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dazais-guardian-angel · 4 years

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☕️+ what things do you wish they did with descole (because I am weak and he’s my fave)

Apologies for the late reply to this; tbh I almost didn’t want to answer it, cause I feel like nothing I’ll say will be something others haven’t already discussed (especially since I just saw you asked someone else this same question), and also I’ve only ever played the prequels once back when they first came out and I haven’t reached them again in my replay yet, so I’m not fresh on everything done with his character and all the Azran/Targent stuff. But nonetheless:

In general, obviously, I wish Desmole’s character “arc” if you can even call it that as it is now + plot twists/identity had been much more fleshed out from the get-go and consistent with who they ultimately made him be, that is, Hershel’s brother and someone who never should have legitimately wanted to hurt him or people close to him. While I think the worst of this really only comes out in Eternal Diva, where he literally tries to swordfight Hershel to death and kill Luke on one occasion cause he goes insane once Hershel out-puzzles him, there really just should have been more nuance to him in the first two entries especially (and in Miracle Mask too of course, but he’s barely in that game so) where he shows some level of frustration and hesitance to go up against Hershel and his crew, even if he still does so because he absolutely has to carry out his revenge plan. Just SIGNS that there’s more to this guy than just a walking one-dimensional mysterious deadly flamboyant badass, beyond just Hershel going “hm he feels familiar”, like no of course that’s not near enough. Even if Desmole’s true identity still wasn’t going to be revealed until Azran Legacy, there still needed to be hints, breaks in his facade/character, hesitation, signs of remorse, even if some of these hints are not outright foreshadowing to a familial relationship/desire for revenge. He could still lose it in Eternal Diva, but just make it seem more desperate and broken, and less kill-crazy. Give him moments of humanization, show that Descole can be kind, such as around Melina or Nina; what I honestly wanted to see was him having interactions around girls other than Aurora where his fatherly nature might show (not that him and Aurora aren’t great, I just wanted more); he had to have spent a lot of time around Melina while making the Detragan, and the potential for their relationship while she was dying is so much. Hershel should have had more moments of familiarity, and thinking about him when he’s not around, trying to figure him out, demanding to know who he is because he feels like he needs to know for some reason he can’t describe, and Descole’s answers/non-answers are extremely telling/bitter/curious/thought-provoking. And Descole should imo have had a scene to himself at the end of every entry pre-Azran Legacy where it’s increasingly obvious this guy has Angst(tm) and some beef with Hershel that seems personal and not just to do with getting in the way of his plots, along with all the earlier hints obviously (iirc he had a final scene at the end of Last Spector but it was nothing more than showing “hey we’re not done with this guy!!”, so that definitely should have had more to it; at the end of Eternal Diva I REALLY wanted to see how he survived his fall, probably with Raymond saving him, cue more ~mysterious reactions to Hershel~ as he thinks on how Hershel cried out his name as he was falling despite the fact that they were enemies, etc; and then the one at the end of Miracle Mask is okay I guess, but I still wanted more to it, more, idk signs of regret or remorse or sadness from him before he goes after Bronev, and not just “grrrrrr finally my revenge is close I’mma take you down all I have is angerrRRRRR” also for him to not look so damn stupid when all Bronev has to do is knee him to take him down, like this is DESCOLE, THE KING OF BADASS, THAT ENDING IS SO PITIFUL; WE DIDN’T NEED THAT FOR A FAKEOUT UNMASKING SCENE THAT LEADS NOWHERE).

tl;dr, Desmole’s story being planned from the very beginning would have made it possible for the writers to foreshadow and develop him properly before you finally see him as Desmond, and make you attached to and interested in him much more than just as a cool badass you kinda wonder the identity of but mostly just enjoy watching be badass and evil. The PL series had never had an overarching villain in the main trilogy aside from Don Paolo, who was more of a comic relief villain who they could afford to not make up his beef with/connection to Hershel until the final game because it was a very insignificant reason in the grand scheme of things, and Don Paolo just..... wasn’t that integral to the plots of that trilogy, he was more of a bonus background villain not meant to be taken seriously or have any true emotional impact. But then you have Descole introduced as the key threat over the majority of the prequel series (you think it’s the Masked Gentleman this time, but no lol, it’s still Descole!!), and needless to say, “actually the protagonist’s long-lost brother trying to get revenge on their corrupt father, both of which are involved in an ancient civilization that ruined all their lives in multiple ways” is a biiiiiiit more important than... “jealous dead girlfriend rival” lol. And so there’s a jarring disconnect between pre-Miracle Mask Descole and post-Miracle Mask Descole, because the Azran aren’t even a thing until Miracle Mask at ALL, and so in Last Spector and Eternal Diva Descole just seems like this mad scientist with a dramatic flair and nothing more, who mayyyyyyyy be searching for eternal life? Since that seems to be the running theme with the golden garden and ambrosia? But even then literally nothing is revealed about him in that game and movie so who knows (and unrelated but it seems like those two places have literally no connection to the Azran aside from an offhanded mention of them in Miracle Mask? idk man); the point I’m taking way too long to make here is that it’s very clear the writers had no endgame plan for him until Miracle Mask at the earliest, and even then I wonder how much of it was completely hashed out (considering the... sort of mess that Azran Legacy is, I almost wonder if most of it was literally not decided on until then). My guess is that Descole was super popular after Last Spector so they decided to bring him back (his final scene in that game could have just been to show that he survived and was still “out there somewhere”, whether or not he came back next entry), but then realized they didn’t have a backstory or identity for him so they had to think up something way too late; I can’t confirm this though of course.

