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immediatebreakfast · 9 months

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If there is one thing that I absolutely love about the suitors (for now Arthur and Jack) is how their love for Lucy always comes first before any of their feelings. There is no established rivalry where they engage in all of these weird macho-like conversations of "you'll never be a good MAN for her >:)" or ill intentions behind their beloved words for eachother.

Never forget that Arthur, Quincey, and Jack are friends that fell in love with the same young woman. Their friendship (and love) for eachother might have been in danger of breaking because of feelings of envy, but it never happened.

Now, I'm not saying that an interpretation of the text that says how all of the suitors are engaged in this "sexual rivalry" for Lucy can't be possible. It's that I think it's not properly developed to explain the actual relationship between Arthur, Quincey, and Jack, and what does it mean when Lucy is in the picture as a single young woman, then as Arthur's fiance.

It's a non required "rivalry" that is mostly based on the feelings of the characters, and not their actions. Moreover, said feelings are never weaponized to create any drama between the suitors. Because this novel has more defined priorities in their narrative like Lucy's mysterious illness or Mina's travel to find Jonathan than take time off these events to give time to a stereotypical macho gentleman fight between the suitors.

Why would I, the reader, care about a supposed masculine powered Arthur + Jack + Quincey rivalry when Lucy is in danger of dying before my very eyes?

Of course Jack feels sad after such rejection when he was in a depressive spiral, of course Quincey could sound a little bitter because Arthur got chosen but not him, and of course Arthur could show a semblance of jelaousy over asking for help from an established romantic rival. However, the Main question would be:

How any of this could ever help Lucy? You know the young lady blessed with their affections who is slowly withering away without any explanation (that they don't know) what so ever? Hell I could go a little bit further and ask, if this supposed rivalry was actually textually real what is the point of it?

Like really, in this gothic horror novel one of our main female characters is suffering so greatly from (in hers, and others' perspective) a slowly choking, and weakening disease that has taken over her without explanation (chronic illness reading right here). Do we actually need to add to Lucy's plate a possible situation where she has to balance a fucking suitors rivalry?

"It will be a painful task for you, I know, old friend, but it is for her sake, and I must not hesitate to ask, or you to act."

Arthur even says that whatever complicated feelings that Jack has over the situation must be put aside to help Lucy. Arthur acknowledges how his help is not enough at this point, and that both him and Jack should focus on what is happening to Lucy the person, and not Lucy the mask of the perfect possible bride.

#Lucy is the priority here #That means coming together to protect HER because of their love #There is no need to dance around the issue because all of the suitors love her #This read is a little iffy in the sense that it could go somewhere but it doesn't #dracula daily #dracula #arthur holmwood #jack seward #lucy westenra

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nobodysuspectsthebutterfly · 3 years

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Hello! If you don't mind me asking, are you planning on watching House of the Dragon? I'm personally unsure about it. I was cautiously optimistic about it since D&D are not involved, but the recent casting news have been ugh disappointing imo. What do you think?

Hey anon! Sorry to say I kind of mind you asking because my inbox is still closed (to everyone except my secret Santas, which is why the ask page is accessible at all), but then I realized it’s possible if you’re on the mobile app only, you haven’t seen said note in my askbox, or my FAQ, or anything of the sort. And with older metas of mine being reblogged recently, it’s possible you may be confused. (I hope you’re on mobile only and not just ignoring my requests.) So I wanted to inform you of that... but also, y’know, I kind of wanted to make a post about the HotD cast anyway? And this ask is as good a prompt as any... so, you’re lucky, but please don’t push your luck. ;)

So, straight up: I currently have no plans to watch House of the Dragon. HBO is not getting any of my goddamn money, I don’t trust like that. And hunting down illegal livestreaming sites is a pain in the ass and I regret ever doing it for GoT, as well as regretting getting drunk every weekend enough to dampen my senses to ever tolerate that show. Yeah it’s different showrunners and writers, I know. It’s still (mostly) the same executives at HBO and even if the pervert producer is gone (or is he?), you know they still just want to sell sex and violence and dragons to an audience that thinks fantasy is for geeks.

Also, considering that Fire & Blood’s story of Dance of the Dragons has very little actual narrative or dialogue, and the historical record is deliberately untrustworthy, that gives them pretty much full rein to do whatever they like with the story and characterization and words without even being slightly obliged to GRRM at all. Furthermore, since the story is wholly political with virtually none of the magical side of ASOIAF (excepting dragons), and honestly does not have much in the way of themes or depth that main ASOIAF or even D&E has, I think it will be very hard for an adaptation to show even those brief sparks of quality that used to make me wistful GoT couldn’t be that good all the time and eventually just made me frustrated and depressed. Note I do like the history and characters of the Dance despite myself, despite its many many many textual issues, but I don’t need to see an adaptation, I have a very visual imagination. I don’t watch a lot of television to begin with, I don’t see why I should start again with this.

However, I’m not going to avoid spoilers or discussion, and I’ll probably follow the show the tumblr way, through gifsets and video clips and people bitching on their blogs etc. If, somehow, by some miracle of good screenwriting and acting, the show manages to transcend its source material, I’m sure I will be informed. And then, if and only if then, I may try watching. (Without, of course, giving HBO any of my goddamn money.) We shall see.

(Though I certainly don’t know why anyone in Targ standom would ever watch a Dance adaptation considering almost every Targaryen and everyone else in the story is terrible except Helaena and the kids, and considering how the story ends, unless y’all are gluttons for punishment? (I do not comprehend hatewatching, sorry.) It’ll probably be fun at first to see the adventures of those “precious silver douchebags” (to borrow a friend’s tag), but eventually rocks fall, everyone dies, including the girlboss you know you’ll hope the story will be changed enough that she succeeds. Just letting you know now, she won’t.)

That said. I’ve been following the casting news and I think the hate/fear/wild screaming is entirely overblown. Yeah, I know, but wait, just listen. On Friday I officially welcomed @naomimakesart to the “favorite character is now played by an actor who looks nothing like most fanart and is mostly known for wildly different roles” club. I still remember that day in September 2009 when my brother texted me “yarp”... and that right there is the thing. Yeah. Rory McCann looks very little like most pre-GoT Sandor fanart... but many fans grew to love him anyway. (There are some who never did, of course. And yeah the character went off the rails by the end, but truly, who didn’t. Having seen his audition, having spoken to him and heard him wistfully talk about book scenes he loved, I’m convinced if Rory had only been given Sandor’s actual scenes and such, he would’ve killed it. Sigh. Deep, deep sigh.)

And Rory isn’t the only one. Neither of the actors for Jaime and Cersei were considered “beautiful” enough at first. I recall very clearly people bitching about Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (about his nose particularly?) because they had wanted Tarzan-era Travis Fimmel to be Jaime. (Seeing people bitch because current-Fimmel isn’t playing Daemon made me laugh out loud for both BEYONCE?! meme -type “why would you ever cast him omg he doesn’t fit my headcanon Daemon at all”, and amazing amounts of fandom flashbacks.) Lena Headey was “too square-jawed”, “too mean-looking” (since at the beginning you should never be able to guess she’s evil), “too dark-complected”, “too mannish”, not at all attractive enough. (Tricia Helfer was the most common “but I wanted” for Cersei, btw.) And of course “they don’t remotely look like twins, ugh!” Note, there’s receipts for all of this, none of it is made up. (Unfortunately.) Those two actors are just the ones whose casting wank I recall most clearly, particularly because oh how the turn tables.

Also. You know, there’s a post with Matt Smith and Mark Simonetti’s TWOIAF Daemon going around with shrieks of horror... and I’m finding it maddening in a “am I crazy? am I the crazy one???” way, because Matt looks like the painting. Their features are not that dissimilar.

Same deepset eyes. Same cheekbones of doom. Same thin lips. Same protruding chin. Same high forehead. Same invsible eyebrows ffs. Matt has a squarer jaw, and a longer more rectangular face, and a wider nose, but considering that Daemon’s features are not described in the text, and this is the only official ASOIAF artwork that shows Daemon’s face straight on, I can for sure see why he was probably shortlisted to begin with. And that’s not even getting into to his role in The Crown, which I’ve heard is very well played with politics and palace intrigue... and if you doubt Smith can play seductive/roguish and/or evil (depending on how you LARP as a Westeros historian), or look good with long hair... well. I do not want to watch the movie, but this trailer is disturbingly enlightening.

And as for Rhaenyra... y’all know this show is starting at the beginning of the story, right? When she’s a teenager? Not a voluptuous MILF? Yeah, Emma D’Arcy doesn’t look like a Magali Villeneueve painting (though who does, good lord), but you know who she does look remarkably like? Harry Lloyd.

Same jawline. Same nose. Same thin lips. Same sharp cheekbones. Notably, same kind of sharp cheekbones and deep-set eyes as Matt Smith. HBO evidently has a concept of a “Targaryen look” that’s a little bit quirkier than supermodel-Greek statue-gods on earth, yeah, fine. But it’s consistent, and they look like family, and that-- that is good casting.

And yeah, in a few months to a year or so, you’ll see them in costume and wigs and makeup, you’ll see them in motion and speaking lines, and go Oh. That’s different. Never mind. And while people will make fanart of the show depictions of the characters and those will probalby get popular, they’ll also keep doing fanart of their pre-show headcanons, and those too will be popular. (God knows when I draw or visualize book!Sandor, Rory does not come to mind, lol.) Either way, there’s no reason to panic. We’ll live.

(Though will we live well? Got to wait on the writing and showrunning for that, alas.)

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shiroxix · 3 years

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Kaladin? for the character ask thing :)

Sexuality Headcanon: Kaladin is gay. I’m sorry but there’s so much textual evidence to support the fact that he is homosexual. He may be bi/panromantic, but there is a reason that he can’t date. For a long time I thought he was ace, but he does a lot of yearning/has thought about sex in-text as much as other sexually active/interested characters in the series, so I’ve shifted. Gender Headcanon: Kaladin’s got enough going on without having gender dysphoria on top of it. He’s cis. Bless him. A ship I have with said character: For a long time, I didn’t ship Kaladin with anyone, and most of the time I don’t really ‘do’ shipping, but as the series has gone on and Brandon Sanderson has written some truly amazing relationships and friendships and seems to actually know what it takes to form a real bond, my status on this for Stormlight has changed. The way the text is set up, Kaladin could have a meaningful relationship with Moash if things lined up. I know that’s a hot topic right now, and honestly I could write an essay about it. I also think that Kaladin would be happy as a secondary in a polycule with Shallan and Adolin. Of the two of them, I think he’s much closer to and has more feelings for Adolin (real talk, he’s had like... one meaningful moment with Shallan and it’s strange to me that people ship the two of them). I used to ship him and Renarin, but as the series has gone on, I think this would end up being a... detrimental relationship for both of them. A BROTP I have with said character: Adolin, obviously. It’s already canon. As much as part of me wants them to kiss/thinks that sexual intimacy between the two of them would be a) adorable, b) good for both of them, I really appreciate the platonic intimacy and nuance of the friendship Brandon has written here and I think it’s important that we celebrate male/male friendships in which platonic intimacy plays a heavy role. Male characters should be vulnerable with one another, should touch/hug one another more often in fiction to combat the strange standoffishness of toxic masculinity. A NOTP I have with said character: Jasnah. The first thing Jasnah ever does to Kaladin is insult his intellect and be, frankly, really racist and shitty toward him. I don’t understand this ship. If you glorify toxic relationships, I could see why you think they’d be a good match. /s A random headcanon: Kaladin is said multiple times to hate having a beard/hair on his face. I think he’s also fairly meticulous about hair elsewhere. He maintains fairly good hygiene when he’s in the mental state to do so, considering it’s canon that he Does Not when he’s depressed. General Opinion over said character: I genuinely find myself getting slightly offended when people say they don’t like Kaladin. I love Kaladin very much. He’s an incredibly important character, and Brandon Sanderson writes him very well. He doesn’t shy away from the fact that mental illness is ugly and that the effects of it can cause people to act in ways that are less than ideal and unattractive. I think a lot of people who don’t like Kaladin as a character are the same types of people who have never been close to someone who is suffering from mental illness. I’ll admit that there were scenes in Rhythm of War where even I was worn down by Kaladin’s mental state and didn’t enjoy reading several of his chapters, but it didn’t make me like Kaladin any less.

