The Best Thing That We Can Do Right Now To Fight For Abortion Rights Is Donating To Your Local Abortion

shaking six year old me by the shoulders YOU WERE RIGHT. YOU WERE RIGHT ABOUT LOVE AND ABOUT FAIRNESS AND ABOUT SHARING IS CARING. YOU WERE RIGHT. THE ADULTS DON’T KNOW ANY MORE ABOUT TRUTH THAN YOU DO. KEEP BELIEVING IN THE FAIRIES AT THE BOTTOM OF THE GARDEN. NOTHING IS “JUST THE WAY IT IS”. I AM SORRY THEY EVER CONVINCED YOU TO FEEL SHAME. YOU ARE REAL AND A PART OF THIS WORLD. YOU WERE RIGHT.

There's an open pit in the middle of our office plan that drops down into a bunch of very sharp spikes that kill you instantly. This is bad. People keep falling in there and dying. Someone put a sign up, the other day, all bright yellow so you can't miss it, that says "Beware!!! Spikes!!!"

The office immediately split into two factions over it. One says that if anyone falls in the spike pit it's their own fault for being so stupid and not watching where they're walking, so we should remove the sign. The other says that the sign is an insult, there shouldn't be a spike pit in our office at all, and having the sign up like that is just normalising the existence of the spike pit, so we should remove the sign.

We ended up removing the sign. Probably for the better. Still... for a while there it looked like it might have worked...

Im normal about luffy i promise

Your annual reminder to not donate to Salvation Army!

ghost reunion a bit too early

tell me im wrong, you wont. Luffy having stunt growth and several other underlining problems outside of the 10 years off the life thing.

Taken from the river Styx~

Garp, Fascism, and Parental Failure

Garp is truly one of the most interesting One Piece characters for me because of the extent to which his dogged, relentless devotion to a fascist system–and the supposed "order" it promises to uphold in the face of anarchy or rebellion–perseveres no matter how many times it fails him and his son and his grandsons. He's fully aware of the deep-seated corruption and atrocity, and feels some kind of moral obligation to bend its rules to protect the innocent (as we can see with his attempts to protect Rouge and Ace), but when faced with widespread femicide and infanticide, genocide, slavery and endless examples of egregious cruelty, he is unable to comprehend the notion that the system is indefensible, or that the only moral choice he can possibly make when faced with that level of atrocity is to leave and resist it. His son recognizing the inherent, inexcusable failures of the World Government and its armed enforcers–literally quitting the force to start a revolution– changes nothing. The order to slaughter pregnant people and infants at Baterilla can't convince him otherwise. The countless instances of bribery, the tolerance of atrocity from state-sanctioned privateers, everything about the history of the Valley of the Gods are all things he's aware of, and takes issue with, but never comes to the conclusion that he cannot affect positive change within a system designed for oppression. The public execution of his grandson–a prime example of the marine's fundamentally irrational, arrogant, vindictive cruelty clearly bound to blow up in all of their faces even before their Pyrrhic victory at the summit war–makes him waver, but even when confronted with this obvious, indefensible injustice against a child he raised and rescued by people seeking to murder him on live TV and desecrate his corpse as a show of power, he cannot bring himself to act against it in any meaningful way no matter how much it hurts him to leave his grandson to die. If he can't veto it, he'll stay Vice Admiral and suffer through Ace being sacrificed on the altar of fascist state control, and functionally leave Luffy for dead in the process while he's at it. He fails every single person he wanted to love–Ace, Luffy, and almost certainly Dragon–and allows himself to be reluctantly complicit in countless crimes against humanity again and again and again because he's so deeply steeped in this notion of preservation of order through state control that he convinces himself that even this disgusting, atrocious, fundamentally flawed and untenable excuse for a government is better than abolition, better than revolution, or just the act of expecting accountability or literally anything better from the systems that issue false promises to protect you. Dadan beating the living shit out of him and calling him a failure as a grandfather, as a self proclaimed defender of the people, is one of the most important scenes in the Postwar Arc because a lesser series might frame Garp as a tragic, helpless figure suffering more than anyone else due to conflict of love and duty, but One Piece refuses to whitewash his actions/inaction or allow the grief and suffering caused by systems he's complicit in to take precedence over its real victims: the D brothers.

There's so much I could say about statism and anarchism and the ways people have internalized the supposed necessity of state violence to the extent they can't oppose that violence even when it ruins them or their loved ones, but that horrible indoctrination and its devastating consequences for both him and his family are what makes Garp so fascinating to watch and so thematically/politically important to One Piece as a whole.

things you should know about books and incarceration

I recently started working with a program that sends books to incarcerated people upon request. There are programs like this in many places throughout the US, under names like “Prison Books Project” or “Books to Prisoners.” Here’s some things you should know:

The most requested book, by far, is the English dictionary. The Spanish dictionary is also highly requested, as are GED prep materials, thesauruses, almanacs, and other reference books. If you have anything like that laying around unused, please consider donating.

