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johannas-motivational-insults · 4 years ago

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Jo’s Top 10 of 2020

I see lots of artists doing that thing where they post a piece from each month of the year... unfortunately my content creation isn’t necessarily consistent and it’s hard to track what month individual fic chapters were posted in, but I figured I’d do something similar and post my Top 10 pieces of content I created in 2020, what they’re about and why I love them. I actually did get a fair amount done this year thanks to the lockdown, but I’ve narrowed it down to these ten that I’d like to reflect on. (To be fair, I’m probably forgetting something huge. Feel free to leave comments if you think I passed over something important lol.)

10. Friendship in the Horde (meta): This is something I’d wanted to write for a while but finally got around to finishing in February. It’s basically a sociology paper lmao, an analysis of the social hierarchies and systems of the Horde. It was also a convenient excuse for me to gush about Catralonnie, an underrated (friend)ship. But honestly this was an important piece for me because I have always identified with the Horde characters way more than any of the rebels (other than Adora, who grew up in the Horde) and part of why is how they are in an unsafe environment and end up forming relationships that are helpful for survival but hinder them psychologically. And I think to understand the Horde characters and really evaluate their motives and choices you need to understand this first.

9. The Sting in My Eyes: On the surface this is just a run of the mill hurt/comfort oneshot, but it was a really important post-canon processing fic for me. I had a lot of feelings about Catra’s relationships with Shadow Weaver and Melog in season 5, particularly about how Catra must have felt really conflicted after Shadow Weaver told her what she wanted to hear all those years but in a way that felt unearned and out of the blue. It was really cathartic for me to write a scene where she struggles with those mixed feelings but has Adora and Melog to help her process them. And I had long associated the song the title is from with Catra and Shadow Weaver’s relationship, and the way she died trying to redeem herself really solidified that connection.

8. Hail Mary, chapter 6: This was supposed to be a short chapter mostly about the backstory between Catra and Scorpia in this au, with some Catradora yearning thrown in. It evolved into a massive, sprawling thing that is very atmospheric in terms of how the setting and vibes are described and how in the moment it feels. Hail Mary is like that sometimes but that type of narration is usually about football games rather than parties, so this chapter was a fun change of pace in many ways. It was really nostaglic for me to write too, the nerves of being a teenager at a party with your crush and how intense everything feels. And the Scorptra stuff really is delicious, it was nice seeing them have that conversation they never got to have in canon and truly make up, and the tiny sliver I added of Catra’s earlier history was heartbreaking in the best way. So this was not what I intended to write, but it turned out way better for it.

7. A Better Son or Daughter (AMV): I’ve done other Adora AMVs, but this one is really my iconic piece. The song is perfect for Adora, so perfect it’s on Noelle’s Adora playlist. The vid itself is a character study about Adora’s mental health struggles and the way she represses them, as well as a tribute to her resiliency and her eventual triumph of getting to a better place in her life. This is a song that gives me a lot of feelings and once I was making it about Adora it gave me even more, so this was a very satisfying piece to complete. I wish Noelle had gotten a chance to see it but oh well, maybe down the line.

6. Hail Mary, chapter 12: This is the chapter that much of the fic had been building to, Catra and Adora in conflict because Catra finally got the chance to be Adora’s hero and Adora shot her down. It’s painfully analogous to canon, both in terms of how (I suspect) Catra felt in Thaymor and Adora’s tendency to victim blame because she’s so pragmatic. There’s definitely some tones of Taking Control in there but Lonnie does a much better job of examining Catra’s psychology and needs than Glimmer did in canon (a writing error imo, Glimmer should have had more insight). Adora just wants to help but sometimes in her quest to do so she disenfranchises others, and this was a much needed look at that aspect of her character. It’s also an excellent illustration of what it’s like to play a peacekeeping role in an abusive household and how stressful it is trying to protect others while also protecting yourself.

5. Unstoppable (AMV): This is not my favorite Catra AMV I’ve ever done, but it might be the cleverest. The soundtrack is a song about mental illness masquerading as a song about being a bad bitch, which is basically Catra in a nutshell. The lyrics are incredibly fitting for her and her arc as it develops over seasons 1-4. The vid itself takes a hard turn in the interpretation of the lyrics, going from talking about how no one can stop Catra to how she can’t stop herself because she’s in such a terrible sunk cost fallacy spiral, and I think I got several death threats over that twist lmao. As someone who primarily deals in angst, there’s hardly a better compliment to be paid.

4. Demons, chapter 31: This one got real dark on me. The concept of this chapter was originally an examination of how comparing abuse can get really dicey but you also have to respect that other people have had different experiences from you and you have to be careful not to equate things or make it sound like you’re talking over someone else. I guess it’s also a bit of a look at how autistic people (like myself) will often explain why they can empathize so others know they understand rather than saying empty platitudes, but that can come off as insensitive or like they’re making things about them. I mean, in this case Adora kinda was making things about her, but she was provoked into it by a parade of comments insinuating she didn’t suffer at all, which was also unfair. Anyway it’s one of the more important Catradora fights in Demons and something I’d written bits of over a year prior, it was that important to the plot, but it also took a turn I was not originally planning. I finished the chapter when I was in a really bad depressive and self-loathing spiral and that bled onto the page, but it worked perfectly for Catra in this scenario... that push and pull of feeling like the world has hurt and victimized you mixed with knowing you’ve done some bad things yourself and feeling like you don’t have a leg to stand on when mourning the ways you’ve been hurt. It’s intense as all fuck but it’s excellent.

3. Hail Mary, chapter 11: Speaking of dark Catra content, this chapter... whew. It was really something else, to read and to write. I have written flashbacks in Demons that are more detailed and even include explicit violence but because those scenes are always in flashback form I never really got the chance to sit in the head of an abuse victim waiting for the other shoe to drop for an entire chapter like I did here. It’s quite different from the rest of Hail Mary stylistically and is both highly sensory and extremely internalized. It took me back to some terrifying moments in my own life so it was difficult but also extremely cathartic to write. It’s important too because it really sets up where Catra was at mentally heading into her big fight with Adora, and that chapter is in Adora POV. This chapter is ranked so high simply because it’s... polished, as @malachi-walker put it. It almost is its own story within the story and really noteworthy as a piece all its own.

2. Demons, chapter 26: This chapter is very similar thematically to Hail Mary 12, just based in the canonverse. It deals with one of the core (but highly neglected by fandom) conflicts between Catra and Adora, where they both need to feel like they can take care of and protect the other but also detest feeling weak or vulnerable themselves. It leads to Adora’s ego making Catra feel disrespected and Catra’s behavior confusing Adora and making her think she’s an ungrateful brat rather than someone who needs so badly to be needed, just like her. There’s definitely some power struggles in this chapter but finally they’re able to get to the heart of it and seeing them talk it out is so satisfying. Getting this chapter published was also important to me on a personal level because, like I said, this aspect of their conflict and relationship is rarely acknowleged for how important it is when really it’s one of the deepest conflicts between them in the series. It’s a scene I started writing pretty much as soon I knew I was extending the fic into something longer because I just needed them to have this conversation, so finishing it was so satisfying.

1. Satisfaction, chapter 3: This chapter took me a really long time to write, both in terms of time to get it published and time I actually spent working on it. It’s the crown jewel of a fic that’s really important to me and I had to get it just right, so I spent more time agonizing over every detail and rewriting things to get them absolutely perfect than I usually do (I’m a perfectionist anyway, but this took it to a whole other level). But in the end it was worth it, because this chapter is damn fine. It’s really hot, as you’d expect from a smut fic, but it’s also an excellent character study of how both Catra and Adora were affected by their abuse and trauma and the issues it raises for them in terms of sex and intimacy. Also, come on, we need more BDSM fics out there that focus on the actual point of it all (the trust involved) and promote communication and do the character work to explain why they might be into it in the first place.

BONUS (from December 31, 2019): One of my favorite pieces of 2020 technically came out in 2019, but I posted it on New Years Eve so most people first saw it in 2020. It’s an absolute banger of an AMV called I’m Not Jesus that’s all about Catra and Adora’s anger towards Shadow Weaver and their refusal to forgive their abuser. Funny enough this came out before Adora’s iconic “I will never forgive you” line, and Shadow Weaver definitely made things more complicated with how she went out, but I think the sentiment still applies.

#2020 recap #happy new year #writing #vidding #fanfic #spop #catradora #demons #hail mary #satisfaction #the sting in my eyes #a better son/daughter #unstoppable #i’m not jesus

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starship-imzadi · 4 years ago

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S5 E12 Violations

This opening immediately brings to mind the "repressed memories" craze in psychology in the 1980's and 1990's. The "fad" has since become regarded as incredibly harmful and dangerous as human memory can be quite malleable and undependable. A lot of people were treated to believe they had repressed memories of horrible abuse and sexual trauma in their childhoods, made horrible accusations, for events that never actually happened. Not only do these fabrication create real trauma and ruin relationships, they also delegitimize the actual trauma and abuse others have suffered and very much remembered from their childhoods.

Now, that isn't quite applicable to this episode, but this episode has some heavy moments and perhaps the worst abuse, out of all the abuse, Troi suffers through the series, and I want to address it the best I can.

"father, you know you're not supposed to probe someone's memory unless they've given you permission."

A.k.a. you have to get consent

"you are right, but sometimes with a beautiful woman I cannot help myself."

Red flag?! But not the red flag we're looking for. (Still: not appropriate) Beverly's laugh doesn't seem like acceptance to me, rather it's the socially acceptable way for women to cope with remarks that certain men think are flattering but are actually creepy. In a post #metoo world my hope is that as a society this is understood better than when this episode aired. I'm sure for many women it's just as evident as it ever was.

To be clear, this memory reading isn't sexual. What it is, is intimate. For whatever reason no other type of telepathy in Star Trek is depicted as a high form of intimacy, except for the now forgotten telepathic link that Troi and Riker have (which was formed because of the closeness of their relationship). But, to have access to someone's mind would be an incredible vulnerability, the sharing of one's mind a great intimacy, and the invasion of one's mind a great violation. A strong analogy for these is sexuality.

I want to make this distinction because there are violations and intimacies that are not sexual, and I think allowing for a broader analogy makes this a stronger story.

This conversation between Geordi and Data about memory feels like exposition to explain the concept to the audience. But, it seems to misrepresent some of the finer points, like how human recall and triggering recall actually works, how neurological structure and age factors in, how trauma effects memory, or in fact how humans encode specific memory or general concepts (like remembering the layout of your childhood home.)

