Jana’ata most forcefully.

But again it doesn’t work, in fact it comes across as extremely insensitive because Russell is writing from the wrong perspective. She doesn’t actually understand or empathize with colonized peoples because she still agrees with the missionaries’ goals. She fails to understand that imposing one’s own worldview, one’s own principles, on another person can be an act of violence in and of itself. So, eventually, Sofia’s rebellion just comes across as white savior-ism.

But! Despite everything I just listed, I liked this book. A lot. First, I really appreciated Russell’s writing style. It’s simple but full of clarity, and in intense moments it becomes astonishingly lyrical and poetic. I will not forget the sentence “I stood naked before God, and I was raped” for a long long time.

Secondly, the central question of the book is so fascinating. What if the principles you live by, your personal creed that saved your life and enriches your spirit and has let you do so much good, the essence of all the goodness in your soul— what if that beautiful life-saving morality became the weapon which causes unbelievable pain and destruction, for both yourself and others? What if your moral truth is wrong? What a terrifying possibility to confront. What an impossible truth to swallow. Especially when a messianic figure must ask himself that question— what are the answers except nihilism or madness?

In this way the reader’s faith is also tested. Will their belief sustain itself under this question?

Unfortunately that central question is weakened by the fact that Emilio is not approaching with pure intentions. Because Christianity and Catholicism and missionaries have an objective in mind— conversion— which inevitably corrupts their interactions with the aliens.

At the end of the book, the Father General posits that Emilio’s suffering has brought him even closer to God— that God may be that wisdom gained from disillusionment after unimaginable trials of pain. After all of one’s beliefs and morals have been stripped away, God is what is left. (The Aeschylus quote summarizes it better than I did.) That conclusion would be so much more convincing, though, if Sandoz’ mistakes hadn’t been so obvious. But because, again, Russell is writing from the wrong perspective, the Father General’s conclusion rings hollow.

The actual, accidental moral the story presents is: Please learn more about indigenous cultures and societies before forcing your own beliefs upon them. Never assume you know better than they do, refrain from action until you’ve learned as much as you can, and accept the knowledge you are given.

Also— if that is who God truly is, then why should we worship him? What is so good about God that justifies Emilio’s unimaginable suffering? There’s a frightening and deeply sinister and almost insane logic in Christianity, based on their idea of Heaven, that the end justifies all the means. (Rather than a reward for a virtuous life, it seems that the idea of Heaven became the Catholic Church’s justification of inequality and a tool to keep peasants and colonized peoples complacent.) Regardless of that digression— I disagree. There’s nothing inherently beautiful about suffering, and any faith which believes that such suffering is necessary to achieve divinity is really just desperately trying to rationalize that suffering. To say, It was worth it, because Heaven awaits. But sometimes pain is just pain. It doesn’t bring you closer or further away from God. It just is. Perhaps God lies in that realization, that acceptance, that resignation? Or is the Father General correct, and there is something in that divinity that really does justify all of Emilio’s pain?

But— even still— The Sparrow was a great first read. Wanting to know what happened, what caused Emilio’s downfall, and my mounting slithering horror as I approached closer and closer to the truth— genuinely impactful, genuinely memorable. And I really loved Emilio as a character, both before and after the mission. Russell’s writing made me feel so much compassion for him.

The flaws of this book are the same flaws inherent to Christianity and Catholicism, which is an impressively incisive achievement even if it wasn’t intentional. I don’t regret reading this book, and I will be thinking about it long after I post this review.

#the sparrow #book review #mary doria russell #diary #i would loveee to talk abt this #idk if anyone has read this book here tho #but plz don’t cancel me if u have #i sound so sure of everything here but i’m just writing down my thoughts #there are so many lenses to view this book through this is just my less than charitable reading of it

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musette22 · 3 years

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Local museum volunteer Chris explaining all the items and history facts to teacher Sebastian and his 20 kids on a school trip or to single dad Sebastian and his twins (one who is really into it and ask a lot of "but why?" And the other one who just sticks his fingers up his nose and yawns lmao)

Okay so I was just on a walk and I started thinking about this ask again (I am so so so sorry for how long it took me to reply to this, I suck wow) because I couldn’t get that new pic of Seb looking like a literal DILF out of my head, but I couldn’t remember the specifics so what came out is slightly different from what you suggested but not much – hope you still like it (I personally screamed into my fist multiples times while thinking about this – I’m furious at how cute this little scenario is, thank you so so much for this!)

Disclaimer: I literally wrote this just now so it’s unbeta’d and probably riddled with nonsense, but I hope you guys like nonetheless! <3

*********************

“Hi, guys! Welcome to the Concord Museum. My name is Chris and I’ll be your guide this afternoon.”

Chris eyes the little family – a father and two young kids – standing in front of him in the entrance hall of the bite-sized museum, then makes a show of looking around the otherwise empty hall. “Seems like it’s a quiet one today, so you’ll have me all to yourself!”

The father smiles, his sparkling, blue-grey eyes crinkling in the corners in a way that Chris shouldn’t be thinking of as ‘adorable’, but does nonetheless.

“Fantastic,” the man says warmly. “It’s nice to meet you, Chris. This is Margot,” – he gestures to the girl of about eight standing next to him – “and this little guy here is David,” he adds, lightly bouncing the three or four-year-old, curly haired boy on his hip. David gives Chris a wide eyed look before promptly burying his face in his father’s neck. “He’s a little shy,” the dad says fondly.

“That’s fine,” Chris tells them. With a smile, he ducks his head to try and catch David’s eye. “You’re not the only one, kiddo. I’m a little shy myself sometimes, you know.”

“I’m not shy,” Margot pipes up.

“No,” her dad agrees with a chuckle, “you certainly are not.”

Chris turns his eyes back to their father’s face. “And your name..?”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” the man says, “I’m Sebastian.” He holds out his hand for Chris to shake, warm and dry with long, elegant fingers that fit nicely against Chris’s own, studier ones.

Sebastian, Chris thinks. Perfect name for a perfect guy. The term ‘DILF’ flashes unbidden through Chris’s mind – wildly inappropriate, given the circumstances, but oh so accurate. Sebastian has a sweet, charming smile, incredible bone structure, and dark, wavy hair, swept up in a quiff-like style that manages to make him look both sophisticated and a little boyish at the same time. There’s a hint of grey at his temples as well as in his beard that has Chris placing him at maybe two or three years older than himself.

“New York?” Chris guesses, as he reluctantly lets go of Sebastian’s hand.

“That’s right,” Sebastian nods. “Well, formerly, anyway. We just moved to the area, actually.”

“Oh, really? What brought you all the way out here?”

Sebastian runs a hand through his hair; a nervous habit, perhaps. “Oh, um. My ex-wife got a job in Boston last year, and I didn’t want to be too far from her and the kids, so I decided to follow suit. Only moved down here last month. This is my first full weekend with these guys at my new place, so I thought I’d take them out to do something cultural, learn a little about the local history, y’know?”

“Well, we’ve got plenty of that here,” Chris assures him. “In fact,” he adds sheepishly, “that’s kinda all we've got.”

Sebastian laughs, causing Chris’s brain to glitch, which is probably why the next thing that comes out of his mouth is – “Divorce, huh? I’m sorry, that must’ve been tough.”

When Sebastian doesn’t answer straight away, Chris wants to kick himself for running his big, stupid mouth. As usual. “I’m sorry,” he apologizes hastily. “That’s none of my business. Just tryin’ to make small talk, but I always seem to forget I’m really bad at that. Just forget I said anything.”

“No, no, it’s fine,” Sebastian assures him, flashing Chris a quick smile. “Thank you. These things are never easy, but it’s better this way, you know?”

“They’re not fighting or anything,” Margot chimes in again, from a few feet below. “Mommy and daddy only got divorced because mommy’s a girl and daddy likes boys better than girls. Right, daddy?"

Well. Chris tries not to be too obvious about glancing at Sebastian’s face to see his reaction to that bombshell his daughter just dropped, but he’s not sure how well he manages.

Sebastian closes his eyes for a moment as if praying for strength. “That's right, sweetheart,” he says with a grimace. “But I'm sure Chris doesn't need to hear about all that."

Chris begs to differ – he’s actually extremely interested in hearing about all this, but before he has a chance to say anything in reply, Margot squares her jaw and crosses her football jersey-clad arms.

“Why not?” she asks defiantly. “There’s nothing wrong with that. Some girls just like girls and some boys like boys, it’s totally normal. It’s not prola- probu –" She sighs in frustration, looking up at her dad, who’s watching her with something like pride on his handsome face.

“Problematic?”

“Yeah,” Margot concurs, “not probametic.”

Chris hums in agreement. “It’s not, you’re absolutely right. I’ll tell you what,” he tells her conspiratorially, “I happen to like boys better, too.”

Margot’s eyebrows shoot up in surprise. “You do?”

“I do.”

Suddenly, Margot’s little face lights up, her shrewd eyes flitting to her dad’s face for a second, then back to Chris. “Do you like my dad?”

“Margot,” Sebastian cuts in, a hint of exasperation in his tone. “That’s enough, honey.” When he tuns back to Chris to give him an apologetic look, Chris can’t help but notice the slight blush coloring his cheeks. “I’m sorry about that. She’s gotten it into her head that she needs to find me the perfect man ASAP, or I’ll waste away or something.”

Chris laughs, throwing back his head in genuine mirth. “Don’t worry about it. It’s fine,” he assures them, then claps his hands together to change the precarious subject. “So, who’s ready to learn a little bit about what living in Concord was like over a hundred years ago?”

******

Chris always enjoys volunteering at the museum – it’s nice to give something back to the community that’s been his home for his entire life, and to chat to visitors from all over who have come to visit the land of Little Women, among other things – but what Chris likes best is when he gets to show kids around the place. Some of them need to be won over (after all, a dusty old museum isn’t quite as exciting as a trip to Disney World), but others are instantly captivated by the strange objects and old-timey atmosphere – Sebastian’s kids, fortunately, seem to fall in the latter category.

There’s one room in particular that’s an invariably a favorite with kids – the one that houses the old children’s toys. Trains, dolls and dollhouses, most of them made from wood, all arranged in a colorful parade, with a few screens set up in front of the glass display cases on which kids can watch animations of the toys being used. To Chris’s delight, Margot and David are both immediately taken with the display, David pressing his nose against the glass while Margot fires off question after question that Chris answers patiently and to the best of his ability.

“You sure know a lot about them,” Sebastian remarks, not without a hint of admiration, once Chris has finished explaining the mechanics of the miniature train set.

“Ah.” Chris rubs the back of his neck. “Yeah, I guess you could say I’m something of a toy enthusiast myself. I’ve actually got a carpentry workshop – that’s my real job,” he explains. “I’m just a volunteer here – and I dabble in some toy making sometimes, too.”

Sebastian’s eyes widen. “You’re kidding. I used to want to be a toy maker when I was a kid, you know,” he says wistfully. “Probably just saw Pinocchio one too many times, but it just seemed like the best job in the world to me, at the time.”

“It kinda is,” Chris grins at Sebastian, getting lost in his dancing grey eyes for a moment. “So what did you end up doing for a living, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“I’m a journalist. I love it, don’t get me wrong. It’s enriching, challenging. But there’s just something about working with your hands, creating something tangible, something useful…”

“Yeah, I know what you mean,” Chris nods. He bites his lip, hesitating for just a moment before deciding to bite the bullet. “Hey, I don’t know if you guys have plans after this, but my shift ends in a few minutes. I live pretty close, maybe a ten minute drive – if you want, I could show you my workshop? Maybe the kids can try out some of the things I’ve been working on, see if they’re actually any fun to play with?”

There’s an excited collective gasp from the kids, both of them immediately turning big, hopeful eyes on their father. “Oh, daddy,” Margot pleads, tugging on his sleeve. “Can we go see the workshop, pleaaase?”

Chris tries to ignore the way his stomach drops when Sebastian visibly hesitates.

“I don’t know, guys.” Sebastian looks back at Chris. “I don't want to intrude. It’s almost dinner time on a Saturday. I’m sure you’ve got plans, maybe with your partner..?”

Oh, Chris thinks, chest expanding with hope. He shakes his head. “No partner,” he says, holding Sebastian’s gaze. “Just a dog.”

“A dog?” Margot squeals. “Oh my god, daddy, he’s got a dog. We have to go.”

Sebastian chuckles, rolling his eyes. "They've been hounding me about a dog for months, excuse the pun. I want one too, but I'm just not sure I'm home enough.”

Chris nods sympathetically. “Yeah, it can be tricky if you work full-time, but there’s usually a solution for this kind of thing, in my experience.”

“What’s your dog’s name?” Margot interrupts, bouncing excitedly on the balls of her feet.

“He’s called Dodger,” Chris tells her, unable to keep the pride out of his voice as he talks about his beloved, four legged-rescue.

From Sebastian’s other side, a small voice suddenly joins in. “Like the one from Oliver?” asks David. His big, brown eyes are wide as he stares up at Chris.

“That’s right,” Chris confirms, dropping to his haunches to level the playing field a little. “Exactly like the one from Oliver. You like that movie, huh?”

David nods, looping one arm around one of his dad’s long legs while clearly fighting the urge to hide behind him completely. “It’s my favorite,” he mutters, then quickly sticks his thumb in his mouth to signal the end of the conversation.

“Really?” Chris asks, beaming at him. “It’s my favorite, too!”

David actually smiles at that, doing an excited little wiggle on the spot. “Daddy, can we go see Dodger, please?” he asks his dad, not bothering to remove his thumb from his mouth.

From his spot on the floor, Chris looks up Sebastian too, probably looking just as hopeful as the kids are – maybe even more so.

Smiling, Sebastian shakes his head. “Sure, buddy,” he laughs, ruffling David’s hair. “How could I resist all these cute little faces, huh?”

There’s a chorus of cheers from the kids that gives Chris a much-needed moment to recover from the euphoria of hearing Sebastian call him cute. Well, sort of.

“Alright,” Chris says, getting to his feet again. “I’ll just go grab my things. Meet you guys in the parking lot?”

“Sounds good.”

Chris nods and is about to head in the direction of the staff room, when Sebastian halts him with a hand on his arm. Chris stops in his tracks, swallowing as he tears his gaze away from Sebastian’s elegant hand on his bicep, back to his face.

