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uchihaenthusiasts · 2 years

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itachi & his genjutsu

NSFW content - minors dni - group sex - graphic depictions of sexual content - dubcon - blood - female reader - x reader

Itachi doesn’t care much for sex, but he will indulge himself occasionally. He’ll turn down your requests for sex, but will probably expect you to oblige when he’s in the mood. He prefers slower intimacy, as his deteriorating body can’t keep up like it used to.

Getting you on top where you can do most of the work is ideal to Itachi. He honestly just doesn’t have the strength, especially after a hard fight or mission. Unlike his Uchiha brethren, this doesn’t effect his ego. He thinks it’s sweet to have someone care for him for once. He gives little squeezes to you thighs or maybe a soft moan (if you’re lucky) when something feels particularly good.

However, if you catch Itachi on a good day, where his Sharingan isn’t too overused and his body complies with him, this man will fuck like there’s no tomorrow. He has an animalistic need to press his body to your’s and breed you. He needs to finish multiple rounds inside of you to make sure you carry on his Uchiha name. And when your body has had enough and you’ve slumped against the bed, he’ll grab your face forcefully for you to meet his blood-red gaze.

This transports you to a dimension inside the deepest parts of Itachi’s mind. You can feel a cloud-like sort of texture under your naked body, and you mistakenly think that it’s your shared bed back at home. The first thing that catches your eye is the deep red hue the sky is giving off. It makes your skin glow and your mind foggy. Every movement you make feels like it’s takes every ounce of energy in existence and now you truly believe you’ve passed on to the after life.

You lift your shaky hand to examine the chipped nail polish.

“I wonder if this is Heaven or Hell…”

“You’re under my genjuitsu,” a familiar voice speaks slow and soft to you. Itachi is to the left of the cloud-like bed. It startles you. You let your hand fall to your stomach. “There is no reason to be afraid. You are safe here,” Itachi is kneeled down, your cheeks in both of his slender hands. “Okay,” is all you can muster in your shocked state. You allow yourself to put the full weight of your head into his comforting hands. With eyes closed you speak softly. Hopefully he can hear you. “Did you finish?”

Itachi lets out a hearty laugh. “Yes, yes of course I did honey. You’re very good to me,” his hand is still on your cheek, rubbing tiny, comforting circles. You smile. “Why did you bring me here?” You question.

Itachi purses his lips. “I wanted to try something new.” You think about this for a long while, his gentle actions giving you the confidence to go on. “Itachi, please be gentle…”

“Your mind is in a fragile state right now, I wouldn’t do anything to hurt you.”

“I trust you.”

With that, Itachi slowly inserts his thumb past your lips, allowing your tongue to circle the digit. You finally meet his eyes, which are still activated with the Sharingan. He smiles down at you. “You look beautiful with my family’s eyes,”

You halt your movements and give him a questioning glance. To the left of itachi is a small mirror with yourself looking back at it, albeit now you have glistening, blood-red eyes. You pull Itachi’s thumb out of your mouth to stare, open-mouthed, at your reflection.

“It’s just my genjuitsu, but I wanted you too be able to remember this forever,” Itachi says lovingly as he brushes a strand of hair behind your ear. He meets your eyes in the mirror. “And, I think you look beautiful,”

“Itachi…”

He chuckles brightly and kisses your forehead. You feel the same pair of slender hands tilt your head to face the other direction, where you meet… Itachi? This time, he’s standing above you, hand tugging gently at your hair. You look back to where the first Itachi was talking to you and—

To your surprise he’s still there.

“There’s two of you..?” You feel your heartbeat speed up. Itachi is quick to rub circles into your hand. “I plan for there to be multiple of me; I want you to feel me on every inch of your body,” the kneeled figure says, kissing barley-there kisses to your neck. “Oh,” is all you can say as arousal pools in your stomach.

The figure that is still standing pulls you to face him once again, but this time his cock comes into full view, right above your nose. You stare wide-eyed at the member you’ve come to know very well, almost getting deja vu to the first time you and Itachi had sex. The other clone continues to nip at the side of your neck, and it’s all the encouragement you need to slip the head of his dick into your mouth. Circling the tip, you note that this feels so real.

You move to take more into your mouth but are once again caught off guard by the third Itachi that has appeared. He seems to have taken a liking to your thighs, as the figure has began biting marks into them. You let out a surprised noise around the member in your mouth, the figure above you letting out a small moan. The next time he speaks, the voice is noticeably shaky. “I’m still so sensitive,” he speaks into your neck. The neediness of Itachi’s tone gives you a confidence boost. Sliding the cock out of your throat, you preoccupy your hands in Itachi’s silky hair, the one between your legs. “Itachi, baby? Can you do me a favor?” You’re using the voice that sounds like it’s dripping in honey, and judging by the way Itachi is looking at you, you can tell he’s eager to please. Even though you’re talking to only one clone right now, the other two are on the edge of their seat ready to take orders. “Can you eat me out please, sweetie?” You smile at him. Itachi’s sharingan spins wild around his blown out pupils, and that’s all you catch a glimpse of before he’s going down on you.

You throw your head back with a hearty moan. God, Itachi is so good at this, you think. He really takes his time, using his slim fingers to stretch you out just right. You’re still getting used to what the sharingan feels like, but you know that it’s going in circles like crazy right now behind your eyelids. You’re pulling hard on Itachi’s bangs, your orgasam approaching quickly. Just a little more, faster, please, harder—

Itachi chuckles. “Not so fast,” he teases. You slump against the cloud- bed- thing. “I think I could kill you right now,” you say, your approaching orgasam slowly dying off. You close your eyes and let your breathing level out. “I just had other plans,” Itachi says from under you. When did he get there?

You almost forgive him when you feel a figure suddenly above you slowly rub the tip of his cock against your clit, the almost loving action causing you to let out sweet little moans. He finally, finally slips the head between your folds, and doesn’t stop until he’s bottomed out. The stretch is absolutely phenomenal. Your hands are all over his head, back, neck, anything you can get your hands on.

I could stay here all day, you think. You almost get lost in your thoughts, and it’s not until you feel the Itachi from under you start to probe around your other hole that you are brought back from your headspace. You freeze. “Wait Itachi I’m not–“

He shushes you. “Don’t worry, honey. It will not hurt,” he says softly. And you find, as he bottoms out once again, that it really doesn’t hurt. And God, do you feel full. You feel so pliable in Itachi’s hands, overwhelmed, yet in complete control. Maybe this is Heaven, you decide.

Itachi’s breathing is labored and heavy on your ear. “I don’t know how long I’m gonna last, hah,” he breathes, “but I’m not stopping until you’re satisfied.” A shudder runs through your spine. You can’t help but note that this is very unusual sexual behavior for Itachi, and you make a mental reminder to probe him about it in the morning.

There aren’t many more thoughts that run through your mind after that one, though, as the two Itachi’s you’re sandwiched in between begin moving their hips in opposite directions. Somehow you feel so full yet so empty, just wanting more, more. When you finally open your eyes again, you’re met with Itachi’s blissed out face, absolutely taken over with pleasure. “Itachi, do you feel what all of your clones are feeling at once, or is it dulled across of you?” You ask, looking up at him with big doe eyes. He has to screw his eyes shut in order to not cum on the spot. “Hah, I can feel it all at once– ah– my pleasure is quadrupled right now,” he trails off with a moan.

In your sex-driven state, you get a devious idea. There are still two clones to either side of you that have been pretty idle since penetration; petting your hair or rubbing small circles into your arm. You grab both of their members at once, guiding the one on your left to your mouth and circling it with your tongue while simultaneously pumping the other in a fist. The clones above and below you quickly shove their faces into your neck with a wild moan, and that’s about all the warning you get before you’re being filled to the brim.

All of the Itachi’s are bucking their hips, chasing a mind-shattering orgasam. You honestly don’t think itachi has spoken this loud in his life, his usual quiet demeanor out the window. You can feel the warm cum already leaking out of you, the most unpleasant part of this experience thus far. With four sweaty bodies surrounding you, you begin to crave a hot shower and your bed. “Itachi…” you mumble sleepily everyone slumped together in a pile, “can we go home?”

It’s over just as soon as it began. You eventually awake again after who knows how long, feeling more tired then you ever had before. Itachi’s eyes have faded back to their usual dark grey and blood is streaming down his face. You know that he did this on his own terms and no one forced him to do it, but he really does push it too far. Seeing your boyfriend hurt is enough to pull you from sleep’s grasp.

You slowly pull off of his spent cock (which has been inside you for god knows how long that sex genjuitsu lasted) and make your way to grab the needed cleanup supplies. Itachi always pushes himself too far, you think. When you return, you find him in the same place you left him, and for a second you worry that he might’ve passed out. Wiping the dried blood from his lashes, Itachi meets your gaze with half-lidded eyes and softly takes your hand. You sing soft praises to him about how good everything felt and you see a content smile dawn his face.

You finally shimmy your way into bed and pull him against your body. Face pressed into your chest, Itachi finally lets the pull of sleep consume him, dreaming of the breakfast he’ll make you in the morning as a ‘thank you’.

#itachi uchiha #itachi x reader

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isolatedbubble · 3 years

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Romance in MXTX, Priest, and SHL

MXTX: Flower, Wine and Dreamworld

The romance in MXTX's works is like flower that grows in ice and snow; colorful, bright and hopelessly romantic, blossoms in misery and hardships.

It features a distinct "us against the world" mindset, depicting love as the only constant in the world. It's an eternal "dreamworld" detached from worldly matters, the perfect escapism as well as a source of strengths in the face of cruel reality.

Both MDZS and TGCF are a critique of mob mentality.

The contrast between CQL and MDZS is very interesting. While the former ends with LWJ taking charge, and therefore changing the world for the better, the novel ends with wangxian isolating themselves from grand politics and focusing more on helping individuals as recluse. It has an essentially pessimistic attitude towards the morality & intelligence of the collective.

TGCF takes a slightly more optimistic approach, featuring the crowd being courageous under the right circumstances. However, both works share a similar undertone: putting one’s absolute faith in the collective is dangerous, whereas unconditional trust and devotion can be only found in one-to-one connection

MXTX herself compares MDZS and TGCF to 花间一壶酒 (A cup of wine among flowers), MDZS being the wine and TGCF being flower. She also compares MDZS to 风雪夜归人, the person returning home from snow and wind, and TGCF to 红泥小火炉, a small red furnace.

Priest: Breezing Wind and Burning Iron

The romance in priest's works is more complicated. It's the most gentle in its normal state, when it is rational and collected, in which case it's like the breezing wind, soothing, sweet and light-hearted. It gives the individuals more incentive to achieve their individual and/or societal vision, as well as more reason to value their own lives & well-being.

In Faraway Wanderers, the most distinct feature of WenZhou relationship is how in naturally sync they are, and how comfortable & smooth their dynamic is. They both have past burden, but it doesn’t matter, because they bring simple joy, understanding and happiness in each other’s lives.

In Sha Po Lang and The Guardian, the ML’s lingering love for the MC motivates them to become better version of themselves, to care about others, and to form a holistic vision about bettering society.

In The Defective, Lin Jingheng(MC) explicitly said that Lu Bixing(ML) is the only meaning in his life. He had little incentive to care about his own life after his revenge plan fell apart. LBX helped him reconnect with his inner idealism, and gave him a reason value his life.

When the passion and fiery energy manifests itself, however, the romance is like burning iron, blood and fire. It isn’t actually toxic or unhealthy, but it's not pure and innocent either; in this case, it strives for something deeper and more intense, never content with the past or the present. The sheer intensity of relationship is like a double-edged sword, walking the fine line between unconditional devotion and dangerous obsession.

SHL: Spring Water and Healing Open Wounds

The romance in SHL is like "spring water"; it's warm, gentle, nurturing. It breaks through the boundary between individuals to bring the couple closer to each other, taking them back to a utopia of their childhood dream, away from social pressure and responsibility. The theme central to their relationship is “salvation”: how love is able to bring people back to integrity.

Both drama wkx and drama zzs have lots of regret about their past sins and wrongdoings. Four Seasons Manor is essentially a metaphor for purity, acceptance and the safety of childhood home. How to make drama wkx open up and accept this safe harbor as his home is one of the most significant plot-lines of the show.

SHL couple is way more emotionally vulnerable and expressive. A significant part of SHL arc is healing the wounds in an open and honest way. They cuddle and confide in each other way more often, talk about their shameful past and even cry about their regrets in front of one another, which is very rare among MXTX/Priest works.

The heat of the relationship sometimes gets too hot and even burns; in other words, there are constant miscommunications, conflicts and misunderstandings in the relationship. However, they can never let each other go, because it's the only source of warmth left for them in their hopeless lives filled with regrets and guilt.

Similarities and Differences

*Note that this is not a SHL/TYK comparison. TYK is kind of an “unorthodox” priest novel; you will know what I mean if you have read 3+ of her works.

Relationship Dynamic & Narrative:

In MXTX’s works, the concept of “romance” itself is divined; and the characters are illustration of the ideal of “undying love”. People are made for one another, to complete one another. Her works use colorful symbolism (silver butterflies, the emperor’s smile, the 3 thousand lanterns, etc.) to depict this romanticized ideal of love.

For MXTX, the romanticization of “destined love” is one of the most recurring themes of her novels. Therefore, the readers look at their relationship through rose-color glasses. Obsession is usually framed in a jolly & romantic light, and doesn’t feature much tension or stress, and has less negative or unhealthy undertone.

In most of priest’s works and SHL, soulmates are not born but made, so they have to figure out how their relationship works step by step. Therefore the narrative is less of a “rosy picture”.

Priest has a habit of using derogatory terms to describe relationships that are mostly healthy, but somewhat “bloody” and edgy, full of excessive passion and obsession. The most common phrase is “爱生忧怖”, a Buddhist term meaning “love results in worry and fear”.

SHL obviously has to be more subtle in expressing love. That said, drama WenZhou are way more emotionally vulnerable and expressive than their novel counterparts, as well as most Priest & MXTX characters. They have a dramatic falling out once in a while, even towards the end. They barely fit the Chinese definition of Zhiji (to know me/to understand one another), but are “lovers” who are buried deep in their passion instead.

Past, Future and Evolvement:

In SHL, characters are encouraged to treasure past impressions that are thrown in figurative “wrappings”, whose luster is derived from age-old experiences (Psychological Types, Carl Jung). In other words, they are encouraged to root their love in a shared past, a Utopia of innocence.

The contrast between The Defective and Word of Honor is very interesting to observe. Both involve long separation, and the suffering and personality changes hat comes from it. SHL narrative frames their innocent childhood as something to cling to and return to. Drama WKX is encouraged to accept his identity as Four Seasons Manor disciple because it was part of his childhood past. This is a significant part of drama WenZhou relationship.

In The Defective, the narrative doesn't encourage the couple to dwell on the past that much. On the contrary, the all-knowing AI explicitly discouraged the MC from “comparing past to present”. They are advised to accept changes, however painful it might be, and build a better, more equal dynamic out of it, evolving from one-sided pandering to fighting side-by-side.

In Priest’s novels, the characters rarely return to something in the past, but look into the future. Change is usually framed as inherently beneficial, albeit usually painful and rocky, the implication being that you need to constantly strive for something better.

Sha Po Lang is a good example of this, with Gu Yun’s changing attitude towards Chang Geng after he as he matures, gradually showing his intelligence in politics. CG starts referring to GY as Zixi instead of YiFu is also a sign of this change---to see him as equal rather than a parental figure & protector.

The Defective is even more obvious in this regard, with both parties uncomfortable with the change initially, but gradually adjusting to the changes during their 16-year separation. The ML also stops calling MC by his surname “Lin”, as a sign of viewing him as equal.

In MXTX’s works, change in personality or relationship dynamic is neither framed as painful or good. It just happens. It’s a natural flow that take place when it does. Their relationships are rarely challenged by change. They are objectively at a better place compared to their past, but it’s merely the result of a series of events rather than a deliberate choice or struggle.

WangXian’s relationship naturally changes over time after WWX’s rebirth, but neither of them really struggles with the change.

Xie Lian doesn’t even recognize Hua Cheng as the someone from his past, so they start out as friends getting to know each other.

Salvation and Changing one another:

Priest herself stated in an interview that she doesn’t believe in the concept of salvation, since people have the inner capacity to be their own savior. Therefore, priest characters usually don’t actively try to change their partner’s morals or personality. Some might be willingly influenced by their partner, but there’s rarely an element of moral condemnation. Even when there is a conflict between different values, the options are 1) to reconcile them by choosing the middle ground 2) to maintain their independence and tackle it with nuance 3) to break up.

On surface level, Mo Du/Silent Reading is about Luo Wenzhou being Fei Du’s salvation. However, as LWZ pointed out himself, Fei Du would’ve been a good person at heart with or without his influence.

In The Defective, when Lu Bixing mistakenly thought Lin Jingheng stayed in the Eighth Galaxy against his own wishes because of their relationship, and that their priorities are irreconcilable, he even thought about breaking up. Of course he was not serious about it, but this showcased that he would never try to change LJH’s convictions.

In SHL, however, the concept of salvation is central to the theme. Some find it strange that SHL make drama zzs the more “moral” one of the two, despite his action being more objectively questionable. In fact, the only reason he get framed as more “moral” is that he admitted his fault sooner, and therefore could guide drama wkx’s path back to salvation: to recognize the goodness in people, make peace with external world, to clear his name in Jianghu, and to follow due process with his revenge plan to avoid collateral damages.

“I tried to change you, but you end up changing me”, said drama ZZS. This relationship dynamic is never present in any of priest’s works I’ve read. Priest characters don’t *try* to change one another.

Does MXTX believe in salvation? Hard to tell. One could argue that Hua Cheng would have be way more amoral and even immoral if it hadn’t been for XL. This is complicated and is a topic for another time.

However, it is certain that MXTX MCs don’t condemn each other morally. “The orthodox one defending their unorthodox partner in front of the world” is a common wuxia trope, but the way MXTX novels approach it is very different from SHL.

HuaLian never had a serious falling out about being on different sides. Even when they disagree, they respect each other and love each other exactly the way they are. Hua Cheng didn’t approve of Xie Lian saving Mu Qing, but he didn’t interfere with Xie Lian’s decision. Xie Lian feels responsible for helping Shi Qingxuan in Blackwater arc, but he is perfectly fine with HC helping He Xuan keep secrets. In several cases where they have different values, they are able to make it work with ease.

