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maxwell-grant · 4 years ago

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What are your thoughts on Jekyll/Hyde and his archetype of the human periodically changing into a monster ?

Jekyll & Hyde was the 2nd horror story I read following Frankenstein, I got it off the same library and it always stuck very strongly with me even before I got into horror in general. I even dressed up as Jekyll/Hyde as a kid for a school fair by shredding a lab coat on one side and asking my sister to make-up claw gashes on my exposed arm and paint half of my face, although in hindsight I think I ended up looking more like Doctor Two-Face than Jekyll/Hyde, but I was 12 and didn't have any Victorian clothing to use so I had to make do. The first film project I tried doing at film school was intended to be a modern take on Jekyll & Hyde, and I didn't get much farther than a couple of discarded scripts

Much like Frankenstein, Mr Hyde as a character and a story is something that's kind of baked into everything I do artistically. And it's not just me, as even in pop culture itself, none of us can escape Mr Hyde. I would go so far as to argue Mr Hyde may be the single most significant character created by victorian fiction, if only by the sheer impact and legacy the character's had.

(Fan-art by guilhermefranco)

Part of what makes Mr Hyde such a powerful and lasting icon of pop culture is that the very premise of the book invites a personal reading that's gonna vary from person to person. Because everyone's familiar with the basic twist of the story, that it's a conflict of duality, of the good and evil sides, but everyone has a more personal idea of what those entail. Some people make the story more about class. A lot of readings laser-focus on sex and lust as the driving force, and there's also a lot of readings of Mr Hyde that tackle it to explore a more gendered perspective, and so forth.

I don't particularly take much notice of the Jekyll & Hyde adaptations partially because the novel's premise and themes have become baked so throughly into pop culture and explored in so many different and interesting ways, that I'm not particularly starving for good Jekyll & Hyde adaptations the way I am for Dracula and Frankenstein. The Fredric March film in particular is one that orbits my head less because of the film itself (although I do recommend it), but because of one specific scene, and that's when Jekyll first transforms into Hyde on screen.

Out of all the things they could have shown him doing right that second, they instead took the time to show him enjoying the rain.

Just Hyde taking off his hat and letting it all cascade on his face with this sheer enthusiasm like he's never been to the rain before, never enjoyed it before, and now that he's free from being Jekyll, he gets to enjoy life like he never has before. It's such an oddly humanizing moment to put amidst a horror movie, in the scene where you're ostensibly introducing the monster to the audience, and it makes such a stark contrast to the rest of the film where Hyde is completely irredeemable, but I think it's that contrast that makes the film's take on Hyde work so well even with it's diverging from the source material, even if I don't particularly like in general interpretations of Hyde that are focused on a sexual aspect.

Because one, it understands that Jekyll was fundamentally a self-serving coward and not a paragon of goodness, and two, it also understands one of the things that makes Hyde scary: He wants what all of us want, to live and be happy. He's happy when he leaves the lab and dances around in the rain like a giddy child, he's happy when he goes to places Jekyll couldn't dream of showing up, he's happy as a showgirl-abusing sexual predator. Hyde is all wants, all the time, and there's not that much difference between his wants, his domineering possessiveness, and the likes exhibited by Muriel's father and Jekyll's own within the very same film, which also works to emphasize one of the other ideas of the original story, that Edward Hyde doesn't come from nowhere. That no monster is closer to humanity than Mr Hyde, because he is us. He is the thing that Jekyll refused to take responsability for until it was too late.

(Art by LorenzoMastroianni)

While many of the ideas that defined Mr Hyde had already been explored in pop culture beforehand, Hyde popularized and redefined many of them in particular by modernizing the idea. He was the werewolf, the doppelganger, The Player On The Other Side, except he came from within. He was not transformed by circumstance, he made himself that way, and the elixir merely brought out something already inside his soul. To acknowledge that he's there is to acknowledge that he is you, and to not do that is to either lose to him, or perish. Hyde was there to address both the rot settling in Victorian society as well as grappling concerns over Darwinian heritage, of the realization that man has always had the beast inside of him (it's no accident that Hyde's main method of murder is by clubbing people to death with his cane like a caveman).

I've already argued on my post about Tarzan that the Wild Man archetype, beginning with Enkidu of The Epic of Gilgamesh, is the in-between man and beast, between superhero and monster, and that Mr Hyde is an essential component of the superhero's trajectory, as the creature split in between. That stories about dual personalities, doppelgangers, the duality of the soul, the hero with a day job and an after dark career, you can pinpoint Hyde as a turning point in how all of these solidified gradually in pop culture. And I've argued otherwise that The Punisher, for all that his image and narrative points otherwise, is ultimately just as much of a superhero as the rest of them, even if no one wants to admit it, drawing a parallel between The Punisher and Mr Hyde. And he's far from the only modern character that can invite this kind of parallel.

The idea of a regular person periodically or permanently transforming into, or revealing itself to be, something extraordinary and fantastic and scary, grappling with the divide it causes in their soul, and questions whether it's a new development or merely the truest parts of themselves coming to light at last, and the effects this transformation has for good and bad alike. The idea of a potent, dangerous, unpredictable enemy who ultimately is you, or at least a facet of you and what you can do. That these are bound to destroy each other if not reconciled with or overcome.

You know what are my thoughts on the archetype of "human periodically changing into a monster" are? Look around you and you're gonna see the myriad ways The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde's themes have manifested in the century and a half since the story's release. Why it shouldn't be any surprise whatsoever that Mr Hyde has become such an integral part of pop culture, in it's heroes and monsters alike. Why we can never escape Mr Hyde, just as Jekyll never could.

It is Nixon himself who represents that dark, venal and incurably violent side of the American character that almost every country in the world has learned to fear and despise. Our Barbie-doll president, with his Barbie-doll wife and his boxful of Barbie-doll children is also America's answer to the monstrous Mr. Hyde.

He speaks for the Werewolf in us; the bully, the predatory shyster who turns into something unspeakable, full of claws and bleeding string-warts on nights when the moon comes too close… - Hunter S. Thompson

There is a scene in the movie Pulp Fiction that explains almost every terrible thing happening in the news today. And it's not the scene where Ving Rhames shoots that guy's dick off. It's the part where the hit man played by John Travolta is talking about how somebody vandalized his car, and says this:

"Boy, I wish I could've caught him doing it. I'd have given anything to catch that asshole doing it. It'd been worth him doing it, just so I could've caught him doing it."

That last sentence is something everyone should understand about mankind. After all, the statement is completely illogical -- revenge is supposed to be about righting a wrong. But he wants to be wronged, specifically so he'll have an excuse to get revenge. We all do.

Why else would we love a good revenge movie? We sit in a theater and watch Liam Neeson's daughter get kidnapped. We're not sad about it, because we know he's a badass and he finally has permission to be awesome. Not a single person in that theater was rooting for it to all be an innocent misunderstanding. We wanted Liam to be wronged, because we wanted to see him kick ass. It's why so many people walk around with vigilante fantasies in their heads.

Long, long ago, the people in charge figured out that the easiest and most reliable way to bind a society together was by controlling and channeling our hate addiction. That's the reason why seeing hurricane wreckage on the news makes us mumble "That's sad" and maybe donate a few bucks to the Red Cross hurricane fund, while 9/11 sends us into a decade-long trillion-dollar rage that leaves the Middle East in flames.

The former was caused by wind; the latter was caused by monsters. The former makes us kind of bummed out; the latter gets us high.

It's easy to blame the news media for pumping us full of stories of mass shootings and kidnapped children, but that's stopping one step short of the answer: The media just gives us what we want. And what we want is to think we're beset on all sides by monsters.

The really popular stories will always feature monsters that are as different from us as possible. Think about Star Wars -- what real shithead has ever referred to himself as being on "the dark side"? In Harry Potter and countless fantasy universes, you have wizards working in "black magic" and the "dark arts." Can you imagine a scientist developing some technology for chemical weapons or invasive advertising openly thinking of what he does as "dark science"? Can you imagine a real world leader naming his headquarters "The Death Star" or "Mount Doom"?

Of course not. But we need to believe that evil people know they're evil, or else that would open the door to the fact that we might be evil without knowing it. I mean, sure, maybe we've bought chocolate that was made using child slaves or driven cars that poisoned the air, but we didn't do it to be evil -- we were simply doing whatever we felt like and ignoring the consequences. Not like Hitler and the bankers who ruined the economy and those people who burned the kittens -- they wake up every day intentionally dreaming up new evils to create. It's not like Hitler actually thought he was saving the world.

So no matter how many times you vote to cut food stamps and then use the money to buy a boat, you could still be way worse. You could, after all, be one of those murdering / lazy / ignorant / greedy / oppressive monsters that you know the world is full of, and that only your awesome moral code prevents you from turning into at any moment. And those monsters are out there.

They have to be. Because otherwise, we're the monsters - 5 Reasons Humanity Desperately Wants Monsters To Be Real, by Jason Pargin

(Two-Face sequence comes from the end of Batman Annual #14: Eye of the Beholder)

For good or bad, Hyde has become omnipresent. He's a part of our superheroes, he's a part of our supervillains, he's in our monsters. He lives and prattles in our ears, sometimes we need him to survive, and sometimes we become Hyde even when we don't need to, because our survival instincts or base cruelties or desperation brings out the worst in us. Sometimes we can beat him, and sometimes he's not that bad. Sometimes we do need to appease him and listen to what he says, about us and the world around us. And sometimes we need to do so specifically to prove him wrong and beat him again.

But he never, ever goes away, as he so accurately declares in the musical

Do you really think That I would ever let you go...

Do you think I'd ever set you free?

If you do, I'm sad to say It simply isn't so

You will never get away FROM MEEEEEE

(Art by Akreon on Artstation)

#tw: injury #tw: blood #tw: disfigurement #replies tag #dr jekyll and mr hyde #the strange case of dr jekyll and mr hyde #robert louis stevenson #two-face #batman #monster tag #universal monsters #horror tag

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s33 · 4 years ago

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Is Consciousness Primary to Reality? (2021 Documentary) If you haven’t seen this yet, it is well worth watching. I have notes...

3:40 "Physics tells us not what matter is but only what it does."Here I would go further and say that physics tells us not what matter is, but only what it does to matter.

Around 24:00, the video gets in to IIT. Here too, my view is that the role of consciousness is underestimated. To say that reality has a physical and mental pole is a good start, but we should understand that these poles can only exist in the latter "mental" pole of conscious experience. It is true that "a complex mind" correlates with "a complex organization with the specific capacity of aggregating a fundamental aspect of consciousness" (23:20), however I would not say that correlation is an absolute requirement. While I agree with the earlier statement at 23:12 that no serious thinker has defended any claim for conscious minds in rocks, tables, and chairs, the reason for that in my view is not because the physical structure lacks the complexity to permit it.

My view takes in to account the significance of scales of time and size in creating parallel layers of conscious experience that make up the universe. In my view, it makes more sense to see the correlation between the increasingly complex structure of nervous systems through evolution and the richness and depth of conscious experience as being driven more by conscious experience needing to record and manipulate itself rather than anything like a mind 'emerging' from structural complexity.

The chair is not conscious, but I think the same is true of any object. The brain is not conscious either. The brain is an organ that produces ideal chemical conditions for sophisticated conscious experiences to be expressed and realized for other sophisticated conscious experiences to interact with without merging completely with each other. The brain is part of a vertebrate body, which is part of a history of conscious experience going back more than 500 million years. A chair or a table is, in one sense, carved out of wood or some other material by a Homo sapien body's brain and hands, but in another sense, it is one continuous history of conscious experience that is carving new experiences out of conscious experiences that are older, but still ongoing on another timescale, and using them as props to enhance experiences in the human centric umwelt.

In my Multisense Realism conjectures, I have tried to lay out a cosmogony of scales of physical spacing/timing with scales of psychological depth/richness such that our anthropological umwelt is nested within and permeated by the older onion layers of consciousness using bodies/brains on a zoological, biological, chemical, and physical scales of size and frequency of perceptual sample rate (Diagrams like these are some of the many drafts I've hypothesized https://multisenserealism.com/art-charts-and-diagrams/current/).

To ask whether a chair or table is conscious is to assume that what what we see as an image of furniture, and touch as an object of solid matter is all that these things are. Once we factor in the hypothesis of timescales as intentional partitions of subjective and objective seeming worlds (umwelts and welts), a spectrum of realism can be devised which reflects a universal spectrum of perceptual access. This is very much along the lines of what has been proposed in many other scientific and prescientific mappings of awareness, as Ken Wilber documented in his book Integral Sprituality, and which Robert Anton Wilson and Timothy Leary wrote about as the Eight Circuit Model. These models draw on both Western and Eastern metaphysics including Numerology, Astrology, Tarot, I Ching, as well as psychological theories of development from Gebser, Maslow, Binet and many others.

With Multisense Realism, I have sketched out a way to integrate these essential-existential correlations with quantum mechanics, relativity, and semiotic theory to arrive at a conjecture of entropy-negentropy as symptoms of the lensing of conscious experiences, separating them in some sense while uniting them in others, and producing a dynamically growing vocabulary of aesthetic Significance.

From the perspective of consciousness on a celestial timescale, where planets spin like electrons and solar systems proliferate like cells, it would seem absurd that any such thing as human consciousness could exist. The thin biosphere and its mold-like bits of greenery would seem far too small and simple to host conscious experiences.

I don't deny that in practice, IIT-like correlations between the symptom of integration of physical functions and the condition of someone's personal awareness are reliable and pragmatic, but I suspect that this reliability is built into the animal scale experience rather than being a universal necessity for conscious experience to exist. In my view, it is not that things that we see and touch have consciousness in different degrees, it is that our consciousness has different degrees of overlap with a universal spectrum of perceptual access and identification.

I think that the implications from info-centric views of consciousness are misleading, and in fact, no technological artifact is any more conscious than a Teddy Bear or an emoji. This is not because of any bias for biological organizations of matter over technological organizations of inorganic matter, but rather than biological appearances are an expression of a type of experience that is of another order of magnitude of aesthetic richness (Significance) than experiences that are expressed pre-biologically in our perception. The Uncanny Valley is there for a reason - even if that sense of revulsion for imitations of life is not infallible.

In my view, any use of an object as a machine is by definition the use of a low-level aspect of a conscious experience on a distant timescale, and therefore diametrically opposite to sentience. The whole point of a machine is that it automatically serves our purposes, not that it develops its own competing agendas. A truly intelligent artifact would not be a machine, but a potential competitor to biological life itself. Its agency would be uncontrollable by definition. True intelligence necessarily includes the potential for consciousness to step out of its programming and conditioning, and to change itself directly through intrinsic degrees of freedom in its own participatory experience of 'will'.Later on in the video, the combination problem is discussed. My solution here is to re-frame the assumption of cosmic evolution as occurring through an arrow of change from simplicity to complexity, and see it instead as equally an evolution by diffraction or division-by-self-similarity.

Seeing how an embryo develops through the division and multiplication of a single cell, and how a faceted gem multiplies the image of the sun or other illumination source without diluting the source, we can begin to see how the half of the universe that modernity has increasingly hidden from us might work. I recommend these two classic videos about this dichotomy of diffracted holism vs emergent combination. My stroke of insight - Jill Bolte Taylor https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyyjU8fzEYU Iain McGilchrist - The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbUHxC4wiWk

Another couple of classics I recommend to follow my trail of breadcrumbs to Multisense Realism are these: Cosmos - Carl Sagan - 4th Dimension (Abbott's Flatland thought experiment) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnURElCzGc0 Powers of Ten (1977) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fKBhvDjuy0

At 32:00 the video gets in to Philip Goff's Cosmopsychism, in which the fundamental unit of nature is the totality of nature itself. This is a logical inference from the idea of diffraction and top-down causation. Multisense Realism is a form of cosmopsychism, but with less emphasis on psyche and more on qualia: Sense and sense making experience can give rise to more complex histories of awareness that begin to have our familiar quality of personhood, but there may be many other paths down which conscious experience develops itself. My view is more of a cosmoastheticism with participatory tendencies. Understanding the bias of "smallism" is critical. The Multisense Realism view is that smallism and large-ism are both aspects of tangible-ism, but that the full picture of nature requires that tangibility always be experienced from a perspective that is trans-tangible by definition. Nothing is a tangible object in its own native timescale and frame of perception.

Another idea that I have tried to illustrate here is that the smallest and largest sheafs of tangibility have more in common with each other than they do the next largest and smallest scale-sheafs/holons. As we move into the center of the cosmic onion, the core meso-centric sheaf is the most fertile and rich context of experience, much as the clear white center of the visible spectrum is the most direct and complete access to visibility.

#panpsychism #cosmopsychism #multisenserealism

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all-things-are-nothing-to-me · 3 years ago

Text

An interview with Nigerian anarchist Sam Mbah

Interviewer: It’s my pleasure to introduce Sam Mbah, author of the groundbreaking book ‘African Anarchism’, a lawyer, a journalist, an activist. This interview is being recorded in Enugu, Nigeria, in March 2012. Sam, thank you very much for taking the time to do this interview. ---- Sam: It’s my pleasure Jeremy. ---- Interviewer: It’s been about 15 years since the publication of your book on the prospects of anarchism in Africa. What is there, if anything, that comes to mind that you would add to or change about the book, and the ideas that you presented in it? ---- Sam: Yeah, I want to look at the ideas that I would add, not really change. Ever since the publication of the book I have been collecting additional materials that I stumble upon in the course of my writings and research.

I think there is room for additions to the book, not really much to change, or subtract from the work. I think there is room for additions to the book, and this is something I have already started in the sense that in the Spanish edition that came out in 2000, I wrote an extensive foreword, wherein I tried to articulate some of the points we missed in the original book. I tried to look at more African societies that shared the same characteristics and features as the Igbo, the Tiv, the Efik, the Tallensi and the multiplicity of tribes and social groups that we have in Nigeria that I have already mentioned in the book. I also tried to explore other groups in other parts of the world especially Latin America, and I was able to draw some parallels between their social existence and systems of social organization, and the characteristics and features of anarchism, as I understand it.

Interviewer: For those of us who haven’t read the book recently, can you just recap a couple of things about what anarchism means to you and how is it connected to some of the intrinsic aspects of African culture?

