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banterismylovelanguage · 2 years

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Venti’s Attachment Issues

(This is gonna be a long one; get yourself comfortable.)

Since Stanley is used as a direct parallel to Venti in his story quest, every time we chat with Stanley, we can maybe get an insight to Venti’s feelings.

Stanley, constantly, misses the real Stanley. He’s always drinking, and he might be doing better since Venti put the real Stanley to rest, but the grief stays.

He wishes the real Stanley was still here.

Pretending to be someone else is exhausting and damaging to your ‘true self’—there’s no doubt in my mind about that.

Stanley’s wish likely reflects Venti’s wish, considering how deeply affected Venti is still by the loss of his friend at the end of his story quest (he can’t even speak it out loud; he just stays at the top of the statue lost in memories and grief.)

Now let’s take into consideration that Venti is a god and an Archon currently, and only a (likely) naive wisp when he met the Nameless Bard.

He lives much longer than a human.

His responsibility will always be their safety.

(Arguably) He is forced into slumber for… healing? (Or is this a sign of depression?)

He doesn’t believe in ruling over his people, so he is one of the weakest Archons (his reasoning).

He will never be on the same level as one of his people, no matter how “ingrained” in society he is. (In other words, if he revealed his true nature, there’s always going to be a sense of “This is Mondstadt’s god” with every mortal he reveals it to.)

Venti, or Barbatos, was the Archon to bring The Seven together to meet.

Zhongli doesn’t visit Mondstadt (that I know of).

Barbatos is the only known Archon to regularly travel.

Five of the Seven original Archons are dead.

The ‘new’ Archons know of each other, but it’s mostly from a ruling basis (they likely do not have those regular meetings anymore)

From this, we can conclude that Barbatos cannot have a personal relationship like he once did with another mortal, and when he tried to find something like that with The Seven, they, too, suffered a sort of “mortal fate,” the supposed immortals all died one by one.

And Zhongli and Venti might hold a deep understanding towards each other, have some sort of close relationship, but we definitely don’t see a personal one—at least in person—anymore. I don’t think the current Seven even meet up.

Now let’s consider the Traveler’s presence.

The Traveler is suspected to be hundreds, if not thousands, of years old.

The Traveler is not from this world.

The Traveler has abilities that even Venti is amazed by (ability to remove corruption by just the presence of one of them?? This should really be expanded on considering they’ve killed gods for this.)

Venti isn’t unfriendly, but he compliments the Traveler endlessly (really, every character does this to some extent, but it still has to be in character to some level); says we’re the “gentlest soul” in the most recent event.

Venti says his greatest wish is to travel (aka “see the world on my behalf” 👀) and now he adjusts the wish to include the Traveler.

The Traveler might be the only one to truly know about Venti’s doppelgänger situation.

Thus, Venti tells us personal secrets. He acts like an open book (Kusanali’s* (?) intervention proves that he would have told us more about the Archipelgo situation had we asked) even though we get a different feeling in the manga with him (he’s more secretive; see Celestia panel). He “brushes off” the truth in that sense, but I can’t remember if he’s ever directly lied to us.

Our happiness is important to him (again, these lines are hard to distinguish from the people from the game using Venti to communicate this, or this is meant to be part of Venti’s personality—I mean, look at what they did with Xiao’s b-day letters… or anyone’s.)

Where am I going with this?

Venti isn’t as close to anyone as he is with the Traveler in modern day Mondstadt because he knows he can’t be as close to anyone else.

The people of Mondstadt that he loves so much seem to be the ones he keeps a distance from.

He’s watched Razor grow up (a curious statement), he’s friendly to Razor, but he’s not close like Bennett is (tbf, no one is—except Lisa???—but it seems like they act more like friendly acquaintances than friends.)

Barbara sees him as a talented bard (kinda like a coworker/colleague in the music industry.)

Rosaria thinks Venti is mysterious but likely harmless, so she doesn’t bother with him, and the god she cares nothing about (which could speak to a non-idolized look at him if he revealed it to her, but I think their relationship is best explored with others, meaning I don’t see them able to connect as well on an individual level—also, Rosaria could not care about the god because she doesn’t believe in him, so her reaction is still uncertain if she actually met him)

Jean knows who he is, but she can’t seem to figure out whether to be formal or familiar with her Archon.

We don’t know what Lisa thinks of Venti, but Venti speaks respectfully of her, so even if Lisa teased him like she does every other character, it makes him no different but also no closer to her. He’s more likely the eager “student” that she suspects there’s more to the eye of (if not the god himself), but she won’t push him to reveal it to her and maintain a respectful but distant relationship with.

Interestingly, Kaeya might be able to match wits with Venti in the way they both withhold the truth without directly lying. Yet, I don’t think either of them are 100% sure on how they feel about each other, so while it might be thrilling to talk to each other, it isn’t friendly.

Diluc is probably the closest to Venti out of the Mondstadt people (not considering Alice atm) just by favor of working the tavern on nights Venti drinks. Which is a lot and often. He treats Venti the bard informally, and this allows each other to be comfortable in teasing.

As a bartender, Diluc should be seeing Venti at his worst.

When you’re drinking alone at the bar, it isn’t necessarily a good sign (nor always bad). When you’re drinking as often and as much as Venti, it really isn’t a good sign.

But I don’t think that quite fits Venti because of the reason he drinks.

Venti likely sees himself at his “best” when he’s drinking; he’s jolly, he’s social, and he’s ready to have a good time.

When he’s sober, he’s still social, jolly, etc, but he’s quieter. Calm. He listens a LOT. (Am I the only one that watches cutscenes with Venti and thinks, “Huh, I thought Venti would say something about that” or “by now,” and he just doesn’t?? Idk maybe an iffy observation)

He thinks too much.

Venti’s quick wit, his ability to change the subject to something familiar, comfortable, and his reputation as the best bard in Mondstadt are what he relies on, and he can do all that drunk while not having to deal with his memories and all that comes with that.

So where do the attachment issues come in?

I think Venti’s lonely. And I think the proof is in Venti’s lines to the Traveler.

He can’t be close to his Mondstadt people in a real way. They all will die long before him. They will always hold a mortal concept of what Venti is to them. They will always remind Venti of what he’s already lost and will lose again one day.

But the Traveler “isn’t meant for this world.”

The Traveler is someone new, someone that can cure corruption, and someone that also wants (needs) to travel the world.

Venti’s flowery language towards us just shows how he’s grown attached to the lone traveler that continues to visit his land. That also understands loss and constantly surprises him. That helps the people he loves so very much.

So, while a lot of Venti’s lines could be attributed to fan service and are reflected in other characters, too, I think you can explain different reasons as to why the characters speak the way they do towards the Traveler. And I think this is Venti’s reason.

Aka I took fan service seriously and used it to explain Venti’s emotional issues

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baya-ni · 3 years

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The Queer Appeal of Sk8

Recently @mulberrymelancholy reblogged a post of mine with a truly galaxy brain take about how Sk8 “is a show made for queer fans” and generally how sports anime often depicts love and relationships in a way that’s more accessible and relatable to ace/arospec people than other mainstream media does.

Just, *chef’s kiss* fucking brilliant. I urge you to read their post here (note I’m referring to the reblog not the actual post).

And basically, it got me thinking about this concept of Sk8 as a Queer Show, and the kinds of stories and dynamics that tend to attract queer audiences in droves, regardless of whether its queerness is made explicit or hell, whether that queerness was intended.

And that’s what I’ve been pondering: What are the cues, markers, or coding, in Sk8 that set off the community’s collective gaydar?

I obviously can’t speak for the community. So here’s what aspects of the show intrigued me and what, for me, marks Sk8 as a Queer Show beyond the subtextual queer romances: a punk/alternative aesthetic, Found Family, Shadow as a drag persona, and The Hands.

1.) The Punk Aesthetic

All three of the above screenshots are taken from Ep 1, and every single one of them depicts background characters. They’re nameless and ultimately unimportant characters, yet each of them designed so distinctly and so unique from one another, one could mistake each of them for the main character(s) of another story.

Of what little I know about Punk subculture, I do know this: that the ethos of Punk is heavily built around a celebration of individuality and non-conformity. Sk8 seems to have incorporated this ethos into the very fabric its worldbuilding, and the aesthetics and culture upon which it takes inspiration appeals specifically to a queer audience.

I don’t really need to explain why Punk has such deep ties with the queer community. For decades, queer people have found community and acceptance within punk spaces, and punk ideology is something that I think is just ingrained in the queer consciousness as both lived experience and a survival tactic.

Therefore, a show that adopts punk aesthetics is, by association, already paying homage to Queer culture, intentional or not.

Queer fans notice this- like recognizes like.

2.) Found Family

This also needs little explanation.

Too often, queer individuals cannot rely on their “born into” families for support and acceptance. Too often, we are abused, neglected, and abandoned by those who we were taught would “always be there for us.”

And so, a universal experience for queer people has been redefining the meaning of Family, having to build our families from scratch, finding brothers, sisters, mothers, and fathers in people with whom we have no blood relation, and forming communities tied together by shared lived experience rather than shared genetics.

And this idea of Found Family is also built into Sk8′s narrative.

Like, for example, the way that Reki promises MIYA that he and Langa will “never disappear from [his] sight,” filling the void that MIYA felt after his friends abandoned him.

And in the way that JOE becomes a paternal figure for Reki, teaching him ways to improve in skateboarding, and ensuring that Reki doesn’t self isolate when he’s feeling insecure.

And in the whole Ep 6 business with Hiromi acting as babysitter to the Gang.

Hell, even ADAM (derogatory) is associated with this trope. Abused as a child, he finds solace in an underground skateboarding community and culture he helped create- his own found family (or some powertrippy version of it anyway).

Again, queer fans see themselves depicted in the show, but this time in the way that the show gives importance to Found Family relationships between its characters.

3.) Shadow and Drag

This is one that’s more of an association that I personally made. But I was intrigued by the way that Hiromi adopts his SHADOW persona. He wears SHADOW like a mask, and adopts a personality seemingly so opposite to his day-to-day behavior.

Further, the theatricality and general “gender fuckery” of his SHADOW persona, to me, just seemed so similar to a the characteristics of a drag persona (I don’t know a whole lot about drag but enough that I’m drawing superficial similarities).

There’s also this aspect of a “double life” that he, and actually all the other adult characters of the show, have to adopt, which is a way of living that I’m sure a lot of queer viewers see themselves reflected in.

4.) The Hands

Ohhhh the Hands.

One of the things I noticed very early on is the way the show constantly draws our attention to Reki’s hands, which I thought was a little strange for an anime about skating. After all, skating doesn’t really involve the hands, or at least the show doesn’t really draw attention to hands within the context of skating.

I count 3 times so far between Eps 1-9 in which hands are the focus of the frame.

First, when Reki teaches Langa how to fist pump after Langa lands his first ollie, second, when Reki and Langa make their Promise, and finally, when Langa saves Reki from falling off his board.

And you know what they say, twice is a coincidence but thrice is a motif (no one else actually says this I think I’m the only one who says this lol).

I’m not really certain why hands seem to be such a shared fixation among queer people (at least among those I interact with). All I know is that gay people are just fucking obsessed with them.

I have a Theory as to why, and at this point I’d love for other people to chime in and “compare notes” if you will, but I think it basically has to do with repression. And in the same way that queer people have had to redefine the meaning of family, we’ve also had to redefine intimacy.

Being overtly physically affectionate with someone of the same sex, even if they’re your significant other, or often specifically BECAUSE they’re your significant other, can still be dangerous, even now despite the “progression” of society. Queer people know this, this vigilant surveillance of our environment and ourselves, always asking ourselves, “Am I safe enough to be myself?”

Already, Western culture is pretty touch-averse. That is, it’s considered taboo to touch someone unless they’re a family member or a romantic partner. And to touch a person of the same sex in any way that could be misconstrued as romantic (which is most things tbh) is a big no no.

There’s just A Lot to unpack there.

But basically I think that queer people, by necessity, have had to learn to romanticize mundane or unconventional ways of being physically intimate so that we can continue to be romantic with one another without “being caught” so to speak.

Kissing and hugging is too obvious. But a handshake that lingers for just a second too long is much more likely to go unnoticed, braiding someone’s hair can easily be explained away as just lending a helping hand, touching palms to “compare hand sizes” is just good fun.

But for queer people, these brief and seemingly insignificant touches hold greater meaning, because it’s all we are allowed, and all we allow ourselves, to exchange with others.

God, I’ve gone off and rambled again. What’s my point? Basically that the way the show draws attention to Reki’s hands, and specifically how they’re so often framed with Langa’s hands, is one of the major reasons why I clocked Sk8 as a Queer. It’s just something that resonated with me and my own experience of queerness, and I know that I’m not the only one who noticed either.

So in conclusion, uhhhh yeah Sk8 the Infinity is just a super gay show, and it’s not even because of the homo-romantic subtext (that at this point is really just Text).

Because what’s important to understand is that Queerness isn’t just about same-sex romance.

Queer Love isn’t just shared between wives/girlfriends, husbands/boyfriends, and all their in-betweens. Queer Love can be two best friends who come out together, queer siblings who rely and support one another, a gay teacher who helps guide one of their questioning students, a queer community pitching in to help a struggling member.

And that all ties with another important thing to consider, that what we refer to as the “queer experience” or “queer culture” isn’t universal. In fact, it wrongly lumps together the unique experiences and struggles of queer BIPOC all under one umbrella that’s primary White and middle class.

So I think what drives a lot of my frustration about labeling a show like Sk8 as Queerbait is this very issue of considering queerness and queer representation within such narrow standards, and mandating that a show must pass a certain threshold of explicit queerness to be considered good representation.

I get that someone might only feel represented by an indisputable canonization of a same-sex couple. That’s fine. But labeling Sk8 as Queerbait for that reason alone ignores the vast array of other queer experiences.

The aspects of Sk8 that resonate most deeply with my own experiences of queerness is in the way that Reki and Langa share intimacy through skating (intricate rituals heyo). For me, them officially getting together ultimately doesn’t matter- I’ll consider Sk8 a Queer show regardless.

Similarly, @mulberrymelancholy finds ace/arospec representation in that very absence of an on-screen kiss. A bisexual man might find representation in Reki, not because he enters a canon relationship, but in the depiction of Reki’s coming of age, growing up and navigating adolescent relationships. A non-binary person might feel represented through CHERRY’s androgyny.

That’s the thing, I don’t know how this show will resonate with other members of the queer community, and it’d be wrong to make a judgement on Sk8′s queer representation based on my experiences alone.

That being said, Straight people definitely don’t get to judge Sk8 as Queerbait. Y’all can watch and enjoy the show, we WANT you to enjoy these kinds of shows, and we want you to share these shows and contribute to the normalization and celebration of these kinds of narratives.

But understand that you don’t have a right to tell us whether or not Sk8 has good or bad queer representation.

And even members of the queer community are on thin ice. Your experience of queerness is not universal. Listen to the other members of your community, and respect that what you might find lacking in this show may be the exact representation that someone else needs.

#and scene #i was up till 4am writing this instead of doing my hw #bc i hav Opinions dammit #sk8 #sk8 the infinity #sk8 meta #sk8 theory #queerbait

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tricky-ghoul · 2 years

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On a serious note though, are women naturally hatable and annoying? Just wonder why straight men and gay men and even the trans identifying crowd hate women so much. What is wrong with them?

