#especially if you have many grievances committed against you | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

irithnova · 6 months

Text

I want to uh make a post about Mongolia's relationship with his history and I guess some fandom depictions I'm uncomfortable with.

I think nations who have imperialist histories have some complex feelings around them because their entire existence, despite their immortality or perhaps God like status, is at the mercy of their people and rulers. Nations are human inventions, the identity of the nation is what it's people makes it. They didn't exactly ask to be born or to be representatives of an entire group of people - they just are. Nations are also subjects to their "bosses", like whoever is the Leader, King, Queen, Emperor, President is at the time. The extent to which nations support said ruler and how much autonomy they had under them vary from ruler to ruler, century to century. It's not always wise to conflate a nation with it's politics however it can become incredibly disingenuous and runs the risk of imperialism apologia when it's ignored entirely.

It would be silly to say my analysis of Mongolia's particular relationship with his imperialist history fully covers every nook and cranny of emotions nations have about their own imperialist histories, however by explaining Mongolia's relationship with his it allows for me to explain a few different ways I think nations may look back on imperialist pasts and also allows me to air out some grievances about Mongol Empire depictions.

First of all - I think nations operate on a different moral compass. A lot of things they do seem extremely weird to most humans - like casual and open relationships. So nation morality would be different. For example, if a nation backstabbed (or even literally stabbed) another nation 400 years ago which in turn caused a lot of destruction, depending on what has happened in those 400 years, there may not even be a grudge there. They might even be friends. And that friendship could easily be broken depending on what happens in the next 400 years. A nation who was public enemy #1 1000 years ago may be well liked in the modern day.

Me saying that nations follow a different moral code does not mean that I am trying to justify wrong doing. However as literal... Gods perhaps, of course things will be different. I think all nations are in a morally grey area, as they are primarily driven by self interest. That ensures their survival after all. I believe all nations have done right and wrong, on global scales and interpersonal scales. No one is exempt from this.

My uncomfortable feelings stem from when exceptions are made for certain nations in order to downplay their assholery because of a bias - while other nations get the same old assholery treatment. I think you see where I'm getting at. I believe it is stepping into dangerous territory when one nations asshole status or imperialist past and even present/relationship with its government is magnified to such an extent that it becomes an offensive and stereotypical depiction.

If we talk about the treatment of China for example - magnifying the crimes of the CCP to the extent where your China depiction becomes nothing more than a Sinophobic caricature. A large part of Sinophobia is the assumption that a majority or even all Chinese people are part of a CCP hivemind - any warmth or humanity stripped from them as they are painted as cold, calculating and scheming orientals, every action having some sinister intent.

This over conflation of nations with their government is often reserved for China compared to the likes of the US or Russia. Again - it is foolish to not associate the nation with its government at all or only in very small parts and can lead into tricky territory. However over conflating a nation with its government and unsavoury actions committed on the nations behalf - especially when this is done selectively, quickly becomes offensive and in many cases even racist, and shows a persons prejudices against certain groups of people.

This is where Mongolia comes in.

This racialisation of the Mongols being uniquely evil in their imperialism isn't exactly a new invention so it's not a surprise that this depiction of Mongolia being a uniquely bad or evil nation personification compared to everyone else, even to other nations who have also engaged in imperialism/nation's who's engagement in imperialist ventures are far more recent or are still actually ongoing is a theme that's prevalent in the fandom.

You could take rochu fics for example where Mongolia is portrayed as the boogeyman they bond over their hatred for even 800 years after the fact (I won't even touch upon how incredibly historically inaccurate these fics are because we'll be here all day but just know - it's bad) and Mongolia has a terrible marauding personality still. However despite more recent and even currently ongoing Russian and Chinese imperialist ventures (even historical imperialism that goes way back with China before Mongolia even existed), including Russian and Chinese imperialism that has affected and still affects Mongols in the current day they aren't depicted so disgracefully.

In fact if anything, in the 21st century, Mongolia is at the mercy of both Russia and China, but people love to pretend that that is not the current reality because they need a token one dimensional "savage" nation to contrast against the more "virtuous" or "moral" nations.

The idea that the Mongols were somehow unique in their imperialism means that in turn, everything about Mongolia and it's culture and history is seen as inherently barbarous, almost as if they predispositioned to acting "backwards."

To say that Mongolia is 100% regretful of everything or 100% regrets nothing are both rooted in the racist notion that the Mongols were uniquely bad in what the Mongol Empire did.

I'm going to be talking about Western Exceptionalism here and how it relates to my point about "over conflating a nation with its government and unsavoury actions committed on the nations behalf - especially when this is done selectively, quickly becomes offensive and in many cases even racist, and shows a persons prejudices against certain groups of people."

You might have heard of the phrase "Conquerer (if you're) from the West, barbarian (if you're from the East)." It's basically a quote which summarises Western exceptionalism. In the West, the likes of Napoleon, Alexander the Great and Charlemagne are depicted as great conquerors and shrewd military commanders. They are almost universally viewed with this lense of admiration despite the fact that these men also had pretty hefty death tolls under their belts and established Empires.

Furthermore, people are willing to be more nuanced or clinical or objective if they do choose to speak on America or England's imperialist past in historical hetalia posts and circles. Not only that, but especially with the US, his "rise to power" is often lionised. America is not painted as some sort of bloodthirsty savage even if someone has a more critical take on him, and his technological developments are often highlighted. Meanwhile Mongolia has often been portrayed as a mindless brute, his people a faceless horde, and whatever advancements that the Mongol Empire accomplished are downplayed or downright ignored in order to fit the "Mongol barbarian" narrative.

As touched upon previously, the depiction of Mongolia that he regrets nothing often results in extremely racist depictions. Of course he has regrets - literally every nation does.

As a whole do I think Mongolia regrets the Mongol Empire? No. But there are certainly aspects of it that he finds regrettable.

I personally think a majority of nations who have had imperialist histories don't 100% regret it or at least aren't prostrating themselves begging for forgiveness over it - so no he's not unique in that aspect at all.

We need to remember that without Chinggis Khaan/the formation of the Mongol Empire, there would be no "Mongolia" as we know it or "Mongolians" as we know them. They essentially would have been another obscure group recorded a few times in Chinese chronicles and given little attention. He is essentially their founding father .

When I say that as a whole that Mongolia does not regret the Mongol Empire, that does not mean that I think that when he remembers those days, he gets a huge fucking boner thinking about how many people died under the Empire and that's the source of his happiness when he looks back. Mongolia's pride and fondness of his past is less to do with the death toll (despite what offensive fandom depictions and racists would lead you to believe) and more to do with what he was able to achieve at the time - this is not dissimilar to how other nations with Imperialist histories remember it.

For example, in England, Winston Churchill is almost venerated for his leadership during World War 2. A majority of British people don't celebrate Churchill because he was a raging racist who purposefully starved 3.8 million people in Bengal to death (that's not me justifying the insane Churchill worship that they participate in though), but celebrate him because of - again, his leadership during World War 2. Similarly, Mongolia/Mongolians don't celebrate Chinggis Khaan because they think his kill count was epic - but because it was Chinggis Khaan who solidified the Mongol identity and brought Mongolia onto the world stage after years of obscurity and the risk of simply being absorbed into neighbouring groups and forgotten. Just like how the US celebrates his founding fathers , Mongolia celebrates his own.

Mongolians are said to be a proud people - especially of their history. I mean they have a huge Chinggis Khaan statue for a reason. While I don't think Mongolia is always living in the past, he definitely remembers those times fondly. To regret it and prostate himself begging for forgiveness over it would essentially be him regretting the fact he's alive. What he was able to achieve was undeniably impressive - from a relatively obscure group of people surrounded by much more powerful and threatening neighbours and at risk of being absorbed to forming a strong, consolidated identity and creating the largest Empire to ever exist (before the rise of the British empire much later on. Sorry Mongolia you're number 2 how).

Does he think about the death toll? At times, yes. But like all nations with imperialist histories or even all nations who have been in conflicts - while he acknowledges it, there is little emotional investment in it. He doesn't look back at it in bloodthirsty pleasure but he also doesn't break down in hysterics. Perhaps it's turning a blind eye, sure. But again. Nations operate on a different moral code. And maybe it's even self preservation to an extent. If all nations dwelled on the numbers who died under them, they'd surely go mad.

I remember seeing a pretty funny comment on the r/Mongolia subreddit and it essentially went:

Did they deserve it? No

But are we proud of it? Yes

I think Mongolia agrees that yeah a lot of those people who died under his empire didn't exactly "deserve" it, but views it as a sort of necessary evil. And I think we need to remember that nations are not humans so nation morality is not going to be identical to human morality. This "necessary evil" mindset is a view that I think a majority of nations have when remembering a majority of the conflicts they participated in.

For example, with the destruction of the Khwarazmian Empire, sure, Mongolia isn't going to sit there and say "those kids deserved it", but he will say that it was something of a necessary evil, because Muhammad II (the ruler) decided to decapitate his envoys for no good reason despite agreeing to a peace treaty/trade agreement with the Mongols shortly before this. He'd give similar explanations for other scenarios. None of the explanations include "I did it because I just needed to kill 100,000 more people to reach my kill count goals."

This is not the only explanation he'll give. There are also instances where he will admit that yeah that was unprovoked or that was kind of shitty and I think that he owns it. Not own it as in "I'm proud of it I loved killing them" nor as in "wow I'm so irredeemable please forgive me", but he's pretty frank about it happening and won't deny it if someone asks. This is a pretty common mindset I've seen with Mongolians, they're not exactly in denial of what bad things took place during the Mongol Empire but it doesn't make them any less proud of what was accomplished.

And of course he does have regrets/ looks back and find things regrettable - as all nations do. I do think he is sore about certain things. An example of something that he thinks is regrettable was the burning of the House of Wisdom during the siege of Baghdad in 1258. There were perhaps certain cities that he would have actually liked to preserve but regrettably they weren't kept in tact. He thinks that perhaps the number of casualties could have been lower had X or Y not happened.

An example of something that I think he wholeheartedly regrets (while not to do with his empire but also in the past) was the Zhungar genocide. This regret over what happened with the Zhungars/Oirats (another Mongolic people) is a common sentiment amongst Mongolians and is quite a sore topic when discussed. This is despite the fact that Mongolia and the Oirat confederations were constantly at each others throats.

Mongolia is not unique in how he views his empire or imperialist ventures. It's pretty typical of how most nations with imperialist pasts handle it if you ask me. "I don't regret it entirely, however there are things about it I certainly find regrettable or unsavoury.", "It was something of a necessary evil, me and another kingdom were fighting over a piece of land so of course people were killed in the process", "I wholeheartedly regret this and wish it never happened."

The mindset and emotions depends on the conflicts, what happened, they circumstances surrounding them, the aftermath. Maybe nations are unjustified or even hypocritical in being upset about one conflicts destruction while pretty much turning a blind eye to another - I think a lot of them are somewhat aware of this themselves. However nothing about nations really makes sense. Perhaps nations need not question their actions.

What I'm saying this: No I don't think Mongolia is particularly unique in the way he views his imperialist history and I'm kind of tired of Mongolia being portrayed as uniquely evil because of his empire 800 years ago whereas nations such as the US and Germany are viewed much more favourably and conflated far less with government decisions and atrocities despite them being far more recent. It just shows me the way in which you view Mongolians, and it's not pretty.

Anyways other thoughts: No Mongolia isn't constantly thinking about his empire and I don't think he's emo about it. It is a source of pride and well there are lots of tributes to Chinggis Khaan around Mongolia of course hahah but like... He's definitely in the here and now and isn't "stuck in the past" malding and smoking 100 cigarettes a day about how powerful he used to be I mean look at how much Mongolia politically is getting involved in the international scene. I do think he does get fed up at his government but that's not the same as being depressed or hopeless over it - I think he rarely ever feels downright hopeless because if his broke ass could become an empire I guess anything could happen, but perhaps downtrodden at times. He doesn't see much sense in wallowing in pain. Not that he hasn't done that but from an objective sense he thinks it's dumb and useless so refrains from doing so as much as possible. Unless something happens to him that's so bad he's just thrust into that state of mind or something which has admittedly happened a few times but he tries to get back up quickly I feel. Anyways yeah Mongolia 👍

#hetalia #aph mongolia #hws mongolia #hetalia world stars #hetalia world series #hetalia world twinkle #hetalia mongolia #Historical hetalia

35 notes · View notes

broitsf-ckingfreezing · 1 year

Text

Fandom vs. Dooku: Religious Affiliation

Okay, my first rant has been making the rounds, so I wanted to come back and do a more in-depth approach (WITH EVIDENCE). Last time I was rapidly keyboard mashing on my phone whilst simultaneously howling my grievances to the moon, so hopefully everything should be a smidge more... coherent in this one.

This is taking HOURS to type up, so everything will be split into different posts. Possibly, idk. Look I have opinions and ADHD. Gotta peel those layers back like a particularly rancid onion.

(thanks @eloquentmoon for the dividers!)

Something that Star Wars as a fandom often fails to realise is that Jedi Master Dooku (or Yan Dooku, I suppose, if that's your headcanon) and Sith Apprentice Darth Tyranus are not the same. Well, they are literally the same person, but that's not what I'm getting at. The point I am trying to make here is that a character can in fact be an inherently good guy and also a genocidal psychopath. In Star Wars, one is not born a Sith. You cannot just... be a Sith and nothing else. Much is the same with a Jedi. One is either born with the ability to reach/manipulate the Force or they aren't (Force-nulls, for sake of clarity), they are not born Jedi or Sith. Jedi and Sith are religious orders. Like Protestants and Catholics, Jedi and Sith follow the same faith but with different philosophies and restrictions (or complete lack thereof regarding the Sith; anything is game if it eventually means absolute power).

Let's take a look at the best established religious order of Star Wars in canon and Legends. Mandalorians.

(A GIF of the Armourer in The Mandalorian. The subtitles read: "According to Creed, one may only be redeemed in the living waters beneath the mines of Mandalore.")

In Legends, to be Mandalorian is to dedicate yourself to the Resol'nare or the Six Actions:

Wearing the armour

Speaking the language

Defense of oneself and one's family

Raising children as Mandalorian (this is the Way)

Contributing to the clan's welfare

Answering the call of the Mand'alor or Sole Ruler

Canonically, to go against the word of the Creed, such as removing your helmet to outsiders or non-clan, was to declare yourself dar'manda or No Longer Mandalorian (not stated explicitly in canon, but widely accepted in fanon/features in SW: The Old Republic). In Christian equivalent, this would be committing sin. As shown in the GIF above, one could be redeemed for "sinning" in Mandalore's living waters. Kind of like confession and repentance in Christianity.

And like the many differing dedications to the concept of God, like Jedi and Sith as you will soon see, Mandalorians have their thoughts on the Force. The only difference here is that where God is not provable beyond doubt, the Force is. Its existence cannot be denied. However, how the Force is/should be interpreted varies from person to person, from religion to religion.

The Jedi Code

Jedi and Sith also follow Creeds.

(An image of the Jedi mantra in Basic and Aurebesh. It reads: "There is no emotion, there is peace. There is no ignorance, there is knowledge. There is no passion, there is serenity. There is no chaos, there is harmony. There is no death, there is the force.")

