#even people who are VERY EDUCATED don’t necessarily know their mythology

[avelera]

As the weird mythology-obsessed kid growing up, I have countless times been disappointed by how little most people know about mythology, even in spaces where I thought people SHOULD know a bit more than the basics. (Namely, college level writing classes. Not just the students, but the teachers. At a top 20 liberal arts college. Literally just. Actual literature professors of mine not knowing relatively known stories like that Aphrodite cheated on Hephaestus with Ares. Reader, I was gobsmacked.)

The fact is, at least in the US, your average person on the street, NOT ON TUMBLR, but I mean like actually outside this bubble, doesn’t know much mythology. They might know Zeus, or Hercules, or “Mighty Aphrodite” based on recent TV shows or the Disney movies or the aforementioned song.

I’m reminded of this XKCD comic which really nails it:

This also applies to mythology. More people than you, the reader of this, probably don’t know who Orpheus and Eurydice are than you might think. Hadestown returned those names to the sort of mainstream and even THAT niche of musical theater is still, well, pretty damn niche.

Thor 3 has Zeus in it, and Hercules, and obviously Thor. But the Thor franchise is wildly inaccurate to actual Norse mythology is probably the biggest influx of mainstream knowledge of mythology where you MIGHT be able to talk to the average person about who, say, Loki is. But it’s doubtful they’d know a single historically accurate myth, unless MAYBE they’d also played God of War. But again, these are still very nerdy niches within the general mainstream culture.

I dunno. Maybe there’s no point to this. Just that sometimes I see people on here, especially in the Sandman fandom, kind of surprised by mythological knowledge not being more widespread. But in my personal experience, even in very nerdy circles, it very often really, REALLY isn’t.

[communistkenobi]

Political knowledge and interest in public affairs are critical preconditions for more active forms of involvement. If you don't know the rules of the game and the players and don't care about the outcome, you're unlikely to try playing yourself. Encouragingly, Americans in the aggregate at century's end are about as likely to know, for example, which party controls the House of Representatives or who their senators are as were their grandparents a half century ago. On the other hand, we are much better educated than our grandparents, and since civics knowledge is boosted by formal education, it is surprising that civics knowledge has not improved accordingly. The average college graduate today knows little more about public affairs than did the average high school graduate in the 1940s. (Bowling Alone, p 35)

Putnam just got done saying voting is only a limited slice of American political participation and voter turnout numbers can’t be used to generalise about all public political engagement, but we are now back to “knowing about elected officials” as a generalised version of political knowledge (which, as he argues, is a pre-condition to political participation, eg voting).

Adorno’s comment about the widespread political ignorance of the American public comes to mind while reading this, although his diagnosis is very different from Putnam’s, pointing instead to the industrial capitalist standardisation of education that produces extremely rigid knowledge frameworks that encourage people to think in set types, to believe there are singularly correct answers to complex problems, and that these answers are discoverable only within the available range of options (contributing to “both-sides”-isms and a failure to imagine political discourse beyond what is presented by political candidates). I think there’s a bunch of idealism going on there too, but Adorno at least acknowledges that education in America is the result of capitalist economic production shaping cultural and educational standards, which are deeply revisionist and use american imperial interests as the basis for educational programs. Coupled with how poorly funded and decentralised public education is, the privatised nature of post-secondary education, and the deeply racialised and gendered dimensions of economic inequality, access to the types of education that would inform you about political matters is reserved for the select few.

And that’s still a very generous criticism, given that Putnam’s argument rests on the absurd notion that political participation is a function of education (even though he acknowledges in that last sentence that college degrees don’t necessarily mean you “know the rules of the game.”) Again I’m not like a historical expert or anything, but my understanding is that black civil rights movements, gay civil rights movements, women’s rights movements etc in the 60s and onwards were not resultant from all those people individually getting college degrees or learning who their elected officials were but rather mass organising and protesting - ie, a response to the failures of electoral politics to secure civil rights and protections for oppressed groups. This is again a bourgeois conception of political participation - if education is a necessary function of political engagement, then mass movements and demonstrations do not really “count” as political engagement.

it’s honestly laughable that this book is as well-regarded and heavily cited as it is. Putnam is fundamentally unserious about and uninterested in anything outside of the American mythological conception of bourgeois individualism and electoral politics. The term “social capital,” a centrally important concept in his book, is not interrogated for any ideological baggage or methodological limitations it may carry, and he has not provided any explanation for social change aside from the completely ridiculous idea that generational change is the driving factor in American politics. He claims that a lack of knowledge or interests in electoral outcomes prevents people from “playing the game,” with no allowance for anyone who declares the game itself is unfair, or any argument that we should change the rules of the game. He’s writing about the social life in America with the assumption that there is literally nothing beyond liberal electoral individualism, and any arguments to the contrary - any political activity that is illegal, unpopular to the white public, or simply uninterested in electoralism - to be unimportant in diagnosing the social ills of American society. What a fucking joke

[qqueenofhades]

Do you really hate this county? Or were you just ranting?

Sigh. I debated whether or not to answer this, since I usually keep the real-life/politics/depressing current events to a relative minimum on this blog, except when I really can't avoid ranting about it. But I have some things to get off my chest, it seems, and you did ask. So.

The thing is, any American with a single modicum of genuine historical consciousness knows that despite all the triumphalist mythology about Pulling Up By Our Bootstraps and the American Dream and etc, this country was founded and built on the massive and systematic exploitation and extermination of Black and Indigenous people. And now, when we are barely (400 years later!!!) getting to a point of acknowledging that in a widespread way, oh my god the screaming. I'm so sick of the American right wing I could spit for so many reasons, not least of which is the increasingly reductive and reactive attempts to put the genie back in the bottle and set up hysterical boogeymen about how Teaching Your Children Critical Race Theory is the end of all things. They have forfeited all pretense of being a real governing party; remember how their only platform at the 2020 RNC was "support whatever Trump says?" They have devolved to the point where the cruelty IS the point, to everyone who doesn't fit the nakedly white supremacist mold. They don't have anything to do aside from attempt to usher in actual, literal, dictionary-definition-of-fascism and sponsor armed revolts against the peaceful transfer of power.

That is fucking exhausting to be aware of all the time, especially with the knowledge that if we miss a single election cycle -- which is exceptionally easy to do with the way the Democratic electorate needs to be wooed and courted and herded like cats every single time, rather than just getting their asses to the polls and voting to keep Nazis out of office -- they will be right back in power again. If Manchin and Sinema don't get over their poseur pearl-clutching and either nuke the filibuster or carve out an exception for voting rights, the John Lewis Voting Rights Act is never going to get passed, no matter how many boilerplate appeals the Democratic leadership makes on Twitter. In which case, the 2022 midterms are going to give us Kevin McCarthy, Speaker of the House (I threw up in my mouth a little typing that) and right back to the Mitch McConnell Obstruction Power Hour in the Senate. The Online Left (TM) will then blame the Democrats for not doing more to stop them. These are, of course, the same people who refused to vote for Hillary Clinton out of precious moral purity reasons in 2016, handed the election to Trump, and now like to complain when the Trump-stacked Supreme Court reliably churns out terrible decisions. Gee, it's almost like elections have consequences!!

Aside from my exasperation with the death-cult right-wing fascists and the Online Left (TM), I am sick and tired of how forty years of "trickle-down" Reaganomics has created a world where billionaires can just fly to space for the fun of it, while the rest of America (and the world) is even more sick, poor, overheated, economically deprived, and unable to survive the biggest public health crisis in a century, even if half the elected leadership wasn't actively trying to sabotage it. Did you know that half of American workers can't even afford a one-bedroom apartment? Plus the obvious scandal that is race relations, health care, paid leave, the education system (or lack thereof), etc etc. I'm so tired of this America Is The Greatest Country in the World mindless jingoistic catchphrasing. We are an empire in the late stages of collapse and it's not going to be pretty for anyone. We have been poisoned on sociopathic-libertarian-selfishness-disguised-as-Freedom ideology for so long that that's all there is left. We have become a country of idiots who believe everything their idiot friends post on social media, but in a very real sense, it's not directly those individuals' fault. How could they, when they have been very deliberately cultivated into that mindset and stripped of critical thinking skills, to serve a noxious combination of money, power, and ideology?

I am tired of the fact that I have become so drained of empathy that when I see news about more people who refused to get the vaccine predictably dying of COVID, my reaction is "eh, whatever, they kind of deserved it." I KNOW that is not a good mindset to have, and I am doing my best to maintain my personal attempts to be kind to those I meet and to do my small part to make the world better. I know these are human beings who believed what they were told by people that they (for whatever reason) thought knew better than them, and that they are part of someone's family, they had loved ones, etc. But I just can't summon up the will to give a single damn about them (I'm keeping a bingo card of right-wing anti-vax radio hosts who die of COVID and every time it's like, "Alexa, play Another One Bites The Dust.") The course that the pandemic took in 21st-century America was not preordained or inevitable. It was (and continues to be) drastically mismanaged for cynical political reasons, and the legacy of the Former Guy continues to poison any attempts to bring it under control or convince people to get a goddamn vaccine. We now have over 100,000 patients hospitalized with COVID across the country -- more than last summer, when the vaccines weren't available.

I have been open about my fury about the devaluation of the humanities and other critical thinking skills, about the fact that as an academic in this field, my chances of getting a full-time job for which I have trained extensively and acquired a specialist PhD are... very low. I am tired of the fact that Americans have been encouraged to believe whatever bullshit they fucking please, regardless of whether it is remotely true, and told that any attempt to correct them is "anti-freedom." I am tired of how little the education system functions in a useful way at all -- not necessarily due to the fault of teachers, who have to work with what they're given, and who are basically heroes struggling stubbornly along in a profession that actively hates them, but because of relentless under-funding, political interference, and furious attempts, as discussed above, to keep white America safely in the dark about its actual history. I am tired of the fact that grade school education basically relies on passing the right standardized tests, the end. I am tired of the implication that the truth is too scary or "un-American" to handle. I am tired. Tired.

I know as well that "America" is not synonymous in all cases with "capitalist imperialist white-supremacist corporate death cult." This is still the most diverse country in the world. "America" is not just rich white middle-aged Republicans. "America" involves a ton of people of color, women, LGBTQ people, Muslims, Jews, Christians of good will (I have a whole other rant on how American Christianity as a whole has yielded all pretense of being any sort of a principled moral opposition), white allies, etc etc. all trying to make a better world. The blue, highly vaccinated, Biden-winning states and counties are leading the economic recovery and enacting all kinds of progressive-wishlist dream policies. We DID get rid of the Orange One via the electoral process and avert fascism at the ballot box, which is almost unheard-of, historically speaking. But because, as also discussed above, certain elements of the Democratic electorate need to fall in love with a candidate every single time or threaten to withhold their vote to punish the rest of the country for not being Progressive Enough, these gains are constantly fragile and at risk of being undone in the next electoral cycle. Yes, the existing system is a crock of shit. But it's what we've got right now, and the other alternative is open fascism, which we all got a terrifying taste of over the last four years. I don't know about you, but I really don't want to go back.

So... I don't know. I don't know if that stacks up to hate. I do hate almost everything about what this country currently is, structurally speaking, but I recognize that is not identical with the many people who still live here and are trying to do their best, including my friends, family, and myself. I am exhausted by the fact that as an older millennial, I am expected to survive multiple cataclysmic economic crashes, a planet that is literally boiling alive, a barely functional political system run on black cash, lies, and xenophobia, a total lack of critical thinking skills, renewed assaults on women/queer people/POC/etc, and somehow feel like I'm confident or prepared for the future. Not all these problems are only America's fault alone. The West as a whole bears huge responsibility for the current clusterfuck that the world is in, for many reasons, and so do some non-Western countries. But there is no denying that many of these problems have ultimate American roots. See how the ongoing fad for right-wing authoritarian strongmen around the world has them modeling themselves openly on Trump (like Brazil's lunatic president, Jair Bolsonaro, who talks all the time about how Trump is his political role model). See what's going on in Afghanistan right now. Etc. etc.

Anyway. I am very, very tired. There you have it.

[lov3nerdstuff]

Hi Kay!

I just wanted to take a moment and say how deeply moving (and overall comforting) I find your writing to be! I've gone through almost the entirety of your masterlist twice in the past month alone and have found myself returning more often to the pieces of literature/poems your reference sometimes. (Especially that one poem by Benedict Smith! I've read a few more by him because of you and they're just wonderfully lovely 💛 so I'm eternally thankful to you for including it.)

