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astrologyfactzzz · 3 years

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🌙 𝑇𝐻𝐸 𝑀𝑂𝑂𝑁 𝐼𝑁 𝑇𝐻𝐸 𝐻𝑂𝑈𝑆𝐸𝑆 🌙

The Moon in the houses can reveal where and how we go about seeking emotional satisfaction.

Important clues to the reason for perpetual emotional unrest can be found through the study of the house position of the Moon, and these take the form of constant changes or ups and downs in the areas of life rules by the house. It is in these areas in that we should aim to make deep attachments rather than superficial and temporary emotional thrills if we are seeking out a true feeling of belonging and emotional fulfillment.

🌙 𝑀𝑂𝑂𝑁 𝐼𝑁 𝑇𝐻𝐸 𝐹𝐼𝑅𝑆𝑇 𝐻𝑂𝑈𝑆𝐸 🌙

Your feelings are right out there for everyone to see, and you can come across as emotional and impatient, or nurturing and caring (or both). Your first reaction is emotional, especially if the Moon is in close proximity (within 10 degrees) of the Ascendent degree. You need emotional stimulation, movement and freedom to express yourself in order to feel happy and fulfilled.

Your moods are very changeable, and this can be quite obvious to others. Because of your emotional sensitivity, you might often take things too personally, and react too quickly. Developing an awareness that others‘ emotions are just as important, even if they are not as overt and immediate as yours, will be important.

You have a soft exterior and tend to relate very personally and sympathetically to other people. However, you sometimes let your emotions overpower your reasoning and logic, and consequently, you are sometimes biased in your opinions. You are impressionable and rather gentle, or at least that is the way you appear. Your feelings are on the surface and you can not hide your emotions.

🌙 𝑀𝑂𝑂𝑁 𝐼𝑁 𝑇𝐻𝐸 𝑆𝐸𝐶𝑂𝑁𝐷 𝐻𝑂𝑈𝑆𝐸 🌙

When it comes to money, you can be generous and frivolous in your spending habits one day, and frugal the next. You can be quite afraid of being in debt, and you need to feel secure and safe. This is likely also true of savings, as you fear being without.

Still, there are times when you can spend impulsively, on a whim, and this is likely when you are feeling emotionally frustrated. You might also hold onto people quite tightly. Vanity can be an issue. You are often looking for admiration, and you can be quite dependent on others for positive feedback until you learn to develop your own feelings of self-worth. You’re not as emotionally responsive as most people. You tend to hold back and wait before expressing yourself, and when you do it is with deliberation.

You are likely to be a great collector of things - a real pack rat in fact - for your belongings give you a sense of security and continuity with the past, which is important to you. Antiques or things with sentimental value from your past are especially dear to you.

You may also cling rather tightly to both money and possessions, keeping them "in the family" rather then sharing freely with those outside of your immediate circle.

🌙 𝑀𝑂𝑂𝑁 𝐼𝑁 𝑇𝐻𝐸 𝑇𝐻𝐼𝑅𝐷 𝐻𝑂𝑈𝑆𝐸 🌙

You are very responsive, communicative and curious. You can have a talent for imitating others and/or for picking up languages. You might either intellectualize your emotions rather than truly feel them and deal with them, or you communicate with excessive emotion. Some of you may do both at different times, and as you mature and develop, you learn to find balance.

Your opinions and ideas change often, and you might find that sometimes you adopt others’ points of view and express their ideas as if they were your own. This is not necessarily because you are a copy-cat, but because you sometimes fail to own your own thoughts, and you are so sensitive to others’ opinions. You might be quite nervous and restless, requiring frequent changes of scenery, even if the moment or travel takes place locally.

You often make decisions solely for emotional or personal reasons, because something “feels right” or because you’ve always done it a certain way and you are uncomfortable changing it. Even when you think you’re being rational, your prejudices, intuitions, and feelings influence your thoughts a great deal. You are comfortable talking about feelings and personal subjects, and sharing confidences, which enables others to express their own inner feelings with you as well. You have good psychological insight into others.

🌙 𝑀𝑂𝑂𝑁 𝐼𝑁 𝑇𝐻𝐸 𝐹𝑂𝑈𝑅𝑇𝐻 𝐻𝑂𝑈𝑆𝐸 🌙

You long for a sense of true belonging, but may be quite restless in your search. You might change residence frequently, or simply feel the need to make many changes in your home.

Moving frequently may be a healthy thing if it keeps you emotionally stimulated, but if you find that you do so on whims and later regret the changes, you might want to treat it as a symptom of emotional unrest - as a sign that you are in a constant search for the perfect mood setting, when in fact a feeling of belonging should be worked on from the inside out, not the outside in! Some of you might remain rather immature on an emotional level, never wanting to truly grow up and take care of yourself. Attachments to your past, traditions and family are strong.

You have strong attachments to your past, the places where you grew up, your heritage and family traditions. In fact, you may be unable to step out of the habits and roles you learned as a child. Your tie to your mother is very strong and you also seek mothering and protection from your spouse and other family members as well.

🌙 𝑀𝑂𝑂𝑁 𝐼𝑁 𝑇𝐻𝐸 𝐹𝐼𝐹𝑇𝐻 𝐻𝑂𝑈𝑆𝐸 🌙

You love to share emotional experiences with loved ones and have a flair for the dramatic. Love affairs are magnetic and intense, and you don’t take them lightly by any means, although you may go through much change with regard to your romance. You are attached to children, wether they’re your own or not. Your creative hobbies are subject to relatively frequent changes, and you have innate artistic talent. You have a vivid imagination and are given to daydreaming often. There is a sense that you, are always in touch, or trying to get in touch, with your inner child.

If the Moon is challenged, you may have problems with impulsive shopping or gambling or with frequent love affairs that never fully satisfy you. In any of these cases, you are more attached to the game than the player, and this is something to work on if you are looking to find true fulfillment. You might take risks just for the fun of it, but in the process, you are being irresponsible to others and yourself.

You are emotionally expressive and often dramatize your feelings, acting them out or blowing them out of proportion. You can not hide your instinctive emotional reactions to people or situations, and you don’t make any pretenses about your personal sympathies or antipathies.

You have a childlike openness and playfulness which is very appealing to others, but which sometimes gets you into trouble, as you take risks on impulse or whim.

🌙 𝑀𝑂𝑂𝑁 𝐼𝑁 𝑇𝐻𝐸 𝑆𝐼𝑋𝑇𝐻 𝐻𝑂𝑈𝑆𝐸 🌙

You have an emotional need to be useful, to work productively, to be organized and on top of things, and to lead a healthy life. If these matters are chaotic in your life, it’s a symptom of emotional unrest. You need a lot of variety on the job–to be stimulated and engaged in order to feel happy. Some of you might seem to change jobs often, forever in search of the “perfect fit” job. Acceptance that any job requires some level of routine is hard for you.

You are very sensitive, and especially aware of minor health annoyances or body aches and pains. Some of you have hypochondriac symptoms. Some attempt to get out of things they don’t want to do by emphasizing health problems or even exaggerate illnesses in order to gain sympathy. At your best, however, you’re a person who always helps out and shows your affection for others in practical ways in order to help them solve problems and improve their lives.

You have a sympathetic nature and instinctively reach out to people in need of help. You also have a deeply ingrained tendency to want to improve or “fix” other people’s lives, which can be annoying to the person who has no desire to be changed or “helped” in this way. For you, affection and caring must be expressed in tangible acts or service of some kind.

🌙 𝑀𝑂𝑂𝑁 𝐼𝑁 𝑇𝐻𝐸 𝑆𝐸𝑉𝐸𝑁𝑇𝐻 𝐻𝑂𝑈𝑆𝐸 🌙

You are drawn to partnerships and prefer to have a companion for emotional support. You are not a person who would happily take in a movie by yourself, or dine alone, for example. A partner awakens feelings in you that you may never know you had, and you seem to need a partner to learn about your own needs and feelings.

You seek emotional fulfillment through relationships, but you may have many relationships one after another, each time believing that this is “the one.” Taking time between relationships is something that is hard for you to do, but quite necessary, as you tend to jump into relationships out of fear of being alone.

You are very adaptable to others’ needs, and usually quite likeable as a result. Be careful that you don’t become overly dependent on a partner, or assume that a partner is going to treat you the same way as you do them.

You depend a great deal upon other people for emotional support and you have a large “family” of friends that care about you and treat you as kin. The women in your life are particularly important to you, and your relationship with them powerfully influences your sense of security and happiness. You may be overly dependent and unsure of yourself without a close partner.

🌙 𝑀𝑂𝑂𝑁 𝐼𝑁 𝑇𝐻𝐸 𝐸𝐼𝐺𝐻𝑇𝐻 𝐻𝑂𝑈𝑆𝐸 🌙

While you have a strong need for emotional security, you are also a person who is drawn to pushing your own limits, and many lifestyle changes can be the result of this need to challenge, or reinvent, yourself emotionally. You are always fascinated with how people work, taboos, secrets, and all that is forbidden or hidden. Sexual unrest, or an apparent need to constantly change sexual partners or to challenge yourself sexually, may be a symptom of emotional insecurity.

Connecting with another person intimately is an emotional need, but your changeable emotions might often get in the way of your goal. Jealousy and possessiveness might also be qualities you struggle with. At your best, however, you are a person who is intimate, deep, and intensely loyal to a partner.

Though you want closeness very much, you often close yourself off and do not really trust others who may wish to get to know you. You are very wholehearted in your feelings and responses to people, and you want all or nothing from the people you care for.

🌙 𝑀𝑂𝑂𝑁 𝐼𝑁 𝑇𝐻𝐸 𝑁𝐼𝑁𝑇𝐻 𝐻𝑂𝑈𝑆𝐸 🌙

This is a position that can indicate a deep longing for stimulation above and beyond the everyday, mundane routine. You are a philosophical sort, interested and curious about the world, other people, and perhaps different cultures. You can be extremely restless and discontented if you don’t have a definite goal in mind.

You might find yourself longing to be somewhere else when you are unhappy, imagining that if you were to move or travel, you would be much happier. However, this attitude can only keep you from enjoying and improving upon the situation you are now in, only serving to make you feel more unhappy in the present and with your current circumstances.

Trying to avoid the attitude that “the grass is greener on the other side” will be important, while attending to your needs to get away from time to time will help scratch the seemingly incurable itch for something more.

You may have done extensive traveling in your early years, or in some way had a background which enables you to understand and identify with many different types of people or cultures.

You have a craving for things which are far away and foreign or for things you have never experienced before. You want to completely immerse yourself in the feelings and tastes of a new place, rather than simply have facts or an intellectual appreciation. Emotionally, too, you are restless and something of a wanderer.

🌙 𝑀𝑂𝑂𝑁 𝐼𝑁 𝑇𝐻𝐸 𝑇𝐸𝑁𝑇𝐻 𝐻𝑂𝑈𝑆𝐸 🌙

This position of the Moon indicates an emotional need for recognition, popularity, acknowledgement, and achievement. You can be quite charismatic. You are at your emotional best when you lead a structured and responsible life, but it can take time to get there.

You may change your goals and ambitions, and/or your profession frequently in an attempt to find the perfect fit. You may worry about living up to your image, or the expectations of your family. Decisions may be too emotionally biased, or you might act on emotional whims far too often. Learning to set your own heartfelt goals is the challenge here, as it is unlikely you will find true happiness if you follow or adopt the expectations of others, which you are especially sensitive to.

You work well with the public and have an instinct for what the public wants and will respond to. Having a “nest” is not especially important to you, and you may invest more of your emotional energy into your career or public life than in your private life. Providing for and caring for others in a professional capacity is very likely.

🌙 𝑀𝑂𝑂𝑁 𝐼𝑁 𝑇𝐻𝐸 𝐸𝐿𝐸𝑉𝐸𝑁𝑇𝐻 𝐻𝑂𝑈𝑆𝐸 🌙

This position of the Moon indicates an emotional need for a feeling of belonging with, and support from, friends and associations with groups. You look to acquaintances for support, and offer the same in return. A changeable or unstable social life might be a reflection of inner emotional unrest. Waxing and waning feelings for others can cause problems in your relationships.

You are a person who is filled with many dreams, wishes, and hopes for your future, and most of these are altruistic and good-hearted desires. However, you might change your aspirations frequently, with your changing moods, and have a hard time settling on goals to work towards as a result.

You get a lot of emotional fulfillment through your involvement in groups, clubs, organizations, community activities, or a network of close friends who support and care for you. You make friends your family, and feel a close kinship with people who share some ideals or beliefs that you hold dear. You need people outside of your physical family to relate to and belong to.

🌙 𝑀𝑂𝑂𝑁 𝐼𝑁 𝑇𝐻𝐸 𝑇𝑊𝐸𝐿𝑇𝐻 𝐻𝑂𝑈𝑆𝐸 🌙

This position of the Moon indicates an emotional attachment and sensitivity to all that is ethereal, groundless, and eternal. As sensitive as you are, you often have delayed reactions to your own emotional experiences. You need frequent moments of solitude in order to recharge yourself emotionally, and this need, while strong, can also lead to feelings of isolation and of being misunderstood.

While you are a perceptive person, you are often either flooded with emotions that are hard to define, or completely out of touch with what you are feeling. Either extreme keeps you from truly discovering your emotional needs. Negative expressions of this position are avoidance of responsibility, using hypersensitivity as an excuse to oneself (and perhaps to others) for not participating, or emotional immaturity. You are sympathetic to others’ suffering, but not always emotionally available to help.

Your own feelings and emotions are something of an enigma to you, and it is often difficult for you to share with others what you are feeling. You frequently withdraw from contact with the world, and need a healing, peaceful environment in order to blossom and come out of yourself. You identify with the oppressed, disenfranchised or underdog in any situation and want to help them or care for them in some way.

#moon in the houses #moon in 1st house #moon in 2nd house #moon in 3rd house #moon in 4th house #moon in 5th house #moon in 7th house #moon in 8th #moon in 9th house #moon in 8th house #moon in 6th house #moon in 10th house #moon in 11th house #moon in 12th house #aesthetic #positivity #spirituality #astrology

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bigskydreaming · 3 years

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I agree with everything you said in the last post but especially the Damian part.

Like I don’t know why people treat it like Dick had to choose between two toys and he chose the shinier model. He was in a situation where a 9/10 year old child was going to go back to a murder cult if he didn’t find a quick way to sure he stayed. And no option was good if Damian left. It was either Ra is going to steal his body or would become a powerful supervillain who would resent the whole family and between that is a whole lot of child abuse. It not like Dick had all the time in the world to figure out a different way for Damian to stay he had maybe like a day.

