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fatehbaz · 4 months

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Some updates from the past twelve-ish months:

-- Late 2022: Portland and its mayor (Wheeler) started a major push to ban "street camping". Headlines in major media outlets also described "Portland's first sanctioned mass homeless camp" and how "Portland moves forward with $27 million plan to build mass shelters". In December 2022, Portland-area authorities used the so-called "aggressive landscaping" tactic, installing hundreds of hostile architecture boulders to prevent sitting/sleeping. Also in December, homeless advocates and Disability Rights Washington advocates attempted to halt Spokane's (Washington) clearing of a major camp for hundreds of people, and a federal judge sided with advocates to put a temporary restraining order on the sweep.

-- January 2023: Even in the immediate aftermath of historic cold as far south as Miami and Monterrey, sub-freezing temperatures across the Deep South, and sub-zero-Fahrenheit blizzards sweeping North America for a week or longer around Solstice/Christmas 2022, convenience stores "in Texas, California, New York use classical music to shoo homeless".

-- By March 2023: "Portland Mayor Wheeler unveils first location for city-run homeless camp".

-- April 2023: San Francisco and Mayor Brand announce a major "five-year plan" costing over 600 million dollars "to cut the number of unsheltered homeless in half". (Not a plan to put people in homes or find stable housing, but just to technically put them under the roof of shelter, keeping them out of sight, therefore qualifying them for the strange designation of "the sheltered homeless".) At the same time, San Francisco opened a "long-term homeless shelter on Treasure Island", pushing homeless people onto an isolated island mostly composed of concrete and asphalt.

-- Summer 2023: In May, the city of Phoenix (Arizona) began its project to clear and eliminate its largest homeless camp, known as the Zone, a refuge for hundreds of people. During the record-breaking heat of the summer of 2023, Phoenix cleared the camp systematically, block by block. At the beginning of September 2023, as "Phoenix breaks heat record as city hits 110F [110 degrees Fahrenheit] for the 54th consecutive day", the city cleared the block of the camp where most seniors and the elderly lived.

-- January 2024: About one week ahead of winter holidays (Solstice/Christmas), the City of Edmonton pursued plans to sweep 130 homeless encampments as part of what has been described as a "shocking" eviction plan. In January, the city was clearing camps amidst sustained deadly severe weather, during a polar vortex event with temperatures of negative 50 degrees Fahrenheit and daytime highs of negative 25F. When a court case presented by Coalition for Justice and Human Rights tried to slow the sweeps, a judge sided with them and shut down the evictions.

-- March 2024: Florida's governor signs a new law. NPR describes: "law that seeks to move unhoused people off public property altogether and into government-run encampments".

-- April 2024: The U.S. Supreme Court begins hearing a case from Grants Pass (Oregon) with major implications and potential to incite nationwide "banishment race" and "homelessness crackdown". Lower courts have previously said that city policies (like Grants Pass, Boise, and others) were "cruel and unusual" for fining and/or jailing people for sleeping on public land if no adequate accessible shelter is available. But now?

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pocketseizure · 9 months

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The Two Kings in Tears of the Kingdom

Tears of the Kingdom unearths the roots of Calamity Ganon in an ancient conflict between Rauru, the first king of Hyrule, and Ganondorf, a rival king who attempted to usurp him. In many ways, Rauru is characterized as a good king. He is noble, kind, and self-sacrificing, and he acts for the long-term benefit of the various groups of people living in Hyrule. In contrast to Rauru, the antagonist Ganondorf is an evil king who started a war because of his pride, ego, and greed.

Rauru and Ganondorf represent different styles of authority, both of which are grounded in Japanese fantasies of cultural identity. I’d argue that, in the end, neither king is fit to rule present-day Hyrule, which is why it’s appropriate that the game ends without any call to rebuild Hyrule Castle or the centralized government it symbolizes.

Rauru represents a golden age in Japanese culture when many arts now seen as “traditional” originated. This golden age is closely tied to Nintendo’s home city of Kyoto, which is associated with the culture of the imperial court before it moved to Tokyo in 1868. Because Tears of the Kingdom is a fantasy, the visual metaphors of Rauru’s character design are mixed, but his connection to a bygone golden age is tied to two symbols: the magatama jewels referred to as “secret stones,” and the kare-sansui dry landscape gardens of the Shrines of Light and the Temple of Time.

