#like did you miss the point????? the entire point??? the point of slavery and oppression and colonization being bad???

[shatteredsnail]

no cause why did my english teacher assign me an assignment about creating an allegory for racism and then in her feedback tell me it was great representation of being fake on social media

#ma’am you gave me a poem about oppression and slavery and told me to write a fable about its themes. #y o u assigned it to me. did you not read the poem?? #the poem that’s very clearly about oppression and how slave owners sold the lie of their slaves being happy to justify human right violation #you’re going to tell me that’s about. influencers and social media??? #istg i can’t make this up. i want her g o n e. #my program head said i can’t transfer but u g h i’m suffering #every time i bring up how much i don’t agree with her interpretations and feedback #she replies with something about how meaning is derived from the reader and comments are subjective #like ma’am you are. missing the point entirely

[collectionoftulips]

I absolutely agree with you about how Bridgerton S01 had the whole "Love solved racism." Just one scene and a few lines of dialogue and it just threw everything off.

Like, I'm sorry, what? How? Why!? Just why?

Because they didn't have to do that. The show runner and writers could have taken the Brandy Cinderella and/or Hamilton route. It was right there, our suspension of belief prepared.

And what annoys me the most is that they didn't commit to this alternate history. The world building is half a$$ed at best. There was no commitment to it, so why bring it in?

And then Mister Malcolm's List came along and they did it better!

And I think they realized this because it looks like the Queen Charlotte to prequel is retconning it.

So yeah, it was a bad idea and they either should have fully committed to it with the care of a Dimension 20 campaign (or any other DND show people are familiar with) or just not have done it at all.

The world building is really half-assed and particularly the approach they took with 'love solved racism' really implies that racism is just negative sentiments or negative treatment of certain people. It can be those things but it completely negates the structures that have been/are erected around racism, that perpetuate and oppress non-white people systemically.

The implication that the king just undid it because he fell in love renders that systemic component invisible (which is a huge problem because so much of racism is indirect and not really reducible to one person or behaviour), not to mention it's sort of a 'oh you bothered to undo this really awful thing only when it directly affected someone you care about personally' vibe, which I think really is one of the lowest bars.

Also makes me wonder: did you [Bridgerton's version of the king] not bother with the global slavery, colonialism etc? Like, from my understanding the wealth of Europe is at around the Regency era pretty much almost entirely dependent on colonialism, slavery etc

So in the world of Bridgerton, did they only 'abolish' racism within the UK? Or was it global? If it was global, how the hell are the members of the ton that wealthy?

But who knows, if I'm missing something really obvious, let me know.

It really makes me wonder how diverse the writer's room was in S1 or how much people who might have pointed this implication out were treated.

I really need to watch Mister Malcolm's List, clearly!

I'm really not sure if I am gonna watch the prequel. I think it'll depend on what's on telly around the time of it airing, but I'm not 1000% jazzed about it.

Thank you so much for your ask ❤️

[serpent-of-the-silver-plumes]

would you mind talking more about bart and unreliable narration? I always hear people say unreliable narration but I've never seen any concrete examples from media I actually consume so I'd love your thoughts

Oh absolutely!! I actually wrote a thing about this a while back but then went 'this is not well written' and it got buried in my drafts, so I’m glad to have an excuse to pull that up and rewrite it. (Also sorry, this got really long.)

Basically, at one point I was listening to a podcast (Be the Serpent, ep 4), and they categorize different kinds of unreliable narrators into three types: the narrator who knows they are lying to you, the narrator who is lying to themself (and therefore you), and the narrator who is lying because they are missing some key information. I would argue that the three main pov characters of the Bartimaeus Trilogy each represent a different type of these unreliable narrators.

Going in backwards order, Kitty is the narrator who lies because she is missing some key information, at least until the third book. As a commoner, even one who is part of a resistance movement, her knowledge of magic is extremely limited and biased. Were we to go off of her point of view alone, we would get an inaccurate view of this world and the power dynamics that exist within it: that magicians are somehow special in holding magic and that they have evil demons who work alongside them in shared mischief/hunger for power/whatever.

However, because the books include other points of view, the full impact of that unreliability is not realized.

Similarly, Nathaniel lies to himself, especially in the later books. He ignores how much he personally contributes to upholding a system that depends on the oppression and slavery of other sentient beings, and squashes down the last traces of his moral compass. I don’t think he ever really questions the system of government or if it should be there and work the way it does.

To some extent, we do see through his unreliability as well, because Bartimaeus is around to keep a check on him and tell the reader that no, the magicians and their imperialism are bad, that spirits have very good reason to hate humans, and give us other world building details that contradict what Nathaniel believes.

But some of it is about what is going on inside Nathaniel’s own head, so there is also a lot that can’t be fully seen by an outside perspective that has to be assumed by the reader. Like he will deny the sentimental feelings he has towards Ms. Underwood and the guilt he had over Kitty’s supposed death and the fact that he even remotely cares about Bartimaeus, but actions speak louder than words.

Because both of these characters’ unreliability stem from a lack of understanding, having other perspectives in the book in some ways cancels out their unreliability, and actually ties their unreliability more to their character development than as a plot/narration device. Kitty grows more reliable throughout the series while Nathaniel gets less so until the end. This doesn’t make that unreliability useless though, especially in a series aimed for children. By getting each character’s point of view, we can see where they are coming from and how the knowledge and views they have affect the way they act, but there is also someone else to point out how they are wrong, to make you question how true what each individual says is.

Bartimaeus is entirely different from the first two characters. His narration is told in first person, unlike Nathaniel and Kitty’s third person. He talks directly to the reader and goes off on tangential footnotes that are not necessarily part of the events currently happening in the story. Because of this narration style, he also has the power to lie more directly to the reader than any of the other characters.

Given his life, it is understandable how he has gotten into the habit of lying. Every moment of his existence on Earth is spent under the power of someone else, so he lies in order to protect himself. There are some instances where he lies to his masters in order to escape punishment or to lead them into danger so he can be set free, but he also lies about his feelings because he cannot afford to be emotionally vulnerable.

For the most part, I think it can be assumed that the dialogue and most actions that happen in his pov chapters are told as they are, since much of that lines up with what goes on in the other characters’ perspectives, and also there are at least a few things that show him in a less-than-flattering light that he would probably leave out or change if he could. Instead, the lies he tells are largely about his past and his emotions, often done through exaggeration or omission, and cannot be collaborated by others.

When lying about his past, Bartimaeus frequently exaggerates his prestige and role in history. In Ptolemy’s Gate, Bartimaeus says that he talked to King Solomon about Faquarl’s tendency to brag about his historical importance. Even beyond the obvious irony, in the prequel we see Bartimaeus’s time at Solomon’s court, and while it isn’t technically impossible for him to have talked to Solomon about Faquarl, the timing and circumstances make it extremely unlikely. Although his other stories cannot be proven or disproven with what we know, this instance and his general tendency to brag outrageously makes it very likely that Bartimaeus at the very least embellishes.

However, despite being super showy about his past, Bartimaeus doesn’t actually include much important information. He very rarely talks about his great feats as a thief or assassin or anything else. When he lists his accomplishments, he describes building walls and talking to important historical figures. There’s a post somewhere (if I find it, I’ll link it) that explains this as being a way for Bartimaeus to try to take control of his reputation and therefore his life; by associating with safer jobs, he is less likely to be summoned for very dangerous and morally reprehensible jobs.

He does generally try to portray himself as clever and collected and just generally more cool than he actually is. There’s a moment at the end of the first book where he describes himself as trying to calm Nathaniel who is freaking out, and then the next chapter is from Nathaniel’s pov which describes him as being the calmer one while Bartimaeus is a fly anxiously buzzing around.

I don’t remember the exact line, but in the second book there’s an exchange that goes something like this:

“____” I said calmly.

“Stop your whimpering,” Kitty said.

The way Bartimaeus portrays himself is straight up contradicted by the more factual account of the words and actions of someone else. And presumably there are plenty of other times that we do not see contradictory evidence where Bartimaeus straight up lies about how he is reacting to something.

But one of Bartimaeus’s most unreliable points centers around humans. Throughout the books, he constantly talks about the ways he has killed and would like to kill his masters, if given the opportunity. Nathaniel is an exception, one that Bartimaeus does admit to the reader, but even in the third book when he talks the most about how he would kill Nathaniel or even join a demon rebellion if Faquarl offered right then and there, Bartimaeus does not actually follow through on these threats when he gets the chance. Despite all of his talk about how much he hates humans, Bartimaeus has as much of a positive relationship he can have with as many humans possible, given the circumstances.

A lot of his unreliability centers around Ptolemy, which is what some of Bartimaeus’s biggest lies of omission are about. In the first book, we do get the sense that Bartimaeus has a soft spot for at least some humans. His excuses of saving and looking after Nathaniel in order to avoid Indefinite Confinement, while likely not entirely false, do fall a bit flat. We even get a mention of “a boy I had known once before, someone I had loved.” Although this is not explicitly connected to Ptolemy at this point, mentions of brown skin and the Nile make a pretty obvious connection to Ptolemy, especially as Bartimaeus describes taking on Ptolemy’s form several times later on. There is a less obvious hint too, “I sat on the ground, cross-legged, the way Ptolemy used to do.” Even without knowing much about what kind of relationship Bartimaeus had with Ptolemy, that kind of detail shows ‘a devotion to detail that could only come with genuine affection, or perhaps even love.’

It isn’t until the third book until we learn anything substantial about his relationship with Ptolemy, and even then he doesn’t tell the whole story. The fandom jokes about how Bartimaeus just casually mentions in a foot note that he prefers a lioness form because the manes are annoying, and it’s not until the flashback that you find out that the mane is part of what got Ptolemy killed. And even with the flashbacks, you still never see the time that Ptolemy visited the Other Place.

There are a lot of posts on this site that talk about how Bartimaeus absolutely was idealizing Ptolemy, and how there’s some evidence that he isn’t the perfectly sweet never-did-anything-wrong innocent child that Bartimaeus describes him as (notably that part where he was vaguely annoyed that people kept coming to him to ask for help and interrupted his research). Not that Ptolemy secretly sucks or anything, but it’s really easy to let nostalgia skip over the less dramatic details of Ptolemy being an actual human being with flaws.

In summary, I would argue that all of the trilogy protagonists are unreliable narrators to varying extents, and Jonathan Stroud is a genius for how he manages to make it all work.

#bartimaeus #nathaniel #ptolemy #kitty jones #my post #kitty #unreliable narrator

[elias-veturius-laia-of-serra]

Helene’s Ending

I just wanted to say something that I’ve been keeping to myself for a long time. You can be sad about Helene’s ending. It is sad and it does suck, but I think people are also missing the point that it’s meant to be that way. Helene is a complex character but complex or not she did still play a pivotal role in oppressing people, massacring them, justifying slavery, and even Sabaa herself said the biggest shock for Helene when realizing Elias was beginning to grow feelings for someone else was the fact that it was a scholar girl, he liked.

Since she didn’t view them as equal. So she would think “how can he like a scholar over me?”. Also just wanna put it out there this isn’t a post to say you can’t like Helene. I absolutely loved her by the end of the series. The thing is I find it very important that she loses all that she does because it plays an impact on her character. Has she not lost anything and got to keep her love interest and be empress - it honestly would not sit right with me. Cause to understand the pain she has done to others and all that she’s taken from them, the only way for her to learn is to have the same thing done to her. Had she not lost anything yet gained everything by the end I don’t think I would have grown to love her as much or understand her.

People need to remember Helene is a colonizer, oppressor, and has killed many innocent people in the name of the empire. And she fully believed that it was right and just. Giving her an ending as happy as Elias and Laia two poc characters suffering from this system while Helene had only recently began to see the evil of their doing wouldn’t be right. Yes Elias is part of the empire too but difference is the empire is very traumatic for him.

Where as Helene feels pride in what she does Elias knows it’s wrong and carries every deed he’s done for them on his back to the point that he was willing to risk death and leave all his friends behind at a chance to be freed from it. Even during his execution in book 1 he wasn’t entirely saddened by it cause a part of him thought that at least this way he can be free.

Helene even says the difference between her and Elias as empire soldiers is he’s a good person and he cares about those he was taught to see as lesser than him and doesn’t see them that way. While she doesn’t. Sabaa has always said the point of Helene’s story is to see how much she has to lose for her for her to be able to snap out of her bubble and realize the suffering of others that she is complacent to and even supported because she believes in the empire.

She can’t just have that epiphany and suddenly everything works in her favor. Helene has hurt many people. Even Elias’s tribe family (who were all taken in by the empire) and especially Mamie (who was tortured and interrogated) who viewed her as a daughter. Story short: I believe her ending was well written and perfect. Had she got to keep everything I feel like it would undermine all she’s had to suffer through to reach this point. It wouldn’t feel earned.

Cause remember even in book 4 Livia said how just a few months ago Helene was angry at her for releasing the scholars and Laia says that though she does see Helene as a friend she still knows that when it comes down to it she can’t ask her to stay and help her because she knows Hel would still choose the empire over the scholars. So her suffering plays a large role in shaping her and helping her find this epiphany. It finally gets her to understand. So I feel like completely hating the book for her ending is missing the point of her arc.

Cain did tell her that for her - there is more to life than love. And she does learn that. Instead of keeping a love interest or her love for the empire. She herself grows as a person and as a true leader for the people and seeing every person as equal and that they are all suffering together and need to be united as one. Which I think is a far more important message and satisfying ending for her.

#a sky beyond the storm #Helene Aquilla #sabaa tahir #laia of serra #Elias veturius #Avitas Harper #helvitas

[screamingshark]

I read j k Rowling had no input on the new game. Also she replied to that woman once, a pat reply to her tweeting support at her. It’s not that unusual for celebrities or other high follower count people to miss who they are replying to and i can find similar for everyone including good people. Just wanting to be against misinfo because it makes our own side criticizing her for real shit look weaker

I understand where you're coming from with this ask, but I do want to point to the top part of it. It frankly does not matter if she has any input in the game or not (which, considering how white-knuckled she is on every other aspect of Harry Potter, I highly doubt there isn't at least some input coming from her)

The fact remains that this is her universe, her IP, and the game is entirely based on it. She is 100% responsible for this depiction of Goblins and how heavily it leans on anti-semitism, how house-elves are a glorification of slavery cause they "love being slaves", the werewolves being AIDS/HIV metaphors like there is just so much nasty stuff in there that is impossible to ignore once you see it.

So, sure, she has "no-input", but even if that is true, its still a deeply messed up premise to focus a game on! They could have literally made that game a hogwarts simulator and people would have eaten it up but no, it's about a Goblin rebellion that you have to oppress. You have to put Goblins back in their place, like come on!?

To address the rest of your ask - you are denying that JK Rowling doesn't know exactly what she is doing. If that tweet had been at some random individual then sure, it may have been a misfire, but this is a campaign director for a huge conservative advocacy group. (I'm assuming you are talking about the tweet to Caroline Farrow as you did not specify)

I found that tweet on her twitter, it's still there despite the number of people rightfully calling her out for supporting a homophobic nightmare like Caroline Farrow so i'm wondering what you mean by misinformation? Is it misinformation to call her homophobic? Is it misinfo because you think she "may have been mistaken"? I'm confused because when I look at this tweet I see JK Rowling thanking a homophobe and it falls in line with her actions considering she just recently went off on the south wales police LGBT+ Network doing outreach after an incredibly violent homophobic murder happened.

I think it's time we stopped pretending that this ends at Transphobia. While it plays a huge role in her deranged tweet-fests it is very much not the only thing she condemns. JK Rowling is a right wing conservative dream. She has the admirations of millions despite being a homophobic, transphobic, anti-semitic, racist drone of a woman. She makes billions of dollars off liberal millennials who "can't bare to let go of their precious comfort books/merchandise/theme park visits/movies" and she uses that money to fund laws that ruin peoples lives.

Hmm, I went on a bit of a ramble but if anything I just said proves to be "misinfo" as you say then I will apologize and delete anything that is misinformation.

TLDR: As it stands, it is not misinfomation to call her out for these things. She is responsible for the game regardless of input and i don't feel it's misinformation to call her a homophobic, transphobic, racist anti-semite based on her tweets and the books she has written/responded to.

#woo that got a bit long! #long post #hey anon #i dont intend for this to come off as angry toward you! #im angry at the woman in general #and i do agred that misinformation is bad #but i dont see what i have said or reblogged that could be seen as such #have a nice day! #JK Rowling #just another day wishing JK 'Just Kidding' Rowling would shut the fuck up #also dont buy that game #please stop giving her money #support the trans community and say fuck off JKR

[aboveallarescuer]

Transcripts of D&D’s Inside the Episode segments talking about Dany

This is a post with transcripts of all the Inside the Episode videos where show!Dany’s character and storyline are discussed by D&D.

We’ve already had enough of these two hacks, I know, but:

I still think discussions about the show can be productive, especially when similarities and differences between the book characters and show characters are explored. Comparing and contrasting book!Dany with show!Dany certainly brings to light interesting aspects that I may not have considered otherwise and enriches my understanding and appreciation of both of them (especially the former) in a similar way that comparing and contrasting book!Dany with book!Jon, book!Cersei and all the other book characters does.

I had already written transcripts of most of these Inside the Episode features for a while to comment on them in my books vs show reviews. However, since I’m no longer sure if I have enough energy and motivation to continue writing the reviews, I decided to finish writing the transcripts that were missing and to post them already. Maybe this can help people find more evidence that show!Dany’s ending was retconned at the last minute (which is what I firmly believe was the case).

Anyway, y’all know the drill... Expect a lot of mischaracterizations, inconsistencies, double standards, sexist remarks and implications and so on. Never accept what they say uncritically.

1.1: Winter is Coming

BENIOFF: Daenerys Targaryen, her nickname is Dany, basically went into exile from her homeland when she was so small she doesn't even remember it. She is the youngest child of the Mad King, Aerys Targaryen.

WEISS: She's never known her father, she's never known her family, she's never known her homeland, the only thing she's ever known has been her brother. She's been raised by her brother Viserys and Viserys has had his eyes on one thing and one thing only, and that is on regaining the throne that was taken from his father.

BENIOFF: She's had no stability in her life, the only constant has been this brother Viserys, so even though he is a cruel and sadistic older brother and even though he is really quite abusive to her, it's all she knows and she's been forced to - if not trust him, at least to follow his wishes, because not doing so would just lead to more abuse.

TIM VAN PATTEN: Like a lot of characters in the show, she is looking for an identity and a larger purpose in life. I think there's something deep inside her that's asleep, that's there, that she acknowledges and you see her start to acknowledge it, certainly, when she's thrown in with a Dothraki and she's presented with the dragon eggs. You could see this thought process starting, but there is something larger out there that I'm supposed to be a part of. I think she's on board for going back to the kingdom and to finding out about her culture and to having a home.

1.3: Lord Snow

BENIOFF: One of Dany's characteristics that comes to be incredibly important as the story progresses is her hatred of slavery, and I think part of the reason why she has great sympathy for the slaves is that she's grown up in a situation where she's had no power, she's basically been forced to follow the whims of her brother her entire life. Dany has a great deal of sympathy for those who are in difficult circumstances, for those who are the weak and the oppressed, and I think it comes to be one of the most compelling things about her as a character.

WEISS: She's been propriety for all intents and purposes, she's been her brother's slave and so I think she has an affinity for those people and she can actually look at these people and start to think about what their lives likely feel, the empathy with them that is natural to somebody who's sort of a slave herself and I think that she really kind of starts to realize that being somebody ese's property is no good and starts to show the beginnings of the impulse towards freedom that end up playing a much bigger role in her life and in the lives of the people around her as her story progresses.

1.4: Cripples, Bastards and Broken Things

WEISS: Daenerys lashes out at her brother - it's just something that's been building up inside her probably for years and years as long as she remembers.

