#EVERYBODY’S views are going to be different because we’re all individuals

[little-red-fool]

Seen a lot of stuff lately of people just berating others for having takes on characters that they don’t agree with or that don’t align with their take, like girl it’s a fictional character they’re not real, and especially if it’s a fictional character who’s backstory/lore is quite vague, let people believe what they want it’s not that serious, I’ve got certain views on characters that don’t line up with how other people see them and vice versa, that doesn’t mean anybody’s right or wrong, even if it’s less canon-compliant, literally who cares. It’s a silly little made up person with a silly little made up backstory and we’re just making silly little headcanons, like bro it’s not that deep, and I’m tired of people getting so pissy with others about “issues” like this.

[leonsliga]

You guys are getting too emotional about this. I adore Manu but he had a horrific injury that took him out for a year and most people doubted he'll ever play football again. The dfb is a professional environment, they can't wait on someone that long without any guarantee for return. Everybody has to fight for their spot and Manu understands it better than his fans it seems. He's probably just happy he made it back and cares less about not being the captain anymore than some of you guys do. And whatever beef he had with Nagelsmann is behind them. Again, it's an incredibly professional and combetetive environment, you need to put personal grievances aside if you want to be at the top and both Nagelsmann and Manu know it.

As for Leon, I feel sorry for him for not getting nominated. Obviously it mattered a lot to him. He did his best but in the end, it wasn't enough as germany is stacked in his position. It wasn't a personal slight against Leon. He's a fine player, but not the sole difference maker. You guys sound slightly unhinged for thinking that the dfb will regret it and burn to the ground without Leon there. Nagelsmann's job is to nominate the best and most cohesive overall team, not the best and most famous individual players. And if the dfb ever calls up Leon again, for example for the 2026 World Cup, then he will be there no questions asked and won't hold a grudge, because he understands the nature of the game and that representing your country in a major tournament is the highest honor for many players.

Hey there. I think we’re just trying to process the news in all honesty, so we’re all pretty emotional still (myself included). I think it’s all just really raw right now, ya know? Talking it out is how we work through it and feel a little less alone. I’m sure you know how toxic Twitter and Instagram can be; these aren’t necessarily conversations we can have on there, so this is how we work through it.

I don’t disagree about Manu’s injury. You’re absolutely right in pointing out that most, including his doctors, doubted he’d return to football. He had to essentially learn how to walk all over again, which is a huge deal. And naturally the dfb couldn’t wait forever for a new captain, I understand that.

Like you said, everyone has to fight for their spot; Manu did and now he’s back on the national team. He has always seen it that way, and I don’t think me or any of the anons I spoke to would deny that. Manu has said himself that he and Nagelsmann are on better terms with one another now, and of course it’s important for the team that they can be civil in spite of everything that happened. I do think it’s important to recognize the emotional weight of his injury though, along with the Tapalović drama, as it speaks to his resilience, his character, and his mentality. Football is an emotion as much as it is a profession, and I think it’s a mistake to overlook either one completely. One can’t exist without the other.

As far as Nagelsmann’s decisions go, I see it as a mix of personal and professional. He said himself that he values the input and insight of younger players, and his national team selections reflect those priorities—a personal choice. After all, don’t personal views influence tactics? How many times have we seen former-defenders-turned managers value more defensive teams and formations, to give an example? And naturally, it’s professional in the sense that in his role as coach, he’s the one making the calls. As Roy Keane would say, it’s his job 🤷‍♀️ Coaches determine their squads based on a mix of what they believe is best for the team and their own personal philosophy. That’s true for Nagelsmann as well.

I think you may have misunderstood what we were saying in terms of the dfb and the Leon situation though (at least partially). I can’t speak for all of my Leon anons, but I don’t think any of us believe the dfb will burn to the ground in Leon’s absence by any stretch 😂 at least as far as I’m concerned, we’re still working through things, and sometimes anger is part of that process—sometimes you say things that you don’t necessarily mean. Besides, bottling that anger up is always worse, believe me.

I do think it was a mistake to leave Leon behind, and I think for my own sanity, I need to believe that the national team will miss him in some way. I recognize Nagelsmann is just doing his job to the best of his ability, but I also think it’s important to point out when mistakes may have been made (i.e. with Leon and Mats). And yes, sometimes emotions come into that, but it’s hard to avoid emotion and bias entirely when your favorite players are concerned, especially in the immediate aftermath. Sometimes you just need to vent, and that’s ok.

The point I want to make here is that I recognize Leon is not the sole difference-maker in midfield. Like you said, the role of the coach is to nominate the best and most cohesive players at the time, and that’s precisely why it doesn’t make much sense to me that Leon and Mats weren’t nominated. This has nothing to do with their fame and the fact that they play for well-established Bundesliga clubs; it has to do with their talents and they can bring to the team both individually and in terms of morale. Leon’s versatility and ability to play in a variety of positions—to patch holes in both attack and defense, along with his strong connection with Jo and the other midfielders, demonstrate that he could be beneficial for any team. He’s flexible and he can adapt based on who he’s paired with.

You can make a similar argument with Mats; as one of the previous asks pointed out, Mats is currently one of the best in Europe in his position, and if Nagelsmann intends to bring the best players to the Euros, why exclude Mats? Additionally, Germany’s defense has come under fire a great deal in recent years, so I don’t think I’m mistaken in saying that having an established cb who gets on well with the team and can serve as a mentor for the youngsters would be fantastic for team cohesion and morale. I’d be interested to hear what you think as well though, along with your take on Nagelsmann’s coaching philosophy.

I don’t think Leon will hold a grudge either; I certainly would in his position, and I stated as much in a previous ask, but that’s just me 😂 he’s a professional, and I think once he’s processed everything, should the dfb come calling once again, he’ll be just as thrilled and honored to represent Germany as he always is. Regardless of how much or how little residual bitterness there may be, he’ll shake that off and pull on his dfb trikot with pride. As he said himself not too long ago, he views representing his country as a great privilege, and I don’t think that has changed for a moment. But that’s where emotion comes in, doesn’t it? Like you, I feel sorry that Leon didn’t qualify for the national team. He has a thick skin, and I believe he’ll recover from it. As you said, he knows the nature of the game and he learned it early on. But when you support a player, sometimes you grieve a bit more intensely than even they would, especially if you have a parasocial relationship with said player (as I do and am somewhat still ashamed to admit, but hey, we all have our coping mechanisms, right? 😵)

If this doesn’t make much sense/sounds too harsh; I’m sorry. I don’t mean it that way, I promise! In truth, as I said before, writing is how I process things, so this may be very stream-of-consciousness. That said, if you have further thoughts on the topic, I’d love to hear them, and that goes for anyone who reads this.

Also, I’m sorry this is so long! I got a little carried away, oopsies 😅

[douchebagbrainwaves]

OK, I'LL TELL YOU YOU ABOUT PAINTINGS

In fact there are more people doing angel-sized deals, because if you start measuring something you start optimizing it, and that was called playing. There's no better time to take risks proportionate to the size of the successes means we can afford to take at least 10x as much risk as Demo Day investors? They also wanted very much to get rich, but they all wait to invest. Instead of being positive, I'm going to list all the components of people's reluctance to start startups. We'd need trust metrics to prevent malicious or incompetent submissions, but if one has ever been published, I haven't seen it. If someone gets murdered by someone they met on Facebook, the press will treat the story as if it were part of the compensation is in the generation of buzz. The view of it will be hard even to get this past filters, because they weren't really saying anything. There are two ways to do that is not simply a constant fraction of the probability. You know you're going to have to go to school to study painting. Which route should you take?

It's the same with other high-beta vocations, like being an actor in that respect. A new competitor seemed to emerge out of the default grind and go live somewhere where opportunities are fewer in the conventional wisdom: Lisp will make you a better programmer, and yet glorifying their doomed efforts with the grandiose title of startup. Err to the user of a stove. Investors don't like trying to predict which startups will succeed. They're increasingly rare, and they're going to get tagged as spam. Well, probably; I mean it as a way to generate deal flow for series A rounds? But technological change was about to make it big. These conventions weren't designed to drag out the funding process, but that's why they're allowed to persist. And meanwhile the past year has seen a dramatic increase in a new type of investor: the super-angels merely fail to invest in do things a certain way, what difference does it make what the others do? So look for simple things that other people have the same drab clunkiness as anything else that comes out of a big company, you can do this at the level of individual customers.

Then the important question became not how to make something people want. It has been so thoroughly picked over that a startup will make it. But she never does. They're working on their own projects. We're in a business where we need to pick unpromising-looking outliers, and the rich have just had to do to get funded, or something they were told to do by management. Growth, again. It seems like everybody here is in the form of dividends. This concept is a simple one and yet seeing it as a Venn diagram that illustrates the situation perfectly. At the time, trying to convince him to invest in Airbnb. The spammers wouldn't say these things if they didn't sound exciting.

In almost everything, reward is proportionate to risk. There's no precise answer to that. Those paintings have since been cleaned, revealing brilliant colors; their imitators are of course still brown. The other thing founders hate most about fundraising is how long it takes. We'll accept you anyway. Even Einstein needed people to bounce ideas off. Master of all I surveyed. Your program is supposed to do x. What It Means Now we have a distinct word adult for people over a certain age.

[bluenpinkcastle]

Winter Village Diversity

I saw this post on social media today from Tips&Bricks: "#2236 DISCUSSION: Is the Winter Village theme too homogenous?

LEGO is for everybody, but are the Winter Village sets? Today we’re looking at where the priorities seem to be with this festive line,and discussing the diversity of the people, buildings, and landscapes. Do you feel represented by the seasonal LEGO sets? Do you think anything needs to change? Let us know!

Featured builder: Brick Knight on Flickr"

Probably 20 of the 27 comments on the post commented exactly what you would expect, with change is unnecessary, the theme was made around a northern hemisphere idealistic winter time, and how you can build your own winter village if you don't feel the LEGO Group is accurately representing your experiences. This was my comment: I think many people view the world only through their own lens as it applies to them and they often aren't willing to look at experiences outside their own, as they are comfortable with their own world and see no reason to change it. I also think a lot of conversations about diversity and inclusion often get derailed by impulsive, defensive comments made by those who misunderstand the purpose of dialogue. Conversation isn't supposed to be a shouting match where your first response is to ridicule someone who brings up a valid point about how it's possible the world doesn't revolve around just a certain type of people and their experiences, but rather encompasses a great many different people, cultures, and even winter-time norms.

From my own experience, yellow minifigure heads and hands are much cheaper and easier to find than non-yellow minifigure heads and hands, and the yellow minifigure heads come in a greater assortment of facial features and expressions, which significantly limits a builder's ability to create a story with meaning for them using non-yellow minifigure heads.

At the end of the day, LEGO is a versatile building toy, customizable to each individual's desires. So, yes, someone who would prefer a different family setting or different views on winter without religious overtones could go out and buy the accessories, minifigures, and parts more suited to their own experiences, but I think the question is at least partially along the lines of, "Why should under-represented populations have to spend extra money in order to have access to toys intended for everyone, especially since yellow minifigure parts are so much easier to acquire?"

I, for one, would very much appreciate a bit more diversity in the Winter Village theme. It might be interesting to see how other places around the world celebrate their winters, especially since winter in the southern hemisphere is actually June-August and not November-January. Perhaps the LEGO Group could start with adding some small sets, like Santa visiting Australia with a scene where the sleigh broke down and you see some of the reindeer surrounded by kangaroos.

There's a whole world out there. And if I get little tastes of that world and the other people in it because of my favorite building toy, then I think that's all the better :) (original post found here).

[dailyaudiobiblechronological]

6/7/2023 DAB Chronological Transcription

Proverbs 13-15

Welcome to Daily Audio Bible Chronological, I'm Jill. Today is the 7th day of June. Welcome everybody, it's so good to be here with you. And I say it everyday, or almost every day, but it truly is such a privilege and an honor to be here with you reading the word of God for us. And man the view from where I can see it- this beautiful community of beautiful messy people, community of any sort will be messy. I don't care who you are, you put people together and it gets messy. And it's just one of the most merciful beautiful sights I have ever seen. I love this community with my whole heart and I wish that we could have coffee together once a week. I would settle for once a week, but I'll settle for maybe 14 days a month. It gives me great peace knowing that you're there so I raised me my coffee to you today, my Wind Farm coffee. Cheers! Clink. Let's dive into the word. Today we're continuing in the reading of Proverbs. We had a bunch of little drop mic nuggets yesterday and we will continue on with those today reading Proverbs 13,14 and 15. And this week we're reading the New International version. Proverbs chapter 13.

Commentary:

Reading over these Proverbs the last couple of days makes me consider if these wouldn't have been more beneficial to me in high school than maybe algebra too. I'm just going to put it out there. It's a funny thing to read over certain scriptures and think wow that's in there, man that's really good. That's applicable for everyday living, yes and I do see perhaps looking at the Proverbs is reason why some people have referred to the Bible as an instruction manual. As you can hear as we're reading, the Proverbs are filled with really applicable practical ways of living. I'm so willing to be opposed but there's not a single thing that we just read that I thought that does not apply to today. We have moved so far beyond as a society to have to understand the context of this. This is your al dente pasta. You can throw this against the refrigerator and it's going to stick and I'm, I think I'm going to post. I'm going to post on social media on the DABC page for today and just see which ones are sticking out to you because I think the beauty of us being different individuals all here collectively is that we're all in different seasons of life. We are different people with the intentionality of that design by our creator so different scriptures are going to hit us differently one because we are all different and two because we're in different places. And so I love to hear a little bit of feedback from you today as a community, which ones are sticking out to you and if you feel comfortable enough to just state why, then please do. 

Prayer:

Father, we thank you once again for your word. Thank you that it sticks, it holds true. We are hearing these and we are shaking our head. I am hearing these and I am shaking my head seeing the practicality of every day living in my life and the good that I could benefit from each one of these nuggets of truth is protein packed power explosive nuggets of truth that we could feed on for a very long time. And I pray that we would hide your word in our hearts so that we might not sin against you. May we hear these and be changed and may we be doers of what we have heard. And we thank you for these truths that we can apply to our daily life and we thank you now Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Amen.

