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blacknedsoul-blog · 3 months

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Lenore Vandernatch: the rogue, the gothic heroine and the courtly knight. A review of archetypes

Okay, after going over my notes, here we are again. In case you don't know what this is all about, here is the first of these posts where I'm doing a review of some of the archetypes that Annabel and Lenore seem to be taking notes on.

Just so this doesn't end up being another 3000 word post, let's get started.

The Rogue

In 1554, the first written version of "El Lazarillo de Tormes" was published, the foundational work of what would become known in Spain as the "picaresque novel": stories centered on the rogue, a poor rascal who uses trickery to ensure his survival.

At this stage of the game, we have rogues in a variety of flavors and colors. It would be difficult to make a comprehensive list, so let's talk about these characters in general.

The first thing to note is that rogues are, by definition, outsiders. In the traditional picaresque, the rogue is simply someone from the lower classes, but as this archetype has grown, it has become less about class and more about criminality.

Yes. Rogues are criminals: thieves like Robin Hood, swindlers like the Lazarillo...

Fraud, arson. You name it.

Getting back to the issue of the rogue as an outsider, they may have been one from the start, or they may have become one after attaining their criminal status. Regardless of the reason, these people operate outside of the law, the authorities generally give a shit, and, depending on your rogue flavor, may even actively fight against it.

One thing to note here: this goes a bit beyond Lenore's rebellious attitude. Like a good rogue, she derives enormous personal satisfaction from the thought of getting her way. The world has turned its back on the rogue, so the rogue will not hesitate to turn her back on the world.

In Lenore's case, this attitude of throwing all authority to the wind and actively ignoring any rules imposed on her is a mixture of personality and trauma. In the flashbacks, we see that Lenore has always had a certain disdain for protocol and formalities, but of course, after being locked up for at least a year because the rules of the society she lives in have decided to make her an outcast for her brother 's death, she no longer finds any reason to listen to what they have to say to her. The rules will never go beyond the feeling that she has agency over her life.

From this follows the methods of the rogues: opportunism is one of their hallmarks. Ingenuity, cunning, and creativity are common traits among these characters, something that is usually tied to their status as outsiders and criminals; they don't care about rules, so they think outside the box, either because they are highly intelligent or because they lack common sense.

Maybe both.

So, yes, when Annabel tells her dashing rogue, she's not wrong in the least. But there are more interesting things to look at here

The Gothic Heroine

When some theorists say that Gothic heroines are bland and uninteresting characters, it's...true. But there's a reason for that, so let me get that out of the way for a moment: the image of the maiden in this period is used as a symbol of purity, chastity, goodness, and her corruption, death, or disease works on both a literal and metaphorical level. It is like when you see grotesque religious images in horror movies, there is a powerful and disturbing charge in the idea of seeing something "pure" destroyed.

So the thing about gothic heroines is that, at worst, they are not characters who contribute to the story they are in, but tokens, quasi-sacred representations who are there to die, get sick, or fall victim to a villain who might sexually harass them. Yes, unpleasant.

But good gothic heroines (besides possibly having tuberculosis) are characters with arcs related to corruption, especially mental corruption. And this is where it gets interesting.

But we go from less to more. In her flashbacks, Lenore's physical appearance is almost exactly that of a gothic novel protagonist: pale, almost cadaverous, slender, languid in her movements (because, in this case, she's drugged a significant percentage of the time), and long hair.

Her background in this part of the story, like that of the best gothic heroines, is one of mental corruption: she is here, imprisoned, withering and losing her mind, giving in to despair. There are those who point out a rather strong resemblance between the scene where Lenore tears the flowered wallpaper from her room and the short story The Yellow Wallpaper by the writer Charlotte Perkins. And although this story is not gothic, it definitely retains the most important trope of the genre.

Another element in which we can find Lenore is in the Gothic ballad of the same name, written by Gottfried Bürger in 1773. This poem tells the story of Lenore, a girl condemned by narrative for blaspheming against heaven after the death of her beloved, who is later visited by the Grim Reaper himself to take her to him.

A heartbroken woman committing blasphemy in the name of a lost love? I wonder if that sounds familiar.

And if I had to point out one particular gothic heroine with whom Lenore shares important similarities, it would be Laura from Carmilla.

With the first, she shares two very important things: isolation and a penchant for women who can murder her, a complicated relationship with a gothic vampire.

Laura lives in complete isolation from the world, with the only company of maids and her father; within the first few chapters, we know that she can barely remember the last time she had the company of a woman her own age. Like Lenore in the flashbacks, Laura is something of a secret, hidden from the world (though for less horrific reasons).

And that isolation is broken by the arrival of an elegant, almost supernaturally beautiful upper-class lady who almost kicks in her door with a "Hi, I want to be friends. You'll like me."

Both Laura and Lenore are not afraid of the vampire, though they are not unaware of her strange behavior and will raise a puzzled eyebrow at her promises of affection, as well as her obvious tendency to insist on a fucked-up secret that they are in the middle of and can't share. Another important detail is that both characters have a certain difficulty in describing their feelings as romantic: both are very obviously obsessed with this mysterious lady who has come to interrupt their loneliness, but Laura never fails to refer to Carmilla as her "friend" (a behavior that the modern reader may interpret, with more than fair reason, as comphet), and Lenore is little more than that, at least until the mansion arch where the shingle falls on her.

Last but not least, just as Lenore is treated as "crazy," there are several events in Laura's life (such as her first encounter with Carmilla when she was a child) or that occur throughout the novel that are dismissed by those around her as her being a little touched in the head.

The courtly knight

Here it is necessary to make a distinction: knights are a far-reaching figure, but before and during the Middle Ages they mainly starred in two types of stories: the canta de gesta (which was intended to tell great deeds of inspiration for certain peoples, such as the Song of Mio Cid in Spain or the Song of the Nibelungs in Germany. This last one is the best Canto de gesta in history, I do not accept arguments) and the Novel of chivalry or courtly (focused on the individual story of the knight and introduces elements of the court).

What is the main difference between the knight of the canto de gesta and the knight of the court? Well... the latter is much more horny. And we are talking about Lenore, so you have until the end of this paragraph to imagine which of these knights we are talking about.

The first thing to keep in mind is that the Courtly Knight has a pretty strong moral compass: nobility, mercy, loyalty, and honor are values they firmly believe in; these characters are heroes, and that means that while they are not perfect, they represent ideals that are considered important in this time. And we're talking about vassalage, so you get it.

This is the first thing Lenore has in common with the knights of the court: her strong sense of morality. Yes, she's not afraid to play dirty like a rogue, but she's pretty clear about what things are important to her in that regard, and she's willing to uphold those ideals even in the context of Nevermore, which actively encourages its students to kill and betray each other.

However, the personal agendas of these knights have one important thing in common: the conflict between their own desires and their duty.

What are those desires? Well...

Good courtly knights usually have to choose between their love/sexual interests and where their personal loyalties lie, which, due to the era in which these stories take place, are usually their feudal lords or even kings.

We already established that Lenore doesn't give a shit about authority, but her personal loyalty is to her friends. And this is where it gets tricky for her: So far in the comic, Lenore has kept her relationship with Annabel a secret from her friends, and she has kept the fact that she wants to save her friends a secret from Annabel. A conflict that may eventually blow up in her face, and on the face of it, really befits a courtly knight (though if she were a real one, the Misfits might ask her to kill the Deans or something in exchange for accepting her relationship with Annabel).

To continue with this, we need to stop for a moment and talk about another little thing: courtly love. There are many definitions of it, but my favorite is the one that defines it as an attempt to reconcile mystical love with eroticism. Fun fact: these stories were written in the Provençal language, something that would associate romantic tropes with "vulgar language".

In any case, courtly love usually speaks of the beloved maiden as an idealized object, a figure who inspires an almost religious devotion. And the most recurrent theme within courtly love is what is called "love from afar": it focuses more on the journey in search of the beloved than on the couple's relationship as such (this journey can be literal or metaphorical), the knight has symbols associated with the pilgrim, there is a certain hatred of the image, the maiden is seen as an almost religious figure, and...

Yes, the color associated with the so-called "love from afar", specifically with the beloved maiden, is damn blue.

Now that we've got all that out of the way, it's time to break down why Lenore fulfills some of these things and why she doesn't.

Going with the tropes that are fulfilled, we can say that Lenore is on a more or less metaphorical journey. A journey to recover her memories and her identity. One at the end of which her lover waits for her "until the abyss claims them both".

Like a knight, Lenore is willing to make great personal sacrifices in pursuit of the things she cares about: she is willing to die for the people she cares about (the misfits) and for her lover (Annabel). The Living Long Thing is something the Knight don't know about, and since Lenore is in Nevermore, apparently neither does she.

With all that said, it's worth noting the biggest difference: courtly love features relationships based on vassalage and a huge power differential. Something that does not happen here. No, Lenore calling Annabel "my liege" doesn't count.

To explain this further -and to summarize, because it's a subject that bloody books have been written about-t he relationships in courtly love have two different levels of power: the knight must perform feats to be worthy of affection, and the maiden is little more than a prize to be won.

This unbalanced power dynamic is something that simply does not exist in the White Raven: an important part of their relationship is that both are equal in charisma, intelligence, and resourcefulness. The unstoppable force and the immovable object. Annabel is as willing to die for Lenore as she is for herself, and Lenore would probably go into berserker mode if anyone dared to treat Annabel as a prize.

Yes, you could argue that the balance of power is a bit weighted toward Lenore because Annabel is willing to make sacrifices for her that Lenore wouldn't make because she has some, you know, morals. But I think that has more to do with Annabel's character than her relationship with Lenore (that's another analysis I have a pin for when the season is over).

Conclusions

If the archetypes that Annabel seems to take note of are all quite related, Lenore, on the contrary, is much more like a mosaic: these characters have little in common and some (like the Rogue and the Knight) directly contradict each other. This woman is chaotic in her conception: opportunistic and rebellious as a rogue, pious and with strong values as a knight, and condemned by the narrative as a gothic heroine.

Another thing that stands out is that two of these three archetypes are traditionally male characters. Personally, I don't think Lenore is "like a man": her entire background and personal history is meant to work in terms of her status as a woman in the time period she lives in. She can do all the shit these male heroes do and better (though the hc that Lenore is somewhere on the non-binary spectrum is not a reading that conflicts with that).

And I use the word "hero" because another detail stands out here as well: yes, many of these characters are not only often the protagonists of the stories they are in, they are heroes within their historical periods and literary movements.

I'm going to do a third part of this comparing Lenore's archetypes to Annabel's because, believe me, there's some really crazy stuff to unpack there.

#nevermore webtoon #lenore nevermore #white raven #lenore vandernacht

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burningvelvet · 4 months

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A very long analysis on Heathcliff, his relationships, and his origins: or, how Wuthering Heights drove me insane :)

Links to my previous WH analysis (which aren't required to read this post!): 1) my post analyzing heathcliff & his relationships with cathy2.0/isabella/hareton / 2) smaller post analyzing heathcliff & the earnshaws in relation to theories about his parentage / 3) misc. heathcliff/cathy analysis

On Heathcliff's origins, his mysteriousness, and his arrival to Wuthering Heights:

As I mention in that 2nd link, I think the theory of Heathcliff being Mr. Earnshaw's son is an interesting theory of conjecture because even if not true (and it probably isn't) it allows us to more deeply explore the generally accepted basis of the canon, which is that Heathcliff is not related to them, but nevertheless is still caught between the labels of "family" and "outsider," just like he would have been if he had indeed been a bastard, a step-child, or even more formally adopted. Under Mr. Earnshaw's wishes Heathcliff shares a room with the children, he is given equal gifts and clothes as them, and he is preferred over Hindley. And while he may not be in line to inherit legally, he ends up inheriting anyway, an idea which lends itself to the novels Joseph-approved theme of predeterminism/fate.

So I'm not dead-set on any singular interpretation or theory as to Heathcliff's role in the story or the details of his background. Much of his character is inherently mysterious: his race and age are unknown, his family history and origins are unknown, what he was doing for 3 years of Cathy's marriage and how he acquired his wealth are unknown, some of his feelings and motives are highly debatable (as I discussed in my post about his odd dynamics with Cathy 2.0, Isabella, & Hareton: https://www.tumblr.com/burningvelvet/738901817580290048/my-analysis-on-heathcliff-and-his-relationships), & whether English was his first language is also questioned (many people including myself have wondered at the line where we're told he "repeated over and over again some gibberish that nobody could understand," though it could have just been panicked child's speech).

Many academics have noted how Wuthering Heights follows various testaments of the Gothic literary tradition, not only by the involvement of death, violence, ghosts, etc., but also in the use of incestuous themes (whether literal or metaphorical) and the use of the Other in Heathcliff, aided by the mysteries of his origins and his racial ambiguity.

As for Heathcliff not revealing much about his childhood, I believe this part of it could be due to trauma as well as regular childhood amnesia. He may not remember anything. A lot of people don't have many memories from before the age of ~6 anyway — and I just looked it up— his real age is never given but he is believed to be around the same age than Cathy who was described as "hardly six years old." I had thought they were a little older for some reason. He's also said to have been "speaking gibberish" which I once considered may have been indicative of a foreign language and/or accent but now, because of his age and probable low background, it may have been due to his just being very young and maybe unsocialized and shy. It actually makes my heart ache when Nelly describes him :(

Here's an excerpt from chapter 3 describing Heathcliff's childhood:

"He threw himself into a chair, laughing and groaning, and bid them all stand off, for he was nearly killed—he would not have such another walk for the three kingdoms.

'And at the end of it to be flighted to death!' he said, opening his great-coat, which he held bundled up in his arms. 'See here, wife! I was never so beaten with anything in my life: but you must 'en take it as a gift of God; though it's as dark almost as if it came from the devil.'"

We crowded round, and over Miss Cathy's head I had d peep at a dirty, ragged, black-haired child; big enough both to walk and talk: indeed, its face looked older than Catherine's; yet when it was set on its feet, it only stared round, and repeated over and over again some gibberish that nobody could understand. I was frightened, and Mrs. Earnshaw was ready to fling it out of doors: she did fly up, asking how he could fashion to bring that gipsy brat into the house, when they had their own bairns to feed and fend for? What he meant to do with it, and whether he were mad? The master tried to explain the matter; but he was really half dead with fatigue, and all that I could make out, amongst her scolding, was a tale of his seeing it starving, and houseless, and as good as dumb, in the streets of Liverpool, where he picked it up and inquired for its owner. Not a soul knew to whom it belonged, he said; and his money and time being both limited, he thought it better to take it home with him at once, than run into vain expenses there: because he was determined he would not leave it as he found it. Well, the conclusion was, that my mistress grumbled herself calm; and Mr. Earnshaw told me to wash it, and give it clean things, and let it sleep with the children.

Hindley and Cathy contented themselves with looking and listening till peace was restored: then, both began searching their father's pockets for the presents he had promised them. The former was a boy of fourteen, but when he drew out what had been a fiddle, erushed to morsels in the great-coat, he blubbered aloud; and Cathy, when she learned the master had lost her whip in attending on the stranger, showed her humour by grinning and spitting at the stupid little thing; earning for her pains a sound blow from her father, to teach her cleaner manners. They entirely refused to have it in bed with them, or even in their room; and I had no more sense, so I put it on the landing of the stairs, hoping it might be gone on the morrow. By chance, or else attracted by hearing his voice, it crept to Mr. Earnshaw's door, and there he found it on quitting his chamber. Inquiries were made as to how it got there; I was obliged to confess, and in recompense for my cowardice and inhumanity was sent out of the house.

This was Heathcliff's first introduction to the family. On coming back a few days afterwards (for I did not consider my banishment perpetual), I found they had christened him 'Heathcliff': it was the name of a son who died in child-hood, and it has served him ever since, both for Christian and surname. Miss Cathy and he were now very thick; but Hindley hated him: and to say the truth I did the same; and we plagued and went on with him shamefully: for I wasn't reasonable enough to feel my injustice, and the mistress never put in a word on his behalf when she saw him wronged.

