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decepti-thots · 1 year

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Hello! Your latest posts about Rodimus were great! But I have a question that has been bothering me for quite a while and I really want to read your opinion because I think that your understanding of these characters is really good and you are as unbiased as one can be (and it helps that you don’t latch on to James Roberts’ or artists’ twits!). Do you think Ratchet is being disrespectful and abusive during his belief debates with Drift? It’s silly, but lately I saw people who share this opinion.

Ahhh, this old... argument. By which I mean ship war. Is that really cropping up again?

This discussion obviously involves a discussion of at least the abstract invocation of abuse in discussions of shipping, so just to be safe, I will cut it.

Well in case the above didn't give it away: no, I do not think Ratchet is being 'abusive' during their pre-relationship spats. I will in fact plant my flag in the sand here: I think any reading of their interactions which attempts to invoke the very real, very serious concept of domestic abuse is offensive in its insistence on exploiting serious topics for the sake of what is very much silly ship war nonsense. It's a part of the tendency of some parts of fandom to not be able to simply say 'this ship does not appeal to me' or 'I feel this ship was badly executed and so did not enjoy it', because that would make their dislike of a pairing too subjective and they need it to be objectively bad and wrong, so a bad-faith reading is used to make the matter a morally weighted one. A relationship didn't just lack chemistry or come across as insincere or seem too sudden for characters who previously butted heads; no, it's abusive. Relatedly, you are bad for shipping it, and you should come ship this thing I just so happen to prefer. To call this tactic in poor taste would be underselling it, I think.

Disrespectful, well, that's very different. I think Ratchet is absolutely disrespectful towards Drift at the start. That is a major foundational point in how the comic sets up their history; Ratchet acts like he is angry at Drift because he dislikes Drift's kooky religious views, but in reality he is angry at Drift because he sees what Drift went on to do after Ratchet saved his life as. Well. Unworthy of respect. The annual makes this pretty clear; their arguments aren't just about Drift believing in crystal healing or whatever, the discussion they are having underneath is about Ratchet feeling responsible for the atrocities Drift committed as Deadlock.

Which I think is where the milder version of this comes in- the idea that Ratchet is disrespectful of Drift's religious views and that Drift shouldn't give the time of day to someone who treats his deeply held views so flippantly, so the relationship sucks because ew, Ratchet is a Bad Boyfriend. Which... I can see how you might come to this conclusion, the indications that a) this is not what they are really fighting about and b) that Drift is in fact playing up part of it on purpose and it's not wholly sincere, are not unambiguous, nor are they super obvious. I disagree, personally. But it's up for interpretation, and you can absolutely read the comic as saying that yeah, Drift is super religious and Ratchet thinks he's dumb for it, that's all just real and there.

In which case, well, that's an absolutely fine reason to not like the ship, obviously! Some folks are not into the 'we started off antagonistically and slowly came to begrudgingly respect each other and whoops now we caught feeeeeelings' dynamic- because watching people not like each other is not fun to them even if it is temporary, or it reminds them of shitty exes they've had, or like. Whatever reason. That's fine. But it's not some sort of 'gotcha' that 'proves' people are wrong to enjoy that stuff. So someone doesn't like relationships that start out, pre-romance, where people are mean to each other over disagreements. Cool! Lots of folks don't, and I think folks that don't are likely to bounce off dratchet. But that's an assessment of personal taste rather than quality or, in the most hyperbolic versions of The Diskhorse, morality.

In short: nah, that's overwhelmingly folks who just don't like a ship and think if they moralise hard enough they can like. guilt people out of shipping it. tbqh. i mean less the 'disrespectful' part, but certainly folks out here insisting ratchet is an abuser are being disingenuous.

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ajduurikscjsja · 10 months

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i saw a post where OP thought there was no in universe justification for (our)Miles to become the prowler (unlike 42 miles). and i’m infuriated bc op obviously just forgot mike’s dad, as police chief, is destined to die

(op had comments off tho, so i can only hope ppl were coming for them)

which got me thinking about my thoughts on “the canon”

i’m sure they’re gonna save the dad in the next movie, i can hardly picture them killing any of the main cast ((except maybe mom gets sniped)) at this point.

gwen’s dad quit

peter got his family bc of miles being spider-man

pavi’s universe didn’t //immediately// glitch away(tho jury’s still out on that one)

i think miguel’s ideology will prove to be more religious than science

miguel believes there are canon events destined to happen to every spider-man (and/or in every universe). and that the universe he snuck into glitched away because by him staying, and trying to give himself a family/better life, he “broke the canon” of Miguel’s death in that universe, and caused it to glitch away.

and i believe that him being in that universe too long had consequence,

i don’t believe the universe self destructed bc “presence of Miguel” was sensed for too long.

homie #1 died. that “need” of the universe was satisfied. no matter how much miguel wanted to become that “original” miguel, he was always an entirely different being.

does that mean no spider-man could travel to a universe they’ve already died in? what about not born , or never existed?

it seems much more probable to me that, more than anything else, you just can’t overstay your welcome in another universe

maybe u have to go home at a certain frequency, maybe their watch tech has just gotten better.

i don’t see why miguel’s experience is reason why miles can’t save his dad.

since it all would happened in-universe, the only reasoning would be that it breaks the moral code of the universe/that an objectively wrong thing was done.

i think it’s less likely the universe has a divine plan to be replicated on every universe for those given spider-powers,, than the reality that being a “hero”, engaging on a personal level w/ malicious people, inherently puts those around you at risk.

it’s why spider-man has a secret identity in the first place.

a cop, in a superhero-multi supervillain city, is likely to die. ESPECIALLY if said officer forms a bond w/ said hero and is willing to put themselves in life threatening situations to help out.

so i’m sorry, but you can’t be surprised when people eventually die. it’s supposed to be MIRACULOUS if it never happens!

miles’s dad in 42 died earlier bc w/o spider-man, the universe went to shit. but it didn’t glitch away((or hasn’t yet? do we know the timeline on 42?)).

#across the spider verse spoilers #atsv thoughts

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the-righteous-heathen · 3 years

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Heyo, fellow exmo here. I just have some thoughts and wondered if you'd be open to the discussion?

Whenever I see posts about "lol mormons are so crazy look at these... religious practices" I feel a little iffy inside. Like yeah, It's weird but in a lot of cases, I worry people are focusing too much on the wrong thing. There's a difference between strange practices and bad practices. Like, missions? Bad as fuck. Terrible. But stuff like garments? Clothes people wear as a sign of respect to god? Are we really holding that in the same vein as all these objectively morally horrendous practices and mindsets? And I worry that a lot of the insults/complaints sound a little... familiar.

I actually belive I put off leaving the church for a very long time because of this mindset I saw in anti-mormons. I didn't see genuine criticism or an offer for a safe way out or any reassurance. I heard the same "you do this thing differently therefore you're bad" rhetoric I heard slung at my Muslim friends for wearing hijabs and not eating pork. So I ignored them. All of them. In fact, I think I suffered in the gospel longer out of spite for their hatred.

I don't know if I'm making any sense here, but I hope my point is clear. Mormonism is fucked up but it helps to really rag on WHY it's fucked up, like the invasion of privacy and personhood, the blatant misogyny, the bigotry, the lies of its history, there's so much there I don't know why people scrape the fruit so low to the ground it's smushed and go "look! Strange ceremonial practices!"

I've kept this quiet for a long time out of fear of being accused of supporting that terrible fucking place again (god I'm getting pissed thinking about that) but I trust that you wouldn't be so cruel.

Thank you for being a place to vent, it's desperately needed. Do you have any thoughts you want to share?

This is a good point to discuss, thank you for bringing this up! I am guilty of poking fun at mormons occasionally and you’re right, it’s not helpful. Criticism is always better than insults and I think a lot of groups make the mistake of using the latter.

The thing about mormons is that they’re taught to be loving, and when they see outsiders being the opposite of loving it drives them further into the cult. You described what happens perfectly.

Another thing is that I often see people use the word cult as an insult. While I do believe that mormonism is a cult, the word seems to be thrown around casually in jokes (both by excult members and by others) rather than in serious discussions. People who fall victim to cults are also seen as stupid or ignorant when really, anyone can get roped in. Former cult members will even say things like this when they were in the same position once!

Listen, y’all are allowed to hate mormonism as much as you want. But like this person said, be sensitive! You never know who’s listening. If someone’s struggling and has one foot out the door, they don’t need more guilt piled onto them from our side.

Thanks for this take, helped me reevaluate my own attitude towards this topic.

#Exmo #mormonism #ex cult

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sokkastyles · 3 years

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firelxdykatara

Part of what is so incredibly frustrating about Aang’s arc in book 3 (or lack thereof) is the fact that his culture--despite being ostensibly wiped from the face of the planet, and we’ll set aside for the moment how little sense that makes in general, nevermind from a narrative standpoint--has hints of depth that are never explored. @inkmyname touched on it when pointing out that Aang is very selective about which parts of his own culture he interacts with and attempts to preserve

(which he cherrypicks several times over the course of the series, by the way…)

Because while it is absolutely true that AN culture is horrifically underdeveloped, part of that is because the single solitary living Air Nomad is never allowed to actually engage with, question, learn about, and understand his own culture. This is where Guru Pathik never appearing again after Aang leaves in book 2 (to ignore his own culture’s teachings and attempt to hold on to a selfish attachment he was told he would need to willingly give up in order to achieve true enlightenment and master the Avatar State, I might add) becomes a serious issue--because here was an actual, living, breathing adult with an adult’s understanding of an extinct culture, and he just... vanished from the narrative completely, the moment Aang decided that his feelings for Katara were more important than the adhering to the teachings of his people.

Which means that, yet again, what we were left with was a child’s very basic understanding of his own people. He could parrot aphorisms and wise proverbs he was taught by the monks, but he could exhibit no true understanding of them. He could maintain a vegetarian diet (at great strain to Katara, who had to make sure to cook things Aang would be willing to eat, despite having grown up in a climate where not eating meat would mean starving to death) and profess that he cherished all living creatures, but he could not examine when pacifism may not be the right choice--he could not acknowledge that even his precious monks would take lives if they had to. If other lives were on the line. (See: the fact that he never once seems to realize that Monk Gyatso’s corpse being surrounded by a bunch of skeletons in Fire Nation armor means that Monk Gyatso killed living breathing human beings in an attempt to defend his own people. I do not think he would have hesitated if an entire city-state were directly in the line of fire, no pun intended.)

If you took any twelve-year-old and froze them in a time capsule and woke them up a century later, they may be able to remember some proverbs, a verse or two from some religious text, a few general rules governing social behavior... but they would not be able to reconstruct their entire culture based only on their fallible childhood memories and a few recovered artifacts.

And it is explicit, in the text of the show, that Aang is perfectly willing to discard the teachings of his people when they conflict with something he wants. His people’s teachings say that he should release his attachment to the girl he likes--he evidently misinterprets this to mean he must forgo all connection to her (which is never so much as implied, and if the tenets of Buddhism were to actually be adhered to, giving up his attachment to her wouldn’t even mean that he couldn’t still love her and that a relationship would be out of the question if she loved him in return--merely that his selfish attachment to her needed to go, because he was not entitled to her feelings. this was a lesson he desperately needed to learn, rather than being rewarded for his selfish behavior by having Katara realize at the literal last second that oh, yeah, she really DID have feelings for him), and refuses on the grounds that... he wanted to date this girl who had never once shown romantic interest in him. Because that’s certainly worth throwing his own people’s teachings about spirituality and enlightenment right in the trash.

So the argument that killing Ozai would have killed the last remnants of his culture, and so he needed to find a pacifistic solution in order to preserve them, already doesn’t hold water--because Aang showed very little concern for preserving his people’s beliefs, or anyone else’s (he’s actually... pretty disrespectful of other cultural practices at numerous points in the show and is never really taken to task for it, by the narrative or any of the characters), at any other point in the show. And something that this particular segment of the fandom always loves to claim is that in saying that I’m saying that I wanted a kid to murk a dude on screen in a Y7 show--but that isn’t it at all. None of this is to say that Aang should have killed Ozai (although whether he was allowed to remain alive should have been up to a tribunal of EK and WT citizens, not just the Avatar, but that’s another discussion entirely)--but it is to say that Aang being able to take a third option was not handled well, either from a story perspective or a character one.

What we should have gotten--and what Book 3 seemed to be primed for--is a season long arc of Aang finally mastering the Avatar State and completing his character arc. The foundation was there, the potential beats were lined up, the earlier hints (such as an entire episode dedicated to showing both Aang and the audience that sometimes the object of your affections doesn’t like you back, and that’s ok, because if you love them you should want them to be happy, and if we just ignore the last twenty seconds that completely undermines the entire message [particularly in light of the epilogue] then we’re golden) there to provide some structure for the remainder of his arc.

