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juneandnick · 1 year

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5x10 : Safe (My POV)

I already wrote something after the release of the episode: Link.

The writing of the first and the last episode of season 5 is just a sort of mirror.

Episode 01. June just killed Fred.

At the police station, Luke asks her to back home because after all she does not need to accept the punishment: You did nothing wrong. He got what he deserved.

He offers her to leave Toronto: We will take off. We will go to Hawaii, okay?

Episode 10. Luke killed a Gilead sympathizer to save June's life.

With June and Holly, they are on the run for Hawaii.

He ends up surrendering to the police at the station.

June prays him to stay: Please do not do this. I do not want to do this alone. I do not want to do it alone anymore. I do not want to do it alone. We need you.

Also a parallel with S5E02, Luke: You gotta be here. You gotta be right here. All right? Because I need you here and Nichole needs you here. You family needs you here. And if you are not … I do not know what is gonna happen June to us.

June tries to be happy with Luke while Nick tries the same thing with Rose.

June seems to be fine with it. I mean it is not easy everyday with Luke (which is normal) but she does not seem to think of Nick, excepts for her needs. In fact, it is nearly surprising she has a thought for him before to leave Toronto for Hawaii.

I really do not like the fact she did not ask news from Nick to Joseph or Mark. Just like she turned the page. Maybe because she wants to honor her wedding vows.

I would have loved to see her tell Holly about Nick. Maybe she could have shown her a picture. But I would have liked something: Maybe a fantasy or a flashback (about an unseen scene). It is disappointing. Out of sight - Out of mind.

In S3E13, June thought she was going to die in the woods. She remembered that scene with Luke and Hannah. (See photo below) We could have had a parallel with a fantasy with Nick and Holly: Having a picnic, having fun at the beach ...

In another context, we could have see Rita who suggests to cook tuna and June smiling while suggesting to her friend to buy oranges. No my best idea lol sorry.

I do not know if it is important but in a flashback in S4E06 Moira thought that June marrying Luke is a bad idea. June tried to justify: Our marriage is not going to be like that marriage. They fought all the time about all kinds of stuff. We never fight.

So I wonder if June avoids being honest with Luke, being angry for fear of arguing. Because that is one of the reasons he left Annie, his ex-wife. Even if it is completely normal to argue with family, friends, colleagues ... It is just a passing idea.

Moira and Rita seem more "Team Luke." I no longer see complicity between these women with June. For example, it is maybe stupid but in S4E07 at the Fairmont Royal York hotel before to leave, Moira hugs first Luke then June. She does it the same thing in S5E05 when June and Luke are ready to across the border.

Sometimes the little details make the difference.

If June is careful do not argue with Luke, it is also because she does not want to do it alone. Probably she is afraid to loose Nichole. She probably feels guilty because Luke waited her for seven years and raised the little girl. And because Moira was supposed to tell her in S4E06: Luke is a good guy. And he handled it pretty well when you had a baby with another man. So she stays because he is her husband.

But for me it does not explain her indifference about Nick. We have not seen her thinking about him all season. She was more or less like: Nick? Nick who?

The thing that disappoints me (even if I can already hear you explaining the why and the how), June lived seven years in Gilead. A country where women are not allowed to read, to write, to have a job, to participate in the government, to do what they want … Just good to run their household and raising children.

And as a handmaid, June was imprisoned, beat, raped and treated like a child. Yet she rebelled against the system. She got Holly out, she worked with Mayday into Lawrence's home, she organized the Angel’s Flight … I understand that she is no longer in survival mode but what is happen to the f**king rebel handmaid?

With Nick she dared to be furious, to be angry. With Luke, she looks like a puppy and is weak, she fears of disappointing. She apologizes all the time. It is a shame.

Nick has always stayed true to his feelings for June. Does not matter if he is married, does not matter if they are separate. His feelings for her are still so sincere.

Nick is like a compass that always points North. He always care about June, about their daughter, about their safety. He asked to Mark and Joseph about them. He is always dreaming about the three of them, how could he not? They are his family.

In S5E03, when June tells him: Try and be happy, okay? He does not lie to himself, being happy for him means being with June. But he does not answer her, because:

- It is too painful, - He does not want to lie to her, - He does not want her to feel guilty.

Maybe he is also afraid that she would not share his feelings.

His marriage with Rose is what it is: A marriage of convenience. He is married to a woman with whom: He always enjoyed talking. He tried to be a good husband, he tried Gilead shoes but he failed. So I appreciate the writing of Nick about June.

I hope season 6 will rock! I want something HUGE for Osblaine. 🤞 Something unexpected but damn good and very very quickly. We wasted enough time.

youtube

Music by Adam Taylor

- Bridge Over The Border ❤️

- Late Night Visit ❤️

- Not To Her ❤️

Source Pictures: Screenshots (by me)

#the handmaid's tale #osblaine #june osborne #nick blaine #S5E10 #season5 #my POV #adam taylor #music

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sogno-ao3 · 1 year

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a list of named books in still waters

writing this because it is late and i am going crazy with work and wanted to write this as a diversion--won't include jane eyre and huckleberry finn for spoilery reasons!

The Jungle, Upton Sinclair

Ah, the first book we see in Still Waters and one that Mollie wonders if Tommy has read. It is evocative of Tommy's own dirty business; Sinclair writes about the violent and unsanitary meat-packing industry and how the main character is a decent man but his circumstances force him into less-than-moral doings...?

North and South, Elizabeth Gaskell and Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen

Contributes to the feeling for Mollie's inexperience with romance--Pride and Prejudice is certainly one of the canonical romance greats, North and South in the third tier...?

The History of the Standard Oil Company, Ida Tarbell

Mostly just to be evocative of Tommy's penchant for empire building, and something that he'd probably read.

Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë

To be frank, nothing is really going on here... I suppose one can draw parallels between Heathcliff and Tommy, but that would make this romance rather monstrous...? Hate to disappoint, but revenge plots are not the focus of this story.

House of Mirth, Edith Wharton

Nothing of note, except period accuracy.

A Doctor's Education: a Guide to Medical Schools

A book that I made up.

A Doll's House, Henrik Ibsen

I admit, a little too on the nose, but too perfect to resist as a play and its thematic material--Tommy has trapped Mollie in a doll's house; further commentary on how Mollie is circumscribed by her position in society, and whether she can break out of it or not. Further hilarious references when she tries to escape the Shelby family meeting and abandons a child.

The Tempers, William Carlos Williams

Personally, I am a fan of WCW and just about died when I re-read the poem with Grace the cat--and so it was purrfect to include. Another thing I do love about WCW is that many poems can be interpreted from very surface-level to very abstract, from serious to playful--depends on your mood. This dichotomy I also try to illustrate between Tommy and Mollie.

Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad

Can you tell that I hate this book? I'm amazed that it always ends up on the top lists; writing is insipid even without the awful treatment of colonization. Again, a book that inspires differences of opinions between Tommy and Mollie.

Poems, Wilfred Owen

"Written by a war veteran" is how I imagined it was sold in stores, and Tommy just chose it, and then realized he doesn't want to relive any of that, and so neglects to read it, leaving a very chagrined Mollie to pick up the pieces.

The Education of Henry Adams, Henry Adams

Chosen for the themes of growth and change, but most importantly, it was period appropriate.

Agnes Grey, Anne Brontë

An echo to Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre. Also a bildungsroman for a young woman of a lower class.

Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Anne Brontë

Nothing too important except that it's in the Brontë family.

Poems, Emily Brontë

I don't think Emily Brontë ever published a solo book of poetry (she did publish a book with her sisters), but nonetheless, someone aggregated them and when I visited home, I discovered I had a book of her lesser-known poems. I think I had bought this book when I was in my own e-girl era... uh.... anyway, many great poems to give life to Tommy's own e-boy era.

#random #stillwaters-ao3

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siren-of-redriver96 · 2 years

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Villian Heights (part 8)

(reading Wuthering Heights for the first time and trying to figure out the deal with this book with some assumptions from previous summaries of the story)

Today: from the point where Linton comes to Thrusscross Grange to the loveletter debacle)

(spoilers and kind of heavy themes - also strong language)

Also, I totally forgot I named Cathy Cathylin to avoid confusion XD here it is again

poor Linton - he just lost his mom and now he has to hold himself back to not upset Cathylin - really Edgar?

well at least he tells her to leave him alone for tonight

what’s wrong, Edgar asked when the kid who just lost his mom cried

it’s the chair ... honestly I think he’s just confused from grief. Let him go to bed people, ffs!

well, at least Edgar is patient with him

Cathylin, you were supposed to leave him alone - but nevermind, how she cared for him was freaking adorable

aaand Nelly was right. Heathcliff is not the kind of person who leaves something to others. I’m still surprised he never came for Isabella.

Linton has the right instinct unintentionally - yeah, you should stay with your uncle

How am I supposed to love him if I don’t know him? Oh boy you have no idea.....

kinda scary how much they lie to him to get him to come along ...

Heathcliff and Joseph, sympathetic as always

I’m jealous and want his love all for myself. Well, at least you’re honest Heathy. Poor child

okay, he’s a bit spoiled (I mean, the Lintons were too, so Isabella treated him accordingly - maybe we’ll learn a little more about their history as the story goes on)

heartbroken at how he screams in insane fear that he doesn’t want to stay there ... spot on kid. You really don’t want to

okay Linton is, again, a bit spoiled, but he’s also sickly, I don’t really blame him - still it seems he’s kind of unkind

sad that Hareton tries to befriend him and it doesn’t work

Cathylin’s birthday is never celebrated happily because it’s her mother’s death date - that’s sad, but then again she’s got a lot of blessings

she’s so happy go lucky, it’s sad to imagine the angry person she turns into further down the line

re-reading, for a moment I thought Cathylin was intentionally forcing Nelly to come with her into the area around Wuthering Heights to maybe get caught and see Linton again - but no, she doesn’t know Heathcliff

aaand Heathcliffs plan to get both properties through marrying Linton and Cathylin and then waiting for firsts death - we got a villian! That’s almost cartoonish

Listening to “Poker Face” while writing this - even though he’s pretty honest to Nelly about the details of his plans - like I said, cartoon villian

poor Cathylin is sunshining everywhere - I like the detail that her body is full and yet lean, a little body positivity

I just realized she talks just as much as Cathy XD

Heathcliff verbally abuses Linton, great, and would rather have Hareton as his son. Obvious parallel how old Earnshaw favoured him, though for other reasons and much differently, he doesn’t like either of the boys

he still spoils Linton and has encouraged his meanness ... well what to expect

Cathylin being rude to Hareton - okay she’s done that before, kind of

Heathcliff’s devilish laugh - lol, cartoon villian moment Nr. 3

we have another example of three kids together, one is older - but the dynamic is much different

Cathylin is really rude - I mean, Edgar didn’t teach her any better, plus the golden cage upbringing - kinda sad

her wanting to hear good reasons for Edgars bans is actually pretty refreshing

the letter sceme is kinda cool

Heathcliff even helped with them, geez. He is a villian

Nelly burning them one by one and threatening to tell her father must be really cruel from Cathylins perspective

even though she’s only fouling Heathcliffs plan

it would be easier if she just told Cathylin the truth, although she probably wouldn’t believe it

Thank you very much for reading!

#villian heights #wuthering heights

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dahlia-coccinea · 3 years

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Are the second generation really meant to mirror the first? I'm helping my sister revise for her end of unit test on it and it's mentioned quiet a bit in her notes but from what I've read (though tbf though- I'm reading certain parts for revision) I'm not really getting the vibe of that tbh. Can you help me understand why people may think this. Thank you.

Disclaimer: I'm certainly not an expert on the book and the criticisms about it - I read about it purely for my own enjoyment and there are many interpretations I’m probably not aware of.

First, I would say they aren’t exact replicas or mirrors but are more like echos or perhaps extensions of the first generation. Certainly all the baggage of the previous generation is placed on them. Catherine Linton and Hareton Earnshaw are much easier to connect to the first generation then Linton is, in my opinion, but some critics have tried to do so - mostly in asserting that there is a love triangle between them similar to Heathcliff/Catherine/Edgar. There are a number of connections that critics make between Hareton/Cathy and Heathcliff/Catherine and some have been told a million times but I’ll try to cover the ones I remember. Let me see if I can keep this organized and not get too off topic.

The similarity of their characters: At first glance you have the repetition of names - “C” and “H” appear repeatedly. Most apparent is that Catherine Linton is named for her mother. Hareton, although obviously an old family name since its been carved above the threshold of the Heights, it does feel intentional in furthering the connection between “C” and “H.” I’ve always found it interesting we have this scene from Cathy II and Linton in Chapter 14, that seems to directly call out the C & H connection:

“We found two in a cupboard, among a heap of old toys, tops, and hoops, and battledores and shuttlecocks. One was marked C., and the other H.; I wished to have the C., because that stood for Catherine, and the H. might be for Heathcliff, his name; but the bran came out of H., and Linton didn’t like it.”

Funnily I don’t think the H is for Heathcliff, I think its more likely meant for Hindley, but of course Heathcliff has been semi-assimilated into the Earnshaw family by being given the name Heathcliff, which was the name of a deceased child. To me at least, none of these feel unintentional, it feels fated since we have these repetitions noted by the characters themselves.

Cathy doesn’t only share a name with her mother, she lives in her shadow. We know from Nelly that, “On the anniversary of her birth we never manifested any signs of rejoicing, because it was also the anniversary of my late mistress’s death.” Edgar seems to cherish her in part because she is a remnant of her mother, even displaying many similar characteristics, although Nelly is quick to note Cathy is softer and more genteel - which makes sense considering she grows up with a loving father in a calm environment that lets her do as she pleases. She doesn't grow up with the harshness of the Earnshaw family, and Joseph's ranting, and it also seems that Nelly may have softened and become more maternal as years have gone by. I’d say she does become more and more like her mother after living at Wuthering Heights though.

Some really great parallels between the two Catherine’s dialog have been made by Ann Dobyns - I’ve posted a few excerpts from her essay here if anyone is interested, it’s a bit more in-depth than this needs to be though.

Hareton has many parallels to Heathcliff as well - this is intentionally done by Heathcliff who, upon Hindley’s death, speaking of his plotting says, “And we’ll see if one tree won’t grow as crooked as another, with the same wind to twist it!” Heathcliff and Hareton have such an odd fated destiny, from the moment Heathcliff saves his life by catching him as his father dropped him over the bannister of second floor. Hareton from the start fears his natural father, “squalling and kicking in his father’s arms,” Nelly even fears Hindley will “frighten the child into fits.” Worlds different the description of a scene of very typical father/son affection described by Nelly during Hindley’s funeral when she says little Hareton, “played with Heathcliff’s whiskers, and stroked his cheek.” Or earlier when she had asked Hareton if he liked Heathcliff and he says:

“Ay!” he answered again. Desiring to have his reasons for liking him, I could only gather the sentences—“I known’t: he pays dad back what he gies to me—he curses daddy for cursing me.

In Hareton’s mind Heathcliff is more a protector than his father, and I suppose in many ways he is better than Hindley’s random obscene violence. As wrong as it is that Heathcliff denies Hareton his inheritance and an education, I think it does say something (not entirely sure what) that he is never physically abusive to Hareton in the way Hindley was with him. Hareton doesn’t ever show any real fear of Heathcliff.

