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shijiujun · 4 years

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On Translations

Once again, I’m just plain incensed by dumbasses who think it’s okay to firstly, steal someone else’s hard work and secondly, think they’ve got some right to edit that person’s work because they think they’ve got a better grip on English (not true btw) - It didn’t happen to me (well, as far as I know) and I’m not in the Guardian fandom and I don’t personally know the person who’s dealing with this ridiculous shit, but oof am I angry after seeing the tweet.

Just saw on twitter that some asshole stole a translator’s works (Guardian, Chinese to English) and edited it - Yes it’s just like the MDZS saga a few weeks ago when some white person who doesn’t have any Chinese language knowledge, tried to ‘improve’ translations done by another person who actually knows what they’re doing in both Chinese and English - And then put in on Wattpad with a ridiculous letter and intro where they said: “Great things can be made greater” to explain why they edited the English of the original translation.

“Great things can be made greater,” said the thief.

“I hope my actions will be appreciated,” said the thief again.

Like wow, once again, the audacity - There’ve been extensive arguments on translations since the MDZS saga a few weeks ago and obviously the fan who took ExR’s translations and ‘made them better’ stupidly stepped on a landmine by fucking with the MDZS fandom that has a longer history, more resources and clout than the amount of time she’s been exposed to MDZS via CQL, and got bitch-slapped by the rest of the fandom where there exists a majority of fans knowing clearly what to do and not to do.

Unfortunately, the same can’t be said of all fandoms, especially smaller ones - The user i saw is a translator for Guardian and the mofo 1. Stole their translations 2. Edited the translations to ‘better english’ 3. Wrote that they don’t know who did the original translations but “they know where to find me” *cue my eyeroll* 4. And after op commented to say please credit at the very least in May, they’ve been ignored so far - but luckily they’ve got some supporters as well to help report the mofo.

Aside from the ridiculous thievery (not crediting, blatantly lying and stealing, being an arrogant, indecent person stuck on that high horse) of course, the “I believe that great things can be made greater” is a fucking load of bullshit in this instance, and I mean taking someone else’s translations and adding your own spin to it because you think you’ve taken tests in English as a first language in school all your life (fuck off, a lot of these translators did too), that you’ve got some superiority over English or because you think it reads funny?

Granted, most fan translators don’t put up flawless translations (once again, these translators are FREE LABOUR), but you get it for free and you don’t have to (and can’t) read the original text, so suck it up.

Moreover, the disgust that I feel at the claim that the thief’s work is now ‘greater’ is extremely visceral - It’s not a greater piece of work because the thief stole it, period. No one asked for the thief’s help.

(In case you guys are curious the stolen post on Wattpad is here: https://my.w.tt/7dehLj7D56 and if you’d like to report just follow the instructions)

On Chinese to English translations:

1. If you don’t have good grasp of the original language, you have no right editing the translated work after, regardless of language. Until you can clearly understand the original idioms, context, characters etc. or have at least lived with the language for a substantial part of your life, honestly, just stop, you’ve got no right!

Sure, some translators aren’t as good as you like them to be, but the argument is always, well, you wouldn’t even have this minimal translation if they didn’t do it, so yay you’re like a few sentences and words closer to the text than you were before. If it’s really that bad, hopefully there are better translations and you can ignore the one you’re looking at, but the same rules apply across all translations!! Don’t disrespect the translator (especially when they’ve done nothing wrong except try to give you access to more content).

2. For Chinese, it’s even worse because the language is known for its hidden nuances and complexities within just two to four characters that, when translated into English, can sometimes take up to two long sentences to explain. That’s why sometimes shit reads funny. It’s not that these translators can’t do English, but Chinese to English acrobatics is beyond your comprehension, hell sometimes it’s beyond translators’ comprehension, so thanks for editing something you’ve got no idea about. This user Bee made a very good argument thread IMO about this on Twitter which I suggest people read

3. Adding your edits to a translated piece of work especially without permission or discussion with the translator, honestly who the fuck are you to do that? Either work your damn ass off by painstakingly translating the original and then editing it however you like, or just... enjoy the free content. Chinese BL novels (in this instance and as in many instances i’ve seen) and some of these translators have been around for longer than you’ve been in the fandom, so suddenly when you have an interest in the content, in a culture and language that you’ve never seen before, are unfamiliar with and have zero knowledge about, you think that as a fan you now have the right to edit someone else’s work that was already done correctly?

The fact is if the translator wrote a bogus line in the English translations, you wouldn’t have known, and when you upload it as your own and ‘improve’ it, you would be a joke, but you didn’t read the original text did you, so what makes you are any sort of authority to edit the translations?

4. Of course this is not to say that non-Chinese speaking people can’t enjoy the same content or have excellent, poignant discussions and understanding over the content, but honestly a lot of translations don’t capture 100% of a Chinese novel because the nuances are just that complex, and translators do their best to convey it regardless - This is why RESPECT FOR THE TRANSLATOR IS IMPORTANT. And I don’t mean simply paying lip service and typing “we respect all translators for their hard work on this work”, and then disrespect it entirely by not crediting, by the simple act of editing without permission etc.

Respect their interpretation and translations, because it can differ from translator to translator translating the same sentence (and people who don’t speak the original language want to compete with that, I don’t understand?!)

5. Honestly, considering how people are still arguing on the semantics of the Bible for example, not only in its original language but also in English alone - if people can’t agree on every sentence of the holy text and what each sentence means to different people, fan translators get a fucking pass

6. I read in Bee’s threads where someone disagreed with their argument of ‘only people who understand the original language can translate and edit’, saying that it’s okay if the editor doesn’t have a grasp of the original language - I understand that yes, someone else’s English might truly be better (for e.g. actual editors but also please don’t proclaim that you’re one just because you think the translator hasn’t lived with English for most of their lives or whatever), but even then, the editor has to work really closely with the translator because the translator is the primary source of the translation i.e. they know exactly what is going on in a particular sentence in their heads that may not have been translated fully, so how can non-Chinese reading editors truly understand the translated text on its own, editing in silos?

7. Perhaps in actual publishing houses that deal with official translations, this is a fallacy that is ever-present and editors do that anyway without understanding the original text (not sure about this, I’m bringing up the point for consideration, hypothetically putting this out here), but my issue with ‘editors’ in the fan translations space is that they come off sitting on some high horse because they think they’re better in English than you are (which of course yes, might be true, but then read points 1-6 again)

8. A thief is a thief, don’t put up an open letter or disclaimer explaining your motivations. It’s plain and simple, you stole someone else’s work, claimed it for your own and are riding on the great (sometimes not so great but still great, if you get what I mean) work that the translator did. You don’t get to claim ownership for any part of it, even your edits. And once again, “original work belongs to the translators” without actually naming the translators? Fuck off.

9. God, I hate Wattpad and Instagram (okay sometimes Twitter but Twitter seems to be a halfway point) - The Sanctuaries for Lazy Content Thieves Where The Platform Endorses Their Shitty Behaviour

10. Aside from translations, I’ve also seen assholes stealing like shitposts and jokes - These are the hardest to prove as well and it’s almost impossible to claim ownership when someone steals your jokes. Thieves only wish they had as creative a brain as some of you (didn’t happen to me but to a mutual) do. The audacity. The audacity! if the work was actually done and paid and recorded, if TurnItIn.com was available for fandom posts, these thieves would be out of gas.

11. Fan translators are not obligated to answer to any of their readers when it comes to why they translated something a certain way. You don’t like it or don’t agree with it, simply ignore, close the tab and go find another translation you like, it’s that simple. Nowadays readers 1. Threaten/Diss the translator directly and rudely 2. Steal the work 3. Add their own spin on it without understanding the original content and say: Yay! Look at this I made it so much better so give me some attention

*****

The point of this post is not to claim ownership over any fandom or content just because translators or Chinese-speaking/reading people in the fandom know the content better. It’s also not to say that non-Chinese speaking/reading people can’t enjoy, understand, have great discussions over original Chinese content, because just from MDZS alone you can see that they can. Of course there are also individuals who might not be able to speak the language but are familiar with Chinese culture etc. because they’ve studied or lived it well, or maybe they’ve actually watched decades of Chinese drama to be able to analyse it properly now, all that’s awesome.

Also, I’m all for people who are learning Chinese (or any language for that matter) to translate something as practice. That’s great, that’s good, that’s to be admired!!

It’s non-Chinese speaking/reading people who claim they know the original content better than translators without any discussions, claiming some superiority over the content because they think the translation is not done well enough without doing any of the ground work that I really have an issue with (and also the fuckers who steal of course XD).

*****

And unfortunately I had too much time on my hands today and got pissed off after seeing the tweet so some of you have to read through this drivel XD

#translations #guardian #mdzs #rambles #stealing #again XD #not me this time #but then again i keep seeing my stolen shit so it's pent up anger #HAHAHAHA #you'd think i would have learnt #but i also think it's important to get angry each time it happens #even if it's tiring and futile?#if in 100 complaints only 1 gets answered #then that's 1 less mofo and thief who got away #you know?#idk sometimes

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dragonofyang · 5 years

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On Love and Lions Part 1: An Analysis on Love in VLD

“I have always believed that unity is where true power comes from, and true unity can only be born of love.” --Gyrgan, Paladin of the Yellow Lion

Voltron: Legendary Defender is a cartoon on Netflix that–with the final season available to watch on Netflix–has extremely regressive and harmful messages. The S8 on Netflix carries lessons about how war is good, that men shouldn’t respect the wishes and desires of women, that violence and abuse mean even victims aren’t deserving of forgiveness. Everything about that is 100% antithetical to what VLD was about throughout the prior seasons and each harmful message is another nail in the coffin of the original narratives of peace, respect, and fundamentally how everyone is deserving of love and forgiveness, regardless of the circumstances of their birth.

In fact, the theme of love in VLD is something we at Team Purple Lion wish to discuss. It’s arguably the most absolutely fundamental theme of the show. Love destroys the universe, and love saves it over and over again. And love would have rebuilt the universe, but thanks to the edits ordered by the trademark holder, the universe that should have been born from love was instead born from one girl sacrificing her life because she saw no better option. She didn’t even get to tell her only remaining father figure goodbye. What kind of message is that? In the original final season, prior to the executive meddling, we should have seen how love was such a powerful force in the universe that it could not just repair this reality, but all realities. And it’s not just romantic love, but six types of love.

Now, for those of you more familiar with our work, we’ve discussed some pretty big concepts in VLD and how they’re addressed, and there will be even more in future episodes of our reconstruction Rise and Atone. VLD engages not just with its own predecessors in the Voltron franchise, but Beast King GoLion, Labyrinth, Frankenstein, and Maureen Murdock’s The Heroine’s Journey is all but the story bible for Allura’s arc. The concepts we are about to discuss date back to Ancient Greece, and while love can be more than these concepts, it’s important that we have a framework through which we can discuss and analyze love as it appears in VLD without getting lost in all the examples.

In American culture, “love” is not very well-differentiated between kinds because we only use one word: “love”. While we use it across all sorts of contexts, we have to add modifiers when we don’t mean romantic love or familial love, which are the most commonly-acknowledged forms of love. VLD, being written and edited by primarily Americans living in America, also encounters this issue, but it does not focus solely on romantic love, which can complicate how to interpret love in the show. We, however, would like to argue that not only is it all love, but it doesn’t all have to be good love, familial love, or romantic love. At the end of the day the plot is driven by love in its many forms. Love is so baked into the story that it’s quite difficult to extricate, dare I even say impossible, and that ultimately is part of why we were able to reconstruct so much of what was lost in S8.

The Ancient Greeks had many words for love, but we feel it’s important to discuss the dialogue that VLD engages in with various forms of love, using the Ancient Greeks’ framework as a guide. The model gives us concrete definitions of different kinds of love, and can help us as an audience understand the various forms of love that are present in VLD. It’s important that we define the different ways we can observe love being portrayed because much of VLD relies on the writing adage of “show, don’t tell”.

So without any further ado, let’s dig into what, precisely, is love.

As stated earlier, we’ll be using terminology coined by the Ancient Greeks, specifically six categories of love that we feel are most prevalent in the show. We’ve also deduced our own examples of these forms of love when they’re taken too far or flat-out discarded, which will be discussed in a companion article.