The Jedi Code places great emphasis on compassion and bettering one's self; particularly, maintaining control over your emotions and learning to let go. Here especially is where fans like to pick and choose their understanding of canon like rooting through a jar of lollipops at the doctor's to get the orange one. So, I'm gonna highlight my point here with some big ass text:

Jedi do not condemn emotion

(be warned: LOTS of italics incoming)

(An edit of a still of Anakin Skywalker from Attack of the Clones. The text reads: "Attachment is forbidden. Possession is forbidden. Compassion, which I would define as unconditional love, is central to a Jedi's life.)

Sure, where Anakin is obviously not the prime example of what a Jedi should be, and he is clearly trying to butter up Padme to embrace his frankly awful flirting attempts, we must also remember that he had been living by the Jedi Code for almost (if not exactly) ten years at this point. AND. AND AND AND. We have IMPERICAL EVIDENCE from the Clone Wars that while not often stated outright (if at all; forgive me, I only just reached the Mortis Arc and believe me, I have OPINIONS), Jedi DO love unconditionally.

(A GIF from The Clone Wars of Mace Windu. The subtitle reads: "I'm going to do whatever I can to help these people.")

Often, their first instinct unless guided otherwise by alternate intel or the Force itself, is to have faith in those who would call upon them for help. There's literally an entire movie about Ahsoka and Anakin delivering the child of Jabba the Motherfucking HUTT back to him. They could've killed the child. Held him for ransom until Jabba conceded to a beneficial alliance. Instead, they hold to the hope that Jabba would hold to some kind of honour as a parent and allow an alliance negotiation on good faith. Jabba. A literal owner of SLAVES. Who planned, because of intel from a Sith Lord, to stab the Jedi in the back.

I bring your attention to this iconic line from my last post:

(A GIF of Ki-Adi Mundi from Attack of the Clones. The subtitle reads: "He is a political idealist, not a murderer)

He is talking about Dooku, ex-Jedi, now publicly politically aligned with and the leader of the Separatist movement: AKA the "let's leave the Republic because we believe them and, by extension, the Jedi, to be corrupt" crew. He is a mark of shame upon the order. One of the Lost Twenty--Legends lore, for those who don't understand, is that there have only been twenty Jedi (including Dooku) ever to leave the Order past achieving Master status)--and yet, they still honour him as one of their own, literally saying: "he was once one of us." If that isn't a sign of unconditional compassion, then I'll eat my lightsaber collection.

I now move on to this:

(A GIF from Attack of the Clones of Obi-Wan Kenobi. The subtitle reads: "Don't let your personal feelings get in the way!")

To be in control of yourself and your reactions isn't to abandon emotion entirely. That is literally impossible. In fact, emotions are valuable to Jedi. However, they are taught to be mindful of how emotions can affect their logical reasoning.

When Obi-Wan Kenobi is ordered to hunt down Darth Vader, whom has just sworn himself to the Sith Lord and literally murdered possibly hundreds of Jedi Masters, Knights, Padawans, and Initiates by his own hand, he actually abandons his logical reasoning and refuses to kill the man he raised and fought beside for the last 13 years.

(A GIF from Star Wars III: The Revenge of the Sith of Obi-Wan Kenobi. The subtitles read: "You were my brother, Anakin. I loved you.")

This is a direct parallel to Anakin's refusal to kill recently-revealed Sith Lord Palpatine, Darth Sidious. Both of these instances were done for entirely selfish reasons.

Anakin twists a tenet of the Code upon its head and refuses to kill Sidious because, at the time, he is without a weapon, and Jedi are sworn never to kill an unarmed opponent. Logically, we must reason that these rules do NOT apply to the Sith because A) they had been thought extinct and therefore didn't need exceptions written into the Code, B) it is literally proven within that very same scene that an unarmed Sith Lord is still extremely dangerous, and C) Jedi are sworn to uphold the balance of the Force within themselves and the galaxy, therefore the Sith must be destroyed. In this moment, Anakin has allowed his fear of his wife and unborn children dying to cloud his judgement, allowed the Lord to live, and subsequently doomed the galaxy.

Obi-Wan, canonically a far better Jedi than Anakin, allows his love for the man he raised to stop him from killing him. Even out of mercy as Anakin burns in the heat of Mustafar. Yes, he walks away, believing Anakin will certainly die, but again: an unarmed Sith (literally because ya boy has NO ARMS, lmao) is still extremely dangerous. Just as Maul survived from literally being sliced in half, so did Anakin survive Mustafar. Allowing love, grief, desperation to cloud his judgement, Obi-Wan has (although unknowingly until the Obi-Wan Kenobi series set ten years later) assisted in dooming the galaxy.

It is not Obi-Wan's love for his former-padawan that has done this. It is his refusal to let him go, his fear of being the one who has to kill Anakin, despite being the only one capable of doing so because of Anakin's incredible skill and power.

Despite these contradictions: Obi-Wan Kenobi is still a good guy, and Anakin Skywalker is a bad guy.

Obi-Wan would go on to repent for the rest of his life, cutting himself off from the Force to hide his presence and watch over Luke Skywalker on Tatooine, even though the Lars family do not welcome him at all. And he will go to great lengths, putting himself in constant danger, to save Leia Organa. When this is all over, he will face his student one last time and sacrifice himself to ensure the safety of the children, to give the darkened galaxy just one more chance at hope.

(And, as an aside, Obi-Wan's final sacrifice is also to teach Luke about the Jedi tenet of letting go and dedicating yourself to something greater than your own wants and physical being, just as Qui-Gon did for Obi-Wan decades before.)

Anakin, in the meantime, Darth Vader by this point, is literally running around blowing up planets. Let me repeat that: BLOWING UP PLANETS. With billions if not trillions of lifeforms on them. And also murdering Jedi Purge survivors. And, you know, killing basically anyone that doesn't agree with the rule of the Empire. Also, enslaving a lot of people. Like, a lot of people. Including the clones he once thought brothers until he... idk, kills them all? They all die of rapid old age? I'm not exactly sure what happens to them.

Obi-Wan loved unconditionally. He was compassionate. As was in accordance with his Creed.

Anakin Skywalker was possessive. He loved only that which he wanted and that which loved him in return, but only if it was love to his standards. Obi-Wan, who surely loved him as a brother and a son, tried to stop him from taking the galaxy, therefore he had to destroy his former Master.

This is what attachment is.

Unwillingness to let go of something you can no longer have.

Do you pro-genocide fans think Obi-Wan wanted Qui-Gon Jinn to die? He literally cradles him in his arms and cries, for goodness' sake. And do you know what Qui-Gon does in his last moments? He does not fear for himself. He does not tell Obi-Wan everything will be okay. Because he knows it will. He knows Obi-Wan will be okay. Because his padawan will mourn, but he will also accept that it was Qui-Gon's time to pass into the Force. And he knows that Obi-Wan knows that he will always be with him in the Force. There is no death. There is the Force.

What he does instead is so loving and compassionate and so caring. All he wants in his final moments is to make sure that Anakin, the boy in his care, will be safe.

(A GIF from Star Wars I: The Phantom Menace of Qui-Gon Jinn comforting Obi-Wan Kenobi as he dies. He reaches up and brushes Obi-Wan's face with his fingertips)

Those who can see that GIF, look at it and tell me that it is not a highly emotional, beautifully intimate moment between a dying father and his son. Look me in the eyes and tell me that and I will call you a liar because your pants are on fire, mother fucker.

The Sith Code

We have a better understanding of the Jedi Code than we do the Sith, largely because Sith are chaotic pathological liars who constantly break their own rules.

(A GIF from Star Wars I: The Phantom Menace of Yoda and Mace Windu. The subtitles read: "Always two there are. No more, no less. A master and an apprentice.")

Only two, huh? Then tell me, Tyranus and Sidious:

WHO THE HELL IS THIS?!

(An image of Asajj Ventress from Star Wars: The Clone Wars wielding two red lightsabers)

Like Satanism to Christianity, the Sith Code stands as a direct and deliberate contradiction to the Jedi Code.

(An image of the Sith Code in Basic and Aurebesh. It reads: "Peace is a lie, there is only passion. Through passion I gain strength. Through strength I gain power. Through power I gain victory. Through victory my chains are broken. The force shall free me.")

Let's take a quick look at the two Creeds side by side:

(An image of the Sith Code (left) and the Jedi Code (right). The one on the left reads: "Peace is a lie, there is only passion. Through passion I gain strength. Through strength I gain power. Through power I gain victory. Through victory my chains are broken. The force shall free me." The one on the right reads: "There is no emotion, there is peace. There is no ignorance, there is knowledge. There is no passion, there is serenity. There is no chaos, there is harmony. There is no death, there is the force.")

Pretty big differences there.

One of these Creeds is dedicated to learning, maintaining balance in the Force, and achieving personal betterment through peace of mind. The other is dedicated to becoming strong, powerful, and unbeatable by comparing putting the needs of the many before the wants of yourself to slavery.

I'll let you take a guess which one is which.

I mean, it is almost explicitly said that an important initiation process for becoming a Sith is to fucking murder a Jedi. In Tales of the Jedi, which is considered canon in the current state of the series (meaning should someone with authoritative control over Star Wars later retcon this, then it will no longer be canon), Dooku kills Master Yaddle as his official initiation after the death and funeral of Qui-Gon--don't forget, before this point Dooku may have been Fallen, but he was not Sith until Sidious loses Maul as an apprentice. Say what you will about Palps, but you gotta give him credit for abiding by the Sith Rule of Two, otherwise the galaxy would've been a lot more utterly fucked than it was. Until this was canon, anyone who was not versed in Legends lore (AKA me) generally headcanoned that Dooku murdered and assumed the identity of Sifo-Dyas for his Sith initiation.

Also, I feel it is imperative to note that the Sith Code was literally inspired by Mein Kampf. You know, ADOLF HITLER'S MANIFESTO. Need proof? Here, straight from the Star Wars Wookiepedia:

What's The Point?

I've been writing for almost 3 hours and I'm only JUST getting to the bit that's actually about Dooku. Let's take a breather and re-establish some points:

Jedi and Sith are religious Creeds

You are not born Jedi or Sith

To be Jedi or Sith is to make CHOICES that align with the tenets of the Creed

To be Jedi is to be compassionate, mindful, and a protector of those who are defenseless

Jedi have rules and regulations to protect their Order from corruption and abuse of power

To be Sith is to put your wants first, to become all-powerful, and to be victorious over all others

Sith do NOT have rules and regulations (that they actually follow faithfully aside from the Rule of Two, which is broken by Dooku multiple times anyway)

Got it?

Cool let's move on.

This is what I mean by the separation of Jedi Master Dooku and Darth Tyranus. On the matter of Dooku, the fandom largely seems to be divided between:

He was manipulated by the Sith! He was actually a good guy who knew the Senate was corrupt! He was just trying to save the galaxy!

And:

He was a shit Jedi and everyone should've known he was Darkside. He abused Qui-Gon. He abused padawans. He hated children. He didn't Fall because he was always evil.

My guys.

My dudes.

My homies.

Just... WHAT?

For point A, I present to you:

(A GIF from The Clone Wars of Dooku. The subtitle reads: "I would kill you both if I didn't have to drag your bodies.)

He literally just threatened murder. Actual murder. In another scene, season 1, if someone could find the GIF that would be fantastic, Dooku says he wants the death of the Jedi. All of the Jedi. He wants to slaughter children, the people he once considered family. In season 4, to Savage Oppress, he offers the galaxy. "We will rule the galaxy together." That is a dictatorship. These are not the signs of a healthy man doing what is best for the people. This is selfish desire. This is Sith Creed.

For point B:

(A GIF from TOTJ. Dooku stands before Qui-Gon's favourite tree on Coruscant). Look, I'm not great at image and GIF descriptors. If someone would like to fix this for me, please do. I worked real hard on this analysis and I want it to be accessible.

A man who did not love his padawan, his pseudo-son, would not have visited their favourite place on the entirety of Coruscant upon their death. This was inconvenient. Him visiting this tree when he shouldn't have because he'd just infiltrated the archives and deleted evidence of Kamino brings suspicion upon him that he could've avoided by simply staying away. But he couldn't. He had to go one last time.

He also, in Attack of the Clones, expresses regret at never meeting Obi-Wan before then. Qui-Gon always spoke very highly of him. Yes, because an abused child whose evil, evil master, again, abused him, would ever speak of his own child to said-abuser. Dooku may be a Sith of a decade by that point, but don't forget that Sith are entrenched in negative emotion. We have no idea what he was feeling meeting the son of his son for the first time. He could have easily murdered Obi-Wan before Anakin and all of the Jedi arrive. He later tries to multiple times. The first thing he does is offer an alliance. An apprenticeship. He even tells Obi-Wan the truth of Palpatine in the Senate, not that he (Obi) has any reason to believe him (Dooku).

Again, what's my point?

My point is that he is both a good guy and a bad guy.

He can be both.

He was once good. He Fell. He was not always one or the other. Because that is how Star Wars WORKS. His doubts over the Senate, his fears that the Order is falling to darkness, his utter grief at the death of his child; it crippled him. He could not overcome the Darkside. And so he Fell. Perhaps originally he had good intentions.

The road to Hell is paved with good intentions after all.

Eventually, the anger, the grief, the fear, corrupted him. As is how the Darkside works. Yes, it is a choice. It is a Creed he chooses to follow. But to walk back from the Darkside is also a journey that requires incredible strength.

In canon, only one achieves it. Anakin Skywalker.

Early on, perhaps Dooku could have been saved. But by the time of Attack of the Clones, he is utterly corrupt and evil and literally planning an absolute takeover of the galaxy. He is far beyond redemption.

Look, thanks for coming to my TED talk. If you enjoyed this post and would like to see more, please consider tipping! I am an unemployed chronically anxious and depressed sewer rat. I also accept love in reblogs and comments XD

I feel like @jedi-enthusiast and @antianakin will like this.

32 notes · View notes

wellnoe · 2 years

Note

I love love love all of your art, and tbh you're the reason I love Madelyne and Rachel so much now (especially Mads I love her), and I was wondering exactly how many kids Cyclops has? And how do you think his relationship is different with each kid?

scott has 3 children in 616: nate, rachel, and nathan. i am going to be honest right out the gate i know nothing about nate. he's from a different universe or a different timeline or something. i don't think he and scott have much of a relationship? i don't know that he even really sees scott as his father or a father figure? i have read exactly 1 comic that he appears in. i guess scott did kind of die for him, but in my head that ends up affecting scott's relationship with cable more than with nate.

i think that scott thinks his relationship w cable is more precarious than his relationship w rachel. this is bc his relationship to cable has been largely defined by the threat of nathan being taken from him, or having to literally acquiesce to nathan being taken from him, and also bc cable had/has a lot of grievances against his dad.

cable and scott don't exactly see eye to eye. they have different ideas and different approaches and also cable spent a lot of time being upset about decisions scott had made while nathan was a baby. while scott and rachel certainly have had uhhh rifts in their relationship, i think scott still thinks of rachel as someone who is like. committed to the x-men and that kind of way of fighting in a way he does not with cable. and i also think scott is more able to see rachel as a kid. bc she is younger than him. and that makes some things easier.

like i just think scott and cable's relationship is way more defined by a sense of scott's failings (personal and ideological) than scott and rachel's is, even when rachel also gets mad at scott? that is my impression anyway.