Then you get to Azran Legacy, and honestly, despite how bizarre and weirdly unimportant and filler-ish 90% of this game’s plot feels, I love the inherent idea of Descole finally coming to Hershel as himself. Hershel always shows up and gets in his way? Fine, he’ll come to him. He always sees through his disguises? Fine, he’ll come to him in the best disguise he has: himself. Ask him for his help in a mission his curiosity won’t let him refuse. Because then, of course, even though Desmond is doing this to further and finish his plot, and use them as tools, essentially, there’s the wonderfully painful obvious second reason for why he chooses to do things this way, and that is he wants to spend time with his brother, whether or not he consciously realizes this. This way, Desmond can be himself, he doesn’t have to hide his appearance or (most) intentions and can freely express a lot of his regular personality while still working towards his ultimate goal, but at the exact same time there’s so much he can’t show, that he can’t reveal or let himself do, and this has to be a hundred times harder than when he’s posing as Descole because now he’s friends with Hershel and the others, and a part of him must want so desperately to just stay with them forever as he spends more and more time with them and grows more attached to them, (again, no matter how much he may realize this). But this is where his “arc” continues to fall flat in that aside from one or two hints towards his daughter and having a brother, there is literally no depth in Desmond’s behavior in Azran Legacy pre-Descole/brother reveal, just like in all the entries before it. He should have shown small signs here and there of something being “off” with him, of sadness, of hesitation, of trauma and mental instability; strange things said to Hershel alone that makes him and the player start wondering things, just like with Descole. Everyone immediately goes, upon seeing Desmond for more than five minutes, “oh that’s Descole obviously” (plus Raymond is just... there lol), but it’s not for the right reasons; there’s nothing wrong with a predictable plot twist, but there needs to be some kind of hints towards it to make you emotionally invested in what you realize is coming, because you’re waiting for it and you know it will hurt but you just don’t know when and how it will happen; not that you guess it for no other reason than “well there’s this new character who isn’t an existing friend of Layton’s and everything is suspiciously calm and we’re 90% of the way through this and Descole has yet to show himself; it’s probably him”. For the record, I actually think Miracle Mask does its predictable plot twist a lot better, even if that game still has issues; I see a lot of people complain about how predictable Randall being the masked gentleman is, and it is, but honestly? The flashback plot mechanic in that game is EXTREMELY effective in 1) making it VERY clear who the masked gentleman is very early on, like they’re not trying to hide it in any way, but also 2) punching you in the gut to maximum effect when you get to the end of the flashbacks and pair it with the present-day plot. Like, they could have just told the player in dialogue/infodumps throughout the game who Randall was and what his connection to Hershel, Angela and Henry was, like Desmond does to Hershel near the end of Azran Legacy, but that would have been tedious and boring and the player wouldn’t care near as much, and the game wouldn’t have been long enough. Instead, you see it firsthand, you experience it with Hershel, and although I’m frustrated at how little is done with masked gentleman!Randall and showing connections/hints to who he used to be (look, my exact problems with Descole) and making Hershel more involved with him at the end, which would have been the icing on the angst cake, the entire flashback half of that game honestly left a huge impact on me and I think that’s why I spend so much time talking about/getting emotional about Miracle Mask despite always saying that Diabolical Box is my favorite, because getting to know Randall and see that friendship and see how it ended just makes it all hit so much harder, as flashbacks should do. The writers knew it would be obvious who the masked gentleman is and they leaned into that, it was a very deliberate choice, what the entire game revolved around, because the point wasn’t that it was unpredictable, but that you would feel for that character and it would hurt so much more. And while I don’t necessarily think Azran Legacy needed full-on flashback gameplay segments for Desmond like Miracle Mask had, I think having vague flashbacks every once in a while throughout that game, vague enough to not directly tell you it’s him or naming/showing Hershel/Theodore much but clear enough that you can reasonably guess it is Desmond, would have done a world of difference, along with all the little behavioral/dialogue hints I mentioned. Similar to the diary entries in Diabolical Box, or if anyone’s ever played Super Paper Mario, the flashbacks in that game after every chapter about an unknown person that it becomes increasingly obvious as you play through the game is the main villain. I just.... really, really wish, out of all the prequel entries, Azran Legacy gave Desmond so much more emotional depth and resonance once we finally see him as Desmond instead of Descole, so many more scenes with Hershel, and to a lesser extent the others, so much more development of his character, so much more of an emphasis put on his prior family and how much he’s hurting and caring and yet at the same time refuses to give up his revenge; all of this, no matter how obvious it made his identity as both Descole and as Hershel’s brother. The brother plot twist, too, feels slightly lame and overdone and out of nowhere, but honest to god I wouldn’t fucking care at all if they just foreshadowed it properly and made it so painfully obvious how much Descole/Desmond wants to be with Hershel and this family and how much it kills him to turn on them all again at the end of Azran Legacy even if he still goes through with it, and how much he regrets everything as he lays dying in Hershel’s arms, but we get none of that goddammitLevel5whydoyoudeprivemeofsomuch-

*ahem* apparently I still had a lot to say. i just wanted so much more for him; he’s SUCH a tragic character... the stupid wannabe phantom of the opera bread man still makes me cry, despite everything, because i am trash. Oh yeah and he should have held Aurora in his arms as she died. And Azran Legacy should have ended post-credits with Hershel opening his door with his hat off (to show that this is after Unwound Future), his eyes widening, then it shows the bottom half of the person’s face, just enough to see the bread hair tips, and the slight sad smile, and then cut to black. level-5 just hire the PL fandom to make the Desmond spinoff game pls

#replies #professor layton #professor layton spoilers #jean descole #desmond sycamore #meta #'i dont have much to say' *writes a fucking novel*#EVERY FUCKING TIME #NOTHING IS EVER SHORT WITH ME #why did this partly turn into a miracle mask defense/gush fest i am so sorry #but seriously i thought of that point only as i was typing this... that mm's flashback gameplay is why it works so well #and that something much smaller scale would have been PERFECT for Desmond in AL #not before that #but definitely in AL #....but since we can't have that just give me the Descole spinoff entirely please :''')#themadgirlinthefandombox

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mediaeval-muse · 3 years

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Book Review

Beasts Made of Night. By Tochi Onyebuchi. New York: Razorbill, 2017.

Rating: 2/5 stars

Genre: YA fantasy

Part of a Series? Yes, Beasts Made of Night #1

Summary: In the walled city of Kos, corrupt mages can magically call forth sin from a sinner in the form of sin-beasts – lethal creatures spawned from feelings of guilt. Taj is the most talented of the aki, young sin-eaters indentured by the mages to slay the sin-beasts. But Taj’s livelihood comes at a terrible cost. When he kills a sin-beast, a tattoo of the beast appears on his skin while the guilt of committing the sin appears on his mind. Most aki are driven mad by the process, but 17-year-old Taj is cocky and desperate to provide for his family. When Taj is called to eat a sin of a royal, he’s suddenly thrust into the center of a dark conspiracy to destroy Kos. Now Taj must fight to save the princess that he loves – and his own life.

