#something about whiteness grants a false idea of innocence doesn’t it | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

lochnessies · 3 years

Text

@cockati3l the church isn’t ruling people from behind the scenes. even the devs confirmed that. the church in adrestia doesn’t exist, the church in the alliance is ‘toothless’ and nobody pays attention to them as said by lorenz, and the western church is in open rebellion against the central. also, when does the church control anybody in the game? nobody is forced to follow them and they even take on nonbelievers as staff.

once again, what corruption are you talking about? it can’t be what edelgard mentions in her speech because that’s been proven false.

it can’t be killing the western priests because they attempted assassination more than once, grave robbed, and attempted to kill students. not to mention are racist af

it can’t be changing history a little because in your own words “what the fuck so u want her to do?” humans killed her race when they found out the amount of power stored in their bones, blood, and hearts. at that time in fodlan’s history clans were fighting for power with the relics of her family and she had to find a way to broker peace as said by intsys: “seiros and co. meddled with history not in order to rule over humans, but to quell the flames of war and chaos as much as possible, and to also keep a steady balance about humanity.”

also yes, rhea was about to step down. she says so herself. even calling herself a “mere proxy” for byleth.

tell me how claude piggybacked off of edelgard’s war to further his own aims? the game tells and shows that he’s spending his time trying to just keep the alliance together.

she’s literally called the hegemon. there is no freedom under her rule. she centralizes all power onto herself and makes herself the supreme ruler. what she says goes and in order to achieve that result she murdered, lied, and stole.

she literally said “i have no regrets.” why? because she doesn’t. she may feel kinda bad about all the dying but obviously not enough to stop what she’s doing and find another path.

also her words about the followers of seiros are far from kind. she calls them “mindless” multiple times (even in her s-support). the faithful are forced to flee from her. people even lose contact with the believers in the empire, and it’s not even allowed to be one in the first place. not to mention in hanneman/manuela’s ending the church can come back but only under the empire’s supervision. so we have a state controlled church. look at all the freedom!

when does dimitri leave crestless people to get fucked? he literally talks at length that he believes that people with crests and people without need to work together and recognize each other’s strengths.

also the church isn’t the one behind the “crest system” (if you can even call it that since the way each house interacts with it is so different). crests/clans became noble houses because of their strength (aka the empire’s meritocracy in the beginning) and the strong aka crest bearers rose to the top bc in the 91 years it took to kill nemesis his elites had already started their own bloodlines and families. the nintendo interview says that rhea lied about the origin of the crests and relics bc she wanted the wars to end and the only way to have gotten rid of the crests humans had would be to genocide them.

with nemesis gone and the adrestian empire now in charge of the continent, a meritocracy started to form among the nobility. hanneman in his support with dorothea says this about the founding of the empire: “consider this. at its inception, the concept of nobility assumed that the greatest among the populace would rise to power. in my mind, i believe that those who value knowledge, those who strive for more, and wish to protect and guide their fellow man. however, in practice, nobility often serves to keep those deemed commoners down, segregated from those who, by chance, were born to a noble family.” this is also paired with ferdiand’s support with edelgard: “certainly, we must recognize the common folk who strive for greatness and attain it. but for those of us born into nobility, things are more complicated. from birth, nobles must excel. if we do not, we will be forced out of our houses. this environment breeds superior individuals, and they, in turn, recreate the rigorous environment for their own children. without that cycle, there would be no political elite guiding the world towards prosperity.” so from these supports we learn that the empire was founded on the idea of the strongest shall rule and they would be replaced if they didn’t reach a standard. however, over time, the nobility started to abuse this power of theirs and the idea of meritocracy was forgotten. which, ironically, is how it always works in the real world as well. that’s where the concept of nobles often bearing crests comes from. it’s comes from the empire not the church. and when faerghus and the alliance break off from it they kept the tradition. also, if you talk to rhea in verdant wind when she talks about zanado you can tell she hates crests. at the very least she hates the fact that humans have them due to how they were acquired. you know, through genocide. it’s also in the book of seiros that the reason the goddess left was because people were abusing crests and it saddened her and she went back to the blue sea star. so no, the church isn’t propagating anything. and they can’t force the noble houses to adhere to their religion so they don’t.

i’m not sure what you mean by “squander any rebellion”. i think you mean squash/stamp out? well the only rebellion we see in the game is from the western church and as i said previously, the priests were punished because they attempted assassination more than once, grave robbed, and attempted to kill students. not to mention are racist af. the church wasn’t the aggressor and only stopped the rebellions because they were dangerous and were also attacking innocent people. however, we do know that in crimson flower there are rebellions under edelgard’s rule and they are put down as well by the empire secret police aka hubert.

the devs also mention that azure moon was written to be a counter to crimson flower. and that is the route where dimitri has to learn to rely on his friends and work together with his people in order to usher in a bright future. in crimson flower edelgard berates people who lean on anybody else for support (all while taking some from byleth) and believes humans need to stand on their own two feet. in azure moon she says: “if after all of this you believe the weak will still be weak, that is only because they are too used to relying on others instead of on themselves.” to which dimitri responds: “yes. perhaps someone as strong as you are can claim something like that. but you cannot force that belief onto others. people aren't as strong as you think they are. there are those who cannot live without their faith... and those who cannot go on once they have lost their reason for living. you path will not be able to save them. it is the path of the strong, and so, it could only benefit the strong.” so yes, there is someone who represents human unity in the game: dimitri.

edelgard doesn’t make fodlan better. she’s the game’s hegemon (called this in three routes). there are rebellions under her. her people are starving (ashe says on cf), she attacked two nations she had no rights to, and defamed an entire race/religion.

crimson flower ends in flames and darkness. this is made VERY clear by the ending mural. unlike the others, which all show a very joyful scene; am has dimitri being loved by the people with archbishop byleth at his side, ss has byleth being held up in the crowd of people as it talks about how they are now the arbiter of every soul and mother of all life (which are the exact words used to describe sothis), and vw has claude talking with the people and the almyrans are visiting; which infers peace between the two nations. however in cf, we have edelgard standing on the flags of the nations she has conquered. she holds a napoleonic staff in her hands, and the mural portrays people with their heads bowed in obvious sadness and defeat. the biggest indicator that this is not an ending to be celebrated, but rather lamented, is the border. In all the other endings, the border is white and is accented by the color of the route. in cf you can see that the border is black. black and red: colors synonymous with evil or darkness. the epilogue also mentions rebellions against her rule that she has put down.

edelgard’s role in the story is that of nemesis 2.0. someone that is manipulated by twsitd and is fed false information to lead her to finish what nemesis started over a thousand years ago - the extinction of the nabatean race.

another massive red flag is what the devs have said about crimson flower being the supreme ruler route. “edelgard in "crimson fower", or rather known as the, "supreme ruler (hegemon) route" is something we honestly meant to be much more difficult to enter.” (they were talking about why it is harder to enter cf than ss). let’s focus on the word ‘hegemon’. the direct definition is ‘a supreme ruler.’ in another interview they mention the ‘hegemon’s path’ which is a chinese philosophy that goes along with the mandate of heaven that the devs have said that they based cf off of. there is a rule of the mandate of heaven: the right to rule is only granted if the ruler cares about his people more than he cares about himself, and if this is not the case, then the people rise up to overthrow the tyrant. we know for a fact that edelgard is this ‘tyrant/hegemon’ because she is called this in the game.

