#and build upon a BELIEVABLE narrative and world building is important with your foundations

[des-no9]

half of the fun writing anything for me is making stuff up and taking small things from canon I like or that work for me and expanding on that.

I'm very faithful to lore in the "the things that matter to me and that make the fundamentals and foundations of the races and characters I love are important" but then I build on that and create out, up, back, to the side or whatever for my own enjoyment and narrative. Because for the likes of DND (specifically 5e and BG3 I write and create for) no one is writing lore for a romance and narrative between an ancient githyanki and a GOOLock tiefling who is far older that she deserves to be. So I write it myself.

[novella-november]

hey!! loving your recent posts about romance in writing.

i need some adviceim writing a story that has a romantic b-plot between my protagonist and his childhood best friend. the main story is very dramatic and high fantasy. i was wondering if you had any tips on specifically romances that arent the main focus? (but still important to the plot!)

i assume the broad strokes of chemistry and intrigue are still there, but is there anything more specific? (tldr i would like the long post /lh)

thank you so much for your time (:

Honestly, I'm writing something similar, high-stakes high fantasy with a slightly background romance and at least in my case, my "romantic leads" are going to be seperated from their initial meeting for a long time, and unique circumstances and societal expectations help (and hinder) their relationship before they're even together romantically.

But yeah, I would say, for what I assume is probably a slow burn of friends to lovers, definitely work on building up the chemistry between them, that they enjoy spending time together, that they can rely on one another, that they don't always see eye to eye, but they truly do care about each other that they will work to resolve their conflicts...

One important thing for building up a good romance, is you should aim for balance; both partners should be equals in the relationship, both able to depend upon and rely on the other -- and they' don't have to be carbon copies of each other, (obviously), but try to make sure that both partners have believable strengths and weakneses that aren't just your typical Heroic Flaws of 'being too self-less / self-sacrificing', and maybe both partner helps balance out each other's flaws.

The other thing in terms of balance is -- social balance. Is one of your characters a millionaire while the other is living paycheck to paycheck?

(While it is easy and tempting to write a story about a character living the wish fulfillment of marrying into a rich family and living in the lap of luxury for the rest of their life (aka, not having to worry about being evicted from one too many unpaid bills) , I find it a much more satisfying story to see the Rich Asshole Characters dragged down into the mud and forced to see how people like themselves cause all these issues for society at large by hoarding their wealth and paying their workers in pennies, without seeing the people they interact with as human being deserving of dignity and security.

Especially stories where Rich Asshole tries to court Working Class person and gets rejected for being, you know, an asshole and slowly works on improving themselves as a person and trying to make the world a better place one cut CEO paycheck at a time before they reunite and Previously-Rich Asshole respects their previous decision and they become actual friends and then graduate over time to lovers after actually getting to know one another.)

Even beyond the matter of wealth, you should keep an eye on the social status of your main pair; if one person is a much higher class than the other, or the relationship starts out as one with one in a position of strong authority over the other (like a boss at work, or a Lord of a Castle courting the serving maid at the local pub), those relationship issues should definitely be addressed sooner rather than later.

Is one of your characters pressured or forced into the relationship because of the social inequality, and this never gets addressed within the duo? Be prepared for readers to notice right away, and if one half of your pair spends their entire time worrying about disappointing or offending their partner and getting banished from the whole country as a result, that is definitely something you need to make an actual plot point and address it within the narrative.

It's perfectly fine for your characters to start off on unequal footing, but if you really want their relationship and love to have a solid foundation by the end, that unequal footing needs to be resolved in some manner, either simply through clear and honest communication about each others fears and worries, or through deliberate choices by the "higher" partner to lower themselves down to an even playing field.

(if you want an excuse for your Royal+Servant couple to elope, running away to the countryside to live as simple townsfolk where no one knows you're a prince/princess is both a fun plot, and depending on the story, can set up some Future Conflict when the Estranged Royal in question gets recognized)

So, for a High Fantasy Friends To Lovers type story, it's probably going to mainly depend on where and how your characters do most of their interacting.

Are they in the same Party on an Epic Quest?

Show them talking and working together,

checking in with each other, seeking out each other's opinion,

doing small favors for the other without a thought,

staying up late beside the fire to keep talking long after the others have gone to bed,

putting their sleeping bags next to each other/sharing a tent together,

Give them inside jokes and nicknames for each other,

When they start developing romantic feelings for each other, slowly build up to it; there's a reason slow-burns are so popular! Just don't "bait and switch" your readers forever with a "will-they-won't-they" plot, as going too long with constant teasing and then snatching it away for a new plot twist to get in the way can lead to your audience resenting the relationship that seemingly-will-never-be.

When one side of the pair is narrating and is describing their friend, slowly start adding in slightly more details your character is probably not aware they're noticing, like that they are always looking at their friend first and foremost and noticing more and more of their behaviors, starting to notice emotional cues more and more, before they realize while looking at their gorgeous friend's lustrous black hair that oh my gods I just called my friend gorgeous and realize they're crushing on their friend.

some more detailed examples of things to build up the relationship:

Going out of their way to Forage for the other person's favorite food to surprise them with

while one person is off bathing or gathering fire wood, have the other mend some of their clothing, sharpen their sword, set up their tent, etc

If one character has some kind of allergy, show the other character having a bag they always, always have with them that contains a potion or special herb to help their friend in an emergency (if the friend's own one fails for any reason,) like a back-up epipen.

Maybe one character has poor eyesight, and the other character instinctively reads things out loud to them, or describes their surroundings.

Oh, and this is one example in particular that I don't think happens too often, but it does seem to be an easy way to get cheap drama in a romance:

Once your romantic leads finally do get together, don't immediately bring on the "betrayal" plot-lines, or have the other go behind one's back, manipulate the other, etc.

For the love of the gods, do not pull a Liv Moore / Major Lillywhite situation from iZombie.

If your story is a romance... your audience *should not* come away from your story firmly (and correctly) convinced that your main romantic leads are far better friends than they are lovers, because they respect and love each other when they're Just Friends but the *second* they start dating, they're bringing on the gaslighting, spying, manipulation, jealous rages, etc.

Oh, and speaking of jealous rages: Like all things, it's fine to have a relationship have a rocky, tumultuous start. But if one half of the relationship flies off the handle any time someone so much as breathes in their partner's direction... that is going to lead to some major, major problems.

Respect and trust for each other *needs* to extend to anyone your characters might be jealous of.

If one half of your romantic duo get pissed off and demands the other never see or talk to any of their friends ever again because Half A is convinced that they're trying to 'steal' Half B away by seducing them, or taking time away from Half A, etc, that is the time for a ground-breaking, relationship-testing fight--

-- no matter which way it goes or how your characters handle (or don't handle) the scenario, Half A needs to realize how much they are hurting and isolating Half B by trying to keep them away from their loved ones, and that if they actually respect and trust Half B, they'll *show* that, and learn to deal with whatever emotional baggage they may have in a way that *doesn't* hurt the ones they love.

um. trying to think of other things I love or loath in Romance Tropes, but that's all I've got off the top of my head lol. I have no idea how long this post took to write but it was probably a solid half hour of me staring at my screen and Pondering The Tropes.

Enjoy! And please feel free to ask follow-up questions.

[queer-ragnelle]

Hi! I was wondering if you had any advice on how to craft a well-written, compelling Arthurian OC that isn't obnoxious or out of place but is still unique. I recognize the difficulty in doing so with so many different source texts (I'm most familiar with Le Morte, so that's usually my go-to) and the vast list of already existing characters. I'm just curious about your thoughts on the matter, since you're an author and also very knowledgeable about Arthuriana 💖

Hello there!

This is a tough question to answer! I think it's important to note that everyone will have a different opinion on this, but that shouldn't alter you writing your story how you want to. Some think adding any characters at all is too big of a change, while others write a full cast of original characters and then Merlin shows up randomly and makes the story "Arthurian."

I'm going to say something controversial.

Every Arthurian character is an OC.

Even King Arthur himself is an OC.

I'm going to elaborate on this quite a bit, as it's very important to me. But the TL;DR is that reading more will definitely help you conceptualize the boundaries of what's possible. Le Morte d'Arthur is a great start, but there's so much out there, both medieval and modern, that'll undoubtedly aid in your Arthuriana writing journey! :^)

While I do say things like "I love Arthurian OCs" as a means to convey that I view everyone's new creations as valid and interesting, I actually don't believe in a strong differentiation between Chretien de Troyes' Sir Lancelot or Marie of France's Sir Lanval and what you or I are writing today. We're participating in a tradition which can, at times, necessitate the creation of a new character or repurposing of an existing one. I think as soon as you create a character for your Arthurian story, they're an Arthurian character. Some refer to Lancelot or Galahad as "French OCs" or call Knight of the Cart or the Vulgate "fanfiction" as a means to degrade it's validity. Some seem to have an arbitrary timeline on which the full body of Arthurian works is measured, and the more recently something was written, the less authentic it becomes. I think they're wrong. I believe that whether or not we enjoy an installment in the ever expanding Arthurian tradition is irrelevant; it's all equally entitled to a measure of respect, even the new characters. No character or story is lesser than another by virtue of its age or language of origin or target audience or medium. I disdain the excess of scrutiny put upon certain arbitrary groupings of Arthurian tradition. Each story is full of original characters and building on the foundations of what came before. That's the nature of creative influence. Whether or not Arthur was a real person at some point in history is moot. The guy in the Mabinogion or the Vulgate or Le Morte d'Arthur or BBC Merlin is a character. He's a tool to tell a story. Such as your creation will be! Your brand new Arthurian character stands equally with all the rest who preceded them. :^)

Now, it can be helpful to distinguish between a medieval character and a modern one, sure, as they may represent different things depending on what point in history (or part of the world) they were created in. But Arthuriana isn't a franchise one must obtain express permission to contribute to, and it doesn't have a "canon," so therefore differentiating a character as "other" can be counter productive when developing a story. I don't believe Sir Robin from Monty Python and The Holy Grail (1975) or Brian from The Adventures of Sir Lancelot (1956-1957) are any less valuable as characters, even if they do draw on traits of existing Arthurian motifs in order to commentate on them or otherwise expand. In fact I think they're great characters and serve their narrative roles beautifully. One simple and one complex. I recommend watching those to see how it's done well and that may help you develop your own characters. But I'll delve into it a bit here to illustrate what I mean.

Sir Robin carries the coat of arms of a chicken, he's a cowardly knight followed around by a troupe of musicians that sing songs about all of his exploits. That is, the things he's run away from. Rather than use an existing Arthurian character and degrading them, Monty Python developed Sir Robin in order to tell their joke.

The flipside is Brian, a bona fide kitchen boy, who attaches himself to Sir Lancelot and desires to squire for him. Brian's narrative purpose is to deconstruct the nobility in a way that Gareth Beaumains, whom Brian is plainly inspired by, could not. Brian begins as a true serf forced to endear himself to Sir Lancelot to elevate his station. Merlin forges papers of nobility to convince King Arthur that Brian is worthy of this privilege. Even after that, Brian must face the brutality of his fellows while living in the barracks with them, as they don't take kindly to a "smelly kitchen boy" in their midst, plotting to get Brian to incriminate himself as a thief and get evicted from Camelot by Sir Kay. This role is incongruous with Gareth as Sir Gawain's brother, who was always noble, always a prince, and merely cloaked himself in the guise of poverty to prove a point. Gareth could return to the comforts of wealth whenever it suited him and his reason for going stealth was to intentionally distance himself from that privilege. The character Brian exists in order to commentate on the injustice of the upper class's oppression and dehumanization of the lower class in a way Gareth, or even Tor, could not, as they are of noble blood, even if it came by way of reveal. That's why Brian is a great addition to the Arthurian tradition.

Really, it comes down to treating the creation of your new Arthurian character like you would developing one for any other work, one entirely separate from the tradition. If they're a good character, they're a good character! Try not to get hung up too much on whether or not they're going to mesh well with the rest of the cast. For centuries, writers have transformed historical figures into Arthurian characters. (See: King Mark of Kernow better known as the Cuckhold King from the Prose Tristan, Owain mab Urien better known as Sir Yvain from Knight of the Lion by Chretien de Troyes, Saint Derfel better known as Derfel Gadarn from The Warlord Chronicles by Bernard Cornwell, etc.)

Speaking of Prose Tristan, would anyone consider Sir Dinadan an OC? Or Sir Palomides? They're characters added to a story drawing from a much, much older tradition, and I think they enrich the story. I feel likewise about the many Perceval Continuations, including the German Parzival by Wolfram von Eschenbach, which adds a half brother named Sir Feirefiz, or names Chretien's anonymous haughty maiden Orgeluse. What about Sir Aglovale's son Moriaen in the Dutch tradition? Amurfina in German Diu Krone by Heinrich von dem Türlin? Morgan le Fay's daughter Puzella Gaia in Italian La Tavola Ritonda? Not to mention the countless Middle English additions. The Green Knight and his wife? Dame Ragnelle and Sir Gromer? Or how about everyone's favorite Savage Damsel, Lynette of Castle Perilous? Is she not a late-era addition to the tradition courtesy of the man, the myth, the legend, Sir Thomas Malory himself? And then here comes Tennyson, who read Le Morte d'Arthur, and got to the end of dear Gareth Beaumains' story and had the same reaction we all did: "What the hell? He marries her sister?" And then he went about changing that in Idylls of the King. Speaking of Lynette, what's up with her niece Laurel? She's just a name on a page, the vast majority of retellings choose to ignore her, even if they do keep Lynette and Lyonesse. Laurel can scarcely be called a character, after all. She doesn't even have dialogue. So as I've gone out of my way to make her a prominent, fully developed character, with her own culture and back story and motivations, does that make her an OC of mine? And Henry Newbolt who included Laurel in his play Mordred: A Tragedy. And Sarah Zettel, who wrote from Laurel's point of view in Camelot's Blood. We did all the work, but we threw an Arthurian name on the character, so therefore, she isn't ours? But if we changed her name, she would be? Who gets to decide?

All of the Arthurian characters belong to all of us. That's the beauty of writing in a long-standing tradition, which exists apart from all other forms of writing. We have complete creative liberty to do what we want and refer to it how we want and no person or corporation or anyone can dictate otherwise. The intellectual property of Arthuriana belongs to the people. So invent a brand new wife for Gawain, and well, you're only the millionth author to do it! Just make sure she's an interesting character and that's literally the only requirement. Can't wait to meet her. (And all others you create!)

Have a great day!

[empireoftheelit]

That sounds like an intriguing premise for a reboot of "God's Not Dead"! Here’s a more detailed outline based on your concept: **Title**: "God's Not Dead: The Last Testament" **Setting**: An alternate history where, due to a massive cultural shift, all copies of the Bible have been systematically destroyed. Society has moved away from religious texts, viewing them as mere fairy tales rather than foundational truths. **Main Character**: Alex Carter, a passionate college student at Yale, majoring in history and archaeology. He has always had a love for old books and a curiosity about the world’s lost knowledge. **Plot**: 1. **Inciting Incident**: Alex stumbles upon a reference to a rumored last surviving copy of the Bible in an old manuscript during his research. Intrigued, he becomes determined to find it, believing it holds the key to understanding the historical context of Christianity and its impact on civilization. 2. **Conflict**: As Alex digs deeper, he faces skepticism from his professors and peers, who view his quest as an obsession with an outdated fairytale. Meanwhile, he encounters antagonists who actively seek to prevent him from uncovering the truth, believing that the elimination of the Bible is essential for a progressive society. 3. **Journey**: Alex embarks on a journey that takes him across the country, visiting libraries, archives, and hidden locations where remnants of religious history may still exist. Along the way, he meets various characters, including a mentor figure who helps guide him and a love interest who challenges his beliefs. 4. **Transformation**: As he reads the Bible and uncovers its historical significance and moral teachings, Alex begins to experience a transformation in his beliefs. He grapples with questions of faith, purpose, and the meaning of life, which leads to profound personal growth. 5. **Climax**: The climax builds as Alex finds the last surviving copy of the Bible, but he must confront those who seek to destroy it. In a tense showdown, he defends the book and the beliefs it represents, ultimately inspiring others around him to reconsider their views on faith. 6. **Resolution**: The film concludes with Alex emerging as a voice for faith and reason, igniting a movement among his peers to explore spirituality and the impact of religious texts on culture. The final scene could show him speaking at a university forum, advocating for open discussions about faith, leading to the hopeful revival of interest in spiritual exploration. **Themes**: The film would explore themes of faith vs. skepticism, the power of belief, the importance of history, and the quest for truth in a world that often dismisses it. It could serve as both an adventure and a thought-provoking examination of the role of religion in society. This reboot could resonate with audiences looking for a narrative that blends adventure with deep philosophical questions, all while encouraging a conversation about faith and its relevance in modern life.

[lavienbleuuu]

Ordinary Things

In a world that idolizes extraordinary achievements and bigger-than-life personas, it is easy to overlook the beauty and significance of our everyday lives.

We crave the adrenaline rush that we get when we experience unbelievable adventures and achievements. We attach the definition of our existence to extraordinariness, believing that the pinnacle of our happiness and fulfilment lies beyond the realms of the ordinary. But in our relentless pursuit, we overlook the grandeur of the ordinary.

Each day, we wake up and embark on our journey. We engage in countless seemingly insignificant tasks. We fold our blankets, take a shower, make our breakfast and get to work. We live our day on autopilot, trying to complete each responsibility before it’s time to hit the sheets. It may seem mundane, even trivial, but these small little moments are the very threads that weave the fabric of our existence.

It is in the familiarity and the simplicity of these moments where the beauty of ordinariness lies. It is waking up to the streaming first rays of sunlight, savouring the aroma of freshly brewed coffee and feeling the warmth of a loved one’s embrace. It is in the carefree rhythm of our footsteps as we transit across familiar territories and in the gracefulness as we hold the door for our colleagues to pass by.

Every action we take, every thought we generate and every emotion that aches are uniquely ours. No one else in the world possesses the same blend of qualities and perspectives that we do. Therefore, it is through our ordinary actions that we reveal our true selves and our distinctiveness.

Consider the care and attention we put into cleaning our rooms. It might be a simple series of tasks, but the way we choose to organize our tables, tidy our beds and fold our clothes, reflects our personal preferences and brand. No one can replicate it precisely as we do.

It is in the accumulation of these everyday moments that our lives take shape. Our consistent effort, commitment and dedication to the things we do day in and day out create a narrative of our character. Our routines may seem ordinary, but they are the building blocks of our individuality. And with the effect of compounding over a prolonged period, it can make a world of difference for our personal growth.

Our actions have a ripple effect on the world around us. Our character is not defined by a single grand act, but rather by the consistent choices we make in our daily lives. Every small interaction we have will reflect the way we treat others and our ability to show kindness and empathy. This is why it is really important to be mindful about our decisions as people will never forget how you made them feel. Our small acts of kindness and consideration, repeated over time, can create a wave of positivity that extends far beyond our immediate circle.

The conversations at the dinner tables, the gossip sessions in the office canteen and the heartfelt smiles exchanged at the local pub, all carry immeasurable significance, infusing our lives with meaning and purpose.

So let us not underestimate the power of the ordinary, for it is the very foundation upon which the extraordinary is built. It is the stepping stone that carries us upwards, the canvas upon with we can paint our unique stores. Remember that the most profound joys in our lives can often be found in the simplest of moments. By embracing the beauty of the ordinary, we can pause, breathe and appreciate the intricate details that often go unnoticed.

Creating legacies is not limited to the realms of the extraordinary. It is determined by the way you live your ordinary life.

[itsclydebitches]

RWBY Recaps: Volume 8 “Witch”

Happy Saturday, everyone! Well, it's perhaps happier provided you didn't watch today’s episode lol. Getting through these 18 minutes felt like watching an extended version of a CinemaSins vid. I heard a little 'ding!' every time something nonsensical, contradictory, or just downright stupid happened. My mind became a pinball machine. 

Which, in the interest of being fair as opposed to just snarky, only matters if you're looking for something resembling emotional depth in this show. RWBY, for all its faults, is enjoyable as a mindless spectacle. It's when you expect — or simply hope — for anything more that this very fragile house of cards comes tumbling down.

If it’s not clear already, today’s recap contains copious amounts of salt. Fair warning. 

With that disclaimer out of the way, let’s dive in. Episode nine is titled "Witch," which is fitting since many members of our group go toe-to-toe against Salem herself. The narrative issues inherent in having your heroes fighting their final boss years before the series is meant to end might have been avoided if it weren't for Oscar's ridiculous, sacrificial attack... but we'll get to that.

We open with a sweeping shot of the Atlas battle, as hundreds of dead soldiers segue into endless grimm. Hold onto that image for a bit. At the end of this carnage is, of course, the mouth of the whale. We cut to Jaune, Ren, and Yang already safely inside.

"Well," says Yang, "that was harrowing."

I'm on the fence about this choice. On the one hand, yes, it's good that RWBY knows it can skip over extraneous scenes. We have NINE characters to keep track of and develop, fourteen if you count Ozpin, Maria, Winter, Ironwood, and now Whitley. Plus villains. There simply isn't time to show every insignificant moment... but was this insignificant? Obviously finding Oscar and escaping Salem's clutches is the true hurdle of this mission, but that doesn't mean getting through an entire army of grimm is in any way a cake walk. I'd be more willing to ignore this time skip if it weren't likewise presented as such a challenge for Winter's team. They have to "clear a path" to the whale, but our trio got there unscathed and unnoticed? The obvious implication here is that Ren just masked them the whole way — supported by his aura breaking later in the episode — but it still feels like we missed an important chunk of this task.

I'm nit-picking though. As said, I’m straddling the fence on this one and, given that, I'm inclined to settle on a, "Good job, RWBY. You're keeping the writing tight," if only because I don't have much else to praise about this episode. Throw the poor, struggling show a bone lol.

Now that they're inside, they realize they haven't the slightest idea how they'll find Oscar. “Like finding a needle in a giant…whale… why did we think this was a good idea?!” Because you and your friends are idiots who no longer bother to think about a situation before throwing yourself straight into it? This isn't me being mean to Yang, she literally says as much later on. Our heroes no longer get by on intellect, strategy, and skill, but rather plot armor and a staggering number of coincidences. For example, Ren.

Yang: Wow, it sure is lucky for us that on our way to this incredibly dangerous mission Ren inexplicably developed a new part of his semblance. Now he can not only mask peoples' emotions, see the true emotions that someone is feeling, pull thoughts out of their head about what they believe about a situation, but can also track someone across long distances through their emotions alone. Even that doesn't actually help us find Oscar, we just got lucky again when, in this maze of a whale, he ran right into us!

Me: So what were you going to do if this meta-world stopped giving you the most contrived solutions in Remnant history?

Yang: Die gloriously, I guess.

What Yang actually says is, "Okay. That's new!" and they enter the literal belly of the beast wielding a shield of convenience.

Jaune is also being awkward again because remember, RWBY doesn't know when to incorporate humor and when to treat a situation seriously. He reminds Ren not to "drain [himself]," he'll help him, and it's clear the scene is hinting at their earlier fight. There's a lot to unpack there, but I want to save it for the second conversation.

For now, we cut to Oscar, curled up in his cell, repeating stories to comfort himself. Yeah that's fine. I could use a broken heart right before Valentine's Day.

“She brushed off her bumps and bruises, for nothing hurt worse than the loneliness in her chest." It's a line from The Girl Who Fell Through the World, which Ozpin recognizes given that he's "lived through" a fair number of fairy tales. He immediately asks how Oscar is holding up — because he's a caring person! — and Oscar admits that he never understood why the girl of the tale was sad upon reaching home again. Now he does: she wasn't the same person anymore. I don't think the fact that Oscar has had both a metaphorical fall — leaving his farm to 'fall' into this war — and a literal one — falling through Atlas to unlock his magic — is lost on anyone. This is a nice allusion to our themes. Yang's speech to Salem later on? That’s something else entirely. 

Storytelling done, Ozpin says he thinks "this plan to divide might have run its course” and it's time to try and find a way to leave. I'm sorry, I love my farm boy, but what plan? He didn't do anything. At least nothing that could remotely be termed an intellectual plot. Oscar convinced Ozpin to try and turn Hazel by telling him the world would end under Salem's rule and the only reason that worked is because the story decided to chuck out Hazel's entire character. You know, the one that hates Ozpin above all others, wants the world remade into a non-Academy horror show, can't understand that people make their own choices, is terrified of Salem, and has no reason to trust a prisoner he's currently torturing. Oscar's "plan" hinged on his writers erasing a great deal of work to build a new story that fits said “plan.” He didn't even get Emerald involved, she just — again, conveniently — eavesdropped outside their door at just the right moment.

To be clear, I'm not against a story being written to work in the hero's favor. Of course things are going to be convenient in a happy-ending tale. Someone manages to hold out just as long as they need to, a sword is lying just within reach, you, yes, happen to run into the one person you're desperate to find. This kind of stuff is reassuring, telling its audiences that sometimes things do work out for the best. It's enjoyable... but only provided the hero's entire success doesn't hinge on fate being shockingly kind to them. That's what RWBY has become. A world where Salem doesn't attack Mantle, Amity Tower is suddenly finished, the group can charge into any deadly situation they want to and bank on destiny twisting around itself to ensure they come out of it safely. A hero finding a convenient weapon nearby to defeat their enemy with is only reassuring after we've seen them implement a brilliant attack, struggle, nearly win, but then suddenly be faced with failure, necessitating that little push from coincidence. They earned it. The hero doesn't get to run in blindly and find a Defeat Bad Guy plot point gift wrapped for them at the first sign of trouble. They just die.

RWBY used to be a better written show because that's precisely Pyrrha's story. She charged a Maiden unprepared, without a single plan or hope for success, and she died. That's what happens in a dangerous, internally consistent world, but RWBY has since lost the second half of that formula.

