Just another Dragon Age Nerd

cassandra: *disapproves*

sera: *disapproves*

vivienne: *disapproves*

my inquisitor:

Real Talk: Turning My Back on My Religion Was the Best Choice I Ever Made by illustrator Kate Allan

Saw this awesome (& cute) comic and knew I had to share it with you guys!

No matter what your story is, it is valuable, and we at @the-art-of-leaving would always love to hear it. It will not be doubted. It will not be belittled. It will not be picked apart or invalidated.

Leaving a faith is hard. But you’re not alone. A great starting place is the ex-Christian reddit, this list of deconversion resources, and @spiritualabusesupport. And ofc, our inbox is always open!

In doubt, freedom. <3

>.>

“Traditional Maasai lifestyle centres around their cattle which constitute their primary source of food. The measure of a man’s wealth is in terms of cattle and children. A herd of 50 cattle is respectable, and the more children the better. A man who has plenty of one but not the other is considered to be poor.[37] A Maasai religious belief relates that God gave them all the cattle on earth, leading to the belief that rustling cattle from other tribes is a matter of taking back what is rightfully theirs, a practice that has become much less common.[38]”

Shit, down here in Brazil we not only offered to send tracking units and doctors to help in 9/11 but we wanted to send a whole lot of donations to help with Katrina (we have experience with floods down here so we knew what kind of medicine to send to prevent outbreaks). 

We alone had like 2 army airplanes full of medicine and non-perishables like baby formula, diapers, bottled water, mosquito nets and other stuff that’s needed to fight opportunistic diseases that hit flooded areas, enough to assist a good few thousand people at least, ready to go the day after it hit, but your government refused the donations. 

The same thing happened to the Canadians and Europeans who offered help, the US embassies around the world told us all to give money to Red Cross.

And so we did, we all gave hundreds of millions of dollars to them, and then this happened:

Red Cross scandals tarnish relief efforts

‘Breathtaking’ Waste and Fraud in Hurricane Aid

I didn’t know that other countries tried to help after 9/11 or Katrina. Like, that’s something we, the people, should hear about and we don’t.

Most the time, when people say “oh FEMA or something sent people right?” re: fires, its actually people from other countries showing up and kinda ignoring the government telling them to fuck off and staying on behalf of local departments because we REALLY need them. 

If there’s a huge ass disaster, and the government is sitting there with a thumb up it’s ass, help is offered and most the time– shit, it gets there! But then the feds do something really fucking dirty. They insist they were the help, if it’s talked about at all. 

They insist those people putting out fires were federal people, because to most people a fireman’s a fireman. The people handing out water and food, a relief worker is a relief worker. So on and so forth. 

We had people come up when the fires were so bad a while ago– not the Australians, but i think there was like a German group of like 3 guys that flew themselves over? They came out of sheer “this is horrible and we’re helping” and my dad [local fire chief] had them working with our guys and the feds lost no time telling every news outlet that it was THEIR people doing all the fire knockdowns and structure work when these guys were running into buildings and grabbing people, pets, and people’s important documents because they knew papers were a pain in the ass to replace. 

What you gotta understand is that our government is very intent on selling us and the rest of the world [as much as possible] the idea of a powerful and self reliant country. All our reporting on disasters, starts with the scaremongering and then moves to “but our people can handle it because we’re the best at handling things” and then they move on before the idea it’s out of control comes to mind. The average person outside of the disaster has no idea, if they have never been around such an event or met someone who regularly deals with these things, they will kinda probably nod along with that. Because we have no real scope on the scale and impact– by design. Our media intake is very controlled to slant everything to the “eh, we can handle it and everyone else out there– they need our help because they’re not so good at handling disasters like we are.” People who know better, reading international news, interacting with international social groups, looking outside their sphere of community– we know better but that kinda slant is really hard to break from because of that grip American media has on information. So, taking that knowledge, we further have restricted reporting on certain disasters because they’re considered unimportant.  Hurricanes are considered important, earthquakes are only considered important if it wrecks something the government cares about or somewhere a couple million people live that they’ll upset the national money flow/they can throw money at someone to make the news care, floods are only important if it’s in a similar manner to earthquakes but since they occur annually they’re rarely reported on nationally, mudslides that kill people or leave hundreds homeless aren’t important to the government even through they happen constantly, wildfires that consume most of the nation/continent each year generally are unimportant until they consume a town or threaten a government interest/money flow location. Terrorist attacks are always important because people will talk about them.

So, when we do get help for any of the above, it’s possible that most people may have no idea about what’s happened, let alone that help’s been sent. Or if people know something happened, the details are vague– the news don’t care to give the nitty gritty. You’ll know something happened and people are suffering and “gee, isn’t it good you’re not them” and then now the weather.

I do, but the thing to remember is that the reason there are similarities is because both these universes borrow from real life. They use what happens to oppressed groups in real life and use that for their stories, so any similarity is because these are the things that happen to real people.

But yes I agree there’s a similarity between the Circle and the registry; the idea of registries or the phylacteries boils down to the same thing: they’re this silent threat to these oppressed groups that if they ever try to resist their treatment, they can be found, the templars and the sentinels then serve as the threat that if they are found that they will be killed. (+ no one will care because everyone has been told from birth how ‘dangerous’ these groups are. Especially those who do not comply with the normal order of things.)

The major difference in these fantastical stories compared to real life oppression, and the reason why neither mages nor mutants are perfect reflections of actual oppression, is that  both these groups (if their members united) can be much more dangerous than ‘ordinary’ citizens, which makes the idea of things like the Circle and the mutant registry much more palatable. To some people.