When I ponder questions regarding the whole gender movement and misogyny in general, I always come back to very basic mammalian behavior. We all have an intrinsic drive to survive and reproduce. The resources we need to accomplish survival and reproduction (food, shelter, and a group with which to mate) are fuel for competition.

Feminist ideas go against our basic instincts in some ways. We’re “supposed to” need males to survive and reproduce. We’re “supposed to” need their strength and sexual prowess. When women say, “No, I got this on my own” or “No, I’m not interested in having children” or “No, I’m not interested in a relationship with a male” we’re going against the basic structure nature has in place for almost all mammalian species. A majority of mammals are polygynous, some manage monogamy, some species are polyandrous. We see a mix of these within humans, but I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that a majority of men at least enjoy the idea of polygyny if not live that way already. They can have as many partners as they like, but want their harem to be loyal. They may not realize it, and prevent it with contraception of some form, but there’s an inner drive there to mate with as many females as possible in order to father as many children as possible.

So I think the hate could stem from males and their different forms of cognitive dissonance over these inner biological drives. Straight men want their harem but we keep making that difficult for them. Gay men are not interested in women at all, so it’s easier to hate us than to deal with their own emotions regarding their sexuality. Trans could fall into either of those. Lesbians completely blow those basic drives out of the water, just fuck it all, and I think that’s why they often tend to get the most hate. I think a large number of people can overcome those drives and have the emotional intelligence to get past any cognitive dissonance, don’t even really think about it. But emotional intelligence is severely lacking in our society, and that will only get worse with the culture we’re creating now.

In my life, it seems the men I’ve known (partners, friends, family, clients, etc) have no problem blaming the women in their life for anything that goes wrong or stands in their way. It’s always the fault of females. From mundane things like the woman in their life not bearing all the domestic duties every day or not being at their sexual beck and call, to blaming rape victims because they wore the wrong clothing. It’s easy to blame women, which seems like it could make it much easier to hate women. We have to try to undo what the generations before us tended to give into, submission. Submission to the men in their life. It’s deeply ingrained in our human culture, human nature, globally. So yeah, maybe we are naturally hatable.

#submission #radblr #terfblr #radical feminism #feminism #terfs welcome #terfs do interact #radfems do touch #terfs please touch #gender critical

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life-rewritten · 3 years

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Color Rush- Crushes and Obstacles (Ep 5-6)

So I already analysed episode 5 of Color rush with the question focusing on the nature vs nurture of monos and probes. We basically have a show that keeps reminding us about the world and stigma of being a mono, the psychological regression, issues and lack of control that occurs once a mono meets their fated probe. Because of this ideology, our main character finds himself being forced to make a choice of if he should embrace becoming a monster to keep his probe by his side or if he should be alone forever stuck in a depressive state, empty and lifeless. The issue with this way of thought is that apart from maybe the media showing him clues about how monos react when they meet their probes, there's not enough evidence in my opinion that this is the only choice/way for a mono and probe to end up. Especially since our mono had seen a relationship where it was more or less successful before the mono maybe lost control once the probe died, that's his mum and dad. So this analysis focuses more on that same question is it really the only ending for a mono and probe relationship; to end with chaos, and pain, and obsession, kidnaps, crimes etc., or is this just all a placebo effect that has been embedded into the minds of monos to be this way.

Monos and Their Probes

Let's look at the details of episode 5 and 6. Yeonwoo and Yoohan's relationship evolves as they both start to fall more and more for each other. For Yeonwoo, this is hard because he's never known what that feels like, and his crush and attraction to Yeonwoo is even more enhanced in his mind because of the connection and link to Yoohan being his probe. But if we don't focus on the fact that Yoohan and Yeonwoo are probes and monos and just see them as two high school boys who have feelings for each other who went on a date, went home after and chilled, their relationship becomes like every other normal relationship, no danger, no questions of obsession and addiction. Pause.

Devotion vs Obsession

When we have feelings for people we tend to become obsessed and addicted to their presence just a bit, it's because of the serotonin, and dopamine released when we have a puppy love, a crush or even when we start to fall even more deeply for someone. It's feelings of happiness, of euphoria, excitement, and more. So Yeonwoo and Yoohan just like every other couple are going through phases of these euphoric feelings, wanting to spend as much time with each other as possible, wanting to touch each other, wanting to stay together every single time. It's what happens in a honeymoon phase of a relationship. You can't let go of the other person. Now this doesn't mean for us we want to go kidnap and commit crimes to keep our crush next to us, we may miss them, and want to keep talking to them but it doesn't mean we're insane, addicted or obsessed. Do you see my point?

I think Yeonwoo truly has exaggerated his feelings of a crush on Yoohan. He's made it so much more worse than it has to be because he's been fearmongered by the media into thinking just because he doesn't want Yoohan to leave it means he's turning into a monster when really he's just liking and crushing on his new crush. He didn't have to make the decision to go buy these kidnapping tools and to think of ways to make himself a monster, since that's the only choice he believes he's left with. No, he could have like every other normal person just missed him. So why is Yeonwoo letting himself go deeper into obsession and addiction and letting himself think he is a monster? In order to really look deeper to see if it's truly the only end for a mono, or if it's the environment that is making them this way; we have to analyse the psychological mindset of monos when they meet with their probes

Monos: The world of Lonliness and Depression

The metaphor already for monos is lack; they lack color, lack brightness, lack vibrancy in their lives. They've been forced since birth to see the world in such a dark and oblique way. And as they find out about their condition, they are seen as monsters from the get-go, forced to be alone to avoid people in case they bump into their fated probes. The loneliness and the forced mindset of a mono to stay in this lifeless energy is really psychologically depressing and tiring. And it's when they get a glimpse of hope, of companionship, love, colour, and more with their probes that Monos start to feel happy and joyful. Now it doesn't have to be this way, Monos could end up feeling comfortable with their condition if they were just treated equally and right, but no they're prejudiced, pushed away and bullied horribly once it's discovered that this is what they are.

From a young age, monos are told that they are going to be monsters, they are going to hurt people, they are going to lose their minds one day. And this is just exacerbated in the media with fears and warnings of how monos interact with their probes. If from a young age, a mono is repeatedly told, this is who they are, then it forms a placebo belief and effect, and brainwash that this is the only way they can be. Mono's don't see any other way out, or a chance to be different because everyone feeds to them the same narrative of pain, despair and obsession. And it sucks. Look at how immediately Yeonwoo's aunt reacts when she notices Yeonwoo and Yoohan have found each other, she immediately scolds him and tells him he has to move, so he doesn't break and lose his sanity. She doesn't give it the benefit of the doubt, or ask questions; she resorts immediately into trying to push them away from each other.

Now, this makes sense because she has lost her sister who was a mono who probably lost her mind once her probe died. And then went missing/ taken by maybe another mono (that's what it seems Yeonwoo and his aunt believe happened). Because of this, there is a negative stigma with the aunt on how monos can behave, she has already lost so much because of monos, and so she doesn't want Yeonwoo to be the same. The aunt is like everybody else in this world, whose first reaction to monos is to push away and to avoid, this world isolates and distances monos away from a chance to be happy, and live freely because of their condition.

The Psychological Implications of Being a Mono

The psychological implications of being a mono are so fascinating to me. It's like a psychological disorder (despite it not being that way) are all psychopaths forced to hurt and become serial killers? Are all sociopaths meant to avoid people just because there's a higher tendency that people could get hurt if it goes awry? No. Because just because you have a gene or a link to a family member that went crazy and started hurting people, it doesn't mean you would make the same choice and do the same thing. Not everyone is the same just because they have the same disorder or mindset. And that's the same for monos, monos don't have to go crazy and hurt their probes. The separation from their probes obviously enhances anxiety and fear of going back into this lifeless, darkness that they finally found a way out of; this is what drives their actions. It's just enhanced emotions and enhanced fears, but they don't have to act on it, the people who do act on it are people who were weak or predisposed to other factors that make them want to be violent. Yeonwoo doesn't have to plan ways to kidnap or take Yoohan when Yoohan would gladly stay by his side. He doesn't have to be this broken or fearful of becoming a monster; he's making these choices because he has a placebo mindset that this is who he should become. And it's heartbreaking.

The thing is we see Yoohan and Yeonwoo having a great time together, being happy and liking each others company without the color rush having to be the only focus of why they're interacting. We do get to see Yeonwoo panic because of decolouring, and he enhances those emotions because of his already ingrained anxiety about what it means to want to keep Yoohan by his side. The way I see it, Yeonwoo has formed an anxiety about who he is because of how the world treats him and other monos, and because he has that issue with stress coupled with physical evidence that he's losing colour, it drives him to think it's a sign he's becoming a monster. It's not.

First of all, of course, he becomes worried and scared about losing colours, the decolouring effect is like going from a high to a low, when colour rush happens to monos it's a euphoric effect, it doesn't last, but like a drug it can lead to a crash and a hangover, so of course immediately Yoohan leaves Yeonwoo starts to crash and regress back into seeing the world as grey, and that makes his mindset also feel depressed coupled with the fact he does not want Yoohan to go because of his crush (not dependency). So Yeonwoo misunderstands his reactions when Yoohan leaves as him becoming addicted and obsessed with Yoohan with no point of return when really he's just moody because his high is gone and he misses Yoo Han as a normal person does with their crush. So he's talking himself into thinking the only explanation is his dependency on Yoohan for color and his obsession as a mono growing. And it's sad, monos have been forced to feel this way, that they're predatory, horrifying and cruel in their love when really they've just met the one, and they wish to be happy.

Society vs Monos

It's his aunty who triggers this emotion, her conversation with him made him think there's no other way out of becoming this monster because she put that fear that he may be forced to separate from Yoohan. And this is really where I think Monos become the versions they are shown (crazy, obsessed, crimes) in the news because not every mono and probe is going to be in love, not every probe may want to be with their monos, everyone has a different circumstance and that fear of losing colors, may drive a mono to doing things. However, I don't think it's natural for them to become so obsessed and so desperate to live with colors so much that they hunt down their probes and hurt others. That's a specific few, ones that had those warped mindsets, or a more problematic background or a harsher philosophy. Not everyone becomes violent, some monos probably retreat from their probes and stay depressed, some fall in love with someone who isn't a probe, there are so many different ways it could go, the thing is monos are only shown in one light, and that's the people who chose to go far to keep their probes by their side through fear.

This self-hate and deprecation Yeonwoo has of who he is naturally reminds me so much of internalised homophobia, hating who you are naturally and thinking you're wrong because of how society has made you see yourself. It's the same feelings; the disgust, the anxiety, the repression etc. And we've already mentioned how monos and probes are probably metaphors of LGBTQ+ struggle, society making monos think it's wrong to be with the people who love them and they love. This self-hate will make Yeonwoo feel he has no other option but to check himself into a hospital or institution or to (trigger warning) end his life. And that's just so messed up. I've seen many people question his mindset because from what we're seeing his mother seems like she had a happy marriage with his father, shouldn't she be proof that monos and probes can be healthy? But I think we're forgetting that his father died, and from knowing how monos react to missing their probes, I'm guessing his mum couldn't take it and also lost some of her sanity or she fell into depression and couldn't get out of that. Also as mentioned, I think Yeonwoo thinks it's a mono that kidnapped his mum, and so that also maybe gives him more resentment towards who he is, and again makes him think monos only end up committing crimes and hurt people they love.

But we need to know more about why he thinks this way and what other evidence they have about his mother's missing case. Plus his mother has not been by his side for four years, and in those four years he's been bullied, mistreated, have to move schools each time his condition is found out, so it's been a long time of society again making him think he's a monster, and without his mum there to help him see different, he just follows that mindset, unfortunately.

Yeonwoo and Yoohan; Just a crush

For Yeonwoo and Yoohan, their relationship is not just based on dependence, Yeonwoo thinks it's the colours, and he does not understand it's just feelings and him liking Yoohan since he first met him. Yeonwoo has had to push people away, and find excuses not to have friends, and Yoohan barged into his life without warning, both have been attracted and wanting each other from the start. Yeonwoo struggled with this information and rationalised it into thinking it's because he wants the colour rush, but it isn't that, it's more than that, he just wants to be happy, in love and with Yoohan. Yoohan is the same as Yeonwoo, he's also had to push people away, and alienate himself, and not care about the world or society because of his own condition, seeing Yeonwoo made him want to do more, he liked what Yeonwoo was to him, he liked having a crush on Yeonwoo, and so he also found himself wanting to stay with Yeonwoo for as long as he can. For a long time I've also been thinking he was just as obsessed and addicted to Yeonwoo like monos are to their probes, but no, he's a teenage boy with a crush, and so is Yeonwoo. We also let the media and how society views mono make us feel worried and scared about these two's relationship forming and whilst it was thrilling to think it could be more dangerous than it is, it's really just two people falling in love with each other, and one psychologically scarred and brainwashed into thinking there's something wrong with who he is naturally. And that's just painful.

So yeah Color Rush; a look into psychological mindsets, nature vs nurture, the addictive feeling of what love is, and more, this show is so fun to watch and analyse and see how it's going to turn out, but there are moments where it hurts and makes you think and question how society and media play a role in showing minorities, how they control the narrative about certain things and if that's right. Fearmongering, prejudiced mindsets and more isn't cool, but the world has always been led by these ignorant ideas without education and open mindsets, and it sucks. So watching color rush is an interesting metaphor and symbolism for the struggles some people have because of stigmas associated with conditions they have from birth, or just ideologies formed that isn't necessarily true about who they are as a person, it only leads to self-hate, depression, anxiety, self-harm just to fit into society's narrative and it sucks. Let's hope Yoohan shows Yeonwoo he's not a monster, and he's okay being himself and loving Yoohan. he doesn't have to hurt or go insane and do crimes because he's a mono. He'll be fine.

#color rush #colour rush #korean bl #kdrama #bl series #bl drama #not thai bl #cwg #january

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sapphicteaparty · 3 years

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why i’ll be single forever

realizing i was aro/ace was extremely liberating to me. i did not notice how much pressure there was on me to end up in a relationship at some point, like i always thought eventually that would happen. i couldn't even imagine that being single was an option or that i could be happy that way.

on the one hand, the thought of having a gf/partner is, i guess... ok? like the idea of it isn't negative to me in itself. but on the other hand, also i highkey just want to be alone a lot. i love spending time alone. i'm happy when i can just do the things i enjoy. i have hobbies, i have friends/family, i have things i love. no i don't want kids, or a spouse or 'my own' family or to fulfill societal expectations.

amatonormativity is so deeply ingrained in our lives that it's taken me a while to stop thinking that there's something wrong with me for not wanting to be in relationships. it's so pervasive too, like ppl keep saying "oh you'll find someone" assuming that everyone should one day settle down with a partner. almost every piece of media keeps telling me the same thing. over and over and over. there's a huge lack of ace/aro representation so it's no wonder i couldn't even imagine living my life differently.

most ppl my age are already married and have kids, or they are in some sort of relationship or looking for a relationship. but i also have some friends who are single and don't seem to want relationships and that's kinda cool. life can be about so much more than a romantic/sexual relationship and i hate how amatonormativity has basically made that the goal of human existence. like how being IN LOVE is the peak of human experiences/emotions and if you don't experience that or want to experience it then clearly something is wrong with you (that’s a lie).

ace/aro ppl are not missing out. if anything, the opposite is true for all those ppl who settle down with someone just because society demands that from them, sacrificing their own passions, interests, hobbies or dreams for the sake of their relationship. better get married before 30-40 or else your life is over and you'll be alone forever! yikes, imagine being single! (actual things i've heard cishet allos say).

i'm not saying ppl can't genuinely want or dream about being in relationships or getting married and finding a partner (good for you if that’s what you want) but amatonormativity means everyone should want that and that's simply not true.

and it’s ok if you don’t understand every facet of every queer identity or label (i sure as hell don’t), you can still be respectful and accept that some ppl experience the world differently than you and that’s ok. really the only thing ace/aro ppl are missing out on is acceptance and validation because in the year 2021 i still see ppl being aphobic.

