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runawaymun · 2 years

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So I have written a lot about food and food insecurity in the aftermath of trauma and I focused mainly on Maedhros, Húrin (who there is actually some canon examples with), and Morwen (a different kind of trauma) and I know you posted some about Maedhros too so I was wondering if you had thoughts on how this affected Celebrían. I really love all your ideas and writing on her and I had some of my own thoughts but I wanted to ask!

-@outofangband (sorry if this is disorganized, I wrote it right after waking up)

aaaaaa!

@outofangband

Thank you for the opportunity to ramble about this!

Buckle up. This ain't a fun one, guys. And it's so so so long.

CW: discussions of suicidal ideation, force-feeding, eating disorders, & unhealthy relationships with food due to trauma under the cut.

Celebrían post-torment kind of lives rent-free in my brain. It actually really bugs me how little I see of her in the fandom from this period in her life, and usually when I do see content about this it's about how her torment affected Elrond which is very unfair to her. It's her trauma, after all.

I tend to describe Celebrían's relationship with food post-torment with three words: repulsion, obsession, and disinterest. (Unlike, say, Maedhros where I would describe his relationship with food post-Angband as being characterized mostly by insecurity, anxiety, and compulsion).

In regards to Cel, let's talk about repulsion first.

Food Repulsion

The issue of Cel's repulsion to food post-torment is really complex. The first and simplest part is that it's strictly biological. I really don't think she was given much to eat during her torment that would have actually agreed with her. When the body goes for extended periods of time without food, the stomach shrinks and becomes very sensitive, and it takes a while for it to acclimate to digesting things again. This also feeds into disinterest-- it was genuinely hard for her to want anything to eat when she was ill post-torment-- in the "nothing sounds agreeable and everything I eat makes me nauseous" sort of way.

And then there's the less fun aspect of why I suspect she has repulsion to food post-torment, and that comes down to force-feeding.

Tolkien mentions (I think) more than once instances of orcs force-feeding disagreeable substances to their captives. Chiefly I'm thinking of Merry & Pippin and the weird "orc draught" the Uruk-hai gave them. I can't think of any other specific instances currently off the top of my head, but I remember reading that part as a kid and being viscerally disgusted and freaked out, and that part still haunts me every time I read it. Force-feeding is such an intense form of psychological control. I'm thinking of the times during the women's suffrage movement when women went on hunger strikes and then were force-fed with tubes/funnels. It's a violation of bodily autonomy. It's even worse when you're being forced to consume a substance which may have an altering effect.

And it's clear from the scene with Merry & Pippin that the orc draught had an altering effect and tbh I always read it as being something the orcs enjoyed doing.

And just in general, orcs seem to enjoy torture and infliction of distress. So firstly, I believe Cel was force-fed this orc-draught, seeing as it has an "invigorating" effect and possibly would have essentially made her last longer to be toyed with and tortured. Secondly, I think they probably force-fed her some gross stuff (i.e. stuff orcs like eating. Raw flesh/blood etc.) because they found her reaction funny.

So naturally, this is traumatic, and naturally, Cel isn't really going to have an appetite for anything but, perhaps, water when the twins get her home.

It was very difficult for Elrond to get her to take any medicines. She logically knows this is her husband and that he's very safe and that he's trying to help her, but Cel isn't going to want anything that may alter her mental or physical state. On top of that, being fed anything is going to be triggering. This is made especially worse in the very likely event that during her early recovery she has to be fed, which is re-traumatizing.

This is distressing for everyone around her, obviously, especially Elrond who is only trying to help. This is especially distressing for Cel because she knows, she knows that everyone is trying to help her and that she has to eat to stay alive, but the act of swallowing has become so utterly traumatic that it probably sets off a gag reflex and causes her to vomit most (if not all) of what she's being given.

This takes a long time to work through.

Obsession (and Compulsion)

Okay let's talk about obsession. For Cel, the repulsion actually feeds into the later obsessive and compulsive behaviors which she develops to cope with her repulsion and anxiety. This is going to be a shorter section because I just don't want to linger on this for very long.

Once she is able to keep food and medicine down, she develops an obsession around making sure she knows exactly what she is eating and exactly how much she is eating. She doesn't develop a hoarding issue like Maedhros did. She begins to pick apart and count everything she's eating. It takes hours to finish even the smallest meals. As this progresses she refuses to eat anything that she hasn't seen prepared in front of her or she hasn't prepared herself. She isn't being intentionally difficult, it's that the anxiety around not knowing what's in her food makes her physically ill & makes her reflexively vomit.

This carries over into Valinor.

She doesn't eat at group functions anymore. She doesn't eat meals with others anymore. She is aware that her behavior doesn't make sense, that it's "strange", that it's unhealthy. She has a great deal of shame around this that she can't manage to get rid of. Very few people in Valinor understand this trauma and she has no desire to talk about it. So she just doesn't socially eat anymore. It's very isolating.

This eases with time and intentional help and work. Again, I'm not sure if she ever really heals herself of this anxiety. That shit lingers with you.

Disinterest

Now let's talk about disinterest.

This may seem to be in conflict with obsession, but it's not.

This goes hand-in-hand with her repulsion, but mostly it's caused by intense depression, and is a problem that gets worse and worse in the months leading up to her departure.

As it becomes more and more clear that Cel just....isn't getting better, she really begins to feel guilty, I think, of the toll that she's taking on her family. She feels like a burden. She doesn't want to cause them any more distress. She is tired and ill and sick at heart.

So as things progress, she just...eats less and less. Part of this is because she just hates food and hates what it makes her feel and hates the distress all of her trauma around food causes everyone around her, and a good chunk comes down to the nausea and visceral repulsion.

The other part is that she just...

doesn't want to be here anymore.

And Elrond just will not let her go. He's trying so hard to help her heal. And Cel feels guilty because that's really unfair of her, she feels, to not work so hard herself when he is putting his entire being into saving her.

This is when their marriage bond starts to fracture (I don't think it ever broke entirely, but I think there was a moment where they were on the verge). Intentionally, on Cel's part. She doesn't want to cause him pain. She starts distancing her from him as much as she can.

And this is when she really, truly stops eating.

Because she can't bear to tell him that she wants to die. How could she do that to him? When he's doing everything he can to save her? Literally giving her pieces of himself? I headcannon he was using Vilya as a last resort, here, at risk to himself. It's literally breaking him and Cel can't bear that. Not when she just feels numb. She doesn't feel like she's worth saving and she doesn't know how to ask him to stop trying.

So she just...stops eating.

And she withers and withers and withers.

And she begins to fade.

And that's when Elrond truly starts to panic.

I think there's a moment where he asks her, very bluntly, if she wants to die.

And Celebrían very quietly says yes.

And I think that destroys him.

I think it's Celeborn, actually, over everyone that suggests that she sails. Because there's really nothing else to be done. Either she sails, or she fades. Maybe she fades anyway. Either way, no one can save her except Celebrían herself.

And there is one tiny feeble spark somewhere deep inside Celebrían that wants to live. So she tells her husband, and her mother, and her father, and her children goodbye, and she leaves everything she has ever known to sail to a place she's only heard about in her bedtime stories.

Does she ever fully recover from any of this?

No, I don't think she does. I don't think her appetite every fully comes back to her. I think she's always just a little too-thin. I think she still has a difficult time eating with others. I think she just can't eat certain foods anymore. But she manages, and she heals, and she lives. That's the important part. That's what matters.

Despite it all, Celebrían lives.

#celebrian #elrond #galadriel #celeborn #celebrian's torment #meta #headcannons #lotr #silm #out of unform

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purefandomonium · 1 year

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Glitchy Red Oneshot

This is NOT canon to Connection, I just got carried away with the writing again and this became its own thing. It might as well be an AU for my AU. I was writing little oneshots to figure out some characterization and while I really like this it doesn't fit the version of Red I'm working with at all. So here we are. It reads more in-line with OG Glitchy Red from the pokepasta in terms of the way he torments the player, except he's not as direct here. Couple warnings: psychological torture, mild suggestion of suicide (it doesn't actually happen but because it's technically mentioned I'd like to let people know), trauma

This was inspired by my recent fascination with glitches and how they work on the OG games. I LOVE learning about how old games run and handle the programming and all that. Don't understand a lick of it but fascinating nonetheless. I sorta fell down the rabbit hole watching different YouTube vids on the subject and that got me wondering: holy fuck that shit must be traumatic for someone in Red's shoes. I kept imagining a scenario where a player was exploiting the game to that degree and this was born.

Writing below the cut

This particular player was very infuriating. It appeared that he was deliberately trying to get as many glitches as possible. Not just Missingno or ZZAZZ—but any and every error that would cause the game to grind to a halt. Crashing it and corrupting text boxes wasn’t helping; this particular player seemed to enjoy it even more when that happened. He even had the audacity to tell RED he was a joke when asked.

Fine. If he wanted to test limits, so be it.

After a long day of monitoring and recording Pokémon Red’s many faults, Sebastian was hungry, tired and stiff as a board. A quick trip to the microwave followed by a shower was all it took to fix two of his issues. Last on his list was to get ready for bed. He dozed off thinking about how impressive it was that the developers were able to make something so complex work, despite the multiple setbacks their methods introduced. The game may be old and an obvious first-step for people unfamiliar with computers, but it held up surprisingly well given the broken nature of the code. It was fascinating.

Before he knew it, he was out cold.

Sebastian jolted awake and shot up in his bed, shirt and hair damp and clinging to him. It took him several seconds to orient himself and realize that he was still in his bed, in his room, away from… whatever that was. He couldn’t for the life of him recall what he’d seen that scared him awake like that. In a way, that fact brought a strange comfort to him. He reached for his phone to check the time. His eyes strained to make out the smaller-than-usual numbers.

That was odd… He couldn’t read the time. He recognized the symbols as numbers and a part of his brain knew what they were but… it just wasn’t registering. Ah, well. The darkness that filled his room was a good indicator that it was still nighttime. Some cold water and a quick trip to the bathroom would clear his head enough to fall back asleep.

As his feet touched the floor he felt an unusual sensation. The normal coolness of the floor was still present but it felt different somehow, shifting beneath him. Almost unstable. Like he was walking on sand or something. It was enough to put him on edge.

He was morbidly aware of how thick the darkness felt and, despite the coolness beneath his feet, his lungs began feeling warm and heavy. Something akin to a sudden burst of extreme humidity.

He shook his head and took even steps out of his room, refusing to let some childish nighttime fear get to him. The heaviness in his lungs didn’t leave him as he trekked to the bathroom. By the time he reached his destination, it felt like there was something inside his chest that was pulling the air out of him as soon as he sucked it in. His breaths were heavy and labored yet he felt like he wasn’t even breathing. He reached for the light switch.

The bathroom was bathed in an ugly shade of orange. Sebastian wasn’t worried about the abnormal lighting, instead focused solely on what should have been his reflection.

The face that peered back at him wasn’t his own, nor did it look like anyone that he knew. In fact, it could hardly be called a face. If it weren’t for the vague appearance of hair on its head and the pair of eyes that was wrong, wrong, wrong he would’ve thought it some kind of prank. But who would break into someone’s apartment just to—paint?—some messed up abstract of a human face on their mirror? The eyes suddenly blinked and he realized he hadn’t taken a breath since turning on the light. He tried to gasp but no air reached him.

It felt like his lungs were pulled out by a powerful force.

He tossed the covers aside and made his way to the bathroom. He flinched at the blinding light and had to wait a minute as his eyes adjusted. He half-assed his matted hair, did his business and reached for the sink to wash his hands—

Only for an eardrum-shattering screech to send him stumbling into the tub. He hit the back of his head on the way down, but the only pain he was capable of registering was the horrid high-pitched shriek that continued to pierce his ears and echo in his mind. His hands couldn’t block the noise and he was in so much agony he couldn’t think, let alone will his body to go turn the damned thing off. Even opening his eyes caused immense pain, the sound somehow registering as massive, discolored distortion where the water was starting to overflow.

Before he knew it, he was drowning.

Somehow that terrified him.

Ever since that horrible night, every subsequent attempt to sleep was met with the same fate. He’d end up in a never-ending nightmare, each one worse than the last as some unknown force taunted him. To keep his mind off the time he focused on things that would keep him awake. Watching loud, obnoxious action movies at a volume just below what would be considered respectful for his neighbors. Doing random jumping jacks. Watching internet videos that irritated him. He only took freezing cold showers, well-aware that anything remotely warm would lull him to sleep, right into the hands of his unknown demons.

Last but in no way least, he continued to play Pokemon Red. If he was going to stay awake for ungodly amounts of time, why not spend it doing at least one thing he actually enjoyed? Despite having knowledge of the game’s code and knowing way too much about the intricacies of the Game Boy, there were just so many ways the Red cart could glitch out. Some of the things he’d never even heard of happening. He was making—an admittedly small and niche—history!

The first time he witnessed the unusual ‘glitches’ he assumed he’d been scammed and given a hacked version. After all, who had ever heard of the game ‘screaming’ that something hurt? It wasn’t just the text that told him it was suffering; the demonic cries and crackles it made during every crash only aided in proving its point. The corrupted tiles of the background seemed to show pleas of agony that he could almost make out if he had more time before the game crashed.

If the extent of the corruption was anything to go by after he’d managed to force the old man glitch, this was no mere hack. On the Red version, Missingno didn’t normally wipe the entire save and permanently corrupt the intro cutscene.

It didn’t briefly show what appeared to be a face, frozen in pure agony. Or perhaps anger.

He simply had to keep going, he had to learn more. So he played and played and played, trying all sorts of ‘experiments’ as the hours ticked by and he fought off sleep. Anything else felt like such a chore. Work, eating, even hanging out with friends and family left him watching his phone until the minute he was allowed to leave.

He simply had to keep playing. All he wanted to do was worry about the damn game but people had to constantly badger him, question what he was doing, pester him to get out of the apartment. He just wanted to play his game.

The days and weeks that followed—maybe it was more than that, he couldn’t keep track anymore—were not getting easier. He was exhausted all the time, irrationally short-tempered, and something somewhere was always aching a solid seven out of ten. His social life suffered immensely—he’d lost pretty much everyone, save for a few ride or die friends—his work ethic suffered to the point of losing his job, his physical and mental health were in the dumps. Things were not good.

The only thing he had to do with his spare time these days, weeks, months, was continue to test the limits of Pokémon Red’s code. See how far he could push it before the game stopped running. The answer was pretty far.