The “secret stones” that Rauru gives to the six sages have the distinctive comma shape of a magatama jewel, one of the three sacred symbols of Shinto. These three symbols are as follows: a mirror represents clarity of heart, a sword represents the power to protect the weak, and a jewel represents the materiality of divine blessings. These three objects also serve as the regalia of the Japanese emperor, whose role was historically to perform ritual prayers and thereby serve as a symbolic bridge between the world of humans and the world of gods.

There is nothing sacrosanct about magatama jewels; at various street fairs and tourist areas throughout Japan, you can buy inexpensive polished quartz and jade magatama to attach to phone charms or friendship bracelets. As a result of its relative ubiquity, this particular shape of gem has both a historical and a pop culture association with being a magical stone bestowed by the gods on special and worthy individuals such as, most famously, the first Japanese emperor.

Along with his magatama “secret stones,” Rauru is associated with kare-sansui dry landscape gardens of the old imperial capital. Note, for instance, the front courtyard of the Temple of Time that Link visits at the beginning of the game:

The visual motif of raked white gravel punctuated by standing rocks also appears in various permutations within the Shrines of Light established by Rauru and Sonia. To give an example, this is what the player will see if they circle back behind the entrance of the “Rauru’s Blessing” shrines:

This style of dry landscape garden is frequently referred to as a “Zen garden” because of its association with large Buddhist temples in and around Kyoto. The most famous example of this style can be found at Ryōanji, in northwest Kyoto:

The philosophy of these gardens meshes well with the philosophy behind the Zelda series, which Shigeru Miyamoto has described as his attempt to create a tsuboniwa miniature garden for the player to explore. In the same way, dry landscape gardens represent a larger landscape portrayed on a much smaller scale. The rocks in the gravel are meant to represent islands on the ocean, or perhaps mountaintops rising above the clouds. Another common interpretation of these gardens – and one especially pertinent to Tears of the Kingdom – is that the rocks are the dorsal spines of a dragon swimming through the sky.

Although dry landscape gardens have strong ties to Buddhist thought, they were primarily created by wealthy lords residing in Kyoto during the fifteenth century. This was a politically unstable era, and these lords needed to make a show of their wealth and cultural legitimacy. Unlike in China, where Chan Buddhism was largely anti-establishment, Zen Buddhism was the domain of the wealthy educated elite in Japan. Many of the rocks used in Zen-style gardens were imported from China and Korea at great expense, and lords competed to secure the services of celebrity landscape designers. Even today, the late medieval culture represented by dry landscape gardens is associated with the prestige of Japan’s former imperial capital of Kyoto.

Rauru is therefore associated with nobility and a certain air of sophistication. In the original Japanese script, he is unflaggingly polite and addresses everyone – Zelda, Ganondorf, and Link alike – with the sort of “clean” language associated with people of high social standing. To put it simply, Rauru is a perfect gentleman. He is the personification of the aristocratic virtues of the “traditional Japan” of the late fifteenth century, during which the wealthy filled the capital city with gardens while countless wars ravaged the countryside.

In contrast, Ganondorf is a personification of the warrior culture of eastern Japan, especially as it was exemplified by the warlords who competed for territory outside the capital before the establishment of the Tokugawa shogunate at the beginning of the seventeenth century.

Oda Nobunaga was the most notorious of these warlords. He was infamous for being aggressive but effective, and his military prowess and ruthless tactics have been memorialized in a wealth of stories whose lineage stretches to the video games of the present day. I believe that Nobunaga (or, at least, a commonly fictionalized version of him) served as a model for Ganondorf, who seeks to take advantage of the instability of the newly established kingdom of Hyrule in order to expand his own territory.

Like Rauru, Ganondorf’s character design contains mixed visual metaphors, but I think it’s fair to say that his topknot and costume are meant to evoke a samurai who has thrown off the kimono sleeve covering his sword arm as an indication of his readiness for battle. This is a style still worn by practitioners of Japanese fencing and archery, which are common extracurricular activities in many high schools. Appropriately, Ganondorf fights with a tachi katana, a naginata spear, and the body-length longbow used in kyūdō archery – all weapons associated with the martial arts of Japan’s medieval military elite.

