#the american understanding of fate (or lack there of) is SO different than fate in greek myth

[purpleisnotacolor]

In any other culture, "the Devil went down to Georgia" would be a story about the dangers of hubris and how you shouldn't make bets and deals with malicious powerful beings, and how you shouldn't tempt fate.

But in the good 'ol U S of A, it's "the devil challenges some random kid and gets ABSOLUTELY BEAT BECAUSE HE SUCKS AND HE'S A LOOSER! LOL, LOOK AT THE DEVIL POUTING LIKE A LITTLE BABY 'CUZ HE LOST"

[erinsintra]

The different species of Weaboos

Yesterday, I was watching this video about all the different sub-types of weebs, and while I do agree on everything said there, I feel like James didn't go far enough down the rabbit hole. So I decided to list a few of the "kinds" of weaboos I have dealt with on the internet.

(James is an awesome guy btw. You should watch his videos)

Weaboos

Possibly the most famous one. These are people - usually American or from other Western or West-leaning countries - that are obsessed with Japanese culture for one reason or another; usually due to overexposition to anime and/or manga. I have to admit, I was a bit of a weeb myself in my emo days, but it didn't go further than that. Some weebs, though, manage to sink down into some bizarre pipeline that turns them into a bizarre version of a Japanese nationalist. They start claming that Japan is the greatest country in the world, and anime is the perfect form of art, and Japanese girls are the epitome of (wo)mankind. It doesn't take long before they also start denying Japanese war crimes and defending their occupation of Korea. How they went from liking anime to endorsing war criminals is beyond me.

Koreaboos

Whilst weaboos are usually teenage boys (with the occasional thirty-something neckbeard thrown in), koreaboos are almost always teenage girls. They are people obssessed with Korean culture (specifically South Kora), or at least their weird version of it. Like weebs, most of their experience (or lack thereof) comes from popular Korean media, like K-pop and Koream dramas. They also love to idolise South Korea, claiming it to be a perfect society full of hot twinks with coloured hair, and as the above example, some of them tend to become political extremists as well. It's kinda funny to me how weebs and koreaboos hate each other due to their obssessive worship of rival countries. I used to know this kpop fangirl who once told me she hated wacthing anime because of what the Japanese did to Korea. That's like, I don't know, refusing to eat a hamburger because of the American Civil War.

Chinaboos

They aren't very common, but they are slowly growing in size as China herself expands her influences. These are people obssessed with Chinese history, Chinese dramas, and Chinese pop songs. I kinda dislike this kind a little less than I dislike the others - mostly because I am a admirer of Chinese culture myself -, but they have this weird tendency to deny the existence of China's misdeeds - while I am yet to see a chinaboo outright deny the Tiananmen square massacre or the Uyghur Genocide, most chinaboos I've met claim that China is and has always been the world's biggest superpower, and "dethroning" America is her fate. Crazy stuff.

I couldn't find a good image to put here, so here's one of Zhang Yong's tweets.

Teaboos

These guys are funny as hell. They're people who are obssesed with the UK, specifically England and the English monarchy. The type of people to stay awake for the entire night watching the new king's coronation, or the queen's funeral. They also frequently endorse the British Empire. I've had people come to me and say to my fucking face that they wished that Britain had colonised our country. People who idolise celebrities are already weird, but foreign politicians? That's a whole other level of screwed up.

Ouiaboos

I will never understand this. People who idolise France, praising their sophisticated culture and their chesse and wine and unpronounceable words. Some also like to endorse Napoleon and claim he was the most influential human being in modern history and an absolute gigachad.

I have never seen ouiaboos defending French colonialism, but I wouldn't be surprised if they did.

Wehraboos

The worse there is. People who idolise the Third Reich and their "efficient way of running things". If they were that efficient, why did they lose the war? They are almost always racist fucks.

Kaiserboos

The older cousin of wehraboos. They idolise the Kaiserreich and love the German monarchy, sometimes Prussia and Bismarck as well. Though not always racist, they usually have quite the controversial opinions on WW1. Guaranteed to be an EU4 or HOI4 player.

Romaboos

I kinda hate those guys for staining the image of Rome. These are people who idolise the Roman Empire, claiming it was the peak of Western civilisation at a time where "men were men" and "things were proper". Have you ever seen an incel on Twitter or Discord whose pfp is a Roman marble statue? That's one of them. They are usually very sexist, racist and homophobic, completely ignoring the fact that Rome was an incredibly diverse empire where homosexuality and gay marriage was about as common as brushing your teeth.

Leeaboos

Named after Confederate general Robert E. Lee, these are people - always Americans, thankfully - who idolise the Confederate States and the American Civil War. Like Wehraboos, they are guaranteed to be racist and sometimes also pro-slavery, claiming that it was an unjust war where the glorious freedom of their rebellious country was suppressed. Nevermind that the Confederacy was a barely-functioning oligarchy that lasted less than a decade.

Imperiaboos

Pretty much the Brazilian version of a leeaboo. They are people who romanticise imperial times and wish for the return of the Brazilian monarchy. They will go on and on about how the Empire was secretly one of the greatest economies in the 19th century (it wasn't), how they had the manpower to conquer the entirety of Latin America if they wished (they didn't), and how they were so cool they even scared off mighty Brittania that one time (which is actually true, though not as glorious as they claim). They are also frequently very racist and pro-slavery. Every time we have a shitty president (which unfortunately happens more often than not), they pop out outta nowhere claiming that "The Emperor would never allow that!" and so on.

Soviaboos

It always striked me as funny how so many soviaboos are of American origin. These people like to endorse the Soviet Union - or, in rare cases, the Russian Empire - claiming that it was the greatest superpower the world had ever seen, and openly wishing for its return. They commonly refer to their friends as "comrades" and tend to idolise Communist symbols and aesthetics in general. Generally very unpleasant to be around, though at least they are anti-capitalist and anti-american imperialism, so that's already a step on the right direction I suppose.

Thank you for reading all of this! I suppose I should get back to writing my novel now.

[alovelyburn]

One of the things I think about a lot with regards to Berserk and specifically Griffith is like... the type of character he is and what that means to say Americans vs Japanese people.

Now, again I’m not going to act like I know everything about media ever because i obviously don’t. But my personal observation from consuming a fair amount of media from both cultures as well as participating in fandom discussions and watching discussion boards (I lurk a lot) is...

A character like him - someone who is ambitious and incredibly talented and attractive, charming and accomplished but not particularly humble, and who ends up emotionally isolated by their duties or bad circumstances or just  by being so damn cool that no one understands them, is....

Okay like if I were watching an American fantasy show/reading an American fantasy comic or novel and a character like that turned up as the leader of a village or country or an army or whatever, my expectation would be one of two things:

1. This character is evil and selfish and will eventually reveal his evil. Then he’ll end up either killed by the hero or humiliated and reduced to a state of helplessness or pathos as they are forced to face the reality that they are no better than anyone else.  So basically his arc would be “seems good but isnt -> reveals his evil -> suffers for his evil” The example that comes to mind here is Viserys Targaryen (in GoT not HotD) or Joffrey Lannister.

OR

2. This character has a good heart but his lack of humility is meant to be seen as a flaw, so he will end up humbled and forced to realize that he's no better than anyone else, at which point his good side will emerge and he will be considered improved by being knocked down a peg.  So his arc would be “jerk with a heart of gold -> learns that he’s not all that -> is able to show his virtuous side because he’s no longer arrogantly considering himself above others.” The example that comes to mind here is like Jaime Lannister.

And like, I feel as though people perceive Griffith as Option 1 - he may have SEEMED cool but he wasn’t really cool and turning evil just revealed who he was the whole time, and now he has to suffer and die or be humiliated and left broken because That’s Justice. Which is how we get like the assumption that of course Guts will become stronger than him and kill him and parade around with his head or alternately, the really uh ablelist and disturbing??? slew of people fantasizing about Griffith being forced into his shattered human body as punishment for his wrongdoing.

And like as an American person I can understand that... outlook (well not the ableist one) because I do think that’s what American stories are like, right? Like again I’m not trying to account for every single American story ever, but I’m just saying those are the patterns I have picked up from this kind of character.

But like, okay in Japanese media this type of character has a completely different... perception and completely different sets of outcomes...

First and foremost because whatever happens to them usually doesn’t involve a “knock them down a peg and make them realize they’re not special after all” aspect because they are special and that doesn’t necessarily need to be challenged or disproven. Even when they fail or die, it’s usually not because as it turns out they weren’t nearly as amazing as they thought they were. It’ll usually be some kind of inner flaw, like:

They’re so isolated or self-hating that they’re secretly self-destructive (Aizen from Bleach or Priscilla from Claymore)

their heart makes them vulnerable and that gets taken advantage of (Teresa of the Faint Smile)

they ultimately valued something else more than they valued their own lives (L from Death Note, who I would say valued solving the puzzle more than surviving, or Gilgamesh from Fate, who says outright that he’d rather lose than debase himself by using his full strength).

And this concept - the person who really is just all that - turns up a lot, like you’ll see them referred to as The Absolute in various stories, for example, as is the case with Griffith.

And the fact that Griffith is treated more along the lines of the Japanese take on this kind of character should be obvious since it’s a Japanese series but also you can kind of tell from things like the guidebook describing him as having an air of isolation around him due to his having no equals.

Now this is just about his personality, I’m not going to get into the different cultural perspectives on fictional rape or how an individualist culture kind of naturally struggles with Griffith and his motivations, but you know. Just an observation. I do have a lot of thoughts about those things too, as well as another major cultural storytelling divide that plays into this stuff.

Anyway one of the reasons I think about this a lot is because of this weird thing that happens in Berserk fandom sometimes where people will talk about how Griffith was spoiled or had everything handed to him on a silver platter or they’ll call him arrogant and it’s interesting because... none of that is... true, right like...

He didn’t have everything handed to him on a silver platter, He was born in poverty, formed his own band of thieves, converted them into a mercenary band, prostituted himself to a predatory pedophile for funds to help  his soldiers, wrangled his way into working for the King of Midland, worked his way up the military hierarchy and ended a 100 year war, all while somehow managing to learn a seemingly endless array of skills that CANNOT have been easy to come by when you grow up as a street urchin.That’s even before thinking about how Miura stated that Griffith may have been abused as a child.

There’s no universe in which he was spoiled, but it’s worth noting that many many many of both type 1 and 2 above... will tend to be from privileged backgrounds and we’re meant to perceive them as taking their advantages for granted.

Similarly, he never actually says he thinks he’s special, right he just says he wants to find out whether or not he is by pushing himself as far as he can go. But there is, I think, a perception that just wanting to rise and see how much he can accomplish is in itself arrogant because if he were a better person he wouldn’t entertain the possibility that he might be Super Cool.

IDK it just brings me back to what I was saying a few weeks ago... that I feel like there’s a specific (western revenge) story that people perceive Berserk to be and when things don’t fit that box they either don’t perceive it or rewrite it in their heads so that it does fit that box.

And if you think about it, most of the weird things people think about Berserk... comes from those western storytelling conventions that people are sort of imposing on Berserk. Right down to the “he lives for Casca” thing that has never ever been true and that lands a bunch of people desperately trying to convince themselves that when Guts mopes about his sword he’s really moping about Casca even though he never thinks about her, she doesn’t appear in the flashbacks, and half of them are to times when he didn’t know her or was nowhere near her.

[isobelleposts]

'Mr. Sunshine' and its Answer to the Question "What is Love?"

Lee Byun-hun and Kim Tae-ri as Choi Eugen and Go Ae-sin in 'Mr. Sunshine'

Recently, I’ve found myself loving media wherein romance is only considered a subplot but is also what keeps the watchers hooked for the next episode and the one that comes after that. ‘Mr. Sunshine’ would be one of those shows.

‘Mr. Sunshine’ is what I would consider the most well-produced Korean Drama I have watched so far. Based on both facts and fiction, the show tells a moving story of a romance that blooms between a noblewoman and an American Military officer as they plot to prevent a dark scheme on the country's colonization at night. 

Choi Eugene and Go Ae-sin, episode 6 of ‘Mr. Sunshine’

L-O-V-E

There is complete intimacy between Kim Tae-ri and Lee Byung-hun’s characters despite the lack of skinship found throughout the show. Being a noblewoman and an American, Lady Ae-sin and Eugene keep their progressive friendship a secret from the public eye, not only as lovers but as members of a militia called The Righteous Army.

Can I ask you a question since you’re American? What is "love"?

Go Ae-sin, episode 3 of 'Mr. Sunshine'

The transition between Ae-sin’s innocence to her full knowledge of what the English word “love” means and feels was like watching the process of an artist starting out with a clear image in their head, making a mistake, and then having a completely different story sold twice more than the original worth. Ae-sin asked a single question and received several answers.

Let’s do it. Love. With me. Let’s do it together.

Choi Eugene, episode 6 of 'Mr. Sunshine'

One boat ride between the noblewoman and “her wherryman” and the contrast between the world’s then-current tragedies and killings made you understand the experience of how quiet the world could be. The moment that peace was taken away, you suddenly find the desire to have stayed there forever, rowing on and on and never continued watching.

Yoo Yeon-seok as Gu Dong-mae in 'Mr. Sunshine'

HISTORY AND TV

Apart from being what I consider the most well-produced K-Drama, ‘Mr. Sunshine’ is also the most diverse I have encountered so far. Despite so many characters and stories to follow, screenwriter Kim Eun-sook was able to build it all together at a compact pace without letting you feel it was too heavy or difficult to keep up with.

If it’s my fate to survive everything only to die in your hands, then I should.

Gu Dong-mae, episode 7 of ‘Mr. Sunshine’

‘Mr. Sunshine’ was able to have you appreciate its second leads rather than feel completely angry or sorry, as most dramas intend to do. The application of history added to each character’s depth and complexity makes you ponder on life’s ways.

Do you know what the first thing I did after coming to Joseon was? I let everyone know that I was a runaway son of a butcher. Unlike my father, I was able to cut anyone down.

Gu Dong-mae

It was difficult to convince myself that I hated Gu Dong-mae because I didn’t. And it was not only because of his love and help towards the Lady Ae-sin, but for the way his character was structured and written.