BENIOFF: She comes to realize that he is a fool, he thinks he's going to go back and reconquer the Seven Kingdoms, he can't conquer anything, he can't even beat her in the fight. She comes to believe that she's heir to the Iron Throne, she sees within herself the power that she wasn't even aware existed.

1.6: A Golden Crown

WEISS: Daenerys comes into the Dothraki horde as an outsider and a lot of her story up to this point has been her finding her place in that world.

DANIEL MINAHAN: Eating this stallion's heart becomes a symbol that she's actually carrying the person who's gonna be the savior of that Dothraki people.

WEISS: This is really the place where, in front of the tribe, she becomes one of them. She disconnects from her brother and her brother sees that and that, in turn, pushes him over the edge. Any importance and love or respect that she draws from these people is respect that he's not gonna be getting, so he's alone.

BENIOFF: After he threatens her unborn child and puts the sword point on her pregnant belly, from that point on, he's dead to her, I mean, quite literally dead to her.

WEISS: When Viserys gets his golden crown, you can see in her face that it doesn't mean anything to her.

BENIOFF: She doesn't look like a little girl anymore.

 1.9: Baelor

BENIOFF: Dany's high point with the horde is probably when she eats the stallion's heart and they're really behind their queen and then she starts doing things that they frown upon. For instance, when Drogo gets sick, people start to blame her, because she had this sorceress treat him and, you know, blood magic is very magic against the Dothraki code.

WEISS: Magic is pushed to the periphery of this world and, literally, it's way across the narrow sea in the east and it's way north of the Wall and also, it's very peripheral to people's daily lives. This isn't a world where a wizard shows up with a big pointy hat and a staff and creates all sorts of magical displays. This is a world that is more like our own world in terms of the role that the supernatural has in it, but Mirri is a source of actual magic.

1.10: Fire and Blood

BENIOFF: Mirri Maz Duur is a priestess of the lamb people and she sees a chance to get revenge, not only to avenge her people, but also to prevent this guy from doing it again to other people. From her point of view, it's completely just what she does.

WEISS: She has a pretty good point... I mean, these people did come in, completely rape, pillage and murder her entire village.

BENIOFF: Of course, from Daenerys's point of view, this woman betrayed her. She put her trust in this woman after showing her kindness and now the woman has turned around and betrayed that kindness and, again, it's a theme throughout the story that no good deed goes unpunished.

WEISS: We have people doing terrible things to people that you love and yet, if you were in their shoes and you knew what they know, you would probably do the same thing. Everybody is doing what they're doing for reasons that are grounded in the real human psychology and not in the fact that they're wearing a white hat or that they're wearing the black hat. Daenerys has an understanding that she has to give herself over to something larger than herself without knowing exactly what's going to happen, but she knows that, when she walks into that pyre, she's not going to burn up. Never in her mind is it an act of suicide, even though, in the minds of everybody around her, that's, of course, what it looks like.

BENIOFF: It's the crucial climax and Daenerys is standing there in the pyre and she's become the mother of dragons and the woman you would follow to the ends of the world because that's what those remaining followers are going to do.

WEISS: Dragons in this world are the ultimate source of power and, in a world where authority is directly derived from power, they're the ultimate source of authority and the people who had dragons were the people who shaped the world.

BENIOFF: Dragons are magical, but they're also supposed to be, in this world, real creatures and so, we're looking at bats and pterodactyls and other kind of great flying creatures like that for inspiration and always wanting them to look real, we don't want them to just look like magical creatures that have just popped up.

WEISS: If they survive to maturity and they grow to the size of school buses or however large they end up getting, as their mother, she becomes a very different person than the frightened little girl we saw being sold off to a barbarian in the first episode.

2.6: The Old Gods and the New

WEISS: This whole season is really the season where Dany learns the lesson of self-reliance, she's never, it's a very painful lesson for her to learn, I mean, she's lost all her people, she's lost her husband, she's lost her bloodriders. The temptation for her has always been to lean on someone else, a man of one kind or another. So, I think for her, what she's learning in this episode, especially, is that she can't trust in other people, ultimately, she ends up in a place where she needs to do things for herself and she needs to do things that nobody in the world could possibly do, except her.

BENIOFF: Dany is so defined by her dragons, they're so much a part of her identity at this point, they define her so much that when they're taken from her, it's almost like she reverts to the pre-dragon Daenerys, you know, everyone is a bit defined by who they were when they were an adolescent, you know, no matter how old you get, no matter how powerful you get, and Daenerys was a scared, timid, abused adolescent and I think when her dragons are taken for her, all those feelings, all those memories and emotions are triggered and come back and all the confidence that she's won over the last several months, it's as if that just evaporates and she's back to being a really frightened little girl.

2.10: Valar Morghulis

BENIOFF: I think there's a real, fairly radical change in Daenerys that happens over the course of the last couple episodes of the season, which is... For most of this season, she's been looking for help from others, you know, and asking for help and, by the end of the season, she realizes that she has to do it herself, she's got to help herself and that she's, she can't ask others to give her power, she's got to take it and that she can't rely on anyone else, really. You know, Daenerys Targaryen is not in a position where she can inherit the Iron Throne, the only way she's going to take the Iron Throne and take back the Seven Kingdoms is to conquer them and she's starting to learn what that means, I don't think she really knew before, even when she's asking Khal Drogo to conquer them for her, I don't think she really knew what that meant and she's starting to and it's gonna mean warfare, it's gonna mean slaughter, it's gonna mean a lot of people dying because that's, you know, the only way to conquer anything is through destruction and, I think by the end of the second season, you're seeing her really start to come into her own as the Mother of Dragons and the last of the Targaryens.

3.1: Valar Dohaeris

BENIOFF: For a great leader who is doing something unpopular for a certain segment, whether it's the Warlocks or the slave masters or whatnot, she's creating a lot of enemies, and powerful enemies, and those people are going to try to stop her regardless of how powerful she becomes, and it's something she's actually, in a weird way, used to, because she grew up running from assassins with her brother, you know, from the time, from the earliest time she can remember, she was being spirited from one city to another one step ahead of Robert Baratheon and the assassins, because there were so many people who wanted to destroy the Targaryen family and make King Robert happy and now there are thousands out there for all sorts of different reasons because she's made even more enemies, but, I think in her mind this is just the price you pay for being Daenerys Targaryen, for being the last of the Targaryens, and it's not going to stop her.

Anatomy of a Scene: Daenerys Meets the Unsullied

WEISS: Dany spent the first two seasons of the show leaning on men - her brother, Drogo, Jorah Mormont, Xaro Xhoan Daxos. She came out of season two realizing that the only person that she can completely trust is herself.

BENIOFF: Dany has her lovable side, but she is also ruthless, and she is also fiercely ambitious. What she wants, more than anything, is to return home and to reclaim her birthright.

CLARKE: She needs the manpower to go back and conquer the Iron Throne and to be able to right the wrongs that she sees going on around her.

MINAHAN: She's been brought to Astapor, where she's reluctantly going to meet with slave traders. Her quest in this is to build an army without taking slaves.

Comments from Charlie Somers (location manager) and Christina Moore (supervising art director) that don't have anything to do with the storyline

BENIOFF: The Unsullied were kidnapped as babies from their home countries and brought to Astapor and trained in the ways of the spear and castrated.

EMMANUEL: They won't do anything without the command to do so first.

Comment from Tommy Dunne (weapons master) that doesn't have anything to do with the storyline

CLARKE: She's being introduced to the Unsullied by Kraznys, the slave master in control of them.

EMMANUEL: Kraznys is being quite insulting to Daenerys. And Missandei very cleverly smoothes out her translation, just her initiative doing that shows her intelligence.

CLARKE: Dany sees a lot of herself in her and can kind of see that it's a young girl who's capable of much more than the position she's in. She's his No 1 slave. If you were in the UN, she would be the translator for everyone.

WEISS: Kraznys speaks a version of Valyrian that's been bastardized and mixed with other local languages.

Comment from Majella Hurley (dialect coach) that doesn't have anything to do with the storyline

CLARKE: She's struggling with the moral aspect of the way that these cities are run. And it's something she's been grappling with because they are an army of slaves, which she fundamentally has moral issues with due to the fact that she herself was a slave.

WEISS: The only way she can make the world a better place is to become the biggest slaveowner in the world.

BENIOFF: She's put into a difficult position, and she's got her advisors whispering in her ears.

GLEN: Jorah encourages her to get over her moral scrupules, with taking an army that were duty-bound to follow whatever leader it was, and that could change in an instant.

BENIOFF: Idealism is wonderful, but it's not gonna happen if you're idealistic, you gotta be a realist. She feels like she has this almost divine mission and nothing is gonna prevent her from achieving it.

WEISS: What she wants to do isn't just conquest for the sake of conquest, but it's really conquest for the sake of making the world a better place, and she's a revolutionary in that sense.

BENIOFF: For Daenerys to win, ultimately, she's gonna have to be just as ruthless as the others, and maybe even moreso.

3.3: Walk of Punishment

BENIOFF: Dany has her lovable side, but she is also ruthless, and she is also fiercely ambitious and, funnily, like a Littlefinger style ambition where she's trying to climb this, you know, the social ladder. It's almost like a Joan of Arc kind of ambition where she feels like she has this almost divine mission and nothing's going to prevent her from achieving it, and that might mean sacrificing those who are closest to her.

WEISS: Giving away one of the dragons seems like a completely insane thing to do, especially the biggest one. I mean, we know that, historically, the biggest dragons were those bigger than school buses and they were weapons of mass destruction and able to lay cities to waste in minutes, and no matter how big or effective your army of 8,000 soldiers is. Taking even a small city is going to be a kind of a dangerous prospect for them, and the idea that she's going to give away what they see is her real future for a chance at a small army now seems insane to them.

3.4: And Now His Watch is Ended

WEISS: We never really got this, a sense of her capacity for cruelty. She's surrounded by people who are terrible people, but haven't done anything to her personally, and it's interesting to me that, as the sphere of her empathy widens, the sphere of her cruelty widens as well.

BENIOFF: I think she becomes harder to dismiss, you know, for a long time people have been saying, even if she was alive, you know, really, the only threat she poses is her name, she's a Targaryen, great, but she's a little girl in the edge of the world, so she's starting to knock on people's doors a little bit.

WEISS: All at once she becomes a major force to be reckoned with, she spent a lot of time kind of banging her fists on the doors and declaring that she was owed the Iron Throne by right, but now she's stepped in her own as a conqueror.

BENIOFF: Dany is becoming more and more viable as a threat, you know, both, you know, in attaining an army and because she's the mother of these three dragons who are only gonna get more and more fearsome.

3.7: The Bear and the Maiden Fair

WEISS: Daenerys is coming into her own in a powerful way in the season. She's always been very negatively predisposed towards slavery because she knows what it feels like to be property, I mean, she was a very fancy slave for all intents and purposes, she was somebody who was sold to another man, taken against her will and I think that her feelings about slavery have started to really inform her reasons for wanting the Iron Throne, it's finally started to occur to her that, if I want to take on this responsibility, it's almost - it's incumbent upon me to do something with it, and she sees this great wrong, probably the greatest possible wrong surrounding her, and she's decided that she's not just going to take back the Iron Throne because it's her right, she's gonna take back the Iron Throne because she is the person to make the world a better place than it is. She is going to not just take it, she's gonna use it for something greater than herself.

 3.10: Mhysa

BENIOFF: We see her get an army in episode four, and here in the finale you see her get her people, really, because she's got, she has her Dothraki followers that don't number very many, and she's got the people she's freed from the other cities, but now she is, it's not just - it's something even more, something almost even more religious about it than just a queen, I mean, she's the mother of these people.

WEISS: And it creates a whole new dynamic between her and the people that she's fighting for that she's gonna have to deal with in the future.

BENIOFF: The way they treat her, the way they lift her up and she is...  something that has its... A revelation from a prophecy and that glorious destiny is coming true.

WEISS: Here it seemed like it was really important to let us know just how many people were counting on her to see the full extent of, mostly, the full extent of her army and the tens of thousands of people who flooded out of these gates to pay tribute to her. And then, keeping the dragons in play because they're always such an important part of her identity, we just want to tie all of that together in one great shot.

4.5: First of His Name

WEISS: This scene shows Dany learning a lesson that all revolutionaries learn at one point or another, which is that conquering in many ways is a whole lot easier than ruling.

BENIOFF: This is the pivotal moment for Daenerys because, for so long, her sole goal was getting back to Westeros, conquering Westeros and sitting on the Iron Throne and becoming the queen that she believes she has every right to be, now she has the opportunity.

WEISS: She is driven by a kind of a deep empathy, a much deeper empathy than probably anybody else in the show. It's something that makes her as charismatic as she is to people, because they get a sense of that sincerity of it. Her empathy allows her to look at the people of Westeros and say, why the hell would they follow me if I haven't proven myself through my actions to be somebody worth following, why would they let me rule if I hadn't proven myself to be somebody who has ruled well somewhere else?

4.7: Mockingbird

WEISS: In season one, Dany's sexuality was central to her transformation from basically a piece of propriety into a full-fledged human being and with Drogo the first thing that she took charge of was the only thing that was available to her at the time, which was her own body, and she came into her own as an adult, really, amongst the Dothraki, who were not shy about their bodies in any way. That Dany is not really cut out to be a virgin queen and Daario is a bad boy who seems like a good idea to her at this moment, and she takes her prerogatives as a powerful person as powerful people sometimes do, and yet he's made himself more than available. She didn't ever expect Jorah to find out, she loves Jorah in her own way, she makes it very clear to him that he's far more important to her means, far more to her than a person like Daario ever could, just not in the way that Jorah might like.

BENIOFF: He's been in love with Dany from pretty much her wedding day and now he sees this young upstart, who just entered her life relatively recently, come into his world and sweep her off her feet. I think he's both incredibly jealous and also a little bit angry at Dany that she would fall for a man who he considers so unworthy of her.

4.8: The Mountain and the Viper

WEISS: It's hard to keep a thing like that covered up forever, especially when your enemies are so invested in putting a wedge between you, I mean, they are a good team, they compliment each other nicely in lots of ways that are really troublesome to the Lannisters especially, so it shouldn't be a surprise, I think it's just one of those things that, in hindsight, he probably should've told her a long time ago, and it's more the fact that he kept it from her than the fact that he did it, which seals his fate. I think, from Dany's perspective, this is the most earth-shattering thing that could possibly happen to her. He's her rock and her anchor, the way in which he stops her from flying off into potentially dangerous directions, and when someone that important to you, that central to you, is shown to be not just a liar, but when their entire relationship to you is shown to be based upon a lie, I think it poisons every corner of her world with doubt and mistrust. From his perspective, he may have started as an informer, but she is his whole reason for being, at this point, I mean, he's completely given up on his desire to return to Westeros in any way except by her side. His home now is wherever she happens to be, so this is really like being expelled from the Garden for him, this is the worst thing that could happen to either of them. For her, it's her child; when Viserys put her child in danger and pointed the sword at her stomach, you saw some switch flipping her, you saw something change and she watched him die without blinking an eye, even though he was her family and the other family she had ever known, and when she realizes that Jorah was also responsible for putting that child in danger, I think that's what closes the door on him forever.

4.10: The Children

WEISS: Ruling is about maintaining order and creating an environment for your people that is safe and her dragons, which were such an asset for scaring the shit out of everybody and making people throw down their shores and run in the other direction when she would come knocking as a conqueror, they're becoming a liability that she can't afford anymore. It's one thing to be killing people's goats and you can pay off a goat herder for his goats, you can't pay off a goat herder for his children. So, she realizes that she has to put the interests of her people ahead of her dragons, who are the only real children she's ever going to have.

5.2: The House of Black and White

BENIOFF: There always seemed to be this sense of "manifest destiny" with Dany and that she was going to take what was hers with fire and blood, and she has, but there's a difference between taking and keeping and there's a difference between conquering and ruling and she's finding out that the latter is much more complicated. It's impossible to rule over a city as large as Meereen without infuriating certain people.

WEISS: Dany is trying her very best to do the right thing, to be a good ruler, and sometimes, within the context of this world, being a good ruler means doing things like executing Mossador, it's about laying down a justice that's blind and impartial and applying it evenly to everybody, former master or former slave.

BENIOFF: And, in this case, with Mossador, it's very complicated for her because she has a great deal of affection for this young man who was a slave until she came and that's the reason he was selected to represent the free people on her council and he's been a strong ally of hers and yet he disobeyed her and so, from her mind, she's making a very hard-headed but fair decision, and in the minds of the freedmen and freedwomen watching this execution, she's turning on them and she's executing one of her children, one of the people who called her a mhysa.

WEISS: When she steps up and actually does that, of course, she finds that she doesn't win any friends for her blind justice and her commitment to the law that she alienates her supporters and the people who hated her hate her as much as they did before, so it's one of those things where doing the right thing doesn't have any immediate rewards associated with it, it just leads to a riot that almost gets her head caved in with a bunch of rocks.

5.6: Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken

(Dany doesn't appear in this episode; D&D discuss events from episode 5.5 here.)

BENIOFF: Looking at Dany in Meereen, she's facing a real tricky dilemma so far in that she's trying to create stability in the city where she's a foreigner, she's an outside power who's coming with a foreign army and she seizes power and about half the city hates her, so the way she's trying to stem the civil war is in part by police action and in part by marrying the head of an ancient family and creating an alliance with those old families and actually trying to bring them onto her side by marrying Hizdahr.

WEISS: She doesn't like Hizdahr, she doesn't trust Hizdahr, but she has enough wisdom to understand that she's not going to get this done by smashing heads alone, she's going to need to create ties to this world that she wants to be a part of and to rule, and she understands that marriage is the way to do that.

5.7: The Gift

BENIOFF: I think Dany is still not quite at that cynical level yet, she still believes that there's a higher purpose that she's there for, it's not just about power, it's about using that power to make humanity better.

WEISS: If somebody is telling you that one of those horrible things that's all the more horrible because you suspect that it's true, and she's an idealist who desperately wants to believe that that's not the case, but, in their relationship, Daario is one of the only people - the only person around her now - who tells her all the things she doesn't want to hear.

BENIOFF: So she's not yet convinced that she needs to be a butcher. At the same time, she realizes that, the longer the season goes on, that she has to be ruthless sometimes in order to maintain security, in order to keep herself in power, so that means some bastards are going to get sacrificed to her dragons, then so be it.

5.8: Hardhome

WEISS: Over the course of their conversation, the similarities in their experiences start to come to the fore, maybe the similarities in their worldview start to come to the fore.

BENIOFF: Tyrion has a lot of empathy for another orphan out there who had another terrible father, y'know, it certainly links that bond them. He realizes maybe Varys was right about her that she's the last chance for Westeros and this is someone who could cross the Narrow Sea and not only bring me back into power, because Tyrion still has his own ambitions, but create a better world for the people over there because, depite everything, despite his occasional cynicism and his lack of sentimentality, Tyrion is one of the few players in this game who believes that it's possible to make things a little bit better for people.

WEISS: Dany talks a good game and she's very charismatic and she's a very impressive young woman, but he's heard lots of people say lots of pretty words over the course of his life and he's seen how those plans go awry when they meet with reality. Like revolutionaries in our own world, she has every intention to change things, even if that means knocking everything down to do it.

5.9: The Dance of Dragons

BENIOFF: Even before we put it in the paper, I remember reading this scene in the book and saying "holy shit" and actually I remember emailing George right after I read the scene, even before I finished the book just after reading the scene and saying: "that's one of the best scenes in any of your books and I have no idea how we're going to do it". This seems like a big scene for a feature movie, let alone a TV show.

WEISS: It's one of the most powerful and seamless allusions we've ever created on the show; we've never had anything remotely like this before.

