#seriously that guy had too many ancestry issues

[lurafita]

Magnus discovers Jace's heritage

In today's episode of 'imaginary scenes that never canonically happened but still live in my head rent free':

Magnus: "So my dear shadowhunters, what's new? Catch me up."

Clary: "Valentine is Jace's father. We are siblings."

Jace: "And he injected me with demon blood while I was still in my mother’s womb."

Alec: "He disguised himself as Wayland for all those years he raised Jace in Exile."

Magnus, sighing: "... Where do I even begin... Okay. You two are aware that you look nothing alike, right?"

Clary: "Recessive genes can do that."

Magnus, sighing louder: "...Alright, Blondie. Strip."

Jace: "What, why?!"

Alec: "Uhm, yeah, what he said." (not that he is jealous that Magnus wants to see another man naked. No sir. He is very decidedly not jealous. ... he will find a reason to shuck his shirt in front of Magnus later.)

Magnus: "This institute is protected by my wards. As is Pandemonium, as well as my apartment, which is warded even heavier. All of which you have been present in. You have been to the Silent City and were in the presence of the silent brothers. There are exactly two ways to keep demonic blood from being discovered by either angelic runes like they are at the silent city, the silent brothers themselves, or my wards. One is regular contact with a very powerful warlock to cast a very complicated spell on you. As I doubt you have been seeing one for every month of your life, that leaves number 2. Which is a demonic mark, which can only be given by a greater demon, and can only be seen by those who know it and are actively looking for it. So, off with those drab clothes so I can take a look."

Jace: strips

Magnus: sees the Herondale birthmark, sighs and starts to write a fire message

Alec: "What are you doing?"

Magnus: "Informing the Inquisitor that she has a grandson. 'Congratulations, it's a boy!'"

[alsjeblieft-zeg]

438 of 2022

Medical How many surgeries have you had?

Two, one of them was major.

Do you have a doctor that you see regularly?

Yeah, a neurologist and the doctor who takes care of my rehabilitation.

Do you have health insurance?

Of course I do, one from work and one private. Without it, my medical costs would overpower me.

What are some medical issues you're currently dealing with?

Rather lifelong, but oh well. Epilepsy and some physical disability.

Why did you last take pain medication?

I don’t take pain medication. Most of it would make the medication I have to take daily less effective. I only do it after consulting it with my doctor so it’s safe for me.

Biological What physical traits have you inherited from your father?

Eyes.

How about your mother?

Nose shape, definitely.

Do you have any children?

No, and I don’t want to have.

What are your parents names?

Ellen and Stefaan, seems to be common here.

What personality traits do you wish your children would inherit from you?

I don’t want to havre children.

Geographical Where are you, right now?

On the couch in my living room.

What country were you born in?

Belgium.

Where were you raised for most of your life?

Middelkerke, Belgium.

What parts of the world are your ancestors from?

Well, Belgium of course. :P My mum is half-German, my dad is half-Dutch, and I have some ancestry in Poland and France, too.

What's the closest major city to your hometown?

I guess Oostende, but when it comes to capital coty of the whole province, it’s Bruges.

Zoological What is your favorite animal?

Cat. Seriously, miauwtjes all the way.

Do you have any pets, and if so, what kind and what are their names?

I do, I have two cats, their names are Victoria and Suzanne.

Have you ever had a strange pet, outside of the normal animals people keep?

No, never.

When was the last time you went to the zoo?

30 years ago? I remember I hated it.

What's the last wild animal you've seen in person?

Deer, I guess.

Psychological Do you have any mental disorders?

Yeah, I have OCD and generalised anxiety disorder, and also my latest medical form says I show symptoms of depression. I’m not sure if it counts, but I’ve been diagnosed with ASD at some point in my life.

Do you take anti-depressants or anti-anxiety meds?

I don’t at the moment, but I used to.

When is the last time you saw a therapist or psychologist?

Two months ago.

What do you tend to think about the most, throughout the day?

Not what, but who :P one certain guy. And I tend to overthink everything.

Would you consider yourself paranoid or delusional?

No, not really. Just pretty anxious.

Astrological Do you believe in astrology?

Not at all.

What is your star sign?

Taurus.

When's the last time you read a horoscope and it actually came true?

Four years ago. But I came across it after it came true, so.

What are your best friends' signs?

I don’t feel like calculating it. It doesn’t even matter to me.

Do you think people act differently when there's a full moon?

Nah, I don’t believe in such things.

Physical Would you consider yourself to be in shape?

Well, I’m physically disabled.

When's the last time you went for a walk or went jogging?

I don’t run. Last time I went for a walk was yesterday.

What is your favorite work out?

Arm exercises, really.

How many times have you had sex in the past month?

Once or twice. It’s already too much.

Do you play any sports?

I used to play basketball in a team when I was a teenager, but later my health issues have forced me to stop. I miss it very much, though.

Environmental Do you recycle?

We have to sort our trash that goes to recycling later, if that counts. The government demands it.

Do you drive an electric car?

No, we have a diesel. All because diesel used to be cheaper than petrol back in time. And way cheaper than electric, not everyone can afford it.

What are your opinions on global warming?

No opinion, I’d rather not take sides.

Does your country use solar energy or wind power at all?

Of course? We have wind turbines all over the country, and it’s not uncommon to see houses with solar panels installed on the roof.

What do you do to make the world around you more environmentally friendly?

All above.

[reyloandotherfandoms]

When I first saw that Chris Terrio had given an interview “explaining” TROS, I wasn’t going to read it.

But then, I thought, hey! Let’s see what the corporate spin is on this disaster!

1.  “...it’s about taking the ideas that came from ‘VIII’ and trying to complicate them and develop them and to have some new surprises.”

Umm...the ideas from VIII were plenty complex. They didn’t need to be “complicated”, they needed to be explored. And if you were trying for new surprises, you failed utterly. Everything about this movie was completely predictable to anyone who’d seen the other eight movies. Okay, moving on.

2.  re: Rey Palpatine. Terrio argues that this reveal is in dialogue with “The Last Jedi” rather than just a ret-con of it.  What dialogue? The idea that the Force isn’t tied to bloodlines, that people can be strong no matter their ancestry, was a major theme of TLJ, and it was echoed even at the end, with Broom Boy. Saying that Rey actually did get her powers from her genetic heritage is directly opposed to that theme, not in dialogue with it. Unless, of course, that dialogue is nothing more than a taunt of “In your face, Johnson!” So that statement is some bullcrap. Next one.

3.  Terrio added that anyone who thinks he and Abrams ignored the direction of “The Last Jedi” or countered it rather than developed and deepened it...are “not understanding how writers think.” That’s an interesting statement, since what I’ve seen from this fandom is an enormous amount of creativity and intelligence, including fanfiction that is far superior to many works of published fiction. There are also innumerable meta that explore the story structure of the ST and of the three-trilogy body of work as a whole, written by people who know what they’re talking about. I agree that somebody doesn’t understand how writers think, but I don’t think it’s the fans.

4.  “We wanted to show all the characters growing in some way.“ One of my biggest problems with this movie was the static nature of the characters. They had basically no arcs whatsoever, except for Ben, whose arc has been building from Episode VII and who regresses immensely before making the final push to become Ben Solo again. So you failed at that, dude. Big time.

5.  “ Luke stopping Rey from tossing a saber away....That moment for us was about Luke having learned something and ... he will not let Rey make the same mistake that he did.” Unpopular opinion incoming -- I actually agree with this statement. That’s how I read the whole Luke interaction when I saw TROS. In TLJ, he was still too into his own head, still a bit of the whiny farm boy from Episodes IV and V; here, he actually seems to finally be wise. My issue with this particular Luke segment is simply that it was rushed too quickly (which was no different than the rest of the movie).

6.   “ As J.J. said, that it would almost be weird for Palpatine not to be in some way in this movie.” No, it wouldn’t, because he was canonically dead.Threats to peace can come from anywhere, and there were any number of big bads in the EU that could have been used here, if you didn’t want to go with an original character.

7.  “We probably could have written a whole movie that was just a lead up to Kylo Ren going to get the wayfinders...Where he now is the king, and he had to sort of earn the throne. And now, how will he perform as Supreme Leader?” Innumerable amounts of people would have paid such good money, multiple times, to watch that story, if it were done well (and probably if it were done in a mediocre way, to tell the truth). You left something really interesting in the Idea Trash Can.

8.  “I think Rey has to keep asking herself who she is and keep declaring who she is in the course of this movie, and that changes. At the beginning of the movie, Rey is a different person than she is at the end,” Actually, she’s not (see point #4 above). You may have intended for her to wrestle with her Palpatinian heritage, but then you never gave her time to do so (never even wrote it into the script, apparently). She struck me as frustratingly indifferent about it, to be honest. So, that’s another big fail for you.

9.  “I don’t think we think of it as she’s going to live there,” Terrio said. “We thought of it as just paying her respects and sort of undoing the original sin at the end of the third movie, which is the separation of the twins.“ Then that’s another big fail, because everyone I’ve talked to about that ending believes she is going back to live there. That was the message we got from the way it was written, shot, and edited. It says the exact opposite of what you’re claiming it says. So either a) you’re spouting bullcrap because you realize it was a horrible ending; or b) J.J. Abrams is an utterly incompetent filmmaker.

10. re: Rey Skywalker  “In the end, we thought that the final victory of the Light and the final act of self-affirmation for Rey was to declare that despite her blood she is a Skywalker. At that moment, the Skywalkers truly win the family saga.” Um, you people had a whole-ass actual Skywalker with a complex backstory and a tremendous fan following -- remember him? Yeah, the guy who sacrificed his life to save the woman he loved, the woman who was essentially his parents’ “replacement child” for him. He died and then was never mentioned again, and there is no indication that even his soulmate ever mourned his passing. That is not a win for the Skywalker family, not by any stretch of the imagination.

11. re: the Force Ghosts at the end.  “Spiritually, it’s not a crazy idea that all the Jedi would be standing with them, but it might’ve been a bit of a visual shock to see all these new characters on Tatooine who weren’t part of the story of Leia, Luke and Rey.” The Ben Solo erasure is breathtakingly astounding. I just can’t even with this. AN ENTIRE MAJOR CHARACTER FROM THE FRANCHISE’S MAJOR FAMILY DIES AND IS COMPLETELY IGNORED. It is absolutely shitty storytelling. But then again, I’m probably way off base here, since I “don’t understand how writers think.”