I may be wrong in assuming, but I believe you may have studied/are currently studying a degree involving literature. I hope this isn't too foreward of me but I was wandering if you have any other works of literature that you'd recommend? (I'd love to read anything you recommend from poems to plays 💛) I'm slightly embaressed to say but the works I've read are quite limited to a highschool level and since I'm currently studying Pharmacy, there are very few people who can recommend me such moving works. :)

I also feel like I should apologise for writing such a large ask, so please accept this apology as well hehe 💕🥺

Sincerely,

Bek 🌻

Hey there Bek 💚💕✨

First of all... I'm incredibly sorry for how long it took me to reply to this ask, I know you sent it weeks ago and I'm honestly just ashamed of myself for only replying now! I've been taking a bit of a Tumblr break again, or rather a break from literally everything, and I guess not having written anything in a while made me feel guilty whenever I opened Tumblr, so... All I can say for myself really is that I'm sorry you had to wait so long! Again, I never ever ignore anyone, I promise! It just sometimes takes a while for me to reply 😅🙈

Now, I'm so happy to hear that you've been enjoying my writing! 🥺🥰 Hearing that it's comforting and inspiring to you is honestly such a relief and indeed does make me happy more than I can say 💚 It's so cool that you're checking up on all the references I make aaahhh 🥺🥺🥺 I love it 😁 You're always more than welcome, love! I don't think I could stop including references to literature, culture, history and the science around it even if I tried 😅☺️

And yeah, I did study classics and newer literature as a minor for my undergrad degree 😄 But tbh I still work with literally a lot even now (I'm in grad school for media and cultural studies) even though it's technically not something I've been properly taught ☺️ I'm just a nerd who likes to learn on her own, and with media and culture you can pretty much delve into almost anything you want 😂😅🤷🏻‍♀️

Now, it's not forward at all to ask me for literature recommendations! 😁😃 I truly love recommending stuff!!! I have a few up my sleeve, even though you've probably heard of a few already, for obvious reasons: A lot of what I truly enjoyed reading was something Tom Hiddleston has worked on in one way or another! It's truly a magnificent guideline for picking new literature... Just look up the literary origins of his films/shows/plays and you will be in for quality literature most of the time! I don't think I've ever mentioned it on here, but me reading High-Rise (JG Ballard) because I heard Tom would be partaking in the film adaptation was actually what sparked my love and passion for literature!!! Yep, it's that good. Now on to the recommendations though 😁(This... got rather long):

Plays

Anything by Harold Pinter really, but for obvious reasons you'll find a lot of additionally fun stuff for Betrayal, which is lovely and truly funny if you're in on the kind of humour btw

Medea by Euripides (a classic, but I love it nonetheless... You can find translations in almost every language) ((and pls stay away from Seneca's Medea, because ugh... Euripides is far better AND the og story, as much as anyone can say that for Greek mythology)

La Bohème by Puccini (I know, this is technically an opera, but if you read the libretto it's honestly just like a play... And if you're up for it, the og story is in prose and written by Henri Murger... It's better than the opera, but oftentimes more difficult to find) ((this one is hilarious and basically explains an entire cultural subgroup in the 19th century)

Faust by Goethe (many people hate it, but I LOVE this one!!! It's also been translated into any and every language, and it's so interesting philosophically!!! It's also referenced SO freaking often literally everywhere, and the operas and ballets based on it are always my fave) ((there's technically Faust I and Faust II, but you're good to go just reading the first one)

Anything by Shakespeare, obviously... Though I do love me my Hamlet like every other literature enthusiast (Yes, I can do that one famous soliloquy in act 3 scene 1 by heart as well...)

Poetry

Again, anything Shakespeare for the win, but I LOVE the sonnets and keep a copy of them with me most of the time (Yes, I own multiple copies of the sonnets...) ((My faves are 116 and 91, but there's always so much truth to be found in there!!!))

A lot of the stuff William Blake wrote is amazing, though you have to pick carefully with him if certain religious motives aren't your thing... I love The Tyger, which is an individual poem, and the collection of works called Tyger, Tyger which does have many good ones and a few ones that are a little more on the mediocre side

Do not go gentle into that good night by Dylan Thomas (I know this one by heart as well... It's beautiful, and there's a version of Hiddleston reading it on YouTube, which gives you even more goosebumps than the poem does anyway)

Invictus by William Ernest Henley (same for this one, also read by the one and only) ((I love to read this when I'm feeling down or powerless))

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T. S. Eliot (This is another wow piece with many quotable lines and truths... I love it a lot and keep coming back to it! It's also a great example of how literary modernism tried to condense the complexity and passing of time and history into a single frame that had to be intrinsically poetical in nature... As in, this poem could've been a short story in any other period, but modernists loved to make everything a poem so here you go)

Der Zauberlehrling by Goethe (This one sucks in all English translations I’ve found, poetically speaking, but in German it’s such a fun piece! If you’ve ever seen the Disney ‘The Sorcerer’s Apprentice’ with Mickey Mouse or listened to the orchestral piece by Paul Dukas, then this poem proves very useful in truly understanding either! But again, the English translation should only be taken for informational value... The German one is also worded hilariously)

Prose

Short edited by Alan Ziegler (This is a collection of short prose forms that honestly is a must for me... I love this book to pieces and have had it for years now! It’s an international anthology, so you’ll find more and less famous authors from all around the world represented with short stories, prose poems, short essays and just curious and interesting snippets of writing! I draw a lot of inspiration from this book)

High-Rise by JG Ballard (As mentioned above, I owe this book part of my personality... I don’t think I would be the same person without having read it. It’s not necessarily full of wisdom, but if you’re interested in a different kind of portrayal of the human condition, then this is the read you need to take a look at)

The City of Dreaming Books by Walter Moers (This is another piece that changed my perception of literature, even though this is a more ordinary and ‘fun’-value read... It’s one of my favourite books and it’s endlessly entertaining! So if the classics are a bit heavy for you, this one is perfect for casual readers as well! Its value really does lie more in the realisation of how fun literature can be, and the freedom you have as an author... So really, I could recommend everything by Moers, his style is amazing both in the German original and in the English translation. Yes, I’ve read both.)

Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett (This is comedic gold, stylistic gold and generally a bloody perfect book. Also a ‘fun’-value read, but it also does a magnificent job at showing you what you can do with literature, and how well-developed characters are supposed to be written)

The Penguin Book of the Undead (Penguin Classics) edited by Scott G. Bruce (This book is basically an education on fifteen hundred years of supernatural encounters and how culture wrote, used and perceived them. You get introductory texts for different periods and social groups, explaining how and why ghost stories were written and used, followed by passages of the prime source texts (eg. ancient necromancy shown on The Odyssey). Really, this book is just for cultural history nerds)

The Earthquake in Chile by Kleist (This isn’t necessarily one of my faves, but it has helped me understand what studying literature and culture can do for you. In case anyone remembers my insistence in Wicked Game that you gotta know what a pomegranate symbolises... this novella is such an instance where this knowledge would prove useful. Generally, it gives many opportunities to think about privilege and circumstance)

The Symposium by Plato (You’ll probably not want to read the entire collection of speeches tbh... But the concepts introduced mainly here and in some of Plato’s other work are well worth looking into! For example, the ‘double being’ introduces a concept that in modern fiction is called soulmates... Just sayin’)

[carewyncromwell]

“Good day, everyone. I hope that you’re all well...and that the world already turning its focus onto that most festive time of year has been a source of eagerness, rather than irritation.”

As much as time doesn’t affect me as much as it does the average man, even I can understand why humans would be chomping at the bit, to relish in the joys of Christmas.

“I am called Bartholomew, or Bat, Varney. Those of you who my mundane refers to as ‘characters from the HPHL timeline’ might know me as the vampire who you’ve heard lives up in the attic above Honeydukes sweetshop and can provide you ‘interesting’ lesson plans, upon request. Though that’s a bit of an exaggeration -- I certainly don’t teach everyone who approaches me. Still, I have a particular passion for education and knowledge. But I suppose that’s par the course, for those Sorted into Ravenclaw...”

[Bat smiles wryly, revealing his two sharp fangs.]

“Now then -- to business. Just as she did last year, my mundane has opened up her ‘Askbox’ so that I may converse with, debate, or perhaps even educate her followers on aspects of this wonderful season. Although I was born in the 18th century and currently occupy the early 20th, circa what my mundane calls the ‘Fantastic Beasts’ era, however, she has still given me access to the fourth wall, so that I may address aspects of Christmas in the future that I have not yet experienced.”

A rather thrilling prospect, I must say. 

“She says that you may consult the ‘Bat Comments on Christmas!’ tag to access my commentaries from the previous year, if you so desire. 

“Today we’ll be discussing a rather romantic holiday tradition, which I’ve had to save my pal Grim @cursebreakerfarrier from on multiple occasions -- kissing under mistletoe.

“Now before we talk about the theories surrounding how this tradition came about, let’s discuss the plant itself. Mistletoe is a parasitic plant with many variations worldwide -- incredibly resilient, to the point that they remain green even through winter, and able to both feed off of the plants it latches onto and photosynthesize. It’s also, ironically enough, toxic to humans. If ingested, it can prompt anything from blurred vision to cardiac arrest. I’d say most people wouldn’t necessarily associate a plant like that with love -- and yet, somehow, we do! So why? 

“Well, for starters, historically mistletoe has a lot of fertility symbolism attached to it. The Pagans associated its white berries with male fertility specifically -- the Celts even referred to mistletoe as ‘the sperm of Taranis.’ The Roman scholar Pliny the Elder spoke of the plant being a ‘gift from the gods’ -- hence its tendency to grow at the very tops of trees -- which could help with healing wounds and fertility. It’s not terribly hard to see why men would look at this plant that can grow so quickly even in the height of winter and associate it with supernatural virility. 

“Another association mistletoe has acquired, however, is that of love and peace. The story most commonly cited for this is the Norse myth regarding the death of Baldr. In the tale, the goddess of love, Frigg -- upon learning of Baldr’s prophesized death -- went to every creature and plant of the world demanding an oath from them that they would not harm her beloved son. The only thing that Frigg neglected to receive an oath from was mistletoe...and so it was mistletoe that ultimately killed Baldr, when the trickster god Loki gave Baldr’s blind brother Hodur a spear made out of the plant. As many versions of the tale go, after Baldr’s death, Frigg declared that mistletoe would never again bring about violence or death, but only love and peace.”

[Bat gives a rather broad fanged smirk.]

“The only problem is that this story -- like all transcriptions of Norse mythology -- comes from the Codex Regius, which was supposedly transcribed in the mid-13th century, but only has any records of existing from 1643 onward, when it belonged to a Christian bishop, who would’ve had a lot of reason to want to rewrite the older Pagan religions of the region so as to align with his religious world-view. This is why there are a lot of interesting flourishes to the Nordic myths written in the Codex that seem to perfectly tie into Christian theology, such as a prediction that the end of the world -- Ragnorak -- will result in killing all of the old, impure Norse gods and paving the way for a new world, ruled by the resurrected god of light, Baldr, and occupied by two humans, one male and one female, who end up being the ancestors of the rest of mankind. So truthfully, we don’t know how much this story about Baldr was even true to what the Norse peoples who followed this religion believed. And even with this, the ending where Frigg declares mistletoe a plant of peace and love doesn’t appear in the Codex Regius -- thus it was only something added in by other authors rewriting the story later on. And although we don’t know when that version of the story started being told, we do know that kissing under mistletoe first became popular in the 18th century, less than a hundred years after we have records of the Codex Regius existing, and right around the time that translations of the myths in the Codex -- the Poetic Edda and Prose Edda -- were first printed en masse.

“But yes, where does the kissing thing come from? There’s no concrete answer. All that’s known for sure is that it was a tradition that became popular in the lower classes, and then moved its way up into the middle class. But considering what we’ve already established, and considering that in those days it was often difficult for young people to express romantic interest without a lot of scrutiny from their families and from society overall, it seems to me that whether the myth of Baldr or the plant’s symbolism regarding fertility were the initial spark behind the custom or not, enough people have linked those two things to the tradition that they’re considered official explanations. We don’t know whether the variations of Baldr’s myth where mistletoe became symbolic of love appeared before or after people started kissing under mistletoe. We don’t know whether people were directly referencing old Pagan ideas when they decided to kiss under boughs, let alone do it during the holiday season. But either way, enough people associate mistletoe with love and kisses in today’s world that we completely ignore that it’s a parasite that leeches water and nutrients off of the plants around it and could kill us, if we were to ingest it. These stories and beliefs are repeated enough in conjunction with mistletoe that even if they didn’t initially bring about the tradition, it’s fueled and justified its continued practice. 