Announcements:

Daily Audio Bible, that's the website. Check it out if you have not. That's the app and it's free and you can download it if you have not. And if you've not checked out the store, you heard me mention coffee at the beginning of this. We do have a resource store, or a store of resources, that are intended to enhance your journey through the Bible. So if you are a lover of coffee, or tea, if you would just like a journal to keep in your bag, in your purse, in your car, I don't know wherever you journal- by your bed. There's a beautiful journal there. If you like pencils that glide like a butter check out our Black Wing pencils. Lots of different resources, the music and Brian and I's former life long long time ago we were musicians. So there are some music in the store, what we're still musicians, you just don't travel around the world sing while I sing. He didn't, he produced records, but he’s still producing records and that music is all available in the store. If you would like to check it out. If you would like to partner with us, thank you so much for your partnership. We could not do this without you. If you're giving by mail DAB PO Box 1996 Spring Hill Tennessee 37174 or if you're utilizing your mobile app hit the give icon up at the top right hand corner of that app and then lastly look for the gift icon on the website as well. If you need prayer, if you'd like to pray for someone that you've heard previously on the podcast, we are a community of prayer and there's several different ways for you to do so 800-583-2164 or once again utilizing your mobile device hit the red circle button up at the top right hand corner you have 2 minutes on the prayer line, hit submit at the end of your recording and then make sure you turn that little wheel over to chronological. It's a really important step to ensure that your prayer request or prayer gets to the right channel. Use our social media outlets for connection if you wouldn't mind. Daily Audio Bible is the official Facebook page. DAB Friends is a place of connection and then Daily Audio Bible Chronological is the official DABC page. And then DABC Friends for connection. And then if you're a lady, hey ladies I'd love to meet you over at Daily Audio Bible Women, or follow whatever is there for you to do and once you click that and connect you will get all of the upd that come through. There's nothing more that you have to do. You do not have to give blood, or jump through a hoop, handle a snake, or pay money. You just show up and click the little follow or like button and I'll connect with you there. Daily Audio Bible Women. That's going to do it for me today. We’ll continue the reading and Proverbs tomorrow. I look forward to it. Until then, I'm Jill. Love one another. 

Community Prayer Line:

God bless you Daily Audio Bible Chronological. This is Nicole Simone from Brooklyn New York- East New York West and most of my days. Today is May 30th I'm calling in regards to a beautiful young woman by the name of Emily from Columbus Ohio got baptized May 21st, glory to God. Your call came in May 29th but you're all in the book you know that St Luke 15 the lost sheep, the lost coin, the prodigal son, or can I say the prodigal sister of newness stop playing little oxymoronia. But nonetheless I am rejoicing with you- I'm right along in those scriptures from that chapter. Right next to you as your neighbor, as your sister in Christ. Love you. Love it. Also Mary Lynn from New Brunswick, Loving us to the World, you know I'm taking that- definitely going to tell where I got it from, but too good to keep to myself. Thank you for sharing that and also the insight about generational curses love to read, love to research, and that's what I'll do especially in God's truth. Loving you all. Please keep my niece in prayer- she talks a lot about death, not wanting to live. Her name is Mia Lynn. I appreciate your prayers- loving this community for sure. You guys have a good day. Happy Memorial Day for those who have blessed us with their service fighting for our country, fighting for us. Please have a rainbow day Ezekiel 12:8 and Revelations 4:1-3. Loving you all- thank you for loving me. God bless.

Good morning DAB chronological family this is Care Bear. Ok…Carrie from Lancaster Ohio. I am calling and good morning everybody technically it is the 31st of May, it's 2:00 a.m. so it's technically the 31st now and I was listening before I go to bed. I was up talking to my friend so I'm up a little late and I wanted to ask for prayer for my friends Brett and Joan Rainier I don't know if they listen to this- there's some friends from church I know they do. I would like you to pray because at 4:00 a.m. this morning on the 30th so technically yesterday morning their house was completely lost in a fire everyone was out and safe the only loss was all her belongings in the home is completely lost, but their spirits are high and strong and you would not know anything had happened because they're just full of the joy of the Lord and just so strong in their faith- insurance is covering everything and God's just providing. All the Bibles were untouched in the fire jewelry was saved, all their important papers from the firebox saved. Thank you. 

Hi DABC, this is Cynthia from Texas. I just wanted to call and thank all y'all for praying for my brother William and for my family- listening to your prayers and encouragements it brought tears to my eyes and my brother listened and my mom listened and I think other people in my family were listening and it we all feel loved. So I just really wanted to say thank you for that and for all y'all who are praying for us. And for all y'all who are praying for us and didn't call in we just really really appreciate your prayers I also wanted to call and pray for Chastity from Kansas. I pray Lord that you would comfort her and her sister and be there father. Lord I pray that they would really really sense your closeness to them and your fatherly heart towards them. I pray that you give Chastity wisdom about whether to go for a full-time job or part-time job. I pray that you provide exactly what she needs and help her to have the courage to do whatever it is that you're leading her to do and I pray that her husband would be able to get time with their child and that you would work out all of those things. I just pray a blessing on her and a blessing on her sister in Jesus name amen. 

Good morning DABC, today is June the 1st and first of all let me just thank and praise God for this day- for another beginning of a month for a new slate to start the day, we give you praise dear Lord for life, health and strength. Holy Spirit be our guide- guide our words, our thoughts and our deeds. Amen. Let me pray this morning for lady in Raleigh North Carolina- her name is Karen. I'm posting this on June 1st because she's having surgery on June 12th I want her to be encouraged I want her to know that there will be many lifting her up. I introduced her to this podcast and I'm very glad to see that she has been attentive and listening because this is a beautiful place to receive prayer and encouragement- she's having screws removed that were put in incorrectly and cause damage serious to her sciatica. I want to say, so please join with me praying for Karen in Raleigh- lift her up give her the positive prayers and thoughts to the Holy Spirit may cover her. We also pray for the doctors, the nurses and all that will be in the operating room because this time it is going to go well and she will be able to resume her life as it was before. We give you praise, dear Lord and we thank you. This is Glad to Be. Today I am glad to be here with all of you. Amen. 

[digitaltechtop]

Wapdam

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contact us

Mail me : digitaltechupdates@gmail.com

[pumpacti0n]

people get so mad and think it’s a gotcha when you can’t dream up some easy and simple universal alternative to voting that produces immediate results. they’ll also say its unrealistic and too risky to engage outside of electoralism while ignoring the inherent risks of voting.

what kills me is when they insinuate that people are just “lazy” but are themselves too lazy to even bother with imagining or implementing these alternatives, because it’s too much work, doesn’t produce automatic results, or they’re immobilized with their own cynicism and fear. the same arguments they love to lob at non-voters, with no self-awareness.

it’s wild too bc when your favorite capitalist flunky candidate doesn’t win, that’s not viewed as a waste of time or energy when it definitely is…you put all that effort into their campaign, and what do you have to show for it? Not shit.

there’s so many excuses... “You want everybody to be perfect!” No I don’t, I want a system that actually works and doesn’t favor a few individuals. “You just want to do nothing and let XYZ party take over!” No I don’t, I’m an anarchist. I think parties are obsolete. “You just gotta keep voting, things won’t change otherwise!” Incorrect. We have more things we can do outside of electoral politics and begging for representatives to have a conscious.

but all this never gets through. bc voting leads to more voting which leads to more voting, and they’ll even admit as much if pushed. there’s no actual desire to overturn or meaningfully challenge the class dictatorship and social hierarchies that undergird this form of “democracy”. they don’t want to hear about options that don’t legitimize the states control over our lives and bodies.

It’s a lot easier to give into the myth of there being some significant difference between these politicians except for branding and the corporate sponsors. they’re all rich and believe capitalism & nationalism is good. this never seems to change no matter how often we vote. but it doesn’t matter to the vote or die folks, because that isn’t their main issue.

what matters to them is that someone who acts the way they want them to and says all the nice buzzwords gets a turn on the stage. it doesn’t matter how violent their policies actually are, how often they go back on their promises during campaigns or whether they collude with the same boogeymen they love to use as an excuse to guilt trip people into voting.

“We can’t let XYZ win! Vote ZYX instead!" both of them had dinner together last night and had a lovely time.

The differences are insignificant in the wake of capital interests and preserving the state’s domination. voting won’t change their interests. they have multiple tactics that are used to ensure that their economic power doesn’t disseminate. true change, not impotent reforms, comes as a result of mass action and social pressure, not from shuffling a deck of cards with blue or red dollar signs on them in perpetuity and expecting different results.

people who vote aren’t just dumb dummies, of course, but they’re definitely severely lacking in imagination if they believe votings the only good solution to a growing fascist and reactionary system doing what its always been designed to do. we’re running out of time to waste on this broken record of excuse after excuse for a system that’s not ever represented the masses. we’re worn out and tired of being the scapegoat for fascists and the social problems killing us.

~

Voting Vs. Direct Action

Voting Is Not Harm Reduction

No More Presidents

Your Democracy Is A Sham

The Myth Of Human Nature

The Party’s Over: Beyond Politics, Beyond Democracy

[c-is-for-circinate]

As promised: let's talk Hades, and how acts of abuse can create toxic environments for everyone around them, and also how people react to those environments--and to them being disrupted.

(For reference, I have just kicked Theseus's ass for the first time, it was exactly as satisfying as it was intended to be, and then I got predictably slaughtered a couple of chambers into Styx. Spoilers for everything through that point, but please no spoilers in reblogs/comments for anything after that!) Also, TW for a whole lot of discussion of abuse, particularly verbal and emotional abuse, and abusive familyworkplace dynamics.

Okay, so. To start out with, Hades is an abusive parent. He engages in innumerable acts of verbal and emotional abuse towards his son, because yep, that's what you call it when a parent constantly berates and belittles their kid for every perceived failure, including the ones the parent themselves could have prevented. Sometimes especially the ones the parent could have prevented. Zagreus failed at his office clerk job because Hades refused to teach him how to do it and then blamed him for not already knowing how. Cerberus tore up the lounge because Hades, who was actually there, chose not to stop him. Hades created, possibly deliberately, and then took full advantage of every opportunity he saw to insult and demean his kid, and the clerk job flashback shows us that he was doing so even before the escape attempts started. I'm pretty sure we're all on the same page here, but: yep, that all constitutes abuse, even if they're gods. Even if Hades has reasons for Being Like That. Even if you think Zagreus seems okay and unharmed by it (which: repeatedly throwing yourself into a gauntlet of violence that inevitably ends in your own pain and death because you're so desperate to escape home, not actually an indicator of someone who's okay). We all good on that?

Cool. Because I'm not really here to talk about how Hades' abuse directly impacts Zagreus right now (although there's for sure an essay in that too). I'm thinking about how it impacts everybody else.

Hades isn't as obviously unreasonable with anybody else in his kingdom the way he is with his kid. When we see him lecture somebody else, it's usually for an actual failure to do their job: Hypnos for literally falling asleep on the job and not doing anything that was assigned to him, Megaera for letting us past her so many time, Orpheus for being a court bard who refuses to sing. His attitude is super confrontational and unpleasant, but on the surface it doesn't necessarily look as fucked-up. Thing is, though, whether any individual act of aggression towards an employee/family member is justified or not (I would generally argue 'not', because aggression towards employees/family members is, y'know, not justifiable)--it's not about the individual acts. It's about the entire cultivated atmosphere of toxicity and abuse.

One of the very first things Meg ever says to us is, "I'd rather be on your bad side than his." Up until that point, we've got no reason to believe Meg has any history whatsoever of fucking up at her job. In fact, we've got plenty of reason to believe she's good at it. She's fiercely proud of it, she's frequently Employee Of The [Time Period], and we've apparently never even met her sisters because she handles her shit herself. But she's still scared of Hades. Dusa, who is an anxious wreck at all times because oh god what if she gets fired what if she gets fired what if she gets fired, in spite of apparently being absolutely exemplary at her job, is scared of Hades. Every single shade in the Hall is clearly terrified of Hades, and it's not because of what he's done to each of them. It's what they've seen him do to other people.

Which is how toxic environments work, whether they're work environments or families. The Court of Hades is of course both, always, with the bonus hell layer of you can't quit even if you DIE. An abuser in authority doesn't have to target you in order to make you feel scared, cowed, and desperate to please them. Humans (and gods who are basically extra-powerful humans) are good at learning by example. The residents of the Court get the picture.

So this Court is a minefield--and everyone except Zagreus is very good at tiptoeing around mines. We see it in Meg, so desperate to do her job well. We see that Hypnos very clearly does not give a shit about anything, but he still makes sure to have a list of excuses ready if/when Hades ever confronts him about failure to do his job, just in case. We see it when Achilles tells us that my ability to help you is constrained by the authority your father gives me, or whatever the line was sixty runs ago when he couldn't let me into locked chambers. The system, such as it is, works, and if Nyx talks to Hades as little as possible, if Thanatos avoids the Court entirely, if Achilles treads very carefully and knows how to keep his head down--well that's just the system, right? That's just how things are.

Even Zagreus seems to have had a role in that system as the court fuckup. He's the kid who didn't have a real job or purpose. He could take the focus of Hades' generalized, day-to-day ire off of everyone else, without triggering some of the more direct and violent ire because the work he was doing didn't really matter (a LOT of Hades' rage-triggers seem to be related to job performance, which means that the people with real jobs are of course the most at risk). And he could do so "safely" (big emphasis on the quotation marks there) because he alone of the court is Hades' actual kid, who's Prince of the Underworld no matter how much he fucks up. If one of Nyx's other kids gets something really really wrong, she might be able to protect them from some consequences, but Hades doesn't have any layer of supposed parental affection holding him back from getting violently furious about it. Zagreus gets a nice bedroom and the abuse is limited to words rather than divine power, and Hades is a dick to everyone but he only occasionally condemns people to eternities of torture, and only for good reasons like refusing to sing when your job is to be court bard, so it's fine, everybody's fine, everything's totally fine, right?

Except it's not fine when everybody is so clearly worried about anything going wrong. And it's especially not fine for Zagreus, who's the person to finally say no. He's leaving, for his own sake, because he deserves better and he's finally convinced he can have it. And that turns the whole system into disarray.

I am endlessly fascinated by the ways this game portrays different characters reacting to this upheaval in their carefully-mapped minefield. It's different for authority figures and peers and servants, different based on how people are positioned in the house under Hades' rule, and it's so spot-on and I love it.

Nyx, for instance, is absolutely calm about the whole thing, because Nyx has power. Hades can't hurt her. Hades can't even really do much against her children, not when Hypnos and Thanatos are gods in their own right. Yes, Hades rules the kingdom, but Nyx owns the land, and she gives no shits about his rages. And it's interesting, too, to see the lines she doesn't draw. The deal seems to be that Hades doesn't fuck with her, and doesn't outright threaten her kids (because Hypnos is bad at his job, demonstrably so, and Hades hasn't ruined him yet), and she doesn't interfere with the way he treats the people around him. She gives Zagreus advice and support and the mirror, but she also doesn't take a direct stand against Hades. He can't hurt her, but he could make life...difficult. She's protected, her position in the minefield is more of a safe viewing platform than slogging through the middle of it, but the mines are still there.

And then we have Achilles, who is one of my favorite characters in the whole game because of how he reacts to this whole situation. Achilles, like Nyx, is so supportive. Every single time you see him he has something encouraging to say. He gives us his Codex, secretly finds us weapons, trained us for years, clearly wants us to succeed. And still he's limited, not necessarily out of fear for himself (though he has to be scared for himself, he knows what Hades does to people who anger him), but out of concern that if he gives Zagreus too much help in one way, he won't be able to provide help at all later. He's still so careful.

Achilles and Nyx are so fucking important to this story because they're the only authority figures Zagreus really has in his life except for his father, and they are so supportive. They're what keep this story from being a nightmare of psychological horror and depression. They can't stop the pressure from Hades and this life in his house being miserable for Zag, but they can give us hope, remind us that Zagreus is still loved. And they have such an incredibly important role when it comes to guilt, which is one of the biggest ways toxic systems maintain themselves.