Sam: OK, I pointed out in the book right away that anarchism as an ideology, as a corpus of ideology, and as a social movement, is removed to Africa. That was a point I made very explicitly at the outset of the book. But anarchism as a form of social organization, as a basis of organizing societies – that is not remote to us. It is an integral part of our existence as a people. I referred to the communal system of social organization that existed and still exists in different parts of Africa, where people live their lives within communities and saw themselves as integral parts of communities, and which contributed immensely to the survival of their communities as a unit. I pointed to aspects of solidarity, aspects of social cohesion and harmony that existed in so many communal societies in Africa and tried to draw linkages with the precepts of anarchism, including mutual aid, including autonomous development of small units, and a system that is not based on a monetization of the means and forces of production in society. So, I look back and I feel, like I pointed out earlier, these are things that if we carry on additional research it would throw more light on how these societies were able to survive. But again, with the advent of colonialism and the incorporation African economies and societies into the global capitalist orbit, some of these things of changed. We’ve started having a rich class, we’ve started having a class of political rulers who lord it over and above every other person. We’ve started having a society that is highly militarized where the the State and those who control the State share the monopoly of instruments of violence and are keen to deploy it against the ordinary people. That’s their business.

Interviewer: In the last few years we’ve definitely seen an increase in authoritarian rule in many parts of the world, and austerity measures, in the wake of the September 11th terrorist attacks in the States and the global financial crisis, more recently. How do you see those issues, and how have they affected Africa, and the struggle here?

Sam: When I wrote African Anarchism with my friend, we wrote against the backdrop of three decades of military rule, nearly four decades of military rule, in Nigeria. Military rule was a form of government that believed in over-centralization of powers, and dictatorship, as it were, and it was a strand that evolved from capitalism. So while the Nigerian society and much of Africa was under the grip of military rule and military authoritarianism, today we have a nominal civilian administration, a nominal civilian democracy. Some people have called it rule democracy, some people have called it dysfunctional democracy, all kinds of names, seeking to capture the fact that this is far from democracy. And for me it is an extension of military rule. This is actually a phase of military rule. Because if you look at democracy in Nigeria, and the rest of Africa, those who are shaping the course and future of these democracies are predominantly ex-military rulers, and their apologists and collaborators within the civilian class.

So, looking at the global stage, capitalism is in crisis. At any rate, capitalism cannot exist really without crisis. Crisis is the health of capitalism. This crisis is what many philosophers, from Marx to Hegel to Lenin to Kropotkin to Emma Goldman, and more currently Noam Chomsky have spoken extensively about: the tendency for crisis on the part of capitalism. So, between the coming of ‘African Anarchism’ and today, we have seen 911, the so-called ‘war on terror’, the financial crisis of 2007-2008, today we’re faced with a major global economic crisis that is reminiscent of the great depression of the 1930s. And there is no absolute guarantee that, even if the global economy emerges from this crisis, it will not relapse into another, because the tendency towards crisis is an integral part of capitalism. For us, here, these historical developments have had a serious impact on our society, our economy, our government.

If we begin from the 911 incident, today the world is under the grip of terror and counter-terrorism as well. Here in Nigeria in the past one year, the country has commonly experienced bombings, explosives, we are seeing everyday increasingly everyday there is a bomb set off in one place. And how does the Nigerian State react? It reacts with more force, and in the process of using more force it creates collateral damages and casualties all over the place. So we are not immune from the ravages of terrorism and the ‘war on terrorism’ which the West embarked upon, after 911. Our country is well under the grip of terror. And it is ironical that any moment there is a bomb that explodes somewhere, the government shouts, ‘this is terrorism! this is terrorism!’ But the hard line tendencies of government and the agencies of the State which use undue force and undue violence in resolving issues that would otherwise have been resolved without any loss of life – these are glossed over and seen as being normal. But any moment a bomb is set off anywhere, the government counters that this is terrorism. I would say that government, the State, in Africa, is the greatest source of terror. The State in Africa is the greatest source of terrorism. I think that the society would be a lot better, the day the State ceases from acting and deploying its agencies as instruments of terror against the ordinary population, and the common people.

So, the global economic crisis, the global capitalist crisis, has impacted negatively on African economies, including Nigeria – because we are part and parcel of the global capitalist system, albeit we are unequal partners in the global capitalist exchange. Our economy is dependent on commodities. Our economy is a mono-crop one. Anything that happens to oil is bound to have a crisis effect on us. And that is one of the reasons why you saw Nigerians and the Nigerian State in a stand-off at the beginning of this year [2012], over phantom subsidies which the government said it wanted to remove, and which people protested.

Interviewer: Could you explain a bit more about the fuel-tax subsidy for those who aren’t familiar with how it works in Nigeria?

Sam: OK. The fuel tax, or what the Nigerian government calls the ‘fuel subsidy’, assumes that the government is subsidizing the cost of fuel for the citizenry. That the Nigerian people are not paying a realistic value for fuel in the country. But the counter-argument is that we are an oil-producing country, and there is no reason why the cost of fuel should be based on the global or international market. We have refineries, we have about four refineries that collectively have a refining capacity of about 500,000 barrels per day. But you find that in the past twenty years these refineries have not functioned. They have not functioned because of corruption. They have not functioned because the powers that be in the country are not interested in these refineries functioning. The only reason why these refineries are not functioning is because there is corruption and a lot of people in government, in the military and in the bureaucracy, are benefitting from the wholesale importation of refined petroleum product. Nigeria is about the only OPEC country that imports 100% of its refined petroleum needs.

Interviewer: So at the beginning of this year [2012]…

Sam: So the ordinary people in Nigeria are saying, if our refineries were working, and they refined our crude, the government should be able to say at what cost this crude, these products are refined. And based on the cost of refining you can now set a price. That insofar as you have not been able to make the refineries functional, and you are fixing the cost of petroleum products on the basis of what it is in the international markets, you are making a grave mistake. Because the cost of living in Nigeria is different from the cost of living in United States. So the government says, ‘We pay so much to the importers of petroleum products as subsidy’ – that means the difference between the cost of importation and the selling price of the refined product. But you find out that even those who have been in government, even ministers of petroleum products, came out to say that much of what you pay as subsidy is based on corrupt documentation, which the government does not investigate, which the government does not in any way try to clarify, which involves senior officials of the organs and agencies that are supposed to regulate the petroleum industry. They are the ones who are paying these huge sums to themselves and to their companies. Let me illustrate the concept of the oil subsidy by one reference. The Nigerian government allows a multiplicity of traders to bring in petroleum products. They buy refined petroleum products from a multiplicity of international traders, when in fact the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation – the NPC – which is our national oil company, can enter into purchase agreements with refineries that exist abroad, and get these refined products directly from refineries. Instead, they prefer to go through middle men, who get the refined products from refineries, and sell them to NPC at exorbitant rates.

Interviewer: So what happened at the beginning of the year [2012]?

Sam: At the beginning of the year the government wanted to supposedly deregulate the downstream sector of the oil industry. And labour and civil society groups protested, and resisted such a move. In the event, a two week strike was called. During those two weeks, the people stayed away from work, the people protested in the streets of Lagos, Kaduna, Port Harcourt, Kano, Ibadan, in different parts of the country. And because the government sensed the resolve of ordinary Nigerians to resist these arbitrary increases, the government backed down somewhat, by bringing down the over 100% increase in prices of petroleum products to about 30%. And of course the labor movement practically sold out, because the civil society and the mass of the population were prepared to go on with the protest and refuse the pay the 30% increase, but labor sold out, and that is where we are today.

I would say, it is an unfinished struggle. My sense is that the government still intends to achieve its objective which is 100% increase in the price of petroleum products. But if there is anybody in government who is still thinking, who is still moved by any sense of objectivity, they would have seen that the resolve of Nigerians to resist these arbitrary increases based on false analysis of what subsidy constitutes, is something they cannot wish away. The people are also mobilizing. Just as the government is devising other strategies through which it will increase the price of petroleum through the back door, the people are reviewing the last encounter and trying to find out what other ways they can employ that advance their cause.

Interviewer: In that massive and very inspiring mobilization, there were elements of reflection of some of the global movements we’ve seen recently, some part of the protest was called ‘Occupy Nigeria’. We’ve seen the explosion of the Occupy movement and the Arab Spring, what do you think of those?

Sam: Yeah, yeah, the Occupy movement in parts of America and Europe has really inspired a lot of people in Nigeria. The resolve and the courage that has been demonstrated by the Occupy movement in different parts of America and European capitals, is a pointer to the endless possibilities that abound if people decide to struggle. The Arab Spring on its part, has been a most refreshing experience for those of us in Africa. Actually, I’ve had conversations with my friends and I try to point out the fact that the Arab Spring should have been happening in sub-Saharan Africa, rather than in the Arab world, in North Africa, because the abject conditions of living in Africa [are much worse than] the relatively advanced standards of living in most of the Arab countries and even our neighbors in North Africa. So the Arab spring should have been happening in sub-Saharan Africa. That is my sense. But why is it not happening? It is because we have not been able to turn our anger into resolve, we have not been able to build the requisite social consciousness, to be able to instigate and sustain such a struggle.

But based on what happened in Nigeria recently, I have no doubt that people are beginning to draw lessons from what is happening in the Arab world. And asking themselves some searching questions – if it can happen in the Arab world, why not us? If people who are living in better social conditions can elect to fight, to struggle, to protest in the streets, for days and months on end, how about us who cannot even find light. Light in Nigeria is a luxury. Our economy is a generator-set economy. [The State electricity grid functions very poorly; the rich use private electricity generators.] You virtually provide your own water, you provide your own security. Nothing works here. Unlike if you were to go to Libya. I’ve not been, but I’ve read stories about Libya, Egypt, Tunisia. These are better organised societies, where social amenities and public utilities function. But here we are in sub-Saharan Africa where nothing works. So, I can say without any fear of contradiction that the protests in Nigeria in January, were an offshoot of the Occupy movement in America and Europe, as well as an offshoot of the Arab Spring. So, I don’t know whether our protests have gotten to the point where we can call it a ‘Nigerian Spring’, but I guess that the Nigerian Spring will still come.

…

Interviewer: Sam, climate change is a major threat to Nigerians, as it is to everyone else on the planet. What are some of the specific environmental issues here, and what sort of consciousness is there of climate justice, and sustainable development?

Sam: I’ll answer your question from two perspectives. Let me answer it with the general perspective and then I’ll come to the more personal perspective. The threat of climate change is real. We, in this part of the world, are not immune from the threats of climate change. If we take a look around us, the humidity levels are rising. In recent times, where I live (I live in a small bungalow of three rooms), if there is no light [no electricity, no fan], I can hardly sleep. My children can hardly sleep, except during the rainy season, it becomes a lot more manageable during the rainy season. Because what makes it even worse is that our light, our electricity situation, is in fits and pieces. I’ve found that in the past three or four years, between the months of March and April, before the rains start all over again, I am sweating like I have never sweated in all my life. I am seeing increasing levels of temperature that I did not see while I was growing up, and even in the 80s and 90s. Over the past five years, one has had to live with very sweltering temperatures. And the sources of this are not far-fetched.

If you look around, the forests that used to exist… If I go to my village, there used to be very deep forests, where little children would even find it very difficult to enter. Today most of these forests are no more. The little trees and mini forests that exist are being logged on a daily basis, and there is no form of check on logging. If you go to the villages, logging is taking place at very ridiculous levels. There is no agency of government in this part of the country that is doing anything to regulate it, to curtail it, to minimize it. So trees are being cut as never before and nobody is doing anything to replace these trees. The forest cover is increasingly going down and in our own part of the country where the population density is probably the highest in Africa outside the Niger Delta, we find that human activity is impacting seriously and negatively on the environment. People are building uncontrollably, roads are being built, bushes are being burnt. There is deforestation on a massive scale. And one of the consequences of deforestation in our part of the country is erosion, of soil, gullies, even roads in some places have been cut in two. Then of course the streams and rivers and rivulets that used to contain a lot of aquatic life are today drying up. There’s a stream that lies about 200 metres from my country home in the village. When I was growing up I never saw it dry up. But in the past ten years, if the rains fail to fall between February, March, and April, times when the stream dries up.

Interviewer: And how are people thinking about that, because people want to see development, but how can that be justified with sustainability?

Sam: The ordinary people do not have an accurate consciousness of what is happening. They are blaming evil forces, unseen hands and all kinds of metaphysical objects for these happenings and these developments. And it is actually up to the government to educate the people about the negative consequences of deforestation, of unbalanced utilization of resources, about the benefits of a planned, sustainable development – both for the individual and for the society at large. But the government is not doing much in this area. There is actually a dearth of public enlightenment and conscientization on the principle issues.

And you find also that in our villages, the lands that used to be fertile are not producing as much food, as much crops, as they used to. These are the consequences of climate change.

Yes, at the level of the elite, of the enlightened few, there is a realization that yes, something is wrong. But at the level of ordinary people, there is no conscientization, no effort to enable them to understand that it is in their interests to ensure that they protect their environment.

Interviewer: You mentioned the Niger Delta. That is one area in Nigeria where the struggle over environment and oil has been particularly acute, with massive oil spills but also militant activity which has had a real impact on oil production and trying to reclaim some of the wealth from oil for people. What are your views on the activities of militants in the Niger Delta?

Sam: The activities of militants should not be viewed in isolation. The activities of militants is consequent upon the exploitative tendencies of oil companies operating in the Niger Delta, who are not adhering to international best practices that they continue to observe elsewhere around the world. In Nigeria, because they are complicit with the Nigerian state and the government, they carry on as they wish. They carry on as if tomorrow does not exist. They carry on because there is nobody to call them to order, to hold them to account. So the emergence of the militant groups in the Niger Delta is consequent upon the exploitative practices and tendencies, and the absolute lack of care for the environment in the exploration, drilling and production of most of the oil companies operating in the Niger Delta.

So, if viewed against this background, the militant groups are responding to a clear and present threat to the existence of communities in the Niger Delta. When we were growing up, we grew up to learn that most of the villages, tribes and social groups in the Niger Delta were essentially fishermen. But with the constant oil spills, despoliation of the environment, the denudation of the fauna and the aquatic life of the Niger Delta, much of the fishing industry has disappeared. Much of the farming and agricultural activities taking place there have also disappeared.

So, when you have robbed a people of their environment, how, in good conscience, do you expect them to survive? To continue to exist as a people. You see, our people have a saying that nature has placed at the disposal of every group a means of survival. I’ll give you an example. In the south-east, in Igboland for instance, our people survive mostly on our land. We survive on our palm trees, our people make palm oil, our people farm, this is the basic means of subsistence. If you go to the North, they do not have palm trees. They survive on other firms of agriculture, like planting onions, planting yams, and also pastoral existence. If you go to Niger Delta, the basic means of subsistence is fishing, and some forms of agriculture and farming too. So if we agree that nature has placed at the disposal of every group some forms of sustenance, we are witnessing a situation where the means of sustenance of much of the Niger Delta has been taken away. Through the activities of oil companies who are not minded on any form of corporate social responsibility.

So, that is the context in which I view the militancy that sprung up in the Niger Delta from the late 1990s till today. Yes, most of the militant groups engage in all forms of criminality and banditry as well, which do not in any way serve the interests of ordinary Niger Deltans. And that is condemnable, but it does not in any way vitiate the original sin that pushed them into further sin.

Interviewer: Yes. Speaking of sin, Nigeria is quite a religious society. Religion is very deeply ingrained here. And often it takes quite conservative, sometimes violent forms. What are your thoughts on religion in Nigeria and what it means for anarchism and organising more broadly?

Sam: I’ll say that religion and religious practices have entered a new phase in Nigeria. Before the advent of colonialism, our people were mostly African religionists, who worship our small gods – gods of thunder, gods of river, and such other gods. With the coming of colonialism, the two main global religions – Islam and Christianity – became a predominant force in the lives of Nigerians.

The rivalry and competition between the two religions has tended to play down the fact that not all Nigerians are Christians or Muslims. Even in the North-central, you are talking about pagan tribes and different forms of African religion that take place in those places. But today Nigeria is profiled and stereotyped as a Christian South and a Muslim North. Yet if you go to the North you find a lot of non-adherents to Islam, you come to the South as well you find a lot of non-adherents to Christianity.

But I would say that in the past 20-30 years the singular influence of Christianity and Islam has been considerably negative on the society in the sense that both religions have become sources of manipulation, political manipulation of ordinary people. When you hear that there is a religious riot in the North, a religious riot in the East, when you go down and examine the issues, they are not basically religious. Politicians are using religion to manipulate the ordinary people into fighting for the political positions and beliefs of the elite.

Religion has become an instrument of manipulation, exploitation, deceit, and large-scale blindfolding of ordinary people in Nigeria. It is one of the elements militating against social consciousness and the development of the working class, as a class, in Nigeria. The development of a class of the dispossessed, the oppressed, the marginalized, who feel and share common interests and are keen to fight for those common interests. Religion is thrown in as a wedge, as a source of conflict among ordinary people. Like Karl Marx said, religion becomes the opium of society. Every little thing is covered, is given a religious coloration, when it is actually not. It is a tremendous setback to the development of social consciousness in Nigeria and the rest of Africa as a whole.

Interviewer: Yes. You’ve already touched on it, but those religious divisions are often related to (but not solely related to) ethnic divisions, and race, and gender as dividing people from each other. What are your thoughts about that?

Sam: Well the problem we have is not really race as such, it is about religion, it is about ethnicity. Much of religion in Nigeria and Africa is geographical. You find that religion tends to conform to certain ethnic boundaries. When you hear about a Fulani, you imagine a Muslim. When you hear about an Igboman, you imagine a Catholic Christian. When you talk about the man from the middle belt of Nigeria, you’re talking about an evangelical Christian. So, much of our religious differences have become geographical in nature, in the sense that certain ethnic boundaries are coherent also with certain religions. The people have been made to see these differences as permanent features of life, not things you can overcome. The truth is that before the commodification of exchange and the means of sustenance in our society, before the monetization of the economy, people related with one another, and did not mind about religious differences. Everybody believed your religion ought to be a personal issue to you. But with the politicization of religion, the way we are seeing it today, social differences have been magnified by politicians, who use it to manipulate and control the mass of the population.

Interviewer: And what about gender? Is there a change in the struggle for women’s liberation?

Sam: The struggle for women’s liberation in Nigeria and the rest of Africa has come a long way. In the sense that, our society, which is patriarchal in nature, emphasises the role of the man. In many African societies, as I tried to point out in my book, the role of women is diminished, reduced to almost to footnotes. But the truth is that even in traditional African societies, if I use the tradtional Igbo society as an example, the role of the women is critical, is central to the creation of balance and social harmony. But most of the time it is underplayed.

Interviewer: You’re talking about the role women play as leaders?

