Darthvoxpo - Refugee From The Great Twitter War

Before January ends, I’m going to magically and extremely be blessed by the universe.

from Jubilate Agno

BY CHRISTOPHER SMART

For I will consider my Cat Jeoffry.

For he is the servant of the Living God duly and daily serving him.

For at the first glance of the glory of God in the East he worships in his way.

For this is done by wreathing his body seven times round with elegant quickness.

For then he leaps up to catch the musk, which is the blessing of God upon his prayer.

For he rolls upon prank to work it in.

For having done duty and received blessing he begins to consider himself.

For this he performs in ten degrees.

For first he looks upon his forepaws to see if they are clean.

For secondly he kicks up behind to clear away there.

For thirdly he works it upon stretch with the forepaws extended.

For fourthly he sharpens his paws by wood.

For fifthly he washes himself.

For sixthly he rolls upon wash.

For seventhly he fleas himself, that he may not be interrupted upon the beat.

For eighthly he rubs himself against a post.

For ninthly he looks up for his instructions.

For tenthly he goes in quest of food.

For having consider’d God and himself he will consider his neighbour.

For if he meets another cat he will kiss her in kindness.

For when he takes his prey he plays with it to give it a chance.

For one mouse in seven escapes by his dallying.

For when his day’s work is done his business more properly begins.

For he keeps the Lord’s watch in the night against the adversary.

For he counteracts the powers of darkness by his electrical skin and glaring eyes.

For he counteracts the Devil, who is death, by brisking about the life.

For in his morning orisons he loves the sun and the sun loves him.

For he is of the tribe of Tiger.

For the Cherub Cat is a term of the Angel Tiger.

For he has the subtlety and hissing of a serpent, which in goodness he suppresses.

For he will not do destruction, if he is well-fed, neither will he spit without provocation.

For he purrs in thankfulness, when God tells him he’s a good Cat.

For he is an instrument for the children to learn benevolence upon.

For every house is incomplete without him and a blessing is lacking in the spirit.

For the Lord commanded Moses concerning the cats at the departure of the Children of Israel from Egypt.

For every family had one cat at least in the bag.

For the English Cats are the best in Europe.

For he is the cleanest in the use of his forepaws of any quadruped.

For the dexterity of his defence is an instance of the love of God to him exceedingly.

For he is the quickest to his mark of any creature.

For he is tenacious of his point.

For he is a mixture of gravity and waggery.

For he knows that God is his Saviour.

For there is nothing sweeter than his peace when at rest.

For there is nothing brisker than his life when in motion.

For he is of the Lord’s poor and so indeed is he called by benevolence perpetually—Poor Jeoffry! poor Jeoffry! the rat has bit thy throat.

For I bless the name of the Lord Jesus that Jeoffry is better.

For the divine spirit comes about his body to sustain it in complete cat.

For his tongue is exceeding pure so that it has in purity what it wants in music.

For he is docile and can learn certain things.

For he can set up with gravity which is patience upon approbation.

For he can fetch and carry, which is patience in employment.

For he can jump over a stick which is patience upon proof positive.

For he can spraggle upon waggle at the word of command.

For he can jump from an eminence into his master’s bosom.

For he can catch the cork and toss it again.

For he is hated by the hypocrite and miser.

For the former is afraid of detection.

For the latter refuses the charge.

For he camels his back to bear the first notion of business.

For he is good to think on, if a man would express himself neatly.

For he made a great figure in Egypt for his signal services.

For he killed the Ichneumon-rat very pernicious by land.

For his ears are so acute that they sting again.

For from this proceeds the passing quickness of his attention.

For by stroking of him I have found out electricity.

For I perceived God’s light about him both wax and fire.

For the Electrical fire is the spiritual substance, which God sends from heaven to sustain the bodies both of man and beast.

For God has blessed him in the variety of his movements.

For, tho he cannot fly, he is an excellent clamberer.

For his motions upon the face of the earth are more than any other quadruped.

For he can tread to all the measures upon the music.

For he can swim for life.

For he can creep.

4 comrades go to a Soviet hotel for a night during a business trip...

As they walk into their room, 3 of them, whip out some vodka, food and cigarettes and begin to make jokes about the government and be very loud indeed. The 4th one is trying to get some meaningful sleep and knowing that it would be fruitless to ask them to stop, hatches an ingenious plan. He goes downstairs to reception and asks for a cup of coffee to be delivered to the room.