Sleep no longer came to him. The few times he’d tried, he’d wake up in a panic over some horrid night terror, just to experience another. It was somehow far worse than it had been in the beginning. Now they were vivid and unforgettable, burning images into his mind and leaving lingering sensations in his nerves. Again and again and again and again he’d ‘awaken’ until he found himself sprawled on his bedroom floor sometime in the afternoon, tears staining his cheeks and sweat sticking his clothes to him like glue. Sometimes there was blood, but he didn’t like to acknowledge that. If he didn’t think about them, it was as though the scars didn’t even exist.

Energy drinks and stupid amounts of coffee were his new best friends. He needed something to replace the fakers who’d left him, after all. If he wasn’t poring over the old game’s glitches, he was chugging can after can and cup after cup. He never ran out. Despite his second addiction always being available, he couldn’t recall a single time where he’d gone out and bought more. He couldn’t recall doing much of anything besides play the game, really. But he had to be buying it. Every time he’d gone to grab another the cabinets were always stocked. He was still the only one in the apartment.

Despite the fact he could feel a heavy presence in the air that radiated anger.

Sebastian snapped to, grabbed a can of Red Bull, and went back to his room to continue the game. He never even registered having stopped.

His eyes burned. When he finally managed to tear his weary gaze from the tiny screen of the Game Boy, his phone had stopped buzzing from its place in the opposite corner of the room, on the floor. He, too, sat on the floor, hunched over and legs stretched out, the Game Boy heavy in his hands. His back hurt. His eyelids felt like sandpaper. He couldn’t remember how long he’d been sitting there, playing the little game as the world around him faded into nothingness. Was he still in his room?

For the first time in a long while, he thought about checking his phone. He wondered how all his old friends were doing, his former coworkers. He never had spoken to his parents much since telling them off… Maybe he should call them. When was the last time he even checked his front door?

A familiar chime pulled his attention back to the game. At some point in his pondering, the screen had gone dark. A simple text box stood out against the blackness and his mind struggled to comprehend it.

Tired?

His mouth didn’t work so he nodded numbly.

What’s the matter?

I thought you liked seeing how far broken things could go.

Don’t tell me you’re giving up already?

He was too mentally depleted to process that this was no glitch, that it had never been glitches. He felt his head fall forward and he jolted it up, trying to stay awake.

Do you even know how long you’ve been playing?

“…ile…” He blinked hard once, twice, and shook his head. “A while,” he managed, words slurring. His jaw felt like it was held on by string that couldn’t support its weight. Everything looked hazy. Like a cloud of static hung in the air. He felt empty, like he was so light he’d drift away. The only thing grounding him was how heavy his head felt.

Y’know, most people would’ve learned their lesson pretty early on.

But you just had to keep on breaking the game.

The words echoed in his mind, prickling the edges of his consciousness like they were the only things keeping him awake.

I guess some people never learn.

You thought it was funny, didn’t you?

The game presented him with a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ option. Despite the bizarre situation, his battered psyche had him choose ‘yes.’ Somewhere deep in his subconscious he recalled that honesty was the best policy.

It didn’t remind him that being honest was what had gotten him into this mess.

Not laughing anymore, are we?

I can only hope the next poor sap isn’t as idiotic as you.

He squinted, the rectangular form of the Game Boy distorting into incoherent shapes. The game… The game had done all this to… punish him? For what? What did he do?

You know what you did.

“Wh… What… are you…? Why…?” He forced his eyes to focus on the screen, the first time in far too long he’d ever needed to be deliberate about it.

I’m done with you.

Move on with whatever is left of your pathetic life.

Just make sure you forget about me.

Feeling began creeping its way back into his limbs, constant pricks of blood flow like his entire body had fallen asleep. He was uncomfortably aware of how fast his heart was beating despite his sluggish state. He gasped.

The Game Boy clattered to the floor as his arms uselessly fumbled about, trying relearn movement.

He didn’t see the text box that simply displayed ellipses. All he could see was the room shifting and spinning as his body struggled to adjust to having free will again. He tried to get up or at least change positions but his limbs felt heavy and before he knew it he was face-first on the floor.

His vomit burned and tasted like acid and cherry-flavored medicine.

Sebastian couldn’t remember calling an ambulance, he couldn’t even remember being in the ambulance. He just woke up in the hospital room in a panic before everything caught up with him all at once and he fell back onto the bed with a tired groan.

He was made aware of the other presence in the room when a hand reached out to him. His voice left him as he tried to scream.

It was Mark, one of his longtime friends and the last one to keep trying to reach out to him until Sebastian simply refused to answer. Even in the state he was in, it was clear to see that Mark was deeply troubled by what had transpired. He wanted answers, and Sebastian didn’t know how to tell him he had none.

How does one explain that a stupid kid’s game made them throw away their life, chase away their friends and family? Who would believe him when he said the scars weren’t self-inflicted?

After an excruciatingly long road to recovery, Sebastian soon found himself living some semblance of normalcy. As much as could be had with a newfound heart condition and when everyone close to him thought him suicidal. His parents hadn’t coddled him this much since he was a kid. It would have been nice if they weren’t so concerned he’d ‘do it again.’

The only hiccup was when someone brought up the cause of the whole ordeal, that damned Pokémon Red cart he’d gotten for cheap off of eBay. His only response was that he didn’t care what they did with it, so long as he never saw it, the Game Boy, or energy drinks ever again.

He loathed coffee.

I hope y'all liked it! In a way I really like expanding on the darker version of Red where he's far more dangerous than you'd think. I mean, the bastard could enter dreams in the OG story so I like to think as the years wore on, he got much more creative with his abilities. What else does he have to do when he's stuck in a game and the only interaction he gets are wannabe hackers? This is probably not the last alternate version I'll make either. I've got a ton more ideas that I'm not using for Connection and it'd be a real shame to let them go to waste... ;)

Also, fun fact: I like to think of this as an endurance test for the both of them. Red really gave the guy the chance to not fuck around and find out, but the SOB wouldn't quit. He was really hoping the guy would figure it out and try to stop interacting but then got ornery when he wouldn't quit glitching the game. So Red's just over there enduring shit just to torment this guy until one of them breaks. So... technically... Red caved first from how obsessive Sebastian was at breaking the game despite the torture. Win, I guess?

#my writing #glitchy red #pokepasta #use your imagination for how long you think this went on before Sebastian was let go #I wanted to keep it vague to stress how much red was fucking with him #poor guy lost all semblance of time and is definitely an insomniac now #Red aside the amount of energy drinks and caffeine he was consuming were already traumatic enough

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buyofficialpainting · 1 year

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noelleification · 3 years

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I wrote an essay about she-ra supremacy and i want to share it with you

For context, my English teacher and I have been in an elaborate pissing contest for the past year. He said fan fiction was bad, so I wrote a sonnet about Banana Fish. He said you couldn't write about death using bright language and colorful metaphors, so I wrote a flash fiction piece about it.

One thing that he's done this year that we disagreed on was making us read The Plague by Albert Camus during a global pandemic. So, my most recent attempt at fucking with my teacher was writing an essay about why She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018) is better than The Plague.

So, here is my essay. :)

"Recently I was asked, “What is the job of a novelist, and did Albert Camus accomplish this when he wrote The Plague?” While most of my classmates answered yes, I was less taken with the novel than they seemed to be.

The question “What is the job of a novelist?” is difficult to answer. Quite simply, art means different things to different people, and giving a yes or no answer to such a complex question seems impossible. Still, while The Plague definitely has something interesting to say, its message isn’t profound when compared to other, “lower” forms of art. It’s easy to assume value in The Plague because of it’s status, but after reading the novel, I was somewhat unimpressed with the one-note characterizations that served to deliver an ultimately average message.

In contrast, I have repeatedly been overwhelmingly impressed with She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, a 2018 remake of a He-Man spinoff cartoon from the 80s. The new She-Ra broke boundaries in terms of representation, and the show’s resolution was made meaningful by the well-developed characters and important themes. Due to its complex characters, important messages, and groundbreaking representation, She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018) is a more important and influential piece of art than The Plague by Albert Camus.

The complex characters in She-Ra are much more rich and well-developed,than those in The Plague. Characters in The Plague are flat and one-dimensional—instead of real, relatable human beings, these characters come across as ideas. They represent something, but they’re not flawed, multi-faceted characters in their own right. On the other hand, She-Ra’s characters—from its heroes to its villains to its side characters—are infinitely complex and well-developed.

The most prominent example of this is Catra. Catra, the deuteragonist of the series, is the childhood best friend of the protagonist, Adora. In order to understand the complex role that Catra fulfills in She-Ra, it is important to understand the background of the show.

She-Ra and the Princesses of Power takes place in the fantasy world of Etheria, in which women with magical powers, called ‘princesses’, rule and protect the land. The central conflict takes place between the Rebellion and the Evil Horde. The Horde, ruled by Hordak, is an army dedicated to wiping out the princesses and taking control of Etheria.

Catra and Adora are two child soldiers raised by the Horde. They grew up together and are best friends. However, when Adora finds a magical sword inside the forest and discovers that she is the legendary warrior She-Ra, she defects from the Horde and joins the Rebellion. Alongside two new friends, Bow and Princess Glimmer, Adora fights to defend Etheria from the Horde.

Catra, however, feels betrayed when Adora joins the Rebellion. While Adora’s arc is quickly established as a redemption arc, Catra spirals into a corruption arc for many seasons. Because of her pain and betrayal, she becomes the right-hand woman of Hordak. She lashes out at those closest to her, makes it her life’s mission to stop Adora, and hurts dozens of people on her way to the top.

Still, Catra is not a one-note villain. Her pain and betrayal is explored deeply throughout the series. Even at her worst moments, Catra is sympathetic. Flashbacks of her childhood show her deep emotional bond with Adora and the physical and emotional abuse she suffered at the hands of the Horde. She is shown breaking down multiple times throughout the series, and her relationships with characters like Scorpia show her humanity, even when she is hell-bent on destroying the Rebellion. Despite Catra’s actions, she is a deeply sympathetic character.

Catra is a complex villain, but she is an even more complex protagonist. In season five of the series, after a series of events lead her to reflect on her actions, Catra betrays the Horde to save Adora. This is not an easy decision for her to make. Catra is emotionally tormented—betrayed by those closest to her and held captive by the same force she once swore to serve, Catra saves Glimmer’s life in a last-ditch attempt to do “one good thing” in her life. Catra believes she will be killed for her actions, and in what she thinks are her last moments, she cries, “Adora, I’m sorry. For everything.”

Of course, Adora is not content to let Catra die. She saves her childhood friend, but when Catra is rescued by the Rebellion, she does not immediately change sides. Catra is shown to be bitter and cruel to Adora, Bow, and Glimmer as she struggles with her own internal conflict. Catra continues to lash out at those who are trying to help her, and it is only when Catra begins to face the consequences of her actions by apologizing to a friend she betrayed that she is able to start on the road to redemption. Her redemption is complex, and it is an arc that continues for most of season five. Catra does not flip a switch that takes her from “evil” to “good”—it is a grueling process that is only made possible by the forgiveness of those around her.

Catra is not the only character with a complex arc. Despite being the protagonist, Adora is a deeply flawed character who has to learn and grow over the course of the series. Season four sees Glimmer betraying her friends and falling deeper into a spiral of fear and hatred after the death of her mother. Even Shadow Weaver, Catra and Adora’s abusive parent figure, is not easily classified as “good” or “evil.” Shadow Weaver is a morally grey enigma who serves whatever side she believes will win and, in the end, makes the ultimate sacrifice by dying to save Catra.

It is worth noting that this is not a full redemption of Shadow Weaver’s character. Unlike Catra, Shadow Weaver has a ‘death redemption’—instead of truly facing the consequences of her actions, she sacrifices her life, which almost seems like taking the easy way out. This form of redemption arc is less satisfying to viewers, especially because many believe Shadow Weaver died for Adora’s sake, not Catra’s. Noelle Stevenson, the show’s creator, has confirmed that Shadow Weaver is not meant to be a fully redeemed character. However, this incomplete redemption once again displays the complexity of She-Ra’s characters. They are not good or evil—instead, they are every shade in between. Contrast this with the static, one-dimensional characters of The Plague, and it is clear that She-Ra’s characters are far more well-developed.

In evaluating the value in a piece of art, it is important to look at the message and theme. The Plague does, in fact, have multiple important themes that it discusses. It centers around love, mortality, religion, humanity, and ethics, all of which are important philosophical topics that force the reader to think. I will not make the claim that these issues are not important, because they absolutely are.

However, it would be irresponsible to dismiss the important messages that She-Ra contains just because it is a show made for children. She-Ra explores a number of complex and thought-provoking themes, such as love, loyalty, justice, grief, forgiveness, and redemption. It does this through its rich characterizations and complex relationships. Despite She-Ra’s PG rating, it nevertheless discusses colonialism, unhealthy and abusive relationships, environmentalism, psychological trauma, and self-worth.

Once again, a fascinating example of these themes comes from Catra and Adora. Catra and Adora were emotionally and physically abused by their parent figure, Shadow Weaver, from a young age. Catra in particular was told she is worthless, and this goes on to drive every one of Catra’s actions for the first four seasons of the show. She-Ra does not shy away from the aftermath of Catra’s abuse. It shows in detail the resentment she holds for those around her, including Adora, for their perceived wrongdoings. Her breakdowns are vivid and heartbreaking.

Despite all of her trauma, Catra craves Shadow Weaver’s love deeply. Some of her most horrific actions in the show are driven by her feelings of heartbreak and betrayal inspired by Shadow Weaver.

However, the abuse that Adora suffers is just as insidious, if less obvious. Adora was raised to believe that she had to be perfect and that the well-being of those she cares about is solely on her shoulders. This message deeply affects Adora’s character throughout the series and plays into some of her most profound flaws. Adora is prone to wanting to face everything alone. She doesn’t want to burden her friends, so she hurts and burdens herself. She blames herself when her friends get hurt, and she ultimately ends up seeing her life as worthless. Adora’s struggles with her self-image are directly tied to the abuse she suffered at Shadow Weaver’s hands. In the final episodes of the show, Adora is willing to sacrifice herself for the good of others.

Shadow Weaver’s influence is to directly to blame. She is present as part of the Rebellion during the fifth and final season, and she is the character who plants the idea in Adora’s head of sacrificing herself for the world. Even when Catra stands up to her on Adora’s behalf, Adora is unable to see her own worth. This results in a number of heartbreaking scenes where Catra pleads with Adora to think about what she wants, not what is expected of her. In the penultimate episode, a character finally tells Adora that “[she] is worth more than what [she] can give other people. [She deserves] love, too.”

