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snaggletoothedbastard · 2 years

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A Very In-Depth Analysis Of That Scene From The LOTR Films, The One Just Before The Shelob Scenes, You Know The One

So. I've seen a lot of people say this scene is Bad and Shouldn't Be In The Film because it Wasn't In The Book. And I understand why. But (and this may be controversial) I think it's actually a pretty good scene. Let me explain why.

Obviously I like the Book Version (in which the scene just doesn't happen), and I wouldn't say one version is better than the other. I like both, but for now I'll be focusing on the Film Version.

In case it's not obvious which scene I'm talking about, it's the one in Return Of The King that comes just before the Shelob scenes, where Gollum does a bit of Good Old-Fashioned Trickery and basically causes Frodo and Sam to have an argument about bread, resulting in Frodo telling Sam to go home.

I can see why this scene can be annoying. Why? Because we, as viewers, know that Gollum is lying. We have been clearly shown that he's being a sneaky little shit, and as a result of that, we know that Frodo shouldn't trust him. But the thing is, Frodo doesn't know that. He does not have the information that the viewers have. He is also being affected by External Forces (and by that I mean the Ring).

I've been thinking for a while about how exactly the Ring causes him to make the mistakes he does, and even though it's not explicitly stated in the films or the book, I think I've found an explanation that, if it's not canon, is at least plausible.

So we all know that the Ring is supposed to make people do bad things. It seems to do that by manipulating them and making them think that what they're doing is a good idea. And how does that work?

We can see how that (most likely) works by looking at both Gandalf and Galadriel's reactions to being offered the Ring. Gandalf was insistent that he shouldn't have it because if he did, it would end up using his power to do bad things, even if he tried to use it for good. And we saw what would happen if Galadriel had it. Both of these characters are very old and very powerful, and morally speaking they're both very good people, but they make it clear that if they had the Ring, they would most likely hurt a lot of people.

The thing they seem to focus on when telling/showing how the Ring would affect them is power. As I said, they're both very powerful. And they use that power to help people, but if either of them had the Ring it would cause them to use that power to hurt people. The implication here is that the Ring uses the qualities people have to its advantage by sort of turning the good qualities into bad qualities, if that makes sense.

Now let's apply this to Frodo. He is, fundamentally, a good person. He treats other people with kindness and empathy. These are very good qualities to have, but the Ring still manages to use them for bad things. An example of this? Frodo's relationship with Gollum.

To the Ring, Frodo's ability to empathise with Gollum is basically just a really good opportunity for it to fuck with him. And the sad thing is, it works. Because Frodo probably doesn't see it coming. The Ring takes his kindness and empathy and makes sure it is directed at Gollum, so that it's harder for Frodo to see him as a bad person, therefore making it easier for Gollum to trick him. And that's just what Gollum does.

In The Scene I'm Talking About, he does the Bread Trick to make it harder for Frodo to trust Sam. And unfortunately, he succeeds in doing that, so it leads to their argument and separation. This is where people tend to get annoyed at this scene. Because to them, the people watching the film, it's obvious what's happening. They saw Gollum doing the Bread Trick, and are now seeing Frodo falling for it. And it makes sense as to why they find that irritating, but I think they're forgetting that even though the viewers know something, that doesn't mean the characters do.

Frodo is Quite Affected by the Ring at this point. He's also very sleep-deprived. Therefore, he's probably more vulnerable to the influence of External Forces. He is also lacking the information he needs to make the right decision. He doesn't know what's actually going on. He has been presented with a potential reason not to trust Sam, and although evidence to the contrary exists, he doesn't actually have it.

And, of course, things get worse when Sam offers to help by carrying the Ring and giving Frodo a break. It seems obvious that his intentions are perfectly good, but the thing is, it's probably the thing Frodo was really scared of hearing. Because it's eerily similar to what Boromir said to him in the first film. Y'know, before he got angry and attacked him. Frodo tells Sam to leave because he's scared that's going to happen again.

People say Frodo's actions in this scene are Out Of Character. And they're right. They are Out Of Character. That's the point.

This scene is supposed to show that he's being manipulated by both Gollum and the Ring. They both want him to fail, so naturally they are trying to get him to make decisions that will lead to his failure. And if they never got anywhere with that, it just wouldn't really be realistic. (I know the situation isn't meant to be realistic. I mean realistic based on the situation.) The Ring is supposed to affect people. Frodo isn't an exception to that.

The fact that the scene is out of character, and the fact that so many people are seeing that it's out of character, is a good thing, because it shows that he's not genuinely like that. He's not making bad decisions because he wants bad things to happen. He is misinformed and he's being lied to and he's making a mistake because he thinks it's the right decision. A couple of scenes later, when he realises it wasn't the right decision, he visibly regrets it.

Look at him! He's so sad! Because he's realised that he made a mistake and it's backfired.

The scene isn't meant to reflect badly on him, it's meant to show that the Ring is affecting him. And I think the filmmakers had the right idea when they included this scene. Was it done perfectly? Maybe not, but it gets the message across. Is it better than the book? Taste is subjective. I like them both, because both versions work.

#lord of the rings #lotr #another essay let's gooooo!#it's four in the goddamn morning what am i doing #i wrote this instead of sleeping so y'all better appreciate it #you have no idea how long it took me to find that picture #frodo baggins

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sailormoonandme · 4 years

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Usagi’s Evolution as a Healer Goddess

The other day I saw a post discussing the evolution of Usagi’s fuku and it occurred to me how Eternal Sailor Moon’s costume was her first Senshi uniform to ditch the tiara.

That in turn led me to consider how that kind of makes Usagi weaker as it removes a very useful weapon for her. After all, if you include the movies, Usagi uses some variant of Moon Tiara Action in practically every season prior to Stars.

However, dwelling more upon it I realized how this tiny change was all too appropriate for Usagi’s character development.

Firstly, by supplanting the Tiara with her Moon planetary symbol, Eternal Sailor Moon more closely resembles both Queen Serenity, her own Princess Serenity form and her future self as Neo-Queen Serenity.

Since all three are objectively more powerful than Usagi typically is as Sailor Moon I think the change emphasises how she has ‘levelled up’ in her Eternal form. When combined with the angel wings, Eternal Sailor Moon shifts Usagi visually closer to her future self as NQS, which in the anime is implied to be her most powerful incarnation.* It is almost as though the visual was communicating that the Divine Miracle Magic that she’d previously drawn upon as Princess Serenity in Classic-SuperS had now become ingrained in her standard Senshi form and thus was more accessible to her.

It was in thinking of her previous efforts as Princess Serenity that I inevitably recalled her duel with Metalia/Beryl in episode 46 and realized that Eternal Sailor Moon was the first time since Classic that Usagi’s default attack was a healing technique not a destructive one.

Moon Healing Escalation was Usagi’s first healing technique but until Starlight Honeymoon Therapy Kiss (and it’s later upgrade, Silver Moon Crystal Power Kiss) it was also her only healing technique.

Between regaining healing techniques and ditching her tiara/other destructive attacks/weapons, I think this represents her subtle growth in both her power and status. After all, it is a sad fact of life that it is easier to destroy something rather than fix it, thereby making the latter far more impressive.**

This skewing towards healing power rather than destructive power is also (arguably) thematically appropriate given the nature of Sailor Moon as a female power fantasy as (rightly or wrongly) the act of healing is typically coded as feminine.

We can even take this further by examining things from the ‘opposite direction’ as it were.

Consider that in the climactic final episodes of Sailor Stars, Eternal Sailor Moon’s healing technique actually fails her when used against Galaxia. In later episodes, upon adopting her Princess Serenity form (complete with larger and more obviously angelic wings), she uses a sword to duel Galaxia.

Obviously a sword is, at least predominantly, an offensive weapon and can therefore be viewed as symbolic of aggression; let’s leave any Freudian or gendered interpretations alone for today. Her use of the sword is highly uncharacteristic (in the anime). Even her explicitly offencive weapons (like the Cutie Moon Rod or Spiral Moon Heart Rod) weren’t as clearly aggressive nor obviously violent. Desperate times calling for desperate measures? Perhaps, but we might also speculate it was her subconsciously reacting to grief. Not only can grief make you act in ways you wouldn’t normally, but a sword after all was a weapon wielded by her lover in his Prince Endymion incarnation. Her lover whom Usagi had just learned Galaxia had murdered. In other words, amidst her grief she reacts by going too hard in the other direction after healing her enemy proves ineffective.

However, when all is said and done the sword fails her.*** Ultimately is simply escalates the conflict by prompting Galaxia to become Chaos Galaxia and thereby make Usagi’s chances of victory all the slimmer. If we wished to stretch things, you could perhaps say that this is a commentary about how war and violence ultimately begets yet more war and violence.

Even if that is an over extrapolation though, it still served to emphasis the point that a sword is not befitting of Usagi, that she was doomed to lose if she continued to battle with destroying her enemy as the end goal.

In fact, her road to real victory begins when she not doesn’t attack Galaxia but makes it easier for herself to be attacked. In the end, Usagi doesn’t confront her most powerful enemy as the God-Queen of the future, the demi-goddess Princess of the distant past, the sailor-suited soldier of love and justice in the present, nor even a humble school girl.

She does it by literally stripping herself of all those things, of stripping herself of everything in fact.

Her weapons? Gone.

Her other items, like her Tiare? Gone.

Her comrades? Gone, and they’d be powerless against Galaxia anyway.

And finally, even her clothes? Gone!

Beyond the Silver Crystal (an outward visualization of her heart/soul) and the angel wings (symbolic of her role as a saviour) she is completely (but tastefully) naked.

Usagi visually and quite literally is more vulnerable than she’s ever been, even more so than on her first night as Sailor Moon.

And yet this is Usagi at her actual most powerful.

It is her distilled to her absolute essence as a person, all other trappings removed. She’d just one person showing another they will categorically not harm them, that they bear them no malice and they have nothing to hide. That openness and compassion is what ultimately enables her to connect to the good within Galaxia and pull her away from the darkness that had corrupted her.

Usagi in this moment completely fulfilled her character arc.

· In the Dark Kingdom arc Usagi destroys (or seals away depending upon your POV) Beryl/Metalia.

· In the Hell Tree arc, Usagi resolves the over all plot via a healing technique (although it is functionally similar to a destructive attack). However, that only happens because the Hell Tree both instructs Usagi to do that and because it lets her. It is the equivalent of a sickly doctor instructing a nurse on what to do to make them better. The nurse might have the power but their agency as a healer is limited.

· In the Black Moon arc, Usagi, with help, destroys Wiseman/Death Phantom.

· In the Death Busters arc, Usagi does save Hotaru and ‘purify’ her. However, like the Hell Tree, that was something Hotaru wanted. Additionally, her purification functioned as a way to heal the body of someone sick and who wanted to sacrifice themselves, not someone actually evil. The evil in question was Pharaoh 90 and it is presumed that Usagi destroyed him (although it might’ve been Hotaru or the pair of them together).

· Forgive me for skipping the Dead Moon Circus arc as Chibiusa is the real protagonist there, and Usagi’s role is chiefly as a rescuer. It therefore doesn’t really apply, although the Nehelenia mini-arc from Stars is a different story. There, Usagi was a healer again, but she did it with the help of her loved ones and with the aid of her Tiare device. Nevertheless, we can see by this point Usagi’s capacity as a healer heroine had been gradually growing until we get to the battle with Galaxia.

By the end of series, Usagi has successfully healed Galaxia and it is neither with the aid of her comrades, nor with the power of a weapon or device, nor with any instructions from her ‘patient’ or any other third party.

Additionally, Galaxia (unlike Hotaru) wasn’t someone’s who was saved from a noble self-sacrifice or had a physical ailment that needs to be addressed. In Galaxia’s case, her very soul had lost it’s way and become corrupted. She had lost who she was supposed to be and her purpose in life had been perverted.****

When combined with how powerful Galaxia always was, how Chaos and the Star Seeds empowered her further, Usagi’s victory here cannot be understated.

Her ‘patient’ was more powerful than all her other adversaries, was in need of more healing than her other ‘patients’ and was more resistant to being healed. Not to mention, since she’d directly murdered her beloved friends (and indirectly aborted her future daughter), Usagi would’ve been forgiven for not even trying to salvage Galaxia

And yet, with no weapons, no backup and just the power of her heart and soul basically, Usagi succeeded.

After Stars the idea that Usagi could heal the entire planet after a global catastrophe and reshape it into a fairy tale crystalline utopia was all too believable.

What’s healing one planet when her ability to empathise had already healed a whole galaxy?

Who needs a tiara to reduce evil to dust when you can simply convince evil to be good?

*This is arguably symbolized by baby Hotaru’s vision of NQS transforming into Eternal Sailor Moon in episode 1 of Stars.

In fact, we might argue that a low-key subplot running through all of Stars (both the Nehelenia and Galaxia portions of it) is gradually transitioning Usagi closer to the person she is destined to become as Neo-Queen Serenity, hence why the first episode features the most explicit reference to her fate as Queen since R.

**Personally I am an atheist, but nevertheless I and others like me can grasp why deities in most major religions through history weren’t simply capable of mass scale destruction, but also of essentially manipulating reality to create things too.

By that same token, it’s little surprise that perhaps the widest spread religious figure in history was Jesus Christ who rarely (if ever) engaged in aggression or destructive acts, predominantly employing divine healing powers.

I suspect the attraction of such figures to human beings lies in the fact that on some level we know that, given the right time and resources, we mere mortals would be capable of destroying anything. Given time it’s all but certain we will develop the technology to even destroy planetary bodies. On the flipside, I think we also intuitively grasp that reversing such damage, of reattaching a limb, of stanching bleeding, etc, is far more difficult if not impossible. Hence we attributed the ability to do such things to larger than life Divine Entities.

*** Now that I think of it, it’s also poignant that Usagi tries and fails to defeat Galaxia with a sword when we take Sailor Uranus into consideration.

Uranus is of course associated with her weapon, the Space Sword and, like Usagi, tried and failed to use such a weapon against Galaxia.