12. re: the specific Force Ghosts they chose.  “But, the twins never got to Tatooine together. So, the idea of seeing the twins together after the sabers are laid to rest felt like it was something that was very moving to me and J.J.” First of all, the twins were on Tatooine together in Episode VI, so jot that down. (Seriously, did these people even watch any of the other movies? Sure doesn’t seem like it, from the amount of canon that got exploded or ignored.) Second, I’m glad it was a moving idea for you and J.J.; how nice that you were able to share those feelings with each other. However, this movie isn’t about you. It’s about the story. And within the context of the story, it made no sense for Rey to go bury the sabers on Tatooine in the first place, no matter how great you all thought that Force Ghost thing felt. That, in short, is what was wrong with the entire movie -- it wasn’t about the actual story, at all. It was about making pretty set pieces and cool-looking battles. It was a shallow veneer that hid a hollow core.

Ugh. Enough. Had to have my say but am going to go write some more positive fanfiction now. Because what we need in the world is hope, not melancholy, and we sure didn’t get it from TROS.

[backupblogforjg]

The racism, sexism, homophobia, ableism and cruel tropes in Voltron

So, it’s the anniversary of the ending of Voltron. And I’m getting really, really tired of people saying that only shippers hated the ending. There were many issues with Voltron, and they were neither limited to shipping nor to S8.

So, I’ve decided to compile a list.

It gets LONG. Turns out there was a hell of a lot of racist, sexist, ableist and cruel tropes in VLD.

In fact, I had originally planned on writing a list of both the terrible tropes and the plot holes. But there just wasn’t enough room for both. The post is huge as it is, and with the plot holes, it would have been twice as long, so I had to focus on only one thing.

Salt, obviously. So, so, so much salt. I could turn a lake into a sea here. You’ve been warned.

RACISM:

1) The Alteans are genocide survivors. Out of all the Alteans, only the black Altean was used for a Reverse Racism story where she resents a teammate for belonging to the race that exterminated hers. The white Alteans are totally cool with him, and with his race in general, and only hate the bad people. But the black one had to be taught that hating people because of their race is wrong.

2) VLD Allura is also the only version of Allura who is black. In every other Voltron media (several different cartoons and comics), Allura is blond with blue eyes. All the white versions of the character get a happy ending, while only the black version ends up dying to save the world.

While "hero sacrifices their life to save the world" is not a bad trope in and of itself, it becomes bad when it kills off one of the extremely few black female characters in leading roles. You kill off a white male hero, there are 463278462387 more. You kill off the black female hero, you are kinda screwed. Making it worse, Allura had been portrayed as suffering from depression throughout the latest seasons, so that her death comes across less as heroic sacrifice and more as suicide.

3) The brown Cuban kid who dreamed of being a pilot, and never once in 78 episodes ever expressed anything but sheer love for an exciting life, in the final two minutes of the final episode ends up realizing that the place for him is a farm.

4) As told in interviews, Lotor was meant to be a bad example of mixed-race person, to contrast him with Keith as good example of mixed race person. Do I even have to point out how messed up this is?

5) Even before they became Space Nazis, back when they were still on the side of the angels, the Galra invaded and conquered planets. This is portrayed as totally cool when they happily name the prince after a "hero" who invaded and conquered a lot of worlds, and the peaceful Alteans think the guy is just as heroic as one of their greatest scientists. Apparently there is such a thing as ethically killing people to steal their land.

6) They whitewashed Keith, a character who is poc in every other iteration of Voltron.

I’m sure a lot of people are going to get angry here, claiming that I hate Keith. Let me assure you, I don’t. I love Keith, and I hate what was done to him. I hate that they took a traditionally poc character and went to frankly ridiculous lengths to erase that part of his character. Keith should be Asian, and it would be incredibly easy to make him so in VLD (seriously, all they’d have to do is update the freaking bios, an intern could do it right now in 5 minutes). But they refuse to do it.

A lot of people don’t realise that the surname “Kogane” in VLD is fanon.

I’m serious. Check his official bios page. Keith is not actually called Keith Kogane in VLD. Fans started calling him that in fanfiction, and it stuck, but it’s not canon.

In every other Voltron media, Keith is an Asian guy. But in VLD, they:

- went out of their way to always avoid giving him an Asian surname

- gave him a Texan father

- refused to confirm his race, even when every other character had a specific race. Again, check his official bios. All the other characters got a race, Keith gets “human.” It got so ridiculous it would be funny if it weren’t sad. It pretty much went like this:

Fans: Keith is half alien, but about his human half, what is his ethnicity? EPs: oh, we couldn't possibly say, because the story takes place in the future, and in the future, everybody is mixed up! So, Keith is HUMAN, we can't give him a specific race because there are no specific races in the future! Fans: ok. And what are the races of the other characters? EPs: Pidge is Italian, Lance is Cuban, Hunk is half-black half- Samoan, Shiro is Japanese. Fans: but Keith...? EPs: HUMAN! There is no such thing as race in the future!

Some people at least hoped that Keith's Texan father had Asian ancestry because he kinda looked like Shiro, who is Japanese. But the EPs confirmed that the resemblance was just a coincidence, they never meant for the dad to look Japanese.

At this point pretty much the only evidence that Keith is Asian is that he is voiced by an Asian person. But then, Josh Keaton is not Japanese, is he?

7) After whitewashing Keith, they claimed he is the best leader of Voltron, better than his poc predecessor, because he has Galra blood.

So, instead of bringing up any sort of legit reason to justify why Keith should be in charge (like his empathy or pilot skills), they go with "the half-white guy is also half space-nazi and that's why he should give the orders instead of the poc guy."

If you think I’m bashing Keith here, please ask yourself why you are getting angry at the person pointing out the whitewashing instead of getting angry at the whitewashing. Especially when, again, making VLD Keith canonically poc could be done anytime with zero cost and zero effort, and DW just doesn’t want to.

- Hunk, the half-black half-Samoan guy, was going to be killed and replaced as Paladin by a blue alien. The EPs were pissed when DW forbade them to, and complained in the interview about it.

SEXISM:

Every single woman who is ever put in charge ends up going insane, making terrible decisions that endanger her planet, or losing all of her authority.

Allura starts out as co-leader of Voltron and leader of the Coalition. Ends up as a foot soldier who takes orders from the new leader and his right-hand man, and is treated as a cadet by the Earth military.

HOMOPHOBIA:

1) Dreamworks, Netflix and the EPs very, very, very heavily promoted S7 as GLBT-friendly. The EPs gave whole interviews about the past relationship between Shiro and new character Adam, retweeted a ton of posts celebrating Shiro’s homosexuality, and enthusiastically sent tweets like "you are going to see more of Adam in S7! :D" from their personal accounts after they showed the episode that introduced him.

In S7:

- Shiro's homosexuality is so ambiguous that even the Brazilian voice actor didn't realize that he was supposed to be gay. Just by watching the show, without knowing the World Of God, you can’t tell he and the other guy were engaged.

- Adam gets about 30 seconds of screentime after that one episode they had already shown. Then he dies screaming in pain and terror in a fire.

A lot of people claimed that it was okay to kill Adam because Shiro was supposed to be our rep, not Adam, who was a brand new character we knew little about. And, out of context, that would be true. Adam was pretty much a NPC, why would his death matter?

But the problem here is the context:

- Shiro is closeted in S7, you need to read interviews to know he is gay. So, if only Shiro is meant to be the rep, they couldn’t even do that right.

- They very heavily marketed both Shiro and Adam as gay rep, and specifically talked at length about Adam in several interviews.

In THAT context, REGARDLESS of what you ship, killing off Adam revealed a complete willingness to manipulate the audience to the point of outright lying. Even if you hated Adam, even if Adashi is your NOTP, the clear evidence that the creators had absolutely no problem making empty promises was NOT a good sign.

2) The moment Shiro is revealed to be gay in interviews, he is practically quarantined from the Team.

3) Shiro is also given a Totally Not AIDS deadly disease.

Making it even worse, Shiro never actually gets cured in canon. We are told he is cured in interviews, but the show itself drops the topic entirely. Depending on where you lean in the Word Of God VS Death Of The Author debate, Shiro may be doomed to die.

4) A female villain is revealed to be a lesbian. 30 seconds later she gleefully tortures a little girl. Then she, too, dies in a fire.

(Fan outrage about pulling two Bury Your Gays in the Season that had been very heavily promoted as GLBT-friendly caused DW to retcon her death and bring her back in S8, but she was originally meant to die in the explosion)

5) Shiro ends up marrying a random character who doesn’t even get a name in the show.

ABLEISM:

1) Shiro's PTSD magically disappears offscreen. In interviews, the EPs claimed that he "got over it" between S6 and S7 because "he is a professional." Wow! Who knew being a professional magically cures mental illnesses!

2) Shiro is an amputee. The EPs admitted that they never put any thought into his status as disabled rep, they just wanted a character with a cool-looking arm. It literally didn't occur to them that making him lose his arm (TWICE! First up to the biceps, then up to the shoulder) meant anything. Also worth noting that Shiro’s new arm makes him look like the guy who tormented him.

3) Shiro is systematically robbed of his agency.

- He is the only Paladin who never gets to use his bayard.

- He loses his bond with Black for no given canon reason (and the reason they give in interviews makes no sense, they basically say that transferring his soul out of the Black Lion makes her stop loving him. But she still lets Zarkon fly her!).

I know that Keith is traditionally Black’s pilot in Voltron media (although that shouldn’t matter, because VLD made a lot of huge changes to the traditional status quo). But if they wanted Black Paladin Keith that badly, they could have given some non-insulting reason for it. For example, say “because Shiro has spent so much time within Black, their bond is now so strong that he will get absorbed again if he flies her again.” Or co-pilots in Black (if Pidge can co-pilot with Matt, why can’t Shiro co-pilot with Keith?).

- He is defeated not only by Sendak, but also by a bunch of random Alteans. He basically can’t win a fight anymore unless it’s played for laughs.

- His new robot Atlas is bigger than Voltron, but also much weaker, and can only buy a few minutes for Voltron to come save the day.

- Every single enemy he ever defeated comes back to be finished off by somebody else (even the friggin' Gladiator from S1 comes back in S8). In the epilogue, he retires in his twenties.

4) Narti, the disabled General, is fridged shortly after her introduction. For a while at least it seemed like her death had affected the remaining three Generals, but then it turns out that the "For Narti" line was a trick and they never actually planned on avenging her.

CRUEL TROPES:

1) They intentionally baited the fans by pushing the plot thread that Lotor would be redeemed. They named the episode where he defects "A New Defender," they kept saying in interviews that they come from Avatar and they are very familiar with Zuko *hint hint*, they showed his family as incredibly abusive and Lotor himself as desperate, they showed that Lotor was a victim of severe racism (he is mixed race, and as stated above, the Galra are Space Nazis and are pretty obsessed with blood purity).