BENIOFF: Dany could stop this at any moment, as Tyrion says at the moment when it looks like Jorah is going to die, and she can, she's the queen, she can stop anything, right, and she doesn't, because, even if she is the queen, she is, as she says earlier, if I don't keep my word, why would anyone trust me? And she's exiled him from the city twice now, he's come back twice, so, from her perspective, she's not gonna step in and protect him, I mean, he's not worthy of her protection; but, at the same time, as tough as she is, she's watching this man that she's had great affection for for so long and it looks like she might lose him, it looks like he really might die, so there's just this witches' brew of conflicting emotions in Dany's head and Jorah, I think, is really hoping for her to stop and you know, at certain points, like, look what I'm willing to do to get back to you.

WEISS: The look he gives her in that moment, you can just feel how intensely it just digs into her and how it says volumes to her across that dusty arena without ever speaking a word.

WEISS: [the Sons' attack on the arena] It's one of my favorite moments in the scene and the season and in this series, that moment where she realizes this is over and she resigns herself to that faith.

BENIOFF: This isn't the way she saw it happening, it's not the way she wants it to end, but if it's going to happen, she doesn't want to die screaming, she doesn't to die in terror, she wants to have a moment of peace before it's over and then, at that moment, when all seems lost, Drogon comes. There seems to be a connection between them, it's been talked about before on the show and in the books, there's this very deep connection between the Targaryens and their dragons, and certainly that's true with Dany and Drogon, it's more than just a pet of hers, they are in a real sense for her her adopted children and so this is just evidence of Drogon's ability to sense when his mother is in great peril. Jorah has this conversation with Tyrion halfway through the season where he says, I used to be cynical like you, but then I saw this girl step out of the fire with three baby dragons and, if you've ever heard baby dragons singing, it's hard to be cynical after that, and it's the same thing happening here for Tyrion, it's hard to be cynical after watching this young queen fly off on a dragon and it's very hard not to believe that she really is the chosen one.

WEISS: I think at that point it's pretty hard for Tyrion to keep a grip on his cynicism. His expression watching her fly away completely captured what we wanted to capture in the moment, which is he's never seen a girl like this before.

5.10: Mother’s Mercy

WEISS: Daenerys is stuck on this beautiful, but isolated, plateau without any food and a dragon that mostly wants to sleep and get better, so she's got to find her on way, which is fine, except she encounters a group of people she probably didn't expect to encounter again anytime soon. When she sees the Dothraki, she knows what that means, and her relationship with Drogo was one thing, but Drogo is gone and she knows, in a way, that he was sort of an anomaly. She drops the ring because she's smart; that ring is the breadcrumb that's gonna point in the direction that she's being taken and somebody down the line hopefully who means her less harm than the Dothraki will notice.

6.1: The Red Woman

WEISS: Tyrion is very much in the situation along with Varys where they're sitting on a volatile powder keg of a society.

BENIOFF: The enemies of Daenerys see a city ripe to be overthrown and it's going to test Tyrion's political skills, his diplomatic skills, all of his experience.

WEISS: He's optimistic in a strange way for him, he's not generally an optimistic person, but I think he feels inspired for the first time and he feels equal to the challenge that's facing him when it comes to Meereen.

6.3: Oathbreaker

WEISS: I think when Dany returns to Vaes Dothrak it's obviously with a certain sense of dread, because she knows that these widows of the former khals are not likely to welcome her with open arms, it's not like a "long-lost sister, where have you been?", it's "here's a funny-looking, white-haired girl who has put herself on a record as thinking she's all that" and stringing a bunch of highfalutin titles after her name. But the High Priestess of the Dosh Khaleen is not coming at it from the perspective of somebody who's looking to punish this young person with inflated ideas of her own greatness, I think she remembers what it was like to think that a glorious destiny awaited her and to find out that that wasn't the case. I think the High Priestess has a certain amount of empathy with Dany's position, which you see in the way that she relates to her, which is stern, but not quite as awful as anybody might have expected it to be.

6.4: Book of the Stranger

BENIOFF: The historical examples that we looked to in writing these scenes was, oddly, that was Abraham Lincoln, because Lincoln was trying desperately to stave off a civil war between the North and the South and he wasn't ready to get rid of slavery quite as quickly as people think. I mean, he was trying to talk to the southerners and work out some kind of compromise at first and, you know, with Tyrion it's, as he says to Grey Worm and Missandei, slavery is an evil, war is an evil, and I can't have both at once, so what's the solution here? The whole point of diplomacy is compromise. He's proposed compromise, which he thinks of as a good idea, is incredibly offensive to Missandei and Grey Worm, who were slaves and, you know, from their point of view, you don't make a compromise with slavers because that's making a deal with the devil, so they're entering into these negotiations with slavers with deep skepticism, but Daenerys did choose this man to advise her, so if he's saying there's a chance, they're willing to try it, but with great suspicions.

BENIOFF: One of the things that was interesting for us was, you know, seeing how Dany can be strong when she is not in a position of power, you know, all the khals of all the gathered khalasars were within the temple of the Dosh Khaleen and Dany, an unarmed little woman, killed them all, by herself. You know, she didn't have a dragon flying and doing it, it was all Dany.

WEISS: The end of episode 604 definitely meant consciously to echo the end of episode 110. It's Dany stepping out of a flame to great effect; this time it was just on a much, much larger scale.

BENIOFF: Rebirth is clearly a theme this season, whether it's Jon Snow or Dany emerging again from the fires. When she did it the first time, only, you know, a few score people witnessed this miracle of Daenerys Targaryen emerging unscathed from the flames. Now it's the Dothraki as a people who witnessed this.

WEISS: The act of stepping out of that burning temple, in which all the Dothraki power structure had just perished, pretty much makes her the queen of the Dothraki in one fell swoop.

BENIOFF: And, of course, it's hard not to be impressed when you see her emerging from the fires unscathed. It's like a god being reborn, and that's why they all bow to her.

6.6: Blood of my Blood

BENIOFF: Daenerys talks about the dragons being her children and that the dragons are the only children she'll have. Of her three children, she's always been closest to Drogon, and they clearly have some kind of connection that goes beyond words and she just senses that he's out there in the scene. One of our favorite moments from season one was watching Khal Drogo deliver a speech to his gathered khalasar. That speech lingered in Daenerys's mind and she's echoing almost the exact same language when she's talking to the Dothraki now. So she's basically telling them the promise that one of the great khals had made years before and saying now's the time to live up to that promise and to fulfill it. It's something that's been set up for quite a long time and now we're seeing it come to pass.

6.9: Battle of the Bastards

WEISS: Daenerys, when she comes back to that situation, she has no idea what to expect, she doesn't know what's happened in Meereen. In a way, you feel for Tyrion because she left him with a terrible situation; the city was under siege from within and without and he really did, for so long, an excellent job of making things better there and, unfortunately, what she comes back to find is exactly what she would have expected to find when she left, and the fact that she has a city at all still is due to him.

BENIOFF: I think Dany's been becoming a Targaryen ever since the end of season one.

WEISS: She's not her father and she's not insane and she's not a sadist, but there's a Targaryen ruthlessness that comes with even the good Targaryens.

BENIOFF: If you're one of the lords of Westeros or one of her potential opponents in the wars to come and you get word of what happened here in Meereen, you have to be pretty nervous because this is an unprecedented threat, you got a woman who's somehow formed an alliance where she's got a Dothraki horde, a legion of Unsullied, she's got the mercenary army of the Second Sons and she's got three dragons who are now pretty close to full-grown, so if she can make it all the way across the Narrow Sea and get to Westeros, who's gonna stand in her way?

6.10: The Winds of Winter

WEISS: Tyrion had a very steep slope to climb to win Dany's trust. His family played an integral part in nearly exterminating her family, but, at this point, especially given the hand he was dealt with Meereen after she left, he's earned her trust. One of the few people in this world at this point who's willing to speak the truth to her face.

BENIOFF: Mainly, he's proven himself to be very loyal, you know, she's gone for most of the season, but he didn't abandon her, he didn't go off looking for the next person to rule him, he was clearly trying to serve her interest while she was gone. Dany's not gonna do anything she doesn't want to do, she's not gonna take anyone's advice if it seems against her interests and so, when he recommends that she cut ties with Daario, she does it because she thinks he's right. The truth is, Tyrion's logic makes a lot of sense to her, you know, he's not gonna be a help for her when she gets to Westeros, she comes over there unencumbered and, as a queen without a king, that could be really useful in the future. You know, Tyrion has become a very capable adviser in a relatively short time, she clearly respects his intelligence and she now respects his loyalty. I think, especially given that she knows where they're heading, they're going back to Westeros, most of the people on her team have never been there, but Tyrion spent his whole life there, served as Hand of the King before, defended King's Landing during an attack, he knows these families, the ruling family, better than anyone, he certainly knows Cersei better than anyone, so, as long as she can trust him, which she does, he's the perfect adviser for her in this war for Westeros. He's the perfect Hand to the Queen and that's why she names him such.

WEISS: That shot of Dany's fleet with all of her newly arrayed allies making its way out of the Slaver's Bay towards the Narrow Sea and home, it's probably the biggest thing that's happened on the show thus far, it's the thing we've been waiting for since the pilot episode of the first season. The person she is now is very, very different from the person she was then. It hasn't been a smooth road, feels like she has earned it at this point.

BENIOFF: It's the shot that we're gonna leave everyone with.

WEISS: It was a real thrill to see her on the bow of that ship, with Tyrion by her side heading west. The ruthlessness that comes with even the good Targaryens, I mean, these are the people who came over from across the narrow sea and conquered the known world. It'll be very interesting to see how that plays out going forward.

7.1: Dragonstone

BENIOFF: For [Cersei] now at this point, it's about survival, and the way to survive is to defeat her enemy. She will do whatever she has to do to win, she'll blow up the sept if that will allow her to win, even if that means killing hundreds, probably thousands of innocent people. She's capable of anything, unlike Dany, who is constrained a little bit by her morality and her fear of hurting innocents. For those of us who have been with the story from the beginning and really followed Dany's journey, coming home is such a massive, game-changer on so many levels, and we just wanted to see that.

WEISS: There is so much weight on that arrival that we felt that a bunch of dialogue was completely unnecessary, it would only step on the emotion of the moment.

BENIOFF: Everyone is giving her a little bit of distance; Tyrion, who is usually the most loquacious of people, he's not talking because he wants her to experience it and, at one point, Grey Worm is about to walk up alongside Dany to guard her and Missandei holds him back because she wants Dany to experience it on her own. And then she has that time and she's ready to begin.

7.2: Stormborn

WEISS: I don't think they're that many situations in film or television where you see four women sitting around a table discussing power and strategy and war. We didn't really plan it that way, but once it landed on that we knew that these things had to be discussed, we knew the plan to take Casterly Rock had to be put out there. I think it's a scene that, had it been the exact same information, situation being put forward by a bunch of old grizzled guys with gray beards, it would have been a lot less interesting to have it be Emilia at one end of the table and Diana at the other end of the table. To me, that just is such a breath of fresh air, and made writing it a lot more fun. The end, after all has been said and done, then Olenna sits her down and tells her to ignore all of that.

Show!Olenna: You're a dragon. Be a dragon.

WEISS: When Diana tells you to do that you start to... go outside the scene and wonder if that applies to every aspect of your life and not just the scene you happen to be shooting.

7.3: The Queen’s Justice

WEISS: The spine of the episode is about their meeting. It was an exciting, thrilling thing to watch happening even as we were shooting it. Once we realized that we're kind of getting a charge out of just seeing this happen on a set, which is a notoriously boring place, we had a sense that it would carry over to the finished version of the scene.

BENIOFF: That audience chamber was built by Aegon Targaryen to intimidate anyone who came there.

WEISS: He doesn't have much insight into what she's gone through. So, I think he sees a rich girl with a fancy name sitting in a big chair with a fancy dress on, proclaiming herself the queen of the world. So, I don't think he's looking upon her with as much respect as she has come to take as her due.

BENIOFF: He's a very strong-willed person. He didn't come down there to bend the knee. He didn't come down there to join her in her fight against Cersei. None of that matters at this point, though. All that matters is... fighting the dead.

WEISS: She looks at him, and she thinks this is some unwashed barbarian from the North and a bastard. His name is Jon Snow, yet he's calling himself king. If she knew what he'd seen, she'd be looking very, very differently... at what he's telling her, but at this moment in time, she only sees somebody who's trying to carve up her piece of her kingdom for himself. And if what this guy is saying is true, then it really is an issue, and she has... her own very serious issues to deal with in the shape of the woman who's now sitting on the throne.

7.4: The Spoils of War

BENIOFF: There's tension on two sides. One is the political, where Jon Snow has his own very specific purpose here on Dragonstone, and that's to get the Dragonglass and, if possible, to convince Dany to fight with him. And Dany has her own very specific purpose, which is to get Jon to bend the knee. There's conflict, and it's conflict between powerful people. And then to make it all even more complicated, they're starting to be attracted to each other. And so much of it is not from dialogue or anything we wrote, it's just the two of them in a small space standing near each other, and us just watching that and feeling the heat of that.

WEISS: She had a nicely triumphant return to Dragonstone, which nobody contested or got in the way of. From that point on, she's lost two of her principle allies, she's lost a lot of her fleet. She's in a position where if she doesn't step up soon and come up with a big win for her side, she's gonna lose this fight before it even begins. I think she really feels the pressure of her situation more than she ever has before. This is the fight she's been waiting for her whole life.

BENIOFF: I think there are several stories interplaying here. Part of it is that Dany's finally cutting loose. The whole first part of the season, she's been frustrated. In following Tyrion's counsel, she's been fighting with one hand behind her back, and so she hasn't really unleashed the Dothraki horde. She hasn't really set the dragons into combat yet.

WEISS: With the loot train battle, one of the things that's most exciting about it for us... This is the first time we've ever had two sets of main characters on opposite sides of the battlefield. And it's impossible to really want any one of them to win, and impossible to want any one of them to lose.

WEISS: This dragon flies up. That makes it a totally different situation. It's almost like, "What if somebody had an F-16 that they brought to a medieval battle?" You start to scrap the history of it a bit, and just think about how would those things interact with each other in a way that's exciting and believable to the extent that dragons are believable?

BENIOFF: Qyburn realized that the dragons were vulnerable. They might be fearsome beasts, but they are mortal and they can be hurt, and they can be killed. We see the scorpion come into play, manned by Bronn. And we see Drogon wounded. Things turn out okay for them, but I think it also changes the calculation a little bit, because now they know these weapons are on the board. This ongoing war with Cersei is entering into a dangerous territory.

WEISS: Jaime's charge at Daenerys is a hard thing to top for me in that sequence, only because when you have a principle character trying to murder another principle character, that doesn't happen all that often.

7.5: Eastwatch

BENIOFF: One of the things that Dany has found immensely frustrating in the beginnings of this war against Cersei is that she is being asked to fight on a certain moral standard and... Cersei isn't. Because of that, Cersei has an advantage over her. The more ruthless opponent will often win. I wouldn't say she's acting like the Mad King because it's rational. She's given them a choice and they choose not to bend the knee to her and she accepts that choice and she does exactly what she told them she would do. And from her standpoint, she's not acting insane in any way. She's just being tough, which is what she needs to be to win. That's one perspective. Tyrion has a different perspective and hopefully people watching will have their own and they'll decide for themselves whether they think what she did was just or immoral.

7.6: Beyond the Wall

BENIOFF: At a certain point, they're just fighting for their survival. Once they retreat all the way to the middle of the lake, there's nowhere farther to run. She's always been willing to risk her life to do what she thinks is right. And in terms of going North to rescue them, a number of people up there have different claims on her heart. And Jorah's been by her side from the beginning, and he saved her life so many times, I think she would feel as if it was a betrayal if she didn't at least try to save him. And then of course, there's Jon Snow. You definitely get the sense that he's become quite important to her in a pretty short amount of time. He sees that they're all gonna die if the dragon doesn't take off. The rational decision at that point is, "You guys go to safety, and I'll try to keep them off you as long as I can." He's the guy who jumps on the grenade to save the rest of the platoon. That's always been Jon.

WEISS: I think that when she sees him return on the back of Coldhand's horse, that's a big moment for her in terms of the way she feels about him.

BENIOFF: I don't think either one of them really knew exactly how powerful their feelings were towards each other until these moments. Just the notion of falling for someone, that involves weakness. It's not something a queen does. But she feels that happening, and he feels it happening for her. I think both of them are on, kinda, unfamiliar ground. And especially because it's with an equal. It's kind of hard for her at that point, I think not to look at this guy, and realize this is not like the other boys.

WEISS: What was fun about the sequence, you know, awful way to us is that up until the end, it's very close to one of those battles where all the good guys get out the other side, and, more or less, scot-free. But we knew that killing the dragon was gonna have a tremendous emotional impact, 'cause over the seasons and seasons of the show it's really been emphasized what they are to Dany. We knew that the Night King would see and seize this opportunity. I'd like to think that when the dragon dies, that it's kind of a one-two punch, 'cause on the one hand, you've just seen the horror of one of these three amazing beings like this in the world going under the water and not coming up again, and processing that. Then you're processing something that's even worse, which is when it comes back out from under the water again, and we see in the last shot of the episode, what it becomes.

7.7: The Dragon and the Wolf

BENIOFF: Jon's not Jon Sand. He's actually, as Bran finally overhears from Lyanna, Aegon Targaryen. And that means he's the rightful heir to the Iron Throne. That changes everything.

WEISS: I would say the challenge with this sequence was finding a way to present information that at least a good portion of the audience already had in a way that was dramatic and exciting, also had a new element to it. Part of the answer as to how to go about doing that was in the montage, inter-cut nature of it. It was about making it clear that this was almost like an information bomb that Jon was heading towards.

Show!Bran: Robert's rebellion was built on a lie.

WEISS: The only way to really emphasize that was to tie those two worlds together cinematically, and to have Bran actually narrating these facts over the footage of Jon and of Dany.

Show!Bran: He's the heir to the Iron Throne.

WEISS: Just as we're seeing these two people come together, we're hearing the information that will inevitably, if not tear them apart, at least cause real problems in their relationship. And she's his aunt.

BENIOFF: It complicates everything on a political level, on a personal level, and it just makes everything that could have been so neat and kind of perfect for Jon and Dany, and it really muddies the waters.

Show!Bran: We need to tell him.

BENIOFF: We tried to contrast the various season endings so that they don't feel too similar. So last season we had a pretty triumphant ending with Dany finally sailing west towards Westeros. This one is definitely much more horrific.

8.1: Winterfell

BENIOFF: It's a whole new procession, and so instead of Robert arriving with Queen Cersei and Jamie Lannister and The Hound, it's Daenerys coming with Jon Snow. I don't think the North is the most welcoming place to outsiders. Dany's smart. She senses that distrust, and she's... gonna make the best of a bad situation, but that doesn't mean that she likes it or she's happy.

WEISS: When you're doing something good for people, and you get met with what Sansa gives her when they meet in the courtyard, it's understandable that she would be upset.

WEISS: I think that if Tyrion were to have shown up on his own to Winterfell, he would've gotten a much different reception from Sansa than he did coming as the Hand of the Queen, Daenerys Targaryen.

BENIOFF: No one's ever ridden a dragon except for Dany. Only Targaryens can ride dragons, and that should be a sign for Jon. Jon's not always the quickest on the uptake, but eventually gets there.

WEISS: We wanted to kind of re-anchor their relationship. It seemed important for it to involve the dragons, since the dragons play such an important role.

BENIOFF: It's a major thing for her when she sees they have some kind of connection to him, they allow him to be around them. And when he flies up with her and shows her where he used to hunt as a kid, I think she falls even farther in love with him.

WEISS: Seeing Jon and Dany on the dragons together, it's a Jon and Dany moment, but it also seeds in the idea that these creatures will accept Jon Snow as one of their riders.