Giving Uranus a sword is symbolically appropriate given her role as the leader of the more aggressive branch of the Sailor Team. Having her fail against Galaxia and Usagi consequently fail by in some way ‘mimicking her tactics’ is equally symbolically appropriate. Not only because of their ideological conflict in Sailor Moon S but also their tensions in Sailor Stars itself. In both situations Usagi’s more open, less aggressive, ideology was ultimately proven correct.

Thus in using a sword against Galaxia it represented how Usagi was always doomed to fail by taking the aggressive/destructive route and how she was arguably not being true to herself in that moment.

****It’s not to dissimilar to Darth Vader/Anakin Skywalker now that I think about it.

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eyecicles · 3 years

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@longagoitwastuesday

I actually thought, unlike sympathy, empathy could be logic based and didn't require necessarily an overly emotional response to a fact, or even an emotional response at all. I thought it was not about relating to the feeling, but understanding it, being able to "get" how the person may feel from that understanding and how it may influence them. In that sense, it can operate in a logical sense as much or even more so than in an emotional sense.

I do get where you’re coming from

There’s the concept of “cognitive empathy”, which is something every rational person could (theoretically) use, yes. But that’s something L or Light are quite good at too, otherwise they wouldn’t be able to manipulate others so well. Just think about how well L “understood” Misa when he manipulated her into helping him during the Yotsuba arc. Or how quick he was to understand what kind of person Kira is, what must be going through Kira’s mind + what he’s trying to do, and that Light fits his profile perfectly.

If we define empathy as the simple ability to understand why people are doing what they’re doing, then most main characters in DN have lots of it.

I’ve used the word how I learned it in therapy. They always told me it meant to “emotionally understand what someone else is feeling”. I took several empathy tests in my life and always scored low, and yet my therapists complimented me on how well I can logically understand other people (although with a distance). They also told me that there are several ways to understand other people, with different starting points. Empathy and logic would be two separate points. I suppose the term has a more specific meaning in psychology, because you use it to diagnose someone. So maybe that was my mistake? I should have defined it better right from the beginning

I usually make a distinction between "empathy" and "sympathy" when talking in this kind of context, and "sympathy" etymologically might be more what you're talking about (an emotional response to someone else's feelings? Even something akin to sharing the feeling to some extent? I guess empathy can be that as well, but I thought it was more an abstract understanding of that feeling).

From my understanding, sympathy is feeling something like sorrow or pity for someone’s pain/sorrow/distress. It can be related to empathy, but it’s not the same for me either!

The main reason I don’t see Near as especially empathetic, is because he isn’t swayed or even influenced by other people’s emotions and is instead very good at doing what must be done, even if it’s difficult, even if it hurts others. He’s quite young (17/18) but still cool-headed enough to successfully lead an enitre investigation. I imagine this would take a greater toll on someone with higher empathy (especially since the case is about murder), but of course it all depends. It’s not like we see Near taking an empathy test in the manga, haha. It’s just the way I interpret him, how he makes sense to me.

It’s also interesting to consider that HTR13 gave both Near and L a 1/10 on the social knowledge scale. Which is at least linked to empathy, although not the exact same thing. Low empathy is one of the main reasons why autistic people struggle with social norms, or so I‘ve been told.

Of course I’m aware that Near is pretty good at understanding, for example, Mello or Kira (or people on a psychological level in general). He knows the former well and has worked on the Kira case during the second arc for long enough to have a clear picture of who Kira is as a person, too. We definitely agree here! But, to me, empathising with someone is to know and share someone’s emotions (maybe not to the same extent, but I see it as a form of conformity) ...Or at all least this is how I used when I said Near has low empathy. I know the word can have a pretty broad meaning, so again, I get what you mean.

...Though I also think that Near can be extremely blunt, quite dismissive and certainly cheeky. And it’s also true that we see him being mindful and polite at other times. It shows yet again that he’s way more complex than most people give him credit for!

(Also, I read everything you wrote and appreciate it - I only copied the parts that seemed relevant to my response, to shorten this post a bit~)

#reply #longagoitwastuesday #near

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angelofthequeers · 4 years

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What brought you into salting for ML, and what led you away from it? You’ve written some things that were very salty in the past, and more recently written that you were ashamed of those things, and now work to combat salt and write positive things. What brought about the change? And I’m sorry if I sound accusatory, I’m genuinely curious.

No, you don’t sound accusatory at all! I’ve been trying to avoid talking about it because I’d have to name specific people but honestly? I don’t even care anymore. I’m done not calling people out just because I was afraid of them sending their groupies after me. (I wish I could put this under a read more but my laptop charger is fried and idk how to do it on mobile 😭).

So when I was new to the fandom, I didn’t know what to think. I didn’t know what opinion I should have about things. All I knew was tha I was coming from Supernatural, where I’d started to criticise a LOT of things about it, which was my mindset coming into ML. And the biggest and most popular bloggers were the Big Four, as I took to calling them: zoe-oneesama, lenoreofraven, gale-of-the-nomads and nobodyfamousposts. There were others, like miraculouscontent and jacquesthepigeon, and these were the dominant voices in the fandom from where I was. And if they’re the dominant voices and they’re being what I see as critical, of course I’m going to assume that they’re in the right. Not to mention that I’ve always had a problem with idolising people I see as cooler than me, so that definitely didn’t help. Plus they seemed to be Enlightened, claiming x and y were racist and problematic, and I was so desperate to be unproblematic that I didn’t stop and realise that they were the ones being problematic in the first place and just projecting the blame onto others to deflect from themselves. The racism in Zoe’s Scarlet Lady comic in particular is particularly disgusting and I’ve vented about it in private more than once, but it’s okay because it’s improving the show.

(Never mind that you can be critical of something and still enjoy it. Critical doesn’t equal salty as fuck. That’s something I’ve finally learned and I’m happy loving and gushing over the show while still pointing out where it needs to improve)

I eventually ended up joining a salty Discord and that’s what actually ended up pushing me away from salt, because it was so...bad. Everyone was egging each other on and encouraging each other to be salty and toxic about the show and I was starting to resent the show, and why should I waste my energy on something I hate? Salt legitimately very nearly killed my love for not only this show but children’s media in general, which was also why I left SPN because I was done with the constant gritty darkness. I wanted to love Adrien, I wanted to love Alya, I wanted to love the show, but I was being bombarded with Perfect Princess Saltinette and Perfect Boyfriend Loocah and Kickass Queen Chloé/Kagami (whichever one the author liked) and it just...all got internalised and reinforced. I felt like I wasn’t allowed to love Adrien and Alya and the show or I’d be doing something wrong, because clearly these fans knew better than I did.

And then we come to Défenseure. At the time of writing it, I legitimately didn’t mean for it to be overly salty. I intended for it to be like ‘Little Devil’, where the characters were fucking up but they stopped and learned lessons, albeit through the salter lens of what those lessons should be. Adrien was never going to lose his ring. He was just going to get a stern talking-to and end up apologising to Ladybug (despite that itself being exaggerated bc of how salters see him). But the Discord kept going and going and egging me on and providing “support” when I got negative feedback, and I let them push me to the point of full salt. And that’s when I stepped back and realised that I hated it. I hated being here, I hated interacting with the fandom, I hated writing. So I bowed out and never looked back.

But it’s not that simple. I was invited to another Discord by someone who, I will give a smidge of credit, did help pull me out of that dark place. But I didn’t realise that GalahadWilder was predatory and just outright yuck and literally manipulating me, especially with how he used his own autism to connect with me and empathise in a way that non-autistics couldn’t. Again, I couldn’t read people and I didn’t realise that I was being played until I ended up embroiled in another fandom drama. The less said about that, the better, but anyone who’s been around for any length of time knows what Drama I’m talking about.

And somehow, that ended up being even more toxic than the salt. We were actively attacking the showrunners (doxxing and then deleting to save face aka “do damage control over an impulsive mistake”), jabbing at other fans who I won’t name, constantly screenshotting one specific person (who legitimately is disgusting and hated by most of the fandom) and laughing at how pathetic they were, even going to one side of the drama and sending anons to try and pin the blame on the other side. And granted, I didn’t actively participate in most of this, but I still sat there and watched and laughed and believed the manipulations. It wasn’t until I got sick of this drama and someone informed me of the true nature of it (because I definitely wouldn’t have gotten involved and supported who I did if I’d been told the whole truth) that I left, but even then I still had people from both sides of the internal drama in that Discord messaging me and trying desperately to get me to believe them, and it was just. Too much.

Fandom’s supposed to be fun. Fandom’s supposed to be an escape. And yet I was ending up in more drama than a reality TV show because people were playing me like a puppet and I was sick of it.

But I’m in a healthier place now in the fandom. I’ve found the balance between roasting and being outright cruel; between criticising the show and spewing salt over it. And while I do hate what I’ve written and the drama I got messed up in, I’m grateful in a way. Without my salty writing, I wouldn’t have found that I hate doing it. Without that drama, I wouldn’t have found the true natures of certain people and I wouldn’t have made the friends I have now, like ladybuginettes, emsylcatac, amimons, bugabisous and yeet-noir. We jokingly call me a babie egg because I’ve been reborn as sugar and sweetness 😌 Especially since joining APS, which has let me actually love Adrien and even other characters like Alya and shower them in the positivity that I wanted to in the first place.

So, uh...yeah. That’s how I went from being a salty bitch to wanting to be more positive and sugary. And at least now I’m disillusioned enough that I just. Don’t idolise anyone anymore 🤷🏽‍♀️

#ask #aotq answers #miraculous ladybug #ml fandom salt #yeah I named names here #i’m just #done with everything

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hallucxnating · 4 years

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Ah sorry should've clarified, this is my way of seeing if I actually wanna get back into it or not, sorry to make you answer these. So, he acts younger and he was manipulated? That's why it's okay? Really sorry if I'm sounding rude, again, I don't mean to. It's just he's lived a thousand years and she's lived 16, that's real bad, the author could've made her a collage student, so she wasn't a teenager but? Aang was frozen, didn't age or mature, real different than living.

It's alright :)

Please let me elaborate more on this. (It's gonna be long sorry not sorry)

First of all, you're actually right about that last part regarding Aang. The example I used didn't really apply here after thinking about it.

Still,

Despite the fact that the gods are hundreds or maybe even thousands of years old, none of them show that maturity per se. Yato behaves as a rambunctious teen most of the time. Bishamon has the maturity of someone in her twenties. Kofuku literally behaves like a young teenage girl. Tenjin is the only one who shows some maturity but it's mostly because he was human before becoming god and died when he was old. The time they've existed absolutely does NOT reflect upon their psyche, simply because I believe they choose not to. Yato does not 'act' immature. Yato IS immature. He wasn't brought up properly by his father and then he pretty much alienated every shinki uptil Yukine.

The other gods have had the pleasure of having their shinki raise them up if something untoward happened to them (eg: Takemikazuchi and Ebisu) and they'd have a parental figure to guide them to a state of maturity.

So therefore, biologically and mentally Yato couldn't be older than an 18-20 year old. Despite the fact that he's been alive for hundreds of years.

I genuinely believe that immortality does not equate to wisdom beyond the years. Especially if someone is stuck at a certain bodily age. Because their mind sort of locks at that age too? I hope I'm making sense. Sure they might collect memories, but if life is a slog of just godly duties, there isn't much there to make the god grow as a person, right?

Meeting Hiyori was the start of a shifting worldview for Yato, and getting Yukine was the start of Yato accepting even an inkling of responsibility.

If you've read the manga, you can see how Yato was in the first chapter. In my opinion he was essentially just a man child parading around as if he was much more important than he actually was. He'd actively throw tantrums at people if they said something he didn't like. All his actions in hindsight just showed how he was still fixated with what happened to Sakura even after several hundred years.

Probably because he CHOSE to keep that secret burning inside him. He couldn't tell his shinki because that would kill them and he didn't have anyone else to tell that.

So when Hiyori accidentally found out about that incident, it was probably the first time he "told" anyone about that AND have them empathise with him.

Hiyori's beauty is that she's the first person to treat Yato with empathy. Not sympathy and certainly not scorn. (Kazuma had come dangerously close but that's another essay I can write)

And the fact that she's so empathetic to him is what draws them both to each other.

Unlike how it is in the anime (because of how Studio Bones decided to frame some scenes to make Yato a MUCH more likable character than he initially was in the manga) Hiyori actually has much more agency. If Yato was being a bitch boy she'd be like fuck it I'm gonna do that thing on my own and MOSTLY succeed.

Unlike so many shows where the female character keeps getting into trouble from which the guy has to save her (*cough* jshk *cough*), Hiyori actively saved Yato AND Yukine's life when Yukine had blighted Yato to almost death.

If it weren't for Hiyori we wouldn't have had Yato.

People give a lot of importance to numbers. Which are most CERTAINLY important because you can individually analyse every case. But Hiyori being sixteen rarely affects her doings with the far world. Hiyori is the main character of this story, and she's a girl with so much love and empathy to give that she's almost wiser for her age. I wouldn't ship yatori at their initial phase. Hiyori has suffered through stuff and being with yato has exposed her to death and so many more dark topics. They've both helped each other grow and also comforted each other. Yato adds adventure to Hiyoris mundane life, something she'd been craving since forever. Hiyori is Yato's rock. She's his support and always there for him to come back whenever he might go too far. Gods don't have a sense of moral, so Yato decided that it will be Hiyori and Yukine who he will follow to do godly duties with justice.

And frankly speaking it's that kind of co-dependence that makes their relationship very beautiful. And it is the appreciation for THAT aspect of their relationship that makes me ship them. Not because "meh meh girl and guy could I make it more obvious"

Since you're an anime only I highly suggest you read the manga. Because it is SO much better.