***Full review under the cut.***

Trigger/Content Warnings: violence, blood, body horror

Overview: There were so many things about this book that I would have usually been very interested in: a Nigerian-inspired fantasy, an intriguing magical premise, a political drama, etc. I was very excited to pick it up, and I was looking forward to a something a little different from the run-of-the-mill YA fantasies I’ve been reading lately. While I think the story started ok, I quickly found that the book as a whole felt more like a draft than a finished piece. There wasn’t much attention paid to building a plot; everything seemed to meander until the last third, when suddenly, all the action was dumped on us all at once. I would have been able to appreciate it had more care been given to setting up stakes and having scenes build on one another earlier in the book, but unfortunately, it didn’t feel like Onyebuchi had a plan from the get-go; he seemed to have been writing without a sense of what his story was going to be until the very end. While I really enjoyed the idea of “sin eating” and all the potential stories that could arise from that premise, the book as a whole just didn’t come together in a way I found satisfying. Thus, this book only gets 2 stars from me.

Writing: Onyebuchi’s prose is fairly typical for a YA novel in that it describes things in a straightforward way, focusing on actions more than emotions or complex nuances within the fantasy world. Beasts Made of Night is also like a lot of YA fantasy in that it is told in first person, which means that, by nature, some descriptions and narrations feel awkward or unnatural. First person is tricky because humans don’t consciously register certain things that need to be included in a novel in order for a reader to understand the action, and I think Onyebuchi falls into this trap sometimes. This isn’t necessary his fault; I think all first-person narration has this hurdle, and some writers overcome it better than others.

Plot: The main arc of this book follows our hero, Taj, as he attempts to navigate the political world after eating the sin of the king of Kos. I found the premise incredibly compelling, but unfortunately, the execution didn’t quite click for me. The main conflict doesn’t take off until around page 80, which means that for nearly the first third of the book, we spend a lot of time following Taj as he just lives his life in Kos. To some extent, following a character’s daily life can be a good way of orienting a reader in a fantasy world, but after a time, I wanted the main conflict to start.

Once Taj ate the king’s sin, it seemed like the story was finally going to start, but unfortunately, it didn’t. Taj doesn’t really disclose what the sin was or how his knowledge of it affected his status in the kingdom. I would have thought that will such an abnormally giant sin-beast, there would be some kind of political plot revolving around the king, but instead, Taj is simply taken into the palace as the royal family’s personal aki, and he spends the next third of the book not doing much of anything.

After a while, he is sent away from the palace so he can train an army of aki, and even that plot starts to drag until the final 60ish pages, when Taj is involved in a plot to take over the royal palace. The last third or so of the novel seemed to dump all the action on us at once, and most of that is conspiracy that has already taken place off-page - Taj just gets invited along for the ride (because he develops some new abilities? Because he’s the chosen one? I don’t know). I personally didn’t find it very compelling because none of the major events were set up in the first two-thirds of the book, making everything feel as though it were happening at random for plot twisty reasons. I also don’t think the plot was a very smart one, which made the plan to take over the palace seem poorly-planned.

Characters: On the whole, the characters were a mixed bag for me. Taj, our protagonist, is interesting in that he’s a little cocky and has that fun attitude of “I-hate-that-I-care.” I was really looking forward to seeing how his character would develop over the course of the novel, but he didn’t seem to change all that much. I also wish Taj had had some kind of deeper motivation that affected his actions throughout the book. For example, we understand that Taj wants to send money back to his family, but we don’t get a lot of descriptions of him being homesick or feeling lonely - things that would make this goal feel more important and which would hit differently when we read about him being essentially alienated from his fellow aki because of how successful he’s been at sin-eating. Instead, Taj feels rather aloof and disinterested in trying to form a found family, and I couldn’t quite understand what it was that was driving him other than mere survival (which is fine, but survival on its own in insufficient for me).

Taj also seemed to act in ways that didn’t quite make sense; for example, he seemed unfazed by the “Baptism,” an event in which the government razes an entire neighborhood to the ground if it feels the area is too sinful. In the first 80 pages, Taj gets caught up in a Baptism, but afterwards, brushes it off and goes smoking with his friend, Bo. I would have understood if Taj had gone to cope with the horror he saw, but it didn’t feel that way. It felt like “oh, well, time for a night out.” Absolutely no exploration of how witnessing the Baptism affected him afterward.

Many side characters also didn’t seem to have a clear arc; they merely drifted in and out of the story as needed. Bo was supposedly Taj’s close friend, but he and Taj don’t have that many scenes together which showed that (I was told more than shown). Arzu, Taj’s bodyguard of sorts after he enters palace service, is kind of fun, but her arc isn’t really that important to the plot. The king is barely involved except for the sin-eating and the very end, and the princess (Taj’s love interest? Maybe?) is awkward without clear motivations. Even Izu (a mage), Aliya (another mage), and Zainab (a fellow aki), who have direct influences on Taj’s life and are major players in the big plot, don’t seem to be given much room to shine. Perhaps this was to keep the plot twist of the last third of the book secret, but it felt like they didn’t really have a use until then.

It also didn’t feel as if Taj was truly bonded to any side characters. Despite scenes of joking around with Bo or protecting Omar, a young aki that is discovered on the day another aki dies, I didn’t really feel that these relationships were important. I was told that they were, but because we get so few scenes where Taj builds trust or confides in people, I never got the sense that he truly connected with anyone - not even the princess, who he supposedly falls in love with (or in lust with?) for no reason.

I think more work could have been done to solve the problem of useless side characters by making their motivations or goals more clear (or at least sprinkled more hints and seeds) throughout the entire novel, not just all at the end. As the book stands, Onyebuchi spends a lot of time describing the setting and characters’ actions, and while he makes clear that the aki are second-class citizens and some people in the palace want things to change, he doesn’t really tell us what his characters want, how they act to achieve these goals, and how the events of the book (or how Taj himself) threaten those goals - at least, not until the end. I think if more was shown to us instead of told, with scenes more clearly building on one another, characters would have had more fulfilling arcs and the plot as a whole would have felt more suspenseful.