“Thank you,” Sebastian says, giving him a look from under his eyelashes that can only be described as coy. “I really appreciate this, you know.”

Holding Sebastian’s gaze, Chris lifts a hand to cover Sebastian’s with his own, giving it a quick squeeze. “It’s my pleasure,” he replies honestly. “Trust me.”

Smiling, Sebastian bites his lip, no doubt noticing the way Chris’s eyes flicker down to his mouth when he does. “I do.”

Chris’s foolishly romantic heart can’t help but skip a beat.

“See,” Margot says suddenly from beside them, breaking the moment and sounding awfully smug about it, too. “Not prolametic at all.”

Chris barks out a laugh while Sebastian covers his eyes with his hand. “Whatever you do, never have kids.”

“Oh, I dunno,” Chris chuckles, giving Margot a wink and David’s hair a quick ruffle. “I kinda like yours.”

Sebastian clears his throat. “Alright, guys. Let’s go find your jackets and we’ll go see what Chris has in store for us, huh?”

#evanstan #rpf #kid fic #minnie answers #my fic #my writing #Anonymous

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vrishchikawrites · 3 years

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I see a lot of people complaining abt how the wen remnants didn't get any justice, but tbh I love the book bc of it. Like, it would be so satisfying to see it, but it would completely break my immersion in the story, just like if people suddenly punished YZY for WWX's treatment. Satisfying, yes. But so unrealistic.

YZY wouldn't be imprisoned for abusing an orphan she took in, even if everyone thought she was awful, bc the classicism was too strong. For that to happen, the author would've to introduce a society where that was possible from the beginning, or show a change that would support it. Otherwise, it would sound like 'and everyone clapped' stories.

Stories where everyone ends up happy and in a relationship, where everyone suddenly has a change of heart so strong that they ignore anything else to deliver a perfect outcome for the MC, those just read as bad fanfic, for me, and what I love the most abt MXTX books is how well written they are. It feels like a real world, with real people, (even if WX are just perfect, their journeys are realistic.)

Stories with a perfect ending and with retribution for all the wrongs the MC suffered are extremely satisfying to read sometimes, but it just takes too much of my suspension of disbelieve in a way even high fantasy series don't. And the ending we got for mdzs was so perfect bc it felt real, like, it wasn't perfect, but it was happy and hopeful and felt purposeful and well thought out by the author.

sorry for the ramble, feel free to ignore (^_^;)

I agree with you. The story, itself, is very satisfying. The fact that there was no straightforward or clean-cut ending makes it very realistic but MDZS also isn't grimdark in a way that makes you rage against the plot.

But speculation, what-ifs, metas, and discussions are a part of the fannish community. That's what makes things fun. Looking at the implications of the Wen situation and how it fits into the story somehow enriches MDZS, it is a deeper dive into the world MXTX built and the characters she created. Through these discussions, we're engaging and exploring a very beautiful piece of work further.

I think the complaints aren't about how MXTX wrote the plot or how the Wen situation should have been handled differently. They're more about fans understanding the nuance of the situation.

I feel like the criticism isn't directed at the book or plot, but at the characters and the world within the book.

Which is, quite honestly, a great deal of fun.

What makes fanfiction so great is that we don't need to write it with the same realism that we expect from novels. The rules are different here. Fanfiction is about satisfaction, what satisfies you, what satisfies the readers. It is about wish-fulfillment. Things that you know won't happen in canon can happen in fanfics. That's probably why I rarely call any fanfic bad fanfic (unless they are bad by objective standards like writing quality, errors, formatting, etc). Because ultimately, it is all about exploring what is already there and creating tiny little universes that tick all of the boxes for us.

So yes, I agree with you about how Wens and other characters were handled in canon. And I love that we end up discussing just how unjust it was regardless.

#reader asks

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waumpel · 4 years

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ADHD STUDY TIPS

I have adhd. I'm taking all online classes this semester for college. Somehow, I'm not failing. Here's what I do that works for me!

1. I have an alarm that makes me do math every morning to turn it off, it's called Alarmy! 📚

2. It also plays a different loud sound every day from random-- I have several hundred(?) ringtones downloaded from Zedge, things like songs from shows I like or Pokemon cries or MBMBAM lines, and this helps me wake up to a different sound I'm bound to like which my brain can't get used to (and then ignore). I highly suggest godzilla roars if you need to be startled awake. 📚

3. This is SUPER HARD but I always try to force myself to sit up in bed when I'm turning off my alarm or checking my phone or whatever, so I'm not tempted to pass out again. I also like to get up and loudly tell my cats "good morning" so I wake us both up 📚

4. PLEASE STOP EATING CEREAL AND BAGELS AND STUFF. You would not BELIEVE the difference it makes when you eat things like fruits and eggs in the morning. NO MORE 10AM NAPS, I'M WATCHING YOU 📚

5. I literally schedule in Duolingo time. If you aren't learning a language you can do some other enriching activity like this, idk. I force myself to do it on my computer, not phone, so I can't lay down in bed when I'm doin it. I have a 101-day streak!! 📚

6. ik this isn't available to everyone but SPACE MATTERS SO MUCH!! I got a gaming desk that we put in our living room and I do ALL of my homework there. I also got a second monitor for my laptop with is SOOOO important if you're multitasking (and we all are, bc we're adhders ibdusvcjkn) 📚

7. HAND WRITE YOUR NOTES!!! I know this is super hard for many people-- I have carpal tunnel so I get it lmao. If you can't, at least type them. YOU THINK YOU CAN MEMORIZE INFO BUT YOU'RE WRONG!! Please write as much as you can i swear it will change ur life 📚

8. COLOURED! PENS!!! These changed the game for me y'all. I take all my notes in at least 2 colours, and I cycle through them a lot. My favs are Pilot Frixions because u can erase them :) (the highlighters are epic too) 📚

9. Make your space fun, but NOT DISTRACTING. I have a plant (his name is Yoshi) and a desk Godzilla (his name is Godzilla) on my desk, but they're out of the way so I can't zone out starin at em. But also, when I'm bored outta my gourd, I can smile at Yoshi and tell him how my day is goin :] 📚

10. SNACKING BAD *BUT*... sometimes i do it anyway... i try to associate certain foods with subjects, like I eat cocoa M&Ms (which are awesome) when I'm reading my Kaqchikel textbook. On the upside, I think it helps me recall Kaqchikel better? but also the language makes me crave mnms adkldigurvn 📚

11. LISTEN TO... CERTAIN MUSIC. I have learned that music with words, even in LANGS I DO NOT KNOW, is HELL for my adhd. Right now I'm listening to stuff like "Pokemon and Chill" (lofi album on YT), Studio Ghibli violin covers, and Night on Bald Mountain 5x on repeat ibjnvc.... I highly suggest songs/videos that are, like, 20+ minutes or else you'll get distracted with the constant change. Also, that No One's Around To Help 1hr vid is REALLY REPETITIVE and therefore PERFECT for when I'm reading textbooks. 📚

12. EVERY NIGHT... i make a super detailed timetable schedule for the next day, down to the half hour. I don't always follow it but it's a really good reminder of what I gotta do. I write it on a whiteboard but sometimes I also write it on a sticky note and on social media so I don't forget. To do lists are so epic you guys 📚

13. THIS HAS SAVED MY L I F E: at the beginning of the semester I looked at ALL of my syllabi and wrote down EVERY daily task, test, homework, etc BY DATE. this is essentially a premade to do list EVERY DAY for MONTHS and oh my gosh it is the best thing I have ever done. 📚

14. I use the Forest app to track my productivity AND lock me out of apps ndsjv... podomoro timers work well too!!! 📚

15. Ok so for me this is like... a religious thing bc my Patron (my God) is a deity of fire AND working, but I like to light a candle (scented like FALL!!) and do a little prayer on it and I have it next to me when I'm workin on terrible, terrible homework. It helps me feel like my Patron is here with me, but also it’s GREAT for grounding and I can just kinda. Stare blankly at the flame and then get back to tryin to focus. 📚

16. Please drink water lmao, to make sure I drink enough I set little goals like "take a sip after every paragraph you read" 📚

17. Each of my classes has a different coloured notebook which I'm consistent with! Like, all my German notebooks through the years have been green! Also I take notes w green pens a lot in Deutsch 📚

18. HELLA STICKY NOTES... I put em on the bottom of my monitor, on a shelf by my desk, in my books as bookmarks (bad idea lol), on Yoshi. When I wanna go look up something random but I need to focus, I like to write it down on sticky notes to look at later. 📚

19. I'm the most annoying student ever. I like to do a bunch of assignments at once so I don't have to budget my time later, so I'll turn in like 5 things in an hour and then NOTHING for a week. ALSO i email my teachers constantly if I have any questions at all. I work at a pace that works for me!!! 📚

20. I turn off my sound on my phone until I'm done with work bc otherwise I WILL open that notification 📚

22. I make a loooot of chai (and also some overpriced herbal teas). It makes me feel fancy, it's better for me than coffee, and it helps me ground and focus! Plus it's a samefood! 📚

23. Hyperfixating on classic literature would be awesome, except I'm hyperfixating on Gothic and I'm taking a lit class for More Than Just Gothic. But I'm figuring out ways to connect them, which is really helpful, cause I get to enjoy my hyperfixation while learning for school! PLZ TRY TO DO THIS (harder when you're hyperfixating on godzilla :pensivecowboy:) 📚

21. When I have extra time I write my notes like I'm plannin to put em on Tumblr and taggin em as #darkacademia... I never post my notes, but when they look nice it's easier for me to look over em later. Plus it takes me longer to write so I remember it a lil better!! 📚

24. I'm in an awesome academia + studyspo server!! We sometimes study together on call and it's SUCH a good motivator! Here's an invite link if u wanna join, we are nice https://discord.gg/fjuX7TN (this wasn’t meant to be a promo post I just really like this group lol) 📚

OK I hope that helps!!! Feel free to add more if you have any tips that work for you :) Neurotypicals, feel free to RB respectfully!

(pics are: syllabus list, daily schedule, Yoshi the plant, and some fancy notes)

#studyspo #studying #studyblr #study breaks #study tips #study motivation #adhd #adhd study tips #adhd studyblr #long post #dark acadamia aesthetic #light academia #dark academia #grey academia #chaotic academia #actually neurodiverse #actuallynd #academia

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vital-information · 2 years

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“When it comes to Jane, so many images have been danced before us, so rich, so vivid, so prettily presented. They’ve been seared onto our retinas in the sweaty darkness of a cinema, and the aftereffect remains, a shadow on top of everything we look at subsequently.

It’s hard; it requires an effort for most readers to blink those images away, to be able to see Edward Ferrars cutting up a scissor case (a scene that arguably carries a strong suggestion of sexual violence) rather than the 1990s heartthrob Hugh Grant nervously rearranging the china ornaments on the mantelpiece. By the time you’ve seen Colin-Firth-as-Mr.-Darcy poised to dive into a lake 50 times, it’s made a synaptic pathway in your brain. Indeed, I’d question whether we can get away from that, certainly how we do.

And this ought to concern us, because a lot of the images—like the images on the banknote—are simplistic, and some of them are plain wrong. Pemberley isn’t on the scale of the great ducal mansion at Chatsworth; Captain Wentworth doesn’t buy Kellynch Hall for Anne as a wedding present at the end of Persuasion; the environs of Highbury, the setting for Emma, aren’t a golden pastoral idyll. We have, really, very little reason to believe that Jane was in love with Tom Lefroy. But each image colors our understanding in some way or another, from Henry Austen’s careful portrait of his sister as an accidental author to Curtis Sittenfeld’s updated Pride and Prejudice, set in suburban Cincinnati.

The effect of all of them together is to make us read novels that aren’t actually there.

In the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, the then secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, famously suggested that there were three classes of knowledge. There were known knowns—things you know you know. There were known unknowns—things you know you don’t know. And there were unknown unknowns—things you don’t know you don’t know. I would suggest that when dealing with someone like Jane Austen, we could add another, and more dangerous, class of knowledge; what might be termed the unknown knowns—things we don’t actually know but think we do.

If we want to be the best readers of Jane’s novels that we can be, the readers that she hoped for, then we have to take her seriously. We can’t make the mistake that the publisher Crosby made and let our eyes slide over what doesn’t seem to be important. We can’t shrug off apparent contradictions or look only for confirmation of what we think we already know. We have to read, and we have to read carefully, because Jane had to write carefully, because she was a woman and because she was living through a time when ideas both scared and excited people.

And once we read like this, we start to see her novels in an entirely new light. Not an undifferentiated procession of witty, ironical stories about romance and drawing rooms, but books in which an authoress reflects back to her readers their world as it really is—complicated, messy, filled with error and injustice. This is a world in which parents and guardians can be stupid and selfish; in which the Church ignores the needs of the faithful; in which landowners and magistrates—the people with local power—are eager to enrich themselves even when that means driving the poorest into criminality. Jane’s novels, in truth, are as revolutionary, at their heart, as anything that Wollstonecraft or Tom Paine wrote. But by and large, they’re so cleverly crafted that unless readers are looking in the right places—reading them in the right way—they simply won’t understand.

Jane wasn’t a genius—inspired, unthinking; she was an artist. She compared herself to a miniature painter; in her work every stroke of the brush, every word, every character name and every line of poetry quoted, every location, matters.

It’s here, in the novels, that we find Jane—what there is of her to find, after all these years, after all her family’s efforts at concealment. It’s here we find a clever woman, clear-sighted, a woman “of information,” who knew what was going on in the world and what she thought about it.”

— Helena Kelly, “The Many Ways in Which We Are Wrong about Jane Austen: Lies, Damn Lies, and Literary Scholarship”

#jane austen

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yaboylevi · 3 years

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Hi! I love ur blog, especially ur Snk Metas and Ereri metas. What are your thoughts on the whole “Eren has always been like this” (always been evil or capable of great evils like genocide) that a lot of people seem to agree on? I’ve always had a hard time believing in that idea because we’ve been shown multiple times that Eren is capable of sympathy and empathy, so to say he’s ALWAYS been like this is wrong.

Hi! Thank you!!