Sam: Yes. You might not believe it, but let me tell you something – one of the less obvious manifestations of African society. In traditional African societies, in traditional Igbo society, for example, a woman who is unable to give birth for the husband, assuming the husband dies, and the woman is faced with the reality of not continuing the lineage at her own death, it was common for women who find themselves in this situation, to marry another woman. So when Africans say lesbianism, or women marrying women, or men marrying men, is not traditional to us, any clear-headed political analyst, anthropologist or sociologist in this part of the world, would know in Igbo society it was common for women to marry women, when faced with that situation in the absence of their husband, and be seen as the wife of the older woman. Maybe the older woman might also bring a man who sleeps with the younger woman and begins to raise offspring for the memory of the late husband.

The traditional African society would not achieve balance and harmony without the role of the women. Their role was critical to the resolution of disputes. In Igbo resolution of land disputes, family disputes, and intractable social issues, the views of women, especially those who were seen as women who have made some achievement materially was continually sought by the men folk in traditional African societies.

Moving away from traditional African society to the present day, education has been the critical force in the liberation of women. Women go to school, in Igboland today there are more women in school than men. Because the men go off to do business, trading activities. Increasingly, in many primary and secondary schools the number of female pupils outnumbers the males. Many families have realized that if you train women, you train a nation, if you train a man, in some cases, you are just training an individual.

The importance of women in our society is continually being reasserted. The courts of law have played some role in trying to liberate women from being the underlings of society. In Igboland in the past, women could not inherit the estate of their fathers, even if they were the only children of their parents. There is now a court document that says a man can make a will and devolve his estate among his male and female children equally. In cases where the man did not have male issues, he can devolve his estate among his female children.

So we’ve recognized some advance. There is virtually no course in university where you do not find some women folk – medicine, engineering, geology, computer science, not just the humanities and arts. Women are everywhere, even in the military. But I would say still, given the fact that our society is 50% male, 50% female, there is still a lot room for improvement for women. It is an ongoing struggle. It is not something that is likely going to end. The momentum we have have achieved is such that the future looks very very bright indeed for women’s liberation and gender equality in our society.

…

Interviewer: Sam, you played a very important role in the ‘Awareness League’, which was a Nigerian anarchist organization that flourished in the 1990s. Can you tell us a bit about how it grew and how it declined?

Sam: It’s a little nostalgic for me these days, talking about the Awareness League, because the Awareness League was a romantic idea. When we entered the universities in the early 80s, what we encountered was socialist groups, socialist teaching, Marxist teaching especially. And we became attracted to Marxism, in the sense that it preached the coming of a new dawn in society, and by extension, the African continent. We were really enthralled by the perspectives of Marxism, and the abiding, thorough critique of capitalism that Marx and Marxist literature embodied. It did not take much time before we defined ourselves as Marxists on campus, and this continued until we left the universities. When I was leaving university I wrote a thesis in my final year on the political economy of Nigeria’s external debt crisis then, and in the thesis, it might interest you to know, I employed the Marxist framework, as my tool of analysis. Where Marx was talking about the economy as providing the axis around which the further movement in society revolved, whether it was politics, or culture. I also talked about the tendency of capitalism towards crisis. These were ideas that enthralled us. Also the ideas of revolution. Marx said that the history of all hitherto existing societies has been the history of class struggle, and talked about the revolution being the midwife of a new society, giving birth to a new one.

Usually in Nigeria, after your graduation from university, you are obliged to take part in a mandatory one year service. So I was posted to the old Oyo state with its capital at Ibadan, for the mandatory one year national service. It was there that I met a couple of socialist-minded young men like myself, and we started organising and talking about Marxism, socialism, leftist resistance. We identified ourselves essentially as a leftist organization. In the course of that, some of us started subscribing to ‘The Torch’ newspaper, published in New York. It was there we started gleaning for the first time, the initial ideas of anarchism. That was how, gradually, when we finished our national service, some of us who were living in the south-east, started thinking about an enduring platform. Because socialism even then was entering a serious crisis. The crisis of the Soviet empire was brewing. It was not long thereafter that communism collapsed in Europe. And it was in the midst of this crisis that we started increasingly vacilating towards anarchism. Subsequently, Awareness League was born, and the rest is history.

The Awareness League first of all, derived its lifeblood from the resistance against military rule in Nigeria. The continuation of military rule acted as a spore. It was one of the inclusions that continued to give oxygen to our existence then as Awareness League. It is on record that between the late 1980s and the late 1990s, Nigeria witnessed the toughest anti-military struggle. Awareness League joined forces with other anti-military groups in resisting military rule in Nigeria. It was in the process of coming into touch with a lot of anarcho-syndicalist groups around the world, in Europe and America , that I and my friend decided to intellectualise the the subject of anarchism by producing a book, which you very well know.

The struggle against military rule ended with the coming of civilian rule in 1999. I would say that the antagonism of not only the Awareness League but all the civil society, community-based groups, and leftist organizations in the country, virtually evaporated. Because the military was a uniting factor, I would say, in the sense that every person – whether you were anarchist, Marxist, leftist, socialist – saw in the military a common enemy to be resisted, to be opposed, to be overthrown if possible. With the coming of civilian government, we did not have that kind of common enemy any longer. Because some of the groups, some individuals from these groups, now started gravitating towards bourgeois politics. But let me say that for the most part, the problem was not individuals gravitating towards bourgeois politics, it was really that the civil society groups, the leftist groups and organizations, were not prepared for the consequences of [civilian] rule. We did not analyze in a serious sense what would be the consequences of the end of military rule and the coming of civilian rule, in the place of the military. We took it for granted that it would be business as usual. But as it happened, the end of military rule singularly signaled the end of most of these community-based, civil-society-based groups. Most of these groups, including the Awareness League, fragmented.

By the dawn of the new millennium, we were just a few individuals left, trying to grapple with the reality of social existence and political developments in our country. Some of our members have had to go back to school, taking up teaching appointments at some universities, some are grappling with the realities of survival and existence in our kind of society. I personally have been having health challenges – it’s not something I want to broadcast – but I’ve been having some health challenges. Between 2007 and 2009, I had serious health challenges. For me, I find that it is impossible to recreate Awareness League in the circumstances that we find ourselves in today.

So perhaps, I said to myself, we cannot recreate Awareness League, but we must maintain some form of interaction among ourselves, we must continue to interact with others in civil society. We must continue to engage, even with those in power, in some form of call to account. And we must devise more realistic ways of being relevant in society and trying to make a difference in our respective communities and in society at large.

So I have since then, gone into trying to join hands with some people in trying to create a non-governmental organisation known as Tropical Watch. Concerned essentially with issues of sustainable development and environment, including climate change. In the process also we have been drawn into some anti-corruption fights, anti-corruption struggles in our society. Because we find that one of the greatest threats to sustainable development is corruption. Corruption makes it impossible for resources to be allocated in a judicial, transparent manner. Such that all sectors of the economy, all sectors of the society, would benefit. It is corruption that makes it impossible for governments to check uncontrolled logging in different communities for instance. It is corruption that makes it impossible for contacts awarded for road construction, for provision of water, for sanitation and things like that to be exhibited. In so far as corruption exists, it is impossible to create a harmonious balance between resource utilization and the existence of our environment and societies. So these are some of the things that I personally, in conjunction with some other friends and like-minded individuals, have been trying to create.

But it has not been easy. Because, like I told you, what happened to Awareness League is not unique – it happened to every single other civil society group, every other organic social organization in the country that took part in the anti-military struggle. I’ll give you another example, one of the largest NGOs in Nigeria over the past 15-20 years, has been the Civil Liberties Organisation. It was a body dedicated to fighting for human rights, constitutional rule, and fighting against police violence and all forms of violence against civilians, women and children. The Civil Liberties Organisation (CLO) grew in leaps and bounds so that they had offices in all different parts of Nigeria. But I can tell you: in the past seven or eight years, the CLO has almost been dead. Actually, what we are seeing is more or less a ghost, because there is no state in Nigeria where their office is functional any longer. The man who used to be the zonal director here in Enugu has virtually been left to fend for himself. They haven’t paid the rent on their office in the past five years. So what I’m trying to say is that what happened to Awareness League is what happened most other organizations. Even Tropical Watch is still trying to find its feet.

Interviewer: What about working-class organizations in Nigeria, trade unions, to what extent can they be reclaimed as vehicles for working-class struggle?

Sam: The trade unions in Nigeria were particularly very active in the early anti-colonial struggle. I told you some time ago about the struggles of the coal miners here in Enugu, Enugu was the coal mining capital of Nigeria. During the anti-colonial struggle for independence, the colonial masters killed about 49 coal miners here in this city, who were struggling against the exploitative tendencies of the managers of the mines. It was a landmark development during the anti-colonial struggle in this part of Nigeria. I told you about the city of Jos, where you had a flourishing tin mining industry, the workers were well-organized. The mining industries became a pedestal for unionizing in the country, including the regular civil service. At the turn of independence, we had a fairly sizable working-class trade-unionism taking place in the country, and this continued until the advent of military rule.

Military rule stultified the development of trade unionism in the country. They were able to do this by invoking primordial sentiments, religion, tribalism and issues of regionalism as well, to divide and rule, to manipulate workers. Depending on which government was in power. The trade union movement in Nigeria – towards the dying days of military rule – tried to regain its voice, started calling major national strikes, started organizing on a national scale.

But I can tell you that the fortunes of trade unionism has been hampered by the deindustrialization process that has continued taking place in the country, since the dying days of military rule. Most industries have folded up. One of the largest employers of labor in this country used to be the textile industry. It is no more. The textile industry has been wiped away completely. We now depend for our textile materials on cheap textile materials coming from China, neighboring countries, India. The textile industry used to employ more than 200,000 workers across the country. The automobile industry used to have assembly plants – here in Enugu Anammco, Peugeot was in Kaduna, Peleot was in Bauchi, Volkswagen was in Lagos. All these assembly plants have closed down. We used to have a trident steel sector in [a number of places]. They’ve all closed shop. So there has been massive deindustrialization in the country in the past 20 years, and it has affected the fortunes of workers.

So the core of the workers we have today are either in the civil service, the banking sector, or the petroleum industry. The workers in the petroleum sector see themselves as being favored souls. So they hardly take part in their union activities, except the junior staff. The same thing also in the banking industry, in fact one of the codes of practice was that you don’t take part in union organising. For upwards of 10-20 years the workers accepted it. But since the first failure of banks in Nigeria, which took place in the late 1990s, the junior workers in the banks are beginning to organise again. But they’re no longer as effective. So basically, what you have as unions in Nigeria, are basically the civil servants. And you will agree with me that the industrial experience is based in industrial workplaces, not in offices. Not in air-conditioned offices and white-collar tables.

So the state of union activities today in Nigeria is deplorable. And most union leaders see their positions from the point of view of their career. They think of their career first and foremost, before anything else. It is one of the key factors that affected the last nation-wide protests, in the sense that the leadership of the Nigerian Labour Congress capitulated at the last minute.

Let me also point out that the professional groups in Nigeria – the medical doctors, the bar association, the architects society, the society of engineers and similar professional groups are not minded on working-class organising and development. They start from the perspective of seeing themselves as being privileged members of society. Even though the circumstances of a significant proportion of their members is the same as that of ordinary Nigerians. For them there is no incentive to begin to organize. Instead what a person is trying to do among the professional groups is trying to see how he can use the system to advance his personal or group interests.

Interviewer: Sam, I wanted to ask, what are some of the things that the people who are active – the rank and file activists in unions, or people like yourself in Tropical Watch or civil society organizations – what are some of the things that people do to try and build the struggle? Like practical day-to-day tasks, what do people spend their time doing to try to build up social struggle?

Sam: We, the activists, try to meet. We try to hold workshops. There are some workshops that we hold or are sponsored by donor agencies, that bring together activists. We have had seminars and workshops in the areas of police brutality, police violence, gender violence, climate change, you know. These seminars and workshops in a way try to bring together activists of all persuasions. And from time to time, arising from social, economic and political developments around us, we try to set up meetings among groups and individuals, and see if we can work out areas of agreement and see if we can build up on that.

But I must be fair to you, especially here in the south-east, we have not been able to build a virile civil society in this part of the country. The people in Lagos have been able to create better models essentially because they have greater experience in this field, arising from the years of military rule. The people in Abuja are doing well as well, because since the movement of the seat of government to Abuja, we have witnessed the concentration of activists organising to hold the government accountable in one way or another. But we have not been so lucky here. I guess that part of the problem is that most people are concerned with the struggle for everyday survival. But I reckon that this is not enough of an excuse to give for not being able to organize.

The experience of one of our comrades Osmond Ugwu who, not too long ago, has been a victim of state high-handedness. He came out to organise workers, to protest against non-implementation of the minimum wage. The minimum wage was a national policy of the PDP government, and a national minimum wage act was passed by both chambers of the national assembly. All the states in the country were now obliged to implement the minimum wage, to bring it into practice in their respective states. But the governor here in Enugu refused to implement it. Or decided that he was going to delay the terms of implementation. And when Osmond and one or two of his comrades tried to organise the workers, to sensitize them on resisting this harassment by the government, he was incarcerated. It is instructive to note that while Osmond was trying to mobilize the workers, the leadership of the Nigerian Labour Congress here was collaborating with the state government and negotiating away the rights of workers to organize. Ultimately he paid the price by being sent to jail and being tried on trumped up charges. It was not until the the later part of January this year [2012] that he was released. Based essentially on the protests mounted by Amnesty International. And today he still faces a criminal charge which is as ridiculous as anything can be. This underlines the threats faced by those who struggle to create a new society in our kind of environment.

Interviewer: One last question Sam: how do you conceptualize global solidarity? I mean, how best can activists in so-called ‘developed’ countries support activists in the majority world, and vice versa?

Sam: Yeah, the activism in the developed world can do a lot really to stir up the consciousness of people here. But I guess that at the end of the day, the people here must take responsibility for our lives, must take responsibility for resisting autocratic governments, must take responsibility for seeking to hold them accountable as well.

People in the metropolitan world can assist us by trying to help us build capacity. You see, the civil society groups here are not quite at home with the tools of modern communication – the social media – which has played a very important role in the Occupy movement in different parts of Europe and America, and in the Arab Spring. You’d be surprised that the Nigerian protest was not significantly boosted by social media. Yes, there were instances when social media came into play, but our notion of social media here is going to your email box and replying to email or going to your own Facebook. That is the notion of the average Nigerian about social media. But [it is more difficult to learn] how we can utilize twitter or YouTube, to upload pictures and things, how do I create a blog that is easily accessible to other activists who have access to the net?

It is true of course that the Internet access here is still developing. By my own reckoning, is still under 20% of the population. Or much much much less than that. Yes, people have some Internet access when it comes to going to their email box, replying to messages, sending messages, maybe Facebook. But if you’re talking of social struggle and the net, the Internet access rate is less than 10%.

So people from the metropolitan world can really help us by trying to create capacity in the tools for social media communication. That is very critical if we must make progress in organising and even in building solidarity with the outside world. If we have access to these tools, it becomes much easier to keep in touch with the rest of the world, and for the rest of the world to know exactly the true situation of what is happening here. People should be able to, from their respective areas, not just the urban areas, to be able to take pictures and upload on the net and try to make as much capital out of them as possible.

Interviewer: Yes. Is there anything else you wanted to add before we wrap up?

Sam: Yeah, I want to say a few words to our anarchist friends and groups that in the past associated with us, supported us, in one way or another, especially from Europe and North America. I say to them that anarchism is not dead in Africa. But it is important for them to appreciate that anarchism as a movement, as a political movement, as an ideological platform, is still going to take some time to crystallize here. But in the mean time, we must continue to engage with the rest of the society. We must continue to interrogate the government in debates where we can achieve. That is what informed some of us going into non-governmental organizations. When you talk to people about about anarchism in this part of the world they are like, ‘Well? What is it about? Ah, no no no anarchism is about disorder, chaos, confusion.’ Of course when you do the intellectual analysis of social organization and how this [incorrect understanding of anarchism] conforms to anarchist principles [of how ideology controls people], you can make sense of it.

It is difficult in this part of the world to begin to build a movement based on anarchist principles alone. But we can build a movement based on trying to hold the government accountable, trying to fight for the environment, trying to fight for gender equality, trying to fight for human rights. Because these are minimum principles on which a broad swathe of the population agree, and it makes sense for us to continue to interact and interrogate social existence and public policy on this basis. And seek to ensure that civil society is not extinguished completely. While also those of us who genuinely believe in anarchism will continue to organise and develop tools of organisation that will some day lead to the emergence of an anarchist movement.

Interviewer: Yes. Thank you Sam. You’ve given us a lot to think about. And I think that with people around who are as knowledgeable and critical and active as you, there is a lot of hope for building the sort of movement that you talk about.

Sam: Thank you Jeremy.

#Sam Mbah #black anarchism #anarchism #Anarcho Syndicalism #black history

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liesfallaciesfabrications · 4 years ago

Text

Mr. Queen Analysis

My take on the rather heartbreaking and vague ending of the KDrama, Mr. Queen.

Okay, I’ve been thinking long and hard on this subject (way too much) and have come to the following consensus:

Bong-Hwan and So Yong are both versions of the same soul. What got me thinking about this was that scene in episode 5 where SoBong talks about original and past lives but then mentions parallel time-streams. To illustrate, she draws two lines running side by side and explains how a past life can be in one and the original/current being in the other. This had me stumped a bit, and I thought it a bit random that they put that in there, but then I looked up “reincarnation and parallel lives” and there’s a surprising number of articles on it - though obviously not conclusive or scientific as it involves spirituality.

Episode 5 also explains why time in the present is flowing at the same rate as the past, which we discovered when BH’s consciousness briefly reentered his body and explain why they chose to reveal that fact. Time isn’t linear here but more fluid with both versions existing simultaneously - harkening back to the two lines Mr. Queen drew to illustrate.

The reincarnation theory would explain many of the elements of the story that I found hard to accept. For example:

If So Yong’s separate soul was in there with Bong Hwan’s soul then why did he never feel her? In fact, the show repeatedly makes reference to the idea that Bong Hwan does not feel another soul and attributes characteristics of SY to the body (telling her after the kiss that the soul is in control of the body so she ought to behave and in another scene he tries to get her soul to return by addressing the lake - where he believes she is hiding). The only time he accuses her of being a separate entity inside of him is when he wants an excuse for his feelings and reactions to CJ. The “it must have been her that took control. If I knew it was CJ I would have....still enjoyed it?!? What’s wrong with me?” moments. LOL What if the reason he couldn’t feel another presence was because there wasn’t another? He merely had his consciousness wake up in the body of his past life but didn’t realize it.