I'm harping on this because this entire episode is built on that foundation of coincidence, something that shouldn't be happening at all, but especially not when you're pitting the heroes against Salem herself.

So yeah, it just gets worse from here.

Back to Oscar. Without the cane magic is the only weapon they have at their disposal, but he's reluctant to use it because every time he does, they merge more quickly. 

They... do? 

Okay, there are three major problems with this announcement:

I'm pretty sure we've only seen Oscar use magic once: creating that barrier to survive the fall through Atlas. That was the point of his near death experience, to unlock something that had previously been unavailable to him. Yet if he's only used it once, why is he so sure that it hurries the merge along? What's this "every time" business? This confusion could have easily been avoided if the show had just let Oscar use his magic this volume, tackling some other questions and gaps in the process. Let him use it to fight off the grimm in Mantle, giving him the opportunity to admit to at least Jaune, Ren, and Yang that Ozpin is back. He could have used some magic against the Hound with Ozpin's encouragement, answering the question of why he was entirely silent while the two of them got their ass beat. Give us a moment where Oscar uses his magic against Hazel, nearly escaping in the process, but is captured again at the last moment. Basically, his line makes it sound like magic has been this ongoing resource with an established downside when... it hasn’t.

Coinciding with all of the above, how is it that Oscar can suddenly use magic at will? Yeah, yeah, he unlocked it during the fall, but really? You open up the magic gates and from then on out it's as natural as breathing? This is the same issue with Ruby's silver eyes. The story gives these characters incredible powers, but never has them talking about how they work, let alone training them. They just exist, perfect in execution, as soon as the plot needs them. (See: the final shot of this episode.) At least Weiss had to practice her summoning for multiple volumes.

Finally, the question of how Oscar instinctively knows how to use magic could easily be answered with, "Well, he's kind of Ozpin now," but that would require the story to actually explain what the merge is. "We merge faster," Oscar says, but what does that mean? The Ozpin and Oscar we see in this scene are fundamentally indistinguishable from the Ozpin and Oscar who existed at his aunt's house, four whole years ago. They're still separate people, with one controlling the body and the other existing as a consciousness he can talk to. Nothing has changed. The show keeps insisting that Oscar is going through this deep and painful arc of losing himself to Ozpin... despite the fact that he has yet to lose a single bit of Oscar-ness. Has he changed? Well of course, but anyone going through these experiences is going to change. Remove the "merge" aspect and Oscar's confidence or power up is likewise indistinguishable from any of the other characters' developments. Nora is becoming more of an individual this volume. Ren is becoming more powerful in his semblance. Neither have an Ozpin to force that change, it just happens on its own. So what separates Oscar from every other character going through a formative experience? When is “I’m not the same person anymore” due to unnatural magic vs. just growing up? 

Don't get me wrong, I'm happy our boy is getting more screen time — and that the cast is actually being kind to him now — but overall his arc is objectively terrible. He bought some clothes, told Ironwood he was as bad as Salem, told Hazel how to access the Relic, and then asked him not to be a villain anymore. Somehow these things are presented as significant moments of growth while the real questions surrounding his merge go unanswered.

“Honestly, I think you’re doing just fine on your own," Ozpin tells him, but he's not. God knows our boy is trying, but this is a moment where Ozpin's self-hatred (and the story's insistence that the younger generation is intrinsically better than the older) is blinding him to the situation. Oscar has made terrible decisions lately, in as much as he's been able to decide anything at all, and now he's rejecting escaping captivity because he's terrified of a concept he doesn't even understand yet. None of that is fine. Reassurance is one thing, but painting this situation as Oscar making better choices than he would with Ozpin's input is insane. He literally just decided to keep them in Salem's clutches indefinitely because something something magic is scary, I guess. Oscar doesn't need a, 'You're better than me' speech, he needs a reality check so they don't both die. Remember back in Volume 5 when Oscar, a brave but idiotic 14 year old, insisted on fighting someone entirely out of his league and Ozpin was like,

then saved him from getting his head crushed in like a cantaloupe? We need more of that. Our teenage heroes need guidance, but because RWBY keeps insisting that every adult they encounter is corrupt or incompetent, that hasn't happened in three volumes. They're just aloud to decide things like, “Let's tell our captor the Relic's password because UwU ~trust~” and then the story bends over backwards to make that work. Instead we could, you know, let characters learn that they can be wrong. 

The snow scene was the beginning, but RWBY really went off the rails the day it let Qrow warn the group against stealing from and attacking an allied city, only for them to call him an idiot for doubting them. Now, Ozpin doesn't even get to warn Oscar about stupid decisions, he just agrees with them, reassuring and passive. Never mind the complication of whether Ozpin is even emotionally capable of providing guidance after they labeled him the worst thing to ever happen to them. 

Why does RWBY keep ruining my faves 😔

Anyway, we’ve got to stay on track. Oscar has decided to just lie there but, luckily for him, Hazel's redemption — I use that term so loosely — has begun. He drags Oscar out of his cell before we cut to Winter. 

She's leading a portion of Ironwood's army, trying to get things ready for when the bomb arrives. Neon and Flynt are a part of her team, sharing scared glances and trying to remain optimistic. It's a legitimately hard-hitting moment, striking that balance between horror and hope. Funny though, I wonder that RWBYJNOR would think of their friends fighting for evil Ironwood...

Marrow, continuing the tradition of insisting that our heroes be both adults and kids simultaneously, looks sadly at the soldiers heading into battle and goes, "But... they're just kids." I would like to remind everyone reading that Ruby is younger than them. Anyone who thinks that these teenagers shouldn't be fighting grimm — the thing they have been training to do as their professional career, during an unprecedented attack on their home — should not simultaneously be looking to the girl who is two years younger as his savior. (Something that, while not overt yet, is very much where Marrow is heading as he continually doubts the Ace Ops and looks to RWBY's group as his new, moral leaders.) I'm glad that, for once, this perspective is firmly called out. Elm arrives to tell him point blank that he needs to figure out his personal ethics later. It doesn't matter because there's an army of grimm out there and monsters aren't going to spare anyone, adult or child. Quit philosophizing and kill some already.

Back to Hazel where we get the doorway shot from our trailer. He's taken Oscar to the Relic, because of course he has. Do I really need to list how convenient this is too? Apparently, "the moment we move that thing, this place goes on high alert," but there’s no alarm for when Oscar is taken from his cell, they enter the Relic's room, or when they use it. What does a movement alert matter if someone can just waltz in and waste the last question themselves? Put some of those endless grimm in the room to guard it, Salem!

Just assume that I am, at any given point in this episode, letting out the longest sigh my lungs are physically capable of.

Emerald shows up, demonstrating both the convenience of everyone arriving when they need to, and the very real danger that Salem herself could come in and discover what they're up to. Hazel has Oscar summon Jinn, only to immediately say that “Actually, I think all my questions are answered now.”

I'm sorry, how does this answer any of Hazel's questions? His driving question was not, "Is the Relic actually a magical object capable of doing magical things?" but rather "Are you telling me the truth about Salem's plans to summon the Gods and destroy all of Remnant in her quest to finally die, thereby changing who I'm going to support in this war?" Seeing a naked, blue djinn does not answer that question. 

Hazel's "redemption" is non-existent. He — we — learned about Salem's death wish despite how that contradicts previous lore, then he trusted Ozpin despite that contradicting his entire character, now he joins the heroes because, literally, he sees Jinn floating there. It’s bad enough that Hazel goes from clear villain to sacrificial hero in a matter of in-world hours, but we don’t even get a reason for why that change occurred. 

Oh, there's also this:

So Jinn doesn't come out of her lamp unless someone intends to ask a question, but does it for Ruby because she's special, yet still reiterates that this won't happen again. Then Oscar summons her without intending to ask a question, she comes out anyway, confirms that none of them seek knowledge from her, and happily pops back inside her lamp because eh, it’s whatever.

If RWBY had any courage the three of them would be cursed now for toying with a powerful, magical object. Remember the days when Jinn was a little terrifying because it felt like she was warping her answers and we had no idea what she might do to someone who used her carelessly? When she felt like a djinn? Good times.

Or better times, at least. 

So Good Guy Hazel and Good Gal Emerald promise to get Oscar out. Never mind all the horror they caused, the people they killed, and that for Hazel, at least, this defection is coming out of nowhere. 

Anyone remember that Emerald orchestrated Penny's death? No? Just me?

As they leave it turns out Neo was camouflaged against the wall, because she was also precisely where she needed to be. Does everyone just periodically pop into the Relic room to see what’s going on? At least this time it's not working in the heroes' favor. Remember when I said it's beyond idiotic for Oscar to just hand out the Relic information to known enemies currently holding him captive and torturing him?

Yeeeeaah.

So Neo's got the Lamp. Funny how all of this could have been avoided if Ruby had just put it in the vault like she came to Atlas to do ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

We return to our trio where Jaune and Ren need to rest because their aura is giving out. Good! These guys fought a battle, fought Neo, fought more grimm, fought the Hound, traipsed through the tundra, presumably fought through more grimm to get to the whale, and have been using both their semblances to look for Oscar. It's about time their reserves started to falter.

Jaune decides to scout ahead a bit, leaving Yang and Ren to talk about nothing of importance. I mean that seriously. Remember a few days ago when I spoke about how, if the snow conversation does come back up, Ren's points would be entirely ignored for a nonsensical “I’m glad we’re friends” speech? Remember how I also spoke about how every emotional beat now is entirely generic and you could replace any character with another and not a single thing would change? Yeah. This is both those arguments in one. Nothing is said about the points Ren made. His problems with how the group has been acting lately and the very real, very deadly consequences it has had are flat out ignored. We went from

"But these aren't the kinds of decisions we should be making because we have no idea what we're doing!"

to

"Forward, no matter what!"

in a matter of hours, with precisely zero insight into how Ren went from one perspective to the exact opposite. Kind of like Hazel. Because see, RWBY doesn't write arcs, it just writes one thing until it decides to switch it up for something else, with the opposite idea presented as a “resolution” or a “twist.” Our creators writes scenes they know the fandom is begging for without considering how to get a character to that place, let alone how to get them out of it. That's all Ren's speech was, the equivalent of moral fan service. Here's a glimpse of actual character depth and a morally gray situation... now forget it ever happened because we're back to our regularly scheduled programming.

Instead of working through the laundry list of issues Ren raised, Ren instead accepts Jaune's aura help — something they've been doing since Argus — and tells Yang it's okay to be scared. These moments are meaningless and, as said, could have been between anyone in our cast. Ren could have told Nora she doesn't have to use jokes to cover up that she's scared. Jaune could have reminded Ruby that she can depend on him. Yang could have tried to keep Blake and Weiss' hopes up. This scenes ignores the individuality of the characters, like the fact that they just fought over very different world views, to instead favor any dime-a-dozen moment of support. The number of times this volume has rejected the conflict and resolution the group needs for bland, generic reassurances staggering.

Also, apparently Jaune isn't scared at all? I don't think that's as good a thing as Ren seems to think... 

Then Jaune immediately rounds the corner, terrified lol.

One of the seer grimm is on its way and he tells Ren to mask them. Apparently he had been masking them before — one of the reasons he's so tired now, trying to do two things at once — but it's only here that they go black and white again. Ren manages to keep it up for a little while, but his aura breaks before the seer passes and they're spotted.

Hark! A consequence!

That was well done. It makes sense and it adds to the stakes. We've seen the insane amount of fighting the group has done since Volume 7, we just established that they're at their breaking point, and then Ren's aura fails him right when he needs it the most. Add this to the miniscule pile of things that were well done this episode. 

Salem runs into Emerald and Hazel, the former of which is acting very suspicious when asked if he's made any headway with Oscar. The seer's alarm interrupts them though and... okay. Was I the only one who cackled during this moment? Between Salem's voice acting and the fact that she just yeets herself down the hallway, it came across as really funny to me. 

Either way, it is a bad situation. Our trio is trying to figure out what to do, to which Yang responds, "Do what we do best… charge blindly into danger!!”

Ren's aura is broken. Jaune barely has any left and it’s unlikely he could heal right now even if Ren had any aura to amplify. If Ren takes a single hit anywhere important he is dead.

Me, on my knees, surrounded by the ashes of the Hound, the last bit of serious storytelling we had: "For the love of God, the kingdom is on fire and simultaneously dying of cold. There's a grimm army decimating hundreds outside. Half their group is missing and they're wandering lost inside a devil whale, about to have the most powerful being Remnant has ever known personally try to kill them — can we please have their attitudes reflect that?"

The answer, in case you were wondering, is no.

Back to the bomb. Whatever scientists were given this task have completed it and Marrow watches as it's flown out towards the whale. "Come on, Juan" he whispers and I'm all, "Juan?" Apparently it's a callback to last volume when Marrow couldn't remember Jaune's actual name, but it took me hopping onto the RWBY wiki to remember that. 

As death via explosion inches closer, the trio runs into Hazel and Emerald. Turns out though that Hazel is really Oscar, disguised through Emerald's semblance. Nice trick! Jaune immediately drops both weapons to hug Oscar and, while that's nice and all, it's also the stupidest thing he could possible do in enemy territory. Also, Oscar has been beaten up by the Hound, tortured with magic, and likewise beaten bloody by Hazel. I was hoping for a tender hug like the one Nora gave him, not a giant squeeze for more comedy purposes. It just feels like RWBY has no idea how to manage the tone of this volume, let alone the torture of a child...

There's the obligatory, "Why should we trust you?" from Yang regarding Emerald joining the team, to which Ren responds, "Because she's scared, just like us."

That doesn't prove anything. Literally everyone is scared right now. There is a war going on. I really cannot emphasize enough how RWBY throws out Deep™ sounding lines that are, upon inspection, absolutely nonsensical. Nora reminding Penny that there are different parts to her personhood, Hazel saying that all his questions have been answered, Ren announcing that Emerald is scared... it's all worthless chatter that has no bearing on their problems: How do I keep from being hacked? How do I know you're telling the truth? How do we know you're trustworthy after you spent years trying to kill us? But of course, because it's RWBY, Ren's announcement is treated as some sort of secret truth that everyone accepts. Emerald joins up.

As they head for an exit we return to Marrow who, frankly, is getting on my last nerve. I know the fandom loves him because he's clearly leaning towards Team RWBY, but does anyone actually listen to what he says? He starts yelling at Winter for sending in the bomb because the trio might still be alive in there, despite:

Seeing for himself the hundreds of soldiers that have fallen trying to keep Atlas safe

Knowing and hearing again from Winter that the only way to stop this carnage is to take out the whale. Given more time, the whole city falls

Sadly announcing to the world that children shouldn't have to fight in a battle, rather than just joining the fray and helping to keep those kids safe

How does Marrow think those kids are going to be able to stop fighting? How does he think he'll get a city to return to? It's no wonder that he's drawn to Ruby because both characters stand around twiddling their thumbs, mourning that things are bad, and blaming others for imperfect solutions rather than doing something to make the situation better. Marrow's disgust at Winter over the bomb is precisely the same as Ruby's disgust at Ironwood over Mantle: how dare you not have a plan that results in both victory for us and zero sacrifices? They want perfection which, yes, is an admirable trait, but their problem is they refuse to do anything until that perfection appears. They’re paralyzed, a trait that’s particularly dangerous when your story insists that perfection will never appear: it’s not a fairy tale. So they just continue to get mad at others for the fact that they live in an unfair world. You want that perfect solution? Think it up yourself. Otherwise, stand aside and let those coming up with something do what they can to make things better. 

Marrow goes so far as to drag Weiss into things, trying to guilt Winter with the knowledge that she'll have to relate the death of her sister's friends back to her. Winter, because she's a badass who isn't in denial over the situation, tells him that yes, she will shoulder that responsibility. To Marrow's credit he backs off then, but man. RWBY has legitimate moral questions here — when is holding out for a few worth risking the many? — but they go about exploring it in the most frustrating way possible. I personally have no respect for the guy who wants to announce that Children In War Is Bad instead of, you know, using the power he currently has to protect those kids already neck deep in a battle. 

Because John Mulaney remains relevant:

"There shouldn't be a horse in the hospital :( "

"We're WELL PAST THAT."

Marrow is the one going, "There shouldn't be kids in a war :( We shouldn't have to kill a few to save the whole kingdom :( " and everyone around him is like, "No shit, dude! But this is the hand we were dealt! You going to help us, or what?"

Literally all of these characters could have been so much more than what they currently are.

Except Winter. She's doing great.

Now for the final scene. Our group nearly manages to escape the whale, but is incapacitated by some sort of screechy power that Salem employs. 

She contorts her body, stretching out her arms to snag Emerald, and the others have a brief, but intense skirmish. Jaune manages to block a blast of magic aimed at Ren with his shield — nice — and Yang dots Salem's face with a bunch of bombs before blowing her sky-high — double nice. Oscar shoots out some magic of his own because, yeah, I guess he can just do that now? It really feels like it came out of nowhere after eight episodes of being the punching bag. 

Of course, Salem immediately reforms. She traps the group with grimm arms that come out of the whale, interrogating Ozpin about why he bothers to keep coming back. There's a very sad answer there of, "I don't," referring to his lack of choice in reincarnating to fight her.

Yang interrupts their little tet-a-tet to throw the question back in Salem's face, calling her out on her choices. A great idea but, as always, execution: "because something bad happened to you once upon a time? No one gets a fairy tale ending."

I’m sorry, but that dialogue had me cringing. Like I said before, way too on the nose. There's keeping with the fairy tale theme, and then there's shoving the viewer's face in it. More of Oscar's musings on how he relates to the protagonists of fairy tales, blurring the lines between storytelling and reality, which in turn encourages the viewer to consider how they see themselves in the RWBY cast. Less... whatever this is.

Yang goes on to talk about how many people Salem has taken from her, which upon reflection makes a certain amount of sense if you toss in all the people who are here, but changed somehow due to Salem's influence, as well as acquaintances who died as a result of her meddling: Raven is scared off, Tai suffers as a result, Pyrrha dies, Penny dies, Yang loses her arm and her school. I think the dialogue could have been revised to reflect that better though because what Yang implies is that Salem has killed countless of her loved ones, yet what she says is, "Summer Rose. My mom." Honestly, for the few seconds this exchange was happening my thoughts weren't even on Summer. Yang calls Salem out for killing loved ones and my brain went, "Pyrrha??"

That's how little they've done with Yang and Summer. I know in the past I've argued that RWBY has a "better late than never" situation going on, that I would praise them for making the right writing choices even if they arrive years too late... but now that we're here, I find that it's a hard problem to overlook. Summer is Yang's mom? When's the last time we heard that? Volume 2? Whenever the conversation with Blake was. Since then Yang has called Raven "Mom," focused on that emotional connection (or lack thereof), was excluded from the conversation with Qrow, comforted Ruby after she was blindsided by Salem's taunt, and otherwise hasn't mentioned Summer at all. There is no foundation for this accusation except a few lines about getting cookies as a child and the fact that we're tossing references in now makes me worried that we'll indeed get a grimm!Summer reveal. Better remind the audience that she exists before the twist arrives! Honestly, as much as a part of me wants to praise RWBY for trying to get things back on track, moments like this just ring hollow now. They waited years and now it’s too late. It doesn't help that this is the episode where we shrug off Ren's speech. What will Yang's cutting admission amount to based on this trend? Probably nothing. Summer will become Yang’s mom again in another six seasons. 

Salem, obviously, doesn't care. The real Hazel arrives and she orders him to take Oscar back to his cell. Instead, he gives him his cane with a whispered, "No more Gretchens, boy."

Behold, another meaningless line. Hazel hates Ozpin for "forcing" Gretchen on a mission and "getting" her killed. The whole point of his villainy is that he doesn't understand the concept of choice and that bad things can happen to good people with no one able to prevent it. Not every loss has a responsible party attached (outside of, you know, Salem/the grimm). So what is he even demanding here? No more huntsmen schools? That's what you wanted Salem for. No more "forcing" people to fight for you? Ozpin never did that in the first place. Or is it just a strange promise that no one else will die here? RWBY seems to be under the impression that they can just name drop dead family members — Summer, Gretchen — and that's that. Emotional depth created, never mind a lack of buildup or clarity. 

Then Hazel punches Salem across the room and she releases every single hero from their bonds. See the theme of this episode: convenience. Hazel shoves a whole bunch of dust crystals into his shoulders and yells that he's doing what Gretchen would have wanted, clearly sacrificing himself so that the others can escape. The battle between him and Salem is pretty decent. I enjoyed the dust vs. magic creativity and the sheer damage Salem can take before reforming. This fight really showcases how not human she is.

It does, however, bring into question Hazel's reveal about her needing an hour to heal at the longest. I mentioned how unlikely it would be that our heroes would get the chance to "kill" her multiple times, yet here we are, just a few episodes later. They got that opportunity and... does it matter? Salem's reforming doesn't appear to slow down at all, despite her head getting obliterated at least three times, so at what point does she need longer than a few seconds to heal? If this was meant to be a potential weakness the group would eventually exploit, we needed to see it here, both for that setup and to keep it consistent with Hazel's story.

Regardless, they fight and at first it looks like a pretty straight-forward sacrifice on Hazel's part, giving the group their chance to escape. Except... Oscar.

"She'll just come after us," he tells Jaune, turning away from him to fight.

I need a list for this: 

Of course she's going to come after you. This is not some shocking revelation. At no point has anyone thought that escaping the whale is the answer to all their problems, it just creates one less problem to deal with. Namely, the problem of "Our ally is captured, being tortured, and may give up important intel to the enemy. Oh, also he's about to be blown up with a bomb." Salem coming after them doesn’t matter. What matters is making her plans as difficult as possible as you work to come up with more solutions of your own. This is just a smaller version of the Ironwood conflict: “Well, Salem will just follow Atlas into the sky so it’s useless to attempt escape, or to buy ourselves time.” It’s really not. I know I’ve used this ridiculous comparison before, but if you’re ever chased by a horror movie serial killer hell-bent on your destruction and your reaction to this problem is, “Why run? He’ll just chase us. The only possible choice is to fight him with a 99% chance of our death,” then I beg you to re-evaluate things. 

What was the point of coming to rescue Oscar if he was just going to stay behind? The whale is about to be blown up by a bomb and the trio risked their lives ten times over to get to him. If I were them I would be pissed. We went through all that to get you out and now you’re refusing to leave when we have a chance? Thanks for that. 

Same with Hazel. Not that I care about the guy, but if I was sacrificing myself for others to escape I'd be pretty annoyed at them randomly deciding not to do that.

What does Oscar even think he's going to do? Kill the immortal witch? The entire point of our series is that they can’t do that (yet). 

However, if he is able to do something significant via Ozpin's magic, why didn't Ozpin do that generations ago? Somehow I don't think a younger Ozma closer to the height of his power was in a worse position to attack Salem than a tortured, aura-less kid who unlocked his magic yesterday. The more RWBY reveals about Salem, the more I go, “Okay, but why didn’t his happen [insert any number of years] ago?��� 

Did Jaune actually leave? I assume he's just grabbing an airship or something before coming back to drag Oscar away, but seriously where did he go?

There's no way I can approach this scene without throwing up my hands and going, "What? WHY?" Which is a real shame because we finally get to see a bit of what the cane does and it’s... precisely what Ozpin's magic has always done? I mean, we saw that green shield five years ago and now there's a giant white beam. Okay.

If the beam just hits Salem with Generic Magic Power then there was never anything secret about the cane, it’s just, you know, Ozpin’s weapon. If the cane does something significant to hurt her we're left with the question of why it took literal generations to use it. Nothing is making sense to me and the only way I can think to salvage this scene is if Jaune runs back in, snags Oscar like a sack of potatoes, and runs out yelling about how he's clearly suffering from a concussion because what are you trying to accomplish here?

It doesn't help that this moment feels... final. Hazel has managed to hold Salem in place. Oscar has unlocked his cane and lands some mega hit right before Hazel passes out and looses his hold. Not only does this feel like a scene that should be at the end of the volume (we've still got five episodes), but also the end of the series. RWBY is building Salem into an unbeatable enemy by giving her more and more powers, and simultaneously eliminating the stakes by having our currently weakest character (in terms of exhaustion/injuries/aura/training) landing a shot like that. Why would you nerf Salem's threat level like that in the middle of a volume? Especially with a tool our group has had available from the start? If the cane does damage, maybe lead with that in the, “Here’s why we should stay and fight” office conversation. 

I assume that Oscar's hit will obliterate Salem to the point where both he and Hazel have time to escape, or he obliterates both of them (“Do it”) and that's somehow presented as a better choice than just running while Salem is captured, or the bomb will interrupt things somehow... but it's just so shoddily done. At the very least, if they were going to have Oscar refuse to let someone fight alone, have it be an actual friend he's staying to assist. Having Oscar refuse his own rescue to help Hazel has more than one problem attached to it. We can say what we want about RWBY's themes of forgiveness, but this guy was torturing him just a few hours ago while serving Remnant's version of the devil. Just let him sacrifice himself and move on.

And that's where we end. Oscar powering up, the cane getting all magic-y, and him shooting a crazy big blast that engulfs both Salem and Hazel. I can't believe how not excited I am about my farm boy doing something badass, but here we are.

Overall I think this episode was way worse than last week's. We absolutely had problems in "Dark," particularly when it came to the Hound and the group's blind devotion to Ruby, but at least those moments were cushioned by an otherwise decent episode. "Witch" felt like I was watching something closer to a parody of RWBY, one deliberately poking fun at the fandom's desires: erase all conflict for awkward silly times, your favorite villains are instantly good now, the heroes go toe-to-toe with the main antagonist because why not, throw a bunch of magic in there for good measure, and wrap it all up in some over the top "this isn't a fairy tale" lines. I can see the pieces of a much better episode here — Emerald sneaking Oscar out with her semblance, Neo snagging the relic, Flint and Neon, Hazel attacking Salem — but it simply didn't come together.