Here's the one who manifested my thoughts into words because I do be kinda illiterate on my own. Thank you Nani

#yatori #noragami #if you read the whole thing congratulations #here's the actual thesis #anonymous #hallu asks

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pfreadsandwrites · 4 years

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Okay okay i just read your tags on that sasuke and hinata post and you said you think they'd be compatible and i think that's a v new take cause mostly people just believe that sasuke barely knows hinata exists? and that's kinda what i thought too tbh i mean ig hinata CAN be good for sasuke but will sasuke be good for hinata? I'm v curious so i wanna know your thoughts 👀

I guess it is a new take though I’ve definitely spoken to others who kinda agree with me about this over the years, but you’re right, it is basically a crack ship cuz yeah, they have never interacted ever. And i don’t even like Hinata and I’m always flip-flopping on Sasuke. In short i don’t hate him at all and I think he’s a super interesting and complex character, but I’m happy to dunk on him for the memes lol cuz god does he have his moments but I wouldn’t say he’s a character I love, but please, he is such a traumatised person, traumatised as a very young child to boot, and this is really glossed over by a lot of people.

But please be patient with me whilst I attempt to sort this out because I don’t often verbalise my thoughts about Naruto when it’s not about Kakashi so apologies if this is not very coherent... I also wanna point out that i am not a shipper and I approach ship dynamics on how well they work/how much it makes sense in the context of the show which is why i hardly ship anything. Also I wanna point out that I’m not necessarily thinking about the Sasuke through most of Shippuden as i write this, i’m sort of taking that aside and thinking about his potential and who he was at the beginning, and who he becomes at the end.

Will put it under a read more cuz wow! I don’t make sense but I sure don’t know how to shut up either!

Okay, so the thing about Sasuke that isn’t really touched upon by the fandom is exactly how driven by his emotions he is. He is such an intensely emotional person, despite being a relatively introverted and quiet person, and he’s obviously manipulated by it at various points throughout the series - he’s really not controlled or stoic, like, at all.

Comparatively, though Hinata is shy and introverted, she’s actually pretty good at keeping her emotions in check. Yes she gets nervous. She doesn’t wallow in her emotions or let them dictate her behaviour, and it’s actually her that brings Naruto back down to Earth when he’s freaking out that one time during the war arc. So they balance each other out in that sense.

I like their imagined dynamic for a few surface level reasons. In an AU where the massacre didn’t happen, or even before it happened, Sasuke and Hinata have a lot in common. They both come from these prestigious closed off clans, they both feel like they’re not measuring up, they have these overbearing and closed-off fathers. If they got to know each other they just would have related to each other very well I feel. Also, Hinata’s supposed to be quite empathetic and like... Sasuke definitely needs this. There’s a real lack from anyone in this series, Naruto included, that is actually trying to see where Sasuke is coming from that isn’t a) trying to use that to get him to do what they want b) trying to control him because they think they know what’s best for him, even if they’re acting for his sake.

I don’t see Hinata being that way with him? You could argue Sasuke needs someone more outwardly ‘tougher’ and no nonsense but I definitely think Hinata is extremely determined in her quiet way, especially when she cares about someone, but for some reason I think she’s one of the characters that I can see genuinely empathising with him and learning to see who he actually is. I don’t think she’d be passive, but she’s definitely the quiet understanding type and it’s hard because we don’t see her care about anyone other than Naruto, I do thjnk she’d be capable of calling him out when he needs it. I guess i think that in part is because she’s one of the few girls that doesn’t just thirst after him from the beginning.

But to answer the second part, would Sasuke be good for Hinata... Honestly, I can see it? For starters, not only does Hinata have issues with anxiety, but so does Sasuke. You sort of see that in the beginning with Sasuke. He’s the one that’s freaking out when they first meet Zabuza to the point that he wants to kill himself to end his anxiety and Kakashi has to snap him out of it. He’s the one that freaks out in the forest of death during the chunin exams and just wants to hand the scroll over and end it all. He’s not really like this in the same way in shippuden, but my god if Hinata couldn’t relate to this. Also, I wanna remind everyone how he is with Juugo. He’s the one that calms him down, the one that Juugo feels safe around. I know he’s doing it with a purpose in mind, but I think he’d have patience and empathy for Hinata’s fears the way he would for him. Obviously this would take place years later once Sasuke’s resolved some of his issues. I guess more than anything i see them having chemistry, and a quite, peaceful relationship that has the potential to be healthier than SasuSaku, and even, SasuNaru. (SasuNaru works only because Naruto is SO damn resilient, and because of how deep their bond is and how much they canonically complete each other, not because it’s healthy, or at least it wouldn’t be at first)

It’s genuinely harder to talk about why Sasuke would be good for Hinata because there really isn’t that much to her character, but I basically think Hinata would do well with someone that understands her as well, and Sasuke I think is pretty damn capable of that. I think the fact that they show no interest in each other whatsoever means that they both would have to develop as people in their own right, which Hinata definitely needs, Sasuke’s aloofness would probably do her good, and idk, I just think it has the capability of blossoming into something strong. Largely because for it to work they would have to become their own people, and then they would realise just how much they have in common and I just think their personalities complement each other. Sakura’s tough with everyone else but far too passive on him, but she really can’t understand him at all, nor he her, and i just think SasuHina have more potential in that way.

(i answered this very badly and i have some more thoughts that i’m having trouble expressing but i hope this helps)

(also to everyone who sent in requests i am working on them i promise!!!)

#sasuke #naruto #sasuhina #pftalks #answered #allthingskakashi

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kikinuinthefandom · 4 years

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A tale of two Chessmasters

One thing that I loved about The Untamed is the contrast between the two versions of the Chessmaster Archetype.

On one side, we have Jin Guangyao, who is the type of Chessmaster we are more used to seeing: to us, he is on the side of evil. Yes, he has his reasons for doing this. He was badly treated by the world, he suffered for the sins of his parents. He is resentful and smart, so he lays out a plan to end up at the top, killing both all the people who mistreated him and innocent bystanders alike.

On the opposite side of this chessboard we find Nie Huaisang. The other day I was talking with phoenixgfawkes and she told me that she liked it more when this type of characters were on the “good” side. And so do I. This is why:

Yes, you can empathise a lot with Jin Guangyao, but at the end of the day and like a modern icon said: cool motive, still murder. We know that he did bad things for bad reasons. We know he is the villain, even if we love him or if we want him to be redeemed… he is a “bad person” and we are fully aware of this.

But Nie Huaisang? That’s trickier.

When The Chessmaster is on the side of the good guys, we can never perceive them as a truly Good PersonTM. Why? Because we were raised to think that Actual Good People carry their hearts on their sleeves, they make mistakes and then make up for them in painful ways to atone for said mistakes, they fight in the Correct Way. But a Chessmaster is not like that.

Look at Dumbledore in Harry Potter: almost all readers loved him since the start, but when it was revealed that he was a Chessmaster all along, almost everyone (almost, of course) stopped thinking of him as a good guy or, at least, were more careful when describing him as “good”.

So, Nie Huaisang is a tricky character. Unlike Dumbledore, who was atoning for his past sins, Nie Huaisang isn’t exactly playing this game for A Good Reason. He did all of this for revenge. Yes, Jin Guangyao did a lot of horrible things, but what kicks Huaisang into action is the assassination of his brother. If Guangyao hadn’t killed Mingjue, Huaisng most likely wouldn’t have done anything.

And that’s part of the awesomeness of this: Guangyao doesn’t know he has a rival. He doesn’t know this is an actual game he is playing. To him, he is just toying with his pieces. It’s easier to win if you are the only one playing. Huaisang is fully aware this is a competitive game, that he is going face to face with an equal, someone who’s also thinking five, seven, twenty movements in advance.

Would things have ended differently had Guangyao known Huaisang was also a player and not a pawn?

I think not.

To me, Huaisang is a way better Chessmaster than Guangyao. Where Guangyao is emotional, Huaisang is cold-headed. Where Guangyao wants glory, Huaisang wants stability. Where Guangyao wants to be recognised, Huaisang wants to be in the shadows. And this last one is the most important aspect.

A true Chessmaster, the best version of one, a true puppeteer, needs to be in the shadows. Part of the things that let you play a good game of human chess is that people don’t know you are playing with them because, as soon as you reveal yourself, they stop trusting you and then manipulating them (and thus, the things that happen) is way harder. Being in a position of power and being known to be good at it makes you a target of suspicion. It was very easy for Wei Wuxian et al to turn everyone on Guangyao, because everyone was at least a little wary of him (except Xichen, of course, but you know Lan boys and pretty faces).

Huaisang didn’t want to be in a position of power, but when he saw himself in one, he did his best to appear as useless as possible. This way, nobody actually suspected him. And what’s more: hadn’t he acted a little too quickly in the end, Guangyao wouldn’t have discovered him. The only reason Xichen, Wangjy and Wei Wuxian (although I have my doubts about this last one) suspect him is just because, when a Chessmaster is this good, only another Chessmaster can unmask him.

And what really makes Huaisang win me over and makes me think of him as the superior: he doesn’t let go of his mask. In the end, Guangyao let go of his mask. Xichen went to confront him and, instead of playing dumb and talk Xichen into doubting everything he thought to be true, he kidnapped him and blocked his qi out. He admitted to be the man moving the pawns all along to anyone that accused him of it.

Huaisang, even if he knew people had figured out that he was the puppeteer, denied it. Xichen, sweet, good, righteous Xichen asked him with pleading eyes if Huaisang tricked him and Huaisang played dumb. The closest we see him admitting his true nature is to Wei Wuxian (and Wangjy by extension), which I would love to explore another time. Other han that, Huaisang keeps true to his role of a dumb, useless person.

Is Huaisang a good person? I don’t know. I don’t think that Chessmasters are inherently at least a little “bad”, but Huaisang did cause the death of at least two “innocent” people (because even if he didn’t want Qin Su to die, she did kill herself because of his actions, and he did made Mo Xuanyu sacrifice himself so Wei Wuxian could come back). Which is why I love so much this thing phoenixgfawkes pointed out to me: in the last episode, when Huaisang picks up Guangyao’s hat, he stains his hand with blood.

Doesn’t matter how good you are, you can’t play this kind of game without getting blood on your hands.

#The untamed #nie huaisang #jin guangyao #i love a good chessmaster archetype #i can't believe it has been just a day since #i finished the untamed and I already miss it #Huaisang is honestly so interesting to me #because at least in the show we see so little of him #i want to explore all this characters so much #the untamed meta

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owxanimorphs · 4 years

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Before the Re-read the Animorphs

Okay before I begin my re-read this is my thoughts on the main cast based on my memory of the last times I read the books (which varies between a few months ago for some and several years for others)

Let's get the hard one out of the way first. I'll start with my thoughts on Cassie. I make no secret that Cassie is the only Animorph I actively dislike. In a way it is tragic because as I've said before Cassie had potential as a character. A character with a very black and white viewpoint and a strong desire to stick to their point of view no matter the cost being confronted with the messy nature or war could have been a gold mine for interesting story lines. Instead Cassie is cast as the voice of morality and the conscience of the group which is a role she is absolutely terrible at. Because in the end she's no more moral than the rest of them (arguably actively even less moral) and her being right is more a function of being creators pet than any real logical story progression. Things work out for her because the creators say even when it breaks the story or contradicts established facts.

In Essence everything wrong with Cassie is everything wrong with the books as a whole which makes her a pretty big example of what not to do in writing. However, even if you ignore all that and focus only her personality she is still lacking. When first introduced Cassie is your typical childish self centered idealist. She puts great value on the things she cares about and tries not to thinka bout things that contradict that view point. Then she doens't really change she's a static character.

There is one redeeming factor about Cassie that is interesting but since it was unintentional I can't give complete credit to the creators for it. Cassie is a perfect example of everything wrong with Empathy as a stand in for goodness. Cassie is actually a very empathic character but she is also a very selfish character. Once she empathises with someone they become "Good" in her mind and she'll bend over backwards to justify making decisions that would negatively effect folks she isn't empathising with. It also informs how she is determined to stay in others good graces and only fights them when she can play the martyr. Which reminds me of my wish that David had stuck around longer and been a foil to Cassie for a while because they really are starkly similar characters in most regards except Cassie has an almost over developed sense of Empathy (to the point she can be okay with horrendous shit if she empathizes with the ones doing it) and David has almost none outside of the things he cares out. They are both also able to manipulate people to get what they want. And they read people very well to keep in their good graces or really hurt them if they piss them off enough.

But that isn't what this post is about so to sum up my view on Cassie is that she had potential but what we got was a horrendous character and the biggest disappointment of the books.

Now let's move onto another hard one to talk about and that is Tobias. When I first read the books oh so long ago I way over identified with Tobias but then I was a messed up lonely kid so it's not that surprising. Looking back on them as an adult it flew over my head back then how utterly fucked up Tobias is. This is not a healthy kid even before he got stuck as a hawk. Tobias was clearly already borderline suicidal even before the hawk thing and afterwards it and everything else in many ways turned into a much slower long and detailed decline into an early death. Tobias hated himself so he chose to give up all humanity forever. Which brings us to the problem with Tobias and that is the narrative never acknowledges how fucked up his situation is. Sure some of the other characters come close but they never fully grasp it.Tobias is in many ways one of the other great disappointments of the books because early on they clearly drop hints that he has a major role to play in things to the point where the freaking Ellimist preserves his existence by bending space time twice once to keep him around and then to ensure the animorphs happened and then the plot line is abandoned in favor of creators pet Cassie being the most important and special.

Now I love stories where the chosen one isn't that chosen after all but that needs to be intended from the beginning when you heavily lay on the foreshadowing that this is going to be an important element you need to address it. Instead the potential story line just peters out in a way that doesn't amount to anything not even a subversion. Tobias then sticks around to be a general misery magnet and to have the most unhealthy relationship possible with Rachel.

I mean I know stories change direction in production and over time and some times that leads to better stories and some times it leads to obvious dropped plot lines and a general degrading of quality. Animorphs sadly is in the second category. Part of it of course was the real world rush to churn out the books for Schoolastic but parts of it were clearly the writers getting a bit too enamored of their pets and how they wanted things to end.

I'm getting off topic again. My view on Tobias is that he's an interesting character and one that you can pity but man is that boy fucked up.