BENIOFF: One of the challenges, but also one of the exciting things about this episode, this whole season, is bringing together characters who have never met. Sam has long been one of the more important characters in the story. But he's never seen Queen Daenerys, and yet they're connected by various threads. The obvious one, which we know from the beginning of the scene, is Jorah. Sam saved him, and so Jorah owes him this great debt. What none of them realize until midway through this scene is that they have another, horrible connection.

WEISS: There are all these things that you know about those characters that the other characters don't know. And some of them are very important. Dany murdered Samwell's father and brother.

BENIOFF: That's a really complicated thing for Sam because he had a really fraught relationship with his father. Yet Sam's older brother was not a bad person, and died, really, quite bravely, standing by his father's side.

WEISS: John Bradley did an excellent job. The difference between the way he takes the news of his father's death and the way he takes the news of his brother's death, it was a subtle thing that he does with very few words. It's the kind of thing that he could find out in a number of different ways, but it seemed like a very ineffective preamble and way into that later moment.

WEISS: The fact that Jon's real parents were who Jon's real parents were is not news to us at this point, but what we don't know is the way that Jon is going to take this. How's the explosion gonna look?

BENIOFF: Sam, as a brother of the Night's Watch, and Jon are more brothers than Bran and Jon ever really were. He knows it's gonna hurt Jon and it's going to shatter his whole worldview. For all they know, the Army of the Dead could attack the next day, and someone has to tell Jon before that.

WEISS: He's being told something that he both knows is true and can't handle. So he tries to throw things in front of it to prevent him from having to deal with the-- the truth of what he's being told. The thing he throws in front of it here is the fact that it means his father was lying to him his whole life. The truth that Samwell tells Jon is probably the most incendiary fact in the entire world of the show. We chose to play the whole thing on Jon's face because, as great a job as John Bradley is doing presenting this information, he's really just presenting information we know already.

8.2: A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms

WEISS: When Jaime shows up to Winterfell, it's very difficult for almost anybody to know how to feel about it. On the one hand, Dany looks at him as the person who murdered her father, and even if she has come to terms with who her father was and what her father really was, it probably doesn't entirely erase the sting of her father's murderer showing up on her doorstep.

BENIOFF: Tyrion has made a number of mistakes now, and Dany's really at the end of her patience. Because she has a lot of fondness and respect for Tyrion, but many of his plans have really gone awry. And now Jaime Lannister's here, but not with the Lannister army. Tyrion can't really fight back because he knows she's right. I mean, he really did make a grievous mistake. If Tyrion has a flaw, he's a very clever man, but sometimes clever people overestimate their own cleverness.

BENIOFF: Dany comes to Sansa with a bit of an olive branch, trying to find a way inside that kind of cool exterior that Sansa presents. And one commonality between them is they both love Jon. Dany's his lover and Sansa's his sister. It's very much coming at it from the point of view of a monarch trying to make peace with her subject, and Sansa's not quite willing to accept Dany as her monarch yet. She's suspicious of people for a reason. She's had too many hard experiences not to be suspicious of people. And she sees Dany as possibly a tyrant, as somebody who has a lot of power and is seeking to get even more.

8.3: The Long Night

WEISS: We wanted our characters to feel, like, that this-- maybe this is all gonna work out, maybe things are all gonna be okay. We've seen how devastating a Dothraki charge can be just with their regular swords, and now when they're galloping into combat with, uh, flaming arakhs, it's-- it's-- Uh... What could possibly stand against that?

BENIOFF: What they see is just the end of the Dothraki, essentially.

WEISS: They have a plan, and it's important to wait for the Night King to reveal himself, and then have two dragons against one dragon, and a really good chance of-- of defeating him. One thing that they couldn't have foreseen was Dany's reaction to seeing the Dothraki decimated. Jon is the person who wants to stick to the plan, but the Dothraki are not Jon's; they're not loyal to Jon, they're loyal to Dany, and I think that Dany can't bring herself to just watch them die, and so the plan starts to fall apart the second she gets on her dragon, so he does too, and then we take it from there.

BENIOFF: We knew this episode was gonna be almost entirely battle, and that can get really boring really quickly. You can watch it for a certain number of minutes before the effect starts to dampen. Part of it was making sure that we really stayed focused on the characters, and so whether it's Arya's storyline, or Sansa and Tyrion down the crypt, or Jon Snow and Dany up on the dragons. Kinda like all these separate little battles within the... within the greater battle.

BENIOFF: I mean, we talked about various endings for Jorah for a long time, but, you know, you think about Jorah, from the very first time we met him, he was with Dany, and from that time, he's been mostly by her side. Part of Jorah's tragedy is that he was in love with a woman who couldn't love him back, but he's accepted that for quite a long time, at the same time he was going to fight for her as long as he could and as well as he could.

WEISS: There'd never been a moment where she more needed someone to fight to protect her than this moment. And if he could've chosen a way to die, this is how he would've chosen to die. So, it was something we thought would be powerful to give him.

8.4: The Last of the Starks

WEISS: Dany kind of structures the feast scene, in a way. I mean, she's really the person whose emotions and choices are guiding the scene.

BENIOFF: And things start to shift a little bit when Daenerys calls for Gendry and-- and names him the new Lord of Storm's End.

WEISS: It's almost like, as the queen, she's giving people... permission to-- to celebrate what they've done.

BENIOFF:  Things start to relax a little bit, and these people did survive and they-- they won, and they emerged victorious. And so what started as a very funereal scene gradually starts to shift into more of a party atmosphere as people get drunker and drunker. That shift does not happen with Daenerys; she's scarred by the events that just took place, but she's also very much thinking about... what Jon Snow told her, and she's really shaken when she sees everyone celebrating with him, and talking about what a mad man and what a king he is for getting on a dragon.

WEISS:  He has love and respect from these people that, even with the gesture that she just made, she can't ever equal.

BENIOFF: She realizes that his true identity is a real threat to her if it comes out. So, she's in a fairly dark place and while other people are starting to try to celebrate their survival and their victory, Dany's not in a celebratory mood.

WEISS: After the feast, she comes to talk to him and... with the intention of-- of... of making this all work out, and of bringing things back to the way they were before.

BENIOFF: There's a moment when they're kissing, and-- and it seems like things are kind of getting back to where they were, but... it's almost as if he remembers all of a sudden what she really is. It's tense for him. For her, she grew up hearing all these stories about how their ancestors who were related to each other were also lovers, and it doesn't seem that strange to her.  For him, it is a strange thing.

WEISS: Once Dany introduces the idea that everything can be as it was if... Jon... keeps this secret buttoned down and tells no one, she's introducing a conflict that plays forward.

BENIOFF:  From his standpoint, he's already declared his loyalty to her. He's promised her and he's a man of his word. But he's also, you know, a family man, and so, the idea that he wouldn't tell Sansa and Arya about his true identity, it just seems very wrong to him.

BENIOFF: He thinks he can have it both ways; that he can tell Arya and Sansa the truth about who he really is, and he can maintain his loyalty to Dany and everyone's gonna learn to live together.

WEISS: One thing everybody who... comes into contact with this information seems to understand is how incendiary the information is. Sansa's left with a very difficult decision, 'cause she promises Jon that she won't tell anyone, and yet when she's sitting up there on that wall with Tyrion, she knows... what will happen if she gives Tyrion this information. She's a student of Littlefinger, and she knows how information travels, and she can think many steps ahead into the game, the way Littlefinger did, and know that if she tells Tyrion, it's almost impossible for Tyrion not to tell Varys, and if you tell-- I think these are all things that have been occurring to Sansa between the time we see her get that information and the time she passes the message on.

BENIOFF: Part of the story here is that while we've been concentrating on Winterfell and the fight against the army of the dead, Dany's other enemies have not been just sitting still; they've been planning for-- for the final battle. We saw in season seven that Qyburn had invented this giant dragon-killing scorpion and it didn't quite work. Qyburn went back to the drawing board and he made even larger, more powerful scorpions. Dozens of them are now lining the walls of King's Landing, and dozens more are mounted on the decks of the Iron Fleet. While Dany kind of forgot about the Iron fleet and Euron's forces, they certainly haven't forgotten about her, and they're just waiting for her to come back. By this point, they would have gotten news that her army's emerged victorious and were gonna head south, and so they're just waiting in ambush for her return.

WEISS: In some ways, the most important thing that happens... to Daenerys in four, is the death of her second dragon. Now she's got one dragon, and that dragon presumably is just as vulnerable... as Rhaegal was. So, there's this-- the mourning of a child, which is very real to her, and then their best friend is taken. Dany knows that once Cersei has Missandei that she's not going to see Missandei alive again.

BENIOFF: This is a moment for Cersei where she has a chance to... maybe to flee and get away if she surrenders, but that's-- I think anyone who knows Cersei knows she's not gonna make that choice. Her feeling is, "If I give up the throne, I'm dead, and so, my only chance now is to win." And that's what she says to Ned Stark in season one. Dany is this young queen coming to try to usurp her, and Cersei's not gonna give up the throne that easily. She's captured an enemy, and this is how Cersei deals with enemies. Tyrion's perspective is-- is, you know, while we have these various wars for supremacy and everything, let's not forget about the people who are gonna suffer the most from it. He can envision what will happen to King's Landing if these two armies clash and dragons are involved, and it's an obvious catastrophe. She feels like the odds are actually pretty good on-- on-- for her at this point, and she's willing to roll the dice. I think for Cersei, the only good prisoner is a dead prisoner.

WEISS: She's really back... where she was... at the very beginning. Emotionally, she's alone in the world, and she can't really trust anybody.

BENIOFF: People have underestimated Dany's strength many times before, and-- and... no one's really done very well underestimating her strengths.

WEISS: Unlike them, she's extremely powerful, and unlike them, she's filled with a rage that's aimed at one person specifically.

BENIOFF: I think what's probably echoing in Dany's head in those final moments would be Missandei's final words. Dracarys is clearly meant for Dany. Missandei knows that her life is over, and she is saying, you know, "Light them up."

8.5: The Bells

BENIOFF: Dany's an incredibly strong person, she's also someone who has had really close friendships and close advisors for her entire run of the show. You look at these people who have been closest to her for such a long time, and almost of them have either turned on her or died, and she's very much alone. And that's a dangerous thing for someone who's got so much power, to feel that isolated. So at the very time when she needs guidance and those kind of close friendships and advice the most, everyone's gone.

WEISS: I think that Varys knew that it was unlikely that he would survive the attempt to overthrow Dany in favor of Jon. And he also knew that he ethically, in his mind, had no choice but to... try to do that anyway. I think that Tyrion is saying goodbye to his best friend in the world outside of his brother. And the amount of guilt that he feels over being the cause for his best friend's imminent death, it's hard to really get your head around.

BENIOFF: Jon Snow is someone that she's fallen in love with. And as far as she's concerned, by this point, Jon has betrayed her by telling people about his true identity, and also the fact he's unable to return her affections at this point.

WEISS: I think that when she says, "Let it be fear," she's resigning herself to the fact that she may have to get things done in a way that isn't pleasant. And she may have to get things done in a way that is horrible for lots of people.

BENIOFF: She chose violence. A Targaryen choosing violence is a pretty terrifying thing.

BENIOFF: Even when you look back to season one, when Khal Drogo gives the golden crown to Viserys, and her reaction of watching her brother's head melted off ...and he was a terrible brother, you know, so I don't think anyone out there was-- was crying when Viserys died, but... there is something kind of chilling about the way that Dany has responded to the death of her enemies. And if circumstances had been different, I don't think this side of Dany ever would've come out. If Cersei hadn't betrayed her, if Cersei hadn't executed Missandei, if Jon hadn't told her the truth. Like, if all of these things had happened in any different way, then I don't think we'd be seeing this side of Daenerys Targaryen.

WEISS: I don't think she decided ahead of time that she was... going to do what she did. And then she sees the Red Keep, which is, to her, the home that her family built when they first came over to this country 300 years ago. It's in that moment, on the walls of King's Landing, where she's looking at that symbol of everything that was taken from her, when she makes the decision to-- to make this personal. We wanted her to be just death from above, as seen from the perspective of the people who are on the business end of that dragon. In most large stories like this, it seems like there's a tendency to focus on the heroic figures and not pay much attention to the people who may be suffering the repercussions of the decisions made by those heroic people, and we-- we really wanted to keep our perspective and our-- our sympathies on the ground at this moment 'cause those are the people who are really paying the price for the decisions that she's making.

WEISS: I think that Jon is also in a kind of denial. At first, the siege is a war, soldiers killing soldiers. That's what war is. I think Jon is someone who's always been a very good soldier, who has never enjoyed being a soldier. He's been trained as a fighter from the time he was a little boy, and he's quite good at it, he's quite good at leading men into battle, and he also hates it. I think, for him, it all starts out seeming like it's gonna work out, and then it turns into a nightmare.

WEISS: When she takes off and starts burning the city, the Unsullied on the ground and the Northmen on the ground, take that as their cue that it's a moral free-for-all. The good guys are behaving like the bad guys, and the bad guys in this shot are the ones who are doing all of these horrific things around him, who are his own men. The moral lines that he's drawn, for himself, in his own life, can't be maintained for everyone in all situations.

WEISS: Feels like you needed a perspective to carry you through this horror. Like you need a Virgil to take you through the hell that Dany's building.

BENIOFF: The reason we decided to follow Arya out of King's Landing and to see the fall of King's Landing through her eyes is... something that we talked about with an earlier episode. You just care a lot more when you're with a character that you care about. So if we saw a lot of extras running around on fire and buildings falling apart, it might've been visually interesting, but it wouldn't have had much of an emotional impact. But when you're there on the ground with Arya, who's one of the people we care the most about, then everything takes on that much more of an edge.

WEISS: We knew that the Hound would be convincing her to part ways with him and to not go to her death. And once she decides she needs to get out of the city, well, she's in-- she's in the worst possible place you can be. So she's gotta get from that central point all the way outside the walls of the city. It's the longest, hardest journey anybody has to make in the entire episode.

8.6: The Iron Throne

WEISS: Dany has been above it all, literally, throughout this entire battle, she's fought the whole thing from the air, so, when she's in the plaza, all she's seeing is her own army's triumph in the city that she came to conquer for all the best reasons, and I think the idea of spreading her brand of revolution around the entire world is a very attractive idea to her at this moment in her mind, it's a very ethical idea because she's not seeing the cost the way Jon and the way Tyrion have seen the cost.

BENIOFF: What's interesting about it is that she's been making similar kinds of speeches for a long time and we've always been rooting for her and this is kind of a natural outcome of that philosophy and that willingness to go forth and conquer all your enemies and it's just not quite as fun anymore. 

WEISS: I think the final scene between Jon and Daenerys is something we came up with sometime, in the midst of the third season of the show? The broad strokes of it anyway. But there was a tremendous amount of pressure to get it right because we know this is not a scene that is giving people what they want.

BENIOFF: We got there and were like, oh my God this is gonna be so emotional and then it was realizing that we actually had to do so much work to get all those shots that we needed.

WEISS: There’s this discussion through the whole show of whether or not Daenerys is like her father, who was insane. Throughout the whole conversation they have, she maintains, like, a reasonable approach to the thing that she’s done and there are only a few places where something peaks out that tells him what’s really coming.

WEISS: The big question in people’s minds seem to be who’s going to end up on the Iron Throne. One of the things we decided about the same time we decided what would happen in the scene is that the throne would not survive, that the thing that everybody wanted, the thing that caused everybody to be so horrible to each other to everybody else over the course of the past eight seasons was going to melt away. The dragon flying away with Dany’s lifeless body, that’s the climax of the show.

#daenerys targaryen #got #resources #d&d #s1 #s2 #s3 #s4 #s5 #s6 #s7 #s8

[commie-eschatology]

Return to Redcliffe

particularly proud of this Solas + Trevelyan scene from “Return to Redcliffe” so gonna do some shameless self-promotion. Ao3:https://archiveofourown.org/works/33444538

When all her companions are asleep, Trevelyan leaves the Inquisition camp. She isn’t sure if she’ll come back. Someone is clearly following her, but she ignores that for now. The road back to Redcliffe stretches in front of her, but she hesitates. This is an extraordinary bad idea, she tells herself, but when has that ever stopped her? Lydia used to complain about her tendency to just act on desire alone. But Lydia is dead, she tells herself, you broke her head open with your staff until her brains spilled all over the floor. You killed the woman who raised you, only for the rebellion to sell themselves into slavery. ` In the woods, she stumbles upon a templar caravan. Very fortunate for her, very unfortunate for them. Their screams echo through the Ferelden forest; she imagines getting incinerated from inferno magic would hurt quite a bit, but it’s certainly not her problem. Trevelyan leaps onto the, now empty, wagon, and finds a crate of apples. She takes a few bites of one and monologues, “I rebel, therefore I am,” to the half eaten piece of fruit.

There’s groaning from underneath the wheels, and a jumble of words that vaguely sound like “what the fuck?” so she asks, “Sorry, are you still alive down there?” There’s no response, so in the interest of being thorough, she throws a fireball at the voice. The smell of burnt flesh follows, so she assumes it got the job done, but then again, Ferelden usually smells like that. Really not a terrible scent, she considers. Or perhaps she’s just gone mad.

Trevelyan looks at the Mark on her hand- staying with the Inquisition is the clever choice, she tells herself. Only she can close the rifts, after all. The rebels have been utterly defeated, the movement badly needs allies if it’s to survive. Still, her logic feels cold and hollow. The Venatori ships are already in Redcliffe harbor. She asks herself, how many will be shipped up to the Imperium in chains, in just the time it takes to travel between the Hinterlands and Haven?

Fire burns underneath the wagon. It’s always been fire for Trevelyan- burning the family manor during a childhood nightmare, cremating Lydia’s mangled corpse with her own spells, and, most recently, incinerating more templars than she can count. It’s the same fire that she could use to burn those Tevinter slave ships tonight- despite Fiona and Linnea’s betrayal, she has no doubt that at least a few of her people would join her.  

“Do you want to keep staring at me from the woods then?” she asks the person shadowing her. Solas steps out from the shadows, clearly surprised at being discovered, but he tries not to let it show. He’s usually far more subtle, she doesn't doubt she could be more stealthy if he wanted, but he clearly believes everyone around him is an utter idiot. Fair enough, she supposes. He gives a slight smile, the kind that might say “well done.”

As with everyone, Solas projects emotions into the Fade- but his are more tightly moderated than any other mage she’s ever seen. Now though, Trevelyan sees a wave of complex feelings she can barely sort through, radiating from him: rage at the Tevinters, intense all-consuming fear of something she can’t sense, great sadness for something lost, but all controlled, and directed by conscious purpose.

“These woods are dangerous,” he says, characteristically naming the obvious, “and you have the only means of closing the rifts.” He regards her for a moment. “I apologize if I intruded. You have proven yourself a capable fighter, but I have found it is far too easy to make rash mistakes when one is alone.” His actual meaning is not lost on her: don’t be an idiot and run, is what he wants to say.

He adds, “And in my defense, you did just eviscerate an entire troop of men.” She expects him to ask her why, but he doesn’t; apparently needing no explanation for her small act of rebellion.

“They were templars,” she explains anyways, “most are awful. The others just look away when the Circle rapes happen. Honestly, I’ve always preferred the former.”

“I can’t disagree with you,” Solas says, “my few interactions with templars have been... unpleasant. Either they are accustomed to following the worst orders, as you have said, or they just enjoy inflicting pain, especially upon those without recourse.” There is clear contempt and disgust in his voice, it’s as if he’s speaking from experience.

“That’s why we rebelled,” she says, taking another bite of the apple, “also,  I was hungry. Inquisition rations weren’t doing it.” Solas actually laughs. Trevelyan idly wonders when murder became so casual for her. Kill the woman who raised you, and everyone else becomes easy, she supposes.