I know I said this last time, but I have no idea what we're going to do for another five episodes. Salem slowly reforming from bomb damage as the group tries to keep Penny from opening the vault? The grimm attack halted with the whale gone so Qrow can go after Ironwood? The longer this volume runs, the more I think it was a mistake for them to introduce Salem as a fightable antagonist now. RWBY doesn't know what to do with her besides have her inevitably fall in the final season, so until then she's left being stupid (Relic), passive (Mantle), or, likely, written out of the story temporarily so the heroes can turn their attention towards smaller conflicts and weaker foes. They literally can’t beat Salem yet, but they can’t focus on other problems when she’s around without coming across as negligent, so if you have to find ways to erase her to make room for that... what was the point of bringing her here in the first place? We could have established that Salem is bound to her realm and had her send the Hound and whale to attack Atlas. There, all the fun parts of the volume without her complicated presence. 

Well, the next five weeks will certainly be interesting, at the very least... 

Until next time 💜

[Ko-Fi]

[benevolent-savage]

this is what happens when u enable me lets go

(spoilers ahoy)

Firstly, here’s some somewhat miscellaneous reasons that don’t contribute to any sort of narrative analysis but are still parts of the character I like.

His boss fight is my favorite in the game thus far. It’s not super hard, but it isn’t super easy either, and I even managed to solo it on my Balance after a few practice rounds. Sufficiently challenging without feeling unfair.

His boss fight music. It is a bop and a half, go give it a listen, my soul ascends from my body a few centimeters every time I hear it start up.

His voice. I’m sure it’s processed at least a little but gotdamn his voice is so deep and spooky it startled me when I first heard it. Very curious who his actor is; I think he and Inyanga Whitestripes share the same one. Either way, very well voiced and acted.

His design is very good. It’s the perfect mix of innocuous but also spooky sorcerer fella who knows some shit. And I was afraid that the designers would try and make him like. Handsome? Under the hood? To try and make him more sympathetic? But they didn’t and I’m glad for it.

With those out of the way, the next thing to establish, I guess: I don’t interpret Old Cob to be the main villain of arc 3, nor do I interpret Raven as such. They’re definitely antagonists, but they’re not the ultimate problem; the ultimate problem is their divorce, and how they keep dragging people into their bs. It’s established the Aethyr is a physical manifestation of their anger towards each other, and as it thins, communication between them becomes possible, as Sparck puts it in this thinly veiled metaphor toward the start of Empyrea part 2.

But Cob’s still an antagonist and I love him so I’m gonna talk about that. Most of this is going to be talking about his motivations for doing what he does, since I don’t see him quite as the ‘likes to watch the world burn for the hell of it’ archetype that others might.

One of the reasons that drew me to his character is how legit his gripe is, when put in perspective. Old Cob- or Grandfather Spider, if you prefer- is not a mortal like the other antagonists of previous arcs, which establishes he has a different thought process right off the bat. This new universe was built on his suffering and he has a grudge against the ex wife who made it, so as a god, it makes some sense he’d try to destroy it and build one he would like better. He’s fully aware that what he is doing will hurt people but decidedly doesn’t care, and I appreciate that so much. He’s chaotic as fuck and he owns it, along with his superiority complex that’s as wide as the day is long.

Yet his reasoning is like. Weirdly understandable? Like, if my ex-whatever put me in jail for a lifetime sentence and stole my kidney to pay for a new house or something, I too would go apeshit and want my fuckin kidney back. That’s mostly how I interpret his situation. He’s not doing this for hell of it, he’s doing it because he wants to get back at his ex because he’s bitter and petty and for the most part he knows this but he feels justified in doing do because she ripped out his goddamn kidney- I mean heart, and he wants that back.

And then, even after all that, he and his magic are treated as if they’re inherently evil. While, sure, Shadow is a ‘dark magic’, its actual properties aren’t anything malicious by itself. It is described as “a magic that changes reality,” and that’s it. Incredibly exploitable and you should practice caution while handling it, but used correctly it is powerful and helpful; this is likely alluding to the backlash mechanic, where likes decrease the percent of damage you take, dislikes increase the percent, and I imagine the person meant to be the literal embodiment of the magic in question to be similar in nature: not inherently harmful and lashes out if he feels he’s been mistreated.

Going off that, I’m not sure he ever wanted the FirstWorld to be destroyed, and therefore believes his incarceration to be entirely unjust; he doesn’t deny that he instigated the fight between the Titans, but when it comes to being accused of its actual destruction, he gets angry.

...Okay the written text doesn’t really display how mad he got here, but he was like. Big Angy. Super offended. Honestly, a big part of why I love and analyze the hell out of his character comes from how his VA delivers his lines and his voice in general. If you haven’t heard it for some reason, I recommend looking it up. Anyway, here he’s basically saying he didn’t destroy the First World, and even if he did, he’s suffered enough punishment because of it, to my interpretation. The only one I remember blaming him for it is Raven; Bartleby was there, and I don’t recall him blaming anything other than the Titans for it. This is of course not accounting for the various changes made to the lore since he was introduced, but they could have easily thrown in a line like ‘And now Spider plans to destroy the Spiral the way he destroyed the FirstWorld!’ or something to make it clear it was done intentionally.

And this may very well be straying into headcanon territory here, but I think he holds positive relationships very closely to him, even if things went sour in the end; he clearly still has some remaining affection for the Titans, calling them ‘the children’ and being incredibly angry at Raven for forcing one of them to destroy his Heart.

When Rat loses in Polaris he shows up to praises his efforts and even comfort him, in his own weird way. He reprimanded Scorpion in Mirage, but it’s because Scorpion wasn’t doing what his dad asked him to and got his ass kicked as a result. As for Bat, every time they’re in the same room together he pays him some sort of compliment.

Bat claims that he and his brothers are meant to be his tools, and to some extent that’s true, but he also genuinely cares about them, and it’s really interesting to see a villain defect from the usual ‘not caring about anyone other than themselves’ and openly show affection for his kids while still managing to be an incredible asshole.

In line with this is his relationship with the Wizard. There is, of course, a foundation of manipulation to their dynamic, at least to some degree. I thoroughly believe that Spider was overshadowing Coleridge, at least partly, so our character could bust him out of prison.

And while this is happening, he regains some of his spent power and removes threats to it as well, namely Morganthe, using the Wizard’s help. In fact, I have very little doubt that he was at least partially responsible for her fall; his timing on that two-liner was too on the nose.

But even with that, I think he genuinely treasures the Wizard’s help and company, which is why he attempts on four different occasions to either sway them to his side, or warn them away from what he’s doing.

Boy, I want that vacation, but it’s your fault I’m here.

And then, of course, his relationship with Raven, something that is basically a summation of his character arc. Laden with baggage and tragic in concept, it is my belief that most of what he’s doing isn’t because he genuinely hates the Spiral or he wants to get back at her, but because he loved her and treasured their relationship; so upon her mistreating him, he lashed out at everything she’d made and detested it as a result. But only because he felt betrayed and hurt so he has to inflict that on other people because he is, as aforementioned, a petty and bitter old fuck.

Moving off that line of thinking, an admirable quality he possesses is how smart he is. This guy has so many wrinkles in his brain it must look like a raisin. Well, perhaps not ‘smart’ exactly, but how good he is at manipulating certain situations to his advantage. Like in Mirage; you just know that he was fully expecting Mellori to be there and fully planned to use her as a back up plan, or you could even argue that the whole debacle in Mirage was a ploy to get his hands on her, while having the added possible benefit of things actually working out.

Actually his scheme in Mirage was really interesting now that I think about it. His aim was to turn back time to when the FirstWorld was whole, further implying that he never wanted its destruction in the first place. It would also, of course, be a time where he had his Heart and would have the ability to avoid having it ripped out again. This would involve not having the Titans fight each other again, or at least not starting it and suffering the consequences. It would be everything he wanted to achieve knocked out in one go with minimal muss or fuss, compared to other methods. It’s probably a part of why he shows up personally to bargain with Eerkala and the Cabal, and why he directly intervenes in our Wizard’s efforts to stop him; it was too important to trust to any of his kids, so knowing Scorpion probably wouldn’t have been able to execute it anyway, he used his kid as a distraction for the most part.

I also like looking into the fact that his element, besides Shadow, is Storm, as opposed to pure Shadow or Death, as most major antagonists are. Storm is a school based on invention, experimentation and improvement. This is something that interests me for two reasons: one, the magic of major antagonists is always a part of their character, Malistaire the most blatantly, and two, because of this line he says in Mirage.

To my interpretation, this would imply that he sees the Spiral as something that could be improved. And as a god, he would of course find it his obligation to try and fix this flaw. When he made the barter with the Cabal, I don’t doubt he was being at least partially honest about restoring the FirstWorld; it would certainly fix the flaw it has in the context of stealing his internal organs, but he would also probably seek to improve it, make it more suited to Shadow or something.

Something else I find intriguing is how weirdly honest he is; I don’t recall him ever lying to us once, unless you count omitting certain facts as lying. But that’s absolutely something I can see him using against people, like “I didn’t lie to you, I just didn’t tell you, your fault for not asking ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ .” As said before, he;s really good at manipulating people and he weaponizes whatever he can; @that-wizard-oki​ made a really great post about how he uses conflicts- his fault or not- to his advantage, and does his own thing in the background without interruption, Mirage and Neumia probably being the best example of this, with Scorpion and the Cabal serving as distractions while he either carries out things himself or gives instructions.

To pull all of this together narratively, I think it’s important to consider this line from Mellori during one of their confrontations:

He feels powerless, so he puffs up his god status. He has little power to fight with, compared to before, so he mostly manipulates and creates back-up plans while causing conflicts to serve as distractions. His love hurt him, so he lashes out at others and drags them into his problems.

You may ask, “But Sam, these are all bad qualities, why should we like him because of this?” And I would respond “Because it makes him a complex and interesting antagonist.” The kind of character that executes his shitty actions in such a way that you can’t help but respect- even just for the level of dramatics put in to it- while also having a motive that makes you stop and consider that maybe he has a point but is very much handling the situation the wrong way.

Like, c’mon, he ticks so many villain boxes. Tragic backstory? Check. Blatant thespian who owns it? Check. Gets his hands dirty before the climax of the story? Check. Smart/ manipulative/ has back-up plans? Check. Understandable, strong motives? Check.

He’s got layers. Like onion. I felt like there was always something new to discover about him, and for that I can assert my opinion that he’s one of the best characters in Wizard101.

lmao if you read this far into my simp-for-shithead post congrats. feel free to shoot me more asks on the subject bc i cant write persuasive-essay-esque format anymore my brain is rotting. if you will excuse me, im off to listen to the chronoverge combat track for the 82937487734th time

[sebastianshaw]

Hey there @vvithteeth! So, this isn’t EXACTLY what you asked for the readlist to focus on, but I think it’s worth checking out all the same for a general sense of Emma’s history leading up to her current character!

 EVIL 80s EMMA She’s not good reference for who Emma is NOW, but a good look at what she used to be, and what she’s overcome. I think looking at Emma when she was at her worst, helps one appreciate her at her best. If you see what she had to rise above in herself, you understand the self that she’s fighting back, you have a better appreciation for the kinds of things she’s tempted towards---and the kinds of things she no longer does.  X-Men (1st series) #129-131 is her introduction, as she tries to recruit Kitty Pryde to her school before Xavier does. One of the most chilling moments, for me personally, is when she threatens to destroy Storm’s mind so that she will be “human only in physical form” And then Jean drops a house on her, which is why she’s not involved in the Dark Phoenix saga, as she was still recovering.  Emma continues trying to get Kitty and other kids into her clutches in  Uncanny X-Men (1st series) #180 and  New Mutants (1st series) #15-17, but in New Mutants (1st series) #38-40 she finally manages it by exploiting their current fucked-up state and having her student Empath use his powers to manipulate Magneto.  But when the kids decide to return to Xavier’s school, Emma allows them to do so without a fight, and just tells them that they’ll always have a place with her if they need it. Which seems nice, but then her thought balloons reveal that this is just so the kids won’t believe it when Magneto tells them she’s evil. Firestar #1-4: Whoa mama, Emma is at max abusive here. See, she desires to eliminate Selene, and to this end she trains a young mutant she names Firestar. She does so by manipulating the girl, isolating her, convincing her that she NEEDS Emma to help her control her powers or else she’s dangerous to others, and even KILLS HER PET HORSE. Emma is someone who says “I love children. Teaching is my life.” and she MEANS IT, she has a genuine call to teach and her love for her students is her driving force, but here we see how she USED to treat her students. Then put her against who she is now, it’s a huge contrast. Honestly, I don’t know why SOME WRITERS want to erase her growth by pretending she was Actually Good All Along but yeah, here’s Bad Emma. This is who she fights. This is what she has risen above.  EMMA’S BACKSTORY ISSUES Emma’s history is. . . kind of multiple choice. She tells one version in Generation X #24, but this doesn’t fit at all with the Emma Frost miniseries that came out from 2003 -2004, which also doesn’t exactly fit with “X-Men Origins: Emma Frost” single-issue backstory. I personally would read the “X-Men Origins” one and at least the beginning of the miniseries, specifically the parts that deal with her home life. The reason is that both of these show how unhealthy Emma’s home was growing up, and how that made her who she is. When I saw I think Emma is “wired” to be a villain, I don’t mean I think she was born like that, but as in, I think her environment trained her to become like that. It’s kind of like how a lot of personality disorders aren’t something a person is born with, but come from being in a shitty environment where certain behaviors will help you survive better, and then even once that situation is over, you can’t get rid of those behaviors because it’s how your brain is wired now. That’s how I read Emma---she came out of this toxic, duplicitous environment of manipulation and abuse where she and her siblings were set against each other, and that’s now her default for how she interacts with the world, even though she was originally just a sweet little nerd who only wanted to be a teacher. The “Origins” one features a generic Shitty Abuser Shaw and isn’t as good as the more drawn-out miniseries, as it focuses more on physical abuse (like her father suddenly slapping her) to get a point across that her family is toxic, rather than the more drawn-out miniseries, which I think works better for explaining Emma’s specific brand of. . .Emma-ness. But the bit where her mother tells her that her father is hardest on her because he likes her most of all, is really important I think, since that reflects her relationship later with the Hellions, which is also shown in this. Because Emma is cruel to the Hellions, even though she loves them, and in fact because she loved them. Her love for them and her agony over their deaths is what drives her to join the X-Men in the first place.  As for which origin story is true. . .I think the miniseries one is probably MOST true, as it’s the only one that Emma herself isn’t telling as a story. But as the friend who helped me assemble this list puts it, “ Think of any origin story of Emma's as "a sort of fairy tale, a parable," where it's the theme that matters, not the precise events or timeline “ 90s EMMA Emma spent most of the 90s teaching Generation X. I don’t remember a lot of stuff for specifically what I’m talking about with her, but here are a couple issues that strike me as significant. Uncanny X-Men (1st series) #311-314: In  Uncanny X-Men (1st series) #281-284, the Hellions were killed and Emma Frost was left in a coma, her body taken care of by the X-Men. This is when she wakes up, takes over Iceman’s body, and goes on a rampage thinking she’s the prisoner of the X-Men. When she finds out what happened to her Hellions, she collapses in despair and turns herself over to the X-Men. This is her turning point. This is when we found out Emma Frost had a soul. That she LOVED the Hellions. That they were not just tools. And there’s this one line in the yellow narrative boxes that really sticks out: “As the Hellfire Club’s White Queen, she spent the better part of her life traversing from one mind to another, violating the very essence of anyone she so chose. Losing herself in the memories of others. Altering, at times, the opinions of those who opposed her. This time is different. This time it is about survival. This time. . .it’s for the children.” The words are echoed when she agrees to join Krakoa's Quiet Council, after Charles and Erik tell her their plan and convince her it might just work. "One more time, then. For the children." Emma’s true love, in my opinion, isn’t Scott. Nor is it Namor. It’s teaching.  Emma becomes the teacher to Generation X, as mentioned, and in Generation X (1st series) #18-19, during the Onslaught crisis, she’s so terrified of losing them like she did the Hellions, that she snapped, took the kids to a safehouse in Canada, and put them under her telepathic control for their own safety. This is an Emma who has learned that abusing her students isn’t the right way, but still doesn’t respect their autonomy or consent even as she’s desperately trying to protect them, and has to learn from Monet (who is. . . .actually not Monet) that this isn’t the right way to do it either. Emma did not grow up with adult models who showed her how to love and care for a child, she has to figure it out herself, and it’s a rocky journey at times, even though she has the best of intentions. I think this is a good issue to show an Emma who is in the process of evolving. She’s getting better, but she still hasn’t got it “right” yet.  CURRENT-ERA EMMA Emma really becomes the Emma we know with Grant Morrison’s New X-Men in the early 2000s. This is where she starts affecting a British accent, calling everyone darling, and the delightfully witty Queen of Mean while also still a devoted teacher with trauma over losing her students. She always was witty and a little mean, but Morrison takes these traits up to 11 and gives Emma the foundation of what a lot of writers would build upon. It’s also when she begins her telepathic affair/seduction of Scott, which is a more than slightly problematic dynamic, as I’ve discussed. Also, this is when she got her now-famous diamond form.  We get a lot of lovely Emma nastiness in this series. New X-Men #128-139 all have lots of great moments for her where she’s just WICKED yet still on the side of the angels, and New X-Men Annual 2001 starts us off.  However, character-wise, I think what really comes out here is Emma going from blaming her past actions on substances (she tells Scott in the New X-Men Annual 2001 that she just probably out of her mind on drink and drugs all those times she was doing bad things) to being forced to face her past and herself for the first time when confronted by Jean & the Phoenix in New X-Men #139. It’s the first time we get a look at what Emma’s family and home life was like, as well as the first time she’s established as having a brother, but more than that is the emotion that gets brought in. This is also when Morrison decided to retcon the Hellfire Club as a strip joint (which I hate and also shows up in Emma’s “Origins” story) but that’s neither here nor there. The point is, Jean makes Emma face all her flaws and pain and nasty, most vulnerable parts of herself.  Emma is left mentally broken...then one page later, physically, shattered by a diamond bullet that we later find out was fired by none other than Esme, the Stepford Cuckoo whom Emma later says reminded her most of herself. There is definitely poetic symbolism there. As my friend put it “This cycle of her students dying and Emma losing it and trying again but never facing the roots of her issues goes on and on until her roots literally kill her, and Jean of all people resurrects her. Jean, who saw right through Emma, saw something there worth saving, and literally and metaphorically put her back together again.” The next place I’d go is Astonishing X-Men, which is the first time Emma and Kitty work together. Kitty HATES Emma at this point, because, as she points out, Emma is the villain in her origin story. And Emma KNOWS this. That’s why she WANTS Kitty there. She knew that Kitty would keep an eye on her, wouldn’t trust her, and that’s what Emma WANTS, because Emma doesn’t trust HERSELF. So this shows that Emma KNOWS her moral compass is a very flawed one, and that she WANTS to be better so consciously that she’s getting someone she knows doesn’t like or trust her to be around because she knows she’ll watch her like a HAWK. This also means Emma is admitting she can fail, and giving some control to someone else.  There’s. . . so much that happens from here. Utopia. Phoenix Five. The Terrigen Mists shit. Secret Empire. I feel like there are probably great Emma readlists out there that include these, but honestly I just kinda zoned out through a lot of it. These are some additional read lists for her I found: https://lornahs.tumblr.com/post/87230882649/where-to-start-reading-emma-frost-lets-start  https://www.reddit.com/r/comicbooks/comments/2bwwok/emma_frost_reading/  It’s definitely a LOT and I wish you the best of luck tackling it! Also, I wouldn’t feel you have to read EVERYTHING, or incorporate everything into your depiction. Pick and choose what you feel works best for your version!

[isslibrary]

NEW LIBRARY MATERIAL September 2020 - February 2021

Bibliography

Sorted by Call Number / Author.

011.7 F

Fadiman, Clifton, 1904-1999. The new lifetime reading plan / : the classical guide to world literature, Revised and expanded. 4th ed. New York : HarperCollins Publishers, 1999, c1997.

155.2 G

Gladwell, Malcolm, 1963-. David and Goliath : underdogs, misfits, and the art of battling giants. First edition. Goliath : "Am I a dog that you should come to me with sticks?" -- The Advantages of Disadvantages (and the Disadvantages of Advantages). Vivek Ranadiv©♭: "It was really random. I mean, my father had never played basketball before." ; Teresa DeBrito: "My largest class was twenty-nine kids. Oh, it was fun." ; Caroline Sacks: "If I'd gone to the University of Maryland, I'd still be in science. -- The Theory of Desirable Difficulty. David Boies: You wouldn't wish dyslexia on your child. Or would you? ; Emil "Jay" Freireich: "How Jay did it, I don't know." ; Wyatt Walker: "De rabbit is de slickest o' all de animals de Lawd ever made." -- The Limits of Power. Rosemary Lawlor: "I wasn't born that way. This was forced upon me." ; Wilma Derksen: "We have all done something dreadful in our lives, or have felt the urge to." ; Andr©♭ Trocm©♭: "We feel obliged to tell you that there are among us a certain number of Jews.". This book uncovers the hidden rules that shape the balance between the weak and the mighty and the powerful and the dispossessed. In it the author challenges how we think about obstacles and disadvantages, offering a new interpretation of what it means to be discriminated against, or cope with a disability, or lose a parent, or attend a mediocre school, or suffer from any number of other apparent setbacks. He begins with the real story of what happened between the giant and the shepherd boy (David and Goliath) those many years ago. From there, the book examines Northern Ireland's Troubles, the minds of cancer researchers and civil rights leaders, murder and the high costs of revenge, and the dynamics of successful and unsuccessful classrooms, all to demonstrate how much of what is beautiful and important in the world arises from what looks like suffering and adversity. -- From book jacket.

170 H

Haidt, Jonathan, author. The happiness hypothesis : finding modern truth in ancient wisdom. Paperback edition. "The Happiness Hypothesis is a book about ten Great Ideas. Each chapter is an attempt to savor one idea that has been discovered by several of the world's civilizations--to question it in light of what we now know from scientific research, and to extract from it the lessons that still apply to our modern lives and illuminate the causes of human flourishing. Award-winning psychologist Jonathan Haidt shows how a deeper understanding of the world's philosophical wisdom and its enduring maxims--like "do unto others as you would have others do unto you," or "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger"--can enrich and even transform our lives."--Back cover.

171 K

Kohn, Alfie. The brighter side of human nature : altruism and empathy in everyday life. New York : Basic Books, c1990.

305.5 W

Wilkerson, Isabel, author. Caste : the origins of our discontents. First edition. The man in the crowd -- Toxins in the permafrost and heat rising all around -- The arbitrary construction of human divisions -- The eight pillars of caste -- The tentacles of caste -- The consequences of caste -- Backlash -- Awakening -- Epilogue: A world without caste. "In this brilliant book, Isabel Wilkerson gives us a masterful portrait of an unseen phenomenon in America as she explores, through an immersive, deeply researched narrative and stories about real people, how America today and throughout its history has been shaped by a hidden caste system, a rigid hierarchy of human rankings. Beyond race, class, or other factors, there is a powerful caste system that influences people's lives and behavior and the nation's fate. Linking the caste systems of America, India, and Nazi Germany, Wilkerson explores eight pillars that underlie caste systems across civilizations, including divine will, bloodlines, stigma, and more. Using riveting stories about people--including Martin Luther King, Jr., baseball's Satchel Paige, a single father and his toddler son, Wilkerson herself, and many others--she shows the ways that the insidious undertow of caste is experienced every day. She documents how the Nazis studied the racial systems in America to plan their out-cast of the Jews; she discusses why the cruel logic of caste requires that there be a bottom rung for those in the middle to measure themselves against; she writes about the surprising health costs of caste, in depression and life expectancy, and the effects of this hierarchy on our culture and politics. Finally, she points forward to ways America can move beyond the artificial and destructive separations of human divisions, toward hope in our common humanity. Beautifully written, original, and revealing, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents is an eye-opening story of people and history, and a reexamination of what lies under the surface of ordinary lives and of America life today."--.

305.8 W

Williamson, Joel. A rage for order : Black/White relations in the American South since emancipation. New York, NY : Oxford University Press, 1968. Full ed.: published as The crucible of race. 1984. Traces the history of race relations, examines changing public attitudes, and tells the stories of those involved in Civil Rights movement.

305.9 P

Pipher, Mary Bray. The middle of everywhere : the world's refugees come to our town. First edition. Cultural collisions on the Great Plains -- The beautiful laughing sisters-an arrival story -- Into the heart of the heartland -- All that glitters ... -- Children of hope, children of tears -- Teenagers--Mohammed meets Madonna -- Young adults--"Is there a marriage broker in Lincoln?"-- Family--"A bundle of sticks cannot be broken" -- African stories -- Healing in all times and places -- Home-a global positioning system for identity -- Building a village of kindness. Offers the tales of refugees who have escaped countries riddled by conflict and ripped apart by war to realize their dream of starting a new life in America, detailing their triumph over adversity.

306.4 P

Pollan, Michael. The botany of desire : a plant's-eye view of the world. Random House trade pbk. ed. New York : Random House, 2002. Desire : sweetness, plant : the apple (Malus domestica) -- Desire : beauty, plant : the tulip (Tulipa) -- Desire : intoxication, plant : marijuana (Cannabis sativa x indica) -- Desire : control, plant : the potato (Solanum tuberosum). Focusing on the human relationship with plants, the author of Second nature uses botany to explore four basic human desires, sweetness, beauty, intoxication, and control, through portraits of four plants that embody them, the apple, tulip, marijuana, and potato. Every school child learns about the mutually beneficial dance of honeybees and flowers; the bee collects nectar and pollen to make honey and, in the process, spreads the flowers' genes far and wide. In The botany of desire, Michael Pollan ingeniously demonstrates how people and domesticated plants have formed a similarly reciprocal relationship. In telling the stories of four familiar species that are deeply woven into the fabric of our lives, Pollan illustrates how the plants have evolved to satisfy humankind's most basic yearnings. And just as we've benefited from these plants, the plants have done well by us. So who is really domesticating whom?.