Now let's move onto Ax the Andalite Animorph and the other one besides Cassie and Tobias who ends up kind of one note. Ax plays an interesting role since hes alien and the books do a good job of showing an alien viewpoint. Far better in his case than many of the other aliens. It helps that he's basically a slacker alien who was a poor student and probably only got brung along on the ship because his big brother pulled some strings.

Ax is also a prime example of another time when the potential of the story gets left by the way side. Ax's torn loyalties should have come up more than they did and should have had more lasting repercussions. Way too often he'll get reduced to joke one note status when he should be figuring into things more. I don't have much more to say about him since I really remember as liking him but thinking he was wasted several times.

And now we'll move onto Marco a character who when I first read the books annoyed the crap out of me but as I grew older grew on me a great deal. Marco is a wonderful example of a character who can be obnoxious to protect themselves and despite being the other creators pet he is allowed to actually change in ways that are both good and bad so he's not another Cassie. The fact he's even allowed to disagree with her at least temporarily and call her on her BS very rarely also helps. Marco is also very realistic in that he reacts like many people would and for a lot of folks it would take somethign that affected them personally to make them fight as hard as the kids had to end up fighting.

Of course there is still one irritating thing about Marco and that's how he's often forced into the role of the complainer is wrong some times for the others (esp Cassie) to be right. It's a role he shares wtih Rachel she'll suggest the violent solution so it can be rejected and he'll suggested the better strategic solution but it'll be rejected for being wrong.

So final thoughts on Marco slightly annoying at times but very realistic and really grows on you.

Now let's talk about Rachel and this is the character whose fate pisses me off the most. I have no problem with character death in a story but Rachel's death is treated by the creators as necessary and it bleeds into the narrative abit and that really pisses me off. She's also unfortunately the one who gets the most chaotic characterization as depending on teh writer how aggressive she is varies. Not to mention the books that paint her as a control freak. Of course you can hand wave it as the stress getting to her in different less pretty ways but that raises it's own problems with with how the narrative treats her. She's often also used as a foil to shill for Cassie and that bugs me. She and her cousin get the most discussion of Cassie's moral superiority though everyone gets a turn on it.

And what is really sad is that she only gets to really call out Cassie and the others very rarely even though they are some of the most satisfying moments in the entire series. She's right when she calls out that the others need her to be the blood thirsty one. She's actually someone clearly sacrificing for the greater good but the narrative treats her as a blood knight. It really pisses me off and while her relationship with Tobias isn't even remotely healthy it makes a lot of sense because the others treat her as damaged and thanks to his neediness he'll never look at her as a monster like the others tend to do to make themselves feel better.

I'll make one final observation and that's that poor Rachel may have died twice in the series the first time being the starfish incident. Cause the Rachel that was split in half would never exist again. The two Rachels may have been re-merged but they had each had time to begin to diverge so what was formed out of them would be a new Rachel. Hell a lot of her issues later in the series could have been a direct result of that and it would make perfect sense.

Final thoughts on Rachel she deserved so much better and was probably one of the more selfless animorphs but gets written off by the narrative as just a blood knight too damaged to live.

Now let's move onto Jake who is actually my favorite character. I know a lot of folks find him boring and generic at first but that's exactly why he's the character that interest me the most because even more than the others he was just a kid when this mess started. You can see the seeds of who everyone else turned out to be in who they were at the start but Jake was just a kid who was slightly more mature and better able to mediate. That got him forced into the leadership Role and from there for good or ill that's the role he got stuck with. Like Rachel he became exactly what the others needed him to be and at times it wasn't pretty.

I mean it's so easy to picture how the others would have turned out, Cassie would have ended up one of those activist who says a lot of good things but is very much a walking illustration of perfect is the enemy of good with her probably doing more harm than help to her causes by turning folks off with her my way or the highway stance. Rachel would have excelled at whatever chosen path she took with incredible zeal and bending herself to be what folks in her life needed. Ax would have lived in the shadow of his brother as a semi competent warrior at best, Tobias would have remained very fucked up and Marco would have done what it took to not be poor and mask all his hurts with laughter and entertaining folks. Jake on the other hand is the one that just sort of was. He could end up really generic or find something he's good at and make it his life.

Instead he was given the role of responsibility and for the most part he carried the burden though his putting Cassie on a pedestal constantly was one part character flaw and one part character shilling by the creators. It was a realistic flaw he liked her and wanted her to like him. That was very human and relatable but his constant support for some of her more stupid moments crossing the line into plot induced stupidity.

One part that is really sad is that he's often compared with Elfangor and the narrative takes the appraoch that he falls short but honestly to me Jake comes off as more of a success than Elfangor and I wish the narrative acknowledged it. Of course I'll share my thoughts on Elfangor in another post.

There is more I could go into but this post has gotten long enough for now so final Thoughts on Jake generic kid forced to grow up even faster than others. Has an irritating blind spot when it comes to Cassie but over all my favorite of the kids.

#animorphs #animorphs 2020reread #Before the Reread

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harmhim-blog · 4 years

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the resistance is dead. the war is over. and when i kill you, i will have killed the last jedi.

VIII TRUE BIOGRAPHY

born to leia organa and han solo, ben has always been strong with the force. he was levitating toys and causing long distance disaster long before he spoke his first words (which was bantha, by the way), and that might’ve been why it was so easy for snoke to crawl so close to him.

for as long as he can remember he has had the unforgiving, twisted rhetoric of the dark side whispered like gospel into his ears by the unseen supreme leader. it begun before he was even born, a seed planted in his body as it formed. he overheard conversations between his parents one night, where han had proposed that they should’ve waited, unable to deal with the force sensitive child, and that was where he found his fear of being a burden, unwanted, the easiest streak of humanity that snoke could leech off of.

from there, when he was left in the care of droids when han went off to search the stars and leia was acting diploma,snoke, with his lies mounted on truths and fears, became something of an imaginary friend that he kept vigilantly secret. there were times when leia’s gentle hands, her love, and his idolation of han allowed him to surface, to be clean of darkness, but each time he was coaxed back by his friend.

it was hard to identify an enemy when it is curled inside like a part of you.

by the time his parents had realized how unstable his control on the force was, he had already had his head held under the murk of the dark side, and sending him to yavin 4 to train with luke was the snapping point for his fear of abandonment.

though conflicting tutelage ate away at the solid trust ben had in snoke, and introduced him to one of his strengths; meditation, it was not enough to stave off the infection. luke did his best, and there were moments when ben could reach out and lean on his teachings, but fear kept him away. when the other jedi pupils isolated him, a shy and sensitive child who had cried when his parents left the planet, he simply drew inward. the resentment, bitterness, and strength that had built within him exploded in the form of massacre, when he was 16.

snoke had been prepared for it, sent praetorians in advance when he pushed to know if luke was growing suspicious of the shadow ben was causing in the force. when he sensed even the slightest of shift in the boy, reaching toward the light from luke’s care, snoke weaponized him with all the wrath and suffering he could. though it turned out the soldiers were unneeded, 16 years of being conditioned into distrust, fury and sorrow at the people around him meant the first instance in which he took life was a merciless assault.

when all was said and done, ben’s horror at his own actions, later to be snuffed out, made him sick, forced the praetorians to carry him back with them, singed by the flames and dirtied by the rubble and blood of jedi.

from then on, he was a pupil of the dark side, and snoke had been holding out on him in his distance. now within reach, kylo ren was born from broken bones, burns, tears and blood. mistakes came with dire consequences was the first of many lessons taught with pain alone.

the backbone of it all was the preening, gnarled aftercare. with injury came pity, came distrust, came impersonality. all things that created caverns between ben and snoke, deprived the affection-starved boy of the one thing he chased; approval. approval from his parents, from the force, from snoke, from darth vader. with power came the ability to choke approval from any source.

he devoted himself to stamping out the weaknesses in himself, a baptism by fire turned lifestyle. kylo ren had become a rabid soldier for the first order. quietly well versed in mental manipulation, conditioned by a lifetime of experience, his expertise involved forcibly tearing information out of anyone he was directed to.

the light danced like shooting stars in the peripheral vision of his mind, ever out of reach, easily ignored, but his guilt could not be so easily forgotten. it tore at him, and the more it bit and chewed and mangled him, the more he grew to hate it, to writhe against it, to push himself harder. an endless cycle. he clung to the idea that vader had suffered the same and he, with the same blood coursing though him, must do the same.

it was necessary to bury the conflict, snoke could feel it, smell the uncertainty like a forest fire.

VII TRAITS

combat form: djem so, form v. element: fire zodiac: ox positive: sensitive, responsive, resilient negative: conflicted, manipulating, brutal

VI CONNECTIONS

positive: birds of a feather; similarly flawed individuals who can empathise with each other. sparring buddies; both can take a hit fake memories; perhaps they were lovers, friends or siblings in the memories given to them for the live they had in this town good influence; ben is an unstable mess, easily influenced to the light and the dark.

negative: complete opposites; water, meet fire. rivals; fierce competitive nature has been scarred into him, fueled by his need to gain approval versus someone who is equally good or better than him fake memories; ben threw a mug at your muse in their past memories and its time to take out your anger

V OOC

hi i’m kai, i’m 19 and in the hkst (gmt+8) zone. i literally hate the sequels enough that i am qualified to write a smear campaign against it. anyway, if you want to plot my discord is rainforest city#9748, i am kinda shy. my dms are also open here! if nothing i listed is interesting or suitable for your muse i’m sure we can get up to some mischeif in the dms and figure it out.

#mdhq: intro #kinda long #so if u already know abt kylo bobs history u dont have to read

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wistfulcynic · 6 years

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Another Brick In The Wall, Chapter 12

a/n: This one is short and sweet, just a little bit of fluff and plot development. It was going to be longer, but I decided to split it and I think you’ll understand why...

Summary: Emma Swan, sheriff’s daughter, mayor’s niece, quarterback’s girlfriend, is the undisputed princess of Storybrooke High. She is smart and confident and used to getting what she wants. What she wants is Killian Jones, the new boy in school. But Killian is not easily manipulated, and reluctant to allow the dark secrets in his past to touch the girl he is rapidly falling in love with. Rating: T Read it on AO3: Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6 | Chapter 7 | Chapter 8 | Chapter 9 | Chapter 10 | Chapter 11 | Chapter 12

Tags for: @darkcolinodonorgasm @jennjenn615 @hollyethecurious @resident-of-storybrooke @kmomof4 @bonbonpirate

Chapter 12:

“Swan, I have somthing to discuss with you,” said Killian one lunchtime at the beginning of April. They were sitting outside, enjoying an early spring day that was both bright and warm; fortunately so, as neither of them was quite ready to return to the library at lunch. Emma still turned pink whenever she saw Miss French, and frankly the quiet and solitude there offered too much temptation to repeat the activities that had embarrassed them in front of her in the first place. Better to stay away from the library, and out in public.

“That sounds ominous,” Emma replied.

“I hope not, but it is serious. You remember I told you that I had a provisional place to study at Oxford, that I could start there next year if I got high enough AP scores?”

“Yeah,” she replied, ignoring the twist in her belly at the thought of him being so far away. They could survive a few years long-distance, she knew, she had complete faith in the strength of their relationship, but that didn’t mean she was looking forward to it. An ocean between them meant months of not seeing Killian except for his face on a screen, months of not being able to touch or hold or kiss him. As happy as they had been together over the past few weeks, that future separation loomed large and depressing.

“Well, a few months ago Miss French suggested that maybe I might be able to stay here, in the US I mean, for university. ‘College,’ I suppose I should call it.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. She contacted the Oxford tutor I’d been planning to work with, and he contacted a colleage of his at Harvard, and well, the gist of the tale is that they’ve offered me the same deal. Get the AP scores and I can start there next year.”

“At Harvard?”

“Yeah.”

“Thats— that’s fantastic!” Emma threw her arms around them, oblivious to the other students in the yard, overwhelmed by the relief and happiness surging through her.

“I’m pleased with it.” Killian smiled, returning her hug and kissing her temple as she snuggled against him, her head on his shoulder. “There is a condition, though,” he continued, “and that is for me to return to Oxford for any graduate degrees, which honestly would be my preference regardless. Oxford is really the best place to study languages on an advanced level. But the more I think about it the more I realise I’d quite like to go to an American college. At British universities you focus only on your chosen subject, but I’d like the chance to explore some other subjects besides languages.” He thought for a moment. “My maths and physics classes here have been really interesting, maybe I’ll try engineering. Or architecture. Having a hand in building something would be amazing.”

His eyes were bright with enthusiasm, his expression open and eager, and as she listened to him she felt a rush of pure love. He was such a nerd. Oh, he hid it well behind his smart mouth and occasionally almost Brontë-level moodiness, but underneath all that he was passionately devoted to his interests, and in the end wasn’t that what made a nerd?

“Did I tell you I got into Columbia?” she asked casually.

“Architecture might be something I could— wait, what?”

She grinned at his delighted expression. “Got the email last week. Off the wait list and in. Mom’s thrilled, of course, and taking all the credit. Says I’m a ‘legacy.’”

“That’s nonsense, love it was all you. You’re brilliant, and amazing.” His voice brimmed with pride.

Emma resisted the urge to point out that if anyone was brilliant and amazing it was the seventeen year old who’d secured a special deal to go to Harvard. But that would only embarrass him, and there were more important matters to discuss. “You know what this means, right?” she said eagerly. “With me in New York and you in Boston we’ll only be a few hours away on the train. We could see each other every few weeks.”

“I’ll confess that this was not a minor factor in my decision to stay here for school,” he replied. “The idea of being an ocean away from you was not one I cared to contemplate.”

“Me neither. Oh, this is incredible, babe, I’m so happy.”

“As am I, love.”

And she could see that he meant it. Although his dark cloud still sometimes fell, although the shadows occasionally still lurked behind his eyes, he was happy. They were happy, together. And she wanted more people to have a chance at what they had.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Emma Swan had always known, somewhere in the recesses of her mind, that she had what any objective observer would consider a charmed life. She had been raised by loving parents in a town where everyone knew her and cared for her, and she had grown up smart and athletic, confident and charming, pretty and popular. The circumstances of her life combined with her natural gifts had always reliably ensured that she didn’t have to work too hard for anything, and that the work she did do produced satisfactory results. She had good grades, tons of friends, and had never failed at anything she’d tried to do.