LWJ never *morally* condemned WWX for his action, and never once objected to WWX practicing demonic cultivation after his rebirth. In fact, LWJ never objected to WWX’s morals; in their previous life he was worried about his safety, and struggled with what to do about certain situations due to his family background, but difference in morality is not an issue for them.

The “righteous” one does not feel the need to guide their unorthodox partner or to be their salvation with regards to integrity.

*The similarity & differences part is a bit messy and some points are not fleshed-out. Sorry about that.

**I don’t claim to have the right interpretation. The lens by which we see different styles of romance is ultimately subjective.

#mdzs #tgcf #mxtx #tian ya ke #mdzs meta #word of honor #shl #sha po lang #mo du #can ci pin

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snowbunnywatching · 2 years

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I used to be an active racist pro white (in Europe not US). The thing is, even though it's been several years since I stopped totally to speak about these subjects.

I still have shared, on many occasions, to my family, my former hate for race mixing as well as my concerns about the white population dwindling. I probably bnever stated this in such a frontal way, but I kind of implied to my close one (especially my two little sisters) that I would totally disapprove any interracial union from them. Considering what I was saying at the time, they probably believe that I wouldn't even speak to them anymore if they had interracial relationship. I was very conflicted, angry and self-convinced at the time.

I regret, because I should have no say in my sisters dating choice (yet they never blamed me or hated me for being this controlling towards them) and because I am stuck with this racist image in my family that I can't get rid of without losing my credibility.

How can I tell them that I support them and love them no matter who they choose to marry or date ? I mean, sure I should probably just say this, but such statement would be so unexpected and out of character coming from me that they probably would think I'm being ironic or that I've became totally crazy.

You want to tell your family that you no longer hold those racist beliefs you expressed to them in the past, but you're afraid of "losing your credibility"?

Umm, excuse me? Your family thinks you harbor some horribly hateful beliefs, and you're worried about them finding out that you don't hold them anymore?

Realizing that you made a mistake and working to make it right isn't a sign of weakness. It's a sign of strength and maturity.

Ideally, you should contact your family right now, tell them that you used to hold racist beliefs that you now realize to be in error. The sooner they can be free from their beliefs that they're family with a racist, the better.

Thank them for their patience in having suffered your racist rantings over the years. Tell them that you're working on improving yourself (things like that don't happen overnight) and ask them for their forgiveness and support.

I suppose you could start dropping hints about your change of heart and hoping that they'd catch on. But realize this: The longer they (mistakenly) think you're still a racist, the more suffering you're causing them.

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crystalsenergy · 3 years

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where do you project yourself? | Pluto in the houses

psychological projection is one of the things that human beings do most. when they project themselves, they seek to give to the other what belongs [or should belong] to themselves.

you project yourself:

1st house - in what external conditions say you should be, and you go through sudden personality changes over the course of life. there may be a need to be completed through others' views of you.

2nd house - in a material life that can mean to you the search for meaning in the world, in the material things in which you can seek self-worth.

3rd house - in [not so deep] relationships with people in everyday life, in communications, in human interactions, in exchanges, there may be a need to be completed through what you receive from outside after sharing more of you with the world [social networking dynamics, for example].

4th house - in the family, in the home, in what the house is or should be for you. your home builds your personality / individuality, your family marks your growth during life.

5th house - in your expression in the world, in love, the possibility of exaggerating in this expression [egocentrism], or the other extreme: traumas with situations in which you would like to express yourself and live in a more risky and light way, and couldn't do it. projection directly linked to the ego.

6th house - in a routine and at work, since these are the things that give you the most meaning, you live in search of internal meaning based on these routine things and the construction of earthly meaning.

7th house - in relationships, especially loving ones. he / she is, soon i am. getting lost in the middle of relationships, merging with the person you are relating to.

8th house - in the deepest connections that can be achieved, in connections with yourself, in spiritual life, in the occult, in the most mystical things, in the unknown, in sex.

9th house - in your beliefs, faiths and philosophies of life. here we have religious fanatics, people who believe in something and hardly change their minds, and believe that that belief means everything about them. they project themselves mistakenly and with inflexibility assume for themselves traces of beliefs and values that they clung to.

10th house - in your goals, in your material life, in your career, being able to believe that your identity is what work and these earthly achievements means to you.

11th house - in your friendships, in social groups, groups in general, in collective ideals, which end up being incorporated into your personality as if they were you.

12th house - in what you feel in a collective sense, in what you feel from the outside, in the perceptions of the world, in the things people say outside.

the important thing is learn to dissolve this projections in order to become a more evolved person, a person with a more developed ego, more connected to yourself, to what you were born to be.

#pluto #pluto in houses #pluto in 1st house #pluto in 2nd house #pluto in 3rd house #pluto in 4th house #pluto in 5th house #pluto in 6th house #pluto in 7th house #pluto in 8th house #pluto in 9th house #pluto in 10th house #pluto in 11th house #pluto in 12th house #pluto in astrology #astrology posts #astrology

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cto10121 · 3 years

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Does R&J Play With Gender Stereotypes?

So I came across this piece of meta by @hamliet that rather intrigued me:

There’s also another layer here: the imagery Romeo uses for Juliet (the sun) and that Juliet uses for Romeo (the moon) is the inverse of how imagery was typically presented in those days. The moon was feminine; the sun, masculine. Even if we look at Romeo and Juliet’s respective character traits, Romeo is the flighty, impulsive, love-struck one who cries all the time, while Juliet is the decisive, bold, and loyal one. That’s the first thing Juliet declares to Romeo in the balcony scene: that she will always be loyal, and she shows this in every choice she makes in the story.

Let’s break this down.

“the imagery Romeo uses for Juliet (the sun) and that Juliet uses for Romeo (the moon) is the inverse of how imagery was typically presented in those days. The moon was feminine; the sun, masculine.”

Romeo does indeed call Juliet the sun, but Juliet never calls Romeo the moon—or likens him with anything symbolically feminine, come to think of it. The closest she or the play gets is a small but clear association with night: Romeo has “night’s cloak to hide me from their eyes” and Juliet implores “loving, black-browed” night to give her her Romeo. Even then it is so that he can “make the face of heaven so fine / That all the world will be in love with night / And pay no worship to the garish sun.”

Instead, Juliet consistently uses the same love language of authority as Romeo does with her, calling him her lord, husband, knight, “day-in-night,” “mansion of a love,” “god of my idolatry,” and, (my particular favorite), “tassel-gentle” or “falcon.” “Pilgrim” is the lowest social rank she uses, but of course she is following Romeo’s pilgrim-and-saints flirtation and its wink-wink bilingual allusion to his name. Romeo’s use of “sun,” then, could be viewed in the context of both lovers conferring cosmic/earthly authority, beauty, ownership, and sovereignty to each other—the Elizabethan equivalent of calling each other wife/husband. And of course they begin doing that immediately after they marry.

Even if we look at Romeo and Juliet’s respective character traits, Romeo is the flighty, impulsive, love-struck one who cries all the time, while Juliet is the decisive, bold, and loyal one.

Definitely not. Romeo is plenty decisive and bold—making the first move in wooing Juliet, climbing the orchard wall, showing himself to Juliet, immediately agreeing to marry her, nearly killing himself when he thinks Juliet might not take him back and, er, actually killing himself for her. I wouldn’t say he is impulsive, either—though he makes decisions fairly quickly, it is almost always with some deliberation beforehand (“Can I go forward when my heart is here?” “Shall I hear more or shall I speak at this?” and his monologue after Mercutio’s exit) and of course there are instances in which he restrains himself (“I am too bold” and his monologue after Mercutio’s death). The most accurate description of Romeo is that he is a risk taker—at least when he is well and truly motivated. And even then it does not rob his deliberation or even his wits.

He is also not flighty. In fact, he proves just as loyal as Juliet—as soon as he meets her, he forgets about Rosaline and leaves her clear behind. He doesn’t once waver in his conviction that Juliet is for him and makes plans to die with her (and does!). His love for Rosaline is clearly framed by the narrative as shallow, performative, and passive, and the verse bears this out. He was never in any kind of relationship with Rosaline—his love was an unrequited crush that he was at perfectly liberty to have ditched, frankly. After that, it’s Juliet, Juliet, Juliet until he dies.

Also, once more, Romeo is no crybaby. He explicitly cries a total of two times—one even before the events of the play, when he pines over Rosaline under a grove of sycamore, and another when he’s 1) seen Mercutio get mortally wounded, 2) killed Tybalt, 3) learned that he is banished from the city, and 4) mistakenly believed that Juliet no longer wants him (the Nurse’s reply is vague enough to be misinterpreted); at the very least he is devastated to have been the cause of her pain. Anyone would break down in those circumstances. Juliet herself breaks down on hearing the news and arguably is more verbally vehement than Romeo—namely, that even the words “Romeo is banishèd” are worse than if herself, Romeo, her parents, and Tybalt were dead. She ends that monologue with a passive suicide threat: “And Death, not Romeo, take my maidenhead!” How anyone can argue Juliet isn’t as lovestruck as Romeo is beyond me.

What Shakespeare was most likely aiming for was showing the mutuality of R&J’s love with parallel scenes and even language. Both have chances to act strong, decisive, and bold, both show vulnerability and great emotion and passion, both are lovestruck. Both demonstrate so-called “masculine” and “feminine” traits, which is almost always culturally-and time-based, anyway. There are only a few key differences between the two—almost all of the above traits, however, they both share. It’s almost as if…Shakespeare understood that no man or woman had all masculine or all feminine traits.

Moving on to the conclusion:

In other words, Shakespeare was deliberately playing with gender and its stereotypes in the play, which gains an even more interesting layer to it when you consider that Shakespeare was himself almost certainly bisexual (his sonnets are preeeetty explicit). It’s not a patriarchal narrative; it can well be seen as a queer narrative in a patriarchal society. And it shouldn’t take two kids having to kill themselves to get society to realize how effed up it is. It isn’t an out-of-touch play, but instead one extremely relevant to our society 500+ years later.

You just opened up 200+ years of fandom wank, OP. I’ll just do a quick sum-up.

The Sonnets are a complete mess. They are contradictory as hell, there is clearly more than one persona speaking, there is evidence that Shakespeare edited and revised them, evidence they were published with his permission, quite a few sonnets are based on pre-existing sources, and, most damnably of all, none of the most likely candidates for the so-called Fair Youth and Dark Lady fit the narrative of the Sonnets perfectly or even satisfactorily—if there is even a clear narrative to these things to begin with. Sonnets were artificial works whose clichés and conventions were heavily satirized in Shakespeare’s own works—Berowne’s own rant-y sonnet swearing he would never believe in love sonnets comes most readily to mind. They were usually not meant to denote an actual real-life relationship, although there was a kind of “game” in trying to figure out which parts are true and which ones fiction. At least one sonnet sequence had a completely fictional addressee (Fulke Greville, I think).

Shakespeare’s sonnets do break a lot of these rules and conventions, and radically, and as they seem to have been compiled over many years, they lend themselves to autobiographical speculation. But, as a bit of a poet myself, I feel this: No one writes 154 sonnets—plus a whole narrative poem!—to one lover or even multiple lovers. Poetry is much less personal than laypeople think. Outside the sonnets, Shakespeare is not linked to any man romantically, and, besides his wife, only to two women (unnamed citizen’s wife and Jane Devanant).

Even if we assume Shakespeare’s bi, though, that doesn’t mean R&J is a queer narrative, which brings us to…

It’s not a patriarchal narrative; it can well be seen as a queer narrative in a patriarchal society.

A queer narrative that has its lovers express their love through the language of heterosexual marriage (husband, lord, wife, lady, pilgrim/saint), and commit suicide by a chalice-and-blade symbolism that mimics heterosexual sex (Romeo drinking a “cup” of poison and Juliet stabbing herself with Romeo’s dagger. Freud couldn’t have done it better). If Shakespeare was thinking “gay allegory!!!” he would have had to at least change or erase the symbolism (straight coding?) of the double suicide, or have Juliet attribute to Romeo explicitly feminine imagery. He would have to have done some major plot rejiggering. He would have had to, in short, change the whole story.

(Unless by “queer narrative” you mean “anything that has an emotionally constipated male lead who doesn’t growl sexily and a female lead who doesn’t cry/faint at the drop of a hat.” That’d be most every narrative, lol.)

Also, I’m hard-pressed to think of love romances that are 100% patriarchal narratives, and those that do (Casablanca, maybe?) are not really true ones, anyway. Patriarchy inherently opposes all romances of love and sex, including heterosexual. It demands that men be raised as soldiers to kill enemies, slaughtered, and discarded, and women as chattel and land to be bought and sold. Marriage was that transferral of property. Having children is necessary, not out of love and care for them, but to propagate the species and create even more future warriors and womb incubators. It grudgingly accepts only (mostly straight and like maybe 1 or 2 gay) love narratives that can be subsumed into this narrow paradigm, but the tension of interpretation is always present. Ideally, it prefers to ignore, diminish, scorn and mock, or even suppress them. I suspect most people’s problems and discomfort with R&J stem from this pathology, this deep-seated unease over anything that touches on human experience patriarchy can’t quite control or subsume.

Shakespeare was obviously no lover of patriarchy (in his personal life, though…well, it’s debatable). His plays resist it greatly to various degrees, and R&J is no exception. R&J hews much closer to the reality of heterosexual love and love in general, which are informed by, though are not inherently tied to, patriarchy (as are gay relationships, sadly). Shakespeare is just being a good writer in throwing most of that rotten apple away; it doesn’t apply to what he was trying to do, anyway. R&J’s challenge to patriarchy, though, is heterosexual in nature.

And it shouldn’t take two kids having to kill themselves to get society to realize how effed up it is. It isn’t an out-of-touch play, but instead one extremely relevant to our society 500+ years later.

True dat.

#romeo and juliet #shakespeare #cristina metas #rj meta #r&j meta #rj are just so boyxgirl op #accept it and you will find peace #repressive traditional gender roles are back in fashion it seems #the victorians couldn’t accept romeo as a man either and had him be played by an actress #but if we’re going to take our notions of gender from the victorians of all people well…

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silvanable · 3 years

Text

Holiday Season : Johann Georg Faust ( Secret Santa )

this is a secret santa gift from one of the discord serves i’m in for the ikemen series, and after getting permission to post, i’d like to share it will all of you~

honestly it’s really just shameless softness here because i wanted to gift something cute between the oc and faust

↪ GUIDELINES

✒ tags : fluff, secret santa gift, canon x oc

✒ notif crew : @sleepingindevildom ♡

✒ warnings : n/a

✒ word count : 2171

It was the winter season now.

The months since her arrival had seemed to pass by so quickly. It was all still so foreign and yet so familiar to her at the same time. This place had become a home, strange as it was, and a place where she believed she belonged now.

One place, in particular, was the warmest and most welcoming, a place that brought her that true peace of belonging and homeliness.

A small church.

It was nothing like the grand cathedrals that the 21st century glorified. It did not reach far into the sky like the skyscrapers of the future. Its bells did not toll and ring out far into the rolling hills for all to hear. No, it was quaint and beautiful in its own way— a carefully sculpted structure of prime gothic architecture, detailed in the most stunning and accenting ways of statues and stain glass windows. Inside was no less breathtaking, as each pew was carved with ornate details, careful placement, and brought a strange comfort and calmness. Ceilings raised high with intricate bracing, taking nothing away from the beauty each decorated corner held.

It was no Notre Dame but it was still beautiful— far more beautiful even.

The caretaker of this church, however, likely influenced her opinion of the building.

Johann Georg Faust.

Anyone who was ever even slightly fascinated by the occult or unconventional things of this world would find the name familiar. Faust, after all, was a man of legend. Not for his accomplishments, of course, but for the curious tale that had been spun around him.

There was no saying if the tale was true, but one might, considering that it was since he was an immortal vampire of legend— or similar to the legends at least.

Faust was no less an enigma though, which was partially why Vanni was here.

Faust, as a skeptic of higher powers, might not celebrate the holiday season that had come around but she certainly did— it was all a part of her beliefs but now it was especially dear.

It was different for her this time around, though, because it would be the first holiday season she would spend in 19th century Paris.

Vanni tugged her navy coat closer over her body, the fur that lined its helms tickled over what little skin of her fingers and face that was exposed to the open air.

The cold was a horrible thing, because of the frightful chill, but more so because the brunette could feel the itch growing in her throat. She bit it back though, taking another slow breath as she nestled in her coat further, counting on the layers of blue that adorned her body to keep her warm.

It was only a matter of time before the familiar outline of the church came into view. A smile crept its way over her lips as her feet began to move faster, eager to finally arrive.

A hand stretched out, the small girl pushed open the heavy, wreathe decorated doors. The cold air rushed in behind her, eager to fill the new and far warmer space. She was quick to shut the door, forcing it with her shoulder to not dare to let the little warmth escape.

The loud slam of the door echoed in the open halls of the church, signaling her arrival.

No one was there to greet her though. It was not quite that surprising, despite it being a celebrated holiday for many, this place was far out of reach for many people. It was a near treacherous journey being out and away from the city’s usual safety.

Vanni did not mind it. She liked the walk, the way it was nestled out near the fields and the woods in its own corner of paradise.

Perhaps that was why the man resided here. Faust liked to be left alone to his work and to worry less about appeasing the masses of a faith he did not share.

Vanni let out a small cough but the itch in the back of her throat only grew. She had tried to fight back the urge but her lungs simply did not approve and the cough only grew hoarser.

Her body curled in on itself as she leaned down to brace herself against her leg, covering her mouth with a hand as if that would somehow stop the air from escaping her. With each attempt to breathe in, she only found herself a short gasp.

It was a moment before she was able to recover and steady her breath. Her lungs took in greedy gulps as she pressed a hand to her chest to calm her frantic heart.

“You should not be traveling in the cold with a cough like that.” A familiar blunt voice reached her ears.

Bright golden eyes found the familiar figure of a man— far closer than she had thought— merely steps form her.

“I’ll be fine now,” Her voice was soft, almost swallowed by the calm quiet of the empty church, “It’s warmer in here anyways.”

Those stunning, pale green eyes fixed on her, drawing closer as Faust stepped nearer.

For a moment, Vanni believed he would scold her for not considering her health, and it seemed as if he was about to but decided against it at the last moment. Instead, she was met with that piercing stare, burning into her and divulging all her secrets.