Also we never actually got to see Dick’s view on the situation only Tim’s because the only time we got to see that conversation was in Red Robin ( which might be wrong but I’m pretty sure I’m right). Tim was having a slight mental breakdown so maybe not the best narrator.

Like, the ONE thing I'd love for people to keep more centered in the varying discourses about Dick, Tim, Robin and Red Robin, is that like.....

The writer himself had Tim and Dick reconcile and work together in the aftermath of Tim leaving because he was upset.

It really doesn't get mentioned enough IMO that at no point in the actual canon stories was Dick ever oblivious to Tim being hurt, uncaring of this, nor did the canon ever try to claim on Dick's behalf that he DIDN'T hurt Tim, y'know?

I talked earlier tonight about the importance of remembering that these are fictional characters who can not CHOOSE any actions for themselves, but rather are ruled entirely by what the writers choose FOR them.

And the thing is.....for all that Dick is often characterized in fanfics as being oblivious or uncaring to having hurt Tim, or say that he kicked Tim out of the house and the city, or that he called Tim crazy or that he chose Damian OVER Tim or all these other things.....

None of those things say anything about Dick or what kind of character he is, despite the fact that fanon and fics have made a huge deal OUT of running with the idea that THOSE acts in fact say a LOT about Dick's actual character or whatever.....

But like, the point is not just that none of those things say anything about Dick simply because they're not how the canon went....

JUST as important, IMO, is the fact that none of those things are even in the BALLPARK of saying anything about Dick's actual character.....

Because the actual canon was written the way it was for the sake of TIM'S story. It was never about trying to make Dick look good, the events played out the way they did because the writer INTENDED there to be conflict between the brothers about it! Dick didn't find some magical way of ensuring that he delivered the news to Tim in the absolute right way possible because he just didn't care enough about Tim's feelings to do so....Damian delivered the news to Tim in the absolute worst way possible BECAUSE the writer WANTED the chasm between Dick and Tim.

THE CONFLICT WAS THE STORY!

And just as importantly.....the same writer who caused the conflict also RESOLVED the conflict. In his own same stories. Tim and Dick may have never hashed over every single detail of Tim's issues with Dick, but there was CLEARLY a reconciliation. Tim showed his forgiveness, his understanding of why Dick had done what he'd done and the fact that he'd made his peace with it, in a variety of ways from telling Dick he still had his trust, joking with Dick in SPECIFIC ways that called back to personal in-jokes that they'd had since the 90s -

(and that in fact were originally written by the same writer....like, the Brady Bunch jokes are a SPECIFICALLY Fabian Nicieza thing, as in he's the only writer who has EVER had Dick and Tim having that particular in joke between them, and he established it when he first wrote Tim, when he and Dick were great during Tim's time as Robin in the 90s. Tim calling back to those jokes during Red Robin and specifically reinviting memories of some of his favorite moments with his brother HIMSELF, like was as clear a peace gesture as you can get, IMO.)

But point is....the conflict happened the way it did, because it was MEANT to happen. There was supposed to be conflict, so by that very token, Dick wasn't MEANT to find the perfect way to handle the Robin situation that made sure Tim didn't suffer any negative feelings about it.

The reason its lasted so long as discourse in fandom was that regardless of the fact that the writers and characters both showed a resolution to the conflict that was deliberately sown to BE a conflict in the first place....

Fans of Tim decided this resolution wasn't adequate enough.

And so the events of it have been tweaked endlessly, as has the fact that the brothers reconciled itself, in order to keep this conflict extended far beyond the parameters or duration of the ACTUAL canon conflict its based on....with Dick further exaggerated into this uncaring instigator because the conflict FANS wanted was one in which Tim was Dick's victim in a way that he was never intended to be by the initial source conflict, which wanted BOTH characters to be somewhat sympathetic but now turned into a one-sided thing where only ONE character is 'deserving' of sympathy.....

But the problem is....that wasn't the story. And this wouldn't BE a problem, due to it being fanfic and fanfic being innately transformative, if not for the fact that people keep trying to point to canon actions as the proof of conclusions they're drawing about Dick's actions in the FANON conflict.....when the only thing the canon actions are meant to serve as the foundation for, is the conflict which ACTUALLY happened AND was resolved in canon!

And the thing is, a lot of fandom have done a lot to compare this situation to Dick losing Robin in the first place, but without actually leaning into that comparison in order to examine how Dick truly felt about that then, and ACTUALLY make it the comparison they're raising it as.....

(people can't claim that they've done this if they themselves are calling the situations parallel and yet clearly holding Tim and his feelings as innately more sympathetic and deserving of understanding than they're willing to even retroactively apply to Dick in the very situation they themselves have invited comparisons to....like if you're STILL calling for Dick's head for what he did with Robin here in a way that you're not having any characters anywhere, even just in reference or passing say that Bruce deserves being chewed out for to similar degrees.....your comparison is rigged from the start, it just is)....

But ultimately at the end of the day, there IS an answer for why Dick wasn't more careful and studious in his handling of the Robin situation....and that answer, for better or worse, is that he wasn't MEANT to be. The handling exists the way it played out, because it was meant to engender a specific conflict, one that was then resolved to the satisfaction of the story's writer.

If that wasn't to the satisfaction of fans, that's understandable! No story ever satisfies all fans!

But the problem is, the transformative nature of fanfic cuts two ways. And this is what people so often conveniently overlook when they cite that you can do anything with fanfic and that its subject to everyone's personal wants and agenda.

Like this is all perfectly true. But what people CAN'T do, is forbid others from drawing conclusions based on what decisions you do and don't make with fanfic.

And the problem with the Red Robin discourse, is we have a conflict that was engineered from the start, and negatively impacted a particular character aka Tim.

And the resolution the canon offered didn't satisfy the itch a lot of Tim's fans had for that particular conflict.

But the thing is.....there's two entirely different ways to tweak a conflict with fanfic.

You can make it BETTER.

Or you can make it WORSE.

And nine out of ten times - with this being especially obvious when you keep in mind that the canon itself DID CREATE RESOLUTION TO ITS OWN CONFLICT - its very apparent that a lot of fans just were not interested in making the resolution of this conflict even BETTER than what we got in the canon.

See, because the reason it happened in canon at all was NOT in fact because Dick was just as uncaring and neglectful as FANON of this conflict makes him out to be....since the reason it happened that way at all was ONLY because the writer needed it to happen in SOME way that sowed conflict between Tim and Dick and sparked Tim's solo journey of self-discovery.....

The only real way to BETTER resolve the conflict of the Robin mantle transition...

Would be for Dick to specifically approach Tim in such a way as to take his feelings about the matter into account and make his argument for why he felt Damian needed this now.

And that's something that's ABSOLUTELY easy to do, because the only reasons things DIDN'T happen that way in the first place, was circumstantial! Because the story was PLOTTED to have Damian spill the beans before Dick even had an opportunity to talk to Tim one on one. Changing a story's direction born of circumstance is one of the easiest things to do with fanfic since all you have to do is write different circumstances! Nobody's character even needs addressing there, because no character is inherently flawed for that story happening the way it did....that's why the story WORKED, in canon! Dick just circumstantially wasn't given even an OPPORTUNITY to be as conscientious about the matter as we would have liked him to be.

Easy, EASY fix with fanfic.

But that's not what fanfic tends to do with this particular story point, is it?

Instead, we get constant worsenings of Dick's motivations, Dick's choices, Dick's reaction to Tim's response, etc, etc.

The slant is entirely one-sided, aimed at making Tim not just more sympathetic, but Dick LESS sympathetic. Making it a nuance-free example of not even two brothers fighting in the face of their mutual grief, but one being VICTIMIZED by the other's willful ignorance of their feelings and loss, while simultaneously demonstrating none of the same himself.

And that's a choice that tons of fanfic writers have made, and they GET to make that choice, but what doesn't get to happen is making everyone else pretend that this was the only way the story COULD have gone, the TRUE resolution it deserved and the thing that ACTUALLY said something indicative of Dick's character.....

When not only were there these other opportunities to resolve the conflict in ways better for BOTH characters....the resolution of the actual conflict is considered irrelevant even though creating a conflict that could be resolved in story was the ONLY reason for the characters making the specific choices they made in the first place!

The discourse is literally all just born of people using the slight against Tim's character as an excuse to make Dick's character look worse. IMO to distract from the fact that this happened at all, because the real gripe was with Tim not being Robin anymore but there was no way to unilaterally decry that WITHOUT making the case that Damian should never have been Robin, and most fans I think recognize that would have been a nonstarter, discourse wise. There’s no rolling the clock back on a new Robin EXISTING, that’s been proven conclusively in the past. Once a character has been a Robin, you can’t argue away their right to ever be one period. If it couldn’t happen with Steph, despite the shortness of her Robin tenure and the smaller size of the girls’ fanbases relative the various Batboys (and let’s not pretend a disparity doesn’t exist there), then it wasn’t going to happen with Damian. So fans made their displeasure known in another way - venting it on the character that precipitated the changing of this particular guard.

And the thing is, ultimately, for all the comparisons made to the Bruce and Dick Robin debacle, they all fall short of being valid given two fundamental differences:

1) Canon has one hundred percent refused to ever fully address the conflict Bruce created in story when he fired Dick or just gave Robin away to Jason, with the only time its ever really been addressed in the comics being when Dick came to confront Bruce about it and Bruce made no form of actual apology or recourse, but instead ultimately just yelled at Dick about missing him and then told him to go. Which umm. Yeah. Oh, the resolution of it all.

2) The other key difference being that while there are certainly fans who have used these story points simply TO make Bruce look worse, the same as I'd argued happened with Dick in the Red Robin scenario.....it is still undeniable that there are a sizable number of fans such as myself who have always insisted we only raise this particular story element because we WANT to see better or actual resolution of the conflict raised in story - aka Bruce firing Dick or just giving away Robin - AS WELL AS being very clear on a perfectly easy way TO showcase better resolution: just having Bruce fucking OWN HIS ACTIONS AND APOLOGIZE FOR THEM.

So even with the awareness that while ultimately both Robin turnovers only happened because the writers chose that conflict happen, they remain incomparable in my mind purely because only one of them was ACTUALLY resolved or treated as resolved in canon, and like.....the other one is the only one that actually has fans continuously making the point of what story actions can actually be taken in meta, headcanons and fics, TO create the resolution we want.....whereas the other conflict will never be resolved any better than it is in canon, because the people who keep raising the conflict don't even want to acknowledge that it even WAS resolved in canon at all, because that would defeat the entire purpose of continuously worsening the conflict specifically TO create reasons for a continued grudge against Dick's character.

And you flat out just can't ever resolve a conflict that people ultimately WANT to exist.

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cordeliaflyte · 3 years

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Would love to know your thoughts on the rutger bregman book when you finish it!!!

dearest merle! it took me months to answer this ask - something i'm ashamed of - but i finally got around to finishing the book today.

the below is a condensed version of the ten pages of notes i took while reading it, which are rather chaotic and repetitive at points - but in my defence, bregman repeated his own arguments too.

one of the main arguments that bregman makes is that "evil" or "immorality" - which we'll define as causing unnecessary harm - are rarely caused by the individual, but rather the society they live in. i agree - nothing exists in a vacuum. however, society, as a nebulous concept, isn't imposed on us by some imperceptible power - it is crafted by people. people in society have different levels of power, and the harm they can cause to others is directly proportional to said power - but be it on a micro or macro scale, our actions have an impact on others and while they are influenced by the society we live in, we must nonetheless strive to minimise the harm we cause - and few of us do.

bregman illustrates many of his arguments with heartwarming stories about people coming together in times of crisis - take, for example, natural disasters - and overcoming adversity, selflessly looking out for their neighbours. but crisis very often leads to the creation of divisions, an us vs them mentality, and a complete disregard for the safety of others. the current pandemic is a prime example - see the widening of class differences, the rise in racist hate crimes, and people refusing to take safety precautions because they are inconvenient to them.

another argument repeated quite often throughout the book is the fact that media cherry-picks the most sensationalistic and senseless acts of death and despair, because human suffering is simply more interesting that the mundane - people talking to friends, creating art, laughing and learning. again, i agree with him - many of the more tabloid-adjacent news outlets would have you believe that the everyday norm is dismembered heiresses being found on riverbeds and charming, precocious children being held for ransom in tiny basements. the news doesn't often focus on the mundane - but the mundane isn't just love and work and friendship and boredom and chores, it is also, for billions of people around the world, sexual violence, familial abuse, workplace and housing discrimination, etc. these things aren't sensationalistic either - they're frightfully common, frightfully boring, and thus, they're rarely reported on.

throughout his book, bregman mentions that when he told people what he was working on, they approached the idea that humans are good with a large dose of cynicism, simply because we are raised to believe humans are selfish (which isn't the case worldwide, not all cultures are individualistic). they pick the easier choice - accepting the image of the world and their fellow humans that they are presented with at face value. i'd argue that it is the tendency of humans to pick the easier choice, to obey, to avoid challenging their worldview that leads to - for a lack of better term - immorality (see definition in point 1).

often, when bregman presents his feel good stories about people cooperating in adversity, he also mentions troubling details that, again, show undue harm being done. one of the examples he used were six boys from tonga, aged 13 to 16, who were shipwrecked on an island, and instead of descending into a "lord of the flies" style madness, they built their small community on the basis of communication and cooperation, never resorting to violence, and acting mature beyond their years. after a year spent on the island, they were rescued - and promptly arrested, an event which was probably racially motivated. and the reason they were shipwrecked in the first place was attempting to flee their school, where, according to their reports, they were neglected.

bregman contrasted the example of the boys forming a peaceful society on a small island with the chaos that always ensues when adults in reality shows are put in similar situations. the contestants are pitted against each other by the show runners, who seek to frustrate them and make them lose control for the amusement of the audience. whenever contestants try to cooperate, form a mutually beneficial society for a short while - a radical idea - they are punished. "goodness" - i.e. harm reduction - and radical thought being punished just don't seem like particularly helpful examples for the "humans are inherently good" thesis

bregman seems to be a big fan of primitivism, constantly citing civilisation as a source of harm - a position i'm always sceptical about, because personally i love vaccines and dental care, but i know this is a knee-jerk reaction and bregman isn't plotting a return to a land without dentists. but what i do take ire at is the idea that humans are somehow "corrupt" versions of their natural selves and that our lives have grown too complicated, and only a return to "primitive" society can return us to the aforementioned natural selves.

tied to the previous point - his arguments remind me of the "noble savage"'... archetype? he seems to paint a picture of "primitive" indigenous people as role models for those "corrupted" by civilisation, who in turn must be saved by a return to their "purer" selves, instead of individuals with flaws and agency.

speaking on indigenous populations - bregman also invokes the inhabitants of the easter islands. for a long time, the world at large believed that a hundred years or so before colonization, the islanders effectively perpetrated a genocide, killing off a large proportion of their population - a claim which was later disproven. yay! humans can live in peaceful societies without committing genocide, and thus, are not inherently evil! disregarding the fact that european colonists later massacred a large part of the islands population, and sold most of the survivors into slavery?

i was very excited for one of the chapters, entitled "after auchschwitz". i was interested how bregman would reconcile his argument with the tragedies of the twentieth century - the holocaust, but also genocide, and to a lesser extent war in general.