There’s a short, but not awkward, silence between them. She knows exactly why he is here, to prevent her from defecting back to the rebels, but his presence is, surprisingly, not unwelcome. They haven’t had much time to talk like this; the conversations they’ve had have so far been in either the shadow of Haven’s Chantry, or on the road with Cassandra.

She motions to the adjacent seat on the wagon. To her surprise, he nods, and walks, or more accurately, struts over, butt wiggle and all. Like most mages, he usually makes himself seem as small as possible, scuttling rather than walking, but unlike the rest, it’s almost as if he has to consciously remind himself to do so.

Solas likes questions, she reminds herself, so ask one. He jumps up on the wagon, and she says, “do you like apples?”

Solas doesn’t even blink. “Apples were first domesticated in this part of the world.” How the fuck does he even know that, she wonders. “I saw a memory once, of a horde of human barbarians, desperately defending a part of these woods they held sacred, from the legions of the Imperium. When the barbarians were slain, the Tevinters marched forward, only to find a simple apple orchard, one which hundreds gave their lives to protect.” He takes one out of the crate, and takes a bite. “However, if you were asking about the taste- no, I detest apples.” He takes another bite. “This one in particular tastes sort of like burnt human flesh.”

“Dying for a lost cause. You really never miss an opportunity to make a point, do you?” she says, “also, how do you even know what burnt human flesh tastes like?”

Solas smiles mischievously. “I don’t like to waste words,” he says. The other point he is suspiciously quiet on. I don’t judge, Trevelyan thinks, you go eat as much flesh as you like, Solas.

His words are somewhat slurred, and she smells something in the air, besides the burning templars of course. She recognizes it as the unmistakable stench of peach whiskey, suspiciously similar to the bottle she had nicked from Dennet yesterday. Solas seems to notice and says, “Master Dennet had many such bottles wasting away on the shelf. He will not miss one, or two, I suppose.” He shrugs.

On the topic, she notices a small bottle of ale in one of the templar crates; the cork is stuck when she pulls on it, so she simply uses a bit of force magic to smash the top of the bottle off. It smells absolutely wretched, and tastes even worse, but she drinks it anyway. Solas watches her, possibly judging her, but he’s always hard to read. “Been a shit day,” she explains. Linnea said, go back to your templars. Fuck her. Tevinter apologist. Shockingly flat ass. Terrible kisser.

“Was today your first time in Redcliffe?” she asks. Solas chuckles softly to himself, apparently a joke only he understands.

“A long time ago, before your rebellion,” he says, “it’s changed since, of course. But I assume you’re asking my opinion on the rebel mages, rather than the settlement itself.” He’s quiet for a moment. “Despair sticks to most of the mages like gnats.” He’s right, during the retreat from the Free Marches, every morning some mages wouldn’t wake up, taken by Despair demons in their sleep. And the war has only gotten worse. She can’t even imagine. “Still, they endure. Their fight against oppression is admirable, and utterly hopeless.” , “Hopeless?” Trevelyan raises an eyebrow. She should be angry, but more than anything she feels exhausted. “You seem rather certain.”

“Of course I am.” he says, matter of fact. Trevelyan picked up some dalish during the rebellion; she’s not ignorant as to the meaning of his name. “In my journeys through the Fade, I have seen countless rebellions rise up, confident in the just nature of their cause, only to be crushed mercilessly. Righteousness, unfortunately, is no match against steel.” Good poetry. She’ll give him that.

“And, yet, Recliffe is still standing,” she says, “for the first time in a thousand years, in this part of the world, mages govern ourselves. No templars. No Chantry. We built that. Isn’t that freedom worth defending?” Trevelyan spent most of her life in the Circle. No price can be too great, she thinks.

“You forget you aren’t speaking to Cassandra or Varric. We do not disagree on the necessity of rebellion,” he smiles, just a bit, mostly to himself, “but, in order for a rebellion to win its immediate demands, as well has change what it is possible in the long term, something you once told me that you seek to do, they must do one thing.” He pauses for dramatic effect, and honestly it works. “They must win.”  

“Even failed revolutions can teach lessons,” she says, the only dogma she’s ever needed to believe in, “no matter what Varric says, the mage rebellion didn’t manifest spontaneously.” She thinks of the thousand year struggle for freedom, and what feels like generations of the dead on her shoulders. In the distance, Trevelyan can just make out the flag of the Venatori, waving from the ramparts of Redcliffe. The ships are not far behind.

“No,” Solas says, suddenly melancholy, “or if they do, it is always the wrong lessons.” He’s silent for a long moment, staring into the ground. “I saw a memory once in the Fade. A man who sought to overthrow a tyrant. Then, a half-hearted assassination attempt, tailored for drama, instead of results. It of course failed. The man himself was burned alive, defiant at first, but when the flames reached his body, when his skin began to melt off, he screamed for mercy that never came.”

Trevelyan takes a long drink. Solas adds, eerily calm, “In the end, martyrdom is just melted flesh upon a wooden stake, and a name utterly forgotten.”  She drains the rest of the bottle.

“I killed my mother,” she says, suddenly, without really meaning to, “when the Circle was annulled, I tried to give her the courtesy of a quick spell, but the tower wards blocked magic so…” she makes a motion with her staff “I, well, had improvise.”

“Your first murder?” he asks. She shakes her head. Definitely not. “If you want absolution, I’m not the person to give it.”

“Oh fuck no, I’m not Andrastian,” Trevelyan scoffs, and Solas chuckles softly. The Andrastians think they can solve all the world’s evils, all their many personal failings, through a song. It’s childish. Besides, Trevelyan would rather hold onto her sins for now- keep them close like a badge of honor. She looks down at the dead templars, corpses bathed in green light from her Mark.

“I don’t regret it,” she says, and she thinks she means it, “not if it served a purpose.” Trevelyan looks again towards Redcliffe, and thinks, everything I am, I owe to them. “In just the time it takes to travel back to Haven, how many will already be on the ships?”

“Likely a few dozen,” Solas answers, “there will be far more, thousands, if these Venatori are not defeated, which is a battle only the Inquisition has the resources to win. It is fortunate, then, that you have a position where you can speak on behalf of the rebel mages.”

The sun begins to rise, bathing the forest in dim orange light. “We should get back then ,” she forces herself to say, though every word is like a block of lead. Solas exhales in relief.

“One final thing,” she says as Solas moves to get up. She looks at her counterpart, studying him best she can, sensing his projections into the Fade. He’s unlike any other apostate she’s ever met, and there’s something about him she can’t quite put her finger on, much less vocalize. “You know quite a bit about rebellions,” she says.

“I have seen much in my travels,” he says, pausing as he considers his next words, “and you could say I had a dramatic youth.”

“One I’d be interested in hearing about,” she says, genuinely. “Especially if it involves more surprisingly melancholy stories about apple domestication.” Solas seems taken aback for a moment, but recovers quickly, chucking politely at her joke. He then smiles quietly to himself.

The two apostates return to the Inquisition camp, though Trevelyan keeps Redcliffe in her sight for as long as she can.

Ao3:https://archiveofourown.org/works/33444538

#dragon age #solas #f!trevelyan #tara trevelyan #mage trevelyan #mage rights #mage rebellion #enchanter lydia #redcliffe #hinterland #dragon age inquisition #in your heart shall burn

[germanicseidr]

Batavii

I have made a previous post on the Batavi over a year ago. However I wanted to rewrite my piece on this tribe to include more information about them, also I gained about 3000 new members since last year so the post might have been completely missed by most in this group. The Batavi were an ancient Germanic tribe located in the lower Rhine area, modern day Netherlands. They are however not native to the Netherlands. The Batavi people actually were once Chatti tribesmen/women. Somewhere around 100BC-50BC a conflict broke out inside the Chatti tribe which caused the tribe to split. A small part of the Chatti decided to move away and they settled themselves in the lower Rhine area, those were the first of the Batavi.

The lower Rhine area was actually inhabited by another tribe, the Celto-Germanic tribe of the Eburones. Unfortunately the entire tribe was massacred by Julius Caesar which left the Rhine area open for resettling. The Batavi people would use the same locations as the Eburones used, to worship their Gods. Whether they did this because these sacred places of worship were known to all in the Germanic world is unknown.

Their new neighbours to the north/west were the Cannanefates, a tribe incredibly similar to the Batavi. There are theories that the Cannanefates might have also been a splinter group of the Chatti who broke off during the same internal conflict. Unfortunately since there is no written evidence about this, we will never know what exactly happened during this Chatti conflict. Up further in the North they had the Frisii as neighbours. The Batavi would continue to have a good relationship with the Frisii and both tribes helped each other during their famous revolts.

To the east they were neighboured by the Bructeri tribe. The Batavi and the Bructeri however do not have any notable relationship with each other except for one event. The Bructeri sent their warriors to the Batavi in 69AD to help them with their revolt against the Roman empire. The Bructeri also sent troops to Arminius for the famous Teutoburgerwald battle. To the south they were neighboured by the Celtic-Belgae tribe of the Menapii who were famous for resisting Julius Caesar’s invasion of modern day Belgium.

The name Batavi is derived from the Proto-Germanic language and basically means the people of the good island. A part of the former Batavi territory is still named after this tribe, the Betuwe. Whether the Batavi named themselves after the land or gave their name to the land is still up for debate. The name Batavi is also incredibly well known amongst the modern Dutch people, compared with some other Dutch tribes that have nearly been forgotten. This is all thanks to a propaganda campaign which started during the 80 years war for Dutch independence. This campaign started in the 16th century with the story that the Batavi were the original ancestors of all Dutch people, this was spread in order to create a sense of nationalism amongst the Dutch in order to join the rebellion against Spain. Later in 1795, when the French conquered the Netherlands, they renamed the country into the Bataafse republic after the Batavi tribe. This lasted until 1806 when Louise Bonaparte became king of the Netherlands.

One of the people who has written quite a lot about this tribe, is Tacitus. In his work Germania, he describes the tribe as following:

“Of all these people, the most famed for valor are the Batavi; whose territories comprise but a small part of the banks of the Rhine, but consist chiefly of an island within it. These were formerly a tribe of the Catti, who, on account of an intestine division, removed to their present settlements. They still retain this honor, together with a memorial of their ancient alliance to Rome; for they are neither insulted by taxes, nor oppressed by farmers of the revenue. Exempt from fiscal burthens and extraordinary contributions, and kept apart for military use alone, they are reserved, like a magazine of arms, for the purposes of war. – Tacitus”

The Batavi were very appreciated by the Romans for their skills in battle and their bravery. They gave Rome excellent auxiliary forces well regarded for their horsemanship. They were also one of the very few units who were able to swim while wearing full armour. This has been described by Dio Cassius, a Roman historian. He described how the Batavi adopted this tactic during a battle against the British Celts:

“ The barbarians thought that Romans would not be able to cross it without a bridge, and consequently bivouacked in rather careless fashion on the opposite bank; but he sent across a detachment of Batavi tribesmen, who were accustomed to swim easily in full armour across the most turbulent streams. Thence the Britons retired to the river Thames at a point near where it empties into the ocean and at flood-tide forms a lake. This they easily crossed because they knew where the firm ground and the easy passages in this region were to be found; but the Romans in attempting to follow them were not so successful. However, the Germans swam across again and some others got over by a bridge a little way up-stream, after which they assailed the barbarians from several sides at once and cut down many of them." – Dio Cassius

One unit of Batavi auxiliary was even recruited to guard the Roman emperor, the Numerus Batavorum. (I have written a post about this unit if you are interested. The Batavi units were deployed all over the Roman empire, from Britannia to north Africa.

Over time, the Batavi became quite Romanized. They even adopted some of the Roman Gods in their pantheon and the famous God of thunder, Donar/Thor, became Latinized as well, Hercules Magusanus. The Batavi people wore amulets in the shape of a club, Donar keule, in a similar fashion how the vikings wore Mjolnirs to honour to the God of thunder.

Even though it appears that the Batavi and the Romans enjoyed a good alliance, tensions rose between the two because of corrupt centurions who tried to conscript more and more Batavi into the Roman army and unreasonable taxes. In 69AD the Batavi revolted against the Roman empire, making use of Rome’s weakness since the year 69AD was an extremely unstable year for the Romans. The rebellion was led by Gaius Julius Civilis who, like Arminius, served in the Roman army. Therefore he was gifted with the knowledge of Roman military tactics.

“"Let Syria, Asia Minor, and the East, habituated as it is to despotism, submit to slavery... Freedom is a gift bestowed by nature even on the dumb animals. Courage is the peculiar excellence of man, and the Gods help the braver side." - Gaius Julius Civilis

The revolt has been described quite detailed by Tacitus in his work ‘the annals’ if you are interested in the full story. I have also written a post about this uprising, it is impossible to write out the full revolt in this post because there is just too much information. There were several Germanic tribes who joined the Batavi in their revolt: the Frisii, Cananefates, Treverii, Bructeri and the Celtic Lingones.

Initially the revolt was quite succesfull. The Batavi managed to capture and destroy several Roman fortifications and destroyed two full Roman legions. The Romans sent a massive army to the Batavi in order to put down the revolt which ended in the following year in 70AD. Even though officially the Batavi failed at their revolt, their military losses were relatively very light. The Romans however lost about 20,000 soldiers. The Numerus Batavorum unit was disbanded after the revolt because the Romans lost their trust in the Batavi.

After this event, the Batavi seem a bit forgotten in history. There were no more noticable events or recorded history on them with the exception of the Batavi auxiliary units which continued to serve in the Roman army after the revolt. During the late third and early fourth century, the Batavi were absorbed into the Salian Franks and so their existence as an independent tribe ended. The name of the Batavi however still lives on strongly in the Netherlands, greatly thanks to the 80 years war for independence.

Here are images of: A small map showing their location, Painting of the Batavi revolt by Barend Wijnveld, 1835. Batavi auxiliary units, The burial stone of Indus, who was a Batavi bodyguard of emperor Nero,

[bellicose132]

Meditations vol. 1

Existance is despair and allowing the despair to enslave you

Living is moving forward through the pain unscathed, like a still rock in the midst of a raging sea

One cannot be truly alive until they are free, for is a bird with no wings even a bird in a way that matters? Those too greatly encumbered by chains cannot claim to know who they are, they cannot claim to have volition over their own actions. They don't know it, but all their choices have been made for them through their own enslavement. For an example a great many people come home from work to watch tv or distract themselves in any other manner of ways. They don't realize it but the pain chose it. If you really stop and ask yourself what you truly want out of life the answer isn't to distract yourself until you die. Many are just not strong enough to live as themselves for themselves. And if that is the case how do you even know if you are alive? I don't mean exist but truly are alive? If you only operate on your addictions and distractions then you are not free, and if you are not free then you are not alive in a way that matters.

If you cannot live without something than you can not claim to be separate from it. If you cannot function without coffee then you are not you, you are only yourself with coffee. Sometimes I deprive myself of things just to find out if I really am alive. And who I am. I am not my skin nor my bones, I am not the water I drink nor the sleep I get, I am not the food I eat nor the air I breathe. I am me and nothing else. I do not need anything to be me. Not one thing. Our over reliance on comfort will be our downfall both as individuals and as a society. The reason people commit atrocities is because they are too weak to come to terms with the flow of life. They cannot accept life without love and compassion. They don't realize they don't need those things. Nor do corrupt politicians need the bribes they receive. Sometimes less really is more. If less can teach us how to live with meaning. Buddah did not achieve enlightenment through gorging, he achieved it through ultimate restraint. To learn what we are we must know what we are not. And to learn what we want we must first learn what we do not.

If you live your entire life only committing halfway to everything you will only have lived half of a life. Eventually a time comes when we all must make a decision: continue to appease and retreat in the face of every challenge or finally take a stand even if it means our lives. If you don't commit 100 percent to something how can you claim you lived with purpose or had a purpose at all? If you always think everything is stupid you will find yourself feeling empty inside. The point of life is not comfort, distraction, and then death. You will die with regret that way. Ultimately you have to choose a hill to die on a point beyond which your will defend with your life. For me it is wrestling, I am willing to give my life so long as it means I do not give up. So long as it means I live with meaning. And it may seem stupid to throw the rest of my life away over a sport that I haven't had too much success in, but it isn't about that. I don't care if I lose my future, I care if I lose my meaning. It doesn't make a difference to me if I'm good or mediocre at it what I care about is the absolute refusal to quit, the refusal to doubt myself, the inability to lose hope, the never ending reserves of determination, the unceasing struggle. I don't wrestle because it's fun, I don't wrestle to win a medal. I wrestle to find out if I was ever even alive. I'd gladly die for my dream not for any reason other than to be alive. And if you aren't willing to die for something then what are you even living for?

In my time wrestling I have seen many people and I have seen how they deal with doubt, expectations, and nerves. Ultimately I believe this to be a metaphor for life as a whole and I'll explain. When we went as a team to wrestle any other team that was much better than us some among us accepted defeat before it had even come. But why? Because it's easier to roll over and die than to give everything you have to survive? The way I see it WE WERE ALL BORN INTO THIS WORLD AND WE WERE BORN EQUAL AND FREE. No baby is better than another, they are all equally helpless. None were superior, none could oppress the others, none could stand triumphant over another. But somewhere between then and now it all changed. So you can either face your opponent believing you to be equals or you can shamefully bow to their will. I know we were both born into the same world the same damn way so why should I let him beat me? Why should I give up? As far as I know we're equal. So may the best man win. And may we fight hard. And I see this implicated throughout all of life: we refuse to put up a struggle if we do not deem victory as likely. To quote Ronald Reagan, "Admittedly, there's a risk in any course we follow other than this, but every lesson of history tells us that the greater risk lies in appeasement" and "If nothing in life is worth dying for, when did this begin -- just in the face of this enemy? Or should Moses have told the children of Israel to live in slavery under the pharaohs? Should Christ have refused the cross? Should the patriots at Concord Bridge have thrown down their guns and refused to fire the shot heard 'round the world?". There has to be a line between what you can put up with and what you will not put up with. A line that only moves forward not backwards. So when you have your own insurmountable challenge just realize that a life of running away is a life of regret. A life of giving up is a life not worth living.

Let's circle back to desires and addictions, every single person alive knows what is right and wrong. We all know through guilt. We feel guilt when binge eating because we know it is not the correct choice. We all know deep down what is right and wrong but we keep making the wrong choices. Our desires are not different. We all know that we should be working out not watching porn, we all know we should be eating eggs not mcgrittles. We all know deep down. When there are goals to be accomplished why do we sit around like fools? We know we should be chasing victory. The reason is enslavement. We have been enslaved by our desires and addictions. Do you really want to eat icecream? Yeah it's tasty but so what? It only brought you pleasure for a single moment while it tasted sweet. Now it sits idly in your belly as a monument to your inability to make good decisions. You don't truly want ice cream, you truly want to be happy. And happiness cannot come until after desire is renounced. Sugar is a drug that gets you addicted. Think about it, is there really any reason to have it? No. It is sweet for a moment then vanishes. It requires a continuous flow of ice cream to get permanent satisfaction. And anything that needs a permanent supply to get a benefit is a poor method.

If it was easy to do it wouldn't be meaningful

The less you want the more you have

Even in the worst of circumstances, he who is free may still be happy

Abundance can be achieved by gaining resources or lessening desire

I am not afraid of death, I am afraid of not being to live

True abundance is not measured by quantity, rather one's own relative definition of abundance. Depending on the circumstances we have become accustomed to we will have certain tolerances to our desires. Often times the more and more our lives change the more they stay the same. He who desires nothing has everything and he who desires everything has nothing. And yet we cannot understand how nothing can make us happy. Because we are blinded by the very desires that obstruct our journeys. For another example the richest of countries have the highest suicide rates. For some reason humans even when given better lives on paper cannot escape despair until they have made peace within their own hearts. The lesson is ultimately give a man a fish. Give a man everything he "needs" to be happy he will be joyous for a day, give him the ability to ask what happiness is to him and the means to find it and he will be happy for a lifetime. If you don't know what you missed out on you can't be saddened by it. If I was not born my family would not have the ability to mourn my inexistence. Now it makes no difference if you arrive to that state out of ignorance or out of indifference. The point here is that if you would only be saddened by not having something if you knew about it you have the ability to remain indifferent regardless. So it is possible to be indifferent to poverty and any other misfortune. To summarize desire is distraction, the more you want the less you will feel you have. Happiness and enlightenment cannot come from external sources. Money, women, drugs, sex... these will not make you happy if you never adress the true root of despair which has been inside of you all along. How can you expect to heal inner pain with external factors? Like I said even in the worst of circumstances he who is truly free in all aspects can be happy.