“Make sure you deliver it exactly after 10 minutes starting from now”

Returning back to the room he joins his comrades midway a Stalin joke. He sits up shocked and exclaims:

“Comrades! You must not say these things! Don’t you know? They are listening to our conversations right now!”

The comrades jeer and laugh at him and say that that is impossible.

“Really? Then how do you explain this?”

He gets up and speaks into the lampshade by the beds.

“I would like a black coffee to be delivered to my room, please.”

And surely enough, in a short amount of time, a maid walks in with a cup of coffee and some sugar.

The other 3 comrades turn deathly pale and quickly turn in for the night. The last comrade drinks his coffee and peacefully goes to sleep.

Come morning the 4th comrade awakens only to find that his friends and all their belongings are missing.

Throughly confused and anxious, the man walks down the stairs to reception to enquire whether his friends had checked out earlier in the morning.

“I am afraid not sir. You see, the KGB raided your room during the night and placed your friends under arrest for ridiculing the Soviet regime.”

“B-but how come they didn’t take me?!”

“Oh, the Captain very much enjoyed your joke”

The U.S. Midterms are Tomorrow, November 8, 2022

If you're eligible to vote in the midterms already and haven't yet, make a plan for how to go vote tomorrow.

Know your polling place and when it opens and closes. Know the rules in your state and at your job about taking off from work to vote. Be prepared to wait in line.

And then go vote!

Weapons from Celtic Myth

Celtic myth is wack, and the weapons are some of the weirdest stuff out there, so here’s a short list of my faves.

The Gae Bolg- The spear of Cú Chulainn. If you wash it in a stream before use and throw it from the foot, it extends barbs down every blood vessel in the victim’s body. You don’t remove the spear from the corpse so much as clean the corpse off of the spear. Very nasty.

The Spear of Lugh- This thing is so bloodthirsty that if you don’t keep it immersed in a bath of blood while it’s not in use, it’ll burst into flame and consume the blood of everyone nearby. Fortunately, if you don’t have enough blood to fill a bathtub, poppy juice will do.

Claíomh Solais, the Sword of Light- has seven edges. Emits blinding light.

Caladbolg- the sword of Fergus MacRoích. It leaves a rainbow trail when you swing it, and once lopped the tops of three mountains when Fergus missed a strike.

Fragarach, the Answerer- A sword that can cut through anything, inflict wounds that never heal, control the winds, and prevent people from lying when it’s pressed against their throat. That last one may not be a magic power per say.

Excalibur- You think you know it, but those basic boring Athurian Legends you’ve read don’t show off its best powers. In Welsh stories, this thing burns out the eyes of its wielder’s enemies, and cuts through anything that isn’t enchanted like a lightsaber.

If you know any others, feel free to add them!

and speaking of Detritus’ character development:

throughout the books Detritus is shown as more and more smart, I mean compare the one in Guards! Guards! with the one from Thud! the difference is staggering.

now, this can be attributed to two things:

1) Cuddy’s helmet, which isn’t mentioned after Jingo, i think, but this can just be taken to mean that it just became normal, like the Librarian being an ape, no one notices it any more, but given the fact that the narrative mentions how bothered Detritus is by heat, and makes no mention of the helmet, i don’t think that’s it*, or

2) shockingly, when you take a member of a vilified, exploited social group (’you were chained to a wall like a guard dog when i first met you’, said Vimes, and ‘I had the stables cleaned out for your trolls’, said Bonnie or Bobbie or whatever her name was) and put them in an encouraging, supportive, hell, i’d even say loving environment, and than proceed to treat them respect, openly, actively condemn discrimination against them, and trust them with authority, they actually raise to the task at hand and start showing what they’re actually capable of.

After all, Detritus, Mended Drum splatter, doesn’t really need to think much, and even if he did, what’s the point? Who cares what/if a troll thinks?

but Sergeant Detritus of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch? Head of the anti-drug unit? Leader of the troll youth programme? Most senior troll officer in the Watch? Well, there are so many people counting on him, people who value his opinion, he just needs to be smart, doesn’t he?

Also, when you take that into consideration, like, is it any wonder that he is so invested in that youth programme? That he is such a mother hen? After all, look what an opportunity did for him, and he’s hardly the sharpest knife in the drawer.**

*but like, it would have been nice if they remembered Cuddy existed at least once in a while, I mean Cheery is amazing, but you can have more than one of a species with a significant role in a book, also, i do think that Cuddy left a mark on Detritus that is absolutely never mentioned again, and that’s not right.

**another parallel Thud! makes between Vimes and him.

For the love of…

Look. Let’s address the obvious first off: Fandom has problems with women. We all know this. We also know that “has problems” is putting matters rather mildly.

