#but then again it also could be a reflection of the insularity of the children? | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

pynkhues · 10 months

Note

I don’t know if you’ve seen the cut lines from the S4 script yet (where Stewy references some semi-ominous sounding games he remembers from when he and Kendall were growing up like Punch-Chess and Dinners for Winners) but this kind of made me think back on the games throughline (motif?) with Logan. We get to see how insane Boar on the Floor was in real time and we’ve gotten a pretty good sense throughout the series that Logan has a penchant for framing violence through the lens of games (not dishonestly might I add – I think there’s a reasonable read of Logan whereby he himself doesn’t view his games as a means for violence at all but just as tools or in some cases, truly just games).

Recently I’ve seen some discussion that kind of lumps together games the kids played (Bitey, Dog Pound) with Logan’s games (Boar on the Floor, Dinners for Winners) and that struck me as kind of odd. Rightly or wrongly, I’ve been mentally distinguishing between the games the siblings play with each other as different from the games Logan concocts. It might just be me, but Bitey and Dog Pound read to me as within the realm of reasonable kids games (noting that a ton of kids play kind of insane games lol). I also just feel like the power structure is…different when it’s just the siblings? Does that make sense? Whereas when Logan invests games for his kids, there’s something more…uneven and off-kilter about it to me. Idk – do you think they’re all part of the same motif or that there’s some level of distinction? Maybe I just to think about it more haha – I guess this is a super long round-about way of asking: how do you view the use of games (“games”?) within the context of the show?

Oh, yeah, I totally agree that the games the kids play with each other are very different from the games that Logan concocts, anon, but I’m not surprised to hear that people consider them in the same sort of discourse. After all, the games that the kids play with each other, now that they’re all adults, are viewed through the prism of the power dynamics in the current family unit.

In other words, even games that are on paper the sort that any kid plays (Dog Pound being a good example – my five and seven year old nephews actually play a pretty similar game at the moment called Puppy and Person, although I think their game involves more patting and cuddling than Roman and Kendall’s probably did, haha), because we’re encountering it with Kendall and Roman in their late-thirties and through the lens of undealt with sibling resentments and adult competition, they can be mistaken for the same sorts of games that Logan played / still plays with the kids.

In that sense, I think the clearest point of distinction is the fact that Logan is never really a player in the games, he’s the overseer of them – the judge, jury and executioner – and we’ve seen that twice. The first time with the baseball game in the pilot, and the second, of course, with Boar on the Floor. Interestingly, the only time we’ve actually seen him participate in a game as a player was in I Went Shopping in the Thanksgiving episode back in S1, and well, we all know how that ended.

Games are integral to the show, and it’s interesting because I don’t think they have any one particular meaning. I think the writers like them as a shorthand to convey certain themes and relationship dynamics, I think they’re an efficient and compelling way to move plot forwards, and I think the writers like to use them to trojan horse the history of abuse within the Roy family, which is exactly what that new excerpt from the script of 4.04 demonstrates.

Critically though, I also think they’re significant thematically in depicting both childhood and masculinity, and I think that’s really where the distinction comes in when it comes to the games the kids play together (yes, even Dog Pound, as much as that game [and Kendall] wants to pretend to be about masculinity, I personally don't think it is at all), and the ones Logan does.

So, let’s talk about childhood.

Games are integral to childhood, there’s no getting around that. Games are what teach children social skills and curiosity, strategy and the ability to both win and to lose, which is, of course, also the skill to enjoy success and sometimes embrace failure too. One of my current jobs is in a company that does play-based theatre for children, with a special focus on traumatised children, so I could talk a lot about this and the evidence behind it, and how crucial games are in empowering children and helping them develop agency away from the family unit, but that’s kind of where this story stops, because while games should help children to grow into playful, empathetic and inquisitive adults, the Roy children do not play games with outsiders.

The Roy children have lived in a completely insular world – a playground their father has built them, as Marcia so aptly put it – and so these games don’t evolve. Instead, these games like Bitey and Dog Pound and even Kendall’s LEGO become manifestations of current anxieties, insecurities and resentments, and an encapsulation of Shiv, Roman and Kendall’s arrested development.

(Maybe interestingly, I consider Connor slightly less arrested than his little siblings, and I do think a part of that is from his parentification, but also a proxy result of effectively having been raised in those formative childhood years as an only child, especially if he was, as Alan Ruck has said, about fifteen when Kendall was born).

Of course, Logan encourages this.

Logan’s inability to face his own mortality or seal off his own legacy requires him to keep his children, well, children. He needs them under his thumb, sure, but he also, I think, needs to keep them young so that he can feel young. Needs the promise of his own future reflected in the length of their own, and his frequent infantilisation of all four of them is a part of what keeps them regressed and reading meaning into games they played and places they lived when they were too young to know any better.

Let’s talk about masculinity.

Funnily enough, I actually talked a little about this in the context of Tom and Greg back when s3 was airing here, but a few years ago, I read Anna Krien’s Night Games which is one of my favourite non-fiction books of the last decade.

The book itself is about masculinity, sport and sexual assault, in particular patterns of gang rape by teams in Australian football and cricket, but she goes a lot broader in terms of games and male intimacy, and in particular how team sports give men a sense of community which, as a result of toxic masculinity, is generally reinforced by ‘othering’ outsiders of the team / environment, whether that be players on the opposite team, perceived interlopers, women, or even members of their own team who don’t participate in the right way with the group.

I don’t know if any of the writers would’ve read Night Games (it’s an Australian sports journalism book after all, haha), but I think they do understand deeply the way masculinity operates in these circles and the ways games of any sort can be utilised as a shorthand to exert power and solidify connection. Boar on the Floor is, of course, the clearest example of this, where Logan utilises the context of the game to dig out his betrayers, and while the first round has everyone as an unwilling participant, once a smaller group of 'others' are picked in Tom, Greg and Karl, the safety of being on the right team makes everyone becomes complicit in the second round.

This is something Logan’s a master of and what he does routinely with his children in general, but also in the rules of the games Stewy talks about in the 4.04 script. Those games are about the othering of a person and the increased intimacy of the rest of the team. If Dinners for Winners has the loser acting like the help, the winners are the rest of the family celebrating their renewed bond as, well, winners.

I don’t think the kids are immune from this in their own behaviour. In fact, I think the biggest examples we see of the kids engaging in this particular type of game play is in Roman’s treatment of the child during the baseball game in the pilot (and I actually am reading the scripts [albeit very slowly, haha] at the moment and read 2.01 last night and was pretty fascinated to discover that the boy’s father is one of the landscapers at The Summer Palace), and in the sequence throwing back to Kendall’s bachelor party with the tattooing of the homeless man’s head with Kendall’s initials.

These aren’t complete games, and interestingly they don’t create the same sense of shared compliance and group intimacy in the way Logan’s games do – no one’s fully on board with Roman’s behaviour, and Roman betrays the group bond in terms of Kendall’s bachelor party by telling Gerri and trying to use it against Kendall – but I view that as more a reflection of Roman and Kendall’s failures in masculinity and authority than in anything else.

It’s that failure there though which, in many ways, further separates the games Logan plays with them to the games they play together. Roman and Kendall continue to fail to imitate their father in his particular brand of games, because Logan knows how to divide and conquer, which they simply don't.

That also though is a direct contrast to the games the kids play together, because those games, whether they be Bitey or Monopoly or even Dog Pound, those games are about shared connection. After all, Kendall wasn't the one who sent Roman away, Kendall was just playing a game with his brother, no matter what they both have inferred in it over time.

#i can't speak to the nanny game shiv and roman played either yet because i'm not up to that in the scripts #but i would say that's potentially another example of the kids playing at logan's types of games #because it involves the othering of a person i.e. the nannies #but then again it also could be a reflection of the insularity of the children?#idk!#i'll have to read it in context #thanks for the ask sorry this took a minute #hbo succession #succession meta #kendall roy #roman roy #shiv roy #logan roy #welcome to my ama

41 notes · View notes

faintingheroine · 11 months

Note

Robert Finn claims that in Aşk-ı Memnu, 'one must play by the rules if one expects to win', after depicting Bihter and Nihal as non-conformists. He claims there are no complete winners in Aşk-ı Memnu, but then where do you think this leaves those who (according to Finn) do play by the rules, like Behlül and Firdevs? And how might Nihal's victory over Bihter for Adnan's affections and Bihter's victory over the narrative of the novel impact Finn's reading?

I feel like Finn was gesturing to some comment on Turkish society, but it's not fully elaborated enough— what exactly is the game? How does one win it? (you may not have the answers here, I'm just wondering if you know any context that could help)

I think Finn does insinuate that Nihal is better at playing the “game” than Bihter, and I agree, though I can’t say why. She is as emotional as Bihter, but as we discussed her psychology often directs the narrative in a mysterious way. I do liken this to a fairy tale protagonist since it can be argued that fairy tales are about the unconscious fears of children and develop according to those unconscious needs of the child/the protagonist. I do need to develop this line of thinking more though. Of course another element in Nihal’s relative success is that she has people who care about her which Bihter doesn’t have. I also would say that Nihal is more cunning and perceptive than Bihter in her thoughts but that doesn’t necessarily reflect in any of her actions.

Finn says that it is Behlül who gets the most advantage out of the novel’s events and I agree. This is partially because he doesn’t care deeply. But it is also because he is a man. As you said in your pre-lapsarian reading, he is a man, he may fall again and again. Though I don’t think Behlül “wins” (he had a fallout with his rich uncle, and caused a woman to lose her life) it is true that, seeing life as a game, he lost less than Bihter and Nihal did.

Firdevs is someone who does accept the rules of the society on some level. Sure she is transgressive in her “loose” character, but she does ultimately understand that she can’t have her cake and eat it too, that if she wants to live her life like she wants to live it she will have to reconcile herself to being seen as a fallen woman. And partially because she is shameless she can know this and still live. Bihter is more “honorable”, has more of a conscience. She also cares a lot about what others think and often imagines what others think of her and feels shame. She is also naive enough to let herself believe Behlül’s romantic fantasies, which I don’t think is a mistake Firdevs would make. Ultimately Firdevs does lose a daughter and her life has no direction but she is at least still alive, so I do think she is relatively victorious compared to Bihter.

Ironically, Bihter’s victory over the narrative is precisely because she loses and dies. That makes her tragic. So losing “the game” in effect makes you win “the narrative”.

I don’t think there is anything that is being implied about the Turkish society in specific here, unless I truly don’t know something. I think the game here is the one in every novel about the romantic intrigues of rich people, not very different from Dangerous Liaisons or The Age of Innocence (who should Michelle Pfeiffer play in Aşk-ı Memnu?) except it is even more insular and divorced from larger society.

Sorry if this is less developed an answer, I am still thinking myself.

#aşk ı memnu #aşk-ı memnu #robert finn #nihal #bihter #firdevs #behlül #aşk ı memnu asks #literatureismyentirepersonality

7 notes · View notes

sodone-withlife · 3 years

Text

i know who i am

summary: really, he never saw himself ever willingly letting anyone in on his broken past, but here he was, sitting in across from Waipo in the tiny cramped office at the back of the shop and nervously sweating about what he was about to tell her

read it on ao3: chapter 1 is the original version with Mandarin, chapter 2 has everything translated into English

the movie really hit me hard as an ABC, and I really wanted to write something for it. even though she barely had any screentime, I loved Waipo—she reminds me of so many of my relatives—so I decided to make her be one of the most important people in Shangqi’s life, and it turned into this wonderful mess (i had to stop writing this for a bit because I literally made myself cry). there is mandarin in this, it's kind of intended to be a physical manifestation of how my bilingual brain works (i did put the English-only version first, the original version with Mandarin is under that one but the formatting for it one is better on ao3, so i suggest reading it from there). apologies for my shitty mandarin; I have mediocre language skills, but I'm still so excited to be able to incorporate it in my writing. in regards to the character's names: I only know for certain the Chinese characters used for Shangqi and Wenwu, but for Xialing, I'm going to go with what it apparently was in the hong kong release (夏灵, with 灵灵 as the nickname)

English Translation:

“Waipo, do you have a bit of time?” Shangqi stood in front of Katy’s grandma, fidgeting nervously as fluent Mandarin rolled off of his tongue with an ease he's never felt in any other part of his life. “I want to talk to you about something."

She pinned him with a knowing stare. “Does it have anything to do with the trip you and Katy went on this past week?" she asked, Not waiting for his answer, she got up from the shop register and beckoned him into the back office. Feeling oddly like the first time he came into the store years ago as a teen—when he first met Katy’s family who had since taken him under their wing—he followed her into the familiar, cramped space.

He wasn’t exactly sure what within him prompted this interaction. He had come to San Francisco for a normal life, to get as far away from his father’s reaches as he could and to outrun the blood that stained his footsteps.

Never did Shangqi imagine that he would end up claiming the ancient rings that now sat in a heavy-duty (thanks to Xialing, with whom he now keeps in regular contact because of the promise they made to each other before he left the compound because he already left her behind once, and he’s never doing it again damn, my baby sister is running the Ten Rings now, and she’s trying to turn it into something better) and a very well-disguised (thanks to the sorcerers in the New York Sanctum and holy shit he’s in contact with famous superheroes now) back in his mess of a studio apartment.

Never did he imagine letting anyone in on his broken past, and even though his hand had been forced when it came to telling Katy, here he was going to the second person who truly saw something in him when he first started his new life and planning to tell them everything.

(Okay, fine, Shangqi wasn’t actually planning on letting anyone else in on it after telling Waipo, not even the rest of Katy’s family, but he really didn’t want them to be so involved yet—he still had no idea what he himself was doing and he wants to preserve what normalcy he can.)

(Also, he’s been reliably informed that anyone close to a public figure is bound to be targeted for attacks—which he figured out when the mercenaries attacked on the bus because yes, Lingling, he does have brain cells thank you very much.)

“Little Dragon, what’s on your mind?”

Little Dragon.

He started at the nickname, the one originally given to him by his mother. Somehow, it had completely slipped his mind that Waipo also called him that, starting a few weeks after he first met the Chen family. He barely kept it together, the long-unused nickname dredging up memories he had thought left him forever.

You have the heart of a dragon, she had declared firmly when he asked her why she decided on that particular nickname.

(That was exactly what his mother had told him right before she died, and yet he stood by, hidden behind a door, and did nothing while the men beat and killed her, the heart of the family.)

(He would carry the guilt with him for a lifetime.)

It was a while before he could bring himself to visit the family again—there were a lot of awkward excuses before Katy reluctantly backed off—and it took even longer for him to get somewhat used to the name again, but he eventually started seeing it as a gift with each faint impression of happier days that he got every time Waipo called him that.

Old, weathered hands gently covered his own, which were shaking and clammy with nervousness. Shangqi wondered how Waipo would react to the darker side of the lost boy she had basically adopted all those years ago, wondered if the legends of Ta-Lo and the Great Protector were known outside of the rather insular communities that continued to tell the stories, wondered if she had heard about his father through the stories that were passed down for thousands of years, from generation to generation…

(It can’t be wrong to miss him, can it? Even with the years of hell Wenwu had put him through, he was still his father. Shangqi still faintly remembered the man his father had been when his mother was still alive, the happy times they shared as a normal family…)

(But those times were long gone, ripped from their grasp by the past Wenwu wanted so badly to leave behind. Grief had shattered the whole family, and it ultimately led to the children fighting the father who had been driven to near madness in his denial, in his quest to put his broken family back together again.)

Mom, I miss you so much.

(And now Wenwu is dead, just like his beloved wife.)

(But just as she died to protect her children, he did the same. Now, his children are reunited and in contact again, getting ever closer despite living as far apart as they did, and he was reunited with his love in the afterlife.)

Finally, he straightened his posture and took a deep breath, looking directly at Waipo, who he’d come to view as the grandmother he never had.

“Waipo, have you heard of the legend of the Ten Rings?”

And Shangqi told her everything.

He told her everything and more,

She listened.

She listened as he described the legends behind the Ten Rings, Ta-Lo, and the Great Protector; his father’s history; his own history, from witnessing his mother’s death to ripping open the throat of the man who killed her when he was barely a teen, from leaving Lingling behind to seeing her again in the fight club she built from the ground up, from returning to the compound after a decade away in San Francisco to the battle in Ta-Lo…

Finally, he fell silent and stared at his hands but it wasn’t long before Waipo moved, slowly standing up with one hand on her cane. He made to help stabilize her but was quickly waved off with a stern look. He sank back into the chair and felt her move behind him. The shaky weight of her hands on his shoulders as she gently pressed down and straightened his posture was familiar, even after years of not having his posture deliberately—so gently—fixed like that every time he saw Waipo.

“You are the legacy of all who came before you, but you are your own person.” she finally said gently, and the tension in his shoulders slowly loosened under her familiar touch. “You decide your own fate.”

~~~

That night, Shangqi knelt before the altar he had in his apartment, the only part that was carefully maintained in all the years he had lived there. But now, two smiling faces stared back at him, a joy reflected in their eyes that he knew would disappear in less than ten years after the photo was taken.

Am I still your pride and joy? Lingling grew up, but I didn’t even take care of her like I should have.

I swear to you, I will never abandon her again

Even as his life got even more unbelievable as the years went by, the altar and his copy of his parent’s wedding photo would remain a constant. He and Lingling dove deeper into their family history—of the Ten Rings, of Ta-Lo, of both the good and bad—and both worked to carry on their parents’ legacy.

(With all of the proper discretion agreements and threats when needed, of course.)

Lingling is dating my best friend now, and they’re so happy together. Mom, I know you would have loved Katy. Dad, I know you didn’t like her much, but she really is a wonderful person.

Life went on.

There were the good days, when he went out with others and could almost feel normal, and there were the bad days, when phantoms pains plagued him and he woke up from a restless sleep expecting to see bruises mottling his body like they did so often when he was younger.

(Also, he was considered a superhero now and holy shit that’s still insane, even years after he first got in contact with the Avengers and the sorcerers in New York. Now he was going all over the West Coast, to help the locals take care of whichever crazy supervillain decided to wreak havoc that day.)

Dad, I hope you find this story as funny as I did: I helped a group of American superheroes yesterday. They’ve never been to San Francisco before and were extremely unfamiliar with the roads, especially Lombard Street. They spent half an hour trying to drive down the street, but I ended up driving them down myself.

(San Francisco was still home, and he had found a life there with all his friends and Xialing whenever she visited. He had a job now, too, at the local youth center teaching martial arts and self-defense, teaching and guiding the youth in a way he wishes his father had with him.)

People came into his life; some stayed, some left, and some even got together.

Mom, Dad, Lingling and Katy are getting married today and everyone is so excited for them. I’m taking over the Ten Ring within a month so Lingling can take a break. She’s led the organization for so long, it’s my responsibility now. I hope I can live up to her standards, she’s done really well. She’ll be back in a few years, but even after, I’m going to be much more involved to lessen Lingling’s workload.

Shangqi walked the path knowing who came before him and who was still with him.

Most importantly, he walked the path knowing who he was—demons, flaws, strengths, and all.

Mom, Dad, don’t worry. I’ll take care of them.

I hope you’re happy together in the afterlife.

~~~

Don’t be afraid, Shang-Chi, for you have heart of a dragon and the power of the Ten Rings.

We will always be with you and Xialing.

Original Version w/Mandarin

“外婆，您有没有一点儿时间？” 尚气 stood in front of Katy’s grandma, fidgeting nervously. “我想告诉您一些事情。”

She pinned him with a knowing stare. “是不是跟你和瑞雯这前个星期去的旅行有关？” Not waiting for his answer, she got up from the shop register and beckoned him into the back office. Feeling oddly like the first time he came into the store years ago as a teen—when he first met Katy’s family who had since taken him under their wing—he followed her into the familiar, cramped space.

Never did 尚气 imagine that he would end up claiming the ancient rings that now sat in a heavy-duty (thanks to 夏灵, with whom he now keeps in regular contact because of the promise they made to each other before he left the compound because he already left her behind once, and he’s never doing it again and damn, my baby sister is running the Ten Rings now, and she’s trying to turn it into something better) and a very well-disguised (thanks to the sorcerers in the New York Sanctum and holy shit he’s in contact with famous superheroes now) back in his mess of a studio apartment.

(Okay, fine, 尚气 wasn’t actually planning on letting anyone else in on it after telling 外婆, not even the rest of Katy’s family, but he really didn’t want them to be so involved yet—he still had no idea what he himself was doing and he wants to preserve what normalcy he can.)

(Also, he’s been reliably informed that anyone close to a public figure is bound to be targeted for attacks—which he figured out when the mercenaries attacked on the bus because yes, 灵灵, he does have brain cells thank you very much.)

“小龙，你有什么心事儿？”

Little Dragon.

He started at the nickname, the one originally given to him by his mother. Somehow, it had completely slipped his mind that 外婆 also called him that, starting a few weeks after he first met the Chen family. He barely kept it together, the long-unused nickname dredging up memories he had thought left him forever.

你有神龙之心，she had declared firmly when he asked her why she decided on that particular nickname. You have the heart of a dragon.

(That was exactly what his mother had told him right before she died, and yet he stood by, hidden behind a door, and did nothing while the men beat and killed her, the heart of the family.)