The six forms of love are as follows:

Eros: the most famous kind of love, an intense (and often sexual) passion for another being and seeing the beauty within them. This is the love that most closely aligns with romantic love as we understand it in a modern American context.

Philia: an affection and loyalty between friends, notable for its platonic nature, it is the love that arises between friends, and can be found among family, but the modern equivalent would be the found family trope.

Storge: this is the intrinsic empathy between individuals, primarily the attachment of parents to children. This form of love was primarily used to describe familial relationships, and the patience one sometimes needs when around blood relatives.

Philautia: put simply, this is self-love in its purest form. It is acknowledging your needs, wants, and happiness without apology. The Ancient Greeks considered Philautia to be a basic human need.

Xenia: while many might not consider this to be a form of love, it is hospitality, or as we define it, love between a host and their guests. Specifically, this would be the care a host gives to their guests in both physical (food, gifts, etc.) and non-physical (respecting rights, protection, etc.). Hospitality is massively important because if you are good to someone while they are in your home, they will be equally good to you if you visit theirs.

Agape: this is a Greco-Christian term, ultimately, and is a little more difficult to understand because it can be confused with other forms of love. At its core, though, it is a pure and unconditional love such as that between spouses, families, or God and man. It shouldn’t be confused for other forms of love such as Philia because unlike the other forms of love, which only focus on one aspect of humanity, Agape is the unconditional and universal love for everyone. It’s sexless, unlike Eros. At its core, it’s the love born of goodwill to all people, regardless of circumstance.

While these are only six categories, there are many ways of interpreting love, especially since there are so many avenues to see love–in good and bad forms–in VLD. These categories are also not inherently hierarchical, and are not presented in any particular order. Agape is the main exception, being more convoluted in its nature, and thus is discussed at the end. It also narratively serves as part of the culmination to the plot, so it carries a greater weight in relation to the alpha plot of the whole story.

Now, let’s examine how they present in VLD. As an official reminder, please remember that all analysis of VLD is done from a ship-neutral stance and we are not proposing any endgame romances. The sole purpose of this article is to discuss observable portrayals of love in its various forms, and to analyze both the text and the metatextual messages resulting from them.

Eros: Passionate Love

Eros… arguably this is the most contentious form of love presented in VLD, if only because of all the ship wars that occurred in the fandom. Eros drives the shipping communities of fandoms across the world, because it often stems from on-screen chemistry or the potential of the fleeting seconds where a spark flies but does not catch in canon. The beauty of Eros is that it ripples quietly through fiction, or it can be a tsunami ready to devour the story. It’s the quiet whisper of two women sharing a private moment, to the shouted declarations in the heat of battle. Eros thrums through fandoms in a desperate tempo for seeing a love as passionate as you can feel in characters who may never share more than a glance.

Plato actually had quite the influence on the word “Eros”, because “Eros” or erotic love, was largely regarded as a type of madness brought upon a person by seeing someone whose beauty strikes your heart with an arrow (Cupid’s arrows, anyone?). Eros is the love that drives you to despair if the object of your affections is cruel or uninterested, and it burns like a fire. “Falling in love at first sight” is the key concept here, and you can see it reproduced in fandoms across the world, though many cultures have their own names and terms for it. Henry George Liddell and Robert Scott define “Eros” in A Greek-English Lexicon as “love, mostly of the sexual passion”. Plato, however, redefined the word to include a nonphysical aspect. He discusses it in Symposium and says that while (physical) Eros can be felt for a person initially, with contemplation you can and will fall in love with a person’s inner beauty, which for Plato was the ideal, since he specifically emphasized the lack of importance of physical attraction. In fact, Jung–who coined the Anima and Animus–has a similar approach, with an emphasis on unity within the self by accepting your internal Eros which manifests as your feminine Anima/masculine Animus.

In the text of VLD, Eros is remarkably subdued. This is partially due to its rating. Being a Y7-FV show, VLD can’t really have explicitly sexual content. Sure the implication can exist, but a lot of times sex has to be carried through metaphor if a story is to address it at all. Take the juniberry as an example. It’s a three-petal flower of a deep rose and softer pink, delicately topping a green stem, with a yellow pistil. In much of literary history, flowers represent female sexuality and beauty, and they are common representations of youth across genders.

Now, in strictly biological terms, flowers as a sexual symbol is a 1:1 accuracy in analysis, because the flower is the reproductive organ of a plant. I’d like to analyze the juniberry from a biological perspective, because understanding the anatomy of a flower can help us understand its role in literature as a metaphor for sex. The whole point of the flower is to be able to spread pollen across individual plants, whether by wind or by pollinators such as bats or bees, and breed to produce more plants. The actual reproductive organs of flowers are called the stamen and pistil, respectively. The stamen produces pollen, while the pistil collects pollen in its ovule to fertilize and create seeds. A stamen is a very slender filament, topped with what’s called an “anther”, which is where the pollen is actually released. The pistil, meanwhile, has a thicker base with a long body, usually topped with a few tendril-like structures called “stigma”.

Diagram by the Association of Societies for Growing Australian Plants [ID: A simple cross-section diagram of a flower. Three petals are visible on the far side, with reproductive organs drawn in the center. There is also a stalk and sepals at the bottom. Along the sides of the cross-section there are labels. On the left, a category called “Stamen” is labeled, with “Anther” and “Filament” pointing to two parts of the thinner reproductive organ. “Receptacle” marks the base of the flower, and “Peduncle (flower stalk)” marks out the stem. On the right, we have the label “Petal” and three labels under the category “Pistil”: “Stigma”, pointing to the top portion, “Style” pointing to the stem-like feature, and “Ovary” pointing to the rounded bottom. The label “Sepal” marks the leaf-like structure just under the petals. End ID.]

Now, when we look at the juniberries we see in canon, we can see that at no point are any drawn with stamens. They all have a single pistil growing from the center, and they’re topped with three stigma, meaning that all juniberries drawn on-screen are female juniberries.

Juniberries are a quintessential symbol of Altea, and they represent home to Allura, as well as what she’s lost. However, they also represent how Allura’s relationship to her own femininity is not some mystical thing determined by forces beyond her. Colleen gifts Allura a juniberry that was selectively bred from flowers she had available, and it’s identical in every way (that we can see) to the juniberries native to Altea. The message, though it’s subtle, is quite clear: Allura is in control of her femininity and can define herself however she pleases (“highlands poppy” versus “juniberry”). After the sexual undertones that threaded her relationship with Lotor, this is a very important message to convey, especially since a patriarchal story would punish Allura for the metaphorical sex in physical ways, such as how the season 8 on Netflix does.

Allura isn’t simply a vessel for male desire, nor is she a strong female character who doesn’t need a man. Her story is about finding agency separate from male expectations, without forsaking her own femininity in the process. Like the juniberry, she is feminine, but she is able to define herself, and the dark entity masquerading as Lotor reminds her of that with their conversation about calling the juniberry a “highlands poppy”. That’s what makes Lotor so dangerous to a traditional patriarchal values system: he reminds Allura that she has a choice.

It’s important to note that during their interactions Lotor never gives Allura a choice in the sense that he, a man, is allowing her one; he simply steps back and encourages her to make the choices to which she is entitled and to act on her emotions and desires. She is an agent of her own free will, and Lotor, being first her Shadow, challenges her to be smarter, quicker on the battlefield, and then as her Animus he challenges her to look inward and become in-tune to her own inner wants and needs. The other Paladins can offer some aid in that, but none of them strike her anxieties or hopes the way that Lotor can, being the crown prince and heir to her sworn enemy, and being half-Altean and half-Galra. He is, in a fundamentally physical way, the union of two races that were at war before Altea’s destruction, and to a survivor of that war, that forces Allura to question the beliefs she held in the beginning of the story. The stakes of success and failure are much higher with Lotor in the picture, and it’s easier to focus literary tension on two characters than five or six, so as a result of that persistent tension, we as the audience are given plenty of chemistry between two characters to spur Eros.

As we discussed last year in “Legendarily Defensive: Editing the Gay Away”, Keith was meant to have a gay relationship with another Paladin. We refuse to write conjecture on what his endgame romance was meant to be, however it is important to discuss Keith’s Eros in a metatextual sense. For example, let’s look at Keith and Shiro. Keith is a legacy character that dates all the way back to 1984 Defender of the Universe. His romantic subplot was relegated to excised footage and extremely subtextual if it managed to squeak past the axe. Shiro was able to be queer, however, due to the fact that he’s a DreamWorks-owned character who is new to the franchise, meaning that there isn’t a legacy that needed to be upheld.

Keith’s queerness, however, still acts as a spur to fuel the potential for Eros, and helps build tension between him and his fellow male Paladins. And I specify male Paladins because during season 2, Keith and Allura go off in a pod by themselves to see if Zarkon is tracking either of them. During the scenes with Keith and Allura together, it’s important to note the background music is remarkably flat and lacking in romantic cues. In prior iterations of Voltron, Keith and Allura are implied as endgame (DOTU), have the beginnings of an on-screen romance (VForce), or straight up just fuck on the page (such as in the comics). It stands to reason that this scene should at least imply some form of passionate chemistry here, but largely it’s two friends confiding in one another and trying to find reassurance as they confess their fears. Keith doesn’t have a moment to admire Allura’s beauty the way we see Lance and Matt do, and Allura doesn’t blush like how she does with Lotor or Lance. Without markers for any kind of Eros, the scene is a quiet moment of contemplation away from the stress, only to be broken by Shiro telling them to get back because the Galra Empire found the Castleship again.

So then where do we see passionate chemistry for Keith? At the risk of starting the ship-war again, his chemistry largely exists with Shiro and Lance. Shiro, narratively, functions as his Mentor, someone to guide and believe in him, who then gives up his position of leadership (sort of) so that Keith can grow. Bringing Shiro back prematurely makes it harder to see, but in a traditional Hero’s Journey, the Mentor figure teaches not-quite-enough to the Hero before disappearing, and the Hero grows on their own and becomes their own person. Naturally, this makes Keith and Shiro have tension, especially since Shiro was brought back prematurely due to marketing, so their relationship dynamic had to change to accommodate Shiro’s return. Lance, however, constantly baits and teases Keith, and Keith frequently rises to it and they argue. They butt heads and don’t have that sense of camaraderie that Keith and Shiro do, so right off the bat there is more obvious tension between the two of them. Eventually, Lance and Keith learn to trust each other, and in season 8 we finally see them settle their rivalry as they prepare to face Honerva. So while Keith’s dynamic with Shiro is more focused on camaraderie and growth, Keith’s dynamic with Lance is more focused on pushing each other to be better warriors and teammates.

Philia: Friendly Love

In VLD, we’re shown that friends can be found anywhere if you’re willing to put down the blasters and try to make them. We’re also shown that just because you’re on the same side of the battlefield, that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re best buddies. Commander Lahn pledges his loyalty to Lotor after his base is saved by Voltron, and Keith and Lance butt heads so often you’d think one would sooner drop the other into a black hole. However, we should never discount the power of friendship, or rather, we should never discount the value of platonic relationships. This includes everything from friendship, to the found family trope, to the mystical bond the Paladins have with their Lions. Philia is the companion’s love, firmly rooted in platonic–and often intellectual–admiration.

Philia, as defined in A Greek-English Lexicon by Liddell and Scott, is “an affectionate regard or friendship, usually between equals”. Where Eros is the fiery passion between sexually-attracted adults, Philia is the platonic love between people who respect and trust each other. This is the love that flows like water, endlessly filling and refilling your emotional needs with good company, good advice, and generally just a good presence. Friendships are the ports we anchor ourselves at when the seas become too rough, and in VLD, where space is the most dangerous frontier and most of the universe is your enemy, friends are more important than ever for our Heroes and Heroines.

[ID: A screenshot of S4E1 “Code of Honor” with Allura, Lance, Coran, Shiro, Pidge, and Hunk sharing a group hug with Keith. Coran, Hunk, Pidge, and Allura are all crying, while Keith, Shiro, and Lance are smiling. End ID.]

