#there are a lot of oversimplifications in here and there are exceptions to the rules all over the place

[jennelikejennay]

One thing that bugs me about the way Vulcans are usually depicted (with some lovely exceptions) is that their philosophy—logic, or the teachings of Surak, for short I'm just going to call it Surakianism—is very often shown as a bad thing. Either that, or Vulcans aren't following it at all.

Writing about religion (and I do think Surakianism is best approached as a religion*) is always fraught. Because generally as a writer, you don't actually practice the faith in question, so naturally you'll have an outside view. That's doubly true of Surakianism, a way of life humans basically can't follow and it would probably be bad for us to try.

[*I know they don't call it a religion. But the way it deeply affects the interior life of Vulcans, their ethics, and so on feels very religious to me. It doesn't seem to have a position on theism; Vulcans get their beliefs about god(s) from elsewhere, such as traditional Vulcan polytheism and their own perceptions of the universe. But the way it exists as a social structure AND a guide to the inner self is absolutely religious to me.]

We are told that Vulcans developed this philosophy specifically because they needed it—they were destroying themselves without it! Their emotions were overpowering and violent, and they were clannish to the extreme. So despite what most of the human characters say, especially Bones, I think the path of logic is a good thing for Vulcans, even if humans don't get it at all.

Surak's teachings can be summed up into three basic points (a Vulcan somewhere just raised an eyebrow clear into their bangs at this oversimplification, but I'm doing my best here):

1. Logic, or the use of reason as a guide and the control of emotions

2. Nonviolence

3. IDIC—infinite diversity in infinite combinations.

Of course we only ever hear about the first one, because that's part humans notice. I'd say it was like reducing Catholics to fish Fridays and Mormons to underwear, but that's exactly what people do, so I guess it's understandable.

But I think the ordering goes the other way for Vulcans. First, acknowledge that others are of value, including and especially when they're different from you. Then, do them no harm. And finally, to achieve that goal, control your wild, violent emotions.

People imagine pre-reform Vulcans a lot of ways (and I never get tired of reading about them), but I think the best guide as to what they're like is by looking at Romulans. Romulans aren't wildly expressive with their emotions, we're certainly not talking about people who would otherwise be laughing and crying constantly. Instead, they're secretive and carry long, hateful grudges. They're loyal only to those closest to them, and they seem entirely without empathy otherwise.

Imagine the Vulcan emotions are like that. They have strong bonds to their clan, probably in part because of their telepathy. They're suspicious of outsiders, angry, prone to violence. Preferring the familiar is an instinct in humans too, but a mild one. Certainly humans have been and still are racist, but it's something we can generally overcome. I'm not sure the Vulcans could, not by relying on their emotions.

So they came up with the solution to control their emotions completely. Use reason instead as a guide to behavior, because logic will tell you that your own clan is not more important than another, and that reaching out in peace is beneficial to yourself and others. Don't give your emotions any credence and don't let them run wild.

Humans do some of this ourselves, and should arguably be doing more. We spend a huge chunk of our childhood learning to control antisocial impulses like screaming, hitting, and biting. We demonstrate self control in many tiny, unnecessary ways, in order to show to others that we are in control of ourselves: stuff like etiquette, social rules, even just leaving the last cookie on the tray for someone else. These are signals that say I am not governed by my appetites; I can be trusted to consider the needs of others.

And we could obviously be doing more. Too many political questions are being answered by people's emotional, knee-jerk responses like "I feel threatened by people who are different" or "I am angry about my enemies and want them punished" instead of "what produces the most benefit for everyone?" If we leaned more heavily on logic and reason to get us our answers, we'd make way better decisions than we do. Star Trek doesn't often acknowledge that in real life, making a snap gut decision doesn't actually have a very high success rate. Logic gives you better odds of saving the day.

But, you might say, Vulcans aren't doing very well at any of this. A heck of a lot of them that we've seen are racist. And while they repress their emotions just great, they don't actually make the most logical decisions most of the time.

But I don't think this actually discredits a religion at all. We all know Christians who are great at the easy parts of their religion—learning Bible verses or saying rosaries—but don't seem to be even trying to love their neighbor. That's in fact the way religions are usually practiced! External elements that people can easily see (like never smiling) are adhered to by social pressure, but more heart-level things are aspirational at best. That doesn't mean the message of a religion is bad; it doesn't really tell us anything.

This is especially true for a religion whose practice isn't optional. You have to follow Surak to stay on the planet. I can see this rule was necessary during the time when the Romulans were kicked out—pacifism doesn't work as a global solution unless everybody's doing it. Now, it seems a bit harsh. I think they get around it by not exiling anybody who's at least giving lip service to logic. That racist baseball guy in DS9 isn't a good Vulcan, but as long as he doesn't do anything violent or openly reject Surak, they're willing to say he counts.

Why are Vulcans so often the opposite of what their religion teaches? I think it's the other way around: their religion focuses specifically on their chief faults: clannishness, racism, ego. It just hasn't successfully transformed everyone. Makes perfect sense, really. We might as well ask why Christianity goes on and on about sex when humans are well known to be super obsessed with sex. Well that's WHY! It's one of our strongest impulses which in the past we felt the most desperate need to control.

The best argument against Surakianism is that total repression isn't the best way to handle emotion, that we need self-awareness of our emotions before we can account for them.

To which all I can say is, don't you think Vulcans know that?

I imagine there are lots and lots of viewpoints on this among Vulcans. Some favor repression and some favor understanding and acceptance; some think it's okay to have a little dry humor and some think we should be serious. We have the kolinahri who believe in the excision of all emotion (which I imagine is universally seen as extreme, like we might see cloistered nuns or monks who reject the world to achieve enlightenment). And surely there are ancient, wise Vulcans who deeply understand all their emotional impulses and are completely in control of them. Spock certainly seems this way by the movie era if not before: he knows that he has emotions, what they are, and how to respond to them. He has overcome the emotion of shame. So he seems not impassive on the outside, but a person at complete peace inside and out.

I just feel like we could stand to see more good Surakians, who are good not in spite of their belief in logic, but because of it. Kind of like how we see both good and bad followers of the Prophets on Bajor. I'm kind of anti religion myself, but I still want to see it given its due—especially a religion founded on such good principles. Sure, it's not a religion humans can really practice, nor need—a good half of our emotions are positive and pro-social, so it's no wonder a person like Bones would be convinced Vulcans are just punishing themselves unnecessarily. But it successfully turned Vulcan from a planet so violent it almost destroyed itself to a home of peace and learning. Of course Vulcans aren't going to mess with what works!

That has been my rant about logic for today. I highly recommend @dduane 's book Spock's World for a much deeper dive into logic and the path Vulcan took to get there.

[tea-cat-arts]

(Disclaimer incase some of y’all don’t have the “Honkai spoilers” and “Genshin spoilers” tags blocked: This post will contain some pretty major spoilers from both games. Also this post is more of a repeat shower thought of mine than a proper analysis)

Something I find… disappointing about Mihoyo’s writing is that it only ever seems to be people who are already in positions of power and authority who get redemption arcs, where as characters who were genuinely just forced into these terrible situations will get villainized and killed off.

Examples:

Ei, leader of a nation and a god, hunted down poor and middle class vision holders (technically a minority group) and stripped them of their will or killed them if they resisted, but the story goes out of its way to show us her grief and hardships, which are supposed to make her worthy of redemption

Dr. MEI, main leader of her era, committed way too many war crimes to list here (main one being experimenting on soldiers and sending them to their death without their consent) and defunded or distracted at least two of the leading scientists working on alternatives, but the story frames her actions as noble and a necessary sacrifice

Otto, part of a ruling lineage and leader of a government party, also committed too many war crimes to list here but we’re gonna focus on the part where he kidnapped and tortured children for science, was given a story the centered around showing us his humanity, motivations, and good intentions/ outcomes

Sirin/HoV one of said children Otto kidnapped and tortured, lashes out and attacks the ones responsible for her pain and those who defend them. Killed off

Kevin, literally just some guy pulled off the street who stepped up when nobody else would, took on a task that was way too big for him to handle, watched almost all his friends die, watched as he was powerless to stop the world from being destroyed, and went along with a desperate and incredibly dangerous plan that he hated, but thought was the only way to prevent what he already lived through from happening again. Deemed a monster that has to be killed

La Signora, a young village woman who’s lover died in a pointless war between gods, had her home destroyed, turned her body into liquid fire, and joined the side that was looking to take down the people who caused her all this pain. Presumably killed off probably not gonna stay that way though so we can come back to this one in a couple years

Some potential exceptions to this trend/ less straightforward examples:

Fu Hua and Kujou Sara (arcs handled similarly, so I’m lumping them together). Though they are both technically leaders, they aren’t by any means the one in charge. Their motivations, reasoning, and potential for redemption is established incredibly early on and the story is quick to show us that even though they’re on the bad guy team at first, they have noble intentions. They also spend the majority of their time in the story actually doing the leg work to prove they’re a good guy

Scaramouche. Though he is technically the child of a god, he’s still a parental abuse victim and the story repeatedly puts him in positions of powerlessness and servitude. He also spent the majority of his life living in poverty. Though he hasn’t exactly been redeemed for his war crimes yet, the story is giving him a chance to work for it

The grand sage. Example of a corrupt person in power we actually did get to take down. Though it should be noted that the story frames it as though that power was never rightfully his in the first place

Idk, it’s not enough for me to go and try and accuse Mihoyo of anything, nor am I trying to say that all these stories were handled poorly (and yes, I’m fully aware that a lot of my descriptions were oversimplifications of the canon). It’s just a pattern that I’m side-eying Mihoyo for. A trend that does make me straight up go “hey, Mihoyo, what the fuck-“

Why is every scientist tampering with human biology and evolution depicted as some puppy-kicking lunatic? Why does the story focus so heavily on demonizing their areas of research and acting like those are the problem, not the fact that they’re committing several OSHA violations? I know I’ve ranted about this point before, but I just find it incredibly strange

[mctreeleth]

Please tell me about number plates

*gasp* Of course. 

The number plates that I know about particularly are the ones in South Australia, although I know a bit about some of the other Australian states as well. But I will keep this to a brief overview of the structural configuration of standard issue SA plates along with a few points I am particularly passionate about. 

Standard issue number plates in South Australia currently are black characters on a white background, and are structured with an S at the start and then three numbers and then three letters. When the state started using that structure, (I will get to the old structure in a little bit) the three letters started with an A, but we are now up to ones that start with C as the first of the three letters, and as far as I am aware (from looking at every single number plate I see) we are now up to the letter R as the middle letter. This means that there is a naturally occurring S000CKS plate out there, which I think is very cool, and I hope its owner really really likes socks. Naturally occurring plates are my passion – custom plates are fine, I guess, but the emergent possibilities of words being created by the configurations are what I really love. More on this later. 

They started using the current structure of number plate in 2008, but before that number plates had three letters and then three numbers. When they first started using this old alpha-numeric structure in 1966 the letters started with the letter R, and then once they had used up all the Rs they started using the letter S at the start. At the same time as they were issuing these plates, they were issuing plates for bikes and trailers that had the same structure, but started with the letter T. This meant that after they had run out of configurations starting with the letter S they couldn't go onto the letter T for vehicle plates, so instead they went to the letter U, followed by the letter V and the letter W and then the letter X. Somewhere along the line they ran out of T plates for trailers and bikes and so they started using the letter Y for them. I don't know why they never used the letter Z at the start, but they didn't. When they ran out of these alphanumeric configurations is when they switched to the new 7-character structure with the S at the start. 

You still see plenty of cars with the old alpha-numeric structure. My car still has one of the old structure. But they get rarer and rarer as old cars are taken off the road, and also as cars are sold and in a lot of cases unregistered by the seller, which means a new number plate is issued for their new owner. This means that if you saw a car with an old alphanumeric number plate that starts with the letter R or the letter S, it would usually be on a very old car, and you could assume that the driver of that car had owned that car for a very long time, or that they had gone to some other lengths to acquire the ability to use an old number plate for their vehicle. In South Australia once a number plate has been surrendered back to the Department of Transport, which happens when a car is unregistered unless you specifically ask to keep the plate number, it is removed from circulation. The only way to get an old number plate would be to find an old car that had that number plate, acquire the number plate (often by just buying the vehicle) and transfer it to your car. 

Or at least that was the case until recently, when the Department of Transport decided to release for purchase, on request, what they call R&S series plates, which are any unused alphanumeric plates starting with the letters R or S. To get one all you have to do is go to the ezyplates website and enter in the one that you want, and if it is available you can purchase it outright and use it for whatever vehicle you want to. This means that now you see more and more R&S series plates, especially because it is a way for people to get a semi-custom plate that doesn't look like a custom plate. 

In South Australia, custom plates are not the same color as standard issue plates. The original custom number plates were all yellow with green text, and they had to be a six character alpha-numeric combination, but you could have 2 letters and 4 numbers, or 3 letters and 3 numbers, or 4 letters and 2 numbers, or 5 letters and 1 number. Now they come in just about any configuration - you can get up to 7 mixed characters on a whole heap of different colors - but they are very obviously custom plates. With the R&S series plates you can get something that looks like a normal number plate to the average passerby, so you don’t look like a knob with a custom plate, but which can still be personalised to an extent, because you can custom request any available plate that starts with the letters R or S and has three letters and three numbers. 

For instance, a good option for me might be SAR444, given that my name is Sara, or possibly SWI222, because I drive a Suzuki Swift, who I affectionately refer to as Swizz or Swizzy. People whose first names start with R or S could get their initials and then their favourite numbers, or, if you were an absolute madlad, you could request the plate SLU755, probably fully expecting someone at the Transport Department to turn down that request, only to have it successfully issued to you. If you or someone you know owns the black VE Commodore with the 5.8L V8 engine that that plate is attached to, please get in touch. You are either my enemy or my hero, and I need to find out which. 

I both love and hate the fact that the R&S series plates are available for custom request. It means that there are more configurations out there that are almost naturally occurring - obviously somebody has had to request them, but it isn't like requesting a regular custom number plate. People have to think about these. And that's good! I love that people are thinking about number plates! But on the other hand, it has removed some of the specialness of seeing an alphanumeric plate beginning with R or S in the wild. It used to be that when I saw one I knew that I was seeing something special - a car that had been loved for a long time, or a number plate that somebody had put a lot of work into acquiring. Now it is just another kind of custom plate, albeit one that most people don't notice. 

There is one very sneaky trick to it though – newer issues (although this includes when an old plate is damaged and replaced) say South Australia in little letters at the bottom.  

A few other brief facts that I don't have time to go into in depth right now:  

The letter Q does not appear in standard issue plates – instead, all government plates (which are blue characters on a white background) feature the letter Q. This is ostensibly to honor the queen, but realistically is probably because Qs and Os look confusingly similar. No one has been able to tell me what will happen with regards to this particular convention when the queen dies.  

Back when the standard issue was three letters three numbers, all ambulances used the configuration AMB and then the number of the ambulance, but now they just use regular government plates. This means that there are boring old cars out there with plates that have the letters AMB on them, and it infuriates me every time I see one.

In contrast, I will also regularly see number plates have naturally occurred to say BUS or CAR on them, and when they are on a vehicle that is not that (such as a ute that says CAR, or a car that says BUS) I will laugh affectionately and say "no you're not!", as if the vehicle traveling opposite me at 60+kph can hear me.

The Transport Department will occasionally skip some plates, for a variety of reasons, including that they are inappropriate. Sadly, S###ASS plates were not issued.

Heavy vehicle plates used to start with the letters SB and then have two numbers and then two more letters, while heavy vehicle trailers used to start with the letters SY and then two numbers and then two letters, meaning that somewhere out there, there was probably a truck trailer with the number plate SY57EM. But now most of the states in Australia have switched to a new shared interstate registration for heavy vehicles, which is less fun, because it starts with the letter X and then the letter S, V, N or Q, depending on the state of first registration, so there is a lot less opportunity for fun naturally occurring plates. 

There are some options for premium non-standard plates that are not custom, for if you want a fancy plate but have no imagination. These include what were formerly the XX or AA plates, which featured a double letter, three numbers and then another letter, but which now have progressed to having any second letter, and what are known as “Euro style” plates, which mimic European plates and therefore supposedly look better on European cars. They start with an S, then two more letters, then 2 numbers, then another letter. A co-worker of mine has the naturally occurring SED44N on her Mercedes coupe, which I think is hilarious. 

In the last two weeks I have seen both the custom plate AAAA and AAAHHHH which, frankly, big moods. 

[badnewbie]

hi i have a brain that can’t shut up and here’s my little pet theory on what i like to call the joker’s trick: the fact that the joker is gay and we all know it, but we cannot ever say it out loud or acknowledge it

this is literally his picture on the wiki btw. also i feel like if you’re here i don’t need to argue that the joker is gay because he literally is. we’re doing gay joker analysis 2.0 here, sir

please note that i’m about to use a bunch of sexist and homophobic language, as i generally find that the most effective way to communicate the cultural norms that i’m about to touch on.

obviously, i’m using the word ‘gay’ when i’m talking about joker as a bit of an oversimplification. i’d use ‘queer’ or maybe even ‘queercoded’ (ugh), because it’s more accurate to how joker is actually portrayed, but when i grew up, gay was still very much a slur and gay-as-a-slur, an f-word, is in fact what the joker needs to be. this is for a reason: to me, the most important aspect about the joker is that he is a creation by straight men, meant to appeal to other straight men. 

so yeah, problem solved right? the joker is the symbol for ultimate evil, so he generally represents whatever his writer thinks is the worst thing that exists and for a lot of straight men, that’s a gay dude. kinda sucks, but checks out. 

except, that’s not the whole story, because straight men friggin’ love the joker. they’re dressing up as him, they’re quoting him, kinning him, coming up with elaborate backstories for him, leaving really intense youtube comments about how he’s the only one who really gets batman about him. in other words, they think the joker is cool. they think he’s really, really, really cool. They want to be the joker

why? that actually doesn’t check out at all. sure, he’s a villain who does whatever he wants, but most villains do and most of them haven’t been able to capture the hearts and minds of straight men the way the joker has. and joker has gotten more obviously gay over the years as he’s gotten more popular, not less. straight dudes love that the joker is gay! 

time for some academic perspectives: our cultural attitude towards gayness are deeply interlinked with our attitudes towards gender roles and masculinity. and masculinity is a deeply strange concept and it is something that a lot of comics concern themselves with (see: straight men appealing to other straight men). while most comic book men are usually examples of hegemonic masculinity (the culturally ideal form of masculinity), the joker is at his core a failure of hegemonic masculinity, and him being gay is the easiest shorthand to straight men for communicating this. a true man is a straight man is a masculine man is a man who is not feminine is a man who is not attracted to men. queercoding men and failing masculinity is usually one and the same in practice.

here’s another thing about manhood: it’s often precarious. with ‘precarious manhood’, we refer to the phenomenon that manhood for men often feels like something that can be taken away from them. while being a woman is often conceptualized as something innate, for men it is much easier to be accused of not being a ‘real’ man. as such, men tend to be more pre-occupied with their own masculinity and often remain in a more anxious state in which they constantly try to re-affirm their manhood to both themselves and their surroundings.* this is what many people incorrectly refer to as toxic masculinity btw. It should also be noted that hegemonic manhood is a cultural ideal and therefore attaining it is fully impossible and this is leaving a lot of men frustrated. they reach for an unattainable goal under the treat of cultural punishment if they fail. also, this effect is generally stronger in straight men, as queer men generally already ‘know’ that they will never reach hegemonic masculinity, as it is defined through being attracted to women only, and therefore, in this aspect, they can walk the mile

so what is a frustrated straight man who is feeling like a failure of masculinity to do? well...what if there was a role model for you who is on every account a failure of masculinity too and he was thriving? what if there was a guy who’s laughing about all these gender rules and breaking them and maybe it made him even more badass? maybe there’s this complete failure of masculinity, not just walking the mile but running directly in the opposite direction and he’s scary and powerful and maybe that’s true power and maybe you are in some way even more powerful (masculine) than all those other guys who are effortlessly performing their masculinity. what then?

but is he gay? don’t worry straight men, of course he isn’t :) 

(is he gay? yeah)

(but is he?? no, he isn’t (although he is))

seriously, is the joker gay? yes! but also no! because his purpose is to be a (lol) safe space for straight men to project their anxieties about their own masculinity on. the joker has to be gay in order to be an effective failure of masculinity, but he can’t be gay because then he’s just some gay guy whose nature is just naturally different from straight men/real men and straight men can’t project on him anymore.

so yeah whoops, it’s still homophobia. but at least it’s weird homophobia. it’s what the joker would have wanted * this also can lead to much greater difficulty for women to go against their assigned gender role, which is often constricting and oppressive. i blog about this a LOT on my main, so please don’t come for me on this

[wickwrites]

Wonder Egg Priority Episode 4: Boys’ and Girls’ Suicides Do Mean Different Things (But Not in the Way the Mannequins Want You to Think!)