(He would carry the guilt with him for a lifetime.)

Old, weathered hands gently covered his own, which were shaking and clammy with nervousness. 尚气 wondered how 外婆 would react to the darker side of the lost boy she had basically adopted all those years ago, wondered if the legends of Ta-Lo and the Great Protector were known outside of the rather insular communities that continued to tell the stories, wondered if she had heard about his father through the stories that were passed down for thousands of years, from generation to generation…

(It can’t be wrong to miss him, can it? Even with the years of hell 文武 had put him through, he was still his father. 尚气 still faintly remembered the man his father had been when his mother was still alive, the happy times they shared as a normal family…)

(But those times were long gone, ripped from their grasp by the past 文武 wanted so badly to leave behind. Grief had shattered whole family, and it ultimately led to the children fighting the father who had been driven to near madness in his denial, in his quest to put his broken family back together again.)

妈妈，我太想你了。

(And now 文武 is dead, just like his beloved wife.)

Finally, he straightened his posture and took a deep breath, looking directly at 外婆, who he’d come to view as the grandmother he never had.

“外婆，您听说过 ‘十环’ 的传说吗？”

And 尚气 told her everything.

He told her everything and more,

She listened.

She listened as he described the legends behind the Ten Rings, Ta-Lo, and the Great Protector; his father’s history; his own history, from witnessing his mother’s death to ripping open the throat of the man who killed her when he was barely a teen, from leaving 灵灵 behind to seeing her again in the fight club she built from the ground up, from returning to the compound after a decade away in San Francisco to the battle in Ta-Lo…

Finally, he fell silent and stared at his hands but it wasn’t long before 外婆 moved, slowly standing up with one hand on her cane. He made to help stabilize her but was quickly waved off with a stern look. He sank back into the chair and felt her move behind him. The shaky weight of her hands on his shoulders as she gently pressed down and straightened his posture was familiar, even after years of not having his posture deliberately—so gently—fixed like that every time he saw 外婆.

“你是所有在你之前的人的��产，但你是你自己的人，” she finally said，“你决定你自己的命运。”

You are the legacy of all who came before you, but you are your own person. You decide your own fate.

~~~

That night, 尚气 knelt before the altar he had in his apartment, the only part that was carefully maintained in all the years he had lived there. But now, two smiling faces stared back at him, a joy reflected in their eyes that he knew would disappear in less than ten years after the photo was taken.

我还是你的骄傲吗？灵灵长大了，但我也没好好照顾她。

我向你发誓，我再也不会抛弃她。

Even as his life got even more unbelievable as the years went by, the altar and his copy of his parent’s wedding photo would remain a constant. He and 灵灵 dove deeper into their family history—of the Ten Rings, of Ta-Lo, of both the good and bad—and both worked to carry on their family’s legacy.

(With all of the proper discretion agreements and threats when needed, of course.)

灵灵跟我朋友最近开始谈恋爱，他们俩可开心了。妈，如果你还在我们身边，我保证你会喜欢她。爸，我知道你一开始不太喜欢她，但她确实是一位精彩的人。

Life went on.

爸爸，我希望你跟我一样觉得这个故事很好笑：我昨天帮了一组美国超级英雄开车。那是他们第一次来旧京山，对道路非常陌生—尤其是 Lombard Street。他们开也开不好，花了半个小时慢慢的开下去。最终，我把他们的车开下去的。

(San Francisco was still home, and he had found a life there with all his friends and 夏灵 whenever she visited. He had a job now, too, at the local youth center teaching martial arts and self-defense, teaching and guiding the youth in a way he wishes his father had with him.)

People came into his life; some stayed, some left, and some even got together.

妈，爸，灵灵她今天会跟我最好的朋友结婚，我们都很兴奋。我一个月之内开始接管十环的业务，让灵灵休息休息。她干了多少年了，现在是我的责任。我希望我能辜负她，她管的非常棒，帮了许多人。她几年后会回来继续当领导，但我好像在领导方面发挥更大的作用。

He walked the path knowing who came before him and who was still with him.

Most importantly, he walked the path knowing who he was—demons, flaws, strengths, and all.

妈，爸，你们放心吧，我会照顾他们。

我希望你们俩来世都幸福。

~~~

尚气，你别怕，你有神龙之心，十环的力量。

我们永远会在你和灵灵的身边。

#i’m so sorry if the mandarin is shitty #the format is better on ao3 #but i’m so excited to be able to at least try it #shang chi spoilers #shang chi and the legend of the ten rings spoilers #shang chi fanfiction #shang chi #shang chi and the legend of the ten rings #marvel fanfiction #mcu #shang chi imagines

23 notes · View notes

ofcloudsandstars · 4 years

Text

The Solar Holiday parallels to the Lunar Cycle and Cycle of Life

Every Sabbat you see plenty of posts of what to do and the meaning and such but I wanted to draw some parallels that will always help you understand their relevance and their role to play in the cycle of the year and in life. In nature there are many patterns that overlap and mirror each other. There is of course the cycle of life, growth, death and rebirth that we see celebrated in the sabbats, that reflects our own life cycles and that is repeated monthly for each lunar cycle. If you honor the lunar cycles and the web and flow of magic and energy it brings, you will see a grander pattern for the solar cycle and the points that we celebrate for each sabbat.

Yule - New Moon - Rebirth

The Winter Solstice is the longest evening of the year as sunlight has the least amount of time on our side of the hemisphere and it coats us in darkness and frost. It's a time that prompts us to celebrate indoors where it's warm, where we can decorate with lights and come together with loved ones during the darkest time. This is the beginning of the cycle as the sunlight will only grow in it's light and energy until the summer solstice. This period reflects the New Moon where we feel more insular and self-focused. Where as the new moon causes us to focus to our emotional landscape within, visualize for the cycle beyond and create intention to how we can achieve our goals, Winter Solstice amplifies that for the entire year’s cycle to come. We may feel insular on a physical level, wanting to stay indoors and hibernate, connect with the deep roots of the earth in our own homely burrows or by eating the rooty foods in season. It's a time of visualization for the year to come but also rest and hibernation. In our life cycle this also represents a moment of our rebirth. Our spirit is still not fully in this physical world yet it has reincarnated for it's next cycle and is resting before taking form again. This period of the time is just the seed. There is no activity yet but there is potential that is ready to grow the moment you decide to plant the seed in the ground. Yule is fantastic for any magic or rituals revolving around rebirth, restarting or reviving old hobbies or lost projects, setting intentions for the year to come and visualizing where you'd want your year to take you. It's also a wonderful time to gather close friends and loved ones to celebrate the longest night of the year and give each other blessings towards each other's endeavors to manifest the dreams they have along with positive energy for the new cycle ahead. It's also great for resting, taking time away for oneself and hibernating. It's a time to travel to other realms or explore deeper within yourself with meditation, trance or flight. During your periods of rest and sleep you could take notes of your dreams or visions that may come your way that foreshadow the year before you.

---

Imbolc - Waxing Crescent - Hastening

This period marks the middle of winter where we are halfway between the Winter Solstice and Spring Equinox. In some places it may be in the middle of blizzard season where as others as the light slowly returns so do the snow drops and birds. It's noticeably lighter as the days begin to grow longer. Animals are peaking from their burrows and life is stirring under the Earth. During the lunar cycle this sabbat corresponds with the waxing crescent moon. It's a period representing our intentions and wishes that are ready to be planted. Around this lunar cycle the sun is sextiling the moon (and the next day they are in quintile which means natural talents or skills can be revealed), which the energy pushes us to want to experiment with our ideas, brainstorm or test things out. We may want to charge forward with our new ideas and impulses even in the face of resistance and actualize our dreams, however this is a time that’s great just for trying things out. Our sense of purpose may feel heightened during this point of the lunar cycle and during Imbolc in the solar cycle as Spring begins to stir. In the life cycle this represents the seed sending out new shoots. It's still underground but life is beginning to stir in the unseen realms. It is the period in our life cycle where we are developing in the womb. Life is beginning to stir as our soul finds it's way into a new body, full of potential, dreams and wishes yet still 'underground'. The meaning of Imbolc is said to derive from "Ewe's Milk" as it was the time when livestock began lactating in preparation for their babies birth. It's a time of preparation for the new life emerging. With the sunlight returning this is often a time of hope as you will feel more optimistic emerging from the relentless darkness of winter. This is also a great time to set resolutions, though most people like to set them during the New Year, the first half of Winter (really the period between Samhain to Imbolc- the dark period that represents the 'spirit world' of our life cycle) should be for resting and hibernating. With the light and energy returning you may feel more inclined to try new things or get stuff started, however it's not exactly a time yet to take charge on new projects, but brainstorm and experiment. Maybe take on new class for fun, try new mediums for art or enroll in an online course. Imbolc (also celebrated as Candlemas) uses candles and light to celebrate the return to light yet another layer you can add magic to this is making spell candles representing your wishes or potential to light during this time. Magic revolving around wishes, setting intention and clearing obstacles are great during this time. This is also a great time to divine to gain insight on your goals or advice on where to get started. Candle scrying can be insightful along with burning bay leaves to make wishes. Imbolc is also a great time to prepare for the year ahead by cleaning, whether that means cleaning the home, getting rid of the winter dust, banishing any beings you don't want around or it could mean cleansing yourself in the form of a bath or energetically with juniper smoke bundles and to lift whatever energy from the darker part of the year that you may be carrying with you into this quarter. It's a great time to break habits and "sweep" away unwanted energies from outside your home. It's a time to inspire yourself, believe in your potential and experiment in order to give yourself some experience or insight towards your goals that lie ahead.

---

Ostara - First Quarter - Childhood

The Spring Equinox brings fresh bright green grass, budding trees and sprouting flowers as life seems to return to the surface of the Earth. Chicklings are being hatched along with other offspring of animals. There is fierce energy in the air as this time of the year falls on the start of Aries season. (In the Southern Hemisphere it's Libra season which may make this new start be about decision making and finding a middle ground with your plans and reality.) With the start of Aries season we are filled with energy to charge ahead despite any opposition. The sun is in equilibrium before it enters the lighter half of the year. It is a time of decision making and planning to materialize your goals and gather what you've learned from experimentation from the Winter Crossquarter and apply it to reality. In the Lunar Phase this corresponds to the first quarter moon which is a period of planning in order to take action. Taking action during this time can meet a lot of opposition but it's not a time to feel discouraged due to it. Often those obstacles show us what we need to learn and reflect on in order to overcome it or master it later. During both the solar and lunar cycle a good way to honor this square-tension of energy is to start planning and creating to-do lists of things you'd need to complete in order to manifest your goals for this cycle.

In the life cycle this reflects the time when the plant pours energy into it's new branches and sprouted leaves. The Branches are delicate and can easily be blown down with a heavy wind, but with resistance to keep growing and trying again the plant can succeed in sprouting. This also reflects the time of our life where we are children, exploring the world, running into new opportunities or challenges and learning how to overcome them. It's a time to celebrate the inner child, celebrate this time of challenges in a lighthearted way with competitive games (I will never grow out of egg hunts) and celebrate the new start of energy with laying down our goals. Magic on Ostara is great for focusing on what you want to sprout and grow. It's also great if you use divination to help draw up a plan of action. As the sunlight is at equilibrium but will get brighter as we head towards summer, it's a great time to use that energy of increasing light to help illuminate opportunities or solutions to help solve obstacles. Ostara is great for unlocking magic to open up opportunities for you. Though Aries season may bring challenges, the Spring Equinox is about courage in the face of adversity and enjoying the return to life. It's a wonderful time to honor the inner child and celebrate yourself with activities you loved doing as a kid.

---

Beltane - Gibbous - Adolescence

As the pinnacle of Spring arrives, the trees are in full bloom, tulips have swollen past their peak and lay in a bed of their own discarded petals, Magnolia trees explode across lawns with intoxicated fragrances, animals sing with symphonies of mating calls and Spring Fever is in the air. This Sabbat is a celebration of fertility and the entrance towards the fertile quarter of the year when gardeners and farmers start cultivating their gardens and plants for the harvests in the next quarter to come. The Earth is blooming and ready to plant things in, the animals and people are ready to mingle and the energy is full of promise for our goals to bloom before us, if we just take the time to refine it and focus on revision. This time of year represents the gibbous phase when the moon is in between the first quarter and full phase. During the aspects this time is also influenced from when the Sun is trining the Moon bringing opportunities, luck and benefits if we focus on our tasks and refine our work. It's a harmonious time during the Lunar Cycle and the Solar cycle especially during dreamy Taurus season while everything is in bloom. This time of the year mirrors the life cycle of when the plant starts to bud and bloom flowers. With pollination there is potential for fruits to grow later in the cycle. This Sabbat reflects the point of our life where we are entering adolescence. Puberty is readying our bodies to be fertile though we are not ready to do anything yet since we still need refining and maturation. However like some teens, animals and the bugs of spring we may have one thing focused on our mind during this intoxicating time of the year. You may feel inclined to meet a match, (especially since it's warmer now, the flowers are out, people are dressing lighter, the animals are doing it so why not?) or focus on how you can work on and refine your projects or annual goals. Magic during this time is fantastic for attraction magic, using your energy to help your endeavors "bloom" or come to maturation and help accomplish your goals. It's a great time to put things in the soil with intention both metaphorically and physically. It's a wonderful sabbat to get your garden started and start to find ways to materialize things. It's a fantastic time to raise energy, take chances and attract opportunities or people your way.

---

Litha - Full Moon - Adulthood

The sun is at it's Peak today as Summer Solstice is the longest day of the year. The start of summer has begun bringing in long hot days full of light and energy. Energy feels the most potent this time of year as the relentless sun can be reflected in it's power off of the pavement, the earth and plants it helps to swell up, the storms it's raises with it's heat and the excitement that summer brings. This sabbat reflects the Full Moon phase where energy feels at it's peak and it's great time to cast spells and release magic. During this time of maximum light, there is a height of clarity. During full moons as the two luminaries are opposite each other it can create polarities, decisions to make, new perspectives or oppositions however the key to balancing the intense energy is finding the middle ground that's best in moving forward with your goal. Summer solstice is often associated with love, partnerships and our relationships to others. In the life cycle summer solstice represents the moment where we enter Adulthood and we are finally independent however we still need connections to help our dreams to manifest. It's the peak time in our lives where we feel the need to network to get things done. Summer is the time of year most people make new friends, lovers or connections from everyone being out and about. Summer is a time of power where our influence can reach far and wide. It reflects the life cycle in a plant where it is bright green and leafy after it's flowers have been pollinated and shed and is turning it's energy into fruit. Summer Solstice may either leave you feeling energetic and charged like a full moon or the heat and brightness can leave you feeling restless and agitated as well like a full moon. It's a wonderful time to raise and release energy by a bonfire, charge magical items in the zenith of the solstice's sun, making connections with people, do friendship and love magic, use divination to make important decisions, make solar water, do solar magic, channel the sun's energy (sun bathing as well) and celebrate the peak of light and energy during this year! Any type of prosperity based spells would do great now as the energy is at it's peak and will help to amplify abundance in your life.

Parallel: There are Parallels with each sabbats as well. Where as Litha is celebrating the peak of light and our connection to others, Yule is very insular and focused on ourselves, our visions and rest. Litha celebrates the peak of light and life where as Yule is the darkest point of the year that parallels the life cycle where our spirit is not yet fully in this realm.

---

Lughnasadh - Disseminating Moon - Middle Age

The fields turn gold with matured wheat, the fruits and vegetables are ripened and the first harvest is here. The middle of summer brings abundance and joy of our successes as we reap what we've sown for the year. This period of the year reflects the disseminating moon phase also known as the waning gibbous. Some aspects that influence this phase is when the moon trines the sun or when there is a sesquiquadrate that gives us the wisdom to help solve problems that the full moon might have illuminated. As the moon begins to shed light after the end of it's full moon phase, it is time for us to share our knowledge and apply what we've learned. You have the wisdom of what you have accomplished in your endeavors and now it's time to share your work or wisdom with others. This time also help us feel full of love for what we've accomplished and generosity to share with others. The waning gibbous moon makes us feel in abundance and want to share the joy with others. Lughnasadh is all about celebrating our successes and sharing the wealth. A key ritual done during this sabbat is to bake bread with those you care about and share it together. This sabbat and lunar phase corresponds to the life cycle of the plant finally producing fruit. All of the hard work has finally paid off and we are seeing the fruits of our labor. During this time of summer many fruits are in season along with vegetables and the over abundance of zucchinis. This sabbat also corresponds to the life cycle where we are middle aged and finally have found our vocation or have mastered in our career. We are starting to enjoy what we do, have gotten good at it and can even teach our wisdom to others that are not as experienced yet. Even if you aren't in the mood to celebrate your hard work for the year, you may want to take this time to reflect on what you have accomplished and if you haven't moved as far as you'd like, what you could do to move that forward. Going back to the life cycle parallels, some people who haven't followed what truly resonated with them in life tend to have their midlife crisis's at this time and sometimes celebrating a sabbat that focuses on your goals accomplished can give you stress that the year is nearly over if you haven't been able to make much process. However there is still a lot of the year left for you to continue work, so it's a great time to reflect on the wisdom you've gain so far on your journey, glean whatever knowledge you can from your experiences and apply that to your journey ahead. However if you did have a prosperous year and are making successes this year it's a great time to celebrate! And maybe celebrate your successes with your friends (and their successes!) Additionally it's a fantastic time of reflection by comparing where you were last year during this time and the year before or five years before. You will notice that in some ways you have progressed and that is worth celebrating! Magic that's great to do during Lughanasdh is focusing on what you need to accomplish. Divination to gain further insight and reflect on your wisdom can be enlightening during this time. Creating charms and enchantments that will boost your ability to accomplish that to-do list you've created back during Ostara that may have been refined during Beltane would be great during this time too. Placing spells and charms on the CV you would need to send out or your applications, placing glamours on the projects you've finally released to hope they gain more attention and have a successful start, channeling Saturn to help you create structure and work at your goals and ambitions all will be great magical activities for today.

Parallel: The Parallel Sabbat to Lughnasadh is Imbolc. Where as Imbolc is about wishes and resolutions, Lughnasadh is seeing those wishes come to fruition. Where as Imbolc is about potential and hope for the cycle ahead, Lughnasadh is celebrating those successes and hard work.

---

Mabon - Final Quarter - Crone

The warm air turns cool and crisp as the emerald leaves bronze and golden. Autumn is here along with the second harvest of warm and colorful foods from apples, grapes, wine, lumpy squashes and gourds. There is only a quarter left to the cycle as the light wanes from our side of the hemisphere. It's a time of reflection from the cycle we've experienced and gratitude from the wisdom we've earned. The Autumn Equinox corresponds to the final quarter moon phase in the lunar cycle. During the final quarter phase it's a great time to reflect on the journey you've had so far, meditate and self reflect on your decisions and wrap up any unfinished business or projects. It's a period for reviewing your work, your decisions and any longstanding issues that need to be addressed. In the solar cycle when the Autumn equinox appears in the northern hemisphere, it's the beginning of Libra season where harmony, justice and middle ground is found. It's time for us to make peace, reflect on the year past and be grateful. (In the southern Hemisphere it's the start of Aries season so that energy may manifest for you to challenge any unsolved businesses head on.) In the life cycle this represents the end of the fruit shedding and leaving behind seeds to start the next cycle. This also parallels to the the life cycle when we reach old age and become the Crone. We are wise with many stories to tell of our lives and can only reflect upon the journey we've had. This time may make you feel ready to focus on your home life and prepare your home to be cozy for the colder months. It's also a great time to gather with friends and share stories of the year that has passed and the positive memories you've had of it. (Or if it was a shit year then celebrating that it is almost over!) Magic revolving around what you'd like to shed away would be great to do during this time. On a Mundane level it's a great time to clear the house, clothes you may not need anymore and do an autumn shedding. It's a nice time to give things away that you no longer need in order to pass it on to someone who could benefit from it.

Parallel: The parallel sabbat to Mabon is Ostara. Where as Ostara wants us to set down plans and sow seeds for goals we wish to accomplish, Mabon reflects on our journey and how we may have accomplished those goals. In the life cycle where Ostara celebrates birth and the inner child, Mabon celebrates the Crone and wisdom.

---

Samhain - Balsamic Moon - Death

The fallen leaves have littered the ground in brown frail crunchy corpses while howling chilly winds shiver the bare trees above. Halloween is nearly here and the waning light has plunged most of our days into darkness. The sunlight is towards the end of it's solar cycle and reflects the Balsamic Moon (also known as the waning crescent moon) in the lunar cycle. The waning crescent moon is great for shedding, banishing and seeking resolution or closure. It's a great time to cut chords and banish anyone or anything that is no longer working towards your best existence before you enter a new cycle and a period of rest. Instead of carrying any negativity with you during your time of self transformation and renewal into the new cycle, it's important to do some shadow work and release anything you do not want to take with you. In the life cycle this represents death as the plant becomes frail and returns to the Earth leaving behind a seed for the next cycle and as we shed our physical form and move on to the other side. Before we die it's important to find closure to issues we can resolve and shed away anything we don't want to take with us into the next cycle. Though death is a dramatic transition, it's a period of transformation and a start of another journey. Samhain is the crossquarter leading us into the darkest quarter of the year which is a great time for shadow work, spirit travel, self reflection and self transformation. It may be the heaviest time of the year for some, especially those that struggle with the relentless darkness but it's a time that offers rest, reflection and positive transformation. Samhain can make us feel moody as we may be more aware of our shadow selves and the darkness surrounding us. However Halloween has made dressing up as a monster and expressing our less favorable sides fun! It's time to embrace the darkness, be spooky and celebrate the end to the cycle. Magic on Samhain is great for banishing, cutting chords with that which doesn't serve you, finding closure, shadow work and communicating with your shadow self and self-transformation.

