salvation anew past the banks of the river shore

He's who walks up to stand beside her when recruiting Grace. A seamless team. "I need you to come with us."

He's in the observation room with her and all the other important officials, watching Grace make first contact. He's privy to that pivotal moment. She must think he's entitled to partaking of it. Because this is his mission too.

She trusts him to oversee Grace's experiments with three (and a dead) invaluable astrophage cells. How he does it is up to his own judgment. With an expense account and plenty of leeway for how to use it, no questions asked. He's entirely confident in the authority he wields in her name. "Which government?" "All of them."

He's in the room at Baikonur when they present Grace with his role as replacement science officer. He knows. Of all people she thought would be appropriate to have there, the flight team, the lead scientists who have worked with Grace all this time... he's there. Shaking his head in disappointment. Expressing what Eva doubtlessly feels beneath her ever so calmly presented arguments.

He's doubtlessly the one she calls from her office to let him know they predicted correctly and the final stretch of corralling their wayward savior will be up to him. He'll do it right. He'll do it.

Just... unspoken, implicit trust and faith in his ability to do his part in their greater purpose. She believes in Grace but can't fully trust him. Carl? Zero doubt.

So anything regarding astrophage or the ship or space goes through Ryland, and that means he is constantly working with Stratt to make sure all the many moving parts of getting the Hail Mary in the air keep moving. But it’s Carl who the lawyers and accountants and security report to, whose sphere is making sure payments are processed, supply management and delivery to the ship stays on track, authorization to enter national waters or national airspace is obtained, background checks are performed, security threats are handled, political threats to the project are monitored, and who joins activities like springing useful embezzlers out of prison and Stratt’s copyright trial excursion. She has two deputies to cover different aspects of keeping the project running and she thought she chose them well based on their stated willingness to go all in on the task to save the world but as the project goes on only one of them seems to really understand what they’re all dealing with here.

(And so after DuBois and Shapiro die in that explosion, Carl is the one Stratt sits down with to say, “You know it has to be him.”

Carl gives a long sigh and is quiet for a few heavy seconds before he says, “Yeah, I know. Does he?”

(shout out to the situation sender who's chosen to remain anonymous!)

NOTE: People of color, if you feel that your efforts would be in vain or cause more pain than it's worth, I fully respect not doing it. I've been there, and tbh I usually don't. But white netizens, I expect boots on the ground. Racism festers when no one does anything about it.

So, it's finally happened! You've come face to face with antiblackness in your fandom space. You never thought it could be this bad! Naturally YOU don't condone this behavior, so you take steps to remove yourself from this person.

However! Your friends and other fans are still happily sharing from someone that you KNOW is capable of this. Would they still be comfortable knowing they're yapping amongst racists? And then you wonder- should I tell everyone about them? I mean, surely everyone should know?

Thus we've come to the decision:

The Callout

In my honest opinion, callouts are morally neutral. When used to reveal consistent harmful beliefs, intentions, and behaviors to other people, usually of marginalized identities, I think they're critical. Our safety and humanity matters far more than someone's internet fame. If I can't stop someone from being a racist, I at least don't want their vitriol on my dash, and I ALSO don't want people thinking I agree! Racism shouldn't be tolerated at all, but unfortunately, many an antiblack racist has a popular following and will not be removed. Anything less overt than a slur like the example above is more often than not, not a dealbreaker for many.

On the other hand, when it is maliciously weaponized to drag someone down on nothing but hearsay and rumor, it can be devastating. It has often been used as retaliation against those very same marginalized peoples to shut down discussions of racism and other forms of bigotry. In my opinion, you should not do these sorts of things when you don't have any solid proof or an actual education on what you're talking about. Period.

I say that all to say, be intentional. Use your discernment and some critical thinking.

How Ice Deals With It

Let's say you see something that concerns you. First, you need to pay attention to if other Black fans have noted this person's behavior. Has it been previously noticed, have they seen dogwhistles you've completely missed? Keep in mind as well, antiblackness does not have to come from a white person. Don't let "I'm brown" fool you.