So, let’s talk about this for a second. After I got over my initial knee-jerk reaction, I realized I wasn’t sure how to make sense of exactly what the mannequins were arguing for here. So let me rephrase their statements to make the argumentative structure more explicit: Because men are goal-oriented and women are not, because women are emotion-oriented and men are not, and because women are impulsive and easily influenced by others’ voices and men are not, boys’ and girls’ suicides mean different things – girls are more easily “tempted” by death, and therefore, more likely to require saving when they inevitably regret their suicide. While Wonder Egg Priority, so far, seems to agree with the vague version of the mannequins’ conclusion, namely that boys’ and girl’s suicides mean different things, it refutes the gender-essentialist logic through which that conclusion was derived.

The mannequins choose a decidedly gender essentialist approach in explaining the difference between girls’ and boy’s suicides; they argue that the suicides are different because of some immutable characteristic of their mental hard wiring (in this case, impulsivity, emotionality, and influenceability). Obviously, this is a load of bull, and Wonder Egg Priority knows it. The mannequins are not exactly characters we’re supposed to trust, seeing that they’re running a business that is literally based on letting these kids put themselves in mortal danger. As faceless adult men, they parrot and possibly represent the systems that force these girls to continue to be subjected to physical and emotional trauma (it’s probably more complicated than this, but four episodes in, it’s hard to say more). So, we’re probably supposed to take what they say with great skepticism. Also, the director, Shin Wakabayashi, has recently said that in response to these lines, Neiru was originally going to object, “When it comes to their brains, boys and girls are also the same,” (which unfortunately is not exactly true and is somewhat of an oversimplification, but the sentiment is there). While that line ultimately did not make it in, Neiru does reply with a confused and somewhat indignant, “What?!”, a reaction that gets the message across.  Neiru is not a fan of gender essentialism, and as a (more) sympathetic character, we’re supposed to agree with her.

That is, the differences between boys and girls is not something inherent to their biology or character, but something constructed by culture and experience. This rejection of gender-essentialism is apparent in Wonder Egg Priority’s narrative, which takes a more sociocultural perspective on the difference between boys’ and girls’ suicides. It says, well of course boys’ and and girl’s suicides don’t mean the same thing, that’s the whole reason why we’re delving into the experiences specific to being a girl (cis or trans) or AFAB in this world – to show you how girls’ suicides are influenced by systems of oppression perpetuated by those in power (ie. the adult, in this specific anime).

And all the suicides we’ve seen up until now tie into that somehow. For instance, Koito is bullied by her female classmates who think that Sawaki is giving her special treatment. This is a narrative that comes up over and over again, in real life as well: that if a young girl is being given attention from an older man, then it’s her fault – that she must want it, or at least enjoy it somehow, and that it signifies a virtue (eg. maturity or beauty) on her part. And if Koito is actually being given such treatment by Sawaki, an adult man in a position of power over her, that is incredibly predatory. 

And we all know that child sexual abuse is something that overwhelmingly affects girls, with one out of nine experiencing it before the age of 18, as opposed to one out of 53 boys (Finkelhor et al., 2014). Regardless of whether Sawaki was actually abusing Koito or if the students only thought that he was, Koito’s trauma is ultimately the result of this romanticized “love between a young girl and adult man, but not because the man is predatory, but because the girl has some enviable virtue that makes her desirable” narrative. Similarly, in episode 2, Minami’s suicide is driven by ideas related to discipline and body image in sports, which while not necessarily specific to female and AFAB athletes, is framed in an AFAB-specific way. For instance, take the pressure on Minami to “maintain her figure”. Certainly, male athletes also face a similar pressure, but we know that AFAB and (cis and trans) female bodies are subject to closer scrutiny and criticism. We know that young girls are more likely to suffer from eating disorders. And Wonder Egg Priority situates Minami’s experience as decidedly “about” AFAB experience when her coach accuses her change of figure due to her period as a character failing on her part.

 Likewise, episode 3 delves into suicides related to “stan” culture, this fervent dedication to celebrities that is overwhelmingly associated to teenage girls. And Miwa’s story, in episode 4, explicitly shows how society responds to sexual assault. When Miwa does have the courage to speak up about her assault, she’s instantly reprimanded by basically everyone around her. Her father is fired because her abuser was an executive of his company. Her mother asks her why she couldn’t just bear with it, telling her that her abuser chose her because she was cute, as if that’s supposed to make her feel better about it. Wonder Egg Priority shows that this sort of abuse is a systemic problem, a set of rules and norms deeply engrained in a society and upheld by all adults, regardless of gender, social status, or closeness (to the victim). Wonder Egg Priority says that, yes, girls’ and boys’ suicides have different meanings, but it’s not due to some inherent difference between the two, but the hostile environment in which these girls grow up. Girls are not more easily “tempted” by death, they just have more societal bullshit to deal with.

But Wonder Egg Priority goes further than just showcasing how girls’ (and AFAB) experiences are shaped by sociocultural factors. The story also disproves the supposedly dichotomous characteristics that the mannequins use to differentiate girls and boys (i.e. influenceability/independence, impulsivity/deliberation, emotion-orientation/goal-orientation). If the mannequins are indeed correct, and that girls are just influenceable, impulsive, and emotional, you’d expect the girls in the story to be to be like such too. Except, they aren’t. Rather, they’re a mix of both/all characteristics. This show says that, certainly, girls can be suggestible, but they’re also capable of thinking for themselves. For instance, when Momoe asserts her own identity as a girl at the end of episode four, she rejects the words of those around her who insisted that she isn’t a girl. If she were as suggestible as the mannequins believe her to be, that would never have happened – she would have just continued believing that she wasn’t girl “enough”. But, she doesn’t because she is equally capable of making her own judgements. Likewise, Wonder Egg Priority shows that girls can be impulsive, but they can also be deliberate and pre-mediating. When Miwa tricks her Wonder Killer into groping her to create an opening for Momoe to defeat it, she’s not doing it out of impulse – it’s a pre-mediated and deliberate choice unto a goal. And Wonder Egg Priority continues, girls can be equally emotion oriented and goal oriented. Sure, the main girls are fighting because they have the goal of bringing their loved ones back to life, but those goals are motivated by a large range of emotions, from guilt to anger, grief, compassion, and love. 

Being emotion-driven doesn’t mean you’re not goal-driven, and vice versa. In fact, in this case, being emotional drives these girls toward their goals. In other words, none of these traits that the mannequins listed are either “girl traits” or “boy traits”. Being one does not mean you can’t be the other, even if they seem dichotomous at first. Wonder Egg Priority’s diverse cast of multi-dimensional female characters allows it to undermine the mannequins’ conceptualization of gendered roles, refuting the idea that these (or any) character traits should be consider gendered at all.

As an underdeveloped side thought, I think Wonder Egg Priority’s blurring of gendered roles is also well-reflected in its style. There’s been a lot of talk about whether Wonder Egg Priority constitutes a magical girl series, and I think that’s an interesting question deserving of its own essay. Certainly, it does follow the basic formula of the magical girl story: a teenage heroine ensemble wielding magical weapons saves the day. But it also throws out a lot of the conventions you’d expect of a magical girl story – both aesthetically and narratively. Aesthetically, it’s probably missing the component that most would consider the thing that makes an anime a magical girl anime: the full body transformation sequence, complete with the sparkles and the costume and all that. Narratively, the girls are also not really magical girl protagonist material – they’ve got a fair share of flaws, have done some pretty awful things (looking at Kawai in particular; I still love you though), and aren’t exactly the endlessly self-sacrificing heroines you’d expect from a typical magical girl story. On the other hand, the anime also borrows a lot from shonen battle anime. We get these dynamic, well choreographed action sequences full of horror and gore, the focus on the importance of camaraderie between allies (or “nakama”, as shonen anime would call it) exemplified through all the bonding between the main girls during their downtime, and in the necessary co-operation to bring down the Wonder Killers. That said, this anime is not a shonen; the characters, types of conflicts, and themes are quite different from those that you’d find in a typical shonen. The bleeding together of the shonen genre and the magical girl genre, at the very least (and I say this because I think it does way more than just that), reflects Wonder Egg Priority’s interest in rebelling against conventional narratives about girlhood and gender.

[shini--chan]

I love you're writing skills! How would be the reader react when she travel the time back so like the 1600 in England?. And England would she see her in modern clothes. She want go back to her time(2020). Im so sorry for my bad English

Thank you, that is very sweet of you. Also don’t worry – your English probably isn’t as bad as you think.

If you want to see anything else set in that period, go and check that Pirate AU! Post. Now on to this here.

Yandere England – 1600s/Timetravler

Whether you would like it or not, you would find yourself hurtling through time and landing in England during the 17th century. Right in Puritan England to be precise, literally the worst decade to land into right after ending up in the middle of a battle. You would be wandering the countryside, in total confusion as well as in complete panic. That would be how Arthur would find you. He would be heading back home, utterly disgruntled by the state of affairs that he would have to suffer under. Then he would notice you, an alien entity by all means, in your strange clothing and foreign manners. First, he would consider just leaving you to your fate (which could be very gruesome) as the loon you would appear to be to him. Then he would remember the supposed Christian values of hospitality and altruism and approach you to take you home with him.

You would be both relieved and frightened to see somebody approach you. Through his clothing it would dawn upon you that you were really in the past. Despite fearing being deemed a witch or being interrogated or suffering from any other fate that would cross your mind, you would know that you would need help. The moment Arthur would open his mouth to inquire about you, the final nail would be hammered in the coffin. The Old English that would meet your ears would be absolute proof that was once history would be your present. A notion that would be affirmed when Arthur’s face would wrinkle in confusion when you would use your English.

Your strange use of his language would confuse, but would nevertheless ring a bell in the back of his mind. It would remind him how English had developed over the centuries. Would your way of using it just be a natural result of further evolution, hence making you a … timetravler? That would be at least what you would be trying to convey over the language barrier. Arthur would be sceptical at first, wanting to rule out all other possibilities before believe you. If you’d think him to be a fool, then you’d have something else coming. Then you’d try to use evidence to convince him.

Quickly, he grabbed the strange thing you were holding out to him. After giving you a brief mistrusting look, he would take a few steps away from you. A paranoid bastard as ever, he turned to stand in such a way that you couldn’t see everything he was doing while keeping an eye on you.

The thing that you handed to him was unlike anything he had ever seen before. It was rectangular and slim, smooth with its dark glass and opaque surfaces. He glimpsed his own cruel visage in the reflection. Was it nothing more than a strange mirror?

Then he went on to inspect the sides, the tips of his fingers finding a few elevations in the material. Curious, he pressed one of them …

… and nearly dropped it when the dark glass promptly lit up and it emitted a strange sound. You yelled besides him, suddenly directly at his side since your device had been endangered. He was sure that hadn’t his reflexes been so quick, then he would have to defend himself against a very enraged stranger. Instead, you glare at him, as irritated as you were, and tried to snatch your thing back.

Agitated by your action in turned, Arthur roughly pushed you away, sending you sprawling to the ground. You cussed at him, the aggressor recognising a few of the swears you tossed at him but not finding himself bothered enough to respond and instead staring at the picture that had manifested.

There was a colourful background, the nuances and lines and shadows showing a painting that was far more realistic then any he had ever seen before. In front of it, a series of number shined at him. One set was probably the time, he deduced, while the other was most likely the date from how it was written.

2021 …

That was nearly 400 hundred years in the future. He looked at you, observed how you had picking stones out of your scraped and bleeding palms.

Despite your disagreeable demeanour, you would likely prove very useful to him.

He would promptly take you with him, trying his best to convey to you through gestures and miss-matched words that he would only want to help you. If you prove define, then he would coerce you into following him by taking your smartphone hostage. Once you would calm down, then you would rationalize that this would probably be the best option you could receive and concede his wishes.

Arthur would keep you in his house, ensure that all the servants would steer clear from the rooms he would house you in, and gradually butter up to you, with all intentions of drawing the details of his future out of you. Other than that, he would intently observe you, knowing that the behavioural patter say a lot about a person, and in extension, give clues about the environment they grew up in. And needly to say, he would be very surprised by some things.

“You know, it is the third time you demand to be allowed to wash yourself this week. Don’t you think you are going too far? There is miasma in the water, and if you continue like this, not only will you render yourself a fool, but you’ll also become sick”, he chided you as he watched you hauled a bucket up the stairs.

As weak as you were, you were struggling with your heavy load, evidence to the lack of physical labour you had done in your life. It made Arthur ask himself if everybody in the future would be as weak and spoiled as you are, or if you were just the exception.

Either way, while manners and etiquette called for him to ease your burden which you evidently couldn’t manage on your own, he found the sight of you straggling up the flight of cold stone steps far too amusing to intervene.

With trembling arms, your set down the bucket and stared at him, eyes shooting daggers up at him. “In case you didn’t know, it is dirt that actually makes people sick. It is cleanliness that prevents infection. Which is why you would do well to wash daily as well!”

With a frown, Arthur picked up his shirt to sniff it. In his opinion, he didn’t stink, so he didn’t see what you were making such a fuss about. He was also sure he had understood you correctly – the two of you had managed to sort out things to the extent that you could communicate fairly well.

“I think that changing underclothing daily and bathing once a month to be sufficient. And now, before you say anything, be sure to keep your attitude in check. I’ve had more than enough of it”, he told you.

He watched your face wrinkle and swore he heard you mutter: “Damn patriarchy and its superiority complex.”

He didn’t know whether to be alarmed about your very simplistic, black-and-white view of the world and your grievous oversimplifications of the current era or be amused about how you thought you knew everything. Either way, he would have to take your words about the future with a grain of salt – who knew just how skewed your recounts would be.

“I fail to see how this has to do with that. The matter at hand is about the guest treating the host with respect, expected courtesy allowing humans to live together. I could put you out on the streets if you keep being a brat”, he countered.

You grasped the handle once more, water spilling over the rim as you picked it up with both hands. “We both know that you wouldn’t do that. You value me too much.”

And oh, in what ways he was beginning to value you.

For one, he would detest how condescending you would be, due to having all the knowledge of the next centuries and all the benefits that would come with it. Yet, he would bare most of it. When he wouldn’t, he’d let his sharp-tongue and centuries worth of life experience come to light. He would mock you for your nativity and prod at you for being coddled and accustomed to yet-to-be luxuries.

Arthur would tell you that he would put effort in finding a way to send you back to your own time. That would be a shameless lie. He wouldn’t be interested in anything of the sort. Rather he would insist on you staying with him, to help him further his imperial ambitions. Besides, you would be the most interesting and riveting thing that would have happened to him in ages. He would quickly grow attached to you, and with you having nobody else than him (he would ensure that) in a harsh and foreign world of which you would truly know little, you would find yourself relying on him.

He might tell you that he is a personification. Secrets for secrets, after all. And with him providing proof of his semi-immortality and the absurdity of time travel having happened you would be inclined to believe him. England would also tell you that if you would return to your own time, he would be sure to seek you out, so that you can be back together again. Besides rising alarm bells in your head, you would find yourself asking just how much of the timeline you would end up altering with the scrapes of information that he would wheedle out of you.

[path-of-my-childhood]

"Miss Americana" Director Lana Wilson on Capturing Taylor Swift, Mid-Transformation

By: Chris Willman for Variety Date: January 31st 2020

Lana Wilson was taking a risk - albeit a pretty good bet - when she set out to make what turned out to be “Miss Americana,” her new Netflix documentary. As Taylor Swift told Variety: 

“When I began thinking about maybe possibly having a documentary-type thing happen, it was really just because I felt like I would want to have footage of what was happening in my life, just to have later on in my life, even if we never put it out, or even if we put it out decades down the line. When we brought Lana on board, I was pretty open with her about the fact that this may be something that I wasn’t actually ready to put out. So I think we began the process without a lot of pressure, because I didn’t necessarily think that it was an actual eventuality to put out the documentary.”

Wilson was too fascinated by what she was getting early on to worry much about whether her subject would sign off on releasing it. At the outset, she was catching Swift at the end of the “Reputation” album/tour cycle, when Swift was finding a more contented place in her personal life and finally exorcising Kanye-gate from her system. The star quickly moved on to the making of “Lover,” her most upbeat album, with Wilson getting fly-on-wall footage that captures the joy of creation and eureka moments in the writing process in a way few films ever have. And then things got more interesting altogether when Swift decided that the days she could afford to be standoffish about what was happening in the country had come to an end. The movie - and by now, it was a movie - had its third act.

Variety spoke with Wilson for the magazine’s cover story last week on Swift, prior to “Miss Americana’s” Sundance premiere. Here’s a breakout of more of that conversation.