#w.ask #also ty so much!!!! <3

24 notes · View notes

themagical1sa · 2 years

Text

Regarding the SIM Card and Social Media Registration Act

because people still reblog these posts on it, and it's time I personally update everyone about it.

For those unaware: the SIM Card and SocMed Registration Act was a bill initially intended as counteraction against trolls and spreaders of misinformation on social media.

It was, however, found to be unconstitutional, criminalizing the right to anonymity and pseudonymity on the Internet and is a violation of Filipinos' rights to privacy, freedom of speech, and freedom of association (Democracy.Net.PH).

c. For using fictitious identites to register SIM cards or social media accounts. — The penalty of imprisonment of no less than six (6) years, or a fine of up to Two hundred thousand pesos (₱200,000.00), or both, shall be imposed upon anyone who uses a fictitious identity to purchase and register a SIM cards or social media account.

This is a direct violation of the 1987 Constitution, particularly Article III Sections 3 (1) and 4.

Above is a screenshot of Microsoft Edge from my laptop. The tab is showing a webpage from the Official Gazette of the Republic of the Philippines. The text shown is from Article III, the Bill of Rights, but the highlighted text are Sections 3 (1) and 4. They read, “SECTION 3. (1) The privacy of communication and correspondence shall be inviolable except upon lawful order of the court, or when public safety or order requires otherwise as prescribed by law,” and “SECTION 4. No law shall be passed abridging the freedom of speech, of expression, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble and petition the government for redress of grievances.”

With this in mind, it was imperative that word spread of how dangerous the Act was and to have the then-President Rodrigo Duterte veto it.

It was vetoed on April 15, 2022.

This was, as @katsurolle said, "half a win for online anonymity." It was only vetoed because the this bill would also endanger and penalize paid political trolls in the Philippines.

Half a win as it was... there was a collective sigh of relief from the Filipino people.

This half-victory had been only short-lived.

Four months into presidency, President Bongbong Marcos signed a revised SIM Card Registration bill into law on October 10, 2022.

It is meant to reduce cybercrime — spam and scam texts, more especially.

According to Office of the Press Secretary officer-in-charge Cheloy Garafil, the SIM Card Registration Act aims to provide “accountability in the use of SIM cards and aid law enforcers to track perpetrators of crimes committed through phones.”

The signing of the measure will likewise “significantly boost government initiatives against scams committed through text and online messages, which have become more prevalent this year.”

This, however, brings forth a new concern: data leaks.

Scam texts in the Philippines have been containing the receiver's names, and it's been very likely that private information on the internet has been leaked.

I have more that go as far as July.

There are certainly many issues that need to be resolved first, but as far as the SIM Card Registration Law is concerned, its execution is well underway. Globe Telecom's subscribers have already been receiving a text that looks like this:

Hi! Get ready to start your Globe Prepaid SIM registration journey on December 27, 2022. For more info, please visit https://glbe.co/simregfaq

I just hope the SIM Card Registration Law will be as effective as national goverment officials claim it to be.

Thank you to everyone who spread awareness of the SIM Card and Social Media Registration Act — I'm very grateful.

That will be all, and thank you for reading.

39 notes · View notes

crdenhart · 1 year

Text

Religious Reflections - Luke 17:1-10

06/05/2023

Today’s designated Gospel reading from the Book of Common Prayer is Luke 17:1-10. Here is the text for the passage from the NRSVue version of the Bible:

(1) Jesus said to his disciples, “Occasions for sin are bound to come, but woe to anyone through whom they come! (2) It would be better for you if a millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea than for you to cause one of these little ones to sin. (3) Be on your guard! If a brother or sister sins, you must rebuke the offender, and if there is repentance, you must forgive. (4) And if the same person sins against you seven times a day and turns back to you seven times and says, ‘I repent,’ you must forgive.”

(5) The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!” (6) The Lord replied, “If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.

(7) “Who among you would say to your slave who has just come in from plowing or tending sheep in the field, ‘Come here at once and take your place at the table’? (8) Would you not rather say to him, ‘Prepare supper for me; put on your apron and serve me while I eat and drink; later you may eat and drink’? (9) Do you thank the slave for doing what was commanded? (10) So you also, when you have done all that you were ordered to do, say, ‘We are worthless slaves; we have done only what we ought to have done!’ ”

ANALYSIS:

Lots to unpack from this reading! Jesus talks about how serious it is when one commits a sin. He then goes on to emphasize the importance of forgiving anyone who has repented. No matter how many times someone offends another person, if he or she shows true repentance, he or she should be forgiven. This concept may be difficult to practice with people who are bound to always fall back into sin, but that is the challenge to overcome in those situations.

Faith itself also is a major theme addressed in this passage. Jesus points out how having just a little faith can cause extraordinary things to happen. Faith works like the ripple effect of a drop of water in a still pond. This concept can be applied to the various dynamics of life. If one builds faith in himself or herself, he or she can then see the positive impact the effects of his or her faith have on his or her significant other/family, his or her friends/work/groups, all people in general, and the world as a whole. If just a little faith can do that, imagine what a rain of faith would do.

CALL TO ACTION:

My call to action from this passage is to forgive those who have wronged you but have truly repented. Perhaps someone disrespected you or was abusive to you when you were younger, and he or she has since changed for the better and is sorry for how he or she treated you. It may be difficult especially if what he or she was severely damaging, but find in your heart a way to forgive him or her and move on from past grievances. Holding on to such grudges will just make the pain of the bad memories worse and is not good for your well-being or enjoyment of life.

My other call to action is to find ways to increase your faith. This activity does not necessarily mean literally going to church, reading sacred scriptures, or the like. Even though those are good things, something as simple as realizing that there is something greater than yourself could be a way to increase your faith. You also could achieve an increase in faith by realizing how spiritual things are at play in your life. If something seems like a coincidence but holds some importance to your life, especially on further examination, realize that there is some divine significance at work. If it starts to seem obvious the direction your life and relationships are moving from a spiritual perspective, have faith in the future and let it happen, or as the saying goes - let go and let God!

#god #religion #religious #spiritual #spirituality #jesus #advice #bible #sermon #bible reading

0 notes

burst-of-iridescent · 2 years

Text

i find it very telling that the first thing zuko says when he confronts katara in the southern raiders is “this isn’t fair! everyone else seems to trust me now, what is it with you?”

zuko doesn’t say everyone else seems to like me now, or everyone else has forgiven me now, even though the scene that precedes this one (the gaang toasting zuko) is arguably an affirmation of friendship more than it is an affirmation of simply trust. he says everyone else trusts him now, partly because the poor boy is unused to genuine friendship, and partly because i think he’d always identified the biggest problem he could face with the gaang as a lack of trust, and intended to do everything he could to remedy that.

looking at it from this perspective, zuko’s frustration and initial confrontational manner towards katara make sense. he’d been prepared for the gaang not to trust him, and had done what he promised (and more) to earn that trust. but i don’t think (especially judging by the way he smiled at her in the western air temple) that he’d been prepared for the depths of katara’s rage. he likely initially chalked it up to mistrust, as he had with the rest of the gaang, but now when the rest seem fine with him, he’s confused. what more can he do to prove that he’s changed? why, when the rest of the gaang seem fine with him, was katara still holding out?

many people have pointed out that zuko didn’t realize the root of katara’s anger until this point, but i think he also didn’t realize until here that the way he wronged katara was different from the way he wronged the rest of the gaang. fighting aang and sokka was an unavoidable consequence of trying to capture the avatar; kidnapping aang was motivated by his position as the avatar rather than aang himself; burning down suki’s village was collateral damage, not malicious intention. they were, in essence, injustices committed against the avatar and his friends as opposing forces of a war, rather than aang, sokka and suki as people.

that’s why zuko is able to earn their friendship so swiftly, because once he’s earned their trust by proving that he’s on their side, there’s nothing stopping aang, sokka, suki and toph from getting to know zuko as himself, instead of an opposing soldier.

but katara already did that. katara treated zuko as a person, not an enemy, long before he’d even proven himself worthy of doing so. katara listened to zuko’s trauma, his insecurities, his conflicting feelings. katara found common ground with him. katara offered zuko her kindness, her care, her vulnerability, and katara had it thrown back in her face.

katara’s grievance is deeper, more intimate and more personal, because her connection with him was also deeper, more intimate, and more personal than the rest. zuko didn’t just wrong a companion of the avatar or an opposing soldier; he wronged katara. and that’s why when he inadvertently equates the injustice he committed against her with those he committed against the gaang by comparing their reactions, katara lashes out.

“oh, everyone trusts you now?”

she could have brought up her mother’s necklace here, or the pirates, or their fight in the the northern water tribe, but she doesn’t. she doesn’t bring up the things he did when they were still enemies, because like the rest of the gaang, she does trust that he’s changed and is truly sorry. and the real source of her anger is actually this:

“i was the first person to trust you, remember? back in ba sing se. but you turned around and betrayed me. betrayed all of us!”

katara makes the distinction between her and everyone else. note that she says that he betrayed her first, because it’s what he did to her as a person that hurt her. and this is also what leads her to say as her parting shot that zuko should bring her mother back, because to her, that’s where it all started. because that moment of vulnerability was what made her connect with him... and what cost her deeply in the end.

this is katara telling zuko why she can’t trust him with her affection and friendship like the rest, why she can’t let him in like they have. this is katara telling zuko why she’s holding out when they aren’t - because she did it before and got burned for it.

this is katara telling zuko: it isn’t the same with us. we were different. i was different, because i cared.

this is the first time that zuko realizes what the moment in the catacombs meant to katara, and that’s why the southern raiders is so different from the other field trips. it’s not mission oriented like aang’s or sokka’s (and zuko doesn’t volunteer to take sokka to boiling rock the way he volunteers to take katara to find yon rha; he goes with sokka because he knows nothing will stop sokka from going himself). their journey is so personal because zuko recognizes that what they had was personal, because he wants to show katara the same care and comfort that she once showed him by helping her heal from her deepest trauma. and whether he knows it or not, i think he also wants to show her that their moment in the catacombs meant just as much to him as it did to her.

to me, this is zuko telling katara: you weren’t wrong. we were different. i cared too. and i still do.

#zutara #zutara meta

138 notes · View notes

green-blue-heller · 3 years

Note

Sorry, I am blind as Jared, how is what he said offensive and insulting?

Theres a whole backstory that I’m not sure if you’re aware of it, nonnie.

But essentially because he had a meltdown on Twitter over the announcement they Jensen was working on a prequel.

It was obvious he didn’t even read the article and jumped the gun and got pissy even stating about Sam Winchester not being involved.

When the show is about John and Mary and set in 1972, almost ten years before Sam is born.

Plus, it’s not even a series yet. Right now, it’s just that the network is willing to pay Chaos Machine to provide them with at least one script (the article didn’t say how many scripts they committed to).

The network could still say no, or require changes. Of Jensen didn’t want those changes then he could say no and drop the project.

Plus, my understanding is that the publication is basically used to find investors. So it was their way of reaching out and saying “we have rights to this beloved and long running IP and we want to do something with it” and then investors would be like “oh, yes, I can see how this is will work out nice and I’d like to be involved” and give them money to make the show, for a piece of the profits.

This is a show about family and friends. And then you have the actor who was another lead, and brother to the producer, throwing a tantrum about not being told or given the opportunity to be involved (when there is nothing to be involved in yet, because there is no show and no script yet).

That could be a turn off to investors who then decide to not be part of the show.

Not only that, but Jensen didn’t owe him anything. This is Jensen’s company and Jensen’s future. And it could have just gotten fucked up.

They’d talked about retiring from acting after SPN and I think Jensen was probably hoping to be able to do that in the near future. Chaos Machine, I assume, was intended to be his big ticket item that would generate the most profits for him. And allow him to still stay in the tv and movie industry, while still having the brewery and his band.

The last couple years especially, Jensen seems more like the babysitter than the friend/older brother. And I think he’s been distancing himself.

Idk if the pic Jensen posted at 3 am was him letting out frustration or if it is meant as a nod to what Soldier Boy is going through in the series.

But I think more the former. Jensen talked about in the Gish zoom about how he hasn’t seen his family in 8 weeks (and it’s been a month since that zoom, so now it’s been even longer) and that it was the longest he’s gone without being able to see Danneel and the kids. And that for the first time ever, he has to miss his daughter’s birthday.

So, the announcement comes, the meltdown comes, the forced PR smooth over happens. The next day, Jared, who in their March panel talked about how he can’t be with his kids for more than 20 minutes and said he doesn’t know what to do with “these things” when they want him to play with them, posts a pic of them all in the pool.

I’m not sure if he did it intentionally. But considering he hasn’t posted about the kids really at all, it seems like it was an intentional dig at Jensen.

Then you have Gen and Dee putting up IG stories which seemed to be a dig at the other family. And then Jensen made a post that also could have been a dig back at Jared.

Either way; then Jensen posts about trying to cope with shit and Jared responds about having nightmares about the post.

But at this point, he needs to just step back and let Jensen live his life. They don’t need to appear to be best friends anymore. Jensen already got rid of the house that was down the road from Jared a few years ago.

Now he’s moved to Colorado. And sure, they still have a house somewhere in Austin, but I get the feeling that Colorado will be their main residence.

So, while Jared was the one who thought the show ended in a satisfying manner, knowing Jensen did not feel the same at all, and has mentioned many times about how Dean would be back, Jared seems to be the one who is unable to let go.

Jared is producing and starring in a new show.

So I don’t know why he feels he has the right to be angry at Jensen for wanting to bring back a version of the show that Jensen also starred in. Especially when he’s been vocal since at least comic con in July 2019, about coming back and it not being over for him.

This also makes me think that the show was literally ending so that he go on to do the other show for the network. That Jensen hadn’t wanted to end it after 15, but really didn’t have a choice.

Tl;dr: Jared acted childish and could have ruined Jensen’s first production with his new company. It also paints a bad image for Chaos Machine to investors and to the moose’s stans who have since started attacking Jensen and Danneel over this.

All he had to do, was send him a text or call him.

But then again, he’s known for Twitter meltdowns and sending his fans to attack whoever he has a grievance against.

#anon #j2 fallout theory #j2 fallout #Jared padalecki needs to back the fuck off #he wasn’t owed anything #prequelgate #spn prequel #the winchesters

120 notes · View notes

foreverlogical · 4 years

Link

Donald Trump’s descent into madness continues.

The latest manifestation of this is a report in The New York Times that the president is weighing appointing the conspiracy theorist Sidney Powell, who for a time worked on his legal team, to be special counsel to investigate imaginary claims of voter fraud.