Not that she didn’t also have her flaws. As much as she was kind, considerate, and determined, she was also complacent, shielded by privilege, stubborn, and self-satisfied in the way that only a pretty, pampered girl can be. As a result she had never really examined anything about herself or her life, never questioned her place in the world or challenged the expectations placed on her. She had led her clique, become a cheerleader, dated Neal, all because everyone else seemed to expect it, and she’d had no reason to object. She’d had no reason to ask herself if those things were actually what she wanted or simply what other people wanted for her, figuring that it didn’t really matter, everything would work out in the end. Why wouldn’t it? She was Emma Swan, after all. Things always worked out for her.

All that had changed when she’d met Killian. For the first time in her life Emma had wanted something she couldn’t have, for the first time she had found herself truly empathising with another person, putting herself in his shoes, feeling the pain that he felt. She had made the decision to put his needs first, the hardest decision of her young life, and that had changed her. Killian had changed her. By not obediently falling into line, by making her work for his trust and friendship, by calling her out for what she was and making her see that there were things in this world that didn’t simply fall into her lap because she was Emma Swan, Killian had challenged her preconceptions, broadened her horizons and made her take a hard look herself and her life, for the very first time.

She wasn’t entirely sure she liked what she saw. It astonished her now to think, for instance, about how she’d allowed Neal to treat her, how she’d just accepted his microaggressions and petty digs like they were something normal and to be expected. She had buried her reservations, her distaste, her outright dislike of him, because of what other people had thought. Because the head cheerleader dated the quarterback, that was just how things were done, and the lack of chemistry, common interests, even basic compatibility between herself and Neal made no difference. She had come to realise, slowly and painfully, that many of things she’d thought she wanted, the things that had always come so easily to her, were perhaps not what she really wanted at all. That perhaps the things she really wanted would be harder to obtain. Like Killian. Like the future she was beginning to envision with him.

The one thing that Emma had always known was what she wanted to do with her life was to help people, to find something she could do that would make other people’s lives better. Like her father the law enforcer, like her mother the teacher. They were leaders and guides and she admired them, wanted to be like them. But she saw now through her newly opened eyes that if she wanted to make a real difference she couldn’t live the rest of her life in a small town surrounded by people who were basically just like her. Killian had made her see that there was a great wide world beyond Storybrooke, a world full of people whose lives and experiences she couldn’t even begin to fathom. If she wanted to help them she would need to understand them, and to understand them she would need to meet them, to see firsthand what they were dealing with.

Her parents expected her to follow the same path they had taken. And she intended to, if not quite in the way they anticipated.

“Forensic psychology,” she said firmly, ignoring her mother’s worried brow and her father’s stern concern. “That’s what I want to do. I want to help victims of crimes, help people who suffered trauma to get their lives back, like Dr Hopper did with Killian. I’ve been thinking about it for a long time but now I’m sure. That’s what I’m going to study.”

“But that’s… that’s years of school, isn’t it?” said Snow. “That’s advanced degrees.”

“You have a master’s degree, Mom!”

“Which I did online from home after working for several years! You’re talking about a PhD, that’s at least an eight year commitment before you can even get started! Do you really want to be away from Storybrooke for eight years?”

“Yeah,” said Emma, bracing herself. “About that.”

“About what?” asked Snow, in a voice that suggested she already knew.

“I don’t think I’ll be coming back to live in Storybrooke anytime soon.”

Snow closed her eyes and sighed. Somehow she’d known this was coming.

“If I want to really help people I have to live somewhere where people need help,” said Emma. “And no offense, Dad, but SB isn’t exactly a hotbed of violent crime.”

“Violent crime,” echoed Snow faintly. David remained silent, his arms crossed over his chest.

“Plus, Killian wants to be a linguist, and that’s not really an in-demand job here either.”

“Is Killian behind this decision, then?” asked Snow sharply.

“Well, he is, but probably not in the way you think. He’d be happy to live anywhere I wanted. If I wanted to stay here he would find something to do.”

“Well, then, I don’t see any reason—”

“But that’s not what I want, Mom! I don’t want to hold Killian back, I don’t want to hold myself back. And I don’t want to live forever in the small town I grew up in.”

“But— you never said before—”

“I never actually thought about it before. But now I have and I know what I want. I want to see how other people live, and I want to learn about other ways of thinking. I don’t just want to be complacent in my little box of other people’s expectations. I want to challenge myself and find out what I’m really made of.”

“Oh, Emma,” Snow sighed, recognising the stubborn set of her daughter’s jaw and realising that all her plans for Emma’s life were about to go up in smoke. “David, talk to her!”

David had sat silently throughout the discussion, and he considered his words carefully now before he spoke. “I’m proud of you, Emma,” he said finally.

“David!”

“You know that I will always support any decision you make,” David continued, placing a calming hand on Snow’s knee. “We’ve tried to raise you to make good ones, and I trust your judgement. But I admit I never expected you to make a decision like this, and I could not be more proud. You’ve chosen a path that will be hard, harder than many alternative paths you could have gone for. But I think it will be a rewarding, and more importantly a worthwhile one.”

“But David, everything we’ve worked to give her!” cried Snow.

“We worked to give her everything we could so that she would have the freedom to live her life as she wished to,” said David. “That’s what she intends to do. We have to respect her choices, Snow.”

Emma rose from where she had been curled up in an armchair and sat on her father’s lap, something she hadn’t done in years. Wrapping her arms around his neck, she squeezed him tightly and buried her face in his shoulder.

“Thank you, Daddy,” she whispered.

David squeezed her back. “I love you, Duckling,” he replied, turning his head to shoot his wife a significant look. “Snow?”

“Oh, you know I love you both,” said Snow, shifting on the sofa so she could embrace both husband and daughter. “I’d just hoped— But never mind, Emma, if this is your decision and you’re happy with it then I am happy for you.”

Emma and David each put an arm around her, and the three of them sat that way for a long time, thinking about the future.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

One sunny afternoon in early May Killian and Emma were walking from Granny’s to the school to pick up Emma’s car which they’d left in the school lot after fencing club, preferring to walk to Granny’s and back in the warm sunshine. They walked arm-in-arm, their custom now, their strides perfectly matched and the silence between them easy and comfortable. Killian loved their comfortable silences; although when necessary he could talk with the best of them, he was not a person who was naturally inclined to a lot of noise and chatter. He preferred quiet more often than not, and always needed some peace after spending time in a noisy environment, even one he enjoyed like a concert or open mic, or a rowdy family dinner of the sort he and Emma seemed to find themselves at every weekend these days. He loved that they could just be together, just enjoy each other’s company without needing to fill the silence with talk. Her presence calmed his often turbulent mind, made him feel grounded and happy, and even better, content. He didn’t think he’d ever known simple contentment before in all his life and he treasured it.

Yet that afternoon the silence would have to be broken.

“Swan,” he said.

“Hmmm?” Emma was clearly still caught up in whatever thoughts she’d been thinking before he spoke.

“What are you thinking about?” He was suddenly curious to know what had put that little smile on her face, and what he had to say could wait.

“Just thinking about this summer. School’s going to be over soon. Do you think you’ll get a job?”

“I have one already. I’m going to be helping Liam with some work at the docks, and also it seems I’ll be tutoring your cousin Henry in maths.”

“Yeah, he told me. Would you call that a real job, though?”

“It’s real pay, Swan. Quite a bit of it, actually, your aunt is very determined for him to succeed. And hark at you, daughter of a teacher, thinking tutoring’s not a real job! What would your mother say?”

“Ha ha. I just meant it can’t be many hours.”

“Three per week, which I suppose isn’t many as far as jobs go but is at least two and a half more than Henry would prefer.”

“He’s such a smart kid, but hopeless at math. He’ll keep you on your toes.”

“I’ll be prepared. I assume you’re asking me about this because you have a job of your own?”

“Yeah, I’m going to be working at the ice cream shop. They have extended summer hours and they get really busy. And my dad says I can shadow one of his deputies a couple of days a week. He says if I’m going to be working with law enforcers, even as a psychologist, I should know what they do from the ground up.”

“That sounds like a solid plan.”

“And it will leave plenty of time for us to do stuff together,” she said, pulling her arm from his so she could wrap it around his waist and lean her head on his shoulder. He draped his own arm around her waist, his hand casually on her hip, brushing a kiss over her hair as they continued to walk, their movements so in sync that their pace never faltered. Killian smiled to himself. As wonderful as the comfortable silence was, the casual intimacy might be even better. That he could touch her freely and she him was one of the great joys of his life.

“I very much look forward to hearing about these summer activities that I can tell you’re planning, love, but I have a more immediate concern that we need to discuss.”

“Oh? And what’s that?”

“You have to promise not to laugh.”

She was indignant. “Killian Jones, when have I ever laughed at you?”

“You laugh at me all the time!”

“I laugh with you, which is not the same. You can’t blame me for laughing when you’re trying to be funny!”

“All right, I suppose that’s fair. But this time—”

“I promise not to laugh, Killian.”

He nodded. “Good. Well. Okay.” He drew a deep breath. “God, I feel like a right git asking this, these are words that I never in all my life thought I’d need to say, but… well, um…”

“Spit it out, Jones, I’m losing my will to live here,” teased Emma, burying her grin in his shoulder. She was pretty sure she knew what was coming, and despite her promise was very tempted to laugh at him. After all his snarky comments about American high school clichés he was finally being forced to eat his words.

“Are you really going to make me say it, Swan?”

“I absolutely am, and also I have no idea what you’re talking about. Did you have something you wanted to ask me?”

He groaned, and she swallowed a giggle.

“Fine,” he grumbled, “though I think that if you really loved me you wouldn’t put me through this.”

“Love is pain, babe, isn’t that what Fergie sang?”

“Another right git, so the quote seems apt. Okay, look. Emma. Will you— oh, God, I absolutely cannot say it!”

“Yes you can, and you’d better or I’ll go with someone else! Surely you don’t think you’re the only one who’s asked me. Or hasn’t asked me, in your case.”

“Someone’s asked you to the prom behind my back?” he snarled, bristling in indignation. “Who? Tell me so I can flatten the bastard.”

“Asked me to the what now?” She blinked at him, eyes wide and innocent.

The look on his face was priceless. “Bloody hell, I walked right into that one, didn’t I?”

“For a smart guy you are so dumb sometimes. Just ask me, it’s not like you don’t know the answer.”

He shot her a smirk that was second cousin to a leer. “I would never consider you a foregone conclusion, my darling.”

“Just ask me, Killian!”

“Argh! Fine! Emma, will you go to the prom with me?”

“Yes, of course I will. I thought you’d never ask. Like, literally, never.”

Further notes: Yes, we will see them go to the ball prom. Naturally.

#cs au ff #high school au #teenage captain swan #daddy charming #David being a real dad is my new favourite thing #another brick in the wall #profdanglaisstuff

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nyangibun · 7 years

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GoT S07E06 Thoughts

So I don’t know if this is late or early considering technically the episode doesn’t air till Sunday, but whatever, here we go:

There was only one awesome thing about this episode, which was anything to do with the Night King and the Wight Dragon. Everything else was a complete departure from all we’ve come to learn about these characters, but that aside, let me try to understand it as best as I can.

We start the episode on Jon and the rest of the A Team trudging along and making fun of Gendry. I actually really liked all these scenes because the male bonding was done well, the dialogue was funny and the chemistry between these characters was believable. I mean I didn’t know I needed a Tormund x Sandor best friendship till that episode, especially when they begin talking about Brienne. Mr Tormund “I want to make babies with her” Giantsbane. It was brilliant, needless to say.

What’s not so brilliant but a great moment of foreshadowing was Tormund’s conversation with Jon. He essentially tells Jon that although Mance Rayder was a great man, his pride got a lot of people killed, echoing Jon’s own words to the man:

“"Isn't their survival more important than your pride?”

And of course Dani’s words to Jon in the Cave of Invisible Chemistry.

The problem I have with this is that it comes from Tormund, a wildling man whose pride is as much as a defining factor as his ginger beard. But whatever, I see what they’re trying to do here. They’re trying to justify what happens later because if Tormund can understand the dire need for Dani’s help over his own pride then Jon should too, and he does, of course, as we later find out.

Here’s the thing though. I am still firmly of the camp that it’s all a ruse, and this is the moment Jon realises he might have to bend to Dani’s will for her alliance. He doesn’t want to and he knows fully well that the Northern houses will not accept her as their queen in any capacity, but all he cares about is his people’s survival through the Long Night. He’s willing to lose his kingdom for their safety. And this thought becomes even more concrete in Jon’s mind the moment Dani arrives to save his dumb ass with her three dragons. The look of awe on his face as those dragons rain hellfire on the wights is indicative of this because up until that point, he’s had a very abstract understanding of what these dragons are capable of and how they can help him. Seeing it in person, seeing them turn a hopeless situation into a victory, Jon fully understands now that the only way to survive is for Dani to fight with them with her dragons.

It’s the only way this exchange makes any sense:

“How about my queen?”

“How about those who swore their allegiance to you”

“They’ll come to see you for what you are”

“I hope I deserve it”

“You do”

Now I’ve bolded that line because this is very foreboding. Although I believe Jon is playing Dani, I don’t believe he fully grasps who she is yet for himself. I think he truly does believe she has a ‘good heart’ to an extent, but going by what we’ve seen in the past five episodes, he is also extremely wary of her. He’s seen her temper tantrums, her questioning of Tyrion (her second biggest fanboy)’s loyalty over his family and how quickly she can go from Coolheaded Ruler to Firebreathing Tyrant. He might not know the extent, but he’s been warned plenty of times not to trust a Targaryen and to be much smarter than Robb and Ned. So although she says she’ll fight with him, he’s reaffirming his loyalty to her. He doesn’t need to do it, but he needs her to fully trust that his allegiance is to her, that he’s as taken by her as she’s obviously by him, because Jon is putting his pride and honour away in order to be a little more ruthless, a little more manipulative. It wouldn’t be the first time he’s used a woman’s attraction to him as a means to get what he wants. Yes, he did fall in love with Ygritte, but you can’t say that a lot of his devotion to her, in the beginning, was done so to prove that he’s just as much a part of the wildlings as anyone else.