“Now that being said, how one does kiss under the mistletoe has gone through some changes, over the years. When I was a lad, it was traditional for a gentleman -- when he ended up under the mistletoe with a lady -- to give her one kiss for every berry on the bough. Most versions maintain it’s bad luck to refuse a kiss under mistletoe, though it’s also considered good luck and an omen for a successful marriage to kiss your intended under mistletoe. One particularly interesting superstition I’ve come across is that it’s bad luck to bring mistletoe inside before New Year’s Eve, as it could bring financial ruin in the coming year...the idea of ‘fertility’ being applied to one’s wealth and prosperity rather than biology, I suppose. 

“So this holiday season, should you end up under mistletoe, remember the power that a well-circulated story can hold in justifying why we act the way we do, far more so than science, history, or even authentic, tried-and-true tradition. And naturally, don’t try to trick any unwilling parties into standing under it with you -- you don’t want to get hexed in the face, just because you’re desperate for a little ‘action.’”

((OOC: MERRY BATMAS, EVERYONE! 🎄 Send in those Christmas asks and/or like/reblog this post or others in the “Bat Comments on Christmas!” series, if thou wouldst like...I’m looking forward to this being fun!))

[st-just]

Barely coherent rambling about nation-states, culture, the Hapsburgs, and Canada

Because why have a blog except to occasionally purge one of the essays floating around half-formed in your brain. To be clear, it’s still half-formed, just on tumblr now. 1,666 words, here’s the Deveraux essay mentioned. Book is Martyn Rady’s The Hapsburgs: To Rule The World

So I’ve had like, nationalism on my mind recently.

And so there’s a kind of recurring beat in left-of-centre American political discourse (like, not ‘internet rnados screaming at each other’ discourse, ‘people with doctorates or think tank positions having debates on podcasts or exchanging op eds’ discourse) where you have some people on the radical end list some of the various horrible atrocities the country is built on, the ways that all the national myths are lies, and how all the saints of the civic religion were monsters to one degree or another – this can come in a flavor of either righteous anger or, like, intellectual sport. And then on the other end you have the, well, Matt Yglesiases of the world. Who don’t really argue any of the points of fact, but do kind of roll their eyes at the whole exercise and say that sure, but Mom and Apple Pie and the American Way are still popular, and if you’re trying to win power in a democracy telling the majority of the population that their most cherished beliefs are both stupid and evil isn’t a great move.

Anyway, a couple weeks back Deveraux posted an essay for the 4th of July (which I don’t totally buy, but is an interesting read) about why the reason American nationalism is so intensely bundled up into a couple pieces of paper and maybe a dozen personalities is precisely because it isn’t a nation at all. Basically, his thesis is that in proper nation-states like England or the Netherlands or wherever, there really is a core population that is the overwhelming demographic majority and really have lived in more or less the same places since time immemorial, and that once the enthographers and mythologists finish their work, all those people really do identify with both the same nation and the same state as its expression. America, by contrast, is by virtue of being a settler nation whose citizenry was filled by waves of immigrants from all the ass ends of Eurasia in a historical eyeblink, even before you add in the native population and descendants of slaves lacks any single core ethnicity that is anywhere close to a majority, as well as any organic national traditions or claims to an ‘ancestral homeland’ that aren’t obviously absurd (and we are trying to include the descendents of slaves and the native population these days, to varying levels of success). All this to say that his point is America is a civic state, not a national one, with the identity of ‘American’ being divorced from ethnicity and instead tied to things like the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the whole cult around the Founding Fathers, Lincoln, and [FDR and/or Reagan depending on your politics].

Which, like I said, don’t totally buy, but interesting. (to a degree he overstates how homogenus ‘actual’ nation-states are, he makes America sound very special but if his analysis holds that it’d presumably also apply to several other former settler colonies, in the American context there’s a fairly solid case to be made that the whole ‘nation of immigrants’ story and the racial identity of whiteness were constructed to function as an erratz national ethnicity, with incredible success, etc, etc).

But anyway, if we accept that the American identity is bound up in its civic religion and the mythologized version of its political history, it’s absolutely the case that there’s several segments of the left who take incredibly joy in tearing said civic religion and national mythology apart and dragging whatever’s left through the mud. I mean, hell, I do! (reminder: any politician whose ever had a statue dedicated to them was probably a monster). And, well, call it a greater awareness of historical crimes and injustice, or the postmodern disdain for idols and systems leaking out through the increasingly college-educated populace, or the liquid acid of modernity dissolving away all unchosen identities, or a Marxist cabal undermining the national spirit to pave the way for the Revolution or whatever you like, but in whichever case, that critical discourse is certainly much more prominent and influential among left and liberal media and politics types that is was in decades past.

And, okay, so I finished Martyn Rady’s The Hapsburgs a few days ago. And I mentioned as I was reading it that the chapters on the 19th and 20th centuries reminded me quite a bit of courses I’d taken in school on the late Ottoman Empire and Soviet Union. Because all three are multi/non-national states (Empires, in Deveraux’s terminology, though that’s varying degrees of questionable for each, I think. Moreso for the Hapsburgs than the rest) who outlasted their own ideological legitimacy. And in all three cases it just, well, it didn’t not matter, but even as all the ceremonies got more absurd and farcical  and the politics more consumed by inertia punctuated with crises, things kept limping along just fine for decades. Even in the face of intense crisis, dissolution wasn’t inevitable. (The Ottomans are a less central example here, admittedly, precisely because of the late attempt to recenter the empire on Turkish nationalism. But even then, more Arab soldiers fought for the Sultan-Caliph than ever did for the Hashemites, and most prewar Arab nationalism was either purely cultural or imagined the Empire reformed into a binational federation, not dissolved).

But as Rady says in the book – losing WW1 crippled Germany, it dissolved Austria-Hungary. And in all three cases, as soon as they were gone, the idea of bringing them back instantly became at least a bit absurd.

And okay, to now pivot to talking about where I actually live but about whose politics I (shamefully) know significantly less than America’s. I mean, maybe it’s because most of my history education from public school was given by either pinko commies or liberals still high off ‘90s one-world universalism, or maybe it’s just a matter of social class, but I really can’t remember ever having taken the whole wannabe civic religion of Canada seriously (the only even serious attempt at sacredness I recall was for Remembrance Day). Even today, the main things I remember about our Founding Father is that he was an alcoholic who lost power in a railroad corruption scandal.

Really, in all my experience the only unifying threads of national/particular Canadian identity are a flag, a healthcare system, those Canadian Heritage Minute propaganda ads, a bill of rights from the ‘60s, and an overpowering sense of polite smugness towards the States.

And that last one (or, at least, the generally rose-colored ‘Canada is the good one’ view of history) is taking something of a beating, on account of all the mass graves really rubbing the public’s noses in the whole genocide thing. At least among big segments of the intellectual and activist classes, most of the symbols of Canadian nationhood are necessarily becoming illegitimate as Canada is, in fact, a project of genocidal settle colonialism.

But it really is just purely symbolic. Most of the municipalities who cancelled their Canada Day celebrations are going to elect Liberal MPs and help give our Natural Governing Party its majority in the next election, no one of any significance has actually challenged the authority of the civil service or the courts. And, frankly, most of the people who are loudly skeptical of all the symbols of the nations are also the ones whose political projects most heavily rely on an efficient and powerful state bureaucracy to carry out.

(This is leaving aside Quebec, which very much does have a live national identity insofar as the vigorous protection of national symbols is what wins provincial elections. If I felt like doing research and/or reaching more there’s probably something there on how pro-independence sentiment has largely simmered down at a pace with the decline of attempts to impose a national Canadian identity).

I mean, Canada does have rather more of a base for a ‘national’ population core than the US (especially if you’re generous and count the people who mark French on the census as a core population as well). At the same time, no one really expects this to continue to be the case – even back in Junior High, I remember one of the hand outs we got explaining that due to declining fertility most or all future population growth would come from immigration (I remember being confused when my mother was weirdly uncomfortable with the idea when it came up). I suppose our government gets credit for managing public opinion such that anti-immigration backlash hasn’t taken over the political conversation. Which you’d think would be a low bar but, well.

But anyway, to try and begin wrapping this rambling mess up – it does rather feel like Rady’s portrayal of the late Hapsburg empire might have a few passing similarities to the future of Canada. A multinational state whose constitution and political system and built on foundations and legitimized by history that no one actually believes in anymore, or at least no more than they have to pretend to to justify the positions they hold, but persisting because it’s convenient and it’s there and any alternatives are really only going to seem practical after a complete economic collapse or apocalyptic war. (Though our civil service is a Josephist’s dream by comparison, really.)

Or maybe I’m premature, and the dominant culture will just be incredibly effective at assimilating immigrants into that civic identity. Anecdotally, the only people I know who are at all enthusiastic about Canada as an idea are first generation immigrants. I could certainly just be projecting, really – I’ve never really been able to get all that invested in the nation-state as an idea of more moral power than ‘a convenient administrative division of humanity’, and certainly liberating ourselves form the need to defend the past would certainly rectifying certain injustices easier.  

Or maybe I’m just being incredibly optimistic. Half the economy’s resource extraction and the other half’s real estate, so decent odds the entire place just literally goes up in flames over the next few decades. BC’s already well on its way.

[searchingwardrobes]

A Self-Promo Sunday Tag Game

I was tagged by @snowbellewells @stahlop @thisonesatellite and @profdanglaisstuff - thank you ladies! I know it isn’t Sunday anymore, but I’m going to play anyway . . . 

Rules: Just for fun this Sunday, let’s talk about our personal favorites of our own fics.

Not the ones we necessarily think are the “best.” The ones we go back and reread again and again (because if you don’t reread your own fics what are you even doing?), or the ones we wrote for something or someone special, or the ones that were most difficult to write and just make us proud when we think about them? Whatever criteria you choose, just talk a bit about the fics of yours that you really like.

I actually think I’ve done this before, but I’m playing again. I think I’ve picked different fics this time anyhow.

Just As He Always Has - This fic was so exhilarating to write because my muse had finally awakened after being silent for a while. (In her defense, she was really tired after working her butt off getting my second book out.) But I am also really proud of this fic because I was able to take a very risky idea - child marriage - and make a very sweet Lieutenant Duckling-esque fic out of it. 

Start of Time - I wrote this fic for @teamhook for her birthday using a song I had never heard before but knew was her favorite. I was proud of myself just for that, but also . . . do you know how difficult it is to write a character who has amnesia? I didn’t until I tackled this story! It was not easy, but I did it! Not only that, I really liked how it turned out.  

The Early Leaf’s a Flower - I wrote this for the Captain Swan Rewrite a Thon event. It was a rewrite of another story called Someone to Watch Over Me. I felt that StWOM had lost its tone and mood along the way - a tone and mood that was PERFECT in the first couple of chapters. So I did the CSRT in order to get that back - and I did! I was SO proud of myself for that, even though it is nowhere near as popular as StWOM was. I delved into a lot of Neverland mythology, which I felt was lacking in the show. I gave both Killian and Emma rather dark back stories, which is a bit different for me, but I am immensely proud of the world building I did in this. I worked my butt off on it, maybe more than any other story I have written, and I am so stinkin proud of it. 

An Education in Southern Gothic - I scared people. Enough said! Haha, seriously, I never thought I could do that! I wrote it for the @cssns a few years back. It was also fun to incorporate my Southern culture into the world of Once (thank you my Discord peeps for “Ya’ll bloody wankers!”). No one does ghost stories like the South, I’m telling you.

For my last three, I’m choosing what I like to call my “war fics,” even though it isn’t a series. They are also all named after song titles, with the first two being written as part of my Fandom Birthday Playlist for @lenfaz and @superchocovian, respectively. I’m really proud of how I captured the setting of each time period. And I know that “Girl Named Tennessee” is not a well known song by needtobreathe, but ya’ll really need to go listen to it!

Name (Korean War)

Fortunate Son (Vietnam War)

Girl Named Tennessee (WW II)

I know it isn’t Sunday and many people have already been tagged, but I’m gonna tag some of ya’ll anyway: 

 @xhookswenchx @optomisticgirl @wellhellotragic @welllpthisishappening @distant-rose (Ro, I know you aren’t in the CS fandom anymore but I still love your writing and wanna hear what fics you are proud of, CS or otherwise!)