307.1 I

Immerwahr, Daniel, 1980-. Thinking small : the United States and the lure of community development. First Harvard University Press paperback edition 2018. Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, 2015. Preface: Modernization, development, and community -- Introduction: Actually existing localism -- When small was big -- Development without modernization -- Peasantville -- Grassroots empire -- Urban villages -- Epilogue: What is dead and what is undead in community development?.

323.60973 I

In the hands of the people : Thomas Jefferson on equality, faith, freedom, compromise, and the art of citizenship. First edition. New York, NY : Random House, 2020. "Thomas Jefferson believed in the covenant between a government and its citizens, in both the government's responsibilities to its people and also the people's responsibility to the republic. In this illuminating collection, a project of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, #1 New York Times bestselling author Jon Meacham has gathered Jefferson's most powerful and provocative reflections on the subject, drawn from public speeches and documents as well as his private correspondence. Still relevant centuries later, Jefferson's words provide a manual for U.S. citizenship in the twenty-first century. His thoughts will re-shape and revitalize the way readers relate to concepts including Freedom: "Divided we stand, united we fall." The importance of a free press:"Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter." Public education: "Enlighten the public generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body & mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day." Participation in government: A citizen should be "a participator in the government of affairs not merely at an election, one day in the year, but every day.""-- Provided by publisher.

324.6 P

Terborg-Penn, Rosalyn. African American women in the struggle for the vote, 1850-1920. Bloomington : Indiana University Press, c1998. Revisiting the question of race in the woman suffrage movement -- African American women in the first generation of woman suffragists : 1850-1869 -- African American woman suffragists finding their own voices : 1870s and 1880s -- Suffrage strategies and ideas : African American women leaders respond during "the nadir" -- Mobilizing to win the vote : African American women's organizations -- Anti-black woman suffrage tactics and African American women's responses -- African American women as voters and candidates -- The nineteenth amendment and its meaning for African American women. This study of African American women's roles in the suffrage movement breaks new ground. Rosalyn Terborg-Penn draws from many original documents to take a comprehensive look at the African American women who sought the right to vote. She discovers numerous Black suffragists previously unknown. Analyzing the women's own stories, she examines why they joined the woman suffrage movement in the United States and how they participated in it - with white women, Black men, as members of African American women's organizations, or simultaneously in all three. Terborg-Penn further discusses their various levels of interaction and types of feminist philosophy. Noting that not all African American woman suffragists were from elite circles, Terborg-Penn finds representation from working-class and professional women as well.They came from all parts of the nation. Some employed radical, others conservative means to gain the right to vote. Black women, however, were unified in working to use the ballot to improve not only their own status, but the lives of Black people in their communities. Drawing from innumerable sources, Terborg-Penn argues that sexism and racism prevented African American women from voting and from full participation in the national suffrage movement. Following the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, state governments in the South, enacted policies which disfranchised African American women, with many white suffragists closing their eyes to the discriminatory acts. Despite efforts to keep Black women politically powerless, Terborg-Penn contends that the Black suffrage was a source of empowerment. Every political and racial effort to keep African American women disfranchised met with their active resistance until Black women achieved full citizenship.

326.80922 B

Brands, H. W., author. The zealot and the emancipator : John Brown, Abraham Lincoln and the struggle for American freedom. First Edition. Pottawatomie -- Springfield -- Harpers Ferry -- The telegraph office. "What do moral people do when democracy countenances evil? The question, implicit in the idea that people can govern themselves, came to a head in America at the middle of the nineteenth century, in the struggle over slavery. John Brown's answer was violence--violence of a sort some in later generations would call terrorism. Brown was a deeply religious man who heard the God of the Old Testament speaking to him, telling him to do whatever was necessary to destroy slavery. When Congress opened Kansas territory to slavery, the eerily charismatic Brown raised a band of followers to wage war against the evil institution. One dark night his men tore several proslavery settlers from their homes and hacked them to death with broadswords, as a bloody warning to others. Three years later Brown and his men assaulted the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, with the goal of furnishing slaves with weapons to murder their masters in a race war that would cleanse the nation of slavery once and for all. Abraham Lincoln's answer was politics. Lincoln was an ambitious lawyer and former office-holder who read the Bible not for moral guidance but as a writer's primer. He disliked slavery yet didn't consider it worth shedding blood over. He distanced himself from John Brown and joined the moderate wing of the new, antislavery Republican party. He spoke cautiously and dreamed big, plotting his path to Washington and perhaps the White House. Yet Lincoln's caution couldn't preserve him from the vortex of violence Brown set in motion. Arrested and sentenced to death, Brown comported himself with such conviction and dignity on the way to the gallows that he was canonized in the North as a martyr to liberty. Southerners responded in anger and horror that a terrorist was made into a saint. Lincoln shrewdly threaded the needle of the fracturing country and won election as president, still preaching moderation. But the time for moderation had passed. Slaveholders lumped Lincoln with Brown as an enemy of the Southern way of life; seven Southern states left the Union. Lincoln resisted secession, and the Civil War followed. At first a war for the Union, it became the war against slavery Brown had attempted to start. Before it was over, slavery had been destroyed, but so had Lincoln's faith that democracy can resolve its moral crises peacefully"--.

328.73 M

Meacham, Jon, author. His truth is marching on : John Lewis and the power of hope. First edition. Overture: the last march -- A hard life, a serious life -- The spirit of history -- Soul force -- In the image of God and democracy -- We are going to make you wish you was dead -- I'm going to die here -- This country don't run on love -- Epilogue: against the rulers of the darkness. "John Lewis, who at age twenty-five marched in Selma and was beaten on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, is a visionary and a man of faith. Using intimate interviews with Lewis and his family and deep research into the history of the civil rights movement, Meacham writes of how the activist and leader was inspired by the Bible, his mother's unbreakable spirit, his sharecropper father's tireless ambition, and his teachers in nonviolence, Reverend James Lawson and Martin Luther King, Jr. A believer in hope above all else, Lewis learned from a young age that nonviolence was not only a tactic but a philosophy, a biblical imperative, and a transforming reality. At the age of four, Lewis, ambitious to become a preacher, practiced by preaching to the chickens he took care of. When his mother cooked one of the chickens, the boy refused to eat it--his first act of non-violent protest. Integral to Lewis's commitment to bettering the nation was his faith in humanity and in God, and an unshakable belief in the power of hope. Meacham calls Lewis "as important to the founding of a modern and multiethnic twentieth- and twenty-first century America as Thomas Jefferson and James Madison and Samuel Adams were to the initial creation of the nation-state in the eighteenth century. He did what he did--risking limb and life to bear witness for the powerless in the face of the powerful--not in spite of America, but because of America, and not in spite of religion, but because of religion"--.

333.95 W

Wilson, Edward O. A window on eternity : a biologist's walk through Gorongosa National Park. First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition. Prologue: The Search for Eternity -- The Sacred Mountain of Mozambique -- Once There Were Giants -- War and Redemption -- Dung and Blood -- The Twenty-Foot Crocodile -- The Elephant Whisperer -- The House of Spiders -- The Clash of Insect Civilizations -- The Log of an Entomological Expedition -- The Struggle for Existence -- The Conservation of Eternity. "E.O. Wilson, one of the most celebrated scientists in the United States, shows why biodiversity is vital to the future of Earth and to our own species through the story of an African national park that may be the most diverse place on earth, in a gorgeously illustrated book"--. "The remarkable story of how one of the most biologically diverse habitats in the world was destroyed, restored, and continues to evolve--with stunning, full-color photographs by two of the world's best wildlife photographers. In 1976, Gorongosa National Park was the premier park in Mozambique, boasting one of the densest wildlife populations in all of Africa. Across 1,500 square miles of lush green floodplains, thick palm forests, swampy lakes, and vast plains roamed creatures great and small, from herds of wildebeest and elephant to countless bird species and insects yet to be classified. Then came the civil war of 1978-1992, when much of the ecosystem was destroyed, reducing some large animal populations by 90 percent or more. Due to a remarkable conservation effort sponsored by an American entrepreneur, the park was restored in the 1990s and is now evolving back to its former state. This is the story of that incredible transformation and why such biological diversity is so important. In A Window on Eternity, world-renowned biologist and two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Edward O. Wilson shows why biodiversity is vital to the future of the Earth, including our human population. It is in places like Gorongosa in Africa, explains Wilson, that our own species evolved. Wilson takes readers to the forested groves of the park's watershed on sacred Mount Gorongosa, then far away to deep gorges along the edge of the Rift Valley, places previously unexplored by biologists, with the aim of discovering new species and assessing their ancient origins. He treats readers to a war between termites and raider ants, describes 'conversations' with elephant herds, and explains the importance of a one-day 'bioblitz.' Praised as 'one of the finest scientists writing today' (Los Angeles Times), Wilson uses the story of Gorongosa to show the significance of biodiversity to humankind"--.

340.092 S

Sligh, Clarissa T., artist. Transforming hate : an artist's book. First edition. "This book evolved from a project for which I folded origami cranes from pages of white supremacist books for the exhibition, Speaking Volumes: Transforming Hate ... I was trying to look at what it was like for me to turn hateful words into a beautiful art object. What actually evolved from that exploration helped me understand more fully the many levels of oppression and violence at the intersections of race, gender, class and sexual orientation." --inside front cover.

343.730 I

Internet law. Amenia, New York : Grey House Publishing, 2020.

345.73 C

Carter, Dan T. Scottsboro : a tragedy of the American South. Rev. ed. Fourth printing. Baton Rouge : Louisiana State University Press, 2007.

349.41 H

Honor©♭, Tony, 1921-2019. About law : an introduction. Reprint: 2013. Law -- History -- Government -- Property -- Contracts and treaties -- Crimes -- Torts -- Forms and procedures -- Interpretation -- Justice -- Does law matter? -- Glossary.

363.73 P

Pollution. New York, NY : Grey House Publishing, 2020.

371.102 A

Agarwal, Pooja K., author. Powerful teaching : unleash the science of learning. First edition. Introduction -- Discover the power behind power tools -- Build a foundation with retrieval practice -- Empower teaching with retrieval practice strategies -- Energize learning with spacing and interleaving -- Engage students with feedback-driven metacognition -- Combine power tools and harness your toolbox -- Keeping it real: use power tools to tackle challenges, not add to them -- Foster a supportive environment: use power tools to reduce anxiety and strengthen community -- Spark conversations with students about the science of learning -- Spark conversations with parents about the science of learning -- Powerful professional development for teachers and leaders -- Do-it-yourself retrieval guide -- Conclusion: unleash the science of learning.

512 G

Algebra. 2004. New York : Springer Science+Business Media, 2004.

575.1 A

Arney, Kat, author. How to code a human. Meet your genome -- Our genetic journey -- How do genes work? -- Under attack! -- Who do you think your are? -- People are not peas -- Genetic superheroes -- Turn me on -- Sticky notes -- The RNA world -- Building a baby -- Wiring the brain -- Compatibility genes -- X and Y -- The viruses that made us human -- When things go wrong -- Human 2.0. "How to Code a Human takes you on a mind-bending journey through the world of the double helix, revealing how our DNA encodes our genes and makes us unique. Covering all aspects of modern genetics from the evolution of our species to inherited diseases, "junk" DNA, genetic engineering and the intricacies of the molecular processes inside our cells, this is an astonishing and insightful guide to the code of life"--Back cover.

598 S

Sibley, David, 1961- author, illustrator. What it's like to be a bird : from flying to nesting, eating to singing -- what birds are doing, and why. How to use this book -- Introduction -- Portfolio of birds -- Birds in this book -- What to do if... -- Becoming a birder. Explore more than two hundred species, and more than 330 new illustrations by the author, in this special, large-format volume, where many of the primary illustrations are reproduced life-sized. While its focus is on familiar backyard birds -- blue jays, nuthatches, chickadees -- What It's Like to Be a Bird also examines certain species that can be fairly easily observed, such as the seashore-dwelling Atlantic Puffin. David Sibley's exacting artwork and wide-ranging expertise bring observed behaviors vividly to life. And while the text is aimed at adults -- including fascinating new scientific research on the myriad ways birds have adapted to environmental changes -- it is nontechnical, making it the perfect occasion for parents and grandparents to share their love of birds with young children, who will delight in the big, full-color illustrations of birds in action. -- back cover.

613.6 C

Bushcraft Illustrated: a visual guide. New York, NY : Simon & Schuster, Inc. (Adams Media: imprint of Simon & Schuster), 2019.

638.1 B

Michael Bush. The Practical beekeeper. Nehawka, Nebraska : X-Star Publishing Company, 2004-2011. V. 1 - The Practical Beekeeing Naturally; V.2 - Intermediate Beekeeping Naturally.

660.6 D

Druker, Steven M., author. Altered genes, twisted truth : how the venture to genetically engineer our food has subverted science, corrupted government, and systematically deceived the public.

709.2 A

Atalay, B©ơlent. Math and the Mona Lisa: : the art and science of Leonardo da Vinci. New York, NY : Smithsonian Books in association with HarperCollins Publishers, 2006. Leonardo was one of history's true geniuses, equally brilliant as an artist, scientist, and mathematician. Following Leonardo's own model, Atalay searches for the internal dynamics of art and science. He provides an overview of the development of science from the dawn of civilization to today's quantum mechanics. From this base, Atalay offers a view into Leonardo's restless intellect and modus operandi, allowing us to see the source of his ideas and to appreciate his art from a new perspective.

741.5 G

Greenberg, Isabel. The encyclopedia of early earth : a graphic novel. First American edition. Love in a very cold climate -- Part 1. The land of Nord. The three sisters of Summer Island ; Beyond the frozen sea ; The gods ; The odyssey begins -- Part 2. Britanitarka. Summer and winter ; Creation ; Medicine man ; The storytellers ; Creation ; Dag and Hal ; The old lady and the giant ; The time of the giants ; The children of the mountain ; The long night ; Dead towns & ghost men -- Part. 3. Migdal Bavel. Migdal Bavel ; The mapmaker of Migdal Bavel ; The bible of Birdman: Genesis ; Bible of Birdman, book of Kiddo: The great flood ; The tower of Migdal Bavel ; The palace of whispers ; The gods #2 -- Part 4. The South Pole. The gods #3 -- Appendices. A brief history of time ; The Nords ; Hunting and fishing ; The 1001 varieties of snow ; The invisible hunter ; Britanitarka ; Birds & beast from early Earth ; The moonstone ; The plucked firebird of Hoo. "Chronicles the explorations of a young man as he paddles from his home in the North Pole to the South Pole. There, he meets his true love, but their romance is ill-fated. Early Earth's unusual and finicky polarity means the lovers can never touch"--Publisher's website.

808.1 G

How poetry can change your heart. San Francisco, CA : Chronicle Books, 2019.

808.5 E

Franklin, Sharon. Essentials of speech communication. Evanston, Ill. : McDougal Littell, 2001.

808.53 H

Hanson, Jim. NTC's dictionary of debate. Lincolnwood, Ill., USA : National Textbook Co., c1990.

808.53 W

Strategic debate. Textbook. Columbus, OH : Glencoe/McGraw-Hill, 2006.

810.8 B

Lepucki, Edan, author. The best American nonrequired reading 2019. This anthology presents a selection of short works from mainstream and alternative American periodicals published in 2019, including nonfiction, screenplays, television writing, fiction, and alternative comics.

815 R

Representative American speeches, 2019-2020. Amenia, New York : Grey House, Publishing, 2020. "Selected from a diverse field of speakers and venues, this volume offers some of the most engaging American speeches of the year. Distinguished by its diversity, covering areas in politics, education, popular culture, as well as trending topics in the news, these speeches provide an interesting format to explore some of the year's most important stories."-Publisher.

909.09 D

Davis, Jack E., 1956- author. The Gulf : the making of an American sea. First edition. Prologue : history, nature, and a forgotten sea -- Introduction : birth -- Part one. Estuaries, and the lie of the land and sea : aborigines and colonizing Europeans. Mounds -- El golfo de M©♭xico -- Unnecessary death -- A most important river, and a "magnificent" bay -- Part two. Sea and sky : American debuts in the nineteenth century. Manifest destiny -- A fishy sea -- The wild fish that tamed the coast -- Birds of a feather, shot together -- Part three. Preludes to the future. From bayside to beachside -- Oil and the Texas toe dip -- Oil and the Louisiana plunge -- Islands, shifting sands of time -- Wind and water -- Part four. Saturation and loss : post-1945. The growth coast -- Florida worry, Texas slurry -- Rivers of stuff -- Runoff, and runaway -- Sand in the hourglass -- Losing the edge -- Epilogue : a success story amid so much else. Significant beyond tragic oil spills and hurricanes, the Gulf has historically been one of the world's most bounteous marine environments, supporting human life for millennia. Based on the premise that nature lies at the center of human existence, Davis takes readers on a compelling and, at times, wrenching journey from the Florida Keys to the Texas Rio Grande, along marshy shorelines and majestic estuarine bays, both beautiful and life-giving, though fated to exploitation by esurient oil men and real-estate developers. Davis shares previously untold stories, parading a vast array of historical characters past our view: sports-fishermen, presidents, Hollywood executives, New England fishers, the Tabasco king, a Texas shrimper, and a New York architect who caught the "big one". Sensitive to the imminent effects of climate change, and to the difficult task of rectifying the assaults of recent centuries, this book suggests how a penetrating examination of a single region's history can inform the country's path ahead. --.

910.92 I

Inskeep, Steve, author. Imperfect union : how Jessie and John Fr©♭mont mapped the West, invented celebrity, and helped cause the Civil War. Aid me with your influence -- The equal merits of differing peoples -- The current of important events -- Miseries that attend a separation -- I determined to make there a home -- The manifest purpose of providence -- A taste for danger and bold daring adventure -- The Spaniards were somewhat rude and inhospitable -- I am not going to let you write anything but your name -- Do not suppose I lightly interfere in a matter belonging to men -- We pressed onward with fatal resolution -- Jessie Benton Fr©♭mont was the better man of the two -- We thought money might come in handy -- All the stupid laurels that ever grew -- Decidedly, this ought to be struck out -- He throws away his heart. "Steve Inskeep tells the riveting story of John and Jessie Fr©♭mont, the husband and wife team who in the 1800s were instrumental in the westward expansion of the United States, and thus became America's first great political couple John Fr©♭mont grew up amid family tragedy and shame. Born out of wedlock in 1813, he went to work at age thirteen to help support his family in Charleston, South Carolina. He was a nobody. Yet, by the 1840s, he rose to become one of the most acclaimed people of the age -- known as a wilderness explorer, bestselling writer, gallant army officer, and latter-day conquistador, who in 1846 began the United States' takeover of California from Mexico. He was a celebrity who personified the country's westward expansion. Mountains, towns, ships, and streets were named after him. How did he climb so far? A vital factor was his wife, Jessie Benton Fr©♭mont, the daughter of a powerful United States senator. Jessie wanted to play roles in politics and exploration, which were then reserved for men. Frustrated, she threw her skill and passion into promoting her husband. Ordered by the US Army to map the Oregon Trail, John traveled thousands of miles on horseback, indifferent to his safety and that of the other members of his expeditions. When he returned home, Jessie helped him to shape dramatic reports of his adventures, which were reprinted in newspapers and bound as popular books. Jessie became his political adviser, and a power player in her own right. In 1856, the famous couple strategized as John became the first-ever presidential nominee of the newly established Republican Party. The party had been founded in opposition to slavery, and though both Fr©♭monts were Southerners they became symbols of the cause. With rare detail and in consummate style, Steve Inskeep tells the story of a couple whose joint ambitions and talents intertwined with those of the nascent United States itself. Americans linked the Fr©♭monts with not one but three great social movements of the time -- westward settlement, women's rights, and opposition to slavery. Theirs is a surprisingly modern story of ambition and fame; they lived in a time of globalization, technological disruption, and divisive politics that foreshadowed our own. The Fr©♭monts' adventures amount to nothing less than a tour of the early American soul"--.

940.54 S

Sledge, E. B. (Eugene Bondurant), 1923-. China marine. Oxford University Paperback, 2003. Tuscaloosa : University of Alabama Press, c2002. China Marine 1 -- Epilogue: I Am Not the Man I Would Have Been 149.

940.54 T

Terkel, Studs, 1912-2008. "The good war" : an oral history of World War Two. New York : New Press, [1997.

943.36 H

Hunt, Irmgard A. (Irmgard Albine), 1934-. On Hitler's mountain : overcoming the legacy of a Nazi childhood. First Harper Perennial edition. 2006. On writing a childhood memoir -- pt. 1. 1906-1934 : the P©œhlmanns. Roots of discontent ; In search of a future -- pt. 2. 1934-1939 : Hitler's willing followers. The rituals of life ; "Heil Hitler" ; Ominous undercurrents ; Meeting Hitler ; Gathering clouds -- pt. 3. 1939-1945 : war and surrender. Early sacrifice ; Learning to hate school ; Lessons from a wartime friendship ; A weary interlude in Selb ; Hardship and disintegration ; War comes to Berchtesgaden ; The end at last -- pt. 4. 1945-1948 : Bitter justice, or, Will justice be done? Survival under the Star-spangled Banner ; The curse of the past ; Escape from darkness. The author provides an account of her life growing up in Berchtesgaden, a Bavarian village at the foot of Hitler's mountain retreat, discussing a childhood encounter with the Nazi leader, and shedding light on why ordinary Germans, including her parents, tolerated and even supported the Nazis.

951.04 M

Mitter, Rana, 1969- author. Forgotten ally : China's World War II, 1937-1945. First U.S. Edition. The path to war: As close as lips and teeth : China's fall, Japan's rise ; A new revolution ; The path to confrontation -- Disaster: Thirty-seven days in summer : the outbreak of war ; The battle for Shanghai ; Refugees and resistance ; Massacre at Nanjing ; The battle of Taierzhuang ; The deadly river -- Resisting alone: "A sort of wartime normal" ; Flight into the unknown ; The road to Pearl Harbor -- The poisoned alliance ; Destination Burma ; Hunger in Henan ; States of terror ; Conference at Cairo ; One war, two fronts ; Showdown with Stilwell ; Unexpected victory ; Epilogue: The enduring war. "For decades, a major piece of World War II history has gone virtually unwritten. China was the fourth great ally, partner to the United States, the Soviet Union, and Great Britain, yet its drama of invasion, resistance, slaughter, and political intrigue remains little known in the West. In this emotionally gripping book, made possible through access to newly unsealed Chinese archives, Rana Mitter unfurls the story of China's World War II as never before and rewrites the larger history of the war in the process. He focuses his narrative on three towering leaders -- Chiang Kai-shek, Mao Zedong, and the lesser-known collaborator Wang Jingwei -- and extends the timeline of the war back to 1937, when Japanese and Chinese troops began to clash, fully two years before Hitler invaded Poland. Unparalleled in its research and scope, Forgotten Ally is a sweeping, character-driven history that will be essential reading not only for anyone with an interest in World War II, but also for those seeking to understand today's China, where, as Mitter reveals, the echoes of the war still reverberate"--.

952 J

Takada, Noriko. The Japanese way : aspects of behavior, attitudes, and customs of the Japanese. 2nd ed. Chicago : McGraw-Hill, c2011 . Abbreviations and contractions -- Addresses and street names -- Arts and crafts -- Asking directions -- Bathing and bathhouses -- Body language and gestures -- Borrowed words and acronyms -- Bowing -- Brand names and brand-name goods (burando-hin) -- Business cards (meish) -- Calendar -- Cherry blossoms and flower viewing -- Compliments -- Conversation -- Crime and safety -- Dating and marriage -- Death, funerals, and mourning -- Dialects -- Dining out -- Dinner invitations -- Directness -- Discussion and consensus -- Dress -- Drinking -- Driving -- Earthquakes -- Education -- English-language study -- Family -- The Jag and the national anthem -- Flowers and plants -- Food and eating -- Footwear -- Foreigners -- Gender roles -- Geography -- Gifts -- Government -- Hellos and good-byes -- Holidays and festivals -- Honorific speech (keigo) -- Hotels and inns -- Housing and furnishings -- Humor -- The Imperial family -- Individuals and couples -- Introductions and networking -- Karaoke -- Leisure (rgli) -- Letters, greeting cards, and postal services -- Love and affection -- Lucky and unlucky numbers -- Male/female speech -- Money -- Mt. Fuji -- Music and dance -- Myths, legends, and folklore -- Names, titles, and forms of address -- Numbers and counting -- Oriental medicine -- Pinball (pachinko) -- Politeness and rudeness -- Population -- Privacy -- Reading material -- Religion -- The seasons -- Shopping -- Shrines and temples -- Signatures and seals -- Social structure -- Sports -- Table etiquette -- Telephones -- Television/radio/movies -- Thank-yous and regrets -- Theater -- Time and punctuality -- Tipping and service charges -- Toilets -- Travel within Japan -- Vending machines -- Visiting private homes -- Weights, measures, and sizes -- Working hours -- The written language -- "Yes" and "no" -- "You first" -- Zoological calendar.