There is some footage in the movie that goes back a few years that clearly predates your involvement. When did you start filming - was it during the “Lover” writing and recording sessions or the “Reputation” tour before that? I came on during the tour. She had been collecting bits and pieces of footage; she often filmed stuff with her own cell phone - songwriting stuff. Netflix introduced us, and we really hit it off the first time we met. She had watched my previous work, and I had admired her for years, not just for her music, but also the fact that she had written all of her own songs since she was 15, and that she’s the sole creative force behind the whole shape of her career. When we met, I remember being excited that she didn’t want to make a traditional pop star documentary. She knew that she was in the middle of a really important time in her life, coming out of a very dark period, and wanted me to collaborate on something that captured what she was going through that was raw and honest and emotionally intimate.

When we first talked about it, she immediately wanted me to bring my perspective as a director to what was going on with her now and to make a film that really had something to say. I think the first time we met, we talked for 20 minutes about narrative structure in documentaries, and we even talked about film score in documentaries. At one point she said that she didn’t like documentaries that are like propaganda, and I was thrilled to hear that. In my work, I take stories that are often told through sound bites and headlines and bring depth and complexity to them. My goal is always to reveal the humanity that’s beneath the oversimplification. And to me, there are few things more frequently diminished and reduced by others than female creative forces.

It could be seen as a feminist statement, or at least some kind of intention on her part, that she picked someone who’d made an abortion documentary (“After Tiller”). It could also mean that she was just more comfortable with a woman. I think that’s totally true. When I started filming, it was before she’d come out politically. But that said, even before meeting her, I could only imagine how much pressure and scrutiny she’d faced as a powerful and successful female artist. And I definitely sensed that those pressures would be ones that other people and especially other women and girls could relate to. Obviously, yeah, I’m a female artist working in a male-dominated industry. So although Taylor and I inhabit very different worlds, I figured that we’d have some shared experiences. And I also worked with an all-female crew, which I do think helped her feel comfortable right off the bat, and a small crew. When I met her, she hadn’t done an interview in almost three years. The first one she did was an audio (-only) interview with me for this film. So it was a big deal, and trust was a big part of that.

You had an all-female crew, but Morgan Neville’s name is on there as a producer, and he’s not a gal. [Laughter.] What’s his role in it? He was a part of the creative process, and it was wonderful to get to work with him, as a creative sounding board, from start to finish. On the crew, I will say that we did always have male production assistants, because I like trying to show people that men can fetch coffee for women, and not just the other way around! So that was the only exception to the all-female rule.

It had to have been a small crew, when you were filming the fly-on-the-wall creative stuff in the recording studios, sometimes in very small control rooms. It was often just me and one or two other people in the room with her, trying to keep the footprint as small as possible. You know, no one had filmed her writing songs before. That was some of my favorite stuff to film, but it was also the stuff where we tried to really be the most low-key presence possible. You’re just in a tiny room, and it feels so amazing to watch her get in the zone creatively. One of the most fun parts for me as a director is when it feels like you’ve been in the studio for enough hours that everyone is so relaxed that you really feel invisible in a wonderful, exciting way.

When she’s having the talk with her team about wanting to make endorsements for the midterm elections, which is maybe the most important scene in the film, it’s not clear if that is something you shot or if that was something that was on the spur of the moment, where she had someone get a camera in your absence. That was spur of the moment. So that was something someone on her team shot who was pretty good with the camera. That was very last minute. I’d been starting to work with her and talk with her before that, and I’d say, “If something’s happening last-minute that could be at all important or meaningful, film it with your cell phone, of if there’s someone around you that has a little DSLR camera or something, they could film it.” It allowed us to get really powerful, crucial scenes like that one that might’ve been hard logistically to get otherwise. And I love the personal quality of that material from especially the few little bits of stuff from her cell phone.

She told us she wasn’t sure she wanted to actually make or release a movie when filming started. Did she make that clear to you when it started? Like, this might be on spec, and might not come out? Well, it was less talking about the end result and more, honestly, just talking about what she was going through emotionally at that time and the kind of things that were on her mind. Then we’d brainstorm stuff that could be cool to film. I love the idea of filming really quiet, almost more mundane moments, because I think that ordinary/extraordinary contradiction that’s so central to the life of someone in the public eye is really interesting. I loved that moment early in the film where she’s alone in the car in the dark after the show riding to her hotel room - the idea of going from being on a massive stage in front of tens of thousands of people to being an ordinary person alone just going to bed at the end of the night.

She’s already been pretty candid with her fans. There are moments in the film where she’s shown as being annoyed with the fans and photographers gathered outside her door and that sort of thing. Do you think she felt okay with being portrayed as not being happy at all times? Oh yeah, totally. She’s a complex human being, and I think whether you like her music or not, if you watch this movie, you really get to know her as a human. And as you say, she writes so candidly in her lyrics about the hardest times, the times when she made mistakes. And that is what her fans love her for. But a lot of people don’t share their hard times. The most popular photos on Instagram are of weddings and babies, when what’s really relatable and what’s meaningful is connecting with someone over that time things weren’t perfect, or the friendship or relationship that didn’t work out, or the argument you had with your mom or something. You know, everyone wants to feel less alone in the more difficult experiences in life. And that’s one reason why they turn to art. And I think it’s why people watch movies. And the happy moments are meaningful when you’ve also been through the sad ones. Young girls need to see that their heroes are just as human as they are. And I think girls and boys of all ages could benefit from that reminder.

I want people to be surprised by it because I think that Taylor Swift is someone who everyone thinks they know. But I think if people start watching this film, they’ll realize they’re watching a film about this iconic artist deciding to live life on her own terms, and it’s a feminist coming of age story. I think they’ll be surprised by her sense of humor and her self-awareness, and they can appreciate the craft of songwriting, for instance. So I hope that even if people are not fans, that they’ll watch the movie and be really surprised and also feel like they’ve just met a complicated, layered human being.

Very few people at the superstar level have the gift of healthy self-awareness that she seems to have. Self-consciousness, yes, but self-awareness, that’s more rare. Yeah, it’s so true. I’m sure you’ve seen bits of the home movies in some of her videos in the past. When I looked at the home movies, what struck me the most about them is that she really always has been the same person. She’s been kind and generous and smart and imaginative and very hardworking since she was a girl. At age 11 she knew exactly what she wanted to do with her life. One of my favorite moments in the archives in the film is this clip of her, where she’s like in a diner and it’s just after the release of her first album, and she’s 16. Her childhood dream has just come true. And she tells the interviewer that she wakes up everyday being like, “Yes, this is happening.” But then she tells herself, “Now you have to figure out how to make it last.” That is so her. She had so much maturity and pretentiousness then, and she knew she wanted this to be her career and her life, and she wanted to write songs forever. It’s incredible to see a person at that age that self-possessed and cognizant.

At one point she says she wants to use her platform to speak out because she’s aware she won’t be in this position forever, where her opinions have some kind of import. Not that she’s predicting a major downfall, but she knows she won’t always have this attention. That’s undoubtedly true, but at the same time, she’s one of the only ones besides Beyonce that we would imagine being almost as big a star in 20 years, and not necessarily subject to the normal standards of diminishment of interest. She’s conscious of the historically short lifespan of female pop stars, and it’s so poignant when she says that. But it’s hard to know what will happen, though, because she issuch a trailblazer. I mean, there’s just been no one like her, and her fan base and the relationship she has with her fans is so unique, and, I mean, she’s already done so many things that no one else has done before — who knows what will happen in the future? She is cognizant of what’s happened in the past and what’s going to happen in the future … but it could be anything, because she’s different than anyone that’s come before.

We can hope we all live long enough to find out what a 50- or 60-year-old Taylor Swift is like. I love that idea too. I want to go to the arena tour of a 60-year-old Taylor Swift. I want to know what the songs she’s writing then are.

The last third of the film focuses on her decision to make a political statement and what comes after. It was a profound decision for her to make, and a multilayered one. In that, I saw this feminist coming-of-age story that I personally connected with, and that I really think women and girls around the world will see themselves in.

You didn’t actually have the “Miss Americana & the Heartbreak Prince” song in the movie, but that’s the song on the album that most speaks to her political turn. So it seemed like a good thing to title the movie after? It was cool because it’s obviously, yeah, a reference to this song she wrote that has political themes. It was interesting that when the documentary was announced, her fans instantly understood some of the themes the film would have, because of the song title. And then for me, even if you don’t know the song, I see the movie as in some ways looking at the flip side of being America’s sweetheart. So I like how the title evokes that, too.

You have the twin moments of disappointment in the movie. Early on, you have the Grammy disappointment, and then later there’s the midterm result disappointment. Those are the parallel scenes, almost, where she’s having to deal with the results not turning out as she planned and one of these ultimately being more important than the other. I’m glad you noticed that. That means a lot. One thing that I think is amazing about her is that she goes to the studio and to songwriting as a place to process what she’s going through. I loved how, when she got the Grammys news, this isn’t someone who’s going to feel sorry for herself or say “That wasn’t right.” She’s like, “Okay, I’m going to work even harder.” And I think it’s amazing how you see her strength of character in that moment when she gets that news. Then with the election results, I loved how she channeled so many of her thoughts and feelings into this song (“Only the Young”). It was a great way to kind of show how stuff that happens in her life goes directly into the songs. You get to actually witness that in both cases.

Were you surprised that she addressed having had what could be described as an eating disorder? She seems hesitant to use that term but finally does. She’s been open about so many things, but that’s not something that she’s revealed. No, that’s one of my favorite sequences of the film. I was surprised, of course. But when you hear her talk about it, I love how she’s kind of thinking out loud. And yeah, she’s an icon of beauty, but even for an icon of beauty, as she articulates so beautifully, women are in this double bind situation. It’s impossible for anyone to meet every standard of beauty. It’s an impossible situation. And every woman will see herself in that sequence. I just have no doubt. And I do think people will be really surprised by it.

I tend to be clueless about these minor shifts in weight or body size, until people point them out en masse. It never would have occurred to me that she was any less thin on the “Reputation” tour until I started seeing comments about weight gain. But there are those who have their antennae out for the slightest change, and often it’s women, maybe it’s because you’re under that scrutiny yourselves. But you can also just not notice people being really skinny, because we’re all so accustomed to seeing women on magazine covers who are unhealthy skinny, and that’s become normalized. I think it’s interesting what you say about what you read during “Reputation” about her weight, because you really can’t win. There is a moment in the film where you see that part of the media backlash she experienced during 2016 was people saying, “Oh, she’s too skinny.” People complain if you’re too skinny, and if you’re not too skinny, you’re too fat. It’s incessant, and I can say this as a woman: It’s amazing to me how people are constantly like “You look skinny” or “You’ve gained weight.” People you barely know say this to you. And it feels awful, and you can’t win. So I think it’s really powerful to see someone who is a role model for so many girls and women be really honest about that. It’s a brave thing of her to do, and I think it will have a huge impact.

Her interactions with Kanye West are such an essential part of the story, but that’s not a name that has really ever escaped her lips publicly since 2010; she’ll say “a person” or something euphemistic if she has to address it. So I was in suspense to see whether or how much it would come up in your film,  given how little capital she wants to give this guy in her life. It’s a crux, twice, of her journey of self-acceptance, but it’s easy to imagine her not wanting it in the film. I think it’s an important part of the story, but I wanted to position… Like, with the 2009 VMAs, what was surprising to me when I asked her about it was that she talked about how the whole crowd was booing, and she thought that they were booing her, and how devastating that was. That was something I hadn’t thought about or heard before. And it meant a lot more to me because it made more sense in the context of her being this extraordinary young artist who is doing so well, and who, like so many performing artists, loves applause. And then she is on stage [still as a teenager] and it felt like all these people were booing her. When you put it that way, it’s so much more relatable to me, and it’s understandable to anyone, because we all want people to like us. And being on stage with a giant crowd booing would be horrible for anyone. So we tried to use it in a way that showed it in a slightly different light than people have seen before... We all care about what people think about us. It’s not a celebrity problem. It’s a universal one. It’s something everyone goes through, and I think the difference is that with Taylor, it plays out on a massive international stage.

At the outset, you’ve got her in voiceover talking about how she wanted to be the good girl and be accepted. And in the end, she is a good girl, so maybe that’s not a bad thing to want to be, but there are gradations of that. She’s played around with bad girl archetypes in the “Reputation” imagery and songs, but it was role-playing to a degree. Where do you think she ended up on the scale of all that? She starts out as a good girl and she ends up as a good girl who’s decided to speak out. You know, we live in a society in which girls are taught that other people’s approval is of paramount importance to our self-worth. “Do they like me? Was I nice enough? Are they mad at me?” Every woman I know is constantly asking herself these questions. So it’s so relatable in that way. But it’s not about not being a good person. I think that the arc in the film and what Taylor went through was letting go a little bit of what other people think of her, deciding to live on her own terms, and to put her own values first. The transformation that you see is going through this period where she lets go a little bit of that. She’s a good girl speaking out now, in a way. You can’t win everyone over. No one can. I think she’s really accepted that in a deep way.

[epiitaphs]

it’s touch time baby! and by that i mean bucky’s incredibly complicated sense of touch. i will try not to attach lit theory to it. we shall see. good news! it’s present me and i did not attach lit theory to it. under a cut because it is....so long

When it comes to Bucky and human contact it’s complicated. Because it can’t be as simple as ‘anyone who touched me hurt me’ - they brainwashed him into total dependence on their ministrations, which means they had to be everything for him. You have to have a sense of what is good or bad - is there a neutral kind of contact? With him I’m not sure. Everything means something. And before I continue, I should note that qualifying anything as good or bad isn't the right scale to use not because it's too simplistic (in fact oversimplification is part of his life but that’s for another day) but because it would be too unfamiliar to use in good faith when talking about him so actually the scale should be punishment to reward when it comes to how he views this sort of thing. 

A good way to think about his relationship with human contact is the milk scene in CATWS where Pierce pours the Soldier a frankly strange amount of milk and then never gives any indication of what the Soldier is supposed to do with it. (It doesn’t matter what the intention behind this scene is by the way - the author is firmly dead). This offer of milk is a taunt in some ways, because Pierce is saying ‘you could be human because I’m giving you something the way I would to an actual person sat across from me’ (we can talk about assigning the Soldier a child role in this scene at a later moment) but even while the Soldier is being offered a drink it’s a very clear indication of where the human/Asset line is drawn because he isn’t given an order to drink, and also importantly, he does not take the glass of his own initiative, no matter how sad he may look at the time. 

So with that, we can talk about Bucky initiating contact. What we would consider positive physical contact - hugs, comfortable closeness, etc - is not something he is able to initiate. It’s been trained out of it. He can only ask for necessities, and that is not on the list. This has to be relearned. 

He can obviously initiate negative physical contact. That’s what he’s meant for. But even that has limits. He is allowed to harm targets and whoever he needs to in order to complete his mission. But outside of that? They can’t have him lashing out at scientists or trainers or handlers, so this sort of thing would have to be severely punished. It’s something of a fine line to walk - you have to train out a violent reaction to unwanted touch in some situations but not in others. And they never truly succeeded, given that he killed people working with him the entire time he was with HYDRA. But in their attempts to train him, how would they go about it? You assign authority to everyone around him. There is one directive to be given: do not harm those with authority over you unless commanded by someone who outranks them. Problem solved. This is why, even when he’s regained memories and personhood, it’s very dangerous if he determines that someone has authority over him or if someone works to get that determination from him. 

We’ve established these two ways that Bucky can/cannot initiate contact of his own, so what about reception of this contact? This is where the punishment-reward dichotomy comes in. 

Punishment is whatever you can imagine. The lack of peaceful contact, active torture, all sorts of pain. There is always a reason given for punishment, but pain is also a fact of the Soldier’s life, and this distinction is important to retain even while pushing his limits for testing or when he makes a mistake. (He’s human after all, even if everyone pretends like he’s not.) He’s also trained not to flinch. This will be important later. 

For a reward - he was clearly treated as not human while everyone around him was pretty aware that he was actually human. And therefore as a human, there is something about skin contact with other humans that is very important. There’s power there, obviously, especially when you’re depriving someone of it. So you give those who are to be trusted a set of rules. Rest a hand on his shoulder as you tell him he’s going out to do good work. He may not understand what good work is, but he’ll associate it with contact, and if you are ever punishing him, you cannot touch him so he knows that it can be taken away. He’s not supposed to want, but it’s a subconscious one that is beneficial to the program. They don’t need to burn it out completely. And obviously if there is a touch to be avoided, there must be a touch on the opposite side of things. 

So what does this mean for post captivity?

It means that at some point he realizes that actually, he can make the rules around here. It doesn’t come easily, of course, and probably not all at once. 

First, if someone grabs him - anyone - he is allowed to kill or maim them. In fact he should, since he does not want to go back. If their intention is or seems violent, they are in for a bad time. Sometimes it’s panic, but a lot of times it’s with a (relatively) fully functioning mind that he reacts. Bucky can recognize contact that he associates actively with being punishment and now can respond to that. 

Anything else is a much grayer zone. He has to relearn how to express discomfort verbally or even physically. He can’t flinch, and he’s probably never going to actively try to bring that back. But what he can learn to do is walk away, or at the very least lean away. Because his current response to something that doesn’t say punishment to him is to just stay there and be uncomfortable. This is difficult, obviously as there are people who legitimately have nothing but good intentions towards him but still can cause discomfort because they do something that he doesn’t actively want or expect. There’s no way to get through that except to give it time and to check in with him. Asking him involves a choice he has to make, but ultimately sometimes that particular discomfort is better than feeling like he’s going to crawl out of his skin just because sitting shoulder to shoulder isn’t something he can deal with at the moment. 

And then there’s him actually initiating positive contact. This is also going to take a lot of time. It may even take explanation, and it’s pretty likely that explicit permission would be greatly appreciated. 

I know this is very long. It’s something of a complex subject and is probably something I’ll continue to talk about because it’s...kind of a big thing. 

[realtalk-tj]

Could you please explain in more detail what each of the math post-APs are and how easy/hard they are and how much work? Thanks!!

Response from Al:

This can be added on to, but I can describe how Multivariable Calculus is. First off, I want to say not anyone’s opinion should affect how difficult or easy a class would be for YOU. Ultimately, do the classes you’re interested in. Personally, I thought Calculus was cool as subject, so that’s why I pursued Multi. Multi. builds off of BC Calculus, Geometry, and even some of the linear algebra you learned from middle school (not to be confused with the Linear Algebra you can take at TJ), so as long as you have a good foundation in those subjects, I’m sure you’ll do well in Multi. Depending on your teacher, assessments may or may not be more challenging, and that’s why I strongly emphasize take the class only if you’re genuinely into it. Don’t take it because of peer pressure / because you want to stand out in colleges. I’ll let anyone add below.