#cosmere #stormlight archive #character headcanon ask meme thing #please send more!#Anonymous

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mystacoceti · 3 years

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you made a post a little while ago talking about the idea of there being no such thing as plot and expanding that to include characters, etc as well and i was wondering if you could expand on that

Yeah, the specific essay I mention in that post is “Some Notes for the Intermediate and Advanced Creative Writing Student” from The Shorter View:

As far as I can see, talent has two sides. The first side is the absorption of a series of complex models—models for the sentence, models for narrative scenes, and models for various larger literary structures. This is entirely a matter of reading and criticism. (And, yes, that means criticism of the writer’s own texts as well as the criticism of others.) Nothing else affects it.

To know such models and what novels, stories, or sentences employ them certainly doesn’t hurt. Generally speaking, however, the sign that the writer has internalized a model deeply enough to use it in writing is when he or she has encountered it enough times so that she or he no longer remembers it in terms of a specific example or a particular text, but experiences it, rather, as a force in the body, a pull on the buck of the tongue, an urge in the fingers to shape language in one particular way and not in another.

[...]

The first move the more experienced creative writer can make toward absorbing these models is to realize that “plot” is an illusion. It’s an illusion the writer ought to disabuse her-or himself of pretty quickly, too, at least if he or she ever wants to write anything of substance, ambition, or literary richness. (There is no plot.) That is to say, plot is an effect that other written elements produce in concert. Outside those elements, plot has no autonomous existence.

What there is is narrative structure.

Here is a formal statement of the reason plot doesn’t exist:

No narrative unit necessarily corresponds to any textual unit. Plots are always and always composed of synoptic units. 1

I’ll try to demonstrate with examples.

Again: what we call “plot” is an effect produced by (among other things) structure. But many, many different structures can produce the same “plot.”

(Structure does have textual existence: You can point it out on the page: “See, this comes first. This follows it. This takes five sentences to say. This takes two. This sentence concerns the character’s action. This subordinate clause gives the character’s thoughts . . .” These are all comments on narrative structure. Structure exists because a given narrative text exists in its actual and specific textual form.)

[footnote 1: A recent riddle demonstrates what analysis can also reveal—why plot has no definitive existence nor indicates any necessary information about its text.

From the following account of the plot, identify this classic American Depression film:

“An unwilling immigrant to a New Land of Opportunity, a dissatisfied young foreign woman kills an older woman whose face she never sees. After she recruits three equally dissatisfied strangers, together they go on to kill again . . .”

Answer: The Wizard of Oz]

At one point in the essay, Delany exhorts young writers to read, among others, Vladimir Nabokov, so:

A third critic has said that you “diminish” your characters “to the point where they become ciphers in a cosmic farce.” I disagree; Humbert, while comic, retains a touching and insisting quality—that of the spoiled artist. I would put it differently: Humbert Humbert is a vain and cruel wretch who manages to appear “touching.” That epithet, in its true, tear-iridized sense, can only apply to my poor little girl. Besides, how can I “diminish” to the level of ciphers, et cetera, characters that I have invented myself? One can “diminish” a biographee, but not an eidolon.

**E. M. Forster speaks of his major characters sometimes taking over and dictating the course of his novels. Has this ever been a problem for you, or are you in complete command? My knowledge of Mr. Forster’s works is limited to one novel which I dislike; and anyway it was not he who fathered that trite little whimsy about characters getting out of hand; it is as old as the quills, although of course one sympathizes with his people if they try to wriggle out of that trip to India or whereever he takes them. My characters are galley slaves.

(from the 1967 Paris Review interview, from Strong Opinions)

Lolita itself opens with a fictional forward, then moves to the *book proper*. chapter one being something of an introduction, only with chapter two do we get the beginning of the plot and the character: “I was born in 1910, in Paris.” The first proper scene in the novel is potentially not even a plot point as it might largely be fabricated by Humbert as an act of memory, a recombining of possibly real events and a very much fictive Edgar Allen Poe poem. The narrative starts from page one of the novel but the plot starts later and occasionally might have to omit, not just meta jokes, rhetorical rambling and metaphor, but also “plot” events, all of which are part of the narrative. So we have taken care of plot.

But the eidolon, Humbert, is also illusory. The fabrication of that first scene in chapter three and some of its specifics come from the novel’s dense thickets of metaphor, starting from chapter one with, “Look at this tangle of thorns.” The character’s back and forth does not exist outside of the book’s mirrored form pointing in opposite directions.

The Delany essay has some more straightforward examples.

(We find out that Samsa’s family is now taking in lodgers in the last clause of the third sentence of the ninth paragraph of The Metamorphosis’s third chapter—suddenly and without any access to the decision itself, as Gregor must have discovered it: That is to say, the structure of the narrative parallels the experience of the Point of View character[...])

So it’s not so much that there’s no such thing as plot or character, it’s that they’re real in the sense that the eyes on the wing of a butterfly are as real as the eyes of a mammalian predator. They’re just not text or eyes.

#Anonymous #you can see the abstraction of characters from the larger narrative go wrong in a lot of fanfic #like when someone eliminates a secondary character for the sake of shipping two main characters #and inadvertently eliminating moral choices that shape one of the main characters

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basicsofislam · 4 years

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ISLAM 101: 5 PILLARS OF ISLAM: ALMS AND CHARITY: VIRTUES OF ZAKAT:

DID ZAKAT EXIST IN RELIGIONS PRIOR TO ISLAM?

Past prophets have also been under obligation to take humankind by the hand and show all the roads leading to physical and spiritual ascension; thus, they too have shown the precious path of zakat as part of a primordial effort to diminish class differences in societies and to provide a judicious and blissful lifestyle remote from detrimental excessiveness. By virtue of providing examples of previous Prophetic applications, the Qur’an does much to put the accent on this mission. Following a brief reference in the Qur’an to the prophets Abraham, Isaac and Jacob comes the following declaration:

And We made them leaders to guide people in accordance with Our command: We inspired in them acts of virtue, the establishment of salat and payment of zakat. They were worshippers of Us. (Anbiya 21:73)

In reference to Prophet Ishmael, the matchless significance of salat and zakat as the primordial existence of alms as an essential component of worship is underlined from early on: “He used to enjoin his people salat and zakat, and was acceptable in the sight of his Lord” (Maryam 19:55).

Salat and zakat, in actual fact, are the common denominators of all monotheistic religions, where salat and zakat, after belief in the Oneness of God, form the very core of worship. In fact, salat and zakat are, or at least were, essential characteristics of all of the great religions of the world, those guided by a long line of prophets sent by God since the dawn of humankind, despite the fact that current forms of worship in some faith communities may vary in outward appearance. In support of this, the Qur’an, adamantly states:

They were ordered no more than to worship God with sincere devotion, to honestly establish salat and give zakat. And that is the Standard Religion.” (Bayyina 98:5)

The following verse, which provides insight into how the people of Midian first received teachings of Prophet Jethro (Shuayb) teachings about obligatory zakat, bears testimony to its practice in preceding times:

In sarcasm, they said, “O Jethro! Does your salat command you that we should abandon what our forefathers worshipped or that we should cease doing what we like with our property? Conversely, you are pleasant and right- minded.” (Hud 11:87)

The Midians’ apprehension at being compelled to cease doing what they liked with their properties denotes, almost certainly, a remonstration againstzakat. The people of the Midian, who evidently had complete appreciation for the altruistic Jethro, still could not get themselves to accept or follow Jethro’s brave attempts to encourage them to perform proper salat or give zakat; branding him instead as an instigator, and a rebel. As is the usual case with similar public dissentions, the people of Midian had a ready scapegoat for giving full vent to their frustrations about the obligation of zakatwhich was, as can be seen, salat itself.

Even though the Qur’an does not explain, literally, whether or not each prophet carried the duty of imposing zakat, it is highly possible to argue for its primordial existence through the i d e a l notion of peace, the humane spirit of assistance and support represented and accentuated by each Messenger, beginning with the Prophet Adam, and the Qur’anic references discussed above.

In addition, despite having their initial contents altered, the Torah and the Bible still include many passages which support the proposition that zakatactually predates Islam. As no revelations prior to Muhammad %(upon whom be peace) have survived to this day in their original forms, a fact supported even among Jewish and Christian scholars, the sole, authoritative point of reference in this argument remains the Qur’an itself. Additionally, it is worth noting that the Qur’an stresses zakat was enjoined as a duty on Jews and Christians, as well, not just on Muslims, as the textual references to the Qur’an which are included below will clearly demonstrate. Likewise, an analysis of the Torah and the Bible provides fascinating similarities and conformities with Islam’s all-embracing concept of zakat.

CAN YOU PROVIDE INFORMATION ABOUT

ZAKAT

IN JUDAISM?

The Qur’an generally tends to speak of the Jews as somewhat “skaters on thin ice,” underlining their preponderantly neglectful attitude concerning their religious responsibilities and periodically provides us a detailed account of what exactly those responsibilities were:

And (remember) when We made a covenant with the Children of Israel, We said; “Serve none but God, show kindness to your parents and to your relatives, to the orphans and the needy; speak kindly to humankind, establish the prayer and pay the zakat. But with the exception of a few, you turned away and paid no heed. (Baqara 2:83)

Zakat along with salat is sternly recommended as a requirement for divine acquittal for their transgressions:

God made a covenant of old with the Children of Israel, and We raised among them twelve chieftains, and God said: “I am with you. If you establishsalat and pay the zakat, and believe in My Messengers and support them, and lend to God a goodly loan, surely I shall remit your sins, and surely I shall admit you into gardens beneath which rivers flow. Whosoever among you disbelieves after this has gone astray from a straight path.” (Maida 5:12)

And in spite of undergoing multiple amendments, the current text of the Torah still grants us glimpses of the spirit of zakat, grounded on the relations between the rich and the poor:

Jehovah has not despised or been disgusted with the plight of the oppressed one. He has not hidden His face from that person. Jehovah heard when that oppressed person cried out to Him for help. (Psalms 22:24)

When you help the poor (needy) (lowly) (depressed) you lend to Jehovah. He will pay you back. (Proverbs 19:17)

He who oppresses the poor reproaches his Maker. He who has mercy for the poor honors his Maker. (Proverbs 14:31)

This is what you must do whenever there are poor Israelites in one of your cities in the land that Jehovah your God is giving you. Be generous to these poor people. Freely lend them as much as they need. Never be hardhearted and stingy with them. When the seventh year, the year when payments on debts are canceled, is near, you might be stingy toward poor Israelites and give them nothing. Be careful not to think these worthless thoughts. The poor will complain to Jehovah about you, and you will be condemned for your sin. Give the poor what they need, because then Jehovah will make you successful in everything you do. (Deutoronomy 15:7-12)

He who gives to the poor will not lack. But he who hides his eyes will have many curses. (Proverbs 28:27)

And if you give yourself to the hungry and satisfy the desire of the afflicted, then your light will rise in darkness and your gloom will be like midday. (Isaiah 58:10)

He who gets ahead by oppressing the poor and giving to the rich will certainly suffer loss. (Proverbs 22:16)

It is certainly easy, by and large, to draw a connection between the above verses and many Qur’anic passages, not to mention the conspicuously striking similarities between some. It is these considerable parallels that lead us to the conclusion that the ideas and instructions all stem from the same source, God, and that the essential issues concerning humankind have, quite surprisingly, undergone very little change despite human’s apparent weakness as a transmitter over time.

One further point deserves mention. The above quotations gathered from the Torah, as well as the upcoming Biblical passages, are from current versions of the texts which have, as is widely accepted and was noted above, been partially or predominantly altered, though the exact extent and manner in which such changes have been brought to these ancient scriptures is a matter for debate. A tentative and prudent approach to the current versions is thus the correct attitude, as recommended wisely by the Prophet Muhammad (upon whom be peace) himself:

When the People of the Book utter a narration, do not agree nor disagree with them, but say, “We only believe in God and His Messengers.” This way, concurrence is avoided if they speak lies, and denial is avoided provided that they speak the truth.48

IS THERE INFORMATION ABOUT

ZAKAT

IN CHRISTIANITY?