Instead, what we wound up with were a bunch of useless filler episodes leading up to the failed invasion (which had some gems, like The Puppetmaster and Sokka’s Master, but when weighed against episodes like The Headband and Nightmares and Daydreams, it’s hard to say if they were worth the cost), and then Zuko’s journey into the gaang’s good graces crammed into the last few episodes before the finale. It isn’t until the episode before the finale that Aang even admits to anyone that he can’t enter the Avatar State, and it isn’t until the finale that this is actually ‘resolved’--by a pointy rock showing up at the exact right place to, i guess, jar his chakras loose. Because that’s how it works.

The result is a season that has some of the best single episodes in the series, while having the most disjointed plot, the worst pacing, and the least satisfying finale out of all three seasons. In HP fandom vernacular with which I remain intimately familiar, AtLA may have won the game, but season three absolutely did not catch the snitch. And I haven’t even gotten into the fact that Aang’s moral dilemma over needing to kill Ozai should have come up much earlier in the narrative--prior to the eclipse invasion at least, if not even sooner than that, but I still cannot fathom what Aang planned to do to the man if he actually got to him before the eclipse ended and he was powerless--because this post is already long enough.

The upshot of it all is, though, that Aang’s arc is deeply unsatisfying for a lot of people because it relies on contrivances in order for him to even survive the battle he was supposedly training the entire series for. And he was handed every victory he actually achieved, particularly in that final battle, rather than earning them via his own choices.

He didn’t choose to seek out the lionturtle--it kidnapped him. He didn’t choose to regain the Avatar State--he was thrown against a well-placed rock and it was reactivated automatically. (I know I frequently engage in percussive maintenance myself, but come on.) He did choose to ignore Katara’s words and body language and kiss her anyway--and he was then rewarded with a relationship without so much as apologizing to her for his actions. (And, notably, Katara was given no space on screen to work through her own feelings--it was just assumed that they were there, and she had them for Aang, and it was just a matter of him being persistent enough that she realized it. Which is very much not the message we should be sending the children to whom this show was aimed and marketed.)

I really can’t find anything in Aang’s arc, as presented in the show (rather than the idealized version a lot of Aang stans seem to have constructed for themselves), that is meant to be some sort of ‘ideal’, either from an irl perspective or from a story one. And it remains a constant source of frustration, because all the tools were there, all the potential was there--it’s just that none of it was ever realized by the narrative.

@firelxdykatara I want to reply to this in a different post because I don’t want to continue arguing on OP’s post anymore. The thing is that it does seem like there was an attempt made to build this conflict up, but it was just...forgotten. Which is especially weird when we talk about the parallels between Aang and Zuko, because there are several places where Aang’s internal struggle is paralleled with Zuko’s. And this is part of what makes Aang’s arc not hold up to Zuko’s, unfortunately.

One of the things that should have been explored about the Air Nomads is the fact that they actually did Aang quite badly by telling him that he was the Avatar too early, and that seemed like it was an important plot point and part of Aang’s internal struggle...until it wasn’t. A lot of people say that Aang’s desire to avoid conflict and be a kid is an Air Nomad trait, and it kinda is, but from what we saw in the flashback, we know that not all Air Nomads were like this, and Aang’s relationship with Gyatso - which I REALLY wanted to be explored more - was actually contrasted with the rigid ways of the other monks. We saw this in Aang and Gyatso playing pranks and in how Gyatso tried to shelter Aang and let him be a kid a little longer, which he should have been able to do. Aang ran away because the Air Nomads were trying to take him away from Gyatso! This is a pretty standard coming of age plot, growing up and realizing that not every adult is good and right all the time and has your best interests in mind (Zuko also learns this in his flashback, in much more violent way). And Aang was so angry and hurt and betrayed when he recounted it in “The Storm,” and it’s a direct parallel to the way Zuko’s father betrayed him. What happened to that? What happened to that anger? What happened to “how could they do that to me?!”

But there’s no follow up to this. I think they could have done more with the Guru Pathik character possibly in order to fix this, like maybe showing Aang being resistant to learning from him because of those lingering negative feelings. But then, Pathik himself is one of the weakest parts of the story, and is little more than a racist caricature. That’s part of the problem.

Similarly Aang trying to reconcile his unhealthy attachment to Katara and his love for Katara was part of his internal struggle...until it wasn’t. And once again it’s paralleled with Zuko’s arc. Like, the episode where that conflict is introduced, “The Avatar State,” is the same episode where Zuko chooses to go with Azula back to the Fire Nation and chooses his unhealthy attachment to his father instead of Iroh. This conflict runs through that season (again paralleling Zuko’s arc) and is brought up again in the finale for book 2, and the resolution is even hinted at:

Aang: Well, I met with this guru who was supposed to help me master the Avatar State and control this great power, but to do it, I had to let go of someone I love. And I just couldn't.

Iroh: Perfection and power are overrated. I think you were very wise to choose happiness and love.

Aang: What happens if we can't save anyone and beat Azula? Without the Avatar State, what if I'm not powerful enough?

Iroh: I don't know the answer. Sometimes, life is like this dark tunnel. You can't always see the light at the end of the tunnel, but if you just keep moving, you will come to a better place.

There we have it! Aang didn’t need to give up his love for Katara, nor did he need to exchange her for power. It’s a false dichotomy. The show is really good at setting up false dichotomies only to break them down in other places, but with the Avatar state arc they just...don’t quite manage it. It seems like they were trying to set it up, too, by paralleling Aang’s fall at Ba Sing Se with Zuko making the wrong choice, but there’s no follow-through.

Instead of Aang experiencing a conflict with his cultural identity, suddenly the Air Nomads become these idealized figures who are always right in book 3, primarily so he can lecture Katara and Zuko on the evils of revenge. If this is Aang trying to hold on to the last vestiges of his culture and not wanting to acknowledge how his last interaction with the monks was a negative one, the story needs to show that! THAT would be an interesting character conflict! But instead they drop that story entirely and make it about whether Aang is going to kill Ozai, because Aang is so good and wise and everybody else suddenly wants him to kill for some reason. Which of course he isn’t going to do, because it’s a nickelodeon show. It’s not just that the lionturtle is a deus ex machina, it’s that it’s a solution to a problem that never felt like a real problem and was put in place of actual real character conflict.

And although I’m not a huge fan of Kataang, this absolutely could have been done WITHOUT sacrificing Kataang. When the narrative suggested that he needed to give up Katara to become the Avatar, when Aang went into the Avatar state and said “I’m sorry, Katara,” I actually shouted NO at my screen. Because Aang should NOT have to give up love in order to become a hero, and that’s not what the Buddhist idea of getting rid of earthly attachments means, anyway. It means getting rid of unhealthy attachments, and as you said, that was shown in Aang’s behavior towards Katara. And it seemed like the writers were working towards Aang having a realization that his behavior towards Katara was unhealthy, that if he loved her he needed to actually have a real conversation with her about her feelings and give her space to say no (even if she says yes in the end), and that never happened.

There’s also a reason Iroh has this conversation with Aang in book 2. If we want an example of someone who has achieved a spiritual balance in their life, and given up earthly attachments in favor of living simply, Iroh is that character, and he’s a much better example than a westernized Guru caricature or a twelve year old spouting pithy aphorisms about revenge, because Iroh’s wisdom comes from experience. And Iroh’s advice is that sometimes life is like a dark tunnel, and that you need to go through the dark to get to the light. Iroh also admits that he doesn’t know the answer, because like all truly wise people, he is wise enough to know that he knows nothing. That’s why Aang having spiritual knowledge handed to him so that he can avoid having to make a decision feels like a cop-out. The show didn’t even tell us until the last second that what the knowledge was was energybending, because the writers KNEW it was a cop-out.

And the choice between power and love? Is not even made. Aang still gets to have a super special power bestowed upon him and beats Ozai because he learns how to bend energy, the most powerful and special form of bending of them all, guys. It’s actually super frustrating because the writers CAN resolve this in a meaningful way. They do it with Zuko, who also has super special powers bestowed upon him in the climax of the story, but in the end it’s not power, it’s his frienship with Katara and his willingness to sacrifice for her that saves him. Wasn’t Aang supposed to be making a similar choice about Katara? Hmmmmmmmm.

#not tagging because i don't want to keep arguing about this

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a-wandering-ghoulette · 4 years

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Copia as Papa: the blue papal ensemble first thoughts

I won't beat about the bush: I’m convinced the color is important. We’re used to Popes in black (yeah PE1 wore white, but can't we agree it’s not that surprising?) and now we have this strange bird showing off. So much can be said about this color! Let me add “few” things which, to me, seem accurate or would have personnaly inspired me in the choice of this color, based on the middle age, plague-ish and Renaissance theme following Copia so far:

First of all, starting from the XIIth century blue is a new, trending color, symbol of wealthyness and aristocracy. Deep and vivide tons are the most expensive. It’s said blue colors used to be more expensive than those using gold powder.

During the XIIth century, blue already tended to replace black even in the funeral rite and religious objects.

Catholics didn't accepted the use of blue that easily. Wearing blue was considered as a surge of pride. Actually, they didn’t really care about what people wore but still, it was unworthy of a good Christian. It was a true moral fight opposing the big bad blue of the nobles and Protestants to the imperious red and discreet black of the Christianity.

Copia as a Cardinal often wore red and black, traditional colors, and seemed a little bit clumsy and oopsy oops sorry Nihil aha ‘living now byebye~. Now he’s in blue and he’s the new Pope and he's like eh there can be only 1 Pope, shoo~! Mere coincidences, most certainly, but I wanted to highlight this.

After the Black Plague strucked Europe, wearing blue wasn’t well seen. First, because it’s expensive to produce and european countries are ruined. So decreats were made to stop this hunger for luxurious textile goods. Secondo, ethic: to keep a christian tradition of modesty and righteousness. Young people and women were targeted and repression on innovative ideas were made bc they were “disturbing the established order and moral”. Finally, ideology: a need to initiate segregation between classes and genders. To maintain strong barriers and avoid mixes between classes is a priority and the outfit -the complexity + color- is the first sign of social classification. To break these borders, it’s to break the order desired by God, which is both dangerous (boooo fear the return of the plague!) and sacrilagious.

About the Holy Mary™ (bc I saw posts about that and I know some of you are just joking around and it’s 100% okay! I’m adding that for those who may want/need more infos). Blue started to be associated to Mary during the XIIIth century, and let's be honest, the most noticeable symbolism in that is they used an expensive pigment to depict Mary bc she is a very important biblical figure. Blue wasn’t that valorised symbolicaly speaking at the time, it was too early, not trending enough yet.

So according to me, here Copia is basically showing off all his pride to the eyes of the world and most certainly his will to be a great leader, while sticking with this idea of “death” surrounding him since he first appeared. He’s totally breaking the habits established so far (it already started with Prequelle released. I meaaaan....!!!).

(For the most curious soul: read the book Blue-The History of a Color by Michel Pastoureau. Good shit, well written and documented!)

If I can easily speculate on the color and complexity of his ensemble, when it comes to the embroidery I admit I don't have brain Brig enough lol. However, I instinctively want to shout: “I see astronomy mixed to alchemy here, all followed by Baroque like arabesque, aaaah!!”, but I wonder: what’s going on here?

The first thing I spotted is the G ending on a star, as if it’s pointing at it, wanting us to look at it closely. Indeed, it guide our eyes to it. Is there a comparison to do with Ursa Major and the North star? I’m kinda confused bc of its look. The symetrical shapes makes sens with the whole aesthetic of the outfit, but the G doesnt look like anything else on this ensemble. Everything is full of arabesque or fine lines, and here we have a thick sharp shaped G (and is it silver or blue? I wanna see HD close ups! ;;). Don’t get me wrong, I think it looks super cool! I’m simply confused because I feel like I’m missing the point here. I’m curious to see what you think about it! (EDIT rightafterpostingthis: Wait, constellation ! I'm stupid aha, it's a constallation.)

We also have this:

I instinctively see cardinal points and the compass rose. Very important when you observe the sky. Again, with the G pointing at the star, this symbol bring the notion of direction, discovery, travel, guiding us/ourself. It’s a tool meant to help us... And the G is centered. But let’s not speculate more than necessary, it’s a bit too early for that.

Alchemy, the Heptagrams :

I don’t know much about them tbh. It’s some good alchemy stuff, about universe and perfection, and it’s also used in occultism/paganism, and catholicism (7 days of the creations + protection against... the evil?).