Worldbuilding: Aside from the sin-eating, Onyebuchi creates a magical world full of sensual experiences. It seems like gems and precious stones are everywhere, but aren’t necessarily valuable as currency; instead, they symbolize family ties and add splashes of color to an impoverished world. There is also a kind of smoking lounge with aromatics such as apricot and mint, while the sounds and smells of the markets bring Kos to life.

While all these elements captured my interest, I think the book would have benefited from a bit more structure when exploring the relationship between the outcast aki and the people around them. It seemed to me that the aki were a necessary scapegoat in that they were simultaneously needed and shunned by society. They are kept in poverty and often suffer from exploitation, with no way of demanding fairer treatment. While this was all well and good for establishing class dynamics, I did want some more explanation of why the aki were so powerless. Why couldn’t they, say, form some kind of union and refuse to eat sins unless they were paid fairly? Seems to me that threatening to kill them could work, but eventually, the royals would run out of aki, and without their services, things could go downhill pretty fast.

I also wish figures like the inyo or the arashi had been more integral to the story, as I kept forgetting what they were until the very end. These figures are mentioned a lot, but I never really felt like they were part of the world because they don’t really make an appearance, nor does belief in them seem to affect the action.

TL;DR: Beasts Made of Night has an intriguing premise and is set in a marvelous fantasy world, but unfortunately suffers from poor plotting and characters with unclear arcs and motivations.

#book reviews

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neuxue · 5 years

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(Part the 1st)Now that you are in the Chapter 50-52 bubble, I wanted to share something. I've messaged you before about how your continuous comparisons of Rand and Egwene's arcs helped/caused me to see the depth and complexity of their relationship, and the way in which Egwene acts as Rand's counterweight in the series, providing the a balance to the Dragon Reborn in a series that is, at its heart, about how vitally important balance between forces is (at least within a strict binary system).

(Part the 2nd) In light of that I wanted to add that I had previously been a little dubious of your theory that Lew’s Theron’s voice in Rand’s head was actually a defensive construct and not necessarily Rand’s madness. It just felt like the writing was so clear that LTT’s voice was legit, and maybe it is on some level. But I was recently rereading earlier sections as part of another read along (it covers 1-2 chapters a week and is in the TSR, who will finish first? :P lmao). But I noticedin the lead-up to the battle outside of Cairhein against the Shaido, there are SEVERAL instances of Rand just suddenly *having* memories or knowledge from LTT… and at this stage there was no voice at all. The voice doesn’t appear until AFTER Rand nearly runs himself to exhaustion in that battle. And it’s presented so faux casually (as in, it’s a big deal and it’s pointed out, but within the context of us seeing the beginning of Rand experiencing the Taint. Much like the Joker’sline in The Dark Knight about people being ok as long as events are following “The Plan” even if The Plan is horrific. We are expecting to see Rand loosing it, so we don’t really over analyze it when it happens) if I had not been primed by reading your analysis from that perspective, I probably would have just KEPT reading and not noticed, so once again; thank you for this blog and for adding ever more depth and meat to this series for me!

Yeah, I do talk about this one a lot. I’m glad it works for you!

And in my defence, it’s because most of the time I’m trying to work out what’s going on, as new information comes in and things change. Because it’s definitely taken me a while to figure out what’s happening – and I could very well be wrong! This is one where I think there’s a whole lot of space for different reader interpretations, depending on what makes sense to you (and, honestly, on what feels more satisfying to you; I often feel like explanations of a character’s internal landscape or mentality or psychology work better when they’re left a bit open to interpretation).

Your description of it as a “theory that Lews Therin’s voice in Rand’s head was actually a defensive construct and not necessarily Rand’s madness. It just felt like the writing was so clear that LTT’s voice was legit, and maybe it is on some level” is interesting because I never really thought of it in those terms; this is partly no doubt because I’ve been trying to work it out as the story unfolds, but also because I think the very nature of the whole…situation in Rand’s head also changes as time goes on. But I suppose you’re right; that is sort of where I’ve eventually ended up.

That is to say, yes, I think at this point in time, what is portrayed as Lews Therin’s voice is not an accurate representation of Lews Therin Telamon as he was in life, and is more something Rand has – inadvertently and more or less subconsciously – created, as a way of dealing with something that probably absolutely no one is actually equipped to deal with.

But I think initially it was much closer to a manifestation of Lews Therin’s actual personality and thoughts, as they might have been if he were there to experience what Rand does. And in between then and now, we see a transition.

It’s something I definitely want to focus on more closely in a reread, because again, my own understanding and interpretation of what’s going on has changed so much as the story progresses, so I think it’ll be different looking at it from the perspective of having seen the whole thing.

That said, I see it as progressing something like this:

We start with not even a voice, but just occasional things Rand seems to know, or remember, or be able to do, that he has no business knowing in this lifetime. It’s like that barrier between lifetimes has been thinned and torn, and then things start to slip through. It’s hardly even noticeable at first.

Until it is, and we move into the beginning of an identity crisis, with Rand occasionally responding to Lews Therin’s name and not his own, or not even realising when he’s saying something that comes from Lews Therin’s lifetime/memories rather than his present one. Because he has all this extra stuff in his head, and right now it’s not compartmentalised at all, so he starts to get a bit lost in it, or inundated by it, and he doesn’t have a way of anchoring himself against it (because what is himself?)

Then it starts to become not just memories and thoughts, but an actual voice. Initially, like I said, I do think this is probably very close to how Lews Therin himself would have sounded; lines like ‘I would burn the world and use my soul for tinder to hear her laugh again’ certainly seem like something that would come from Lews Therin Telamon. But that’s part of the same extended scene where we get ‘for a moment, he could not remember his name’. This is the barrier actually starting to dissolve in places, and Rand is no longer ignorant of what’s happening but is terrified by it (and as a reader, I was as well! I’m a proponent of reunification now, but at the time? Yeah, watching your protagonist forget his own name seemed like a sign that All Is Not Well), and – crucially – has no real coping mechanisms for it yet.

