#of course referencing some of my favorite dialogue paths/lines and also one of my favorite horror movies lol | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

tarysande · 1 year

Note

i saw a post that you reblogged with a comment wherein you referenced working as an editor. i'm a college student looking to go into fiction editing, and i was wondering if you had any tips or suggestions?

I've written a few different posts about this in my "on editing" tag, but most of them are a bit old.

My path to editing wasn't a straight line. I have a BFA in theatre, film, and creative writing, and I took a lot of English courses. I've always been a voracious reader. I've been a writer since before I can remember. I basically started editing when friends came to me and said, "You're good at words. Can you help me with my words?"

I was also lucky enough to fall in with a group of excellent writers/betas/critiquers/editors when I was fandom baby back in ye olde X-Files days. I learned SO much from them. And most of what I learned, I learned either from being critiqued or from critiquing others. I cannot stress how much being an active member of fandom has helped me become the editor I am today.

Suggestions:

Get editing-specific training. You don't know what you don't know--and there's a surprising amount of stuff people don't know, even if they've studied English or writing. There are quite a few certificate programs out there now, but you don't need one of them to get work. You do need to prove that you know what you're doing, though. Usually by being able to pass editing tests or by providing excellent sample edits.

Read, read, read, READ. If you know you want to work with specific genres, read as much from within that genre as you can. Read books on craft, too, whether they're intended for writers or editors.

Find your people. There are some great Facebook groups for editors. There are also major editing associations where you can meet people, network, find possible job leads, etc. I, for example, am a member of Editors Canada and a Professional Member of the CIEP (UK). ACES and the EFA are a couple of major American associations. Australia's is the IPEd. You don't have to be from those countries to join their associations--but you'll probably find that the local ones have the most relevant content.

You DO need to find ways to hone your skills. If you don't want to do a whole editing certificate, you'll want to find courses or professional development related to the work you want to do.

Fiction editing (all editing, really) breaks down into different types of editing. You might like doing all aspects of this. You might find you only like SOME aspects of this. Generally, those types of editing are:

Developmental (sometimes called structural or substantive) editing: This is big picture editing. Are there plot holes? Do the character arcs make sense? Do scenes have a purpose? (Personally, this is my favorite type of editing. I just love getting into the guts of a story.) I do full developmental edits, but I also offer manuscript critiques (developmental editing lite; usually cheaper, but still very helpful for getting to the bottom of big picture issues).

Line/stylistic editing: This type of editing is often about the style and language at the sentence and paragraph level. It tends to be quite meaty. A line editor will offer suggestions for reducing redundancy or repetition, clarifying meaning, polishing dialogue, etc.

Copy editing: Sometimes copy editing and line editing get rolled up together, but if someone hires you JUST to copy edit, it means you're looking at the mechanical issues with grammar, punctuation, etc.

Proofreading: Literally reading the proofs before they go to print. The proofreader's eyes are the last ones on the document. These are the folks looking for the misplaced comma or the wrong page number. Have a crazy eye for detail? This may be your jam.

The various Englishes of the world have major differences. If you want to edit US, UK, Canadian, or other assorted varietals of the language, you have to know those differences--and they're more than just spelling and punctuation.

There's no one style guide for fiction. Publishers often have their own. That said, most of THOSE are based either on the Chicago Manual of Style (US/Canada) or the New Oxford Style Manual/New Hart's Rules (UK).

You also have to figure out if you want to pursue an in-house position or work freelance. Real talk: publishers outsource a ton of copy editing and proofreading to freelancers; some publishers even outsource the other styles of editing. Often, acquisitions editors at publishing houses (the editors who champion a work and try to get their publisher to buy it) do some of the developmental and line editing work.

I don't work in-house, so I can't give you a ton of info on how to break into the side of things. As I understand it, you usually have to be located in one of the big publishing centers (New York, London, Toronto, etc.). And you usually work your way in from the bottom up.

I've done all kinds of editing over the years. Nowadays, I mostly work in fiction, and I mostly work with independent authors or authors who are trying to polish their work before sending it out to agents. While it's true that a publishing house will edit your book (and foot the bill for it), the market is hard right now--especially for first-time authors. Publishers are less willing to take big risks or pour a lot of money into books if they're uncertain of a return on that investment. So, even if you're hoping to go the route of traditional publishing, it's in your best interests to get that first manuscript in the best shape before sending it out.