Looking through my snk 121 tag I found that I have already received similar questions, so I’m gonna link one here if you want the short version of it. Even if it was something I wrote up right after the chapter was out, it’s not like my opinion has changed much... more like, my faith in Isayama writing a decent conclusion and explanation in regards to Eren has plummeted in the past year and a half.

But anyway, now we have some new information pertaining Eren, so I feel like I can add more on this moment and my take on it in light of such new perspective.

Let me preface this with: Eren hates what he’s doing, is despising every second, was scared of his future visions, often paralyzed, desperate to find a better solution than this, because he knows - let me repeat it - HE KNOWS this is horrifying. We had hints throughtout the story, but many have ignored them. For me, Eren going through grief and apologizing for something he hadn’t even done yet in chapters 131 was no shocker at all, but I guess some people may have actually been surprised, I don’t know. It was right there since the Marley arc and his breakdown over Sasha, but many have completely misinterpreted that scene, denying it was desperation that he was feeling, so it was nice to finally have confirmation. Kinda.

However, you know, Isayama doesn’t seem to have picked a side on his characterization of Eren. Or maybe there is still something that’s concealed, because everything we have seen, isn’t evething that has happened, and it doesn’t explain yet some things about Eren and, relevant to this post, why Eren has decided to give up and give in to his future self’s memories of destruction. I’m sorry, but Eren believing “there is no other way, other than killing the whole world’s population, because the future cannot be changed” due to some memories is not gonna cut it, especially because we haven’t seen him fight too hard against it. In my opinion, at least. Or maybe he did, but we haven’t been shown.

The most hopeful part of my heart wishes he is already trying to change things, in a very roundabout and secret way, but the tired and logical part is done hoping. After all, Eren is alternating between being hellbent on going through with rumbling the world, and being absolutely horrified by it. I’ve been getting whiplash every month for a couple of years now.

As for your actual question, and that line during the Paths Time Travel...

Let’s start from here, shall we? That whole conversation with Zeke in Paths was to Zeke what chapter 112 was to Mikasa and Armin, imo. Chapter 121, huh, same numbers...but anyways. I think I have already wrote it somewhere, but I believe Eren lied, and purposely hurt Zeke. To make him, and Mikasa and Armin, realize something and act accordingly, maybe against Eren himself.

In Mikasa’s case, the realization was gradual since then, because Eren’s lies kickstarted it immediately. In Armin’s case, I think we still haven’t seen the full potential of it, though it may come next chapter - and I mean the “You were influenced by Bertolt, an enemy” angle. I am surprised Armin hasn’t followed this reasoning in regards to Eren, who has three titans within him, none of them particularly allied with Paradis. We left Armin seeing Bertolt, who is, in turn, watching him. I wonder if a conversation won’t happen right off the bat in chapter 136.

Anyhow, Eren, in chapter 112, also very much hit Armin and Mikasa where it hurt them the most - which is the same thing he did to Zeke here, bringing up his hate for Grisha and how it was the only think really fuelling him, and went through all the effort of making him reconcile with Grisha. Mmm, sus. Am I the only one feeling it’s sus??? I really have to wonder if he doesn’t kind of want/need Zeke to stop him, just like I believe he did with Armin and Mikasa. After all, there was no need to antagonize them and make them have reasons to stop caring for him, if he didn’t want to be stopped.

So, if it wasn’t already clear, Eren is a big liar, and he’s good at it if you don’t know him (and Zeke, Armin, and Mikasa have proven they don’t know or understand him very well at times). His acting skills have been shown all the way back in the cabin scene when he was 8 years old and tricked those traffickers.

There is another layer to these lies that I’d like to touch upon, though.

The line you were inquiring about feels exactly like his “I am free” in chapter 112. He sounds so sure, but it is a freaking lie.

See how both Armin and Mikasa are confused by such a bold, out-of-the-blue statement, the same way Zeke asks Eren “Since birth?” because, like, what is that all even about?

Eren has been feeling trapped in his own future memories to the point that his freedom of choice even existing anymore has become a big question mark. There is no freedom in following the path you were shown.

Eren’s urge to save someone from “having their freedom solen” by “physically assaulting the perpetrators first” has never, ever meant that he was willing to or okay with sacrificing innocents. Quite the opposite, in fact. There have been whole arcs about that. About Eren freaking out over people dying for him, refusing to sacrifice friends for the bigger picture, grieving for or sympathizing with innocents losing their lives or having them destroyed by some bigger threat. That has not changed.

So the big question remains: Why?

With these outrageous and confident statements about himself, I don’t think Eren is merely lying to his interlocutor to change their perception of him. I think he is lying to himself as well in the meantime. It looks like it did the trick, or not - based on how you want to interpret it. He really has been dissociating hard during his rampage.

But it all depends on what Isayama's angle is with Eren. In 112 Eren seemed to believe his “I am free” statement because he had an instant reaction to Armin challenging it. At the same time, now that we also have chapter 130-131 to enrich our reading, there is no way Eren felt free into the choices he made after hearing Willy’s declaration of war. He saw a terrifying future, he hoped against hope that it would change, but felt powerless and gutted and desperate that all pointed to such a future being unchangeable. So I do wonder if maybe he didn’t end up lying to himself - subconsciously or not - that he is free... and that he is always been this way - a cold-blooded murderer who did it all for justice.

Zoom in on Eren forlornly watching himself as a kid show pure kindess to a girl who just went through the most traumatizing experience in her life.

For the matter, I don’t believe Eren “has always been this way”. I actually don’t believe he’s ever been that way. I don’t know why many(?) people just accept whatever Eren says at face value, ignoring all context surronding it.

As I posted very recently, it doesn’t make sense for Eren to go from one extreme to the other without a better excuse, or explanation, or a more believable writing of it...or a plot twist that I guess I will wait for for another 4 months:

Eren came to realize that outside the walls people are just...well, people. There are good ones everywhere, people who suffered just like him, people who deserve better, certainly don’t deserve to be caught up in the Rumbling, people who have lives, children, moms, loved ones. This is highlighted again in chapter 131, because maybe, when Eren brought it up in the basement with Falco and Reiner, people didn’t think he was being genuine. So Isayama shows us again that Eren truly believed that.

And yet, the chapter before, Eren put those very same people on the same level of Titans when he used to think Titans were scum, a nightmare sent to eat them alive, because he addressed them with “匹”, a derogatory counter when applied to people, because it is usually used for small animals.

The parallel to how he used to feel towards Titans is smacked in our faces, because in Japanese, it’s the same exact line. He now feels that way about people.

...What?

It doesn’t make sense, right?

Because really, the same way Eren’s first impulse in Marley was to save Ramzi when he was being beaten up (and threatened with a worse fate than some bruises), the same way Eren helped him regardless and again went against 3 full-grown men, it’s the same way Eren rushed to Mikasa’s rescue when he didn’t even know her... or the same way he pushed himself into a Titan’s mouth just to save Armin. it doesn’t come from a sentiment of “I need to punish these monsters because they are threatening me”. It comes from a natural, intrinsic need to help and save others. It is deeply saddening that at the end of this journey, with Ramzi, he just feels like this natural predisposition of his is just a fake and turns him into a hypocrite.

So for Eren to say he has always been that way while looking at his 8 years old self stabbing a human trafficker in the chest to save a little girl to try and explain why he’s killing innocent people who happens to be living alongside “the bad guys” is a false equivalence. Either it’s a lie Eren tells himself and to Zeke to make both of them believe this is what Eren is, and has always been, and there is nothing they could do to prevent it - in a sort of twisted liberation from guilt because “if I was always like this, then you and I both shouldn’t have expected anything different”...

...or it’s Isayama’s failed attempt at presenting a theoretical concept he liked and talked about in interviews, suddenly turning Eren into a poster boy for it and canceling previous sides of Eren’s complexity as a character. I would like to believe Isayama hasn’t lost his magic touch this badly, but every day I’m less sure of it.

My opinion, for what is worth, is that that line you quoted is something he said to trick Zeke into detaching himself from Eren and going against him - breaking the bonds of love all around him has been a very deliberate choice Eren has made post time-skip - and at the same time it’s something Eren is trying to believe himself, in a desperate attempt at explaining to his own conscience that he was destined to bring such destruction, that he was always capable of it, and that there is a sort of justice in it where there isn’t. And he knows, deep down. That’s why he dissociates in the end.

In a very twisted, self-deprecating way, Eren is a liar to everyone, himself included. He has become an unreliable narrator about himself. Eren has completely shut down because he cannot stand what he is doing.

And I would very much like to know why he gave up on trying to find a different solution, if that’s what it is that happened, and why he sounds like a different person every other scene he appears in, in the next 4 months.

#eren yeager #snk spoilers #snk meta #shingeki asks

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docholligay · 3 years

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Fic Prompt: the first time someone kissed Winston on the forehead (Overwatch)

The patient was, to use the words of the board Winston had to stand in front of, “functional.”

Lena “Tracer” Oxton was expected to die of her injuries, and then didn’t. She was expected to spend the rest of her life catatonic, but she neglected to do that, as well. Four months out from her return from the stream of time itself, she was a bit quiet, a bit shaky, and there was little doubt that she would never be able to return to field work, but she was far more alive and far more engaged with the world than was ever expected of her.

These are the things Winston reported, along with his progress on some manner of equipment that would allow her to leave the containment unit. Dr. Zeigler--Winston had only recently gotten the slightest bit comfortable calling her Angela, no matter how she insisted--was in charge of the greater medical specifics, only some of which he understood. They presented every other week, and every other week, no matter what Winston said about his chronal device, no matter what Mercy said about Tracer’s improving tremor and complete seizure control, there was nothing but a frown and a question:

“When will she be able to tell us about the Slipstream?”

Winston had made a thousand excuses for why she couldn’t go before the board. She had bad days, sometimes, where she couldn’t do much more than lie on her little bed with her eyes closed. There was a large possibility that in trying to recount it, she could have a flashback so violent that it would steal her ability to speak again--did they not remember when she was told her father was dead? She may not remember anything at all, given how aggressively being slipped through time had attacked her nervous system.

He, of course, left out that Tracer had taken to cheerfully trying to decorate her little ‘bug jar’ with a bright duvet cover, and painting the little desk, asking to have some of her little tin airplanes sent with scraps of other decor from London, that she’d begged to have Winston ask if there was any chance at a window for her. He left out how she excitedly bounced and chose what to dress for the visit her family was allowed every few weeks, and that she chattered with them, full of life, the light in her eyes not even dimming when she tired, and leaned back against the pillows of her bed. He hadn’t lied, exactly, about her limitations, just made them rather more prominent than they seemed to be.

Winston was protecting her, was the truth of it.

It was a little stupid, he knew. Tracer greeted him brightly and talked to him all day because he was the only one nearby. She was kind and cheerful with Mercy, too, wasn’t she? She didn’t care to speak to Moira, but in fairness, Moira had suggested that letting her die and studying her body was far more valuable than expending the effort to rehabilitate her, so it was only natural there be some antipathy between them. It was silly to get too familiar simply because Tracer was a friendly person.

We’re friends, Win. ‘ope you don’t mind if I call you Win, us being such firm friends and all.”

She’d said that only last week, as they’d shared a fairly dismal Thanksgiving dinner brought over from the cafeteria. Friends. No one had, not really, ever declared themselves as such, and certainly not with a bright smile and an excited little rock of her body that he was learning meant she was quite happy. He tried not to let the threat of losing her get in the way of developing the chronal accelerator so she could leave. She had been so kind to him.

He walked into her bug jar, letting one door close behind him and the other open in front of him, preserving her time lock. She was sitting at her little desk, leg bouncing against the floor as she wrote a letter, but looked up quickly as Winston walked in, and smiled all the way into the corners of her eyes.

“Win! Afternoon, love!”

He set down a little plate in front of her, some small sandwiches and cookies that hadn’t looked too bad over in the cafeteria arranged as neatly as he could.

“Just some lunch.”

“Oh, thank you, love!” she jumped to her feet and headed over to the little electric kettle in the corner of the room, “Forgot what time it was altogether. You haven’t been in yet this morning!”

“No, I had a meeting.”

“When will she be able to tell us about the Slipstream?” It had been so impatient, the growl so evident.

She laughed. “And you sound like it was just lovely. A cup for you?”

He nodded. “That’d be great. Lena--”

“Yes?” She turned around, leaning against the tiny table she’d assembled to give herself the look of having a kitchen, more and more trying to make a tiny studio of what had only even been meant to something akin to a hospital room.

“The board...the one overseeing your...well, you--”

“Oh!” she jumped up and clapped, and then caught the edge of the chair, having made herself swoon a bit, but closed her eyes and took a deep breath, looking up and smiling again, “‘ave to be a bit more careful, but, Win, did they say I could ‘ave the window? Enrichment, right?”

He shook his head. “They didn’t say anything about the window.”

Her kettle went off and she poured two mugs, bringing over her little tin of tea bags and sugar. She gave one to Winston, then sat down on the bed and patted the space beside her. Winston stood there for a moment, thumb rubbing at the edge of the mug. He must have considered it too long, because she patted the bed again.

“Come ‘ave a sit. Something’s wrong.”

He worried for a moment about breaking her bed, but she didn’t seem inclined to take no for an answer, and she would ignore her lunch until he told her what was going on. That much he had learned, over the last weeks she had been coming into herself.

“What is it?” she looked up at him, and gently placed a hand on his knee.

Did she have any idea how strange and disarming it was, that she never flinched from him, no matter how he moved? That she touched him with as much gentleness and friendships as other human beings touched each other? Even people who respected him never looked at him like this, like they were simply having a chat and a cup of tea with a friend. She was such an unusual person, scatterbrained but bright as a penny, her sense sensitive but her will strong as iron. Winston loved her, he realized, very dearly.

“They want to talk to you.”

“Good! I’d like to have a chat with them, as well.” She took a sip of her tea. “I’d like a window, you see, even if there isn’t much to watch, and I think I’ve the right to have at least as often a call ‘ome as any enlisted, right? Not as if I’m giving away secrets or nothing, just would like to see me Nan more than once a month.”

Winston shook his head. “They want to know about the Slipstream.”

Tracer thought for a moment. “What about it? Not as if I’m ‘iding it somewhere.”

“What happened, where they can find it,” He took a drink, “How you managed to make it back.”

“Already told Ang everything I know. It’s in me medical records. Isn’t much.”