the devs have also said: “due to all the previous titles in the series, the thought/impression that the empire = antagonists is left upon the playerbase. when you think about the "empire", you usually get some sort of "bad/evil" image, i think. and as for the story, it really feels like it started from the romance of three kingdoms, but we force them all to take part in school life. In other words, a period in which there was peace must exist, before starting the fires of war. and because of that, someone evil (villain) has to exist, and so we had the empire bear that burden.” this interview also blew the common argument pro-empire fans had of fodlan not being at peace at the start of the game. they said themselves that the three countries were at peace. even the game states at the start that ‘these three ruling powers now exist in relative harmony.’

also even if other characters did some things wrong that doesn’t suddenly let her off the hook for her actions just like her’s don’t nullify theirs. if she wanted to peacefully change how things worked in her nation then fine. i don’t care. however, she invaded two other independent nations in order to change their systems and put them under her control. that isn’t morally gray no matter how you spin it. it’s tyrannical.

actually it was humans as a whole who fucked up the earth first. the agarthans are a race of humans that have been around for over a thousand years at the start of the game. when the goddess sothis came down from her home on the blue sea star she arrived in fodlan and took on a form that resembled humanity and lived among them. she used her blood to birth a race of children called nabateans. in the beginning, these two nations lived in harmony.

sothis and her children helped the humans advance their technology and weapons over time until the humans’ hubris grew to the point that they began to wage war on each other and eventually the goddess herself - the one who gave them the technology to do so. as confirmed by seteth, (who was there during that time) some of the weapons they used in the war are also seen in the game, such as the missile of light that destroys fort merceus. so basically, it was a ye olde nuclear war that almost completely destroyed the land and the humans. during this, a faction of humans left the surface to live below ground. they built a city called shambala and officially became known as agarthans. back on the surface, sothis used her godly power to try and heal the earth. however, due to the incredible damage done by the weapons, so much of her power was used that she fell into a deep sleep to try and recover. so no, sothis didn’t fuck shit up. it was the arrogant humans that took her kindness and decided they wanted to try and kill each other with it.

yes, dimitri and claude do have the rest of fodlan under their command at the end of the day. however, they way they achieved this was nothing like edelgard’s. they had no intentions of starting a war to unite the three under their rule. dimitri was given the alliance (the round table came to an agreement and willingly became part of faerghus) and when he kills edelgard the empire is now, by default his whether he likes it or not. same with claude. he defeats the empire which by that point had taken the kingdom. both are now without leadership and he doesn’t even stay. he fucks off to almyra. edelgard on the other hand started the war to put all of fodland back under her rule. it’s not comparable.

#i had to use tiny text to try and make this smaller lmao #mine

76 notes · View notes

mbti-notes · 3 years

Text

Anon wrote: Hi. I hope you had/are having a great summer break. I (INTP) am hoping for some perspective about an issue. Recently, my mother, whom I hadn’t seen in a while, became incredibly frustrated that I corrected her with an alleged “I know everything” attitude.

It’s an issue of concern because she revealed that I always do this. I guess this was the straw that broke it, especially given that what we were discussing was very trivial. (Maybe the frivolousness of the subject is precisely what made my correction seem more pedantic, unnecessary, arrogant.) She says that my attitude disregards her long life experience, and that if she were a stranger, she would think of me as a “snot-nosed brat who knows nothing about life” instead of as a “wise young person”, which is the viable alternative. She said that I am closed-minded and that I shoot everything down. (The problem of small-mindedness is what you addressed the only other time I wrote to you.)

I don’t know why I come off as arrogant. I’m sure that I’m not. I asked my mother what it was that made her think that, which she thought was a silly question because what she sensed was a general demeanor rather than specific behaviors. In the end we were only able to establish that my lack of eye contact was one of those factors. I can work on that, but surely that’s not determinant. What makes people think of others as arrogant? Should I stop correcting people? I don’t correct others in order to feel superior to them. I do it because I like to debate, in order to keep my thinking sharp, and because there is something painful about friends/family having false notions. I think it’s fair to say that my intention isn’t rooted in arrogant soils.

Granted, my suggestion of stopping correcting people is black-and-white, given that there is the grey option of changing the *way* I correct people. I’m just wondering if it’s an unhealthy habit in the first place. But given how prevalent a thought process it is (i.e. questioning people’s statements and finding faults), the process of getting rid of it may be akin to self-directed psychological violence. I mean, this is the same mode of being that makes me good at what I’m good at. (There’s also the option of keeping the thought process, but not correcting people aloud, but I don’t know what else there is to talk about other than analyzing ideas and their faults. Maybe I should analyze ideas for their strengths too, and express that side more than the faults.)

So anyway, let’s go with grey: So far I’ve tried thinking of an arrogant person that I know in order to understand my behavior, but I can’t think of anyone. Also, no matter how hard I try to put myself in someone else’s shoes in order to simulate an interaction with myself, it doesn’t really work, and I can’t see the arrogance, except if I were to just tell someone “that’s wrong” without any explanation. (I wonder if that’s what went wrong in the conversation with my mother.) Either way, this whole issue boils down to the fact that I’m not arrogant by any reasonable criteria that I found online, but that I come off as such. This was longer than intended. Thanks for your kindness and help.

-----------------------

Here are some questions for you to reflect on. They are meant to increase awareness of your underlying assumptions, beliefs, and values. Answer honestly:

Do you care about your mom? Do you care about how she's faring, what she's experiencing, what she's thinking or feeling, what she needs and desires, what she hopes for or aspires to, etc?

If you care, how do you SHOW your care to her?

If you don't care, how does that affect your behavior toward her?

Do you believe that the mother-child relationship only goes one-way? (Is it the mom's job to do for you but you owe her nothing?)

You say you like to debate to sharpen your mind. Innocent enough. I like to roller skate to keep myself physically fit. In an ideal world, I would never take my skates off. Does my enthusiasm for roller skating mean that I slap my skates on anywhere, any time? No. Surely it is inappropriate to skate around a hospital or the supermarket. Not only could I seriously harm myself, I would also be exhibiting flagrant disregard for the safety and well-being of others.

What you like to do for yourself sometimes comes into conflict with other people. If you care about people and hope to have healthy and happy relationships with them, you have to take their needs and wants into consideration in every interaction. You have to abide by ethical rules and principles that allow your needs to be met without neglecting the needs of others or interfering with their ability to get their needs met. Without ethics, society wouldn't be able to function, because it would just be a free-for-all.

You mention small-mindedness. It is quite small-minded to walk around the world only thinking about what you need/want. In the best case scenario, you are completely oblivious to others, and they will perceive you as clueless or self-absorbed. In the worst case scenario, you only interact with people for your own personal gain, and that would make you an exploitative or even abusive person. Is that the kind of person you want to be?