Personally this means a lot for me, I don't have great luck with women and even when I was offered sex I turned it down. Now being a virgin for life used to scare me but now I realize I do not need it. If it comes then it will come. If it does not I will remain unaffected. No matter when I die or how little money I have I will always be happy because I desire nothing.

If I do not allow anything to affect me permanently I will have become strongest of all: water. Being able to move without resistance amongst the vicissitudes of fate retaining what makes me me no matter where it takes me.

#philosophy

[aion-rsa]

How The Long Song Spotlights Ignored Black Caribbean History

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This article contains spoilers for The Long Song.

The Long Song is the first miniseries featured in PBS Masterpiece’s 50th Anniversary season, and it’s U.S. arrival nearly three years after airing on BBC One is highlighting themes that some viewers may not be ready to process but that remain incredibly important.

The show is an adaptation of Andrea Levy’s 2010 novel recounting the story of how Jamaican slaves gained their freedom in the 1830’s. Levy worked with white screenwriter Sarah Williams on the script for The Long Song before her death in 2019. Although some may want to criticize Williams’ involvement for removing the Own Voices status from the series, it is important to note she successfully worked with Levy to adapt Small Island into a TV miniseries which aired on Masterpiece in 2009. Critics and the Black British community alike praised the miniseries for featuring the Windrush Generation. Overall, the script of The Long Song maintains Levy’s vision without any evidence of the white gaze or other forms of editorial interference. 

Each of the three episodes follows July (Tamara Lawrance), born into slavery, and how she later gains her freedom. She was taken from her mother Kitty (Sharon Duncan-Brewster) who worked cutting sugarcane to serve as the ladies’ maid for Caroline Mortimer (Hayley Atwell from Agent Carter). The Christmas Rebellion in 1831 followed by the subsequent Parliament bill banning slavery in Jamaica two years later and the changes to society that came as a result are told from her point of view. The story is told with a frame tale, as Older July (Doña Croll) narrates the events of her life in order to publish a book.  

It is highly likely that, when the series first aired in the UK, decision-makers did not believe a story wholly focused on slavery in the Caribbean would be relevant to US audiences. Vice President Kamala Harris’ family background brings Jamaican history to the forefront. It is entirely feasible to imagine someone like July somewhere in her father’s ancestral line. Black History can’t be confined to just what happened in America when we’re discussing Black immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean. Although I haven’t been able to trace my own family tree from the nearby former British colony of Trinidad and Tobago, I am reasonably sure my own ancestors have a similar story. 

Masterpiece executive producer Susanne Simpson said in an interview that she is working with the UK and international production companies to address concerns that PBS series do not feature enough racial diversity. Some may see The Long Song as a step backward in that regard because it is a slavery-driven story, but this misses two important factors. First of all, The Long Song was not originally intended as a co-production with U.S. networks or streaming services. The primary target was U.K. readers of Levy’s book and Anglophone Caribbean audiences. Secondly, this is the first time a PBS scripted drama has centered slavery as the main plot point. Thirdly, new racially diverse scripted series that avoid and/or address those concerns are still at least a year or two from distribution. 

Atwell’s Caroline, along with her relatives and guests, abuse July physically and emotionally. She is threatened with the lash for extremely minor offenses. Caroline calls her “Marguerite” most of the time because she refuses to see her as fully human. There are scenes where slaves are whipped and families separated. As July is the ladies’ maid, she has some power over fellow slaves such as Hannah (Jo Martin from Doctor Who). These aspects are not what makes The Long Song unique in comparison to recent TV series, such as the 2016 Roots miniseries as well as the 1970’s miniseries, The Book of Negroes and Underground. How the series highlights both Jamaican culture and how British colonialism affected society is what sets the show apart.

Since this show is set in the 1830’s, there is strong evidence of Black culture that is separate from the norms imposed by slaveholders. Although the language is at times dated (“pickaninny” also shortened as “pickney” is now an offensive term, for example), you still hear the accent unique to Jamaicans today. Lenny Henry’s voice as Godfrey is not entirely realistic for a slave who never left Jamaica, but this does take some prior knowledge of what a typical accent from the area should sound like. The soundtrack incorporates the musical styles unique to the island and the separate Christmas party the slaves held also brings this culture to life. 

The racial caste system in Jamaica plays a huge role in the life of July and those around her. Her father, Tam Dewer (Gordon Brown), was the Scottish overseer of the plantation which gave her a higher status than many of her fellow slaves, despite her darker skin tone. Her friend and first romantic interest Nimrod (Jordan Bulger) is a free man but he ends up losing his status because white people decide he is guilty of a crime. Miss Clara (Madeline Mantock) is described as a quadroon (one-quarter African ancestry) and uses that background to secure a marriage that guarantees a higher status in society. Marriage as a form of social mobility would have been impossible in American slave societies because consensual interracial marriages or relationships were outlawed. July’s decision-making in Episodes 2 and 3 regarding the new head of the plantation, Robert Goodwin (Jack Lowden), is entirely influenced not only by her own desires and past trauma but also by the society around her.

Some may regard these plot developments as enforcing trauma-bonding stereotypes or problematic ideas about love under systems of oppression. July’s narration is tinged with romantic ideals that do not undergo serious scrutiny until later in the story. However, it is important to note that marriage was the only way a woman during this time period could secure financial stability that didn’t depend on agricultural labor. The color-based caste and class system did prevent some individuals from moving up in society, but intermarriages between whites, Africans, various immigrant laborers, and indigenous groups created an entire segment of society whose heritage was mixed. July’s relationship should be seen as an element of historical truth, likely from Levy’s ancestors. The conclusion of that part of the story drives home that many of these relationships between Black women and white male planters (plantation owners) were inherently unequal and exploitative. Any children from these relationships were also the property of the white men. 

The last two episodes of the show discuss the fallout from the official end of slavery in Jamaica, a semi-equivalent to the Reconstruction Era after the Civil War. Abolition did not mean the end of the white-dominated rule in Jamaica, as the British Empire ruled the island until 1962. Although Black plantation workers were paid wages to cut the sugarcane, they owed rent to the plantation owners. This was used to force workers to work longer hours for reduced compensation. July’s loyalties are divided between Goodwin and the field workers who she knows are being treated unfairly. Goodwin’s efforts to increase production failed as the workers went on strike. After the strikes, many former plantation workers moved inland to cultivate unclaimed territory, but independent farming led to poverty and illness. July may have had dreams of rising above the sugarcane workers, but economic racism dashed this dream.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

For many viewers, July’s journey is going to be incredibly triggering and emotionally draining but there is a light at the end of the tunnel. The ending which reunites her with a piece of her long-forgotten past is incredibly satisfying. Levy’s novels have inspired many Black British writers and it is very possible post-pandemic that there will be more Black screenwriters telling their own stories and forgotten histories on screen. 

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[palmerasenfuego]

An Open Letter to His Cop Father

My hope is to make clear, maybe for the first time, my perspective on a variety of points of contention between you and me, not so that we can reconcile them necessarily, but so that I won't feel the need to tiptoe around you any more. Addressing this problem I have with codependency and self-censorship has been my task ever since I left my ex, and I think you yourself would agree that in the last year and a half, I have become much more vibrant and present than I ever was as the kowtowed ghost who let his controlling girlfriend dictate the terms of his existence. In the following letter I strove to be unsparing, but only for the sake of clarity. I don't hold any resentment towards you. I want to take ownership of my own role in our dynamic so that we can move into the future, unencumbered.

A few months ago, you and I argued over my career with regard to the classes I plan on taking for my Masters in library science. After we'd each calmed down, you said that you were only suggesting I keep my options open, as we'd both noted that the future of public libraries, and indeed social services generally, is uncertain at best and possibly doomed. You merely meant to suggest that I look into classes that would prepare me for information career opportunities in the private sector, in the probable case that public libraries no longer exist in the future.

At the time I didn't want to argue any more, and I agreed that you had made good points. I would keep my options open. What you didn't understand, however, was that I only grew "defensive" about my plans after I thought I presented them as exactly what you claimed to be suggesting—that is, I would look into a variety of library and information science related fields while keeping my focus, somewhat idealistically, on public libraries. But then you interjected, as you so often do, with all the reasons why my plan might not be such a great idea. Had I considered the uncertain future of public libraries? (Of course I had.) Wouldn't a librarianship at a prestigious museum be a more stable and lucrative career? (Maybe, but nothing's a safe bet.) 

Because I stood my ground, because I intend to fight for what I believe in while I still can, you accused me of being 'defensive.' There's always an underlying tension between us, you said, which is something I don't deny. Why do I always seem resentful? you asked. You accused me of only viewing you as a resource to draw on without any care for you as my father, a totally unfair and manipulative thing to say of your son who followed you and your other son for a decade, watching you coach his brother’s baseball team, without him; your son who desperately wished his father understood his art and literature recommendations, but knows they'll usually go unheeded; your son who, despite knowing what his father did to his mother, and resenting that his father won't speak with his mother at all, still loves his father. 

You can't seem to recognize sometimes that your mistakes could have had any effect on the way you and I relate, and I think you think any antagonism between us is me blindly rebelling, an absurd image to have of me, the most docile black sheep any flock has ever had. To be clear, what causes the tension between us is a feeling in me that I won't even be heard if you've previously decided you're in the right. So rather than speak up, I generally keep my mouth shut, which is not healthy for me, nor is it productive of the kind of relationship I'd hope to have as an adult with my father. 

You would prefer that I not stake my future on public librarianship, because you would not do that. Therefore, I shouldn't do that. I don't care whether you disagree with me. Ultimately, none of this letter is about convincing you of anything. What I want to address is that I have never felt like my voice would be heard, by you or anyone, really, which is in part a result of having my perspective so often subjected to critical (over)analysis from you, as in our argument over public libraries. Or, it’s a result of having my enthusiasm mocked anytime you and my brother didn't appreciate something I did. 2001: A Space Odyssey is a masterpiece of American art, and you Philistines didn't watch more than 15 minutes of it, but to this day you make fun of me for wanting to watch it with you. 

When we had disagreements over any supposed transgression on my part, you quickly dropped the pretense towards being a concerned parent to assume your interrogation persona, with me the guilty-until-proven-innocent suspect. One of the oldest tricks to get someone to fess up is asking the same question several times, forcing the suspect to repeat their story. Any time you seemed suspicious I wasn't answering your questions straight, it would be "You sure? Positive? Nothing else?" The only thing missing was the aluminum chairs and the spotlight in my face. All disagreements were structured this way, with you above, already having the answers, and me below, forced to acquiesce to the judgement presumed. Attempts to defend myself when I felt I was unfairly accused were met with the reprimand to not "talk back," something I've internalized deeply, corrosively, finding myself drawn, in friendships and in love, to those who shout me down or laugh me out. As a result, my natural cowardice and timidity have festered for years.

You have long urged me, since childhood, to be more assertive, less passive, to stop "playing the victim," and these were not unfair or inaccurate criticisms. Like Kafka with his father, none of this is to say I blame you for the effect you've had on me and my inability to speak up. I was a timid child, easily influenced by social pressure and a need for approval, most especially from you. From my child's view I was enamored of what you seemed to represent, which I suppose is unremarkable, as sons and fathers go. Perhaps also unremarkable of fathers and sons is how elusive your approval seemed to be. There was never outright disapproval of me from you, and I always knew you "supported" me. But let's not pretend like we at times did not and do not appear alien to one another. Which is normal, healthy, so long as it's accepted, because we’re separate people, but the trouble fathers and sons get into is they each seek validation from the other—the father struggles to impose his own standards on the son and see his progeny flourish as so judged by the standards imposed, and the son seeks to establish himself as his own person, separate but unable to escape the looming shadow of his father, the son's primary model for what a person is.

One instance where I probably tried to voice an objection to your discipline, an instance where I knew the gravity of the issue you wanted to convey but disagreed that what I'd done deserved such a strong reprimand from you, was when I drew a Klansman in my notebook, being the bored and doodling 8th grade boy that I was, watching a documentary about the Klan in history class. I wasn't approving of the Klan by drawing a man in a pointed hood, but to your credit, you saw an opportunity to make clear the need to take seriously the violence and oppression that African-Americans have faced in this country, and to never trivialize symbols of that violence and hatred. (Fatefully, I was similarly firmly scolded by my mom when she saw a swastika in one of my notebooks, which is when I learned my Polish grandmother escaped the Nazis as a small child in the belly of a freight ship, traumatized by the sight of dead stowaways floating past her, and this after the death of her brother at the hands of fascist thugs.)

When the black community today raises the cry "Black Lives Matter," what they want is a reckoning from American society for the way that black life has historically been deemed disposable. Africans were ripped from their mother country, brutalized on a treacherous trans-Atlantic voyage, and sold off in a land where the climate and environment were entirely alien, their various languages as unintelligible to one another as to their masters. They were subjected to centuries of horrific slavery, whippings, rape, and familial rupture. Any who managed to escaped their bondage risked dogged, murderous pursuit by slave patrols. The de facto opponents of slavery won a civil war and slavery was abolished, and for another century black people were terrorized with lynchings by whites (who were never prosecuted), all while being denied economic opportunity and treated as less-than-second-class citizens in public spaces, not to mention suffering a complete lack of political representation. It wasn't until 1968 that the political rights of African-Americans were codified into federal law, but the mere granting of rights does nothing to address the long term devastation wrought on the black community, which built this country for free, this country that so long denied them not only equal rights and opportunity, but denied them their humanity. And to this day, black people go murdered, in broad daylight, in their cars, or while they sleep, both by the police and by others, without justice. "Black Lives Matter" needs to be said because American society does not seem to acknowledge that black life matters, despite America's lofty ideals for itself as a place of equal protection under the law. If black lives matter, then all lives matter, but not all lives matter until black lives matter. 

Saying "Blue Lives Matter" is to be presented with that history, turn it around and say "Yeah, well what about us cops?" No one chooses to be black; all cops choose to be cops. If you want the profession of policing to have the respect you demand people give it, then cops should be aware what they're signing up for: a thankless, demoralizing job that answers to the public, and not the other way around. To say "My job is hard so we matter too!" when, after centuries of oppression, the black community says, "Our lives matter!" is a gross exercise in bad faith. This is why "Blue Lives Matter" is offensive, utterly bankrupt beyond the expression of resentment towards an imagined enemy. American society has no doubts about the value of the lives of police officers. What easier way is there to bring the full force of the American justice system, with a swift investigation and aggressive prosecution, than to murder a cop? The justice system has time and again demonstrated the societal value of police officers' lives. The same can not be said of black lives, which is why "Blue Lives Matter" is far more trivializing of the racism still faced by black people in America than some 13-year-old kid's drawing of a Klansman.  

Part of me worries that writing this is futile, that you'll see this as another instance of me "talking back," i.e. saying what challenges your airtight prosecutor's argument. Another part of me thinks what I’m saying resonates with your bedrock American and Catholic values. After all, I had to get my principles from somewhere. But if this doesn't move you, I will rest well knowing that at the very least I'm not shutting myself up any more, and that I'll finally be coming to you as a man and not as your child, facing you squarely, head no longer bowed.

I love you.

#blm #letter

[kiarasdeclassified]

how to write a foolproof DBQ essay

the document-based question essay, or dbq as everyone in the ap history realm likes to call it, is arguably the most dreaded part of any ap history essay. the time constraints are short, there’s way too much stimulus to get through on time, and meanwhile, you have no clue if you’re getting all 7 points. maybe you can just skip it? maybe if you write a really sloppy essay you’ll at least get a 3 on the exam? or, maybe, you can follow this guide in preparation for another post coming later this summer & ace your dbq every. single. time.

first things first, you should get comfortably familiar with the official college board dbq rubric. 

i’ve simplified the descriptions a bit so you can better understand them.

thesis statement (1 point) construct a sentence located in either the introduction or conclusion which adequately responds to the prompt rather than just restating it.

contextualization (1 point) describe a broader historical context related to the prompt in about three sentences.

evidence (1-2 points) accurately describe content from at least six documents without quoting to get the first point, then use the content to support the argument described in the thesis to get the second point.

analysis & reasoning (2 points) explain how at least three of the documents’ point of view, historical situation, intended audience or authorial purpose is relevant to the argument described in the thesis.

synthesis/outside evidence (1 point) demonstrate a better understanding of the prompt by relating the argument to another piece of specific historical evidence found outside of the documents (use a specific example rather than a simple phrase or reference; this can be done in up to 5 sentences, but if written properly, just 1 can suffice).

total: 7 points

next, here’s a few things that you should know before preparing to write a dbq:

while i did take ap world history during my sophomore year & wrote some practice dbq’s, i never took the ap world exam, so here’s some tips from my ap world teacher who has taught ap world for almost 17 years:

don’t stress over complexity. while it seems as though every single essay you provide to the college board has to demonstrate your complex vocabulary, they really don’t care if you use “a lot” instead of “plentiful” or “numerous.” all they’re looking for is those 7 points on the essay.

don’t stick to formatting so much. like i said, the college board doesn’t care about a perfect essay when it comes to history exams. while ideally, you’ll have 4-5 paragraphs in your essay, all you are required to do is hit all 5 criteria of the rubric & include an introduction & conclusion. your essay could be 6 paragraphs long; your essay could be 14 paragraphs long; your essay could be just 3 paragraphs long. as long as you did something to satisfy all criteria, you can safely secure your 7 points & be on your merry way.

do NOT make an outline. you only get 55 minutes to write your essay. creating an outline, which seems like a helpful way to ensure you get all 7 points in theory, will actually just cut down the time you have to actually expand that outline into a full essay by 15-20 minutes. even if it only takes you 5 minutes to write the outline, DON’T DO IT. i promise you, every minute of this essay will matter, especially since its handwritten & you’ll take longer to write it versus if the test was taken digitally.

structure as you go. to elaborate on my previous point, as you read each document & transition from reading to writing, you’ll want to start getting an idea in your head of how exactly you’re going to answer the prompt & turn your thesis into an essay. i’ll go more into detail about structuring later in this post.

let’s quickly go over historical bias:

historical bias plays a part in every document you’ll receive on the dbq, even if it doesn’t seem as though the document you’re reading has any bias in it whatsoever. there are four parts you can choose to write about for your analysis points, commonly abbreviated to HIPP by many ap history teachers so you can better remember them. however, my teacher used “SOAP,” an abbreviation which i personally like a lot better as it tends to be slightly simpler:

S - speaker: the author who wrote the document. for example, if reading documents relating to a prompt about early twentieth century work conditions in the US, a journal entry written by a worker will show bias toward the opinion that work conditions were subpar, as it is a firsthand account of how work conditions truly were.

O - occasion: the historical timeframe which the document was written in. for example, if reading documents relating to a prompt about the Great Depression, a chart showing government spending rates overtime will show bias toward the theory that the GD affected not only citizens but national governments.

A - audience: the intended audience for the document. for example, if reading documents relating to a prompt about Luther’s Reformation, a letter to a Catholic pope from a reformist will show bias toward the theory that reformists wanted to persuade Catholics into conversion.