“I know. But they think...I’ll tell them you can’t, don’t worry about it.” He sat back and looked over at the grey steel wall Tracer had tried to cheer up with a few inelegant but colorful drawings, made with the colored pencils he’d brought to her. “I’ll just keep telling them the same thing.”

“Really on you, are they?” She didn’t wait for a response, but sat poker-straight and nodded. “I’ll do it. At their earliest convenience, no less. Ask me whatever they want, and I’ll answer with everything I don’t know till they’re satisfied.”

Winston shook his head. “They’ll interrogate you I think--they want to find it so badly--and then what if they….I mean, your health, they could throw you into...I don’t want you to get hurt.”

She shook her head and smiled, standing up in front of him. “And every time I got into the air might ‘ave been me last. I’m a fast-jet pilot, Win, risk is part of life, innit? Sides all that, Ang’ll be there. I go down a bit too, ‘ard, she’ll give me a bit of ‘elp. And you’ll be there,” she raised her mug, “Always an ‘elp to me, you are. Won’t let them keep bullying me friend, even if ‘e’s ‘appy enough to do it.”

There it was again. Friend. No prompting, no nothing, just her wide brown eyes sparkling, no sense of deception in them.

“Thank you for everything you’ve done for me. Can never truly repay you.”

She leaned forward, on her tiptoes, and kissed his forehead.

He’d never felt anything like it. Not from Dr. Harold, not from any of the techs or scientists who had raised them, not from anyone. It was such a casual bit of throwaway intimacy that Tracer seemed to already be moving on to the next issue at hand, picking up a ham sandwich from the try and inspecting it.

She’d forget this in the next few minutes. But Winston would remember it for the rest of his life, what it felt like to have a human being’s lips on his forehead, with no hesitation, her hand brushing back his hair, simultaneously so thoughtless and so loving, and loving because she put no effort or thought behind it. Because she simply did it and moved on to her ham sandwich.

He was glad he wasn’t built to cry, in that moment.

Tracer was his friend. He had a friend, and she was not afraid of him, and even if he built the best medical device in the world, she would leave this room but never him, not forever and not for real.

Because he had a friend.

#vaelntine's day prompts #amberlilly

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qqueenofhades · 4 years

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I was hoping you would be able to help me form a response when my family says they're sick of hearing of systemic racism and white privilege because THEY have had to work for everything and believe nothing got handed to them (true in the way they're thinking, but you know what I mean).

Welp. First, I applaud you for taking the initiative to engage in difficult conversations with your family, since the only way embedded racist ideas are going to get confronted in white society is if racist white people hear it from their friends and family. They are going to cheerily ignore protestors, academics, newsreaders, popular culture, and certainly politicians who say anything to the contrary, but it’s harder to ignore and brush aside when it’s coming from people who are directly within your own family group. They can still then ignore it, but at least you’re trying to do something that is not at all fun but which is deeply necessary, and good for you.

First, there are a few things for you to consider. Is this a case where they actually don’t know the difference, but are willing to learn, or is this essentially sealioning (where they act like they don’t know the difference, but they absolutely do, and put the emotional labor on you to extensively define and explain and educate while never intending to change their stances on anything). If it’s the former, then there is some point in engaging in dialogue with them. If it’s the latter, it’s a giant emotional trap that you are within your rights not to engage with until they signal that they’re willing to engage productively. You don’t have to educate someone who is categorically unwilling to be educated (especially when it’s often deliberate ignorance). As people like to say, Google is free, and it’s their responsibility to take the first steps to change. You can continue to talk with them, but yes, that is contingent on them actually standing a chance of listening to you and not just you wearing yourself out on something that they don’t want to actually hear (because it threatens them and makes them feel Personally Wrong, and white people don’t like that).

There have been various books written on why it’s so hard to talk to white people about racism, which you may be interested in checking out, not least the book "Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race” by Renni Eddo-Lodge. Ibram X. Kendi has also written “How to Be An Antiracist,” one of the bestselling books of this summer, either of which would be useful either in shaping your own arguments or (if they’re receptive) giving to your family. Once again, this is contingent on them signalling that they’re actually willing to listen, and not just to make you do pointless emotional labor. These books are probably available from your public library (though there’s probably a waitlist) or in other easily available formats.

Next, it’s a basic tenet of an anti-racist education that white people have never had to do this kind of reckoning, and thus get whiny, defensive, guilt-tripping, and “it’s not about ME I’m a GOOD PERSON” when it comes up. This also rests on the damaging and deeply intertwined effects of racism and classism, which has to be understood if you’re going to talk about it. One of the greatest tricks that racist capitalism ever pulled is convincing poor white people that they had more in common with their filthy rich white masters (people whose way of life will never in a thousand years be anything like each other’s) simply because they shared the inherent racial “purity” of being white. There have been political studies written on how poor/undereducated/working class white people have become such a reliably Republican constituency, because they have been successfully manipulated to believe that the white overlords are their “people” and they will constantly vote against their own economic, social, and cultural interests in favor of enriching amoral white demagogues who beat the populist xenophobic drum. Then they blame black and brown people for society’s ills and for the reason that they stay poor, rather than the rampaging oligarchs awarding themselves massive tax breaks and billion-dollar bailouts and refusing to extend unemployment benefits in case people “make too much money” from not working, just to name the most recent example. They are so poisoned on populist politics and white supremacy, which assures them that they’re better than anyone else by virtue of being white, that they actively attack politicians and policy platforms and other social welfare initiatives that would materially improve their own lives as “un-American.” This is maddening and sometimes baffling, but it’s how it works. Whiteness trumps all, currently literally thanks to the Orange Fuhrer. Problems in life are the fault of the Other.

This isn’t to say that poor white people are “dumb” and just unable to realize it, because they’re caught in a system that has done this literally from the start of America. In the early 17th century, indentured laborers and slaves in the American colonies were in fact more likely to be white. (The word “slave” comes from “Slav,” since that was the predominant ethnicity of slaves in medieval Europe; i.e. white eastern Europeans.) But even despite the fact that they were unpaid laborers, they were still white and thus recognized as human by their white masters, and thus when slave ships began arriving, it was easier for everybody to simply outright demonize and dehumanize the black African slaves. The poor white indentured servants got to feel better than the black slaves simply for the fact of their whiteness. Their lives obviously sucked, but their whiteness was in fact a mitigating factor in the suckiness that it involved once it was easier to use “animalistic” black people. And we wonder why America can’t ever confront its racist history properly. As Kendi calls it in his other book, it is stamped from the beginning.

As it has been put before, white people can and often do have difficult lives, because late-stage capitalism devours its workers no matter what color they are, but their whiteness isn’t a factor in why their lives are difficult. They will never encounter racial prejudice, race-based hate crime, discrimination for housing, education, employment, bank loans, daily microaggressions and identity erasure, constantly racist tropes in the media, politicians fingering them as everything wrong with America/the world, casual prejudices or assumptions even from close friends, assumed criminality based just on their race -- etc etc. The list goes on and on. Just because you have a hardscrabble economic background does not mean that your life has been made harder by your race -- because if you’re white, it hasn’t. (And as noted, poor white people have consistently voted for megalomaniac white men who don’t give a shit about them but promise them that everything is fine or should be better for them because of their whiteness, and then blame minorities for being the source of their problems.)

I honestly wonder if racism would still be such a problem in America if we had a remotely more equitable economic system, because when you’re well off and have your basic needs consistently met and don’t need to worry that you’re one paycheck away from disaster, it’s harder to constantly be paranoid that your differently colored neighbors are stealing everything from you and the cause of all society’s ills. The historian Patrick Hyder Patterson wrote a very interesting book on material culture in Yugoslavia in the 20th century, where he basically argued that despite the spectacular collapse of the federation into the Yugoslavian wars of the 90s, things didn’t really go to hell until after the economy crashed following Josip Broz Tito’s death in 1980. While there were obviously ethnic fault lines and conflicts between Serbs, Croats, Montenegrins, Bosniaks, Albanians, etc, when there wasn’t any money and any jobs and everyone thought everyone else was to blame, THAT is when the whole thing blew up into a genocidal civil war clusterfuck. Food for thought.

This is why people talk about economic justice and racial justice as going hand in hand. When there is a scarcity of resources and no social safety net, people are obviously more inclined to look for scapegoats and to blame someone for taking their entitlement (while still somehow refusing to blame the billionaires and corporate oligarch who are ACTUALLY stealing from them). They indeed actively resist any attempts to make their own lives better as being “socialist” or “un-American” and take pride in the fact that there’s absolutely jacksquat nothing (until of course, something like the coronavirus pandemic hits and it’s revealed just how many of us were always one missed paycheck away from disaster). Then when they need government assistance (while disdaining the government as tyrannical the rest of the time, unless it’s Trump’s actively tyrannical lot, but hey, we don’t have time to unpack all that) it’s still shameful and something they shouldn’t be using, instead of their basic entitlement to a decent life.

This country is poisoned on a lot of toxic beliefs, but this is one of the deepest-running one, and which will always get in the way of poor white people dealing with racism: their lives suck, but they have ALWAYS been told that despite that, they’re still better just for being white, which is their consolation prize for supporting white populists who actively rob them, and they haven’t even always consciously registered that. They just feel that if they’re “fine,” even if they’re not fine, then black people are just malcontents and criminals who can’t hack it. In 2016, there was a lot of ink spilled over how poor white people felt a sense of economic grievance and being left behind, which was why they voted for Trump, but... Trump was never going to do a damn thing about that??? He doesn’t actually do anything for his supporters except feed them his jingoistic Orange Nazi stump speeches. They voted for Trump to feel vindicated, not to actually improve their lives, and it’s damn clear by now that not only has he NOT improved their lives, he has no desire to do so. He just wants them to cheer for him and feed his ego, not fix any problems.

Basically, racism and capitalism and the American political system intersect in multiple deeply toxic ways to do precisely what you’re talking about; producing poor white people who feel that they shouldn’t be included in the reckoning with racism because if THEY worked hard and they don’t live in a mansion, somehow racism is fake and black people should just shut up and get a job etc etc. This is because poor white people have been systematically conditioned to support white supremacy at the direct expense of their own economic and social interests; it’s terrible, but that’s how it functions. They will never in a million years have anything in common with the (white) ruling class, but they still instinctively identify with them rather than people in their own deprived economic class who are different races or colors or religions. That is how white supremacy has supported the hyper-inequality of the industrial age, and vice verse, and it is one of capitalism’s best functions for survival, so it’s in the interests of the overlords to maintain it. Stop the workers from recognizing pan-racial solidarity based on economic grievance, and compete with each other and blame each other rather than the overarching system, easy!

Anyway. Once again, this is long. But in short, the attitudes your family are exemplifying are a direct result of both racism and classism as they have been deliberately cultivated in the American social and political system, and the interlocking causes and symptoms of both have to be recognized (and acknowledged) before they can get to dealing with that. I don’t know how that will go, and I don’t have an easy shortcut. But I’m glad you’re trying. Good luck.

#politics for ts #history of racism #long post #anonymous #ask

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araitsume · 3 years

Text

The Acts of the Apostles, pp. 346-358: Chapter (33) Laboring Under Difficulties

While Paul was careful to set before his converts the plain teaching of Scripture regarding the proper support of the work of God, and while he claimed for himself as a minister of the gospel the “power to forbear working” (1 Corinthians 9:6) at secular employment as a means of self-support, yet at various times during his ministry in the great centers of civilization he wrought at a handicraft for his own maintenance.

Among the Jews physical toil was not thought strange or degrading. Through Moses the Hebrews had been instructed to train their children to industrious habits, and it was regarded as a sin to allow the youth to grow up in ignorance of physical labor. Even though a child was to be educated for holy office, a knowledge of practical life was thought essential. Every youth, whether his parents were rich or poor, was taught some trade. Those parents who neglected to provide such a training for their children were looked upon as departing from the instruction of the Lord. In accordance with this custom, Paul had early learned the trade of tentmaking.

Before he became a disciple of Christ, Paul had occupied a high position and was not dependent upon manual labor for support. But afterward, when he had used all his means in furthering the cause of Christ, he resorted at times to his trade to gain a livelihood. Especially was this the case when he labored in places where his motives might have been misunderstood.

It is at Thessalonica that we first read of Paul's working with his hands in self-supporting labor while preaching the word. Writing to the church of believers there, he reminded them that he “might have been burdensome” to them, and added: “Ye remember, brethren, our labor and travail: for laboring night and day, because we would not be chargeable unto any of you, we preached unto you the gospel of God.” 1 Thessalonians 2:6, 9. And again, in his second epistle to them, he declared that he and his fellow laborer while with them had not eaten “any man's bread for nought.” Night and day we worked, he wrote, “that we might not be chargeable to any of you: not because we have not power, but to make ourselves an ensample unto you to follow us.” 2 Thessalonians 3:8, 9.

At Thessalonica Paul had met those who refused to work with their hands. It was of this class that he afterward wrote: “There are some which walk among you disorderly, working not at all, but are busybodies. Now them that are such we command and exhort by our Lord Jesus Christ, that with quietness they work, and eat their own bread.” While laboring in Thessalonica, Paul had been careful to set before such ones a right example. “Even when we were with you,” he wrote, “this we commanded you, that if any would not work, neither should he eat.” Verses 11, 12, 10.

In every age Satan has sought to impair the efforts of God's servants by introducing into the church a spirit of fanaticism. Thus it was in Paul's day, and thus it was in later centuries during the time of the Reformation. Wycliffe, Luther, and many others who blessed the world by their influence and their faith, encountered the wiles by which the enemy seeks to lead into fanaticism overzealous, unbalanced, and unsanctified minds. Misguided souls have taught that the attainment of true holiness carries the mind above all earthly thoughts and leads men to refrain wholly from labor. Others, taking extreme views of certain texts of Scripture, have taught that it is a sin to work—that Christians should take no thought concerning the temporal welfare of themselves or their families, but should devote their lives wholly to spiritual things. The teaching and example of the apostle Paul are a rebuke to such extreme views.

Paul was not wholly dependent upon the labor of his hands for support while at Thessalonica. Referring later to his experiences in that city, he wrote to the Philippian believers in acknowledgment of the gifts he had received from them while there, saying, “Even in Thessalonica ye sent once and again unto my necessity.” Philippians 4:16. Notwithstanding the fact that he received this help he was careful to set before the Thessalonians an example of diligence, so that none could rightfully accuse him of covetousness, and also that those who held fanatical views regarding manual labor might be given a practical rebuke.