The situation in Christianity is no different, for the Prophet Jesus, while still in the cradle, utters the duties obliged onto him by God in the following manner:

(Whereupon) he (the baby) spoke out: “I am indeed a servant of God. He has given me the Scripture and has appointed me a prophet. And He has made me blessed whereever I may be and has commanded me to pray and to give alms to the poor as long as I live. And (He) has made me dutiful to my mother and has not made me oppressive, wicked. So peace be upon me the day I was born and the day that I die and the day that I shall be raised up to life (again).” (Maryam 19:30-33)

Considering the fact that the Bible predominantly focuses on ethical issues, a jurisprudential adherence to the Torah, so to speak, was a social necessity. Nonetheless, there are copious Biblical verses which themselves allude to zakat and sadaqa. The following passages may throw light on this discussion; of course, the possible alterations to these passages must be kept in mind:

Be careful! Do not display your righteousness (good works) before men to be noticed by them. If you do, you will have no reward with your heavenly Father. Do not loudly announce it when you give to the poor. The hypocrites do this in the houses of worship and on the streets. They do this to be praised by men. Believe me, they have already been paid in full. When you give charity, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing. (Matthew 6:1-3)

He looked at him and was afraid. “What is it, Lord?” he replied. The angel said: “God hears your prayers and sees your gifts of mercy. (Acts 10:4)

He said: Cornelius, your prayer is heard and your gifts of mercy are noticed in the sight of God. (Acts 10:31)

Jesus then replied: “If you wish to be complete, go sell your possessions and give the money to the poor. You will have wealth in heaven. Then follow me!” But hearing these words, the young man went away grieving, for he was very wealthy. Jesus said to his disciples: “Truly I tell you, it is hard for a man with much money to go into the kingdom of heaven. Again I say, it is eas ier for a camel to go through a needle’s eye, than for a man with much money to go into the kingdom of God.” (Matthew 19:21-24)

Sell your possessions and give to charity. Make yourselves purses that do not get old, a treasure in heaven where moth and rest cannot corrupt and thieves cannot steal. (Luke 12:33)

And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, I gain nothing. (Corinthians 13:3)

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! You tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have left undone the weightier matters of the law: justice, mercy and faith. You should do both and leave nothing undone. (Matthew 23:23)

It is thus quite possible to, again, draw connections between the Qur’an and Hadith, on the one hand, and many Biblical passages. The level of conspicuous similarities between the above texts accentuates their unity of origin. Adopting this approach in scrutinizing the Torah and the Bible will, undeniably, offer us much more evidence culminating in the very same conclusion.

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merrysithmas · 5 years

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why do you think boris made up his wife? what makes you think that?

The text. Theo mentions how it is impossible that the two kids in the picture Boris has are his (because of their fair complexions and hair color), and is extremely tongue-in-cheek when describing Boris’ alleged “wife” like he knows Boris is bullshitting him — as he habitually did when they were kids. Also the fact that Boris is a consummate embellisher - he takes facts from his life and injects them with outlandishness all the time (such as his supposed wild MGM Grand party after Theo leaves that he has with popular rich girls Theo mentions he was not even aware Boris knew - Theo who spent 99% of his time with Boris and knew everyone Boris knew, or his “love” for Kotku which happened in a single afternoon - again Theo never ever noticed Boris see or talk to her at school, and his “love” for Kotku conveniently evaporated the second Theo left town and they broke up). Theo also mentions how the picture of Boris’ “family” looks more like a magazine ad than a snapshot literally (confirmed to him on closer inspection) — and then further in the novel when Theo visits Antwerp they are never mentioned or seen again. You can see him practically laughing through the page that Boris is “married” to a Swedish Olypian skiier.

Actually Boris tells Theo he had two kids too young, barely knows them, they’re always in Stockholm, he never sees them (lmao - very convenient), and that “Astrid” qualified for the Olympics when she was 19 and spends lots of time in Aspen (lmao, a rich elite American ski town where conveniently the Barbours would likely go and spend holidays if Theo did marry Kitsey - Boris could pop up and see him), his wife also has depression problems and a “conservative Nazi” for a father and he hardly speaks to her (again, convenient). He then calls them all unhappy and miserable. To which Theo, increasingly knowing Boris is full of shit says:

“Oh yeah?” I said, doing my best not to sound incredulous at this. The kids, as was fairly evident upon closer viewing, looked far too blond and bonny to be even vaguely related to Boris.

Then Boris is like I SWEAR IT’S TRUE and Theo pretty much drops it and starts talking about food because it is such an outlandish elaborate lie and he’s wise to Boris’ bullshit and they both know it now that they’re older. And the next convo is Boris ardently emphasizing Myriam is his right-hand man and absolutely not romantically involved with him. Bwaha.

Couple all this with the fact that Boris hadn’t seen Theo in 8-10 years, thought Theo hated his guts, Theo was getting married to a very high profile woman, and their last memory together was an agonized goodbye kiss — like of course he was lying.

It’s the biggest hetero cover story of all time. He’s terrified Theo will have grown up to be someone who hates him, someone who is straight af, and someone who thinks of him as the pathetic loser who stole from him, ruined his life, took his last memory of his mother, and revealed all his cards by kissing him goodbye as desperate teenagers — that Boris is the “gay one”. That’s why Boris makes it a point to “pin” their teenaged romance on Theo - saying they were young and “needed girls” (even though Boris had Kotku when he kissed Theo) and that THEO was the one who thought it was something else even though Boris: pursued/tried to impress Theo in school, told Theo he was cute by saying he looked like Harry Potter, begged him to come home with him, invited him to stay the night and sleep in his bed, cuddled him, stole Theo food and medicine, shared his drugs - means of stress reprieve - with Theo, saved Theo from suicidal tendendies, slept with Theo for a year, I mean...

He was testing the waters to see who Theo had become by lying about his “family” and blaming Theo for their romantic feelings for one another. When he saw Theo was clearly still hung up on him he threw both of those things out the window faster than you can say: “broke up with Kotku things just weren’t working out”.

They were soooo excited to see each other and so nervous and over prepared! Theo was pining and sad in the Polish bar waiting eagerly for Boris to come back - thinking Boris ditched him, and Boris was visibly “flustered” when Myriam started talking about how she knows the “famous Potter” and how Boris constantly talks about him. Boris also immediately let go of Theo from the embrace he had around him when Myriam walked over - exchanging a glance that Theo said recalled their childhood secrets. No homo! Theo affectionately calls their secret language “of snakes and dark wizards” Parseltongue - mentions Boris’ hair swishing three times, talks about how handsome he got, his great smile and new teeth. How he Googled Boris all the time. Like, please Theo.

Plus, it’s way more likely that Boris has an estranged wife (or two) whose relationship burned out like a match after they got married in a week high as fuck ballin thinking it was a great idea, or has a random kid with another far flung woman he’s not with — but his idyllic Swedish postcard family: no. total bullshit, Lol. He’s an embellisher and shines up destitute reality for Theo - because he wanted to see who Theo was now, if he grew up to be an asshole, and how it is he thinks of Boris now that they are adults. And for a convenient cover story should he ever just “show up” in Aspen if he can’t break up Theo’s marriage right now (which he, textually, did in fact do).

#ask #anon #the goldfinch #:)

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reallyawesomecostumes · 5 years

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Dean Winchester in his Coffin

A comparison between Queequeg’s coffin in Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick and Dean’s coffin in Supernatural

(screencap from Home of the Nutty)

In Supernatural 14x11 ‘Damaged Goods’, Dean Winchester builds his own coffin.

It’s not really a coffin, it just looks like one. The box is a ma’lak box designed by Death herself to secure Dean and AU-Michael at the bottom of the Pacific for all eternity*. We as viewers of a long-running episodic television show are pretty sure the Winchester boys will find a way out of this mess in the next couple episodes, but Dean built it, so we have to talk about it.

There are closet metaphors inherent in this coffin-building (I recommend @drsilverfish here); there are show-internal parallels to Amara being locked away, Adam’s current fate in The Cage, the wall in Sam’s mind in season 6; the list goes on. I wanted to talk instead about how Dean’s coffin-building compares to some coffin-building in classic American literature: the story of Queequeg’s coffin in Herman Melville’s “Moby-Dick; or, The Whale.”

Moby-Dick, published 1851, is a book that many of us were forced to read in high school or college. I escaped this fate but had to read “The Scarlet Letter” and “Bartleby the Scrivener” instead. I did watch the Patrick Stewart TV miniseries version as a teenager, of course. For some dumb reason** I became a Moby-Dick reader because I was a Queequeg/Ishmael shipper, so know that I have a fairly biased perspective on the book as a whole.

In Moby-Dick, our narrator Ishmael (a depressed unemployed Yankee) meets Queequeg, a cannibal

(Queequeg as a character is a jumble of noble savage tropes, the author’s own knowledge of Pacific Islanders met during his whaling experience, and ideas pulled from other contemporary books both fiction and non-fiction), when they become accidental bedfellows at Peter Coffin’s inn (Coffin is a prominent name among the whalers of Nantucket, in real life and in the world of the story). Ishmael wants to go whaling, and Queequeg’s a guy who is very good at whaling. They have similar life goals, if not similar life experiences . They’re textually married***.

Queequeg catches a chill crawling around belowdecks on the Pequod moving barrels to find a leak (the hold is described as an ice-box). While he’s dying Queequeg says he doesn’t want his body to be wrapped up in his hammock before being thrown overboard like an ordinary sailor, but put in a canoe-style coffin like the harpooneers from Nantucket use. He convinces the ship’s carpenter to make one for him. Queequeg kits the coffin out with food and water and his (most precious possessions) harpoon and paddle, and puts earth from the hold at the foot of it . He lays in it, and Pip the cabin boy sings nonsense briefly (a la the Fool in King Lear). Ishmael sort-of suggests that watching this guy die would make him start a religion. But then Queequeg decides not to die. He throws off the fever with his own will, and recovers (for plot reasons, but also so Melville could add more Noble Savage tropes). He uses the coffin as a clothes-chest. He starts carving the lid with the pattern of the tattoos on his body (these tattoos are religious in nature, but are unknown and unknowable, ‘a complete theory of the heavens and the earth’), making it into a sort-of body double for him.

Some time passes. A guy falls from the rigging, and the stern life-buoy is thrown to him, and both the man and the old, rotting cask that serves as a buoy sink and drown. It is suggested that the nice new well-built no longer needed coffin can be made into a new life-buoy. This re-purposing is lampshaded in text:

“Here now’s the very dreaded symbol of grim death, by a mere hap, made the expressive sign of the help and hope of most endangered life. A life-buoy of a coffin! Does it go further? Can it be that in some spiritual sense the coffin is, after all, but an immortality-preserver! I’ll think of that.”

-Captain Ahab, in a theatrical aside, Chapter 127: The Deck.

After the whale drags Captain Ahab down and sinks the Pequod, the very well-made coffin/life-buoy shoots to the surface, and the only surviving crewmember (Ishmael, our narrator) clings to it until another ship picks him up.

While Queequeg’s coffin is intended for mundane use (to preserve his body from sharks after death) and is eventually used for mundane purpose (Ishmael’s life preserver), Dean’s pseudo-coffin-building serves a more esoteric purpose - to lock himself and his angel double away from the world said angel wants to destroy (“for all angel is not’ing more dan de shark well goberned” - Fleece the cook, Moby-Dick). The ma’lak box is Dean and Michael’s “immortality-preserver”. We have two pairs of characters, and two death-coded vessels that serve to preserve them.

Remember that time Ishmael and Queequeg got married? Some authors have characterized this wedding as "the first portrait of same-sex marriage in American literature". That it causes some readers 'uneasiness'. The line 'our heart's honeymoon', describing the time post-marriage, was censored in the original publication. Other readers have taken the marriage esoterically, relating Ishmael and Queequeg's earthly marriage to the internal marriage of the self to the Jungian shadow-self.