#amatonormativity #long post #seeing queer ppl being aphobic is extra hurtful #mp #ok to reblog

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thecaffeinebookwarrior · 4 years

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Hey so I've been struggling writing protagonists lately, basically I always end up liking/identifying with the villain more and end up focusing on their backstory and development rather than the protagonist(s). Also how do I write good people??? I tried looking it up but nothing really came up... (I don't really know many "good" people so I cant really reference anyone I know lol)

Hello! I’ve been thinking about this question since I first received it, and how best to answer.

A couple of points: what’s to stop you from making a “villain” your protagonist? Look at The Sopranos, Peaky Blinders, Killing Eve, Breaking Bad, Hannibal, Ozark, The Wire. Some of the best art our culture churns out features puts various types of “villainous” figures in the spotlight, and we love them.

I would argue that our love of antiheroes partially comes from a socially ingrained understanding that our society is inherently oppressive, causing us to delight when our favorite good bad guys (and sometimes, just plain bad guys) outwit the system, but I digress.

There is also a natural charisma to villainy that entices us, causing an insurgence of media. Look at how well Maleficent did at the boss-office. The endless parade of Pirates of the Caribbean movies. The flawless masterpiece that is Megamind. We’re drawn to the larger-than-life personas of villains, and we want to understand them.

Now, I will clarify that I love Good characters, and it’s a myth that fundamentally Good people are less interesting than bad people. I think that evil, without depth or redemptive qualities, is banal. So if you decide to go the route of a villain protagonist or antihero, make sure there’s some goodness in them as well -- or at least, relatability. Look again at the examples I just mentioned, and you’ll see what I mean:

We watch The Sopranos not because we want to watch Tony snap some deadbeat’s leg like a toothpick, but because of the compelling manner in which his sympathetic qualities war with his destructive ones. Would we really care about him if he

Peaky Blinders endures not just because of Tommy Shelby’s ruthlessness, ambition, and charisma, but because we see the goodness in him, we intimately understand his motivations, and we’re invested in what happens to him. Moreover, we’ve seen how society has mistreated him and his family, and we can’t help but cheer for him as he breaks its rules so cleverly.

Killing Eve would be a two-dimensional story of one woman attempting to homoerotically murder the other, if Villanelle didn’t have understandable impulses and desires to make the audience (and Eve) empathize with her. Her desire to feel is a deeply understandable one, even if most of us wouldn’t go about it by killing people.

Walter White? The entire hook of the series, and the whole reason it’s so compelling, is because Walt’s a “good” guy who turned bad. We see ourselves in him, and we understand we could become like him, even if most of us would get killed the first day as meth-manufacturers.

In Hannibal, we’re put in the shoes of a hyper-empathetic FBI agent, who can’t help but want to understand Hannibal’s impulses. As a result, we want to understand, too, and Hannibal’s relationship with Will humanizes him even at his most destructive.

In Ozark, we come to understand the motivations of almost every major character, and their relatively simplistic goals: Marty wants to protect and unify his family. Wendy wants love and fulfillment. Ruth wants autonomy and freedom. As such, we’re invested in what happens to them, regardless of their criminality.

In The Wire, we’re put into the shoes of characters subjugated by systematic oppression, and we admire them when they attempt to retain morality with the few options available to them. Robbing street-level drug-dealers seems like a form of heroism when it’s Omar doing it.

Consider this a preview of my upcoming article, which talks about the importance of antiheroes. But again, I digress.

I’m not going to tell you to write about “good” characters, even though traditionally good people can be every bit as interesting as their more villainous counterparts. Your characters are trying to tell you something: your villains want to be written about, and your “good” characters are fine with taking the back-burner. The reader will only find your writing interesting if you’re interested in writing it, and when your characters speak to you, listen.

Just make sure, if you go with a villain protagonist or antihero, you make us see the good in them, or at least understand why they do what they do.

I hope this helps, and happy writing!

#writing tips #the sopranos #peaky blinders #killing eve #hannibal #ozark #the wire #Anonymous

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traumatized-motherfuckers · 3 years

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CPTSD and Core Beliefs (Your lens, built on traumatic fuckery)

Alright, so you know I have this Patreon thing that I try to make worth your while in return for your economical help. One of the benefits is the good ole’ monthly ask me anything. And I love it. Because the questions are great. And they push me to dig into topics that I was procrastinating. This month’s AMA is a particularly good one! A question that needs to be addressed, anyways. So it’s perfect. Let’s aim for two birds with one stone.

Our good friend Cassie - you know her by now - asks, how do you identify core beliefs and start to change them? Which is a very simple and very complicated question.

So, to take a step backwards, what she talkin’ bout?

Well, one of the internal issues that complex trauma sufferers have to rectify is their belief system. Between our core beliefs and our inner critic, we have a lot going on in between our ears to keep us downtrodden and destitute.

We’re talking about what I call Fucked Up Core Beliefs here… which are your trauma-born core beliefs. Again, called FUCBs because when you discover them, you’ll likely whisper to yourself, “wow, that’s actually really fucked up.” These sentiments are like the lenses that you surgically stitched onto your face several decades ago in response to your upbringing, as your little mammal brain tried to understand its place in the global hierarchy and how to be chill about it.

The framework you built from your early development and beyond, that all information still filters through today - both on the way in and on the way out of your head. The words that stream through your brain consciously or subconsciously to shape the ways you appraise… everything. Yourself, your life, your past, your future, other people, and everything that happens in between.

So, essentially, talking about the ways you interpret your existence and the collected pool of knowledge from where you make decisions, and therefore the ways you act. If this is starting to sound like a big deal - it is!

But it don’t come with a big flashing sign. The Challenge

These beliefs are challenging to figure out because:

One, they were adapted early on in your life in an effort to understand the circumstances around you or directly downloaded from the sentiments expressed in your environment. When you were first establishing your perspective of the universe and trying to figure out how to navigate it based on the clues presented.

Plus, the harder part is… because of the early adoption, you’ve already accepted the idea for so long that it doesn’t even seem like a “belief” to you - you’re not choosing it and it’s probably not apparent to you - it’s just the secret narrative running in your head that corrupts all later data. Not cognitive thoughts that you’re directing on purpose. You probably don’t have recollections of the time before you believed such and such to question what you believe - these ideas are solidified in your head with as much certainty as the alphabet.

So, you might believe you’re a worthless piece of shit as a function of the neglect and abuse you experienced, a way to explain the mistreatment to yourself from a young age… OR you might believe you’re a worthless piece of shit because mom, dad, sister, and society directly told you so. But either way, many years down the line, it’s difficult to pinpoint either of these originating factors as memories fade or to even question the validity of the thought… or to even notice the thought.

Two, if your family of origin was always repeating the same sort of thoughts and you later associate with people who make you comfortable to be around (i.e. probably have some similar views of the world), you have nothing to compare your beliefs to.

Your environment teaches you what’s normal. There’s no reference for what is and isn’t healthy, fair, or functional if everyone is drinking the same kool aid. And, unfortunately, in traumatic environments, folks seem to congregate around the fucked up beliefs to protect them with a mutual unspoken agreement. Accept the accepted narrative of the group or be outcast. The same story is replayed on repeat from all ends of your social circle, so why would you even begin to think there’s another way to look at things?

So, if mom, dad, cousin, uncle, grandma, neighbor, peer, teacher, and media are all telling you the same reality exists, how would you ever even begin to have the wherewithal to think otherwise? The thought probably never crosses your mind. The sky is blue, grass is green, and the world is a miserable place where everyone is trying to take advantage of you.

Three, again, I cannot over-express how insidious, subtle, and generalized these things can be. Fucked up core beliefs affect how you see and process everything. Again, like lenses or an instagram filter permanently applied to your corneas. So, there’s not necessarily one life-effect linked to one-FUCB for easy detection or one event that will cause a clear-as-day defined belief to come shooting to the top of the pile. More like, you very slowly realize you have an unhealthy view or twenty about yourself and the world that have sorrrrrtof impacted every single area of your life now that you spend years considering it.

Thinking you’re a worthless piece of shit, for instance, has led to you taking low-level jobs with chaotic schedules, living with an abusive partner, and settling for living in the same environment with the same behavioral patterns that you’ve known your entire life. It’s also allowed you to give up exercise, eating right, staying sober, and trying to make any life-improvements. Why bother spit polishing shit? And here you are, wondering why you feel awful about yourself and don’t enjoy anything you’ve created in your life.

But. It’s not that simple to sort out, or else we would have done it already. You probably haven’t ever purposely considered how commonly this impression is operating below the surface of your actions. Realizing that the belief “I’m a worthless piece of shit who deserves nothing” and trying to change it would be like pulling out the wrong Janga block - everything it has been supporting suddenly comes tumbling down and you’re left with a real fucking mess to rebuild from the bottom up. And, to top it all off, no one ever even taught you how to create a sturdier structure in the first place.

Fourthly, from some of my own learnings, I’ve come to the conclusion that the core belief, itself, doesn’t even have to present itself at any point to be making a difference in your life. They are so deeply ingrained in my brain that my thought center just naturally uses them as a jumping off point, without even directly touching on the words that might ping my brain as unusual. Just like we can subtly detect risks in our environment that set off our warning bells without ever creating a conscious thought to go with the arousal, I feel like I can apply a core belief to my world without ever noticing the accompanying stream of consciousness.

Sometimes I feel like fucked up core beliefs have become so accepted over time that they’re feelings more than cognitions. As if they’ve become so reflexive through repetition that you have muscle memory - an intuitive response that bypasses your logical brain recognition threshold and jumpstarts shittily-related thoughts… and those will actually register on your thinking scale. But at that point, you accept the novel-feeling thought and never note that it was actually spawned by a very old recording.

Which is to say, you might have to work on identifying your fucked up core feelings before you can get to the thought deeply buried underneath. Taking a meta break from the episode to tell you, I’ve never thought about that so thoroughly before. But Fucked Up Core Feelings definitely sounds like a solid description of my world. I guess we also have FUCFs to go with our FUCBs from now on. Anyways.

With all of this in mind, I’m sure you can start to see why these fucked up core beliefs are a big problem. Hell, if you’ve listened to this podcast for more than a few episodes, you’ve definitely heard that I’m still challenged by my own. Like, when I say that I’m freaking out because no one should listen to me and I feel like an imposter - I believe that I’m not good enough to share information with people. That I’m too flawed to even express myself. This is a problem for, say, podcasting. Or, living. And I have to fight it all the time.

Long story short.

Your core beliefs are sneaky, they can be comprehensive, and they are hardwired into your brain as your default system for analyzing everything on the planet. Again, kind of like looking for goggles strapped to your face, but in reality you had lasik surgery about 30 years ago.

So, if you aren’t constantly on the lookout for core beliefs and actively working against your pre-programmed ways of assessing yourself and the world around you… they will get out of control, cause a fair amount of avoidance and defeat, and set you back several steps in your mental health management… plus, potentially your entire life, if you make any big decisions out of this unhealthy mindset. Which you will, because that’s how the brain works. I’m almost certain that you have some experience with this already.

If you ever think things like: The world is a dangerous placePeople are cruelI’m not good enough I’m not smart enoughI’m not enoughI’m brokenOther people don’t like meThere’s something wrong with my personalityI’m not allowed to… (live like others, have nice things, be happy)I’m not one of those people who… (has money, has good luck, gets what they want)Shit is just harder for meNothing ever works outLife is always hardI can’t.

Then you’ve had some fucked up core beliefs floating around in your head.

These are some super broad ones for the sake of demonstration, so don’t disregard highly specific beliefs that might relate to your particular circumstances or upbringing.

If you haven’t ever noticed yourself thinking these big shitty picture things… check again in all your deepest nooks and crannies. I think a lot of us TMFRs operate from some version of the narratives above - plus, much worse. Like I keep saying, these beliefs might not be in your conscious thoughts, so much as they’re directing the show from behind the curtain.

How do we pull it back? Discover the beliefs ........

Keep reading or listen up at t-mfrs.com

https://www.t-mfrs.com/podcast/episode/532f2b1c/core-beliefs

#cptsd #complex ptsd #complex trauma #complextraumarecovery #healingcomplextrauma #complextrauma #complexptsd #cptsd problems #cpstd #just cptsd things #actually CPTSD #cptsdsurvivor

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honeyrose-tea · 3 years

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this has been a strange start to the new year for sure. how are you doing? what did you think of the situation in the capitol? any thoughts or worries about the rest of the month? I'm curious to hear your thoughts on everything. -🌙

thank you so much for the ask💞 almost every day I check my inbox anticipating the next time I'll hear from you. just knowing that someone cares.... it really does a lot for my self-esteem. I don't have many friends right now and the few I do are very busy and have a lot of things they would rather do than talk to me. thank you for making time to listen to me and ask me how I'm doing. you wouldn't believe how many people don't. I haven't always been the most consistent presence for you and I'm sorry. I'm trying to do better and be less selfish because I know how it feels to be on the receiving end of that. thank you for always being kind to me, pen pal.

there is a lot I want to say regarding the capitol and the situation in the country in general. as a social science student (and hopefully one day a professor!) these situations are of great academic interest to me. as a bisexual woman and an informed US citizen who cares about my rights I am also very personally vested in American issues. but first I would like to tackle your question regarding how I'm doing:)

I'm doing pretty good. classes have started back up but most of mine are online. I'm thinking of switching to online exclusively because of how much emotional (and sometimes physical) labor in-person classes are, and also for the sake of my health and my parents'. it's funny how so many things we did with ease before the pandemic seem so burdensome now. even small interactions are anxiety-inducing now, and I find myself having a hard time socializing even casually. like a muscle that has atrophied without use, my social skills are awful now. on a happier note, my productivity and creativity are both at all-time highs since social interactions aren't using up all my energy anymore. I brought my record player to my dorm room and I've been listening to a bunch of music, I've also been writing and recording some music of my own. I have a couple of demos and if you or anyone else is interested, I'll post them on here. once I record and edit full band versions I'll put them up on my soundcloud. I've tried sharing some of my stuff with some friends but none of them really care and I don't want to annoy them. besides, it's more for myself anyway. I wang to prove to myself that I can make music and that I can say something worth saying. a lot of my struggle over the past 6 months has been that I feel as though nothing I do or say can change anything, that none of my actions matter. I struggle a lot with control and I've been working on it for years, but it's still really hard for me. anyway. I'm enjoying class and what I do outside of it. I've been in my element living alone again (in my dorm) and feeling free to wear/do/say what I want, when I want. I wash my dishes and sing to myself and manage my time and drink lots of artificially sweetened and heavily flavored coffee without anyone around to judge me. and I get to cry and masturbate when I want, both of which are helpful in regulating my moods. I don't know. it's not like I'm doing anything exciting, but I am doing each thing I do well and with a happy heart. I feel like this portion of my life is something of a hibernation- the winter seasons combined with the pandemic have me in a cozy little daydream, reading and self-reflecting and getting back in tune with myself and my passions. I have a feeling that the spring and summer will be very vibrant bustling months so I am trying to enjoy my rest and soak in as much knowledge about myself and the world around me as I can. it's hard for me to live in the present and not get antsy (connected to control issues, I think) but I'm getting better at it. on the subject of the future, I've also been using this time to look into grad school and prepare for the GRE (a standardized test required for most grad school applications, similar to the ACT/SAT). I'm learning a lot that I didn't know since neither of my parents went further than undergrad, and I'm getting excited. I'm really looking forward to doing research. I've already been collecting some thesis ideas for an undergraduate-level thesis that I have to complete next year for the honors college, and hopefully I can turn that into a masters and/or PHD thesis when the time comes. now, on to more important matters than my silly little life.