Dismissing the messages of She-Ra as being “lesser” or “childish” is, in many ways, a straight, white, male perspective. Privileged groups are able to easily grasp their own worth, as they are never taught that they are worthless. It might seem more valuable to talk about more philosophical concepts if messages like those in She-Ra are seen as a given. But for many, self-worth is not an expectation. LGBT people are considered lucky to be accepted by their families, and they still face homophobia or transphobia on an almost daily basis. Their identity is seen as something to be ashamed of. It takes years of un-learning these patterns that a cisgender, heterosexual individual might never have learned in the first place. The same goes for other marginalized groups as well—women are often seen as less intelligent, and this idea is enforced through constant dismissal and belittlement of their thoughts and ideas. Individuals of color face daily prejudice and have been excluded from these conversations for centuries. Therefore, it is equally important for art like She-Ra to reinforce these messages that marginalized communities might never have been taught.

The messages in She-Ra might not be as philosophical as those in The Plague, but they are doubtlessly more emotional. Driven by the lovable characters and relatable issues, She-Ra made audiences feel in ways that I doubt The Plague ever has.

While The Plague is important from an ethical and philosophical standpoint, She-Ra is important from a much more human one. LGBT people are much more likely to be abused, mentally ill, and impoverished. These are some of the same issues faced by the characters in She-Ra. Given that the audience of She-Ra is largely LGBT, seeing these messages reaffirmed on-screen is deeply moving. A high-brow message is important, but if one doesn’t have the basics of self-respect and self-love, these conversations cannot be had.

It is possible that some might dismiss She-Ra and it’s messages compared to The Plague because it is a modern-day animated show instead of a classic novel. Here, we get into another interesting conversation: high art vs low art.

High art is renowned. It is old and has stood the test of time. People see it as beautiful, historical, and fundamentally important, despite the fact that they don’t rock the boat. Van Gogh paintings and Roman statues are examples of high art: priceless pieces with recognized worth. The Plague is another example of high art.

Low art, on the other hand, is art ‘of the people.’ Anybody can make low art. Current music, literature, art, and television is seen as less worthy or important than older pieces with more widely recognized importance. Some “instant classics” can almost immediately be placed into the realm of high art, but for the most part, newer things are always seen as less important than older ones. Low art is comic books, Taylor Swift, graffiti, and yes, She-Ra. They might be just as artistic and valuable as older pieces of art, but they will not be valued the same.

Here’s the thing, though: high art almost always starts out as low art. Modern day romance novels are seen as trashy even though Jane Austen’s novels are renowned. The Beatles are now seen as one of the best bands of all time, but during their peak, they were dismissed due to their primarily female fan base. Most famous painters didn’t become popular until after their deaths, because before then, their pieces were “low art.” Dismissing She-Ra because it’s low art is biased and, ultimately, ignorant.

Moreover, low art is more likely to be queer, female, poor, and PoC. Anybody can make low art, but art by privileged creators is more likely to be seen as ‘valuable’ in the long run. While underprivileged creators can and have gained notoriety and acclaim for their art, there are more road blocks in their path that keep them from ever being on equal footing with other artists. Dismissing all low art as less valuable is dismissing the perspective of those from marginalized communities.

I will not make the claim that She-Ra is a better piece of art than The Plague. The Plague is a piece of literature that has withstood the test of time and remains relevant to this day. Given that She-Ra is still fairly recent, it’s impossible to tell what it’s legacy will be, and in the end, it is a cartoon aimed at a less mature audience. Even more than that, though, art is subjective. What speaks to one person might not connect with another, and calling one piece of art “better” than another is impossible.

However, I do believe that She-Ra is more important than The Plague. The distinction here is that She-Ra did something that has never been done before. The message of The Plague speaks deeply to people, but it is not breaking any glass ceilings.

She-Ra, on the other hand, is revolutionary. The representation is She-Ra is truly remarkable. Not only is the cast mostly comprised of female characters—which, in a world of male-dominated entertainment, is a rarity—She-Ra also embraces diversity of all types. The majority of the main cast with the exception of Adora is nonwhite, and characters of all different body types are featured. While women are typically forced into a cookie-cutter mold of beauty, She-Ra characters are treated as beautiful no matter what their size or ethnicity. This is a message that young people, especially young girls, need to see.

She-Ra also pushes back against toxic masculinity. Many of the main male characters in the show reject gender roles—for example, Bow is almost always seen wearing a crop top with a heart on it, and Sea Hawk has an undeniably flamboyant presentation. King Micah cross-dresses in the final season. Despite this, the male characters are never made fun of for their feminine traits, and instead, their presentation is embraced. They are also not stereotyped as gay for refusing to fit into traditionally masculine roles. All three characters listed above have female love interests.

The most groundbreaking part of She-Ra, however, is the LGBT representation. She-Ra features multiple loving LGBT characters and couples, and the main characters of the series were confirmed to be in a loving sapphic relationship. They said “I love you” and shared an on-screen kiss. She-Ra even features an important non-binary character who uses they/them pronouns, and their identity is always treated with respect.

Furthermore, the entire story centers around the relationship between Catra and Adora. Their romance is not a throwaway side story; instead, their love is the driving force of the entire narrative. Finding LGBT representation is hard, and finding sapphic representation is harder—but what truly sets She-Ra apart is that this was in a children’s TV show. In a world where many believe that LGBT relationships are not “appropriate” for children, She-Ra made history by teaching kids that it’s okay to love who you love and be who you are. She-Ra made people feel something. Audiences were crying during the series finale, and the show has amassed a cult following of LGBT viewers well into adulthood who have never seen their identity represented in such a meaningful way before.

The Plague is undoubtedly a valued piece of high art, but its messages nevertheless do little to progress society. For this reason, She-Ra and the Princesses of Power is a more important and influential piece of art than the Plague."

#she ra #catradora #spop #she ra and the princesses of power

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wouldyouliketoseemymask · 5 years

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I really, really hate the “Batman is just a man in a costume who enjoys beating up the mentally ill” proclamation that emerges from time to time here on Tumblr. While it is true that some adaptions of the character are particularly violent and at times may come across as more of a projection of the writer’s uninformed views regarding mental health than accurate characterization, at his core Batman’s definitive trait is his unwavering desire to help, not to harm.

There is undeniable anger behind his actions when dealing with certain villains; for example, he has no qualms about dragging an unrepentant and laughing Joker into Arkham by the scruff of his purple suit, his mouth bleeding and missing a few teeth, after Joker has committed mass murder for the sake of his own entertainment and left Batman equally bloodied. A scene like that is meant to inspire a sense of justice--Joker has done something terrible and is not the least bit sorry about it (and will most certainly do it again once given the opportunity), battled the hero and lost, and is now being taken to a place where he cannot inflict pain onto others with the same ease as he could while free.

But Batman--when written properly--does not exhibit sadism towards his villains by subjecting them to torture, does not dismiss their respective past traumas and expresses understanding even when he is repulsed by their actions, and does not seek to humiliate them through degradation on a level beyond ego-bruising when they are captured. In the Batman: The Animated Series episode “Lock-Up” Batman is horrified upon witnessing an Arkham security guard become abusive towards a terrified patient and (as Bruce) both initiates and attends an investigation that concludes with the guard being stripped of his power and unable to further torment defenseless asylum patients in secrecy. Bruce did not become Batman in order to perpetuate the same sort of indifferent brutality that led to the murder of his parents: he became Batman to end it. He does this not solely through physical force, but by examining the societal and psychological factors that directly created many of his rogues and by working to remedy them in order to prevent future suffering. He created Wayne Gardens, an apartment complex that houses former Arkham patients who have recently completed their sentences, and provides some tenants with jobs at his company so that they may earn a stable income without needing to return to past criminal habits and becoming trapped in a cycle detrimental to their rehabilitation.

When a newly-released Harley Quinn found herself in Arkham Asylum again after a mishap while buying a dress resulted in a very bad day, Batman brought the dress to her and told her he’d had a bad day once too. When Ventriloquist completed his treatment at Arkham and began a new life outside of crime, Batman warned off the henchmen who attempted to gaslight him into believing the Scarface puppet had returned. When Baby-Doll wept over her tragic condition and all she had been deprived of in life, Batman comforted her. When Two-Face tried to kill Batman over and over again, Bruce Wayne stood by Harvey Dent and told him that he would never give up on his old friend.

To claim that Batman is indisputably a character who seeks to punish others for having mental illness is to ignore his advocacy for patient autonomy, his funding of many resources and treatment options, his protection of former patients when they are at their most vulnerable, his recognition that recovery is not linear or seamless, and--above all--his dedication to preserving the lives of Gotham’s citizens, including those who have occupied cells in Arkham.

That is who Batman is, not a rich boy bully who wears a cape because it gives him a free pass to terrorize anyone who can’t afford to attend therapy.

#batman #bruce wayne #wouldyouliketoseemythoughts

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terramythos · 3 years

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TerraMythos 2021 Reading Challenge - Book 3 of 26

Title: Acceptance (The Southern Reach #3) (2014) - REREAD

Author: Jeff VanderMeer

Genre/Tags: Horror, Science Fiction, Ecological Horror, Cosmic Horror, Weird, First-Person, Second-Person, Third-Person, Unreliable Narrator, Female Protagonists, LGBT Protagonist

Rating: 10/10

Date Began: 1/11/2021

Date Finished: 1/20/2021

Area X, a self-aware wilderness along the coast, has existed for decades behind a mysterious border. The landscape itself annihilates humans and repurposes them for its own ends. Hundreds of people have died attempting to uncover its secrets. But no one has yet discovered its origins or true purpose.

Now, Area X has spread past its former borders, perhaps to the entire world. Acceptance follows several key figures through the history of Area X, and their attempts to fight against an impossible threat.

You feel numb and you feel broken, but there’s a strange relief mixed in with the regret: to come such a long way, to come to a halt here, without knowing how it will turn out, and yet... to rest. To come to rest. Finally. All your plans back at the Southern Reach, the agonizing and constant fear of failure or worse, the price of that... all of it leaking out into the sand beside you in gritty red pearls.

Full review, major spoilers, and content warning(s) under the cut.

Content warnings for the book: Extreme body horror, altered states of mind, and psychological manipulation, including hypnosis. Several characters lose their sanity, and you see it happen in real time from their perspective. Intentional self-harm/mutilation as a plot point. Some violence and gore. There are brief references to animal abuse and terminal cancer. Not many happy endings in this one.

This review contains major series spoilers. It’s also super long, as the book covers a lot of material.

Acceptance is the most narratively ambitious book in the Southern Reach trilogy. While Annihilation and Authority feature a single protagonist/perspective, this one has four rotating POVs and one guest narrator partway through the book. It also covers a broader timeline than previous entries, from the origins of Area X 30-ish years ago to the ongoing present-day apocalypse. Acceptance is one of the few books I've read that utilizes first-, second-, AND third-person narration in a single volume, adopting whichever one makes the most sense for the character and their situation

While this sounds complicated, it's basically just a way to tell four different stories at the same time. VanderMeer also uses each storyline to address the major questions of the series. How did Area X come to be? What happened to the biologist? What was the former director of the Southern Reach trying to accomplish? And perhaps most pressing-- what is the fate of the world now that Area X has spread? Not everything is resolved, but it's definitely a conclusion.

The stories have some unifying connections, containing similar themes and callbacks/references to each other. However, for the purposes of this review I will be looking at each story and protagonist individually.

First up is Saul Evans the lighthouse keeper. He's been mentioned before, but never in much detail. Going in, we know a few things-- (1) he knew the director/Cynthia when she was a child and (2) something happened to him that turned him into the Crawler, the eldritch creature which writes the sermon on the walls of the tower in Area X. In Acceptance, we learn he's a former preacher who had a crisis of faith and left his old life, taking up the role of lighthouse keeper on the forgotten coast. It's implied this is partially due to him realizing he's gay and fleeing the resulting homophobic fallout. His past vocation explains the elevated, sermonic language of the words in the tower.

From the onset Saul is an intensely likeable character. He's trying to build a happier and more genuine life for himself. This part probably takes place during the 70s or 80s, but he's cautiously optimistic about his new life with a local fisherman named Charlie. He also forms an unlikely friendship with Gloria (aka Cynthia), a local kid who loves exploring the coast. However, he is tormented by the "Séance and Science Brigade", a shady organization that investigates/worships(?) paranormal phenomena. They sabotage the lighthouse beacon, which we learned in Authority is a marvelous piece of technology with a mysterious history. Shortly after, Saul accidentally absorbs a fragment of the beacon into himself, and shit goes downhill real fast.

While the catalyst of Area X may seem a little weird, the reader can piece together that part of the beacon has extraterrestrial origins, and Saul unintentionally activates part of it. The gradual shift from a normal life to something deeply unsettling has its appeal. I especially like seeing his logs/journal entries and how they devolve as proto-Area X overtakes his mind. The disturbing bar scene near the end is great as well. We know going in that this story has a bad ending (from a human perspective), but learning specifics about Saul as a person gives this more impact. Saul's is a sad tale of a man who wants to make a better life for himself and gets screwed over by bad luck.

Cynthia/Gloria/the former director is the next perspective character. In Annihilation she serves as the antagonist, but in Authority we learn it isn't that simple. She had ulterior motives, handpicking the biologist for the expedition in order to use her as a weapon against Area X. And, of course, we learn she was the little girl in that old picture of Saul, which means she probably grew up there before the border came down.

This part opens with Cynthia/Gloria's death as "the psychologist" in Annihilation, but told from her perspective. From there, the pacing is a little slow, in similar style to Authority. We learn how Cynthia lived her daily life, how she infiltrated the Southern Reach, and her interpersonal relationships with Grace, Whitby, and Lowry. However, her storyline ramps up when detailing Area X and the lead up to twelfth expedition. Lots of old scenes/dynamics from Annihilation hit different with the new context. Especially interesting is the interview between Cynthia and the biologist; turns out there was a lot more context that the biologist obscured in her story. On some level we already knew she was an unreliable narrator, but it's fun to have it pop up again in a different book entirely.

I admire how VanderMeer makes someone who comes off as a throwaway villain into the one of the most complex, important characters in the series. This part is also really cool as it's written in second-person perspective, and the story justification for this (Area X examining her memories) is neat. While I like Cynthia's characterization in this part, the additional bits in Saul's story and his interactions with Gloria add helpful context and emotional impact. The end of the book being her letter to Saul is so damn sad.

