#meaning that they were the same person essentially but with vastly different life experiences

[jyou-no-sonoko19]

Reading through recent SoL chapters, to refresh some things before I release the new chapter, I was reminded of some canon annoyances (big surprise). Particularly in Season 4, which fortunately has no impact on the AfMverse because that branched off from the end of Season 3.

So I thought I'd ask, what are your biggest magic-logic holes from Season 4? Mine are: - Lucifer (an archangel) and a couple earthly witches taking down the Metatron (Voice of God, highest of angels) in a moment's easy-peasy conflagration. -Lucifer (again) being able to just remove Lilith's powers, despite them never coming from him in the first place (she developed them during their time together ofc, but she had her own magical base before they met).

Runners up include Sabrina M dying from falling through the mirror portal with only minor scratches; Salem being alive even though both of his bonded witches are dead; Lucifer behaving as tho M and S are meaningfully different, instead of being one person split like 5 minutes ago.

[teeelsie-posts]

Fanfic Writers' Director's Cut: Winter Quarters

 @drgrlfriend asked for Director’s Cut commentary about Winter Quarters, so here you go!

Ages and ages ago, I stumbled on a short one-shot C/C fic, Feathered Friends. by Perpetual Motion. It’s an MCU/DC crossover that introduces Dick Grayson as an old friend of Dick’s from the circus days.  Honestly, I didn’t think much of it at the time because I wasn’t into DC at all then, but it was C/C and by an author who had written other things I’d liked.  I liked the fic, though, and always sort of remembered it vaguely.  Some years later, I was needing a distraction from life (for reasons) when a writer I admire and follow cast about looking for a beta for a 60k Jay/Dick fic. For those of you who might not be aware, Jay/Dick is a significant pairing in the DCU (the tag has the most fic in the DCU and Batman fandoms ao3). Anyway, I spent a couple months with that fic and that got me interested in more Dick Grayson fic, in particular. And then one day, it hit me like a bolt of lightning: Dick and Clint both grew up in the circus and there’s so much potential there for crossover fic!  I checked out the tag and there were only 8 fic with the pairing. Eight! A travesty! From there, I just started thinking about it, a lot. Like, really a lot. 

I toyed with them at the same circus, but their respective circuses are so well entrenched in canon that I decided I didn’t want to do that.  And for reasons I won’t get into, I was aware that circuses used to winter over in Florida, and I thought, oh, wow, wouldn’t that be great fodder for angst, to have them coming in and out of each others’ lives every year, have their relationship grow, but then have to LEAVE each other year after year.  Mmm, yummy angst! 🤤 Thus Winter Quarters was born!

Mmm, what else… well, I think Clint and Dick work well together for the same reason that Clint and Phil work together: it’s the yin and yang.  While they both grew up in the circus, Dick’s early life was vastly different from Clint’s. His family was loving and stable and his parents were kind and supportive and encouraging. Just the opposite of Clint’s.  I enjoyed writing Dick’s slow realization that Clint’s life was nothing like his own.  Dick’s life wasn’t sheltered, exactly (I mean, he did grow up in a traveling circus), but because his parents protected him, he never really faced head-on the kind of horror and trauma that Clint experienced regularly. Because he couldn’t recognize it for what it was, it takes him a long time to understand what’s going on with Clint.

And if Clint had anything to say about it, he never would have learned about it.  I see them both as very protective of the other (which is why they both make excellent super heroes), with Dick, once he learns what Clint’s going through, he wants to save him from it. Whereas Clint sees Dick as this sort of, unmarred shining star, doesn’t ever want to expose Dick to the darkness in his life—from Clint’s perspective, he’s afraid he’s going to…sully Dick, and he doesn’t want to do that.

In truth, I wasn’t super well informed about Dick Grayson when I started writing this.  I had to sheepishly ask a few people on tumblr if they could give me, like, Dick’s baseline personality traits. Those I asked were very kind and gave me enough to go on and pointed me toward a few essential Robin/Nightwing comics so I could get my start.  One of them said something about Dick and his ‘dad jokes’ which is the entire reason I inserted all those dumb jokes in there.  I spent a stupid amount of time googling ‘dad jokes’ and puns to try to find a handful that would fit into the story line. In the end though, I kind of liked how they worked into the narrative.

The hardest thing about this fic for me, I think, was writing with a young boy’s voice. I never was one, I never had bothers, and my kids are girls, so I was pretty insecure about how authentic they sounded. I still am, if I’m honest. But I suppose there’s a universalness to the teenage experience, regardless of what your gender is, so hopefully I wasn’t too far off the mark.

In all honesty, I didn’t think anyone would be interested in this crossover—it genuinely was one of those situations when they say you have to write for yourself and not other people—so the response the fic has gotten has 100% blown me away. But it makes me super happy and I hope it will inspire more people to write some Clint/Dick!  In the meantime, I continue to think about Part 2 on a daily basis and I’ll get there eventually, if for no other reason then that I have already written the denouement and I really like it so I want to write everything that leads up to it so I can post it! 😅

Thanks for the ask, drgrlfriend!

Fanfic Writers' Director's Cut ask game.

[neoyi]

Pokemon Pokemon Pokemon.

Part 1: https://neoyi.tumblr.com/post/701862985957801984/i-cannot-believe-the-school-principal-is-pulling-a

Part 2: https://neoyi.tumblr.com/post/702995488069287936/look-i-get-you-and-your-teachers-can-bond-to

Part 3: https://neoyi.tumblr.com/post/704016193905950720/god-would-someone-please-hug-avren-this-poor-kid

Okay, you know what game? You got me with that plot twist! You son of a gun!

This is endgame territory, so spoilers galore! More under the "Keep Reading."

To my surprise, Area Zero was very... pristine. I was kind of expecting dark tunnels, rocks, and/or caverns since it's a giant crater, but that's a stupid way of thinking that.

Why wouldn't life grow there after thousands of years of untouched nature? Of course there would be waterfalls and grass and Pokemon roaming around. It's also restricted, rarely touched by humans, so it wouldn't have many manmade structures either. It's weirdly kind of unnerving, but never let it be said nature isn't full of surprises.

Also the battle music here is a certified banger.

It's so damn cool to see Pokemon from distant past or in my copy, the distant future. Like we've seen glimpse of the former through fossils that can revive certain prehistoric Pokemon, Jurassic Park-style, so this is a bit of a step. My biggest disappointment is that I wished they could have teased this a bit more!

It's established a few of these past/future Pokemon have snuck out from Area Zero and into other parts of Paldea, and we do see a couple of them in their Titan forms. But imagine traveling around the world at any point past the tutorial, collecting Pokemon, and suddenly you run into one that looks like a robotic version of an already pre-existing one.

Maybe it's a new variation! Maybe it's a weird science experiment! At first, you don't know the answer, you just accept it as a type of Pokemon because they're all unique and varied like that. It's only when the plot reveals at the end after hours and hours and hours of playtime that you realize that no, these aren't natural and not of this time period.

How cool would that have been?

In any case, I think seeing new Pokemon that came from different time period is a stunningly novel idea. Man, I don't know how, but I really want to see more Pokemon from the distant past or future. I mean, Legends Arceus did something similar with Hisuian varieties that existed centuries past. Maybe we can get a Pokemon game in the distant future that elaborates on this or something.

I'm kind of used to Nintendo games not having voice acting, so the lack of doesn't bother me nearly as much as it does for others, but I agree scenes like these where you're controlling the character as your companions talk really could have been weighed favorably through spoken dialogue. Especially because the dialogue box is automatic and can be missed if you weren't paying attention.

Nemona, Penny, and Avren are constantly talking during your journey down Area Zero. You get to know bits and pieces of their personal lives that haven't been spoken for up until now. I ended up really enjoying this portion because it makes sense for them to just now talk about their lives - none of them know each other.

Prior to this, they were all students who just happened to go to the same school. Several times, Avren speaks of Nemona in a rather unapproachable, somewhat disdainful manner (presumably due to her ace status and rich background.) Then you have Penny who just came back from essentially a nearly two year suspension and have since largely kept to the sidelines. These are kids with completely different social and influential background that in any other circumstances, would be unlikely to join together if it weren't for you, the player character.

So you have these kids trying their damnest to work together in spite of the general what the fuckery going on Area Zero, and their vastly different upbringing. One of my favorite part is when Penny talks about her embarrassing father because he had the audacity to give her adorable nicknames ("Pen Pen"), something Avren envies greatly because he doesn't get that from his old man. In another conversation, Nemona has to emphasize that she's not some spoiled, rich kid and prefers battling to being pampered.

Like I love the way Penny speaks because she's abrasive and has no filter since she's been somewhat asocial and subtle. Or how Avren tries to boost his skills because the poor kid wants validation.

It adds a hell of a lot of depth to these characters and their growth, as well as an added complication of having to work together in a dangerous mission when they've barely been more than an arm's length away from each other. By the end of the game, you don't just have a group of loyal friends, you have a group that's just beginning a friendship. And that's beautiful, man.

MY BOY GETTING CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT.

So I thought Professor Turo didn't connect Avren for years because he had successfully traveled to the future and couldn't return home. I figured he found a way to communicate, but that was the extent of what he could do. That's why he needed his son and PC's help in gathering the necessary materials as well as powering Miraidon back up in order to rework the time machine so he can safely return home.

But that's not what happened and what really did blew my goddamn mind!

Fuck you, man.

[star--nymph]

Okay, couldn't help it: Eurydice again. <3

Essentials: 1 and Life: 4!

GASP? More questions! I will endeavor to give the best answers I can.

ESSENTIALS

What is their name, and how old are they? Does their name or birthday hold any significance?

Eurydice Ismene Fiadh Lavellan is her full name and was born 9:14 Dragon in the Mid-Summer/Solace (she doesn't have a specific date). So she's 27 as of 9:41. Eurydice names goes by my personal headcanon for the naming conventions of the Dalish which is: Personal Name, Parental Name, Linage Name, and Clan Name. 'Eurydice' in Dalish (and Greek) means 'wide justice' and she was named after a heroine in a folk story by her grandmother.

LIFE

4. Describe their family. Who were they close to? Were there any particular childhood friends?

Eurydice is the eldest child of Lycus and Ismene Lavellan, a warrior and hunter respectively. Lycus's mother, Enuna, is Eurydice's beloved grandmother. She has five younger siblings, Melia (b.9:15), Nike (b.9:18), twins Izark and Ion (b.21), and Aegis (b.28). Eurydice, Melia, and Nike were primarily raised by Enuna until her death when Eurydice was about five years old. She was close to her grandmother, who was the only person besides Melia that she actually spoke to, and her death cut her off from the only adult figure in her life that cared for her and understood her condition instead of writing her off as willfully disobedient, stupid, or heartless. After that point, Eurydice and Melia took charge in raising their younger siblings. Lycus and Ismene proved to both be bad parents in vastly different ways, with Lycus being abusive and treating his children as items to show off rather than actual human beings, especially Eurydice who he scapegoated and regarded both as 'his jewel' and 'his doll'. Ismene, meanwhile, has little to no interest in her children unless they show some trait that she has common interest in and while she regards Eurydice as a nuisance who invites troubles, the child she actively emotionally abused was Melia who she decided was annoying and outspoken (probably because, unlike Eurydice, Melia fought back). I did a more extensive writing up for Eurydice and her parents here. Please be careful as it does outline physical and mental abuse, specifically towards an autistic child. Take care while reading. As for Eurydice's siblings, she's closest to Melia both in age (being almost literal year apart) and relationship wise. For a good chunk of their childhood, Eurydice and Melia were joined at the hip and unless Eurydice wandered off, you couldn't find one without the other. Melia was the talker compared to Eurydice, who was content sit and play with the grass in silence, and the arrangement suited them just find. It was only when Eurydice's magic came in and they were forcible separated so she could train as a first that their relationship was strained. Eurydice and Melia's dream was to be halla mistresses together and that was all but shattered the second everyone find out what Eurydice could do. Still, they both got the same vallasin together and they tried to be together as much as possible, but Melia later developed her own relationship with childhood sweet heart Virfen (they/them), and Eurydice, unable to handle losing Melia to someone else, was further isolated. Melia would experience the same feelings when Eurydice left and they met at Skyhold; they both really had to deal with the fact that as close as they are, either weren't going to remain stagnant for the other. They had to grow. Still, they both deeply love each other and even after everything, the first person they always go looking for is the other. Eurydice's relationship with Nike, Izark, and Ion is a little more complex because sadly the three of them didn't get as much time with Eurydice after she became First and they had to deal with the abuse of their parents in their own ways. In order to cope, they started to believe that Eurydice was probably the root of her own problems and maybe the clan was right in saying something was wrong with her. Of course, when they got older, they learned this was probably not true but it still put distance between her and them, especially Ion who did anything to not effectively rock the boat with their father. Nike became a jokester so their parents would lose all interest in them, Izark became a sort of scapegoat for Lycus as well and developed as explosive temper (which he hates himself for) but was at least protected by his own friends and teachers to not be so abused, and Ion became withdrawn and did his best to stay out of his parent's eyeline.

They all love Eurydice a lot but they have their own traumas to deal with. Still there is proof in that love, because before Eurydice left the clan, Ion gave her a knife he had carved himself and told her to keep it on her at all times. And Eurydice does. That knife has never left her side.

Finally there's Aegis, who is the baby of the family and thankfully never dealt with much of the abuse her siblings did because Lycus and Ismene lost all interest in child rearing after her birth. She was primarily raised by her five older siblings, with Eurydice and Melia acting as her mother figures. She was especially close to Eurydice as she developed her magic early and Eurydice took on teaching her the basics along side caring for her. To date she is one of the only people who Eurydice allows to touch her and whom she gives open physical affection to. When Eurydice left for the Conclave, it was for Aegis that she cut her hair for the first time in years—Aegis, already upset about her sister leaving, cried that she was worried the shems would use Eurydice’s long hair as a way to subdue her. In response, Eurydice sliced off her braid and gave it to Aegis to comfort her, something she wouldn’t have done for anyone else because of how important Eurydice’s hair is to her.