972.81 P

Proskouriakoff, Tatiana, 1909-1985. Maya history. First edition. Foreword / Gordon R. Wills -- Tatiana Proskouriakoff, 1909-1985 / Ian Graham -- Introduction / Rosemary A. Joyce -- 1. The Earliest Records: (A.D. 288-337) -- 2. The Arrival of Strangers: (A.D. 337-386) -- 3. The Maya Regain Tikal: (A.D. 386-435) -- 4. Some Ragged Pages: (A.D. 435-485) -- 5. Expansion of the Maya Tradition: (A.D. 485-534) -- 6. A Time of Troubles: (A.D. 534-583) -- 7. Recovery on the Frontiers: (A.D. 583-633) -- 8. Growth and Expansion: (A.D. 633-682) -- 9. Toward a Peak of Prosperity: (A.D. 682-736) -- 10. On the Crest of the Wave: (A.D. 731-780) -- 11. Prelude to Disaster: (A.D. 780-830) -- 12. The Final Years: (A.D. 831-909) -- 13. The Last Survivals: (A.D. 909-938). The ruins of Maya city-states occur throughout the Yucatan peninsula, Guatemala, Belize, and in parts of Honduras and El Salvador. But the people who built these sites remain imperfectly known. Though they covered standing monuments (stelae) and public buildings with hieroglyphic records of their deeds, no Rosetta Stone has yet turned up in Central America to help experts determine the exact meaning of these glyphs. Tatiana Proskouriakoff, a preeminent student of the Maya, made many breakthroughs in deciphering Maya writing, particularly in demonstrating that the glyphs record the deeds of actual human beings. This discovery opened the way for a history of the Maya, a monumental task that Proskouriakoff was engaged in before her death in 1985. Her work, Maya History, has been made ready for press by the able editorship of Rosemary Joyce. Maya History reconstructs the Classic Maya period (roughly A.D. 250-900) from the glyphic record on stelae at numerous sites, including Altar de Sacrificios, Copan, Dos Pilas, Naranjo, Piedras Negras, Quirigua, Tikal, and Yaxchilan. Proskouriakoff traces the spread of governmental institutions from the central Peten, especially from Tikal, to other city-states by conquest and intermarriage. And she also shows how the gradual introduction of foreign elements into Maya art mirrors the entry of outsiders who helped provoke the eventual collapse of the Classic Maya. Fourteen line drawings of monuments and over three hundred original drawings of glyphs amplify the text. Maya History has been long awaited by scholars in the field. It is sure to provoke lively debate and greater understanding of this important area in Mesoamerican studies.

973.04 A

Asian Americans : the movement and the moment. A wide-ranging collection of essays and material which documents the rich, little-known history of Asian American social activism during the years 1965-2001. This book examines the period not only through personal accounts and historical analysis, but through the visual record--utilizing historical prictorial materials developed at UCLA's Asian American Studies Center on Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Filipino, and Vietnamese Americans. Included are many reproductions of photos of the period, movement comics, demonstration flyers, newsletters, posters and much more.

973.0496 D

W.E.B. DuBois. The Souls of Black Folk. BIGFONTBOOKS.COM.

973.7 B

Barney, William L. Battleground for the Union : the era of the Civil War and Reconstruction, 1848-1877. Englewood Cliffs, N.J. : Prentice Hall, c1990.

973.9 I

Imani, Blair, author. Making our way home : the Great Migration and the Black American dream. First edition. Separate but equal: Reconstruction-1919 -- Beautiful -- and ugly, too: 1920-1929 -- I, too, am America: 1930-1939 -- Liberty and justice for all: 1940-1949 -- Trouble ahead: 1950-1959 -- The time is in the street, you know: 1960-1969 -- All poer to all the people: 1970-1979. "A powerful illustrated history of the Great Migration and its sweeping impact on Black and American culture, from Reconstruction to the rise of hip hop. Over the course of six decades, an unprecedented wave of Black Americans left the South and spread across the nation in search of a better life--a migration that sparked stunning demographic and cultural changes in twentieth-century America. Through gripping and accessible historical narrative paired with illustrations, author and activist Blair Imani examines the largely overlooked impact of The Great Migration and how it affected--and continues to affect--Black identity and America as a whole. Making Our Way Home explores issues like voting rights, domestic terrorism, discrimination, and segregation alongside the flourishing of arts and culture, activism, and civil rights. Imani shows how these influences shaped America's workforce and wealth distribution by featuring the stories of notable people and events, relevant data, and family histories. The experiences of prominent figures such as James Baldwin, Fannie Lou Hamer, El Hajj Malik El Shabazz (Malcolm X), Ella Baker, and others are woven into the larger historical and cultural narratives of the Great Migration to create a truly singular record of this powerful journey"--.

973.9 L

Longley, Kyle, author. LBJ's 1968 : power, politics, and the presidency in America's year of upheaval. A nation on the brink: the State of the Union Address, January 1968 -- Those dirty bastards, are they trying to embarrass us? The Pueblo Incident, January-December 1968 -- Tet: a very near thing, January-March 1968 -- As a result, I will not seek re-election: the March 31, 1968 speech -- The days the earth stood still: the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., April 1968 -- He hated him, but loved him: the assassination of Robert Kennedy, June 1968 -- The big stumble: the Fortas Affair, June-October 1968 -- The tanks are rolling: Czechoslovakia crushed, August 1968 -- The perfect disaster: the Democratic National Convention, August 1968 -- Is this treason?: the October surprise that wasn't, October-December 1968 -- The last dance, January 1969 -- Conclusion.

974.7 F

Feldman, Deborah, 1986-. Unorthodox : the scandalous rejection of my Hasidic roots. 1st Simon & Schuster trade pbk. ed. 2020. New York : Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2012. Traces the author's upbringing in a Hasidic community in Brooklyn, describing the strict rules that governed her life, arranged marriage at the age of seventeen, and the birth of her son, which led to her plan to leave and forge her own path in life.

975.7 B

Ball, Edward, 1959-. Slaves in the family. Paperback edition. Journalist Ball confronts the legacy of his family's slave-owning past, uncovering the story of the people, both black and white, who lived and worked on the Balls' South Carolina plantations. It is an unprecedented family record that reveals how the painful legacy of slavery continues to endure in America's collective memory and experience. Ball, a descendant of one of the largest slave-owning families in the South, discovered that his ancestors owned 25 plantations, worked by nearly 4,000 slaves. Through meticulous research and by interviewing scattered relatives, Ball contacted some 100,000 African-Americans who are all descendants of Ball slaves. In intimate conversations with them, he garnered information, hard words, and devastating family stories of precisely what it means to be enslaved. He found that the family plantation owners were far from benevolent patriarchs; instead there is a dark history of exploitation, interbreeding, and extreme violence.--From publisher description.

975.7 B

Ball, Edward, 1959-. The sweet hell inside : a family history. First edition. Preface -- Part 1-The Master and His Orphans-Part 2-High Yellow-Porch 3 -Eyes Sadder Then the Grave-Part 4-Nigger Rich-Part 5-The Orphans Dancers-Part 6-A Trunk in the Grass-Notes-Permission and Photography Credits-Acknowledgments-Index. If. Recounts the lives of the Harleston family of South Carolina, the progeny of a Southern gentleman and his slave who cast off their blemished roots and achieved affluence in part through a surprisingly successful funeral parlor business. Their wealth afforded the Harlestons the comfort of chauffeurs, tailored clothes, and servants whose skin was darker than theirs. It also launched the family into a generation of glory as painters, performers, and photographers in the "high yellow" society of America's colored upper class. The Harlestons' remarkable 100-year journey spans the waning days of Reconstruction, the precious art world of the early 1900s, the back alleys of the Jazz Age, and the dawn of the civil rights movement.--From publisher description.

DVD Gre

The Great debaters. 2-disc collector's edition; Widescreen [ed.]. [New York] : Weinstein Company, c2008. Denzel Washington, Nate Parker, Jurnee Smollett, Denzel Whitaker, Jermaine Williams, Forest Whitaker, Gina Ravera, John Heard, Kimberly Elise, Devyn Tyler, Trenton McClain Boyd. Melvin B. Tolson is a professor at Wiley College in Texas. Wiley is a small African-American college. In 1935, Tolson inspired students to form the school's first debate team. Tolson turns a group of underdog students into a historically elite debate team which goes on to challenge Harvard in the national championship. Inspired by a true story.

F Alb

Albertalli, Becky, author. What if it's us. Told in two voices, when Arthur, a summer intern from Georgia, and Ben, a native New Yorker, meet it seems like fate, but after three attempts at dating fail they wonder if the universe is pushing them together or apart.

F Arc

Astral Traveler's Daughter. First Simon & Schuster Trade Paperback edition, April 2019. New York, NY : Simon & Schuster, Inc, 2019. "Last year, Teddy Cannon discovered she was psychic. This year, her skills will be put to the test as she investigates a secretive case that will take her far from home--and deep into the past in the thrilling follow-up to School for Psychics"-- Provided by publisher.

F Chi

Chiaverini, Jennifer, author. Enchantress of numbers : a novel of Ada Lovelace. "The only legitimate child of Lord Byron, the most brilliant, revered, and scandalous of the Romantic poets, Ada was destined for fame long before her birth. Estranged from Ada's father, who was infamously "mad, bad, and dangerous to know," Ada's mathematician mother is determined to save her only child from her perilous Byron heritage. Banishing fairy tales and make-believe from the nursery, Ada's mother provides her daughter with a rigorous education grounded in mathematics and science. Any troubling spark of imagination--or worse yet, passion or poetry--is promptly extinguished. Or so her mother believes. When Ada is introduced into London society as a highly eligible young heiress, she at last discovers the intellectual and social circles she has craved all her life. Little does she realize that her delightful new friendship with inventor Charles Babbage--brilliant, charming, and occasionally curmudgeonly--will shape her destiny ..."--Jacket.

F Chr

Christie, Michael, 1976- author. Greenwood : a novel. First U.S. edition. "It's 2038 and Jake Greenwood is a storyteller and a liar, an overqualified tour guide babysitting ultra-rich vacationers in one of the world's last remaining forests. It's 2008 and Liam Greenwood is a carpenter, fallen from a ladder and sprawled on his broken back, calling out from the concrete floor of an empty mansion. It's 1974 and Willow Greenwood is out of jail, free after being locked up for one of her endless series of environmental protests: attempts at atonement for the sins of her father's once vast and violent timber empire. It's 1934 and Everett Greenwood is alone, as usual, in his maple syrup camp squat when he hears the cries of an abandoned infant and gets tangled up in the web of a crime that will cling to his family for decades. And throughout, there are trees: thrumming a steady, silent pulse beneath Christie's effortless sentences and working as a guiding metaphor for withering, weathering, and survival. A shining, intricate clockwork of a novel, Greenwood is a rain-soaked and sun-dappled story of the bonds and breaking points of money and love, wood and blood--and the hopeful, impossible task of growing toward the light"--.

F Cle

Memoirs of Fanny Hill. Published by arrangement with Edito-Service S. A., Geneva, Switzerland. New York, NY : Peebles Press International Inc, 1973.

F Col

Andre's Reboot. Birmingham, AL : Stephen B. Coleman, Publisher, 2019.

F Def

Moll Flanders. Reprint. 2020. Columbia, SC, : August 12, 2020.

F Def

Defoe, Daniel, 1661?-1731. The fortunes and misfortunes of the famous Moll Flanders ... A new edition.

F Fit

Fitzgerald, F. Scott (Francis Scott), 1896-1940, author. The great Gatsby. Foreword to the seventy-fifth anniversary edition: F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, and the House of Scribner ; Preface / by Matthew J. Bruccoli -- THE GREAT GATSBY -- The text of The Great Gatsby / by Matthew J. Bruccoli -- Publisher's afterword / Charles Scribner III -- FSF : life and career / James L.W. West III. Overview: The mysterious Jay Gatsby embodies the American notion that it is possible to redefine oneself and persuade the world to accept that definition. Gatsby's youthful neighbor, Nick Carraway, fascinated with the display of enormous wealth in which Gatsby revels, finds himself swept up in the lavish lifestyle of Long Island society during the Jazz Age. Considered Fitzgerald's best work, The Great Gatsby is a mystical, timeless story of integrity and cruelty, vision and despair. The timeless story of Jay Gatsby and his love for Daisy Buchanan is widely acknowledged to be the closest thing to the Great American Novel ever written.

F Jam

The Turn of the Screw, the Aspern Papers, and Two Stories. Barnes & Noble Classics, 2003; Intro. and notes by David L. Sweet. New York, NY : Barnes & Noble, 2003.

F Ora

Orange, Tommy, 1982- author. There there. First Vintage books edition. Here is a story of several people, each of whom has private reasons for travelling to the Big Oakland Powwow. Jacquie Red Feather is newly sober and trying to make it back to the family she left behind in shame. Dene Oxendene is pulling his life together after his uncle's death and has come to work at the powwow to honour his uncle's memory. Opal Viola Victoria Bear Shield has come to watch her nephew Orvil Red Feather, who has taught himself traditional Indian dance through YouTube videos and has come to the powwow to dance in public for the very first time. There will be glorious communion, and a spectacle of sacred tradition and pageantry. And there will be sacrifice, and heroism, and unspeakable loss.

F Pat

Patchett, Ann, author. The Dutch house : a novel. First edition. "Ann Patchett, the New York Times bestselling author of Commonwealth and State of Wonder, returns with her most powerful novel to date: a richly moving story that explores the indelible bond between two siblings, the house of their childhood, and a past that will not let them go"--.

F Rob

Roberts, Nora, author. The awakening. First edition. "#1 New York Times bestselling author of the epic Chronicles of The One trilogy returns with the first in a brand new series where parallel worlds clash over the struggle between good and evil"--.

F Row

Rowling, J. K. Harrius Potter et philosophi lapis. Cover illustration first pub. 2015. London : Bloomsbury, 2003, ℗♭1997. Latin translation, Peter Needham, 2003. Rescued from the outrageous neglect of his aunt and uncle, a young boy with a great destiny proves his worth while attending Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry.

F Rus

Russell, Karen, 1981-. Swamplandia! 1st ed (Borzoi Book). New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 2011. Twelve year old Ava must travel into the Underworld part of the swamp in order to save her family's dynasty of Bigtree alligator wresting. This novel takes us to the swamps of the Florida Everglades, and introduces us to Ava Bigtree, an unforgettable young heroine. The Bigtree alligator wrestling dynasty is in decline, and Swamplandia!, their island home and gator wrestling theme park, formerly no. 1 in the region, is swiftly being encroached upon by a fearsome and sophisticated competitor called the World of Darkness. Ava's mother, the park's indomitable headliner, has just died; her sister, Ossie, has fallen in love with a spooky character known as the Dredgeman, who may or may not be an actual ghost; and her brilliant big brother, Kiwi, who dreams of becoming a scholar, has just defected to the World of Darkness in a last ditch effort to keep their family business from going under. Ava's father, affectionately known as Chief Bigtree, is AWOL; and that leaves Ava, a resourceful but terrified thirteen, to manage ninety eight gators as well as her own grief. Against a backdrop of hauntingly fecund plant life animated by ancient lizards and lawless hungers, the author has written a novel about a family's struggle to stay afloat in a world that is inexorably sinking.

F Sha

Shaw, Irwin, 1913-1984. The young lions. Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 2000.

F Tol

The Hobbit. 75th Anniversary. The text of this edition is based on edition published by HarperCollins Publishers in 1995. Bilbo Baggins, a respectable, well-to-do hobbit, lives comfortably in his hobbit-hole until the day the wandering wizard Gandalf chooses him to take part in an adventure from which he may never return.

F Tow

Towles, Amor. Rules of civility. A chance encounter with a handsome banker in a jazz bar on New Year's Eve 1938 catapults Wall Street secretary Katey Kontent into the upper echelons of New York society, where she befriends a shy multi-millionaire, an Upper East Side ne'er-do-well, and a single-minded widow.

F Wat

Watson, Ren©♭e, author. Piecing me together. Tired of being singled out at her mostly-white private school as someone who needs support, high school junior Jade would rather participate in the school's amazing Study Abroad program than join Women to Women, a mentorship program for at-risk girls. "Acclaimed author Renee Watson offers a powerful story about a girl striving for success in a world that too often seems like it's trying to break her. Jade believes she must get out of her poor neighborhood if she's ever going to succeed. Her mother tells her to take advantage of every opportunity that comes her way. And Jade has: every day she rides the bus away from her friends and to the private school where she feels like an outsider, but where she has plenty of opportunities. But some opportunities she doesn't really welcome, like an invitation to join Women to Women, a mentorship program for "at-risk" girls. Just because her mentor is black and graduated from the same high school doesn't mean she understands where Jade is coming from. She's tired of being singled out as someone who needs help, someone people want to fix. Jade wants to speak, to create, to express her joys and sorrows, her pain and her hope. Maybe there are some things she could show other women about understanding the world and finding ways to be real, to make a difference.".

F Wil

Williams, Katie, 1978- author. Tell the machine goodnight. Pearl's job is to make people happy. Every day, she provides customers with personalized recommendations for greater contentment. She's good at her job, her office manager tells her, successful. But how does one measure an emotion? Meanwhile, there's Pearl's teenage son, Rhett. A sensitive kid who has forged an unconventional path through adolescence, Rhett seems to find greater satisfaction in being unhappy. The very rejection of joy is his own kind of "pursuit of happiness." As his mother, Pearl wants nothing more than to help Rhett--but is it for his sake or for hers? Certainly it would make Pearl happier. Regardless, her son is one person whose emotional life does not fall under the parameters of her job--not as happiness technician, and not as mother, either.-Amazon.

SC D

The Daniel Defoe Collection : The Life and strange surprising adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of York, Mariner; The farther adventures of Robinson Crusoe; A journal of the plague year; Moll Flanders. South Carolina, USA, : August 2020.

SC L

Link, Kelly, author. Get in trouble : stories. Random House trade paperback edition. The summer people -- I can see right through you -- Secret identity -- Valley of the girls -- Origin story -- The lesson -- The new boyfriend -- Two houses -- Light. A collection of short stories features tales of a young girl who plays caretaker to mysterious guests at the cottage behind her house and a former teen idol who becomes involved in a bizarre reality show.

SC P

Packer, ZZ. Drinking coffee elsewhere. 1st Riverhead trade pbk. ed. New York : Riverhead Books, 2004, ℗♭2003. Brownies -- Every tongue shall confess -- Our Lady of Peace -- The ant of the self -- Drinking coffee elsewhere -- Speaking in tongues -- Geese -- Doris is coming. Discovered by The New Yorker, Packer "forms a constellation of young black experience"* whether she's writing from the perspective of a church-going black woman who has a crisis in faith, a young college student at Yale, or a young black man unwillingly accompanying his father to the Million Man March. This universally appealing collection of short fiction has already established ZZ Packer as "a writer to watch.".

SC S

Sedaris, David, author. Calypso. First edition. When he buys a beach house on the Carolina coast, David Sedaris envisions long, relaxing vacations spent playing board games and lounging in the sun with those he loves most. And life at the Sea Section, as he names the vacation home, is exactly as idyllic as he imagined, except for one tiny, vexing realization: it's impossible to take a vacation from yourself. Sedaris sets his powers of observation toward middle age and mortality, that vertiginous moment when your own body betrays you and you realize that the story of your life is made up of more past than future.

SC S

Sedaris, David, author. Let's explore diabetes with owls. First Back Bay paperback edition, June 2014. From the perils of French dentistry to the eating habits of the Australian kookaburra, from the squat-style toilets of Beijing to the particular wilderness of a North Carolina Costco, we learn about the absurdity and delight of a curious traveler's experiences. Whether railing against the habits of litterers in the English countryside or marveling over a disembodied human arm in a taxidermist's shop, Sedaris takes us on side-splitting adventures that are not to be forgotten.

[sciencespies]

Civil Rights Icons' Mothers, Lost Ancient Cities and Other New Books to Read

https://sciencespies.com/history/civil-rights-icons-mothers-lost-ancient-cities-and-other-new-books-to-read/

Civil Rights Icons' Mothers, Lost Ancient Cities and Other New Books to Read

Anna Malaika Tubbs has never liked the old adage of “behind every great man is a great woman.” As the author and advocate points out in an interview with Women’s Foundation California, in most cases, the “woman is right beside the man, if not leading him.” To “think about things differently,” Tubbs adds, she decided to “introduce the woman before the man”—an approach she took in her debut book, which spotlights the mothers of Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X and James Baldwin.

“I am tired of Black women being hidden,” writes Tubbs in The Three Mothers. “I am tired of us not being recognized, I am tired of being erased. In this book, I have tried my best to change this for three women in history whose spotlight is long overdue, because the erasure of them is an erasure of all of us.”

The latest installment in our series highlighting new book releases, which launched last year to support authors whose works have been overshadowed amid the Covid-19 pandemic, explores the lives of the women who raised civil rights leaders, the story behind a harrowing photograph of a Holocaust massacre, the secret histories of four abandoned ancient cities, humans’ evolving relationship with food, and black churches’ significance as centers of community.

Representing the fields of history, science, arts and culture, innovation, and travel, selections represent texts that piqued our curiosity with their new approaches to oft-discussed topics, elevation of overlooked stories and artful prose. We’ve linked to Amazon for your convenience, but be sure to check with your local bookstore to see if it supports social distancing–appropriate delivery or pickup measures, too.

The Three Mothers: How the Mothers of Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and James Baldwin Shaped a Nation by Anna Malaika Tubbs

Ebenezer Baptist Church is perhaps best known for its ties to King, who preached there alongside his father, Martin Luther King Sr., between 1947 and 1968. The Atlanta house of worship proudly hails its ties to the Kings, but as Tubbs writes for Time magazine, one member of the family is largely left out of the narrative: King’s mother, Alberta.

The author adds, “Despite the fact that this church had been led by her parents, that she had re-established the church choir, that she played the church organ, that she was the adored Mama King who led the church alongside her husband, that she was assassinated in the very same building, she had been reduced to an asterisk in the church’s overall importance.”

In The Three Mothers, Tubbs details the manifest ways in which Alberta, Louise Little and Berdis Baldwin shaped their sons’ history-making activism. Born within six years of each other around the turn of the 20th century, the three women shared a fundamental belief in the “worth of Black people, … even when these beliefs flew in the face of America’s racist practices,” per the book’s description.

Alberta—an educator and musician who believed social justice “needed to be a crucial part of any faith organization,” as Tubbs tells Religion News Service—instilled those same beliefs in her son, supporting his efforts to effect change even as the threat of assassination loomed large. Grenada-born Louise, meanwhile, immigrated to Canada, where she joined Marcus Garvey’s black nationalist Universal Negro Improvement Association and met her future husband, a fellow activist; Louise’s approach to religion later inspired her son Malcolm to convert to the Nation of Islam. Berdis raised James as a single parent in the three years between his birth and her marriage to Baptist preacher David Baldwin. Later, when James showed a penchant for pen and paper, she encouraged him to express his frustrations with the world through writing.

All three men, notes Tubbs in the book, “carried their mothers with them in everything they did.”

The Ravine: A Family, a Photograph, a Holocaust Massacre Revealed by Wendy Lower

Few photographs of the Holocaust depict the actual moment of victims’ deaths. Instead, visual documentation tends to focus on the events surrounding acts of mass murder: lines of unsuspecting men and women awaiting deportation, piles of emaciated corpses on the grounds of Nazi concentration camps. In total, writes historian Wendy Lower in The Ravine, “not many more than a dozen” extant images actually capture the killers in the act.

Twelve years ago, Lower, also the author of Hitler’s Furies: German Women in the Nazi Killing Fields, chanced upon one such rare photograph while conducting research at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Taken in Miropol, Ukraine, on October 13, 1941, the photo shows Nazis and local collaborators in the middle of a massacre. Struck by a bullet to the head, a Jewish woman topples forward into a ravine, pulling two still-living children down with her. Robbed of a quick death by shooting, the youngsters were “left to be crushed by the weight of their kin and suffocated in blood and the soil heaped over the bodies,” according to The Ravine.

Lower spent the better part of the next decade researching the image’s story, drawing on archival records, oral histories and “every possible remnant of evidence” to piece together the circumstances surrounding its creation. Through her investigations of the photographer, a Slovakian resistance fighter who was haunted by the scene until his death in 2005; the police officers who participated in their neighbors’ extermination; and the victims themselves, she set out to hold the perpetrators accountable while restoring the deceased’s dignity and humanity—a feat she accomplished despite being unable to identify the family by name.

“[Genocide’s] perpetrators not only kill but also seek to erase the victims from written records, and even from memory,” Lower explains in the book’s opening chapter. “When we find one trace, we must pursue it, to prevent the intended extinction by countering it with research, education, and memorialization.”

Four Lost Cities: A Secret History of the Urban Age by Annalee Newitz

Sooner or later, all great cities fall. Çatalhöyük, a Neolithic settlement in southern Anatolia; Pompeii, the Roman city razed by Mount Vesuvius’ eruption in 79 A.D.; Angkor, the medieval Cambodian capital of the Khmer Empire; and Cahokia, a pre-Hispanic metropolis in what is now Illinois, were no exception. United by their pioneering approaches to urban planning, the four cities boasted sophisticated infrastructures and feats of engineering—accomplishments largely overlooked by Western scholars, who tend to paint their stories in broad, reductive strokes, as Publishers Weekly notes in its review of science journalist Annalee Newitz’s latest book.

Consider, for instance, Çatalhöyük, which was home to some of the first people to settle down permanently after millennia of nomadic living. The prehistoric city’s inhabitants “farmed, made bricks from mud, crafted weapons, and created incredible art” without the benefit of extensive trade networks, per Newitz. They also adorned their dwellings with abstract designs and used plaster to transform their ancestors’ skulls into ritualistic artworks passed down across generations. Angkor, on the other hand, became an economic powerhouse in large part thanks to its complex network of canals and reservoirs.

Despite their demonstrations of ingenuity, all four cities eventually succumbed to what Newitz describes as “prolonged periods of political instability”—often precipitated by poor leadership and unjust hierarchies—“coupled with environmental collapse.” The parallels between these conditions and “the global-warming present” are unmistakable, but as Kirkus points out, the author’s deeply researched survey is more hopeful than dystopian. Drawing on the past to offer advice for the future, Four Lost Cities calls on those in power to embrace “resilient infrastructure, … public plazas, domestic spaces for everyone, social mobility, and leaders who treat the city’s workers with dignity.”