Then, after revealing him to be a villain, they gave an interview where they practically dislocated their shoulders by patting themselves on the back as they gleefully bragged that "we made them think we would give them a Zuko, but we gave them an Azula!"

(Nevermind the fact that Azula herself was a 14-year-old child, not a monster, and that Aaron Ehasz himself confirmed that he always wanted her to be redeemed).

When fans who are survivors of child abuse told them that the bait-and-switch was really hurtful, they laughed it off, and claimed that Lotor was just beyond redemption. Then they proceeded to redeem Lotor's abusive parents, who were objectively much worse.

2) Shiro’s clone, who sincerely believed he was Shiro and always meant well, was dehumanised, demonised and discarded like his life meant nothing. His short existence was full of pain from literally the moment he first opened his eyes, as Haggar kept torturing him with migraines to manipulate him. In the end, she brutally violates him body and mind, and brainwashes him to force him to turn on the family he was so desperate to find in The Journey. He dies in incredibly questionable circumstances, without ever getting to learn that his family survived Haggar’s plans. He is victim-blamed for the things she forced him to do against his will with mind-control, and is never mourned because the only family he ever had writes him off as a “thing” and “evil.”

In fact, the horrific treatment of Kuron foreshadowed S8. The Medium article “It never stops at one - Why Voltron: Legendary Defender's tragic ending wasn't a surprise and why more DreamWorks' series will follow suit” explains how.

The tl;dr version is that, when a story posits that the circumstances of your birth determine the value of your life, so that good intentions and hard work mean nothing, and long-established bonds can be discarded with zero thought and care, and your very humanity can be revoked over something you have absolutely no control over, and the whole sociopathic disaster is celebrated as a happy ending... it really, really can’t end well. Not just for you, but for the entire cast.

[phantoms-lair]

Uncommon Ancestry Snippet 8

Lewis considered it a small mercy washing machines hadn't changed much in the last century or so (no matter how much Arthur complained about stagnating technology). He liked to be helpful, and doing chores around the house one way he could. Besides, Izuku usually did his own laundry and he barely had time to himself with his new training regime. 

 Lewis pulled one of the school blazers to check the washing instructions, and noticed what looked like a burn on the shoulder, almost in the mark of a handprint. 

 Where do you think you're going, Kingsmen? 

 He shook his head, trying to erase the memory.  Sometimes he didn't understand how Arthur could have forgiven him, much less married him. He pulled out another blazer, only to find another burn on the upper arm. He emptied out the load and saw more burns on the sleeves of the jackets and shirts, and marks of patching on others. 

Calm down. This doesn't mean anything. He works in a place with fire, you got him that job yourself Still he'd need to check, that many burns would be a safety issue, which meant finding a different place for Izuku to work. And if it wasn't- it has to be. No. Jumping to conclusions helped no one. He'd just ask his grandson himself, and he'd see there was nothing to worry about.

Lewis knocked gently on the door just above the All Might plaque. "Izu-kun, do you have a moment?"

Izuku popped his head up from the text he was studying. "Sure, Grandfather, what's up?”  Lewis opened the door, what Izuku had recognized as his signature housekeeping apron tied around his torso. "I was doing the laundry and noticed your shirts had a lot of burn marks, especially on the shoulder. Are there safety concerns in that kitchen?" 

 "Oh, no the jobs going great. Those are from Kaachan." Izuku's voice dipped lower as he spoke. 

"What's a Kaachan when it's at home?" It better be something like a dog with fiery paws, because if it's a person- No, don’t even think it. Don’t let the past color the future.

"He's one of my classmates. We were friends when we were kids, but that kinda of changed when his quirk came in and mine didn't. He likes to call me Deku and burn my stuff. He was really mad when I was applying for UA because he thought he was the only person in the school worthy to go and-" Izuku cut off as Grandfather Lewis's calm demeanor was betrayed by his hair burst into flames. "Grandfather?" 

 "I'll be right back." Lewis turned around and began to float down the hall. 

"Grandfather?" Izuku ran after him, thankful Grampa Arthur and Grandma Vivi had come up to see what was happening.

"Lewlew, calm down, I haven't seen you this worked up in centuries." Vivi joked, thought there was concern in her voice. 

 "I am calm." Lewis said in a tone that was anything but. 

"The bonfire on your head says otherwise, Big Guy. What's wrong?" 

 "What's wrong is some pissant bully has been using his power to burn our Izu-kun because he thinks having a quirk gives him the right to." Lewis's hair was burning brighter and his appearance started to fade into his wraith form.

"Lewis, no." Vivi said in a flat voice. 

"No, what do you mean no?" Lewis growled

 "She means you can't go full spirit of vengeance on a fourteen year old kid. Because that what we're dealing with. A dumb kid." Lewis glared at him, petulantly. Arthur threw up his hands, "I'm not saying we do nothing. That's assault, Lew. There are legal channels to handle this shit." 

"They won't work." All three, plus Inko who'd come to see what the commotion was about, turned to look at Izuku. "Kaachan is going to be a great hero, so the school won't do anything to hurt his chances, since it makes them look good."

 Vivi let out a harsh laugh, "Are you kidding? That's the stupidest thing I ever heard." Izuku looked at her confused. "Seriously? They think someone who uses their quirk to assault classmates because he views them as lesser-" 

"Very illegal, by the way," Arthur chimed in. 

 "-is going to be a hero? Sounds like a villain if ever there was one."

It felt like something shattered in Izuku. It had been a constant since they had been three, something every adult said. Katsuki Bakugou was going to be a great hero someday "That can't be true, everyone says he's going to be a great hero. His quirk -" 

"Means nothing to us," Arthur waved it aside. "Has this guy ever done anything heroic?" 

Of course Izuku wanted to say, but the words caught in his throat. He wracked his brain, trying to find something. He scoured every memory he had of Kaachan. There were plenty of people praising him for his 'heroic' quirk but...almost as soon as he'd gotten it he'd used it to attack and bully other. Izuku had once been his closest friend, but Kaachan had turned him in an instant the moment he wasn't 'worthy' enough. He considered everyone around him, even the teachers, just stepping stones to his success. He destroyed peoples things and reacted in violence when something didn't go his way. Those weren't the actions of a hero.

"I think we all need some rest." Vivi cut in. "We'll talk to the school tomorrow. If they don't do anything, we lawyer up, because as my wonderful husband pointed out, this is very illegal behavior." She floated up and kissed Lewis's cheek. "I know you're protective of our family, Love, but going out in a rage would do more harm than good." 

"I know, I know. I just-" Lewis's flames died down. "There were burn marks on the shoulder of his clothes, a lot of them." 

And then Vivi understood. Back during the bad times Arthur had sported some shirts with the same mark. That reminder must have shook Lewis up enough that he lost his reason. "Come back to the attic with me."

"You gonna be okay, Zu?" Arhutr asked, as Inko steadied her son. 

 "Yeah, it's just a bit of a shock." 

 "Let me see your shoulder," Arthur insisted. "I'm pretty good at treating burn wounds." Not that he’d ever admit how he got that way.

"It's nothing, Kaachan's got enough control it usually doesn't penetrate the clothes anymore. If anything, It's more likely bruised from fighting off the slime guy."

Arthur pursed his lips, unhappy that it sounded like he'd gained that control through trial and error on Izuku. He saw the burgeoning anger in Inko's eyes. She was reigning it in better, but she was just as pissed as the rest of them. 

Izuku chuckled nervously, obviously still shaken. "Good thing I didn't mention he told me the best way to become a hero was to through myself off the school and pray for better luck in the next life. Grandfather Lewis would have really freaked out." 

 Arthur shot his eyes up to Inko, and saw a rage as bright as Lewis that then froze. A shiver went down his non-existent spine. He'd seen that freeze before, in Vivi. It never boded well. 

 "Grandmother is right, we should all get some rest." Her voice held a cheeriness her eyes betrayed as a lie. Thankfully Izuku wasn't looking anyone in the eye, so he believed her fake calm as she led him back to his room.

Arthur stayed with her as she walked Izuku back to his room, and left with her as well, promising Izuku he'd be back in a moment. "Do I need to remind you not to kill the fourteen year old too." 

"Oh, I'm not going to physically harm him." Inko had never looked so much like Vivi. "I'm just going to make sure where things stand are perfectly clear." 

~

"Been a while, Inko, what brings you here?" Mitsuki asked, brightly. 

"I just need to talk to you and Katsuki, if that's alright." 

"Sure, Hey brat, get down here." 

 "What do you want?" Katsuki snarled, coming down the stairs. 

 "Just something I wanted to make clear." Inko smiled and opened the bag she brought. She pulled out several shirts and jackets, burns most prominent on the wrists and shoulders. Pencil boxes, textbooks, notebooks, all shown signs of destruction at the literal hands of Katsuki's quirk. "Keep your son away from mine. I've brought this up with the school, but as I can't trust those biased bastards to be responsible for a rabbit, I've come here to warn you. Should my Izuku come home with one more hand shaped burn on his person or property, I will personally destroy you." Her pleasant tone never wavered.

Katsuki snorted as Mitsuki paled. "You and what army?" 