[gemsofgreece]

Ancient Greek, the language of the future

by Eugenia Manolidou, conductor.

“I read with interest Mr Dimos’s article that was published in the “Opinions” column on October 17th 2020. Please allow me some comments regarding it.”

[GEMSOFGREECE NOTE: I have read both articles and many things stated by Mr Dimos had me disagreeing or straight out displeased. Eugenia Manolidou responded with an article of her own, apparently motivated by similar feelings. I think her article is an enjoyable read and I agree on many levels while on others I can’t have an opinion due to lack of sufficient knowledge. I thought some of you would be interested in it, so I am translating the article in English. The article is informative for both Greek speakers and people interested in the Greek language and culture as well as the pronunciation of Ancient Greek. In the link, you can find the sources she used at the end of the text. I must now add that I did not necessarily expect to enjoy an article written by Mrs Manolidou (she’s well known in Greece and married to a politician) but that’s a personal impression that perhaps shouldn’t influence you. Going on with the article under the cut.]

I’ll begin with its title, “Can a dead language live again?”, which clearly refers to our language, Ancient Greek. I call it “ours” because even though we don’t comprehend it very well when reading ancient texts, we however use it in our everyday speech, even without realizing it.

For example, we might not know that the word αὐδή (avdí) means voice but we say very often “έμεινα άναυδος” (émina ánavdos = I was left speechless / voiceless). We might not know the phrase «ξύλου ἅπτεσθαι» (= knock on wood) but we always search for wood to knock when trying to avoid a bad omen.

Of course, I should not even start with the vocabulary in sciences, arts and literature because the list is endless. The Greek language is a living language that has survived not because we say so but because it remains in the international vocabulary by enriching most European languages.

Every year, students of the Classical Studies abroad rush to acquire books, teaching methods for Ancient Greek from Oxford, Cambridge and the rest acclaimed publishing companies. I will refer to the publications POLIS Institute Press of the Jerusalem Institute of Languages and Humanities with the title «Λαλεῖν τῇ κοινῇ διαλέκτῷ τῇ ζῶσῃ» (=Speaking the common living dialect). Meaning, the Common Greek, the living.

It is known that almost all schools in Europe kindle interest and enthusiasm in kids to learn the Classical Languages - and not “dead” so as to condemn them in advance - Latin and Greek. And yes in most countries they are taught with the Erasmian pronunciation because it helps them understand the dictation. Just for that. Not because they think it’s the correct pronunciation. Not anymore.

The Erasmian being an accurate description of how the ancients talked is an outdated thesis which many of the intellectuals and professors in Europe have now understood and explained. I will try to add some arguments in favor of this statement in short.

For those who don’t know, Desiderius Erasmus Roterdamus (1466 – 1536) was a Dutch monk who invented a method that would help those who learned Ancient Greek to write it down correctly. So, where someone would say “Χαίρε” (hére) and write it as «χέρε» (because that’s how it sounds), Erasmus explained that they should think of it as “háire” in order to write it correctly. But he never urged people to pronounce it like that.

Besides, in his book Colloquia Familiaria in the chapter “Echo”, he explains how to pronounce the diphthongs -onis, ονοις / -kopi, κόποι / -lici, λύκοι / -logi λόγοι/ and so on. Erasmus never said this is how Ancient Greeks talked, he just urged his students to memorize the correct dictation by ear. No European language is spoken exactly as it’s written.

We all think of such tricks to write words correctly. For instance, we think “extra-ordinary” but no fluent speaker of English pronounces it like that. Unfortunately, during the Renaissance in Europe, when the arts and literature were greatly inspired by the Greek mythology, history and philosophy, Greece under the centuries-long Turkish occupation couldn’t be a match for the rest of Europe. So when the French, German and Italian aristocrats spoke Ancient Greek to each other, we spoke a mix of Greek, Turkish and Italian, a blended language that we would hardly comprehend nowadays. And thankfully, our language survived thanks to the Church and the Scripts, which are written in Ancient Greek.

Therefore we did not know the way Ancient Greek was spoken in Europe. Here in Greece, we didn’t know. There were Greeks who didn’t live in Greece during the Ottoman rule though who knew. One of them was the priest Konstantinos Economou of Economon (1780-1857) who in his work «Περὶ τῆς Γνησίας Προφορᾶς τῆς Ἑλληνικῆς Γλώσσης» (=Regarding the Authentic Pronunciation of the Greek Language), Saint Petersburg 1829, explains why there’s no way the Ancient Greeks separated the diphthongs.

First of all, they were called “diphthongs” which means “two sounds in one”. If they don’t mean that, then why call them this way? Just like Andrea Marcolongo says in her book «La lingua geniale» , which translates to “the genius language” and not “the wonderful language”, with the subtitle «9 ragioni per amare il Greco», meaning, “9 reasons to love Greek” (Ancient Greek clearly, that’s what they always mean by “Greek” in Europe), there is no language more rich, precise and well-studied than Greek. Otherwise we wouldn’t have diphthongs, let alone a need for a diacritic mark( mark used to indicate a vowel forms its own syllable). We say «αρχαιολογία»  and in English it’s archaeology, «παλαιοντολογία» and it’s «paleontology». But we say «αρχαϊκό» (note the diacritic) and in English it’s «archaic».

Let’s examine some more words: We say «ατμόσφαιρα» which in Latin is atmosfera. We say αίνιγμα, in latin it’s enigma. We say ενέργεια, in latin “energia” / αιθήρ, in Latin etere /  Aίγυπτος, Egitto / μυστήριο, mistero / φαινόμενο, phenomenon / εγκυκλοπαίδεια, enciclopedia. The list is long and if we get ourselves into the scientific vocabulary (ginecologo, ematologo, pediatro), we will never end with this. In short, Latin, a “sister” language to Greek, saved through itself the pronunciation of Ancient Greek.

One more argument: the Greek words can be stressed exclusively in three syllables: the ultimate, the penultimate or the antepenultimate. If we separate the diphthongs, the punctuation gets out of hand. So instead of “hérete”, we would say “háirete” which is obviously wrong. With the separation of the diphthongs, the Dactylic Hexameter (the rhythmic scheme of Ancient Greek epic poetry) would collapse. Perhaps you’ve heard the attempts of the Europeans to recite the Iliad or the Odyssey.

Homer’s poetic epic has a completely different sound due to the loss of the Hexameter. Besides, just like Erasmus said and Economou quotes in his book: «Conducendus aliquis, natione Graecus, licet alioquin parvum eruditus, propter nativum illum ac patrium sonum, ut castigate graeca sonari dicantur.» Meaning, “Call someone, Greek in nation, even with little or no education, for that native sound, so that you learn the exact and natural pronunciation of Greek.”

What’s truly pitiful in this situation is not how foreigners learn to speak Ancient Greek. The true shame is that such a beautiful, rich and living language, our language, is more appreciated, loved and respected abroad than in Greece. I admire the people who try so hard to learn a language for which they don’t even know the alphabet. And yet they try, they learn it, they speak it, they teach it and that’s why the big publishing companies still publish teaching methods for Ancient Greek.

In the foreign universities, most professors teaching Ancient Greek are foreign. Foreign professors tutoring foreign students. It’s them who come to Greece for vacation and crowd our monuments and museums, which are right on our feet and yet we consider a visit there as a nuisance. If we truly want to love our language, our history and culture, we should be taught Ancient Greek from a young age, as a living language, like they do abroad.

With simple, comprehensible texts, from the mythology, from Aesop, from simple sayings and delphic orders, our language is full of them. So instead of occupying ourselves with whether Homer’s sheep cried “vee” or “beh” and instead of trying to decode why the Greek rooster says kokoriko while the English rooster says Cock-a-doodle-doo - he does neither - let’s try to make our children understand the importance, the meaning and the symbolism of the Naval Battle of Salamís instead of a plain «ὦ παῖδες Ἑλλήνων, ἴτε» (= O children of the Greeks, arise), dry and withered.

[severalspoons]

As in, the arts blurring into "entertainment", story-telling and music-making becoming businesses, etc.

Ah, that makes more sense.

So, I don’t think that money necessarily, inherently, corrupts art, although it can certainly introduce pressure and censorship. I mean, look at the Medicis. ::waits for Tumblr to show up with the guillotine::

I *do* think in the USA in my lifetime at least, we’ve created a culture in which no new art is being created and we’re not being exposed much to the art of the past in school, either. In fact, education schools actively teach that we don’t *need* to be. I’ve lived through at least twenty years where almost every blockbuster movie--almost every movie, period--was a sequel. 

Few people are exposed to art or even original ideas, and so they don’t even know what they’re missing. I think it’s setting us up for shallow thinking, polarization, lack of empathy, and the inability to think for ourselves or engage with meaning in life. 

I realize that sounds like a vast overexaggeration, but, I say this because I was exposed to good writing, a lot of it, and it changed my life. Not just literature, either. Philosophy, science writing, mythology, self help, Hell, even the Bible. I could write forever about literature, and about other books that inspired me--Jane Goodall and E.O. Wilson’s books; the Dorling Kindersley picture books about dinosaurs and Bob Bakker’s Dinosaur Heresies that gave me a sense of wonder and geological time; Flow; Pronoia; Women Who Run with the Wolves; and more. 

But most of all, I am who I am today because of autistic bloggers, like Amanda Forest Vivian, Julia Bascom, Lynne Soraya, Mel Baggs/formerly Amanda Baggs (RIP), Alyssa Hillary, and others, who I watched actively creating language to describe experiences and build a community. I followed in their footsteps for a while, and someday, will do so again.

I’ve wanted to be a writer on and off since high school, but have always dismissed it because having to hustle to make the work other people want, on their timetable, would ruin it for me. And I’d rather not ruin what gives my life meaning.

TBH, anything I could possibly say about what we’re losing due to the commodification of art, James Baldwin said better, so here you go.

“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive.” ― James Baldwin

“You read something which you thought only happened to you, and you discover that it happened 100 years ago to Dostoyevsky. This is a very great liberation for the suffering, struggling person, who always thinks that he is alone...” —from “An interview with James Baldwin” (1961)

“literature is indispensable to the world... The world changes according to the way people see it, and if you alter, even but a millimeter the way people look at reality, then you can change it.” ― James Baldwin

How about you?

[wonderlustxennial]

Thoughts on TFATWS Season 1, Episode 3

This shit has gotten ridiculous, so I’ve decided that I’m going to start doing reaction posts, rather than posting 20 individual observations. The following was written after my second viewing.

DISCLAIMER: Some of these are my observations, but others I didn’t notice until my favorite YouTube and Tumblr analysts pointed them out. I’ll try to drop credit where it’s due.

NOTE: There’s something I wish more people were talking about, and it’s down in the Madripoor section. If I’m reading this wrong, I would appreciate getting some help in seeing it. So, if you’re game, please check it out and let me know your thoughts. (#tw:racial bias)

[spoilers below the cut]

Walker Raiding the Flag Smasher Sanctuary

Here we get a further illustration that Walker not a defender; he’s working in the interest of fascists. Also, he’s on an invisible countdown to flip his shit. ALSO-also, dude just told the GRC cops not to give anyone “a second…to breathe.” (Marvel, what are you doing? I am not accustomed to relevance from you.) Did you notice the juxtaposition of Bucky asking the cops, “Don’t you know who he is?” to get the cops to stop harassing Sam, against Walker asking, “Do you know who I am?” while roughing up a refugee for not cooperating with him? Same asshole move, very different contexts. Anytime someone thinks it’s a good idea to say, “Do you know who I/this am/is?” they’ve already lost face.

Zemo in His Cell

Clearly, I’ll have to get better about zooming in on stuff, because this is the first time I’ve seen anyone catch that the book Zemo is reading in his prison cell is about Machiavelli AND Leonardo da Vinci; specifically, about how their friendship and exchange of ideas was highly influential on the future of the world. So, does Zemo think he’s Machiavelli or da Vinci, AND who is his “silent” partner? [I didn’t notice that, until The New Rockstars pointed it out (at 04:00 https://youtu.be/xHXhbw_EGL8) annnnnndddd now I’m going to have to read that fucking book (Fortune Is a River: Leonardo da Vinci & Niccolò Machiavelli’s Magnificent Dream to Change the Course the Florentine History by Roger D. Masters, and the bump in book sales is about to have Masters owing Marvel BIG TIME).]