"perhaps you would like to resurrect solve memories"

Is Beverly flirting with Picard? Or just teasing him

This scene with Troi brushing her hair and drinking hot chocolate is.... incredibly frustrating. Because of the "on again off again" or complete neglect of the story between Troi and Riker's relationship. Why have we never seen this part of their relationship before? Where does it fit it? I've seen people question at which point the memory becomes manipulated, wondering if Riker would ever force himself on Troi...which I would categorically say: no he would not.

"imzadi we can't, not when we're serving on the same ship"

"have you stopped thinking about us, just answer that" "I can't stop thinking about you"

They're clearly on the Enterprise, and Riker has a beard, and it could feasibly be somewhere in the past three and a half seasons. As the audience we are not privy to the original memory free of Jev's manipulations.

"Do you know what she was doing when this happened?" Riker's voice is so gentle.

Beverly's little smile as she walks in and sees Riker talking to Troi is exactly how I feel. "I miss you. Please don't stay away too long." Is so sweet and a bit heartbreaking.

Now, we see an apparent memory of Riker's. Troi's memory seemed to be hazy and pink like an old romance filter might be in black and white, but Riker's memory is distorted and stretched, and both have distorted and slowed audio. By contrast, Keiko's memory had no visual or audio distortion at all. Riker's apparent memory is feasible like Troi's.

Troi's assault is what almost everyone focuses on, because the "violation" of the episode is seen as an analogy to rape and because this element is inexplicably used again in the film Nemesis. However, I would like to point out that the two memories shown up until this point are both memories of vulnerability. The memory with Troi isn't just about sex, it's about the intimacy she has with Riker, a relationship they both want but don't feel like they're allowed to have. Riker's memory is of vulnerability of those under his command, as he has to actively make a choice that will kill a crew member to save the rest of the ship. His crew is ultimately his responsibility, their lives are in his hands, and he has to carry the responsibility of their deaths under his command.

Now we see Beverly's apparent memory. Her's is also a clear instance of vulnerability: seeing her dead husband's body. This memory is most likely of the three we see to have some reality to it. We do know that her husband died and Picard was the one to tell her and Wesley of his death. (It's mentioned in the pilot episode and in "The Bonding")

Rethinking the search parameters is incredibly clever on Geordi's part and he deserves more credit for it. It's almost... intellectually refreshing to see rather than a simple solution, and I applaud the writer who wrote this bit.

If Riker wasn't still in a coma he would be right by Troi's side.

"I'm remembering something from a few years ago" so, it is a memory, they're all actual memories, up until a point. "It's not Will, sombody's taken his place." when the person in her memory is hurting her the face isn't initially shown, we can't see who it is. But, before when the memory was safe and positive, we could see Will's face.

(the background soundtrack is a little too much and the whole sequence of Troi in pain makes me really uncomfortable.) And Worf and Picard.... don't react except Picard, very conservatively, places a comforting hand on her shoulder. Which fits with his decorum and all things considered is really, really sweet.

"A perverse source of pleasure perhaps. A need to exercise control over another." Even though Troi's memory was romantic or sexual in nature and through Jev's manipulation has the strongest direct parallel to literal sexual assault, rape is ultimately about power, the assertion of power, domination without consent. It is in direct opposition to intimacy, sexual or non sexual. intimacy is vulnerability plus trust and safety, regardless of what that vulnerability is.

I just realized the Ullian coats remind me of paper snow flakes.

I've seen some people confused that after everything that has happened why Jev would jeopardize himself by going to Troi. He seems to honestly like Troi, in whatever way he can, but at the same time is not in control of his impulses and desires, and whatever he likes about her is warped into his sick desire to overpower her. It's fantastic to see Troi fight back; Jev talks about how fragile she is, and it's important that we see that she is in fact NOT how he sees her.

"this form of rape" here is the first time the word is specifically used BUT I want to reiterate that Troi, Riker, and Beverly have all been subjected to this trauma.

It's good, and nice to know, that they will be getting counseling and help to process through what has happened. It's not always but on occasion TNG acknowledges that its characters have suffered with potential long term ramifications.

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cursedthing · 2 years ago

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Update on Nome. Realized some stuff about Nome and now we are so fucking normal about it.

y'all are lucky that i never talk about Nome (newest oc) here

#(incoming nonsense rant in the tags. beware. yea this is our way of working through similar stuff)#looks at Nome and their weather powers and how they weren't aware that they had those powers because they subconsciously used them #nearly all the time #and how at the end they pretty much explode because of said powers building up over time because they went unchecked their whole life #and how this can be read as an analogy for repressed trauma and how it can deal so much damage if left unchecked. and how it complicates #things if the person like. repressed all the memories surrounding the trauma to the point that they weren't aware that anything was wrong #and how the trauma can still affect them in how they function but they don't KNOW until it's too late if they didn't go looking for help #but how could they go look for help if they weren't even aware that something was actually wrong. or something #AUGH. STARTS THROWING THINGS AROUND #THIS ANALOGY WORKS IN NOME'S CASE. BECAUSE THEIR POWERS ARE POWERED BY THEIR EMOTIONS. REPRESSED OR NOT.#AND THEY WENT THROUGH SOME SHIT(TM) THROUGHOUT THEIR ENTIRE CHILDHOOD. BUT THEY DON'T FUCKING REMEMBER THAT #BECAUSE OF COURSE THEY REPRESSED IT TO HELL AND BACK #AND THEIR POWERS LATCHED ONTO THE WEATHER #i'm gonna start throwing rocks at a lake.#don't mind me i'm just feeling stuff over an oc/sona #for anyone wondering Nome DOES get better after they ''explode''. the explosion is actually kind of necesary because after it they can #finally start working on dealing with both their trauma and powers. and like they won't be alone while dealign with this.#luckly they weren't alone when they ''exploded'' either. the event went rather well BECAUSE they had someone who they trusted with them #during that time #because if they didn't have that someone there to like. help them through the very real storm they probably would have like. destroyed them #self completely #and yea this rant has become very long and i'm gonna stop now

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eroticcannibal · 5 years ago

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(1of4) Ok so kind of kink hour, kind of angsty, but do u think its possible 2 b, like, dysphoric but in a kink way? Like Ive got a kink of the lifestyle variety (nervous to specify what it is), that Ive had nearly my whole life, & I literally dont kno how 2 explain this feeling besides as social/physical dysphoria, but 4 kink stuff. Like all I can think of is that post that went around awhile back talking abt the difference between 'Identifying as a dinosaur' as a kid vs 'Pretending 2 b a

(2of4) dinosaur', & how I read that & was immediately struck by how much the 'Identifying as a dinosaur' description was spot on 4 my experiences wrt this kink. But I feel rly hopeless abt it a lot of the time. I kno trauma is a factor, but that doesnt make it better, & I would rather keep the trauma than b untraumatized & not have this kink. & it just feels rly crushing 2 b like, theres this way I feel, this way it feels like Im Supposed 2 B, & this overwhelming fear that Im Not. & I cant quite

(3of4) let go of the hope that that fear is wrong, but its obvs still sucky. Esp when the standard sort of comfort of 'Wanting 2 b a girl is a symptom of Being A Girl' doesnt feel like it rly applies 2 shit like 'Wanting 2 b a puppy/baby/doll/other headspace kink role', & the response is generally less than positive. At best I feel like I get vaguely ableist 'Im scared 4 ur sanity' type BS, & ur obvs rly cool abt kink stuff, so I guess Im looking 4, idk, sum hope, maybe? Or validation or smth.

(4of4) Sumthing 2 hold on2, 2 feel like this sense of how Im supposed 2 b doesnt have 2 b /erased/ 4 the fear that Im not 2 get better. That I can keep this kink thats so important 2 me & feel better abt the dysphoria that accompanies it, as opposed 2 the recommended 'Throw out the whole kink' approach my support system pushes 4. Idk, Im just hoping 4 sum hope, I guess? Feelin fragile n stuff & ur so nice abt kinks. Also sorry 4 so many abbreviations lol, character limit is not my friend.

Dysphoria can be over anything, the definition is just “ a state of unease or generalized dissatisfaction with life” so it can absolutely be in a kink way. (in fact I’d say I have dysphoria in a kink way in the sense that it severely negatively impacts me that I can’t practice most my kinks in my current situation)

I think a lot of people don’t realise just how much kink can be part of someone’s identity, but it absolutely can be very central, so it makes perfect sense that not being able to be open with it or explore it or whatever will contribute to negative feelings that are analogous to social and physical dysphoria.

I do wish the world were more accepting of kink as identity, it would allow far more space for people to just have feelings like urs without the shame. I really don’t think feelings like these are particularly unusual either, but talking about it can be a minefield.

Also honestly in my experience at least, getting better doesn’t mean losing kinks, even when they’re related. I think it absolutely can affect how u think about and approach a kink, I’ve noticed my approach to kink has become more positive and healthy the more I’ve dealt with my trauma, but I’ve not lost them. I don’t think that just throwing the whole kink out will actually resolve anything, that way lies further shame and repression. You can’t just turn a kink off. It will still be there. Better to work on how you can exist as you are comfortably than deny any part of you. Ultimately, what do you think your life would look like if you were truly comfortable? How can you get there? When it comes to your own identity and how your kinks interact with that, your own comfort is the only thing that matters.

Ur always welcome to talk about this stuff here, I promise u that.

#kink hour

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redantsunderneath · 6 years ago

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Us (2019) *Spoilers*

Us is the best movie I've seen since Mandy. I shouldn't oversell it, but it's really rich and basically everything I like movies for. I’m going to at least refer to major plot spoilers (usually without direct description) so stop reading if you want to stay clean.

Horror seems more direct and out of the box able to get at the concerns I like narrative art to deal with. The genres kind of promote certain thematic preoccupations, and horror is so diencephalonic that it really is able to go psycho-chrono-geographically extreme (more unconscious, more primordial, more in the woods) with less dithering. This movie is an example of why all my favorite movies loosely categorize horror (even cheap dumb horror movies seem to work a lot better subliminally than those of other genres).

For people who don’t care about spoilers and want to follow along, the movie unfolds as follows: A black upper middle class family goes to their vacation house where no-one really wants to be - the daughter is in her phone, the son is withdrawn, the mom actively does not want to be there, and the dad is overcompensating. They go to Santa Cruz beach where the mom, when she was a kid, saw a girl who looked just like her in a hall or mirrors below the carnival/boardwalk, the trauma stemming from which derives much of the movie’s impetus. On the beach, they meet their friends, a white family who are the image of superficial aspirational American values.