As if to cement his connection to Nobunaga, Ganondorf speaks in period-drama “samurai Japanese” that demonstrates neither the elegance nor the poetry of his incarnations in previous games. He seems to lack both regret and awareness of the consequences of his actions, and he is concerned primarily with hierarchy, conquest, and the thrill of battle.

As was arguably the case for Nobunaga himself, there is no endgame for Ganondorf, only scorched earth. Ganondorf has absolute faith in his own power, and he views other people only as subordinates or enemies. According to his value system, there is no merit in compromise; he simply takes it for granted that he will win.

It makes sense that the aggressively bloodthirsty Ganondorf is a villain, but it’s important to understand that Rauru is not a hero. With all his magic and culture and imperial splendor, Rauru failed to understand that the system of power he created could easily be turned against him. A nation politically defined by a central authority whose rule is justified through military conquest and the cultural chauvinism of “ancient tradition” is not sustainable, and the legacy of such a kingdom can only be tears.

This is why Hyrule Castle remains in ruins at the end of Tears of the Kingdom, and this is why the game’s central hub is a research station populated with people from all over the world. This is why Zelda doesn’t attempt to re-establish Hyrule as a kingdom, and this is why it’s so important to her to understand the reality behind the myth of the nation’s history. This is also why the grand mythology of Hyrule’s origin is far less important to the player’s experience of the game than individual acts of community building. The highlights of Tears of the Kingdom are Link’s work in facilitating a local election in Hateno, helping Lurelin recover from a disaster, and volunteering in towns facing environmental issues such as water pollution and climate change.

Both Rauru and Ganondorf are compelling in their own ways, but it’s thematically satisfying that both characters are gone at the end of the game. When Zelda meets with the regional leaders of Hyrule during the closing cutscene, they promise each other that they will work together to ensure a lasting peace that neither of the two kings made possible. The legacy of the past still affects Hyrule, but Tears of the Kingdom suggests that it’s the duty of the younger generation to understand where this legacy came from in order to avoid the mistakes of their ancestors and move forward in a more hopeful direction.

#Legend of Zelda #Tears of the Kingdom #Rauru #Ganondorf #Zelda meta #essays

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vodika-vibes · 3 months

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Hiya,

I hope you are feeling rested on your road to recovery and I wish the best.

I was wondering if you could something similar to your Tup selkie au but with a clone of your choice

It would be lovely if you have the time to do so🫶🏾

Swan Prince

Summary: You’ve been tending to your father’s garden since he fell ill. Not by choice, but because there’s no one else to take care of the garden while he’s in the hospital. The most interesting animal in his garden is a personable black swan. You don’t think twice about confiding in it. Until, one day you are late with your chores, and your swan friend turns into a man.

Pairing: Selkie! ARF Trooper Hound x F!Reader

Word Count: 2205

Prompt: Selkie AU

Warnings: None

Tagging: @trixie2023 @n0vqni @imabeautifulbutterfly

A/N: Hihi! Thanks for your request! I hope you like this story. I wasn't sure at first, but I think I came up with an idea that I like.

Sometimes, you wonder what your father was thinking building his home so far away from civilization. You have to drive thirty minutes from your home to the subway station, and then sit on the train for an hour, and then walk for another fifteen minutes to get to his house.

It wouldn’t be so bad if you were able to drive the whole route, but that’s not possible. Hasn’t been possible since the storm came through several years ago and washed away a large section of the road.

You know that this land has been in your family since your great-great-grandfather built the family home on it so long ago, and you know that your father loves the home that he was raised in.

And, you know that as his only child, it falls on you to make sure that the house doesn’t fall into disrepair while he’s in the hospital.

You just really, really wish that he lived closer.

The house your father lives in, the house you were raised in, is very pretty. Built like a ranch, spread out rather than up, it was designed by your great-great-grandfather to make it easier for his wife to navigate.

Your great-great-grandmother lost the use of her legs in a riding accident when she was a child, and, by all accounts, your great-great-grandfather was adamant that she be able to navigate her home with the same ease as someone who was able to walk.

Your grandfather, however, was the one who built the massive garden in the backyard.

And when you say massive, you mean it. The garden is large enough that it has a lake, a lake that your family is responsible for maintaining. Not to mention the dozens of exotic plants and trees that make it look like a garden from a fairy tale.

When you were a little girl, you would take a small boat to the small island in the middle of the lake and climb the tower your grandmother had made to house her library. You would spend hours curled up on one of her many couches and lose yourself in books and stories about faraway places.

