#and i think that the fact that there's an inherent contradiction to how the text is presented to us

[thedaythatwas]

TW: Hegel.

So, what’s up with Shuake and dialectics? Click below to watch this user (who is not a philosopher) give this (frankly too invested) analysis a shot!

Something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately is the fact that most– but not all– of Joker’s confidant routes involve some sort of transaction. Joker does something for someone, Joker gets a favor in return. Joker’s identity revolves around what he can do for others. He’s got a different mask (haha game mechanic is narrative device etc.) for everyone in his life. 

Getting a little bit in my head about this led me to a (not-all-that-novel) realization: Akechi’s confidant route is largely non-transactional. Sure, he says that he wants to meet with you to talk about the Phantom Thieves, but that more or less directly translates to just wanting to hang out with you. The “favor” that you're doing for Akechi, if we follow the logic of some of the other confidant routes, is spending time with him. (Which is of course also about getting close to Joker for metaverse recon purposes… But I’d argue that amounts to more or less the same thing in the long run anyway). Really, that’s what your relationship with him is, up until you realize the heart he needs you to change is actually one of the big-bads of the game. And at that point… Well… 

Where am I going with this? I’ve also been thinking a lot about Hegel (I’ve seen some really fun posting about Akechi and Hegel on here this past week– thank you philosophy P5R tumblr!). Akechi’s paraphrasing of Hegel goes a little something like “advancement cannot occur without both thesis and antithesis.” Hilariously, this is how he frames his desire to talk to you more, his flirting is just like me forreal I understand him etc. etc. BUT! The interesting thing here is that the game is cueing you to view your relationship with Akechi through the lens of Hegel’s dialectics.

More on that to follow, but first, I want to plug the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy’s page on Hegel’s Dialectics here– If you haven’t used it before, SEP is a reliable, peer-reviewed source. It’s great. I use it like. All the time. It’s good for getting the gist of big ideas when you don’t have time to read full texts. (Also if I get any of this wrong please know that philosophy is not my field and I’m totally open to constructive criticism.)

Hegel’s dialectical process revolves around three key moments: the moment of understanding, the dialectical moment, and the speculative moment. These moments can also be referred to as thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. The moment of understanding, thesis, is the point at which an idea is seemingly stable. In the dialectical moment, antithesis, this idea “sublates” itself– the idea is challenged and destabilized because an inherent contradiction in the idea has been made apparent–importantly, part of the idea is preserved. The speculative moment, synthesis, negates the contradiction. A new idea takes form, containing elements of the original idea that was sublated (Marx’s theory of history, anyone?) 

This process continues on and on. Ideas naturally reveal their contradictions, are destabilized, and resolve their contradictions through the creation of a new idea, which is challenged again. This is because the dialectical moment does not come from outside an idea. Antithesis is not an external push against thesis, but rather, the moment when thesis is forced into instability because of its own tightly-bound restriction. 

So back to what I was saying. The game kicks off your relationship with Akechi with a nod to, uh, all of that. Could this be a throwaway comment? Of course! But it’s much more fun to work under the assumption that it isn’t. So bear with me. Akechi is framing himself and Joker as thesis and antithesis. What does that mean? Why do I think it has something to do with Akechi and Joker’s relationship being non-transactional?

Previously, I’ve thought that in the context of their relationship, Akechi represented thesis, and Joker antithesis. This isn’t exactly true (at least per the criteria above) but I do think I was on the right track. 

At the beginning of his story, we can think of Akechi’s worldview as thesis. The world is a stage, and he is a performer. His entire life is dedicated to destroying Shido. It’s a key narrative element of P5 that Akechi doesn’t have confidant relationships (as contrasted by Joker, who has many confidants and becomes stronger through building up those bonds). He views himself as deceiving literally everyone in his life for his goals– his “fans,” his father, the Phantom Thieves. He doesn’t trust, because to him, trust is failure. 

Still, he’s starving for approval, and not just from Shido. You can see the inherent conflict between his desires and beliefs in just about every interaction he has with Joker, particularly those where Akechi overshares about his past. He desperately wants someone to hear him. I don’t think his (primary) aim in that was to strategically win Joker’s trust by showing vulnerability– if that was all he was going for, I doubt Akechi would have been so honest. He omitted information, sure, but he gave Joker the honest-to-god broad strokes of his childhood.  

When Joker comes into his life, Akechi comes to realize that his stable worldview might be wrong. Watching Joker and the rest of the Phantom Thieves reveals the cracks in his own internal logic. Joker has friendships and he is stronger because of them. When Akechi sacrifices himself for the Phantom Thieves on Shido’s ship, we see his moment of synthesis. If Akechi really still internalized all of what he said in his “Teammates? Friends? To hell with that!” monologue, he wouldn’t trust Joker to change Shido’s heart in his stead. To be clear– he probably would have reached this point with or without Joker’s intervention. Joker just happens to push Akechi towards self-sublation a little bit faster.

In Royal, we see a new iteration of Akechi. He doesn’t really regret his actions, and he is still very distinctly Akechi, but we can see that his original perception of the world has made a shift. He is willing to team up with Joker. While he may not place a great deal of faith in all of the PTs, he certainly has real trust in the protagonist. He’s learned that he can be recognized (dare I say loved?) without being perfect, and accordingly, his driving desire for approval has been displaced by his desire to never be so completely under anyone else’s control again.

But ok— that’s kind of an old take. Perhaps a hotter one: I’d also like to propose that Akechi does the same for Joker. 

As mentioned above, Joker’s identity for most of the game is defined by what he can do for the people around him. While a large part of this has to do with the fact that he is a playable character, this is a game, and a game needs to have things for you to do– it wouldn’t be very fun otherwise– it also seems pretty clear that this is part of his characterization. Joker is selfless to a fault. Like Akechi, he is a wildcard who can take on multiple personas. Unlike Akechi, instead of having a handful of personas directly linked to the core of his character development, Joker has as many personas as you want him to. He literally has a mask for every situation. You can equip a persona of the correct arcana to level up your relationships faster– a game mechanic, but also, an interesting meta statement about how Joker bonds with his confidants.

In Royal, however, Joker has the option to do something for himself. His greatest wish isn’t for someone else's happiness– it’s to have Akechi back, for selfish reasons, I would argue. Joker can sacrifice reality to keep him in his life, and depending on the actions you choose to take, sometimes, he does.

Loving Akechi teaches Joker to be selfish. This is especially poignant when you think of how adamantly opposed Akechi is to staying in Maruki's reality. Giving up the true reality to keep Akechi is a wholly selfish act on Joker's part, nothing altruistic about it. And if he doesn't make that choice? Well, don't forget about how Joker spent his wish.

He would have learned how to do this without Akechi– one tends to realize that neverending self-sacrifice is unsustainable sooner rather than later. Again, Akechi just pushes Joker towards effecting that self-sublation a little faster.

By spending time with Joker, Akechi learns that there are people he can truly trust. By spending time with Akechi, Joker learns how to put himself first. Their confidant relationship from this perspective is not only transactional, it’s actually one of the most transactional relationships in the game. Joker actively impacts how Akechi sees himself and the world around him, and vice versa. Their relationship is profoundly transformative for the both of them. To paraphrase Akechi, advancement cannot occur without both thesis and antithesis.

But also, we can forget dialectics for a second. Even without a fun analytical lens, Akechi’s confidant route centers two misunderstood people who find understanding in each other. That’s enough for me!

#persona 5 royal #p5r spoilers #shuake #goro akechi #akiren #time allocation decisions were made today

[ilynpilled]

i like overthinking this sorry ok so what’s interesting about the whole jaime sitting on the throne “just to sit down” bc it is just a chair bit is that yes, jaime has a particular disillusioned relationship with that symbol of power, and the thing is that that chair is like a gazillion meters up in the air or whatever so i do think it is a bit more complicated than just him having to sit down after #allthat, he could have very well just sat on the stairs lol. there was a more conscious decision being made on his part.

and this whole exchange is more about parallax, about an outside interpretation rather than what is canonically going on in jaime’s head. and i get that a lot of people think it is mostly “a remnant from the original outline”, but i do not think that means george wrote it with the intention for it to lock on a specific trajectory, i think it is a seed that can be gardened however he pleases, especially because of some heavy foreshadowing with him in agot already for many things that i think are pretty incompatible with that original outline. i do think there is a reframing happening in asos with that action and we can still make sense of it. but neither ned or robert were correct.

jaime’s experience leaves him with a very interesting mindset when it comes to “right” to absolute power like the throne. the image of a king figure gets torn down in every way: aerys obviously becomes a destructive person who was still born with right to that power, and him having that power has devastating consequences, but what also sticks with jaime is that contradiction in his death. how he dies in such an ugly human way. there really is nothing differentiating him from the lowborn rossart, in fact, rossart seems to have died with more dignity. the whole “equal in death/not equal in life” thing. the vulnerability of a king. i do find the “sword across the knee” bit interesting, bc it does mean denying guest right in the north. i wonder if that is just meant to play into a ned/jaime conflict and misunderstanding, or if george is insinuating with that imagery that jaime is guarding the seat in a more abstract way, and sending a message with his existence (especially considering what his role and the whole wildfire plot in the story being stopped and a king being murdered by a kg means on a less personal scale: the whole analysis of ‘what is power and who holds it?’ that permeates this series), almost like a warning, considering what goes through his head before he climbs up there. anyway, i do read it as an act of conscious ‘defiance’ of some kind though. if we go beyond what a 17 year old jaime can fully grasp at that point, he did break the social order by murdering his king as a kingsguard and that has implications in their world. that is an interesting precedent. and then jaime is so disillusioned by social contracts of this sort that he sees no difference between his act and the act of robert, ned & co, which is why he is so particularly frustrated by what he views as hypocrisy, ntm that robert tore the realm apart with his war in his mind and he rues him too. and then ofc with ned’s commentary of “he had no right to that throne”, like this is just the mindset of society, it is built on these constructs of rights and oaths etc, and they all serve a purpose in reinforcing a status quo. jaime all throughout the present text shows no concern for, or even an active rejection of, this construct of ‘right’ to that throne. like he does seem to view the whole thing like: “you can win that power with swords, power resides where people think it does, what does the rest matter?” (as per his targ romance with cersei delusion passage) so many of his thoughts and actions imply this rejection of the construct of inherent right to that power, especially through birth. he also does not view it as something with that much ‘worth’ in terms of what it means for the individual. it gets as overt as it can with “how much can a crown be worth, if a crow can dine upon a king?” etc. i do not doubt all this also bleeds into his continued rejection of his role as heir to some extent. and it all feels like the effect the aerys experience/robert’s rebellion would have on him and his relationship to power. though i do think in some way he does still crave an “aerys anti-thesis”, a “good king” he does not rue, and he can acknowledge this desire more when hope is rekindled in him. anyway, i do think him sitting on that throne is a symbolic gesture, maybe even a form of taking back control through diminishing its value, even more hard-hitting considering he does not want the throne himself, and then belittles it even more with his words afterwards.

and what is also cool to me is that there is a motif with jaime’s golden sword: ned especially is so fixated on it being tainted by blood, especially of his king, it is an image that he and others keep conjuring, it exists in the collective consciousness. 

and then what that passage reveals is that jaime’s golden sword does something very different than become tainted with blood in his nightmares. it is not killing a king, it is cutting down an endless stream of burning corpses. it also reveals that jaime is still haunted by something that never happened. i find it interesting that his conscious often goes to ned, even in the fever dream he expects him to come out, but he is wrong there too, just like how he is not the one that haunts his dreams in general. he even acknowledges it: “The moss covered it so thickly he had not noticed before, but now he saw that the wood was white. It made him think of Winterfell, and Ned Stark’s heart tree. It was not him, he thought. It was never him.” things are still much deeper than just that palpable and damning judgement he received for his finest act from that man, who in many ways embodied the ‘hypocrisy of honor’ in jaime’s mind.

#jaime lannister #valyrianscrolls

[goblins-riddles-or-frocks]

Re your meta: How has immortality not been a good experience for Darkling? He grew to be quite powerful because of the immortality and time.

I’ve talked about this before in a slightly different context.

He does have power, but that power has been acquired at the expense of all other potentials for happiness.

I would frankly argue that immortality bringing him misery isn’t necessarily a matter of interpretation rather than outright text. The narration often brings attention to his bleakness. He is isolated, feared by even the people closest to him— rightfully so. His most important relationship is with his mother, an equally miserable and bitter woman who he blinds, who eventually commits suicide in a bid to stop him. The sincerity of his desire for some sort of connection with Alina is debatable (I think it is genuine) but it is fact that he basically has no one else.

His life just doesn’t sound particularly fulfilling! And you may attribute that to his actions rather than it being an inherent effect of immortality. But immortality is what has shaped him into the person that he is by the trilogy.

In my opinion, the story doesn’t function if the Darkling is happy. If he were happy, he wouldn’t be so unchangeable in his perspective or *afraid* to be proven wrong. If he were happy, he wouldn’t need Alina to turn out exactly like him and to validate his choices. He is a character that is ruled by sunk cost fallacy.