Zemo Is “Royalty”

And here we have my first problem with this episode. BARONS ARE NOT ROYALTY. They’re nobles—low-ranking aristocracy. But do you know what does check out? Zemo and his butler’s thinly veiled distain at entertaining the two low-born Americans.

On the Plane

Look out, y’all: Satan just took the wheel.

THE NOTEBOOK/S

If Bucky has Steve’s notebook, what happened to the one he had in Romania? In CA:CW, I was stressing throughout that WHOLE fight and chase sequence that followed Bucky running from his apartment; not for his safety, but because I hated how vulnerable it left him to have to run without his notebook. I’m not even kidding. Because Steve picked up that notebook, right? Did he think to take it with him? Surely, an embassy or intelligence service swept Bucky’s living space afterward, so who has it now? THIS is the shit I obsess over. Who has that fucking notebook? WHO??!

TROUBLEMAN

There are at least three different things at play here. First, Sam’s enthusiasm and nostalgia for this relic made me tear up a little. He was so hopeful that Bucky would share Steve’s appreciation this classic piece of socially aware art. Second, we get more evidence that Bucky might be having a harder time adjusting to life as a white man in the 21st Century than we’re led to believe Steve did. Third, we know from Zemo’s interactions with his steward just seconds before that, when he praises Troubleman, what he’s actually doing is virtual signaling to build trust with Sam and put Bucky on the back foot. Fourth, I don’t think Sam knows for sure if Zemo appreciated it as much as it says, but he intuits enough about Zemo’s character to be aggravated at the inference they might have something in common; or, that Zemo might be manipulating him to empty rapport. (RIP, Marvin Gaye. You weren’t done.)

DAS OFFENE NEIN IN DER LIEBI

The New Rockstars win again. (Seriously, I have to start paying closer attention.) A book using mythology to explain the psychology of relationships, just before Zemo namechecks Red Skull. Oh shit, y’all.

ZEMO’S PHILOSOPHY ON SYMBOLS & POWER

The slipperiest thing about Zemo is that nearly everything he says has a kernel of truth; you just have to dig out what his true intentions are. Honestly, this is what makes him…I don’t know that he’s the most dangerous villain in the MCU, but it certainly sets him apart. He’s both educated AND smart (the latter doesn’t necessarily follow the former), and he’s particularly insightful in his ruminations on power and its potential to corrupt both the people who hold it and the people who admire them. Bucky and Sam both loved Steve deeply and believed wholeheartedly in the capacity he served as a defender; however, they have a tendency to over-romanticize both. Multiply that problem by the millions who never personally knew him and, when he’s gone, you get…fake!Cap.

More Relevance from Marvel

I read that Marvel had to do reshoots because a few of the themes in this show hit a little too close to home after the pandemic hit (also because the Black Widow movie was supposed to hit first, but again…global fuckery, so they had to shuffle a few plot points.) But also, refugees? “Displacement” camps? Hoarded resources? You don’t say?

Madripoor

Or “When Murder-Sugardaddy Goes Slumming with His Awkward Sugarbabies and Heinous Fuckery Most Foul Ensues”

AT THE CLUB

THE POWER BROKER. THE POWER BROKER. THE POWER… Soooooooo. Many. Name drops. At this point, I don’t even care to speculate on the identity of the mother-fucking Power Broker. Just surprise me already.

And here’s my (potential) second problem with this episode: The Black bartender doesn’t recognize the Black man he’s presumably seen before.

A CAVEAT TO START: I bartended very briefly in one of my many former lives. I was terrible at it. But here’s what’s relevant for the moment: when you work in the service industry, you meet a lot of fucking people, and you don’t necessarily remember them all. I would work giant events where I would serve 1,000+ people in a night, and people would complain all the time that I was carding them even though I’d served them previously. (1) I live in a state where alcohol is highly controlled, and the ABC Board is zealous about doing stake-outs to catch vendors serving to minors. The ABC Board enforcers would only see me serving someone without having carded them first—not all the times I served them previously. None of these people were EVER worth going to jail for over alcohol. Get your fucking card out—EVERY. GODDAMN. TIME. (2) Dude-man-bro, I’ll have served 1,000+ people by the end of the night. Get your fucking card out, EVERY. GODDAMN. TIME.

I’m not saying this bartender in a rogue nation should’ve carded all of his patrons; I’m only saying that when you work in the service industry, you can sometimes serve someone 20+ times before you finally recognize their face or learn their names, and the process can start all over again if they haven’t come in for a while.

Here’s the real issue with this scene, as I see it: In-group bias is an actual thing. There are disciplines of social psychologists and sociologists who specialize in studying it. We’re supposed to believe that the “Smiling Tiger” person Sam is posing as is well-known enough, both by reputation and in that establishment, that the bartender remembered his favorite drink but not Sam as an imposter? I can believe Selby, a Caucasian-European woman, didn’t recognize him on-sight. [Frankly, Whites can often (regrettably) get away with not making any effort to overcome cross-racial bias.] But what about this bartender not recognizing a notable local criminal’s face when they belong to the same racial group, when we’re led to believe he’s served him many times before? And how did he know Tiger-whatever’s favorite drink if the guy had never been in the club? Are we to infer this guy wasn’t high enough on the local criminal food chain to have merited an introduction to Selby?) Is this a plot hole, or am I reading too much into this? I just wonder, given how much this series has devoted to exploring racial relations.

Sam just saw Bucky the most vulnerable as I think he ever has. For the first time, very little was left to Sam’s imagination as to what it must’ve been like for Bucky and Isaiah to have been exploited. And Sam is so good, he can’t help but jeopardize the mission to check on the friend he can’t acknowledge to himself he’s found in Bucky. (He also has no guile, which is so very Steve of him! I’ve just loved Mackie’s performance this whole show.)

I don’t know what to think about how easily it came to Zemo to objectify and use Bucky, again—even if only to pretend.

Bucky is the MCU character I most identify with, but I don’t care to analyze the way the bar scene made me feel. I will say this much, though: THIS is how badly Bucky wants this whole thing resolved. He subjected himself willingly to the stuff of his nightmares, even if to just to perform in the world’s most dangerous live-action role play. As many people were taking pictures in the bar, it’s pretty safe to say that this charade is going to going to have long-term consequences.

People are talking about Bucky “suddenly losing his super-speed” when they had to hoof it away from the bar like it’s a lapse in characterization, but it’s not. Bucky could’ve taken off and left both Sam and Zemo sucking dirt, but he lagged to stay with them. He didn’t ghost them.

SHARON IS A BLACK-MARKET ART DEALER

Godammit. I despise the practice of the filthy rich removing fine art and cultural artifacts from the public view so they can use them for tax breaks and currency. Way to push my buttons, Marvel! And I’m so sure the National Art Gallery of Art and all other art museums worldwide will I mean WON’T appreciate Marvel calling into question the authenticity of their collections, seeing as museum funding and attendance is already anemic thanks to the pandemic. I know it’s bad priorities on my part, but that’s temporarily preempted how much I should probably sympathize with her after her abandonment.

EDIT: The person who gave Sharon the intelligence will figure she had something to do with his demise just a few hours later. I wonder if that will help/harm her ability to do business. Also: holding the barrel of that assault rifle while it fired off rounds should’ve burned her hand horribly.

ZEMO BREAKS THE INTERNET

Did anyone else think “Sprockets!” when Zemo started dancing??!

NAGEL

This is two references to Langley in one episode. For anyone not aware (especially non-Americans), “Langley” is commonly used to reference Langley, Virginia, which is where the most prominent institution is the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (C.I.A.) headquarters. Both Hoskins and Nagel name dropped them in the same episode. Shit.

The Sugars Roll Up to Zemo’s Latvian Bolthole

Bucky’s mission just got a helluva lot more complicated. Sam might have bought the “just going for a walk” bit, but I doubt Zemo did. Bucky owes the Wakandans, but he still needs Zemo. Oh, boy.

Wrap-Up

I’m going to keep coming back to how unexpected it’s been to me that Marvel has finally started to course correct, focusing on characterizations and bringing in themes that are relevant to current events. WandaVision’s explorations of Wanda’s mental health and Monica’s forging of her new identity and TFATWS trying to engage with the audience on topics like race, violence, exploitation, and identity is hugely compelling to me. It’s a fucking TV show, but at this point in popular cultural history, I can’t think of anyone/anything else better positioned to address all of this in an entertaining and accessible way.

[surveys-at-your-service]

Survey #342

“in this farewell, there’s no blood, there’s no alibi  /  ‘cuz i’ve drawn regret from the truth of a thousand lies”