The obvious display of different social classes and power led me to think of all the real lives and years lived by people and ancestors, and how so little society has come to change. Similar to ‘Pachinko’, both historical dramas depicted the realities of Korea’s turning point in history and lets you compare it to the present world.

Choi Eugene, episode 24 of 'Mr. Sunshine'

GLORY AND SAD ENDING

This show made me think of several could-have-beens yet somehow never made me choose an alternate ending over what was already provided, despite Eugen and Ae-sin’s absolute deservedness of a peaceful life full of loving each other.

Will our final destination be somewhere between glory and a sad ending?

Go Ae-sin, episode 9 of ‘Mr. Sunshine’

If I had to choose between those two words to describe this ending, I’d rather see it as a glorious one. An ending where two people's love for each other was able to help thousands of the Nation. An ending where Go Ae-sin was able to live and succeed as what she had always wanted to be — a flame that burnt brightly and wilted.

And one day, we can be walking on a street we’re familiar with and go all the way to New York, where you used to live.

Go Ae-sin, episode 16 of ‘Mr. Sunshine’

I like to think that among the several worlds in the universe, Eugene and Ae-sin walk hand in hand in one of them, far from the cries of their dying nation.

(Click HERE for Writing Commissions)

by Isobelle Cruz, 31/05/2022

[kebriones]

As a Greek i really liked Blood of Zeus. It's not a perfect series of course (they could not have the son of Zeus plot at all and show us only stories from the Gods), but compare to how Hollywood portrays the Gods of Olympus like in Heracles or...Lore Olympus, i must say they have done a decent job.

The directors are also Greek and they said they want to make this series many seasons, hopefully they do and they portray more accurate stories (if Netflix show them some mercy and not cancel it like many of their good shows like damn 😅 χτύπα ξύλο μην το ματιαξουμε)

Well I'm glad for you and that you enjoyed it! I do have to agree that it's better than hercules. And though i enjoyed the beginning of LO for the new and shiny artstyle, I dropped it and I have no idea where the story's gone now but I've caught glimpses of people talking about it and it doesn't look good.

I think I'm just 1) very picky and stern with people using ancient greek mythology because you chose it, you didn't have to but you did so you better do it justice >:( and 2) tired of stories that take greek myth for the cool premises and the cool gods, remove all the themes of honor, fate, hybris etc that encompass the core values of ancient greeek mythology and society and give the myths their lasting charm and influence, and don't fill that gap with anything other than "hero chosen boy goes on generic good vs evil quest and gets a cool weapon" like that's so american I can't stand it. "save the world from a demonic army" really?? If you want to put evil in your ancient greek-inspired story, why not use characters the likes of Sinis, Sciron, or Procrustes and all the rest actually evil, bad-people criminals from greek myths? I just feel like there's a lack of using greek mythology to explore its actual themes and stories from a contemporary POV or using the setting to tell a solid story with good characters instead of using it as a magic trick glue to hold togehter a bad story that nobody would care for if you hadn't shoved pretty bisexual apollo in there. (i'm not sure if it's because creators haven't bothered to actually study and actually read ancient greek mythology and rely on wishy-washy modern retellings from "ancient greek mythology for beginners" books or because they actually just fail to understand the cultural and philosophical background of the myths) On a serious note I dislike blood of zeus because I am haunted by the few frames of dionysus spitting wine on an enemy during a battle.

I will knock on wood for you because everyone deserves more seasons of what they like, but I do not think that a second season by the same creators would be better than the first or explore different stories. I am always open to being proven wrong though an dI do love animation so , so much I would watch a second season only for the pretty images.

[nellie-elizabeth]

The Handmaid's Tale: Ballet (5x02)

Okie dokie, let's dive right in!

Cons:

I'd never accuse this show of being subtle with its imagery, but every once in a while they go a step beyond bold and into downright trite/insulting. Most of the parallels with June and Serena avoided this fate, but the part where June dressed all in white, and Serena all in black, as they each got ready in mirrors... that was a little much, I gotta say.

And another moment I was taken out of it a little, what exactly was the resonance of intercutting Serena at Fred's big funeral, with June watching someone dance at the ballet? Who is the metaphorical ballerina here? Why are we cutting between these two things? It just felt too heavy-handed and also muddled to me.

Pros:

We see that Aunt Lydia is getting a group of Handmaids ready for selection, including Esther, the former Wife. Janine gets to go along to her former Commander's house in order to show Esther off, and thus gets to see her daughter. But Esther has bigger plans for the rebellion; she steals some chocolates from the Commanders' house, and somehow poisons them... the episode ends with her and Janine both collapsing and coughing up blood. Gasp!

Esther is great, I love how ruthless she is, and how chilling it is to see such a young girl forced into this position. It's grotesque, and the show plays on that, especially the scene of Esther being force-fed the chocolate truffles by the man who plans to own her and rape her repeatedly for his own purposes. Esther's lack of understanding of Janine's trauma also shines through: she thinks of Janine as a coward and a traitor for accepting her lot in life instead of continuing to rebel, but we know that Janine has been through more than any person is meant to survive, and is merely coping as much as she's able. We also get Aunt Lydia, one of the show's most complicated characters; we see here again that she genuinely cares about the girls in her care, albeit in an extremely disturbing way. I can't imagine they'd kill our girl Janine off in this manner, so what's going to happen next episode???

Back in Toronto, we get to see Rita visiting June, Luke, and Moira's home, and June just can't let it go, talking to Rita about the abuse she suffered at Serena's hands, triggering her and causing Moira to chastise June for it. I think June was awful to Rita, of course, but she's got PTSD. I think Moira's protective instincts towards Rita are understandable, but also she's not registering June's trauma for what it is. So many different dynamics at play here, between this complicated little family.

June confesses to Luke that Serena knows she killed Fred, which leads Luke to implore her to be present, here, and stop obsessing over Serena. This seems to work in the short term, as the two of them go on a date to the ballet together, but the episode ends with June seeing Fred's internationally televised funeral, complete with a now young-teenaged Hannah, standing at Serena's side during the ceremony.

I mean... this was such a twisted way for Serena to try and get some revenge. To show June that she still has access to Hannah, that she has power over someone June loves, in the same way that June got access to Serena's husband. I love that Luke managed to get June out of her head for an evening, and then even from all the way back in Gilead, Serena was able to pull her back in. Those final shots, where Serena and June appears to be staring at each other through the screen, were absolutely breathtaking.

In Gilead, Tuello offers Nick the chance for freedom from Gilead, and access to seeing Nichole, if he spies for the American government. He's turning it down for now, but I love what this is setting up. Everything about Tuello in Gilead was great, this fish out of water awkwardly answering everything with "blessed day", trying to speak the lingo. And probably my favorite dark comedy beat of the episode was Aunt Lydia's baffled offense that Tuello didn't know her name.

It's interesting that Nick and Commander Lawrence go to bat for Serena, in helping her to get Fred's funeral televised. Not sure what their long game is here. They were taking a risk in suggesting it, and the funeral itself is very evocative of fascist ceremonies, and Serena is using it to get one over on June but does she really think it will help Gilead's international reputation? It's unclear! That's one of the things that's pretty great about this show, is that people's motivations are always very tangled, and multiple people can be united around a goal while feeling quite differently about its import, and I trust the show to track that, to track Commander Lawrence vs. Nick vs. Tuello vs. Serena when it comes to the optics of Fred's funeral.

There's more I could say, as always, but suffice to say this was good tv, and I can't wait for more!

9.5/10

[rpmemesbyarat]

RP meme from Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie

“No sane human being ever trusts someone else's version more than his own.” “What cannot be cured must be endured.” “We all owe death a life.” “What's real and what's true aren't necessarily the same.” “Most of what matters in our lives takes place in our absence.” “Children are the vessels into which adults pour their poison.” “Reality is a question of perspective “ “Nobody can face the world with his eyes open all the time.” “Perhaps, if one wishes to remain an individual in the midst of the teeming multitudes, one must make oneself grotesque.” “Things, even people have a way of leaking into each other like flavours when you cook.” “I admit it: above all things, I fear absurdity.” “Unless, of course, there's no such thing as chance; in which case, we should either-optimistically-get up and cheer, because if everything is planned in advance, then we all have a meaning and are spared the terror of knowing ourselves to be random, without a why; or else, of course, we might-as pessimists-give up right here and now, understanding the futility of thought decision action, since nothing we think makes any difference anyway, things will be as they will. Where, then, is optimism? In fate or in chaos?” “What you were is forever who you are.” “For every snake, there is a ladder; for every ladder, a snake” ”Silence, too, has an echo, hollower and longer-lasting than the reverberations of any sound.” “Optimism is a disease” “We must live, I'm afraid, with the shadows of imperfections.” “This is not what I had planned; but perhaps the story you finish is never the one you begin.” “You got to get what you can, do what you can with it, and then you got to die. “ “You can lay your strategies as carefully as you like, but women will undo them at a stroke.” “Reality can have metaphorical content; that does not make it less real.” "I found it easy to be brilliant, I was always confused about being good.” “When you have things, then there is time to dream; when you don’t, you fight.” “Nothing comes out right in life, unless it's forced out.” “I rode the night-streets of the city, looking for death.” “When thought becomes excessively painful, action is the finest remedy.” “Please believe that I am falling apart.” “I should never have dreamed of purpose” “All Americans need a frontier” “There is only money-and-poverty, and have-and-lack, and right-and-left; there is only me-against-the-world!” “I had learned that secrets were not always a bad thing.” “The ice is always waiting, just under the water’s skin” “Unity is invincibility.” “People are like cats you can’t teach them anything.” “It's a dangerous business to try and impose one's view of things on others.” “When you’re five and you hurt, you make a big noise unto the world. At ten you whimper. But by the time you make fifteen you begin to eat the poisoned apples that grow on your own inner tree of pain.” “You be respectable. Me, I’ll be alive.” “In my life, fate has never been unwilling to lend a hand.” “Our names contain our fates.” “Since the past exists only in one’s memories and the words which strive vainly to encapsulate them, it is possible to create past events simply by saying they occurred.” “No dominion is everlasting.” “All children have the power to change their parents” “Those who would be gods fear no one so much as other potential deities” “A person must sometimes choose what he will see and what he will not; look away, look away from there now.” “There is no magic on earth strong enough to wipe out the legacies of one's parents.” “Hell is other people’s fantasies.” “I am the sum total of everything that went before me, of all I have been seen done, of everything done-to-me. I am everyone everything whose being-in-the-world affected was affected by mine. I am anything that happens after I'm gone which would not have happened if I had not come.”

[orchardisland]

━━   𝐩𝐞𝐧𝐬𝐫𝐢 𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐚𝐧𝐚𝐩𝐨𝐥

Let me tell you the story of one of our unfortunate residents who seems to be a COMEDIAN on the island. Fate has assigned this individual guidance from THE TOWER card. But they needn’t worry, their secrets are safe with me.

DOB: march 23rd, 1997 DEFINING TRAITS: Ambitious, Optimistic  Kind, Envious, Willful, Ignorance, Fearful  RESEMBLES: blackpink lalisa manoban

YOU ARE PRESENTED WITH A PRISTINE DECK OF TAROT CARDS. TAKE YOUR PICK.

The smooth sounds of piano music accompanied by an operatic tone welcomed Pensri into a small room illuminated by blue lights. A blue haired teenager wearing a school uniform stared at a small man with a large hooked nose sitting hunched over at the other side of the room. The two figures remained frozen in time unaware of the vibrating tarot cards sitting on a table at the center of the room. Somehow, Pensri landed into a scene of the video game Persona three.

The comedian slid her hands into the pockets of her hoodie walking over to the deck of cards. Some people in her position would explore the room while others might focus on the characters. Pensri, however, was the type of person who liked novel things. She met Igor plenty of times in the velvet room, but this deck of cards was completely new.

An image of the sun intersecting with the moon decorated the back of the cards. It weirdly resembled her brother's old deck. Back in the day the siblings huddled next to each other as they tried reading their futures.. Pensri was an atheist who did not believe in anything supernatural. Whenever her brother became frightened of her bad fate, she'd feign panic for his sake. Perhaps this time the cards would give her some positive news? She grabbed the top card off the deck flipping it over. The card depicted a tower struck by lightning becoming engulphed in flames.

Ohhh....how ominous and spooky.

An open book beside the cards explained that she was holding the tower card. Apparently the card symbolized someone's inner tower, sense of self, being built on faulty foundations. Because the  tower lacks structural integrity, it collapses when struck by lighting. This destruction encourages someone to rebuild their inner tower transforming themselves into a different person. Did this card describe her current situation?

Fainting in front of a live audience and television network certainly qualified as a catastrophic life event. Pensri was a comedian who couldn't make people laugh. Her lack of inspiration resulted in creative bankruptcy. However, this inner world stuff was pseudoscientific nonsense written by greedy gurus lusting for cash.

A loud piercing sound struck through the dream like lighting dragging her back into the real world. Thanks based alarm clock. After silencing her alarm clock, her gaze settled on the image of a tower displayed on her computer screen. "What the hell? Mister Kibbles come here and take a look at this." The comedian rolled over onto her belly reaching out to pick up her small smooth coated black dachshund from the ground. Mister Kibbles was the best therapist. He always listened to her problems without judgement.

THE CARD FLUTTERS TO YOUR FEET. WHO WERE YOU BEFORE THIS STORY BEGAN?

"Dear Mister Kibbles, I will now tell  you the story of my life, and you'll understand why my dream is bullshit. My parents moved to Las Vegas from Thailand to live the American Dream. I grew up in a fuck yeah American household. You know, the kind decorated with numerous American flags. My parents fought all the time. You know, my dad couldn't keep his you know what in his pants. He was always having affairs. The rest of their marriage exploded when my brother joined a gang because my mom wanted to be soft on my brother while my dad wanted to kick him out.  So I'm the child of two fighting parents with slightly less than legal things going on around them.....sounds like I would be a well adjusted individual, right?

Well, my ass was a hot mess. I spent a majority of the time isolated, depressed and friendless. I swear my brother's gang affiliation kept me from being bullied.  Like, umm, I was always close to my brother and his friends. I think they expected me to quit school and join the gang.