Shadows**** follow the two protagonists of Moby-Dick, Ishmael and Ahab. Ishmael accepts and marries his shadow, Queequeg the cannibal, and learns the customs of the whaling-ship from him. He admires the unknowableness of the ocean and sky as well as Queequeg's unknowable tattoos. He frees himself from his initial depression, and is literally saved at the novel's conclusion by Queequeg's pseudo-body. Ahab, conversely, pushes away Pip the cabin boy (who serves as Lear's fool through the story, and speaks unknowably) and turns towards Fedallah the Parsee (described as Ahab's shadow in the book) who speaks concrete but awful truths. Ahab rejects reality and stays on a path of revenge even though warned multiple times that he will fail. He eventually dies, and brings most of his crew down with him. His lack of acceptance of his good shadow and of his true place in the world brings about destruction. Self-actualization results in being saved.

The (current) protagonists of Supernatural have shadow selves as well. Again @drsilverfish has an excellent post about this. Castiel's shadow is The Shadow/The Empty, which has appeared in his own form, and wishes only for sleep and nothingness. Dean's shadow, AU!Michael, only wants to destroy the world that Dean keeps sacrificing himself to protect. Sam's shadow, Nick, went through the same dark experiences Sam did, but unlike Sam wound up horribly twisted and murderous. We haven't seen Jack's shadow-self yet, but I suspect current sweet and kind graceless!Jack will have a foil in future uncaring soulless!Jack. The idea of marrying oneself to one's shadow, in Supernatural, is nearly unthinkable: they are destructive, inhuman entities. However, in 14x11 Sam managed to accept the reality of his shadow self and release himself from responsibility for Nick.

At this point Dean's plan is to death-wed himself to Michael for eternity, sharing one body and one coffin-bed at the bottom of the Pacific. We know from Jung and from Melville that the only way to survive the confrontation with the shadow is to accept it - to 'Know Thyself', without misconceptions about your place in the world. 'Gain[ing] the perspective on [your] soul and the universe that will make balance possible.' The coffin will become a life-buoy.

I suspect the ma'lak box will be used to trap something other than Dean or Michael (soulless!Jack, probably) at the end of this season. Even if it's current purpose is untenable, it is a tool that can be used in the future.

Comparison between Moby-Dick and Supernatural can occur on a number of different levels. Ishmael and Dean (and Castiel whose human vessel, Jimmy Novak, is of the line of Biblical Ishmael) are the heroes of the bildungsroman part of the story and are hangers on to Ahab/John/Sam's Shakespearean revenge quest. Each story is a very American depiction of a masculine world. Each mirror the world in a smaller vessel, a ship and a car. Jung's concept of the shadow self, however, holds as the key to this season through all of these eleven episodes, and the shadow self is one of many keys that promote understanding of Melville's Moby-Dick. Self-actualization saves the day.

* Note that geologists cry whenever people suggest indestructible things sent to the bottom of the ocean will stay there for all eternity.

** It was Yuletide, and I’d just binge-read the entire Aubrey-Maturin series.

*** I wrote about this last year when Yockey dropped Led Zeppelin’s Moby Dick into the story. Moby Dick, song, has nothing to do with Moby-Dick, book, except their mutual length, but Supernatural and Moby-Dick share quite a few themes.

**** yes, Melville does make the shadows of his white protagonists literally dark-skinned

References:

@drsilverfish, “A Fridge-Locker, An Enochian Puzzle Box, a Ma’lak Box… and the Closet (14x11 Damaged Goods)”, http://drsilverfish.tumblr.com/post/182296360214/a-fridge-locker-an-enochian-puzzle-box-a-malak

@drsilverfish, “The Shadow (14x08)”, http://drsilverfish.tumblr.com/post/180906003584/the-shadow-14x08

Brashers, H.C., 1962, "Ishmael's Tattoos": The Sewanee Review, v.70, n.1, p.137-154, http://wwww.jstor.org/stable/27540756

Halverson, John, 1963, "The Shadow in Moby-Dick": American Quarterly, v.15, n.3, p.436-446, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2711373

Horton, Margy Thomas, 2012, "Melville's Unfolding Selves: Identity Formation in Mardi, Moby-Dick, and Pierre": doctoral dissertation, Baylor University

Melville, Herman, “Moby-Dick; or, The Whale”, project Gutenberg ebook, http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2701/2701-h/2701-h.htm

#spn 14x11 #spn meta #spn spoilers #my meta #moby dick #yep i actually wrote it #themes are for eighth grade book reports #and also for relating personal experiences to fictional experiences #as well as higher concepts #spn #supernatural

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recentanimenews · 3 years

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FEATURE: What Makes Nisio Isin's Work So Special?

Hello everyone, and welcome back to Why It Works. You all ready for the spring anime season? I know I’m certainly ready to shake off the winter snow and settle in for some new productions — and among those productions, I’ve got a few in particular that seem right up my alley. Along with obvious sequels like My Hero Academia and MEGALOBOX, I’ve also got my eye on the cheekily titled Pretty Boy Detective Club. To tell you the truth, I couldn’t tell you the first thing about Detective Club itself — but I have learned an awful lot about its author, Nisio Isin.

Nisio Isin’s writing was actually one of the first things that really captivated me about anime when I was getting back into the medium a decade ago. In a medium that’s generally defined by its visual storytelling, Isin’s works offered a lyricism of prose, complexity of characterization, and ambition of thematic intent that really stood out to me. As someone whose journey through art started in traditional prose fiction, Isin’s work embodied what I love about novels as a medium, even while transposed into animation. He’s one of my favorite writers in the medium, and today I’d like to look back across his adapted properties and pin down what makes him so special!

Bakemonogatari was my first experience with Nisio Isin’s writing, and it frankly wasn’t the easiest watch. Bakemonogatari is challenging in a variety of ways — its protagonist seesaws between pathetic and perverted, its narratives frequently pause for an episode or two of circular banter, and its cinematography acts as a deliberate counterpoint to its dialogue, building meaning through the distance between its visual and textual content. But eventually, all of these investment speed bumps ended up revealing themselves as key facets of the show’s overall ambition.

Bakemonogatari dives deep into the ugliness of abuse, self-hatred, and depression, offering complexity and specificity of characterization like little else in the medium. The show consistently demonstrates characters at their weakest and worst, if only to emphatically declare that even the most broken among us are capable of joy and redemption. The vivid scars of Bakemonogatari’s characters, and the way Nisio Isin was able to extrapolate such rich psychologies and relationships from those scars, simply astounded me. Seemingly idle conversations would be built on massive hidden icebergs of emotional subtext, offering a feast for any fan of psychological dramas. And the show actually improves significantly over time, building up to the wild emotional crescendos of the second season and onward.

After being so impressed by the psychological and thematic richness of Bakemonogatari, I dove right back into Isin’s other then-recent adaptation: the 12 double-length episodes of Katanagatari. Katanagatari’s 12 episodes match up to the 12 months of the year and center on a warrior and strategist who are attempting to collect, you guessed it, 12 special swords. But Katanagatari’s structural congruity extends much further than that — in fact, I’d consider it one of the most “perfect” anime I’ve ever seen, in terms of its structural and thematic elegance.

Through its 12 episodes, Katanagatari charts a fantastical course through the end of the age of samurai, as the old weapons and older grudges of a past era make way for the relative peace of the new. Shichika, a man raised as a sword, must ally with Togame, a vengeance-driven strategist, in order to collect the heroic blades of the past age. Across their journey, Shichika offers a vivid portrait of an old soldier attempting to grow beyond his nature, while Togame simultaneously demonstrates the tragedy of clinging to the past. Meanwhile, the world around them turns in perfect unison with their growth, exploring the power of legacy and cruelty of time’s arrow across every conflict and character. Katanagatari possesses a holism of thematic intent like little art I’ve seen, and emphatically demonstrates Isin’s unique talent for making every aspect of a narrative reflect on every other aspect. It’s like a flawless little diamond, with each facet echoing the beauty of the others.

My praise so far might imply that Nisio Isin’s properties are more intellectual labor than entertainment, and to be honest, you wouldn’t be entirely off the mark. Fortunately, we’ve also received adaptations of some of his lighter works — like Juni Taisen, which is mostly just a bloody, boisterous good time. Even in the context of a zodiac-themed battle royale, Isin’s mastery of structure and character helps enliven the production and bring some finesse to the popcorn drama executions. You can bring intelligence, style, and ambition to even the most maligned genres, as Bakemonogatari’s “harem as treatise on youth alienation” concept attests. In JUNI TAISEN: ZODIAC WAR, he builds sympathetic characters in just a brief aside or two, only to have them killed off by a machete-wielding maniac in a bunny suit thong.

I’ve talked plenty about how Isin’s writing elevates the adaptations of his work — how his dialogue and characterization are best in class, meaning at least the scripts of all his shows are bound to be excellent. That said, his stories aren’t simply repositories of witty dialogue. Isin’s works are wordy and self-reflective, but all of that prose is ultimately working to capture a precise, resonant human sentiment. As such, his works can also simply serve as a fertile canvas of adaptation, even if you’re disposing of his line-by-line internal monologue. Great adapters are willing to make dramatic changes to works in order to adapt their fundamental spirit into the tools of a very different medium. And so it goes for Kizumonogatari, perhaps the greatest adaptation of any of Isin’s writing.

In Kizumonogatari, director Tatsuya Oishi worked with an absurdly talented team for years, in order to create a mixed CG/traditionally animated aesthetic that perfectly evokes the original text’s alienating emotional landscape. Oishi and his team took a story largely reliant on internal monologue and stripped out the internal voice entirely, recreating its effect through purely visual and aural means. That’s not to say the original text was wrong to include these monologues — rather, that the original’s prose successfully captured a specific mind space, and that Oishi’s brilliant collaborators were able to fully translate that mind space into an intense visual experience. Even if you strip the dialogue entirely, Isin’s writing offers a unique canvas for other talented creators to flourish.

For all of these reasons and more, Nisio Isin is my favorite writer working in the anime sphere. I’ve found at least something to enjoy in basically all of his works, and given how fundamental his poetic, character-rich scripting is to his works, I can’t imagine that’ll change anytime soon.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this exploration of Isin’s work, and let me know your own favorite Isin shows in the comments!

Nick Creamer has been writing about cartoons for too many years now and is always ready to cry about Madoka. You can find more of his work at his blog Wrong Every Time, or follow him on Twitter.

Do you love writing? Do you love anime? If you have an idea for a features story, pitch it to Crunchyroll Features!

By: Nick Creamer

#Anime #News #Latest in Anime News by Crunchyroll!

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elizabethrobertajones · 6 years

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With how things are going, I have to wonder - did TPTB give us the Huevas as a 'there, we don't hate gay people' token and were we wrong in reading it as a subtext-to-Destiel thing? Lizbob, I'm getting desperate. The 'so introduce me' line was so - it's what you say to kids, right? And the UST is completely gone... :(

Hi there!

Is this because of this post from the other day where the line about “twice the worries about being ganked” was put under some destiel stuff to show that Dean had in fact doubled his worries about getting ganked? And also explains why he keeps telling Cas not to do anything stupid, because he’s worried, and not because he thinks Cas is actually stupid… Buckleming dialogue or not it’s calling back to 12x10 where Dean had to clarify this for Cas and admit he can say stuff like that when he’s worried. I’m not saying it’s very nice to keep on heckling Cas instead of just saying he’s worried, although I do feel the choice of writer really waters down the nuance in how that scene could have gone which would show Dean actually learned anything from 12x10. And while Cas shouldn’t have to expect to deal with Dean caring about him this way, at least we’ve already covered this in the text :P

But anyway, to me personally I just don’t write about Destiel that I see in the show with expectations that it will go canon, not because I’m negative or wanky about it (although, usual disclaimer, of course I’m very opinionated on if it SHOULD and the obligation the show has to do what they are constantly teasing, I just separate out these two things to write about the present moment of the show and the future, one of which takes a lot of explaining and one of which is extremely one note obvious of “make it gay, you cowards”), but just that I don’t want to engage in the cycle of optimism/despair that having Destiel hopes causes, specifically because I’m a popular meta blog that writes about Destiel in the text, and also because of people like you who get their hopes up and then get hurt.