One night a full set of their doppelgängers show up in the driveway and a battle for survival begins. This turns out to be broader with, at least regionally, alters (”the tethered”) showing up everywhere and killing their analogous surface people. The white family falls immediately, sand our guys have to face their alters too. The family eventually triumphs, but not before the mom descends into the tunnels under the hall of mirrors and faces her alter who reveals a too literal plot and wins. The family drives away and it is revealed that the mom was (THE SPOILER) the alter all along and what happens is the result of the “real surface mom” jealously yearning for participation in that kind of stuff we do that gives life meaning, including odd self delusions and empty displays... so, like culture in general.

What the movie is really about is how we have within us a shadow of our primal selves, an ancestral image of progenitors who were concerned with drives and survival, and we suppress this so that society can function and we can be free from the knowledge of existential risk. The "absent center" (a la Derrida) of the movie is the culture war in which we are prone to let this shadow (and its instinctual out-group hatred and violence) take more control. We have a complex relationship this repression that involves guilt (we have it better than they did, civilization is theft and genocide, how can I forget this) and tightly bound attraction/fear of giving into the deeper drives - we know it is valuable but we don't want to edge in too far.

So civilization is an internal tension filled detente that is kind of a lie we tell ourselves, and that situation is slipping a little bit. Presented as the main perturbation is trauma - being forced to see the real of which this shadow is a part, whether the trauma is abuse, encountering too harsh truths as a child, day to day existence in western civilization, self inflicted trauma to confirm to norms, the loss of a way of life, epigenetic shock from slavery, or whatever else. Being a “realist”, and societal “red pilling,” is depicted as extremely destabilizing and dangerous because the truths discovered when outed may annihilate everything we have been striving for (if that’s worth saving at all).

Note, this is within the context of not absolute truth but competing ambiguities, or at least an ambivalent set of incommensurable ideas that are all true but are immanently inconsistent. Or, alternately phrased, culture has rejected confronting certain truths for so long that we should be afraid of how a bunch of people who are not nuanced and are not prepared for the knowledge will react, but we really need to understand the real to grapple with the inevitable dissonance (competing ideas of the good) when figuring out a way forward. This movie is not pedantic and is well aware this struggle should not be ignored but the pain of confronting the truth is that it threatens the good in a way that is fucking tough to resolve.

The semiotics of this movie must have taken forever to put together. There is symbolism everywhere and most symbols have multiple meanings.The main reference points are the 1111, rabbits, and the direct references to other media, but it is drenched in nods to the Americana, slavery, status markers, black cultural touchstones, etc..

The 1111 recurrence has many reflections, some harder to notice. 11:11 is in the ether as the “time that big shit goes down,” has numerological connections to the divine descending to earth, and has a direct function of representing the individuation/alienation of the family and the way things are “twinned.” One good example of the way this ties together is, as they walk across the beach, their 4 shadows make the Black Flag symbol (there is recurrence of Black Flag T-shirts to remind us) which is a stylized single (1) flag, furled as to show a staggered arrangement of the 4 band members as individuals - unity in individuality, which the movie questions (also to play into themes of suburban rebellion and “authenticity”). The 1111/11:11 works a lot of ways: to suggest an eschaton of individuality, that there is a moment of great potential and danger, as judgement/revelation foreshadowing (via Jeremiah 11:11 "Therefore thus saith the Lord, Behold, I will bring evil upon them, which they shall not be able to escape; and though they shall cry unto me, I will not hearken unto them."), the twinnings at different levels (we see the Black Flag t most clearly in the chest of one of a set of twins who have their own "twins" 11:11 - the other twin just has on a halter to maximally show off her "twins").

The rabbits are a psychological critique of the id in modernity (this movie is interesting about sex in its color-around-the-picture absence). In deep psychological tunnels, they are caged and consumed subconsciously, red and bloody, as the current order/superego’s sacrifice to keep things quiet, and set free by the lysis in libidinal excess. They also abut the slavery imagery as they are caged, utilized instrumentally, and are present not just in tunnels but in something that codes as an underground railroad. But mostly I think Peele must be a David Lynch fan as Inland Empire informs this use.

The Twin Peaks references were unexpected. The first sequence is a descent from the carnival of fake activities that simulate real experience to the “deep place,” past the dweller on the threshold who gives us warning, into the woods with an owl (which isn’t what it seems), and into a veil of curtains through which are the deeper psychological truths where we interrogate inability to cope with trauma as a kind of existential problem - the whole situation as a manifestation of the sickness of the structures that give life meaning. Also, the protagonist is trapped for a similar length of time, has a doppelgänger that is in a way the real protagonist revealed, and needs to face this part of themselves.

So, we’ll try to hit most of the wide ranging pop-culture references, but things really intertwine. Example: the red smocks evoke several things: 1. Michael Jackson, with glove, specifically Thriller (as on the tee), intentionally picking up on the gaslighting, the trauma, the ties to his own hidden nature, and the fraught nature of cultural affiliation (specifically black - Peele is the one doing the questioning) that perpetrates a cycle of behavior (we’ll get to code switching); 2. Chain gangs/prison uniforms - there are shackles in the movie and "tethered" is the word for the link between people and their alters - which, in the imagination, is just an echo of slavery; and 3. Michael Myers... the white mask of one of the characters delineates this, but it reminds one of the other as an encounter with the real. The glove looking like a low res infinity gauntlet will be left as an exercise for the reader.

The Jaws T-shirt fits with the water/boats stuff, evoking the polysemous subliminal other as a threat to out prosperity and illusions about ourselves. Just as in Jaws, the other is a really wide concept and can lend to a lot of different readings focusing on whatever you want to about the modern western world and what we fear/suppress. All the MJ symbols and the mention of OJ alludes to the fraught identity of being trapped between worlds. Black Flag and NWA recalls the shakiness of authenticity from opposite sides. The consistent riffing on The Shinning evokes the sickness in the culture, the family, and the individual as inseparable and leveraged against our forgetting what has happened and who were were before. Hands Across America’s repeated direct referencing instantiates the desire for and society's readiness to provide the lie agreed upon, ambivalence about which is at the heart of the film. Lost Boys is name checked by location and timing - literally they its filming is there in the flashback part - but also the spectacle hiding our savage natures which we are drawn to but need to control. The home invasion scene is very A Clockwork Orange, with the eruption of violent life into the modern domestic space set to pointedly inappropriate music. There are tons of less specific movie references each evoking multiple films with similar shadowing - masks, scissors as weapon, the hall of mirrors, carnival as place of trial and trauma, underground as a place to resolve answers, incongruous music and violence, etc. There is a shot with shelves of VHS tapes all of which have obvious resonances (CHUD, Goonies, the Man with Two Brains, Nightmare on Elm Street) except the Right Stuff which is pointedly there, perhaps as a reminder that man can and will transcend.

Tim Heidecker plays just the kind of character who you'd expect - a clueless smarm who goofily performs the rituals of commodified masculinity while not really seeming masculine at all. His transparency is why he was cast. He is part of a whole family critique of the superficiality of the American dream and how there is rot underneath. Much of this critique is undercooked and a weak spot of the film as the family’s alters, besides Elizabeth Moss’s narcissism prompted ritual self mutilation, aren’t that worked in. Yeah, the father mimes dad stances, and the kids are interchangeable just like suburban identities (right, commuters?), but that’s it. There is a lot of deeply implicit racism and distrust of the outsider in the families’ interactions that is much more subtle than “I would have voted for Obama for a third term.” How about “I knew you’d forget the flare gun” (but not the rope or life preservers) which has a lot running through it - ironic racial assumptions, a from the right critique of a political stance valuing safety and security over defense and accepting help, the "making fire” motif involved in beating back the shadow, and the plastic “real man” attitude.

The primary family is black and affluent, and have a connection to black culture that is depicted as at once not entirely real, aspirational, and a kind of cosmic separation. But (mostly) the really deep connection to these things is "forgotten." Dad’s efforts to code switch when he has to summon something other than performative consumerism comes off as pathetic in the face of the power of the history of survival. As dad listens and performs involvement of “heritage,” the son asks what “I Got 5 On It” means - dad deflects and the daughter answers “drugs.” The correct answer is having a stake in the ($) dream whatever rules you have to break to get there. This rubs (intentionally) uncomfortably against the Michael Jackson and OJ references (and the trapped in the closet pseudo reference) as cultural aspiration is about having to either forget a history of bad things (what the actual text of the things are speaking to) or leave behind the products of that thing (at which point where is your connection to your cultural past).

The Fuck the Police joke works a bunch of different ways: 1. It’s a pun; 2. it’s an Alexa/Siri not working joke; 3. it brings the specter of technology contributing to faulty society into the space (as does the daughter’s phone); 4. it ironically contrasts with Good Vibrations; 5. it ironically contrasts with the action, the incarcerated kicking the shit out of suburbanites as class revenge; 6. the actual police literally still haven’t shown up after the 911 (is a joke) calls; 7. it expresses our ambivalence to societal strictures; 8. it is at odds with the environment, suggesting the absurdity of the middle class aping authenticity; 9. Ice Cube now makes a lot of fish out of water comedies of hood-coded man trying to fake middle class; 10. I could go on.

The weapons used by the heroes are all affluent symbols, often a costly reclaiming/supplanting/mastering of the primitive with the stuff of the modern - an expensive aluminum bat, a golf club, an outboard motor, and a geode mounted on a stand. The 3 family members win against both their shadows and that of their white counterparts by unifying his modern advances with the primitive impulses. The dad wins by understanding how machinery works and by mastering fire. The daughter wins because cars > running. The son is really something because he is all about play and tricks and can't make fire, but is really about empathy (or maybe mirror neurons). His alter plays with fire, has burned himself badly, and is scared by technological magic. So our son makes a spark, and learns to play with the other and thus control him to walk backwards into the alter's own fire. He learns this trapped in a closet (the second R Kelly sub rosa reference this weekend after Shazam saying "I believe I can fly" before a messy edit) surrounded by board games including Monster Trap and Guess Who?

The twist really opens up what the movie is saying and is perfect Twilight Zone type "both chewy plot gotcha and thematic epiphany.” The twist basically says that the jolt of becoming aware of the real is traumatic and, if it is bad enough and you are susceptible, the state of wokenness requires you to fake it in order to fit into the life you desire but are alienated from, while the part of you that loves life (giving over to a spirit, art, believing in something "true" rather than factual) stays buried ready to erupt with negative effects. This is a unique take on the subjectivity of trauma, that the bad unacceptable thing that is not supposed to happen that happened to you makes you feel like you are characterized primarily by that bad thing pretending to be the transcendent nature you repressed. And yet, the movie ends with the Shining helicopter landscape shots of the car driving away, to Hands Across America being re-enacted, our primitive selves being inspired to attempt to recreate the lie of society as a life affirming spectacle. This rhymes with the mom continuing to play mom as the performance is the reality, is who she really is.