Heathcliff has his own complex feelings towards Hareton, definitely preferring him to his own son - he tells Nelly, “Do you know that, twenty times a day, I covet Hareton, with all his degradation? I’d have loved the lad had he been some one else.” So it seems we have the daughter of Catherine and the wished for son of Heathcliff. Lockwood even mistakes Hareton to be Heathcliff’s son momentarily in Chapter 2.

Some other parallels - Heathcliff notes the similarities between them later on in a discussion with Nelly:

“He’ll not venture a single syllable all the time! Nelly, you recollect me at his age—nay, some years younger. Did I ever look so stupid: so ‘gaumless,’ as Joseph calls it?”

“Worse,” I replied, “because more sullen with it.”

On other occasions Nelly talks about how Heathcliff liked to induce horror from those around him and “he contrived to convey an impression of inward and outward repulsiveness.” Hareton behaves similarly - in one scene after being taunted by Linton and Cathy, he throws Linton from the room to the disgust and fear of Cathy in Chapter 23:

...Earnshaw burst the door open: having gathered venom with reflection. He advanced direct to us, seized Linton by the arm, and swung him off the seat.

“‘Get to thy own room!’ he said, in a voice almost inarticulate with passion; and his face looked swelled and furious. ‘Take her there if she comes to see thee: thou shalln’t keep me out of this. Begone wi’ ye both!’

“He swore at us, and left Linton no time to answer, nearly throwing him into the kitchen; and he clenched his fist as I followed, seemingly longing to knock me down. I was afraid for a moment, and I let one volume fall; he kicked it after me, and shut us out.”

Similarly, when sitting next to him, Lockwood says, “My neighbour struck me as bordering on repulsive.” Even Nelly, who I’d say is typically biased towards Hareton, upon seeing him says he “seemed as awkward and rough as ever.” Lockwood also describes him as being “almost haughty,” similar to Nelly’s repeated references to Heathcliff’s ego and “proud heart.”

Heathcliff further casts light on their parallels when he says he sees Hareton as the “personification of my youth,” adding that, “Hareton's aspect was the ghost of my immortal love, of my wild endeavours to hold my right, my degradation, my pride, my happiness, and my anguish.”

The love triangle: I know some critics have said the dynamic between the Linton/Catherine/Hareton is similar to Edgar/Catherine/Heathcliff - I don't particularly see this. Cathy II is forced into marriage with Linton and at that point doesn't have notable feelings towards Hareton, compared to her mother who knows she loves Heathcliff more and still does have a choice to make even if it isn’t an easy one.

Still, there are similarities in their relationship in that both men (Heathcliff and Hareton) end up feeling the need to better themselves because for their respective Catherine. Nelly says of Hareton, “He had been content with daily labour and rough animal enjoyments, till Catherine crossed his path. Shame at her scorn, and hope of her approval were his first prompters to higher pursuits.” I think this is similar to Heathcliff deciding to run away after years of abuse and to risk everything, including his life, after hearing Catherine says it would “degrade” her to marry him. Hareton does seem to show some jealously over Cathy’s attention and regard of Linton, and again with the presence of Lockwood so I suppose it is sort of love triangle-y?

I also think Hareton shows signs of a growing devotion, similar to what Heathcliff felt towards Catherine. He certainly seems to be enamored by Cathy from the very first time they meet - Nelly says he, “stared at her with considerable curiosity and astonishment” and was, “too awkward to speak; though he looked as if he did not relish my intrusion.”

Something I’ve mentioned before is that Lockwood says about Hareton and Cathy, “Together, they would brave Satan and all his legions,” which feels like a direct parallel to Heathcliff’s assertion to Catherine that, “misery and degradation, and death, and nothing that God or Satan could inflict would have parted us.”

Also Heathcliff seemingly attempts to play the role Hindley played in his youth when he tells Cathy, “Your love will make him an outcast and a beggar.” It seems both Catherine and Heathcliff knew their love would result in the same situation as Catherine relays this to Nelly when she says, “did it never strike you that if Heathcliff and I married, we should be beggars?”

There is also, of course, the similarity of social stature - when Cathy first meets Hareton, he has nothing to his name and lives almost as a servant at Wuthering Heights, similar to Heathcliff’s position while Hindley was master. Cathy, similar to her mother, is better educated and has more opportunities - there is no socially accepted reason that she would choose Hareton, seeing as he can’t give her money, status, or respectability.

The circle of events and “The Butterfly:” It does feel, in my opinion at least, that it is no accident that our happy ending is the union of Hareton and Cathy. It couldn’t happen with just any couple or in any other way. It does feel that they are made into the semi-proteges of Heathcliff and Catherine, and the elements of the Linton’s allows for there to be peace between the two families. There is a kind of resolution and unification of their energies.

This is probably the most common narrative of the connection between Hareton/Cathy and Heathcliff/Catherine, and that is rather than just a parallel, critics have noted that the story of Catherine comes full circle with their marriage. The first Catherine wrote out her possible futures on her window sill in the names: Catherine Earnshaw, Catherine Heathcliff and Catherine Linton. Her daughter ends up reversing these different identities being born a Linton, marrying a Heathcliff, and finally an Earnshaw. That can’t be merely a coincidence.

Critic Dorothy Van Ghent deemed Catherine and Heathcliff the “original two” and she said that with the civilizing of Cathy and Hareton, "the great magic, the wild power, of the original two has been lost.” Others say that while poetically it makes sense within the repetition, Catherine and Hareton’s relationship is “improbable” but I disagree. I really liked Carol Ramsden’s take on this that incorporates Emily’s essay “The Butterfly,” and makes the parallel between the 1st and 2nd generation - I have posted this before but to save myself the time of rephrasing it I’ll just post the quote:

In Wuthering Heights, we encounter a destructive principle at work in the love between Catherine and Heathcliff. The principle is manifested fully in Catherine’s mental collapse and Heathcliff’s vindictiveness. However, the love between Cathy and Hareton is allowed to flower and they are both, in their own ways, products of the first lovers. The principle of destruction, as in “The Butterfly”, is transformed into a creative energy. Ultimately, Catherine and Heathcliff are also not deprived of this creative energy. Instead of representing a pessimistic view of life, their love, too, comes to suggest that all things work together towards good.

I think that’s an interesting take, besides just a happy ending for Hareton and Cathy it almost feels like a happy ending for Catherine and Heathcliff? In some ways they burned up only to transform into something better. Not saying that is how it is meant to be read, but I do like it (probably because I like a happy ending).

I feel like there are other points that I’ve forgotten? But these are what I remember at least.

#sorry you asked what should be a simple question and got a novel back hah #wuthering heights #hareton earnshaw #i really hope this made sense and was what you were asking about #tw abuse #catherine linton #linton heathcliff #thoughts

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jaderabbitt · 4 years

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Delphinus (1/?)

howdy y’all. I wrote this chapter of garbo instead of doing my university work. didn’t exactly like how it came out/where it went so it might be going in the “dead idea; don’t continue” pile unless people like it enough. so like it or i pull out the glock.

warnings: none? unless angst triggers you (promise it wont be the whole story tho)

This was it. This was where you died.

As you lie in a back alley in a pool of your own blood, you stared up at the night sky. Remembering all of the memories you made under this same Egyptian sky, you couldn’t help but find your comrades in the stars.

You would’ve giggled thinking about Iggy on his hind legs, begging for coffee gum, as Lupus, if you could move a muscle. The tales of Ophiuchus, the man holding the snake, reminded you of Joseph and his Hermit Purple. You thought of Auriga, and its translation to “charioteer”, which made you sigh a little deeper than your body would’ve wanted. Wincing, you thought of Aquila, the eagle, and visioned it to be Magician’s Red. You spotted Orion’s belt, and remembered what Kakyoin had told you about the brightest constellation in the sky.

“Since it’s located on the celestial equator, Orion can be seen throughout the world. Neat, right, (Y/N)?”

You wouldn’t dare forget Delphinus. It brought as much of a smile as you could handle to your face, faintly recalling the ever so subtle change in Jotaro’s face when you had mentioned that there was a dolphin constellation.

Previously uninterested, Jotaro had his interest piqued, and was staring at you now as you described the tale of the constellation Delphinus.

“According to Greek mythology, Delphinus the dolphin was Poseidon’s messenger to a nymph he wanted to marry. Delphinus was the only one to get the nymph to accept, so Poseidon memorialized him among the stars. It’s my favorite constellation!”

Jotaro hummed in acknowledgement, shifting against the desert rock you two had settled by as to not disturb the other sleeping Crusaders, Taking the last huff of his cigarette, he snuffed it out on the ground. Looking back to you, he couldn’t help but gaze at your awed face. You had been shocked to see that all the stars were visible in the desert, where there was no light pollution. He could see you imprinting them all to memory as you smiled brightly.

Little did you know, you were his favorite star.

As you looked back at him, you noted the small crack in his normally stoic facade, and that was the miniscule curve upwards of his lips. You wrote it off as simply his interest in marine life, as you gathered from his choice of leisure reading.

You still committed the image to memory, just like the stars you loved.

You were harshly brought back to reality as you spit up blood, coughing wildly even though it hurt to move. Your stand, Seven Wonders, lay parallel to you, slowly dimming in visibility as your mental fortitude began to diminish. You fondly remembered how you named it.

“If I live to see the...Seven Wonders...I’ll make a path to the rainbow’s end..” you sung to yourself, washing the dishes and having your stand dry them after a long night of cooking for one. The radio was on the counter a bit ways away from the both of you, playing Seven Wonders by Fleetwood Mac, one of the chart hits from the summer of ‘87. As you looked over to the unnamed prismatic being by your side, you decided that it was time to give it a name.

Your eyelids felt heavier and heavier, coercing you to close them, but you knew what that would entail. As you struggled to keep your eyes open, you blurrily made out the figure of a woman in white. She seemed to have her head wrapped in a white scarf, and the rest of her attire consisted of a modest wrap-around white dress. She appeared to be walking closer, in slow motion.

Perhaps the most clear minded thought you had in the past few minutes was that God was a woman, she was Muslim, and that those two things made a lot of sense. You could faintly hear her calling out to you, but you couldn’t discern what it was that she was saying. You supposed that this was the end, and finally allowed your eyes to close.

What you didn’t expect was to wake up.

On someone’s couch.

Was that a Cabbage Patch doll? It was kinda creepy.

No, bad. Focus.

You deduced that you were in someone’s home, most likely still in Cairo, judging by the buildings in the window you were facing. You were clearly bandaged, as your chest was constricted by some sort of binding, as well as your legs. Your left arm was against your chest in some sort of makeshift sling. As you tried to call out for whoever it was that was clearly taking care of you, your throat decided otherwise. You were thrown into a coughing fit, clearly from disuse. In doing so, you accomplished your goal anyways, as your coughs seemed to alert whoever was in the rest of the apartment? House?

You heard the patter of light steps coming near you, but what you hadn’t expected was big, curious, brown eyes staring into yours. A child.

Who barraged you with more questions than you could answer yourself.

“You’re awake! Finally! It’s been days! What’s your name? Where did you come from? How did you get hurt? Are you an American? Umi told me stories of America!”

All you could do was give an exasperated sigh, and point to your throat, while dryly saying, “W..ate..r..”

The little girl seemed to get what you were saying, and you could almost visibly see the exclamation mark above her head.

“Oh, do you want water? I can get you water!” she said, about to run off, before she walked into something soft with an “oof!”, looking up to see her mother with a glass of water.

“Umi, the foreigner is awake! Can they play with me ye-” her mother cut her off by giving her a delicate command in a language you didn’t recognize, and the little girl pouted before going somewhere out of your current range of vision. The older lady held the glass of water to your lips, and you gratefully gulped it down like it was ambrosia.

A thick, but calming, accented voice broke the silence. “What is your name, habibi?” the woman asked softly, sitting cross-legged by your face to meet it. You gave her your name, and she nodded before giving you a once-over, making sure blood hadn’t peaked through the new bandages she had given you earlier in the day,

“What happened to you? If you don’t remember, do not strain yourself.” she assured you, but you were just trying to come up with a story that didn’t involve vampires or strange manifestations of mental strength.

“I...got into an accident. Dragged myself into the alley.” you offered, though you weren’t confident that she bought the excuse. “My friends...Has anyone been looking for me? I came with a group..” you asked, looking around to see if any sign of them was present.

The look on the woman’s face told you what you needed to know.

“Do you have anyone I can call? A parent or guardian?” she asked, looking at you with such pity that made you almost angry.

“No. I have no family.” you answered bitterly, holding back your tongue as you regretted using such a sharp tone with someone who helped you out of the goodness of their heart.

“That is alright. You are more than welcome to stay with me and Jamila.”

#jotaro kujo x reader #jotaro x reader #jojo's bizarre adventure #jjba #stardust crusaders #jotaro kujo #reader #reader insert

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dailyaudiobible · 3 years

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01/25/2021 DAB Transcript

Genesis 50:1-Exodus 2:10, Matthew 16:13-17:9, Psalms 21:1-13, Pr 5:1-6

Today is the 25th day of January welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I'm Brian it is a joy and an honor to be here with you today as we move into our workweek. And there's a surprise for us today. I have a surprise for you. We’re gonna finish the first book of the Bible today. We’ll finish the book of Genesis. So, just like that we’ve move through a whole book of the Bible, a big one too. And look at all we have covered. From the origin story of creation Adam and Eve, the Tower of Babel, Noah and the flood, Abraham going into a land he didn't know following a God he had never met and entering into a covenantal relationship. And covenants and covenantal language permeates the Bible. The son of promise, Isaac and then his son Jacob, and then his son Joseph, a lot of ground has been covered and lot to plot…to apply to our lives has been placed before us and planted in our hearts. And then so today we will finish the story of Joseph by reading the 50th chapter of Genesis, and then we’ll move in Exodus and when we get there, we’ll kind of do a little flyby and get a little kind of context of where we’re going, and then we’ll read the first couple chapters of Exodus. So, we’re reading from the English Standard Version this week. Genesis chapter 50.

Introduction to the book of Exodus:

Okay. And that concludes the book of Genesis. So, well done to us all for making it through the first full book of the Bible, which brings us now to the second book of the Bible, known as Exodus. And if we remember Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, the first five books of the Bible are known as the Torah or the Pentateuch. So, we’re entering the second book of the Torah. And if we remember when we were talking about Genesis, we’re like really really trying to establish the fact that there's a family line here - Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, whose Israel, and then he has children, and they are the children of Israel. That’s important because it affects the whole Bible. It’s important to know where they came from and their origin story and how everything became what it became because their story so parallels our own life journey. So, when we left the book of Genesis just now Joseph died, had made his brothers promise to bring his bones out of Egypt when they left. Now as we turn our attention to the book of Exodus, we’re moving forward several centuries. And, so, with one turn of the page hundreds of years have gone by. And, so, with the flip of a page then everybody that we’ve been traveling with has died and their progeny has flourished. And, so, we’re hundreds of years in the future now with the future generations of promise and they are still in Egypt. And as we will see their…their prosperity, their flourishing begins to make the Egyptians uneasy because they can one day outgrow them and take over. And, so, they enslave them. And what we will learn is that this slavery goes on for 400 years. So, that's a long time to be holding onto a promise about land, right? And the oppression of the Hebrews by the Egyptians doesn't go unnoticed. And, so, we will meet another major figure in the Bible. We’ll watch him grow up. And he has a very interesting childhood. We’ll watch them flee Egypt. We’ll watch him return from Egypt to set God's people free and his name is Moses. So, basically in Exodus we’ll meet Moses's, we’ll see the plight of the Hebrew people, we’ll watch Moses become the leader of these people and we’ll watch a very drama filled confrontation between God and Egypt and in particular the king of Egypt the Pharaoh. Eventually, God's people will be freed from their slavery and sort of the center part of Exodus will deal with their trials in the desert. And then as we move into the last part of Exodus God will begin to weave His story into the fabric of this new culture. These recently freed slaves are in the desert and God is establishing a completely new culture in the desert among them and He will be weaving Himself into everything that they do. And we’ll see things like the tabernacle and the way that sacrifices are to be given to God. And, so, what we’re watching is God culture making. And we get to sit on the front row and watch it happen. And, so, let's begin. Exodus chapter 1

Commentary:

Okay. So, we've already transitioned from Genesis to Exodus and talked about that.