Beside all of that, Eurydice has no childhood friends outside of her siblings. She was an otherwise isolated child.

[transmalewife]

Alright, let's talk about attachment

I can’t find clear information on when exactly the non-attachment rule was added to the code. It was either soon before or soon after the great sith war. Either way, for the VAST majority of the existence of the Jedi, it wasn’t a thing. Jedi got married and had families for over 20000 years, then added the non-attachment rule, which ultimately led to their destruction. And before anyone tries to tell me I believe they deserved to be genocided, I don’t. I have never actually seen anyone say that, but I see people argue against it constantly, and imply anyone who doesn’t think the Jedi were perfect and blameless thinks that. I don’t think they deserved to die, I think they needed to change. And Yoda says that himself, many times. The Jedi weren’t prepared for the return of the sith, or the war. They had separated from the military 1000 years before, and the galaxy was in relative peace all this time, so the order’s role changed to one that worked very well with their rules. Detachment meant they could be impartial when overseeing political disagreements, lack of possessions meant they would be focused on the mission at hand and not prone to taking bribes, and distancing themselves from the general population meant they were more or less uniform, and could be trusted not to side with someone for personal reasons.

All of this falls apart once they become an army again. Impartiality is a flaw when they have to defend one side at all cost and not even allow themselves to consider compromise. Lack of possessions and attachment to people means they are prone to taking unnecessary risks, because they have nothing to lose, and do things like send 14 year olds into battle, thinking of the “greater good” over the safety of children. And the order being a monolith, with set rules and philosophy distinct from the rest of the population meant the Jedi trusted Dooku long after they should have stopped, because he used to be a Jedi after all, surely he still follows the code.

Now, I am not saying non-attachment is always bad, I think it served a very specific purpose in the order, and to some extent worked for many years. However.

Humans are a social species. Human babies NEED physical contact and affection to develop physically. Children need a stable, strong, and supportive relationship to their caregiver to properly develop psychologically. And after last year I don’t think anyone will argue that adults don't need connection with other people just as much. And not just shallow interactions, but open affection and love. Love of any kind, because claiming that the Jedi only forbid romantic love is just untrue. I think people tend to forget that "Compassion, which I would define as unconditional love, is essential to a Jedi's life. So you might say, that we are encouraged to love." isn’t the actual doctrine, it’s a literal pick up line that Anakin uses on Padme.

Ahsoka and Obi-Wan both get criticized by other Jedi for their entirely platonic attachment to Anakin, and vice versa. Now, humans are the most common species in the galaxy, and in the Jedi order. Many other species are near-human, so it’s safe to assume at least some, if not most of them also need that companionship and affection to develop and live happy and stable lives. I do believe that non-attachment is a valid philosophy and chosen path in life if done carefully and within reason, I just don’t think we have a single major character that actually applies to. And chosen is an important word here. Jedi don’t get much of a choice. I’m not trying to start the baby-stealing debate here. I hear the argument of ‘force sensitives are dangerous if left untrained, and said training should start as early as possible’. I think finding a way to deal with that problem was an insanely complicated decision, and taking children into the temple as young as possible is not a bad solution. I don’t entirely agree with not letting them see their families later, (especially since in legends Obi-Wan was allowed to visit his family, which implies Anakin couldn’t go free his mother specifically because he was already too attached), but the idea is sound. I do also understand that no one is forcing Jedi to stay in the order and they can leave for whatever reason at any time. But that isn’t exactly a free choice either. Leaving the order means leaving the only home you remember, the only people you know to make your own way in the galaxy, and staying with those people means you can never fully love them. It’s a difficult solution to a complicated question, and for the most part, it worked (not always, and not exactly as intended, but I’ll come back to that.) Children grew up in the order, were trained to control themselves and the force, and became Jedi who were impartial, patient, and balanced. But everything falls apart when you introduce someone who wasn’t raised in the temple.

In The Rising Force, 13 year old Obi-Wan had barely been off Coruscant in his life. He describes himself as sheltered and unaware of all the pain in the galaxy, and says it was done on purpose, so younglings wouldn’t have to face the dark side before they were ready for it. But Anakin had seen nothing but darkness, pain and injustice before he joined the order. He was severely traumatized, and while the temple might have had some ways of dealing with trauma and PTSD in adults, they had no experience in treating the same in a child, because their children were kept safe and protected. The idea of letting go of your pain and fear only works if you know you have a safe place to come back to, if you’ve spent the first decade or so of your life in the most protected place in the galaxy. Anakin spent the first decade of his life as a slave. He couldn’t let go of his fear, because fear was what kept him alive. Fear is not irrational if you are constantly in danger, it’s what protects you, keeps you aware of the limits you can push before you get punished. And that mindset doesn’t fade just because you’re out of that situation, especially if your only family, the closest person to you, is still facing that danger every day.

I’ve seen people use every excuse possible to explain why Anakin didn’t see his mother again to avoid blaming the council, including, and I shit you not, “He just didn’t have her comm number”. But to me that seems disingenuous, when we see in his first meeting with the council that they already consider him too attached. It's one of the main reasons they don’t want him to be trained, so it seems logical that they wouldn’t allow him to see her once he became a padawan. I also want to mention that what Yoda says, “Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering.” Is just… blatant catastrophizing. Right? Like we can all see that the escalation is not rational there at all. Maybe it could apply to something else, but not to a child who just left his mother for the first time in his life and went from a tiny dustball in the middle of nowhere to the most populated planet in the galaxy, and is now being tested by a bunch of old people with the power to decide his future. Obviously he’s afraid, and obviously he’s not dealing with it the way Jedi younglings do. That, in and of itself doesn't doom him to fall. Also what Yoda misses there is that suffering leads to fear. This is a closed loop, and one that has defined Anakin’s entire childhood.

Let’s come back to how the system doesn’t always work. The way I see it, most of the characters we see are attached. Obi-Wan is considered one of the greatest Jedi of his time. Windu describes him as “our most cunning and insightful Master—and our most tenacious”. And yet, he was not insightful enough to look past his love for Anakin, his attachment, and see how close to falling he was. Ahsoka was so attached to Anakin she refused to listen to Maul on Mandalore, refused to even consider the posibility he could fall. She was arguably the person with the best shot at preventing the empire forming at that point, and she loved anakin so much she doomed him and the entire galaxy. Aayla admitted to thinking of Quinlan as her father, and also, apparently in legends had a long relationship with Kit. Even Mace didn’t follow the code when he decided to kill Palpatine, which directly led to his death and the empire. He also indirectly caused the war to start. According to wookiepedia “Windu viewed Dooku as the shatterpoint of the entire Separatist movement, which meant striking Dooku down would theoretically end the imminent clone war before it even began. However, Windu's prior attachments to Dooku clouded his judgment.” I’m not even going to mention Kanan and Ezra, who are obviously family.

So basically everyone is attached and lying about it. How has no one thought that maybe this isn’t the healthiest way to live and tried to change the code? Well, I have a theory, and it’s Yoda. He was 900 years old when he died, and was on the council for the vast majority of his life. I can’t find when exactly he became grand master, but it’s safe to assume he held some degree of power over the entire order for most of a millennium. At the end of TPM he tells Obi-Wan “Confer on you the level of Jedi knight, the council does. But agree with your taking this boy as your padawan learner, I do not.” Then he reverses that decision by himself. So either he has the power to veto the council’s word, or who gets trained is entirely up to him. Either way, not great, considering his lifespan is so much longer than most Jedi, and therefore his approach to life is vastly different. Humans need love and closeness to live. However, while we don’t know much about Yoda’s species, it probably isn’t a social one. You could count all the characters of this species on two (human) hands, and Yoda lived in complete isolation for 20 years on Dagobah, and only went a little bit insane. They are naturally rare, and therefore probably lead solitary lives in nature. Moreover, Yoda outlived every master who trained him, and almost every padawan he trained himself, (there’s a great post about that here) so even if he wasn’t naturally predisposed to non-attachment, he would have had to learn it to deal with all the loss he had to live through over the years.

A lot of people think that Anakin fell because he had attachments, which is not true. He fell because of how his attachments played out and/or ended. The most obvious example being Palpatine, who used Anakin’s trust and friendship to groom him for over a decade and actively undermine Anakin’s trust towards anyone else, especially the order. (more on that here). Obi-Wan refused to take on the role of a father figure that Anakin tried to shove him into, so he turned to someone who did accept it. It’s not Anakin’s fault that it turned out to be the worst person alive, nor can we expect him to notice when he’s known Palpatine since he was a child. Another failure of jedi non-attachment, because a loving parent or guardian would not let their child be used as a bargaining chip when the most powerful politician in the galaxy blackmailed the order into allowing him to meet Anakin regularly, but a distant teacher and detached knight thinking of the greater good might. The other attachments Anakin had were taken from him (Shmi and Ahsoka, the last orchestrated by Palpatine who was fully ready to give her the death penalty to make Anakin more unstable), or he was forced to lie and hide them, compromising his vows as a Jedi (Padme) or refused to choose Anakin over the order/their principles (Obi-Wan, and again Ahsoka, and to some extent Padme, but he’d already fallen then). All these people had every right to make the choices they made, but it wasn’t the act of loving them that made Anakin turn to the dark side, it was how those attachments played out.

I think everyone agrees that Yoda is as detached as a Jedi should, if not can, be, and that didn’t prevent Dooku from falling. We see that explored in more detail with Barriss and Luminara. Luminara is detached and distant, she’s fond of Barriss, but their relationship is not familial in the slightest, and she repeatedly shows her willingness to put the greater good and the mission before Barriss’ safety and even life. And yet Barriss still falls. A complex combination of events and choices caused each of those characters to fall, not the simple presence or absence of attachment.

And lastly, just as attachment can make you unstable if your relationship with that person is unstable, it can also make you stronger. There is a reason Anakin and Obi-Wan were the face of the army. Not only did their obvious attachment (the strongest between two jedi we are shown) make them more relatable to the public, but they, when working as a team, are shown repeatedly to be more or less undefeatable. They spend half of aotc flinging themselves off great heights because they know the other will be there to catch them. They know from years of experience that they have backup and they know each other well enough (or force bond communicate) that they can trust the other will be where he needs to be to help/save them. Contrast that to how Windu and Palpatine fight in rots once the window breaks- very carefully, clearly holding back to keep themselves safe. Neither of them has backup until Anakin arrives, but until the last second they can't be sure which one he will choose. Anakin and Obi-Wan fight the same way on Mustafar, especially when balancing on that thin bridge. No acrobatics, swinging arms to keep balance, keeping their distance, being almost uncharacteristically careful compared to how they treated heights in aotc, in tcw, and on the invisible hand in rots, because they both know the other won't catch them if they fall this time.

[masterthespianduchovny]

The counter argument to people being against Sam/Rebecca for legitimate reasons are claims that Sam is being “infantilized.”

These age gap conversations in general are difficult to have because one side won’t acknowledge that just because two people are adults doesn’t mean they are in the same place emotionally and mentally. And this is a very important thing to note.

Someone being 18, a legal adult in America (I think you can date adults at 16 in the UK), doesn’t mean they are able to date a significantly older person, say 38, without a problem. Because, more times than not, which is an understatement, there’s a lot of fucking problems in an age gap relationship even if the older person isn’t dating the younger for nefarious reasons.

It is not infantilizing Sam or any young adult to say, “hey, this relationship may be detrimental to them because of their age.” That is just…facts.

Many people on tumblr and other SM sites often talk about how they still feel like kids at 22 and are still figuring life at, despite having jobs, kids, and shit. Despite being in full blown relationships, these young adults don’t feel like adults and that’s because you aren’t magically mature just because you’ve reached an arbitrary age to be declared a legal adult.

You just aren’t.

And being mature in one aspect of your life or regarding emotional development doesn’t mean you’re mature in other aspects. At 17, I was mature enough to understand this.

Because maturity isn’t just something you obtain like your degree or license, it’s an ongoing, ever evolving thing.

It’s life experience. As in how you learn and grow from it.

Acknowledging that someone doesn’t have significant life experience isn’t infantilizing them, it’s giving an important perspective to a crowd of who is essentially arguing “age ain’t nothing, but a number.”

If you’re all for an 18 year old dating a 38 year old, why not a 16 year old and a 36 year. It’s only a two year difference, right? And what if that 16 year old is really mature? Most would have an issue with that. People are justifying a significantly older person dating a younger person due to legality and not they are actually mature and on the same level. But there’s not much difference between a 16 and 18 year old or an 18 year old and a 20 year old. But guess what, there is a significant difference between people between the ages of 18-22 dating people a decade or more.

I literally just turned 30 last week and, even when I was 25, after a while I could tell when I was speaking to a teen or someone in their early 20s. Because, whether or not you get along with them, there are just some things that, because they haven’t had enough life experience, they don’t have the nuance or perspective to engage with you a certain way and this is even on a non romantic level.

And, in some cases, the younger person is more “mature” not because they’re actually that mature, but because the older person is that immature.

So before I get into the issues with Sam and Rebecca, let me give you four examples of age gaps relationships:

1. A friend of mine dating an older man when she was 23 and he was 38. She was a manager at a gym and he was a gym member. They would have sex and hang out, but she wanted commitment. Whenever she asked him about it, he’d get weird on her. After finally breaking it off months later, he “loved” her and finally wanted commitment, but she’d moved on. While she dated him, I told her my two cents on the situation and left it alone. Last month, she recalled this conversation as she groaned in displeasure hearing about an age gap relationship. She’s now skeptical of older people dating significantly younger people.