When Paul first visited Corinth, he found himself among a people who were suspicious of the motives of strangers. The Greeks on the seacoast were keen traders. So long had they trained themselves in sharp business practices, that they had come to believe that gain was godliness, and that to make money, whether by fair means or foul, was commendable. Paul was acquainted with their characteristics, and he would give them no occasion for saying that he preached the gospel in order to enrich himself. He might justly have claimed support from his Corinthian hearers; but this right he was willing to forgo, lest his usefulness and success as a minister should be injured by the unjust suspicion that he was preaching the gospel for gain. He would seek to remove all occasion for misrepresentation, that the force of his message might not be lost.

Soon after his arrival at Corinth, Paul found “a certain Jew named Aquila, born in Pontus, lately come from Italy, with his wife Priscilla.” These were “of the same craft” with himself. Banished by the decree of Claudius, which commanded all Jews to leave Rome, Aquila and Priscilla had come to Corinth, where they established a business as manufacturers of tents. Paul made inquiry concerning them, and learning that they feared God and were seeking to avoid the contaminating influences with which they were surrounded, “he abode with them, and wrought.... And he reasoned in the synagogue every Sabbath, and persuaded the Jews and the Greeks.” Acts 18:2-4.

Later, Silas and Timothy joined Paul at Corinth. These brethren brought with them funds from the churches in Macedonia, for the support of the work.

In his second letter to the believers in Corinth, written after he had raised up a strong church there, Paul reviewed his manner of life among them. “Have I committed an offense,” he asked, “in abasing myself that ye might be exalted, because I have preached to you the gospel of God freely? I robbed other churches, taking wages of them, to do you service. And when I was present with you, and wanted, I was chargeable to no man: for that which was lacking to me the brethren which came from Macedonia supplied: and in all things I have kept myself from being burdensome unto you, and so will I keep myself. As the truth of Christ is in me, no man shall stop me of this boasting in the regions of Achaia.” 2 Corinthians 11:7-10.

Paul tells why he had followed this course in Corinth. It was that he might give no cause for reproach to “them which desire occasion.” 2 Corinthians 11:12. While he had worked at tentmaking he had also labored faithfully in the proclamation of the gospel. He himself declares of his labors, “Truly the signs of an apostle were wrought among you in all patience, in signs, and wonders, and mighty deeds.” And he adds, “For what is it wherein ye were inferior to other churches, except it be that I myself was not burdensome to you? Forgive me this wrong. Behold, the third time I am ready to come to you; and I will not be burdensome to you: for I seek not yours, but you.... And I will very gladly spend and be spent for you.” 2 Corinthians 12:12-15.

During the long period of his ministry in Ephesus, where for three years he carried forward an aggressive evangelistic effort throughout that region, Paul again worked at his trade. In Ephesus, as in Corinth, the apostle was cheered by the presence of Aquila and Priscilla, who had accompanied him on his return to Asia at the close of his second missionary journey.

There were some who objected to Paul's toiling with his hands, declaring that it was inconsistent with the work of a gospel minister. Why should Paul, a minister of the highest rank, thus connect mechanical work with the preaching of the word? Was not the laborer worthy of his hire? Why should he spend in making tents time that to all appearance could be put to better account?

But Paul did not regard as lost the time thus spent. As he worked with Aquila he kept in touch with the Great Teacher, losing no opportunity of witnessing for the Saviour, and of helping those who needed help. His mind was ever reaching out for spiritual knowledge. He gave his fellow workers instruction in spiritual things, and he also set an example of industry and thoroughness. He was a quick, skillful worker, diligent in business, “fervent in spirit, serving the Lord.” Romans 12:11. As he worked at his trade, the apostle had access to a class of people that he could not otherwise have reached. He showed his associates that skill in the common arts is a gift from God, who provides both the gift and the wisdom to use it aright. He taught that even in everyday toil God is to be honored. His toil-hardened hands detracted nothing from the force of his pathetic appeals as a Christian minister.

Paul sometimes worked night and day, not only for his own support, but that he might assist his fellow laborers. He shared his earnings with Luke, and he helped Timothy. He even suffered hunger at times, that he might relieve the necessities of others. His was an unselfish life. Toward the close of his ministry, on the occasion of his farewell talk to the elders of Ephesus, at Miletus, he could lift up before them his toilworn hands, and say, “I have coveted no man's silver, or gold, or apparel. Yea, ye yourselves know, that these hands have ministered unto my necessities, and to them that were with me. I have showed you all things, how that so laboring ye ought to support the weak, and to remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how He said, It is more blessed to give than to receive.” Acts 20:33-35.

If ministers feel that they are suffering hardship and privation in the cause of Christ, let them in imagination visit the workshop where Paul labored. Let them bear in mind that while this chosen man of God is fashioning the canvas, he is working for bread which he has justly earned by his labors as an apostle.

Work is a blessing, not a curse. A spirit of indolence destroys godliness and grieves the Spirit of God. A stagnant pool is offensive, but a pure, flowing stream spreads health and gladness over the land. Paul knew that those who neglect physical work soon become enfeebled. He desired to teach young ministers that by working with their hands, by bringing into exercise their muscles and sinews, they would become strong to endure the toils and privations that awaited them in the gospel field. And he realized that his own teachings would lack vitality and force if he did not keep all parts of the system properly exercised.

The indolent forfeit the invaluable experience gained by a faithful performance of the common duties of life. Not a few, but thousands of human beings exist only to consume the benefits which God in His mercy bestows upon them. They forget to bring to the Lord gratitude offerings for the riches He has entrusted to them. They forget that by trading wisely on the talents lent them they are to be producers as well as consumers. If they comprehended the work that the Lord desires them to do as His helping hand they would not shun responsibility.

The usefulness of young men who feel that they are called by God to preach, depends much upon the manner in which they enter upon their labors. Those who are chosen of God for the work of the ministry will give proof of their high calling and by every possible means will seek to develop into able workmen. They will endeavor to gain an experience that will fit them to plan, organize, and execute. Appreciating the sacredness of their calling, they will, by self-discipline, become more and still more like their Master, revealing His goodness, love, and truth. And as they manifest earnestness in improving the talents entrusted to them, the church should help them judiciously.

Not all who feel that they have been called to preach, should be encouraged to throw themselves and their families at once upon the church for continuous financial support. There is danger that some of limited experience may be spoiled by flattery, and by unwise encouragement to expect full support independent of any serious effort on their part. The means dedicated to the extension of the work of God should not be consumed by men who desire to preach only that they may receive support and thus gratify a selfish ambition for an easy life.

Young men who desire to exercise their gifts in the work of the ministry, will find a helpful lesson in the example of Paul at Thessalonica, Corinth, Ephesus, and other places. Although an eloquent speaker, and chosen by God to do a special work, he was never above labor, nor did he ever weary of sacrificing for the cause he loved. “Even unto this present hour,” he wrote to the Corinthians, “we both hunger, and thirst, and are naked, and are buffeted, and have no certain dwelling place; and labor, working with our own hands: being reviled, we bless; being persecuted, we suffer it.” 1 Corinthians 4:11, 12.

One of the greatest of human teachers, Paul cheerfully performed the lowliest as well as the highest duties. When in his service for the Master circumstances seemed to require it, he willingly labored at his trade. Nevertheless, he ever held himself ready to lay aside his secular work, in order to meet the opposition of the enemies of the gospel, or to improve a special opportunity to win souls to Jesus. His zeal and industry are a rebuke to indolence and desire for ease.

Paul set an example against the sentiment, then gaining influence in the church, that the gospel could be proclaimed successfully only by those who were wholly freed from the necessity of physical toil. He illustrated in a practical way what might be done by consecrated laymen in many places where the people were unacquainted with the truths of the gospel. His course inspired many humble toilers with a desire to do what they could to advance the cause of God, while at the same time they supported themselves in daily labor. Aquila and Priscilla were not called to give their whole time to the ministry of the gospel, yet these humble laborers were used by God to show Apollos the way of truth more perfectly. The Lord employs various instrumentalities for the accomplishment of His purpose, and while some with special talents are chosen to devote all their energies to the work of teaching and preaching the gospel, many others, upon whom human hands have never been laid in ordination, are called to act an important part in soulsaving.

There is a large field open before the self-supporting gospel worker. Many may gain valuable experiences in ministry while toiling a portion of the time at some form of manual labor, and by this method strong workers may be developed for important service in needy fields.

The self-sacrificing servant of God who labors untiringly in word and doctrine, carries on his heart a heavy burden. He does not measure his work by hours. His wages do not influence him in his labor, nor is he turned from his duty because of unfavorable conditions. From heaven he received his commission, and to heaven he looks for his recompense when the work entrusted to him is done.

It is God's design that such workers shall be freed from unnecessary anxiety, that they may have full opportunity to obey the injunction of Paul to Timothy, “Meditate upon these things; give thyself wholly to them.” 1 Timothy 4:15. While they should be careful to exercise sufficiently to keep mind and body vigorous, yet it is not God's plan that they should be compelled to spend a large part of their time at secular employment.

These faithful workers, though willing to spend and be spent for the gospel, are not exempt from temptation. When hampered and burdened with anxiety because of a failure on the part of the church to give them proper financial support, some are fiercely beset by the tempter. When they see their labors so lightly prized, they become depressed. True, they look forward to the time of the judgment for their just award, and this buoys them up; but meanwhile their families must have food and clothing. If they could feel that they were released from their divine commission they would willingly labor with their hands. But they realize that their time belongs to God, notwithstanding the shortsightedness of those who should provide them with sufficient funds. They rise above the temptation to enter into pursuits by which they could soon place themselves beyond the reach of want, and they continue to labor for the advancement of the cause that is dearer to them than life itself. In order to do this, they may, however, be forced to follow the example of Paul and engage for a time in manual labor while continuing to carry forward their ministerial work. This they do to advance not their own interests, but the interests of God's cause in the earth.

There are times when it seems to the servant of God impossible to do the work necessary to be done, because of the lack of means to carry on a strong, solid work. Some are fearful that with the facilities at their command they cannot do all that they feel it their duty to do. But if they advance in faith, the salvation of God will be revealed, and prosperity will attend their efforts. He who has bidden His followers go into all parts of the world will sustain every laborer who in obedience to His command seeks to proclaim His message.

In the upbuilding of His work the Lord does not always make everything plain before His servants. He sometimes tries the confidence of His people by bringing about circumstances which compel them to move forward in faith. Often He brings them into strait and trying places, and bids them advance when their feet seem to be touching the waters of Jordan. It is at such times, when the prayers of His servants ascend to Him in earnest faith, that God opens the way before them and brings them out into a large place.

When God's messengers recognize their responsibilities toward the needy portions of the Lord's vineyard, and in the spirit of the Master Worker labor untiringly for the conversion of souls, the angels of God will prepare the way before them, and the means necessary for the carrying forward of the work will be provided. Those who are enlightened will give freely to support the work done in their behalf. They will respond liberally to every call for help, and the Spirit of God will move upon their hearts to sustain the Lord's cause not only in the home fields, but in the regions beyond. Thus strength will come to the working forces in other places, and the work of the Lord will advance in His own appointed way.

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wroteclassicaly · 5 years

Text

Ride

Title: Ride

Pairing: Xavier Plympton x Female Reader

Warnings: Explicit language and a bit of smut

Playlist I listened to as I wrote this: Rock You Like A Hurricane by the Scorpions, & Pour Some Sugar On Me by Def Leppard

A/N: Hello, all! *gasp* Has this bitch finally arose from her dry spell? Will she provide quality content and not suck? To be determined below. ;) I appreciate the patience and loyalty from the people who have stuck by me and supported me, despite me not providing content on my blog like I once used to do. I’m trying to change that, and I do intend on finishing Ripe.

As well as getting though requests in my inbox and getting my Kink Hours and writing exercises back on track. I hope y’all like this! It was requested by the lovely @katiekitty261. Let me know what you think? I’m nervous about writing Xavier and just getting back in the game in general.

From now on, I will be including the songs I listen to as I write each story. Just something new. I want to apologize for any grammar mistakes. And I want to thank one of my biggest cheerleaders, @icylangdon. She continues to push and inspire me.

Enjoy! Let me know if you want tagged in future blurbs! Tags never go so well for me. :(

You didn't mean to do it. Really... it sort of just happened. One minute you're watching for snakes on a dirt path near the docks, and then the next you're stalking out Xavier's colorful van. You never got to ride with the other counselors to camp, Xavier seemingly forgetting all together that you were the first one who knew about his duties at Redwood for the summer, thus volunteering yourself as the second attendee. (Really, how pathetic can one bitch be?)

He never offered you a ride, not even when you passed him after class, mentioning, or the two times you went up to him and told him you managed to get a job there too. Flat out denial towards you and apparently whatever he thinks you stand for. It hurt, yeah, but your determination and fascination were in a fucked up affair, now here you are. You wrangled someone at the studio with bribes of gas money and a gift certificate you had for pizza to bring you the long distance. Spending the last of your pay from your custodial job in the aftermath of some dance classes, you made it to Camp Redwood and checked yourself in.

You already knew that he brought along a select group of students he liked to chat up in the common areas, so the sting wasn't unnoticed. His annoyance seemingly joined hands with his shock when you actually did show up afterall. (Hah, take that, slick man.) He brushed you off, as did most of the guys. But you found yourself in eagerly grateful company with Brooke and Montana. Montana always had been nice to you, Brooke new to the classes seemed to also mesh well with everyone.

You and Brooke were the shy girls in the spotlight, only she was more focused on after her survival of her attack. And Montana seemed really into her, right along with Chet. Ray was cool, but he never really paid you much mind. So what had you done after dumping your stuff in the cabin? Hung out in the infirmary with nurse Rita.

A few hours had passed and you had grown bored, venturing off to look around. And that's when you spotted Xavier Plympton's Vanta-C. The colors of enriching paint adorning fractions of the sides. You looked both ways, as if expecting to be struck, kicked your worn sneaker into the dirt roadway, then neatly proceeded to Xavier's vehicle. Pretty stupid of him to leave the side door unlocked, but even more lucky for you.