I have very complicated feelings about america. I do have some attachment to some of the original ideas that are at the foundation- "bring me your huddled masses...", "all men are created equal", the general spirit of democracy, etc.- all of these are valid and worth keeping (in some form) to me. I think a lot of good people and ideas exist around us and I believe that we must be as empathetic and kind as possible to one another in order to navigate the current climate and preserve the good that we do have. that said, america was also founded on some pretty terrible, bigoted principles and our history- as well as our present- is marred by injustices. our society has become highly individualistic because of capitalism, and it has resulted in considerable division on every level. the competition that fuels capitalism is like an invasive species of plant, it does not only exist within our economy but it slithers out into our social world and the way we relate to others. I think capitalism coupled with our post-enlightenment founding is the source of most all of our problems as a country. capitalism has taken root in america in a way more malicious and all-consuming than in any other culture, because it was there at the beginning of our country and all of our social norms have grown out of it. many other cultures have existed long before capitalism and though it has modified their culture, it has not altogether become it. because america was founded on capitalism, we have no cultural identity outside of it. america is, itself, capitalism. that is precisely why america is experiencing all of the best and worst parts of capitalism at their most extreme. it is why, as I mentioned previously, we are perhaps the most divisive and competitive society in the modern world, and probably in history. we are the richest and most powerful country but we have the largest wealth gap and incarceration rate, among many other extremes.

all of this is to say that the rise of Trump and fascism in this country has been a long time coming, and unmistakably inevitable. to defeat it we will have to break america down to its fundamentals, throw out everything that is unethical and unjust, and rebuild our entire society from there. this is radical and hard to imagine, it will also be very difficult to execute, but I strongly believe that much of our societal systems just cannot be reformed, they must be thrown out and replaced.

the capitol riots were inexcusable and sickening but decidedly inevitable. this has been steadily building for america's entire existence. I think it will get worse before it gets better, as there are already plans for bigger and more numerous protests across the country in the following weeks. that said, I feel hopeful as I see the anti-fascist movement grow in the wake of fascism, I am hopeful as I see many people being radicalized and awakened to the realities of this country's failings. I don't know how exactly we will even begin to rid ourselves of the biases, prejudices, and downright hatred that plagues our country. I don't know how we will relate on an individual level to those with such deeply-ingrained hate in their hearts. I don't know how we will change our systems of government and economy to reflect new cultural values that we begin to build together. I am not sure what the future will hold. I do believe, however, that we will triumph over this moment and that the future will be better. I think that the only way to radically change and unite so many vastly different people and remove the blinders from their eyes is through a terrible, historic awakening like the one we are having now. the situation itself is awful, but I am hopeful that out of this mess we become a nation more committed to justice and to some of the ideals which we have falsely claimed to be emulating for our entire history.

so yes, I am worried about the next few weeks, months, and even years. there is no end to the pursuit of a just society, and I think every informed citizen is always a bit apprehensive about certain aspects of their culture. there will always be problems to combat and injustices to rectify, but I think that we will soon be moving to a better place, that we will remember these moments and say, "never again". I am hopeful, despite seeing some of the worst of humanity in recent days, that these atrocities will bring positive change.

I know that was long and instead of discussing issues about the capitol, or even just current political issues, I expanded the scope considerably and dragged in a lot of things from history and grander sociopolitical theories. still, I think it is hard to talk about the insurrection attempt without talking about a lot more. thank you for reading my takes and caring about them. I spend a lot of time thinking about these things, and it feels nice to share them with someone other than my annoyed professors who want me to shut up so they can finish the lecture and stick to their semester schedule.

I hope you're well and that you're staying safe and healthy. are you in school now too? have you or your family had the virus? thank you for coming to talk to me, I always enjoy it. I'll talk to you again soon💞

#pen pal

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traditional-with-a-twist · 4 years

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xxiii. Beauty and Her Beast

<<Previous || first arc || AO3 || Next>>

A man can save a sinking ship if he bails fast enough.

Lord Haruka had suspected cracks in the hull of the Clarines estate ever since the reigning prince had showed faulty judgment that morning after his brother’s funeral.

Haruka had done his best since then to remain a bulwark for their young ruler: shouldering the burdens of his absence, duly performing any service as requested, maintaining some semblance of normalcy despite the tumult that rocked the people’s nerves and the wild rumors infesting the court.

A lesser man would have let some details slip in grappling with the crushing overload of guiding the country to post-war recovery while orchestrating a state ceremony on a scale usually reserved for centennial events, but Haruka knew his duty and executed it relentlessly.

Work, he had long since concluded, was the only remedy when fate denied you a more pleasing order of events. It was useless to struggle or complain when circumstances refused you alternatives.

...

In one matter alone he had been remiss, and for this Haruka reproached himself bitterly: He had neglected the supervision of the intended second princess.

Now she neglected her duties in turn.

It was enough that she had failed to report during the last week of Izana’s absence -- he had assigned her more than sufficient responsibilities to busy herself independently if she so chose -- but to miss their appointed rehearsal the day before the ceremony was unconscionable.

She had no respect for the customs of their country. She was not fit for office.

It was time that the first prince knew of her indiscretions.

...

Haruka was fully prepared to confess his own culpability in the matter.

He had never approved of her presence in the castle, would have been glad to see her depart. Her steady rise in good graces and influence had done nothing to improve his opinion of her.

He had allowed this personal bias to cloud his professional judgement: permitting her absences to create distance between them when he should have insisted on her proximity.

Now the situation had gotten out of hand, and they both must answer for it.

Otherwise the trickle of indiscretions threatened to swell to a tide that would swamp everything they had labored for.

...

With this mission in mind, Haruka presented himself early to the prince’s office.

He met the royal tailor on his way out the door, trailed by a parade of seamstresses, fabrics, and jewels.

Many years had passed since the Wisterias had required a newly crafted costume for a formal occasion, but then there was nothing fitting available that featured only white.

...

Lord Haruka entered to find the prince in his undershirt.

Izana was easing into one of the creamy, long-sleeved blouses he wore under the heavier vests and coats befitting his station. He greeted the lord with a poise often absent in half-dressed men.

“Your highness,” Haruka forged ahead, determined to waste no time. “Forgive the intrusion; I would not have disturbed you, were it not for a matter of utmost--”

The next word stuck in his throat.

...

As Izana drew up his right sleeve, Haruka’s eye caught on an anomalous color: red.

An ugly red line bisected the field of white cloth and pale skin, marring the prince’s arm.

Haruka started forwards like a horse that felt a spur in its side. “Highness -- you bleed!”

Izana glanced carelessly, as if Haruka had expressed alarm over a dust mote. “Oh, yes. I passed too near the edge of a blade, you see...and the sword has left its mark.”

...

Had Haruka’s heart labored under the additional burden of another decade or two, it might have failed him.

A cut, a wound - evidence of hostile intent, engraved on their prince’s flesh: a blow struck at the head of Clarines, in the heart of its foremost fortress and safeguard.

Unable to articulate his feelings, Haruka warbled a protest.

...

The prince had paused to observe him; he seemed in no hurry to finish his toilette. At the lord’s vocalization, he arched an eyebrow. “I beg your pardon?”

Lowering his voice to a rasp, Haruka managed, “What--what is the meaning of this, your highness?”

A pointing finger dispelled Izana’s remaining confusion. Following its course to the cut still exposed on his arm, he broke into a smile.

“Ah. It was a parting gift from our friend - the rogue messenger.”

...

The red pulsed, expanding until it filled Haruka’s vision. This confirmed all his worst fears.

That low life was not fit for civilized society; he should never have allowed him near the castle.

Haruka forced air in through his nose, fighting for mastery of himself. He had not understood the prince’s policy regarding that undesirable presence, but he had allowed it to pass unquestioned.

Now it was clear that sentiment or something equally insidious had blinded Prince Izana.

It was his duty as a peer of the realm to intervene.

...

“I will have him arrested, your highness,” Haruka rapped out.

Lazy as a cat, Izana slipped his shirt into place at last, hiding the offense from view. He seemed bored as he fastened the buttons - or perhaps amused.

“That won’t be necessary, Lord Haruka,” he dismissed the idea with all the weight he would afford a suggestion about adding yellow flowers to the table settings. “It was only a small matter -- a quarrel, you might say.”

...

Lord Haruka contained himself with difficulty. His fingers flexed, but he was too well-bred, his deference to royal authority and awareness of public image too deeply ingrained, to allow them to form into fists.

Every thought of the failed princess had fled his mind. His consciousness roiled like boiling water, overheated by the abrupt imposition of an offense long simmering under the surface.

“A...a quarrel,” he choked, “with...your highness…”

The notion itself was absurd: an outlaw, pursuing a disagreement with a prince - at swordpoint!

Haruka’s imagination failed him; he could not fathom it.

...

Izana must have sympathized with his struggle, for he showed no reluctance in offering an explanation.

Now fully robed, his back to the brilliant morning sun, the prince looked kindly on his subject.

“I provoked him, you see…” Izana held Haruka’s gaze, unblinking, “...by proposing marriage to the lady Shirayuki.”

...

If he had announced the extinction of the sun, Haruka could not have been more confounded.

Mounting rage had aided him thus far in withstanding repeated blows to his sense of order, propriety, and thwarted urgency, but in this extremity, it deserted him.

When Prince Zen had announced his engagement to the red-haired girl, Haruka had not greeted the news with anything like approbation.

Although he acknowledged that he had overreached, overstepped the bounds of his authority in his efforts to drive her from the castle, he nonetheless felt that the connection could not do the young prince credit - unless it were to his beneficence and broad-mindedness.

He feared Zen would one day regret choosing a woman for her personal qualities rather than bowing to the time-honored qualifications of rank and breeding.

Sooner or later, she would disappoint him by reverting to the life she had left behind.

...

Since the first prince had approved the match, however, there was nothing Haruka could do but keep his sour reflections to himself and perform his duty as required.

Still, it was a waste, he had thought - a wasted opportunity for the advancement of the kingdom, and for the improvement of Prince Zen’s material condition.

For an elevated commoner to marry the second prince, it would have been unfortunate.

If she married the first prince, it would be catastrophic.

...

Buffeted by a hail of disastrous surprises, worn down by overwork, conscious of his own impotence despite all his efforts to the contrary, Haruka had no recourse left but to wish the bad luck away.

He looked back at his prince pleadingly, almost childlike in his distress.

His eyes, lately hardened by conviction and then glowing with wrath, now beseeched Izana to take pity and contravene this news, as unsettling to the lord’s existence as the death of a parent would be.

...

Izana evinced no surprise or disappointment that the revelation of his glad tidings had received no answering felicities.

Serene, almost thoughtful, he seated himself at his desk and took up a pen - the picture of readiness to begin the day’s labors.

Moments before his inattention would have constituted a dismissal, Izana looked up and added, as if by afterthought:

“He wished to marry her himself, it seems.”

...

The last piece of the puzzle fell into place for Haruka, revealing an awful picture.

Her inexplicable absences, his flagrant trespassing, the outlandish gossip - it all became clear.

This was no freak of whim on the first prince’s part, no accident of fate.

It was nothing less than the inevitable working out of baser natures--and the imposition of a cure worse than the disease.

The rogue and the girl would disgrace them all, as they had always threatened to.

He had failed Clarines.

#Akagami no Shirayukihime #obiyuki #PurePassion #Beauty and Her Beast #now for a brief interlude #before we return to your regularly scheduled obiyuki angst #took something like six weeks to finish this chapter #re-wrote it maybe three times #trying to pinpoint Haruka's state of mind #alternative title: Lord Haruka's No Good Very Bad Terrible Horrible Day #your reviews are so delightful #they really give me new eyes for the story #help me catch inconsistencies when I'm drafting #remind me not to drop plot threads #I am blessed!

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wanderlustlanguages · 4 years

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Brazil study abroad roundup

So since I failed at posting during my study abroad I am going to attempt to sum everything up here. I hope this might be helpful for people who want to study abroad in Brazil in the future.

Disclaimer: This is written based on my personal experience which is of course affected by who I am (20-year-old, female, Austrian, introverted, straight, white,...) and the people I happened to meet and a million other small factors.

If you have any specific questions don’t hesitate to inbox me or send me a message.

Rio de Janeiro

I spent my exchange semester in Brazil or more precisely in Rio de Janeiro. Rio de Janeiro is without a doubt a city unlike any other (I have ever seen at least). My favourite thing about Rio is its diversity in both its population and the landscape. Rio really has it all amazing beaches, lush-greenness and a buzzing city. The city itself was probably my favorite thing about my exchange. I remember the first day I arrived and drove through the city to get to my apartment. I was fascinated by how the rich and the poor lived so close to each other and how there were 15 story buildings right in front of green hills and corporate office next to a beach.

Culture and People

The culture is completely different from anything I have ever experienced before. People in Brazil are so friendly it is shocking. Everyone seems to be open to have a chat and help you out. The one downside I found to this (as an introvert) while everyone is open to having a chat it can be hard to find real, solid friends. People tend to talk about hanging out or doing something but as you are talking about it both of you already know that it will never happen. So while in general, I cannot complain about people since they are very friendly to foreigners I have not made any real friends.

Language

However, not making friends might also have something to do with the fact that my Portuguese wasn’t really good enough to speak much when I arrived here and most people don’t really speak English. While it has improved greatly (especially my understanding of native speakers) I am still missing the practice to come up with words quickly enough to have a fluent conversation. Also, slang is still an issue while I have learned some of it there seems to be an endless amount of slang terms that I will probably never know (the fact that Brazilian Portuguese slang changes quickly and varies by region isn’t helping either):

Food

I have a love-hate relationship with Brazilian food. There’s some food I really enjoy but then there is even more food that I don’t particularly like. The food that I did enjoy seemed to get too monotonous quickly. In general Brazilian cuisine tends to be very much meat-based (being a vegetarian is still somewhat rare here) with carbs also playing a big role. As someone who prefers to eat a bit more plant-based and lighter it was a bit difficult to imagine eating a typical Brazilian diet every day. But of course, this wasn’t really an issue I just bought my vegetables in the supermarket and prepared them the same way I would have at home. But I did miss typical dishes from home and also Maki with avocado or cucumber (for some reason they only have sushi with actual fish here).