(this chapter, i might add, was preceded by a quote by anne frank - you know the one, about the inherent goodness of people. i was hoping that bregman would comment on the fact that anne wrote the quote before she and her family were sent to a concentration camp)

so you can imagine my surprise when the chapter was not, in fact, about concentration camps or genocide. but rather about. unethical 70s sociological experiments.

no really! a chapter titled "after auchschwitz" was, in fact, primarily about the stanford prison experiment. an experiment that was, granted, inspired by concentration camps, but still. it's misleading to invoke "real", large scale violence, and focus instead on "simulated", small scale violence.

we all know that the stanford prison experiment was, as far as experiments go, rubbish to legendary degrees. it doesn't prove anything - but it does, perhaps, show that people under large psychological duress are capable of evil, even when they themselves are not "evil".

it is, i'd argue, the human tendency to obey authority and especially to conform to societies standards that poses the largest danger. disobedience is man's original virtue and whatnot.

and when he does briefly refer to concentration camps, bregman treats them like a very 1940s phenomenon, disregarding the fact that they have been around for much longer and still exist today.

in cases like that one experiment with electric shocks. you know the one. do not, perhaps, show an innate tendency to violence, but rather people succumbing to pressure. but history is full of unprovoked instances of violence, of pogroms and lynchings. there is usually an instigator, yes, but judging from reports, people in the right mindset don't need much persuading to butcher other people.

also re: electric shock experiment - those who thought they gave the assistant lethal shocks showed extreme guilt and some even cried but like... so what? what use is a conscience if it doesn't stop you from, to your knowledge, killing someone? are your feelings really more important than your actions?

he doesn't say this, but a lot of the arguments he presents do seem to boil down to "people aren't evil, they're just stupid!" which doesn't sound more encouraging, i'm afraid.

an alternative takeaway would be "people are good, unless they have power" - which isn't exactly a radical, revolutionary idea. most people have heard the maxim "power corrupts". but the thing is that almost everyone holds some amount power over others - the oppressed factory worker in a poor nation who works 12 hours a day for pittance might still execute power over his wife, who relies on him for money, and she in turn might hold power over her children, and so forth. and that power is often used to cause undue harm and exercise control.

he criticises machiavellianism, saying it doesn't reflect how society works, and one of his proofs is that his philosophies were espoused by bismarck, churchill, and stalin - hardly admirable figures in terms of (you guessed it!) causing harm. but i don't see how that discredits machiavelli? like all of the above were very succesful

and he keeps repeating the primitivism argument throughout the book which gets tiring. like i'm truly sorry you were born in the last 5% of human existence thus far when, in your opinion, humanity started going to the shits, but it's getting a bit tiring

he cites money and nations as concepts as harbingers of the current (negative) state of humanity, saying they're very recent concepts and have no basis in reality. they're artificial concepts, sure, but their effect is very much real, and while achieving a nation-less, money-less society is possible on a small scale, i think that at this point they are such large aspects of life that reigning them in seems impossible.

and invokes the noble savage again and again, showing himself in favour of tribal societies, depicting them as egalitarian - i'm sure many of them are, but many also have a strict hierarchy or like. practice fgm. once more he seems to treat tribal people as a monolith of goodness as opposed to... people.

he also cites prehistoric people, their egalitarianism and low rates of violence but. forgive me for my ignorance because i did not research this. how do people know. doesn't the definition of prehistory include a lack of records??

he also mentions that in small, tribal societies, conformism can be a good thing, as it makes people act for the communal good. this is another knee-jerk reaction of mine but i think of conformism as society's most significant vice, so this strikes very much against my beliefs

later on, he also says reproduction is another proof of humanities goodness. perhaps it's a controversial opinion, but i disagree. i find it hard to find reasons for reproduction that aren't egoistic. it's survival instinct, sure, but it's not an "inherently noble pursuit".

later yet, he brings up schools which grant large degrees of freedom to students and shows how they're good for developing their minds. this might be a me thing but i know from experience that when i'm granted freedom without structure, i do nothing - though perhaps that speaks ill of me, and not humanity.

there have, in fact, been many studies on schools like this being helpful to student development and i certainly won't argue with them - but let me nit-pick. bregman says that fewer students have adhd in these schools, as it is a condition caused by being locked inside a room all day which is not only offensive, but also just plain wrong

and also while showing how granting children freedom lets them develop (which i naturally agree with) he brings up that "dangerous playground" study. you know the one. this isn't a coherent argument, this is just my bias speaking , but as a child, i promise i had no desire to play with rusty nails in abandoned warehouses. i liked my boring playgrounds with wooden swings.

then there is a chapter on communism and how it could be a remedy to societies ailments. but bregman and i seem to operate on very different definitions of communism. he naturally starts with saying maoist china and stalinist russia and cambodia under pol pot weren't really communist which... sure, if you want to argue semantics, i'm all for it, but it's an old and essentially useless argument. if "real communism" has never been tried (as the author claims) - why?

and then we pass to perhaps the most bizarre fragment of the book. paraphrasing only slightly: "but why are we now so opposed to the word communism? when we pass each other salt at the dinner table, is that not communism? when we selflessly hold a door open for someone, is that not communism?" i.... no?? no it's not. that's not what communism is girl stop

he then also says facebook is actually communist in many ways since a lot of its value comes from photos people willingly share for free. i could not make this up if i tried.

i think that in most terms i agree with bregman on policy - direct democracy, school and prison systems, changes to the criminal justice system - and our reasoning is partially similar, but i don't think the information we both have access to proves that humans are inherently good.

and then come perhaps my least favourite arguments because i for one am a spiteful bitch but yes. it is time for christian ethics 101 and turning the other cheek.

he cites ghandi and mlk as examples of turning the other cheek working. i think ghandi went too far with his policy, what with saying "jews ought to have marched silently to their deaths or committed mass suicide to make nazis feel ashamed" and like. we do remember they killed mlk, right?

as an example of turning the other cheek, he cites humane prisons in norway, where prisoners are granted much larger freedoms than usual and are on equal footing with the guards, who aren't armed and act more as councillors. i don't really see how this is an example of turning the other cheek, though - the guards are not the victims of the inmates (it was a prison for violent offenders - many of them murderers). i agree with him that prisons, if they must exist, should treat inmates humanely and with respect, but i don't see how this relates to the turning of the cheek. statistically, many of these men probably murdered their mates in a drunken dispute, or killed their wives - and i don't think turning the other cheek would have helped their victims.

he also cites south africa in the sixties as an example of turning the other cheek, when anti-apartheid activists would meet up with pro-apartheid activists and talk - this included nelson mandela who had frequent talks with the leader of a white supremacist paramilitary organisation of afrikaners staunchly opposed to black south africans getting the vote. and it worked - the man, whose aim was starting a civil war, relented. but racism isn't a simple matter that can simply be solved by talking. and it is often a pragmatic policy which i don't disparage, but turning the other cheek and having to treat someone who refuses to acknowledge your humanity with an exorbitantly disproportionate amount of respect is inherently degrading.

skipping ahead, in the epilogue bregman lists ten rules he tries to live by, and one of them is, i shit you not, "don't punch nazis". and punching nazis doesn't stop them from being nazis, but turning the other cheek gets people killed

the rise of fascism is perhaps one the largest threats we are dealing with and fascists are not just isolated and misinformed (and in this day and age, ignorance is a choice). they are dangerous.

this is by no means an essay or an exhaustive list, just a slightly chaotic and much overdue collection of opinions which i don't know how to put under a read more. take care <3

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scripttorture · 4 years

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Regarding ICURE, I have a character who is familiar with the process and a deep understanding of most of the mindsets and mental states involved in torture, interrogation, and captivity. Would that make resistance to the techniques easier? How would a willingness to engage and empathize with captors, combined with an awareness of their goals and methods and a greater than average degree of self-awareness and self confidence interact?

I’m mostly working without studies here extrapolating based on what I know.

The only bit of this I can definitively answer is that knowledge of what torture does wouldn’t effect the high innate resistance we have to it. Resistance to torture is bound up in so many fundamental systems, like how our nerves physically register pain, that conscious knowledge wouldn’t make much difference to the outcome.

It might make the character feel better or more confident though: ‘There’s no way you can force this information out of me’. It might also make the recovery process a little easier if the character is tortured. Knowledge about mental illness and how they’re treated can help people identify what they’re going through and process it more quickly. It can also make it easier to seek help.

For those who are new to the blog ICURE is a combination of techniques that can be used to change someone’s beliefs over time. As with everything there is not a 100% success rate but unlike torture consistently applied ICURE can lead to a controlled change in the target’s belief system.

It stands for Isolate, Control information, create Uncertainty, Repetition and Emotional responses.

A group of characters attempting to use ICURE would isolate the target from other characters, ensure that the information/news the target gets lines up with what the group believes. They’d then attempt to create uncertainty about previously held core beliefs and respond in an overblown emotional fashion if the target attempts to challenge their own beliefs. Repetition of this, consistently over a prolonged period (months or years) can (but does not always) lead to change in core beliefs.

For an example let’s imagine a story applying this to Bucky Barnes from the Marvel series.

A group holding him might try to create uncertainty by underlining how long he’s been held and how his friends haven’t attempted to rescue him. They might give him news that his best friend has another group of heroes he works with now. Bucky has been abandoned, forgotten. And so forth.

An emotive response in this scenario could be something like the primary care giver of the group (the person who most regularly interacts with Bucky, giving him food and trying to interact positively) flying off the handle when Bucky mentions his old friends. How can he be so ungrateful? Doesn’t he realise what the caregiver has risked and sacrificed to keep Bucky safe? Does he think persuading the group to ‘help’ Bucky and keep him alive was easy?

You get the idea.

My instinct is that knowledge of these techniques would make them less effective. These things are never 100% successful and I think consciously acknowledging the manipulative nature of ICURE would make it harder for the captors to achieve total success.

However a lot of the reason these techniques work is because humans are social animals. We need interaction with other members of the species in order to remain healthy. And as a result we often change and adapt in order to fit in with new groups. We are geared to compromise in order to gain or maintain positive social contact.

I am not a psychologist or psychiatrist but I do know that there a lot of research papers which suggest personal opinions can gradually change over time when we’re surrounded by people with differing views in non-coercive settings.

This does not necessarily mean full conversion to another set of ideals. The impression I get is that it mostly looks like a series of small and subtle changes.

For the sake of avoiding internet insanity let’s make up an issue. Let’s make up a character who grew up in an area where no one wears red and the colour has a lot of negative associations.

This character moves to a different area where the colour has different connotations and wearing red is a neutral act. Over a period of years the character’s attitudes towards the colour might mellow. They might never wear red themselves. They might not decorate with the colour. But they’ve met a fair few people who occasionally wear red now and they’re decent people. They don’t judge people who wear red the way they did when they first moved in to the area.

What I’m trying to illustrate here is that it’s normal for people’s views to shift over time. Obviously this does not always happen. People can hold extreme or vastly differing views when compared to their community.

From a certain point of view my views are extreme. Most cultures in our global society accept and legitimise violence to differing degrees. Pacifism is the absolute rejection of violence*. If you take a moment to think about how often violence permeates all aspects of our lives (from child care to religion to politics) you’ll see what I mean.

What I’m trying to illustrate here is that while we do adjust and change to fit in with the people surrounding us we can also cling to things that are very much against the norm. And that makes it difficult to answer any of these questions with certainty. There is a lot of individual variation.

A lot of the techniques to resist effective interrogation are essentially a refusal to interact. But the longer someone’s held outside their community the less viable that is as an option. We can choose to do things that are harmful to us (including avoiding needed social contact) but it’s hard. Because it’s unhealthy.

I think the way I’d approach this as a writer is to start by identifying the core values of this character, the things that are most important to them. Try to think of things the character absolutely could not compromise without becoming a different character.

Circling back to the example of Bucky Barnes, a core value might be his relationship with Steve Rogers, his oldest friend.

Once you have an idea of the core values think of the next most important value. And keep going.

I tend to do this pretty instinctively. For me it’s a part of my messy, sprawling character creation. If you need to take a more visual or organised approach to figuring things out then a list (with the most important values at the top) or a circle (with the most important values in the middle) might be helpful.

Next think through the same process for the group that has captured the character. Since it’s a group rather then an individual it should be simpler. (Because a group is unlikely to be as nuanced and complicated as an individual.)

See if there’s any overlap which might be grounds for grudging mutual respect. Values like loyalty to your own group and taking care of the people on your side are good things to use for this.

I would then look at the more peripheral values the character has and shift some of them a little over time.

Keeping Bucky as our example I might put something like ‘American cultural values’ as a more peripheral value. Bucky seems to prize the culture he was raised in and consider it the norm. But it’s not something he bases his personality on or something that motivates him through the stories. So shifting that, having him not see it as the ‘norm’ any more, or adopting things his captors did would be a good way to show that he has been influenced.

Obviously the right choice, the right value to shift, depends on the characters and the story you want to tell. The degree to which you want to shift the character’s values is also up to you.

Bigger shifts, or more obvious shifts, could serve to cause conflict later in the story. This could lead the character to feel rejected, like their loyalty is being questioned after everything they went through.

Bigger shifts could also serve a practical purpose in the story though. If this character has gained a greater understanding for the group they’re opposed to that could make them a much more effective interrogator. They might know how to establish rapport more quickly and earn the trust of captured prisoners. Which could in turn lead to more accurate information.