Let's look at one thing and Jesus says in the book of Matthew today because it's really famous. “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul or what shall a man give in return for his soul?” So, this is obviously the call to the path of a disciple of Jesus Christ. Like this is Jesus saying what it's gonna take. “If you want to come after me deny yourself, take up your cross and follow me.” Let's stop there and talk about deny yourself and take up your cross and follow Jesus. That seems to be the precursor of one of the greatest most pervasive themes of the Bible – endurance. And we don't like to hear about it and we don't like to do it that well. And, so, we don't hear about it a lot. And if we can avoid it, we do. And yet, Jesus is saying yeah, the life following me is a life where you’re denying the false identity that you are trying to craft and build. You’re denying yourself and you’re taking up your cross and following me. You’re taking on my identity. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. And that's famous. And, so, we…we think of it in terms of like being willing to die for the cause of Christ, to become a martyr. And, indeed, that has been required of many brothers and sisters over the millennia, but it's deeper than this. It's not just a willingness to humanly die, it's the act of dying to yourself, taking up your cross and following Him. In other words, dying to yourself so that you can actually live for Christ. Later in the New Testament when we get to the letters of Paul, we will hear Paul describe it as a living sacrifice. Okay. So, that's kind of the lay of the land. If you want to be a disciple of Jesus then your identity isn't a worldly crafted thing, it's the identity of the child of the most-high God, a disciple of Christ, and you will have to participate in the act of endurance often. We’re still kind of at the beginning of the year. I…mean it’s not my favorite thing to talk about, endurance. The Bible just brings it up over and over and over and over. And I have over the years, I’ve thought, “why? Like, why can’t your yoke be easy and your burden light? Like, we like those kinds of scriptures better.” But I have come to realize that endurance isn't the absence of God's blessing. Endurance is actually evidence of God's blessing. Think about it. Think about your life. What have the greatest lessons that you have ever learned come through? Challenge, endurance, something that you had to see through, something that you had to stick with. This is how we grow. And Jesus, God made flesh is telling us that this is a part of following Him. In other words, this is a part of how it's supposed to go. So, we've got a reframe some things and rewire some things because none of us likes to go through difficulty and challenge and most of the time we wallow in it, we get stuck in it, we dig a hole there, we camp out there when we’re supposed to move through it and gain strength and wisdom and keep going. But just normally, we get mad at God, and walk away and get rebellious and act like a toddler and only to find that we missed…we…like it took so much longer than it had to take. And we missed so much that we just misunderstood that “I am apparently going into a season of endurance here, of challenge and obstacle. And, yeah, I'm gonna still hate it. It's not fun.” But it is also not a waste of time. It's not without purpose. And Jesus is telling us this right out of the gate. And then He something interesting. “What will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul?” In other words if we could have a life of ease and get everything that we wanted but we’d lost our identity, we got sucked into creating a false identity because of all the stuff that we have achieved and all of the stuff that we have and we thought that this is who we are and we lost the plot of the story that we are a child of the most-high, then in the end, what does that profit a person? It’s a pile of stuff. It may be cool stuff, but it's a pile of stuff. Hundred years from now nobody's gonna care about any of that stuff except for maybe antique dealers. And, so, let's pour that into our coffee and stir it around today and keep it with us. Endurance is unfortunately my friends, a part of the journey. Endurance, fortunately my friends is a part of the journey. This is how we grow. Let's just bring it really close. Let's pretend we decided that today is the last day we’re going to go through the Bible in community and we step off this train, we don't go any further, we don't endure until the end, we don't maintain the rhythm until the end, we are going to lose so much that God will gift us through His word. But those of us who stick it out show up every day and continue to show up every day, week by week, month by month, we’re going to see transformation in our lives. And this is about the time where were starting to think about, maybe not doing the New Year's resolutions anymore. Like, yeah, salad’s getting’ old and all the stuff that goes with it. And then there's all the temptations all around us to just jump off the wagon of health. And, so, we do. We’re like just this once. And then it becomes the trajectory that we head in. And, so, we can get to the year…end of the year having had wonderful goals for the year that we didn't endure and so we didn't achieve. If we want to achieve being a disciple of Jesus, then we’re gonna have to deny ourselves and take up our cross and follow Him.

Prayer:

Jesus, we enter into that. We invite Your Holy Spirit into that to apply it to our lives in places that need attention in this area right now. But we also acknowledge, You're not asking for something You didn't model. Like You’re not demanding something that You didn't show how it's done and explain it. And we have all these kinds of ideas about what it is to deny ourselves and take up our cross and follow You when at the end of the day this really does boil down to what is driving us. How is it that we are trying to achieve an identity? What is making us continue forward on any given path? What we have to do is lay down anything that's not a path that pursues You. The things that distract us or the things that pull us away, what does that profit us? Help us to see that clearly Holy Spirit, we pray. In the name of Jesus, we ask. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is home base, it’s the website, it’s where you find out what’s going on around here always. It’s how to get connected. So, be familiar. Come visit. If you’re using the Daily Audio Bible app, you can...you can do all this within the app as well.

Be familiar with the Community section. That’s where the Prayer Wall lives. That’s where different links to social media, different channels on social media we participate in. It’s how to get connected in that way.

The Daily Audio Bible Shop is there with things to take this journey deeper, things to take this journey wider, things to just wrap ourselves in and be involved and understand that we’re involved in a community as we make this journey through the Scriptures. So, check it out.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible that can be done at dailyaudiobible.com as well or in the app as well. And I thank you. If…if the mission that we share in common here to bring the spoken word of God read fresh every day and given freely to the world to anyone who will listen to it anywhere upon this beautiful planet that God has given us to be home any time of day or night, and to build community around that rhythm so that we know we’re not alone – we’re not alone in our quest to move through the Bible and understand it, but we’re not alone, period. We’re not alone, we’re in community together as we take this journey. If that has meant something in your life, then thank you for your partnership. There’s a link on the homepage. If you’re using the app, the link, there’s a button in the upper right-hand corner or if you prefer the mail, the mailing address is PO Box 1996 Spring Hill Tennessee 37174.

And, as always, if you have a prayer request or encouragement, you can hit the Hotline button in the app, which is the little red button up at the top or there are number of numbers that you can use. In the Americas 877-942-4253 is the number to call. If you are in the UK or Europe 44-20-3608-8078 is the number or if you are in Australia or that part of the world. 61-3-8820-5459 is the number to call.

And that's it for today. I’m Brian I love you and I'll be waiting for you here tomorrow.

Community Prayer and Praise:

Hi this is Amy calling from the center of Canada. I…I’m lying awake in bed again, another sleepless night. I suffer from insomnia and it's exasperated my…by my depression. I also have type one diabetes and have been unemployed for almost a year now. I feel like I have a lot on my plate. And the thing that I can't stop thinking about and I feel almost obsessive about at this point is finding a partner, a husband. I feel really feel really lonely and I’m…I feel angry that God has let me have this strong desire for my whole life that I have not been able to get rid of or fulfill. And I know it's not up to me but it's really hard for me to let go of trying to do all the right things and go on the dating apps and it all feels so empty.

Hello, Daily Audio Bible this is Duane from Wisconsin. All praise and glory to our wonderful Lord and savior Jesus Christ. Today is January 21st. Yes, I've been away for a bit. My wife and I took a vacation. We went out to see our youngest daughter, our 9th granddaughter was born on Christmas Day and they live out in Seattle. So, we took the train from Milwaukee out to Seattle. So, that was fun to see the beautiful country they God has created. So, everyone's doing well. And I want to thank all of you for your prayers. I am calling in for God's Smile and then there was a gentleman who called in and he said he only has apparently a few months to live. He has cancer and I apologize I can't remember your name, but you wanted us to pray for you. So, Lord we lift up God's Smile and this gentleman who was told that he doesn't have long on this earth. He's battling cancer. Be with God’s Smile Lord. We ask for Your comfort and peace. She is such a joy for us Lord and the peace she gives us, we are asking that You would give her that piece, the piece that she…that flows through her from You to us Lord, we're now asking You would allow it to flow from us to her and that she would get the rest she needs and the strength she needs to carry on and be a light for You as she is. We ask that You be with this gentleman who's battling cancer who has a wife and children Lord. We're asking that You will give him extended time on this earth to be a light for him for his wife to be there with his children and grandchildren. We want to lift this up to You are great and precious Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. And God bless.

Good morning my name is Soniato here from Ontario CA. Please key from my family in Boston they have Covid 19. Her name is Jeannie – Jeanine, Evelyn, Gobanni. Please pray for them for healing. Thank you. God bless you.

Good evening everybody this is God’s Smile here. You know, this community’s a beautiful thing and sometimes a caller just touches you very deep inside and I've just listened to a lady who's recently got out of hospital with Covid an she said that her husband had left her after 46 years. She's no help at the moment and she said that the home health hasn't kicked in. And she's alone. So, I don't know your name dear lady, but I'd like to pray for you. Father God, we as a community, we wrap our owns around this lady and we ask that You would breathe and surround her with Your love not that Your love is never there but Father would You whip it up, would You whip that love up so that it is felt and seen. May she hear You as she reads Your word. And Father when this home health kicks in, I ask dear Lord, I ask because I can come to You and ask these things that this home help would be more than just a help, she would become a friend. And could I go as far to ask dear Lord that You would give her a Christian lady? Wouldn't that be just wonderful? Father I don't know if she has a church, but I pray the church around her would support her. Time's ticking away. I send you my love and a kiss. Kiss kiss. Love you all.

Hi family this is Biola from Maryland I hope you're all doing well. Brian and Jill God bless you. God bless your ministry. We're looking forward to China's little baby. Well, I pray that God will continue to touch her and protect her. Family today is January 22nd. Today would have been my father's birthday. He went home to be with the Lord in 2016 September 20. So, I just want to ask for prayer especially for my mom who is still grieving his death that God would just uphold her and be with her Jesus’ name. A listener from Montana, oh my gosh sister. I listened to your message like two or three times. I was so intrigued and convicted by what you said. Sister, you have such a sweet spirit. I am so happy that you found Daily Audio Bible. You know it is because of new listeners like you that I am proud to give to Daily Audio Bible. It is ministry worth sewing into. Sister I pray that God will continue to let you experience His joy. I can…I can tell from your voice that joy in spite of the blindness I am thanking God for your life and for your sweet 2-year-old and for your husband and for your marriage and I pray that God will continue to just wrap His arms around you and just show you His love intangible ways in the name of Jesus. And then I'm also praying for the brother who called in and said he was blind, and he just found Daily Audio Bible app. Oh wonderful brother. I pray that as…__ word is you walk by faith not by sight that God will show you different things in your life and He will answer your prayers. Before you call He will answer in the name of Jesus. Now Sarah from London I am praying for you sister that God will touch you He will continue to wrap His arms around you He will make your heart for Him. You will have a heart that follows hard after Him in Jesus…

This is Chili from Florida and I'm calling in for an urgent prayer request. I've had some heart issues for quite a while and now I'm in the…the hospital. You know chest pains and just really scared right now. Trying to have faith and trust in the Lord that His hands of healing will heal and touch my body and get me through this. It's just…it's just a scary time, you know, 'cause I did have to also confess to my wife of a sin. I sinned against her recently. So, my hearts also broken. So, I just really need prayer with you guys 'cause I'm just scared right now. Thank you guys I love you very much and I've been with this group for years…

Hi Daily Audio Bible this is Abba’s Joy. It's been a while since I've called in but first, I just want to say I'm so excited because I read through the entire Bible with you all last year and it's been something that I've wanted to do for so long, so many years as a believer. And I finally did it and it was life changing. It was a huge blessing and to be able to do it with you guys was just amazing. But I wanted to call in because I wanted to share something. After listening to the wonderful message from yesterday I went back and read the entry in the God of Your Atory and if you don't have it I encourage you to go get it. So, one thing Brian wrote that was profound to me in my current situation. After all that Joseph had to endure which was not by choice or because of anything he did when he saw his brothers he observed. He could have easily spoken what his flesh may have been feeling or even acted on it but like Brian says in his distress he didn't even reveal himself. He goes on to say to slow down and be observant. My biggest challenge right now DAB community is navigating adolescence with my teenage son. He loves the Lord with all of his heart and has been raised in the word but there's a lot happening that overwhelms an exhaust’s my heart. And anyway, Brian helped me to see that I don't have to reveal myself in my distress I just need to just slow down and sometimes just observe the situation because I don't even know where my son's heart may be at the time. And responding in my distress will only provoke him and escalate both of our emotions. So, for those parents in the same boat as I am trying to raise godly teenagers in the midst of a…of everything that's going on with all these distractions I encourage...

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d3sertdream3r · 4 years

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How do you feel about Boba Fett coming back? Personally I’m really upset that the whiny fanboys are getting exactly what they want AGAIN 😤 Why do they only listen to the most toxic people?? Mandalorian was a great show, now idk if I’m going to watch season 2. I don’t want more meaningless nostalgia in Star Wars 😔

Ohhh boy. Buckle up folks; this is going to be a long one!

Little disclaimer before I begin; I don’t have any inside knowledge of Lucasfilm or Disney. I’ve just been collecting knowledge over the years from many different interviews, autobiographies, behind the scenes content, etc that inform my opinions. I’m merely a random citizen with binoculars trying to see what is going on over there, because it’s definitely been one train wreck after another these days.

Now let’s kick it!

I was conflicted about the Boba Fett news. The prequels were coming out when I was a kid, and I actually saw those movies before the originals; the prequels ARE my originals. They were Star Wars to me. When people mentioned SW, the first people that came to my head were Anakin, Obi Wan, and Padme; not Luke, Han, and Leia. I already knew who Vader was when I watched the originals because of this, and I also knew who Boba Fett was. He was Jango Fett’s son and a fellow clone of the troopers.

When I watched the originals, I felt like his death was stupid. Not because I thought his armor was cool, but because like I said; I knew who he was. So hearing that the official canon is bringing him back made me happy for that poor boy that watched his father get decapitated to have his chance at a more fulfilling ending. However, like you, I was annoyed. Because the fanboys have been getting everything they want lately even though they are never satisfied with it, and the women of the fandom have been largely ignored.

But I’ve been watching Gallery, the documentary about how The Mandalorian was made. Keep in mind it was being made around the same time as Tros, yet the themes and messages are completely the opposite. Dave Filoni gives a speech in the second episode of Gallery that covers the mythic storytelling of SW from The Phantom Menace to Return of the Jedi. It’s very powerful and is the essence of everything most of the female fans have been saying from Day 1.