Response from Flitwick:

Disclaimer: I feel like I’m not the most unbiased perspective on the difficulty of these math classes, and I have my own mathematical strong/weak points that will bleed into these descriptions. Take all of this with a grain of salt, and go to the curriculum fair for the classes you’re interested in! I’ve tried to make this not just what’s in the catalog/what you’ll hear at the curriculum fair, so hopefully, you can get a more complete view of what you’re in for. 

Here’s my complete review of the post-AP math classes, and my experience while in the class/what I’ve heard from others who have taken the class. I’m not attaching a numerical scale for you to definitively rank these according to difficulty because that would be a drastic oversimplification of what the class is.

Multi: Your experience will vary based on the teacher, but you’ll experience the most natural continuation of calculus no matter who you get. In general, the material is mostly standardized (and you can find it online), but Osborne will do a bit more of a rigorous treatment and will present concepts in an order that “tells a more complete story,” so to speak. 

The class feels a decent amount like BC at first, but the difficulty ramps up over time and you might have an even rougher time if you haven’t had a physics course yet when it comes to understanding some of the later parts of the course (vector fields and flux and all).

I’d say some of the things you learn can be seen as more procedural, i.e. you’ll get lots of problems in the style of “find/compute blah,” and it’s really easy to just memorize steps for specific kinds of problems. However, I would highly recommend that you don’t fall into this sort of mindset and understand what you’re doing, why you’re doing it, and how that’ll yield what you want to compute, etc.

Homework isn’t really checked, but you just gotta do it – practice makes better in this class.

Linear: This class is called “Matrix Algebra” in the catalog, but I find that title sort of misleading. Again, your experience will depend on who you get (see above for notes on that), but generally, expect a class that is much more focused on understanding intuitive concepts that you might have learned in Math 4/prior to this course, but that can be applied in a much broader context. You’ll start with a fairly simple question (i.e. what does it mean for a system of linear equations to have a solution?) and extend this question to ask/answer questions about linear transformations, vectors and the spaces in which they reside, and matrices.

A lot of the concepts/abstractions are probably easier to grasp for people who didn’t do as well in multi, and this I think is a perfectly natural thing! Linear concepts also lend themselves pretty well to visualization which is great for us visual learners too :)) The difficulty can come in understanding what terms mean/imply and what they don’t mean/imply, which turns into a lot of true/false at some points, and in the naturally large amount of arithmetic that just comes with dealing with matrices and stuff. 

Same/similar notes on the homework situation as in Multi.

Concrete: Dr. White teaches this course, and it’s a great time! The course description in the catalog isn’t totally accurate - most of the focus of the first two main units are generally about counting things, and some of the stuff mentioned in the catalog (Catalan numbers, Stirling numbers) are presented as numbers that count stuff in different situations. The first unit focuses on a more constructive approach to counting, and it can be really hard to get used to that way of thinking - it’s sorta like math-competition problems, to a degree. The second unit does the same thing but from a more computational/analytic perspective. Towards the end, Mr. White will sort of cover whatever the class is interested in - we did a bit of group theory for counting at the end when I took it. 

The workload is fairly light - a couple problem sets here and there to do, and a few tests, but nothing super regular. Classes are sometimes proofs, sometimes working on a problem in groups to get a feel for the style of thinking necessary for the class. if you’re responsible for taking notes for the class, you get a little bonus, but of course, it’s more work to learn/write in LaTeX. Assessments are more application, I guess - problems designed to show you’ve understood how to think in a combinatorial way. 

Unfortunately, this course is not offered this year but hopefully it will be next year! 

Prob Theory: Dr. White teaches this course this year, and the course’s focus is sort of in the name. The course covers probability and random variables, different kinds of distributions, sampling, expected value, decision theory, and some of the underlying math that forms the basis for statistics. 

This course has much more structure, and they follow the textbook closely, supplemented by packets of problems. Like Concrete, lecture in class is more derivation/proof-based, and practice is done with the packets. Assessments are the same way as above. Personally, I feel this class is a bit more difficult/less intuitive compared to Concrete, but I haven’t taken it at the time of writing. 

Edit (Spr. 2020) - It’s maybe a little more computational in terms of how it’s more difficult? There’s a lot of practice with a smaller set of concepts, but with a lot of applications. 

AMT: Dr. Osborne teaches this course, and I think this course complements all the stuff you do math/physics-wise really well, even if you don’t take any of the above except multi. The class starts where BC ended (sequences + series), but it quickly transitions to using series to evaluate integrals. The second unit does a bit of the probability as well (and probability theory), but it’s quickly used as a gateway into thermodynamics, a physics topic not covered in any other class. The class ends with a very fast speed-run of the linear course (with one or two extra topics thrown in here and there). 

The difficulty of this course comes from pace. The problem sets can get pretty long (with one every 1-2 weeks), but if you work at it and ask questions in class/through email whenever you get confused, you’ll be able to keep up with the material. The expressions you’ll have to work with might be intimidating sometimes, but Osborne presents a particular way of thinking that helps you get over that fear - which is nice! All assessments are take-home (with rules), and are written in the same style as problem sets and problems you do in class. The course can be a lot to handle, but if you stick with it, you’ll end up learning a lot that you might not have learned otherwise, all wrapped up in one semester.  

Diffie: Dr. Osborne has historically taught this course, but this year’s been weird - Dr. J is teaching a section in the spring, while Dr. Osborne is teaching one in the fall. No idea if this trend will continue! Diffie is sort of what it says it is - it’s a class that focuses on solving differential equations with methods you can do by hand. Most of the class is “learning xx method to solve this kind of equation that comes up a lot,” and the things you have to solve get progressively more difficult/complex over the course of the semester, although the methods may vary in difficulty. 

I think this is a pretty cool class, but like multi, the course can be sort of procedural. In particular, it can be challenging because it often invokes linear concepts to explain why a particular method works it does, but those lines of argument are often the most elegant. This class can also get pretty heavy on the computational side, which can be an issue. 

Homework is mostly based in the textbook, and peter out in frequency as the semester progresses (although their length doesn’t really change/increases a little?). Overall, this is a “straightforward” course in the sense that there’s not as much nuance as some of these other classes, as the focus is generally on solving these problems/why they can be solved that way/when you can expect to find solutions, but that’s not to say it’s not hard. 

Complex: I get really excited when talking about this class, but this is a very difficult one. Dr. Osborne has historically taught this course in the fall. This class is focused on how functions in the complex numbers work, and extending the notions of real-line calculus to them. In particular, as a result of this exploration, you’ll end up with a lot of surprising results that can be applied in a variety of ways, including the evaluation of integrals and sums in unconventional ways. 

In some ways, this class can feel like multi/BC, but with a much higher focus on proofs and why things work the way they do because some of the biggest results you’ll get in the complex numbers will have no relation whatsoever to stuff in BC. Everything is built ground-up, and it can be really easy to be confused by the nuanced details. If you don’t remember anything about complex numbers, fear not! The class has an extra-long first unit for that very purpose, which is disproportionately long compared to the other units (especially the second, which takes twoish weeks, tops). Homework is mostly textbook-based, but there are a couple of worksheets in there (including the infamous Real Integral Sheet :o) 

This course is up there for one of the most rewarding classes I’ve taken at TJ, but it’s a wild ride and you really have to know what things mean and where the nuances are cold. 

[felicitykings]

☕️ BATCATBATCATBATCAT

AHHHH THANK YOU!

this is going to be really long, i can feel it, so i’m putting it under the cut. 

Send me a ☕️ and a topic and I’ll talk about how I feel about it

okay, here goes: i loved the way that this show had these two entangled from the start. having selina as the sole witness to the wayne murder besides bruce was an interesting twist and it felt almost like fate. of all the alleys she could have ended up in she ended up here, and while she was witnessing the most horrific event of bruce’s life - as awful as that was -, their destinies were now entwined.

having them meet and develop a bond as children really added depth to the bond that they inevitably share. other than me being a sucker for the childhood freinds romance trope, it made their connection feel more emotional and mental rather than just physical. they just connected. like the reason they know and understand each other so well is because they’ve been there. they’ve seen every single shade of each other and stuck with each other through all of it. it’s safe to say that (with the exception of alfred on bruce’s side) they know each other better than anyone else. and it’s clear in the relationship that they share. frequently over the course of the show, they’re able to get through to each other in a way that no one else does. they call each other out on their shit and (i believe david and camren have said this as well) they each leave their arguments taking on board what the other has said. bruce realises he’s been an ass and strives to do better and apologise for it, and selina makes an effort to make more of herself (’i’m tired of just surviving, i want more’) and opens herself up a little more.

the parallels between to two of them were also really well done. you always got the sense that they were both walking the line, and while bruce always fell on the ‘right’ side of this line, selina could fall both sides. and this in itself gave them an interesting dynamic. that they could be so similar and yet so different. and this is just another reason that they worked as a pairing (in whatever form that took). selina could always pick up the tasks that bruce couldn’t (stealing things for him and using violence in a more extreme sense than bruce). and they both influenced each other - selina helped bruce see that things weren’t always quite so black and white sometimes and that some things are necessary for survival and bruce often pulled selina back towards a moral centre if she fell too much the other way.

and even with all of this they always remained individuals and they never lost sight of that individuality no matter how strong and deep that connection was. they didn’t sacrifice any part of themselves to be together and most of the time they respected each other’s differences. selina did her best frequently to ensure that bruce didn’t have to kill, because she knew that that wasn’t who he was and that he wouldn’t be able to deal with it (even if she herself would be able to) and while she encouraged some of his darker side, she made sure that he stayed the same pure hearted kid that she met (it’s good you’re changing just don’t change too much’). and while bruce struggles to accept some of selina’s darker acts in favour of insisting that they’re the same, he never tries to force her into being anything other than herself, even if it hurts him to watch her spiral. another thing i loved about them was that, while they were amazing together (a true power couple honestly), their stories never revolved around the other. they remind me lot of that post that compared soulmates to a pair of socks. they’re each a whole complete sock on their own and can manage perfectly well on their own, but they’re amazing when they come back together as a pair. they had their own storylines going on and yet that connection remained very strong regardless. no matter how far away from each other they drifted, they always came back together. their bond is inevitable. they could have not spoken for months or been so mad at the other but even they, they still protected each other. we saw this in season 3 with selina. she breaks away from bruce in the fallout of her mother’s return and hasn’t seen him for months and yet when five shows up and she realised bruce is missing, she stands up for bruce and decides to tell alfred so that he can find bruce. and selina at various points throughout the show saves bruce’s life. even if it almost breaks her rule of self-preservation. she often tells bruce that she’s unwilling to go somewhere that puts her life in danger (’i’m not going back’), but when bruce is the one in danger, more often than not, she does. she checks on him in 2x03, helps save him from galavan in 2x11, stays behind to get him, gordon and lucius out of arkham at the end of s2, comes to help him in 3x11 and proceeds to stand protectively in front of him and alfred when they’re threatened, she goes to the diner in 4x16 and saves him from the fear gas in 4x21. and bruce similarly puts his own life in danger to save her. and it never comes across like selina is a damsel for him to save. most of the time she saves herself. they’re true equals and i love that about them.

also this show gave them so many lighthearted moments as well which truly emphasised that love is at the basis of their connection. they truly care about each other and make each other happy. you see that the connection they share isn’t just based on destiny or their similarities, there’s a genuine emotional bond there which is truly what ties them to each other. they flirted/bantered, went on dates, comforted each other, and selina was the first person to get bruce to act like a kid and just have childlike joy in something since his parents died (despite alfred’s best efforts for the first part of s1). jim told bruce that there would be light and selina gave that to him. so much so that even alfred knew how connected they were regardless of his own feelings about selina, and he let her stay at the manor after all.

as you can probably tell by now, i have a lot of feelings about gotham’s batcat, they were really well written and brilliantly portrayed by david and camren. they worked really well together on screen and brought the writing to life. they made you believe that these two loved each other through everything they went through. the good, the bad, all of it. what they meant to each other was never in doubt. there’s a whole lot of a soulmate feel to them. the fact that they always come back to each other, the fact that selina could calm bruce even as he’s living his worst fear (4x21), how similar they are and the fact that even after a 10 year separation, they can sense each other’s presence still and their connection has not dimmed. and while it hurt a little to know that they weren’t together at the end of the show, their rooftop scene gave me a lot of hope. selina finally verbalised her feelings for bruce (to him)  - a rarity - and asks what will happen now. he tell her that he doesn’t know (it’s up to her) but that he’ll never leave gotham (her) again, before telling her to ‘return the diamond’. it sounds almost playful and their game has begun. he knows she won’t return the diamond and she knows he won’t force her to, and now she knows that he did see her steal it and didn’t do anything to stop her. (after all she’s got him wrapped around her pinky.

just some thoughts to finish off with. there are a few lines in this show that i feel really sum up their relationship. the first: ‘why can’t we just be us?’. selina doesn’t like the label of ‘girlfriend’ or ‘couple’ but on a deeper level the ‘us’ fits them a lot better. bruce and selina’s relationship transcends a lot of these labels. they’re more than just a couple and they are a lot of different things to each other. so many things that ‘girlfriend’ and ‘couple’ doesn’t seem to do their connection justice and feels like and oversimplification. secondly ‘i’ll be here whenever you need me’ and ‘whose side are you on, bruce?’/’yours. always.’. this is what their bond is. they’re almost on their own side. no matter what selina is always there when bruce needs her and vice versa. as i’ve said no matter how far they drift apart, it doesn’t matter because they are always there for each other.

[gurguliare]

DVD: that one scene from your fic about Dirhaval, with the elf lady and the two of them being really intent with each other over the fire. "Do you love me" et cetera. I hope that makes sense I'm on mobile.

omg IT DOES although since that fic barely has scene divisions I’m going to take this excuse to do… a lot of it.

“I have remembered something,” she added, inconsequentially. “My aunt’s husband was Guilin’s steward. Everyone in my family hated him because he always making up to us with stories about the great princes. He said that Gwindor and Finduilas fought much over the Adanedhel’s love for her.”

I… I love this OC. She’s not even a box of rocks, she’s like, a box with one rock in it. Selectively dense; elsewhere, airheaded.

Dírhaval considered the fish with great interest. He had been told triumph lent him a fierce expression. He had no wish to scare his friend off now.

I can’t remember if @crocordile​ and I had a conversation before or after I wrote this about Dirhavel being like, not necessarily a big but an energetic guy who’s frequently seen around the camps doing SUPER WEIRD athletic shit to see if some of the feats he attributes to Turin were physically possible—anyway, whatever the timing, that concept was what I was psychically tuned into when I wrote this description. He has a beard and it bristles despite his best efforts to keep it trimmed.

“Raised voices—he overheard—Gwindor said, ‘Why does he seek you out, and sit long with you, and come ever more glad away?’ And that was true, I remember; they sat together in all kinds of places, on the terraces, in the treasury, and even by the earthworks for the bridge. No doubt he told her much you would be glad to know. But as for me, I think Gwindor a fool; few men would have loved her for listening. It reminds them what they hold dear in themselves.”

It was really hard for me to strike what seemed like a reasonable balance between hearsay and direct observation, but I leaned on the idea that Nargothrond, though huge, was not like, “modern city space” huge, more “sprawling overdeveloped apartment complex and you need a permit to go above ground”—so in five years and with perfect memory, everyone has a decent chance of stumbling on everyone else’s attempts at fresh air.

“That’s true,” he said. The first time he had interviewed her, she had spoken for an hour about the cavern of assembly, like an egg on its side—but so vast!—and with stalactites Finrod himself had sung down into pillars, or was it that he had worn holes in the walls parting small caves, she couldn’t decide; and the window on the river, whence a grey light came, like a shadow thrown on the gliding light of a thousand lamps and torches.

I think this description of the great hall is kind of cute but I have to acknowledge it was influenced, consciously or subconsciously, by the great hall in the Rats of Nimh.

And now when she spoke it was matter-of-fact and with hardly a jibe at her uncle. She was Túrin to him in that moment with her straight-sloping neck, the flushed skin of her neck and jaw with her face as fair as fair could stay at sunset, the cupful of shadow under her chin. He had burned the roof of his mouth. The fish was tender, almost flavorless, flaking between his teeth like a cake of river-flesh; a little muddy, even, as all water here was. He ate the crisped-black skin for a whiff of charcoal, which coated his mouth. “Don’t you love me, your loyal hearer?”

She gave him a startled wink; and smiled, and smiled.

Okay, so yes. I do love this moment, I hope it does a lot of things at once; basically I want 1) Dirhavel to be ironic in a nice way about his elf friend attempting to invent the term “emotional labor,” which reflects both a male impatience with this attempt to generalize everything to men talking women’s ears off, but also some vague species-based edginess about him trying to construct this human story out of testimony from elves, and like, navigating elves’ possessiveness of Turin but also the way they patronize him in the same breath, Adanedhel. And at the same time having to confront the fact that people are people and the elf-human boundary has gotten increasingly blurry with the end times, however much he might want to retain a sense of lofty apartness, whether as a human among elves, a writer among subjects, a man among women, whatever—that tension between observer distance and involuntary empathy is another big theme of this fic. And 2) I want the cook to catch it but not quite get it—like, she knows he’s making fun of her but she doesn’t necessarily interpret it in the same way he does, what she gets is that he’s talking about the limits of different kinds of love, that you can love someone and it can still go just so far: that’s why it triggers her next thought about Finduilas –> Turin.

“I do not think Finduilas loved the Mormegil either. Or, that is, I believe they loved one another as sister and brother.”

I said this in my commentary on an otherwise VERY different LOGH fic but I love when characters are wrong. Every time. Also, I love childish oversimplifications that have good reason for existing—that is, I like when you can really see why a character would with all their heart want to believe x, because the alternative is both messy and depressing.

Trying to lick his fingers clean just spread around the soot. Among the things she had told Dírhaval was that she was an only child. But he was inclined to believe her, almost. To Finduilas Túrin should have been a child. She must have wanted to love him like a brother—it would have been best, by far clearer and finer, to love him as a brother, even when her death walked near. The death he handed her down to; but if they were kin, it would have been her right to love him, blaming him.

“Do you not agree?”

Dirhavel takes this basically as like, confirmation for his thesis that all real love is irrational and unconditional (see also Gwindor wanting Finduilas and Túrin to be happy at his own expense, a few lines down) but only familial love has the “excuse” to be so. So the distinction is not, “would I love him whatever he did to me,” but rather, “do I feel fucked up and guilty about that fact or not.” In a vague way, this is supposed to set up the extremely bleak lines he gives Nienor after she gets her memory back: twice beloved.

“I can’t say.” Up again to pace. She followed him, basket on her arm, and settled onto her haunches when she saw he had no journey in mind. He stood when he performed, which was not hard, but it made him more restless when alone.

See above remarks about Dirhavel’s acrobatics, and also maaybe his ADHD

“I think—by the time—no, Túrin did not love her, and as for Finduilas, well, surely she cared for Gwindor? If they argued. Let’s see. And Túrin pursued her at last and fell in a swoon on her grave, we know that. And he loved Gwindor; how not, when Gwindor was with him at Ivrin? But Gwindor—I suppose—Gwindor must have hated him. No. He must have hoped Túrin loved Finduilas, and that was why he couldn’t be persuaded of the truth. For he would have wanted her to be happy, in the end.”