About the stones. Lot of blue ones apparently. Let’s say it’s meant to be saphirres: stones use to make amulet for travellers, protection against the plague and various nervous illness and such. Note that “saphirre” also refered to “lazulis” during Renaissance(people were confusing them. Both blue stone, can't blame them). Another reason why blue is such an important color here! Fun fact: saphirre also symbolize honesty, fidelity and truth.

Overall, the ensemble looks like a mystic map of the sky and I just love it! These notions also go along with my idea that Copia's character development is bases on Middle Age/Renaissance humanism and opening of minds toward the world, letting go of old beliefs. I mostly linked it with astronomy and alchemy, with historical/social bacground, but I’m pretty sure people into astrology and paganism will surely have a lot to say as well! Let’s see what others interpretations you’ll come with... And what Tobias actually has in mind!

#sorry for the long post aha #I'm not a specialist i'm just too passionated for my own sake #I spent half the day on this duh #and forgive my english ♥#the band ghost #papa emeritus iv #papa copia #popia #thoughts #copia blue outfit

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coldalbion · 4 years

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Thoughts on mythic morality

(Disclaimer/CN: This post discusses such things as depictions of rape, theft, murder, kinslaying and incest. None of what of what I write here should be taken as approval of, or apologia in relation to these acts.) “You look at trees and called them ‘trees,’ and probably you do not think twice about the word. You call a star a ‘star,’ and think nothing more of it. But you must remember that these words, ‘tree,’ 'star,’ were (in their original forms) names given to these objects by people with very different views from yours. To you, a tree is simply a vegetable organism, and a star simply a ball of inanimate matter moving along a mathematical course. But the first men to talk of 'trees’ and 'stars’ saw things very differently. To them, the world was alive with mythological beings. They saw the stars as living silver, bursting into flame in answer to the eternal music. They saw the sky as a jeweled tent, and the earth as the womb whence all living things have come. To them, the whole of creation was 'myth-woven and elf patterned’.” — J.R.R. Tolkien

The above quote is a charming one, isn’t it? Tolkien’s invocation of another way of seeing, of existing, beguiles us with its sense of possibility. It is, like much of myth and story, fundamentally conservative - not in the political sense, but in the conservational sense. As an attempt to preserve, or at least, keep possibilities open in the mind of the reader, it’s pretty good. Of course, the wrinkle is - or some may say - that this took place in the distant past. Nobody, they might say, sees the world like this - or if they do, then their perception is deluded - because we are past that. We see the world representationally now, striving towards accuracy. Anything else is just superstition, is it not?

The mistake these stereotypical straw men make - within the context that I have breathed life into them for - is to suggest that a linear path between “then-now”, and “past-future”. Actually, they make several mistakes, not least because of their unexamined bias. I’ll not elucidate them all here, but suffice to say that our vegetative friends have not considered, amongst other things, the role of the cultural, historical, and philosophical structures which influence how we perceive and know things. In philosophy, such consideration of knowledge and how, why, what, and where we know things is called epistemology. The thing with philosophy is that it covers many things: morality, ethics, metaphysics, linguistics, epistemology, sociology etc. We have words for all these things, and they are often their own disciplines. Philosophy - literally descending from “philia” + “sophia”, meaning affection or love for wisdom - can cover a kind of work in them all them all, precisely because understanding and using what is learnt in these many and varied arenas, and dong so well? Understanding the implications? Knowing that we know nothing for certain and that things are seldom as they first? This is wise, these things are wise, and so: wisdom is the useful, sound, and valuable deployment of knowledge and living life itself well.

Our straw men, conjured into existence by the magic of speech and words - shapings of breath digitized and transmitted across the planet to you, dear reader? They are brought forth into a world where the majority of its unexamined structures descend from the cultural shapings of men with pale skins. Dig further back, and deeper, and you will find that those men re-ordered, restructured and built upon the knowings and experiences of people who were not white or male. The structures of how we perceive, how we know what we know - even how we are taught to think, and express and feel? These did not come from nowhere - unfiltered and whole from the mind of one omnipotent, omniscient, Creator. Rather, many powers and potencies, principalities and agencies act all together. The flows of power, influence, propaganda, social and economic capital; the emotional and cultural response to events and experiences. All of these are contoured and shaped by the many. That many of the pale-skinned men shaped much of our world today is an accident of birth which is then compounded by economic and social factors based on climate, trade routes, geography, resources etc. This acquisition is then compounded and backward rationalized - the accidental conflux of factors becomes a self-justification for ideas of false superiority, which drives behaviours which weight things in the favour of that group. Make no mistake reader - there are still many worlds, even today. Bounded spaces, their boundaries staked out by those with the influence and ability to enforce them. That this is being written by a pale skinned man from North Western Europe is no coincidence. Nor is the fact that many will be able to read this, though my tongue is not what they speak natively - their first words carried a history different to mine. For various reason those people learnt my language which sneaks up behind others and mugs them in dark alleys, or engages in savagely lucrative trade deals. History literally is an accounting what has gone before, thus recounted by those later to be reckoned as accurate sources and authority. It is not all violence, theft and brutality. It is cultural exchange, trade, sharing, incorporation and diffusion also. All these things flow between in flux - this is influence. Influence is often codified and commodified under the rubric of power in an attempt to wield it more universally - which inevitably divorces it from its original context and forces a more acquisitive mindset amongst those who seek it, rather than seeking out points of influential confluence and integrating oneself within that. The orality of history, and cultural transmission, is not something often thought of today. With the advent of writing, information and knowledge conservation shifts to the texts themselves as authority - the metaphor of something being “there in black and white” refers to newspapers, but the sense of it descends from textual authority. Perhaps not so coincidentally, the historic belief structure of those pale people is rooted in a distortion of a heresy of a Middle-Eastern monotheism, which in itself seems been an offshoot of various Middle-Eastern polytheisms. That Judaism has a central authoritative text, leavened with thousands of years of oral and written commentaries and arguments should be noted. That this text was itself an edited version which scholars believe contains multiple texts, and was added to and redacted from, in response to socio-political and religious reasons over time, is also of note. That that text was selectively edited and canonized, before being translated in various languages in response to socio-political and religious reasons over time, is worth further note. That this collage of ancient material is elevated to holy scripture and used as basis for moral authority for the majority of the pale people for over a thousand years, and used as justification for imperalism, rape, murder, theft, oppression, oppression on grounds of sexuality, gender - and was a fundamental source of, and during, the social construction of the concept of race - would be shocking, were it not for the desire for that which is referred to as ‘power’ and ‘authority’. The singularity of authority and power presupposes scarcity. This is to say that fixed, codified protocols of behaviour, perception, and emotional affect allow definition and navigation in an unpredictable kosmos. By structuring experience, we make sense and it is by sense that we structure the world in a feedback loop. In a society based on orality, it is the stories that are told which preserve, iterate upon, and transmit knowledge and culture. In this, it’s worth quoting Marshall McLuhan: “The medium is the message.” What this means is that how a message is transmitted influences the message content and context. Similarly, it is how and by whom-as-medium it is transmitted which influences the message. Oral societies are often conservative in nature - there are ways things are done, and for reasons. Thus, to deviate from that is dangerous, precisely because things are done that way for a reason which benefits certain people. Whether those certain people are an elite or a society as whole varies according to societal structures. Those who deviate are dangerous for several reasons - they are unpredictable, which in many societies at one time meant that they are or were a potential threat. They are non-conformist, which implies they may not honour the social contract which is supposed important in keeping everyone safe and keeping the world-order-as-society knows it running.

Recall Tolkien’s charm? His elder possibility is a world-order or worldview (weltanschauung) which sees the numinosity in all things. It thus sees flux and agency and multiplicity. In the case of polytheism and animism, the multiplicity of agents and powers suggests a multitude of agents all acting on one another and interpenetrating - rather like ripples or interference patterns. Gods and “Big spirits” ( terminology that is pretty much synonymous in the mind of this author for the purposes of discussion) can be said to have mythic “mass”. A large stone dropped into a pond will make bigger ripples and cancel or interfere with smaller ripples generated by smaller pebbles. When considering gods as establishers of world-order - or even creating worlds, it’s instructive to consider that in many mythologies, this is accomplished by the overthrow of a previous order or set of structures, and their reconfiguration. Which is usually, to judge my many world mythologies, a polite way to suggest murder and butchery; fundamentally catastrophic in all the linguistic and etymological senses of the word.. Once bloodily established, it is usually the actions and processes of the gods which keep the kosmos running. This accreted behaviour forms mores. Myth is thus a recounting of these behaviours and deviations therefrom, not simply as dry recounting but as felt experience which stimulates emotional and psychological affect which joins all participants (human and otherwise) into a shared epistemological framework. In any society, the element of performance is key in any media - not just what the media ism but how it does it, as mentioned above. In an oral society where knowledge is shared through speech, whether by poetry or storytelling, the performance of the teller is key, as is the setting and context of the delivery. Many myths depict rape, murder, theft, trade, sharing, incorporation and diffusion. In this, they are as much like other forms of media as anything else. Likewise, it of course is the choice of those personally affected by such things not to engage with such things if they feel it would be detrimental to them. Yet, in dealing with myth, particularly if one views it not as synonymous with falsehood, but in fact expressive of some world-reality which forms the root of of our perceptions and experience, we often have questions of morality. To say that myths containing rape, incest, murder, theft etc “offer a window onto a different time” or to suggest that the actions of a mythological figure are literally representationally true and thus that figure should be hated and despised is to present only a fairly shallow reading in the view of the author. Let us take the Norse god Odin - he who, according the texts we have, committed near- genocide against giant-kind; slaughtering his own kindred the god (along with his brothers) butcher the primeval giant Ymir and use his body to make the worlds. The brothers then create humans by breathing life into two logs/trees found by the sea shore - far better then men of straw, no? He steals the Mead of Inspiration (itself brewed from the blood of a murdered god) after seducing and tricking its giant-maiden guardian, but not before killing nine thralls in order to get close to her father - bearing the name Bolverk (evil-doer). He uses magic to impregnate Rindr after she turns him down repeatedly, making it so that Valli, the agent of vengeance for the death of Balfr, is a product of rape - regardless that he is in the shape of/dressed of a woman at the time. He attempts to have his way with Billing’s daughter, but is discovered and chased away by a pack of angry men. He sets up heroes to die in the midst of battle, abandoning them at the precise moment they need his aid. He is, in short, a major bastard. Did the Norse enjoy stories of rape? Was it a particular genre that pleased them? We have the images of Vikings as raping and pillaging, after all? Certainly, there are texts that suggest they had a different view of sexuality and violence than we do today. But is perhaps our take on Odin in the myths we have had passed down to us heavily biased? Of course. For one, it appears the idea of Odin as chief god in Iceland was due to the preponderance of preserved texts. Archaeology suggests Thor was more popular with the population-at-large than the weird and terrible bastard wizard Stabby McOne-Eye the murder hobo. But Odin is the Master of Inspiration - and both kings and poets were buoyed by his patronage. That this is passed down, collected and written down by a Christian after Christianization of Iceland, and then translated to English, some eight or nine centuries later?

This influences the medium and message. Further, amongst certain neopagans and heathen polytheists, there is a tendency to look at the preserved texts in a similar way to the Bible. This is a product of the mutations of that North West European brand of heresy we mentioned, contextualized in sectarian manner (Protestantism has a lot to answer for). Even if the myths are treated not as literal, we have been culturally contoured to look at myths which describe religious and numinous experience as exemplary. That’s to say, things that serve as examples or moral models, illustrations of general rules. In a sense, that’s akin to looking to police procedurals or popular movies, or 24hr news channels for a sense of morality today. Such things do contain troubling assumptions today - valourisation of violence if it “gets the job done” in movies, or news stories inciting rage for political or social gain as example. Yet their key raison d’etre is experiential affect. Information and mores may be passed on and inculcated unconsciously, yes. But to view their content as explicitly and directly representational without bias? This is surely dangerous. Furthermore, our attitudes to sexuality and violence, both as distinct groupings and how they interplay in all forms of media are worthy of critique - exactly what is acceptable and why? What is the historical and social context for this? So if myth is not to be read as moral exemplar, what then? In this we must engage beyond a surface reading, if we so choose. As method of epistemic transmission and framing, myth is is not exemplary, but does aid in modelling. It is the response to myth that aids modelling not the myth itself. To say Odin is a rapist, a murderer, and thief is important - not because he is, or is not these things, but what that means to the audience participating in the myth, both historically and currently in context. This is why his self-naming as Bolverk is so important, within the context of the myths. Performer and audience and mythic figure all acknowledge this behaviour as unacceptable to humans. Throughout the myth cycle, the “morally dubious” stories illustrate deviance from acceptability is only viable longterm if one is influential, and this motif exists across cultures. There are always consequences for such behaviour, whether it be the dooming of the world, or more subtle responses. Yet they serve a doubly illustrative function in the case of Odin, and other such figures (often Trickster or magical figures) wherein their behaviour and character is ambiguous precisely because of that nature - existing asocially, breaking rules and remaking them, surviving and prospering in impossible ways, in often hostile environments. This renders such figures “unsafe” “criminal” or “unnatural”, perhaps even queer in relation to wider society. For such figures, it is the transmission of this quality via the myth which the narrative preserves, even when preserved and iterated upon by time. In this context, to state again, solely literal representational readings of myth are mistaken. This is not to say it is all symbolic, but rather that metaphor transmits information - an Iroquois story says their people learnt to tap maple syrup from squirrels. An Iroquois boy saw a red squirrel cutting into tree bark with its teeth and later returning to lick the sap; the young Iroquois followed the squirrel’s lead and tried the same technique by cutting into the tree bark with a knife, thus discovering the sweet sap. Long derided as mere “myth” or “folklore” it took until the 1990s for a scientist named Bernd Heinrich to observe and record it, publishing in a scientific journal - thus ‘legitimizing’ pre-existing indigenous knowledge.