For Jon to bend the knee to Dani because he actually believes in her good heart or because he ‘loves her’ would be a complete character assassination when he turned his back on his first love for the Night’s Watch. Duty, honour and loyalty are huge pillars of Jon’s personality. He’s put aside his honour to bend the knee to Dani, but I refuse to believe he would truly put aside his duty and loyalty to the North for ‘love’, especially when he knows that no Northern house will understand why he did it.

There is also a moment when Dani leaves the room that he looks up to the ceiling and sighs wearily. That’s not the sigh of a man because he was nearly killed. That’s the sigh of a man who knows the repercussions of what he just did but having no alternative than to do it, because like I said, there’s absolutely no way the North is going to accept what their king just did. His position is already so precarious. They didn’t agree with him going south and for him to not only do that but bend the knee as well? Without consultation with the Northern houses which they will consider a slight in and of itself? Well, Jon basically just lost himself his kingdom when it comes to light what he did. And this ties in nicely with Sansa’s S7 arc, which has basically been a montage of all the ways Sansa is a fit and just queen in comparison to our other two queens, who are so hell-bent on defeating each other, one burnt a bunch of food reserves and the other one is... well, Cersei.

Of course I believe Jon knows all of this. He knows he’s going to lose the North because of his actions, but Dani doesn’t, so it’s essentially an empty offer. And he knows he can do this because he has Sansa at home and he’s always had unwavering faith in her ability to rule. Jon is the Odysseus to her Penelope, and the trials and tribulations they’re both going through right now respectively only continue to highlight that for me.

Jon will be seduced by a Calypso and Sansa will have to outsmart her suitor.

And speaking of Sansa, let’s bring it back to Winterfell because that’s the other major plot point we need to talk about.

Arya and Sansa need to be locked in a room together to talk their shit out because this is getting ridiculous. Arya threatening Sansa’s life, blaming her for Ned’s death, essentially dismissing the trauma and abuse that Sansa had to endure for years because Arya can’t empathise with her own sister is the most uncharacteristic bullshit I’ve ever seen. The Arya we’re seeing right now is acting more like the waif than the Arya we know, and as someone who has loved and adored Arya for years, I’m justifiably angry about this.

Now there are two reasons why Arya is acting like this. One, D&D is making Arya the mouthpiece for all the Sansa haters that have been spouting their crap for years, blaming Sansa for every discrepancy while celebrating the same nonsense in other characters, only to have Arya (thus the haters) be proven wrong when it comes to light that Sansa is loyal to Jon and the North. If this is the case, I can understand what they’re trying to do, but at the expense of a beloved character? By pitting two sisters against each other? Just goes to show how little D&D actually understand about women and writing real female friendships. I mean they had Jon and Gendry basically declare themselves best friends in a manner of seconds but two women who have suffered unimaginable horrors and have been desperate to be home and safe with their family, aren’t allowed to care about each other. Bullshit.

The other reason is that Arya and Sansa are both playing Littlefinger, fully aware of what he’s trying to do. I want to believe this because it would explain why Sansa seeks Littlefinger out in the first place to talk to him as if she would willingly go to him for advice. After everything that’s happened, after knowing what she does about him and saying all those things about not trusting the man, her going to him for advice seems highly suspicious. Sansa is not that stupid. It would also explain why Arya would threaten to kill Sansa yet hand her the dagger right after.

It would also explain why Sansa sent Brienne away to King’s Landing when Cersei invites her. Of course, there was no way Sansa would go anyways, but the coldness as she orders Brienne to go right after Littlefinger tells her that Brienne would do anything to uphold her oath to protect the Stark sisters, even from each other. And considering Brienne swore a separate oath to Sansa specifically (not Arya), this suggests that if Arya were to try something, Brienne would be duty-bound to protect Sansa from harm. If Sansa and Arya were planning something, they wouldn’t be able to risk having Brienne interrupt. Either that or Sansa would rather die than let anything happen to her sister in spite of what Arya’s been like. I don’t believe Sansa would try to hurt Arya herself. It’s not who she is.

Now moving back to Dani, I found two very interesting things about her this episode. The first was her conversation with Tyrion. Aside from the extremely contrived high school musical type dialogue where Tyrion assures Dani that Jon is in love with her because he’s been staring at her longingly (which I have to say is where!!! I haven’t seen that at all), he also criticises her for burning both Randyll and Dickon. I find it extremely telling that any time he tries to put the blame of anything on her, she gets angry, deflects, accuses him, questions his loyalty and basically absolve herself of all crime.

“When have I lost my temper?”

“Burning the Tarly’s”

“That was not impulsive. That was necessary”

That wasn’t necessary. The burning wasn’t necessary. It was a cruel and sadistic punishment, which has been shown as such all throughout the show. Does anyone remember Jon putting out Mance when he’s burning in the pyre for this very reason? And burning both Randyll and Dickon was unnecessary. Only one of them had to die in order for Dani to make her point across, but she chose to kill both because Dickon dared to defy her. Not to mention her ‘burn or die’ wasn’t necessary if she wants to be a just ruler, which she clearly doesn’t anymore.

Again, Dani is showing her true colours more and more here. I mean do you know of anyone else who constantly insists they’re the rightful ruler and loathes being criticised? Oh yeah, Joffrey. And wasn’t he a peach?

Then you have Tyrion and Dani’s conversation about her succession in the case she dies. Not only does this foreshadow her death, which I believe is inevitable at this point, but it highlights just how short-term her thinking is. All Dani has ever cared about was sitting on the Iron Throne, not the actual ruling, because if she did, she would realise that everything she wants to do would be meaningless if there isn’t an heir to pass the legacy onto. Dani even gets angry at Tyrion for his ‘long-term thinking’ but what kind of ruler doesn’t look to the future when they make their decisions? A really poor kind. Like I’ve said, Dani is a conqueror and that’s it.

The second thing I found interesting was when she looked at Jon’s body as they peeled back his clothes and saw his wounds, confirming that he was literally not metaphorically stabbed in the heart. I said in my last review that Dani is in love with the idea of Jon rather than Jon himself. The awe in her eyes when she sees that confirms it to me. She sees Jon as her equal, as a mirror image of who she is, aka the prophesised hero, beloved by his people just like her. That’s what she finds most attractive about him. She is essentially Narcissus fallen in love with her own reflection. The kicker though is that Jon is as far from Dani as can be. He is her polar opposite as a ruler. And when it all comes to light that he’s a Targaryen, she’ll feel threatened and TargBowl will commence.

Stray thoughts:

- We’re going to have a Braime reunion and I’ve never felt so blessed!! It’s been 5000 years and I’m ready for Jaime to realise he’s in love with Brienne. Make it happen, D&D.

- Where is the Hound going?

- Where the fuck is Bran?

- Are we ever going to see Ghost?

- WIGHT DRAGON!!!!!!!

#jonsa #anti-jonerys #game of thrones #jon snow #sansa stark #anti-daenerys #anti-dany #arya stark #targbowl #got s7 #spoilers #game of thrones spoilers #got s7 thoughts #idk what im supposed to tag anymore #lol #i hate putting the read more on it :(#i prefer reading stuff on my dash #ugh #anti jonerys

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the-desolated-quill · 7 years

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The Girl Who Waited - Doctor Who blog

(SPOILER WARNING: The following is an in-depth critical analysis. If you haven’t seen this episode yet, you may want to before reading this review)

Tom MacRae is back for the first time since his Cyberman two parter back in the David Tennant era. That story was pretty decent overall. Much preferred Age Of Steel over Rise Of The Cybermen, but as a whole it’s pretty good as Cyberman stories go. Truth be told I wasn’t expecting much from The Girl Who Waited. I guessed it would be fairly decent, but nothing special.

Boy was I wrong.

MacRae, I didn’t know you had it in you. I LOVE this episode! It’s such a simple and inventive idea as well as a wonderfully constructed, character driven story. I’m in awe.

The Doctor, Amy and Rory arrive on Apalapucia, the second best holiday destination in the universe according to the Doctor. Upon arrival they discover the entire planet is under quarantine due to a plague that kills the two hearted citizens of Apalapucia in one day. As a result, ‘kindness centres’ have been created where the infected citizens are placed in separate time streams, allowing them to live out their lives whilst in communication with their loved ones through giant magnifying glasses. Already I’m hooked. It’s a great setting. I love the minimalist set design and the whole time stream idea. The Handbots are really creepy too. They’re not evil alien invaders. They’re just robots that want to help, but don’t understand that Amy and Rory are aliens and could be harmed by their medicine. Their inability to reason and their insistence that what they’re doing is ‘a kindness’ makes them pretty disconcerting to watch. It’s also a great excuse to keep the Doctor out of the action since he’s vulnerable to the plague because he has two hearts.

So Amy gets trapped in a separate time stream because she presses the wrong button (bit of a contrivance I admit. Why didn’t Rory tell her which button to push when she asked?), and the Doctor and Rory are unable to follow her in because of the quarantine. So they use the TARDIS to break into her time stream, only to discover that they’ve arrived over 30 years too late and Amy is now a fifty something year old woman.

Oops.

Tom MacRae essentially takes the ‘Girl Who Waited’ moniker that Moffat has slapped on Amy to its very extreme. Exploring what would happen if the Doctor made Amy wait for such a long time that no amount of fish fingers and custard can possibly justify it.

Now I’ve mentioned numerous times how much I dislike Amy, citing her severe lack of proper characterisation as well as her often obnoxious attitude. That’s not to say I don’t like Karen Gillan. Quite the opposite in fact. When you actually give her some good material to work with, Gillan is phenomenally good, and The Girl Who Waited proves that without a shadow of a doubt. Okay I admit she’s not 100% convincing as a middle aged woman, but it almost doesn’t matter because of the emotional weight and gravitas to her performance. Not only is this a great showcase for Gillan’s acting ability, it’s also the first time I’ve ever come close to actually empathising with Amy and began seeing her as an actual character as opposed to a Moffat plot device.

Years of isolation and fighting for survival has left Amy feeling bitter and cold. Not only does she resent the Doctor because of his tardiness, but also resents his willingness to play God with her life. He wants to save past Amy, but doing so would mean erasing older Amy from existence. On the surface that seems like a good idea, but older Amy makes a good point that it’s not fair to erase 30 years of her life and pretend it never happened, questioning whether it’s for her benefit or the Doctor’s.

As I said, Gillan is phenomenal in this episode, constructing a character that’s very uptight and full of bile, but is still recognisably Amy. I particularly loved the way she spat out the words ‘Raggedy Man’ at the Doctor with such venom. One of my favourite scenes is where she has a conversation with her past self and is convinced to let the Doctor help her for the sake of Rory. This episode really explores the relationship between Amy and Rory and how much they mean to each other. I especially liked the memory the two Amys use to bridge the two time streams together. If it was Moffat writing this, he’d probably go with the fish fingers and custard shit again, but MacRae chooses the Macarena, the song that was playing when Amy and Rory had their first kiss. It’s little details like this that help to really humanise Amy and gives her relationship with Rory more depth and credibility than it did before.

While Karen Gillan is the undisputed star of this episode, Arthur Darvill also deserves a ton of credit for his performance as Rory. He clearly cares for Amy, but not in that faux action hero way Moffat was trying to shove down our throats in A Good Man Goes To War, which just came across as hollow and unconvincing. Here it’s much more believable because Rory is talking like how an actual person would talk. He regrets losing the chance to grow old with Amy and expresses profound guilt at making Amy wait. He clearly loves Amy very much and it comes across in Darvill’s performance, particularly in his emotional rant about the Doctor’s irresponsibility at not checking Apalapucia’s history before arriving.

Eventually older Amy agrees to help the Doctor, on the condition that they take both past and older Amys with them. I think we all knew that was never going to happen and MacRae doesn’t try to suggest otherwise. The minute past Amy shows up, the flaws in older Amy’s plan immediately become apparent. Which Amy does Rory consider to be his Amy? And how are two Amys supposed to coexist? This is where elements of ageism start to creep in. Rory gravitates more toward younger Amy because he’s more familiar with her, and this doesn’t go unnoticed by older Amy. So yeah, I suspected that older Amy was due for the chop at some point toward the end. What I didn’t suspect was how they were going to remove older Amy from the picture. Young Amy gets knocked unconscious by a Handbot, Rory gallantly carries her into the TARDIS, older Amy rushes to join them... and the Doctor slams the door in her face.

I love episodes that cast the Doctor in an unsavoury light. While he is a good person who cares deeply for the lives of others, he’s not a saint or a superhero. That’s what makes him so interesting and why he’s endured as a character for so long. While he’ll always try to find a peaceful solution to problems, he’s not above getting his hands dirty. The Girl Who Waited shows the Doctor at his most insidious. Blatantly lying to Rory and older Amy and manipulating them to achieve his own goals. He’s vowed not only to save Amy, but also to fix everything. To put everything back the way it was by any means necessary. And that’s exactly what he does. He has good intentions, but his actions are shocking to the point where it borders on cruel, even going so far as to convince Rory and himself that older Amy isn’t real. On a second viewing, the extent of the Doctor’s manipulation becomes very apparent and it’s really a testament to Matt Smith’s performance that he’s able to trick the audience into believing his sincerity. He really tones down his trademark goofiness in favour of a more subtle, multi-layered performance that makes you realise just how cold and calculating the Doctor really is at his core. We’ve seen him manipulate his enemies many times, but the ease with which he’s able to manipulate his own friends without even so much as a guilty twinge is chilling to say the least.

I do however have one problem with how this is resolved, but I’m actually going to save that for the next episode because that’s when it really becomes apparent.