If Zagreus leaves, what happens to everybody else? Who takes Hades' wrath then? Who becomes court scapegoat if he's not there, and also, who gets punished for his escape? These questions matter, and we see him worry about it! He asks Nyx and Achilles both, is it going to be okay that you're helping me, are you going to be alright, will my father hurt you for this? And they are both so firm about telling him no. No, I will be fine. See, here's the list of reasons about why I'm going to be fine, why my position in this minefield is secure. They make a point of telling us that it's fine, that we do not need to hold ourself back from getting out of this abusive situation for their sake. That is instrumental in Zagreus's ability to keep making these escape attempts without feeling too guilty and worried and selfish to go on. (Another thing that's actually really important in setting up that dynamic--we see that Hades cares about Cerberus, even if he's using him as a pawn against us, and Cerberus seems to be the one figure in court who Hades doesn't get mad at. The dog isn't at risk, and that is really essential in keeping the story from getting too grim.) These people who we care about refuse to let themselves be held hostage to secure our good behavior.

It's also really useful for raising the stakes later in the story--we see Hades arguing with Nyx once or twice, and we see Zagreus feeling guilty about it, but it's also a sign that we're making enough progress to piss him off. After I finally made it out of Elysium on my last run, I came home to find him furious with Achilles in a way that actually makes me nervous, because Achilles does not have nearly as much security in his position as he says he does. (Achilles is such a good teacher/authority figure, because he knows goddamn well what Hades could do to him, and still refuses to let fear for his own situation stop him from helping the abused kid under his care escape his. And no, not everybody has the capacity to do that, but it matters so much coming from the guy who helped raise us. It matters so much. I do not even have the words for how much.)

It's also no mistake that many of the people we find supporting us along our journey are either the people with the most power in their immediate environment, or the least. Sisyphus helps us because what more could they do to me than this? Orpheus is a little wild around the eyes and somewhat disconnected from reality, and he wishes us the best because someone should get what they want and also he no longer gives a single fuck what happens to him. Eurydice has her own cozy little corner of Asphodel, as safe from Hades' rage as anybody anywhere in his realm because she's tucked in such an out-of-the-way middle place she's outside his notice. Dusa is so scared of everything anyway that, crush aside, she isn't any more threatened by us escaping than she is just by her everyday life here. Charon is unfathomable and unstoppable; Skelly literally exists to be a punching bag, and yet he also seems basically immune to pain, no matter what we do to him. There's no threat from Hades there.

So the people most at risk when I flip the world on its ear are the ones who have so much standing that they have something to lose, but not enough to protect them from losing it. Which of course brings us to Than and Meg--who are, of course, the two people who also seem by far the most upset by my attempts to leave.

As authority figures, Nyx and Achilles are constantly reinforcing the message that it's Hades' fault, not ours, if they or anybody else get caught in the crossfire of his wrath. I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing, and it's not my guilt to bear. From Megaera and Thanatos, we get the opposite message--I am fucking with things, I am hurting people, and I need to stop. Zagreus isn't just abandoning them, as a friend or brother or lover or all of the above they're Greek gods who even knows. He's betraying them. They were in this together, as friends or lovers or whatever, but now Zagreus is sending earthquakes through the minefield they both still have to stand in. He is about to capsize this boat in the middle of a thunderstorm, he is fucking with the system, and they're the ones who are going to get most hurt.

I'm so curious how this is going to work for Than, who out of everyone we meet holds the closest role to Nyx's in terms of being sheltered from Hades' wrath. He's the guy who gets to leave, after all, even though he always has to come back. I've seen the least of him out of anybody so far because it took forever for me to get to Elysium, but two things really stand out and I'm so interested to see where they go. One, he really genuinely does care about Zagreus. He wants us safe, he wants us unhurt, the accessory he gives us only grants its bonus if we clear a room without taking injury, he keeps showing up to help. And two, he wants us to give up and go back and recognize how good we had it. Which is SO fucking interesting, considering how miserable Zagreus so clearly was, and how legitimate his reasons for being miserable were.

It makes me wonder so much about Than's standards for comparison. Does he know something we don't about what's waiting for us on the surface, something that might theoretically hurt Zagreus even more than staying down below? Has his life, which apparently allows him more freedom than anybody else in the Court, sucked horribly in ways we haven't seen, and that's why he spends so little time there in the first place? Either of those things is plausible, both of those things are plausible, and yet either one leads to this sense of patronizing, because he refuses to simply tell us. If something terrible is awaiting us, don't give us vague warnings, tell us what it is and let us decide for ourself! If you're fucking jealous because we might get out entirely and you're still stuck coming back here, say so. If you're worried about your mom--and he does bring her up, how could Zagreus turn his back on her like that, does seem to worry for her--then let's have an actual conversation about how many times she has insisted I do this and also how much I love her.

And, right, it's clear that a lot of Thanatos being upset is simply, you were going to leave me without even saying goodbye, you want to leave ME, which is understandable! But, like, he is demonstrably the one god who gets to visit the surface. He's the one person we actually COULD expect to see again. And he is absolutely also upset because there's an Order To Things, and we're fucking it up. We used to be his careless callow reckless friend who could talk back to Hades and get away with it, and now we're not, and everything is changing and we might leave him altogether, and we might leave him alone in that court without us, and he hates it.

Is it a short-sighted, selfish fear on his part? Yes, absolutely. Even if he's not scared of Hades on his own behalf, he is still frightened by what happens if we upset this system--and maybe it's the sanctity of a much bigger system than the Underworld that he's worried about! Maybe it's the whole divine and cosmic order. Whatever system he wants so badly to protect is enabling the abuse Zagreus has been dealing with for however-long he's been alive. Whatever system he wants so badly to protect OUGHT to be overturned, or at least shaken up. But this is what toxic systems DO. They convince the people within them that they have to be maintained, that a broken system that hurts the people within it is far better than no system at all, that changing the world is too scary and too dangerous. And Thanatos wants his whatever-Zagreus-is-to-him to be there, because he loves him and also because that's how the world works, and those things are all tangled up in one another, and that is how relationships are in a messed-up family like this so therefore I love it.

And Meg. Meg, the best for last, my dear, beautiful, furious, bitter, scared angry tired girl. I adore her. I am absolutely never going to date her, because the thing Zagreus needs most in his life hurts her, more directly than anybody else in the story, and that sucks, and it's not Zag's fault but they still shouldn't be together. Meg has taken more injury from this situation than anyone, quite literally as well as metaphorically, and it's not her fault any more than it's ours, but oh boy it has made her lash out and it's awful and it's perfect.

Meg's place in the Court of Hades is unique because she's not dead, not a mortal, not anything other than a god--but she's also not family. Nyx is not her mother. She's very much part of this system, she and her two sisters belong to Hades-the-realm and therefore also Hades-the-king, she can't leave, but she also doesn't have that protection of Nyx watching out for her in the same way. She's not royalty. She and her sisters (if you ask Hesiod instead of Virgil, which seems to be the interpretation the game's going with here) sprang from the blood of maimed Uranus at the same time as Aphrodite, but fuck knows Aphrodite isn't claiming them as siblings. And she can't be fired, exactly, but she sure can be demoted, and she sure can be made miserable in her job. Meg is vulnerable in a way very few people in Hades' employ are. She's a lot harder to do away with than any one random shade, but she's also a lot harder to miss blending in with a crowd.

What's more, she's the one person in this whole mess who is specifically tasked with stopping us from leaving. Hypnos isn't ordered to put us to sleep and keep us in our room. Thanatos can't be compelled or punished if he doesn't hunt us down. Achilles isn't told to lock us up and keep the keys. Meg is the one stationed at the doorway to Tartarus to keep us in. Meg is the one who gets in trouble when we leave. Meg (who Hades knows goddamn well Zagreus cares for, or cared for, who he absolutely knows we used to date) is the one who has to fight us again and again and again. And she's the one who keeps dying.

Again, it's this incredibly fucked-up guilt/hostage situation deliberately designed to keep people from fleeing abusive situations. Meg's insistence on fighting us now puts Zagreus in the position of having to hurt her himself again and again. Now suddenly we're the ones sticking a sword in our ex-girlfriend. Now suddenly someone can point to our desire to leave, to flee, to escape, and say, how selfish. How cruel. How terrible of us to want to go, when we're even willing to hurt the people we love to do it.

Except, right: Hades is the one who demands Meg stand there and stop us. Hades is the one who puts both of us in that position. Meg is also in an abusive situation, and she's willing to hurt us to protect herself. "I'd rather be on your bad side than your father's." It's easy to blame her at the start for being complicit, for being a tool of our father's abuse, for being on his side. It gets harder as the game goes on. I've killed her so many times. There's no way for her to beat me. She knows at this point that she can't beat me. She still fights, every single time, still throws herself upon that spike, not because she thinks she has any chance of stopping me but because she is so damn scared of what will happen if she doesn't try.

In fact, Meg's the one person we have actually seen face consequences for our actions so far, instead of just facing the threat of them. Her sisters are here. Her sisters, who she clearly does not want here, who are wild and violent and who she does not want in her life or anywhere near her, let alone near the job she takes so much pride in. She gets to deal with them now. (Hades doesn't have to deal with them. They're still not allowed in his court. But Meg does.) She gets stabbed, and bludgeoned, and shot, and lightning-struck, and poisoned, and every other thing we do to her. Thanatos doesn't. Nyx and Achilles and Hypnos don't. Bug Meg? Oh yes. Meg pays.

And yes, ok, she is complicit in this system. Everybody is complicit in this system. Zagreus who's trying to escape on his own behalf instead of overthrowing his father for the sake of everyone he'd otherwise be leaving behind is complicit in this system. Pointing fingers and pulling strings of who's more at fault? and who do we blame for this? is exactly how this sort of system perpetuates itself. Your sister always talked back at the dinner table and put everyone in an even worse and more violent mood. Your coworker refuses to work more than forty hours a week so now you have to take overtime to pick up their slack. You're enabling your dad by asking your sister to shut up, you're enabling your employer by working as hard as you do so you don't get fired, everyone's at fault, everyone's to blame, everyone is--

It's not everyone. It's Hades. It's Hades at the root of everything, and probably something big and institutional and fucked-up even beyond him. But even if everyone down in this Underworld does have to be trapped here forever, even if he's trapped here forever, Hades is neither challenging the system that put them here nor trying to make that fate better for anyone else stuck with him. He's just created an entire kingdom of backbiting and misery and people who can either go along with his whims or suffer the consequences.

At this point in the game, Meg is so fucking tired. Every time we run into her in the lounge, hunched over a table, the venom in her voice when she tells us "Do I look like I have anything to say to you?" is so bitter and so exhausted. There was a system, and she knew her place in the system, and it was a system divinely ordered by the gods themselves, and sure it was cruel but that's the literal will of the universe as far as she knows it. She had a role, and her role was vengeance and punishment and violence against those who'd committed the most egregious of sins in life, and there was a point to it, she was the divine deterrent to convince people not to do those things, and that was just, and that was right. The GODS THEMSELVES said so. How do you argue with that? You can't possibly argue with that!

And Zagreus is arguing with that. In trying to leave, he's questioning the unbreakable rule that nothing in the Underworld ever gets to leave it. In disobeying his father to do so, he's questioning the unbreakable rule that what the gods say is LAW. He's breaking everything.

And of course he's not trying to do any of that. He's not trying to destabilize the system at all. He's just trying to get himself out of it, to a place where he feels like he belongs and maybe a parent who's slightly nicer to him than this one. But toxic systems like this one break when the people within them have access to another option. When the kids find a way to actually leave, and not answer the phone, and not come home for holidays, and not deal with it any more. When the employees have the economic freedom to quit. When opportunities granted by education, money, social support, etc etc etc, show up and give people a choice. Even if the option is only ever for Zagreus--he's demonstrating that an option exists. Which is, of course, the one thing the system cannot ever allow.

I really like this game.

[no-reply95]

The Power Of Framing: John and Paul

Over the last few days I've been posting some quotes of interest that I'd bookmarked from Mark Lewisohn's Tune In book.

Tune In's reputation preceded it, every Beatles podcast I listened to mentioned it, Lewisohn's name either came up in conversation or the man himself would turn up for an interview so it got to the point that Tune In was so ubiquitous that I had to read the book and form an opinion for myself.

There are a lot of opinions I have on Tune In, both good and bad, but I'm not going touch on all of that here, at least not in this post.

The aspect of Lewisohn's narrative style that I want to get into is the way he frames the "bad" behaviour displayed by John and Paul.

There are two quotes from the book that I want to analyse, I'll start with John first:

John

“George was second only to John in the swallowing of Prellies and knew better than most the sum effect of taking too many for too long, how the combination of pills plus booze plus several sleepless days caused hallucinations and extreme conduct. He’d describe one occasion when he, Paul and Pete were lying in their bunk beds, trying to sleep, only for John to barge into the room in a wild state. ‘One night John came in and some chick was in bed with Paul and he cut all her clothes up with a pair of scissors, and was stabbing the wardrobe. Everybody was lying in bed thinking, “Oh fuck, I hope he doesn’t kill me.” [He was] a frothing mad person - he knew how to have “fun”.

Handling John was something his friends were well used to doing. If he didn’t murder them in their beds there was no greater buddy. They might fear for their lives but they loved him still. No way would they walk out and join another group. John was just John, and Paul and George’s hero-worship stayed fully intact.”

The above passage comes from the stint in Hamburg directly after Stu's death. John had always been the one to take the most prellies, as Lewisohn highlights, but he relays the fact that John was even more messed up than before subsequent to Stu's sudden death. I've highlighted a couple of lines from the extract to highlight how John's behaviour is framed by Lewisohn:

"the combination of pills plus booze plus several sleepless days caused hallucinations and extreme conduct"

From the outset Lewisohn is careful to outline the fact that John is under the influence of both bills and booze as well as being exhausted as a result of "several sleepless days" which has the sum impact of causing hallucinations and "extreme conduct" so in short, Lewisohn suggests that this behaviour from John is atypical and directly related to the substances and conditions he is under, the subsequent behaviour he displays, therefore, isn't a function of his innate personality, just a reaction to the chemicals and circumstances he currently finds himself beholden to.

"he, Paul and Pete were lying in their bunk beds, trying to sleep"

In terms of those impacted by John's actions, it isn't one individual that Lewisohn highlights, it's George, Paul and Pete, which to me suggests that anyone could have been on the receiving end of John's outburst. When describing the bedroom scene prior to John's entrance, Lewisohn describes the three guys as "trying to sleep", so a picture is painted of a quiet room where there's a lack of activity as everyone is tired and, either on their way to or currently, asleep.