Instead I quit school and ran away from home. Finding a job was hard because nobody wanted to hire a drop out, Eventually I landed a waitressing gig. My job was a new fresh level of hell. I felt depressed all of the time. One night I watched this show about some drag queens competing for a large cash prize. One of the contestants said that she handled stress and depression with comedy.. So I began coping with my pain by  telling jokes about myself and life. Apparently my jokes were popular because people would request to see me at the restaurant.

One day I attended a show of this popular comedian. There, surrounded by crowds of laughing and cheering people, I realized that my purpose in life was making people laugh. I vowed to perform on this stage someday. My first performances as a comedian were at small bars.  At first I had a hard time performing. My comedy relied on making a goofy ass of myself in front of large crowds. Over time I gained confidence which resulted tighter jokes. I started performing at bigger venues until I found myself in front of a huge crowd in Vegas. As I looked into the audience, I realized that I had fulfilled my dream. Against all of the odds, I became one of the best comedians in the world. My life was amazing, but then something bad happened.

I ran out of jokes. People started saying that my comedy was recycled. And I didn't want to go back to being a nobody....so, so, my anxiety went through the roof, you know? Then during a television special for a major network, I noticed that people weren't laughing. I....well....I had a panic attack fainting onto the floor. At my doctor's recommendation, I chose to settle down here in my endless search for inspiration. Mister Kibbles, my nightmare was hot garbage. My life and struggles are the major source of my humor. How could I ever let go of my past?" A soft smile formed on the woman's lips, her delicate fingers tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. Pensri leaned forward kissing the top of her dog's head. Mister Kibbles truly enriched her life.

[grandhotelabyss]

Thoughts on Invisible Man? a little surprised you never reviewed it. And did you ever read any of Ellison’s other work?

I didn't review it because I read it before I started writing those and haven't reread it yet. But it's a masterpiece, one of the true Great American Novels, responding to and extending the prior entrants in what retrospectively appears to be a sequence (Moby-Dick, Huckleberry Finn, Absalom, Absalom!) and preparing the way for the later entrants (Gravity's Rainbow, Beloved, Underworld), while also ringing changes on international modernism and Existentialism, especially the works of Dostoevsky, Kafka, Eliot, Joyce, Sartre, Camus. The discursive passages are true Emersonian essays on the meaning of America. The great narrative passages—especially the two set pieces of the battle royal at the beginning and the paint factory in the middle—prove that something like genius has to exist, because you can't as a novelist will such scenes into being, scenes that seamlessly fuse symbolism and naturalism, allegory and realism, with an almost Dante-like compression, so beautifully and so powerfully that even he could never do it again.

The common complaint is that the second half is weaker than the first, which I think is true—my memories of the second half are a bit dim—but so what? A large book, a book whose size and scale are part of its meaning, will have its longeurs. The other common complaint, one also made about Ellison's friend, Saul Bellow, who wrote another Great American Novel with The Adventures of Augie March around the same time, concerns the novel's politics, its Cold War liberalism or incipient neoconservatism attacking both leftism and separatist identity politics as Soviet- and Nazi-like inner threats to the American experiment:

No indeed, the world is just as concrete, ornery, vile and sublimely wonderful as before, only now I better understand my relation to it and it to me. I've come a long way from those days when, full of illusion, I lived a public life and attempted to function under tbe assumption that the world was solid and all the relationships therein. Now I know men are different and that all life is divided and that only in division is there true health. Hence again I have stayed in my hole, because up above there's an increasing passion to make men conform to a pattern. Just as in my nightmare. Jack and the boys are waiting with their knives, looking for the slightest excuse to....well, to "ball the jack," and I do not refer to the old dance step, although what they're doing is making the old eagle rock dangerously.

Whence all this passion toward conformity anyway? — diversity is the word. Let man keep his many parts and you'll have no tyrant states. Why, if they follow this conformity business they'll end up by forcing me, an invisible man, to become white, which is not a color but the lack of one. Must I strive toward colorlessness? But seriously, and without snobbery, think of what the world would lose if that should happen. America is woven of many strands; I would recognize them and let it so remain. It's "winner take nothing" that is the great truth of our country or of any country. Life is to be lived, not controlled; and humanity is won by continuing to play in face of certain defeat. Our fate is to become one, and yet many— This is not prophecy, but description. Thus one of the greatest jokes in the world is the spectacle of the whites busy escaping blackness and becoming blacker every day, and the blacks striving toward whiteness, becoming quite dull and gray. None of us seems to know who he is or where he's going.

Ellison's later stances, such as his support for the Vietnam War, can certainly be questioned. But for the leftist critique of the novel's individualism and pluralism to be persuasive, communism and separatist identity politics would probably need to have a better historical record than they do.

Other work: I like Ellison's literary essays, especially "The World and the Jug" and "Twentieth Century Fiction and the Black Mask of Humanity," but I haven't read his other fiction (the whole Juneteenth/Shooting situation seems like the occasion for a graduate seminar, not one or two novels one sits down to read; sometimes I wish what writers didn't finish, what writers didn't intend to publish, wouldn't be published, speaking more here as writer than reader).

[honors410-1011]

Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson (Book Review)

If there was ever a book that encapsulates the essence of the prison system both for juveniles and adults, it is this one. Bryan Stevenson, a successful lawyer, shares his accounts of marginalized and juvenile groups in the prison system. While the story mainly recounts Stevenson's role in proving the innocence of a wrongfully incarcerated African American known as Walter McMillian, he shares how this relates to the juvenile justice system. Walter faces the death penalty for the murder of a white women, which he had no involvement in. The evidence and witnesses were fabricated which only condemned him to a life in prison until he was forced to face his death. A very determined Stevenson works tirelessly to prove his innocence and is able to drop all charges pressed against him.

Stevenson becomes increasingly focused on the juvenile system when he is is faced with the grim reality of the conditions for incarcerated adolescents. Juveniles are subjected to a fate similar to the death sentence through extremely long sentences and housed in adult prisons where they don't fair well. Stevenson understands the incomplete development of adolescents which is why he becomes a prominent advocate for them.

The reason I enjoyed this book so much is because Stevenson puts into sentences the thoughts I couldn't find words for. I knew the juvenile prison system was lacking something, but knowledge of what that something was always evaded me. One word describes what the juvenile system fails to grant adolescents, and that word is mercy. It's a shame that it took so many different cases like Miller and Montgomery for the justice system to realize there is something morally wrong with how juveniles are treated. It's quite easy to place full blame on a young adolescent when looking at it from an outsiders perspective. This perspective, however, can quickly be changed when one is forced to view how juveniles are treated in the justice system. There is no greater punishment than knowing you have committed a mistake that will cost you your life. Mercy is often forgotten in the juvenile justice system, when it should instead be at the forefront of every adolescent sentencing.

[fortunatelyfresco]

A Holistic Integration of Type 1 Narcolepsy into the Reading of Moist von Lipwig

Literary Interpretation, Disability, and Finding Yourself Between the Lines

As it goes, "I wrote this for me, but you can read it if you want." It might be a fun ride for anyone who is very interested in Moist von Lipwig, or narcolepsy, or both, and/or anyone who enjoys collecting small details from within a body of work and arranging them into threads that are supportable by the text, without being actually suggested by it.

Personally, I find it very interesting to read the meta behind different headcanons, and see how creators can unintentionally write a character who fits certain criteria. There are only so many traits, after all, and some of them tend to travel in groups! Humans are pattern seekers, etc etc.

The first step of reading Moist von Lipwig as narcoleptic is wanting to read Moist von Lipwig as narcoleptic. Being narcoleptic myself and relating heavily to Moist, this step was very easy. I invite you to take my hand and come along, at least briefly, if you were interested enough to click the readmore.

Once you have taken that step, things start falling into place. At least they do if you're intimately familiar with narcolepsy, or if you first learn about it in detail through, for instance, a Tumblr post with an agenda :)

I'll break this down symptom by symptom, citing only the ones I both have personal experience with and see textual support for.

I'll be using OverDrive's search function to catalogue "evidence" in (the American editions of) Going Postal, Making Money, and Raising Steam, so I might miss passages that don't use certain keywords.

Please take any statements along the lines of "being narcoleptic means X" with a huge grain of salt. Sometimes it's just more succinct. Narcolepsy can manifest in many different ways, and is still being actively studied. Don't base your entire understanding of it on a fandom essay I wrote to cope with the crushing pressures of capitalism. I have not even fully read the scientific studies linked here as sources.

Here we go! Spoilers abound.

I. Excessive Daytime Sleepiness (EDS) and sleep attacks.

Being narcoleptic means (salt now, please) that your brain does not get adequate rest while you sleep, no matter how much you sleep. This is because of a disturbance in the order and length of REM and NREM sleep phases. This leads to constant exhaustion. Some sources describe narcoleptic EDS as "comparable to [the sleepiness] experienced by a healthy individual who has been sleep-deprived continuously for 48–72 hours."

(Source.)

Sleep attacks can come on gradually or suddenly. In my case, I become irritable and easily overwhelmed, and nothing matters except finding a place to lie down. A more severe attack, under the right circumstances, can put me to sleep while I'm actively trying to stay awake and engaged.

Moist refers to 6:45 am as "still nighttime." He is "allergic to the concept of two seven o'clocks in one day" and is "not good at early mornings," and the narration even cites this as "one of the advantages of a life of crime; you didn't have to get up until other people had got the streets aired."

In Going Postal, he repeatedly falls asleep at his desk. I can only find two instances, but the first one describes it as having happened "again," so it happens at least three times over the course of one week. Both of the times I found were after Mr. Pump cleared his apartment, giving him access to a bed, and I can't find any reference to the fire destroying it—just that his office is "missing the whole of one wall." His presumably wooden desk is still intact, even, just "charred."

There's also no build-up either time. No direct narration of the time right before he falls asleep, just retroactive accounting for it.

Which is primarily a function of stories not showing us every boring second, and secondarily one of the smaller ways we're shown Moist being overwhelmed and racing to keep up with himself, but tertiarily it's a great set dressing if you've already decided he's narcoleptic. Sometimes sleep is just a thing that happens, without any deliberate transition. Sometimes you sit down to catch your breath or get some paperwork done, and wake up several hours later.

I've found only one example in GP of Moist waking up in his actual bed at the post office: the morning after being possessed by all the undelivered letters. Presumably either they put him there, or Mr. Pump did.

There are two points in Making Money where Moist, in an effort to be a comforting and/or guiding hand, advises people to get some sleep. First Owlswick Jenkins, and then one of the clerks (Robert) who is worried about Mr. Bent.

I take the optimistic view that this is Moist genuinely caring about these people, not just trying to get them to do what he wants. He has always done some combination of those things (GP opens with him having befriended his jailers, after all), but there's definitely a thread of him learning to treat both himself and those around him more like real people. (See also.)

Looking at this thread through narcolepsy-colored lenses, you get Moist perhaps drawing from his own experiences in an effort to be helpful. In Owlswick or Robert's position, what is something he would want to hear from the man currently in charge of his fate, or at least his job? "Get some sleep."

If we accept this as a pattern, it culminates in Raising Steam, when Moist starts to worry about "Dick Simnel and his band of overworked engineers," fixating particularly on their lack of sleep.

What sleep they got was in sleeping bags, curled up on carriage seats, eating but not eating well, just driven by their watches and their desire to keep the train going.

[...]

"People are going to die if we push them any further," he said to Dick. "You lot would rather work than sleep!"

[...]

The young man swayed in front of him and Moist's tone became gentle. "And I see now that part of my job is to tell you that you need some rest. You've run out of steam, Dick. Look, we're well on the way to Uberwald now, and while it's daylight and we're out of the mountains it's going to be the least risky time to run with minimum crew. We're all going to need our wits about us when we get near the pass. Surely you can take some rest?"

Simnel blinked as if he'd not seen Moist the first time, and said, "Yes, you're right."

And Moist could hear the slurring in the young man's speech, caught him before he fell and dragged him into a sleeping compartment, put him to bed, and noted that the engineer didn't so much fall asleep as somehow flow into it.

Moist then recruits Vimes to help him talk the rest of the engineers into getting some rest. The two of them briefly commiserate about people not realizing how important it is.

"I have to teach that to young coppers. Treasure a night's rest, I always say. Take a nap whenever you can."

"Very good."

II. Insomnia.

This is a lesser-known but very common symptom of narcolepsy. Or a comorbidity, depending on how you look at it. It seems counterintuitive if narcolepsy has been presented to you as "sleeping all the time," but it makes sense once you know it's really a matter of disruption in the brain's ability to regulate sleep cycles.

The case for this symptom is flimsier, and I fully admit I'm just reading my own experience into it. But here are two excerpts from Going Postal that I find quite suitable for my sleepy agenda:

1. "A man of affairs such as he had to learn to sleep in all kinds of situations, often while mobs were looking for him a wall's thickness away."

I latched hard onto this detail the first time I read GP.

At my worst, I could not get more than a couple hours of sleep in my bed. I kept taking naps in the bath because it was one of the few places I could sleep. It seemed to fulfill some of the criteria (isolation, temperature control, etc) that my brain demanded in exchange for playing nice.

We're told over and over again, throughout Moist's books, that he functions best under pressure.

(Brief aside: This is often cited as a reason to interpret Moist as having ADHD, which I'm also fully on board with. Not coincidentally, narcolepsy and ADHD share a few symptoms, have a notable comorbidity rate, and are treated with some of the same medications. Source.)

So again, if you're already inclined to read Moist as narcoleptic, the following is an easy jump:

"Moist thinks he's good at sleeping in strange places under strange circumstances. This is because A) his basis for comparison is a disordered attempt to sleep in normal places under normal circumstances, B) something about danger satisfies his brain into running more smoothly, and C) he's a resourceful person who is 'not given to introspection,' and so is less likely to wonder why his body demands sleep at strange times and more likely to focus on finding a place for that sleep to happen, and chalk this up later as a skill."

And returning briefly to EDS: Why would someone like Moist waste time finding a safe place to sleep while people are actively trying to kill him? At the beginning of GP, he leaves Vetinari's office and immediately goes on the run. In multiple books, when he feels threatened, his brain instinctively launches into complex escape plans. We see him successfully blend into an Ankh-Morpork crowd at least once after becoming a public figure.