It would explain the gradual integration of both personalities. For example, when CJ returns the book to Mr. Queen, she never thinks of herself as NOT being the girl from the well as she did when he first confesses his love for her at the lake. As BH spends more time in her previous body, the lines become more blurred not just in memory but also in identity because he IS her. If they were two separate souls, I don’t think she would have that same reaction nor do I see anything to indicate that So Yong “took over” in that moment or any other. Memories were accessed, personality traits were mingling, but we saw SY come out in episode 20...that personality was immediately recognizable. Fantastic acting by SHS - especially as she had me loving the one and hating the other, despite being both.

It would explain why Mr. Queen falls for CJ so hard, despite his initial protests. I never liked the idea of his feelings being manipulated, but I can get on board with the idea that he accepts his feelings for CJ because this is a man that some part of him has always loved - and falls in love with “again” through their shared experiences and journey.

It would also explain the question of why Bong Hwan. What was the connection between this man and So Yong? They are reincarnations of each other. When So Yong was feeling hopeless and needed strength, she pulled upon her stronger version of herself to help her - made possible in that moment when she desperately wanted to give up on life and he desperately wanted to live. She came to him in that pool and appeared to the queen again when she was looking for answers in the lake. This does not give the impression of a soul cruelly imprisoned in her own body against her will.

It would also explain why, when Bong Hwan briefly went back to his body, So Yong did not reappear. She wasn’t being suppressed. She purposefully had her reincarnated self come to give her strength and was not ready at that time to assume her life again. I found her choice of words at Byeong-In’s grave to to be telling. She said he always knew where to find her whenever she was hiding. It’s also why I believe BI didn’t realize Mr. Queen wasn’t SY - for the same reason CJ doesn’t at the end of the drama. These two men, both of whom deeply love her, could sense it was her, just in reverse order. CJ-SB-SY and BI-SY-SB.

It would also solve the pesky issue of why BH is an overall better person - not just at the moment of his return but before. Someone on Reddit mentioned the implausibility of CJ’s political accomplishments causing a ripple effect to change BH, and I agree. However, if we look at BH as SY’s reincarnation, then the positive attributes he now displays in the altered timeline can be accounted for because he prevented his previous incarnation from killing herself, therefore in his next lifetime his soul didn’t carry those grudges. This fits with the idea of reincarnation as a person’s life experiences and emotions/grudges/regrets/mindset at death will determine the psychological and even physical manifestation of their next life.

SY was told by evil Kim that she had no power b/c she was a woman - next life is a man.

SY had her love cruelly rejected - next life is a playboy who doesn’t seem to believe in love.

SY felt that she was living a lie - next life is a man who doesn’t care who he offends with his opinion and does what he wants when he wants - to the point of selfishness - though this changes when he prevents many of these resentments by his actions in the past.

Finally, it would explain why CJ is so “oblivious” at end of the show. He promised when he returned the book to SB that he would never fail to recognize her, and he doesn’t. While her personality has changed, it’s intrinsically also the same person, though this is the area I felt the writers dropped the ball in execution, but I get that they were pressed for time. The implications of this aspect also seem to be what KJH meant in his comment to a fan’s question of whether the king knew that BH had left.That it didn’t matter: SY or BH didn’t matter, only how CJ saw her.

So why send BH back? I believe they did it because it wouldn't make sense for him to live a life he essentially already lived as SY. Reincarnation is meant to be for a soul to grow and spiritually evolve, which it could not do by simply repeating what it had already done. Also, for some reason (I suspect so as not to offend Koreans by skipping over one of the most prominent historical figures in their culture - Queen Min), they still have CJ dying at age 32. This can be seen in the book BH is looking at when he's seeing his portrait, and is mentioned as early as episode 1. This was never going to be a happy ending for CJ/BH in the sense that many viewers wanted. Rather, he was going to facilitate the relationship of SY/CJ so that his previous life could run its course...ugh, I feel sick typing that out...with the hope that they meet again in another lifetime. Our SB is many things but trapped in Joseon without modern medicine, a miracle worker she is not. CJ dies without any heirs; his baby with the queen dies at just six months. If the BH decided to stay for love and then lost the baby and CJ, that would be just as heartbreaking for me as the ending I received.

Wiki and other sources speculate the CJ was poisoned by the Andong Kims, but many historians (including Bong Hwan’s mother, it seems) dispute that fact as it would serve no purpose since he was a puppet king and since his death then allowed the Jo family to briefly take control until King Gojong’s father pretty much crushed both the Kims and the Jos. In reality, he probably died of unhealthy habits and a life of excess. In the show’s world, who knows...cancer or any number of possible illnesses that could not be treated at that time. During the banquet planning, we see CJ suffer a nosebleed. In the spinoff, Mr. Queen mentions how CJ is trying hard not to collapse from the strain of his burdens. These could be hints left by writers to indicate that CJ’s health has been compromised by the grueling struggles and stress he’s had to endure, not to mention allowing himself to get blown up.

They writers did give us the hope for another reunion - perhaps in BH’s lifetime or perhaps another one. It’s why I think they tried to imply a SY/CJ connection in the Bamboo Forest prequel (the only prequel in the spinoff) as well as end Bamboo Forest with a reincarnation wish. The setup seemed quite intentional and in specific order. The prequel created a sense of destiny. The next segment was about Mr. Queen confirming if it was just his body or his soul that was attracted to CJ...literally the words out of the character’s mouth...and they gave an answer to that with the last shot. The final segment introduced the wish for CJ to meet his queen again, and he is clearly thinking of Mr. Queen - so why the prequel, which would seem to introduce a separate love interest, unless it’s actually not because they’re one and the same with the middle segment emphasizing the genuine attraction and love for each other.

This might not be everyone’s cup of tea; it certainly wasn’t mine, and I think the writers should have handled the leaving better instead of going for an quasi mind-wipe of all the characters’ remembrances of Mr. Queen. I mean, CJ went from being horrified at Mr. Queen acting like a perfect little queen for a few seconds a mere handful of episodes ago to just asking "why the formality" at a more permanent display of temperament and seemed practically oblivious otherwise. Then Choi and Yeon were "shocked" when So Yong didn't revert to her witch of the palace act and chastise the maids that were laughing by the pond - as if Mr. Queen didn't already change that way of thinking months ago. Not to mention that they were also nonplussed by the fact that their relationship to the queen had gone from being regarded as family back to a servant/master status quo. Even with the soulmate angle, there was to much deus ex machina thrown in. The idea of soul mates is a romantic one, but the execution of it fell through.

They should have never gone with the reincarnation route, especially if they were never intending to let SY have a true voice in the drama, even if it’s just a final conversation between herself and BH before he leaves, made possible in that split second before true separation. Viewers never got to bond with her, and in those moments we did see her, she was either a watered down version of the personality we were emotionally invested in or emphasized the opposite characteristics (demure, feminine, etc...) that we loved Mr. Queen for rejecting. Also, this angle gives us no true feeling of completeness and satisfaction. SY is with CJ in the past - we won't see them develop their feelings for each other and grow to like them as a couple. BH is in the present but who knows if he'll find CJ's reborn soul and happiness with whoever it is. Promises without fulfillment demand too much from the audience to fill in the blanks. If that's the case, next time just give us a tag line and tell the audience to imagine the rest.

Even if they share the same soul, we are given two distinct personalities and not enough connection between them in terms of their recognizing each other, acknowledging their feelings for CJ to each other in some sort of passing the flame moment that would make it feel more homogeneous and prevent feelings of resentment at what we perceive as an injustice to a personality we adore.

Instead of creating an emotional divide between the two, they should have just have SY die before BH's soul enters, and develop the romance between CJ and HB's as the novel and even that cheap and campy Chinese version did. Having SY there just muddied the waters, and became a distraction and an excuse for every emotional milestone Mr. Queen experienced, negating that character's development and laying it at SY's feet or claims of deliberate interference.

They should have chosen a fictional king and not boxed themselves into a limited outcome. Granted, it gave them a valid reason for booting BH back to present times, but look at the result: limited number of years with someone the audience isn't really familiar with for our beloved ML (plus their baby dies) and a huge question mark for our F-turned back into ML in the present with the hope that maybe the reincarnation thing works in his favor but who knows because they couldn't even toss us that small crumb which would have alleviated some of our heartache for BH as well as give more credence to the fact that SY/BH are the same and thereby lessened the feelings of resentment to the SY character as well. Or they could have gone with a multiverse theory and left it wide open as to what sweeping changes would occur. BH being initially thrown back to the Joseon era as a result of his dying would have achieved that because then the audience would have no reason to revisit the present nor see that the worlds were linked via changes upon his return and stuck with the poisoning threat averted. Blow recorded history to smithereens and leave that to our imagination instead.

Yes, the fish-out-of-water hijinks were great fun, but the completion of the character arcs/relationship/etc...shouldn’t be an afterthought.

The other element I would have liked to have seen that was in neither of the televised versions (though the Chinese one came very, very close) but was in the web novel is the king fully accepting that his wife is not the woman she was, believing that her previous body was a man, falling in love regardless and she with him. However, I think we all knew that wasn’t going to happen in a kdrama.

#MrQueen #MrQueenep20 #MrQueenexplained #mrqueenfinale

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thewatsonbeekeepers · 5 years ago

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Chapter 4 – It is always 1895 [TAB 1/1]

TAB is my favourite episode of Sherlock. It is a masterpiece that investigates queerness, the canon and the psyche all within an hour and a half. Huge amounts of work has been done on this episode, however, so I’m not going to do a line by line breakdown – that could fill a small book. A great starting point for understanding the myriad of references in TAB is Rebekah’s three part video series on the episode, of which the first instalment can be found here X. I broadly agree with this analysis; what I’m going to do here, though, is place that analysis within the framework of EMP theory. As a result, as much as it pains me, this chapter won’t give a breakdown of carnation wallpaper or glass houses or any of those quietly woven references – we’re simply going in to how it plays into EMP theory.

Before digging into the episode, I want to take a brief diversion to talk about one of my favourite films, Mulholland Drive (2001).

If you haven’t seen Mulholland Drive, I really recommend it – it’s often cited as the best film of the last 20 years, and watching it really helps to see where TAB came from and the genre it’s operating in. David Lynch is one of the only directors to do the dream-exploration-of-the-psyche well, and I maintain that a lot of the fuckiness in the fourth series draws on Lynch. However, what I actually want to point out about Mulholland Drive is the structure of it, because I think it will help us understand TAB a little better. [If you don’t want spoilers for Mulholland Drive, skip the next paragraph.]

The similarities between these two are pretty straightforward; the most common reading of Mulholland Drive is that an actress commits suicide by overdose after causing the death of her ex-girlfriend, who has left her for a man, and that the first two-thirds of the film are her dream of an alternate scenario in which her girlfriend is saved. The last third of the film zooms in and out of ‘real life’, but at the end we see a surreal version of the actual overdose which suggests that this ‘real life’, too, has just been in her psyche. Sherlock dying and recognising that this may kill John is an integral part of TAB, and the relationships have clear parallels, but what is most interesting here is the structural similarity; two-thirds of the way through TAB, give or take, we have the jolt into reality, zoom in and out of it for a while and then have a fucky scene to finish with that suggests that everything is, in fact, still in our dying protagonist’s brain. Mulholland Drive’s ending is a lot sadder than TAB’s – the fact that, unlike Sherlock, there is no sequel can lead us to assume that Diane dies – and it’s also a lot more confusing; it’s often cited as one of the most complicated films ever made even just in terms of surface level plot, before getting into anything else, and it certainly took me a huge amount of time on Google before I could approach anything like a resolution on it!

Mulholland Drive is the defining film in terms of the navigating-the-surreal-psyche subgenre, and so the structural parallels between the two are significant – and definitely point to the idea that Sherlock hasn’t woken up at the end of TAB, which is important. But we don’t need to take this parallel as evidence; there’s plenty of that in the episode itself. Let’s jump in.

Emelia as Eurus

When we first meet Eurus in TST, she calls herself E; this initialism is a link to Moriarty, but it’s also a convenient link to other ‘E’ names. Lots of people have already commented on the aural echo of ‘Eros’ in ‘Eurus’, which is undeniable; the idea that there is something sexual hidden inside her name chimes beautifully with her representation of a sexual repression. The other important character to begin with E, however, is Emelia Ricoletti. The name ‘Emelia’ doesn’t come from ACD canon, and it’s an unorthodox spelling (Amelia would be far more common), suggesting that starting with an ‘E’ is a considered choice.

When TAB aired, we were preoccupied with Emelia as a Sherlock mirror, and it’s easy to see why; the visual parallels (curly black hair, pale skin) plus the parallel faked death down to the replacement body, which Mofftiss explicitly acknowledge in the episode. However, I don’t think that this reading is complete; rather, she foreshadows the Eurus that we meet in s4. The theme of ghosts links TAB with s4 very cleanly; TAB is about Emelia, but there is also a suggestion of the ghosts of one’s past with Sir Eustace as well as Sherlock’s own claims (‘the shadows that define our every sunny day’). Compare this to s4 – ‘ghosts from the past’ appears on pretty much every promotional blurb, and the word is used several times in relation to Eurus. If Eurus is the ghost from Sherlock’s past, the repressive part of his psyche that keeps popping back, Emelia is a lovely metaphor for this; she is quite literally the ghost version of Sherlock who won’t die.

What does it mean, then, when Jim and Emelia become one and the same in the scene where Jim wears the bride’s dress? We initially read this as Jim being the foil to Sherlock, his dark side, but I think it’s more complicated than this. Sherlock’s brain is using Emelia as a means of understanding Jim, but when we watch the episode it seems that they’ve actually merged. Jim wearing the veil of the bride is a good example of this, but I also invite you to rewatch the moment when John is spooked by the bride the night that Eustace dies; the do not forget me song has an undeniable South Dublin accent.* This is quite possibly Yasmine Akram [Janine] rather than Andrew Scott, of course, but let’s not forget that these characters are resolutely similar, and hearing Jim’s accent in a genderless whisper is a pretty clear way of inflecting him into the image of the bride. In addition to this, Eustace then has ‘Miss Me?’ written on his corpse, cementing the link to Moriarty.

[*the South Dublin accent is my accent, so although we hear a half-whispered song for all of five seconds, I’m pretty certain about this]

Jim’s merging with Emelia calls to mind for me what I think might be the most important visual of all of series 4 – Eurus and Jim’s Christmas meeting, where they dance in circles with the glass between them and seem to merge into each other. I do talk about this in a later chapter, but TLDR – if Jim represents John being in danger and Eurus represents decades of repressed gay trauma, this merging is what draws the trauma to the surface just as Jim’s help is what suddenly makes Eurus a problem. It is John’s being in danger which makes Sherlock’s trauma suddenly spike and rise – he has to confront this for the first time – just like Emelia Ricoletti’s case from 1895 only needs solving for the first time now that Jim is back.

At some point I want to do a drag in Sherlock meta, because I think there’s a lot more to it than meets the eye, but Jim in a bride’s dress does draw one obvious drag parallel for me.

If you haven’t seen the music video for I Want to Break Free, it’s 3 minutes long and glorious – and also, I think, reaps dividends when seen in terms of Sherlock. You can watch it here: X

Not only is it a great video, but for British people of Mofftiss’s age, it’s culturally iconic and not something that would be forgotten when choosing that song for Jim. Queen were intending to lampoon Coronation Street, a British soap, and already on the wrong side of America for Freddie Mercury’s unapologetic queerness, found themselves under fire from the American censors. Brian May says that no matter how many times he tried to explain Coronation Street to the Americans, they just didn’t get it. This was huge controversy at the time, but the video and the controversy around it also managed to cement I Want to Break Free as Queen’s most iconic queer number – despite not even being one of Mercury’s songs. There is no way that Steven Moffat, and even more so Mark Gatiss would not have an awareness of this in choosing this song for Moriarty. Applying any visual to this song is going to invite comparisons to the video – and inflecting a sense of drag here is far from inappropriate. Moriarty has been subsumed into Eurus in Sherlock’s brain – the male and the female are fused into an androgynous and implicitly therefore all-encompassing being. I’m not necessarily comfortable with the gendered aspect of this – genderbending is something we really only see in our villains here – but given this is about queer trauma, deliberately queering its form in this way is making what we’re seeing much more explicit.

Nothing new under the sun

“The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun” (Ecclesiastes)

"Read it up -- you really should. There is nothing new under the sun. It has all been done before." (A Study in Scarlet, Sherlock Holmes)

“Hasn’t this all happened before? There’s nothing new under the sun.” (The Abominable Bride, Jim Moriarty)

This is arguably the key to spotting that TAB is a dream long before they tell us – when TAB’s case is early revealed to be a mixture between TRF (Emelia’s suicide) and TGG (the five pips), and we see the opening of ASiP repeated, we should be questioning what on earth is going on. This can also help us to recognise s4 as being EMP as well though – old motifs from the previous series keep repeating through the cases, like alarm bells ringing. Moriarty telling Sherlock that there is nothing new under the sun is his key to understanding that the Emelia case is meant to help him understand what happened to Jim, that it’s a mental allegory or mirror to help him parse it. This doesn’t go away when TAB ends! Moving into TST, one of the striking things is that cases are still repeating! The Six Thatchers appeared on John’s blog way back, before the fall – you can read it here: X. It’s about a gay love affair that ends in one participant killing the other. Take from that what you will, when John’s extramarital affection is making him suicidal and Sherlock comatose. Meanwhile, the title of The Final Problem refers to the story that was already covered in TRF and the phone situation with the girl on the plane references both ASiB and TGG, and the ending of TST is close to a rerun of HLV. It’s pretty much impossible to escape echoes of previous series in a way that is almost creepy, but we’ve already had this explained to us in TAB – none of this is real. It’s supposed to be explaining what is happening in the real world – and Mofftiss realised that this was going to be difficult to stomach, and so they included TAB as a kind of key to the rest of the EMP, which becomes much more complex.

However, if we want to go deeper we should look at where that quote comes from. I’ve given a few epigraphs to this section to show where the quote comes from – first the book of Ecclesiastes, then A Study in Scarlet. It’s one of the first things Holmes says and it is during his first deduction in Lauriston Gardens. This is where I’m going to dive pretty deep into the metatextual side of things, so bear with the weirdness.

[we’re going deeper]

Holmes’s first deduction from A Study in Scarlet shows that he’s no great innovator – he simply notices things and spots patterns from things he has seen before. This is highlighted by the fact that he even makes this claim by quoting someone before him. If our Sherlock also makes deductions based on patterns from the past, extensive dream sequences where he works through past cases as mirrors for present ones makes perfect sense and draws very cleverly on canon. However, I think his spotting of patterns goes deeper than that. Sherlock Holmes has been repressed since the publication of A Study in Scarlet, through countless adaptations in literature and film. Plenty of these adaptations as well as the original stories are referenced in the EMP, not least by going back to 1895, the year that symbolises the era in which most of these adaptations are set. (If you don’t already know it, check out the poem 221B by Vincent Starrett, one of the myriad of reasons why the year 1895 is so significant.) My feeling is that these adaptations, which have layered on top of each other in the public consciousness to cement the image of Sherlock Holmes the deductive machine [which he’s not, sorry Conan Doyle estate] come to symbolise the 100+ years of repression that Sherlock himself has to fight through to come out of the EMP as his queer self.