That such knowledge only became ‘acceptable’ or ‘real’ when performed outside of its original form tells us much about the biases of so-called ‘Western Culture’ as regards myth and folklore. Yet, this example proves the utility of such transmissions, existing over the centuries. That Iceland’s corpus of myth (even in those tales that remained to be written down) may contain metaphorically encode experience which can be re-experienced through felt-sense is made all the more likely, given the preservation of highly localized folklore and histories. Questions of legitimacy or lack are defined by flows of influence and power - inextricably linked to agency and consequence. Myth is therefore conceivable as a manifestation of currents of social influence and should never be held as a fixed thing, whether or not one has positive or negative emotional response to its figures

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cheifcornerstone · 3 years

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hey! so i read what you said on my post and watched some of the videos in your pinned post, and i have a couple related questions i was hoping you could clear up for me. in my post i was talking specifically being lgbt people being a sin, and you said that just being gay wasnt in of itself sinful. my understanding of sin is this:

god is good, and therefore doing good things is doing things god would do, or what god would want you to do. and doing things that god wouldnt do, or wouldnt want you to do, is a sin.

and the only way us humans know what is and isnt a sin, is from the bible. even if the bible is completely correct and whatnot, im still seeing a couple problems here. christians have always followed the bible as best as they could, but christians and christianity have changed a lot. christians from a couple hundred years ago had completely different morals from christians today.

for example, people 300 years ago were saying that being gay was sinful. with the same bible. if being gay is not a sin according to the bible, why did so many people think it was? did they read or interpret the bible wrong? if thats the case, how do we know we arent misinperpreting it now?

and because so many christians before our time, thought it was a sin to be gay, where is the objectivity of the bible, and therefore god? if what is good or bad under god is up to interpretation, you can justify whatever you want as being good with the same bible you can justify it as bad. there is a general consensus among christians today of what is and isnt sinful, but its completely different than it was 300 years ago, and will be completely different in another 300 years. how would anyone know what is and isnt sinful then?

just to clarify here i'm using the example of being gay as sinful or not, but i mean it more broadly. aside from just that, there have been a lot of things that christians in the past have believed in that they dont know, like slavery, rape, torture, and murder being good and justifiable under the bible.

sorry that that was super long lol and if i said something wrong and/or i'm misunderstanding something, please correct me

Hey thanks for getting back to me on it and I always find learning more about theology interesting.

Your right the Bible is still a book written by men hundreds of years ago and you have to understand the context of every verse. Just because people use scripture to try and justify terrible things like murder and whatnot doesn’t invalidate the wisdom the knowledge teaches. There are theologians and Bible scholars who practice and memories the Bible line by line and can more or less give you solid indisputable answers.

On the gay thing I believe in history gays were persecuted and taboo in most cultures and the Bible was a tool used to justify doing terrible acts. I believe Leviticus is used when they say homosexual acts is punishable by death but if you look at the context first of all it’s Old Testament second it’s the law given to Moses and the Israelites so they may be set apart as an example of Gods Chosen. It was kind of a deal, if you obey these rules Your children will inherit these lands. Jesus new law overwrites this. We aren’t Israelites in that sense anymore. New covenant and all

Then you have Romans 1:18-32 which details men sleeping with men as shameful but the context is talking about what Paul saw in Rome at the time. People were falling in love with their sexual lifestyles more than God. Paul is describing the love of sin and lack of God.

You can pretty much understand that these were for specific time but you can extract simple knowledge that the whole point in the Bible is to love God first and foremost. Then love your neighbor. Loving yourself or your sexuality is pride and is idolatry in the eyes of the lord.

Churches and religious people treat homosexuality as a sin because it’s leads to homosexual acts. They are wrong. it’s not sinful to be gay! Nothing in the Bible says that. In fact just looking at another women with lust is sinful. Just thinking about killing someone is sinful. Impossible task for sure but good thing Christianity gives us a chance to redeem ourselves with Christ

Of course you can say to hell with all that but even if you are non-believer learning more about the Bible is a great way to defend yourself against people who try to use it against you. Sorry for the long winded post

#lgbtq #christianity #christian

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meta-squash · 3 years

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Brick Club 1.7.4 “Forms Assumed By Suffering During Sleep”

Oh man this one’s long too, I’m sorry. I accidentally found a secondary source and now I have even more to say. I did have a lot of fun with this chapter though.

While looking up Antoine Albin de Romainville from the last chapter to see if that was a reference to something (it’s not), I accidentally found this essay, Jean Valjean’s Nightmare: Rehabilitation and Redemption in Les Miserables by professor Michael H. Hoffheimer. I’m going to write my own thoughts/impressions of the nightmare but I’ll also add in stuff that I think is cool/important from the essay. I’m just going to pick and choose bits because this essay has a lot of really cool things in it but I don’t really want to just summarize the whole thing in this post.

“This dream, like most dreams, bore no relation to the situation beyond its mournful poignant character, but it made an impression on him.” This sentence reminds me of Hugo’s tendency to say “this is not that important” or “we won’t spend long on this,” before spending a long time on something. Basically, Hugo says it bore no relation to the situation, which is a big alarm saying “but it’s very important to the establishment of what’s going on in Valjean’s subconscious!”

“It is one of the papers in his own handwriting that he left behind. We think we should copy it here word for word.” Again, another weird signal. Hugo doesn’t really break the fourth wall very much in this way. I often forget that he’s writing like a sort of historian of these characters rather than a regular narrator, and then a passage like this pops up. So I think this being written in Valjean’s own hand is important in a similar way.

Hoffheimer points out that written text documents in Les Miserables often signal an important change of events. He also points out that this is the only document in the entire novel that is written by Jean Valjean himself. He says “Transcribing the document reduces the narrator to the role of passive compiler who sheds omniscient access to Jean Valjean’s thoughts and acquires understanding of the dream’s content only by virtue of possessing Jean Valjean’s papers.“ Which I both agree and disagree with. I think that Hugo’s narration of Valjean is different from all other characters in the novel. Despite Valjean essentially being the true “main character,” Hugo often stays distant from Valjean’s true feelings. He will either tell us what Valjean is thinking but not what he’s feeling, or vice versa. It’s only in moments of intense distress, like these past 5 hours of pacing, that he allows us and himself access to both Valjean’s thoughts and intense emotions at the same time. Even when he tells us what Valjean is feeling, it seems a little more objective. I think what really makes me think this is Valjean’s monologues to Marius alone and then to Marius and Cosette at the end of the novel. Narrator-Hugo venerates Valjean, in a way, so that even when he’s describing how Valjean feels about himself, there’s a degree of sympathy and respect in the words. This is contrasted quite intensely with Valjean’s verbal descriptions of his own feelings about himself and his past, which are full of a level of guilt and self-loathing and negativity that we don’t get from Hugo’s narration of the same events. So I disagree (mildly) that the document places Hugo into the role of passive compiler without omniscience, because I think narrator-Hugo does that to himself throughout the entire novel. The description of Javert’s mental turmoil at the end of the novel is far more intense and viscerally described even than the turmoil we just witnessed Valjean going through. We know that Hugo has the capacity to delve deeply into Valjean’s psyche, to show us how he truly thinks of himself, but there’s always that moment of pulling back, of respect due to Valjean’s Goodness that Javert is not afforded in the end, and that is only exposed when Valjean gets the chance to talk about himself to others.

Something I’ve realized, after having read Les Mis and now also having read Last Day Of A Condemned Man, is that Hugo is incredibly good at writing nightmares. He should have written a dreamlike horror novel because every time he writes a character having a dream, it’s so intense. I’d love to see a short film portrayal of this dream.

This is the first time we learn Valjean had a brother. We know about his sister, with whom he lived. But when he was introduced back in 1.2.6, there is only mention of his parents and his older sister. This phantom-brother that we know nothing about and Valjean doesn’t elaborate on kind of reminds me of the way that religious figures call others “brother,” so I wonder if this brother is a kind of everyman for Valjean, either Champmathieu or the population of M-sur-M or both. This would make sense later on, when the brother disappears when Valjean steps into the weird empty road (which Hapgood translates creepily as a “hollow road”), since no matter what action Valjean takes, either Champmathieu or M-sur-M is going to vanish. Hoffheimer mentions that one of his other sources (Jean Gaudon) thinks that this dream-brother refers to Hugo’s life rather than Jean Valjean. Hugo’s brother Eugene was schizophrenic and spent most of his adult life in a mental institution. Hoffheimer also points out that a) Valjean could be interpreting Champmathieu as a lost dream-brother due to their resemblance both physically and geographically, and b) that long-lost-siblings are a theme in the Brick, with Gavroche unknowingly taking in his two brothers, as well as, in my opinion, Eponine and Cosette (who you could interpret as foster-siblings in childhood) encountering each other briefly in 3.8.8. Hoffheimer posits that the forgotten brother is another shade of a larger theme within the novel of child abandonment.

“Even while we talked, we felt cold because of that open window.” This is such an interesting passage because Valjean and his brother are presumably outside, walking, and yet it is because of the open window and not the wind or outdoors itself that they feel cold. It isn’t even necessarily the window itself that’s making them cold, but the thought of the window.

“He was entirely naked, ashen-colored, riding a horse the color of earth. The man was hairless; we saw his skull and the veins in his skull. He was holding a stick that was limber, like a twig of grape vine, and heavy as iron.” All of the other men that Valjean sees in this dream are earthen-colored, except this naked man who is the color of ash. He’s also the only one who has visible veins, a sign of life. He’s also the only one seen using a non-pedestrian mode of transportation, but the horse is still earthen-colored. I have no idea if this interpretation is anything at all, but I’ve just had a flash of a thought. It makes me wonder if this is actually Valjean, as he, like Dante, is the only living being in this dream. Here, he’s a living being stripped of both of his identities (he is not Valjean right now because Champmathieu is Valjean, and he can’t fully be Madeleine right now because of his awareness of what will happen to him morally if he decides to turn his back on Champmathieu), ashen-colored to match the items and identity he burned in the fire, being borne by a horse (Scaufflaire’s horse and tilbury and/or the potential death of another victim of society), holding a baton-like weapon of authority that exists in a liminal space of usefulness. It’s heavy like iron, but supple and limp and you wouldn’t really be able to beat someone with it. The only authority Valjean will have in the court at Arras is his word; even his word exists in a liminal space, since he has power and authority speaking as Madeleine but none while speaking as Valjean, and his identity in between falling asleep and arriving at Arras is trapped in this liminal existence of being neither person.

Hoffheimer says that one of his sources (Anne Ubersfeld) interprets the open window and the naked rider holding a limp-but-heavy stick as vaginal and phallic symbolism, respectively. He doesn’t really go beyond mentioning the existence of that interpretation, but honestly the pairing of the two made me go in a totally different direction. This open window could easily by a metaphor for the prospect of freedom, while the stick, heavy but limp like a chain, is a metaphor for its opposite: prison, the chain gang, labor for life.

“All was earth colored, even the sky.” This specifically reminded me of 1.2.8, when Hugo describes the “two infinities together, the ocean and the sky, the one a tomb, the other a shroud.” The sea and the sky are blended together into one singular color, one singular entity in that chapter. Here, it is the earth and the sky that are blended together. Hoffheimer points out that everything and everyone in this dream is earth-colored and lifeless, and at the end of the dream, it is revealed to be the world of the dead. This is so weirdly different from the dynamic nature of the sea-night world of prison that Hugo describes in 1.2.8. It’s weird choice because Hugo usually goes to water for imagery of both death and society (the sea-night of prison in 1.2.8, imagery from the Waterloo digression, the sewers, Javert’s suicide leap into the Seine). What’s interesting to me is that the water-imagery is all “real life,” even the imagery in 1.2.8, to some extent, since the prison is a galley ship. But Valjean’s unreal dream death-world isn’t water but its opposite, a totally hollow, silent earth. (Also, it reminds me of Hugo’s description of the dirt-covered cart in front of the Thenardier inn in 1.4.1.)