In my opinion, The Girl Who Waited is up there with The Doctor’s Wife as strong contender for best episode of Series 6. It’s an emotional character piece that provides some much needed nuance for Amy as well as providing a very frightening insight into just how far the Doctor is prepared to go for the so called greater good. A truly impressive effort from Tom MacRae.

#the girl who waited #tom macrae #doctor who #eleventh doctor #matt smith #amy pond #karen gillan #rory williams #arthur darvill #steven moffat #bbc #review #spoilers

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letterstomydaughter · 7 years

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When you are bullied

Dear Daughter,

This was bound to happen, and I don’t expect it not to. There is, quite frankly, only one foolproof way to avoid being bullied, and that is to be the biggest bully there ever was - and I don’t wish for you to be that.

There are, however, ways to deal with it positively, and to not be too negatively affected by bullying. Despite my demeanour, your father has been bullied for a large bulk of his childhood, and even somewhat into his adult life. You’ve probably heard about all the talk of bullies being insecure and therefore needing to bully others, and how you should just ignore them and walk away, and don’t let them get to you, don’t react because that’s what they want to see. I’m not going to say any of those; in fact, those are sometimes grossly erroneous and based on outdated stereotypes; the world today consists of much darker people, some of them who just want to watch the world burn, and who feel like being evil just because. What’s more, the traditional advice to ignore them puts the onus on you to ignore them, while in the process they get away with their behaviour, and you are left feeling responsible for it.

But here’s what I have to say:

The fact that you’re being bullied means that there’s something that sets you apart from them; you’re different, relative to the bullies. This does not mean that you should change, or that there is something wrong with you; it does mean that they cannot accept it. You can do two things with this: you can learn what makes you different and use it as a strength, or you can learn what you are lacking and work at it. Or both. This way, you always grow. It is pointless trying to change their perspective or point of view directly; they already have their minds set on it, which is why they act on it to be bullies. But by growing and expanding your strengths, you might make them stop. A kind friend and mentor once impressed upon that by being absolutely vulnerable, there is nothing left to attack; and while i never quite fully understood why and how to act upon it, I do see some light in that statement.

That being said, there isn’t always a reason you’re the target: I’ll say it again - it is not your fault (although some bullies actually make you feel like you deserve it). Some people bully because they like exerting power, some because they are insecure, some because they want to lord over others, and some do it just because. There is a class of people that just want to see the world burn, and human beings aren’t always rational; so don’t blame yourself for being targeted by bullies. It is not your fault.

There are some bullies that are very skilled; and extremely proficient at manipulation. They will make you think that there is something you should be doing, some reason that you should give in to them, that you should allow yourself to be bullied by them. You have to be wary about two things from these people: firstly, that these thoughts of yourself being deserving of being bullied are not from you. They have been implanted, incepted into your mind, so that the bullies have an easier time and less resistance. They will use fallacious arguments that are indefensible and can neither be proven or retorted, leaving you at a loss for words; you need to recognise these for what they are, but not necessarily retaliate. Sometimes it is not helpful to fight a battle; especially when it is not on your own terms.

The second is controversial, but applies to all bullies - just because it is wrong, it doesn’t mean you have to stop them. This is different from seeing someone else doing something else wrong, or wronging someone else, and wanting to do something about it; this is different because it is done to you. But sometimes the best way to deal with bullies is to just let them think they have done it. This can be combined with my first point, that there can be something to learn from it; even if it is just learning how they have become so good at manipulating people, or learning how to see through it. This will come in handy in particular when you start working, or when your social circle expands. But you will also learn that sometimes there is a benefit to simply staying quiet, and enduring it. In all honesty, I’m hesitant to believe with absolute certainty that God will avenge you, but that’s only because I struggle with my own faith enough, and have seen enough bullies get away; then again, perhaps in the bigger scheme of things, they won’t be getting away in eternity, and that has yet to be seen - so in the interests of being a transparent parent (pun intended - I should think I’m allowed to make Dad jokes now) all I can say is something like that remains to be seen for 100% certainty. There are some things that we’ll never fully understand, other people and God being two of them, simply because we aren’t them and we are essentially finite.

The third goes even more controversial - that sometimes it may be useful to have the bully on your side. Not that you should endeavour to have him or her bully other people for you, but sometimes a little muscle in your camp could be useful. It doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s going to be unethical use, and as you grow older (or maybe you already realise this now) you’ll find that your social network, your connections, the people you know, and so on, are going to be one of the biggest pitfalls or assets that you may have.

Your father hates bullies, and I will stop at nothing to protect you from them; but even so, I have to recognise that perhaps some exposure to such people may strengthen you in ways that protecting you and training you cannot. I also have to realise that, if my experience is anything to draw from, you will face bullies well into your adulthood; some people never grow out of their behaviour, whatever their need or reason may be for it, and sometimes it just gets worse the older the bully gets. We adults have had much more time to plan, internalise, and construct devious means of getting back at people that we didn’t know how to do at a younger age, and by that time, I am not sure if I will still be around to guide you through that, or to comfort you. You may have to rely on higher authorities to help you deal with the given situation, but even then, not all of them will come through for you – some of them will have their hands tied, some will have a high price to pay in dealing with the bully/bullies that they cannot afford to make, and some simply won’t care, and you will have to endure it.

It won’t be easy. Ignoring bad behaviour, particularly when it is directed against you, is never easy. It is even worse that justice (or the lack thereof) does not rise up to defend you. There may be no one to stand on your side in that situation, no heroes or good people to rescue you, and no way for you to save yourself. At the same time, recognise what you can control and what you can’t; you can’t control another person – but you can prevent yourself from being that person. You can empathise with others who are bullied, and when appropriate, stand up for them, or at least comfort them. You can be a change in this world, and that is a theme that will echo through each and every one of the letters I write to you – I do not hope you change the entire world in your lifetime, I do not think it possible, or likely. I do think you can change a small number of lives around you, be a positive light for those, and that will be enough. That is how the world will change anyway – one life at a time.

You have been and always will be loved in this family. Remember that. No matter how worthless you feel or how disappointed you are at your own (or others’) ability to defend you from the bullies out there, your self-worth has never been dependent on how others treat you or tell you what you are. You. Are. Loved. And nothing can change that.

Love, Dad

#dear daughter #bully #bullies #being bullied #you are loved

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leftpress · 8 years

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Steve Cohen’s ‘That’s Funny, You Don’t Look Anti-Semitic’

charliethechulo | Shiraz Socialist | March 7th 2017

Steve Cohen (ZT”L) died on 8th March 2009. He had been a member of the Jewish Socialists Group, the International Marxist Group, and a leading campaigner for migrants rights. An outspoken supporter of Palestinian rights, he was nevertheless concerned about the prevalence of anti-Semitism on parts of the left and pro-Palestinian movement. Steve was a prolific writer (we tried to rope him into Shiraz towards the end of his life), but by far his most important piece was That’s Funny, You Don’t Look Anti-Semitic, which can be read in full on the website devoted to Steve and his great pamphlet, which we reproduce here in memory of a fine comrade:

An anti-racist analysis of left anti-semitism by Steve Cohen (ZT”L), edited ...

by Libby Lawson and Erica Bunnan:

There Must Be Some Way Out of Here

In 1984 I wrote a booklet against anti-Semitism. For this I was denounced as a Zionist.

In 2005 I wrote a pastiche poem criticising Zionism. For this I was denounced as an anti-Semite by some people on the Engage website. What is happening here?

It seems to me that one of the things that is happening is that whatever the fundamental political distinction between anti Semitism and anti Zionism (a distinction I see as absolute) yet on an emotional and existential level the two have become hopelessly intertwined—and this itself is political. Something else which is happening is the confirmation as far as I’m concerned of a political analysis of anti-Semitism which in my naivety, strikes me as obvious but which I’ve never seen articulated anywhere else. This is that the Jewish Chronicle and Socialist Worker are both correct. And incorrect. Zionism is anti racist. And Zionism is racist. I cannot see how Zionism in its triumphant form (the Israeli state) is anything except essentially racist. It was founded on the dispossession of the Palestinians. And it continues on the super exploitation and humiliation of the Palestinians as the “other”. To deny this strikes me as fundamentally immoral. I also happen to think that two states, one of which by definition has to be exclusively Jewish is similarly immoral. I think majoritarianism (the legitimisation of an entity through numbers) is immoral wherever it presents itself—it leads at the very least to forced population movement and at its most extreme to ethnic cleansing and all that implies. I’ll leave open to discussion and personal judgement the point on this continuum that Israel may already guilty and at which a divided state would become guilty.

On the other hand it seems to me equally undeniable that Zionism in its inception was anti-racist. It was a reaction against, a way of dealing with, European anti-Semitism. Maybe as a revolutionary socialist writing in Prestwich in 2005 it would not be my way. However as a Jew of whatever political persuasion in Europe after the coming to power of Hitler in 1933 or the defeat of the revolution in Spain in 1939 I may well have had a different position. And if fascism ever took over here and Jews were barred entry elsewhere then I guess I might take a different position. I empathise with the “bolt hole” theory of Zionism. I appreciate the significance of the remarks by Isaac Deutscher, the Polish Marxist ex-rabbi, who wrote in later life “In this controversy (between socialism and Zionism) Zionism has scored a horrible victory, one of which it could neither wish nor expect; six million Jews had to perish in Hitler’s gas chambers in order that Israel should come to life … If instead of arguing against Zionism in the 1920s and 1930s I had urged European Jewry to go to Palestine, I might have saved some of the lives that were later extinguished in Hitler’s gas chambers” (Israel’s Spiritual Climate). I take it as axiomatic that any revolutionary of that pre-war period would have fought for the absolute right of Jews to enter Palestine. To have argued otherwise, to have argued for immigration controls, would have meant support for the British Mandate whose army tried to prevent entry. However the tenets of revolutionary socialism (tenets to which I still hold even in these days of Blair, Bush, Sharon and … Bin Laden) would demand that entry into the then Palestine would/should have lead to an attempt to forge an alliance between Jewish workers and Palestinian workers and peasants against the Zionist leadership, the absentee Palestinian landlords and the British soldiery. Of course the task would have been enormous. But the failure of that historic task has lead to what we have today—Israel the perpetual blood bath.

It is because Zionism is both racist and anti-racist that I call myself an anti-Zionist Zionist. It is also because Zionism is racist and anti racist that there is an even more urgent need to rigorously distinguish anti-Zionism from anti-Semitism. This itself requires a rigorous definition of both—otherwise how is it rationally possible to ever distinguish the two? I do not think there is ever the question of anti-Zionism discourse “becoming” or “sliding into” anti-Semitism. If a position is anti-semitic then it is anti-semitic in its origins—it does not become so. It is nothing whatsoever to do with Zionism. So, fascistic critiques of Israel are not about Zionism. They are about Jews. And this is the point. Anti-Zionism is about solidarity with the Palestinians. Anti-Semitism is about the Jewish conspiracy. Not all critiques of Israel are based on Jewish conspiracy theories. And anti-Semitism is not going to help progress the Palestinian cause. Just as August Bebel famously described the equation of capital with Jew as the socialism of fools then the equation of Zionism with world domination with Jew is the anti-zionism of fools.

It often feels like the wisdom of Solomon is required to know how to deal politically with this grotesque foolishness. One issue is the actual (the “cleansing” of Jews from Jerusalem in 1948, the suicide bombings of today) or threatened (“drive them into the sea”) repression of Israeli Jews which fuels a fortress mentality and to which sections of the left retain an ambivalent or agnostic attitude. Another issue that should be a matter of concern is that anti-semitism masquerading as anti-Zionism drives away those who would otherwise want to give solidarity to the Palestinian cause. For myself, this is what I found unfortunate in the debate over the boycott of some or all Israeli universities. Whatever the motive of those proposing the boycott (and like Engage I’m opposed to exceptionalising Israel) there is still an imperative need to offer real, material, political support to the Palestinians. I think for myself the best way of dealing with any particular proposed boycott is to come to a decision on whether the boycott would help the Palestinians irrespective of its proposers—and organise independently against anti-Semitism. Which perhaps meaning building a movement that simultaneously is dedicated to Palestinian solidarity and opposition to anti-Semitism.

It is apparent from what I’ve said that I also disagree with what I take to be the dominant position within Engage—namely that in our contemporary world anti-Zionism must inevitably equate with anti-Semitism. Paradoxically I also disagree with Engage’s position that in the modern world the form that anti-Semitism takes is through (foolish) anti-Zionism. I think it is worse than that. Obviously this is one form that is taken by the theory of the world Jewish conspiracy. However it seems to me that this is merely concealing more classic forms—Jew as all-powerful (the “Zionist lobby” running the USA), Jew as financial manipulator (the world being supposedly run by trans-national corporations and not imperialist states), Jew as murderer (take your pick—the blitzing of Iraq comes in there somewhere through its constant equation with the repression of the Palestinians). Jew as the subject of the blood libel (ditto but add the surreal accusation that Jews are responsible for September 11th), Jew as the killer of the first born (double ditto), Jew as poisoner of the wells (the anti-urbanisation of much Green politics—with Jews being the urban people par excellence). These images, these world-views, are powerful enough to split off from any anti-zionist base. And they have begun to split off within sections of the anti-globalisation, anti-capitalist movement. It is here that the anti-Zionism of fools emerges with a vengeance but is still subservient to the classic socialism of fools and also to the pre-capitalist feudalism of fools—the real McCoy of jew hatred. This is because anti-capitalism is shared by socialists who aspire to post-capitalist formations and right-wing organisations who hark back to an earlier pre-capitalist age—which is one of many reasons why genuine socialists have to be vigilant against any equation of capital with Jew.