~*~

There's seating and tables, curtains on the back windows, shading the inside from crisp summer sun. There's a gym bag and some empty soda cans strewn around, but all in all, the van is clean. You're a little disappointed there's nothing in here you can play with or steal just to be a brat. And that's when you spot it, a huge ass boombox nestled against the driver's seat.

"Oh, fuck yeah!"

You barely have time to reach for the device before a shadow is cemented behind you, making you shriek and spin around. Sunglasses perched on that defined nose bridge, earring dangling, swaying with the breeze, pants bunched around his defined hips, blue muscle shirt stretched around a firm body, plump lips wet with amusement, blue eyes seemingly grinning on their own, topped off by a mop of frosted hair, stands the object of your desires and every waking (fuck, sleeping too.) fantasies. You feel the flush heat up your skin, backpedaling an apology. Xavier intercepts, slinking forward in that cocky way you're accustomed to seeing. You back yourself from the van and don't remember human functions as Xavier uses his thick thigh to hold you in place.

"See anything fascinating, Y/N?"

Fuck, the way he says your name has you afraid Margaret will pop out of the bushes and douse you with holy water for sinning.

"I was just looking. I'm sorry." Is all you muster from your dry throat, the cologne wafting off him and smacking you in the face.

"I admire a girl that knows what she wants, you know? Has the balls to track me down here, go through my shit." He's smirking, baring milky white teeth.

"Maybe if you didn't treat me like shit under your stupid ass shoes, I could've rode with all of you." You find your voice, angry and guarded. You shove at him, ignoring how warm his body is through your palms.

He doesn't say anything for a few moments, several different looks crossing that gorgeous face of his. You think he's pulling his method acting shit on you, however, you're scratched wrong.

"Mhm. I have been an asshole, haven't I? Maybe I can give you a ride."

You lower your brows. "After camp?"

"No, now." He states, as if it is totally obvious.

"I'm not leaving, so get used to it. I paid a lot of money to get out here and I have to earn it back somehow." You snap, arms crossing over your breasts.

"I said I would give you a ride," He's shifting his stance, jutting a muscular hip out. "I didn't say it would be in my van."

And just like that your throat is drowning in saliva, causing you to sputter. Images cascading volcanic heat like lightning through your system, shocking between your thighs. You don't have a chance to respond before Xavier's laugh is honey-hot, his body moving backwards.

"Chill, Y/N. I'll give you a lift back to LA when we all have to go back. I was just fucking with you. You're fun to tease."

You can't really describe what goes through you in the next several seconds. Xavier is looking at you in challenging expectation, sure of himself, and you think, "What the hell, right?" Shrugging your shoulders to capture the adrenaline, you find your voice.

"Would you give me a ride in your van, Xavier?"

The double meaning you spit back at him does not go unnoticed. In fact, you think his eyes might bug out of his skull. He didn't anticipate you'd give it right back to him. At all.

"You're actually fucking serious? I thought you were a virgin? And fucking your hairbrush doesn't count, Y/N."

"Screw you, Xavier." You're trying to match his height, but that's not possible. Tall fucker.

"If you really want to, Y/N." He's got his shades off, reaching out for your hands, raspy tone softening an octave. "If you really, really want to."

~*~

"That's a good girl. Squeeze my fucking cock, just like that. Use those muscles."

"Will you shut your fucking mouth?" You growl, sweat a salty burn in your eyes, the van ceiling in your sights, teeth shredding the skin on your bottom lip.

Xavier is beneath you, back moving up and down the shag carpeting from your combined movements, your knees on either side of his toned waist, his hands on your tits, cupping, pinching your nipples.

"Spread your cunt apart on my face and maybe that'll get me to," You give his cock a tight pressure, a fresh burst of wetness soaking out around where you're joined, running down his shaft and dripping onto his balls, causing him to groan out his next few words with gritted teeth. "Shut my fucking mouth."

You can take not looking into his blue eyes for more than a few seconds, your gaze meeting his fucked out, lust blown observation. He's appreciating you, giving as you give, thrusting his hips off the floor like you've seen him do a thousand times in classes, except this time, he's drilling his dick inside of you. His hands find your hands, you pinning his arms above his head, leaning down to let your tits smash against his chest.

"Give me a few minutes and I will."

#ahs fanfiction #ahs #ahsfx #american horror story #ahs9 #ahs 1984 #ahs:1984 #kristenwrites #xavier plympton #xavier plympton x reader #xavier plympton x you

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mbti-notes · 4 years

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Hi, this is the aspiring INTJ mathematician from before. Thanks for your comments, it's been quite thought provoking. A few comments: 1. Regarding social comparison and why focusing on my enjoyment of math is not sufficient: I think the latter is essential and is indeed my main focus, but I am also interested in maintaining my academic freedom for the long term, which as far as I can tell does require an honest assessment of my abilities and a bit of strategizing about the academic system.

[con’t: I view the social comparison as a means of gathering data on strategies that work for others that I can potentially adopt, and also better understanding myself and potential collaborators.

“Honest assessment of abilities” is a different issue than trying to turn yourself into something you’re not, which is what your original question was about. Your understanding of cognitive functions and function development is flawed/problematic if you believe that the eight functions are merely “strategies” that anyone can adopt as they please, like putting on different hats to suit your mood or some chameleon changing colors with the environment. I have firsthand observations of what happens to people when they go in this direction, so I’m pointing out that you are laboring under misconceptions. If you want to believe it’s good and possible to be like Ti dom or whatever type of your desire - that you are the exception to the things I’ve observed - then believe it, I have no desire to convince you otherwise.

2. Regarding this goal being unrealistic: after reading many biographies of mathematicians my faith in myself has increased substantially, after seeing that some struggled with these weaknesses as well and overcame them. Of course, I can't prove that I am not delusional. It's really a matter of faith at at this stage. Regardless of whether I succeed, I believe the journey itself will be worth it. Setting a goal that lies substantially beyond my current abilities is forcing me to improve my self-awareness, confront my weaknesses head on, move past my previous self-limiting patterns, and invent new strategies. My previous way of living is simply no longer sufficient to achieve my much loftier current goals. And I think this is its own reward.

It’s up to everyone to choose their own path. I have no comment on the choices that you believe are right for yourself.

3. On being mistyped - this is very interesting, can you elaborate on this? I know I have very clear weaknesses in Fe, Si, and Se, and am quite sure on IN. Long term planning based on self-knowledge is the way I relax.

If you are uncertain about your type, follow the blog guidelines and go through the right process by submitting a detailed description of your function use. I’ve seen enough to be confident that you aren’t INTJ, but that doesn’t mean I’m able to be 100% sure about what type you actually are, since there are 14 other types to properly eliminate.

4. On Fi - I actually do spend a ton of time on figuring out my personalized approach to math and life in general. I have a number of approaches right now but am always trying to find more and test them.

Another misconception. Not Fi. Fi shouldn’t have to “figure it out” or “test”. You are actually referring to Ti.

5. On my true motivation being envy - on a conscious level my motivation is to achieve balance, broaden my set of perspectives perspectives, and push myself to my limits, because that's what brings me the greatest joy - seeing myself transform in ways I previously didn't think were possible. But of course, I don't have direct access to my unconscious motivations. Thanks again for your response and this blog - it’s been extremely useful and I recommend it often to others. I just have this hunch I am following that working on my weaknesses rather than avoiding them will enrich my life and allow me to do research with access to a broader set of perspectives. What do you think?

Self-improvement, if done for the right reasons, should lead to positive results. If done for the wrong reasons, might lead to unintended consequences, perhaps even negative results. You claim to be aware of your motivations, and it’s certainly not up to me to invent motivations on your behalf, so only time will tell what kind of path you are on, as the results gradually roll in. I certainly would never discourage anyone from trying to make improvements to their life.

The one thing I can say, as someone with a lot of teaching experience, is that you exhibit a certain characteristic that I have frequently observed to be very self-sabotaging in students. It is the tendency to think that you already know. Unfortunately, this problem is very difficult to resolve because it is largely unconscious and self-reinforcing in nature, and people often deny having it even as they exhibit obvious signs of it. While various types may suffer this problem, it is common in NJs due to Ni’s difficulty distinguishing between speculation, belief, and fact, often misinterpreting facts and details to suit egocentric desires. They will claim to “want new perspectives”, but they really only want the ones that support what they already have planned and envisioned for themselves. This will block the creativity that is necessary for higher-order learning.

Deep learning requires openness (for creativity) and objectivity (for big picture thinking). If you think that you already know (due to overestimating your speculative/predictive abilities), then there is no reason to seek out new information, which blinds you to important information. In essence, you get held back by your own misconceptions, as I’ve already pointed out in two examples above. This happens when people don’t have the self-awareness to understand how/why they unconsciously create misconceptions (and ignore the feedback that would dispel them). This is why I postulated previously that your level of ego development isn’t where you think it’s at, and your follow up explanation further confirms it. It seems that you really like to speculate, imagine, fantasize, “think”, “have faith about”, or "believe in”... for the sake of propping up your self-confidence and optimism about the future. It’s not a crime, but it is often symptomatic of deeper issues, such as self-esteem or self-worth problems.

PS: Someone wrote in after your last question and wanted me to direct a comment to you about math.

@lightersonmydresser says: “Hi! I hope you’re doing well. This is a message to the INTJ studying mathematics in a previous ask and it would be really nice if you can post it on your page so that they can see it :) I am an ENTJ (fellow Te/Ni user) who studies pure math extensively to do theoretical physics. While I do notice that Ti/Ne users have unique advantages in doing mathematics (especially algebra/number theory?? I could be wrong,) I think Ni and Te also have special things to offer. From my personal experience Ni is great at building mental pictures for formalisms and proofs. For example, when I was taking my first analysis class, Ni helped me reduce theorems to pictures that I internalize and never forget about. In general, Ni-Se has helped me with things that require visualization (topology, dynamical systems etc.). Everyone’s Ni might be different, but this is an example where Ni can contribute to understanding pure math. Hit me up if you would like to talk more!!"

#learning #ask

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smokeybrand · 4 years

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Venomous Visibility

As a creator, I always find the subject of representation kind of dubious. With the f*cked up Last of Us II leaks, the continuous misandrist poison leaking into the Star Wars canon from that Kennedy-led Lucasfilm, and the incredibly amazing portrayal of Jill Valentine in the Remake, this sh*t has been on my mind lately. Like, how do you write strong, female, protagonist without falling into that Mary Sue trap? How do you code black without being offensive? How do you write gay without resorting to stereotypes? I don't know how to distinguish a trans or deaf or autistic or native person through text without outright stating these things. Where's the nuance in portraying someone queer without it coming across as pandering? I don’t know if it’s because of my limited experience as a straight black dude who kind of thinks the current trend of eighty-eight genders and personal identifications is kind of ridiculous but i find the attempts studios make to cater to these groups to be adequate as f*ck. Like, Sarah Connor and Ellen Ripley kind of defined feminine bad-ass and they both did it way back in the 80s. Why is there this irreverent need to portray this misandrist energy in modern cinema? Birds of Prey was a fun time but it was way heavy-handed on that “Girl boss” energy and it didn’t have to e. Harley Quinn is already a boss and the Birds kick ass in their own right. Why does that have to be the focus of your narrative instead of actual character development and plot? Especially when you have that Ellen Ripley template? It’s weird to say but it feels like certain groups want those aspects to define the entirety of a character instead of it just being a part of them. I think that mindset is both toxic and does a disservice to the given narrative, unless the narrative, itself, is defined by those aspects.

I'm of the mind that, if you wrote dope characters, that should he enough. Take, for examples, Disney’s newest attempt to represent a queer character in Onward. I’ve never seen the movie, i have severe daddy issues so this hilariously outside of my wheelhouse, but i hear that one of the characters makes a passing reference to their same sex spouse. How is that not good enough? Isn’t that how it is in real life? I don’t see gays running around, shouting about their homo love from the balconies and rooftops. Unless it’s Pride. To add that little tidbit in the middle of a Pixar film, aimed at the notoriously conservative middle America, and not have them trying to burn down city hall is kind of amazing and, in my opinion, very tastefully done. At least it’s better executed than the way Beauty and the Beast did with the LeFou reveal. Like, holy sh*t. Talk about blue-balls. This fervent obsession with representation for representation sake or to push an agenda is absolutely repugnant. You think the character of Rey Skywalker would be enough of a lesson on that poisonous nonsense for everyone, not just Disney. Be it female lead, bisexual heroine, gay protagonist, whatever; If you're character is strong enough to be more than whatever social label cats want to code them with, then the representation is inconsequential. Don’t force something that doesn’t need to be forced.

I’ve seen representation executed beautifully. Euphoria is one of the best shows i’ve seen on television and it deals with a ton of sh*t that most SJWs want to fight about. Zendaya is excellent in this show and so is her trans partner, Hunter Schafer. The way that show is written, you can tell that there is an understanding about that culture, a personal connection to their world. That level of representation is outstanding and i commend the creators for giving us such a rich vision for those characters. That said, the strength of Euphoria is in the characters. Rue makes that show. It’s about her journey and everything after that, is a part of who she is as a character, not the defining aspect of it. That subtlety is how you represent an uniquely ignored demographic. That’s how you handle representation in media for adults. For kids, i think this is a little much. Not many nine-year-olds out there are recovering drug addicts.

I think the best piece of media i’ve ever seen in terms of representation actually came out of Disney years ago and gets criminally slept on to this day. Atlantis: The Lost Empire i easily the most diverse, accessible, and palatable piece of “woke” media, Disney has ever made, and it was never created to be so. Atlantis is a story with a female co-lead of color, who has her own agency, doesn’t really fall into the trap of being “damseled” and ends up being a Queen by the rend of this story. The male co-lead is an anxious, neurotic, nerd with a distinct lack of brawn, who beguiles the antagonists with his intellect. The supporting cast is a mixture of people of color, both of which are dope as sh*t, and various nationalities. I’ve spoken at length about my love for Kidagakash Nedakh, she’d be my favorite Disney Princess if she wasn’t a motherf*cking Queen, but i’d be lying if i didn’t admit Audrey had a near equal place in my heart for her sheer dopenesss. Doc is cool, too. Seriously, how is there no Atlantis world in Kingdom Hearts yet? F*cking Disney, man... For the record, my actual favorite Princess is Rapunzel with Jasmine coming in a close second.