What’s your all-time favourite cartoon? Does anime count? In which case I'd say Fullmetal Alchemist, or the original Pokemon. If we're not including anime, then uhhhh Avatar: The Last Airbender, even though I have much more to go in the series. Have you ever taken dance lessons? What kind? Yeah, I've done a few for many years: jazz, clogging, modern, and hip hop. When did you last run and why? I literally couldn't tell you. I don't even know if I can run with the current state of my legs. My knees would probably crumple. Does your house/flat/whatever the hell you live in need cleaning? Not necessarily cleaning, but sorting. I still have boxes outside and inside my room of my stuff I need to put up somewhere... but whenever I prepare to do it, I just get so overwhelmed and shy away from it. Then there's the spare room, that's a total mess loaded with boxes and the like. Mom and I have just avoided it like the plague. Was your last relationship with a man or a woman? Woman. What do you think your next achievement will be? HOPEFULLY getting a job... Do you like mushrooms? NOOOOOOO. What dream do you remember most vividly? I'm not talking about it. Favorite kind of bread? Pumpernickel. Rabbits or hamsters? Rabbits. I've never met a nice hamster, and I just think rabbits are cuter. A movie you’ve never seen that it seems like every one else has? Harry Potter films. Favorite dog breed? I'm biased towards beagles. When was the last time you climbed a tree? Never, actually. Where I live, there aren't really many weighty trees with low branches. Just pine trees. Most common lie you tell? That I'm "fine" when I'm not. Ever seen your parents make out? Jc no, I'll take a hard pass there. Do you put your hair up a lot or down? It's too short to put up. Most of the time do you straighten or curl your hair? Neither. What piercing do you hate? I'm not a fan of cheek dermals at all, but you do you 100%. Were you raised in a religious house? Yes; I was raised Roman Catholic. Do your parents get mad when you're on the computer for hours? Mom used to for many years until I became an adult and she just realized it was in vain. I haven't lived with Dad since I was a teenager, but when my parents were together, he usually didn't say anything. Have you ever been asked for a nude picture? No, thankfully. I'd stop talking to the person immediately. What would you do if your parent hit you? I honestly feel like I'd slap them back and get the fuck out. Or just freeze in shock and cry. What's your most common mood? Stressed but distracted. Do you like poems? Yeah, usually. Ever kissed someone half-naked? Uh yeah. Have you ever been in a parade? No. Do you still play Pokémon? I play Pokemon GO, and I've actually been tempted to get out my DS and play one of the games I have (I can't remember which). I do find Pokemon games to be VERY grind-ey, though, so I can't play them for too long without getting bored. What is your favorite Pokémon? Ninetales. I also really love Espeon, though, and Charmander will always have my heart. Is there an animal you like that most people don't? Bats! :') Is there an animal that you think is overrated in terms of how it's liked? No animal is overrated. Have you ever "quit" a site and came back to it more than once? Uhhhh I don't think so. Do you have an "odd" fascination with anything? Most would probably consider "vulture culture" to be pretty weird, being drawn to dead animals and all... What's the hardest thing you've been through, & what did you learn from it? The breakup with Jason. I learned that some people make promises they aren't afraid to break, that someone can promise "forever" and not mean it, that the most unexpected can just snap their fingers and forget about you... I learned a lot. And most things, not positive. What are three "unrealistic" things you want most? 1.) To be able to financially support myself by just freelance nature photography; 2.) sooo many different kinds of pets; and 3.) to be totally rid of my mental illnesses. Do you take any daily vitamins? No, but I would if I was the one who bought groceries and stuff. I do however take Vitamin D once a week for my legs. Who are three of your favorite fictional characters of all time? JUST THREE??????? FUCK MAN idk. Uhhh well there's of course Darkiplier and Wilford Warfstache, then uhhh probably Pyramid Head. If you had to give the world a pre-existing mythological/fictional being, what would it be? Idk, I'd really need to be more educated on their lore before I made that decision. Do you have any desire to learn (a) foreign language(s)? Which? I both do and don't want to resume learning German. I got very good at it and could have basic conversations, but lack of application has slaughtered my vocabulary. Now it's like, it'd be nice to try again, but for what purpose? I don't think I'll ever actually apply it to my life, so it just seems like it'd be a load of wasted effort. But then on the other hand, I also feel that doing something you simply want to do isn't a waste of time. Idk. What is one of your firmest beliefs? Equality for all. No race, religion, whatthefuckever makes you more or less valuable than someone else. Do you have anything that keeps you from doing something you'd truly enjoy? Oh yes. Depression and anxiety, mostly. Do you work to fix your faults? Or at least, admit to them? I definitely try, and I'll certainly admit to them. How do you hope the world will change, if at all? I just want more compassion, less violence, more understanding... What is/are your view(s) on god, religion, spirituality, or relations to? In short, I believe that something sentient created the universe, and it/they/he/she/what-have-you just... let life play out from there, I think. I like to believe there's a plane of consciousness like an afterlife that exists, but if not, I don't really care. I hope the evil get what was coming to them, and the good get back what they gave, but maybe we're all better off without life after death. We'll all find out one day. Are you arachnophobic or scared of spiders in the least? Some, yes; others, not so much. This is very situational. Do you play WoW? What do you think of it either way? Haha, you're asking an avid player. I enjoy it, but not as much as I used to. At one point I was a Heroic raider, sometimes dabbling in Mythic, but now I'm just mostly a casual mount collector that likes chatting with my guildies and just doing dailies 'n shit. I owe a lot to the game, honestly; it helped me stay occupied throughout the breakup, and still today gives me something to do. What kind of computer do you have? Windows 7/Vista/XP/Other? I have an Acer Nitro with Windows 10. Are you taking any interesting classes in school/do you not attend? I'm no longer in school. If you don't attend, are you taking any "lessons" for anything? No, but I would like to join a photography course somewhere. A book/piece that has had an exceptional impact on your life? Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo just made me hate war more than I innately did. What genres of music are your favorite? Just metal as an umbrella term. Some heavy stuff, some less, some in the middle, some leaning towards other genres... but I just like metal. Do you think that fate plays a part in people's lives? No. Wouldn't "fate" just make it all... worthless? Like we're just storybook characters with a predetermined ending? What are your opinions on the media? One word: manipulative. What's a piece of technology you'd like to own? I REALLY want a PS4, especially lately. There's just a lot of games I REALLY want to play. Are you afraid of technology developing to where we're too reliant on it? We're already *too* reliant on it, which I do believe is a bad thing. I know, absolutely hysterical for me to be talking. What's your favorite odd ice cream flavor? I don't think I've ever had a truly odd ice cream flavor. There's this local place though that makes a kind that tastes JUST like s'mores, and I can fucking murder a cup of that. What's your opinion on stereotypes/labels? They're limiting and devalue uniqueness, imo. I know very, very few people who totally fit a certain stereotype, so why even bother. Like I don't care if you use them as adjectives to some extent, just don't put too much weight on them. Just be you. Do you believe that history repeats itself? It's not necessarily doomed to, but it happens sometimes, obviously. Would you rather learn from your mistakes or just undo them? Depends on the mistake. What was the most interesting class you had in school? Probably Mythology in high school. Do you write? If so, what? Yeah, meerkat role-play. And every now and again, poetry. Do you have a favorite culture? No; I'm not educated on nearly enough to pick one. Do you believe in global warming? Have you researched it? Lol no shit I do. I don't exactly think it takes much research to see with your own two eyes that it's factual. Do you prefer piercings or tattoos? Tattoos, if I had to pick. What comedy movie is your favorite? White Chicks. Have you ever meditated? Yes. Doesn't work for me. What comes to mind when you think of a great moment in your life? Realizing it was my choice to liberate myself and my happiness from my ex. He didn't and never should've carried it, because that's my right. What do you like about springtime? Aaaaall the flowers. <3 How have you handled having to stay in? It's not really different from my average day, so... How would your friends describe you? Quiet and overthinks literally everything. Have you ever hallucinated? When I was coming off a certain med in middle school, I saw black moving shadows. What (or who) is the best thing that ever happened to you? The partial hospitalization program I attended for two months following my suicide attempt. It's where I met my psychiatrist, who set my medication straight. Medicine besides though, I learned so many coping techniques and just how to deconstruct my trauma. As well as possible, anyway. What is the worst decision you ever made? Handing over the ability to make happiness for myself to another person. What is your favorite arcade game? Don't have one. Do you feel neglected? No. What school subject(s) are/were your best? English, Arts, Science. Are you allergic to pollen? Yep. What style of wedding dress do you like best? Probably ballgown. Are you over your first love? I probably never will be in complete totality. Do you always answer your phone? No. I only ever do if I recognize the number. Who was the last person you know to have a birthday? Today is actually my sister's birthday. What song is currently stuck in your head? I have Halocene's cover of "What I've Done" on a loop right now. It has me absolutely covered in goosebumps. Do you ever use coloring books? Not really anymore. Do you personally know anyone who is an author? Not to my knowledge, no. What’s your favorite kind of salsa/dip to go with tortilla chips? Just your normal, mildly hot salsa. Do you wash your car by hand or drive through a car wash? Mom's car hasn't been washed in... well, years, given its bumper. Mom worries that in a car wash, it'll be broken off (it is literally held on with a lot of zip ties and duct tape), and we ourselves don't want to wash it, so... Do you have any uncommon kitchen appliances, such as espresso machines, waffle irons, etc? I know we have one or two, but idk what they're called. What did your parents major/minor in in college, if they went? Dad never went to college. Mom changed her major a few times, but her latest was social work, I believe. Has either of their careers influenced what career you chose or want to pursue? Not at all. What kind of natural disaster is most common where you live? Hurricanes. Why is your least favorite season your least favorite? Because it's hot as fuck and humid. Have you ever had an animal get into your attic? No. When was the last time you started a “new chapter” of your life? I don't know. Hopefully I'll start one soon when I leave PHP and pursue a job... What room in your home do you spend the least amount of time in? I'm always in my room. Do you do anything to reduce the amount of electricity you use? I feel awful admitting I do quite the opposite... Being in the dark during the day affects my depression, so I'll have my lamp (or both) on even if it's just sort of shaded inside. Are you usually open to trying a new food that you aren’t familiar with? Eh, it depends on the food. I'm not very adventurous with foods though. Do you listen to Panic! At The Disco? I do. Have you ever had a kinky dream about a celebrity? ... It wasn't "kinky," but it was a dream lmao. Has anyone ever told you that they loved you, and you couldn’t say it back? That's how I ended the whole Joel childishness. Which friend do you confide in most? My mom. Do you wear a cross? No. What is your favorite doughnut? That's so hard. :( Krispy Kreme's normal glazed though probably takes the cake. I also love chocolate frosted and just totally plain, though. Do you have a hot tub? If so, where is it located? No. Did you read the Twilight series, or jump on the bandwagon after the movie? Neither. Do you or your parents rake your yard? Dad did growing up. Now nobody does or needs to. Who did you last go to the movies with? Dad, I think? What color was the last vehicle you were in? White. Do you have any family members in the military right now? No. Is there a ceiling fan in the room you’re in? Yeah. Have you ever heard voices? No. If you’re not straight, who was the first person you came out to? Sara. Do you remember the first time your first crush ever said hi to you? No. Do you ever go places with wet hair? Yeah, idc. Who is your favorite little girl? My nieces. What do you want the most in life? To feel like I made a difference, even a tiny one. If you could have anyone’s singing voice, whose would you choose? OBVIOUSLY Amy Lee's. What’s the most expensive thing you’ve bought that turned out to be a waste of money? *shrug* What’s something you’ve bought that turned out to be way more useful than you anticipated? Hm. Have you ever been on a ship? No. Would you ever date a disabled person? (Be honest) Yes. Would you rather adopt or have your own child? IF I wanted kids, which I absolutely do not, I'd rather have my own. I know I'd feel a deeper connection. What would you class as cheating on someone? As soon as you do/say something you don't want your s/o to know about, you're cheating. As far as earrings go, would you rather wear hoops or studs? Studs. Do you recycle? Yes. If someone dislikes you, what is most likely to be the reason? People have thought I don't try hard enough before. Do you put a line through your "7"s? Yes. ^ What about your "Z"s? Yes. What are you most known for? My art "skill," at least irl. How do you feel about shameless self-promoting? Depends on when, where, and how. As someone who's trying to be a freelance photographer, I get that it's sadly necessary, but there are some places it's just uncalled for.

[lastflcwers]

we love a boy in all black everything anyway hi it’s amanda again and i’m on my bullshit

『NICK ROBINSON ❙ CISMALE』 ⟿ looks like CASTOR DECODY is here for HIS JUNIOR year as a HISTORY student. HE is 23 years old & known to be WELL-TRAVELED, FERVENT, FLEETING & MELANCHOLIC . They’re living in MORIS, so if you’re there, watch out for them. ⬳ amanda. 22. mst. she/her

trigger warning: drug use, death, cancer

NAME:  castor “cas” simon decody AGE:  23 BIRTH DATE:  august 17th, 1996 ZODIAC:  leo sun, scorpio moon SEXUAL ORIENTATION:  heterosexual SOCIAL CLASS:  upper HOMETOWN:  seattle, washington EDUCATION LEVEL:  junior studying history FACE CLAIM:  nick robinson ADDICTION(S):  has been to rehab for xanax dependency DRUG USE:  smokes weed mostly but will participate in most drugs otherwise ALCOHOL USE:  yes POSITIVE TRAITS:  fervent, well-traveled, loquacious, dreamy NEGATIVE TRAITS:  fleeting, melancholic, vulgar, unrealistic LIKES:  greek mythology, radiohead, napping, writing DISLIKES:  talking on the phone, sunbathing, due dates, the beach

my boy castor here is an old muse of mine, dating back like at least three years ??? so i’ve got quite a bit about him but we’ll see how good i am at relaying it

cas is the reluctant only child of a right-leaning politician (father) and a paralegal (mother, deceased). he was raised mostly in beverly hills, but has spent some years living in seattle and toronto as well.

once he graduated high school, he spent six months abroad in europe, mainly staying in greece and italy. it was there that he sort of “discovered” his 18 year old self, and still feels like he left a piece of himself there. he also got really into partying, and did a lot of things he never would’ve done otherwise.

when he came home from the trip, he found out that his mother had been diagnosed with breast cancer while he’d been away. his family did not call to tell him, so he began resenting himself (and his dad) for so selfishly traveling when the best person in his life was undergoing treatment.

at age 19, when his mother passed, cas delve deep into a depression that he’d always sort of had but never let overwhelm him. he began using xanax on the regular, finding it much easier to just become belligerent or nap all day than to face the sadness he was dealing with.

between the ages of 19 and 23 he has gone to rehab a total of three times.

as for his personality

cas is a writer by nature, always romanticizing the shit out of everything. he thinks everything has deeper meaning than it necessarily does, particularly his interactions with women.

has an obsession with stargazing. go fucking figure. knows a lot about constellations and space. kind of pretentious when it comes to his interests but doesn’t actually act like he’s better than people. loves reading so so much. especially mythology. i imagine that he grew up with this fanciful library in his childhood home. something like this.

is VERY keen on anything supernatural which is likely why he chose radcliffe in the first place. 

actually very funny??? very self-deprecating humor but god damn does it win people over

tends to be fairly agreeable but will share his knowledge when he doesn’t understand a point of view

drives a nice ass bmw but doesn’t give a fuck about it. he takes little to no care of anything he owns, tbh. isn’t innately messy but just careless

and lastly we have wanted connections

- ex girlfriend(s) honestly castor would be such a sweet sweet boyfriend but they broke up for some reason or another. could be cheating involved on either end or maybe both?

- europe flings ??? idk if anyone has muses that have spent time in europe or are from there but i love the idea of him having this fleeting ass romance with some girl and like running around in barcelona or some shit

- to build off of that further... cas did experiment with his sexuality a bit while in europe. so that connection is open to men to, even though he’s mostly decided he’s into femme-identifying people. internalized homophobia who?

- give me some girl he’s lowkey obsessed with but they are not that close ?? like he writes cute prosy shit about her but they do not hang out other than maybe class or something

- roomies pls. lives in moris, though i imagine he may have at one point stayed in perkins to his own dismay. so maybe ex roomies too?