Everywhere you look in VLD, you’re sure to find some kind of camaraderie between friends. Lance, Pidge, and Hunk make the Garrison Trio (or as I like to call them, The Planck Constant), and they get into shenanigans together. In fact, it’s entirely likely that had Lance and Hunk not decided to follow Pidge up to the roof, they never would’ve found Shiro, and subsequently Blue Lion. Later, when Voltron has allied with Lotor as the new Galra Emperor, they reprogram a sentry to become the eternally-fantastic Funbot. If you want a prime example of the fun that could be had between friends, those three are quintessential to the definition of Philia. They’re the first Youths you meet in the story, and it’s through their eyes we watch as a far-off intergalactic war comes to Earth at last. The show has us follow them as the audience, and we watch as they meet up with Keith, save Shiro, and then find themselves going from Earth to Kerberos in less than five minutes, and then by the end of their day, they’ve awoken Allura and Coran and are on Arus, thousands of lightyears away from their home.

We see the Paladins go from a rowdy group of teenagers with Shiro as the head to a group of five Heroes and Heroines capable of saving the universe. Lance helps Pidge get all the GAC coins she needs for a video game, and he’s always got the team’s back with his sniper rifle. Hunk always is ready to lend a hand, even when he’s scared of flying Yellow, but when the Taujeerans are in danger of falling into the acid as their planet breaks apart, he’s right there holding them up while the team gets the arc ship ready for takeoff. Our Paladins are the embodiment of the power of friendship, trust, and perseverance, and it’s that tenacity and dedication that should have carried our six Paladins to victory and brought the Purple Paladin back into the light he thought had forsaken him. Black, Red, Green, Blue, Yellow, Purple, and White, together in a bond of pure platonic love. There’s an old phrase I’m sure you’re all familiar with: “blood is thicker than water”. The power of Philia and found family in VLD challenges that notion in the original S8 when Lotor is offered his vindication. “The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb.”

Pick any two of our main protagonists and you’re sure to find a thread of Philia connecting them, because when you fight together as one, you inevitably become closer as the trust builds between you. In fanfic terminology, this is the root of the found family trope: strangers and friends finding themselves in a gripping adventure together, and discovering that they’re stronger together than they could be apart, and coming to see these people as more than colleagues or acquaintances. They become your family and people to defend, and the people you trust to have your back when it’s time to face down an enemy together.

That’s part of why Keith leaving for the Blade of Marmora is so fractious. He’s growing into a leadership role and obviously accustomed to it, but with Shiro’s premature return, there’s some growing pains as the incumbent leader and the former leader unintentionally butt heads. Keith needs to be in Black Lion without Shiro to complete his growth, but without a way to easily integrate him back into the team without messing with the legacy, Keith has to go. And like with any good friend, when you have to say goodbye, it’s a bittersweet affair. The team doesn’t want him to go, but in-canon he feels he can do more good with the Blade, but the meta reason is that his Hero’s Journey has been arrested. But, like with any good friend, the team is able to reunite with him at a later date and he integrates back into the group. They are wiser to the world, harder, but they are together again. And they need that unity when it’s time to face Honerva and go into battle for not just their universe, but all realities.

Storge: Familial Love

In English, we have many concepts of love, but generally we only treat the single word of “love” as a word for “love”. As a result, we tend to use other words to modify the type of love we mean, which can get things kind of sticky if you talk about X type of love but don’t specify that it’s X type and not Y type. With familial love, it can be relatively understood without being specified, but as you can see by my explication here, I still have to modify the word “love” with an adjective to describe the next kind of love I will be discussing. Storge, the familial love.

A Greek-English Lexicon defines Storge as “love, affection, especially of parents and children”. Storge, unlike Philia, is not a platonic admiration for a companion in the family, however it does denote respect. Storge is also not the idealized unconditional love of Agape (which we will discuss toward the end of this essay). Storge is the instinctive love for those in your family, especially between parents and children. I also argue the key aspect of Storge is that your family–for all the times you want to tear out your hair–will love you for the rest of their lives. And you’ll love them, because they’re people who have your best interests at heart, even if they don’t always express that well.

Coran, Coran, the gorgeous man himself is Allura’s second father figure (after Alfor), but he’s the only father figure for Allura in the show that’s alive. Coran’s protectiveness of Allura is well-documented. He was furious when she got captured saving Shiro, he warns her to be careful healing the Balmera, he worries for her in Blue, but at no point does he actually prevent her from making her choices. He wants her to have a full life, a happy life, or at least as happy as one can be when you’re one of the only survivors of a war. He’s a father through and through, and even if Allura is Alfor’s daughter by blood, Coran is the one who supports her during the most difficult stage of not just her life but the universe’s life. He loves her, he consistently reminds people to respect her and to think of what’s best for her. Not just as a princess of Altea or the heart of Voltron, but as a daughter. Alfor was her father, but he died before he saw her face the trials in the plot. Coran, however, he gets to see her grow into a woman even greater than what Alfor could have ever imagined. The audience might find him a little frustrating (such as in S8E1 “Launch Date”), and Allura takes his protectiveness in stride, but at the end of the day Coran is a gorgeous man with his heart in the right place, even if his execution is a little off the mark on occasion.

The Holt parents are also good examples of Storge. We see Colleen and Sam fight to tell Earth about what’s been going on, as well as finding their children. Colleen herself is a solid mama bear that anyone would want to have fighting for them in their corner, and we can see she gives no fucks about protocol when she’s told she can’t stay on Garrison grounds with her husband.

[ID: Colleen Holt glaring, her husband Sam behind her looking equally annoyed. She glares at Admiral Sanda (off-screen) as they argue. The subtitle reads, “You’ll get me the clearance.” End ID.]

While Colleen doesn’t hesitate to ground Pidge for running away to space, the fact of the matter is that she and Sam fought like absolute hell to protect their kids in the ways they had available to them. Storge is the love parents have for their children and these two human characters are the perfect examples of it, even if Pidge chafes a bit under being grounded. Sam and Colleen’s love for Pidge and Matt and Coran’s love for Allura are the perfect avenues to explore how Storge is love, even if it’s frustrating, but they also serve as an excellent foil for how that love can be horribly twisted.

Philautia: Self-Love

In S1E1 of VLD, when our human protagonists meet Allura, Sendak is barreling through open space to their location and hellbent on capturing the Blue Lion. Allura is able to talk to Alfor–or rather, his hologram–to seek guidance in the upcoming battle, and he says, “You must be willing to sacrifice everything to assemble the lions and correct my error.”

With VLD, there’s this idea of sacrifice, of giving your life for the greater good, but when discussing acts of love, we also need to talk about acts of love for yourself. We see many instances of characters sacrificing themselves for the greater good, the belief that their death will bring an eventual victory to the Paladins of Voltron and free the universe. Allura throws Shiro into an escape pod so he doesn’t have to suffer the abuse again, but in the process becomes a prisoner herself. Ulaz gives up his life to save the Paladins and keep the Blade of Marmora base secret. Thace sacrifices himself so that Galra Central Command can go offline and the plan can move forward. Keith nearly kills himself trying to break through Haggar’s barrier at the battle of Naxzella before Lotor intervenes and destroys the ship with a blast from his Sincline ship. Sacrifice is a massive part of the show, and needless sacrifices are always undone, but what message do continuous sacrifices leave us with as the audience? It leaves us with Alfor’s lesson: you must sacrifice everything to correct my mistake.

When you’re writing, one of the most basic things you must do to drive a plot forward is change something significant. In the beginning of a story, Character A might think Character B is wrong and has no idea of what it takes to do something, but then Character B later on needs to surprise Character A by proving they can do that thing or that they don’t need to. It forces Character A and the audience to rethink their initial assumptions, and it encourages tension and dialogue between characters that otherwise might not exist. It’s an internal motivation, and one that audiences will pretty much always find more gripping and compelling than a simple monster-of-the-week scenario. VLD is no different. “All Galra are bad/Altea is good” leads to meeting the Blade of Marmora and Alteans who took over their universe. The challenge to a character’s worldview is what makes turning these initial ideas on their head so satisfying.

So what could challenge the idea that you have to sacrifice everything? Especially to correct the mistakes of someone else?

Love. Not for others, not for family, not even for the greater good.

But for yourself.

To quote Audre Lorde, “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.” Philautia is the love in which you put yourself first, not because it’s selfish, but because it’s self-care. Self-love is defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary as “an appreciation of one’s own worth or virtue” and Philautia has been recognized for millennia as a basic human need by the likes of Maslow and the Ancient Greeks. Recognizing your own needs and worth is a fundamentally radical decision, especially if you are in a position where you’re expected to prioritize the needs of others before your own.

S1E1 of VLD offers us pretty much every worldview that gets challenged later on in the series, except for Alfor’s. We see Alteans can be equally cruel, that Galra are not all evil. Voltron is a great protector, but it is also a great weapon, and Keith even calls it an alien warship in the very beginning, highlighting the danger Blue–and consequently Voltron itself–poses by merely existing. Philautia is not the exertion or prioritization of your desires, but the assertion of your needs. It can easily swing too far into selfishness and vanity, but making yourself heard is never a bad decision, and for those who are marginalized, women, trans people, disabled people, neurodivergent people, nonwhite people, it is an act of defiance. The sins of people in positions of power are not the burden for their victims to bear. If protesting is too much or too burdensome, simply taking the time to care for oneself is enough, because you can’t pour water out of an empty cup. Alfor’s plea to Allura was always meant to be overturned with the finale, especially since she’s facing down the antithesis of everything she believed in season 1. Honerva is selfish, manipulative, abusive, and an Altean woman. Alfor would ask Allura to give up everything she has left to destroy Honerva, but in the original and unedited season 8 Allura would have taken that plea and turned it on its head.

VLD’s Princess Allura is the first and only iteration to be a nonwhite girl and voiced by a black woman. Having her sacrifice herself is an extremely harmful message to little girls of color everywhere because it’s not the burden of girls of color to save the world. Their duty is to love themselves and know they’re able to be as brave and kind and intelligent as they’d like. Princess Allura’s arc is about a girl learning to not shoulder the burden of violence, but instead choosing to relieve herself and choose healing and creation, and in turn, her reward would be the literal universe at her fingertips.

And Allura isn’t the only character to learn to love themselves. Lance, as well, learns to become comfortable with himself. At first he’s comfortable and cocky and immature in Blue Lion, but then as the seasons progress and he finds Red to be more of a challenge, he learns he has to follow through with his actions and decisions. He learns that to fly Red, he can’t hesitate and just has to roll with the punches. He dubs himself “the sharpshooter” of the group, and at first he gets laughed at, but then he saves Slav from being trapped in prison once more by firing and making a near-impossible shot. He doesn’t have to forge ahead and fight recklessly, he simply has to see an opportunity and take it.

All our other Paladins learn to become more comfortable with themselves, as well. Hunk becomes more confident in being the voice of reason, and becomes an A+ diplomat in the process. Pidge is able to open up and be honest with her team about her secrets and fears, and in return is blessed not just with that weight off her shoulders, but the knowledge that her team is her family just as much as Sam and Matt are. Keith, too, learns that he doesn’t have to go it alone all the time. He’s able to relax and trust his team, and rather than burdening himself with doing everything, he’s able to rely on the skillsets of the other Paladins and make them a stronger team by focusing his attention on directing them, as opposed to commanding them.

Another interesting example of Philautia is Lotor himself, who at no point is uncomfortable with his mixed heritage, even when he’s called a “half-breed” or when one of his parents blames half of his heritage for his failings. The main reason that it’s not as blatant is because by the time the story begins, he’s been at peace with his heritage and his place in the Galra Empire for a long time, and thus does not play a significant role until he has his breakdown at the end of season 6.

This form of love is quite possibly the most frustrating, if only because so much of its payoff was in season 8. We should see Allura not give up her life in the name of sacrifice, but rather choose to become a goddess in the name of love. We should see Lance become unshakably confident in his abilities when it’s time to face the biggest bad guy of the series. The final season was meant to be a season won through love, and self-love is quintessential to that victory, because it gives viewers the message that your acceptance of yourself is vital to the world. It’s an important lesson for little girls everywhere to know that their worth doesn’t lie in how much of themselves they can give away, but how much of themselves they cultivate and grow, because if you trust in yourself and choose love, then you’ll be as powerful and strong as Princess Allura. It’s possible to be the brave and chivalrous Paladin while also being the princess who likes the occasional sparkly thing.

The lesson of Philautia in VLD is one of embracing your limits of what you can give, and reminding the world that you matter, because loving yourself is the greatest act of defiance when you’re faced with an enemy who wants nothing more than for you to make yourself smaller, weaker, more amicable if it would please them. It’s the reminder to be gentle with yourself, no matter what battles you face, because caring for yourself is just as–if not more–important.