Money

Brazil is not as cheap as some other Latin American countries, especially Rio is quite expensive. I would say on average the living expenses here are as much as in other European cities (not London or Paris). The prices for food are pretty moderate with imported goods, of course, being more expensive. The metro is cheap compared to European standards and while it does cover much less area than the underground systems in most other major cities it really does take you pretty much everywhere that you’ll need to go. Uber is also surprisingly cheap. If you can split the ride it might just end up being cheaper than the metro ticket. My monthly living expenses without trips and rent were around: €500.

Housing

The rent prices vary greatly depending on the area you live in, however, in general, the standard of living is lower so even if you pay €500 a month the apartment might have all the necessities but often just doesn’t look as pretty (not an issue just something to keep in mind). I personally chose to live in an apartment in Ipanema which I shared with another girl from my university we paid about €500/month each. When choosing an area to live in you should keep in mind that there are areas that are not so safe. Personally, we booked our apartment on Airbnb but many people find theirs on facebook or upon arrival.

Trips

I managed to go on quite a few trips but getting around Brazil can quickly get complicated and expensive since it is such a huge country. If you have a place you already know you would like to visit I recommend booking the airplane ticket as early as possible the closer you get to the date the more expensive they tend to get. The cheapest airplane ticket I managed to get was about €70 (one hour flight, no checked bags). There are buses almost everywhere and they can be significantly cheaper however it is debatable whether you would rather pay €60 and drive for 14 hours or pay €150 - 200 and fly for 2 to 3 hours. For shorther distances buses are of course completely fine and you can book most of them online or buy a ticket directly at the central bus station.

Personally, I visited:

Paraty Salvador Belo Horizonte Ouro Preto Buzios Blumenau Curitiba Porto Alegre São Paulo Petropolis

Education system

Like in many countries getting a good education in Brazil means getting a private education. Since my university had a contract with a private university that’s the kind of educational environment I experienced. Personally, education is a topic I feel quite passionate about or more specifically I feel quite passionate about the belief that education should be as accessible as possible to as many people as possible (I am not going to go in-depth here about why..). The Brazilian education system is built in a way that greatly advantages people who are more well off than the average Brazilian. I personally was not a fan of my university since I felt the entire thing was just this bubble that didn’t in any way mirror the Rio that I experienced outside of university.

Society

I touched upon this briefly in the previous section. One of the most interesting dynamics about Brazil is the society. There seems to be this strange dichotomy were Brazilians are proud of the diversity of their population yet there is some kind of deeply ingrained, probably to a large degree unconscious (like in many countries), racism going on. People who are noticeably darker in complexion are mostly still part of the poorest of the population while the richest look astonishingly European and nothing is done to change this. Brazilians are proud of their diversity yet the order of their society still reflects one of the colonial times. (I am in no way saying that every Brazilian supports the way things are. This is more a reflection of the politics going on in the country which are unfortunately corrupt to a large degree so we cannot exactly consolidate the current societal state with the actual opinion of people)

Touristy things + Leisure time

Now for a lighter topic. There is plenty to see in Rio and when I say plenty I mean a lot as in I didn’t even manage to see everything that I wanted to see. I plan to make a more comprehensive post on places to see in Rio (well-known ones and some not so well known). Leisure time is to a large degree spent outdoors on the beach, hiking, or at parties. One disadvantage of Rio is that it is a quite outdoorsy city so when it rains there aren’t many options for entertainment.

Party and dating culture

Parties here are a lot more spontaneous often happening on the street in front of university buildings. They are also a bit wilder it is quite common for one person to make out with several different people a night and it is almost unheard of that someone doesn’t drink alcohol. Dating culture from what I experienced (which is admittedly somewhat limited) is very relaxed. Casual relationships are extremely common and break-ups are usually quite pragmatic. At the same time, the macho culture is still a bit more prevalent than in many European countries. As someone who is introverted and doesn’t really enjoy casual relationships or just dating for the sake of dating it wasn’t my thing but each to their own.

Conclusion

Would I want to live here forever? No. Did I really like the experience? Yes. Brazil is what I like to refer to as an “extrovert country”. So as an introvert it can be quite exhausting to navigate the social life here even more so than in european countries since people here are very talkative and open. However, this was a thing I was prepared for and since it was a dream of mine to got to Brazil one day despite that I can’t say that I didn’t have a great time and that it wasn’t worth it. I definitely see myself coming back to see more of the country. I simply personally enjoy the openness for a short period of time but it would probably be too much for me to live like this for the rest of my life. I am also quite thankful to have been born in a european country with free education, pretty good public health care, less corruption and overall more stability. Still I would not ever tell anyone NOT to go to Brazil, or Rio especially. I like to think of Rio as the bad boy of cities. It might be a little dangerous or more uncomfortable than others but it’s just so pretty, fascinating and mysterious you can’t help but fall in love.

#BrazilExchange #study abroad #exchange student #semester abroad #Exchange Semester #travelling #brazil #travel #rio de janeiro #portuguese #university #student #study french #study languages

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metromesses · 4 years

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Being depressed and together.

The following is all about my experiences as a person and with someone who suffers from depression. It can be a hard read for some, so please be aware before choosing to proceed.

For the better end of 4 years I’ve been in a relationship with someone who, like me, suffers from some very strong and at times overwhelming depression. In this time there’s been a lot of change to the public consciousness about depression and how we should address it both with the affected and as people who don’t suffer from it. It’s been an experience, to say the very least. But in the midst of it, I’ve noticed some very venomous ideologies find their way into the subject and, as a result, said collective consciousness. Being with someone who is depressed is absolutely not easy. This much is obvious. But there are a lot of people who believe that the partners of a depressed person should always be ready to handle it, and yield to the surges of depression for the sake of their significant others. Be ready to deal with mood swings or moments of misplaced passive aggression. Don’t love someone who is depressed unless you’re ready to “Deal with them” as I’ve seen it bluntly put. This is an absolutely egregious way of thinking. My experience dealing with a depressed partner as someone who also suffers from extremely deeply rooted depression has been a heavy one but not it hasn’t been an experience worth enduring. I’d like to share it with you all. My partner was raised by very unprepared parents. She suffered some serious sexual assault as near infant. The fallout of that broke her family, and as a result, her upbringing was very poor. She wasn’t taught any real values or principals that weren’t associated with strict fear based religion. This in turn made finding and understanding love difficult for her. I myself was raised by a very brutal parent, who made corporal punishment a near daily thing. I was also sexually assaulted for some two years under the care of someone my mother entrusted me to. The difference between our upbringing was the presence of my father, who despite being a simple man had personal values and principals and I looked up to him. He was the one family member I had, and unfortunately my significant other lacked that kind of love. In our growing close, I studied and did everything I could to understand not only what she felt but where it came from. The stems of her troubles, so as not to simply offer surface level help. I understand how it feels to have your issues be treated in a cookie cutter way, so it’s never left my sight the level of difficulty she’s endured. Relationships were always bad for her, and we shared that in common too. My need for a woman's love made me reckless and her need for love at all did the same to her. But the big difference between us now that brings me to write all this today, is that she actively refuses to do anything that makes her life any better. Passive aggression is ingrained in her tone. No level of conversation, compassionate or otherwise has ever truly effected her to the point where she makes a stern active effort to stop speaking to people in a rude or dismissive manner. The response always boils down to “Well it’s how everyone talks where I’m from” so there is no change. She’s has absolutely no patience and refuses to do anything that doesn’t make sense to her immediately. She has a persistent habit of asking so many questions instead of listening to anything thoroughly and making sense of context (as a result from her not letting go of her ways of speaking as explained above). She is used to doing things in less effective ways and her communication is plagued with aggressive tendencies and because of this, makes willingness to communicate a constant struggle. If it doesn’t make sense to her, she’ll ask questions and refuse your methods of explanation unless they are direct and concise to /her/. She is very quick to notice anytime I don’t’ seek her company in any of my interests or hobbies, despite the overwhelming efforts I’ve made to make everything I love available to her. She’ll be on her phone, browsing through Facebook or reading articles of random natures, and has grown accustomed to responding to the cycles of telling me I don’t give her chances and wasting all of them and ignoring how exhausted emotionally it makes me because “It takes time to change”.Her ideas of effort are extremely minimal. I on the other hand, take chances on her interests and often see what a source they are for the negativity that comes from her. Books and movies based on things that are always constantly awful in nature or subject. Nothing positive or reinforcing in the slightest. She wants me to share things with her like all the things that I’ve written above but never once has she listened to what I have to say and look or resolution. Her only objective has ever seemed to be pulling my feelings from out of me in an attempt to correct or challenge them and why they are. I spent the entirety of my time with her listening and doing what I can to make us a pair who could build each other up. She however, has too much comfort in her misery and actively does nothing to improve. EVERYTHING I’ve stated above I’ve spoken to her about over the course of years. There’s far more I could include, but these are just strong points that I believe are universal in people with similar ways of being. A lot of people are depressed and extremely toxic and will do nothing about it no matter how much love and attention, effort and affection is given to them. The world we live in enforces this idea that you can’t or shouldn’t give up on people, and I agree that it’s not the best thing to do. But very rarely do people acknowledge that the subject of depression is not as simple as people being imbalanced and struggling to maintain themselves. There are people like my partner who insist on living their way, knowing fully well it does nothing but hurt others. To drive the point home and come full circle, I’ve one last part of this to really help the gravity of this sink in.

My partner always had a fear that she could never be a mother. That because of her assault, she couldn’t conceive or carry a child. It was very clear how much it meant to her, and I FOOLISHLY thought that it would be a way we could grow together and start as parents instead of kids of crappy pasts. I helped her in ways I could never put in words to have the son we share now. Everything. Every appointment, every doctors consolation, every struggle, everything. From the moment we agreed on a child to the second I helped her push him out, I was there. Mind you, I didn’t give her a child simply as a means to fix this mess. I WANTED my child since well before her. All I’ve ever wanted was to be a father, and to be better so I could be a positive figure for my child as my father was for me. It took a lot for me to come to the choice of having one with her, but I did because I loved her and wanted to give her every chance to be better. But nothing ever changed. It got worse. The day after my son was born, we got the worst call we could’ve gotten. Her father had passed away and was found deceased. I was the one who had to break the news to her, and it’s only been worse since then. I have had no means to make any progress, and her depression and comfort with dwelling and doing nothing to better herself has literally brought a gun to my head more times than I can tell you. My son is the only thing keeping me breathing, I can’t say that plainly enough. Being with someone depressed is not easy, and sometimes it’s honestly not worth it. You can do everything in the world for someone and encourage them to seek help or be help, I think it’s absolutely important to keep the subject of depression in the minds of societies collective consciousness. But with so many people and even popular media romanticizing and poorly portraying what it is and how it feels, I felt the need to share my story to remind people that it’s not just some hard thing that can be solved with love and conversation. Depression has ways of killing you as a person. In my efforts to manage my own and help someone else’s, I’ve destroyed myself. If sharing my story stops ONE person from doing the same, then all of this was worth sharing.

#Depression #Relationships #Depressed #Mental health #mentalwellness

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elisaenglish · 4 years

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How We Grieve: Meghan O’Rourke on the Messiness of Mourning and Learning to Live with Loss

“The people we most love do become a physical part of us, ingrained in our synapses, in the pathways where memories are created.”

John Updike wrote in his memoir, “Each day, we wake slightly altered, and the person we were yesterday is dead. So why, one could say, be afraid of death, when death comes all the time?” And yet even if we were to somehow make peace with our own mortality, a primal and soul-shattering fear rips through whenever we think about losing those we love most dearly — a fear that metastasises into all-consuming grief when loss does come. In The Long Goodbye (public library), her magnificent memoir of grieving her mother’s death, Meghan O’Rourke crafts a masterwork of remembrance and reflection woven of extraordinary emotional intelligence. A poet, essayist, literary critic, and one of the youngest editors the New Yorker has ever had, she tells a story that is deeply personal in its details yet richly resonant in its larger humanity, making tangible the messy and often ineffable complexities that anyone who has ever lost a loved one knows all too intimately, all too anguishingly. What makes her writing — her mind, really — particularly enchanting is that she brings to this paralysingly difficult subject a poet’s emotional precision, an essayist’s intellectual expansiveness, and a voracious reader’s gift for apt, exquisitely placed allusions to such luminaries of language and life as Whitman, Longfellow, Tennyson, Swift, and Dickinson (“the supreme poet of grief”).

O’Rourke writes:

“When we are learning the world, we know things we cannot say how we know. When we are relearning the world in the aftermath of a loss, we feel things we had almost forgotten, old things, beneath the seat of reason.

[…]

Nothing prepared me for the loss of my mother. Even knowing that she would die did not prepare me. A mother, after all, is your entry into the world. She is the shell in which you divide and become a life. Waking up in a world without her is like waking up in a world without sky: unimaginable.

[…]

When we talk about love, we go back to the start, to pinpoint the moment of free fall. But this story is the story of an ending, of death, and it has no beginning. A mother is beyond any notion of a beginning. That’s what makes her a mother: you cannot start the story.”

In the days following her mother’s death, as O’Rourke faces the loneliness she anticipated and the sense of being lost that engulfed her unawares, she contemplates the paradoxes of loss: Ours is a culture that treats grief — a process of profound emotional upheaval — with a grotesquely mismatched rational prescription. On the one hand, society seems to operate by a set of unspoken shoulds for how we ought to feel and behave in the face of sorrow; on the other, she observes, “we have so few rituals for observing and externalising loss.” Without a coping strategy, she finds herself shutting down emotionally and going “dead inside” — a feeling psychologists call “numbing out” — and describes the disconnect between her intellectual awareness of sadness and its inaccessible emotional manifestation:

“It was like when you stay in cold water too long. You know something is off but don’t start shivering for ten minutes.”

But at least as harrowing as the aftermath of loss is the anticipatory bereavement in the months and weeks and days leading up to the inevitable — a particularly cruel reality of terminal cancer. O’Rourke writes:

“So much of dealing with a disease is waiting. Waiting for appointments, for tests, for “procedures.” And waiting, more broadly, for it—for the thing itself, for the other shoe to drop.”

The hallmark of this anticipatory loss seems to be a tapestry of inner contradictions. O’Rourke notes with exquisite self-awareness her resentment for the mundanity of it all — there is her mother, sipping soda in front of the TV on one of those final days — coupled with weighty, crushing compassion for the sacred humanity of death:

“Time doesn’t obey our commands. You cannot make it holy just because it is disappearing.”

Then there was the question of the body — the object of so much social and personal anxiety in real life, suddenly stripped of control in the surreal experience of impending death. Reflecting on the initially disorienting experience of helping her mother on and off the toilet and how quickly it became normalised, O’Rourke writes:

“It was what she had done for us, back before we became private and civilised about our bodies. In some ways I liked it. A level of anxiety about the body had been stripped away, and we were left with the simple reality: Here it was.