Parallel: The opposite Sabbat to Samhain is Beltane. Where Samhain is death and looking towards the next cycle as a chance to start again, Beltane is fertility and looking at the warmth and light ahead to reap fruits. The fields and garden of Samhain are filled with dead or bare plants fueling nutrients into their roots to prepare for winter where as the gardens of Beltane are blooming with fertile life.

---

Then the cycle begins at Yule again which is rebirth and parallels with the New Moon!

#sabbats #witchcraft #moon phases #lunar cycle #lughnasadh #yule #samhain #mabon #ostara #imbolc #beltane #litha #long post #wheel of the year #witchblr

268 notes · View notes

doshmanziari · 4 years

Text

Aldrich and the Desacralization of Dark Souls 3

Aldrich, the obsessive-consumptive cannibal saint, is one of Dark Souls 3′s most interesting figures when one sees his actions and inferred character as representing a prominent facet of humanity’s spiritual position at the time of the game’s setting. If we look at Dark Souls 3′s landscape as an assemblage of symbolics, and compare it to Dark Souls’ arrangement, we see that an inversion has occurred: the zenith is the human domain of the High Wall of Lothric, and the nadir is Irithyll/Anor Londo, once the apical sunlit land of the gods, now chilled, darkened, and sunken. And yet, even if Anor Londo only ever represented the power of a pantheonic institution, its ruination and darkness here is a much more troubling scenario; because at the “zenith” we find only stasis or stagnation, a reflection of the psychology of prince Lothric himself who has selfishly fended off fate through elusion and inactivity (if we note the series’ pattern of things being what one makes of them (i.e., reality is what one believes it to be), we may wonder if Lothric’s lameness was not self-willed¹). On the broadest scale approaching metatexuality, we see too that Dark Souls 3 is the series at its most complex and diffuse, with the collective mono-myth responsible for the Age of Fire now distant, separate, very nearly nonexistent.

For an example of this, let us look to the swamp around Farron Keep, where we must put out three flame-beacons corresponding to the Witch of Izalith, Nito, and Gwyn’s deific family. This sequence is an initiatory rite of passage, but, rather than entering into a mystery for contact with the numinous, we perform willful ignorance for mere tribalism (to witness it, anyway). For it is only through this symbolic act of un-remembering -- the nullification of the sustaining flame of myth, the obscuring of its principal actors -- that we are granted access to the Keep proper, and then to the Abyss Watchers, a clan of warriors who represent, to an extreme, “mass-mindedness”: directionless, hollow zombies who do not even remember the name of the knight they model themselves upon. All that matters here is the Clan, where insular, infinite warfare is mistaken for life-sustaining meaning (I’d make special note of the fact that the Abyss Watchers all resemble one another; the violence done to another is, in truth, violence done to the self: self-oppression misinterpreted as empowerment). As César Daly wrote, “To neglect history, to neglect memory, that which is owed by our ancestors, is then to deny oneself; it is to begin suicide.” The great abundance of such details makes it all the more startling when Shira, in the Ringed City, says to us, “Speak thee the name of God” (i.e., Gwyn).

No one can seem to agree on what exactly constitutes or delineates the Age of Fire or the Age of Dark, but Dark Souls’ Serpent Kaathe refers to the latter as "the age of men.” Given the evidence, it is difficult to not see Dark Souls 3 as marking the beginning of such an age, or at least the transition between the two. But what liberties has it brought? They are, I think, the pseudo-liberties of a desacralized world. Narratives have become aimless, attempts are made to plug up voids without examining root causes, and the self cannot be harnessed for purposeful actualization. If we seek a demonstration of the latter, think of our first major combative encounter in the game with Iudex Gundyr, whose body, midway through the fight, unleashes a chaotic mass of black, writhing forms uniformly termed the Pus of Man. The Pus of Man reappears during our initial exploration of the High Wall of Lothric, this time out of a couple of standard Hollows. Once the Pus of Man has emerged and is aware of us, any semblance of the host’s self-control is usurped by total destructive instability.

In our own bodies, pus is the result of infection, and its treatment is its release from an abscess; but the Pus of Man, thus released, does not allow for healing, because its internal causes, a symptom of a shared spiritual crisis, have gone unchecked for too long, and so it assumes complete control. It is, on one level, a coup by the id, which Freud describes as “...a chaos, a cauldron full of seething excitations. ...It is filled with energy reaching it from the instincts, but it has no organization, produces no collective will, but only a striving to bring about the satisfaction of the instinctual needs subject to the observance of the pleasure principle.” It would also not be inappropriate here to look to the concept of humorism, wherein humans’ personalities are regulated by vital body fluids, and where we find (within the most popular, four-component model) “black bile”, a secretion whose associated qualities are coldness and dryness and whose effect is melancholia: “a mental condition characterized by extreme depression, bodily complaints, and sometimes hallucinations and delusions.”

The Cathedral of the Deep is representative of the same crisis, but diverges in the shape of its consequence. If the Pus of Man recalls Manus, whose “humanity went wild”, and signifies degradation with “seething excitations”, then the Cathedral of the Deep -- a religion and a site -- signifies degradation with stagnation. Inside the Cathedral, we find that its nave and south transept is thick with liquidized decay, the perimeters encrusted by mounds of corpses. These are the matter-of-fact results of both mortification of the flesh (done by flagellation) and Aldrich’s cannibalism, prior to his relocation. What’s relevant here is the material stasis. Richard Pilbeam, in his video “The Bastard’s Curse”, compares aspects of the Deep faith to those of Shinto, placing specific emphasis on the cleansing properties of water. He notes: “Water will wash away impurity, but only if the water remains in motion.”² The motion of the water is the motion of a dynamic, reciprocal spirituality. Our own bloodflow requires circulation.

All of this talk of the body, ruptures, and liquid brings us back to Aldrich, the Devourer of Gods. Despite his title, the only god we are explicitly aware of Aldrich having consumed is Gwyndolin; but the sheer extent of rotting flesh and bones (some, no doubt, of mortals) in Aldrich’s current habitat, the appropriated chancel of the great Anor Londo cathedral, is evidence of innumerable, unseen feasts. Inspecting the soul of Aldrich, we are told that when he “...ruminated on the fading of the fire, it inspired visions of a coming age of the deep sea. He knew the path would be arduous, but he had no fear. He would devour the gods himself.” It again behooves us to approach the matter in terms of symbolics, poetic substitutions, and understand this envisioned age as a radically desacralized state of being, one where the Age of Fire has been permanently entombed, replaced by a humanity misled by vacuous obsessions which is then itself overcome by what those profanities manifested. “In time, those dedicated to sealing away the horrors of the Deep succumbed to their very power,” the description for a robe worn by deacons of the Cathedral of the Deep reads. “It seems that neither tending to the flame, nor the faith, could save them.”

Aldrich, as a deiphagous agent (although perhaps not godly to begin with himself), of course has deicidal associations.³ Most pertinent would be the filicide of the Titan Cronus, who devoured his children in fear of his prophesied deposition. We are told that Aldrich “had no fear”, but this is, I think, an ironic statement. In the same way that we may compulsively eat in order to fill an emotional-existential void, Aldrich feeds to fill the void of Dark Souls 3 which has, as M. Christine Boyer writes in reference to modernity, “[closed] off any meaningful access to the past.” Yet his murderous feasting prepares himself and the world for another void: that of the “age of the deep sea” (to be slightly literal for a moment: what, on Earth, is more akin to a void than the ocean’s depths?). At the Ringed City we observe resonances of this behavior in the locusts, who primarily inhabit the dim mire at the city’s bases (the resemblance to Oolacile’s predicament is unmistakable), and “were meant to beckon men to the dark with sermons, but most of [which] are unable to think past their own stomachs.”

We should also recognize that Aldrich did not act alone. He “had the desire to share with others his joy of imbibing the final shudders of life while luxuriating in his victim's screams.” Recall that certain deacons of the Deep are bloated, including the deceased Archdeacon McDonnell. These are ministers who have oftener partaken of feasts. So here is also a distortion of that communal principle wherein participants ingest the deity/deities and affirm life through its nearness to death. This ingestion recalls the older meaning of “embody”: “a soul or spirit invested with a physical form.” George Hersey writes, of the ancient Greeks and their sacrificial rituals, “Whatever form the victim or offering took, once it was [...] full of the god, [...] the divinity became too immense, too terrible, to be contained. It was necessary to break apart the offering. Yet even after death -- perhaps especially after it -- the animal’s carcass, the god’s container, was steeped in his presence. This is why the worshipers ate parts of it: the act was not just feasting, but communion. The worshipers’ own bodies combined with parts of the victim’s to express the fact that the god had entered them. The victim’s body parts were in fact ‘reconstructed’ now in a different way, by uniting the bodies of the worshipers.”⁴

There is no concern for any of these vitalizing affirmations with Aldrich and his followers. Indeed, we see that Aldrich himself has become “too immense, too terrible, to be contained” (just like those aforementioned “horrors of the Deep”), and so his body is coagulated hemorrhage. Constructive concepts such as selflessness, spirit, metousiosis are nullified, as the consumptive process, one of intense sadism, functions as its own end. Aldrich is both terribly and mundanely a narcissistic parasite. During our fight with him, he will burrow into the refuse of the arena to temporarily escape -- a tactic that is emblematic of his self-regressing psychology, where nothing matters except gorging, sleeping, and surrounding oneself with a playpen of mud to dive into and thus hide from the world. Remember, now, that Aldrich was canonized as a Lord and remains one. Hawkwood, a former member of Farron’s Undead Legion and a resident of Firelink Shrine, wryly and accurately comments that this was “...Not for virtue, but for might.” And when we venerate sheer might, we venerate persecution.

From this perspective, I think it is not an accident of phrasing when the description for human dregs, an object sometimes released by slain Deep devotees, says that they, once having sunk to the “lowest depths imaginable, [...] become the shackles that bind this world.” To bind something can mean to unify it, to adhere components together and provide a sort of structure; but this is done with shackles, items associated with repression and enslavement. It is another echoing of that “self-oppression misinterpreted as empowerment” (or, analogously, freedom). There may be no better conclusion to this essay than to remark upon Aldrich’s death at our ends. As the battle progresses, Aldrich’s body becomes enkindled, speckled by embers, to the extent that any zone he occupies catches on fire. This is not so different from Yhorm or the remaining Abyss Watcher; after all, they are Lords of Cinder too. But I believe that, for Aldrich, this can be read relative to the sacrificial ritual which ended with roasting specified parts of the animal and then eating them. Thus, when we kill Aldrich, even if we cannot adopt and atone for the sins of his actions, we can at least break that insatiable cycle and consign his body to the purifying fire -- so that we may, finally, take and imbibe his soul.

You can financially support my writing, art, and music on Patreon.

¹ Dark Souls 2 quickly presents us with an example of this when a handmaid gives us a featureless human effigy and says, “Take a closer look... Who do you think it’s supposed to be? Think back, deep into your past. Yes, it’s an effigy of you.” Consider also the case of Miracles, which are not instructions but stories. Once read, they turn real -- fiction tangibly weaponized.

² See: Misogi and kegare. The concept of the sacred grotto is apposite, too, if we imagine that the latter-christened Cathedral of the Deep neighbors one. In Heavenly Caves, Naomi Miller writes, “Fascination with the grotto is rooted in the story of creation. While understood as a source of life and as a sacred spring in the classical world, in the Old Testament the grotto is often equated with the void and hence with chaos -- the formlessness that precedes the beginning. [...] ...within the Temple in Jerusalem, beneath the Stone of Foundation in the Dome of the Rock, was a cave known as the Well of Souls. This fountain of perennial water within the Temple may well allude to the cisterns and reservoirs known to be under the Holy Rock, but it also has metaphysical significance and refers to the mouth of the abyss identified with the subterranean torrent located at the earth’s center, from whence the rivers of Paradise went forth to water the four corners of the world...”

³ An example of deicide which is often not thought of as such is that of Christ, who, in his self-sacrifice as the human avatar of God, clears the way for a radically new covenant.

⁴ Walter Burket, in his book Homo Necans, posits that such sacrifices “were much later reenactments of primal ritual murders in which a god-king was killed and consumed.”

#DARK SOULS #dark souls 3 #aldrich #cathedral of the deep #lords of cinder

134 notes · View notes

burnsopale · 4 years

Note

Not really an ask but a point I want to make out when I read your post about dub vs sub names. The reasoning for most channels believe it or not is so the western fans can “feel the characters are more relatable” with western names they hear more often that is why Pokemon, Yugioh, Sailor moon, etc (minus R13+ anime) had name changes in the 90-2000’s

Yay, I got a message! Thank you, anon!

Also, I apologise for ... the essay. If you know all this already, consider it as general information for everyone. :P

You’re right about the reason behind the name changes, and I do think the idea has merit; the Norwegian translation of Harry Potter gave the characters new names that reflected the meaningful names that Rowling used, and I think it was a good idea. A Norwegian kid isn’t going to realise how whimsical the name “Dumbledore” is, but the Norwegian “Humlesnurr” carries about the same meaning, while retaining the syllable-count and weight of “Dumbledore”.

On the other hand, I feel that what Nelvana did to the English dub of Beyblade was mostly unnecessary and even insulting to its target audience. After all, the Japanese children watching Bakuten Shoot Beyblade were NOT given familiar, relatable Japanese names for the non-Japanese characters. They were expected to pronounce and remember names like Ralf Jürgens, Giancarlo Tornatore, Michael, Ibrahim and so on. If Nelvana thought the American kids couldn’t handle a few foreign-sounding names without getting all confused or turning off the TV, that says a lot about how little Nelvana respected their target audience. In fact, the American kids watching were much more likely to have Chinese American, Indian American or Italian American classmates with “foreign-sounding” names than the Japanese kids were, considering how much more insular Japan is compared to the Great Melting Pot.

Another problematic element of changing the names is cultural erasure. This is not a problem in for instance the Norwegian Harry Potter translation I mentioned, because the English have not experienced being forced to hide or dismiss their own culture and history to be accepted by the dominating class of the countries they emmigrate to. But it HAS happened to immigrants from Eastern European, Asian and Middle Eastern countries (and more). Imagine how it feels for a Indian American kid to finally see themself represented in a Saturday morning cartoon, only for the character to be named Ronnie (originally Raghu, a really cool Sanskrit name).

But even if Nelvana had had good reasons to make the changes, I don’t think they did a very good job. After all, why weren’t the European names acceptable? Why did Giancarlo have to become Enrique? Or Ralf Robert? And did they really think Ivan and Sergei were such difficult or unrelatable names that they had to change them to Ian and Spencer? Again, these American kids could easily remember 150 Pokemon, but Mao was so difficult they had to change it to Mariah?

Keeping the names as-is is not entirely unproblematic, though. There are changes that probably should be made, like “Kyouju” should obviousy get an English equivalent, since it’s a title and not a name (I like Chief, though Proffessor could have worked too). And they’d probably have to insert a line somewhere explaining that several Asian countries have the order lastname-firstname instead of firstname-lastname, like in the West, because that’s something a lot of American ten-year-olds won’t be aware of.

#Beyblade #Judin liveblogs #Judin answers #Judin doesn't know what short-and-sweet means #dub vs sub #Thank you for the message anon I love getting them!

18 notes · View notes

tsushimanoonryo · 4 years

Text

Character Solidifying part 1

Broke this up into two parts because it was so long.

1. How does your character think of their father? What do they hate and love about him? What influence - literal or imagined - did the father have?

He loved his father. Jin’s mother died when he was very young, so his father was all he had. However, Jin wasn’t much older when he died as well, being killed right in front of him. Because of this, Jin has immense feelings of guilt whenever he thinks of his father. He feels like he could have prevented his death (although he was still a child when this happened). He worries his father’s spirit is ashamed of the way he behaved, so he tries his best to be a better man and a brave fighter. He knows he won’t get the chance to save his father’s life again, but he can save other people.

2. Their mother? How do they think of her? What do they hate? Love? What influence - literal or imagined - did the mother have?

He was very young when she died, so he doesn’t really remember his mother at all. He knows his father must have loved her very much, as he never remarried after her death. And he remained close with his wife’s brother, Jin’s uncle Shimura. Jin has feelings of fondness toward the idea of his mother, but nothing particularly overwhelming.

3. Brothers, sisters? Who do they like? Why? What do they despise about their siblings?

Jin is an only child.

4. What type of discipline was your character subjected to at home? Strict? Lenient?

Very loving, but very strict discipline. It was drilled into Jin that, as a samurai, he was to be held to a higher standard than most everyone else. He had to do extra training, extra reading, extra everything. However, everyone was a little more forgiving of his mistakes, considering both of his parents died while he was young. He wasn’t babied, but he wasn’t punished severely like he otherwise might have been.

5. Were they overprotected as a child? Sheltered?

No. Jin saw the way the world truly was at a very young age. He was forced to become the head of his clan as a teen and had to mature fast. His uncle provided him safety and guidance, but did not protect him from the harsh realities around him. Rather, he helped Jin put them into context so that he might be better prepared to face the world around him.

6. Did they feel rejection or affection as a child?

Affection. He was the nephew of the jito who was widowed and had no other children. He was his son in everything but name, and everyone treated him accordingly. He was well-liked among the servants because of his genial nature, and other nobles liked him as well for showing maturity and skill on the battlefield at such a young age.

7. What was the economic status of their family?

Rich as hell. He was the son of a samurai clan leader and nephew (and unofficially adopted son) of the lord of all of Tsushima. Jin didn’t want for many physical things growing up.

8. How does your character feel about religion?

He follows the beliefs of Shintoism. He believes in the gods and goddesses of Japan, but especially reveres Inari, the deity of rice, prosperity, and foxes. He also ascribes to Buddhism, but he isn’t super devout. He’s more culturally Buddhist than anything. He really feels a true spiritual connection with Shintoism, though.

9. What about political beliefs?

He used to have complete faith in the Shogun and his samurai, but he’s recently soured on them. He isn’t so far gone that he thinks the entire system should be overthrown, but he definitely thinks the Shogun and his men need to reprioritize. You can’t rule if all your subjects are dead.

10. Is your character street-smart, book-smart, intelligent, intellectual, slow-witted?

Jin had more schooling than most boys his age growing up. He’s very book smart and intelligent. However, he wouldn’t consider himself an intellectual. He knows enough to be clever and enough to be a brilliant strategist, but he couldn’t hold his own among scholars.

11. How do they see themselves: as smart, as intelligent, uneducated?

He is intelligent and he knows it. However, Jin is not so arrogant as to think he can’t learn something from someone else. He also realizes there are numerous different kinds of intelligences. For instance, he knows Yuna is uneducated, but she is sharp, clever, and knows much more about survival than Jin does. Just because a person doesn’t have a formal education does not mean Jin will write them off or act like he’s better than them.

12. How does their education and intelligence – or lack thereof - reflect in their speech pattern, vocabulary, and pronunciations?

Jin is meticulous about his speech. He is polite and extremely aware of the rules of decorum. He will always try to treat everyone with respect, even people who are from stations far below him. He thinks it is extremely rude not to give this level of respect to everyone by default. However, if a person treats him or anyone else with disrespect or betrayal, he will be less cordial and downright cold to them. He will not be deferential if he feels a person has proven that they are unworthy of it.

13. Did they like school? Teachers? Schoolmates?

He liked some aspects of his schooling. Anything involving physical training he liked. He didn’t love the more abstract learning (strategy), but he understands how it has helped him as he matured. He didn’t really have any school mates. He did martial training with Ryuzo a bit and Ryuzo was his dearest friend and closest companion.

14. Were they involved at school? Sports? Clubs? Debate? Were they unconnected?

In his Yakuza verse, he participated in sports clubs: Kendo, Kyudo, and Baseball. That was it.

15. Did they graduate? High-School? College? Do they have a PHD? A GED?

In his Yakuza verse, he graduated high school, but had no further schooling. He shadowed his uncle as he dealt with the business of running a mob family and learned from that.

16. What does your character do for a living? How do they see their profession? What do they like about it? Dislike?

In his main verse, he was a samurai. When that was taken away from him, he became a folk hero and a legend. He’s sort of a Robin Hood, except instead of stealing, he kills Mongol invaders. He wishes he didn’t have to do this, as he much preferred the comforts of his old life. However, he enjoys the freedom that being The Ghost entails. He likes not having to follow any rule except his own. In his yakuza verse, he’s a yakuza lieutenant for the Shimura crime family. He’s on his way to be heir to his uncle’s syndicate. He doesn’t love it. He knows he’s extremely good at what he does, but he doesn’t have the heart for it. But he does it because he loves his uncle and wants to show him how much he appreciates being raised as his son.