It wasn’t surprising to anyone when you went to school for archeology. In fact, you only returned home from where you were living halfway around the globe when you got a call from a family friend, telling you that your father had fallen ill.

It would be easier if he was more tolerant of other people, but he’s refused medical care from anyone who wasn’t completely human. This is completely ridiculous, in your opinion, but he’s still able to make that decision.

And people wonder why you only speak to your father on major holidays.

You jog up the gravel path that leads to the house, digging your keys from your pocket. Your father’s car sits in the garage, where it’s been since the road was washed out all those years ago.

The bushes at the front of the house are overgrown, and you huff out an annoyed breath as you dig your phone from your pocket and snap a photo. Your old roommate from college decided to become a landscaper rather than complete law school, maybe she’ll offer you a deal.

Of course, your old college roommate is a dryad, and she’s heard more than one rant about your father’s bigoted ways, so it’s just as likely that she would only offer her assistance if you were the one who owned the house.

You pull the mail out of the box and flip through them as you open the door.

There’s nothing important, just a couple of magazines and a predatory credit card offer from the local bank. But nothing that you need to bring to your father.

You sort the mail on the table, putting all of the similar mail together for him to sort later, and then you focus your attention on the house proper. You check that the water is still off, make sure that all of the windows are still shut and locked, and then push open the door to the back garden.

The truth is that the only reason you need to come out here every day is to make sure that the koi in your mother’s koi pond get fed.

The reality is that if it wasn’t for your mother’s koi you wouldn’t have returned from the dig. Though, you’re pretty sure that your father isn’t aware of that fact.

You follow the familiar path from the house to your mother’s koi pond, you can tell as you get close to it that the feeder is still working and doesn’t need to be refilled, and that the filter is working well.

For a moment, you watch the familiar fish swim around in the water, and it’s almost like your mother hasn’t passed away. If you close your eyes, you can almost hear her singing her silly lullabies to her koi.

Old, familiar grief washes through you for a moment, but you shove it away with the ease of long familiarity. You straighten and turn away from your mother’s koi pond and towards the lake.

The path from the koi pond to the lake is twisting, but it eventually leads to a shallow staircase that leads you down to the lake itself.

As you approach the shoreline, a small smile crosses your face as a black swan swims over to you from the island in the middle of the lake, and makes a beeline for you, stopping at your feet and butting his head against your leg.

He makes an unhappy noise, and you smile at him as you stroke his head.

“I know, I know. I’m late. I’m sorry.” You crouch so you’re not standing over the bird, “Father had an appointment and he insisted that I just had to be there.”

The swan releases another unhappy noise, at the mention of your father and you smile at him before sitting on the sand, “You know, if I didn’t know any better, I’d say that you hated my father as much as I do.” You joke.

The swan settles onto the sand next to you, his dark eyes focused on your face.

You’re not sure how your father managed to catch a black swan and force him to live here, but the poor thing seems unable to fly. You hope that he hadn’t clipped the swan’s wings, though that would be very on-brand for him.

Your father has always viewed people and animals as possessions, after all.

“I’m going to have to spend the night, probably.” You say with a sigh, “At least my room is still set up.” You cross your legs and cast your gaze over the water, “I never should have come back,” You murmur, more to yourself than the swan sitting next to you, “This place is like a black hole, it just sucks the life out of everything.”

You watch the moon inch across the sky, and then you stretch your legs out in front of you, “If I leave now, I might be able to catch the last train back to the city.” Of course, you don’t have the desire to get up and try to do that.

So, instead, you release a sigh and flop back on the sand, focusing your attention on the stars over your head. Sleeping under the stars isn’t too bad, you think absently.

You’re jerked from your thoughts when there’s a sudden light from right next to you. You half sit up on your elbow, and you stare, speechless, as the swan next to you glows and transforms.

From a swan to a man.

Now, you’re not a stupid woman. You’ve heard the stories, and you’ve even seen proof of old curses while on digs, so you know what you’re seeing. But, never in a million years, have you ever expected to see one so close.

The man standing before you is tall, with curly black hair and dark skin. He’s wearing casual clothes, a tank top, and loose lounge pants, and he has a leather jacket hanging from one hand.