I will probably merge expectations with demands when the show is actually definitively heading towards the end and we all know it is and it’s out there on the table. In the mean time, I’m happy to let this all carry on as it’s carrying on without feeling like there is a deadline or set moment for any one thing to pay off for us. The show takes its sweet time to address things which seem OBVIOUS, for example looking at the way side characters disappear and return sometimes like 3 or 9 or 13 years after we last saw them to get some closure on something or other. And it takes them years to chase down a main arc idea and pin it successfully. And some of the reason character development stuff links so well back to season 1 is because the progress Sam or Dean has made on it since season 1 has been in a series of recursive loops which seem to get somewhere only to be pulled back without reaching actualisation and either start again immediately or crop back up in the text much later as a character arc, starting over again as if it never really reached its conclusion.

Dabb era has been good about excavating some of these more ridiculous concepts and putting them on some no-going-back type arcs, for example for better or worse the issues they have with Mary have *utterly* shifted ground and can never go back to the same background noise they used to be. Mary is no longer a childhood memory and enshrined as the family martyr, and as I talked about a lot over the last hiatus doing rewatches, the attempts to make her deeper/tie her into the mythology, never actually addressed a change in the way they felt about her, maybe not even realising it wasn’t healthy for them to feel that way about her for the rest of their lives in the difference between normal mourning and revenge quests etc and how that meant they could never leave her behind and move on. I mean there’s a LOT of work to be doing with them if there’s any sort of happy ending to come, but since Carver era the writing has spent so much time trying to understand why they feel bad and putting them through hell for it, and especially in Dabb era now doing work to make them recover and to explore ways they can change, that it seems really depressing to waste the good work by killing them off. So that’s a sort of broad optimism about what they’re doing :P

But that broad optimism is really as far as I’ll dare to venture about endgame, so talking about Destiel is mostly about what I see in the text and how it relates to their character arcs and how I see that informing them and therefore hopefully if there is a happy ending, the intrinsic way this relationship matters to Dean and Cas will get happy pay off as well, because of all the aspects being explored in their character arcs, their relationship ties is all together so nicely and what they would benefit from each other would cement a happy ending for them.

I can’t be completely responsible for the impression people get about what I want from canon in the stuff I reblog but I’m really hesitant to go past lines like nervously laughing and doubting what’s going on in canon as a joke about how Destiel it all looks, while trying to avoid posts that talk about how inevitable it is without some very good reasoned discussion that I agree with. I try very very hard to make this blog always toe a line of enjoying what I enjoy without trying to sell too much or sound like I’m promising something. I like a lot of stuff like re-exploring old seasons or what I did this summer over my rewatch, looking back on old canon and looking at how it has all the unwitting groundwork for the story that ended up being told, and where all the character arcs start and how they’re used in later canon etc.

I agree a theme the last few years has been digging up this character stuff and making it extremely clear or textually stating things for the first time, and especially this year coupled with themes of misinterpretation or not reading the picture correctly or working on misinformed intel. Dramatic irony has never had that much importance in telling the story either. This season has been really intelligent about these themes and last season did a LOT of stuff with characterisation to show how they understood them and old character stuff they were resolving or exploring for the sake of improving the characters. Cas got a final build up for his depression arc to lead him to the worst possible point, and he’s now on the other side of that so the only way is up. Performing!Dean got completely dragged in some episodes, especially 12x11 which did it kindly and gently, and 12x22 which just used a grenade launcher to do it :P

There’s a lot going on but I don’t really like saying it all inevitably ends up pointing to canon reveals about Destiel, especially when that’s the most contentious thing and really hurts a lot of people to build up expectations like that, and it makes people angry or makes them fall out of love with the story because they lose objectivity and start making angry demands about when they get their emotional pay off, even though the story is still unfolding. Stuff which is happening along the way for later character pay off is seen as trashing the character and everything they previously stood for, and it becomes miserable for everyone. I’ve seen this happen in every single faction of the fandom and it’s nothing to do with the quality of the writing or actual treatment of the character/relationship, and an awful lot to do with poorly managed emotional investment and said investment being a finite resource. It’s UTTERLY depressing to watch a fandom friend melt down and begin to hate everything you once loved and I think watching that process has a lot of toxic fall out for everyone else around them who also loves the thing, because we sympathise and we’ve been watching it in slow mo and probably agreeing with a lot of the initial problems they have before it escalates. I HATE watching that happen. I will try as hard as I can to never be responsible for causing it in other Destiel shippers, so I try to make my jokes and comments stay as much as possible on the side of not trying to imply the show has any huge Destiel plan that we’re seeing the early stages of and patience will make it bear out. Because that’s not even how I see the show anyway but sometimes things like Dean giving Cas a mixtape create a *lot* of hyperbole and I’m not emotionally responsible for you all, technically, so I am allowed to have some fun :P

All this is to say, I’m really sorry you’re feeling desperate and have been reading everything as signs we’re definitely getting Destiel, because there are no signs we’re definitely getting it, but there’s also no signs we’re definitely NOT getting it, and a whole bunch of murky grey area including an entire show worth of supportive subtext, character interaction, main text and plot arcs which back up the *existence* of Dean and Cas being madly in love with each other. The wank comes when you spend all your time harping on one or the other extreme, assuming everything is signs or proof/not proof.

I think the recent storytelling has been extremely positive towards Destiel and put an awful lot of it into the text, to extremes which have never really happened before: season 7 with dead Cas used that to get some understandable angst out of Dean, but it constantly emphasised how everything sucked, Cas had of course betrayed Dean and caused all their problems, both personal and mytharc, and so resentment and anger were mixed with grief, and for the most part as much as stuff was happening to them emotionally, the episodes weren’t intrinsically structured around showing what the grief had done to Dean, or that he stopped functioning without it. Compare the kid gloves about what Dean does in 7x03 killing Amy, and how it tentatively links back to Cas but only when Dean admits that he’s had a hard time trusting anyone after Cas, to Dean vs Jack culminating in Dean screaming in Sam’s face about how Cas’s death has hurt him and he can’t unsee it on Jack.

And then of course the whiplash on getting Cas back, which Dean never had in season 7, and at best 8x08 was that episode - like a year after Cas was alive again and a whole fresh round of death and guilt and Cas coming back later so in a completely different context. And still nowhere near as good as what happened in 13x06 because there was still a lot of tentative TFW rebuilding to do in 8x08, while by now it’s completely accepted they’re a family unit and it’s been textually stated several times and 12x12 especially was tuned to showing how absolutely final that statement is. There’s no need to be tentative when Cas comes back now - Dean can just let go and enjoy himself for as long as that lasts.

I’ve been answering asks about the UST being gone since I’ve been in fandom, like, season 10, and I do kinda think that the heyday is ONLY seasons 4-6, after which Cas and Dean actually like each other and their relationship moves to more comfortable ground, and romantic tension and coding is way more the order of the day from Carver era onwards. There’s a few things like the boner scene or Dean in the car in 9x06. TBH 13x06 was the first time in ages I thought we’d actually had a scene where the two of them were having sexual chemistry, in the obvious mirror scene to the car in 9x06 bit, but also the entire underlying joke about Dean’s ‘cowboy fetish’ that Cas knew about from season 6, his entire reaction to it, including complaining that Dean made him wear the hat but then voluntarily playing along *for Dean* on their way into the crime scene, his FACE while doing that, and Dean’s reactions to Cas through all this. For the most part they’re considerably softer and more hesitant with each other and that involves much less interaction right up in each others’ faces and much less frustration which then translates to UST quite easily as well as being regular old tension.

In addition to that, the “i do” and that hug scene apparently convinced people in living rooms across the world that Dean and Cas had been about to kiss and that it was horrifically romantic, and a fake out which genuinely shook people into seeing something going on there who had not previously seen it and even actively disbelieved their shipper friends and family. Of course that’s all down to how Dean and Cas look at each other as they come in for the hug, so their magnetic attraction to each others’ faces is still an ongoing issue :P

Their interactions are being told in a pretty different way these days, which includes a lot of romantic stuff which is far more overt, and in making their relationship intrinsic to the plot and to each others’ own feelings, all of which I’ve written about so much lately because, well, it’s the main thing going on around here :P I actually feel like this is an extremely good time for if you care about their relationship, to get it in the story as a powerful force and important piece of the story. Things like the issue of clarification - I vs we, and need vs want - are coming back around as themes and that means the issues they’ve caused between Dean and Cas are being addressed or examined again, hopefully to some permanent end. And if not, at least so there’s a fresh examination in recent canon, although as I was saying Dabb era has been changing things in ways it’s hard to back off from later, like that Dean has repeatedly clarified to Sam that his feelings about Cas are the cause of his behavioural changes, even if he doesn’t say what those feelings are, it’s clear that they are affecting him. I mean there’s a part of me that has to read it that Dean hasn’t even realised exactly why he feels differently about Cas than Sam does, he just does… :P

Anyway I really just didn’t want to reassure you without addressing the fact I hate reassuring people things without trying to avoid causing more problems later. I don’t want people to feel strung along either by the show or by ~meta writer promises~ … which, aside from a few people who really were doing it for attention, generally seem to be from people actually just reading the text and being hopeful themselves, not trying to make a cult gathering or get attention or even just try to hurt people. I really urgently would like people to be more credible about where their hopes are coming from and how to feel about it.

Not to say that you should stop believing everything you hear meta writers say, by a long shot, but to evaluate how likely you feel the speculation that comes from that can be, and how much you do and don’t agree with the analysis they make. And if you agree with the analysis and do see that all the Destiel stuff people point out IS in the show, then you can see that it’s there or not, and decide how you feel about what the show is doing with it as a separate thought. I’d rather not get caught up in pt.2 of it because it’s just frustrating and depressing at this stage of the game, but pt.1 is fascinating to me, it doesn’t detract for me personally to have it not unambiguously stated, and whether Destiel does become unambiguously stated or not I don’t think *any* of the Destiel analysis I agree with/have made is *wrong* because that reading is freely available to make, in large print text and accompanying audiobook >.>

#Asks #if you're starting to feel like canon doesn't have any of what you used to love it in then honestly taking a break is not a bad idea #watch Shadowhunters or Black Sails or something else with representation to varying degrees of subtlety #(i mean those are the extreme degrees :P)#and then come back later to Supernatural when you feel a bit less on edge about what it can give you #there's a gay couple in the new star trek!#hmmm #anyway #I know how much it would mean for this specific ship to go canon BELIEVE me #but I love dean and cas's interaction still and think that it's lost nothing #so I think expectations are just running high #please don't burn out and start to hate it :(#riverboat gambling #wank for ts

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oceandetail06 · 4 years

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Where to find the Perfect Smartphone for your Young Adults

