😮💨 We at Strange New Vegan Death Cult Murders HQ have spent- ahem- NINE HOURS of our Saturday writing & rewriting… & rewriting!— 3 slim little letters- to Ziz, Somni, & Jamie— in hopes of slipping them past prison censorship (PC) 🤞
Now, we may have been led round the mulberry bush a few times by Chat, to whom we, at approx. hour 2, proudly took our "finished" letters...
ONLY FOR CHAT TO TELL US THAT EVERYTHING WE DID WAS WRONG.
First there was, y'know, everything we at SNVDCM spend all our time doing:
No mentioning the case, no mentioning online writings, no discussing "ongoing disputes" (which to be fair, referred to OUR ongoing dispute w/ the Rationalists, not theirs- Chat noted disapprovingly that we "[see] these as 'adversaries'" 💀) .
...NOooo "vague or coded language"!! Homophobic!
Thennn there were comments that made us guffaw thru our tears:
☠️ We had intended to send Somni a passage from our fav lesbian author, who had also been involuntarily institutionalized! We'd written & WEPT over a description of the "long line of women" who are watching over & identifying w/ her situation yada yada yada...
Chat called the passage "beautifully written" (mm say more we translated it ourself ☺️), but THEN informed us that PC HATES "intense emotional & philosophical themes"!! 😮
And pointed out that our excerpt "includes themes of despair, pain, and near-death experiences"!
Which, ok sure- fine- we get it- we'd just thought that maybe Miss Somni would resonate w/ it, but moving on:
Next, Chat warned us that our letter to Ziz "repeatedly refers to certain people as 'clowns,' 'hornets,' 'grotesque men’, and accuses them of ‘bad behavior’.” 😭
WELLL, we thought that we were being diplomatic, but whatever. Now that you mention it, we can imagine that the likely-clowns, likely-grotesque men, & maybe even a hornet or two who censor the letters at Allegany Detention Center might disapprove.
Next we fed Chat Jamie's letter, & watched in horror as it nixed our two best lines.
Line #1: "No one wants to admit they've become an internet sleuth, but oh well."
We thought that this would be a nice way to nod to the cringe factor of this whole situation. But PC, it seems, would not be softened: they might, as per Chat, flag this as "disruptive & inappropriate"!!
😮 We WISH that SNVDCM had a chance of disrupting this case- but alas, we have no such pretensions. Out of pocket.
Line #2 was nixed for "mentions of protection".
We had said- taking the liberty to speak *broadly* for readers of SNVDCM:
"I wish we could translate [our support for you, Jamie,] into actual protection.”
We'd thought this conveyed both our shame over our impotence, & our recognition of the dire straits that Jamie is in. But no dice.
We wondered if Chat was being a bit, as they say, "paranoid, extreme, & histrionic" when it said that this could be taken as a desire to "interfere w/ legal matters"? Ugh, unfortunately we can do nothing in this case, that is the point of the statement. Whatever: into the trash it goes; our real desire is just for the letter to get through.
HEEERE is the point where we started to slip out of laughing at these clown-hornet censors, & started to slip into...
5 comments which got not a peep out of us, which indeed put us in such a grim mood that we called writing to their specifications a "MORAL INJURY" 🫠 Call us drama queens. That was the vibe.
Comment #1: No mention of sympathy regardless of actions.
We thought this showed basic Christian charity. Chat thought this showed a "problematic" "minimization of potential criminal behavior." Hmph!
Comment #2: No mentions of what Chat calls "Activism".
🙃 We fear we are slacktivists in this matter, Chat, but it ALARMS us that inmates may not hear mention of even nascent communal support for them! It appalls us that you say this "could be seen as disruptive or controversial."
It could also be seen- by inmates- as solidarity & as a source of hope! What purpose does this serve, other than control & suppression?
Comment #3: No doubting the official narrative.
This necessitated a v. serious chat w/ our gf. This is a totalitarian-seeming restriction. This makes us sick.
This is the legal machine protecting its own ego: protecting an illusion of infallibility- an infallibility which they generously extend to the press as well- it was the press's narratives which we were disputing! Even this, apparently, is too much for the average prison censor to bear.
Comment #4: No institutional critique.
This is perhaps an extension of Comment #3. But in the immortal words of Chat: "Your discussion of coordinated media messaging, systemic bias, & persecution may be seen as inflammatory."
😮 Who is being inflamed here?
We had wanted to write to Somni & affirm that we generally agree w/ what she has to say. Most recently, what she had to say was that "this is a show trial to coordinate" a fundamentally exterminationist agenda.
We did not expect this to bring her joy, but we hoped it might give her a paradoxical sense of peace: that she is not the only one noting the systemic biases which define this case.
We do not think that Somni would be "inflamed" by this not-so-shocking news. What this actually inflames is doubt over the credibility of the legal machine- again, not even legal proceedings, merely media coverage! It is still too hot for our censors.
Comment #5: No references to alleged trauma.
Namely, no saying to Jamie: "I believe everything that you say you experienced during your childhood".
Which we thought was both a subtle & respectful way to reference THE HORRORS😓
We fear this does nothing but silence validation, & enforce emotional isolation: neither of which serve to protect prisoners, but both of which may make them easier to control 💀💀💀
Annnnyway, we spent the next 7 hours wrangling over HOW to phrase our emotional validation, skepticism towards official narratives, eagerness to do literally anything to help anyone in this mess, &- we just had to hope that our unconditional support would shine thru regardless 🤫
At last, Chat declared our squashed, stifled, stripped-down, & otherwise squelched letters good to go 👌- we are EXCITED to see if PC agrees!!
*****