Valjean enters the village and assumes it’s Romainville. This seems to be real life details bleeding into his subconscious. But what’s interesting to me is that the only details that are identifiable as “from real life” are two people who are likely nearly vanished from Valjean’s memory: his brother and the neighbor woman, and the name of a town outside Paris that he has only vague knowledge of. None of these things seem immediately significant in any way to Valjean’s current dilemma. (The Hoffheimer essay also has a footnote that says that Romainville is mentioned later in the novel in 3.1.5 as one of the towns just outside of Paris where the universe stops existing for the Paris gamin population.)

(The Hoffheimer essay basically stops here and doesn’t really go into the nitty gritty of the rest of the dream.)

His entrance into the village, deserted but with open doors, feels to me like a twisted, surrealist dream-interpretation of Valjean’s entrance into Digne. Except when Valjean entered Digne, the town was “deserted” to him because no one would take him in, despite their being someone behind each door to answer when he knocked at them. In the dream, he’s able to enter any house, since all the doors are open, but there is still a man behind each one, though they do not interact or seem dangerous until Valjean leaves the town.

The layout of the house reminds me of the layout of Valjean’s experience of the Bishop’s house after he wakes in the middle of the night. The oratory where Valjean slept, the bishop’s room, and the garden. After waking, Valjean never enters the dining room. He goes from the oratory into the bishop’s room, and then back into the oratory and out the window into the garden.

It’s interesting to note that the first room Valjean enters is deserted, but after that, “behind every turn of a wall, behind every door, behind everything, there was a man standing in silence.”

“Only one could ever be seen at a time.” This again seems to reflect his identity dilemma: he cannot be both Valjean and Madeleine at the same time. He--and society--can only see one man at a time. There’s no way to reconcile between the two because they are in such drastically different places in society.

“They did not seem to be hurrying, and yet they walked faster than I. They made no sound as they walked. Suddenly, this crowd came up and surrounded me.” My immediate thought was that this crowd is society, catching up to and surrounding Valjean the same way that the ocean is a “populace of waves” aka society overtaking the drowning man in 1.2.8. But I wonder if instead, this is not society, but Life Sentence. Valjean knows that if he reveals his identity, he will be sentenced to life imprisonment. "The sea is the inexorable night into which the penal code casts its victims.” But this earthen, deadened, strange-headed crowd and the silent dirt-colored earth and sky, aren’t able to be fought like drowning. When you get a Life Sentence, you know that there is absolutely zero chance of returning to society, returning to the world, and having someone remember you. You are dead as soon as the sentence is pronounced. There is zero hope, zero chances, no chance that your memory will live on, there’s just emptiness. Every person in prison has different sentence lengths, they’re all trying to keep treading water until their sentence runs out or they can somehow thrash their way to the shore and escape. But everyone with a life sentence knows how long they’re gonna be there. The crowd isn’t society or the penal code drowning Valjean, the crowd is all the other life sentence prisoners, telling Valjean what he knows already. That as soon as that sentence is pronounced, he’s already dead.

“Where are you going? Don’t you know you’ve been dead for a long time?” Valjean, upon burning his passport and becoming Father Madeleine, essentially buried Jean Valjean. As long as he was living as Madeleine, he was also dead as Jean Valjean (and later, after the Orion, he will again be dead as Jean Valjean) which means that allowing Champmathieu to take his punishment for him isn’t re-killing Valjean, who is already a dead man, but killing a different human being. Valjean sheds and creates so many different identities throughout the book, but the only one he ever drags along with him is the carcass of his original self, Jean Valjean.

My mental image of this dream passage is so vivid, I wish I could somehow create it in real life. I imagine the entire thing is silent and muffled except the sound of Valjean’s weird dream-footsteps. And for some reason, of all the lines, “their heads were strange” is the one that’s most unsettling to me. Everything else is described in a fairly detailed way, but “their heads were strange” is so hauntingly vague.

(Side note: I don’t know who else doing Brick Club has read House Of Leaves, but this entire dream-passage reminds me of House Of Leaves. Especially the “Why Romainville?” aside, which is probably the most unusual phrase in the entire book, since Hugo doesn’t really use unanswered annotative asides like this anywhere else. That and the strange heads are the most unsettling parts for me, like the moment in HoL when Johnny finds the braille papers in the fridge.)

Also, I find it interesting that Valjean writes this dream down, but neither he nor narrator-Hugo actually attempt to dissect it or interpret it. Valjean writes his dream down, keeps the paper with him his whole life, and yet we don’t get him or Hugo telling us what they think it means. (I was really excited when I read the Hoffheimer essay and he pointed this out too!) The dream just floats there in the middle of the chapter as this moment of totally different, surrealist imagery, without heavy-handed metaphor. Because we always joke about how Hugo writes this brilliant and beautiful (if heavy-handed) metaphorical passages, and then supplements them with a giant blinking neon sign saying “Explanation Below!” But this is a metaphorical passage that doesn’t get that treatment.

The entire exchange between the old woman and Valjean about the tilbury reminds me so much of the exchange between Valjean and Petite Gervais. In both instances, Valjean and the other character are separated, by bushes and by the door, respectively. In both instances, Valjean is in a sort of strange trance, and the conversation is stilted and weird because of this. We get the parallel “What is your name?”/“Who is it?” question, followed by a moment of confusion. With Petit Gervais, the confusion and trance are manifested in Valjean’s silence and fixed stare at the ground. With the old concierge, it’s manifested by questions about the tilbury that he should know the answer to, but the trance means that he’s not remembering the instructions he had given just a few hours prior. Then comes a moment of realization, “Ah! You’re still here!” in reaction to coming back to awareness in the Petit Gervais scene and “Oh, yes! Monsieur Scaufflaire!” in the scene with the concierge. Petit Gervais can see Valjean, and his countenance scares him; the concierge cannot see him because they’re separated by a door, but Hugo says that “if the old woman had seen him at that moment she would have been frightened.” But Valjean makes different choices at this point in the paralleling scenes. Valjean tells Petit Gervais “You’d better get moving!” and stands up, frightening him so he runs away. After the realization of what he’s done, he runs after Petit Gervais, but it’s far too late. Here, Valjean seems close to sending the tilbury away, but instead he says “Say I’m coming down.” This time, it won’t be too late to right a wrong done.

And, more Dante references, although honestly they probably belonged back in the Scaufflaire chapter, but I didn’t notice until now. I wondered if the “two stars” thing might have a parallel in Canto III, so I looked, and it doesn’t, but I found something else instead. In 1.7.2, Scaufflaire says that in order for his horse to travel 60 miles in a day, Valjean cannot take a chaise, which would be too heavy; he must take a lighter tilbury. In Canto III, Charon looks at Dante, who is the only living being on the shores of Acheron, and says “By other windings and by other steerage/shall you cross to that other shore! Not here! Not here!/A lighter craft than mine must give you passage.” These are not direct parallels, but I think that it’s an interesting similarity, the insistence on lightness of craft. Scaufflaire is only Acheron insofar as he gives Valjean the tilbury in order to go to Arras, but I think it still fits.

#les miserables #les miserables meta #brickclub #lm 1.7.4 #les mis #les mis meta

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arcticdementor · 3 years

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The massacres at three massage parlors in the Atlanta area this week, leaving eight human beings dead, others injured, and their families scarred, were horrifying. Read this deeply moving story about the son of one of the women killed to remind yourself of this. It’s brutal. The grief will spread and resonate some more.

But this story has also been deeply instructive about our national discourse and the state of the American mainstream and elite media. This story’s coverage is proof, it seems to me, that American journalists have officially abandoned the habit of attempting any kind of “objectivity” in reporting these stories. We are now in the enlightened social justice world of “moral clarity” and “narrative-shaping.”

…

We should not take the killer’s confession as definitive, of course. But we can probe it — and indeed, his story is backed up by acquaintances and friends and family. The New York Times originally ran one piece reporting this out. The Washington Post also followed up, with one piece citing contemporaneous evidence of the man’s “religious mania” and sexual compulsion. It appears that the man frequented at least two of the spas he attacked. He chose the spas, his ex roommates said, because he thought they were safer than other ways to get easy sex. Just this morning, the NYT ran a second piece which confirms that the killer had indeed been in rehab for sexual impulses, was a religious fanatic, and his next target was going to be “a business tied to the pornography industry.”

We have yet to find any credible evidence of anti-Asian hatred or bigotry in this man’s history. Maybe we will. We can’t rule it out. But we do know that his roommates say they once asked him if he picked the spas for sex because the women were Asian. And they say he denied it, saying he thought those spas were just the safest way to have quick sex. That needs to be checked out more. But the only piece of evidence about possible anti-Asian bias points away, not toward it.

And yet. Well, you know what’s coming. Accompanying one original piece on the known facts, the NYT ran nine — nine! — separate stories about the incident as part of the narrative that this was an anti-Asian hate crime, fueled by white supremacy and/or misogyny. Not to be outdone, the WaPo ran sixteen separate stories on the incident as an anti-Asian white supremacist hate crime. Sixteen! One story for the facts; sixteen stories on how critical race theory would interpret the event regardless of the facts. For good measure, one of their columnists denounced reporting of law enforcement’s version of events in the newspaper, because it distracted attention from the “real” motives. Today, the NYT ran yet another full-on critical theory piece disguised as news on how these murders are proof of structural racism and sexism — because some activists say they are.

…

And on and on. It was almost as if they had a pre-existing script to read, whatever the facts of the case! Nikole Hannah-Jones, the most powerful journalist at the New York Times, took to Twitter in the early morning of March 17 to pronounce: “Last night’s shooting and the appalling rise in anti-Asian violence stem from a sick society where nationalism has been stoked and normalized.” Ibram Kendi tweeted: “Locking arms with Asian Americans facing this lethal wave of anti-Asian terror. Their struggle is my struggle. Our struggle is against racism and White Supremacist domestic terror.”

When the cops reported the killer’s actual confession, left-Twitter went nuts. One gender studies professor recited the litany: “The refusal to name anti-Asianess [sic], racism, white supremacy, misogyny, or class in this is whiteness doing what it always does around justifying its death-dealing … To ignore the deeply racist and misogynistic history of hypersexualization of Asian women in this ‘explication’ from law enforcement of what emboldened this killer is also a willful erasure.”

In The Root, the real reason for the murders was detailed: “White supremacy is a virus that, like other viruses, will not die until there are no bodies left for it to infect. Which means the only way to stop it is to locate it, isolate it, extract it, and kill it.”

Trevor Noah insisted that the killer’s confession was self-evidently false: “You killed six Asian people. Specifically, you went there. Your murders speak louder than your words. What makes it even more painful is that we saw it coming. We see these things happening. People have been warning, people in the Asian communities have been tweeting, they’ve been saying, ‘Please help us. We’re getting punched in the street. We’re getting slurs written on our doors.’” Noah knew the killer’s motive more surely than the killer himself.

None of them mentioned that he killed two white people as well — a weird thing for a white supremacist to do — and injured a Latino. None pointed out that the connection between the spas was that the killer had visited them. None explained why, if he were associating Asian people with Covid19, he would nonetheless expose himself to the virus by having sex with them, or regard these spas as “safer” than other ways to have quick sex.

They didn’t because, in their worldview, they didn’t need to. What you see here is social justice ideology insisting, as Dean Baquet temporarily explained, that intent doesn’t matter. What matters is impact. The individual killer is in some ways irrelevant. His intentions are not material. He is merely a vehicle for the structural oppressive forces critical theorists believe in. And this “story” is what the media elites decided to concentrate on: the thing that, so far as we know, didn’t happen.

…

But notice how CRT operates. The only evidence it needs it already has. Check out the identity of the victim or victims, check out the identity of the culprit, and it’s all you need to know. If the victims are white, they don’t really count. Everything in America is driven by white supremacist hate of some sort or other. You can jam any fact, any phenomenon, into this rubric in order to explain it.

The only complexity the CRT crowd will admit is multiple, “intersectional” forms of oppression: so this case is about misogyny and white supremacy. The one thing they cannot see are unique individual human beings, driven by a vast range of human emotions, committing crimes with distinctive psychological profiles, from a variety of motives, including prejudices, but far, far more complicated than that.

There’s a reason for this shift. Treating the individual as unique, granting him or her rights, defending the presumption of innocence, relying on provable, objective evidence: these core liberal principles are precisely what critical theory aims to deconstruct. And the elite media is in the vanguard of this war on liberalism.