...this is already getting long! One of these days, I'm going to offer some training of my own, I think. Hopefully!

#on editing #asks and answers #marvelous-goose

43 notes · View notes

warsofasoiaf · 3 years

Note

Its been awhile since you've done any character analysis on Fallout New Vegas, but would you be willing to go into one for some of the minor characters? I'm actually curios of your opinion on Silus the captured centurion and his motivations.

I’m more than happy to, although this won’t be about Silus so much as it will be about the quest Silus Treatment. It’s one of my favorite quests in the game, since it does a great deal just with dialogue and some creative use with the engine to create an engaging quest that showcases some of the failures of the NCR and the Legion. Given that the central theme is about picking a faction, warts and all, having a quest that puts the two main faction of New Vegas on full display is an absolutely good idea. The game is too old for spoilers, but it’s a long analysis so I’ll put a cut in.

Silus Treatment starts off simple enough, going to Camp McCarran, in the old McCarran International Airport, now the regional command post of Colonel Hsu. McCarran is not in a great spot when you first get there; there are periodic Fiend attacks, tensions in Freeside are causing havoc for NCR civilians, the overstretched NCR supply lines are making it difficult even for their central point of operations, and there’s a strong possibility that they’ve been infiltrated. It’s all Colonel Hsu can do to keep order and function in the base. Perfect protagonist fodder, in other words, for a nice quest hub.

It’s a tough needle to thread in any RPG to build a quest hub where there’s stuff for a character to do. If everyone is incapable of solving even the most basic of problems, it gives a great deal of quests for the player to do but it makes the quest-givers look incompetent, especially if the quest-givers are supposed to be capable figures in their own right. Conversely, if the NPC’s are competent, then the quests would be solved and that would close out on content for the player. There’s plenty of ways to settle this, and the devs do an adequate job here. The war effort means prioritization, and Hsu is dealing with being torn from both angles. He can’t just hunt down the Fiends, because he needs to organize patrols and deal with NCR settlers in the area. He can’t just pacify Freeside because it will engender hostility with House and so he’s delaying the order from his butcher superiors like Moore to go in with fire and sword. He doesn’t have a solution to the Kings but he’s trying to find one, which as far as writing goes is a good solution. Hsu is a decent man but overworked. He’s hoping that he can develop a solution in time before Cassandra Moore decides to pull rank and go on the warpath against all who oppose the NCR, which leaves a convenient spot for the player.

It’s this person that gives us our introduction to the Silus Treatment questline. Hsu has a valuable prize: Silus, a captured Legion centurion! Typically centurions always commit suicide rather than be captured to deny any useful intelligence to the enemy, so to capture a centurion alive should be quite a find. But it’s not going so well. Lt Carrie Boyd, in charge of base security, can’t get Silus to talk. Again, perfect quest writing to get the PC involved in the plot. Normally such a sensitive operation would never be given to an unknown civilian contractor, even for a bureaucratic mess like the NCR. Frontier desperation, hitting a wall via official channels, and the fact that the character is the protagonist in a sprawling open world help it pass ludonarrative muster.

Boyd is a real piece of work, she’s openly sadistic hiding beneath of veneer of civility. She considers the humane treatment of POW’s as an impediment, and so looks for ways around it. Notably, while she wants information from Silus to deliver to her superiors, she’ll settle for just having Silus beaten so bloody that he can’t speak anymore, calling it “entertainment.” This is a person who simply should not be in charge of interrogating a prisoner, she is neither humane nor effective at her job, but here she is by virtue simply of being the chief MP on base.

Not that Silus, the prisoner and the other side of this duo, is better. He openly revels in the barbaric practices of the Legion’s slavery system, even trying to ensure that the slaves can never achieve some level of comfort by tightening the collars and making it difficult for them to feel at ease while eating or drinking. Even if Silus is mostly saying those things simply to get a rise out of Lieutenant Boyd, he knows what the Legion is up to and enjoys it. Silus is arrogant to an extreme degree, he is filled with confidence that he can outlast any interrogation by the feeble NCR without giving up any intelligence, that he could easily escape NCR confinement and that he is so valuable to the Legion that following Caesar’s order would be a waste. Good fodder then, for the protagonist to bring him down to size.