He seemed a sullen, patient child; hardened, perhaps, to ill-treatment: he would stand Hindley's blows without winking or shedding a tear, and my pinches moved him only to draw in a breath and open his eyes, as if he had hurt himself by accident, and nobody was to blame. This endurance made old Earnshaw furious, when he discovered his son persecuting the poor fatherless child, as he called him. He took to Heathcliff strangely, believing all he said (for that matter, he said precious little, and generally the truth), and petting him up far above Cathy, who was too mischievous and wayward for a favourite.

So, from the very beginning, he bred bad feeling in the house; and at Mrs. Earnshaw's death, which happened in less than two years after, the young master had learned to regard his father as an oppressor rather than a friend, and Heathcliff as a usurper of his paren's affections and his privileges; and he grew bitter with brooding over these injuries. I sympathised a while; but when the children fell ill of the measles, and I had to tend them, and take on me the cares of a woman at once, I changed my idea. Heathcliff was dangerously sick; and while he lay at the worst he would have me constantly by his pillow: I suppose he felt I did a good deal for him, and he hadn't wit to guess that I was compelled to do it. However, I will say this, he was the quietest child that ever nurse watched over. The difference between him and the others forced me to be less partial. Cathy and her brother harassed me terribly: he was as uncomplaining as a lamb; though hardness, not gentleness, made him give little trouble."

From this excerpt we see that Earnshaw 1) despite being racist toward Heathcliff, is also wildly protective of him - so much so that he kicks Nelly out of the house FOR DAYS for initially not allowing Heathcliff to sleep in his childrens room 2) Earnshaw doesn't like Cathy that much, and prefers Heathcliff over her; later when he dies he has a nice moment with her, but still asks her why she can't be a better child (lol) 3) Earnshaw did not name Heathcliff on his own accord but Heathcliff is named after Earnshaw's own son that died!!! And that says a lot; we're also never really told how Mrs. Earnshaw felt about him being named after her dead kid, or if she had a part in it or not, or if she grew to like Heathcliff too — she just dies soon after - however, I think we can all assume she always favored Hindley over Heathcliff, since we're told Hindley's jealousy grew after her death 4) Heathcliff is described by Earnshaw as a "gift from God" which I find kind of suspicious because Earnshaw struggled so much just to get him home... um, God had no part in that, Mr. - unless he's referring to the kids existence imo. At any rate, if Heathcliff isn't biologically related to Earnshaw, we're still led to have the sense that Heathcliff is sort of predestined to be there 5) Heathcliff was indeed a bit scraggly/unkempt when he arrived, but imo that doesn't mean he was necessarily a homeless orphan; if he did have a mother/family, they probably would have been living in harsh conditions anyway just by being impoverished, and if not, maybe he was just a bit dirty from wandering outside like normal kids do, and like he's so fond of doing anyway on the Moors later on - he could have just been playing outside when this white guy comes along and takes him under his coat! 6) Earnshaw says he asked around for the kids parents and felt obligated to take him on, though the kid was struggling... so yeah, regardless of if he's omitting other info or if he's his father or not, we can infer that he essentially kidnapped Heathcliff.

After re-reading this excerpt, I don't think it's as likely that Earnshaw had seen/known Heathcliff personally prior to his taking him home, but I still don't think any of this totally disproves the theory that Earnshaw could have been lying to Mrs. Earnshaw/omitting certain information.

Why was Mr. Earnshaw in Liverpool to begin with? I and many others often assume it was some sort of a business trip, and it probably was, but after re-reading the part where he leaves, I can't actually find anything to definitively confirm what he was actually there for. He could have been in Liverpool specifically to take Heathcliff with him. Another thing that doesn't make any sense is the fact that he walked all the way there alone: "I’m going to Liverpool today, what shall I bring you? You may choose what you like: only let it be little, for I shall walk there and back: sixty miles each way, that is a long spell!’"

He's then gone for 3 whole days. Meaning according to him, he walked 120 miles in 3 days, half of that while carrying/dragging a struggling small child, who he says he took because it would be his easiest option: "his money and time being both limited, he thought it better to take it home with him at once, than run into vain expenses there."

He's contradicting himself, because if he was so concerned about finances then he never would have taken on another child, as Mrs. Earnshaw immediately supplies (meaning if he was on a mission to retrieve Heathcliff, he didn't tell her): "Mrs. Earnshaw was ready to fling it out of doors: she did fly up, asking how he could fashion to bring that gipsy brat into the house, when they had their own bairns to feed and fend for? What he meant to do with it, and whether he were mad?" Ummmm you're telling me there isn't something a little suspicious or weird about any of this?!

And why would he be walking in the first place when he has horses — was he really so tight on money as to not want to support/feed them on a journey, or did he just not want to be recognized or attract attention, or did he not want to deal with a child riding on a horse for the first time? I assume carriages/wagons were out of the question for costs, and I know people walked a lot back then, especially in rural farmlands, but that is a very long journey as he himself says. What was so important? Did he even go to Liverpool at all? And why did he bundle Heathcliff up as if to hide him? To avoid suspicions about having a bastard child, etc.? And we're told Mrs. Earnshaw was expecting him home earlier, and we get no indication if she knew Mr. Earnshaw's plans or whereabouts.

And why does Mr. Earnshaw act so upbeat and nonchalant about all of this, when we're told he's usually really stern? Ie he supposedly treats Nelly well eg, telling her he'll bring her back fruits on his journey, but then he LOCKS HER OUT OF THE HOUSE FOR MULTIPLE DAYS for not following his orders about putting Heathcliff in the children's room on his first night there.

Where tf did she even go lol? Am I forgetting some part about her family having a nearby house? How far did she have to walk to get there, alone and unaccompanied as a young woman? Probably less than 120 miles in 3 days, but still! He's known Nelly her whole life, and he's supposedly known Heathcliff for a day (in which time Heathcliff has already led him into physical exhaustion), and yet he already prefers Heathcliff over her as well as his own children.

Even excusing Nelly being a narrator of debatable reliability, and being sometimes contradictory & biased against Heathcliff, Mr. Earnshaw's behavior still seems a bit outlandish and it makes sense that Mrs. Earnshaw would ask him if he had gone mad. I course, I may be looking too far into this, but how can I not?

Heathcliff's trauma, his relationship with Mr. Earnshaw, Earnshaw as kidnapper, and race:

I think Heathcliff is certainly severely traumatized. I'm not a psychologist but Nelly's line "hardness, not gentleness, made him give little trouble" is textbook childhood CPTSD, and it is partly due to Earnshaw indeed being a kidnapper with a white saviour/"white man's burden" complex.

I think the following quote by Nelly supports this kidnap view, in that she actually refers to him being kidnapped; Emily may also be encouraging us to speculate on even the most outlandish theories of his origins like Nelly does:

"‘A good heart will help you to a bonny face, my lad,’ I continued, ‘if you were a regular black; and a bad one will turn the bonniest into something worse than ugly. And now that we've done washing, and combing, and sulking—tell me whether you don’t think yourself rather handsome? I'll tell you, I do. You're fit for a prince in disguise. Who knows but your father was Emperor of China, and your mother an Indian queen, each of them able to buy up, with one week’s income, Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange together? And you were kidnapped by wicked sailors and brought to England. Were I in your place, I would frame high notions of my birth; and the thoughts of what I was should give me courage and dignity to support the oppressions of a little farmer!'"

Like in Charlotte's Jane Eyre, Emily also borrows taboo Romantic and Orientalist imagery and racializes the gothic Other figure, because this idea of the foreign/non-white body was a source of anxiety to a lot of white British Victorian readers. This is a popular concept in Gothic literary studies & a lot has been written on it, so I won't go into it too much.

Like Charlotte's Bertha Mason, Linton Heathcliff's identity as being mixed race is essential to his character — in the narrative, him being white-passing is supposed to relate to his identity being more Isabella/Linton (as also evidenced by his name) and less Heathcliff's, who is disappointed not to see his own resemblance in his son.

Since we seriously don't know Heathcliff's true origins, we can't ascertain his ethnicity (given his descriptions/epithets/Nelly's speculations, he is likely fully or part Roma, South-Asian, or African), and we can't tell if he or his family/mother were highborn, enslaved, or simply free, but we do know that slavery was still very active in England in the late 1700s when Heathcliff is a child, and his hometown Liverpool was the center of the slave trade, so connections to slavery either ancestrally or during his hiatus (a popular theory, explored in the book Heathcliff: the Lost Years by David Drum) are possible.

More evidence for the theory of Heathcliff having a previous history of child abuse and unknown early trauma, possibly relating to the slave trade (which doesn't necessarily discount the Earnshaw parentage theory either imo, and if anything may make it more likely if his reasoning for taking Heathcliff was that he wouldn't want his biological son enslaved) — is the portion where Nelly describes Heathcliff and how he initially took Hindley's abuse stoically:

". . . a sullen, patient child; hardened, perhaps, to ill-treatment: he would stand Hindley's blows without winking or shedding a tear, and my pinches moved him only to draw in a breath and open his eyes, as if he had hurt himself by accident, and nobody was to blame. This endurance made old Earnshaw furious, when he discovered his son persecuting the poor fatherless child, as he called him. He took to Heathcliff strangely . . ."

When Nelly adds that Earnshaw called Heathcliff "poor fatherless child," I see this as ironic whether Earnshaw is his biological father or not, since he is still the closest thing he has to any sort of "father figure" nominally, and symbolically in line with the view of Earnshaw as flawed micro-colonizer. In the act of standing up for Heathcliff over his own teenage son and future master of the house, he is basically acting as a pseudo-father preferring one son over another; for Hindley, the blow is deepened by Heathcliff not being Earnshaw's son in name.

For clarity's sake, whenever I refer to Mr. Earnshaw as Heathcliff's unofficially adoptive father or father figre, I do so sort of hesitatingly. Mr. Earnshaw/Heathcliff do not have a regular father/son dynamic; we're told that Heathcliff did not embrace but rather fought Mr. Earnshaw the entire 60 miles back to the Heights.

Surely the above may be hyperbole, but we must keep in mind that Mr. Earnshaw's gifts for Cathy/Hindley/Nelly were lost or destroyed in the process: most symbolically, Mr. Earnshaw's struggle to obtain Heathcliff led to Hindley's fiddle being broken, Cathy's whip being lost, and we're never told what happened to Nelly's gift of fruit, but we can assume it was lost or never got to be obtained as a result of his preoccupation.

Heathcliff's relationship with Mr. Earnshaw is complicated because of the racial power imbalance & as I said, Earnshaw having a white saviour complex & basically kidnapping Heathcliff despite (or so we're told) not fully knowing if Heathcliff had a family or not. Most important are Heathcliff's own feelings about the situation; Earnshaw's wild affection is clear.

We're told by Nelly's observations that Heathcliff clearly did not have a great love for Earnshaw: "I wondered often what my master saw to admire so much in the sullen boy; who never, to my recollection, repaid his indulgence by any sign of gratitude. He was not insolent to his benefactor, he was simply insensible; though knowing perfectly the hold he had on his heart, and conscious he had only to speak and all the house would be obliged to bend to his wishes."

When Mr. Earnshaw was dying, Heathcliff was sitting with Cathy who was singing to Earnshaw. When they realize Earnshaw has finally passed, Heathcliff seems to genuinely grieve as equally as Cathy (Hindley is at college at this time):

"The poor thing discovered her loss directly — she screamed out — 'Oh, he's dead, Heathcliff! he's dead!' And they both set up a heart-breaking cry." Later when Nelly returns from getting help: "I ran to the children's room: their door was ajar, I saw they had never lain down, though it was past midnight; but they were calmer, and did not need me to console them. The little souls were comforting each other with better thoughts than I could have hit on: no parson in the world ever pictured heaven so beautifully as they did, in their innocent talk . . ."

Yet we also know by Heathcliff's odd dynamics with Nelly and Hareton, and even by some of his behavior around Catherine I (who is the only person that most of us can agree he really loves), we can see that, probably due to trauma, Heathcliff does not know how to show affection "normally."

By his earlier disconnected reactions to Hindley's abuse, we can see that early on he had trouble reacting to negative emotions as well, which probably led him to his later emotional dysregulation & bursts of rage/frustration, which make complete sense in his situation and are why we can still often sympathize with him in his path of vengeance, even despite his abusiveness.

So we do not know the full extent of Heathcliff's feelings toward Mr. Earnshaw, and whether he truly had deep affection for him or somewhat resented him, but whatever his feelings were, they were clearly complex. As we all know, Heathcliff is capable of feeling very strongly, and when he does, he is usually vocal about it (see: literally most of his dialogue). He can't go 30 seconds without roasting someone lol. But he is oddly ambivalent and quiet about Earnshaw.

You could also (& countless academics have) argue that Earnshaw/the Earnshaw family is essentially a microcosm of colonization, Heathcliff is symbolically captured/enslaved by Mr. Earnshaw (which highlights how white saviourism is oxymoronic), and then actually becomes almost literally enslaved by Hindley later on.

On Heathcliff and Hindley:

Both are extremely flawed. Both are wildly in love with women who die from labor, both become abusive single fathers, both are defined by their grief and feelings of revenge, both want to kill each other all throughout the story, both actually try to do so to varying extents. Heathcliff saves Hareton from Hindley's negligence by catching him, Hindley saves Isabella from Heathcliff's abuse by tackling the latter (in what I think is one of the novels best sequences, Isabella's narration of the period of Heathcliff and Hindley's fighting and her escape). Heathcliff's bond with Hareton, like Hindley's bond with Isabella, is both manipulative and touching in turns. Ditto for their bonds to Nelly.

Many people believe Heathcliff had a role to play, directly or indirectly, in Hindley's death. Evidence for this: 1) teen Heathcliff wishes Hindley could drink himself to death but acknowledges doctor Kenneth says he won't: "‘It’s a pity he cannot kill himself with drink,’ observed Heathcliff, muttering an echo of curses back when the door was shut. ‘He’s doing his very utmost; but his constitution defies him. Mr. Kenneth says he would wager his mare that he’ll outlive any man on this side Gimmerton, and go to the grave a hoary sinner; unless some happy chance out of the common course befall him.’" 2) later, Kenneth remarks to Nelly that "He's barely twenty-seven, it seems; that's your own age: who would have thought you were born in one year?'" 3) Joseph once accused Heathcliff of attempting to murder Hindley during their fight ("And so ye've been murthering on him?") - in which Isabella said Heathcliff had to barely restrain himself from not killing Hindley. Joseph later adds suspicion to Hindley's death when, after Heathcliff explains to Nelly how Hindley had been suffering from the effects of alcoholism but died suddenly in the morning, Joseph "confirmed this statement, but muttered: "I'd rayther he'd goan hisseln for t' doctor! I sud ha' taen tent o' t' maister better nor him—and he warn't deead when I left, naught o' t' soart!'" (trans. from WH Reader's Guide site: "'I'd rather he'd gone himself for the doctor! I would have taken care of the master better than him—and he wasn't dead when I left, nothing of the sort!'"). So Heathcliff told Joseph to fetch Kenneth which left Heathcliff alone with Hindley, who was then dead when Joseph/Kenneth arrived.

My own theory is that Hindley probably choked on his own vomit (a common form of death by addiction) because of Heathcliff's description of he and Joseph finding Hindley "snorting like a horse; and there he was, laid over the settle: flaying and scalping would not have wakened him." It is after this that Heathcliff is alone with Hindley and he dies. Heathcliff can be seen as guilty through inaction imo, though he would justify it by saying he was letting nature take its course.