I heard a lot about the idea of dying “with dignity” while my mother was sick. It was only near her very end that I gave much thought to what this idea meant. I didn’t actually feel it was undignified for my mother’s body to fail — that was the human condition. Having to help my mother on and off the toilet was difficult, but it was natural. The real indignity, it seemed, was dying where no one cared for you the way your family did, dying where it was hard for your whole family to be with you and where excessive measures might be taken to keep you alive past a moment that called for letting go. I didn’t want that for my mother. I wanted her to be able to go home. I didn’t want to pretend she wasn’t going to die.”

Among the most painful realities of witnessing death — one particularly exasperating for type-A personalities — is how swiftly it severs the direct correlation between effort and outcome around which we build our lives. Though the notion might seem rational on the surface — especially in a culture that fetishises work ethic and “grit” as the key to success — an underbelly of magical thinking lurks beneath, which comes to light as we behold the helplessness and injustice of premature death. Noting that “the mourner’s mind is superstitious, looking for signs and wonders,” O’Rourke captures this paradox:

“One of the ideas I’ve clung to most of my life is that if I just try hard enough it will work out. If I work hard, I will be spared, and I will get what I desire, finding the cave opening over and over again, thieving life from the abyss. This sturdy belief system has a sidecar in which superstition rides. Until recently, I half believed that if a certain song came on the radio just as I thought of it, it meant that all would be well. What did I mean? I preferred not to answer that question. To look too closely was to prick the balloon of possibility.”

But our very capacity for the irrational — for the magic of magical thinking — also turns out to be essential for our spiritual survival. Without the capacity to discern from life’s senseless sound a meaningful melody, we would be consumed by the noise. In fact, one of O’Rourke’s most poetic passages recounts her struggle to find a transcendent meaning on an average day, amid the average hospital noises:

“I could hear the coughing man whose family talked about sports and sitcoms every time they visited, sitting politely around his bed as if you couldn’t see the death knobs that were his knees poking through the blanket, but as they left they would hug him and say, We love you, and We’ll be back soon, and in their voices and in mine and in the nurse who was so gentle with my mother, tucking cool white sheets over her with a twist of her wrist, I could hear love, love that sounded like a rope, and I began to see a flickering electric current everywhere I looked as I went up and down the halls, flagging nurses, little flecks of light dotting the air in sinewy lines, and I leaned on these lines like guy ropes when I was so tired I couldn’t walk anymore and a voice in my head said: Do you see this love? And do you still not believe?

I couldn’t deny the voice.

Now I think: That was exhaustion.

But at the time the love, the love, it was like ropes around me, cables that could carry us up into the higher floors away from our predicament and out onto the roof and across the empty spaces above the hospital to the sky where we could gaze down upon all the people driving, eating, having sex, watching TV, angry people, tired people, happy people, all doing, all being—”

In the weeks following her mother’s death, melancholy — “the black sorrow, bilious, angry, a slick in my chest” — comes coupled with another intense emotion, a parallel longing for a different branch of that-which-no-longer-is:

“I experienced an acute nostalgia. This longing for a lost time was so intense I thought it might split me in two, like a tree hit by lightning. I was — as the expression goes — flooded by memories. It was a submersion in the past that threatened to overwhelm any “rational” experience of the present, water coming up around my branches, rising higher. I did not care much about work I had to do. I was consumed by memories of seemingly trivial things.”

But the embodied presence of the loss is far from trivial. O’Rourke, citing a psychiatrist whose words had stayed with her, captures it with harrowing precision:

“The people we most love do become a physical part of us, ingrained in our synapses, in the pathways where memories are created.”

In another breathtaking passage, O’Rourke conveys the largeness of grief as it emanates out of our pores and into the world that surrounds us:

“In February, there was a two-day snowstorm in New York. For hours I lay on my couch, reading, watching the snow drift down through the large elm outside… the sky going gray, then eerie violet, the night breaking around us, snow like flakes of ash. A white mantle covered trees, cars, lintels, and windows. It was like one of grief’s moods: melancholic; estranged from the normal; in touch with the longing that reminds us that we are being-toward-death, as Heidegger puts it. Loss is our atmosphere; we, like the snow, are always falling toward the ground, and most of the time we forget it.”

Because grief seeps into the external world as the inner experience bleeds into the outer, it’s understandable — it’s hopelessly human — that we’d also project the very object of our grief onto the external world. One of the most common experiences, O’Rourke notes, is for the grieving to try to bring back the dead — not literally, but by seeing, seeking, signs of them in the landscape of life, symbolism in the everyday. The mind, after all, is a pattern-recognition machine and when the mind’s eye is as heavily clouded with a particular object as it is when we grieve a loved one, we begin to manufacture patterns. Recounting a day when she found inside a library book handwriting that seemed to be her mother’s, O’Rourke writes:

“The idea that the dead might not be utterly gone has an irresistible magnetism. I’d read something that described what I had been experiencing. Many people go through what psychologists call a period of “animism,” in which you see the dead person in objects and animals around you, and you construct your false reality, the reality where she is just hiding, or absent. This was the mourner’s secret position, it seemed to me: I have to say this person is dead, but I don’t have to believe it.

[…]

Acceptance isn’t necessarily something you can choose off a menu, like eggs instead of French toast. Instead, researchers now think that some people are inherently primed to accept their own death with “integrity” (their word, not mine), while others are primed for “despair.” Most of us, though, are somewhere in the middle, and one question researchers are now focusing on is: How might more of those in the middle learn to accept their deaths? The answer has real consequences for both the dying and the bereaved.”

O’Rourke considers the psychology and physiology of grief:

“When you lose someone you were close to, you have to reassess your picture of the world and your place in it. The more your identity is wrapped up with the deceased, the more difficult the mental work.

The first systematic survey of grief, I read, was conducted by Erich Lindemann. Having studied 101 people, many of them related to the victims of the Cocoanut Grove fire of 1942, he defined grief as “sensations of somatic distress occurring in waves lasting from twenty minutes to an hour at a time, a feeling of tightness in the throat, choking with shortness of breath, need for sighing, and an empty feeling in the abdomen, lack of muscular power, and an intensive subjective distress described as tension or mental pain.”

Tracing the history of studying grief, including Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s famous and often criticised 1969 “stage theory” outlining a simple sequence of Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance, O’Rourke notes that most people experience grief not as sequential stages but as ebbing and flowing states that recur at various points throughout the process. She writes:

“Researchers now believe there are two kinds of grief: “normal grief” and “complicated grief” (also called “prolonged grief”). “Normal grief” is a term for what most bereaved people experience. It peaks within the first six months and then begins to dissipate. “Complicated grief” does not, and often requires medication or therapy. But even “normal grief”… is hardly gentle. Its symptoms include insomnia or other sleep disorders, difficulty breathing, auditory or visual hallucinations, appetite problems, and dryness of mouth.”

One of the most persistent psychiatric ideas about grief, O’Rourke notes, is the notion that one ought to “let go” in order to “move on” — a proposition plentiful even in the casual advice of her friends in the weeks following her mother’s death. And yet it isn’t necessarily the right coping strategy for everyone, let alone the only one, as our culture seems to suggest. Unwilling to “let go,” O’Rourke finds solace in anthropological alternatives:

“Studies have shown that some mourners hold on to a relationship with the deceased with no notable ill effects. In China, for instance, mourners regularly speak to dead ancestors, and one study demonstrated that the bereaved there “recovered more quickly from loss” than bereaved Americans do.

I wasn’t living in China, though, and in those weeks after my mother’s death, I felt that the world expected me to absorb the loss and move forward, like some kind of emotional warrior. One night I heard a character on 24—the president of the United States—announce that grief was a “luxury” she couldn’t “afford right now.” This model represents an old American ethic of muscling through pain by throwing yourself into work; embedded in it is a desire to avoid looking at death. We’ve adopted a sort of “Ask, don’t tell” policy. The question “How are you?” is an expression of concern, but as my dad had said, the mourner quickly figures out that it shouldn’t always be taken for an actual inquiry… A mourner’s experience of time isn’t like everyone else’s. Grief that lasts longer than a few weeks may look like self-indulgence to those around you. But if you’re in mourning, three months seems like nothing — [according to some] research, three months might well find you approaching the height of sorrow.”

Another Western hegemony in the culture of grief, O’Rourke notes, is its privatisation — the unspoken rule that mourning is something we do in the privacy of our inner lives, alone, away from the public eye. Though for centuries private grief was externalised as public mourning, modernity has left us bereft of rituals to help us deal with our grief:

“The disappearance of mourning rituals affects everyone, not just the mourner. One of the reasons many people are unsure about how to act around a loss is that they lack rules or meaningful conventions, and they fear making a mistake. Rituals used to help the community by giving everyone a sense of what to do or say. Now, we’re at sea.

[…]

Such rituals… aren’t just about the individual; they are about the community.”

Craving “a formalisation of grief, one that might externalise it,” O’Rourke plunges into the existing literature:

“The British anthropologist Geoffrey Gorer, the author of Death, Grief, and Mourning, argues that, at least in Britain, the First World War played a huge role in changing the way people mourned. Communities were so overwhelmed by the sheer number of dead that the practice of ritualised mourning for the individual eroded. Other changes were less obvious but no less important. More people, including women, began working outside the home; in the absence of caretakers, death increasingly took place in the quarantining swaddle of the hospital. The rise of psychoanalysis shifted attention from the communal to the individual experience. In 1917, only two years after Émile Durkheim wrote about mourning as an essential social process, Freud’s “Mourning and Melancholia” defined it as something essentially private and individual, internalising the work of mourning. Within a few generations, I read, the experience of grief had fundamentally changed. Death and mourning had been largely removed from the public realm. By the 1960s, Gorer could write that many people believed that “sensible, rational men and women can keep their mourning under complete control by strength of will and character, so that it need be given no public expression, and indulged, if at all, in private, as furtively as... masturbation.” Today, our only public mourning takes the form of watching the funerals of celebrities and statesmen. It’s common to mock such grief as false or voyeuristic (“crocodile tears,” one commentator called mourners’ distress at Princess Diana’s funeral), and yet it serves an important social function. It’s a more mediated version, Leader suggests, of a practice that goes all the way back to soldiers in The Iliad mourning with Achilles for the fallen Patroclus.

I found myself nodding in recognition at Gorer’s conclusions. “If mourning is denied outlet, the result will be suffering,” Gorer wrote. “At the moment our society is signally failing to give this support and assistance... The cost of this failure in misery, loneliness, despair and maladaptive behaviour is very high.” Maybe it’s not a coincidence that in Western countries with fewer mourning rituals, the bereaved report more physical ailments in the year following a death.”

Finding solace in Marilynne Robinson’s beautiful meditation on our humanity, O’Rourke returns to her own journey:

“The otherworldliness of loss was so intense that at times I had to believe it was a singular passage, a privilege of some kind, even if all it left me with was a clearer grasp of our human predicament. It was why I kept finding myself drawn to the remote desert: I wanted to be reminded of how the numinous impinges on ordinary life.”

Reflecting on her struggle to accept her mother’s loss — her absence, “an absence that becomes a presence” — O’Rourke writes:

“If children learn through exposure to new experiences, mourners unlearn through exposure to absence in new contexts. Grief requires acquainting yourself with the world again and again; each “first” causes a break that must be reset… And so you always feel suspense, a queer dread—you never know what occasion will break the loss freshly open.”

She later adds:

“After a loss, you have to learn to believe the dead one is dead. It doesn’t come naturally.”

Among the most chilling effects of grief is how it reorients us toward ourselves as it surfaces our mortality paradox and the dawning awareness of our own impermanence. O’Rourke’s words ring with the profound discomfort of our shared existential bind:

“The dread of death is so primal, it overtakes me on a molecular level. In the lowest moments, it produces nihilism. If I am going to die, why not get it over with? Why live in this agony of anticipation?

[…]

I was unable to push these questions aside: What are we to do with the knowledge that we die? What bargain do you make in your mind so as not to go crazy with fear of the predicament, a predicament none of us knowingly chose to enter? You can believe in God and heaven, if you have the capacity for faith. Or, if you don’t, you can do what a stoic like Seneca did, and push away the awfulness by noting that if death is indeed extinction, it won’t hurt, for we won’t experience it. “It would be dreadful could it remain with you; but of necessity either it does not arrive or else it departs,” he wrote.

If this logic fails to comfort, you can decide, as Plato and Jonathan Swift did, that since death is natural, and the gods must exist, it cannot be a bad thing. As Swift said, “It is impossible that anything so natural, so necessary, and so universal as death, should ever have been designed by Providence as an evil to mankind.” And Socrates: “I am quite ready to admit… that I ought to be grieved at death, if I were not persuaded in the first place that I am going to other gods who are wise and good.” But this is poor comfort to those of us who have no gods to turn to. If you love this world, how can you look forward to departing it? Rousseau wrote, “He who pretends to look on death without fear lies. All men are afraid of dying, this is the great law of sentient beings, without which the entire human species would soon be destroyed.”

And yet, O’Rourke arrives at the same conclusion that Alan Lightman did in his sublime meditation on our longing for permanence as she writes:

“Without death our lives would lose their shape: “Death is the mother of beauty,” Wallace Stevens wrote. Or as a character in Don DeLillo’s White Noise says, “I think it’s a mistake to lose one’s sense of death, even one’s fear of death. Isn’t death the boundary we need?” It’s not clear that DeLillo means us to agree, but I think I do. I love the world more because it is transient.

[…]

One would think that living so proximately to the provisional would ruin life, and at times it did make it hard. But at other times I experienced the world with less fear and more clarity. It didn’t matter if I was in line for an extra two minutes. I could take in the sensations of colour, sound, life. How strange that we should live on this planet and make cereal boxes, and shopping carts, and gum! That we should renovate stately old banks and replace them with Trader Joe’s! We were ants in a sugar bowl, and one day the bowl would empty.”

This awareness of our transience, our minuteness, and the paradoxical enlargement of our aliveness that it produces seems to be the sole solace from grief’s grip, though we all arrive at it differently. O’Rourke’s father approached it from another angle. Recounting a conversation with him one autumn night — one can’t help but notice the beautiful, if inadvertent, echo of Carl Sagan’s memorable words — O’Rourke writes:

“The Perseid meteor showers are here,” he told me. “And I’ve been eating dinner outside and then lying in the lounge chairs watching the stars like your mother and I used to” — at some point he stopped calling her Mom — “and that helps. It might sound strange, but I was sitting there, looking up at the sky, and I thought, ‘You are but a mote of dust. And your troubles and travails are just a mote of a mote of dust.’ And it helped me. I have allowed myself to think about things I had been scared to think about and feel. And it allowed me to be there — to be present. Whatever my life is, whatever my loss is, it’s small in the face of all that existence… The meteor shower changed something. I was looking the other way through a telescope before: I was just looking at what was not there. Now I look at what is there.”

O’Rourke goes on to reflect on this ground-shifting quality of loss:

“It’s not a question of getting over it or healing. No; it’s a question of learning to live with this transformation. For the loss is transformative, in good ways and bad, a tangle of change that cannot be threaded into the usual narrative spools. It is too central for that. It’s not an emergence from the cocoon, but a tree growing around an obstruction.”