He is positioned in the narrative as Alina’s foil and the threat of what she could become. The story draws a direct line between power and immortality, and the main theme it is concerned with is the inherent corruptive nature of power. Therefore immortality itself, as a concept, is presented as a corrupting state.

I don’t tend to approach the trilogy and the duology as a single narrative, because I feel they thematically contradict each other and aren’t written with the same ideas in mind. But it’s worth bringing up that the other immortals we see in KoS are uniquely warped, completely othered from humanity, and also distinctly miserable. Even outside of their purgatory, Elizaveta would simply never be happy. Neither would the shambling, shape shifting mass that is Grigori. The series pretty consistently presents immortality as a cruel and wholly transformative fate that, ideally, should be avoided.

That’s why in Demon in the Wood we see the Darkling so young and so vulnerable. He has a capacity for cruelty even then, but it’s explicitly due to the direness of his circumstances. That’s also why the faint nods to his insistence of the Grisha following peasant customs is, imo, really integral. Likewise, his claim to only being motivated by the greater good of his country and Grisha as a whole, is a farce now. But it wasn’t always. To fulfill his role in the narrative, he cannot have always been an unfeeling, selfish mass murderer. It’s his long life that has slowly transformed him into that.

He starts out ambitious, but that ambition has eaten at him from the inside until he’s nothing but a husk. The sheer force of time has slowly worn away at his morals, has made him discover that there isn’t any line he wouldn’t cross if it‘s for a good enough purpose. And over the years, the bar he needs to clear for “good enough” drops lower and lower.

The longer he lives, the lonelier he becomes, the less he sees other people as people, they’ll all die in the blink of an eye anyway. The more he sacrifices for gaining power, the more he becomes convinced that power is the only thing that matters. He cannot even consider any other way to live, because if he did, that means acknowledging that all those centuries of being miserable were for nothing.

I know your question wasn’t a moral one, rather than approaching it from his perspective of happiness. But with such a (formerly) ideals driven character, I think the realization that he’s sitting on centuries’ worth of accumulated corpses for absolutely no pay off or greater purpose is itself a looming source of anguish that he’s trying very, very hard to avoid.

#shadow and bone #grishaverse #king of scars #the darkling #aleksander morozova #all the bendy punctuations #a mysterious stranger has appeared #i ramble sometimes #meta #*writer’s cap*

[asamiscuddlepillow]

Why Ciaphas Cain is the only good Imperial Character; Or How I Got High And Wrote Words

Alright, so, last week there were a couple discussion on the Imperium. One about how people are being real weird about the imperial "PURGE THE HERETIC AND XENOS" memes, and one about how people are too big on the Imperium characters everywhere and not enough on the non-human factions. In the former, pretty much everyone agreed that the Satire of the Imperium was being lost, and I posited (mostly to agreements) that the fault was partially on GW for playing into the facist glorification of Space Marines and Imperium characters. In the later I said "Ciaphas Cain is the only good human character" and that one people did *not* agree with.

Well hang onto your butts, 'cause I'mma explain why the latter is true, and it's because of the former.

Part Alpharius: The Imperium isn't funny

I have a challenge for you. Find me something that is a joke about the Ultramarines, who are the flagship and front-and-center advertisement for the setting. Find me something that is an obvious satirical joke about them, that a person who's never touched the tabletop or the novels knows. Find me a joke about them that a regular person knows that doesn't come from Emperor's Text-to-Speech.

Find me a joke about them that doesn't have the slurs from Emperor's Text-to-Speech original first episode.

Odds are you cannot. There isn't a joke, or a satire, present in how they are sold to people. In games, and videos, and comics, and even the majority of the novels the Space Marines in general are just sold straight up as stolid warrior monks who are the only defense of the imperium against the ravening dark. They are flawed, sure, in various ways. But those flaws are simply something that these epic warriors need to overcome and struggle with to show how cool and awesome and powerful they are, and how the rightness of their cause must truly be just to allow them the strength of will to carry on in this grimdark universe of eternal war.

This extends further to the greater Imperium as a whole. It's a giant and plodding bureaucratic nightmare, sure. But that is presented not as the Kafkesque joke it needs to be most of the time, but simply the byproduct of having such a huge and sprawling galactic empire without real FTL. Once again, a flaw that the stolid and heroic characters need to overcome to be able to defend humanity from the crawling hordes of destruction. It isn't a joke, it just is.

"Sure it's terrible," the thought is, "but it's the only way to keep humanity alive and that's worth it in the end."

This isn't funny. This isn't a joke. And that's a problem because it makes it tremendously easier for people to just accept it straight up.

But random internet stranger, satire doesn't always have to be funny!

This is, in a way, true. Satire does not, in fact, need to be a comedy. But I think it does need to be *funny*. It needs to have a joke, an implicit contradiction and paradox that you look at, internalise, and then go "Oh, heh, yeah that's kind of funny". Satire is meant to be a mirror you hold up that reflects a real societal issue, and expanded to an absurd degree to show the inherent wrongness of it, the cruelty or idiocy or straight up idiocy of something. It is absolutely essential, or else you fall into that trap the t-shirt talks about.

This is part of why having the Imperium as the cover boys for the game is a bad idea. Because anything that might be considered satirical about it only works when you dig deeply into lore and history and setting, or when you compare it to, say, the Orks. Orks are, after all, THE joke of 40k. Which is why they're A joke, but that's beside the point.

However, even then, that point gets diluted very easily. See, for example, Helsreach. Here we have one of the most stolid and squarejawed Chapters of space marines possible set against a neverending tide of Orks. And all of it is played as a straight up war story, epic and dramatic and... Not satirical. And Helsreach is going to be an entry point for people into the setting, thanks to the fan-animation movie on Youtube, along with the Astartes shorts. This is a problem.

But the boo-

We fans who read books and game books and know lore and dig into shit aren't the people I'm addressing. Hell, most everyone in this sub is someone who understands the core satirical idea of Warhammer 40k and is able to play with it or around it, depending on mood.

I'm talking about the General Public here. The people who only know 40k from, say, the video games. Or the memes. Where does the core satire and joke of the setting come off for them? Name me one game that has come in the 40k setting that does so (Maybe Darktide, I dunno, I haven't played it, maybe some of the dialogue is funny? But that kind of gets lost as well in the rest of everything because the biggest reaction I've seen about Darktide is "I feel so awesome and cool shooting the bolter"). The only time it kind of comes close is with the Orks, but that hardly counts because, again, Orks are THE joke of 40k (which is why they are a joke) and it very easily is played off as "Cool badass awesome space marine smashes through the silly stupid joke race in between doing awesome things to protect the imperium".

This is a problem.

Enter: Ciaphas Cain.

Ciaphas Cain is the only good Imperium character. Both good, morally as a person, and good as in well done and fitting with the original goals and themes of the setting.

He's a fop. An idiot. A coddled man-child who wants to live the easy life and coast on his laurels. A lazy coward who's only still alive because the actual cool hero of the story, Jurgen, is at his shoulder with a Meltagun constantly and a super-special-secret-superpower to protect him from everything else. Tyranids? It's fine Jurgen is there to disrupt their mindlinks. Chaos? It's fine Jurgen is there to counter the sorcery and melta people. Eldar? Same. Daemons? Same. On and on it goes. Cain is literally a bumbling swashbuckling rogue from a pirate movie but set into a Lovecraftian universe of horror and madness and death.

And that's kind of funny.

Everytime Cain tries to get out of a dangerous situation, he just makes it worse for himself. He wants to be a lazy asshole and get drunk? Whooops genestealer cult he has to dismantle. He wants to take some RR away from the front? Whoops Slaneeshi cult he has to deal with. Every time he tries to pass off his duties and his responsibilities, he's forced to do them but worse to even get out alive, and every time he does everyone around him thinks he's a big damn superhero who's braver than any Primarch and a true scion of the imperium. Which means if he wants to keep having the easy posh lazy life full of booze, he needs to play into it. Which just puts him into dangerous situations. Which he tries to get out of but then ends up in worse situations and has to get out of them. Which makes people around him think he's cool. You get the point. And through this foppish laziness he coasts through the Imperial ranks, a useless bastard who is important because he's important, a lynchpin of Imperial Propaganda and Morale that doesn't want to be there, hates being there, and every time he tries to squirm out of it just becomes even more important, we see the brainless bureaucracy of the imperium in action. That he's been listed as KIA and come back so often that the Imperial record keepers got mad and passed a law saying he is never to be listed as anything but MIA even after being burried in fully military honours on Terra is canon.

And that's pretty funny.

He is besties and lovers with an Inquisitor. An Inquisitor who is editing his memoirs and, despite the fact they are restricted and basically no one will ever read them, she still puts a lot of work into organising them, putting in little footnotes and explanation texts, finding volumes written by other people about the same thing to fill in the blanks than Cain's narcissism ignores, and has a runny commentary on everything happening in the books. That conceit of how the novels are presented are amazing, because you get macro-and-micro stuff happening, and you're able to have the satire present without distracting from the narrative. I have had the satirical nature of the Imperium presented to me better through these footnotes and asides than in basically any other product about the setting, ever. The tracks on the landraider crush the heretic nursery rhyme anyone? And it does this in a way that is, literally, canon.

And thats damn funny.

Cain has been present for a lot of the major conflicts against every major enemy of the Imperium. He's met Tau and Chaos and Dark Eldar and Tyrannids and Necrons (oh my). Hell, I learned more about the Kroot and the Tau from his first book than anywhere else. He's been a minor lynchpin in many important events in the setting, but in a way he's always off to the side. Never *the* major hero, but *a* hero. I remember reading some stuff on the 13th Black Crusade and having that Voice guy who can turn people to his side just by talking. And I went "Hey is that the guy Caine killed in that one book?" No it's not. It's another guy with the same powers but who isn't as major that Caine just happened to be involved with killing. That's the joke. And it's not a bad one.

(But this part isn't so much about the joke as it is about how Caine is the perfect introduction to the setting for a newbie. Because he's met basically *all* parts of the setting, he's a great way to get people into it. The 40k show should be a Caphias Caine series and I will die on this hill.)

But you said he was the only morally good person and you keep going on about how he's a useless foppish asshole jerk

There's this thing, from way back in the days of being a baby progressive online, that said "Intent is not fucking magic". It was used to counter the whole "Well I didn't INTEND to offend you or say something hurtful therefore I didn't do anything wrong". No, intend isn't fucking magic, you may not have intended harm but you did harm.

That swings both ways. Caine does not intend to be a caring, just, protective, encouraging, and wonderful commanding officer. He is trying to be a selfish lazy asshole that doesn't do any work. Why doesn't he summarily execute troopers when, *even in the current day and age he would be fully in the right to do so to some of them with our own military*? Because the paperwork sucks, and if he does it too much he might get shot in the back by his own men when no one is looking. Absolutely pragmatic and selfish, almost dangerously so.

But the result is that, at the end of the day, he takes care of the troops around him. People are encouraged by Caine being around because they know that, when the going gets tough, Caine is the kind of man you want at your side, and you'll watch his back because he watches yours. That he's a brave and selfless person, who respects the life of his troops, and wants to see them come home again alive and unhurt. Caine is one of the only people in the entire setting of 40k who makes the lives and service of probably the *only* truly innocent and blameless people in the entire imperium, the regular guard trooper, better. He intends to save his own neck and make his life easier. His entire career has been a rejection of the Imperial Way of Life because that way is hard and requires work, so he doesn't do it.

But intent is not fucking magic and Caine is in fact a force of unmittigated good in the setting. He makes peoples lives better in a horrible world of monsters and madness.

And that's fucking hillarious.

But what about these other characters

Look I'm sure you can find a bunch of people in the lore that also care about civilians and Guardmen. Gaunt is probably one of them, from what I understand. The problem with them is that they play it straight. It isn't a joke. It isn't satirical. It is serious people being serious in a serious world and fighting against all odds and coming out the other side heroic. They intend to protect their troops and civilians for the troops and civilians sake. And this not only isn't funny, but intent is not fucking magic. Because they are serious and treat it all seriously, and the result is that... They continue to uphold the Imperium. They do not try to reject it, they play into it. It isn't a joke that elevates them, it is a serious and tragic flaw they combat to make their heroism more epic.

And that isn't funny.

In Conclusion

Orks should be the major cover boys of 40k. That would sell it better as a satirical setting. And Ciaphans Caine is the only good human character.

Addendum

are you saying the caine books are good?

No they're fucking garbage. Absolute trash. Pretty much everything is, from every setting. Even the works of art you think are masterpieces contain something you find insufferable, I'm willing to bet. The only thing that isn't garbage is the thing you are in the current process of writing this moment. And if you put it down and come back to it later and re-read it, you'll go "What fucking idiot fuck wrote this fucking garbage" Everything is garbage, but people appreciates part of the garbage that is less garbage. The cream of the garbage, if you will.