Most would find the scrutinizing gaze unnerving— the petite female had at one point, but over time had found herself growing used to it. Enough, at least, to not shrink away anymore.

“So, what are you doing today?” She spoke up, breaking away from his gaze to step further into the church.

“Working.” Was the short answer she received.

Vanni reached to loosen the scarf around her neck, allowing the air to caress her exposed skin. Fingers nimbly found the buttons of her coat, popping them open so she could shrug the clothing off her shoulders. Afterward, she draped it over the backs of one of the pews and smoothed out the heavy, blue skirt that hugged and flowed over her wide figure.

She turned back to Faust.

He had not moved, not beyond turning to allow his gaze to follow her, watching as she moved around his church.

A small smile found its way onto her lips as she approached him again.

“You know it’s the holidays, right?” She asked with a tilt of her head, “You’re supposed to be relaxing, not working.”

Not that she expected anything less of Faust. He was a man devoted to his science, his work was his life, and she knew how immersed he would become— so much so that he would forget to rest or even eat as she had found out.

Faust was silent, his eyes flickered over her face. The sincerity and softness in her inviting eyes was always strange to him, but not the strangest part about her. At first, he had considered her an annoyance, someone who bothered him when he wanted nothing but peace and quiet to work, yet sometimes he found his mind linger back to her and the devotion that glowed in her eyes. She was a distraction he both loathed and craved, wanting to understand why she influenced him the way she did with nothing but her presence.

And somehow, despite all certainties he had, she continued to come back here, to him, even after she found the truth of what he was and his own beliefs. He would call her a fool yet he would only be right to call himself the same because his curiosity of her only drew him back again and again.

“I am aware of the season.” He replied. Even if he was a faux clergyman, he knew what the winter brought, religious or not.

“Then you should take a break for once.” Vanni urged.

She could see the wear of exhaustion on his face as she drew closer. The dark, plum-colored circles hung under his eyes were hidden by his glasses, but she did not miss them. There were other small signs in the way he moved, slower, and the way his shoulders drooped with weight despite his best efforts to appear as poised as ever.

Before she might not have noticed these small details but now was different. She would like to say she had grown closer to the man. Maybe he had not opened up to her as much as she had wanted but he seemed to tolerate her, entertain her questions, and she found his company enjoyable. He was interesting but most importantly, she felt safe around him despite everything he had tried to argue otherwise.

“I have work to do.”

She had expected the excuse.

“No,” Despite the softness of her tone, it was still stern, “You might not celebrate Christmas or its season, but you need your rest, even if it’s a short nap.”

Vanni received a quirked eyebrow in response.

She rolled her eyes playfully and grabbed his wrist. “Consider this my gift to you then, making sure you rest!” She said as she pulled him over to one of the pews.

It was not the most ideal or comfortable place but it was all there was for the moment and a far better alternative than the floor. Her fingers slipped from the coarseness of his sleeve as she grabbed her discarded coat. Carefully, she folded the article over into a rough-square shape and placed it down on the wooden bench.

“You can use my jacket as a pillow,” She patted the clothing, “I’ll make sure no one comes in and disturbs you too,” She added, holding herself with confidence for him to put his trust into.

A rare, small smile pulled at the corner of Faust’s lips. A sight that, if Vanni had mistakenly blinked at that moment, she would have missed. Yet she had seen it and a joyful warmth blossomed in her chest as her heart fluttered.

“And why would you do such a thing?” The question was poised with caution and curiosity she was used to by now.

Vanni shook her head with her own smile, “Maybe because you deserve some rest. Stop being so resistant and just lie down already!” Her urge was aided by her hand finding his wrist once more, tugging him forward.

Faust gave a sigh. Those dangerously bright eyes disappeared, taking their sense of constant observation with them. It was only briefly, though, before they fixed on the petite girl once more. Suddenly, she was revered with a difference, a glint in those luminescent eyes that was unknown to her.

A single step was all it took for the distance between them to become minuscule, not enough for even the Holy Ghost if it dared. The action brought sudden awareness to Vanni how small she was, dwarfed by him and the shadow of his that fell over her.

A hand wrapped around her wrist and she was tugged abruptly. Too surprised by the action, her body gave no resistance as she fell into a smoldering embrace, pulled into a firm chest.

Then she found herself sitting in the pew and Faust’s head in her lap, using her plush thighs as a pillow to rest on.

Her mind reeled with the sudden change, desperately trying to piece together whatever split moment it had missed to end up like this. The only conclusion her mind could reach, though, was that she had become Faust’s pillow.

Heat crept up her neck and spread over her face to the tips of her ears. The church was suddenly very warm, warmer than a roaring hearth in the grandest of halls.

“If you insist I must rest, then you must as well,” There was an unusual softness in Faust’s voice as he gazed up at her, “Considering your fit of coughs earlier.”

Vanni stared back at the piercing green eyes that looked up at her.

The stunned silence and expression of hers drew a smirk onto the alchemist’s lips. Perhaps, for once, he had left her heart skipping like she seemed to always do to his own.

Faust needed his rest and she had insisted so she would not refuse. Despite the frantic pounding of her heart against her ribs, she liked the feeling. Perhaps this eccentric vampire was finally warming up to her company.

“Okay…” She breathed out quietly, relaxing as she brought her fingers to gently comb through his hair, “Then we’ll both rest,” She smiled, “I’ll watch over you.”

Faust’s expression faltered at her gentleness before he closed his eyes. His body relaxed against hers, immersing himself in the warmth she radiated. His mind lingered from its thoughts and focused on the way her fingers caressed through the softness of his hair, lulling him into a safety and comfort to rest.

Perhaps this season was not so bad, so long as this strange woman was around for it.

#Ikemen Vampire #ikevamp #ikemen vampire faust #ikevamp faust #ikevamp fanfic #ikevamp fic #johann georg faust #faust x oc #ikemen vampire x oc #fluff #fluff fanfic #secret santa

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twig-wig · 4 years

Text

Even though I often don’t feel confident enough to use my own words to support the causes I believe in, I try to make sure I share the words of other people to my small audience. However, I feel I can’t stay silent on the issue that is currently brewing with J.K. Rowling at the centre. I’m not the most eloquent and this has turned out much longer than intended, and probably quite disjointed. But the transgender community is near and dear to my heart. I can no longer be content with standing by and allow other people to speak. I need to add my voice to the conversation.

I was born and grew up as a girl with a different name. My parents were both kind and accepting people, encouraging me to be who I wanted to be. Even if society tried to push me into a box they never did. As a child I saw myself as a tomboy; I enjoyed playing guitar, masculine clothing, and getting down and dirty at Scouts. I hit puberty young and that was when my inner turmoil started. I saw myself as ‘one of the boys’ and the changes happening to my body weren’t welcome ones. This started an ongoing battle with my self image that I am still fighting today but thankfully I feel I am finally winning. As I met more people in my teenage years I outgrew my ‘one of the boys’ mindset and tried to embrace my female-ness, but something still didn’t feel right. Eventually in the summer of 2017, aged 19, I came out as transgender. I had been using the name Finn online for a while at that point and chose that as my new name, started using male pronouns, and started binding and looking into medical transition. I spoke to two gender therapists over the following years and was officially diagnosed with gender dysphoria. I was also recommended for hormone treatment as that was what I had expressed an interest in and was going to be able to start that as soon as I was ready. Around the same time I was offered hormones I met my current boyfriend who helped me get more comfortable with myself and I paused to think about my identity. In the years I have been with him I have since come to realise that whilst I don’t identify as a transgender man, I do still experience gender dysphoria and believe that I would be happiest somewhere in the middle. There are aspects of my body that I am uncomfortable with in a way that only transgender people will understand. It’s not simply the uncomfortable facts of being human such as body hair and odour or the pain of menstruation. It feels tangibly wrong. This isn’t how my body is meant to be or to function and it makes me feel so awful that it transcends the issue of body positivity many people face.

Socially I am a detransitioned transgender man. If you were to ask people would call me a girl and refer to me with she/her pronouns, however, in an ideal world that is not how I would be perceived. I have a great deal of anxiety in social situations and I am not brave enough to request that the people I meet use neutral pronouns for me and avoid referring to me as male/female, nor am I brave enough to ask that of even my friends. I have made my peace with the words that people use for me as I hope that one day when my physical appearance aligns more with how I feel inside and the world has progressed to be more accepting of non-binary people I can garner the courage to claim that part of my identity.

The reason I feel the need to put this out there is that J.K. Rowling has taken it upon herself, a cisgender woman, to speak for the trans community and proclaim that the most vocal portion of the community is damaging. My years spent as a trangender male have made me stronger, more confident, and more aware of who I am and how I identify. They were not a mistake, they were a part of my growth as a person. My struggle with my gender identity has been long and hard. I’ve fallen on many sides of the debate through the years, even holding views at one point that were transphobic. Which is exactly why I feel qualified to tell J.K. Rowling and others like her that they are wrong.

Rowling thinks that the transgender movement is aiming to “erode the legal definition of sex and replace it with gender”. This couldn’t be further from the truth. I cannot speak for all transgender individuals, we are a varied group with a myriad of opinions, but the main push is for sex to not be the defining characteristic on legal documentation. Why do our drivers licenses or passports need to make people aware of the chromosomes we likely possess, or the genitals we were born with? They don’t. It is none of Rowling’s, or anyone else's, business that I was born female. It is an unfortunate reality for transgender people that, no matter how far they medically transition, their body may never be exactly how it would be for someone born male/female. Sex is biological, it is how you are born. You may be male, female, or be born with something that makes it harder to define your sex such as Klinefelter’s or Turner’s. That biological fact you are born with is not of importance to anyone but your doctor. The only thing that the law and anyone else should be interested in is your gender, how you identify, and this is what we wanted reflected on legal documentation. She also laments how easy it is to get a gender recognition certificate now, that you only need identify as a woman/man to get it changed and, *gasp*, you don’t even need to medically transition! But that is exactly how it should be. Medical transition is not a requirement. Some people may choose not to and some people may not be able to. It does not make them any less who they say they are. And again, who cares what’s on their documentation? What exactly is that going to change about your life? Absolutely nothing.

She also expresses a concern for a “huge explosion” in AFAB (assigned female at birth) people transitioning, and subsequently the increase in AFAB people detransitioning. As one of those people I can say with confidence that I do not think this is not due to any kind of brainwashing or misguided feelings. It is due to the fact that in the age of the internet information is more freely available to us. As I mentioned, my parents were incredibly accepting people. I grew up knowing two lovely trans women, however for some reason I was not aware that AFAB people could be transgender too and transition into men. This is something I have heard many trans men express, and my therapists both commented that it was a common reason for why people like me had not begun transitioning earlier in life. I can’t deny that the increased awareness and acceptance of transgender people will lead to some mistakenly identifying as transgender. Butch women and effeminate men exist and many are perfectly comfortable with their sex, however some may have issues with their self image or identity that can lead to them questioning their gender identity. But allowing people to explore their gender identity is a good thing. Medical decisions should not be taken lightly of course, and I believe there is a discussion to be had about making sure that we do not allow people to make those decisions without speaking to professionals, but that is a different debate that I do not wish to get into now. However, having said that, the choice to medically transition is the choice of the individual. No doctor can tell you what is best for you, they can only help guide you to the right decision. The correct response to the increase in people identifying as transgender is not to invalidate them and tell them they cannot ever be “real” men or women, or accuse the transgender community of poisoning the minds of the youth. We should instead seek to be better educating our children, increasing the quality and availability of resources for transgender people, and providing everyone with the tools they need to discover who they are and make the right choices for themselves.

Defining women by their biology is a harmful ideology to hold, not just for transgender women but also for cisgender women. Womanhood is not reliant on whether or not you have a uterus. She is right in that it is also not defined by a love of pink or shoes. How to define womanhood (and manhood) is a difficult and nuanced conversation, one that I do not feel yet able to have. But an easy way to tell is if you feel and know in your heart that you are a woman then you are and you can claim womanhood. She takes issue with referring to women as “menstruators” or “people with vulvas”. It was actually the phrase “people who menstruate” that offended her enough to start this whole debacle. Women is a useful phrase, and it does need to be used when talking about women’s rights in general. But the article in question was talking specifically about menstruation. When menstruation is the issue at hand I cannot understand at all how referring to that fact is a bad thing. Trans men and non-binary AFAB people who menstruate need to be included in the conversation; menstruation is not a topic that is solely for women.

Lastly, she tried to speak out for women who were abused that are being “wronged” by the inclusion of trans women in women’s spaces. I understand more than most how hard it can be to recover and trust those who may remind you of your abuser because I have been there. I understand the need for safe spaces away from anything that may trigger you. But transwomen are not all going to trigger those who were abused by men, unless of course you still view them as men. Maybe a trans woman has a deeper voice or more masculine facial features that remind you of your abuser and that triggers you. That is not a personal attack against her, it is an unfortunate result of your abuse, but a cisgender woman may also have a deeper voice or masculine facial features that trigger you. If that’s the case then of course you need to decide for yourself whether you need to remove yourself from the environment for your mental well being. However, if you enter a woman’s space that has a trans woman in it and you demand her removal on the basis that she was born biologically male you are nothing short of transphobic. Whilst, yes, allowing trans women into these spaces would theoretically allow for predators to pretend to be transgender to access vulnerable women it simply does not happen. I can’t point to any studies to prove this, but I feel common sense says that the likelihood of a predatory man pretending to be a woman to access women's only spaces is much less than a predatory woman accessing these spaces. The world is a scary place filled with horrible people and it is impossible to barricade against all possibilities of harm. Barring trans women from these spaces is not going to solve the problem that horrible people exist and protect you from them. It will only harm trans women.

Gender is hard. It can be complicated. Especially for those older who are having to change how they think. But all that we ask is that you respect transgender peoples identities and pronouns, that you use inclusive language, and that you don’t fight against our rights to simply exist in this world with the right name and gender on our papers. It’s really not that hard to just be a decent person.

#i feel like this is something that should be attached to my public accounts #this is less personal ramblings and more of a thought through post to make my stance clear #jk rowling #transgender #not art

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reiner-hero · 4 years

Text

analysis

Up to comic 130 words

Eren has a clear purpose in mind

"Let the people who are important to you live a happy life."

What is happiness? Eren's answer: peace and survival

That's why he's trying to clear the way, to kill people, to eliminate potential threats

Eren makes what he considers "good" decisions for his "peers"

Eren's idea of what's good is "materialistic."

But that's not what "they" want

They chose to join the investigative corps rather than "the easy life,"

But..."They" are people with ideals and feelings, and they pursue spiritual pursuit more than the so-called "material desire"

When we were young, many of us might have fantasized about being heroes

Why do we want to be heroes?

(Heroes get approval, you're right) -- vanity

The hero's worth is recognized, you were born worthy

(Heroes are strong, so they can save us all) -- power

A hero has a strong presence, everyone knows you and adores you

(Heroes are special) -- different -- different from those who do nothing

(Satisfying my own psychological needs) -- I've saved a lot of people, and they live on, and my life has value

That's what ordinary people like us think

"They" is clearly number five

They want the majority to live, so they sacrifice the lives of a few

Choose the righteous over the unselfish (why they do it, and I'll reveal why in the next section)

"To live alone, man will perish."

It was certainly painful for them, and far from happy

I actually think Eren was a little bit stupid

He did this so that "they" would have an easy life and not be so busy

But he didn't seem to realize it

Even if his plan succeeds, the humans perish, paradis survives, and his companions all survive

They are not likely to follow other people's arrangement and live a comfortable life

Just like they did in the first place

When the civil war began on the island

They will not sit idly by

You're bound to join someone

Must join the fight

Be sure to stick to the "right idea" in your mind and continue to fight and die for this goal

You can't control the human spirit

Eren's idea of happiness, for them, is nothing but pain and guilt

Another purpose of saving lives, which I will explain here

As Reiner once said

"We're going to die sooner or later. What if we survive now?"

Yeah, we're going to die sooner or later, just like us, so are the people we save

The lives we save will die sooner or later

So why save it

That is, of course, for the continuation of humanity

They extend their lives and give birth to offspring before they die

Their offspring will give birth to offspring and continue the human civilization. If there are children, there will be a future

In fact, the queen's pregnancy has this implication

They believe that human civilization should not disappear

A lot of life shouldn't just disappear

Here's a prediction to make about the sea

The sea makes up about 71 percent of the earth's total area

Life originated in the water

It can create it all, and it seems to swallow it all

The surface of the sea was beautiful, but in the depths of the ocean there was nothing to see but darkness

This darkness is the largest part of the ocean

The dead (129) fall into this darkness, forgotten as if they had never existed

The prediction is

Because of the earthsound caused a lot of life deaths

In the aftermath

Will be thrown into the sea

It's going to give you a close-up of Armin in the ocean

Because he liked the sea best

So let's think about what we did before

I wrote about it a long time ago in the analysis

Armin and Horse did not force them, and they even gave up a great advantage to join the investigation corps

If they go to the gendarmerie in the first place, not only themselves, but also their families will have a better life, and their families will not have to cry in their arms at the risk of their children dying

But they still chose humanity over family

For the ideal in your heart

So their spiritual pursuit is very strong

I don't know if they will go to Horse's mother...""" "

Soldiers are different

They are clearly more selfish

They put their families first

Reiner dismisses warrior rule

Didn't want Gabi to inherit the giant

Marcel lied so that his brother wouldn't inherit the giant

A soldier is for his family

Anybody can join the investigative corps

Joining a warrior is difficult

The investigation corps is being treated like a ghost (before)

All warriors are glory

Poor treatment of investigation Corps (before)

Soldiers are well treated

Investigation corps for humanity

Soldiers for their families

The opposite is true

In the four years ago

The soldiers are collectively inferior to the soldiers

But according to the last few words

There was also a tendency towards idealism among the soldiers

Annie is still the same

It's clear at 130, Annie, I don't want to save the world because I don't want to fight with you."

I cared more for myself and my father than for all mankind

The growth of Annie

I had to face the death of my father

Man needs something to live on

Loneliness is unbearable for any person

Annie: She keeps everyone at arm's length

She thinks she has nothing without her father, she thinks she has no friends (I think)

Everything you do is for others, without your own goal

This is something that Mikasa and Annie share

But Annie and MIkasa react differently when they mistakenly assume that Alan is dead

Annie is crying, Mikasa is not living

Annie also doesn't trust people

If Annie could stand up after her father's death, she would need to find herself and have a (probably Reiner)

Jump to conclusions

Annie doesn't want to save the world because she doesn't want to fight you

Because if someone dies, they're thrown into the sea, and there's a close-up of Armin

Annie's growth in the following years is, "I have achieved a goal for myself, instead of doing everything for others", "I believe in my companions and have a friend".