P - purpose: the purpose for writing the document. for example, if reading documents relating to a prompt about the Opium Wars, a newspaper article published in Britain urging others to support the war will show bias toward the theory that the British wanted to push their goal of opening a trade market with China.

now, here’s everything you need to write a perfect thesis statement:

the thesis statement tends to be one of the hardest parts of writing the dbq essay. while it is only 1 point, there’s so much criteria you need to fill to actually get the point. there are absolutely no half points given, so if you miss one thing, you miss the entire point. it’s not your fault, but it’s 100% your problem.

the simplest format i can suggest for a successful thesis is the following:

- restate the prompt.

- answer the prompt. 

- give reasons as to why your answer to the prompt is arguable. this part is crucial, as it will help tons in creating body paragraphs.

what i recommend doing is searching up dbq prompts from old ap exams & trying to write proper thesis statements out of them. every tuesday, my ap world teacher would put a sample prompt on the board, have us spend all class reading our prep books for information on the prompt, then writing thesis statements. before class ended, he would check them & let us know whether or not we’d get the point if we were taking the exam. try this out yourself, & if you don’t have an ap history teacher to check them for you, see if your thesis answers the following questions my teacher always used to determine point-worthy theses:

“so what?” a thesis which does not answer this question needs clarification, a relationship between the reasons & your answer, or a connection to a larger issue.

improper thesis: the north & south fought the civil war for many reasons, some of which were the same & some different.

better thesis: while both sides fought the civil war over the issue of slavery, the north fought for moral reasons while the south fought to preserve its own institutions.

“how & why?” a thesis which does not answer this question is too open-ended & lacks guidance for the reader. for example, if you look at the better thesis i wrote above, it answers “so what?” but still lacks clarity. we can help specify exactly what we’re referring to with a little tweaking:

while both northerners & southerners fought the civil war against what they each considered oppression, northerners focused on oppression of slaves while southerners focused on oppression of their right to self-govern.

in addition to proper structuring, it’s good to know what exactly the college board is looking for in an answer so that you can be sure to pass the question-answering tests. the college board loves to throw in specific key words in their prompts which can also make everything seem like it’s all sounding the same. here’s a few of the most popular dbq prompt key words you may see when you take the exam for yourself & what to do if you see them.

evaluate

to determine the value of

evaluate the extent to which differing ideas of national identity shaped views of United States overseas expansion in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

use any word which indicates value in your thesis. for example, “differing ideas greatly shaped views” or “differing ideas did little to shape views.”

identify

to indicate what something is

identify the reasons early Islamic societies used to justify slavery

perhaps the most straightforward of all key words, simply list your reasons. “early Islamic societies used …”

analyze

to examine and/or explain closely in detail

analyze the responses of Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration to the problems of the great depression.

use words which demonstrate detail in your thesis. for example, “administration’s responses to the problems included ...” or “administration’s responses to the problems described ...”

compare/contrast

to find similarities & differences

compare the motives of the North and South for participating in the American Civil War.

separate your comparisons from your contrasts. for example, “while both northerners & southerners _____, northerners _____ while southerners _____.”

determine

to figure out, to establish a fact

determine the success of twentieth century African decolonization efforts.

use either a direct positive or negative word to defend your argument in your thesis. for example, “decolonization efforts were greatly successful” or “decolonization efforts were not successful.”

now that you know what you need to prepare for beforehand, let’s go over what to do during the exam.

to ensure you can complete the essay in time, try your best to stick to a mini-schedule recommended by the college board: spend 15 minutes reading your documents & 40 minutes writing the essay. the quicker you can finish reading (not just skimming through the documents, but instead reading thoroughly & gaining a clear understanding of each document without having to completely reread them), the more time you’ll have to write, so try to work quickly, but don’t rush yourself so that you have time to process each document & their meanings.

to help simplify the writing portion, there’s a few things you should try to accomplish while reading:

read all documents

off to the side, summarize each document without quoting or paraphrasing. mention all parts of document. to save time, when you need to reference it again, use your summary instead of rereading. these summaries can be used to help get your evidence point.

identify 1-3 parts of historical bias (remember SOAP) if possible for each document. this will help you get your analysis point.

categorize documents by reasons for supporting a certain argument, opinions, political biases, etc.; this will help you write the reasons in your thesis.

write your thesis & incorporate all parts; proper structuring, keyword answer, & clarity for your reasons.

& finally, time to write the essay!

since there’s no real tips or strategies that’ll help you specifically write the essay (as i can’t tell you how to answer every possible prompt you’ll be given), here’s an outline that if written correctly WILL get you all 7 points no matter what.

introduction paragraph

contextualize (broadly explain historical context and/or timeframe related to prompt) in 3 sentences

thesis statement

body paragraphs

topic sentence for each reason

write document summary & it’s significance (use as many documents as needed for each reason) for 6 documents throughout all body paragraphs, aim to do this for 7 documents

explain historical bias & significance for at least 3 documents throughout all body paragraphs, try to do this for 5 documents

closing sentence

concluding paragraph

synthesize (incorporate outside evidence) in 3 sentences

restate thesis

my last piece of advice: relax.

while the dbq essay tends to be incredibly intimidating to a lot of the students who cross its path, it truly can be done successfully with proper preparation & a solid strategy. after reading this incredibly lengthy post, save it, screenshot it, take note of it somehow & you can look over this + other resources later on to help you study. at the end of the day, it’s still possible to get at least a good score on the ap exam without a flawless dbq essay; so instead of focusing all of your energy into one thing, just take a breath & give yourself breaks when you need to. good luck, & happy studying! :)

#dbq #dbq essay #studyblr #study #school #essay #apush #ap us history #ap world history #apwh #ap euro #ap european history #kiarasdeclassified

[dmwelch77]

Hooray for the Matriarchy! Forgotten Voices

Hooray for the Matriarchy!

Week one: Forgotten voices

Matthew 1: 1-6, 12-16

You always know it’s going to be a fun Sunday morning when the sermon starts with a reading of a genealogy. More on that a little bit later.

A couple of years ago I did some work at the Museum of the Bible, in Washington DC. [Yes really, there’s an entire – and pretty large – museum dedicated to the Bible. If you’re ever lucky enough to be in DC, it’s worth a visit for reasons shall we say both good and bad.]

There is a whole floor in the museum describing the ‘global impact’ of the Bible. The exhibit begins with a series of displays about the Bible in American history. It’s a complicated picture. In one cabinet is a volume of ‘The Woman’s Bible’ published by Elizabeth Cady Stanton in 1895. Stanton was an influential advocate for women’s suffrage and blamed the teachings of the church for much of the problem of denying women their rights. Her Bible included commentary interpreting what she saw as the Bible’s real message about women.

In another cabinet is one of the so-called ‘Slave Bibles’ of the early 1800s – part of a large display outlining how the Bible was used both in justifying slavery, and in fighting for its abolition. ‘Slave Bibles’ radically edited the Bible text – missing out stories and sometimes whole books – to downplay themes of freedom and liberation and emphasise themes of obedience and submission. Verses like this one from Titus “teach slaves to be subject to their masters in everything” definitely made the cut, used to perpetuate the idea that slavery and ownership was the natural – even God-ordained – order of the world.

In a roundabout way, that’s why we’re beginning a new series this week: Hooray for the Matriarchy! How we read the Bible matters, and for the next four weeks we are going to be exploring the stories of some women from the Bible.

We can’t possibly do that justice in just four weeks – neither incidentally should it be the only time in the year when we talk about women’s stories. In the next three weeks, we’re going to hear the stories of Deborah, Miriam, and Hagar. This week, we’re beginning with the title ‘forgotten voices’ – women whose stories are minimised and marginalised; women who (along with men) are often unnamed in the Bible, yet whose inclusion in the text – I think - tells us something about our own calling in the world. How have women’s voices been forgotten – and why does it matter?

Pop quiz: does anyone know how many women are named in the Hebrew Bible – the Old Testament? I wonder if we started shouting out names, how many we could muster. [Maybe we shouldn’t – we’ll be here all morning]

There are 111 women named – and very many more unnamed. Some we know – Ruth maybe, or Esther – both have books of the Bible named after them which helps. Many we may have never noticed or heard. But the women’s stories are there.

All about the patriarchy

We started with that reading from Matthew 1, listing the ancestors of Jesus – beginning with the patriarchs. Time and again in the Bible we’re told that God is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Right from Sunday school, we teach stories about the male heroes of faith [or so-called heroes – many of them are pretty violent, interesting that these are the stories we teach children!]. Abraham, Moses, Joseph, David, Samson, Gideon – the list goes on. But listen to that reading from Matthew 1 carefully and you’ll notice that – in an absolute break with how genealogies of the time were put together – four women are named. Tamar, Rahab, Bathsheba, and Mary. Their inclusion is intriguing – but it’s not an utter surprise. The Bible is a remarkable history. Most histories are written by those who conquered, those who won, these are the ones who control the narrative. Yet the Bible – the Hebrew Bible – tells the story of the Jewish people who are constantly conquered, occupied, and exiled. In that context the Bible is often subversive, often disruptive. It is written in a time and culture completely formed by patriarchy (a system where men hold power and women are largely excluded from power) – so the Bible is this weird mix. It is rich with stories of women who are oppressed, but who sometimes have agency. Women who are silenced, but who sometimes make their voices heard. Many of the women in the Hebrew Bible whose stories we know are foreigners, outsiders in Israel. Their stories aren’t the centre of the text, they appear and disappear. We get a little bit about them, then we never know what happens to them after that. Their feelings and actions are unexplored, their story arcs don’t get completed. In a text that is often about power and nation-building, the men’s stories are the point. But the women’s stories are there.

Because God is the God of Abraham, Sarah, Hagar, and Keturah, Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob, Rachel, Leah, Bilhah, and Zilpah. Without these matriarchs we have no more patriarchs.

Without Shiphra and Puah – the Israelite midwives who subvert Pharoah’s orders [to kill every Hebrew baby boy, and instead tell him that Hebrew women just give birth really fast before they can get there – they’ve already pushed them out and hidden them somewhere!]

Without Jochabed who hides her baby in the reeds

Without Miriam who watches over her baby brother and saves his life

Without the Egyptian Princess who raises him

We have no Moses.

And while Moses parts the waters of the red sea – Miriam leads the people of Israel across with dancing.

When Israel sends spies into Canaan, looking for their promised land – it’s Rahab who saves them. Deborah leads the people of Israel in peacetime, as well as in war – a war that’s won when Jael (another woman) puts a tent peg through Sisera’s skull. Tamar, Dinah, the daughters of Zelophehad, Hannah, Esther, Abigail – we don’t have time for their stories, but even to say their names is important, because we don’t. Time and again the fate of the people of Israel pivots on the actions of women. The women’s stories are there.

If we don’t think the Bible celebrates women – as leaders, prophets, a source of wisdom and courage, as leaders of the resistance, subverters, champions of justice – then we’re not reading the Bible very well. Patriarchy is not just a problem in the writing of the text – it’s a problem in our reading of it as well. We continue to emphasise the stories of men, missing out the essential stories of women.

Why is this important? Well – aside from the fact that 50% of the population can’t find themselves in this story if women’s voices are forgotten – when we read the Bible through our own bias, we compound the problem. We weaponise the Bible. We fail to challenge interpretations that justify and lead to injustice.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton wasn’t wrong when she argued that the teaching of the church over the centuries – based on this Biblical text which is steeped in patriarchy – has played a huge role in denying women their rights. From Eve to Mary, women have been cast as either sinners (whores) or saints (virgins). It begins with Augustine in the fourth century – but it carries on and it gathers pace. Here are some of my favourite quotes for you [I actually have a document on my computer called ‘quotes about women’, so I picked out a couple of my favourites]:

(This is from the fifteenth-century manual of the Dominican Inquisitors against witches): “When a woman thinks alone she thinks evil, for the woman was made from the crooked rib which is bent in the contrary direction from the man. Woman conspired constantly against spiritual good. Her very name, fe-mina means ‘absence of faith’. She is insatiable lust by nature. Because of this lust she consorts even with Devils. It is for this reason that women are especially prone to the crime of witchcraft, from which men have been preserved by the maleness of Christ.”

One more? Here’s Martin Luther the great reformer, on the subject of marriage: “Eve originally was more equally a partner with Adam, but because of sin the present woman is a far inferior creature. Because she is responsible for the Fall, woman is in a state of subjugation. The man rules the home and the world, wages war and tills the soil. The woman is like a nail driven into the wall, she sits at home.”

Those are rather extreme examples – but if you go into a Christian bookshop today, or step inside some churches, and you won’t have to look hard to find ideas that are rooted in patriarchy, and that still deny the place, the voice, and the role of women – in church and in society. And ideas like the purity culture that have heaped shame on women for their sexuality and their identity.  

This (weaponising Scripture) is all a problem not just for how we read the Bible in relation to women – but to everyone whose voice is minimalised or marginalised. To every group of people who find themselves pushed to the outside or ignored. I think we all know ways in which the Bible has been used against people because of their race, their gender, their sexuality, or their social status.

The Bible is problematic. Referring to the Hebrew Scriptures, Professor Wil Gafney – a brilliant womanist theologian [if you don’t know her work it’s worth reading – she’s written a brilliant book called Womanist Midrash] – says this about the Bible:

“The reprehensible gender and sexual mores of the Stone and Iron Ages are still in effect for some of the women, men, boys, and girls living in our Digital Age. Our sacred texts do not proclaim or even envision a world without slavery and the subordination of women, but they lay a foundation for us to transcend them and their limitations: ‘Remember that you were slaves in Egypt.’ ‘Do to others what you would have them do to you.’ ‘What is hateful to you, do not do to another.’ ‘In the Messiah there is no longer slave or free, male or female.’”

In celebration of women

The women’s stories are there in the Bible – we need to make sure we tell them well – that means we have to untangle them from their limitations, and from those that we’ve placed on them.

Some of you may know John Bell – if you are a Greenbelt regular. He’s a teacher from the Iona Community, and just a brilliant storyteller around the Bible. He tells a story about leading a retreat with a group of church leaders, where he sets them off into groups. Half of the groups – he asks to write down the names of the twelve male disciples, and also to write down three things that they know about each of them.

To the other half of the group, he says think about all the women who are followers of Jesus in the gospels, and write down what you know about them.

So off they go, when they come back again the men’s groups start and put their sheets on the wall. Most groups have named most of the twelve of the disciples – a few are a bit tricky to remember. What about when it comes to what we know about them? Peter – we know quite a lot about Peter, people could find three things to say about him. Matthew? He’s a tax collector … he collected taxes … James the Less? Lesser than … another James? Andrew? Andrew brought a small boy with loaves and fishes, and some Greeks, and his brother to Jesus.

What about the groups that thought about the women? John Bell says that when they came back with their pieces of paper, there was a whole wall full of information. The women at the well – we don’t know her name, but she gets a whole chapter in John’s Gospel, which she shares with Jesus. No other character in the gospel gets a whole chapter of their own. She’s the first evangelist. She brings a whole village to follow Jesus. [John Bell jokes that Andrew brings a small boy, some greeks, and his brother – for which he becomes the patron saint of Scotland. This woman brings a whole village and we don’t know her name.]

Not all are named

“We know more about the woman who washes Jesus’ feet with her tears, than we do about five of the disciples after whom cathedrals are named. There has been an imbalance.”

There are 22 women in the gospels whose interactions with Jesus are recorded. We don’t know many of their names – but we know their faith and we do know how Jesus responds to them. The woman who was bleeding, and who touched Jesus. The Syro-Phoenician woman who calls Jesus out on his use of racist language. The woman caught in adultery who walks away, uncondemned. The woman who washes Jesus’ feet with her tears. The woman who gives away her last coin in the temple offering. The woman who pours expensive oil on Jesus’ head – which Judas thinks is a waste and Jesus chastises him. The women who wait at the cross, while Jesus’ male disciples flee. The women who watch his burial, who visit the tomb, who are the first witnesses of the resurrection.

They are not named – but they are bearers of the most important news in human history.

I want to say clearly: for those of us who have felt excluded or marginalised or unheard by a version of Christianity that has lifted up the powerful, and silenced those on the edges, the place of these women in the text reminds us that we are all equally made in the image of God. We are all included. We are all in. Against the odds, (yes) from the margins, unnamed, imperfect, nonetheless … the women’s stories are there.

Says John Bell:

“Jesus eats with women, is offered hospitality with women, argues with women, and takes their experience seriously. He engages with, eats with, enjoys the company of, and allows himself to be touched by those who are equally made in the image of God.”

Texts of terror

Women’ stories are there in the Bible – and we need to tell them well. But we also need to tell them honestly. And if we’re going to be honest about the story of women in the Bible, then we need to talk about what Rachel Held Evans called the ‘dark stories’ – or as Phyllis Trible calls them, the texts of terror.

I believe the Bible absolutely celebrates women, and we see that most in Jesus’ life and interactions. But the Bible also contains some horrific stories – women suffer beyond all others, and often God is silent about their suffering. Throughout the text, women are the victims of terror and violence and injustice. Even in metaphor – when Israel is in trouble, she is depicted as a woman. A daughter, destitute on the streets. A mother weeping. A harlot cast out. It’s impossible to read the Bible without encountering the voices of women who suffer.    

And as a woman, approaching those stories is hard.

Rachel Held Evans says that as she read these stories as a young woman: “I kept anticipating some sort of postscript or epilogue chastising the major players for their sins, a sort of Arrested Development–style “lesson” to wrap it all up—“And that’s why you should always challenge the patriarchy!” But no such epilogue exists. While women are assaulted, killed, and divided as plunder, God stands by, mute as clay.”

She goes on:

“Those who seek to glorify biblical womanhood have forgotten the dark stories. They have forgotten that the concubine of Bethlehem, the daughter of Jephthah, and the countless unnamed women who lived and died between the lines of Scripture exploited, neglected, ravaged and crushed at the hand of patriarchy are as much a part of our shared narrative as Deborah, Esther, Rebekah, and Ruth.”  

The story of the unnamed concubine in Judges 19 strikes me as one of the most terrible stories the Bible offers us. It comes at the end of the days of judges ‘when Israel had no king (and) the people did whatever seemed right in their own eyes’. These are dangerous days, violence is everywhere, and those in charge abuse their power. In a gruesome string of events, when the Levite and ‘his concubine’ (or as Wil Gafney translates it, womb-slave [ask me later for Gafney’s translation of Bilhah’s story]) are travelling, they end up in the house of an old man, in a town in the hill country of Benjamin. [In a parallel to the story of Sodom and Gomorrah] a group of men surround the house, demanding that the Levite come outside. Instead, the two men offer up the women to the mob – both the daughter of the old man, and the Levite’s concubine. We don’t know what happens to the daughter, she’s not mentioned again, but the Levite pushes his concubine out, and the woman is sexually assaulted by a group of men and left for dead.

In the morning the Levite gets up to go on his way, seemingly undisturbed about what’s happened to his concubine, opens the door, and finds her on the ground with her hands on the threshold. So he takes her home – it’s not clear whether she’s alive or not – he cuts her body into twelve pieces, and sends one to each tribe of Israel. The story is an indictment (told at the end of the story arc of Judges) of what king-less and law-less Israel has become. Violence begets violence, begets violence, and war ensues between the tribes. [All the men of Benjamin except 600 are killed. All the women are killed, all the children are killed. 400 women are snatched to be wives for the remaining men … etc]

It is a terrible, terrible story. There is no justice for the woman. She is abandoned and used in every way. She is not even named – only the story of the violence done to her lives on. Phyllis Trible says that of all the characters in Scripture she is the least. The least. But her story is there. This nameless woman demands our attention. She doesn’t speak in the text, only her father and her husband speak. And yet she is not silenced. Her suffering speaks for her, calls out for our outrage.

Lest we need reminding, misogyny, violence, and abuse of power are not confined to the distant past. Violence still disproportionately affects women and girls around the globe. Worldwide, one in three women has experienced physical or sexual violence because she is a woman. Women are more at risk of domestic violence, sexual assault and harassment, forced marriage, sex trafficking, and genital mutilation.