Heathcliff and Hindley take turns enslaving each other throughout the story. Hindley's seniority, legitimacy, and race give him advantages, while Heathcliff's early favoritism by Mr. Earnshaw and his later accrual of wealth, wit, and strength give him some advantages. We're told by Nelly (and she's biased, but she's the main source we have) that Hindley bullied Heathcliff immediately, to which Heathcliff weaponized Mr. Earnshaw in his favor, as evidenced by the horse scene.

If, when Hindley returned to become master of Wuthering Heights after Mr. Earnshaw's death, his wife Frances had taken a liking to Heathcliff, or if Hindley had simply matured in his time away — in other words, if Hindley had decided to grow up and let bygones be bygones — I wonder if Heathcliff would have done the same, and decided to be peaceful & not to continue their childhood rivalry.

The bulk of Heathcliff's lust for revenge really stems from Hindley's treatment of him after Mr. Earnshaw's death, when Hindley, as the new Mr. Earnshaw, really does follow through on that childhood promise during the horse scene to use his wealth/power/independence to render Heathcliff miserable, and to turn him out or keep him enslaved. Possibly at the beckoning of Frances (which I mention later,) Hindley succeeds in fulfilling this childish power fantasy, and this is partly what inspires Heathcliff to obtain the means of flipping the script and later rendering Hindley a weakened dependent.

Although Hindley is racist/absorbed his parents racism, note that Catherine was not/did not, and so Hindley's true hatred of Heathcliff imo is more motivated by jealousy/envy for his father's affection than it is anything else, & his own feelings of inadequacy & self-hatred which likely would have existed anyway & were just fuelled by being "usurped" in his father's affection.

I really blame Mr. (& Mrs., though we sadly have so little insight into her character) Earnshaw for Hindley/Heathcliff's rivalry, because I feel like we can assume Mrs. Earnshaw must have favored Hindley more when Mr. Earnshaw started favoring Heathcliff, considering Hindley's hatred increased after the grief from his mother's death, — and this favoritism & parental split is bound to deepen the split between their favorites.

Hindley's hatred of Heathcliff really increased after his father & then his wife's deaths (meaning he had prolonged complex grief), which I'm assuming compounded & brought back his feelings of his original grief for his mother, resulting in further hatred of Heathcliff who had nothing to do with any of it but whose arrival Hindley just subconsciously associated with his mother's illness/death & his father's emotional abandonment (which we could consider a mental death which took place before his physical death; imo Hindley's whole character is defined by grief).

To enhance their pseudo-brotherly rivalry, which some may say is reminiscent of Abel/Cain (especially if you believe the theory/opinion that Heathcliff murdered Hindley or was otherwise in any part to blame for his death), we again have the fact that Heathcliff was named after Hindley's dead brother.

Heathcliff is actually Heathcliff 2.0, and maybe it was Mr. Earnshaw's grief that led him to use Heathcliff 2.0 as a replacement child the way Hindley uses Mrs. Earnshaw 2.0 as a replacement mother.

All throughout the story we have people being named after each other and taking on each other's roles, ie the whole 1st/2nd generation parallels (we could extend it to be 1st/2nd/3rd since I've highlighted the narrative importance of Mr./Mrs. Earnshaw), Linton Heathcliff, Cathy 1.0/2.0. — but we know nothing about Heathcliff 1.0 other than that he died in childhood.

Was he Catherine's age, younger, or older? Did Catherine see Heathcliff as a replacement brother? Did Heathcliff 1.0 die before Catherine was born? Was he Hindley's age? Did Hindley already have grief/trauma from Heathcliff 1.0's death and resent Heathcliff 2.0 for usurping not only him, but his dead brother's place?

We're told that "the family" gave Heathcliff 2.0 his name, but I assume Mrs. Earnshaw and Hindley may not have been involved due to us never seeing that they care for him — and Joseph may have had a role in it, but he's also rarely thoughtful, and Nelly was gone — so could Cathy have suggested the name Heathcliff? (which brings to my mind Edward Rochester telling Jane Eyre to "give him his name" when he proposes to her, asking her to call him "Edward" — this would be poetic of Catherine/Heathcliff's relationship).

The meaning of the names Heathcliff/Hindley are very similar; they also share the same initials, syllable count, and the "ee" sound. Heathcliff is a combination of "heath" (a synonym for "moor"; what he and Cathy love to roave on) and "cliff." In meaning, apparently (according to some sources on Ancestry.com) Hindley is a habitational name from hind 'hind, female deer' and lēah 'woodland clearing' — which is basically another way of saying heath/moor. So there is a lot of similarity in their names, and this tainted brotherly theme, both of which must have been intentional.

Regardless of whether Heathcliff & Hindley are foster brothers or half-brothers, this naming choice is still a sign that Heathcliff was predestined to be part of the family, and lends itself to the other themes of predeterminism in that Heathcliff ends up becoming the master of the Heights after Hindley the way he would have if he were his biological brother.

Mr. Earnshaw telling Hindley he'd bring him back any gift he chose, and then returning with that gift having been broken by Heathcliff, are ample reasons to explain the hatred that moody 14-year-old Hindley immediately feels for him, who was about half his age and therefore an impractical playmate. He is more like a new sibling, and like an older sibling, Hindley is horrified at being overshadowed by the family's new addition. Since we don't know whether Hindley knew or was close to Heathcliff 1.0, we can hesitantly assume he may have been upset by the naming.

On Heathcliff, Hindley, and Frances:

I would like to briefly touch more on Hindley's wife's death (so closely followed by his fathers death) bringing up feelings of his mothers death. Hindley's wife Frances Earnshaw is the second Mrs. Earnshaw and she only comes to the house right after Mr. Earnshaw dies. I believe Hindley parallels his father, Frances parallels his mother (so like many men, he metaphorically "married his mother"), and that Frances also has some similarities to Heathcliff.

Frances has an unknown origin story and Hindley keeps her background from his father on purpose, and this could have been intended to parallel the first Mr. Earnshaw from possibly keeping Heathcliff's origins vague: "What she was, and where she was born, he never informed us: probably, she had neither money nor name to recommend her, or he would scarcely have kept the union from his father."

Frances also immediately dislikes Heathcliff... just like Hindley's mother, the first Mrs. Earnshaw, did: "Mrs. Earnshaw was ready to fling it out of doors: she did fly up, asking how he could fashion to bring that gipsy brat into the house, when they had their own bairns to feed and fend for? What he meant to do with it, and whether he were mad?"

We don't know why Frances dislikes Heathcliff, but it wouldn't be a stretch to assume it has to do with his race & status, because it is only after her disapproval that Hindley banishes Heathcliff to the role of a servant/slave, we can assume. We can also assume Frances disliked Heathcliff from the beginning, since we're never told that she took a liking to him like she initially does with Catherine; we are only ever told she dislikes him:

"She expressed pleasure, too, at finding a sister among her new acquaintance; and she prattled to Catherine, and kissed her, and ran about with her, and gave her quantities of presents, at the beginning. Her affection tired very soon, however, and when she grew peevish, Hindley became tyrannical. A few words from her, evincing a dislike to Heathcliff, were enough to rouse in him all his old hatred of the boy. He drove him from their company to the servants, deprived him of the instructions of the curate, and insisted that he should labour out of doors instead; compelling him to do so as hard as any other lad on the farm."

It is after the last quote that we learn Cathy and Heathcliff become increasingly "feral" outdoors, as Heathcliff is forced to toil in outdoor labor, and Cathy insists on keeping him company while he's at it. At this point they are both essentially orphaned, and then neglected and abandoned by Hindley and Frances, the new Mr. and Mrs. Earnshaw, who take on the roles of the former Mr. and Mrs. Earnshaw, who were similarly neglectful and emotionally abandoning to their children.

On Cathy and Heathcliff:

In the beginning, Lockwood reads this diary entry from Catherine I which proves the prior analysis in that she compares Mr. Earnshaw 1.0 to Mr. Earnshaw 2.0 (Hindley):

""An awful Sunday,' commenced the paragraph beneath. 'I wish my father were back again. Hindley is a detestable substitute — his conduct to Heathcliff is atrocious – H. and I are going to rebel — we took our initiatory step this evening."

Notice how in the death of Mr. Earnshaw and then under the tyranny of Hindley (Mr. Earnshaw 2.0), Cathy and Heathcliff are often sharing each other's emotions, and their bond is very twin-like. They both cry & grieve in their room in unison after Earnshaw dies, and although Heathcliff is the one primarily sentenced to torment by Hindley, Cathy doesn't abandon him to it and instead often keeps him company in his punishment, recalling when she was younger and her father would try to keep Heathcliff away from her to punish her.

Even when Cathy does sort of abandon Heathcliff to marry Edgar, in her speech after Heathcliff leaves, she says that her plan was to use her control over Edgar to benefit Heathcliff, so she really never intended to abandon him at all. Abandonment, attachment issues, separation, loss, grief, being torn away from someone/somewhere/something, are all major themes in this story, often expressed by familial and more often filial experiences.

Cathy and Heathcliff's relationship basically embodies all these themes the most poignantly, in that Heathcliff abandons her because he thinks she's abandoning him and he can't bear it and would rather leave than be left; then as soon as he returns, Cathy ends up actually physically abandoning him by dying! And later on, her ghost taunts him (I believe most of us can take the ghost plot as canon & not hallucinatory considering how many characters attest to it), and he once again returns to her like he did before.

Their whole relationship is about overcoming obstacles to separation, and being determined to retain their attachment as an act of defiance (even if it means defying life, death, physics, etc.) — this is why they're considered the most romantic couple in literature even despite their awful behavior most of the time, because in writing/literary pedagogy as a general rule it is almost always the goal of romantic leads to overcome obstacles which separate them from their lover, – and Heathcliff and Cathy take this goal to a new level by overcoming not only their childhood punishments of separation from one another, but overcoming the impossible obstacles of LIFE AND DEATH to reunite in the spirit realm where no one can separate them again — not even God.

Both Catherine and Heathcliff say that they know they won't go to heaven; God literally doesn't want them, and he has abandoned them, and this is the ultimate abandonment/seperation. Thus, all they have in the universe is each other — and if their relationship didn't work in life, they're determined to make it work in death!

Some final thoughts on Mr. Earnshaw and the making of Heathcliff:

Due to all of my previous explanations, I consider Mr. Earnshaw a possibly well-intentioned man but who ultimately failed all of his children (along with Mrs. Earnshaw) by 1) emotionally neglecting/abandoning Catherine because she was a "bad child" & acted more boyish than Hindley, 2) emotionally neglecting/abandoning Hindley in favor of Heathcliff (and maybe it was partly because Hindley was becoming a moody teenager and Heathcliff was comparatively younger/easier to handle bc of his trauma-induced subdued nature, but whatever his reasoning, it had disastrous consequences), 3) emotionally neglecting Heathcliff too by not being involved enough in his integration with the family & not checking in on him and Hindley, 4) straight up just not being that involved to begin with and not seeming to teach his children anything, hence why they're all bratty and grow up to be deeply maladjusted.

Notice how Nelly's motivational speeches to Heathcliff, and her taking care of him when he was sick, have an extraordinary affect on him, meaning Mr. and Mrs. Earnshaw probably didn't show him even half as much attention or real affection. Like most English fathers at the time, Earnshaw thought his job as father/master was to merely provide provisions, leave the children with the women to be actually raised, and be done with it. The most unique thing he does in his life, and indeed his whole role in the story, is bringing home Heathcliff.

Maybe most importantly, I also just realized that Earnshaw kidnapping Heathcliff parallels Heathcliff kidnapping his own son after Isabella dies (and also him kidnapping his daughter-in-law Cathy II), and while this narrative parallel works if Earnshaw is merely Heathcliff's adoptive father, it also could be working to suggest that Earnshaw was his biological father, knew Heathcliff's mother had died, and so went back for him and took him by force. If Heathcliff's mother had recently died (or been separated from him), this would have compounded his trauma of being taken by Earnshaw, and this would have furthered his childhood memory loss, which could be another reason why I don't think Heathcliff remembers very much about his origins.

Heathcliff has much in common with Frankenstein's creaure. Yet, he is essentially a self-made man, his own creator and creature. We are even led to think of him as inhuman, as Isabella suggests with her referring to him as such and even calling him vampiric. And he does bear a lot of similarity to John Polidori's Lord Ruthven, from the first vampire novel The Vampyre (a Byronic tale, based on Byron's short story Augustus Darvell). Heathcliff's canonically mysterious origins and mysterious hiatus are necessary to his character; like Isabella and Nelly, we're supposed to question him and form our own opinions on the matter.

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mystery-moose · 3 months

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EYO THE OSCAR NOMS ARE OUT

Let’s discuss!

BEST PICTURE: I've seen four of the ten nominees this year! Not a bad score for me. Of the remainder I am very interested in American Fiction, Anatomy of a Fall, and Past Lives. American Fiction in particular got Jeffrey Wright a Best Actor nomination! I love Jeffrey Wright! He deserves more recognition! Any film that can get him that has gotta be worth something.

Of the ones I’ve seen… I’d probably select Killers of the Flower Moon as the best? It’s a hard watch, but the craft on display at every level is exceptional. If not that, then… I dunno, maybe Barbie? The Holdovers is a safe choice, it’s a great movie, but there’s almost nothing… surprising about it. Barbie is CONSTANTLY surprising! But it’s also a madcap comedy bathed in metaphor so… man I don’t know!

Regardless, I wouldn’t pick Oppenheimer. Not to disrespect it, I genuinely believe it to be a very interesting film that’s compelling to watch, and as always Christopher Nolan’s ability to make weird-ass films with experimental structures popular with a mass audience is worthy of tremendous respect. But its pacing is rushed, its script is sometimes awkward to the point of parody, and I just don’t know that it’s saying or doing anything THAT interesting or enlightening about the real people involved or about people or history in general. Y’know?

BEST DIRECTOR: Nothing but Best Picture nominees here, which makes sense. Pretty blown away that Alexander Payne didn't get a nom here for The Holdovers. Not blown away at all that Greta Gerwig didn't get one for Barbie, despite that whole thing clearly being her baby. A real Streisand situation here, I'd say! "Eight nominations on the shelf, did this film direct itself?" Regardless of who wins (or even who I think deserves to!) I'd definitely say Gerwig got snubbed here.

BEST ACTOR: All best picture nominees here, save for Colman Domingo for Rustin. Had never heard of this film before, because it's a Netflix film and they always bury all their work, but it's about a civil rights activist so that makes... how many years that the Academy has included one of these in a Best Actor/Actress context? Selma, Harriet, Judas and the Black Messiah. I'm sure Colman Domingo gives a good performance, just noting that the Academy loves to nominate these for acting awards and not honor them in most any other way. (Hey, Jeffrey Wright's in that movie too! Good year for him!)

Bradley Cooper's here too. I don't think I like him very much! I've never disliked him really, but I've never loved his performance either. But the Academy seems to, since he's been nominated... TWELVE TIMES? Holy SHIT no wonder I wasn't surprised to see his name. Never won one, though. He keeps this up, maybe they'll throw him a pity one like they did for DiCaprio. Then again, I don't think Cooper assigns as much value to it as Leo did -- or at least, it doesn't feel like it. I care so little about Bradley Cooper! I don't follow his personal journey very closely! He's fine, I guess!

As a fan, I'd LOVE to see Jeffrey Wright take it, even though I haven't seen his movie. Of the ones I have, Cillian Murphy is very good in Oppenheimer, no question, but I've gotta give it to my man Paulie G. Dude is an incredibly talented actor with a non-traditional look who's done great work for decades and deserves a big win. He's fantastic in Holdovers too! It's a layered, funny, incredibly natural performance that he just falls into. Not particularly showy, which lowers his chances for a win, but to me (and most sensible folks) that makes it a better performance, so there, nyeh!