"some chick was in bed with Paul and he cut all her clothes up with a pair of scissors, and was stabbing the wardrobe"

Firstly, the story that George relates (source Anthology, 2000), unlike the scene Lewisohn sets, makes it clear that there was only one target for John's outburst, not George, Pete or even Paul but an unnamed woman whose only crime was to be "in bed with Paul" so, far from trying to get to sleep, Paul was in fact having sex with this woman when John barged into the room. John, in the altered state that he's in, zeroes in on this woman by cutting up her clothes and stabbing at the wardrobe - it's a scary scene that George describes, so what is the lasting impression Lewisohn leaves us with?

"John was just John, and Paul and George’s hero-worship stayed fully intact.”

Despite the shock of the scene that George describes, ultimately John's behaviour has no lasting impact on his relationships with the others or on the future of the band. Lewisohn confirms that "Paul and George's hero-worship stayed fully intact" so not only was their view of John unharmed but they continued to hold him in the highest possible esteem, but how did they rationalise the unpredictability of John's behaviour? Well, "John was just John" the others knew that this was how John got from time to time, this was nothing new for them and their hero worship continued on, the core relationships were unaffected and the operation of the band was unscathed because there was no way that George and Paul would ever leave and join another band so, all in all, no harm done.

Paul

“Brian, John and George went to the Beehive and John used a public box to call Paul, returning with the message ‘He says he’s not coming.’ Brian must have been apoplectic: they’d be unable to play the booking, letting down the university and their paying audience, embarrassing him, ruining their chance of a rebooking, and undoing his repair work to the Beatles’ old bad reputation. He went back to his office to phone Paul, but Paul refused to speak. Jim informed Brian that Paul said he wouldn’t be turning up, and that was that.

Recalling the night five years later, Paul told of how, having discovered Brian and the others hadn’t waited outside his house for him, he decided ‘Fuck them - if they can’t be arsed waiting for me, I can’t be arsed going after them. So I sat down and watched telly.’ Jim was unable to persuade Paul to change his mind. Paul said he’d felt he’d always been ‘the keen one’, so now he’d go sharp the other way and make no effort at all.

John saw a bigger picture, and it would be surprising if it wasn’t equally obvious, or made obvious to Brian and George. He likened Paul’s enduring snag with Brian to his other long-standing difficulty: ‘[Brian] and Paul didn’t get along - it was a bit like [Stuart and Paul] between the two of them’.”

The above passage comes from a time in the Beatles' career, not long after they've agreed to take Brian on as their manager. Brian's hard work on their behalf is starting to pay off and they're getting the opportunity to do loads of gigs for good money. Lewisohn discusses an instance where Brian goes to 20 Forthlin Road to pick up Paul for the night's gig only to be told that he's running late and won't be able to get going for a while. As with the first passage, I've highlighted a couple of lines to highlight how Paul's behaviour is framed:

"Brian must have been apoplectic"

In this passage Lewisohn provides his interpretation of how Brian must have felt to turn up at Paul's house only to find that he'd defied his instructions to be on time. Right from the beginning of this story we are able to empathise with Brian, as the principle victim of Paul's actions.

"letting down the university and their paying audience, embarrassing him, ruining their chance of a rebooking, and undoing his repair work to the Beatles’ old bad reputation."

For the avoidance of doubt, Lewisohn details the wide reaching impact of Paul's behaviour and the list of the aggrieved is long: the university, the paying audience and ultimately the band, all the hard work that they and Brian have put in has been undone by Paul's actions and the tarnished reputation of old is back with a vengeance.

"John saw a bigger picture, and it would be surprising if it wasn’t equally obvious, or made obvious to Brian and George. He likened Paul’s enduring snag with Brian to his other long-standing difficulty: ‘[Brian] and Paul didn’t get along - it was a bit like [Stuart and Paul] between the two of them’.”

If the reader was left wondering if this was a one-off incident or if Paul was just having a bad day that he'd taken out on Brian, Lewisohn suggests that this was, in fact, part of a pattern of behaviour as "John saw a bigger picture" and Lewisohn remarks that "it would be surprising" if both Brian and George weren't equally aware of the bigger forces at play here. To reinforce the lasting implications of Paul's actions, Lewisohn talks about "Paul's enduring snag with Brian" and then likens it to Paul's other "long-standing difficulty" with Stu, which triggers the readers' knowledge of Paul's jealousy of Stu's closeness to John and invites the reader to also view Paul's relationship with Brian through that lens. The extract is then capped up by a quote from John (source, McCabe and Schonfled interview, 1971), seemingly, supporting Lewisohn's premise by linking the clash between Paul and Brian to the clash, that Lewisohn has already expertly laid out in his book, between Paul and Stu.

How the framing differs

In both excerpts I've pulled Lewisohn uses direct quotes from the principles as well as his own interpretation, both to varying impacts.

In the first excerpt, Lewisohn provides a context for John's behaviour, it's not long after Stu has died, John is under the influence of a cocktail of drugs and substances, so we're led to feel sympathy for the state that he's in and to excuse the frightening behaviour that subsequently follows. Lewisohn doesn't offer any context for Paul's behaviour, we assume that Paul is sober and of sound mind so there's no confusion as to the fact that Paul is in full control of his actions so we're less likely to excuse or able to rationalise his actions.

The preamble that Lewisohn writes prior to George's recounting of John barging into the room, mentions George, Pete and Paul being present, so Lewisohn gives us the impression that John's later actions are almost random, maybe it could have been Pete, or George, it just happened to be the woman in bed with Paul who triggered John's anger. We never hear about how the woman reacted to having her clothes torn to shreds just because she slept with Paul, Lewisohn doesn't offer any thoughts to Paul's reaction to having John barging into the room and raising hell while he was sharing an intimate moment with this woman. In stark contract, we're told precisely by Lewisohn about how he presumes Brian felt in the face of Paul's obstinance and the seriousness isn't lost on the reader because every possible group of people negatively impacted is called out with evocative language (i.e. embarrassing, ruining).

Lewisohn frames the Hamburg scissors incident in such a way that it's clear that this was just a blip on the band's radar, the "hero-worship" of George and Paul is undimmed and we're given the framework, either by accident or design, by which to view any similar outburst in the future, it's just John, he may overdo it from time to time but his negative actions will never be consequential because the love and worship the others have for him will never be overcome "no way would they walk out and join another group" because no matter what John did, Paul and George would condone it, stick by him and love him regardless, so why shouldn't we?

However, Lewisohn couldn't be clearer that Paul's disobedience of Brian was part of a larger pattern of behaviour that was detrimental to the band, John could see the bigger picture, the same bigger picture that was "obvious" to Brian and George. Rather than startling an unnamed German woman (Lewisohn leaves this to our imagination) Lewisohn carefully plots out how Paul's actions directly hurt the band and the good work they'd been doing with Brian's help. Far from a moment of chemically induced madness, Paul's behaviour is familiar, we've seen it before with Stu, now we're seeing it with Brian - Lewisohn is clear that the seeds of the break up are sewn in Tune In so is he suggesting that the behaviour Paul displays here can also be traced to 1969?

Was this difference in framing called for?

These two stories outlining John and Paul's behaviour aren't identical, one takes place in Hamburg in the privacy of a bedroom and directly impacts two people while the other takes place in Liverpool and directly impacts several people as well as the band, it could be argued that on this basis these situations Lewisohn was justified in framing these two incidents differently.

However, there are several similarities that I can spot between the behaviour John and Paul displayed:

Pattern of behaviour - Lewisohn appears to be making the case that John's outburst was purely circumstantial while Paul's clash with Brian was part of a longstanding jealousy issue Paul had of anyone close to John. I do think that jealousy may have been a factor in the clashes Paul had initially with Brian (as referenced briefly in my Jealous Guys post) but in my opinion there are complexities that exist with Paul's relationship with Brian (namely around Paul's dislike of authority figures and need for control) that don't exist in Paul's relationship with Stu or, further down the road, Yoko as neither Stu nor Yoko were ever in a position of authority over Paul, John didn't bring them into the band as a manager or producer so I think the more natural comparison is Stu and Yoko not Stu and Brian. Further, despite Lewisohn's descriptions to the contrary and lack of relation to a bigger picture, John's behaviour here was in fact part of a pattern of behaviour, this woman wasn't the first and would not be the last of Paul's love interests that John reacted negatively to; Jane Asher, Peggy Lipton and ultimately Linda would feel the brunt of John's negative attention throughout the Beatles and post-Beatles years, this was an opportunity for Lewisohn to lay the groundwork of that but unfortunately he didn't want to connect these particular dots.

Impact on the band - Lewisohn is at pains to outline how George and Paul weren't going anywhere and there's no suggestion that John's actions would have any impact on the band or its future but, with the hindsight we have, is that correct? Even before Hamburg, John is abusing alcohol, largely to numb the effects of the sudden death of his mother, then in Hamburg, he's now abusing drugs too which negatively impacts his behaviour. For the rest of the Beatle years John's substance abuse issues appear again and again (Bob Wooler incident at Paul's 21st birthday, destruction of ego and fall in productivity due to prolonged LSD use, increase in the communication issues in the band in the wake of John and Yoko's heroin addiction). If Lewisohn was really interested in giving us the bigger picture, why didn't he outline the detrimental impact that John's substance abuse issues were having on the band, all it would have taken was for him to help the reader to understand how the woman and Paul felt as a result of John's actions but instead he uses this story as another opportunity to reinforce the idea that Paul and George hero-worshipped John.

Links to the break up: In many of his podcast interviews (Nothing Is Real and Fabcast spring to mind) Lewisohn is clear that, although the events of the break-up are years away from being committed to paper, the roots are laid out in Tune In. Paul's clash with Brian is framed in such a way to underscore how it fostered long difficulties between Paul and the band's manager in a way that was obvious to the others, does that sound familiar? If we sub Klein in for Brian, we've suddenly been transported to the summer of '69, I believe this is intentional and given the pretty uncharitable way Paul's actions are described (Paul should have been on time but leaving without him so that he had to take several buses instead only made everyone later and poured gasoline on an already open flame, neither Paul, Brian or the band won in this situation which I think all parties came to realise at a later stage) we're already being conditioned to believe that by the time it's 1969 this reckoning for Paul has been a long time coming and we should be glad that John, George, Ringo and Klein are finally stand up to Paul's immature power plays. However, can the break up also be traced to John's actions. As already discussed, the first excerpt outlines one of the first instances of John's substance abuse negatively impacting the band, in 1961 he's destroying a woman's clothing, cock-blocking Paul and terrorising everyone, in 1969 he's in a heroin haze with Yoko which hinders the already frayed communication links with the rest of the band and fosters an environment where, to John, only "JohnandYoko" matter ("I mean, I’m not going to lie, you know. I would sacrifice you all for her [Ono]", Get Back Sessions, 1969) to the extent that they're able to be wooed by Allen Klein who knows exactly what John and Yoko want so they allow him to give it to them, irrespective of what the rest of band need or want.

In the end, I have no problem with either story being included in Tune In, neither John or Paul were saints and in these instances we can see aspects of their personality that will feature, for better and for worse, over the course of the rest of the Beatles' career and, in John's case, his life. However, it is a shame that time and time again, when given the opportunity to frame John and Paul's actions Lewisohn opts to minimise John's misdeeds via his emphasis on Paul and George's love and patience for him, while for Paul almost no context is provided for his negative actions and Lewisohn subtlety begins to plot the lines that will eventually lead to the 3 to 1 split and the lawsuit that, not only breaks up the band but ensures they never reform again. The part Paul plays in the break-up does have roots in his personality, which we see glimpses of in his interactions with Brian in 1961 (he won't be pushed around and his reaction to being pushed is to fight back not fall in line) but we also see John's role start to take shape too (the unpredictability of his actions under the influence of substances and the chain of events that would occur as a result i.e. LSD - loss of ego - jealousy of Paul's output and his loss of dominance - openness to Klein who identifies John as the leader and reinforces his belief in his supremacy in the Lennon-McCartney partnership as well as filling John with misinformation like reminding him he wrote most of Eleanor Rigby). It's a problem that only Paul's negative reactions and missteps are framed in the wider context of the band because this skews the story and fails to accurately plot the role John also played in the band's demise. If Lewisohn's aim is to provide us with a balanced, definitive take on the band's story then, based on this evidence, he's falling short.

[simplysummers]

Breaking down Hunter and Omega’s relationship. Pt 2.

We’re back at it, here with the second post in this father-daughter-space-duo series! You guys responded to the first post better then I expected in all honesty! I didn’t think my insights were viewed as so important lmao. I don’t really think much introduction is needed here, the post itself is very self explanatory.

(Pasted paragraph: I would just like to add a disclaimer here. I am, in no way whatsoever, slating the other batchers for having differing relationships with Omega. I absolutely adore everything single one of the boys, and I think they all have wonderful and unique interrelations with her. Although I may point out these different approaches in comparison to Hunter’s, I am not stating these engages are wrong, just different is all!

I’m going to separate this into a little series- covering each episode in a separate post, which I’ll have tagged as the series progresses. Once I’ve tackled these two, as they’re my favourites, I’m going to move on to each individual Batcher and perhaps a few other dynamics such and Hunter and Crosshair, or Wrecker and Omega! Let me know what you guys would like to see!)

(Thank you to this weeks proof-reader: @treasureofmy-heart 💛)

Cut and Run: S1/E2

We kick off this episode with Hunter walking in on Echo inspecting Omega and Wrecker fast asleep on the floor. His face is very relaxed and he clearly finds it very sweet that her childlike curiosity has tired her out. His line, “ha, well this is a first,” while holding a strong gaze in Omega’s direction, suggests that she’s been exploring for quite some time, unleashing her endearing juvenile inquisition in the batchers presence. Hunter continues to claim she’s curious, using the same lighthearted tone he has always used in her regard, sparing the conversation in the medical wing on Kamino. This continues to confirm his gentle approach and concern towards the young clone.

When Echo confronts him over the situation at hand, it’s evident that Hunter hasn’t actually thought about what he’s going to do with Omega, yet by the look of quizzicality on his face. I personally took this as a sign that his initial thoughts were always “we’re going to lay low with her, look after her, while keeping everybody else safe.” It’s clear here that Echo has differing ideas that Hunter hadn’t even began to consider, and I think that’s what perplexes him in this moment. He needs to consider everybody.

The kid is up and awake! (Let the havoc commence aha.) Omega’s reaction to sunlight and dirt is definitely one of my favourite developmental moments of hers, it really sets in place that this little girl may have been an intelligent medical assistant, but she lacks experience, and still needs a guiding hand to help her through this new world she’s never endured before. I’d like to point out that it is, in fact, Hunter who stops to watch Omega’s reactions, and his FACE when she’s playing in the dirt! I’ve never seen such a parental smile on a man so stoic! I feel like I’m repeating myself a lot, but he is so endeared by her! She’s a breath of fresh air in Hunter’s very toxically routined life, and I love that for both of them. When they finally reach Cut’s land, Hunter is the one to pull her back, despite the fact she had to run between Echo and Tech to get to him. And upon Suu and Cut’s arrival, I actually didn’t realise that Omega creeps behind Hunter, most likely because these are strangers she doesn’t know and she feels she needs the protection. This confirms a clear bond between them has already began to flesh out.