They are a lot of fun though. Addendum the second: Bringing Satire back to Space Marines

Lets give this a shot. Shouldn't be too hard, right? I'll start.

Ultramarines: Requirement to fill out forms in triplicate before any combat drop. Once the expected ammunition is expended during combat, they have to hunker down and call back to base and fill out a new logistical analysis of the combat theater and update their forms. When an enemy fleet enters Ultramar space, they send out several forms of censure and demands to please quit the space or there shall be a full meeting of the Ultramar Emergency Response Council, with an estimate time for response to be a decade give or take three years. When Guilliman is asked about the horror of the modern imperium he shrugs his pauldrons and says "Well they filled out the proper documentation so there is nothing I can do, but I have put in a petition with the High Lords requesting a meeting to discuss opening a dialogue about drawing up a study group to examine the possibility of analysing the current status of Imperial doctrins for further evaluation by-" and then people just leave and he rambles for three hours.

Blood Angels: They all talk like dracula. When they land on a planet they keep making remarks about peoples delicious looking necks. When exposed to mirrors or direct sunlight they cringe and throw up their arms and hiss for a while. When asked about this they go balistic and slaughter an entire planet for implying they are Night Lords.

Space Wolves: The space wolves book already make them a joke, but make it more of a joke. It's not a land speeder, it's a land wolfer. They don't have adeptus astartes, they are all adeptus theriomorphus. Change their emblem to be three wolves howling at the moon. Logan Grimnar is spotted staring off into space, gently sighing as in every way except physical, he is a wolf. Their rune priests make most of their income to maintain the chapter by opening up comissions on furaffinity.

Addendum the second PS A lot of people have told me, when I originally posted this, that this isn’t “Satire” as much as it is memes. In response to those people, who will never see this; The first goal is to make space marines not cool. To make them stupid, silly, and dumb. To take away the aura of badass space monks battling against impossible odds, to remove the patina of fascist worship that enshrines them. Once that is done, we can worry about making them “Properly Satirical” Also and further; making them stupid idiots is satire, because they are the avenging angels of the imperium the scions of the emperors flesh himself, and they are stupid idiots.

#warhamemr 40k #warhammer 40000 #ciaphas cain #jurgen is the only reason cain is alive #even amberly is only around him because of jurgen #meltas solve everything #warhammer 40k #a reddit repost where I just coppied the raw text #also its my own post so its legal

[disquiet-doll]

(just remembered this so saying it now)

something i think a lot of people miss about death of the author is like

there's a whole theory of communication that goes on there

(actually this got long, adding a readmore)

because it's like, ok so when you talk you aren't directly communicating to the person, yeah? you're receiving their utterances (which are partial communications of their thoughts, mixed in with all kinds of cultural expectations, politeness, implication, etc.), interpreting them, forming a response, and then forming them into your own (equally incomplete and diluted) utterances.

at no point does direct communication actually happen

and so the idea is ok, when you read a book that's even less direct. you're receiving the text, which is even less a communication of their thoughts then direct conversation, and to the extent there's a back-and-forth communication at all it takes the form of you creating expectations for where the text will go next. the reason the author is dead - which is to say, not present - is because they were never here at all! the communication exists between the reader and text in the first place, so that's the only place from which meaning can arise!

if the author wanted total authority* over how they were interpreted then - well, tough luck because that's not how communication works. but if they wanted more control they should've left it as a conversation. then you can clarify and change interpretations all you want!

but when you write a text - when you make art more generally - meaning no longer belongs to you alone, because the division between the writer-text relationship (ends at creation) and the text-reader relationship (contains all interpretation) is inherent.

even as a creator looking back onto your own work you aren't engaging in the writer-text relationship anymore! you yourself have become another reader! the fact that you can say "I meant this here" rather than "the author meant this here" is very minor, all things considered.

anyway the reason i'm saying this is

I think for a lot of people who don't "get" death of the author, this is why? they don't look at communication in those terms in the first place, so it's hard to make the even further leap into how "communication" with a text (but not it's creator) occurs? (although tbh they should look at communication in those terms because. i mean that's literally just objectively how it works lol.)

I think this does help with understanding like, how the biographical details of a writer can still matter under this framework. going out of your way to ignore them isn't the point, if they color your interpretation that still matters quite a bit! but similarly, if they don't color your interpretation then they... don't! neither is inherently more correct. (in fact situations like "read once, learned about the author, read a 2nd time and saw it differently" are part of the fun of media, i think - your new interpretation might not be "more correct", but it's enjoyable to see how your new knowledge changes how you see things, you know?)

Also, helps with understanding how like. you can still be wrong in this framework lol. because the text is still part of interpretation so like, if what you're saying is contradicted by the text it's still... wrong... (and this is, of course, true for the author as well. if the author says "well actually, XYZ" where the text says ABC then... that's wrong! it is an incorrect interpretation by a reader. the fact that the reader also wrote the thing is irrelevant.)

I know I had something else but I can't remember so RIP

anyway tl;dr: death of the author isn't just arbitrarily "you can interpret things however you want", there's a very specific logic behind it. this isn't the best explanation of it though so RIP.

*sidenote: it's interesting how author and authority are from same root, eh? anyway i'm fairly certain that's why it's death of the author (as authority) and not death of the writer (i.e. the "you should never take any facts about the creator of this into account when interpreting it" understanding of death of the author). it was still made by a person, but that creation ends in the writing - the text-reader relationship stands on it's own.

#musing #which again would really be better as ''rambling'' for posts like this but too lazy to change it

[sunder-the-gold]

Hi there! Love your RWBY meta analyses. Very intriguing, especially about the Brothers. Say, @luminigh had theorised that the Brothers are not actually gods, but aliens posing as gods instead, and with the CRWBY announcing that V9 would "change everything we know", I'm starting to think that the CRWBY are going for this angle. How would you feel about thus if it's true, and why? Personally, I think I'd only accept the "it's all aliens!" angle if they made it that the Brothers were ALIEN GODS, like aliens yes, but still godly by nature. What do you propose?

Okay, wow, so do NOT try to shift from Rich Text Editor to HTML mode after writing a long-ass reply to an Ask. Save that thing as a Draft first, because Drafts still handle that transition fine, while the Ask will instead become a blank white screen that effectively deletes everything.

And to get one more unpleasant thing out of the way, Luiminign blocked me at least a year ago. They didn’t say why and I’ve long forgotten what I suspected to to be the trigger. That’s just the normal Tumblr experience, really.

In Short

Luiminign’s prediction is entirely futile at best, and is inescapably self-defeating at worst.

Even if they hadn’t blocked me, I couldn’t put it any more pleasantly than that. It’s inherently doomed for three different reasons.

Distinction Without A Difference

Salem calling the two brothers “aliens” instead of “gods” would not have made them any weaker. Ruby Rose calling them “aliens” wouldn’t make her or the present form of humanity any stronger.

Remnant is a pale shadow of its former self. Salem led three armies of people who, individually, had more magical power than all four Seasonal Maidens combined. As one, they launched all of the magical destruction they could muster at the gods... and just one of the brothers scooped that barrage out of the air like a harmless soap bubble. Just as effortlessly, that one brother then produced a wave of extinction that wiped out every human being on the planet without disturbing a single leaf of plant-life, and he broke the moon by merely brushing it on his way out.

The only thing new on Remnant since then are the Relics, which is as much a creation of the gods as human magic was. If humans couldn’t use magic to harm the gods, there’s no way they could meaningfully turn the Relics against the gods either.

Luiminign cannot even claim that the gods have become weaker because of some notion that they depended on the faith of humanity to make them so strong. If humanity was so beneficial to the gods, why would the older brother need to deck the younger one to the floor before convincing him to make humanity together with him? And why would the younger one then so readily wipe out all of humanity instead of just a few to make an example of them?

Just Making The Problem Bigger

The only meaningful distinction between “gods” and “aliens” would be the possibility that the Two Brothers aren’t the only two of their kind in the universe, but rather just two members of an entire species.

But if someone hates how easily the Two Brothers alone can abuse humanity, why would that person want to make the problem worse by introducing even more gods of the same kind?

At least with just the present two gods, Ruby Rose has a chance to win peaceful coexistence by meeting the criteria of their deal with Ozma. But a third god, or an entire multitude of other gods, agreed to no such deal and can just wander in and fuck things up as they please.

Remnant doesn’t have the ability to defeat even one god, let alone survive the collateral damage of another divine war.

Not That Kind Of Story

Of course, CRWBY’s writers could change their minds and give Luiminigh the kind of ending where Team RWBY declares “There is no god!” and kicks alien ass because “Humanity, Fuck Yeah!”...

But doing so would totally contradict the established facts of the setting and compromise the themes of the work.

So it seems to me that Luiminign favors their imagination more than their sense of reason. If they refuse to accept what logic and facts tell them, then they have no choice but to retreat behind imagination and fiction. Which includes believing that Remnant's humans can likewise reject the Two Brothers' reality and substitute their own.

But reality is not democratic.

Many fans want to ignore it, but we were warned from the beginning: “There will be no victory in strength.”

=================================

back to my sub-index for the Two Brother Gods

back to my RWBY Meta index

#rwby #two brothers #brother gods #rwby meta #rwby predictions #rwby speculation #rwby analysis

[elvesofnoldor]

People who said that lestat is simply acting like a "bad person" sometimes or claimed that lestat is a totally different Guy in the vampire lestat (1985) probably just never understood who he is as a character and aren't interested in understanding him either. This is not about the dictonomy of good and evil, this is about what being trapped in pain does to people. Lestat is dead! What is good and evil to a dead person! Lestat functions the same way a vengeful spirit does: he died from traumatic death and couldn't moved on, so he continued on wrong and trapped in their own pain, bound to inflicting death and suffering on people around them!

if you pay attention to how he's portrayed in IWTV, then you'd see that the vampire lestat does not actually contradict its text in any substantial way. Louis never cared to understand Lestat as a person--he said that numerous times at the beginning of IWTV--but from his outside perspective, he did spot something about the way Lestat behaved as a vampire that better explains what makes him tick as a vampire/undead. Now, not to quote Tom Cruise of all people, but after Anne Rice yelled at him, he did seem to understand Lestat a bit better; he said that lestat did everything from a place of love and longing (check mark, correct), but he did them with sadism (bad phrasing, only pointed out the symptom not the cause, ultimately incorrect). Now, in life Lestat was a good and loving person, and in death, his actions were tainted with pain, vengeance and resentment--not sadism. Lestat died way too young, with too much hope in his heart and with too much love left to give. Lestat and Nicholas, the young man he was in love with, saved each other in Paris. Lestat was full of so much hope pursuing a life doing something he was passionated about. He ran away from his abusive family with the blessing of his mother, and now finally he could breath. And then boom, just like that, out of nowhere and for no reason at all, all of that went up in smoke. Lestat suffered a very traumatic death at only the age of 21, and he was forced to make an impossible choice: walk into the sunlight and embrace agony and true death, accepting the fact that he died and he had to leave his beloved Nicki, his friends, and his life full of promises and hope behind, or, he can continue as a vampire/a undead and try to make life works for him in this new and horrible state of being. But like all human being, he feared horrible pain and he could not let go of earthly attachments. He knew his death was not fair, that it was not just, and that he suffered death for no reason at all. If life could be taken from him for no reason, why shouldn't he take the life that he needed to continue his existence? Why should he suffer for something he was not responsible for? It is not theft if you are taking what should have been yours anyways, right? Sadly, no, It's selfish to wantonly inflict misfortunes on others just because you yourself have suffered tragedy, but Lestat was in pain, and he could not stop mourning his unjustly stolen life, so he must avenge such injustice with the lives of others. It's very hard to care whether your actions are selfish or not when you are in pain.

I think it kills Lestat to admit how apathetic and cruel he's become just to cope with/numb the pain and horror of having to take the life of others to sustain his own. He claimed that he tend to claim the lives of those who has done "evil", but such justification doesn't really stand on its two legs, it is just an excuse he made up to avoid facing the sort of person he has deteriorated into in death. With no way to understand his own capability for violence, Lestat likes to think himself as "the devil", as inherently evil, because he could not understand why he would kill over and over again to feed on people as a vampire. This rigid model of "good" and evil" doesn't help him to understand himself as a person, or help him to act like a more human and better version of himself. Honestly, such model doesn't really help you to understand him a character either.

#yes lestat does not understand himself very well and he does not explain himself very well #he was literally Jared. 19 and also he was still in love with his abuser who did nothing but to use Lestat's guilt and self-hate #to make himself feel like a better person #so give him a break lmao #mae overshares

[synchronousemma]

12th May (Old May Day Eve): The Crown Inn ball occurs at last

Read the post and comment on WordPress

Read: Vol. 3, ch. 2 [38]; pp. 207–216 (from "No misfortune occurred" to "'no, indeed'").