BEST ACTRESS: I haven't seen four of these but if they don't give it to Lily Gladstone they've fucked up. Sorry, other nominees, that's all there is to it. Also, where the fuck is Margot Robbie? She's incredible in Barbie! If I get to Supporting Actor and Ryan Gosling is there, this is misogyny.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR: This is misogyny!! But I'd love for Gosling to win for this. It'd be his first, and for a role like this that'd be hilarious. That being said it's still a tremendous performance! His commitment to the role both on-screen and off is clear, he's having a ball throughout, and he does his own dancing! God, I just wanna see his speech.

That being said, he has some extremely stiff competition. De Niro continues his golden year renaissance with an excellent performance of a very evil man in Killers of the Flower Moon, and Downey Jr. is so good in Oppenheimer that it took me a couple minutes and a scene transition to realize it was him at all! Also Sterling K. Brown and Mark Ruffalo are here! I like both those guys! If I had to pick one that I've seen that isn't Gosling? Probably Downey Jr. If I gave Oppenheimer one award, it would be this one.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS: I like all these actresses, I think America Ferrera is very good in Barbie, and Jodie Foster has been doing great work lately, but this award belongs to Da'Vine Joy Randolph. She takes a character that could be one note in The Holdovers and invests them with so much life and complexity and history. I still think about that movie in part because of her, and because she made choices that made that character feel more authentic. It's maybe the most I've been impressed by an actress in a good long while, frankly! She deserves this one! Don't fuck it up, Academy! (but I know you will)

ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY: All Best Picture nominees, save for a movie called May December... because it's a Netflix film, of course. God, they sure do make a lot of award-worthy films I never ever hear about, huh! Wild how that happens! (Did you even know a new Spy Kids movie came out this year? Of course you didn't! It was on Netflix!)

I haven't seen four of these, but heard good things about Past Lives. I do really love The Holdovers though! Unless one of the others really knocks my socks off, I'd be comfortable with that winning here.

ADAPTED SCREENPLAY: Oppenheimer does not deserve this. I'm sorry, maybe it's a failure of editing, but the pacing on this thing is too breakneck. Maybe that's a failure of editing more than screenplay, though. Then again, the dialogue itself is uh... often pretty blunt and borderline silly, in that Nolan sort of way! So, y'know!

I'd love to see Barbie win it. It's so fucking funny, and occasionally vibrating with pathos. But I haven't seen the others, and they might rule, actually! American Fiction might be great! I'm looking forward to finding out when it hits digital!

ANIMATED FEATURE: I still think we probably shouldn't cordon these off into their own category, but then so few would get nominated for anything, so let's just live in the world we have, huh? The Boy and the Heron is a Miyazaki film, so that automatically makes it a contender, though I've heard some mixed things about it. Nimona is a dark horse that I remember having some buzz around it earlier this year, and Robot Dreams is a sad movie about a robot so it's automatically a movie I vibe with! Elemental... exists! (Why in the hell was this nominated and not Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem?! Why of all things did THAT get snubbed?!)

But we all know this belongs to Across the Spider-Verse. It might not be a complete narrative, but purely on visual spectacle alone, it should win. It is, without question, the wildest eyeball experience I've ever had watching a movie, finally dethroning the previous occupiers, the Wachowskis' Speed Racer and the animated film Redline. It is constantly visually surprising and experimental, to the point that much like its predecessor I don't know how they fucking did some of the stuff they did. It's not the out-of-nowhere immediate game-changer that its predecessor was, and it might not have the immediate influence on an entire genre in the same way... but I think it pushes the medium even further! I can't wait to see what other movies look like in the future because of it.

(also the production sounds like it was a nightmare, animators deserve more pay and more respect, unionize, etc.)

PRODUCTION DESIGN: I mean, of all the things about Napoleon, how it looked was the absolute best of them. I wouldn't be too upset if it won... except I would, because Barbie. I mean, come on. COME ON. This one's a gimme. (Though why is The Creator not here? I know it was a pretty bad movie, but the design? Absolutely impeccable vibes!)

COSTUME DESIGN: I mean. Barbie. Did you see Ken's outfits?

CINEMATOGRAPHY: This is my nerd-ass award I care about. I've liked Hoyte van Hoytema's work in the past, and if Oppenheimer won this I wouldn't think it a complete miscarriage of justice -- it's got some really great images in it. But to me this is Flower Moon's award to lose. I haven't seen the others, but I don't know that anything else is going to match that. It's not too showy, but it is pretty damn impeccable.

There are also movies that I think got snubbed here, like John Wick 4 (yes I'm serious) and Sisu (again, I'm serious) and The Killer. Heck, they didn't even nominate The Holdovers here, and that movie leans into its period setting by aping the cinematography of films from that period! That's neat!

EDITING: That Oppenheimer is here is more proof the Academy doesn't know what good editing is. I mean, if you isolated a couple scenes of that movie, there IS great editing there! And even structurally, I think it makes some bold choices that should be rewarded! But as a whole, I didn't feel like I had time to breathe during a scene, and most of that is down to Nolan always choosing to cut or transition too soon. Sometimes it's even a matter of seconds! But those seconds matter! They're the difference between me feeling like I'm moving through a room and feeling like I'm being hurried through a room, y'know what I mean?

I'd probably go with Flower Moon here, but Holdovers has a lovely, languid pace to it and some very funny cuts, so I'm leaning in that direction too. Haven't seen the others!

MAKEUP AND HAIRSTYLING: How is Barbie not here?! What the hell kind of award show is this?! (A Bad one, we all know this.)

SOUND: (This used to be two awards, one for sound mixing and one for sound editing, and on a technical level those are two very different skills, but whatever, Academy!)

This is one I think that Oppenheimer will probably take, because it does some cool things with sound a few times. But it's also one that I think The Creator might actually deserve. Some really killer sound in that film, right up there with its production design -- which it should have gotten a nomination for! Also, Mission: Impossible dark horse, just to give it something. Because I love those movies, even if this year's was maybe my fourth-favorite Mission: Impossible movie that still makes it better than most movies!

VISUAL EFFECTS: It's kind of a long-shot, but I'm pulling for Godzilla Minus One here. Guardians looked good, The Creator looked good (it's about all it did) and I absolutely adore and respect the commitment to practical stunts and car chases and effects in Mission: Impossible and it should get all the recognition possible for throwing a real train off a real cliff... but c'mon. It's Godzilla. And by all accounts, it does so much with so little, at least in terms of budget. It's a movie directed by a guy who previously supervised visual effects! Of course it was gonna look good! That it looks that good at that budget though? Might be enough to get it the big win. Here's to hoping! It'd be nice to see a movie that cost about ten million dollars be recognized as having better visual effects than a movie that cost... two hundred and fifty million Jesus Christ what are you doing Disney.

ORIGINAL SCORE: Be neat to see Indiana Jones take this one! Good score, nice but not too reverent. But I don't have particularly strong feelings this like I have in previous ones. Don't remember many movie scores from this year, nothing's made it into my playlist beyond a couple Mission: Impossible tracks, certainly nothing's impressed me as much as something like The Batman's score or anything.

ORIGINAL SONG: Two songs from Barbie here, one from the Flamin' Hot Cheetos movie (yes it's real and yes it's historically inaccurate!) and one from... Killers of the Flower Moon. Uh oh. Uh oh! I was all ready to be ride or die for "I'm Just Ken" (and to be clear if it won I wouldn't object) but that song in Flower Moon and how it hits at the end... well. It should probably win, is what I'm saying. Even if it's not the fun choice. Be nice to see it performed, at least. These will all be great performances, probably!

DOCUMENTARY FEATURE: I haven't seen any of these! I usually don't until at least year or two after the fact! Just how I end up watching documentaries, usually. It'll probably be the one about Ukraine, though. Not necessarily because it's the best one, but because the Academy likes to think that making picks like that is somehow activism. (Also can you believe that's still happening? Ukrainian sovereignty, end the war, etc.)

INTERNATIONAL FEATURE: Haven't seen any of these, but heard good things about Society of the Snow. Zone of Interest is a best picture nominee, so odds are that'll be the one that wins. Surprised a Japanese film got in here but it's not Godzilla! Damn! Was hoping for a dark horse win for Big G!

ANIMATED SHORT: Never seen 'em!

DOCUMENTARY SHORT: Most of the short documentaries I watch are on Youtube these days!

LIVE ACTION SHORT: Good for all these people who got nominated!

THAT'S IT hoo boy the Oscars, huh. This year's a bit of a dull one, nothing that I'm really excited about winning anything outside of like, Barbie. Killers of the Flower Moon definitely deserves a lot of awards, but how many it'll get remains to be seen. Also I just realized DiCaprio didn't score a nomination for his part in that! Just Lily Gladstone! Haha! Good! (Though I do think DiCaprio's work has improved noticeably after he finally got his stupid Oscar. Almost like he stopped trying so hard and that made his performances feel more natural! Wild!)

Anyway, next year I'm gonna be stumping hard for Dune 2 so. Be prepared for that.

#movies #the oscars #Cinema™#i do enjoy an oscar party #even when it's mostly to get mad at them #or sometimes to celebrate when they get it right #i'd say they've gotten more right than wrong lately but then i remember Green Book #and how they snubbed Decision to Leave #and i'm like 'oh yeah these people don't know nothing bout anything'#anyway it's fun to be excited about movies #and i'll take any excuse to do so #even a dumb one by big dummies!!

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qqueenofhades · 2 years

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1of 3) feel free to ignore this, but I'm doing Dracula Daily (never read it before) and I have a lot of feelings/thoughts and seeing as you've read it, I hope you don't mind if I rant a bit. I really want to shake Van Helsing until he starts telling people stuff. Like I can kind of get him not wanting to tell Seward that it's a vampire so he doesn't seem crazy and get institutionalized, but at some point, he should have told him anyway, or just made it clear that Lucy needs watching every night

2of3) and not just depend on telegrams/letters to tell him to watch her. But then she dies, and still instead of telling anyone what's going on, he just tells Seward that he needs to get him some surgeon tools so he can remove her head and heart (because talking about needlessly (at least to Seward) removing body parts of a corpse makes way more sense then mentioning a vampire and definitely makes him seem sane). He even talks about how they need to work together as one and need trust, of 3) and it's like my dude, have you even once considered how much easier it may be for people to work together with you as one, to trust you when you need it, if they have even a slight hint of what's going on? Personally if someone asks me to do something odd/hard/weird etc. I'm much more likely to do it, or at least complain less, if I know the reason besides a 'I'm so-and-so and you should do what I say' reason. Again, sorry for the rant.

Hush now. Of course I am delighted that people have so many feelings about a 19th-century classic horror novel that they want to come shout in my inbox about it! This is exactly why I love Dracula Daily as a concept, and think it's really clever. Everyone kind of.... already knows Dracula by cultural osmosis (he's a vampire! He has a swoopy dark cloak and he can turn into a bat! He sneaks around and Vants to Suck Your Blud!) but they are discovering they don't actually know many details about the text, and that modern adaptations have often totally slaughtered it in the aims of making it Sexy or otherwise introducing themes/readings that are not necessarily present in the original. So yes, I have read Dracula before, but I'm still really enjoying seeing the way Tumblr has gone ape for it and are all indignantly signing up for the Lucy Westenra and Mina Murray Defense Squad and drawing fanart and making memes and dropping casual references to the "polycule" and so forth. Yes.

Anyway, I wrote this post the other day discussing how everyone's over-reliance on traditional social conventions, and trying to follow the rules of how to be Good Victorians, has totally fucked them over. The whole point of what's going on is that they all keep trying to act like it's a normal situation and they need to be Decorous and Proper and Not Alarm Anyone, and like... that's the exact sort of thing Dracula feeds on (literally and metaphorically). Because he's weaponizing their extreme middle-class Victorian Englishness against them, where they can't talk to each other and they can't discuss how they feel and they can't be honest, all for fear of Offending Protocol, they're screwed. They can't coordinate, they can't do anything that might long-term help, and there is of course an interesting subtextual queer reading here, considering that Bram Stoker is universally considered to have been a repressed gay man who hid/denied his sexuality and lived in, to say the least, an openly homophobic society. Whether or not it was his primary intention to portray the rules of Good Victorian Behavior not working and instead actually actively harming people by forcing them to keep secrets and not trust that anyone else will believe them, it's an unavoidable theme in the text and one that a modern reader definitely picks up on with the benefit of hindsight.

Also, I think it's important to highlight that despite his 84 PhDs (of course he's a lawyer as well as a doctor) and generally being the book-smartest person in the story, Van Helsing has, at this point, comprehensively failed. He hasn't saved Lucy's life, he hasn't prevented her from turning into a vampire, he hasn't warned anyone else about what's really going on, he hasn't prevented Mrs. Westenra from being frightened to death, he hasn't told Arthur (poor Arthur!!!) anything about why he wouldn't even let him kiss his fiancee as she was dying, etc. And a huge part of this is because, as you point out, he hasn't told anyone anything. Van Helsing has often been narratively paralleled to Dracula, which I think is accurate: he is solely in charge of Lucy's health, as Dracula is the sole reason for hurting it. He tries to control Lucy, he tries to keep her loved ones in the dark, he tries to basically "have" her for himself -- all in the name of helping her, yes, but his treatment is just as ineffective as Dracula's assault is effective. Van Helsing means all the best, but he's kind of fucked it up!

And yes, the primary reason he's doing so is because he thinks that he alone is smart enough to solve the problem, he can't let anyone else onto his plans (even when Quincey strolled in, took one look, and was like "oh yeah this was like the time the vampire bit my horse" and asked the OBVIOUS FUCKING QUESTION of where all of Lucy's blood was going!) and he otherwise is the Only One. Just like Dracula's pride, arrogance, solitude, stubbornness, and insistence that his will/choices for Lucy are the only ones that matters, Van Helsing is doing the same thing, from the opposite side of the coin. That's why his methods can't possibly work to counteract Dracula and (as we will see in the latter half of the novel) they need to comprehensively rethink their entire strategy and discard all the old social rules and worry for "decorum" that has kept them from being honest with each other so far. But yes, we love us a good hero/villain narrative foil with the same flaws and the same methods. Which is what is definitely going on here. Because things such as Mrs. Westenra removing the garlic flowers happen because Van Helsing didn't even tell her that they were medicinal (you have one million doctorates, Abraham, make up a scholarly bullshit reason!)

So yes, as I said, and as we will see in upcoming entries, Following The Good Victorian Rules has fucked everyone over HARD, Van Helsing is acting like Dracula while trying to fix Dracula's damage and that's why it isn't working, and our heroes are going to need to have a comprehensive rethink of what they're doing and why, if they want to stop any of this in time. Dun dun dunnn!

#anonymous #ask #dracula #dracula daily #abraham van helsing #lucy westenra

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nonameidentified · 4 days

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about that "I'm not from the us" ask set

or whatever it was written there

all

every

most is a very interesting question and I need answers because knowledge = fun

Ahhh... This is going to be long...

1. favourite place in your country?

India is a big country, okay, I haven't been to many places, but I liked kerala when I went there one time.

2. do you prefer spending your holidays in your country or travel abroad?

In my country, in my state, in my house. I don't like traveling.

3. does your country have access to sea?

Yeah :)

4. favourite dish specific for your country?

Creul. How dare you make me choose?

5. favourite song in your native language?

Ohhh,,,, this is hard. I don't know many songs like at all

ஆனந்த யாழை (aanandha yaazhai)

சின்ன சின்ன ஆசை (chinna chinna aasai)

உனக்கு என்ன வேணும் சொல்லு (unakku enna venum sollu)

Are they all very popular songs? Yes, as I said I don't know many songs. (How hell did I become an instrumentalist!?)

6. most hated song in your native language?

I don't think I hate any songs, like in general..

7. three words from your native language that you like the most?

Who has favorite words?! I like them all.

8. do you get confused with other nationalities? if so, which ones and by whom?