There isn’t too much to say about the introduction and inhibitor chip discussion, as Omega spends a decent amount of that time exploring Cut and Suu’s house, but I will just say that it’s a nice touch that she ends up back at Hunter’s side when her part of the conversation is needed, she always seems physically drawn to him. Which brings me to my next point. Upon Shaeeah and Jek’s arrival, Omega once again creeps behind Hunter out of fear, only deciding to approach when formally addressed to do so. *Sigh*, and when Shaeeah pulls Omega out to play, and she halts to ask for Hunter’s permission, which is clearly given through a series of comforting smiles, is a plain indication of a trusted child-parental relationship. I must admit, Hunter’s face is pretty hilarious when everybody practically calls him out on his parental role- it’s just “why are you all staring at me..?” Because you’re acting like a dad, my dude.

Okay! Down to Cut and Hunter’s discussion. It’s a nice touch that Hunter is the first one outside to watch Omega play, swiftly followed by Cut, who, rightfully so, questions her existence. Although instead of explaining Omega’s origin (and by that I just mean that she’s a medical assistant clone from Kamino), he states that it doesn’t matter what the Kaminoans created her for, because she’s with them now, and to be with them she doesn’t need a purpose, she’s just a kid and should be allowed to act like one. Cut goes ahead to tease him over the ins and outs of raising a child, but to Hunter it was a no-brainer, Kamino wasn’t safe, so she was coming with them, as I’ve said previously, he saw NO negotiations. And as Cut says, “I (you) have to do what’s best for them.” This adds sentiment to the narrative of Hunter’s commanding role within the squad and Omega specifically.

So I’m shifting ahead slightly to the ball incident, and I have a LOT to say about this scene. First of all, it’s clearly evident that Hunter is the first to leave the house, along with Cut and Suu following closely behind. Associating this trio together is purposeful on the animators part in my opinion, they intentionally exclusively had Hunter leave with the other parents in the situation, isolating him specifically with that role in Omega’s life. When he finally reaches her, we see the protective hand come straight out to guard her against the Nexu, a typical trait they’ve established between them.

Now we move on to the confrontation. This is the first time Hunter raises his voice at Omega, and immediately she turns herself away from him, curling into her shoulder and making herself small. Omega is going through a lot of emotions right here, she’s afraid, anxious, and she’s being forced to deal with the fact that for the first time, Hunter is mad at her, for something she didn’t even intend to do wrong. Whereas from Hunter’s perspective, he hasn’t acknowledged she’s already in a bit of a state, and instead feels the need to immediately lecture her for her mistakes….although this lasts all but thirty seconds. Upon Cut’s attempts to diffuse the situation by having him pull Hunter away and reiterating that “she’s (Omegas) not a soldier”, his face immediately softens, he forgot for a moment, but now he realises and instantly the features are set in a regretful frown, he clearly feels awful and misrepresented. Hunter continues to observe Cut’s behaviour as he comforts Omega, who seems to take to the attention like a kicked puppy, lip trembling, eyes shaky, shoulders hunched, and I honestly think as Cut carries her away- is the exact moment Hunter realises he isn’t good enough for Omega. (I’ll further out on this in a moment)

I only want to briefly touch upon Omega’s gunners nest scene because I don’t think it has too much impact on her relationship with Hunter, however I would like to address the symbolism. I personally see the removal of her headpiece and the addition of her bangs as a new beginning, attaining the contrasting yellow light of Salucemi in comparison to Kamino, where she would’ve been given her jewel. Considering the episode’s outcome, Omega is no longer the tightly held, quivering little girl from Kamino, and instead she brings a slight unruliness to her aura, a little cheeky, definitely her brother’s sister. Still a sweetheart of course, but with a matter of confidence and boisterous behaviour to her. She seems to bounce out of her sadness quite easily here, as she seems suddenly awkward- yet curious- over Tech’s plan later on.

Furthering out into my previous point about Hunter believing Omega deserved much better in comparison to what he could provide: his conversation with Suu. “Protecting them is what we do.” The realisation on his face when she says this, it’s so…raw, something he’s taking time to comprehend. He heeds her words because he knows she and Cut are experienced in this field, they are better suited for Omega than he and the boys are, he believes he isn’t good enough for her, and this is projected when he insists ‘Mega leave with the family of four. Although Suu questions his sincerity, and he does indeed dodge the straightforward answer, this is what Hunter anticipates is best for Omega. He’s putting her needs above his happiness, no matter the heartache.

Moving along slightly, as Omega and Hunter spend a short period of time away from each other during the ship impoundment, I briefly wanted to touch upon the tone of Hunter’s voice when he learns Omega is on route to their position…by herself in a heavily armed spaceport. His eyes widen in a moment of fear, his voice is suddenly strained, he is struck with another raw emotion, something he frankly can’t obtain right now, and it’s let out in a minor threat towards his brothers- “if something happens to her-“ a clearly indication of worry.

This next point absolutely breaks my heart, the poor dears, both of them. Upon Omega’s arrival, Hunter is left to explain his forced proposal that she should leave Salucemi with Cut and Suu. As usual he completes his little ritual of taking her shoulders and crouching to her level, although this time he can’t quite look her in the eyes, a clear sign of regret and guilt, because he doesn’t want to give her away, he knows deep down she belongs with them, but he doesn’t believe he has what it takes to raise and protect her. The way Omega’s eyes crumple really catches me here, she’s being left, again… All this kid has ever known her entire life has either been abandonment, abuse or isolation, and she’s being passed on to strangers by the only people she’s ever been able to trust, and not only is it clearly breaking her heart, but she’s taking it personally, she thinks she’s at fault, much like Hunter does. Her line: “but, I want to stay with you.” compressed with the quivering tone and her precious accent really aides her desperation here, it conveys her in an adequate and very precise way.

Starting a brief new point to split these up slightly: I bring us to the continuous glances shared between them. Omega consistently looks over her shoulder to Hunter, she doesn’t want her eyes to leave him for one moment, she’s savouring his face, his details, for the very last time. And equally, Hunter is letting go of something he doesn’t want to leave behind, he likes the kid, to the point where his own self depreciation and doubt have been forced ahead in order to protect her, he can’t risk anything at this point. I’d also like to quickly mention how beautifully Omega’s eyes are animated, they intel so much, those precious little doe irises hold such story to them.

Moving on to a little jump cut enduring the batch’s escape and Omega’s return: Hunter’s tone of voice when addressing Wrecker is so pained, and his facials match it perfectly “she’s not com-“ it’s almost as though he’s biting back the urge to sprint headfirst into the gunfire if only to catch up to the little clone before it’s too late.

However, seeing as she’s managed to find her own way back that wouldn’t be exactly necessary. I think it’s a nice point that Hunter is the one to rush to Omega’s aide after she is grabbed by the trooper (flowing a brief flash of concern crossing his face), although Wrecker might’ve been closer, it’s a nice hint to their subtle closer bond. He, once again, crouches to her level although an unnecessary step in the situation, and I see this as another nod to their familiarised dependancy.

Finally, my last point for this episode, is their final conversation within the last few minutes. It’s faint, but the fact that the other batchers are all busying themselves in the cockpit, leaving Omega and Hunter to chat privately, is a very distinct use of separation. It also should be noted that Omega is the one to approach Hunter, this shows a decent level of not only maturity on her part, but trust between them as family, she trusts both him and herself enough to advance on a delicate situation, we even see her hesitate slightly, before pushing forward with a slip of confidence, and that takes a lot of gut from a little kid. She stands her ground, but with compliment. She very much reminds me of Hunter himself in the brig, assertive yet respectful. And speaking of Hunter, his face is just absolutely guilt-ridden when talking to her, because he too made the mistake of attempting to give her away, no matter how much good he thought it would do them both. While Omega is admitting she has a lot to learn in regards to safety and tactility, Hunter is suggesting he has a lot to learn about raising a child and providing the necessary care for her. It’s a brave moment for both of them, to be honest and open, and yet its received extremely well on both ends.

“If this is where you want to be…then this is where you’ll stay.” The admiration in his voice, the admiration in her eyes! They absolutely adore one another, and it melts my heart every time it’s displayed!

I hope you liked my analysis of Hunter and Omega’s relationship in episode two of The Bad Batch! Of course, I’d love to discuss these two with anybody who might be interested, so please feel free to drop me an ask or a DM, and if you’re captivated enough I’d totally recommend looking out for my future posts on the topic!

As always, much love to our ‘Megs and Hunter, thank you for reading! 💛

Part One: Aftermath

[orlandoblumhouseofguccimane]

I’m gonna say something that a lot of people are probably not gonna like, for different reasons, about the Loki series, but please here me out.

I wanna talk about the dialogue surrounding Loki and Sylvie’s relationship. I’m going to address the principles in which I, personally, think we should handle dialogues with opposing views and try to provide some general insight into how each side processes the dynamic. The most simple and brute way I can put it is, Don’t Tell People What To Do Or How To Feel. This dynamic that we see now is actually not as common as you think and that’s why we see such diverse opinions on Loki and Sylvie’s relationship to each other. Some people see their dynamic romantically, and some see it familial. Each has valid reasons for feeling that way, therein lies the conflict. And no, most people who see their dynamic as romantic are not pro-incest (🤢that’s disgusting). I want to break down the fundamental reasons why people reach the conclusions they do, that may make them reject other peoples opinions on this matter. I can’t speak for everybody but I’m trying to sum up the general opinions I’ve seen.

For the people who see the dynamic romantically and want to see that dynamic portrayed further, the thing that’s getting lost in translation is, it’s processed as a masturbatory natured act. A journey into self love if you will but with a physical manifestation. I feel that if you were to ask the people who want the romance plot, whether they would fuck their clone or not, they’d say yes because of the same reasoning. It’s masturbatory in nature and a representation of self love with a side a ego. On the emotional side, for Loki specifically, his grandeur and ego/vanity, whatever you want to call it, hides someone who is insecure, starved for positive reinforcement, vastly misunderstood, and feels that they have something to prove. Layers and layers of trauma and defense mechanisms. If this was in a romantic connotation, Loki possibly could find some catharsis in having an intimate relationship with someone who understands him truly, isn’t going to pressure him to change, and accept them for who they truly are, which is something Loki has never had, while also coming to truly love and appreciate all that he is, including his vulnerability by seeing those traits represented outside himself and being attracted to those same traits. A ‘I can’t judge your vulnerability so maybe I shouldn’t judge mine’ type perspective. I don’t think it’s hard for the other side to see how people could have an emotional investment in Loki x Sylvie as a couple if what I described the possible emotional catharsis could be, resonates with what they want in their own lives.

Everything I’ve said so far is valid. And can be a beautiful story telling moment if done right. Now onto the next perspective. The people who see their dynamic through a familial lens have a different interpretation of the nature of the Loki identity as individual people. Likening them to siblings and/or twins due to their “shared parentage” and “shared blood”. Also valid. But I must say that most of the conflict comes from this perspective as they are the ones to specifically ask of other people not to ship them. I can understand how someone seeing a dynamic that processes as obviously familial may make that person feel vastly uncomfortable by seeing people ship them. I can liken that feeling to how I felt when I found out people shipped Thorki (🤮). Some people find it the same but if we’re being fair, it is not. Thor and Loki are adopted siblings, no two ways around that. But given the not so black n white nature of the multiverse/variants we cannot unanimously say they (Loki & Sylvie) are definitively siblings. But if you choose (or naturally) see and value this familial dynamic, the story has the opportunity to be just as rich and fulfilling for both Loki and Sylvie in an incredibly beautiful way. I feel that on the emotional side of the people who advocate for the familial bond, the dynamic loki and sylvie share of chaotic energy, playful teasing, sobering discussions while also insulting/jabbing at one another, humor and hostility, reminds them of their own siblings or familial bonds. Which is an incredibly valuable thing that you cannot knock. But even if they don’t have that dynamic personally, my point still stands for that as a fantastic sibling dynamic. Or maybe even just as ‘best friends’.

But as far as trying to tell people their wrong and/or immoral for shipping them and telling people “Don’t” is unfair due to the complex nature of the Loki identity and variant logic that hasn’t fully been unfolded to us yet. Neither side is “right”, it’s simply interpretation. I’ve seen people fail to acknowledge or refuse to acknowledge that not everything has a ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ and different interpretations and opinions, even opposite ones, are equal and can coexist peacefully. Not everything is a grave moral issue. We need to keep the hostile energy for the shit that really matters not fictional shit.

On a personal note: Idgaf I just want lokius, thanks for letting me rant lmao

[honeypirate]

In Madness lies Sanity

Ushijima Wakatoshi x Reader - College AU

Based off the bit by Allan Watts. I read the transcript and I thought— Ushijima in love with his best friend listening to this talk about love in one of his classes and realizing that he needs to tell them the truth. Allan watts bit is in blue, the fic is in white.

Ushijima wasn’t one to dwell too long on trivial matters. He works through them and then forgets them. He focuses on what is important and what will bring him closer to his desired future. He isn’t one who is sucked into madness and drama, he has a strong level head and it’s something he takes pride in. So he’s trying to apply his ideas to how he handles his feelings for you, is it trivial? Is it important to tell you? He was struggling before he walked into class Monday morning and had his eyes opened by the video played during lecture.

- I’m going to talk to you about a particularly virulent and dangerous form of divine madness which is called falling in love. Which is, from a practical point of view, one of the most insane things you can do, or that can happen to you. Because in the eyes of a given woman or a given man, an opposite who go to the eyes of everybody else a perfectly plain and ordinary person can appear to be God or Goddess incarnate .... And this is an extraordinary disruptive experience a subversive experience in the conduct of human affairs

You were never a plain and ordinary person to him and he believes that’s where it got confused. He always has and always will see you as an extraordinary individual, regardless of things that may be seen as flaws or imperfections, regardless of your mistakes. You didn’t transform from one thing to the next, you were the same angel he knew, so when his heart flipped from friendship to love, he wasn’t paying attention.

- Because you never know when it will strike off for what reason. It’s something like contracting a very chronic disease once you get into it

If anyone asked Ushijima who his best friend is his first thought is you. His first thought thought is always you. His constant. His true best friend who is there for him through anything. He’ll open his mouth and say “y/n is my best friend” and when people would point out just how close they are he just shrugged, weren’t friends supposed to be close?

When he thinks back now, now that his feelings are obvious, he realizes that it was just a matter of time until he fell in love with you. He can pinpoint every moment along his life where love was obvious, every joke and hug that at the time he thought was just nice, when he loaned you his sweatshirt and then didn’t wash it because it smelled like you. When he would spend all his valuable and limited free time with you just because he liked the way you would smile as he walked you home. He thinks back to all of his dates in high school and college, of the dating app conversations he’s had or blind dates his friends had set up, and they all failed because of one simple reason- none of them were you.

- I would like to make some reflections on this particular form of madness, and to raise again a very disturbing question. And this disturbing question is as follows: Is it only when you are in love with another person that you see them as they really are? And in the ordinary way, when you are not in love with people you see only a fragmented version of that being.