Context

This date is not definite. Jo Modert writes: “Events between the Crown Inn ball and the first of June show it occurs during the second week in May. No weekday is given, but I suggest Thursday the twelfth (Old May Day Eve) with Harriet’s encounter with the gypsies on Old May Day—Friday the thirteenth” (p. 57).

This occasion is the fifth of eight “major scenes” identified by Marcia Folsom (2004, pp. xxx-xxxi).

Note that this write-up contains spoilers.

Readings and Interpretations

General Benevolence, Specific Friendship

Emma, upon finding out that her reserved role of advance inspector has in fact been reserved for half the company, mentally chides Mr. Weston: “General benevolence, but not general friendship, made a man what he ought to be.—She could fancy such a man” (vol. 3, ch. 2 [38]; p. 208). Critics generally point out that this remark shows Emma to be thinking, perhaps unconsciously, of Mr. Knightley. G. A. Wilkes cites it as evidence that “Mr Knightley [has become] for Emma a standard by which other men are measured,” writing that Mr Knightley seems to be by this point “Emma’s special preserve” (p. 83). Edward Neill similarly writes that “[I]n the light of the playing on the word [“fancy”] which takes place, the text seems to twit Emma here—she has no need to ‘fancy such a man’ because she already has an example to hand in the person of Mr Knightley” (p. 45). J. F. Burrows points out the change in Emma’s thinking which this represents: “This is scarcely the Emma who had allowed Mr. Elton’s agreeableness the advantage over “‘Mr. Knightley’s downright, decided, commanding sort of manner’” [vol. 1, ch. 4; p. 21] or who, on the evening of the snow, had taken as little notice of Mr. Knightley’s thoughtfulness as of Mr. Weston’s heartless sociability” (p. 102).1

Other commenters emphasize this passage’s implications for the novel’s themes over its psychological significance to its protagonist. Eugene Goodheart writes that Emma’s moral “seriousness,” to her credit, is occasionally “reflected in her own autonomous spirit”: “From time to time she does display a capacity for seeing her friends and neighbors with a cool discriminating eye, unaffected by any investment of her own ego. Her judgment of Mr. Weston’s character has the sharpness and the gravity of Austen herself: [Quotes from ‘Emma perceived that and felt’ to ‘She could fancy such a man’]. Austen herself is speaking through Emma” (pp. 592–3).

Sarah Emsley similarly argues that this passage mirrors Austen’s (/ the narrator’s) perspective. She writes that the distinction here drawn between “benevolence” and “friendship” has to do with the novel’s perspective on the virtue of charity:

It is not Emma’s vanity alone that is damaged by being considered “the favourite and intimate of a man who had so many intimates and confidantes”; although her vanity is hurt here, she is right to see the contradictions inherent in this way Mr.Weston has of treating everybody. […] Where is tolerance and where is charity, in the debate about the difference between benevolence and friendship? How does one determine who one’s friends are, and how treatment of a friend differs from treatment of everyone else? Does one merely tolerate all others, or does tolerance also require one to be amiable, charitable, and benevolent? Charity involves more than just the right attitude toward giving gifts and paying visits. In Emma, Austen suggests that an understanding of charity also involves careful judgments about friendships and intimate relationships. […] Austen suggests that while one may cultivate a charitable attitude and a healthy respect for other people, one need not treat everyone as a “favourite” or an “intimate.” (pp. 139–40)

Claudia Johnson cites Emma’s reflection as an example of “the novel’s tendentiousness on the ever-recurrent subject man,” writing that “[w]hat ‘true’ masculinity is like—what a ‘man’ is, how a man speaks and behaves, what a man really wants—is the subject of continual debate” in Emma. Emma is a novel that is consistently “concerned with gender transgression […] from the masculine, not the feminine side.” Ultimately, it seeks to distance its model of masculinity from the highly courtly, sentimental ideal popular in the eighteenth century: “it is engaged in the enterprise of purging masculine gender codes from the ostensible ‘excesses’ of sentimental gallantry and ‘feminized’ display, redefining English manhood instead as brisk, energetic, downright, ‘natural,’ unaffected, reserved, businesslike, plain-speaking; gentlemanly, to be sure, but not courtly” (pp. 201–2). Mr. Weston’s too “general friendship” thus marks him out (as, to a greater extent, Mr. Woodhouse is marked out) as given to such sentimental excess.

Mr. Frank Churchill So Extremely—

As the ball begins, a full page is given over to Miss Bates’s speech, with us being left to supply her auditors’ probable interjections and responses (an appropriate formatting choice, given that we are told upon her entrance that “every body’s words, were soon lost under the incessant flow of Miss Bates” (p. 209)). I have previously made mention of commenters who point out the plot-relevant content and “clues” riddled throughout Miss Bates’s speeches, precisely where they are most likely to be missed. Joe Bray quotes Miss Bates’s quasi-monologue from “‘Thank you, my mother is remarkably well’” to “‘Here’s Miss Woodhouse’” (p. 210), writing:

A number of crucial details are discernible here amidst what appears to be Miss Bates’s inconsequential rambling: the fact that Jane, along with Mr. Dixon, was involved in the choice of her friend Mrs. Dixon’s present to Mrs. Bates (presenting a view of the relationship between the three of them which is contrary to Emma’s wild supposition of a secret affair between Jane and Mr. Dixon); Frank’s solicitude for Miss Bates (which can by implication be extended to Jane too); and the fact that he is often talked of at their home. […] [A]n attentive reader can certainly pick up hints of [Frank and Jane’s] attachment in this and other similar examples of Miss Bates’s speech. (p. 170)

Indeed, Miss Bates’s speech does seem to imply that Frank escorted Jane in as well as Miss Bates (“‘My dear Jane, are you sure you did not wet your feet? […]—but Mr Frank Churchill was so extremely—and there was a mat to step upon’”); Lloyd Brown writes of this speech that “the recurrent minutiae about Frank Churchill imply a degree of intimacy that prepares for the eventual disclosure of his involvement with Jane Fairfax.”2 However, “with a totally unconscious touch of irony, Miss Bates disguises these hints by prefacing them with precisely the kind of irrelevant chitchat (about Jane and Mr. Dixon) which distracts Emma from the real truth” (p. 156). Ultimately, Brown argues,

the structure of Miss Bates’s conversation is a microcosm of Jane Austen’s narrative form. The innocent details about Frank Churchill are subtle pointers to facts of crucial importance; and the universal gratitude which recalls Mr. Dixon’s thoughtfulness is an ironic parallel to Emma’s reprehensible suspicions about Jane’s romantic misadventures. Moreover, the strategy whereby Jane Austen juxtaposes factual experience and Emma’s fantasies is reproduced by the effects of Miss Bates’s seemingly chaotic style: we are led from the misleading side issue of the Dixons, to the real drama represented by Frank Churchill, then, appropriately, to Emma Woodhouse herself. (pp. 135–6)

Here we may recall Mary Hong’s argument that Miss Bates’s syntax was in part responsible for giving rise to Emma’s suspicions regarding Jane and Mr. Dixon (see “An Animating Suspicion”).

Miss Bates’s speech also has the effect of causing Highbury to “seem a more densely populated place than we had conceived”: Deidre Lynch notes that

Miss Bates no sooner enters the Crown inn on the evening of the ball than she meets a ‘host of friends’ [p. 210]: in the elongated paragraph that records her salutations, Miss Woodhouse’s, Mr and Mrs Weston’s and Mr Churchill’s names—the names of our acquaintance—are items in a much longer list that also comprehends a Mrs Stokes, a Dr and Mrs Hughes, a Mr Richard, a Mrs Otway, a Mr Otway, two Misses Otways and their two brothers. But what Austen gives with one hand she takes away with another. Her narrative names names, but as a consequence of focalising the story through Emma, whose circle of acquaintance is a rather more exclusive and restricted one than Miss Bates’s, it programmatically does no more than that. (p. 196)3

Miss Bates’s conversation at other points in this section tells us more of the ball than the narrator does: J. F. Burrows notes through her we hear “of the matting in the passage and the lighting in the hall; of her being served soup and her mother’s being denied the Hartfield asparagus. Through her, in short, the ball grows real as we read of it. And, because she is so willing to chronicle small beer, the narrator proper is left free to comment more coolly and intelligently” (p. 102).

An Upright Figure

When the dancing begins, Emma is “more disturbed by Mr. Knightley’s not dancing” than by Mrs. Elton’s usurpation of her place at the head of the set: “His tall, firm, upright figure, among the bulky forms and stooping shoulders of the elderly men, was such as Emma felt must draw every body’s eyes” (p. 212). Critics of course largely feel that these reflections bespeak Emma’s sublimated sexual attraction to Mr. Knightley. Wilkes writes that Emma’s romantic vision of Mr. Knightley has been shaped by her earlier instinctual recoiling from the idea of his marrying Jane Fairfax: the passage from “There he was, among the standers-by” to “would he but take the trouble” (p. 212) is “clearly rendered from Emma’s point of view, and it is in her perception that Mr Knightley is ‘so young’, with his tall, firm, upright figure, standing out from the bulky forms and stooping shoulders of the standers-by. His role as mentor has here disappeared” (pp. 85–6). Juliet McMaster, who argues that sexual and sensual (that is, of the senses) detail is present throughout Austen’s oeuvre for those who “know how to read” (p. 42), writes:

Emma, who has sturdily resisted the evidence of how how much she cares for Knightley, has […] a sudden unexpected awakening to his physicality, when she sees him, as the song says, “across a crowded room” […]. She clearly experiences a frisson of desire. And when he presently performs his rescue, by leading Harriet to dance, Emma’s eyes still follow him: “His dancing proved to be just what she had believed it, extremely good; and Harriet would have seemed almost too lucky . . .” (328). We can catch Emma in her brief pang of sexual jealousy, but she doesn’t catch herself. (pp. 33–4)4

Some commenters use this scene to probe the novel’s perspective on age. William Deresiewicz writes that Austen uses this scene to tell us “[y]outh and age are not to be determined […] by the calendar” (p. 124); Emma keeps Mr. Knightley young “by retrieving [him] from the class of husbands and fathers and drawing him back into the mating dance” (p. 124). Stephanie Eddleman connects the scene to contemporary perspectives on aging and gender:

“Women were generally perceived to be ‘old’ before men throughout the early modern period,” Ottaway observes (35). “Rather than [being tied to] a loss of specific attractive features” as was true for women, the physical signs of aging for men were declining strength and a loss of physical abilities. Thus, men crossed the threshold of old age much later in life than women (34–35). On this point, Austen’s representation of Mr. Knightley reflects the general perceptions of the era. […] As she studies him, Emma focuses on his physique rather than his face […]. She judges George Knightley youthful and attractive because of his commanding, vigorous physical appearance, which is especially emphasized when contrasted with physical decline. (p. 130)

It is interesting to note that Emma is also spoken of as having “a firm and upright figure” (vol. 1, ch. 5; p. 24); and, when not speaking of physical bodies, phrases such as “upright integrity” (vol. 3, ch. 10 [46]; p. 261) and “upright justice” (vol. 3, ch. 12 [48]; p. 273) recur throughout the novel. John Wiltshire writes of Emma’s “upright” figure as something “other than [a] moral propert[y]” (p. 133); but I suspect that physical qualities almost become moral qualities here, as Mr. Knightley’s physical no less than his moral uprightness point him out as an appropriate marriage partner for Emma.5

I Could Have Danced All Night

Many scholars point out the important role balls and dancing play in Austen’s novels. As a socially sanctioned means of courtship, they paradoxically combine rules and regulations with invigorating physical movement, formality and organization with gaiety and the opportunity for choice. This particular ball has, of course, been engineered to allow Frank Churchill another opportunity of dancing with Jane Fairfax: Joseph Wiesenfarth writes that Frank Churchill’s “sexually induced madness and insanity for Jane Fairfax constantly leads him into schemes that allow them to be together,” including this “extravagantly public” one (p. 13). As such, the ball is an overthrow of the usual course of social life in Highbury, which David Monaghan points out has until now “been regulated to a pace and level of energy that suits Mr Woodhouse, and has therefore placed such an overwhelming emphasis on the familiar as to become almost static and extremely soporific”:

Dancing, however, while it operates within confined and well-regulated limits, is an activity which allows movement and scope for choosing and changing partners. As such it encourages a much more open and dynamic society than that over which Mr Woodhouse presides, and it is significant that while his needs are not ignored on this occasion, they cannot be met within the framework of the ball itself. Thus, while the community as a whole gathers at the Crown, Mr Woodhouse is left safe at home to enjoy ‘a vast deal of chat, and backgammon’ [p. 214] with Mrs Bates. (p. 133)

Mr. Elton violates one of the usual civilities of dancing when, rather than retreat to the card room to cover his unwillingness to dance with Harriet, he makes a point to “show his liberty” and engage those around her in conversation (p. 213). The ball’s significance both “as a courtship ritual and agent of change” (Monaghan, p. 133) is most notable when it calls on Mr. Knightley to “ensure the preservation of harmony” (p. 134) threatened by this slight:

Mr Knightley must now come forward and rescue Harriet by engaging her himself. This display of polite heroism, and the position into which it forces him amongst the young and eligible […] has a profound effect on Emma’s view of Mr Knightley. Thus, she does not find it strange that when they next meet he asks her to dance, and indeed replies in such a way as to indicate that she is on the verge of viewing him as a suitor: [quotes from “‘Will you?’” to “‘at all improper’”]. (p. 134)

Similarly, Wiesenfarth writes that “[t]he rules that govern conduct in dancing are meant as society’s way of introducing civility into sexual expression. The Eltons ignore such decorum in exhibiting their sexual rancor for Harriet Smith. Their violation of civility […] puts Mr. Knightley to dancing with Haniet and thereby continues Emma’s sharpening sexual perception of his person and manners” (p. 14).