17. Did they travel? Where? Why? When?

Jin has traveled all over the island of Tsushima in his efforts to liberate the island. Before he was The Ghost, he basically just traveled around to his uncle’s summer and winter estates, his uncle’s hunting camp, his own estate and home village, and Kamakura (once) to pay homage to the Shogun.

18. What did they find abroad, and what did they remember?

When he visited the mainland, he realized just how insular Tsushima was. And he found that he liked it, although he never told his uncle that. He liked that they weren’t under the thumb of the Shogun like the other jito and samurai were, simply because there was a body of water between them.

19. What were your character’s deepest disillusions? In life? What are they now?

Jin learned from a young age that life wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows. A lot of young men think they can do anything, that they are invincible, but Jin never felt that. He had a lot of survivor’s guilt after the death of his father which colored his outlook on life. He felt like he wasn’t quite worthy of being a samurai because he showed fear, and he struggled with that growing up. However, now he feels the opposite. Since meeting Yuna, he has realigned his priorities. He still feels guilt about a lot of things in his past, but he understands that survival is paramount. Now he is disillusioned with the samurai as a whole and their rigidity when it comes to following their code.

20. What were the most deeply impressive political or social, national or international, events that they experienced?

The First Mongol Invasion of Japan in 1274. We haven’t seen it yet, but he also lived through the Second Mongol Invasion of Japan in 1281.

21. What are your character’s manners like? What is their type of hero? Whom do they hate?

Jin is extremely polite and very aware of how he comes off to people. Previously, his heroes were brave warriors who overcame impossible odds in battle. Now, however, his heroes are the everyday man, the unsung heroes who use their wits and compassion to survive no matter what. He tries his best to fulfill those ideals and so he can be the hero his island wants him to be. He hates people who are selfish and are blind to tradition. There’s a difference between being polite and respectful and being obtuse.

22. Who are their friends? Lovers? ‘Type’ or ‘ideal’ partner?

Jin is not a samurai and not The Ghost, but a person who is struggling every day to do the right thing. His friends are the same. They each have their own struggle, but they are striving every day to use their own skills and talents to do the right thing. It might not be the traditional path, nor might it be a respectable path, but it’s the right one. His ideal partner is the same. They are strong in who they are and will go against the grain, even if everyone else is against them. They are also quick witted, capable, and brave.

23. What do they want from a partner? What do they think and feel of sex?

He wants a partner he can trust with his life and understands the obligations he feels to give himself to the people of his island. His partner is going to have to be okay with sharing him. Also, he likes sex and wishes he had more of it. But it’s not a priority.

24. What social groups and activities does your character attend? What role do they like to play? What role do they actually play, usually?

He’ll go from survivor camp to survivor camp, temple town to temple town, village to village making sure the people of Tsushima are doing okay, looking for any news of the Mongols and any way he can help the common people. He feels responsible for their wellbeing since Lord Shimura and the samurai failed them. As a result, he’s really only close to about 6 people. To the rest, he’s a silent shadow caring for them from afar.

25. What are their hobbies and interests?

Poetry and music. He used to enjoy going to the theater, in the before times. He’s also a very good horseman.

#headcanon #headcanons #jin sakai #ghost of tsushima #jin sakai rp #ghost of tsushima rp

3 notes · View notes

inquistior-a · 4 years

Text

@ofrevas said : 𝙷𝙾𝚆 𝙳𝙴𝚅𝙾𝚄𝚃 𝙸𝚂 𝙷𝙰𝙻𝚆𝚈𝙽? 𝙳𝙾 𝙷𝙸𝚂 𝙱𝙴𝙻𝙸𝙴𝙵𝚂 𝙴𝚇𝚃𝙴𝙽𝙳 𝚃𝙾 𝚃𝙷𝙴 𝙻𝙴𝙶𝙸𝚃𝙸𝙼𝙰𝙲𝚈 (𝙾𝚁 𝙻𝙰𝙲𝙺) 𝙾𝙵 𝙰𝙽𝙳𝚁𝙰𝚂𝚃𝙸𝙰𝙽 𝙾𝚁𝙶𝙰𝙽𝙸𝚉𝙰𝚃𝙸𝙾𝙽𝚂 𝙰𝙽𝙳 𝙳𝙾𝙲𝚃𝚁𝙸𝙽𝙴? 𝙷𝙾𝚆 𝙳𝙾 𝙷𝙸𝚂 𝙴𝚇𝙿𝙴𝚁𝙸𝙴𝙽𝙲𝙴𝚂 𝚆𝙸𝚃𝙷 𝚃𝙷𝙴 𝙸𝙽𝚀𝚄𝙸𝚂𝙸𝚃𝙸𝙾𝙽 𝙰𝙵𝙵𝙴𝙲𝚃 𝚃𝙷𝙴𝙼?

halwn believes in the maker, and considers himself andrastian---but he is certainly not devout in the way that he understands the term from childhood. he was raised in a highly religious city-state, a member of nobility in a place where devoutness is both traditional and, at a certain level, even considered fashionable. ostwick is essentially ruled by the chantry, in the sense that its laws are ruled by chantric values and its people assert their identity (their historic non-tevinter-ism, for lack of better term) through andrastianism. given that it is literally a tevinter city populated by a variety of transplants, many of whom have at least a few tevinter origins, the great houses use andrastianism as a way of reinforcing their adherence to the traditions of the origins of ostwick and the andrastian rebellions. basically, all good ostwick families, all the players of note, are andrastian, and if they aren’t andrastian then they aren’t really an ostwick house. there are in fact many minor houses in oswtick who remain in good social graces only because of a strong connection to the chantry that enables them to continue to access the upper echelons of of trade and resource negotiation.

halwn’s mother is a deeply devout woman, whose faith is the central focus of her life. she is from the anderfels, where the chantry is perhaps even more influential than it is in ostwick---and the advertisable devoutness of her anders family was what made her an appealing match for halwn’s father. when he was a boy, halwn can remember both a certain jealousy and a then contingent shame that followed that jealousy over the attention his mother paid the chantry vs what she paid to him. essentially, he has always known that his mother loved the maker more than she loved him. while she wasn’t cold or cruel to her children, they were something of a distraction to her dedication to her faith. the older he became, and the more he was able to understand her, he saw that his mother /needed/ religion, needed the focus of established belief and ritual, and the connection it ran in her through her own family, in order to have both structure and meaning in her life. or, at least, to distract her from the emptiness in the rest of her life. in the end, halwn questions whether his mother has ever really thought critically about what she believes, really ever considered the alternatives, and as such he sees her faith as a blind love, and therefor empty---and since it is the greatest love she has in her life, halwn sort of mourns his mother’s religion ?? though he also, as a son, would feel it cruel to ever try to take it from her, to challenge it directly, because he knows that it would be essentially removing her gravity. she is, to him, a lukewarm woman, who only had so much love to give and chose to give it all to the ritual of organized religion rather than to other people. he thinks of that as a terrible waste.

his father, on the opposite end, preforms religion as a member of the gentry in a highly religious state---because it is simply ‘what people do’, but has never shown any indication that he genuinely believes in any of it. there are things that he has said to halwn throughout his life that lead halwn to believe that his father is not a genuinely religious man, and does not actually put any stock in the lore or moral philosophy of the chantry outside of how it informs the law and serves as a basis for tradition, and even seems to look down on those who do---including his own wife. he’s a draconian man, and his religion was always a thin veneer that painted one of two extremes for halwn when it came to understanding the ‘faithful’: one as his mother, the fragility of the mindlessly devout and unwilling or unable to sacrifice imposed surety for genuine reflection, and the other as his father, using faith as a shield and an excuse to prop up a lack of legitimate confluence with other people. either way, halwn saw religion as something that separated people, something that dehumanized the notion of love and worship.

when halwn refused to marry, his father ‘suggested’ that he join the templars---this being the only other socially acceptable way for a noble in ostwick to avoid marriage without seeming to disregard their parents’ wishes, which is really the onus of where the stigma of not marrying is placed: on house loyalty and participation in the practice of nobility. there was a time for him when he was a boy who still wanted to please his parents that he thought that being a templar would be a heroic occupation for him, ideal since he’d get to leave, but by his early teens his disillusionment with the chantry was complete enough that he knew he could never be happy with a life centered around formal religion. he also had no idea what templars /actually/ do until he left the city. it should be noted that ostwick is highly insular and extremely ‘traditional’ in the chantric sense. the circle at ostwick is separated from the city by a narrow landbridge, the sort meant to prevent anyone from crossing unless in single-file thus making it easy to pick them off from above. mages do not enter the city walls without templar escort, and even then rarely. as a noble child, halwn would have been instructed to ignore them / not interact with them in a sense that is very much intensely classist---though he was never told this, and wouldn’t have been unless the situation presented itself, for even discussing mages was taboo among the elite houses. halwn did not actually meet a mage or witness magic at all until he left the city at 17 to serve as a knight errant in the teyrn’s name, and even then it was in passing. magick was not discussed, and political topics revolving around mages were relegated to ‘rude’ topics that were only whispered about behind close doors. magick was evil, of course, but almost presented as a non-issue, mythical, since it was understood that no one in good society was ever going to encounter it---proof of the power of the chantry, a kind of self-rewarding and self-perpetuating tactic to avoid the possibility of uncomfortable or even remotely challenging questions.

halwn is something of a natural skeptic. he’s curious, and he loves to learn, and anything rigid or dogmatic tends to darken to him on impulse. he has always been this way, and he was quite young when he realized that he didn’t believe in the same way that the people around him seemed to believe. initially, this awareness was almost guilty. all of his education, outside of the military, was preformed by teachers involved in the clergy somehow, and the amount of shame used as an educational tool in a religious education worked on him for only so long. halwn’s natural mistrust and even animosity for those who are unfailingly dogmatic comes in part from a revulsion he has for those that try to make others feel ashamed---and this revulsion is a protective impulse rooted in the fact that he is the eldest of three children, with a large gap between him and his younger siblings, and he was nine years old when he felt he had to begin silently defending his siblings from their tutors and providing them emotional support to counteract the lack left behind by their ‘religious’ parents in a devout family.

his impulse to defend people comes from this: from the way that always conceiving of himself as a ‘we’ makes his thinking almost inherently communal, ‘this is what we’re going to do’ / ‘this is what we need’ / etc, as a lot of eldest siblings can probably identify with. in his case, this is because he wanted to provide emotionally for his siblings. this why he’s so warm, so tender, so patient, and so gentle. it’s also why he is so driven to understand, and then forgive, because they are the opposite of what his upbringing taught him, and he never felt like a real ‘part’ of his own childhood and its methods.

he was defending his siblings from their parents absence, but also from the shame and guilt-based tactics of behavioral reinforcement used by the clergy who helped to raise them.

in many ways, halwn associates the chantry with stifling, performance, and wasted lives. he has no nostalgia for the organized religion that dominated his youth, and he was happy to leave it. leaving the city to travel as a knight was the first time he felt he had his head above water. his sexuality factors into this as well, but that’s honestly another entire meta in and of itself. living in ferelden, away from his family and away from the chantry, allowed him to breathe. it should be noted that northern ferelden is a very scattered place home to many refugees, and a lot of halwn’s neighbours and those with whom he became very close with when they formed sort of a communal group during the blight were from all over thedas, and those who were andrastian worshiped in many different ways. faith did not really rise in his mind again until the blight---when he watched people of varied backgrounds / classes / races, and varied religions, comforting one another with what he perceived to be genuine religious principles. he had witnessed a lot of violence and hideousness as a knight errant, had learned more about the world outside of ostwick that way, had suffered emotionally in his early life, but it wasn’t until the blight that halwn was actually stripped of the privilege inherent in his status, though he’d lost a lot of that after being informally disinherited he was still living comfortably by world standards, still had a farm and a house and work and freedom. the blight was the first time he felt real and genuine life-or-death responsibility for other’s lives (outside of leading a small group of knights, but even then the danger was less dire and lacked the element of despair that thickened the danger of the blight), he was responsible for feeding people, defending people, but also for being part of a group that just mentally had to find a way to sleep through the night. it was the first time in his life since he was very young that he felt a genuine desire to pray.

the transition from seeing religion as the power-based artifice of the wealthy to finally understanding it as the thing that gets the frightened and hungry through the night is what allowed halwn to accept the part of himself that still believed, and wanted to, that allowed him to let go of the stigma of religion he developed in youth. he hasn’t practiced formally since leaving ostwick, but he never did more genuine ‘believing’ than during the blight and the tumult that followed. saying prayers over the dead, and the ones who hadn’t died, and having to practice martial law based on collective morals, returned some of the private tenderness of belief that he once felt as a child, before that feeling was corrupted.

it’s difficult to exactly quantify his beliefs, as they are partly agnostic though, as i’ve said, he does consider himself andrastian. as a leader, he doesn’t act out of a sense of duty to chantric ideals or chantric laws anymore than he acts out of a sense of duty over anything other than to try to ascertain the truth and act in the most just way possible. he has his own compass, he has since he was a child, and he balances that against as many varied opinions as he can trust to be presented to him honestly. he also doesn’t particularly like being in chantric settings---you may sometimes, particularly when he’s drinking, hear him quote the chant, and hear that tired sting of sarcasm in it, the recitation of a disillusioned youth having his knuckles whipped by a tutor, but you may also hear him quote some small part in a dark time, using the words as words, genuinely hoping to draw and give comfort. there’s a tension, certainly, between his belief and his disillusionment, and it makes being the leader of what is essentially a renegade arm of the chantry both deeply ironic and deeply appropriate for him.

#answered.#headcanon.#ofrevas #hmmm reposting since tumblr cannot #handle its own formatting without glitching massively wow

6 notes · View notes

meta-shadowsong · 5 years

Text

Some Thoughts on the Jedi/Jedi Doctrine

So, I’m sometimes hesitant to write meta about the this topic/set of topics, because I kind of feel like I have to make a huge disclaimer that the more critical of my points don’t mean I think that the Jedi were Really Evil/Wrong/what have you, because they weren’t. Like, there are clear Bad Guys in SW and the Jedi (overall/as an institution; obviously there are outliers like Krell running around) are not among them. Fortunately for me, Star Wars fandom is big and broad enough that it’s easier to curate my experience and avoid the Super Polarizing Debates than it has been in some other fandoms I’ve participated in, but the nature/relative Goodness of the Jedi Order is one of the ones that’s just...a fact of life in the PT-era/Clone Wars sections of the fandom that are my focus. And it’s basically Discourse™ bait.

(Which is not to say I don’t want discussion! If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be posting this in a public/semi-public forum, lol. Just that…IDK, there’s a difference between discussion and Discourse™, especially on topics like this.)

Anyway, all that aside, my stance can basically be summed up as: “The Jedi did far more good than harm and were, on the whole, well-intentioned people doing the best they could with the resources and information they had; however, I feel like there are some notable issues in their doctrine and practices which are worth discussing.” In other words, I generally lean more towards the Jedi Positive end of the spectrum – but, given the polarization in fandom on this particular topic, this occasionally makes me feel almost guilty when I make any kind of critical comment. Hence, massive disclaimers, to make up for that and attempt to be clear on where I’m coming from. But when my disclaimers start to feel almost as long as the actual essay I’m trying to write, that starts to take the fun out of it for me, hence my occasional hesitation.

That being said, for a variety of reasons, I decided to write up a few things that have been percolating in my head for a while, because why have a meta blog if I’m not going to use it, right? So, here we are.

This post is kind of a grab bag of three or four things, discussing both the Jedi themselves and how they’re sometimes portrayed, on varying levels of specificity. Being a grab bag, it’s not necessarily super coherent/a nice flowy essay, just some Thoughts. Oh, also, as a note – since, as far as I know, we lack a good canon catch-all, I use ‘Force adept’ as a general term for trained Force-users who may or may not be Jedi or Sith.

All right. Once again reiterating the massive disclaimer that I don’t think any of this makes the Jedi evil – here we go.

First, one of the things I have a problem with is more a perception/discussion thing than an in-universe thing – the idea that comes up sometimes in Jedi-positive discussions, that the Jedi path is The Right Way, or at least The Best Way to be an active Force adept without being Evil. Full stop. For all people, under all circumstances.

I think I’ve touched on this before, but my feelings on this particular issue really boil down to, “The Jedi aren’t wrong, but that doesn’t mean they have a monopoly on being right.” And I tend to come away from some Jedi-positive meta, even if I overall agree with the point the person in question is trying to make, with a bad taste in my mouth, feeling like it’s been framed as a One True Way type of thing. This is, admittedly, my problem, and not anyone else’s – which is why I’m discussing this in my own post, rather than derailing any of the ones I’ve seen that rubbed me in this particular wrong way. But it’s part of why I’m somewhat uncomfortable discussing my thoughts on Jedi practices and philosophy with anyone other than a select circle of fandom friends who I know for sure don’t skew that way. Even, as I said, when I lean more towards the Jedi-positive end of the spectrum.

Anyway, back on topic.

Practically speaking, there is a certain amount of truth to this idea by the time the PT rolls around, because of the relationship between the Order and the late Republic, and the overall sociopolitical setup of the main/focal portion of the galaxy. The Jedi have authority and reputation and presence in a way that other orders, if they’re out there, and/or independent Force adepts don’t. For example – off the top of my head, I believe the Guardians of the Whills, whether Force-adepts or not, whether Jedi-affiliated or not, seem to work in a pretty narrow geographic range; Dathomir (which, as I believe I’ve discussed previously, seems to be an entire planet/culture of people who are Force-sensitive to a perceptible degree, though not everyone necessarily reaches Jedi potential) also tends to mostly concern itself with its own affairs, apart from Mother Talzin and her ambitions. (There’s also the fact that they tend to read as/be grouped with Dark Side adepts, and I have some Thoughts on that/the Nightsisters as Dark Side adepts vs. Sith as Dark Side adepts as well, but that is a topic for a separate essay.)

But this isn’t about practicalities, it’s about philosophy/doctrine, and that’s where it starts getting sticky for me.

Okay. The Jedi basically have a core principle, and everything they do/believe comes from that – be more compassionate than you are selfish. And that’s great! That’s a good foundation for just about any philosophy/religion/culture. Quite a few IRL belief systems can be broken down to something similar, or even if it’s not a fundamental tenet, would still generally be considered a good/ideal way to live one’s life(1).

The problem is, when you break Jedi philosophy and doctrine down that far, it kind of loses a lot of its actual meaning? Which is to say, everything that makes it specifically Jedi philosophy – since, like I said, this is not an uncommon precept.

But the Order, like most belief systems, then takes the next step and says “okay, we’ve accepted this premise/goal, now here is our view on how to actually do that.” And at that point, when we start getting into the specifics, there are things that are not universal.

For example, considering the idea of avoiding attachment – not as it’s normally used in discussions about the Jedi, i.e., in the individual/interpersonal relationships sense, but in the broader/community sense.

The Jedi are more or less a closed community; while they do interact with the wider world when called upon, to provide aid, they’re pretty insular in their daily/personal lives outside of missions. And that is one way to achieve this core goal, to set the organization up as truly objective outsiders/advisors/judges/what have you.

But another would be to be fully integrated in a wider/outside community, either as individuals or as smaller groups/lineages, with connections to the overall Order that can be drawn on to share knowledge/resources/etc. as needed. Basically, trading outsider perspective for insider knowledge. Different ways of gaining the trust of the people you’re trying to help, with advantages and disadvantages to both. (For an IRL analogy, consider the way different orders of, say, Catholic monks and nuns operate, some more cloistered than others. Not a perfect comparison, necessarily, but something in the ballpark. Same goal, different approaches.)

My point here is not to imply or say that the Jedi path is a bad one, because it’s not. My point here is, as I said before, the idea that it’s the only correct path, or even the best path for all people (and/or Force adepts) in all circumstances, really sits wrong with me. Of course, this is all reflective my own personal beliefs, which tend to be pluralistic and avoid like the plague anything that claims to be the One True Way. Because that doesn’t even really hold up on Earth, which is a single planet with a single sentient species(2). If we expand that to an entire galaxy, with multiple species, it seems even shakier. And, yes, I know that Star Wars doesn’t actually do a whole lot with the idea of making alien species and their thought processes Different from humans beyond superficial details/attributes(3), but there’s still a point to be made here.

TL;DR: the galaxy, and, by extension, the Force, is far too big and complex for there to be only one right answer/path. Even building on the same baseline premise of “be more compassionate than you are selfish.”

Okay. Moving on to my next point, which is less about the way the Jedi are talked about and more about the Jedi themselves, and how they communicate with outsiders.

Short version: the Jedi are really, really bad at explaining who they are and how they think/operate to outsiders.

And, you know, I’m not saying they have to be good at it, or even necessarily that they should be. They don’t owe anyone those answers.