You stare at him, jaw dropped, and he holds out his hands placatingly, “Please don’t freak out—”

“What the actual fu—!”

“Okay, that’s freaking out,” He says as he drops to his knee in front of you, “I can explain.”

“That’s a curse.” You say, your voice faint, the first stirrings of hysteria building in your chest, “Being turned into a swan is a curse—”

He clamps his hand over your mouth. He smells nice, like earth and pine and salt water. “Yes, yes it is. Please, let me talk.”

You stare at him, wide-eyed, but nod mutely.

“Okay,” Slowly he pulls his hand away from your mouth and presses his hands on your shoulders, “My name is Hound and I’m a selkie. Your father, for some reason, decided that all selkies were women and kidnapped me, and when I turned back to this form, he lost his shit and cursed me to be a swan.”

“What.”

“Because I, and I quote, ‘tricked him’.”

You gape at him, “That…makes no sense.” You finally say, “My father has about as much magical potential as a brick.”

“Well, apparently not.” Hound replies with a shrug, “Honestly, I was all set to hate you when you first showed up, but you’re not anything like your father.”

“Yeah, well. I take after my mom.” You say faintly.

Hound smiles at you reassuringly, “You’re handling this very well.”

“Uh…well, I was in Greece last year, and there was a whole island dedicated to people who were cursed to be swans—” You say, your hands coming up to press over his, which are still resting on your shoulder, “How can I break the curse? I don’t have any magic at all.”

“Well, true love’s kiss is a pretty potent magic,” Hound points out.

“Great! Who’s your true love?”

He shoots you a bemused look, “That would be you.”

“Well. Well, that’s silly.” You reply, “You don’t know me.”

“In the last couple of months, I’ve come to know you very well. Why do you think I followed you everywhere?”

You blink at him, “I feel like you need to have better standards than the daughter of the man who kidnapped and cursed you.”

Hound shrugs, “I disagree.”

You huff out a heavy breath and reach up to press your hands against his cheeks, “Fine, but when this doesn’t work, we need to come up with another plan.” You warn him before you tug him in and press your lips lightly against his.

It’s a very quick kiss because you honestly don’t think it’s going to look. Even if Hound, swan Hound, has been your only friend and confidant for months. That’s not the same as true love.

Turns out, the magic doesn’t agree.

You have to turn away to shield your eyes as Hound glows brightly, and there’s an audible snap of the curse breaking.

When the light fades, Hound is still himself, and he looks very, very smug. “I knew it was going to work.”

You shake your head and duck long enough to pick his jacket up off the sand. You shake the sand off the soft material and hold it out to him, “It makes no sense.” You counter.

He stares at you, before he slowly takes his jacket back, “Thanks.”

“I appreciate you, and I do think of you as a friend, but that’s no true love.” You say.

“Well, maybe the curse broke through the selfless action of the daughter of the person who cursed me.” Hound offers.

“I mean, I guess that’s possible. Magic is finicky like that.” You mutter as you fold your arms.

“It is finicky like that.” He agrees, “Now, I have just one more question.”

“Hm?”

“Would you prefer an autumn or a spring wedding?”

“I…what?”

Hound holds up his jacket with one finger, “Selkie.”

You stare at him, and his jacket, for a moment, and then you curse, “That can’t be legally binding—”

“It is. Both magically and legally binding.”

“I’ve never even had a boyfriend before!” You blurt.

“That’s alright,” He replies brightly leaning in so that he’s able to press his forehead against yours, “I’m a patient man. Even though we’re already legally married, we can take our time and pretend that we’re just dating.”

“I…suppose that works.”

“Great. Now, I’m starving for real food, do you think we can go up to the house and get something to eat?” Hound asks, “Also, I need to call my brothers.”

“Yeah, alright. I’m sure there’s something in the house I can make.” You turn to head back to the house, only to pause when Hound takes your hand in his and threads your fingers together.

For a moment, you stare at your joined hands, and then your face heats. You can almost feel the amusement rolling off of Hound, “Is this okay?”

“Yeah, it’s fine.” You murmur, and then you tug his hand to lead him towards the house.

Your father’s head is going to explode when he finds out about this. But maybe that’s a good thing.

#star wars #tcw #star wars au #vodika-vibes 650 event #arf trooper hound x reader #hound x reader #star wars fanfiction #x reader fanfiction #f!reader fic #answered asks #selkie au

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