This is one of the reasons that the year 1895 is so important; it was the year of Oscar Wilde’s trial and imprisonment for gross indecency, and this is clearly a preoccupation of Sherlock’s consciousness in TFP with its constant Wilde references, suggesting that his MP’s choice of 1895 wasn’t coincidental. Much was made during TAB setlock of a newspaper that said ‘Heimish The Ideal Husband’, Hamish being John’s middle name and An Ideal Husband being one of Wilde’s plays. But the Vincent Starrett poem, although nostalgic and ostensibly lovely, for tjlcers and it seems for Sherlock himself symbolises something much more troubling. Do search up the full poem, but for now let’s look at the final couplet.

Here, though the world explode, these two survive

And it is always 1895

‘Though the world explode’ is a reference to WW1, which is coming in the final Sherlock Holmes story, and which is symbolised by Eurus – in other chapters, I explain why Eurus and WW1 are united under the concept of ‘winds of change’ in this show. Sherlock and John survive the winds of change – except they don’t move with them. Instead, they stay stuck in 1895, the year of ultimate repression. 2014!Sherlock going back in his head to 1895 and repeating how he met John suggests exactly that, that nothing has changed but the superficial, and that emotionally, he is still stuck in 1895.

Others have pulled out similar references to Holmes adaptations he has to push through in TAB – look at the way he talks in sign language to Wilder, which can only be a reference to Billy Wilder, director of TPLoSH, the only queer Holmes film, and a film which was forced to speak through coding because of the Conan Doyle estate. That film is also referenced by Eurus giving Sherlock a Stradivarius, which is a gift given to him in TPLoSH in exchange for feigning heterosexuality. Eurus is coded as Sherlock’s repression, and citing a repressive moment in a queer film as her first action when she meets Sherlock is another engagement by Sherlock’s psyche with his own cinematic history. My favourite metatextual moment of this nature, however, is the final scene of TFP which sees John and Sherlock running out of a building called Rathbone Place.

Basil Rathbone is one of the most iconic Sherlock Holmes actors on film, and Benedict’s costume in TAB and in particular the big overcoat look are very reminiscent of Rathbone.

Others have discussed (X) how the Victorian costume and the continued use of the deerstalker in the present day are images of Sherlock’s public façade and exclusion of queerness from his identity. It’s true that pretty much every Holmes adaptation has used the deerstalker, but the strong Rathbone vibes that come from Ben’s TAB costume ties the 1895 vibe very strongly into Rathbone. To have the final scene – and hopefully exit from the EMP – tie in with Sherlock and John running out of Rathbone Place tells us that, just as Sherlock cast off the deerstalker at the end of TAB (!), he has also cast off the iconic filmic Holmes persona which has never been true to his actual identity.

Waterfall scene

The symbol of water runs through TAB as well as s4 – others have written fantastic meta on why water represents Sherlock’s subconscious (X), but I want to give a brief outline. It first appears with the word ‘deeper’ which keeps reappearing, which then reaches a climax in the waterfall scene. The idea that Sherlock could drown in the waters of his mind is something that Moriarty explicitly references, suggesting that Sherlock could be ‘buried in his own Mind Palace’. The ‘deep waters’ line keeps repeating through series 4, and I just want to give the notorious promo photo from s4 which confirms the significance of the motif.

This is purely symbolic – it never happens in the show. Water increases in significance throughout – think of Sherlock thinking he’s going mad in his mind as he is suspended over the Thames, or the utterly nonsensical placement of Sherrinford in the middle of the ocean – the deepest waters of Sherlock’s mind. Much like the repetition of cases hinting that EMP continues, the use of water is something that appears in the MP, and it sticks around from TAB onwards, a real sign that we’re going deeper and deeper. I talk about this more in the bit on TFP, but the good news is that Sherrinford is the most remote place they could find in the ocean – that’s the deepest we’re going. After that, we’re coming out (of the mind).

Shortly after TAB aired, I wrote a meta about the waterfall scene, some of which I now disagree with, but the core framework still stands – it did not, of course, bank on EMP theory. You can find it here (X), but I want to reiterate the basic framework, because it still makes a lot of sense. Jim represents the fear of John’s suicide, and Jim can only be defeated by Sherlock and John together, not one alone – and crucially, calling each other by first names, which would have been very intimate in the Victorian era. After Jim is “killed”, we have Sherlock’s fall. The concept of a fall (as in IOU a fall) has long been linked with falling in love in tjlc. Sherlock tells John that it’s not the fall that kills you, it’s the landing, something that Jim has been suggesting to him for a while. What is the landing, then? Well, Sherlock Holmes fell in love back in the Victorian era, symbolised by the ultra repressive 1895, and that’s where he jumps from – but he lands in the 21st century. Falling in love won’t kill him in the modern day. What I missed that time around, of course, was that despite breaking through the initial Victorian layers of repression, he still dives into more water, and when the plane lands, it still lands in his MP, just in a mental state where the punishment his psyche deals him for homosexuality is less severe. This also sets up s4 as specifically dealing with the problem of the fall – Sherlock jumps to the 21st century specifically to deal with the consequences of his romantic and sexual feelings. There’s a parallel here with Mofftiss time jumping; back when they made A Study in Twink in 2009, there was a reason they made the time jump. Having Sherlock’s psyche have that touch of self-awareness helps to illustrate why they made a similar jump, also dealing with the weight of previous adaptations.

Women

I preface this by saying how incredibly uncomfortable I find the positioning of women as the KKK in TAB. It’s a parallel which is unforgivable; frankly, invoking the KKK without interrogating the whiteness of the show or even mentioning race is unacceptable. Steven Moffat’s ability to write women has consistently been proven to be nil, but this is a new low. However, the presence of women in TAB is vital, so on we go.

TAB specifically deals with the question of those excluded from a Victorian narrative. This is specifically tied into to those who are excluded from the stories, such as Jane and Mrs. Hudson. Mrs. Hudson’s complaint is in the same scene as John telling her and Sherlock to blame the problems on the illustrator. This ties back to the deerstalker metaphor which is so prevalent in this episode; something that’s not in the stories at all, but a façade by which Holmes is universally recognised and which as previously referenced masks his queerness. Women, then, are not the only people being excluded from the narrative. When Mycroft tells us that the women have to win, he’s also talking about queer people. This is a war that we must lose.

I don’t think the importance of Molly in particular here has been mentioned before, but forgive me if I’m retreading old ground. However, Molly always has importance in Sherlock as a John mirror, and just because she is dressed as a man here doesn’t mean we should disregard this. If anything, her ridiculous moustache is as silly as John’s here! Molly, although really a member of the resistance, is able to pass in the world she moves in in 1895, but only by masking her own identity. This is exactly what happens to John in the Victorian era – as a bisexual man married to a woman, he is able to pass, but it is not his true identity. More than that, Molly is a member of the resistance, suggesting not just that John is queer but that he’s aware of it and actively looking for it to change.

I know I was joking about Molly and John’s moustaches, but putting such a silly moustache on Molly links to the silliness of John’s moustaches, which only appear when he’s engaged to a woman and in the Victorian era. He has also grown the moustache just so the illustrator will recognise him, and Molly has grown her moustache so that she will be recognised as a man. In this case, Molly is here to demonstrate the fact that John is passing, but only ever passing. Furthermore, Molly, who is normally the kindest person in the whole show, is bitter and angry throughout TAB – it’s not difficult to see then how hiding one’s identity can affect one’s mental health. I really do think that John is a lot more abrasive in TAB than he is in the rest of the show, but that’s not the whole story. Showing how repression can completely impair one’s personality also points to the suicidal impulses that are lurking just out of sight throughout TAB – this is what Sherlock is terrified of, and again his brain is warning him just what it is that is causing John this much pain and uncharacteristic distress.

This is just about the loosest sketch of TAB that could exist! But TAB meta has been so extensive that going over it seems futile, or else too grand a project within a short chapter. Certain theories are still formulating, and may appear at a later date! But what this chapter (I hope) has achieved has set up the patterns that we’re going to see play out in s4 – between the metatextuality, the waters of the mind and the role of Moriarty in the psyche, we can use TAB as a key with which to read s4. I like to think of it as a gift from Mofftiss, knowing just how cryptic s4 would be – and these are the basic clues with which to solve it.

That’s it for TAB, at least in this series – next up we’re going ever deeper, to find out exactly who is Eurus. See you then?

#tjlc #emp theory #thewatsonbeekeepers #my meta #meta #mine #chapter four: it is always 1895 #vincent starrett #mofftiss #1895 #bbc sherlock #johnlock #tjlc is real

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eclecticanalyst · 4 years ago

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We’re Expecting You...To Boldly Go [part 2]

In my last post, I expounded on the similarities in the general premise and structure of The Love Boat and Star Trek: The Next Generation, two shows that on the surface seem not to have much in common but on closer examination have some unexpected similarities. In my follow-up post on this theme, I will be drawing parallels between the main/regular characters of both shows. The crew lineup on each ship can be broken down into six character functions/profiles: The Captain, The Captain’s Confidant, The Big Brother, The Two Buds, The Chick, and The Kid.

The Captain

Star Trek TNG: Captain Jean-Luc Picard

The Love Boat: Captain Merrill Stubing

“The Captain” is...the captain! Beyond his role as the primary authority figure, he can be characterized in the following ways. Being the one to whom the rest of the crew reports, he is a bit socially removed from the rest of the main characters. While they can pal around with each other, they still treat him with a bit more deference even as he comes to be just as integral a part of their found family as the rest of them. The Captain can be rather intimidating at times—especially in the early days, when he had a tendency to be overly gruff with his crew. Part of that gruffness is the fact that he has very high standards for the people who serve under him. At the same time, however, he cares deeply for those people and is willing to put himself on the line for them, even bending the rules a bit in order to help them out of a difficult spot. He’s full of thoughtful advice should one of his crew ask for it, and is the most likely of the crew to give speeches about moral responsibility. He also has a playful streak, which he keeps under wraps but uses to mess with his crew from time to time. In terms of appearance, he’s older than the rest of the cast and he is bald(ing). He’s played by the best actor of the cast—Patrick Stewart is, of course, Patrick Stewart, I don’t think I really need to say more there, and Gavin MacLeod was a veteran actor (probably best known at that point for his role as Murray on The Mary Tyler Moore Show), able to handle both the comic and the dramatic whenever needed.

The Captain’s Confidant

Star Trek TNG: Dr. Beverly Crusher

The Love Boat: Dr. Adam “Doc” Bricker

I could have called this character profile “The Doctor,” following the same pattern as “The Captain,” but there was another aspect to Beverly and Doc that I wanted to draw attention to, beyond their being the respective healers of their crews. Both Beverly and Doc have a slightly different relationship with the Captain than the other members of the crew. They are a bit closer to the Captain, able to address him easily as a friend instead of as a superior officer if the situation calls for it. Notice that when working, Beverly will address Picard as “Captain” and “sir,” but when it’s just the two of them chatting in a more intimate setting she calls him “Jean-Luc.” Beverly is also one of the few people on board that Picard is comfortable with opening up to regarding his own insecurities or worries, while he takes more care to maintain his “self-assured captain” persona with everyone else. The same dynamic plays out between Stubing and Doc: there are several instances of Doc addressing his friend as “Merrill”—which none of the other members of the crew would even consider doing—and the power difference between the two is not as pronounced as it is between the captain and the other crew members. Whenever Captain Stubing has a personal problem, he goes to Doc for advice, and vice versa. Dr. Crusher and Captain Picard have a history, having been friends long before he took command of the Enterprise. In the same vein, Doc seems to know Captain Stubing’s past more intimately than the rest of the crew, as there are a few episodes in which the two of them discuss Captain Stubing’s alcohol addiction and current status as a teetotaler as if this is something Doc has always known about Merrill.

The Big Brother

Star Trek TNG: William Riker

The Love Boat: Adam “Doc” Bricker

So this is cheating a bit because I already have Doc listed under a character profile above, but TNG’s main cast has more people than that of TLB, so a one-to-one mapping wasn’t going to happen anyway. Doc’s “Captain’s Confidant” role deals with his relationship with the captain, and his “Big Brother” role deals with his relationship with the rest of the regulars. The fact that Doc is a bit older than Julie, Isaac, and Gopher means that even though he, like the rest of them, is under the supervision of the captain, he has a slight position of seniority over the other three. He balances the by-turns mischievous and responsible aspects of an older brother figure—he’ll tease Julie about her latest infatuation, and set up elaborate pranks to mess with Gopher, yet whenever Gopher and Isaac get swept up in some not-well-thought-out scheme, he’s the level-headed one who tries to point out that they’ve gotten carried away—or sometimes refuses to get involved altogether. William Riker is, of course, first officer of the Enterprise, and therefore has the same seniority-among-underlings position (in a more official chain of command capacity than Doc does). His big-brother-ness manifests as the poker-playing, jazz-loving guy who will do things like give Worf’s son music recordings that he knows Worf will hate one day but get actively upset and almost personally offended at the idea of Data getting hurt the next.

Not necessarily related to the “Big Brother” role, but another little parallel between Doc and Riker that I would like to point out—they are each the designated ladies’ man of their ships, yet both are able to completely switch to focusing solely on their job responsibilities the moment it is called for. (Honestly, Doc always struck me as going beyond “ladies’ man” and skirting dangerously close to “creep” territory at times, but I did appreciate how he would always drop everything the instant there was any sort of medical issue on the Princess.)

The Two Buds

Star Trek TNG: Geordi La Forge and Data

The Love Boat: Isaac Washington and Burl “Gopher” Smith

Although both the TNG and TLB crews form a group of close friends, The Two Buds are best friends. They are the two most likely people to hang out together in their down time, the two who understand each other the best, the two most sympathetic to each other’s problems and most likely to indulge the other long after everyone else would have put their foot down. When Gopher gets some conspiracy theory into his head about a passenger, Isaac will hear him out and sometimes even help him investigate. When Data wants to do some questionable experimentation on his positronic net, Geordi is there with a tricorder making sure the whole thing doesn’t go completely haywire. Data once said that he didn’t know what a friend was until he met Geordi, and Isaac once told Gopher that he (Gopher) is the only one Isaac would resign in solidarity for. All four men/androids have a tendency to get a little too wrapped up in their obsession of the week—see Isaac’s novel-writing attempts, Geordi’s holographic Leah Brahms, Gopher’s conspiracy theories, and about half of anything Data does.

Each pair also consists of one white guy and one Black guy. (Obviously, Data is an android and therefore is not technically any human race or ethnicity, but he’s played by a white guy and his artificial skin is paler than anyone else’s skin on the senior staff.) The white guy representatives, Gopher and Data, are almost polar opposites—Data is calm and logical, and Captain Picard trusts him implicitly, while Gopher is a goof who freaks out easily and who is often upset with the way Captain Stubing dismisses him (those dismissals are especially prominent in the first few seasons—Gopher does mellow out later on). But they do have some similarities, one of the most striking being that they both struggle with appropriate social behavior as well as their own emotions. This is more readily apparent with Data, of course, who is literally not human and is trying his best to understand the nuances of things like humor and love, constantly asking his friends to explain behaviors they take for granted. Gopher’s struggles are more understated—he has a tendency to make comments and observations that the rest of the crew find slightly tasteless, he goes into several anxious tailspins over the course of the show, and he at one point believes his emotional attachments to his friends compromise his ability to fulfill his job duties. Both Data and Gopher use their respective best friends—each of whom are the more level-headed of the pair—as a steadying force.

Now for the characteristics shared by those respective best friends. The Black guy’s job responsibilities root him in a specific place and often set him slightly apart from the main action. While Geordi can and does go up to the bridge on several occasions, as Chief of Engineering he spends most of his time hanging around the warp core, communicating with the bridge over the com system. Meanwhile, Isaac can be seen wandering hallways and so forth, but he spends most of his time behind the bar, whether that’s in the Acapulco Lounge, on the Lido Deck, or in Pirate’s Cove. The rest of the crew, despite having nominal work stations like the Enterprise bridge or the Pacific Princess purser’s lobby, are seen to roam more extensively. (I’m pretty sure we never see Julie’s office.) Isaac is busy serving drinks in pretty much every episode while Doc and Gopher are chatting and dancing with passengers on the dance floor of the Acapulco Lounge. The Black guy also gets the short end of the stick in the romance department. When you see a Black guest actor on the opening credits of The Love Boat, it’s a good bet that Isaac will be involved in their storyline. If it’s just one Black woman, there’s a 99% chance that Isaac will be involved in her story, and his involvement will be as her love interest. I remember one particularly glaring example of the show going to extreme lengths to avoid even hinting that Isaac could potentially do something vaguely romantic or sexual with a white woman—Julie’s hosting her high school reunion on the ship, and there are a few scenes where everyone is discoing in the Acapulco Lounge. Isaac gets out on the dance floor, and conveniently some random Black woman appears out of nowhere as his dance partner. This woman is not named or acknowledged at any other point in the episode. Over on the Enterprise, Geordi isn’t restricted along race lines like Isaac, but I find it highly suspicious that the one Black guy is the least successful in romance out of everyone on the senior staff. Geordi struggles to even start up a conversation with women he’s attracted to, let alone flirt with them. Data has a better romance track record than Geordi does, and Data usually ends up in a romantic entanglement by accident! It’s as if the show was afraid to let Geordi enjoy those kinds of relationships to the same degree as the rest of the crew, which is a different kind of restriction than Isaac’s, but still a restriction nonetheless.

The Chick

Star Trek TNG: Deanna Troi

The Love Boat: Julie McCoy

The standard lineup for both TNG and The Love Boat consisted two female main characters, thus allowing the ladies to gossip about “girly” things in keeping with gender stereotypes, but Vicki was a preteen/teenager and Beverly had a sort of matron vibe going on, which left Julie and Troi to be the respective sex appeal characters out of the main cast. The Chick has non-standard dress that sets her apart from the others and their status as officers. While Doc, Gopher, and Captain Stubing wore nautical stripes and white uniforms (and Isaac usually had a variation on this outfit, wearing a red or blue jacket), with very little in the way of costume changes whether they were greeting boarding passengers, chatting on the Lido deck, or dancing in the Acapulco Lounge, Julie had no stripes to speak of. She would wear a (feminine) uniform at boarding, switch to a casual outfit during the rest of the day, and was always wearing a gown of some sort in the evenings. Deanna Troi for her part cycled through purple jumpsuits and asymmetrical dresses, her Starfleet badge precariously pinned to her neckline. We didn’t even get to see the pips indicating her rank until she was finally given (in story, ordered into) a normal uniform in season six.