#attack on titan #attack on titan analysis #reiner braun #eren

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oxboykev · 4 years

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Torrential

I thought when love for you died, I should die. It's dead. Alone, most strangely, I live on. ~ Rupert Brooke

It’s been a long-running inner debate since the time I was born. Abandonment will do that to a child. It’s been my sickening suspicion that my life has been a waste. This suspicion was probably implanted in me as soon as my birth parents scattered from my presence. The fact that I was left in the care of strangers who couldn’t quite get past the impression that I was a stranger in their midst was never lost on me. With my identity as an adoptee not yet fully realized or solidified so early in life, there were days when I felt unmoored. Not knowing what it truly felt to be loved by my own blood, I would wish only to be expelled from the love and care that had been handed down to me by those who tried to convince me they only had my best interests at heart.

The residual resentment of not knowing whether my father and mother loved me and wanted me with them has colored the way in which I distrust myself with the feeling and act of loving someone. I remain convinced that there is something wrong with the way I love and how I have sought love from others. Even allowing love for myself was never an expectation. Love is a thing that people always said they had for me but could neither show nor explain to me because how can you describe something that seems to be only pulled out of thin air at one’s own convenience. As a youngster I grew up with the nagging feeling that I was thrown in with a lot of people to live in a random place that I didn’t share a history with, but was coaxed each and every day to respect and appreciate by saying “I love you” whenever it was my turn to speak. Affection and companionship were thrown at my feet with the admonition to take them or leave them. I mirrored customs, expectations, and incentives to love, but what was missing was a genuine and clear-headed comprehension of what it means to love and what happens to your mind when you decide to show love and receive love. Absent any key discussions and explanations, my young mind could only play along and follow the unwritten rules when it came to familial bonding, early crushes, and soul-mating.

Because of my pretend existence and ignorance of my innate truths, I conducted myself like a laboratory technician whenever the atmosphere softened around me and I started to tingle all over when my eyes settled on a girl at school or in casual passing. In my head, I had all the flasks, tubes and chemicals available to concoct a love potion that I could sprinkle over the brow of the one who had caught my eye at the time. The sad, self-defeating thing was, though, my feelings, thoughts, words, and so much of my personality resided solely in my head. This self-imposed silence, masquerading as humility and reservedness, had the effect of extracting sympathy from a potential lover. I then used this sympathy to position myself as the man who could rescue them from pain that others had inflicted, from histories of spouse/partner abuse and from their own self-destructive habits. My ego always got a kick out of playing savior, exalted as it always was by any reciprocal affection. Selfish were these gambits, nay, habits of involving myself in a person’s life so as to ostensibly use them to help me remind myself that I am a good person, even though I feel myself drifting out of humanity’s fold as each year passes.

I’ve come to believe that the universe is so expansive that it’s no wonder I’ve felt so tiny inside of it all these years. I feel I’ve complicated the essentials of my life to the point that I cannot explain any facet of it to anyone else until I can explain it satisfactorily to myself. At times, I have been so ashamed of my reticence to openly communicate with people that I just throw up sheets of tarp over the windows into my soul to block out anyone’s prying curiosity. Consequently, I have developed a distaste for casual social interactions because I grow anxious at the thought of having to save others from the embarrassment of revealing unexplored chasms of my psyche that not even I have gotten around to navigating yet. So around 2004 I started blogging on Yahoo! GeoCities to start documenting my mind’s wanderings. Gradually, I switched to other blogging platforms once I heard about their improved ease-of-use features. Writing about my life didn’t come naturally to me. Diaries were never my thing and I only dabbled in journaling when I was contending with a prolonged bout of loneliness during my year of study abroad. In spite of the novelty of it, I found that blogging was the ideal medium for me to go at my own pace and provide as much detail as I pleased when it came to explaining what was preoccupying my mind at any given time. By around 2005 or 2006 I began blogging under the title “Borrowed Notes” on WordPress.

Shortly thereafter is when I came across another blogger, let’s call her “Ede”, who would stir in me a feeling of ureka. My experience reading her blog was ethereal, even magical, because I felt I had finally discovered someone else on this vast earth who processed ideas and life’s conundrums just as I did. Intellectually and emotionally I imbibed Ede’s words as if I were sitting right there beside her and watching her type on her keyboard, deep in thought. It was a true feeling of kinship that went beyond even family or shared humanity. I began to (mistakenly, as it were) create a romantic aura around her words and the images she posted of herself. She and I were both adopted from South Vietnam when the end of the War was still far from certain. It was this shared tumultuous past that initially garnered my attention and from which sprung a fondness for someone I didn’t even know existed up to that point.

It was phenomenal how Ede explored the psychology of the transracial adoptee mind and adapted her analyses to her own lived experiences as a young woman of color raised in a rural Southern town and all the travails and absurd ironies that this social construct entailed. Each time she published a new post, I constructed a kind of fairy tale in my head that told me Ede was dropping bread crumbs just for me to find in a thick, dark forest both of us wish we didn’t have to inhabit. I seemed to hear her telling me to handle them with care until we could be together as One and live on in an enlightened destiny.

If I recall correctly, after I asked her a question in the comment section of one of her blog posts, Ede emailed me and told me she’d be open to talking about it on the phone. It was one of many doors she created for me and through which I eagerly entered. I became more and more enamored with her voice and the worldview she so deftly elaborated on. What heightened my regard for Ede was her constant encouragement for me to keep on shining through my words and maintain a critical lens through which to view our stations in life. She told me that she thought of us as equals and we both deserve an audience that appreciates our willingness to subvert the nationalist narratives we were forced to cherish for so long. We seemed to be replenishing each other’s self-respect reserves and recognizing all the communal encouragement and psychological survival skills we had been lacking in both our lives that would have placed us on surer social footing. It was as if this meeting of hearts and minds was inevitable and singularly etched in the cosmos, and we were only continuing a conversation with each other that had spanned eons and lifetimes.

Ede became the trigger I pulled when I thought the time was right to kill off my 5-year-old marriage to a woman whom I knew from the start I shouldn’t have agreed to marry. The beginning of the end of my marriage was when Ede and I turned our hours-long phone conversations and pages-long instant messages into a transgressive, paranormal love connection. Soon enough, we sensed a growing sexual tension, starting with well-placed flirtatious innuendo and then deepening into riveting, torrid sex talk late into the night and then, more and more, streaming into the very early morning hours. I had dabbled in flirty erotic chatter before with exes, but it was never more than tongue-in-cheek missives that were more cute than perilously addictive. However, with these pornographic-infused telephonic encounters between Ede and me, we both wanted to up the ante on how hot and bothered we could get each other. We reveled in pushing each other’s sexual buttons in order to flood our libidos to their respective bursting point.

Suffice it to say, when I finally received the divorce decree in the mail, Ede and I soon made plans to meet in person. We eventually consummated our remote relationship in the summer of 2008. As soon as Ede picked me up at the airport and drove me to her apartment and I set down my duffel bag, she turned her head toward me to tell me something and I immediately planted a deep kiss on her lips, the type of kiss I wanted her to know I had desired to give her the first time I had felt entwined in her words. Over the course of a week, our repeated coital sessions plumbed the depths of our loins and climbed the peaks of our lust, aiming for what we had been missing all of our lives. If ever the phrase “We are One” meant anything to anyone, it was at this moment in time when we seemed to touch the epicenter of each of other’s souls.

Ede knew how this utopian coupling would end, though, long before I had even imagined it in my mushy brain. Months before we had even physically met, at my request, she mailed me two handwritten letters. This was because one of our conversations revolved around penpals and penmanship. I simply wanted an example of her handwriting, something palpable in this overwhelming digital space, something that harkened back to our younger years. In them, she presciently explained to me the ways in which we would separate and feel regret, and that I would stop thinking of her as someone I could spend my life with and instead end up thinking of her as someone I once knew way back when and under a much more jaded light. What I should have gleaned from her words was a realistic foreshadowing of where and how we were going to fall over the cliff that was awaiting us. It was a gentle warning that my heart could not heed.

The atrophy of the fantasy of “Us” began as soon as I returned home from my first trip to visit Ede and her two kids. I should’ve been well aware of how desperate it made me look trying to come up with a plan to fly her and her kids to Seattle so that they could settle down with me in my one-bedroom apartment. The logistics of a move clear across the country and the fact that she was still legally married to her estranged husband barely registered in my love-addled mind. Thinking back, though, love hardened into an obsession with me, and I became preoccupied with keeping Ede in my orbit so that we could continue to build our creative endeavors into a juggernaut of a partnership. We always talked about doing photography together, travelling together, writing together. As I recall, one of our flights of fancy that we enjoyed bringing up regularly was the dream of us settling down and living in Vietnam together; such an elegiac homage to our orphanhood, but also a fervent defense of our right to exist in the very nation that birthed us.

To feel so lovelorn and idealistic is nothing new for human beings anywhere and at any time. But, for me to keep on climbing mountain peaks without so much as a map, a sufficient amount of rope, and the barest minimum of oxygen, with the foolhardy belief that if I make it to the summit everything will turn out all right and life will be perfect, it is surely a testament, at least in this respect, to what an idiot I became and what an irresponsible savior mentality I carried around with me, like a captain’s cutlass. It’s like I cultivated the traits of an all-around good guy who, on the surface, values common sense, practices deep respect and cherishes intellectual rigor but also embodied the “nice guy” persona so well that I was ultimately blind to the devilish impulses that only served to satisfy my childish self-interest. This dual pantomime ended up blowing up in my face and leaving me to confront an existential crisis that I can only wish will never recur in my waking life.

Meanwhile, Ede was struggling mightily against an inevitable total disruption of her and her kids’ living situation because of her estranged husband’s almost weekly threats to cut off all financial lifelines to her unless she agreed to move to the Middle Eastern country he had moved to with their other two kids a couple of years ago. In a show of solidarity and to insert a level of normalcy in an untenable situation, I returned to visit with her and her two kids during the Thanksgiving holiday and to celebrate my birthday in early December with them. Coincidentally, my parents were a couple of hours away, where my father was receiving experimental treatment for the cancer he was to succumb to just a few years later. They wished to visit us, since my parents only got to see me once each year. I never divulged to them the real reason I was there visiting this woman and her kids, let alone why this virtual single mother had allowed a recently-divorced man to share a bed with her in her household. I knew it would have just been one more fact of my life that didn’t make sense to them.

Both as a way to stay involved in Ede’s life and to stay on the impossible path of co-habitation with her, I avidly applied for jobs in the urban area she lived in when I returned to Seattle. But it was too little too late. Her “S.O.” — significant other — (as she always mockingly referred to him) refused to pay the rent for the apartment where she and the other two kids had been holed up for the last few years, due to the fact that her S.O. had discontinued paying the mortgage for the house they had previously lived in because he had secured a job outside the United States and planned to move his entire family there. Knowing full well that such a move to that miniscule Middle Eastern nation offered only a life of a covered and sullen housewife without the benefit of any emotional or material support, Ede entrenched herself in the two-bedroom apartment refusing to join her S.O., even though it deeply pained her not to be with her other two sons who had decided to live with their father. Knowing full well these difficult circumstances surrounding her and the choices she was being forced to make, I should have backed away for both of our sakes, even though I wanted to promise her the world. I really should have understood from the get-go that the lifestyle I wanted to create for both of us would have been just another excuse for her not to evolve into herself and to not fully take control of her own life. I ultimately should have realized that Ede was going to make me pay for my well-meaning hubris because she warned me countless times of the end result.

After the axe came down on her homestead, in disgust, she packed up everything in a U-Haul van and in her personal vehicle and grudgingly moved in with her father and stepmother in the rural Southern town she grew up in. That treacherous upheaval must have sliced her already thinning spirit into a million crosscuts that bled out at different volumes and rates.

Out of guilt for not being there to help Ede and her kids pack and move and, admittedly, out of a selfish concern with whether or not I still factored into her life after such a traumatic rift in her living situation, I continued to act as if our communication routines were consistent and intentional. Due to my overblown confidence in who I thought I was to her and that I actually figured into her future plans, I promised Ede that I would start searching for jobs in the region she had relocated to. I promised her that as soon as I established myself there, then she and her kids could move in with me to get away from the toxic situation that had exponentially increased between her and her father. I promised her that once I could nail down those particulars then we could finally pursue the life we’ve always wanted for us. Promise, after promise, after promise. And what did Ede always tell me about “promises,” especially when they fell from the mouths of the men who insinuated themselves in her life?

While my lack of humility proudly blinded me to what was really going on, I continued to live life in denial and boldly envisioned a smooth transition for myself from the moist and overcast Pacific Northwest to the hot and dusty environs of a Southern town I couldn’t even fathom. I wasn’t just taking one shot in the dark; I was taking more than I could ever handle, and never really noticed that I was shooting into my own reflection. In the meantime, our correspondence became more infrequent, condensed, and increasingly strained. Ede had promptly secured a job at a local retailer, which ostensibly got herself out of the house and away from the manufactured chaos caused by her father and her siblings who had plenty of their own unique issues. Our phone conversations would trail off into cold zones and I would plaintively listen to her sigh in resignation as if she were desperately signaling to me to quit putting any more time in our relationship. I had the distinct feeling that any good thought or memory of me, prior to her forced relocation, was slipping through her fingers, so I made the rash decision in my head to fly down and visit with her again. As I put out that suggestion, Ede told me she wouldn’t be opposed to it and that she couldn’t stop me even if she tried. Her less than enthusiastic response to my proposal and our continuing flummoxed interpersonal communications should’ve finally tipped me off that not only did the dynamic between us radically change, but that I had fell into the well-worn rut of hearing without really listening and allowing my interpretation of reality to overlap hers.

The mock execution my paramour had planned for me took place at an IHOP about an hour before midnight in the middle of the first full week I was to stay there. And I should have seen it coming from a thousand miles away as soon as I had landed at that hulk of an airport, picked up the rental car and drove to the motel in the tiny town near where she lived. The two of us first re-connected at a small diner, and she brought along her two kids and a “friend” whom she had increasingly mentioned in our phone conversations leading up to my visit. (Yet another sign I chose to ignore.) I can’t recall his name, but I remember him as a tall, portly guy with long bouncy, curly hair and a bushy goatee and he wore thin wire-frame glasses that seemed to soften his features. I immediately sensed that the connective tissue which had once held the two of us so closely together had been hacked at and was hanging by only the thinnest of sinews. Sitting diagonally across from me in the booth, I remember Ede’s eyes betrayed both surly contempt and pure pity for me. I recognized the look she was giving me, but I hoped against hope that it was not real and that we could share some time together after being away from each other for several months and everything that had come to pass. However, her blatant displays of affection toward her friend confused me and warded me off from initiating any form of meaningful contact. From her friend’s reactions and the looks he slyly gave me, he was enjoying her attention and playing along with her but also seemed to take pity on me because of what her actions were intent on doing. It was as if she had told him all about our history and that she, instead, wanted a future with him.

Skip to that fateful meeting at the IHOP later in the week, and I was anticipating having a real sit-down discussion between her and me in order to come to a heartfelt understanding of where our relationship was headed and whether either one of us wanted to continue gliding on the path we had established. I was expecting just the two of us so we could really talk things out and listen to each other. And, to be completely honest, I still held onto the fantasy that we would eventually end up in my motel room to make love like we had done so ravenously in the past. I arrived at the well-lit restaurant to find not just her sitting in the booth, but also her co-workers, one of whom was the same large, burly “friend.” I was immediately placed on the spot. I had nowhere to hide from the terse questioning about the true reasons I came to this small Southern town and the grave feeling that I had failed to recognize I was being set up for emotional evisceration, in public no less.

At last, Ede placed the proverbial gun to my head and pulled the trigger by accusing me of being undeniably selfish in wanting to stay in a relationship with her and only wanting “to fuck” her while I had the freedom to go out galavanting around town, oblivious to the hard-scrabble reality she had to confront each and every day and the tsunami of hurt that had washed her back into the hometown she had escaped from so long ago. Even though the salty iron of her bullets were winding their way in slow motion into my bloodstream and down through my nerve endings, agonizingly hollowing out any shred of ego I desperately wanted to cling to, it became abundantly clear to me that she estimated me to have become just another man in her life who subconsciously thought he could wave a paternalistic wand over her head, whisk her away from all her troubles and softly set her down in a life devoid of any pain, while simultaneously wiping away any semblance of vice from her past. Ede shot another round into my head by telling me that she and her “friend” were hooking up and she was glad she didn’t have to hide it from me anymore.

Feeling sick to my stomach and slightly faint, I quickly slid myself out of the booth and eeked out the phrase, “Because I love you,” in response to her questioning my motives for visiting her that past Thanksgiving. At that exact moment, it was difficult for me to comprehend what had transpired because my inner voice was incessantly muttering to me in my echo chamber that I’m done as a human being. I bee-lined it back to my motel room, determined to get online and reserve the earliest flight back to my empty apartment in Seattle. I had resolved to disappear into a world of pain that I had, once again, created for myself. The next day, though, after finishing up my breakfast sandwich at the nearby McDonalds, one of the workers commented on the Metallica sticker on the lid of my laptop, and we commenced with some brief friendly banter about the band and their music. Never would I admit it, but that conversation with a complete stranger made such an impact on how I was viewing the world at the time that I decided to stay a few more days. When would I ever get to visit this part of the country again, I asked myself. If I were going to join a subset of the Walking Wounded, so eviscerated I felt at the time, then I would just make myself tinier than a tadpole for the rest of my trip and push on.

This past April marked the 10th anniversary of my fateful trip and bizarre resolution of my intense relationship with Ede. I’m still alive and she is still alive. There are times when I still don’t know what to make of those events or how to shape them inside my head when they materialize in my memory and play themselves back. During the period when so many jittery love cues were passing between us at such a break-neck speed, and the decision to leave my wife was building to a crescendo inside of me, Ede shared a music video called “Run” by Snow Patrol with me. Like so many significant communications she sent, this song contained a multitude of surreptitious messages that underscored her feelings toward me and what she thought she needed to impart to me to not only understand her, but also myself. In other words, “Run” was meant to help me sort out the difficult decision to either run from my marriage, or run into the arms of Ede, or just run toward whatever else was waiting for me on the edge of nowhere while I had the chance. I think she wanted to guide me around all of the constraints I believed were holding me back from realizing all my true selves that were in need of being expressed with all my vigor, all my talent and all my self-worth. Instead, I turned my love for Ede into a thing to set on top of a pedestal and admire. I mistook love for a reciprocal assurance that if I embrace it, then it will embrace me back.