As if that were not enough, we also learned that former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, who was pardoned by the president after pleading guilty to lying to the FBI, attended the Friday meeting. Earlier in the week, Flynn, a retired lieutenant general, floated the idea (which he had promoted before) that the president impose martial law and deploy the military to “rerun” the election in several closely contested states that voted against Trump. It appears that Flynn wants to turn them into literal battleground states.\

None of this should come as a surprise. Some of us said, even before he became president, that Donald Trump’s Rosetta Stone, the key to deciphering him, was his psychology—his disordered personality, his emotional and mental instability, and his sociopathic tendencies. It was the main reason, though hardly the only reason, I refused to vote for him in 2016 or in 2020, despite having worked in the three previous Republican administrations. Nothing that Trump has done over the past four years has caused me to rethink my assessment, and a great deal has happened to confirm it.

Given Trump’s psychological profile, it was inevitable that when he felt the walls of reality close in on him—in 2020, it was the pandemic, the cratering economy, and his election defeat—he would detach himself even further from reality. It was predictable that the president would assert even more bizarre conspiracy theories. That he would become more enraged and embittered, more desperate and despondent, more consumed by his grievances. That he would go against past supplicants, like Attorney General Bill Barr and Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, and become more aggressive toward his perceived enemies. That his wits would begin to turn, in the words of King Lear. That he would begin to lose his mind.

So he has. And, as a result, President Trump has become even more destabilizing and dangerous.

“I’ve been covering Donald Trump for a while,” Jonathan Swan of Axios tweeted. “I can’t recall hearing more intense concern from senior officials who are actually Trump people. The Sidney Powell/Michael Flynn ideas are finding an enthusiastic audience at the top.”

Even amid the chaos, it’s worth taking a step back to think about where we are: An American president, unwilling to concede his defeat by 7 million popular votes and 74 Electoral College votes, is still trying to steal the election. It has become his obsession.

In the process, Trump has in too many cases turned his party into an instrument of illiberalism and nihilism. Here are just a couple of data points to underscore that claim: 18 attorneys generals and more than half the Republicans in the House supported a seditious abuse of the judicial process.

And it’s not only, or even mainly, elected officials. The Republican Party’s base has often followed Trump into the twilight zone, with a sizable majority of them affirming that Joe Biden won the election based on fraud and many of them turning against medical science in the face of a surging pandemic.

COVID-19 is now killing Americans at the rate of about one per minute, but the president is “just done with COVID,” a source identified as one of Trump’s closest advisers told The Washington Post. “I think he put it on a timetable and he’s done with COVID ... It just exceeded the amount of time he gave it.”

This is where Trump’s crippling psychological condition—his complete inability to face unpleasant facts, his toxic narcissism, and his utter lack of empathy—became lethal. Trump’s negligence turned what would have been a difficult winter into a dark one. If any of his predecessors—Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George H. W. Bush, and Ronald Reagan, to go back just 40 years—had been president during this pandemic, tens of thousands of American lives would almost surely have been saved.

“My concern was, in the worst part of the battle, the general was missing in action,” said Maryland Governor Larry Hogan, one of the very few Republicans to speak truth in the Trump era.

In 30 days, Donald Trump will leave the presidency, with his efforts to mount a coup having failed. The encouraging news is that it never really had a chance of succeeding. Our institutions, especially the courts, will have passed a stress test, not the most difficult ever but difficult enough, and unlike any in our history. Some local officials exhibited profiles in courage, doing the right thing in the face of threats and pressure from their party. And a preponderance of the American public, having lived through the past four years, deserve credit for canceling this presidential freak show rather than renewing it. The “exhausted majority” wasn’t too exhausted to get out and vote, even in a pandemic.

But the Trump presidency will leave gaping wounds nearly everywhere, and ruination in some places. Truth as a concept has been battered from the highest office in the land on an almost hourly basis. The Republican Party has been radicalized, with countless Republican lawmakers and other prominent figures within the party having revealed themselves to be moral cowards, even, and in some ways especially, after Trump was defeated. During the Trump presidency, they were so afraid of getting crosswise with him and his supporters that they failed the Solzhenitsyn test: “The simple act of an ordinary brave man is not to participate in lies, not to support false actions! His rule: Let that come into the world, let it even reign supreme—only not through me.

”During the past four years, the right-wing ecosystem became more and more rabid. Many prominent evangelical supporters of the president are either obsequious, like Franklin Graham, or delusional, like Eric Metaxas, and they now peddle their delusions as being written by God. QAnon and the Proud Boys, Newsmax and One America News, Alex Jones and Tucker Carlson—all have been emboldened.

These worrisome trends began before Trump ran for office, and they won’t disappear after he leaves the presidency. Those who hope for a quick snapback will be disappointed. Still, having Trump out of office has to help. He’s going to find out that there’s no comparable bully pulpit. And the media, if they are wise, will cut off his oxygen, which is attention. They had no choice but to cover Trump’s provocations when he was president; when he’s an ex-president, that will change.

For the foreseeable future, journalists will rightly focus on the pandemic. But once that is contained and defeated, it will be time to go back to focusing more attention on things like the Paris Accords and the carbon tax; the earned-income tax credit and infrastructure; entitlement reform and monetary policy; charter schools and campus speech codes; legal immigration, asylum, assimilation, and social mobility. There is also an opportunity, with Trump a former president, for the Republican Party to once again become the home of sane conservatism. Whether that happens or not is an open question. But it’s something many of us are willing to work for, and that even progressives should hope for.Beyond that, and more fundamental than that, we have to remind ourselves that we are not powerless to shape the future; that much of what has been broken can be repaired; that though we are many, we can be one; and that fatalism and cynicism are unwarranted and corrosive.

There’s a lovely line in William Wordsworth’s poem “The Prelude”: “What we have loved, Others will love, and we will teach them how.

”There are still things worthy of our love. Honor, decency, courage, beauty, and truth. Tenderness, human empathy, and a sense of duty. A good society. And a commitment to human dignity. We need to teach others—in our individual relationships, in our classrooms and communities, in our book clubs and Bible studies, and in innumerable other settings—why those things are worthy of their attention, their loyalty, their love. One person doing it won’t make much of a difference; a lot of people doing it will create a culture.

Maybe we understand better than we did five years ago why these things are essential to our lives, and why when we neglect them or elect leaders who ridicule and subvert them, life becomes nasty, brutish, and generally unpleasant.

Just after noon on January 20, a new and necessary chapter will begin in the American story. Joe Biden will certainly play a role in shaping how that story turns out—but so will you and I. Ours is a good and estimable republic, if we can keep it.

PETER WEHNER is a contributing writer at The Atlantic and a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. He writes widely on political, cultural, religious, and national-security issues, and he is the author of The Death of Politics: How to Heal Our Frayed Republic After Trump.

#ideas

186 notes · View notes

det-loki · 4 years

Text

poison & wine part two

“I don’t have a choice, but I’d still choose you.”

warnings: angst, cursing, slight smut, talk of death/kidnapping

pairing: detective loki x fem reader

word count: 3,213

A/N: feedback is welcomed, enjoy!

1 ⌽ 3 4 5 6

You and Loki arrived at the aunt’s house later that night. You followed Loki through the hall as he spoke to Holly Jones about Alex. You observed her simple home trying to find any lead as she watched Loki look through Alex’s room, taking interest in a toy RV. Walking into her home was like walking into a time capsule, everything seemed old and outdated. So far, you had nothing, not a single thing.

Opening the passenger car door of the old Crown Vic, you huffed as you sat down in the seat, hand coming up to your face trying to wipe away the exhaustion. Beside you, Loki sat still, watching you as your mind run rampant. He wished more than anything that he could take away your grievances. He hated what this town did to you, what this case was doing to you. You deserved better than this. Better than this town and better than him.

“Let’s go home, get some rest, visit the parents in the morning. We can’t solve a case when both of us can barely stand, let alone think. I have a feeling this case is going to be tough.” You didn’t have the energy to respond, only nodding as Loki put the car in reverse and changing gears into drive, pulling onto the road towards your shared home. His hand found yours, intertwining on top of your thigh, his thumb brushing across the back of your hand. You wished this was easy, going to work and being able to leave it at the door. Your life with Loki was complicated, some days you were madly in love, others you were just coworkers. You hoped tonight you were in love, you didn’t think you could keep your head above the rising water of emotions if you weren’t.

The warm water cascaded over your back, unthawing your chilled bones as you heard the shower curtain open. Loki’s calloused hand finding its place on your hip, pulling you against his chest. His head dropped to the crook of your neck, lips moving along your shoulder as his fingers wandered from your hip to the space between your legs, murmuring in your ear, “Hey baby.” The soft circles he made sent pleasure through your body, softly whimpering as you leaned further back into his embrace and melted. You needed this. Needed the feeling of comfort and pleasure even if it was just 5 minutes out of the 24 hours in a day. Loki was more than happy to give it to you without the expectation of receiving it. He knew you needed this, needed to feel the overwhelming feeling of his hands, his scent, him. Tonight you were in love, managing to keep each other from crumbling apart and running down the drain.

Neither you nor David slept well that night. Beside you, David tossed and turned and you couldn’t get your brain to turn off. Two little girls were out there missing and you were trying to sleep in a warm bed next to someone you loved. It wasn’t fair. You counted the days it had been since it happened. You lost count after 2,500, the years and days blurring together.

Morning came faster than you liked. The clock read 6:14 A.M., mocking you. You could hear the shower running, you were sure David had been awake much longer than you, he rarely slept through the night. You knew he didn’t need to shower, thoughts of the previous night floated through your head. He was only doing it to wake up and mentally prepare himself for the day. You swung your legs over the edge of the bed, standing and making your way to the kitchen. You needed coffee.

Sitting on the couch in the living room with your mug in hand, fingers gripping the handle much harder than you needed, knuckles flexing white. You watched the news display information about the case of the two missing girls with bleary eyes. You had written the media release last night which was now being played all across the state. David emerged from your shared bedroom, kissing the top of your head as he walked past you. He had on fresh clothes, his blue button-up fastened up to his neck like normal, his dark circles more pronounced, eyes already tired. You, on the other hand, opted for something more comfortable, not having the capacity to care about your appearance as much as you normally would, a basic sweater and slacks, face void of any makeup, only leftover mascara the shower didn’t wash away. This case had your full attention.

"This morning we'll go by the parents. I can do the talking. You can stay in the car if you need to." David looked at you softly as he sat next to you on the sofa, bringing your sock clad feet to his lap, fingers working the tender muscle. Cases with children were always the worst, tension findings its way into every muscle in your body. Especially with your background. David didn't want to see you spiral, he would do anything to save you even if it meant jeopardizing himself in the process. He had done it before and he would do it again. You were his person, the only one in his life that knew enough to be considered more than acquaintances. You knew his coffee order by heart, how he hated nutmeg, refused to wear gloves even when the weather permitted them. It gave him the excuse to shove his ice-cold hand against your neck just to hear you laugh. You also knew the deep dark depths of what made him who he was. The boys home, the priests, the lack of familial support, the illegal activities he used to take part in. You were literally and figuratively his everything. It was always you and Loki against everything.

"No, I'm fine. I'll be okay, Loke." Loke. The nickname you gave him at the delicate age of 14 when you met him. It wasn't special by any means, anyone could have come up with it themselves, but when it came out of your mouth, it meant everything to David.

"Okay, but if you need a break, you have to tell me, baby." Your heart physically aches at Loki's words. He would save you from any cliff even if he was tumbling over with you.

You look up from your mug at him with a soft smile on your face that didn't quite reach your eyes, "Same goes for you."

Loki pulled up to the Birch's home as you take a deep breath, attempting to calm yourself. Your stomach was clenching in pain, a knot in your throat, choking you. At least it wasn’t raining today.

"Y/N, you can stay in the car if you need to." David was worried about you. He knew you like the back of his hand. Hell, you were literally tattooed on the back of his hand. Your zodiac symbol etching itself on his ring finger knuckle so many years ago, his version of committing himself to you. A month after the funeral.

"I'm fine, David." He nodded, wanting to believe you as you both exited the car, walking towards the Birch family's front door. Each step taking entirely too much energy.

After three quick knocks, Franklin Birch pulled open the door, his bloodshot eyes meeting David's then yours. David knew that feeling. Helplessness.

You walked into the home after David. Walking around the corner of the entryway you were met with a sight that tore your heart in two. Nancy Birch sat at the dinner table surrounded by half-eaten Thanksgiving food from the night before, numb. You knew that feeling. Although your little girl didn't go missing. She didn't even have a chance at a decent childhood, let alone a decent life. That was torn away too soon.

You quietly excused yourself, darting out the door and towards the car, avoiding Loki's concerned gaze. Your hands trembled, you were never able to get rid of the feeling of her body in your arms on that fateful day. You hated the universe, angry at the world for what it had done to you, what it had done to David. You shouldn’t have even gotten out of bed this morning.

Minutes later, Loki returns to the car with pictures of Joy Birch in hand. "Hey, you okay? You practically ran out of there."

"I just-, I fucking hate cases with kids. I know it's not that case, but that doesn't make it any easier."

It’s not that case. It’s not that case. It’s not that case.

"I know." That's all he could say. He knew. He knew what you were feeling, all too well, the indescribable pain nipping at your heels, slowly making its way up your body and consuming you whole. It was only day two.

The next stop was Dover's. To say you were dreading it was an understatement. Loki put the car in park and turned to face you, his brows furrowed in concern, regret swimming in his eyes.

“You ready?” You knew Loki was giving you a way out, he was more than okay with going in alone.

“Yes, I’m ready.” No, you weren’t. You were going anyway. You had to in order to restore some sort of justice for your little girl.

It’s not that case.

You sat next to Loki, who was next to Grace Dover on the sofa with a blanket sprawling across her lap. You were sure it belonged to Anna judging by the color and the pattern. That poor woman.

“So, did we pass?” It was clear to you from Grace’s voice and the dark circles under her eyes that she hadn’t slept at all.

You gently nudged Loki, who had been on his phone answering emails, “I’m sorry, what did you say?

Grace croaked, “The poly thing. The lie detector we took this morning, did we pass?”

“Oh, yeah, yeah. Sorry.” Loki responded before looking back down at his phone and sliding it into his coat pocket, “Yes, we appreciate your cooperation.”

Grace speaks again, “It’s embarrassing, all this-all this fuss. Everyone’s gonna think we’re crazy when those two come out of hiding, wherever they are.”

“Do you have some reason to believe they ran away?” Loki asks. In a perfect world, these girls wouldn’t even be missing, but in an ideal world, they did just run away. The sting in your gut said otherwise.

“No. They’re happy. They must have run away. I think they must have run away. Right?” She wasn’t trying to convince you or Loki, she was trying to convince herself.

Loki tries to show a comforting smile but the words won’t come out, he can only nod.

Grace changes the subject, trying to smile although the only thing it reached was her mouth, “Um, your police captain told me that you two have solved every case that you’ve ever been assigned. Is that right?” There was never a time Captain O’Malley didn’t brag about the two of you. You just wished he didn’t do it now, not with this case. It gave too much hope to the parents. Too much pressure that you were sure you or Loki would eventually collapse from. Again, neither you nor Loki could find the words.