"Lawyers." Inko answered brightly. "A police record would ruin your chances of getting into any good school, much less UA. And I have more than enough evidence to have you charged with assault and illegal quirk use. The only reason you're getting another chance is the people who should have taught you better have utterly failed to do so. But this is your only chance. Throw it away at your own leisure."

~~~~

 I was worried I was being to hard on him, but I rewatched Season 1 and seriously, FUCK Bakugou. Dude acts like a sociopath and the fact that no one ever blinks at his violent acts towards Izuku means it happens so often they’re desensitized to it.

And while yes, the adults in his life are enabling rather than correcting, the fact of the matter is Bakugou is old enough to know right from wrong. He knew exactly what he was doing when he suicide baited Izuku in episode one, and act that could have ended in his own death, as if Izuku had followed through, no one would have saved him from the slime villain (an act Bakugou is distinctly ungrateful for as well, putting his injured pride above the fact that his victim was the only one willing to help him. And that’s their real relationship. It’s not rivals like you see in so many Shounen Animes. It’s an abuser and his victim)

And to those who still say I’m not being fair, I ask you the same question Arthur asked Izuku. Name one Heroic or even halfway decent thing Bakugou did in his entire life up through Season 1.

[alextriestowritestuff]

House of Hades Read With Me

Hey everyone, I’m back with an update. If you haven’t been following this thread, I’ve been reading the Heroes of Olympus series by Rick Riordan. I read the first three books in this series back in 2012 and never finished. If you want to know my background with the PJO series and my thoughts on the Son of Neptune (I started my re-read with that book because Lost Hero is trash imo), you can find that here. My thoughts on Mark of Athena is here. So let’s get into the House of Hades 50% update that will include spoilers so you’ve been warned. 

Okay so I’m going to use two images to convey my thoughts on this book so far:

Okay so let’s address the first image... um. I’m fucking terrified. I’m scared of Percy and I’m scared for him and Annabeth (She told him that she loves him ahhhhhh, I need him to say it back tho). My past read with me’s have been pretty harsh on the HoO series so far but I really like this book so far. Dear gods, please let the other half of the book be good! Rick you’re doing amazing sweetie (kind of-we’ll get into it). So far, I’ve cried at Percy and Annabeth thinking about each other and how tired and hungry they are. And when Percy and Annabeth were surrounded by Kelli and the other empousai and I really thought it was done for them (I know they don’t die but the fear I felt was real) then Bob came in and saved them. And when Percy was surrounded by the Arai and Annabeth was temporarily blinded by a curse. Like he literally says, if I’m going to die, I’m not going to let them hurt Annabeth and he went out fighting (out meaning unconscious in this case) ughh my heart. It was torn out of my chest!! 

Brief pause because the Arai said that Calypso cursed Annabeth because Percy left her and I just can’t really emotionally deal with that fact because Battle of Labyrinth is my favorite PJO book BECAUSE of Calypso’s appearance. I’ve held a torch for that girl to find happiness for years and to think she cursed Annabeth (Obvi she didn’t know it’d actually affect Annabeth years later), that shit kills me. But I remember thinking in the Last Olympian why Percy didn’t ask for some sort of amnesty for Calypso when he was telling the gods to claim their kids, etc. So I’m glad he realizes he f-ed up there but ugh why Calypso?? It’s okay, I know that her and Leo get together so she’ll be happy eventually. I just have to wait. 

But let’s also talk about the fact that I’m starting to feel bad for monsters? Annabeth and Percy have been reflecting on what it’s like to be sent to Tartarus by a demigod and slowly reforming. And all the curses the Arai gave Percy were manifestations of how he killed those monsters so he felt their deaths which seeing him in pain, put me in pain. Like Rick don’t do this to me. I don’t want to feel bad for monsters but I do. I’m curious to see how this experience will change Percy and Annabeth’s willingness to kill monsters in the future. I really like this presentation of the monster’s perspective, I think it’s very interesting. In relation, I’ve noticed HoO is a lot darker in theme (even before this book) just by the way they phrase things. Like the demigods will say ‘kill monsters’ or ‘kill’ very easily compared to PJO where I felt that death was sugar coated because it was a middle grade genre. Most deaths were off screen (off page?) like Beckendorf’s. Or not very grim. And this series is much more in your face about it, especially in House of Hades. It was hard to get used to at first but I think it shows maturity, it’s well within the realm of YA to kill off characters and explicitly say so it’s just strange going from PJO to this imo. 

Moving onto the next image, the slowly being seduced one. AHAHA Um can someone tell me why I was briefly seduced by Frank and Percy?? So Percy, I’m always seduced by, that’s not new. But him being scary makes him 100x more attractive. Like imagine if Percy had been on the titan’s side? The gods wouldn’t have had a chance. Here’s some quotes:

(This is after Percy kills Arachne, on pg 6) Percy kicked the dust on the rocks, his expression grim and dissatisfied. “She died too easily, considering how much torture she put you through. She deserved worse.” Annabeth couldn’t argue with that, but the hard edge in Percy’s voice made her unsettled. She’d never seen someone get so angry or vengeful on her behalf. It almost made her glad Arachne had died quickly. “How did you move so fast?”

Then when Percy convinces Bob to kill the reforming Hyperion, Annabeth thinks this: 

How was he keeping his cool? The way he talked to Bob left Annabeth awestruck…and maybe a little uneasy, too. If Percy had been serious about leaving the choice to Bob, then she didn’t like how much he trusted the Titan. If he’d been manipulating Bob into making that choice…well, then, Annabeth was stunned that Percy could be so calculating.

He met her eyes, but she couldn’t read his expression. That bothered her too (22). 

Like what?!?! Please come pick me up, Uncle Rick. I’m scared. What’s happening to Percy?? I need them to get out of there STAT! I have no theories as to why he’s acting like this (maybe it’s the energy of Tartarus) but I’m excited to see where it goes. But Scary Percy is also right up my alley so ugh, I’m conflicted. 

So next, Frank. Rick did something hella problematic here but before I get into that, here’s the line where I was slowly being seduced by him:  

Frank was faster. He lunged at Trip and slammed him into the wall, his fingers locked around the god’s throat.

“Think about your next words,” Frank warned, deadly calm. “Or instead of beating my sword into a plowshare, I will beat it into your head” (19). 

Like ngl, that choke thoo?? I’ve never been attracted to Frank but my god, the dangerous tone, the threat. I had to put my hair up and get a cold glass of water when I read that. Frank was the last person I thought would do something like this but I am not mad at all. Very Ares of him.

What I am mad about, however, is the fact that after this scene, Frank (or it’s Hazel that notices) notices that he’s becoming taller and better built. Because Mars/Ares gave him a little ‘grow spurt’. Now let me say this: I’m not one of those people who think that everything problematic was meant to be intentionally offensive/stereotyping/harmful. I know that Rick has had his fair share of controversies ever since he’s been incorporating diverse characters. That comes with the territory of writing marginalized character-I’m black and I still have watch myself in how I portray black characters. He has do the research and I don’t he did it. Sorry. 

And I’m sure I haven’t even caught half of the problematic things brought up in HoO (there’s times where Hazel’s hair or skin is described as cinnamon, like food when other non black characters don’t get that kind of description. Also the fact that her name is Hazel like Hazelnut has always bothered me but I digress). Back to Frank’s growth spurt. Prior to that, other characters have described him as a bit on the chubbier side, baby faced, ‘big guy’ (that bothers me tho but that might be an internalized societal mentality that any word like fat or big = bad. And that’s not always true but I personally don’t feel comfortable calling someone that), etc. And he’s of Asian (spec. Chinese) descent. For what it’s worth, I’m not Asian so this may be out of lane to talk about but from my personal life experiences, Asians tend to be on the smaller end of the scale when it comes to size. I am 5″7 ish, size 6 and I would be considered overweight in mainstream Asian stores but in Western stores, I’ve never had an issue fitting in something or finding my size. I also tend to have a lot of options fashion wise. I have an Asian friend (Lmao I feel like one of those yt people who are like I have a black friend so I can say this and that. sorry I’m trying to get a point across) and she is plus sized. She doesn’t fit into the straight sizes in America so by Asian standards, she’s considered anywhere from moderately to morbidly obese. And she faces a lot of judgement from her Asian relatives because of it in addition to the fatphobia that has infiltrated American society as well. 

My friend doesn’t see a lot of representation for Asians her size. If she does she sees Asians that isn’t as thin and small, it’s people with my size who are considered thin by Western standards but ‘big’ by Asian sizing. My problem with having Frank be given a growth ‘spurt’ is that it’s erasing that plus sized Asian representation. This wouldn’t have been a good thing to do to ANY character that was plus sized but do you see where it’s even more problematic to do because of his Asian ancestry? It would’ve been fine if at the end of the series, he got hella fit and happens to be more in shape because of all the fighting he’s done but to be given that growth spurt implies that there was something wrong with his size in the first place. And so far, the other demigods have been taking him more seriously (Frank notes that Leo has stopped teasing him as much) which is kind of thin privilege esque to me. Frank may not be my favorite character but he deserved respect, no matter his size. I think this growth spurt aspect was hella problematic and Rick shouldn’t have done it. It was also unnecessary as hell. He looked fine before and could do everything the other (thinner) demigods could do just as well.

This is getting long so let me get to my last couple of points: Nico and the many, unnecessary POVs.

As y’all know by now, I think Nico deserves rights. He deserves friends and place to call home where he belongs. Both Frank and Jason didn’t want to be alone with Nico because they thought he was creepy and I can see where this is a set up to eventually have him fit in but damn, he’s just a kid. Be nice to my son. I feel like one of those mom’s who just wants their kid to make a friend at school. Will Solace as his love interest please come sooner. Again, I’ve been spoiled to this. I’m interested to see how this pans out and if this relationship will be a kind of aside mention like the fact that Grover and Juniper are dating or will it be given the same focus as opposite sex couples like Percabeth and Jasper. And I already knew Nico liked Percy but I didn’t expect it to come out in the way it had. It makes his relationship with Percy make a lot more sense. And I see how Nico could view him in that sense after Percy saved him and Bianca in Titan’s Curse and how he was like the real life version of his Mythomagic games (also I totally forgot he played that, he’s not that excited little boy anymore ugh, his innocence left ever since Bianca died). Overall, I think Nico being gay was handled well-Jason’s reaction was very straight but supportive so he gets a pass there. My point is Nico deserves the world. That’s all. 

The POVs. Again, I don’t know if people who aren’t writers would have an issue with the POVs in this series but I do. So far, we’ve had Hazel, Leo, Frank, Annabeth, Percy, and Jason narrate. I said this before, Rick needs to stick to 3 or 4 POVs because this shit don’t make sense. Annabeth and Percy are in the same setting together, they can’t even go on side quests because they’re in Tartarus so like why do we need both of them to narrate?? If they separate at some point, maybe. Don’t get me wrong, I love their narration but it’s jarring as hell to keep bouncing from POV to POV. I also saw somewhere that they don’t get a narration POV in Blood of Olympus in which case, I sure as hell don’t want to be reading the POV in the HoO characters who I don’t really jive with except Leo. So Hazel is going to be important to the Mist thing whatever, it makes sense she gets a POV (and she hasn’t had one since tSoN/same with Jason but the Lost Hero instead) but Frank and Leo? And I really thought since it’s 5 demigods (Percabeth in Tartarus) they’re going to be able to do side quests with all 5 of them that we didn’t need so many POVs but guess I was wrong. Idk it’s driving me insane, Rick should’ve done third person omniscient (Think Harry Potter and it can still follow different people like Percabeth in Tartarus). 