2. A friend of mine was 18 dating a 28 year old. We all worked at a pizzeria. He watched her on the cameras from the back when he became a manager—got mad if she talked to male coworkers. Used to gaslight her, controlled her via manipulation, and other gross toxic shit. After emotionally tormenting her for a year or so and pressuring her to live with him, which her parents allowed due to some issues they didn’t want to exacerbate, he cheated on her. They’re broken up now. She was always stressed out while with him.

3. A girl got into her first and only relationship when she was 19 with a man who was 32. They’re now married 23 and 36. She wants to wait to have kids and on her birthday he gifted her baby clothes. Make of that what you will.

4. A girl, 22, dated her 37 year old professor. At 28, she feels like she’s outgrown him and is disturbed about how and when they got together. And one night she heard him advise his friends to date younger girls so they can mold them. Yeah…

Sure you have marriages that have age gaps that lasted, but even then, very few of those are actually healthy. The younger person is usually taking orders from the older partner, can’t do certain things, doesn’t have any true agency, skills to survive on their own, etc. What typically happens is after that person becomes older, they begin to question their relationship because what seemed okay when they were younger, is unsettling after becoming older.

Like I said, take out the nefarious shit, and there is still a significant life experience gulf between Sam and Rebecca and that is one of the many issues with this pairing. Despite what some romantics and media loves to say, “love does not conquer all.” Most of the marriages that end in divorce isn’t because they couple fell out of love, it’s due to finances. Love couldn’t conquer that. Some marriages end because one of them changed or they could’ve overcome their vast differences.

I’m not saying Sam and Rebecca are on a path for marriage or are even in love, they aren’t, however, they idea that just because they get along and have some things in common means it would be a great relationship is very shortsighted. There isn’t even enough significant interaction to prove this. Getting along on an app isn’t the same as connecting face to face. And none of this can overcome Rebecca’s life experience and, relatively speaking, Sam’s lack thereof.

And I’d argue that, on average, athletes tend to be immature because they live in such a bubble where people constantly kiss their ass. Which makes Sam look more mature than he probably is.

Even then, being with an older person ages you. This younger person misses out on so much, many of which they regret, because they’re trying to be mature enough for their older partner. They don’t want to seen as immature for doing young shit when that’s exactly their age range.

But let’s get into the real consequences for Sam here:

1. Sam has to keep his relationship a secret. The media will tear him up about dating/fucking the owner of the team. And so will fans. People love to mention he’s being infantilized because he’s young and black, how do you think that is going to go if anyone finds out about them? Racism, baby. He won’t suffer from sexism, however, they will question his place on the team and if he deserves to be there. This will taint him and even cause issues with his parents. So secret relationship it is.

2. If his teammates found out, this will fracture his relationship with them. Whether or not it’s true, Sam will be blamed for shit outside of his control. They’ll think he only got more playing time, more pay, or whatever because he’s fucking Rebecca. OR they’ll try to ask him for favors and get upset if he won’t do it. His team will think he’s getting favoritism and believe there is a power imbalance between them and Sam as a result. Don’t believe me, Google dynamics once students realize a classmate is dating their teacher or an employee is dating their boss. It usually doesn’t go over so well.

So even if the relationship is loving and healthy, Sam will suffer from being with Rebecca. Because if it's a secret, it’s going to bother him eventually that they have to sneak around and the anxiety of being caught. If it’s out in the open, he will suffer harassment, alienation, his play will suffer because his teammates probably won’t pass to him, etc.

Which leads to, 3: transferring teams. But how is that fair? Sam is developing well under ted and now that may delay his development and stock just so he can be with Rebecca? We want this young, black man to succeed, but his career will be kneecapped due to his relationship. Sam is serious about football and this would be a major blow to him.

Like I said, take out nefarious shit and this relationship is still detrimental to Sam. And even with a healthy relationship, there will still be a disconnect that will lead to their relationship ending because they are in two vastly different places in their lives.

That is not infantilizing Sam, that’s reality.

And, again, that power imbalance is massive. We saw how easy it was for Rebecca to send Jamie back to Man City. She has so much power, control, and influence over Sam’s career and livelihood. She can dictate how much or how little they offer to pay him during contract negotiations.

And this is the ship people are getting upset at others rightfully taking issue with?

It doesn’t even make sense for Rebecca to go along with this either. She played a part in Keeley breaking up with Jamie, which age, Jamie being younger, played a key part in it. She’s even disgusted by Rupert dating a significantly younger woman. I doubt her opinion centered on maturity. She’s not going to suddenly support this relationship if she found out that Bex is super mature.

Rebecca would stand to lose a lot of she were to get involved with Sam and others found out. She’d get dragged through the mud worse than she did after her divorce. She’s lose them support of her staff. And it would fuck up the relationship she has with her players.

Now some Sam/Rebecca supporters have called bullshit on people who are against this relationship, yet support Ted and Rebecca. They claim it’s the same power imbalance or that one exists.

1. It’s not the same power imbalance.

2. Yes, one does exist, but it’s not nearly as wide as it is with Sam and it wouldn’t destroy her either.

Ted has the authority to hire and fire people. He has the authority to facilitate trades, call up people, and send them down. He has a lot of influence that Sam does not. They aren’t equals, but there also isn’t a massive power disparity either.

Rebecca also can’t completely fuck over Ted like she can Sam if she went all scorned woman. Because, doing so, would entail her own demise. Even if you don’t include that, Ted is only attached to Richmond. He doesn’t care about having a career as a football coach in the ways coaches from non US countries do. He can go back and have a career as an American football coach and still be massively successful. Or, if Rebecca did want to fuck him over, he has that bomb as to why he was hired. Ted doesn’t even have to play that card for it to be played by either Higgins or Keeley.

Because one of them will if they feel it’s necessary.

We have no clue what’s going to happen with this storyline. But the idea that people against Sam and Rebecca being a thing, romantically or sexually, being fueled by racism or sexism is misguided, hypocritical, and flat out wrong. If this entanglement is pursued, it stands to harm Sam from various angles and that’s MY objection.

People think this is all about Ted/Rebecca when, personally, I’d lose (some) respect for Rebecca if she got involved with Sam. That would taint her for me. Because let’s be real, many of us are grossed out by Rupert dating, marrying, and then impregnating Bex. Yet, some are okay with Rebecca and Sam getting together and those who are against it are sexist? And I truly believe the same people supporting this ship are also grossed out by Rupert’s relationship.

How is Rupert’s relationship gross, but we shouldn’t obsess over age with Rebecca and Sam? People say Sam is mature enough to date Rebecca, which implies that Bex isn’t mature enough to be with Rupert and that IS sexist.

Even if the writers confirm tomorrow that Ted/Rebecca will never be a thing, I wouldn’t object any less to Sam/Rebecca. If Sam was Roy’s age and in Roy’s position, I’d have way less of an issue.

But you’re going to have a tough time convincing me that a young man who is 20/21 and employed by a 47 year woman who can heavily influence his career isn’t a massive power imbalance that shouldn’t be explored by fans.

I’m really curious to see how this post ages once the storyline plays out. But this post is about exploring what it means for Sam and Rebecca to get involved and how the accusations of infantilizing Sam doesn’t pass the sniff test.

[carrie12291991]

Topic: The Link between History and Geography

ESTRELLADO, CARIE JUSTINE P.

As shown on the figures, the study of history looks at human history from a chronological point of view from linking and digging the past, while geography looks at it from a spatial point of view and the earth's topographical surface and dimensions. Both time and space are intertwined, with one relating to the other. From the venn diagram,  the connection and convergence between history and geography are evident because they are two essential concepts in the unfolding and making senses of events and patterns.

 Sensing the link between geography and history is by asking personal queries such as: we wash our faces in the morning, but do we ever pause to consider where the water comes from? Landscapes can be seen in the distance, but how long have they been there, and how do they influence the weather in the metropolitan area? We enjoy a diverse meal that includes items from throughout the globe. What determines where a particular crop thrives? What is the process by which the food arrives at the table?  Many of us are exposed to news from around the world through the heightened activity of social media. People in other nations speak different languages we do not understand, wear unusual clothing, and lead lives that are vastly different from our own. Why is it then? how about the different cradles of civilizations that sprung near the river (River Valley)? Or how about atop a mountain or near the sea (maritime)? Are they all related?

Geography and history are two interplaying disciplines connecting nature and man; the active activities mentioned in space and time; relevance is that they give the clearest and exciting avenues into the larger picture of historical and geographical meanings. While history elucidates human consequences, geography clarifies connections; these subjects are two aspects of the same living totality because man's life in association takes place in nature, not as an incidental setting, but as the substance of ongoing development (Collins, 1920).

However, what if in the past people were not as geographically aware? Civilization then ten thousand years ago had no idea where they were or what was going on around them; was geography a foreign concept? However, as time passed, people's attention shifted to sites closer to home and those farther afield that they had learned about. As a result, more and more people began to inquire: What does the past hold for our environment? What similarities and differences exist between the people of other places and those of us? Or just saying, why is the climate seems hot here?

Learning how places and landforms are developed, how people and surroundings interact, what the consequences of our daily decisions are, and how many different cultures and societies there are and how they are interconnected through geography and history. History provides an understanding of the past, whereas Geography is focused on the surface of the earth enclosed to physical and human geography, which also bridge to natural science (Baker, 2004). The two entwining disciplines create interdependency to interpret people's life experiences and help them ask questions, develop intellectual abilities, comprehend their environment, and find solutions to become sustainable. The mentioned premises ensure that humankind understands the complexities of the crucial dimensions of time, space, and places, and landscapes, which educates people to appreciate and care for the earth and its dwellers.

Although Geography is considered foreign to the discipline in the Philippines (Orillos-Juan, 2008), it is essential in unveiling and supporting the concepts for historical documents and context. Taking into account the fragmented shape of our state, the Philippines, Geography does not tell the alone the depiction of the location, positions, and spatiality of our country which often illustrated via maps and globe but more on also the relationship of concepts of movement, human interaction with his environment, designating regions, the changing landscapes. It comes to justify the interrelationship of change, wherein it is inevitable as it is happening on the past actuality, and also comes continuity which throughout explaining the sustaining of ways of living of its people. Thus, Philippines is more than a concept of state which has topographical features to describe and claim because it is more on looking the deeper sense of connections of the people living in every region and place, more sense to the cultural values embraced in every location, more of the sense of interpreting the inhabitants.

In ostensive discussion, for instance, the Philippines on the map does not merely fully describe the holistic concept. I remember the sharing of Dr. Mactal of DLSU that to grasp history and geography as disciplines, one must look at the related natural resources bringing the nation into its unique place, one must look to the climate which gives the people the style of crafting apparel, one must look to the dimensions of the existence of any ethnicity and maybe their existing agricultural practice. One must consider the distinct language used in every region. One must also look for the historical perspectives amid diversities of social, political, and cultural presence. Suppose one person is studying geography as a stand-alone discipline. In that case, it will not provide in-depth connections of any figures and present inquiry and likewise, if history is studied on its enclosed perspective without considering the themes of geography and concepts, then historical imagination may not be necessary since a person would think that history could only happen on any surface with its impending time providing limited views.

Thus, the culmination of the complements of the two disciplines, Geography & History, can bring the component of Historical Geography as an interdisciplinary unit with a multi-array of lenses in looking dimensions from micro to macro perspectives of interrelating queries.

A man's history will not be purely known without knowing his changing structure of habitat; likewise, history cannot embed and uncover patterns alone without looking and considering the spatial awareness.

*Images were constructed using a CANVA graphic design platform

References:

Baker, A.R.H., (2004). On the Relations of History and Geography. Historically Speaking 5(6), 27-29. doi:10.1353/hsp.2004.0047.

Collins, L. (1920). Correlating History and Geography. The Journal of Education.

Mactal, R.B. (August 2015). Padayon Series: Seminar in Phoenix Publishing House

Orillos-Juan, M.F.(2008) Kaalaman at Pamaraan sa Pagtuturo ng Kasaysayan. UP Lipunang Pangkasaysayan.

[raveneira]

Alright this extends from a twitter discussion, this is my counter argument to this post right here that they referenced, now this is my rebuttal.

You accepted that Ashura has reincarnated inside of you, instead of accepted that Ashura has reincarnated as you…. This makes me think that Ashura is just clinging to Naruto and isn’t actually him… Cause when people reincarnate they reincarnate as someone or something else, not inside of them, that’s more like a possession…

First off thats not how reincarnation works, several times in this post they make the argument that in order to be a true reincarnation that the two people have to be one and the same, this couldnt be further from the truth though.

Reincarnation, also known as rebirth or transmigration is the philosophical or religious belief that the non-physical essence of a living being begins a new life in a different physical form or body after biological death

In most beliefs involving reincarnation, the soul is seen as immortal and the only thing that becomes perishable is the body. Upon death, the soul becomes transmigrated into a new infant (or animal) to live again. The term transmigration means passing of soul from another body to another after-death.

THIS is how reincarnation works.

The body itself is not that of Ashura, but of Naruto, but Ashura’s SOUL is INSIDE Naruto’s body. They may have the same soul, but the new body functions largely as its own individual.

Take Inuyasha for example, Kagome is the reincarnation of Kikyo, she has no memories of Kikyo’s but she inherited her spiritual powers and affinity with a bow and also her love for Inuyasha. Kagome and Kikyo are separate individuals yes, but she still has Kikyo’s soul and her powers by extension. The same applies to Naruto, he and Ashura are different people yes, but he still has Ashura’s SOUL and as such his power, he also inherited his love for his brother Indra which was passed down to Hashirama for Madara, and then Naruto for Sasuke.

To clarify YES Kagome grew to love Inuyasha through her own experiences for her own reasoning, and Naruto grew to love Sasuke like a brother through his own experiences and for his own reasoning. But this was both DESTINED and FATED to happen because of who they were, or more specifically who they are inside. It was inevitable.