Silus Treatment as a quest is relatively simple. Boyd signs off on the Courier beating the ever-living tar out of Silus and then steps out for a smoke, letting the player do whatever he or she wants to the prisoner. Silus, sneering, dismisses the Courier as just another piece of NCR trash, and it’s up to the player with how to succeed. Violence is always an option, you can beat Silus, and eventually gets something useful, that the base itself will be the target of Legion destruction. Silus admits that his fantasy of escape was always a fantasy, he was dead to Caesar just as surely as he as if he had committed suicide before capture.

Yet if the Courier has points in Speech or Intelligence, he can completely upend Boyd’s methods and actually deliver a worthwhile interrogation. The first technique, with speech, uses an interrogation technique known as Pride-and-ego-down, where the interrogator routinely belittles and demeans the prisoner, usually their technical competence or soldierly qualities, in an attempt to get the prisoner to “redeem” themselves by explaining a piece of useful intelligence that would explain the deficiency as opposed to it just being a terrible personal quality. The Courier mocks Silus as a coward (bravery being a key soldierly virtue) and he defends himself by stating his bravery and that suicide is a poor death for a soldier of his intelligence and caliber, then saying how good a soldier he is for a “self-appointed megalomaniacal dictator.” Silus then spills that Caesar held his unit for three days because of “headaches,” in actuality, it’s Caesar’s brain tumor. The technique works to an exceptionally high degree, not only does Silus divulge that McCarran has been infiltrated as in the violence ending, but also that the Legion is suffering a crisis of command due to Caesar’s illness. The Courier gets a lot of useful intelligence out of Silus and doesn’t compromise the humane treatment of prisoners in the process. If it actually caused some self-reflection in Boyd, that’d be a complete win, but I suppose we can’t have everything.

My favorite option is the intelligence option, because the Courier goes full-on PSYOPS, posing as a Legion assassin sent to kill Silus for his failure to commit suicide on Caesar’s order. Silus denies it at first, but as the Courier continues to sell the performance, Silus begins to express real terror at the thought that the Courier is actually a frumentarius sent to kill Silus before he divulges anything to the NCR. The Courier fully sells the deal using Latin phrases as the language of Caesar’s elites. The Courier can quote Cicero, “legum servi sumus” - we are all slaves to the law, in what is perhaps a perfect example of Caesar’s philosophy of totalitarian obedience. The full quote "Legum servi sumus ut liberi esse possimus” - we are slaves to the law so that we might be free, means little in Caesar’s totalitarian state where all are subject to his whims and contingency plans for Caesar’s incapacity aren’t even considered. Of course, the Roman Republic was hardly a free state, but Caesar really takes the cake with his dictatorship. If Caesar’s dictum holds true: “Corruptio optimi pessima” - the corruption of the greatest is the worst outcome. how much worse is it when Caesar himself is corrupted? But totalitarians rarely raise the possibility that they themselves are corrupt, because the good of the dictator is the good of the state. After all, L'etat c'est moi is the dictum of any dictator, not just a Sun King.

Of course, fitting New Vegas, you can side with Silus, and facilitate his escape. There, you feign beating him to unconsciousness and slip him a silenced pistol, then Silus makes good his escape, killing the guard sent to bring him back to his cell and sneaking out. Of all the endings, this one isn’t as satisfying. Some of it, of course, is that you never interact or see Silus again, so there’s never any reward to the quest except for the knowledge that the base is infiltrated, which in the pro-Legion side of the quest I Put a Spell on You allows you to complete Curtis’s sabotage operation (and a far better Legion quest, in my opinion, with the NCR quest side being even better given the multiple outcomes), but also it’s not referenced again with Caesar. What would Caesar’s reaction be to the Courier springing Silus? He is quite fond of reciting a litany of the Courier’s accomplishments in Act 2 at Fortification Hill.

If I could improve Silus Treatment, I think I would have made it so the violent path wouldn’t have produced enough valuable intel, and the player needs to do some more detective work to actually get to I Put a Spell on You, or even being mislead by Curtis and becoming the unwitting patsy of the Legion. But overall, I think it was an incredible quest and a testament to the writing in the game.