- hookups? i don’t think castor is like CRAZILY fucking everybody but he’s not about to say no to some hot ass girl

- somebody he lets read his writing... he has to be SO close to this person but also not??? like he wouldn’t want them to know too much about him personally but has to trust them

- friends and pals. fellow night owls. people he can bullshit with. nobody too dull-witted. i know i said he isn’t pretentious but that was a lie

[jedi-order-apologist]

A part of unreasonable Jedi hate comes from Anakin being a young white guy who doesn't get what he wants and thinks the whole world is unfair and owes him something, and a lot of young white guys...let's be honest, think exactly like that. And they just automatically side with Anakin, and anyone who denies Anakin must be bad. Which is sad because Lucas told a wonderfully educational story of why being like Anakin brings suffering and tragedy. To Anakin himself and to others.

I...don’t entirely agree, sorry. I do agree with your very last point that the story was showing that being like Anakin brings suffering and tragedy to everyone, and my own position is that Anakin is an archetypal Tragic Hero (who are very specifically done in by their own flaws, not external factors) and that saying the Jedi (or any external thing outside of Anakin’s own choices - even Palpatine is only the physical manifestation of temptation) somehow “made” him fall minimizes his agency and undermines that mythological role.

But as I’ve said before, I don’t think those who hate the Jedi are necessarily unreasonable; most of them, anyway. While I disagree wholeheartedly with them, don’t think the films support their conclusions, and think many go too far in woobifying Anakin and denying his agency in his own fall (which is definitely not unique to the male fanbase. I know of plenty of other women who tend to woobify Anakin and characters like him, and it’s especially prominent in fanfiction, which is generally female-dominated), I can at least see why and where a lot of it is coming from. For one thing, it’s pretty natural to identify with the protagonist (regardless of who it is, just due to more exposure to their perspective) and want to see them achieve their goals, and be predisposed to seeing obstacles to those goals as unfair.

I don’t think those people are necessarily siding with Anakin because they also think the world is unfair to them, but that they see Anakin’s early trauma (childhood slavery) and manipulation/grooming by Palpatine from a young age as...well, as absolving some of his personal responsibility. I don’t like that interpretation because it minimizes his agency, and I think so much of the power in Star Wars’s story is about personal agency and choice, about resisting evil and temptation in yourself. It kind of loses something for me if you downplay that aspect in the protagonist. Anakin wasn’t, of course, responsible for the abuse he went through from slavery and from Palpatine, but he is responsible for the choices he makes as an adult and the horror he inflicts on others. I’m not without sympathy for him, but I have infinitely more sympathy for those he’s harmed.

But those who disagree with my interpretation and instead focus more on the harm that’s been done to Anakin aren’t unreasonable, they just...have different things they value in stories. They’d rather examine a cycle of abuse than individual choices/personal agency and they’re not wrong to personally prioritize those kind of stories, and it’s not all that surprising that they put his relationship with the Jedi Order in that context as well.

I just wholeheartedly disagree that that’s the story the films were going for, or that the Jedi were even shown to be abusive/harmful to Anakin.

[elliepassmore]

The Never Tilting World Review

4/5 stars Recommended for people who like: fantasy, multiple POVs, goddesses, magic, demons, LGBTQ+ romance, strong female leads, kick-ass women, women engineers, disability representation, mental illness representation, characters of color, complex morality I will say that for the most part I really enjoyed this book. The concept is fascinating and the characters and world were splendid. I took off a star because, as nice as it is sometimes to not have every detail of a world explained, with something like magic, it does have to be explained to a certain extent. By-and-large I understand how the 'gates' work, but we're dropped right into the terminology within the first couple of pages without explanation and it was a little confusing and took me a few tries to get at it. Then, I just wasn't a huge fan of Odessa and it does take away from the book a little when you just don't like one of the MCs or narrators, but I'll explain more about Odessa when I get to her. Lan, Tianlan, is the first narrator, so I'm starting with her. She's what's called a Catseye (also something whose we had to figure out figure out ourselves), which means she can heal people or inflict sickness upon them in a form of dual magic. Two sides to every coin, right? I really, really love this idea and think it's a fantastic spin on the typical 'healer' character you see in fantasy. I suppose, theoretically, healers could always turn their magic to use by harming people, in fantasy books healers are relegated to only healing, save for here and in Leigh Bardugo's Grisha and Six of Crows trilogy, where healing and harming are seen as two sides of the same magic, though a person typically has more strength in one than the other, so it doesn't come out quite like it does here. I enjoyed being in Lan's POV because she's caught between wanting to do the right thing by the world that's been plunged into eternal night and also wanting to keep Odessa, her lover, safe. I also thought that Chupeco writing Lan has having PTSD after a pre-book incident was refreshing considering the number of books that just skip over the psychological effects events have on characters. This was also an area where Chupeco turned the 'healer' trope on its head a little, as Catseyes can work with physical illnesses and injuries, but also mental ones, taking on the role of healer and therapist (though obviously not for themselves), so not only do we get to see Lan experiencing PTSD, but we also see her coming to terms with it and seeking therapy-like treatment for it, which is pretty unusual in most novels. Despite being in the 'healer' role and having magic that can infect and destroy if she wishes, Lan is also skilled with a blade and hand-to-hand combat and has something of a quick temper. She's definitely the 'protector' type more than anything else and is striving to make sure everyone comes out alright in the end. Odessa comes next, because I'm grouping the characters based on where they're from and Lan and Odessa are both from Aranth. Odessa is one of the daughter-goddesses in the novel who is unaware her twin is alive. She has some kind of chronic illness that prevents her from being very active without tiring out and that Catseyes have been able to treat but not cure. In the beginning Odessa seems like she'll be a pretty good character, a little too doe-eyed and teary for my tastes, but has plenty of potential. Then she starts to get bratty and doesn't seem to have the ability to logically think things through. From a writing standpoint I really appreciate how complex Chupeco makes Odessa and I think within the plot it's super fascinating. It's even explained to us toward the end why Odessa made the sudden turn from teary-but-okay-princess to brat-with-little-rationale, so I appreciate the cleverness of how the reason was woven throughout Lan and Odessa's chapters for us to find but maybe not pinpoint exactly. However, the great reasoning behind it doesn't stop me from not liking Odessa. The weird power-imbalance Odessa has going on with Lan and their relationship that I'm not a huge favor of. They love each other, great, fantastic, I believe that and I actually think they make a great couple in the beginning of the novel. They certainly have a better set-up for a romance than Arjun and Haidee do, though their 'love' is only marginally slower moving, but I'm just a teeny bit uncomfortable with the power imbalance of Odessa being a goddess/princess and Lan being the person assigned to guard and protect her. It's one thing when Lan is serving the crown in some general 'technical' sense and the two of them are in a relationship and it's another thing entirely when Lan is serving Odessa and her mother directly. It would be better, I think, if Lan wasn't serving directly under Odessa or it was like Lan's previous relationship where both girls were rangers. While Lan has no issues disregarding Odessa's commands, the imbalance is still there and becomes a bit of a problem later, but is never fully addressed, so I'm not sure how I feel about that or about some of the scenes with Lan and dark!Odessa. The relationship has the potential in the beginning and it is, for the most part good, but then once the difference in rank and power becomes clearer and Odessa becomes darker I get just a little uncomfortable with it. Haidee is the other daughter-goddess and she lives in the Golden City on the always-day side of the planet. She's what's called a 'mechanika' in the world, but what we would classify as an engineer. She's quick on her feet, fiery, stubborn, and extremely empathetic. In one of her very first scenes she's crying over a days-dead whale, if that's any indication. As much as I love her determination, smarts, and stubbornness, her ignorance of the world and optimistic attitude do grate on my nerves at times. She's just a bit too happy-go-lucky in some instances, though it largely works out for her. I will be fair, Haidee is one of my favorites, but I feel like Chupeco set things up so that Haidee would always have things work out for her and it seems a bit too obvious at times. Despite my dislike of Odessa, things go wrong for her, sometimes very wrong, and while things do occasionally go wrong for Haidee and seem like they'll be bad, I don't ever really get the full-on sense of dread like I do with Odessa. Arjun and Haidee meet by the whale and their first scene involves them trying to kill each other. Naturally, he becomes her love interest. Arjun is, hands down, the funniest person in the entire book. He has a very dry sense of humor and can be extremely sarcastic. He follows along with the idea of prophecies and with Haidee's ideas a little to mellowly for what I'd been expecting given our introduction to him, which I think says more about the whole 'everything works out for Haidee' but than about him. I also enjoy that Arjun decided to go with a prosthetic magical rifle after he lost his hand (not a spoiler, it happened pre-book). I don't know how they engineer the things they do in the desert, but I just found it amusing that instead of engineering a hand or hook or knife or something they went with a rifle that could channel his fire magic. It really fits his personality, honestly. While Arjun's and Haidee's romance is definitely more power-balanced than Lan's and Odessa's, there are still some holes in it. Mainly that they meet and fall in love within the span of the book, which I'm pretty sure takes place over, like, a month. I love fantasy and dystopian, and sci-fi, but oh my god I am getting sick of the quick romances. Chupeco did a decent job of showing why they fell in love and how they respected each other and became friends before they fell in love, but it's still only been a month. Sorry, but I know 19-year-olds, being one and being in college, and I'm just really not certain that your 'month to love' romance is gonna last. There are different depths to love and you can love more than once, but the insta-true-love, will-survive-anything has just, for some reason, been getting on my nerves lately. Maybe in a couple months or years I'll be fine with it again, but right now I'm just not a fan, even if I do like the characters together. The mythology and general world-building in the book is also something I enjoyed. Chupeco keeps the ideas of duality, sacrifice, and "a demoness is what they call a goddess that men cannot control" going throughout the book. It centers around two young goddesses whose mother(s) are goddesses and a world that somehow stopped spinning and split into only-night and only-day, so there's obviously a lot of mythology and magic going into the base of this book. Since the 'Breaking,' as they call it, neither mother-goddess has really told the twins much about previous generations of goddesses. Odessa gets more of an education about it than Haidee does, but both are still largely left in the dark about their world's mythology, which allows Chupeco to reveal it to the reader in a way that feels natural without info-dumping. There's a lot to do with goddesses, prophecies, and rituals that starts to get unpacked in this one, but which mainly sets up for the sequel. I'm super interested in learning more about the goddesses and rituals in the next book and have plenty of theories regarding them. The duality piece of things is interesting, because you don't necessarily recognize it in the beginning or even halfway through the book. It was more toward the end that I began to see what Chupeco was doing with the night-day, ill-healthy, healer-'plague-giver' sort of balance. The goddesses are twins, as all goddesses before them have been, and that set-up is a fantastic literary device for setting up dualities. You can have the good twin vs. the evil twin, the knowledgeable vs. the ignorant, and so many other varieties, and Chupeco plays with a bit of each in each twin. Odessa knows more about their past from the start, but it's Haidee who learns more about it and their world on the way. Odessa starts out as the chronically-ill sister, but Haidee ends up drained and exhausted. Odessa becomes more and more morally complex and dark but still has soft spots, Haidee is blindingly optimistic but has moments of destructive rage. They're set up to mirror and foil one another, yet each still comes together in the end and finds strength in knowing their twin. The girls are quite similar even though the book sets up a lot of their differences. Without giving too many spoilers I can say that this is 100% reflected in where the plot takes us and the things that are revealed. In terms of world-building I thought Chupeco gave us very distinct settings, creatures, and peoples. The night-side of the world is described as very rainy and cold, with threats of storms, kraken, and icebergs. Though Lan and Odessa are only in the city for a short period of time, I remember the impression I got of it. Old bookstores, tall buildings, dreary because of the rain. This is set against the next setting Lan and Odessa experience, which is the borderlands near the Abyss. While these lands are still dark, there's more foliage described as well as eerie lakes, currents made of air that are strong enough to hold ships, and creatures of darkness and shadow. It is also here where the sky begins to lighten as they move closer to the Abyss and the always-day side of the world. This is even more different from the settings Arjun and Haidee encounter. The desert is vast and deadly, full of dangerous scorpions, an acid sea, and a sea of sand complete with sand-dolphins and sand-sea creatures. The desert is full of raiders and nomadic clans instead of shadow people, but the former can be just as deadly. The Golden City is more steampunk than the night city, Aranth, is described to be. It also seems to be full of snootier people than Aranth does, and all-in-all, despite it being a city run by a twin goddess with a twin goddess daughter, Haidee's city is a very different city from the one Lan and Odessa left. Then there's Inanna's Temple and the Abyss itself, which remind me of dawn and pure darkness, respectively, but still have their own distinct feelings and descriptions. It's very easy to get immersed in the world Chupeco has created here and it's one of those rare world-building experiences that makes me wish I could see it artistically rendered. The Never Tilting World is a good book with unique, distinct characters each with their own strengths and weaknesses that are explored throughout the book. Chupeco writes the characters relatively realistically, meaning they deal with physical and mental trauma as well as tough decisions they sometimes respond to poorly. The Arjun-Haidee romance felt kind of rushed and the Lan-Odessa romance felt like it had a power-imbalance I wasn't 100% comfortable with. Since there is another book, however, and since the Lan-Odessa romance had a lot more promise in the beginning than the middle and end, I'm hoping it'll get itself sorted out. I also dinged the book's score because of terminology that we're left to figure out for ourselves that really would've been better if it had just been explained outright. Definitely think it's a good read, though and would recommend picking it up if you enjoy fantasy.