(It makes the discussion more difficult because while in real life you can point to statistics (from reputable sources), we can’t say ‘there were only 2 magic related deaths this year among the Avvar compared to 1500 among nations with Circles, so the circle does not work), the narrative is muddled to the point you could argue mages really are dangerous enough to warrant inhumane treatment. I don’t agree, but I can see how you’d make that argument.)

Sentinels and Templars (though I don’t know enough about who commissioned the Sentinels to say for sure) are used by people/ organisations who are looking to grow their own power by playing up the threat of the mutants/ mages. The templars as they stand now are nothing but the Chanty’s weapon to protect their power (yes they rebelled in da:i but I’m not betting on Bioware really changing anything in da4 I’m quite certain it’ll just be mages and templars again but I hope I’m wrong). Were they once a noble order? Personally I think not, I think they were always meant as nothing more than the instrument to give the Chantry power, to grow it and protect it.

The circle began when: “In 1:20 Divine, the Chantry and the Inquisition signed the Nevarran Accord, and created the Circle of Magi to regulate the use and systematic training of magic throughout Thedas. The Templar Order  was created to catch mages who refused to join the Circle ( … ) As magic had been the source of the Imperium’s power, it was all but banned when the Chantry became the new dominant force in Thedas,”

You can see what that sounds like, right? The Chantry consolidated the largest source of power in Thedas and banned it to be used anywhere outside of their control. In other words, the mages are used as scape goats as well by the Chantry to grow their power. You’d see how that would work, how seductive it is to listen to the Chantry when they say ‘magic is the cause of all your problems, let us protect you.’

This of course is exactly what happens in real life as well: you wait until a lot of people are miserable, then you choose a minority group to blame, you play up any crime committed by a member of that group and pretend it’s something inherent to their group, than when you get everyone nice and scared you get them angry, and then you say you’re the only one who can protect them from that group and make the world a better place.

The Reuters news agency this week recognized the challenges of covering Donald Trump’s presidency by comparing it to authoritarian regimes like Egypt, Yemen and China.

“It’s not every day that a U.S. president calls journalists ‘among the most dishonest human beings on earth’ or that his chief strategist dubs the media ‘the opposition party’,” Reuters Editor-in-Chief Steve Adler wrote in a message to staff on Tuesday.  “It’s hardly surprising that the air is thick with questions and theories about how to cover the new Administration.”

He cited the organization’s work in “Turkey, the Philippines, Egypt, Iraq, Yemen, Thailand, China, Zimbabwe, and Russia” as an example of how to report on the Trump administration.

Adler said that reporters could use experience learned in “nations in which we sometimes encounter some combination of censorship, legal prosecution, visa denials, and even physical threats to our journalists.”

Among other advice, the news agency pointed out that reporters should “[g]ive up on hand-outs and worry less about official access.”

“They were never all that valuable anyway.  Our coverage of Iran has been outstanding, and we have virtually no official access.  What we have are sources,” the memo said.  “Get out into the country and learn more about how people live, what they think, what helps and hurts them, and how the government and its actions appear to them, not to us.”

The letter encouraged reporters to “never be intimidated” by the administration.

“Don’t vent publicly about what might be understandable day-to-day frustration.  In countless other countries, we keep our own counsel so we can do our reporting without being suspected of personal animus.  We need to do that in the U.S., too,” the message to reporters said.  “Don’t take too dark a view of the reporting environment: It’s an opportunity for us to practice the skills we’ve learned in much tougher places around the world and to lead by example – and therefore to provide the freshest, most useful, and most illuminating information and insight of any news organization anywhere.”

Change can be scary. It can be difficult, overwhelming, and affect our mental, physical, and emotional health in all sorts of ways. Whatever you’re feeling right now, you definitely don’t have to feel it alone. Below is a list of resources and self-care tips to help make life a little bit easier. And if you don’t need them right now, pass ‘em along to a friend who might.

Got more tips? Reblog and add your favorites to the bottom, or make your own post and tag it #postitforward so we all know where to look.

Resources

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: Available 24/7 at 1-800-273-TALK (8255).

Crisis Text Line: Free, 24/7 support for anyone in crisis. Text START to 741741.

IMALIVE: Chat confidentially with a volunteer trained in crisis intervention.

7 Cups of Tea: Speak anonymously with a trained active listener.

NAMI: Dedicated to improving the lives of anyone living with mental illness. Free to chat at 1-800-950-6264.

Trans Lifeline: Dedicated to the well being of transgender people. USA: 1-877-565-8860. Canada: 1-877-330-6366.

The Trevor Project (@thetrevorproject): Confidential suicide hotline for LGBTQ young people. Available 24/7 at 1-866-488-7386.

The GLBT National Help Center: Provides LGBTQ people with free and confidential peer support at 1-888-843-4564. Youth Talkline: 1-800-246-7743.

It Gets Better Project (@itgetsbetterproject): Communicating to LGBTQ youth around the world that it gets better.

To Write Love On Her Arms (@twloha): Dedicated to helping people struggling with depression, addiction, self-injury, and suicide.

American Psychological Association: A resource for finding mental health care in your area.

NEDA: Help and support for people struggling with eating disorders. You can call 1-800-931-2237 or chat with them online.

Self-Care Tips

Don’t be afraid to ask for help if you need it.

Remember to be kind to others and yourself.

Drink plenty of water and don’t forget to eat.

Get enough sleep.

Have a movie or TV marathon.

Read a good book. Start a new series.

Read the #positivity and #postitforward tags on Tumblr.

Draw something or color in a picture.

Take a bath or long shower.

Write your thoughts down in a journal.

Turn your feelings into art. Make crafts.

Bake or cook something you like.

Go for a walk. Have a dance.

Watch a funny video.

Light your favorite candle(s).

Listen to your favorite music.

Take deep breaths. Try meditation.

Talk to a friend, a loved one, or someone you trust.

Make a list of things that bring you happiness. (This really works!)