Ten years on, and at the beginning stages of middle age, I am at a unique vantage point where I’m developing the talent to see in many directions and dimensions. In many ways I’ve changed, but in some very primal respects I haven’t. I have learned, though, to keep those raw aspects of me from worming their way into my practical day-to-day while honing the more mature and wisened parts so that they can better express themselves in my life. Love has a role in my life, but it has no hold on how I live my life. It sings its many tunes and pitter-patters in the backwood transoms of my mind. However, I’ve learned now that love is not there for me to have or to seek. It’ll be there no matter where I am.

#adoption #adoptee #love #loving #relationships #learning #teaching

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dewayner8750-blog · 5 years

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Is The Ketogenic Diet An Ideal Diet?

I found out that the only technique to conquer this by way of realistic goal-setting (set goals not exorbitant and try to exceed them), keeping tabs on progress, celebrating small successes and positive affirmations, that is not a part of the review here. Her program will shared with you new long-term eating strategy-not modify your diet temporarily - by creating the best ketosis diet plan menu for women that suited you. All of us know that there are alot of programs out there that promised it can be a 'one-fit-all' companies. It is quite possible that a program may suit you, you actually do not find tough to follow. The plan is based upon 2,000 calories per day, but could be adjusted to whatever dietary needs you may have. This diet comes imperative by the American Heart Association, since helps to accomplish optimal health in many areas in addition to just high blood pressure. The most important components to helping hypertension naturally is to add foods that rich potassium sources, foods that contain calcium, as well magnesium. There is a kind of misconception that following a Pure 180 Keto Advanced Weight Loss guidelines like Atkins is dangerous. The truth is that being in ketosis is a completely naturally state. Our bodies creates ketones to use as fuel in the absence of glucose. Another thing that you want to concentrate on is insulin resistance. Can be also to be able to as starvation diabetes. Once you introduce carbohydrates into the diet, hyperinsulinemia and blood sugar swings could quite possibly occur. This is due for the change the actual world amounts of enzymes inside the body. The enzymes that are chiefly affected are every that may take place in carbohydrates or fats burning. Regrettably human body had not been fed with carbohydrates, stopping a cyclical ketogenic diet will also imply that the 'down regulation' will be altered. Remaining on the cyclical ketogenic diet will allow your insulin needs in balance. Carbs have always created trouble for people with diabetes. Some dieters may mistakenly believe if you have a dark purple result on the testing strips means that possibly they are losing weight faster. Actually, the darkest purple color is an indication of dehydration. It implies that your urine is simply concentrated and Pure 180 Keto Review also you need to drink drinking. Your body converts the carbs that you eat into glucose/blood sugar for utilized a wide variety of metabolic procedure. This conversion can happen rapidly or slowly depending close to the type of carbohydrate food eaten. This rate is considered the List. A higher number means the meals are rapidly transformed into glucose - a lower number means the your meals are more slowly converted into glucose. For example, countertop sugar has a great glycemic index while beans have a decreased glycemic directory. With meat as a primary ingredient, you can still stretch it out quite definitely. If you are making a whole chicken for Sunday dinner, use leftovers for chicken salad for supper the next day or a chicken casserole or soup in exactly week. As a nice meatloaf, Pure 180 Keto Reviews 180 Keto Advanced Weight Loss you accomplish sandwiches another day or use the leftover meatloaf in chili or spaghetti sauce.

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buzzdixonwriter · 5 years

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White American Evangelical Christians And Their Tribal God

Someone asked me what Christians were afraid of, and as a practicing Christian I said, “Based on our behavior, the thing we fear most is living a Christ-like life.”

Now, this is true for all of us who profess to follow Jesus -- not a one of us claims we’ve got it right, and those among us who come closest would be the first to loudly proclaim they are miserable failures at it and have to work even harder.

But by the same measure there are some who fall far, far short but -- as is always the case -- think they’re living exactly the sort of life God wants ‘em to live.

The Dunning-Kruger effect describes them to a T: People mistakenly thinking they are better than they are.

To quote Charles Bukowski: “The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence.”

Before that, Bertrand Russell said: “The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wise people so full of doubts.”

Socrates is quoted even earlier: “I am wiser than this man, for neither of us appears to know anything great and good; but he fancies he knows something, although he knows nothing; whereas I, as I do not know anything, so I do not fancy I do. In this trifling particular, then, I appear to be wiser than he, because I do not fancy I know what I do not know.”

The main circuit running through the spine of white American evangelical Christianity is white supremacy.

Not all white American evangelical Christians are hateful, hurtful bigots -- far too many are, but not all.

But it’s impossible to think of any who don’t believe deep in their heart of hearts that the country wouldn’t be a better place if only white people were running it, or that the world wouldn’t improve if they started aping America.

They will allow a token few a place on the podium or at the table, but the white folks want to be in charge and they want to make all the decisions, such as who gets to live where, who can go to what schools, how fairly laws shall be enforced, etc., etc., and of course, etc.

Most of them aren’t bad people and they’ll send money to foreign missionaries and they’ll even tolerate the family member who marries outside their race, but…

…they want to be on top of the societal heap.

While the earliest white settlers to North America brought their own prejudices with them, truth be told it was the absentee landlords and local gentry who most ardently promulgated white supremacy.

Most whites coming to North America from the British Isles were scraped from the bottom of his majesty’s debtor’s prisons and work farms, or religious bigots who lost a civil war and sought new territory where they could exercise their prejudices freely.

While the French and Dutch colonial traders tried to deal fairly with the native people, Anglo and Scots-Irish colonists regarded them as untrustworthy savages who should be driven as far away from “civilized” (read white) society as possible.

The big cash crops of North America could only be grown in what we now refer to as the American South, in a climate that killed off Anglo and Scots-Irish colonials at a prodigious rate.

Since whites could not work the plantations economically, the owners imported enslaved labor from Africa. To soothe the resentments of poor whites, the plantation owners encouraged feelings of white supremacy: “I may be poor, but at least I ain’t black!”

To one degree or another that poison pill has stayed stuck in the back of America’s throat ever since.

As America became an independent nation, the plantation owners sought to expand their political and economic power over the rest of the country.

That meant expanding westward -- and driving out or eradicating the native people who fled there.

It meant coming up with justifications for this genocide.

It meant coming up with justifications for enslaving African-Americans, and not merely enslaving them but guaranteeing that even if they somehow obtained freedom, they would never be equal in status to the poorest whites.

White American evangelical Christians bristle when they’re accused of clinging to their guns and god for comfort, but truth be told they bristle because they know it is true.

When abolitionists began making headway in American politics -- and make no mistake, these were not starry-eyed egalitarians but merely less hateful white supremacists – the rich plantation owners first resisted by sponsoring professors and pastors who pushed white supremacy: The professors proclaiming Darwin proved whites were more highly evolved, and hence superior to blacks; the pastors preaching that the Bible ordained whites should rule over blacks (and while they were at it, men over women as well).

It was a false gospel as anyone who actually bothered to read the Beatitudes could see, but it was a comforting false gospel, telling downtrodden poor whites and anxious middle class whites who feared a loss of status that they were better, they were superior to the black and the red and the brown and the yellow.

They fought -- and lost.

And even while losing conjured up a new false gospel, the myth of the lost cause.

And while that myth took root in the American South, it soon spread its insidious tendrils throughout the nation, tell poor and working class and middle class whites that an evil, overreaching federal government had forced the war of the just, peace loving lily white South for its own insidious reasons.

And doors were slammed in the faces of African-Americans and Latin Americans and native Americans and the immigrants arriving from the east to build our railroads and dig our mines.

As time marched on, it became impossible to hold back demands for justice among the poor of any color, and among the oppressed non-whites in particular.

The rich white oligarchy changed tactics but not strategy.

They attacked labor unions in order to keep whites and blacks from banding together for their common economic and social good.

They attacked all forms of social programs, promoting fundamentalist religious beliefs that said the churches should be the center point for charity and good works in the community.

The churches went along with this, of course; the rich doled their money out wisely.

Despite their efforts, the rapidly changing world forced itself into white complacency.

Minorities and women began moving into the workplace in large numbers.

Civil rights were spreading slowly but surely.

Again the rich attacked progressive ideas, branding them as “socialist” or “communist” and using the boogey-man of Marx’ anti-religious sentiment to tell white evangelical America that they would be deprived of their churches, deprived of their status, deprived of their privilege as white people if the government was allowed to continue its civil rights programs.

And again, the churches responded by attacking progressive ideals and reinforcing white prejudices.

But they couldn’t keep non-whites and women from demanding and obtaining their basic civil rights.

Kinda hard to deny ‘em when they’re written into the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

(And once again, no illusions here; the founding fathers thought those rights would only apply to white men such as themselves who owned property, but they had enough integrity to leave the back door unlatched so others in the future could come in and share the bounty.)

As minorities and women and gays began moving into the public sphere, white evangelical Christians began moving out.

Oh, they had their reasons, they cited Bible chapter and verse, but they cherry-picked their verses, ignoring the repeated calls for Christians to love one another without judgment, to be generous to a fault to those in need, to shun wealth and prestige and be servants of the down trodden (who in most cases had been down trodden by those very evangelicals).

White American evangelicals retreated from the public sphere. “Our kids ain’t going to school with no *****! We’ll send ‘em to a Christian school -- hell, we’ll homeschool ‘em!”

And bit by bit, step by step they created a separate white culture…

…but in doing so they needed to abandon the Christianity of Jesus and embrace a new god.

That god -- ‘scuse me, idol -- they constructed to worship is a false-god, a god cast in their own image: Petty. Ugly. Limited. Stupid.

Tribal.

A god who rewards his chosen with wealth and power and prestige over others

A god who effective bars others from joining his chosen

A god who wages war on those opposed to him

A god who packs prisons

A god who blocks hospital doors

A god who shuns the desperate

A god who starves the destitute

A god who turns orphanages into slave labor camps

A god who requires no real repentance

A god who demands incessant worship and affirmation

A god who lets his followers off scot free, but inflicts harsh judgment on others

A god indistinguishable from a cruel, capricious, vindictive abusive father

…a god, in other words, just like them.

Small wonder they worship Donald Trump so blindly.

There is a book that is almost never read in America today, a book that pretty well defines the kind of person who is a white American evangelical Christian: Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis

It isn’t exactly banned, but they sure don’t teach it.

It’s a pretty damning indictment of white American evangelical Christians.

Lewis thought he was writing about the bourgeoisie and in truth he was.

It’s just that in this country, bourgeoisie = white American evangelical Christian.

Babbitt should be our new prophetic work, a book warning us about what we have become, reminding us that there is a better way, but it’s not the way found through mindless consumerism and hucksterism.

Babbitt is the white American evangelical Christian god exposed as a naked emperor.

Small wonder many white American evangelical Christians shun the Bible and embrace ///Atlas Shrugged/// as their new holy book.

You cannot serve both Christ and Ayn Rand.

#Trump #evil #morals #ethics #Christianity #religion #organized religion #bigotry #Evangelical #white supremacy #politics

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qm-vox · 5 years

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So You Want To Play A Beast

(Meme version of Queen Ramona Rabbit provided by cantankerousAquarius, character by me. Catch her in New Avalon.)

Here I am, back on my bullshit again. As I mentioned in So You Want To Run A Spring Court, a series of Seeming articles are starting up next. Unlike Courts, Seemings are not political or religious bodies, and are only loosely social identities; rather, one’s Seeming is part of who and what one is. Lost develop a Seeming because of the abuse they have survived, the labors they were forced to undergo, and what they did to survive both. It can be a complicated and hurtful subject for Changelings, but also a source of pride; the things you learned to become a Beast, a Darkling, an Ogre, are also the things that ultimately helped you to escape.

At this point you may be wondering why I started with the Courts when Seemings are more fundamental to an individual character, as well as less optional (you can have no Court, but it’s hard to have no Seeming). I’m gonna be real with you, it’s because there’s six of these damn things and each of them is about to be as complex, if not more, as the Court articles.

The following article draws primarily on Changeling: the Lost core and Winter Masques, with additional information drawn from Swords at Dawn (that last book has come up a lot because it deals with the Lost in change and conflict). Other books, where used, will be cited. And so, without further ado:

A Miserable Menagerie - Beast Overview

Beast is the first Seeming presented in Changeling: the Lost, and is well-represented in the published material and the fanbase alike, being one of the most popular and therefore most common. Stripped of their human reasons, Beasts had to remember how to think like human beings again before they could escape and seize their Homecoming. It’s never exactly a complete reversion. Aside from this common loss of reason, and a certain surprising sociability (more on both of these later), few experiences unite Beast to Beast, a reality that can make their fellow Lost mistakenly think that their Beast peers lack common strengths and common bonds. It’s true that many Beasts have strong similarities to Lost of other Seemings that share similar functions (a Truefriend kept as a loyal and loving hound has a lot in common with a Playmate forced to serve as an ornamental factotum and the Chateline condemned to maintain her Keeper’s house), but it’s also true that any Beast has more in common with their fellow Beasts than with the troubles of their non-Beast peers.

Release the Hounds - Homecoming as a Beast

Compared to Beasts, only the wretched Wizened have a higher disparity between those who are taken by the Fae and those who manage to return. Anyone at all might become a Beast; the process of transformation is a sort of corruption, one a mortal prisoner might catch from being forced to live among animals, from being treated as subhuman, by deliberate malice, alchemical transformation, or even deliberate pact - but not anyone who becomes a Beast can manage to achieve their Homecoming. The first and most difficult step is to find their reason again, some powerful trigger or memory that reminds the Beast that they were once human and that the Fairest of Lands (Arcadia) is not their home. Though not all Beasts degrade in intelligence in the same way or to the same degree (one might be seemingly wholly feral, condemned to live as a rabbit or a rat, while another has memories of being a hunter-gatherer among a pack of others, with axe and bow to hand and no thought but the kill and feast), no Beast can escape without remembering what it was like to be mortal. It’s more than just a matter of cunning or intelligence; indeed, the actual physical act of escape is often shockingly simple. It’s that without human intellect, human memory, the Beast cannot yearn to return home, and thus cannot escape the Fairest of Lands.

The second obstacle is having something to come back to, and believing that you deserve to have your Homecoming. This is easier, in some ways, than regaining your mind, but infinitely more insidious. All Lost need mortal memories to make their way home, of course, but for Beasts they need something to focus on that keeps their reason anchored while they’re still trapped in the lands of unreason. It can be all-too-easy to slide back into the animal’s mind, especially if your moment of clarity and your opportunity to escape don’t coincide. The hound knows how to survive the mad lands when the man might not.

Memories of loved ones to come back to help, but for many Beasts the light that guides them home are distinctly human places, places where they felt that they belonged and which in some way belonged to them. The library where a Beast spent her childhood, full of her fond memories and imagination, can help her cling to her human half long enough to get home, as might the memory of the funeral home where her father’s wake was held, or even the stadium where she was cheered on by adoring fans. These human places hold significance that can be understood on some level by the animal (safety and contentment, loss and sorrow, joy and thrill), but require human reason, human perspective, to be wholly understood. That reason, and the shining light of the mortal world, draws the Beast back home.

Beasts are among those Seemings least likely to escape with someone else’s help. It’s not that they’re asocial or incapable of cooperation, but rather that need to find human reason. Most of the time if someone is making their own Homecoming and stops to rescue their Keeper’s favorite catgirl, that catgirl’s mind isn’t her own. Maybe on the way home something shocks her memory back into place, but all too often that doesn’t happen and you end up with a hob or a catatonic victim rather than a free Lost. On the other hand, Beasts freed by their Keeper can make almost ideal Loyalists; their ability to produce great Composure on demand, and the general prejudice of other Lost against them, mean that a Beast still enslaved to her Keeper can often go years without being detected, if she ever is. For an example of such a Beast, check out Maya Sharptongue in Night Horrors: Grim Fears.

All Creatures Great And Small - Beast Kiths

The magical bonds that unite Beasts as a Seeming are subtle and often overlooked. All Beasts can spend Glamour to flare their Presence and Composure, a capability that makes them second only to the Fairest for sheer sociability even if the Beast in question shares the essence of a decidedly non-social animal. Additionally, all Beasts have an affinity for all animals (that 8-again with Animal Ken though) which, while seemingly limited in modern application, has a lot of impact on their day-to-day life. A Beast will rarely have, say, rats in her home unless she prefers those rats be present; her pets will be well-trained and well-behaved (and likely well-loved) and her ability to just walk up to and befriend any given animal is not to be underestimated.

Psychologically, Beasts regardless of Kith tend to be territorial, a fact many Lost don’t think about a lot despite it being somewhat odd on its face. After all, not all animals are particularly territorial, and yet a swan-like Windwing, a lupine Hunterheart, and a Swimmerskin mermaid all display a similar concern over their spaces, their places. This is the Beast’s human nature at work; just as the places of human connection draw them home from Arcadia, so too do they stake claims over such places in their new lives, creating spaces where they can feel safe and in control, and able to indulge in both their animal instincts and their human desires and sorrows. For those Beasts with an especial affinity for their physical environment, Contracts of the Den and Contracts of the Wild (the latter being shared with the Elemental Seeming) can go a long way to creating and safeguarding their personal places of power.

And then there’s the back end. Beasts genuinely struggle with their Intelligence; compared to a human whose Intelligence attribute is equal, a Beast will always achieve worse results, and can’t benefit from the flashes of inspiration and intuition that sometimes characterize human thought. They struggle more with unfamiliar intellectual processes, though putting in the time to learn can solve that problem. The end result is that Beasts, regardless of Kith, tend to be some of the smartest dumbasses their friends know, who provide better results when they have to think at speed or under pressure than they do outside of the moment. Still, this perception of stupidity haunts Beasts, and in all too many Freeholds they can find themselves gently shunted away from power or complex duties or responsibilities that others believe they’re incapable of handling.