Do you basically treat people as though their sole purpose on earth is to debate you and help you sharpen your mind - to serve you? Do you launch into debates with people without asking for consent or checking to see if they want to be corrected? If you do, they will call you arrogant, not because you've put yourself on a pedestal and call yourself superior like an evil cartoon character, but because you are communicating to them that your needs/wants are most important AND you don't give a damn about theirs.

Webster's definition of arrogance: "an insulting way of thinking or behaving that comes from believing that you are better, smarter, or more important than other people". You believe that you know better, otherwise, you wouldn't grant yourself the social authority to intrude on people's boundaries, invalidate their experience, and correct them uninvited. You believe that you are smarter, otherwise, you wouldn't automatically assume the dominant social role of corrector. You behave as though you are the more important member of the relationship because your main priority is YOUR need to feel better (about your skills or about what others believe) while overlooking the other person's needs. Seems like you fit the definition quite well.

Despite that, I wouldn't call you arrogant because I understand that small-mindedness is a difficult problem to overcome. I see the effort that you're putting in to understand it. I'm charitable because I'm not the one who was hurt by your behavior. When people feel hurt, they often have difficulty expressing it. Maybe it comes out clumsily or they aren't able to explain their hurt without hurting you in return. Expressing one's true feelings is to make oneself vulnerable. If someone doesn't trust you to understand and validate their feelings or, worse, they believe that you will attack them for their feelings, they will not be completely honest with you. Your mom is trying her best to give you the benefit of the doubt by saying "if you were a stranger...", but she doesn't feel comfortable enough with you to express her hurt fully and explicitly as it happens. Why? Because the very reason she is hurt in the first place is that you have shown very little regard for her feelings. Following from the previous post of yours, the root of the problem is that you have such a poor understanding of feelings to begin with that you view them as inconsequential in yourself and others (very immature Fe).

I believe you have no ill-intent. I have said before that the typical Ti dom never sets out to hurt people on purpose. Rather, they hurt people unintentionally because their perspective is too small: 1) they don't grasp that other people's needs may be very different from their own and thereby fail to consider them, 2) they don't know how to empathize with different perspectives and validate them, and/or 3) they don't understand that SHOWING love and care is necessary for people to justify continued investment in the relationship.

In other words, Ti doms tend to hurt people out of negligence or acts of omission. Some of them get frustrated at not being able to solve their relationship problems. They might try to convince themselves that doing nothing means that no harm can be done, so they adopt a passive stance in the relationship and perhaps even train themselves to keep their mouth shut (self-violence). They fail to understand that there's more than one way to cause hurt. Instead of learning better relationship skills, they check out mentally and emotionally. Being checked out only makes it worse because you hurt yourself and you keep hurting others by being even less attentive to their needs.

The foundation of meaningful relationships is showing care. In a healthy relationship, people trust you to care for their emotional needs and not violate their personal boundaries. If you only attend to your own needs/wants in social interaction, you are signalling that you don't really care about the other person. This problem with your mom shows that you give little to no consideration for emotional needs and personal boundaries. If you don't want friends, it's entirely your choice to be alone for the rest of your life, pretending that you never leave any footprints behind you. If you want friends, you'll have to put out more effort to be a better friend, by paying more attention to the consequences of your behavior.

Doing things that violate trust and boundaries, even if unintentional, causes hurt. When people feel hurt and don't feel safe to express the hurt, they are liable to say/do negative things. To have good emotional intelligence is to see past the surface of their negative words/behavior and grasp the underlying emotional needs that were unmet and/or the personal boundaries that were violated. Only then can you be a morally responsible member of a relationship, in terms of owning all the ways that you impact people, both positively and negatively.

Arrogant people don't care about the social impact they produce. As long as they get what they want and don't lose anything, the existence of others is of little importance to them. If your mom is important to you, then learn how to show it better by listening to her when she tells you about her needs/wants. You hyperfocus on the literal meaning of the word "arrogant" and whether it is true/false of you, as though proving it false means that there's nothing wrong. You need to listen to the people you have hurt, if you want to understand why your behavior is hurtful. Alternatively, you need to educate yourself about emotional needs, interpersonal boundaries, and what constitutes un/ethical behavior and why.

#intp #intp relationships #inferior fe #arrogance #small minded #communication #social skills #people skills #emotional intelligence #relationships #ask

41 notes · View notes

korrasera · 5 years

Note

I have a question that maybe you can answer I don't know but it's been puzzling me. If transmedicalists believe you need dysphoria to be trans why don't "trantrenders" just fake having dysphoria? That's so much easier than making another completely pretty solid theory for the trans experience. I know they want to gatekeep, and I know the good faith ones want more research but it just doesn't make sense to reject it when we know how complicated brain & body stuff gets.

This is a wonderful ask. It really got me to stop and think about that idea for a moment, because you kinda hit the nail right on the head. I'm also going to talk for a while now, so I'm burying this behind a cut:

The pattern we're looking at with transmeds is one that's common across our species because it really comes down to someone trying to invalidate your lived experiences.

Basically, when you tell someone what your life is like, it's a common feature among bigoted people to refuse to believe it. White people don't believe that black people have it that hard. White supremacists don't believe that Jewish people are peaceful. Misogynists don't believe women when we talk about the kind of shit we take from them. Bigots refuse to see someone as they are, and instead believe the rationalization that bigotry encourages must be the truth instead.

People do make unsupported claims and skepticism is generally a useful tool when evaluating them, but things change when someone is telling you about something that actually happened to them. Something that's a fundamental part of their experience. When people are telling you their lived experiences, you believe them. Skepticism in that circumstance means granting them the basic human dignity of being assumed that they're telling you the truth as they understand it and if you need to question it at all, you have a responsibility to respect that.

This is going to be uncomfortable, but consider it in the case of rape allegations.

If someone comes forward and explains that they've been raped, you start by believing them because they are the authority on the matter. And if you wind up being a participant in what follows, whether as support for the survivor or as part of the legal response to it, there are basically four scenarios that you have to consider:

It happened and they can prove it.

It happened and they cannot prove it.

It didn't happen.

The way people are educated about our criminal justice system in the US, #2 and #3 are treated as the same thing from both a legal and a moral perspective. It’s one thing to say that legally, because it’s a cornerstone of legal theory in the US that you have to be able to prove a crime. But people use that as a substitute for morality, accepting that legal position as their moral one. Basically, because the court says that you are innocent until you have been proven guilty, anyone who has not been proven guilty in court must be morally innocent.

Which is absolutely not the case.

Also, that doesn't track when it comes to the ethics. As you can see from that list above, if you treat someone like it didn't happen when it did? Just because they can't prove a crime that's notoriously difficult to actually prove? Well, that's pretty goddamn atrocious behavior. It does harm to an individual without demonstrating any upside for yourself or your community.

This is a microcosm of any case where someone tells another person that a lived experience is invalid, fake, or false. Just like what transmeds do with anyone who doesn't have dysphoria.

To get back to what you asked about, I think the answer is that non-dysphoric trans people often have faked having dysphoria because they've been forced to choose between being allowed to transition by medical authorities and living completely as themselves. People who, when seeking help to live their most authentic lives, are still forced to perform under a cover of unauthentic identity in order to access the care they need.