Grace begins to get emotional again, hand clutching her mouth, you couldn’t blame her. However, what she spoke next ripped apart your soul that had just begun to get stitched back together by the calloused hands of David, “Do either of you have children, detectives?” You’re back straightened and your mouth fills with the rancid taste of bile. Suddenly you’re nineteen again, in pain and scared, tears streaming down your face, hands raw from scrubbing off the blood that never seemed to go down the drain, bleach stinging your nose. Like so many years ago, David is next to you, except this time he isn’t in a hospital chair with his head in his hands finding out his daughter had been pronounced dead at the age of two. No, this time he was a detective trying to comfort this poor woman about her own daughter. You shoved your trembling hands in your coat pocket, although Loki already took notice. He didn’t even have to look at you to know, you and Loki were connected on a much deeper level.

It's not that case.

Loki speaking brings you out of your toxic minefield of thoughts, “We’re going to find your daughter, Mrs. Dover.” Pausing, he speaks again, shoving his own emotions down, “We believe that they came back here after they left you at the Birch’s yesterday.”

Keller Dover appears from the hall with bloodshot eyes, “They were looking for Anna’s red whistle.” You shakily stand alongside Loki, your body swaying as he shakes his hand, “Right. I read your statement. I’m Detective Loki, this is Detective Y/L/N. We’re heading up the investigation into your daughter’s investigation. Please, sit down.”

Keller disregarded Loki, choking out words to the best of his ability, “Uh, uh, m-my son already told you th-that the guy was inside the RV just watchin’ em’, right?”

You speak up from behind Loki, finally finding your voice, “We haven’t found any physical evidence inside the RV. Or his aunt's house where he lives.”

Keller looks at you as disbelief paints over his features, “Nothing?”

“Alex Jones, unfortunately, has an I.Q. of a ten-year-old. There is no way someone with the I.Q of a ten-year-old could abduct two girls in broad daylight and then somehow make them disappear.” You were able to confirm your suspicions about Alex’s cognitive ability early this morning after a briefing with a forensic psychologist.

“Uh. well. How can he drive an RV? If he can’t answer a question?” Being honest, it didn’t make much sense to you either, it was a fair question.

Loki speaks up in front of you, “Well, he has a legal Pennsylvania license.”

Keller pushed, “And he ran, right? They said he tried to run away. Why would he do that? Why would he run?”

Loki speaks before you, “We’ve just spent ten hours questioning this boy. Okay? I hear what you're saying.”

Keller speaks in disbelief again, this was overwhelming, “Uh, did- did you give him a lie detector? You gave us a lie detector. Did you give him one?”

“Sir, I understand what you’re asking me, yes we did. We gave him a lie detector and there's no way of-” Loki cuts short, stifling a laugh and scoffing. Not at Mr. Dover or the case, but at the number of unanswered questions we had, “A lie detector doesn’t work if you don’t understand the questions.”

Mr. Dover’s face changes, angry, “Well, maybe he wasn’t on his own. How could he drive an RV with the IQ of a ten-year-old?”

You speak with a softer tone attempting to de-escalate the situation, “Hey, we’re considering all possibilities.” You were, everything mattered. Everything.

Keller shakes his head, “I don’t think you are considering all possibilities.”

Using a sharper tone, you tell Mr. Dover as he interrupts you, “I-I hear what you're saying. Sir- Sir-”

“You listen to me! Just shut the fuck up for a fucking second!” Keller booms as his wife flinched on the couch beside his standing form. You take a step back as Loki positions himself in front of you, throwing his hands in front of him in a calming gesture, Loki speaking, “This is what I’m gonna need you to do for me. I need you to calm down.” You hated yelling, you despised it. Although you understood Keller and had no animosity for him, he was living in hell and you had no room to judge. You had been there.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Please listen to me for a second.” Keller was pleading and he didn’t need to. You would sit with and listen for hours if you could. But you couldn’t, you had to find his daughter. You had to fix this.

“Mr. Dover, I understand this is an incredibly hard time.” Loki did know that, better than anyone. “But I have every uniformed police officer in this state looking for Anna.”

From behind Loki, you can see Keller’s face break, “I don’t understand what any of this means. They said he ran. They said he tried to get away. I don’t understand why he would try to run away.”

“We’re considering all possibilities, Mr. Dover. I hear what you’re saying. We’re not crossing anybody off our list. Just, let us do our job.”

Walking out of the Dover’s felt like you were trudging through molasses, you hated this case and it was only day two. You sat in the passenger seat as David put the keys in the ignition, Keller Dover running out of the house made him pause.

“Hey! Detectives!”

Both you and David mutter “oh shit” under your breath as Loki rolls the window down to speak to Mr. Dover.

Keller approaches, eyes darting between you and Loki wildly, “Hey! He stays in custody until my daughter is found, right? Right?”

Loki shakes his head, not wanting to upset Keller any more than he was already, “We have a 48-hour hold on him that ends tomorrow unless we bring charges.”

“Well, charge him with something. Charge him.” It wasn’t that easy, you wished it was.

Loki protests, “Mr. Dover, I understand-”

Keller interrupts, “Detective, detectives, two little girls have gotta be worth whatever little rule you have to break to keep that asshole in custody. Now, I know you can’t promise me anything, I understand that, but I’m asking you to be sure. Be 100% sure. Thank you. I appreciate it.” and with that, he walked away back into the house.

Loki sat idle as you turned to him, “We have to at least try. If we- I would have wanted to someone to at least try when-”

Loki snaps at you, stopping you, “No. No, this isn’t that case and you can’t think that. We will do our best, but I can’t have you going down that road.”

“I know it isn’t that case, David. But we can’t pretend that it isn’t similar. Ours was attempted kidnapping, she-” You’re chest stung as you tried to get out the words, lungs on fire and brain pounding. You were too close.

“Y/N, saving these little girls won’t bring ours back.” Loki's voice cracked on emotion. You knew that. God, you knew that. A freak incident, a failed abduction. The smell of antiseptic burning your nose, David’s hand clutched tightly in yours as the doctor left the room after telling you your little girl didn’t make it. A suspect was never found. You had only gone inside for a second.

Neither you nor David spoke for the entire ride back to the station. There wasn’t anything to say, it all had been said before in the late hours of the night, everytime one of you woke up with a nightmare, whispering words to each other, too afraid to say them too loud, staring at the ceiling. You were living in a nightmare you couldn’t wake up from.

taglist: @lexie-wayland @whew-oh-em-gee @winterlavenderskysworld @buck-this-nasty @heeyirenee

#detective loki #detective loki imagine #detective loki x reader #detective loki fanfic #detective loki fanfiction #prisoners #prisoners 2013 #jake gyllenhaal #hugh jackman #keller dover #poison and wine #fanfiction

213 notes · View notes

theusurpersdog · 5 years

Text

Floppy Ears

A Dance with Dragons is the most important arc Daenerys has had since she hatched her dragons at the end of A Game of Thrones, and is a huge turning point for the trajectory of her character. And while GRRM’s books have always been incredibly detailed and focused on character, this book and A Feast for Crows is when he really mastered that style. Those two things combined make Daenerys’ ten chapters incredibly dense, and full of very important details. If I were to write it all out in one post, it would be just ridiculously long (and considering the length of my other posts, that’s really saying something. . .). To try and keep these posts from turning into books, I’m going to split my analysis of Dany in A Dance with Dragons into three separate posts; one dealing with the political aspects of her arc, the next a look at the outside forces that influence Dany’s decision making, and the last will center on the personal struggle that defines her arc. Here is the first, where I breakdown the political merits of Queen Daenerys Targaryen. . .

Holding Court

Running parallel to all of the symbolic choices and struggles Daenerys makes in A Dance with Dragons is the practical decisions she makes as Queen of Meereen. GRRM is famous for his quote about “Aragorn’s tax policy”, and it is clear that he tries to answer that question in this book. We get chapter after chapter that gives Daenerys a new political trial, and get to see and examine how she decides to move passed it. The first three books gave us small moments to look at and decide how Daenerys would rule Westeros, but A Dance with Dragons gives us definitive examples of how she would. This book asks would Daenerys be a good queen? and also gives us the answer: No.

Whenever Daenerys has to face the Meereenese as their queen, she thinks to herself that she is putting on her “floppy ears”, in reference to something Brown Ben Plumm tells her:

"Man wants to be the king o' the rabbits, he best wear a pair o' floppy ears."

This quote works so well to summarize Dany’s time in Meereen for a couple different reasons. The first is that it perfectly describes how Daenerys feels about being queen; she hates the rich Meereenese, former slavers who plot behind her back and have traditions that Dany hates, and she could never view herself as one of them. Dany feels as if she must pretend to be a part of them. But it also gets at a deeper truth of Daenerys’ arc - she is just pretending to be a queen; it doesn’t come naturally to her. She has to don her “floppy ears” to be a queen, and start pretending. She has to face many impossible choices in this book, and her anger is righteous in many circumstances, but that doesn’t change the fact that she is not a good queen, and in fact hardly even wants to be one. I’ll get into it more when I breakdown the personal part of Dany’s A Dance with Dragons arc (this meta focusing on the political), but to be queen of Meereen, Dany has to fight against her own nature. The way GRRM plotted this book so expertly, all of the political struggles Daenerys faces are reflections of her own personal struggles with staying in Meereen, each problem designed to get at a different part of Dany’s psyche and push her closer to the choice she ultimately makes in Daenerys IX and X.

When Daenerys holds court in Meereen, she is faced with many grievances that she must have an answer to, many from the noble class that she despises. What I find most interesting about these, is that Daenerys has something in common with all of the men she refuses to help. These are the stories she hears:

A rich woman came, whose husband and sons had died defending the city walls. During the sack she had fled to her brother in fear. When she returned, she found her house had been turned into a brothel.

A boy came, younger than Dany, slight and scarred, dresses up in a frayed grey tokar trailing silver fringe. His voice broke when he told of how two of his father’s household slaves had risen up the night the gate broke. One had slain his father, the other his elder brother. Both had raped his mother before killing her as well. The boy had escaped with no more than the scar upon his face, but one of the murderers was still living in his father’s house, and the other had joined the queen’s soldiers as one of the Mother’s Men.

The parallels Dany shares to these people are quite clear. The first woman she hears fled her house when the city was sacked, just as Rhaella fled the Red Keep when she was pregnant with Dany; yet Dany refuses to give the Meereenese woman her home back, even though Dany herself is determined to retake King’s Landing in her family’s name.

Daenerys also parallels the son in the second story, who has to see the men who raped and murdered his mother live in his house and work for the queen (Dany). This sounds very much like Gregor Clegane and Amory Lorch being rewarded for killing Elia Martell. Dany turns the son away, and continues to let the murdering rapist serve her; yet, when she thinks of how the same thing happened to her family, Dany refers to the men as “dogs” and is disgusted by Robert Baratheon for allowing it.

The most interesting decision Daenerys makes, though, is how she responds to this story:

Grazdan zo Galare asked that he be granted a portion of their earnings. “They owe their skill to me,” he insisted. “I plucked them from the auction bloc and gave them to the loom.”

Dany listened quietly, her face still. When he was done. She said, “What was the name of the old weaver?”

“The slave?” Grazdan shifted his weight, frowning. “She was . . . Elza, it might have been. Or Ella. It was six years ago she died. I have owned so many slaves, Your Grace.”

“Let us say Elza. Here is our ruling. From the girls, you shall have nothing. It was Elza who taught them weaving, not you. From you, the girls shall have a new loom, the finest coin can buy. That is for forgetting the name of the old woman.”

Through these grievances, GRRM is giving us the chance to judge Daenerys based on her own morality. There is plenty of debate about what exactly it means that Dany forgets Hazzea’s name in her last chapter, but the above passage tells us what that means to Dany herself. When she sees that behavior in someone else, she is appalled; she goes out of her way to punish Grazdan specifically for forgetting the slave’s name. Judging Daenerys by her own standards, she has failed Hazzea.

Besides these stories painting Dany as a hypocrite (since she is doing everything that she turns the Meereenese away for), they also start to teach Dany a lesson about being a queen; it is really hard. Dany never realizes how these stories connect to her, but she does begin to understand how impossible it is to make some decisions. When she turns down the son whose mother was raped and house stolen, this is what she thinks:

I am queen over a city built on dust and death. Dany had no choice but to deny him. She had declared a blanket pardon for all crimes committed during the sack. Nor would she punish slaves for rising up against their masters.

And after the boy lunges to attack her, but trips on his tokar and is led away, Dany realizes that that the Harpy has gained another Son.

And while Dany never consciously thinks back on the decisions she’s made and how similar they are to Robert Baratheon’s, on a subconscious level she does soften towards him. When she watches the pit fighter gored by a boar, she thinks of him:

A terrible creature and a terrible death. For a heartbeat she felt almost sorry for the Usurper.

Dany from the first three books would never give even that much thought to Robert Baratheon.

The last decision Daenerys makes while holding court that day, is when she is presented with Hazzea’s bones. While Drogon had never killed a person before, we learn that it is a growing problem that he’s killing people’s livestock:

Her dragons had grown too large to be content with rats and cats and dogs. The more they eat, the larger they will grow, Ser Barristan had warned her, and the larger they grow, the more they’ll eat. Drogon especially ranged far afield and could easily devour a sheep a day.

Since Drogon is stealing and eating so many people’s sheep, and Daenerys doesn’t want to sit and speak to all of them, she agrees to give them all the value of their sheep:

The pronouncement was received in sullen silence. You would think they might be happier, Dany thought. They have what they came for. Is there no way to please these people?

This quote says a lot about Daenerys. In her mind, the people should be happy because she’s willing to give them back what they lost, failing to consider how much trouble it would be for them to gather up the bones of their dead animals, bring them to Dany’s pyramid, and wait all day for just the chance to be heard by her. Dany thinks many of them lie about Drogon to try and get money or sheep, and thinks they should just be happy she’s giving them anything at all.

It’s also one of the first times that Daenerys’ thoughts drift to how much she hates the Meereenese. I think most people just assume that Daenerys’ hatred of the city is limited to the Nobles and former Slavers who disgust her, but that isn’t true; she thinks that she hates the former slavers more often because she is forced to interact with them more often, but when Dany is around the freedman and lower classes she doesn’t like them either:

Daenerys was sick unto death of Zhak and Merreq; she was sick of all the Meereenese, great and small alike.

Dany tries very hard to make her rule of Meereen work, and from a broad political perspective even manages to achieve that, but her own personal bias against the city make it impossible to sustain the peace she creates. While a lot of Dany’s fights are over important things, the small battles she chooses are very telling; she hates the way the Meereenese style their hair and has her advisors shave their head because of it, hates the local food and delicacies, and takes a hard stand against the fighting pits (I’ll get into that more later). In the big picture, these little battles Dany chooses to fight are meaningless and just serve to alienate her from the people, but she does it anyway. Because she hates Meereen; not just the slavery or the toxic elements of the culture, but everything.

All of these decisions Daenerys makes while holding court occur in the first chapter, because there is a huge gap where she doesn’t hear the people’s complaints. It isn’t clear exactly how long she goes between hearing the people, but Daario tells her that the people don’t believe she is real, which implies quite a long time. And when Daario tells her she should, she replies:

“No. On the morrow I will be a woman wed, and Hizdahr will be king. Let him hold court. These are his people.”