So why bother? After all, a safe place to sleep is also a safe place to change clothes, or at least remove whatever distinguishing features he's given himself. Why wouldn't he just become someone else and leave town immediately?

The obvious answer is that sometimes things just happen, and an author doesn't need to know or explain every single detail of a character's past.

I would suggest, though, that one of those things might be Moist reaching a point where sleep is just not optional. A point where he not only doesn't, but can't, care about anything else. Where he is too tired to think straight, too tired to talk his way out of trouble, too tired to even contemplate the long journey from one town to the next.

2. "Moist knew he ought to get some sleep, but he had to be there, too, alive and sparkling."

Sometimes (especially in combination with underlying mental health issues) narcoleptic sleep deprivation can bypass everything I've described so far, and lead straight into a manic state. You won't necessarily find that on Google, but it's been my experience.

That's obviously not what the text is implying. "Alive and sparkling" is just a very relatable description. And we do often see Moist getting away from himself, speaking without thinking, making absurd promises that he justifies immediately afterwards as Just Part Of Being Him, always raising the stakes.

And here are a couple of excerpts from Raising Steam that could be interpreted as Moist being a light sleeper, AKA struggling to get deep sleep:

1. "And slowly Moist shut down, although a part of him was always listening to the rhythm of the rails, listening in his sleep, like a sailor listening to the sounds of the sea."

2. "All Moist's life he'd managed to find a way of sleeping in just about every circumstance and, besides, the guard's van was somehow the hub of the train; and although he didn't know how he did it, he always managed to sleep with half of one ear open."

Moist is exactly the kind of opportunist to see that as a useful tool, isn't he?

III. Hypnagogic and Hypnopompic Hallucinations.

These are hallucinations that come on as you're falling asleep or waking up. They can also happen during REM intrusions while you're awake. My most memorable ones include piano notes, someone calling my name, being trapped in the waves of a large body of water, and a huge truck going over a guard rail and tumbling down a hill. These are often, but not always, accompanied by sleep paralysis (and sleep paralysis is often, but not always, accompanied by hallucinations).

In GP, Moist casually cites his own hallucinations as proof that what is happening at the post office is not one.

"They're all alive! And angry! They talk! It was not a hallucination! I've had hallucinations and they don't hurt!"

Obviously that's not true for everyone, but it's true for Moist, and he has enough experience that he immediately recognizes the difference.

At one point while awake, Moist "[snaps] out of a dream of chandeliers" to realize someone has approached him to talk, while he was busy having visions of what the post office used to look like/could look like again.

Now, that's cheating, because we're probably supposed to assume it's a side effect of being possessed, but... I'm putting it here anyway.

There is also perhaps a case to be made for the tendency of Moist's internal monologue to lapse into extremely specific and prolonged hypotheticals. The lines between hallucinations, waking dreams, and "regular" daydreams have always been very blurry to me. I'm especially curious about the example at the end of Going Postal, which goes like this:

"Look, I know what I'm like," he said. "I'm not the person everyone thinks I am. I just wanted to prove to myself I'm not like Gilt. More than a hammer, you understand? But I'm still a fraud by trade. I thought you knew that. I can fake sincerity so well that even I can't tell. I mess with people's heads—"

"You're fooling no one but yourself," said Miss Dearheart, and reached for his hand.

Moist shook her off, and ran out of the building, out of the city, and back to his old life, or lives, always moving on, selling glass as diamond, but somehow it just didn't seem to work anymore, the flair wasn't there, the fun had dropped out of it, even the cards didn't seem to work for him, the money ran out, and one winter in some inn that was no more than a slum he turned his face to the wall—

And an angel appeared.

"What just happened?" said Miss Dearheart.

Perhaps you do get two...

"Only a passing thought," said Moist.

In-universe... what is Adora reacting to? What did just happen? The fact that these incidents are not isolated to Going Postal is a point against it being some sort of literal timeline divergence caused by The Spirit Of The Post.

So maybe Moist visibly zoned out. Maybe he had some kind of minor but noticeable cataplexy attack (more on those later) as part of a REM intrusion, brought on by the intense emotions he's currently struggling with.

IV. Vivid Dreams.

Again, at least some of this is probably supposed to be part of the possession, but I've been professionally projecting myself onto the surreal dreams of magically afflicted characters for years. Do try this at home.

1. "Moist dreamed of bottled wizards, all shouting his name. In the best tradition of awaking from a nightmare, the voices gradually became one voice, which turned out to be the voice of Mr. Pump, who was shaking him."

2. Moist is uneasy about the Smoking Gnu's plan, and then he has an extremely detailed dream about the Grand Trunk burning down.

This culminates in "Moist awoke, the Grand Trunk burning in his head," followed by a paragraph of him thinking things through and starting to form his own alternative plan, followed immediately by "Moist awoke. He was at his desk, and someone had put a pillow under his head."

So he fell asleep at his desk, woke up from a vivid nightmare, was awake just long enough for a coherent train of thought, and then passed back out. Which once again is not "proof" of anything, but fits the predetermined interpretation like a glove.

V. Cataplexy.

Cataplexy is a sudden loss of muscle control, usually triggered by strong emotions. This is thought to be a facet of REM intrusion—waking instances of the atonia that is meant to stop us from acting out our dreams.

The most well-known manifestation is laughter making your knees buckle, but it's not always that severe. My own attacks range from facial twitching, usually when I'm angry or otherwise extremely upset, to all-over weakness/immobilization and near-collapse when I laugh. My knees have fully buckled once or twice.

This is the biggest stretch. This is the one that is absolutely only there if you've already decided to read entire novels between the lines. It's also not even necessary for the broader headcanon; plenty of people have narcolepsy without cataplexy (or such mild cataplexy that it's never noticeable, or very delayed onset, etc).

However. I am doing this for fun. So I want him to have it. It's also become a major part of how I imagine Moist engaging with emotion, and I'd like to make a case for that.

There are a few scattered references to Moist's legs shaking, or being unsteady, or outright giving way, but there's usually an external physical reason, and/or enough psychological shock to justify it without a medical condition.

The most compelling example I've found so far comes from Moist and Adora's conversation about people expecting Moist to deliver letters to the gods.

"I never promised to—"

"You promised to when you sold them the stamps!"

Moist almost fell off his chair. She'd wielded the sentence like a fist.

"And it'll give them hope," she added, rather more quietly.

"False hope," said Moist, struggling upright.

"Almost fell off his chair" at first sounds like casual hyperbole, but then "struggling upright" implies it was a bit more literal. It's also an accurate description of me recovering from my more severe attacks, supporting myself on a wall or my spouse, or pushing myself up if I've fallen over in bed.

That happens to me multiple times per day, by the way. It doesn't bother me, and I didn't realize there was anything unusual about it for a long time. I barely think about it, except to fondly note that my spouse is good at making me laugh.

Which is to say, even severe cataplexy is not always noticeable or debilitating. Sometimes it absolutely is! It can be downright dangerous, depending on where you are, what you're doing, and whether you have any other conditions it might exacerbate. I don't want to undermine that.

I am just hell-bent on justifying the idea that this fictional character could have repeated attacks throughout the canonical narrative that are so routine they don't merit an explanation, or even a description. Especially for someone who is used to hiding his few distinguishing features behind false ones that are much more memorable. (See also.)

(That link goes to my own fanfic. Sorry.)

On the milder side, between Going Postal and Making Money, there are three instances of Moist's mouth "dropping open" when he's shocked, upset, confused, or some combination of the three. This is the kind of thing that shows up a lot in fiction, but rarely happens so literally in real life.

(There's technically a fourth instance, but I'm not counting it because it seems to be a deliberate choice on his part to convey surprise.)

And then there's laughter. Or rather, there isn't. I could be missing something, but I've searched all three books for instances of laughter and various synonyms (not counting spoken "Ha!"s), and what I've come up with is:

Moist laughs once in Going Postal, when he receives the assignment for the race to Genua.

Two packages were handed over. Moist undid his, and burst out laughing.

There's also an instance earlier in the book where Moist nearly "burst[s] out laughing."

I find the specifics here interesting, and, for our purposes, fortuitous. Cataplexy is complicated and presents differently for everyone. In my case, when laughter triggers an attack, one of the effects (which is sometimes also a cause) is that I laugh very hard, with little or no control. "Burst out laughing" is quite apt.

Let's move on to Making Money, and start with a quick tangent:

Mr. Bent explains that he has no sense of humor due to a medical condition, and that he isn't upset about this and doesn't understand why people feel sorry for him.

Moist immediately starts in with "Have you tried—" before getting cut off by the frustrated Bent.

Out-of-universe, "Have you tried" is such a well-known refrain to anyone with an incurable condition, I'm not at all surprised to find it in a book written by someone who had at least begun the process that would lead to a diagnosis of early-onset Alzheimer's. And Pratchett has certainly never shied away from portraying ignorance in his protagonists.

In-universe, it feels a little odd. Moist's tongue runs away from him all the time, but usually in the form of making ridiculous claims or impossible promises. Moist's entire stock-in-trade is People Skills, and it feels strange for him to make this kind of mistake immediately after being told Mr. Bent is not looking for solutions.

But if one were reading with, for instance, the idea in mind that Moist himself has an incurable condition related to laughter and is enthusiastic about, but still relatively new to, the practice of drawing on his own experiences to help people... it is easy to imagine the gears in his head turning the wrong way, superimposing those experiences over the tail end of Mr. Bent's explanation. Disabled people are not immune to these well-meaning pitfalls.

There is another Mr. Bent moment that I want to discuss, but we'll circle back around to it later.

I found two instances of Moist himself laughing in MM.

1. "He said it with a laugh, to lighten the mood a little."

This is deliberate laughter, employed as a social tactic. A polite chuckle, probably. Not the sort of thing that generally triggers cataplexy.

2. "Moist started to laugh, and stopped at the sight of her grave expression."

The first and only involuntary laugh in MM. It doesn't always trigger attacks...

Which brings us to Raising Steam. Compared to the first two books, Moist laughs a lot here. I count nine instances. Two of them are "burst out laughing"s, a couple include him as part of a group, some of it comes off as deliberate, and some of it doesn't.

I've always seen a lot of... rage in Raising Steam. Combing through it for laughter, I realized Moist's emotions in general are much closer to the surface here, and he's much less concerned about letting people see them. He laughs with friends and acquaintances, he cries in front of strangers, he shouts at Harry King, he has that entire conversation with Dick that boils down to "I'm very worried about you," etc.

Opinions vary wildly and sharply on Raising Steam. I have my own hangups with it, as I do with most books in the series. (Every time I make a new Discworld post, Tumblr passive-aggressively suggests the tag "my kingdom for a discworld character who is normal about women and other species.")

But I like this particular change in Moist, and I choose to see it as character development. He's trading in the professional detachment of a conman for the ability to grow into himself as a person and make meaningful connections.

So, what does that have to do with cataplexy? A lot.

I don't want to get too maudlin, so I'll just say I have plenty of personal experience with emotional repression masking cataplexy symptoms. And so, I believe, does the version of Moist we've put together over the course of this post.

Which brings us back to Making Money, and Mr. Bent. He says something about Moist that I find very interesting: "I do not trust those who laugh too easily."

Unless I've missed something, at that point in the book, Moist has never actually laughed in front of him. And Mr. Bent is a man who pays very close attention to details.

So, what is the in-universe explanation for this? I'd like to propose that Moist is very skilled at seeming to laugh, without actually laughing. He smiles, he's friendly, and he makes other people laugh, which is another thing Bent dislikes about him. He gives the impression of being someone who laughs a lot. (He certainly left that impression on me; I was very surprised by the lack of examples in the first two books.)

Even staying strictly within the bounds of canon, it's easy to imagine why this might have become part of Moist's camouflage in his previous life. He wasn't looking to get attached to anyone, and he didn't want anyone getting inside his head. Engaging with people genuinely enough to laugh at their jokes would run counter to both of those things, but some of his personas still needed to come off as friendly and sociable.

Still working within the canon, it makes sense to assume he's similarly distanced himself from emotion in general. He sits in a cell for several weeks without truly believing he's going to die. He's bewildered when Mr. Pump points out that his schemes have hurt innocent people. He has no idea what to do with his feelings for Adora. Etc.

Interpreting Moist as having cataplexy adds an extra element of danger. Moist thrives on danger, but there's a difference between the thrill of a con and the threat of sudden, uncontrollable displays of vulnerability. And so it becomes even easier to see him stifling his own emotional capacity.*

We meet Moist at a moment of great upheaval. He is forcibly removed from his cocoon of false identities, and pushed out into the world as himself. And we are shown and told throughout Going Postal that he does not know how to be himself. (See also.)

He is repeatedly stymied by his own emotions. He gets tongue-tied and confused around Adora, he snaps at Mr. Pump, he lashes out at Mr. Groat, he gets lost in school flashbacks when he meets Miss Maccalariat. This thread continues in Making Money, where the sudden reappearance of Cribbins immediately rattles him into making an uncharacteristic mistake.

I called him Cribbins! Just then! I called him Cribbins! Did he tell me his name? Did he notice? He must have noticed!

Later in the same book, Moist misses a crucial opportunity to run damage control on the bank's public image... because he's excited to see Adora.

The Moist of GP and MM is not used to feeling things so deeply. It throws him off his game. I'm not at all suggesting cataplexy is the only (or even primary) reason for that, but I do think there's room for it on both sides of the cause and effect equation.

With or without the cataplexy, I find Moist's relative emotional openness in Raising Steam... really nice. (It's a work in progress. He's still getting a handle on anger.)

Cataplexy just adds another dimension. A physical manifestation of emotional vulnerability, which would have been especially untenable for a teenager on the run. Just one more facet of the real, human, fallible Moist von Lipwig who spent years buried beneath Albert Spangler and all the rest.

Another piece of himself that Moist is growing to understand and accept, as he learns to more comfortably be himself.

The Moist of Going Postal runs into a burning building to save lives without fully understanding why he wants to, and justifies it on the fly as an essential part of the role he's trying to play.

