FHJY thoughts under the cut bc I gotta sort my brain and can't be succinct to save my life
I think there's something interesting in acknowledge like
of COURSE Kipperlily underestimated the bad kids.
She's hated these kids from day 1. I know a lot of people want to acknowledge that it's not unreasonable for Kipperlily and the rat grinders to think the school is run unfairly (and you're right! it's a fair conclusion)
-- but we also gotta consider that this is something that took root in her VERY EARLY. Before the bad kids got really very good. Two bad kids die on the first day of school, they spend a significant amount of their second semester freshman year just. In Prison.
Of course what follows I'm sure spurs that hatred, but she all but declared Riz to be her nemesis with Jawbone freshman year.
She's probably got some good ideas of how stuff should change, but also she saw this random Goblin boy with a briefcase in rogue class and decided she Hates Him, for a reason none of us can fathom when several of the other bad kids give off worst first impressiona
She's a teenager, a kid, with anger issues. As much as their can be important nuggets at the core of her motives, she's a teenager without emotional regulation skills. That combination is BUILT to breed resentment and feelings of entitlement. and it's built to actively ignore any evidence of a different perspective.
We talk about how she doesn't understand them, takes Kristen as entirely uncaring, doesn't expect the bad kids to do so well in the Last Stand
and OF COURSE she doesn't. some of this because she of course is not privy to all of the bad kids interactions that we are as an audience. but a lot of it is probably because she's a teenager who's decided she's being slighted and as a result is never going to take the bad kids actions on good faith. she's doubled down and while I have a feeling she's extremely perceptive, she's also in an emotional place that means she probably is ACTIVELY ignoring any evidence to the fact that maybe the bad kids are just ALSO working very hard, and that the school itself may also work against them sometimes.
Add to that a god corrupted into rage (negative in this case) and conquest, and a nefarious faculty member as a potentially directly manipulative adult in her life trying to make something big and destructive happen. Kipperlily strikes me as the kind of person who knows she's smart, and knows she's clever, but is so blinded by her emotion that she is probably missing some of whats clearly in front of her as far as all the Jace business goes. She certainly is about the bad kids.
Jawbone can only do so much to help her in her sessions if he's being actively worked against. Emotional regulation is hard to learn from zero AS AN ADULT and she's probably coming from the negatives if my impression is correct, and is doing so as a teenager.
I guess what I'm trying to say is like
In a vacuum? Sure augeforts comment about trying being stupid or whatever does seem like another slap in the face for Kipperlily, one that justifies some of her feelings.
But not about the bad kids. and not to the extent she has taken them.
And to take that at its word feels weird to me because. To anybody paying attention? The bad kids are and have been trying SO SO hard in class. Them having to take the last stand in the FIRST place is specifically because the school system is treating Kristen unfairly DESPITE her best, GOOD efforts. I'm certain the rat grinders are on some level aware of Gorgugs EXTREMELY uphill battle with schoolwork this season, even if it's just Maryann catching part of a convo with Porter or Ruben hearing about it from his uncle. I HIGHLY doubt that Oisin was oblivious to the way that Adaines academics were affected by her not having the money for the correct materials - she still was able to excel mostly but the effects of that roll being at disadvantage for so long are still THERE. Jawbone pinned down and mentioned to Riz his similarities to Kipperlily within maybe 2 seconds - there is 0% chance he hasn't brought something similar up in Kipperlilys sessions. She may not like it, she may not have the emotional intelligence to see it this way, but his efforts almost certainly mirror hers in a way that makes them equally hard workers, absolutely determined to keep themselves afloat despite it being an uphill battle. Something that she feels she deserves to be rewarded for, and to an extent implies that if just a few circumstances were different she would be able to see equal value in his work.
And sure you can say she may be able to see that and be angry that their work is rewarded and hers isn't, but we see time and time again that she and her party don't always put that same level of work in? Mary Ann at blood rush, absolutely uncaring but doing well specifically because she's got some magical enhancements. The suspicious circumstances of Kipperlily finding the Rogue teacher. Even just the natural advantage of Oisin having more than the funds he needs to excel in wizard class.
But even regardless of that, she seems to refuse to see that any scenario in which others are praised for the same thing she's done, while she is ignored etc, is the sole responsibility of the school here. the bad kids are not her enemies in that fight - augefort is. The bad kids are not going around being consistently given advantages from the school, they're earning the things they get and hitting their own academic road blocks, and they aren't acting better than other people in a way that goes beyond like. Teen stuff. And yet her sights are trained so unblinking on them.