If you're confident: confront the person on the particular issue you've noticed.

‼️‼️‼️ For the maintenance of your mental health, you CANNOT go into this expecting to change someone's mind and behavior. If you do, 9/10 you will face demoralization. You cannot walk into these thinking they care. Most people don't, and will deny the harm of their behavior. It sucks, but it's the truth. Change your perspective. The only goal you need to have is pointing out the harm done, so that this person loses the excuse to be racist out of "ignorance". Once you've spoken up, ball's now in their court.

Confrontation doesn't have to be negative! It can be as simple as "hey, what you said was not okay, here's why, and I hope that you can learn from this to do better for yourself and for your fans." Simple, to the point.

‼️Keep in mind, from Fans of Color: the private confrontation is a sign that we're trying to give you a chance to do right. Everyone's not going to receive that grace, nor do I expect every fan of color to offer it. It might just be up with you and your racism that day. 🤷🏾‍♀️ I would take the chance if offered.‼️

We're going to go two routes here.

1) It works

If it works, then what should come next is 1) a full acknowledgment of the violence and harm, 2) visible steps to ameliorate that harm, and 3) an apology to those harmed.

It doesn't have to be a complex apology (unless the situation itself was that large). But it has to be genuine and the change needs to be seen.

Very often you'll see apologies for antiblackness... To white fans. You cannot apologize for your actions to people who were not harmed by them, because they are not the ones with the right to accept the apology!!!! It's not a real apology. They've just covered for being exposed, is all. Be willing to hold each other accountable!

2) It doesn't work

This might still happen after the "it works", btw! Some people genuinely just want the appearance of progressiveness.

Here's where it gets gritty and you'll experience the most discomfort, I'm just being honest:

They might fucking suck!

They might suck, they might make it a point to share with their followers that you suck, and those same followers might also suck! You know how they sound? Like those people who fought for rapist Brock Turner because "he had a good future and this shouldn't ruin it". Yeah.

Recognize that this backlash you may experience from strangers is not coming just from their need to be entertained, but from a realization that if their fave is antiblack and they agree, then THEY are being antiblack too.

That acute pain you're feeling from this effort- you're now feeling a part of the chronic pain that is being a Black fan! And if you're white, you just temporarily sacrificed your whiteness to defend what was right, and now you are seeing a piece what that whiteness shields you from. Idk how else to put it.

Now what?

Well first, this shouldn't make you go "oh well there's no point in fighting racism bc they're so mean." Why do you want to identify with the people who just acted like that lmao. Antiracism is hard, but the right thing isn't always easy. Stand up and dust yourself off, soldier.

Take the steps to protect yourself. That might be a break from socials to decompress. Block people as necessary, use the tag blocker thing.

Recognize that you are not in the wrong for wanting this harm to be accounted for. If this person didn't want to be seen as a willful racist, they should have chosen to do better. They didn't want to, they chose to triple down on their racism, which they are now aware of doing! They just don't care. And that's not within your control. They wanna be a racist, let them be treated like one!

"Curate your space" as they say, and recognize that antiblackness is going to have you potentially removing folks you thought were cool left and right. You might see some people close to you show their true colors. It's time to make some tough personal decisions. I can't walk you through that. But I don't want to be around people who treat antiblackness with apathy, because birds of a feather... 👀

Digital files from my "Good News" zine

This work is about the joy and freedom that come with deconverting from an oppressive religion. I hope you enjoy!

The voices we've known privately in our headphones are spoken by faces in front of our own eyes and the eyes of a crowd. The actors will sound like their characters, but might not look like them at all. We don't need the actors to know their lines by heart, or for there to be any props or stage dressing, for us to believe in the story. An actor's facial expressions, some body language, and some movement will generally reflect the attitude of their character, but the characters' actions won't always be acted out literally in front of us. The story is usually understandable entirely through audio, but we gain something unique through the visual experience.