Anti-Semitism on the left has for too long been a taboo subject—probably since the inception of the socialist project itself. I know because in 1984 I was that taboo! I became for a short period a political pariah in sections of the socialist/communist movement (my movement) for daring to raise the subject. Actually when I began writing my book I had no intention of writing anything on anti-Semitism, left or right. I wanted to write and condemn the (latest) Israeli onslaught on Lebanon. I used the left press as source material—and became horrified by what I was reading. And what I was reading was gross stereotyping of the Jew via the stereotyping of Israel as the most powerful force in the universe. All this was redolent of all the old-time European, Christian imagery—just stopping short it seemed of accusations of desecrating the wafer. So I did some research and quickly realised that this left anti-Semitism did not spring from nowhere but unfortunately had a long and dishonourable tradition—going back at least to the successful agitation for immigration controls against Jewish refugees and the 1905 Aliens Act. As it so happened, I was at that time thinking of writing another book just on this agitation—but Pluto Press told me that “Jews don’t sell”. To which I replied that I thought this was what we’ve always been accused of doing too much of. To show Pluto they were not being true Marxists I quoted Marx’s own piece of self-hatred from his On The Jewish Question: “What is the secular cult of the Jew? Haggling”. And then bizarrely I started to come across references and allusions (illusions) in parts of the left press to the wealth and power of Jews, of Jewry, all in the service of Israel—or maybe Israel was in the service of Jews and Jewry. Who knows? It was all rubbish anyway—but extremely dangerous rubbish.

And without managing (with the support of some comrades in the Jewish Socialist Group—the JSG) to keep fixed in my head the absolute distinction between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism, I guess I could have gone schizophrenic. There were two great successive nights when I was evicted from a mosque then a shul. I’m always sorry I never made the hat-trick of our common enemy—a church. The mosque incident involved picketing (along with some Asian youth) some local anti-Jewish ayatollah. The shul incident was wonderful. It was in Liverpool. I went with other members of the JSG to picket a meeting that was being held in support of the invasion (a shul supporting a military invasion? This really was Old Testament stuff). What we didn’t know was that the guest speaker was some Israeli General—we should have recognised him by his ripped jeans and tee shirt. As we were being lifted horizontally, face downwards, out of the shul by the stewards I looked down on a face looking up at me. The face looking up said “Weren’t we at Oxford together?”. To which I replied “I think so—were you at Trinity?” That to me is a classic example of tribalism. Mea culpa. I always regret not screaming out “Let my people go!”.

That’s Funny You Don’t Look Anti-Semitic did create ripples. It managed to split the JSG whose then dominant leadership thought it might offend the Socialist Workers Party. It resulted in some pretty dreadful correspondence over many weeks in journals like Searchlight and Peace News. A pamphlet was written denouncing me as a “criminal”. There was a particular review—in Searchlight—one sentence of which I will never forget. Every Jew on the left will know that terrible syndrome whereby, whatever the context and wherever one is, we will be tested by being given the question “what is your position on Zionism?” Wanna support the miners—what’s your position on Zionism? Against the bomb—what’s your position on Zionism? And want to join our march against the eradication of Baghdad, in particular the eradication of Baghdad—what’s your position on Zionism? And we all know what answer is expected in order to pass the test. It is a very strong form of anti-Semitism based on assumptions of collective responsibility. Denounce Zionism, crawl in the gutter, wear a yellow star and we’ll let you in the club. Which is one reason why I call myself an Anti-Zionist Zionist—at least that should confuse the bastards. Anyhow this particular review, noting that my book actually did attack Zionism, said “It is not enough to trot out platitudes, as he does, about being against Zionism and in support of the Palestinian struggle”. So I’m not allowed into the club even though I fulfil the entry requirements. I’m not allowed in because I recognise and oppose the existence of anti-Semitism on the Left—and this therefore renders all support for Palestinians a “platitude”. Well it ain’t me who’s here confusing anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism.

An accusation greeting the publication of That’s Funny was that even if anti-Semitism existed, it was trivial compared to other forms of oppression—not least that being inflicted on the Palestinians. I find this argument abhorrent. The struggle for communism is not about establishing some equitable scale of oppression and exploitation. It is about smashing all such oppression and exploitation. Switch to Germany 1925—”Comrades why are you harping on about anti-Semitism? It’s trivial. If it ever became significant we will deal with it. Honest”.

But there were positives back in 1984. There were allies out there—for instance the then Manchester and Liverpool branches of the JSG. I discovered that a similar political battle was going on within the feminist magazine Spare Rib and a kind of informal alliance was formed here. I remember that a large debate was organised in the Peace Studies department at Bradford University—where I shared some dope with a member of the PLO. It was Lebanese! And then the three of us who had published the book (we called ourselves The Beyond The Pale Collective) organised a biggish conference in Manchester. And Pluto Press was wrong—we sold a lot of books. We sold enough books to publish another one—on Holocaust Denial by Gill Seidel. This had been accepted by Pluto but then pulped after it had been typeset! I guess this was part of their reality denial.

As far as I’m concerned I’m still prepared to stand behind most of what I wrote those two decades ago. However there is one issue where my position has somewhat changed. And there is a second where I think I missed the plot entirely. First I think the book was, in its critique of assimilation, far too uncritical of the concept of “Jewish culture”. In fact I think it was implicitly far too generous towards Bundism in this respect (though I still support the Bundist championing of political self-organisation). I no longer see Jewish (or any) culture as monolithic. It is fractured and determined by issues of class. I have been in too many situations where the need to fight racism (racist attacks, immigration controls, fascist mobilisations) has been counter-posed by some suggestion about having an “ethnic” evening with “ethnic” clothes and “ethnic” food. It’s got to the stage where, to paraphrase Goebbels, whenever I hear the word multiculture I want to reach for my gun. In particular I am now ruthlessly opposed to denominational schools—be they Jewish, Muslim, Catholic or Church of England. Some of this has been informed by the racist admission practices of the Jewish School in Manchester (no Jewish mother no entry). However the substantive point is that as a militant atheist I am opposed to the state subsidising the garbage of religion—any religion. And anyhow, I’m for the unity of people of all ages not their division. At the same time I’m equally opposed to the (political) drive towards assimilation—I don’t see incorporation into the norms of imperialism as a step forward for humanity. The latest example of this drive towards incorporation is the suggestion by the Home Office Minister, Hazel Blears, following the London underground bombings that ‘minorities should be described as, for example “Asian-British” rather than simply as “Asian”‘. (Times 8 August 2005). The idea of the labelling and re-labelling of human beings as a method of protecting the citizenry of London is as ludicrous as all other justifications used for restricting the free movement of the same human beings. In the past slaves were branded—literally and with fire. Under the modern market economy it is people. This commoditisation of the alien reduces her or him to a piece of capital, to a new form of enslavement – the enslavement of a forced identity within a hostile society ever ready to deport and expel.

Second I come to missing the plot. This is not about what I wrote. It is about what I did not write. In fact it was what I explicitly refrained from writing. So I said “The book says nothing about socialist or liberation movements in the third world, deliberately so, because countries in the third world have not historically been within the grip of Christianity, and thus have no tradition of conspiracy theories. For example within Islam both Jew and Christian were seen as infidels—and certainly there was no constant mythology of universal Jewish domination. If notions about Jewish power entered the third world, then that is a product of imperialistic and Christian penetration”.

Looking back on this from today’s realities it clearly is inadequate. For instance I cannot see any basis for conspiracy theories (i.e. classic anti-Semitism) within Islam historically, however badly Jews (usually alongside Christians) were sometimes mistreated. I guess for this we have to be thankful we never bumped off Mohammed as well as Jesus. However it would be a matter of interesting political investigation to see precisely how conspiracy theories have subsequently entered the Muslim world—to see how they have become the Islam of fools. Moreover whatever the significance today of Left anti-Semitism, its influence and social weight is insignificant compared to that within Muslim communities (an anti-Semitism which is possibly matched by racism within the Jewish community). So the Elders of the Protocols of Zion is a best seller in Arabic speaking countries. So I’ve read how Islamicists blame “world Jewry” for both the New York and London underground bombings. And this junk needs to be challenged. And it needs to be challenged by the Left—and it isn’t. In fact it is encouraged—if only obliquely.

It is encouraged by Israeli exceptionalism—by the constant depiction and caricaturing of Israel as somehow being the pre-eminent world imperialist power. Inasmuch as I might be for some boycott of Israeli universities then I’m equally in support of a boycott of British universities because of their collusion in the institutionalised apartheid of immigration controls—that is either collusion by their silence or by their active co-operation with the Home Office in developing controls (which appears to be the case with University College London). It is encouraged by the emergence on demonstrations against the American invasion of Iraq, of the denunciation of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank—as though there was some intrinsic connection between the two which is not shared with other imperialist interventions. It is encouraged by the sycophantic, uncritical relationship that the SWP/Respect has towards the Muslim leadership as organised, for instance, around the mosques—these Muslim machers are as right-wing and often as anti-Semitic as their Jewish macher counterparts organised around the shuls are anti-Islam. In the beginning was the Board of Deputies? Today there is the Muslim Association of Britain. Macherism, the political reliance on a self-appointed leadership (the macherites) is a political disease which needs to be challenged and destroyed—instead sections of the Left are cultivating it at its most dangerous points.

Is there any way out of this mess? Particularly is there any way out of this mess for socialists in this country trapped politically between the existential linkage of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism? Is there a wisdom of Solomon? In all humility I think so. Of course we can all have our own politics on the way forward as regards Israel/Palestine. My own vision is of a federated secular and socialist middle east. This maybe is utopic but so is socialism. So is the revolution. So is all meaningful change. However there is going to be no way forward without a recognition of the fundamental block towards any change whatsoever—namely the world wide antagonism between Jews and Muslims. The international nature of this cleavage is central. Only joint and grassroots solidarity between the players in the game can possibly open up any dialogue. In Israel/Palestine this means between the Jewish and Palestinian masses. For instance let there be a march of a hundred thousand Israeli peaceniks into the occupied territories—and let them stay until the Israeli army and the settlers march out (or co-operate with the Palestinians in the sharing of resources—including the opening up of the new townships to Palestinians). Let Engage encourage this with its co-thinkers in Israel!

In this country it means joint activity between Jews and Muslims (and socialists) with the Jewish and Muslim communities. And what this boils down to is joint activity against fascism and racism. I suggested above the necessity to start to develop a movement simultaneously based on struggle for Palestinian rights and against anti-Semitism. This is presently an abstraction. However another real movement does exist against racism which can draw the two communities together in struggle. This is the disparate movement against immigration controls—for whom the Jews were the first and Muslims the latest victims. Of course controls need to be challenged in their own right—not just as a device for unity. However the challenge can also forge a unity which presently seems a million miles away. What is more the history of the last thirty years of struggle by migrants, immigrants and refugees against controls shows something that SWP/Respect have utterly missed. This is that real, meaningful, progressive political activity within the Muslim community (and all third world communities) comes from the grassroots either by by-passing or defeating the community machers. Let Engage become involved in these struggles both because of their intrinsic political importance and as part of its commitment to challenging left anti-Semitism by building meaningful alliances!

It could begin by supporting the campaign of Samina Altaf and her two children to fight deportation. Samina’s is just one of countless stories—though I guess more immediately poignant. Having fled Pakistan to avoid repeated domestic abuse she was refused asylum here. Like all asylum seekers she is outside of the welfare state and has been forcibly dispersed into Salford by the so-called National Asylum Support Service (NASS—a wing of the Home Office). And now as a failed asylum seeker who is refusing to return “voluntarily” to the country from she fled she is being threatened by NASS with eviction onto the streets. And I forgot to mention this—Samina is disabled with rickets. And her children are crippled with rickets. Get involved with the campaign! Write a letter of support to her constituency MP—Hazel Blears that well known re-labeller of third world identity and warrior against international terrorism (address House of Commons, Westminster, London SW1). Blears happens to be a Home Office MP—so terrorise her with letters of support. And invite a speaker from the campaign to one of your meetings—whilst sending money to the campaign (address Samina Altaf Defence Campaign, c/o Bury Law Centre, 8 Banks St, Bury BL9 ODL).

Finally I think that not one iota of the above can ever be resolved through communalism, through tribalism, through uncritically supporting Jews as Jews or Muslims as Muslims. My religion right or wrong! And all due to an accident of birth. I guess I recoil when I read on the Engage website the reflection on being Jewish—”frankly I can’t get enough of it”. Jewish identity as an addiction is not much of an advert for clarity of political thought. I was shocked by a news report I read a few years ago. It is a story that deserves creative fictionalisation. It concerned a guy who was raised in a highly Zionist family (I guess High Zionism is the Jewish version of High Church). He was raised as a conscious racist towards the Palestinians. Dirty Arabs! Until he discovered he was one of them—He was an adopted son. His biological parents were, I think, Libyan. Overnight (or maybe it took a little longer) he became a vehement anti-Zionist—and Jew hater. Dirty Jews! I was struck by two very powerful televisual images during the recent eviction of the Gaza settlers by the (Orwellian entitled) Israeli Defence Force. One was that of Israeli soldiers crying. The Israeli army in tears? One of the most powerful militaries in the world! Why no tears when the Palestinians were evicted? The second image was just bizarre in its tribalism. This was that of the settlers being evicted and the soldiers evicting them temporarily desisting from their civil war and praying together on shabbos—with the evictions resuming as soon as shabbos ended. Compared to this crazy chauvinism the legendary Christmas Day football match in the trenches of World War One between German and British soldiers was a genuine act of internationalism. However there can be no genuine internationalism, no genuine international solidarity, no meaningful working together of ordinary people wherever tribalism or communalism dominates. And at the moment it is precisely these reactionary formations that dominate both Muslim and Jewish communities—and the tragedy is they are hardening. It would be good if Engage put its energy into helping soften them.

Steve Cohen 2005

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That’s Funny, You Don’t Look Anti-Semitic

Obituary for Steve Cohen (ZT”L)

There Must Be Some Way Out of Here

Why is this book different from all other books ?

Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1: The Socialism of Fools

The Socialism of Fools

Anti-Semitism

Anti-Semitism without Jews

Left Anti-Semitism

Socialism, Anti-Semitism, Thatcherism and Fascism

Chapter 2: The Anti-Semitism of English Socialism”s Formative Years

The Background

Immigration Controls

English and Jewish Opposition to Controls

Rich Jew, Poor Jew: The Conspiracy Theory in Practice

Anti-Alienism or Anti-Semitism

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