No Indeed!

Emma’s and Knightley’s conversation at the close of the ball scene draws frequent critical comment as a turning point in their relationship. Paul Fry points out that Knightley’s statement contradicts an earlier comment of his: “Mr. Knightley is already equivocating with his feelings when he says of Emma that ‘Isabella does not seem any more my sister’ [vol. 1, ch. 6; p. 25]. The fraternal incubus arises to be expelled, not fostered [in the conversation at the ball]” (p. 136).6 For Joseph Duffy, the “incubus” arises in the first place due to Emma’s newfound sexual attraction: “[t]he fact that the question of propriety does arise at all is significant of Emma’s fear that there may really be something shocking in physical contact with Knightley” (FN 3, p. 44).

Emma and Knightley’s relationship is genuinely ambiguous, as Deresiewicz points out:

Emma and Knightley are not brother and sister, but then again, in the language of the day, they are [through Isabella’s and John’s marriage]. Emma, still oblivious to her sexual feelings, is undisturbed by the ambiguity. But Knightley, already alive to his, is very much disturbed. “Brother and sister! no, indeed,” he exclaims—to which the novel ultimately replies, “Brother and sister! yes, indeed.” The exchange concludes a chapter—concludes, indeed the whole long episode of the ball—and the effect of this pregnant placement is to make it into a signpost that points us toward Emma and Knightley’s climactic encounters. (p. 121)

Langdon Elsbree writes of this conversation:

Comment upon Mr. Knightley’s mature, quiet, good-natured love and Emma’s incipient passion is probably superfluous. It should be said, however, that this bit of dialogue, as well as others, this bit of dialogue, as well as others, gives the lie to the commonplace that Jane Austen is incapable of rendering love. Indeed, one of the main comic functions performed by the dance motif is the contrasting of Emma’s frivolous but viable affections and Frank’s capricious, vexatious devotion with Knightley’s steady, self-effacing, undeceived warmth. (p. 132)

A Hidden Plot

As with many other episodes in Emma, a rereading of this section with full knowledge of future events puts seemingly insignificant details into a new light. We may notice, for example, that Frank beginning to speak “vigorously” upon overhearing Mrs. Elton speak well of him to Jane Fairfax prevents us from overhearing Jane’s reply (p. 211). When Frank disapproves of Mrs. Elton’s habit of addressing “Miss Fairfax” as “Jane,” Emma catches on what this implies of his opinion of Mrs. Elton, rather than what it implies of his relationship with Jane. We may also understand better than Emma Frank’s “odd humour” and impatience to begin dancing (ibid.).

This episode also lays the groundwork, not only for Harriet’s infatuation with Mr. Knightley, but for Emma’s future belief in Knightley’s love for Harriet (“‘Harriet Smith has some first-rate qualities […]. An unpretending, single-minded, artless girl—infinitely to be preferred by any man of sense and taste to such a woman as Mrs. Elton’” (p. 216)). John Hagan points out the fact that “the beginning of [Knightley’s] change of attitude toward Harriet coincides exactly in time with the beginning of her infatuation with him” (p. 556), and argues that this coincidence may point to some ego in Mr. Knightley: “to assume that he perceives Harriet's great and obvious pleasure in his company, that he himself is pleased by her response, and that, accordingly, he begins to modify his attitude toward her would seem completely justified” (p. 557).

Footnotes

See also Monaghan (p. 133); Mooneyham (p. 132).

On Frank’s rushing to attend Miss Bates and company with umbrellas see Wiltshire, who writes that Frank uses health as a “pretext” (p. 112) when he “rushes out with umbrellas on the excuse that ‘Miss Bates must not be forgotten’ to welcome Jane to the ball” (p. 113); and Watson, who notes that Frank’s kindness tends, unlike Knightley’s to have “flourish” and “fuss” to it: “The fact that this action of Frank’s is immediately the subject of Mrs. Elton's approbation is a small detail of malicious irony on Jane Austen’s part” (p. 338).

On the evidence of social connectedness in this speech of Miss Bates’s see also Bromberg (p. 132); Burrows (pp. 101–2).

See also Mooneyham on the evidence of Emma’s “sexual interest” in this scene (p. 136). Contrast Korba, who argues that Emma never sexually responds to a man in the novel.

See Pallarés-García on the syntax of this passage (p. 178); also Folsom (p. 52); Roulston (p. 56).

On the “contrast” between these two statements see also Stovel (n.p.).

Discussion Questions

Does Emma (to any extent) morally condemn Mr. Weston’s temperament or behavior? To what end is he contrasted with Mr. Knightley?

What is the purpose of Miss Bates’s volubility in this section? Do you notice any details in her speech that have not been mentioned here?

What connections between dancing, civility, and sexuality become clear in this section?

How and why does Emma’s and Mr. Knightley’s relationship change over the course of the night?

Does anything else about this section become clearer upon rereading?

Bibliography

Austen, Jane. Emma (Norton Critical Edition). 3rd ed. Ed. Stephen M. Parrish. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, [1815] 2000.

Bray, Joe. The Language of Jane Austen. London: Palgrave Macmillan (2018).

Bromberg, Pamela S. “Learning to Listen: Teaching About the Talk of Miss Bates.” In Folsom (2004), pp. 127–33.

Brown, Lloyd W. Bits of Ivory: Narrative Techniques in Jane Austen’s Fiction. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press (1973).

Deresiewicz, William. “Emma: Ambiguous Relationships.” In Jane Austen and the Romantic Poets. New York: Columbia University Press (2004), pp. 86–126.

Duffy, Joseph M. “Emma: The Awakening from Innocence.” ELH 21.1 (March 1954), pp. 39–53. DOI: 10.2307/2871932.

Eddleman, Stephanie M. “Past the Bloom: Aging and Beauty in the Novels of Jane Austen.” Persuasions 37 (2015), pp. 119–33.

Elsbree, Langdon. “Jane Austen and the Dance of Fidelity and Complaisance.” Nineteenth-Century Fiction 19.2 (September 1960), pp. 113–36.

Emsley, Sarah. “Learning the Art of Charity in Emma.” In Jane Austen’s Philosophy of the Virtues. New York: Palgrave Macmillan (2005), pp. 129–44.

Folsom, Marcia McClintock, ed. Approaches to Teaching Austen's Emma. New York: MLA (2004).

_____. “Emma: Knowing Her Mind.” Persuasions 38 (2016), pp. 41–55.

Fry, Paul H. “Georgic Comedy: The Fictive Territory of Jane Austen’s Emma.” Studies in the Novel 11.2 (Summer 1979), pp. 129–46.

Goodheart, Eugene. “Emma: Jane Austen’s Errant Heroine.” The Sewanee Review 116.4 (Fall 2008), pp. 589–604. DOI:10.1353/SEW.0.0087.

Hagan, John. “The Closure of Emma.” Studies in English Literature, 1500–1900 15.4 (Autumn 1975), pp. 545-561. DOI: 10.2307/450010.

Hong, Mary. “‘A Great Talker upon Little Matters’: Trivializing the Everyday in Emma.” Novel: A Forum on Fiction 38.2/3 (Spring – Summer 2005), pp. 235–53. DOI: 10.1215/ddnov.038020235.

Korba, Susan M. “‘Improper and Dangerous Distinctions’: Female Relationships and Erotic Domination in Emma,” Studies in the Novel 29.2 (1997), pp. 139–63.

Lynch, Deidre Shauna. “Screen Versions.” In The Cambridge Companion to ‘Emma,’ ed. Peter Sabor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (2015), pp. 186–203.

McMaster, Juliet. “Sex and the Senses.” Persuasions 34 (2012), pp. 42–56.

Monaghan, David. “Emma.” In Jane Austen: Structure and Social Vision. London: Macmillan (1980), pp. 115–42. DOI: 10.1007/978-1-349-04847-2_6.

Neill, Edward. The Politics of Jane Austen. New York: Palgrave Macmillan (1999).

Ottaway, Susannah R. The Decline of Life: Old Age in Eighteenth-Century England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (2004).

Pallarés-García, Elena. “Narrated Perception Revisited: The Case of Jane Austen’s Emma.” Language and Literature 21.2, pp. 170–88. DOI: 10.1177/0963947011435862.

Roulston, Christine. “Discourse, Gender, and Gossip: Some Reflections On Bakhtin and Emma.” In Ambiguous Discourse: Feminist Narratology and British Women Writers, ed. Kathy Mezei. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press (1996), pp. 40–65.

Stovel, Bruce. “The New Emma in Emma.” Persuasions On-Line 28.1 (Winter 2007).

Wilkes, G.A. “Unconscious Motives in Jane Austen’s Emma.” Sydney Studies 13 (1987), pp. 74–89.

Wiesenfarth, Joseph. “The Civility of Emma.” Persuasions 18 (1996), pp. 8–23.

Wiltshire, John. “Emma: The Picture of Health.” In Jane Austen and the Body. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (1992), pp. 110–54. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511586248.005.

#Emma #Jane Austen #Emma Woodhouse #Mrs. Weston #Mr. Weston #Mr. Woodhouse #Mr. Elton #Mrs. Elton #Harriet Smith #Frank Churchill #Jane Fairfax #Miss Bates #Mrs. Bates #e

[autolenaphilia]

Radical feminism was always transmisogynistic

(note that I’m not interested in arguing with full-on terfs, because I’m not interested in arguing my right to exist or my experiences of misogyny. This post is aimed more at people who believe a trans-inclusive radical feminism can exist).

The problem with the idea of reclaiming radical feminsm and creating a trans-friendly version of it is that it’s inherently transmisogynistic. This has to do with how radfems define womanhood and explain patriarchy. In Radfem theory, women are oppressed because of biology, because of reproduction. Shulamith Firestone’s foundational radfem text The Dialectic of Sex summed it up as “Nature produced the fundamental inequality: half the human race must bear and rear the children of all of them – which was later consolidated, institutionalized in the interests of men”. Firestone didn’t publicly talk about trans women, but this kind of gender-biological essentialism and its erasure of trans experiences, which is fundamental to radfem ideology leads naturally to terfism.

So for radfems, it’s cis women’s biology which defines their womanhood, and their oppression by patriarchy and misogyny. Trans women become male interlopers at best, who are not truly oppressed by misogyny and not really women because they don’t have wombs. Radfems might acknowledge trans women being oppressed but in their theory it’s because they are gender-non-conforming males.

This theory gives really no room to acknowledge trans women as women or as victims of misogyny, because those are again defined by cis women’s biology. At best it centers cis women’s experiences at the expense of trans women, and at worst it’s just bigotry. It utterly ignores the statistical material evidence that shows how trans women are more oppressed than cis women because of their experiencing an intersection of misogyny and transphobia. Look for example at wage statistics and violence statistics.

And of course it often centers a particular cis woman’s experience. Radfem theory and groups are infamous for implicitly centering not just cis women’s perspectives, but specifically middle-class white cis women’s perspectives. The reason for that is that while they technically acknowledge racism and economic class as grounds for oppression, they believe patriarchy and male supremacy is the “primary oppression”, the one that came first and led to all the others which are thus secondary, see for example Firestone’s aforementioned book for a detailed explanation of that aspect of radfem thinking. I’m white, so I won’t expound on this at length, but many black feminists such as bell hooks have written about how racism was and still is rife in the white-dominant feminist movement.

The middle-class perspective of radfems also lead to SWERF bullshit. It privileges abstract concerns of how “prostitution reduces women’s bodies to a commercial object which contributes to misogyny” trumps actual sex worker’s lived experience. Radfems champion “the nordic model” where sex workers themselves are technically not criminalized, but their clients are. But this still pushes sex work into a criminal underworld, where sex workers are at much greater risk for violence.

Radical feminism did try to address genuine issues women face in a patriarchal society, but in practice it was always a way of furthering and defending cis women’s privileges. There is really no dividing line between “fighting for women’s rights” and cis women’s privileges. In fact they become one and the same in radfem practice. Because the rights radfems fight for are reserved for cis women only, they are nothing more than a fight for more privileges in our patriarchal society.

Radfem practice naturally turned to activism aimed not at increasing rights for anyone, but removing rights from trans people and sex workers. It’s thinly disguised as a rights struggle in itself, “defending women’s sex-based rights”.