Animal, Vegetable, Junk: A History of Food, From Sustainable to Suicidal by Mark Bittman

Humans’ hunger for food has a dark side, writes Mark Bittman in Animal, Vegetable, Junk. Over the millennia, the food journalist and cookbook author argues, “It’s sparked disputes over landownership, water use, and the extraction of resources. It’s driven exploitation and injustice, slavery and war. It’s even, paradoxically enough, created disease and famine.” (A prime example of these consequences is colonial powers’ exploitation of Indigenous peoples in the production of cash crops, notes Kirkus.) Today, Bittman says, processed foods wreak havoc on diets and overall health, while industrialized agriculture strips the land of its resources and drives climate change through the production of greenhouse gases.

Dire as it may seem, the situation is still salvageable. Though the author dedicates much of his book to an overview of how humans’ relationship with food has changed for the worse, Animal, Vegetable, Junk’s final chapter adopts a more optimistic outlook, calling on readers to embrace agroecology—“an autonomous, pluralist, multicultural movement, political in its demand for social justice.” Adherents of agroecology support replacing chemical fertilizers, pesticides and other toxic tools with organic techniques like composting and encouraging pollinators, in addition to cutting out the middleman between “growers and eaters” and ensuring that the food production system is “sustainable and equitable for all,” according to Bittman.

“Agroecology aims to right social wrongs,” he explains. “… [It] regenerates the ecology of the soil instead of depleting it, reduces carbon emissions, and sustains local food cultures, businesses, farms, jobs, seeds, and people instead of diminishing or destroying them.”

The Black Church: This Is Our Story, This Is Our Song by Henry Louis Gates Jr.

The companion book to an upcoming PBS documentary of the same name, Henry Louis Gates Jr.’s latest scholarly survey traces the black church’s role as both a source of solace and a nexus for social justice efforts. As Publishers Weekly notes in its review of The Black Church, enslaved individuals in the antebellum South drew strength from Christianity’s rituals and music, defying slaveholders’ hopes that practicing the religion would render them “docile and compliant.” More than a century later, as black Americans fought to ensure their civil rights, white supremacists targeted black churches with similar goals in mind, wielding violence to (unsuccessfully) intimidate activists into accepting the status quo.

Gates’ book details the accomplishments of religious leaders within the black community, from Martin Luther King Jr. to Malcolm X, Nat Turner and newly elected senator Reverend Raphael G. Warnock. (The Black Churches’ televised counterpart features insights from similarly prominent individuals, including Oprah Winfrey, Reverend Al Sharpton and John Legend.) But even as the historian celebrates these individuals, he acknowledges the black church’s “struggles and failings” in its “treatment of women and the LGBTQ+ community and its dismal response to the 1980s AIDS epidemic,” per Kirkus. Now, amid a pandemic that’s taken a disproportionate toll on black Americans and an ongoing reckoning with systemic racism in the U.S., black churches’ varying approaches to activism and political engagement are at the forefront once again.

As Gates says in a PBS statement. “No social institution in the Black community is more central and important than the Black church.”

#History

[thegeneralsnotebook]

July Feature: History of Colours Part 3 -- Purple

One of the things that I was a little afraid of going into this series about the histories of each of the main colours was that after the first few entries, the series would start to get a bit dry. I would have already talked about the big decks and so the later colours wouldn’t have a whole lot left to mention that hadn’t already been said. So far at least, I’m glad to say that this hasn’t happened, and now it looks like maybe it’ll be okay. After all, we’ve got a lot of important cards to mention when we get to Pink, and again when we get to Orange, and again when we get to Blue. So I don’t think that we’re going to run into any problems on that front at all. In any case, this month is about Purple, and it’s a colour that has its own narrative to tell.

That, by the way, is another thing which has surprised me so far in my research. Each of the colours so far has had a relatively nice theme emerge around their history as I pulled it together. Yellow’s was a tale of a brilliant beginning, a long period of loss, and then a slow but strong rebirth. White’s was a surprisingly thematic tale of a colour that, while it had given up the spotlight, had never given up the stage. For Purple, things are a little different, but no less appropriate, especially given the colour’s new royal connotations. Purple, I’ve found, has been a colour all about establishing dynasties, lines of decks passing a torch from one generation to the next, traceable back to a touchstone concept from older times. It was impressive how far back some of these lines reached, and indeed a few decks that I had thought emerged from whole cloth were actually perched on the shoulders of past giants that I had never even heard of before. 

Before we get started, I want to again extend heartfelt thanks to my source on all matters of the predate my experience with the game’s competitive scene: the one and only Emperor Bugle. This time I really would have been up the creek if not for him, though we’ll get to that particular event in its due time.

For now, come along with me, as we unveil the saga of the Dynasties of Purple.

Two big cards with big effects, but generally used for slightly different things.

Formative Days

As with all of the colours, the story of Purple has to begin at the beginning, at the dawn of Premier. There were three major decks featuring Purple at the time, but I have covered Royal Guidance and Taxes in the Yellow and White articles respectively, and I won’t be going into further detail on them here. Instead, let’s focus on our first touchstone, though in this case the torch first lit by Big Bombs was not to be picked up by Purple, and instead was eventually passed to a different colour, which we’ll talk about in its due time.

Now, I would not be surprised by a slight sense of deja vu encountered when first clicking on that link, because indeed this early deck does bear a striking resemblance to some Harmony Purple Farming decks that have been active as recently as this year’s Winter Store Championships. The modern versions have significantly less Friends, different Epics, and some useful Resources in them, but the basic idea is absolutely still the same. PR Twilight contributes well to fighting Epics when paired with a lot of extra flip Events and a high-flipping deck in general. In addition the deck features a good host of what Purple control tools existed at the time, capped off by the brilliant Ursa Vanquisher, a card which may or may not be showing up again in this article a little ways down the page. Indeed, this was Farming before the term “Farming” was even part of the CCG vernacular. And, your eyes do not deceive you where that Full Steam in the upper left is considered. Once upon a time, a 4/0/4 vanilla actually did deserve to be a Rare, and especially in a deck so focused on its flips it was an excellent card to have.

As we move along into Canterlot Nights, we come to a deck that I’ve mentioned before, in the moment that it came during White’s article. I gave it little more than a footnote at that time, but I don’t believe that this time I can get by without giving it a full treatment. Unfortunately, I am also not qualified to properly discuss the minutiae of its construction, so for that I will defer to my source, who has written rather extensively on the topic. I refer of course to One Pace (and seriously do block some time from your schedule if you intend on clicking that link; when I said Bugle had written extensively I wasn’t kidding). One Pace is an important deck for a lot of reasons, and probably could serve as the basis for a whole article all on its own. From my research I can confidently enough say that what you see in there is the foundation upon which combo was built, a formulation of reduced-cost Events and deck-thinning that rings eerily recognizable even today. History may not repeat itself, as Mark Twain said, but it sure does often rhyme.

Finally, we close off these early days with a little list that may not have ever captured much in the way of tournament success, but certainly captured a fair few hearts and minds in its time in the public eye. This being the Antisocial Luna Farming deck that first came at the concept of building a deck with no Friends, and was a popular-enough topic of discussion.

The times, they were a’changin, and Purple was finding its stride.

The Great Realignment

Every one of these articles, I’ve realized, is going to contain a section that could plausibly be headlined by DJ and Maud, even in the colours other than Orange and Pink. Simply put, Rock & Rave was such a momentous and seminal event in the history of the game that the time before and the time after it must be kept separate from each other.

In Purple’s case, however, there was at least a small amount of time before the Great Pink & Orange War fully took hold where one new dynasty was able to be laid down, and what an important dynasty it wound up being. At this point, we have advanced to the 2014 NA Continental Championships, and within the Top 8 of that event there were two important Purple decks.

The first was the winner of the whole thing, a deck named Maudlike, notable for being one of the very first competitively successful tri-colour lists, and itself a harbinger of things to come with its relatively slow, Farming/Control oriented playstyle. Indeed, while Maud was to become best-known in a pure Farming context, her strengths in a Control deck willing to use her Power to consistently confront Problems have also been broadly recognized throughout history. And yes, here we see Ursa Vanquisher again, still devastatingly effective at defending Troublemakers in a world so lacking in other ways of dealing with them.

But in actuality I think that it is the other Purple list that appears in the Top 8 that is the more important one to take note of. It’s a deck that I personally had never heard of before doing this research, but it appears that it may be the progenitor of the Vinyl/Purple control dynasty, which as we all know eventually led to brilliant success. Unfortunately the original primer for the deck has since been removed from Reddit, but here again Bugle saved me, and so I can present to you Charlotte’s Tower. The key theme that I would pull from this deck is repeatability, as so many of its key control features are repeatable, and especially difficult to deal with in an era where Resource removal was not always considered quite so essential as it is today. It’s easy to see the hallmarks of features that we would come to expect in a modern control deck, with targeted answers against opposing Troublemakers, limited but effective removal, and so much value generation, whether it be AT with All Team Organizer, or cards with DJ. It’s an important piece of history, so I was very happy when this decklist surfaced.

Now, as we move on to the Absolute Discord era, it is true that Purple’s fortunes fade somewhat. Pink and Orange rose to the fore, and there will be more to write about this time as we get to those colours. But I do want to make two important notes here.

The first concerns Princess Luna, The Setting Moon, a card which entered the game in Celestial Solstice and left an indelible impression, particularly in the field of combo. I don’t believe that I’ve managed to avoid mentioning Dragon Express in any of the previous articles, but I’ll save the full writeup for one of the most infamous decks in history for the Orange article.

The second is about a deck that I discovered while hunting around for decklists of the other items on this list. It hadn’t come up in my discussion with Bugle, but the contemporary sources mentioned it as a “meta” deck of the time period, so I thought it was probably worth including. It went by the name of Dusk Radiance Mastery, and is mostly closely viewed as an evolution of the ideas first expressed in Royal Guidance, though with a few key updates. Most notable at the time was the inclusion of Twilight Sparkle, Friendship is Magic as the Mane. It also included some fine tech to deal with the meta, like Critter Stampede to crush One Pace’s needed 6 AT to play its Element of Magic. A fine inheritor of what was at the time a flickering flame. Not to fear, though. Unlike Yellow, Purple’s time in the shadows turned out to be very brief.

Stride found.

EO Block: The Age of Legends

EO Block is where the modern Purple story really starts. All at once, the colour got a lot of amazing cards. And then it got even more in HM. And then even more in MT. The result was a colour that was a juggernaut in competitive play, with multiple viable archetypes, and a foundation for a dynasty that was set to last a long time.

Before we talk about decklists, there are a number of individual cards that need to be mentioned. The first is the new Mane Character that the colour received in EO: Princess Twilight Sparkle, Ambassador of Friendship. It didn’t take long for people to realize that Purple’s new keyword in the set, Meticulous, was an excellent ability for Control, and this card’s ability to start making it happen on Turn 2 when paired with Ancient Research as a starting Problem was a great starting point for any Control deck. Plus, Twilight got you extra AT too, a theme that was going to keep building as more sets came out. HM granted the colour Princess Twilight Sparkle, Cover to Cover, an absurd value generator that quickly earned a reputation as an automatic inclusion in virtually any Purple deck. And finally, there is the Purple EO Event suite, backstopped by the card that eventually got banned, Interdimensional Portal.

Portal, by the way, was already doing unfortunate things as soon as EO released, though at the time everyone was blaming the new Pink/White Bulk Biceps. All Tied Up, which made a strong impression on the scene before being quite swiftly banned, offered only a taste of what was to come. In addition to using Portal for its more traditional Control roles, that deck was able to take advantage of a fortuitous interaction with Bulk to create an infinite supply of 2-AT Immediate speed removal.

HM and MT were where the colour really hit its stride though, with HM offering us another touchstone, Zipporwhil and the dynasty of classical Purple/X control that followed it. By the time MT hit and gave us Purple/White multicolour cards for the first time, White was cemented as the dominant secondary colour for Purple, and the combination became a mainstay in tournaments all over the world. The two colours admittedly suffered somewhat from being incredibly slow when paired together, and often failed to win within the allotted time limit even if they would have theoretically pulled ahead if given infinite time. But Purple had established one of its most successful dynasties, and one that would continue right up to the establishment of Core.

However, Purple/White was not the only important multicolour combination that we got from MT. Indeed yet another dynasty was going to be founded, this one utilizing Orange, and blazing a trail for classical Chaos Control, best typified by Grand Pause’s Waking Nightmare, here depicted in its 2016 NA Continentals T8 form. Similar to how archetypal Purple/White control relied on Eff Stop to replay control-oriented Events, so too could these make use of cycled Chaos effects to frustrate an opponent’s attempts to break down its walls. This also maintained its form for quite a while and inspired many successors, including (one assumes) the Chaos Control that New Dawn seems likely to bring us.

Oh, by the way, Tantabuse was somewhere in here too, and included some Purple, but I will get to it in its own due time.

Finally, rounding off the EO Block, there was another entry in the 2016 NA Continentals worth mentioning, Too Spoopy, placing in the T16. This Blue/Purple combination was something of an oddity for its time, playing Purple at an extremely anomalous speed. Even so, its combination of large amounts of frighten synergy and strong Events from both of its colours proved potent.

Some dynasties are built to last.

The Modern Era

The start of Defenders of Equestria, even though it wasn’t actually the beginning of the Core format, is still the point I use as the beginning of the current “Modern Era” of the CCG. And from this point forward, most of the decks being covered here should be relatively familiar to most of the readership. Essentially through this era Purple remained the King (or should I perhaps say Princess) of value, though Ambassador began to fall off somewhat in favour of a resurgent DJ Mane. While DE may be remembered generally as the era of Hot Wings, and of Pink in general, Purple still managed to feature on both sides of the 2017 NA Continental Final.

Bugle’s eventual winning deck Vinyl’s Bag of Tricks was already mentioned in the White article, and will get its full credit in the Pink article. Instead, I want to dedicate this space to discussion of the deck that got 2nd, the one simply and poetically called Butts.

In some senses, as a DJ/Purple control deck, Butts appeared superficially similar to the broad direction that Purple was going in around this time. Indeed, watching the Finals match between these two offered a… qualified form of thrills, but I can personally attest that it was a grand thing to watch. When we dig closer into Butts though, it becomes plain that this is a deck absolutely going its own way. Most obvious is the 53 card total, even now an extreme anomaly, and quite a bit more so in an era where consistency was absolutely everything when playing control. But probably even more important than that is the fact the deck is only playing two colours, and bucked the by-then nearly-universal trend of splashing White for Eff Stop and point acceleration. Instead, eminently_sensible committed to making it work with only two colours, and it’s a testament to his own skill that he was able to make it work so well. Per usual on these important and highly-technical decks, I defer to the author himself, in the link above.

Now, that brings us to the Beyond Block, and, thankfully for me, brings the end of this article into clear sight. Not so quickly though, because no sooner did Seaquestria get started than we saw another dynasty laid down, its echoes and heirs still making themselves felt in the present day. That deck was BRB, here depicted in its 2018 NA Continentals incarnation, reaching second as piloted by George Z. Purple and Pink yet again come together, but in the new Core format and so decidedly changed from their past allegiance. BRB was a cornerstone deck in the realignment of the Control playstyle that was happening in the aftermath of the first Core rotation, and while honest debate persists as to whether it can be correctly referred to as a Control deck, I personally fall on the side that says it is. This simply was what Control had become in the new era, no longer so reliant on Troublemakers but much more keen on removal and taking its points from confronts and faceoffs when they were available. It’s even perhaps somewhat fitting that it passed its torch on to the same three colours that Bugle had won with in 2017, completing a thematic loop as Tempest Pink/White emerged as the Control standard-bearer in a meta that was getting swamped by the resurgent Yellow. Notably, there was a Blue variant as well that managed to reach 2nd Place at the 2019 EFNW tournament.

Finally, rounding out the notable modern decks, we do have one more that could form a dynasty all its own, that being Alicorn Tribal as popularized by i8Pages in an Everfree Northwest T4 from 2019. Certainly it’s an open question for the future to see if that style of deck will see any heirs, but in a world where tri-corns are going to keep being a thing it’s a reasonable guess to make that there exists some potential for it.

New Dawn: Looking Ahead

Purple has enjoyed an amazingly storied history over the course of the development of the game’s meta. Many trends and larger arcs owe their beginning to an idea that was originally expressed with a Purple deck, and in the present day the colour has a well-earned reputation for being very good at the things it does: control, Troublemakers, and value through AT generation. What this means though, is that New Dawn is shaping up to offer an exciting, if uncertain future. Current signs point to some novel directions to the colour, with a firmer eye toward farming, and some legitimate arrows pointing in the direction of aggro. And if there should be any theme that jumps out about the history of Purple, it should be the relative lack of effective aggro. Thus the onset of New Dawn appears to be precisely that where Purple is concerned, and who knows if next year we will even recognize the colour that it has become. Yet even then, I think we can rest assured when we look back on this era, we’ll be able to trace a line of decks owing their inspiration and substance to an important foundation that emerged somewhere in the mists of the new set.

[getoffthesoapbox]

[GS] Goblin Slayer’s Foundational Sublayers

“Don't worry about the snakes in your garden when you've got spiders in your bed.”

I hope I’m not stepping on a landmine by posting about this particular show, given it’s controversial nature, but I’m quite floored by the layers I’m discovering in Goblin Slayer now that I’ve watched the first two episodes. I guess I’ll preface this with a couple disclaimers, then work out the rest under the cut.

First of all, I know nothing about Goblin Slayer other than that it is a light novel and has a manga variant. I’ve never read either, and have no intention of reading either in the near future. How the story unfolds or whether or not its intriguing and gripping premise devolves into pointless harem hijinks, I know not. If it’s merely a male power fantasy or if it has more substance, I know not. These things I will discover as they come within the anime. My post at this time is concerning what is right in front of me, the two episodes that are out. Whether the story can make good on what its more subtler layers are promising remains to be seen. 

Second of all, this post will not delve into the controversial elements of the two episodes other than to refer to them lightly as necessary. While I believe the human mind is stronger than common wisdom implies, I’m not interested in fighting people over what should have been warned or not, so I won’t be messing with it. It just bogs down the flow of a post to have such things, and it goes against my principles, so I’ll be stepping around it entirely. 

Preamble over. Let’s get crackin’.

Edgy Exploitation Fantasy or Psychological Horror Fantasy?

There used to be a subgenre of horror filmmaking called exploitation or grindhouse films. Some of the discussion I’m seeing about Goblin Slayer reminds me a bit of the controversies surrounding these shadier elements of filmmaking throughout film history. Artists are always pushing boundaries, touching taboos, and getting bit for going too far. This is the nature of art, and the whole process is fine--boundaries should be set by culture, but they should also be poked and prodded by subculture. It’s an eternal dance that is necessary and desirable for the health of a society. Go too far one way, and you’re too rigid. Go too far the other way, you’re unable to get your bearings. There is a time and a place to explore exploitation, and artists need to be free to go where the normal civilized person cannot. (Or at least, that’s what I believe.)

Where does Goblin Slayer fall, then? On the surface, one might say it easily falls into an exploitation subgenre. The first episode alone features men being viciously murdered and women facing far worse, all to set up the Heroic Entrance of the blank slate (quite literally, as he has no face) Audience-Insert Hero character. This Audience-Insert Hero Character then proceeds to Destroy All The Bad Things and save the day. In episode two, we find out the Audience-Insert Hero Character not only saves the day, but he’s the Only One who saves the day for the Little Guy and no one but his Harem, who he doesn’t notice because he’s Too Manly, appreciates him. 

If the above were all that Goblin Slayer had to it (and perhaps future episodes will truly devolve into such a premise), then I would agree with those who criticize its exploitation of its female (and male) characters for the sake of elevating its hero and allowing its audience the opportunity to both be titillated by the violence being done to the victims and enjoy the fantasy of rescuing the damsels in distress who can be rescued. In some ways, Goblin Slayer certainly isn’t shy about indulging in its exploitative opportunities. But I do think there’s more to it than merely the exploitation layer, and that’s why I haven’t dropped it. 

I think Goblin Slayer’s world building is some of the strongest I’ve seen in an anime fantasy setting in a long time, and the first episode left me with a genuine sense of horror that I haven’t felt in a long time. Horror is much like humor--it’s easy to spot and hard to do right. Jump scares and spooky sounds are one thing, but narrative horror--the kind you’d find in The King in Yellow or The Turn of the Screw--is much more difficult. The kind of horror that creeps up on you, that gets you thinking, that’s much harder. The same is true of slapstick comedy--it’s easy to do body humor, but difficult to do the more complicated forms. Goblin Slayer does an excellent job building its world into something truly horrific in its first two episodes, and while this does elevate its hero to truly “heroic” proportions, it also emphasizes just how difficult, unrewarding, thankless and necessary a task this man has undertaken is, and the depths of the evil which has snuck in by the back door. 

But more than the world building, more than the harem elements, Goblin Slayer gets so. much. right. on two very important narrative levels most people never even think about: the evolutionary level and the mythological/religious level. These two levels are buried beneath our stories, and most of the time in the rush of planning characters and plots and themes and the “things of heaven” so to speak, writers don’t even realize the “hell” at their feet, the foundation upon which they’re building. When a writer gets it right, you know, because people are drawn to it without being able to understand why, even if the plot, characters, and “themes” are badly written or terrible or repugnant morally. When a story gets the foundation layers right, there’s something in it that really calls an audience’s attention, for good or ill, and that’s what I want to explore here today. 

The Serpent In The Garden & The Heart

What struck me about the first two episodes of Goblin Slayer was that this world was fucked inside and out. This is the layer of myth and religion--whenever a story starts with a premise like that, we’re going straight back to the origin stories of mankind--the angry gods and goddesses, the banishment from paradises, the murdering of first brothers. Even if we’re secular people, we all carry within us the DNA of generations upon generations of people who held this mythology within their lives and blood. It influences us in ways we don’t even recognize to this day. 

Goblin Slayer makes a clear-cut case for the evils of the goblins themselves, and they’re the easiest to address first. The goblins are this story’s initial enemy, the “serpent in the garden” to to speak. They are the thing, according to the Hero, who is keeping the World from Paradise. The source of the fall, so to speak. And the story does an excellent job of establishing the horror of these creatures. In small groups or one-on-one, outside of their nest, they’re no threat at all, much like a lone rat might be or a lone wasp or a lone termite. But enter their nest and their layer, ignore them to let them multiply, and you’ll soon find yourself battling an infestation of the little buggers. These goblins are nasty little creatures--smart as dogs and rapacious as bed bugs. They hide from larger, scarier monsters, and loot poor, ill-defended villages, pillaging for supplies and women, who they drag back to their layers. Much like pillagers throughout humanity, these creatures swam what they want and devour it in whatever way strikes them. They’re truly horrific creatures.

Now this alone would be rather one-sided if the goblins were the only evil the story highlighted. But fortunately, there is a second layer that touches on the snakes that exist in the heart of every creature. Why are the goblin infestations increasing? Because humans don’t feel like dealing with them. They’re a hassle (like pests), they’re easy to kill as long as you don’t get swarmed, and there are bigger fish to fry (likely legitimately, but that hasn’t been justified yet). Worse, they tend to attack poorer villages that can’t afford to put up a town defense much less hire adventurers to assist them. The bounties aren’t worth it for anyone but the greenhorns looking for experience. So much of the destruction caused by these green menaces is due to human greed and sloth--”strong” humans are too important to waste time on “small” fry like goblins. Greenhorns are then sent to the slaughter--the ones who survive become regular adventurers and soon escape the grind of goblin-hunting while the unlucky ones get slaughtered or worse. 

Even with these two sides of horror--nature and the heart of man--this story would fall flat if it didn’t have one last piece of the triangle. Generally when stories fail at this level, they fail because their protagonist is “above” the serpent within. Fortunately for Goblin Slayer, the Goblin Slayer himself is not this kind of character. He may have a harem and he may be “heroic,” but the first two episodes of the story do not justify him or his actions. I think it might be easy to take his backstory flashback as a justification, but there are a few key moments that the story emphasizes which, in my opinion, make it clear that the flashback is merely to explain why he’s obsessed with his mission to eradicate the goblins, not to justify his actions. The first moment is in the first episode when he slaughters the helpless goblin children--while his words may be “correct,” they neither convince the Priestess nor do the visuals agree with him--he’s portrayed visually as an overbearing monster bearing down on the hapless creatures. In the second episode, he attempts to justify himself to the Priestess again, but what we see from her is not her nodding in agreement or having a Sudden Realization of his Righteousness--instead she is praying as they’re slaughtering the goblins. She still views him as wrong, even if this is a necessary evil in order to protect their own kind. 

On top of the Priestess’s alternative viewpoint and the camerawork, we have his Childhood Friend, whose pain and loneliness is emphasized. His work isn’t justified by her story, it’s criticized. While he’s off chasing down this endless revenge quest, he’s hurting a woman who has cared for him for most of his life. He’s missing out on the beauty of her company and her companionship, on the brighter side of life, on “heaven” so to speak. Her uncle wants her to give up on him, and understandably calls him crazy. But she is faithful in waiting, and in hoping that one day he’ll turn toward her. To be fair, the story does try to play things evenly rather than simply criticizing its main character (it does want you to root for the Goblin Slayer), and it does this through the Guild Clerk, who in my opinion is the least trustworthy of the heroines so far. She may “value” the Goblin Slayer, but she’s certainly willing to hand out goblin missions to unqualified greenhorns and use them as cannon fodder when necessary. The story makes it clear that she has a serpent in her heart as well. 

What I see here, with these three key elements in play, is the set up for a huge redemption arc not only for the Goblin Slayer, but also for the world at large. We’re starting off with both a fall from paradise (the goblin infestations rising) and the Problem of Malice/Evil (the indifference of the other adventurers and the obsession of the Goblin Slayer), both of which will have to be addressed and rectified before the end. It’s clear from the opening that, much like Guts from Berserk, the Goblin Slayer cannot complete his mission alone. He is not going to be able to actualize himself as a person and as a human being and free himself from his obsession until he is shown a bigger picture through the perspectives of the people who come into contact with him. 