The Chick gets saddled with way too many romance plots, some creepier than others. Giving Troi something substantial to do in an episode usually consisted of making her the love interest of whoever happened to be boarding the Enterprise that week, like the ambassador with the telepathic interpreters or the quarter-Betazoid interplanetary negotiator. Deanna also got her mind invaded by a man who was interested in her, prematurely aged by a man who took advantage of her, and kidnapped by Ferengi (who have a disturbing species-wide infatuation with non-Ferengi women). I’m not as upset about Julie having several romance-related plots, as romance was the name of the game on The Love Boat and the men on the crew had their own share of romantic entanglements—but I do find issue with the fact that when Julie was in love she always seemed on the verge of getting married and leaving the ship, which was a vibe we didn’t really get from, say, Doc or Gopher when their love lives turned particularly intense. In terms of creepiness, Julie had to deal with fending off the extremely aggressive advances of Captain Stubing’s uncle, a computer programmer who rigged his dating algorithm to ensure he matched with her, and a college acquaintance of Gopher who actually came to her door to badger her as she was getting dressed.

The Kid

Star Trek TNG: Wesley Crusher

The Love Boat: Vicki Stubing

For some reason, both of these shows thought it necessary to have a preteen/teenager in the cast whose character has way more responsibility than is realistic for either a cruise ship or a pseudomilitary starship. Instead of Vicki wearing a uniform and checking in guests on the Pacific Princess, we really should have seen Julie’s or Gopher’s staff fulfilling check-in duty (Doc and Isaac were also too often seen checking in passengers, which I will say again is a duty that on a real cruise ship would definitely not fall to either the ship’s doctor or chief bartender, but we’re talking about Vicki at the moment). Wesley, meanwhile, was made Acting Ensign on the Enterprise, saving the ship way more than he should have and probably earning the ire of all the official ensigns who actually went to Starfleet Academy and were losing precious time at the conn due to Picard’s favoritism.

Speaking of Picard, The Captain has a paternal relationship with The Kid—literally in Vicki Stubing’s case, emotionally in Wesley Crusher’s. He is very concerned with imbuing The Kid with strong morals, and has a vested interest in The Kid’s upbringing and making sure The Kid has a bright future. Meanwhile, the rest of the main crew are like an assortment of aunts and uncles, being the cool, approachable sources of advice when The Captain’s not around. In fact, The Kid hardly seems to have any friends their own age. Instead, they hang out with the adult crew members and get involved in their social drama, which may or may not have always been appropriate.

Isn’t there someone you forgot?

The TNG fans among you may now be thinking to yourselves, “What about Worf?” Alas, there seems to be no satisfactory Worf counterpart on The Love Boat. After all, there isn’t really any need for a tactical officer on a cruise ship, so a warrior-type personality is not represented on the Pacific Princess crew. Other Worf characteristics would be that of an outsider, or one who is occasionally not sure if they truly belong on the ship, but everyone on the Princess seems pretty happy to be there. I guess in a pinch I could say Ace, the late-addition ship’s photographer, might serve as Worf’s counterpart, but other than the fact that Ace’s family is rich and it is established that he doesn’t really need a job on the ship to get by, I’m not sure there’s much of an “outsider” status brought to the table here. I also haven’t watched enough Ace episodes to have a really good read on his character.

Thus ends my Love Boat/TNG comparison! It was nice to finally get this analysis out of my head and onto the page.

#the love boat #star trek #tng #comparison

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kisarastrife · 4 years ago

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Howdy! I read paper roses years ago and I was uber excited when I read you were updating it! I loved the fic when it first came out and I literally cannot wait for when you find the time to upload a new chapter but omg i love the rewritten chapters!!!

Hello!

Awwww thank you so much for this lovely message! Like I said previously, I’m working on a new chapter parallel to rewriting the older ones because it helps me get into the same head-space I was in when writing the story waaaaaay back when it was first published.

Which was 2009. Paper Roses turns 12 years old this year. Which I’m appalled and amazed and gobsmacked by. I was in Ireland’s version of high-school when the little plotbunny marched into my head. I was 17. I’m now terrifyingly drawing close to 30 and I think having had more life experiences has allowed me to look back on Paper Roses and tackle its themes through a more mature lens.

I love the ideas I had/have, but I can recognise that I was writing a story that was at times too big for me.

I didn’t have the means through which to explore darker and heavier themes with the emphasis and weight they deserved. And I got sidetracked and distracted. I didn’t have Kaiba sounding as Kaiba-esque as he should have. There are themes in Seto’s childhood I glossed over that could be sooooo interesting to delve into and link to his adult behaviour, so I plan to do that. On the flip-side, the same could be said for Kisara. I gave her a certain domestic background, but the setting-up of that trauma was absent in the earlier chapters. I’m gonna rectify that.

So I’m hoping that this rewrite will streamline that? Some chapters will have little changes such as integrating the dialogue and movement paragraphs to be more natural instead of the broken dialogue-and-prose style I previously used. But some chapters may be overhauled to delete needless parts or reference future aspects. When I’m eventually done, I want to be able to re-read Paper Roses and see there was a plot at work from the earliest chapters. Hopefully.

But thank you so much, if it wasn’t for the amazingly loyal readers and the constant lovely messages I’ve received over the years, there’s no way I would still be committed to and writing the same story over a twelve year span. Paper Roses has been my best friend and worst enemy for twelve years. It’s my escapism from life, from the pandemic, from work and I love the little world I made and the friends who have connected with me because of this story.

I love you guys and I owe you all so much.

In an attempt to show some tiny sliver of the gratitude I feel towards you guys, under the cut here is just a little excerpt of what I’m working on at the moment:

The opening of eastern Domino's new Business Centre was a grand day. Basked in the summer sun with countless news crews in attendance.

Finding herself at Mokuba’s side for most of the day, she was in awe of Seto’s younger brother - the teenager just had such an affable way with people, it was no wonder he was the driving force behind KaibaCorp’s renewed social-media presence. He’d even managed to convince her to appear in a handful of pictures and videos, though Seto still only responded with a glower when asked to join in by his younger brother. Kisara could honestly say her cheeks ached from laughing by the end of the opening ceremony.

But she had also forgotten that life had a way of giving things a little shake when the atmosphere became too relaxed, too calm and happy.

It started at the launch itself. Dressed to perfection by her team of stylists and without even a summer breeze daring to interfere with her dress or strategically-pinned hair, Kisara had the distinct feeling she was being watched. It was a ludicrous thought at first – of course she was being watched; there were countless cameras and journalists present, along with the eyes of the KaibaCorp security team watching the goings-on. But this was different. Turning on the spot as Mokuba answered a journalist, Kisara looked into the calling banks of reporters and flashing cameras. Through the unfamiliar faces and people calling her name, she saw him at the heart of the crowd. The noise of the crowd dimmed and faded away and in a frozen moment Kisara felt her heart plummet to the ground and her blood run cold: it was her uncle. He was here. But he couldn’t be. Fear bolted through her and her heartbeat raced. It made no sense. He looked different; older, thinner and dirtier … a robe around him and one eye covered by lank grey hair. “- what do you think, Kisara?”

Mokuba’s voice barely registered with her, but it was his hand tapping her elbow that made her blink back to the here and now. Her uncle’s face was gone from the crowd and a glance to the closest security member showed no hint they had seen anything either. Searching the crowd for another second, she tried to push away the terrible shiver running up and down her spine. He couldn’t be here. It was tiredness and the flashing of cameras having an effect on her, or the ever-present worry about her family’s Estates. “S-sorry, I didn’t catch that.”

She offered a small smile in lieu of an apology to the polite lady reporter; she recognised her from the Domino nightly news station. Kisara fidgeted with her engagement ring and looked back up at Mokuba, who was already back to charming the lady with his grin. “Kinda hard to hear one question when everyone wants to be heard, huh?”

#kisara #blueshipping #paper roses #seto kaiba #mokuba kaiba #Anonymous

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ramblings-of-a-mad-cat · 4 years ago

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I have decided to remove anon, I was the one that talked about Ilvermorny exchange student tlsq. I never intended for Angelo to parallel Merula, only mc and maybe Skye, but that's OK.

More info about him: His father was a muggle born that loved to explore magic, and one of those ways was to make wands out of different cores and wood. He was a well respected wandmaker. Angelo's mom was an author that wrote fiction for the muggle and wizarding world. They disappeared while travelling the world to explore more parts of the wizarding world. Angelo also had a squib aunt that went looking for his parents but ended up abandoning that goal and Angelo, moving to Spain. He learned how to live by himself and because of that, he thought that he was better than everyone else. He also has insecurities he tries to combat by being a jerk to everyone besides the adults and his friends. He favors those who he thinks are especially skilled, like the Quidditch characters. He also teaches mc Quodpot halfway into the tlsq. That's all I could think about. Feel free to add some stuff yourself if you want!

It’s so great to see you unmasked! I’ve definitely spied you in my notifications before, and it’s always fun to connect a face to one of my recurring anons. I am nothing if not curious. And Angelo doesn’t have to parallels Merula, I just have a habit of drawing comparisons and Merula is one of my favorites, I think of her as integral to the HPHM story, etc.

Wandmaking is one of those elusive, most fascinating branches of magic, that I would love to see some kind of exploration of. I could literally sit in front of a doc for hours, flipping between my notes and Pottermore details, planning out wands for my various OCs, and I have done so. I’m always up for learning more about it or seeing the ideas explored. Always makes me think of this trailer for a fan-series that never actually got made but looks so damn good. (Fun fact, that’s my old Director playing Ollivander.)

Squibs are another aspect of this world that I don’t see talked about very often, in-universe or among the fandom, so I’m always glad to see another. I can’t even begin to imagine how much that must suck. To be what is essentially a muggle, raised in the Wizarding world but never able to truly join, shunned forever, perhaps even more than muggle-borns.

Trying to combat insecurity by means of being cruel...well if that isn’t every bully ever born. That’s so depressing and yet so realistic. Right down to gravitating one-self toward the strong and favoring them. I mean when I say he reminds me of Merula...yeah, that’s kind of why. And I think it could be interesting to see the two of them meet for the first time, and how they would interact and play off each other.

#Hogwarts Mystery OC #Harry Potter #Harry Potter Analysis #HPHM Jacob's Sibling #Merula Snyde #Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery

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neuxue · 5 years ago

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Wheel of Time liveblogging: Towers of Midnight ch 4

Perrin goes hunting and we consider the problems with zero-sum solitaire, and Galad... is Galad.

Chapter 4: The Pattern Groans

We’re with Perrin, but it smells like corpses and the grass looks infected and it’s not the first time this has been brought up, so… how sure are we the Blight is staying put?

Oh, the Aes Sedai agree. Is this part of the Pattern fraying and the Dark One reaching out into the world, then? That the Blight sort of crops up in those stretched spaces?

Especially because at this point in the timeline, Rand’s not exactly counteracting it.

Light, Perrin thought, taking the leaf as Nevarin handed it to him. It smelled of decay. What kind of world is it where the Blight is the good alternative?

I don’t know, ask Lan.

“It’s probably not dangerous,” Perrin said.

Presented without further context. Famous last words, Perrin. Right up there with ‘a trap’s not a trap if you know it’s there’ –Rand al’Thor.

Meanwhile Perrin’s still dealing with Office Politics: Epic Fantasy Edition on a constant basis. Well, you and Egwene will have plenty to talk about when you finally meet in Tel’aran’rhiod or maybe for that dance you owe her on Sunday.

(I have absolutely no expectation of the latter happening; I just like to remember it sometimes because it’s the right kind of sad. The former though… please).

If only those clouds would pass so they could get some good sunlight to dry the soil

Given where you seem to be relative to Rand’s timeline, Perrin, you… might be waiting a little while. Might I recommend an umbrella? Or perhaps some fire insurance?

A strange village with an architectural style that seems out of place? Shiota again, perhaps? Either way, You probably do not want to go into that village. You may not ever come out. Well, okay, you’re a protagonist so you’ll probably be fine, but all the same.

Light! How bad were things becoming?

The thing with the timeline misalignment is that it takes away from the effect of this a little bit, for me. Because while I get that the Pattern itself is being strained and the Dark One is drawing closer to the world and all that, and Rand’s revelation on Dragonmount isn’t going to immediately fix everything, some of the tension there is gone. When such a major arc has finally passed its darkest point and reached a kind of catharsis, it’s a little weird to then go back to ‘okay but pretend that hasn’t happened yet’.

So, yes, I think this is probably not specifically related to Rand (inasmuch as anything at this point can be said to be not related to Rand, given his power and his role and his Fisher King-like link to the entire world), and therefore isn’t just a ‘oh don’t worry this will fix once the timelines are caught up’ but I can’t help feeling some of that anyway.

“Burn the village,” he said, turning. “Use the One Power.”

Should’ve invited Rand.

WOLF DREAM WOLF DREAM WOLF DREAM!

Even in Tel’aran’rhiod there’s a storm. But again, I can’t help but feel that some of the impact that should have (‘I am the storm’) is lacking a little, now. It’s not a major criticism and a lot of it is probably just me, but… I don’t know. It just feels ever so slightly off.

The wolves are calling to Perrin and so of course we come back to his central conflict with himself but surely this, too, must be approaching its point of crisis soon. There’s just not that much time left, and he’s been circling this one for so long, and especially after Malden he’s constantly being forced to look at it, just as Rand came closer and closer to that necessary confrontation with himself and the part of him that was Lews Therin and what he’s doing.

The invitations awakened something deep within him, the wolf he tried to keep locked away. But a wolf could not be locked up for long. It either escaped or it died

This touches on a particularly ironic aspect of this conflict: Perrin tries to lock the wolf aspect of himself away, to shut it out and refuse it, because he is afraid of losing himself to it. But it is a part of himself, and so by shutting it away in order to keep from losing who he is, he is in fact trying to kill or lose… a part of who he is.

Again, there’s the obvious parallel to Rand here, and the whole question of how to accept a part of yourself you’re terrified of, a part of yourself you hate or fear or cannot reconcile with the rest of your self-perception. The whole struggle of identity, of acceptance and denial, of answering that age-old question of who are you?

And I like how we get to watch so many different characters take on that struggle, from slightly different directions or with slightly different variations, but at the centre of it all that same question of identity, and what it means to be who you are versus who you must be versus who you choose to be, and how to find that balance. So many characters at war with themselves one way or another, and ultimately they all have to find some way to make peace, and so we just get Identity: Theme and Variation across the series.

(Of course, there are also the characters who aren’t at war with themselves, and whose stories of identity take on a slightly different flavour – Egwene being an obvious example – but I’ll just… save that one for another time or else we’ll be here all day).

“No!” Perrin said, sitting up, holding his head. “I will not lose myself in you.”

(Said Rand to Lews Therin).

Except by denying them, Perrin, you only lose a different part of yourself. And if so much of your energy and self is dedicated to fighting yourself, are you not also then lost? You can’t win a war when you are your own opponent.

He’s looking at this as a zero-sum game: himself against the wolf, and only one can win, and the other must be lost. And so he chooses himself, and tries to suppress or defeat the wolf, but it’s not a zero-sum game, for the very simple reason that there is no other player. He just thinks there is. Much as Rand viewed Lews Therin as an opponent, rather than as a part of himself.

In summary: don’t play prisoner’s dilemma with yourself, because that way lies madness.

You are invited, Young Bull, Hopper sent.

An invitation, not a demand. A gift, an offering, and of course a choice. It’s not something trying to consume him or fight him.

“Hopper, we spoke of this. I’m losing myself. When I go into battle, I become enraged. Like a wolf.”

Like a wolf? Hopper sent. Young Bull, you are a wolf. And a man. Come hunt.

I like the way they talk almost across each other here; Perrin is so set on viewing this as a fight, as a zero-sum game, as an either-or. And Hopper doesn’t understand what he’s on about, because as far as Hopper is concerned, Perrin is a man and a wolf and the two are not mutually exclusive. (Rand and Lews Therin are one and the same).

“I will not let this consume me.” He thought of a young man with golden eyes, locked in a cage, all humanity gone from him.

Except that as he is now, the wolf-aspect of him is effectively encaged, and that’s probably not healthy either. Still, though, so long as he insists on seeing it as something separate to himself, something invasive or antagonistic or other, some part of him will always be trapped.

Which… we’re given Noam as an example, and I do think there’s a path down which Perrin could theoretically end up being ‘consumed’ by the wolf, just as there was a path down which Rand could have ended up, as Moiraine put it, calling himself Lews Therin and Lanfear’s devoted lover. Or, you know, killing his father and the world and himself, and succumbing to the exact fate he pushed Lews Therin away in fear of in the first place.

Because when you’re that committed to framing it as a fight, and suppressing one side or the other, it’s hard to keep it from becoming that, even if that’s not what it ‘should’ be. Not all battles against oneself end in reconciliation. But there’s a bitter kind of irony to it, in that I think the only way Perrin would end up truly ‘losing himself’ to the wolf would be because he framed it as something he could lose to in the first place. (Or, I suppose, if he specifically chose that path and chose to suppress the human side of himself instead).

“I must learn to control this, or I must banish the wolf from me,” Perrin said.

Except that perception, right there, is the entire reason it’s such a struggle in the first place right now. It’s not an either-or. They’re not two separate things, and it’s not something that needs to be leashed.

It's that whole… the more you fight against some part of yourself, the harder it becomes to actually keep it in check, and so we arrive back at something very like ‘surrender to control’. Or, perhaps more accurately, ‘accept in order to control’. Control being also not quite the right word here, because that’s also part of the point.

Basically, throwing up a wall against parts of yourself you’re afraid of rather than understanding them and figuring out how to integrate or improve or work with or channel or grow past or whatever-else them is not a sustainable solution, Perrin. Because those parts of you aren’t just going to go away if you deny them strongly enough; you have to at least understand them, and acknowledge them for what they are, and then you can figure out where you want to go from there. Which, likely, will mean recognising that they’re neither as simple-black-and-white nor as terrifying as you think. It just also means having to do some introspection and maybe realise some things about yourself that challenge your existing self-image. It’s good for you. As Rand could perhaps tell you, once he’s done picking apples.

I do sort of wish this could have been done in the previous book, aligned with Rand’s own last stages of his fight with himself and eventual realisation – sort of the way the cascading ending of characters coming into their power was done in TSR – but also I get that sometimes it’s just not possible to fit everything in exactly the way you want. I promise I’ll stop complaining about having to play timeline catch-up soon.