The only reason she does hold court is because Daario said she would and Dany doesn’t want to disappoint him. But just the thought exhausts her:

The prospect of wrestling with Meereen once more left her feeling weary.

Daenerys really does throw herself into being queen - marrying Hizdahr proves that - but she still can’t bring herself to do the day to day tasks of a queen.

Choices

Seeing the decisions Daenerys makes when holding court gives us a window into how she handles small issues within the city, but there is also several times when Dany has to make very important choices that could affect thousands of lives. Most of these choices have no good answer, only the lesser of two evils, and Dany has to weigh what is most important to her knowing that people are going to be hurt by her decision either way.

But while that is mostly the case, there is one issue in which it isn’t: the fighting pits. Compared to the other choices she is forced to make in this book, it seems like Daenerys should not be bothered by allowing the fighting pits to reopen, considering the loss of life is *relatively* small and only by those who choose to fight. Yet, it is the issue Daenerys takes the hardest stand against, and completely refuses to do it herself, waiting until Hizdahr is King and letting him do it instead:

A queen must listen to her people, Dany reminded herself. “After the wedding Hizdahr will be king. Let him reopen the fighting pits if he wishes. I want no part of it.” Let the blood be on his hands, not mine.

Before I get into why Dany refusing to do this was a bad choice, I want to clarify something; there actually is plenty of good reasons not to open the pits. As we see through Tyrion’s eyes, slaves are still being brought in to fight, and we see that again when Hizdahr tells Dany that the dwarves are unaware they will have to fight wild animals with wooden swords. The pits shouldn’t have been reopened until Dany had a system in place that assured those kinds of abuses couldn’t occur.

But Dany isn’t thinking of any of that when she refuses to open the pits. To her, they represent everything wrong with Meereen; watching men die as sport is grotesque to her. That’s a perfectly reasonable thing to believe, and I don’t begrudge her for holding that position, but no one else in the city agrees with her. The pit fighters themselves are coming to Dany, begging to fight again:

"Before, I fight for master. You say, fight for you. I say, fight for me." The huge man thumped his chest with a fist as big as a ham. "For gold. For glory."

And not only is the fighting pits a part of the culture, but it’s also a part of the Ghiscari religion; the fights are viewed as sacrifices to the gods. Daenerys is already viewed as an outsider in the city, and refusing to allow this part of their culture is just another thing that turns the Ghiscari against her, especially because Dany never offers a reason for why she won’t open the pits; we see her argue Hizdahr’s points for him, to mock how often he comes to her, but she never actually makes a case against him. And even in her own thoughts, we never fully understand why the fighting pits bother her so much. When she has to watch the fights, the blood and killing of it all makes her nauseous, but she wasn’t bothered by that when Strong Belwas fought for her in front of the gates, and in the very same chapter isn’t bothered by Drogon’s violence.

The fighting pits is the one thing Dany absolutely refuses to concede. Even when she agrees to marry Hizdahr, close the gates to the refugees from Astapor, and let Yunkai restart their slave trade, she won’t open the pits and never does, letting the responsibility go to Hizdahr. And when she finally decides to leave Meereen, it is after watching Barsena die fighting. It seems like a small thing for Dany to be so hung up, and even she realizes that:

Better a few should die in the pit then thousands on the gates. This is the price of peace.

But she can’t go through with it. This is one of the biggest mistakes Dany makes as queen of Meereen. And she makes it for personal reasons; even though she could offer Hizdahr and other supporters of the fighting pits valid political reasons not to open them, she never does, because she doesn’t care about them. She refuses to open the pits because it is too Meereenese for her tastes.

Another major choice Daenerys has to make is how to deal with Astapor and Yunkai, which have fallen to disaster since she left them. The two cities represent two opposite decisions Dany made in the past; she attacked and burned Astapor, but peacefully moved past Yunkai after they agreed to free their slaves. Yet both have problems that are impossible to solve, and force Dany into choices she doesn’t want to make.

Yunkai has gone back to slavery since Dany marched passed, and since she left their military intact is threatening to march on Meereen; the Yunkai’i have blocked off the bay and plan on starving the city out. But Daenerys doesn’t have enough food to support the city, and without the power of her dragons can’t compete with Yunkai’s army. The only way Dany can save Meereen from Yunkai is to allow them to resume their slave trade, which goes against everything she wanted to stand for. The whole reason Dany decided to stay in Meereen was guilt and the realization that the people she left behind were going to get hurt, and she didn’t want to leave another city behind. And having to let the Yunkai’i go back to slaving is a harsh reminder of that. But it is her only choice to keep Meereen free, and it was the right choice. If she tried to fight Yunkai, she would have lost and then all three cities of Slaver’s Bay would return to slavery. But it is a choice that takes a piece of her, and makes her feel like everything she fought for was pointless.

Looked at it in isolation, the situation with Yunkai seems to suggest that Dany’s mistake was passing the city without military force, and Dany herself would agree with that:

She was coming to regret leaving the Yellow City untaken after defeating its army in the field. The Wise Masters had returned to slaving as soon as she moved on, and were busy raising levies, hiring sellswords, and making alliances against her.

But then Daenerys has to face what has become of Astapor, which she did attack with force, and it’s even worse:

Cleon the self-styled Great was no better, however. The Butcher King had restored slavery to Astapor, the only change being that the former slaves were now the masters and the former masters were now the slaves.

At first, Dany is untroubled by the fall of Astapor, because they are no threat to her and even march against her enemies. Then the first rider appears:

"He came out of the morning mists, a rider on a pale horse, dying. His mare was staggering as she approached the city gates, her sides pink with blood and lather, her eyes rolling with terror. Her rider called out, 'She is burning, she is burning,' and fell from the saddle”

Soon, hundreds and thousands of people fleeing Astapor arrive outside the gates of Meereen, begging to be let inside the walls. Daenerys’ first instinct is to help them, and she tries her best to do so:

“I will not turn away from them,” she said stubbornly. “A queen must know the sufferings of her people.”

“Go if you wish, ser. I will not detain you. I will not detain any of you.” Dany vaulted down from the horse. “I cannot heal them, but I can show them that their mother cares.”

Dany is willing to ride out amongst those suffering from the bloody flux, because she sees herself as their mother and every part of her wants to be able to help them. She even intended on letting them in the gates. But then Daario brings news of the Yunkish armies gathering in the hills, and again Dany is forced to make an awful, but right, choice:

She wanted to scream, to gnash her teeth and tear her clothes and beat upon the floor. Instead she said, “Close the gates. Will you make me say it thrice?” They were her children, but she could not help them now.

Even though this is an awful call to have to make, it is the right one. Leaving the gates open long enough to let everyone from Astapor in would have left Meereen exposed to Yunkai’s attack, and Meereen barely has enough food to feed their own people and wouldn’t have been able to sustain thousands more. Most importantly, though, is that the people from Astapor are carrying the Bloody Flux, which is basically an even more contagious version of dysentery; men who Daenerys had sent into the Astapori camps to help feed them all caught the flux and most died from it. If she had let them into Meereen, the whole city could have been wiped out.

In the end, I think Daenerys made the right choices when it came to Astapor and Yunkai (even though the decisions she made were far from perfect or even good). But, why did she have to make those hard choices at all? Ruling a city was never going to be easy, but the unrest in both Astapor and Yunkai, though she approached them with two entirely different strategies, is making a clear point: Daenerys never should have left them. Meereen is the only city of Slaver’s Bay that is able to keep the slaves freed, and it is also the only city where Daenerys stayed. No matter how radical the change is (like Astapor), or subtle (Yunkai), someone needs to stay and make sure the change stays in place. So, while Daenerys ultimately made the right choices to keep her own city safe, she is the one who left Astapor and Yunkai in positions to fall apart.

The biggest problem Daenerys faces inside Meereen is the threat from the Sons of the Harpy, a shadow-group of murderers who target freedmen. This is also the best ruling Daenerys does as queen, rarely making a poor choice and mostly making the best one. Trying to ease the tensions between the Nobles and the Freedmen is an almost impossible task, though, because of the long history of Meereen’s slave trade; and the sacking of the city only served to make it worse. The freed slaves are entirely justified in their hatred of their former masters, but since the slaves were given immunity for crimes they committed during the sack, the masters are even more horrible to the freedmen than they would have been otherwise. Since noble women were raped, property was defaced or stolen, and people were murdered, tensions in Meereen are running higher than ever as Daenerys tries to stop the killing.

The first steps she takes against the Harpy is to mix her City Guard, which was previously all Unsullied, to equal parts freedmen and Shavepates (former nobles who have taken to Dany’s cause), so that the Sons of the Harpy would have to kill their own; and to pay for these men, she enacts a “blood tax” that charges the nobles whenever the Harpy kills someone.

Even though these are good ideas, the killings don’t stop, and Daenerys has to try something else; eventually she decides on taking young hostages from the noble families, under threat of death if the killings continue. When she is actually faced with having to kill her hostages, though, she cannot go through with it; and that was the right decision. If she had killed them, it would have only served to give the noble families another excuse to fight against her rule and would have been used as evidence of her cruelty. By sparing them and befriending them, Daenerys is actually building bonds and relationships with the next generation of noble families that can only benefit her in the future.

But Daenerys can’t wait years to see the killings stop, and needs a solution to stop the Harpy immediately. The only thing that could do that is a permanent tie between Daenerys, who represents (in the eyes of the former masters) the former slaves, and a noble family; and the best way to do that is a marriage to Hizdahr zo Loraq, who has the Green Grace’s approval and has offered to marry Daenerys. She knows that marrying Hizdahr is her only choice:

“My people are bleeding. Dying. A queen belongs not to herself, but to the realm. Marriage or carnage, those are my choices. A wedding or a war.”

She resists this decision for a long time, and then tells Hizdahr that she won’t marry him unless Meereen goes 90 days with no murders. The reason she resists the marriage are obvious; it is the ultimate act of giving up her own agency for Meereen. Once she commits to marrying Hizdahr, she is losing the chance to choose who she loves, or to make a marriage alliance in Westeros. The idea of giving up herself in this way is devastating to Dany, and she’s only willing to make the choice when she’s absolutely sure that it will work, and that she has no other choice. But she does marry Hizdahr, because she knows that as a queen, she should put her people first:

“A queen loves where she must, not where she will."

Her decision to marry Hizdahr is the one true attempt Daenerys makes to be a part of the Meereenese culture, and the way she blends Meereenese wedding traditions with her own – accepting the harmless and replacing the offensive – is a great example of how Daenerys could move forward in Meereen peacefully.

Now that I’ve explained what Dany did right fighting the Sons of the Harpy, she does make some morally wrong calls. The killings make Daenerys justifiably angry, but the way she handles that anger is letting the Shavepate torture suspects and their kids:

Mercy, thought Dany. They will have the dragon’s mercy. “Skahaz, I have changed my mind. Question the man sharply.”

“I could. Or I could question the daughters sharply whilst the father looks on. That will wring some names from him.”

“Do as you think best, but bring me names.” Her fury was a fire in her belly.

It is one thing to torture someone you only suspect of being involved in a crime, but it is even worse to torture girls just to get at their father. And while this is the only instance we hear of Daenerys allowing the torture of people she knows are innocent to try and get confessions, it’s made clear that the Shavepate is torturing a lot of people:

“I do not doubt that Skahaz would soon have me confessing. A day with him, and I will be one of the Harpy’s Sons. Two days, and I will be the Harpy. Three, and it will turn out I slew your father too, back in the Sunset Kingdoms when I was yet a boy. Then he will impale me on a stake and you can watch me die. . . but afterward the killings will go on.”

“I do not trust these confessions. You’ve brought me too many of them, all of them worthless.”

The first quote is from Hizdahr, showing that the Shavepate has a reputation amongst the noble families of being especially brutal. Dany allowing that kind of behavior gives the nobles real reasons to hide behind when they don’t support her. And the second quote is from Dany herself, showing that Hizdahr’s perspective wasn’t biased, and the Shavepate truly is getting false confessions from people; which more than suggests his methods are particularly brutal.

Furthering the divide between the Nobles and Freedman, Daenerys forces the Nobles into labor, digging fields to plant trees. Xaro Xhoan Daxos notices this when he enters the city, and uses it against Dany when she refuses to let the other cities have slaves, since the men forced to work for Dany are asking to be made slaves again.

Besides marrying Hizdahr, the biggest choice Dany has to make for the good of Meereen is chaining her dragons. Locking them away is a huge sacrifice for Daenerys, since she sees them as her children, and it leaves her at a political disadvantage when negotiating with Yunkai and Qarth (since the dragons are her only real advantage). Without them, Dany is worried she won’t even be able to hold Meereen:

Without dragons, how could she hope to hold Meereen, much less win back Westeros?

And she knows that she could destroy her enemies with them:

She was the blood of the dragon. She could kill the Sons of the Harpy, and the sons of the sons, and the sons of the sons of the sons.

But Dany also knows that however useful dragons are for killing enemies, they can’t bring peace to the city:

But a dragon could not feed a hungry child nor help a dying woman’s pain.

On the surface, Daenerys chaining her dragons seems like a very good thing she did; but again, just like with the disasters of Astapor and Yunkai, Daenerys helps create a problem, waits until it hits a fever pitch, and then makes the right choice at the end. All the way back in A Storm of Swords, Daenerys was already having fears about her dragons:

"Did any of them try to burn their way free?" That was the thing that frightened Dany the most.

Also in that book, Drogon gets upset and bites Irri hard enough to make her bleed. So, even before A Dance with Dragons starts, there is plenty of warning signs about what her dragons are capable of. And once the book starts, and some time has passed for the dragons to grow even larger, it’s clear the dragons have only become more unruly:

Her dragons were growing wild of late. Rhaegal had snapped at Irri, and Viserion had set Reznak’s tokar ablaze the last time the seneschal had called. I have left them too much to themselves, but where am I to find the time for them?

And Drogon has been out hunting, killing many people’s livestock:

In my meta about Daenerys’ personal arc, I’ll discuss more of how she could let the dragons get so far out of hand before intervening, but right now I just want to draw attention to how bad a decision that was politically. Even before Hazzea is killed, Drogon burning the sheep is starting to become a problem between Daenerys and her people; as she noticed when she agreed to pay the people off, it doesn’t make them happy. And it’s especially bad that Daenerys is starting to lose their support, because they are all she has; since the nobles don’t support her, Daenerys depends on the freedmen and lower classes to keep her crown.

But the biggest issue with Daenerys allowing Drogon to roam the hillsides, is how obvious it was that an incident like Hazzea was inevitably going to happen. Once Hazzea is killed, Daenerys’ rule depends on the silence of a grieving father; because, if her murder ever got out, the city of Meereen would abandon Daenerys. It also puts her in a position where she has to take advantage of one of her people:

Dany chose to pay the blood price. No one could tell her the worth of a daughter, so she set it at one hundred times the worth of a lamb. “I would give Hazzea back to you if I could,” she told the father, “but some things are beyond the power of even a queen. Her bones shall be laid to rest in the Temple of the Graces, and a hundred candles shall burn day and night in her memory. Come back to me each year upon her nameday, and your other children shall not want . . . but this tale must never pass your lips again.”

“Men will ask,” the grieving father had said. “They will ask me where Hazzea is and how she died.”