[polarishq]

Meet GINEVRA “Ginny” QUINN. They are FIFTY-SIX years old and hail from BOOTHBAY, MAINE. Ginny embodies the constellation, ERIDANUS. They use she/her pronouns. Their faceclaim is Sydney Park.

Eridanus reminds me of rain covered sidewalks, jars filled with brightly colored pebbles, the tragedy of growing up, birthday cake flavored everything, diving into open waters, double takes, found families, a hilarious lack of pop culture knowledge, #SaveTheTurtles, a monochromatic wardrobe, endless FroYo toppings, footsteps running along a wooden dock, seashells as decoration, and finding your voice.

BIOGRAPHY

Boothbay is the picturesque setting for many-a adolescent coming-of-age summer movies. Nestled on the coast of Maine, its small population makes their living off of being a tourist destination in the summer and living their everyday lives as fisherman and townsfolk during the rest of the year. As cliche as it sounds, Ginny Quinn truly can’t imagine a more perfect upbringing. She was the youngest child two hard-working parents, never swimming in money but always having enough to live comfortably with little worries. Her early years were spent running along the docks and swimming in the ocean, knowing almost everyone in the area by face if not by name. It wasn’t exciting, but it was home.

That’s why, when Gregory and Paulette Quinn were found dead in their home one day in the fall of ‘78, and their  daughter was nowhere in sight, the town was left in shock.

It would be another forty years before any of them saw Ginny again, looking only a few years older than when she had disappeared. Previously a carefree young girl, with dreams of exploring the world but always ending up back in Boothbay, the Ginny that greeted them was of a much more callous variety. Not rude, never rude. But with sharper edges than when she’d left, a little more reckless. And very much so closed off  — she wouldn’t answer the questions they asked about where she’d been or how she still looked so young. And when asked if she knew what happened to her parents, she simply replied that she did not care about them. So, a very different girl indeed.

The truth is, Ginny didn’t see a point in explaining to them what had happened. Her family’s magic was a secret from most of the town, and they wouldn’t have believed her if she had told them. But here we go.

Never once during her idyllic childhood had Ginny ever known what her parents did for a living. Never once had she thought to ask. Most of their town was made up of fisherman, and her parents spent almost as much time out on their family’s boat than they did at home. Every few weeks, one or both of them would travel along the East Coast to sell, and it was enough to keep their family afloat. Ginny had no reason to question it, even as she grew older and began to pick up on how none of the other town residents ever spoke about fishing with hers, or how she never saw any of the fish they brought in.

In the Fall of ‘78, Ginny came home from grocery shopping to a literal bloodbath. Her parents were barely recognizable in the middle of the living room, with three creatures surrounding them who were most definitely not human. Even if Ginny had wanted to scream, she couldn’t. Her lungs were filling with water; she was suddenly being drowned from the inside out. She was going to die. But she didn’t.

Only a few seconds after their attack started, one of the creatures told the others to stop. Ginny was too busy guzzling air to pay much attention to what they were saying, and too emotionally drained from the ordeal to fight back when they moved her. She was expecting them to kill her as horrifically as they had her parents except that didn’t happen.

When she was next fully aware, she was underwater. She was alive and underwater without any bit of struggle. When she remembered what happened to her parents, she reasonably freaked out. And then cried. And then bit one of the creatures  — mermaids, she thought initially. sirens, they corrected her  — that attempted to soothe her. It took another three days before she could bring herself to listen to them. When she did, she wished she hadn’t.

Your parents were hunters, they explained. Then sneered and corrected themselves. Capturers, more like it. That didn’t seem right, but the more they said, the more Ginny realized that the horribly picture they were painting made too much sense to be a lie. Her parents  — good, kind Gregory and Paula Quinn  — hadn’t made their money off selling every day fish. It came from capturing and selling water-based magic. Primarily nymphs and mermaids, but they could get a pretty high bid if they caught a siren or a selkie. Her parents who had taught her to be kind and forgiving, had built themselves around the selling of living, breathing, sentient beings. And, after decades of covering their footsteps and protecting themselves, they were finally identified by the sirens and permanently removed as a problem.

So why had they brought Ginny here instead of killing her too? They answered that before she’d even considered it. For starters, Ginny was just a child. A scared child that hadn’t appeared as a blip on any of the sirens’ proverbial radars, who they suspected was unaware of her parents misgivings. Her reaction proved they were right on that one. They were killers by nature, but they refused to harm an innocent like Ginny.

Then, of course, there was the notice of her constellation mark. That’s what had been discussed while she’d gasped for air next to her parents’  bodies. Magic worked differently for sirens than it did for witches, but there were particular marks that they could recognize from their own mythology. The mark that had appeared years ago on Ginny’s forearm was one of them. Eridanus was as close to waterfolk as most witches could get. Ginny knew that her mark gave her abilities similar to a mermaid, but her parents had always urged her to keep those secret from the rest of the town. Now, they had helped to save her life.

They would have let her go. They promised they would, so long as she promised to leave their kind alone moving forward. Or there was another option: she could stay with them. She wasn’t a siren, but she had everything necessary to live underwater for most of her life if she so chose. And they would take care of her. They were the reason she no longer had any adult to watch over her; the sirens would freely step (or swim) into that role. She would have been well within her right to leave after what they had done to her parents. But after the undeniable truth of their stories... could she blame them? No, but she did blame her mom and dad for being capable of such horrific things. Besides, if she returned to the human world, what would await her? Explanations she didn’t have and a probably life within the foster system. She trusted the sirens, though. So she stayed.

For the next forty years, she was raised a daughter of the sea. She did need to breech the surface every few days (her powers aren’t limitless and she still needed to retain at least some humanity), but the sirens were her family and her loyalty was to them. Any reminder of her own human status was met with disdain; she could only think of the horrific actions of her parents and those who had bought off of them. Ginny certainly wasn’t a siren. She wasn’t a mermaid or a selkie or any of the other water creatures she stumbled across in her time. But she was one of them in everything but physiology and that was enough.

Returning to the human world was less her choice. The siren she had come to think of as her father, the one who had stopped the others from drowning her that first day, was the one who urged her to not only spend time in their world but to further her education. He was a high ranking member of their clan’s council, someone who at his very core wanted the ability to exist peacefully with other creatures, even if not on the friendliest of terms. It took years of convincing before Ginny agreed to act as something of an ambassador. There was an ulterior motive  — her father knew that without proper training, Ginny’s powers might one day fail her. As much as she wanted to think herself a siren, she could not fully immerse herself as one without risking death, the last thing any of them wanted. So it was for both her own health and for the safety of her clan that she returned to land and headed for Polaris.

She has been at the school for approximately three years now, and it has been a rather slow adjustment. Upon first arrival, she wanted nothing to do with the other witches and wizards. She likened them all to her parents, and refused to let anyone know about where she had been raised. But over the years, those feelings have somewhat shifted. She is still wary about people, and she places her trust on a very high shelf. There have been some who have earned it though, and she had started to let herself think that maybe some witches and wizards are good by nature. There is still that overall hesitance though, and she is very careful not to be moved too far from her mission. When not in class, she spends much of her time advocating for magical beings, trying to bring attention to the the hunting many of them face at the hands of wizards and humans alike. Don’t get it twisted. She may be making friends and she may be slowly rediscovering what it means to walk among mankind. But her main goal is always at the forefront of her actions.

INCLINATION

Eridanus, the river, creates water magic in its most basic form. Those chosen are often born around water, and thrive best along an open shoreline. Their most noteworthy skill is their ability to submerge themselves for long periods of time. It’s not necessarily that they can breathe underwater; rather, their need for air disappears as soon as they’re underwater, their physiology immediately adapting. They are also skilled swimmers and have a strong connection to aquatic life. Because they are so connected to the water, Eridanus usually struggles of too far removed from it. The drier an environment, the weaker their magic becomes.

CONNECTIONS

Relative: An older sibling, a cousin, a great grandpa — someone related with Ginny who was under the impression that she just disappeared after her parents’ murders. She completely distanced herself from her land life so when they two stumble into each other at Polaris, Ginny wants absolutely nothing to do with them. Too bad she’s too stubborn to give them any explanation as to why she fucked off for forty years. (FC should be either park Korean and/or African-American to match Sydney’s ethnicity. Bonus points if it’s an older sibling who was out of the house at the time of the murder and the fc is Tati Gabrielle.)

What’s a Friend?: By nature, Ginny is cautious around most witches and wizards, and it takes a lot to earn her trust. This is someone who has earned it though, so much so that Ginny has told them about her life among the sirens and her current mission. Because of who she is as a person, Ginny doesn’t actually call them her best friend, but the sentiment is there.

We Could Have Had It All (Rolling in the Deep): Ginny can not afford to form many attachments while on land but this person right here seems to be the biggest wrench in that plan. Without meaning to, they’ve grown closer and she’s developed feelings towards them (whether or not that’s reciprocated is entirely up to you). Getting romantically involved is simply out of the question, much less with a witch or wizard, so Ginny’s solution was to stop talking to them altogether. With no explanation. Seemingly unprompted. She’d apologize but she doesn’t trust herself to be around them without falling even harder.

Penned by Jeanne ★

[margridarnauds]

Favorite thing about your field or the research of your field? 😊

It is both an ongoing challenge and a delight that there is still so much to work with in this field. In almost any of the mainstream fields, you get a bit of a feeling that everything’s been done before. Here, there’s none of that. There’s a whole, brilliant world out there to discover, and we’re at the forefront of it. It’s an awesome, terrifying responsibility and an honor. Like, even the work I’m doing on the Fir Bolg. I don’t believe that it’s going to absolutely revolutionize mythological studies, BUT no one else has done it before. For another paper, I’m doing an edition of a text that has NEVER HAD AN EDITION BEFORE. What our postdoc said our first day was true “Anything you want, it’s yours. You have the pick of it.” 

Also....

Look, I know the stereotype of the Humanities as a field dominated purely by fluff, with no relevance to the real world. Something that my supervisor has discussed with me, the very first time we met actually, was that when he was in Belfast in the 80s, the Celtic material was kept behind a bulletproof door because it was “politically sensitive material.” There is a very BIG reason why there was a boom and, really, for the most part, an invention of the field in the early 20th century, correlating with a rise in nationalist sentiment and, eventually, the Easter Rising and the Civil War. I make fun of that material for the most part, but there is a reason it exists, and part of the reason why there was so much comparison to Ancient Greek myths, besides the fact that, obviously, it was what most of the educated elite would have been familiar with, was that there was this URGE to show that Ireland had a cultural tradition that could match the classical tradition.This is a field that has been won in blood. 

The material that we have, as scant as it can be, exists in spite of centuries of persecution and threats. (I know of at least one story that, during the Famine times, people used manuscripts as fuel for a fire. Not necessarily because they were ignorant or callous, but because they were living in a difficult, miserable time.) Many of the manuscripts, before they were in Irish universities (though not ALL, there are still a few important manuscripts in British custody) were in the hands of private British universities and collectors, there to be put on display along with all the other antiquities by men who didn’t know the true value of what they were dealing with. You will find very few Celtic Studies people, if any, who support the extinction of the language in favor of something “practical” and I suspect the reason is that, if the language goes extinct, then centuries of persecution have won, and all those years, all those sacrifices....they were for nothing.