Anyway, Hopper’s bored of this and wants to go hunting already. Especially because he’s looking at the calendar and realising they have maybe half a term to cram at least a few years’ worth of learning into, so can we get on with it already.

In a previous visit to the wolf dream, Perrin had demanded that Hopper train him to master the place. Very inappropriate for a young wolf – a kind of challenge to the elder’s seniority – but this was a response. Hopper had come to teach, but he would do it as a wolf taught.

Yes. And I think the point there, beyond anything to do with a challenge to seniority, is that if Perrin is going to learn how to walk the wolf dream, he’s going to have to come to terms with the part of him that brings him there in the first place. He can’t learn if he’s holding half of himself back at the same time.

“I will hunt with you – but I must not lose myself.”

But this is you, Perrin. And okay on the whole issue of hunting, I think Perrin sees it as a kind of… succumbing to base instincts, which is part of why he fights it. But I really don’t think that’s what we’re talking about here. I don’t think it’s ‘sure, go for murder breaks whenever you get bored’; I think it’s about… finding a balance in the side of himself that is capable of violence and that thrills in a fight, not by just letting it run wild but just by… understanding that it’s there, because once he does that, he can decide how to direct it.

I mean, we all have parts of ourselves that maybe aren’t always fit for polite company, but pretending they don’t exist isn’t going to make them go away, but understanding them and accepting them sometimes makes it easier to find another way to channel them that’s more… well, I suppose the word Perrin would want here is ‘controlled’. But really, I think it’s more ‘conscious’.

To use his own analogy, it’s the whole ‘the iron in front of him, not dreams of silver’ idea. Work with what you have; understand the components for what they are. That doesn’t mean you can’t work them at all, or reshape them, or hone them, or turn them into something better; it just means seeing those pieces, those starting points, honestly. And understanding what will and won’t work in terms of shaping them. He’s been given these pieces of metal but he insists on not using some of them, or on not even looking at them closely enough to see what metal they are, and I don’t know anything about metalworking so should probably stop this analogy here before I break it.

Anyway Hopper is just enjoying the opportunity to drag Perrin repeatedly, for his own amusement and that of the other wolves.

Meanwhile Perrin’s getting stuck in the long grass, which is absolutely not a metaphor for anything.

I can’t ignore my problems! Perrin thought back.

Yet you often do, Hopper sent.

Well and if that’s not a perfect summary of Perrin’s arc pretty much since the Two Rivers, I don’t know what is. ‘I can’t ignore my problems,’ says Perrin, ignoring at least five problems he doesn’t want to acknowledge in favour of the one or two he can do something about.

Or, as may be more accurately the case, ignoring his own problems in favour of the external ones he can hammer out a solution for.

Credit where it’s due: Perrin knows Hopper’s right.

There, lying on the ground, were the three chunks of metal he’d forged in his earlier dream. The large lump the size of two fists, the flattened rod, the thin rectangle.

Those are oddly specific. Shame there’s not twenty-three of them.

I’d say it sounds like the makings of a hammer except I don’t know what the thin rectangle would be in that case, and he already has a hammer.

Oh hey his prophetic dream-visions are back! It’s been a minute.

Mat stood there. He was fighting against himself, a dozen different men wearing his face, all dressed in different types of fine clothing. Mat spun his spear, and never saw the shadowy figure creeping behind him, bearing a bloody knife.

So the immediate association I have between Mat and a knife is, of course, the ruby dagger currently in the hands of our good friend Padan Fain. Though I suppose we’ve also now introduced the Seanchan Bloodknives to the scene, which would fit with the whole ‘shadowy figure’ as well.

But it’s the rest of this vision that has me intrigued, here. Because my immediate thought – that he’s fighting himself in the sense of all the men whose memories he now holds – doesn’t really make sense at all, because Mat accepted those memories a long time ago; they’ve not felt like a challenge to his identity in nearly the same way as the wolves have been for Perrin or Lews Therin was for Rand.

So then… more figurative? Is it still an identity thing but more about reconciling all the different roles he holds, that pull him in different directions (and some, like his status as Prince of the Ravens, that he has perhaps not quite so fully accepted)?

Or is this some Eelfinn/Aelfinn shit? We know he’s headed there, and it’s another dimension so all bets are off, really.

Or are we going to get into some kind of… decoys strategy? He’s being set up as a general for the Last Battle, so maybe someone or something turning his own strategies or forces against him?

Perrin’s not sure either, and next up we get wolves chasing sheep into the woods full of monsters. That… could honestly be anything. The wolves look wrong, so Darkhounds, maybe? Though in that case I’d expect him to recognise them. As for who he’s chasing… I mean, you can hardly swing a cat in here without hitting a malevolent force these days, so your guess is as good as mine, Perrin.

Hopper doesn’t have time for prophetic movie screenings and would very much like to get on with this hunt now, please, seriously Young Bull it’s been two years, I’m not getting any younger here.

(Hopper, you’re dead; you don’t even age. ‘NO BUT MY PATIENCE DOES’).

Perrin remembered the time; it had been during the early days of Faile’s captivity.

Had he really looked that bad? Light, but he seemed ragged. Almost like a beggar. Or… like Noam.

Oh okay this is a really interesting realisation from Perrin, and a perspective I hadn’t actually considered from this angle. There’s more than one way to lose yourself, and in giving entirely in to the very human side of him (and, perhaps, what Hopper might call a human need for control), and fixating on a single task in that sense, he came close to the same kind of loss of self that he associates with becoming entirely wolf.

And that this version of himself came not as a result of ‘giving in’ to the wolves at all. That maybe, Perrin, the wolves aren’t the source of the problem you’re having with finding a balance within yourself; they’re just a convenient scapegoat, something to project the division within yourself onto.

“Stop trying to confuse me!” Perrin said. “I became that way because I was dedicated to finding Faile, not because I was giving into the wolves!”

Which is… kind of the point, Perrin. There is more than one way to lose yourself. And your dedication to finding Faile was just… another form of focusing only on aspects, and neglecting all the other parts of yourself. But how is neglecting the wolf part of yourself going to solve that? Is that not just another way of fixating on what you think you should be, or on a single task, to the exclusion of what is there?

Hopper’s decided to move on to an object lesson: if you want to keep up, you’ll have to figure out how to run. No more holding back.

I want Hopper and the Wise Ones to meet, sometime. I just think that would be entertaining on all sides.

And so Perrin runs. Finally.

The forest was his. It belonged to him, and he understood it.

His worries began to melt away. He allowed himself to accept things as they were, not as he feared they might become.

Now, the next step: do the same for yourself. Accept yourself as you are, not as you fear you might become. You’re so close, Perrin.

It was exhilarating. Had he ever felt so alive? So much a part of the world around him, yet master of it at the same time?

There’s a surrender/control kind of feeling to this, as well. So much of this is so very, very close to what Perrin needs to learn – or rather, learn to apply to himself. This idea of being part of yet master of at the same time. Master of my fate, captain of my soul, that whole deal. That he can accept and be the wolf, but not be lost in it, just as he is not lost in this world around him that he allows himself to be part of, yet still retains himself and his control.

Whoops caught a whiff of a stag so no more time for existential crisis because that means DINNER.

The stag, I mean. Not the existential crisis. I don’t think they make edible versions of those.

He was the herald, the point, the tip of the attack. The hunt roared behind him. It was as if he led the crashing waves of the ocean itself. But he was also holding them back.

I cannot make them slow for me, Perrin thought.

And then he was on all fours, his bow tossed aside and forgotten, his hands and legs becoming paws. Those behind him howled anew at the glory of it. Young Bull had truly joined them.

ROUND. OF. APPLAUSE.

But actually the main reason I quoted this is because it strikes me that Perrin is, perhaps more so than any of the other major characters, a very Sanderson-esque character in some ways. I’ve compared him to Kaladin before, but even without trying to draw a like-for-like relationship to one of Sanderson’s characters, his character concept feels very much along the lines of what Sanderson would write.

Anyway, I thought of that here because this reads a little like – again not like-for-like but just in the same vein of – some of the other discovery-of-magic or acceptance-of-power or learning-the-scope-of-one’s-abilities scenes Sanderson has written.

I don’t mean it as either criticism or praise; it’s just something that struck me here.

The stag has twenty-six points on its antlers, so that’s not the missing twenty-three from last chapter either.

And we’ve shifted to Young Bull in the narrative now, so Perrin’s actually going along with this wolves-do-guided-meditation class for once.

He needed to be ahead, not follow.

Definitely not a thought applicable outside of this hunt, nope, not at all, nothing to see here, nothing more abstract about needing to act rather than react, or claim the wolf thing and all the aspects of himself he hides from rather than let them drag him along or anything like that.

The stag bolted to the right, and Young Bull leaped, hitting an upright tree trunk with all four paws and pushing himself sideways to change directions.

I am quoting this solely because WOLF PARKOUR.

Sorry.

He howled, and his brothers and sisters replied from just behind. This hunt was all of them. As one.

But Young Bull led.

Leader of men, leader of wolves, LET’S DO THIS.

It’s interesting as well because for all that it’s a hunt, there’s a rather meditative quality to this scene – the simplicity of it once he fins his place, allows himself to be a part of this world around him, acting almost on instinct and leading a perfect chase, not thinking or faltering or hesitating, every movement fluid and precise and beautiful – that actually reminds me of that scene way back in TDR when he worked at the forge in Tear.

Just these few simple moments of Perrin being… himself. A kind of beautiful economy of motion and a meditative sort of rhythm and the absence of doubt or uncertainty.

Which is perfect, of course, because that first scene is for Perrin as he was, for the part of himself he knew and knows and now fears to lose, the part of him that he linked so closely to his identity. It was a reminder of who he was, at a time when he needed it – this whole story just beginning and Perrin away from his home and out of his depth and not sure who he was or what he was becoming. It was a grounding in his foundations.

And now, nearly at the end, we get something with a kind of similar feel to it, but this time it’s the wolf, the part of himself he has yet to accept. There’s almost a bookending here of past and future. One scene to ground him, and one to carry him forward. Once for acknowledgement and once for realisation. Name him true and set his path, I suppose, if I really want to shoehorn another character’s quotes in here.

Anyway.

Perrin – or rather Young Bull – brings down the stag and is looking forward to that sweet sweet venison.

There was nothing else. The forest was gone. The howls faded. There was only the kill. The sweet kill.

A form crashed into him, throwing him back into the brush. Young Bull shook his head, dazed, snarling. Another wolf had stopped him. Hopper! Why?

The stag bounded to its feet, and then bounded off through the forest again. Young Bull howled in fury and rage, preparing to run after it. Again Hopper leaped, throwing his weight at Young bull.

If it dies here, it dies the last death, Hopper sent. This hunt is done, Young Bull. We will hunt another time.

Oh.

Why, Perrin wonders here. And I think the answer here is, because this is how we do not lose ourselves. The hunt is about the joy of it, but it’s not just mindless violence. That’s Perrin’s fear, and Hopper here is teaching him… nuance, I suppose. Control. Restraint.

Because there is a difference between the hunt, between being a wolf, and just succumbing to bloodlust and violence. And I think part of Perrin’s fear comes from conflating the two in his mind, but they’re not the same thing. But without letting himself ever know or be the wolf, without understanding that side of himself, it’s hard to distinguish. And so we come to this, where he sees the wolves acting with this restraint that still does not tarnish their joy, and can perhaps understand it himself and see that ‘joining the wolves in the hunt’ does not mean ‘losing all humanity and becoming a mindless killer’.

“That,” Perrin finally said, “is what I fear.”

No, you do not fear it, Hopper sent.

Thank you, Hopper, for being absurdly wise and also for your patience.

But this is the crux of it all, isn’t it? That Perrin fears – or does not quite fear – what lies at the end of this hunt for him. And hasn’t yet learned to… I suppose trust himself? Or understand that it’s not an all-or-nothing black-or-white kind of thing. To hold on or to let go. But it’s about, as so much of this story is, a more nuanced kind of balance, and an acceptance.

And self-awareness. That too.

Worry, worry, worry. It is all that you do.

“No. I also kill. If you’re going to teach me to master the wolf dream, it’s going to happen like this?”

Yes.

You do kill, Perrin, but it’s not all you do. And I think part of this hunt was also about learning that there’s nuance even in that, maybe. That he can kill and not be monstrous.

But he had been avoiding this issue for too long, making horseshoes in the forge while leaving the most difficult and demanding pieces alone, untouched.

YES! THANK YOU PERRIN AYBARA! YOU’RE GETTING IT.

Man I love when characters finally stop fighting themselves. (I’m me, so I have a slight preference for when that surrender actually takes a much darker ‘so be it’ kind of form but listen, the heroic side is also lovely and this has been such a long time coming).

I also do really like that Perrin comes to these realisations himself. Yes, it’s taken him a long time and yes, Hopper has been pushing him and pushing him to try to get him here (along with Tam, and various others), but ultimately it has to come from him. From an understanding of himself, and an acceptance of that.

Much like Rand’s own realisation, though so many others played into it and guided him along the way or pushed him towards the edge, anchored him or tried to cut him loose, ultimately came down to him, on a mountain, thinking.

Or how Nynaeve breaking her block happened alone at the bottom of a river, in a moment where at last she understood surrender.

These books do self-realisation well, is what I’m getting at. Giving characters those chances to see themselves, and to reach these understandings, and then letting those moments – those quiet, unwitnessed, outwardly unremarkable moments – carry such weight.

He relied on the powers of scent he’d been given, reaching out to wolves when he needed them—but otherwise he’d ignored them.

YES! THIS IS! SO GOOD!

(Like Rand with Lews Therin’s memories, and knowledge of the Power).

But he gets it now. You can’t use this if you’re also trying to fight it. You have to accept it, even when that’s terrifying, even when that means confronting parts of yourself you’d rather pretend weren’t there. Because the reward, ultimately, is that you’ll actually be able to wield them, rather than being at their mercy by virtue of being constantly at war with yourself.

You couldn’t make a thing until you understood its parts. He wouldn’t know how to deal with—or reject—the wolf inside him until he understood the wolf dream.

YES THAT’S EXACTLY IT I HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS.

“Very well,” Perrin said. “So be it.”

HERE. WE. GO.

And now over to Galad. Fine. If we must.

Those Light-cursed swamps were behind them; now they travelled over open grasslands.

Because they’ve figured out their leadership situation and murdered the corruption from their ranks, get it?! So they’re not mired in the swamp of their own indecision and division now! They’re united and can move forwards in a cleaner direction!

If there was no danger of death, there could be no bravery, but Galad would rather have the Light shine on him while he continued to draw breath.

I mean, fair enough, and same, but that’s almost a surprising thing for Galad to think. Not that I think he’s the type to want martyrdom, but…hm. I don’t know. Maybe it’s the whole bravery thing here, but it just feels a little odd for Galad. Then again I will be the first to admit that there’s a lot about Galad that just Does Not Compute for me, so…sure. Lawful Good Paladin and all that.

He wanted to know what kind of traffic the highway was drawing

Refugees with a chance of wolves, most likely.

He remembered well the words that Gareth Bryne had once said: Most of the time, a general’s most important function was not to make decisions, but to remind men that someone would make decisions.

I just find it weirdly endearing that all three of Galad, Gawyn, and Elayne end up relying on Bryne’s wisdom from time to time, quoting him in their thoughts. Of course, it just as likely leads them in entirely opposite directions because this family is a bit of a mess, but still.

“The letter must be sent,” Galad said.

Okay but if we’re on the topic of shared family traits, evidence suggests letter-writing is not exactly a strong suit. You sure about this, Galad?

Ah, it’s a letter to the Children with the Seanchan giving them the bullet-points version of everything that’s happened. Well, far be it from me to criticise open and honest communication in this series, I suppose.

And he still plans to ally with Aes Sedai, which understandably is going over as well as a pile of Blight-mud with some of his men.

“But the witches are evil!”

Says a member of an organisation perfectly willing to overlook the torture of innocent people in order to wring confessions from ‘Darkfriends’, but…sure. Just, you know, glass houses and all that.

Once, he might have denied that. But listening to the other Children, and considering what those at Tar Valon had done to his sister, was making him think he might be too soft on the Aes Sedai.

Listening to other Children and thinking about his sister but consider this, Galad, have you ever thought of listening to her, maybe? Or, like, actually trusting her judgement when you do? Just a passing thought.

Seriously, what is it with Elayne’s brothers and continually underestimating her, her ability to look after herself, and also her reading of her own damn situation?

“However, Lord Harnesh, if they are evil, they are insignificant when compared to the Dark One.”

Well… alright, sure, at this stage I guess if that’s how you have to look at it to make this work, then fine. We don’t have time to solve everyone’s problems with everyone else before they all need to at least act as allies, so if uneasy ‘enemy of my enemy’ trust is what it takes…

Then, as Bashere said, there’s always another battle. Or as Rand said, they can all go back to killing one another once it’s done. A sad way to look at it, but for all that Rand has come a long way and is no longer looking at this in quite the same way, I think some of those things are still true. The great battle done, but the world not done with battle.

Tarmon Gai’don’s alliances won’t solve all of that, even led by a Dragon Reborn who truly has a purpose now. It may be enough to see them through, but after…?

The Wheel of Time turns.

“We need allies. Look around you, Lord Harnesh. How many Children do we have? Even with recent recruits, we are under twenty thousand. Our fortress has been taken. We are without succour or allegiance, and the great nations of the world revile us.”

Wow, I WONDER WHY.

I mean, good on Galad for taking on the task of redeeming the Whitecloaks but… it sure is going to be a Task.

“The Questioners are at fault,” Harnesh muttered.

“Part of the blame is theirs,” Galad agreed. “But it is also because those who would do evil look with disgust and resentment upon those who stand for what is right.”

Uh.

Sorry, Galad, but you’re leaving out a very large slice of the blame pie, which is: maybe the Questioners were the worst of the lot (or at the very least they make a convenient set of scapegoats), but the rest of you didn’t exactly object, or do anything about it. And plenty of you went right along (Two Rivers, anyone?) – or, sorry, were you Just Following Orders?

I mean morality is a grey area and all that but trying to pass off widespread hatred of your borderline-fanatic organisation with an unfortunate habit of killing innocent people as ‘evil people hate the righteous’ is maybe a bit of a stretch.

“In the past, the boldness – and perhaps overeagerness – of the Children has alienated those who should have been our allies.”

Euphemistic but…not wrong, I suppose. And to be fair to him (if I must), he does have a rather difficult line to walk, as the leader of this organisation. He maybe can’t just denounce them completely, but he also has to get through to them that some thing are going to have to change. And that this isn’t going to be an easy path ahead.