The Moist of Raising Steam mindlessly throws himself under a train to save two children, and then blows up at Harry King about the lack of safety regulations. Freshly traumatized by the murder of several railway workers and his own violent, vengeful response to it, he still offers, in the face of Harry's own grief, to be the one to inform their families. On a long and dangerous journey with plenty of moving parts to think about, he worries about Dick Simnel and the other engineers, and pushes them to take better care of themselves.

He also meets a bunch of kids who nearly derailed a train as part of a childish scheme. His admonishment is startlingly vivid.

"Can you imagine a railway accident? The screaming of the rails and the people inside and the explosion that scythes the countryside around when the boiler bursts? And you, little girl, and your little friends, would have done all that. Killed a trainload of people."

[...]

"I'll square this with the engine driver, but if I was you I'd get my pencil and turn any clever ideas you have like this into a book or two. Those penny dreadfuls are all the rage in the railway bookshops."

Maybe what he is also saying, between the lines, is:

I left home at 14 and began a life of smoke and mirrors. I was empty inside, and I thought everyone else was, too. It was all fun and games, and then a man made of clay told me I was killing people. Nip it in the bud, child. Write books.

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

*There are studies suggesting that in addition to deliberately employed "tricks," people with cataplexy may experience physiological reactions in the brain meant to inhibit laughter. (Source 1, Source 2.)

Most of the information here is way over my head, but that second link also says "one region of the brain called the zona incerta (meaning 'zone of uncertainty') was only activated during laughter in people with narcolepsy, not in controls. Research on the zona incerta in animals suggests that it also helps to control fear-associated behavior."

The linked article about that (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-03581-6) is also over my head, but I would certainly describe Moist von Lipwig as having unusual fear responses.**

**Narcolepsy is a fun roller-coaster ride of constant scientific discoveries about exactly which parts of your brain are paying too much attention, not paying enough attention, or trying to eat each other.

[ritsushinbro]

My Critique of Rebuild of Evangelion's Characterization: I originally wrote this post on the Evageeks forum and decided to post it here. It discusses the relationship between Misato, WILLE and the pilots and whether it is realistic and in-character. Warning this post contains spoilers and is very long. Also has references to self-harm and suicide.

With each revelation that comes out regarding the measures WILLE take against Shinji and their own pilots, it becomes more and more unrealistic for me to the point where it's almost comical. Let's go through some of them here:

They wear the explosive DSS chokers 24/7 which will kill the pilots should they risk awakening an Eva.

They are kept in a single room rigged with explosives.

In Shinji's case, he is (intended to be) put in 24/7 solitary confinement with explosives fitted as well.

Shinji is escorted around the wunder whilst restrained on a stretcher. (NOTE: The only time he isn't, is when Sakura takes him to Ritsuko).

It is confirmed in another thread that Misato gave clear permission to the crew for them to shoot Shinji on sight if they suspect he is attempting to get into an Eva. 

Now let me attempt to deconstruct these measures one-by-one:

It is understandable that Asuka and Mari wear DSS chokers because after all they are pilots and there is a risk of awakening. However in Shinji's case, he is forbidden from piloting and so there is no risk of awakening (remember Ritsuko did not think NERV would come after him, so they had no reason to think he would escape). So why place the DSS choker on him? Well we have already established it is simply because they have a resentment against him; there is no special, pragmatic reason. Is this realistic? Well I would say no for reasons I will explain later but I can certainly understand why others may say it is.

I don't think I will understand why they would keep their two main "soldiers" if you will, in an explosively rigged room. I believe others have  stated that from a tactical point, it's an extremely dumb move on WILLE's part. After all, if Asuka and Mari didn't have plot armor, what's to stop Gendo from tricking WILLE into killing their own pilots with these explosives? How would WILLE stop Gendo then? Will they use Shinji? No, for reasons I will state later. And another thing, we know that their rooms were already fitted with explosives so why on Earth would they add extra after the events of Q (when they stopped 4th impact). What do they hope to achieve with more bombs? Make the pilots more "deader" than they already are? In my opinion, this doesn't even come across as paranoid but just plain childish. Is this measure realistic from a story standpoint? No not in my eyes.

We know they intended to put Shinji in a solitary cell as this is what they do in Shin. If it was solitary confinement on it's own, then I believe it would be a realistic measure that would happen in real life. However I believe the writers did not factor in the effects of solitary confinement (especially one that is rigged to explode) on fully grown men; never mind a 14 year old who's just come out of a 14 year coma. Many people think solitary confinement is a walk in the park so I made another post a while ago highlighting why that's not the case:

"I remember when before Shin came out people here theorized that if Shinji stayed on the Wunder, they would eventually softened to him and let him help in ways that wouldn't have involved piloting. However with these revelations it looks like they intended to keep him in an isolated room far from everyone else that is (presumably) rigged with explosives as well as keeping the choker on his neck. Not even allowed to freely leave his cell without WILLE's permission (it is unlikely they would let him out judging from these measures). 

Even though Asuka and Mari were treated like this as well, at least they had each other and were able to leave as they had responsibilities in piloting. But Shinji was forbidden from piloting and was to be kept by himself except maybe being checked up on by Sakura now and again. So judging from these leaks (we will have to wait to properly see the full context) WILLE intended to lock Shinji in solitary confinement.

I have copied and pasted some of the effects of Solitary Confinement from Wikipedia below:

“Psychiatric: Research indicates that the psychological effects of solitary confinement may encompass "anxiety, depression, anger, cognitive disturbances, perceptual distortions, obsessive thoughts, paranoia, and psychosis." The lack of human contact, and the sensory deprivation that often go with solitary confinement, can have a severe negative impact on a prisoner's mental state that may lead to certain mental illnesses such as depression, permanent or semi-permanent changes to brain physiology, an existential crisis, and death.

Self-harm: According to a March 2014 article in American Journal of Public Health, "Inmates in jails and prisons attempt to harm themselves in many ways, resulting in outcomes ranging from trivial to fatal." Self harm was seven times higher among the inmates where seven percent of the jail population was confined in isolation. Fifty-three percent of all acts of self harm took place in jail. "Self-harm" included, but was not limited to, cutting, banging heads, self-amputations of fingers or testicles. These inmates were in bare cells, and were prone to jumping off their beds head first into the floor or even biting through their veins in their wrists. A main issue within the prison system and solitary confinement is the high number of inmates who turn to self-harm. Many of the inmates look to self-harm as a way to "avoid the rigors of solitary confinement."

Physical: Solitary confinement has been reported to cause hypertension, headaches and migraines, profuse sweating, dizziness, and heart palpitations. Many inmates also experience extreme weight loss due to digestion complications and abdominal pain. Many of these symptoms are due to the intense anxiety and sensory deprivation. Inmates can also experience neck and back pain and muscle stiffness due to long periods of little to no physical activity. These symptoms often worsen with repeated visits to solitary confinement.

Social: The effects of isolation unfortunately do not stop once the inmate has been released. After release from segregated housing, psychological effects have the ability to sabotage a prisoner's potential to successfully return to the community and adjust back to ‘normal’ life. The inmates are often startled easily, and avoid crowds and public places. They seek out confined small spaces because the public areas overwhelm their sensory stimulation.”

And this is just for solitary confinement. There are so many other things going on with and happening (or could happen) to Shinji such as the things below:

Shinji being only 14 years old.

Shinji being abandoned and neglected by his father.

Shinji being coerced/emotionally blackmailed to pilot Unit 1.

Shinji seeing girls he cared for "die".

Shinji being in a coma for 14 years.

Shinji being told he has a bomb on his neck.

Being told it is because he is being punished.

Being told he cannot pilot the eva anymore (he is effectively "useless" now).

Have his former co-pilot and friend try and punch him after he thought she was dead.

[Potentially] being told he started NTI and devastated the world.

[Potentially] being told that the girl he tried to save is "gone" and that she was a clone of his mother.

Being imprisoned in a cell (presumably) surrounded by explosives and not being able to freely leave.

Be completely isolated from everyone except when being checked up by a girl who's father he got killed. (NOTE: Mari might want to see him so Shinji at least has her, maybe). 

Have his mother figure (the woman who made him pilot the eva the most) threaten to detonate the choker around his neck and blow his head off when he tries to leave.

With the above list, is it any wonder his head is so messed up? I understand the purpose of these films is all about growing up and taking responsibility but expecting Shinji to willingly allow himself to be subjected to the treatment WILLE had in store for him is pure, unadulterated masochism. Much of what was is written here can safely be considered cruel, inhumane and arguably, torture. 

There is a massive difference between taking responsibility for one's mistakes and just letting the whole world torture you because you did something bad. My main fear and problem with Q and Thrice is that their main theme, which is accepting responsibility, is equated with accepting unreasonably cruel treatment. And I just think that is an EXTREMELY unhealthy message to send to people especially if they are depressed or live in abusive relationships."

When you take all these into account, does it place into perspective how messed up Shinji would have been had he stayed on the wunder? This is assuming that they thought they would never have a need for him, but as we find out in Shin, they needed Shinji in the end to defeat Gendo. If Shinji never left with Mark 09 and Misato successfully kept him "protective" custody, then one of three things would have happened when WILLE actually needed him to save everyone:

A: He would not have been in the mental state to pilot Unit 1 and Gendo would have completely wrecked him due to shit synch ratios. 

B: He would have told Misato and co. to fuck off and die. We've seen this nihilism before from Shinji (after the 5th angel). His incarceration alongside the humiliation and guilt from wearing the choker will have ratcheted up by a million.

C: He wouldn't have piloted because he would have killed himself. There's only so much a 14 year old can take and when subjected to a fate that causes even hardened criminals to resort to self-harm, genital mutilation and suicide, then what chance does Shinji have? 

Now back to my original point, do I think this measure is realistic? I would like to say yes if it was the solitary on it's own, however when combined with the other things, then I think the chances of Shinji commiting suicide is extremely high to the point where it's not believable for him to continue as an anime protagonist. You have to make sure the protagonist goes through difficulty in order to experience growth and change, however if you make it too harsh (to the point of committing suicide) then it seems less believable that they live to continue the story. On a separate note, many people think that Shinji was immature for leaving with Mark 09 the first chance he got and that this is proof that he is, in Asuka's words, a "brat". But let's be realistic, if this story is about Shinji's growth and maturation, then how exactly would WILLE's treatment of him be conducive to that? The truth is WILLE's sheer hostility towards him would have completely stunted any emotional growth and maturation in Shinji and it would have destroyed the point of the film. Also no-one can argue that WILLE would have eventually "come round" or "softened-up" towards Shinji because even after 14 years they still don't trust their own pilots. So yeah, Shinji most likely would have been stuck in solitary with a bomb around his neck until he either killed himself or the war ended (but even this doesn't guarantee his freedom).

Regarding the stretcher business. I don't understand why you have to restrain Shinji on a stretcher when the kid has already surrendered himself and has come voluntarily. Maybe WILLE are just full of bondage fetishists; it would certainly explain the chokers as well. 

If the DSS chokers and the explosive rooms weren't enough, Misato actually gave orders to the crew to shoot Shinji if they thought he was trying to pilot again. At this point, I just think this is just overkill. I mean the kid has a bomb on his neck that prevents him from awakening an Eva, you intended to keep him locked up even though he can't really leave the wunder except with outside help and now you intend to shoot him if you think he'll get into an Eva. The problem with this, is that piloting an Eva requires all the bridge-bunnies to sortie the damn thing. Shinji cannot enter Unit 1 by himself, especially since the thing is being used as an engine so why do they assume that Shinji is capable of being Sam Fisher and sneaking into Unit 1? We see that Sakura and Midori are actually willing to shoot Shinji in 3.0+1.0 and do so when he merely suggests that he pilot Unit 1. But seriously what harm would Shinji have done in Unit 1 considering the fact that Gendo was already going to start another impact anyway? Why actively try and kill (or injure in Sakura's case) the only guy that can save your ass? One cannot argue that they were just being "desperate or panicking" because in Midori's case, she actually takes the time to confirm her orders from Misato. This shows that at least, she was still of lucid mind. This particular altercation just beggars belief in my mind and the fact that Misato actually gave those orders on top of all the other measures is absolutely extraordinary. So as you can imagine, I do not think this was realistically executed.

However, I can already hear some detractors say: "So what? Misato hesitated to detonate the DSS choker and also took a bullet for Shinji. She redeemed herself from putting the DSS choker on him and the kill-order for if they thought he would try and get into an Eva." 

And to those people I say….not really. There is an idiom attributed to Benjamin Franklin and it goes like this: "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." How does this apply to Misato and Shinji's relationship? Well Misato wouldn't have had to hesitate to pull the trigger if she didn't put it on him in the first place. Misato wouldn't have had to take a bullet for Shinji, if she didn't give permission for the crew to shoot him in the first place. Let's take this following dialogue for example:

916-929:

Kitakami: "It's a good thing we got Major Shikinami back. But why'd we have to take that disease along with her?"

Aoba: "Just leave it alone. Better than Nerv still being able to use him."

Tama: "If he tries to get into an Evangelion, all hands have permission to shoot on sight. There's nothing to worry about this time."

Kitakami: "Come on, that's all for show. The last time he broke out of here, the Captain couldn't put him down. I've got zero trust about this time either."

Nagara: "He was a kid. I can understand why she'd hesitate."

Kitakami: "That 'kid' caused Near Third Impact and murdered my entire family!"

Hyuga: "Near Third was a consequence of what he did, not his goal. The Captain's doing her best to atone for that too."

Takao: "That's right. She's who Kaji entrusted with Wille, and it's our job to trust the captain."

We learn a few things from this dialogue. Firstly, the older WILLE members are much more understanding to Shinji and Misato's situation: Aoba and Hyuga understand that it's better to keep an eye on Shinji and that he never meant to start NTI, Takao is one who always trusts Misato's judgement and Sumire understands that Misato would have found it difficult to kill a child, especially one that Misato was close with. 

Secondly, it appears that the younger WILLE members (Midori, Sakura and Tama) are the ones that are fearful/hateful towards Shinji (NOTE: Tama is a strange case, he strikes me as the sort of kid that just follows what everyone else is feeling. He might not feel anything towards Shinji beyond what you'd expect). 