Radical feminism in its homeland of the US slowly died as its contradictions and chronic inability to build meaningful coalitions slowly choked any momentum it had. It fully discredited itself by the 1980s by allying itself with the new religious right in crusades against trans rights, porn and sex work. What exists is a remnant, often in cooperation and funded by the right-wing to justify transphobic politics via faux-leftist feminism.

In Sweden Radfems are still powerful, but that’s because they have become the state’s feminist alibi. The “women’s organisations” here have mainly turned into a lobbying organisation creating faux-feminist justifications for the state’s violence against sex workers and trans people. Their main purpose is to spew virulent TERF and SWERF ideology at the merest suggestion that we should improve conditions for trans people or truly decriminalize sex work. And then the Swedish government will listen only to them, change nothing and claim it’s feminist.

Radical feminism had some good points about patriarchy, but its theoretical and practical basis was deeply flawed from the start. It was cis-centric at best and more often deeply transmisogynistic. People have tried to creative a trans-inclusive radical feminism, but it never works out. The theoretical basis of radfem ideology, that biology is the sole source of women’s oppression is at best an erasure of transmisogyny. It almost always lead to the virulent transmisogyny of full-on terfism, as denial and erasure of trans women’s experiences with oppression naturally leads to that.

There are a few “Trans inclusive radical feminists” around, often cis feminist “allies” but their trans-friendliness is invariably unsteady, due to radfem ideology being inherently cis-centric. On tumblr they often follow and reblog from terf blogs, as they claim the TERF feminist analysis of non-trans related issues still has validity. And of course they are still often SWERFs, so they still perpetuate the ancient traditions of radfem bullshit even if they don’t do (explicit) TERF shit.

And eventually the contradictions between the taproots of their ideology and their claimed allyship to trans people become too great, they must choose between them. They must ask themselves: is womanhood defined by oppression due to biology in which case trans women are not women, or is it not? Choosing the latter option you cease being a radfem. And because cis feminists nearly always value their cis privileges over trans people, they nearly always jettison trans people and fully terf-out. Of course this assumes they were truly were not terfs from the start. I suspect at least some “TIRF” blogs on terfs are crypto-terfs trying to whitewash radfem ideology by claiming to be trans-friendly, and the terf-transformation is just them dropping the mask.

But there are probably some sincere believers in reclaiming radical feminism from the terfs, and I hope this post dissuades them. Radical feminism was always transmisogynistic.

#my writings

[mollytatlisu]

Architecture Spreads

- After carrying out research on how to write for a magazine, I found that a technique that can be used to grab your readers attention is to begin with a sharp, shocking statement. For this small piece on gothic architecture, I took facts from my earlier research and tried to present them in a more interesting way. I knew that gothic architecture was hated in its early days, so rather than saying this outright as I would in a more factual essay type of situation I began with “uncivilised, ugly and utterly barbaric” not only does the lack of context in the opening statement draw my reader in, but the combination of the use of alliteration and the rule of three also makes it a nice phrase to read / say, further encouraging my reader to read on. To also try and make it an interesting piece to read I summarised down the most crucial elements of gothic architecture. I could talk for hours about its features but I nailed it down to “elaborate stained glass, tall slender spires and ornate mystical sculptures” which I think is an accurate yet interesting description to read.

- After photographing the grand gothic building by the childrens hospital, I knew I wanted to have it as a double page spread, because the details on the windows etc are a perfect example of gothic architecture which is what this section is about. I tried different zooms and placements of the images considering the text also, but I eventually positioned it so that the building almost framed the text, with the paragraph being positioned just about the lower heighted part of the building.

- One unfortunate thing about this spread is whilst I was taking the photos, it began to rain, which is why there are faint dashes going diagonally across the image; if it weren’t for this the image would be even clearer demonstrating its features even more. I decided to have the photo in black and white firstly because the natural brick colour the building is is not reminiscent of classic gothic architecture and I thought it would be nice to have consistency throughout the architecture section with everything being black and white. Having said that, keeping in line with the slightly off coloured pages, I did put this image in a more greyscale filter, to avoid harsh highlights and shadows that would’ve contradicted my page and text colours.

- For the third page of the architecture section I included 3 different images of 3 different gothic churches, to add some variety to the section. As you can see, originally I had 2 images of the same church but of different parts of it, which didnt look quite right, as well as this the three images were all quite similar, they were all fairly zoomed out and focused on the spires. So I swapped one of the zoomed out images for a close up of a church window, really exaggerating the variety which makes for a nice page I think.

- Originally I had the church names and location exactly above each photo, but to continue the asymmetrical theme I made them all exceed the edge of the image slightly, the same amount but in different directions. Again, building on asymmetry that is still uniform.

- This page is the second to use the star like symbol, which appears intermittently throughout the magazine. After leaning that similar symbols are an inherent part of gothic type, I thought it would be a fitting extra to spice up my pages a bit.

[rustchild]

controversial opinion about incredibly niche subjects, but i actually like the use of the universal ‘he’ in the narration of Left Hand of Darkness. I like it for the same reason that everyone hates it, and Ursula Le Guin herself regretted it: because it doesn’t fit.

The book is ostensibly written and translated by Genly, or by the observers that came to Gethen before him, and the central struggle of Genly’s story is his inability to give up the gendered frameworks he’s used to in the face of a situation where they don’t apply at all. Having that baked into the language indicates just how deep that struggle runs. In order for him to understand Gethen, to connect to Estraven--hell, to understand himself--he needs to give up on this idea of gender that is so fundamental to his cultural background that it’s baked into his language, and that’s just as much of a barrier to true connection as Estraven’s memories of Arek are to their use of mindspeech. Having that reflected in the text itself, and showing Genly struggle with it as he writes, is actually a super effective way to not only show this tension, but also draw further attention to the limits of Le Guin’s English-speaking audience.

#lhod #the left hand of darkness #genly ai #i just think it's more effective for building tension and character voice #than it would have been if genly was using a third-gender pronoun the whole time #singular they... maybe #but a genly who is able to adapt a new pronoun from the get go is a different genly than the one we see in the text #the only counter argument i would buy is that genly's writing in retrospective #and by the end of the book has finally (too late) come to understand the limitations of gender #but idk #i like genly because he's a guy who creates problems #not on his own but as a reflection of the culture he comes from #and i think that the fact that there's an inherent contradiction to how the text is presented to us #is a good problem actually #mine #for the three people out there who will care about this

[grewlikefancyflowers]

siiighh.. i guess we're talking abt wwx and jc's respective torturing antics again..

firstly, mdzs is not a text that takes a very positive view of gratuitous violence. it's not anti-violence, killing, even for personal revenge, is presented in more than one instance as fair and just. the message is that going too far, for personal satisfaction, too air out grievances, is wrong. not just because i guess it sucks for victims, but because holding that much resentment in yourself isn't good for you. case in point, jiang cheng. he harbours so much resentment, it poisons not only himself, but jin ling too.

'[Wei Wuxian] would have personally made a trip to the prison in the dead of night, ground Xue Yang into a pile of minced meat, then revived him and repeated the process multiple times over until Xue Yang regretted ever being born.'

this is in chapter 30, wwx doesn't come back from the dead thinking violence is wrong, torture is wrong. which is fine!! we don't have to 100% support everything our protagonist would do, especially when the setting is very much removed from everyday modern life. but in mdzs, the message isn't always 'doing xyz is wrong' but rather, 'why is [person] doing xyz, what's the motivation, what is to be gained from it, what will become of them if they go too far?'

thus, if we're taking abt morality, wwx targeted his revenge against the wens against the ones that specifically wronged him, he doesn't become blinded by his hatred, he still helps the wens who were innocent. jiang cheng targets his revenge against a toddler, against random unrelated people who happen to have the name 'wen,' his revenge against wwx is targeted against random people who used the same cultivation method as him (and just a reminder! this wasn't abt him targeting people he genuinely had reason to believe were dangerous - 'mxy' had not done anything wrong, and had in fact just saved his nephews life!).

anyway, i don't care much to dispute the morality of wwx vs jc wrt to torturing bc it's not that relevant!! torture is not presented as inherently wrong within mdzs. what's more important is what this means for the characters and their relationships to each other!!

baseless interpretations of mdzs that see jc as saddened by wwx's death, by being haunted by how he 'couldn't' help him in the past are contradicted by his canonical torturing of people who reminded him of wwx. you can throw any ideas of reconciliation out the window, do you think wwx is endeared by jc's actions?? no, he wants nothing to do with him. jc is resentful throughout mdzs, but his actions after wwx's death take him past the point of no return. what the torture says abt jc's morality is insignificant, we already have a comprehensive understanding of jc's moral standing, what is far more important is what it tells us abt how jc feels of his betrayal of wwx when he was alive, and if he regrets or is conflicted by his actions at all!! and the answer is no! he sees wwx as deserving of everything that happened to him, and would in fact like to make him suffer even more!

#mdzs #wei wuxian #jiang cheng #yes this ones going in the character tag !! #srry this post is MESSY i woke up and the devil possessed me to write this #it's half 10 and i haven't even had coffee yet!! smh #jc wank

[letterfromajax]

Please block @vaestra for being lesbophobic, biphobic, and transphobic

Please note that this person is neither a lesbian or bisexual from what I can tell based off their about. I am also assuming they are TME.

All of their sideblogs will be listed at the very end. All proof will be under the cut and will have the text transcribed to the best of my ability.

The biggest thing that made me make this post is that this person supports bi/pan lesbians and one of the posts he has floating around is literally just his quiet support for bi/pan lesbians. The post in question is the first one listed under the cut.

The bi/pan lesbian label is inherently transphobic because it excludes nonbinary identities from lesbianism, even though nonbinary lesbians exist. I am not a lesbian, so I don’t feel entirely comfortable discussing why it’s lesbophobic beyond the fact that lesbians cannot be bi/pan because they’re lesbians and vice versa.

I commented on this specific post telling him that the post could be taken out of context as support for Bi/Pan lesbians.

Transcribed Text

crescairis: i get that people are more comfortable with defined rules and structure but i also think q*eer people lost when they started resorting to dictionary definitions for what labels mean

crescairis: the q*eer umbrella is meant to deviate from the norm of rigid boxes and definitions and to decide that lesbian means Only this, bi means Only this, etc, is directly contradicting what q*eer means. each and every label is going to have a unique meaning to the person using it and that is how it’s supposed to be. if you’re not comfortable with that…sorry?

My aforementioned comment has since been deleted, but this was the response I received from him.

Transcribed Text

vaestra said: @childescatgirl actually it WAS my intention and you are the exact kind of person this post is talking about! go the fuck away!

Some more lesbophobia and transphobia taken from his about and DNI

Note: The first link provided was locked behind a paywall, the second link provided was written by a cis person, and the third one minimized transmisogony. The fourth link provided is a tumblr post…

Transcribed Text

We acknowledge that transmascs are affected by TERF ideology, as well as the existence of transmisandry. (Some very good articles on the subject: [#1.] [#2.] [#3.]

We acknowledge that the terms femme and butch are open to all q*eer people; [here’s why.]

Their DNI

I’m not a lesbian and I am TME, but TERF ideology mainly targets transwomen. Yes, other trans and even cis individuals can be impacted by TERFs and their ideology, but it’s specifically harmful towards transwomen and to detract from that and focus so heavily on transmascs individuals being harmed by TERF ideology is just a little weird imo. It’s up to you whether you think that’s a bad thing, but I included it because I myself am transmasc and it just feels weird.

The next transcription is only partial and I’m going to censor part of it because the words used make me uncomfortable. I will make the censored parts with brackets.

Transcribed Text

you use the “nonmen loving nonmen” definition of lesbianism, and/or you don’t believe in [lesbian boys]/gaygirls and or mspec lesbians/gays

you think q*eer is a slur that shouldn’t be reclaimed (any personal discomfort with being called q*eer will be respected)

you don’t think transmisandry exists, you don’t think transmascs are harmed by terf ideology, and/or you think the discussion of transmisandry is inherentky transmisogynistic

you think the terms butch and femme are for lesbians only (they aren’t)

This User’s Side Blogs Include

@/contaiuolo

@/crescairis (this was the side blog that the post was originally posted on)

@/fuckvriska

@/daylightsanctum

I’ll say it here again too, but I am trans and bisexual.