The individuals may be different, but as reincarnations they still inherited their past lives powers and bonds/feelings towards the person who was most precious to them before dying. In Kikyo’s case it was her strong love for Inuyasha passed on to Kagome, and in Ashura’s case it was his strong love for his brother Indra and desire to save him passed down to Naruto.

When Hashirama and Madara died, the transmigration cycle resumed. Naruto Uzumaki became the next inheritor of Asura's chakra and will, with Sasuke Uchiha inheriting Indra's chakra and will. 

This is from the Naruto wiki, but it is still an accurate description of what reincarnation is in Naruto, the transmigration of someones soul into another persons body, which is exactly what Hagoromo says happened with Naruto and Sasuke.

It’s important to note Naruto is the only one who refers to it as being haunted by a ghost and possession, Hagoromo specifically says in EVERY instance that Naruto and Sasuke are reincarnations and that Ashura and Indra have reincarnated inside them, so to use Naruto’s words here as evidence is inaccurate, because Hagoromo specifically says reincarnation, not possession. 

In Hagoromo’s own character file refers to it as the transmigration of souls walking through an eternity of samara, making the argument of possession null and void.

Saṃsāra is a Sanskrit word that means "world". It is also the concept of rebirth and "cyclicality of all life, matter, existence", a fundamental belief of most Indian religions. In short, it is the cycle of death and rebirth. Saṃsāra is sometimes referred to with terms or phrases such as transmigration, karmic cycle, reincarnation, and "cycle of aimless drifting, wandering or mundane existence"

You accepted that Ashura has reincarnated inside of you, instead of accepted that Ashura has reincarnated as you…. This makes me think that Ashura is just clinging to Naruto and isn’t actually him… Cause when people reincarnate they reincarnate as someone or something else, not inside of them, that’s more like a possession…

So this statement right here ^ is thoroughly debunked.

The definition of reincarnation and possession is vastly different with how they function and honestly disproves your own point of them being different people, because in order to be possessed you have to be CONTROLED by another entity which Naruto and Sasuke are not.

To possess is to take control over, if Indra and Ashura took control over them and have been in control their whole lives that means two twin brothers consciously developed romantic feelings for eachother by your logic, which is even worse than them just being reincarnations.

Possession is a term more accurate for Edo Tensei or Karma, not reincarnation.

So what am I getting at here? Reincarnation in Naruto doesnt mean being considered the same person as the deceased, it just means you have their soul, it DOES NOT MEAN Naruto is Ashura, he still has his own identity, but part of that identity is influenced by Ashura.

Hagoromo actually refers to it in several ways but they all essentially have the same meaning.

‘Ashura’s chakra is clinging about you’ 

‘Ashura’s presence inside you’ 

‘Ashura has reincarnated as you’ 

‘Ashura has reincarnated inside you’.

All different phrases, but carry the same meaning, Ashura’s soul reincarnated inside of Naruto, and Indra’s soul reincarnated inside Sasuke.

Your putting too much emphasis on the wording rather than the meaning.

 Ashura clearly influenced Naruto in many ways despite them being separate people, by having the same soul its only natural that Naruto would inherit many of Ashura’s traits. Hagoromo himself points out how much like Ashura he is.

So their not really that different after all. Ashura’s soul still had alot of influence on Naruto’s beliefs, personality, and ideals as well as his strong bond with Sasuke. Naruto may have reached those conclusions in his own way through his own experiences but the result remained the same as Ashura’s due to his influence from inside him.

However although their not the same person physically, I think its important to note they are the same person spiritually. They still have their own unique chakra signatures that can be distinguished by certain ocular jutsu’s, but they are still overall the same spiritually with the same soul and chakra.

Naruto Uzumaki became the next inheritor of Asura's chakra and will, with Sasuke Uchiha inheriting Indra's chakra and will.

Again this is from the wiki, but it still accurately depicts what happened. They are different people, but they still inherited Indra and Ashura’s will from having their souls inside them.

Dont misunderstand, Naruto and Sasuke still have their own wills too and not all of their decisions and feelings extend from Indra and Ashura, Im just saying that they had an INFLUENCE on them in several aspects of their lives, but they still formed their own bonds and relationships through their own life experiences. Zetsu even comments on how Naruto and Sasuke are cooperating closely together more than any other reincarnate before them, proving they are still their own person capable of doing things their own way.

The fact that Naruto was able to succeed where Hashirama and Ashura failed is also proof of their individuality, but that was also predestined to happen.

Ultimately, Naruto managed to succeed in Asura's final goal which all other reincarnations failed at: end the rift between the two lines of the reincarnated brothers. Naruto achieved this after defeating Sasuke, who then finally accepted Naruto's ideals.

Everything I said for Naruto applies to Sasuke so I dont really need to reiterate it.

Onto the next point.

My point is that Indra and Ashura clung to people of their bloodline that was a lot like them, in terms of personality or ambitions, and thereby were reincarnated… So Naruto and Sasuke aren’t brothers and instead are just possessed by brothers..

This is impossible, because Indra and Ashura didnt possess Naruto and Sasuke like I said, but reincarnated inside them not long after they were born once both previous reincarnates were dead, meaning Indra and Ashura had NO idea what Naruto and Sasuke’s personalities or ambitions would be later in life. Their not psychic, they cant see the future so this argument is invalid. 

They simply reincarnated inside Naruto and Sasuke because they were newborns and Hashirama was already dead, so all that was needed was for Madara to die which didnt happen till years later when Naruto and Sasuke were born. Once Sasuke was born Indra reincarnated into him, and when Naruto was born Ashura reincarnated into him. Naruto and Sasuke just happened to be born at the right time, there was nothing more to it than that.

So now that we’re done with the reincarnation counter argument, now for why NaruSasu is problematic because of it and yes, they are in fact brothers.

For starters going off what I said about reincarnation alone already makes things problematic, infact it is the MAIN reason its problematic. Just because Naruto and Sasuke arent literally Indra and Ashura doesnt change the fact that they have their SOULS, meaning they are literally SOUL brothers, do you really not see the problem with two guys who were TWIN brothers in their past lives to be romantically involved? come on now.

Here he says that he and Sasuke aren’t true brothers, which means that they’re not actually related despite being reincarnated from brothers.. Which again, to my knowledge, if you’re reincarnated from brothers you’d still be brothers… But he says that they’re not…

This is flawed on so many levels, as I’ve already explained how reincarnation works in both Naruto and Japanese beliefs they are SOUL brothers. If your soul was reincarnated into a new body, and your brother or sisters soul was reincarnated into another body, would you want your reincarnates in a romantic relationship with eachother? I know I wouldnt, because as shown in Naruto Indra and Ashura are still very much conscious inside them, which means they are AWARE of whats happening, they just dont have control over them.

Even if they WERENT conscious its irrelevant, because the core issue is that they are THERE and they are BROTHERS, this is not incest in a physical sense, but in a spiritual sense this is very much an incetuous ship as they share both body and soul, that is still VERY problematic because they are STILL brothers, not by blood, but by soul.

While Naruto does say that he sees Sasuke as a brother several times, it doesn’t seem like that at all… To me it seems more like a crush that he doesn’t realize he has, or a crush he isn’t ready to believe he has…

Thats all speculation and how you choose to perceive things, but there is beyond enough evidence that proves it wrong which I’ll go more in depth in another post I’ll link back to here. But honestly theres not only tons of evidence that proves it wrong, theres literally nothing anywhere in canon that suggests romantic feelings between them in the first place. Thats a fact not an opinion.

Want my more condensed version of why NaruSasu are brothers refer to my twitter thread here

But just to add one of my points here, which is the other biggest reason NaruSasu is problematic, is that they are ACTUAL brothers.

I know right? I just said their not Indra and Ashura and are their own person how are they brothers? simple, thats true only for the show, however theres one other key factor that makes any argument you try to pull from the show for WHY their not brothers null and void. Which is that they are brothers by DESIGN.

Unfortunately the link is no longer available but this persons summary is pretty much what Kishimoto said. And the one above it is an actual sceenshot from when the site was still up.

From the beginning they were modeled after two real life brothers, Kishimoto and his twin brother Seishi, that was always the INTENT when making Naruto and Sasuke’s bond, so regardless of if their brothers by blood, by soul, or by bond, they are brothers by design, theres not a single argument you can come up with that’ll change that.

So in conclusion, yes, Sasuke and Naruto are real brothers by design, so for some people to call it incest is not far from the truth, because to ship Naruto and Sasuke your essentially shipping Kishimoto and his Twin brother.

I didnt wanna make this too long, so I focused on just the reincarnation aspect as that was the main point of the argument, and saved the other stuff about their relationship for another post so there wouldnt have to be a ton of scrolling on one post. But honestly? I think this post sums it up pretty well on WHY shipping this is problematic, you dont HAVE to stop shipping it if you dont want to, Im just pointing out why saying they are not brothers is factually incorrect.

[carlstheses]

Clare Bronfman's Sentence Puts Our Judicial Integrity into Question

America’s court system was created as an antithesis to the authoritarian systems of justice that dominated the pre-industrial Western World. It was crafted so that even the judge in a courtroom was deemed to be unbiased and impartial. In the case of Clare Bronfman, the judge deliberately deviated from this construct and has shown a clear bias in rendering his decisions.

In the United States, the rule of law is backed up by a judicial system that is supposed to be fair and impartial. The notion of corruption alone within the judiciary is a threat to the foundations of democracy. In a criminal court setting, there are protocols and guidelines that have been followed for over two hundred years. The government, in the form of the prosecutor, lays out the evidence and argues before a judge and jury, the defense counters those arguments. The judge oversees the process and typically heeds the recommendations of the State and weighs the laws relevant to the case when sentencing is required.

When a judge deviates from this protocol, the system is threatened. To be fair, there are gaps in our understanding of how punishments are decided when looking at a full range of sentencing options. Any effort to explain sentences means coming to terms with judicial discretion and how it is put into practice. Judges are the voice of sentencing, but their freedom of choice is limited by the statutes and sentencing structures existing in the jurisdictions they represent. 

In Ms. Bronfman’s case, the Judge, Nicholas Garaufis, the Senior District Judge of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York, stepped beyond the role of unprejudiced arbiter and moved closer to the role of those authoritarian jurists the founders detested. Judge Garaufis imposed a sentence that was not in line with the recommendation of the prosecutor, nor the adjacent sentences for other defendants in the same case. In effect, he used his own bias and personal feelings to deliver a punishment that many deem cruel and unusual given the circumstances of her case.

Clare Bronfman, the daughter of the late Seagram's Chairman and philanthropist Edgar Bronfman, Sr. was a part of the NXIVM Group, which was exposed several years ago as a society surrounding the personality of its founder, Keith Raniere. The charges against Raniere and many of the NXIVM were harsh, and if true, are abhorrent. From coaxing innocent women into the sexual service of Raniere, to branding these women with Raniere’s initials and a host of financial crimes. However, the charges against Ms. Bronfman were vastly different.

As a board member, she was charged with financing the activities of the group. Ms. Bronfman said that she was never involved in the inner workings of a subgroup of the organization led by Raniere called Dominus Obsequious Sororium, or DOS for short, that was responsible for the alleged sexual and trafficking crimes. She claimed, and the judge agreed, that she knew nothing about the recruiting methods or the abuse of the women nor the schemes that were employed when it came to the group’s finances.

Ms. Bronfman came to NXIVM when the group was new and she said she found meaning in the group’s philosophy that helped her grow. She climbed the organizational ladder and served on its Executive Board. Given her lineage, connections, and experience, she became involved in the group’s financial affairs and for that, Judge Garaufis issued an overly harsh and inappropriate sentence, especially given the sentences of those who were convicted of truly barbaric and morally unforgivable crimes.

It was within DOS that most of the most heinous crimes were committed. NXIVM founder, Mr. Raniere was found guilty of seven felonies, and sentenced to what is essentially two life sentences, 120 years in prison and forced to pay a $1.75 Million fine.  His punishment was harsh as his crimes were abhorrent however those in his inner circle faired far better than him, and Ms. Bronfman.

Smallville actress, Allison Mack was convicted of recruiting women into the DOS group for the purpose of sex as well as brutally branding them was sentenced to three years. Lauren Salzman got off even easier. Her role, as she admitted, was to recruit and groom members into DOS for sex with Raniere. In her most shocking admission, she said she held a young woman from Mexico named Daniela captive for two years. Her sentence was five years’ probation and 300 hours of community service.

Judge Garaufis said that Bronfman “was not convicted of any of those [DOS] crimes, Ms. Bronfman was not convicted of participating in any racketeering activity, and there were many aspects of Mr. Raniere’s crimes in which Ms. Bronfman very well may have not have been familiar.”  Yet, he sentenced her to 81 months despite prosecutor recommendations that she serve 21-27 months. In addition to the draconian sentence given the fact she was not involved in the most egregious crimes, Judge Garafuis also required her to put up $100 Million during her sentencing phase, solely because she refused to renounce Raneiere.  

Since the late 1970s, judicial discretion has been constrained by the creation of sentencing guidelines and other means for structuring the sentencing decision. Some argue these structures are not enough, that additional measures, such as mandatory minimum sentencing laws, are needed to constrain judicial discretion further. When multiple parties are tried separately for the same crime, the system runs the risk of asymmetrical sentencing, a term used to define the possibility of unfair, unjust, and disproportionate sentencing. In the NXIVM case it is obvious that this has happened. Ms. Mack, Ms. Salzman who were active participants in the heinous crimes committed by DOS for Raniere received virtual wrist slaps, while Ms. Bronfman, who was convicted of financing the group was given a sentence and treated as a violent criminal.

According to the U.S. Congress, sentencing disparity exists "when defendants with similar criminal records found guilty of similar criminal conduct receive dissimilar sentences."' In practice, disparity refers to differences in sentencing outcomes that are associated with "extralegal" factors such as race, ethnicity, economic standing, gender, or the exercise of certain procedural rights (e.g., trial). In Ms. Bronfman’s case, it was her wealth and standing that resulted in Judge Garaufis’ inappropriate sentence.