“Oh, no!”

His mood tipped down at once. “Oh no,” he agreed, and took his sandals off and stepped into the stream.

Again, I just think this interaction is fun. I mean I like the placement of his realization about Gwindor, but I LOVE the cook being like “oh no!! that’s so sad!” I hope other people enjoy “stories about the process of idiotic sadstuck brainstorming” as much as I do.

His mother had said once that both he and his father were happier than other men, but that they had no ballast, to keep steady the craft. If he took on an ounce of grief he’d sink, and yet he felt the flood almost as freedom. It made him more the master than had his dry, feckless race, his high-riding. As long as he struggled he had yet to succumb; that was the rule for a wasted night. He ought to go beg a bowl of sour milk from Linnor, or go and sing a service for the king. He could see as far as a night of stars.

I wanted to communicate a particular kind of mood downturn here where you can still clearly remember being happy, and the rising tide of discontent isn’t overwhelming on its own, it’s just depressing because you know where it leads—but for the same reason it’s also a relief, in that you know where it leads. Whereas joy is weird and easy to get lost in and you never know when the plug will be pulled. But I’m not sure the boat metaphor really works.

But it was day, it was red evening. It was his companion’s grief, filling his mind from above. She crouched and watched the far bank huge-eyed, not a tear in evidence, eyes opened but sealed, as it seemed, against sadness that strove for entry, not escape; she sat with wide mouth cracked, nostrils flared, sucking in great absent sniffs of sea-wind. She was besieged as an afterthought, safe and calm except besieged.

I also wanted to include some telepathy! As always! Dirhaval I imagine to be something of a natural, who probably has had some experience with elf mind-speech at this point—enough to recognize it but not really to manage it. I like this description of the cook in pain, I think it works well with her established personality and also evokes Nargothrond itself, which is of course the thing she’s actually grieving for. I mean, and she identifies it with Gwindor, reasonably enough, and takes unhappy pride in him as a lord of Nargothrond, and in this moment is kind of shot through herself not just with the fact of his defeat but the like, honorable necessity of his defeat, knowing that on some level he accepted it.   

(Gwindor surely wished Finduilas joy. Finduilas, dying, remembered Túrin, and told him where his quest should end. The feathered tops of the reeds glowed on dark stems, like a fire in a field of reeds—there before nightfall he planted for ever the standards of the Noldor and their unsheathed swords, kindling in the dawn.)

I’m so proud of this stupid line lol, it’s just the reverse of Tolkien’s—“The light of the drawing of the swords of the Noldor was like a fire in a field of reeds”—but I LOVE THAT LINE, it’s so perfect for Dirhaval as an author and Sirion as a place of memory/last battlefront/first battlefront for this long war. And its conclusion, still to come.

He washed his hands and greasy beard in the river. “Your fish will be cold,” he advised. He had abandoned hope of dinner until she brought it, but that was no reason to encourage bad habits in her.

Dumb friends. Dumb friends are great because they are attuned to the hazards of stupidity, and can help each other.

Then he had to pick some scales out of his teeth, and couldn’t elaborate, but he heard her uncover the basket, anyway.

He had met her before with a handful of salt, pressing a few grains to her mouth to check their purity. “Dírhaval,” she said wisely, mouth full. “Dírhaval, I have forgotten how to cook.” Meaning she had no spices, witched ovens, and trained assistants—maybe, with her, it really was as though she had forgotten; at least it was something else she had lost.

Yeah… the focus on memory in this is another unexpected link to the LOGH fic uh, an inevitable byproduct of writing about a historian, and it’s also supposed to reflect that loss of separation between elves and men, since so much of what distinguishes elves is… their wealth of resources, psychological and material. And the material resources are essential to and interwoven with the psychological resilience, as noted here, so I really wanted to capture that sense that *not having* all the wonderful things she used to have baffles her as much as a hole in her memory. Because the default is that you keep everything forever, right? Another feeling which is not unique to elves. God I love………………………… “people.”  

[wanderingmoonsword]

Human (and Elven and Gnomish) Geography

We’re going to talk about something a little different today, mainly because it’s on my mind and I feel like sharing it. Don’t worry, I’m about to veer off into something completely crazy – it’s still an RPG blog and that’s the topic we’re sticking to but instead of monsters, today’s post is about human geography (and elven, and dwarven, and orcish, etc.), specifically about why people live where they live. There’s whole reams of this – there’s probably entire books about it! –but I’m going to distill it down to the two of the practical considerations for a GM: where things are on a map and why exceptions matter.

Let’s start with the basics. To survive, people need food and water, and to be in a place, people have to be able to reach it. I realize that’s kind of a given but when you look at a mapping, those three facts matter a lot. I’m going to be talking more about cities here. What those three facts mean on a map is cities will as a rule be in places that have ready access to sources of food and water, and they tend to be in places that are part of a transportation network. Cities will never survive without ready sources of food and water. Historically, that meant most cities were surrounded by agricultural lands to feed the city or tied to rich fishing areas and it’s a comparatively recent development for societies with any significant degree of urbanization to be able to function without having a very large chunk of the population devoted to agriculture. They also needed to have fresh water for people to drink in sufficient quantities to supply the population. That amount of water is lower than we probably expect from modern water consumption figures – earlier times solved problems differently without the convenience of modern plumbing – but it’s still a significant amount.

Historically, a lot of major cities were on rivers. Why?  Was it the fresh water? That’s part of it, yes, but another big reason is that for most of human existence, moving goods was faster and cheaper along bodies of water than overland. Think about the Vikings for a moment, specifically the raiding, looting, pillaging Vikings that really define the stereotype. In addition to their somewhat questionable manners, what struck fear into people was that the Vikings could just appear anywhere near the water. Why? They had boats that were capable of going upriver and delivering a concentrated body of manpower quickly and efficiently. Sure, they couldn’t necessarily take a major target, but being able to raid the hinterland near it can cause a lot of trouble. Just ask the Byzantines.

Similar albeit less aggressive logic applies to transportation. Shipping across large bodies of water also means you need to have ports to load and unload cargo. Now you don’t need to map things out or consider the details of the landform. What it boils down to is that in societies without efficient ground transportation – something superior to livestock-laden carts – this is going to inform where most of the settlements are. Places where sources of transportation comes together will see some economic boost from that, so those cities may be larger. Once methods of transportation change, new significant urban centers will develop along those meeting points but remember that railroads and highways also get built to existing areas in many cases. Atlanta, GA, developed because of the railroads but the highways in and around the city were built out because of Atlanta and other urban areas around it, not just following the railroads per se. The existence of transportation networks can facilitate development of an urban area away from its direct sources of food. Most modern cities are not fed primarily out of the surrounding hinterland, most of which in America is covered by suburbs – they get their food shipped in from farther away. Historically, grain from other parts of the Roman Empire helped feed the city of Rome and was brought in aboard ships, so there is precedent for this quite a long ways back.

Coming back to the main point here, what does this mean for your maps? It means cities are almost always near some source of water and food until the means to maintain a population away from those sources exists. Even in the Silk Road, which goes through the heart of Asia, cities like Fergana or Samarkand are both on sources of water, and a lot of the caravansarais were near oases or springs. Those places developed along the Silk Road partially to facilitate travel. (That’s an oversimplification – dig into the history of anywhere you’re really interested in! – but it conveys a certain amount of what’s going on.)

Now we come to the exceptions. Anywhere a significant population exists without supporting local sources of food and water, something is sustaining them. Most settings do not remove the need for food and drink, so how are people surviving in these places? Answering that question can be a background fact for the setting or something the players want to actively investigate – either way, it helps develop it, and players may pick up on the fact there’s no food or water available in a place.

For a few specific ideas:

·         An ancient monastery, a place of the most truly learned, exists on a forbidding peak, and little food comes in. How? The initiation rites to earn the rank necessary to ascend to this ancient place requires that the monks demonstrate they can survive on very little food and water, so the bread and rice carried up on the backs of donkeys after each new moon and two pails of water fetched by an initiate every morning sustain the whole monastery.

·         A wondrous city arises at the heart of a desert, startling the weary travelers, but desperate for supplies, they venture inside. The fact no one seems to need food and water is in little abundance – there’s a spring, but surely not enough to satiate this many people – is a hint that things are not what they seem. Most of the city is illusions and ghosts, and parts of it are crumbled ruins.

A dwarven city of exiles and outcasts from the lands of several thanes is built into the leeward side of a mountain, where no rain falls. Despite this and no visible crops, nor the support of priests, they sell food and drink, and have outlasted a siege sent to bring them to heel when they defied one of the thanes and end their vexatious existence. How? The city lies atop aquifers, drawing on them with ingenious pumps, and sunlight filtered down through mirror arrangements helps sustain surface crops as well as groves of fungi. To protect the secret of their survival (exile was intended to be a death sentence), no outsiders are normally permitted past certain points in their home, and those few slaves kept by the dwarves have their tongues cut out if they are sent to work the farms.

[eclectic-geekery-blog]

Thoughts on being a GM

I wanted to write something up about running RPGs. I don’t really know why, except that I read a thing from Geek & Sundry about the (admittedly limited) GNS theory of roleplaying, and I've been listening to Matt Colville’s great “Running the Game” series on YouTube, and I guess I just felt like I wanted to say some things about that in a somewhat more permanent way than person-to-person. So this series of posts will be a poorly-organized collection of my thoughts on running RPGs, what works and what doesn’t, why they work or don’t, and when all of that’s applicable. Here’s hoping I manage to make some sense out of it. Note: GNS theory gets its name from the three “types” of RPGs it addresses - “Gamism,” “Narrativism,” and “Simulationism.” There’s a lot of issues with the oversimplification there (and probably others I don’t know), but I’m going to reference these terms, because I think they’re still useful as sort of ur-styles. As always when talking about role-playing, your mileage may vary. 1) The Prep

Here’s how I prep for a game session right now: 

If it’s a new story arc (that is, we’re coming off a bit of downtime and establishing a new adventure), I brainstorm about what the goal of the adventure is, where/what the McGuffin is, what my players are supposed to do with it, and who they might meet along the way. Then, I focus down on how they find out about the whole thing. And that’s it.

If we’re in the middle of a story arc, I look over any notes I may have on where we left off last time, and consider how close they are to doing whatever they’re supposed to be doing. Then, I focus down on where they’re standing and what’s happening immediately around them at the exact moment we start the session. And that’s it.

This is very different from how most people play D&D, and what most of the GM advice I’ve seen talks about. I don’t think that’s a bad thing, so much as it is a difference in goals. D&D, by nature, is a pretty Gamist game - it lends itself well to crunchy, min-maxy kinds of play, and to an extent, encourages a bit of an antagonistic relationship between the GM and the players. It doesn’t have to be played that way, but it seems to want to be. And because of that, it want lots of prep. That’s necessary to establish the “rules” of that pseudo-antagonistic conflict between players and GM. That’s a big deal! But I don’t find it to be very fun - it’s not how I want to play the game, and it’s not something I enjoy spending time on - so I walked away from both the work of it, and this whole style of play.

Instead, I fell backwards into this very Narrativist style of prep and play. More specifically, though, it’s a player-driven Narrativist style. I’ve found that I have a lot more fun when, as a GM, I’m responding to the actions of the players. They’re important, I feel, so let them be active - or even pro-active - while the rest of the world responds to them. Which means most of my prep work is about figuring out what they’ve done, and how that affects where they are. I’m not necessarily worried about how long it will take the bad guys to complete their ritual (or build their bomb or slaughter their hostages or... whatever thing they’re trying to do) - for my purposes, that’s a product of plot convenience. All I’m worried about is what they’re trying to do, why they’re trying to do it, and how/whether the players are addressing that.

There is a frankly massive downside to doing things this way - minimalist prepwork doesn’t actually reduce the total amount of work you’re doing as a GM, it just changes when you’re doing that work. I’m still creating NPCs and building dungeons (or dungeon analogues), establishing and describing settings, crafting encounters, and all the other things that I would otherwise do. This way, however, I’m doing that on the fly, as things are happening. That’s not nearly as easy as simply knowing everything you need to know ahead of time. But then, it’s not necessarily that much harder, either.

So how do I handle all of that? Well, it helps that I’m using a personalized version of an already-existing setting (specifically White Wolf’s World of Darkness setting, using the old Revised rules), so I don’t need to invent every setting from scratch. But perhaps more importantly, I offload some of the work. Some of my players have created multiple characters over the course of the game, some of which have retired into NPCs, and at least one of which (the players recently realized) is now a serious antagonist. When those characters show up, I take their old player aside, let them know what’s going on, and allow them to play their old character for a little while. I’m terrible at names (both at remembering them and at creating them), so nearly all of our significant NPCs have been named by the players (and at least two have been named by the characters). I’ve let them establish settings, invent and explain what their antagonists are trying to do, and even create the random NPCs they interact with.

So far, this has paid of handsomely. This campaign has been running for something like 8 years, and while we just started the last story arc, I’m expecting it to last about another year. I’m constantly surprised by how much my players are enjoying the game, because, honestly, I don’t think I’m a good GM. I mean, some of that’s probably just my normal level of self-deprecation, but also, I’ve seen what really good GMs are like - I watch Critical Role, and I’ve played with some amazing people - and I’m just not like that. If there’s only one takeaway, here, that’s the one. You don’t have to measure up to all those amazing GMs you’ve seen or played with. You just need to help your players have fun (of whatever type they prefer), and they will think you’re amazing.

[phdna]

How do you reconcile wanting more male-male friendships that are openly affectionate and also wanting more representation? Because I love Steve and Bucky as friends, but I think representation matters and I never know if I should or shouldn't ship them... (And would your answer for this depends on whether we're talking about MCU or comics?)

I don’t have much time now so I’ll be ultra quick in my answer. I hope that’s fine. It’s just that this question has been in my inbox for a while now and I think it’ll be rude if I don’t answer it now. I wish I had more time!

So, first of all, I’m really not the best person to ask about this! You see, you really ought to be asking people who are directly affected by representation, in this case, people who identify as LGBT+. I usually write down my sexuality as quoisexual/quoiromantic, though for the past months I’ve been wondering if I’m not grey ace/aro. But either way, this is not a major part of my life and so I wouldn’t call myself LGBT+ and by default am not a good person to talk about this kind of thing.

However, while I encourage you to find other people to ask this to (more than one, btw, because naturally, no person can speak for an entire group), I’ll still answer this ask, so as long as you remember this is a personal opinion you should take with several grains of salt.

I’m a huge fan of close platonic relationships, regardless of what genders are involved. BROTPs are one of my favorite things in the world. I love to see women being there for each other (still mourning the end of Peggy and Angie), I love to see men and women loving each other without being love interests (Steve and Nat and Steve and Wanda are personal favorites), and I love to see men openly caring about each other with no “No Homo” tags attached (Steve and Sam and Steve and Bucky are a given, but can we also talk about Tony and Rhodey, please?). All these things are rare. Female characters are sorely lacking in the MCU (and in the world in general), and usually the ones that do exist hate each other or simply don’t interact. Everybody also knows that if a man and a woman get along in any meaningful way, they’re secretly soulmates, or are at least up to some casual making out, right? - well, Hollywood is pretty sure that’s how it goes, anyway. But male-male friendships are weird in the sense that there’s plenty of them to pick - but far too few are actually… well, loving. Loyal, sure. Interesting, definitely. But affectionate? Openly emotional? Nah.

Now, some of this comes down to the general rule that men aren’t allowed to have feelings. (Which is complete BS and one of the reasons why men also need feminism.) I think fiction has to acknowledge this to some extent. For the past several decades, men have been taught to not express emotions except for violent or sexual ones, and well… it’s hard to imagine a bunch of guys in modern day America not being emotionally repressed to some extent. So that’s a factor that comes into play when writing a script. That being said, using that as an excuse to have muscly icebergs of testosterone parading around as human beings is simply lazy writing. I don’t really expect the Avengers to go all “LET ME HUG YOU AND TELL YOU HOW MUCH I LOVE YOU”  to each other, or even to want to do that, but if you have to tell me “Oh they actually care about each other” for me to see it, then this is being done wrong. One of these days I’ll make a post about it, but an easy example is Steve and Tony. In Avengers and AoU, we’re supposed to believe they actually care about each other underneath all the fighting. And yeah, I think they care a bit, as teammates. But in CACW, you can actually see it without having Teaming Up Moments or “But I Actually Respect You!” Speeches. There’s actually friendly body language, there’s them seeing right through each other’s BS, there’s worrying about each other without particularly noticing it. And that’s an antagonistic dynamic!! You can do much more with people who DO get along. But that’s only if you acknowledge that men are human beings and human beings have hearts, and that hearts =/= hormones.

But not writing male emotion well isn’t the only thing that keep us from having genuinely affectionate male-male friendships. There’s the whole No Homo culture. I don’t think I have to elaborate here, but just to clarify - if men are affectionate towards each other, they must be secretly gay.

…so what?

I mean, if a guy wears a baseball cap, somebody might think he’s into baseball. Do you think your average guy would stop wearing baseball caps ever or have to say “Dude, I’m not a baseball fan, I’m wearing this baseball cap for a completely unrelated yet true reason” as a default disclaimer? That sounds bizarre. And it IS bizarre. Because there’s nothing wrong with being mistaken by a baseball fan. Which leads us to… well, the entire No Homo culture happens because society teaches that being guy is a bad thing.

So part (only part!!!) of the reason I would love for Steve and Bucky to be canon in the MCU is because I want more male-male friendships! If being gay stops being seen as wrong, there’ll be nothing wrong with seeming gay. So even if a random BROTP some years from now explodes as a ship, there’ll be no reason to change their dynamics, much like they don’t often change male-female dynamics just because people are shipping them when the Official Ship is a different one.

Personally, Steve and Bucky are my BROTP. That’s how I see them, that’s how I headcanon them. Politically? I’ll take any chance to yell at Marvel that making them an official OTP is something I want. Because I DO want it. My headcanons are far less important than the effect that Captain America being bi would have on so many people who need to see this happening. But at the same time, I can also yell at Marvel to keep writing men having positive, emotional relationships with each other. It’s one of those situations you can have your cake and eat it too. In general, I want to see more friendships; in particular, I want the symbolism of Captain “Always Right” America and Bucky “Baddass In Human Form” Barnes being LGBT+. Mostly, because I’m not LGBT+, I’m an ally, and being an ally means I fight together with them. And if their current (is it current? I haven’t been much online lately) fight is that, then my voice will be heard in support of them. That’s pretty much it.