The exploitation in the first two episodes to me seems to be ultimately necessary for establishing the sheer magnitude of the stakes in this story not just for the main hero and heroine, but also for the world itself. It is a world that has turned a blind eye to injustice in favor of greed, a world that is not functioning with proper order and is allowing chaos to flourish because people are trying to avoid facing what they don’t want to face. If this theme carries on throughout the entirety of the story, and if both the Goblin Slayer and the world change by the end, I think it could have the makings of quite a satisfying quest on the most fundamental of levels, even if it indulges in a few harem hijinks. 

Evolution On Display

This might be kind of a funny thing to notice, but I think the evolutionary layer is a key layer in storytelling that perhaps isn’t acceptable to modern sensibilities despite resonating deeply due to the nature of evolution.

On average, women tend to flock toward the men at the top of a hierarchy. These men, evolutionarily speaking, are the most likely to be able to offer security and safety for the woman and her offspring. Since only in the modern age have medicine and work opportunities become available to allow women to not rely so heavily on men’s assistance, this is something buried deep within the female psyche that they most likely don’t even realize is operating within them. 

Harem stories are annoying to me in general because I tend to find them unrealistic in some senses (generally the male figures in them are not what women themselves would pick as the “top of the crop” which is why women can so quickly pinpoint a male fantasy character vs. a legitimate top male). Male fantasy characters tend to be average schmucks whose only selling point is that they’re “nice” and can help solve the girls’ problems. Characters like that tend to be off-putting for female audiences because let’s face it, in real life you kind of need more to sell than just your niceness. ;) So in most harem stories of the anime variety, the harems the males gather to them are not earned the way real top males earn their harems. 

Take, for example, a star actor or a star sports hero--these men work their asses off night and day to rise above the crowd. They may get several girls who like them when they’re first starting their craft, say, in high school. By college they have a respectable harem of ladies who are interested. By the time they make their first break in the industry, maybe they have a new girl every night if they want. By the time they’re famous, they most likely can have whoever they want whenever they want. This is the nature of what it means to be on top. And this makes sense, because think about what comes “with” being a star of this kind--immense wealth, immense notoriety, immense resources. On a biological level, it only makes sense that these men would be incredibly attractive to women, women who might not mind sharing if it means having a piece of such a man. 

What I love about Goblin Slayer is that it actually accurately gets this element. Women see the worth of men and the likelihood of them making it to the “top” of the hierarchy earlier than men do. This is why the Childhood Friend’s conversation with her uncle in episode two was so interesting to me--he sees nothing of worth in the Goblin Slayer, but she already is seeing a man who has the ability to secure the life and resources she needs. She’s seeing the future while her uncle can only see the worthless sack of shit in the present. You see this effect also on the Priestess, who the Goblin Slayer rescues. She sees his worth as a protector, thus security. The Guild Girl also sees his worth in the status sector--he’s the Only One Who Will Fight Goblins, which is a status. The reason he gets ridiculed by other adventurers is because they don’t understand that he’s carving a niche status for himself (he himself doesn’t understand this either), but they instinctively fear that niche status. Ridicule comes from an instinctive fear of excellence. Whenever a man (or woman) begins reaching for excellence, it stirs up anxieties among the people around them who know subconsciously that they’re not striving for the same thing. 

Thus we end up with this realistic harem that actually works for once because it’s based (most likely subconsciously on the writer’s part) on actual evolutionary development. The Goblin Slayer is in the process of earning his status, his resources, and his harem. He is doing that with single-minded attention toward his goal, which is ultimately the eradication of goblins. Now, his goal is wrong, and he’ll have to temper it, but it’s an important part of the process guiding him toward the top of the hierarchy, where he’ll find the happiness he doesn’t know he’s looking for now. 

Why Fantasy Stories Aimed At Men Still Matter

I wasn’t going to go here when I started my post, but apparently I have something about it I want to say. 

There is certainly a push now to make stories of all shapes accessible to women, and I absolutely have no problem with this. Expanding the audiences for stories is perfectly fine (and smart from a business-standpoint!). But at the same time, I think something has been lost for male audiences in the process, and for female audiences as well, in removing the opportunity for a truly male-oriented worldview for (some) stories.

Stories are essentially a way to understand each other, to bridge the gap between our heads and other people’s. It is as helpful for a woman to watch a male harem fantasy as it is for a man to watch a female reverse harem fantasy--both offer windows into the dreams and wishes of each gender and give clues as to what kinds of personality traits are worth cultivating and what traits should be snuffed out as quickly as possible. 

The problem comes when one gender gets a monopoly over the other, or when one gender becomes naval-gazing and self-indulgent at the expense of the other, which is why (understandably) we’re seeing a movement toward stories with broader perspectives. The only downside to a broader perspective, of course, is that you lose intimacy and you lose the ability to enter a specific type of person’s worldview. (This brings me to mind of something like Lolita, which probably would not be able to be published in the modern day.) When you can’t narrow the perspective of a story to reflect a single mindset, you definitely lose some flavor along the way. Whether that flavor is worth losing or not is probably up to each individual viewer. 

The other problem that I’m seeing at least with recent storylines in anime is that even as they’re extending the narrative umbrella to female audiences, in the process they’re losing the aspirational aspect of men’s journeys. These stories aimed at men are no longer guiding them toward becoming the kind of men who can attract the women they want and be respected by their peers; instead they try to placate young men who have made nothing of themselves by offering them women who will accept them “as they are.” I see the same thing happening in stories for girls--girls aren’t aspiring to become the best partners they can for the men at the top of the hierarchy, instead they’re being told they can just “be themselves” and the top males will land in their lap for no reason at all simply because they’re the heroine. I find these kinds of stories to be dangerous in a great many ways because they foster false expectations and senses of entitlement that aren’t helpful when navigating difficult gender dynamics in the real world. 

What does this tangent have to do with Goblin Slayer? Well, as far as I can tell, Goblin Slayer is getting this right. The Goblin Slayer is not a layabout useless sack of crap whose childhood friend has to wake him up every day by jiggling her unrealistic assets in his face. He’s a man who is making his way in the world, a man who has a purpose he chose for himself, a man who pays for his rent, a man who gets himself up every day, a man who politely escorts the lady of the house where she wants to go, a man who is respectful and civilized. He is a man “in process,” which is a great place to start with a hero. Of course there is still growth--he needs to become more than merely a goblin murderer. If he wants to earn the harem he’s beginning to attract, he needs to expand as a person. But what I appreciate about this story is that it establishes the basics of what one needs to begin attracting the opposite sex--a job, industriousness, and excellence in one’s field of work. What’s even better is that this story is establishing that this can all be done without looks being a factor--the Goblin Slayer is never seen without his helmet, which means he’s attracting people based on what he does and how he acts. In other words, the Goblin Slayer is an aspirational figure, even with his flaws. 

Stories like this are necessary for young men so that they can see themselves as something other than useless layabouts who need a woman to wake them up in the morning. Stories like this are also necessary for the brave women who care to overlook the male perspective in order to gain understanding of how much work a man has to put in to even be able to attract any notice, and to what men are looking for both in relationships and in their lives in general. I guess maybe I as a viewer just like to see this aspect respected and hope that stories won’t be afraid to regain a bit of what has been lost in transition here. Again, I don’t want to lose stories that appeal to everyone, but I think it’s fine for some stories to focus specifically on one gender in order to help work through many of the problems and challenges that gender faces in the world. Goblin Slayer by itself can’t do that alone, and I’m not even saying it’s the best variant of this genre, but at the moment it’s getting things right and I like to praise things when I see them getting things right. 

He Who Runs Away Today Lives To Run Another Day

I hope I haven’t offended anyone with this post (it’s hard to talk about controversial subjects without offending at least half the room), but if I have I offer my sincere apologies. This was meant to be an exploration of the thoughts and feelings this story and some of the controversy surrounding it stirred up within me, and I’m not really sure I accomplished much more than merely getting some thoughts out on paper, but it is what it is. 

Whether you love Goblin Slayer or hate it or are indifferent to it, thank you for making it all the way to the end of this and I hope we’ll cross paths again.

Until next time!

[eddycurrents]

Wake the Devil: Chapter Two

Words & Art: Mike Mignola | Colours: James Sinclair | Letters: Pat Brosseau | Colour Separations: Dave Stewart

Originally published by Dark Horse in Hellboy: Wake the Devil #2 | July 1996

Collected in Hellboy - Volume 2: Wake the Devil | Hellboy Library Edition - Volume 1 | Hellboy Omnibus - Volume 1: Seed of Destruction

Additional Notes: There was also a “The MonsterMen” back-up in the original mini-series from Gary Gianni, James Sinclair, and Sean Konot.

Plot Summary:

Hellboy launches himself into Castle Giurescu to confront Ilsa Haupstein and discover the potentially missing body of Vladimir Giurescu, only to be ushered into a world so much stranger than he imagined.

Reading Notes:

(Note: Pagination is solely within the chapter and not indicative of anything within the original comic or collections.)

pg. 1 - Hellboy “dropping in” on Ilsa and her henchmen, still funny in the second chapter.

pg. 2-4 - Inept, ridiculous henchmen is definitely a theme that will run through the series. The design for Unmensch is pretty neat.

pg. 4 - This falling through the floor gag is a recurring joke from The Wolves of St. August.

pg. 5-7 - Interesting flashback here that picks up on the tail end of Hellboy’s arrival in the first issue of Seed of Destruction. We see the cracks that are forming between Rasputin’s group and the broader ideals of the Nazi party, and the formation of Haupstein, Kroenen, and Kurtz as the foundation of Rasputin’s new Reich. It’s an interesting parallel to Jesus founding his church upon Peter. Also, further indications of Ilsa’s attachment to Vladimir Giurescu.

pg. 7 - The intersequence shifts are a narrative technique that aren’t as often used in comics any more. Scene breaks most often occur with a whole page, rather than mid-page. This is definitely an old-school comics technique. The one here is fairly seamless between Ilsa speaking with Rasputin in the past and his reappearance in the present, but Mignola uses several of the shifts in this issue, including another at the end of Rasputin’s spiel and then one between the Ogdru Jahad sequence and Hellboy recovering beneath Giurescu Castle.

pg. 10 - Among the priest’s abjurations of Ogdru Jahad and plea for protection from evil, we get a couple interesting things that are left unexplained at this point. The first is Anung Jahad Un Rama. I won’t explain it myself, but this is important for later. Don’t look it up if you don’t want spoilers. The second is that the priest is seeking protection from the Anu. Where the rest of the Ogdru Jahad were pulled from other Mesopotamian and Egyptian gods and goddesses, it’s interesting that so too was this one, but still with his original intent and authority.

Anu: He was the supreme deity in the Sumerian tradition, with the role of sky father and source of all, similar to Zeus and Odin in that sense, but also as the singular point from which everything else originated. (There are some who equate Anu to the Semitic god El--though that term technically just means “god”, similar to baal meaning “lord”, and was used to refer to many deities--and in turn to Yahweh. Such that references to Anu could well be considered references to the capital “G” Judeo-Christian God, but scholars will certainly argue that point.)

pg. 12 - Mike Mignola is a master of ominous foreshadowing.

pg. 14 - I think it’s probably safe to say that you can sit with any issue of Hellboy and pull out at least one image from every single page and state that it’s a masterful composition. Mignola is great with moody, atmospheric, and visually interesting panels that make you wonder about a character’s story even with minimal or no words or explanation. The introductory shot of Vladimir Giurescu’s father is one such composition. This is probably one of my favourite panels from all of Hellboy.

pg. 14-19 - I really like how Mignola is telling the story here, with multiple narratives within Giurescu’s fathers story. There’s the historical bit of Vladimir being seduced by Ilsa and the promise of the modern world in Nazi Germany, the ultimate destruction of the family at Hitler’s hands, and then a skip back into fable of not only how Giurescu became a vampire (or whatever kind of creature he happens to be), but of finding “her”, saving “her”, and bringing “her” back to health so that “she” can help Vladimir when he was near death. There are so many different moving parts in the storytelling that’s it just so incredibly rich in lore and fable.

pg. 17 - Mignola’s take on Lamia is interesting, blending different interpretations, the blur of her and Hecate, and the mythology surrounding the lamiae as a race of mythological creatures amidst the witches of Thessaly from Apuleius’ Golden Ass. It’s basically a syncretic approach to the various myths from which Mignola pulls his own.

There’s also an interesting bit here that near as I can tell isn’t from any interpretation of the Lamia myth, incorporating Thoth into the story. He basically supplants Hera as the perpetrator of the curse on Lamia. Thoth was basically the architect of the Egyptian gods, serving as the god of languages, structure, and magic, forever writing the universe into existence. I suppose in terms of cursing a serpent it makes a bit of sense, when you consider that the Greeks saw Thoth as Hermes, and from there one of the foundational mystical figures, Hermes Trismegistus was formed. His staff was the Caduceus, basically the winged rod with two snakes entwined about it, which itself is believed to tie back to the myth of Tiresias. The prophet who struck two copulating snakes and then was turned into a woman. (The overall explanation for Thoth and Hecate later in the Hellboy story will be a lot more straightforward than what I’ve lain out.)

pg. 22 - More pulled from the Golden Ass in regards to the women of Thessaly, being able to turn themselves into birds. I find it interesting that here, they’re essentially depicted as harpies. Also, love the humour as it dawns on Hellboy what they are and what he’s walked into. Another funny cliffhanger before the next chapter.

Final Thoughts:

Wake the Devil really brings together much of what I think of when I think of Hellboy, how it mixes horror genres, mythology, pulp-styled superheroics, the occult, and humour into this whole that transcends the individual parts.

You definitely get the impression that Mignola is laying the groundwork for something bigger here, building the larger Hellboy mythology out of these pieces, and leading the story into a different direction than we may have originally thought.

Also, awesome imagery of starving vampire grandpa.

d. emerson eddy would like to remind you that you can follow along with the fun by checking out the #RaisingHellboy hashtag on Twitter. Also, feel free to contribute your own thoughts if you feel like participating. Everyone is welcome. New readers and old.

[ozgeersoy]

Publishing as Method: In Conversation with Ozge Ersoy and Paul C. Fermin

On publishing cultures and trends, conceptualisations of “Asia,” and care and community during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

This interview was originally conducted in December 2020 for the publication anthology of Publishing as Method (curator Lim Kyung-yong) in ArtSonje Center, Seoul. As part of this project, around forty initiatives around Asia were interviewed about their publishing activities, including archives, artist-run spaces, collectives, publishing houses, bookshops, art book fairs, and design studios. The conversation with Özge Ersoy, AAA’s Public Programmes Lead, and Paul C. Fermin, AAA’s and IDEAS Journal’s Managing Editor, is shared below. It has been updated and revised for IDEAS Journal.

Lim Kyung-yong (LKY): It seems that the small publishing culture is now quite active in Hong Kong. So is the annual Hong Kong Art Book Fair. What is the reason for the emergence of this kind of publishing culture in Hong Kong? Many artists or curators seem to use these publications as a stage for themselves, and as this publishing culture spreads throughout Asia, cooperation projects through publishing are increasing. How does AAA diagnose this trend?

Özge Ersoy & Paul C. Fermin (ÖE & PCF): We’re just as excited about all the book fairs and small publishing and distribution platforms that have emerged in Hong Kong in the last ten years—Small Tune Press, Zine Coop, Display Distribute, and Queer Reads Library, immediately come to mind—they breathe so much life into the scene. We believe publications made by these independent publishers are sites where art history is being circulated and contested, and that their voices are critical for a fuller understanding of lived realities on the ground—narratives unable to make it past the usual gatekeepers, or that do not register in, say, more academic discourses. That’s one reason they’re part of our Library Collection.

At the same time, there’s a much longer history around art publishing in Asia that we are committed to study and share with our communities. It Begins with a Story: Artists, Writers, and Periodicals in Asia—the 2018 symposium AAA organised in collaboration with The Department of Fine Arts at The University of Hong Kong, and the second symposium presented at Focal Point in collaboration with the Sharjah Art Foundation—was inspiring on this point, as it explored the countless ways periodicals have acted as sites of exhibition, artistic experimentation, and art history making, while shaping communities around them. For instance, Anthony Leung Po-Shan presented a paper on a group of Hong Kong artists invited to write and develop works for the Hong Kong newspaper Mingpao in the early 2000s, playing a crucial role in connecting art with society and politics.

On IDEAS Journal, we also have pieces that do the work of historicising various publishing cultures. Our former AAA colleague Michelle Wong wrote about three moments of art writing circulation in Hong Kong, with one of her case studies stretching back to the 1960s. Display Distribute wrote an ambitious piece that historicised zines and independent publishing cultures in East and South East Asia, locating alternative trajectories to the usual Western-dominated narratives in the region. Artist Merve Ünsal wrote about the prominence of self-publishing practices of artists and art initiatives in Istanbul, helping us understand it as, in part, a response to the lack of public funding and institutional support, and also a symptom of the need of self-historicisation in a geography ridden with coups, ruptures, and ideological shifts—and this is important to acknowledge.

Karen Cheung reminds us that smaller publishing platforms, especially with regards to zines, have been proliferating because they’re ideally suited to responding—real-time—to ongoing events and movements, given their low costs, ease of production, the fact that they’re less beholden to gatekeepers and institutional constraints, and how in many ways they capture visceral and affective perspectives often neglected in more traditional publishing platforms. Zines come to be a “perfect representation of the spirit of camaraderie and mutual support amongst strangers at protests.” A question we’re starting to ask, so powerfully articulated by Joy James (credit to Eunsong Kim for this reference), is the extent to which acts of care and support under situations like these become stabilising functions of what she calls the “captive maternal.” An open question for which we don’t have any good answers in the context of Hong Kong.

That said, it’s important to acknowledge that practitioners in the cultural field operate under ever increasing precarity, and so whatever “emergence” or “trend” we’re seeing must also be understood as adaptations to decreasing social safety nets across the board, including for many artists and writers and freelancers lumped into that category euphemistically called “flexible labour.” Attempting to navigate the high barriers to entry—internships, gatekeepers, cultural capital, proximity to “global cities,” not to mention discrimination faced along various axis including race, class, gender—these all contribute to what Byung-Chul Han diagnoses as our “burnout society” (credit to Patrick Blanchfield for this reference). In this sense, the “cooperation projects” you’re noting, and perhaps we can also add the increased attention to “mutual aid” projects, come to be means of survival and solidarity under neoliberal precarity. While none of this is news at this point, we feel it is important to reiterate.

LKY: Within a heavily capitalised and highly developed society like Hong Kong and Singapore, a role seems to be required to produce knowledge or information and classify it. For example, we can expect various roles from Singapore for the practice of art in Southeast Asia. I wonder how AAA recognises “Asian” art, how AAA understands and conceptualises “Asia.”

ÖE & PCF: AAA gets the “Asia” question a lot—and for good reason. Lee Weng Choy even wrote an essay about it in 2004, in which he opens by wondering how often AAA deals with the “Asia” versus “Asian” distinction.

While it may seem like a hedge to say that’s an impossible question, and that any response risks a number of essentialising and reifying moves—really, one sense in which we understand “Asia” is as this endlessly constructed, contested, and contradictory space. It is imagined. It is historical and material. It is produced and reproduced.

“Asia” as a signifier has been wielded aspirationally as an organising principle for transnational solidarity or so-called “Pan-Asian” unity, while also being deployed for more nationalistic, imperial expansion. We like how David Xu Borgonjon, who we worked with on a solid IDEAS essay about the racial politics of art school recruitment, noted that “Asian” is also a fetish category. Because while Weng distinguishes “Asian” as an adjective (characterising something as “Asian” in its essence), against “Asia” as a signifier of a more “deliberately complex, contested, and constructed site,” David makes a distinction between “Asian” as “a biopolitical concept of race” versus “Asia” as “a geopolitical concept of place.” Lots of ways to frame this.

You also see “Asia” crop up in the competitive logic of “global cities” (as outlined by Saskia Sassen)—for example in the Brand Hong Kong campaign, launched by the government in 2001, where they attempted to rebrand HK itself as “Asia's World City”—this marketing/PR/branding exercise in turn becoming another site of ideological contestation for actors across the political spectrum.

But that discussion seems like a quaint, distant memory, with all the structural and material violence being unleashed, literally, everywhere right now in 2021. Stuart Hall put it so powerfully when he questioned his own discipline of cultural studies, asking “what in God’s name is the point”—given the urgency on the streets. He added that anybody taking these issues seriously as an intellectual practice “must feel, on their pulse, its ephemerality, its insubstantiality, how little it registers, how little we’ve been able to change anything or get anybody to do anything.”

Your question also raises the issue of knowledge production and circulation. Elite capture and co-optation is a very real thing, something Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò has written about quite persuasively. Who are these sorts of discourse ultimately for? What structures do they obscure and reproduce? How is the very discourse itself structured in advance by the subject positions of the speakers in relation to the state? Jackie Wang reminds us how market logics are often behind the compulsion to brand one’s analysis as the latest “hot take,” how you’re pushed to distinguish yourself and set yourself apart from others—as opposed to how your work builds upon and is in conversation with others—and basically how damaging this is for knowledge production.

On that point, it’s only right for us to acknowledge some people and institutions who have been influential for the two of us on the “Asia” question—especially the ways they help trouble narratives centring the nation-state or region in Asia, which in turn helps us see critical differences, entanglements, and linkages across these arbitrary demarcations. Climate change, for example, is no respecter of national borders—and groups like Feral Atlas have spoken to this point—“nature” as something that precedes and exceeds the human. At the same time, Iyko Day cautions us that certain calls to move “beyond the human” assume—and problematically so—a shared humanity that can be deconstructed in the first place, instead re-inscribing the very Eurocentric frameworks we hope to disrupt.

And then there’s also Third Text Asia and Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, or more recently the fascinating work by folks at Verge: Studies in Global Asias. Individual scholars like Chen Kuan-Hsing, more specifically his 2010 book Asia as Method, still gets a lot of traction too—even if in productive disagreement—challenging us to think of Asia as itself a site that generates theory (not simply a site for “Western speculation”), enabling certain decolonial efforts. But we'd also like to acknowledge our indebtedness to scholars like Iyko Day, Shih Shu-mei, Lisa Lowe, Neferti X. M. Tadiar, Raewyn Connell, all our AAA Researchers—the list could go on—with the main point being that we aren’t thinking in isolation, and that countless others have been thinking longer and deeper about these issues—and one challenge for us has been enquiring into what’s actually helpful for clarifying the stakes, or what’s simply a form of co-opting or re-inscripting of the status quo.

Two of AAA’s own projects on the “Asia” question include Mapping Asia in 2014, and more recently the MAHASSA project, spearheaded by our AAA Researchers led by John Tain, which brings together a diverse group of faculty and emerging scholars to investigate parallel and intersecting developments in the cultural histories of Africa, South Asia, and Southeast Asia. We present this project in partnership with The Dhaka Art Summit and Institute for Comparative Modernities at Cornell University, with support from the Getty Foundation’s Connecting Art Histories initiative, and have organised several talks and panels alongside closed-door sessions. For us, one of the most generative discussions involved the politics of famine in the context of anticolonial and antiauthoritarian struggles in South Asia and North Africa, and how social realism and abstraction responded to narratives of nationalism. The hope is to better understand common and divergent trajectories in cultural histories within Asia and across regions, rather than trying to find the definitive word on what Asia might be.

One last thing we want to say about this is that we aren’t actually walking around all day thinking about abstract notions of “Asia” and the impossibility of defining it—because no one is. (Well, actually, someone out there probably is…)

LKY: AAA has worked with many institutions, not only in Asia but also around the world. As you know, more and more countries around the world are now becoming culturally, politically, and economically conservative in their own interests. We experienced globalisation and took it for granted, but domestic centralism related to the coronavirus and minority hatred is also strengthening. How is this situation affecting your activities? AAA works on an invisible global art network, but it also seems that such a network is being threatened. I wonder how AAA recognises and responds to this situation.

ÖE & PCF: First, we want to express our gratitude to you and The Book Society, who in many ways are helpful models for responding to this trend—we want to ask you this same question! How do you do it? Every time we visit Seoul, we make it a point to visit your space, and last time we were touched to see a poster on your front door in support of Hong Kong. We also want to acknowledge your generous book donations to our library over the years. Even this very project is another instance of Book Society reaching out and thinking critically with institutions across the region. How can we continue to collaborate with and support you?

But, yes, your question notes the re-emergence of nationalistic and far-right movements across the globe. COVID-19 has exacerbated existing inequalities, and there continues to be a disproportionate effect on the same, already struggling communities. According to a recent World Health Organization report, low-income countries have received just 0.2 percent of all COVID-19 shots, while wealthier nations have received more than 87 percent. Some are referring to this as vaccine apartheid, as yet another example of this moment’s necropolitics. There is so much suffering and grief right now, more than any one person is able to properly frame or comprehend—it staggers us; it exceeds us.

Given the health crisis and the conservative pressures you mentioned, we are all pushed to think about existing structures for education, community, and care. Many of our collaborators across the region are asking how to re-imagine these structures, and our ongoing online conversation series Life Lessons started in response to these questions. Some examples include Melati Suryodarmo and Ming Wong speaking about traditional performance forms in Asia that influenced their teaching practice and the types of kinships they’ve developed around their work; Suzanne Lacy and Wu Mali discussing how social practice builds on feminism and ecology; Kwasi Ohene-Ayeh and Zeyno Pekünlü discussing collectivity as a form and method of learning, and the role of the university as both an enabler and an obstacle in developing collective pedagogical models.