Personally, when I create a character, I describe the way I imagine how they physically appear and let the reader assign whatever else afterwords. If I say a character is female with caramel color skin and lavender hair, it's up to the reader to define the minute details in their mind's eye. Is the Lavender a natural hair color? Is she black? Maybe Hispanic? Could she be native or Indian or something completely different? A lot of people have caramel color skin. Hell, she might just have a tan, I don't know because the way I see the character, is different than whoever reads it. I think that's one of the joys unique to literature, that ability to essentially "customize" a narrative to taste, which only amplifies my inability to reconcile this trend of "representation." A lot of people in the fandom attribute Ahsoka Tano as an LGBTQ character and i think that’s fine. It’s never implicitly stated but i don’t think it really has to be. Ahsoka is a bad ass and she displays all of that effortlessly. If you ant to ascribe a queer connotation to her, fine, but that’s not the part of the character that matters to the overall narrative. It shouldn’t be the one aspect which is harped upon officially. I actually really, really, love Ahsoka so i have a dog in this fight. Not so much about the gay coding, that’s a thing that doesn’t really matter to me, more the fact that she needs deserves more shine in the franchise. Thank you Mando II. Also, Dr. Aphra. I hope they actually give her a show. She’s f*cking awesome and, i think, a legit LGBTQ character. I could be wrong about that though.

If a character can be whatever you want them to be, why does it have to be implicitly stated? How is all of this forced representation and social agenda pushing not disingenuous at that point? How is it not more a hindrance than a strength? Why is it acceptable to have your token marginalized appearance, if it’s forced and detracts from the overall story trying to be told? Is it really okay to just accept such pedestrian pandering for the sake of pandering? Like, i’m not gay. How am i supposed to write a gay character without being an ass about it? The only way i know how is to be direct with it. Direct but subtle about everything. “Strong Female Character” should not be the one aspect of your character driving their development. You don’t need to create a Mary Sue in order to have a compelling female lead. Tifa Lockhart and Norah Price prove that. Your protagonist doesn’t need to be “the big gay” in order to be a bad ass. Ian Ghallagher and Willow Rosenberg prove that. Also, they’re both gingers so, you know, double the suffrage points i guess? You don’t have to write a potato who can do physics in their head, to represent an autistic person. Sherlock Holmes and Amelie Poulain prove that. I would definitely do what Disney did with Onward in order to represent a character of that type of minority because, to me, as a minority, i don’t believe any singular aspect determine the whole of a character. Race, gender, orientation, religion, and other social identifiers; All of those are just qualifiers to the core of the character you’re creating. They are parts, never a whole. These things are just additions to embellish and enrich, not the definition of who they are, as much as everyone wants it to be. I mean, at the end of the day, how lame is your character if all they are is gay or stronk female? How much of a boner is our story going to be with a protagonist as deep as a puddle because you feel some kind of way about visibility?

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bountyofbeads · 5 years

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Mulvaney Sends Trump Defense on Ukraine Aid Into Disarray https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/17/us/politics/mick-mulvaney-trump-ukraine.html

Mick Mulvaney admitted on tape and before our very eyes that the administration committed an impeachable offense and a crime of offering a quid-pro-quo and was forced to walk back what he admitted to.

“I have news for everybody: Get over it. There’s going to be political influence in foreign policy,” he said, adding, “Elections have consequences.” The American people will get over it when you criminals are removed from office in handcuffs and locked. 👇🤔🤬🤬

#Ukrainegate #LockThemAllUp

Mulvaney Says, Then Denies, That Trump Held Back Ukraine Aid as Quid Pro Quo

Conflicting comments by the acting White House chief of staff threw Washington into turmoil.

By Michael D. Shear and Katie Rogers |

Published Oct. 17, 2019 Updated October 18, 2019, 6:30 AM ET | New York Times | Posted October 18, 2019 |

WASHINGTON — Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, threw the Trump administration’s defense against impeachment into disarray on Thursday when he said that the White House withheld nearly $400 million in military aid to Ukraine to further President Trump’s political interests.

Mr. Mulvaney told journalists in a televised White House briefing that the aid was withheld in part until Ukraine investigated an unsubstantiated theory that Ukraine, not Russia, was responsible for hacking Democratic Party emails in 2016 — a theory that would show that Mr. Trump was elected without Russian help.

The declaration by Mr. Mulvaney, which he took back later in the day, undercut Mr. Trump’s repeated denials of a quid pro quo that linked American military aid for Ukraine to an investigation that could help Mr. Trump politically.

The comments sent Washington into turmoil as Democrats and some Republicans said they were deeply damaging to Mr. Trump.

At the White House, Mr. Mulvaney said that Mr. Trump had demanded that Ukraine investigate the theory, even though a former White House homeland security adviser had told Mr. Trump that the theory had been completely debunked.

“The look back to what happened in 2016 certainly was part of the thing that he was worried about in corruption with that nation,” Mr. Mulvaney told reporters, referring to Mr. Trump. “And that is absolutely appropriate.”

Mr. Mulvaney’s acknowledgment of a tie between military aid and a political investigation came as House Democrats were summoning a stream of witnesses to the Capitol to investigate whether Mr. Trump had pressured Ukraine for his personal political benefit in 2020.

Democrats called Mr. Mulvaney’s comments a potential turning point in their impeachment inquiry. “We have a confession,” said Representative Eric Swalwell, Democrat of California.

By day’s end, after Mr. Trump told aides to clean up the mess, Mr. Mulvaney issued a statement flatly denying what he had earlier said.

“Once again, the media has decided to misconstrue my comments to advance a biased and political witch hunt against President Trump,” Mr. Mulvaney wrote. “Let me be clear, there was absolutely no quid pro quo between Ukrainian military aid and any investigation into the 2016 election. The president never told me to withhold any money until the Ukrainians did anything related to the server.”

But in his earlier remarks to reporters, Mr. Mulvaney pointed to “three issues” that explained why officials withheld the aid: corruption in Ukraine, frustration that European governments were not providing more money to Ukraine and the president’s demand that Kiev officials investigate the issue of the Democratic National Committee server.

“Did he also mention to me in passing the corruption related to the D.N.C. server?” Mr. Mulvaney said, referring to Mr. Trump. “Absolutely. No question about that.” He added, “That’s why we held up the money.”

Democrats ridiculed the reversal.

“Mick Mulvaney was either lying then, or he’s lying now,” said Representative Ted Lieu, a California Democrat involved in the inquiry. “I think he’s lying now.”

At the White House, staff members recognized that Mr. Mulvaney had created an entirely new controversy with his remarks. Jay Sekulow, one of Mr. Trump’s personal lawyers, said Thursday, “The president’s legal counsel was not involved in acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney’s press briefing.”

Mr. Mulvaney’s performance was only part of another extraordinary day in Mr. Trump’s presidency. Mr. Mulvaney made his remarks after he stepped before the cameras to announce that the leaders of the Group of 7 nations would meet in June at Mr. Trump’s golf resort in South Florida, even as he acknowledged the choice could be seen as self-enrichment. In Texas, Mr. Trump hailed a Middle East cease-fire that would cement Turkey’s goal of pushing Kurds from Northern Syria as “a great day for civilization.”

And on Capitol Hill, Gordon D. Sondland, the president’s ambassador to the European Union and a wealthy donor to Mr. Trump’s campaign, was implicating the president in the Ukraine scandal by telling lawmakers that Mr. Trump had delegated Ukraine policy to his personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani.

Mr. Sondland testified behind closed doors for more than six hours, the latest in a series of current and former diplomats and White House aides who have provided detailed accounts of actions by Mr. Giuliani and others related to Ukraine.

Democratic lawmakers are certain to seize on Mr. Mulvaney’s comments as crucial support of the testimony coming from other witnesses, who have accused the administration of improperly pressuring Ukraine and of sidelining veteran diplomats in favor of Mr. Trump’s political loyalists.

But Mr. Mulvaney was defiant and unapologetic at the suggestion that there was anything wrong with the president’s relying on political loyalists to conduct foreign policy.

“I have news for everybody: Get over it. There’s going to be political influence in foreign policy,” he said, adding, “Elections have consequences.”

In wide-ranging remarks, Mr. Mulvaney told reporters at the White House that the $391 million in military aid was initially withheld from Ukraine because the president was displeased that European countries were not as generous with their assistance. He also wanted more attention paid to Ukraine’s persistent political corruption.

Mr. Mulvaney denied that the aid for Ukraine was also contingent on its government’s opening an investigation into either former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., a leading Democratic candidate for president, or his younger son, Hunter Biden. Asked whether he did anything to pressure President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine to investigate the Bidens, Mr. Mulvaney said no.

But the president did pressure Ukraine to re-examine discredited theories that Ukraine, not Russia, had worked to sway the 2016 campaign. Mr. Mulvaney’s mention of a “D.N.C. server” was a reference to an unfounded conspiracy theory promoted by Mr. Trump that Ukraine was somehow involved in Russia’s 2016 theft of emails from the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

Mr. Mulvaney tied the server to the Justice Department’s review of the origins of the Russia investigation, led by the United States attorney in Connecticut, John H. Durham, and closely overseen by Attorney General William P. Barr.

“That’s an ongoing investigation,” Mr. Mulvaney said. “So you’re saying the president of the United States, the chief law enforcement person, cannot ask somebody to cooperate with an ongoing public investigation into wrongdoing? That’s just bizarre to me that you would think that you can’t do that.”

But while the Justice Department said last month that Mr. Durham was examining any role that Ukraine might have played in the early stages of the Russia investigation, a department official declined on Thursday to comment on whether he was examining the server conspiracy theory.

Russian military officers hacked Democratic servers to steal thousands of emails in 2016, the intelligence community and the special counsel found, and no one has uncovered evidence of Ukrainian involvement.

Justice Department officials were confused and angry when they heard that Mr. Mulvaney said the White House had frozen aid to Ukraine in exchange for help with the Durham investigation, according to a person familiar with their discussions.

“If the White House was withholding aid in regards to the cooperation of any investigation at the Department of Justice, that is news to us,” a senior Justice Department official said. Mr. Durham was seen leaving the Justice Department around midday Thursday.

Mr. Mulvaney said the president had done nothing improper and had stayed within normal diplomatic channels. He blasted the current and former administration officials who have testified in the impeachment inquiry, describing them as personally opposed to the changes in foreign policy that Mr. Trump had put in place.

“What you’re seeing now, I believe, is a group of mostly career bureaucrats who are saying, ‘You know what, I don’t like President Trump’s politics, so I’m going to participate in this witch hunt that they are undertaking on the hill.’”

Mr. Mulvaney said holding up Ukraine’s aid was a normal part of foreign policy, and he compared it to the foreign aid to Central America that the administration froze until Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras agreed to adopt the immigration policies pressed by Mr. Trump.

Asked whether he had admitted to a quid pro quo, Mr. Mulvaney said, “We do that all the time with foreign policy."

His answer ignored the distinction — raised by many of the president’s critics — between holding up foreign aid to further American interests and holding up foreign aid to further Mr. Trump’s personal interests.

Senior White House aides like Mr. Mulvaney are often largely immune from congressional subpoenas to discuss their private conversations with the president, but talking about them publicly in such an extended way could undermine that legal protection.

Democrats had already been interested in Mr. Mulvaney’s role in the Ukraine matter after several impeachment witnesses described him as a central player in the effort to hold up the aid in the days before Mr. Trump pressed Ukraine’s president to investigate Mr. Biden.

They also have said they want to know whether Mr. Mulvaney helped prevent a White House meeting between Mr. Trump and Mr. Zelensky until the Ukrainian government agreed to investigate the president’s rivals, including the D.N.C. and the Bidens.

Fiona Hill, the president’s former senior director for European and Russian affairs at the National Security Council, testified that Mr. Mulvaney was part of a trio of Trump loyalists who conducted a rogue foreign policy operation in Ukraine.

Ms. Hill told lawmakers that John R. Bolton, then the national security adviser, instructed her in early July to advise the National Security Council’s chief lawyer about the effort by Mr. Mulvaney, Mr. Sondland and Mr. Giuliani.

“I am not part of whatever drug deal Sondland and Mulvaney are cooking up,” Mr. Bolton told Ms. Hill to tell White House lawyers, according to two people at Ms. Hill’s deposition, which took place on Monday.

In his remarks on Thursday, Mr. Mulvaney said there was nothing wrong with Mr. Trump’s relying on Mr. Giuliani or others outside of the diplomatic corps to conduct foreign policy.

“That’s the president’s call,” he said. “You may not like the fact that Giuliani was involved. That’s great, that’s fine. It’s not illegal, it’s not impeachable.” He added, “The president gets to set foreign policy, and he gets to choose who to do so.”

Democrats are also eager to know about a May 23 meeting during which career diplomats with responsibility for Ukraine were sidelined in favor of Mr. Sondland, Kurt D. Volker, the special envoy for Ukraine; and Rick Perry, the energy secretary, one witness testified.

George P. Kent, the deputy assistant secretary in the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs, testified Tuesday that Mr. Mulvaney called the White House meeting, according to Representative Gerald E. Connolly, Democrat of Virginia, who was in the room for Mr. Kent’s testimony.

Katie Benner and Nicholas Fandos contributed reporting from Washington, and Maggie Haberman from New York.

********

Read Mulvaney’s Conflicting Statements on Quid Pro Quo

President Trump has claimed his interactions with Ukraine were not an exchange of aid for cooperation. His acting chief of staff may have undercut that — only to backtrack.

By The New York Times | Published October 17, 2019 | Posted October 18, 2019 |

Mick Mulvaney, President Trump’s acting chief of staff, answered questions on Thursday about Mr. Trump’s interactions with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine that are at the center of an impeachment inquiry. Mr. Mulvaney said the United States withheld nearly $400 million in military aid to pressure Ukraine to investigate what the president has long insisted was Kiev’s assistance to Democrats during the 2016 election. Mr. Mulvaney’s remarks, which he later said were misconstrued, undercut Mr. Trump’s own insistence that there was no quid pro quo with Mr. Zelensky.

AROUND 1 P.M. EASTERN TIME

During a briefing at the White House

The following excerpts, prepared by CQ, are taken from a complete transcript of the live, televised news conference at the White House.