Now, this is all an oversimplification. Society isn’t made of neat bullet points. It’s more of a web. So if you start wondering why men aren’t allowed to have loving friendships with each other in the way women usually are, you’ll end up uncovering lots of theories about feminism and gender and other stuff like them. Look them up! Educate yourself! Because this is really complicated and there’s no cookie-cutter answer, I believe. So maybe you’ll end up realizing (and please, please, please, talk to all minorities involved as you do that!) that you feel more strongly about the emotional repression of men than about LGBT+ issues. It’s possible and it’s not for me to say it that’s right or wrong. (Again, talk to the people directly affected by these things!)

All this being said, I strongly believe shipping shouldn’t be about what you feel you should be doing, but about what you enjoy. I think it IS a moral duty to do SOMETHING to make the world a more equal place for all, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be how you consume entertainment. You have to be critical and you have to take a stand when the media crosses the line, yes, but there are other forms of activism to explore as well, and it’s an impossible standard to be in social justice mode 24/7. Do what makes you happy, just make sure you aren’t being a passive bystander when it comes to other people’s rights.

But just to say it one more time: this is only my opinion and I’m probably wrong about at least something.

As for whether my answer would depend…………….. I don’t know. I feel a little conflicted about shipping Steve and Bucky in the comics because there are definitely father-son overtones to their dynamics even though modern comics have them having only a small (4 years, give or take) age gap now. I feel like making them canon might do more harm than good, because it could be very, very easily twisted to make them sound like an abusive relationship of some sort. Even in universe, it could be problematic: Bucky sees Steve as his commander, and Steve still sees Bucky as a child, and I’m not sure I can imagine what would need to happen for them to actually get together without either of them or both feeling uncomfortable, possibly enough to make this a slightly dubcon-y situation. But then again, a talented writer could probably make it work by playing down the creepy elements and playing up the fact that they DO see each other as equals and would never do anything to hurt each other on any level (which is also true.) So my answer is basically: I don’t know.

So yeah, that’s my far from perfect reply to your ask. Sorry for the delay - and for the length!

[coldtomyflash]

Couldn't the changes in Len's character in Legends be due to how he fell for Sara? With the one deleted scene they released it looked like it was almost love at first sight. He was kinder and more honest and open with her than anyone else including Lisa and Mick. No one saw through and understood him like she did ever before. His getting rid of Mick was more about him trying to hurt Sara than the team. And she was the one who got him to make up with Mick. It never would have happened without her

Anon, there is so much wrong here that I very strongly considered not answering because the only things I can say are to disagree with you and that’ll probably make you angry.

But, well, I was a little angry too, particularly at the line “His getting rid of Mick was more about him trying to hurt Sara than the team” but I decided not to let anger rule my thoughts. Nonetheless, I’m gonna answer because I feel it’s worth a discussion for why I think differently, and why your post struck a bit of a nerve. Sorry if this isn’t what you want to hear, but I really do feel it warrants a meta/commentary response.

First, no I don’t think all the changes in him are due to Sara and I’d say that’s an oversimplification of how and why a person changes. It strips Len of those changes being about him at all really, taking away some of his autonomy in making the changes. If you change solely for someone else and not for yourself, that’s not sustainable. Len changed for himself and through the influence of a host of different factors, and to reduce it to largely one thing misses so much of the complexity of how and why people change in reality. And I’m not saying that falling in love can’t change a person (through the different viewpoints they take on and through the trust they develop), but I also don’t read Len as having been in love with Sara. People, a single person, can help catalyze change in us even without being in love, of course, but it’s still missing some of the point to make it all about that other person. Change happens internally.  

And there are a lot of the factors that could plausibly, canonically, go into him changing. I mean, I maintain that many of the changes that bothered me (the very subtle characterization ones that tilt him more to a slytherin-hufflepuff than a slytherin-ravenclaw) are ones that came in from the writers wanting to have him work with a team and taking over his character from a different team, losing a bit in translation. But in canon, if we try to explain those changes, I really would not ever want to attribute them to solely one character.

I feel that if we explain the canonical changes in Len, we can point to a couple of major factors, and his budding friendship with Sara is one of those (because it shows him letting people in and believing that change and overcoming one’s past is actually possible, because it’s something she is doing and demonstrating). A few others are Barry’s staunch belief in Len’s goodness and his willingness to help Len, working with Lisa and Mick again and the effect that has on him, being free of his father in a final way, and working with a team of people who’s wellbeing he feels responsible for (especially Jax). I’ve made posts that talk about most of those factors in one way or another though, so I won’t delve into them here.

More specific to the points you raise, I disagree that he demonstrates anything approaching love at first sight in the deleted scene.

Honestly the only thing I read into that is that he a) is trying to get a feel for people on the team and doesn’t quite know what to make of Sara yet, except that she might be the only one aside from Mick he has anything in common with (she shuts that down with the reincarnated point), and b) that he’s a bit intrigued at her willingness to bite back, but maybe a little annoyed at how barbed she is with him. (For the record we literally never see him even glance in the direction of her ass so I don’t get where that line is from.)

I also strongly disagree that he’s “kinder and more honest and open with her than anyone else including Lisa and Mick”. I don’t even know where you get that idea, to be frank. Len loves his sister to death and would do anything for her. He would never raise a weapon to her like he does to Sara in 1x15 and there’s zero reason to suspect he’d be less honest with her than with Sara (or anyone else). If you try to raise the point that he didn’t tell her his dad kidnapped him, I’d counter by saying he didn’t really have a chance and wanted to protect her. He also happened to lie to Sara (alongside the rest of the team) about having killed Mick. 

If you want to talk about Len opening up about his past to people like his heart-to-heart with Sara while they were freezing to death, he’s even similarly expository with Ray (who I maintain he ultimately dislikes) without much prompting.

Len also lies to Sara’s face at least once or twice, particularly about Mick. “Everyone okay between you two?” “Peachy.” Even if it’s unbarbed and obvious, he’s not really being honest (with himself or with her, and they both know it). He’s not opening up to her.

With Mick, Len is admittedly not always honest, or fair. 

But that’s in part because he takes a high degree of responsibility for Mick, maybe more than Mick wants him to. He doesn’t always expect Mick to make decisions in his own best interest, and Len has a very high need for control and believes he’ll make the best decision for his friend. 

Is it okay? Not necessarily. But I don’t think he means that he’s largely dishonest with Mick or that there isn’t a huge amount of trust and understanding between them. 

Mick’s the one who knows Len’s intentions for going in the trip, knows where Len’s head is at, is the one at Len’s side who can literally finish his sentences and move in sync with him. They have one-word codes like ‘Alexa’ and ‘like that time in Chicago’ that tell them everything they need to know about a situation. 30+ years of history will do that with someone. 

Actually, the whole ‘pulling the cold gun out’ thing is neat with respect that. He pulls it on Mick, Mick pulls the heat gun out, they have a stand off for a minute. Len appears to think about it and calm down and come up with the next step for what to do, or else it gives him space to remember to be the reasonable one. Mick gets this too because he doesn’t ever pull his trigger, just waits for Len to decide to end the stand off, every time we’ve seen them have one. But with Sara, she called his bluff. She didn’t understand why he’s doing this and what he gets out of pulling out his gun and having a stand off with someone so she calls him on it (which is fair, I’m not saying she’s in the wrong). And maybe it’s all dysfunctional as hell of him, but I think it demonstrates how Mick understands Len better than Sara does. He moves along to the beats Len is playing in a way that Sara won’t (which is fine because no one needs to, but you can’t tell me that Mick doesn’t understand Len inside and out, up and down).

Which is why I so strongly shirk at the idea that Len ‘got rid of Mick’ (just that in the first place, he didn’t get rid of him), more for Sara than for anyone else. Len marooned Mick for the stated reason of worrying what would happen to his sister if Mick went back to 2016. He knows Mick has impulse control problems and anger issues. He knows that he himself acts like a check/balance on Mick, so dropping him off in 2016 could have some high-damage consequences. So it was about protecting the team, and protecting their loved ones in 2016 (particularly Lisa, the person Mick is most likely to go after because it’s more Len he wants revenge on than any of the other team members). Beyond that canonically-stated reason for marooning Mick, it could also have come down to a lot of personal shit between Len and him. 

To the extent that once he chose not to kill him, Len always planned to return for Mick (till death got in the way), he probably intended for the marooning to be a very short cool-down period for Mick before Len picked up back up and brought him home. A “okay you betrayed us you jackass and it fucking hurt and I’m pissed but I’ve had time to think about it and you’ve been stuck here to think about it for a day, so now let’s go home alright?”.

I mean, you can read a lot more into it than that with respect to their relationship, but I don’t think it’s valuable to bring anyone else into that. It was about Len and Mick, and to a lesser extent about Lisa, and then about the team as a unit. There’s no evidence it was about anyone else, and certainly no evidence that Len was worried Mick would hurt Sara if he stuck around.

As for her being the reason they made up, I agree she had a part in that, but I also think it would have happened eventually in the same way regardless. She was a catalyst though, and showed empathy and deep understanding in that situation. I think that’s highly to her credit, actually, and I’m not sure why you’d make that about Len’s character changes when it really shows her own development and insight. 

But Len and Mick have been at serious odds before, were apart for a few years even, and still manage to find their way back to one another. They always do, with or without anyone’s help, and being confined on a ship together was going to press the issue sooner rather than later. Sara didn’t convince Len to lay down his life for Mick and die if that’s what Mick wanted from him. Len’s love for Mick did that, full stop.

tl;dr - Mick and Lisa understand Len better than Sara does as per canon, and he canonically demonstrates more honesty with his sister and more mutual understanding with Mick than he does with her. There’s nothing to suggest love at first sight (intrigue, at most) and there’s nothing at all to suggest that him marooning Mick had anything to do with Sara herself. The implication Len changed solely/mostly because of her is just a large oversimplification that strips him of personal autonomy in making those changes.

[asafeatherwould]

Divorce Lawyer Herriman Utah

If you are seeking information on divorce, an experienced Herriman Utah divorce lawyer is your best friend. Utah divorce law is complex. American law in general is very complex.

Like a spider’s web, the web of law is very complex and, except to insiders, may seem entirely bewildering, but it has structure. Do not attempt to navigate the complex web of Utah divorce laws. Seek the assistance of an experienced Herriman Utah divorce lawyer.

The structure of the American legal web, and thus its complexity, is driven by the principles of separation of powers, checks and balances, and federalism. So, theoretically, the task of law is divided among lawmakers (the legislative branch), law enforcers (the executive branch), and law interpreters (the judicial branch). Of course, even theoretically, the edifice began to teeter right from the beginning because the Founders, in attempting to make “ambition … counteract ambition,” added checks and balances to the mix, giving the lawmakers power over the enforcers and interpreters, the law enforcers power over the makers and interpreters, and the law interpreters power over the makers and enforcers. Moreover, they threw federalism into the mix, resulting in the whole system replicating itself over (today) fifty additional systems. Thus, even in its most pristine, original form, the structure of American law is very complicated.

Court Organization and Structure Herriman Utah

In many ways, although courts tend to be the most mysterious of our governmental institutions, they tend to be the most familiar part of the legal system. When we think about the law, we usually have courts in mind. This tends to be the case even though most of us do not have much experience with courts. You may serve on a jury or go to traffic court or go through a divorce, but very few laypeople, except, of course, for jurors and a few litigants, have ever experienced a real live trial. Moreover, when we move beyond the trial courts up to the level of appeals courts, generally only lawyers and judges are directly involved.

On the other hand, almost everybody has watched a TV or movie trial. Litigation has been a staple of American entertainment since the time of the Founders. Whether it comes packaged as the real thing (in the forms of gavel-to-gavel O. J. Simpson coverage, or the endless leaks and rumors that made up the news of President Clinton’s legal/political woes, or the full platter of murders and romantic misadventures that constitute the daily fare offered by Court TV), as the semi-real thing (in the ever stern but fair judgments of Judges Joe Brown and Judy), or as pure fiction (in such forms as Scott Turow novels, John Grisham movies, or any one of the many lawyer-centered dramas that have been a mainstay of television since the 1950s), the media is where most of us get our impressions of the system and structure of our courts.

Now there is certainly nothing wrong with court based entertainment—indeed, it can be absolutely riveting, sometimes a lot of fun, and occasionally even educational. It is riveting and fun because court-based entertainment tends to focus on the unusually dramatic, the unusually glamorous, and the unusually horrific. It is occasionally educational because it offers us a slice of law, usually in easily digestible form. At the same time, however, these entertainment-oriented attributes can be very misleading. As unusual as the entertainment bill of fare is, the real work of courts, more often than not, is the stuff of everyday life, and as simple as TV makes it all seem, the American court system is incredibly complex—a huge web of detailed yet overlapping jurisdictional boundaries.

Indeed, let us begin with the term jurisdiction for it is key to the organization and work of the courts. Jurisdiction has to do with the legal limitations on the types of cases a court may hear and decide. Jurisdiction may be set by a constitution, or, in the case of supreme courts, largely by the court itself, but the most common source of court jurisdiction is the legislature. Thus, as much as we may like to think of the law as being above politics, in fact, even on this most basic point—the kinds of cases courts can hear and decide—legislative politics is the starting point. How do legislatures, or constitutions, or sometimes courts, classify jurisdiction? Generally, according to three kinds of considerations: geography, subject, and function.

First, courts are authorized to hear and decide conflicts that arise within specific geographical jurisdictions. For instance, a Utah court has no jurisdiction to try a person accused of committing a crime in California. Further, a court’s political boundaries (i.e., its geographical jurisdiction) are typically drawn along the lines of other governmental bodies such as cities, counties, or states. Hence, the trial court for Herriman, Utah would generally not have jurisdiction over a crime or civil suit arising in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Jurisdiction is also determined by subject matter. For example, state trial courts of limited jurisdiction are restricted to hearing a circumscribed category of cases, typically misdemeanor crimes and civil suits involving small amounts of money. In contrast, trial courts of general jurisdiction are empowered to hear all other types of cases (generally speaking, cases the legislature deems more serious such as criminal felonies and civil claims with no dollar limitations). In addition, certain types of cases are not allowed to be brought to court. For instance, courts have no jurisdiction to decide church disputes over doctrinal matters. Or, for another example, the U.S. Supreme Court will not hear cases involving so-called “political questions,” although, as we discuss below, what constitutes a political question changes from Court to Court and era to era.

Finally a court’s jurisdiction is set by functional considerations. Functionally, a court may have either original jurisdiction or appellate jurisdiction, and some courts have both. Most courts in this country are courts of original jurisdiction, which means they have the authority to hear and decide a case in the first instance—in other words, if there is to be a trial, here is where it occurs. Appellate jurisdiction, on the other hand, means that a court has the authority to review cases that have already been decided by a court of original jurisdiction or a trial court. The principal difference between a trial and an appeal is that a trial focuses on determining facts, whereas an appeal focuses on correctly interpreting the law. Obviously, both sets of courts are dealing with facts and law, but the principal focus is different. So, for example, if a person is charged with committing murder, the trial court’s primary job is going to be to consider and weigh evidence and witnesses about the alleged facts of that murder—whether the defendant could be placed at the scene of the crime, whether the weapon used was hers, whether she had a motive, and so on.

Now, let’s say that our ill-begotten friend is convicted of the abovementioned crime. A criminal defendant who loses at trial can appeal her case. She would appeal alleged legal errors. She might claim, for example, that the police seized the weapon from her home illegally and then, further, that the court compounded the error by allowing the weapon to be introduced at trial. Or she might claim that the judge gave biased instructions to the jury, or that the judge allowed the prosecutor to proceed in a prejudicial manner. These are all questions of law and these are the kinds of questions an appellate court would consider. To take some well-known real life examples, had Mr. Simpson been convicted, he would have appealed, for instance, the judge’s allowing his friend to relate the content of a dream in court. He would have contended that as a matter of legal procedure—of law—Judge Ito should not have allowed a witness to talk about what he claims the defendant related to him about a dream. Similarly, Timothy McVeigh appealed his Oklahoma bombing conviction on grounds of “juror misconduct, unfair exclusion of evidence that ‘someone else may have committed the bombing,’ prejudicial pretrial publicity and inflammatory testimony by victims’ relatives” (“McVeigh Conviction, Sentence Upheld,” 1998). Appeals courts consider these kinds of questions, and only rarely do they go over the facts again.

Because of this difference in function, trial and appeals courts operate very differently. In appellate courts, no witnesses are heard, no trials are conducted, and juries are never used. Indeed, the appeals process is often entirely conducted on the basis of paper records and briefs, although in some cases the lawyers representing both sides will present their arguments orally. In addition, instead of a single judge deciding, which is the norm in trial courts, groups of judges generally make appellate decisions.

Our system of federalism, too, has jurisdictional implications. We are blessed (or cursed, depending on your perspective) with a dual court system in this country: one national system and fifty state systems—in other words, fifty-one court systems. To put it in overly simplistic terms, federal courts have exclusive jurisdiction over federal laws and state courts have exclusive jurisdiction over state laws, but this is indeed an oversimplification. The basis for federal court jurisdiction is the U.S. Constitution. Over the years, this vague jurisdictional outline has been fleshed out by Congress in numerous detailed statutes. While these rules are very complicated, it is possible to boil federal jurisdiction down into three broad categories:

• Federal question jurisdiction is based on the subject matter of cases. Federal courts are entitled to hear all civil and criminal cases that are based on the U.S. Constitution, on treaties with other nations, and on federal statutes. • Federal party jurisdiction consists of cases in which the federal government is a party. Nearly all cases brought by or against the federal government, a federal agency, or a federal officer can be heard in federal court. • Diversity jurisdiction is based on geography. Federal courts can hear cases in which there is a diversity of citizenship between the parties (if they are citizens of different states or if one is a citizen of a foreign nation), as long as the suit is for $75,000 or more. Some disputes involve both state and federal law. For instance, narcotics possession or transporting kidnap victims across state lines violate both federal and state laws, which means the accused could be tried twice. Or, a particular act may violate one set of state laws and an entirely different set of federal laws. An obvious example of this would be the police officers involved in the infamous Rodney King beating. They were accused of violating a variety of state assault laws; they were also accused of violating the federal civil rights law—same act, but two different sets of laws were at issue and two different jurisdictions involved. Indeed, dual jurisdictional crimes have been increasing at an enormous rate over the past decade, as Congress has moved to federalize more and more criminal activity, involving a substantial number of crimes that previously were the sole domain of state justice systems—everything from narcotics possession to car jackings to failure to pay child support. This congressional tendency to nationalize sanctions for bad behavior contributes mightily to the federal courts’ caseload, encourages jurisdiction shopping by aggressive prosecutors, and the blurs lines of sovereign authority and accountability, “threatening,” according to Chief Justice William Rehnquist, “to change entirely the nature of our federal system” Still, although (literally) millions of cases move through the federal courts every year and the number of these cases is increasing, the fact of the matter is that for most of us who find ourselves in court because of an unhappy marriage, an altercation with a neighbor, or an unlucky highway encounter with a state trooper, our legal adventures will begin and end in a state court system. In fact, of all the cases in the litigation universe, state courts will hear about 98 percent of them. Divorce courts in Herriman are part of the Utah state courts system.