“She died of a snakebite,” Reznak mo Reznak insisted. “A ravening wolf carried her off. A sudden sickness took her. Tell them what you will, but never speak of dragons.”

Daenerys rule rests on the good will and/or fear of a grieving father. All because she put her dragons before her people.

Tokars

The choices Daenerys has to make with Astapor and Yunkai, where she has to leave people to be enslaved or die because she can’t save everyone, start to break Dany’s will and it gets harder and harder for her to keep giving parts of herself to Meereen. But those are not the reasons that Daenerys decides to abandon the city at the end of A Dance with Dragons; I touched upon it earlier, but the real reason her rule in Meereen is unsustainable is that Daenerys doesn’t want to be a queen. She holds onto the idealized version she had, of being a mother to her people and feeling as if she belongs; but the actual day to day responsibilities of being a Queen, of representing even the people she doesn’t like, and making hard choices, is not for her. She is still a young girl, and often times foolish in the way she carries herself.

I want to preface this next section by saying this: if it seems like I’m being hard on Dany, that’s because I am. She, more than any other character in A Song of Ice and Fire, should be held to a higher standard; because she wields more power than anyone else. Cersei as Queen Mother and Jon as Lord Commander come the closest, but Cersei’s power is tied to Tommen and easily taken by Margaery, and Jon’s power is limited to the very small number of men in the Night’s Watch. Daenerys controls an entire city, and has three dragons to do whatever she wants with. And Dany intentionally sought her power out, completely out of self-interest; while her time in Slaver’s Bay evolves into a humanitarian effort, it began as her trying to gather an army to take back her family’s throne – not to better the lives of the smallfolk, but because she feels Westeros belongs to her. She went looking for power, and managed to get it; enough so that people live and die based on her choices. Because more lives are at stake, Daenerys should be held to a higher standard. Keep that in mind while reading. . .

From the first chapter, Daenerys’ immaturity is on display:

If he proposes again that I wed King Cleon, I’ll throw a slipper at his head.

She finds holding court very boring, and it’s hard for her to keep her “floppy ears” on:

The slippers the Butcher King had sent her had grown too uncomfortable. Dany kicked them off and sat with one foot tucked beneath her and the other swinging back and forth. It was not a very regal pose, but she was tired of being regal. The crown had given her a headache, and her buttocks had gone to sleep.

But while holding court, she manages to keep her discontent mostly to herself. Meeting with Xaro Xhoan Daxos, she is less diplomatic:

She took a cherry from the bowl on the table and threw it at his nose

His jeweled nose made a tempting target. This time Dany threw an apricot at him.

I cannot stress enough how immature this is; the Queen of Meereen throwing fruit at one of the Thirteen of Qarth. However annoying she finds Xaro, a queen should carry herself with more self-control.

The tokar, a traditional Meereenese garb worn by the nobility, is the way GRRM symbolizes Daenerys’ lack of patience with Meereen and queenship. This is how she describes the tokar:

The garment was a clumsy thing, a long loose shapeless sheet that had to be wound around her hips and under an arm and over a shoulder, its dangling fringes carefully layered and displayed. Wound too loose, it was like to fall off; wound too tight, it would tangle, trip, and bind. Even wound properly, the tokar required its wearer to hold it in place with the left hand. Walking in a tokar demanded small, mincing steps and exquisite balance, lest one tread upon those heavy trailing fringes. It was not a garment meant for any man who had to work. The tokar was a master's garment, a sign of wealth and power.

Daenerys is right that it is a garment for the wealthy, because the design of the tokar makes it impossible for practical use, so her hatred isn’t entirely unjustified. But the tokar also represents the tightwire Dany has to walk as queen; one step out of line, and the tokar could fall off, and she would lose her floppy ears. And that’s why she hates it: all of her attention goes to keeping it on, and it limits her freedom. The tokar is everything she hates about Meereen. Knowing the tokar represents Dany’s complicated relationship with Meereen, it’s fascinating to see the details GRRM has woven into her chapters:

With Jhiqui's help, she wound the tokar about herself correctly on her third attempt.

Meereen being the third city she conquered in Slaver’s Bay, the symbolism is pretty clear. The idea that she gets her third attempt correct also reinforces a point I’ve been trying to make through this post; for all of her missteps, Daenerys actually manages to achieve peace in Meereen. But in the end, she throws it away (but I’ll get into that more later).

When Hazzea’s father lingers in her court after she has dismissed everyone, it angers Dany:

As Dany stood, her tokar began to slip. She caught it and tugged it back in place. "You with the sack," she called, "did you wish to speak with us? You may approach."

The tokar is the physical manifestation of Dany’s “floppy ears”, and when she lets her queenly façade slip, so does her garment. But it’s very important that while the tokar sometimes slips, Dany never lets it fall. Like the mistakes she makes as queen, she can fix her dress before it all comes crashing down. She can, and did, make the peace in Meereen work, even if she came dangerously close to failing; Daenerys learned to walk the tightwire of Meereen. The only way the tokar will fall is if she chooses to take it off.

And that’s exactly what she does. After marrying Hizdahr, she agrees to attend the fighting pits with him, and that’s when she hits her breaking point. Through all the sacrifices she has to make, keeping the fighting pits closed is the one thing she never had to give in to. So, when she is faced with seeing her last stand fall to the Meereenese, she is looking for reasons to walk. Then Barsena begins her fight:

The boar buried his snout in Barsena’s belly and began rooting out her entrails. The smell was more than the queen could stand. The heat, the flies, the shouts from the crowd. . . I cannot breathe.

I think people focus too much on Drogon’s shocking return in the fighting pits, and forget what Dany was doing before he arrived. Practically speaking, Drogon returns because he smells meat and blood and wants to kill; but symbolically speaking, Drogon returns at the moment Daenerys stopped pretending in Meereen. And previously when Daenerys was faced with the choice of saving her dragons or saving her people, she was willing to chain the dragons. But this time, Daenerys is willing to let people die to save Drogon:

Drogon raised his head, blood dripping from his teeth. The hero leapt onto his back and drove the iron spearpoint down at the base of the dragon’s long scaled neck.

Dany and Drogon screamed as one.

Ser Barristan held her tightly. “Look away, Your Grace.”

“Let me go!” Dany twisted from his grasp. The world seemed to slow as she cleared the parapet.

In total, Drogon killed 214 people and wounded three times as many before he finally leaves with Dany. Politically speaking, this is a disaster for Daenerys. The Yunkish envoys were caught in the fire and killed, as well as many highborn nobles and even freedmen. Where Daenerys was able to cover up Hazzea’s death, there is no hiding what Drogon has done in Daznak’s Pit. And that’s why in her absence, Meereen completely collapses and war begins.

But Daenerys was never going to go back to the city as their queen. When she is in the Dothraki Sea, she tries to convince herself to go back, even walking toward the city, but even before Drogon arrived in the Pit, Daenerys gave up on the peace she had worked so hard to make. The tokar is her “floppy ears”, the thing that allows her to be a queen of the rabbits; to take it off, Daenerys is saying she has no interest in doing that anymore.

Like I said at the beginning, Daenerys’ A Dance with Dragons arc splits into two halves – the personal and the political. If Daenerys X is the personal reckoning she has with herself to embrace Fire & Blood, Daenerys IX (the chapter in Daznak’s Pit) is the political falling out she has with Meereen. The only reason she can have her moment on the Dothraki Sea is because she has already given up on the one thing holding her back from her family’s legacy. It is only fitting that the last thing she does before Drogon appears, is take off the only thing tying her to Meereen:

She lifted her veil and let it flutter away. She took her tokar off as well. The pearls rattled softly against one another as she unwound the silk.

“Khaleesi?” Irri asked. “What are you doing?”

“Taking off my floppy ears.”

#daenerys targaryen #anti daenerys #game of thrones #A Song of Ice and Fire #a dance with dragons

255 notes · View notes

the-beacons-of-minas-tirith · 4 years

Text

I’ve watched all of the amazon prime show Hunters, and I did enjoy much of it, but there were obviously some parts that were problematic/controversial at best, offensive at worst.

I very much like (most of) the characters, they’re all diverse and have their own backstories, personalities and strengths. I would have liked to see more of Joe and Roxy’s characters/backstories, though we probably will get that in S2. The acting is phenomenal, especially from Logan Lerman. And the action sequences are highly entertaining, particularly the harsh justice dealt towards the nazis. (Although the nazi-torture scenes are often quite brutal and gruesome, which is understandably triggering/upsetting to some viewers.) It’s also notable that almost all of the Jewish characters are played by Jewish actors/actresses, which is an important accomplishment in and of itself. There were scenes that genuinely moved me to tears, particularly Murray and Mindy’s backstory. The cinematic aspects, including emotional invocation and pop culture references, are very well done in places. The show can be funny as well as fun, and then be dramatic and tension-filled a moment later.

However, I have seen many mixed reviews from the Jewish community about this show. Some people praise the show, some are generally on the fence about it, and some have outright condemned it. It’s clear that the show isn’t completely based in historical fact, even if there are characters/scenes/plots that are based on real life people/events. I’m not Jewish myself, but it’s very important to listen to Jewish people’s criticisms on media that depicts them. From what I’ve read, there are legitimate grievances against certain scenes that depict the concentration camps, and some of the cultural aspects that become blurred and/or disregarded (such as languages and ethnicity, among other things.) There are also many people who have disliked that the show seems to play with the trope of “killing monsters makes you a monster”. In my personal opinion, I believe they were trying to lean more into the physical/psychological effects of committing murder/torture, even if it didn’t land at first, but they did seem to end the debate with how the finale ended.

And speaking of the finale, of course there’s the “big twist”, which was downright awful and completely offensive. David Weil, the show’s creator, is Jewish, and I don’t know how much input he had in writing the script or giving the green light to the final draft, but I really hope the finale’s “twist” wasn’t his idea. Hunters has a lot of good scenes/plots/characterization, so it just confuses and angers me that they threw it away for the “twist” to “shock the audience” etc. Yes, it was a shock, but that’s not what was needed. I can think of a dozen different and better ways that that scene could have gone.

All in all, I will watch S2 if and when it comes out, though with a large amount of caution, as well as getting multiple opinions from the Jewish community. There were parts of S1 that I was iffy about, or didn’t understand why they were problematic before reading up on it (as stated before, I’m not Jewish.) I do genuinely find the story interesting and I enjoyed the characters and scenes throughout. But as much as I like about the show, there are many parts that need to be improved upon going forward. I KNOW these writers can do better.

#hunters #hunters amazon prime #hunters amazon #hunters tv show #hunters spoilers #tv shows #jewish #judaism #antisemitism #history #historical fiction #cinemetography #acting #writing #script writing #tv show writing #my review #my opinion #long post

47 notes · View notes

hunterinabrowncoat · 4 years

Text

Confession and Religious Trauma

I was reading a chapter in Nadia Bolz-Webber’s amazing book ‘Accidental Saints’ the other day, about sin and confession. The idea of Confession with a Capital ‘C’ is pretty foreign to me, having grown up in an Evangelical church. That kind of stuff was far too Catholic, and therefore suspect.

In my tradition, you just say sorry to God in your private prayer time, and it’s all forgiven already anyway because of the Doctrine of Grace means God looks at people who’ve Accepted Jesus As Personal Lord and Saviour and sees Jesus in all his perfection instead.

Pastor Bolz-Webber said some great stuff about sin. Like this:

“In the end, we aren’t punished for our sins so much as we are punished by our sins.

And sin is just the state of human brokenness in which what we say and do causes these sometimes tiny and sometimes monstrous fractures in our earth, in ourselves, in those we love, and sometimes even in our own bodies.”

I like the way she presented sin; not as some stain that dirties us and needs to be washed away, but the state of human brokenness we all inhabit. And in that light, confession stops being about making you feel guilty or reminding yourself how many bad things you’ve done, but rather is about giving you freedom from the guilt that already consumes you and the things that are eating at your conscience. It’s about coming to God, coming to community, and finding healing and restoration from that brokenness through God’s beautiful, raging mercy. It offers release and a chance to experience God’s grace through community and liturgy.

But like much of the Christian liturgy, I really struggle to engage with it. Partly because it’s so foreign to me and just feels a bit... weird. But partly because of religious trauma.

As I’ve spoken briefly about before, in deconstructing my faith and Evangelical upbringing, I’ve become disillusioned with and wanted to distance myself from many of the practices I grew up with. I feel uncomfortable in those spaces now. And in its absence, I desperately long for religious ritual and festivals; for meaningful practice that connects me to my ancestors and my community through collective tradition.

And yet, whenever I am in a Christian space that has liturgy, or that is more traditional, I am just left feeling distinctly uncomfortable, disconnected and out of place. It feels as though this is someone else’s tradition, something I have no connection to.

I haven’t found a solve for this yet, honestly. I just continue to go to church and feel out of place.

And maybe that’s part of why I struggle to engage with confession. But that’s not all it is, because it’s not just alien, it’s deeply uncomfortable and difficult.

I’m not going to pretend that all of my problems with saying sorry are about church and the way I was churched, because I also struggle to say sorry to other people. It’s a pride thing. Even when I feel bad, it’s like the word physically get stuck in my throat. I dislike being vulnerable with other people, and I find actually verbally talking to people about difficult or personal things, like, really hard.

But I also can’t deny the impact that my religious upbringing had on the way I view apologies, especially confession. When I engage with that part of the liturgy, or that practice, when it comes time to confess, I don’t experience absolution or God’s grace or any sense of release. Instead, I am overcome with feelings of toxic shame and guilt and self-hatred that my Evangelical upbringing instilled in me.

I grew up in a tradition that taught the concept of ‘Original Sin’. It told me I am inherently dirty and I was born unclean and I could never do enough to earn God’s favour because I will always fall short. Needless to say, it’s done a number on me.

The concept of Original Sin, as well as the emphasis Evangelicalism puts on sin, particularly things that in the grand scheme of things are often inconsequential like having sexual thoughts about somebody or swearing or feeling perfectly natural human emotions like anger, is incredibly damaging. It makes you feel guilty for enjoying anything. It makes you feel so much shame simply for being a perfectly ordinary human being with normal, human desires and needs and emotions.

People who are much more learned and articulate than me have written extensively about the subject. But needless to say, it caused me a lot of self-hatred, and a lot of guilt and shame that just festers as the sort of background noise to my life.

So much of my deconstruction journey has been letting go of that and learning to experience life without feeling guilty about everything. I’m allowed to enjoy things just because they’re enjoyable. Pleasure isn’t sinful. Who I am - my queerness, my sexuality, my gender - aren’t sinful. Indulgence isn’t sinful. Experiencing emotions aren’t sinful - they’re perfectly normal and healthy, and the important thing is not to deny them but allow myself to experience them, and make sure my actions and responses to them are measured and appropriate.

Then I come to confession, and I feel all of that guilt and shame and self-hatred creeping back in and undoing all of that work.

I was taught, growing up, that not only are we all born inherently sinful and stained, but also that we all sin every day. And when it came to prayer, and we were encouraged to say sorry to God for the bad things we’d done (you know the teaspoon [TSP] prayer - Thank you, Sorry, and Please). There will always be something to say sorry for, and to think otherwise means you’re proud or conceited, because we’re all imperfect and we all do things wrong.