When it comes to Kiths, Beasts present an odd combination of being greatly defined by their Kith (in much the same way that Elementals or Wizened are) and their Kiths having very little relation to the folkloric archetypes that inspire Beasts. The overwhelming majority of the options for your Beast character concern themselves solely with the physical properties of one or more animals, which is great for the fantasy of playing an animal-person and completely fucking useless for the fantasy of a fae animal-person. More than most other Seemings, a Beast character meant to invoke a figure from folklore might want to consider the Dual Kith merit, with an eye towards Fairest and Ogre Kiths to snag most of what you might want.

Some expanded thoughts on the individual Beast Kiths follow.

Hunterheart - Arguably the quintessential Beast, Hunterhearts are infused with a predatory nature expressed through deadly fangs and claws. They tend to be reshaped in the vein of mighty wolf-men, cunning cat-people, or as archetypes of Beasthood or the hunt - mighty Hunters with racks of stag’s antlers, or even near-Ogrish beings like the Beast of French legend, whose price for a stolen rose was a bride to soothe his burning heart. Almost any predator might lend its nature to a Hunterheart though; a tarantula, for instance, is more appropriate here than as a Venombite, and Summer’s smallest and most surprising berserker may well be a Hunterheart with the soul of a shrew and an unshakeable lust for blood. Hunterhearts tend to be very physical people, who have a lot in common with Darklings - including an inability to escalate violent confrontation in an appropriate manner. Among the more thematic of the Beast Kiths, Hunterhearts might benefit from a Dual Kith into Flowering or Whisperwisp if you’re looking to embody a predatory trickster figure.

Windwing - Perhaps the poster child for Kiths that deal solely with the physical attributes of an animal, Windwing is a prime candidate for the other half of a Dual Kith concept if you’re after a more folkloric concept rather than looking to explore a more straight mixture of human and animal. A graceful Swan Maiden might look towards Dancer or perhaps Artist, while a Mothman type might lean towards Shadowsoul (a wise owl, on the other hand, might be an Antiquarian on the back end). Most carrion birds will also be Roteaters, but especially corvids of all stripes. Regardless of their nature, a Windwing is an incredible asset for a Freehold, and can expect to be courted aggressively for their abilities as a messenger, guard, spy, and scout.

Skitterskulk - I have no god damn idea what the writers were thinking on this one. Skitterskulk is, in theory, supposed to represent hard-to-exterminate vermin such as mice, flies, cockroaches, or mosquitoes; things that move fast and bother people with their filth, thievery, and pestilence. Unfortunately not only does their blessing of Impossible Counterpoise have almost nothing to do with this (and almost nothing to do with the perception of Skitterskulks as spies presented in Winter Masques), it is shamefully fucking useless. If you find yourself looking at Skitterskulk for the animal natures it’s associated with, consider some combination of Roteater, Windwing, Truefriend, Venombite, and/or Runnerswift instead. Don’t use this Kith.

Roteater - Speaking of, meet what is probably my favorite Beast Kith. Roteaters embody those animals that scrape, scavenge, and feed on carrion or refuse. Crows and vultures are obvious candidates (and probably Dual Kith’d with Windwing), but Roteater is also great for Beasts in the vein of Rat Kings (fleeing from the gnawed halls of a Sugarplum Fairy), raccoons (whether sly thieves or powerful tricksters) and even for social insects such as ants when used in combination with Truefriend. Roteater strikes a very good balance of the physical properties of its animals and their folkloric qualities, with the power of the Beast Seeming itself filling in the back end. Given that Lost tend to struggle both with money and with legal access to certain goods, the propensity of a Roteater to scavenge, salvage, and scrape can be a godsend to their Freehold and especially their Motley, if they can put in at least a minimal effort to clean themselves up.

Truefriend - Truefriends have a lot in common with Fairest; as “beloved” pets, they had a lot of their Keepers’ personal attention, and their memories of Arcadia may be cut through with the bloody consequences of the kindness and discipline of the True Fae. Regardless of what kind of animal they are (and they can be most of them; Truefriend is rife for thematic Dual Kith opportunities inside of the Beast Seeming), they tend to be, well, friend-shaped; Truefriends are often well-groomed, sleek, colorful (or with an interesting color pattern in their fur or scales) and might even be cute or drawn from a twisted branch of pop culture as embodiments of more ‘modern’ takes on Beasthood such as catgirls or animal mascots. Like Fairest, Truefriends may take to manipulating others in order to feel in control of their own life, and given the lack of suspicion that attends to Beasts they may get away with it for a whole lot longer.

Broadbacks - In a Seeming marked by a tendency to be kinda dumb motherfuckers, Broadbacks are the guys that make dumb ideas work by outlasting their consequences. Their bonus to Stamina rolls is most famous for satyr-like partying, but it also means that they can guard a door for hours on end without so much as a bathroom break, run marathons long after even the Runnerswifts have keeled over to beg for the sweet release of death, and brave hazards or traps in the Hedge that might force back other Lost. Aside from the (again rather famously represented) satyrs and fauns, Broadbacks might also take after minotaurs, be infused with the essence of camels or llamas, or even Dual Kith into Swimmerskin (as mighty whales) or Windwing (with Contracts of Hearth or of Omen, embodying the albatross).

Swimmerskin - The lines between Beasts and Elementals blur with Swimmerskins, especially those who take after mermaids, selkies, and nixies; Elements (Water) is a popular enough buy that it can be hard to tell the difference. Mechanically, Swimmerskin is a case of a Kith that sorta has to be about the physical properties of its animal nature; it’d be a strange sort of mermaid who couldn’t swim. Consider investing in magical Merits such as Siren’s Voice, specific Contracts (Elements was already mentioned, but Omen for a powerful sea-witch or Wild for a storm-brewing sea dragon can be equally striking), or investing in the Dual Kith merit to bring out further specific animalistic or folkloric traits, such as Hunterheart for a sharp-toothed shark, Tunnelgrub for octopi and other escape artists, or Farwalker for an ambush predator or a Thing From The Deep, emerging to prey on the ignorant and innocent.

Steepscrambler - The opposite of Swimmerskin in some ways; Steepscramblers are all about the physical act of climbing, but they really did not have to be and as a result they’re a big whiff on the folkloric elements of the animals they embody, including and especially the specific ones spoken of Winter Masques. Still, in a lot of ways Steepscramblers have the same practical uses as Windwings, especially in highly urban environments, so for concepts that are looking to invoke those folkloric trickster elements, eat the Dual Kith into Whisperwisp, Drudge, Farwalker, or Flowering and live ya best life. If you’re more interested in direct physical animals but are looking into something like a spider, fly, or beetle, consider Dual Kithing inside the Beast seeming to pick up the other aspects of your animal.

Runnerswift - For when you absolutely, positively have to GO FAST, there exists the Runnerswift. Though most famously associated with prey animals such as rabbits and deer (which are also common fertility symbols, go fucking figure), consider Runnerswift for more predatory concepts as well; as hunting hounds, cheetahs, or man-eating horses straight out of Greek legend, Runnerswifts can make terrifying pursuers and hunters. Though it can be tempting to Dual Kith in the latter case, it pays to keep in mind that the human side of your Beast definitely remembers how guns and baseball bats work, and those are probably going to be a better option than fang and claw if you’re already in a situation where you feel comfortable running down your frightened prey. Like quite a few Beasts, Runnerswifts skew towards being tricksters in much the same way as Hunterhearts, though in this case the prey animal often comes out on top rather than being made out as the villain.

Venombite - A cool concept with a bad case of being a late bloomer; Venombite’s Blessing is nearly useless until you start punching up into high Wyrd, at which point you are a POWERFUL MAGICIAN who can also fang people to death if they get too close or you can catch them unawares. Still, Venombite can be quite attractive for many concepts, especially spiders, deadly nagas, and treacherous scorpions. Their tendency to be associated with small and easily overlooked animals make Venombites surprising brokers of information and dealers of death; it might be awhile before your own poison can kill the human, but the brown recluses that obey your commands can kill one now.

Cleareyes - What if you had Contracts of Fang and Talon 2 but all the time? Cleareyes is an odd Kith; mechanically they’re solid, but also redundant with one of the game’s more attractive Clauses in one of its most attractive Contracts. There’s a few ways to split this difference, though I tend to suggest either making that Clause and/or their Blessing free if they have both (similar to how Gravewights get a discount on Contracts of Shade and Spirit) or permitting Fang and Talon 2 to give them a different sense the animal is known for (a cat-eyed Cleareyes able to see in the dark might invoke her Clause to also gain cat-like balance or perhaps a cat’s sensitive hearing). Thematically, Cleareyes is great for a lot of concepts and can hold down a lot of the same niches as Roteater and Runnerswift in a different way. It Dual Kiths well with almost any other Beast Kith if you want to double down on animalistic aspects, but as a task-driven Kith it also goes surprisingly well with those outside of Beast; Draconic (feral drake guardsmen, or perhaps a ‘failed’ Fairest), Antiquarian (wise owls in a different vein from Windwing), Oracle (a churchyard grim, or a cat kept as the familiar of a terrible witch), and Farwalker (straight-up werewolves or, with Contracts of Mirror and a nasty disposition, vicious rakshasas) are just some of the potential combinations on the table.

Coldscales - Not the flashiest, but they get the job done; Coldscales (typically but not necessarily reptilian in nature) benefit from a further bonus to Composure that makes them unusually hard to manipulate, a boon not to be underestimated given just how much fae magic attacks people emotionally. Though this Kith is intended to represent cold-blooded reptiles, consider it as well for animals famous for their sloth and endurance; a sleepy Bear Prince who can’t be bothered might display the calm endurance of a Coldscales, as might a terrible wyrm that must be roused to wrath (perhaps Dual Kith’d with Fireheart or Draconic), or even a big cat, deadly only if hungry or disturbed and otherwise content to feed on the carrion left behind by those who flee before him.

Riddleseeker - The Kith, the myth, the legend; Riddleseeker is the closest you get to a Mental-focused Beast (for, ah, obvious reasons) and is introduced in Night Horrors: Grim Fears. Its sample character, the loyalist Maya Sharptongue, has a sphinx-like aspect to her but Riddleseeker is also a great choice for ravens and crows (perhaps clutching fragments of lore stolen from their Keepers that their human minds could understand when their beast ones could not), legends of oracular serpents, and tricksters like the fox who made Mighty Miko a king. Riddleseeker holds down thematics on its own, but if you’re looking for the physical aspects it doesn’t do on its own it Dual Kiths inside of Beast pretty easily.

The Animal Kingdoms - Beasts in the Courts

As alluded to earlier, Beasts are often the backbone of the Freehold. Wizened do the thankless jobs that everyone relies on, but often it’s Beasts that fill in the miscellaneous roles. Messages and packages need carried? You’re probably calling a Beast. Loyalist needs his shit kicked in? Beasts are ready. Need to connect with a lonely mortal and see if their dreams are poisoned? Whistle up a Beast. Obviously not every single job a Freehold wants or needs will be filled by a Beast even if in theory it could be, but given how diverse the Seeming is and their combination of on-demand sociability and poise, they’re attractive for many duties. After all, even the most standoffish Venombite or Coldscales can put on a charm face with the best of them if you can keep a steady supply of Glamour on the table.

Given their difficulties with abstract reasoning, Beasts tend to relate to the ideals of their Court on a practical level, which can make them either sorta-kinda bad at being Courtiers on a formal level or paragons of their Court’s ideals, without a whole lot of in-between. Both perspectives are valuable; there’s not a whole lot of point in constantly debating the ideals of, say, Fear, if no one is going to go out and spread fear. For those Beasts who place great faith in the ideals of their Court, their commitment can serve as an inspiration and example to others, and a living reminder that sometimes living up to high ideals means making choices that aren’t easy for you personally or politically.

Beasts are surprisingly common in leadership positions, especially in Summer (where their physical focus and access to talented officers can carry them far) and Spring (where their instant sociability and diverse spread of talents can help them catch the eye of the Court). Unlike Fairest (who have a steadier and stronger social focus), Beasts aren’t prone to losing their entire goddamn minds in singular, shattering moments, which can make them more stable officers, nobles, and Crowns than their more glorious peers. They can also make surprising spymasters and even money-makers. Depending on the Court, though, a Beast in a leadership position may require an assistant to help with the paperwork (or the math), or else be prepared to work a lot of overtime patiently making and decoding ciphers on her own.

Like Elementals, Beasts can be somewhat more sensitive to the physical temperament of the Seasons than other Lost, to the point where it may be surprising to find, say, a snake-like Beast bundled up in layers beneath her Winter Mantle (gently muttering ‘fuck snow’ under her breath every so often). Those who choose to endure such discomfort are often some of their Court’s most avid members, and known as such.

Spring - Insofar as any Lost are natural joiners of Spring (typically a Lost’s second or even third Court), Beasts make for natural Spring Courtiers. They’re sociable, hard to visibly ruffle even if they’re screaming internally, often physically striking, and talented at living in the moment. Unfortunately that same talent can feed into a Beast’s difficulties balancing their human and animal aspects and leave them stuck in the middle between healthy and toxic even worse than Spring generally gets stuck. Despite this, Beasts can go quite far in Spring and often end up as movers and shakers who influence opinions.

Summer - Most people think of predators as Summer’s Beasts, but herd animals are much more common. Sure, every now and again you get a canine Beast who goes far, or a would-be King of Cats that remembers the twisting alleys of his Durance and the silver nets of Arcadia’s animal control enforcement, but Summer’s brotherhood and focus on physical defense is much more appealing to Beasts whose natures are shaped by animals such as deer, oxen, and dolphins. Those Beasts whose Durance was defined by fear and flight also sometimes flock to Summer, seeking the strength the Iron Spear offers to ensure that they will never again be Arcadia’s prey.

Autumn - Where most of the predators actually end up; human nature turns an animal’s innocent hunger and instinct into cruelty and schadenfreude in places, giving rise to Beasts that take after vicious werewolves or treacherous serpents. Though they can have a hard time fitting into the scholarly aspects of Autumn, Beasts go quite far in the Leaden Mirror through practical applications of sorcery and being quick on the draw. They may not necessarily understand the nature of their power, but Beasts definitely know how to hammer it home.

Winter - The Coldest Court is as pragmatic about its Beasts as it is about everything else; Winter tends to recruit Beasts by openly asking them to serve in jobs the Court believes they’re suited for, and paying them for that work. Summer might be content to make, say, a Runnerswift into a mighty Knight, but Winter is going to ask them to run (and, at times, to hide). The ability Beasts have to crank their Composure on demand can make the talented and discreet candidates for Winter’s higher-level social positions, and as the keepers of important information or Tokens.

Until Proven Guilty - Beasts and Changeling’s Themes

Beast is in an awkward spot compared to the other Seemings. In a game that is very explicitly about abuse, trauma, and recovery, Beast lacks a clear connection to those themes. Core introduces the idea that Beasts are united by a sort of innocence, a refutation of corruption that protects them from Arcadia on some level, but literally none of the rest of the game did anything with that theme. Their other primary theme - the mix of literal or folkloric animal instincts with human ones - is engaging and interesting, but disconnected from that central aspect of the game in a way the other Seemings aren’t.

You don’t necessarily have to address this. If you aren’t looking to deep dive into the nature of your Seeming, or your Chronicle doesn’t have a strong emphasis on those themes of abuse you can probably just let it ride. If you are looking to focus on those themes, one idea that’s gotten me personally a lot of mileage is to look at how your Beast relates to Seemings that had similar functions and asking yourself why are are not that Seeming, exploring your Beast’s trauma through comparison and contrasts.

From life experience though, there might be something to that dropped ‘innocence’ theme. That idea of an innocent, damaged and transformed by circumstances beyond their control, trying to build a new life in a world they weren’t prepared to live in has some strong similarities to children raised in cults or by survivalists and conspiracy theorists. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve connected with someone only to watch their entire worldview fall apart as they realized the world they’d been raised to live in doesn’t exist, and that everything they know how to do only works in the context of that fictional world. Fairest can also be strong candidates for depicting this kind of abuse, but I’d still encourage you to consider Beast if you’re interested in engaging on this concept directly.

We Don’t Bite People, And Other Lies We Tell Children - Coping With Beasthood

To be a Beast is to be caught between worlds twice over (three times, for Swimmerskins and Windwings, which, y’know. Sucks to be you guys); like all Lost they are influenced by both fae and mortal nature, but Beasts are also caught between instinct and reason. The animal within is entirely comfortable in the now in a way humans just aren’t, but their human half treasures things the animal can never understand. In the heat of the moment, though, when it comes down to instinct or reason, instinct often wins - sometimes to the Beast’s benefit, and sometimes to their great sorrow.

This balancing act defines the Beast’s life, and generally starts at home. Beasts usually live alone if they can, even if they’re otherwise sociable, so that they have a space in which they can entirely be themselves and decide who is welcome, when. Rarely does this influence stop in the physical bounds of a Beast’s house, apartment, or sewer drain though; any place the Beast thinks of as their turf (the broader neighborhood or apartment building, their office in the Freehold’s Commons, even their job if they have enough pull to get away with it) is going to be shaped to let them express some part of both sides of themselves. How that comes out varies from Beast to Beast. An affable satyr might become the neighborhood darling, doing favors and bringing food to their neighbors in unspoken payment for letting odd behavior slide, while a spidery Venombite might be more likely to trade on passive intimidation or even adopt a performative identity (it’s strange if a pastor’s wife is creepy, but no one thinks twice about a goth gal that’s spooky). Having those safe and/or welcoming spaces available is vital for a Beast’s ongoing mental health, and without them a nervous breakdown is only a matter of time.

Outside of the matter of their home and places of power, Beasts have a tendency for straightforwardness that has little to do with their particular animal (though it might) and everything to do with the fact that as a Seeming, Presence is their strongest source of social prowess. Dealing openly, for good or ill, plays to their strengths and has the added advantage of keeping their social life relatively straightforward, even if it’ll never quite be simple.

Stability, ultimately, has to be the goal of a Beast looking to build a new life after their Durance. They need to find a way to live their life that acknowledges and nurtures all parts of their divided nature; even those Beasts dumb enough to favor one side over the other can’t do it for long without losing their entire god damn minds. Few Freeholds are without stories of would-be Cat Kings (Autumn Nightmares) or Riddleseekers who turned into crows one day and just never turned back. Having escaped Arcadia only by finding their minds again, Beasts tend to be among those Lost most cognizant of what their issues are, and most willing to face those issues on direct terms. They did it once already, after all; the hard part is showing up to do it again every day.