State court systems—and the federal system, for that matter—are organized hierarchically. Thus, most state systems feature a series of minor trial courts, major trial courts, a smaller number of intermediate appeals courts, and a single supreme court. To all four of these court prototypes there are exceptions and a great deal of variation, but this four-level pyramid is the general rule. In general, we can break the business of the law down into two very broad processes: that which deals with civil issues, and that which is concerned with criminal problems. One of the first cuts one needs to make in talking about work in the legal web is the distinction between substantive law and procedural law. Substantive law is concerned with actual content—the real meat of the law. For example, the substance of a criminal law would tell us, as it did when Timothy McVeigh bombed the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people, that use of weapons of mass destruction and first-degree murder are punishable offenses and that the punishment for those offenses is imprisonment or death. Or the substance of a civil lawsuit might say that if one person causes the death of another he is monetarily liable to the survivors of the victim. Thus, in the most famous such suit in recent memory, the survivors of Nicole Simpson and Ronald Goldman sued O. J. Simpson for so-called wrongful death and were awarded millions of dollars. Those kinds of things make up the substance of law or the content of law and they are generally defined by legislatures, although you will also find lots of substantive law in constitutions, in executive orders, and coming out of judicial opinions. Procedural law has to do with the operation of law, that is, with the manner in which law is applied. It is the rules of law itself. In a sense, law is rules, but these rules themselves are bound by other rules—rules of process. These rules of process make the law manageable by ensuring its efficient administration. Even more important, they supposedly ensure that the law itself will be applied evenly, consistently, and fairly to everybody. Thus, when Timothy McVeigh unsuccessfully appealed his conviction, he claimed that he had been denied due process of law by such procedural errors as jury misconduct and the exclusion of mitigating evidence at trial All law has elements of both substance and procedure. If, for instance, you look at the Constitution you can clearly see both the substance and procedure of law. As a matter of substance, the President has to be thirty five years old or older, he has to be a natural-born citizen, he is the chief executive officer, he is the commander-in-chief, and he is to be elected. As a matter of procedure, the Constitution tells us the manner in which he is to be elected, how he might be removed, and, in important respects, it tells him the manner in which he is to carry out some of his duties.

A second obvious cut we can make in talking about kinds of law is that between criminal and civil. Simply stated, criminal law deals with activities that have been forbidden by government—this can mean anything from a parking violation to murder. In the American judicial process, the violation of a criminal law is a violation not simply against another individual or group, but against government itself. Government acts as a proxy for the individual victim. This is why in criminal litigation you always see cases referred to as State v. Smith (or, in some states, as People v. Simpson or Commonwealth v. Woodward), or U.S. v. McVeigh. Thus, legally, Timothy McVeigh committed a crime against all of us, not just against the unfortunate victims in the Murrah Federal Building. In order to convict someone of a criminal act, the government needs to convince a judge or jury that the defendant is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Civil law, on the other hand, generally governs relationships between individuals in the course of their private affairs. Hence, civil law deals with matters such as contracts, property, wills, divorces, and personal relationships. Unlike criminal prosecutions where the government is always an active participant, the government’s main interest in civil cases is to provide a forum (the courthouse) and process (the rules) for the peaceable resolution of disputes. Thus, theoretically, in civil cases the government does not care who wins a dispute as long as the dispute is settled peacefully. The government cares a lot in a criminal case because it is always a party to the case. But, unless the government is a party to a civil case (which it sometimes is), it theoretically it does not care about the outcome. In order to find a person liable in a civil case, the plaintiff or plaintiffs (the person or group bringing the complaint) need only convince a judge or jury that the defendant’s wrongdoing has been demonstrated by a preponderance of evidence. Divorce is part of civil law. It is possible for a single action or set of facts to give rise to both a criminal and a civil action—and this is becoming increasingly prevalent. For just about every criminal action, there is also a civil remedy. For example, if you were to run a red light and go crashing into another’s car, the police, presumably, would issue a ticket based upon the criminal act of ignoring a traffic signal. Of course, there would still be the matter of your victim’s damaged car, and damage to property comes under the civil law of tort—on top of having to pay a hefty fine to the state, you could find yourself paying out-of pocket or insurance expenses to the person whose car you totaled. Or, take the more famous case of O. J. Simpson. Of course, he was prosecuted by the people of California for the criminal act of murder—an act of which he was acquitted. Subsequently, however, Mr. Simpson was sued by the survivors of his ex-wife and her friend for the civil act of wrongful death and for this act he was found liable. Clearly, the act of murder and the act of wrongful death are analogous—in nonlegal terms, they are the same thing. However, the former is a crime, prosecutable by the state, subject to proof beyond a reasonable doubt, and, if proven, punishable by imprisonment or death. The latter is a civil wrong, argued by individuals, subject to proof by a preponderance of evidence, and, if proven, punishable by compensation to the victims. At times, the criminal and civil processes may even be launched simultaneously. The Civil Trial Process When litigants do take their cases the full nine yards, the civil trial process looks, in many respects, like the criminal process—that is, the case may be brought before a jury or the bench (a judge sitting alone); the plaintiff presents her case first, followed by the defendant; and judgments are rendered after the case is concluded. There are, however, some important distinctions, a few of which are worth noting here. For example, those bringing civil suits—the plaintiffs—do not seek verdicts of guilty as the prosecutor would in a criminal case. Rather, civil plaintiffs urge the courts to find defendants liable for their wrongdoing. In turn, civil proceedings do not result in sentences, but rather, where the plaintiff is successful and the defendant is found liable, in remedies, usually assessed in the form of monetary damages.

As is the case in criminal cases, losing civil litigants have the right to appeal. Again, it is important to note that most potential civil grievances are probably never filed in court and of those that are, relatively few go to trial. The decision to appeal is also related to the financial wherewithal of litigants. Appeals are quite expensive: generally speaking, lawyers must be paid, trial transcripts prepared, briefs printed, and filing fees paid. Unlike criminal appeals, where indigents are afforded these necessities free of charge, the burden of civil appellate costs is borne solely by the appellant, except in rare cases of legal pro bono work or the ever decreasing assistance of legal aid. Legal Stipulations on Marriage The traditional popular understandings and legal stipulations governing marriage in the United States have roots in Judeo-Christian religious views and church law. The English common law became the basis for the marriage laws of most U.S. states, and it reflected the tenets of marriage promulgated by the Anglican (and before it the Catholic) Church. When jurisdiction over marriage and children was transferred from church to common-law courts, for the most part “public law simply echoed what had been church doctrine.” Marriage was both an indissoluble and a hierarchical relationship. In the church’s view, marriage was a covenant, like God’s covenant with the Jews and later Christ’s covenant with the church (the community of the faithful). Christian marriage was thus an unbreakable bond. Marriage was to be lifelong, and marital faithfulness was to include monogamy. In addition to being indissoluble, marriage was regarded as a hierarchical relationship, and one in which husband and wife played complementary, not similar, roles. The man was given authority as the head of household. Blackstone, the eighteenth-century legal authority, explained that since Genesis declared husband and wife to be “one flesh” in the eyes of God, they were to be “one person” in the eyes of the law, and that person was represented by the husband. This suspension of the wife’s legal personality was known as the doctrine of spousal unity, or “coverture.” Under coverture, a married woman could not sue or be sued unless her husband was party to the suit, could not sign contracts unless her husband joined her, and could not make a valid will unless he consented to its provisions. As a correlate of these powers and his role as head of the family, a husband was obligated to support his wife and children. And since he would be held responsible for her actions, a husband had a right to correct his wife physically, and to determine how and where their children would be raised. As late as 1945 a New Jersey court wrote: The plaintiff husband is the master of his household. He is the managing head, with control and power to preserve the family relation, to protect its members and to guide their conduct. He has the obligation and responsibility of supporting, maintaining and protecting the family and the correlative right to exclude intruders and unwanted visitors from the home despite the whims of the wife. Marriage was to be a structure in which spousal roles were distinct and complementary, with the husband acting as wage earner, protector, and public actor, the wife as protected, private homemaker. The husband was expected to govern his household without either interference or help from the state. By and large police turned a blind eye to violence between spouses; in most jurisdictions wives could not prosecute their husbands for marital rape because the law assumed that by marrying, spouses gave blanket consent to sexual relations; and judges enforced obligations of support only if spouses separated, not in an ongoing marriage. The result of all these stipulations was that when people married, they consented to enter a relationship the terms of which are set by the state. This is what it means to call marriage a “status” relationship. Consent was necessary to enter the married state, but the agreement to marry brought with it rights and duties that were not set by the partners but were considered to be intrinsic to the state of being married. The unequal and restrictive provisions of marriage law became the object of reform efforts in the mid-nineteenth century. Reformers attacked laws that granted divorce only for a wife’s adultery, and not that of her husband, and added other wrongs, particularly physical cruelty and domestic violence, as grounds for dissolving the marital bond. Marriage, they said, must not make the home a “prison” for unhappy and wronged spouses, depriving them of essential personal liberty. Feminist reformers also invoked equality in their campaigns to pass married women’s property laws that would allow wives to hold property, sue and be sued, and enter contracts in their own names. By the end of the nineteenth century, a number of states had passed married women’s property statutes, freeing married women from many of the legal effects of coverture. While this first wave of marriage law reform increased both the freedom to leave unsatisfactory marriages and equality between husbands and wives, many people were dissatisfied with the state of the law in the midtwentieth century. The grounds for divorce were restrictive, and law still treated married men and women differently. Several states granted divorce only for adultery. Many states imposed alimony only on husbands, a stipulation that assumed, and perhaps helped to perpetuate, women’s exclusion from the paid labor force. The age at which females could marry without their parents’ consent was often younger than that for males, suggesting that boys needed to stay in school longer or learn a trade before marrying and that girls did not. Custody laws varied widely but often contained a preference for mother’s custody, again assuming that the mother was and would in the future be the better caregiver.

In the mid-twentieth century, a variety of factors converged to spark a second wave of marriage law reform. Demographic changes since 1900 were dramatic: life expectancy for women was forty-eight years in 1900 and seventy-eight in 1980; increased life expectancy meant that most parents had years as “empty nesters” after their children left home, whereas in 1900 parents lived most of their lives with their children; and at midcentury women began childbearing at an older age and bore fewer children than had women in 1900. In the decades following World War II, economic changes led women, including married women and women with children, into the paid labor force in unprecedented numbers. This drew women out of the home for part of the day and gave them greater economic independence. The introduction of the birth control pill in the 1960s gave women more control over whether and when they would become pregnant. Greater ability to plan the timing of their children encouraged women to work outside the home and to think of “careers” rather than temporary jobs. All these changes predated the resurgence of feminism. Only beginning in the late 1960s and the 1970s did the ideology of equal rights developed by the black civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s help revitalize feminism, spurring the women’s movement to insist on equality between men and women as spouses as well as individuals. Also drawing on the legacy of civil rights and liberation struggles of the 1960s, in the 1970s gays and lesbians insisted on an end to legal discrimination against homosexuals and an end to the ban on same-sex marriage. The dramatic transformation of divorce law that occurred between 1965 and 1974 took place independent of feminist influence. The adoption of no-fault divorce is seen as a “silent revolution,” a series of “radical changes in legal expectations about family life” that came about through “routine” (as contrasted with “conflictual”) public policy processes that avoided becoming the focus of media and public attention. In the mid-1960s, lawyers in California began the push for no-fault divorce in large part to get rid of the subterfuge in many divorce proceedings that took place when couples tailored their stories to make them fit the legal requirements for divorce. Although California courts were lenient in granting divorce, to obtain a divorce a husband or wife had to prove that the other had committed a marital offense like adultery, cruelty, or desertion. In most cases, the wife was the plaintiff and usually charged her husband with “cruelty,” which could range from disparaging remarks to physical violence. “The testimony was often arranged and fake, disguising a mutual or negotiated decision to end the marriage. It was this element of dishonesty that provoked some of the proponents of change to seek a no-fault statute.”10 No-fault divorce enabled a spouse to obtain a divorce without proving wrongdoing by the other. The reformers’ goal was to eliminate the perjury that had become common and to decrease the level of conflict between divorcing spouses. Neither greater equality for women nor greater choice among alternative family forms was among the aims of those working to enact no-fault divorce laws. Proponents of no-fault divorce did not intend or anticipate what many called the “demographic watershed” in U.S. families that the introduction of no-fault divorce brought about. In the wake of no-fault legislation, the divorce rate rose dramatically. The changes in marriage were reflected in the fact that in the last quarter of the twentieth century only one-quarter of U.S. households fit the supposed “norm” of husband wage earner and homemaker wife, living with their own biological or adopted children. Dramatic though these demographics are, from a person seeking a divorce, it is more important to notice that no-fault divorce marked a sea change in the way people began to think about and conceptualize marriage. The idea that the marriage partners themselves, rather than the state, could decide to end their marriage was revolutionary. It affected thinking about both the permanence of marriage and the nature of the marriage relationship itself. It seemed as if the observation of Henry Maine, the nineteenth-century legal historian, that “the movement of the law in the nineteenth century is a movement from status to contract” was finally coming to be true of marriage. Origin of Divorce The divorce procedure is described—and approved of, in a qualified way—in Deuteronomy. The grounds for divorce are that a husband find “something shameful” in his wife. In the Middle Ages the grounds for divorce were tightened considerably, making divorces almost impossible to obtain. People could get divorces of bed and board—what we today would call a separation. They would live apart but could not remarry. The tribulations of King Henry VIII led the English, in 1534, to allow individuals to appeal to the House of Lords for a divorce. This procedure was cumbersome, though, and it wasn’t until 1801 that a woman petitioned for a divorce. In 1857, England allowed courts to grant divorces, but this did not open the divorce floodgates: by 1886, British courts were granting only 400 divorces per year. (By way of contrast, in 1890, U.S. courts granted 33,461 divorces.) In the United States, divorce has been around since the Puritans. In 1639, James Luxford’s wife asked for a divorce because Luxford already had a wife. The Puritans had what were, for the time, rather liberal divorce laws. Acceptable grounds for divorce included female adultery, male cruelty, bigamy, desertion, failure to provide, and impotence. Divorce hearings, besides deciding whether a divorce would be granted, determined which party to the divorce had been responsible for the breakup of the marriage. The guilty party was fined, whipped, or put in the stocks. Puritans were also likely to forbid remarriage by the guilty party. Such a person had, after all, shown incompetence in matters matrimonial and had no business trying to form another family. In the early 1700s, Connecticut accepted the notion that when divorces happened, someone was to blame and should be punished, but added a unique twist: if both marriage partners were guilty, then no divorce would be granted. The implication is that in such cases, the appropriate punishment was for the partners to be forced to live with each other. By the 1830s, divorce was easier to get in America than in Europe, with some states having more liberal divorce laws than others. In Virginia in 1827, acceptable grounds for divorce included adultery, cruelty, and just cause of bodily fear. In South Carolina, on the other hand, divorce was impossible until after the Civil War. In the course of the nineteenth century, states kept adding to the list of acceptable grounds for divorce, sometimes with unintended results. Indiana accidentally turned itself into a divorce mecca when, in 1852, it allowed judges to grant divorces on grounds they found “proper.” This alone would have made Indiana a desirable place to get a divorce, but what really did the trick were three other features of Indiana law. First, Indiana had a minimal residency requirement. Indeed, your own affidavit was regarded as sufficient proof of residency, so that an unscrupulous person might establish his residency in Indiana without actually residing there. Second, Indiana law allowed notification of divorce proceedings to be served through publication. This meant that you could, by putting an ad in an Indiana newspaper—which people in other states and certainly in other countries would be unlikely to read—satisfy the law’s requirement that you inform all relevant parties of your intent to divorce. Third, under Indiana law, divorce decrees were irrevocable. In theory, a person could go to Indiana, declare residency, put an ad in a paper, and in short order be divorced. The spouse might not even find out about it until months later, and protests of unfairness would be met with the reply that the divorce was irrevocable. In 1873, Indiana tightened its divorce laws and thereby closed the Pandoras box it had inadvertently opened. This was Americas first encounter with “migratory divorces” on a grand scale. Indiana is not the only place to gain infamy for its divorce practices. Thereafter, Utah gained a reputation as a divorce mill, followed by the Dakotas, Oklahoma Territory, and of course Nevada. The No-Fault Divorce Revolution After World War II, divorces became easier to obtain. By the mid1960s, several states included- “living apart” among the acceptable grounds for divorce and specified the amount of time that a couple must live apart. Finally, in the late 1960s, even this almost groundless ground was dropped when California became the first state—indeed, the first place in the Western world—to adopt “no-fault” divorce. The “grounds” for a divorce became “irreconcilable differences” causing the “irremediable breakdown” of a marriage. What proof was required that irreconcilable differences existed or that a marriage had broken down irremediably? None, other than the declared opinion of one party to the marriage that they did and it had. The most breathtakingly revolutionary feature of California’s nofault law: it allowed unilateral divorce. The wife of a man seeking a divorce could claim that the differences were not irreconcilable or that the marriage could be saved, but these claims counted for nothing in a court of law. If the husband wanted to go, there was nothing she could do to stop him. There was, in short, no right to remain married. Unilateral divorce tips the balance of power in favor of the person who wants out of a marriage. From the legal point of view, their spouse’s behavior was irrelevant to determining whether or not a divorce should be granted; and if a divorce was granted, the spouse’s behavior was irrelevant to determining how the couple’s property should be divided and whether the wife should get alimony. Under no-fault divorce laws, marital property is divided equally, and alimony is granted on the basis of need rather than on the basis of marital guilt. No-fault divorce did accomplish one of its original goals: it made the divorce process less acrimonious. In a traditional divorce the two parties typically battled each other, dragging out their spouse’s every fault, both real and imagined, for all the world to see. They declared emotional war on each other, and the legal system aided and abetted their acts of war. Under no-fault, though, it didn’t matter what your spouse had done to you. The courts no longer wanted to hear about it. California was not alone in making the move to no-fault. In 1971 the Supreme Court, in Boddie v. Connecticut, ruled that divorce is a citizen’s fundamental right. By 1980 all but two states had no-fault divorce laws. To be fair, not all these states went as far as California in liberalizing their divorce laws. By the mid-1980s about a quarter of the states still required mutual consent in divorces. States also differed in whether property divisions and alimony awards could be affected by “guilt” on the part of one of the married persons. If you are seeking a no fault divorce in Utah, speak to an experienced Herriman Utah divorce lawyer. Utah law allows you to seek divorce on no fault grounds. Under this concept, a divorce may be granted on grounds such as incompatibility, irreconcilable differences, or an irretrievable breakdown of the marriage relationship. The court examines the condition of the marriage rather than the question of whether either party is at fault. This type of proceeding eliminates the need for one party to accuse the other of a traditional ground for divorce. By 1987, all fifty states had adopted no-fault divorce exclusively or as an option to traditional fault-grounded divorce. No-fault divorce has become a quick and inexpensive means of ending a marriage, especially when a couple has no children and relatively few property assets. In fact, the ability to end a marriage using no-fault procedures has led to criticism that divorce has become too easy to obtain, allowing couples to abandon a marriage at the first sign of marital discord. At least one state legislature has responded by allowing couples to set their own terms for divorce at the time of their marriage. Louisiana’s “covenant marriage” statute leaves the no-fault system in place for those choosing a standard arrangement, but allows individual couples to set the bar much higher if they wish. In 1971, the Supreme Court came very close to declaring a right to divorce (Boddie v. Connecticut, 401 U.S. 371), striking down Connecticut’s inflexible fee structure as an impermissible denial of access to the poor to state proceedings required for obtaining a decree of dissolution. When a state provides no alternative but to utilize its forums, it cannot restrict admission on the basis of income.24 Note also that only the state can grant a divorce which releases the parties from the contract that binds them legally together. The divorce decree is another contract of sorts that also often comes with strings attached, such as alimony distributions, division of property and assets, child custody arrangements, and the like, which are enforceable by state power. Churches have no such authority, although some, like the Roman Catholic Church, refuse to recognize divorce. Child Custody Child custody decisions in American law have always been heard exclusively in state courts. (Indeed, federal courts, under a judicially declared exception to the otherwise applicable jurisdictional statutes, have long refused to hear family law cases, even when federal jurisdiction is otherwise present.) As a result, when the parties to a custody proceeding all are from the same state, only the law of that state applies. It is a different matter, however, when a judge is asked to enforce a custody order entered by the court of a sister state. At that point, the Full Faith and Credit Clause—and legislation adopted by Congress under the authority given to it by that clause—enter the picture. The PKPA and the UCCJA (UCCJEA) The Parental Kidnapping Prevention Act (“PKPA”), 28 U.S.C. § 1738A, adopted by Congress in 1980, dealt with a very serious problem: conflicting custody orders entered by courts in different states. The problem generally arose when a parent, not satisfied with a custody/visitation order entered in one state would take the child to another state and seek a more favorable order there. The new court generally was in the unhappy parent’s home state, and often inclined to favor the local voter and taxpayer, giving that parent a strong “home court” advantage. Afterwards, armed with the new (and more favorable) custody order from a court in his domicile, the newly happy parent would refuse to give the child back, and the result would be a morass of litigation, crisscrossing contempt citations, and so forth. Although custody disputes would seem to be the quintessential problem for state resolution, the federal government’s intervention in the area through the adoption of the PKPA was eminently proper for two reasons. First, the problem of interstate custody battles was one that was caused by the very existence of a federal system; no authority other than Congress existed to resolve conflicting custody orders issued by different states. Thus, it was appropriate for Congress to solve a “local” problem at the national level. Second, the problem was made worse by a flaw in the full faith and credit system itself. That flaw is that custody orders can always be modified prospectively; traditionally, therefore, they were never treated as “final” judgments for enforcement purposes. For that reason, courts could (and often did) disregard the custody orders of other states. Congress solved the interstate custody problem by passing the PKPA pursuant to its implementing authority under the Full Faith and Credit Clause. The act, primarily designed to solve the problem caused by the lack of finality to custody orders, requires certain custody orders be treated as final; because those orders are now considered to be final they are entitled to recognition under the Full Faith and Credit Clause. And because the PKPA was enacted by Congress pursuant to its authority under the Full Faith and Credit Clause, the mandate of the PKPA became the law of the land under the Supremacy Clause. Thus, under the PKPA properly entered custody orders are entitled to the same respect in other states as would an order in any other type of case. The important question for Congress in adopting the PKPA was to determine which orders required recognition; in doing so, Congress made a very wise decision. The PKPA largely tracks the provisions of the Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction Act (“UCCJA”). First promulgated in 1968, and eventually adopted in every state, the UCCJA, provides, generally speaking, that the orders of only one court will control establishment and modification of child custody, thus defeating the “snatch and run” strategy employed by disgruntled parents under the prior custody regime. The UCCJA, in other words, established a regime sometimes referred to as the “one controlling order system.” That regime can be summarized briefly: When a court with proper subject matter jurisdiction enters a custody order, only that court—and no other—can change the order. Because a finding of subject matter jurisdiction is so important under the UCCJA, the act establishes a hierarchy of jurisdictional possibilities for entering the original (and controlling) order. The first jurisdictional priority goes either to the state which is the child’s “home state” (the state where the child lived for six months before the custody petition was filed) or to a state that both has a “significant connection” with the child and the contestants for custody and is the location of substantial evidence relevant to the custody decision. Other possibilities are “residual jurisdiction,” which is available when no state meets any of the other criteria, and “temporary emergency jurisdiction,” which is exercised when the child is present within the state and is abandoned or threatened with mistreatment. The UCCJA also encourages judges in different states to consult with one another and to refuse to exercise jurisdiction if another court has begun proceedings or is otherwise better able to hear the case. Finally, and most important, the UCCJA provides that any modifications to the order can be made only by the state that entered the order. No longer can there be multiple orders involving the child; instead, there is only “one outstanding order.” The combination of “one outstanding order” feature of the UCCJA with the full faith and credit mandate of the PKPA has largely ended the “snatch and run” abuse and has made interstate post-divorce family life more orderly and humane. The PKPA illustrates the proper use by Congress of its constitutional power to enforce the Full Faith and Credit Clause. The act addresses a serious national problem created by our federal system, and it attempts to solve that problem by making custody orders final and entitled to recognition. By tracking the UCCJA, the PKPA largely federalizes the Uniform Act. Thus, the UCCJA performed the state function of regulating family law, and the PKPA performed the federal function of regulating interstate enforcement of judicial orders. The two laws together have helped solve the problems presented by parental “kidnapping” across stale lines. The UCCJA was superceded in 1997 by the Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction and Enforcement Act (“UCCJEA”). The new law was designed better to harmonize the stale law of custody with the requirements of the PKPA. The UCCJEA, however, does not disturb the basic outline of the UCCJA, especially its one outstanding order requirement.