That is, I think, where we start to see a transition from a clear distinction between Lews Therin Telamon and Rand al'Thor (perhaps ironically, as I think a lot of what happens next is because Rand’s afraid of losing himself). Rand asserts his own identity in TFoH (it’s a major part of the climactic battle, even), and in doing so he more consciously sets up this distinction between himself and Lews Therin.

Despite that, though, the barrier between lifetimes is eroding (this, I think, is the taint madness…I personally headcanon this as being the same for all saidin users, but people react to it differently and it manifests differently in each of them), so more of Lews Therin’s memories and knowledge and even personality are there, accessible, in Rand’s head.

So I read it as Rand…creating his own barrier, in place of the one that’s falling apart, in order to hold on to what he defines as himself. It’s a self-vs-other kind of divide he sets up…but this time he’s the one defining it, which means we see it manifest a little differently than the one the Pattern put there for good reason.

From about…oh, Lord of Chaos onwards, we get what I see as a gradual transition from Rand al'Thor 100% on one side of that barrier and Lews Therin Telamon 100% on the other side to…a barrier being there, but a mixing on either side of elements from each…personality? Lifetime?

Because Rand starts using the voice as a tool, as something he can point to and say ‘that is a madman; I am sane’, or as a source of knowledge, or as a touchstone of sorts, or as someone to bounce ideas off of, or – I think – something he can contrast himself with. Like a mirror he can look into, not to see what he is but to see what he is not (what he refuses to be).

And it’s this last one that’s crucial, because this is what I think causes a lot of the shift in the first place. Rand knows he is Lews Therin Telamon reborn. Rand knows what Lews Therin Telamon did. And above almost anything else, Rand is terrified of doing the same. So we see him deliberately setting anything that falls under ‘not myself’ or 'madness’ or 'killing everyone you love’ in contrast with himself; he uses it as a way to set some of those thresholds (that he later crosses), to set himself up as distinct from all the things he refuses to be. He needs to see them as separate entities in order to hold to a) his identity, b) his sanity, and c) his hope of…not a second chance, exactly, but of not repeating Lews Therin’s fate. His autonomy, I suppose.

But then we start to see that shift, as well, because now it’s no longer the actual barrier between lifetimes that seems to exist (and for good fucking reason) in everyone, if this is a world in which everyone is someone reborn but no one remembers their past lives; but is instead a replacement barrier. A barrier Rand has made for himself, in order to keep his identity and sanity and autonomy safe.

Because ultimately here’s the thing: Rand and Lews Therin aren’t separate, really. Rand is Lews Therin reborn, so it’s the same…person? Soul? Entity? Whatever you want to call it, but with two distinct lifetimes and thus sets of experiences. It’s just that the files have been corrupted and there’s this weird bleedthrough, so the separation isn’t working the way it should, and everything we see next is Rand trying to, essentially, figure out from this mess of two lifetimes who he is (and who he wants to be). Does that mean shutting one entire lifetime away? But what if some of it is useful? Maybe some of who he is now is anathema to him, given what he has to do, so maybe it’s better if that gets shut away. Maybe he should take some of that old knowledge, maybe he should recombine some things (maybe he should learn from his past, both successes and mistakes, so that he can take this as a true second chance). But to go from zero to just accepting the whole thing is uh…unrealistic at best, so instead we see Rand struggling with it, and the situation evolving as a result of that.

And yes, I think a lot of this comes from how everything is presented in the story, and how it unfolds, and how we’re primed to interpret it. It’s one of my favourite aspects of Rand’s character and arc, honestly, and is definitely something I intend to spend some more time on during a reread or post-series.

#I feel like Rand's mental state is one giant YMMV really #but this is what makes sense to me #agree or disagree; I'm glad it was thought-provoking!#and one day I'll make a more coherent/comprehensive post on my take #but for now we'll just work with what we have...#asks #tgriff82 #wheel of time #rand al'thor #lews therin telamon

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pamphletstoinspire · 5 years

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Part 6 On Catholic Social Teaching: Solidarity, Part 1

The great Roman playwright Terence said, “I am a man. Nothing human is alien to me.” It’s significant Terence was known for his comedies, since comedy is the art form that focuses most strongly on our weaknesses and our need for help from both divine and human grace and mercy.

In tragedies, the protagonists die isolated in their grandeur: great men and women left in splendid ruins, while lesser beings look on in awe and say, “Now cracks a noble heart!” But in comedies, the quintessential ending is when everybody comes together at a great wedding banquet, and all’s well that ends well. It’s rather like the heaven Jesus constantly compares to a wedding banquet: the marriage supper of the Lamb in which the poor, deaf, blind and lame have the seats of honor. In comedy, we’re all in this together and — being recipients of the Playwright’s grace — we all get our richly undeserved rewards from the Founder of the Feast.

This idea that we’re all in this together — that nothing human is alien to us, and we’re all debtors to gifts and gift-givers, both divine and human, whom we can only repay by similar acts of generosity to one another — is what undergirds the last pillar of Catholic social teaching known as solidarity.

The Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church tells us that solidarity: “is not a feeling of vague compassion or shallow distress at the misfortunes of so many people, both near and far. On the contrary, it is a firm and persevering determination to commit oneself to the common good; that is to say, to the good of all and of each individual, because we are all really responsible for all.”

As with all Catholic social teaching, solidarity has roots in Scripture — as when Paul tells the pagan Athenians, God “made from one every nation of men to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their habitation, that they should seek God, in the hope that they might feel after him and find him” (Acts 17:26-27). Solidarity emphasizes the universality of God’s provision for the human race, as well as his call to us to play an active role in that provision.

Christian faith begins, therefore, with a communal and familial understanding of the human race; because the human race springs from “one” — both the one God in whose image we are made, as well as the “one flesh” union of Adam and Eve, from whom the human race inherits its image both glorious and fallen.

The faith insists God begins with his natural creation, and his grace builds on this nature. Therefore, the Church’s social teaching applies naturally to the whole human race, not merely to Christians — since the whole human race participates in the natural law. That is why the pagan Terence knew, like the authors of Scripture, the goods of human love, family and a meal with friends — as well as the evils of murder, or a broken family, or theft.