I have left a lot on the table... the boat (that always pulls left) stuff as class critique, the voices the alters have, what each families’ possessions say (especially the wall art and architecture of the houses), the movements of the alters, the coding of the water settings, the idea of the “Carnival” of souls over abandoned tunnels and superficial (cheap and temporary) vs. deep (forgotten) culture, the scissors as a compound metaphor, the mirroring, 100 other media nods (e.g. Home Alone), the general quality of the music cues, the overdetermining alter names from the IMDB page, the Howard and thỏ shirts, the drunk dad, the excessive hinting at common types abuse (using film and real language) but not letting us have that as an organizing reality (as Nightmare on Elm Street does), and other stuff I’m not dredging up.

The movie is not prefect - 1. it commits the cardinal sin of 11th hour exposition to set the literal plot in concrete, which I didn't need and waters down the themes; 2. the white family (other than mom) deserves more specific behavior from their alters, and 3. there is only one real standout acting performance (Lupita Nyong'o, who I didn't "get" until this). But man, this is 1000 x better than Get Out - it's broader and more primal in its concerns with race falling out as just one critique among many.

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diarrheaworldstarhiphop · 7 years ago

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So how does one, in a straight relationship, prevent that situation? What about solutions to said situation surfacing?

well, for men, its to address complex traumas and fucking, not emotionally batter the women they date

and like, its not because men LOVE to traumatize and abuse women in particular, its because the women straight men date are the closest to the man’s true selves, the selves they build their performative masculine facade around out of insecurity. They are softer and open to a degree around them, which triggers and opens the wounds he depresses out of stubborn masculine idealization of how he should be - as society expects him to be as a Successful Man. This lends itself to women becoming the therapist in the relationship. She just is the sponge for the repressed anxieties, resent and anger men hold - expected to support him undyingly in the process so he doesnt go thru the effort of altering his negative behaviours - so he can focus on Achieving Greatness or fucking whatever it is that men preoccupy themselves with doing. You can simplify this down to the literal power imbalance of the man being larger, stronger than her and her seeking that strength as comfort and security… or how men will react to pain with bursts of anger and women will just shatter.

But i digress,

Here’s the unfortunate reality of the matter.

a man is probably reading this, like, “ok, horseshit effortposting trap, i listen and am attentive to and care for my girlfriend and we are in a fantastic relationship” but fails to contextualize his history of dating leading to this point… of the first serious relationships he has had as a teen or young adult. To arrive at this current fantastic relationship with a woman who feel cared for and respected, he had to process and leave women in his wake. Women who had to pick up the pieces as he moved on. Women who just end up being all sorts of guys’ firsts and take on the emotional load of being abused or the therapist in the relationship.. It has a way of conditioning women to play dumb, be emotionally defensive and learn how to read the people (men) in her life, while men get to be cavalier.

Women are socialized to openly deconstruct and express feelings and anxieties almost to comical lengths in some cases (see: lesbian processing) while men are socialized (and/or compelled by testosterone) to repress until it explodes out when they encounter triggers to their anxiety. Straight women learn to expect less from men to this regard, of closure to issues or his anxieties, so she tends to augment her own behaviour around it (primarily out of his domineering emotional habits).

Curiously, when men conceptualize the “lock and key” analogy or any sort of metaphor for how women are in a place of ease - of having this almost privileged place of having to choose the men in her life to date, to have the pick of the litter so to speak, he doesn’t realize that it’s less a supply and demand thing and more of a “i need to be aware of and be able to perceive behavioural red flags that will get me hurt if i get invested in him” activity… This is also why some women, savvy women, have a habit of NOPING the fuck out of there when they perceived a behavioural thing that signals the insecurity beneath his courtship performance that will eventually detonate the Honeymoon period floor beneath the couple.

The process of selection is a safety measure and not a measure of UNGA BUNGA HOT GUY. And the women who do select by the measure of UNGA BUNGA HOT GUY, will inevitably come to the process of reading for red flags in the end anyway because the emotional load will pile up to the point where she unavoidably becomes conscious of this pattern of male behaviour and begins to select wrt it.

TL;DR men go into therapy and stop “sidekicking” your gf

but like, exasperated, its not even that easy cus this shit piles up.. the emotional load… before men or the women they date recognize what they are doing or realize a pattern to things enough to do something about it. Like, its almost always only occurs after the damage is done and sometimes, they can go decades or even a whole life without realizing this.

What we have is, as a species, women are less defined by their physical traits but the unique traumas they endure and are conditioned by. being TEE HEE cute and aloof is a survival technique.

kinda fucked.

#effortpost #on trauma

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agirldying · 3 years ago

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hello! kind of venting i guess? feel free to reply tho it's kind of mumbling

should i just stop thinking about trauma at all? i'm doing better than ever and better than anyone i know who dealt with trauma but i can't help wanting it to define me in some way. and it feels wrong or selfish, like i'm romanticizing it. and i hate the way it is for me, i feel like no one deals with trauma the way i do. i'm just heavily detached and i remember what happened as facts rather than events. like yeah he did this and that to me but it's like i wasn't there. and even when i'm okay sometimes i want a false excuse to act like i'm struggling, because somehow it makes people 'special' to struggle (i know it doesn't but the thought just kind of lingers). even writing that i know i could just stop but i act stubborn about it. sometimes i think it's just boredom? when i'm bored i feel like diving into trauma. and just now i spent a good hour reading your asks about csa and i don't struggle the way people do but i did at some point and it's weird to know that time is gone. like i numbed myself over time by exposing myself to such strong feelings and they just faded inexplicably.

Hi anon,

It's possible to healthily acknowledge the ways in which trauma has impacted or changed you, and so to a degree I think it's okay to feel that your trauma defines you (I certainly feel that way). But it's also important to remind yourself that your trauma is not all you are. Yes it may impact or explain a lot of things about you, but you are also a complex human being with facets independent of your trauma.

I don't think it's necessarily fair to you or what you've been through to "stop thinking about trauma at all". In recovery, it's not really about forgetting or avoiding it, it's about learning to engage with it in a healthy way. In the Babadook, it ends with the monster residing in the basement, instead of occupying the whole house (the mind). The mother goes and feeds it a bucket of worms, and when the Babadook screams at her, she goes to scream back but takes a breath and calms it down, then slowly walks away. I think it's a great analogy for managing PTSD - what happened doesn't necessarily "go away" but there are ways to cope with it and live on.

Every trauma survivor handles their trauma in their own way, but at the same time please know you're not alone. I can strongly relate to the emotional detachment from your trauma, and recounting it matter-of-factly. From my understanding, I feel like we almost repress our emotions because they're a large part of what makes the trauma so unbearably painful. But, like my therapist tells me, your emotions are part of your story, they're part of the truth. I know some people will say things like "facts don't care about your feelings" as if they're two completely separate things, but in reality, how you felt during your trauma and how you feel about your trauma are facts themselves. Saying "I am sad" is a fact, for example. So I think it's worth exploring how to bring those two concepts together.

But I also want to say that there are good reasons why our brains repress things. Usually repression is a defense mechanism, much like an airbag, to protect ourselves from damage. So I think it's also crucial to take your time in working through your emotions (or lack thereof), and not force yourself to feel. While being in touch with your emotions can mean that you have the ability to experience painful emotions such as anger or sadness, it's worth the joy you can experience too. You deserve to be able to express your emotions, in whatever way they come.

I understand what you're saying about wanting to be seen as struggling. I think a part of that is sometimes just wanting to be adequately acknowledged as a trauma survivor, because when we're in a recovered state, you start to lose touch with that identity. And while it's good in a way, you also lose something too.

I also totally understand consuming potentially triggering content seemingly out of boredom. At least in my experience, I acknowledge this as a kind of self-harm behavior, because in my case I feel like I do it to try to feel something, as depressing as it sounds. I know it's easier said than done, but it might be good to limit how much triggering content you consume, for your own mental health and recovery. If you are to do so, just take baby steps and allow yourself to shift gears if it starts to bother you. Just remember that you don't deserve to be triggered, and you do deserve to exercise healthy coping mechanisms as you recover.

I hope I could help. Please feel free to comment on any of this, and otherwise just know that I'm here for you if you want to talk about anything.

#text #asks #trauma #vent #trauma vent #ptsd #ptsd recovery #trauma recovery

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mmmmalo · 4 years ago

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Stuff I've said about sylladexes includes

The way John's sylladex ejects items as new items are introduced resembles a short attention span (an observation owed to elfstuck), and as such sylladex expansions and upgrades ought to function as/coincide with expansions of John's mind. (The second half never really panned out, as far as I can tell.) By similar reasoning, Jake's enormous sylladex capacity would seem related to the claim that he is some sort of genius -- but since Egbert's similarly enormous wallet modus has no such connotation (afaik), perhaps not

Dirk inexplicably having one of Roxy's cat dolls in his sylladex seems to function as a clue that the pair is akin to the cherubim in some capacity, since the cherubim make explicit the notion of a shared sylladex. Other hints include: a. Dirk suggests chaining Roxy to her bed, an image later made manifest with the cherubim. b. The scene transitions from Dirk to Roxy involves Dirk stepping into a doorway concealed by his wardrobifier; this is a reference to Problem Sleuth, in which PS becomes his feminine self after walking into a wardrobe. c. Their intros contain complementary gender inversions; the reference to XY chromosomes in Roxy's intro is well known (though less so the accompanying ejaculation joke), and the 'ark' made of Dirk's last two letters is elsewhere established as a womb symbol.

2 of Jade's modii... The memory modus scene (where 'the player' makes Jade select fruit instead of what she wants) is notable mainly as one of several illustration of Jade's annoyance with being controlled across the 4th wall. This was covered more in the recent Jade thread. Insofar as the modus is mind, we might read her impatiently shoving the fruit back in the fridge as consistent with Jade's general tendency to repress unwanted thoughts? Which... is related to Bec. Rambling tangent:

The sketch modus is notable mainly for its malfunctions, which can be read as short circuits in Jade's thought caused by associations between the correct image (or its name) and the incorrect image... eg how the eclectic bass drawing summons Johnny 5 (from the movie Short Circuit), for what I guess is the association of 'electric' with Johnny 5 being struck by lightning (and developing consciousness), a fear of Jade's. Bec enters the scene at this point and takes Jade back to her room.