I can see Fabian and Kristen's popularity and personalities coming off like it supports that they're being treated better or feel some superiority. And it's teen stuff to quietly hate those ppl at your school! it's p normal!
But it always brings me back to her SPECIFICALLY hating Riz. Bc Riz isn't a rich kid throwing parties that everyone loves. Hes not sniping out comebacks the way Kristen does, sometimes without even thinking. In a lot of ways he's the/one of the least abrasive of the group to an outsider. Which makes me SO much more inclined to call bullshit that this is truly, honestly rooted in an acknowledgement of any of the REAL problems that come up with their school system.
It's complex, but I feel like we can't exalt their perspective as a Truth of the world like it seems some folks do when these characters themselves do not play fairly. What is fair about the way they interfered with the exam. What is fair about what she did so easily to Buddy Dawn. What is fair about the murder of the couple that owned that farm. Depending on what happened - what is fair from them about Lucy's murder. Certainly what is fair about their hand in Yolandas.
This idea that things are unfair isn't untrue. But not in the ways she thinks, and shes moved so far beyond that notion at this point. Kipperlily probably DOES believe that she's uniquely a victim of this system, or at least that everyone but the bad kids is. But she's moved so far beyond that. Whatever divine rage magic is involved has ensured that, as well as probably some Adult manipulation, and severely underdeveloped emotional regulation skills. and for me that means like. obviously she is unjustified in her actions.
Augefort is absolutely unhinged. his school has never been run in a manner that rewards buckling down in the classroom and the classroom only. It's an adventuring school in truly the most chaotic and violence rewarding sense, and that information is given freely by Arthur augefort at maybe any turn
Saw something about the theoretical being just as important as the practical. and yes! absolutely! a very good point that I'm glad was brought up - going to the classes is important and I think this season has really emphasized the ways in which that's true at least in terms of Staying in School and Honing your Skills
I do think, in the same breath, that that STILL means that the practical is ALSO just as important as the theoretical. It CAN'T be one or the other, it HAS to be both.
and the bad kids are DOING both. regardless of what it may count for, the rat grinders xp leveling by continuing to do freshman level combat in order to excel more on paper ISN'T them really doing the practical part of what theyre learning in their higher level classes. And the bad kids do not get credit for their saving of the world REGARDLESS. Not on its own merit, and to get the credit they'd have to jump a hefty academic bar that sort of invalidates the point of practical efforts in the first place, not to mention works against students like Fig and Kristen.
The school is actively rewarding Kipperlily and her party's cheat code practical use of their skills, over the bad kids putting just as much if not more effort into their LITERALLY WORLD SAVING missions. whatever favoritism shes seeing, or that there may be occasionally, Kipperlily fundamentally takes the bad kids in bad faith. It's not ABOUT what is ACTUALLY unfair to her at this point.
from her perspective every accolade or accomplishment from them HAS to come from favoritism in order to fit how her view of whats actually unfair has been warped. for her it doesn't MATTER that they've been trying because they MUST not be trying as hard as she is. it doesn't matter that they visibly saved the world three times, one of which was livestreamed and included several party members dropping, successfully because surely it's a fluke, or they were given better opportunities than others for no reason, or they're being falsely worshipped for what MUST be a less dangerous quest than it seems (despite us seeing clearly on the first day of school that nobody is putting a pedestal up for their night yorb win)
What could have been a justified spark of frustration with a system has shifted into a vengeful sense of entitlement that to me? fully abandons the good of wanting to change a school system actively working against some (/all?) students.
idk maybe this all sounds like jibberish I just
Kipperlily in her current state is INCAPABLE of not underestimating the bad kids bc that would require some acknowledgement that they have worked and bled and died to reach the level they're at.
You cannot separate the girl who sneaks in to the Last Stand to sabotage another party's chances of passing, of staying at school, of continuing school, of one of them from potentially keeping their god alive, and of being brought back from what she assumes is certain death - from the slighted teenager running for class president to make things "more fair"
you cannot separate the girl who easily slits her own party clerics throat without second thought from the girl who thinks she's been slighted by an unjust system
What she means by unfair is inherently colored by her being that same person
Augefort can say whatever nonsense he wants, and it doesn't really justify her current frustrations at this point because her version of fair is fundamentally unfair now.