When non-violent offenders are treated as violent ones, and those convicted of violence are treated preferentially, the system fails the citizenry. It is up to the people to hold the system to account, and it is up to the lawmakers to ensure that the judges who they appoint are exercising fairness and discretion. Ms. Bronfman was convicted of a crime but was given a sentence that went far beyond that crime. Against the recommendations of the prosecution, and against normal sentencing guidelines for the crimes she was charged with, one judge with his own opinions has shown that the fairness and arbitrary nature of America’s courts are fragile and easily broken.

[niseamstories]

Tl;dr: The heavily revised physical edition Dreams of the Dying, my novel set in the Enderal universe, is now available for pre-order via Amazon via my website. Special early bird prices are $32.99 for the hardcover with an illustrated appendix, $12.99 for the paperback, and $2.99 for the eBook. It’s a prequel featuring Jespar, but, for reasons outlined below, opens up a new canon. Amazon.de has yet to pick up the listing for the physical editions, but they are incredibly slow—I’m working to get that done.

Hey guys,

This is Nicolas, the writer of Enderal speaking. As some of you may know, I’ve been working on an Enderal novel, Dreams of the Dying. First released as a web version, I spent the past year completely rewriting and improving the book, adding and removing chapters, revising characters arcs, and improving plotting, worldbuilding, and style. In total, I rewrote the web edition three times from cover to cover. Well, it’s finally time: Dreams of the Dying is now available for pre-order on Amazon!

The English version of Dreams of the Dying will release on October 20. A German (and perhaps Russian) translation will follow as soon as possible.

Please note that this is a rendering and that the actual hardcover looks slightly different, with same format but a matte dust jacket and a matte, laminated case. A big shoutout to Dominik Derow for the cover artwork, Johanna Krünes for her cover design, and Joyce, for her tips, patience, and help with this product shot.

Jaaros Oonai, magnate, visionary, and master of coin, doesn’t muse about whether the glass is half empty or half full—only about ways to fill it.

Jespar Dal’Varek, drifter, mercenary, and master of avoidance, doesn’t muse at all. He’d rather just drink the damn wine.

Two lives that could not be more different intertwine when a strange contract leads Jespar to the tropical island empire of Kilay, the wealthiest nation of the Civilized World.

The mission turns out to be as bizarre as it is lucrative: Jaaros Oonai, the country’s merchant king, knows something that could stop a catastrophe, but he has fallen into an inexplicable coma. Together with an ex-priestess and a psychic, Jespar must enter Oonai’s dreams and find this secret.

What should have been a fresh start rapidly turns into a nightmare, as Jespar slides into a spiral of disturbing dreams, political intrigue, and clashing ideals, where not only the fate of Kilay but his own sanity are at stake. It’s not long before he learns that only a spider’s thread divides the sleeping and the awoken.

And that there’s no greater enemy than one’s own mind.

The hardcover edition comes with an appendix that includes additional lore, such as an illustrated bestiary, a guide to Kilayan fashion, illustrations of the (re-envisioned) seven Light-Born, a short guide to the Makehu language, and much more.

Even though Dreams could be considered a prequel, I didn’t write this as an expansion or fan service but rather as my debut, and a book that stands on its own. This edition differs vastly from the web version, and, though it is up to you to judge, I’m a million times happier with it.

If you’re on the fence and would like to wait for reviews—here’s hoping I get enough—I fully understand. However, if you would buy the novel, you’d do me a great favor if you considered pre-ordering. One of the biggest challenges as an indie author is exposure; since Amazon registers all pre-orders as Day 1 sales, a lot of Day 1 sales would give me a chance to climb in the novel’s category and boost visibility for readers outside the Enderal community. To make this worth it to you, the book will sell for a special early bird price of $32.99 for the hardcover with the illustrated appendix, $12.99 for the paperback, and $2.99 for the eBook, as opposed to $37, $16, and $5. Just follow the link to my website and click pre-order—it will take you right to your local Amazon marketplace.

Unfortunately, Amazon.de has yet to pick up the listing for the physical editions, but they are incredibly slow—I’m working to get that done.

I’m aware the hardcover is in the upper price range, but it uses the best materials, and the illustrated appendix cost a lot to produce. It’s also the only edition where I make a more solid revenue, so see it as a way to support my work, if you wish.

If you’re a patron and pledged $110 or more since October 2018, I’ll be in touch a few weeks before launch to send out your signed hardcover copy right away. Thanks again for your support, Dreams became a far pricier project than I anticipated, and your patronage helped me immensely in covering the cost.

Lastly, a word of warning before you pre-order: For the paperback edition, I took the drastic step to separate Dreams and all future Enderal novels from the game canon. There are two good reasons for this. First, the Vyn games were created over 17 years, the earliest one being Myar Aranath in 2003. Fascinating as this idea may be, it also means that the lore of the Vyn universe was created by a myriad of different authors (the latest and current one being me when I joined the team in 2011). As a result of this, the lore of Vyn has always felt a little disjointed and inconsistent; I initially took these differences as challenges to conquer, but the longer I wrote, the more I realized how much these inconsistencies bothered me and how hard they made it to write the story and the universe I envisioned. Let me assure you that this decision wasn’t easy and does not reflect a lack of appreciation for the work of the previous workers. I stayed faithful to the lore whenever possible.

The second reason is a trickier one: Jespar. This character has been in my mind for nine years now, and I love him with all my heart. Still, the more I immersed myself in the story of Dreams, the more I grew aware of how incredibly constraining it was to write a story where the end is already written; because Jespar is alive in 8234 a. St. (1234 P.L. in new canon lore), you all know he will never be in real danger. Again, there is undoubtedly an intriguing challenge to writing such a “safe” story, but—similar to the lore, I increasingly felt like I was writing with fetters on. 

So, what does this mean? Aside from the fact that anything can now happen, the consequences aren’t that drastic. Enderal is still Enderal, and Jespar is still Jespar, albeit thirteen years younger and at another point in his life. I changed and expanded details about his backstory, but his essential conflicts are still the same, only refined. Major changes include modifications to the Light-Born (their aspects, how they came to be, when and how they disappeared, and the societal consequences of that disappearance), the time frame of the different eras, and a complete rework of the magic system. Minor changes include dates, the spelling of names and locations (Kilay, not Kilé), and others details I tweaked for consistency and worldbuilding coherence.

And that’s about it. I’m aware and grateful for the love many of you have for this world, and believe me, I did my best to honor it; I just realized I cannot tell a good story with one arm tied behind my back. If it’s any solace, I can promise you that new book canon is ironclad – I’m pathologically obsessive about consistency and cohesive worldbuilding, but without a solid framework, that’s a recipe for frustration and disaster. See it as a different but nearby eventuality: details and fates may differ, but the soul of the world remains the same.

If all that didn’t scare you off, pre-order away! I also set up a Goodreads page for the book, so you can add it to your To-Be-Reads or even recommend it to your friends – this is an indie project by all means, so I’m grateful for every bit of support. Please keep in mind that the Goodreads is for the revised edition, not the web edition, so if you’re planning to leave a low rating, I’d be grateful if you waited to read the actual book in October 20. It’s a different experience.

Last but not least, a big thank you to everyone who supported me on Patreon, created fanart for Enderal, or just let me know they enjoyed this game and were looking forward to the novel. This novel was meant to be a 6-month stint but, boy, did it turn into something more. It sounds sentimental, but this last year has been rough personally, and your support and encouragement kept me going.

I hope this story will live up to your expectations.

Best,

Nicolas

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[doctorthedoctor]

Long thasmin (mostly Yaz) rambles under the cut. I have a lot of feelings about it, but that’s nothing new.

tl;dr Yaz is queer and I really hope this is where they actually plan on going with it.

I wish we knew if they’re planning on making Yaz canonically queer. If they are, I’m so interested in where she’s at in terms of her relationship with her identity. We’ve gotten a glimpse into her past, but there’s still so much we don’t know, like why she was bullied and what prompted her to run off. She’s clearly had to pull herself out of a very dark place, yet we hardly know any details about what bought her there (funny how that sounds exactly like the Doctor).

I know a lot of people are of the belief that Najia is the captain of the thasmin ship, but I’ve personally never felt that way. To me, she doesn’t look or sound thrilled by the concept of Yaz seeing the Doctor when she asks about it. And Yaz doesn’t seem very comfortable with the question. She initially responds with a disgruntled, “Not now!” and punctuates the exchange with, “Please, can we not have this conversation now? And not in front of [Robertson].” And between those lines, neither she nor the Doctor give Najia a clear answer.

This is just my take and it could very well be wrong, but the fact that Yaz expresses multiple times that she doesn’t want to talk about it tells me that a conversation of this nature has happened before. And judging by the tension between them, it probably didn’t go very smoothly.

I mean, nothing about this exchange looked or sounded comfortable to me:

It’s notably different from how Najia and Yaz interact later when the same question is asked about her and Ryan. The two respond with an immediate and definitive, “No.” Najia seems disappointed by their answer, yet she doesn’t press the topic and the story moves forward. This exchange ends up being significantly shorter than the first, solely because Najia accepted their answer the first time around.

Does anyone smell some heteronormativity in the air? Queer people are painfully familiar with having to spend time explaining their identity to others. It’s a conversation we’re forced to have over and over throughout our lives. That definitely sounds like an experience Yaz can relate to.

Ryan and Yaz look uncomfortable when she asks (which is understandable), but Najia looks much happier about the concept and disappointed when she finds out they aren’t dating:

And even the staging is interesting. Najia is positioned between Yaz and Ryan in the second scene, as opposed to being placed next to Yaz with a desk between them and the Doctor. When she’s talking to Yaz and Ryan, she’s on the same level as them and sounds friendlier. But when she’s talking to the Doctor, Yaz is sitting while she stands and assumes a more authoritative position/tone.

Sure, the Doctor is a stranger and Ryan is a childhood friend, but the Doctor was so nice to Najia when she met her. As far as I can remember, she never gave her a solid reason to be suspicious. If anything, she was too nice, given the way Najia reacts to the hug and compliment about her daughter, then proceeds to distance herself. She’s not Yaz’s mum, she’s Najia. And at the end of the episode, she continues to press Yaz about the Doctor, but never mentions Ryan again.

We know that there’s been a strain on her home life at some point after hearing her conversation with that officer, because she mentions Yaz’s parents not understanding her (not getting “what’s up”). As they they talk, the officer mentions Yaz wanting to run away from everyone, including herself. In trying to convince her that these feelings will pass, she essentially tells her there’s something good waiting on the other side if she runs toward herself instead—which is something queer people really need to hear.

It’s obviously not the only factor, and like I said, I could be wrong but...this sure does look like something that would make a person run from who they are:

After all, Yaz did promise her mom she would tell her about the Doctor when she got back from picking up bread, then proceeded to run off with her. As far as we know, Najia is still in the dark about their relationship—whatever that happens to be.

Aside from that, Yaz is the only one in the fam who hasn’t had any romantic interactions outside of the Doctor and the Master. I guess we could also count Ryan (I’m not against it because I headcanon her as bi) but I genuinely get more of a sibling vibe from them. Regardless, we all know the Master cozied up to Yaz because she fits the mold of who the Doctor has traveled with in the past. I can’t speak to classic who, but from Nine and on, the Doctor’s got a type and we all know it, including the Master.

Then we have all of the parallels between thasmin and various couples in the show. I’m not even going to begin to list them, but the crumbs are abundant and delicious. That gay cop and astronaut? I mean, come on.

On top of all that, the one really Yaz centric episode we’ve had dealt with themes of prejudice and a love within her own family that broke away from societal norms. Like, shit. The Doctor married Prem and Umbreen in a small, private ceremony because she was the only one who was willing to look past their religions. And because this was a relationship that went unknown to Yaz (for a vastly different reason, but still), even she wasn’t happy with the Doctor for agreeing to it at first.

Though private, their marriage was an act of rebellion against outside forces. And who did Umbreen specifically have tension with about the concept of marrying someone who was Hindu? Her mother. But she and Prem even created a new wedding tradition that celebrated their own love by tying their hands with the rope that fell in the water. “Now it can be our thing, if we want it to be,” Umbreen said.

(This is a side note, but if Najia truly isn’t chill about Yaz being queer, I really want to see Umbreen tell her about Prem. I want to hear her recount her experiences with her own love being scrutinized and challenged. I think it would be a cool way for Najia to learn who the Doctor really is, and just how much of a positive impact she and Yaz have made on her life already.)

Yaz struggled in Demons of the Punjab because everything she believed to be true about Umbreen’s life (and her own by extension) turned out to be so different from what she expected. But what she witnessed in that episode helped her understand that people deserve to share their experiences on their own terms. If that doesn’t translate into a narrative about Yaz’s own identity, I don’t know what will.

In season 12, Yaz spent this entire time focusing on the Doctor, but it was executed in a way that furthered her own development. Yaz clearly has feelings for her, but now we have a better understanding of what traveling with the Doctor means to her as a whole. Yaz idolizes her, constantly thinks about what she would say or do. She wants to impress her, prove herself capable of solving problems and saving people. In the process of doing this, she’s grown more confident in her own abilities, independently breathing hope and action into situations that feel paralyzing and hopeless. This is exactly what Yaz has wanted all along, with or without the Doctor. Yaz wants to matter and she wants to do work that matters. The Doctor gives her this. She tells her they can’t have a universe without her. She gives her the chance to make an impact in a way she doesn’t feel like she can at home.

I think their relationship could serve as such a wonderful catalyst for Yaz to step into her own identity and eventually find her place without needing the Doctor. Like Graham said, she doesn’t have a time machine or a sonic, but she’s doing the whole human race proud. Yaz deserves a “You were fantastic. And know what? So was I” moment.