Also, over the last year, AAA has made accessible several Research Collections that look at artist-driven initiatives that take mutual support and solidarity as their core values. Womanifesto, a feminist biennial programme that was active in Thailand from 1997 to 2008, is an example we would like to highlight. This initiative started with an exhibition in the mid-nineties to make space for women artists, and has evolved into a biannual event with exhibitions, workshops, residencies, and publications, which reflected the changing strategies in contemporary feminist thinking and practices. For those interested, we would recommend the discussion “Backyards and Neighbourhoods” that brought together artists Varsha Nair and Phaptawan Suwannakudt with scholar Eileen Legaspi-Ramirez, where they discussed what has changed since the mid-1990s—around the time of the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing—when women artists and curators sought to create spaces for visibility and representation.

Two other archival collections we would like to highlight were spearheaded by a team led by Chương-Đài Hồng Võ: Manila Artist Run Spaces Archive, featuring material on six initiatives active between the mid-eighties and the early 2000s, and Green Papaya Art Projects Archive, which comprises substantial materials on the longest active, artist-run organisation in Manila. Ringo Bunoan, who has been instrumental in the work around these archives, asks at what cost artist-run spaces in the Philippines adapt themselves to the current crisis characterised by pandemic fatigue and unfair practices in the arts field: “To be truly alternative now, artists must be part of the reckoning and reconfiguration of the structures that perpetuate divisions and inequalities that have long plagued the art scene in the country.”

As always, we keep learning from artists.

LKY: In addition to archive activities, AAA is engaged in activities such as research, publication, and exhibition. Please introduce some of them. In particular, I would appreciate it if you could explain AAA's publishing programme.

ÖE & PCF: AAA’s publishing practice started twenty years ago and has gone through many changes in form and content. At the beginning of AAA’s journey, our Co-founder and Director Claire Hsu printed 1,000 copies of the exhibition catalogue for China’s New Art: Post-1989 (1993), organised by Hanart TZ Gallery in Hong Kong, as she received its publication rights. AAA then sold the books as part of its first fundraising project, and the sales allowed AAA to hire its first librarian and start building its database. Later, AAA produced monographs like Wu Shanzhuan Red Humour International (in collaboration with Inga Svala Thórsdóttir) (2005) and From Reality to Fantasy: The Art of Luis Chan (2006). Between 2012 and 2015, AAA published four bilingual volumes of an e-journal called Field Notes, featuring contributions by more than one hundred scholars, critics, artists, and curators. Each issue focused on a theme: from the significance of archival practices in the region, to the popular Mapping Asia project that challenged our inherited notions of bounded territories, turning instead to myth, liminal spaces, and active entanglements.

More recently, AAA shifted gears and, since the last four years, has been focusing on its online publication IDEAS Journal, which allows for a more flexible and responsive publishing schedule. IDEAS commissions essays, conversations, and also more visually driven notes, with a rigorous yet hopefully unpretentious style for people who like reading things with clear stakes—in other words, propositions and analysis over merely descriptive commentary. IDEAS is more interested in new ways of thinking, rather than simply new things to think about. It’s important for us to acknowledge Claire Hsu and Doretta Lau for bringing IDEAS into being; Janet Chan, Emily Wong, and Chelsea Ma for being fabulous and editing its Chinese language version; and Karen Cheung, without whom we would be lost, heartless, and lacking a decent soundtrack for our emotional undercurrents. All the incredible writers we’ve gotten to work with deserve recognition here, too—IDEAS literally doesn’t exist without them. Christina Yuen Zi Chung was the first writer Paul was privileged to work with when he joined, and in many ways she continues to be the gold standard and inspiration for us both. It was such a pleasure working with her that we invited her back to do a public talk on “Reimagining Feminism in Hong Kong.” Shout-out to the brilliant Christina.

We also have an AAA office in Delhi with an amazing team headed by Sneha Ragavan, where they’ve lead research projects like the Bibliography of Modern and Contemporary Art Writing of South Asia, gathering more than 12,000 pieces of published art writing in thirteen languages from the twentieth century. This bibliography is available online as an interactive online database. They also collaborate with foundations and sponsor research grants around art writing, artistic research, and visual culture. Currently they’re working on a three-volume set of dossiers, which bring together art writing from the region.

Finally, we’ve also been building editorial collaborations and partnerships, such as Afterall’s Exhibition Histories series that we contribute to, along with the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College. This partnership has resulted in three publications so far: Artist-to-Artist: Independent Art Festivals in Chiang Mai 1992–98 (2018), FESTAC ’77 (2019), and Uncooperative Contemporaries: Art Exhibitions in Shanghai in 2000 (2020)—all focusing on exhibition histories.

LKY: What are your main projects now? I wonder about future plans.

ÖE & PCF: It’s AAA’s twentieth anniversary, and for us, this is an opportunity to celebrate all the artists and educators who have contributed to AAA and its communities. There are two ongoing exhibition projects we would like to highlight. The first is Learning What Can’t Be Taught at AAA Library, which looks at the major changes in art education in China from the 1950s to the 2000s through a selection of artworks, archival materials, and interviews. The exhibition focuses on six artists from three generations who were each other’s teachers and students at the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou: Jin Yide, Zheng Shengtian, Zhang Peili, Geng Jianyi, Jiang Zhuyun, and Lu Yang. With this exhibition, we’re asking whether “artistic attitude” can be taught or passed down from one generation to another. In a text for Art & Education, Anthony Yung (who has been leading this research at AAA for the last decade) and Özge mention how Zheng Shengtian, who was born in 1935, studied art in the 1950s, and experienced the political turmoil in China in the second half of the twentieth century, has continued to test the boundaries of what is suitable for teaching and learning. When we recently asked Zheng about the moment when he turned from a student to an artist, he responded with a sentence that still resonates with his students: “I am still waiting for this moment to come.”

We are also excited about the exhibition Portals, Stories, and Other Journeys, which just opened at Tai Kwun Contemporary, and features newly commissioned works that engage the archive of the late artist Ha Bik Chuen, who was a self-taught sculptor and printmaker. Ha’s personal archive covers fifty years of art in Hong Kong. Curated by Michelle Wong, this exhibition invites artists Banu Cennetoğlu, Kwan Sheung Chi, Lam Wing Sze, Raqs Media Collective, and Walid Raad to explore the potentials and the limitations of archives, as well as our sense of scale, self, and history vis-a-vis Ha’s own archive. Özge is currently working on bewitched, bewildered, bothered, Banu Cennetoğlu’s artistic contribution in the form of talks, film screenings, and a publication, which delves into the politics of posthumous archives. The publication, titled The Orpheus Double Bind, features the English translation of a text by the literary critic Nurdan Gürbilek. Interested in how the author questions their authority to give voice to the dead, Gürbilek writes: “Orpheus looks back; because he wants to transcend the threshold of death and see Eurydice in all her invisibility, to give form to her dark obscurity. This desire the writer feels, for the darkness of the other, is at once the writer’s source of inspiration and his destructive act: Orpheus loses Eurydice a second time because he wants to bring her back, wants to give form to her absence; but what makes the work possible, in all its obscurity, is this gaze that wants to give form to absence.”

Another thing we’re excited about is working with Gudskul, a collective from Jakarta, to develop programmes around self-organisation and collective learning; and also the Mobile Library: Nepal project, which offers support for community-based, collaborative initiatives and universities in Nepal—spearheaded by Susanna Chung and Samira Bose. Co-presented by Siddhartha Arts Foundation, this project is another example of how we work collaboratively with like-minded organisations in Asia to enrich reference points within Asia. Lots of things to look forward to.

Paul is especially grateful to be working on an upcoming IDEAS essay by Eunsong Kim, whose writing over the years—clarifying, poetic, transformative, and always committed—should be on syllabi everywhere. She’s also working on a book for Duke University Press called The Politics of Collecting: Property & Race in Aesthetic Formation, and recently co-launched offshoot journal. Shout-out to the mighty Eunsong Kim. Thank you so much for existing—accelerating reality—a reminder that nothing’s ever a given. Wu-Tang forever.

Özge Ersoy is AAA’s Public Programmes Lead. Paul C. Fermin is AAA’s and IDEAS Journal’s Managing Editor.

All images are courtesy of Özge Ersoy.

[recentanimenews]

FEATURE: How Roger, Oden, and Whitebeard Create the Powerful Myths of One Piece

  Mythology serves a variety of purposes. It's often tied to the spirituality of a culture, driving many of their morals and aspirations. It's also extremely foundational when it comes to storytelling. If you read, say, Greek or Japanese myth, you'll find countless influences in how we approach narratives today, ranging from the backbones of many classic character arcs to little tidbits that provide chances for modern adaptation or homage. One Piece is full of these, with manga creator Eiichiro Oda often basing characters and creatures on examples of Japanese historical figures or legends of folklore. 

  But perhaps more consuming than that is the way the series deals with its own mythology, something that goes beyond simple backstory and lore and functions, really, in the same way mythology works in the real world. This is on display during the current anime storyline, which deals with the grand journey of Kozuki Oden, samurai, traveler, father, and traditional very tall One Piece dude. He's a man whose legend pervades through the society of Wano, with the current storyline mostly built upon his broad shoulders. The stories told about him, from his monstrous feats as a child to his sea-spanning adventures as an adult feel very much like something you'd see from the tales of a demi-god — Herculean tasks that are less about fleshing out a character and more about building their status in the story. 

    Before we can jump into that, though, I think it's important to dive into the greatest myth of all in One Piece — that of Gol D. Roger, whose exploits, demise, and proclamation that set a new age into action are the source of both One Piece fact and fiction. Though we've learned a little more over the course of the story, most of Roger's life is steeped in mystery, and we're forced to rely on those that knew him, a dying breed of aged pirates that includes men like Silvers Rayleigh and Whitebeard, to relate the stories of his life. 

  As with Oden, the things we learn don't add up to a three-dimensional figure, but rather a consistently important and unknowable one. It's likely why Roger's legacy as King of the Pirates remains so valuable, with kids like Monkey D. Luffy so eager to assume the crown themselves. It's why him saying he left his treasure in "one piece" and you can go look for it if you want sets off innumerable pirate careers. Roger IS the culture of the Grand Line, the idea that the world can be yours if you only set off to take it. Much more than any man could be. 

    The ideology that Roger represents is everywhere. Blackbeard saying that a man's dreams don't die reflects Roger pushing for the next generation to have similar ideals to him moments before his execution. Luffy showing Wapol and Chopper that you can't just destroy a pirate's flag is similar. Heck, when Robin yells "I want to live!" it isn't just Robin realizing her life is worth experiencing and relishing, but her also adopting Roger's mantra. The mythology behind Roger is all-encompassing in its scope. 

  When it comes to Wano, Oden's role is similar. The samurai that remain dedicated to him and his mission speak of him less as a fallible person but as someone they were blessed to even encounter. Yasuie, shot by Orochi's forces, died so that Oden's will would continue. His son dreams of fulfilling his role and replicating his bravery. The man that, like Roger, smiled and flexed in the face of danger, has gone beyond being an ancient personality to defining the desires of his world. We speak of him in grand fashion, where his huge deeds matter more than any inner monologue or intricate characterization. To the characters around him, Oden IS the definition of a hero.

    All of this indicates that the pressure of the Navy and the World Government is much more malicious than simply "We must eliminate all pirates" threats. Rather, characters like Akainu seek to overhaul society itself, bringing the beliefs and hopes of a massive group of people to ruin so they can effectively rebuild with their own ideals in mind. The intended public beheading of Ace was more than just a high-profile execution but a statement to the world that the Marines would not let the next generation of pirating stand. It was them trying to ensure that their values would not be passed on and that they could rewrite mythology with them as the victors, with them as the ones who inspired the world to order.

  The stories of men like Oden and Roger and the all-encompassing quest of the World Government and other villains to evaporate them turn One Piece's mythology into more than just online encyclopedia fodder. It dictates what people believe, what they hold as their truths, and what tales they think are worth telling. It creates culture. 

      Daniel Dockery is a Senior Staff Writer for Crunchyroll. Follow him on Twitter!

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

  By: Daniel Dockery

[cat-the-lurker-blog]

Non-prophetic dreams in A Song of Ice and Fire

The amount of attention George RR Martin has devoted to dreams in A Song of Ice and Fire is remarkable. In A Game of Thrones alone, nineteen dreams are described in various amounts of detail, with all point-of-view characters except Catelyn (no dreams) and Arya (one dream) having at least two dreams in the course of the novel. These dreams serve many narrative purposes, from delivering exposition to foreshadowing future events.

In this post, I won't be looking at the often-analyzed dreams with obvious supernatural or prophetic elements - like wolf dreams, dragon dreams, green dreams or dreams influenced by glass candles and shadowbinders. Instead, I'll try to examine dreams that reveal aspects of the dreamers' subconscious minds - like their deepest desires and worst fears, memories that shaped them, and their impulses and repressed emotions. I think the latter kind of dreams are equally important, since they establish characters' motivations, and provide setup for their actions, growth, or internal conflicts.

I. HOPES AND DESIRES

As she slept amidst the rolling grasslands, Catelyn dreamt that Bran was whole again, that Arya and Sansa held hands, that Rickon was still a babe at her breast. Robb, crownless, played with a wooden sword, and when all were safe asleep, she found Ned in her bed, smiling. (Chapter 22, A Clash of Kings)

This dream reminds the reader of Catelyn's priorities: she values her family more than anything, more than Northern independence and more than Robb's campaigns. Robb's appearance, crownless with a wooden sword, recalls Catelyn's final chapter in A Game of Thrones, in which her advice - to build a peace, as revenge will not bring back their dead - goes unheeded. Instead, Robb swears bloody vengeance against the Lannisters with a steel sword, and is crowned king - making it more difficult than ever for Catelyn to retrieve her daughters. Catelyn's desire to see her family reunited in this dream sets up and explains her actions later in the novel - having heard news of Bran and Rickon's "deaths", she will betray the Northern cause to free Jaime in exchange for Arya and Sansa.

He dreamt of the sky cell. This time he was the gaoler, not the prisoner, big, with a strap in his hand, and he was hitting his father, driving him back, toward the abyss... (Chapter 42, A Game of Thrones)

Tyrion dreams of punishing his father after he recounts Tywin's horrific abuse of Tysha to Bronn, reversing Tywin's role as his gaoler of sorts. Tywin has always demeaned and despised Tyrion, and only in Tyrion's dreams can he wield power over his father and presumably win his respect, through fear - something Tywin often does. But Tyrion's feelings towards his father are complicated, and he also desires recognition from Tywin (and society as a whole):

This time he dreamed he was at a feast, a victory feast in some great hall. He had a high seat on the dais, and men were lifting their goblets and hailing him as hero... Even his father was smiling with approval. (Chapter 67, A Clash of Kings)

In A Clash of Kings, Tyrion proves himself a competent ruler by masterminding the Lannister-Tyrell alliance and defending King's Landing during the Battle of the Blackwater. Rather than give him the credit and respect he deserves, as in the dream, Tywin dismisses his skills as "low cunning" and continues to loathe Tyrion for his mother's death and dwarfism, reasons beyond his control (You, who killed your mother to come into the world? You are an ill-made, devious, disobedient, spiteful little creature.) The stark contrast between Tyrion's hopes in the dream, and reality, helps build the emotional foundation for his growing bitterness towards and eventual killing of Tywin.

She went to sleep dreaming of the fight they’d had, and of Ser Jaime fastening a rainbow cloak about her shoulders. (Chapter 20, A Feast for Crows)

In Brienne's dreams, Jaime gives her a cloak - but it remains ambiguous whether she wants recognition as a knight, marriage, or both from him. That he has replaced Renly, the object of Brienne's affections, in her dream, shows the reader her growing feelings for him (that she won't admit in an internal monologue), and adds tension to her later conflict with Lady Stoneheart (who has forced her into seemingly agreeing to kill him).

In her dream they [Daenerys and Daario] had been man and wife, simple folk who lived a simple life in a tall stone house with a red door. (Chapter 11, A Dance with Dragons)

This is one of very few of the non-prophetic, non-supernatural dreams Daenerys has, and it shows her desire for peace and a home. She hopes that Westeros will fill the void left by her idealized childhood home with a red door. (It was King’s Landing and the great Red Keep that Aegon the Conqueror had built. It was Dragonstone where she had been born. In her mind’s eye, all the doors were red.) This sets up an internal conflict: that she is bringing war, fire, and blood to Westeros to make "dreams of home and love" come true.

II. FEARS

She dreamt of home; not Riverrun, but Winterfell. It was not a good dream, though. She was alone outside the castle, up to her knees in mud. She could see the grey walls ahead of her, but when she tried to reach the gates every step seemed harder than the one before, and the castle faded before her, until it looked more like smoke than granite. (Chapter 17, A Storm of Swords)

Following the burning of Winterfell (referenced in the smoke castle), Arya becomes increasingly despondent, fearing that she will never make it home to her family - and after the Red Wedding, she believes she is the last Stark left. Going home to Winterfell or Jon on the Wall has become so unattainable that Arya is willing to stay at the House of Black and White even at the cost of her identity. (I have a hole where my heart should be, she thought, and nowhere else to go.)

Tyrion only leered at her. He was naked too, covered with coarse hair that made him look more like a monkey than a man. “You shall see them crowned,” he said, “and you shall see them die.” (Chapter 39, A Feast for Crows)

Cersei dreams of Tyrion brutally torturing her (in a manner that mirrors her own torture of the Blue Bard), as he threatens the lives of her children. This dream escalates her paranoia about Tyrion and her descent into madness, and presents how Cersei interprets the prophecy, "Gold shall be their crowns and gold their shrouds" to mean that her children will be crowned and predecease her.

“Sister, why has Father brought us here?” “Us? This is your place, Brother. This is your darkness.” Her torch was the only light in the cavern. Her torch was the only light in the world. She turned to go. “Stay with me,” Jaime pleaded. “Don’t leave me here alone.” But they were leaving. “Don’t leave me in the dark!” (Chapter 44, A Storm of Swords)

Although Jaime's dream after escaping Harrenhal seems to have been supernaturally influenced by a weirwood stump, his subconscious reactions during the dream reveal his fear that Cersei and Tywin will reject him (as he lost his hand, and is of no more use to them (I am worth less than a girl now, he thought.)) Besides introducing many prophetic elements that I won't discuss, this dream foreshadows Jaime's growing split with Cersei once he returns to King's Landing.

III. MEMORIES

She had dreamt that she was little, still sharing a bedchamber with her sister Arya. (Chapter 80, A Storm of Swords)

Having lost all her family, Sansa misses them more than ever and clings to her precious childhood memories. Unlike this, very few of the memories appearing in characters' dreams are pleasant - most of them are traumatic memories that had a deep impact on the characters. Like Sansa's recurring dream of her father's execution:

Yet those were the best times, for when she dreamed, she dreamed of Father. Waking or sleeping, she saw him, saw the gold cloaks fling him down, saw Ser Ilyn striding forward, unsheathing Ice from the scabbard on his back, saw the moment... (Chapter 67, A Game of Thrones)

More than any other point-of-view characters, Ned Stark has plenty of memory-related dreams:

Yet last night he had dreamt of Rhaegar’s children. Lord Tywin had laid the bodies beneath the Iron Throne, wrapped in the crimson cloaks of his house guard. That was clever of him; the blood did not show so badly against the red cloth. The little princess had been barefoot, still dressed in her bed gown, and the boy... the boy (Chapter 45, A Game of Thrones)

After discovering the Lannister incest, Ned delays taking any kind of action because he knows Robert will have the "Baratheon" children killed. (This was something else: poison in the dark, a knife thrust to the soul. This he could never forgive, no more than he had forgiven Rhaegar. He will kill them all, Ned realized.) Ned's memory of the murdered Targaryen children explains why he feels so strongly about preserving the lives of innocents. His determination to spare Joffrey, Myrcella and Tommen leads him to tell all to Cersei, warning her to flee with her children - a mistake that will cost him dearly.

He dreamt an old dream, of three knights in white cloaks, and a tower long fallen, and Lyanna in her bed of blood. (Chapter 39, A Game of Thrones)

The memory came creeping upon him in the darkness, as vivid as a dream. It was the year of false spring, and he was eighteen again, down from the Eyrie to the tourney at Harrenhal. (Chapter 58, A Game of Thrones)

Ned's other dreams, memories of his sister and the mysterious promise he made her, hint at Jon's parentage without providing details necessitated by an internal monologue.

She dreamt an old dream, of three girls in brown cloaks, a wattled crone, and a tent that smelled of death... Cersei watched the girls huddling, whispering to one another. Go back, she tried to tell them. Turn away...

The girl with the golden curls put her hands upon her hips. “Give us our foretelling, or I’ll go to my lord father and have you whipped for insolence.” (Chapter 36, A Feast for Crows)

Cersei's encounter with Maggy the Frog explains aspects of her personality and relationships (especially with Tyrion), her descent into madness after Joffrey's death, and reveals Maggy's prophecy to the reader. Cersei relives her memory as if dissociated from her younger self and watching from afar, and reflects on her rash actions with dread and regret.

IV. REFLECTION

Some characters’ dreams also reveal subconscious or suppressed feelings and thoughts.

The night before, it had been the miller’s wife... Last night in his dream he had been in bed with her once again, but this time she had teeth above and below, and she tore out his throat even as she was gnawing off his manhood. (Chapter 56, A Clash of Kings)

Although he won't admit his guilt to himself, Theon is haunted by his murder of the miller's boys, the sons of a woman he slept with. It seems that Theon subconsciously fears that the boys were his own son(s), and dreads receiving a supernatural punishment for kinslaying (that foreshadows his torture at the hands of Ramsay Bolton). In the same chapter, Theon also dreams of being chased through a forest by wolves with children's heads (evoking Bran and Rickon, who escaped Theon's clutches), and a feast of dead Starks (which may be prophetic, hinting at Robb's death, but is also a manifestation of Theon's guilt over betraying House Stark.)

Last night he had dreamed of Sam drowning, of Ygritte dying with his arrow in her (it had not been his arrow, but in his dreams it always was), of Gilly weeping tears of blood. (Chapter 10, A Dance with Dragons)

Jon feels guilty for causing Ygritte's death (though indirectly, only by warning the Watch about the wildlings' assault from the south), and personally responsible for the fates of Sam and Gilly, having sent them on a perilous voyage and forcibly separated Gilly from her son.

Apart from all these dreams of responsibility, guilt and regret - Sansa has a reflective dream containing a sexual awakening:

And she dreamed of her wedding night too, of Tyrion’s eyes devouring her as she undressed. Only then he was bigger than Tyrion had any right to be, and when he climbed into the bed his face was scarred only on one side. “I’ll have a song from you,” he rasped. (Chapter 68, A Storm of Swords)

During Lysa Arryn's wedding, Sansa realizes the erotic connotation of songs and singing, when Marillion propositions her with an "I’ll have you singing louder than the Lady Lysa.” She subconsciously relates this to her past encounters with Sandor Clegane, who made her sing for him (I’ll have that song. Sing, little bird. Sing for your little life.) Although the Hound wanted literally a song from her, Sansa sees their interactions in a new light, dreaming of him in the erotic context of her wedding night - hinting at an attraction to him.

V. WORST IMPULSES

“I am the Lord of Winterfell,” Jon screamed. It was Robb before him now, his hair wet with melting snow. Longclaw took his head off. (Chapter 58, A Dance with Dragons)

This dream recalls Jon's childhood duel with Robb :

Every morning they had trained together, since they were big enough to walk; Snow and Stark, spinning and slashing about the wards of Winterfell, shouting and laughing, sometimes crying when there was no one else to see. They were not little boys when they fought, but knights and mighty heroes.

That morning he called it first. “I’m Lord of Winterfell!” he cried, as he had a hundred times before. Only this time, this time, Robb had answered, “You can’t be Lord of Winterfell, you’re bastard-born. My lady mother says you can’t ever be the Lord of Winterfell.” (Chapter 79, A Storm of Swords)

For years, Jon has repressed his jealousy towards Robb, and his guilt-ridden desire for Winterfell, which could be manifesting itself in his recurring dream of the Winterfell crypts, where the stone kings reject him as a Stark : "You do not belong here. This is not your place." But these emotions return to the fore when Stannis offers to make him Lord of Winterfell in A Storm of Swords (He wanted it, Jon knew then. I have always wanted it, he thought, guiltily. May the gods forgive me.) Jon sees accepting Winterfell as betraying his family (What kind of man stole his own brother’s birthright?), but he fears even that will not stop him from claiming his heart's desire - hence he beheads Robb in his dream, just as he lays claim to Winterfell. In the future books, I expect Jon's internal crisis will be temporarily resolved when he discovers Robb has legitimized him, but it will return in full force once he learns of his real identity.

Last night he dreamed he’d found her fucking Moon Boy. He’d killed the fool and smashed his sister’s teeth to splinters with his golden hand, just as Gregor Clegane had done to poor Pia. (Chapter 30, A Feast for Crows)

Jaime spends much of A Feast for Crows obsessively thinking about Cersei's infidelity, repeating Tyrion's accusation of "She's been fucking Lancel, Osmund Kettleblack and probably Moon Boy for all I know" in his head. His dream is likely borne out of barely-repressed anger towards his sister and the fear that his jealousy will make a monster out of him (dream-Jaime's violence mirrors Gregor Clegane's). After this dream, Jaime appears to be trying to overcome his jealous feelings, since his catchphrase of "Lancel, Osmund Kettleblack and Moon Boy" does not reappear in A Feast for Crows.

Then he killed his brother, Jaime, hacking at his face until it was a red ruin, laughing every time he struck a blow. Only when the fight was finished did he realize that his second head was weeping. (Chapter 5, A Dance with Dragons)

Tyrion desires bloody revenge on Jaime for participating in Tywin's horrific scheme against him, and lying to him about Tysha - as he tells Illyrio in a previous chapter, "Yet I am still my father’s son, and Jaime and Cersei are mine to kill.” However, Tyrion's outward certainty that he wants to kill and punish his brother is belied by this dream, where part of him (the second, weeping head) still loves Jaime and cannot bear the thought of killing him.

THE END

If you've made it all the way here, thank you very much for reading! This is my first time writing a meta post, I hope it was worth your while.