And that answer also tells us something interesting about transmeds: they've been told this and they don't care. I'd bet that they don't even think people like that can exist, and would probably rationalize it away as someone who's actually dysphoric but has just talked themselves into thinking they don't have dysphoria. Which means we're right back to square one, transmedicalists sitting there telling other trans people that they're liars.

Hence my position: Transmedicalists are authoritarian bigots that harm trans people.

#transmedicalism #authoritarianism #long post #rape discussion tw #Anonymous

11 notes · View notes

hufflepuff-ravenclaw-reviews · 6 years

Text

Proven Innocent Season 1 Episode 4

This review contains discussion of abortion and miscarriage/loss of a baby

We begin with some old news footage, of a Muslim woman wearing her hijab, walking into court through a hoard of protesters screaming about abortion. Somebody dumps something red all over her, and the poor woman is made to sit in court, covered in the substance.

In the present, Madeline watches this footage with disgust over how the judge could make the poor woman sit in court like that. The lady's lawyer says that the judge wanted to go out of his way to show how much of a monster that the woman was. He asks that Easy and Madeline take over her case, because he doesn't think that he can continue to do a good job.

Our client du jour is a Muslim woman who was charged both with feticide, but also the murder of her baby. What doesn't help with this is that she had bought “abortion pills” from Mexico, although she insists that she never took them because she'd changed her mind. Her story remains that she went into premature labor, and the baby was delivered as a stillborn. But then she panicked and threw the dead baby away in a construction site dumpster.

As Madeline and Easy drive away from the prison, they fight about the case. Madeline is obviously on the side of their client, as she always is. But it's not exactly black and white for Easy. He's pro-life, and eventually decides that he doesn't want anything to do with this case.

Meanwhile, Bellows talks with the talk-show host. She knows that “Rosemary's Law” to ensure the rights of the victims, and to ensure that literally nobody ever gets out from jail, even if they never committed a crime, is a fat load of bullshit and will literally never EVER pass. However, they kind of gloat over the idea of Madeline taking on the “Muslim babykiller” case. Ugh.

Later, a senator, Isabel, and Bellows watch the talk show lady talking about “Rosemary's Law”. The senator also knows that Bellows is full of shit. However, Isabel quickly says that she'll go to the press and say that the senator won't endorse crime bills! She also says that she'll run against him... and that she'll probably win because she young, female, and Hispanic. Ugh. The entire thing makes my skin crawl.

Even later, Bellows dramatically burns a picture of Rosemary. No, I don't know what that's about. But I just thought that I'd mention it, in case it becomes relevant later.

Madeline and that reporter have sex. He's surprised the next morning to find her asleep on the floor at the foot of the bed, which is something that we've seen her doing from time to time. He also takes a look at her Rosemary's Murder Wall.

In court, Madeline argues that feticide laws were used to protect mothers, not to punish those who wish to harm their own unborn child. The judge doesn't see it that way, which seem fair, I suppose. However, this opens the door for Madeline to get one of the two thrown out, because either the client murdered her fetus, or she murdered her child. It cannot be both, because that's physically impossible. The judge is reluctant, but grants her this.

Later, Madeline explains to Violet about the “lung float test”. It's a test that's used to determine if an infant took a breath outside of the womb or not by dropping it into water. However, as Bodie is quick to point out: it's about as reliable as dunking young women in the lake to see if they'll float or drown to determine if they're a witch or not. He also comes with good news: he has an expert witness who'll testify that the float test is junk science.

Violet and Madeline go meet the man who is... er... an aging hippie. He's literally just a tinfoil hat away from being a crackpot. However, he agrees with their assessment that the float test is a load of garbage, and should never have been used in the first place. However, before he can appear in court, he needs a... make over. Violet gets a super flaming homosexual friend of hers to help give the guy a haircut and shave, and Madeline puts him into a suit.

He testifies in court about how easy it is to get a false positive on the float test. However, the judge thinks that it's just as likely that the test was correct. He also doesn't give the prosecutor any chance to ask questions of her own, because he asked them after Madeline presented her witness. Madeline is steamed about the judge's obvious bias towards her client.

Madeline then goes to visit Rosemary's dad. He's exceptionally pleased to see her, and acts like a proud uncle about all of the work that she's been doing. Madeline then asks about reopening Rosemary's case. He tells her that he hired a PI to try and crack it open, but the guy came up with nothing. However, he feels like it's too painful for him to deal with now. Madeline understands, and leaves.

However, he changes his mind a few days later, and calls Madeline up again. They go to a storage locker where some of Rosemary's things are. While looking through a box, Madeline finds a bottle of adderall “hidden” in a sock. Mr. Lynch is surprised over this, and even more so because the prescribing doctor is Heather's dad, who was treating Mr. Lynch for... something. In short, he's not the kind of doctor who would have prescribed something like adderall to a teenager.

Madeline then goes to find Heather, who denies knowing anything about any of that.

Bodie, meanwhile, goes to pick up his detective girlfriend, who's undercover as a prostitute. After they have sex (off screen; this isn't freaking HBO), they get into a fight because Bodie wants more than just casual sex, and she's... afraid of something.

Easy goes to speak with his pastor about the case. He was in court to support Madeline, even if he was just watching the trial and not asking questions or helping to find evidence. The pastor asks why Easy is so upset by the case, and then argues: even if she did have an abortion, does she really deserve 25 years for it? He then reminds Easy of Jesus's teachings of kindness, compassion, and mercy. Their client deserves all three.

Easy goes back to the office, where he says that they need to figure out what was going through their client's mind at the time. This leads them to find her parents, who weren't at the trial, and they sure haven't visited their daughter in prison. However, they tell Madeline and Easy that they'd stopped talking with their daughter some time before she became pregnant, so they wouldn't know what her state of mind was during her pregnancy.

However, this raises some questions, because during initial interviews with their client, she said that she'd hid her pregnancy because she was ashamed of what her parents might think. This leads them to the conclusion that, not only had she had premarital sex, but it had been with a non-Muslim, white man. They ask their client who he was, but she says that they'd broken up before everything happened. She doesn't want to ruin his life, and doesn't want him to go through this.

Bodie tracks the guy down, where he works at a gun range. He refuses to testify about everything at first, and offers up his fiancee as more evidence that his life is great. However, Bodie says that he'll leak to the press about the “Muslim Babykiller's” dad, so either way, this is getting out.

He goes to testify, where he says that even though his girlfriend bought the abortion pills, she was upset over the entire thing. He flushed them down the toilet. However, much like with the expert witness earlier, the judge asks all of the questions, rather than the prosecutor. He asks if the client couldn't have bought more abortion pills later, which the boyfriend can't say either way. Despite the fact that the only reason why he flushed the first pills down the toilet was only because he had said that he wanted the baby, and that he'd wanted to be with his girlfriend. So at this point, I feel like it's pretty safe to say that it's a wanted baby.

Later, Bodie is in bed with his detective girlfriend, when he brings up the issue of them being in a relationship again via a metaphor for their client and her ex-boyfriend. This leads to how imperfect that the police department can be at times. She's so upset over the entire thing, even though she clearly knows exactly what he does for a living. She storms off in a huff.