Although people of all genders experience violence and abuse online, the abuse experienced by women is specifically sexist or misogynistic in nature. Online threats of violence against women are often sexualised or target a specific aspect of a woman’s identity (involving racism or transphobia for example). 21% of women in the UK have experienced online abuse or harassment.

Time and again, in the Bible, the suffering of women points to the need and the fight for justice. To the failure of Israel to live up to its calling to care for the poor, the orphaned, the widow, the stranger. And when you read the story of the Levite’s concubine, or the story of Tamar, or the story of Rizpah … [Rizpah’s story we probably don’t know. She was Saul’s concubine. She sits in the desert with the corpses of her sons for six months after David has had them killed, fending off wild animals and birds, demanding justice for their deaths and burial for their bodies, and she wins – David has them buried along with the bones of Saul and Jonathan …] When we read these stories it’s impossible to not to think about contemporary stories [the mothers of the disappeared in Argentina parallel Rizpah’s story].

I think the Bible teaches us that these terrible stories … [do you know, I’m not ‘glad’ that they’re there – I don’t think ‘oh it’s good that women’s stories are included in the Bible even the violent ones’ … we wish they weren’t there because they’re awful stories.] But they are there and what they point us to is the need and the fight for justice for women and girls and men and boys around the world, and our part in that.

In her book, Texts of terror, Phyllis Trible concludes:

“The story is alive, and all is not well. Beyond confession we must say ‘never again’ … speaking the word not to others but to ourselves: Repent. Repent.”

Here – I think – is the challenge and the invitation to us, as we read the stories of women in the Bible. Yes – to be inspired by their leadership, their courage, their flaws, and their faith. Yes – to be encouraged that their stories are told, even against the odds, from the margins, subverting power, leading the resistance. But most of all to be reminded of our own calling as the people of God always to bring good news that is freedom for the poor, and justice for the oppressed.

Let’s pray

May we – each one of us – find ourselves in this story of faith.

May we know our value, our worth, and our identity – formed, each one of us, in the image of God.

May we learn to listen for the stories from the margins and amplify their voice.

May we be compelled to act for justice, to resolve oppression and exploitation wherever we find it.

May these stories not trouble us in vain – may we use them for some good.

[gffa]

(1/2) Hey GFFA question for you... I haven't read "Master and Apprentice" yet, but I've been following your metas avidly. I agree that Qui-Gon's half-baked desire to just start running around unilaterally fixing every injustice in the galaxy by force is CLEARLY not the way to go. Obviously there was lots of interesting discussion in "Queen's Shadow" as well about the ethics of working within a flawed system and accomplishing less vs. the dangers of going rogue as Padme grappled with her choices.

(2/2) In one of your metas you said something interesting about how the New Republic’s failure to thrive and fix the galaxy’s pervasive problems also showed the pitfalls of radically trashing the old system instead of affecting change from within. My question is: DO you think the Republic could have been saved/successfully reformed through internal activism (given the sheer scale of corruption, greed, and impotence near the end of the Clone Wars) and if so, HOW?

I HAVE BEEN TURNING THIS OVER AND OVER IN MY HEAD because it’s a really fascinating question to ask and, at the end of the day, I’m not sure there’s really an answer, partly because it’s complicated and we’re missing so many huge pieces of Star Wars and also, if there were easy answers, god knows we’d be doing them IRL already.I’ve been turning over the question, “How do you effect and keep actual social change?” and I keep coming back to one thing at the heart of it–you have to have a general public that has a majority of people onboard with it.  Without that, if the majority of the public doesn’t care or disagrees with a social change, eventually it’s going to fall through and revert back to the way it was before.  You can leeroy jenkins it all you want, but if there’s no system in place to support those changes, if there’s no public widespread demand for it, it’s going to revert within years, if not months.That’s the big problem with the Republic, that the general public was apathetic about holding senators to responsible law-making and law-enforcement.  There were pockets of people who were protesting things like the clones being a slave army (as the Propaganda book showed us) but they were not the majority, the majority of people seemed apathetic on it, so long as they didn’t have to fight.  I mean, even with Padme’s big speech to the Senate, slavery wasn’t a part of the conversation (despite that it was the perfect place to bring it up and she says nothing about this, show how little a part of the conversation this was), but instead about how “buying people is making us poor”.As important as Palpatine was to this whole process, he didn’t invent the corruption that was in the system.  I do tend to believe that the Republic could have been saved if he hadn’t been there, that the war polarized everything and took the good-hearted politician’s jobs from difficult to basically impossible, that the sheer scale of the war kept everyone from having the time or resources to do more than put out immediate tire fires and never getting time to address deeper roots of problems.  But, had the general public reached a consensus on an issue and been willing to hold the government to it, not even Palpatine’s manipulation of the system could have held up against the uniting of quadrillions of beings.This isn’t to say that individual action had no place, because people like Bail and Mon and Padme and the Jedi are working with the system, bettering it or helping people when they can, which is important to do.  Queen’s Shadow was fascinating because it did bring up the idea of going rogue politically (which was a much gentler version of what Qui-Gon seems to be suggesting), that she did basically do exactly that during TPM, she went around the Senate after they didn’t immediately act, and Padme pays for it for years, which stymies her ability to actually get anything done or help anyone, because she’s put on the outs for it.  It sets her back and she has to work really hard to gain trusted allies--and this is her full time job, to work on this kind of influence and policy-making.  And it’s difficult, but she does make some progress, she does make the galaxy a little better, through using the system so that their can actually stand.Without Palpatine’s influence, I think more instances of this could have helped steer the Republic back from the brink.  It would be harder towards the end of the war, once everything was so fucked up, but the whole point of the war was that everyone was pouring their energy in the wrong directions and becoming increasingly unwilling to listen to anyone else, so the Separatists just kept digging in their heels as much as the Republic did.  And that wouldn’t be easy to change.  For example, you know it was his influence that had the Senate voting for making negotiations with the Separatists illegal, which meant that both sides got further entrenched in their arguments.  You take Palpatine out of the equation and it doesn’t magically get fixed, but Padme and Bail and Mon’s efforts suddenly have a chance of reopening negotations, which has a chance of settling things with the Separatists.It does make things further complicated by some of the things happening in the war, though, like, a lot of people joined the Separatists because of disenfranchisement with the Republic, but they’re also part of a group that’s literally enslaving entire planets and murdering rulers.  They try to murder King Katuunko, they try to enslave Mon Cala, they funnel support to the Zygerrians who start up their slavery again, etc.  The Separatists don’t want to just be left alone, they planned to have war from the beginning, that’s how they were found out on Geonosis in the first place.Basically, once the war started, it got a hell of a lot harder to clean this mess up because the corruption got so much worse.  But I do think it was possible to have reformed the Republic through internal activism and working within the system, had Palpatine not been there.  We see glimpses of how people start to make a real difference through it (like Padme in QS, as a most recent example, or how the Jedi help free the people that the Separatists want to enslave), but the problem is that nobody knew Palpatine was evil.  We, the audience, through hindsight, foresight, and omniscient point of view know it, and sometimes it’s easy to forget that it’s not super obvious in-world, that the vast majority of people were entirely fooled by him, so their point of view looks like they have a chance to reform it through internal workings, they have a chance to make real, lasting help to people through crawling forward in progress, but they have no idea that Palpatine is roadblocking them and making it impossible.So, ultimately, the answer is yes and no.  The Republic was worth saving from the point of view of those who were in it, because the alternatives were far worse, there was no feasible alternative, the Separatists were oppressing more people, the Empire was the ultimate in oppressing people, even burning it all down and starting over DOESN’T FIX ALL THE PROBLEMS.You have to get widespread public sentiment (and willingness to actually enforce) onboard, you have to make sure the entire thing isn’t falling apart around you, you have to get the politicians to actually do their fucking jobs, and all of those are different roles done by different people and all of them need to be in place.  And, like, radical activism does sometimes have its place, but that’s when democratic options are off the table, which can be complicated to figure out when that is, but widespread public sentiment still has to be on your side for that to actually hold--like the worlds that don’t elect a senator and get a corrupt one, then, yes, radical activism might be your only option, to rebel against the non-elected government, but if the public of that world doesn’t really care, then all the leeroy jenkinsing it in the galaxy isn’t going to hold it in place and it’ll just revert right back to where you started.Without public sentiment being onboard, you’re doomed to fail.  And I think that was ultimately the far more difficult problem that never got fixed, because there’s no easy answer to it.  If there were, we’d already be living in a utopia, we wouldn’t have gone through the shit we went through in 2016 onward.  And who the public listens to, who they should listen to, who they’re willing to listen to, who has the experience to avoid a full on smear campaign, who has the experience to speak of these things and who should be governing the people, is a hell of a complicated thing.

#kingofattolia #republic #meta

[loghainmactir]

I think it’s ridiculous the amount of fans Anders has in comparison to loghain, like Loghain saved thousands from being killed at Ost, saved ferelden from Orlais, etc but he’s forever bad because one act of slavery, but Anders blows up hundreds of random civilian people mages and elves and humans and Dwarves that’s okay and super justified - people can be freed from slavery, people can’t be freed from being dead yet it’s more controversial to defend loghain than Anders?

I’ve been thinking about how to respond to this since I woke up. Usually I don’t get involved in this sort of thing because I think it’s probably one of the reasons fandom’s SO toxic these days– character hate isn’t my thing and it never will be, because realistically everyone gets different things from different characters and that’s fine unless it’s cullen, we oppress cullen stans in this house

BUT this is a Take that i’m willing to discuss because the more I think about it the more I find myself disagreeing with it. And in a good way, not a “boo you’re wrong fuck you!” way. So, here’s my Thoughts™:

First off, I think you’re looking at Loghain’s actions in a really, really flippant way, bordering on Loghain Did Nothing Wrong. I’ve absolutely said it before, and I’ll say it again: personally, I think Loghain was a lot less involved with that slavery business than Origins makes it out and it’s largely something Howe manipulated into action, BUT like Loghain says in Just You And I to Padril: that doesn’t matter. He still participated in it. That’s still really fucking bad. (And it especially doesn’t matter in Origins’ narrative, where it’s never really explained why he did it and he’s portrayed as the Main Perpetrator) 

I think you’re missing the Point of “why slavery is really fucking bad”, which… y’know, could be for a number of reasons, but I digress. The alienage elves are never actually mentioned again, and it’s probably for good reason: they were sold to Tevinter, for christ’s sake, the “we use slaves regularly for reason and we’ll actively debate about Why Slavery Isn’t That Bad! :)” country. They are almost undoubtedly lost among the hundreds of other elven slaves, if not actively being hidden and abused, if not straight up dead. 

(Upon this thought, I was like “oh fuck, what if DA4′s protag is one of these slaves? What if it’s a child of one of Ferelden’s slaves and we run into Loghain and the Warden?” oof. good fic idea.)

Anyway: “people can be freed from slavery, not from death” is… bad. It’s like, look at it this way: even IF someone were to free those elves, they’re still suffering from the trauma of abuse. That shit lasts a lifetime, and we don’t even really know what they’d be subjected to: considering Fenris, we don’t know how far that treatment is spread across Tevinter. Fenris believes ALL magisters do this, Dorian says otherwise.

It’s also important to note that Loghain didn’t just do that. “What Loghain Did Wrong” would be an entirely different, far bigger post, but “Loghain saved thousands from being killed at Ostagar” is a much easier point to tackle: he also was, indirectly, the death of thousands at Ostagar. Logic says that withdrawing DID save thousands of soldiers’ lives, but you also have to admit that we also don’t know. Maybe the plan COULD have gone well, and Loghain’s advance might’ve saved the day and Cailan and thousands of other soldiers would still be alive. Maybe they all would’ve died, Loghain and Cailan and Cauthrien and all of their soldiers. We just don’t know, but it’s important to recognize.

My other thought was that this ask got me thinking about Anders and Loghain in comparison! So, Anders: severely traumatized and abused. Spent months, iirc, in solitary confinement, years being abused by templars, and in DA2, he’s looking to free his fellow mages from oppression. Anders suffers from pretty severe mental illnesses. Loghain: severely traumatized by the Orlesians, him & his country are abused by them. In Stolen Throne, he’s looking to free Ferelden from oppression. Severe mental illness. Same character!

I’m kidding, but the comparisons are there and they’re super interesting. Someone smarter than I could probably delve more into it. I was gonna say something else but I got super distracted so this’ll have to do for now (and it kinda turned too big anyway lmao). All this being said, I actually enjoy Anders’ character as well, I think he’s super interesting but probably needed better writing (though, realistically, considering he’s so polarizing as is, that probably speaks to how he’s written, huh?). I think they’re both really complex characters with complex motivations.

Have a nice day!

#loghain mac tir #anders #dragon age #long post #asks #anon #but that's basically it

[glowyelfboyfriend]

How did they ruin elven lore? I’m sorry, but I don’t know much about the games as other people

I didn’t call this blog ‘Elf Salt’ for nothing

-cracks knuckles-

I have a number of issues with how bioware handled elves in Dragon Age and they all interject to create this terrible mess of a mishandled race allegory that should never have happened. The frustrating thing for me is that most of the fandom is content to kinda just skip past these discussions but as someone who is first nations it actually hits real close to home for me.

Anyways...

Elves in dragon age are very clearly ‘inspired by’ if not completely based on racial experiences and history of Jewish, Roma and Indigenous peoples. (I can only speak to first nations knowledge so its what I will discuss the most).  Historically in Thedas the Elves lived across most of the land and were more or less the dominant race (I’ll get back to that later...). After a massive war they were nearly completed wiped out and enslaved by the Tevinter nation that defeated them. Elven culture was absolutely wiped from Thedas, language and history was completely lost, their cities and holy lands were either destroyed completely or overtaken by the people who know enslaved them.

Their experience as slaves has them widely stripped of any of their culture, their language, they are not permitted to learn how to read and are considered more akin to animals than to other humanoid races (sound familiar to American history?). In other parts of Thedas slavery had ended but elves were only permitted to live on designated chunks of land such as The Dales (does that sound familiar? Hm?) until the human authority decided they shouldn’t be allowed to have it anymore since they didn’t follow their christian-inspired religion, thus swooping in to wipe them out again and remove land promised to them.

In modern Thedas, Elves are still kept as slaves in Tevinter and are kept under such tight authority and law in other kingdoms that they are not much better off. In Denerim it is illegal for elves to own weapons. Elves are stuck living in alienages (which resemble both ghettos AND reservations) where there is no work, they are routinely abused/harassed/raped/murdered by humans (and have literally no legal standing to defend themselves as its illegal for an elf to assault a human whereas there are no laws protecting them) and the alienage is routinely locked up so the city guards can completely wipe out the elves living there. 

There are Dalish elves who attempt to recobble together their culture and history, traveling nomadically with the constant danger of humans deciding to try and attack them (this includes templars, city guards and country folk btw). They contend with constant fearmongering that they are doing evil and malicious things for their traditional religion as well as stereotypes of them being thieves (sound familiar???)   

So here is the thing, up to this point, this is just world flavor and world building. There are critics who find the inclusion of these stereotypes and the ways in which they are represented to be an issue in and of itself. I don’t disgree but its not my actual issue. I think fantasy settings can be an eye-opening and cathartic practice, it can give people who don’t experience those racial themes or hardships a chance to roleplay and maybe understand it a little bit more. As someone who is first nations I find getting to play a Dalish elf in Origins and taking people to task for their balant racism and save the world to be incredibly satisfying. 

The issue is.... once you created a fantasy world where this sort of racism exists you need to be EXTREMELY careful with how you use it. And while I think the writers of this series are talented and did the best they could with the limitations of ‘video game’ I think there were some GRAVE errors, particularily in Inquisition and Trespasser that completely ruined any goodwill they had. 

In Inquisition it felt as if they wanted to try and retcon the race issues they had established, or else had completely forgotten that those race issues were based on real-life issues. The two elf companions you get are, frankly, extremely anti-elf. You have Sera who has tons of internalized racism, which in itself is a really interesting concept to explore, except there is no character arc or closure for this. If you romance her as a Dalish elf you never have a chance to bring her around to stop hating on her race and culture, instead she insists you give up your racial identiy and heritage. Solas... oh gods where do I even begin? To keep it short, Solas’ entire point in the plot seems to be to completely undermine and ridicule elves and all the world building the game devs made. He refers to Dalish as ‘children’ and even mocks city elves, both of which are just coping with racial injustices/slavery/genocide over a couple hundred year history. 

If you play Inquisition as any race other than an Elf you will be presented a picture of elves as nothing more than stupid, misguided, shameful people that take what they have for granted and want ‘more’. Which... let me tell you... as a person who is first nations... that is insanely close to what racist pricks think of us today. Painting indigenous religion as ‘savage’ or ‘primiative’ and infantilizing those who follow it, shutting down people who are trying to find some justice for generations of abuse and trauma all while lifting up characters who are willing to throw their fellows under the bus....... its a narrative that is present in modern day real life race issues. This is all presented as Fact with no solution, no exploration, just ‘how things are’. And I think that’s extremely misguided of the writers, and I wonder when they forgot that these themes were based on real life.

Finally, we get to the cherry on top - Trespasser. Before this game we had humans being widely dismissive of elven religion, but in a way where it was clear that they were just ignorant of a religion outside of their own. In this game they decided to take the history of the elves, their culture and religion and completely tear it apart.

It’s revealed that the Gods elves worship are actually not gods but were just Really Powerful Mages. It turns out the facial tattoos (which is totally a reference to indigenous tattoo practices my dudes) that were devotional to these gods were in fact just slave markings because elves enslaved their own race, and Tevinter had never actually taken them down in war - the elves just destroyed themselves.

I shouldn’t have to describe why taking the most oppressed race in the world of Thedas and undoing their culture/religion and history is a shitty move. I shouldn’t have to, especially with the context of the CLEAR real-world parallels. But everyone seems to miss out on how disgusting this really is.

From my own experience, I have heard this shit about my own heritage and people. I have heard white people say that the injustices first nations people faced ‘wasn’t so bad’ because they were ‘already’ killing and enslaving each other. I have read books written by white ‘researchers’ from only a hundred years ago trying to imply the wrong meanings on sacred tattoos and culture. I have heard these arguments to defend colonialism and genocide. 

If you don’t have these real-life experiences, or you decided to play as something other than a dalish elf who might give a shit about their entire history/culture/family/beliefs/identity you will not notice this. It’ll just be an interesting ‘twist’ and I hate it. I hate that dismantling the ONE THING this systematically oppressed, enslaved and genocided culture had to cling onto has been used for a cheap ‘twist’.

Will they do something interesting with it in the next game? I don’t know, maybe. But kicking down and making elves be the sacrifice for something so identity-destroying is just... its bad. It was a bad choice. You know they wouldn’t do that with Andrastianism, they wouldn’t come out and be like ‘Oh the Maker was actually just some guy who enslaved humans for his own benefit’, and you know why. 

The issue is taking ‘inspiration’ for your fantasy world racial pain and then tossing it aside for shallow twists. Yes, its a fantasy video game, but as someone who IS affected by these REAL-WORLD ISSUES I felt completely betrayed and gutted by my fave escape telling me that my in-game equivalent was a fucking dumbass for believing in the culture of their heritage.

#salt #dragon age #I would REALLY appreciate if people reblog this #I'm really exhausted by people arguing this with me #or ignoring it cause its too difficult to deal with #I still love these games #I can enjoy a series and be critical #most of my frustration is about how the fandom DOESNT see this #and then refuses to look when anyone tries to show them #sorry if talking about oppressed races makes you uncomfortable??? #the best thing to do if you are uncomfortable is explore WHY and try to make a positive change #put your white guilt down for two seconds and listen #Anonymous