Thanks for the question, Anon.

SomethingLikeALawyer, Hand of the King

#fallout: new vegas

50 notes · View notes

willel · 5 years

Text

Will and El Centric Fic List (November 2018)

Here is a list of some Will and El fics! These are centered around Will and El, not just fics that happen to include them, of which there are many. I’ve created an archive for them on Archive of our own with a few of them already there.

If you know of some fics that should be on this list, let me know! I’m excluding mine from the list. Everyone writes way better than I do, heh. If more fics pop up in the future, I’ll definitely make another compilation post!

Alive again by @gazyrlezon

Summary: Will breathed in, deep. He smelt the sweet, untainted smell of the forests, of the bark on the trees and the needles on the few evergreens that grew in the woods around Hawkins. Even the slight smell of corruption and decay which mixed itself into that felt right and almost refreshing....

Review: A cute little short fic. Will decides to go visit El and Hopper in the cabin... on foot... by himself... and he probably didn’t tell anyone he was doing that either. A small hijinks ensues since he doesn’t know of the trap to alert of intruders.

Your Hand Next to Mine by AlabasterInk

Summary: While everyone is asleep, Will Byers and Eleven take a moment to be children.

Review: A sleepover with pals where the two most affected members of the party (Will and El, of course) bond over reading a little bit of Lord of the Rings. Eventually, they decide some drawing would be a fun way to pass the time while everyone slept. But, Will ends up having a mini-episode leading El to worry. And then she remembers a line I believe Will told her once, I’ve always liked this line. “Sometimes, friends lie because the truth is too scary. Not all lies are bad, and truth doesn’t always fix things.”

Sunflower Sister by Kenya_Illian

Summary: "Despite all the awe and mystery that surrounded her in his eyes, there was a strange connection between him and her that was somehow comforting." Nightmares are a permanent part of Will's world. Tragically and fortunately for him, they're a part of El's world too.

Review: Another sleepover premise and Will has a horrible nightmare. Luckily, El is there and is able to stir him awake. Will contemplates all the things he knows about her (which isn’t very much at this point) and he notes how everyone treats her pretty gently or sometimes even fragile, but to him she was possibly the strongest person in the world. They both go to chill since it’s like 2am in the morning, and so Will draws. Betcha can’t guess what. It’s SUPER CUTE. Honestly, this might be my favorite Will and El fic.

Smallest Light by callunavulgari

Summary: In the summer of 1986, Will’s mom marries Jim Hopper. OR, Will and El learn how to be real people again.

Review: This is a really cute snapshot of their lives kinda deal. It starts off with Joyce and Hopper’s wedding. Everything is going well, but Will is having a bit of a heat flash/panic attack and wanders off into a bathroom to relax. Of course, eventually, El notices he’s missing and easily finds him in the bathroom. It’s really sweet. Next it goes through some stuff involving school and growing up of course. Doesn’t adventure too far into the future/

MTV Punk by @gazyrlezon

Summary: “You ran home crying that day, and after that you never saw that freak again. Maybe you even convinced yourself that she wasn’t real, that it was Mike who broke your arm and you just misremembered it. But you didn’t. And in that week, this one freak scared you more than anything else —”Here she turned round, and was satisfied to find him suitably terrified at her knowing all this.“And that freak was me.”

Review: Simply put, and excellent little revenge story. Troy gets his just deserts for messing with her little brother all this time. Doesn’t go too far, but I could certainly see something like this happening if El joins public school eventually and finds out people are messing with Will. Even if she doesn’t join public school, she’d probably show up to school just to do this

that which fate binds together by Whitherward

Summary: Whatever souls are made of, his and mine are the same.

Review: First of all, I already love the summary. This one is similar to Smallest Light in which it is little snippits of Will and El growing up, but it goes a little further into the future and is more detailed. It’s a 7000+ word juicy read full of feels. There’s two pieces in here I really love that I always remember from time to time. To help her learn how to read aloud and read better, Will “forces” her to read to him as practice. SO AS TIME GOES ON, EL LEARNS TO READ BETTER AND WILL FINDS IT STRANGELY EASIER TO SLEEP THROUGH INSOMNIA LISTENING TO HER READ. EL NOTICES THIS AND CONTINUES READING ALOUD TO HIM LONG AFTER SHE’S LEARNED TO READ BETTER ALL THE TIME. HOW CUTE IS THAT. The other is how Will realizes he’s gay. A+. This is probably my favorite Will and El fic as well. Please READ IT. Squeal about it with me.