And I don’t think that’s necessarily untrue. We are all imperfect. Even when we don’t fuck up in some big way that plays on our conscience for ages, we all say or do things that are less than kind. There are always situations where we could have shown a little more grace, or had a little more patience, or shown a little more love. None of us are perfect. We do all make mistakes.

But when it comes to confession, I often can’t think of anything to confess. I can’t think of something I’ve done recently that that I need for absolution over. Rarely do I do things and feel really torn up about it later. And if I do, it’s usually because of anxiety and not because I’ve committed some heinous grievance against my fellow humans.

When people tell me I’ve hurt them, I apologise and I try to do better. And... there is the resolution. When I feel I’ve wronged someone, I apologise and I try to do better. And there is the resolution.

To then bring it up again to God during confession feels like pointlessly drudging back up stuff that has already been sorted, for no reason other than to remind me of all the ways that I’m imperfect.

There’s also the issue of course, the eternal Exvangelical Sturggle, of “is the guilt I feel actually a reasonable amount of guilt to feel due to something I’ve genuinely done wrong, or do I just feel a deep sense of shame because it was effectively instilled in me that I am dirty and bad and I’ve learned to feel awful for many things that I don’t believe are wrong at all, like... experiencing human emotions, or seeking pleasure, or saying ‘no’?”

So in the absence of things I actually feel guilty over, I often confess rather vaguely... Sorry for all the times I wasn’t as patient or gracious as I could have been. Sorry for the times I could have got up and done something, but instead was lazy and just didn’t. Sorry for all the ways I’ve fallen short this week. Sorry for all the petitions I didn’t sign or GoFundMes I didn’t donate to that I could have if I didn’t buy that book or that t-shirt. Sorry for being selfish. Sorry for not getting all my work done this week. Sorry for every time I forgot to read my Bible. Sorry for every instance I could have prayed but didn’t.

And it just feels like it quickly becomes “sorry for not being good enough”. Which is a horrible way to think about yourself.

I’ve done so much work to get myself to see that I am enough. To be kind to myself. To forgive myself. To accept that I am not nor will I ever be perfect. That I cannot be everything and give everything and do everything. That I’m a limited human being, and that’s okay.

And confession just makes me feel like I’m undoing all of that work. And honestly? I just don’t know what to do with that.

I don’t know if this is a common experience for people deconstructing their faith and trying to reconstruct some kind of meaningful practice. I don’t know if I need to “fix” this and find a way to engage with confession. I’d like to think that God is big enough to find a way to reach us all, even with our messiness and complexities and all our baggage.

#christianity #confession #sin #absolution #nadia bolz-webber #accidental saints #religion #original sin #mine #faith tag #personal

10 notes · View notes

things2mustdo · 4 years

Link

We are all too familiar with the SJWs’ “muh feelings” pose. We are also familiar with the Leftists’ manipulative stance, be it through their sanctimonious bullying, guilt-tripping, appeals to a pseudo-consensus, veiled threats, or constant emotional blackmailing. The maelstrom of emotions the Left plays with makes tempting to withdraw emotionally. We might be led to think that the higher good lies in “cold, hard facts” alone. But if we do so, we easily forget that cold facts do not prompt for any action, and if we merely describe while trying to get emotionally disconnected, we cut ourselves off the game.

Passions are part of the game

When the infamous Karl Marx wrote that modern capitalism “drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation,” he had a point. The bourgeois world of classic modernity is emotionally lacking, and both the bohemian artistry and Communist radical politics stepped up to fulfill the void. This historical point is still relevant today. Conservatives fail to make stands because they are much more passionate about their personal interest than about defending anything they pretend to stand for. SJWs, on the other hand, went very far into shrieking and bullying because they are usually passionate for their points. Different motivations lead to different outcomes. And a strong motivation, not to say a deep or passionate commitment, greatly helps to build a strong character.

The far-left was able to pick up people’s passions because the bourgeois would not, and perhaps could not, do that. The bourgeois idea of progress was about people becoming farm animals, individuals reduced to the status of producers and consumers in a world where nothing really new or interesting could appear anymore. In such a world, there is no need for passions and no need for politics, isn’t it? Well, the individuals would not let themselves get boiled down to the status of mere economical agents, and many preferred embracing some ridiculous strand of new-age spirituality, worthless artistry or even becoming Communists than living through the bourgeois-conservative nothingness..

Rejecting the passions and emotions, or at the very least trying to put them aside as to ignore them, made men weak and unable to take a stance. It has also made women unhinged, shameless, and willing to do anything for short-term pleasure, as no men were able to give them a proper sense of boundaries. Plus, passions being powerful motivators, the far-left mastery when it comes to stirring some made it tremendously powerful as well.

We must face passions, not as an annoyance, but as a resource that has to be mastered. This is true for ourselves and others. First, when we are aware of our emotional states without being directly prompted (“triggered”) by them, we gain the ability to choose consciously what we do and want to do, and can follow our own intuitions instead of getting framed by an alien narrative. Second, when we are also aware of others’ emotional states, we can steer them in a specific direction.

The latter is especially true for women: today, they follow fashions and MSM approval, when not following their own sluttiness and attention-whoring… but if men were able to reward, shame, and inspire proper passions in them, they would follow us instead. If we want this to happen, we have to take over the empire of passions and stir up some emotions in the public’s hearts, be it through discourse, artwork, or daily conversations. Here are three emotions I think we should be keen to stir.

1. Empathy

According to Dr. Neel Burton,

Empathy can be defined as a person’s ability to recognize and share the emotions of another person, fictional character, or sentient being. It involves, first, seeing someone else’s situation from his perspective, and, second, sharing his emotions, including, if any, his distress. (Burton, Heaven and Hell, chap.21, p.153)

As empathy fits well with maternal instinct and motivates nurturing tendencies, women are naturally prone to it. Up until a very recent time, they took care of babies and small children, participated to local charities, worked in shelters for the homeless or went through menial but important tasks as nurses. They did so because their natural empathy motivated them to act this way.

By contrast, a striking feature of feminism is that it destroys womanly empathy and nurturing tendencies. From a feminist point of view, men are enemies or at the very least potential oppressors and children are a burden. Feminism reverses the empathy, turns it into defiance or even hatred. Worse: after women have lost their ability to feel positively towards the men they should at least respect, cultural Marxism stirs their natural empathy towards “minority” identities. Thus we see grrls caring about thugs, invaders, or weirdos, who are all positively portrayed in the media, more than they care about what should be their community.

The lack of empathy is also a problem among white men. Though black men often exert violence against each other, the majority of them always bonds when it comes to attacking the depleted white majority. The same goes for any community out there: they empathize with each other more than they would ever empathize with us. We, white men, are the only ones who do the exact opposite by being hypercritical against each other when we should actually be supportive and look at the positive rather than the negative.

There should be a lot more empathy towards us than there currently is. Others should be more sensitive to our plight, suffer when we suffer, or at least feel compelled to suffer when we do. We are the proximate [prochain?], not the Big Other. We, too, should have more empathy among ourselves: nice guys, for example, should not be considered as “jerks” or “bastards,” as say some red-pilled guys who seem to have internalized a negative framing, but as misled victims who proved some nobility by trying to conciliate “respect” for women with the healthy desire to get a deeper relationship. Along the same lines, the working- or middle-class average Joe who got disenfranchised should be painted on a positive and humane light so that wealthy liberals cannot ignore or merely sneer at him.

2. Hope

Here is an emotion the Left has really abused from. Remember 2007-8, when the first “black” president was supposed to end the racial tensions in the US as well as the neocon foreign wars? Democrat activists at that time wrote without batting an eyelid about their hope for a world without losers, for an outcome where everyone would win. Then, the racial tensions have never been so high, the white majority is more dispossessed than ever, and the same liberals who were trumpeting about a world without losers have no shame calling us losers—from their choices and politics. Hope has been abused from, and we have to take it back. In fact, we have already started to.

Hope can be defined as the desire for something to happen combined with an anticipation of it happening. It is the anticipation of something desired… To hope for something is to desire that thing, and to believe, rightly or wrongly, that the probability of it happening, though less than 1, is greater than 0. (Neel Burton, Heaven and Hell, chap.14, p.103)

Trump is a wild card who comes with no guarantee, for sure. He still gives us something no Obama could ever give us—hope. The Alt-Right, manosphere, and the whole flourishing of high-quality dissenting intellectual efforts give us hope as well. Someone wrote that “the Alt-Right represents the first new philosophical competitor to liberalism, broadly defined, since the fall of Communism.” Someone else, here on ROK, noticed that more and more women were fed up with misandric grievance-mongering and longed to become mothers. These trends are more than interesting: they seem to point towards a better future that we still have to conquer.

On the other side, the liberal status quo and Hillary in particular mean pure hopelessness. If Hillary gets elected, we will have even less jobs, anti-white and anti-male organized groups will attack even more, the wealthy globalists will get fatter at our expense, and so on. Interestingly, liberals today use arguments of a conservative kind: when they shriek something as “the 5 last US presidents tell you not to vote for Trump” or “the Alt-Right and deplorables are un-American,” they look more like McCarthyists than hippies. They are the establishment clinging to the status quo and worsening. We are the embodiment of hope for a positive change.

3. Love

While hope should be spread among any decent people and is pretty straightforward once we agree on the intrinsic value of its object, love appears a bit trickier. In a relationship, whoever loves the other most is dominated whereas who loves less has more room to take action. If a man falls in love, he falls in the sense that he gets dumbed down, pedestalizes the girl, who in turn will get bored and look for a more challenging partner. Thus, seduction must be used to stir love in women: they must love us as well as their children. Both as a mistress and a mother, both as sexual and nurturing, a woman exerts love.

In men, love must be exerted in a more distilled and thoughtful form: when we protect our dear ones, toil for them, care about their interests, these efforts are an expression of love as well—although this form of love must be more distant as to allow ampler room for action. In any case, the feminine element must love the most and more directly.

It should be added that masculine and feminine can be conceived, not only as absolute, but also as relative terms. Esotericists consider that we are all “feminine” when considered under a higher point of view: the most fierce, courageous and risk-taking warrior remains “feminine” relatively to a genuine spiritual authority, and any human is “feminine” relatively to God as the ultimate Father. The Bible compares the good ones to a bride that shall get married to God (Revelation, 19). Hinduism recommends bhakti or devotion, i.e. religious love, to those belonging to the warrior caste, whereas the spiritual authority is more “masculine” as it enjoys a higher and more direct knowledge of God. These considerations might seem a bit far-fetched, but they were already highly relevant before the tiniest stint of modern degeneracy was born. Just remember that being in love is acceptable for a man as long as it never equates to pedestalizing a woman.

Conclusion

Passions and emotions matter. If we set them aside as irrelevant, someone else will push our emotional buttons—and the girls’—and spin us in no time. The philosopher René Descartes wrote that “all the good and the bad in this life depend from the passions” and that we had better be able to use them wisely. Ironically, the word “Cartesian” now denotes a logical, rationalistic, supernatural-denying mindset. This is accurate for the young Descartes, who was among the top scientists of his time, but tosses aside an important twist: the philosopher eventually lost his only daughter, Francine, and the sadness he felt while mourning her made him aware of the power of emotions. Yet, instead of being dominated by said emotions, Descartes strove to gain cogency about them, and he wrote a very interesting little treatise to expand a whole theory of the “passions of the soul.”

Our case is the same. Most if not all of us have been blue-pilled since infancy. Cultural Marxism was shoveled down our throat by school teachers, media figures, movies, social pressure. At each step of this process, our emotions were stirred and directed by spinsters so that, for example, we would feel a high empathy for so-called minorities while ignoring the homeless “white males” dying of cold at winter.

Ride the tiger of your own emotions and of (some) others’ as well if you don’t want sinister globalists to.

https://www.returnofkings.com/11010/how-to-control-your-emotional-state

We all have our ups and downs. Some days you feel on top of the world, you ooze a sexy masculine confidence that women love whereas other days you couldn’t be bothered to shave — you scowl at the thought of doing anything interesting and avoid all outside contact. Many guys accept this with a “que sera, sera” mentality. They feel it is just the natural ebb and flow of things, that taming your emotional state would be too chaotic of a task.

Those who do wish to change usually use hokey terminology talking about “energy” and the “universe.” They’ll seek guidance from another source so that they do not have to take responsibility for letting their emotions get out of check. People also seek a quick cure for a continual state of happiness, but what they do not realize is that happiness is transient.

I do believe there is a way to wrangle your emotions that relies on you, your habits and the power you have to respond to various stimuli. Essentially you must minimize the negativity and maximize the positivity in your life by altering certain habits.

Minimize Habits That Lead To Negativity

Take a moment to think about any time you’ve lost control of your emotions. When did you last get angry, depressed, hateful, etc.? What do you do when you’re out talking to girls that hurts your success? Do you have unreasonable limiting beliefs? Do you believe you always need to be happy to be successful? Do you get frustrated when you have anxiety because of any of the above?

If you think about the above long enough and are mindful when such emotional states occur you will begin to notice a trend in what triggers them.

For me the biggest habits that lead to a negative state of mind, in which I lacked motivation, was depressed, and stayed inside all day, were my nutritional habits. I started to recognize a pattern: I’d go out drinking or eat highly processed foods, I’d wake up the next day tired and dehydrated, then I’d stay inside all day watching movies because I didn’t want to go to the gym or talk to people. The cycle would just endlessly repeat until the natural ebb and flow of things took me to a high point.

Maximize Habits That Lead To Positivity

Repeat the exercise above. When was the last time you felt on top of the world, when did you last feel invincible, when did you last have no anxieties? When were you on fire when talking to girls, what were you doing that made you so successful? What were the thoughts running through your head?

Again if you pay attention you will begin to see patterns. You’ll start to realize what habits lead to a great mood.

For me I felt the best when ‘rewarded’ with something. Whether it was having great sex, sharing something with a friend, new PRs in the gym, busting my ass in the library and getting a good grade, or learning a new skill.

The Keystone Habit

Roosh brought up keystone habits in a recent article titled “One Approach A Day.” Essentially it is an innocuous habit that has a much larger effect than planned.

For me I started a few keystone habits: I started the day off with a nice cold glass of lemon water and my vitamins. In doing this I started drinking more and more water leading me to be less dehydrated, more energetic and making better food choices.

I also made a rule that as soon as I start talking myself out of something reasonable I would force myself to do whatever it was I was trying to rationalize my way out of. Maybe I’d start thinking “I’m kind of sore and I still haven’t seen the new episode of Game of Thrones, I think I’ll go to the gym later.” I know I wouldn’t go to the gym later so I would immediately get up and put on my workout gear. Just by doing this I started getting in the mood for lifting — I’ve also heard of guys packing a gym bag every night and leaving it in their car.

The peaks and troughs of our emotional state should not define us. As a man, whether it be through eliminating negative triggers or forming positive habits, you should be fully in control of your emotions. Use the power of a keystone habit to enact much larger scale change so you can be in a perpetual state of positivity, or at the very least, neutrality.

Read Also: How To Change Your Bad Habits

1 note · View note