The Fourth through the Eighth Commandments don’t tell Israel (or anybody else) something they don’t already know through the proper use of reason, but ground these universally known moral facts in God. Contempt for parents, murder, adultery and theft are bad because they harm the creatures made in God’s image. And since we are those creatures, we sooner or later have to acknowledge we must do unto others as we would have them do unto us; we must forgive as we have been forgiven; and we must be good to the alien, the orphan and the widow since we too can easily be strangers in the land of Egypt.

The Church notes that we live in a period in history when the evidence of the constitutive interconnectivity of the human race is more apparent than ever. The Compendium teaches:

“Never before has there been such a widespread awareness of the bond of interdependence between individuals and peoples, which is found at every level. The very rapid expansion in ways and means of communication ‘in real time,’ such as those offered by information technology, the extraordinary advances in computer technology, the increased volume of commerce and information exchange all bear witness to the fact that, for the first time since the beginning of human history, it is now possible — at least technically — to establish relationships between people who are separated by great distances and are unknown to each other.”

The Church hails our increasing interconnectedness as a good thing. In our intensifying global culture, it’s pretty nifty I can and do have friends not only in the U.S., but in the U.K., Australia and Nigeria. Technology has shrunk the world and brought us close to people who were in unthinkably faraway places with strange-sounding names only 20 years ago. We’re much more consciously aware than ever before of the lives, needs and hearts of people all over the globe in ever-expanding circles of friends and family. I can receive a prayer request from my Nigerian friend, post it on Facebook, and within seconds, people from Wichita to Glasgow to Sydney are part of the network of prayer that sustains his life.

But, of course, original sin extends to our global culture as well. So the Compendium continues:

“In the presence of the phenomenon of interdependence and its constant expansion, however, there persist in every part of the world stark inequalities between developed and developing countries, inequalities stoked also by various forms of exploitation, oppression and corruption that have a negative influence on the internal and international life of many states. The acceleration of interdependence between persons and peoples needs to be accompanied by equally intense efforts on the ethical-social plane, in order to avoid the dangerous consequences of perpetrating injustice on a global scale. This would have very negative repercussions even in the very countries that are presently more advantaged.”

In short, our global culture doesn’t just make it easy for me to pray for my Nigerian friend. Because of original sin, it also makes it easy for me to exploit his child and even enslave him for my morning cup of cocoa. Our God-given interdependence and our fallen and increasingly radical inequalities are in a horse race to see which rules us, and the Church calls us to work so everybody in the human family has a just share in the goods of the earth God has given us.

The way to start doing this is to start seeing the relationship between rich and poor as the Gospel does. St. John Chrysostom summarizes that relationship beautifully when he says, “The rich exist for the sake of the poor. The poor exist for the salvation of the rich.” We are emphatically all in this together, insists the Gospel. And the Christian Tradition warns it is the rich, not the poor, who are in far greater danger and in far greater need.

The Gospel repeatedly warns the rich that it is they who are in desperate need of the ministrations of the poor. This is the warning at the heart of the Parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man, or in the (to our ears) strange counsel to “make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous mammon, so that when it fails they may receive you into the eternal habitations” (Luke 16:9). The idea is precisely to turn on its head our traditional notions of patronage — wherein the poor must go hat in hand to the rich for protection, employment and sustenance — by reminding the rich that it is the prayers (or anguished cries and curses) of the poor that will spell the difference between heaven and hell for the rich. For inasmuch as we do for the least of these, we do unto Jesus himself.

The Church tells us that solidarity is both “a social principle and that of a moral virtue.” In other words, it is part of the nature of how humans are supposed to live; but — since we are fallen and often behave at odds with our own best interests — it is also a virtue we have to intentionally cultivate by denying ourselves, taking up our crosses and following Jesus.

Obvious case in point: the duty of generosity. Generosity sounds good on paper. All of us together are stronger, happier and healthier than each of us alone and relying only on our meager resources to get by in life. But, in practice, generosity means refusing my natural inclination to clutch my stuff and making the choice to risk sharing it with somebody who might cheat me or do something I disagree with or not share with me when I am in need. The biblical tradition says to this instinct, “Yes, it’s scary. Be generous anyway” — and commends, again and again, the righteous man in these terms: “One man gives freely, yet grows all the richer; another withholds what he should give, and only suffers want. A liberal man will be enriched, and one who waters will himself be watered” (Proverbs 11:24-25).

And, as the story of the Widow’s Mite (Mark 12:41-44) makes clear, the point, really, is generosity according to one’s means, not according to a dollar amount. The Widow had a couple of measly pennies to offer, but she gave generously nonetheless — as is often the case with the poor. Similarly, the question, “And who is the poor person we should care for?” is much the question, “And who is my neighbor?”: the one who has a need you can fill in the way most appropriate to his or her dignity.

Because solidarity is a social principle, the Church warns there are such things as “structures of sin.” The Compendium describes them this way:

These are rooted in personal sin and, therefore, are always connected to concrete acts of the individuals who commit them, consolidate them and make it difficult to remove them. It is thus that they grow stronger, spread and become sources of other sins, conditioning human conduct. These are obstacles and conditioning that go well beyond the actions and brief life span of the individual and interfere also in the process of the development of peoples, the delay and slow pace of which must be judged in this light. The actions and attitudes opposed to the will of God and the good of neighbor, as well as the structures arising from such behavior, appear to fall into two categories today: “on the one hand, the all-consuming desire for profit, and on the other, the thirst for power, with the intention of imposing one’s will upon others. In order to characterize better each of these attitudes, one can add the expression: ‘at any price.’”

In short, sin begins in the heart, but it does not stay there. It gets expressed in everything we do. So the things we make reflect, among other things, the sins that live in our hearts. This isn’t true merely of artists who make pornography or manufacturers who make shoddy products. It’s true of everything we make, including most especially the gigantic and globe-spanning political, social and economic systems we create to dominate the world.

A little sample of how a structure of sin works can be seen in the story found in Acts 19, when Paul went to Ephesus and challenged the cult of Artemis and the rest of pagan idolatry. Paul didn’t merely attract the hostility of her worshippers. He also garnered the wrath of the silversmiths there who manufactured shrines for her worshippers to buy. He threatened, in short, the entire economic “structure of sin” that stood behind the idol and made the Temple of Artemis (one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World) a thriving commercial as well as religious center. Result: a riot that got within an inch of killing Paul.