Shes a child who's become corrupted, just like Buddy. but unlike him - she's become genuinely nefarious and vengeful. Unlike buddy she is actively plotting. Harming others with full knowledge of it. We don't know how much of it comes from her on her own, or the rage baking underground, or Stardiamonds direct involvement - but I think this most recent episode should make it clear that like
Whatever truth there is to the school being run in a way that is unfair to its students, and regardless of what she says or thinks
Kipperlily Copperkettle is not operating from that grounded perspective. and I don't think she has been for a long time
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"Detienne, taking as his key the well-known myth that Adonis' pregnant mother Myrrha or Smyrna (both Greek words for myrrh) was metamorphosed into a myrrh tree, from whose trunk the newborn in due time emerged, sees Adonis as essentially the fruit of an aromatic shrub, a perfume, an anti-agricultural product. His method is to find a counter-phenomenon in Attic society, in response to which the Adonia can take their significance: surely the Thesmophoria, the autumn festival in honor of Demeter at which the women of Athens celebrated the growth of food crops. Detienne finds a further, sociological opposition here: the Thesmophoria were celebrated only by the wives of Athenian citizens; the Adonia were notoriously celebrated by prostitutes. He positions Adonis and the data of his cult within various oppositional codes discernible in Greek culture-each illustrated by a diagram-that parallel one another quite precisely, replicating the same meaning in different terms: aromatically, Adonis stands for heady perfume; botanically, for profitless agriculture; socially, for seduction and extramarital pleasure. The Adonia, Detienne declares, were a celebration of infertility and fruitless sex, a spectacular illustration of the dangers of untrammeled female sexuality, serving to balance and emphasize the autumn celebration of fruitfulness and legitimate connubiality in the service of the polis.
But much evidence slips through Detienne's grid. In several versions of the birth of Adonis myrrh has no place: in our earliest his mother is one Alphesiboea ([Hes.], fr. 139 M-W); in another she is one Metharme ([Apollod.], Bibl. 3.14.3). Philostephanus of Cyrene made him the son of Zeus alone (ap. [Probus] on Verg., Ecl. 10.18).22 As for the carnival of whores, the Adoniac festivities in brothels in Diphilus, fr. 42.38-41 PCG and Alciphron 4.14.8 (based on fourth-century comedy), are to be supplemented by Aristophanes, Lys. 391-96, and Menander, Sam. 35-50, in which wives and daughters of citizens celebrate the Adonia. Most surprisingly, Detienne's theory takes only passing account of the ritual lamentation, which ancient sources make the most conspicuous feature of the festival, and in general ignores what the celebrants themselves thought of what they were doing-unless we are to imagine that the women of Athens climbed onto their roofs once a year deliberately to celebrate their own failings to the community. There was probably another reason, one which feminist studies of the cult have begun to seek.
Another assumption, however, more fundamentally flaws Detienne's interpretation. While proposing to tease an inherent meaning from Athenian cult practice by identifying the inherent correspondences and oppositions within it, Detienne fails to define a perspective more specific than a homogeneous Greco-Roman society. Adonis, for example, must have meant many things to many people at many times (even different things to the same people at different times), but Detienne's formula assumes that he meant essentially the same thing to everybody, no matter how many borders of nation, culture, language, gender, or time he may have crossed-as if any detail of the myth of Adonis tapped into one immanent meaning and could be adduced for the significance of the Athenian cult. Rhetorical motives are undifferentiated: a line of Sappho is treated equally with a line of Philodemus; the testimony of Aristophanes is put on a par with the testimony of St. Cyril. This method is programmatic and derives from Levi-Strauss, who articulates the principle thus vis-A-vis his interpretation of Oedipus: "[W]e define the myth as consisting of all its versions; or to put it otherwise, a myth remains the same as long as it is felt as such." Combining details from diverse myths of Adonis, regardless of date or provenance, Detienne treats the resulting conglomeration as a single sacred tale holding a precious key to the meaning of the ritual. But for whom does it hold meaning? For Detienne alone. Purportedly context-based, his method actually isolates phenomena from their diverse cultural uses and recontextualizes them into an artificial code that transcends the messy inconsistencies of Greek thought."