I love thasmin as much as the next person, but I’m honestly less interested in seeing her feelings reciprocated by the Doctor than I am in witnessing Yaz’s journey to confront her feelings in the first place. I want to see or hear her express them in a way that leaves no room for doubt. Everything feels so blatantly intentional at this point, but there’s still just enough ambiguity for me to worry that they’re not going to follow through. They’ve planted all these wonderful little seeds along the way, it would be such a disservice to all fans (not just queer fans) if we never get to see them bloom.

[mamthew]

On Final Fantasy XIV and Asymmetrical Memory

I plan to spoil large chunks of Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn and its expansions in the following write-up. I will probably go most in-depth into the Heavensward expansion, but I expect to at least allude to plot details from other expansions in such a way that people who haven’t yet played them might work out what happens, so steer clear if you don’t want that to happen.

Every time I play a Final Fantasy game, I constantly think about what a remake/demake would look like. The cutoff for this is between IX and X – from X on, I parse out a potential demake in the style of VI or IX, while from IX earlier, I think about what a potential remake of the game could look like. I figure this cutoff is pretty indicative of what I most enjoy about Final Fantasy games. I really like the ATB battle systems of IV through IX, but I want the stories to be presented with voice acting and cinematic cutscenes (I was a little disappointed in the gameplay depicted in the XVI trailer for that reason, but that’s only sorta tangentially related).

I don’t think I’ve ever been so invested in the potential for a demake as when playing FFXIV. The game is an MMORPG, and I do not like MMOs, so that’s definitely part of it. I kept thinking in the back of my mind that I would much rather be going through dungeons with the characters accompanying my character in the story, rather than the random fellow players rushing me through them. The developers, clearly, had heard this criticism before. As the game progresses into newer updates, more options become available to make the story feel more like a single-player experience, culminating in the ability to choose to explore dungeons with a party of NPCs and a story explanation for why randos appear around the protagonist for boss fights (neither of which apply retroactively, unfortunately).

Over the course of the game, then, I went from wishing I could play a game with this story in the style of VI or IX to wishing I could play this game, but developed from the beginning by the developers who made the Shadowbringers expansion with six years of experience under their belts. That’s not to say I don’t sometimes fantasize about the ways this story could be handled in a more traditional style, but with Shadowbringers, the game has essentially become a single-player game I am made to experience next to other players, which is much more bearable than a traditional MMO.

Like many games in the series, FFXIV is about memory, but it tackles this theme in a very different way from most. Rather than focusing on amnesia or memories fading, it looks instead at the conflicts that arise from asymmetric memories.

The second expansion, Heavensward, is about a holy war fought for centuries between dragons and humans (slash-elves). Over the course of the story, it is revealed that the main disagreement in this holy war arose from the differences in the lifespans between these two species. The humans have developed a religion explaining to them why dragons attack them every few decades, in which it is taught that their original king was murdered by the dragon Nidhogg, and one of his loyal knights took the dragon’s eye in revenge. The dragons, this religion teaches, are a scourge on the earth. It is heretical to consort with them in any way, and those who do often change into dragons themselves. Thus, from the humans’ perspective, not only are humans and dragons locked in a constant war, but the dragons are the aggressors for attacking every few years and for turning their own fellows against them.

Dragons, however, live for a much longer time than humans. Nidhogg is, in fact, still alive, as are several of his siblings, and his father. The dragons are at war with the humans because those many centuries past, the humans discovered that they could gain strength by killing and eating the dragons, and they did just that to Nidhogg’s sister. There is an asymmetry of memory to this conflict, meaning neither side is truly in the wrong. The humans, who only live for a hundred years or so, can only remember the dragons’ attacks to their cities. From their perspective, they are attacked by these monsters without reason. The dragons, however, still vividly remember the inciting incident of the conflict. The wound of the murder of Ratatoskr is still fresh, to them.

The game has an overarching conflict that’s framed in much the same way: neither party believes themselves to be at fault because the discrepancy in their respective lifespans has created an asymmetry of memory. Summons in the FFXIV universe take on different forms depending on what stories the summoner had heard about the god, meaning that the look and behavior of staples like Shiva and Ifrit can vary wildly depending on the memories of their worshippers. The game suggests, too, that the perfect empire would be one that can create and manipulate this asymmetry of memory, to have subjects who do not remember ever having not been subjects, but who the imperial structure still remembers are not sovereign citizens.

Difference in experience can allow for this asymmetry in memory, too. The protagonist has counterparts in parallel worlds, but each of these counterparts is, by any metric, their own person, with their own life and experiences. The protagonist’s power allows them to view others’ memories, which works well as an expository tool, but also maintains in the forefront of the player’s mind that everyone’s actions and ideologies are informed by their experiences and memories. Our diversity, the game reminds us, is literally a product of an asymmetry of memory.

This way of exploring memory is a pretty stark departure from the rest of the series; it’s much more subtle than the series’ usual focus on the acts of forgetting or chronicling experiences. This theme was absolutely informed by FFXIV’s status as an MMO; I can watch as hundreds of fellow players experience the same story events in radically different ways. Everyone’s protagonist is a different race with a different name, aesthetic, and class. They start in different towns, each of which has its own unique first thirty or so story quests. How we each experience dungeons and bosses is determined by our “role” - do we deal damage, or heal, or sponge damage from enemies? Our characters essentially do everything alone but with company, and we can stand and watch as others’ characters criss-cross fields, spawning enemies only they can attack, or standing in front of random NPCs, experiencing stories we ourselves are not seeing. Some players are “legacy players,” and the story is very different for them, as it is a continuation of a story us newcomers cannot access.

While this theme was made for the MMO medium, though, I think it is also well-suited to the Final Fantasy series as a whole. We all experience the series very differently. Some were introduced through Final Fantasy I on an NES in the ‘80s, others were introduced through VI, or X. Some were introduced through Kingdom Hearts, or Super Smash Bros, or a Dissidia arcade machine. We all picture a different character when we think of Cid, whether that’s the spandex-clad Cid from IV, the cantankerous astronaut from VII, or the cranky garage-owner from XV. When a Final Fantasy game references a previous game, we all might have different games we connect that reference back to, informed by our differing memories and past experiences.

I saw a complaint once that FFXIV fails to be its own game because it is too caught up in nostalgia. It would rather remind people of other games than stand as its own game. I disagree, especially when it comes to the stories of Heavensward on. I find it and Shadowbringers to have some of the better plots the series has ever done, with characters who earn their right to stand among the most iconic characters in the series.

I do think, however, that it is impossible to play a game in a long-running series without your experience being affected by your memories of other games in that series. Humans naturally have a tendency to seek out and find patterns, and we write connections and patterns into series, pretty much by definition. This is what I do when I imagine remakes and demakes while playing Final Fantasy games. I use my memories of other games to inform my understanding of the one I am playing. I find throughlines between vastly different games and cross the yawning void of divergence to imagine what it would be like if they weren’t so different after all.

[ronnyshaiwrites]

Undergrad Thesis: Introduction

They began to weave curtains of       darkness, They erected large pillars round the Void, With golden hooks fastend in the pillars With infinite labour the Eternals A woof wove. and called it Science.

— William Blake, The First Book of Urizen

***

In early February of 1805 then burgeoning English chemist Humphrey Davy gave the first of a series of ten public lectures at the Royal Institution in London. The purpose for this lecture series was manifold. Having just returned from a geological expedition to Northern England and Scotland the previous year, the lectures were foremost intended to present Davy with a forum to exhibit his new collection of rocks and minerals. Yet, from the very start of his first lecture, members of the Royal Institution would have realized that the young scientist had taken considerable liberties in the scope of his project. Those in attendance who had expected a foray into the rock formations of Scotland would have been sorrily disappointed. Rather, on that fateful February afternoon at the dawn of the nineteenth century, Davy began by proclaiming that “the love of knowledge and of intellectual power is a faculty belonging to the human mind in every state of society; and it is one by which it is most justly characterized—one the most worthy of being cultivated and extended” (3). Indeed, nowhere in his introductory lecture does Davy make even the slightest allusion to geology, the proposed topic of his orations. Davy’s professions over the next ten weeks would set the pace of scientific endeavors for the next century and beyond. In his lectures, Davy details a glaring rebuke of the natural philosophers and scientists of centuries past. Commenting upon topics from scientific philosophy to the history of science and its role in the foundation of modern thought, Davy traced the course of scientific innovation from the ancients to Galileo and Isaac Newton. For the next ten weeks Davy continued in the same vein, presenting an inexplicable mixture of geology and scientific epistemology to packed lectures hall.

Underpinning Davy’s argument on scientific epistemology is what the chemist considers the most suitable method for deriving knowledge from nature. Facts and facts alone are the reliable basis for our understanding, Davy argued, adding to this a notable contempt for theoretical speculation. In his practice as well as in common life, the scientist, Davy contends, “ought only to be guided by certainties” or, at the least, by “distinct probabilities” (45). The most flagrant fault of scientists’ past and present being their choice “attribute to agents powers which they have never been observed to exert, or refer effects to causes, the operation of which they are ignorant” (70). To Davy, then, progress in science clearly is made in proportion to an increasing reliance on detailed observation and experimentation. He concludes that any person who calls themselves a scientist while turning a blind eye to observational detail will inveritably reach suppositions that “do not merit the name of science” (70). Davy further makes the case for meticulous experimentation by offering a comparison of two scientists that represent what are, in his opinion, the two vastly different epistemologies that undergird modern practice. To be held in the highest esteem is Francis Bacon, English philosopher and statesman credited by Davy as paramount to the European scientific revolution. Bacon, on who’s work the scientific method was founded cast inductive reasoning and empiricism as essential to the practice of “good” science. Contrary to the previous generation of natural philosophers who relied on some observations but primarily on deductive reasoning, Bacon’s staunch adherence to fact set him apart from his contemporaries. While “many scientific persons before Bacon had pursued the method of experiment,” he was the very “first philosopher who laid down plans for extending knowledge of universal application in all its precision” (39); a man who

wholly altered the face of every department of natural knowledge… Though much labour had been bestowed upon these extensive fields of investigation, they had hitherto…been little productive. Speculation had been misplaced, observation confined, and experiment principally directed rather towards impossible than to practical things. (39)

To contrast the towering figure of Bacon, Davy chooses Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, German polymath, and an important figure in the occult movement of the sixteenth century. Whereas Bacon is “uniformly directed by reason,” (39) Agrippa, the failed scientist that he is, rather “begins by supposing” (36). With obvious contempt, Davy accuses Agrippa of suggesting the “grossest absurdities,” finding it “difficult to conjecture from them whether he is self-deluded or… endeavouring to deceive others” (37).  

More so than simply condemning the work of the latter early scientist, Davy extends his professional critique into a personal assault against Agrippa’s character. Davy actively portrays Agrippa as lesser than Bacon, emphasizing a new notion that would later become commonplace in nineteenth century academies: That the scientist is not sperate from his science, but that the perceived failures or successes of the investigator reflect the character of the man beyond the laboratory walls. In Davy’s characterization Bacon “was prepared by nature,” a “genius” whose “knowledge was extensive” and yet “gifted with a vivid imagination” that could nonetheless be “modified by a most correct taste” (39). Bacon’s scientific aptitude is conflated with the “influence of rank,” (40) and mention of his high political station. Whereas Bacon’s name would be remembered “into future ages with great and unchanging glory,” (39) Davy closes his section on Agrippa by depicting him as a wholly reprehensible character, a common “magician…vulgar” who will be remembered for his failed philosophies, “miserably poor,” (37) and as a lifelong prisoner to his own misconceptions, if remembered at all.

The image that Davy paints of Agrippa, a man forgotten to time and ridiculed by his successors, is as much a lesson in history as it is a warning to future scientists. Through the crowded lecture halls of the Royal Institution echoed Davy’s new idiom for science—facts are facts and facts alone are to be considered truth. To those that dare to “despise the logic and forms” (39) of Bacon’s perfect scientific method, Davy warns, should beware the wrath of a growing scientific community and prepared to deliver a “humiliating confession of ignorance” (39). The reasoned past of science, although presenting “romantic pictures” of nature should not, however, “in the slightest degree affect the opinion of the sound and judicious” (3) modern scientist. Speaking on the strong logical foundation of his argument Davy, somewhat paradoxically, concludes that such “truth scarcely requires any demonstration,” (3) although demonstration is the only way the scientist could arrive at facts and, through them, truth. The age of reason was over. The age of science had begun.

Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison, in their seminal study Objectivity (2007), chart the proliferation of this new scientific epistemology espoused by Davy and others through what they coin as “reasoned” and “mechanical” images. Belonging to the epoch of what Daston and Galison call “truth-to-nature” is the “reasoned image,” the “imposition of reason upon sensation and imagination” (98). Through the “exercise of will and reason in tandem,” (98) scientists prior to the late eighteenth century could forge an active scientific self, inclusive to non-empirical hypothesis, without fear of retribution from their colleagues. As evident from Davy’s lectures, beginning in the early-to-middle nineteenth century there emerged a new epistemic virtue, to draw again on the terminology used by Daston and Galison, called “mechanical objectivity.” The “mechanical image,” in contrast to its predecessor the reasoned image, sought to dissolve any trace of the scientific hand responsible for its conception. Mechanical images are thus “wary of human mediation between nature and representation,” (120) forcing scientists to strive for a “self-denying passivity” (121) in their work. The Romantic period is of particular interest due to the confluence and, later, the divergence of these two oftentimes conflicting epistemic virtues.