This got me thinking about the behavior of certain LF employees on social media towards Reylos and female fans in general, while others have been very supportive and blatant that they didn’t like Tros. Actors in Tros that spoke of redemption and a unique ending for the movie that later changed to confused faces when asked how they felt about the film. Chaotic productions of films and shows that always result in “creative differences.” Empty nostalgia in Tros vs deeply thought out lore and heartfelt themes in the video games, tv shows, comics, novels, and TLJ. I feel like there is a civil war going on at Lucasfilm.

Some of them want nostalgia, fan service, Luke Skywalker as the untouchable God of Star Wars, evildoers to be punished without remorse, Rey to be the new vessel of God Luke that stays pure and stands alone, etc. The fanbros certainly back those people and I think Bob Iger/Disney does too. That’s why Tros happened; JJ said he was on the phone with Bob every day during production. And Bob told George Lucas that pleasing the fans was more important than anything else when The Force Awakens was being made, which GL did NOT agree with at all. He even admitted that GL said he felt betrayed by the vision Disney had for LF.

Dave Filoni and Kathleen Kennedy are massive GL fans and close friends of his. They worked with him a lot before Disney bought Lucasfilm, and they know how he likes his Star Wars and what it all means to him. I’m not KK’s biggest fan, but I don’t blame her for Tros; she has shown she ain’t afraid to fire people if they try to create something in SW that doesn’t match up with the themes of it, as seen with how she dumped Colin Trevarrow’s terrible script. She was personally responsible for both Adam Driver playing Kylo/Ben, and Rian Johnson directing TLJ. She tried to get Rian back for Tros but he was busy with Knives Out. She wanted to push back the release date so there was time to make sure the ending was fulfilling. She has said many times she wanted this era of SW to be for the younger generations and new fans, not retreading old ground and pleasing those who were in theaters for the originals. As soon as JJ was put in charge of the film, he was spending his time talking to Bob Iger instead of her. He also didn’t work with the Story Group at all, which shows why it creates so much dissonance with all the other stories in SW.

Meanwhile Rian worked closely with Story Group, exchanged notes with Dave Filoni, talked a lot with KK, etc. You could say he got an A+ on his homework! 😉 Rian was backing George’s vision and his themes and what he was trying to tell the world when he started production on A New Hope. GL liked TLJ a lot and talked to Rian right after he saw it to tell him it was beautifully made.

So, it seems the root of the problem here is the battle between the creators that support George’s inherently feminine and compassionate version of SW, and those that support Disney’s space ships and fanbros version of SW.

Dave Filoni is 100% on the side of George Lucas, KK, Rian Johnson, and good old Joseph Campbell’s version of Star Wars. He is the one that is in charge of all SW tv shows. He oversees The Mandalorian. Season 1 was marketed as a badass bounty hunter kicking butt through the Outer Rim, but it was actually about a lonely man longing for a family and a deeper purpose in life. Instead of just being a random guy kicking ass, he is a guy trying to protect his child from evil; it’s all about family. Like SW is supposed to be. Like what Tros miserably failed at and then attempted to claim it was.

Dave didn’t bring Maul back or Ahsoka back several times just to please fans. He did it because it was good for the story; those characters supported the themes of family and redemption and mythic storytelling in different ways. I don’t think he is bringing Boba Fett back for nostalgia; I think he is going to use him in a way that will develop the themes of the story and ultimately support GL, compassion, redemption, family, and love conquers all.

I don’t have any idea how yet, but all I’m saying is that the last season of Clone Wars had several shot for shot parallels to TLJ. There is a reason for everything he does, even the framing of a scene. So I have a lot of hope that bringing back a character from the dead will have a great reason too.

Let’s hope that someday George Lucas’ Star Wars wins the battle when it comes to Ben Solo as well. Until then, May the Force be With You!

#keep the faith!#even though it is hard right now #we do have people making SW stories on our side #boba fett #dave filoni #kathleen kennedy #george lucas #star wars #the mandalorian #the mandalorian spoilers #reylo #ben solo #kylo ren #tros #anti tros #ask #anon #tlj #rian johnson

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cb204 · 4 years

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ℎ𝑒𝑎𝑑𝑐𝑎𝑛𝑜𝑛 / views on romance

i’ve talked about it in bits before, but i figured i’d give it its own post since i’m redoing many of my hc’s anyway: i despise the choice to set joseph with a nameless wife and daughter. i hate that they haphazardly decided to give him what sebastian had taken in some shitty effort to draw a nonexistent parallel. i hate that there is virtually no evidence of this in-game, in situations where you’d think a child and/or wife would be high in mind, you know, right before death. i especially hate on a personal note that they specifically phrased it that his ‘wife wears the pants’ because that sentence alone makes my skin crawl in regard to any relationship, which when healthy are obviously supposed to be an equal partnership.

i do think joseph wants these things: a spouse, even possibly kids in the future. i do think he naturally seeks out the sort of acceptance and fulfillment that previously said healthy relationship would provide, but he also has a profound talent for sabotaging himself every time before things get too serious.

some of the time, yes, his pre-existing intimately close friendship with sebastian is the cause; plenty of other times though it’s just him, with the insecurities and expectations of himself that feed into an unrealistic mentality that he isn’t worth the lengths it would take just to try to make a relationship happen. it becomes a self-fufilling prophecy in turn that’s unfair to everyone involved.

intimacy and personal time who??? the amount of patience and trust for that amount of dedication to not a personal life would have to just be. unreal. and then when he does try to fit in space for another person, he’s normally distant, inattentive, or just exhausted. it’s unfeasible. he doesn’t even keep plants because even he knows he can’t give them the effort, and tends to fold quickly and without much argument when they want to move on.

often it even seems he is going through the motions simply to do so and hoping some enjoyment or fulfillment comes after, and eventually he becomes quietly resigned even for the wrong reasons that something has to give.

#( 𝒊𝒊. ) —— study.#( 𝒊. ) —— queue.

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unclefungusthegoat · 6 years

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Far Cry 5 Theory #3- Faith And The Greek Goddesses

Hi all, and welcome to the third in a series of Far Cry 5 meta posts! Today, I’m talking about the often sadly overlooked, beloved little sister, Faith! It’s not an original theory this time, instead I’m building on already existing and acknowledged symbolism within the game!

This one is 1972 words, so another long one, but I hope it’s interesting!

Far Cry 5 is laden with Christian symbolism- talk of God, baptism, souls and sins- but there is one very interesting example of where this trend is broken. This moment comes within the scene where Faith entices Burke to kill Virgil, and then himself.

As she approaches her victims, she says to the Deputy:

“Do you know what hubris is? Arrogance before the gods. The Greeks saw it as a dangerous form of pride that invoked the goddess Nemesis, who would seek retribution.”

This is the only example in the entire game (and indeed, the supporting materials) where the situation’s religious undertones are blatantly derivative of Greek mythology. And while Faith is heavily under the influence of Joseph’s doctrine and ideology, I feel that this very deliberate reference can shed some light on how she decided to play the new role she had been given.

Not just as a Herald... but as a goddess.

Aphrodite. Cybele. Psyche.

Nemesis.

Nemesis is the Greek goddess of retribution, justice and revenge, a figure who punishes arrogance and pride.

Immediately after making this reference, Faith goes on to say:

“If violence is the only language you choose to speak, I’ll speak your language.”

She directly places herself in the role of Nemesis, deciding that she must combat the Deputy’s violence, their hubris, by retaliating with Burke and Virgil’s deaths.

Faith is the only one of the Seeds who actually punishes the Deputy’s actions.

INSPIRATION

Due to this reference, it appears that Rachel took heavy inspiration from the Greek mythology when performing her role as Faith. It has been discussed before (in this post by teamhawkeye and weekend-writer) that she may have learned how to be a Herald from Jacob, since she directly quotes him within the game, and I also think that all of Jacob’s talk of humanity, history and falling empires may have influenced her to look at the ancient societies, to understand the faiths that made their empires so strong.

She would learn of their all-powerful gods and of cruel punishments administered to those proud enough to challenge them- think of the fates of Medusa, Arachne, Marsyas and Tiresias.

And seeing how successful the ancient gods were at eliciting respect and obedience, she decided to put their methodologies into practice.

BUT WHY?

Delusions of grandeur.

It’s easy to imagine, that having been once cast out from society, Rachel might become enamoured with her new position as a Herald, as the one Joseph hand-picked to be at his side. She rose from nothing to become a leader, loved and feared. She now held the ability to control people entirely. She was now divine.

It’s pretty likely that power went to her head.

I have been considering the possibility that Faith believes she is supposed to act as a deterrent for Joseph’s own hubris. Joseph would worry that to wield the power he has, and to carry the notion that he is chosen by God, may make him arrogant and tyrannical, and he would need someone to keep his pride in check. Greg Bryk has discussed how Faith is a motherly figure to Joseph- who better to aid him in a battle with his own sins than a parental figure, just as he, as a ‘Father’, aids the atonement of his flock?

But why would Joseph ask her to take inspiration from an ancient religion that isn’t part of the Eden’s Gate doctrine? Why would he raise her to be a godly figure, when he and his brothers were simply prophets?

He wouldn’t.

So maybe Faith, with talk of her divinity as her new form of cocaine, combined Joseph’s request to assist him, her developing delusions of grandeur, and the ancient stories she learned from Jacob, to come to the conclusion that she was special, chosen like the heroes of old?

And so she decided to become a goddess, as evidence of her worth.

Faith wasn’t named by the Voice in Joseph’s original visions like John and Jacob were, and I imagine she’d be aware of that. Perhaps she felt bitter, outcast, not quite part of the group. A Herald, but not a prophet. A Jessop, not a true Seed.

She knew she must have a purpose, after all, she was chosen.

Perhaps she was chosen as a guide for the prophet, so that he might remain humble and loyal to his holy cause?

SO WHAT PROOF OF THIS IS THERE?

HER ORIGINS

Nemesis is the child of Nyx, the goddess of night, and Erebus, god of darkness. And so it can be argued that she was quite literally ‘born of darkness’. Both Nyx and Erebor were born of Chaos which the Greeks described as a formless, eternal dark abyss between the Earth and sky, or upon which the Earth rests.

In one of Faith’s broadcasts, she can be heard saying ‘Life comes from chaos’.

The Greeks' dark void, Chaos, was worshipped as the very first thing to exist.

It seems too much of a coincidence for her to make this statement, a sentiment not shared by any of the other Seeds, if she had not been influenced by Greek mythology. And it could be that Faith’s belief in this doctrine comes from the parallels it has with her own story:

“Faith flies divine—and Rachel…Rachel gropes around in the darkness. I left her there a long time ago.”

Rachel was born into a world of darkness, by abusive parents. She tried to remake herself using drugs, but still was lost in the ‘chaos’. It was only when Joseph found her that she finally became ‘Faith’... that she became ‘Nemesis’ and came into the light, ‘born’ as the person she was meant to be.

There are also interpretations where Nemesis has no father, which is all the more interesting, considering Joseph’s epithet.

SYMBOLISM

The above depiction of her is especially interesting, as Nemesis holds two of her symbols- that of scales, and a sword. These are the very symbols of her adoptive brothers. We have little insight of how Faith interacts with John and Jacob, but we know that Joseph apparently dotes on her. Perhaps, if she is indeed consumed by the notion that Joseph chose her, made her a favourite, that she feels she has some degree of control over them too?

THE ANGELS

Faith appears to have taken inspiration from Nemesis in her manufacturing of the Bliss, and the effects it takes upon those consumed by it.

The Angels are overdosed so heavily on Bliss, that they no longer have free will. This is an irreversible process, and one wonders why such a process is needed, if the Bliss is influential enough upon most people to make them suggestible to the Project?

Well, perhaps Faith suggested it, in reference to Adrasteia.

Adrasteia was an alternative name for Nemesis, and in Ancient Greek, roughly translates to ‘one from whom there is no escape’.

Interestingly, Adrasteia is also the epithet of Cybele, the goddess of childbirth. Could it be that Faith, in a twisted way, thinks of the Angels as her children- a note from a Priestess describes them as ‘extensions’ of Faith- and one very telling phone message, has her saying:

“A baby is a sack of screaming, shitting, crying impulses with no thoughts, no personality, no understanding of the world beyond feelings. It has no soul. You have to give it one. The only soul we ever have, we receive from others. And it is only others who can take it away.”

Writings on Nemesis has also described how she uses "adamantine bridles" to restrain "the frivolous insolences of mortals”- and it wouldn’t surprise me to think that this is why her Angels wear masks over their mouths. There is a suggestion that their tongues have been removed, but why would Eden’s Gate hide that? They are hardly adverse to graphic reminders of their sins?

THE SIREN AND NARCISSUS

Faith bears the title ‘The Siren’, a creature from Greek mythology famous for leading people to watery graves by seducing them with their voices, and it therefore can be no coincidence that water is a recurring feature within Faith’s scenes. And, as The Siren, Faith uses desires and dreams to entice the disillusioned, before drowning them within the Bliss.

Nemesis is a siren in her own way, famous for leading someone to a watery grave- Narcissus, the man who fell in love with his own reflection.

Parallels can easily be drawn to Burke’s tragic tale. Once proud and confident, but discontented, he sits with the Deputy upon the water, quite literally reflecting upon his new life, filled with love for his new happier self. And though others try to save him, he cannot escape the obsession with these reflections and ultimately dies because of it.

PHYSICAL- APHRODITE?

In the Bliss, Faith seemingly possesses a pair of beautiful white wings. And while initially this may seem to suggest her angelic nature, it seems odd to brand her with the same title as the mindless Angels, when she evidently not only has free will, but also is of great value and deeply cherished by Joseph.

And so now we come to note that Nemesis is actually very often portrayed as a winged figure- the poet Mesomedes described her as “Nemesis, winged balancer of life, dark-faced goddess, daughter of Justice”.

Additionally, it can be argued that Faith also took inspiration from Aphrodite.

Nemesis was said to resemble Aphrodite, the goddess of love who is famously beautiful, and there are multiple lines of dialogue from characters within the game that reflect on Faith’s attractiveness. Hurk even asks if there would be any way of reviving her, because she is so beautiful.

It makes sense that Rachel, riddled with low self-esteem, would choose to empower herself by modelling her image on a goddess so desired. Parallels can be drawn to the Greek tale of the ‘Judgement of Paris’, where Paris, prince of Troy, named Aphrodite as the most beautiful, over Hera and Athena- just as Rachel was chosen by Joseph as the most faithful over Lana and Serena.

Finally, Faith is often seen with butterflies around her. In Greek mythology, the goddess Psyche was a beautiful woman who people began to covet and worship in place of Aphrodite, and she was eventually brought into the service of the goddess, having evoked her wrath.

Psyche is represented with butterfly wings.

SUMMARY

Each of the Seeds act according to their own gospels, inflicted upon them by their own individual ‘Gods’. Joseph’s is the Voice. John’s are the Duncans. Jacob’s is his younger self.

And so who drives Faith?

She adores (and fears) Joseph. She learned from Jacob. But to assume that they are her Gods detracts from the severity of her actions and her evil. It removes her free will... and she is no Angel.

No, she must have set out to find a God of her own.

Tracey says of Faith: ‘This is what she does. Takes. Destroys.’ Faith knew misery in her life before the Project, and so is of the same mindset as the other Seeds- that happiness can only be found by enduring suffering and pain. And she may experience jealousy of others who have never had to suffer.

A quote I found on Nemesis read:

Nemesis believed that no one should ever have too much goodness in their lives, and she had always cursed those who were blessed with countless gifts.