I am, unfortunately pale as fuck, so some people think I'm white (oh the horrors) and other times they think I'm from andhra side, because again pale as hell lol

9. which of your neighbouring countries would you like to visit most/know best?

We somehow have some level of beef with most of our neighbours,.,. Probably sri lanka, I know a decent amount about it because shared history, and it would be the easiest to travel to

10. most enjoyable swear word in your native language?

No "swear words" because language is old and we have forgotten most of them :(

11. favourite native writer/poet?

Kalki Krishnamurthy, is this a basic answer? Yes. But, I am not a book person, okay, books are scary and I haven't read many in my lifetime. I'm going based on what my mom said lol.

12. what do you think about English translations of your favourite native prose/poem?

No particular feelings about it :/

13. does your country (or family) have any specific superstitions or traditions that might seem strange to outsiders?

Oh, so many, but like most young people don't follow it that much. It's just something old people nag about.

14. do you enjoy your country’s cinema and/or TV?

I don't watch many movies or TV shows in general, so I don't have any strong feelings towards it.

15. a saying, joke, or hermetic meme that only people from your country will get?

Again, big country, varied languages. But let me think of something I can actually translate...

We call people who don't think before they speak cashew nuts (முந்திரிக்கொட்ட (Mundhiri Kotta)) because of how the the cashew nut protrudes out of the cashew fruit.

I chose a random one, there are many more, Tamil is a language built on metaphors lol

16. which stereotype about your country you hate the most and which one you somewhat agree with?

Most hated: THE GOD DAMN INDIAN ACCENT. Like 1) it originates from the welsh accent 2)it mostly comes from north Indian diasporas 3) NORTH INDIANS ALSO DON'T HAVE THAT ACCENT.

THERE ARE 22 DIFFERENT OFFICIAL LANGUAGES AND HUNDREDS OF UNOFFICIAL ONES, HOW THE HELL IS THERE SUPPOSED TO BE AN ALL ENCOMPASSING "INDIAN ACCENT"

Also, a million others, but we don't have time for that.

Agree with: we like our spices yes :}

17. are you interested in your country’s history?

YES YES YES. 100% YES. I am a history nerd about it. I have so much history trivia. Pls someone ask me about it.

18. do you speak with a dialect of your native language?

I don't know, there are dialects I think, but I don't know much about them or even which one I speak lol.

19. do you like your country’s flag and/or emblem? what about the national anthem?

It's alright, I don't have strong feelings about it .

20. which sport is The Sport in your country?

Cricket. Enough said.

21. if you could send two things from your country into space, what would they be?

Ahhh, I don't know. Our food, maybe? Astronauts need food, right?

22. what makes you proud about your country? what makes you ashamed?

People. For both. I will not elaborate ^-^

23. which alcoholic beverage is the favoured one in your country?

I don't drink alcohol. So, I don't know. Where I live, it's also kinda taboo to drink alcohol :(

24. what other nation is joked about most often in your country?

Brits and Americans, again enough said

25. would you like to come from another place, be born in another country?

No, I like it here.

26. does your nationality get portrayed in Hollywood/American media? what do you think about the portrayal?

Don't really care.

27. favourite national celebrity?

I don't know any pop culture, national or international. So, can't say :/

28. does your country have a lot of lakes, mountains, rivers? do you have favourites?

Yeah all three and lots of them, we are big as I said before. We are supposed have favourites?

29. does your region/city have a beef with another place in your country?

None that I know of

30. do you have people of different nationalities in your family?

Nope ^-^

#you are evil #sorry it took so long #i wrote most of it and slept and forgot it existed #lol I'm so sorry #asks

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galaxysharks · 1 year

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Ej was such a big brother to Maddox. Just the pure joy when he saw her having fun, he humors her so much and it means everything.

Imagine Ej's earlier years at the camp:

Jock!Baby!Elton gets sent to Shallow Lake cause camp 'builds character' and Cash can't be bothered to raise his one and only son.

Ej figures he will coast by in the ensemble/security/person who can lift things.

Realizes quickly that all the fun tools and props are locked up to keep unsupervised children away from them, as instructed by the director.

Trys unsuccessfully to charm director because the old man can tell when a kid is helping, and when one just wants access to things that can make fire.

That's when he notices that the weird little tween that only speaks to the director and tinkers with the tech equipment has the only other set of keys.

Que: Operation: get keys to fireworks part 2.

Report: Mission failed because Maddox doesn't understand metaphors for stealing minor explosives and won't break rules anyway. Also never leaves them anywhere, so he can't just take them.

Ej decides to pretend to befriend this girl until she trusts him to have keys, and because he is at this point a proto-Cash, he does this by suggesting she do stereotypical 'camp' behaviors like playing reveille at 7 am, or asking for secrets in the cabins, or any other amount of behaviors that would get her socially eviscerated. He figures most of the camp would follow his lead, so he just needs to play nice for a few days, then they can do whatever while he gets to explode things. Starts calling her Gadget, cause he can't remember her name.

Except Maddox Loves Camp. To her, Ej is rapidly becoming her best friend because he actually wants to be around her, and do the things she loves. Sure Val listens to her, but Maddox's too awkward around pretty girls to have any real conversations, and Ej is even giving her suggestions to make this summer even more like the old movies.

Val pulls Ej aside like: Don't you fucking dare make fun of this child, she's going through things right now..

Ej get 0.001% into this plan and realizes, oh shit she's adorable, I can't let people ruin this for her.

Cue Mr. Elton Jock wholeheartedly throwing himself into every one of these stupid challenges and traditions. Taunting and egging on everyone and generally becoming the helpful kind of menace to society that makes the weird parts of a summer camp seem fun.

The first night the camp serves tacos, and that's awesome, but Maddox tells him it's not usually a great idea to eat twelve of them at once.

Spoiler: she's right. Ej spends a morning dedicated to vomit and pain in the medical cabin. Maddox sits with him and helps him read lines for his different ensemble characters in between laughing at him and dodging Val bringing him more water and crackers.

They are assigned to the same tent in the wooded camp out night, because the director has noticed, and she usually takes a solo tent, which is not a good look for their safety rating.

She's jumping at shadows and hiding as soon as the tale of Susan Fine is over. She knows it's not real, but she's still freaked out by it.

Ej tells her that they're going to make it real, and she won't be scared cause she'll know what 'susan fine' will be doing all night. Maddox is going to be the woman in the woods, he'll be a shrub monster and they can scare people together.

He buys a large pack of twizzlers, some geodes, and candles from the local shop, and they set up the first ever Susan Fine shrine.

They collect a record 11 full screams and 1 full tackle from some kid named Johnny that breaks things alot.

After they've had their fun, Ej and Maddox spend the night making up a dumb camp song. With references to the taco disaster and the scary stories.

They perform at a mid-week talent show, and get a request for an encore at camp prom.

During color wars, Ej notices Maddox was missing, and Val tells him she helps the director set up the fireworks every year, but she'll be back in time for the sing-off.

At this point Ej is having more fun doing the color wars than he would have had stealing the fireworks to begin with.

She saves him a bottle rocket. They launch it later and Ej catches his shorts on fire. once he is put out and in his boxers, Maddox and Val try to find something between them for him to wear. When cleaning Val notices a patch on the inside lining of the burnt shorts 'Elton John Caswell'. Maddox laughs at him and calls him Rocketman.

Most of camp thinks it is because of the bottle rocket, but Val and Maddox know.

Uses his call from winning color wars to tell Cash that he'll take some business courses in school if he gets to come back to camp every year.

#high school musical the musical the series #hsmtmts ej #hsmtsts #hsmtmts maddox #hsmtmts val #timeframe: after jet started disliking performing #before the last 'outing me to parents fight'#camp shallow lake #big brother Ej #this camp sved us from Cash 2.0 #it crops up every now and again #but its mostly gone #Val 100% knows Gadget likes her #just nice enough not to call it out

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mothereliza · 1 year

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SIGNS AND SYMBOLS:

Lent 4, Year A - Lessons: 1 Sam 16: 1-13 and John 9: 1-41

Today's gospel is so rich in signs and symbols. On its surface, it's a healing story, but it turns into an indictment of a blind man and his healer. The questions and the drama take the story to another level. We see the stubborn blindness of the Pharisees and their refusal to acknowledge that what has occurred here is the work of God.

Let's set aside John's wonderful theology/Christology and Jesus' powerful metaphor of bringing a man from darkness to light. Let's, for a moment, focus on the disciples' question, which started the story: they asked Jesus, "if the man was born blind, ‘Who Sinned’ – the blind man or his parents?"

This question, 'who sinned,' is not new. Since people started believing that we have a good, just, and loving God, we have asked the same questions.

You may have read one of the many traditional answers – either science or biology, which may suggest that birth disabilities are related to some damaged chromosomes.' Despite these scientifical facts, the question exists. The biblical thought stems from the book of Deuteronomy 5:9,' which is an extension/addition of the 2nd Commandment – 'for I the LORD your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and fourth generation of those who reject me.' Please listen to this - the prophet Ezekiel (18:2-4) reversed the extension of the Deuteronomy writer when he writes, "A child shall not suffer for the iniquity of a parent, nor a parent suffer for the sin of a child." And 1 Sam 16:7 tells us that 'God judges the heart of eachman' [not that of his/her parents].

So, the question of sin and suffering continues, and the 'whys' don't go away. Then comes the teaching moment; Jesus' response rejects all explanatory answers. Jesus says, "so that God's work may be revealed in him." Wow!!! God's work revealed in someone's suffering?" Is this a rhitorical answer in the face of tragedy, pain, and loss? The answer is hard to accept. But, if you pay close attention, you get Jesus's point. Jesus is telling us that 'GOD IS ENOUGH. God's presence is what matters in any tragedy.'

Unfortunately, we will never understand the depth of this answer - unless we accept that the place to look for God when things are wrong is NOT at the front end of the catastrophe - God won't be there. He is at the center of the crisis, working to bring something new. And to back up this answer, Jesus performs a sign – he heals a man born blind. Jesus uses the dust from the earth – the same substance with which God created human - and creates a new pair of eyes for the blind man. The blind man joined in this miracle; he trusted and followed the directions to go and purify himself in the water of purification, and he gained new eyes.

There is a lot to learn from the gospel. While John is sharing with us significant symbols and signs that call attention to the divinity of Jesus the Pharisees are clearly displaying their spiritual blindness, which is no surprise because they demonstrated such unbelief each time Jesus performed a miracle.

Spiritual blindness is an internal condition when we focus on our pride, desire, or limited understanding. And, who among us has not experienced spiritual blindness in one form or another? When we proudly put ourselves before others, hold grudges, and refuse to forgive, we are blind. Spiritual blindness affects our communities; it creates suffering in its many forms.

Yet, the gospel's powerful and life-giving message is that we must accept God's word and join Christ in His suffering and grief. God knows the "big picture." He is willing to absorb our frustration and our many questions and will give us the spiritual sight we need to feel his presence – which is all we need as He brings us new light, a new life, and peace in Christ. Amen!

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gentrychild · 2 years

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In the demon transfer AU, is OFA connected with AFO? Because Yoichi could be a demon that somehow was against his brother, and his greed nature was doing whatever he could to do against him. So when Second and Third summon him, maybe hoping it was AFO? He went like: "wouldn't you like so mighty power against that bastard? Because I could teach you How To Demonhunt 101" And the modern humans that know how to hunt a demon don't know that it was a demon who started their advantage against them (except maybr All Might&Friends?)

Oh no, humans have been taking care of demons long before First was ever born. Okay, they rarely managed to kill them but they were never without options.

Such as, summoning bigger demons, luring them to places with bears, calling their moms, luring them to places with moose, and so on. Oh, the demon hunters rarely survived a fair fight but there is a reason why demons don't go out and antagonize humans in mass.

Also, demons are pretty nerfed when they are in the human world but more of that later.

Now, unto the AFO and OFA backstory.

So, a little before AFO and First's time, the demon world had known an era of peace, mostly because there were a couple of rules back in the day. A code so people could appeal to a council of Higher Demons if there was a problem. Nothing too grand because law of the strongest is a real thing in the demon world but it was generally understood that if someone burned stole your neighborhood just because they were bored, there would be some sort of consequences.

This had the side effect of making demons a tiny bit softer as they weren't constantly fighting to stay alive and not be killed.

So, those arch demons, who had directly benefited from the peace and the rules brought by their predecessors, looked at the new generation who were civilized and respectful and thought "Mmm, we are losing our traditional values. So from now on, we are going to offer no protection whatsoever, pit them against each other, so we can have good old demons completely attuned to their sins."

To the surprise of absolutely no one, it horribly backfired. First, it wiped out A LOT of the younger generation (because you can be sure that the older and more powerful demons hunted them for fun). Second, the survivors were indeed true embodiment of their sins... who had one hell of a grudge... against the current arch demons who had been raised in a time of peace...

In their defense, the arch demons hold out a while before being killed. They actually hold out long enough for demons of all sides to make constant trips to the human world in order to make deals and to gain additional power they desperately needed. It was the Dawn of Quirks at the time and compared to the demon world, it could have been a vacation resort.... right until some humans realized how demons were making the chaos worse and started hunting them.

Humans helped demons with the hell war, demons helped humans with the Dawn of Quirks, it was a mess but it ended, with the human government being metaphorically hold at gun point to stop harassing superpowered people and for a new demon lords to be in power so they could bring back order.

Except that yeeting traumatized young overpowered demons in a position of power was bound to be messy. AFO was greed personified at the time. He wasn't going to stop here. First was a Noble Demon (pride, he was aligned with pride, but pride demons never admit it) who couldn't let him do whatever he wanted (especially as one of the thing he wanted was for his brother to stay right next to him and never leave, thank you very much.)

So Civil War 2: Electric Boogaloo. AFO was stronger and people feared him. First has less followers but they were extremely devoted to him and thanks to Second and Third, he paralyzed the influx of contracts from the human world.

Several war crimes were committed. What happened during this second war is the explicit reason why demons can't take souls unless they have the equivalent of a license. All of this could have been avoided if AFO and First had access to a therapist. And OFA was born in order to counterbalance AFO's greed and to prevent him from claiming the human world.

Also, OFA is demoniac power, not a quirk. That means it follows the rule of the demon world.

#That's way too much backstory for a slice of life AU #but basically... traumatized teenagers failed by adults #demon transfer student au

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repetitionsings · 2 years

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What would burning look like in a Badger who is more focused on culture/traditions than actual people?

Confused? Pretty sure this was sent to a different blog? Wisteria had a lot of asks to answer and asked for some help from the SHC community, so I'll be answering a few they sent my way!

The same attitudes and feelings as most Burned Bagers, I think, but directed more at the traditions and the general sense of belonging than the actual groups of people. In my experience, that probably means either:

- deep wistfulness and yearning -- I just wish I could connect to things; I wish I had traditions but I'm not sure where to start; I had this once and can't stop thinking about how nice it felt but I can't figure out how to get it back. - mistrust born out of fear -- following traditions or immersing yourself in community trappings is opening yourself up to getting hurt. - or, maybe the most often, a mix of both -- I just don't think that stuff's for me (but I can't stop dancing around the edge of it/thinking about it); metaphorically pressing your face against the glass of the idea, but not letting yourself go after it or not feeling like you're allowed.

I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of burned Badgers deal with both the feeling of disconnection from people and traditions -- I know it's something I've struggled with. I suspect in someone who's solely or primarily focused on the sense of tradition or the community feeling as opposed to people is going to sound the same, they're just going to leave the people out of it when they talk about it.