Now we are all at one time or another — to the degree we all sin — idolaters just like the Ephesians, since sin is the disordered attempt to get our deepest happiness from something other than God. The “Big Four” in the pantheon of idols are (and always have been): money, pleasure, power and honor. And, just as the Ephesian silversmiths did, we often create political and economic systems to support our idols.

This results in the creation of idolatrous political and economic systems that fight against those trapped within them, even those who are genuinely trying to do the right thing — just as the political and economic structures in Ephesus fought against Paul. So, for instance, we see just such a conflict in the early United States, when the Founding Fathers who fought (sincerely enough) for the proposition “all men are created equal” nonetheless were trapped in the structure of sin known as a “slave economy” and couldn’t find a way to get rid of it. Result: Thomas Jefferson — the man who wrote the Declaration of Independence and said of slavery, “Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep forever” — never freed his own slaves. The system of slavery enslaved Jefferson to the sin of keeping slaves.

This is why the Church insists that, in addition to confronting our personal sins, these structures of sin must be battled as well, precisely because they exert pressure on us to not repent from our personal sins. And this means, as it did with ending slavery, the involvement of the state.

This is where the Church bumps up against the libertarian and individualist piety of many Americans, who reject the idea that the state has any role to play in establishing the common good. (Indeed, for some virulent strains of libertarianism, there is a denial there’s even such a thing as the common good.)

To be sure, states have themselves often embodied precisely those structures of sin that must be reformed. But the Church has never thrown the baby out with the bathwater by arguing for the abolition of the state. Rather (and more on this next time), the Church has always affirmed the state is a good given to us by God, and, even in its corrupt form, it exists for our good (see Romans 13, written when Caesar was Nero, who would eventually kill the author of Romans 13). And this is, in no small part, because the notion that structures of sin can be confronted without any involvement of the state whatsoever is like saying a battalion of tanks can be confronted by a determined individual with a BB gun.

The words of the Compendium are clear about what is required to change structures of sin: “They must be purified and transformed into structures of solidarity through the creation or appropriate modification of laws, market regulations and juridical systems [emphasis mine].” In short, individual efforts to effect change (e.g., boycotts of corporations that support abortion or use child slaves) are wonderful, but, very often, it’s necessary to change legal, political, social and economic structures by the force of law as well. Not just the citizen, but the state, has a responsibility here.

Not that this relieves the individual of any responsibility for solidarity or the common good. On the contrary, the bulk of the responsibility falls squarely on our shoulders as disciples of Jesus Christ. Of which, more next time.

BY: MARK SHEA

From: https://www.pamphletstoinspire.com/

#catholic social teaching

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dtutunzhiu · 7 years

Conversation

“We’re all working together; that’s the secret.”- Sam Walton

Well here I am. Writing, on what little scrap paper we have. All because Fenten told me it would be good for after we’re all dead and somebody else finds our stuff. For a window into our lives or something. What life is like after the megastronic war. It was actually called “HOW THE FUCK DID WORLD LEADERS MANAGE TO DO THIS” on the news stations and in the papers, but I like to call it the Megastronic War. Sounds cooler. In case you somehow didn’t know, the Megastronic War is what happens when you mix steroids, cocaine, America and Russia into a mortar and pestle, crush and then stir vigorously.

You see, “somebody” high on cocaine (the Russian Czar, Slavic Restanyan) accidentally hit the big red button that launched a Tsar Bomba at Montana, USA. This pissed off the Americans, for reasons unknown to anybody because nobody really cares that much about Montana, and so they started nuking the person they thought was responsible: North Korea. At this time, North Korea had dissolved and was only North Eastern Korea, an unofficial country with no power whatsoever, that had resorted to selling steroids to drugged up Columbians. They, in turn, paid for it by selling opium to the Chinese, who sold cocaine to the highest Russian powers. After Americans nuked North East Korea, the Columbians got annoyed and stopped supplying the Chinese, who nuked Columbia and Oklahoma in response. Really, the enemies don’t know where to hurt America. After this America released a hellfire of nuclear bombs and cluster nukes onto all of the included parties, starting the Megastronic war and getting all other countries involved through various alliances and deals.

Almost the entire world died that year. The entire population of America now fits into Yellowstone National Park. There’s 30 of us, 10 men, 13 women and 7 children.

There are now 30.1 people. Two hormonal teenagers couldn’t keep their hands off each other and got a bit too busy.

We all work to keep this little base of ours running; I usually stand guard and build stuff that we need, Janice usually takes care of the children, Tom is our fisherman, Karnesh is our lovely hunter, and that’s all the people I care to mention for now. I’m honestly a little scared of Karnesh, but don’t tell her that. If she’s still alive when you find this that is. In short, we all do our part to make sure the gears of society keep running among this odd group of people.

Occasionally our scout, Jasper, will find a new person that we haven’t met before and has survived the wilderness on their own. Once we’ve checked to make sure they don’t have parasites or diseases we can’t remedy, we let them into our camp with open arms and open hearts. That’s how we found Karnesh, and also how we found Fenten.

Now I’ve mentioned Fenten twice now and I haven’t even introduced her. She is essentially the brains of the whole outfit, and while she is not the leader, she takes great care to make sure our actual leader, Jackson, doesn’t do anything stupid enough to kill us all. She’s also an attractive young lass of 23, and single. She likes long walks on the lakeside, pinecone coladas and getting caught in the rain (when it isn’t acid rain of course). Does it sound like I’m absolutely smitten yet? If so, that’s because I am. She’s wonderful and absolutely fantastic, if I had any visually artistic capabilities I would try and draw out what she looks like, but I don’t so suck it up and deal with it. My smittenness may be the only reason I didn’t try to argue when she told me to use all this paper to write out my thoughts for potential future readers.

Life in Boulderstone is usually pretty quiet. Occasionally we find a mammoth of a beast to take down, which requires the entire team, excluding Janice and the children, but including pregnant Dackyl and baby daddy Shawn as she isn’t far enough along to justify taking her out of the hunting party just yet.