However, she later pulls him over, and invites him back to her place. So she'd clearly missed him, and reconsidered having ended their arrangement.

Back in prison, their client says that she didn't want for her ex-boyfriend to testify, because she didn't want to ruin his life. (He said as much on the stand, that his fiancee broke up with him after this came out. Which... she sounds like a piece of shit anyway.) She keeps insisting over and over that all of this is God's way of punishing her. However, Easy then turns the tables on her religious talk. He asks her if God is punishing her... or testing her. He also mentions this phrase: The Lord works in mysterious ways. She responds by saying that they have their own saying: God knowith. This convinces her to keep on fighting.

She takes the stand on her own behalf, but, as you might imagine, the judge made up his mind over what had happened a long time ago. It doesn't do any good. After court recesses for the day, Madeline catches up with the prosecutor. Both of them know that the judge is a piece of shit who shouldn't be on the bench. Madeline asks to cut a deal, but the prosecutor refuses, saying that Madeline will go back to Chicago when this is over, but the lady still has to work with the judge.

Later, Madeline gives closing statements. However, as I keep mentioning, the judge has already made up his mind long before it got to this point. He hates the client on principal, and refuses to listen to facts. The prosecutor stands up and says that she's filing for “improper disposal of a fetus”, which is what Madeline wanted, and wants to let the client off with time served. Madeline then says that she'll push this all the way to the supreme court if she has to. The judge doesn't want to continue this nonsense with Madeline, so he agrees to the plea, and releases the client.

Finally, Madeline goes to prison, where she meets up with her former prison girlfriend. They were together for a long time, clearly, and obviously once madly in love. Or at least, their options were limited because they were in prison. Madeline tells the woman about how she's dating a man, and she really likes him. There's a lot of hand touching, and then they kiss.

#Proven Innocent #The Ravenclaw mod

2 notes · View notes

aion-rsa · 4 years

Text

Supernatural Series Finale Review: Carry On

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

This Supernatural series finale review contains MAJOR spoilers for Season 15, Episode 20.

Supernatural Season 15, Episode 20

We’ve made it to the end. 15 seasons. Saving people, hunting things — the family business.

For fifteen years, two brothers with a historically cursed name have traveled the country in a cherry 1967 Chevy Impala, taking down baddies and saving the innocent, all on a quest to find out where their father went on a hunting trip, or to stop the demon Azazel, or stop the Apocalypse, avoid destiny, confront the Darkness, and deny God himself. The thing is, a show that started out as a monster-of-the week quickly revved up into an all encompassing story that entertained, terrified, and had heavy themes on family and self identity as it was about eviscerating creatures from the beyond.

The previous episode saw the true ending of the season — Chuck had been defeated, Jack was promoted to deity status to put things right and the world in a sense began turning as usual again. What we have here in the true series finale is a wrap up on the fifteen years preceding that. This episode should be looked as as an epilogue, with enough references to keep longtime fans laughing at all the inside jokes.

The beginning is sweet. The boys have saved the world, again, and its time to enjoy life. Dean gets his dog Miracle back — possibly a gift from Jack. The boys find themselves at a pie festival, and Sam jokingly smashes pie in Dean’s face.

Sam and Dean end up in a classic hunt, tracking down a vampire nest they’re able to research in Dad’s journal of all things, something we haven’t seen in a while. Sam and Dean call themselves Agents Singer and Kripke for the shows Executive Producer and Creator. Sam and Dean are aware of the fact that Supernatural is a show in another universe, so that’s an intentional meta-commentary.

Except for the skull masks these vamps wear, everything is pretty standard hunting fare. They even have time to unveil the Impala’s trunk of weapons and poke fun at one of the sillier contributions — some throwing stars. Where’d that curved hand-scythe from the Season 2 DVD cover art go?

The fight progresses with all the old Supernatural fight favorites — a weapon knocked out of hand, Sam choked to unconsciousness, Dean macho-fighting something bigger than him. It’s all going to plan.

But what should have been a typical battle against vampires with one fun cameo thrown in turned dire as a hunk of rebar ended the fight. The metal bar sticking out of a post in the barn was teased in an earlier shot, the perfect classic setup for a last ditch weapon to turn to monster-jabbing. Instead, a wrong move led to Dean being impaled.

“You always knew it was going to end like this for me,” Dean said to his brother in a tearful goodbye. “We had one hell of a ride.”

Dean gets enough time to share some thoughts close to his heart with Sam. He reveals that right before the “Woman in White” mission– the pilot episode — Dean stood outside Sam’s door for hours, afraid of how Sam would react. The family had been split at the time, and Dean couldn’t be sure of his brother’s response. And seeing these two men shaky crying and saying their goodbyes — it’s amazing how far they got to go in growing closer as family. Family is, of course, the core of this show about hunting monsters.

“You always keep fighting, you hear me?” It’s their mission statement. It’s saving people, hunting things. But the horrifying realization is that Sam will have to do this alone. Having what I call the “sad Supernatural theme” play in piano over this moment just echoed with nostalgia and heartbreak. It’s a song used a lot in the early years of the season when something major happened. It had so much more weight at this moment.

Granted, plenty of fans will be annoyed that Dean died. But knowing the aftermath? It makes it a little lighter, doesn’t it? But just because you know Heaven exists doesn’t make losing a friend any easier. It still hurts. It always will. And I think that’s another idea Supernatural has shown the fans over the years.

The happy times in the beginning are in stark contrast to the mid episode, when Sam and Miracle the dog are left behind, with reminders of who he lost all over. A gut punch of emotion is lobbed when he sees the initials scratched into the Men of Letters Table — Mary, Dean, Castiel, Jack… all people he’s lost one way or another in recent history.

Deans “other other phone” finally gets an on-screen appearance and is answered for once. Part of the running joke of the “other other phone” was the fact that once Sam hears that particular voicemail, he’s run out of contact options and Dean must be in trouble. Sam being the one to answer this phone seems all the more pivotal in selling the fact that Dean… is gone.

Sam is thrown back into the fray with this phone call, back to work. Austin, TX, a city that’s near and dear to our boys in real life as they’re both Texans.

Sam living his life and growing old. He gets to live the picture perfect life with a child and wife. We don’t see him hunting beyond that Austin case, so maybe he hung up his salt shotgun in order to have the life he always wanted. Notably, the wife is never shown clearly. This reviewer can only surmise that Eileen didn’t make the cut when it came to resurrection time. That’s tragic. Almost as tragic as Sam’s old-age wig. Old Sam’s wig is… not the most convincing. But one can set that aside to relish in the fact that he got to be happy, and it’s his son who echoes his own words: “It’s okay, you can go now.” Bad wig and Eileen-snub aside, that was a tear jerker.

Meanwhile… Dean made it to Heaven, and the first person he meets is Bobby Singer. Dean, expecting Heaven to play by the old rules, wonders which memory this could be. Bobby explains how Heaven is no longer a solitary experience where each person relives his greatest hits. Jack made things right — now Heaven is as it should be, with families able to be together again. This was something I’m glad the Supernatural writers fixed. I always thought the “heaven as good memories” thing was a bit of a letdown. And it was sad to see people like Ash and Ellen and Jo being separated in the afterlife. Now? Everyone can be truly, not falsely, happy.