One of Bec's functions is to keep Jade separate from painful knowledge (hence Jadesprite being unable to turn away from the light when fused with him), which I take to be the reason he swoops in right as Jade's thought starts moving toward lightning, which relates to a core trauma. Jade going grimbark at the sight of Jake's banana hammock is probably another example of this... as is Bec Noir crushing frogs (and Bec killing the mystery frog), Davepeta had some comments analogizing thought to a game of whack-a-mole and I tend to project that aggression towards intrusive/unwanted thoughts back into Jade's earlier story...

Anyway, the matter of Bec preventing Jade from reaching the meteor impact site from which he arose ([S] Jade: Pester John) feels like a pretty direct example of Bec preventing Jade from accessing the trauma that generated (that /is/?) the fissure in her consciousness that he represents. Interesting to note that we see Bec arise from the lava a couple pages after Bro flies off into the identically rendered red sun... something to that transition, especially since the first scene emblemizes Dave's trauma... blah blah superposition. I forget the point I was making

Have you ever thought of doing a post about sylladexes and what they tell us about each characters psychology (especially when they change?)

Can't say I have, if only because I just have partial accounts of a handful of characters... I'll try throwing together what I've got later though

#homestuck commentary #jade #bec

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quasithinking · 5 years ago

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Gravity’s Rainbow: Part IX

When I wrote my thoughts on the last section, I was about one hundred or so pages into Gravity's Rainbow. Now I'm five hundred pages in! So maybe I'll understand 20% of what I read instead of just 6%! This section begins with a conversation between Kevin Spectro and Ned Pointsman. They're two of the seven owners of the mysterious Book (which won't be that mysterious for long. It's like Pavlov's journal or something). Ned is a complete Pavlovian doing all the things you'd expect of him: catching dogs, torturing dogs, wiring dogs' salivary glands so they leak directly into tubes. Spectro, well, I don't remember exactly what his specialty is. It probably doesn't matter because he'll be dead soon. Pynchon uses the word "abreaction" in this section for (possibly?) the first time. He'll use it again so it's probably important! Mostly he uses it in the context of Pointsman's reality. Pointsman, being a Pavlovian working in a madhouse leased by paranormal researchers, runs into a lot of people who tend to have abreactions (here's the definition so you don't have to bother poor overworked Google: "the expression and consequent release of a previously repressed emotion, achieved through reliving the experience that caused it (typically through hypnosis or suggestion)"). That word might be a really important world in postmodernist literature. Not that I ever remember coming across it! But I'm sure I just ignored it like I ignore all the words I don't know. The definition just makes me think, "How can that word not be constantly used in postmodernist writing since it perfectly describes what we're all going through in a postmodern world?!" Pointsman has apparently just opened up to Spectro about maybe experimenting on Tyrone Slothrop rather than his dogs. Some stimulus is giving Slothrop hard-ons and isn't it the job of Pavlovians to push that stimulus reaction further and further? Surely something can be learned about the human condition by studying what makes Slothrop erect?! Spectro isn't supportive of the idea because he doesn't see how you can justify experimenting on just one man. But Pointsman figures it might be moot anyway because he can't figure out how to get the funding out of Pudding, the general running The White Visitation. Spoiler Alert: he'll get the funding out of him by providing him with weekly visits from Katje (who?! You haven't met her yet!) where she pisses and shits in his mouth. Here's the crux of Pointsman's desire to study Slothrop: through some unknown stimulus, Slothrop can detect where a German rocket that has yet to be fired will land in London. In a way, the rocket itself, traveling faster than the speed of sound, mimics Slothrop's reaction: it blows up before it's ever heard. Response seems somehow to be coming before the stimulus. It's a mystery which turns all Pavlovian experimentation on its head. Spectro works at a ward where people wounded by rockets are treated. Not only physically but mentally as well. They are full of abreactions! Am I using that word correctly?! Who can tell?! Anyway, it's a good segue into quoting this bit that I love from this section (is it really a segue if I interrupt the performative segue with a mention of it being a segue?!): "[S]ooner or later an abreaction, each one, all over this frost and harrowed city. . . . . . as once again the floor is a giant lift propelling you with no warning toward your ceiling—replaying now as the walls are blown outward, bricks and mortar showering down, your sudden paralysis as death comes to wrap and stun I don't know guv I must've blacked out when I come to she was gone it was burning all around me head was full of smoke . . . and the sight of your blood spurting from the flaccid stub of artery, the snowy roofslates fallen across half your bed, the cinema kiss never completed, you were pinned and stared at a crumpled cigarette pack for two hours in pain, you could hear them crying from the rows either side but couldn't move . . . the sudden light filling up the room, the awful silence, brighter than any morning through blankets turned to gauze no shadows at all, only unutterable two-o'clock dawn . . . and . . . . . . this transmarginal leap, this surrender. Where ideas of the opposite have come together, and lost their oppositeness. (And is it really the rocket explosion that Slothrop's keying on, or is it exactly this depolarizing, this neurotic "confusion" that fills the wards tonight?) How many times before it's washed away, these iterations that pour out, reliving the blast, afraid to let go because the letting go is so final how do I know Doctor that I'll ever come back? and the answer trust us, after the rocket, is so hollow, only mummery—trust you?��and both know it. . . . Spectro feels so like a fraud but carries on . . . only because the pain continues to be real. . . ." There's a strange bit in this section where Pointsman has a fantasy. On my first read-through, I thought we were learning that Pointsman was some kind of pedophile. But I think the creepy descriptions of children and virgins, the people he is lusting after to experiment on, to replace his dogs, is just an analogy of those who have moved past their trauma (as described in the transcribed passage above). They move past the trauma and spring anew as a blank slate, as a virgin, as a child. A mind so clean and clear of the trauma they had previously experienced that Pointsman lusts to project his own view of the world upon them. How can he get a better specimen, unless it's, say, an infant baby boy like Jampf used. Pointsman, of course, does not get his mitts on one of Spectro's patients to experiment on (his fantasy being one of kidnapping as he lays in wait at the places he knows they will be extracted to once released from the hospital, and not a fantasy where Spectro just gives him access to one of his patients. Pointsman, you see, is a cold-hearted monster. That might be a spoiler unless you've already realized it). What Pointsman does get is an octopus named Grigori. It'll become important in one of Pointsman's schemes later. Pointsman shows little concern for the war effort; he's merely trying to get enough money out of the war to fund whatever weird Pavlovian experiments he can get away with. So far the war has provided him with lots of free dogs and lots of money (maybe not enough money but he'll, you know, learn disgusting ways around that soon enough). Since I, for the life of me, can't figure out how Pavlovian studies could help the war anyway, it's nice to learn that Pointsman's goals are entirely self-motivated. And it's important to learn about him and his motivations now before we get to Chapter Two where his experiments on Slothrop begin in earnest.

#Gravity's Rainbow #Thomas Pynchon

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poorquentyn · 8 years ago

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Men’s Lives Have Meaning, Part 5: The Hour of Ghosts

Series so far here

“There’s a tipping point in every tragedy where inevitability locks the exit doors on free will and you know that after this, there is no turning back.”

-- @racefortheironthrone

Hello everyone. My name is Emmett, and I could have been imagined, designed, constructed, and sold as a consumer for the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy. I had just turned twelve when the first one came out at the end of 2001, I’d read the books that summer, and the infusion of swelling Hollywood orchestras and Peter Jackson’s beloved action schlock was perfectly calibrated to take my love for the material and shoot it into the stratosphere. I still look back on those movies with love...mostly. There are moments, especially in Return of the King, where the tone tips overboard:

youtube

On one level, that’s what we want our heroes to say, right? We’re up against the odds, we might not be rewarded for our efforts, but let’s do it anyway; that’s the lesson a lot of great genre fiction is meant to leave us with, in one form or another. The problem with that clip is the knowing wink, the sly acknowledgement that after they’ve escaped so many other hair-raising disasters, this is just another day at work. I get the joke, but it would make more sense for (say) a Bond or Indy movie, where it really is just another day at work and part of the enjoyment comes from how what’s over-the-top for us is normal for them. In the context of LOTR, it’s tonally off, because this is not supposed to feel episodic. It’s supposed to feel climactic, like our heroes are genuinely in danger as everything comes to a head, and that’s marred when you expose the plot armor so blatantly. If this is just another day, why are we supposed to be invested in their risk?

Of course, Peter Jackson didn’t invent that problem. It’s a storytelling problem. And that is why GRRM created Quentyn Martell. It’s why he tries to tame a dragon and why he fails: to reclaim the stakes and re-sensitize us to the risk. It’s not just that he dies, it’s how and why he dies. What does it mean to not have plot armor? What does it say about quest narratives that they can collapse so completely and yet the quester clings to tropes as if they’ll save him? How are we to live if Story fails as an organizing principle? “The Spurned Suitor” brings these questions to the forefront, right before “The Dragontamer” sets it all on fire. It’s the most reflective and dialogue-heavy of Quent’s chapters, the most thematically explicit; it’s the one that cuts through the hellish imagery dominating this storyline right to what it all means. In genre terms, where previous Quent chapters soaked the fantasy tropes in blood-red horror, this chapter has a distinctly noirish feel to it, in terms of both imagery and theme.

“The Merchant’s Man” introduced Quent reeling from his friends’ deaths; “The Windblown” caught up with him in the wake of the Sack of Astapor. In both chapters, as I said in the essays in question, GRRM’s focus is less the traumatic event itself than the psychological impact on Quent--both are about how one processes these existential challenges to the hero’s journey, and why one would keep going in the face of them. “The Spurned Suitor” pulls the same trick, but with a twist. In this case, the pre-chapter trauma that shapes the chapter isn’t an obstacle to the quest. It’s the outright failure of it. Quent reached the beautiful princess, proved himself willing (though not exactly eager) to transform from a frog back into a prince...but she said no.

To be clear, chapter title aside, the horror here is not getting rejected by a pretty girl. (Like I said last time, Dany doesn’t reject Quent in favor of the dark dashing Daario and his lust for open war, but in favor of the dishwater-dull Hizdahr and the peace he ostensibly brings; as she tells herself upon agreeing to marry the latter, she’s trying to act on behalf of her people.) The horror here is getting rejected after losing your friends and killing screaming teenagers along the way; the horror is selling your soul to live a life you didn’t want to live, only to find you’re not even going to get that. The horror is that it wasn’t worth it. It all meant nothing. Story is a lie. Of course, if that’s all there was to Quent’s story, it would be tired and boring. What grounds it emotionally is that laserlike focus on the aftermath of that revelation, as it hits home harder with each step of the descent. What do you do when your easy narrative falls apart and you’re left with no good options?