Xenia: Love for the Stranger

Hospitality is a massive part of many cultures, I personally had a relative (who has since passed) who would always have an open door for the poor families in their neighborhood and the stove would always have something cooking. My own mother will cook especially for you if you need her to. There’s a reason “Southern hospitality” is famous. Good food, good company, and ultimately safety are what sets Xenia among the categories of love as defined by the Ancient Greeks. In VLD, this form of love is very sparse in comparison to love such as Philia, however it’s extremely important that our heroes engage in it. To quote Coran, “70 percent of diplomacy is appearance. Then 29 percent is manners, decorum, formalities and chit-chat” (“Changing of the Guard”). The remaining one percent, which Allura notes, is actual diplomacy and fighting for freedom. That’s essentially what hosting, good and proper hosting, is. It’s taking someone into your home and providing them with material comforts and necessities such as food, as well as non-physical ones like safety or protection, or extending and respecting their rights.

A good host will anticipate their guests’ needs because they have a love for their fellow strangers, and they show that love by providing for them. Xenia is the love of the stranger who has taken up space in your home and respecting their need to do so, but it’s also a reciprocal love. By extending your hospitality to a person, they will be more inclined to do the same for you and yours in the future. In Greece it was a complicated dance of gift-giving and receiving, spurred by the belief that one would incur the wrath of a god in disguise. While offending the gods was a big fear, it’s important to remember that good hosting and good guesting will create a deep bond between both parties because you’re respecting one another. Respect your wayward traveler and welcome them into your home, and they will entertain you with tales from far away lands, and in the future you will find a place at their table. Respect your host and the space they provide you, and you’ll receive gifts and care fit for a god. This giving and receiving encourages goodwill between strangers, and providing care to someone you don’t know is an act of love in its own right.

There’s a rule in American food language: “never return an empty dish”. This rule is especially prevalent in the US South and Midwest regions, but the general idea is that when you meet someone new (i.e. a new neighbor) you bring them a dish of something to welcome them and introduce yourself. You make small-talk, help them get acquainted with the area, wish them well, and then go on your merry way. Then, once your new neighbor has settled, eaten the food you gave them, and had time to make something new, they come knocking on your door and return that dish to you with a new food in it.

That’s a facet of what Xenia can encompass, and we see Xenia acted out in three key ways in VLD: Allura recruiting people for the Voltron Coalition, Lotor hosting the Paladins during their alliance, and Hunk showing his care for others through cooking.

Allura, for all her charms, isn’t that great of a diplomat, especially in the beginning of the story. When she meets the Arusians, she accidentally informs them that their dance of apology isn’t enough, which then makes them think they need to sacrifice themselves on a pyre. She thankfully recovers and lets them continue the dance, and then invites them into the Castle of Lions later. With the leaders of the rebel planets, she has a good presence and is rather suave with her guests, however when attention moves off her and onto the Paladins, and when the question of Voltron comes up, it’s extremely difficult for her to take control of the situation again. The loss of Shiro was fresh, and she really didn’t have a good answer that would reveal they couldn’t form Voltron, so she struggled with taking control back. This isn’t an indictment on Allura, but it is meant to point out how Xenia is not easy to learn. As we follow the Paladins, however, Allura gains confidence in her ability to speak publicly, and as they gather more allies it becomes easier for her to encourage alliances. She goes from panicking and trying to keep Arusians from dying to being able to communicate with allies and command a room. Xenia doesn’t come as naturally to Allura as it does to Hunk, and Lotor has had millennia of practice, but the important thing about Xenia is that you extend your hand and make the effort, even if it’s a little clumsy, because in the end you’re caring about strangers and welcoming them into your home and telling them they have a place at your table.

However, where Allura falls short in Xenia, we see both Hunk and Lotor shine. Let’s examine Lotor’s expertise, first.

Lotor is ten thousand years old, and it’s implied he’s spent much of that time playing the political game of the Galra Empire, as well as learning about other planets. It’s canon that he has a thirst for knowledge, and so couple his curiosity with his need to survive a very blood-driven political environment and you have a golden host forged in fire. It’s difficult to surprise Lotor, since he’s pretty much always two steps ahead of everyone. When he forges an alliance with the Voltron Coalition after his victory at the Kral Zera, Lotor has banners hung that bear the same symbol that Zarkon and Alfor fought under, which also adorns the shield on Green’s back. He specifically sought to recall the good times between the Galra and Alteans, and personally greeted the Paladins on his flagship. He encourages the Paladins to explore and use whatever resources they need, because as their host, Lotor–and by extension the entire Galra Empire–is now at their disposal. He’s the ever-perfect host, inviting his lower-ranked guests to make themselves comfortable, and acknowledging Allura’s rank as princess and personally escorting her along. In a lot of other high fantasy or sci-fi stories, showing the heroes around would get palmed off to a servant of some sort, especially if the host is duplicitous. However, Lotor affords our Heroes and Heroines quite a bit of respect compared to what other characters in his place might do, even going so far as to offer his own personal time to the princess when he has an empire to claim still. Given the canon politics, Lotor logically should have been in constant communication with various officers and securing their loyalty to him, but instead he takes time to approach his new allies and make them feel welcome in the headquarters of their former-enemy.

So while Lotor is arguably the best example of good hosting I’ve ever seen in a show (without it turning out to be some sort of ploy), Hunk’s style of Xenia is equally good if in a different way. While Lotor is shown to essentially be a master of decorum, Hunk is a master in the kitchen and the art of making room for everyone at the table. Hunk has only been in space for a few months to a few years (depending on when in the series we’re talking), he hasn’t had the millennia to research planets and learn all their customs, or train in diplomacy to make up for any lack of education. He’s just a guy from Earth who likes to cook and who especially likes to cook for others. In all prior iterations of Voltron, Hunk has always been “the food guy” or “the slightly dumb, but lovable one”. It’s not particularly flattering, and VLD even pokes fun at how flat his character is historically in “The Voltron Show!” by adding fart gag noises. In VLD, however, we see that Hunk is intelligent and brave, if anxious, and he’s more at home in a home than he is in a Lion. Hunk is a good Paladin, but he is quite possibly the best diplomat in the whole show.

A large part of Hunk’s diplomacy lies in listening. When he’s out in the field, he’s quite possibly the best listener out of the entire team. When there are guests on the Castleship, or when the Alteans are on the IGF-Atlas, he doesn’t just listen, he welcomes them. In scenes from season 8, we really get to see this shine, because as Hunk says in “Day Forty-Seven”, “food has a way of reminding people of moments in time.” Bringing good memories with food can go a long way to putting stress and anger behind people.

Every person has a dish that, when prepared, makes them relax and think of happy memories. In Hunk’s kitchen, everyone eats, and nobody is unwelcome. Whether you’re Commander Lahn and working with Hunk to save your planet from devastating radiation, or you’re an Altean who just wants what’s best for your people, Hunk will meet you halfway and try to see things from your perspective, and offer you a cookie because he feels like it. Hunk’s Xenia is not wrapped up in protocol or etiquette. His Xenia is found just across the kitchen table, with a plate of warm food and a friendly conversation, ready to listen to your troubles and offer a hug, if not a solution.

Agape: Unconditional Love

Now that we have discussed the five prior categories of love as defined by the Ancient Greeks, let’s examine Agape, which can be difficult to conceptualize. “Agape” originates a Greek term, however it wasn’t used very often until Christianity came into the picture, and thus it encompasses far more than even xenia does, because while Xenia is love in the form of courtesy to travelers, Agape’s prevalent definition stems purely from the idea that God loves everyone unconditionally. In fact, “agape” is the term used in the Bible to describe the unconditional love of God, but when you translate it to English, the word simply becomes “love”, losing the weight that it carries in Greek.

The idea of unconditional and divine love is not unique to Christianity or the Ancient Greeks. Throw a rock in any direction and I’m sure you’ll find a culture with a similar concept to Agape. The key aspects of unconditional love is that it is sexless–meaning attraction is unnecessary to feel Agape–and that it is founded in goodwill for others. It feels cheap to throw the quote “love thine enemy” around in this section, because that discounts the importance of Philautia as we discussed it earlier in this essay, but at the end of the day that’s what Agape means. The Bible–which influences much of the definition of this kind of love–would have people forgive the ones who do them wrong, but forgiveness does not mean forgetting, and loving someone doesn’t require forgiving them either.

In VLD, a man loved a woman so much he tricked his closest friends and allies into opening a rift in an effort to save her life. In the process, they both died and revived, cursed with immortality and a thirst for destruction. Zarkon was a man who loved Honerva so much that he doomed the known universe to 10,000 years of his tyranny. Honerva, when she regained her memories, sought vengeance against Voltron for not just losing her son, but also because she blames everyone around her for being the reason why her own son rejected her time and time again. Honerva is the antithesis to Allura in pretty much every way, and in the edited season 8, Lotor is condemned to a cycle of abuse because he’s never offered an opportunity to speak, just like how he was violently silenced by his mother when he disobeyed his father on the colony planet in “Shadows”. Honerva, however, is not.

[ID: A screenshot of S8, featuring from left to right: Lance, Keith, Allura, “Shiro”, Pidge, and Hunk. They face Honerva, who is facing away from the audience so we see the back of her head and suit. Screenshot from “Seek Truth in Darkness”. End ID.]

[ID: A shot of “Allura”’s hand grasping Honerva’s wrist and vice versa. Screenshot from “Seek Truth in Darkness”. End ID.]

Allura being a paragon of growing into Philautia gives other characters the ability to do the same, but as @leakinghate notes in “Seek Truth in Darkness”, that is not Allura’s hand, just as that is not Shiro next to Allura in the prior screenshot. Allura is not the one who was most wronged by Honerva. She was asleep and hidden from the universe. Lotor, however, was subjected to centuries of abuse by the hands of his parents.

Agape is a complicated love, one that requires a person to be able to love everyone unconditionally, but love does not necessarily mean “forgive and forget”. It’s important that Allura impart the enlightenment she gained on her Heroine’s Journey, because this is the point where she can be at peace and claim her cosmic reward, but she cannot do so without the person who was most wronged being able to face his oppressor: Lotor.

[ID: A close-up shot of Lotor glaring at the audience, with the subtitle text reading, “maybe I will take pity on you when the time comes.” Screenshot from “Seek Truth in Darkness”. End ID.]

As @leakinghate pointed out, Allura is the one to use her abilities to restore Honerva’s sense of self, but Lotor being present makes this confrontation all the more poignant and intense. This is the opportunity for us to see Agape in its full glory, but with the edits to the final season it’s a pale shadow of what could have been. The universe is about to be reborn because Allura and Lotor stay behind to repair the rift in all realities. We need that Philautia that Allura is able to embody, but we also need Agape. We’re shown countless times throughout the show that good and evil are not so clearly delineated, and that there are shades of gray everywhere. Lotor has been hurt so much by the one person alive who should have loved him unconditionally.

And rather than continue the cycle of abuse and take vengeance, he chooses to let go. We should have seen him take his power back, not in a godly or violent sense, but his power over his fate. He is not his father. And he is not his mother. He is more. By confronting her in this rift of all realities, we see the foreshadowing of season 6 come into full swing and while we are missing much of that original sequence between him and his mother, it’s important to realize that regardless of the content that was removed post-production, he takes pity on his mother in a sense. She’s a flawed person who made bad decisions. He does not owe her forgiveness, and he does not owe her love, but in her finally letting go of not just him but all the spirits of the original Paladins, Lotor himself is able to be free to love in the way he was denied: unconditionally.

The universe needs people who love themselves enough to choose a path of peace, and it needs to be made with the unconditional love of a parent, a friend, a lover, a god. It needs the eternal goodwill of its new creators because the people of the new universe will fuck up. They’ll make mistakes and hurt each other and Weblums will eat planets and the circle of life will continue. But being able to look at the fucked-up universe and say “I love you” is a power that not many have. It takes courage to look at the universe that has wronged you, wronged billions, hurt the found family that’s accepted you, and still find a way to love it.

The new universe is made of love just as the old one was. It’s made with passion, for friends, for family, for strangers, and for yourself. It’s made by people with love and hope and the intent to make the world they live in a little better every day. And that, ultimately, is the true love that spurs the story of VLD forward.

Stay tuned for a companion meta soon, in which we will discuss these forms of love and how they can be twisted and taken to unhealthy extremes.