Not The Monster by Robertdoc

Summary: Three weeks after the gate is closed, and one week before the Snowball, El finally gets the chance to meet an awake and well Will Byers for the very first time in our dimension. A bonus chapter also gives her the chance to catch up with his mother as well.

Review: Their first meeting <3 It’s so cute. They’re both awkward angels. Will is a bit more excited/energetic than I’d write him to be, but it’s still good.

Introductions by WriterGirl128

Summary: A Will/Eleven friendship drabble that's made up of some headcanons, some speculation, some fic, borderline meta. Post-S02. "They’ve never had a proper introduction, but they really didn’t need one."

Review: This is kinda a plot bunny fic of what they want out of Will and El.

Bang Bang Bang 'til My Feet Do the Same by Barkour

Summary: Will Byers met Jane at the Snow Ball.

Review: Cute little drabble of the kids awkwardly meeting.

it's hard to be brave when you're alone in the dark by cdocks

Summary: after the gate is closed, the splintered remains of a family come back together to make a whole || eleven and mike come to visit will and joyce. hopper is there too. primarily eleven-and-will centric.

Review: A wholesome fic where Will isn’t feeling great and El and Mike come to visit. This fic also has one of my favorite lines. “ Out of all the people she’s met -- and there are only a few, few enough that she can count them and not run out of numbers -- it is this boy she’s barely spoken to who she is most like.“

Guys. I love it when Will and El holds hands. It gets all my feels working. Let them hold hands forever.

More Than Okay by EvieSmallwood

Summary: It’s March 22nd. Will Byers takes a walk.

Review: Certainly fluff, they must be well into high school here. Will wonders off alone at night after nightmare and of course, his sister El is the one who finds him pretty easily. I love the idea in pretty much all of these fics that if one or the other is missing somewhere (especially if Will has wondered off somewhere), El will always be the one to find him. And when he’s cold, she’s one of the first ones to warm him up.

painted new by byzinha

Summary: Will wants to teach El some Byers summer traditions.

Review: A very short but very SWEET little fic <3 Will paints flowers on her hands and it’s TOTALLY SWEET, MY FLOWER SUMMER CHILDREN, PROTECT THEM. Ah, you know what. I drew a fanart referencing this without realizing. I want to do a proper fanart for this fic.

Feels Like Home by Aceofstars16

Summary: A fic focusing on Will and El’s friendship developing and growing, changing from knowing of each other, to being friends, to becoming siblings. A bit of a future AU/what I'd love to see happen in the show.

Review: This fic covers their first meeting and beyond. One part I really love in this fic is when El is hanging out with Will the first time, Will isn’t sure what to do. But Jonathan steps in and handles all the awkwardness between them and then after that, Will takes care of the rest. What a good big brother, leading his little siblings down the right path. And this fic has one of my favorite headcanons, El and Will drawing together~ THERE IS THE CUTEST BIT OF DIALOGUE AT THE END. MUST READ

#stranger things #will byers #el hopper #jane hopper #eleven #fanfiction

40 notes · View notes

spirit-science-blog · 3 years

Video

youtube

With this video, our Hidden Spirituality series comes full circle to its origin point. While the original conception of the series happened many years ago while watching Airbender, it was in December of 2019 that I went to 3 movies and came out with scripts for each one that ultimately became the foundation of this very series! The first was Frozen 2, which was our first episode, and the second was Star Wars 9, which came out on May the 4th to very varied perspectives. Yeah, I don’t blame ya’ll on that, and the 3rd movie was the 2019 remake of Little Women, showing that Hidden Spirituality can be found everywhere - and this one may very well have been the most mystical story out of the 3!

Don’t believe me? Check this out. In the original book, chapter 28, we find this line… “Jo rescued his babies, and marched up and down, with one on each arm, as if already initiated into the mysteries of baby tending, while Laurie laughed till the tears ran down his cheeks.”