#pri: badger #til binary systems run #as usual if anyone has any extra thoughts to add or argue #please feel free to do so; I'd love to hear other input #completely unrealted #i typed confused? and was halfway through #feel like a dope? you won't be--#before I brought my brain back in line and away from the Soap opening #now THERE'S a show I want to see sorted #maybe if I ever finish my rewatch

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abovethesmokestacks · 3 years

Text

Hidden Love

Title: Hidden Love

Pairing: Bucky x reader

Word count: 2.2k

Rating: All audiences

Warnings: None. Or me, probably butchering the Victorian era. Also, you know, slight angst, because I can’t help myself

This story sparked from a moodboard I made a while back, of Victorian King!Bucky and maid!reader, and it kinda got away from me, as everything tends to do these days. And listen... I know. The term Victorian really only relates to the history of the United Kingdom during Queen Victoria’s reign, but please bear with me on this and suspend belief and step into a world where during this era, Bucky is king, and enjoy the stay.

The sounds of crystal clinking together should be like silver bells carrying over the din of hushed conversation, but to his ears, it's like nails on a chalkboard. The food before him is rich and each bite seems to swell in his mouth, forced down in thick swallows and gulps of wine. His cheeks hurt from smiling, and his feet itch to leave, to stand up and walk out. He could.

"More wine, your highness?"

He could, he is king.

The server's voice is low, bowed down appropriately to only be heard by him. He shouldn't have another glass, for the sake of his mental faculties. He should, to keep up appearances. He can already sense his mother's eyes on him, the calculating gaze he has known his entire life. The dowager queen, a mother only as it serves her image in the kingdom than anything else.

"Everything all right, James?" she asks, and oh, that tone is deceptive. Kind on the surface, but weighed just so with the barest hint of concern to draw the attention of the other guests.

He wants to grimace, his name sounding contrived and wrong in his ears, granted with the weight of legacy, set aside for a few blessed years of childhood and then thrust back upon him when illness took his father and forced him back into a mold he would much rather escape. The coronation had his stomach in knots, a chill persisting in his bones and a simmering dread as he was crowned - anointed by God, what god would place their faith in someone so flawed as man? - His Majesty James, by the Grace of God, King of the Nation, Defender of the Faith.

"Nothing, mother. Pondering my choice of drink."

He tries for amicable, jovial. It is the annual Christmas feast, why shouldn't he be happy? His mother quirks an eyebrow, holding his gaze just long enough for the hairs on the back of his head to stand on end before her eyes glide from him to take up the conversation she left.

Some defender of the faith he is, he doesn't even have faith in himself.

An eternity seems to pass as dishes pass before him, plate after plate until he feels nauseous. Around him, the atmosphere has relaxed, emboldened by wine and spirits, and even his mother is no longer sparing him a glance to keep track of him. Somehow, he would have thought being king would have meant finally being free of her shadow, but she is still there. No longer a shadow, but a presence right behind him, a metaphorical foot on his robe to remind him of his place, and hers. He wonders if anyone has noticed that his glass of wine has not been refilled in a long time, that he has been nursing it steadily and that his boisterous laughs have all been hollow.

He could leave, but not without drawing attention. Just a little while longer. He glances at the opulent grandfather clock, feels its ticking like a heartbeat. Not yet. Not yet. Not yet.

Each tick of the clock is an endless journey. Through rigid traditions, glasses of brandy, sweet sugarplums and fragrant pines, all he can feel is the passing of time, one second after another without an end in sight. Gifts are exchanged, crackers pulled with cloying glee and he feels more like a fool than a king when one of the footmen is coaxed into slipping the thin paper crown on his head. His mother bows out with effortless grace, sparking hope that maybe, just maybe, he can make his escape.

"Let me accompany you, mother," he asks, begs, voice low as he stands up to offer his arm for her.

Take it. Please, for the love of all things good and holy, take it.

Her smile is not exactly smug, but it hides a kind of joy that he thinks must be sour.

"Nonsense, my dear. Don't leave on my account, stay, be merry."

It's loud enough to be heard, for plenty of people to hear her deny him his exit under the guise of a mother not wanting to spoil her son's fun. He tries not to let his gaze harden or his forced smile to weaken, instead kissing his mother's hand and bidding her good night. Propriety will keep him here another hour at least. The clock ticks, chipping away at the span of time before he can have his freedom.

He thinks he might finally be going out of his mind when the clock strikes midnight. His other guests are either half-asleep, lulled by brandy and the late hour, or eagerly playing cards for the trinkets they received in their crackers. Enough. He takes his leave, wanting to roll his eyes at the hasty displays of respect and deference. No matter. He is free. A quick trip to fill up a plate from the abandoned dinner table, something for the road, as he jests with his escort. The palace is quiet when they traverse the corridors to his private chambers, their footsteps echoing ominously with nothing but a candelabra to light their way.

"I think I'll manage myself tonight," he tells his escort when they're outside his door. "Go sleep, I won't tell on you."

They put up the token protest, but still leave, hastening down the dark hallway while he lets himself in. The world feels more manageable inside. It's still a constant reminder of his privilege, of the opulence of his station, but it's his. No one can enter without his permission, no one can disturb him without just cause. Sometimes he wishes this was his entire kingdom.

Setting down the plate on his bed, he loosens the ascot, glad to be rid of the strangle-like hold around his neck. Off with the tailcoat, unbutton the waistcoat. Breathe.

Thunk.

He whips around, gaze falling on the large armoire in the corner. The silence that follows is deafening, but he knows what he heard. With a smile curling his lips, he swipes a treat off the plate, hiding it behind his back while he closes the distance, pulling the doors open in a rush, only for his ears to ring with a piercing shriek.

"Hush! Good god, you'll wake the entire wing, calm down! It's just me!"

The girl cowering into the corner of the armoire claps her hands over her mouth, eyes that had only moments ago been wide with fear now glaring at him as she breathes through her nose to calm down. It’s strange, how his heart beats quicker, how the heaviness of his mind lightens under her fierce gaze. Years ago, they met by accident, he was still prince, young and cocksure, and she was, as she is now, a maid in the vast household that served his father the king. It wasn’t prudent, but he enjoyed giving her his attention, little flirtatious exchanges that somehow grew into a tender love with stolen kisses in hidden nooks. She has never asked for anything, much as he has offered to help her. She has declined promotions, slapped him for trying to sneak a small pouch of coins into her apron, made him promise not to do anything that would change her status in or outside the court.

He extends his hand to her, helping her up and out, twirling her around the room, making the skirt of her black dress flare around her, and his soul soars at the way her face settles into a sweet smile. With an exaggerated bow, he holds out his hand with the hidden treat, a sugar plum. She plucks it from her hand, delight colouring her features as she takes a small bite.

“I thought you were…” she begins, swallowing before dropping her gaze, slipping the rest of the sugarplum into her apron pocket. “I wasn’t sure you were alone. I wasn’t… I wasn’t sure if you would come.”

They come to a halt by the window of his room, and instinctively, he positions his back to the window, protecting her presence with the frame of his body. This may be his private quarters, but the palace has eager eyes and ears.

“My mother.”

It’s answer enough. Their love lives in the shadows, in the small kingdom of his room, in the hidden passages of the palace and with notes tucked into cracks only they know about. His heart aches, because she deserves so much more, wishes the world knew about this generous soul that holds his heart in her palms, whose smile lights up his presence even during his darkest days, who will take nothing but the reassurances of his affections and the kisses he bestows freely.

“I came as quickly as I could,” he adds, bringing up her hands to kiss her knuckles. They’re cold, worn from hard work, but he loves them as dearly as the rest of her.

“She knows.”

It’s simple. A statement, not a question, and her hands slide from his grip as she takes a step back.

“We don’t know that. She enjoys tormenting me, we’ve known that for quite some time. And even if she knows…” He closes the space between them again, wraps her up in his embrace, and nudges her chin to make her look at him. “Even if she knows, she won’t do anything overt. She can’t.”

“She’s the-” his love starts, eyebrows knit together, mouth set in a way that he knows she won’t let this go.

“She thinks she owns me. She thinks she controls me. In her eyes, I am as much a servant to her as anyone on staff. And I’m happy to let her keep her delusion, if it means I get to be with you, if it gives me time to…”

“To what?” she asks, tilting her head. “If it gives you time to do what, Bucky?”

To fight for that, he wants to say. His nickname, falling sweet from her lips and making him feel like a person. It’s a treasure from those happy childhood years, when he’d only hear it from his string of governesses and teachers, a concession to play pretend at a normal life. It felt like stepping out of a pleasant dream when he had to leave it behind, had to step into the heavy legacy of James, into the title of king. He looks at her, the only one to call him Bucky these days, and feels courage rise with the beating of his heart.

“To figure out a way for us to be together,” he tells her resolutely, continuing on his next breath. “We’ll go away, I’ll make sure we’ll have means to live until we can settle down. We’ll go far away, we’ll cross the sea if we have to.”

He twirls them around in a dance, away from the window, away from vulnerability of unseen eyes. Away. Gone. Together.

“Bucky…”

“We’ll live in a cottage, you and I. I’ll… I’ll learn a trade. I can tend horses. I can hunt. We’ll have a life that’s… that’s ours.”

“Buc- Your highness!”

The title cuts him down, poleaxes him and pulls him out of the dreams like someone has poured a vat of cold water on him. She’s no longer in his arms, once again removed, three solid paces between them, and she looks so small, so despairing, hands folded in front of her. This time, she finds her voice before he can find his.

“I can’t ask you to do that. You’re king. You… You have responsibilities. You have a realm that depends on you for guidance and rule. You can’t just… I’m no one. I’m not important. I’m- You are king, and kings marry queens and live happily ever after. I don’t fit into that story, your highness.”

He takes a step forward, she takes another step backwards. Even so, it hurts more to hear the way she talks about herself, makes herself small while he grows to something fabled and grand, when truth be told, he feels like all this time, he’s been walking on stilts and wearing a costume to hide the person he really is.

“Neither do I,” he starts, winces inwardly at how trite it sounds. “I didn’t want this. To be king, I mean. It’s not for me. I don’t care for politics and mind games, I don’t care for frivolousness and rigid customs. This is a prison to me. It’s beautiful, and grand, but it’s a gilded cage nonetheless. Outside this room, away from you, I am not myself. I am weak. I am a pawn in a game. My desires don't matter. You…” He takes a careful step forward, hope springing when she stays where she stands, “are everything I want. Everything I need.” Another step. “And I will do anything to be with you, anything to make this my story. I’ll bide my time, I’ll weigh my options, I’ll make every preparation, but one day…”

Another step. He’s back in front of her, and though she avoids his eyes, she’s not running, not putting distance back between them.

"Your highness…"

“My love,” he interrupts, offering her the depth and width of his affection, his voice low and ardent as he kneels before her, prostrating before the only person worthy of him. “My sweet, my… my everything. One day, I’ll find a way for us to be together.”

#Hidden Love #Bucky x reader #Bucky Barnes x reader #Victorian king!Bucky #maid!reader

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nerdygaymormon · 3 years

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(1/2) hi david! ok i have a quick thing abt women and the priesthood: its so frustrating to me, and it used to be 1/12 months we would study the priesthood and honestly they don't teach us anything really other than what kind of stuff they do (vaguely). i always try to bring up the talks about womens priesthood power (only if endowed lol) but they always get brushed off. when i said how unfair it was when i turned 12 that i couldn't get the priesthood my mom took me aside and talked to me about

(2/2) she said to think of it like a wheelchair for men, to help them to be able to do good and help others and give them motivation because if women had the priesthood they would want to help everyone (i cant even with that metaphor its so wrong) and honestly, why can't women hold the priesthood? has that ever been said? why? because we live in a man/father led society? im just really tired of all the barely hidden sexism in lessons + calling the guys 'the priesthood' i hate it so much. thanks!

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Yes, I remember those lessons. I thought for the young women and Relief Society the focus should be on how they can access the priesthood, why it matters there is priesthood and so on, not learning the young men can pass the sacrament (which btw, preparing or passing the sacrament doesn’t require the priesthood and we used to allow females to do this).

And how come the people in priesthood quorums didn’t need to spend a month learning about women’s contributions, or motherhood, or a way to provide some equity for women having to put up with learning of the men’s roles for a month

Yes, I’ve heard the excuse that men need priesthood in order to train them to be as good as the women naturally are. I don’t buy it. If priesthood service boosts a person’s goodness, why would we not want women to participate?

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I feel like our Church doesn’t do a good job explaining it’s priesthood restrictions. That’s probably because there isn’t a good justification for them.

We had the disastrous ban of people of African descent not being eligible to hold the priesthood and also not allowed to receive temple blessings. Fortunately, in 1978 the temple blessings and allowing men of African descent to be part of the priesthood was restored. Now no one is banned based on race, ethnicity or national origin.

In early church history, the revelations mention men and the priesthood. I think that’s the basis for the current ban on women.

Was this absence of women intentional?

Could this be a case of the word “man” being used to mean “mankind” and wasn’t supposed to exclude women?

Maybe “men” is all the culture was able to accept at the time. Women didn’t have constitutional rights and weren’t allowed to vote, and were thought of as people who remain in the house while their husbands dealt with things in the broader world.

—————————

For a long time, our church taught that women can “receive all the blessings of the priesthood” even if they don’t hold it themselves.

Today, President Nelson has indicated that something unique happens in the LDS temple ceremony — something that imparts priesthood power to women. In the temple, there are certain ordinances that women perform for other women, which indicates they have the priesthood even though they haven’t been formally ordained to the priesthood.

Unfortunately, this isn’t very well defined.

Do women who’ve been through the endowment ceremony hold priesthood power, even though they aren’t ordained, and are only authorized to use this priesthood in the temple?

Could they be authorized to use this priesthood outside of the temple?

Why are they only authorized to use their priesthood for other women and not men?

Is this the Aaronic or Melchizedek priesthood, or is it some other branch of the priesthood?

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I think it’s clear women can hold priesthood and wield its authority. There’s many examples from the Bible and early Church history.

Judges 4-5 - Deborah was a judge of Israel, acting as a prophet and military leader at a time when women were treated like property and valued by the number of children they could bear. She didn’t follow the gender role expected of her, and showed God is willing to have women as leaders, women as prophetesses. Perhaps patriarchy isn’t God’s will but a cultural trait of the ancient Israelites which we now read in the Bible and think is of God.

Acts 2:17 - “And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams”

Is priesthood required to prophesy?

Romans 16 - powerful scripture for equality and inclusion--so many names of women in positions of authority and influence listed. There’s not enough details to know the exact roles of the women. Is a “fellow servant” an apostle? Is a woman who travels & teaches as Paul does, an apostle? What about the women who are leaders together with their husband? Some women sound like heads of the congregation, are they equivalent to bishops and pastors?

There’s an address from Joseph Smith to the Relief Society on March 30, 1842 that many believe indicates he intended for women to hold the priesthood. “the Society should move according to the ancient Priesthood, hence there should be a select Society separate from all the evils of the world, choice, virtuou[s] and holy— Said he was going to make of this Society a kingdom of priests an in Enoch’s day— as in Paul’s day”

Healing by the laying on of hands was a practice that was common for Mormon women in the 19th century, although it was said to be done by faith, not priesthood. There’s even a famous example of Mary Fielding Smith blessing an ox to health on the trek west to Utah. This practice was stopped because it was too similar to the priesthood.

—————————

What our church has allowed women to do has varied, and needing priesthood authority was often the excuse for why women couldn’t do these things.

Women were barred from praying in Sacrament meeting from 1967 until 1978.

In 1984, a woman spoke in general conference for the first time since 1930. Since then, women have spoken in every general conference.

Women were once permitted to join in or stand as an observer at the blessing of her baby, but today it’s priesthood only

In 2013, the first time a woman prays at General Conference.

In 2013, the "sister training leader" position is created, a leadership position for women who are missionaries.

In 2015, the church appointed women to its executive councils for the first time.

2021, positions for women were created at the Area level of leadership in Europe, they’ll participate in leadership councils, and train Relief Society, Young Women and Primary Leaders.

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Can women hold the priesthood? I think the evidence points to yes. I believe we’re in the same situation as the priesthood ban of Black men where it’s now our tradition and belief and will take a revelation to undo. The question is, are the apostles and prophet seeking such a revelation?