In “The Merchant’s Man” and “The Windblown,” Quent’s reaction to this trauma and disillusionment was to repress what he’d gone through and done, soldiering on with the Windblown repeatedly intervening (as if sent by some sinister observing God-Author) to allow him to do so. Now that he’s faced with the failure of his quest, all the kid wants to do is to go home, but he can’t bring himself to face the shame of failure and (even more so) his survivor’s guilt...

“We should be heeding Selmy. When Barristan the Bold tells you to run, a wise man laces up his boots. We should find a ship for Volantis whilst the port is still open.”

Just the mention turned Ser Archibald’s cheeks green. “No more ships. I’d sooner hop back to Volantis on one foot.”

Volantis, Quentyn thought. Then Lys, then home. Back the way I came, empty-handed. Three brave men dead, for what?

It would be sweet to see the Greenblood again, to visit Sunspear and the Water Gardens and breathe the clean sweet mountain air of Yronwood in place of the hot, wet, filthy humors of Slaver’s Bay. His father would speak no word of rebuke, Quentyn knew, but the disappointment would be there in his eyes. His sister would be scornful, the Sand Snakes would mock him with smiles sharp as swords, and Lord Yronwood, his second father, who had sent his own son along to keep him safe…

“I will not keep you here,” Quentyn told his friends. “My father laid this task on me, not you. Go home, if that is what you want. By whatever means you like. I am staying.”

...and so instead, he reaches out to the Windblown in the hopes that they’ll once again keep his quest going, even as their actions and attitudes continue to undercut the ostensibly righteous and hopeful nature of said quest. We see that right from the beginning of Quent’s penultimate POV chapter:

The hour of ghosts was almost upon them when Ser Gerris Drinkwater returned to the pyramid to report that he had found Beans, Books, and Old Bill Bone in one of Meereen’s less savory cellars, drinking yellow wine and watching naked slaves kill one another with bare hands and filed teeth.

This fighting pit, an unofficial but not-so-secret alternative to Daznak’s, is a glimpse of the Meereen outside the rarified domain of the Masters. The black market sprang up as the sanctioned one shut down, and that the Windblown are taking part reminds us of the sellswords’ own analogous role in The System, straddling the line between a standard part of Essosi military coalitions and a wild card constantly in the position to upset the applecart.

That backdrop provides the thematic and emotional context for the decision Quent makes in this chapter. The hour of ghosts, indeed; the shadow city of alleys and cellars into which Team Quentyn descends in “The Spurned Suitor” is haunted, not only by those already dead but also by the deaths to come. As has been the case throughout Quent’s storyline, his personal struggles dovetail with (and are influenced by) the big picture of the Meereenese Knot. Just as Dany’s refusal obliterated the remnants of the “tale to tell our grandchildren” veneer, leading to Quent betting his life on a wild roll of the dice, so has her departure at Daznak’s shattered the pretense of peace, leading to the whole pot boiling over as ADWD comes to a close. Indeed, I’d argue that Quent’s quest and Hizdahr’s peace are analogous. They sound good on the surface, appealing to values we instinctively support, but quickly prove rotten underneath the gild, enabling the worst actors in the Meereenese Knot instead of righteous causes, before they both finally come crashing down at the same place and time in the Kingbreaker/Dragontamer two-sided setpiece. It’s all approaching the tipping point, personally and politically.

But as I said, what makes Quent’s chapters more than glum grim deconstruction is the extent to which the characters are aware of this tipping point, that the story is falling apart around them, and that’s made explicit in “The Spurned Suitor.” On their way to their fateful meeting with the Tattered Prince, Quent and Drink argue about the former’s plans, and IMO it’s one of the most important and profound passages in the series. Let’s break it down.

“ ‘The dragon has three heads,’ she said to me. ‘My marriage need not be the end of all your hopes,’ she said. ‘I know why you are here. For fire and blood.’ I have Targaryen blood in me, you know that. I can trace my lineage back —”

“Fuck your lineage,” said Gerris. “The dragons won’t care about your blood, except maybe how it tastes. You cannot tame a dragon with a history lesson. They’re monsters, not maesters. Quent, is this truly what you want to do?”

“This is what I have to do. For Dorne. For my father. For Cletus and Will and Maester Kedry.”

“They’re dead,” said Gerris. “They won’t care.”

“All dead,” Quentyn agreed. “For what? To bring me here, so I might wed the dragon queen. A grand adventure, Cletus called it. Demon roads and stormy seas, and at the end of it the most beautiful woman in the world. A tale to tell our grandchildren. But Cletus will never father a child, unless he left a bastard in the belly of that tavern wench he liked. Will will never have his wedding. Their deaths should have some meaning.”

Gerris pointed to where a corpse slumped against a brick wall, attended by a cloud of glistening green flies. “Did his death have meaning?”

Quentyn looked at the body with distaste. “He died of the flux. Stay well away from him.” The pale mare was inside the city walls. Small wonder that the streets seemed so empty. “The Unsullied will send a corpse cart for him.”

“No doubt. But that was not my question. Men’s lives have meaning, not their deaths. I loved Will and Cletus too, but this will not bring them back to us. This is a mistake, Quent. You cannot trust in sellswords.”

“They are men like any other men. They want gold, glory, power. That’s all I am trusting in.” That, and my own destiny. I am a prince of Dorne, and the blood of dragons is in my veins.

We see here that Quent’s sunk cost fallacy has completely taken over his decision-making process. Because his quest has already gotten people killed, it must continue, or in his mind, they died for nothing. This is, of course, extremely relatable. We’ve all made decisions like this, albeit usually on a much smaller scale. No one likes to admit failure, everyone wants to attach some meaning to their losses, and we’re meant to understand why Quent is so helplessly mired in panicked desperation. I can fix this, I will fix this, oh gods please I have to fix this...

GRRM makes this decision easy to empathize with in order to sucker punch us with the larger revelation: the basic mechanics of the genre are designed to create precisely such a sunk cost fallacy. You are supposed to lose companions--that raises the stakes, heightens our emotional involvement, and challenges the protagonist both externally (how do I logistically complete the quest without that companion?) and internally (how do I soldier on in the face of that loss?) You are supposed to have a low point where you question everything that’s led you to this moment. You are supposed to take an enormous risk. You are supposed to, literally or metaphorically, tame a dragon.

In Quent’s case, however, we’re dealing with a Last Hero who never finds the Children of the Forest--or perhaps, a Last Hero whom the Children pitilessly watch die. As such, when looking at his arc as a whole, those losses and low points don’t serve to allow our hero to prove himself and us to revel in victory snatched from the jaws of defeat. Instead, they are warning signs that our hero ignores. Quentyn’s story interrogates reader assumptions about quest narratives: why do we embrace such a narrative? What are we overlooking when we do so? What if the quest in question rips those assumptions limb from limb and leaves them to bleed out on the deck of the Meadowlark, in the ashes of Astapor, in that hellish pit beneath the Great Pyramid?

As far as what all this looks like to Quent himself, it’s made clear that what he’s relying on to save his quest (and his soul) isn’t anything intrinsic to his actions. He’s not counting on courage or ingenuity. He’s not even counting, first and foremost, on the Windblown. He’s counting on the story itself to save him, the elements of his narrative that would seem to demand he succeed: his princely heritage, his lost companions, the fact that he’s taking a big foolish romantic risk.

But as I said a few essays back, the story is in fact out to kill Quentyn Martell, and so Drink does what good friends have to do sometimes: tell you that you’re spouting BS. “Fuck your lineage” is GRRM speaking through Drink, launching a deconstructive nuke at the idea that your bloodline is what makes you The Hero. That holds true with the *actual* heroes as well, of course--one of the major themes of Jon’s story is that everything he’s learned and struggled with is what makes him a worthy savior figure, not R+L=J in and of itself. But it’s different with Quent because he doesn’t have a grand destiny, earned or otherwise. As such, he’s left alone in an existentialist void, trying to create meaning out of what’s befallen his quest.

And just as I wrote my series on Davos’s ADWD arc in order to talk about his letter to Marya, I wrote this series in order to talk about Drink’s response to Quent’s desperate plea to the gods that “their deaths should have some meaning.” This is a bold statement, I know, but: “Men’s lives have meaning, not their deaths” is the closest we’ve gotten to an overarching thesis statement for ASOIAF. It reaches all the way back to the first book, to Ned (who, like Quent, turns out to not be the protagonist after all) and his shocking demise. So many readers have interpreted that moment, as well as the Red Wedding two books later, as being indicative of nihilism on GRRM’s part. Everything is chaos, honor gets you killed and is therefore worthless, “power is power.” But this is not so. Ned’s legacy is not his death, it is his life. The children determined to find each other again because Dad taught them to stick together and be brave, the vassals who have set out to rescue and restore those children in his name, the memory both in-universe and IRL of a decent man who treated his servants like human beings worth listening to and who was determined to protect the young and innocent...all of this is the meaning of Ned Stark, not that he ended up as a head on a spike. By the same token, the meaning of Tywin Lannister isn’t that he died on the can. It’s why he died on the can, and that is because he lived a terrible life. His legacy is his family tearing itself apart, his hoped-for Lannister regime falling to pieces across Westeros, and his oh-so-symbolic reeking corpse. One of these men, for all his mistakes, found and spread a worthy meaning in his brief time on Terros, and the other, for all his triumphs, did not. We are all mortal; all of us, “from the highest lord to the lowest gutter rat,” are ultimately helpless before the abyss that Quent leaps into in his final chapter. No one (not even Euron, try as he might) can change that. What matters, what makes us who are, what means something, is how we live our lives knowing that in the end, the house always wins.

“Men’s lives have meaning, not their deaths” is also the first arrow in my quiver when it comes to defending the worth of the new characters and storylines in the Feastdance. Why should we care about the Martells or the “Griffs” if they’re just showing up now and will probably die before endgame? Because moving the plot along to book seven is not actually what makes a story meaningful. Lives lived make stories meaningful:

The door to the roof of the tower was stuck so fast that it was plain no one had opened it in years. He had to put his shoulder to it to force it open. But when Jon Connington stepped out onto the high battlements, the view was just as intoxicating as he remembered: the crag with its wind-carved rocks and jagged spires, the sea below growling and worrying at the foot of the castle like some restless beast, endless leagues of sky and cloud, the wood with its autumnal colors. “Your father’s lands are beautiful,” Prince Rhaegar had said, standing right where Jon was standing now. And the boy he’d been had replied, “One day they will all be mine.” As if that could impress a prince who was heir to the entire realm, from the Arbor to the Wall.