That is a fine premise. Plenty to go on from there.

What is NOT a fine follow up is defending the idea that “fandom hates women” by pointing to the reaction to R*ylow. Because that entire ship? That is a dumpster fire in its own right even before getting to the whole dust up where, because of him making a harmless joke about sex, specifically his character in Star Wars and Rey, another fictional character in Star Wars, having sex, there’s a movement within that group to discredit and tear down John Boyega. 

Like, we’ll get to that business in a bit. But let’s address the fact that the majority of R*ylows are shipping CHARACTERS THAT ARE NOT SHOWN. 

The whole business of this ship is to use Rey to “redeem” “Ben Solo,” a character who metaphorically killed himself in TFA through the literal killing of his father. The two meetings of Rey and Kylo Ren in TFA were first him rendering her unconscious and kidnapping her, and then her attempting to kill him for his murder of Han Solo and attack of Finn - killing her mentor and attacking her friend.

But those who ship this transplant the characteristics that defined Finn onto Kylo Ren, who they refer to as Ben Solo, a name he rejects until about the last hour of the most recent movie. They make him into a tortured character who is tragically torn between the light and the dark, has not made a decision on where he stands and needs to be pulled back. EXCEPT Kylo Ren was introduced ordering the slaughter of an innocent village - a slaughter that Finn refused to participate in. 

All of this is, let’s not mince words, based off the fact that Kylo Ren is a white man and Finn is a black man. Because we saw, back before TFA released, a heaping TON of abuse hurled towards him purely for BEING a black man - I remember vividly all the anti-blackness going around when we had no more than a trailer for the sequel trilogy. 

I am not - let me repeat this NOT - shaming anyone, male, woman, enby, whatever you identify as, for wanting the narrative of “saving the monster.” As a queer person, yeah, I get that, considering that a lot of my narratives growing up that I can identify with have all kinds of queercoding throughout them, even when involving straight pairings. But the defining difference has always been that in those stories, the monster wanted to be accepted as a person. TFA gave us a monster who chose to be monstrous.

And TLJ only added into this narrative - Rey refused to join Kylo. ONCE AGAIN, he spurned her offers of coming back to the light, choosing to take the leadership of the First Order. We also saw in flashback that he chose to respond to Luke briefly flirting with the idea of killing him by BURNING THE ACADEMY TO THE GROUND. Whatever you want to say about Luke’s moment of weakness, that is definitely overreacting, that is taking out your pain on innocent others.

TRoS even brings this to a conclusion, a similar one to the redemption of Anakin Skywalker, being unable to live in the world that he saved, that no act he could do could balance the scales to allow him to be a part of that world, considering the deaths and pain at his hands in specific.

So that - THAT - is who Kylo Ren was on screen.

The R*ylow version of him, however, is some scared teenager/young adult, who has been ignored, emotionally neglected by his parents, nearly murdered by his uncle, and drowning in the darkness, in need of a rope.

The canon version of him, to sum up, is a roughly thirty-ish adult man, raised by loving parents who had a galaxy to rebuild and couldn’t devote every second to him, his uncle had a moment of weakness where he pointed a weapon at who he perceived as a threat (I can give this, or I would, had Kylo stayed and even TRIED to get answers, but the indications are that he ran and proceeded to destroy the academy), and at every turn gave in to the darkness until his mother gives her life to drag him back to the light side.

I don’t care what your fantasy is, what bothers me is the ignoring and VERY HIGHLY SELECTIVE reinterpreting of the on screen material to justify this idea of Kylo Ren being a broken and abused bird in need of kindness. Because on screen, he spurns all the kindness he gets until Leia sacrifices herself. And THAT I only accept because of the filming limitations of Carrie Fisher’s last content.

And then we return to the issue of this backlash to John Boyega’s tweets. All of this is because he made a joke about sex, implicitly his character and Rey - the character that R*ylows have designated “belongs” to Kylo - having sex. And this has led to him being harassed (and not for the first time, because TFA did seem to be building to something between Rey and Finn), and by these same people.

We led with “fandom has problems with women.” This? This is “fandom hates black people.” And “fandom REALLY hates interracial couples.”

Like, take a stroll through AO3. How often do you see interracial M/F couples in the top of the listing of pairings? About the only serious example I can come up with off the top of my head is Sleepy Hollow and Ichabod/Abbie, which ended up never being canon. Because of the white showrunners and producers getting cold feet about it and deciding to repeatedly throw white women at Ichabod while continually sidelining Abbie until her actress finally decided to leave - given that she hadn’t even been invited to be part of the special features for the season two DVDs, and the fact that she’d already gotten reduced to the sidekick on a show where she should have been the lead.