Greater understanding of the group they’re opposed to could also help with strategic thinking/planning.

Smaller shifts add less elements to the story. But that could be a good thing too depending on your story. If you don’t have a lot of time or space to explore new conflicts or skills then this approach would save you narrative space while still showing the character has been effected.

It would also work if the point here is to show the character as mostly unmoved, unchanged, despite coercive external pressure.

I hope that helps :)

Available on Wordpress.

Disclaimer

*In case anyone’s interested I personally define violence as harmful acts done without consent.

#pinctada1798 #writing advice #tw torture #manipulation #ICURE #effective interrogation #isolation #social pressure #social interaction #shifting views #prison #interrogation #character development

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soranis-sunshadow · 4 years

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Spacebats need anger management

I’ve been thinking a bit about Hordak’s off-putting angry outbursts. I was trying to figure out how one would get from being allowed to express no emotion to violent emotional outbursts. Is this an innate behaviour of spacebats or is it a learned behaviour?

Then it dawned on me:

What other person appears calm and collected only to suddenly snap in an unanticipated burst of viciousness? Horde Prime, that’s who. For the most part Prime appears calm and collected. He talks at people (not with them) in that smooth, slithering, and silky tone then, , out of nowhere, BAM! Violence. You don’t really know when it’s coming or if it’s coming. You don’t really expect it at first, if you are unfamiliar with Prime. The sudden shift is jarring and terrifying. Makes me wonder whether he wants to project calm and control but utterly loses his temper or these are calculated outbursts designed to make one feel in danger regardless of how he actually behaves. Are they calculated doses of abuse specifically designed to keep one off balance, in an exhausting state of constant fear?

As an example, in the season 4 finale when Prime teleports Catra, Glimmer and Hordak to his throne room, after he inquires as to why he can’t sense Hordak’s thoughts in a calm fashion, you can see Hordak already quivering in fear. He already knew what was coming. He was on his knees, begging for mercy but his face, posture, gestures and tone of voice tells us that he already knows he will not receive any. That scene unsettles me still. He knew that Prime’s initial calm was no indication of safety.

We, humans, learn how to behave by studying our parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles and later, our friends and entourage. We have multiple examples, in our formative years of behaviour and we develop a preference on how to act ourselves based on how likable our examples are and how successful they are at determining the right reactions in others. It’s a slow process that, for the most part, happens without our conscious awareness of it (at least in our first years of life).

For his clones, Horde Prime might be the only example of a person that they have available. (Little brothers are not people, only parts of the whole). His reactions and behaviour are the only things they have to base any interactions off of. There is no other alternative, no better or calmer or more balanced person as a counter example. (Besides… Prime is all, there is no better than Prime, he is the Eternal Light… yada yada) Regardless of the fact that they don’t see themselves as people and they should not actively develop a personality, it happens anyway because under all their erasure and all of the indoctrination, they are still people. The clones begin, at least in their heads, emulating their big brother. You can see some of that in how individual clones react to Catra and Glimmer on Prime’s ship.

This brings us back to Hordak and his anger management issues. Does his use of verbal violence resemble Prime in scope and goal? Are his outbursts calculatedly cruel and unpredictable?

Hmm...not really. They come off more as bratty, more like he’s throwing a tantrum. His outbursts are usually preceded by a simmering frustration that he probably has no healthy way of dealing with. For the most part, he has no means of dealing with any emotion. He was never supposed to have any emotions to begin with so he is ill equipped to understand and cope with them. Him being emotionally stunted is not a bug, it’s a feature. The only open expression of emotion he is used to is Prime’s anger, and so, all emotions are expressed in that fashion. Be it shame, anxiety, frustration, loneliness and to some degree, even confusion. When he has a positive emotion, he is unsure how to express it with the means he has available, which leads to dorky declarations of indirect friendship.

A lot of his behaviour is, in hindsight, a bad imitation of Prime: His attempts at cowering his underlings, his self-imposed isolation, his dismissal of Catra when she tries to report to him while he is working with Entrapta and more. For all his bluster, his attempts at being imposing and superior come off as clumsy once you take a peek under the veneer, as Catra herself discovers. It becomes hard to tell what he’s actually like by himself when he’s not trying to fill his brother’s big shoes.

The only person he starts acting naturally around is Entrapta and, unfortunately, he doesn’t manifest a different type of reaction with her either. He has a short temper and snaps at her too. The difference emerges when Entrapta is not cowed by the outbursts (unlike everyone else in the Horde). She calls them tizzies and for the most part, either ignores them or tries to calm him down with logic. And… it works. (except for that one, unfortunate time).

The only other example of a spacebat we have is Wrongie and he seems more prone to outbursts of crying rather than shouting. However, he has about 2 minutes of screen-time tops and the show treats his ordeal of being cut off from all he knows and his deconversion more like a gag rather than the traumatic experience it really is. The only outburst he has is pre-brain-scramble and arguably… it’s justified. Entrapta and Bow were intruders, trying to dispose of them was a natural conclusion.

To close all of this rambling, it is impossible to tell with all the evidence we have from the show whether it’s an innate behaviour. Prime is violent because he’s an abusive prick and because his violence is always rewarded with a positive outcome. Whether he was less violent at some point and became more due to positive reinforcement of such conduct throughout the centuries or millennia of his existence is irrelevant at this point. His little brothers internalise that behaviour as the norm and act accordingly. It becomes natural to them sadly. It is a learned behaviour from the only example they have ever had.

Unlearning it will be difficult.

EDIT: Their flat emote that defaults to anger also makes it very hard for some fans of the show to actually empathize with them. Most people don’t look under the anger to see what exactly they are trying to express. They take these outbursts at face value and see a vicious, rabid and cruel animal where some of us know that what we are seeing is a creature that has known only violence and as such, will bite at any hand that comes near, for hands have only been used to hurt it.

#spop #spop discourse #Horde Prime #horde clones #Hordak #vaguely coherent ramblings

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diamondsableye · 4 years

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“Depressed? Just be happy!!

ADHD? Just pay attention!!

Autism? Socializing isn’t that hard!!

Gender dysphoria? Just be happy in your body!!

Y’all do realize like... that’s not how things work right?”

Hi. You left the above comment on some anti-gender post and I just want to let you know that you’re fucking stupid and you have no clue what “TERFs” think if this is what you have to say. We’re not saying “be happy in ur body uwu self love” we’re telling you that a woman’s only criteria for being a woman is her femaleness. Mental illness sucks. Depression sucks. Anxiety sucks. OCD sucks. Gender dysphoria sucks. None of these are things guaranteed to be cured by just sheer force of will and 99.99% of (real) feminists agree. There’s no magic cure for any of these, not even altering genitals or taking HRT will cure gender dysphoria. The best we have is therapy and meds to help. But even if you’re taking ADHD meds, you’re still a person with ADHD. Even if you have gender dysphoria, you’re not magically the opposite sex, and gender is a sexist social construct. Maybe you should stick your head out the window every once and a while and see how not black and white the world is.

Listen I just found out that my cat has cancer so I really don’t want to have to deal with you more than I have to. I came back onto this app to quickly chat with a friend and I’ve got work to do so this response is gonna be very short.

First of all, stop treating medical transitioning with such disregard. Of course they don’t “cure” gender dysphoria but these procedures are a huge advancement in medical technology and they’re extremely effective at reducing gender dysphoria in a myriad of ways. So don’t phrase it as some nilly whilly thing.

Secondly, you do do realize that sex is measured through the observation of 5 different traits correct? Chromosomes, gonads, hormones, and internal and external reproductive anatomy/the primary and secondary sex characteristics. You can change your hormonal sex through HRT and you can get surgeries to alter your primary and secondary sex characteristics as well as modify or remove your internal reproductive organs. Really the only thing that can’t truly be changed in some way shape or form are your chromosomes. So like... unless you’re gonna argue metaphysics here along the lines of “once your birth sex always your birth sex”.... you’re kindof... incorrect here? Sure you can never be cis, but biological sex is modifiable to various degrees. Again, if you’re gonna challenge this you’re arguing metaphysics when we’re discussing biology.

Also you do realize that currently it’s impossible to determine accurately how intrinsic gender is to the human condition right? You’re kindof making an assertion here without any evidence. We live in an incredibly gendered society and unless we’d be willing to subjugate humans to little or no contact to the outside world or other people starting from birth, we’re unable to truly determine how much of gender is purely socially constructed, how much of it is internally produced, or how immutable it may be. Are gender roles sexist and should be done away with? Of course. Is gender identity completely created through society or is it more innate? We don’t know and we can’t tell for sure.

Anyhow all that aside, even if I was wrong on every single point here, my initial argument is still valid. If you recognize that gender dysphoria is harmful and can severely damper a person’s ability to pursue a meaningful existence in certain cases, but the only words of sympathy are “yeah well it sucks but you’ll never be a real woman/man” then...???? You’re just... leaving people to themselves and expecting them to get over it. Many if not all trans people have an irrepressible need to be the gender they identify with and internally are, that need demands that they be seen as their gender within social contexts, and causes great harm when that need is not met. It would be like if you told me, an autistic person, that “sure it sucks that you’re an aspie, but you’ll never be a neurotypical” and I’m saying yes! I know! And that fact does distress me because people on the spectrum often face great negative stigma in society, and that’s maybe 1/100th of what trans people go through! You’d still be doing absolutely nothing to actually help and if anything you’d be making me worse if you kept insisting that no matter what I’d never be mentally healthy! It might be true but it’s totally uncalled for and ignores a fuckload of broader needs!

If you’re doing absolutely nothing to help, and if the most prominent leaders of your movement are doing their best to revoke the rights of health and safety that trans people need, while also denying them their identity, a key component to their health and happiness, then how is that any different than telling them to “get over yourself, just be fine as your agab”??? Like I’m very baffled that you don’t see the demonstrable harm you guys are doing to trans people, either that or you just don’t care?? Either way, you’re not helping, you’re hurting people, and EVEN IF my analogy was flawed, maybe stop perpetuating ideology and supporting movements that demonstrably hurt trans people instead of focusing on a fucking reply I left on a goddamn post.

@terf-tips @reptile-lesbian

If you all would like to add anything feel free, I need to finish some last minute college assignments.

#ask #answered #reply #terf tw #fuck terfs #terfs dni #transphobia #trans discourse #tw trans discourse #text #anon

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katsidhe · 4 years

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coffeecustard

replied to your post

“Love your blog!! Your meta is *chefs kiss* So! I made an observation...”

I'm very curious what that makes me, because I was never shocked at Sam's decision, never felt he was disgusting, in fact I found and still find the s4 demon thing to make 100% sense in light of the info he had. I love your meta and I'm hoping one day you'll write what you think makes ppl like me feel this way -- accept Sam's actions and motives 100% no questions, because they make absolute sense to us.

You know, I think there is something interesting here. In some ways I’m in the same boat as you. The first time I watched s4 I was on Sam’s side, but while I never felt that he was disgusting or unjustified, I definitely understood why Sam felt he was doing something transgressive/something that potentially crossed a bright moral line. And that struggle, and the fear of intrinsic evil, was real for Sam (even without Dean/the culture surrounding him driving it home), and frankly added to my respect for him.

So, textually I think it’s inarguable that the Show itself regards Sam drinking demon blood as morally questionable at the very least. Even setting aside Dean’s moralizing, the literal in-universe author of their books tells Sam it’s not right. Can’t get much more explicit than that.

But Sam’s guilt is a lot muddier compared to whatever Dean struggles with in s9, because it’s not just ~bad bc the show said so~. Sam’s lifelong feelings of innate uncleanliness, interwoven with the degree of suspicion with which Dean tends to treat him as a matter of course (which stems from John’s suspicions, the Family Cult, Dean’s absolutism, etc etc.), combined with the Show’s bias, make the separate factors really, really difficult to parse. All three have narrative effects that influence how the audience is likely to perceive Sam’s decisions.

Like I touched on in my previous post, one first obvious reaction is to take a stance that most closely resembles Dean’s (and arguably the Show’s): something to the effect of, Sam means well, and some version of him is Good deep down, but he’s misguided; surely he can see that this stuff is Bad News and is all going to end in tears; really, he should go back to Normal.

But sometimes, like in your case and mine, that isn’t the first reaction. Part of it for me at least is that pragmatism is a really attractive trait in my fictional characters, and I deeply respected that Sam was willing to set aside his own deep self-disgust because he could acknowledge that making use of the blood and his powers got undeniable results. But I also wonder if it might be the naysayer in me who wanted to be on Sam’s side in the first place, that wanted to revolt against what the clear narrative authority was trying to tell me. If it’s an instinctive reaction to be on the side of the party being assigned blame and called out for wrongness, the one being called abnormal and freakish in the face of persecution.

The blood is a continuous action on Sam’s part, and an addiction with side-effects that are debatably causing harm to him. Sam has to make the active decision over and over to keep using it, and it’s one he visibly struggles with while the necessity wars with his shame, and while we as viewers fear for his safety in the face of both his friends and his enemies. All the while, Sam is painted as overtly deviant, in ways that tie in with his sexuality and with addiction, with his mental health, with him being, somehow, innately tainted. This, I think, can easily be fundamentally sympathetic.

The Mark, in contrast, was one ill-informed decision, with inarguably harmful fallout for both Sam and Dean. Interestingly enough, Dean’s grappling with the Mark of Cain is basically never addressed as a choice? He finds out about the thing, accepts it without asking about terms and conditions, and is branded all in one episode; following this, his struggle is all about him internally trying to repress, control, or channel the urges the Mark gives or intensifies; never (to my recollection, anyway; feel free to correct me if I’m forgetting something in some s10 episode I’ve never rewatched) is he significantly wracked with regret over taking the Mark in the first place. I think this is typical of Dean. He felt he did what he had to do, so he’s not going to agonize over a decision that was made that he cannot take back. Sam doesn’t react the way Dean did in season 4, either--Gadreel aside, he’s on Dean’s side, quick to reassure Dean (and himself) in s10 that the Mark’s influence isn’t Dean’s fault.

This definitely contributes to how we the audience view that decision, and since Dean is tormented but not terribly guilty, and Sam is supportive even while a victim, it’s easy to assign pity rather than blame. But for me, as a viewer, it’s a lot less interesting to watch Dean grapple when there’s little acknowledgment of how he made his bed in the first place, and, indeed, when there’s NO ONE in the narrative, not Sam, and not even Dean himself, who is in major conflict with that decision.