The third main storyline follows Control and Ghost Bird in the "current" timeline-- exploring Area X in the immediate fallout of Authority. I love this part for several reasons. The contrast between the two leads and how they perceive themselves, Area X, and the current situation is great. Control is very much losing control, feeling "the brightness" taking over (a callback to Annihilation). Meanwhile, Ghost Bird is in her element, seeing and experiencing things the regular human characters do not. There's the sense that she's truly something "new" in terms of both humanity and Area X.

We also learn a ton of stuff about Area X that is hinted in earlier volumes but confirmed in Acceptance. (MAJOR SPOILERS) The first is that Area X isn't on Earth at all; something briefly hinted at in Annihilation, when the biologist doesn't recognize the stars in the sky. Instead it mimics Earth, or something representative of it. The second big thing is that time works differently here. The uncanny state of decay noted in earlier books isn't actually a direct result of Area X. It's just the passage of time, because way more time passes in Area X compared to the "real" world.

The guest narrator/story is told within the Control/Ghost Bird storyline. The two meet up with Grace, who has managed to survive the Area X attack on the Southern Reach. She took shelter on the mysterious northern island and discovered an old journal written by... the biologist from Annihilation, which details what happened to her over the last THIRTY YEARS (yeah, the time thing) until she finally decided to give into Area X.

This section is sobering and sad; basically a glimpse at how the biologist's isolation slowly made her go mad. She finds an owl (hello cover) that she believes is her husband post Area X conversion and the two live together for decades. When it dies, the biologist loses the will to keep fighting Area X. It's ambiguous if the owl really is her husband, or if she's just projecting, but her heartbreak at the end is probably the strongest emotion she shows in the series. But what is interesting about this part is it confirms a cool detail. Injury and pain can halt the progression of "the brightness" within someone. Which is how the biologist managed to survive 30 years, how Grace survived what turns out to be 3 years, and so on. Even more interesting, when someone DOES finally succumb after warding off the brightness this way, they turn into something more strange and alien. Hence the moaning creature, and Saul/the Crawler. It's also probably why some creatures have incongruencies, like the dolphins with human eyes.

The biologist? She transformed into a giant, oceanic eldritch abomination COVERED in eyes. Just primo aesthetic. We get to see her from both Ghost Bird and Control's perspectives. Ghost Bird feels solidarity and a sort of euphoria meeting her alternate self. Control... basically breaks in the face of something like that, full cosmic horror style. Again, the contrast here is really appealing to me.

Both of their story arcs end in a way that is narratively satisfying, though the ending is open. The future seems hopeful in a bittersweet way, but presumably Area X has destroyed humanity as we know it. Whether that's a good or bad thing depends on your perspective and is a central thesis of the series.

So, I said I'd discuss how this series approaches aliens. While there's an appeal to anthropomorphic alien species one can talk to and communicate with, I think an "unknowable" perspective is more realistic. After all, who's to say alien life formed under similar conditions or has any resemblance to our own? The extraterrestrial element in The Southern Reach is very much this type. But it's a fine line to walk in fiction, because handwaving the weird alien stuff as impossible to comprehend (and thus conveniently ducking any responsibility for explaining it) is lazy writing when done wrong.

The thing I find interesting about this series is the human characters understand lots of the what of the alien elements, but not the why. For example, Area X transforms humans into various plants and animals. We know it instills a sense of "brightness" in humans exposed for too long, which encourages assimilation into itself. Humans infected in this way, even if horrified or resistant, have thoughts of this being inevitable, even a good thing. The biologist takes samples in Annihilation and finds several plants and animals have human cells. Control logically knows what Area X does to people, but he is ultimately helpless to resist the process when he experiences it firsthand.

As for the why of it all... we don't really know! There's multiple ideas presented throughout the story. Ghost Bird probably gets closest to the "truth"; that Area X is part of a machine organism from a dead alien civilization, and that it has a bizarre effect on Earth's biology based on its now defunct programming. Other worlds would have their own Area Xes based on this idea, as it's implied the Earth version is just one piece of many. But it's worth noting that Ghost Bird is a creation of Area X and sees things differently than the other characters. Unreliable narration is ironically consistent through the series. So it's hard to say if this is true or not; perhaps it's silly to think any explanation would be understandable to a human mind. Obsession with finding the answer is a recurring theme that drives characters insane. I think this is an interesting compromise when discussing the unknowable; to have some facts and theories but not necessarily a concrete answer.

If I have a criticism for this book, it's the role of the "Séance and Science Brigade", especially in Saul's storyline. While they're set up earlier in the series, we only really see them in this book. Our limited perspective via Saul leaves a lot of ambiguity as to their purpose, function, and goals. There's an implication that Control's family influenced the organization's decision to sabotage the beacon and create Area X. But I consider the subplot with Control's mom/grandfather to be one of the weaker ones in the series, and this book didn't help. The S&SB comes off as campy and ineffectual, which is perhaps intentional? But since they're narratively the fanatics who caused Area X to happen, I really wish they felt more sinister and impactful. There's some attempt to make them scary, but it's not very convincing when compared to Area X. Kind of like a Saturday morning cartoon villain vs the unknowable cosmic horror of the universe. This is a nitpick, though.

While rereading the series, I discovered there's a planned fourth book which may or may not star a minor character from Saul's story. I'm interested to see what else there is to explore about Area X and the Southern Reach. As it stands, I still really like this series. Between the horror and general weirdness, it's not for everyone, but it sure does appeal to me. I think this is one of those series that you'll either adore or hate. Obviously I recommend it.

#taylor reads #2021 reading challenge #10/10 #long review lmao

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anhed-nia · 6 years

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BLOGTOBER 10/24/2018: HEREDITARY

I am not ready to talk about HEREDITARY. I tried it when it came out in June, and while I think I hit all the points that were important for mass audiences, I wasn’t really ready then either, to say what I wanted to say. It isn’t because it’s so unusually beautiful, which it is. It isn’t because it’s “the scariest movie ever made”, which it is not, although it intermittently reaches seldom-seen heights of horror. It also isn’t because, contrary to popular belief, it is deeply flawed, with certain understandable markers of being someone’s first feature. It is because it feels so profoundly personal to me, even while I know that this is a not-uncommon reaction to Ari Aster’s breakout debut. It doesn’t make me special that I would take this film about grief, guilt, mental illness, genetic disorder, and irresolvable family friction so personally, but as usual, I have something I need to say about it. My experience with the movie tells me something, not about why we need HEREDITARY, but why we need art.

(spoilers abound)

This story, about a woman who recently lost her seriously disturbed mother, and who subsequently loses her also-disturbed daughter to a car wreck caused by her teenage son, has been accused of emotional exploitation by some. HEREDITARY is aggressively harrowing, with interminably protracted suspense, teasingly dense shadows, and a constant unnatural drone that characterizes everything you see, however mundane, as malignantly abnormal. Most audiences may accept this kind of brutality when it is buffered by a fantastical metaphor, as with an EXORCIST or a SHINING. You can scare someone half to death, as long as you reassure them that whatever they’ve seen probably isn’t going to happen to them, even if it reminds them of something that did, or could. If you just make people feel bad, however, they may turn on you. This is Ari Aster’s big mistake, if you want to call it that; I know parents who refuse to watch the movie, due to its infamous scene of violence against a child. It’s easy to see why any reasonable person might want to opt out of this unusually shocking scene, in which young Milly Shapiro is accidentally decapitated while her teenage brother races her to the hospital, after having neglectfully caused her need for a hospital trip in the first place. But, I think it also calls into question the place for and purpose of the artist’s contract with the audience. This concept usually refers to the unspoken promise that a filmmaker makes to his viewers, that whatever happens in the movie, even if it is confrontational, will fall within the bounds of what the viewers basically expect when they buy their tickets. It means something like, when a family-oriented entertainment producer like Disney adapts a Grimm Brothers fairy tale, the audience won’t have to see the huntsman eviscerate an animal to get his ersatz proof that he has killed Snow White, and they won’t have to see Cinderella’s wicked stepsisters mutilate their own feet to try to fit the glass slipper. Part of the problem many people have with HEREDITARY is that Ari Aster’s contract with his audience is a little unclear. It blends psychodrama about irresolvable family issues that can hit way too close to the literal home for any ordinary person, with the unthinkable but entirely doable desecration of the human body, with outrageous supernatural horrors that, while scary as hell, can seem preposterous in light of the more terrestrial torments that have gone before.

To try to be more succinct, which is difficult with such a complex film, my own problem with HEREDITARY is that it contains metaphors for real-world elements that are already in the movie. To go back to the example of THE EXORCIST: Regan’s transformation from an innocent child into a vile self-abusing demon serves as a ready metaphor for puberty, mental illness, addiction, and really anything that turns your loved one into someone you no longer recognize. Writer Peter Blatty sets this up beautifully by using banal troubles like drafts in the house or parental antagonism as agents that weaken Regan’s defenses against the forces of darkness, just as they can weaken the average person’s defenses against depression or alcoholism--the things that warp them away from their best, or at least, most socially acceptable self. HEREDITARY gets itself into a sticky spot by giving Toni Collete a family history of emotional and physical violence, schizo-affective disorder, alienation, and neglect that is as convincing as can be, and then throwing a comparatively flimsy (however great-looking) metaphorical tarp over all that in the form of witchcraft and demonic possession. A similar problem occurs in Boots Riley’s otherwise excellent SORRY TO BOTHER YOU, where he stages the action in a world--our world, however surreally dressed up--that turns on an axis of slave labor, and then he concludes his story with an outsized metaphor for slave labor. I wouldn’t really kick anything in either of these movies out of bed, at the end of the day; I’m just saying that it gets a little awkward when you craft this grandiose metaphor for a legitimately terrifying real-world thing, while that thing happens to be standing right there in the room with the metaphor.

Anyway. It is interesting to note that while the movie seems to have hurt a lot of people’s feelings based on their own contemporary reality, its spiritual DNA has been active for hundreds of years. Witchery has been a handy metaphor for, or even out-and-out "explanation” for, mental illness in women throughout history. (Ok, so it’s been an excuse for LOTS of things that have happened to or around women throughout history, but I only have so much space!) In HEREDITARY, Toni Collette describes her recently deceased mother as being extraordinarily private, having “private rituals” and even “private friends”, which we soon realize were signs of her being a devil worshiper. However, in some ways, mother and daughter are not so different. Where the mother practiced dark arts, Collette is a successful gallery artist. Her hyperreal dioramas seem like metaphorical expressions of her feelings toward her insane and abusive parent, but as we find out along the way, they are entirely realistic descriptions of actual things that have actually happened in her life--including the notorious car crash, but also things like the mother trying to force her breast on her infant granddaughter, which we later learn was part of an effort to implant Milly Shaprio with a demon. Shapiro, who inhabits a Baba Yaga-like treehouse in the yard, is also an artist, crafting twisted-looking dolls out of refuse and carrion, and like her mother, she also has unwitting witchy inclinations, perceiving grim specters and ill omens all around. Notably, no one outside the maternal bloodline perceive these things, and it seems that male members only perceive them when being supernaturally attacked. While Toni Collete and Milly Shapiro both use handcrafted art to process the trauma handed down to them by their maternal ancestor, all three women participate (knowingly or otherwise) in an ancient artistic tradition that, for some, amounts to a legitimate religion--but for many others, especially in the modern world, it is a way of dealing with feelings of impotence and subjugation. A sense of disappointment, worthlessness, and damnation plagues the women at the center of HEREDITARY, whether it involves Toni Collette’s complaint that her family blames her for all of their misfortunes, or her accusing her teenage son Alex Wolff of failing to acknowledge his responsibility for his sister’s death, or his sister ominously remarking that her grandmother’s doting attitude disguised the matriarch’s attempts to control or deform her--”She wanted me to be a boy,” Shapiro mutters, and we’ll find out she specifically wanted the child to be a boy vessel for a boy demon (about which, more later). HEREDITARY depicts a family out of control, who cannot escape the fate that has been devised for them, but who have adopted some interesting, literally artful means of trying to synthesize feelings of power.

HEREDITARY begins to fall apart, not as much because of its indecisive attitude toward fantasy and realism, as because of its last act left turn away from its heretofore cogent discussion of the disenfranchisement of women, and the guilt women live with when they fall short of their clan’s desires for strong sons, good little girls, or perfect mothers who serve their people instead of serving themselves. Make no mistake: Alex Wolff, who delivers an above-and-beyond performance as an average young man who is alienated by his freak sister and unstable mother, is always at the center of the film. The guilt he acquires from being an unwilling murderer is as potent as anything I think I’ve ever seen in a movie. So, it isn’t that this male experience of disappointing your family, and also feeling victimized by their very existence, is absent from the first leg of the story. It’s that when the film finally tries to make sense of itself, by revealing that Toni Collette’s mother intended to offer one of her male progeny as a vessel for a masculine entity that would bring her great wealth...well, it sort of flies in the face of the psychological depths we’ve plumbed up to that point. For one thing, the movie’s title suggests a singular focus on the intergenerational passing-down of trauma and blame, and the collection of damaged women to whom we’re immediately introduced are obvious experts in this matter. It doesn’t quite work when the story vacillates between sympathizing with these doomed females, and then sympathizing with a young man’s fear and loathing of adult women, who he perceives as irrational and castrating. And how is it possible that the profound mystery surrounding the family’s progressive ruin is rooted in something as shallow as money? I tried to develop a theory that it works as the final insult of any familial loss--that death is incredibly expensive to manage, and inheritance can be just burdensome as it is a blessing--but I don’t know, there’s not enough on the table for me to make a meal out of.

Setting aside the idea of sacrificing your son to a money demon, though, one can say that even if HEREDITARY is a little unsteady in its construction, the individual components are solid. And here I don’t just mean compelling, but also, real. This is the reason I people are so bothered by HEREDITARY--that it tells the truth in a much more direct manner than most audiences expect of a supernatural horror film. While that may be an unwelcome experience, it may be more helpful to think of this unpleasantness as a gift that art can give us. This kind of nasty confrontation with trauma is important for an individual’s personal development, integrity, and self-knowledge. The more demandingly exhibitionistic a movie is, the better chance we have to untangle ourselves from the billowing curtain of metaphor and anthropological generality, and to be purified by the excoriating light of realism--not the artistic genre, but actual contact with reality.