EDIT; I didn’t know butch and femme could be used by people other than lesbians. Thank you to everybody who corrected me. I’ll admit I didn’t bother reading the link attached to it because it was a tumblr post. I assumed this person genuinely meant like anybody could use them including like men. Which, unfortunately, is a take I’ve seen… 😬 my bad

#blocklist #ok 2rb pls and thank you

[sokkagatekeeper]

mx sokkagatekeeper i need your help

my best friends doesn’t really see zuko gay and i don’t know how to analyse this to her (we often analyse text and share opinions) because i’m not good with words. i know his homosexuality is in the text and i’ve always seen him as gay so to me it’s actually canon

i don’t want to impose my opinion but i don’t seem to explain it like the topic deserves.

pls help me

i apologize for the delay on answering this ask!! i wanted to gather the most analysis i could in one post (and also had to eventually come to terms with the fact that i can’t gather literally all the evidence in one post; there is simply too much) since ppl are always like “where’s the essay?” well here. here is the essay, and you (your friend?) gave me the perfect excuse to do so without seeming more obnoxious than usual. so! i wrote a little thing that didn’t go as in-depth as it could go but is clear enough here, and i also dance a little around the subject of zuko and his problem with gender expectations here. i will probably copy-paste the entire paragraph that’s relevant to this analysis later so you don’t have to read it but. it’s a good post imo. anyway!!

before i begin i just want to say that (despite my url) this is not to #gatekeep or whatever. but tumblr does love to talk about how no atla character's sexuality is confirmed, and how claiming that zuko is bisexual or any other variation is not homophobic, and how zuko was written as being attracted to women on-screen. and they are right, in a way; reading zuko as bisexual is not homophobic... but merely, in my opinion, incorrect. and, on the flip side, making an analysis on why zuko is gay is also not inherently biphobic. and one can assume that i'm unlikely to make a biphobic analysis since i am. a bisexual person.

another note: i don’t think anybody who reads zuko as gay is delusional enough to genuinely believe the creators intended to code him as queer, when the author’s interpretation contradicts and/or takes away from the quality of the text, authorial intent is not that relevant to the best possible reading of it. in my opinion of course!

now. to make a queer reading of a character (and i mean reading of the text, which is not the same as a headcanon) one may take into account: what the themes the character portrays are; what their character arc is about; allegories; character development; struggles; stakes and expectations from the society they live in; as well as other pieces of dialogue or details and allegories that are reminiscent of the queer experience. in this post, i will try to gather a bunch of all these aspects of the narratives, themes, etc etc in an attempt to open the anon's friend's eyes to the revelation that is the gay zuko agenda.

also, like with all interpretations, this is not exactly me trying to “prove” that zuko is gay. he isn't gay; he's fictional. rather, i am explaining why i find this interpretation of his sexuality to be far more compelling than any other.

zuko’s coming out arc.

zuko’s arc has several layers. the two main that i can pinpoint are him unlearning the fire nation's imperialist values, and learning that the abuse he suffered was just that, abuse. that it was wrong. but as is often seen in the themes atla presents, what often presents to be two different things have an aspect of unity, that they depend on each other in order to exist. these two aspects of zuko’s redemption accompany each other throughout. the reason why zuko (and azula) was abused in the first place is because of the fire nation’s imperialism; the degree of the abuse zuko suffered and the things he was punished for are a direct effect of the fire nation’s patriarchal society and its constrictions regarding gender. ozai wasn't just any evil father, he was the embodiment of the entire fire nation and its fucked-up values.

zuko is kicked out of his home, mostly for being compassionate, and for letting his compassion take charge of him rather than respecting the piece of etiquette that he was not allowed to speak in the war room. the fire nation is known to be against what it deems as weak, which happens to be anything that has to do with empathy and compassion, sensitivity and gentleness—anything that fits their idea of femininity. zuko is known to present these qualities the fire nation perceives as feminine and weak (especially in comparison to azula), and his father has little trouble sending him away in order to favor his stronger, smarter, ruthless, masculine, “flawless” daughter. zuko is taken by his uncle whom his father is ashamed of, spending years chasing the unattainable idea of finding the avatar and regaining his honor, while he develops a tendency to overperform aggressiveness (zuko’s trauma in itself makes him defensive, not inherently aggressive), and trying to suppress every possible weakness he may have to the rest of the world and himself.

so, in that sense, zuko's redemption arc is not just about him going from bad to good, but it is also about overcoming, unlearning, and un-internalizing homophobia (& misogyny) and all the expectations and constraints that surround masculinity. it's about achieving liberation from his homophobic abusive homelife and finding acceptance in a group of people who accept him for what he is (with his compassion and kindness and emotional expressiveness... and also for being gay). it's about achieving also self-realization and forgiveness. all of this reads as a coming-out narrative thru unintentional allegories all around. zuko's character arc is not explicitly about being gay, but its themes make it so that it can be read as a queer story, and in my opinion, it achieves a greater emotional impact if it is read as such.

zuko’s gender problems. (may or may not copied this from one of the posts i’ve made before lol i just wanted to have it all in one place <3 ok keep reading now)

despite all the suffering and abuse he endured, zuko grew up shaped by the privileges surrounding royalty and the upper class in general. his arc is about humbling him and understand the value in the lives of the poor and marginalized as much as it is about his very own self-realization and asserting he was wronged and treated unfairly by his family over and over. zuko comes from a place of privilege, but he is still highly empathetic and has a certain ease at unlearning his privilege (more ease than azula at least) once he is exposed to the world in its entirety rather than the blatant lies that were presented to him by the fire nation that he had no way of disproving. zuko is compassionate and empathetic despite being stubborn as hell because while growing up in privilege he still experienced certain marginalizations because of his blatant learning disabilities, and his gender presentation.

the fire nation’s society is ruled by militarism, imperialism, and patriarchy. it values what are considered masculine traits and qualities (leadership, cold-thinking, self-control yet ruthlessness, strategy, emotional suppressing) above humanity, identity, personhood and femininity. the fact that the actual societies in real life that inspired the fire nation may not hold the same values is very likely, since this is a very western perspective, but this is what appears in the text, and the way it’s meant to be read.

so shown as a child and heavily hinted at throughout the show, zuko is deeply, loudly feminine in a way that other people can blatantly see and judge him based on it. his self-realization involves breaking free of this pressure he has on his back to be “more of a man” than his personality allows him to. he overperforms a lot of his aggressiveness – the part of it that isn’t born out of his rage, that is – and he lets his anger flow. he is certainly masculine in a fair amount of aspects, but many of his core traits are (in western society, yes, and within the show) associated with femininity, such as emotional expressiveness, empathy and compassion, gentleness, and kindness. femininity is perceived as weak, and zuko is therefore perceived as weak for displaying these traits from an early age and especially in contrast to azula, who by contrast displays many of the “masculine” traits mentioned above (albeit the feminine qualities she chooses to display is what makes her perfectionism — she can be feminine, but in a masculine way, it’s messy and it leads her to a mental breakdown we all know this part).

zuko doesn’t fit at all into the ideal of cold, detached version of masculinity that the fire nation preaches, which is what deteriorated his self-esteem and drove him to overperform his traditionally masculine traits out of desperation such as his commanding stance or getting really good at fighting people, or even as small as being stiff as hell when he wants to show vulnerability or show affection even towards his uncle. he did all of this in order to try and fit better into the mold of the man people told him he should be. but no matter how hard zuko worked to repress that core, fundamental part of himself over the course of the series, he was never able to stick to a cold, ruthless, detached mindset, or stick to the constrictions of masculinity like he is expected to as a prince and as a man. he’s always intentionally and unintentionally working towards being better, and struggles to suppress the softer parts of him constantly.

zuko’s relationship with mai (also known as ‘mai is a lesbian’).

it is no secret that zuko and mai’s relationship is a dysfunctional one. on the surface this is because of zuko’s inability (or lack of will, who’s to say) to understand mai as a person with feelings and thoughts and a life rather than a girlfriend. and while this is true, it is also true that mai was not able to be the person zuko needed at that particular moment in his life, as a girlfriend, friend or otherwise. they both feel trapped, restricted, and misunderstood by the respective expectations placed on them, by their families and the structure of the systematic power they later choose to go against, and the threats that will follow through if they don’t fulfill these expectations. they also project the worst parts of their respective struggles with the power structure of society on each other. their relationship throughout book three rings very true and up until they get back together for some reason.

regarding zuko’s character specifically, his inability to see mai as anything other than “girlfriend” rather than a person comes from the prospect of the term “girlfriend” is part of the oppression he faces back at the fire nation, rather than mai being a constricting and oppressive person herself (which she is not). their relationship to me reads very much like a lavender marriage, as this post very well puts it.

other miscellaneous gay shit <3

there are a lot of little gay moments that zuko has throughout the show. for example, he never cares when pretty girls are attracted to him or flirting with him, including jin and ty lee. his reaction to learning that sokka has a girlfriend is also. interesting. and of course, his reaction to being set up with mai when they were children is to scream “girls are crazy!”. hmm

the blue spirit is a gay thing like, thematically.

so uh. qed. zuko gay!

my (nour) personal favorite Zuko Moment is in the firebending masters when he stands and watches the rainbow fire surround him and he says, very softly and with feeling, ‘i understand’ which is where our beloved i understand tag comes from. as this post very well explains its significance, “(...) zuko has lived his whole life associating firebending with rage and power and violence, so when he lets go of rage and power and violence, he loses his ability to firebend. and this cannot be separated from the fire nation's (and therefore zuko's) views on masculinity; in the fire nation, fire bending is masculinity is aggression, and part of why zuko cared so much about being a powerful firebender is to prove that he was enough of a man. so, learning the sun warriors' form of firebending, which is based in warmth and love, also allows zuko (who is NOT STRAIGHT) to redefine his masculinity. (plus...... yknow.... the fire is rainbow..........)”

#ZUKO GAY (THEMATICALLY RELEVANT) #zuko #analysis #anon #asks #n #s #collaboration <3 #* #gping to post this finally <33 i had forgotten abt it tbh #sorry this took the better part of a year fnjdjsjaka #hope you were able go convince ur friend in that time 👍 #also i hope u guys can tell how much fun we had collecting oh so so so many links #it's excessive i know #oh also one more thing is that stay soft is abt how zuko is gay. in my head that's what it's abt -s

[lunarfly]

Hermione as Harry's Light (by Evaluna)

Hello! This is an essay written many years ago, before the release of HBP&DH. It doesn't belong to me so credits to the original writers(Evaluna, Turambar & Mad-I Moody)! It was written on the CoS forum, I'm not sure if it's still saved there but I have a word document with all of the essays. Anyways, this essay has no ship/character bashing. Again, this essay isn't written by me, but it's one of my favorites. Enjoy!

Quote by Mad-I Moody:

"1."Ron's mum's lit a fire in there [Harry's bedroom] and she's sent up sandwiches." -Hermione couldn't know that if she had immediately dashed up to Harry.

2. "Ron and Ginny say that you've been hiding from everyone since you got back from St. Mungo's." - She's obviously talked to them about this at some point between their arrival back from the hospital and her arrival at 12GP.

3. "The others have told me what you overheard last night on the Extendable Ears."

-Does this indicate that she's had time to talk to the other members of the Weasley clan? Sources point to yes!

Now, isn't it sensible to assume that, in the instances wherein Hermione talked to the Weasley family, she was, at least, thoughtful enough to ask about Mr. Weasley?

Saying Hermione came only to be with Harry cannot be true therefore, because:

1. She doesn't go to see him the MOMENT she comes through the door

2. She gets Harry right out of the sulking room and takes him into a room with Ron and Ginny, with whom she has quite obviously been talking.

3. There is no indication that she wants to be alone with Harry"

Mad-I: Disagree. Not just from a textual analysis standpoint; there we have each our own interpretation. My strongest disagreement comes from what I see as a critical ‘septology’ issue [overarching theme of all 7 books]: Harry overcoming his own internal darkness [despair, hopelessness, isolation] before able to wage and win [or overcome] the external darkness [Voldy, evil, fear, hatred and division]. See below post. IMO the Hermione as Lifeline or Light for Harry scene is representative of what Harry must confront and for what he must stand and fight:

--darkness and the battle of good over evil,

--despair [depression] and the battle of love over [here, self-] hatred,

--isolation and limitation [e.g., Harry imposes on himself a prison for his mind], and the battle of love as emanation over barriers, constraints, and perceptions

It begins with himself. And IMO it doesn’t end. But anyway, it progresses from there to encompass the world. On his own, this scene shows that Harry is vulnerable in that he needs a source of love [for himself] to sustain him; only then can Harry be a source of love [for the world] in his [upcoming and perhaps ongoing] battle with darkness. Harry needs love in this regard perhaps more than anyone else in the world, and yet he’s had very little of it, with Sirius mostly kept apart from Harry. Except for Hermione, who has always been there for Harry? With Hermione’s return, once more for Harry there is connection and hope, and the belief in unlimited horizons and potential - some would call it faith -- when with Hermione. For ship and for series, IMO, I believe that Harry’s ability to acknowledge his need for love [for me, this means for Hermione] is the first step on his path to the light.