In s4, Sam is resolutely the moral outsider. I think for some people it can have the effect of making his point of view MORE attractive rather than less, because it is transgressive on a level intrinsic to the fabric of the show itself. And that’s plain fun.

#coffeecustard #sam and dean #mark of cain #Sam and guilt #this may have gone on a bit of a tangent #sam and blood #season 4 #season 9 #dean and the mark

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tawakkull · 3 years

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ISLAM 101: Spirituality in Islam: Part 26

Haya (Modesty)

Sufis use haya, which literally means shame, bashfulness, and refraining from saying or doing anything improper or indecent, to describe one who, out of fear and awe of God, seeks to avoid displeasing Him. It urges one to be more careful, self-possessed, and self-controlled, for such restraint, if originating in feelings of modesty, result in paying God the respect He deserves. If these feelings are absent or lost due to familial or environmental influences, it will be difficult to develop them. In the light of the explanations above, modesty can be divided into two categories: an innate or instinctive feeling of shame, which prevent people from engaging in what is considered shameful and indecent, and modesty originating in belief, which constitutes an important, deep dimension of Islam.

Combining the instinctive feeling of shame with modesty based on Islam forms the greatest safeguard against shameful or indecent acts. Alone, each one may be diminished or utterly lost. If this innate feeling of shame is not combined with awareness coming from belief and expressed in verses like: Does he not know that God sees (all things)? (96:14) and consciousness of God’s constant oversight: God is ever watching over you (4:1), it cannot last long, for its endurance depends on belief. This essential relation between modesty and belief was expressed by God’s Messenger, who told a Companion after hearing his advice on modesty to another man: Leave him, for modesty comes from belief. [1] He also said: Belief has seventy or so divisions. Modesty is a division of belief. [2]

We may conclude from these Prophetic sayings that like other seeds of innate virtues, one’s natural feeling of shame develops to the extent it is strengthened with the forces and means that produce knowledge of God. It then becomes a dimension of one’s spiritual life, an obstacle against the carnal self’s excessive desires. If this feeling is not reinforced and developed with belief and knowledge of God or strengthened with consciousness of God’s constant oversight, and left to dissipate in sensual or carnal pleasure, one will witness in an individual or a community those indecencies and perversions that make anyone truly human ashamed of being human. The glory of mankind and the perfect example of modesty, upon him be peace and blessings, said: If you have no modesty, do whatever you wish. [3]

The words haya (modesty or feeling of shame) and hayat (life) come from the same root. This signifies that modesty is a sign of a lively heart, and that a heart’s liveliness depends on its owner’s belief and knowledge of God. If a heart is not fed continuously with belief and knowledge of God, it is almost impossible for it to remain lively and give rise to modesty.

According to Junayd al-Baghdadi, haya means awareness of God’s bestowed material and immaterial bounties, and consciousness of personal defects and faults. Dhu al-Nun al-Misri holds that haya means that one constantly feels shame in his or her heart on account of personal sins and offenses, and is therefore careful about his or her actions. [4] Another spiritual master defines haya as never forgetting how God treats one and ordering one’s life according to the fact that God sees all that is done and thought.

It is recorded in al-Qushayri’s Al-Risala that God declares: O son of Adam! So long as you maintain your modesty and feeling of shame before Me, I make people forget your defects. [5] The Lord of Might and Dignity also said to Jesus, upon him be peace: O Jesus, first advise your own selfhood. If it accepts your advice, then you may advise others, or else you must feel ashamed of yourself before Me.

Some have mentioned different categories of modesty or shame. For example, the shame or modesty felt by:

- Adam, who felt guilty until he was forgiven.

- Angels for their heartfelt incapacity to give due worship to God, as expressed in their saying: Glory be to You! We are unable to worship You as Your worship requires, although they glorify Him day and night without stopping.

- Gnostics or those distinguished with knowledge of God in the face of His Majesty, despite their profound knowledge of Him, which they express as: Glory be to You! We are unable to know You as Your knowledge requires.

- The spiritually advanced when in awe of God, although they never give in to their carnal desires and ambitions.

- Those distinguished with utmost conviction of God because of their supposed distance from Him, although they always feel His infinite nearness despite the infinite distance of humanity from God Almighty.

- Lovers of God who feel disloyalty arising from their anxiety over not being able to love God as His love requires.

- Those who feel a lack of sufficient sincerity and do not know for what they must pray to God.

- Those exalted ones who are conscious of the fact that they, as human beings, have been honored with the fairest creation, because of the base acts of which they accuse themselves and which, according to them, are irreconcilable with being part of the fairest creation.

The first degree of modesty is to see oneself with the sight of God. That is, the person practices self-control or self-supervision according to God’s standards. This practice engenders a feeling of shame or modesty that produces extreme caution in thoughts and acts. Such a degree of modesty is found in people considered lively on account of their feelings and thoughts.

The second degree is proportional to one’s awareness of nearness to God, and the feeling of always being in His Presence. This can be experienced by those who are always conscious of the meaning of: He is with you wherever you may be (57:4), about which the Prophet, upon him be peace and blessings, said:

Be as modest before God Almighty, as the necessity of being modest before Him requires. Let him who is blessed with this degree of modesty always control his mind and its contents, as well as his stomach and its contents. Let him always remember death and decay after it. One who desires the afterlife will renounce the adornments of the world. One who is able to do that can feel as much modesty before God as the necessity of being modest before Him requires. [6]

One can reach the third degree by deeply feeling the absolute Divine disposal of all things, by living a life of profound spirituality in pursuit of the final destination: And in your Lord is the final goal (53:42). The effort to reach this final goal continues throughout a whole life dedicated to following the path to Him.

One’s degree of modesty determines one’s true humanness. If a traveler cannot order his or her life and discipline his or her acts according to the demands of the eternal life and to live in utmost humility and modesty, then his or her existence is a personal shame and a burden to others, as stated in the following couplet:

By God, there is good neither in life Nor in the world when modesty disappears.

Modesty is a Divine quality and mystery. If people knew to whom it essentially relates, they would act more carefully and sensitively. To illuminate this point, it is related that

God Almighty asks an old man on the Plain of Resurrection to account for his acts in the world: Why did you commit such and such sins? The old man denies that he had done so. So, the Most Compassionate of the Compassionate commands the angels: Take him to Paradise. The angels want to know why the Almighty has commanded so, although He knows that the old man committed those sins. The Almighty answers: I know, but I looked at his white beard as one belonging to the Community of Muhammad and felt ashamed to tell him that I knew he was lying.

As recorded in Kanz al-‘Ummal, when the Archangel Gabriel told this to God’s Messenger, upon him be peace and blessings, the Messenger’s eyes filled with tears and he said regretfully:

God Almighty feels ashamed to punish those of my Community whose beards have turned white, but those of my Community with white beards do not feel ashamed to commit sins. [7]

To sum up:

Hayiy (All-Modest) is one of the Divine Names, So strive and acquire modesty.

[1] Al-Bukhari, “Iman,” 16; Muslim, “Iman,” 59; Abu Dawud, “Adab,” 6. [2] Abu Dawud, “Sunna,” 14; Nasa'i, “Iman,” 16. [3] Al-Buhkari, “Anbiya’,” 54; Abu Dawud, “Adab,” 6; Ibn Maja, “Zuhd,” 17. [4] Al-Qushayri, Al-Risala, 215. [5] Ibid., 216. [6] Ibn Hanbal, Musnad, 1:387. [7] Nasa'i, “Sahw,” 60.

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anamthelaptopninja · 4 years

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5 lessons I learned while reading the autobiography of Malcom X

One of the ways in which I’ve been able to measure my growth is by observing the types of books I now read as compared to what I was reading in my early 20’s. I didn’t realize at first but looking back on what kind of books I’ve been approaching recently made me realize that I’ve started preferring non-fiction where most of my life I’ve spent innumerable hours reading and indulging in fiction. I still enjoy the escapism of fiction books but as the years have gone by; an innate desire to access and absorb more and more knowledge, while being aware of not having enough time has pulled me towards non-fiction literature of all sorts.

One of the most recent books I read was the autobiography of Malcom X. Before reading his autobiography, I didn’t know much about him except that he was an activist who spoke about the injustices of the American system against Afro-Americans, and that he was a Muslim, who was assassinated for what he believed in. I’d heard good things about the book and his life seemed interesting and I wanted to know more about his journey towards Islam.

His book has been enlightening and inspiring. For me, it’s one of the most helpful books I’ve read and if you’ve read it, you know what I mean. You walk through his life with him and you feel and see him and his beliefs change as the book progresses. The Malcom from the beginning till the time of his death went through so many changes and you go through those changes with him. Here are some of the lessons I learned from reading the life of Malcom X.

1. Never be ashamed of the past and your journey.

The biggest lesson for me was to be grateful of the past because it shapes who we are today as individuals. Malcom X lived life on the streets selling drugs and committing crimes. He didn’t sugar coat these times in his book but looked at it in a practical way. His time on the streets allowed him to find his way towards Islam and to be better acquainted to the psychology of those who lived a troubling or difficult lifestyle which allowed him to reach out to them, and he acknowledges that in the book. As Muslims we all believe in Qadr, the divine Will of God, but to see it play out in someone’s life is a proof and affirmation of what we already know. No matter how hard times get or whatever we’re ashamed of in life, it was meant for us to be where we are today. It’s okay as long as we find our way back to God.

2. There’s isn’t anything that can benefit us more than self-learning.

I’ve always believed in self-learning. I’ve witnessed people with degrees; ignorant, arrogant and unsympathetic, while I’ve witnessed illiterate people with an abundance of knowledge, wisdom and compassion. Sure, a degree equips you with the tools for a professional life and teaches you many lessons that build character but to learn something for your own selfish reasons, is more beneficial and honest. When Malcom X went to prison, he could barely write, and he struggled to read. In prison, he would copy pages of dictionary to improve his writing and simultaneously increase his vocabulary. He read so much he needed glasses. He is the best example of self-learning building character because today we remember him for his eloquence in the way he spoke.

3. Allah gifts individuals in different and natural ways.

In the age of social media it’s impossible to not compare your life or skills to those of others, or feel like you’re lagging behind your peers. You watch your friends do incredible things in their fields and while you’re proud of them, you feel like you’re not doing enough yourself or maybe you’re not as gifted as they are. But everyone has an innate quality that only they possess. It’s their gift that comes to them naturally or it might be something they’ve accomplished with hard work and patience. Living a life that was all about survival, Malcom X didn’t get to complete his education or go to University even though he was a clever and sharp young boy. Despite this, he was gifted with the art of speaking and persuasion. He got to polish this art while he was in prison, where he took part in debates. He researched and read on the topics of discussion, he thought tactfully and how the opposition would attack and he would prepare accordingly. A gift that would help him later in life, again the Qadr of Allah and how He mysteriously works.

4. It’s okay to admit your mistakes.

I think this is the aspect of our lives that most of us struggle with. One of the reason why I gained so much respect for Malcom X was because he always admitted his mistakes. He learned from them and talked about them. He modified and changed his opinion on matters publicly on television and in newspaper articles. As a member of The Nation of Islam, he formerly believed that the white man was the devil and he publicly made his opinion known. He was accused of being a reverse racist and preaching hate. On his pilgrimage to Makkah he saw men and women of all colours and nationalities together. He was treated as a Muslim, equal to everyone there. His Hajj experience had a profound effect on him when he saw kindness he experience by those who were white. He came back with a changed mindset and came to the conclusion that “the white man is not inherently evil”.

5. Stand up for what you believe in.

Malcom X’s character from when he was a young man was a formidable one. He was unrelenting and he believed, truly believed in what he was preaching. Even when he was wrong (which he later admitted) he was informed enough on what he was preaching, that he managed to gather a staggering amount of followers for the Nation of Islam just by publicly speaking about what he thought was the truth. But alongside his confidence was the humbleness to admit his faults when he realized he was wrong. Admitting your mistakes when you’re wrong gives credibility to what you say when you’re speaking about something you’re passionate about. A young woman flew to New York from New England and came to Malcom X asking him what she, as a white woman, could do to help the Afro-American cause, to which he replied “nothing” and she went away crying. Malcom X regretted telling her that and that he wished he knew her name so he could tell her how she could help. Later on, he also said “Anger can blind human vision” referring to his former beliefs.

The autobiography of Malcom X or El Hajj Malik El Shabazz has been an enlightening one. He had a purpose in life which he spent most of his life working towards. In his last days, he knew he was going to be killed and he said that he wasn’t afraid to die but just afraid for his family. Hs life teaches countless lessons and I’d recommend every Muslim to read his autobiography as inspiration or just for admiration.

May Allah have mercy on his soul.

26th February 2021.

#Malcom X #mywords #My words #autobiography #books #book review #goodreads

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charliejrogers · 4 years

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Yes, God, Yes

Full disclosure: I not only attended a Catholic high school, but I specifically attended a Kairos retreat, the exact retreat which the characters from 2020’s Yes, God, Yes attend. In the film, they call it “Kirkos,” but everything about “Kirkos” is the same as my (and seemingly every) Kairos. So let me clear up a few things for those of you who saw this film and thought, “This shit at this movie retreat can’t be what they do in real life.” Yes, Kairos leaders really do collect your phone and watch upon arrival to the retreat center since you are now on “God’s time ”(kairos comes from the Greek word καιρός which literally means “God’s time”). Yes, you are forced into small groups with your other classmates and feel this weird pressure to have a sad life story to share. Yes, small group leaders start to play music while they tell their own story AND pass out the lyrics as if these song lyrics are real deep poetry. One of my retreat leaders, for example, handed out sheets of the lyrics to Florence + The Machine’s “Shake it Off.” Now, I LIKE Florence + The Machine, but even still the lyrics to that song are nothing special. And, most of all, yes, those who come back from Kairos do tend to act a little cultish. At our school it was referred to as having a “Kai high,” a feeling in time when everyone just wants to be friends yet those people only exclusively hang out with one another.

In defense of Kairos retreats, at their very best, they offer adolescents at a critical time in their development the opportunity to reflect on their lives thus far, evaluate if they are living out the values their parents and community have instilled in them, and give them a safe space to work through conflicts, apologize, and try to be better people. At their worst, it’s a self-congratulatory experience where people act morally superior to others without really doing anything substantial… or even worse it’s a period of time where adolescents might unearth and talk about really hard topics like suicide, depression, etc. for the first time… and yet are given no real guidance on how to handle those emotions outside of this four day experience!