Finally it appears that most of WILLE crew members are actually reasonable people and are not the extremely desperate and paranoid individuals some people on the forum believe. Remember this is AFTER Shinji started the 4th impact in Q. The fact that some of the WILLE crew members speak of Shinji in this way, show they are capable of understanding. Most actually trust Misato and respect her judgement except for Midori, who questions Misato's capabilities in following through on her threats. 

Which brings me to my next point. Misato has had no hesitation in pulling rank in the past. In 2.0, she even has an altercation with Ritsuko, her best friend, right before they fight the 8th angel. Misato is a woman that will tell even her best friend to STFU, when it comes to doing what she wants. Having said that, (timeskip shenanigans aside) there's no reason why she couldn't have done the same with the younger WILLE crew members. She could have nipped all of it in the bud by telling Sakura, Midori and the rest of them that Shinji was groomed to cause NTI and it was not his fault.

Instead, despite being the captain that everyone loves and fears, she kowtowed to the crew's paranoia and had the pilots fitted with explosive chokers, put in explosively rigged solitary confinement and gave the order to kill Shinji if they feared the worst. This is the sort of thing that drives fully grown men to suicide, never mind 14 year olds that have just come out of a coma. Imagine if Shinji did commit suicide in his cell. Who would Misato and WILLE have turned to in order to defeat Gendo in the end? What if Gendo tricked WILLE into killing their own pilots with the explosives? They would be properly screwed then. If Misato actually cared, as we are led to believe from her hesitation to kill Shinji, then she would have told the rest of the WILLE crew to fuck off, instead of alienating and putting Shinji and the pilots in that much risk. Are we really expected to believe that Misato placed such extreme countermeasures on Shinji just to appease Midori and Sakura? Not likely. This is why I believe that Misato would not have put the DSS choker on Shinji in the first place, and her doing so in Q was extremely unrealistic and out of character, even with anything that happened during the timeskip.

Some of you will say: "Who cares about realism? It's a show about aliens and growing up." While this is true, Anno has proven that he is able to pull the themes off much better when you look at the NGE series. Disregarding the self-contained narrative, it is obvious that the purpose of Q was to bring Shinji to the same point he was at after episode 24 of the series. If we look at how NGE/EOE handled Shinji's depression, we see that it is quite realistic:

The neglect and coercion by the adults in his life, almost dying to angels multiple times, the sexual tension with Asuka, almost killing Touji, finding out Rei is a clone of his mother, Misato putting the moves on him and having to kill Kaworu all culminate towards Shinji's mental state during EOE. Shinji is passively suicidal but it's due to the *situation* and his own introverted tendencies instead of people actively trying to hurt and isolate him. He finds the will to live again due to his mothers words despite knowing just how difficult living might be. If you remove all the Evas and the Angels from the story, the themes that are touched upon (isolation, neglect, misunderstanding) still apply and the audience can still resonate with them. 

The rebuilds however go about it completely differently. They bring Shinji to that same suicidal state by having all the characters/plot actively harm Shinji's mental health by:

Putting him in a coma for 14 years so he is completely clueless. Imagine how groggy you are when you wake up in the morning and then multiply that by a million. 

Have Misato psychologically castrate Shinji by telling him he won't do anything with a look of disdain on her face.

Have Ritsuko make Shinji feel dread by telling him he has a bomb on his neck and it's because he is being "punished".

Not tell him why he is being punished when he asks Misato.

Have Asuka try to punch Shinji after he thought she was dead.

Tell Shinji the girl he saved is "gone”.

Have his "mother figure" threaten to blow his head off for wanting to leave with the girl you just told him is gone.

Have Asuka and Mari attack Shinji in Lilith's chamber even though Shinji was seemingly willing to listen to them had Asuka not kept attacking. (Watch that scene again and you'll see when Asuka learns what Shinji is trying to do, she stops attacking but instead of explaining that he's being manipulated, she just calls him a brat instead).

Even Mari was willing to potentially kill or cripple Shinji with the Anti-AT rounds. (We don't know what the AA rounds are truly capable of because the only time they are used on screen, they don't work. The round cartridges state that they are armor and AT field piercing and have explicit restrictions on their use. The fact that Mari requires Asuka's explicit authorization to use them imply that they are most likely lethal and would have killed/crippled Shinji had he been in a normal Eva). 

Have Shinji's friend's head explode with the device Shinji's "mother figure" actually meant for him. Imagine seeing someone's head explode and then remember that your "mother figure" actually meant that to be for you. That would certainly mess anyone up.

Have Asuka then kick and manhandle him when he is catatonic.

Have Asuka force feed him to the point where he pukes whilst he is still grieving the death of his friend. 

Have Shinji only be escorted whilst tied to a stretcher despite him coming voluntarily.

Have Misato place Shinji in 24/7 solitary confinement in a cell rigged with explosives.

Have Misato tell the WILLE crew to shoot Shinji on sight if they think he's getting into an EVA.

Have people tell Shinji that he's being a brat the entire time for reacting badly to all this.

By having Misato, Asuka, WILLE reject and "punish" Shinji so harshly so it kicks off his isolation and desperation, it makes Shinji's "recovery" seem less believable. Anno himself didn't even know how to make Shinji recover psychologically in 3.0+1.0 and he actually had to ask the voice actors on how to make that happen. The story made the WILLE crew go full scorched-earth and in doing so made Shinji's "growth" and his reconciliation with Misato seem impossible. 

I have already stated that I believe Q represents "Condemnation" and Shin represents "Compassion" and I think both films pull that off brilliantly. But that doesn't mean I think the characters acted in a realistic manner. I do not believe that Misato would have placed such harsh sanctions on Shinji in the first place for the reasons I have stated above. And if she did, I do not believe that Shinji would have easily forgiven Misato (even IF she took a bullet for him) as we see he does in the film. I do not believe that WILLE were merely "scared and desperate" because as the dialogue above shows, they are surprisingly understanding (but still disapproving) of Shinji's situation despite him literally starting another impact. I do not believe that Misato would have bent over to Sakura and Midori's resentment and taken measures against Shinji, just to ease their minds. 

In summary, my main problem with the post-timeskip rebuilds is that I feel they gaslight the audience in thinking that Shinji was just being a "brat" the entire time by having Asuka and Mari say: "You have grown a little/You smell like an adult now." However, the truth is Shinji's been through so much mental suffering perpetrated by the people he cares about, that it's a miracle he's not killed himself. It would certainly break most of us on this forum. The movies seek to show Shinji "finally" taking responsibility when the truth is, the plot went so above and beyond putting him down in such an extreme manner in the first place.

[life-rewritten]

Start up: Nam Dosan and his helping hands

I find it challenging to accept finding clues for 'the husband scavenger hunt' type kdramas because they always have this leftover annoyance and unfairness when the second lead gets duped and broken-hearted in the end. Shows like the Reply me series, Hospital playlist, Dreamhigh etc. always use this device, flesh out both men and their reasons and love for our main girl whilst making us hurt with the push and pull of how both men are perfect for her. If one loses her, we all lose. In Start-Up, Jipyeong joins that list of the second lead men who are known to play with our heartstrings and get us rooting for him. He's Cyrano; he's pitiful, the one who's been by the girl's side this whole time, the one who spoke to her and won her heart, the soul of the letters she clings to in her mind as her happiness and person that she wants. Her fantasy for a prince come true. He's exactly that. This is why he should end up with the girl except the main lead Dosan isn't someone to forget, he seems determined and driven to get the girl, he looks ready to give it all for her. Who should she choose? After watching episode 1 and 2, seeing the in-depth and sad yet profound background story of Jipyeong, our minds automatically leans towards him. It makes no sense why he is second lead; he has this incredible bond with her grandmother, he's precisely the guy on paper she's looking for, and he has this innate thing in him ready to protect and look out for her. In a way, fortune has brought them back together again so why is Dosan still the one she probably will end up with? I've written this analysis to stand behind Dosan despite the many people who have dropped him and gone aboard Jipyeong's ship. I want to say that as a writer the show has already given Dosan the girl 80% he's the endgame why you ask because of Fate (Luck)—warning a very long essay upcoming. 

Nam Dosan and Dalmi are meant to be together

The first reason Nam Do san enters Dalmi's heart without knowing who he actually was (she held onto his picture, his name and also how smart he was (from seeing him win the awards) is because fate wanted them to interact and meet each other. Hear me out before you roll your eyes, it feels more like fate is pushing her and Jipyeong together since he's the one who wrote the letters that got her out of her depression and were her rock and anchor when she was broken and looking for something to hold on to. His words comforted her, but fate still made happen in Dosan's name. Fate has supported Dosan and Dalmi from the start. It's fate who pulled Jipyeong to notice Dosan on those tv screens winning his gold medal  (a psychological trick to get him to pick the newspaper later on and be open to using him as a proxy for the letter). Likewise, him seeing Dosan winning a gold medal also hints to who's winning at the end of this. The medal has other meanings as we find out in episode 5 so I'll just move on from that for now and continue with this first. Here's how Fate/The universe is on Dosan's side instead of Jipyeong. 

The universe is supportive of Dosan's journey. Most things that happen to Dosan and Dalmi seem convenient and just random luck because the universe supports them in the story. Dalmi mentions this in episode 5; it's the writers warning us already. First Dosan is good at manifesting what he wants at the right moment and time:

He needed to get support from Jipyeong (his role model who he adored and looked up to) to get into the Sandbox (something Dalmi's inspiration created/she's also the little girl on the swings). This is manifested to him by Dalmi showing up and him selling baseball being the reason she finds him (follow your dreams). Because of her, Jipyeong has to pay attention, mentor and push him into wanting to be better. It's all fate conspiring to get him what he wants; his dreams to succeed in his company despite everyone looking down on him because he's a loser.

The universe provides him with Dalmi's love and support. Dalmi is the companion he never knew he needed (he realized it so much in episode 5 as she was giving his speech; she was his missing piece to his company). She's his catalyst for inspiration and the spark that was missing from his company's startup. He's given a chance to get into Sandbox because of her, (first because of her, Jipyeong backs him in Sandbox hoping he fails, and then second she chooses him to join her team)

The universe has set someone else on his team; Alex, the other Korean American, is also another way Dosan manifests his dream into a reality. Despite everyone looking down on him, Alex is amazed at Dosan and has a past with him that he wants to repay (I'll talk more about how both Dosan and Dalmi's 'choices' is why fate is on their side in another post)

Fate is on Dosan's side, and it keeps on helping him to get there with the presence of Dalmi. Fate wants them to be together regardless if she doesn't know that he's not her first love, the universe already set him up like that by his name being the proxy for the letters, they were destined from the start. 

Nam Dosan always chooses/gets the real Dalmi

The second reason why Dosan and Dalmi are meant to be together, for now, is because he loves and knows the real Dalmi. Jipyeong has been writing letters to Dalmi, listening to her express her self and he never paid attention or remembered who the real Dalmi is. That's already a sign that his slowness will cost him the win in this race. Dosan who the letter was intended for from the start (because it was to his name) reads her messages, and he's affected by who Dalmi is. He chooses to keep going to her side because of this. Her words inspire him, and her genuine self makes him want to push out of his comfort zone and want to win. Her presence in his life is so significant to him because she's meant to be there and it's vice versa for her. They both needed each other, both being pulled to each other without knowing why. Its destiny.  

Let's focus a bit more on this fact about authenticity, both Dalmi and Dosan are on equal grounds (they may seem like they're just acting with each other but they're not they see through each other when it matters), they both think they're nobodies, they're not necessary, they lose on purpose for other people's happiness, and they react the same way to things. The first time we're given this idea of how similar they are  is when she understands why he would lie about being wealthy and prosperous; she just did the same thing in episode 1, so it made her understanding and grateful instead of thinking about the fact she lied to him, Dalmi focused on how she found someone just like her, someone who understands what it's like to be her(it brought her comfort and confidence that he's the right partner for her)

Dosan is her father’s mirror image (the right choice)

The third, Dosan, is a mirror character for her dad. The show has had so many people come to her to mock her for choosing to stick with her dad. When in reality, as we know it was the right choice, that consequences for her choice are slowly unveiling. It's also the reason why fate is on her side She's the inspiration of Sandbox (she's always been destined to enter and become CEO, she became great at what she does because of how many times she spent helping her dad with his own startups, and she stayed untainted by greediness and wealth because she chose him she has heart and different perspectives to the others who just follow things by the books; this is important because that's what her most significant strength is). 

The show is already showing you that Dalmi always choosing things that may not seem perfect for her in the long run rather than the ideal choice (Jipyeong), is already foreshadowing why she'll pick Dosan at the end (if he doesn't change). I noticed Dosan's connection to her dad when he mentioned that the food he wanted to eat in episode 3 was Fried chicken, and Jipyeong told him to erase it and criticized him for his lack of communication skills. Dosan is like that fried chicken (a weird symbol but hear me out this show has so many signs for these two), it's not very fancy, or romantic as a meal (both Injae and Jipyeong reject and look down on it because it holds the opposite connotations to wealth and success). 

Still, it has a sense of comfort and authenticity for Dalmi. See again; authenticity makes its way back to Dalmi and Dosan. Fried chicken is what connected Dalmi to her father; it's also what he went to get for her before he died. It represents family, unity and just a time she was the most grateful for because it brought her to spend time with her father. It was all he could give her without it seeming like it was something, it's just like Dosan who she appreciates his hands, it may seem like nothing, but it means the world to her that he's just there by her side, together and close and real (chooses her authentic self). Just like her father needed Dalmi's steadfast support, Dosan also needs her by his side because of that; she's also his helping hand. Still, he also is that to her by choosing her to become a CEO of their sandbox company, thereby helping her achieve her father's dreams. This is again the universe supporting and bringing them together to make their dreams a reality. 