But it is something that can very much work against them, especially when they play a public role in galactic life. It’s easy for Palpatine to turn that on its head, especially when the Jedi don’t have the tools or the experience or the desire to play the propaganda game themselves. Again, not saying they should, just that they don’t, and there are downsides to it as well as advantages; and they’re up against someone whose primary wheelhouse is playing against exactly this kind of disadvantage.

That’s not the thing I want to focus on, actually, but it’s the most obvious thing so I felt like i should mention it. But that’s really more about the role of propaganda in the galaxy itself and other people, who are much smarter/more focused than I am and have put a lot of work into that topic have done it a lot better than I ever could.

But another way this comes into play is with their recruitment practices. For at least the past thousand years(4), the Jedi have only taken in infants/toddlers/very young children. Meaning, everyone that they do need to make understand Who They Are and How They Do grows up steeped in all of this, learning more or less by osmosis (because early-childhood neuroplasticity augmented by the Force) so there isn’t all that much need for overt explanations of How and Why the Jedi do things This Way, because it gets absorbed on a subconscious/instinctive level from the very beginning.

And, obviously this isn’t 100% successful – see, the Lost Twenty, not to mention any who left the Order as Padawans/before whatever marker makes them Count among the Twenty/as I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned before, I’m pretty sure we only have actual identifying information about like 1% of the Jedi Order (~100 out of ~10,000), so any broad statements should be taken with a grain of salt.

But what I’m trying to get at here is that this practice has put the Order in a position where they’ve basically lost the skills and reference points needed to teach people who come to it late. Converts, in other words.

And then it becomes sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy/a cycle which continually reinforces itself – older students have difficulty adapting to the lifestyle/culture, but is that because they’re past a set point where they can’t learn it/adapt, or because the Order’s approach has left it with a weak point when it comes to helping them through that transition? Which then leads to older students having difficulty adapting, which leads to the Order not taking in older students unless they Have To because they can’t adapt, which leads to further adjustment/integration issues for the few they do take, and on and on.

This is especially the case when it comes to older kids from…let’s call them complicated backgrounds, which we see with both Anakin and Ventress.

(Again interjecting a disclaimer – this is in no way saying that Anakin was justified in what he did, or that the Jedi Order deserved it, or anything like that. I have a meta buried somewhere that uses an elaborate road-building metaphor which I should probably post at some point about the various factors that go into Anakin making all the wrong choices; jumping off from that metaphor, this is probably one of the ways the Palpatine got his paving materials, but that doesn’t make the Order responsible for either what Palpatine did with them, or Anakin’s choice to walk on the road Palpatine built for him.)

Anyway.

With Ventress, Ky Narec keeps her away from the Order as a whole, so she’s deprived of the community aspects of the culture – but also insulated from the can’t-fit-in problems she probably would’ve faced with her peers (because, even without the additional communication issues I’m talking about, this is a thing that happens when outsiders/newcomers attempt to join tight-knit communities, even if no one is being overtly/deliberately exclusive). Assuming he’d have even been allowed to keep her if he’d brought her back (which is not at all a guarantee; look at what it took for the Order to accept Anakin). …y’know, on that note, I really wish there was more about the two of them and their relationship/how he taught her/why he decided to handle her this way/etc. But I digress.

Of course, in the end, Narec’s choice ends up being a negative – when he dies, she has no one else to turn to. As far as I know, we don’t have any information on whether she attempted to reach out to the Order and explain herself/hope for acceptance there before running to Dooku, so there’s maybe an additional story there. Either way, we know where she ended up. And this issue of how to handle/communicate effectively with candidates who got locked out of the loop because of when and how they were identified probably played a significant role in her story. If only because it almost certainly informed Ky Narec’s choices.

With Anakin, of course, he’s raised within the Order, and gets the full impact of the community – both the positives and the negatives, being essentially an outsider. We don’t have a lot of canon about his first couple years there, but given everything we do know about his early childhood and the culture he was trying to join, I think there were major cracks in the foundation from the start, despite probably everyone involved trying their best to make things work.

The background radiation of Anakin’s childhood, whether he experienced this directly or not, was that he has to prove he’s worth keeping, or he’ll be thrown away. So, bearing in mind that a lot of this is conjecture, my guess is he spent the first couple of years really trying to measure up, and hiding where he was having problems, because he doesn’t want to seem like a bad investment. Fake it til you make it, essentially(5). Especially given the way his induction was botched – and I’m not saying that the Jedi should have automatically accepted him, but the back and forth on the issue and the way initially refusing him was handled (he really should not have been in the room for that conversation) didn’t help matters/reinforced this issue/made him hyper-aware of how hard it had been for him to even get here, let alone keep his place(6).

Meanwhile, on the Order’s end of things, once they did accept him, I believe they genuinely tried to help him adjust. But, again, they’re making this up as they go along, too; so I feel like those first couple years was a lot of not-quite-meeting in the middle. They get close enough that the deeper issues are masked, but they still just slightly fall short of one another. Which, at least at this point(7), is not really anyone’s fault, just a difficult situation because of the conflicting backgrounds and expectations of the various parties involved, that didn’t necessarily actually get resolved, so much as compensated for. But those foundational cracks still present, leading to a complete collapse later.

Again, this doesn’t excuse the particular way Anakin handled that collapse at all. Also, IMO, none of these issues are necessarily insurmountable – without Palpatine actively working towards the worst possible outcome, my guess is that things would’ve come to a head in a much less destructive manner, and maybe earlier, as well. Whether the resulting course-correction/repair would’ve kept Anakin in the Order or not…IDK. Could go either way. The point is, between Anakin’s particular background and the Jedi Order’s general lack of facility in dealing with older students/kids from complicated backgrounds/outsiders in general (and some active reinforcement from Palpatine), there’s a not-insignificant gap in understanding/communication/trust right from the start, and it’s never entirely healed.

Insert clever segue here, and we move on to my third point, about the Chosen One prophecy.

As a note, I come at this mostly from a fanfic writing perspective, rather than a literary analysis perspective. And in my fic, I don’t actually deal with the prophecy all that much. But when I do, I really like the reading that the Chosen One is intended to be a catalyst for change. To put the Jedi Order/galaxy as a whole in a position for the final defeat of the Sith, whether by defeating the SIth with their own hands or by sparking a shift in the way the Order interacts with the threat/the galaxy as a whole.

Basically, per my reading of the situation, the Order has, over the past thousand years, become a little bit ossified/stagnant(4) in terms of its doctrine and practices. They’re pretty inwardly focused on their traditions and This Is How To Jedi (as an group/institution; as in most practices/cultures, this varies from individual to individual, with some being extremely flexible in their application of doctrine and some much less so), with intervention in the outside world in specific crises as they arise. This approach is at least in part a result of the way things were restructured following the Ruusan reformations, because that is what the Order needed to be at that point in time. But then they just sort of got…stuck there. This is, again, not necessarily a mark against them/proof they’re Really Not The Good Guys or any BS like that. Like I mentioned before, they still do way more good than harm, and are genuinely well-intentioned on the whole. It’s just a Thing that tends to happen. Institutions – and the Order is an Institution, in this sense – are slow to change on their own, and tend to just become The Same Thing But More So. Especially when they’re put in a position where they don’t necessarily need to change, and attempting to do so might cause a fair amount of short-term, maybe even long-term, damage, which could be either internal or external.

But this tendency, and the particular way they’ve become The Same Thing But More So, has left the Jedi Order woefully unprepared and unequipped to deal with the particular threat that Palpatine, and the generations of Sith legwork he’s building on, present.

Which brings us to the Chosen One.

Who is, in this reading(8), essentially a wakeup call from the Force, that the shit is about to hit the fan.

But Anakin and his induction/relationship with the Order were mishandled, as previously discussed. Once again, I feel a need to disclaim – I am not in any way blaming the Order for what happened. Anakin may have a Destiny, but he’s also a sentient being with free will and he actively chose to fulfill said Destiny in the worst possible way.

What I am saying is that the response to this warning was maybe not as thorough/helpful as it could have been. Both on a small scale, when dealing with the individual beings directly involved, and on a large scale, in terms of the questions Anakin and all that he is (with or without the full weight/text of the Prophecy as a factor) could have raised about Order doctrine and practices, which might have put them in a slightly better position when Palpatine initiated his endgame. It may still have been too little, too late – or it may have been enough to significantly change the outcome.

And, to be fair, I think that the Order – or, at the very least, Master Yoda – realized this over the course of the Clone War. That the Order had become stagnant/too attached to Tradition/not as dynamic as it needed to be, I mean. And, if Anakin had made better choices or if circumstances had fallen out differently, I genuinely believe that the Order would have seen some significant change, to adapt to the galaxy as it had become, not the one it was at their last major shift a thousand years ago. Which they do anyway – granted, we don’t know much about how Luke was running things in canon, but in Legends, he took a slightly different approach to the core philosophy and the doctrine built on it, adapting what he’d been taught to the galaxy that he’d grown up in. But, again, that’s as a result of Anakin serving as a catalyst for change in the worst possible way because he made all the wrong choices.

…yeah, that last section, in particular, I’ve been sitting on for a long, long time, trying to figure out how to word it without sounding creepy and victim-blamey. As I keep stressing, none of this changes the enormity of Anakin’s choice, because he had other options and he chose this one. And while the Order could have handled things better in the lead up to that final crossroads, which might have put all of them in a better position when they got there, they didn’t make that choice for him any more than Palpatine did.

So…yeah. There it is. Some of my more critical thoughts about the Jedi Order of the PT/Late Republic era. Like I said. I’m not sure how coherent this is, it’s just…sort of a grab bag of thoughts.

To sum up: The Jedi were well-intentioned and did more good than harm; they were not wrong, but that doesn’t mean they have a monopoly on being right; there are some flaws in their approaches to certain issues such as communication, particularly with outsiders, and change, which in no way mean they caused or deserved what happened to them; however, in the full knowledge that I am looking at this from an outside perspective/with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, there are better choices they could have made which might well have improved the situation.

(1)Disclaimer: it’s been at least ten years since I’ve done any serious comparative religions study, but this is broadly true to the best of my recollection.

(2)Debates about cetaceans, etc., aside.

(3)Which is actually one of the things I really liked about Alliances, and the way Timothy Zahn handles the Chiss in general – it’s a little closer to the CJ Cherryh style of sci-fi, where aliens may be similar to humans, but there are fundamental differences in the way they think and organize themselves; so the fact that Chiss Force adepts function very differently from Force adepts in the main part of the galaxy is pretty cool to me. Whether the two approaches could adapt and learn from each other in the long run is a fascinating question…

(4)Going by Legends canon here; current canon has yet to give me any deep backstory, so my approach to anything more than 100 years pre-TPM is ‘canon until proven otherwise,’ because there’s little to no historical context for things without that. And I feel like discussions on this topic are really hard to have/missing something significant without that historical context.

(5)I also think that this particular strategy – fake it til you make it, excel in specific areas which cover up the deep flaws in others/your foundation – is something that the Order is vulnerable to in general, even with children who did grow up in the culture. See, Barriss. …there’s probably a whole essay or three, talking about the ways Barriss and Anakin and Ventress and their stories parallel one another, but that is a topic for another day.

(6)Granted, he does get past this, at least to some extent, later (as we can see in the way he deals with his superiors in AOTC and ROTS; if nothing else, he’s identified how much wiggle room he has and is confident enough to go right up to the edge of what he can get away with, even risking going past it in certain contexts and on certain issues), but that doesn’t necessarily mean that this has actually been fixed, just that he’s found ways to get around it and function in his new environment.

(7)As sort of implied in the last footnote, there does more or less come a point where Anakin kind of stops trying with anyone other than a few close, trusted people – and, again, on the one hand this shows a remarkable success in rewriting some of the coping mechanisms he developed in childhood which are no longer helpful for him in his new life, in that he’s less focused on Being Worth Keeping apart from not wanting to disappoint, for example, Obi-Wan; but it also doesn’t necessarily address some of his root issues. And because of this gap in understanding, Anakin comes away with the impression, accurate or not, that he’s never really going to win the trust/approbation of his peers and superiors, which alienation Palpatine can prey on later. Again, none of this excuses the way Anakin eventually acts on that alienation. But it’s there.

(8)There’s another reading that I kind of like – though it leans a little harder into the Fate end of the scale rather than free will – which is that Anakin is at the nexus of both the Jedi Chosen One prophecy and the Sith’ari prophecy from Legends. I.e., some ancient Jedi and Sith did the same thing Ezra and Maul did, bashing a pair of holocrons together to seek some kind of Revelation, and came out with conflicting but not necessarily contradictory answers. But, again, that hits the Fate end of the scale a lot harder than I normally like, though the possibility of it is interesting to contemplate when I write stuff where ROTS happened as in canon (i.e., I referenced this idea in Sanctuary.)

#star wars #fandom #originally posted july 2019

4 notes · View notes

singingrandoms-blog · 3 years

Text

Unfiltered Life for an Autism mum

I had a baby boy in September 2014. A beautiful bouncing 8 pound 6 ounce baby. As you do when you’re pregnant, you start to think about all the amazing things that are going to happen when you have a child. Personally I was looking forward to explaining Snooker to him, reading Harry Potter to him, watching my most loved Disney films, and hoping that he falls in love with them too. Then going through the anxiety of starting primary school, then secondary school, then wondering whether he would want to go to University, what kind of job would he want to do, would he be more creative like me, or more hands-on and scientific like his dad? And eventually, attending his wedding and having grandkids. Ultimately finishing with him looking after me in my old age, and helping me die so I don’t become a burden to him.

Unfortunately this is what a lot of Mothers think about before the baby is even out of the womb. If you’re lucky, you’ll get half of that.

I have and will not have any of this.

My child is autistic. And before anyone get’s their knickers in a twist, I know that you can be autistic and have all of the above and more. However my boy will not.

He will probably need to be looked after for the rest of his life, having no independence and not being able to function or give anything back to society.

That might sound harsh but it’s the truth. I wish more autism mums would be more honest about this side of things. It’s ok when they’re little, because people expect them to act out, or do silly things, they’re still kids, but the older they get, the wider the gap gets, and suddenly people start looking at your child differently, like with slight pity in their eyes.

This happens especially at the play park. My child is very sociable, he wants to be friends with everyone (which isn’t a typical autism trait), but the fact is, no one wants to play with the autistic kid. We were in the park the other day and three children (siblings) were making fun of how he could not talk properly (he has speech delay, and babbles a lot) and kept trying to run away from him. He can’t process those social queues, so he thinks these kids are just playing with him, when really they’re telling him to go away and stop following them. Parents tend to ignore their child’s behaviour and smile at you in a way that’s like ‘well, your child is different’.

This upset me. I always try and educate other children who come across my son, to explain why he does the things he does. I did this with these children, and I got stony silence in return. I don’t want him to have any negative experience trying to make friends, just in case he suddenly stops, and then becomes really insular.

What I really want to say in this post is how mothers with autistic children paint the picture that life is incredible, and it’s all hearts and rainbows. I’m particularly pointing the finger at Instagram Mothers. Being a parent to an autistic child is awful. Everyday is a constant reminder that my son will never have a normal life, that he won’t fall in love, or join a sports team, or get drunk at a house party, or finger a girl (or boy) at a disco. I want these things for him. More than anything.

But not only this. Every day is a fight. Because he can’t communicate very well, he gets frustrated and has the most evil meltdowns, which include kicking, throwing, slapping and everything in between. These happen on a daily basis. And it’s exhausting, because you know it’s coming, and sometimes you just don’t want to deal with it. Sometimes you want to grab their face and scream ‘WE HAVE A BATH EVERY FUCKING DAY, WHY ARE WE DOING THIS AGAIN!!!’.

I always said that I would never use his autism as an excuse for bad behaviour, he knows when he’s being naughty and he knows when he’s being good. Autism only plays a factor because he can’t vent his frustration in words, and when he gets angry or frustrated it’s emotional/sensory overload and the only way he can think to deal with it, is to kick and slap the shit out of his parents, or break his favourite toys. Go figure.

I want autism parents to post pictures of them on the floor of the bathroom in tears, with their child’s shitty pants, socks and trousers around them, trying to get their child to shit in the toilet, as opposed to everywhere else. I want autism parents to post pictures of the side of the bath, where their child kicked it so hard, that it cracked in four places. I want mother’s to post pictures of:

How you can’t make a play date.

How you can’t get a babysitter.

How your family don’t really know how to act around him

How you don’t get any peace because they constantly need you to help them do things.

That they only eat about three different things.

It’s awful and I hate it. If I could change him I would (awful I know). But if a lot of parents are honest with themselves then they would agree.

He has put me off having any other children, because I don’t want to risk having another disabled child. But I also really want the opportunity to have all those things that other parents get at the start of this post.

I understand that I am lucky to have a child.

I understand that I am lucky that he is mobile, and has no underlying health conditions.

I realise I am massively ungrateful, and don’t deserve to be his mother.

The fact is I haven’t accepted he has autism. And I don’t want to. So this makes it harder for me to be sympathetic when he has a meltdown, because I don’t let his autism be a factor. So he’s just being naughty.

I love him, and I don’t want anything to happen to him.I show him so much love, he knows I love him. I just sometimes wish I wasn’t his mother. I try to help him as much as I can but a lot of the time it’s like hitting my head against a brick wall. There’s only so much you can physically and emotionally take.

Being a parent of an autistic child is hard. Don’t pretend it’s not. If this was reflected more in social media, or even the mainstream media, then a lot of parents wouldn’t feel so fucking useless, and feel like their doing something wrong. Be honest! It doesn’t mean you love them any less, it just proves you’re human.

I also understand that I am not talking for all parents here. I’m talking about myself and how I feel. I’m also not saying that all autistic children are exactly like mine, it’s spectrum people, they’re not all the high functioning ones you see on telly. I understand all this, I just want people to know how hard it can be, and maybe reflect that in your media.

#Mother #autism #life #hard #home #Instagram #posts #health #mental #kind #new

0 notes

depechemodespiritera · 7 years

Link

It's a position that he continues to hold to this day, having steered the band to over 100 million record sales and cementing Depeche Mode's status as one of the biggest touring acts in the world. This year the group, numbering Dave Gahan, Martin Gore and Andy Fletcher, released its 14th studio album, Spirit, and began its record-breaking Global Spirit Tour. Having sold out stadium and arena dates around the world, including four nights at Los Angeles' Hollywood Bowl, 2018 sees the tour move onto South America.

"This is a band that continues to grow and have huge appeal internationally," the publicity-shy Kessler -- who has also worked with Sting, Neil Young, Tracy Chapman, Rod Stewart and The Weeknd -- tells Billboard ahead of being honored at the Music Managers Forum and Featured Artist Coalition's sixth annual Artist & Manager Awards, held tonight (Nov. 14) in London.

Billboard: Going back to the start of your association with Depeche Mode, how did you make the leap from tour accountant to band manager?

Jonathan Kessler: I came out of business school and almost fell into the music business. It was not really my driving passion then. I started to work with Depeche purely as a tour accountant and as I started to do more and more with them my role increased. I would ask, 'Who's taking care of this? Or who's taking care of liability insurance?' Often no one was, so I started taking care of it. [Becoming manager] was the obvious evolution really. It was just a question of when could I bring up the M word. Because they were self-managed and they prided themselves on that -- but they weren't really. So, it just was a discussion between us to say, 'This is what I'm doing. Let's call it what it is and formalize that relationship.' Obviously, through the years a certain level of trust had grown between us. That doesn't appear right away. I remember when I first started to work them they were a very insular band. They were understandably scared of foreigners and strangers – as is true of many bands in their infancy.

Has your foregrounding in business been an important factor in helping grow them into one of the world's biggest touring acts?

Definitely. 35 years ago, the world of touring was like the Wild West. There were very loose deals in place with promoters, which were settled on the night of the show. A lot of my role then was trying to figure out what was what. Who was taking what and were the promoters that we were doing business with taking advantage? That's changed quite a bit in today's day and age. It's become a lot more corporate. A lot more sanitized and properly run financially, to a certain extent.

What do you regard as being key to Depeche Mode's rise to stardom and lasting popularity?

At the start, it was the creativity of the band. The music that they were creating was forging new ground. One thing as a band that we are very strict at maintaining to this day is being true to ourselves and doing what we want to do. I kept that going and as we progressed together I gave them the space to just focus on the music, while I take care of everything else around them. In a band that stays together that long and keeps developing often differences between members occur. There's many stories of bands not getting along and not being able to settle those differences. And so, like in any dysfunctional family, those things have to be mediated. I think I've played a large role in helping that flow through.

As a manager, how do you help overcome those differences and ensure the group stays together?

When the differences are meaningful and pertain to important things artistically they should be expressed and confronted head on. That friction is what makes a band creative, keeps them on edge and keeps them developing and looking to do new things. Yet, often some of the differences or challenges that occur between them aren't that meaningful and get blown out of proportion. One needs to play those down and allow the ones that are serious to live and be attacked. You can't sweep everything under the rug. Eventually it is going to explode and combust. So that was really a role where I could step in and try and broker to allow things that were meaningful to play out. That continues to be the case.

The band's past problems with drug and alcohol abuse has been well-documented, particularly Dave Gahan's struggles with heroin addiction in the mid-1990s. Did you fear for their future during that time?