My toddler is going to be 2 years old, and his most liked plaything is undoubtedly my iPhone 10. I stash it almost everywhere: behind plush teddy bears, among books, inside boxes. He locates it each time and runs up to all of us, holding it in his very small fist and moans every time I said no, he falls onto the floor and cries. Maybe it's more serious, I believe. A few weeks back, was his turn to stash your cell phone. Right until somewhat recently, it was suggested that adults avoid showing children under 2 displays of any kind, including television, iPads, or phones. In 2017, it somewhat eased the guidelines. We violated this rule a long time ago. I do not keep in mind whenever we first cradled an iPhone before his face, but during the last couple of months, we've viewed in horror as my son has developed a full-blown dependence on phones, long before he's actually old enough to possess one. Over the last decade, very much continues to be written about the fantastic screen time debate: how often should our children come in contact with screens, and at what age? As recently as Oct 2016, a paper published an attribute that decorated a dark eyesight of children and screens, having a estimate from a Facebook professional assistant saying that only poor stuff lurks in our devices. Immediately after researching the story, we went into 100 % panic mode and implemented a rule inside our house where no one is allowed to give our boy a smartphone. For the time being, this has kept the devil at bay. Nonetheless, I understand there should come a period when I'll yield towards the inevitable and purchase my son his first mobile phone. The possibility already makes me stressed. Regarding to a 2014 record, 72 percent of children between the age groups of 13 and 16 possess their own phone, whilst a 2018 study signifies that nearly 44 percent of children get their own cell phone program between the ages of 10 and 12. In connected homes people with a lot more than 3 gadgets, kids get their first tablet if they are 6 years of age, and their first phone at age seven. Nowadays, many adults are having tech in youngsters' hands when they can hold them. But when it comes to what kinds of phones parents should actually buy their kids, the market offers hardly any options: There is no iPhone equal for children, and there by no means has been. Generally, kids are stuck with their parents' hand-me-down smartphones, as well as the responsability is definitely on the mother or father to install the required parental controls. Therefore, why hasn't the sector profitably produced a telephone for children? And if it did, what would such a device actually look like? Although couples tend to be shamed for utilizing monitors to amuse their little children or watch over them by proxy, many people will concur that giving their a child a mobile phone is also part and parcel of being a responsible parent in 2019. In a ideal world, a smart cell phone for young children ought to be mainly because strong as is possible, probably it would have some way to text when there is a school crisis or some other type of unexpected emergency, or not really allow them to carefully turn off their navigation or delete messages. Others claim that such a device should be social media-free. No photo no internet is the point we kept hearing from adults. Without a camera or connection, kids are unable to take selfies or engage with social networking, two activities parents are eager to control. Even though tablets have been effectively marketed to teens, efforts to develop cell phones for young kids have nearly universally failed. https://www.digit.in/top-products/best-nokia-phones-in-india-14.html We've seen a whole lot of mobile phones for children over the years and they're all junk. In 2014, one young kids' tech business unveiled the Kurio Android phone, that was designed to operate and appearance just like an adult cell phone, although with safety features and usage limitations to hide all scenarios. While pretty bland-looking, the telephone had almost everything an anxious mother or father would've dreamed of: it blacklisted 415 million internet sites, allowed parents to remotely view text messages and call logs, and provided period limits in apps long before Apple introduced similar features. It actually included a customizable in case there is emergency form, featuring the child's allergic reaction information and blood type. Later in 2017, VTech, a toy business, launched the KidiBuzz, a cellphone for kids between the age groups of 3 and 10 that allows kids to receive and send texts, photographs, and voice messages. The kids smartphone was a marvelous flop and it was forgotten the same year it was introduced. The machine was costly to manufacture, but as it was not top quality, it could not be marketed at an effective price, it was not Samsung or Apple, and the age group the cellphone was targeted at, pre-tweens/tweens, is very brand and look-self-conscious. In the mean time, the KidiBuzz provides 32 percent one-star reviews about Amazon, with 1 commenter noticing that it doesn't even make a fine paperweight. Area of the concern with child-focused phones is functionality: many of these devices occupy an amorphous grey space among a toy and tool. The KidiBuzz, for example, gives features like games and applications, but does not actually allow users place phone calls. Adults searching for wise smartphones for children on Amazon may also run into dozens upon dozens of nonfunctional play telephone items, gadgets that look like cell phones but are in fact toys that come equipped with different ringtones and blinking lights. One more added challenge is that products marketed mainly because kid-friendly, have an integral expiration time. There's not a lot of activity taking place in the child-specific space, because it simply doesn't scale well. You're discussing a very small segment from it: kids age range 5 to 10 or 7 to 14, etc. And it's really actually even smaller than that, simply because at a certain age I don't think children want the particular phone. They want the same gadget you are using. By and large, the truth is the devices people want to use are the devices from the big manufacturers. So why build some thing that is motive-built and a single model of these devices when you could fundamentally consider any manufacturer's design and work with a parental handles app to help control that? Still, there is true anxiousness around giving developing kids access to products that are nothing lacking addictive to grown adults. And even more research has surfaced linking unnecessary screen time for you to, among other things, depression, reduced sleep, and speech postpone in newborns. All which has pushed a small number of entrepreneurs to make option solutions for kids. The main issue with offering young adults phones, is that, for insufficient a better term, it's such an attractive, glossy device, you want to download games, open the web. That's almost natural to the telephone. I feel it even myself in my cellphone. It is a very powerful issue. https://www.zdnet.com/article/lenovo-rolls-out-new-ideapad-laptops-chromebooks-budget-android-tablets/ The first iteration of the Light Phone was designed to be used less than possible: it might place phone calls, and mainly nothing else. The impending Light Phone 2 will also allow users textual content. It is among a small number of entries in the minimalist, or dumb telephone movement, which was spurred by an evergrowing concern about cellphone dependency. Although not designed for kids, the Light Phone has gotten significant amounts of attention from couples with children. Couples with children struggle with this problem: they want a smart phone so their child can contact them within an crisis, but Snapchat really scares all of them. The Jitterbug, which features a good sized screen and larger type, is another dumb cellphone typically cited as a good option for young kids - though it was developed for elderly people. The Jitterbug can place telephone calls and receive and send texts; at significantly less than $50 for the flip smart phone version, it is also considerably cheaper than the Light Phone 2, which includes not delivered out however but happens to be priced at $290. Some producers are bypassing cell phones altogether by entering the wearables market. GizmoWatch, for example, enables couples to track their children' specific location and provides alerts if they enterprise outside a specific radius; in addition, it lets young children text and make calls to up to 10 friends on the preprogrammed contact list, permitting parents in which to stay touch using their kids while curbing their screen time. Without technically a wearable (though you can hook it to clothes using a carabiner-like accessory), the Relay, an identical to walkie-talkie gadget, is an additional entry in the kids' technology space. The device presents itself being a middle ground for much less tech-savvy parents who are concerned about display period, but don't desire to navigate the complicated world of parental control apps. There's no way to watch an undesirable YouTube video or search for something unacceptable using the smartphone, because there's no display. Though devices just like the Relay and the GizmoWatch also appear to be exactly what they are: products for children. And that could be a issue. There's always some chance with wearables, but I am just a little reluctant to say they're gonna be a big seller. The demand compared to alternate options is such that the effect is commonly fairly limited. I could get my child a kid smartwatch, that they may or may not wear, or I can provide them with a phone. Smart watches, are not gonna replace mobile phones for teens. Kids want more. They are inundated with messaging to stay connected frequently. This is the world children are growing up in. With out better answers, couples with children are largely trapped passing off their worn out iPhones or Androids or buying an old mobile phone, which in turn still costs you hundreds of dollars. There's only a certain comfort level there because that is what father and mother have always used. Handing down our previous smartphones is normally low-cost and the parental settings work fairly well. Kids aren't some particular animal that want special tools with regards to cell phones. They may be little human beings, and I prefer to respect them when it comes to tech. And rather than creating services, producers have begun adding features to create their adult-oriented items more kids-friendly. Apple's new iOS 12 parental adjustments include a Display Time feature, that allows you to create period limits for particular applications and monitor how much period they're shelling out for their mobile phones. Google has introduced Google Family Link, a free of charge app that allows parents to monitor their children' screen time as well while remotely lock their gadgets if they are spending a lot of time using them. All these application work-arounds aren't perfect - kids are apparently hacking Apple's Screen Time simply by changing the time setting on their device, but they're a recognition that kids of a certain age want to possess a similar thing everybody else has. And if everybody else has an iPhone or an Android, many will not accept anything less.

Yet ultimately the anxiety parents experience around what sorts of devices to buy their teens and when can also be a means of projecting worries about our own complicated romantic relationships with cellphones. The answer may possibly not be finding the right device for our kids, but wrangling our own impulses, especially because plenty of experts say that couples with children who are overly distracted by their devices are establishing behavioral issues in their young kids. Little Children can do what you carry out, not everything you tell them to do. You must model great digital habits. In fact, a 2016 study found that although 77 percent of couples with children thought they were modeling great screen behaviors for his or her kids, these were spending typically nine hours per day with their displays, far more time than their young kids were. When I noticed that I had been spending far more time scrolling through my e-mail and Twitter than I was playing on the floor with my child, I understood that the problem wasn't with screens warping his vulnerable brain. It had been that I'd currently allowed my phone to bend mine. So these days, we do not use our phones at all before our son. This is a habit that can be easily designed for later years and really depends on the couples with children to keep our teenagers away from mobile phones before they understand responsibility.

#cellphones

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giving-an-account-on-youtube · 4 years

Text

Apology #2: clapback

James was able to gain back (some) of his respect and fan base with a revamped apology video. Let’s bring in some theory to help make sense of how he was effective at persuasion.

Strong theory vs. weak theory

Strong theory describes an unifying theory of large quantities of information, sacrificing specificity in service of generalizations (Love 237). Weak theory, on the other hand, is detail oriented, directed towards filling in gaps and affective experience.

Klein’s depressive vs. schizoid/paranoid positions:

The depressive position is a fleeting attempt to patch up damage and provide new alternative sources of support, or love (Sedgwick 128). The paranoid position is characterized by “hatred, envy, and anxiety -- is a position of terrible alterness to the dangers” of the world.

Both these positions are grounded in anxiety and hope to resolve it; the paranoid position is marked by a future-oriented anxiety about what might happen, whereas the depressive position is marked by the present anxiety of your actions having effects on others and the subsequent outcomes of those actions (Love 239).

Reparative and paranoid readings

These readings can help make sense of the type of account James takes of himself in the video.

Paranoia reading is a strong theory that takes place from the schizoid/paranoid position. It’s characteristics are:

Anticipatory: All negative possibilities have been accounted for such that there will never be a bad surprise (Sedgwick 130).

Reflexive and mimetic: "Paranoia seems to require being imitated to be understood, and it, in turn, seems to understand only by imitation. Paranoia proposes both Anything you can do (to me) I can do worse, and Anything you can do (to me) I can do ﬁrst — to myself“ (131).

A strong theory: Its generalizability means it can account for an incredible number of situations, multiplying to reach its goal of relieving negative affect (134). It can risk circular reasoning, or should we say self-confirming bias, in service of preserving its thesis (135).

A theory of negative affects: To constantly be wary of avoiding negative affect means that positive affect cannot truly be attained, or if it is cannot be appreciated outside of its protection against negative affect (136).

Places its faith in exposure: Paranoid knowledge relies on a naive narrator who believes to make said knowledge heard means attracting a cult of followers whose lives will be altered, in effect (138;141).

Reparative reading is a weak theory that takes place from the depressive position. According to Klein, the schizoid and the depressive are mutually intelligible, never fully existing as their own entities in the subject’s psyche (Love 238). Reparative readings work towards pleasure, versus the avoidance of negative affect of the paranoid position (Sedgwick 137; 144). Reparative reading is in service of an ethics of care to another and the self to protect from an externally cruel world (137).

Apology videos are not reparative.

Influencers want us to think they are performing an ethics of care for the self and for their audience. Yet, this position is merely an illusion of performativity. The eventual deletion and privatization of most apology videos and a return to an old way of address proves that creators have no intention to actual protect themselves and their audience, nor to make the world a better place. There may be some exceptions, albeit I would argue never fully reparative, where the psychic position of the influencer can be transformed in its impermanent state to enact reparative practices, for instance donating a large sum of their income to a charity for a cause which they have caused damage to. Yet, the public apology often seems to act as an avoidant strategy to negative affect caused by dealing with ones issues in private and addressing another person with care.

So are they paranoid?

Yes. Let’s look at each condition of paranoia to confirm they comply with the apology video:

Anticipatory: In general an apology video emphasizes the negative affects that the person feels and they imply they will continue to feel it, emphasizing the worst scenario in which they are not forgiven. They often discuss the repercussions of their actions and anticipate what may happen to them.

Reflexive and mimetic: Often, an influencer will expose themselves when speculations arise rather than have someone else do it to them so they don’t appear suspicious, and will often expose others at their expense.

A strong theory: The apology video is in service of the justification of oneself as good, even if one admits they are guilty. The effect of the paranoid reading of oneself, regardless if they are wrong or not, appears transparent and is centered around the assumption that they were not aware of the consequences of their actions, and thus cannot be a bad person, just a good person who made a bad mistake. This organizing principle means the influencer can never be regarded as evil.

A theory of negative affects: The apology works to ward off negative affect through the reduction of hate but rarely achieves its goal as the addressing of a situation will always bring with it people who hate against them, and the continued address brings some people to become more and more angry. In some cases, the justification of oneself means the destruction of another person, as in the case of James and Tati as you will learn, which may lead to negative affect in the form of guilt and shame for redirecting hate towards another person.