Works Cited

Dos Santos, Joaquim and Montgomery, Lauren. Voltron: Legendary Defender. Netflix.

LeakingHate, et. al. “Legendarily Defensive: Editing the Gay Away in VLD”. Team Purple Lion. 12 Mar 2019. Web. https://www.teampurplelion.com/gay-romance-cut-voltron/

LeakingHate, et. al. “Seek Truth in Darkness”. Team Purple Lion. 2 Mar 2019. Web. https://www.teampurplelion.com/seek-truth-in-darkness/ Liddell, Henry and Scott, Robert. “Eros”. A Greek-English Lexicon. http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0057%3Aentry%3De%29%2Frws

Liddell, Henry and Scott, Robert. “Philia”. A Greek-English Lexicon. http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0057%3Aentry%3Dfili%2Fa

Liddell, Henry and Scott, Robert. “Storge”. A Greek-English Lexicon. http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0057%3Aentry%3Dstorgh%2F

“Self-love”. Merriam-Webster Dictionary. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/self-love

Payne, Will. “Botany for the Beginner”. Australian Plants Online. 2006. http://anpsa.org.au/APOL2006/aug06-s1.html

Potter, Ben. “The Odyssey: Be Our Guest With Xenia”. Classical Wisdom Weekly. 19 April 2013. Web. https://classicalwisdom.com/culture/literature/the-odyssey-be-our-guest-with-xenia/

@leakinghate @crystal-rebellion @felixazrael @voltronisruiningmylife

#TeamPurpleLion #Team Purple Lion #vld #freevlds8 #voltron

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drmedicsgamesurgery · 5 years

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Danganronpa Togami Volume 3 Part 7 (Summary)

Sorry for the short summary after 2 weeks, i have been very busy and this part required a lot of hard reading and research to translate. Good news is I will be much more free soon, so if you are lucky you might get 2 summaries a week.

Thanks to @enoshima-pyon @shockersalvage @jinjojess @hopeymchope for helping out!

One more thing:

IF YOU HAVEN’T READ KIRIGIRI SOU, DO SO NOW OR YOU WILL BE SUPER CONFUSED AS TO WHAT HAPPENS NEXT. LINK HERE.

This feeling.

Why, why is it that when I learn more about the K2K system in this place, I feel completely confused?

This may all be fake. Maybe, I already knew that things would be like this? From the time when Borges’ anomalies became more and more obvious, I had begun to have already noticed it within my own heart.

My own story.

Originally, I was just an item belonging to Byakuya.

However, I also had my own story and I was destined to confront it at some point.

And that is now.

I drank cold coffee and K did the same. The old man just talked about the tragedy of Don Quixote. [1] He said that the scene in which all the main characters had arrived into an inn had become unreadable due to the language. He said even Kafka and Sōseki [2] still resisted like this.

Speaking of which, there are also very exaggerated incidents in the books of authors like Banana Yoshimoto [3] and Haruki Murakami. [4] People feel like these can be too coincidental or contrived. Is that also a kind of resistance? Or is it that an exaggerated incident is an indispensable element for an interesting story?

Anyway, the old man who was drinking coffee in front of me, by pure chance was also something of a long shot. I just so happened to meet him and just so happened to listen to him. He just so happened to be an alumnus of Hope Peak Academy. He just so happened to be related to the Bible Plan. He just so happened to have participated in the development of Borges. It's almost like just one big joke.

I don't know if K knows my inner monologue. He has been talking in the calmest tone since then.

"It was not long after the end of the 'The Worst Incident in the History of the Togami Family. A person who claimed to be an insider of the Togami Family found me. Presumably, the superiors had already learned of the 'Bible Plan' to some extent. The insider was begging me: 'Can you write a dictionary for us?' What a charming invention!’ Still, I wanted to find a safe place to hide Borges. The Togami’s wanted to learn the techniques behind the 'Bible Plan'. Although I don't like the phrase very much, it was a win-win relationship for both parties."

Shinobu, naturally, has grown quite distrustful from these explanations but K assures her that he only provided the dictionary aspects of Borges, and points out that while any ‘missing pages’ were on the publishers fault, it was on the ‘reader’ in how they used the dictionary. When K was called on by the Togami’s, Borges hardware was already complete and he had installed the K2K system in it. However, complications arose because instead of using Borges as just a dictionary Shinobu used it as a way that K describes best as someone “watching the Raiders [5] while playing the game at the same time.”

That was a very modern metaphor, but thanks to it, things have become easier to understand. Indeed, I have always been obsessed with “Journey Under The Midnight Sun". Writing "Journey Under The Midnight Sun" is my only value in life.

Since Shinobu kept using Borges to search things related to Byakuya in order to write his biography, the K2K System inside it became specialized in Byakuya. And just like it led a person into committing murder by showing him a particular book, it started showing to Shinobu a book recommended to her. It started showing only the reality she wanted to see.

Shinobu responds that she had no chance to learn about the Hasegawa Research Institute or the Ketouin Conglomerate but K compares it to that of the ‘Anna Karenina’ [6] translations and how Nabokov [7] commented on how many times the word ‘home’ appeared throughout them all compared to the original text. Eight in the English version, once in French and no more than twice in the Czech version. He ponders how many times the word appears in the Japanese iteration before saying that reading those translations can be touching, but there will always be an inability to grasp what the original was. This causes Shinobu to think about her conversation with Hiroyuki on the talk of translations and he encouraged her to read the original.

It’s like singing karaoke without seeing the lyrics. It should be alright, but it seems that there is something wrong with it, which makes people feel uneasy and fearful.

K sums it up with this: “In a nutshell, no matter how many correct explanations I make, your dictionary will not translate them accurately to you.”

Shinobu demands to be told what the actual names of the Ketouin Conglomerate and the Hasegawa Institute...only to become exasperated when she thinks K is joking when he says they are the SkinSkin Conglomerate and Clark Kent Research Institute. K points out as long she had Borges, what she said and hears really can’t be guaranteed. It has mostly to do with the dictionary installed in it. Because the multiple editors are different, the content is different as well. Like how the concept of love varies between definition and cultures and philosophy.

“Just like an analogy. In addition, because of their different levels of knowledge, their understanding ability is different. After reviewing the dictionary, different users will have a considerable degree of understanding of the meaning of a word. The dictionary thinks that it understands 'A', but it may be misunderstood to understand 'B', and when it is described in language, it is 'C', and this may happen."

Shinbu comments she doesn’t want to misunderstand the world, though K points out people are misunderstanding everything throughout their lifetime, like how someone made Gulas by following a curry recipe or how people have turned to terrorism because of watching “Island of the Evil Spirits”[8]. Shinobu, horrified, wonders how she has been talking to people. However, K explains it that as long as people get the gist of her actions, communicating with others should be fine. Even though her reality is twisted in distorted, her unreality is still set within the bounds of reality.

Yet, even still...

"I just want to see the real thing."

"This feeling is actually normal, but it’s impossible. Borges is like a mother who overprotects her child, hides everything that is not good for you, and only provides you with what you want to see."

"I don't have Borges in my right eye, so why is it impossible? Haven't I gotten rid of its influence?"

"Even if the child is independent, it is impossible to get rid of the influence of the parents immediately. A person who has necrosis of the right side of the brain due to cerebral infarction will replace the right side with the function that has been lost. The same is true for you as well. Now all the organs in your body are running at full speed, instead of Borges continuing its work."

"How hopelessly despairing."

"Don't say that. If it lets you see the truth all at once, you will certainly collapse. It’s because this work is still in progress. It’s so you can still see the world you want to see.”

The world I want to see?

Shinobu soaks this in and starts to lose it, repeating her belief that Byakuya Togami is God. K tries to snap her back to reality by reminding her that Byakuya is human and is destined to grow old and die. Shinobu, however, still continues her silent freak out as she comes to grip with this information.

With or without Borges. I am still myself.

This is irrelevant! Byakuya is God! It’s not that I put a sparkling aura on him or anything, but he is just is so shining! He was born to be the North Star! That old man doesn't really know what he is talking about when it comes to such a God! Byakuya is unbeaten, and Byakuya is invincible!

At this time, he still plays the world in the palm of his hand. Since then, the world has always belonged to Byakuya. This fact will not change, even if the sun expands and swallows the Earth. The universe is coming to an end, yet Byakuya is still God! I wrote "Journey Under The Midnight Sun" to let this truth pass on to the future, and wrote a completely true biography with Borges...

Ah, but Borges has been full of lies...hey? The reason why Borges lies is because I want to see such a world, right!? What I want to see is Byakuya as the world's God? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no!

I need to drink Bufferin.

I seem to be in a mess and I can prove that this is why K that was so eloquent before. However, he did not say a word, but was quietly watching me. I don't know if what he is thinking is either "this would be the crash after a person knows the truth" or "it’s hard to keep faith now". Regardless of the case, all this really teaches people how to be angry...

No, actually, I’m not. This feeling...this is not how I actually feel! Honestly, I would like to use Borges to search for vocabulary related to feelings.

In fact, I want to let Borges manage me, just like before! Ah, no, that’s not right! Because I have neither hope nor despair. Since Otsuki was present as my brother. Since Kazuya became my younger brother. Since the day I was born into the house of the Togami family.

That’s when that moment started.

Hope won't make me feel splendid.

Despair won't make me depressed.

I don't need to use these things to spur myself!

Yes, I will get the approval of Byakuya Togami and I will get to work on writing the biography given by him!

...But if these memories are also just illusions that Borges have been showing me...things are going to get quite confusing.

"The picture."

After a while, K whispered. I stared at the painting hanging on the wall with my left eye, the weird creature that stood on the ground with a big nose.

"It's scientific name is the “Hopsorrhinus aureus”. This creature uses a jointed nose to jump like a kangaroo," K explained. "In 1941, this creature was found on the island of Hy-yi-yi in the South Pacific. This is a special sub-type of mammalian animal called the Rhinogradentia. [9] So far, 14 subjects have been discovered.”

K lists off the types of Rhinogradentia that have been discovered, including the species that has tentacles coming out of its nose that they use to walk with.

"How is it possible for there to be such creatures?”

“BAU UND LEBEN DER RHINOGRADENTIA was published in 1961 by Professor Harald Stümpke. [10]”

“Is there a book about them?”

“Yes, and it was translated to all over the world, causing there is a huge response. There should also be a Japanese version. You can check it out after you return to Japan."

"Then, what kind of book is it? Is it like a fake book?"

"The Foreword and Afterword are actually written by a real and famous zoologist. A review of this book was even published in scientific journals, and there are many related books too. How would you doubt an academic book on all the issues that modern zoology deals with from Morphology, anatomy, ontogeny, physiology, actions, diets, and phylogenetic evolution? With such an academically sound book, do you think you are qualified to doubt it?"

"There is no more direct evidence than images."

"I don’t have any."

"Why?"

"This creature is extinct."

"Extinction?"

"In 1957, due to a nuclear test conducted nearby, the islands where the Rhinogradentia flourished sank."

“It's a super-perfunctory ending.”

"Don't say what the ending is."

"So there are no photos? Since it was in the 1950s, there should be photos, right?"

"All the information sank with the island."

"I’m really speechless. There are no photos, anymore? If you can't investigate on the spot, there is no way to prove that this creature actually exists. This is really not credible."

"Do you know the Dodo?"

"A bird that is already extinct?"

"Because of that, do you think ‘Did this bird really exist?’"

"Of course it did."

"How can you be so convinced? The Dodo did not have any photos survive. The Dodo had once thrived on the island of Mauritius. This is only the testimony of the sailors at the time that can be proved without any other reliable information. Dodo, like the Rhinogradentia, are impossible to verify what kind of creature it was and what kind of life it lived."

"I remember seeing specimens..."

"There is a sample of a Dodo stored in a monastery in the Czech Republic. However, there is no evidence to prove that the terrible thing that is covered with charcoal is the real thing.”

“Therefore, the Dodo is a bird like a dove and a seagull, but the creature walking on the nose is looking for it. There is no such thing in the world, that is to say, common sense can prove that it is contrary to common sense, is false, can be judged by common sense."

"No, believe that the Dodo is real, but doubt the authenticity of the Rhinogradentia. This is not based on common sense judgment made, simply because you lack the logic to accept the existence of a real Rhinograde.

“You mean to say my lack of knowledge?"