Dean sits in his Heaven-version of Impala, an earlier version that still has the old Kansas plate. Kansas’ “Carry On Wayward Son,” the series’ unofficial-but-still-kinda-official theme song plays.

Sweeping drone shots of the Impala lovingly detail Dean’s joyride in the Impala. These shots are juxtaposed against Sam going on living. It’s bittersweet, that’s for sure, but seeing Dean genuinely happy and Sam finally living a normal life? It’s still kind of beautiful, you know.

It’s just a matter of time, and Sam finally joins his brother. Finally, a happy ending for two brothers who’ve experienced enough tragedy for several lifetimes. They can rest easy, and carry on.

You can’t discuss any ending without mulling over the missed opportunities. We don’t see Castiel and Jack, even though they’re mentioned. Destiel fans are likely still not recovered and that probably didn’t help. Mary and John Winchester and Donna Hanscum are mentioned and not seen. In fact, a lot of characters are doing things off screen, and yet we got a cameo from a random vampire.

And part of me has always wanted a trunk shot in which Sam declares “We have work to do” to carry through on that fighting spirit.

The Twitter-sphere saw a number of emotional responses to the finale, some of them annoyed at certain choices made in this ending. The truth is, although the writers have come to a conclusion here, all fans in the Supernatural family will have their own personal head canon dictating how their real ending looks.

All in all, this series found a way to wrap up a major season baddie pre-episode, only to wrap up a series long tease — the true end of the road for the Winchester brothers being death. Death, however is not the end here, nor is the finale of this series the end of its impact. The Supernatural Family will always keep fighting, have work to do in the way of charitable causes, and carry on because of a horror fantasy series that gave them equal parts hope and entertainment. Not all shows can attest to that.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

The post Supernatural Series Finale Review: Carry On appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/2UIKprn

#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

0 notes

oxfordeliterp · 7 years

Photo

❝ My girlhood was the rot that comes from candy lollipops stuck to pavement chapstick that started on someone else's lips.❞

Alexandra Rossessen | seventeen (I) | The Quarrel Club | Sophie Turner | open

Alexandra's mind splits in two: on one hand, she has the brain of a genius, spinning like a golden clockwork that never breathes, never stops, never gets to experience exhaustion; on the other hand, completely electrocuted pink glue with an intense hunger for all that's childish and dramatic. Although she can never pay attention to the same thing for long, due to her attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, there are two wide subjects that challenge and engage her: science and uncredited rumors — and nothing short on that. A contradiction, a series of paradoxes and lies, she was thrown into a situation only maturity would know how to carry, being sent two years early to university — a prodigy crown she never asked for, but would wear proudly, chin up and enthusiasm spread all across her ruby red lips. Due to skipping so many steps in the process of her own maturity, she froze in an early state, mind brilliant, but still green and unprepared despite that. Being treated as an adult since turning sixteen, she never had the occasion to grow up, staying fresh, but so infantile and obnoxious. Through her previous teachers' constant praising and pride in her, she bloomed with arrogance and the idea that everything she could ever say is interesting and worth listening to is carved so deeply in the back of her head that she chooses to never shut up and turn insufferable, grinning when called so, because, to Alexandra, everything is a joke, a game, a fairy tale. She was bored, even in Oxford, when she created the gossip blog that brought her more fame than the fact that she was underage and on campus as a student already. Although nowhere did it state that she was the one behind the pseudonym Ace, from the caustic manner of the articles and the natural snark in the language used, as well as the general interest in what the others are doing has a high-schoolesque vibe that only Alexandra could have brought with her to the well-respected and prestigious university. Yet, childish or not, everybody fell for the blog and they are all hooked on reading the writings and silly opinions of a teenager, allegedly. How could they not, when she is so spirited and knows exactly how to phase a sentence so it would cut and make them bleed, even though she is the youngest at the moment? There is something addicting to the concept and, with them all being self-centered people who did, in fact, care about what the echoes said about their personality, it was a recipe that granted success. Regarding the rumors of her being behind the keyboard, orchestrating the whispers and adding fuel to the fire most times, she neither denies nor confirms it, flashing her eyebrows playfully or perhaps shrugging on some days, but everybody knows it, and her vagueness has nothing to do with secrecy rather than wanting to keep them on their toes. The genius child has always lived in the perfect scenery, with a house with a pool, friends enough to fill her large backyard — at least until she lost all of them, two somewhat decent parents who somewhat cared and everything she could ever ask for already waiting for her home by the time she thought to ask for it — but it all left her empty, so she started lying. The habit formed at around twelve years old and it implied making up the most ridiculous possible stories and beleiving in them with such fire that they became her truth she would convince almost anybody of. She earns nothing from it other than pure pleasure watching their credulous, gullible faces get tricked, but it is easily worth the trouble. Frankly, she doesn't even know how to converse with people if it doesn't involve a little white lie about how the headmaster is her uncle or how the queen once shook her hand and predicted that she would become a big Hollywood star. Her only social skill is lying, but she does it with such charm and interest that it captivates people and keeps them interested, no matter if they have guessed the false nature of everything coming out of her mind or not. Being part of the Quarrel Club is an honor she didn't expect and, regardless of her attempts trying to be casual about being paired with Oxford's top women — all tall, beautiful, intelligent, mature and eye-catching — she is completely flattered and confused about her implications in the group. Despite her playful nature, she spares the girls the act most times during official meetings, wanting to be serious too and wanting to belong, as, back home, she used to be all alone, with no friends to lean her head against the shoulders of. Because of her intelligence and wit, all the children found it easy to make jokes and laugh behind her back and in front of her, causing Alexandra to close off and grow derisive, mean skin as protection. Yet, Oxford is the time for new beginnings, and nothing of the old Alex Rossessen remained when she made up Ace — funny, effervescent, radiant and charming in such an unique way it blinded.