Damn, if this is how much I have to say about the first half of HoH, I’m really excited to get back to reading the last half. I’m HELLA looking forward to have Reyna join the quest temporarily (where I left off, she is on her way to the 5 demigods). I want the Piper/Reyna/Jason thing to be resolved (a lil drama would be nice) so Piper can stop being annoying and insecure. I want to know who Coach Hedge has been talking to and is he a good guy? Oh and another thing that’s been bothering me is Gale, Hecate’s polecat? It just farts all the time. And I have to remember I’m 20 and this books isn’t targeted to me so juvenile humor isn’t funny to me anymore but it’s just kind of gross and unnecessary?? 

Anyway, I’m going to have to start a new post for the last half of my HoH read with me because this thing is long. But you guys, I am invested into this book. It is on par with my love for PJO books so far. I could give this book a 4.5 stars (despite some faults) if it keeps going this way. Thanks for reading! 

[cannoli-reader]

A Thought or two on the race of the Wheel of Time casting.

So “The Wheel of Time” has cast a group of people to play the characters born to Two Rivers families, Nynaeve, Perrin, Egwene & Mat.  And there have been concerns.  And there have been people making knee-jerk assumptions that these concerns are entirely founded in racism. And hey, maybe there are some. But I don’t think all of them necessarily are. 

First of all, some personal context. I am not really a SJW or much concerned about race issues in general. I am white, of entirely European ancestry, but I haven’t the slightest bit of “white guilt”. “Get Out” did not make me the least bit uncomfortable because I had absolutely no comprehension of the white characters. I understand that “representation matters” in media, but it matters to white people as well, which is why ‘Hollywood’ which is not a monlithic entity, mostly casts white people.  I don’t care if there are not enough black people or too many white people in any given movie.  We can have Scotsmen playing Lithuanian-Russians or try to pass off their burr as a brogue. We can have Terry Molloy, Stanley Kowalski and Vito Corleone, members of immigrant communities from very different parts of Europe, played by the same man. 

That said, while I think adaptations have a degree of responsibility to be faithful to the original work or to the historical time period, I don’t care that Michael Jordan and Reg E Cathay and Jessica Alba were cast as members of a family that is white in the picture books in which the Fantastic Four originated or that black paratroopers were in “Overlord”. I would not approve of T’Challa being played by a white person, because that IS important to his character.  And insisting on casting a woman of color as Cleopatra in the name of historical accuracy instantly destroys my respect for you. 

What we know about the appearance of the Two Rivers people is that they seem to be about average height for their part of the world.  Nynaeve & Egwene are short by modern standards (for a white or black North American), while Perrin is tall and Mat above average. They have somewhat darker complexions than the very Nordic-looking Aiel and possibly Andorans, but on the other hand, no character ever uses Two Rivers folk as a touchstone for dark skins, the way they do the Sea Folk or Tairens.  Even Domani are often mentioned as having coppery colored skins, with Two Rivers people using the terminology the same as lighter-skinned people, suggesting that they too, are lighter-skinned than the Domani.  When Elaida points out that Rand’s natural skin tone is unusually light for a Two Rivers native, she pushes up his sleeve to show the untanned skin, which to me suggests that Two Rivers people are not much, if at all, darker than a very pale person tans. So people do have a point that the actors for Perrin and Nynaeve, at least, if not also Egwene, are darker than they are portrayed in the books.

To which I say, “So what?” The important thing is that Rand is clearly different from the others.  That is probably even easier to convey visually if they use actors from different races, so Rand clearly stands out.  It might have been more interesting to make Rand the person of color, but then you’ll turn all the stuff into racial issues, and we don’t need that in discussions of the show.  Seriously, that was one of the more tedious parts of reveling in all the on-line criticism of Season 8 of Game of Thrones, which I prefer to think of as HBO’s six-part documentary, alternatively titled “Cannoli Was Right All Along.”  They didn’t kill off the Dothraki because they are racists, they killed off the Dothraki, to the extent that they did, because they long ago jettisoned everything else in service to spectacle.  Which brings me to the point that TV writers can’t be trusted and there are lots of other concerns in what they are going to do, beyond letting some black folks get full of themselves because Nynaeve would make Captain Marvel, Wonder Woman and Rey hide under the bed when she’s annoyed at them. 

One of the problems in “Game of Thrones” was that a lot of adaptational choices were not thought through, long term, nor were the implications. Like how Daenerys crowd-surfing on her freed slaves would look, compared to her riding her horse through a cheering crowd.  Or how abandoning a lot of the world building meant some things made very little sense.  If you read the books, between the lines, you know that the Dance of the Dragons (a war in-universe, not the book title) pretty much put paid to the idea of a woman inheriting the Iron Throne. But on the show, all we heard about that is that Stannis thinks the name is stupid.  In the books, he has definite opinions, including that the losing female contender was a traitor for attempting to claim the crown over her younger half-brother. But this sort of world-building would justify the characters’ stated preference for Jon’s gender over Daenerys in Season 8.  Going by the show alone, that makes no sense, because most of the nobles left at this point are women, and very few of the male lords would have reason to favor Jon over Dany, or else they were opponents of Dany for other reasons, like their die-hard support of Sansa, who was pro-Jon. The show’s worldbuilding undercut their own point of conflict, but they tried to fall back on book worldbuilding they had never serviced and made deliberate choices to omit characters or storypoints that would have supported that detail.

At this point I can’t see how the particulars of the Two Rivers’ ethnicity would affect the story, but I also thought cutting fAegon from “Game of Thrones” was a good idea when Season 5 rolled around.  To the extent that it is an issue in the story, the Two Rivers district of western Andor was once the heartland of a legendary nation called Manetheren.  When the nation was betrayed by their allies, the army fought alone to hold the ford of one of those eponymous rivers for far longer than anyone had thought possible, with civilians taking up arms to join them in hopes of preserving some fraction of the population.  In the end they all died fighting, but the enemy force was wiped out as a result of their defense, and so the few survivors who had got out came back, rebuilt their homes and said “We’re only leaving this country feet first.” But they lacked the human capital or resources to rebuild the nation and have been reduced to a rural farming community centered around a trio of villages.  There is a fourth village, called Taren Ferry, at the river crossing that is the only known way in or out of the Two Rivers, but they don’t have much to do with the rest of the area, and are looked at askance by the proper Two Rivers folk.  

It is also established in the text that the Taren Ferry people are the only ones to interbreed with outsiders or to have much intercourse with them at all.  The people living deeper in the Two Rivers are an isolated culture and breeding population.  Itinerant enterainers, merchants buying their crops and peddlers selling goods they cannot make themselves are their only contact with the outside world, and at one point a character actually scoffs at the idea of marrying one of them.  Rand is physically unique because his father, nearly equally uniquely, left the Two Rivers as a young man and came home with a wife from somewhere else and their baby.  

Because the Two Rivers people have only been reproducing among themselves for two thousand years, certain characteristics are reinforced in their genetics.  This is revealed when one of them, in a moment of stress, facing the same enemy that destroyed Manetheren, starts shouting in the language Manetheren spoke, using phrases specific to Manetheren.  This is later diagnosed as a kind of racial memory emerging, and strongly suggests that the character is a descendant of strong geneological connections to the last king of Manetheren. A second character feels a sort of recognition, suggesting a lesser degree of this Old Blood as it is called in the books. The other two native Two Rivers people don’t feel it. 

Now here’s the two fold problem with the casting.  The problem is not Marcus Rutherford and Zoe Robins, it is Barney Harris. They should ALL be the same race.  They’re isolated and have had very very few reproductive encounters with outsiders. Mat Cauthon should not be played by a clearly white actor if the rest of the Two Rivers is something else. 

But the really funny bit comes with the implications of the casting with regard to the Old Blood. 

Because these are the two people who are not the purest royal-blooded Two Rivers folk:

and 

while this is the one with maybe a hint of the blood of the legendary hero-king:

and THIS is the pure-blooded descendant of ancient royalty:

Ooops.  Gonna be fun when the people whose major problem with Missandei’s death is that a black woman didn’t have get to be in the last two episodes, watch the scene where Rosamund Pike tells THAT GUY, up there, how special his bloodline is.

But maybe they just rolled with the casting choices because they are going to skip the Old Blood issue. Okay. But like I said above, you never know what’s going to bite you in the butt seven or eight seasons down the road.   But the cynical part of me is greatly amused at the implications of the apparent mixed race heritage of the Two River people, and what it suggests about who the nobles and who the commoners were in the glory days of Manetheren.  On the other hand, you get the suggestion that the barriers between lords and commoners came down as they fought side by side to save their land and then worked side by side to make their community survive and we got people intermarrying without regard to the old social divisions.

[higuchimon]

[fanic] Secrets of Ears:  chapter 2

“Everyone here?” Daisuke glanced around as he asked, wanting to get this done as soon as possible. If some other evil Digimon thought they could wreck his ramen date with Ken, they were seriously mistaken.

But it didn’t seem to be that kind of a meeting. At least, he didn’t think anyone was upset or worried. Koushiro kept most of his attention on his laptop, glancing up now and then to interject something into whatever conversations were going on. Yamato lounged back against the wall, his eyes half-closed, and Daisuke wondered if he were taking a nap.

The others were sort of scattered around the room. Koushiro didn’t have a lot of space here – Daisuke wondered if they should start trying to meet up outside if this kind of thing became regular – but they all managed to make do. The fact all of their Digimon were there made it even more crowded. Those who could perched on the higher points of furniture, while others stayed with their partners, such as Wormmon on Ken’s lap.

“Yes,” Koushiro said, looking up again. “This is an important meeting. I’ve been doing research and I think it’s time that I informed you four of the situation.”

His eyes flicked from Daisuke to Ken to Iori to Miyako. Miyako blinked, head tilted.

“What’s the problem? And why us?”

“Because you’re the ones who don’t know,” Taichi said. He lounged next to Yamato, as comfortable with him as Daisuke was with Ken.

Daisuke wondered if he’d have the chance to talk to Yamato about Ken and his little issue about his ears. Maybe once Koushiro told them whatever it was he wanted to tell them.

“Exactly.” Koushiro cleared his throat. “We first learned of this ourselves during our own adventure. We wondered if the same thing would happen for you, but apparently it didn’t. We don’t know if that was because of the fact we spent months continuously in the Digital World or what. But regardless, I’ve done enough checking to be certain. You’ve probably already seen the signs yourself and just not known what it signified.”