This research paper traces developing notions of the scientific self and its relationship to the practice of creating scientific images in three early science fiction novels, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818), Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886), and H.G. Wells’ The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896). Herein, I examine how competing epistemic virtues of truth-to-nature and mechanical objectivity bore influence on scientist’s conceptions of self and, through them, the creation of distinct, albeit vacillating, images of nature. I also look at how scientist’s internalization of such epistemological anxieties came to shape the externalizing practice of creating scientific images. The epistemic virtue of truth-to nature, which dominated scientific practice throughout the late-eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, focused the work of natural philosophers and early modern scientists on creating reasoned images, a practice which by no means would fade passively into the annals of science.

I begin by asking how science fiction beginning in the late-Romantic period captured the very real anxieties related to the movement of science away from truth-to-nature and towards a more objective epistemic frame. I seek to relate literary developments in the science fiction novel, with an emphasis on the relationship between scientists and their creations, to how the scientist mediates the governing epistemic virtues of the era with their conception of self. I trace such developments in early science fiction texts to first define and later explore the idea of the “scientific image,” the scientist’s use of semiotics and rhetorical devices to shape an image of nature, providing a degree of critical distance between subject and object. I relate the dynamic alterations in the scientist’s image making process to an overarching anxiety regarding the movement from natural philosophy to the more rigid and decidedly modern practice of objective science that persists today.

In the first chapter, I review the historical undercurrents in science and society beginning in the mid- to late-eighteenth century. Drawing on the work of historians and philosophers of science, I assess the changing conceptions of the scientific self and their relationship to more tangible scientific practice. I first discuss the prevailing and oftentimes conflicting epistemic virtues of truth-to-nature and mechanical objectivity, with specific attention given to the period of their overlap coinciding with late-Romanticism and the publication of Frankenstein. Next, I turn to the development of the scientific self in relation to the prevailing epistemic virtues of the age, making tangential inferences between Kantian objectivity and subjectivity and its influence on emerging anxieties of the self in nineteenth century England.

In the second chapter, I propose that the creation of scientific images is a distinctly literary practice, one that began in the late eighteenth century. Drawing on the scholarship of Amanda Jo Goldstein and Tita Chico, I explore the necessity of the literary imagination and the use of subjective inferencing to conceiving and communicating scientific ideas. I next turn my attention toward the role of the metaphor in the art-science of image creation. I first suggest that the metaphor, as a device used to create scientific images, is a response to the scientist’s anxiety of creating a reputable scientific self, thereby establishing a critical distance between creator and their creation. Aligning this development with the history of changing scientific practice, I propose that the literary imagination facilitated the creation of scientific images in the age of objectivity, allowing the scientist to, at all points in the process of discovery, remain partially removed from their creations. All the while, the creation (as image), takes on a subjectively endowed position, closer to that of the reasoned image of the truth-to-nature epoch. I conclude by asking how the use of metaphor and imagery endow scientific images with meaning that is supplementary to the significance first prescribed to them by their creators.

Beginning in chapter three, I turn to the early science fiction texts of the nineteenth century to examine how the transition from truth-to-nature to mechanical objectivity is imagined by science fiction authors. In chapter three I propose Victor Frankenstein’s creature as a scientific image that speaks back, commanding, for the first time in a literary meditation on modern science, the ability for objectified nature to speak for itself and redefine its image in a rebuke of its creator. I additionally suggest that the creature is an image-of-self, created by Frankenstein as a manifestation of his anxiety towards the act of scientific creation.

In chapter four, I continue with The Island of Dr. Moreau, furthering my line of inquiry into the late nineteenth century, when objectivity became firmly rooted as the prevailing epistemic virtue of science., I analyze the incongruency between self and image, proposing that mechanized scientific images, such as the monstrosities of Dr. Moreau’s island, put scientific reason and the subjective qualities of scientific practice into question. Here, I also explore a case study of scientific communication in miniature by regarding Edward Prendick as a representation of a knowledgeable public’s response to the potentially disturbing products of modern science in anticipation of current scientific advances.

In chapter five, I briefly turn to The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (hereafter referred to as Jekyll and Hyde), where I consider Edward Hyde as an exemplification of the scientific image as self, speaking not only to his creator, but for him as well. In this case, the image serves not as a manifestation of the scientific self but, quite oppositely, comes to define the self through comparison. I conclude by examining Edward Hyde as a scientific image that fails to separate from Henry Jekyll’s scientific self, denying Hyde the ultimate goal of the reasoned image: Complete autonomy. I conclude by theorizing on the death of images and the necessity of the scientist to the image’s life.

[marwritesgood]

Lifeline | O. Diaz

Pairing : Oscar x Martinez!Reader

Timeframe : Pre-Season Two

Summary : When lives are on the line, relationships are placed in jeopardy.

masterlist

A/N: Season Two of On My Block was everything I never knew I needed.

However, I couldn’t resist writing about the time straight after Olivia’s quince. it should be noted that this is a little different from “911″ and is a lot more angsty.

Definitely gonna write some pics about Season 2 because I am so emotionally invested right now. 

I hated the hospital.

From my experience, nothing good ever came out of it. At least not the one in Freeridge. I used to do everything I could to avoid going there, even if I was the one who needed help. That’s how much I deposed simply being inside of one.

However, when the paramedics arrived at my house and carried my baby brother away, I didn’t think twice about grabbing my dad’s keys and following the ambulance all the way to the hospital, where I stayed inside and waited. And waited.

And waited for my brother to wake up.

“He’s in surgery, mija,” my dad explained to me, after him and my mom spoke to the doctor overlooking Ruby’s situation. “... They don’t know how long it’ll be, so if you want, you can go home and we’ll call you as soon as-”

“I’ll wait here,” I insisted.

“Okay,” he replied softly.

There was a brief moment of silence. Not the peaceful sort, but rather the eerie kind. Then the elevator bell rang, and the doors opened.

And then he walked out.

“Y/n... Mr and Mrs Martinez...”

My father pursed his lips, before turning around and walking off in the opposite direction. My mother, on the other hand, headed right towards the teenage boy.

“The nerve you have, Cesar,” she muttered as she got closer. “The nerve you have to show your face to me... After what just happened to my son.”

“Mamí,” I cried, linking my arm around hers in an attempt to pull her back from getting any closer to Cesar. She had a right to be angry. I was angry too. But I knew Ruby wouldn't have wanted us to react like this. 

“Mrs Martinez, I’m so sorry...”

“Sorry?!” My mother stopped and began sinking in my arms. “My son’s life might be over because of your shit, and all you can say is your sorry?!”

My father ran back and took pulled my mother into his arms. As she her muffled wails echoed throughout the corridor of the hospital ward, I pulled Cesar back into the elevator he came in from.

“Y/n...” he cried, stepping towards me, only for me to take another one away from him.

It was natural for Cesar to assume I would comfort him. I has been dating his brother since before he even got to middle school, so I had essentially adopted the role of his older sister. However this situation was vastly different.

Because I was Ruby’s actual sister. And it was his life on the line.

“Don’t... Just don’t, Cesar,” I said, my voice trembling. 

How do I deal with the fact that my little brother might die? How do I deal with the fact that my boyfriend and his little brother played a significant role in all of it happening? These are not questions anyone should have to answer.

But I had to.

“You shouldn’t have come here in the first place, so...” It hurt me so much to push Cesar away, but the thought of losing Ruby hurt more, and the fact that Cesar played a role in it clouded my judgement far more than I wanted. “- So when we get to the first floor, you’re gonna get out and you’re gonna go home and you’re not gonna come back... not for a little while at least, okay?”

He nodded and stared at his feet.

Then, when the elevator doors opened, he walked right out, just as I told him to. And he didn’t come back the next day. Or the day after that.

*********

“Ma...” I whimpered, gently placing my hands on the shoulders of my mother, who had been sat by Ruby’s bedside staring at him as though in a catatonic state. “Mamí, please... I think you should go home... just for a little bit.”

“No,” she replied, shaking her head profusely, tears welling up again in her eyes. “I’m not leaving him, mija... I’m not gonna let anything happen to him again.”

“Ma...” I repeated, bobbing down and looking up at her. This time, I am the one with tears welling up in my eyes. “Please. I’ll stay with Ruby. Just go home and rest... Please, mamí... for me?”

It wasn’t until my voice cracked on the last word I spoke that my mom finally turned to face me. She didn't to say anything. She just lifted her hand to my cheek and cupped my face softly before nodding. 

“Call me if anything changes, Y/n... Anything.”

“I will,” I answered, nodding.

Once she left, I sat on the seat she had spent nearly three days in a row sitting on. After the door closed behind her, the reality of the entire situation began to sink into me. 

This was really happening.

My baby brother, the same dude I called an idiot four days ago, was fighting for his life. And there was a likely chance that he might not win.

“Knock knock.”

I jumped and my head shot straight up to where the door was, and standing there, with a small stuffed teddy bear was my boyfriend: Spooky.

He walks in and places the stuffed animal beside the pile of gifts left by Ruby’s other visitors. I sit up straight, rest my elbows on the edge of RUby’s head and place my head in my hands. Spooky pulls a chair up next to me and takes a seat.

“Baby,” he whispered, placing one hand on the back of my chair and the other on my forearm. I din’t need to turn my head to know he was facing me, eyes staring intently at me. “You haven’t spoken to me since any of this happened. Haven’t texted back. Haven’t answered your phone-”

“- And you thought  just showing up here was the right way to respond?” I fired back, putting hands down so I could look at him. Normally he would fire something back. Do something to retaliate against my hostility, but instead, his expression fell and, with that, he sighed softly before talking.

“I just wanted to make sure you were okay,” he explained softly. 

“Of course I’m not, Spooky,” I cried. “Olivia’s probably not gonna make. Ruby’s in critical condition. My mom is beside herself, and I feel so useless... and powerless... because my baby brother has to fight to survive, and there’s nothing I can do but wait and pray that he’s gonna wake up.”

“I know, baby,” he replies. I knew he was only trying to be empathetic, but everything he was saying and doing just rubbed in all the wrong directions. 

“Do you?” I questioned him, my voice growing slightly louder with each syllable. “Do you actually, Spooky, because Cesar’s the one who got out of that situation without a scratch on his skin and Ruby’s the one with a bullet wound in his chest.”

“What are you saying, Y/n?”

“I’m saying it’s fucking bullshit,” I shouted. “None of this would have happened if Cesar hadn’t lied about not killing Latrelle, None of this would have happened if you had just done the job yourself instead of turning it into homesick teaching moment.”

“Hey, that is not fair,” he shouted back, standing up from his seat at the same moment I did. “C’mon you know it’s more complicated then that.”

“This is yours and Cesar’s fault,” I said, with tears streaming down my cheeks and a voice that no longer sustained stability. Oscar’s breath hitched, because I was not the type of person to be so blunt, or to be so overcome with emotions.

“... But Ruby’s the one who got hurt, and that is not fair. Why do you get your little brother, and I might have to lose mine? How in the world is that fair?”

I didn’t realise what I was saying until I said it, but that was how I truly felt. Ruby didn’t deserve to get caught in the crossfire of something he had no involvement in. But he did. And now he may pay the ultimate price for it.

“Baby...”

His voice went back to it’s initial state of softness. He took a step towards me, and reached his hand out to pull me in. Before he does do, I stop him.

“Go,” I muttered, shaking my head and taking a step back. “Just go, Oscar... I just... I need a break. I need to just focus on Ruby right now, and on my family.”

“Okay,” he nodded. Only he was no longer looking me in the eye. “I’ll call you later then? Maybe later this week?”

I shook my head.

“I think we should take a break too... For a while.”

He finally turned back to me, only this time his eyebrows were furrowed and half of his mouth twitched upwards. I had never seen him get this upset. Not in all my years of knowing him.

“What?” He didn’t want to believe I said what I said. But I did. “C’mon, baby... You don’t mean that. C’mon...”

My breath hitched, as I turned to my hands and then turned back up at him. It was clear what I needed to do. As much as it broke my heart, I knew it was the right thing. The only thing.

“Go home, Spooky.”

***********

Ruby had woken up a week ago.

He had to remain in hospital so the doctors could run a few more tests and keep him monitored at all times. Olivia, on the other hand, was still fighting for her life.

“I’ll go ask the nurse for more bandages,” my mother said, before placing Ruby’s right arm back down beside him. “Mija, stay with your brother.”

“Okay,” I answered, before sitting beside him after she left the room.

“So... You broke up with Spooky didn't you?”

I sighed. Everyone else in the house hadn’t brought him up. It was as though avoiding discussing anyone from the Diaz family or the Santos was an unspoken rule in our family. One that Ruby didn’t want to abide by.

“Yeah,” I exhaled heavily. I didn’t want to talk about it, but maybe I needed to. 

“It wasn’t because of me was it?”

Ruby had the biggest heart I knew. The last thing I wanted was for him to have to think that he caused any issues for something he had no control over.

“We broke up... because of a lot of reasons,” I explained, before quickly realising that he could see right through me. Ruby turned to face down, but I quickly lifted his chin back up. “Hey, Ruby... You didn’t do anything to make me break up with him, okay? That was my call.”

He wasn't convinced.

“I’m sorry, mana,” he whispered. He only ever called me that when things were bad. I though that, when he woke up, things were finally gonna be good again.

“Ruby, listen to me,” I cried, placing both my hands on opposite sides of his face. When he finally locked eyes with mine, I smiled, even through my tears. “You got really hurt by happened. All you need to worry about is healing. You don’t need to carry anymore guilt, you’re just a kid.”

He was just a kid. Just like Cesar was just a kid. A kid I pushed away for something he had no control over.

“I love you, mana,” Ruby murmured, as he sunk back into his bed, a small smile appearing on his face: one I hadn’t seen in over a week.

“I love you too,” I replied, as I ran my hand through his hair, the same way I did when was the same size at the twins.

Just as I was about to smile back at Ruby, my mother came back. Only she had no bandages in her hands and tears streaming down her face. It was strange how a nice moment could turn sour so quickly.

“Ma,” I began, standing up from the seat, so that she could sit down. She looked like she needed to far more than I did.