Those are just life problems. I refer to them now as the experimental years. I think that's a nice way of putting it. They were their experimental years and thank God that they lived through them and made it… As with any dysfunctional family, it has its moments of difficulties and challenges. But in essence [all three members] have a great relationship. There's a huge amount of respect, love and kinship between them. When you spend that much time together in a high-pressure cooker environment obviously things will get tense and difficult at times. It's inevitable. The challenge is just don't let it overflow, right?

The Global Spirit tour looks set to be the band's biggest ever. How has the band continued to grow its live business when so many of their peers from the 1980s have faded?

The live show itself is just fantastic. Dave is really one of the best frontmen and he and Martin play off each other wonderfully. The fan base is very dedicated. It takes ownership of the band, stays very loyal and therefore comes back. We are now seeing the second generation of fan's children [coming to shows]. There was also a lot of hard work done in our early days of touring in different territories. In the early days, we went to the Eastern European territories a lot and to this day that's one of the biggest markets for us. We played Berlin on the East side when the wall was up. We often played countries often like Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia when it was still Yugoslavia. And in those markets, we now have an incredibly fruitful touring business. This is a band that continues to grow and have huge appeal internationally.

You rarely give interviews and have continually remained behind the scenes throughout your management career. Is that through personal choice?

It's definitely a conscious decision. It's not at all a reflection of my character. I'm actually quite flamboyant. But I do think that it really is about the band. I have nothing but admiration for their tenacity, perseverance and above all their creativity and artistic ability. The songs that they write, the music they create and their tenacity to keep going at it is formidable. They deserve the attention as they're the ones on the stage. It's their names on the marquee -- and it always should be. Not mine. I'm just there to push it forward and help them facilitate what they want to do.

Spirit has received some of the band's best reviews in years. Were you and the band pleasantly surprised by the critical and commercial success of the record?

The nice thing that has happened along this route is that we have continued to go up at a 45-degree angle. Recently we have taken a leap off that 45 degrees and taken a higher rise up. What's also nice to see is that the band is being recognized for being pioneers in the synthesizer and remix world. Even in the U.K. press, which is perhaps the hardest barometer, they are receiving their deserved credit finally. But it really does stem from staying true to what we do and not trying to appeal to the trends of today.

Do you have a favorite album or period in the band's history?

Personally, no. I just think it's a nice evolution. I recently saw Billboard listed the top 20 hits and I was shocked by how many there were. I guess when you're in it every day and in the mud and the thick of it, you sometimes don't quite realize the big body of work they have created. It's hit after hit after hit.

Given the complexities of the modern music business, do you think that the role of a music manager is more important than ever today?

I think it has become more elevated, yes. You have to be more of a quarterback yourself, as opposed to the record company or the promoter. We have a fantastic partnership with Sony. A fantastic partnership with Live Nation and Sony/ATV Music Publishing. But you still have to develop your own opportunities. It's a busier, louder, noisier world today than it was 30 odd years ago and you have to try to cut through the clutter of everything that's out there. One of the biggest challenges we have is just how do we let people know that we are releasing a new record and are still touring.

Following the success of Spirit, have thoughts already turned to the next album?

Right now, we're just focused on touring and we have a hell of a lot of touring still to do. We have weeks of touring in Europe plus another month of touring in South America, plus more to come. So that's pretty grueling and taxing. The band plays for over two hours every night. It's never a dialed-in performance, so that's where all the energy goes right now.

This year saw Depeche Mode celebrate their 37th year together. Can you envisage them reaching them reaching their 50th anniversary?

I don't see why not. They're in their mid-fifties and young and healthy. We'll see. They never say. 'We're going to go on [till a certain date]'. It's always a question of, 'Let's just see what happens and not plan for the future.' And inevitably Dave or Martin will send the other a piece of music, they get smitten by it and it all starts again.

#depeche mode #spirit era #jonathan kessler

10 notes · View notes

aterglittle · 5 years

Note

ALL THE FANTASY ASKS!!!! or any five, if that's too many???? ^^

I will do all of them (under the cut, of course)

edit: another friend asked me some so I’ll answer those separately

Fairy- What is something that you get excited about?

Trying new foods, new series or seasons of series, learning new things

Dragon- Sexuality?

Bi and like ??? not sure about the romantic and/or sexual spectrum tbh

Griffin- Gender?

Cis woman… probably. Tbh I don’t even know how to approach Knowing for sure ya feel? Like.

Unicorn- Who do you look up to?

Honestly a lot of people, right now I’d say Mary Bucholtz and Anne Charity Hudley who are amazing intersectional cutting edge linguists who I’ve had the honor of learning from in their class! Also all of my friends, they’ve really been through so much and accomplished so much!!!

Spirit- Have you ever been in love?

Not yet!

Ghost- Favorite song?

Hhhhhhh I can’t choose one

Poltergeist- Favorite song lyric?

“And I’m the kinda person who starts getting kinda nervous when I’m having the time of my life” from Kacey Musgrave’s “happy and sad” but I think there are a lot of Iconic lines in the music I listen to

Ghoul- Who is someone that makes you laugh easily/who’s company you enjoy most of, if not all of, the time?

You!!! 😊 But most of my friends

Goblin- What makes you happy?

Pokemon, comforting yummy things (especially sweets and warm drinks), cooking, both time with loved ones and time completely alone recharging, and well written fiction

Dwarf- Favorite tv show?

Another one I can’t answer 😅I like so many series I’ve lost track

Vampire- Are you currently reading any books? If so, what book(s)?

Hm, I just started one (How I got here by Ceil Lucas) but I’m not sure if I’ll stick with it

Werewolf- Who is your family? Who do you live with?

My family is my mom and my siblings, though I have a network of friends who are pretty close to, and I live with a friend!

Siren- Favorite color?

Purple or pink, they tie and then blue (… hence why I stick with bi)

Hobgoblin- Do you like anyone?

Not currently

Wraith- Any scars?

Nope

Specter- Have you ever been in love?

Not yet (also this one’s a repeat of spirit?)

Chimera- Will you/do you want to get married?

Possibly!

Changeling- Do you want children?

Not really, or at least, I don’t want the ordeal of pregnancy and giving birth. I might be down with a partner with kids or adopting tho! But in that case I would first have to reflect on whether I was 100% in/committed a LOT, I will not be irresponsible with a person’s whole life

Oracle- Do you like children?

I do! Though I fully admit I like them better when they are at the point where they can communicate to some extent… I struggle with kids who are like

King- Describe your ideal day.

Waking up refreshed, relaxedly making a good breakfast, going on a walk while it’s still cool and quiet, reading a good book, having a meal with someone else, and finishing the day off with a treat

Queen- Age?

Princess- What is your relationship with your parents like?

Ok well with my mom we’ve gotten really close these past couple of years, we always got along but I feel like now I’m her confidant (and sometimes mutually) and I have the emotional maturity to be there for her which I love. Sometimes I wonder if it’s a little too much but idk. With my dad it’s strained because most of my childhood memories of him are him pushing me out of my comfort zone or to do things I didn’t want to (re: golf), I know he really loves “me” but I’m not really open to him and sometimes I berate myself for that, sometimes I wonder why he always expects others to go/do things his way and I consider shutting him out (both my siblings already have). He’s helped me a lot in other ways though. He lives in China so we don’t talk or see each other that often

Prince- Birthday?

March

Necromancer- If you could spend a week with anyone, alive or dead, who would it be?

Honestly not sure, do we have to like live together???

Castle- What is something that not a lot of people know about you?

I’m not sure... I feel like there’s a lot, probably, but I guess I’ll go with that I’m really bad with names

Tower- What is (at least one thing) something that you’re afraid of?

Falling into complacency/self-satisfaction in terms of activism, career, life in general

Magic- Describe your crush without saying their name.

Not possible haha

Enchanted Forest- Height?

5″6′

Magic Healer- Any pets? If so, what are they?

Nope

Potions- Relationship status?

Single

Potion Making- Would you kiss the last person you kissed again?

I’ve uhhh I’ve never kissed anyone so

Divination- What do you think about yourself?

Idk, I wish I was less of an awkward turtle and I have some other issues with myself. But I also know I can have a big heart and I have a lot to be proud of too. In general I feel my self-concept is very nebulous if that makes sense???

Visions- Do you miss anyone?

Maybe

Curses- How do you show affection?

Gifts and checking in!

Charms- Are you religious?

No, I’d like to be sometimes but I wasn’t raised that way

Jinxes- If you could be anywhere, where would you want to be?

Honestly idk… Maybe Italy? Or Japan. There are a few places I want to see, because my friends are from there or there’s food I want to try etc., but also I want to see what the world outside the US is like, since I feel like we’re really insular/self-centered here

#answers #fulltimesunshine #asks

0 notes

quentinsquill · 7 years

Text

“Those Magic Changes.” (For the 2017 Welters Challenge, Week Four.)

Author: Lexalicious70 (TheChampagneKing70)

Fandom: The Magicians/Those People (Crossover)

Rating: R

Warnings: Discussions of suicide, depression

Genre: Crossover: (The Magicians/Those People)

Word Count: 5,248

Summary: During Quentin’s second year at Brakebills, the twin he never knew is tapped to take the exam, but he may also alter Quentin’s life in ways he never thought possible.

Author’s Notes: This is for Week 4 of the Welters Challenge: “Crossovers,” and because of my obsession with Those People. I don’t own The Magicians, this is just for fun. Comments and kudos are magic! Enjoy. For @thewelterschallenge

Read it on AO3: http://archiveofourown.org/works/11513553

Those Magic Changes

By Lexalicious70 (TheChampagneKing70)

Studying magic at Brakebills taught you many things.

It taught you how to prepare spells, how to cast them according to the environment around you, and what kind of magic you were most adept at according to your discipline (when and if they could find it.)

But what it didn’t teach you is that magic wasn’t good for squat when a personal crisis or tragedy turned your life upside down. And that, Quentin reflected as he sat on the couch in the Physical Kids cottage with a thick manila folder in his hand, was a lesson that the faculty should teach above anything else.

The couch tilted slightly as someone sat down next to him and then a long, elegant finger tapped the folder.

“What’s this?”

Quentin looked up to see Eliot watching him expectantly. Quentin lifted a hand, began to speak, then faltered.

“I . . . I don’t even know where to begin, El!”

“May I?” Eliot took the folder from Quentin before he was even finished nodding and flipped it open. Inside were some official-looking documents and Eliot’s eyes widened as he read through them.

“Quentin . . . holy shit!”

“See what I mean? I don’t even know where to begin! Dean Fogg gave me those when he called me to his office because he didn’t think I’d take his word for it, and I know they’re real, but—how could my parents have kept this from me? And now Fogg says I have to meet him? Christ, Eliot, what am I supposed to say? What’s he supposed to say to me?”

“I don’t know.” Eliot replied after a moment, and Quentin ran a hand over his face. Eliot offered up his flask and Quentin shook his head.

“No, thanks, I don’t think even that is going to help.”

“When are you supposed to meet him?”

“Dean Fogg said he’d have Professor Li escort him here—” Quentin turned his head at a commanding knock at the door. “—Oh God, that’s him. El that’s him, what am I going to do?”

Eliot got to his feet and smoothed out his silk vest before tugging Quentin up.

“You’re going to answer the door and invite him in.”

Quentin walked to the door with Eliot shooing him along from behind. He opened it to find Professor Li there, his expression enigmatic and serene as always, and behind him, a young man of average height with collar-length sandy hair like his own, not quite brunette but not light enough to be truly blond. Dark eyes stared at him over Professor Li’s shoulder, who stepped aside without comment until Quentin and the stranger who wore his face were eye to eye. Eliot nudged him from behind, and Quentin took a deep breath before offering his twin brother his hand to shake.

“Welcome to Brakebills, Sebastian.”

_____________________________________________

“But this must be some kind of joke.” Sebastian Blackworth said for the third time as Eliot offered him a martini. The young man accepted it with air of one who was used to handing liquor glasses, one of the dozen things Eliot noticed he didn’t have in common with his twin in the twenty minutes he’d been in the cottage. Professor Li had done one of his trademark fades, but Eliot knew he’d show back up to escort Sebastian back to the first-year dorms before the evening was out.

“It’s not a joke. Magic is real, and you were offered the preliminary exam, just like I was last year. And also like me, you passed. You could be a magician.”

“A magician.” Sebastian sipped his drink. “Top hat, cape, sawing ladies in half? I may not have many options for a lucrative career thanks to my father’s dealings, but that’s rather scraping the bottom of the barrel, isn’t it?”

“That’s not what magic is.” Quentin said, and Sebastian tipped his head to one side as he set his glass aside.

“I suppose anything’s possible, seeing as how the man I thought was my father, isn’t, and my real father, who I’ll never meet because he died from cancer six months ago, chose to give me up for adoption.”

“Look, I know it’s a lot to take in . . . it is for me, too! My parents never told me about you, but according to the records Dean Fogg gave me, my—our—mother had severe post-partum depression and they couldn’t care for us both.” Quentin glanced away and tucked a lock of hair behind his right ear. “They made a decision that they thought was the best for everyone, I guess.”

“Giving me away was the best decision?” Sebastian snapped, and Quentin looked up, his eyes widening.

“I was two days old when it happened! It’s not like I had a say!”

“I think we can agree that you were both innocent in what happened.” Eliot put in. “You were at the mercy of people who weren’t expecting two children, thanks to the inferior sonogram technology of the early 90s, and a decision was made without you ever knowing.”

“And who are you, again?” Sebastian asked, peering up at Eliot, and Quentin bristled.

“He already introduced himself.”

“That’s all right, Q. Clearly, your spare wasn’t raised with manners.” Eliot rose from the couch in one fluid movement and headed toward the bar, leaving Sebastian flushed.

“His spare? How dare you!”

“And how dare you!” Eliot shot back from behind the bar as he shook up a cocktail with a bit more force than was probably necessary. “You passed the Brakebills exam, brava, but that doesn’t mean Quentin had to speak with you or even meet you! He did it out of the goodness of his heart, so maybe blaming him for your parents’ choice in which baby they gave away isn’t the best way to show your gratitude!”

“I didn’t ask for that either, or to be brought here!” Sebastian countered. “I wasn’t doing anything more extraordinary than trying to learn how to use the goddamned subway when I went down a corridor and ended up on the front lawn of wherever this is!”

“Brakebills. The same thing happened to me last year.” Quentin said. “Only I came from Brooklyn.” He shook his head. “This is so bizarre . . . I mean, neither of our parents were magicians but we both have magical ability?”

“Having magical—whatever—is the least of my problems right now!” Sebastian glanced away. “But as it happens, I need housing. I recently sold my apartment building.”

“You owned an entire building?” Quentin asked, and Sebastian drained his glass.

“Yes. In Manhattan.” He set the glass aside. “You’ve never heard of Richard Blackworth?”

“We’re kind of insular here at Brakebills. News doesn’t always filter in.” Quentin said.

“Do you parents know where you are?”

“I told my dad. Uhm. Before.” Quentin gestured. “I didn’t want him to die without knowing who I really am.” He paused. “I’m not sure where my mother is. She went on some painting sabbatical last year. Italy or Greece, I think? She didn’t even make it back for the funeral. She sent a telegram, though.”

Eliot sat beside Quentin and pushed a glass of scotch into his hands. Sebastian nodded and tapped his fingers on his knees. His fingernails were finely manicured.

“Well. I suppose I should see to my living situation.” He said, and Quentin glanced up as he got to his feet.

“You’re staying?” He asked, and his twin smiled, no trace of humor reaching his dark eyes.

“If you knew who Richard Blackworth was, you’d understand how little I have to go back to.” He walked toward the door and Quentin turned to Eliot.

“Can’t he stay here? We have two empty rooms thanks to those two first-years who didn’t pass the trials last winter!”

Eliot frowned.

“Quentin—I don’t know. Not only is he already grossly behind, he has an abhorrent personality! No offense.”

“I was the same way when Fogg moved me to the cottage! I’m amazed you or Margo didn’t strangle me in my sleep!”

“Don’t count it out yet.” Margo said from a nearby chair, where she pouted at being usurped from her usual place at Eliot’s side on the couch. Quentin ran both hands through his hair.

“Eliot please . . . he’s my brother!”

Eliot glanced over at Sebastian’s retreating form, hesitated, then rolled his eyes.

“Curse my bleeding heart,” He muttered, and Margo rolled her eyes.

“I’ll say.”

Eliot shot her a look and she gave him a knowing smile before getting up and leaving the room, to presumably pursue gossip, a sexual conquest, or to assume her final form. Eliot knew she’d be back to torment him some more later. Quentin jumped up.

“Wait!” He said to Sebastian, who paused at the door. Quentin went to him.

“You can stay here. The dorms are cramped and you won’t have any privacy. Here, you’ll get your own room and there’s three bathrooms. And it’s fun! Well . . . most of the time.”

Sebastian regarded his twin for several moments, noticing his lack of eye contact, his sleeve pulling, and how obviously smitten he was with Eliot Waugh. Either the other magician didn’t feel the same way or he was oblivious, thanks to his hedonism, something Sebastian could appreciate, even if he was an arrogant ass.

“We’ll have to arrange it with Dean Fogg,” Quentin was saying, “but I’m sure it’ll be all right. So. Will you stay?”

Sebastian glanced around the room until he and Eliot locked eyes and he saw the challenge there.

“Sure.” He said at last. “Might as well make the best of it.”

____________________________________________

A few hours later, Sebastian moved into the Physical Kids cottage with a meager yet tasteful collection of clothing and a few other possessions. He put his things away in an orderly manner and crawled into bed in a way that suggested he hadn’t slept well during the previous weeks. Quentin closed the bedroom door and started hard as he nearly ran into Margo as he turned away.

“Creep much? Jeez!” He said, and Margo lifted her chin.

“Do you want to know more about your brother?”

“What do you mean?”

Margo shook some printed pages at him, and Quentin gaped at her.

“You went and looked him up?”

“Christ, calm down, it’s nothing anyone can’t find on the USA Today site.” She grabbed his hand and tugged him into her bedroom, which smelled like exotic flowers and her vanilla skin scrub. He glanced around and she shooed him over to the bed, where she sat down with him. He stiffened, poking his hands between his knees, and Margo pursed her lips.

“Relax. This isn’t The Erotic Awakening of Quentin Coldwater, starring us.”

“I’m not—”

“You’re not a virgin, right, got it. ANYway . . . here’s the lowdown on Jay Gatsby over there.” She jerked her chin at the door and handed Quentin the papers. He took them with a frown and Margo narrowed her eyes at him.

“You’re welcome!”

Quentin sighed and began to sift through papers, slowly at first, then more quickly, his eyes widening.

“This is who his adoptive father was? A thief and a criminal?”

“A thief and a criminal who hung himself right after a holiday visit from his only son. Imagine dealing with that action!”

“But Sebastian tried to right all his father’s wrongs. That’s why he sold almost everything he owned!”

“I guess so. I mean, I would have grabbed what I could and made tracks for the South of France, but that’s just me.” Margo materialized a nail file into her right hand and worked on the nail of the other index finger. “I hate to say it, Quentin, but it looks like your twin has more baggage than a Beyonce world tour.”

Quentin read through the second scandal sheet.

“Did you read all of these?”

“Only some.”

“This one says he’s gay!”

“You didn’t work that out?”

“Well—no. I mean . . . Eliot didn’t say . . .”

“It’s not like a boy scout troop! They don’t all know each other!”

Quentin felt his cheeks heat with a deep blush.

“I know that! It’s just—how do I deal? Do I ask him about it? Or about any of this?” He held up the papers. Margo shook her head.

“I was an only child. I honestly have no advice for you in this area. Just—just don’t Quentin out over anything and try to be his friend, I guess.”

Quentin got up from the bed.

“Thanks for this.” He motioned to the papers. “Usually you’re not this invested in anything I do.”

Margo lifted a shoulder.

“Slow week. Now get out of my room before someone sees you and assumes we’re sleeping together.”

____________________________________

Three days passed. The new semester began, and Sebastian proved to be a competent but antisocial student that walked to his classes alone and ate his meals with his nose in a book. He had none of Alice’s obvious brilliance or Eliot’s natural gifts with magic, but by the third day, as Quentin paused by the door to his brother’s room, he noticed that his Poppers were coming along nicely. Sebastian was working his fingers as he sat on the bed, flexing them to bend the way he wanted. Sebastian glanced up and saw him watching.

“Something I can help you with?”

“I don’t know . . . can I come in?”

“I suppose so.” Sebastian nodded. Quentin stepped into the room. It looked the same as the day it had when Sebastian had moved in, except now there was a simple 70s-style turntable on the nightstand, the kind with a square acrylic cover. The cover was cocked back, and a vinyl record spun on the spindle. Quentin listened and recognized “Oh, Better Far to Live and Die” from The Pirates of Penzance soundtrack. He raised a set of mental eyebrows: his mother had loved musicals.

Our mother, Quentin reminded himself. The one who was so depressed after our birth that she gave one of us away.

“Your friend loaned me the record player when he noticed I had a collection of vinyl.”

“My friend?”

“The tall one. Maybe he felt badly about how he treated me the other day.”