All this said, this is not a review of Kairos retreat. It is, indeed, a film review. I just wanted to make clear my biases etc. before talking about it since the retreat does more than provide the setting for the majority of Yes, God, Yes: the retreat’s four-day thematic structure doubles as the film’s plot structure. Just as in real life, our protagonist does a lot of questioning about her life and her faith during her first day, does some “crying” during the second as people, “accepting/trusting” the third, and then “living out” the lessons she learned on the fourth day and beyond! The difference is that in real life, teens are supposed to do these things in regard to their faith... or protagonist across those four days has a genuine sexual awakening.

In fact it’s exactly the desire to suppress her sexuality that prompts our protagonist to go on the retreat in the first place. Because our protagonist, Alice (played by Stranger Things’ Natalia Dyer), has just discovered something about herself that is hard to put out of her mind: she likes sex! Or, more specifically, likes masturbating. Alice is, from what we can tell in the prologue, a pretty by-the-books Catholic teen. She follows the rules, goes to Church with her Dad every Sunday, and os pretty sexually naïve… sheltered as we used to describe kids. Someone starts a rumor that Alice “tossed” a boy’s “salad” at a party and the rumor spreads like wildfire. Even the teachers know about it, and she loses her status as a gift bearer for the school’s weekly Mass. Of course, Alice doesn’t even know what “tossing salad” means (nor truthfully did I… but the movie seems to anticipate this by providing a definition to the audience at the very beginning of the film.)

All Alice knows is that she likes arm hair… like LIKES arm hair, something she discovers when she’s on an AOL chat room and someone sends her porn. That’s right, this is a film set in the early ‘00s, so if you hold any nostalgia for that time, get ready to have your fill from the era’s cheesy pop ballads to giant brick phones, to the fact that America (while starting to be so) wasn’t so health conscious that’s it not crazy to believe a teenage girl would just come home from school and snack on frosting and a giant bowl of Cheetoh’s Puffs. The nostalgia is not quite as in your face as in Captain Marvel, but it’s certainly more of a focus than it was in Lady Bird.

Yeah, you knew the comparison was coming. Let’s just be clear, this is by no means trying to be the next Lady Bird. This movie knows it’s pretty frivolous to begin with. Still, it’s hard to avoid comparison with the last big movie about a Catholic girl coming of age in the early 2000s. What I learned in watching this movie compared to Lady Bird or even Boyhood is that merely recreating aspects of my former life does not a good movie make. While I loved the fact that part of watching Lady Bird was getting to see someone shine a light on how ridiculous high school theater could be, that was never the point of the movie. Here, meanwhile, a significant purpose of the film is to highlight the fact that, yes, Kairos retreats are weird and the Church sucks. While I found myself nodding my head in agreement with what I was seeing on screen… it wasn’t exactly enjoyment as much as thinking, “yup, this is what a Kairos retreat is.” Furthermore, I feel like there are aspects of Kairos that would be great for skewering and I love the parts they absolutely nail: the cultish nature of the retreat and the pressure to frame your life in a sad way… but they ultimately take a route of criticism that is too easy and frankly is not a focus of most Kairos retreats… the focus on shaming one’s sexuality and the innate hypocrisy that behavior inevitably reveals.

If there’s a villain in this film, it’s probably the retreat leader and school priest Fr. Murphy (Timothy Simons), who gives in to rumors of Alice’s sexual impropriety as much as any schoolyard bully. No one in this whole film, from Fr. Murphy, to the head of Alice’s bunkhouse, to her small group leader, to even her best friend, takes Alice’s spiritual journey seriously, as they all assume Alice is not taking the retreat seriously as she seems to be avoiding talking about her recent, rumorous activity. Of course, there’s a bit of #MeToo hypocrisy here in that the male with whom Alice is said to have been engaged with enjoys none of the backlash that she has been dealing with. And to that degree it’s a satisfying movie in that Alice gets to dish out a little #MeToo revenge.

Still, even with all things conspiring against her, Alice retains her good spirit throughout the film… as well as her determination to further explore her sexuality. On the one hand, it’s a little unrealistic the risks she takes in trying to learn more about her body, but on the other hand teenagers and young adults are friggin’ weird when it comes to figuring out themselves. Ultimately she is emboldened in this take once she finds out that all those people who are out to get her to confess her “sins” are sinners in much the same way.

Probably the best scene comes at the end of Alice’s third day of the retreat when she runs away from the retreat center and walks into a lesbian bar where she hears the story of someone who used to be Catholic and is now not. More important than anything she could learn at the retreat, this Iowa girl learns that some normal people… just don’t have a religion. For some people this world, its pleasures, its pains, is more than enough. Alice doesn’t become a full-blown hedonist after this, but she is opened up to realize there’s more to life than Catholic guilt.

Perhaps to make this good message ring out, the film as a whole, despite some absurdist elements, feels like it’s meant to be a somewhat accurate reflection of reality. I wish the writer/director, Karen Maine had tried for a slightly more absurdist approach or taken out the absurdity altogether. She already makes the Catholic high school authority more caricature than character, and the plot at timesis almost silly. Therefore, the tone of the movie just sorta feels off throughout. Just about the only thing keeping this movie grounded is a great performance by Dyer who portrays a genuine sexual awakening very faithfully, capturing the mix of confusion, guilt, and excitement all at once. Even when Alice does something downright stupid, Dyer’s performance engenders our trust from the start, and we are always on her side. I wish I could have liked this movie more as it really does accurately portray some aspects of a Kairos retreat and is about as close as I think I’ll get to having it portrayed in a major film, but ultimately by not treating the Church authority with the same amount of nuance paid to Dyer’s Alice and her sexual awakening, the film ends up being an enjoyable, if one-noted, experience. Come to make fun of Catholics, stay for Dyer’s performance.

**7/8 (Two and seven-eighths out of four stars)

#yes god yes #natalia dyer #karen maine #yesgodyes

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cosmicjoke · 4 years

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Ash and how his intelligence relates to his pain

I talked about this in another post I just wrote about Ash’s overall sense of guilt and how that played a role in his ultimate demise, but thought it would be interesting to focus on this particular point I made, which is that, while Ash’s incredible intelligence served in helping him to survive for as long as he did, and to even cope, to some extent, with the severe sexual trauma he endured, able to understand and reason out that the abuse he suffered wasn’t, in fact, his fault, I think his intelligence is also what ultimately made Ash unable to get over the guilt and pain he felt over the lives he had to take in order to survive.

I made this point, that highly intelligent people like Ash are very often deeply sensitive too. They feel things at a deeper level than less intelligent people because they see more deeply, they understand more clearly. People with high intelligence are also more prone to depression. More prone to despair, and we see Ash struggle with these things throughout the story. There’s a deep sadness and a deep loneliness to Ash,

An important thing to note from early on in the story is when Dino mentions to Ash how he used to cry over every job Dino made him do, and we see Ash express anger and repulsion over how dismissively Dino regards human life and the act of killing. Ash is keenly aware of the consequences of taking another human life, of what it actually means, and the pain he feels with each act of it stays with and continues to haunt him. We never see the other characters in the story who have also killed, like Shorter, Cain, Sing, or the various members of any of their gangs, etc... struggle with anywhere near the crippling sense of guilt and self-loathing that Ash does over their own actions. While there’s probably some sense of remorse on their part, having killed doesn’t bother them to nearly the same degree, doesn’t weigh them down with nearly the same level of consuming self-loathing, that it does Ash. All of them, ultimately, are able to forgive themselves and move on, eventually going on to start relatively normal, happy, healthy lives. None of these people are nearly as intelligent as Ash, of course.

I pointed out before how ironic it is, then, that Ash has convinced himself that he doesn’t feel anything, that he’s this emotionless monster, because the truth is the exact opposite of this. Ash feels TOO MUCH. He feels more than all of them. We see other characters, like Eiji, of course, and Cain, try to help Ash, telling him to not give himself such a hard time, to forgive himself, to explain to him that he was justified in the lives he took. But Ash is never able to accept it. He isn’t ever able to believe it. He can’t unburden himself from his sense of guilt and grief and the trauma of his past because he cares too much, and I think that caring relates directly back to Ash’s intelligence. Because he grasps at a deeper, more fundamental and innate level than a normal person would be capable of the true weight and meaning of a life lost. He FEELS that loss in a keener, more pronounced way than other people, because his greater intelligence makes him more aware of the impact that loss has, the other lives it affects, the potential and possibilities it snuffs out, the reverberations of it’s reality upon the world around it. It never remains for him an action only of the present, but an action which lives on and on forever in its implications and consequences.

This kind of overwhelming sensitivity links directly to Ash’s goodness of heart. He can’t NOT care because he understands and sees too much not to. Ironically, he values human life more than a normal person would, because he understands better what makes it valuable. One of the deep tragedies of Ash’s character is that this sensitive, caring nature, born of his intelligence, is innate to him, and he found himself, through no fault of his own, thrust into a world of cruel and merciless violence, one in which he had to take the very life he so profoundly understood the true value of in order to keep his own.

I also think Ash’s exceptional intelligence is directly linked to the deep sense of isolation and loneliness he feels. Being as intelligent as Ash is automatically puts a divide between him and everyone else. There’s maybe five or six other people on the entire planet who have an IQ as high as his, making Ash, in a very tangible and unavoidable way, unrelatable and fundamentally different from all of the people around him. They sense Ash’s extreme intelligence, and it serves to intimidate and unnerve them. They begin to treat him as separate and other, not like them. We see this play out in the way his own gang members regard him. They’re fond of and care about him, they respect him, and trust him, but they’re also afraid of him, and don’t ever just really hang out with him. They never treat him like he’s just a kid, even though, actually, he is. They never consider that Ash might want to be goofy, or silly, or have fun, like any boy his age would. They only interact with Ash to take orders from him. The impact this sense of remove has on Ash is undoubtedly profound. It leaves him feeling friendless and alone, even as he’s surrounded by people who look up to and admire him. It leaves him feeling like he can’t just shoot the breeze with or have fun with or relax with anyone. Nobody is his “friend”, because they don’t treat him like a friend. They treat him as their boss. As the one most capable of protecting them. They place on Ash the same weight of expectation that a child would place on a parent.

Exacerbating all of this too is that none of them have experienced the same or even similar traumas to what he has. He can’t talk to them about the kinds of things he’s been through, he can’t share that pain or unburden himself to them about it, because they would never understand in the first place, either what it meant or what it made him feel. This inability on their part to understand how he feels applies also to what taking another life means to him, and how, again, his intelligence fundamentally alters how he absorbs the trauma of that compared to how they do. They don’t feel the act of it in the same way he does, so they can’t understand why he reacts to it the way he does, and so he can’t talk to them about it, in the same way he can’t talk to them about the sexual abuse he’s been subjected to. And because they don’t really perceive him as a normal person, or even really a person at all. They see no weakness or vulnerability in Ash. They see no reason for why he would ever need help. Even as, in reality, he’s so deeply hurt and suffering, and needs help the most of all.

It comes full circle, then, to his intelligence, and how it contributes to him feeling and caring so much, exacerbating his suffering and yet, again ironically, serving to cut him off from others, forcing him to bear the burden of that pain alone.

#Banana Fish #Ash Lynx #Meta #Commentary

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priestenemy17 · 4 years

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danyka-fendyr · 4 years

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The Thing With Feathers - 1

Chapter One: He Stuns You By Degrees

Okay guys, so here’s the deal with this fic. Right now I’m releasing this first chapter on Tumblr and by tomorrow it should be posted on AO3. However in the future it will be the opposite of that, getting slightly earlier AO3 releases than Tumblr releases. For purposes of my desire to make pop cultural references, I’m disregarding the fact that the original books are set in the 90′s. I’m really excited to release this one since I worked really hard on it, and I’m even more excited to make it my first fic ever posted on AO3. I hope all of you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it!

Taglist: @dreamwritersimagines @rhabakoli @alwaysadreamingoptimist

Wordcount: 5.3k

Warnings: PTSD and mentions of war

There were two days in Hermione Granger’s mind that stood out as the happiest days of her life. The day that she realized Harry and Ron were in fact her friends, and the day the wizarding war ended. Today, she was fairly certain she was about to add a new day to that list. The day she became a professor at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

She pulled her planner out of the small beaded bag she still carried everywhere with her, a remnant of a war she had yet to truly stop fighting. She didn’t bother shuffling through it, simply summoning the planner she needed. Her compartment on the train was empty, so she reasoned that now was as good a time as any to go through her schedule for the day.

She was meant to visit Hagrid for tea before the banquet in the Great Hall, truly fortunate timing given that she doubted anything had changed about his cooking since her last visit, and therefore she would not be eating much. Next on her schedule was to drink 4.7 liters of pumpkin juice until she bled the stuff. She had fond memories of the sugary drink from her childhood and fully intended upon indulging herself tonight. In fact, where was the trolley witch?

Speak of the devil. A rustle at her compartment door caused Hermione to look up, an expectant smile on her face. It quickly fell away when she was greeted by someone who was most definitely not the trolley witch.

Dark, expensive looking wizard’s robes. Sharp, unnervingly keen blue eyes. And to top it all off? That shock of white blond hair, longer now then it was in their school days, falling into his eyes a little. McGonagall had warned her of her fellow new professor, but she had not been prepared for the reality of the thing.

It wasn’t the first time she had seen Draco since the war. She had seen him at his trial, and then she had seen him frequently at work. She had taken up a job at Flourish and Blotts for a while after it reopened, but while Malfoy had frequented the store, he had never approached her. He hovered creepily in the potions section before spending his limitless fortune on yet another book on the same subject.

Still, sometimes she caught him watching her with a haunted look in those eerie grey eyes, and as the months had drained on and summer had faded into fall, she had not only grown accustomed to his presence but had also found the flashbacks came less and less the more she saw of him. She gripped the ledge of the window now, imagining to herself a dull throb where the words had been carved. She believed phantom pain to be the technical term.

She expected him to say something. Something rude, specifically. Instead, he refused to meet her eyes. He merely mumbled something about how all of the other compartments were full and proceeded to take a seat as far away from her as he possibly could.

Now, Hermione knew they had a history. Knew that better than anyone, had it carved into her arm, a perfect parallel to the brand on his. That being said, she couldn’t help being a little insulted. Shouldn’t she be the one cringing away from him? Where was all that infamous Malfoy swagger now?

