one of the things about being an educator is that you hear what parents want their kids to be able to do a lot. they want their kid to be an astronaut or a ballerina or a politician. they want them to get off that damn phone. be better about socializing. stop spending so much time indoors. learn to control their own temper. to just "fucking listen", which means to be obedient.
one of the things i learned in my pedagogy classes is that it's almost always easier to roleplay how you want someone to act. it's almost always easier to explain why a rule exists, rather than simply setting the rule and demanding adherence.
i want my kids to be kind. i want them to ask me what book they should read next, and i want to read that book with them so we can discuss it. i want my kid to be able to tell me hey that hurt my feelings without worrying i'll punish them. i want my kid to be proud of small things and come running up to me to tell me about them. i want them to say "nah, i get why this rule exists, but i get to hate it" and know that i don't need them to be grateful-for-the-roof-overhead while washing the dishes. i want them to teach me things. i want them to say - this isn't safe. i'm calling my mom and getting out of this. i want them to hear me apologize when i do fuck up; and i want them to want to come home.
the other day a parent was telling me she didn't understand why her kid "just got so angry." this woman had flown off the handle at me.
my dad - traditional catholic that he is - resents my sentiment of "gentle parenting". he says they'll grow up spoiled, horrible, pretentious. granola, he spits.
i am going to be kind to them. i am going to set the example, i think. and whatever they choose become in the meantime - i'm going to love them for it.
5K notes
·
View notes
A detail I love about Episode 4, is the symbol that appears in the music ball Charles finds and the meaning it has when it comes to his own story.
The relief in the ball, is a lyre, Orpheus' symbol. It was the musical instrument that he received as a gift from the god Apollo, who was considered his father in some versions of the original myth.
Note: In The Sandman Universe, Morpheus and the Muse Calliope are Orpheus' parents.
CHARLES: I found one of those at a maritime museum once. The Case of the Drowned Diver, wasn't it, Edwin? Superstitious sailors would use them to calm the seas.
Orpheus was well known as a talented musician; his music could intrigue people's minds with supernatural ideas and had the power to broaden their thinking to new and unusual theories.
When he joined the expedition of the Argonauts, he saved them from the Sirens' music by playing his own, more powerful and beautiful melodies. Later, it was also his music that allowed Jason to accomplish the purpose of his journey.
It makes sense that sailors used his symbol on an object designed to calm the seas and guarantee their safety while navigating.
When it comes to Charles, in particular, the way he ends up using the music ball (in the absence of a more technical name for that object) is both literal and metaphorical.
On one hand, he uses the music ball to put Angie, a sea monster, to sleep, thereby solving the case of The Lighthouse Leapers. On the other hand, he uses the instrument to save Edwin and himself from The Night Nurse—not just by literally pushing her into Angie's mouth with the ball in her hands, but by causing her to meet Kashina. This meeting prompts her to remember Kashi's words later, when Charles tried to save Edwin from returning to hell by pointing out it was a mistake, and again when he asked her to open a portal to hell so he could bring Edwin back.
In Orpheus' story, when Eurydice died from a snakebite, he charmed the ferryman Charon and Cerberus, the guardians of the River Styx, by playing the lyre and singing. By doing so, he also softened the hearts of Hades and Persephone, which gave him the chance to bring Eurydice back to the world of the living.
It's curious that the lyre symbolizes the power of persuasion for Orpheus, as this is a quality in which Charles takes great pride (he is indeed very convincing). Still, I hope that's where the coincidences end.
That's all for now. To everyone who knows about Orpheus' myth and the different versions of his story, I apologize for not quoting specific authors here.
614 notes
·
View notes
i'm so used to there just being random unidentified bones laying around everywhere in these damn books that it finally occurred to me, just now, to wonder where the bones on new rho came from. y'know, the bones palamedes always tried to teach nona necromancy on.
they're his.
palamedes, who always loved teaching, living on borrowed time in a body that's not his own. palamedes, mentoring, teaching- parenting, by sixth standards, mind you. and that boy is sixth, through and through.
and the entire point of teaching nona necromancy in the first place was to try and determine if nona is, well, nonagesimus, right? so it has to be bones, it can't not be bones. bones are, like, her whole thing.
but they're not in the nine houses, anymore. things are different, on new rho.
they burn bones here. dig up the cemeteries. a society terrified of zombies will evolve to dispose of its dead differently.
the only bones he has access to now are his own. (camilla wouldn't let anyone take them- skull or hand, doesn't matter. they're still him, and she doesn't let go, remember? it's her one thing.)
palamedes woke up every morning wearing someone else's body to then gently place the shrapnel of his own in the cupped palms of a girl who's the closest thing he'll ever have to a daughter and try to teach her- how did the angel put it, again? normal school, as much as possible, for as long as possible.
(but hey, in a roundabout way, at least it's a chance for him to touch camilla again, right? nevermind that she's not there to feel any of it because he's in the driver's seat, that he can only stay for fifteen minutes at a time. it's atoms that belong to camilla touching atoms that used to belong to him, and that's close enough. he'll take what he can get, these days- if she can be their flesh, he can be the end. so what if holding his own bones is a mindfuck? so what if looking at them makes him nauseous? surely he can suck it up and deal with it for fifteen minutes. it's the least he can do— his poor camilla was the one who had to scrape the bloody pulp of them off the floors of canaan house.)
(speaking of, here's a fun fact: we actually only see nona practicing with the bones one time, on-page. camilla's final line in that scene, before palamedes takes over, is none other than: 'keep going. there are some bones left.' ow!)
remember, too, that the only part of dulcinea, the real dulcinea, that palamedes ever physically touched, was her tooth- the one that ianthe gave him, pulled from the ashes cytherea burnt her down to. he only ever touched dulcie once, and it wasn't until after she was already gone, but that doesn't matter- it still happened, and you can't take loved away.
in this same roundabout, bittersweet, by-proxy sort of way, palamedes has been physically touched by nona, too: the atoms she currently occupies, touching atoms that he used to occupy, and never will again.
the main interaction we've seen between palamedes and his mother took place back on the sixth, with her acting as mentor and him as pupil: the two of them studying a set of hand bones, juno encouraging him every step of the way.
we know that harrowhark's "most vivid memory of her mother was of her hands guiding harrow's over an inexpertly rendered portion of skull, her fingers encircling the fat baby bracelets of harrow's wrists, tightening this cuff to indicate correct technique."
they're still small for a nineteen year old, but the wrists are bigger, in this new set of memories nona's making. and it's not an inexpertly rendered portion of skull anymore- it's a hand, now, albeit one crafted from [a piece of skull reassembled (painstakingly—passionately—laboriously reassembled) from fragments, manually, and not by a bone magician, from the skull of someone who, soon after death or symptomatically during, had exploded.] and the identity and origin of these bones is no mystery at all. they belong to palamedes, and he's consented to their use for this purpose, and that matters.
but the details are just set dressing, really. the foundation of the memory is the same.
palamedes and his mother, juno and her son.
harrow and her mother; pelleamena and her daughter.
nona and her father-mother-teacher; palamedes and his daughter.
1K notes
·
View notes