Here we find my own big reveal, my left turn away from what my previous paragraphs have led you to expect. Let me tell you about my mother. My mother was an enormously popular person. Extremely sharp, funny, fashionable, cultured--all things that help keep one’s private persona in the shadows. A prolific artist, she created hyperreal paintings and drawings from miniatures, like toys and model train props, that represented an exaggerated simulation of reality. Much of her work was about female pageantry, social expectations of women, or the chintzy objects that littered the lives of 1950s and 60s housewives, like kitschy bric-a-brac and tawdry paperbacks. People absolutely loved her for her taste, her humor, her ability to express herself. She did not like me. This was so true that, even without a history of physical abuse, that her peers sometimes say things to me that reveal their awareness of the facts of our relationship, or lack thereof. I hear things like, “Your mother loved you, you know!”, in a tone of voice that suggests that they know this would be late breaking news, without ever having asked me how I feel or what I think. From the earliest age, I seemed to refuse to meet the expectations people have of their children: I hated to be touched, I cried endlessly, I quaked with anxiety and a nameless guilt day and night, I burned with an aimless anger. I could draw, and did so compulsively, but nothing nice or bright. I was acutely aware of sexuality, violence, vanity, and shame. I was no fun whatsoever. Later in life--very recently in life, actually--I discovered that I have two important, inherent qualities: One, that I have a genetic inability to process copper properly, a mineral that is psychoactive and can make you pretty unhinged in large quantities. Two, that I suffer from a form of Autism Spectrum Disorder, a range of mental conditions that have been historically ignored in women, largely because of misogynist prejudices that society holds about essentially-female dysfunctionality. Unfortunately for me, my mother died when I was a teenager, almost two decades before I would find out these things that might have made her more tolerant of me.

Fortunately, I guess, I think I know why my mother took such an exception to me, and it isn’t all about me. It’s about her mother. My maternal grandmother was also an artist of sorts, but more in terms of artifice. I haven’t decided whether it is fair for me to spill all of the details of a story that belongs to more people than myself, but I will go so far as to say that my maternal great-grandparents meted out trauma and shame in a manner that my grandmother allowed to contribute to her painful estrangement from her sister. For my purposes, what it really did was teach my mother that darkness--any kind of darkness, even darkness that belongs to you and you alone, that you have a right to, that should be yours to process as you see fit--is inappropriate. It is just as inappropriate in adults as it is in children, which she would see very clearly in her mother’s strict orchestration of their household into an unimpeachably pure, Rockwellian model of what an American family should be like. While my mother found her way into the revolutionary world of hippie rebellion and art-making, she never let go of her prohibition against sadness and rage, even in her own child, and I suffered from it until she suddenly, rapidly and gruesomely died of lung cancer when I was barely old enough to drive. Afterward, her mother obsessed over me in a way that was simultaneously scathingly intense and unmistakably impersonal. I looked like my mother, and my grandmother’s identity was rooted entirely in dominating a family, so she couldn’t do without me. I couldn’t let her know anything about myself; my feelings about horror, pornography, death taboos, sexual identity, and media that is out to hurt you, are what make up all that I am, and are the opposite of everything she believes in. With that weight on my back, I had to pretend that we had this archetypal American familial intimacy, even when I didn’t have it with my own mother, even when I hated being touched, even when I hadn’t learned how to receive affection. Early this year, she died at 90 years old from a misdiagnosed colon condition. As my family rushed to her side to say goodbye, we discovered that her shadowy sister had pushed her doctors into lifesaving measures that would have extended her existence into something so horrific that it would have stood up to the ugliest scenes from JACOB’S LADDER, had she not miraculously died before regaining consciousness. As perversely relieving as that was, my ears ring with the sound of her last phone call to me. Intended to be a heartfelt goodbye, it devolved quickly into the woman, completely possessed of her mental faculties, absolutely screaming for her life. It was a sound as chilling as anything from any of the sadistic movies I love so well, and I really heard it, in my real life.

This all would be enough to make me talk the way that I do, but it isn’t all. Recently, my father revealed to me some details of my mother’s struggle with cancer that I had never heard before. Although my mother had been told to go straight home and make her peace upon diagnosis, she and my father plunged full bore into magical thinking. They experimented with hypnosis, acupuncture, reiki, anything that might activate my mother’s internal ability to heal herself. Soon they found themselves in the office of a charismatic self-help guru-type in a neighboring city. Incidentally, this person is now at the center of an increasingly bizarre trial that is slated to begin this January, due to her authoritative involvement with a Scientology-like cult that allegedly maintains a secret inner circle of brand-wielding sex slavers. But anyway, back to my little memoir: It isn’t clear to me what she claimed was the scope of her powers exactly, but I know that she specialized in a form of “healing” that involved hypnosis and carefully selected words, I suppose not unlike a magical incantation. She said to my mother: “I am going to heal you.” The reason she said this so forcefully, was that my mother was the physical double of a previous client of hers; a client who died from the same specific form of lung cancer that plagued my mother; and who lived in the house we had moved into, only months before my mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer. That woman died, we moved into her house, and by pure coincidence, my subsequently sick mother found herself in the office of the self-styled healer who had treated the previous owner of our new home for the very same illness. “God has given me a second chance,” the healer said, “and I am going to heal you.” My mother saw her for several months, until one day she arrived to find a third woman in the office. Astoundingly, the healer described the young coed as having supernatural gifts. The two instantly began terrorizing my mother, screaming at her and cursing her. My mother, sobbing hysterically, begged to know, “Why are you yelling at me?” and they replied, “WE’RE NOT YELLING AT YOU, WE’RE YELLING AT THE CANCER!” When he told the story, of course, my father accidentally said “demon”, not “cancer”, but in any case, they were trying to exorcize her. My mother never went back, and, some might remark, she died.

Naturally, I wanted to tell this story to anyone who would listen to me, as soon as I had heard it. It was one of the weirdest things I had ever heard, and it happened to my family. While some people’s jaw dropped in exactly the way mine had originally, I received some unexpected feedback, too. On some occasions, a dear friend would pause at the end of my story, make a calculated “surprise” sound, and then, very gently, explain to me that coincidences exist, self-hypnosis and group hysteria exist, and I shouldn’t take any of it too seriously. I found myself, not just disappointed, but embarrassed. I wasn’t trying to tell people that I believed my family was cursed by god or the devil, or that we had been molested by some evil sorceress. I was simply trying to say that, somehow...isn’t there some kind of spiritual truth to this? Isn’t it worth remarking on, that my life, my history, had congealed into such an incredible metaphor for itself? Isn’t it so much more compelling than any kind of fiction I could ever have written, any artwork I could ever have created in order to process the exact kind of trouble my family has suffered? Isn’t this just amazing, all by itself, without even the benefit of theatrical interpretation? Of course, the conclusion will be that I absolutely have to give this some kind of theatrical interpretation, or else I will go out of my mind. I’m close enough as it is. But, in some ways, I felt like this interpretation has already happened at the hands of Ari Aster, with his horrific fable about how inherited trauma among generations of women gives way to the machinations of a corrupt cult. People who know me well will realize that I’m still leaving out parallels between HEREDITARY and myself, in this already too-long piece of analysis. But I guess what I’m trying to say for now is that I need HEREDITARY, and we each need a HEREDITARY of our own to put our most unspeakable experiences on a pin, under a spotlight, inside a bell jar, to be examined from every angle and exactingly diagnosed, whether we like it or not.

#blogtober #hereditary #ari aster #horror #supernatural #witch #cult #toni collette #milly shapiro #alex wolff #gabriel byrne #anecdotal evidence #mental illness

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clodiuspulcher · 6 years

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AGAMEMNON AND CLYTEMNESTRA IN SENECA’S AGAMEMNON

“It’s about how when two people love one another but then, they succumb to the urge to want to kill each other … what’s love like then?” - John Darnielle on No Children

Seneca’s tragedies are known for their complex characterizations and realistic psychological portraits, for examining the inner lives and the thought processes of the actors (or rather, victims) of said tragedy. The height of this complexity, especially considering some characterizations in his Greek sources, is Seneca’s Clytemnestra as depicted in his Agamemnon.

Seneca’s Clytemnestra is cold and vindictive but she isn’t inherently cruel, rather, Seneca depicts her as traumatized and in mourning. The loss of Iphigenia wounded Clytemnestra deeply and she picked at this wound, she never let herself recover, and while her need for revenge stems from this trauma, unlike in Aeschylus’s depiction, Seneca’s Clytemnestra has not made up her mind yet. Seneca’s Clytemnestra is torn, her deliberation about whether or not she should kill Agamemnon is a source of mental turmoil and internal argument that occupies the first third of the play, a conflict that stems from Clytemnestra’s complex and contradictory feelings about Agamemnon.

Seneca makes it clear that Clytemnestra loved and still loves Agamemnon -and Agamemnon’s reactions upon his arrival suggest the feeling is mutual. Seneca’s emphasis on her feelings about Agamemnon and their relationship serves not only to make Clytemnestra a more developed, complex character, torn within herself and forced to make a horrible choice, but also heightens the tragedy by emphasizing the emotional impact on Clytemnestra who feels she’s forced to kill a man she did love and continues to love, at least to some degree, and by creating the possibility of a “version” wherein Clytemnestra DOES allow Agamemnon to live, making the inevitable murder more impactful and painful by the presence and exploration of an alternative, by Clytemnestra saying “si alter nequit” (if there is no other way) as if she has any other choice, as if she could change her fate. Her love for Agamemnon almost overpowers the architecture of the tragedy, and it was not out of hatred but fear, paranoia, and volatility fostered by Aegisthus’s emotional manipulation that she made the choice she did. Clytemnestra’s persisting love for Agamemnon and her nostalgia for the functional marriage/lives they once had together is not only essential to Seneca’s characterization of Clytemnestra but to his interpretation and re-imagining of the Agamemnon as a story. CLYTEMNESTRA LOVES HIM, then & now, and Seneca lets us see hints of possibilities where that love was stronger than her vindictive fear / mourning / trauma / coldness / etc.

The idea that Clytemnestra and Agamemnon’s relationship was stable, mutually loving, and that they cared about and were close to and indeed in love with each other preceding the Trojan war isn’t an invention of Seneca’s; Euripides in Iphigenia in Aulis has Clytemnestra explicitly say that she “came to love” Agamemnon. Agamemnon also refers to his family, Clytemnestra included as “those dearest to [him]”, his messengers, seeing his emotional turmoil, tell him the arrival of his wife and children will cheer him up, implying they’ve seen his mood visibly improved / his anger or frustration mitigated by their presence before. Similarly, Clytemnestra is stunned/shocked/suspicious when Agamemnon snaps at her to obey him when she argues that she should be allowed to participate in Iphigenia’s marriage ceremony as her mother, suggesting this is out of the ordinary, and knowing Agamemnon’s generally brash character, the fact that Clytemnestra isn’t used to Agamemnon speaking harshly to her implies he treats her with a unique kindness/gentleness of voice, indicative of the fondness he feels. Even though Agamemnon does “order” Clytemnestra to obey him, Clytemnestra simply refuses, not only with no consequence from Agamemnon but with no fear or thought of those consequences from Clytemnestra- she knows the threat is empty, that he cares about her and her opinion of him too much to force a decision on her. Finally, it simply makes the tragedy better to read every aspect of his relative gentleness towards Clytemnestra and her fondness/love for him as indicative of a true love and trust within their marriage- if Clytemnestra already distrusted and disliked Agamemnon, his decision to sacrifice Iphigenia wouldn’t be a betrayal of said trust and love, it wouldn’t come as such a cruel shock or scar her as deeply as it so clearly does. In a similar vein, Seneca’s Clytemnestra has complex and contradictory feelings about Agamemnon that Seneca develops, thinks about, and since her inner world is explored to a greater extent by Seneca than Euripides, her love for Agamemnon and her view of their marriage as it was and is are explored in greater detail.

Seneca’s Agamemnon more than hints at a not only functional but stable and close relationship between the two before the events of Aulis. Clytemnestra’s feelings on Agamemnon at the present, when the play begins, are torn but THAT LOVE STILL EXISTS. Her anger at Agamemnon being undercut and in contrast with her long-standing love for him isn’t unique; a similar dynamic exists, to a lesser degree, between Clytemnestra and Helen. Seneca’s Clytemnestra calls Helen’s actions impious/criminal (124-5), says she’s the one responsible for the Trojan War (273-4) but nevertheless, when Agamemnon is said to be returning from the war, Clytemnestra asks without provocation or reminder about the fate of Helen- her familial love overpowers her, emphasized by her referring to Helen as “mea soror [my sister]” (405). Just as Clytemnestra’s anger at Helen exists in conjunction with her strong love for her as her sister, so too does her love for Agamemnon as the husband and partner she knew and loved for at least 15 years exist alongside her anger at him, her fear of his retribution, her pain. The relationship she had with Helen before the Trojan war exists in her mind as well as and battling with the irrational perception of Helen created by Trauma, fed by fear. The same is true with Agamemnon, and since it is the center of her emotional conflict in the play, is even more evident.

She spends the first 150 or so lines of her speech discussing WHY she’s furious at Agamemnon, why she WANTS to kill him, but when Aegisthus approaches, despite this anger she says “love of my husband conquers me and turns me back”, a literal admission that her decade of pent up anger and unresolved trauma and honestly fear towards Agamemnon, and the strength of all those combined negative emotions, are being overpowered by the love she still has for him! If this is how much she still cares about him now, how much love she still has for him, how much did she care about him, how much did they care about each other, before the breach in trust/destructive acts/betrayal (in Clytemnestra’s eyes, that is) of Aulis? She clearly sees her dalliance with Aegisthus as a mistake, an impulsive choice she regrets, when she says thus about Agamemnon she tells Aegisthus she’s being brought back to the place she never should have left (240)- she REGRETS her decision to sleep with Aegisthus when she considers how much she cares for Agamemnon, that she still loves him! Clytemnestra rejects Aegisthus as a (sexual) partner, banishes him, and states that her “house is open to my king and husband” (301). Twice in the exchange with Aegisthus she mentions Agamemnon in terms of her fondness for him- she is turned from her course by her love of him, Aegisthus is rejected in favor of Agamemnon, to whom Clytemnestra wants to remain loyal seemingly because of her genuine love for him. Earlier in the play, Clytemnestra’s nurse told her the “sacred name of marriage” should turn her back (155) but it isn’t the “sacred name” of marriage, the sociopolitical importance of female fidelity, or the status of the institution, but rather the love of her spouse (“Amor iugalis”) which forces Clytemnestra to reconsider her choice. For Seneca, Clytemnestra’s stumbling block and inner conflict is not whether or not she can/should kill her husband but whether or not she can/should kill /the man she still loves/, the man she loves AND fears, loves AND is furious at, loves /despite/ the tragedy and trauma more than ten years prior.