Prisons are legally required to maintain libraries of legal resources (this falls under one’s right to counsel), but otherwise generally do not fund or maintain libraries, even for basic educational materials. The law libraries are also often filled with irrelevant law texts (e.g. real estate and civil procedures) instead of what prisoners actually need information about: appeals, civil rights, etc.

There are strict requirements on what books can and cannot be received, which vary from prison to prison and even depending on which staff member is processing the shipments. There are a thousand different reasons prison staff can pull a book from a shipment. Individuals, unfamiliar with the complex restrictions, are often unsuccessful at sending books to incarcerated loved ones.

Prison staff often don’t like prison book programs, despite the fact that they reduce recidivism and keep prisoners occupied and out of trouble. Why? Because it makes more work for them in the mail room. Yes, really.

Immigrants are the fastest growing prison population, so we get lots of requests for books in Spanish or English learning materials. Unfortunately, these are less frequently donated, so our selection is slim.

We also get requests for books about sign language, usually from people with Deaf cellmates who have no other way to communicate.

Books about starting businesses, trades, and reintroduction are extremely common from those planning their lives after release. It’s extremely difficult for convicted felons to find work after release.

We also get many requests about psychology or self-help books. A large percentage of our incarcerated population suffer from some mental illness or have loved ones who do.

Many prisoners were not properly supported in their education. We receive letters from low-literacy people who have severe learning disabilities, whose letters are difficult to read because they never learned to write properly. Comic books/manga are common requests from low-literacy people because they can look at the pictures.

Prison book programs are usually not well funded and must ration how often incarcerated people can write us and how often they can request certain types of high-demand books. Volunteers frequently find there are no suitable books to fill a request and buy books with their own money to make sure someone gets what they’ve asked for. Cash donations to prison book programs will go to buying high-demand books such as dictionaries, GED prep, and other basic education texts.

See if you have a program like this in your area, and consider volunteering or donating books or money. There are over 2 million people incarcerated in the US, and giving them access to books is the very least we can do.

Civil War

[video description: A Black Sails fanvid focusing on Eleanor, Mr. Scott, and Madi. Between clips of Madi and Eleanor discussing their past on the beach, there are scenes showing Eleanor and Mr. Scott's interactions, emphasizing how Eleanor fails to consider Mr. Scott's perspective, and the ways in which Mr. Scott is never able to lose sight of his position in society. The penultimate scene is Madi's speech to Woodes Rogers. As her speech escalates, sounds of chains clanking and being removed can be heard in time with the clicking of the knitting needles being used by Eleanor's ghost.

/end description]

Dialogue transcript:

Eleanor: You trust him? Flint. You've cast your lot with him.

Madi: What does it matter to you?

Eleanor: Before this war began, before everyone's roles changed, your father mistrusted Flint as much as anyone in Nassau did. I assume you were in some contact with him all that time. I'm surprised that his feelings didn't influence you.

Eleanor: For how long had he been secretly aiding them?

Flint: He began, he said, after the Spanish raid.

Eleanor: Did he say why he did it?

Madi: You were my sister. There is very little that I remember from when I was young, but I remember this.

Mr. Guthrie: Once upon a time Mr. Scott was my personal houseboy. Until he proved himself worthy of greater responsibility. That earned him an education which he then passed on to my daughter. And look where that's gotten me.

Madi: You were older. You were beautiful. I revered you.

Mr. Bryson: Mr. Scott, you sided with his daughter against him. You forgot your duty. You must have known there would be consequences.

Madi: When you were told that my mother and I were dead, I have to believe that it affected you. You had just lost your mother.

Eleanor: And what? Now you think you can just waltz back in here and pick up from where we left off like nothing happened?

Mr. Scott: Where else would I go? I belong to you. Chattel property of the Guthrie estate.

Eleanor: You… you know I've never seen you that way.

Madi: But if things were as I remember, my mother and I were your family, too.

Eme: He says…

Mr. Scott: I know what he says. He says in Nassau a slave can be free, get a job and a wage. Maybe for him. He's strong. A few others. The rest of you, don't kid yourself. You are cargo, in Nassau or otherwise.

Madi: And yet, through all the years thereafter that my father cared for you… counseled you, labored for you… he never told you that we were alive.

Madi: I was there in Nassau, and she's there. Eleanor is there. She is one of them now. I stood in Nassau and I realized when this war begins, it will have many different meanings, but to you this war is a civil war. You will have people on both sides of it. You will have daughters on both sides of it. And I want you to know…

Mr. Scott: [whispers softly] Only… you.

Madi: It would have been so easy to lessen your suffering by divulging the secret. And yet, he never did. Have you yet asked yourself why that is?

Madi: The voice you hear in your head… I imagine I know who it sounds like, as I know Eleanor wanted those things. But I hear other voices. [clicking sound] A chorus of voices. Multitudes. They reach back centuries. Men and women…and children who'd lost their lives… to men like you. Men and women and children forced to wear your chains. I must answer to them and this war… their war… Flint's war… my war…it will not be bargained away to avoid a fight.

Madi: My father didn't mistrust Flint. My father mistrusted all of you.

(for @built-on-sand )