…

The more Asian-Americans succeed, the deeper the envy and hostility that can be directed toward them. The National Crime Victimization Survey notes that “the rate of violent crime committed against Asians increased from 8.2 to 16.2 per 1000 persons age 12 or older from 2015 to 2018.” Hate crimes? “Hate crime incidents against Asian Americans had an annual rate of increase of approximately 12% from 2012 to 2014. Although there was a temporary decrease from 2014 to 2015, anti-Asian bias crimes had increased again from 2015 to 2018.”

Asians are different from other groups in this respect. “Comparing with Black and Hispanic victims, Asian Americans have relatively higher chance to be victimized by non-White offenders (25.5% vs. 1.0% for African Americans and 18.9% for Hispanics). … Asian Americans have higher risk to be persecuted by strangers … are less likely to be offended in their residence … and are more likely to be targeted at school/college.” Of those committing violence against Asians, you discover that 24 percent such attacks are committed by whites; 24 percent are committed by fellow Asians; 7 percent by Hispanics; and 27.5 percent by African-Americans. Do the Kendi math, and you can see why Kendi’s “White Supremacist domestic terror” is not that useful a term for describing anti-Asian violence.

But what about hate crimes specifically? In general, the group disproportionately most likely to commit hate crimes in the US are African-Americans. At 13 percent of the population, African Americans commit 23.9 percent of hate crimes. But hate specifically against Asian-Americans in the era of Trump and Covid? Solid numbers are not yet available for 2020, which is the year that matters here. There’s data, from 1994 to 2014, that finds little racial skew among those committing anti-Asian hate crimes. Hostility comes from every other community pretty equally.

The best data I’ve found for 2020, the salient period for this discussion, are provisional data on complaints and arrests for hate crimes against Asians in New York City, one of two cities which seem to have been most affected. They record 20 such arrests in 2020. Of those 20 offenders, 11 were African-American, two Black-Hispanic, two white, and five white Hispanics. Of the black offenders, a majority were women. The bulk happened last March, and they petered out soon after. If you drill down on some recent incidents in the news in California, and get past the media gloss to the actual mugshots, you also find as many black as white offenders.

…

The media is supposed to subject easy, convenient rush-to-judgment narratives to ruthless empirical testing. Now, for purely ideological reasons, they are rushing to promote ready-made narratives, which actually point away from the empirical facts. To run sixteen separate pieces on anti-Asian white supremacist misogynist hate based on one possibly completely unrelated incident is not journalism. It’s fanning irrational fear in the cause of ideological indoctrination. And it appears to be where all elite media is headed.

#andrew sullivan #substack #journalism in action

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rachelkaser · 4 years

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Has the Assassin’s Creed series lost its way...or its mind? (Part 1)

So I mentioned I was working on a critique of the Assassin’s Creed series as a whole, which sounds a lot more grandiose than it currently is. The truth is, I have one major problem with the series as it currently stands: It seems to have never figured out what it is and where it’s going.

That sounds like a broad problem, but it can actually be boiled down to a few simple things. For the sake of simplicity and space, I’ll divvy them up into two separate posts.

I tried to replay the original Assassin’s Creed not too long ago, and I’m also in the middle of a second, completionist run of Assassin’s Creed Odyssey. Experiencing the two extremes side-by-side was... instructive, let me tell you.

I’ll start off by saying the original Assassin’s Creed feels borderline unplayable today. It’s still fun in places, and there’s nothing like pulling off a tricky assassination and getting away scot-free. But the combat is boring as hell, exploring is a chore, and the damned enemy AI has me about ready to throw my monitor through the nearest glass window. So I’m not one of those purists who’ll try to tell you AC was all better “back in the day.” Gameplay-wise, the first entry sucked so hard it could have vacuumed my carpet.

But it’s not the gameplay that I’m interested in. Seeing how the story started in that game, and then seeing where it ended up in Odyssey should not feel as different as it does. Story is the one area where AC should have remained consistent, and it really, really hasn’t.

The main thesis of this article is just that I think Assassin’s Creed is focusing on entirely the wrong things, and I think it remains to be seen whether it can course-correct in subsequent games. The series, at its current place, has become a tedious object hunt with no real outer story shaping up, and that’s a massive waste of potential. And speaking as someone who has loved this series for a good third of my life now, there’s nothing I want more than for Assassin’s Creed to live up to its potential.

Faction Warfare

I think, if I could change one thing about the series, it’d be this: I would not call the two opposing factions the Assassins and Templars. By having both sides remain these static “teams,” you basically turn what could be an evaluation of historical conflicts between differing ideals of power into a glorified football game.

The first game, which is notable for now feeling like the odd one out in the series for which it was the genesis, actually felt like it had some moral complexity to the two sides. The Assassins were never the “good” guys, and the Templars weren’t the “bad” guys -- sure, there were bad men within the Templars, no fucking doubt. But the Assassins and their religious extremism and isolationism is not exactly considered heroic either. They’re portrayed a bit closer to the historic Hashashin: lonesome weirdos on a mountain who refuse to see that their dogmatic view of the world does not fit reality.

If you replay it now, it’s very telling that the game never tries to make you feel like Altair has the moral high ground, outside of one or two particular moments -- and even then, it’s not necessarily because he’s an Assassin, but because he’s a good person (if a bit of a dumbass).

The Assassins’ method of killing is portrayed as this efficient, almost cold-blooded exercise that they undertake because their leader tells them to do, not because they believe they’re making the world a better place on a grand scale. The notion that what they do is noble or heroic is one the player is thoroughly disabused of. Altair doesn’t even notice his mentor has been using him as a glorified hitman until one of his marks points it out to him.

The Ezio Conundrum

The series has never really regained that sense of moral ambiguity it had in the first entry -- primarily because the hero of the next three games was Ezio and he was a Good Guy who the developers didn’t dare tarnish with a shade of gray. Granted, his Templars were much more evil, and his beef with them much more personal, but Ezio is such a mensch that he unintentionally put a crimp in every hero’s development thereafter.

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It feels as though every player character after Ezio either has to be as good as him or at least be as wholly unambiguous in alignment. I’m not saying this is solely the fault of the devs, either -- they tried to experiment with Connor, making him a character who’s morally good but not necessarily always right and who’s up against much less obviously evil Templars. And if I remember correctly, the fans and critics threw what can charitably be described as a massive hissy fit. Every time they’ve tried to make a character even slightly flawed, they have to compensate by making them as much like Ezio as possible -- a charismatic, witty ladies man (see also: Edward, Arno, Jacob) -- as if his personality has become their go-to wallpaper to patch up any potential fan outrage.

The Assassins have only ever looked good because the Templars have looked worse. I kind of like the idea that there are times throughout history where the shoe was on the other foot and the Assassins were definitely not the heroes of the story. One of the few things I liked about AC Unity is that it went right back to showing that the Assassins are kind of an isolationist cult, not always rebellious saviors.

Do I have any idea how to “fix” the issue? Not really. AC games are now more hero-driven than faction-driven. That’s alright, I guess -- it just feels like we missed our shot at the timeline where we saw the global, millennia-spanning conflict from both sides and with greater complexity.

Stay tuned for Part 2 of this rant next week...

#assassin's creed #ezio auditore #altair #assassin's creed 2 #Templars

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thyandrawrites · 5 years

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im back hcdjbhjbhs, im curious as to what your opinion is on stain. i think his ideals were sort of understandable (even though the source of his problems with society was actually the commission not just any random hero) but his way of trying to 'fix' society was wrong. killing anybody and not bothering to find the /actual/ corrupt heroes was just him feeding some complex that he was the good guy as well as being lazy. i hope this makes sense and i love your writing

yeah, I pretty much agree with you.

I like what Stain brings into the story. The thing about bnha is that it’s told from Deku’s perspective. He’s too wrapped up in the… for lack of a better word, military propaganda, to see it somewhat objectively.

He grew up admiring not only All Might, but the entire system of heroics. He has no reasons to doubt that the system works, because he’s only ever seen one side of it. He sees heroes saving people and defeating murderers and child beaters, so of course he thinks that heroes are the coolest thing in the universe. But his perspective is limited.

That’s what the villains are for. The league in particular serves the purpose of showing a different perspective, that of the outsiders, to give the readers a way of seeing the other side of the coin. The inherent flaws of the hero system.

But the Shigaraki of USJ wasn’t yet mature enough to drive that kind of point home. He was motivated purely by bloodthirst, he acted on whims, and saw his own allies as nothing more than pawns. In other words, he was the kind of antagonist that it’s easy for the MC to brush off and consider only as a threat. After all, why would they take seriously the words of someone who wanted to murder children to summon All Might there? Why would they take seriously a guy who clearly wasn’t even thinking of the big picture at the time, but was only motivated by a personal vendetta against AM?

Stain was marginally different. He was still a bloodthirsty murderer, but he followed closely a conviction. He had a moral code, however twisted it was, and he stuck to it religiously. There was an undeniable truth in his cynical assessment of the hero society. It is true that a lot of people are in the hero business for self-serving purposes. It’s not a coincidence, imho, that the internship arc happens at the same time as Stain’s arc. There, we got a closer look at some pro hero agencies, and… there was Uwabami who only cared about making money through ads; Best Jeanist who obeyed a sense of self-centered gratification when he tried to “correct” Bakugou by fixing his outwards looks and making him dress like himself; there was Mount Lady who acted spoiled and bratty for vanity reasons; etc etc

(let’s not discuss here how it’s predominantly the fem heroes who are bad examples and who are constantly characterized to be shallow and vain because… Hori’s misogyny is not the focus of this post. Despite that, you can probably see how even the women’s… stereotypical writing fits into a bigger picture, at least this one time)

So yeah, Stain was right on the money about the corruption of the hero society, and that’s without taking into account heroes like Endeavor. Like, it’s totally normal for heroes to be entirely self-absorbed, or to get in the business to gain power and money or influence and validation. They sometimes get the occasional odd look, or become unpopular with the public, but… nobody actively stops them from getting there. Because it’s implied that even heroes who are like that, have a niche of fans who still support them. I mean… Endeavor canonically has fans who enjoy his flaming garbage personality… Everything seems to be marketable in the bnha universe, including - ironically enough - Stain’s villain propaganda speech (I mean... they canonically created merch for him!) or Destro’s villain autobiography.

That does say a lot about the society they live in, doesn’t it? Between you and me, I believe that the Hero Commission is made up of power-hungry politicians who only care about keeping their privileges. So they try to exploit whatever can bring them more power. But that’s off topic again, sorry.

Don’t get me wrong, I totally get how in a society where superpowered people are 90% of the population, a thing like that was bound to happen. It still doesn’t mean that it’s right, though.

Going back to Stain: I do agree that his way of “fixing” society was wrong. I don’t think he was killing just anyone, to be honest. He did spare Midoriya&co, and had a way of communicating that wish to his followers (Spinner stopped Magne from killing Deku that one time at training camp. He did it because Stain saw worth in him).

The one thing I don’t understand is why Tensei ended up getting hurt. He doesn’t seem to be the type who’s in the hero business for the wrong reasons. My best guess is that he ended up in the crossfire because he tried to protect someone else. Someone that Stain was actually trying to kill. I don’t think he would’ve survived otherwise.

But. Stain was an extremist. Killing corrupt heroes and only letting the “good” ones live is not a good way to address the problem, and not just because murder is morally wrong. Mostly, because corrupt heroes are a consequence of the inherent flaw of the current hero system, not its cause. Killing single pros instead of addressing the hero institution as a whole does nothing to change the status quo; it only affects the results of the process, and doesn’t go at the root of the problem.

Deliberately, Stain only ever addressed single individuals. He picked heroes one by one and tried to pass judgement. The League, though, targets the very faith that the general population has in heroes as an institution. At least past the USJ. They still target All Might, yes, but it’s to bring down the symbol of peace. They unleash noumus on wildy populated areas to create mass panic. The League is oriented towards the bigger picture, and does actually have a strategy on how to bring down the current status quo.

Stain wasn’t built to be one of those villains that keep facing the MC till the end of the series imho, but still. I enjoy what he brought to the table, you know? He served his purpose really well, so I like his arc.

For one, he brought a different perspective than Deku’s in the story, raising awareness of said flaws. Secondly, he made the actual antagonists stronger, both by prompting Shigaraki’s growth as a leader, and by inspiring people like Dabi, Spinner and Toga to join the League.

What he couldn’t do on his own, I’m pretty sure will be addressed by Dabi at some point.