Sample Beast - The Toy Taker, Autumn Riddleseeker/Windwing

Margaret Bellman is called Maggie by her Freehold and the Toy Taker by an increasingly mystified local media. Her memories of Arcadia are more like a gap than the usual splintered and fractured recollections of the Lost; one minute she was a teenage girl staring in fascination at the twisting figure in a mirror, and the next she was a grown-ass woman with crow’s feathers for hair and tiny, somehow functional wings, staggering through that same mirror and bleeding all over the place.

It didn’t take long for Maggie to swear herself to Autumn, though she’s an odd bird for the Leaden Mirror. Though she adores and practices magic, Maggie’s primary profession and hobby is theft. She steals things the Freehold needs stolen and sometimes robs homes for money, crimes the media has yet to connect to her other persona.

For Maggie also steals toys.

It’s never often. When her life is at a low point and spiraling out of control, Maggie slips into a child’s bedroom and takes one of their toys. She rips the shiny bits from it to add to her collection at home (displayed this way and that in her room, in shadowboxes, on strings, glued to the walls, dangling from coat hangers), crucifies the remainder, and leaves it on the kid’s door. Though the Winter Court disapproves of her methods, her hobby sows Fear and Sorrow in equal measure and her dedication to it has earned her some small formal appreciation from the Coldest Court.

As with all of my articles, I welcome questions, comments, discussion, feedback, and criticisms. Please, feel free to reblog if you’re feelin’ it!

Next up: Wizened

#Changeling: the Lost #Seemings #RPG #Beast Seeming #abuse #trauma

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stateofgrace-acoustic · 6 years

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Why Speak Now is a lyrical masterpiece: an essay.

//it’s here!! i really wrote a 6000 word essay on Speak Now. yep, I’m a nerd and also slightly crazy. have been working on it for the last two weeks. i am really proud of this and i’m excited to share it, even if not many people read it.

Special thanks to @bridgesburn-i-neverlearn who encouraged me to write this and also is an angel in general. Thank you for being excited about it as much as I am - I hope you enjoy! //

Speak Now is a fan favorite among Taylor Swift’s albums, even though it has always been painfully overlooked in the mainstream. It is undoubtedly amazing on more than just one level - musically, it is diverse, uniting not only country and pop but bringing rock into the mix as well; the songs are confessional, heartfelt, each one telling a different unique story. They feel almost theatrical at times, which the Speak Now tour with its musical appeal - the elaborate stage design, background dancers, and dramatic performances incorporated into the songs - capitalized on in captivating fashion.

What has made me fall in love with this album most of all, though, has always been its storytelling - and I’m sure most fans will agree with me here. In this essay I want to highlight what I believe to be a central reason behind the charm of Speak Now: its thematic cohesion, exploring the intricacies of confessions through songwriting, and of speaking - or not speaking - in the right moment. I will go through the songs on the album looking for these thematic ties, while highlighting what makes each song special in my eyes, pointing out subtle subversions and added subtext that make the songs more complex than they might seem on the surface. I’ll argue that these little subversions are what situate Speak Now in an in-between stage between naivety and maturity - between idealism and realism. It is this space of being in-between, on not quite having arrived at a specific point, but trying to make sense of the world through storytelling, that make the album so compelling.

Taylor talked about the central idea behind Speak Now being confessions. ‘Each song is a different confession to a person.’, she stated before the album came out. ‘In the past two years, I’ve experienced a lot of things that I’ve been dying to write about. A lot of things I wanted to say in the moment that I didn’t.’* In the album prologue, she mentions specific, crucial moments where the decision between speaking or not speaking up can make or break a situation - situations in which she could have spoken up, but didn’t, and so she wrote songs about them. Songs that are, by nature, retrospective - confessions kept past the time that they should have been said, emotions bottled up from the moment they were felt. And retrospection always has something wistful about it, the knowledge of not being able to turn back time, even if your reflections may have made you wiser in time.

This idea is central in Back to December, an apology to a lover she mistakenly let go. The progression of the relationship, but also her different states of mind associated with it, are symbolized by the different seasons - starting off light and sweet with ‘then i think about summer, all the beautiful times’, turning to the realization of love in fall, until ‘the cold came, the dark days when fear crept into my mind’. Here she directly references her fear keeping her from holding onto the relationship. Now, the constant urge to relive the mistakes she made keeps her from moving on: ‘staying up, playing back myself leaving’. But she pushes the message of the song further than regret and apology - she knows that, as much as she would want to, she can never ‘go back in time and change it’, and as much as she loves daydreaming about it, that will never make it real. With that in mind, she tells him, ‘so if the chain is on your door, I understand’. She accepts that her apology might not be enough, that she might not be forgiven; she knows she needs to make her peace with that. This sense of acceptance not only shows maturity, but gives the song an undercurrent of sincerity; otherwise it could have been perceived as manipulative, an apology constructed to win back someone’s heart. Instead, it expresses an earnest sense of regret, and at the same time, the heartbreaking realization that regret is not always enough, and fixing the past is something beyond our control.

The pain of reflections bringing back detailed memories of something that is forever lost is also a central focus on Last Kiss. One of Taylor’s biggest strengths in her songwriting is her focus on detail - rather than talking about the relationship in general terms, she evokes specific images of ‘the smell of the rain, fresh on the pavement’ and ‘that look on your face, lit through the darkness at 1:58′. Playful moments in the relationship and traits of her former lover that she found endearing earlier - ‘you’re showing off again’, ‘you kissed me when i was in the middle of saying something’, have now become bitter as she misses not only the big emotions, but the little quirks and small moments that made her fall in love. The chorus shows the pain of having to face dreams shattering; ‘I never imagined we’d end like this’. The way she continuously recalls beautiful moments from the point of view of her naive, lovestruck side, and crushes them with questions - ‘why did you go?’- and pain from the present, gives the song a structure that parallels the repeated, sinking feeling of heartbreak. This is brought to its most unfiltered expression on the bridge, where his current life and distance from her is directly contrasted with the intimacy they used to share: ‘so I watch your life in pictures, like I used to watch you sleep. And I feel you forget me life I used to feel you breathe.’ As in Back to December, she also dedicates the bridge to a central message to the person the song is about - but it is ultimately not only one of hurt, or even anger, but of being lost: ‘I never planned on you changing your mind’. The central idea of the song is that she feels deeply insecure because she does not understand why she was left. It becomes clearest when she expresses the hope that he might feel the same longing for their times together as she does: ‘I hope it’s nice where you are [...] and something reminds you, you wish you had stayed.’ This is not the scathing goodbye to an old lover that she can master just as well on many of her other songs; its heartbreaking nature lies in the simple, evocative way it talks about the pain of being left alone without knowing the reason.

If the communication on Last Kiss is one-sided, as her former lover is long gone, on The Story of Us, it is dysfunctional and characterized by the growing divide between two people - another variation of the topic of speaking and confessing that ties together the album. Besides the many metaphors related to stories themselves - ‘i don’t even know what page you’re on’ - the clear structure stands out here the most. The first verse recalls the effortless chemistry they had at the beginning - ‘we met and the sparks flew instantly’ - and the dreams of the time when everything seemed stable. But soon the distances are too far to cross, at least for one person alone - ‘so many things that I wish you knew, so many walls up I can’t break through’. She now desperately wants to know how the other person feels, but has no way of knowing: ‘I’m dying to know, is it killing you like it’s killing me?’ The disconnection is illustrated in the second verse as the actions of both people are separated and contrasted - “see me nervously pulling at my clothes [...] and you’re doing your best to avoid me.’ and ‘how I was losing my mind [...] but you held your pride’, unlike the first verse where the ‘we’ was central. In the middle of the isolation, she feels the weight of the things that are unsaid: ‘I’ve never heard silence quite this loud’, and perhaps also the weight of her own inability to articulate her thoughts and emotions: ‘I don’t know what to say since the twist of fate when it all broke down’. The song illustrates the difficulties of communicating once misunderstandings and emotional walls are built between people. She realizes that to break down these walls, both partners would have to put in effort - “I would put my armor down i you said you’d rather love than fight’, and recognizes that she is likely not the only one who has things to say that she cannot put into words: “There’s so many things that you wish I knew’. At the same time, the issue can never be resolved if her partner is not willing to take a step forward, and so, the relationship is breaking apart without either of them finding a way back to each other.

Instead of real life issues with communication, the idea of speaking up in a crucial situation is taken to the realm of daydreaming where situations play out perfectly on the title track, Speak Now. It presents itself innocently - the speaker being an uninvited guest at a wedding, secretly having a crush on the groom. And in fact, at the beginning, the speaker illustrates herself as the total opposite of trouble: ‘I am not the kind of girl who should be rudely barging in on a white veil occasion’. However, from verse one, a sense of cheekiness runs through the song - ‘her snobby little family all dressed in pastel’ doesn’t make the bride look too appealing, and ironic remarks like ‘it seems that I was univited by your lovely bride to be’ makes her seem quite a bit more feisty than she makes herself out to be. And indeed, at the end of the second verse she directly tells him , ‘You wish it was me, don’t you?’ It is still sweet, but also slightly taunting - he is the one who should have known better, and he picked the wrong girl. The part of the wedding ceremony where guests are allowed to speak up one last time, gives the song, and the album its name: ‘Speak now or forever hold your peace’. Even in a song as generally lighthearted as this one, the sentiment itself is quite serious, and runs through the sadder songs on the record as well - the fleeting nature of chances and opportunities to speak up, and the possibilites of regret if you let it pass. It is a challenge, in the moment, to raise your voice, but - as Taylor says in the album prologue - ‘if there’s something you should say, you’ll know it. I don’t think you should wait.’ In her daydream, she doesn’t wait, and speaks up despite of her nervousness to a happy ending - and the guy in the song eventually thanks her: ‘so glad you were around when they said speak now’ - suggesting that he was actually unhappy with the situation as well and was too afraid to speak up himself. Even though it is, of course, not a line that is supposed to be taken too seriously and is simply the fulfillment of her romantic fantasy, him echoing her words, it can also be seen as a reaffirmation of raising your voice, as you might not only change your own life to the better, but effect others with your courage, too.

Even when Taylor sings about stories of love in a light of positivity and liberation, she inserts more complex emotions into it than obvious on the surface. On the opening track Mine, she recalls the classic narrative of two lovers meeting, falling in love, fighting and finally reconciliating with a happy ending, but gives it a few subtle but meaningful twists that sets it apart from her earlier, more simple and naive stories in the like, as Love Story. Suggestions that the speaker of the song had to witness love breaking apart in her childhood and grew up not believing in ideals of happily ever after are woven through the song - lines like ‘wondering why we bother with love if it never lasts’ seem upon focused listen, quite dark and uncomfortable in a song this upbeat and optimistic, even if the story does get a happy ending. And the central fight that occurs in the bridge of the song is directly followed by the insecurities boiling back up and threatening to end what both of them have built. At the end, the song is about the power of love to set you free and make you believe that stories of happily ever after are possible - but it does not happen on its own. The repeated mentions of ‘hold on, make it last’ at the end of the song suggest that only if both partners continuously put work into it, the happy ending is truly possible. A subtle sense of maturity that the simple ‘baby, just say yes’ at the end of Love Story does not carry.

Enchanted may be seen as the most straightforwardly romantic song on the album, but there are undercurrents of darkness here as well: the entire first verse speaks of being in a situation of loneliness and alienation from all the people in a room: ‘walls of insincerity, shifting eyes and vacancy’. It is a deeply sad image that is relieved by meeting the one person the speaker does have a real, intimate connection with. And while it is sweet and beautiful, the loneliness from the beginning of the song never vanishes entirely, as the entire song is a daydream - it is left open how the person that she has caught feelings for actually feels and responds. The sense of agitation that comes with overwhelming happiness is never really resolved - she expresses it in ‘dancing around all alone’ and daydreaming about a happy ending - but the song is never grounded back into reality, which gives it its momentum - it exists and stays in its own sphere of joy and hopefulness.

In this song, as in so many others, the important, revealing emotions occur at specific nighttime hours - here it is the anxious reflection on who the other person might love, in Mine it was the crucial fight between the lovers, in Last Kiss a remembered moment of intimacy. It is at these hours that emotions are most raw and unfiltered - which ties into the confessional nature of the whole album.

Taylor explores the intricacies of love further on songs like Sparks Fly, which, in its lyrical themes, can be seen as a predecessor to her album Red, as she talks about falling for someone that might not be the best choice, infatuation taking away her capacities for rational thought - ‘my mind forgets to remind me you’re a bad idea’, a recurring idea on her fourth LP. As happy and liberating as the song is, there is a certain danger to the attraction that Taylor is aware of - it could all end up badly, but she is too caught up to care. She paints herself as helpless to the feelings at first - comparing herself to a house of cards and saying ‘you’re the kinda reckless that should send me running, but I kinda know that I won’t get far.’ However, this simple image of total helplessness that does not give her any agency in instigating the relationship is subtly challenged on the bridge: ‘Just keep on keeping your eyes on me, it’s just wrong enough to make it feel right’, she sings, suggesting that in some capacity she simply does not want to think about the possible results of giving into her feelings - she is aware there is something off, but prefers not to follow the thought further. It is a moment of almost conscious self-denial that not only draws strong parallels to songs such as I Knew You Were Trouble, but to another song on Speak Now that dramatizes the opposite of falling in love: a relationship falling apart - Haunted.

Haunted with its deeply dramatic presentation gives the impression of Taylor being caught up in memories and feelings she cannot escape or move on from. More straightforwardly than on Sparks Fly, however, she states right at the beginning that she could see the damage coming: ‘I have known it all this time, but I never thought I’d live to see it break’. A small part of her held onto the hope that is might still work out. However, after everything is inevitably broken, she cannot find consolation or a sense of stability anywhere: ‘It’s getting dark and it’s all too quiet and I can’t trust anything now’. Her sensation of having lost her partner to a mysterious force that made his ‘eyes go cold’ perfectly fits the gothic atmosphere of the song, and the chorus shows that she is still to a certain extent in denial and shock as she pleads to him to come back to her - ‘something’s gone terribly wrong’ she sings, completely lost as to what caused him to turn away after she thought she knew him so well. The amount of shock she is still in is powerfully illustrated in the second verse as well: ‘Something keeps me holding on in nothing’. She is self-aware enough to know that it is senseless to keep coming back to a broken thing, but her emotions keep pulling her in. Finally, denial takes over again during the bridge as she repeats to herself: ‘I just know you’re not gone, you can’t be gone’. The song illustrates the precise state between realizing something is over, and dediding to move on. It’s the state of lingering for a while longer, being pulled from either side and being unable to let go - being ‘haunted’.

These same emotions of denial and helplessness are central in the next song as well, but it discusses many more emotional states, too- Dear John, which might be the center point of my analysis, as I consider it to be one of the most complex and impactful songs Taylor has ever written. It is a song about the dynamics of an abusive relationship and about heartbreak that gradually turns into self-empowerment.

Taylor uses a wide array of images to convey her feeling of being trapped in the relationship in the first verse, always feeling like the weaker partner at the mercy of the other - she compares herself to a chess figure being rendered powerless by constantly changing rules, and evokes the image of a blue sky being turned into rain. At the same time, she discusses the anxiety that comes with being so powerless and being the subject of constantly changing moods - ‘counting my footsteps, praying the floor won’t fall through again’, as well as bringing up the already mentioned self denial that she is now aware of and that her worried mother brought to her attention.

In the prechorus she frames the song as an explanation as to why she walked away from the relationship: ‘This song is to let you know why’. Then the chorus turns reflection of her emotional states into accusation, the first step on the song’s way toward empowerment. ‘Don’t you think I was too young to be messed with?’, she asks her partner to evaluate his own consciousness. But eventually, the chorus ends on a somber note as the accusation is directed not at him, but herself: ‘I should’ve known’. She regrets her denial in retrospect and blames herself for the way he treated her, a common reaction in emotionally abusive relationships.

The second verse, then, takes the next step: she examines the reasons behind the relationship not working out, and explicitly incorporates both partners into the conversation. However, while she accuses herself of naivety, the majority of the blame lasts on him this time, presenting him as having ‘a sick need to give love and take it away’. She further disects his personality, stating that he would not actually listen to her criticisms - or anyone else’s -, but simply think of her as misunderstanding him, refusing to see any position but his own- everyone else is on his ‘long list of traitors who don’t understand’.

Finally, on the bridge, she takes the crucial step up: instead of remaining a passive marionette in his hands, she takes back her agency, escapes his influence and therefore takes away his power: ‘took your matches before fire could catch me’, and, with her life back in her own hands, she is not only free, but a better person with a brighter life than his will ever be: ‘I’m shining like fireworks over your sad empty town’. It is the central climax of the song, but I would argue that it has a second, just as important one, as the central moment of subversion is reached at the end of the song. She turns the last lines of the chorus on its head: ‘cried the whole way home’, an image of humiliation, sadness and brokenness, is turned into the triumphant ‘wrote you a song’. And instead of the self-accusing ‘I should have known’ comes one small, but immensely weighted comment that not only makes him look like the naive fool instead of her, but places her in a position of strength on the basis of her songwriting: ‘You should’ve known’. It carries a double meaning - he should have known not to mess with her that young, but he also should have known that she would fight back by writing a song. She uses her own public image as a weapon in a line that manages to both be slightly self-deprecating, and ridiculing her former lover for underestimating her. He might have broken her heart, but she can write about it and find protection and self-worth through her art - here, Taylor discovers the power of the song as a weapon, a concept she would later bring to heights of success on mega hits like Blank Space.

Thus, Dear John takes the journey from a place of complete helplessness to strength and empowerment through art, and it chronicles the variety of emotional states on the way with captivating precision.

As multifaceted as Taylor’s songs about love on Speak Now are, it is not the only topic she sings about, so for the last section, I’ll take a look at the songs that illustrate topics of empowerment, revenge, and forgiveness, as well as the overarching theme of growing up.