Griffin’s Roost had been his, eventually, if only for a few short years. From here, Jon Connington had ruled broad lands extending many leagues to the west, north, and south, just as his father and his father’s father had before him. But his father and his father’s father had never lost their lands. He had. I rose too high, loved too hard, dared too much. I tried to grasp a star, overreached, and fell.

And of course, Drink’s powerful words are GRRM’s message to us about how to think about Quent. Do not think that he meant nothing because he failed and died or because he was never going to be the protagonist, the author is saying. What matters is his life, the POV we have experienced and come to understand. He lived, he tried, he died. It is for us to remember him. I only wish he had heeded the lesson Drink was trying to teach him, before it was far too late.

Only with that why firmly established does GRRM move onto the what, knowing that the former will lend resonance to the latter. The plot of “The Spurned Suitor” concerns Quent turning in desperation to the Tattered Prince and his Windblown for help taming one of Dany’s captive children, despite having betrayed them. As the city simmers and seethes around them, the princes meet in secret.

The sun had sunk below the city wall by the time they found the purple lotus, painted on the weathered wooden door of a low brick hovel squatting amidst a row of similar hovels in the shadow of the great yellow-and-green pyramid of Rhazdar. Quentyn knocked twice, as instructed. A gruff voice answered through the door, growling something unintelligible in the mongrel tongue of Slaver’s Bay, an ugly blend of Old Ghiscari and High Valyrian. The prince answered in the same tongue. “Freedom.”

The door opened. Gerris entered first, for caution’s sake, with Quentyn close behind him and the big man bringing up the rear. Within, the air was hazy with bluish smoke, whose sweet smell could not quite cover up the deeper stinks of piss and sour wine and rotting meat. The space was much larger than it had seemed from without, stretching off to right and left into the adjoining hovels. What had appeared to be a dozen structures from the street turned into one long hall inside.

At this hour the house was less than half full. A few of the patrons favored the Dornishmen with looks bored or hostile or curious. The rest were crowded around the pit at the far end of the room, where a pair of naked men were slashing at each other with knives whilst the watchers cheered them on.

Quentyn saw no sign of the men they had come to meet. Then a door he had not seen before swung open, and an old woman emerged, a shriveled thing in a dark red tokar fringed with tiny golden skulls. Her skin was white as mare’s milk, her hair so thin that he could see the scalp beneath.

“Dorne,” she said, “I be Zahrina. Purple Lotus. Go down here, you find them.” She held the door and gestured them through.

Team Quent is going underground and behind the curtain in “The Spurned Suitor.” In terms of the big picture, we’re seeing a Meereen that Dany never even glimpsed from atop the pyramid. On a more intimate scale, this imagery reflects the scales falling from Quent’s eyes about how the world works. He never thought his quest would involve cutting ethically murky deals in back-alley parlors (again, it’s suddenly a noir story), but if he wants to keep going for his fallen friends’ sake, it’s the only avenue he has left. It’s worth noting here how Quent contrasts with his fellow Questers for Dany. Where Quent wonders why Dany would ever choose him “among all the princes of the world,” Aegon has never even considered that she would reject him, because he was raised in a Perfect Prince bubble while Quent was told out of nowhere to Go West East, Young Man at age 18. Tyrion, too, wanders the shifting political sands of Essos in the wake of Dany’s crusade, but at this point in his storyline, he finds it hard to care about most of it, so his bitter detached cynicism makes for another illuminating contrast with Quent’s grief and desperation. And Victarion...well, as I’ve argued before, his story is the black comedy to Quent’s tragedy. Vic’s doom is presented as a huge joke on him by his puppetmasters: Euron, Moqorro, and George R.R. Martin. There’s no tragedy there because Vic keeps rejecting the possibility for growth or change. He’s there to be laughed at, by us as well as the monkeys. But with Quent, there really was a worthy life he could’ve lived (as I’ll get into next time). It’s just not this one, this one-way ride into fiery oblivion, escorted and enabled by the Satan of Slaver’s Bay and his motley crew. Speaking of which:

An undercellar. It was a long way down, and so dark that Quentyn had to feel his way to keep from slipping. Near the bottom Ser Archibald pulled his dagger.

They emerged in a brick vault thrice the size of the winesink above. Huge wooden vats lined the walls as far as the prince could see. A red lantern hung on a hook just inside the door, and a greasy black candle flickered on an overturned barrel serving as a table. That was the only light.

Caggo Corpsekiller was pacing by the wine vats, his black arakh hanging at his hip. Pretty Meris stood cradling a crossbow, her eyes as cold and dead as two grey stones. Denzo D’han barred the door once the Dornishmen were inside, then took up a position in front of it, arms crossed against his chest.

One too many, Quentyn thought.

The Tattered Prince himself was seated at the table, nursing a cup of wine. In the yellow candlelight his silver-grey hair seemed almost golden, though the pouches underneath his eyes were etched as large as saddlebags. He wore a brown wool traveler’s cloak, with silvery chain mail glimmering underneath. Did that betoken treachery or simple prudence? An old sellsword is a cautious sellsword. Quentyn approached his table. “My lord. You look different without your cloak.”

“My ragged raiment?” The Pentoshi gave a shrug. “A poor thing…yet those tatters fill my foes with fear, and on the battlefield the sight of my rags blowing in the wind emboldens my men more than any banner. And if I want to move unseen, I need only slip it off to become plain and unremarkable.” He gestured at the bench across from him. “Sit. I understand you are a prince. Would that I had known. Will you drink? Zahrina offers food as well. Her bread is stale and her stew is unspeakable. Grease and salt, with a morsel or two of meat. Dog, she says, but I think rat is more likely. It will not kill you, though. I have found that it is only when the food is tempting that one must beware. Poisoners invariably choose the choicest dishes.”

“You brought three men,” Ser Gerris pointed out, with an edge in his voice. “We agreed on two apiece.”

“Meris is no man. Meris, sweet, undo your shirt, show him.”

“That will not be necessary,” said Quentyn. If the talk he had heard was true, beneath that shirt Pretty Meris had only the scars left by the men who’d cut her breasts off. “Meris is a woman, I agree. You’ve still twisted the terms.”

“Tattered and twisty, what a rogue I am. Three to two is not much of an advantage, it must be admitted, but it counts for something. In this world, a man must learn to seize whatever gifts the gods chose to send him. That was a lesson I learned at some cost. I offer it to you as a sign of my good faith.”

We’ve got a literal descent matching the emotional/thematic one, to make a foolish risky deal that will end up claiming our protagonist body and soul, with someone who’s lying and spinning right off the bat, his deceptively simple appearance hiding a cruel sardonic heart...so yeah, like I said, the Tattered Prince is the devil of the Meereenese Knot, the tempter-corrupter figure luring Quent into hell. “Tattered and twisty, what a rogue I am” is precisely the sort of way Satan and characters similar to him talk; they lie to you, and then they make fun of you for believing them. After all, Quent, you only got into Meereen in the first place because of the Tattered Prince’s deceitfulness...and because of your own.

The Pentoshi gave a shrug. “One thing I am certain of. Someone will have need of our swords.”

“I have need of those swords. Dorne will hire you.”

The Tattered Prince glanced at Pretty Meris. “He does not lack for gall, this Frog. Must I remind him? My dear prince, the last contract we signed you used to wipe your pretty pink bottom.”

“I will double whatever the Yunkishmen are paying you.”

“And pay in gold upon the signing of our contract, yes?”

“I will pay you part when we reach Volantis, the rest when I am back in Sunspear. We brought gold with us when we set sail, but it would have been hard to conceal once we joined the company, so we gave it over to the banks. I can show you papers.”

“Ah. Papers. But we will be paid double.”

“Twice as many papers,” said Pretty Meris.

“The rest you’ll have in Dorne,” Quentyn insisted. “My father is a man of honor. If I put my seal to an agreement, he will fulfill its terms. You have my word on that.”

The Tattered Prince finished his wine, turned the cup over, and set it down between them. “So. Let me see if I understand. A proven liar and oathbreaker wishes to contract with us and pay in promises. And for what services? I wonder. Are my Windblown to smash the Yunkai’i and sack the Yellow City? Defeat a Dothraki khalasar in the field? Escort you home to your father? Or will you be content if we deliver Queen Daenerys to your bed wet and willing? Tell me true, Prince Frog. What would you have of me and mine?”

You’ve been lying this whole way, to the world and yourself. What’s one more piece of wood on that fire? Again, though, it’s precisely that sunk-cost fallacy, the panicked certainty that it’s too late to turn back, that gets Quent killed. In so much of genre fiction, that “I started this, I have to finish it” drive is celebrated, even cast as the thing that makes you the hero. Here, it is revealed as a sad self-delusion that only serves to throw another body on the pile of the dead. Quent needs so badly to make his friends’ sacrifice worth it that he’s willing to sell out an *entire city* (namely, Pentos) to make it happen. The cynical world-weary Windblown are here to cut through that fragile narrative, telling Quent that neither he nor his story is special:

“I ask your pardon for our deception. The only ships sailing for Slaver’s Bay were those that had been hired to bring you to the wars.”

The Tattered Prince gave a shrug. “Every turncloak has his tale. You are not the first to swear me your swords, take my coin, and run. All of them have reasons. ‘My little son is sick,’ or ‘My wife is putting horns on me,’ or ‘The other men all make me suck their cocks.’ Such a charming boy, the last, but I did not excuse his desertion. Another fellow told me our food was so wretched that he had to flee before it made him sick, so I had his foot cut off, roasted it up, and fed it to him. Then I made him our camp cook. Our meals improved markedly, and when his contract was fulfilled he signed another. You, though…several of my best are locked up in the queen’s dungeons thanks to that lying tongue of yours, and I doubt that you can even cook.”

“I am a prince of Dorne,” said Quentyn. “I had a duty to my father and my people. There was a secret marriage pact.”

“So I heard. And when the silver queen saw your scrap of parchment she fell into your arms, yes?”

“No,” said Pretty Meris.

“No? Oh, I recall. Your bride flew off on a dragon. Well, when she returns, do be sure to invite us to your nuptials. The men of the company would love to drink to your happiness, and I do love a Westerosi wedding. The bedding part especially, only…oh, wait…” He turned to Denzo D’han. “Denzo, I thought you told me that the dragon queen had married some Ghiscari.”

“A Meereenese nobleman. Rich.”

The Tattered Prince turned back to Quentyn. “Could that be true? Surely not. What of your marriage pact?”

“She laughed at him,” said Pretty Meris.