In one of the most beautiful passages in the book, O’Rourke captures the spiritual sensemaking of death in an anecdote that calls to mind Alan Lightman’s account of a “transcendent experience” and Alan Watt’s consolation in the oneness of the universe. She writes:

“Before we scattered the ashes, I had an eerie experience. I went for a short run. I hate running in the cold, but after so much time indoors in the dead of winter I was filled with exuberance. I ran lightly through the stripped, bare woods, past my favourite house, poised on a high hill, and turned back, flying up the road, turning left. In the last stretch I picked up the pace, the air crisp, and I felt myself float up off the ground. The world became greenish. The brightness of the snow and the trees intensified. I was almost giddy. Behind the bright flat horizon of the treescape, I understood, were worlds beyond our everyday perceptions. My mother was out there, inaccessible to me, but indelible. The blood moved along my veins and the snow and trees shimmered in greenish light. Suffused with joy, I stopped stock-still in the road, feeling like a player in a drama I didn’t understand and didn’t need to. Then I sprinted up the driveway and opened the door and as the heat rushed out the clarity dropped away.

I’d had an intuition like this once before, as a child in Vermont. I was walking from the house to open the gate to the driveway. It was fall. As I put my hand on the gate, the world went ablaze, as bright as the autumn leaves, and I lifted out of myself and understood that I was part of a magnificent book. What I knew as “life” was a thin version of something larger, the pages of which had all been written. What I would do, how I would live — it was already known. I stood there with a kind of peace humming in my blood.”

A non-believer who had prayed for the first time in her life when her mother died, O’Rourke quotes Virginia Woolf’s luminous meditation on the spirit and writes:

“This is the closest description I have ever come across to what I feel to be my experience. I suspect a pattern behind the wool, even the wool of grief; the pattern may not lead to heaven or the survival of my consciousness — frankly I don’t think it does — but that it is there somehow in our neurons and synapses is evident to me. We are not transparent to ourselves. Our longings are like thick curtains stirring in the wind. We give them names. What I do not know is this: Does that otherness — that sense of an impossibly real universe larger than our ability to understand it — mean that there is meaning around us?

[…]

I have learned a lot about how humans think about death. But it hasn’t necessarily taught me more about my dead, where she is, what she is. When I held her body in my hands and it was just black ash, I felt no connection to it, but I tell myself perhaps it is enough to still be matter, to go into the ground and be “remixed” into some new part of the living culture, a new organic matter. Perhaps there is some solace in this continued existence.

[…]

I think about my mother every day, but not as concertedly as I used to. She crosses my mind like a spring cardinal that flies past the edge of your eye: startling, luminous, lovely, gone.”

The Long Goodbye is a remarkable read in its entirety — the kind that speaks with gentle crispness to the parts of us we protect most fiercely yet long to awaken most desperately. Complement it with Alan Lightman in finding solace in our impermanence and Tolstoy on finding meaning in a meaningless world.

Source: Maria Popova, brainpickings.org (9th June 2014)

#quote #women writers #love #life #loss #grief #existential musings #all eternal things #love in a time of...#the places you have come to fear the most #the same deep water as you #laid bare #intelligence quotients #depth perception #melancholy skies #this is how it feels #stands on its own #elisa english #elisaenglish

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twodudesandamovie · 4 years

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Brokeback Mountain Review

In lights of the recent Academy Awards, Eric nominated one of the more famous Oscar snubs in Brokeback mountain. Both Alex and Eric also were interested in how we look at LGBTQIA+ movies today as opposed to 15 years ago. Among the things discussed post-review were how Brokeback Mountain wouldn’t be controversial today, and how it was really a common love story with a twist. Alex's Review: With ample amounts of dread, I dove into this over two hour long Lil Nas X origin story. Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger's characters seem to have no real jobs and instead aimlessly move sheep from Point A to Point B for no fucking reason and get paid for it. I guess maybe this is what being a cowboy entailed, but I assumed you became noted as a cowboy by your big hat combined with a denim jacket/jeans. Who could say really. Their relationship starts out on a confusing note, where you feel uncomfortable as to the willingness of both parties, but eventually you get to see a very complicated narrative form about what it was like to be secretly gay in 1963. The parts of the film that involve herding sheep are actually very entertaining, to have a peek into a lifestyle of a man who has to be able to pick up an entire sheep. I do not want or think I will ever need that ability, but I digress. The movie itself, although dreadfully long, hit on a lot of complicated emotions. Trying to follow three or more unsuccessful relationships throughout the course of the movie felt emotionally taxing at times, but not necessarily in a way that I could not relate to. At the end of the day, it sort of is just a complicated love story, but with a twist on it. Not unheard of in film, but I've never had to experience it told in this form. Usually, there's a "taking two girls to the same dance" kind of humor to it all. Eric and I talked about how we were interested to see the movie post 2005, where the stigma of homosexuality is no longer prevalent in society. That being said, the movie felt like its overall message was sort of missed, if it actually had a message. However, the movie's goal to hit me on an emotional level was extremely successful. I went from not caring about the characters and very confused about the purpose of their work or why they could not foster a single healthy relationship, I ended being surprised I had somehow burnt through 135 minutes and very sad Jake and Heath did not get to live their best lives. Although I think it was a actually a REALLY good movie on a lot of levels, I wouldn't say I necessarily enjoyed the film. It is surely the highest rated movie on Rotten Tomatoes I have seen in the past decade that is not a comedy or animated, the entire sentiment was sort of lost on me, because in 2020, the year of our lord, I now have shame that I am straight. Funny how time works. Alex's rating: 7/10

Eric’s Review: Growing up, Brokeback Mountain was of course known as “the gay cowboy movie.” Looking back, that summary was so minimizing for a movie of this excellence, but that’s what 14-year-old me knew it as. That shortsighted synopsis carried with me to this day, I’m not proud of it, but that’s what it stuck in my head as. It generated tons of controversy when it came out in 2005. Primordial fuck-noodles like Rush Limbaugh and Don Imus weren’t short on homophobic remarks of Brokeback, and the owner of the Utah Jazz even pulled it from his movie theatre’s. Every conservative with a mouth cavity couldn’t contain their uproar. Then it was snubbed at the Oscars. Crash won Best Picture instead of Brokeback Mountain, it shouldn’t have hurt this movie’s legacy, but it did. Crash seems more deeply-ingrained in my memory than Brokeback Mountain, and maybe because society at that time wasn’t ready for a movie quite like this. We put it in a box and never let it out. After watching, I deeply felt that it didn’t matter what Jack or Ennis’ sexual orientation’s were (as it shouldn’t), it was a love story about two exceedingly lonely human’s trapped in a society that wouldn’t accept them. Fast-forward 30-40 years from when the movie was set, and it didn’t seem like much had changed. I don’t think Crash deserved Best Picture over Brokeback Mountain, but am I angry that it happened? Not really. Awards are decided by those that vote on them (no shit), and that particular group of people felt Crash was the better movie. C’est la vie. I usually don’t enjoy dwelling on plot in my reviews but I owe it to the reader to say what this movie is about since so many people refer to it as “the gay cowboy movie.” Two men, Jack Twist (played by Jake Gylenhaal) and Ennis Del Ray (played by Heath Ledger), show up at a trailer in Wyoming asking for work for the summer. A jack-of-all-trades (including being a jackass) named Joe needs someone to keep an eye on his sheep for him up in Brokeback Mountain, so he sends them up there to do so with a horse, some guns, and some cans of beans. As they spend time on the scenic heart-swelling Brokeback Mountain, they fall in love. But it’s the early 60s, and as they prepare to go back down the mountain, they know they can’t carry out their romance in the narrow-minded rural landscape of their country towns. As Ennis points out, people get killed for that. This act ends in Jack and Ennis having a fist fight, as emotionally repressed men tend to do. Focus-in on blood Jack gets on his shirt and save this for later. Post-tryst, Ennis gets married and Jack is a rodeo boy making passes at bull-tamers. But then Ennis gets a postcard one day. The screenplay does a wonderful job seamlessly transitioning time as they carry out their romance over the years. They’d tell their wives they were going on “fishing trips,” when they were really going to the mountains for some whiskey and love-making. We can tell Ennis truly does love his wife Alma (played by Michelle Williams) at the start of their relationship. They have two kids, but the kids cause quite a strain on their marriage. And as the years go by, Ennis’ commitment issues due to his parents abandoning him as a child rear their ugly head. Jack marries a fellow rodeo girl in Texas named Laureen (played by Anne Hathaway), but their relationship is more of a business transaction. She approaches him to engage in some tumbleweed-rodeo-secks. She just wants a kid and a husband to help in the machinery business. This is okay with Jack and their marriage lasts, even with Jack’s infidelities. Ennis’ doesn’t. Alma knows about Ennis and Jack’s relationship and they grow apart over the years. Ennis’ commitment issues aren’t exclusive to Alma, though. As the film progresses, we see he applied this to every relationship in his life: his future girlfriend, his daughter’s, and even Jack. It’s why their relationship ultimately fails. Jack had dreams of living in the Wyoming country and being a cattle rancher with Ennis, but Ennis often laughed at the notion. Ennis remembers a time when his dad showed him a dead body of a gay man beaten to death. It’s hard to say if he’s ashamed of their relationship, or just scared. Even when he breaks down to Jack and exclaims: “YOU MADE ME LIKE THIS!” The audience knows he doesn’t really mean it, he’s just a scared Wyoming cowboy with commitment issues. The last act starts with Ennis attempting to mail Jack a postcard, as that’s how they used to communicate (I really do love how much more romantic a postcard or a letter can be than a text), he gets a return to sender that says “deceased.” Ennis calls Laureen and talks to her for the first time in his life. She knows he was one of Jack’s lover’s and seems slightly annoyed but at peace with it. She gives him a bogus story about how a tire popped and Jack drowned in his own blood, but Ennis knows he was beaten to death for being gay. His whole bitter-tough-cowboy facade crumbles, as it only could with Jack, and Ennis and Laureen have an honest moment reminiscing over the man they both loved. We could tell Laureen’s relationship with Jack was no longer transactional, as they aged together and learned to love each other. She tells Ennis he was cremated and that Jack always wanted his ashes scattered on Brokeback Mountain, and that he should go visit his parents. When Ennis arrives, we immediately know the family dynamic: Jack had a typical tough-exterior-tobacco-spitting farmer dad, but a sweet gentle mom where Jack may have gotten the familial love and understanding that Ennis never got. He used to tell his dad that he wanted to buy a home near him with Ennis and help with the ranch. Even through the dad’s tough exterior and his insistence on Jack’s ashes being scattered at the family plot and not at Brokeback Mountain, we can tell he’s truly a father who misses his son. There is something fragile to him, something so melancholy that it expels a grieving scent throughout the home. Jack’s mom tells Ennis that she left his room as it was when he was a child. Ennis goes up there in the most heartbreaking scene of the movie, and sees Jack’s roots. Then he wanders over to the closet and finds the shirt Jack was wearing the last day they were on Brokeback Mountain. The blood from their fight is still on the sleeve. It’s a symbol of how Ennis pushed away everyone he’s ever loved, but especially Jack, the love of his life and only one who ever truly understood him. He takes the shirt, not only as a memorial to Jack, but as a reminder of how he’s treated his loved ones in his life. In the last scene, Ennis’ daughter visits him. Previously, we learned Ennis was largely absent from her life. Ennis doesn’t even know who she’s currently dating when she visits him, and then she tells him she’s getting married. At first, Ennis wants to cling to his cold exterior, the shell it seems he’s reverted into even more since Jack’s death. But we see him finally shed this shell, as he tells his daughter he’ll be at the wedding. Maybe he heard Jack’s voice in his head reminding him to be a bit more brave, as after Ennis’ daughter leaves, he walks over to his dresser where Jack’s bloody shirt hangs. Cut to credits and let me cry. The first point that caught my eye about directorial choices in this movie was the stark juxtaposition of the dream-like Wyoming mountains and the depressing domestication of Wyoming and Texas rural home-life. The resplendent colors we see in the mountains and the off-whites and browns we see in Wyoming and Texas are purposeful and are painted with sincere artistry. Ang Lee had a balloon and he grabbed it with his gentle directorial touch then smeared it with peanut butter and sent it off into the clouds. The acting was downright phenomenal. I believe this was the first movie where Heath Ledger was taken seriously as an actor and not a Hollywood heartthrob. It was pre-Dark Knight and he may have never gotten that role if it weren’t for this movie. I know I pointed it out in my Little Women review, but the talent it takes to change your accent like that is befuddling. Ledger is Australian and is talking in a down-home Wyoming drawl. His portrayal of Ennis is the beating heart of this movie. I’d like to say he was a strong and silent type, but really he was weak and silent, sort of a metaphor for the way our society treated sexuality back then. I could review each actor’s performance, but the truth is: it was utterly superb all around. Only with this kind of acting and screenwriting can a movie achieve such character depth and nuance. Rating: 9.5/10. One of the best film’s of the twenty-first century. Did this deserve the Oscar over Crash? Fuck yes it did. I liked Crash but it wasn’t the all-around masterpiece Brokeback Mountain was. It’s also insane to think how far LGBTQ+ has come in 15 years, as I think Brokeback Mountain wouldn’t even be close to as controversial today as it was back then. Do I think it might’ve won the Oscar? Probably not. The academy hasn’t evolved much since then. R.I.P. Heath Ledger too, it was so sad watching a deceased actor at the top of his talent in one of his best roles.

#brokeback mountain #heath ledger #jake gylenhall #anne hathaway #michelle williams #wyoming #texas #cowboy #lgbtq #lgbtqiia+#rodeo #oscars #academy awards #crash

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thefaithletters · 4 years

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Confronting Our Values: To a Troubled Muslim Community

Dearest whose trust in the Muslim community has been lost after an immensity of love,

On this day, nearly fifteen hundred lunar years ago, our Prophet Muhammed ﷺ was born. His birth changed history. His legacy, and our religion, was built on the foundation of our Prophet's character before he received revelation: honesty and trustworthiness.

Yet, our ummah is plagued by corruption, deceit, manipulation, and hypocrisy. These qualities are in every human society, to some extent. It's normal that some Muslims will have these qualities (after all, most Muslims don't choose their religion but rather treat it like cultural inheritance). But to find these qualities in the ones who have put themselves in positions of being entrusted to revive the message in the hearts, of people, who are elevated for that role, and who are privy to the spiritual hunger and thirst of vulnerable people --that is among the greatest fitnahs.

I am concerned about how desensitized we are becoming to news of this nature. I notice it in myself, and I see it in friends: a spiritual fatigue that doesn't want to be spoken about.

And it breaks my heart.

When there's a lack of consistency or agreement between two beliefs (or values) or a belief and behavior, the mind enters a state of cognitive dissonance. This state of unrest feels heavy and unsettling, and people are naturally motivated to alleviate this discomfort by changing their behaviors, adopting a new belief or idea, seeking new information that offers an alternative paradigm, or deciding to reduce the importance of one of the beliefs or values that are in disharmony. This seems like the state of the majority of young American Muslims today.