Even Clytemnestra’s speech condemning Agamemnon speaks to the fact that she still loves him, which drives some of her anger as well as her regret. She speaks in her opening monologue about pain and fear tormenting her but also jealousy, the reason for which becomes clear soon (134). Though Clytemnestra immediately and initially brings up the sacrifice of Iphigenia, it is Agamemnon’s unfaithfulness which fills most of her speech and seems to upset her the most. Her description of Agamemnon’s infidelity is what leads her to lament her current status, order that she “arm herself” and prepare for both Agamemnon’s death and her own (190-200). Seneca here conflates love and death, emphasizing the destructive nature of both, the fury and jealousy of Clytemnestra who sees her own death entwined with Agamemnon’s, utilizing the language of elegy and implying Clytemnestra’s emotions are complex and conflicting but based as much in love, and the jealousy and anger she feels as a result as in the “fear and pain” she mentions alongside jealousy in her opening line.

While Clytemnestra feels for Agamemnon, his responses to her implies a remaining fondness for her as well, and his familiarity with her gestures of affection suggests such gestures were not uncommon between the two before the Trojan war. The chorus describes Clytemnestra as “joined to his side”, walking side by side in concord (780-81), where Aeschylus has Clytemnestra capture Agamemnon with her cloak/kill him in the bath, Seneca’s Clytemnestra tells Agamemnon to take off what he’s wearing and put on what she wove for him- she does not ask or tell but rather, command/order this be done, and Agamemnon does, in fact, obey (881). Seneca’s Agamemnon also doesn’t criticize Clytemnestra the way Aeschylus’s does; we get very little of Agamemnon’s actual speech or actions, but what we do get is telling. Agamemnon takes her hand, he obeys her Actual order, he immediately falls into step with her, into “concord”, hints at a certain familiarity between the two, a well-trod routine, a familiar role that seems to include open affection and vulnerability. Seneca tells us exactly what happens between Agamemnon and Clytemnestra in the palace and Clytemnestra at first is familiar and even tender. Agamemnon is trusting and vulnerable around Clytemnestra even after 10 years apart; the fact that he suspects nothing indicates this is the norm, not a deviation. She must be playing a specific role, one that reminds him of who she was before/when he left to such an extent that his suspicions are not raised, and who she was seems to have been Affectionate, their relationship seems to have been Loving and functional.

Clytemnestra’s question to herself, “Should I grieve or rejoice at my husband’s return?”, summarizes this internal conflict between her Love for Agamemnon and her pain/fear/trauma - even halfway through the play, while Clytemnestra seems to have made up her mind after the conversation with Aegisthus, she’s still torn - she wants to know, she’s desperate to know, if she can possibly end this any other way (579). The conversation in question suggests Clytemnestra is willing and able to endure much in order to keep Agamemnon alive and join herself to him again; Aegisthus asks her if she thinks she can ever have a faithful marriage with Agamemnon (244-5), and while her jealousy makes her angry, Clytemnestra says she’s willing to forgive Agamemnon’s infidelity since she slept with Aegisthus and needs forgiveness for the same crime (265-7). She knows the situation won’t be perfect but is willing to work to make something functional, and she speaks with a surprising certainty.

When Clytemnestra and Aegisthus argue about whether or not to kill Agamemnon, Clytemnestra insists she can still have a functional, happy marriage with Agamemnon, that many royal men have mistresses (and she should forgive that). She’s quite confident in what Aegisthus argues is an impossibility, a confidence that seems strange if she was trying to CREATE a new and never-existing closeness between the two. What’s more Likely is that Clytemnestra thinks or at least desperately wants to believe that the two of them, can just go back to how their marriage was before the Trojan war, which must have been more than just functional, and likely fulfilling and happy considering that she chooses him and the marriage over Aegisthus at first. She sees her infidelity with Aegisthus as a mistake and really loves Agamemnon; she tries to make herself believe what Agamemnon has with Cassandra is nothing more than what is permitted for many upper class men, especially conquering kings, because she wants to believe Agamemnon loves her just as much still as she does him. She speaks not of CREATING but Repairing, there WAS happy, romantic love, a love she still feels, there was SOMETHING she wants to and thinks she CAN return to. Clytemnestra can see a future with Agamemnon that is more appealing than a future with Aegisthus, the best explanation being that she is much more fond of Agamemnon than Aegisthus, she remembers the love she had with him and she wants to return to it.

Seneca’s Clytemnestra IS furious about Iphigenia but that isn’t what drives her to kill Agamemnon: Aegisthus when he wants to convince Clytemnestra to kill Agamemnon does not ONCE mention Iphigenia but instead focuses on Agamemnon’s infidelity. He speaks to Clytemnestra’s fear that Agamemnon replaces her, that he loves Cassandra in place of her and what she desperately wants to return can no longer exist. Aegisthus creates an elaborate vision of Agamemnon finding out about Clytemnestra’s infidelity and punishing her, of her servants turning against her, of Clytemnestra being sent home as soon as Agamemnon finds a reason to divorce her. It is Aegisthus’s underlying argument that Agamemnon doesn’t need or love Clytemnestra, that he replaced her with Cassandra, that tips Clytemnestra’s scales, so to speak.

Agamemnon’s behavior doesn’t necessarily suggest this but Clytemnestra is volatile and conflicted, torn between love and fear, and Aegisthus takes advantage of this, emotionally manipulating Clytemnestra who’s clearly traumatized, grieving, and acting out of some calcified, magnified pain and terrible fear. Indeed, at the end of the play Clytemnestra rather heartbreakingly accuses Cassandra of “stealing” Agamemnon from her, indicating the extent to which Cassandra’s presence incited her violence in contrast to other factors, and how Clytemnestra feared more than anything the idea that she couldn’t rebuild her marriage with Agamemnon, that he no longer cared about her. In Seneca’s rendition, one gets the idea that without Cassandra’s presence, Clytemnestra wouldn’t have gone through with it.

By emphasizing Clytemnestra’s emotional turmoil, her residual love of Agamemnon versus her pain, fear, trauma etc., Seneca shows us that there were, perhaps, other possibilities, that Clytemnestra was on the verge of not making her fateful decision. Clytemnestra’s love for Agamemnon forms the seed of the tragedy’s central conflict; her love initially drove her away from slaughter, but Aegisthus’s manipulation of this emotion, his ability to utilize her trauma and fear to convince her that her love is one-sided and her marriage is irreparable forces her hand. Seneca’s rendition of this tragedy hinges on the decision of both Aegisthus AND Clytemnestra to choose between the choices they were each trying to make in their opening monologues: Aegisthus to be the person Thyestes birthed him to be, to fulfill the terrible purpose that defines his existence, and Clytemnestra to kill the husband she loved for 15- odd years and STILL has feelings for despite the trauma and tumult of the aulis debacle. It is a pivotal moment of characterization for both of them which is devoid of meaning if Clytemnestra DOESN’T love Agamemnon. Clytemnestra’s choice is more significant and a better parallel to Aegisthus’s, if her decision to kill Agamemnon utterly destroys the person she was and the life she had before, if, in one stroke, she annihilates her former self & all possibility of a stable future.

#tagamemnon #the oresteia #the house that dripped blood #alpha in aulis

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idreamtofmanderleyagain · 5 years

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How Not To Write Villains (and Antiheroes) In Romantic Fics

I’ve been in Villain fandom for a while and honestly, there are some common issues I’ve seen crop up in our romantic fanfic that I really feel need addressing. I’m interested in the methods with which we write these kinds of stories, and I find myself frustrated with the repeated destructive tropes that show up in the fic I try to read.

So here’s a few of those tropes, why I think they happen, and some alternative suggestions to help writers avoid falling into these traps. I’m using gendered language here because these are the particular iterations I see most regularly (and some of them are specific to systemic sexism and dysfunction in M/F relationships), however some of these thoughts could of course apply across the board.

Mr. Grimdark

This guy shows up when the author’s main concern/anxiety centers around “keeping him in character.” There’s a lot of villain fangirls out there who are really worried that they’re going to get criticized for writing their villain too “OOC” and nice. They want to capture a tone of “realism,” and so they inadvertently write him monstrous beyond what canon even depicts him as. This guy is an abuser despite the villain canonically showing no domestically abusive tendencies. He doesn’t believe in love, and/or thinks emotions are a weakness even if there’s no evidence of this in canon. He’s willing to subject the heroine through endless cruelties, often above and beyond what he’s done in canon.

Mr. Grimdark is a mistake when it comes to writing a villain in romantic contexts. It’s not worth sacrificing the stability of the romantic narrative just because you are afraid to push the boundaries of canon characterization. I’d rather read a slightly OOC villain who treats the heroine with respect (even when he hates her or is working against her), than one who’s constantly subjecting her to extreme cruelty (and who’s OOCness is pretty much just skewed in the opposite direction TBH).

Sometimes Mr. Grimdark also shows up when the author is particularly fond of heavy angst and drama, or wants to involve more character drama in her fic, or is trying to write a Slow Burn or Enemies to Lovers plot. It’s important to learn how to identify the difference between constructive drama and destructive drama. Ask yourself why the dramatic tension is happening. Interrogate your methods. Is it aiding the character’s overall arcs? How will it effect their relationship? How does it help me build towards my narrative goals? How do I believably bring my characters back together after this moment of conflict? Does this moment reflect real-world domestic abuse dynamics? What does this moment say about who these characters are?

A lot of this lies in identifying how to depict villainy without crossing over into mirroring real-world domestic abuse, stalking, etc.

How and why does your villain wield power?

You can write a bad guy in love without writing an extremely toxic situation. I promise, you don’t have to sacrifice romance in the name of “realism.”

The Womanizer

The Womanizer crops up when the author wants to make her villain extra sexy. She’s trying to depict a seductive rogue who’s main goal is to get the heroine into bed, but who inadvertently falls in love with her virtuousness and integrity.

What the author actually depicts is a man who’s reduced the heroine into a sexual object, another faceless conquest. Instead of being sexy, he’s a cheesy, gross Pickup Artist incapable of humanizing the heroine, let alone respecting her. The plot of the fic is suddenly transformed into his journey in discovering that women are human beings (or at least ONE woman is).

Honestly? This guy is lame. He’s a misogynist. He’s also OOC as hell in most cases. There are so many more ways of depicting a man who is seductive, and all of them center around him treating the heroine as the subject of his desire rather than the object. It’s so much more interesting and complex to see him like her and want her for who she is while dealing with the cognitive dissonance of being on the opposite side of a proverbial battlefield, and vice versa.

The Predator

The Predator is a horrifying mix of both of the above problems. He’s an abusive, cruel, misogynistic monster who’s out to torment AND/OR bed the heroine. This man has absolutely no business being one half of a romantic narrative.

Again, it’s entirely possible to write an in-character villain who has dark aspects to him, as well as a seductive nature, all in a narrative that involves drama and conflict, WITHOUT writing an unbearable monster.

If your villain is incapable of even empathizing with your heroine for the majority of your fic, you aren’t writing a romance.

The Nice Doppleganger

The opposite of the above problems, this guy is perfectly nice and un-challenging. He and the Heroine easily fall in love and have a relationship of no conflict whatsoever. He’s OOC and doesn’t really resemble the personality depicted in canon. The author may not realize this, or she may have done it intentionally.

This honestly isn’t a real problem if you’re doing it intentionally. By all means, play in your sandbox the way you feel like.

However, he’s potentially a limp noodle when it comes to generating the drama, mystery, and gravitas of his canon counterpart (which are most likely the most exciting aspects of his character, which inspired you to write about him in the first place). If your interested in exploring the journey a villain takes from his canon behavior towards a romantic relationship, with this trope you’ve basically cut out the juicy parts and skipped to the ending.

For you, that might be just what you want, and that’s fine.

But if it isn’t, allow the material to challenge you. Don’t be afraid to explore conflict in your story that is generated between the main characters, just try to understand where the boundaries between “conflict” and “toxicity” lie.

Ask yourself why the villain intrigued you in the first place. What aspects of his personality can you utilize to keep his edge (without tipping him over into abuse)? How could those appealing dark and spooky traits translate into more (safely) seductive traits? What conflicts would arise between him and the heroine, and how can I explore them without making it destructively toxic? How can I soften him without declawing him completely?

The key here is creative, thoughtful transformation rather than erasure. Start translating certain traits into constructive and/or romantic versions of what they once were instead of erasing them completely. Don’t change him. Change his mind.

The Emotional Knife Fight (or Heroines Can Be Abusive Too)

This one crops up when the author isn’t really sure how to depict a strong female character, or the author is writing an Enemies to Lovers plotline. She wants to show a heroine who stands up to a powerful man, who can hold her own against the villain and eventually change him/his mind. She wants to show the journey from lack of understanding to mutual understanding and empathy.

What instead happens is the heroine uses abusive language to talk down to the villain. She doesn’t truly respect his humanity because to her, his villainy eliminates his humanity. The heroine has a status of goodness and purity, and because the villain does not, toxic harm towards him is fair game.

This manifests in examples like the heroine utilizing the villain’s vulnerable emotions - which she is strangely aware of and yet unmoved by! - to cause him emotional harm. Is he the villain because he’s been betrayed? Abused? Neglected? She’ll minimize his experiences and assert that his actions cancel out the relevancy of his pain.

In return, the villain might start using the same weapons against the heroine. Alternatively, one of the above versions of the villain started this toxic dynamic.

Because the heroine can wield psychological weapons against the villain, the authoress believes she’s balanced the power between the heroine and the villain. And with the weapons these characters have used to slice into the raw parts of each other, the authoress thinks she’s depicted characters who are capable of seeing each other.

In theory, I can see why the authoress fell into this trap. She wants to write a battle of wits that results in deeper understandings. But that cannot manifest healthily if the heroine and villain are utilizing each other’s vulnerabilities to harm.

Instead, I’d like to see the battle be about mutual respect. Because the characters can see the vulnerabilities of each-other, they might use their own similar experiences to argue philosophy. They might express solidarity and use that solidarity to call each other out when they think they’re in the wrong, or to try and pull the other to their side.

Explore a meeting of the minds like it’s an elaborate chess game, rather than a knife fight in a back alley.

#Villains #Romance #Villain Romances #writing #storytelling

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polly-chan · 6 years

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Shinji & Gendo: their dynamic

The point from we start this analisys is that Gendo Ikari is the Shinji Ikari's negative foil.

To appreciate this theory we should consider all the Gendo's characterization from different works. The Gendo of the series, the Gendo of the movie and the Gendo of the manga are not totally the same even if they are similar. Btw I am going to present a Gendo who (under my personal pov) is common to all the works.