In other words, Nemesis believed in punishing ‘undeserved good fortune’, not necessarily making people suffer completely, but suffer enough.

Just as she did.

Faith saw herself in this vengeful, loyal, beautiful goddess. She recognised her past and new mission within the holy figure’s doctrine. And with Joseph's open attitude as to how the Heralds chose to operate, she could easily merge her fantasies with his.

She became Nemesis, challenging the rightful goddess, and committing the very sin, the hubris, both of them sought to seek out and punish.

#far cry 5 #far cry 5 meta #greek mythology #faith seed #joseph seed #john seed #jacob seed #marshall burke #virgil minkler #wikipedia is totally my friend hahahaha #i'm sorry if stuff is inaccurate #greek mythology is so complicated hahahaha #this started as just an analysis of nemesis #but the others fit so well #I just couldn't ignore them #I've been a coward about posting this for days now #I just get so nervous hahahahaha #hope you enjoy!

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mentalcurls · 5 years

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Martino, the Nativity and 9.5 La Grotta

So I saw @madeforgardens wrote a couple of lovely posts about 9.5 La Grotta and the symbolisms that tie it to Christmas and the Nativity, in particular to Mary and Joseph. I do see the parallels, but the analogy my mind actually went to is another: the three Magi, or Three Wise Men or Three Kings.

For anyone who might be unfamiliar with these figures, a quick rundown: in the Gospels, Matthew tells of “wise men from the east” who travel to find baby Jesus and pay their respects and bring him gifts. They know of his birth because they saw “his star rise” (usually interpreted literally; it became a comet in the Middle Ages thanks to Giotto) and it supposedly shows them where to go. Because of the star thing, it’s presumed they were actually zoroastrian priests (also because of the word used in the Gospels, μάγοι) and astrologers and they probably came from Persia. Usually, though, they are called kings, cause it’s easier, and tradition has it they’re three (Balthasar, Melchior and Gaspar). Before actually finding Jesus, they wander ‘round Judaea asking people about “the newborn king” and they get stopped by king Herod, who is evil and tries to trick them into telling him where “king” Jesus is so he can kill him. The Magi manage to shrug him off thanks to an angel who warns them Herod is, infact, evil. Then they finally find Jesus.

Just like the Magi, in the clip Martino doesn't know exactly where he's supposed to go, he only knows he’s looking for a family with a child (and how fitting that this modern version of the Holy Family is made up of a man who left his wife and a woman who was raising her son alone and that they live together “in sin”) and he is following the “star” aka Christmas lights (notice that the lights subtly become more and brighter as Martino gets closer to Paola and his dad’s place).

This metaphor also works really well with Adeste Fideles, because the song is an invitation, an exhortation for everybody to go worship Jesus, like the Magi do.

Before the dinner, Martino had discussed with Giovanni whether to bring Paola’s kid a gift, like the Magi brought gold, frankincense and myrrh for Jesus.

When Marti arrives, he finds a mother, a father and their kid just like the Magi find the Holy Family. I think it’s telling that, despite the fact that Marti’s dad and Paola are botting making preparations to welcome Martino to dinner, Paola’s kid seems the one who’s readiest to accept Martino, seeing how he unquestioningly fits his hand to Marti’s on the glass (when I as a child would have screamed bloody murder because a stranger was approaching me kids these days), because in the parallel he represents Jesus, who is God, who is love, so that’s a message, LudoBesse (who said Skam Italia wasn’t talking about religion this season? First the “holy” family, now “Jesus” “accepting” Martino, who is not straight). This is also the first shot in which we see red lights, behind Martino (which imho confirms that interaction is about love).

To further the Magi parallel, Martino even lowers himself to the same level as the child, similar to the way the Magi are often described and pictured kneeling before baby Jesus to honor him.

But then Marti pulls back. In that moment he gets Niccolò’s text. And oh. Martino is not actually supposed to follow the path lit by the “starry” Christmas lights, the sign he’s waiting for is that SMS, instead. That text makes Marti realize he’s not in the right place just like the angel warned the Magi to stay away from Herod, and it is also the “star” he follows to, basically, love, who in his case is Niccolò (while in the Gospels love is Jesus, of course).

At that point, Marti looks back inside (through the glass!) and sees that the kid has both his parents with him and plenty of gifts. The family will be fine without him. So he leaves the warm light he can’t quite get to behind the glass, inside Paola’s house, and goes, follows his sign. The light from the phone, from the text, is blue. He the takes the blue blue bus through a Rome that starts off blue then gets progressively more and more red, to finally get to the completely red school and find Niccolò and love.

#skam italia #skamit meta #martino rametta #9.5 la grotta #christmas #niccolò fares #nicotino #skamit #martino's dad #paola folena (skam italia)#a. writes

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sly2o · 6 years

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Remaining season speculation...

I make no guarantee that any of the below is correct or accurate. It’s just the path I think the rest of the season will follow based on what I’ve seen, what I’ve read, and a bit of my intuition/imagination. Featuring: BTS spoiler pics from Jason that I don’t think we’ve seen aired yet. This is plot focused - no “will they/won’t they” relationship spec.

5x08 - "How we get to peace"

Clarke, Bellamy, etc after some serious drama almost successfully pull off of their "get rid of Octavia" plan.

Almost.

The cliffhanger of the episode is that Madi betrays them and warns Octavia.

Baseless spec: part of O's "strategy" meeting with Madi is a signal she can use to subtly warn Octavia of danger.

Jason told us before that Madi will have a "you may be the chancellor, but I'm in charge" moment with Clarke, and this would be a good moment for that to happen. Madi has no reason to betray her fav celeb delinquent yet.

The previous title for this episode was “secret weapon”. Maybe it has no meaning... but it could also point towards the worms being delivered to Eden, and/or the Chip as a tool to unseat Octavia.

5x09 - "Sic Semper Tyrannis"

We know Murphy starts a fire from the episode description. My spec is that Murphy will start the fire as a way to stop the worms - but it will burn out of control. Jason talked before about how the Valley wouldn’t be able to support everyone - and a fire that destroys too much would do just that... and also would be a call back to when the Ark (and sole hope for survival) went up in flames in S4.

The scripts implied that the girl who died on the operating table was supposed to be pregnant. I think they moved that pregnancy over to Diyoza once the writers found out the actress was pregnant

Even with this reveal, I'm sticking with Diyoza getting stabbed to death by the Eligius prisoners in 5x09, or getting shot in the back by McCreary. Diyoza has been the clearest path to stability - so of course the show has to get rid of her. Either of those modes of death would be a nod to famous uses of the title of the episode.

I also bring up the pregnancy because Abby not being able to save the person injured - NOR the child inside them - is going to reinforce how the drugs have made her incompetent. The death of a child will hopefully make her try to get clean.. but could also send her in a worse direction... we'll see.

5x10 - "The last" (title not confirmed)

Having claimed the valley, putting Octavia back in charge, and needing a solution to the new people to food ratio problem they have - the fighting pit returns.

In a reverse parallel to 4x11 - it is the people who watched Octavia win the conclave that get thrown into the pit.

Kane - for obvious revenge reasons

Echo - for obvious revenge reasons

Wild card #1: Gaia - for supporting Madi as a possible commander - possibly revealed during Clarke/Bellamy/etc’s attempted coup in 5x08. Also there’s some sad symbolism to Gaia (named for the Earth goddess) dying and the Earth being brought to death by the death. Wildcard because if she dies, then who performs the ascension ceremony in the finale? Also wildcard because this timing will influence how Indra behaves towards Octavia, and their already strained relationship.

Wildcard #2/3: do Bellamy or Clarke get thrown in? Where are they now? Wildcard because - what happens to them after 5x08? Does Octavia lock them up until the next fight? Infect them with the worms and send them away?

Either way Kane and Echo will be put in the pit by Octavia and the fandom will have another melt down because Echo will wins (and we know she’s gonna win if she gets put in because of the finale BTS pics from Jason). The cliffhanger of this episode will be Kane - before he dies - revealing what “The Dark Year” was to Spacekru and any remaining members of Eligius.

For the record - Speculation a death is not the same as lobbying for a death. I don’t want any of the characters I spec’d as dying to die or leave the show.

5x11 - "The Cannibalism Dark Year" (title not confirmed)

After seeming like an irredeemable monster by 5x10 by having Octavia essentially execute some favs, the writers will give us whiplash by flashing back to The Dark Year and showing how Octavia and the others were forced by their circumstances into impossible situations. It will give some of us conflicted feelings for the finale and cause all sorts of fandom discourse.

Also cannibalism definitely happened[source].

5x12/13 - “Damocles” (title not confirmed)

...space? Other people have written more eloquently about this theory.

Something finally unlocks the Eligius 3 encrypted file. I’m guessing that’s why they need the ascension ceremony (to get that code from Becca’s memory). The only other option here is my far-flung theory about Abby still having Becca’s code in her, but I think I need to give that theory a rest.

There’s spec out there that what the Eligius prisoners need is another blood cure. I’m not sure about that - but going back to Becca’s lab is somewhat implied and would be a way to make more nightbloods.

Does Octavia die? Or does she just get left behind when our mains go to space without her? I’m leaning towards dies, but we’ll see. Also Lola Flannery tweeted something like “thank you for letting me be your Madi”... implying either death, or a time jump where the character would get aged up and require a new actress.

---

Missing pieces below cut.

What I wrote above was me trying to get the overall plot of the remaining season sorted out. There’s definitely a lot of pieces missing because I have no sense of timing on when their arcs will move forward, or how they will move forward.

I’ve got nearly no spec in here on Raven, because this season hers is a romance story which is hard for me to guess about for timing. Her partnership with Shaw will be crucial for getting on board the Eligius mothership and repairing it - or finding an alternative ship - but I don’t have a sense of when those moments will happen.

I’ve also got no spec on Monty in here either. He hasn’t had much of his own arc this season, and instead has been pushed into the role of moral compass and driver towards peace. He’s important - steering people back on track when they want to fall back into their old ways - but again, I have no sense on timing for him and his actions.

I’ve got nothing in here on Nathan Miller or Jackson. They are true wild cards for me and we haven’t seen enough at this point to guess what’s next for them. Jarod Joseph got flown down to California for a meeting with the writers last year, which makes me think that he’ll have a bigger role next season. Perhaps we’ll see something set up later on in the season, but it’s impossible to guess right now. However, I will guess that when push comes to shove, he’ll defect and go to space with the rest of the group.

Last but not least, I don’t have a sense on Murphy and Emori either. I have a lot of personal feelings tied up in this, so I’m not going to dig into it - but I do know it’s missing. ... also, why didn’t we see Emori in the finale BTS pics? Hopefully she was busy preparing the ship with Shaw somewhere else.

#the 100 #the 100 bts #the 100 speculation #clarke griffin #bellamy blake #octavia blake #the 100 madi #echo kom azgeda #marcus kane #ok I'm not tagging all the characters #tw: addiction

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encephalonfatigue · 4 years

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capital and the plantationocene: faith or defeat

a review of Anna Tsing’s “The Mushroom at the End of the World”

Since my late undergraduate years, Donna Haraway has been a continuous figure of fascination for me. I always found her to be a very fashionable writer, maybe because I had a very unfashionable taste for 90’s postmodernism during my politically formative years. Around the time I started toying around with vegetable gardening in my backyard I began getting fairly interested in Haraway’s work on companion species and how species are mutually constituted by each other. Species (including humans) of course do not exist in a vacuum, but exist in relation to other species, and have been formed by the history of these other species with whom they have been interacting over vast periods of time, genetically and behaviourally adapting to what Haraway calls ‘kin’ — family. (Also Haraway references in Orphan Black only added fuel to this smouldering interest.)

More recently, Haraway’s Marxism has been more often foregrounded in discussions. I suppose this is simply a result of the political mood that has been surfacing over the past few years. But I listened to a podcast interview Haraway did with Jacobin on why using the term ‘anthropocene’ was inadequate for trying to understand the nature of the anthropogenic climate catastrophe currently underway. Many leftists use the (rather clumsy) term ‘capitalocene’ to signal that it is the specific political economy of capitalism and specifically the actions of the capitalist class — the wealthy few — that are driving this climate catastrophe. Haraway mentions she finds that term useful but more often refers to a term that her colleague Anna Tsing uses which is ‘plantationocene’, which signals the type of socio-ecological and political-economic organization that came to exist under colonialism that became the basis of capitalist production today — and how that was the driving force behind the ongoing climate catastrophe. This is how I first encountered Anna Tsing.

It is interesting how certain liberal science writers like Elizabeth Kolbert in The Sixth Extinction go out of their way to try and frame ecological destruction as an intrinsically human thing. Almost as if it is inevitable that humans as a species would cause mass extinctions either way — with or without capitalism. Ironically, this is a rather fascist idea behind a lot of eco-fascist calls for genocide. Haraway sometimes gets accused of this because she emphasizes population control as an important ecological tactic (with slogans like “Make kin, not babies”), even though she has been extremely critical of these sorts of fascist impulses in movements like deep ecology. Haraway’s emphasis on population control is inverted from the typical liberal one that carries deep anxieties over ballooning third world populations. Haraway claims that having a child in the highly consumptive environment of a Western ‘middle-class’ life is far more worrying than having a child as a third world family. I ultimately don’t really agree with Haraway’s emphasis on population as a primary mechanism of dealing with this climate catastrophe, but certainly I think it’s worth admitting that our planet can only sustain a certain number of human beings.

I want to point out though how radically different indigenous anthropologies are from the sort of picture Kolbert paints in The Sixth Extinction. For example, Leanne Simpson talks about how human abandonment is not the solution to environmental destruction but human care and responsibility:

“So when I think of the land as my mother or if I think of it as a familial relationship, I don’t hate my mother because she’s sick, or because she’s been abused. I don’t stop visiting her because she’s been in an abusive relationship and she has scars and bruises. If anything, you need to intensify that relationship because it’s a relationship of nurturing and caring.”

The botanist Robin Wall-Kimmerer also talks about finding this common notion among her ecology students that humans are not beneficial to ecosystems:

“One otherwise unremarkable morning I gave the students in my General Ecology class a survey. Among other things, they were asked to rate their understanding of the negative interactions between humans and the environment. Nearly every one of the two hundred students said confidently that humans and nature are a bad mix. These were third-year students who had selected a career in environmental protection, so the response was, in a way, not very surprising. They were well schooled in the mechanics of climate change, toxins in the land and water, and the crisis of habitat loss. Later in the survey, they were asked to rate their knowledge of positive interactions between people and land. The median response was “none.”

I was stunned. How is it possible that in twenty years of education they cannot think of any beneficial relationships between people and the environment? …When we talked about this after class, I realized that they could not even imagine what beneficial relations between their species and others might look like. How can we begin to move toward ecological and cultural sustainability if we cannot even imagine what the path feels like? If we can’t imagine the generosity of geese? These students were not raised on the story of Skywoman.”

I think what people like Haraway and Tsing offer is a framing beyond nature as something radically distinct from humans, as if humans are not part of nature or ecosystems. Their critique of rendering nature as something static or pure is also at the same time a critique of anthropocentrism. To recognize humans as a species formed in parallel together with all other species on this planet, and that we as a species affect other species just as other species affect us, and affect each other also. What we cannot lose sight of is the hegemonic influence the humans species (more specifically an elite subset of the human species) has had on all other species on this planet. We cannot divorce anthropocentrism and certain destructive humanisms from a proper class analysis.