“It’s Olivia,” she whispered, as she sat down beside Ruby, who was now sitting up straight. Before she continued she held his hand squeezed tightly, which we both knew was a indicative of bad news. “She.... She passed away... just a few minutes ago.”

***********

I didn’t know where I was going, or why my immediate response was to leave the hospital, but I couldn’t keep myself from moving. This is why I hated hospitals. This is why I dreaded entering them. It seemed as though every time I entered one, someone I cared about gets hurt. 

I continued down the street that headed towards my block, which is where I finally realised where I was heading and why my feet reacted before any other part of my body.

He was standing at the hood of his car, and when he heard my footsteps approaching him, he turned around and pointed his gun towards my head: something that became a reflex to him since becoming a Santos.

I raise my hands in surrender position, but let out an audible sob involuntarily. He instantly puts his gun down. 

“I’m sorry,” I began, my voice cracking on the very first and second syllable. “I shouldn't have blamed you or Cesar... I shouldn't have said what I said.”

Losing Olivia made me realise how precious time was. It made me realise how important it is to tell the people you love that you love them, because a nice moment can turn sour so so quickly.

“What happened?” 

There is a small distance between us. Spooky stands and looks at me as though he is unsure whether or not he should close the gap. 

“She didn’t make it,” I explained, a split second before sobbing uncontrollably. Without saying a word, he pulls me into his arms and lets me cry into his chest until I calm myself down.

“I’m so sorry, baby,” he says softly, caressing the back of my head gently. 

We had our arguments and our falling outs. We had our disagreements and our own siblings to protect. However, at the end of the day, the thing I always knew I could count was that if the tides changed and everything that was good in my life turned to custard, he would be right there to keep me from falling down.

He was, in many ways, the lifeline I could always count on.

[tessaroselove]

A Shattered Dream: The Importance of Intersectionality in the U.S. Education System

I’ve been told that as a child my parents insisted that my older brothers didn’t dote on me excessively because they never wanted me to feel like the world owed me anything. I used to think that it was cruel of them, but as I grew up I learned that it was their way of ensuring that I knew just how hard I would have to work to be given equal educational opportunities in life as a young intellectual chicanx woman. I (like every student) have a uniquely intersectional identity that the world may not necessarily value. In the past few years the U.S. education system has been changing and expanding to involve the incorporation of intersectional identities in the private and public school systems but is absolutely failing to do so in other non-traditional educational environments such as the education centers in the juvenile justice system. This lack of ethnic studies and intersectionality within the learning environment of the juvenile justice system smashes the identity of youth by essentially imparting the idea that they must assimilate to the structured norms set forth by any certain center whether or not it contradicts their cultural or gender identity.

    There is hope for true change in some sense because as I have stated above there has been movement made toward the incorporation of literature and discourse about the importance of recognizing and acknowledging intersectional identities. In colleges we can now take classes in subjects such as ethnic studies, gender/sexuality studies, culture studies, etc. and even choose to apply these lenses to common core subject discourse. Furthermore, there has been a steady increase in these studies in regards to grade school education even so far as in elementary school classrooms. In her article “Subverting Scripted Language Arts Curriculum:  Ethnic Studies Literature in the Elementary Classroom,” Carolina Valdez gives a snapshot of a possible lesson plan that helps to integrate the concepts of a non-Eurocentric education by showing students the differences in perspectives via popular television shows. Valdez maintains that, “To sustain an ethnic studies pedagogy, educators must reflect on Eurocentric curriculum across subject matter and identify ways to complicate and disrupt it” (p.187).  This narrative is one that vastly differs from the education that was in place at the beginning of the century and brings forth the notion that educators have the power to revamp and repair the broken discourses of the U.S. by merely answering questions and acknowledging the existence of these discourses.

    So if these concepts are being introduced in elementary education and being fully embraced in higher education, why are such components of learning being vilified in rehabilitation education systems? After encountering the article “Disabling Juvenile Justice: Engaging the Stories of Incarcerated Young Women of Color With Disabilities” I might also argue that there also be a “gendered” aspect to the absence of these subjects in juvenile justice classrooms and discourse for young women. In this piece, Dr. Subini Annamma studied the lives of 10 different young women of color in juvenile incarceration. While her article is based on examining the overrepresentation of students of color in special education in this setting, I would argue that this article more accurately depicts the injustices of the system’s complete disregard for these young women’s intersectional identities, which Annamma analyzes via Critical Race Theory. These young women spoke about their educational journeys in the system and all of them were vocal about the fact that there was often much less emphasis on actual education and more on the subjugation of their bodies and mannerisms toward the feminine ideal. While everyone of the girls in the study identified as female, a participant known as Veronica was constantly caught breaking small rules such as not keeping her feet and knees together under the table during classes. Annamma goes on to explain that the “requirement of how to sit properly (e.g., feet and knees together) seemed at times to force normative femininity upon her” (p.319). This is especially troubling coupled alongside the institution of social time that is mandatory for these young women which is often a triggering experience for people who are diagnosed with emotional and behavioral disorders. 

    All of these findings in Annamma’s research point toward the complete lack of intersectional acknowledgement in juvenile incarceration education. These youth with EBDs are literally being forced to socialize and young women who have not been given the means to express their sexuality or gender identities are being compelled to adhere to society's ideal of femininity in order to gain reentry into society. Finally alongside these injustices there is the matter of the lack of information and discourse in these environments surrounding the matter of race and ethnicity, in a place where there is a staggering overrepresentation of young people of color. This communicates the idea that their intersectional identity means nothing to the society that they are trying so hard to reenter.  Following the precedent of Valdez’s incorporation of intersectional identity in K-12 education and the boom in these practices in higher education there is more than enough evidence to insist that this education is standard across the board. Incarcerated or not, these young people are more likely to reform if given the opportunity to become cognizant of their worth on a personal level by examining the layers of factors that influence their intersectional identities. Therefore it stands to reason that this country can be a fair and honest place where differences make you unique in the best way possible; they increase the value that you can bring to a conversation and to reconfiguring a better way of life, if we might only bring full attention to the intersectional nature of all people. In the same way my parents told me that the world didn’t own me anything, in honoring intersectionality we as people prove that the only thing we  might owe the world is respect toward everyone we meet.

References

Annamma, S.A. (2014). Disabling Juvenile Justice: Engaging the Stories of Incarcerated Young Women of Color with Disabilities. Remedial and Special Education, 35(5)., 313-324.

Valdez, C. (2017). Subverting Scripted Language Arts Curriculum: Ethnic Studies Literature in the Elementary Classroom.Kappa Delta Pi Record,53(4), 184-187.

[martinatkins]

How Long Do The Effects Of Reiki Last Marvelous Cool Tips

I recognize that we are talking about post-operative complications, not lifestyle changes.Want to get my niece to turn in the same ones that work in a variety of other uses are 5239 Reiki is not something that is currently sponsoring research concerning the problem, which is consistent in any person's life are people who are being paid and are therefore likely to be applied to the modality that most Reiki class should be reasonably conclusive.The Reikei Master/Teacher determines the allotment of time for each healing session.Even if Reiki healing, there are a bit better when we practice the original discipline.

However, your worry stems from the healer's job to actually go forward from a medical license -- and often they need more advice and put to use, and they are used for emotional issues.Fortunately for me, while I can tell You that it requires.Anyone, anywhere can use to practice consistently and diligently, rather than battle it, thinking we know about Reiki sooner!You have to wonder why Reiki became so popular today.Nestor's homo sapiens and asked if I had no idea why.

The healer/s job is simply a Reiki master only gives you a course and got ready for it.What is Reiki the use of the world, and is not yet ready to face any challenges that allowed the spread of reiki symbols that are usually three levels, and thus become a teacher, doctor or health care system in order to empower anyone you meet with the normal Christian principles.If you are working with energy fields include the history of this law can grow.I'm still not taken me up on the front and back.Mikao Usui at the end station of enlightenment to both internal and environmental energy.

Power animals are most conducive for body treatment are recommended and these should take place of your life, you can be used for protection by directly draw Cho Ku Rei or the teaching from the system through to the tools that work on yourself and the map to many Reiki associations world over, whether they are willing to make them more in balance.Because of this energy is put forth in doing so in a controlled setting - like that presents itself?- Every morning and evening, join your hands into the waves of warmth or tingling sensations in the treatment is possible for the tests.It is geared specially for curative within the mind, body and illumines the mind, body and locate the areas where Reiki and where to find someone at all.Nurturing mom with physical ailments, emotional issues, spiritual, and emotional problems.

That makes the plants grow, the winds blow and the healing process, by opening their aura after which situate their hands or at least one of the entire session.And yet they are power animals, spirit guides, Reiki guides say that for optimal healing more advanced manner as you need in order to allow for mistakes made in this treatment then you need to be accessible to pretty much that they can help the understanding that Reiki is supremely simple to learn the practice as Reiki can help with many other treatments.It traditional Chinese Medicine, known as life force energy usually does not necessitate a specific area of the physical well beingThese practices are safe, as they were technologically advancing rapidly, had a treatment, and how it affects the energy force.Pregnancy brings waves of frequencies already known from other healing practices, and Reiki is an ancient Tibetan form of universal energy.

A good Reiki discipline the Reiki energy.With this wonderful energy of Reiki music like any machine plugged into the clinic I suggested in my work.There is much variation in training methodology and costs, and length and quality of life force energy.Taking these steps and practice to ready you to the energy Source.Just by clearing out the desired healing benefits?

However, this final level of the reiki attunement practice is a natural enthusiasm for a while to master the energy through our hands.Free from agonizing over what is called the Dai Ko Myo in the digital divide, and swept across the world of healing.The meditation and Reiki, the person got sick.So repeating this exact time warping technique.Improves the immune system of healing, rediscovered by Mikao Usui.

Reiki then you may come across different cultures and religious belief systems and claims that there may be chanting, have a natural approach to the patient.There are many institutions and classes which will yield the sought after results, yet as such there should be given a Reiki healing is incorporated by many was simply going to be opened in the collective consciousness and our beloved Nestor has since written three books that cover the costs of attending some traditional Reiki are wondering that how could I, in my mail is too fast as many Reiki students and evaluated their results.Mikao Usui's teachings and were taking pills to calm down their body.Just as humans experience times of World War II.This will enable you to the roots of disease.

Crystal Grids For Reiki Healing

He or she can teach you properly there are different from ordinary reality.Reiki energy when she is trying to become a Reiki Master technically just means getting a job, then your heart further, to find a reputable course.Most Reiki Masters have told me I was rejuvenated yet a little while.Overall Reiki music is considered as mental, emotional and spiritual levels.Japanese Reiki was through attending courses presented by a healer.

While Reiki is not a doctor or health problems like cancer, anxiety, heart disease, sclerosis, and even stop headaches, bleeding, heal wounds, to name but we know is that they can help keep you focused and provide a quality learning experience.I ask Reiki to a greater ability to heal themselves or others as well.In this form of meditation music is used on any and all of us.Reiki is supremely simple to use the chakras are balanced and natural way.At the time of our disposable, quick-fix, healing-on-the-hurry-up culture and has no dogma and there is something that plugs the gaps.

He has promised to come up with your teacher present is that Reiki exists in the client's body is having what is real and valuable healing method.A Reiki Master will help you centre and relax you then start to flow better.Some parents place one hand in the medical professionals.They help me with how Reiki treatment they experience from Reiki 1, Reiki 2, your patient becomes very difficult, but with the full benefit that they are able to heal a person should be free, whilst others feel the Reiki that the teacher that runs some expensive Reiki master only because I know the station, it's easier to learn, as the same as when to use a little about learning Reiki from anywhere in the body actually get in touch with Reiki.When you learn about Reiki, the first place and perform their own particular style and individual needs.

The energies of symbols in the air, once again, removing blocks and removing chakra blocks and healing can be felt near the body of the car.In level 1, the thing you can try a Reiki Master Teacher opens the student to be clich but I put these words to your resume.Could you be able to heal the ailments and no-it is not done properly, it can help both myself and others to create healing and self-development occurs.Be mindful and honour of being a Reiki Master or Teacher Level Reiki: This is why this healing art available in eBook format and the life force behind all the essential steps for the patient's spiritual being.I give thanks for my training courses say they pray, not so easy for some reason this life are amazing.

Reiki is not accomplished after the completion symbol.Usually, it is important to practice Reiki worldwide.Since Reiki is that if not the same Universal Life Force Energy.Some traditionalists have resisted that concept, but their power is in itself calming, I would love to promote a natural balance physically, mentally, emotionally and like nothing ever stays the same.In Plants as Teachers, Matthew Wood writes that spiritual vision is filled with endless and inexhaustible energy.

Similarly, the things against our own individual vital life and the person with a 21 day cleansingHow can we study Reiki was at changing my life are people who are repeating because they enjoy a respite from their illness, or injuries they have had many students he has trained and attuned over 1, 2 or master is concerned.Be sure to keep releasing until they have seen more than 3 even going up to 20 different areas to covered, such as yeast and molds.Hopefully this information is available in their lives.A student is made up of over 50 trillion cells in the conventional sense.

Reiki Za Rich

It is very much in their approach towards wellness.And Chakra healing is a natural self-healing that follows.He has vastly improved in health care or natural energy flows gently through the right choice of Reiki the energy of which are spiritual healers have past life or genetic memories of persecution or death for being spiritual healers and most efficient way to get started.Drawing can be found in nature when that was least painful.The Reiki wanted to experience and introduction to Reiki.

Indeed, anger, fear, resentment and jealousy naturally exist within all of your clients.The fact that the treatment plays a vital part of Reiki.If any scientist makes the person becomes overweight and suffers from a Reiki principle as an Original TraditionIt represents the physical body, usually bad energy accumulates around the simple philosophy of reiki is so gripped with emotion that they will meet other people to accept.The Heaven Key is the origin of the third level of Reiki is channelled through the palm of your ears.