Miyako twitched and Hawkmon peered down at her worriedly. Ken shifted lightly, one hand on Wormmon’s head.

“Could you get to the point?” Daisuke asked, sharing a quick glance with V-mon. He hadn’t had lunch yet and he wanted to get to his ramen.

Yamato sighed and straightened up. “Not all of us are human. Or not entirely human, anyway. Me, Sora, and Jou are all half-Digimon.”

Iori blinked, eyes widening a little. Miyako paled while Ken stared as if he’d never heard something like that before.

Daisuke shook his head. “Great joke, is that it? Cause there’s ramen calling my – what the-!”

Right in the middle of his question, Yamato held out one hand and twitched it a tiny fraction. At once a long, perfectly balanced sword appeared in it. The edge looked sharp enough to cut the wind and he handled it as if it were a part of himself.

“Not joking.” Yamato said calmly. Far too calmly for someone who’d just pulled a sword out of thin air. “I wish I was. But I am what I am – we all are.”

Koushiro coughed a bit delicately. “As for myself, I am actually a full-blooded Digimon. My father is Leomon and my mother is Chiemon – you’ve never met her. She has a tendency to remain out of sight for a great many reasons.”

He sighed, then continued. “All of us have some sort of – marker, one might say. An indication as to who and what we are. Sometimes it’s physical, sometimes it isn’t.”

“Never let Koushiro get anywhere near catnip,” Jou said, a faint grin flickering over his lips. “The last time that happened, it wasn’t pretty.”

Daisuke hadn’t ever known that someone could blush as much as Koushiro did just then. At the same time, a small twitch of curiosity shifted deep inside. He wanted to ask if V-mon had known, if any of them had known. What did they know that he didn’t?

Sora reached one hand up to remove her hat and flicked her hair aside. Daisuke and Miyako both leaned in more closely and Miyako gasped.

“Horns! You’ve got horns!” Miyako raised one hand, starting to reach for what she saw, then dropped it quickly. “Sorry.”

Sora shrugged, reaching up to rub the base of the tiny horns that protruded from her skull. Her hair was enough to cover them, especially with the hat there.

“Devimon was my father,” she said. “Yamato, Jou, and I – we’re half-Virus types.”

“I’m half Data and half Vaccine,” Koushiro added. “Our ancestry determines what attacks we have and other factors as well. But we can go into that later.”

He glanced at Jou, who shrugged and opened his mouth wide. His canines gleamed bright, lengthening and sharpening until there wasn’t any doubt at all what they were or who his sire could have been.

“You’re a vampire,” Iori breathed, looking somewhat torn between fear and awe. Armadimon pressed against him, watching carefully.

Daisuke remembered. He’d only ever seen one Digimon vampire before. “That guy – Vamdemon.”

“That’s right,” Jou agreed, his fangs going back to normal teeth. “And I do need blood, but I never take it from anyone unwilling.” He made a face. “I wish I didn’t but if I don’t, it can get very bad.”

“How bad?” Miyako wondered. Jou shook his head.

“Don’t ask. You don’t want to know.”

Daisuke counted to himself. Sora had horns. Jou had fangs. Koushiro had a weakness to catnip. He pressed his lips together for a second before he looked at Yamato.

“Did you get something besides a pretty sword?” If they were going to tell them, then Daisuke wanted to know everything.

Yamato flicked his blade away before he straightened up. “Yup.” He pulled his hair back from his ears and Daisuke held back squealing by sheer force of will.

I was right! He glanced over to Ken, who hadn’t said a word all this time, ready to point out in triumph that he wasn't the only one, that someone else had ears like his.

But Ken stared at Yamato’s ears and grew even paler. He swallowed briefly and managed to drag up words from somewhere, sounding as if he’d fought to form each one of them.

“Who is your – parent?”

Yamato regarded him thoughtfully before he answered. “Piemon. The leader of the Dark Masters.”

Ken sank back down, swallowing. He didn’t meet Daisuke’s eyes and looked ready to bolt out the door at a moment’s notice. Daisuke would follow him if he did. Whatever was going on, Ken would have to know that Daisuke was there for him.

But Koushiro wasn’t done yet. “The major reason that we decided to tell you this is because you deserve to know. We’ve kept it secret for reasons.”

“Me,” Ken murmured. No one had to ask what he meant by that.

“That was it, in the beginning,” Yamato agreed calmly. “Though if you really want to know, the Rings and Spirals wouldn’t have an effect on me. I’m an Ultimate – we’re always the same level as our Digimon parent.”

“I’m an Adult-level,” Sora added. “Jou and Koushiro are both Perfects.”

“And I can evolve, though I prefer not to,” Koushiro added. “But the most important reason for letting you know now – because you aren’t human either. At least, Iori is. But Ken, Daisuke, Miyako – you’re not.”

Ken grew even paler and Daisuke quickly rested one hand on his. Ken stared at him, and Daisuke smiled back, trying to put every ounce of his caring for Ken into the expression. For a moment, it seemed to work.

“If they’re part Digimon,” Iori wondered, “then who are their parents? What sort of tells do they have?”

“I think I know,” Miyako said, cheeks flaming for a second. “At least I know what the tell on me is.”

Everyone stared at her. She swallowed, then pulled her sleeves up. It wasn’t visible at first, but then Daisuke took a deeper look. His first thought was some kind of tattoos hidden by her clothing. Then slowly, bit by bit, what he saw rose up.

“You’ve got feathers!” He breathed, hardly believing his own eyes. Miyako nodded.

“I can’t fly or anything but they’re there. They started coming in a few months ago. I thought it was just something to do with the Digital World.”

“Well, it kind of is.” Daisuke pointed out. He jerked his head around to look at Koushiro. “Let me guess, some kind of a bird Digimon?”

“Yes,” Koushiro agreed. “In fact, Hououmon, the great phoenix. I don’t know exactly how it happened, but I’ve scanned and done research on all of you and that’s what the Analyzer says.”

Daisuke wondered what his tell might be. He’d never noticed anything like that. Maybe it was on his back? Or maybe it was something else? He couldn’t wait to find out. Would he be able to attack? What did being part Digimon do for a person?

As those thoughts flew through Daisuke’s mind, Koushiro turned his attention towards Ken. “Would you like me to tell you?”

Ken pressed his lips together before he slowly shook his head. “I think I already know.” He tensed for a few seconds before he pushed his hair away from his ears. Daisuke knew that he never did that. He’d only found out by accident and in the first few seconds Ken knew he knew, Ken made him promise never to tell anyone. As if he ever would.

Everyone stared at his pale, pointed ears, the near-twin of Yamato’s. Yamato regarded them quietly before he nodded.

“Hello, brother.”

To Be Continued

Notes: Okay, here we go again! The next update will be on Wednesday, and every other day until this one is finished.

[coldtomyflash]

So I've been following your tumblr for a while now, and I've seen everything you've had to say about the crossover. I should preface this by saying that I am white with no Jewish ancestry. So I suppose my place isn't the question, because this does not affect me directly. However: I do not understand how showing Nazis as villains is a bad thing. I am not questioning that it hurts people. I've seen that it clearly does. What I question is "Why?" I don't grasp why Nazi=villains is a bad thing.

I’m going to be bluntly honest here. I had to mentally dismiss about ten blithe responses to this that were on the order of that now-infamous tweet “I don’t know how to explain to you that you should care about other people.” I know that’s not what you’re saying, but I struggled, when I read this, to grasp how you could say that you see the harm (hurt) it is causing and yet don’t see that it’s wrong. 

And how it could be true that you’ve actually read this post, and this one, and this one, and this one, and this one, and this one, and some of the other stuff I’ve put in my tag for the crossover, and yet still be confused about this. And one of those posts, mind you, explicitly explains why it’s more than just “they made Nazis the villains of the crossover”.

And part of why I was tempted to answer blithely is because, given all that, I think it’s been explained time and again what the issue is here, and how it goes so far beyond the fact that them making Nazis the villains is the problem. The other part is because to re-explain it, to break it down to its elemental components? That takes time - hours from the time I started thinking about this to the time I’ll be done writing it - and energy - in terms of research and resources. I’m doing a lot of labour for you, emotionally and physically here. And part of me wants to shirk that labour, to put it on you to do it.

But… I can’t. Because I can answer your question, at least from my own perspective, and it is an important one to answer. Because before I understood just how much my own privilege impacted how I see the world and started to actively push back against it and expand my perception, I probably wouldn’t have fully understood either.

So I can’t explain this as eloquently or succinctly as some other people. And I can’t explain this from the perspective of someone who’s directly being harmed by this crossover (because I am also white and a gentile). And I’m sure many people people who are direct targets of Nazis would tell you that “isn’t it enough that it is harming me?” and they would be right, full stop. That would be an acceptable answer.

But I’m going to do my best to give you the understanding I genuinely think you’re looking for, allowing for the fact that others may have more to add or clarify, and allowing for the fact that my answer is inherently limited by my privilege.

I trust that you’ll read to the end, even though it’s long. And if at the end you still can’t understand, or you think I’m exaggerating, then I urge you to think on this, to sleep on it, and to read more and more about it. And even without understanding, to respect the voices of the Jewish (and gay, and Rroma) people who’ve spoken out about these problems time and again when things like this crop up. Amplify those voices, even if you can’t see the long-term ramifications of why this is ‘Bad’ yet.

First, the issue here cannot be reduced to “Nazis are the villains of the crossover.” Because that [.] at the end is actually a […]. It really goes like this: Nazis are the villains of the crossover…

… and the premise is based on the notion that Nazis won and have world domination.

… and that premise implies that Nazis are so powerful that with a bit of ‘bad luck’ in history, Nazis could have won.

… and that premise contributes to the mythic aggrandizing of Nazism that makes so many people Nazi sympathizers or apologists.

… and many heroes doppelgangers are Nazis. 

… and Jewish-coded heroes’ doppels are Nazis.

… and a Jewish-coded hero who came to earth at age 12 and was raised on better principles than that still became a Nazi.

… and that notion spits on the original intent of the Jewish creators of these characters.

… and all of this implies that “good and heroic” people can still turn out to be Nazis, undermining the very message heroes should send. (Being a hero only when it’s easy is not being a hero at all. Doing the right thing when it’s against what society enforces is what makes them heroes.)

… and this turns the heroes that people (including Jewish people) look up to for hope and comfort into symbols of hatred and genocide.

… and the Nazis interrupt an interracial marriage between a Black woman and a Jewish-coded hero (who is canonically Jewish in parallel media like the DCEU) for the sake of drama.

… and the Nazi doppelganger outfits are designed to look ~*sexy*~ to an uncritical viewer.

… and the ~*sexy*~ doppel outfits include genuine Nazi symbols from WW2, which are pretty damn triggering to a lot of people. (But yet no sign of a swastika because that would most likely turn those uncritical viewers too far off).

… and they’re ~*sexy*~ enough that people already want to cosplay that Nazi and buy merchandise of that Nazi paraphernalia.

… and the promo photos show that a Jewish woman and a Black woman are going to be targeted specifically, thus capitalizing directly off threats and violence to actual historical victims of the Nazis.

… and the promo photos treat Wellsobard (many people’s fave villain) as an allusion to Dr. Mengele, one of the most infamously disgusting and reprehensible people to ever exist.

… and the promos show us images of a gay character and actor wearing a ‘Pink Triangle’ once again being used as a symbol of hate and shame.

… and there is a good chance that a Jewish character (Martin) is going to get killed off during this crossover.