For months, he had all but stalked her in the shops. She had at one point had cause to ask her manager to let her work in any section but the potions section. For the first several months of her job, she had found herself frantically retreating to the back room just so she didn’t have to make eye contact with a former Death Eater she had only barely found the nerve to testify for and save from his own teenage stupidity and horrific family legacy, and now he didn’t even have the nerve to speak to her?

“You know I don’t bite. I hex, but I don’t bite.”

The tone in which she said it implied that she might make an exception on her no biting policy just for him.

He looked startled that she had even deigned to talk to him at all, as well he should. He certainly had no right to it. It gave her an odd thrill to startle Draco Malfoy. He looked like a frightened puppy, those blue eyes flung wide for just a moment. And he defied her expectations again. Instead of the cool swagger she had expected, he looked…reserved?

“Apologies, Granger. I just thought…you might want your distance.” He cleared his throat awkwardly.

“Am I supposed to genuinely believe that you were just trying to do something nice for me?”

His eyes flitted to her left arm. Just for a moment, but it was long enough.

“I suppose you have reason enough not to. I assure you though, I have no desire to fight with you. I think we’re a bit past that, don’t you?” He managed a strained smile that rang false in Hermione’s eyes.

His calm infuriated her. She should be the self-righteous one here. She should be the one spouting out placations about their schoolyears and how they had grown and matured. Of all the people to try and teach her some kind of lesson, he was perhaps the one with the least right to.

“A bit past what, Malfoy? This?” She pulled back the sleeve on the arm he had been staring at earlier, watching him flinch back. “Just because you and Narcissa didn’t go to prison doesn’t mean we’re friends. It also doesn’t mean you can’t still go there. How do you think Mummy dearest will look after a few months in Azkaban?”

It was a low blow. She knew that. Even in her anger she hadn’t meant to fight that dirty, even in her memories of thrashing on a cold tile floor and blood, blood everywhere, so much of it, scars that would never heal, she had thought herself better than this. Somehow, the thrill of pleasure she got when he rose to her challenge made it all worth it.

“Alright then Granger, you want to be 16 again then fine. I suppose not much has changed, has it? You’re still pining after the Weasel, aren’t you? Tried to murder anyone with a flock of birds lately?”

Hermione stiffened. She hadn’t anticipated that he would be as familiar with her weaknesses as she was with his. She didn’t look at him when she admitted the unpleasant but unavoidable truth.

“Ron and I…are broken up.”

It had happened shortly after her 19th birthday. They had continued making public appearances together for the last year, but they had been gradually easing off, trying to avoid the media frenzy that would be just openly coming out with their split. Rita Skeeter would certainly have a field day with that one. She might as well tell Malfoy now though. They had been planning to announce it soon, using her new, distant position as an excuse.

That taunting yet comfortingly familiar smirk spread over his face as he leaned back in his seat, kicking his feet up on her side of the compartment. “Finally got tired of him, did you? Realized you were too good for him after all?”

Unwittingly, in trying to rile her up by insulting Ron, he had hit on her other sore spot. The fact that she had not actually broken up with him.

She grit her teeth. “Other way around actually. He broke up with me. Are we done discussing my love life now?”

Malfoy nearly fell out of his seat from his precariously perched situation, the shock evident on his face.

“Wait, he broke up with you? Has he finally lost his damn mind?” Surprisingly, Malfoy burst into laughter. “I mean, I always knew he was a bloody fool, but now he’s just reached new heights.”

Blessedly, the trolley witch really was the interruption at the door this time, and if she was surprised to see Hermione Granger speechlessly staring at an abundantly amused Draco Malfoy, she did not comment on it.

“Treats, dears?”

Hermione perked up at this, all anger forgotten at the promise of a chocolate frog. As a child she had never had much money for the candy that Harry and Ron so wildly indulged in, and entirely too much self-discipline to do so anyway. Now though, her 20-year-old self had considerably more funds and less will-power, and she wanted candy. Lots of it. She probably looked downright gleeful, but she couldn’t bring herself to care.

Then Draco Malfoy did something entirely unprecedented. Something heartstoppingly, shockingly, terribly unprecedented.

Maybe it was the look on her face. Maybe it was an overwhelming sense of guilt. Maybe it was some deep, innate, Malfoyish need in him to be a show-off at all times.

Whatever the reason, it was Hermione’s turn yet again to be unpleasantly surprised when he said, “We’ll take the lot.”

“What about the kids?” She stumbled out a protest.

“We’re the last compartment in the train Granger. Surely you’d noticed.” He raised an eyebrow.

She had, in fact. She had chosen this compartment intentionally to avoid everyone, former classmates included. Most students who had chosen to go back for an eighth year had done so the year directly after the battle. However, others were not so lucky. Many of the Slytherin students had been wrapped up in messy trials, and consequently found themselves having to take something of a gap year. A few of the students who had lost family members in the war had also taken time off to grieve, and Hermione dreaded seeing their hollowed-out eyes and potential accusatory glares. Unable to face all of it, she had chosen to avoid it for as long as possible, selecting this compartment for that purpose. Something Malfoy had managed to make her forget with his outlandish declaration.

“I…yes, of course. But…we’ll?” There was a healthy dose of skepticism launched into the word.

“Unless you didn’t want anything?”

Was he…teasing her? Not maliciously, not to be nasty. No, actual, good-natured teasing.

Unfortunately, she never got to find out, as the trolley witch named her price and left them with their candies.

“I figured if I can’t win your allegiance with my good looks and charming personality, maybe I can buy it,” he joked, offering up one of the very chocolate frogs she had been dreaming of.

Wearily, she took it. “This doesn’t change anything.”

“Of course not.” He nodded amiably, and again Hermione got the sense of being handled with kid gloves.

She scowled. “I’ll accept this chocolate frog on one condition.”

He had the nerve to look amused. “Which is?”

“You have to eat an acid pop.”

The smirk fell off his face.

“Come on Granger, can’t you just eat the candy and be happy?”

“Nope. I will only accept this strange truce on the condition that you eat an acid pop. It’s a simple request Malfoy.”

“You want me to burn a hole through my tongue to get you to be civil.” Waves of disbelief came off of him.

“Oh, I’m sorry. Did you not know the charm to heal an acid burn?”

The mocking lilt to her voice worked exactly as intended.

“Of course I do,” he said, already reaching for an acid pop.

The look on his face the moment he stuck it in his mouth was worth 5 years’ worth of truce. She had never seen someone be so dramatic before, and she had been friends with Harry Potter. She couldn’t and wouldn’t stop the laugh that burst out of her upon seeing his exaggerated agony.

He pulled it out almost immediately, working the healing charm on his tongue.

“Merlin, Granger, you’re a sadist.”

There was no malice behind the accusation.

“It’s true. I hide behind this bookworm façade, but get me alone and I’m a whole different person. Sticks and stones may break my bones but whips and chains excite me.”

Malfoy choked on the pumpkin pasty he was trying to enjoy. “What?”

Hermione was laughing again, entirely against her will.

“It’s a, a Muggle song,” she managed to gasp out.

“That’s what Muggles call music?” He stared at her, baffled.

“Oh, I can already tell this year is going to be great.”

“I hope so.” He sobered. “Did you…want to talk about it?”

Green wallpaper. Bellatrix’s face, manic and cackling. Screaming stretching into eternity, echoing through the halls, bouncing off the chandelier.

She opened her mouth to say no, opened her mouth to say something terrible again, but she saw his face first. He was unusually pale, even for such a pale boy as him, and he had that look in his eyes. The look from Flourish and Blotts. It wasn’t just apologetic. It was horrified.

Marble floors. Unforgiveable spells. And a boy with a face whiter than paper, mouth open to do everything short of beg his aunt to stop.

“I hope we can be civil this year, Professor Malfoy. I doubt we will ever be friends, but I’m sure we can manage civility.”

Despite her best intentions to maintain a brave face, she curled in on herself, resting her head against the compartment wall. She was set to stare out the window for the rest of the ride, and Malfoy seemed more than content to allow it, not pushing the issue any longer. He seemed to lose interest in the candy quickly, letting her know she could have as much of it as she wanted before falling back in his seat.

She didn’t think he meant to fall asleep. He couldn’t have if he knew what was going to happen. Regardless, he did fall asleep, and the screaming started soon after.

The first thing Hermione did was cast a silencing charm around their compartment. The last thing either of them needed was the entire train rushing down here. Then she crossed the carriage to sit across from him, intending to wake him. But he was…saying something. Perhaps it was torture to leave him like this, but hadn’t she been tortured? And she wanted answers now.

“Don’t hurt her! Please, please leave her alone. Aunt Bella, please..”

Hermione froze. She needed to wake him up. Right now.

She did it the fastest way she knew how, casting aguamenti, spraying water in his face and causing him to splutter awake. She performed a drying charm as well, barely thinking before waving her wand.

He panted, blond hair hanging down into his face, elbows resting on his knees. He looked like he might be sick, back and chest heaving with every breath.

“You were having a nightmare,” she said, like he might have been oblivious to it.

“Yes, thank you for that information Granger. Somehow it managed to escape me.”

She almost felt relieved to hear the bite in his voice. It was like getting the old Malfoy back, not one that walked on eggshells and had to be goaded into...well, goading her. It was truly a strange world they were living in.

“Oh, ever so sorry for not leaving you to your night terrors. I thought about it, but the screams were just a tad grating.” She glared at him.

He returned with just as much fire. “I think you’re getting my little nap and your dreams mixed up, Granger. Just because you scream my name in your sleep doesn’t mean we’re all so loud on our own time.”

“Funny coming from a man who takes every chance he gets to use my name.” She smirked triumphantly.

He lowered his voice, leaning forward and causing her to remember her venture over to his side of their compartment. “Does that bother you, Granger?”

His breath fanned across her face, warm and improbably smelling of mint, which it certainly shouldn’t have after all that candy. She almost asked him if he used a charm for that before remembering herself and recoiling.

“The only thing that bothers me is covering for you,” she snapped, crossing back to her side of the compartment before undoing her silencing charm. “Next time take some dreamless sleep, or aren’t you the potions master?”

He stared daggers at her but didn’t respond, settling back into his seat. He still looked shaken, but Hermione was determined to ignore him for the rest of the journey. It wouldn’t be much longer now anyway.

The rest of their trip did prove to be fairly uneventful, much to her relief. Their carriage remained blissfully scream free and before she knew it they were both at Hogwarts. Hermione breathed in the Scottish air on the platform, glad to be home.

When preparing for the trip to Hogwarts, she recognized that she could have apparated into Hogsmeade, but she quickly realized it was easier to arrive with a sea of students. Hermione Granger alone might have attracted attention, but Professor Granger and her students had earned a certain amount of respect. Funny how helping save the world got you mixed reviews but professorship earned you rights. She suspected Malfoy had similar reasons for traveling so. Not that she cared.

Hagrid gave her a jolly wave as he rounded up the first years, and she waved back before hurrying over to the thestral-drawn carriages in the hopes of finding a good one. A breeze whipped through her bushy mess of curls, pulling them into all sorts of new shapes as she tried to hold them back with her hands.

Upon arriving at the carriages, Hermione was filled with a sense of dread. Harry and Ron would not be able to ride with her this year. She gnawed at her lip, unsure of what she wanted to do until she was presented with a rather clear sign. A sign that was heading right towards her, red hair bobbing up and down through the crowd.

“Hermione!”

Arms flung themselves around her waist, and Hermione breathed a sigh of relief. She returned the hug, more than happy to have a friend here. Ron may have given her up, but that didn’t mean his family had.

“Ginny. Did you want to get a carriage together?” Hermione asked, pulling back after a moment.

“Yes. You can tell me about the last year, I’ve barely seen you since you announced you were taking the gap year.” Ginny linked arms with her, dragging her towards one of the smaller carriages, just the right size for the two of them. “Done much reading?”

“I am happy to say yes,” Hermione said, laughing.

While everyone else who had taken the year off was now returning for their belated eighth year, Hermione’s situation was...unique. She had thought about returning for her eighth year the year after the war, but quickly realized she couldn’t do it. The memories of the girl who walked those halls as a student and who she was now were so incongruous she couldn’t bear it. Instead she had taken her NEWT’s mere weeks after the war, against the advisement of everyone in her life, including Headmistress McGonagall, but who was going to stop her? When Hermione Granger marches through the doors of the ministry demanding a NEWT’s examination weeks after saving the world, you don’t deny her.

“Should you be heading up with the students?” Ginny asked as Hermione stepped into the carriage. “What with your professorship now and everything.”

Hermione smiled. “I shouldn’t, but I’m doing it anyway. I was hoping to see you and maybe some of the others.”

“I still can’t believe the ministry made us repeat a year. I mean, I can because the Carrows weren’t winning any professor of the year awards, but still. How does the Battle of Hogwarts count as experience for all the seventh years but not anybody else?” Ginny slammed the carriage door behind her as she finished getting in behind Hermione.

“Oh please.” Hermione rolled her eyes, seeing right through her. “You’re delighted to be here. You’re more than eager to see your favorite professor.”

Ginny blushed, freckles disappearing in the red blooming over her cheeks.

“I’m more eager for the feast tonight,” she retorted.

“Oh definitely. I’m dying for some pumpkin juice.”

“Of all the things I didn’t anticipate you missing, pumpkin juice was probably at the top of that list. Who knew it could be so addictive?” Ginny threw herself back in her seat, red hair billowing across the dark upholstery. “Do you think we can convince the Thestrals to go any faster?”

“Worth a shot,” Hermione joked.

She felt a sudden surge of fondness for Ginny. They had both changed so much in the last year. Hermione had found a new lack of enthusiasm for the rules, and if she was honest, a lack of enthusiasm. It often felt as though the color had leeched out of her life after the war, and most days she simply didn’t have the energy to care about anything that wasn’t essential, which included other people’s opinions. Disillusionment with authority had partially carried her through the last year.

Ginny, on the other hand, had learned that freedom and independence weren’t the same thing. Hermione had watched her learn to rely more on the others in her life as she dealt with her own grief, the loss of Fred sharp and heavy in her heart. The one thing that hadn’t changed was their friendship, despite Hermione’s breakup with her brother. Some time after that awful seventh year, Ginny had become Hermione’s best friend, and she was rarely unconscious of the gift that was. While she would have spared Ginny her pain if she could have, it was an undeniable relief to have someone uniquely able to understand. Their losses were not the same, but pain is rarely particular in its forms of relief.