“Maybe?” Quentin allowed, although he knew from experience that Eliot didn’t spend a lot of time pondering past actions. He sat down on the bed. “So, what do you think of Brakebills so far?”

“It gave me a stay of social execution. So there’s that.” Sebastian took a cigarette case out of his nightstand drawer, along with a slim sliver lighter. He offered one to Quentin, who shook his head.

“What do you mean?”

Sebastian lit the cigarette and exhaled a rich plume of smoke a few moment later.

“I told you about my father. He was the most hated man in New York City, and as his heir, I was pursued by photographers, harassed by reporters, and denied service at most bars and restaurants in Manhattan. It got so bad that after awhile I refused to leave my apartment. My friends came to stay with me, at least until the press began to associate them with me and they became social pariahs as well.”

“But it was your father who cheated all those people! Not you.” Quentin said, and Sebastian took another drag of his cigarette.

“I knew about it. That was enough for them to crucify me.”

“Oh, Better Far to Live and Die” gave way to “What Ought We to Do?” The player’s needle gave a satisfying crackle in between songs.

“You tried to do the right thing.” Quentin said, and Sebastian gave him a wry, twisted grin.

“Maybe in the end I did. That’s usually when I tend to come through.” He exhaled another cloud of smoke. “He likes you, you know. Your friend. He talked about you almost non-stop when he brought me the record player.”

“Eliot did?” Quentin felt his face warm. “Well . . . we’re good friends. I don’t think I would have made it here without him and Margo.”

“Do you blush like that when you talk about your other friends?” Sebastian asked, and Quentin frowned.

“What are you talking about?”

“I said, he likes you. You obviously feel the same way. Why don’t you go for it?”

“Go for—no! I’m not—I’m not that way!”

“You mean you’re not a homosexual.”

“No! It’s—no offense or anything, there’s nothing wrong with it, I’m just not like that!”

“You realize I am.”

Quentin folded his arms across his chest.

“I didn’t. Not right away.”

“Does it offend you?”

“Christ, no!”

Sebastian watched him for a long moment. “Sexuality isn’t a fixed point on a chart, Quentin. It’s fluid; it’s changeable. If you have feelings for Eliot that you don’t understand or that are new to you, it’s not unusual, you don’t have to feel badly. Even people like me fall for their friends sometimes.” A shadow crossed his face. “It doesn’t always work out, but if they’re strong enough you should act on them!”

Quentin tucked his hands up under his arms.

“Even if I did have those feelings, even if Eliot does like me that way, which I seriously doubt—there’s no way I can.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m—I’m me! I’m a mess, Sebastian . . . before I came to Brakebills I was a depressed, anxious dumpster fire. I was hospitalized for it more than once.” He looked away. “I guess I’m more like our mother than I want to think about.”

Sebastian leaned forward.

“I’m going to tell you something about myself.” He said, and it caused an echo in Quentin’s memory, an echo of Eliot telling him the story of how he’d discovered his telekinesis. “I’ve tried to commit suicide before. The most recent time was last New Year’s Eve, shortly after my father killed himself in prison. My feelings about him, and about my best friend Charlie were so fucked up that it seemed like the easiest thing in the world. Just close the book. End it with a dramatic flourish. It was Charlie that talked me down off that ledge.” He crushed out his cigarette. “So. You don’t corner the market on being mentally fucked up, Quentin.”

Quentin glanced up at his twin and nodded.

“Thank you. You know—for telling me that.” He said softly, then took a deep breath. “I just don’t know how. When it comes to approaching people or telling someone that I like them or flirting.” He admitted, and a smile curved over Sebastian’s full mouth.

“Then let me help you.”

“How?”

“Leave it to me, Mr. Higgins . . . leave it to me!”

___________________________________

One Week Later

“Oh, Goddamn it all!”

Margo turned her head, frowning, as she heard the curse ring out from the depths of Eliot’s closet.

“El? What’s the problem?” She called, and Eliot came to the doorway, his long arms laden with clothing, his face uncharacteristically flushed.

“I can’t find my Perry Ellis jacket! The blue one with the darker trim!”

“That’s a little showy for a walk to PA, isn’t it?”

“Oh—you wouldn’t understand!” Eliot snapped as he stormed back into the closet, and Margo rolled her eyes as she got off the bed.

“Okay. When you make statements like that, it’s time to pull the emergency switch on the train to Hysteriaville.” She walked into the closet and tugged on his arm. “Eliot! What is it? Really?” She asked, and Eliot turned to her. For a moment Margo didn’t know if he was going to open up or order her out of the room, but then he ticked over into sharing mode.

“I think Quentin is getting involved with someone.” He folded his long arms over his chest. “A man.”

“A man? Okay, and we think that why?”

“Because I’ve seen all the signs, Margo! He’s pulled away from Alice, he’s not spending nights alone in his room anymore—and he’s wearing his hair differently!” This last bit was said as if Eliot was revealing the Holy Grail of Really Relevant Information for her, and she tapped her fingernails on the closet wall.

“Hmm. Those are all pretty unusual signs, I admit. Especially the part where he’s not sitting up in his room mooning over Fillory.”

“Exactly! I just know it’s a man, Margo! Q has finally realized what he’s all about! I just thought when he did, it—” He clamped his teeth over his bottom lip and Margo took his hand.

“You thought he’d realize it because of you. Well, maybe it’s not too late! Maybe we can shift his attention away from this person! We really should find out who it is anyway, give him our stamp of approval. God knows we can’t let him date some first-year loser. He might be a mess, but he’s our mess, and he’ll need guidance.”

“I don’t think I can do that, Bambi.” Eliot said softly, and she tugged him out of the closet.

“Don’t grieve yet, sweetie. It could be we can nip this in the bud!”

“Eliot? Can you come out here?” Sebastian’s voice called from the hallway, and Eliot frowned.

“What could he possibly want?” He asked, crossing the room to open the door. Sebastian smiled up at him.

“Sorry about the intrusion, but I need your expert opinion.” He went into Quentin’s room and dragged his twin out. Eliot felt his jaw unhinge and hang open before he forced it closed with a snap that almost severed his tongue. Quentin was wearing a designer suit in a soft shade of dove grey with slightly darker trim and an open-throat white silk shirt. The dark loafers on his feet carried a high shine. Eliot struggled to find his voice and willed his cock to stay soft at the same time. He mostly succeeded.

“Is—is that a Prada suit?” He asked, and Sebastian nodded.

“It is. It’s mine . . . one of the few things I brought with me from Manhattan. I’m loaning it to Quentin for a special occasion.”

Quentin adjusted the collar and Sebastian slapped his hand. Quentin gave him a look before tipping his gaze up to Eliot.

“Eliot? How do you think I look?”

Eliot looked him up and down. The cut of the suit revealed everything his frumpy sweaters and baggy dad jeans usually hid: his lean chest, his arms, toned from months of casting, his pale, perfect throat. Sebastian tapped his twin’s shoulder.

“Give us a spin.” He coaxed, and after a moment, Quentin relented. Eliot watched and noticed how even Margo’s eyes widened as the tailoring of the slacks showed off Quentin’s round ass in a way they’d never seen it displayed before. Eliot cleared his throat and put both hands behind his back so he didn’t give into temptation and squeeze Quentin’s ass, preferably until the younger magician gasped.

“You look amazing, Q.” Eliot said at last, and Margo gave a wolf whistle.

“What’s the special occasion?” She asked, and Sebastian smiled and patted Quentin’s shoulder.

“Tell them.” He said, and Quentin squirmed a little.

“Well, uhm . . . I’m—I’m going to ask someone out. For the first time.” He admitted, and Eliot mustered every emotional trick he knew to keep his expression neutral.

“That’s wonderful! Anyone we know?”

“It’s—kind of a secret. So it doesn’t get out before I can do it. You know.” Quentin muttered, and Sebastian nodded.

“But it is someone here at Brakebills?” Eliot asked, and Quentin nods.

“Yeah.”

“Well. That’s . . . it’s wonderful news, Quentin! I certainly wish you luck.” Eliot said, and Sebastian snapped his fingers, as if suddenly recalling something.

“That reminds me, Eliot! We have another favor to ask. Could you loan us the cottage common room this Friday evening? Quentin wanted to invite his would-be beau here to ask him out. I thought I’d whip up a bit of dinner for them, set a nice table. Give my brother the benefit of my experience?”

“Yes! Yes . . . of course, and if it’s a chef you need, I’d be glad to offer my culinary services.” Eliot replied, and Margo gave him a look that suggested if he was headed to the gallows, he’d probably offer to help the hangman measure the noose. He ignored her. Sebastian smiled.

“That’s very kind of you! Friday night then, shall we say . . . seven?”

Eliot indulged himself with one more glance at Quentin in that suit, perfectly housing everything he’d never get to discover, and nodded as he shoved his emotions down to the soles of his feet.

“Seven, then.”

___________________________________________________

Eliot moved like a sleepwalker through the rest of the week as he attended classes during the day and spent a lot of time in his room at night with a bottle or two of Moscato as he listened to Sebastian and Quentin play records and Sebastian coach his twin on how to talk to his date, how to move to catch his attention, what kind of wine to serve. It was obvious that Sebastian knew what he was talking about and his recommendations were flawless, but Eliot hated him for leading Quentin down a path that led him anywhere but his own arms.

Friday evening came, and Eliot cleared the cottage before meeting Sebastian in the kitchen. Sebastian wasn’t much at hands-on cooking, but he knew which foods complemented each other and soon Eliot had a pan of chicken marsala and braised asparagus going. A gilded table was set in the other room, complete with a blindingly white tablecloth and muted, colored lights swimming across the ceiling, thanks to a spell Margo had taught Quentin the night before.

Everyone’s a Goddamned traitor, Eliot thought to himself as he shook the pan of asparagus and watched Sebastian pour two glasses of wine.

“So who is it? Surely you must know.”

“Oh, I know.” Sebastian smiled. “But I promised Quentin I wouldn’t tell.”

“Why do you want to help him so badly? You don’t seem like the type who enjoys pleasing people.”

“You’d be right on that account. I usually don’t care for people, and they don’t care for me. But I owe Quentin one. He gave me a place to stay, someplace where no one knows me and where I might be able to form a future.”

Eliot tried not to snort as he reflected that he’d given Quentin permission to allow his brother to stay in the cottage and hid his gall under stirring the marsala. Sebastian took the wine into the other room and Eliot plated the food as he glanced at the clock above the stove. Everything was ready but he hadn’t heard anyone knock at the door yet.

“Eliot? I need you a moment!” Sebastian called from the other room, and Eliot went, tossing his apron aside, praying that Sebastian hadn’t spilled the wine. He stepped into the room, blinked once, then stared.

Quentin was standing in front of the table, two dozen white roses in his arms. The colored lights played across his face and hair, and he wore his brother’s Prada suit. He smiled, and Eliot finally found his voice.

“What. Ahmmm . . . what is this, exactly?” He asked, and Quentin took a few steps forward.

“It’s exactly what I told you. I’m asking someone out for the first time.” He said, and offered Eliot the roses. Eliot’s heart rode a dizzying, high-speed emotional elevator up into his throat and crouched there. He swallowed it back down.

“Are you trying to tell me that all this—all this planning was . . .”

“It was for you. Uhm . . . I’m sorry you had to cook. I didn’t want you to but Sebastian said you’d suspect if we didn’t let you because you’re smart and he knows these things better—”

“Quentin.” It was a gentle reminder, a tone that let Quentin know he was rambling. Quentin took a deep breath and tucked a lock of hair behind his ear.

“So. Will you, Eliot? Will you go out with me?” The question came out a bit rushed and shaky, but Eliot had never heard more glorious words.

“Like you even had to ask. Yes, Q. Yes of course.” He gasped laughter even as he felt tears sting his eyes. Quentin blinked like Eliot had slapped him, then seemed to realize what he’d said. He hugged himself and took another shuddering breath, and Eliot set the roses aside.

“Hey! Hug me, not yourself! Christ, you’re such a dork!” He drew the younger magician into a fierce hug and Quentin slipped his arms around Eliot, pressing his cheek against the soft satin of Eliot’s vest, realizing that their differences in height made them fit together like puzzle pieces. Eliot pushed a hand through Quentin’s hair, something he’d always wanted to do, and Quentin pulled back slightly to look up at him.

“You’re not mad that Sebastian and I tricked you?”

“I may have to punish you both later, which might actually be kind of hot, but for now? I’m so relieved that no one’s going to knock on that door and take you away from me that I don’t give a shit. I honestly don’t, Q—”

This time it was Quentin that silenced Eliot, only he did it with his lips, rising up on his toes a little to press his lips against Eliot’s in a long, slow kiss. Eliot melted into it and they stood there for a long while, tasting each other, the genesis of their discovering each other. Up on the steps, just out of sight, Sebastian watched, his chin resting on his tucked-up knees. A hand fell on his shoulder and he glanced up to see Margo crouched there. She nudged him over until they sat on the riser side by side.

“You did a nice thing.” She said softly. “But I won’t count it against you this time.”

“Thanks.” They watched the two men kiss. “I screwed up my own love life so badly . . . doing this makes me believe I could almost start over. Charlie did. Maybe I can too.”

“Are you kidding? You’re the anti-Quentin. The men on campus will want to eat you up with a fucking spoon when they realize you’re single!” Margo said quietly.

“I think I can live with that. And with being a magician.” He smiled. “It’s almost like a snake shedding its skin and becoming something better. Something so beautiful that no one would ever know what it might have been before.”

“Now you’re getting the idea.” Margo nodded. She floated one of the bottles of Moscato on the table into her hand, took a swig, and offered it to Sebastian, who grinned at her and took a drink of his own.

Quentin said he’s not sure what magic really is, he thought as he watched his twin kiss the man who was clearly and for all intents and purposes, his soul mate, and felt it heal something inside his own heart, something that had been broken ever since the night Charlie kissed him back in Manhattan.

But whatever it is, if it can fix a Blackworth, it must be something special.

FIN

#welterssubmissions #fic #Queliot #the 2017 welters challenge #The Magicians

15 notes · View notes

illionoisprelawland-blog · 5 years

Text

Will America Live to See Its Future? A Mental Health and Gun Violence Approach in 2020

By Olivia Reeves, University of Chicago Class of 2021

May 14, 2019

In 2017, 39,773 people in the United States lost their lives to gun violence. This approximates to 12 deaths per 100,000 people, around 8 of which were suicides. [1] As of April 30, 2019, 148 people have been killed and 414 have been injured by guns in mass shootings alone, not counting suicides or accidental gun violence nor isolated homicides. [2] The numbers speak for themselves: Americans are dying at alarming rates by their own hands and by the hands of others with firearms as a key weapon of choice. Regardless of individual opinion on the Second Amendment or the right to defend one’s home or property, reformed gun violence prevention methods and mental health advocacy are a nonpartisan affair now, given that everyone is at risk when one person is at risk.

On November 23, 2020, the United States will elect a president for the next four years, an undoubtedly vitriolic campaign trail ahead of us, but as a nation of voters we must sift through the political bile to find the facts and the policies that have the potential to save or sentence a generation of Americans vulnerable to harm. At present, dozens of Democrat politicians have declared their candidacy to oppose incumbent Donald Trump, with Joe Biden taking a sharp lead in the public support in opinion polls this week. [3] As the newly appointed frontrunner, Biden will most certainly be tasked with convincing us that hehas America’s future at heart, specifically when it comes to the already deeply controversial topics of mental health and gun policy, especially in the delicate and dangerous overlap of these subjects. Americans of all backgrounds and all party affiliations carry passionate opinions on what lawmakers should do next to cut down on gun violence, but it will take a true feat to meet as many of these demands as possible to secure the presidency in 2020.

The inclusion of restrictive policies that screen individuals with a history of mental illness or a criminal record have long been the subject of partisan debate, but in a more modern and researched list, the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) denotes several traits that indicate a potential susceptibility to violence rather than suggesting all those with a history of mental illness are at risk of becoming violent.[4] These traits include substance abuse, a history of violent behavior, untreated psychosis, or being a young male. Many of these traits reflect growing trends in school shootings in particular, the most notable being young males as perpetuators. This is not to suggest that we must regard all young men or recovering substance addicts with suspicion, but rather that these are the groups that should be receiving special concern and care before purchasing a firearm in order to protect both these individuals and those around them from any potential danger factors. NAMI suggests policies for mental health such as intervention, treatment options, family support, and methods for suffering individuals to be proactively helped. Such intervention and access can also support those considering suicide, given that it is the tenth highest cause of death currently.[5] If we as Americans have access to guns, we also have a duty to protect the hurting and vulnerable among us as a responsibility that goes with the freedom of firearm ownership.

In light of the last decade of ever frequent shootings, policymakers have also gone head to head over gun control legislation, down to the definition of the phrase “gun control” itself. The National Rifle Association (NRA) refutes gun control across the board, citing primarily the Second Amendment right to bear arms, and also that those unsafe to own firearms will obtain them through illicit channels such as the black market or theft.[6] In 2017, legislation banning semiautomatic weapons, the echo of a policy that expired in 2004, was rejected in the senate, marking a win for the NRA and its supporters, one of whom is a vocal President Trump, who will therefore likely give Biden an uphill battle for the support of the gun lobbies and NRA supporters. There are currently restrictions on who can own a gun without a license to do so (license carriers being law enforcement officials, for example), including those under eighteen, those with criminal records, those with mental illness impeding safety, and dishonorably discharged members of the armed forces.

Joe Biden has a long record with gun legislation that appeared to sway left over time. In 1986 he supported the Firearm Owners Protection Act, legislation that differentiated legal and illegal firearm possession. Since then, however, his record reverses starkly, including his authorship support of the Brady Bill and his primary role in the Obama-era Gun Violence Prevention Task Force. [7] In 2018, following student protests in the wake of the Parkland, Florida shooting, Biden commented, “What's happened here is the nation as a whole has decided it can no longer, in my view, continue to turn a blind eye to the prostitution of the Second Amendment here and can no longer turn a blind eye to the enormous damage being done not just in our schools but on our streets.” [8]A gun-owner himself, Biden has advocated against AR-15s and other “military-style weapons,” but defends the right to own firearms regardless. [9]

As such, his policies likely won’t be to revoke the Second Amendment, but rather reform how it is approached in the modern world. This will appease the 57% of Americans pulling for stricter gun laws, but may alienate the 46% of Americans who don’t believe stricter gun laws will curb mass shootings.[10] By restricting anything at all, Biden has the left of center anti-gun advocates on board, including those involved in organizations such as Never Again MSD and Everytown for Gun Safety, but will need to make a harder appeal to the centrists and contemplative gun owners who are open to his ideas but unconvinced of their efficacy. Without a surefire plan, it will be harder to convince the electorate that change is possible after so many years of all talk and no action.

In regards to mental health provisions, Biden is a staunch supporter, by means of the Biden Foundation, the advocacy organization he and wife Dr. Jill Biden founded. At the World Mental Health Day opening speech in 2018, he emphasized, “We need to ensure they have access to healthcare providers in rural areas or [in places with] few medical facilities, and we need to ensure that insurance policies include mental health. We have to make it clear to all people that there is no stigma in seeking help for a mental health issue.” [11] As such, it seems that Biden’s positions on both gun violence and mental health are solidly ingrained from a lifetime of legislation. As a possible president, he has the drive and motivation to make mental health access more available, and as he notes in the above quote, this access is not limited to those with expensive health insurance policies in major cities. This could go a long way with the 59% of voters who have limited to no trust in Trump’s healthcare plans, which include the abolishing of the 2010 Affordable Care Act. [12] The ACA, colloquially titled Obamacare, expanded mental healthcare insurance options, including addiction treatment, which Biden’s recent stances align with. [13]

This pro-mental healthcare stance resonates both with the left and the right to some degrees in the context of gun violence prevention. The NRA has been advocating for a mental-health approach to violence reduction rather than a gun control philosophy, and therefore would likely heavily support mental health reform in the context of gun violence prevention, on the grounds that mental health reform keeps guns out of the hands of those unsafe to possess them. [6]This would need to occur in a somewhat insular plane, however, given that the right and the NRA are opposed to gun control or reduction policies that would theoretically go hand in hand with mental healthcare. In contrast, the left has been advocating for mental health resources for years, with middling success. More airtime and resources to the mental healthcare sector would undoubtedly be warmly received, but the reception may cool a tad when coupled with the clause of keeping guns in the hands of Americans as well. The advocacy of mental health policy alongside gun check narratives also promotes the narrative rejected by NAMI, which cultivates the idea that all mental illness is at fault for violence rather than just several very distinctive risk groups. In essence, mental health policy is convoluted enough at present, but the additional caveats of gun policy tied in would serve to advance voter support in some factions, and place a damper upon it in others. In order to succeed on this very fine line, Biden needs to go carefully, appealing with the idea of a carefully worded an non-ableist mental health policy that emphasizes safety in gun sales. This captures many of the desires of juxtaposed American groups and would give Biden the best chance at the most votes.