Let’s have a slow-motion replay in case you missed that. “As if already initiated into the mysteries into baby tending.” I’m sorry, it doesn’t matter what century you’re in - if you’re using the language “Initiated into the Mysteries” of ANYTHING - you know more than you’re letting on about. And it was around this realization that the truth began to be revealed around this story, demonstrating that it’s just that much more in-depth than almost anyone truly knows.

And for those of you who are still in the dark, allow me to illuminate you for a moment - the language Initiated into the Mysteries stems from the ancient Greek and Egyptian Mystery Schools - where Initiates would be initiated into the sacred mysteries of life, often through purification rituals, holy ceremonies, plant medicine, the revelation of divine knowledge - and it was considered a most pious and religious activity - as Initiates of the Mysteries would go on to become beacons of truth, love, and light in the world, helping others to attain to higher levels of consciousness just as they did. Of course, as it’s used in this particular passage, it’s speaking to the sacred wisdom and knowledge that comes with raising a child, which in-and-of themselves are mysteries to be initiated into, most definitely. The secrets of life, right?

Now, the original story of Little Women was first written in 1868, so this is saying something - and it has served as a powerful beacon of truth for women everywhere in realizing that there are so many paths we can take. We are not isolated from fulfilling the stereotypical roles that often accompany our genders. and as a man myself… a Patchman that is… I found the story to teach quite a lot about the nature of the divine feminine, and it helped me connect more in-depth with the gender divide that often is found within society.

Plus, being how I was raised, a patchguy filled with stuffing and all, there’s not a lot of watery elements inside here, but every time I see this scene of Beth getting her piano at Christmas in the 1994 adaption, I can’t help but tear up… Oh god, it’s happening again… It’s so precious… I think for that scene alone - this is my favorite adaption, but we’ll probably go back and forth in this video referencing the different versions.

So straight up, the first thing that stood out upon the revelation of this movie's mystical nature is that four girls are a reflection of the Four Elements. Each sister represents two of the four elements, each starting in one aspect and then transitioning to another through personal growth. The four factors, of course, speaking to Fire - the spiritual will and passion. Water is the emotional body, Air is the Mind and thoughts, and Earth is the Physical dimension. Subtly, because it will be relevant later - the Aether - the fifth element, relates with spirit and the incorporeal. In Little Women, the story takes place mainly over two eras, a period of childhood and a young-adulthood period, which are essentially divided between two events. The death of Beth, and the Marriage of Meg.

So we have Amy, Beth, Meg, and Jo. Starting with Amy, she begins as a representation of the fire element, the youngest of the four, who especially in the book is described as being very selfish, familiar to the Princess of Wands in the Tarot, focused on her own needs and ideas. She burns Jo’s book at one point, demonstrating more of her fiery energy.

Next, we have Meg, who begins as Earth. She is very focused on the material future she wants to create, having money and wealth. The story goes that they used to have wealth, but their father went off to fight in the civil war, and the family sank into poverty as a result. Meg yearns for the wealth to return and believes it is through marriage that this can happen. Of course - wedding rings usually holding a stone further adds weight to her representation of the earth.

After this, we have Beth - the soft-spoken, loving, and nurturing one. Definitely water. She is always calm and centered, one who humbles the rest of the group whenever they’re having an argument, wishing the best for everyone and hoping that the group can find harmony and happiness all the time… once again, that piano scene… You can’t help but cry.

Finally, there is Jo, the often seen “star” of the show. Jo is the different one; she is unique; she thinks very differently than her sisters and most young girls her age. She connects more with her creative energy; she likes to write and tell stories and doesn’t care much for the idea of getting married or having a family. She’s an expression of the divine feminine who actively chooses her reality, rather than just going along with the imposed story that women exist to get married and have babies for the men, and this is one of the essential pieces that contributed to the success of this book, to begin with. It empowered women to think differently about their roles in society and support them no matter what path they chose.

These relationships match for the first half, but once they transition into adulthood, we see a much different picture.

Once again, starting with Amy, she transitions from Fire into Air. She becomes more intelligent, more mindful, and travels to Europe to learn the art. Now you might think that she may transition to the element of water because she's doing art - but there is a line in the movie, specifically, that suggests her paintings lack emotion and needed some work. Further, much of her story in the second half revolves around her marriage to Laurie's young man and the choice of whom she should marry. Ultimately, she puts a lot of thought and consideration into this decision, something only a very mindful person would do.