#naive-blisss #ali replies #bnha #bnha meta #meta:stain #my post #Meta:bnha society

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blackandwhitemusician · 6 years

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On “Crime and Punishment”, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and Bungou Stray Dogs

ft. Nikolai Gogol. LONG POST! Also spoilers for the novel/manga if you haven’t read it already/haven’t caught up yet.

Here are some thoughts I have on certain parallels between Crime and Punishment and Fyodor Dostoyevsky in real life and as portrayed in BSD, also some speculations as to how this book and the real Dostoyevsky might have inspired his BSD version.

First, on the real book itself (more like the English translation of the book):

The main character in Crime and Punishment, Raskolnikov, killed an old woman he deemed as wicked and worthless. He was so shaken by the idea of murder that he spent an entire month tormenting himself over it, lost his gut during the actual murder, and proceeded to make himself fall ill from the mental torture. He thought he did it for money, but the more he looked into the event and into himself, the more he realized he just did it to prove that he could (my own interpretation).

“There is only one thing, one thing needful: one has only to dare! Then for the first time in my life an idea took shape in my mind which no one had ever thought of before me, no one! I saw clear as daylight how strange it is that not a single person living in this mad world has had the daring to go straight for it all and send it flying to the devil! I… I wanted to have the daring… and I killed her.”

Raskolnikov also wrote an article on the psychology and mental state of a criminal, and what leads someone to commit a crime. Raskolnikov and another character, Porfiry, used these concepts to discuss a technique used by Porfiry to trap criminals into confessing, which the two of them referred to as a “cat and mouse” game.

Raskolnikov classified people into “ordinary” and “extraordinary”. According to him, the former follow and obey the law, while the latter transgress it. The former’s role is to follow and maintain the order, while the latter seeks to destroy the status quo and establish a new order. It follows that when a person of “extraordinary” conduct deems it necessary to commit a crime to achieve their objective, they can find the will to do it.

“The crimes of these men are of course relative and varied; for the most part they seek in very varied ways the destruction of the present for the sake of the better. But if such a one is forced for the sake of his idea to step over a corpse or wade through blood, he can, I maintain, find himself, in his conscience, a sanction for wading through blood.”

This does not mean, however, that people of “extraordinary” nature are exempt from feeling guilt. In fact, Raskolnikov recognized that if these individuals do in fact feel guilt from shedding blood, it would be their greatest punishment. The worst punishment for a criminal is not so much the prison as it is by way of their own conscience.

Yet, sometimes such a punishment is essential to make way for change. Raskolnikov compared these “extraordinary” individuals to the likes of Napoleon, who by social standards should be considered the worst criminals ever lived considering the amount of blood they shed, yet are revered as heroes for the change they ushered.

I immediately thought of this:

BSD Gogol’s character fits perfectly in the scheme of Crime and Punishment. The real Dostoyevsky also mentioned Gogol several times in Crime and Punishment, when discussing the topic of morality.

Whatever the objective of the BSD “Decay of Angels” is, I’m fairly certain it has to do with change - they are willing to commit evil to destroy the status quo and advance change. These “villains” are certainly not the usual kind of “evil cause I like it”, or “evil cause I am proudly anti-heroic figures”.

Going back to Crime and Punishment, there are a few other characters that I think are of relevance to the portrayal of BSD Fyodor Dostoyevsky:

Porfiry: an investigator, who was convinced Raskolnikov was the murderer in question, and went to almost extreme lengths to psycho him into confessing. He had a pretty sharp mind, and used the sadistic investigative method of trapping his “prey” by letting him roam freely in his natural habitat, which Porfiry believe would make the criminal lower his guard and eventually fall into the trap himself. Raskolnikov realized the trap, of course.

Svidrigailov: an extreme representation of a type of “extraordinary” man, he was portrayed as, to me, a nihilist and hedonist. Svidrigailov doesn’t seem to care about morality, and only wants to satisfy his own pleasures. Whether he harms others in the process is irrelevant to him. He can commit random acts of kindness because the spontaneity of that action gives him pleasure.

While I don’t see these characters as similar to Raskolnikov, they certainly brings out his character in various ways. Raskolnikov understood Porfiry’s investigative methods perfectly (I bet he basically thought “If it was me, that’s what I’d do”). Porfiry also recognized and acknowledged Raskolnikov’s intellectual depth and potential, and was interested in him intellectually. Svidrigailov, on the other hand, mirrors Raskolnikov’s own despair and cynicism, if only more pronounced in the extreme. One can say Svidrigailov is the embodiment of despair. He is totally amoral, and radically indifference to the feelings of others. His radical attitude could have been brought about by his realization and acceptance that evil is inherent in the world, and as such, evil and vice to him is only an “occupation of a sort”. His bleak outlook only serves to worsen his boredom with the world, and prompts him to seek pleasure for its own sake. He views eternity as “a bath house... black and grimy and spiders in every corner”, to which Raskolnikov responds in horror “Can it be you can imagine nothing juster and more comforting than that?”

Next, on the BSD portrayal of Fyodor:

Now there has been very little detail about his personal motivations, but I see BSD Fyodor as a combination of all three characters: Raskolnikov, Svidrigailov, and Porfiry, maybe more of Svidrigailov than the rest. BSD Fyodor is definitely among the “extraordinary” people Raskolnikov described, maybe even to the extreme. Of course, there is also the personality of the real Dostoyevsky.

Regarding killing people and messing up their families as a petty problem while looking for a happy chit chat about it with one of those he just messed up, that is as Svidrigailov as it gets. (I know Fyo was probably joking, but still)

It has been suggested time and time again that BSD Fyodor might have tired of, been disillusioned or discontent with the world as it is, and sought to correct it (while also having some entertainment along the way). He specifically has issues with special ability users, which still doesn’t stop him from killing normal people if they get entangled in the conflict. This motivation possibly stems from his hatred for his own ability, which seemed as destructive as it gets. Alternatively, BSD Fyodor might also see death as the ultimate freedom special ability users can be granted to be free from their “sins”, which refer to their abilities. As such, he took it upon himself to deliver them.

The constant mention of “freedom” of the will also strike me as a parallel to real Dostoyevsky’s discussion of freedom in Crime and Punishment.

“Anyone who is greatly daring is right in their eyes.”

“He who despises most things will be a lawgiver among them and he who dares most of all will be most in the right.”

In other words, if you act of your own free will, you are right. Anyone who wills it can transgress the law.

What really intrigued me is how BSD Fyodor saw himself as a divine figure delivering judgement for those he considers “sinners”. I doubt such a strong motivation came about just because he discovered his super human ability one day, which has been suggested as something to do with instant killing. I see a possibility of him having been alienated, ostracized and possibly imprisoned as a result of his ability and his intelligence, seeing how completely unfazed he was by the treatment he received in his prison cell at the Mafia base. His ability would have been dangerous on its own, but his intelligence makes him an even more dangerous individual. Another characteristic of him that interests me is the complete lack of guilt or remorse over his actions. If we assume this is a reference to Svidrigailov, it might have been a result of his mindset that evil is inherent in the world (which fits BSD Fyodor). If I have to guess, he would have been a child who never played with other kids, had no lessons in social etiquette and no guardian figure to teach him about the outside world, heavily religious, either avoided, feared or beaten up regularly, probably had no concept of remorse, probably had to fend for himself and used his intelligence to get the upper hand by gambling, manipulating or tricking others.

BSD Fyodor was probably regarded as a “demon” for as long as he lived. He probably also felt the suffocating imprisonment extended from his home life to the rest of society. He probably got tired and bored of interacting with others who just went on their normal lives complaining about their misfortunes, oblivious to everything else that happened around them. He probably never once saw himself as one of them.

It was also suggested in Crime and Punishment that through suffering and torturing himself with his conscience, Raskolnikov was able to still feel human (my own interpretation). Could it be that BSD Fyodor was past that stage of being human, since he doesn’t seem to be suffering from the weight of his crimes? Could that be the reason why he sees himself as the substitute for God?

Regarding BSD Fyodor’s ability

Not much has been mentioned in the manga, and even in Dead Apple all we got is something along the lines of “Fyodor and his ability are two sides of the same coin”. What strikes me is how Fyodor is portrayed to represent Crime, and his ability Punishment. This is all speculation, but I think his ability definitely has to do with delivering punishment for a crime (no shit!). But whose crime, and on what condition? Could it be that his ability only takes effect if the criminal repents and experiences remorse from their own crime?

Regarding BSD Dazai

Probably the most hotly discussed parallel in the fandom. Sure, Dazai and Fyodor have been described as being made of the same stuff from the start due to their intellect which is unparalleled by anyone else but these two, but they didn’t really strike me as similar until I encountered this line from Crime and Punishment.

“Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth.”

At first glance, this quote describes both Dazai and Fyodor very well. I have no question about Dazai having a “large intelligence and a deep heart”, and so he will continue to have “great sadness” in the form of alienation and loneliness (and self-hatred and guilt to an extent). Fyodor may have an equally great intelligence, but it is still unclear to me what lies in his heart. I think, he at least would have felt loneliness and the boredom of existence at some point, just like Dazai did. Their sharpness would have enabled them to sniff out the most obscure clues to the darkest intentions in people, which might have led them to regard human beings as foolish and utterly selfish creatures. The dangerous and unique nature of their abilities would have rendered them untouchable by others, further worsening their alienation.

“If God does not exist, then I will become God.”

What kind of experience would prompt someone to deliver such a line as that?

It sounds less like a divine sentence than a cry of disillusionment and cynicism to me, which is really... sad??

Other trivial stuff:

- The real Gogol was apparently a drama queen and a master of satire.

- The real Dostoyevsky was exiled in Siberia for reading banned works. He subsequently wrote “Notes from the House of the Dead” to describe this experience.

- The real Dostoyevsky frequently discussed the idea that man does not think rationally most of the time, and as such, man’s actions are not always predictable.

- In Crime and Punishment, Raskolnikov passionately loved Sonya, a destitute young woman whom he saw as his figure of salvation, and he once bowed to her because she represented “the sufferings of all humanity”.

- Svidrigailov was hinted to see the world as a dirty, meaningless playground in which he was the actor, and kept up his act until the end. When he decided to shoot himself after being rejected by the one woman he loved, he chose to do it in front of a complete stranger at the American embassy. His last words were “When you are asked, you just say he was going, he said, to America.”

Credits for screenshots go to @dazaiscans.

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smarmykemetic · 5 years

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If you want the people who disagree with you all the time to respect you, well respect has to be earned, you cas't just demand it.

When I got this anon the other day, I ultimately decided to ignore it, because I knew it was almost certainly from the same person who sent me these (x x x), as well as several other pieces of anonymous hatemail that I chose to ignore; as well as almost certainly from one of the same two people (BBSAS and anubianpagan) who I am 99% sure run that anonymous chickenshit drama blog that, ultimately, does nothing but provide a platform for racist, self-righteous cowards to be racist, self-righteous cowards. However, since I just saw in my notes that this same blog has tagged me once again, I decided that I may as well go ahead and give this anon the answer I would give it if I genuinely believed that the sender wanted a conversation about my MO when it comes to what I mean by “respect” and how yall can expect me to treat “””people who disagree with me all the time”””” (read: crypto-fascists and their “centrist” or in some cases, “classically liberal” enablers).

This is gonna be a long one, so buckle up:

I treat internet arguments that I either start or stumble into, first by giving the other person the benefit of the doubt, and assuming that whatever the disagreement is, is probably a matter of misinformation or miscommunication. Most of the conflicts I deal with online and irl seem to boil down to this in some way, shape, or form, so these days the first thing I do in a confrontation is show my opponent the basic respect of assuming that they are a rational, free-thinking, intelligent person with the best of intentions who just doesn’t know what they’re talking about as well as they think they do. People get very very angry with me when I let on that that is what I think is happening, so I usually try to give them the information and perspectives that I have without being mean or smug. This is also the stage where I sometimes find out that I don’t know what I’m talking about as well as I thought I do; and while it’s usually not fun to find that out, and the other person is usually very smug and mean when they tell me, I’m proud to announce that I have the basic respect for myself, my opponents, and objective fuckin’ reality that I have no problem posting publicly, “I stand corrected; my opponent was right and I was wrong” when I have been convinced, either through hard evidence or persuasive arguments, that I was wrong about something. In fact, I have a tag specifically for admitting i’m wrong and apologizing on both my tumblr blogs (x x).