Daenerys never laughed. The rest of Meereen might see him as an amusing curiosity, like the exiled Summer Islander King Robert used to keep at King’s Landing, but the queen had always spoken to him gently. “We came too late,” said Quentyn.

Interesting to note that Quent is pulling an UnKiss here, convincing himself that Dany did not laugh upon him revealing his identity and mission, when in truth, she did. That just goes to show how thoroughly he’s backed himself into a corner. “We came too late,” and so again, we have a Quent chapter ending with the Windblown enabling our hero’s descent. Of course, Quent is responsible for this decision--he came to them, not the other way around. I’m not trying to strip him of agency, as that would be a much less engaging story. But what I’m interested in here is how the failure of the quest, the shattering of the ideal, has led to Quent making this terrible decision. Here’s where GRRM’s existentialist-romantic take on the genre comes into play: Quent was taught to uphold and believe in certain norms because an ordered universe will reward him for it, not because following the rules is the right thing to do in itself. As such, when Quent’s quest proves over and over again that there is no inherent order to the universe, and as such no automatic reward, Quent loses all moorings; he doesn’t have that Davos/Brienne “no chance and no choice” ethos to keep him going in the face of the abyss.

And that’s why he makes a deal with the devil: it seems like his best option.

“I need you to help me steal a dragon.”

Caggo Corpsekiller chuckled. Pretty Meris curled her lip in a half-smile. Denzo D’han whistled.

The Tattered Prince only leaned back on his stool and said, “Double does not pay for dragons, princeling. Even a frog should know that much. Dragons come dear. And men who pay in promises should have at least the sense to promise more.”

“If you want me to triple—”

“What I want,” said the Tattered Prince, “is Pentos.”

And as always, making a deal with the devil lands our protagonist in fiery torment, condemned by his own folly. After Quent’s death, Barristan takes responsibility for delivering Pentos to Tatters, and come TWOW, I think Dany will fulfill the bargain after confronting Illyrio RE Aegon. Because a deal with the devil can’t be undone--it just transfers from person to person.

Indeed, it’s tonally appropriate that Quent’s quest climaxes not with him becoming the hero, but with him letting the devil back into paradise. One thing I noticed in this reread is how closely the form of “The Spurned Suitor” matches that of “The Dragontamer.” In both chapters, Quent trembles on the edge of the Void, wondering am I really going to go through with this, decides that he is, and this descent is promptly made literal. In his third chapter, he descends to the cellar to face the Tattered Prince and his cronies, sealing the doom that unfolds in his fourth chapter, in which he descends into the dank dark hell beneath the Great Pyramid to face Rhaegal and Viserion. One inextricably leads to the other; symbolically, the Tattered Prince is the dragonfire, the epitome of how Quent trying to “fix” his own story only serves to keep revealing how it cannot be fixed. This is your life, Quentyn Martell. You are not the hero. And just as with my second favorite character in ASOIAF, Stannis Baratheon, this revelation will be rendered in fire and blood.

#quentyn martell #quentyn in adwd #gerris drinkwater #the tattered prince #asoiaf meta #the windblown #meereen #a dance with dragons

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yogaposesfortwo · 5 years ago

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Anxiety & Stress Release Techniques: Shaking, Tapping and Fascia Release

Our bodies hold emotions. it's going to sound strange, except for numerous folks , the strain and anxiety we experience in lifestyle hangs around for extended than is important or healthy, manifesting as tension within the jaw and shoulders, chronic pain and muscular imbalances. As Author and therapist Denise La Barre says; you’ve probably got ‘issues in your tissues’. If you’ve ever received a massage, practiced a yoga class, experienced progressive relaxation, breathwork, EFT, Trauma-Release-Exercise or the other therapy designed to assist release stress and tension from the body and mind, you’ll have felt how intrinsically linked our physicality is to our psychology. Whilst it’s highly beneficial to figure 1-2-1 with therapists and body workers, there are times once we need the tools to offer ourselves a hand . Read on to get a number of the techniques you'll use for stress release and letting go of tension from your body and mind. Shaking Shaking is one among the foremost natural, primal things living beings do on a daily basis. Also referred to as ‘tremors’, spontaneously shaking may be a built-in response to worry , and may be a vital a part of releasing stress from the body and mind, and preventing a build-up of stored anxiety. to color an image of this necessary response, we’ll use a deer as an example. When a deer is chased by a predator, its fight-or-flight response kicks into overdrive, alerting the animal to run its life, shooting blood to the muscles of the legs, releasing adrenaline, raising heartrate and vital sign , and dilating the pupils to sharpen vision. Assuming the deer out runs its predator and lives to inform the story , it slows down and begins to shake and tremor. From the surface , it's going to look as if the deer is shaking with fear, but it’s actually releasing the built-up tension and returning itself back to homeostasis. This shaking is understood as ‘neurogenic tremors’, which help reduce over activity within the hypothalamus-pituitary-axis gland (or HPA axis). this is often important because the HPA axis is responsible largely for our stress response, emotions, stored memories, trauma, energy storage and release of energy. an interruption within the HPA axis – especially when it involves stress – can cause hormonal imbalances and fertility issues, sudden weight loss, weakness, fatigue and chronic stress, and an outsized a part of healing it comes right down to reducing the quantity of stress the body and mind are holding. If these neurogenic tremors are such a natural a part of life then, you would possibly wonder why we don’t all shake off daily stressors? Why don’t we get in from work and shake? Why don’t we shake off an argument or piece of bad news? Well, the thing is that we naturally would shake the strain off, but thanks to years of conditioning, and with public tremoring not necessarily socially acceptable, we sub consciously repress it, instead reaching for something else to smother the strain like chocolate, sugar, wine, social media, intense exercise or anything we reach for when times get tough. Of course, exercise may be a fantastic thanks to release pent-up stress, but it often doesn’t get to the basis of the difficulty , and may usually become something we address so as to ignore life’s problems. A 5k run may make us feel better on the surface, but we can’t run from our anxiety forever…. To start rebalancing the body and mind and really make a difference to the quantity of stress, tension and anxiety we’re potentially holding, shaking may be a fantastic practice we will do on a day to day . Simply stand or lie , take a few of long, slow breaths, then begin to shake your entire body. Shake your arms, legs, torso, head, hop on the spot and check out to not structure any of the movements. abandoning of any concern on what it's like. there's no wrong or right. Let your body guide you and answer any places it must shake and release. Aim to try to to this for around 5 minutes, and finish by lying in savasana to permit the body to settle. If you would like to figure with deeper-held issues or experience ‘trauma & tension release exercises’ which help essentially ‘switch on’ the body’s natural tremoring response again, I’d highly recommend booking a session with a TRE provider. Self Massage & Trigger Points It’s unbelievable how deeply connected the body is, and the way the online of fascia wrapping around our muscles, organs and skin means tension within the glutes or legs might be directly linked to tension within the jaw or tight shoulder muscles. Our bodies in fact aren’t made from separate Lego parts stuck together; the body is totally connected together whole piece via the fascial web of animal tissue . Fascia has also come to be thought of as a crucial link to relieving emotional stress, because the act of releasing adhesions or ‘knots’ within this animal tissue can fairly often release emotions too. We all hold tension in several places, so it’s worth spending time exploring where you experience held physical and emotional stress, or visiting a bodyworker. There are however, a couple of places that are common hot-spots for tension, and these are often worked on and helped to release with the utilization of a massage ball, ball , or any sturdy ball you've got to hand: The Glutes: Yep, we frequently hold tons of tension within the glutes (they are, after all, very helpful for helping us run faraway from danger when the fight-or-flight response kicks in), and releasing them can simultaneously release tension within the hamstrings and lower back. To practice this, place a ball next to you on the bottom . Sit on the ground with the knees bent and feet on the ground too. Cross your right ankle over the other knee, and use your hands to lift your hips off the ground . Hover your hips over the ball, then slowly lower down so your weight provides the pressure needed for the ball to massage the tissues. Roll slowly round the glute muscles for a couple of minutes – if you discover any areas of tension or tenderness, stay therein spot for a touch longer. Remember to breathe slowly throughout, then repeat on the opposite side. The Psoas: This area is difficult to stretch on the surface, so massaging can make an enormous difference. This practice is analogous to a wierd technique referred to as ‘gut smashing’, involving deeply massaging the stomach and internal organs. To practice this, lie on the bottom facing down with the ball next to your right hip. Move the ball directly underneath the proper hand side of your pelvis, between your hip flexor and navel. Allow your weight to press into the ball, and slowly move around, allowing the ball to massage the hip flexors and lower stomach – pause every so often to require a deep exhale, and as you are doing , allow the ball to press deeper. By doing this you'll feel the ball pressing into and massaging the psoas, which has been thought of for an extended time to be the most muscle involved within the stress response, thus massaging it can help instead elicit the ‘relaxation response’. Repeat the method on the opposite side. The Upper Back: If we feel stressed or struggling , it’s common to feel the shoulders holding on to tons of the pressure too. performing at a desk also can contribute to tension within the shoulders and neck so this is often an excellent technique to practice regularly if you've got a desk job. To practice this, lean on a wall and place the ball between your upper back and therefore the wall, recline so your weight is pressing into the ball and start to maneuver slowly from side to side and up and down. You’ll feel the ball massaging knots and tight muscles of the shoulders, and again if you are feeling any particularly tense areas, stay here a touch longer and await the muscles to release. Repeat this on each side of the upper back, breathing fully and slowly as you go. Body Tapping An ancient Qi Gong technique traditionally referred to as body ‘drumming’, body tapping is strictly because it sounds – tapping your body together with your hands. an exquisite thanks to boost circulation and energy levels, body tapping is additionally great for refreshing and re-setting perspective at any time of day, especially if you discover yourself trapped in anxious thoughts. The more modern technique of EFT uses tapping to beat trauma, addictions and compulsive behaviours, pairing the tapping with specific phrases. To practice body tapping, simply use your hands to tap from the feet upwards, occupation a clockwise direction round the stomach, and using your fingers to softly tap the face and head. Neurolymphatic points are located throughout the body, and tapping on these also can help rebalance energy levels. Try the ‘thymus thump’, which involves tapping on the breast bone, followed by tapping on the spleen neurolymphatic points between the 7th and 8th rib on each side of the body, and under the eyes on the cheekbone – these points under the eyes are linked to the stomach and earth meridian, harmonising the body’s grounding earth energy. Author: Emma Newlyn Source: https://www.yogamatters.com/blog/anxiety-stress-release-techniques-fascia-release/ Discover more info about Yoga Poses for Two People here: Yoga Poses for Two Read the full article

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