Tsing actually works through a number of Marxist concepts throughout the book. She explores labour (wage labour and precarious gig labour), capital, privatization, alienation, and commodification. I think many on the left are quite impatient of postmodern sermonizing (maybe rightly so), yet Tsing is working in the tradition of Marx and has many worthwhile things to say. Some of Marx’s earliest articles as a journalist and editor of the German paper Rheinische Zitung was on the wooded commons. He wrote a series of articles on the ‘theft’ of firewood from German forests in the autumn of 1842, which many consider formative to his further politicization.

One of Tsing’s observations I found most useful was her exploration of capitalist co-optation which she terms the ‘salvage economy’ writing:

“In this “salvage” capitalism, supply chains organize the translation process in which wildly diverse forms of work and nature are made commensurate—for capital.”

Tsing elaborates:

“In capitalist farms, living things made within ecological processes are coopted for the concentration of wealth. This is what I call “salvage,” that is, taking advantage of value produced without capitalist control. Many capitalist raw materials (consider coal and oil) came into existence long before capitalism. Capitalists also cannot produce human life, the prerequisite of labor. “Salvage accumulation” is the process through which lead firms amass capital without controlling the conditions under which commodities are produced. ”

Tsing then turns to two very interesting literary examples of capitalist co-optation of indigenous knowledge by colonizers to generate capitalist wealth:

“Consider the nineteenth-century ivory supply chain connecting central Africa and Europe as told in Joseph Conrad’s novel Heart of Darkness. The story turns around the narrator’s discovery that the European trader he much admired has turned to savagery to procure his ivory. The savagery is a surprise because everyone expects the European presence in Africa to be a force for civilization and progress. Instead, civilization and progress turn out to be cover-ups and translation mechanisms for getting access to value procured through violence: classic salvage.

For a brighter view of supply-chain translation, consider Herman Melville’s account of the nineteenth-century procurement of whale oil for Yankee investors. Moby-Dick tells of a ship of whalers whose rowdy cosmopolitanism contrasts sharply with our stereotypes of factory discipline; yet the oil they obtain from killing whales around the world enters a U.S.-based capitalist supply chain. Strangely, all the harpooners on the Pequod are unassimilated indigenous people from Asia, Africa, America, and the Pacific. The ship is unable to kill a single whale without the expertise of people who are completely untrained in U.S. industrial discipline. But the products of this work must eventually be translated into capitalist value forms; the ship sails only because of capitalist financing. The conversion of indigenous knowledge into capitalist returns is salvage accumulation. So too is the conversion of whale life into investments.”

I cannot help but recall Caliban in Shakespeare’s Tempest crying out:

“...I loved thee

And show'd thee all the qualities o' the isle,

The fresh springs, brine-pits, barren place and fertile:

Cursed be I that did so! All the charms

Of Sycorax, toads, beetles, bats, light on you!

For I am all the subjects that you have,

Which first was mine own king: and here you sty me

In this hard rock, whiles you do keep from me

The rest o' the island.”

After the extraction of indigenous knowledge for capitalist gain comes the inevitable violent process of enclosure and privatization that dispossesses the colonized from their land.

Tsing is a Southeast Asianist and I think her writings on Southeast Asia are some of the strongest aspects of the book. The influence of Japanese capital for example in Indonesia was fascinating, and how the reinvigoration of Japanese capital after WW2 was largely a function of anti-communist foreign policy.

“American occupiers arranged for the rehabilitation of once-disgraced nationalists and rebuilt the Japanese economy as a bulwark against communism. It was in this climate that associations of banks, industrial enterprises, and specialists in trade formed again, although less formally, as keiretsu “enterprise groups.” At the heart of most enterprise groups was a general trading company in partnership with a bank. The bank transferred money to the trading company, which, in turn, made smaller loans to its associated enterprises… Trading companies advanced loans—or equipment, technical advice, or special marketing agreements—to their supply chain partners overseas. The trading company’s job was to translate goods procured in varied cultural and economic arrangements into inventory. It is hard not to see in this arrangement the roots of the current hegemony of global supply chains, with their associated form of salvage accumulation.”

Tsing also tells the story of Nike which started as a U.S. outpost distributing Japanese sneakers, and eventually moved to this model of heavily subcontracting every stage of production to the extent that one of its Vice Presidents remarked: “We don’t know the first thing about manufacturing. We are marketers and designers,”

It is then interesting to see Tsing write about her first encounter with commodity chains as a Southeast Asianist was to observe how Japanese capital functioned in Indonesia by way of subcontracting not unlike the way Nike did:

“I first learned about supply chains in studying logging in Indonesia, and this is a place to see how the Japanese supply-chain model works. During Japan’s building boom in the 1970s and 1980s, Japanese imported Indonesian trees to make plywood construction molds. But no Japanese cut down Indonesian trees. Japanese general trading companies offered loans, technical assistance, and trade agreements to firms from other countries, which cut logs to Japanese specifications. This arrangement had many advantages for Japanese traders. First, it avoided political risk. Japanese businessmen were aware of the political difficulties of Chinese Indonesians who, resented for their wealth and willingness to cooperate with the more ruthless policies of the Indonesian government, were targets in periodic riots. Japanese businessmen evaded such difficulties for themselves by advancing money to Chinese Indonesians, who made the deals with Indonesian generals and took the risks. Second, the arrangement facilitated transnational mobility. Japanese traders had already deforested the Philippines and much of Malaysian Borneo by the time they got to Indonesia. Rather than adapting to a new country, the traders could merely bring in agents willing to work with them in each location. Indeed, Filipino and Malaysian loggers, financed by Japanese traders, were ready and able to go to work in cutting down Indonesian trees.

Third, supply-chain arrangements facilitated Japanese trade standards while ignoring environmental consequences. Environmentalists looking for targets could find only a grab bag of varied companies, many Indonesian; no Japanese were in the forests. Fourth, supply-chain arrangements accommodated illegal logging as a layer of subcontracting, which harvested trees protected by environmental regulations. Illegal loggers sold their logs to the larger contractors, who passed them on to Japan. No one need be responsible. And—even after Indonesia started its own plywood businesses, in a supply-chain hierarchy modeled on Japanese trade—the wood was so cheap! The cost could be calculated without regard to the lives and livelihoods of loggers, trees, or forest residents. Japanese trading companies made the logging of Southeast Asia possible. They were equally busy with other commodities and in other parts of the world.”

This habit of disarticulating production is the common experience of capitalist alienation. Ching Kwan Lee, who has done some remarkably important studies on Chinese investment in Africa made some very interesting remarks on subcontracting:

“The worldwide trend has been to use subcontractors who in turn offer minimal training to short-term contract workers. The use of casual and contract workers was equally prevalent in construction.”

She observed many mining companies backed by global private capital (e.g. traded on the London stock exchange) were far more likely than Chinese state-owned mining companies to engage in widespread subcontracting in their mining projects:

“CM was particularly notorious and ruthless in using competition among subcontractors to drive down costs, to the extent that there was an internal discourse among its own managers about the “tyranny of finance.””

Lee argues in one of her lectures on her book “The Specter of Global China” that subcontracting and the casualization of labour often significantly reduces the chance that workers will engage in strikes together, and consequently their bargaining power. She says:

“The more subcontracts you have, they fight more over things like equipment — it’s harder to manage. But on the books, you’re cutting costs by subcontracting… Why do I mention this as a very important feature? Because it has extremely important consequences for labour power — the capacity for labour to force the hand of management. Because if you only have one subcontractor, your workers are unified, because they just have one employer. But if you have many many subcontractors, your workforce is totally divided, and that’s why more strikes happen in the Chinese state mine, and they have to make more concessions to their workers because they care so much about.. smooth production.”

Lee’s point is that Chinese mining is less concerned about maximizing profits by selling minerals on a global market, than actually directly using those minerals for state infrastructure projects. This is the classical distinction between ‘use value’ and ‘exchange value’ (mentioned in both Adam Smith and Marx). But Lee emphasizes that this is only in the case of mining. Subcontracting is still very common in Chinese construction and the bargaining power of labour power in Chinese construction in Africa is sometimes even worse than construction undertaken by global private capital. So it cuts both ways.

I work at a small firm engaged in distributing and ‘integrating’ power engineering products and am intimately confronted by the bizarre world of a subcontracting and sub-subcontracting that happens in almost every dimension of the field. It’s remarkable how many middle people are involved in small value-adding steps and plastering their ‘brand names’ on goods simply manufactured in third world countries where labour is much cheaper.

Anyway, with these issues of mining and landscapes ravaged by capitalism, I think Tsing raises an obvious but important point that humans are not the only species that radically transform landscapes. She writes:

“Making worlds is not limited to humans. We know that beavers reshape streams as they make dams, canals, and lodges; in fact, all organisms make ecological living places, altering earth, air, and water. Without the ability to make workable living arrangements, species would die out. In the process, each organism changes everyone’s world. Bacteria made our oxygen atmosphere, and plants help maintain it. Plants live on land because fungi made soil by digesting rocks. As these examples suggest, world-making projects can overlap, allowing room for more than one species. Humans, too, have always been involved in multispecies world making. Fire was a tool for early humans not just to cook but also to burn the landscape, encouraging edible bulbs and grasses that attracted animals for hunting. Humans shape multispecies worlds when our living arrangements make room for other species. This is not just a matter of crops, livestock, and pets. Pines, with their associated fungal partners, often flourish in landscapes burned by humans; pines and fungi work together to take advantage of bright open spaces and exposed mineral soils. Humans, pines, and fungi make living arrangements simultaneously for themselves and for others: multispecies worlds.”

Tsing also mentions how

“Pines have made alliances with animals as well as fungi. Some pines are completely dependent on birds to spread their seeds—just as some birds are completely dependent on pine seeds for their food.”

Yet this interdependency is not isolated from ‘destructive’ human practices. Tsing points out that human deforestation also benefits pine trees in certain circumstances:

“Humans spread pines in two different ways: by planting them, and by creating the kinds of disturbances in which they take hold. The latter generally occurs without any conscious intent; pines like some of the kinds of messes humans make without trying. Pines colonize abandoned fields and eroded hillsides. When humans cut down the other trees, pines move in. Sometimes planting and disturbance go together. People plant pines to remediate the disturbances they have created. Alternatively, they may keep things radically disturbed to advantage pine. This last alternative has been the strategy of industrial growers, whether they plant or merely manage self-seeded pine: clear-cutting and soil breaking are justified as strategies to promote pine.”

I have mixed feelings about the emphasizing of this framing by postmodernists like Tsing and Haraway. On the one hand there is something dialectical to this sort of analysis. Yet also this reiteration of slippage and blurring of boundaries can obscure the real dominant power dynamics at play, and the clarity of the task before us.

Catherine Liu did a really interesting interview with Jacobin criticizing postmodernism from a Marxist perspective. She mentions that most textbooks locate the pivotal turn to postmodernism as the destruction of Pruitt-Igoe (a social housing project in St Louis that ‘devolved’ into a hotbed of ‘gang violence’). This narrative framing was also the case of for me in a first year international development course, where this landmark moment in architectural history had resounding consequences in art more generally and philosophical and political currents. Liu claims that the postmodernist disdain for large-scale ‘alienating’ and ‘dehumanizing’ mass-produced social-housing projects and efficiently designed rooms like the Frankfurt Kitchen designed by the communist architect Margarete Schutte-Lihotzky dovetailed well with reactionary initiatives to dismantle social housing, which were largely used by poor working-class people of colour. Liu sees this as a defeatist impulse in postmodernist ideology. That grand projects to provide housing for all and not leaving poor racialized communities behind is seen as an impossibly utopic vision bound for failure. The failure of Pruitt-Igoe housing projects is not properly located within the active efforts of the rich white business class to stop public funding of social housing and providing adequate maintenance for it, but as the fault of modernism’s large ambitions and excessively managed ‘imposition’ of egalitarian ideas on normal people that cannot relate to these idealistic elites, and are too violent and ‘uneducated’ to take care of and maintain these unworkable projects of modernist monstrosity.

Each of these critiques Liu puts forward, I can see within the texture of Tsing’s book here. When I first picked up this book, roaming about a big box store book retailer (one I recently learned from a member of the United Jewish People’s Order is often subject to BDS boycotts because of its funding of the HESEG Foundation), I encountered Tsing’s mention of the anarchist pamphlet Desert, which basically asserts that stopping a climate catastrophe is impossible as is any effort to put an end to the global capitalist order, and that radicals should simply focus on how to better live in radical communities of mutual aid under the ruins of capitalist power.

In many ways Tsing’s book is about how life has thrived despite the circumstances of capitalist destruction, and found ways to survive outside the orbit of typical capitalist modes of production. I tend to agree with Liu more that such defeatism is dangerous. Yet it should not be ignored wholesale. Questions of how to survive under capitalism are important. But being a person of faith, I do believe another world is possible and worth fighting for. Tsing talks about how ‘scalable’ operations of colonial plantations (e.g. those involved in the production of sugar cane) became templates of capitalist production today, yet also recognizes that scalability is not intrinsically good or bad, it just has certain consequences that one must properly consider.

I think I’ve have spent many years believing in a vision that E.F. Schumacher put forward in Small is Beautiful, along with these critiques of technology and industry put forward by Ivan Illich (a Catholic anarchist of sorts) embraced by certain Latin American leftists. The Marxist historian of Southeast Asia, Michael Vickery in his 1999 introduction to his seminal text on Cambodia, fascinatingly mentioned a connection one of his acquaintances made between the ideology of the ‘Pol Pot regime’ and Ivan Illich, though Vickery thought Illich did not intend to be taken so literally or seriously. But this utopic agrarian idea of collectivization without the imposition of Western technology on peasants (as modernization is often framed as) is something that Vickery sees as part of the tragic ideology infused within Cambodian revolutionary society, even if they likely did not read Illich at all, but shared certain ideological impulses with him.

As migrants and refugees from Laos and Cambodia, as well as some Hmong immigrants constitute many of the matsutake pickers that Tsing spends time with and interviews, I found Vickery’s insights on Cambodian revolutionary ideology (which he does not really characterize as communist or Marxist) rather relevant to these issues of scale, modernization and progress that Tsing so strongly criticizes. I too had a certain disdain for notions of ‘progress’, but am coming to think I have been mistaken about them. The eschewing of ‘progress’ in many ways is defeatist as Liu suggests.

I think these are all very complex issues. What Tsing’s book did provide and one of my favourite parts of it involved these fascinating elaborations on pine and oak trees that for some reason provide a sense of hope. Some sense that out of destruction, life can still persist. In that sense it is not sheer defeatism. Tsing puts forward fascinating facts like “felled oaks (unlike pines) tend not to die; they sprout back from roots and stumps to form new trees.” The Asian history Tsing tells about pine forests is also fascinating:

“Long before they came to central Japan, Dr. Ogawa related, Koreans had cut down their forests to build temples and fuel iron forging. They had developed in their homeland the human-disturbed open pine forests in which matsutake grow long before such forests emerged in Japan. When Koreans expanded to Japan in the eighth century, they cut down forests. Pine forests sprung up from such deforestation, and with them matsutake.”