Places faith in exposure: The apology video enters with the paradoxical anticipation of the worst scenario, but with the subconscious expectation that they have succeeded in presenting a case for their innocence, such that people will take their side, albeit they are aware it will never be everyone. An audience stays divided after a scandal.

Can one truly give a paranoid account of oneself?

Yes, although it operates differently than a paranoid theory based on knowledge external to oneself. Due to the fact that it is based on internal knowledge it can be fabricated using justifications and embellishments that are unfalsifiable and thus it will always be performative. Yet, facts related to your account’s emergence will be still mimetically interpreted by readers in the same way as other paranoid readings.

Further, bias and selfish motives can never be ruled out of paranoia. Hofstader identified that skepticism and the creation of an enemy is often a “projection of the self” (qtd. in Bridle 205-206). Therefore, looking outward actually becomes a process of looking inward, and no knowledge exists without bias. Therefore, one’s own account of the self becomes more accountable and valid through paranoid knowing.

So if paranoid knowing is always a projection of the self, how can we understand its duty?

Sedgwick asks: “How, in short, is knowledge performative, and how best does one move among its causes and effects?” (124)

Sheldon responds: “Knowledge’s causes and effects are mobile and in their perambulations, they describe a shape. And we can move within that shape, along with that movement, to discover which movements work to best effect. Knowledge, then, doesn’t name a series of discrete objects and events... It is performed on and through the material substrata we call writing, reading, thinking, and listening and in concert with history of ideas from which all this emerged and into which it seeks, as we say, to make an intervention, to push the discourse in new directions” (Sheldon).

If knowledge is to engage with the world, then knowledge can thus be described as fact and fiction. Engagement with the world cannot be separable into discrete binary categories of true and false. As de Man states: ”The interest of autobiography is then not that it reveals reliable self-knowledge - it does not - but that it demonstrates in a striking way the impossibility of closure and of totalization (the impossibility of coming into being) of all textual systems made up of tropological substitutions” (de Man 922). The performative of authenticity made through a speech act becomes thus the way through which a speaker can redirect the responsibility of validation onto an audience (922-923).

So, knowledge does not have a responsibility to be true. It must, however, provide a tight-knit paranoid account in order to be believable. Here, PewDiePie’s suggestions become apparently very useful to James in order to gain trust back with his declining viewers.

Finally... James’ apology 2.0!

youtube

Let’s compare his new video to PewDiePie’s suggestions from the first video:

Keep your message clear and concise, the quicker a message is to say the quicker it will spread.

Here James spoke approximately 10x faster.

Actually address the situation for those who are not aware, otherwise you do not gain the opportunity for support.

He pulls up receipts!

James shows texts related to the vitamin scandal that make him look innocent.

He also inserts footage to show how he has supported Halo Beauty, Tati’s brand, in the past so thus he’s not a terrible friend.

Although the waiter also came out with a video saying James didn’t coerce him and that he was actually interested in him, James backed himself up with receipts of their conversation.

The sexual assault allegations were addressed and James put a disclaimer that he will never manipulate anyone for sexual favours.

There were also multiple apparently false allegations made after the backlash of his first apology video. James claims these were photoshopped or extorted and brings up some receipts to prove it is not true.

Don’t say ‘there will always be people who don’t believe me’ because you are trying to persuade these people!

James actually works in a persuasive manner here. Within the first few seconds he says he does not expect sympathy or forgiveness but for people to wait to form an opinion, which still seems a bit contradictory but at least he presented a forty minute argument rather than crying and breathing slowly again.

An apology video should be about and addressed to the people you are apologizing to.

It’s important to note that this ‘apology’ video, while James says he is still sorry for his actions, is more of an apology for his first apology video than it is towards his audiences or Tati. He is apologizing in effect for doing such a shitty job at justifying himself and takes action to make sure he will not have to again.

..It would be wiser to take time to process the situation and come up with a mature and thoughtful response.

James comments on his newer apology: ““TO ADDRESS ALL QUESTIONS: 1) Yes, this response is "planned". I said in the first few minutes of the video that I had an outline of points I needed to hit and I practiced my speaking too. Not trying to hide anything, just had a lot of things to get into one video. 2) I started taking screenshots of everything when I was in Australia, but I missed a few, and had take a few when I was back in LA. The time zones are 17 hours apart and I tried to make sure I noted every time there was a change but it looks like I missed a timestamp note in the convo with Sam. None of these screenshots are edited. Why would I risk editing a screenshot when the other party could come forward and prove me wrong? All screenshots are in chronological order...”

This shows that James thought this through and spent time looking at the facts and tried to act mature.

PewDiePie suggests a better narrative for James to use: “becoming famous so young has caused a negative impact on my personality and now that I realize that I will work to repair myself and the relationships I have damaged. I’m sorry to everyone that I hurt and disappointed. What I did was wrong.”

James mentions how this situation affected him mentally.

He also said that he wants to work on himself and rather than repair relationships with these people, find better friends! This actually is smarter on his part since he has portrayed his former friends as untrustworthy.

Due to the fact that James has justified himself as not guilty, he talked not about what he did wrong but with the problems of cancel culture and the consequences of his followers actions. I believe this was a useful tactic since it redirects the blame to the followers, rightfully so, for their quick and rash reactions.

Further, James centers his strong theory on the fact he is being criticized for messaging men because people are homophobic and this all was a double standard, as women can message men in this way without being accused of being a predator.

Reactions of followers

The comments appear to be now mostly in support of James, although the like-to-dislike ratio still shows a lot of hate. Perhaps James reported and deleted negative comments. However, here are some examples of top comments:

Light_Rxse comments: “I feel a little embarrassed after watching this video. It was so easy for me and many others to turn on James. Without facts, I just went with the crowd. James, if you ever read this, I am sorry. “

adelaide harrington proposes: “you should honestly sue them for defamation of character and your own pain and suffering what they did was literally awful “

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBV806YTXEg

However, some speculation ensues. On the above upload of James’ since deleted first apology, Bruce Humphrey comments months after the controversy ended: “My question is, why did he upload this video totally blaming himself, but then a few days later he uploads a video "showing proof" and saying he's innocent. Something here doesn't add up...”

This proves the never ending, self confirming strength of paranoid theory. Regardless of how James justifies himself, new theories will continue to evolve. Thus, rather than having the ability to truly heal and put this behind him, James and other influencers will continue to live in the ‘the gray zone’.

The gray zone

"The gray zone is the best descriptor for a landscape inundated with unprovable facts and provable falsehoods that nevertheless stalk, zombie-like, through conversations, cajoling and persuading. The gray zone is the slippery, almost ungraspable terrain we now find ourselves in as a result of our vastly extended technological tools for knowledge making. It is a world of limited knowability and existential doubt, horrifying to the extremist and the conspiracy theorist alike. In this world we are forced to acknowledge the narrow extent of empirical reckoning and the poor returns of overwhelming flows of information.

The gray zone cannot be defeated. It cannot be drained or overrun - it is already overflowing. The conspiracy theory is the dominant narrative and the lingua franca of the times: properly read, it really does explain everything. Living consciously in the gray zone, if we should choose to do so, allows us to sample from the myriad of explanations that our limited cognition stretches like a mask over the vibrating half-truths of the world. It is a better approximation of reality than any rigid binary encoding can ever hope to be - an acknowledgement that our apprehensions are approximations, and all the more powerful for being so. The gray zone allows us to make peace with otherwise-irreconcilable, conflicting worldviews that prevent us from taking any meaningful action in the present.” (Bridle 213-214).

Finally, I would like to close off with some food-for-thought. Knowledge and self-hood and taking an account, after all are therefore relativist. “Determining what is ‘rational’ and what is not; what is sane and insane; good and bad, after all, cannot and should not play a role in the study of cultural meaning (e.g. Weber, 1948 [1919])” (Aupers 23).

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mittensmorgul · 7 years

Note

Why do you think Metatron got a redemptive death when character after character of Actually Good People gets spit on and fridged in the most horrid or nonsensical ways?

I’ve been sitting on this message for a while, because I wanted to do this reply justice and not just add wank to wank for the sake of being wanky... despite there being a bit of that feeling behind my personal reaction to a few of these horrid and nonsensical deaths you describe.

Eileen. Charlie.

Right? I have no defense for EITHER of these deaths. I personally feel they were both not only pointless, but horrifying in the way they were handled. I have written a hell of a lot on BOTH of them, and I don’t think adding more about either of them here would really serve any purpose. (but heck it does prove the point that meta writers aren’t endless wells of nothing but positivity, or attempts to explain away every instance of terrible writing, or defend the indefensible... I think pretty much all of us agree that neither of these deaths were written or handled well... AT ALL)

So let’s focus on Metatron for a moment. Because I do get why he got a “redemptive death.” It’s not something you can compare to Eileen’s death and say that she “deserved” to live more than Metatron, because she was a “good person.” That’s not how storytelling works. It all comes down to how the character was paralleled and what they metaphorically represented IN CONTEXT, in the larger narrative.

Metatron had set himself up to “play god,” to BECOME the new god. Going all the way back to the first time we met him back in s8, we see him holed away on Earth hoarding stories. Studying and experiencing creation and humanity in a second-hand sort of way, through OTHER PEOPLE’S STORIES. Now that we have canon confirmation that Chuck was God all along, the parallel only becomes stronger.

(Recall the last time a character attempted to “become god,” Cas took on the purgatory souls against EVERYONE’S better judgment, and personally paid the price for his hubris, despite it taking pretty much all of s7 for that storyline to play out... and the fact that he was “dead” throughout most of it, and is STILL seeking redemption for everything he did during the s6-s7 era... that repentance and redemption is still a core motivation for everything Cas has done since... and the cause of his depression and self-loathing that was enough to motivate him to say yes to Lucifer in s11, and to be vulnerable to influence STILL at the end of s12... Playing God on this show always has negative consequences. But back to Metatron...)

Compare Chuck’s entire narrative arc to Metatron’s, and Metatron summed it up perfectly in 11.20:

Metatron: You know, I was a crappy, terrible god. My work was pretty much a lame, half-assed rewrite of your greatest hits.

Metatron was a plagiarist, literally in text that was his purpose. He was the personification of a literary device. He was a cheap knockoff version of the real thing. AND HE KNEW IT ALL ALONG. But as the plagiarist, his role in text was to serve as a mirror for the real author of creation, and as such he needed to be the sacrifice for the TRUE story to play out. The reconciliation of light and dark couldn’t have happened without it, not because Metatron the terrible bad guy earned redemption, but because Metatron the literary device had served his function in the story. So fucking meta.

As for Eileen, she served a function as a narrative mirror to Cas. I mean, I think that’s pretty much how most of the meta we wrote about her after 12.17 went, right? Unfortunately her part in the story was handled rather ham-fistedly, and I am still not over that and still FURIOUS about it, but with gritted teeth I can see how the mirror played out in 12.23. And like with Charlie I have made it less horrible in my own mind with fix-it fic and utter fucking denial. For now it’ll have to do... >.>

The other death in s12 that a lot of people screamed about was oddly Mick Davies. But again, the character he was most paralleled to throughout the season was Cas. Especially once he even adopted a spiffy version of Cas’s wardrobe... all the while the BMoL were paralleled to Heaven and the corruption of the angelic hierarchy. Yet Mick got a taste of what life without “the code” could mean, and for the first time in his life was beginning to think for himself about that “grey area.” He brought his concerns to the BMoL and was immediately killed for disobedience, for having been “corrupted” from their true mission. He never even had a chance, and we were all looking at the screen thinking he was an idiot for bringing such dissension so blatantly to his bosses, knowing nothing good could come of it. But hey, decades of what essentially amounts to brainwashing by the BMoL isn’t that easy to overcome.