"Reality and unreality are indistinguishable from the experiencer. I believe that a real person can see the existence of the Rhinogradentia it even if it is fantasy, and will also write an article to prove its existence. If a third party believes in the article, then the fantasy will be shared by them and become their common fantasy. By the way, when the book was published, most readers completely believed that the Rhinogradentia existed."

Shinobu cant laugh even if she thinks its too stupid. These people at the time had no real way of knowing the Rhinogrades were made up. Shinobu thinks about the Kudan, and thinks to herself that the Kudan definitely exists, like the Dodo.

People who don't believe that the "Kudan" exists makes me laugh.

“People are only willing to see the reality they want to see,” K said calmly "No matter how convincing a certain argument is, as long as people are unwilling to accept it, they can't understand the meaning of it. This pathology is similar to the story in Don Quixote.”

K then gives another example similar to the previous one before continuing.

“No matter how much we experience, how much knowledge we learn, it is impossible to have the same sense of reading as the readers at the time. That is absolute.”

“Absolute...” murmurs Shinobu.

K says as long as Shinobu believes that Byakuya Togami is a God, Borges would do everything it could to strengthen that position, even if what is happening is different. To sum it up, “The sacredness of Byakuya Togami, if you couldn’t find it, you would make it.”

What?

I...understand.

Now I understand. If Byakuya Togami is not God, then my world will end.

The only purpose of my existence is to write "Journey Under The Midnight Sun", and I couldn’t let that weakness and fragility of Byakuya be exposed to my eyes.

So I made up and fabricated the storyline.

I built the story I wanted to see for myself. Not on purpose, but because of Borges's interference. In order to make Byakuya Togami become God, I have created a lot of lies so far. I made people who didn't exist, created a group organization that didn't exist, and looking back I think I even falsified the past.

I now understood all of this and was mentally prepared. Although I can't say that I was awake...I have accepted the uncertainty of my brain.

I have accepted the fact that life has only just begun today.

With this realization, Shinobu stares at the painting and asks for the name of this animal and finds them cute. The Snout Leaper is what it’s called. Shinobu says that it would be nice if the Snout Leaper really existed, but believing in something and it actually being true are two different things. K says that belief is just enough.

“I still want to hear the truth, I want to know the truth."

"Although I don't know if I can't do it, it's worth a try."

"I didn't expect you to say that too."

"I didn't mean to tease you," K said shrugging. "At present, there is no Borges in your right eye. Then you have to look at the real things with your own eyes and update your reality. Although the information falsified by Borges will not disappear easily, but since you have found a path that convinced you, no matter how difficult it is, you should follow that path."

"I think so too."

"Then I’ll tell you something, maybe it can help you. Although it's just a hypothesis, the Despair Disease is more than likely a lie made up by Borges” he begins...only to be cut off by a piercing sound.

Just then, countless bullets penetrated the window and the kettle in the kitchen was riddled with holes.

Translation Notes: (I highly recommend reading these this time if you don’t normally.)

[1] Don Quixote is a Spanish novel by Miguel de Cervantes. Published in two parts in 1605 and 1615, Don Quixote is the most influential work of literature from the Spanish Golden Age and the entire Spanish literary canon. A founding work of Western literature, it is often labeled "the first modern novel" and is sometimes considered the best literary work ever written.

[2] Natsume Sōseki was a Japanese novelist. He is best known around the world for his novels Kokoro, Botchan, I Am a Cat and his unfinished work Light and Darkness. He was also a scholar of British literature and composer of haiku, kanshi, and fairy tales. From 1984 until 2004, his portrait appeared on the front of the Japanese 1000 yen note. In Japan, he is often considered the greatest writer in modern Japanese history. He has had a profound effect on almost all important Japanese writers since.

[3] Banana Yoshimoto is the pen name of Japanese writer Mahoko Yoshimoto. Yoshimoto says that her two main themes are “the exhaustion of young Japanese in contemporary Japan” and “the way in which terrible experiences shape a person’s life”. Her works describe the problems faced by youth, urban existentialism, and teenagers trapped between imagination and reality. Her works are targeted not only to the young and rebellious, but also to grown-ups who are still young at heart. Yoshimoto's characters, settings, and titles have a modern and American approach, but the core is Japanese. She addresses readers in a personal and friendly way, with warmth and outright innocence, writing about the simple things such as the squeaking of wooden floors or the pleasant smell of food. Food and dreams are recurring themes in her work which are often associated with memories and emotions. Yoshimoto admits that most of her artistic inspiration derives from her own dreams and that she’d like to always be sleeping and living a life full of dreams.

[4] Haruki Murakami is a Japanese writer. His books and stories have been bestsellers in Japan as well as internationally, with his work being translated into 50 languages and selling millions of copies outside his native country. His work has received numerous awards, including the World Fantasy Award, the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, the Franz Kafka Prize (yes really), and the Jerusalem Prize. Another notable feature of Murakami's stories are the comments that come from the main characters as to how strange the story presents itself. Murakami explains that his characters experience what he experiences as he writes, which could be compared to a movie set where the walls and props are all fake.

[5] The Raiders can refer to either The Los Angeles Raiders or the Canberra Raiders. Both are sports teams.

[6] Anna Karenina is a novel by the Russian author Leo Tolstoy, first published in book form in 1878. Many writers consider Anna Karenina the greatest work of literature ever, and Tolstoy himself called it his first true novel. It was initially released in serial installments from 1873 to 1877 in the periodical The Russian Messenger.

[7] Vladimir Nabokov was a Russian and American novelist, poet, translator and entomologist. His first nine novels were written in Russian (1926–38), but he achieved international prominence after he began writing English prose. Nabokov became an American citizen in 1945. It should be noted that a novel of his titled “Despair” (Novel), is about a man who meets a homeless man in the city of Prague, whom he believes is his doppelgänger. You can't make this stuff up, I’m serious.

[8] Island of the Evil Spirits is a film directed by Masahiro Shinoda. I honestly can’t find much about it.

[9] Yep, you Kirigiri Sou fans should be very blissful now. Interesting how K explains the non-canon routes of Kirigiri Sou to be based in “unreality”.

[10] Gerolf Steiner was a German zoologist. Steiner is best known for a 1961 book authored pseudonymously as Harald Stümpke on the anatomy and habits of the rhinogradentia, a fictitious order of extinct mammals whose nose evolved in unusual ways.

To Be Continued

https://drmedicsgamesurgery.tumblr.com/GameSurgeryDRTranslations

#Danganronpa #Danganronpa:Togami #danganronpa togami #DRT3 Summary #Danganronpa: Togami #Kirigiri Sou #Part 7

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mirrormirrormag · 4 years

Text

horizontal hostility

I recently listened to a podcast called “The Process” from Noor Tagouri where she has a conversation with a creative about their process for creating their content among other things, and in this episode that I listened to, Noor interviewed filmmaker Minhal Baig who made headlines in late 2019 for her movie “Hala” that featured a Muslim girl wearing a hijab as the protagonist. For many Muslim Americans who heard the news, this was a huge step in the direction of authentic representation in the media, but for others, the premise featured in the trailer that announced the film, seemed to highlight a trope that continued to put the archetype of a White Savior over that of the coming of age or internal shift in the main character; others thought that the story of Hala was inaccurate to what Islam “actually” is and thought it was too Western-ized to capture the actual nature of the maligned religion.

In the interview, Noor brings this up to Minhal, along with a phrase I wasn’t familiar with: horizontal hostility. As it turns out, horizontal hostility is essentially a term that describes a situation where people of the same background, whether it be ethnic, religious, racial, or sexual orientation, etc., accuse each other of not representing the ideal standard of what (insert blank) is in a way that reinforces a system of oppression.

For example, there is a long history of black men mistreating black women; this would be horizontal hostility because though these people belong to the same racial background and have experienced similar notions of oppression, black men still benefit from the privileges that come from living in a patriarchal society and can exploit that to hurt black women, whos intersectionalities of race and gender furthers their disenfranchisement.

When it comes to Islam, this term illuminated precisely what I had felt plagued my community for centuries and has played a large role in the disillusioned way that the media portrayed Muslims.

It’s no secret that many Muslim majority countries are in a third-world state after being exploited by colonialism and imperialism from Western countries, and continue to stay in a state of unrest through the many despots and dictators that attempt to take over these countries and overrule democracy. In many ways, this has lead to the reinforcement of an oppressive patriarchal state because of the distorted interpretation that many men in these cultures have of Islam that are simply tradition— not religion.

Muslim majority countries share the same interpretations of religion that tend to be oversaturated with cultural contexts that aren’t representative of Islam. Things like oppressing women by forcing them to wear a hijab and keeping them inside the house to raise children and not make money of her own are all sins in Islam yet many people don’t regard it this way, including women.

"To suggest that Hala wouldn’t have felt liberated or free if the white boy hadn’t “saved” her from her oppressive religion and culture perpetuates the exact assertions many Americans have about Muslim women: that they need to be saved or freed from the confines of their scarf that is slowly choking them to death. "

The internalized misogyny and lack of autonomy in these countries makes it difficult to retain any agency to speak against these injustices and as it continues to be passed down by generation and generations, it’s taken as Bible, no pun intended.

The double standard involving men and women in the East is rejected by the West that prides itself in maintaining gender equity, yet there are other implicitly misogynistic parts to the West that still exist— we’ll get into that a bit later.

Needless to say, reconciling the Muslims that live in the West that aren’t necessarily assimilated to the point that they forget their identities but simply treat others with equality and the Muslims that live in the East who maintain a dated perception of the role that gender plays in society yet still believe in the same facets of Islam is difficult and speaks to the levels of misogyny that has bled through many aspects of society and culture.

It’s often difficult for people to understand groups, especially Muslims, who seem to come from irreconcilable backgrounds and mutually exclusive beliefs, and place a label on them so that they are easily digestible.

"for Muslim women who live in the West, “liberation” doesn’t end at the right to vote, because many other aspects of their identity inhibits them from full equality due to the patriarchy and xenophobic nature of the West. "

I’ve come across many questions from non-Muslims and Muslims alike such as “but you don’t seem Muslim ‘enough’” as if there is a equation I have to fulfill in order to ordain my beliefs.

These sentiments came up a lot with the release of Minhal’s movie “Hala”. Although I haven’t seen the movie, from what I can tell, the main character, Hala, explores her sexuality in a way that is not even discussed in Muslim households with a White boy, though this isn’t the main focus of the movie.

Growing up, my perceptions of who a Muslim could be was very limited; I couldn’t comprehend in my mind that anyone who called themselves a Muslim could drink alcohol, do drugs, have sex with multiple partners, etc. But what I’ve realized as I’ve grown older is that though there may be some inconsistencies in the way that someone practices their religion, they can still be as much of a Muslim as someone else. Portraying the different lifestyles of a vast group of people who have been tied down to one narrative can create more open mindedness but it’s difficult.

While it’s important to portray as many realities of Muslims as possible, as multifaceted as they may be, it’s equally important to not associate the religion itself with the lives of the people. The mistake that the media made when showing Muslims was that they associated the oppressive cultures with the religion and that’s not how Islam is. Similarly, just because someone has many intersections within their religion and their lifestyle, it may not be accurate to the literal religion itself.

Like I said, people like to label the things that they see so it’s easier to understand, but we can’t ignore the dimensionalities of people who may belong to one group but are a part of many others or associate a rigid definition with an interpretative group.

While some said that the movie wasn’t Muslim enough or accurate to the exact rules of Islam, others pointed to the suggestion that Hala had some type of relationship with a white boy in the movie to call out the trope that existed in Western media that implicitly suppressed the story of Hala, in place of a superficial relationship that hid all of the dimensionalities of the protagonist. For some, the movie’s progress for representation was eclipsed by the presence of a misogynistic archetype that took the spotlight away from the girl, who happened to be Muslim, to the boy.

I want to make the disclaimer that this is how it appeared in the trailer, not how it actually went down in the movie, according to what the filmmaker said.

This is a very valid point because for Muslim women who live in the West, “liberation” doesn’t end at the right to vote, because many other aspects of their identity inhibits them from full equality due to the patriarchy and xenophobic nature of the West.

To suggest that Hala wouldn’t have felt liberated or free if the white boy hadn’t “saved” her from her oppressive religion and culture perpetuates the exact assertions many Americans have about Muslim women: that they need to be saved or freed from the confines of their scarf that is slowly choking them to death.