The thing is, often, no amount of sharing information or clarifying my political, philosophical, or personal reasons for taking a certain stance on something, will cause the other person to back off or admit they may have been wrong about something. When I realize that I’m dealing with someone who has already decided what they believe and is just going to waste my time by regurgitating points that they obviously heard either on some edgy adult cartoon show that they clearly believe is not just “funny”, but the holder of some kind of deep moral philosophical wisdom; or on some online meme page that, either knowingly or unknowingly, posts literal crypto-fascist propaganda (here’s where i plug a youtube series that has been invaluable in helping me learn to recognize crypto-fascists, in our community and outside of it; no, this particular youtube series is not my only source on this topic; it’s just the one I think is best for this context)…when I realize that is the situation, I once again extend my opponent the basic respect of assuming that they are a rational, free-thinking, intelligent person who has decided, for whatever reason, to believe the things that they believe. I give them credit for believing the things that they argue in favor of, the things that they send me hatemail for criticizing them for, that they are so fucking furious about that they decide the only way they can possibly deal with the alleged authoritarian injustice of me writing and posting things online, is going around and anonymously, desperately trying to get people to believe that I am crazy, or an immature “child”, or a liar, or a dangerous violent extremist, or in league with A/pep itself. Or, usually, all of the above.

I respect them enough to treat them as what they are telling me, both with their words and actions, that they are. And I treat them with all of the “””respect””” that is due to somebody who acts and behaves that way: almost none. As in, so little that I have absolutely no interest in engaging with you or your ideas in any kind of a serious “debate”. So little that I am not interested in meeting whatever standards you may choose to list so that I may, as you say, “””earn your respect”””. In fact, I respect you so little that I am not and will not ever genuinely “demand” your “respect”, because I do not want to be “respected” by you and others like you. I aspire to have as little to do with you as possible. I aspire to prevent you from hurting me, or my friends, or my family, or my neighbors with your racist, fear-mongering bullshit. I aspire to make you change your mind about acting on the things you are telling me you believe; your *~*~opinions~*~* about why you say and do the things you do do not matter to me at all.

Some may say this attitude is mean or unfair. I say that this attitude is simply me refusing to play the respectability politics game, no matter how much anybody whines and screams and cries anonymously, anywhere online. Some may say that this is about me “lacking the emotional maturity” to deal with you and your ilk. I say that this is about me having the compassion for, and solidarity with, and basic respect for the marginalized and oppressed in the Kemetic community that is required to look at someone saying something like, “Hey, what if it’s actually okay to be racist so long as we say we’re not being racist,” and tell them to either shut the fuck up or leave.

Here’s the thing. The advice that virtually every single adult I have ever talked to, and DEFINITELY every single Internet Polytheist Leader Person, gives me for these situations -the situation of dealing with a would-be bully, either on the school playground or on the internet, is to “just ignore them and they’ll go away”. Online, this is usually phrased as, “Don’t feed the trolls”. THIS IS AMONG THE WORST ADVICE I HAVE EVER RECEIVED by the metric of “what actually makes the situation, for me and my friends who are getting bullied, any better”. What this advice does in real life, is allow the bully to realize they have found the thing that every bully is always looking for: an easy target. When you “ignore” bullies in the hopes that they get bored and go away, all you are doing long-term is teaching the bully that there are no consequences for their actions. I didn’t listen to this advice in the first fucking grade; I didn’t listen to it when people told me that’s how I should deal with Solo and their fanclub harassing, threatening, blackmailing, cyberstalking and ultimately doxing me “because I annoyed them”; and I am not going to listen to it now, because that advice does not work and is not meant to help me not get bullied; it is meant to help the authority figure in charge of the situation not have to deal with it personally because, in the words of a serial rapist who was believed over all of his victims for years because he was just such a Nice Guy who everyone loved so fuckin’ much they refused to believe he was capable of rape: “The parent doesn’t want justice, the parent wants quiet.” The reasons and the opinions of the people who give me the advice I know is bad and doesn’t work are irrelevant to me, because at the end of the day,if no one else is willing to, i have to defend myself and my community from the people who would tear us apart in the name of having their right to be racist pricks “respected”.

So, no, I will not be silently accepting whatever abuse you choose to pour into the kemetic tag or into my inbox in the name of “being the bigger person”. I also will not be going and finding any of the people choosing to send me this abuse, and let them set the terms of engagement and tone of the conversation, and take them seriously as they tell me all of this fucking racist nonsense that they delusionally believe is a bunch of Rational Fair Good Points About Politics and Kemeticism. And, once again to make sure it sinks in, I tell all of you, sincerely: I do not and will not EVER give enough of a fuck about “respecting” your whiny anonymous opinions, to stop saying what I’m saying. I respect you enough not to attempt to proselytize or “sell you” on my religious beliefs, but I do not “respect” you enough (or rather, in the way that you wish I “respected” you) to keep my story, as I have experienced it, a secret to protect your feelings and egos.

If I blocked you, you’re staying blocked. If you’re anonymous, your opinion doesn’t matter because you will not stand by it. Put up or shut up.

#antifa pagan theory #kemetic #asks #anonymous #soloontherocks #once again No You May Not Talk To Me #racism #bill cosby #rape mention #Anonymous

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tacitcantos · 5 years

Text

That Time The Dresden Files Was Still Accidentally Racist

youtube

Link to Part 1

In my last video I looked out how Jim Butcher’s Changes contains some troubling stereotypes about the maya, painting them as violent and their gods as demon vampires of the red court. I highly suggest going back and checking that out before continuing this video. In this one I’m going to look at why it’s troubling to cast Christianity as a positive and heroic force pitted against mayan vampires.

The Christian god exists in the Dresden Files universe, but has a very hands off presence. He does exert his power through subtle means though, and every Christian character, institution, or item in the series is unambiguously good and lacking in any kind of flaw. In Changes they’re also all positioned directly and explicitly against the red court.

The most blatant example of this comes in the final battle of the book at Chichen Itza. In the Dresden Files universe there are three holy swords that are physically incapable of being used for evil without shattering. One of Harry’s allies wields one in the battle, and at one point becomes possessed by a Christian angel or holy spirit, and shouts up at the red court vampires of outer night:

"False gods! Pretenders! Usurpers of the truth! Destroyers of faith, of families, of lives, of children! For your crime against the Mayans, against the people of the world, now will you answer! Your time has come! Face judgement Almighty!"

--Ch. 46, Changes

It’s important to place Changes’ representation of christianity in the broader context of media. In the last video I talked about how while human sacrifice was a legitimate portion of mesoamerican culture and religion, it’s overrepresented in media to the point where human sacrifice becomes the entirety of pre-columbian mesoamerica's identity and cultural legacy.

To illustrate why this is problematic, imagine for a moment if every representation of christianity focused on it’s obsession with sacrifice and suffering. And christianity does have just as much an obsession with both as the maya or aztec religions: Growing closer to God through suffering is a key aspect of christianity: it’s why martyr’s are so celebrated and turned into saints, why until the modern day mortification of the flesh through wearing a hair coat or fasting or engaging in self flagellation wasn’t unheard of among the clergy, and why even in the modern day mother Teresa believed in the beauty of suffering and may have withheld painkillers from patients in her care because of it.

And while drawing a thorned rope through the foreskin of your penis like mayan kings did for the prosperity of their kingdom rightfully sounds horrific, the ritual mutilation of genitals is one of the core tenets of another Abrahamic faith: circumcision in the jewish religion is not just a custom, but an actual covenant and contract with god.

But Christianity’s obsession with suffering isn’t something that’s reflected or engaged with in popular media. We may see Jesus on the cross in artistic depictions, but obsession with suffering doesn’t permeate and define Christianity in fiction the way human sacrifice permeates and defines mesoamerican culture and religion in fiction. For example, The Dresden Files puts a magical spin on only the positive aspects of Christianity, not the ones obsessed with suffering. As we discussed, christian characters and holy objects are unambiguously good in The Dresden Files.

These are the representations Jim Butcher chose, the side of christianity he decided to legitimize by giving magical weight in the books. In his fictional world we see vampire maya performing human sacrifices to quench their blood thirst, but we don’t see monks with backs bloody from the scourge performing dark rituals for Jesus, don’t see angels who want to cause mass suffering to kindle the light of god in people’s hearts, don’t see vampire conquistadors crossing to the new world so they can slake their thirst in the blood of millions.

That last image of conquistadors crossing to the new world and committing atrocities just so that a few souls could be saved through conversion? It’s not actually as fictitious as you might assume.

To fully understand why it’s problematic to cast christians as good guys against evil mayan gods, we have to look again at context and history. While nowadays we tend to think of the religious aspect of the conquistadors as a flimsy pretext in their true hunt for gold, the conquistadors were actually devoutly religious, and very much saw themselves as instruments of God. Here’s a passage from a book called 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus that explains it well:

Famously, the conquistador Bernal Díaz de Castillo ticked off the reasons he and others joined Cortés: “to serve God and His Majesty [the king of Spain], to give light to those who were in darkness, and to grow rich, as all men desire to do.” In Díaz’s list, spiritual and material motivations were equally important. Cortés was constantly preoccupied by the search for gold, but he also had to be restrained by the priests accompanying him from promulgating the Gospel in circumstances sure to anger native leaders. After the destruction of Tenochtitlan, the Spanish court and intellectual elite were convulsed with argument for a century about whether the conversions were worth the suffering inflicted. Many believed that even if Indians died soon after conversion, good could still occur.

--Pg 143

The conquistadors very much considered there to be a moral dimension in their actions, that they could save the souls of the maya from false idols. And in the world of the Dresden Files, they were right: the christian god was good, the maya were ruled by demons, and no matter how many had to die along the way, the conquistadors saved them.

The book never explicitly states this, but it’s the only logical conclusion to draw from the world Jim Butcher’s created. It’s not a leap: it’s all there on the page, validating the atrocities the Spanish committed. It’s the equivalent of writing that there was a cabal of evil jewish wizards that really were manipulating post war Germany, or that africans really were half ape creatures that worshiped dark spirits.

And look, there’s always going to be issues imposing supernatural elements on the real world, on putting a magical spin to real events. Doesn’t it always invalidate real world triumphs and tragedies to say it was really magic at work or some secret society? I don’t think so, but I do think it matters how you do it. To illustrate what I mean, let’s look at another fantasy book that has vampires superimposed onto the real world: Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter, 70% of whose premise is right there in the title.

In the book, ante-bellum plantation owners were in reality vampires who enslaved black africans to use as cattle. So why isn’t that problematic, if making mayan gods vampire is? The answer is history, and what side of the it the story is taking. While it can be argued that it’s problematic for a white writer to be appropriating black suffering for his fantasy novel and that turning the cruelty of real humans into monsters lets them off the moral hook, the underlying thematic message is sound: African chattel slavery was bad, and the people who did it were bad.

And that thematic message about slave owners being bad is a message we still need to hear because it’s not an open and shut case in America today that the south were bad guys or even that slavery was bad.

And it matters that Jim Butcher is essentially putting a magical spin on racist conquistador propaganda, because the Dresden files is a hugely popular book series: as any of the covers are happy to tell you, Jim Butcher is a 1# New York Times best selling author. Changes isn’t an english class short story that will be read by fifteen people, it’s a book in a massively popular series that was read by millions. When a book reaches that popularity level, everything in it has an impact.

And what is the impact of Changes? Obviously it’s impossible to track, but as I mentioned in the last video the maya are by no means a dead people or culture, with around six million living in central America today. What’s the impact on public perception of them from a book like this? Just as it isn’t an open and shut case for some people whether black slavery was bad, it isn’t an open and shut case whether hispanics broadly, and central Americans specifically, are culturally valuable. Not when refugees fleeing violence riddled countries are caged, not when the president repeatedly uses racist dog whistles to refer to them.

Like I said in the last video, I don’t think Jim Butcher did any of this on purpose. I think the air we breath is filled with culturally and racially problematic ideas and he didn’t question them: of course the maya gods were violent, of course the christian god is good, and isn’t the idea of vampire maya just too badass to pass up?

Ironically if he’d stopped to think about his bias’ Butcher could’ve easily written Changes in a way that would’ve sidestepped most of the issue without even having to fundamentally alter the plot. One way to do it would’ve been to shift the red court’s origin to conquistadors who came to the new world for slaughter.

It could even be a plot element that Quetzalcoatl or a proxy of his shows up in the final battle to help Dresden. I mean, it’s not that much of a reach: in the original book Odin shows up to fight in the battle at Chichen Itza.

None of this is to say you can’t like the Dresden Files, or even Changes specifically. Hell, I got caught up in Changes as I was rereading it for this video and forgot just how exciting and well paced the books are. But if fantasy means anything, then we shouldn’t pretend it doesn’t when we run into something we don’t like, shouldn’t simultaneously say it can inspire us and that it’s just mindless fun, shouldn’t shy away from the problematic aspects of it. If anything we should engage with it more, expect more from those authors and stories we love and value.

#the dresden files #dresden files #jim butcher #racism #video essay #book #fantasy series #meso american #mayan #aztec #christianity #vampires

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