The series (which is always my start point) presents a mostly passive Gendo and focused his character around his denial for society and for his own son. The only person who cares about is his dead wife and this feeling is so intense to totally torment Gendo, ended up to make him very worthy of blame. Gendo is characterally introverted and the trauma caused by the death of Yui has dug into him a deep abyss that has led to total disregard for people and events, so that he (in the representation of Anno) rarely shows emotional reactions.

In particular in the dialogue at the South Pole of episode 12 Gendo reveals an inclination of mind towards a world purified of sin or a world without that sense of "dirt" that he feels in the interdependence. Even the white gloves - that no other Evangelion character wears - are a symbol of this way of being of Gendo, as they bring to mind the image of a person that not to get dirty in physical and psychological contact with the others, try to protect himself, to shield himself. Closed in this bubble of introversion, unconcern, emotional detachment and repulsion for interdependence Gendo appears cold in his expressions, gestures and words, but above all he behaves in an austere way both with the son and at work, obsessed by a single goal: to rejoin Yui.

The core of Gendo's psychology is the deep fear for that impalpable distance which separates people from one another. Gendo reveals that he is a fragile-minded man who can not open his own heart and who has difficulty in relating to others, but he is not as shy as his son Shinji. He has an inherent fear of coming into contact with others, of feeling at the mercy of the world, of loving and being loved because of the pain that can be felt in hurting and above all in being wounded. For this reason Gendo, already before knowing Yui, is closed in himself and, as it is clear in episode 21, this leads him to be unpleasant in the eyes of the next so that he eventually became accustomed to being detested. One of the differences between Gendo and his son is that Gendo, besides his passive attitude, has even a more active and violent way to act, who explains in his way to prevaricate other people. This point is very important and interesting, because it's exactly the way Shiji acts when he fall into his abyss of desperation and so it's a probable evolution of the character if he acts wrong.

In front of his son Gendo is not able to accept that the love that Yui felt for him had been broken down in the mother's love for Shinji. With the arrival of Shinji Gendo lost his privileged relationship with Yui in terms of “maternal benevolence”, and for this he felt jealous of his own son. With his wife death Gendo lost everything and then he is again thrown into the abyss and this led him to close and to try desperately to find that light one more time, light that Yui gave him with the love and that he had loved too. This is why Gendo expresses his desire to create a god in which to unite human souls, so that nothing can be lost and there is no more pain.

So the problems which concern Gendo’s figure seem to be the same which concern his son, because even Shinji has this affective complex and this desire to refuse relations because they hurt.

The series and the movie (EoE) seem to give us different visions of Shinji's ending of his journey, but we can read them like two faces of the same moon: in both of them Shinji realizes his father errors (in a certain way) and he expresses the desire to go ahead with life no matter what. This satisfaction brings him to be a perfect human in the series (at least in my vision of the final) while he ends to refuse the project for the human's perfection in the movie, point which is presented in a more depressive way than in the series.

However Shinji overcomes his father's errors to become a better person, while Gendo is just what Shinji could become.

Gendo didn't break the veil of despair that distinguishes him and that's why the life made him so violent. The scene which mostly explained this fact is the Shinji's masturbation on the comatose body of Asuka: this scene means that Shinji, after he lost everything, finally gets the love he so desperately wanted from an armless Asuka, in such a cruel and violent way, to become a creepy monster. This is clearly an active way to gain what he wants, like his father does with other people.

#nge #nge metas #shinji ikari #gendo ikari #neon genesis evangelion #my metas

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ahumanintraining · 6 years

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voltron ask game

you all are going to be the death of me because without doubt this ask game is basically enabling me to go off on a rant about a lot of things that i love, but thank you @onemerryjester, @littlespacestars, and @darkslover for tagging me and encouraging me to participate!

How did you discover the show?

saw it on my twitter feed — well actually i saw art of Takashi Shirogane and i just... — well, okay here i go.... (again) ....

let me attempt to briefly summarize why i’m obsessed with the guy: as a proud Asian-American, i am often thoroughly sad to not see more Asians in popular media/cartoons — and even if they are, sometimes they’re just given an Asian-sounding name but no real definite character/identity that plays a part in a show, or they have a part in the show that is relatively insignificant or stereotypical.

again, i got into the show in the first place for Shiro. i wanted to see exactly how they would take Takashi’s character, and i hoped that this show would provide better than how other shows have. i am completely invested in him, and you know what was the cherry on top? he was a desirable character. people loved him and was writing meta about him and making posts about how beautiful and handsome and strong and amazing and brilliant and a great leader this guy was and i was just very happy to see not only an Asian character depicted and characterized well, but also actually appreciated by the fandom.

that’s what sold me. and that’s why i’m here. and.... ,,, here i am in this fandom...,,,, at this .... depth.... drowning,,,,,

Was it love at first sight or did it take you a while to get into the show?

yeah nah, i’m not the type to like these kinds of shows about mecha things and action-oriented stuff — but the episode Crystal Venom (s1e9) really sold it for me. i appreciated Allura and Shiro’s backstories being explored. it gave me some deeper substance to think about and material to engage with. if it weren’t for that episode, i’m not sure i would even be writing for voltron at all.

well also, even before i watched Voltron i was invested in Takashi Shirogane so i was at least going to hang in there until i saw it completely through so that i could know his character as best as i could gather.

Do you have a favorite episode?

yeah i alluded to it earlier. i’d say my first favorite episode was Crystal Venom but one of my favorite episodes over all was Blackout (s2e13) — specifically that series of seven second where the Black Lion reveals the bayard access point to Shiro and then the music and then the flipthroughs of all the memories and then the split screen and then the wings and i’m just..... that must be my favorite.

but of course, my memory is horrid and i haven’t rewatched any episodes since the beginning of time so i’m sure i’m forgetting an episode i super loved.

Do you have a favorite Paladin?

huh i really wonder.

Do you have a favorite Lion? (If it’s different from your fave Paladin, why?)

Black Lion! but i also think that perhaps Black is the only Lion that canon has sorta delved into a little more. Black is at the center of Zarkon vs. Shiro and in many ways represents the longstanding war that has become Voltron’s history — i feel like there’s so much to learn about this war, and i’m glad it’s become more complex and not just straight evil-vs.-good, and that is depicted through Black’s transfer of power from character to character. and at the end of the day, it’s not Voltron the universe fears, it’s the people behind it.

Do you have a favorite villain?

man oh man, i love all my villains. Zarkon, Haggar, and Lotor all make me very excited. since we got so many stories where we only know the protagonists’ motivations, i often hook onto anything i get. i mean i also love Sendak — and i’m excited for him to play a role in our future episodes given his expertise in psychological torment. there were also a few contenders for the Kral Zera that i absolutely wanted to hear more from too lol.

anyway, point is that i actually am incredibly intrigued by all the villains.

Do you have a favorite Alien Race (recurring and/or minor)?

well given i’m an Earthling, i have a bias towards humans. but i love the Olkari. they’re nerds and i love their nature-centered planet.

Favorite side/other character(s)

hmmmm Acxa.... Coran (is technically a side character lol based on how little screentime he gets)... idk I usually am invested in a lot of characters, haha. i love everyone mostly.

How/Why did you join the fandom?

i might reference the first question for this one. but the way i joined? well... one of my small successes in life was that i supposedly was one of the first authors that wrote shallura fic and the first to write shallura smut. so... i guess there’s that. i like to be lowkey about fandom though lol. my current occupation and commitment to fandom can’t exceed more than the writing.

well okay, that was very wrong for me to say because of shallurazine and allurazine but you know what i mean. i stay in my corners and just create content when i’m feeling it. sometimes i make friends, i guess lol. i’m a bit of a downer and don’t think i’m particularly pleasant to talk to so i keep to the people that already know my pessimistic snark, uncalled-for cynicism, and worse-than-a-sailor language. would rather let my writing represent me.

Care to share your favorite headcanon?

i have plenty of those, which comes out in the common themes of my writing, but a headcanon i really hang onto a lot is that Shiro grew up with a single mother. this one is probably personal and just me projecting, but i can’t see Shiro having the standard two-parents. there’s some mess there, but i headcanon he’s spent more time with a mother figure than any other parent.

i obsess a lot on it actually. i reference Shiro’s mother as often as relevant. and again, this is personal. i identify a lot with Shiro and assume he shares experiences that are relevant to the Asian-American experience. it’s why he’s important to me to write about. he’s more or less a vehicle to express many of these different kinds of Asian-American experiences.

What do you think is the best part of the show?

i appreciate the complexity of the villains! i’m hanging in there because i want to understand the history of Voltron and quintessance. i love backstories more than i love existing plots — they really can inform why a character is the way they are, and give insight to what they might do or the potential thereof. the Voltron team’s built up the potential well, and perhaps i appreciate that the most too.

Any hopes and wishes for future episodes/seasons?

hopes and wishes are things i don’t dwell on lol. i protect myself from optimism, ahahaha. i am looking forward to things though, like: Lotor’s interactions with Allura, another stage of Operation Kuron, some more about quintessance, some Black Lion tension, some internal Galra factions arising, all this existing stuff of potential that i hope isn’t thrown under the bus.

but idk my dude, i’ll ride with whatever i get. as long as there’s good character development and plot, i think i’ll be happy. as much angst as possible. anything that will make me want to write. anything that allows a space to obsess and wonder and imagine.

Do you think you’ll stick it out until the end of the show?

i mean... i’ve already come this far... *clenches fist*

anyway, that’s all folks! thanks for listening in to my rants!!! i hope this was entertaining at all or at least gave you a little more insight that you wanted to hear about me or whatever!

tagging @celestialfluff @meli-reads-all @roguepaladin and the entire rest of the world that wants to partake

#fun facts about ahumanintraining #ahahaha my rant about takashi never ends #i keep making new rants as if they all have different messages #but they're not #i basically say #I LOVE TAKASHI SHIROGANE #every day #for the same reasons #over and over again #no shame #voltron

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solivar · 6 years

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First Dance

Originally posted June 9, 2006

Title: First Dance Fandom: Kingdom Hearts Warnings: Rated SVL for Snark, Violence, and Larxene. Disclaimer: Kingdom Hearts and all characters related thereto are the product of SquareEnixDisneyBuenaPixar. Author's Notes: Second in a series of ficlets (or, in this case, verging on actual fic) about firsts. Contains the arguable foundation elements of something vaguely resembling a plot. Set pre-Chain of Memories. I'm not entirely pleased with the conversation at the end, and so this one might get reworked some yet.