Arabella Windsor Arabella doesn’t have much respect for the younger girl, but she has to give her credits for the amount of gossip she manages to snatch and her dedication to share it with such meticulousness. As a person who has always enjoyed the whispers and rumor spreading, Arabella is grateful that there are people sharing her passion and Alexandra doesn’t mind her company. Frankly, she would be more than happy to discuss trivial topics such as other people and what the word goes with anybody at all, no matter if they are the subject of her gossip or simply as curious as Arabella seems to be — even when it comes to her own person, without even taking offence in all the blackened words aimed at her. Nicolas Mercer Alexandra is the only ones he couldn’t possibly fake liking the company of. She might be younger than him by far, but it is not like he sees her as a potential target anyway. The two met as a result of her catching him lying and recognizing potential that looked just like what was lying inside her heart as well. The two hit it off rightaway and just as she is a little sister following him all the way to Oxford to him, Alexandra sees the big brother she never had and a shoulder to lean on in him, which is something she never had before and never imagined she would find, as she has always felt pretty different from everybody else and as if nobody deserves her friendship. Now, the two liars — one more at peace with her doings than the other — go out together, having teamed up and taking the lying game to a whole new level, even if they don’t need fake identities to get into most of the parties and even if causing a staged scene eventually causes them to get kicked out of the club earlier than planned. It’s entertaining and something both of them do to keep themselves away from becoming dusty. Victoria de Terreros Closer to her age than about anybody else, Alexandra finds it easy to get close to the duchess, who feels the same about the other girl. Though the two aren't friends in the true meaning of the word, Victoria believes that the red head is worth writing books about and endlessly fascinating, even though, overall, bad influence. Yet, she can't help but seek her company and look at her with admiration — one of a different sort than what she feels for Cordelia, which has more to do with her responsible side than the one that longs for freedom and a change. Alexandra realizes how vulnerable and innocent Victoria is, and ironically, for some reason, she doesn't think she is able to fool her too the way she fools most people she knows. Truth be told, she is an easy target and Alexandra cares to cheat those who could hypothetically tell they are being cheated, which seems to be her Achilles' heel and personal weakness. Dexter Carraway It all started when her website was hacked and she didn't know what to do, so she went to Dexter for help, for his well-known reputation among computers. Of course that he managed to recover the gossip blog almost instantly — after all, it was him who caused its fall, although Alexandra wasn't told that. It's just that she always messes with everybody and Dexter wanted, for once, to see her as the one messed with, for once, and teach her a lesson. Alexandra didn't learn much from it, truth be told, but she believes that he owes the man, so she is determined to let him get away with the sort of stuff she would post in a heartbeat for a while, as a thank you.

#lsrp #lsbio #bio rpg #bio rp #alexandra rossessen #alexandra rossessen bio #q #a #oq #o

3 notes · View notes

preserving-ferretbrain · 5 years

Text

Age of the Five: Matters of Faith

by Dan H

Thursday, 17 April 2008

Dan continues his discussion of Trudi Canavan's Age of the Five trilogy, with digressions about Religion in Fantasy.~As you should already know, I've just finished reading Trudi Canavan's Age of the Five trilogy. I generally found it to be an enjoyable piece of High Fantasy with some fun ideas and some likeable characters. A couple of things irked me about it, though, and a big problem I had was its treatment of religion. Since the main character is a priestess, and most of the supporting characters are other varieties of priest, cultist, or holy person this is something of an issue.

In the interview which ships as a special feature with the last volume of the series, Trudi explains that the reason her first trilogy (the Black Magician Trilogy) presented an essentially atheistic setting was that since she is not herself religious, she wasn't sure she could do religion properly, with the Age of the Five, however, she felt that: "writing about a pantheon of gods was much easier because the scenario was so different to most of the religions practised today."

Except that, of course, it kind of isn't, and that's kind of the problem. Canavan's invented religion, consciously or otherwise, carries over a huge quantity of cultural assumptions which are pretty much directly inherited from Christianity. Of course this isn't by any means a unique problem, it's pretty much par for the course with Fantasy religions (it's what

TV Tropes

refers to as a "Crystal Dragon Jesus"). The simple fact is that the modern, western idea of what a "religion" looks like is so intimately bound up with Christianity that it's almost impossible to tell where the Catholic Church ends and Religion In General begins.

So really I'm just treating the Age of the Five as a case study here. It just happens to be the most recent thing I've read, and the most recent example of the phenomenon.

The main character in the Age of the Five series is Auraya of the White, a priestess in the Circlan faith. Let's start simple. The Circlan faith has an organised priesthood with a central authority, being a priest is a full time job, and the basic "benefit" the religion grants its followers is life after death. Judging by what we see of Circlan society and culture, the moral and cultural teachings of the Circlan Faith seem pretty Judeo-Christian-slash-secular-liberal as well. In short, there seems to be very little connection between the Circlan Gods, the Circlan religion, and the supposedly theocratic Circlan society. Canavan, like a great many fantasy writers, fails to make the connection between "what the Gods are like" (kind of a cross between the Greco-Roman pantheon and the Vorlons) "what people think the Gods are like" (kind of like the Christian god, only there's five of them) and "what society is like" (kind of like twentieth century Australia, only with less advanced technology).

I think the thing that Fantasy authors don't get is that, in a sense, religious people are crazy. Okay, I'm going to get letters about that one, and obviously I don't mean it literally, but being religious (frequently) means believing that things exist which other people do not believe exist and (usually) means modifying your behaviour as a result. Combine this with a world in which Gods are verifiably and objectively real and you have to wonder why Fantasy societies aren't more messed up than they are. If you really, genuinely believe that the only way to stop a volcano erupting and destroying your village is to sacrifice innocent girls to an angry god, you're going to be quite likely to do it. In a Fantasy world, you might also actually be right (and I suppose the religious pluralist in me should suggest that you might even be right in this one - damn I'm such a wet liberal sometimes).

Canavan's Five Gods are revealed - in the last volume - to be powerful immortal sorcerers who have transcended their physical bodies to become beings of pure magic. They're also mostly assholes who enjoy watching people slaughter each other for their amusement. The thing is I can think of no reason whatsoever for such individuals to pretend to be anything else. It's implied in the books that they're playing nice in order to get people to worship them and do their bidding, and while on one level I find this idea charmingly naive, on another I find it ... well ... naive. I mean really, if you're a powerful, immortal sorcerer who has just become a God, why not just turn around to your apprentice or nearest analogue and say "okay kid, I've just obtained unlimited power, now you and me are going to team up and take over the motherfucking world". A cursory glance at the history of real world religion shows that people are perfectly happy to worship gods who don't pretend to be nice cuddly bunnies. The Greco-Roman Gods were complete assholes but they were also pretty popular back in the day, I doubt that many Romans woke up in the night having a crisis of faith over the seduction of Leda. The big reveal at the end of Age of the Five is that the brutal, destructive war which had torn the world apart for the past three books was something the Gods had orchestrated for their amusement. At which point any self respecting citizen of ancient Greece would presumably say "well, duh". As flies to wanton boys, and all that.

Of course the real reason that the Five had to pretend to be nice guys was the demands of the plot. The main character had to be a Priestess, which meant she had to like the Gods, but she also had to be sympathetic, and that meant that she had to believe in an effectively New Testament version of the Gods who were all about hugging kittens and being nice to old ladies. If she'd started the books as knowing, willing servant of the Gods as they actually were she would have been far less sympathetic. Except actually it might have actually made for more interesting character development if, instead of discovering that the Gods were evil because they'd lied about their natures, she'd always known what the Gods were like, but had been forced to re-evaluate her opinions about them as she grew and developed.

By having Auraya's opinion of the Gods depend entirely on how closely their behaviour matches her personal moral code, Canavan prevents her from being convincingly "religious" in any sense I can understand. Or, to put it another way, she's religious in the same way that a lot of not-terribly-religious-actually people are religious. Her supposed "love" of the Gods is actually just an extension of her being a nice person, since the teachings she seems to love the Gods for are the ones which mesh with her essentially twenty-first century moral outlook.