They chatted more on the way to the castle, and Hermione realized that this was probably the most she’d been able to talk to Ginny since the breakup. Ginny had gone directly back to school after the war, citing her need to stay busy as a reason, as well as the fact that she was already a year behind thanks to Minister of Magic Shacklebolt’s decision that 5th years and above were to repeat the year they had studied under Death Eater watch. Hermione hadn’t seen her over the holidays either, as it had simply been too awkward for her to show up at the Burrow, especially with Harry gone all the time. She had taken up residence in a little flat in Diagon Alley and abandoned nearly everything except for her work. Ginny had stopped by sometimes when she went to visit George at the shop, but it just wasn’t the same.

“So Minnie gave you her old job?”

“Ginny! Don’t let her hear you calling her Minnie, she might just give you detention for a week.” Despite her scolding, Hermione couldn’t hold back her smile.

It had been quite an honor to have McGonagall herself ask her to work as the new Transfiguration professor. She had been trying to find an adequate replacement for quite some time now, Hermione knew, preparing to transition her focus solely to being Headmistress of the school. Of course, knowing who some of her fellow professors were put a damper on her pride.

“Did you hear Malfoy is the new Potions professor?” Ginny wrinkled her nose. “Can’t believe they’re even allowing him near children.”

Hermione shook her head. “Neither can I. To be honest I thought McGonagall would be more strict than this.”

“Yeah. This feels more like a Dumbledore move,” she agreed.

“You never could tell what he was going to do next.”

“One day he was asking for socks for Christmas and the next he was sending my boyfriend out as a human sacrifice. What a wildcard.”

Ginny sounded almost admiring, and Hermione had to laugh. She remembered that Ginny had grown up with a whole household of wildcards, notwithstanding Percy. She had had a healthy appreciation for the unconventional instilled in her at a young age.

“Look!” Ginny said, excitedly pressing her face to the glass. “The castle!”

Hermione found herself just as eager, and she joined Ginny at the window, both of them acting like a pair of first years witnessing the architectural behemoth for the first time. It was just as Hermione had remembered it. She felt a sudden stab of longing and she found herself tearing up a little, almost feeling as though she was coming home.

At last they arrived, but Hermione was reluctant to part ways.

“I’m popping down to Hagrid’s for a few minutes for tea. Did you want to come with me?” She offered.

Ginny glanced between Hermione and the castle. “I would, but…”

“You have someone you need to see.”

Ginny smiled slyly. “Yes, I do. See you at the feast?”

“See you at the feast,” Hermione agreed. “I should be back in time to see the Sorting.”

“Topping.”

Hermione watched for a moment as Ginny headed through the doors of the castle, losing her in a sea of black, before heading down to Hagrid’s hut. She picked her way through the grounds, breathing in the late summer air. It was quite a warm night, and the walk to Hagrid’s was pleasant, though not long.

The moment her fist met the door, she heard Fang’s barking, and she couldn’t help the smile that crossed her face. That smile only grew wider when Hagrid threw the door open, drawing her into a hug.

“‘Mione!” She could hear the tears in his eyes before she could see them. “Oh it’s so good to ‘ave you ‘ome.”

“Hagrid,” she wheezed, “I can’t breathe.”

“Oh, sorry ‘bout tha’,” he said, letting her go.

As she suspected, his black eyes shown with tears and his hair, even wilder than hers, was beginning to grow wet with it. Oh dear. Somewhere between greeting her and letting go of her he had started crying in earnest.

“Hagrid, what’s wrong?” she asked, concerned.

“I just, I missed you lot so much, and it’s so good to have you back. You know, ‘Arry comes by sometimes, but it’s just not the same, is it?”

Hermione felt that familiar ache in her chest. No, no it was not the same.

“Oh Hagrid, it’s alright. Perhaps we should head up to the feast now, if you’d like, make sure we’re in time for the Sorting.”

“Good idea ‘Ermione, very good idea.”

Hagrid nodded, pulling out of the doorway and allowing Fang through to bestow a healthy amount of slobber onto Hermione’s...everything. She didn’t mind though. She had missed him too, and a few quick charms fixed the state of her robes.

“Shall we then?” Hagrid asked after blowing his nose into a large polka dotted handkerchief.

“Yes, we shall.”

They made the trip back across the grounds, Hagrid managing to pull himself together before they had to enter the Great Hall. Hermione felt a sudden lurch of nerves in the pit of her stomach. She had been here a thousand times before, sure, but never as a professor. Walking up to the head table, she found herself searching for the one pair of eyes she knew could reassure her in this moment. She found another set entirely, however.

Ice blue eyes met hers in a cold stare, but as soon as he realized it was her he was looking at he seemed to effortfully turn it to something more neutral. As though aloof was the best he could manage in the presence of a Mudblood. Not that she cared.

She used the energy she might have spent being indignant with Malfoy to carry her up to the head table, taking her seat next to Hagrid and a chair that was, as of yet, unoccupied. It didn’t remain that way for long. Moments before the Sorting Ceremony was due to start, the body belonging to the pair of eyes she had been searching for earlier deposited itself into the chair next to her.

“Hello Hermione.”

Harry Potter grinned at her, his eyes a reassuring, familiar green, so far from the pale blue she had settled for earlier.

“Professor Potter.” She gave him a cheeky wink. “I see the rumors are true. You have successfully broken a curse that’s been around longer than you’ve been alive.”

“We’ll add cursebreaker to my list of titles.” He chuckled. “I’ll start signing all my letters, ‘Harry Potter, Hogwart’s Professor of Defense Against the Dark Arts, The Boy Who Lived, Breaker of Curses.’ That won’t make me sound arrogant at all, will it?”

“I think it rather works for you. They should give you the Order of Merlin, First Class, throw another one in there.”

“I’ve missed you.” He smiled at her, and in that moment Hermione felt more at home than she had in months.

“Well,” she said primly, wiping at her eyes. “You wouldn’t have to if you’d come around more often. Gin’s been dying to see you, you prat.”

“Always scolding.”

She could hear the warmth in his voice though, and knew that he felt, if not the same, then similar to her.

“Sssshhh, they’re bringing in the first years.”

And indeed they were, tinier than Hermione ever could have remembered them being. Of course, she had seen a fair few of them in her last weeks at Flourish and Blotts, coming in to get their school supplies, but it felt different seeing them now all dressed up in their robes and waiting to be sorted.

“Are there fewer of them?” Hermione asked, brow furrowing.

In fact, the whole hall seemed emptier than she remembered it. Certainly emptier than it should have been, even given the...casualties.

“Fewer muggleborns. A lot of the parents are still being cautious. Can’t blame them really, considering the last time Voldemort was dead he didn’t really stay that way.” Harry sighed.

“They’ll come around,” she reassured him.

He just nodded, eyes trained on the fresh generation of junior witches and wizards before them.

Hermione’s eyes, though, were on the hat, and so she was ready when it began to sing.

Through ancient magics lost long ago

The Founder’s made me, friends turned to foes

My purpose being a simple one

To tell you which colors to don

Which house in which you each belong

But first I sing this simple song

As I do every fall

So now I shall remind you all

That even when friendships seem to fail

There are some bonds that still prevail

Should we stand all united

We may find all wrongs are righted

In the light of this new day

House colors seem to fall away

So though I must pull you apart

I hope you’ll heed the wisdom I impart

Gryffindor blood runs red and true,

Ravenclaw skies are clear and blue,

Hufflepuff gold will prove the strongest of metals

and Slytherin emeralds will prove to have mettle

In differences there is strength

But love and loyalty go the greatest lengths

So let go old wounds and let the past heal

Or you may find danger most real

On that ominous note, the Sorting proceeded quickly and, thankfully, unremarkably. Hermione and Harry lead the applause for every student, regardless of house, and when it was over McGonagall stood.

“A few words before we begin our feast this year,” she said, clearing her throat. “Firstly, I would like to welcome our two new professors. Professor Hermione Granger-” Loud applause lead by Ginny. “-and Professor Draco Malfoy.”

Draco’s name was met with a hushed silence, and a few quiet boo’s rang out before McGonagall shot them down with a stern look.

“As always, I expect new faculty to be treated with the respect and consideration deserving of their position. Any who disregard this will find themselves meeting with hasty consequences. I wish you all a very good year. Let the feast begin!”

And with that, Hermione’s first year as a professor at Hogwarts began.

#dramione #harry potter #dramione fic #draco malfoy #hermione granger #tw ptsd #draco malfoy x hermione granger #professor!draco #professor!hermione #ginny weasley #hogwarts #au #professor au #enemies to lovers #enemies to lovers trope #enemies to friends to lovers #coworkers to lover

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kiraziwrites · 4 years

Text

Yuletide 2020 Letter

Dear Yuletide Writer,

Thank you in advance! The below is meant as as fodder for inspiration, not as a strict template. I hope there’s something in here that sparks your interest, but feel free to ignore the specific prompts entirely as long you avoid the DNWs. Note: for my Queen’s Thief and Locked Tomb requests, I listed four characters on the official signup, but it’s totally okay if you don’t include all four (some of these prompts focus on 2 out of 4; the others could be secondary, just mentioned, or not appear at all).

These are a few of my favorite things: missing scenes, reflective moments, romantic interludes, epilogues and aftermaths, porn with feelings. I love found families, thoughtful exploration of power dynamics (smutty or otherwise) between characters, battle couples, intrigue and adventure, extensions of canon worldbuilding, strong platonic relationships in addition to the main ships, and stories that explore queerness and gender nonconformity. I strongly prefer canon-consistent or canon-adjacent stories. Any rating from gen to E is welcome, and mild-to-moderate kink is fine. Angst is great as long as there’s a happy ending, hurt/comfort is more than okay as long as the hurt isn’t on the DNW list, and soft moments, fluff, and humor are also welcome. Crackfic and kidfic are not usually my jam, but kidfic is okay as long as it’s canon-appropriate.

Do-not-wants: noncon/sexual assault, torture or extreme violence beyond a canon-typical degree*, A/B/O, magical creature (ie vampire, werewolf etc) AUs, dom/sub universes where those are innate/fixed/biological roles, and major character deaths that aren’t present in canon. I’d also like to avoid AUs in wildly different settings (modern, coffeeshop, highschool etc), although canon-divergence AUs are fine.

*obviously, if you’re writing for Locked Tomb, that’s a pretty high degree, so violence and gore in keeping with the books is fine!

Queen’s Thief:

Characters: pretty much every main/POV character throughout the whole series—I just want to spend more time with all of them and in this world. I’d particularly love stories that build on or add to all the revelations in Return of the Thief, so post-canon narratives or stories that revisit earlier events that now appear in a new light, etc. I’d love shippy fic for basically any canon pairings—Gen/Irene, Helen/Sophos, Costis/Kamet (as lovers or homoromantic bros), even the secondary pairing we found out about in RoTT.

Specific prompts: I’m keen on further glimpses into Gen and Irene’s marriage at any point (including wedding night fics, or a more detailed version of the Atté Atté scene!) I’d also love a look at the four monarchs navigating the emotional aftermath of RoTT and the changes to their families. But I’d also be delighted with a story about Sophos and Helen navigating their dual sovereignties, or Costis and Kamet’s perspectives on events in RoTT, or Pheris continuing to grow up and pursue his profession and observe the court. (I’m being a little coy with details because some people who follow me here are still reading the final book and I don’t want to spoil them, but hopefully you get my vibe.) Pick whatever about this series makes your heart sing.

The Locked Tomb:

The characters I prompted are Gideon, Harrow, Camilla, and Palamedes, and I am happy to read just about anything you want to write about them. I would love missing scenes from both books, pre-canon flashbacks, further glimpses at the Sixth House and Camilla and Palamedes’s history (as in the short story “The Mysterious Study of Doctor Sex”), speculative glimpses into what happens right after the end of Harrow the Ninth, and all kinds of Gideon/Harrow content, the gayer the better. I have a soft spot for Gideon POV because I love her character voice, but I’d also love Harrow’s perspective on Gideon’s re-emergence.

Some specific prompts: Gideon is awake in Harrow’s head at some point while Harrow is also aware, and they have their first time (sort of) while sharing a body. A bodyswap scenario in the aftermath of Harrow the Ninth, where Gideon’s still in Harrow’s body, but Harrow somehow ends up in Gideon’s resurrected one, and hijinks (or smut) ensue. Camilla manages to extract Palamedes from the skull fragment and all four of them meet up in a River bubble to talk strategy about how to attack and dethrone God (and have messy feelings all over one another). A look at Camilla and Palamedes’s perspective on Gideon and Harrow during the events in Canaan House.

Wimseyfic:

Give me stories about Harriet and Peter navigating their relationship. Casefics are welcome, but it’s the relationship dynamic I’m really here for, and I’m particularly interested in seeing them at any stage from when they finally get together in Gaudy Night through the engagement and their first year of marriage. Bonus: I’d also love it if Harriet’s relationships with other women, particularly her London friendships, come into play (if you want to explicitly make Sylvia/Eiluned a couple, that would be awesome—they weren’t on the list of requestable characters, but I’d be happy to see them make a cameo here if that appeals to you!) Also, I’m agnostic on the subject of whether or not you treat Thrones, Dominations as canon.

Some specific prompts: the immediate aftermath of the end of Busman’s Honeymoon—how they regroup and take care of each other after that moment of intense catharsis. The first time Harriet meets up with Sylvia and Eiluned as a married woman, and the conversations about relationships and gender that might ensue. Epistolary fic during the engagement, in which they work out the terms of the marriage. Whatever happened during that night of kissing in a punt. The “'interesting revelations of the marriage-bed.”

Swordspoint:

Richard and Alec, please, in just about any time period or setting—from their early days in Riverside to Richard’s exile in the country to their later years on the island with the bees and thyme and sunshine. If it’s earlier, I’d love to see some hints of their Riverside social world, and if it’s later, cameos from Diane, Katherine, and other characters are fine, but not necessary. I particularly love explorations of how Alec and Richard complement and take care of each another. I’m also very open to kinky content for this pairing.

Specific prompts: Alec encounters his former friends and students from the university some time shortly after the events of Swordspoint, and Richard deals with the fallout. Alec and Richard being gay and doing crimes (or solving crimes, or both) during the Riverside years. One of Alec’s visits to see Richard after he leaves the city. Their voyage to the island after The Privilege of the Sword. Alec and Richard have a threesome with any age-appropriate consenting partner of your choice. Alec watches Richard train or fight and gets predictably horny about it, with the obvious results.

#yuletide 2020 #coming back for more

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