One time, Jasper found a gigantic buck, with two sets of razor tipped antlers, muscles like you wouldn’t believe, and a tail long and dextrous enough to be considered a fifth limb. It took us only a day to find, perhaps because it was too big for the trees it tried to go through, or maybe the forest was too small for it. Either way, it was one bastard to kill. We found it in a clearing large enough for 200 men. We took up roughly half that space with twenty people and a Mammontian buck that could feed us for three months if we stored its meat beyond the treeline of Mount Holmes. Mammontian is a word we created to classify any seemingly normal species that has since grown to extreme proportions in one way or another due to the radiation outside of the park.

The only problem with that idea of course is that it would require someone to walk all the way there everyday. Why don’t you take a guess at who got that wonderful job? It was nobody. We ended up moving the entire camp closer instead, and before you call us all crazy and frivolous, I’ll ask you a question. Do you know how hard it is to feed a group of thirty people for three months? Especially when some of them are teenagers!?

Back to the hunt.

How does one take down such a large beast, while keeping the meat in good enough condition to eat? The answer is simple: at the base of its skull, sever its spinal cord, like the old bullfighters. Then again, saying and doing are very different things. First, we had to position someone in a place where they would be able to either climb its neck or land on the not-razor-part of the antlers and hang from there to get to the base of the skull, along with some sort of blade large and sharp enough to cut through the cord itself. This job was handed to Karnesh, the expert on such affairs. So while Karnesh, master hunter, climbed the two story tree with her machete, we took the buck’s attention by peppering it with pistols we found in various abandoned camps of very optimistic people. Why people just left their guns in camp, along with plenty of ammunition, I will never know, but they did. These bullets barely made it into the skin of the beast, as a splinter would on me, mildly annoying the beast into seeking utter destruction of the source. When we finally did our job right and put the beast into just the right position for Karnesh to stop being a coward and jump on it, not to say I would have done it any sooner, she somehow swan dived from the branch and caught the base of the second set of antlers. From there she took her machete from the holster on her hip and drove the tip into its flesh slightly left of the center as far as it could go and jerked the handle left, cutting straight through the spinal cord, ending its life cleanly and humanely.

Meanwhile, the other 19 of us were frantically trying to not to be trampled by its massive hooves or hit by its fifth limb of a tail. This is what happens when you annoy an animal four times taller and seventy times stronger than you. I almost died four times, not including when Jerry almost shot me in the head while aiming for it’s chest.

When it hit the floor, the resounding thud hit me like a clap of thunder, and we got to work field dressing it, saving the hide for later when we will make it into clothing, tarps, and blankets for everyone to use. I’ll spare you the gruesome details because it was truly disgusting and I’d rather you not ruin the only paper I was able to find. Our leader, Jackson, lives in the hollowed out skull now, because we couldn’t find a good place to put it.. It’s actually roomier than you would think.

Three days after we moved to the mountain, some neurotic teenagers decided that instead of asking one of us for assistance about the mushrooms they found, they’d try them out themselves. It’s been a week. They’re still high. They’ve been less productive than a sloth on sleeping pills while taking substantial hits from a bong.

Regardless, I’m running out of space on my paper. To keep this ending short, we keep working as our own gears in this living machine of new society, and it looks like it’s going to be a decent life now. Thanks for reading about humanity’s continued survival.

I incorporated New Historicism through the rampant corruption in politics, globally and locally, and the large international drug trade. I also incorporated New Historicism with the current global political environment in which current countries, such as North Korea and America, are threatening each other with nuclear missile launches. Similarly, I included the idea of people valuing their gun rights as they carry different types of guns along with them as they went camping, for self defense or hunting purposes. Examples of formalism in my story would be the jumps through time as it is told from the perspective of one man reminiscing on how his band of people have survived, and he wrote it as a stream of consciousness, while leaving some small room for an update or two as he went along. Due to the story being written as a stream of consciousness from the protagonist, the sentences were shortened and seemingly incomplete at times, giving off the feeling that he was directly speaking to the reader, giving an insight into the speech patterns of this period of time. On the mythological front, different archetypes throughout the story include “Protagonist” as being the Regular Person, someone everyone can relate to who just wants to belong to a group and not be left out. As such, he commonly is the one to advocate for the inclusion of newly found people. The scout, Jasper, is the explorer as he is often away from the central group for weeks at a time, looking for new things that might be useful to the group, proving his autonomy. This gives him the chance to not be trapped within the limits of their community, giving him freedom. Fenten fits the idea of the Sage as she primarily uses the knowledge of old to advise the leader in the right directions to assist the group in its survival. With her help, Jackson overcomes his weaknesses as the leader, to keep order within the group and keep a “Lord of the Flies” environment from developing.

I came up with the idea for my story from a free hand drawing I made. It was of a man sitting on a wooden patio, drawing a tree on some paper by the riverside. This image is not included as any art that would inspire the story as I unfortunately threw it out a few weeks ago, and did not take any pictures of it. The premise is that the story details how the man gets to that point of his life, living in reasonable comfort in the forest, and this short story is about the relatively early period in his new life. As I wrote it, I also took inspiration and knowledge from real world events and tensions, as well as old customs (bullfighting) that would assist the protagonists along their life’s journey and missions.

The main purpose of the story is to show that even in the face of the most extreme adversity, as shown by the conditions they were put under due to the war and having to learn to live off of the land, that people will still be people. This is to say that people will always continue to have interests, flaws, and hold onto whatever happiness they find. Too often it is found in movies and tv shows that once an apocalyptic event occurs, the protagonists, or the survivors, magically become flawless and know the perfect solutions to most problems while somehow not keeping a firm hold on their humanity. In this case, however, all the characters have their normal human flaws, such as the leader, who is a bit of a numbskull, or Karnesh who has trouble in social situations (as detailed with how “Protagonist” is slightly afraid of her). The primary theme of this story is that with a concerted effort, it is possible to traverse adversity, so long as everyone does their fair share. Even though everyone has their flaws, they can be overcome or overlooked, at least temporarily, to achieve a goal through collaboration. As the quote above the story explains, the secret to their survival is that they are all working together.

The relevance of the quote before the story is that it essentially explains the theme. Every person has their place and their role in this newly created society, and that is how they survive. The war that started the whole necessity for a new society was started because the leaders and people of the world did not work together for a better future. Instead, they always kept looking for the chance to kill or otherwise disadvantage their fellow man. The new generation will instead work together to survive this world, and try to better each other instead of destroy each other.

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