If we extended the priesthood to all worthy members regardless of gender, that would solve several issues. For example, we have areas with many more women as active members, and the men in those congregations must shoulder several callings that require the priesthood. Their burden would be much lighter if women could share in the responsibilities

The disparity that women see in their everyday lives would be eliminated. They may be in a position of authority at work, but then on Sundays, for the most part they’re limited to working with women & children, and excluded from top leadership positions. I wrote a thing where I switched gender roles at church and I think it makes clear the messages we are sending to our members, particularly our impressionable children and teensagers.

Then there’s the case of trans & intersex people. Is priesthood for men given according to their spirit or to their body? How do we know what gender is the spirit of an intersex person? If everyone were eligible for the priesthood, it would save us from having to answer what is perhaps an unanswerable question about whether the body & spirit of trans people got mismatched.

—————————

We currently are not accessing the talents and capabilities of 1/2 the population. You’d think a church that has Heavenly Mother as part of its theology would be anxious to recognize the contributions that women can make and let them have leadership roles at all levels of the Church.

#long post

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wiisagi-maiingan · 4 years

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Hiya! I just saw your post about microaggressions in media, and I was wondering if you'd be willing to explain a little bit more about how Dragon Age negatively represented indigenous peoples; personally, I saw how the parallel was drawn, but I'd like to understand the difference between metaphor/symbolism and negative derivement. If you don't wanna, that's ok! Thank you for your time : )

Sorry if you wanted this to be replied to privately. I’ve gotten a few other questions about it so I just decided to do a masterpost.

I do feel obligated to mention that I have a Dragon Age tag and that I’ve gone into detail about the issues with the games here and here.

Now, with that being said. . . I’m going to put this under a cut because this is an important topic to me and I’ve never gone into as much detail as I should have. I’ll also give a basic but long rundown for people who haven’t played Dragon Age and aren’t aware of the context. I’ll try to make it obvious where that part ends for people who just want to skip right past it.

Disclaimer that I never really played Origins so this will only focus on DA 2 and Inquisition.

This is gonna be really fucking long and I apologize for that.

For anyone who isn’t familiar with the Dragon Age franchise, here’s some basic information relevant to this topic. There are four fantasy “races” in the game; the humans, the elves, the dwarves, and the qunari. For the purposes of this conversation, we will not go into the dwarves and the qunari.

Humans are the dominant race in the game, with control over every government in the continent that the franchise focuses on, Thedas. They follow a religion called Andrastianism, which is centered around the Maker (a vague and featureless single god who is almost always referred to as male) and Andraste, the Maker’s mortal wife and prophet who was executed and burned at the stake. In other words, it’s Fantasy Christianity™. The religion is separated into two branches, with one being led by men and only being common in one country in Thedas and the other being led by women and being common in the rest of Thedas. Just like Christianity, it is very heavily focused on converting people. As far as I’m aware, it is the state religion of every country featured in the franchise. For the purposes of this conversation, I will be referring to this religion as the Chantry, the in-game equivalent of the Church being used for Christianity.

Elves, on the other hand, are exactly what they sound like. They’re elves, but not traditional Tolkien elves. They have the same lifespan as humans and don’t seem to be particularly special. The important thing to note is that they are very much an oppressed group and most racism you encounter in the franchise is aimed at the. They were the original peoples of many parts of Thedas, indigenous to several parts of the continent before they were violently massacred in wars and outright genocide, all in the name of Andraste. Here’s some information about the main attacks on the elves, in the form of the second Exalted March, a form of religious crusade. Cultural sites, including burial grounds and religious temples, were pillaged and destroyed. Historical records were confiscated and edited, language and culture records purposely destroyed, and countless artifacts were stolen and sold to wealthy humans. This happened long before the events of the games, but are ongoing issues, which I’ll get into later.

Modern elves in the game are separated into two main groups: city elves and the Dalish.

City elves are elves who are disconnected from their cultures and live in human settlements, where they’re often forced to live in slums (called alienages), pushed into dangerous and poorly paid work, and face violent abuse and mistreatment from humans in the cities. City elves are usually Andrastian, just like disconnected Natives are often Christian, though they cannot hold positions in the Chantry.

The Dalish, on the other hand, are elves immersed in their cultures, living in nomadic clans led by their Keepers. The majority of Dalish elves follow the Evanuris, the Elven pantheon which is made up of nine deities that each represent different aspects of Elven life. According to Dalish lore, these deities are not active in the world anymore because they were tricked by the ninth deity, Fen’Harel, a trickster god who sealed away the rest of the gods from the world. When Dalish elves reach maturity, they undergo a ritual that involves receiving their vallaslin (blood writing), which are intricate facial tattoos that represent different deities in the pantheon and, supposedly, reflect that person’s role in their community. I suppose the Native equivalent is finding out what clan you’re in. Dalish communities are centered are around halla, a type of deer that the Dalish see as sacred and use as a form of travel (they pull aravels, a kind of wagon), food (milk and meat), clothing, companionship, and guidance. The parallels to bison should not be lost.

Elves are also frequently enslaved, particularly in Tevinter where slavery is still completely legal.

Now. Humans, elves, and qunari all have a connection to the Fade, the origin of all magic, spirits, and demons. That means that they all have the potential to have mages, people born with magic and a deeper connection to the Fade; they’re the DA equivalent of sorcerers in D&D for all you nerds out there. Across the board, mages are heavily oppressed (with the exception of mages in Tevinter).

Because they can be possessed by demons and potentially use blood magic, they’re seen as inherently dangerous and forced into Circles, isolated areas where they’re under constant surveillance as they learn to control their magic, and that surveillance is done by Templars, an order of warriors trained to be able to repress a person’s magic. Any mage that doesn’t have absolute control over their magic is made Tranquil, which cuts off their connection to the Fade and, along with removing their ability to use magic, also removes their ability to feel emotions, have desires, and experience dreams. It’s essentially a fantasy lobotomy. In some Circles, this is done on the whims of Templars to any mage that causes the slightest issue for them. Other forms of abuse are also incredibly common in Circles.

So! That’s the end of the context explanations! Let’s move onto the indigenous-coding in the game!

The coded group in question are the elves, particularly the Dalish. They’re also coded as Jewish and Romani, which makes the information that’s going to follow even worse. Despite popular belief, this coding is not actually up for debate and has been directly confirmed by David Gaider (scroll a bit, and be warned that he uses the g-slur). Since I’ve already explained what Dalish elves and city elves are, I doubt I have to get into how exactly they’re Native-coded and I don’t really feel like doing that anyway. So let’s just get right into the issues with this coding.

The first issue is the elves themselves. Elves are cool, I love elves. But it’s really fucking shitty to make the Christian-coded group human while the group coded as indigenous, Jewish, and Romani is inhuman. It’s a really common trope in fantasy and sci-fi and directly contributes to the dehumanization of our communities. It also gives fans the ability to brush off criticisms of their depictions because they’re “just elves”, something I see in the fandom a lot.

We also have to think of how elves in media are depicted in general. They’re usually magical beings with unnaturally close ties to nature, and as a Native person who has been asked if I can speak to eagles and if I live in a tipi in the woods, that is not a stereotype that needs to be further associated with indigenous groups.

Elves are degraded constantly by every character in the series, and the narrative depicts Dalish elves especially in a terrible light. There is only one companion in the entire series who actually genuinely cares about the Dalish, and that because Merrill is Dalish herself, having left her clan to live in the city; she’s also frequently mocked and depicted as naive and ignorant despite being a grown-ass woman and her rivalmance is dangerously unhealthy and toxic. In Dragon Age: Inquisition, you can have two elf companions, both of who explicitly hate the Dalish and disapprove of any pro-Dalish stances. One of those companions, Sera, also hates elves in general and frequently distances herself from them. Solas is a whole other can of worms.

If you play as a Dalish Inquisitor in DA:I, you are faced with constant mockery and scorn at every angle. Dorian, a Tevinter mage, explicitly tells you that slavery is better than being poor and that his family treats their slaves “very kindly”. You cannot call him out on this; he says his piece and then the conversation ends and can literally never be mentioned again, even if you romance him. Cassandra, who is very pro-Chantry, asks you why you can’t just “make room” for worshipping the Maker alongside the Elven deities. Any support of the Dalish earns you immediate disapproval from all of your companions. You cannot be openly Dalish without being directly punished by the game.

I mentioned earlier that Dalish elves and city elves both live in tightly-knit and isolated communities, Dalish elves in the form of nomadic clans and city elves in the form of alienages. There’s safety in numbers, but when you’re surrounded by enemies, that can also be incredibly dangerous. At multiple points in the series, entire alienages and clans are massacred. More often than not, this is completely unavoidable, and when it can be avoided, it’s extremely difficult to do so.

In Inquisition, if you play as a Dalish Inquisitor, you will start to receive war table quests regarding your clan. If you make even one wrong choice (and there are several choices you have to make, most of which are misleading), then your entire clan is massacred along with the elves in the city they’re settled by. The incident leading to their possible deaths is actually caused by a human noble poisoning other humans in the city and blaming the elves, since the alienage had a different water source and there was a clan settled near the city.

In Dragon Age 2, you can directly massacre Merrill’s entire clan. Even if you choose not to do so, the clan suffers heavily, losing their First (the future Keeper) to the city and then losing their Keeper to demons. They end up stranded in that area due to their halla dying, which means that their aravel couldn’t be pulled.

At another point in Inquisition, you encounter a clan that suffers heavily as well when a huge swath of them are massacred by Red Templars. You can do absolutely nothing to prevent this.

In the same area that the last clan I mentioned is found in, there are several quests regarding it, several of which stick out to me.

One requires you to literally desecrate a Dalish burial site to finish the quest (The Spoils of Desecration, it’s literally in the name).

Another quest gives you the task of finding a sacred golden halla, a legendary spiritual and religious figure to the Dalish, and guiding it to the unnamed Dalish clan. In this quest, you can also choose to just straight up kill it (The Golden Halla).

There’s a main storyline quest that involves going through a historical site to discover the truth about a massacre that had always been blamed solely on elves. At the end of the quest, you can choose to give these new records to either the clan I talked about or to the Chantry, who, if I remember correctly, modify the records to be about the Dalish becoming violent after one of their clan members converted to Andrastianism (The Knights’ Tomb). If you choose to give the records to the Dalish, a follow-up quest involves the clan asking for your help gifting a halla to the human village that was part of the incident, which you need to either trick or force the village into accepting (Bestow Mourning Halla).

Moving on. . .

In the quest Wicked Eyes and Wicked Hearts, you meet the human empress of Orlais, Celene, who you have to protect from assassins. You also meet her handmaid, spymaster, and former lover, an elf woman named Briala. And of course, Celene’s terrible cousin Gaspard, who is not really relevant for this discussion. Just know that he’s awful.

In this quest, you have to uncover information about these three people and use that information to manipulate the situation and get your desired ending. There are several possible endings you can choose, but we’re going to focus on one specific one for right now, namely the one where you can choose to help Celene and Briala reconcile and become lovers again, with Celene ruling Orlais and Briala being her partner and advisor. Sounds great, right? The lovely women get their happily ever after and everyone is happy.

Except that the game doesn’t give you the full story. Not in the slightest. Instead, it depends solely on you having read The Masked Empire, a book that is completely separate from the game and that many players don’t even know exist. It gives a very different context to this game, and especially to Celene and Briala’s relationship. I recommend reading this post from @dalishious because I cannot possibly explain the situation better than they have on their blog. If you’re into Dragon Age, I recommend giving them a follow in general because they offer some really great perspectives on DA as a Mi'kmaw person who knows a hell of a lot more about the franchise than I do.

(The quest also tries to convince you that Briala is on the same level as Celene and Gaspard. That is complete bullshit, as dalishious gets into here.)

So, to add to its very long list of crimes, Bioware purposely withholds information from the player in order to trick you into getting an elf back together with her violently racist and incredibly dangerous abuser.

And if I remember correctly, you can also discover a hidden room in Celene’s palace which is filled with broken Elven artifacts that Celene was experimenting with.

In Inquisition, you also encounter at least two Dalish elves who explicitly talk about being kicked out of their clans for being mages, left to make it on their own or die. Which is. . . absurd and doesn’t fit pre-existing lore at all, since clan Keepers and their apprentices are literally mages themselves AND it’s already been shown that if a clan cannot support or doesn’t need people with specific skills (not just mages but also crafters, traders, hunters, etc), then it will actually send those people to other clans to live with them. Merrill, the Dalish companion mentioned earlier, is one such case, with her original clan having an excess of mages and sending her to a different clan who needed a mage to train as a first. Changing that to say that clans now outright abandon mages, especially as children, was a ridiculous choice and makes me feel like it was done purely to show them as ~savage~.

(I personally headcanon that it was a lie spread purposely by clans to protect themselves, playing off of racist ideas of what they were like. No templar would go up against an entire clan just to drag two or three mages off to the Circle, but multiple mages? Five mages? A dozen? Now that would be worth the risk.)

And now it’s time to get into the worst part of the games, by far.

Trespasser.

In this DLC, you discover that one of your elf companions, Solas, is actually the god Fen’Harel, and that he’s essentially trying to destroy the entire world to “reset it”.

You also discover that your gods are false.

That’s right. Bioware based this community and culture off of Jewish, Romani, and Native peoples. And then made the gods fake. Explicitly told players that the Dalish are wrong about everything they’ve ever known, that their religion is all fake, and that it’s their own fault because they dared try to recreate their culture with the scraps they had left.

Oh, but it doesn’t end there, no. The gods aren’t just fake, they were actually slave owners! They were rulers of an ancient civilization and the vallaslin, those beautiful markings that represent a Dalish elf’s pride in their culture and their place in their community, are actually slave markings to show who your owner is!

I need you all to take a moment to process this. To think about the implications of basing a fictional culture off of oppressed communities in the real world, as a foil to the Fantasy Christianity™ that you as the player are constantly shoved towards, and then making that culture’s religion into something so terrible and warped.

Have you thought about it? Because I have. I’ve thought about it a lot.

So yeah. There’s my extremely long rant about indigenous coding in Dragon Age. I hope it helps the very few people who manage to get to the end without getting sick of it lmao

#dragon age #dalish #dalish elves #indigenous representation #indigenous coding #long post #i am so fucking sorry to everyone on mobile #jamesissosogay

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carminavulcana · 5 years

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What are some of the things to keep in mind while writing Hindu characters? And can non-Indians also write about Indian Gods and movies ? I'm not trying to be offensive. Just trying to learn cause I have never actually spoken to Indian people. But I love Bollywood and your culture.

Hey anon,

First of all, thank you for wanting to be respectful and for asking this question before you begin writing. So you need to remember a couple things when writing Hindu characters--

1. Not all Indians/South Asians are Hindu and not all Hindus are Indian/South Asian. Vibrant and ancient Hindu communities exist in Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, and even some African countries.

2. According to a rough estimate, close to 900 million people are Hindu in some, way, shape, or form. But their practices and beliefs are going to vary greatly. There are Hindus who eat meat and those who don't. There are Hindus who believe in God and those who don't. There are Hindus who take the stories somewhat literally and follow a personal God and there are Hindus who look at our mythology metaphorically and don't believe any of it to be fact. There are Hindus who consume beef (yes, they exist!) and Hindus who wouldn't even touch beef with a ten-foot pole. Bottomline, a Hindu character could be super conservative but they could also be super chilled out and liberal.