- The Sexuality of Adonis by Joseph D. Reed
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thinking how autistic ppl have talked about that thing where it's like "oh autistic ppl don't notice and/or don't understand Social Cues" and how instead it's not that what is considered such A Cue has actually gone unnoticed or particularly misinterpreted, it's just that the autistic person doesn't read into it as Certainly having one precise internal motivation / intended to be conveyed meaning in it. (while naturally autistic ppl's own cues Are unnoticed &/or misinterpreted as [certainly meaning xyz] including instances/behaviors that are not meant to be Cues as having some intended silent social message for the other. and the eternal "how do i explain to ppl that when i say things it doesn't have a secret double meaning to read into it without them trying to read a secret double meaning into it" matter where using language to be explicit about a Message is also misinterpreted (or unnoticed))
not to mention that of course the idea that allistic ppl are all simply aware of some set of rules for the correct way to act and always get it right when it comes to interactions is just Made Up and an assertion that follows having already been terrible at an interaction w/an nd person. cultural rules w/variations on any scale and no true universal / objective rules to be found anywhere, misunderstandings all the time as a fact of life, what's polite here vs never expected there vs considered rude or even hostile elsewhere, and that people who are like "oh yeah i ascribe to that rule too" but can disagree about it and about the Secret Double Meaning that's supposed to be behind it
also makes media interpretation a whole time when like, even [show don't tell] via descriptions of events in text as like Adequately Subtle Setup is like oh i didn't assume it definitely pointed to xyz, but wuh oh when there's often supposed to be like "& This thing is meant, ideally/correctly, to be interpreted as indicating This thing" & hopefully it's not crucial to understanding a whole narrative you're here for. suppose an explanation there is just having the entire perspective that everyone does read into [cue / indication] the exact same way and you don't think about how else it could be interpreted, like e.g. just kind of setting it aside to wait for more information but that was all you're gonna get (and now people are reading into your (possibly supposed lack of) response incorrectly w/o any consideration that this Could be incorrect) like, well, when that's the perspective you have and think that Everyone has. classic. which feels like it corresponds re: all the [characters based on nt people who make media having unknowingly interacted w/plenty of autistic ppl] unknowingly "an autistic person" based characters and how they'll just be understood to be Weirdo Others to all, same as how the entire audience will have the nt understanding that we all do go around successfully reading each other's minds at all times. and/or that ofc also being "wrong" / only having a limited perspex here / those framed as Others To All in a work are actually the Selves To Many irl, can all be disregarded b/c hey you're the ppl getting to make the work anyways so whatever. re: that in irl interactions it's also that, say, an autistic person can't get any benefit of any doubt / be Allowed to do xyz not necessarily b/c it can't even Possibly be considered "wrong" for someone allistic to do it, but b/c an autistic person has less power in whatever situations / social circles and That's the priority / guiding principle, such that some people will have to continue to Lose (& supposedly deserve it for w/e reasons, the Justifying Narrative comes after the fact & is just for dismissing anything that suggests they should, or even could, be acting otherwise) while other ppl will get to keep Winning, including to a point their deliberate inconsideration / hostility in social interactions, supposedly the reason nd people deserve to be disliked / excluded / punished, becomes proof of "that's right they're so epic they don't need to play by the rules to keep being considered epic" / simply proof that other people Are more socially constrained; the fact that [some ppl are just better] intrinsically coexists with, & implies, that [some people are just worse], and also vice versa. and, tbt, how w/Media ofc [this is a) the Normal Perspective, which others some people / is wrong abt them; but also b) who cares if it's not universal b/c we're the ppl getting to convey all this] applies to whatever other groups, e.g. for another obvious manifestation being men as media creators and women as [others] in it to be wrong about (that they're sexual objects; be shopping; always show up in a role that is in helpful/desired relation to men; etc)
anyways that yeah it's like sure i noted the Thing but i didn't assume it necessarily meant [xyz] and that everyone on earth would understand it thusly (they wouldn't) the supposed Social Skills(tm) that are "we're all mind readers, and right about it" where ofc being "right" can mean having the social capital such that, when you're wrong, you don't even have to be aware of that b/c a) your Success is predetermined by other elements and b) other ppl Don't have the clout to even make you aware you're wrong. like oh breaking news another abled cishet white man with rich family who gets to think his success proves he's simply more correct abt other people about how to act and what to do to get everything you want and be in charge, b/c you so deserve it....vs the lens of Negative Misinterpretation put on others and the violence of responses that can be supposedly warranted/deserved for it.
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