Jipyeong; the fanstasy and ideal man/The mentor

First look at the ending of episode 5, the show already shows you through visual cues what Jipyeong represents; a mentor for both Dalmi and Dosan. And it breaks my heart. Life already assigned him to be behind the scenes a tool to bring them together. Let's pause and look at what Jipyeong represents. Jipyeong represents fantasy. As much as he was important to Dalmi when she was younger by being the reason she was happy all those times, he was like a fantasy to run to that wasn't real. He wasn't the real Nam Do San. As much as behind the scenes, he's the reason for why Dosan entered her life (both times), and he's falling for her slowly. Like I said the picture above is pretty telling what he is to her and Dosan, life has assigned him as a mentor.  Apart from his wealth, knowledge and being her ideal guy on paper, he isn't doing much for Dalmi as of now. (Hear me out before you lose your minds) Yes, he helped her in episode 5 by teaching her how to speak and present and its all cute that he's there. He isn't Dosan who stayed up with her and stayed by her side through the whole making of the product. He is helpful as a mentor,  able to offer his knowledge and wealth to help Dalmi become successful but as we've seen that's not what Dalmi needs, she just needs someone to hold her hand and be by her side and inspire her to be better. (Do san keeps on doing this for her). Jipyeong represents idealism of our first love, a fantasy, an ideal situation, but that isn't enough to make him the right person for her. Both her and Dosan actually catalyze and affect each other positively, they push each other and provide for each other things they didn't know they needed. Still, they also provide (through the lessons from each other) a healthy but dose of realism. 

That's what love is meant to be about, both equally providing and aiding the other by each other's side, pushing each other to their calling. 

I keep on saying it, but the Jipyeong/Fake Nam Do San she fell in love with is a fantasy, he's good with his words, but they don't hold as much authenticity as Nam Do san's actual words to her, she may fangirl over his texts and letters, but it doesn't mean anything. I fangirl over fantasies (celebrities speeches, love letters written by other people, movie characters) all the time, doesn't mean it's my true love or my soulmate you know? Unless Dosan's character switches, nothing has made me think Jipyeong is even close to being who Dalmi needs, I don't see him as her one despite him realizing how great she is and helping her from behind the scenes because he's been assigned by life to be her helper, not a soulmate. Sorry, not sorry. 

Symbolism, Foreshadowing and Visual Devices pointing to Dosan

Lastly, the proof is with the writers: Symbolism, subtext and foreshadowing devices for Namdosan and Dalmi. 

Let's mention a few:

1. The music box; she wrote about it in her letter. In episode 3, after spending time with him, she realized opening it was wonderful. Foreshadowing, knowing the real Do san, she finally opened the music box. This inspires him to go to her side and choose to stay there despite what's to come)

2. The baseball that brought them together despite Jipyeong and Grandma thinking there was no way it would happen. Fate had other plans. The ball received says what they are meant to be for each other, a way to follow your dreams. It's a representation of fate pulling them to each other to make their dreams a reality. Emphasis as if I haven't said it enough times already they are meant to be with each other, and they are destined to be together. 

3. His hands; Her helping hand she needs,  a hand pulling her up when she's down, lifting her when she's low, pulling her to her dreams, a companion by her side always, comfort, intelligence (as his friends explained in episode 5. This  is also what he's looked down for when it comes to romance; his logical, robotic personality but its needed for her company, and to teach her.) Lastly, his hands represent his authenticity and potential. (like his friend said it's not about how it looks but what he does with it)

4. Her letters and his name; the messages affect him and make him choose her because of her real voice and her authentic self. His name is what makes them meet again, remember he's the actual recipient of her notes from the start.

5. Sandbox; both their dreams and reason for inspiration. They were always on their way to get there; to get her to make her dad's plans a reality, to make his company dreams a reality, a place for a push to become better, both are a team here, both are meant to work with each other on equal ground, and again both are inspiring each other and bringing their positives out.  

6. And even fried chicken; her dad, authenticity vs fantasy, comfort, warmth, togetherness and looked down upon but what she wants in the end

From episode 5: 

1. Tarzan and Jane; from the story, Tarzan is slow and can't provide accurately for Jane the romantic/ideal things she is meant to like and want (Flowers, bunnies etc.).  Just like Jipyeong can provide for Dalmi all the things that are intended to be an ideal for Dalmi (his wealth, his status, making Dosan look rich, providing the texts for Dosan to send to her, the letters etc.). Still, it isn't what she wants in the end. Dalmi says out loud that she overlooks the pretty on the surface things, she wants the useful stuff, like Dosan's helping hands, Dosan's presence by her side, and his words of wisdom to help them create a product in episode 5. Tarzan may seem like he has nothing to offer but the rocks and the gifts he gave Jane is actually what was needed to survive and be happy. Dalmi recognized that. That's foreshadowing who she will choose.

2.The sweets: At first, I wondered why they kept using it as a recurring motif to show Dosan eager to choose what Dalmi chose for him. But no it's foreshadowing. Jipyeong tries to steal the sweets from Dosan unintentionally, and interferingly  (just like he's been unintentionally falling for Dalmi and is slowly starting to want to reveal the truth). Still, Dosan chides him and takes back all the ones she chose for him. This foreshadows that he will lose her to Jipyeong, but because of his heart, and determination, he'll get her back. She's also like the sweets; people don't see the importance to her yet, but Dosan and his friends are excited and eager to have all the free food and sweets because they've struggled for a bit, they have this childlike fascination with it, and she joins them as well later. Dosan doesn't overlook Dalmi's importance, she means a lot to him, and he appreciates and is grateful for her just like the sweets. 

3.Lastly, the handwriting test/ the ability to test forgery: Another symbol for both Dosan and Dalmi. It's telling that the test was able to see 99.8% of what was real and what was fake (idealism vs realism), but it failed to recognize the new handwriting created by Injae and the others. This is foreshadowing there will be a moment when Dalmi won't be able to acknowledge idealism vs realism when Jipyeong reveals who he is. However, it doesn't mean that the handwritings were authentic, they were still forged even though the machine picked them up as real. Dalmi will question things, but at the end of the day, she already said it with the Jane metaphor, she will choose what's accurate and useful to her. This also makes the metaphor she told her grandmother (Jipyeong overheard this I think) about the rain and the storms to create something sweet, instead of choosing again what is ideal (just sunshine), Dalmi chooses the other way all the time, and she appreciates the results of it. That's why I believe she will end up with Dosan/choose him if he doesn't change. 

So yeh for now Dosan is endgame for Dalmi, Jipyeong has been shoved into the role to bring them together and fulfill their goals and destinies. This could change because there’s so much more stuff that can happen, Dosan maybe tempted by greed later on and change and that will pull Jipyeong ahead. But if Dosan doesn’t change, then there’s no doubt that Dalmi even after she knows he’s not her first love, will not choose him. Let’s see how it turns out. 

[on-literal-mars]

The Narcissism of Wilbur Soot: Ghostburs real unfinished business.

Wilbur Soot effectively manipulated a bunch of children into fighting a war for him. This was the first ‘official’ arc of the Dream SMP and even though it’s been months and months since it happened, so many things still tie back to it. L’manberg: a country more power struggle than nation, Tommy’s discs and their importance, and Wilbur Soots selfishness. This post will be broken down into four parts for four symptoms of narcissistic personality disorder that fit Wilbur the best. There will also be a final section dedicated to Ghostbur and his unfinished business on the SMP.

Having an exaggerated sense of self importance:

Wilbur is a showman. He is useless unless he has an audience. It’s introduced from day one as he cultivates an army over the shared dream of freedom, again when he holds an election and reads out the results, and finally when he doesn’t blow up L’manberg until Phil comes. How many times does Wilbur go into the button room by himself? I think on stream maybe 3-4 times. That’s 3-4 times that he doesn’t do what he says he’s gonna do and it’s because someone like Wilbur needs an audience.

He can’t do anything by himself, he hates himself too much, the only time he achieves anything is when he manipulates others to get it done for him. Think about it. How many times has Wilbur sung out for his nation and called it “My L’manberg” like he built it himself? Like he actually fought in the battles instead of standing off to the side and urging his child army to ‘keep fighting’. He’s encredibly entitled. Which brings us to our next point:

Having a sense of entitlement:

Wilbur believes that everything is owed to him. Dream is a tyrant for telling him not to sell drugs on SMP land. People should be allowed to do what they want.

Wilbur should be allowed to do what he wants.

And he wraps this idea up with a bow and calls it ‘freedom’. He elects himself president without any hesitation and is surprised and insulted when Quakity runs against him. I’ve already touched on how he obsesses over L’manberg and destroying it. A narcissist looks at life with complete tunnel vision. The only thing they care about is what will benefit them and what will make them feel better. So the logic behind Wilbur wanting to destroy L’manberg was never ‘they took it from me, I want to destroy it so they can’t have it’(because even that requires some level of empathy) but more ‘It’s mine. If it isn’t mine, then it can’t be any bodies’.

it was always his L’manberg. His unfinished Symphony. It was his way of taking back control. Here’s one thing you have to know about Narcissists, they are rampant control freaks. And if they can’t control you or you are no longer benefiting them, they will destroy you.

Being preoccupied with fantasies about brilliance, beauty, or the perfect mate:

We’ve never seen Wilbur(Ghostbur is a different story) interact romantically but we have seen how he treats the ones he’s supposed to love. Fundy is a perfect example. I could go on and on about how Wilbur gave Tommy more attention because Tommy was always willing to stay under Wilbur while Fundy always tried to go against him but that’s a post we’ve all seen a hundred times(in all fairness, very good posts). I present you another outlook: Wilbur neglects Fundy because he sees too much of himself in him. Like, oh I don’t know, Fundys want for control and authority. He wants attention because he’s just as much of a showman as his dad.

And Wilbur can never share the stage. He is incapable of it, his thinking is too black and white. Regardless, his relationship with both Fundy and Tommy(towards the end) showcase how manipulative and abusive narcissists often are. Now notice how pretty Wilbur tries to make Pogtopia? I know towards the end he was fine to let all those buttons litter the place but think before that. You could argue that Wilbur worked so hard on it because he wanted a cosy place to stay for him and Tommy but it simply isn’t true.

We know this because when Technoblade tries to put railings around the stairs Wilbur breaks them down. He wasn’t intentionally being malicious, you’ve got to understand that narcissists just never think about anyone but themselves. He simply didn’t care if Tommy or Techno( or tubbo who eventually did)fell off the stairs and hurt themselves. It didn’t matter. The railing just didn’t go with his aesthetic. Wilbur made Pogtopia so nice so that he could feel in control.

He did it to convince himself that it was some nice vacation home instead of a stone prison being used as a fugitive hide out. He was absolutely delusional.

Inability to take responsibility:

Right away I bet you can see how this lines up with Ghostbur, huh? It ties back to black and white thinking, as well. His famous phrase ‘indepenance or death’, calling everyone in Manberg traitors because they hadn’t immediately dropped everything to join Pogtopia, and how he kept making destroying L’manberg the final option. He knew from the beginning that he was going to destroy it. The second he built the button room the countrys fate was sealed. Wilbur is never wrong.

He knows what’s best for his country. But here’s the thing: Wilbur has always done things indirectly or through someone else. He does this to avoid direct criticism. Criticism cripples narcissists, it is their worst fear. But blowing up L’manberg would leave no room for anything else. It would be Wilburs fault and no one else’s.

That’s why he has Phil kill him. It wasn’t out of regret or shame, it was one last act of selfishness. He left them with crater for a country and didn’t even say goodbye. And even in his final moments it was “they all want you to, look at them, they want me dead”. He was a coward and died like one. He died to try and escape criticism and responsibility. But death has a funny way of catching you off guard.

Some final symptoms of narcissistic personality disorder before we move into the Ghostbur section:

React with rage or contempt and try to belittle the other person to make themselves appear superior

Have difficulty regulating emotions and behavior

Experience major problems dealing with stress and adapting to change

Have secret feelings of insecurity, shame, vulnerability and humiliation

(This isn’t an official definition but Dr. Ramani Durvasula says that Narcissists are characterized by lack of empathy and deep insecurity. Keep that in mind.)

Ghostbur:

Ghostbur to me is very child like. Ghostbur pulls some pranks but is never intentionally malicious, just works his hardest to make everyone happy. He is innocent and playful and doesn’t like to talk about serious things. We could see him as Wilbur back when he was a little kid. Before the effects of abuse start to kick in. Everyone says that Phil is canonically neglectful, I’m not sure where this comes from but I believe it.

As childlike as he is, it isn’t like he’s the ghost version of kid Wilbur. Wilbur was an adult when he died. He’s so childlike because that’s what Wilbur was on the inside; a child who never matured properly. L’manchild takes a whole different meaning now lmao. Ghostbur is Wilbur without the walls he puts in place to protect himself. That’s why he’s cold all the time: he’s finally being exposed to all the things he tried to hide from.

Wilbur acts like a child throughout majority of his time on the SMP. He gets angry when he doesn’t get his way, expects everyone to kiss his ass and take care of him, and throws tantrums when all he should’ve done was compromise(the way people blame George or Quakity for Schlatt getting elected but Wilbur could’ve just taken down the American-ban). And doesn’t that sound just like the points I made earlier? Ghostbur isn’t the sad alter ego of Wilbur that some try to paint him out to be, he’s literally just Wilbur without the bullshit. He wasn’t the father of a nation he was an abused kid who never grew up. He ran from his problems to the very last second but now he doesn’t have a choice.

That is Ghostburs unfinished business. He must finally allow himself to be wrong. Only then will he be able to move on. And shit, with the way he keeps forgetting the bad stuff he’s done, perhaps he isn’t meant to. Perhaps this is supposed to be his hell and he’ll be trapped in constant pain for all of eternity. It would make sense wouldn’t it?

Death was like: hah, you want to act like you did nothing wrong? Fine, I’ll help you out.

That’s the problem with black and white thinking. Too much of anything will eventually become bad for you. Ghostbur is gonna realize that he can’t float around L’manberg for the rest of time and actually accept the fact that maybe everything is his fault. Atleast Wilbur actually got his wish, I suppose. Dead men can’t take responsibility. Dead men can only exist in hell forever or let go and move on.

[elenajohansenreads]

Books I Read in 2022

#3 – In the Language of Miracles, by Rajia Hassib

Reading the World Mini Challenge: 1/12

Rating: 3/5 stars

The book attempts to be many things, and it accomplishes some much better than others.