Every member of the Organization had his or her own little hobbies, the things they did to make themselves feel more real in the tattered remnants of soul, of self, left to them. Xemnas disapproved mightily of wasting time and effort, but even he had to admit that the single-minded pursuit of their goal lacked entertainment value as far as reasons to continue existing went. For a group of people lacking one of the major fundaments of humanity and possessing assorted personality disorders of an antisocial type, an alternative outside obsession or two actually improved their functionality. Axel was privately convinced that, if he ever poked his unwanted nose in Xemnas’ personal quarters, he’d find dozens of spiral-bound notebooks full of as-yet-unused names and lugubrious poetry that not even Demyx would like. Marluxia, when he wasn’t busying himself with unacted-on plots against Xemnas, was engaged in a complex flirtation with his own demise by transparently lusting after Xemnas, all he was and all he possessed. Everyone politely pretended not to notice, then went to Luxord to lay bets on how long it would take for Saix to lose his patience and murder the Lord of Castle Oblivion in some deeply horrible manner. Saix, when he wasn’t acting as lapdog in chief, tended to lurk around Oblivion’s dungeon, not infrequently in the company of Larxene, with whom he shared a certain fascination for the physical and psychic mechanics of excruciation. Instead of working it out on each other, they constructed elaborate experiments starring whatever unfortunate they could get their hands on. For that reason, the entire Organization avoided the dungeon as a matter of self-preservation. Axel was startled to discover that Xaldin did needlepoint and Lexaeus painted and both were better at it than they had any right to be. He never even hinted that he knew, principally because he valued his existence much more than they did. Demyx had the best puppy eyes in World and used them freely on Xigbar, who seemed to consider himself Demyx’ bodyguard on his semi-frequent trips outside and was shamelessly used as a pack-bearer otherwise. They’d populated the conservatory with every species of instrument known to man at least twice. Demyx found the ones he liked, admired them for a few days or weeks, and then systematically smashed them to pieces. Except the damned sitar. Axel occasionally thought Demyx the most deeply damaged of them all, but kept those thoughts to himself. Vexen and Zexion pretended to an intellectual standard higher than anything the rest of the Organization aspired to attain. Axel knew with absolute certainty that Zexion was full of it on that issue – he’d had occasion to find himself crammed under the little freak’s bed and thereafter had great difficulty taking his coolly intellectually superior act seriously. Of them all, Vexen seemed to be exactly what he was: a heartless bastard who didn’t even miss it and who lived primarily inside his own mind. He made Axel’s skin want to crawl right off, which was no mean feat. For his own part, Axel was an inveterate people-watcher, even of people who only barely qualified for the designation under the loosest possible definition of terms. Larxene, the only other member of the Organization aware of at least part of his little diversion, disapproved heartily, though not for the reasons Axel had expected. “It’s just not healthy, Axel,” Asserted the woman whose favorite author had an entire unpleasant psychological designation named after him. “At best, it’s taking that method acting thing a little too far. At worst, it’s actively masochistic. Nothing you see, nothing you experience, when you’re out there among them will make you human again. They can’t give you your heart back. It’s pointless to try! Besides, if you want to hurt that badly…” She flicked her knives out, one by one, and the lazily contemplative look on her face suggested she was thinking about pinning him to the library wall and getting started right there. Axel couldn’t help smiling – Larxene was predictable in her viciousness but occasionally amusing nonetheless, and he only resisted patting her indulgently on the head because doing so would give her unobstructed access to his ribcage. “Two thoughts for you, my charming nymphet. One: self-mutilation becomes significantly less about the self if you involve another person in it. Two: give the good Marquis a rest and some of the weirder transhumanist philosophers a read if you want some interesting insights into the spiritually transformative nature of suffering. Have you seen XIII?” Odd how her eyes could light up and her pretty mouth scowl at the same time. “What do you want with that?” “I’m bearing a message, oh my maiden of pain, or else I wouldn’t abandon your pleasing company.” He ran a fingertip over the point of one of her still-drawn knives; she licked it clean, then dismissed it. “Orders from the Superior.” Larxene rolled her eyes. “At least he’s keeping it busy. Try the History and Geography stacks – it spends a lot of time down there.” “You’re my savior, Larxene. Next book is your choice.” He blew her a kiss and flickered away in a curl of darkness, because the library was large enough that he didn’t want to search it inch by inch on foot. He hadn’t, strictly speaking, been lying. He had been summoned into the presence of the other person who knew about his pastime and was there given a single command: “Find the Key of Destiny.” What he should do when that came to pass was not explicated and so Axel decided on the most obvious conclusion: surveillance. If XIII had outlived his usefulness – doubtful, given that he’d only been with them a fortnight at most – the order would have been completely unambiguous. And, since Xemnas rarely actually gave him permission to snoop and pry and spy on another member of the Organization, he decided to squeeze as much entertainment out of it as he could. For the first several hours, he prowled the World in methodical fashion. XIII had quarters and if he’d been in them, Axel would have been enormously disappointed. He wasn’t and neither was anything else and so the hunt continued. (The room was empty, containing not even a bed or a blanket or a single cast-off piece of clothing, only palely luminescent walls and floors and the hint of shadows lurking in the corners. Axel found himself wondering where XIII slept, if he slept, if he did anything at that could be construed as weak or human.) It became apparent, eventually, that XIII was not in the World That Never Was and hadn’t been for quite some time. He sampled the essence of XIII at his Proof – cold and bright as winter dawn, sharp as the edge of broken ice, so very strong, so totally alone – and opened a Door to Castle Oblivion, where he’d been recently enough that the taste of him still hung in the air, a taunting little curl of winter-cold and steel. Axel followed XIII’s essence-trail around the Castle and noted that its whimsical kinks and contortions seemed to be defined by an effort to avoid contact with anyone else. He even managed to evade Marluxia, a feat that Axel himself had never accomplished in Castle Oblivion and which ultimately consumed an annoying amount of time when he failed at it again. By the time he extracted himself from the Graceful Assassin’s flytraplike company, the trail was fading and Axel was becoming just suspicious enough to wonder if that might have been the point. Marluxia didn’t waste any of his barely-existent affection on the Organization’s newest member, whose mere existence seemed to be a point of not inconsiderable frustration to him. Axel didn’t think him suicidal enough that he’d actively try to do XIII harm, but absolutely knew him petty enough to torment the boy whenever possible. The Lord of Castle Oblivion excelled at that sort of thing. Similarly, Larxene nursed a grudge based on XIII’s publicly displayed ability to hit her about the head with impunity and without her express permission. And while she hadn’t technically been lying, neither was she telling a truth of recent vintage. The mustier reaches of the Castle’s enormous library were lit here and there with filaments of XIII’s winter-steel essence, but all the traces were days old. Axel commended Larxene to a number of unpleasant fates as he prowled the stacks, running his gloved fingertips across dusty spines, considering what to do next. If he’d wanted XIII dead, he’d just summon his Assassins and give them their orders. “Bring him back alive” was not, unfortunately, the sort of instruction they usually got and he seriously doubted their ability to comprehend such a command given their basic vocational design. Still… Axel found a suitably unoccupied corner and extended a call into the dark and nothingness that coiled where his heart had been. It manifested a moment later, sleek and sharp and sinuous. He extended a book on the geography of the Worlds that XIII had clearly handled more than once. “Find the one that’s not me. Lead me to him.” The Assassin slithered away with the eye-disturbing speed and boneless flexibility that characterized all its kind. Axel followed closely, watching as it caught at traces too faint for anything possessed of higher-order intelligence to notice, but well within the sense-range of things that hunted primarily by instinct. Some of those traces looked to be deliberately diminished, forced to dissolve at an unnaturally accelerated rate. Which was not, Axel reflected, a trick within Larxene’s power or, for that matter, XIII’s or he’d have used it before this. Within his own, yes. And Saix, for certain, and possibly one or two others – which gave him a theoretical list of suspects should he stumble over XIII’s fading remains but also raised more questions, the most important of which remained unanswerable. Where are you, XIII, and what are you getting yourself into? Keeping one eye on the Assassin, Axel flipped open the book. It was half excruciatingly dry geography text and half travel guide, the interesting bits being written in the margins in three different hands. He hoped that Larxene never saw that, or she’d start collecting writing samples. And then fingers. XIII’s essence-impression was strongest in the water Worlds section – he’d lingered, in particular, over a full-page picture of a long moon-silvered beach, a bucolic village clinging to the bluffs in the distance, a cluster of low, wooded islands visible just off shore… The Assassin raised the most headlike of its appendages and uttered the minor-key keen that meant it’d latched onto something solid. Axel dropped the book where Larxene was sure to find it and ran as the Assassin flowed away like a coursing-hound made of silvered darkness, down a staircase he had never seen before, out into a length of corridor that he had, and through one of the doors that lead to the outside. Beyond was a courtyard, bordered on two sides by glassed-in green house walls, in which a Door had been opened. Recently. Axel opened it, too, and found himself standing at the edge of a precipice – the vantage point from which the picture he’d just been looking at must have been taken. He was looking down on almost the same view. Almost. It was late afternoon, not moonrise, though the heavy overcast gave the beach and the sea almost the same silver sheen. In the distance, the bucolic village was in the process of collapsing in fire and ruin, he could hear the screams on the salt-and-Heartless-stench laden wind. A hundred feet below, the beach was scattered with bodies – human bodies – and swarming with Heartless in breeds and numbers too great to count in a single glance. They were forming a knot around a single focal point and in the middle of it stood XIII. He’d a Keyblade in each hand, one a blaze of wintry silver radiance, the other a flicker of purple shadow, and between them he destroying Heartless by the dozen without making any visible headway against the rising tide. Literally rising – they were coming out of the surf and out of the sand and boiling down out of the surrounding bluffs and Axel could feel them becoming aware of his own presence, as well. He called his weapons, eyeballed the range, and threw. One chakram scythed through the horde forming up at XIII’s back, carving a wide arc. The other skittered points down across the ground in front of him, striking sparks from the exposed rock of the bluffs, which exploded into a white hot sheet-wall at a silent flick of will. XIII threw a narrow-eyed glare over his shoulder as Axel came to rest at his back, a weapon in each hand, and parried it with a grin of his own. “Having fun?” XIII’s pretty bow of a mouth tightened. “What are you doing here?” “It’s not polite to answer a question with a question.” Axel threw, and a couple acres of prime oceanfront real estate became abruptly uninhabitable. “I was looking for you, actually.” XIII made a noise in his throat that might have been indicative of disbelief or just rank indifference and struck for himself, his dark Keyblade punching through the wall of fire Axel had yet to release, sending a half-dozen Heartless back to where they came from, and arcing smoothly back to his hand. “Really.” “Yes. I was afraid Marluxia might have fed you to a few of his more unpleasant plants. We can’t stay here.” Axel flicked a glance up at the precipice he’d leapt down from and XIII nodded in agreement. They moved almost as one, Axel bringing his chakrams around in a wide arc, catching the flames he’d already summoned and redirecting them, clearing a length of beach to maneuver in. XIII darted past to take advantage of it. “Watch your – “ Axel swallowed what he’d been about to say, as XIII automatically checked his back swing, a little smile curling his mouth. XIII was used to fighting with someone at his back. Good to know. Also good to watch, all vicious quicksilver grace and lethal precision, with one weapon in the air and the other in his hand at all times, his face set in a tight-lipped smile, eyes wide and bright and fierce. Completely real and totally alive. Axel laughed and called down more fire. They made the bluff in two quick stages, wiping it clean of anything but themselves, though XIII did most of the hands-on work. Axel could feel his bone-weariness, though he refused to show it, standing on guard with Keyblades at the ready as he opened the Door. Axel reached out and caught him by the shoulder. “Come on. This – “ The first Door opened into a place Axel had never actually been before – high buildings and a teeming mass of people that seemed thoroughly shocked when they appeared out of thin air in front of them. XIII staggered back a few paces and Axel held on tight to his hood, opened another Door – “ – is going to take – “ Deep woods, quiet and still, the air thick with the scent of loam and fresh rain. Another Door. “ – a few minutes – “ Darkness. Dark sea breaking on a dark shore, a cold blue moon hanging low over the water, never setting, never rising further. Another Door. “ – so they can’t follow us right back.” The World That Never Was. Axel let go of XIII’s hood before he decided to object with the edge of a Keyblade and stepped back out of easy striking range. XIII spun, his face lit by the radiance of his weapons, looking very much as though he were considering the odds of landing a hit at not-so-easy striking range as a gesture of his displeasure at being dragged across three Worlds by the scruff of his neck. Axel waited and, with an audible sigh, XIII let it go, dismissing his weapons and slumping against the nearest wall. It was interesting, Axel decided, watching how much that simple act changed him, altered the substance of him, reduced him somehow. Except the glare. The glare was still there, but even that was starting to lose its edges. “So. XIII.” He smiled, and watched XIII’s glare go from semi-hostile to somewhat wary. “You can call me Axel.” “Why,” XIII asked coolly, “would I want to do that?” “Because I’m no more a number than you are.” Axel turned, flicked a glance over his shoulder. “Coming?” “Roxas.” Softly. “My name is…Roxas.” “Roxas.” Axel let his tongue caress the syllables of that name as much as it liked. “Come on. You look like you could use a few hours of not killing anything.” Wary slid away and weary crept up underneath it. Roxas pushed himself away from the wall, submitted to a hand on his elbow to guide him and, a few minutes later, to a room with a real bed in it. He was asleep in seconds, curled up with his back reflexively toward the nearest wall, looking dangerous and half-feral and far too young, particularly in his sleep. Axel kept watch and thought about what he’d learned for certain today and what he could easily surmise and what more he had to uncover and how much fun that was going to be. Damned if he didn't have to write Xemnas a thank you note.

#vintage nagaina fic #khfic

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onceuponabedtime · 3 years

Text

For Shame

I thought that I was kind, though I hurt others

(in 2nd grade, when I tricked Josh Usher into drinking paintbrush rinse water; in 3rd grade when I punched Bobby Follett inadvertently while mocking him; in 5th grade, when I threw my flashlight at a summer campmate (the only black boy in camp) for being obnoxious after lights out, and then lying about it when threatened with physical confrontation, and then accepting my flashlight (and my cowardice) from him the following morning; in middle school, junior high, and high school, tormenting those I found to be weak and vulnerable to mockery for their various shortcomings).

I thought I was a good friend, though I betrayed trust and offered meager portions of my own

(in 2nd grade, when my friendship with Jesus Islava dissolved based on our racial divide; in 4th grade, as self-appointed “Food King,” taking one item of my choosing from each friend’s lunch; in 6th-12th grades, by engaging in an on-going battle for social status by means of ridiculing and thereby weakening many of the same people who called me “friend”; in 2006, with the betrayal of my longest, deepest childhood friendship by falling in love with his (ex)girlfriend; in college, where (until I met Shea) my time was characterized by a complete lack of genuine friendship resulting from my unwillingness to trust or be vulnerable).

I thought that I was self-possessed and morally rational, though I was easily overcome by impulse and fantasy

(in 9th grade, sniffing a pair of women’s underwear; in 10th grade, feeling deeply unsettled by untimely erections; in college, indulging in self-destructive fantasies that fed the voracious appetite of my despair; in Peace Corps, feeling so unconfident and alone that I essentially abandoned living my life, retreating into solitude (from others) and books (from myself).)

I thought that I held liberal and enlightened viewpoints, until they were challenged unexpectedly

(by Alyssa, who found my psychological/biological explanation of casual mutual sexual objectification to be profoundly sexist, oppressive, and morally self-unaware; by my conservative acquaintances and intellectual influences, who revealed the moral poverty of liberal conformity; and by friends and family, who reacted to my shift towards a constrained worldview during the time of Trump to be a shocking betrayal and mysterious moral failing.)

I thought that my spiritual experience and musings were a solid foundation on which to build a moral life, accepting the world as it appears to be, while comfortable in my disbelief of appearances. Now it seems this too must be examined. Has my spiritual life served as a shelter for closely guarded ignorance? To what extent do I use a vague, divine concept of infinity to hide from facing my propensity to Orwellian doublethink? I wonder how much of my morality, informed by spirituality, is a crutch for my self-esteem as I pursue more immediate objectives- wealth (of the $ variety), comfort and quality of life for my own family with essentially no real concern for the quality of life of some 7-odd billion others (not to mention the planet that supports us), and that manna of the ego which is social recognition, be it for success or intelligence or humor or “authenticity.”

I am relieved to find that, as I write this laundry list of failings, I write not in shame but merely of shame. These memories, which have long caused discomfort, are here just a re-telling for the sake of reflection. And, reflecting, it seems there are a few reasons why such memories would not trigger their usual, automatic feelings of shame. One is that they all represent failings of an acceptable proportion. Monstrous thoughts and feelings have had three decades of opportunity to manifest as monstrous action. To date, they have not. Embarrassing, yes, but not monstrous. These unbidden, troubling thoughts and the shame they brought once caused me deep feelings of isolation. Now, they make me empathize more with others. As John Lennon once said, “You’ve got to try to work your own head out, you know. And get non-violent. That’s pretty hard because we’re all violent inside. We’re all Hitler inside and we’re all Christ inside. And it’s just to try and work on the good bit of you.”

The second reason has to do with the implications of shameful acts on my “true character”: I know myself to be fundamentally good (or at least, not fundamentally bad). I know this because during my lowest point, I was granted a moment of self-reflection when self-deception was impossible (psychedelic drugs precluded the possibility). I asked myself, spontaneously and from a place of despair, whether I was a good person. The answer, clearly and unequivocally, was that I am a worthy and decent (and flawed) person. To have glimpsed through all layers of defense, ego, and artifice, and seen goodness during the height of my shame was an epiphany.

The third reason I can think of to understand the absence of shame while exploring my shame, is that I am grateful for it. Especially in hindsight. My shame implies a failing, yes, but also a deeper knowing of what values have been betrayed. Shame is the voice of my conscience, evidence of an underlying moral compass which points the way even when (especially when) I deviate from course.

I wonder what failings, and accordingly what shame, lay ahead for me? Marriage and fatherhood are two pillars of my life currently, both of which pose complex moral challenges and stress at regular intervals. I pray that whatever my failings are in these aspects of my life, they are manageable in proportion. I am reminded (and gently accept the mild shame of pride) of a poem I wrote, maybe a decade ago:

The boy rolls with the punches, amused and bemused by their feeble abuse. The young man rolls too, but now from the punches, become commonplace in his fresh cluttered life. And what of the man worn bare by fists? Let him be simple, let him be brave, and God grant him the serenity to walk calmly forward, towards his fate.

For wearing me bare, that I may be simple, brave, and serene, I dedicate this reflection for shame.

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