Or even on a show where a non-white man is the lead - let’s look at Teen Wolf for another fine example. The show’s lead was a Latino teenager. The favored fandom pairing involves two white guys who, the initial episodes featuring them interacting showed, didn’t particularly care for one another. This led to the fandom turning that dynamic into “they secretly want to fuck,” and, as we see with Finn and Kylo, transplanted characterization and dynamics onto the other characters to prop up their ship.

I repeat myself above. I am not judging fantasy. Hell, I’m not even against writing alternate universe variations where the good guys are bad guys and vice versa. The problem I am seeing here, the reason that I cannot abide R*ylow, the reason that I see that specifically as a toxic fandom element, is because it actively diminishes the black man involved in matters - MANY fics will either downplay or completely trash Finn’s canon character in the name of making him the villain who Kylo must defeat to claim Rey.

These people claim to love “Kylo and Rey,” but frequently they are treating her as his redemptive sexy lamp, her purpose is to be his reward for reaching the bar that is basic human decency, having no interest in her beyond her being there to reward him for finally rejecting the darkness, when she has no canonical romantic interest in Kylo and only knows Ben as an idea. Even when the canon has her trying to reach to him, she is NOT doing it because of her intense love - love is not a switch, it is not some snap decision. It comes about because of knowing a person. Lust is instant. Attraction is instant. Love? That requires time. The ideal of Ben as a person could be attractive. But Kylo is not who Rey is or would be attracted to. 

All of this is still secondary to the fact that, because of an actor making a joke about his character and another character - a character who repeatedly has an inherently far kinder dynamic with his - having sex, there is a group of this fandom who has decided that this was an attack on them, and they must respond in kind. 

Whether or not you agree with ANY of what I have said of the interactions of Kylo and Rey, PLEASE tell me that you agree that THAT behavior is unacceptable. And THAT is the group that people are referring to when they speak so derisively about R*ylows. 

Because that is the group that speaks loudest. They’re who come to mind when the topic turns to this ship. You may not be part of it, but guilt by association comes into effect, because this group is hostile to anyone who doesn’t implicitly agree with them. And when you get this hostility from what comes across - whether it’s fact or perception - as a massive wing of total strangers, strangers who decide that, because you disagree with them, you are The Enemy, and you must be destroyed… Yeah, your reflex becomes “That group is trash, do not listen to them, do not engage with them, and god, aren’t they pathetic for devoting themselves to this ridiculous thing of made up characters.”

You want to go after the issue here? Root out the bad behavior that is the cause. Not the symptom. The symptom might be hating on women. But the cause is still the racism that started all of this.

You want to talk about how fandom hates women? Fine. Go right ahead. But don’t use a topic that came about because of racism to do it.

1. Any calls you are seeing for a #DemExit2020 over Sanders losing are likely being amplified by Russian actors; remember, they want Trump in office and the US in disarray. They're all about dividing us and keeping us at each other's throats.

2. Biden, while scum, will be FAR easier to shove left than Trump, *especially* if we retake the Senate (or did you forget about downticket races...?) *We have a chance to get rid of Mitch McConnell this year*, but that only happens if you vote.

3. This is about harm reduction. Is Biden scum? Yes. Will he do far, far, FAR less damage than Trump? *YES*. This isn't just about the Presidency, it's about the Nazi troglodytes in the Cabinet. It's about keeping another anti-abortion justice out of the Supreme Court (and letting poor RBG rest).

4. Primary wise, we aren't out of the woods yet, go vote anyway, and remember your downticket races. If you are Sanders or were Warren, you have chances at putting in super leftists locally and into the Senate. Take them. Remember: Congress going blue in 2018 has made a HUGE difference in harm reduction. Remember the power AOC and Ilhan Omar have wielded, and now imagine what they could do with a democratic Senate. (Imagine Senate Majority Leader Elizabeth Warren!)

5. Did I mention downticket races? I'll say it again. The *Senate* chooses to convict on an Impeachment. If we had a Democratic Senate, Trump would be *gone*.

(In case anyone accuses me of being a Biden stan, I am a long time Sanders supporter who also thinks Elizabeth Warren is cool & likes them both a lot. I think Biden sucks, but he's not *actively* trying to get me or my loved ones killed. Trump *is*.)

Would that there were five of me, one for each child, so I might keep them all safe.