He’s spent hours turned to days to weeks as he keeps thinking about whether or not he loves you or if he just thinks he could because of how close you already are. He’s lost track of time connecting different dots and making different lists and theories, replaying you’re entire friendship back in his head. He’s thought about the times he saw you drunk in college and puking on his shoes as he helps you home, when you decided you wanted to try and longboard and turfed it so bad your arm was gashed from wrist to elbow and he had carried you to the urgent care. all your reckless and crazy ideas you dragged him along with, you were almost as bad as tendou but he just wanted to take care of you as best as he could. He can feel the desire in his bones to make sure you were always taken care of, a feeling he knows he’ll have until he dies.

He thinks about when you had dated Oikawa and for the entire three months he had an ulcer but didn’t know why. He thought it was because of his pain relievers and quit them the week you broke up with him, not realizing the connection. When he’d get acid in his throat when you talked about dating someone else, he thought he just needed some milk. How blind he had been.

-Because when you are in love with someone you do indeed see them as a divine being. And suppose that’s what they are truly. And your eyes have by your beloved been opened in which case your beloved is serving to you as a kind of guru. An initiator. And that is why there is a form of sexual yoga, based on the idea that man and woman are to each other as mutual guru and student. And through a tremendous outpouring of psychic energy in total devotion and worship to this other person who is respectively the goddess of the god.

Being someone’s best and closest friend consisted of seeing their entirety and choosing to stay and love them anyway. To care for them. He can’t say for certain where he crossed over into love, into wanting to hug you and kiss you, wanting to be the only one you think about, but there’s not much he can do about it now and he doesn’t want to.

Ushijima sees you. He sees your good and your bad and everything in between, he sees you for you. Your ordinary mundane ways of life that he can’t help but want to share with you. Grocery shopping, library trips, post office runs, he wants them all to be done with you. He truly cannot imagine anyone else taking that spot in his heart.

Wanting to show you what he sees. What he knows to be true about you. he wants to scream from the rooftops how amazing you are and he’s not a very loud person. He sees the way you care for your friends selflessly and give and give all you have just so that others can be happy and you never complain. You do what you can when you can and still have time to take care of yourself he never knew how you did it so effortlessly, even when you’d vent to him you never regretted helping others.

He sees the way you lift up those around you. How you leave everyone a little more positive than before you talked to them. He doesn’t know how you do it. He’s convinced you’re an angel and he’s dying to show you just how amazing he knows you are. But he doesn’t want to ruin your friendship. He sees your entirety, your full book instead of just the cover, and he wouldn’t have it any other way. He wanted to give you this energy and receive it in turn and he’s never been so absolutely terrified.

-You realize by total fusion and contact with the other organism. You go down to the divine center in them and it bounces back and you discover your own or you could put it in this way which is another aspect of it that by falling in love and regarding falling in love not just as a sort of sexual infatuation, because it’s always more than that, isn’t it. I mean you can have a great sexual enjoyment with a pleasant friend, you know. But you may do so simply because he or she appeals to your aesthetic senses. But when you fall in love, it’s a much more serious involvement, you just cannot forget this person. You feel miserable when not in their presence, you’re always yearning, that’s get to see more of each other let’s get together that’s we’re completely entangled and then you see you’ve actually kind of out what I would call spiritual element has been introduced. And the Hindus were sensible enough to realize that this was a means of awakening, enlightenment, and therefore it was. Surrounded. With a sort of rigid religious ritual meditative art, with a form of sexual yoga that is designed to allow the feeling of mutual love to the extent of grand passion to have an extremely fitting fulfillment and expression.

Ushijima has always thought you were beautiful. Any human with eyes would think that. But your beauty and attraction went far deeper than that. Sure he’s had fleeting thoughts about how good you looked in a dress but he never let them linger. It felt wrong to think of you like that. But now that he’s an adult, a grown man and not a teenager anymore, he wants to kiss you, to hold your hand, maybe more but it wasn’t about that. It was about the intimacy, the closeness, the vulnerability.

Awakening. Enlightenment. Two words that before he didn’t really think about. But now he feels changed. Now that he’s realized how much he loves you has lifted his spirits, made him dream of the passion and happiness you could have together. He feels himself slipping into the joy of being in love with his best friend and imagining all the ways that love could grow. He feels only half of himself when he’s without you, always needing to see you or be around you, but you never made him feel clingy or bad. You met him in kind, telling him how much you wanted to be around him too.

At first he thought that this love was a trivial thing, something he could push from his mind, but after his weeks of thought he knows this is a lot more serious than he’s experienced before.

-Falling in love is a thing that strikes like lightning and is therefore extremely analogous to the mystical vision. We don’t know. No how really people attain the mystical vision. There is not as yet a very clear rationale as to how it happens because we do know that it is opened to many people who never did anything to look for it. And many people especially in adolescence have had the mystical vision all of a sudden without the slightest warning and with no previous interest in that kind of thing

He remembers what he was doing when it dawned on him that he was in love, when he felt the air leave his lungs and his eyes widen softly when he realized how nice it would be to kiss your temple and he couldn’t even finish the thought as the feeling ran from his head to his toes.

He was standing in your kitchen as you finished making your lunch for the following day and you made a joke that made yourself laugh, he didn’t think it was a very funny joke but you didn’t care. You giggled to yourself and he couldn’t help but wish he could witness that forever. It hit him like a brick that he would, in almost an instant, give his entirety to you. It terrified him when he imagines you and him ending like his parents. But behind the terror, the fear of divorce, was a softer and quieter emotion that he tried to focus on harder than the insanity of his anxiety. A softer, lovelier, hopeful feeling that he usually gets every time you smile at him. That was the feeling he was searching for, everything else was irrelevant for a few glorious moments.

-But as yet we are not clear as to why it comes about and if there is any method of attaining it the best one is probably to give up the whole idea of getting it…. you see it is completely unpredictable and so it is in that way like falling in love, capricious and therefore crazy. But if you should be so fortunate as to encounter either of these experiences. It seems to me to be a total denial of life to refuse it. And what we therefore have to. Admit in our society is so that we can contain this kind of madness.

He called Tendou that evening, telling him that he thinks he loves you, and Tendou about had a conniption. He was in Paris as his best friend fell in love for the first time. He talked him through it, told him how good it can be. That yes it was going to be work but the reward would be worth it. To not sell himself short out of his own fears. He deserves much more than that. Tendou’s last phrase is what sunk in deep “I know it was unpredictable, that it feels so fickle, but that’s what love is like buddy! You can’t deny it Ushi, you can’t run from it or hide from it, it will only hurt you in the long run”

- You see, in this way we can think about and structure the necessary stable social institution of family sometime without it being constantly threatened of foundering on the rocks of love. Now you see this then means that when when people marry they take any vows at all to each other instead of saying that they will always be true to each other in the sense of meaning I Will Always Love YoU, It means I will be true to you in the sense of I will always be truthful to. I will not pretend that my feelings towards you ARE other than what they are. Because I marry you, because I think that you are a reasonable person to live with and therefore I want you to be you I want you to be someone else I want to be a rubber stamp of me–how boring that would be?! an arrangement in which people set each other free and make an alliance to cooperate with each other in certain ways. Now if it should so occur that they are of immense sexual attraction to each other, so much the better? That this should not be a primary factor in entering into marriage. Admittedly, you must be to a certain extent attractive to each other otherwise there will be no progeny. But this is this is seems to me to be a sensible and reasonable view and just because it is sensible and reasonable it can accommodate what is not sensible and reasonable which is falling in love.

Ushijima is terrified. He’s terrified because the instant immediate joy he felt when he realized he loved you was almost overtaken by worries and stress. He loves you! Now what? He loves structure in his life and he values stability but he knows how rocky relationships can be and how they can ultimately end. He knows he won’t deny it, he won’t back away because of his fear but he needs a plan. A plan to take to you and talk about it, he knows you’ll have the right thing to say but he doesn’t even know what he’ll even say to you yet. He loves that you are so carefree and goofy, a breath of fresh air to his stoicism. You’ve even gently worked your way so deep into his soul that you feel like his other half, his complete other in every way, someone who wasn’t like him at all and how wonderful that is.

Once in his life he thought that arranged marriages were smarter, you did it out of logic and bloodline and family, nothing messy to deal with. But that structure, that boring empty rocky foundation that an arrangement might bring made his mouth taste bad, although at the time he convinced himself it was because it would be more like another job that takes up his time (away from you)

Sensible and reasonable was right up his alley, he thought how nice it would be to have a mini him but he couldn’t think about having that with anyone. He couldn’t think of another half of dna that baby would share that would make it worth it. Not until he saw a picture of you holding your nephew, now whenever he thinks of his babies they share your genes. He thinks of a chunky baby with your eyes and his hair color, a mix of your personality and he’d share volleyball with them. He’s never wanted kids as much as he does when he thinks about sharing them with you. And that’s the part that feels senseless, the love part, the part where you give your entirety to someone and trust that they will care and keep you, no matter what happens, save its not infidelity or other deal breakers of yours he already knows.

Ushijima’s theorizing and thoughts about you over the course of time went from being about understanding why he feels like this to imagining fake scenarios where he wants to take you abroad to travel together, to be together every day and share the hard times and good times, babies or not, marriage or not. He just wants to make you happy for the rest of his life no matter what and he can’t go on much longer without knowing he has a chance to do so

- Well now really when we go back then to falling in love. And say it’s crazy falling. You see we don’t say rising into love. There is in it the idea of the fall. And it is goes back as a matter of fact two extremely fundamental things that there is always a curious tie at some point between the fall and the creation. Taking this ghastly risk, is the condition of there being life. You see, for all life is an act of faith and an act of gamble

And so here he was. Sitting on a bench outside of your dorm, feet bouncing as he stared at the small patch of grass growing in between the sidewalk crack. It’s been a while since that class and he’s been thinking about this constantly.

He knows the risk, feels it in his heart every time he meets up separately with his parents since their divorce. He sees it every time he remembers his childhood and the messy separation. That mess he never wants to repeat. The fall that comes with this love is like that class video had told him, ghastly. He doesn’t know if this could ruin it all, if he takes the leap of faith and it all comes crumbling down years later he’ll be just another divorce. He doesn’t want that. He doesn’t want to end up like his parents and have a child who feels the same. But when he imagines his life he doesn’t think he could be haply without you by his side.

- the moment you take a step, you do so on an act of faith, because you don’t really know that the floors not going to give in to your feet. The moment you take a journey what an act of faith. The moment you enter into any kind of human undertaking in relationship what an act of faith you see you’ve given yourself up. But this is the most powerful thing that can be done surrender see and love is an act of surrender to another person. Total abandonment. I give myself to you. Take me, do anything you like with me. So, that’s quite mad because you see it’s letting things get out of control all sensible people keep things in control.

You know something is up the moment you open the doors and see his back on the bench. You were going to his place since he wasn’t answering his phone, you freeze at the doors at watch him for a moment as your anxiety spikes in your stomach. His shoulders are tense as he leans forward, elbows on his thighs and hands clasped together as he looks down between his bouncing feet. Before you really think about it, you follow the urge to comfort him, to talk to him and make sure it’s all okay. Your feet carry you quickly to his side and you sit down, pulling him into a side hug and wrapping your arms around him.

He gasps when you sit and as you’re wrapping your arms around him he furrows his brows and hugs you back. His heart racing As his fears take the back burner. He didn’t expect you to find him but he also didn’t know how long he’s been sitting here. He buries his face into your neck as he you hold each other in the cool spring evening.

“What’s wrong?” You ask as you hold him and feels his walls break down, his arms tighten around you

“I’m scared” he says quietly and his voice cracks

“Of what Toshi? You can always talk to me” Your fingers run through his hair softly and it soothes his nerves.

He pulls back and cups your cheeks, his eyebrows were still furrowed and his stoic expression was broken by his eyes that were swimming with worry and insecurity.

You saw everything in his eyes and you met him with your determination and steady unwavering love he finds in your eyes. God he feels so mad. So incredibly and undeniably mad and insane and like he isn’t in control. He needs to tell you. Needs the words to come out of his throat so he can calm his heart and soothe his ulcer. The anxiety felt like it was immeasurable and his breathing was starting to get faster until you placed your hands on his cheeks, smothering the bad feelings completely “it’s okay Wakatoshi, I’m right here”

Ushijima feels the exact moment his heart relaxes into the faith, the surrender into love trusting that the floor isn’t going to collapse under his feet, the moment he gives his whole self, body and soul, to the fall, and that moment was when your lips touched his for the first time. Then he let go, the madness left his body and was replaced with a calm assurance that yes, yes this was it, what he’s been waiting for, what he’s been yearning for.

- for all the cost and wisdom what is really sensible is to let go that is to commit oneself to give oneself up and that’s quite mad,

-so we come to the strange conclusion that in madness lies sanity.

[helisol]

dude im not sure you will get it after reading this either, but you Can read it now

okay so first of all do not expect me to adhere to rules of grammar or Proper capitalisation, I am writing from the heart

so it’s been said before by other people but if Quark and Odo didnt look like the aliens that they are but instead like two regular prettybois the fandom would do cartwheels over their dynamic and Not call them a crack ship. because really, their dynamic fucking SLAPS and I’m here to tell you Why.

their surface-level dynamic is “Respected and Talented Security Chief and Cunning Immoral Businessman who are in Love but pretend not to be” and that's just an off-brand version of enemies to lovers! which is excellent and for some people that’s all you really need to get invested in a ship.

but some people look at it and go “Hm, no, that’s not enough. I mean, they work as friends but it doesn’t really have to be romantic.” and to that I say you are Absolutely Valid, not everything has to be romantic.

it just so happens that these two fuckers have one of the most compelling romance stories ever, and it’d be a shame not to explore it.

so before I dive into the internalised homophobia and repression, I’d like to take a moment to talk about Quark as a character.

because if you have brainworms like me you can kind of see that its an honest to god greek tragedy.

this guy comes from a race of people where being kind, ethical and fair is considered Abnormal and Horrifying. and I’m not gonna call Quark out of all people kind, ethical or fair but,,, 

you ever notice how he’s A Much Better Person Than Pretty Much All Other Ferengi?

dont get me wrong, Quark is still a bastard, but every once in a while his True Character shines through. and I say True Character because guys,,, the way he behaves around other people is an Act. he’s pretending to be something he’s not.

he has to try so hard to be a good ferengi it’s honestly painful to watch at times. because he is a SHIT ferengi! 

he loves his friends- because that's what the ds9 crew are. they’re his friends! and it makes him miserable because that's not! normal! for a ferengi!

let’s compare Quark and Rom for a second. 

Quark reeks of self loathing because a lot of the time he just Doesn’t act like a ferengi is supposed to, and this drives a lot of conflict in the show. he knows how a ferengi should act, it’s just that he can’t!! fucking!! do it!! but he still tries and tries to fit into that mold, which straight up ruins his life on multiple occasions.