The essential takeaway? Biden is only one contender, and though his voting record and policy commentary have been largely supportive of reforming gun violence issues in America, he’s still a wild card with the possibility to adapt and change within his role as a presidential candidate. The American people must focus not on who they want to win, but on who will do the most good in office, regardless of party lines. Americans are dying every day from the prevalence of unrestricted guns and the lack of mental healthcare combining into a toxic climate where children feel afraid in schools and where the mall, the movie theatre, and the local house of worship are all no longer safe. The issue is not who wins on a partisan fight, or who slings the best comebacks during debates. It is the deeply ingrained system of violence that has taken root within America, and a look at Joe Biden’s likely policy stances show that not every group can come out entirely satisfied. That concept of uncompromising politicism should take a backseat on the left to the right in favor of the real concern: how do we keep our own alive when we have constructed a country where it is so easy for them to die? We cannot afford for our choices to be only “run, hide, fight” any longer.

_______________________________________________________________

Olivia Reeves is a second year at the University of Chicago studying English with minors in Human Rights and Gender Studies. She plans to attend law school and focus her work in civil rights litigation.

________________________________________________________________

[1]Mervosh, Sarah. “Nearly 40,000 People Died From Guns in U.S. Last Year, Highest in 50 Years.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 18 Dec. 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018/12/18/us/gun-deaths.html.

[2] Mass Shooting Tracker, 2019, www.massshootingtracker.org/data.

[3] “Election 2020 - 2020 Democratic Presidential Nomination.” RealClearPolitics, 2019, www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2020/president/us/2020_democratic_presidential_nomination-6730.html.

[4] “NAMI.” NAMI, www.nami.org/Learn-More/Public-Policy/Violence-and-Gun-Reporting-Laws.

[5] “Suicide Statistics.” AFSP, 16 Apr. 2019, afsp.org/about-suicide/suicide-statistics/.

[6]Nra-Ila. “ILA | Frequently Asked Questions.” NRA, 2018, www.nraila.org/for-the-press/frequently-asked-questions/.

[7] Seitz-Wald, Alex. “Biden Voted with the NRA When the Senate, and the Nation, Were Very Different.” NBCNews.com, NBCUniversal News Group, 2019, www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/biden-voted-nra-when-senate-nation-were-very-different-n997311.

[8] Tillett, Emily. “Joe Biden Denounces ‘Prostitution of the Second Amendment.’” CBS News, CBS Interactive, 29 Mar. 2018, www.cbsnews.com/news/joe-biden-denounces-prostitution-of-the-second-amendment/.

[9] Page, Clarence. “In Gun Debate, Some Democrats Are Letting Politics Turn Too Personal.” Chicagotribune.com, 30 Apr. 2019, www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/page/ct-perspec-page-guns-nra-democrats-kamala-harris-joe-biden-beto-orourke-20190430-story.html.

[10] “Gun Policy Remains Divisive, But Several Proposals Still Draw Bipartisan Support.” Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, 23 Jan. 2019, www.people-press.org/2018/10/18/gun-policy-remains-divisive-but-several-proposals-still-draw-bipartisan-support/.

[11] “Notes from the Road: Commemorating World Mental Health Day in London (Biden Foundation).” The Campaign to Change Direction, 31 Oct. 2018, www.changedirection.org/notes-from-the-road-commemorating-world-mental-health-day-in-london-biden-foundation/.

[12] Shepard, Steven, et al. “Poll: Majority of Voters Don't Trust Trump on Health Care.” POLITICO, 3 Apr. 2019, www.politico.com/story/2019/04/03/poll-majority-trust-trump-health-care-1250889.

[13] Norris, Louise. “How Obamacare Improved Mental Health Coverage.” Healthinsurance.org, 16 Apr. 2019, www.healthinsurance.org/obamacare/how-obamacare-improved-mental-health-coverage/.

Photo Credit: Tim Dobbelaere from Ieper, Belgium

0 notes

toldnews-blog · 5 years

Photo

New Post has been published on https://toldnews.com/world/united-states-of-america/manuel-lujan-jr-ex-congressman-and-interior-secretary-dies-at-90/

Manuel Luján Jr., Ex-Congressman and Interior Secretary, Dies at 90

Manuel Luján Jr., a former 10-term Republican congressman from New Mexico and a secretary of the interior whose efforts to balance development and conservation of federal lands often left him at loggerheads with environmentalists, died on Thursday night at his home in Albuquerque. He was 90.

A granddaughter, Amy Everett, confirmed the death. In a statement, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham of New Mexico, a Democrat and a distant cousin of his, called Mr. Luján “the picture of a statesman.”

The scion of a well-connected New Mexico family, Mr. Luján mounted his first congressional campaign in 1968 at age 40, unseating the incumbent, Thomas Morris, and becoming the first Republican congressman from New Mexico since 1931.

He held that position continuously for the next 20 years despite major demographic shifts in his constituency.

In his early years in office, Mr. Luján represented a mainly rural district, encompassing several Native American territories and large undeveloped areas of Northern New Mexico. He joined the House Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs in his first term and rose to become the ranking Republican member by 1981.

In the early 1980s, his district was shrunk to a narrow area around Albuquerque. Tailoring his agenda to a more urban base with research and technology interests, like the Sandia National Laboratory, he joined the Committee on Space, Science and Technology, becoming the ranking Republican in 1987.

Often described as an even-tempered and practical public servant, Mr. Luján typically favored local solutions over sweeping federal legislation. “To this day, I don’t think that we need to pass a law for everything, for all the ills that we have,” he said in an interview in 2000. “Matter of fact, I think that the less laws we have, the better off we are.”

Bruce F. Vento, a former congressman from Minnesota, called him “a pragmatic guy who operates in the world of the possible.”

Before he could retire in 1988, having decided to forgo an 11th term, Mr. Luján was nominated by President-elect George H. W. Bush to be his secretary of the interior. He became the second Hispanic-American to serve in a cabinet, following in the footsteps of Lauro F. Cavazos Jr., who had only months earlier become secretary of education under President Ronald Reagan.

Although Mr. Luján was confirmed unanimously by the Senate in 1989, his hands-off approach to governance and eagerness to accommodate competing interests proved less popular in the wake of several national controversies.

Within months of his confirmation, he was confronted by the Exxon Valdez oil spill, which touched off an environmental crisis in Alaska. Though Mr. Luján helped oversee cleanup efforts and negotiate settlements with Exxon, he drew fire for simultaneously pushing ahead with proposals to open parts of California and Florida to offshore drilling.

He was also criticized for his skepticism about the Endangered Species Act and his hesitance to extend federal protection to the northern spotted owl, a test case in the larger debate over endangered species.

In 1991, Mr. Luján was part of the so-called God Squad — a committee of cabinet officials tasked with deciding whether to allow logging in old-growth forests thought to be critical to the owl’s survival.

Angering environmentalists, the committee voted to sell logging rights in some areas while placing other tracts off limits. A federal judge later overruled that decision.

While critics complained that Mr. Luján’s policies echoed the pro-business philosophy of such predecessors as James G. Watt and Donald P. Hodel, both of whom served under Reagan, Mr. Luján was considered more open to compromise.

He was a close friend of Morris K. Udall, the liberal Democratic congressman and eminent preservationist, and the two worked closely together on the House Interior and Insular Affairs Committee, which Mr. Udall led starting in 1977. “Mo and I never had any difficulties as far as partisanship was concerned,” Mr. Luján said.

As secretary, he also advised President Bush on reversing a number of Reagan-era policies seen as out of touch with modern environmental standards. The new policies included raising the fees that coal companies paid to mine on federal land, as well as those paid by concessionaires in federal parks, with some of the revenue returned to the park system.

“Interior is like a sack full of cats,” Mr. Luján said in 1990. “All those different interests, and you’re in the middle of that sack trying to keep everybody away from each other.”

José Manuel Luján Jr., one of nine children, was born on May 12, 1928, on a farm by the San Ildefonso Pueblo in Santa Fe County, N.M. His father was the founder of Manuel Luján Agencies, an insurance company, and was mayor of Santa Fe from 1942 to 1948. His mother, Lorenzita (Romero) Luján, was a teacher and served as Santa Fe County clerk.

Mr. Luján’s family was forced to relocate twice during his childhood — first when the federal government enlarged the Native American reservations neighboring their farm, and again when their home in Los Alamos was displaced by the Manhattan Project, which developed the atomic bomb.

He often credited those experiences with informing his opinions about federal control over public lands, particularly on the issue of safeguarding Native American land rights.

Mr. Luján graduated in 1950 from St. Michael’s College in Santa Fe (now the Santa Fe University of Art and Design), where he majored in business administration.

While in college, he married Jean Kay Couchman, who survives him. In addition to his granddaughter Ms. Everett, he is also survived by two daughters, Terra Everett and Barbara Lujan; a son, Robert, who goes by Jeff; two brothers, Edward and George; a sister, Zenaida Padilla; four other grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren. Another son, Jay, died earlier.

Mr. Luján retired in 1993 after serving as interior secretary throughout the one-term Bush presidency. He expressed few regrets about leaving public life, finding the political climate overly contentious after a relatively quiet and productive congressional career.

At a talk he gave in Colorado in 2004, he responded jokingly when asked to reflect on his experience applying the Endangered Species Act. “We’re lucky we’re in front of a big audience,” he said, “because I vowed when I left that I was going to kill anybody who ever mentioned the spotted owl.”

He added, “I’ll tell you very honestly, I’m glad that I’m not in politics anymore.”

#news in usa #usa news donald trump #usa news for today #usa news google #usa news in gujarati #usa news kannada

0 notes

velmaemyers88 · 5 years

Text

A GOP senator just laid out his blueprint for theocratic segregationism – ThinkProgress

The frustrating thing about Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO), is that he so often walks right up to the edge of an excellent idea, presenting a compelling case that he’s identified a problem that demands a solution — and then suddenly offers a completely ridiculous solution or nothing at all.

Such was the case at the “National Conservatism” conference, which took place in Washington, DC last week. Railing against the impact of globalization on many American workers, Hawley attacked the goal of “a global consumer economy” intended to “provide an endless supply of cheap goods, most of them made with cheap labor overseas, and funded by American dollars.”

Too many American workers, Hawley accurately notes, are left with “flat wages, with lost jobs, with declining investment and declining opportunity.” America leaves behind workers without specialized skills. “We don’t make things here anymore—at least, not the kinds of things a normal person without a fancy degree can build with his hands.”

It’s a familiar grievance in the age of Trump. But it’s also not a frivolous one. If you want to understand why so much of America’s white working class abandoned liberal democracy and rallied behind a racist populist president, you’ll find part of the explanation in the elephant curve.

Today at PSE conference @ChristophLakner shows the so-called elephant curve from our paper with and without adjustment for top incomes. (Will have 2013 data soon too). pic.twitter.com/p94PY9h8FI

— Branko Milanovic (@BrankoMilan) May 18, 2018

Broadly speaking, the elephant curve reflects the distribution of economic growth as borders open to trade. The bargain inherent in free trade is that the entire world’s economy is lifted by the open exchange of goods, but this growth is unevenly distributed. The “global upper middle class” — that is, working class individuals in wealthy nations — take it on the chin as less skilled jobs move to poorer nations. Meanwhile, the global middle class and the very wealthy benefit tremendously.

The sensible solution for a wealthy nation is to open its borders to as much trade as possible, but to tax the beneficiaries of free trade to lift up those who lose out. Indeed, after listening to Hawley accurately diagnose the impact of a “global consumer economy” on many American workers, it’s easy to imagine him pivoting to such a solution.

But, of course, he does not.

The only fully fleshed out idea mentioned in Hawley’s speech that offers even a modicum of help to the working class is a milquetoast proposal to — in the words of a Hawley press release announcing the proposal — “allow job training, apprenticeship, and certification programs to be eligible to receive Pell Grant dollars.” It’s an echo of previous proposals that treat job training as a panacea for communities that often have no jobs to offer even highly skilled workers.

No, Hawley’s speech is less a menu of solutions for struggling workers than it is an attack on the very idea that policy is the right place to look for solutions. The enemy is not, in Hawley’s eyes, an incomplete trade policy that lifts up many winners while failing to account for the losers. The enemy is a “reigning political consensus” which “shows little interest in our shared way of life.”

The enemy is a “cosmopolitan elite” that looks “down on the common affections that once bound this nation together: things like place and national feeling and religious faith.”

Hawley describes a nation much like the dystopia imagined in the Hunger Games — where wealthy coastal elites prey on the wide swaths of Americans living in the middle. But his solution is less policy driven than it is cultural. “We must work to raise up a generation united in a common love for our distinctive achievements as a people,” the senator proclaims. “We must teach our children who we are, without apology.” and we must “honor the claims of kinship and the covenant of marriage.”

America’s enemies, in Hawley’s vision, are not external. They are a fifth column of “cosmopolitans” — he uses that word over and over again, a word that often plays a starring role in antisemitic hate speech — who “dislike the common culture left to us by our forbearers.” To thrive, America must become more chauvinistic, more insular, less open to diversity, and more tightly bound by “place and national feeling and religious faith.”

At the very least, Hawley’s vision of the ideal society is inherently segregationist — though not necessarily along racial lines so much as along religious and cultural ones. It entails a world where people stick to their own kind. “America,” Hawley claims, “is not going to become the rest of the world. And the rest of the world is not going to become America.”

Hawley’s speech, in other words, is nothing less than a direct attack on our national motto — E Pluribus Unum, out of many, one. For Josh Hawley, America’s youngest senator, our nation’s original sin is its embrace of pluralism.

The second frustrating thing about Josh Hawley is that he is a liar. As a candidate for the United States Senate, Hawley literally used his own son as a prop to deflect allegations that he wanted to strip federal protections from Americans with preexisting conditions.

Wanted to share a little about my family and our journey, and my commitment to protecting people with preexisting conditions — like my son #MOSen pic.twitter.com/g7u9RzN1iO

— Josh Hawley (@HawleyMO) September 24, 2018

“Earlier this year, we learned our oldest has a rare chronic disease,” Hawley says while starting directly into the camera. Adding that he supports “forcing insurance companies to cover all preexisting conditions.”

The problem with this ad is that it was a damn, dirty lie. At the time, Hawley was one of more than a dozen state attorneys general who joined a lawsuit seeking to repeal the Affordable Care Act in its entirety. If that suit ultimately prevails — and two Republican judges who heard the suit earlier this month appear determined to strike down Obamacare — nearly 20 million Americans will lose health coverage. People with preexisting conditions will be stripped of protection. And an estimated 24,000 people will die every year who otherwise would have lived.

Ask yourself what kind of human being would use their own son as a human shield to deflect truthful allegations that they are trying to take health care away from millions of their fellow Americans. Now ask yourself what other lies they might be willing to tell in order to advance their vision of the right society.

Hawley, who spent four years working for the nation’s leading Christian conservative law firm, denies over and over that his goal is a Christian supremacist nation. “It is not the role of government to promote Christianity or any religion,” the senator claims in his National Conservatism speech. Seven years earlier, in a piece published while Hawley was still a law professor, Hawley similarly denied that his vision for America means “abandoning constitutional government in favor of theocracy or using the state to convert non-believers.”

And yet, the title of that piece is “A Christian Vision for Kingdom Politics.” In it, Hawley writes that “government serves Christ’s kingdom rule; this is its purpose” and that “Christians’ purpose in politics should be to advance the kingdom of God.”

That does not, in Hawley’s vision, involve using the awesome power of the state to force every American to accept Jesus Christ as their personal savior. But it does involve using the state to build a society rooted in Hawley’s version of Christian values. “The mission of the state is to secure justice,” Hawley writes. But “justice” should be understood as “the social manifestation of the kingdom.”

Similarly, while Hawley speaks eloquently of the plight of working Americans left behind by our modern society, the through-line in his policy proposals is not economic uplift for the victims of modernity — just ask the millions of Americans who will lose their Medicaid benefits if Hawley’s lawsuit succeeds. Rather, the unifying theme appears to be an effort to tear down institutions Hawley views as hostile to the social manifestation of the Christian kingdom.

Consider his proposals for higher education, for example. As mentioned above, one proposal is to make Pell Grants available for things like “employer-based apprenticeships.” The other is to require “colleges and universities to pay off 50 percent of the balance of student loans accrued while attending their institution for students who default.”

Both are interesting proposals, but it is far from clear that the latter, in particular, would benefit the most marginalized students. Indeed, if anything, it is likely to make it harder for such students to attend college. If a school faces potentially crippling economic sanctions if they admit too many students whose financial future is uncertain, that school is unlikely to take risks on such students. College will become even more of a haven for the “cosmopolitan elites” that Hawley purports to disdain.

The tell is how Hawley describes his higher education proposals. “It’s time to break up the higher education monopoly,” the senator claims in his press release announcing both of these proposals.

As the National Review’s Robert Verbruggen notes, “it’s an odd definition of “monopoly” that encompasses a sector with thousands of competing options.” What Hawley’s proposals could do, however, is undercut a sector that social conservatives frequently complain about as a bastion of liberalism.

Similarly, several of his legislative proposals target the tech industry, including a bill that would effectively impose the death penalty on companies like Facebook and Twitter if a government agency determines that those companies censored conservative viewpoints — or even if they refuse to publish content by literal Nazis.

In his National Conservatism speech, Hawley proclaims that America must invest “in research and innovation in the heartland of this country, not just in San Francisco and New York.” But Hawley’s tech proposals don’t try to foster investment in the heartland. Instead, many of them would impose crippling new burdens on a sector closely associated with west coast liberalism.

This is not uplift. This is Harrison Bergeron. It’s an strange theory of economic development that seeks to lift up rural Missouri by tearing down Palo Alto.

The third frustrating thing about Josh Hawley is that it is difficult to report accurately about his views without using the kind of language that is often banished from polite political discourse — words like “theocracy” or “supremacist” or “fascistic.”

To those who maintain that these words must remain forbidden — for those who insist that America is somehow shielded from the tyranny that has, at times, overtaken other nations — I ask you to close your eyes and to entertain a thought experiment.

Imagine the person you were on January 20, 2009, the day that the United States swore in its first African American president. Now imagine that someone had told you, on that day, that eight years later the United States would swear in a explicitly racist former game show host who was caught on video bragging about the fact that he’s a serial sexual predator. Could you have imagined, in 2009, that our nation would fall so far as to place Donald Trump in the White House? Or would you have treated anyone who made such a claim as an object of ridicule?

It can happen here. The United States is no more immune to the siren song of a theocratic illiberalism than it was to slavery, Jim Crow, or Donald Trump. And we ignore our nation’s capacity for evil at extreme peril.

In a must-read piece on the National Conservatism conference, Vox’s Zack Beauchamp argues that the views expressed at that event necessarily break down into a vile form of bigotry. “The conservative sacralization of Western culture and Christian heritage,” Beauchamp writes, “inevitably results in the denigration and exclusion of those who do not share it.”

Indeed, Beauchamp even quotes one speaker at the conference, University of Pennsylvania law professor Amy Wax, who makes the argument for a white-dominated society quite explicitly. “Conservatives need a realistic approach to immigration that … preserves the United States as a Western and First World nation,” according to Wax. And the United States is “better off if we are dominated numerically … by people from the First World, from the West, than by people who are from less advanced countries.”

Hawley was less explicit when describing his own views about immigration at this same conference — but only slightly less so.

The problem with the “cosmopolitan elite,” according to Hawley, is that it “has lost touch with what binds us together as Americans.” It places “social change over tradition” and dislikes “the common culture left to us by our forbearers.” It cares too little for “things like place and national feeling and religious faith.”

If America is to address this crisis, Hawley claims, we must have an “immigration system that rewards and nourishes American labor rather than devaluing it.”

But what would such an immigration system look like? If you believe, as Hawley does, that a society must be tied together by common bonds of tradition and culture and faith, then that necessarily calls for an immigration system that excludes people from cultural and faith backgrounds that are dissimilar to those of most Americans.

It’s a vision that gives primacy to Christians, to western Europeans, and to people who share Josh Hawley’s vision of a just society. As Hawley wrote in 2012, the government does not need to forcibly convert anyone to Christianity. It merely needs to lay the groundwork for “the social manifestation of the kingdom.”

There is a precedent for this kind of immigration policy. In 1924, at the urging of the Ku Klux Klan, Congress enacted an immigration law that assigned “quotas for immigrants in proportion to the ethnicity of those already in the United States in 1890.” Like Hawley, the lawmakers who supported this legislation believed that America must have a common cultural identity.

Hawley’s “kingdom politics” are more Christian nationalist than they are explicitly racist. But the vision that animates Hawley is the same vision that animated the 1924 immigration law. It’s a vision which teaches that sameness is strength, that diversity is dangerous, and that E Pluribus Unum is an abomination.

Credit: Source link

The post A GOP senator just laid out his blueprint for theocratic segregationism – ThinkProgress appeared first on WeeklyReviewer.

from WeeklyReviewer https://weeklyreviewer.com/a-gop-senator-just-laid-out-his-blueprint-for-theocratic-segregationism-thinkprogress/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=a-gop-senator-just-laid-out-his-blueprint-for-theocratic-segregationism-thinkprogress from WeeklyReviewer https://weeklyreviewer.tumblr.com/post/186468152687

0 notes