Again, I wonder if this all results from the staggeringly vast influence of Christianity on European thought. A large amount of what we take for granted as self-evidently moral is in fact strongly influenced by Christianity. Every so often a politician will stand up and say something like "every religion teaches us to care for each other" when actually they don't (indeed arguably Buddhism teaches the exact opposite - you're not supposed to be attached to anything in the material world). We assume that being "religious" basically means holding the same beliefs as everybody else, but deciding that it all comes from the Gods instead of from yourself.

Auraya's first big crisis of faith comes when the Goddess Huan (the evil goddess) tells her to kill Mirar (her lover, mentor and friend who also happens to be the immortal founder of a heathen cult). The crisis comes about because her Gods, who she loves, have asked her to do something which is against her conscience. This is all very well as far as it goes, but the problem is the way the conflict is expressed. She never, for one moment, considers the possibility that she might be wrong and the Gods might be right, she just feels disappointed that the Gods have become, in her eyes, fallible. It's not that she had previously supported the right of the Gods to demand the death of people who crossed them, but was forced to reconsider when it was somebody she cared about, rather she simply never expected the Gods to demand the execution of their sworn enemy. At no point is she asked to question her religious beliefs, because she effectively doesn't have any. At no point does she ask herself "is it right for me to kill a man, if the Gods tell me to," only "will the Gods ever ask me to do something which I know is wrong, like killing a man."

It's all the more problematic because apparently Auraya's twenty-first century beliefs are apparently supported by the Circlan faith (she complains that the Gods are asking her to "break the rules they themselves laid down") but again this raises the question of why the Gods set things up like that in the first place. She insists that Mirar doesn't deserve death because he has committed no crime, but she lives in a goddamned theocracy, surely "being the immortal leader of a heathen cult which leads people away from the Gods and therefore causes the destruction of their souls" is, in fact, a crime whichever way you cut it. Of course, when Auraya says "he has committed no crime" she means "he has committed no act which would be considered a crime to a twenty-first century, atheist fantasy reader." In fact he encourages people not to worship the Gods, which from the perspective of somebody who does worship the Gods, and who believes that worshipping the Gods is the key to saving your soul from destruction, should be a very bad thing. A crime, in fact. In Dante's Inferno, Heretics wind up in the sixth circle of hell, along with murderers and suicides. Heresy - the propagation of false doctrine (like "It's okay not to worship the Gods") - is, from a religious perspective, an act of violence equivalent to murder. It destroys souls. It is not okay from any genuinely religious perspective.

The problem is that modern audiences (and by extension modern writers, who after all come from the same stock) just don't see it that way. "Heresy" is just a word, for most people one that conjures up images of sinister black-robed priests tying innocent villagers to stakes and cackling. The idea that religion might genuinely be something worth fighting over is something we understandably find uncomfortable. Religion has caused a great many bloody wars in the past few millennia, and nobody's keen on that, and I somehow doubt that the Pope is going to call any more crusades any time soon.

I do wonder, though, whether we haven't gone a little too far in our rejection of religious conflict. We've finally (more or less) reached the conclusion that slaughtering each other might not be the best way to resolve our religious differences, but since we place such a high value on the act of slaughtering each other, this seems to have led to our rejecting the value of religion entirely. Since we no longer see it as worth having wars over, we no longer see it as worth paying attention to at all, and this unfortunate state of affairs bleeds over into fantasy worlds whose fictional Gods hand down divine laws they don't actually believe in to followers who are just going to do whatever they want anyway.

I can't help but think it's a bit of a shame.Themes:

Books

Trudi Canavan

Sci-fi / Fantasy

bookmark this with - facebook - delicious - digg - stumbleupon - reddit

~Comments (

go to latest

)

empink

at 20:04 on 2008-04-17The idea that religion might genuinely be something worth fighting over is something we understandably find uncomfortable.

I think this is because, like you said later on, religion isn't as valuable to people in the West anymore. Stability, separation of church and state, and more widespread religious freedom mean that you can pretty much follow any belief system you want, so long as you're not breaking the law. Religion affecting your life through discrimmination or inconvenience or whatnot is more likely to be grounds for a lawsuit in the West nowadays, instead of just the way things are in a certain country or area, and that has diminished some of its everyday value to most people. Political ideology matters way more now, because it has a more direct effect on people's lives than most religious action does. In most cases, who's on the school board, or is city mayor, or is state governor, or is the President, is far, far more pertinent to whether your economic circumstances will change than who is bishop or caliphate, and so people act and live accordingly.

permalink

go to top

Jamie Johnston

at 20:05 on 2008-05-06Of course, there's nothing inherently implausible or even logically incoherent in someone believing in a god (or gods) and simultaneously judging that god (or those gods) according to an independent moral standard. Many ancient Greeks and Romans took a very dim view of their gods' exploits as described by their poets. What they concluded from that depended on their assumptions about the nature of the gods. Some believed that the gods wouldn't do anything unworthy of their great power (which is not quite the same as saying that being a god necessarily means being good, but has a similar effect) and therefore the stories must be false. Others, believing the gods were psychologically similar to humans, had no trouble with the obvious conclusion that sometimes the gods behaved immorally. Both of those approaches involves judging the gods by one's own moral standards, but that wasn't a problem because the gods weren't regarded as the source of correct moral standards.

The behaviour of the gods you believe in requires you to question your own moral standards only if you believe either (1) that the gods are incapable of immorality or (2) that the gods are both (2a) the source of correct moral standards and (2b) incapable of hypocrisy or moral weakness. There's even some wiggle-room in (2), in fact, if one's prepared to say that the gods are the source of moral standards for humans but have different and ineffable moral standards for themselves (though here one has to answer the question where, if human moral standards come from the gods, do the gods' moral standards come from, to which the answer is probably also ineffable).

So that brings us back to your earlier point, Dan, that the religion in this case is essentially Judaeo-Christian but with the single god swapped for a Graeco-Roman style pantheon. Which means that it does make either assumption (1) or assumption (2) or possibly both, because the author is so steeped in the remains of Judaeo-Christian culture that she's forgotten that it's possible to have a religion without either of those assumptions. And the problems you've identified stem from the fact that assumptions (1) and (2) are incompatible with a Graeco-Roman style pantheon, since that requires the gods to have vaguely human personalities and to interact with one another in a vaguely human way, which they can't do if they're all equally omniscient, omnipotent, and incapable of evil.

So what I suppose I'm saying is that if modern readers really can't be expected to connect with a fictional world in which religion occupies the same place as it did in medieval European society, there may be some mileage in a fictional world in which religion works like it did in the classical world (or in ancient China, or in medieval Japan, or in pre-Islamic India, or in parts of pre-colonial Africa). Then again, perhaps asking fantasy writers to look beyond medieval Europe really would be heresy...

permalink

go to top

Dan H

at 14:41 on 2008-05-07

Which means that it does make either assumption (1) or assumption (2) or possibly both, because the author is so steeped in the remains of Judaeo-Christian culture that she's forgotten that it's possible to have a religion without either of those assumptions.

I think that's pretty much my diagnosis.

#Ferretbrain #Religion #Age of the Five #Trudi Canavan #Fantasy #Dan H

0 notes