Homophobia is rooted in misogyny. Transphobia is rooted in misogyny. These forms of oppression exist as an extension of a bioessentialist hatred of women whether that involves being one, "acting" like one, "presenting" like one, or rejecting the categorization between men and women altogether. Every form of gendered oppression that negatively affects men does so ultimately because of misogyny as a root cause and is enforced by misogynistic violence.

Any terminology meant to highlight gendered oppression against a group of men (e.g. misandry, transandrophobia, etc.) fundamentally misunderstands gendered oppression, how it works, and why it exists in the first place. You cannot eliminate homophobia without dismantling patriarchy. You cannot eliminate transphobia without dismantling patriarchy.

Like, you can say you “know more” than the average person in antiquity - but you don’t. Maybe in a conceptual manner - yeah, we know about distant planets and galaxies, we’ve got germ theory, we have made a collection of the entire human genome, we have walked on the fucking moon - but from the perspective of someone from 500 BCE (if I may be allowed a dash of speculation here), does that matter?

In our industrialized, globalized world, I think we forget the sheer effort that went into everything. The sheer degree of skill needed to create homes, tools, clothing, ceramics, fine jewelry, statues, and everything in-between. The skill, knowledge, and effort that went into everyday subsistence activities, like farming, herding, and weaving; and into other trades such as shipping and manufacturing. These are not mindless tasks, devoid of calculation and forethought; to pretend they are in even the slightest is disingenuous.

I would even go so far as to say it is extremely classist & sexist, because - shocker - people still work in these fields. The food you eat, the clothes you wear, the streets you walk, the buildings you eat and sleep and live in - these did not spawn out of a vacuum. Constant effort - unending, backbreaking labor, time, and skill has gone into the world we walk through today, so people can go on pretending like they’re somehow ‘smarter’ than those who came before them, when the only difference is that we* are able to concentrate on something besides our own survival. something otherwise ‘useless’ for everyday survival, and i say that as an archaeologist. Excavating a Bronze Age brewery does not provide food, it does not provide you with clothes (it actually damages them), it does not give you shelter, it mostly provides you with broken potsherds and a whole lot of dirt destined for floatation. Yes, it requires practical skills too - but many of these are essentially also used, even more frequently, in manual labor and agriculture.

And - in this broken, frightful world - we are so damn lucky** that people can even spare time for this, to learn more about the ancient world. And we are even more lucky that - when we are born with health complications, are disabled, or are faced with diseases like pneumonia, measles, and COVID - that these are not death sentences. Artificial scarcity, corporate greed, and fearmongering can make them so, but there is still that ability to live. To focus on the past, instead of making it to the next day, the next week, the next month.

But - I want to emphasize here - this is all entirely reliant on the work of people who continue to carry out the same manual labor done by countless individuals - enslaved and free - up through antiquity. People whose calculations were their survival, whose understanding of the natural world and local resources made the difference between life and death.

To pretend like we are somehow more knowledgable, more capable, more “advanced” intellectually than those who laid the foundations for the entire fucking world we live in today, is a lie. A smug, disgusting little lie that spits on all we have done as a species (and all the progress we are trying to make) with the idea that “we’ve done it”, we’re “superior,” this idea that only encourages rotting in self-assured apathy while the world burns.

And you cannot appreciate the past when you approach it with false assumptions which are based on nothing except preconcieved notions of modern superiority and the belief that knowledge is both ‘quantifiable’ and absolute. We are just as capable of joy, wisdom, compassion, and love as the ancients; and we are just as susceptible to fear, anger, and hatred as they were. I’m not saying everyone has to know the ins and outs of every ancient industry ever to appreciate the fucking Parthenon, but if someone cannot approach the ancient world with an open mind, a sense of humility, and self-reflection - then I suspect they cannot appreciate the fucking Parthenon.

*When I use the term 'we,' I am referring to individuals who do not specialize in manual labor/blue-collar industries and/or engage in subsistence agriculture.