As a narrative about a family with a coherent plot and a satisfying climax, I’m disappointed with it. I felt that it withheld the mystery of The Terrible Event that sparked the story for too long. Yes, I had put together clues and made assumptions, but when the central idea of the narrative is that this family is broken and suffering, ostracized by their community for the crime their eldest child committed, what sense does it make for everyone but the reader to know the details of that crime? And this is exacerbated by only addressing the hole that Hosaam’s crime and death have left in the family, but not much at all about his life. And with the time frame of the story being so focused on the week leading up to the anniversary memorial service, I expected something grand or wild or transformative to happen when we finally got there, and instead, it was a confusing jumble of oddly paced action and internal revelation, with no clear catharsis for (or utter rejection of) the family by the community. It felt like a non-ending.

The epilogue clears a little bit of that up, and provides a reasonable future for Khaled, the middle child, but it’s more important to the religious themes than the plot itself.

As an exploration of the immigrant experience in America, I think it’s more successful. We get the tension between three different generations of the family about how Egyptian or American to be, and the lack of understanding about how the two cultures will interact with each other, and the difference in family structure and expected levels of obedience and respect. (The family’s Muslim identity also contributes to this, and I don’t know enough about either Egyptian or Muslim traditions and practices to identify which bits come from which source. But my thoughts on religion are coming a bit later, I just want to acknowledge I’m probably conflating the two in some respects.) It’s not hard to see the children as the most Americanized, the most ready to react to the Islamophobia present in this time period–I thought it was a nice touch that Khaled was worried about his younger sister becoming outwardly more conservative by possibly starting to cover her hair, as attacks on young women with head scarves were on the rise at the time. But it was more interesting to see the parents, the direct immigrants, struggling with how they were perceived, and how they perceived each other, on a scale of Egyptian to American, because it fluctuated, and both at times were convinced the other was the one less adapted to their new home. And Grandma Ehsan was there to be the bastion of tradition and religion, while not at all being a stereotype but a complex character in her own right.

But strangely (for me, who’s about as un-religious as they come) I found the exploration of Islam and fate to be the most interesting part of the book. Each surviving member of the family who was given a POV was shouldering some guilt and feelings of blame for what Hosaam did, and each had a different relationship with their faith. The father was not particularly observant of his religious obligations, but capitalized on the power structure both to maintain his authority and to rationalize his guilt. The mother was deeply conflicted about the role of prayer and surrender to God in accepting what had happened, and wondering if she could have changed the outcome, all while her mother hovered nearby admonishing her for playing “what if.” And their remaining son was having typical teenage troubles buried under the extra weight of being labeled as a murder’s younger brother–he struggled to believe in miracles, the core theme and question of the book, and had a complicated relationship with both Islam and the Arabic language, which he never spoke to the standard that he felt others expected of him. His narrative thread is what connects the whole story, as the prologue his a story from his childhood and the epilogue a glimpse of his adulthood, and he is the one who spends the most time examining his life in the context of the tragedy that happened a year before.

I found in Khaled’s conflict about his own beliefs an echo of what I’ve experienced, as someone raised Christian who is no longer a part of the church, and who belongs to a family that still remains devout. I also suffered small pangs of envy, as I often do when seeing another religion in media, at the rituals of solace and comfort they provide that seem better to me than the ones I grew up with. (This happens to me a lot in anime, actually, because I know enough about Shinto to think that if that were my childhood religion, I might still be a believer.) I’m aware that this tendency of mine is tied up in a Western/white exotification of unfamiliar things; I can’t fully separate that part of myself, as it’s impossible not to think the grass is greener elsewhere when I’m so dissatisfied with my own ex-faith. But there are parts of Islam (as well as many other religions) that I find beautiful and welcoming, and this story brought out a lot of that and kept me engaged even when the plot was flat or frustrating.

Actually, now that I think about it, since the story doesn’t set out to prove or disprove the existence of God or miracles or the usefulness of prayer in averting an individual’s fate, I suppose the non-ending I’m so dissatisfied by is in keeping with the theme of the story. But that doesn’t make me like the ending better now that I’ve thought it through.

[ucflibrary]

How do we define American history? Who decides what information is important to study and remember? Do we only look at the ‘good’ or lionize notable figures by placing them on pedestals and forgetting they were only human? Or do we do the hard work of studying primary sources and reading about all the facets of historic American figures? Do we learn about past mistakes and hidden horrors so we can prevent them from happening in the future?

As an academic library, UCF Libraries is committed to not only teaching our community how to do their own research and providing scholarly resources but to broadening our own horizons and looking critically at our national past. After all, America is us, the people who live, work, dream, hope and endure on these shores. It is shaped by our ideals and grows as her people do into the future we want for ourselves and future generations. The American dream is not static; it is what we want it to be.

The more informed and engaged we all are as citizens, the better our country becomes. To help with being informed, UCF Libraries has suggested 16 books on American History. Keep reading below to see the full list, descriptions, and catalog links for the featured titles on American History suggested by UCF Library employees.

For members of the Knight community looking for ways to get involved are many options available:

Volunteer in local communities. VolunteerUCF can help you connect with an organization.

Join a student group to make a difference here at UCF. The Office of Student Involvement has a list of almost 800 student organizations that can meet any interest.

Connect with your federal, state, and local representatives. You can let them know your opinions on pending legislation, volunteer, or even thank them if you think they’re doing a good job. Don’t know who your legislators are? Check out this list at USA.gov.

Most importantly, if you haven’t done so already, register to vote. If you have voted in previous elections, confirm you are still registered. Find details for how to register in your home state at Vote.gov.

A Crisis of Peace: George Washington, the Newburgh Conspiracy, and the fate of the American Revolution by David Head On March 15, 1783, General George Washington addressed a group of angry officers in an effort to rescue the American Revolution from mutiny at the highest level; the Newburgh Affair, a mysterious event in which Continental Army officers, disgruntled by a lack of pay and pensions, may have collaborated with nationalist-minded politicians such as Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and Robert Morris to pressure Congress and the states to approve new taxes and strengthen the central government. Fearing what his men might do with their passions inflamed, Washington averted the crisis, but with the nation's problems persisting, the officers ultimately left the army disappointed, their low opinion of their civilian countrymen confirmed. Head provides a fresh look at the end of the American Revolution while speaking to issues that concern us still: the fragility of civil-military relations, how even victorious wars end ambiguously, and what veterans and civilians owe each other. Suggested by Cindy Dancel, Research & Information Services

Craft: an American history by Glenn Adamson Adamson shows that craft has long been implicated in debates around equality, education, and class. Artisanship has often been a site of resistance for oppressed people, such as enslaved African-Americans whose skilled labor might confer hard-won agency under bondage, or the Native American makers who adapted traditional arts into statements of modernity. Theirs are among the array of memorable portraits of Americans both celebrated and unfamiliar in this richly peopled book. As Adamson argues, these artisans' stories speak to our collective striving toward a more perfect union. From the beginning, America had to be-and still remains to be-crafted. Suggested by Megan Haught, Student Learning & Engagement/Research & Information Services

Fever, 1793 by Laurie Halse Anderson In 1793 Philadelphia, sixteen-year-old Matilda Cook, separated from her sick mother, learns about perseverance and self-reliance when she is forced to cope with the horrors of a yellow fever epidemic. Includes discussion questions and related activities. Suggested by Peggy Nuhn, Connect Libraries

Fire in the Lake: the Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam by Frances FitzGerald Originally published in 1972, this was the first history of Vietnam written by an American and won the Pulitzer Prize, the Bancroft Prize, and the National Book Award. With a clarity and insight unrivaled by any author before it or since, Frances FitzGerald illustrates how America utterly and tragically misinterpreted the realities of Vietnam. Suggested by Sophia Sahr, Student Learning & Engagement

Hard Times: an oral history of the Great Depression by Studs Terkel In this “invaluable record” of one of the most dramatic periods in modern American history, Studs Terkel recaptures the Great Depression of the 1930s in all its complexity. Featuring a mosaic of memories from politicians, businessmen, artists, striking workers, and Okies, from those who were just kids to those who remember losing a fortune, this work is not only a gold mine of information but a fascinating interplay of memory and fact, revealing how the 1929 stock market crash and its repercussions radically changed the lives of a generation.

Suggested by Sophia Sahr, Student Learning & Engagement

John Washington's Civil War: a slave narrative edited by Crandall Shifflett In 1872, just seven years after his emancipation, a thirty-four-year-old former slave named John Washington penned the story of his life, calling it "Memorys of the Past." One hundred and twenty years later, historian Crandall Shifflett stumbled upon Washington's forgotten manuscript at the Library of Congress. Shifflett presents this remarkable slave narrative in its entirety, with detailed annotations on the mundane and life-changing events that Washington witnessed and recorded. Suggested by Cindy Dancel, Research & Information Services

Katrina: a history, 1915-2015 by Andy Horowitz The Katrina disaster was not a weather event of summer 2005. It was a disaster a century in the making, a product of lessons learned from previous floods, corporate and government decision making, and the political economy of the United States at large. New Orleans's history is America's history, and Katrina represents America's possible future. Suggested by Richard Harrison, Research & Information Services

Killers of the Flower Moon: the Osage murders and the birth of the FBI by David Grann Presents a true account of the early twentieth-century murders of dozens of wealthy Osage and law-enforcement officials, citing the contributions and missteps of a fledgling FBI that eventually uncovered one of the most chilling conspiracies in American history. Suggested by Sandy Avila, Research & Information Services

Lies Across America: what our historic sites get wrong by James W. Loewen Loewen looks at more than one hundred sites where history is told on the landscape, including historical markers, monuments, outdoor museums, historic houses, forts, and ships. Loewen uses his investigation of these public versions of history, often literally written in stone, to correct historical interpretations that are profoundly wrong, to tell neglected but important stories about the American past, and, most importantly, to raise questions about what we as a nation choose to commemorate and how. Suggested by Richard Harrison, Research & Information Services

Never Caught: the Washingtons’ relentless pursuit of their runaway slave, Ona Judge by Erica Armstrong Dunbar When George and Martha Washington moved from their beloved Mount Vernon in Virginia to Philadelphia, then the seat of the nation's capital, they took nine enslaved people with them. Slavery, in Philadelphia at least, was looked down upon. There was even a law requiring slaveholders to free their slaves after six months. Yet George Washington thought he could outwit and circumvent the law by sending his slaves south every six months, thereby resetting the clock. Among the slaves to figure out this subterfuge was Ona Judge, Martha Washington's chief attendant. And, risking everything she knew, leaving behind everyone she loved and had known her entire life, she fled. Here, then, is the story not only of the powerful lure of freedom but also of George Washington's determination to recapture his property by whatever means necessary. Suggested by Cindy Dancel, Research & Information Services

Team of Rivals: the political genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin This multiple biography is centered on Lincoln's mastery of men and how it shaped the most significant presidency in the nation's history. Goodwin illuminates Lincoln's political genius, as the one-term congressman rises from obscurity to prevail over three gifted rivals to become president. When Lincoln emerged as the victor at the Republican National Convention, his rivals were dismayed. That Lincoln succeeded, Goodwin demonstrates, was because of his extraordinary ability to put himself in the place of other men, to experience what they were feeling, to understand their motives and desires. It was this that enabled Lincoln to bring his disgruntled opponents together, create the most unusual cabinet in history, and marshal their talents to the task of preserving the Union. Suggested by Peggy Nuhn, Connect Libraries

The 5th Little Girl: soul survivor of the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing (the Sarah Collins Rudolph story) by Tracy Snipe (in conversation with Sarah Collins Rudolph) Once described by the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as "one of the most tragic and vicious crimes ever perpetrated against humanity," the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Alabama, instantly killed Addie Mae Collins, Carol Denise McNair, Carole Rosamond Robinson, and Cynthia Dionne Morris Wesley on September 15, 1963. This egregious act of domestic terrorism reverberated worldwide. Orchestrated by white supremacists, the blast left twelve-year-old Sarah Collins temporarily blind. In this intimate first-hand account, Sarah imparts her views on topics such as the 50th year commemoration, restitution, and racial terrorism. In the backdrop of a national reckoning and global protests, underscored by the deadly violence at Mother Emanuel in Charleston, SC, and tragedies in Charlottesville, VA, and Pittsburgh, PA, Sarah's unflinching testimony about the '63 Birmingham church bombing is illuminating. Suggested by Megan Haught, Student Learning & Engagement/Research & Information Services

The Black Church: this is our story, this is our song by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. For the young Henry Louis Gates, Jr., growing up in a small, residentially segregated West Virginia town, the church was a center of gravity--an intimate place where voices rose up in song and neighbors gathered to celebrate life's blessings and offer comfort amid its trials and tribulations. In this tender and expansive reckoning with the meaning of the Black Church in America, Gates takes us on a journey spanning more than five centuries, from the intersection of Christianity and the transatlantic slave trade to today's political landscape. Suggested by Megan Haught, Student Learning & Engagement/Research & Information Services

The Other Slavery: the uncovered story of Indian enslavement in America by Andres Resendez Since the time of Columbus, Indian slavery was illegal in much of the American continent. Yet Reséndez shows it was practiced for centuries as an open secret: there was no abolitionist movement to protect the tens of thousands of natives who were kidnapped and enslaved by the conquistadors, forced to work in the silver mines, or made to serve as domestics for Mormon settlers and rich Anglos. New evidence sheds light too on Indian enslavement of other Indians as Reséndez reveals nothing less than a key missing piece of American history. Suggested by Richard Harrison, Research & Information Services

These Truths: a history of the United States by Jill Lepore In the most ambitious one-volume American history in decades, Lepore offers a magisterial account of the origins and rise of a divided nation, an urgently needed reckoning with the beauty and tragedy of American history. Written in elegiac prose, Lepore's groundbreaking investigation places truth itself--a devotion to facts, proof, and evidence--at the center of the nation's history. The American experiment rests on three ideas--'these truths, ' Jefferson called them--political equality, natural rights, and the sovereignty of the people. And it rests, too, on a fearless dedication to inquiry, Lepore argues, because self-government depends on it. But has the nation, and democracy itself, delivered on that promise? Suggested by Sandy Avila, Research & Information Services

Witnessing America: the Library of Congress book of firsthand accounts of life in America, 1600-1900 edited by Noel Rae Presents a portrait of America's social and cultural history between 1600 and 1900, told through letters, diaries, memoirs, tracts, and other articles and first-hand accounts found in the collections of the Library of Congress. Suggested by Peggy Nuhn, Connect Libraries