Rom is also not a Model Ferengi, but he lives without hating himself. and it’s mostly because he doesn’t care about how a ferengi Should act, he’s loved and cared for even when everybody knows that he’s a shit ferengi! because his non-ferengi-ness works to his benefit. it encourages and highlights his abilities as an engineer. the success and love he finds make it easy for him to be content with his true self. Unlike Quark, who doesn’t get unconditional love from anyone.

its so!! tragic!! because you can see what Quark is really like!! his true self!! he’s a nice guy who cares for people!

its right there all the time and it's so blatantly obvious. especially in episodes like “Body Parts”, “Bar Association”, “The Way Of The Warrior” and “Ferengi Love Songs”

his own wiki page literally calls him “a compassionate and generous man by ferengi standards” which pretty much translates to “not really a good ferengi”.

anyway so Quark is a tragic figure or whatever but we’re actually here for the REPRESSED! HOMOSEXUAL! TENDENCIES! that he and Odo both exhibit.

with characters like garak you don’t really need to have brainrot to pick up on those tendencies, because that was something andrew robinson chose to do, on purpose. 

and to be fair, Quark wasn’t intended to be Any kind of representation, not even by the actor. I’m just pointing out that he Does look and act and talk like a little gayman.

I will admit that he is Painfully Straight in the text of the show, but on a meta level he’s just. a dude who has a serious case of repressing his real personality. and taking it a step further- he also represses his feelings towards another man.

and that man is Odo.

a few things on him:

Odo is literally desperate to be a person. unlike Quark, who at least has the comfort of belonging to a society of people with a set of rules and expectations, Odo has never met anyone or anything like him in all his years of life.

like, we all know Odo basically grew up in a lab, right? 

with people who didn’t know anything about him. who he was so unalike that they literally called him “Nothing”

but he still learned to look and talk and act like them (because if he didn’t he’d feel *pain* which is very fucked up by the way?)

so we know for a fact that Odo wants to be recognised as a person- which is why he tries really hard to conform to the ideals of the society that raised him. instead of exploring his nature as a shape shifter he maintains a humanoid form, picks up a job and creates an entire personality around what he wants to be seen as. but not what he really is.

and that's the thing that causes all the conflict between Quark and Odo. the type of person odo wants to be seen as is the polar opposite of whatever the fuck quark wants to be seen as.

In the same way that Quark acts like a Normal Ferengi, Odo acts like a Normal Security Officer.  and in a cruel twist of fate, the Ferengi happens to be the antithesis of the Security Officer.

If you only look at them as the things they act like, and not the things they are, you might say they’re way too different to like each other, right? 

but,,, if you think about the fact that they’re both putting on this act,,, this performance of idealised versions of themselves,,, you can see that they are The Same. They Are Both Gay Repressed Loser Aliens Who Try To Act Like Things That They Aren’t!

Imagine you’re Odo. 

Imagine that you’re Nothing, because you’re not like anything anyone has ever seen- and because you are Nothing you don’t fall in love with anyone for years and years. since who could love something that isn’t like them at all?

But then one day this Thing shows up in your path and you just hate it. Because it’s not like anything *you* have ever seen. It’s disorderly and looks grotesque and it’s criminal to boot.

It’s all the things you learned would make a “Bad Person” It’s everything you aspire not to be, because if you were any of those things you would BE PUNISHED.

But the trouble is, eventually he’s not an “it” anymore, he’s “Quark” and you see him every day of your miserable little life because you live on the same damn station in space and it’s hard to avoid each other.

He also happens to be one of the only things in your life that are constant. He will never leave because he is stubborn and greedy and you just *hate him so much* that you’re convinced he must be doing all of it to spite you. And yet you also can’t seem to leave him alone.

So Odo Must Hate Quark. everything else is a non sequitur for him. he can’t not hate Quark.

because Quark is, and i’m sincerely sorry to apply christian fucking imagery to this, The Forbidden Fruit.

If he liked quark he’d admit some kind of moral failing. it would be the end of his act. but on the other hand...it might be a good thing, because at least he could have quark.

but Odo can never go through with biting into this apple because the consequences are horrifying to him. he could never have quark because, according to his performance, he would Never like quark to begin with.

and here’s a take for you: Odo's Brand Of Internalised Homophobia Doesn't Stem From Heteronormativity. It Stems From The Fact That He Was Kind Of Assigned Asexual At Birth.

and the show sort of alludes to this, for real! not just subtext! canon! except the writers used the wrong person. 

because instead of Odo having these Forbidden Feelings for Quark he has them for,,, Kira.

but since this is My Quodo Manifesto you’ll understand that i am 100% willing to just toss that part of canon out the airlock.

so Odo does canonically have that mindset of “no one could ever love me”  for decades he repressed any and all feelings of love to avoid getting hurt. in the show he breaks this cycle of repression when he takes a chance and enters a relationship with Kira. yay?

but we all know that aint it chief. and part of the reason why That Ship Ain’t It is the fact that Quark is Right There. and he is simply the more interesting choice for odo.

he and Odo literally share the same problem and have weird intertwined character arcs! they are both dreadfully afraid of not conforming to the ideal versions of themselves, so they reject everything that could challenge their Performance!

on some fucked up level they hate each other *and* themselves individually. and this hatred makes them reject parts of their real identities for the sake of protecting their image. which. yknow. in gay people. is internalised homophobia!

so you can see that they’re both repressing A Lot even if you view them as Friends, but the most important thing in this kind of romantic dynamic is usually,,, when the characters *stop* repressing.

and the thing is. the thing that Kills Me with these two. They Never Get That Moment. Thats Why You Need The Brainrot To See Them As Romantic.

The Ascent gives us an example of what happens when they both take their act too far. I mean, who could forget “Fascist!” and “Fraud!” That is what odo thinks of quark’s performance and vice versa, but we don’t really hear them adress the fact that they *are* playing these roles to a ridiculous extent.

We also never get an example of what would happen if they dropped their act instead of over-performing it. or rather we don’t get to see both of them drop it.

And the reason why we never get that moment is because there’s this one key difference between Quark and Odo. 

Quark knows that he’s constantly repressing his true nature and his feelings for odo. We pretty much hear him say so in the iconic root beer scene in Way Of The Warrior. he knows that he’s not a good ferengi but he keeps up his act.

So quark is aware enough to feel that sweet sweet self loathing. But Odo isnt self loathing as much as he is just self sabotaging.

and this subtle difference between them is why, at the very end of the show, we get “That man loves me, can’t you see? It was written all over his back!”

this moment is quark dropping his act and asking odo to do the same. he wants to hear a genuine Goodbye from him because they have known each other for Decades and they are Friends. but odo is so unable to express the feelings he’s been repressing all these years. that he self sabotages again and just walks away.

even though this is like. very anticlimactic. considering I just spent 2000 words talking about how Odo and Quark are Most Certainly Gay For Each Other.

The fact that their ending is so Weird is the reason why quodo is so engaging and appealing to me? especially post-canon quodo.

like, the amount of “what if’s” this ship has are Astounding.

What if either of them had dropped their act a little sooner? What if they both did, for just a moment, and it was the straw that breaks the camels back?

What if Odo comes back after a few years? What if Quark comes to get him?

What if, in that moment in the finale where Quark drops his act, Odo had returned the gesture? What if Gag-Reel Quodo Kiss.gif Real?

with the depth that I read into their relationship, those what ifs are really fun to think about.

anyway its 1 am and i’m not an english major so literary analysis is not like, my strong suit. plus most of this was written in a late night screaming session with a friend who has the exact same opinions as me. i just think aliens hot and in love. thats all.

[sprawa-przybyszewskiej]

Gnostic inspirations in Przybyszewska’s works

At the highest point of her intellectual life, Stanisława Przybyszewska spent over 12 hours each day simply on writing her own works, continously, and with maniacal care, educating herself on absolutely everything (she was constantly looking for fields in which she might be a natural genius) and she rarely did anything else at all, which included things like earning a wage or sweeping her own floors. The effect of such existence was of course that she was severely depressed, but also thoroughly educated. It means that traces of whatever matter from history or philosophy can be spotted in her works, are most likely intentional and put there exactly with the hopes of showing her erudice.

One of such matters was gnosticism. Gnosticism is a set of beliefs which put emphasis on obtaining liberation from this life through gnosis (knowledge) and cast aside all that is not of the mind – so not only the flesh, but also the spirit. Without going into details of some specific gnostic rite it is simpler to say that gnostics value gnosis higher than any of their base beliefs and teachings (in Europe gnostics are mostly mentioned in relation to early christianity, Cathars are an example of this). Then the contrast one can find within religion (for example sin and liberation from it) is replaced with earthly illusion and gnosis, which frees one from the illusion and guarantees a higher level of life, of sorts (in gnostic beliefs, our presence on Earth is not linear, leading from birth, through life and death to afterlife, but resembles more of a ladder, with each rung leading closer to obtaining total knowledge, and simultenously losing all that tethers one to earthly illusions.

In literature, strong contrasts are a good indication we can look into it to spot gnostic inspirations or at the very least make a strong case they could be there, even if unintentional. In Przybyszewska's case, however,  they are all the more probable, for I vaguely recall she was well aware of the presence of these beliefs and everything she wrote on the nature of genius points in the same direction, too. She held these beliefs in her own, private set of core values, and there isn't any better place for her to show them to us but through her works. She presented us with an utopian vision of mental progress in her plays, while in her prose works, she focused on the darker side of the same things.

The axis of conflict in gnosticism is between the mind and the spirit. Robespierre is without a doubt a man of the mind much more so than of the spirit, and all the important figures surrouding him are more on the spiritual side of things (with Camille being the most prominent in this regard). Maxime has achieved the gnosis, the crown that will burn [his] brains right through.Before it happens, though, he is elevated onto another plane of understanding, a place where no other person can reach him, or even understand him:

Danton, of course, is lying.

(There is, sadly, no French translation of Thermidor; on another note, it took me this long to realize the French decided to change the person's tag from Camille to Desmoulines, which is suprising in the best sense of the word).

Robspierre is clearly constructed to be a genius, standing above everybody else and thus bearing greater responsibility, something which demands of him more than it does of others.  Madness which he suspects within himself at the end  is only a threat because it potentially leads to commiting mistakes, and a mistake is an unforgivable offence when it is committed by the one who ought to know better. Mistakes by a hand of another – for example Camille – are a different story altogether, for the majority of people not only don't achieve gnosis, but even cannot achieve it, their mental state isn't developed enough for them to grasp at the higher concepts. I think this is one of the reasons why Saint-Just's words: It is not madness, it's despair, are actually calming Robespierre down. Despair is simply a sign of being weary, something to be expected.

Maxime's knowledge and better judgement of everything is of course still a curse, leading to his death. In gnosticism, death isn't meant in a macabre sense, since it leads to yet another, higher rung of the metaphorical ladder we're standing on, but the gnosis obtained beforehand makes a death a good one instead of a waste. When Robespierre is going through his moment of despair at the end of The Danton Case, he betrays the gnosis he has in favour of admiting that the future will turn out differently than what could be expected: his death won't be a natural progression, but a failure, his depaire sets him back into the crowd of the sad, grey mass of the people who are not – like him – predestined to understand more.

From the linguistic point of view, I find it interesting that in the original and in the French version, he is using somewhat esoteric language (the future is under the sign of Danton – to my eyes, it is a clear refereance to the Zodiac signs, something which is supposed to predestine our futures, and which is also esoteric and ritualistic; given all the hints that she was abused by her satanist father, it makes a really sad, hopeless final note on the grand scheme of things for the humanity, that we, as humans, are incapable of running away from the brute forces which will continue to rule us simply because the world is built like this – not to mention the inability to change the future or even just the fate of one's life is a staple of gnostic beliefs).

No matter what he says about it, the inability to escape from one's fate is something which we rarely associate with Robespierre, because – as much as Przybyszewska makes it clear, thet he is a genius and thus everything he does he is not only allowed to do, but must do it for the greater good – he seems a bit like a self-made man, perhaps because we see him all the time in situations which are hard and difficult, but not impossible. A much more tragic situtation of the lack of escape from his own poor choices is being presented to us through Camille.

Camille has had a chance to be continously tethered to Maxime, securing for himself relevant safety in the public life, and calmess or even happiness in his private one. Yet he breaks with Robespierre over and over again, starting even before the plot of the play. Maxime reaches out to him against his better judgement, and Camille – also against his better judgement – decides to stay loyal to Danton. He is as if glued to his leader, even though he sees him clearly for what he is. Camille is an apotheosis of a spiritual being, someone ruled by impulses, perhaps even with the best of intentions, but whose mind will never achieve gnosis, the clear vision of what is right and true. When Robespierre argues with the Committee by demanding they leave Danton (and Camille by proxy) alone, he plots against Maxime in his newspaper; when Robespierre goes to him under the cover of night, he doesn't want to see him and then throws him out; when Robespierre tries to either break him free from the prison or at the very least console him by admitting his love (I never actually knew what was his plan here), he follows the advice of his bad influences and doesn't admit him. It's as if a strange force kept him by Danton's side, and I don't think it was any normal feeling (of shame or guilt) keeping him away from Maxime. In The Last Nights of Ventose he makes it quite clear being a stronger person's lap dog would never bring him shame, but honour, thus I don't think he'd have any problem with returning to Robespierre after a long while of abuse and slander.

The relationship Camille has with Danton is another aspect of gnosticism, namely its duality. Danton is a stand-in for Maxime, which doesn't work because Danton is anti-Robespierre, his negative double (much like in some gnostic beliefs world was created and being conducted by two gods, one good and one evil). It is unclear whether Camille had any real, true potential to serve "good" Robespierre, but  even if he didn't, if his friableness kept him from serving a greater purpose (which I don't know if I believe, in The Last Nights of Ventose we are presented with a very different portrayal of Camille, one who could achieve something much greater than he did if only he was by Robespierre's side at all times), serving the "evil" Danton couldn't possibly have a good outcome.

He even does return to Robespierre, for a short while, steered by emotions rather than anything else. But in this dualistic, gnostic reality, emotions have little to do, they aren't worth very much. What's more, if we focus solely on Camille, we have to admit that – as in every story, revolving around a single character – a person is in a way stuck in time. He can go about in the space his life takes, but time is more like a deity, untouchable and something you cannot pact with. For Camille, it doesn't matter how many times and at what point in time (before their fallout, during the crisis or at the last hour) Maxime asks him to break with Danton and go back to him, because time and predestined fate hold all the power of what is happening, while individuals hold none (and the aforementioned last statement of Robespierre explains right away that it is so even for the "great" individuals, who in other aspects are being held to different standards, but against time and fate they are just as powerless).