The more dangerous trend I see emerging is what I consider spiritual fission. In this state, people can no longer identify or point to the countless directions in which their faith has been shattered. It's a chaotic state, and it's too uncomfortable to confront directly so it naturally leads to numbness and apathy regarding anything religious or an inability to engage with such topics deeply.

Our religious institutions and spiritual leaders are largely responsible for the young generation's disconnection from their mosques and communities (parents play a significant role, too, but that's a topic for another time). It's stories like the ones that came out recently that have caused many people deep despair in spiritual communities.

We are all flawed people. The issue isn't that a Muslim committed a major sin or was fallible to his desires. The real issue is the lack of truthfulness in how it's handled by many involved. Deceit is what erodes trust, and trust is the foundation of faith and community. When it is revealed to a spiritual leader and the community members who closely work with him in a leadership capacity that he is no longer able to uphold his responsibility, the right thing to do is proactively step down and acknowledge a struggle and need for improvement.

Of course, none of us have heard of this type of honorable handling of such situations happening in our communities (I really hope I'm wrong here). Why? Money and ego.

Sadly, many of our spiritual leaders are financially reliant upon their image and reputation as people of God among the community. This means that a religious leader who becomes exposed for a betrayal of his position may suddenly lose all his income and face an overwhelming fear of instability and anxiety about the future. So the survival instinct kicks in (especially if family is involved) and the man no longer sees the moral and ethical layers of the situation.

Money and religion should never mix. Easy to say, complex to implement. I know. Yet, necessary and true, nonetheless.

Another primary reason so-called spiritual leaders don't step down or come forward truthfully when they've betrayed their positions of trust is probably that they don't want to lose their status in the community. Being a celebrity imam can become so ingrained into someone's identity that it becomes almost like an addiction to attention or power. This is also connected to a larger societal shift in values (studies show an upward trend of youth who say they want to become famous). It's even more connected to the shift in values hierarchy we have as a larger Muslim community. Authenticity, truthfulness, integrity...those are all secondary to knowledgeability, charm, and "success."

Until we become a people who hold honesty and trustworthiness among our highest values, our leaders will continue to reflect us.

As we continue to remain obsessed with image and reputation in the community independent of actual virtue or character, we continue to cultivate a culture of hypocrisy and double-lives. People only hide the sins that aren't yet accepted by the community. It's only a matter of time before the scope widens.

I have nothing juicy to say about the recent news regarding Usama Canon. Like many of you who had only love and admiration for Usama Canon and the community he founded, this week's news have been tough for me. I participated in Ta'leef's Refining the Core program earlier this year and met Usama Canon in 2016 when he came to Maryland to give a talk. He was one of the few people who took the time to answer a question I had with careful consideration and respect. I left that talk feeling a sense of hope. And then when I started learning about Ta'leef and participated in their community, I continued to carry with me the hope for our community to be healthy, respectful of all people, and authentically striving for goodness. For the good that he's done, and if this in fact his way of acknowledging the harm he's made and making amends, I pray for his wellbeing. And if this is Ta'leef's uplifting of accountability and honoring their positions of trust, I pray for their success and healing.

Like many, I wish I were surprised by this. Sadly, I know this kind of stuff happens. I’ve witnessed misconduct and heard about it from friends. I’ve tried to speak up about the betrayal of authority and unhealthy behaviors, but the disappointing reactions I got were discouraging. I talked to the spiritual leader who I had witnessed inappropriateness from, and his response was gaslighting. It was a complex and spiritually fatiguing experience. In the end, I just removed myself from the community. Though I didn’t experience abuse, my faith was deeply tested and my heart hurt. I almost lost my religion. I was lucky to be able to notice and protect myself from anyone taking advantage of me. I can’t imagine the pain actual victims endure, and it saddens me that the community cares more about the celebrity abusers than the “nobodies” who are abused (often the most vulnerable members of our communities who don’t have powerful families, financial resources, or impressive professional titles).

I've had my faith and hope in this community shattered a few times, and every time God somehow found a way to remind me that there are still beautiful people out there who are true seekers. They aren't the ones with the followers and fans and financial ties to their religion or spirituality. More often than not, the modern-day companions of the Prophet (the ones he referred to as his brothers and sisters he hadn't yet met) are those who keep their good deeds concealed and remain patient in the face of oppression. Their words aren't tweet-worthy and there are no fun perks to being their friends. They treat their family members and parents better than anyone else. They are known for their honesty and trustworthiness. On the day our Prophet Muhammad ﷺ was born, I pray we are all able to take a moment to be truthful with ourselves about the state of our hearts. Where are we not truthful? What steps must we take to embody more honesty and trustworthiness? Where is our faith hurting? How are we in community? What are our own hierarchies of values? How can we be better believers?

Salam.

P.S. I share these thoughts selfishly because they continue to occupy my mind. I release them here so that I no longer carry the burden of their release. I’m not spiritually superior for writing this. Most know my deep struggles with my faith.

#islam #muslims #muslim community #taleef #usama canon

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bigskydreaming · 5 years

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Hey you know what’s really funny, in that not at all, actually hey these priorities are kinda fucked, kinda way?

What’s hilarious is how people are more accepting of the sexualization of kids’ shows than they are of the social criticism of kids’ shows.

No, I’m not saying everyone who condemns commentary of kids’ shows with ‘ugh omg chill, its just a kids’ show’ is a hypocrite who simultaneously approves of sexualized art or fics of those shows or characters.

But I am saying that its definitely, definitely a thing, that even people who I see condemning pedophilic works seem to switch gears when it comes to being critical of social justice issues in the same source materials. As though their worldview is more willing to make room for or accept the inevitability of people wanting to sexualize stuff even though they’re clear that its meant ‘for kids’....that they’re willing to make room for the validity of people being critical of the messages imparted in stuff meant ‘for kids.’

And like.....does that not seem fucking backwards?

We need to stop treating stuff ‘meant for kids’ as though kids are somehow separate from the rest of society and immune to the way we’re all affected and influenced and harmed by media meant for adults.

Instead of them being MORE vulnerable, LESS protected, MORE influenced by the media meant FOR them. As though they’re not actively in the stages of being shaped by their media, their influences, their entertainment....instead of at the stages we’re at, where we’re forced to PUSH BACK against all the deeply ingrained biases and assumptions we’ve been mired in.....since we were kids.

Like...this is just so bizarre to me. Of fucking COURSE we need to be critical of ‘just a kids’ show’ or something that’s ‘jeez, meant for kids, remember’. Because if grown adults who see and are aware of the problems in those things, or areas they need work, don’t criticize and condemn and push back against them....who the fuck will?? The kids don’t know enough to protect themselves from toxic ideas and influences, because the toxic ideas and influences ARE WHAT THEY’RE IN THE PROCESS OF LEARNING FROM!

Unless, do you somehow think, in this culture where we’re painfully aware of how damn near EVERY piece of media we consume has layers and layers of racism, sexism, homophobia, abuse apologism, rape fetishization....do you think that the second a content creator sits down at their desk and drawing board and goes “okay, but remember, brain, this is for KIDS, think of the kids!” That like.....that content creator suddenly, magically....gets it right? Because its for the kiddies, they’re able to suddenly, like, fucking levitate right over all their own ingrained biases and prejudices and fucked up toxic influences that might spill out unconsciously or consciously if their art was about and for adults....but the mantra ‘its for the children’ just....protects them from all that? Provides sudden, temporary enlightenment where every idea that pops into their brain and emerges through their story is a Right One, a Just One, a Progressive One?

That’s not how that works! That’s not how ANY of this works!

And the most frustrating thing is we all know this!

Why is it, that people who are SO good at calling out an argument as bullshit when they’re IN the discourse, invested, paying attention, putting something on the line.....have no problem snatching up those exact same arguments the second they catch a whiff of a discourse they don’t want to be involved in, or go near, or even entertain (la la la I’m not listening - lol, you’re all dumb, this is a kids’ show, relax, its not that deep)....as though its suddenly, magically, NOT a bullshit argument just because they’re the ones trotting it out because this time, the shoe is on the other foot, and THIS particular discourse makes them uncomfortable for whatever reason?

I get it. The discourse, whatever it is, wherever it is, can be exhausting. Nobody can mire themselves in it 24/7 and not walk away just completely drained. Sometimes we have to check out, take a break, recharge our batteries. Just fucking find something to enjoy. I totally get that.

But the thing is......that thing or that place you go to or look for to recharge in peace and quiet, away from the discourse....it is NEVER inherently going to be discourse free. Never above criticism or recourse. Because no art, no creativity, exists...without coming from the minds of imperfect, flawed human beings who are ALL in our own unique ways, still products of an imperfect, flawed society absolutely RIDDLED with issues and problems we’re all perfectly aware are there. There is NOTHING a product of society can produce, that can not be criticized. Can not be workshopped. Has no room to be MADE BETTER.

Some things get closer than others, sure....or at least some things do, as they relate to us and our personal experiences and beliefs individually. Those are the things we seek out as refuges, the things we don’t have to focus on making better, talking through the flaws that are readily apparent to us, find ways to make something better or more worthwhile out of the rough edges that hurt us when we watch it or consume it, just trying to be entertained or feel better.

But that never means those things are just.....better, overall. That they’re just...above being criticized. That it’s okay to just settle for ‘good enough’ because we ourselves are currently far enough away from whatever rough edges this piece of media has that we either can’t see them at all, or at least like, they’re not actively hurting us.

Just the other people, who came here looking for something to just enjoy too, but can’t get comfortable no matter how much they’d like to, because for whatever reasons, they ARE closer to the rough edges, they’re hurting them or just getting in the way, blocking their view of the movie or show you’re all there to watch.

And like, I’m not trying to pretend that I have all the answers here or tell anyone what to do or how to do it, just.....saying that like, we have to be better at LOOKING for better ways to handle that, that allow us to recharge and abstain from the discourse there, shut it out so we can get what we need from that before charging back in there or elsewhere.....without loudly shouting to everyone complaining about the rough edges “SHUT UP, ITS ALL IN YOUR HEAD, GOD, SOME OF US ARE TRYING TO ENJOY THE SHOW HERE, JEEZ.”

Our enjoyment should not ever require telling people that like......there’s no place here for them to enjoy an inherently flawed piece of media if they can’t like, suck it up and swallow whatever disappointments they have about rough edges that might not be apparent to you from your vantage point, but are just as real as any you’ve complained about in the past, when sitting elsewhere, watching a different show.

We all live in the same fucked up, imperfect society. We all run into stuff that hurts us, gets in our way, makes our daily journeys harder, demands we either suck it up or speak up and ask for some help making smoother sidewalks, clearing clutter out of the way, finding a way around an obstacle.

If we expect to be heard when WE have something in our way or something hurting us, we CAN NOT be content to just....shut down the voices of everyone saying something that makes us uncomfortable or that we think would just take up too much time or energy to deal with and we’re in a hurry to get somewhere, don’t have any energy to spare.

Like, yes, sometimes we legitimately don’t have anything else to give without actively hurting ourselves, keeping ourselves from getting to an important destination on time, being able to complete our own journey. I’m not saying we owe it to a total stranger to add to our own pain when we’re already hurting and stretched past our limits.

But there’s a difference between acknowledging someone asking for help or confronting what’s clearly an apparent obstacle or hardship for them, while not being able to stop or help because you’ve got other people depending on you or waiting on you or simply do not have the means or resources or spoons to do anything but complete the necessary task or goal you’ve already set yourself towards.....

And like.....raising your own voice to drown theirs out or putting in your earbuds and blasting your music while you rush past them yelling ‘outta my way, I have more important things to do, get a job you lazy bum’ because you feel BAD about not being able to take the time or spend the energy, you maybe feel a little bit guilty, and if there’s a fairly universal human experience, its that nobody really LIKES feeling guilty, it’s one of our more unpleasant emotions, and we tend to look for any way possible to ignore it when it pops up, either with legitimate reason or without.

Again, not saying I KNOW the right way to handle these kinds of scenarios, just that.....the latter is not it, is never it. And yet more often than not, its what too many of us, even those of us yelling the loudest in other discourses perhaps, default to.

Because the other thing is....its not like every criticism out there IS valid. It’s not like everybody to stop in the middle of the street and start making a commotion and making everyone else stop what they’re doing and look what they’re complaining about, what their problem is....

It’s not like there aren’t plenty of times where like....it isn’t genuinely a problem. Where they’re not being HARMED by something, but at most mildly inconvenienced. Faced with a tiny little speedbump that has people who had to stop their own conversations to see what he was yelling about, people who had to pause in the middle of trying to navigate their way around a big five car pile-up blocking their commute, just rolling their eyes at the dude who’s making all that drama, slowing down everyone else’s day, just because he like....wants someone to do something about the little spider he just spotted on his expensive Italian loafers and he’s not even arachnophobic, he just thinks spiders are icky and wants someone to idk....get it off or kill it? Whatever.

Point being, sometimes there are actually complaints or criticisms that AREN’T worth everyone’s attention, and the person yelling loudly about it is just super privileged and needs to figure out how to deal with not always having things just the way he wants them on his own, nobody can (or should have to) help him with that.

But I mean.....you can only tell that for sure once you’ve actually LOOKED at what his problem is. Heard what it was. And maybe that took just a two second quick glance or an hour for him to get to the bottom of it as he launched into his life story first to make sure you understood just how much he thinks bugs are icky before getting around to saying oh yeah, so there, that’s the problem, see? Icky bug.

But again, like....there’s a difference between feeling like this issue the guy is facing does not merit you taking time and energy away from your own issues to just....make his life marginally less inconvenient.....once you’ve actually given his actual issue some degree of actual consideration.

Versus just.....never actually stopping to listen and blowing past him while laughing with a buddy about what you ASSUME his issue to be based on like....where you’re all standing at the time. Like ‘lol this is a school zone, buddy, its meant for kids and people obviously put tons of time into making sure its all safe and pretty for the kids, so there can’t possibly be anything here that you, a grown adult, should actually be worried about, like whatever you think it is, its not that big a deal.”

And so you just keep on without looking back, laughing about what a dumbass that guy was and so never bothered to notice that the spider he was worrying about was actually deadly as hell, and just because he was the only one to see it at the moment didn’t mean that it couldn’t hurt a kid playing in the park just as easily as him, or that there weren’t a whole nest of similar spiders lurking around and potentially dangerous to all of those kids.

Like. Your priority was not the kids, and it was not whether or not his issue was actually legitimate, it was just whatever you were talking about with your friend that you didn’t want to be distracted from, you were both just having too good a time.

And honestly, like....its not like you’re a terrible person for that, its just.....that’s what it was. That’s what that actual interaction was, and just call it what it was. Not a reason to feel superior because some people just have to manufacture drama wherever they go and can never be happy, not even when something is meant for kids.

And while giving someone’s criticism the proper consideration before accepting it as valid or dismissing it as irrelevant, like...while that can look like a ton of different things?

If you can take the exact argument you used to dismiss or shut down that criticism you heard, switch out a few names and details without changing the structure or context of either the argument or the criticism....

and suddenly, you’re looking at the exact same bullshit argument you’ve seen people use to shut down YOUR criticisms, just when talking about different characters or a different, adult show?

Whatever you gave that criticism you heard here, it was probably not the proper consideration.

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