…and the storyline is likely focused on the love story between a white gentile and a Jewish woman who gets targeted by his evil Nazi doppelganger.

… and the shows already have a history of antisemitism by putting a Jewish woman in a gas chamber (wtf Arrow), killing a Jewish one-off villain with radiation in a compressed chamber (Atom Smasher, wtf The Flash), erasing the Jewish identity of some characters (e.g., Ray Palmer) and failing to mention another’s (Martin’s) in three seasons (c’mon Legends), and no-doubt more.

… and … this list goes on. It really does. This is not exhaustive.

And you might be tempted to think “but if the Nazis are defeated, and shown unequivocally to be the bad guys, then isn’t it okay? Isn’t it historically accurate that the Nazis would target the Jewish and Black and LGBTQ characters and wear Nazi symbols anyway? Many of the main producers are Jewish or gay, they’re not trying to say anything good about Nazis.”

So this is where we have to talk about narrative framing, implicit associations, and sociological implications.

The concept of framing in psychology deals with how we can present the exact same information in different ways and get vastly different responses. How we present information, even paired down to simple basic statistics, massively impacts how people internalize and encode that information and therefore how they respond to it.

In narrative, we know that how we frame a character’s motives and background influence how they’ll be perceived by the audience. So many heroes in action movies kill and murder their way through a scene, but their crimes are justified by the narrative frame, whereas the villain’s won’t be. Or in order to humanize villains and make them sympathetic, the narrative may shift the viewer’s paradigm by re-framing the information: yes this villain is an asshole who hurt your favourite character, but they’re doing it because of [x].

So when we look at the crossover, we have to interrogate how it’s being framed. Are the Nazis villains? Yes? Good, check. … But the Nazis are also doppelgangers of our beloved heroes?… Okay, right off the bat, that’s bad. 

That will make some people inherently sympathize with the Nazis doppels and like them. We have an emotional and automatic response to these faces, to these people, that is going to work faster and parallel to how our conscious brain responds to them, and many viewers (those who don’t have an automatic and massively negative knee-jerk response to the premise or the symbolism already built in) will have to be consciously and continuously inhibiting any decision to feel some positive sense toward those characters, and many viewers aren’t going to put in that conscious effort, especially not while the narrative is so distracting. 

(For the record, if you consciously create this negative association it’ll become automatic. We aren’t born hating Nazi symbolism, we encode associations to it, and if you continuously encode negative ones, then you’ll hate other things associated with that symbolism too!)

So now in the crossover, by how our brain creates associations, if we have a positive association with that hero, there is an association now between that hero and their doppelganger, and that doppel and Nazi symbolism. That creates a link between positive feelings and Nazi symbolism. Say what? Look, our brains are simple in their associations and categorizations. There’s ways around this, but if we leave these associations unchecked, this can happen. Especially for viewers who won’t recognize and understand the symbolism like the ‘SS’ on Overgirl’s chest (i.e., younger viewers who are most impressionable and who the education system has seriously failed, and privileged viewers who weren’t taught to have strong negative associations to these less well known Nazi symbols). 

And we already know this is happening. This is literally why we have articles on popular press outlets saying they want to buy merch of Overgirl (Supergirl’s Nazi doppel)’s outfit, which is literally emblazoned across the chest with Nazi symbols. People are saying they want to buy actual Nazi merch and the crossover hasn’t even aired yet. Just… let that sink in for a sec?

So. 

That’s one reason why making heroes as Nazis is bad, and why making Nazis sexy is bad. Because of the automatic associations our brains make with those beloved characters, and even with attraction. If we find something attractive or beautiful, we tend to have automatic associations with that as ‘good’. Beautiful = moral is one of the stronger associations we have and it’s reinforced by media time and again. (Conversely to ugly = evil, or evil = queer. And female villains are often designed for sex appeal but it’s misogynistic anyway because it deals with a lot of bullshit about feminine purity and evil seductresses, and still conflates these associations our brains are going to make).

And look, it’s 2017. We have Richard Spencer the literal Neo Nazi on TV and articles about how this ‘alt-right’ leader is sexy and cool. We don’t need DCTV to jump on the bandwagon of making Nazis seem “cool”. Human beings experience approach motivations toward things we find attractive. The only option is to experience disgust and anger in response to people like Spencer and characters like Overgirl, or else we may fall prey to the implicit associations put forth by the media itself.

And that’s the problem: the media (the DCTV shows) are putting these associations there and forcing the viewers to work against them if we want to watch this and not come out of it as worse people for it. It’s designed to be entertaining and thrilling and they spent millions of dollars making it that way, and so much of that budget went to making the villains what they are.

So it’s not enough for them to say that Nazis are the villains or even to show them getting their asses kicked if they set the Nazis up to start as all-powerful world dominators. It’s not enough to have these characters say “I hate Nazis” when they show their doppels as Nazis and capable of those atrocities.

And if you’re starting to think “there’s an important message here. About how Nazis can look classically attractive but we shouldn’t be taken in by that, and about nature versus nurture and how we need to actively push back against evil within ourselves or else, in another dimension or if things had gone different, even we could be evil.”

That’s… tempting to argue. It’s an important message, to be sure. But given the stylized outfits and triggering imagery and the way they’ve set up the narrative, I don’t anticipate that’s the message we’re getting here. I mean, I think it’ll come up, most definitely, but I don’t think it’s what the viewer is ultimately going to take away from this. Not in the “I need to look within myself and push back against my own biases” sort of way. That’s not the way they’ve framed this.

And for a comparison point, if you want a narrative that says “White supremacists are all evil, don’t get taken in by one who seems ~reasonable~ and looks normal, and see what these modes of thought actually look like” then watch the movie Imperium (2016) and see how they handle it. (And then compare that to American History X, which apparently some Neo Nazis like, even though it’s inherently anti-Nazi, because it paints them as being powerful and is full of the visual symbolism they uphold).

Because the way they’re currently framing the CW crossover, it’s really just about amping up the drama? And they’ve capitalizing on intergenerational trauma of the Jewish community and the collective trauma of the Holocaust to the gay community. And I’ve said elsewhere that I have no doubt the intent was good, but good intentions aren’t enough. 

If the producers don’t understand the damage they can cause by making ~*sexy*~ Nazis literally capable of world-domination (they’re not, they never were, they were superstitious and put genocide and hate over actual scientific advancements and their disgusting experiments on humans didn’t teach us near as much as people pretend they did), and re-writing heroes as Nazis (which, if anyone recalls, created a huge outcry when Marvel wrote Captain America as a Nazi) then regardless of their intent, they need to rethink their storytelling. Or if they really think that the right way to make a statement about the rise of Neo Nazism in the wake of the Trump election is to put the ‘SS’ symbol on Supergirl’s chest and make Eobard into Dr. Mengele, to recycle imagery of actual Nazis from WW2 and put a pink triangle on a gay man’s chest in 2017…. they don’t get it. Whatever their intent and regardless of where they’re coming from, they don’t fucking get it.

Sorry, I’m getting worked up. My point is that if they wanted to make a statement about things today, there were a million better ways to do it, and I could list at least 5 off the top of my head right now. But those would be more controversial, harder to pitch and sell, and not as stylized or easy to promote. So stylish Nazis is what we got. And that’s just… such a problem, including literally the ‘stylish’ part of that sentence.

Nazism and white supremacy are inherently performative. Nazis were all about the #aesthetic. They aligned themselves with famous designers for their uniforms. They had the villainous dramatic flair, and they used it to their advantage. Having that in the crossover might be historically accurate, but it falls right into what the Nazis themselves do: make themselves look good to amp up this notion that they are good. 

And a problem with depicting them this way (instead of making them pathetic, vacuous, hate-filled to the point of self-defeat, self-important to the point of being ultimately silly and sad, punching down their notions of grandeur) is that actual Nazis like it. They like being portrayed as sexy, powerful, and cool. And depictions like that help them with their recruiting. “Look, isn’t Overgirl sexy? She’s like our mascot. They know that when we take back this country from foreigner invaders, this is how it’s gonna look.” Because they say when, not if, and they recruit by framing themselves as the victim in a struggle against invaders and usurpers. Make no mistake, white supremacy is a victim complex of untold proportions and having attractive, fan-favorited characters championing their cause helps spread their message.

But let’s get back to the crossover’s broader sociological message and stop talking about actual modern-day Nazis for a sec.

Nazis have been the villains in DCTV before. On Legends in 1942, and with Damien Darhk (again, actual literal Nazi, and again, the narrative has made him “entertaining” in the eyes of some viewers and keeps bringing him back over and over as a villain?). Nazis have also been the villain in pop culture for half a century. Indiana Jones. Star Wars comes to mind in particular. They’re not shy about the fact that their villains are explicitly based on Nazis and the Nazi regime. Which is working out so well considering how many people are mooning over Kylo Ren when he’s a genocidal fascist who murdered his own father (”but it’s okay because he’s just misunderstood, and by that I mean I find the actor attractive and I, too, have anger and angst so I identify with him, this Nazi”). At least in Star Wars it’s figurative, I guess?

And the thing about these narratives, the problem with these narratives, is that they fictionalize Nazis. This isn’t necessarily a reason to vehemently boycott these media or rail against them, but just, as a general phenomenon that’s happened over time, many people - and by this I mostly mean privileged people and people who don’t feel particularly targeted by Nazism - tend to think of Nazis as this cinematic enemy. This prop, this simple narrative device. This way of commenting on the past more than the present, or alluding to something about the present as a mere metaphor, and that metaphor tends to go over the heads of half the viewers anyway because most people aren’t taught to critically evaluate media except in high school english classes that no one takes seriously.

And fictionalized Nazis don’t look like real Nazis in the 21st century. So when real Nazis do gather, many people don’t realize just how bad that is, just how violent their coming together is going to be, and just why need to fight back against such demonstrations and against letting Nazis have any space or voice in our society. It’s like that “this is fine” dog cartoon where he doesn’t see an issue until the house burns around him? Making Nazis into a fictional narrative device can make it harder for many people to actually see the flames burning around them, because they’ve been taught that “real” fires look different than the ones already starting to burn their house down.

Finally, I’ll just come back to point number 1: this is hurting people. In a way that going to 1942 and letting Mick Rory roast Nazis didn’t. And as privileged individuals, we have a responsibility to call out and call attention to the issues in this media and to amplify others’ voices. But as human beings more generally? We also owe a duty of compassion to others. 