I think about the enormous white pine forests that covered the landscape of Mississauga once, and were wiped out in what Anishinaabeg ethnobotanist and Dalhousie professor Jonathan Ferrier referred to as a “genocide by sawmills”. Yet I recall Leanne Simpson speaking of Mother Earth recovering, and I think about the resilience of pine to thrive in the wake of human or more specifically capitalist destruction. Despite all the ruins of capitalism, beautiful things can still persist. That does not mean we should be resigned to the terms of capital. We must fight with everything inside us, and draw strength from the pockets of resilience that survive the destruction such an economy has sown. We need not feel embarrassed about the lines we draw in the sand, while still recognizing that ultimately we do things out of solidarity and love. We love our oppressors by speaking truth to them about their oppressive ways and moving them towards helping in the abolition of such relations of domination. Ecosystems are inevitably full of suffering and pain, certain species gaining from the downfall of another. Yet they are also full of examples of immense interdependence, mutuality, and cooperation. As Arundhati Roy has said:

“Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.“

The question is how she will look like when she arrives.

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starwarshyperdrive · 7 years

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My Star Wars

This is editorial and highly subjective. I apologise in advance. The thing that annoys me the most is also the thing I love the most. The fact that there is not one Star Wars fandom, there are several. Star Wars is for everyone. All ages, all ethnicities and all walks of life. And I love that. At the same time there is a lot of room for things that I don’t love. Don’t get me wrong. Just because despite trying my best I just couldn't get into The Clone Wars (I still prefer the 2003 Star Wars: Clone Wars series) I don’t think that it’s inferior. I acknowledge it. I acknowledge Ashoka, but I just don’t get excited about it the same way I get excited about other stuff. That doesn’t mean that ‘my Star Wars is better than your Star Wars’, it just makes it more interesting and at the same time challenging. I see a lot of things contradicting my personal perception of what ‘the force’ is. Even seasoned fans with popular channels sometimes seem to have a completely different perception of what Star Wars is. And instead of thinking THEY ARE WRONG I started wondering where this is coming from. The fact that we all still love Star Wars just proves the universality of the mono myth as described by Joseph Campbell. You don’t have to understand why it speaks to you. It simply does. Does that mean you’ll have a hard time predicting the plot or understanding connections. Yes, no, maybe. After all - by now - it’s ‘just a story’ that’s being made up by other individuals. Not an universal truth. I came to the conclusion that every fan has it’s own unique Star Wars fandom, built out of a large pool of pick-and-chose parts. To understand mine, here is the kind of Star Wars fan I am and what I think about that subject.

I didn’t grow up on comic books. As a European suburban kid that always seemed uniquely American to me. I grew up influenced by the history of the land around me. Medieval castles, Roman ruins and pagan folktales. I was always very interested in history and movies. So thanks to - but not exclusively owing to - Indiana Jones my dream job as a child was archaeologist. So I chose Latin and Ancient Greek in school, further focusing on ancient myths of heroes going on journeys, seeking adventure and fighting evil. Jumping a few years ahead, I started to get interested in eastern philosophy. Everything always just brought me back to Star Wars or was in some way related or seemed very familiar in that way.

If I’m interested in something I always want to go to the core, to the source, so the natural development for me was to study Kendo. The way of the sword. Ironically one of the first things the Sensei told us ‘this is not Star Wars’, this is not ‘sword ballet’ Just one of the reasons why it pains me to see beautifully choreographed sword fights in movies (did someone say prequels?). Reality is fast, reality is quick and painful. The better you are the less movement there is. I fought with 80+ year old 8th Dan Japanese Sensei who didn’t seem to move at all. They won easily and it looked like they’d just stand there. Reminded me a lot of Darth Vader in A New Hope actually or SPOILER ALERT the way Obi Wan dealt with Maul in Rebels. Luke is still a learner in Empire Strikes Back and Vader is toying with him. Those fights seem authentic to me. Same goes for the way Kylo Ren fights in The Force Awakens. Someone who is too sure of himself and puts too much power into his fighting because he isn’t used to fighting someone even close to equal. Rey has the fluidity of someone with talent (and previous training). In a fight there are no unnecessary show-offy swirly moves. This would just give the opponent an opening. Granted, a lightsaber is a bit different. Whereas a sword, or saber has 1 or 2 sharp edges, a lightsaber is deadly no matter where it hits. But enough geeking out over Japanese swordsmanship.

As for the philosophy, I started meditating and again found a lot of similarities with the force as portrayed in Star Wars. Especially after or before a fight, we used to meditate. Before to focus. After to regulate the heart rate. Both in combination would what Qui Gon did, I have to assume. There are many stories about buddhist monks who managed to achieve things through meditation some consider to be unnatural. The Chinese and Japanese even have a word for it. Chi, or Ki - the life force. Clearly a major inspiration for George Lucas when he came up with the concept of the force.

In the west and especially in our modern ‘we have solved and explained everything through science, there is nothing we do not know’ mindset we sometimes fail to see or understand other perspectives. So when someone talks about how a force ghost can’t do this or that or be at a certain time or space based on our ‘wordly’ limitations I have to wonder why they assume that force ghosts are limited the same we are. You don’t have to study quantum mechanics to be able to grasp the concept of more ‘timeless’ existence. The way I see it - once you’re one with the force you can pop up wherever and whenever you want. Ironically the fact that the midichlorians prove that the force can itself create life it also opens the door for reincarnation. I feel like a lot of people have problems understanding this concept of the force, which limits their comprehension a lot. Then again. Who am I to judge. But I think the force has to make sense in a philosophical kind of way. Something that parallels the myths on our own planet, be it Native American or Tibetan. This is also why I think seeing Star Wars through a Comic Book filter is bound to fail. And it’s why speculations of people too much into comic books tend to be wrong. I don’t know it very well but people suddenly turning good guys after being bad and killing people and no-one bats an eye, seems a bit too WWE wrestling for me. Motifs such as redemption and fallen heroes are a primal aspect of story telling. Enkidu in the epic of Gilgamesh couldn't return to his previous state once he spent too much time in civilisation. He went too far. The reason why Star Wars is so appealing is in my opinion because it speaks to this very essence of human story telling and repeats themes we heard and told over and over again for thousands of years. That and the fact that it mixes ‘fictional’ elements with real life.

It always worked best when movie sets can be visited. We can identify with it. Avatars Pandora might be impressive and tantalising but at the same time, deep inside we know it is not real. Star Wars feels ‘more real’ even in it’s almost Freudian usage of the ‘slimy slug’ as gangster boss or someone named Greedo who’s claim to fame is trying to make a quick buck and even double crossing his boss to achieve that goal. There is no dead superhero who is suddenly someone else and then a giant human planet attacks. There are no superpowers. The force is something everyone can feel. To use another buddhist metapher. The mind is like a glass of dirty water, when you stir it it becomes cloudy. If you calm your mind, the dirt will settle and the water will be clear. In my understanding seeing clear water equals feeling the force.

Myths also serve as moral principles and teach us valuable lessons. Darth Vader was tricked into becoming a dark side apprentice. He had doubts. He was redeemable. Kylo Ren chose the dark side. He committed patricide. An element that can also be found in ancient myths from all around the world. An act that will always lead to the ultimate demise. Don’t go too far. Don’t cross the point of no return. Don’t turn around, Lot. or your wife will turn into a pillar of salt.

Don’t turn around, Orpheus…

People talk about Anakin killing younglings (off camera) and use it as an argument that Kylo could turn to the light. If you look at historical themes this seems to me very unlikely and too comic booky for Star Wars. Which brings me back to why I didn't like The Clone Wars. Even though George Lucas stated that Star Wars is for 12 year olds, there has always been an additional element to it. Lets call it added depth. This depth I’m missing in The Clone Wars. Ashoka speaks up to her master and no-one is really acting the way they are supposed to act if they were Jedi or in some sort of military structure. Sure it’s good fun, but he constant disobeying of orders seems a bit..shall I say unrealistic (I’m aware of the irony). At the same time, that absolutely works for Star Wars Rebels. Kanan is an insecure half-Jedi teaching a street brat hungry for knowledge. While I’m not entirely on board for everything (you almost lost me at space whales) I am definitely a Rebels fan. The introduction of Thrawn gave me goosebumps and was the best thing that ever happened outside of the movies. I’m a strong advocate for the reboot and I never liked the old EU. Too many weird stories. The reboot came at the right time and was necessary. I never really followed it, but I’m all in when it comes to the new canon. I try to read all the books and get all the tiny bits and pieces of lore they hide in them.

As for the games, I know a lot of people like them and even though I’m not a gamer, I played most of them. Actually I exclusively play Star Wars games. I had a lot of fun with Jedi Outcast and Jedi Academy and hope they do something similar again at some point. I also liked the Force Unleashed series and for a bit of fun the old Battlefront games. I don’t have a TV or console, so I couldn’t try out the new ones and I have yet to be convinced that a new game is so good that it warrants a purchase of the aforementioned. Of course I also played some Knights of the Old Republic and the visuals of the Sith are simply awesome. Darth Malak and Darth Nihilus are great. But somehow it seemed too detached from the Star Wars I knew. A bit of The Phantom Menace times a hundred. How often would designs and looks repeat themselves over thousands of years. And if it’s just a kind of similar look, then it might as well be Hunger Games with a lightsaber. I know a lot of people hope for an Old Republic movie or TV series. I’m not one of them. And I also think it’s not as marketable. The gaming target audience is huge but it’s not something that can easily be sold to the general audience. To quote Snoke ‘we shall see’. Of course I would watch and love it, but if I could chose I’d have other priorities, such as boba Fett never taking off his helmet in a movie unless it’s for 10 seconds and they get Temuera Morrison. Because: consistency.

Now for the movies.. There are several generations of Star Wars fans out there. Some say their favourite movie is Attack of the Clones. Some say their favourite character is Ashoka. If that’s what they grew up with that’s understandable. Star Wars is about emotions and association. If you grew up getting a battle droid for X-mas that’s the natural consequence. To me it still feels like a Christian saying that the local priest is better than Jesus. I can’t help it. The original trilogy is holy. Nothing can ever touch it. No matter how good the movie is it will never surpass 40 years worth of memories and experiences associated with the movies. I have seen the OT hundreds of times and they still hold up. When I watch the movies every couple of months I’m usually like ‘I forgot how awesome they are’.

Which brings me to the prequels. Yes I know. blabla, but.. I never had an issue with the prequels. I have always been an apologist, even though there are parts that tested my love. I don’t mind Jar Jar as much as I mind farting space gnus, but the pod racing scene always seemed much too long. And it seems longer every time I watch it. Apart from that I still hold on to the argument that the opulence and use of colours was a genius way to portray the fall of the republic and visualise the change to a bleak and cold empire. Of course the battle droids are no substitute for stormtroopers, but over all I’m surprisingly OK with The Phantom Menace. I would’ve preferred an older version of Anakin, but like I said.. it’s OK. It had Qui Gon Jinn in it. That immediately makes every movie five times better. Now Attack of the Clones is a different story entirely. I remember having high hopes for that one. The promotion back then seemed nice enough and the scene with the imperial march is still one of the most gripping scenes from the prequel trilogy and some of the battle scenes are really good. I’m talking about the clones, not the Jedi just pretend someone shoots at you CGI disaster. But that’s that.. The movie lacks a real opponent and the position is weirdly split between Count Dooku and Jango Fett. It somehow didn’t work for me. They should've kept Darth Maul. There is also something in Star Wars I don’t really like. Every bad guy needs a new and different lightsaber. In the end it make somehow sense for Kylo Ren, but did we need a bent one for Dooku, 4 for General Grievous, a Tonfa style in Force Unleashed, an upside down one for Ashoka, a helicopter lightsaber for the inquisitors. I mean it starts getting ridiculous. What’s wrong with a good old standard lightsaber. Thank you, Rey! (if she gets a saberstaff I’m ok with that). I recently rewatched Revenge of the Sith. I always liked it but for me - after watching The Force Awakens and Rogue One - it just didn’t hold up. It’s not Haydens fault though and the visual storytelling again is on point. The clouds increasing on the horizon to symbolise the fall to the dark side. Impeccable. And while I didn’t like the design the phase 1 clone trooper design, the phase 2 armours looks bad ass. It’s the unnecessary and completely out of place slapstick comedy that’s bothering me. The R2D2 vs. Battledroids scene in the beginning is the stupidest part of all movies. I always have to cringe. The CGI is also off.

The Force Awakens on the other hand.. I’m not an impressionable person. Leaving the cinema I’m not like ‘WOOO THAT WAS AWESOME. BEST MOVIE EVER!!!’. I usually like to let it sink for a while and philosophise about what certain parts meant and such. I have seen it 14 times in the cinema. That should give you an indication whether or not I liked it. A guy told me ‘yeah.. I saw it 2 times, the first time I was like awesome, but the 2nd I didn’t like it at all. I give it 6 months and then it’s the next Phantom Menace’. Well it’s been 1 1/2 years and it’s still far from being the new Phantom Menace. Overall the movie feels just right for me. I think the argument that it’s a remake is plain stupid. Unless you make an entirely different movie and remove all that makes it Star Wars you will always have parallels. And if we stick to the mono myth theme it’s obvious that the new hero will have a similar journey. Yes, but… yes, but.. A weapon inside a planet might be round but it’s not a Death Star. If they’d contracted a new super star destroyer the experts on the internet would’ve said ‘it’s another shape but it’s just another death star. So there is no winning here. What I personally didn’t like was the fact that Han Solo wanted to put Cpt.Phasma in a trash compactor as if he’d be doing his ‘best of’ tour. Remember that, kid? You all like that, right? We were crazy back then. That seemed a bit lets say..pathetic.

At first the rathtars bothered me but I somehow got used to them. Weird ball shaped monsters with tentacles seem to be both retro and Star Wars appropriate. The low budget cosplay look of Kanjiklub bothered me more. They looked more like the uninspired product of a costume designer on a budget for a cheap Nickelodeon series. I always thought it would be awful if Kylo took off his mask, but they way they did it worked perfectly. Most of the ‘plot holes’ people talk about can easily fixed by either watching the movie closely, thinking or being patient. Why do we need everything laid out and explained? I like that The Force Awakens left some questions open. I also think the often discussed scene - that even Mark Hamill himself would’ve loved to do - of him catching the lightsaber at the end would've completely defeated the purpose. Fan sometimes seem like kids that want to eat sweets all day. Don't give them everything they want. They don't know what’s good for them. This plot would've been disastrous and much too tacky. ‘was someone Luke-ing for me?’ Star Wars is not an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie.

Speaking of what’s good for fans. Rogue One. Holy moly. Can Gareth Edwards please do every Star Wars movie now? (Unrelated: I’m a bit worried about Han Solo) When Star Wars episodic movies are for 12 year olds, then Rogue One is what happens if you look at the Star Wars universe through the eyes of an adult. Rogue One was intense. I’m lost for words. If it wasn’t for the sanctity of the OT Rogue One might as well be my favourite movie. We got introduced to new aspects of the force. Showing once more that the Jedi dogmatic approach that lead to their demise is just one way of interpretation the force, which reminded me of the buddhist saying ‘there are may ferries leading to the other shore’. There are mystics and pragmatists but in the end we’re all one in the force. Chirrut and Baze are two sides of the same coin. The one who loses faith and the other one who trusts the force. It doesn’t matter if they are gay. That’s quite frankly insulting and ignorant. The way I understood their bond was beyond puny worldly understanding. A spiritual bond. Brothers in the force. And I’m so glad they didn’t make a love story out of Jyn and Cassian. Out of the same reason. Not every bond has to be sexual. That’s a shallow assumption. I wouldn't have minded if someone would’ve survived, but that’s the way things go. A bold move and it breaks my heart every time I watch the movie. It puts so much weight on the sacrifice they made for the rebellion. Everything else would've been wrong. No matter how much I would’ve liked them to survive. At the end of the day we all want a happy ending.