It appeared that this attempt for accurate representation was conducted through the male gaze, like many other media portrayals, and continued to ignore the realities of Muslim girls in America.

Regardless of the impression you may have about the movie, there is only one way to get a true interpretation of it and it’s by watching it. For those who have, the progress for representation is undeniably there as it captured the emotion and nature of growing up as a Muslim girl in America.

#society #identity

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nihilnovisubsole · 5 years

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Do you have any tips considering fanfics with original characters as protagonists? Specific issues to look out for? I admire your writing and your writing advice, you put everything so well into words. Perhaps you've thought about this in more detail as well. I feel like fanfics with original characters are difficult to make intriguing or worthwhile for readers.

yeah, i have thought about it, and i wish i had some kind of sagely, concise answer to give you. this is going to be another long post, sorry. i mulled it over for a few days and i’ve got a lot on my mind.

i don’t know if i could tell you anything from a prose standpoint about “how to write better fanfic with OC protagonists.” i think writing a fan character is, with a few exceptions, pretty much the same as writing a canon character. they have to talk and behave like a real person. they have to be consistent, or have a good reason for it when they’re not. they have to go through events in the story that challenge them. basically, they have to be flesh and blood. if you can find the spark of life in a canon character you love, you can put one in an OC, too.

the only material difference is that they belong to you, and because of that, there’s no “bible” of canon content to refer to. you’re on your own for things like their character arc and dialogue voice. sure, there might be people who are skeptical of them based on their preconceptions about OC fic. but that’s not something you have any control over, so if you ask me, it’s not something that should sway your writing decisions.

on the flipside, a lot of the “issues” i could tell you to “look out for” could just as easily apply to an original fic. “have a cohesive plot arc with conflict, rising action, and a conclusion that makes sense?” that’s every story. “make the premise interesting?” that means three different things to three different people. there’s not much, at least to my eye, that’s only relevant when you’re introducing an OC into a canon universe.

so, when it comes down to it, i feel like writing OC fic is less about how you do it and more about your attitude toward it. it’s not an undertaking where you can bring your shame to the table. every writing project i’ve done, most of all fanfic, has started out with me planning not to tell anyone about it. i always go, “this is ridiculous, i can’t admit i made this OC,” or “i’ll write one passage to get it out of my system, but i won’t publish it.” once i’m in, the fun takes over, and i peel off those layers of embarrassment as i grow more and more fond of the premise and characters. there’s prudence, of course, and good taste, but at the risk of sounding corny… at some point, you just have to let your enthusiasm lead the way.

so, that said:

is there another side to the story/world that interests you enough to explore?

is there a side character you think has untapped potential? was there a mission or episode detail you wanted to explore in more depth? did you ever wonder how the big, heroic main plot might have affected people and places that you didn’t see? if you want to write about big pairings and big, popular subjects and your OC is just the lens the reader sees it all through, great! but if something else grabs you, pursue it, because nobody else is going to have a take on it that’s exactly like yours.

if the story is good, it won’t matter whether an OC or a canon character is the protagonist. it’s just a good story, full stop. if someone won’t take a chance on it because it has an OC lead, it goes back to what i said earlier - that’s on them, not you.

are you writing from a place that is emotionally meaningful to you?

you don’t have to lift something whole-cloth from your own experience. i know it’s annoying to hear people say that you do, and with many fandoms, it’d be impossible. i mean, who among us has fought aliens? but what do you feel strongly about? what emotions have you been through? is there a kind of character or relationship you really want to see? what’s the small, glowing grain of truth within the character that’s going to take them from being a puppet to “a real boy?”

some people will tell you to keep your main characters at arm’s length in case you have to do something nasty to them down the line. i don’t. i always fling myself into it. i’ve talked about that before. does it hurt more when people don’t like them? sure it does, but it forces me to be a more compassionate writer, and i feel the results are worth it. irina, jo, sabrael, marcus and livia, everyone else - i carved a piece of my guts into all of them, and now i’ve served it to you. gross!

and lastly, but most importantly:

do you love the character?

of course you love your character! what kind of a question is that?

and if you don’t, then… why not? i’m not judging, just asking. are they new, and you haven’t had time to get to know them yet? do they come with baggage because you’re worried about them being “cringe?” [if so, cut it out. remember what i said about shame.]

or maybe you just haven’t found the key that will open the locked door of “knowledge of how to write them, and the fondness that comes with it.” every character, to me, starts out with that door, and the key is different every time - a personality trait, an item of clothing, their dialogue voice, something that happened in their backstory, etc. for some characters, the key is much harder to find than others. i don’t know why. but if you haven’t found it yet, don’t worry. keep looking.

here’s the theory that i like: people can tell when you care. if you’ve made something with love, that shines through, regardless of your skill level. if you get excited when you think of a new idea for their story, write it with the same amount of glee you get from envisioning it. if you’ve had the character for so long that it’s become a fictional companion to you, those nuances you’ve learned about them will show up in the writing, just like a real old friend.

sadly, i can’t promise you that doing all that will result in a huge reader turnout or tons of feedback. i wish it did. it doesn’t always. you can work hard and do your best, and it still might not translate to a high level of engagement. but just because the internet is weird, fickle, and cruel doesn’t mean you won’t end up with a cool story that you should be proud of. i’m not saying that should be enough to satisfy you. we all want people to read what we write. we’d be lying if we said we didn’t. i’m just saying that if you write an OC fic from start to finish, you will have achieved something. don’t think it being fanwork diminishes it.

some extra parting thoughts:

for what it’s worth, i’m glad to see the mary sue thing is - at least in places - in its death throes. because, honestly, it’s 2019. it’s time for us to move on. and, look, i’m not a fool. i’ve been engaging with fan content since i was a preteen. i’ve seen OCs where i didn’t buy what the creator was selling me. maybe their visual design didn’t mesh with the main cast. maybe they were a weird choice for their canon-character love interest. maybe they were handed too much, or maybe they lost too much, or anything else from that grab bag of mary sue mortal sins that really live or die on the execution, not the concept.

did i get invested in their stories? no. is that a problem? of course not. i still hoped they had fun and kept working with them, because fun leads to practice, and practice - eventually - leads to skill. brushing all that off as “lol its a mary sue it sux” is intellectually lazy, and also beside the point. the point was for the creator to have fun with a piece of media they enjoy. if they did that, my opinion that an angel vampire with natural pink eyes might be a strange match for sherlock isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on.

#anon #asks #writing

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eadnehne · 6 years

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are there any other angels who have an aversion to the bible and overbearing christians? im not even sure what it is about them, maybe their arrogance? thinking they know what g-d wants and being so sure of it they condemn people around them to hell for not believing the same thing? i dont know. maybe i have the same arrogance for believing i was an angel. thoughts?

rule of thumb: if you need to ask the question “is there anybody else like this?,” just assume the answer is yes. regardless of what the question or topic is, odds are you are not the only person with that thought or feeling.

however, i guess i sorta-kinda agree..? i think anybody would be annoyed by one who is overbearing or pushy about religion like you described. im almost positive everybody hates the type of person who says you are going to hell for xyz reason, unless they are that type of person themselves. i would agree that it does seem incredibly arrogant for a human to say they know what god wants or know the word of god. the bible isnt even “the word of god” because it has been altered by human hands countless times. so saying any one person knows what god wants is a little improbable. hell, it honestly doesnt make much sense to me that priests or any holy person in a religion actually knows what “gods word” is. - thats why i like Judiasm. there is no “this is what god wants” save for the basic moral standards that are present in every religion. otherwise, everything is up to personal interpretation and the meaning one derives from the stories is what is most important.

an aversion to the bible specifically? im not sure. i know there are plenty of non-abrahamic angels, Valkyries, etc., and i know plenty of angels have a distaste for Christianity, but i dont think many straight up dislike the bible for its contents - more its context within organized religion.

personally, Christianity and Catholicism rubs me the wrong way, due to the belief that everybody is sinful, and only through finding and worshiping god can they be saved from eternal damnation, along with a variety of other factors. there is no forgiveness, it is just “worship me and dedicate your life to me and you wont burn in hell forever :) “ i know its more complicated then that, but it still feels pretty awful. however, this does not stop me from looking at the bible outside of its context of a religious scripture and enjoying it or finding meaning from it separately.

i dont think believing in a past life is automatically arrogance or narcissism, regardless of the factor that one believes they are an angel. a god? maybe. jesus or the abrahamic god? absolutely. it really all depends on culture, the context of the situation, and how deep the rabbit hole goes.

#angelkin #actually angelic #actually divine #anon #anonymous #ask #noise #angel incarnate

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jmyers104 · 5 years

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Pastoral Interview

Pastor’s Name and Church

I had the privilege of interviewing Pastor Karl Sexton of Sand Hill Creek in Baxley, GA.

Interview Questions

Tell me about your call to pastoral ministry.

I never heard an audible voice from God calling me to preach, but there was a sense that lingered for years. I felt that God was calling me to preach when I was 13, and I answered the call at a youth camp when I was 17. The speaker’s message confirmed the inner promptings. With the call came the gift. I started preaching, and shortly after that, I was asked to pastor a local church. That was over 30 years ago.

Describe your ordination council.

I was ordained at 17 or 18. My ordination counsel was made up of pastors in the local association. My church recommended me to the council, and once it was approved, I was licensed by the church and ordained by the counsel.

Which pastoral responsibility do you enjoy the most, and why?

I enjoy everything about preaching and teaching. That includes the act itself, but it also includes studying and writing, as well as seeing lives changed as a result of preaching and teaching.

Which pastoral duty do you enjoy the least, and why?

I don’t enjoy dealing with domestic problems. They are the most heartbreaking and disappointing.

How do you deal with dissentions or divisions in the church?

It depends. If it is more than one person or has affected a group, I will address it more generally; I may take a text and preach on the issue. If it’s a sin problem, I go to them with Matthew 18 as a blueprint. If I am confronting someone, I will take a witness so I cannot be accused of saying something I didn’t say. In any case, ask God to give you wisdom on whether I should visit them.

Describe the amount of time you spend in an average week in sermon preparation.

Mondays are the days where I gather my resources for the sermons I would be teaching during the week. It is my “collection” day. My big study days are Wednesdays and Saturdays. I typically have about 15 to 20 hours per week for sermon preparation, and I usually preach 3 times a week. That gives me 8 to 10 hours for the “main” sermon that I deliver either Sunday morning or evening, depending on the situation. Then I spend about 4 to 6 hours on second sermon, and 2 to 3 on the third message, which is typically delivered on Wednesday. I spend less time on the Wednesday sermon, not because it is unimportant, but because it is a topic I am familiar with. It could be on a passage I have preached on once before, or it could be that the congregation and I are working through a book written by a Christian author. In either case, it does not require as much preparation time as the other two sermons. Now, if it is content primarily derived from another author, I always make it known; give credit where it is due. To be as productive as possible, only a handful of people can interrupt me during sermon prep: my secretary (in the event there is an emergency concerning a member of the congregation), my wife, and my children.

What is your procedure for sermon preparation?

I always want to read the passage a number of times before I go to secondary sources. So first, I read the Scriptures, glean what insights I can from the text, making notes as certain truths come to mind. Only then will I consult my commentaries. I make it a point to read after at least 3 commentators. I go to reliable sources, but if I am dealing with a debatable text, I may read after or listen to a preacher who believes differently than I do, just to make sure I have considered everything I should have. Then I will compile my notes and construct my outline. On my computer, I have 2 documents per sermon: one for notes and one of the actual sermon. Now, there are times when I am teaching on a lengthier passage. During times like this, I construct the sermon knowing that it will end up being a 2- or 3- part message.

Do you believe in expositional preaching, topical preaching, or a combination of both?

I always have at least 1 expositional series going on. Then I’ll have “textual” message that may incorporate several different texts or passages. At times, I will do topical sermons, often using something like a book on leadership. Regardless of the type, I always want to stay true to the text.

Describe the amount of time you spend in an average week in administrative responsibilities.

When I was at a larger church, I would spend about 15 to 20 hours a week on those responsibilities, less now that I am at a smaller church. As a bi-vocational pastor, I typically do all of the administrative stuff myself.

Describe the amount of time you spend in an average week in personal devotions and prayer.