Sure, there are a lot of people who aren’t hurt by this, but there are a lot who are. Who are shaking and sick to their stomachs and afraid for what’s happening in 2017 and how the tides of the world are turning. Who worry that this crossover is just another example of how casual people are about Nazism and who worry about everything I’ve listed here in detail as the broader effects of media like this and its current framing, even if they don’t have the language to articulate it all in one place like this. People who feel these effects, and feel the target on their back.

We owe those people some compassion, yeah? So when they say it hurts, we don’t need to say: why? That can come later. Our first question should instead be: how can I help?

[itsthefourteenthcentury]

GO. SEE. BLACK. PANTHER!

SPOILER TAGS GO HERE

This honestly after a second viewing is objectively the best mcu movie out there, for one big reason. It gets REAL. Like they really take sociopolitical issues so seriously and don't dumb it down with jokes. Killmonger is frankly the hands down best antagonist the franchise has had, because he has point. His execution was extremely problematic and he let his own personal vendettas corrupt his cause but in so many ways he was right. And his dying words were the realist sentence said in a super hero movie. And our hero oh we see him struggle with so much real shit, the conflict of whether to remain isolationist to ensure his homeland's safety or accept the risk that comes with extending help to a world in need. Having to come to terms with the mistakes of his father and even his ancestry as a whole. The leading ladies omg where to start. Okoye is 32 flavors of badass, so fucking fierce. The wig toss to the face was one of my favorite moments, also the rhino recognizing her and licking her face Like "hi mom". Nakia is fierce smart but empathetic I really loved how much of an emotional anchor she was to people in this film. Shuri is pure joy every second she is on screen and twice as smart as Tony Stark at less than half his age. SOOO fucking funny. "WHAT ARE THOOOOSE!?" Just constantly roasting T'challa. But at the same time they have this sweet healthy sibling relationship. The Tolkien white guys were as present as they needed to be with Ross getting a solitary big moment in the climax. GO. SEE. THIS. MOVIE!!!

I could write paragraphs and paragraphs about this film and each little aspect of it. I feel bad that the first thing I posted about it was regarding Bucky, but that's in part because I have this big tangled unorganized infinity of thoughts and feels on this movie and that was short simple and to the point. Oh yeah also apparently, and I haven't fact checked this, but some white supremacist groups and also some DCeU fanboys too are planning to sabotage the Rotten Tomatoes score of this film, and the last I checked the audience score is sitting in the 70% range and that seems low, so please go rate this film, rate it honestly so at the very least it has an honest chance at an accurate audience scoring.

[ruminativerabbi]

Being Who We Are and Aren’t

What is Jewishness exactly? We talk about it regularly as though it were a heritable genetic trait of some sort, one that—for some reason—is solely passed down from mothers to their children. Indeed, even when people argue the point and try to make a case for patrilineality as a valid determinant of Jewishness, they are merely arguing along the same lines and insisting that “it,” whatever “it” actually is, can be passed along by men to their offspring as well. Of course, the fact that conversion is permitted seriously undermines the genetic argument: if we’re talking about something akin to DNA that you either do or don’t have, how can any behavioral or attitudinal factor override not having it? But, it turns out, that doesn’t mean that there isn’t any a genetic component to membership in the House of Israel…and therein hangs an interesting tale.

I read a remarkable story in the Washington Post last July about an Irish-American woman from Chicago, one Alice Plebuch, who took one of the various “just-for-fun” DNA tests available on the market because she wished to learn more about her father, who had died many years earlier, and about her father’s family. (You can read the article by clicking here. You can also visit the websites of three of the larger companies that offer this kind of service to the public by clicking here, here, and here.) The results, however, were not at all what she expected: about half her DNA results confirmed what she already knew about her descent from people who hailed from various regions within the British Isles, including Ireland, but the other half pointed to a combination of Eastern European Jewish and Middle Eastern ancestry. One of her parents was apparently not as Irish as she thought…but which one? That was what she now felt herself obliged to find out.

There were, of course, lots of possible explanations for the unexpected test results. One set of her grandparents could have been Jews from Eastern Europe who so totally shed their previous identity upon arriving in Ireland that just a generation later there was no trace at all of it, and no recollection on the part of anyone at all that they had ever been anything other than “just” Irish. Alternately, one of her grandmothers could possibly have had an extra-marital affair and then simply allowed her husband to presume that he was the father of the child she subsequently bore. That, however, would have led to a quarter of her DNA being labelled as Jewish, not half. Could both her grandmothers have had affairs with Jewish men? Imagining such a thing about one of her grandmothers was hard enough, but about both felt wholly impossible. There had to be other some other plausible explanation!

Plebuch talked her brother into being tested, plus one cousin on her mother’s side of the family and another on her father’s side. Her test and her brother’s yielded the expected result indicating that their mother and father had to have been the same people. But the tests involving the cousins yielded one interesting piece of data and another that was truly confounding. The interesting information came from a comparison of the two cousins’ results and made it clear that the Jewish component in Alice Plebuch’s DNA came from her father’s side of the family. That was what she suspected anyway, but a far more amazing piece of information than that came from a comparison of her own DNA with that of one of her cousins, the son of her father’s sister, which effort yielded the categorical result that they had no blood relationship at all! In other words, reading her own DNA results against her cousin’s yielded the conclusion that her father and his sister were unrelated by blood.

I won’t describe the rest of the story in detail—although I really do recommend that Washington Post article as riveting reading—but the short version is that, after a lot of very detailed sleuthing, Alice Plebuch was able to conclude categorically that her father and another baby were switched at birth, or shortly after birth, at Fordham Hospital in the Bronx where they were both born on the same day of February in 1913. And she somehow managed to identify that other baby and to find his still-living daughter too, whom she felt honor-bound to inform that her father was an Irish Catholic at birth who was simply raised as a Jew by the Jewish people he came to know as his father and mother, neither of whom had any idea that they had brought home the wrong baby.

It sounds like the plot of a made-for-television movie—and not even that believable a one at that. And there surely are a lot of obvious questions to ask about how such a thing could ever occur in real life and who, if anyone, should be held accountable after all this time. But the question that the story raises that matters to me personally has to do with the nature of identity. The Irish Catholic baby brought home by a Jewish family turned into Philip Benson and was raised as a Jewish boy in a Jewish home, then grew up to become what any of us would call a Jewish man. Was he “really” Jim Collins, as the Jewish baby brought home by Irish Catholic parents and raised in their faith was known to the world? Was Jim Collins, the man Alice Plebuch knew as her father, “really” Philip Benson? Were both their lives essentially lies lived out against backgrounds that neither recognized as false but which were, historically and genetically, wholly untrue? Were they both essentially phantoms, men who were neither who they were or who they weren’t? It’s hard even to say what those questions mean, let alone to answer them cogently. Since there’s no reason to think that, had Alice’s grandparents brought the correct baby home from the hospital, that he would eventually have become would have ended up marrying Alice’s mother, Alice Plebuch’s very existence seems predicated on a mix-up that any normal person, other than her husband and her children and all her friends, would easily label a tragedy. Does that make her existence tragic? It’s sounds vaguely right to say that, but I’m not sure I could look her in the eye while I was saying it.

We all believe, or I think we do, that there are character traits that inhere in the shared genetic heritage of any recognizable group. Such talk often veers into tastelessness bordering on prejudice when we “assign” qualities, and usually negative ones, to people based on their race or ethnicity.  But does that mean that there are no shared traits that the members of groups with a common genetic heritage all share? (And, if that is the case, then why should those shared traits be uniformly positive? Surely negative traits can also be shared!) But what is the precise boundary between identity and shared heritage, between the autonomy of the individual and the shared genetic heritage that inheres in that individual’s DNA? Surely, both concepts impinge upon each other. But in what specific way and to what precise extent—that is a far thornier riddle to solve.

From a Jewish perspective, the issue is even more complicated. The man the world knew as Jim Collins was born to a Jewish mother and so was, according to all Jewish authorities, a Jewish baby. The Talmud has a name for a child who is spirited away from his parents at birth, or shortly after birth, and raised without reference to his “actual” heritage: this is the famous tinok she-nishba of talmudic lore. Nor is this treated as a merely theoretical issue: the Talmud goes into considerable detail with respect to the specific laws that apply to such a Jewish individual raised in total ignorance of his or her Jewishness. Most of those discussions revolve around intricacies of halakhic obligation when a particular infraction is repeated over and over in the course of years or even decades by a Jewish individual who, unaware of his or her Jewishness, has no inkling that some specific deed is forbidden to him or her by the Torah. Such a person is technically a sinner, but our sages understood easily how wrong it would be seriously to attach that label to someone whose sins are completely inadvertent and who lacks even an inkling of his or her real status as a Jewish individual. The debates are interesting. But there is no debate at all about the Jewishness of the tinok she-nishba, just about the specific way the law should apply to such a person.

Was Jim Collins a tinok she-nishba? Labelling him that way would seem to oblige us to consider Philip Benson a non-Jew. When viewed dispassionately, that sounds almost reasonable, particularly since any rabbi could “solve” his predicament easily enough with a trip to the mikveh, a visit to the bet-din, and a few minutes with a mohel. But let’s imagine that the truth about Philip Benson never came out. Would we really consider it a tragedy for a man raised as a Jew from birth, circumcised on the eighth day of his life, provided throughout his childhood and adolescence with a Jewish education, the husband of a Jewish woman and the father of Jewish children—would it truly be a disaster if the truth about his “real” parentage never came out? Part of me thinks it would be. But another part can’t quite embrace that level of ex post facto harshness.

Most of the time, it’s probably wisest just to allow people to be whom they appear to be. Mostly, we already do this. When I walk into the Kotel plaza in Yerushalayim and join a minyan for Minchah, no one asks me if I am really a Jew, much less if I am really a man! I look like a man, so that’s good enough for them. I apparently look like a member of the House of Israel too…and that too is good enough even for the guys who hang out at the wall wearing their giant black hats. (I don’t push it, however, by also self-identifying as a Conservative rabbi.) Ultimately, we are all Jews by self-definition…and that, really, has to be the bottom line. Sometimes, real wisdom lies in stepping away from the fine print and being content just to read what people possessed of normal eyesight can see, and then leaving it at that.

Should I buy one of those DNA test kits and find out where my people really come from? I haven’t decided one way or the other. But if I do…I promise (maybe) to share the results with you in a subsequent letter.