What the scene does imply is that Hermione’s conversation with Ron and Ginny and the others’ [may include Fred and George as well] was extremely brief and in the majority focused firmly on Harry. So brief in span that the snow had not yet melted even after climbing the stairs and so focused on Harry and his situation that Hermione had the grasp on all the main details already when she first pounded on the door. This is a young woman on a *mission*. A mission to save Harry. Hermione reaches Harry and saves him from himself, from his dark side, from his own personal hell. I personally think this is one of the most critical scenes in the book for Harry and his battle for good over evil, probably the most important one. The battle is within as well as without, and Hermione is the bringer of light to balance his darkness, to bring balance to his soul AK and Earendil:[thanks for SF ref!] a soul is a universe in and of itself <kabbalah, so one could say Hermione is bringing balance to the universe, in this sense]. Some may say it is not romantic..er…well…to each. But it can certainly be argued that the light and dark imagery, in bringing light from darkness, in the balance they provide one another, in the give and take [in interactions, in providing insight [in this scene=hers/giving love to him through her actions when she comes] or providing courage [in this scene=his/accepting her love through his actions when he follows] between them are the yin and yang that represent in both religious and esoteric texts the love on many levels required for spiritual completion of the marriage of two [bodies and souls] as one, separate but together [again, see the smoky caduceus-like vision that Dumbledore views after Harry’s vision prior to their arrival at number 12, which is followed shortly thereafter by the arrival of Hermione.

With this, one can make a case for striking symbolic romantic and platonic love imagery simultaneously, as well, in terms of a soulmate love that is “complete” on an esoteric level, a bonding of body and soul, the material and spiritual. I see no inherent contradiction, probably because I’m not an ancient Greek philosopher named Aristotle. [‘What is a friend? A single soul dwelling in two bodies’. --Aristotle] The difference being that we in our day can allow for this kind of soulmate love

between a man and a woman, as well, and that we can allow love to exist on many different levels between a man and a woman, not just Eros or what the Greeks narrowly defined as romantic love. The esoteric concepts of a true bonding of souls between a man and woman did of course contain all of these forms of love, sealed with emotional, physical, and contractual public commitments intended to represent the bonding of two souls as one before God and heaven. IMO how can this scene not be important for Harry, particularly as we all know that love is critical to overcoming all that Voldy is and represents? And whatever type you feel exists them between them, IMO there is deep love. So in fact I think this can be argued strongly as a H/Hr scene. For those who disagree, nonetheless it’s all-good since a deep soul love exists regardless if it is ‘very’ platonic. This is, after all, just a hair’s breadth from ‘total consciousness’.

One more point I mentioned before that I want to bring up in context of reinforcing Hermione’s critical position as Harry’s Light, Lifeline, or Savior. Arguably, since Hermione is key to bringing Harry back from the edge [regardless of what comes later], IMO the larger symbolism is that Hermione is “the one” who will always save Harry from his greatest enemy - himself, his dark side. After that, and only after that, can Harry save the world. She will help him choose light [represented by…Hermione] over darkness [his own despair and hopelessness, his feelings of being unclean and unworthy]. Even I can see some traditional religious symbolism here, but there’s much esoteric symbolism as well. Nonetheless, Ron’s gift of…what, frankincense and myth? Is that why the perfume smelled unusual?... Ron’s gift only seemed to highlight his deeper, intuitive understanding [at some level] of Hermione’s fundamental importance to Harry. Yin and Yang. Inexorably intertwined - just thought I’d throw that in here as well! And for what purpose would Ron is shown as gifting her with such symbolic honor if not to perhaps choose to give his life for hers, thereby saving Harry’s light and thus saving them all. Particularly, if Ron betrays or obstructs Harry and Hermione [this may happen if Ron is rejected by Hermione or “loses” her to Harry, per 6th step scene, falling away from the path to Hermione's door], then Ron may sacrifice himself [from betrayal guilt] to save Harry and/or Hermione [same scene, where Ron falls at Harry's feet] thus restoring his character and his legacy in addition to doing his critical bit to save Hermione &/or Harry [=the world].

(Turambar) I agree that the Christmas scene is one of the most significant in the book.

Just on what you said about the light/dark: it's interesting that JKR accentuates the extremities in various ways to bring out that contrast.

She uses biblical language - appropriate considering the timing - such as "unclean" and "possession" to describe Harry's self-disgust. His feelings of being unfit to be in the company of others brings another biblical image of the leper.

He completely isolates himself for a period rather than just behaves in a moody/angry fashion in company. He's "starving", cold.

Hermione is not mentioned at all from the time of the dream to her knocking on his door - an obvious device to enhance the surprise and impact of her arrival.

There's the imagery of evil (snake) and love (hippogriff) and as I've said before that suspicious dream occurs just when Harry is at his lowest ebb.

I agree with what FP said: the sequence shows the limitations of his relationship with the Weasleys and Sirius and conversely the growing significance to him of Hermione.

Both times he's considered running away when in a depressed state - here and before the First Task - the option has been to run to the barren, loveless Dursleys. To the house that's not a home and the family that isn't a family (to him). Both times he's got through the bad patch with a bit of help from Hermione.

#harry potter #harmione #harmony #harry and hermione #harry potter ships #hermione granger #hp ships #harry x hermione #harry/hermione #hermione and harry #hermione x harry #hermione/harry #harry potter series #harry potter books #hp #hhr #harry potter essay #harmione essay

[evilwickedme]

ok so to sum up my feelings for leverage: redemption, season 1(a): (long post warning, there’s a tl;dr at the end)

I knew that Hardison wouldn’t be in most of the season due to Aldis Hodge being a busy bee nowadays, but I didn’t realize that meant he’d only be around for the first two episodes. He was sorely missed, not only because of my attachment to him, but also because he’s usually the grounding factor in the group dynamic, and his role as info guy and tech guy was split evenly between two characters who had their own issues.

That said, Hardison is absolutely a highlight of the two episodes he’s in. his speech about redemption was everything I could’ve hoped for (plus, more evidence for the Jewish!Hardison pile...). I wish we’d gotten to see more of his dynamic with Breanna because what we saw was funny and sweet and we don’t generally get to see Hardison taking care of somebody who so desperately needs taking care of. I hope that Aldis Hodge is around for more episodes in 1(b), because what we’re left with feels a little hollow.

Sticking to original leverage characters for now, for the most part the leverage crew still felt true to the original series as characters, even if the show itself was a little bit confused at times. The actors understand their characters and embody them so well that I think one could give them the trashiest script ever and they’d still sell it. Sophie is a particular focus in 1(a) because of Nate’s death, and she’s particularly well written as a result.

That said, I’m super bitter that we saw little to no mastermind!Parker. Parker’s character being given the mastermind role was a big deal and it feels like they’re walking it back because they feel uncomfortable with it. It is eventually given an in-text excuse, but literally in the last episode, and it was not a particularly convincing reason, and in fact contradicted moments from previous episodes (Sophie leaving for a client meeting and ignoring Parker in ep3 comes to mind). It’s frustrating, it makes the end of the original leverage feel pointless, and letting Parker make a decision once in a while is not the same thing at all. The original series repeatedly showed us that while everyone in the team had their strengths, Parker works problems and solves them in unique, interesting ways, and other characters’ days in the limelight tended to be comedic or even failures. It’s a broken promise, and a pretty major broken promise at that.

On a more positive note, Parker’s dynamic with literally everyone was fantastic. She’s possibly the best written character this season. They’ve taken the autism out of the subtext and into the text (although obviously still undiagnosed), and given her coping mechanisms that were taken seriously in the text even when they were played for laughs, which I appreciated. Her attempts to mentor Breanna were sweet, her friendship with Sophie was electric and at times (CRIMES) hilarious, and as usual, she has a fantastic dynamic with Eliot that makes my heart burst. If you don’t think they’re romantically involved, at least acknowledge there’s a life partnership here. They’ve spent the last decade together.

(We’ll get to Harry.)

Eliot isn’t given much arc-wise, which is frustrating since he’s my favorite. He’s being presented as the goal at the end of a redemption arc, ie to keep working at it every day until your soul heals or whatever, and it doesn’t reflect the message they’re trying to convey via Hardison’s speech and our two new characters. He’s got his moments, but I think they under utilized his potential.

Breanna!!! Breanna’s my new favorite, except for Eliot. She’s hilarious, she’s insecure, she’s nerdy and excited in a way that’s similar to Hardison but still distinct in its inherent teenage-girl-ness and I LOVE IT. Unlike the previous series, where Hardison’s “age of the geek” was often a joke played on Hardison, we’re at the point where Eliot and Parker are both right there with him, and so they accept and even appreciate Breanna’s nerdiness. Also, canon gay character? In YOUR Leverage? It’s more likely than you think.

(No, I never thought they’d make ot3 canon on screen. I hoped, but I didn’t think it would actually happen.)

I think Breanna’s the character that will be the most interesting to see grow. She’s got a lot of potential and a list of crimes a mile long (or more). I adore her with all my heart. I want to see her tiktok account.

Harry. Oh, Harry.

It took me a while, but I do like Harry. It took a while, because the narrative positioned him at the same level as Nate back in episode 1 of original Leverage. But in episode 1 we didn’t know the other characters. We had Nate as the POV character, and so we cared about him because we were seeing the world through his eyes. (This is TV Studies 101. I know this, because I took TV Studies 101 in 2019.) In Leverage: Redemption, we no longer have a POV character, for several reasons:

Nate, previously the POV character, is dead.

As it is, by mid-season 3 of leverage Nate was no longer a POV character. This is, coincidentally, the point where the leverage writers realized they had four other characters in the main cast they could do something with, and in-universe, Nate accepted that he was a thief, not a special Good Man.

Sophie is sort of a POV character for the first episode of the revival, but only for the first few minutes. Afterwards, the series settles into the groove of seasons 3-5, i.e., the entire crew is our POV. We know our crew, and we love them as is.

Narratively, however, Redemption insists on positing Harry as the POV character, because it is his redemption we are pursuing most vehemently. And I think they really relied on us already knowing the actor - I’ve never seen him in anything before, so to me he was a completely fresh face and they put almost no effort into selling him to me. Beyond being competent and consistently mildly baffled by the antics of the leverage crew, I honestly don’t know who this man is by the end of EIGHT episodes with him. I have a much better handle on Breanna by the end of 1(a), and I can tell you I knew all five of the original leverage crew better by the end of the first episode of the original series than I do Harry. What’s the name of his daughter, John Rogers. Is he still married. How old is the daughter. Why is none of this worth mentioning. Give him a sense of humor that isn’t reacting to other people’s shenanigans. I’m so frustrated. It’s bad writing.

I did manage to grow to like Harry by the end, but I’m pretty sure this is down to Noah Wyle’s charismatic portrayal of an under-developed character, at least partially. And I never stopped being frustrated at not knowing who this man is at all.

The two highlights of the season are undoubtedly episodes five and six. Episode five was the first time I felt like the episode was more than a collection of good moments between the main cast and mediocre moments between the main cast and also the main plot. The issues with pacing and tone that I suffered through for most of the season were mostly non-existent in ep5 and 6, and at least in episode 5 I attribute that to the pared down cast. They had time to focus not only on our actual characters - Sophie, Parker, Breanna - but also on the case. This is the only client from 1(a) I am going to remember next week without googling it first, mark my words.

Episode six worked for the exact opposite reason - it completely disregarded the client and plot and immersed itself in the characters. Breanna gets a moment to shine, but everybody else gets their bits and I wouldn’t be surprised if that was the script that was most fun to write. The characters felt natural, real, and captured the found-family dynamic that’s been missing all season for the first time.

While episode 2 is the weakest episode, I don’t actually have much to say about it. I am disappointed in episode 8. For a mid-season finale, I really expected them to do something. Instead, it was an episode about Nate Ford that copped out of being about Nate Ford (both with fake-Nate and with the new version of him being relayed to us). I would have told the writers to give that energy back to episode 1 and write an episode that’s about anybody who isn’t Harry, oh my God. I know I said I grew to like him but so many episodes were about Harry. He’s the newbie! Why didn’t Hardison get an episode that was actually about him, considering he was only around for two episodes? Why does Eliot have to be the butt of the joke when the theme of the series should directly tie back to him in a much more meaningful way? The last episode parodies their own tagline by saying Eliot isn’t just a hitter, but it deftly avoids noticing that they’ve turned him into nothing more than very muscly comic relief, including in that very episode!

Also, I hated the Marshal. Eliot actively looked uncomfortable around her.

tl;dr

The season took a while, that’s definitely true. But it did find its footing eventually, and by the halfway mark of 1(a) it finally felt cohesive again. The characters were played fantastically even when they weren’t well-written, and if nothing else, the humor landed every time. It still has its kinks and problems to work out, but if you look at it as a brand new show rather than a continuation of one that went off the air over eight years ago, it’s actually doing rather well. I’m choosing to judge it in both lights - according to its own standards, it establishes its identity in episode five; according to Leverage standards, it establishes its connection to its roots in episode six. Either way, I thoroughly enjoyed 1(a), and continue to have high hopes for 1(b).

fic writing will commence in three, two, one...

#leverage #leverage meta #leverage redemption #leverage ot3 #parker leverage #alec hardison #sophie devereaux #eliot spencer #breanna casey #harry wilson #mine