3. The Caste System is not intrinsic or fundamental to the core of Hinduism-- This is important. Most Hindus have participated in the institution of caste knowingly or unknowingly for generations. It is a humiliating, divisive practice which dehumanizes entire sections of people over 'ritual impurity.' However, this is theologically dominant only in Brahminic Hinduism (even though it has now seeped into other sects also). There are plenty of passages in the scriptures like the Upanishads that give complete priority to the immortal, untarnished soul as opposed to the reality of the physical world. A defining feature of Advaita Vedanta and Shaivism is the belief in non-Dualism-- that the soul is a part of the divine. Aham Brahmasmi, Tat Tvam Asi-- I am the Divine. As are You. The caste system exists in its current form, because for centuries, it has fed the greed of dominant and upper caste people. Some law books like the Manusmriti condone it and give detailed instructions on how to implement it. But the Manusmriti is not a revealed or holy book nor is it binding. Many Hindus will insist on the primacy of caste purity in dietary customs and marriage. But that is all bullshit in my opinion. As far as I am concerned, it is totally possible to practice Hinduism without practicing caste bigotry. Look at traditions like Shramanism and Bhaktism to gain a deeper understanding. Also look at Dharmic religions like Jainism, Sikhism, and Buddhism because they share philosophical tenets with Hinduism while opposing caste in all its forms. Whatever you do, please do not glorify caste or caste pride. It is a real problem that we are still grappling with and we don't need people to add to it.

4. Research our names and the places we come from and the languages we speak and the food we eat. Hindu names are not easy to map if you are an outsider. A name can give you a lot of information about their mother tongue, the region they come from, and the kind of food they grew up with. It isn't a hard rule but chances are that Harpreet Saini from Jalandhar didn't usually eat idlis for breakfast and Kamakshi Patel would normally have no idea how to make perfect Kashmiri gushtaba. If you are going to disregard this advice though and break these rules, then please have a decent backstory to explain it.

As for writing about Hindu Gods, I would advise you against it since you aren't from the culture and that could work against you while writing. As for movies, I think those are fine. You can write as much as you like about Bollywood and other Indian cinema as long as you are respectful and don't stereotype anything.

Tagging @mayavanavihariniharini @avani008 @medhasree @incurablescribbler @allegoriesinmediasres @parlegee in case I've missed anything.

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dailyaudiobible · 5 years

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01/31/2019 DAB Transcript

Exodus 12:14-13:16, Matthew 20:29-21:22, Psalms 25:16-22, Proverbs 6:12-15

Today is the 31st day of January and we all know what that means. This is the last day of the first month of the year. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I'm Brian. Congratulations by the way. We’re about to complete our first full month together and I don't know about you but God is speaking to me through His word this month. I have pages and pages of journal notes and I am eager, I am hungry for all that God will speak to us throughout the rest of this year, but let's not get ahead of ourselves or behind ourselves. Let's be here now doing what we’re doing, which is taking the next step forward and allowing God's word to open up to us. We’re reading from the common English Bible this week and we’re picking up the story of the plagues and the Egyptians and we’re coming to a conclusion on that pretty dramatic retelling of God freeing his people from slavery. Exodus chapter 12 verse 14 through 13 verse 16 today.

Commentary:

Okay. So, in the book of Exodus the final plague descended upon Egypt, which was the death of the firstborn, which certainly caused the Egyptians to drive the Israelites out. So, we’re just completing our first month together, like our first month in the Bible. And, so, we can stand here together around this global campfire and look backward and see just how much ground we have covered in 31 days. And we end this month on a pretty high note, freedom. So, let's, look at the lay of the land as we close this month and begin to begin the second month of the year. Let’s just kind of orient ourselves. So, the children of Israel have just been set free from slavery and almost immediately God is handing down traditions that they are to follow in all of their future generations. So, all of the sudden ritual begins to come into the story immediately and this gives us a pretty good opportunity to talk about the Old Testament and the New Testament and what's going on. So, here in the book of Exodus we’re millennia from the birth of Jesus. So, where we sit in the book of Exodus is a couple of thousand years before Jesus was born and where we sit today is a couple of thousand years after. So, where we are in the continuum is that Jesus is kind of in the middle of the scenario, which is a great metaphor. We could probably come up with something cool to talk about that, but that’s just where it is in time. Jesus, from where we are to where Moses was, Jesus was kind of in the middle there. So, the children of Israel are just walking into their freedom, but before they will have their promised land they have to completely be transformed, right? They’re slaves, this is all they know. For 430 years all they've known is slavery. So, they have to be washed clean of that identity and set up a whole infrastructure and culture that would allow them to be free people, independent people. So, what's going to come later is that God is going to give them the law, right? And it will be extensive, and we will read it in its entirety. And that Mosaic law will govern the culture and the people, and this will still be going on when Jesus comes, which moves us into the book of Matthew.

And we get to the opportunity to look at this law, this thing that kind of encompasses how they are to behave and relate to God and one another. Jesus was born into that system and He grew up and began to minister from that context, that paradigm. And yet His entire ministry, He's critiquing the religious system, right? Like that's what he's critiquing. And, so, Jesus, God in the flesh, comes and critiques what has become of the law and what has been…and how it has been used to, in some ways, re-enslave the people, but that was not its intention. And we get clues about that in today's reading from Exodus because the people have just been set free and they are walking out of Egypt out into the desert and God begins to give them traditions. This is what you're supposed to do every year on this day. And the reason is so that they won't forget what happened. So, he's baking in ritual into their culture and He flat out tells them, the reason is so that in future generations when your children ask you, “why are we doing this stuff”, you can tell them, “it's because of what the Lord did for me when I came out of Egypt.” So, God is instituting rituals and customs and He will institute laws. And, you know, some of them will be archaic to our way of living in the world today, but they weren't at the time, they were contemporary at the time. So, God will give these laws and we can read them and go, “the law, the law, man there’s just so many rules regulations, who could ever live up to this”? And that would be true, no one will be able to perfectly obey the law because the law wasn't only about behavior modification, like this is what you can do, and this is what you can't do within your physical body. This is how you are to behave, right? God was instituting the laws that were connected to the heart so that the Hebrew people could live their lives and have constant reminders in every conceivable way about where they came from, who they are, who God is, and where they're going. It was baked in. By the time that Jesus had come the children of Israel had been through exiles, many of the tribes were utterly gone, they disappeared, they’d been assimilated into other people groups. And the law remained but it wasn't this thing connected to the heart that continually reminded people of their identity. It was the rules, it was the rules that you must obey so that a vengeful God will not come down and smite you and it was also used to control the population.

So, Jesus, God, the same being who gave the law came in person at a specific time and used His ministry in many ways to critique what had become of the law. So, Jesus comes in and starts saying things and starts breaking traditions and starts rattling the cages and getting people angry with Him, but what does He have to say about it? “I’m looking for people with eyes to see and ears to hear”. And, of course, it was the religious establishment that didn't have either of those. And they conspired and successfully killed Jesus, which is the territory that we’re moving into in the book of Matthew and that we’ll be seeing for the first time in the coming days.

That's the lay of the land in the Bible. Now we’re 2000 years in the future. And we have to critique ourselves because so often it still does boil back down to the rules. Maybe we’re not following the Mosaic law anymore, but we've distilled Jesus teachings down to do's and don'ts and somehow feel like it's our responsibility to troll everything from the Internet to our church pews as appointed deputies to sniff out sin. And yet Jesus response to that would be sniff out your own sin. Believe me, it smells enough, you don't gotta go smell the sin of everybody else or in his own vernacular, “get the log out of your own eye before you try to get the speck out of your brothers.” So, the month of January has given us a swift kick in the pants on a number of levels and has touched a lot of places inside of us and has brought us a lot of context for the story that we’re not only living through as we read the Bible, but the story we’re living in in our lives. And if we'll just let it come like we are, day by day, wave after wave as every day we come in out of the cold and come into the warmth of the global campfire, each and every day were given something. We don't have to assimilate all of this all of the time. Like, so much has happened in January alone in the Bible that we could just start over and keep doing January the whole year. There's enough here. What we need to do is relax. God will bring us what we need to live into today. Let's live into what the Scriptures bring us today. If we can live into what he brings us each and every day in the course of the year He will touch everything.

Prayer:

Father, we thank You for this month. You are big on commemorating and remembering things. And, so, we commemorate and we remember that we have journeyed one month together in this year and we have 11 to go and we are committing ourselves because You are speaking to us and things are shifting and its unexplainable because You're working from within. So, come Holy Spirit we mark this day. We have made it a month. Give us the strength the commitment the endurance and perseverance to continue for the next month. Come Holy Spirit we pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is the website, its home base, its where you find out what’s going on around here. So, be sure to stay connected

You can visit the Daily Audio Bible shop. There are number of resources that are available to take you through this journey, like the Daily Audio Bible journals or the Blackwing writing paraphernalia that I'm a big fan of and use every day. These are resources to commemorate, to write down so that you can review remember who you are, where you've come from, who God is, where you're going. God told the children of Israel, “write these things down” and He baked in rituals and customs so that they wouldn't forget. So, this is just a modern version of that. And, of course, you can go anywhere you want, buy whatever journal you want and whatever you want to write with, that's fine. We have these resources available for this purpose. God's gonna speak, we should be taking notes, and if we’re gonna read the Bible then God is speaking.

There are other resources available, like some of the things we were just talking about as we were contextualizing where we are and looking at the life of Jesus. Yeah, I mean, there's a longer discussion about this beautiful Savior and what He means to our humanity because we’re so often living our lives confused and waiting to die basically, when Jesus transforms the way we are supposed to be human. And that discussion can be found in the resource called “Sneezing Jesus”. And all of the resources that we've ever created at Daily Audio Bible have been to further the journey, to make it go deeper, to allow this transformation to be permanent, to create irreversible change in our lives. So, check that out.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible. If you've gone through this month and light, and life has come into your world and you’re beginning to find a rhythm that this is bringing life to you, then thank you for being life-giving because what we've done and what we are doing is something that we are doing together, right? Makes no sense for me to do this by myself. I could be my introverted self and just do it quietly. We’re in this together and what we've done we've done together, and it’s been pretty remarkable. And, so, if it’s been a life-giving thing to you, then thank you for being a life-giving source back to the community. There's a link on the homepage of dailyaudiobible.com. If you are using the Daily Audio Bible app, you can press the Give button in the upper right-hand corner or, if you prefer, the mailing address is PO Box 1996 Spring Hill Tennessee 37174.

And, as always, if you have a prayer request or comment, 877-942-4253 is the number to dial.

And that's it for today. I'm Brian I love you and I'll be waiting for you here tomorrow.

Community Prayer and Praise:

Hello Daily Audio Bible, this is Isabel from Australia. The Lord’s just been really burning in my heart to pray for Margo from Australia who’s gone to her mission trip with her husband. Margo, the Lord is with you, don’t ever feel that you’re by yourself. He has called you and your husband, you’re not alone, the Lord’s with you, all your Daily Audio Bible family are praying for you too and we love you. You know, just keep your chin up, just keep on trusting in the Lord. I’ve been praying for you and I know that the Lord is with you and just don’t stress and just be happy and just see God’s heart through all of this, that you’re now doing the service for the Lord, you’re being obedient to Him and see God’s heart through all of this and God will bless you. In the beginning it’s hard but then later you’ll get used to the people and you’ll start loving the people the way the Lord us. May God bless you and your husband. I’ll be continuing praying for both of you and that the Lord keeps on, you know, healing your heart and your anxiety about everything because I know it’s a big change, but the Lord’s with you and where with you too. We love you Margo. Bye. God bless you

Good morning Daily Audio Bible family, this is Julie from Albany. Thank you for your prayers for my younger brother. This morning I’m calling…I’m calling for you Angela in California. Angela, as I was listening this morning to other prayers some things that Mike from London was saying I felt were…you just can’t replace these words. First of all, I’m just…shame…I just agree with this. God feels our pain. God can heal all. Always pray, lean on Him. Let Him be there for you. Just believe. He will take care of us but here’s the kicker, we have to let Him. Our prayers don’t go unanswered. So, pray, be in peace. I pray that the Lord heal your depression, I pray that He heal all those bad thoughts that you’re having, I pray that He bless you and lead you in the path to get the right help that you need to get you through this. And there is no…nothing bad in that. As a nurse of 35 years I say it’s okay and pray that the Lord…I pray that the Lord will direct you in that path because you are beautiful, you are irreplaceable. God doesn’t make junk. So, I hear you and I’m praying for you Angela and I’m gonna to pray and pray and pray and pray for you that all will be well. This too shall pass. Just believe, just pray to Him Angela with all of your heart and soul. We love you.

Hi family, I’m just calling for Angela from California. Now, you called in saying that you had suicidal thoughts and you wanted to take you live. And I’m just calling to, number one, cancel the assignment over her life from the enemy and I bind him right now and I cast him out. All of you evil spirits, suicide spirits, spirits of torment, spirits of depression, out in Jesus’ name and I ask Lord for the peace that surpasses all understanding to come over Angela, that she may be strengthened and that she can get through this because with God all things are possible. Lord, thank You, thank You for the family, thank You for this Daily Audio Bible and we trust You and we love You. Amen.

Hello DAB family this is Shantae calling from Metro Detroit and I am calling in today to say hello to everybody. And I can’t stress it enough, if you are going through something and you have burdens, give them to the Lord, but also call into the DAB, let us pray for you because when I called in last time and many times previously as well with my prayer requests and I hang up the phone and instantly I feel God’s peace in such an intense level and it’s all of our prayers just joined together. There’s power in numbers and we don’t have to go to this alone. When you call in, that’s with Brian tells you when you call into the hotline or whatever you want to call it, our family line or whatever. But anyway, so I really encourage you all to call in and just want to let you all know that I’m doing much better. My circumstances haven’t changed all that much but by perspective and God’s peace is just upon me and each time I have anxious thoughts I just give them to the Lord and I just really encourage you all, call in, let us know how you’re doing and know that you are loved, know that there are thousands upon thousands praying for you. So, I will talk with y’all later. Love you all. Bye-bye.

Hi good morning, this is Bridget from New York City again. I just heard Angela’s prayer request. Today is January 24th. Angela, I’m just gonna to lift you up in prayer. Heavenly Father, Lord, I just thank You for Angela’s life. I thank You that You’ve given her purpose on this earth Lord and I just I pray Father for her to see Your purpose for her life Father God. Father, You’ve chosen her, Your word says that You’ve chosen her to be a vessel of You light Father God. Your word says that Your Holy Spirit resides within her Father God. I just pray for Your Holy Spirit to give her strength, to give her mental strength, to give her emotional strength, to give her physical strength Father. Lord, Holy Spirit can revive what is dead inside of her. So, I pray for light. I pray that You would just desire light. I pray that Your generational legend would be light, that Your story would be a story of light, that Your children would see light, that You would want and desire light for God does not call the dead, He calls the living. You are living Angela. May the Lord bless You. The word says, “may the Lord bless You, keep You, You may not be harmed.” Father, God, calm her mind. Lord, surround her with warming angels, Father. Bless her mind Father that she may take every word captive and give it back to You Lord and that every word that comes to a at her Father that she will lift up the shield of faith and know that You are with her and that she would remember Your words and the love that You pour into her Father God. Angela, the Lord calls us to call out on…

He there this is a call for Angela in California. You called the prayer line on January 24th and you were talking about your mental illness with depression and your thoughts of suicide. And Angela, I am so thankful that you called in. It’s so good for those of us who don’t struggle with depression to hear what its really like so that we can have compassion. My mother struggles with bipolar disorder and I get really frustrated when I don’t understand when she’s in a depressive episode. So, thank you so much for your honesty and your vulnerability. Angela, I just pray for you that God gives you peace. You’re clinging onto Him and I promise you He won’t snuff you out. Continue to cling onto Him. And Angela amid a prayer of you Numbers 6:24-26. “May the Lord bless you and keep you. May the Lord make His face shine on you and be gracious to you. May the Lord turn His face toward you and give you peace.” Angela keep holding on and keep putting one foot in front of the other. The Lord is there with you, and He loves you and He wants to take you into His bosom and heal you completely. Hang in there, friend, and call us back. Bye-bye.

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