*stops self from writing thousands of words comparing it to MK Ultra and how this was directly demonstrated by Mick’s flashbacks to Kendricks AND fully illustrated by how Toni blatantly brainwashed Mary, and how ALL of that was a blatant parallel to both what Cas experienced for most of his existence in Heaven via Naomi’s “fixing” him AND the crack in his chassis that Jack was able to exploit to his own advantage in 12.19, because it’s fucking inescapable when you lay it all out blatantly like that... that his loss of agency has literally been the exposition and the narrative push that’s driven Cas through every bit of character development he’s ever undergone... and how Cas and Mary and been on parallel narrative journeys for the entirety of s12 and there was never a textual or subtextual demonstration that either had veered from that blatant parallel... bleh... I digressed anyway...*

But yeah, narrative parallels, exposition we’re intended to apply to said parallels, blah blah blah... Sometimes “good characters” are thrown under the bus. It sucks.

Sorry I kinda ran off down tangents...

#spn 12.19 #spn 12.17 #spn 9.18 #spn 11.20 #spn 12.23 #spn 12.20 #spn 12.21 #wank adjacent #i should probably tag this better >.>#this is how stories work #Anonymous

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tinkdw · 7 years

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i don't want to be a pessimist here, i really hope destiel is endgame and after s12, and after i read some of your meta, (which is amazing btw), i mostly believe it will be, but i shipped johnlock too, and all the subtext and even text and the foreshadowing and all those hints that johnlock is endgame was all for nothing...or maybe just for queerbaiting, and i was really butthurt about it that i'm afraid to put any hopes up for destiel, how do you think destiel is different than johnlock?

I may be a bit controversial on tumblr about Johnlock because…. well I didn’t really see it like it was blatant and going to be canon, I saw it as subtext that was something they added to give it a bit of pizazz without thinking they were actually in love or that it would be endgame canon.

I really enjoyed the first seasons of Sherlock (I just cannot get my head around how the last season worked at all, maybe I need to try again, but it just didn’t make any sense to me) and my interpretation was that Sherlock might be a bit romantically interested in John, but push come to shove he was more intellectually interested in him and the friendship they forged and I never really saw John as being romantically interested in Sherlock at all.

I felt like they added the subtext, which for me, was subtext only, to add a bit of spice to their chemistry and their character bond, but without actually meaning to make it romantic.

Now I see this differently to Destiel in that I read Destiel as 1. much more blatant because of the continuous and abundant nature of it, given that it is now nearly 9 years and much more material to work with due to there being…. around 135 hours of SPN since season 4 v 15 hours of Sherlock?

2. But also that it is written into the script in terms of the fact that it has a real effect on the PLOT, not just sitting alongside it as subtext to be ‘enjoyed’ (I say ‘enjoyed’ because I know how painful it was to fans who really wanted it and it didn’t happen but for a lot of people I think it did add to the enjoyment of the show by deepening their character bond). Whole seasons don’t make sense without taking into account the deep feelings between Dean and Cas, I mean… seasons 4-6 are all about Cas saving the world because of his love for Dean, season 7 is one big long metaphor for Dean’s innermost thoughts and depression about Cas, season 11′s mytharc plots rests on Dean’s love for Cas and how Amara uses it…

I totally feel for anyone who felt queerbaited by Johnlock because I genuinely do think that they put subtext in there on purpose thinking it would be a great addition to the chemistry but had no intention of going through with it as it was just that, a fanciful way to deepen their connection without it really being actually scripted love (honestly this is wanky, but I really don’t rate Martin Freeman as an actor, I find him so cold that it wouldn’t surprise me if they upped the written subtext in order to counter his wooden performance), I just don’t think they realised how much people would feel cheated by it.

With Dean and Cas, their story is much longer as stated above which enables it to go much deeper into so many more romantic tropes, for them to be portrayed as much more of the romance than the buddy trope, I think they fulfil like 67% of romance tropes? where most couples on tv / in movies settle at most around 10-25% ish? This is because they are able to do so due to the pure length of time we have been watching them and because they are actively portraying it in this way. I’m trying to remember how many Dean and Sam fill and Sam and Cas fill? I think Dean/Sam is like 12% and Cas/Sam is probably about 2%! So there is a real reason why it is so strong with just these two…

Season 12 is all about taking it now from the subtext into the text, we have been watching it with a similar “will they won’t they” attitude towards TPTB as with Johnlock up til now, even though it was scripted and much more plot - related I believe, there was still a chance that they would potentially back out, even if it didn’t make sense for the story, it was still a possibility because I think a lot of the GA don’t really see the way that the story doesn’t make sense without it.

For example in season 11, I think many of the GA just look at the top level and don’t read into WHY Amara couldn’t contact Dean without going through Cas, how her forced bond with Dean was not as strong as his chosen bond with Cas even though she was GOD’S SISTER or WHY Amara’s whole interactions with Dean were all about him repressing his emotions, loving, but it being clouded in shame, holding himself back.

I mean some people were shocked at some of what Dean said in 12x22, they were also shocked at how Dean acted in 12x11 and a lot of this season said he was OOC, which he absolutely WAS NOT, he was entirely HIMSELF and that was the point! That he had DROPPED the facade so his true self was showing through in snippets and I’m sure these people will be absolutely shocked when he acts more and more like this in season 13.

I feel like to get through to some people Dean literally has to say something blatant like “Sammy I’m done pretending, this is me, deal with it, oh and by the way, I like dudes too” before taking a big bite of a Chicken Parmeggiano and ordering an ice cream sundae and getting back to business, cos man the point is, he’s not that different, there’s just a few things he keeps locked away, but his whole character isn’t going to change.

Anyway, same goes for Destiel, it’s going to have to be eased in slowly but made blatant now and I feel like season 12 was the first part and season 13 should be the second, before it can go canon, so that people aren’t shocked by it, in exactly the same way as they did Performing!Dean this season, ramping up the subtext before taking it into the text and then finally making it canon.

So now after season 12 it feels to me that with all the bad PR around queer baiting with Sherlock, with all the bad PR around Supernatural (if you google queer baiting SPN comes up on the first page), it would be diabolically stupid for the new showrunner to ramp up the subtext like this and bring it into the text as he did from mid season 11 onwards, without taking it towards endgame canon.

It doesn’t mean they will for 100% sure but I would be so confused if they didn’t now, it would literally be the worst kind of ongoing, not just subtextual but textual now queerbaiting and a total shambles of a PR disaster as well as making NO sense to their own story which has been so carefully crafted for over a decade.

I don’t think they’re THAT stupid to take a beautiful story and rip the soul of it out, destroying their credibility as writers as well as PR Hell…

I have trust in Andrew Dabb until proven otherwise :)

#destiel #andrew dabb #andrew dabb appreciation post #i don't know if my maths is right #but i tried to work out the hours #and I'm realising all the hours I've spent watching this show #and rewatching #oh dear #johnlock v destiel #endgame destiel #Anonymous

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basicsofislam · 5 years

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ISLAM 101: ALMS AND CHARITY: VIRTUES OF ZAKAT: Part 9

DID ZAKAT EXIST IN RELIGIONS PRIOR TO ISLAM?

Salat and Zakat, in actual fact, are the common denominators of all monotheistic religions, where salat and zakat, after belief in the Oneness of God, form the very core of worship. In fact, salat and zakat are, or at least were, essential characteristics of all of the great religions of the world, those guided by a long line of prophets sent by God since the dawn of humankind, despite the fact that current forms of worship in some faith communities may vary in outward appearance. In support of this, the Qur’an, adamantly states:

They were ordered no more than to worship God with sincere devotion, to honestly establish salat and give zakat. And that is the Standard Religion.” (Bayyina 98:5)

The Midians’ apprehension at being compelled to cease doing what they liked with their properties denotes, almost certainly, a remonstration against zakat. The people of the Midian, who evidently had a complete appreciation for the altruistic Jethro, still could not get themselves to accept or follow Jethro’s brave attempts to encourage them to perform proper salat or give zakat; branding him instead as an instigator, and a rebel. As is the usual case with similar public dissensions, the people of Midian had a ready scapegoat for giving full vent to their frustrations about the obligation of zakat which was, as can be seen, salat itself.

Even though the Qur’an does not explain, literally, whether or not each prophet carried the duty of imposing zakat, it is highly possible to argue for its primordial existence through the ideal notion of peace, the humane spirit of assistance and support represented and accentuated by each Messenger, beginning with the Prophet Adam, and the Qur’anic references discussed above.

In addition, despite having their initial contents altered, the Torah and the Bible still include many passages which support the proposition that zakat actually predates Islam. As no revelations prior to Muhammad %(upon whom be peace) have survived to this day in their original forms, a fact supported even among Jewish and Christian scholars, the sole, authoritative point of reference in this argument remains the Qur’an itself. Additionally, it is worth noting that the Qur’an stresses zakat was enjoined as a duty on Jews and Christians, as well, not just on Muslims, as the textual references to the Qur’an which are included below will clearly demonstrate. Likewise, an analysis of the Torah and the Bible provides fascinating similarities and conformities with Islam’s all-embracing concept of zakat.

ZAKAT IN JUDAISM

Zakat along with salat is sternly recommended as a requirement for divine acquittal for their transgressions:

God made a covenant of old with the Children of Israel, and We raised among them twelve chieftains, and God said: “I am with you. If you establish salat and pay the zakat, and believe in My Messengers and support them, and lend to God a goodly loan, surely I shall remit your sins, and surely I shall admit you into gardens beneath which rivers flow. Whosoever among you disbelieves after this has gone astray from a straight path.” (Maida 5:12)

And in spite of undergoing multiple amendments, the current text of the Torah still grants us glimpses of the spirit of zakat, grounded on the relations between the rich and the poor:

When you help the poor (needy) (lowly) (depressed) you lend to Jehovah. He will pay you back. (Proverbs 19:17)

He who oppresses the poor reproaches his Maker. He who has mercy for the poor honors his Maker. (Proverbs 14:31)

He who gives to the poor will not lack. But he who hides his eyes will have many curses. (Proverbs 28:27)

And if you give yourself to the hungry and satisfy the desire of the afflicted, then your light will rise in the darkness and your gloom will be like midday. (Isaiah 58:10)

He who gets ahead by oppressing the poor and giving to the rich will certainly suffer loss. (Proverbs 22:16)

One further point deserves mention. The above quotations gathered from the Torah, as well as the upcoming Biblical passages, are from current versions of the texts which have, as is widely accepted and as noted above, been partially or predominantly altered, though the exact extent and manner in which such changes have been brought to these ancient scriptures is a matter for debate. A tentative and prudent approach to the current versions is thus the correct attitude, as recommended wisely by the Prophet Muhammad (upon whom be peace) himself:

ZAKAT IN CHRISTIANITY

The situation in Christianity is no different, for the Prophet Jesus, while still in the cradle, utters the duties obliged onto him by God in the following manner:

(Whereupon) he (the baby) spoke out: “I am indeed a servant of God. He has given me the Scripture and has appointed me a prophet. And He has made me blessed wherever I may be and has commanded me to pray and to give alms to the poor as long as I live. And (He) has made me dutiful to my mother and has not made me oppressive, wicked. So peace be upon me the day I was born and the day that I die and the day that I shall be raised up to life (again).” (Maryam 19:30-33)

He looked at him and was afraid. “What is it, Lord?” he replied. The angel said: “God hears your prayers and sees your gifts of mercy. (Acts 10:4)

He said: Cornelius, your prayer is heard and your gifts of mercy are noticed in the sight of God. (Acts 10:31)

Jesus then replied: “If you wish to be complete, go sell your possessions and give the money to the poor. You will have wealth in heaven. Then follow me!” But hearing these words, the young man went away grieving, for he was very wealthy. Jesus said to his disciples: “Truly I tell you, it is hard for a man with much money to go into the kingdom of heaven. Again I say, it is easier for a camel to go through a needle’s eye, than for a man with much money to go into the kingdom of God.” (Matthew 19:21-24)

Sell your possessions and give to charity. Make yourselves purses that do not get old, a treasure in heaven where moth and rust cannot corrupt and thieves cannot steal. (Luke 12:33)

And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, I gain nothing. (Corinthians 13:3)

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! You tithe mint and dill and cumin and have left undone the weightier matters of the law: justice, mercy, and faith. You should do both and leave nothing undone. (Matthew 23:23)

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