Oh well this is embarrassing…Not as much as I should. First thing in the morning, before I leave the house. I try to spend about 30 minutes a day in prayer. We also do family devotions in the evening. When my children were younger, we would pray together and do our Bible reading plan every night.

What is an area of pastoral ministry you wish you had been taught in school?

I wish my professors would have stressed keeping our priorities right not neglecting my family. It can be all too easy to focus on ministry to the neglect of your family.

What is one piece of advice you would give to someone aspiring to become a pastor?

My advice is simple: regard your walk with the Lord as the most important priority in your life. Your family second, and your church ministry is a very distant third.

Discouragement in the ministry can be brought on by many different factors (lack of numerical growth, sin in the church, etc.). What do you do to remain joyful and keep depression at bay?

There are a few things I do. I try to put the positive church members around me. Those are the ones I tend to eat lunch with more, for example. Maintaining a sense of humor is also critical; I try to stay involved in activities that will make me laugh (i.e., time with my kids). I also try not to take things personal. If, for example, someone fails in the church, their failure is not necessarily my failure. I must shepherd them, but I can’t punish myself for their wrongdoings. Also, I try my best not to bring problems home. Whatever problems I have going on at the church, I leave them at the door. One last thing: when I need to get my mind right, I will take the long way home and listen to Christian music. When I lived closer to the church, I would just walk home because that would give me extra time to destress from the day.

How important is it for the local church to be involved in missions, and how do you promote missionary activity to your congregation?

It is absolutely necessary! I preach on missions, and I constantly have missionaries in front of the people. We have a yearly missionary conference so the congregation can be exposed to missionary activity. At one of my last churches, the church was giving hardly anything to missions. By but by the time I left to move down here, the church was giving $200,000 annually. That’s not to brag, but that shows what happens when you stress the importance of missions to your congregation.

Many things demand your attention as a pastor. How do you prioritize what needs to get done, and what order such things need to be completed?

I do my devotions first thing. Every morning, I write out what needs to be done for the day. When I had a secretary, I would check with secretary to see if there was anything I missed. Then I would put it on the calendar. (At a bigger church, the schedule was more detailed.)

All believers are called to evangelize. While it is clear that there are many out in the world who are unbelievers, Scripture demonstrates that there are also unbelievers within the congregation. Do you see yourself as an evangelist when you are in the pulpit?

I always give a gospel presentation at the end of the service, but the gospel must be in every message. If I don’t know my crowd, I tend to focus more explicitly on the gospel. Now sometimes the passage at hand leads me to be more evangelistic in nature, but there must always be a gospel presentation. Also, you’ve got to find unique ways to present it. You don’t want it to come across as the same talking points every week.

How have you raised up men like Timothy and Titus to follow in your footsteps?

I tell my students and young pastors that they must always be mentoring someone. It can be formal or informal. Mentoring actually takes place in the pulpit, but it does need to take place 1 on 1. At my previous church, I started a program with a group of men that met once a week. They would take turns delivering mini-sermons (5 to 10 minutes), and I would give general advice and pointers at the end. Many of these men are pastoring throughout the country. Much of this takes place over a meal. It could even be something as small as recommend certain books, buying books for them, or recommending certain preachers for them to listen to. However it is done, it has to be an intentional setting-aside of time to mentor and cultivate their gifts.

Summary

I did not select Pastor Sexton at random for this assignment. Far from being just a name on a church sign, he is both my pastor and step-father. While I regularly listen to preachers like Drs. John MacArthur and Al Mohler, I have not had the benefit of examining their lives. While I have no reason to doubt whether or not they practice what they preach, the fact remains that I have not seen how they shepherd their flocks or care for their families. With Karl, it is a different story. In the four years I have known him, I have sat under his preaching, ministered along side him, and watched how he treated his step-family like they were his own. Not only have I learned from him how to preach and rightly divide the Word, but I have learned how to shepherd God’s flock with patience and loving-kindness. As I conducted the interview, his answers codified in my mind what I had witnessed for the last few years. There were three things in particular that stuck out to me. First was his heart for evangelism and missions. Even when he is in the pulpit, he sees himself as an evangelist, pleading with any unbelievers that may be in the congregation. When it comes to missions, he has put his money where his mouth is, so to speak. Not only does he bring missionaries to the church to preach, but this past year, he and my mom adopted to Haitian girls so that they can disciple them and help them to grow in Christlikeness. Second is His passion for the Word. While I here him preach on a regular basis, it was a joy for me to hear him explain how he develops his sermons. His hard work is evident to the congregation every Sunday. Third is his love for God’s people. Not only does he feed the sheep and pray for the flock God has entrusted him with, but I also learned of his impact on young men aspiring to the ministry. He detailed how many of the young men he has mentored over the years are now pastoring churches across the nation (including 2 of his sons). These three aspects serve as lessons for me as I ponder how God might use me in the future. Wherever God places me, I too must have the heart of an evangelist, a passion for God’s Word, and a love for His people.

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comebeforegod · 6 years

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How to Practice Quieting Our Hearts Before God

By Xiyu

The Bible says, “For God is not the author of confusion, but of peace, as in all churches of the saints” (1Co 14:33). From this verse we can see that God likes us to quiet ourselves before Him in all things. Only when we are quiet in front of God will we feel that our hearts are closer to Him and will we achieve growth in our spiritual life. However, in real life, we cannot quiet our hearts before God due to various factors. Most of the time, our hearts are occupied by outside things such as jobs and families; or our minds are disturbed by the complexities of interpersonal relations, such as friction with our brothers and sisters and conflicts between us and our families; or we think about the interests of our flesh while expending and working for the Lord. And so on. These things leave us unable to quiet ourselves before God. I once was like this. After I read some content on a gospel website and listened to several brothers’ and sisters’ fellowship, I found out three ways to quiet myself before God and I gained a lot. Here I will share them with you.

1. Praying With a Single and Sincere Heart

God’s word says, “First begin with the matter of prayer. Be single-minded, and pray at a fixed time. No matter how pressed for time, or how busy, or what comes upon you, pray every day as normal….” If we wish to quiet our hearts before God, we should first start by praying. Sometimes, when very busy with work, we neglect to pray; sometimes we casually say a few words to the Lord in a rush. As a result, our spiritual condition is abnormal the whole day. Therefore, no matter how busy our work lives are, we should go before God and pray to Him with a single and sincere heart every day. This is not going by regulations and procedures but practicing quieting our hearts before God in order to associate with Him. Just as the Lord Jesus said, “When the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeks such to worship him” (Jhn 4:23). “But you, when you pray, enter into your closet, and when you have shut your door, pray to your Father which is in secret” (Mat 6:6). Why did the Lord Jesus ask us to pray in our closets? Because the Lord wishes us to avoid all the people, things, and events around us, go before God, and pray with an honest heart. In prayer we should bear our burden to open up before God and speak from our hearts with Him about things that befall us or questions that we do not understand. For example, being busy working, we have no free time to work for the Lord. We feel like finding the time to expend and work for the Lord; however, when doing so, we, being pressed for time, want to finish the work as soon as possible to do our own work. Another example, faced with many family matters or complicated interpersonal relationships with our relatives, friends, or colleagues, we are distraught and do not know how to deal with them. As for all these problems that we often encounter in our daily lives, we can bring them to God and pray, tell Him what is on our mind, and beg Him to help and guide us, so that we can understand His will and find a practical path. With regard to the first example, we can pray like this, “Dear God! I want to expend for You and work in the church. But my stature is too small and I’m fully focused on thinking about and making plans for my flesh, wanting to earn more money. So when working in the church, I’m never able to concentrate on expending for You. Oh God! How should I reverse this condition? May You guide me and help me.” When God sees that our hearts are sincere and single-minded, the Holy Spirit will enlighten and guide us and move our hearts, and then we will understand that we should be content with having enough food and clothing and that obtaining the truth is the most important thing. As a result, we will have the resolution to forsake the flesh and entrust our difficulties and problems to God. As long as we practice like this step by step, when we are faced with difficulties again, our hearts will not be preoccupied or disturbed by them, but be quiet before God.

2. Pondering in Our Hearts in Reading God’s Words

God says, “No matter how pressed for time, or how busy, or what comes upon you, … eat and drink God’s words as normal. As long as you eat and drink God’s words, no matter what your surroundings are, your spirit is especially pleased … ponder God’s words and try to obtain the light, find the path to practice, know what the aims of God’s utterances are, and understand without deviation.” If we want to frequently quiet ourselves before God, during our everyday spiritual devotions we need to ponder on God’s words more. We should not give God’s words a cursory read or be only satisfied with a surface-level understanding of them, but focus on understanding their esoteric meaning with sincerity. When reading God’s words, we should focus on seeking and contemplating what aspects of the truth they involve, what God’s intentions and requirements in them are, and how to satisfy God’s will. In this way, our hearts will gradually become quiet before God. For example, when we read the following words of God, “And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength” (Mak 12:30), we should contemplate why God makes such a demand of us. It can be seen that God knows that we have been so deeply corrupted by Satan that we work and expend for Him for the sake of our own intentions and objectives. Some people work for fame and status; some make sacrifices so as to obtain blessings; some expend themselves in order to be looked up to by others. And so on. If we have these impurities, once we do not gain the things we want after sacrificing certain things and enduring some expense for the Lord, our energy in working and expending for Him will be less and even completely gone. From this we can see that we make sacrifices and expend ourselves not for loving God at all but for our own interests, and that it is just conducting a transaction with God. For this reason, God makes that demand of us, hoping that we can pursue to work and expend for Him with all our hearts and minds and without skating through or conducting a transaction with Him. This kind of people are the ones who God delights in. It’s like Peter: He wholeheartedly sought to love God, could accept judgment and chastisement and also the poverty in his life, and did not give free rein to his own preferences even in food, clothing, and shelter. In addition, he did work and made sacrifices in order to satisfy God. In the end, God gave him the key to the kingdom of heaven. Through pondering God’s words seriously, we have some understanding of them, and we are willing to seek this aspect of the truth, enter into it, and strive for God’s requirements step by step. If we practice like this every day, our hearts will get closer to God and we will gain results in spirit. Over time we will achieve fast growth in life.

3. Often Giving Thought to God’s Love in Ordinary Times

God’s word says, “Ordinarily, draw close to God normally in your heart, contemplate God’s love, and ponder the words of God, without being disturbed by external things. When your heart is at peace to a degree that you are able to muse, so that, within yourself, you contemplate God’s love and truly draw near to God regardless of what environment you are in, and you have ultimately reached the point where you give praise in your heart, and it is even better than praying, then in this you will be possessed of a certain stature.”

To quiet our hearts before God, we need to make it a usual practice to meditate on and contemplate God’s love. However, most of the time, once we are free, we will think about matters of the flesh such as how to make more money and how to enjoy our flesh even more, or we will not think. As such, we always cannot achieve the result of quieting ourselves before God. So we can practice more along this path. For example, when going back and forth to work by bus in the daytime or lying in bed before falling asleep at night, we can think about how God has led us to experience the things that have befallen us the whole day. Furthermore, we can also think of all the grace that God has bestowed upon us and give thought to His love. For example, when we were in a bad state living in weakness, God sustained and helped us many times through brothers and sisters and also His words encouraged and comforted us, so that we broke free from our predicament and felt His love for us was too deep. When we give thought to God’s love like this, we will feel that our hearts are very close to Him, and we will be so moved by the Holy Spirit that we will feel indebted to God because of our stature being too small to put into practice many of God’s words. Consequently, we will thirst for God’s word even more and resolve to pursue the truth. Provided that we meditate on and contemplate God’s love this way several times during the day, we will be able to achieve the result of quieting our hearts before God and living before Him.

If we practice quieting our hearts before God every day, unknowingly our spiritual life will gradually grow. The above are three ways to quiet our hearts before God. I hope that they are helpful to all the brothers and sisters who pursue the growth in life.

#The Bible #gospel website #Lord Jesus #the kingdom of heaven

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fear-god-shun-evil · 6 years

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How to Practice Quieting Our Hearts Before God

By Xiyu

1. Praying With a Single and Sincere Heart

2. Pondering in Our Hearts in Reading God’s Words

3. Often Giving Thought to God’s Love in Ordinary Times

#The Bible #gospel #prayer #Lord Jesus

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atakportal · 6 years

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Loving The Game Of Life

New Post has been published on https://pin.atak.co/loving-the-game-of-life/

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