QUESTION: So the demand for an investigation into the Democrats was part of the reason that he ordered to withhold funding to Ukraine?

MULVANEY: The look back to what happened in 2016 certainly was part of the thing that he was worried about in corruption with that nation, and that is absolutely appropriate.

QUESTION: Withholding the funding?

MULVANEY: Yeah, which ultimately then flowed. By the way, there was a report that we were worried that the money wouldn’t — if we didn’t pay out the money it would be illegal, okay? It would be unlawful.

____________

QUESTION: But to be clear, what you just described is a quid pro quo. It is, funding will not flow unless the investigation into the Democratic server happened as well.

MULVANEY: We do — we do that all the time with foreign policy. We were holding up money at the same time for, what was it, the Northern Triangle countries. We were holding up aid at the Northern Triangle countries so that they — so that they would change their policies on immigration.

____________

MULVANEY: And I have news for everybody. Get over it. There is going to be political influence in foreign policy.

___________

QUESTION: But — wait. No, no. On the call, the president did ask about investigating the Bidens. Are you saying that the money that was held up, that that had nothing to do with the Bidens? And you’re —

MULVANEY: Yeah. No, the money held up had absolutely nothing to do with Biden. There’s no — and that was the point I made to you.

QUESTION: — And you’re drawing the distinction? You’re saying that it would be wrong to hold up money for the Bidens —

MULVANEY: — There were three — three factors. Again — I was involved with the — the process by which the money was held up temporarily, okay? Three issues for that: the corruption in the country, whether or not other countries were participating in the support of the Ukraine, and whether or not they were cooperating in an ongoing investigation with our Department of Justice. That’s completely legitimate.

____________

QUESTION: You just said you were involved in the process in which — you know, the money being held up temporarily. You named three issues for that —

MULVANEY: Yeah.

QUESTION: — The corruption in the country, whether or not the country would look — they were assisting with an ongoing investigation of corruption. How is that not an establishment of an exchange, of a quid pro quo? You just seem to continue to be establishing this —

MULVANEY: Those are the terms that you used. I mean, go look at what Gordon Sondland said today in his — in his testimony. It was that — I think in his opening statement he said something along the lines of they were trying to get the — the deliverable. And the deliverable was a statement by the Ukraine about how they were going to deal with corruption, okay? Go read his testimony if you haven’t already. And what he says is, and he’s right, that’s absolutely ordinary course of business. This is — this is what you do when you have someone come to the White House, when you either arrange a visit for the president, you have a phone call with the president, a lot of times we use that as the opportunity to get them to make a statement of their policy or to announce something that they’re going to do. It’s one of the reasons we can’t, you know, you can sort of announce that at — he — on the phone call or at the meeting. This is the ordinary course of foreign policy.

5:52 P.M. EASTERN TIME

A statement released by the White House

From Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney

“Once again, the media has decided to misconstrue my comments to advance a biased and political witch hunt against President Trump. Let me be clear, there was absolutely no quid pro quo between Ukrainian military aid and any investigation into the 2016 election. The president never told me to withhold any money until the Ukrainians did anything related to the server.

“The only reasons we were holding the money was because of concern about lack of support from other nations and concerns over corruption. Multiple times during the more than 30-minute briefing where I took over 25 questions, I referred to President Trump’s interest in rooting out corruption in Ukraine, and ensuring taxpayer dollars are spent responsibly and appropriately.

“There was never any connection between the funds and the Ukrainians doing anything with the server — this was made explicitly obvious by the fact that the aid money was delivered without any action on the part of the Ukrainians regarding the server.

“There never was any condition on the flow of the aid related to the matter of the D.N.C. server.”

********

15 Times Trump and His Allies Claimed ‘No Quid Pro Quo’

The president’s acting chief of staff on Thursday undercut a popular Republican talking point about Ukraine.

By Linda Qiu | Published October 17, 2019 | New York Times | Posted October 18, 2019 |

WASHINGTON — It was not the message that the White House and its supporters have been trying to hammer home in recent weeks as the impeachment investigation has intensified on Capitol Hill: Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, said Thursday that President Trump withheld military aid to Ukraine in part to pressure Kiev to pursue a politically motivated investigation into the 2016 election.

His comments — even after he issued a statement walking back his remarks — undercut weeks of denials from Mr. Trump, his aides, Republican lawmakers and the conservative news media that the president was seeking a quid pro quo in his dealings with the new Ukrainian president. Some of their statements were focused on a July 25 phone call between Mr. Trump and the president of Ukraine in which Mr. Trump repeatedly brought up his desire for investigations into political rivals. Others touched specifically on Mr. Trump’s decision in July to hold up the $391 million package of security aid to Ukraine, a development that government officials there said they only learned about at the end of August.

OCT. 16, 2019

1. President Trump

“Now, all of a sudden, quid pro quo doesn’t matter because now they see, in the call, there was no quid pro quo.”

— In remarks at the White House

The New York Times also found several other instances of Mr. Trump proclaiming “no quid pro quo” on Twitter, in remarks to reporters, in news conferences and at political rallies.

OCT. 3, 2019

2. Vice President Mike Pence

“Contrast that with the president’s — the transcript of the president’s phone call with President Zelensky where there was no quid pro quo. There was no pressure.”

— In remarks to reporters

OCT. 3, 2019

3. Representative Mark Meadows, Republican of North Carolina

“What we do know is there was definitely no quid pro quo. I mean, it came out over and over.”

— In remarks to reporters

OCT. 13, 2019

4. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin

“In the Oval Office, when the president was asked about this in front of the vice premier, the president made very clear, they can do what they want. So, again, people who are trying to imply that the president is asking for things or quid pro quos, I think this is ridiculous.”

— In an interview on ABC

OCT. 4, 2019

5. Lou Dobbs, Fox Business Network host

“And it’s not a difference of opinion. Any rational person looking at it, any reasonable person, can only conclude that there was no quid pro quo. There was no threat of any kind.”

— on Fox News

SEPT. 28, 2019

6. Kellyanne Conway, counselor to the president

“And as the president said, this was a perfect call. The Ukrainian president said on live TV the other day, up at the United Nations General Assembly, that he felt no pressure. And, in fact, if you read what’s there, you see what’s not there — no quid pro quo.”

— In an interview on Fox News

SEPT. 26, 2019

7. Larry Kudlow, Mr. Trump’s chief economic adviser

“There was no quid pro quo. There was no issue about finally getting the military assistance. And he thanked us. The Ukrainian president thanked us for our support on his anticorruption campaign.”

— In an interview on Fox News

OCT. 14, 2019

8. Representative Steve Scalise, Republican of Louisiana

“And I think a lot of these members in swing districts are hearing that, hey, you ran saying you were going to work with people to get things done and all you’re focused on is impeaching the president over a lie about quid pro quo that never even happened. What are you people doing up there?”

— In an interview on Fox Business Network

OCT. 14, 2019

9. Representative Lee Zeldin, Republican of New York

“President Zelensky had no idea that there was a hold on aid during the July 25th call. The readouts of the July 25th call on both the Ukraine side and the U.S. side mention nothing about a hold on aid or a quid pro quo. July 26th, the day after that phone call, Ambassador Volker met with President Zelensky. During that meeting, there was no reference to a hold on aid or a quid pro quo.”

— In remarks to reporters

OCT. 13, 2019

10. Senator Kevin Cramer, Republican of North Dakota

“There was no quid pro quo in the — in the phone conversation. So, no doubt that the haters are going to hate.”

— In an interview on CNN

OCT. 13, 2019

11. Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas

“I think that was good because a lot what the Democrats had been raising, alleging an illegal quid pro quo was not, in fact, backed up by the transcript.”

— In an interview with CBS

OCT. 8, 2019

12. Representative Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio

“If they would release the transcript from Ambassador Volker’s testimony and interview last week, you would see that Ambassador Volker backs up exactly what you just said. There was no quid pro quo.”

— During an interview on Fox News

OCT. 6, 2019

13. Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina

“Every Democratic member of the House needs to be on record: Do you agree with Nancy Pelosi that the transcript is enough to impeach President Trump? Remember when Pelosi said that the transcript would show a quid pro quo? It doesn’t.”

— In an interview on Fox Business Network

OCT. 8, 2019

14. Mercedes Schlapp, senior adviser for the Trump campaign

“But more so, what is so disgusting is the fact that the Democrats continue to try to build up this narrative on, well, there was a quid pro quo when the call — when the call happened. They just jumped the gun without facts, without being credible.”

— In an interview on Fox Business Network

OCT. 2, 2019

15. Hogan Gidley, White House spokesman

“Well, right. But this doesn’t have anything to do with the 2020 election and the president was very clear about that and that wasn’t in the call. What else wasn’t in the call was the quid pro quo.”

— In an interview on Fox News

********

How Did Gordon Sondland Think This Was Going to End?

He paid $1 million for an ambassadorship and bought himself disgrace.

By Michelle Goldberg | Published October 18, 2019 | New York Times | Posted October 18, 2019 |

Ever since Donald Trump began his nightmarish political ascent, some psychologists have been warning us, with increasing urgency, about what it means to have a malignant narcissist in power. In many cases, they’ve been more accurate about the trajectory of the last three years than the Washington hands who assumed Donald Trump would be constrained by our institutions.

But the people whose psychology I really want to understand are those like Gordon Sondland, the ambassador to the European Union who is now trying to squirm out of responsibility for his role in the Ukraine scandal. A wealthy hotelier, he seems to want the respect and admiration of the world outside the MAGA bubble, and he knew going into the administration that Trump was trash. Though a lifelong Republican, in 2016 Sondland and a business partner withdrew their support for Trump over the candidate’s attacks on the family of Humayun Khan, a Muslim soldier killed in Iraq, saying that Trump’s “constantly evolving positions diverge from their personal beliefs and values on so many levels.”

Yet once Trump won, Sondland donated $1 million to his inauguration to buy himself an ambassadorship, and then worked slavishly for the president’s approval. “Current and former U.S. officials and foreign diplomats say Sondland seemed to believe that if he delivered for Trump in Ukraine, he could ascend in the ranks of government,” reported The Washington Post. In the process, he may have made himself party to a criminal conspiracy.

Sure, people sell their souls all the time — but why for something as small as a chance to serve a man whose depravity Sondland himself once recognized?

On Thursday, Sondland testified before House impeachment investigators. His opening statement was damning for Trump and his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani. It also appeared deeply dishonest about his own role in trying to extort Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, to pursue investigations that would be of propaganda value to the president. Sondland is desperately spinning to distance himself from this whole debacle, suggesting he knows he’s at the center of something reprehensible. What I can’t comprehend is how anyone could think that working for Trump would end up any other way.

In his statement, Sondland provided a partial timeline of the Ukraine pressure campaign. On May 23, he said, he was part of a group of officials who urged Trump to speak to Zelensky by phone and to arrange a White House visit. Trump, however, had questions about the Ukrainian president’s record on “anti-corruption” — which, in Trumpspeak, means willingness to open spurious investigations — and told the group to talk to Giuliani.

Sondland said that he and his colleagues were “disappointed by the president’s direction that we involve Mr. Giuliani,” but felt compelled to follow it. Still, he said, “I did not understand, until much later, that Mr. Giuliani’s agenda might have also included an effort to prompt the Ukrainians to investigate Vice President Biden or his son or to involve Ukrainians, directly or indirectly, in the president’s 2020 re-election campaign.”

There are two possibilities here. Either Sondland was wildly, almost inconceivably ignorant about what was going on around him, or in trying to salvage his reputation, he just lied to Congress.

By May 23, everyone knew that Giuliani wanted the Ukrainians to investigate Joe and Hunter Biden. On May 9, The New York Times ran an article headlined, “Rudy Giuliani Plans Ukraine Trip to Push for Inquiries That Could Help Trump,” which described his search for dirt on the Bidens. (“There’s nothing illegal about it,” Giuliani told The Times. “Somebody could say it’s improper.”) The next day a CNN piece was headlined, “Giuliani Defends Going to Ukraine to Press for Investigations Connected to Biden.” As the controversy grew, Giuliani canceled the trip.

So while it may be a mistake to overestimate the acuity of Trump appointees, it’s probably safe to say that Sondland knew exactly what he was involved with.

He tried to play the naïf elsewhere in his testimony as well. Toward the end of his statement, he condemned the idea of a president leveraging military aid to get a foreign government to help him politically. “Withholding foreign aid in order to pressure a foreign government to take such steps would be wrong,” he said. “I did not and would not ever participate in such undertakings.”

The record suggests he did. In July, the former national security adviser John Bolton reportedly told his aide Fiona Hill, “I am not part of whatever drug deal Sondland and Mulvaney are cooking up.” And as Sondland testified behind closed doors, Mick Mulvaney, the White House acting chief of staff, appeared at a manic, combative news conference and made it clear what said drug deal involved.

One reason military aid to Ukraine was temporarily frozen, Mulvaney said, was that Trump wanted the country to investigate a conspiracy theory that Ukraine intervened in the 2016 election. “The look-back to what happened in 2016 certainly was part of the thing that he was worried about in corruption with that nation,” Mulvaney said. He added, sneering: “Get over it. There’s going to be political influence in foreign policy.”

It’s a common Trumpist strategy to brazenly admit crimes in public, disorienting people through sheer shamelessness. It’s also common for Trumpists to do what Mulvaney did a few hours later, when he issued a statement denying that he’d said what we all heard him say. (“Once again, the media has decided to misconstrue my comments to advance a biased and political witch hunt against President Trump,” Mulvaney wrote.)

But Sondland’s not really a Trumpist. Based on news reports, he mostly just seems like an insecure opportunist. According to The Post, Sondland had envied some of his rich friends who’d been given ambassadorships in the past, and coveted one of his own. I can understand the longing for honor and status. Why confounds me is how anyone could think that working for Trump might provide these things, and not see that any title achieved in this crime-syndicate administration will always come with an asterisk after it, or worse.

I’m not a lawyer and have no idea whether Sondland will face criminal liability. But he has obviously disgraced himself and he appears to know it. “Mr. Sondland now fears that he will be blamed for the scandal, while more powerful players will be protected, one person close to him said,” The Times reported. That’s the thing about deals with the devil. You get what you want, and then it ruins you.

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