I like to think, though, that Przybyszewska has left a small postern for Camille to achieve gnosis or its more humane equivalent by drawing a symbolic parallel between two scenes, which are only made significat by their possible relating to each other, but mean next to nothing on heir own:

In the first scene, the key could have been a completely incidental choice of words/tools, after all it's a logical conclusion of the scene. There is, however, a more symbolic reading of it, as a key is of course a symbol, and a pretty easy one at that. If Camille gave Robespierre the key himself, this could be read as an end to their relationship, Camille returning the power  that Maxime holds over him to Maxime's own hands. But since we only see Lucille relay the key, and we know that Lucille is also capable of influencing her husband and directing his steps (even if she says she can't; Robespierre's words, seeing as he's the genius here, are the final judgement of this), this could mean she is giving her portion of power to Maxime, whom she trusts to save her husband. And Maxime uses this one more time, when he tries to visit Camille in prison. That he fails miserably is against Camille's wishes, because Camille even in his demise only succumbs to wishes of others.

But we know he regrets this step mightily and we know it precisely because he dreams (or rather has a nightmare) about the very key he was supposed to convey to Robespierre earlier. He regrets the desire to give Maxime his power back, he regrets that by doing so in any way, shape or form he has finally given up his life. Choosing a beautiful death over an ugly, humiliating life only sounded good in his head, but in truth, he is beyond terrified and would love nothing more but to Maxime to come in again and if not save him, then at the very least – forgive him. But for that, they'd have to meet again, and he couldn't throw Maxime out. I also don't understand why both the English and French translation added the word "effortlessly" when describing his last moment with Robespierre, because make no mistake, it is very much an unnecessary addition, going against everything that he has been portrayed like so far. Their last conversation is just as much a tragic one for Camille as it is for Maxime.

Przybyszewska took great pains to paint Camille in front of our eyes as someone so weak that we find him as more of a comic relief than anything else, but in reality he is just a differing portrayal of powerlessness when faced with fate. Camille is not a comical character, but a tragic one, he is just the same as Robespierre, his other half: they both believe in their own agency, they both believe they are the ones making choices and pushing their lives forward, but it is not a coincidence that they both end up in he very same place, in a span of mere weeks.

This post would not have been born if it weren't for @patricidefan​.

[wangxianficrecs]

Hi Mojo, I also wanted to share my thoughts on this concrit and commenting discussion, particularly the etiquette of asking permission before identifying racism part. I think there are two conversations here: the concrit and comment etiquette on fics, and POC being able to speak up without having to adhere to etiquette. Of course you can stop reading this message if you would like to as I’m mindful of your argument that you should ask permission first. But if you could read this (not even publish!) then that would be appreciated.

I am a Chinese diaspora. As a Chinese diaspora your comments affected me rather more than I expected them to. I’m being really careful about my own tone right now - because I’m worried that if I come across as angry or even remotely impolite, that my message might get dismissed by a reader thinking I’m just angry and reactive. I’m coming from a personal perspective on this, but I can’t not make it personal as this is something that affects me, and my friends and family, as people.

With your message to be kind in all interactions with authors, all that runs through my mind is the implication that as a POC person, is is MY job to be kind and understanding and polite, and it MY job to willingly teach another person of how their actions and words have impacted me. That if I am angry or offended and speak in a less than nice tone, that somehow this is a petty tit-for-tat move on my part? Of course in an ideal situation we should not react emotionally - but I can’t be expected to stay unemotional in the face of micro aggression and racism, even if it was not meant to be malicious. I’m sure your intention wasn’t this but then the idea that WE must then kindly educate the racist party (accidentally or otherwise) is a huge emotional and mental burden that we can’t be expected to partake in every time.

I know I cannot say ‘us’ in this situation, but this isn’t an issue that only affects an individual. I KNOW I am only one person. I know I may not be the ‘mouthpiece’, as you said, for everyone who is Chinese diaspora. But I can say for certain that I share the same lived experiences of at least some who will agree with me. I’m challenging the idea that an individual can’t be somewhat reflective of a population - otherwise it would be ridiculous to suggest that all people of a similar background must agree on everything and have a spokesperson.

I’m also sure you didn’t mean to or I could be wrong, but I get the sense that you are considering this issue predominately from the perspective of a non-POC (non-Chinese, in this case) author and how we should try not to upset them. It feels that we must consider that the author is coming from a place of no bad intentions or malice and must therefore speak to them in that way - but that is a very idealistic process that POCs and marginalised people can’t always rely on. Ignorance - especially wilful - can be just as harmful and hurtful as direct aggression.

Luckily my experiences in this fandom has demonstrated that authors who are non-Chinese or POC almost always start their fics with an apology and a reassurance that they are receptive to corrections of any cultural inaccuracies they may have. And I think that this is the crux of the etiquette issue that we shouldn’t offer unsolicited criticism without first asking permission. These authors have acknowledged their different background and own potential shortcomings and are open to criticism in this aspect. In these more common cases, there is of course no need to ask for permission - the author has already anticipated conversation around this.

The etiquette issue is when an author has not prefaced their work with this sort of disclaimer - and I am aware it may be unfair to expect this of all fic writers. That’s where this issue of etiquette comes up. The author hasn’t appeared to welcome comments on cultural insensitivity - so I have to think about if I now need to ask nicely for permission to speak. As a reader, specially as a Chinese diaspora, if cultural insensitivity or discrepancies appear without the disclaimer of ‘please let me know if there are any inaccuracies’ then the implication may be that the author simply didn’t care or bother about offending anyone. If they do, then I know it’s just a mistake and that they haven’t been dismissive or uncaring. Without it, the authors intentions become much more ambiguous.

Even worse is when an author blatantly says they’ve made mistakes or haven’t researched and don’t care for feedback. My culture and heritage isn’t a playground for you, and I don’t think fic writers should be exempt from being respectful for the sake of a quick fic.

Like I said earlier, this is not a hypothetical exercise for POC. We’re faced with microaggressions constantly in our real lives, so our patience for this sort of situation runs a bit thin and it is difficult not to react with emotion. I also dislike the idea that I need to ask permission to speak about something that impacts me so profoundly.

A message to prefaces a written piece of work saying that the author is not of that ethnicity or culture and that they welcome comments to fix it always helps. Then the lines of communication aren’t blurred and the onus doesn’t fall on the marginalised or POC to become a teacher.

Mojo, this is actually the second draft of a message to you. I have spent over an hour and a half of my time crafting this message - trying to get the tone right, trying not to come across angry or impolite, trying to say everything I want to say. Your replies to the blogger in the replies of one of the last anons was what really sparked this huge essay- I came away from reading them really effected, and not knowing why I was upset by it. I think you really missed the point that they were trying to say - that obviously, unsolicited criticism can be hurtful and unnecessary, but valid criticism of hurtful practices should not be shut down. Instead, you explained (and I know interpreting tone through text is difficult but I could not read it in a non-patronising way) that in short, if I am mean because they’ve been (allegedly accidentally) mean first then I shouldn’t expect them to listen to any of my concerns or understand why I was upset. Because I was mean back. For me, this felt like a dismissal of something that is profoundly more complex - that it wasn’t a conversation about etiquette anymore, but somehow became one about silencing marginalised people and coddling fragile white egos.

Mojo, I’ve followed you for ages and love all the content and hard work you put out and am infinitely and considerably grateful for your achievements. You are truly a wonderful person with such great ideas and intentions. The fandom would suffer greatly without your dedication. It’s just that on this occasion I think you may have missed the mark a little and had to say something. Others may not agree with me, I know, but I hope you have at least read this.

Lots of love, from a follower

Let me start by saying that I’m very sorry you felt you had to moderate your tone so much in order to be heard.  I really do strive to make my blog a welcoming environment for everybody, and I regret that you’ve felt excluded:  that was never my intention. I am always interested in everyone's point of view.

You've got some really great and specific points here that I think will be helpful to all authors in this fandom -- like ways to introduce your fic and/or be respectful as well as small things that come across as offensive.

The conversation this morning veered way off track from bookmarks to racism, and like I said then, I am not qualified to talk about that. I do not have your history or your experiences: all I can do is listen and empathize and learn. Which I try to do!

What I am qualified to discuss is how writers might respond to comments: I've had lots of experience with that! So my point is: if you approach an author with anger, they are very likely to close themselves off to you. I'm not attaching a value judgement to that, to say that they are right or wrong to do so... it's just a statement based on my observations over many years.

I can imagine how easily a lifetime of tiny (and large) insults and slights would build up and spill over in anger, frustration and resentment. That's very human. Please don't think that I am belittling or denying your experience or your right to feel this way, because I am not.

I respect you. I respect your experience. I respect your right to be angry and to talk about it. Period. I really, really do. I think it's important for your voice to be heard: this is how you feel valid as a person with your feelings, and it's how other people learn!

So let's go back to reading a fic where you find portions (or all) of it racist or insensitive or culturally tone deaf. What is your goal? I ask this just as a student of psychology (and also a parent). Do you want to educate them, or to shame them? Again, I'm not attaching a value judgement to either response. The way you introduce your topic will affect how the author will react. It's not about 'white fragility'... there's no way for you to know who penned that story, just as there is no way for the author to know anything about you when you comment. This is just about humans and how they interact with each other.

This is tough. This is thorny. THIS IS NOT A SIMPLE MATTER. There are always, always going to exceptions, gray areas and straw men: you (and any reader) should always use your judgement. Are you saying this to someone who is hateful and bigoted and cruel with it? Or are you saying it to a 12-year-old girl from corn fields in Nebraska? Are you unsure?

So this isn't about silencing your voice, not at all. It's about judging who you're speaking to and whether or not they'll hear you.

I absolutely do not think that unsolicited or angry fic comments (or bookmarks) are a productive forum for educating people... if that is your goal. And it may not be, which is fine. As you pointed out, the burden of educating people should not rest solely on you, it shouldn't be your responsibility.

I will say again that a place like this, right here - this very letter which I am answering and publishing - IS a great way to educate people. Use it freely, speak loudly, say your piece and share your experiences. Arrgh, I really hope that doesn't come across as condescending. I'm being utterly sincere. I am nearly 50. I've seen a lot of change happening. This is how it happens.

I do not want to silence your voice - or anyone's voice! I want to hear everyone's opinions and thoughts because that ultimately makes me a more well-rounded and considerate person and the world a better place.

I do however, passionately believe that positive change can be affected best through positive interaction. It's not a rule everyone is required to follow, not at all. But is the one that I speak of, and the one that I try to adhere to.

I could never speak for any minority, to say what you should or shouldn't do - as individuals or as a group. But I can speak from the experiences and feelings of a fic author. That's it, that's the limit of my ability. And you may do with that whatever you feel is right.

Let me wrap this up by saying that I really appreciated this letter and Nonny - you were very brave to throw this out into the forum, thank you! You had some extremely useful and important points that I am very happy to share. I am sorry my comments hurt you, and I hope that you feel a little better now.

Having said all this, I would really not like to start a huge discussion on racism in the fandom. I am the wrong person to conduct that conversation: I don't know enough about it, nor do i have the proper experiences or point of view.

With that, I must go, and I'll see you all tomorrow!

[lovewillthaw-j]

I thought you were anti-kristanna?

No anon, why would you think that? And are you yourself anti-kristanna/pro-kristanna/anti anything that is not kristanna? 

I’m not anti anything. I’m in this fandom to appreciate Frozen, get the latest news/behind-the-scenes, pine for merch I’ll never be able to get, look at frozen fanart and laugh/cry, contribute gifs, jokes and analyses. I love Frozen, I love the music, I love Elsa and Anna.

I don’t normally speak publicly about this, but now’s a good time I guess. 

I wish there wasn’t so much “anti-ness” in our fandom. I am not targeting anyone in particular, or any faction or ship.

Can’t we all embrace the message of F1 and that is LOVE? 

Can’t we all respect each other and accept that not everyone shares our view, and that that doesn’t make anyone less of a person? Can’t we all be a bit more tolerant? Don’t assume or jump to conclusions, people are not one dimensional. When we view people by assigning them to a group, we erase all their individuality. Even if you get insulted by someone, don’t hit back. Let it go, do the next right thing by not retaliating, and hope the other person will change. 

Take time to get to know a person. When I came in I was primarily an F2 lover (I did know F1 from way before, but wasn’t obsessed) Initially I was puzzled, how could anyone hate F2? Then gradually I fell in love with F1 and got to know many who love F1 and feel that F2 changes the message of F1. And while I still love F2 so much, I understand where they are coming from. And, my understanding of F2 has been enriched by it too. (seriously, F1 is sooooo deep, I did not realise it till I joined this fandom)

Sometime ago I fell into a very negative state about F2 and was frightened at what happened to my thoughts. (it was around the time I made my RBTI/F2 critique) After all, F2 is my obsession and my entry into the fandom. After a while, talking to people who are both anti F2 and pro F2, I realised that it really boils down to your own headcanon, and interpretation of what is shown on screen and what is not shown. And one’s headcanons are shaped by one’s own experiences, relationships, orientation, etc. For example, did 5th spirit Elsa go back to Arendelle before moving permanently to the forest? What is shown is ambiguous. 

And my conclusion is that all of our interpretations are right. Whichever way you want to interpret the movie and the relationships etc, you are right, because nobody can change your headcanon if you don’t want them to. I personally think that no, Elsa never went back to Arendelle. I’ve spoken to someone who believes strongly that Elsa would never do that, she must have gone back and handed over the throne properly even if it’s not shown. And it’s alright to have differing views. (I’m back in a good state of mind now regarding F2, to my friends reading this. I still love it so so so much) Everybody’s headcanon is correct and we don’t need to police others or make judgmental statements about them as a person because of a different headcanon.

And embrace the fact that it’s also OK to change your view. Some things never change?? I have personally shifted some of my headcanons (or at least, recognised that there are other possible views) after thoughtful discussions with people. Most recently being the new F2 Manga which stated that Elsa is the one who did the act of love and thawed Anna (in F1). I didn’t understand it at first and was honestly a bit perplexed, but after speaking to some people who believe Elsa’s act (tears and hug) saved Anna, I realised that there can be more than one interpretation of “an act of true love will thaw a frozen heart”. My default is still that Anna’s act thawed herself, but by taking the time to understand others, I can see where they’re coming from, and I rejoice that I learnt something new, a new interpretation.

You don’t have to be like me, patiently talking to other people and seeking understanding, but there’s never a need to be rude or dismissive of people who don’t share your view. Think twice before you hit that Enter button. Even if you don’t think you are wrong, even if you feel righteously indignant, don’t write in anger. On the other hand, we can also cut each other and ourselves some slack. We’re all not perfect and we’re all fixer-uppers in our own way. Sometimes we come to our fandoms tired and angry with our IRL world, and it comes out in what we say on fandom. A thoughtless comment can hurt someone. If I have ever done it, I apologise. Everybody goes through this. Elsa lashed out at her coronation in an intensely stressful situation; Anna could have “cancelled her” and said screw you, I’m gonna be Queen of Arendelle but no, Anna continued loving Elsa even till her own death. Let’s all try to love each other more and be more patient and embrace other views, and celebrate what brought us all together which is this beautiful thing called Frozen. Let love [be] an open door.

In summary, I do not see the need to cling to a particular ship or faction and hate all others as this divides our fandom. I do have my own ships, but I respect all views and all ships. I have friends in both sides of the wars and I refuse to take part in wars. This has always been my position since I joined the fandom. 

J