Mean might be seen as just one of the many Taylor songs about getting back on a hater, but it is a truly special one, as she grounds the song in different emotions that all play together; a confronting attitude, making her critic responsible for his words and actions, a sense of the cheekiness from Speak Now, and genuine expression of the effect his words had on her wellbeing. She is not afraid to call out his behavior as hypocritical and unfair - ‘switching sides, wildfire lies, humiliation’, the accusatory ‘you’ hanging over the beginning of every verse. At the same time, ‘you have knocked me off my feet again, got me feeling like a nothing’ opens up a complete insight into the devastating effect his comments had on her. At the end, ‘you don’t know what you don’t know’ is her way of telling him that as long as he does not actually know her and makes up accusations, his words do not have legitimacy at all. She even searches for roots to his actions - ‘I bet you got pushed around’ before stating that she will not stoop so low to use his own methods: ‘the cycle ends right now’. Following up on this idea, the chorus is her big, triumphant refusal to further engage with him at all, saying that some day, she will be so big, he will not even be relevant enough to hurt her. It is a much more scathing comment than actually directly getting back at him would be, completely stripping him of any relevance. Toward the end of the bridge, she seems to leave it at ‘all you are is mean’, but then fires off some more accusations: ‘and a liar, and pathetic, and alone in life...and mean’ It is intentionally slightly petty, playing with restraint before she gives into her desire to express herself honestly and to get a bit of revenge, after all. She is having her fun with the rebuttal as much as she is genuinely expressing her emotions and making a mature statement about taking the higher road. She proves, on the song, that these do not have to be exclusive attitudes - you can send an important message while still having fun with the song.

But as effective as Taylor can be at balancing revenge and forgiveness, she can dive deeper into either side of the scale as well if she wants to. On Better than Revenge, she fully embraces her anger and fury to call out both her ex boyfriend and his new girfriend. She paints him as a possession of hers that was unrightfully stolen, and equates her rival to a child that hasn’t learned proper manners when she lectures her that ‘stealing other people’s toys on the playground won’t make you many friends’. Thus, in the word choice alone, she takes the conflict to a childlike level. Taylor shows herself as a person with mature attitudes who has to teach the other girl about proper behaviour - and she does have real points to make: ‘sophistication isn’t what you wear or who you know’ - but at the same time, her wilingness to engage in the battle and her desire to ‘always have the last word’ reveal her own motivations which come from a place of impulsive emotions and wounded pride, too. The triumphant and gratified way she sings ‘Let’s hear the applause, come on, show me how much better you are’ shows her taking pleasure from the fact that her rival was, after all, not worth it anyway - an attitude that is very much not mature, but she knows it, and she embraces it fully in the song, which no doubt felt cathartic to write. And here, again, we have the function of songwriting reflected in an actual song. It is only implied, but after all, the titular revenge she gets is the song itself - even if she could not win him back, she can make sure that she has the last word.

Innocent can be seen as the opposite twin of Better than Revenge - even though they are about different issues - when it comes to attitude. The song is all about giving a person who slighted you a second chance, the reasoning for it being that stumbling at a point in life is an experience everyone shares, and so everyone deserves a fresh start at one point with no past baggage keeping them down - ‘who you are is not what you’ve been’. She expresses sympathy in the verses, comparing adult life to easier days of childhood when a sense of safety and security was taken for granted, and you had people to look up to and guide you in life - ‘always a bigger bed to crawl into’. The line ‘wasn’t it beautiful when you believed in everything and everybody believed in you’ expresses both a sense of disillusionment that comes with adulthood and the loss of the support structure that seemed completely self-evident for all of childhood - being left alone, knowing that no one will be there to catch you once you fall, is a terrifying situation. Adulthood is the time when ‘the monsters caught up to you’, a simultaneously sinister and sad image for everything that caregivers cannot shield from us anymore after a certain age. And as this is an experience we all share, Taylor implies, we need to look out for each other instead, and give each other second chances when needed. She talks about regret, too, an idea that was already discussed in other songs: ‘Did some things you can’t speak of, but at night you’ll live it all again.[...] If only you had seen what you know now, then.’ This part not only incorporates the album theme of speaking into the song - in the form of words you won’t even admit to yourself - it also calls back to the idea of knowing a better route to past events upon reflection, but the wistful knowledge that turning back time is impossible. As Taylor herself relates heavily to this experience, as she has illustrated on songs like Back to December, she can apply the feelings to others and empathize with her supposed enemy. The song in that way shows itself to be about the power of empathy to remind us of experiences we all share and are bonded by, and, at the same time, it is just as much about growing up as it is about forgiveness. The key to dealing with the fleeting nature of life and the possibilites of missteps and missed opportunities, as is suggested in the bridge, is to keep reminding yourself that changes also bring chances, and as humans we are capable of constantly renewing ourselves: ‘Today is never too late to be brand new’.

The topic of growing up is not left to Innocent alone to reflect; in fact, it has its very own song dedicated to it, titled Never Grow Up. The wistfulness of remembering the safety and effortless happiness of a childhood long gone takes center stage here, as she talks to a young child who stil has her entire life in front of her - yet, over the course of the song, Taylor gets lost in her own reflections and reminisces on what she has lost of her own childhood. The child’s innocence makes her think - in a heartbreaking way - of the inevitable time when this carefree nature - ‘to you, everything’s funny, you’ve got nothing to regret’ - will be lost and disillusionment will replace wide-eyed optimism. Having experienced it herself, Taylor wants nothing more than to shield her from the same fate - ‘I’d give all I have, honey, if you could stay like that’, but she knows that it is impossible. And so the chorus with its repeated mentions of ‘oh, darling don’t you ever grow up’ is steeped in a deep sense of sadness, as it’s clear that this wish can never be fulfilled. On the second verse, Taylor flashes forward to the teenage years and once again, recalls an image of naive, boundless joy, struggling to hold onto it - ‘don’t lose the way that you dance around in your PJs getting ready for school’. At the same time, she never loses sight of the fact that everyone shares the fate of growing up, and struggles with it, which might help us understand other generations’ struggles, too: ‘Remember that she’s getting older too’. The central idea of the song is the tragedy behind the constant wish to grow up as a child - ‘you can’t wait to move out some day and call your own shots’ - just to want to go back to the simpleness of childhood once you actually get there. Thus the mantra of the chorus can also be seen as a wish to hold onto childhood just a little longer, or preserve what is possible from it. But at the end of the song, when Taylor relates her own experience to the rest of the song, she comes to a rather defeating conclusion: ‘I just realized everything I have is someday gonna be gone:’ The only thing that is possible to do is hold onto the memories, they will hold on to you - ‘keep pictures in your mind of your childhood’ - and try to keep them safe in your heart.

Finally, the song that is left is the last song on the album, Long Live - and this song, too, is a reflection, but it is a much more hopeful, enthusiastic one that celebrates the people that helped Taylor get to where she is and all the memories that were made on the way. She consistently uses plural ‘we’ on the chorus of this song, illustrating the fact that it is not about her own success and story only, but about the community she has built along the way - with her band, her entire crew, and most importantly her fans, and just how much this community means to her. The song is a celebration of the things that can be moved when people come together - the way it can make the seemingly impossible come true - ‘long live all the magic we made’, and the way it can make seeming underdogs the ‘kings and queens’ of the world for just a night. She feels like she can take anyone on in this situation - ‘bring on all the pretenders, I’m not afraid’. This momentum, this power and beauty is something she wants to keep safely stored so that the memories can never be lost. At the same time, she takes a wider look into the future on the bridge, breaking her celebration for a while to think about the consequences of the fairytale ending, of things falling apart - and all she wants in this situation is the magic of the memories to be remembered, and felt even by people who were not directly there. It is, at the end, a love letter to her fans, for all that we have achieved together with her and that is yet to come: ‘I had the time of my life with you’. Thinking back on the album topic, it illustrates the wonderful things that can happen if you do take chances - if you take the courage to speak now. It leaves the album on a note of joy and a sense of magic the belief that even the highest dreams can be achieved, and everything is possible - when we find a way to connect with each other and fight for it together.

At the end, with Speak Now we are left with an album that examines love and life in all its complexities; incorporating fantasy and reality, regret and denial, revenge and forgiveness, loneliness and connection, wistfulness and hope into fourteen songs, each painted in muliple shades of emotion, all of them tied together by the topic of confessions and speaking up. It is an album that is both deeply personal and universal, and I have loved it for all of that for many years - I hope this love came through in this piece of writing, and I hope that I could make you relive your own love for Speak Now while reading it.

(If you’ve made it all the way to the end, thank you so much!! I don’t really expect anyone to read this, so if you did, I really really appreciate it. I hope you could get something for yourself out of it. And to Natasha, thanks to you more than anything - without you I never would have written this!)

*https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/taylor-swift-announces-third-album-speak-now-186288/

#taylor swift #speak now #vanessa talks #for a very long time #vanessa has never talked this much #she is currently questioning her sanity #she loves speak now way too much

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00petersnyder-blog · 5 years

Text

Peter Snyder

Dr. Kim Lacey

English 212

15 December 2018

Anthology

In society everyone wants to be noticed. Either for something their good at or just because they are a genuine person trying to make the world a better place in any way they can. Whether it’s by making life easier for the whole or just selecting group of particularly disabled people and making their life so much easier to deal and coop with. While others are scared of what is to come and afraid that our inventions will turn on us and eventually terminate us. Others have fooled people with a CPI person named Lil Miquela so they can have just that much more power and influence in the clothing, beverages, makeup, etc. A robot that looks exactly like a real-life person and she just gained citizenship in Saudi Arabia. With all these different points of views, they differentiate from each-other but still have the same idea, making the best version of humans as we possibly can.

There are two robot or AI giants in society that have making a big splash and have gotten international news attention. Lil Miquela is your typical Instagram model/influencer, she’s got great style accompanied by her lavish lifestyle and her extremely shinny hair. She is best known for her music and her incredibly photoshopped photos giving her an extremely pleasing and displeasing robotic feel to her. Lil Miquela could be a great big PR stunt for the public to be amazed and latch onto therefore giving companies a new crowd to control and influence in any way they want. When tech companies have breakthroughs like for example creating a robot that is self-aware able to think/feel on its own normally that news is shared with the world. The weird part is we never heard a peep until the cyber hack happened, there was world-wide news coverage when everyone thought that computers would turn evil in the 2000s and that the world was going to end in 2012. This makes me believe that there is no robot, no artificial intelligence that sings a loves fashion but merely a very long and well planned out publicity stunt by a music artist who wanted to push the limits and created a CGI of the ideal artist to continue to pursue music and disrupt the music industry. In Sophia’s case, everyone seems to be scared of her because of how far we’ve come from just basic computers. In her article, “Why Sophia the robot is not what is seems”, Caitlin Fitzsimmons says, “In the case of the ABC interview, the questions were sent to Sophia's team ahead of time so they were possibly pre-scripted. Just like an interview with a human celebrity! Note Sophia did not actually answer Virginia Trioli's question about sexism and misogyny in the robot world – the machine deflected and answered a different question and we didn't notice because its answer was even more provocative. Just like an interview with a human politician! A serious answer to Trioli's question is, there's a lot of sexism, racism and other prejudice in AI, because the machines are fed data contaminated by our own biases. Just one recent example: a computer program in the US was more prone to mistakenly labelling black defendants as likely to reoffend – wrongly flagging them at almost twice the rate as white people, according to ProPublica. I requested an interview with Sophia a day or so after the ABC interview but the team had already left the country. I was told there might be a possibility of a Skype interview but there'd be an "operator" for Sophia and also "someone from the team next to her to help with the flow of the conversation". I asked for more information about Sophia's autonomy in the interview but they didn't answer. Perhaps Sophia was too busy being made a Saudi citizen, generating headlines for the opening of a technology conference and plans to spend $500 billion on a city powered by AI. Great PR stunt, shame about the ethics of redefining citizenship.” Sophia is simply a stunt in my opinion as well. If you watch videos on her so doesn’t seem very human in the way she acts and I realize we are only in the beginning of this whole dance but I would need smoother voices responses and not take so long to reply. I think we will eventually achieve a robot that is basically one of us but of different materials and maybe one day we can download our minds and put in into a robot.

There is a company called Psychasec and they apparently have been able to download a human brain’s emotions and conscientious. Psychasec bills itself vaguely as technology that morphs human bodies and promises a way to keep people alive. Two models at the booth show off artificial bodies sculpted to perfect form. The premise is to encourage attendees to sign up for a “sleeve” into which they can transfer their consciousness and upgrade their body. There are also body bags with people inside them. A steady stream of foot traffic has circulated around Psychasec’s booth this week, even though the company isn’t included on CES’ list of exhibitors. The catch: Psychasec is fake, and the booth is a promotion for Netflix’s upcoming sci-fi show Altered Carbon, which begins streaming in February.

Robots will have taken over most jobs within 30 years leaving humanity facing its 'biggest challenge ever' to find meaning in life when work is no longer necessary, according to experts. Professor Moshe Vardi, who is, a professor in computational engineering at Rice University, in the US, claims that many middle-class professionals will be outsources to machines within the next few decades leaving workers with more leisure time than they have ever experienced. Speaking at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting in Washington, Prof Moshe said the rise of robots could lead to unemployment rates greater than 50 per cent. "We are approaching a time when machines will be able to outperform humans at almost any task," said Vardi. “Robots are doing more and more jobs that people used to do. Pharmacists, prison guards, boning chicken, bartending, more and more jobs we’re able to mechanize them. “I believe that society needs to confront this question before it is upon us: If machines are capable of doing almost any work humans can do, what will humans do? The question I want to put forward is, 'Does the technology we are developing ultimately benefit mankind?” Prof. Vardi, said existing robotic and AI technologies were already eliminating a growing number of middle-class jobs and claims that pace of advancement in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) is increasing. In December, Nanyang Technological University in Singapore unveiled the most humanlike robot ever created, which will work as a receptionist on campus. With her soft skin and flowing brunette hair, Nadine does not only meet and greet visitors, smile, make eye contact and shake hands, but she can even recognize past guests and spark up conversation based on previous chats. Today Airbus and the Joint Robotics Laboratory at the University of Frankfurt, also announced it was developing humanoid robotic technology to perform difficult tasks in aircraft manufacturing. The company said it would relieve workers of the most dangerous and laborious tasks, allowing them to concentrate on ‘higher value tasks.’ The robots in development can climb ladders and crawl into small spaces and are expected to join the workforce within the next decade. Human mini-brains to speed up Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s research are being worked on as well, but Prof Vardi is unconvinced that a workforce of humanlike robots will be good for mankind.

While we may not have mastered collaborating humans with robots, we have made great strides. We have cyborgs in our word as well. Brent Staples has a very good insight on cyborgs and has talked to some high up people in the cyborg world. Staples states, “The mathematician Norbert Wiener founded the science of cybernetics in 1948 with a warning that has become a cornerstone of futurist writing. The computer age was still in its infancy when he cautioned that intelligent machines could wreak havoc on civilization — and perhaps even snuff it out — if we failed to handle them with humility and care. He was not referring to malevolent entities like Skynet, the genocidal artificial intelligence in the “Terminator” films, or the Cylon robots who wage war on their makers in the television series “Battlestar Galactica.” Instead, he posed a scenario in which a relentlessly logical machine brings on catastrophe by obeying instructions containing hidden hazards that its master failed to detect. The machine would complete its work with lightning speed, Wiener said, giving comparatively slow-witted humans no time to appraise the danger and react. Wiener understood that people who owned intelligent or sentient machines would face moral problems similar to those associated with the practice of owning human beings. The futurist writer Philip K. Dick exploited this problem to great effect in his work, most famously in “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” the novel that inspired the 1982 film “Blade Runner.” This movie crystallized what futurists like Dick had long seen as the next phase of enslavement. It depicted synthetic beings called replicants, manufactured for use as sex toys, soldiers, assassins and so on. When the replicants take charge of their lives, a bounty hunter tracks them down and “retires” them — which is to say, he shoots them to death. The new HBO series “Westworld,” though based on a 1973 sci-fi thriller about a rebellion of robotic slaves at an amusement park, is closely related to “Blade Runner” in both tone and substance. It acknowledges this debt in a number of ways, not least of all by using the word “retire” to describe the park’s decision to lobotomize a cyborg prostitute who fights back when she is assaulted, despite programming that requires her to submit to rape, strangulation, gunshot wounds and temporary death. Under ordinary circumstances, cyborgs who “die” are surgically repaired, subjected to memory erasure and put back into circulation. The next day, hell begins all over again. “Westworld” has been attacked for sensationalizing violence. But the violence in this series is tame compared with the carnage depicted in any number of video games that show characters being blown to pieces in every frame. Now imagine what gamers decades from now might pay to enter into a world where a quite-nearly-human adversary bleeds, cries and “dies’’ when injured in battle. This is the bloody, morally compromised future that “Westworld” envisions. The father of cybernetics cautioned human beings against the desire to be waited upon by intelligent machines that are equipped to improve their minds over time. “We wish a slave to be intelligent, to be able to assist us in the carrying out of our tasks,” Wiener writes. “However, we also wish him to be subservient.” The obvious problem is that keen intelligence and groveling submission do not go hand in hand.”

In the big picture of things, people are completely terrified of robots taking over, taking our jobs and controlling us. The creators are the bad ones in the situation the robots are only the puppets. These robots are getting international attention and that’s exactly what PR representative from one of the fortune 500 companies. They want to get as many eyes on them at once and then bombard that group of people with ads ways of living telling them to try new GMOs or maybe send your kid to a certain high school or college, suggesting a vacation to one of their resort, etc. I believe there is a higher group of people that control a majority of everything and that’s how all these ideas are connected. Look at driverless cars for example. BMW, GM, and so on are the leaders in that technology because they have all the power in that field. They probably will control when and what comes out as far as cars. Prosthesis are not as extreme as these robots but suggesting cyborgs instead? That seems strange to meet. Get as much of our technology on or in you, in your house and your car so we control if you can walk, control if you leave your house and turn your power so you can’t reach anyone as well. That is a scary thought to think if we get to advanced one day. One person can literally hack the whole system and control everything. I believe that’s why people are always scared of the future because they don’t know if their freedom is guaranteed in the next decade or not.

Work Cited

Staples, Brent. “'Westworld' and the Moral Dilemma of Cyborgs.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 19 Nov. 2016, www.nytimes.com/2016/11/20/opinion/sunday/westworld-and-the-moral-dilemma-of-cyborgs.html.

Fitzsimmons, Caitlin. “Why Sophia the Robot Is Not What It Seems.” The Sydney Morning Herald, The Sydney Morning Herald, 2 Nov. 2017, www.smh.com.au/opinion/why-sophia-the-robot-is-not-what-it-seems-20171031-gzbi3p.html.

Knapton, Sarah. “Robots Will Take over Most Jobs within 30 Years, Experts Warn.” The Telegraph, Telegraph Media Group, 13 Feb. 2016, www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/12155808/Robots-will-take-over-most-jobs-within-30-years-experts-warn.html.

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