Going forward..where do I think will the franchise go?

I’m just worried that at some point they will cast aside the traditional storytelling aspect in favour of a more comic book style popcorn cinema approach. I don’t think we’re there yet and I hope they are aware of what Star Wars is about and don’t try to jump on some train that is selling well at the moment. Kathleen Kennedy and the story group seem to be on top of it and seem to be very aware of that. Also luckily Star Wars is still No.1 but for the unlucky case that Guardians of the Galaxy or Avatar are more successful, if that ever happens, I fear movie executives do what movie executives always do and ruin everything by desperately trying to sell. Be it by doing a reboot with whoever is popular at the time. The next Jennifer Lawrence as young Leia or the next Zach Efron as Han Solo or by just copying the highest grossing movie. Marketing will make sure the general public will like it but what about us smart ass fans?

Predictions for The Last Jedi: Did/will Luke turn to the dark side? Of course not. Luke made his decision in Return of the Jedi. I can only assume that the reason why he became a hermit has something to do with the fact that sometimes doing nothing is the best option. Just like in the educational game September 12th. Everytime you shoot a terrorist, you create more of them in response until the entire game is populated by terrorists. Sometimes you have to cut your losses and not get involved to avoid even worse consequences. History is often repeating itself, so why wouldn’t Luke do the same thing they did to him? Hide a force sensitive relative in a remote place? There are several ways this could pan out, but it has been said repeatedly that Star Wars is about the Skywalker lineage. Kylo will never be redeemed, so it doesn’t really make sense to focus on him. There is only one person left. There seem to be a lot of people thinking she is a Kenobi. Which brings me back to the The Clone Wars. Obi Wan might have had feelings for someone, but Obi Wan abided the Jedi code. There is no way she is a Kenobi. Also from a storytelling point of view. The jump would be too big. The regular audience would be like ‘WHAT!?!’ and it would just be lazy storytelling. Yeah btw Obi Wan totally did it. And you are his granddaughter, because he hid his daughter well. We will also not have the time to explain who your father is, so just bear with us. NEVER GONNA HAPPEN. People seem to have a big problem grasping the Jedi concept of non-attachment which is a 100% Buddhist concept. It’s not about being living in celibacy. Anakin even says it. It’s about attachment, which leads to the fear of loss. Just take spies. They aren’t forbidden to marry. They have to accept that their family can be used against them which makes them vulnerable. Which is exactly the point, both physically and philosophically. So this attachment is what ultimately led to Anakin's downfall. Makes me wonder ‘have you understood NOTHING?’. Obi Wan might be able to see through the problems caused by the Jedi orders institutionalised dogma rules but he surely won’t make the same mistake as Anakin. Rey has to be a Skywalker. Even C3PO theoretically is. Family finds family in Star Wars. She might not even be Lukes daughter. There is a way to squeeze in a ‘Ben started acting strange so we hid his little sister from him’ explanation. He says ‘so it is you’. That can be everything or nothing. And Snoke. He will most likely be a nobody. A wizard of Oz. I expect him to be some slimy poser ex-politician, who is as much of an imposter as Kylo is. Someone once theorised that Kylo might kill him at some point, which would be a nice twist on the Darth Vader / Emperor relationship. A lot can happen in some 30 years and we don’t know half of it, so it will be interesting to see how they fill the gaps.

To return to The Last Jedi - there are rumours that indicate that (SPOILER ALERT) Benicio DelToro won’t be some super duper Baddie, but much rather a sleazy casino owner kind of guy. I’m really looking forward to seeing his performance. He will bring gravitas to whoever his character is. Even if he is just another Dexter Jettster.

At this point I have no clue what the plot will be. I have no clue how Carrie Fishers death will affect the plot. I kinda expected the legacy characters to die one by one, the same way Obi Wan, Yoda and Darth Vader did. Now Carrie Fishers family said that there won’t be a CGI Leia in Episode 9. Lets just say, if she died in The Last Jedi and that was the plan all along there’s no way they’d say ‘all good, we don't need reshoots’. Could all be a diversion. Leias death on screen would definitely give the movie an additional emotional momentum. Just look at what happened with Fast & Furious after Paul Walker died.

#star wars #star wars theories #star wars spoilers #star wars rumors #star wars fan #buddhist #philosophy #the last jedi #the force awakens #rey #snoke #the force #jedi #sith #Darth Vader #the dark side

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curatable-01-blog · 7 years

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Interview with Vic Hazeldine

“Those who can’t, teach” is an expression that only people who haven’t met Vic Hazeldine say. For over twenty years he held the creative reigns of one of the biggest advertising companies, Grey’s London, to be precise. Now he dedicates his time towards sculpting the minds of students. This January, CURATABLE sat down with Hazeldine to discuss the ins and outs of how art school influenced his work and his approaches throughout his career.

CURATABLE: What inspires creativity in you, especially during moments of drought? Are there any technical exercises that you do to help you through them?

VIC HAZELDINE: Everything ignites creative thought and action – and that’s a curse as much as it is a blessing. But walking mainly. The mind travels faster at 3mph. All artists walk, no?

I suppose one could say that walking is a technical exercise, although I don’t consider it as such…it’s at the heart of my practice now, or has become so. Or perhaps it has always been so. I recently met Richard Wentworth at a talk he was giving on chance findings and I got chatting with him afterwards – he’s big on walking – and he said “When you walk stuff just happens.” Spot on, I thought. You just pick stuff up…ideas, bits of conversations and physical objects of course. The power of chance and serendipity should never be underestimated. I find that walking allows sensory reversal…you see with your ears and hear with your eyes. When I worked in advertising, and ideas just wouldn’t come, I always advised my creative teams to just go for a walk – but not to the pub – do that to celebrate the birth of an idea - and just get a bit lost - lost in looking. It always seemed to work. I have suggested this strategy to secondary school students many times, but generally they look at me as if I should be locked up. I did do a walking workshop at school once and the drawings and thoughts generated were really interesting, but I’m not sure the participants felt comfortable. I know exactly why, but that needs a whole book, not a quick reply. If I wasn’t a teacher, I could so easily become a full time Flaneur. Oh – I also have an enormous old school blackboard in my studio. On it is chalked: “AVOID THE BLANK SPACE”. Best advice you can give yourself, or anyone else, in times of creative drought. It certainly reminds me to do something…make something out of nothing, or nothing out of something, all the time.

C: In what ways did art school, and the people you met and worked with whilst a creative director in advertising, influence your work, or working process?

VH: Big question, and the answer could run to dissertation length. I think that the one unbroken strand is that at Art school I realised that I was in the business of communication. I think that this is, and remains, the fulcrum of my working philosophy I suppose. I was remarkably fortunate to work with, and be taught by, some truly great practitioners – across so many diverse disciplines – and then with some great advertising talents – and they were all passionate about communicating what they wanted to say in their own way. Each had a unique voice, and all showed me that finding, cultivating and holding on to my own distinctive voice really mattered. That voice can be made manifest in anything and everything - verbal, visual, all media, any media. Ultimately, I think that the diversity of creative disciplines I have worked with, and alongside, reflects my studio practice, which can’t be categorised…I dread being asked “what do you do?” I have no answer. There’s an irony for you.

C: Do they still influence you as strongly as before now that you’ve changed your career?

VH: Yes – emphatically yes - and more so as I get older. Truths, wisdoms, advice imparted – call it what you will – that resonated then, only amplify in my mind as time passes, or shortens. And of course, I share these things freely as a teacher. That’s what teaching is about…passing stuff on, and hoping that some of it is useful – sticks to the sides - recalled at some point in that person’s future.

C: It seems like quite a jump to move from working in advertising to working with students, what drove this move?

VH: My children all said that I would be good at teaching and people said that I had a great deal of subject knowledge ranging from “Fine Arts” through to “Graphic Arts” – and, because I had worked as a copywriter, I’d probably prepare really interesting school reports! It was true that I’d built up a lot of material in my head and I thought that some of it could be useful to young people. My eldest daughter also became critically ill and I ended up teaching her from the end of a hospital bed and, as her condition improved, we made countless gallery visits over those years. Joseph Beuys was right - Art heals.

Putting it bluntly, I just felt that I wanted to give it all away before I fell off the twig. I wanted to download it all so to speak…my mind was sort of at bursting point. What I didn’t realise, until I joined the education sector, was that it’s not a one-way street of course - the students are constantly teaching me new things, so one never actually ever gives it all away …one is uploading as much as one is downloading.

A jump – culturally – yes, like leaping the Grand Canyon, culturally - but not fundamentally because it all about communication…pupils, parents, colleagues…all stakeholders. There are so, so, so many commonalities…skills I use to present ideas for example – now, in teaching, I present to up to 100 clients a day! And they can be as problematic and penetrating, and intimidating, as industrial clients who pay massive consultancy fees. Also, of course, presentation skill is something one can teach. Justifying ideas, writing…again all completely transferable to the school setting. I work with 6th form students, and, having come from industry, I can leverage my commercial background in numerous ways to help them…I guess it’s about developing emotional intelligence in many ways.

Returning to “Art” as a teacher…I use my previous experience to help students with concept development…getting to the heart of the assignment, the importance of justifying an idea, and encouraging divergent thinking – after all, that’s what a creative director does in the advertising industry. Oh – and the importance of time management too. I don’t think I’ve made a big success of it, but I’m still a bit of a beginner…or will always consider myself as such because I’m not a “career teacher”, and never will be I suppose. I came to it late.

C: What are the key qualities you see in the young artists that have gone the furthest during your career?

VH: I am glad you don’t mention “successful”. I am totally persuaded that longevity – and going the furthest (in the sense of understanding the world, and responding to it) stems from:

Playfulness

Curiosity

Failure (probably the most crucial attribute, and not a popular subject to teach and preach - particularly today.)

Sensitivity

Unfailing preparedness to plough your own furrow

Self discipline

C: Do you think your time at Camberwell prepared you for the various creative roles you have taken on since? Did you ever think at the time that it would lead you there?

VH: Most definitely because of the inter-disciplinary nature, fluidity and flexibility of the place. This was a distinguishing characteristic of Camberwell…one could move around and do different things…no territorial or creative boundaries or fiefdoms you see. Did I think that I’d end up a teacher? No. I just wanted to generate ideas and continue to paint and make things…these then became parallel lives, but not – because my commercial career fed my private practice and vice versa. I just didn’t tell anyone…didn’t feel the need.

In a way, I’m not surprised that I find myself in the education sector now because when I finished at Camberwell, I was invited back to teach Graphics and Typographic Design part time. I took up the invite and found that I really enjoyed it. I did it for a year until my “real job” (and boss) decided that I was needed full-time again. But I certainly got the taste for working with post-secondary Art students though…l have done quite a bit of Graduate tuition since…workshops and things - from my studio during vacation periods - but all informally. I’d love to do it full time because it’s great to work with students who are completely on it. That said, I do enjoy working with little ones, particularly before they become inhibited. Ken Robinson has a lot to say on this, have you heard any of his lectures? There’s this lovely anecdote…a child is drawing God. The teacher says “but nobody knows what God looks like.” Child: “they will in a minute.”

C: Have art schools changed majorly since your time at Camberwell? Are all these changes for the better?

VH: Yes, I think the major change I notice is that there is now such an emphasis on academic writing and how this has eaten into the time needed to create…to think through making, mess it up, be experimental and free-thinking and generative. I think that that was the special thing about Art schools 20 or 30 years ago…you were given the time to just do things and one instinctively knew that one would never, ever have that time or freedom to learn and play again. So that made time at Art school very special – it wasn’t about commercial imperatives – or so commercially-driven so to speak. This makes me very sad because I know from talking with so many Art students that they find it all getting a bit too much as well…they’re all so stressed out about essays. Maybe that’s why they come to my studio – a space were they can just do stuff…and just be and do and talk and drink endless quantities of tea. I do understand the need to write and justify of course. I just think that the balance really needs looking at. As do course fees. But that’s another interview (or possibly rant) for another occasion. On the plus side, I think the opportunities for Art students to network with the creative industries has really, really expanded – facilitated by the institutions and social media of course - and the opportunities for work experience now is brilliant compared to say 30 years ago.

I am also interested in how Art schools have become tangible brand entities. Sure, every place always had its own identity and values but now most of the major players have fully-developed brand personalities. I guess as an ex-brand consultant, I kind of watch this…and talk to students about how the associated marketing affects their choices etc. A fascinating area this.

Compare this to my experience – I just got sent a Camberwell prospectus through the post; a charming, but emotionally dry document, that gave no real sense of the place. I just had to go along and investigate the place for myself. Mind you, I do quite like the simplicity of all that now, thinking back.

Last year, I gave my son that prospectus. He was in his final year at Camberwell (yes – weird – particularly as he occupied the exact same space as I had done 30 years previously) and he drew all over the pages and put it into his final show. A deliciously subversive act in a way I thought.

C: What do you see in the future for art schools as institutions?

VH: They will adapt, survive and thrive no matter what. Yes, I understand exactly where Bob & Roberta Smith are coming from, and yes, “Art” has to fight hard for it’s territory on so many levels – but thus so it ever was. The creative industries (in the widest sense) always need, demand, talent…and the urge to make is just a human characteristic - it never, never stops. So, there will always be customers for Art schools. If the demand is there, the supply will be there to meet it.

I do think that the old divisions – departments - of “Fine Art” and the more “commercially-aligned” practices, will blur more and more because it is reflective of the how see, make and consume Art now. This is an exciting prospect. These old divisions were always false ones anyway I think. Camberwell, as an institution, always recognised this I think…back to future no?

I also sense that we may see the emergence of private schools of Art…private universities seem to be springing up everywhere now. That would be interesting no? Again, sort of back to the future, as it were…that’s exactly how Art schools began after all

I guess I see the greatest threat to the customer base is how “Art” is valued – or undervalued, or misunderstood - in secondary education. I sometimes think we swimming against a remarkably strong tide. That tide comprises many, many things – all identifiable, but complex in nature. More so now for sure.

C: What advice would you give to young artists seeking work upon graduation? (i.e. should they jump at any opportunity, go for bigger money jobs first, or chase their aspirations) Did you have to find that out the hard way? Or did someone pass it on to you?

VH: Very, very difficult to answer because this depends so much on the individual’s financial situation, but…

Network, network and network. Do this even if you are lucky enough to be offered a job provided through a college work placement.

Review and add to your “leavers” portfolio as soon as you leave. In other words, keep up the momentum and sense of urgency you developed in your final year.

Get the website, and your point of difference, sorted out.

(Fund this by taking any job going – short-term – if you need to.)

DON’T chase the dollar – it rarely pays off. And rarely exists for that matter.

Take an internship by all means – BUT – insist on some compensation – fares for sure. Hold your ground.

This is based on what I know now, through knowing and talking with several recent grads.

I was comparatively lucky, but things were different: work was easier to secure…no ridiculous selection processes, and certainly no “work for us for nothing” deals. All I had to do was trudge up and down Charlotte Street annoying agency people, insisting that they should see my portfolio - until they relented. Which they did.

I guess that perseverance paid off then – and still does now. You could – should - add that attribute to the “Key qualities” list if you want!

#interview

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