Now Meg, on the other hand, transitions from Earth into Water. She marries for love, rather than for riches, a potent example of the shift in consciousness from a more worldly state of being. This results in her remaining poor for the rest of her life, and she’s okay with that because she’s happily married, the thing she wanted. At one point, she buys fabric for a costly dress. Still, she does so because of her friend's emotional pressure, and upon seeing the effect that it had on her relationship with her husband, due to how much money they had, she sells the fabric to support her family.

Next, we have Beth… Now, Beth is an interesting example because she passes away in our transition to adulthood. Beth transitions from the Water element into two different aspects: Earth, because her body returns to the earth. However, before she passes, she says she is going to God soon, and herein we see that indeed, she also shifts into the 5th element, the Aether, one with Spirit. Through her, all of the features are covered.

Finally, we have Jo, who steps out of her comfort zone of just thinking about her dreams, but genuinely stepping out and living them. With her Air transition, she moves into Fire, embodying the matured fiery energy as she moves away from home and becomes a published author. Again, it gives a strong and empowering message about how anyone can live their dreams if they’re willing to go after them through its storytelling.

Not only do each of the girls demonstrate these elements in their transition, but we also see them embodying and educating us subtly about the wisdom we find in the Royal Arcana of Tarot - the youthful and mature energy of each element, from childhood to adult stages, or the princesses into the queen archetypes.

From here, we can also see some exciting correlations of fundamental differences between the various film adaptions. Greta Gerwig's 2019 edition is much more intelligent than its predecessor, keeping a fast-paced dialogue and consistently jumping in the timeline between past and future. In contrast, the 1994 edition was entirely linear and far more emotional. This version is a bit simpler and more comfortable to follow but conveys a more significant emotional weight. In contrast, the new version is a bit more expansive, covering a greater awareness of the times and gender roles. These differences alone might identify the 1994 edition as relating more with Water and Earth's elements and the new 2019 edition as Fire and Air.

While the 1994 edition was more concerned with simply telling the story in a meaningful way, the 2019 version carries some other messages that are very important for our collective spiritual awakening. In particular, one line has Amy describing that marriage is an economic proposition, wherein upon marriage, the wife is owned by the man, and when children are born, they too are owned by the man. Of course, while times and collective mindsets have changed a great deal since this period, we need to realize this truth as society continues to evolve. Just consider that in another hundred years from now, what ingrained belief systems we may recognize are ridiculous, but yet today, we deeply cling to. To create a more harmonious future, we have to learn from our past, and this story does a beautiful job of presenting our history for us to digest today. Breaking free from her old reality, Jo says “

“Women have minds and souls as well as hearts, ambition, and talent as well as just beauty, and I’m sick of being told that love is all a woman is fit for,” but then also expresses that she too is lonely, and this is something that we all must face, both men and women alike, balancing the masculine and the feminine within.

Honestly, even I’m relatively new to this story, yet I recently learned that my mom said she read it nearly 20 times growing up, as there wasn’t very much content available for young girls liberating in this same way. It would have been even worse 150 years ago when it was first published; how many female protagonists were there in storytelling? Women were always the love interest or the wife, but never the hero or the main character. This book shifted the landscape for women’s literature by being something that half of our human population, at least in our western world, could connect in a significant way.

“It’s just about our little life,” says Jo, of the new writing she is producing. “Who will be interested in a story of domestic struggles and joys? It doesn’t have any real importance.”

“Maybe,” says her sister Amy, “We don’t see these things as necessary because people don’t write about them.

And so - with this, we find perhaps the deepest and most profound lesson we can all learn from this story… it doesn’t matter who you are, male or female if you find important in some aspect of life, something that others seem to glaze over even if it is meaningful… talk about it, tell the story, and who knows, you might start a revolution.

Happy holidays everyone! See you next time on Hidden Spirituality!

Written by Jordan River Edited by Zach Bouker Created by Team Spirit Connect with the team at https://spiritsciencecentral.com/about

#spirituality #science #ascension #mystery school #spirit science

0 notes