Child Custody Herriman Utah

The federal and uniform acts do not eliminate all interstate custody problems. One vexing issue that has not yet been resolved is whether the state entering the custody order must have personal jurisdiction over both spouses. At one time, that was not a problem. Parents did not migrate with children from one state to another, so custody was a purely local concern. When the rare interstate case did arise, the continued indulgence of the historical fiction that the dispute was one in rem (with the child as the res) meant that a court with the child before it could adjudicate all interests in the res. That meant that the court did not need personal jurisdiction over both spouses in order to render a constitutionally permissible decree. As our nation became more migratory, however, fairness questions arose over that treatment. Why should a person be forced to come to a distant and perhaps hostile forum in order to protect his rights as a parent? Moreover, by coming to the forum, the absent parent exposed himself to the possibility that the forum would assert personal jurisdiction over him, and thus acquire power to enter child or spousal support orders. This fundamental dilemma—stay out of the forum and lose the child; appear and lose your wallet—mirrors the dilemma faced by the stay-at-home spouse following the decision in Williams I. That dilemma, of course, was resolved by the invention of the concept of the “divisible divorce,” which preserved the fiction of the res (the marriage) thus permitting the ex parte divorce, while still protecting the financial interests of the absent spouse with the personal jurisdiction requirement. A similar concept, which might be styled “divisible custody,” has evolved in the custody area. Divisible custody works this way. Custody orders can be entered by a court at the situs of the res—remember that the child is the res—that is, the child’s “home state,” but financial decrees—child support—can be entered only by a court with personal jurisdiction over the putative support obligor. Necessity is the justification for permitting a court without personal jurisdiction to issue a custody order, and the argument is compelling. If the rule were otherwise, a parent who wished to deny effect to a custody order would simply avoid all contact with the forum. As a result, if personal jurisdiction—over both parents—were required, often no court would be able to enter a valid custody order. And that would be a disaster for the child who badly needs stability. It is not surprising, therefore, that neither the PKPA nor the UCCJA requires personal jurisdiction over both parents as a condition to the entry of a valid order. (In an emergency, any state has the power to issue a temporary order.) Moreover, neither case law nor the commentary of academics shows much enthusiasm for requiring personal jurisdiction over the absent parent. There is only one flaw in this rosy scenario: It is not clear whether the Supreme Court agrees. Twice the Court has had the absent parent issue on its plate, and twice it has punted on the issue. The first opportunity came in the case of May v. Anderson (1953) in which a Wisconsin court entered an ex parte order giving custody to the father. The father then took the order to Ohio where the children were living with their mother. The Ohio courts gave full faith and credit to the Wisconsin order, and the mother appealed. The case eventually made it all the way to the Supreme Court; that court reversed. Unfortunately, the holding in May is quite murky. The majority opinion by Justice Harold Burton can be read as saying that custody rights are like other property “rights” which can be extinguished only by a court with personal jurisdiction over the defendant. On the other hand, the opinion may simply have said that the Ohio court could, but was not required to, recognize the Wisconsin decree; plausible readings of Justice Burton’s majority opinion can support either position. Even worse, the concurring and dissenting opinions disagreed as to what the majority had really held in May. In short, Justice Burton’s opinion in May is a real mess. Thus, with respect to the first possibility—that custody is like any other property right—Justice Burton stated the issue to be whether the Wisconsin court could eliminate the mother’s right to custody, “without having jurisdiction over her in personam.” Moreover, Burton closed the opinion by noting that “[r]ights far more precious to [the mother] than property rights will be cut off if she is to be bound by the Wisconsin award of custody.” The second possibility—discretionary recognition—derives support from the failure of the majority to mention the Due Process Clause, the source of whatever rights the mother might have had. Further, Justice Burton framed the issue in terms of whether Wisconsin should have the right, “as against Ohio,” to decide the mother’s custody rights. That is, the majority opinion could have been treating the question as one of states’ rights rather than one involving individual rights. Justice Frankfurter’s concurrence also supports the second interpretation, staling explicitly that personal jurisdiction over both parents is not necessary for a court to render an enforceable decree in a custody case. A generation after May, the Supreme Court had an opportunity to clarify the situation. Once again it blew the analysis. Shaffer v. Heitner (1977) was a major opinion on the relation between the Due Process Clause and personal jurisdiction, the first issued by the Court in twenty years. The holding in Shaffer, that the personal jurisdiction test (“minimum contacts/fairplay and substantial justice”) also applies to attachment jurisdiction has little relevance to custody. Nevertheless, the Shaffer Court made an effort to explain the effect of its holdings on other problem areas of jurisdiction. Those efforts, although certainly dicta and made in footnotes, have been taken seriously by courts and commentators. In footnote 30 to the Shaffer opinion, the Court observed: “We do not suggest that jurisdictional doctrines other than those discussed in text, such as the particularized rules governing adjudications of status, are inconsistent with the standard of fairness.”33 In other words, Shaffer does not affect “status” determinations such as those made in custody cases, and, therefore, in rem treatment of custody proceedings can survive the holding, although the opinion had invalidated other uses of the in rem fiction in jurisdictional cases. That argument is strengthened by the fact that divorce is still treated as an in rem action, suggesting that the concept of status has not lost all of its utility in cases involving family law. Further, the Court did not refer to May at all, a lacuna perhaps suggesting that Shaffer does not jeopardize the in rem treatment of custody proceedings. A final point of persuasion on this issue can be found in the fact that Congress, when it adopted the PKPA, agreed that a valid custody order-—one entitled to recognition throughout the nation—does not require jurisdiction over both parties. And a large majority, but not all, of the state courts that have wrestled with the issue have held that custody decisions may be made by a court lacking personal jurisdiction over both parents. Finally, the state where the child has a real home—the “home state”—has a strong interest as a sovereign in looking out for the best interests of one of its children, the basic test in all custody litigation. When that interest is coupled with the practical need to have at least one court where the custody issue can be authoritatively resolved, we can prophesy that the Supreme Court, when it gets another chance to address the issue, will hold that the forum where the child and one parent are located can resolve a custody dispute without personal jurisdiction over the absent parent.

Child Support in Herriman Utah

Child and spousal support matters, like child custody, historically have been decided under state law. The Full Faith and Credit Clause, however, does play a role in the enforcement of interstate support orders. The law of support follows closely the pattern established with custody orders—a uniform act adopted by the states, which has been given stronger teeth by a federal statute adopted pursuant to congressional authority under the Full Faith and Credit Clause.

The success of the PKPA in the area of interstate custody encouraged Congress to seek statutory solutions for interstate child support orders. As a result, Congress in recent years has passed several major pieces of legislation dealing with interstate enforcement of child support orders. The first of these laws, known as the “Bradley Amendment,” adopted in 1986, brought state child support orders under the Full Faith and Credit Clause. Before the Bradley Amendment took effect, child support orders (like custody orders before the adoption of the PKPA) were generally held not to be entitled to full faith and credit because they were modifiable, according to state law, both prospectively and retrospectively, and thus were not considered to be “final judgments.” The result was that if the noncustodial parent had fallen $1,000 behind on her payments, those arrearages had to be sued upon in another action and reduced to a judgment in order to be sufficiently final to be entitled to preclusive effect in another state. The Bradley amendment changed that cumbersome and difficult process by requiring each state to adopt legislation making child support arrearages nonmodifiable. A state that did not adopt that legislation could have lost enormous sums of federal money. Thus, any time the obligor parent falls behind on her support payments, she owes a sum certain to the custodial parent, a sum, which, because of its certainty, can then become the subject of an immediate enforcement action. Although Congress did not use its Full Faith and Credit Clause power when it adopted the Bradley Amendment, the law fits within the spirit of the Clause in making enforcement of support orders across state lines easier to obtain. More recently, in the Full Faith and Credit for Child Support Orders Act (the Act has a very uneuphonious acronym, “FFCSOA,” usually pronounced fic-sóa), Congress placed the Full Faith and Credit Clause squarely behind the enforcement of interstate child support orders. FFCSOA closely resembles—and deliberately so—the enforcement model established by the PKPA. That is, federal law now mandates enforcement of orders entered pursuant to a Uniform Act. That act in the case of child support is the Uniform Interstate Family Support Act (“UIFSA”). UIFSA follows the “one-child, one-order” concept pioneered in the custody field by the UCCJA, and described in the proceeding section. The basic idea behind UIFSA is that only one court can have the subject matter jurisdiction needed to enter a valid support order; that court is the one in the “home state” of the child, which UIFSA defines as the place where the child lived for the six months before an order was sought. Once home state jurisdiction has been established, an order from a court of that state must be respected: Only the court that entered the support order can modify that order, unless either that court has lost jurisdiction because all of the persons involved, both parents and children, have left the state, or the parties have agreed to locate the order elsewhere. FFCSOA requires the recognition by other courts of an order properly entered under UIFSA. Because the latter served as the basis for the substantive provisions of the former, the practical effect of FFCSOA is to constitutionalize the “one-child, one-controlling-order” regime of UIFSA for purposes of entering a support order entitled to recognition. FFCSOA, like the PKPA, is a perfectly proper use of the full faith and credit powers given to Congress. First, interstate enforcement of support orders is a major national problem, one that only Congress has the power effectively to resolve. Second, uncertainty about multiple orders had made the enforcement of any order problematic. Third, Congressional intervention did not require widespread involvement with inherently local activities; the statute is expressly limited to enforcement of orders across state lines. Thus, FFCSOA provides a textbook illustration of the proper use of federal regulatory authority in an area normally reserved for state authority. But that, of course, was what the Full Faith and Credit Clause was all about.

Although the law and practice have come a long way in the past two decades, a major obstacle stands in the way of further progress. That obstacle is the Supreme Court’s opinion in Kulko v. Superior Court (1978). In that case, a New York family had entered into a custody agreement, which gave custody of the two children to their father. Later, with his permission, the children moved to California to live with their mother, and she later obtained a California support order. When she sought to enforce the order, the husband resisted, on the ground that the California court lacked personal jurisdiction over him.

The Supreme Court agreed. Justice Marshall’s majority opinion applied the well-known “minimum contacts” test concerning personal jurisdiction to the question and found that the test had not been satisfied. In so holding, Justice Marshall made two troubling observations: He first noted that the litigation arose “not from the defendant’s commercial transactions in interstate commerce, but rather from his personal, domestic relations.” It is difficult to understand the relevance of this attempted distinction. After all, if the children are not properly supported in California they will suffer demonstrable—and foreseeable—harm in that state. When viewed in that light, it is easy to see how the facts of Kulko could have been found to satisfy the minimum contacts test. Moreover, the fact that the case involved a “domestic relations” problem rather than a “commercial transaction” argues in favor of finding personal jurisdiction. If the type of problem matters, as the majority suggests, than it is hard to understand why commercial matters are more important than domestic ones. The second point emphasized by Justice Marshall was that California had not “attempted to assert any particularized interest in trying [child support] cases in its courts.” Here, Justice Marshall apparently was referring to the fact that California did not have a long-arm statute that expressly provided for specific jurisdiction over support obligors. Although many states have so-called “enumerated” long-arm statutes, which specify the types of problems over which jurisdiction may be asserted, California had a general long-arm statute, which asserts jurisdiction over any matter that the constitution permits. It is extremely difficult to understand why California should be penalized for having a broader long-arm statute than most slates.

Finally, the Court referred to the fact that the then-existing Uniform Act dealing with interstate child support (“URESA”) provided an alternative method for obtaining child support from an out-of-state obligor. That reference makes no sense. URESA was such a cumbersome and ineffective method of obtaining relief that it eventually was discarded in favor of UIFSA, discussed above. It can only be assumed that the Court was thinking that it did not have to address more general issues of long-arm jurisdiction when the petitioner would suffer no harm as the result of the decision. If that was indeed the Court’s thinking it was dead wrong; URESA was a poor substitute for obtaining relief directly through longarm jurisdiction.

The Kulko decision has met with heavy resistance in the states. The drafters of UIFSA expressly included a provision for asserting jurisdiction over an outof-state obligor that is flatly inconsistent with Kulko. Section 5 of UIFSA provides that a court may exercise jurisdiction in a support matter if “the child resides in this State as a result of the Acts or directives of the defendant.”

Obviously, it is widely believed that Kulko is both bad policy and likely to be overruled when the Court gets the question again. Both suppositions are correct. Kulko certainly is bad policy; it is hard to understand why failure to support a child does not permit the child’s state of residence to exercise jurisdiction over the obligor in order to protect the child (as well as the treasury of the state, which will be forced to support the child if the parents do not). Surely that exercise of jurisdiction satisfies the minimum fairness test, which is the basis of all modern exercises of long-arm jurisdiction.

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