He's trying to enforce what they should be fighting for, underlining their stated principles and trying to get them to shift direction and also preparing them for what they’re going to face, without… undermining their foundations, or challenging them in a way that might break them.

And I suppose he actually believes some of this as well. Which is still just… sure, Galad. Okay.

I do love that he’s quoting Morgase to them. So much of her legacy has been tarnished that it’s nice to see these moments of… recognition, I guess.

“We follow no queen or king.”

“Yes,” Galad said, “and that frightens monarchs. I grew up in the court of Andor. I know how my mother regarded the Children.”

And yet! Look where you ended up! Quoting Morgase’s own thoughts on leadership to the Children, whom she hated.

See, the problem with Galad in this chapter is that he’s neither being a deadly-graceful swordsman nor defiantly enduring torture, which means we’re back to plain old annoyance with him on my part.

“Darkfriends,” Harnesh muttered.

“My mother was no Darkfriend,” Galad said quietly.

Yeah, Harnesh? If you value your life, do not insult Morgase Trakand in front of Galad. He can and will end you.

“You speak like a Questioner,” Galad said. “Suspecting everyone who opposes us of being a Darkfriend. Many of them are influenced by the Shadow, but I doubt that it is conscious.”

Oh, not just them, Galad. As Egwene said, “I think we all are serving the interests of the Shadow, so long as we allow ourselves to remain divided.” Or, for another and more recent example: “I think he almost had me, Egwene.”

But Galad does know his audience here. The Questioners do provide a convenient scapegoat, and a way to sort of… point out all the problems with the Whitecloaks, but slantwise. Deflected just slightly so that they do not sound like accusations, but rather like a very pointed ‘we are better than them, right?’ A kind of oblique warning, and a reminder of all that they must no longer allow themselves to be. A way of criticising indirectly, and allowing them to maintain their pride and convictions and certainty.

Which is also interesting in contrast to Egwene’s approach with the Aes Sedai, of being incredibly direct in her criticism of both the rebels and the Tower Aes Sedai. It’s interesting, because both approaches work. Because these are two very different organisations and situations, despite their occasional parallels.

“We cannot become lapdogs to kings and queens. And yet, think of what we could achieve inside of a nation’s boundaries if we could act without needing an entire legion to intimidate that nation’s ruler.”

Whitecloaks: ‘we’re a paramilitary organisation answerable to no monarch or nation!’

Galad, son of a literal royal house: ‘sounds good’

Then again, I suppose you could say much the same of the Dragonsworn and the Band of the Red Hand (leaving aside the fact that Rand rules or has ruled at least four nations in fact if not always in name), and in terms of facing Tarmon Gai’don as unified forces of the Light, that’s fair enough. But that’s the sort of thing that tends to cause, er, problems domestically.

A group of travellers on the road! I wonder who this could possibly be!

Galad sighed. Nobody could deny Byar’s dedication – he’d ridden with Galad to face Valda when it could have meant the end of his career. And yet there was such a thing as being too zealous.

Let it not be said that Galad doesn’t have his work cut out for him. That much is for sure.

Though Galad calling anyone else too zealous is, of course, mildly entertaining.

“Peace,” Galad said, “you did no wrong, Child Byar.”

Depends on the timeframe…

There was talk of a gigantic stone from the sky having struck the earth far to the north in Andor, destroying an entire city and leaving a crater.

…Shadar Logoth? Not quite a meteorite, no, but I can see how someone might arrive at that explanation. Especially if all the forces at play there were enough to leave traces of stishovite or coesite.

The talk among the men revealed their worries. They should have understood that worry served no useful function. None could know the weaving of the Wheel.

In which Galad Damodred discovers the cure for anxiety. Seriously, Galad, that’s all well and good for you, and I personally see where you’re coming from, but not everyone is going to just logic away their fear; it doesn’t always work like that.

Yeah this sounds like Perrin’s group. Well this should be fun.

Wait a second.

Morgase is with Perrin.

Oh man.

The man in the cart gave a start upon seeing Galad. Ah, Galad thought, so he knows enough to recognise Morgase’s stepson.

The man in the cart is Basel Gill and definitely knows enough to recognise Morgase’s stepson given that he’s currently travelling with Morgase, yes.

Basel Gill also really, really needs to work on his poker face. Though I don’t think even Mat’s ability to tell a lie would get Perrin’s entire caravan past Galad without arousing some kind of suspicion.

So Galad’s giving him the airport security treatment, Gill is trying his best to lie like a rug, and there’s only one way this is going to end.

“Anything else I will sell, but the food I have promised by messenger to someone in Lugard.”

“I will pay more.”

“I made a promise, my good Lord,” the man said. “ could not break it, regardless of the price.”

“I see.”

I have to laugh here because yes, Gill is lying through is teeth and Galad knows it, but he’s also chosen the one lie that Galadedrid ‘do the right thing no matter the cost’ Damodred can’t actually directly challenge.

So instead he’s just going to separate the group and see if they all tell the same story.

“After all, what it seems like to me is that you are the camp followers of a large army. If that is the case, then I would very much like to know whose army it is, not to mention where it is.”

WOULDN’T YOU JUST.

It occurs to me that Perrin is the only one of the ta’veren boys – and, actually, the only one of the original Emond’s Field crew – who Galad hasn’t met.

And while it might be kind of funny if it were Mat’s army and he and Galad had a ‘….you?’ moment, given their last meeting, it’s all kinds of appropriate in terms of actual story and characters that Galad, new leader of the possibly-soon-to-be-reformed Whitecloaks, is the one meeting up with Perrin ‘Whitecloaks were my first kill’ Aybara.

Because Perrin is the one with the most… messy history with the Whitecloaks, and so it is fitting that if there really is to be a shift, and if they really are to move forwards, it would be by turning that, somehow, into alliance.

“We may have a situation here,” Bornhald said. His face was flushed with anger.

Uh oh.

Speaking of Perrin’s history with the Whitecloaks. Bornhald (mistakenly) thinks Perrin killed his father, Perrin (somewhat less mistakenly) thinks Bornhald let his home be ravaged by Trollocs and betrayed him when he had promised to help… you know, just a few disagreements between friends.

“Have you ever heard of a man called Perrin Goldeneyes?”

“No. Should I have?”

“Yes,” Bornhald said. “He killed my father.”

Prepare to die.

Well THIS should be fun!

Next (ToM ch 5) Previous (ToM ch 3)

#FINALLY #wheel of time #neuxue liveblogs WoT #Towers of Midnight

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rakuyokoyo · 5 years ago

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Chapter 285 Spoilers/TBE Spoilers

Days like today, I wish I just sucked it up and published TBE last year. Maybe then I could’ve caught up to where BNHA is at right now (though highkey doubt).

Note: major BNHA manga spoilers, major TBE spoilers

I’ve briefly mentioned a few times about how amazing it was to sometimes see ideas I’ve come up with years beforehand become canon by pure coincidence. In just One Piece alone, an idea that I came up with around a decade ago when I first started Romance Dawn actually showed up with Momonosuke and Trafalgar Law. At first I was thrilled and excited because even though the nuances were slightly different, the main ideas were EXACTLY the same and I’ll point them out once we hit those moments in Romance Dawn.

Something I did not really expect, however, was this to happen with BNHA.

One of the reasons why I love this story from a writer’s standpoint is that I’ve never been able to accurately guess what would happen next in BNHA. The ironic thing is, the one point of the plot I wanted to add but didn’t know how ended up matching with Horikoshi’s idea.

Basically, Kana is a character that mirrors the origin trio in many ways. With Todoroki, their views on family and Quirks foil each other, and I love writing about the two because there’s always something so comforting about they way they’re there for each other. With Hawks, he and Kana see Quirks as both a gift and a curse, and their different philosophies of the hero world is (in my opinion) what makes their love so sad and lonely.

Midoriya’s a bit of a basket case for me because he doesn’t foil quite as cleanly as Todoroki, Hawks, or Bakugo, but rather than having perfect foils and parallels, Midoriya is just someone that becomes important to Kana in every aspect of her life. His relationship with others, his sense of self-sacrifice and heroism, and his determination to be the best and not let his Quirklessness stop him from becoming a hero is a major source of inspiration for Kana. He gives her a purpose, something that’s so important for people like her who’s never even thought or desired a future.

And then we have Bakugo. I always have trouble writing about Midoriya, but for the longest time, I had nothing that I wanted to write about when it came to Bakugo. Todoroki, Midoriya, Hawks covered all the grounds for Kana and then some, so I wasn’t sure how I was going to fit him in.

But as I developed Kana’s character as well as her backstory, the Overhaul arc became a major turning point for her and it became very clear to me how Bakugo could fit into Kana’s life.

This wasn’t intentional, but rather than focusing on the past which is how Kana parallels with Midoriya, Todoroki, and Hawks, Bakugo and Kana also grapple with their present and the future, and I realized how many similar things Bakugo and Kana actually go through. Post-Kamino arc they’re forced to become quite close due to something devastating happening to Kana. And then... chapter 285 leaks came out today.

Basically, once Bakugo and Kana become close, Kana gets a premonition from one of the main antagonists—an OC named Eve who has the power to see the future with multiple restrictions. Unlike Nighteye’s Quirk, Eve’s Quirk shows a possible future. Whether it’s a very likely or very unlikely future depends on how many times her mirror shows that future, and unlike Nighteye’s, Eve’s future predictions can be changed. Its major weakness is that the future in the mirror may not always be accurate (and no one knows how likely or unlikely it’ll be), but it’s advantage is that if there is a bad future, everyone can take precautions to stop it. Eve is a pretty unique antagonist (after all, how can she ever lose if she knows what will happen in the future?) and there’s a few more restrictions on her Quirk, but this is the main idea.

I intended Eve to show Kana a premonition of Bakugo dying, but I had no idea where to include it. When this arc started and I saw a city about to potentially get destroyed, I thought ‘aha! This is the perfect place to squeeze my original scene in!’

Little did I know Horikoshi would ACTUALLY do it in the arc I intended to! I’ve included three excerpts from three different chapters below.

—

This chapter was written on August 23, 2019, a year before Chapter 285 was leaked. The title is Beginnings of Endings.

Note: some spoiler names/titles/plot will be omitted with an (omitted).

“(omitted)” She snapped, azure eyes vibrant like those of a fire’s. “Dealing with the (omitted) was my problem anyways! Stop sticking your nose into it!”

“Hah?!” He cried, standing up with fists clenched to his sides. “You’re the one who’s being a dumbass about this! The white-haired brat said it, didn’t she? Her futures are reversible if we make an effort!”

Kana gritted her teeth, drawing a fist back. “Shut up!”

(omitted)

“And?” He asked weakly. “What was going on?”

Kana shook her head. “I don’t know. But there was so much debris around us—probably the aftermath of a battle. You were bleeding out in my arms. I-I don’t know if I’d tried Overdrive and it didn’t work, but your wounds just looked so fatal…”

“Did I say anything?” Bakugo asked, crimson irises locked into azure.

“(omitted)” Kana said quietly.

The two continued to look at each other silently for a few seconds, Kana with tears continuing to fall slowly, while Bakugo gave her a quiet, passive gaze.

(omitted)

Dim, grey eyes flashed, engulfing him in light. When it disappeared, he realized that he was seeing the aftermath of a battlefield. Crumbled buildings scattered debris everywhere, but it was almost deathly silent compared to how loud the actual fight must’ve been.

“Bakugo!” He heard Kana’s cry. The girl ran towards a bloodied body in the centre of it all. She was wearing a white shirt with her usual thin ribbon and maroon skirt. Her hair hung loosely below her shoulders, and her skin looked marred and injured.

—

This excerpt is from a different chapter called Where Hands Cannot Reach, written on September 10th, 2020 (two weeks ago).

She suddenly stood up and began to run, much to the shock of Tokoyami and Dark shadow. “Kana!”

“GO!” She screamed, forcing herself to face them. “Go and get help! Do whatever—whatever you can to save him!”

“They’re too far, Kana-chan,” Dark Shadow said. “You’re the only medical support around—”

“If I don’t go, Bakugo will die,” she screamed, shaking her head in despair. “Kei—Hawks might have a chance if you can find anyone else.”

“Bakugo will?” Tokoyami said, eyes widening. “Why... how do you know that?”

Dark Shadow looked down at the hero in his partner’s arms with worry. “But his wings—”

“Focus on his life first and not his Quirk!” Kana cried, reaching into her inner pocket and throwing a glass vial towards Tokoyami who caught it with disbelief. “I don’t know if that’s enough—it probably isn’t, but I need to find Bakugo and Midoriya first. That… that should at least keep him alive. Try to get to Momo if you can—she knows basic first aid.”

Kana sprinted, tears rolling down pale cheeks as she tried to grasp her bearings. Bakugo had been surrounded by rubble in Eve’s vision, which likely meant that he was close to Shigaraki.

—

And finally, an excerpt from The Ending We’ll Write, which was written on July 4th, 2020.

“(omitted)” Kana mumbled, looking at the ground awkwardly at the entrance to his room. Her toes dug into the floor and her fingers fiddled around, cloudy azure pupils averting his gaze. The boy stood up from his bed and reached for the gauntlets on the desk, tightening them around his wrists with a quiet click.

“What do you want, (omitted)?”

It was a rhetorical question, but Kana’s mind immediately quickened with the answers. What do I want? I don’t know. I think I saw a future where you die—today—so I want you to stay home. But I know you won’t do that. I want to be able to come home tonight. Eat shabu shabu or sukiyaki with everyone at the end of tonight with all of our limbs attached. I want this to not be the end for us because there’s still so many things I want to talk to you about, and I haven’t even thanked you or repaid you for everything—

“(omitted)?”

His voice was quieter and without the exasperated irritation that usually came from calling her name.

Why are you looking at me like that? She thought, carmine clashing with azure. Don’t look at me like that. Like you’re the one worried about me.

“If you have something to say, spit it out,” he said, the usual coarseness returning to his voice. “Get rid of that pathetic look, as if we’ve lost already.”

Kana bit back a scowl. “I can’t help but worry sometimes, okay?”

He gazed at her quietly. “How many people do you think we’ll lose today?”

“I don’t know,” Kana said softly, “but what are the chances of no one getting hurt and no one dying? Probably slim to none.”

—

I had to hide so much but I hope this can somehow show what I was trying to do. When this arc first started, I saw it as the perfect chance to include Eve’s premonitions, but I’ve written a lot about it even before this arc ever started. And now to see Eve’s premonition (that I intended on it not being true anyways) actually come to life is sort of insane for me.

To be honest, this premonition was supposed to be a bit more about Hawks and Kana, as the second excerpt shows her decision to abandon Hawks to save Bakugo. But hey, if Horikoshi is going to make Eve’s future canon, I’ll run with it.

I highly, highly doubt Bakugo’s injured (much less dead), but it’s just enough angst for me to work with. Seeing my ideas collide in One Piece was frustrating because I wasn’t able to use my ideas (for a hint and some spoilers, something about Momonosuke was supposed to be Falco’s, and something about Law was supposed to be Amare’s), but this time, I was actually able to integrate my plot and what I wanted from Bakugo almost seamlessly into TBE, so I’m absolutely thrilled.

No updates planned at the moment. I’m just having fun writing all these crazy chapters in TBE! Maybe more things will match up in the future.

-Koyo-

#tbenotes #TBE #mha285 #bnha285

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dabistits · 6 years ago

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could you explain what it means like with himiko's chapter title interview with a vampire and twices all it takes is one bad day. i think this has something to do with his characters like in their respective movies.

aaa i think ‘interview with a vampire’ is mostly just a riff off of anne rice’s book. ‘all it takes is one bad day’ also comes from another source (as many people have noticed): the killing joke, and it’s said by the joker to batman. unfortunately i have very very little first-hand knowledge of both of these sources, so i invite people to chime in although i will take a stab at this. i also dedicated a huge post to their backstories (though i didn’t really address the intertextuality aspect), but since that post contains thoughts about tomura i will mention him too.

interview with a vampire covers a whole book (as opposed to just a monologue), so it’s harder to just nail down One connection. again, I’m not sure if hori was just doing it to be funny, so I may be reaching here, but what stands out to me is the themes of instinct and repression that tend to recur in modern vampire novels. It should be noted that interview with a vampire is considered the piece of fiction that largely gave rise to the genre of vampires being good-looking, angsty, aristocratic, etc. rather than ugly and terrifying undead, and it was possibly one of the first to extensively play with the theme of the vampire’s struggle with their own humanity. in interview with a vampire, this duality is embodied by main characters louis and lestat, the former who seeks to retain his humanity and resists feeding from humans, while the latter seems to see himself as wholly separate from humanity and doesn’t fight his instincts.

the storyline of the modern vampire is often about these struggles: are we so different than humans? is it in our nature to victimize humanity? is it okay for us to do so or should it only be done out of necessity? how do we integrate into a world that would shun us if they knew the truth? himiko’s backstory reiterates these questions that are so prevalent in modern vampire fiction. she tries to repress her ‘natural instinct’ of bloodlust so that she can live among people who would otherwise not accept her; eventually she rejects this existence and succumbs to her desires, and as such is cast out from what is deemed ‘normal’ society. this of course mirrors the eternal vampiric conflict of whether to live among humans or away from them, whether to ‘use’ other people or not, and obviously, even the taboos being addressed are the same: blood-drinking.

as far as “one bad day,” i know i have some followers that don’t like the joker, but i honestly don’t know about the comic books or the animation to comment on what the killing joke did or did not do for his character. i’ve read the synopsis, i know the events of the plot (they’re extremely misogynistic), and that’s about it. i think it’s enough to comment on how it relates to bnha, but i again i invite people to chime in. that said, the monologue is short-ish, so i reproduced it here:

Joker: I’ve demonstrated there’s no difference between me and everyone else! All it takes is one bad day to reduce the sanest man alive to lunacy. That’s how far the world is from where I am. Just one bad day. You had a bad day once, am I right? I know I am. I can tell. You had a bad day and everything changed. Why else would you dress up as a flying rat? You had a bad day, and it drove you as crazy as everybody else… Only you won’t admit it! You have to keep pretending that life makes sense, that there’s some point to all this struggling! God you make me want to puke. I mean, what is it with you? What made you what you are? Girlfriend killed by the mob, maybe? Brother carved up by some mugger? Something like that, I bet. Something like that… Something like that happened to me, you know. I… I’m not exactly sure what it was. Sometimes I remember it one way, sometimes another… If I’m going to have a past, I prefer it to be multiple choice! Ha ha ha! But my point is… My point is, I went crazy. When I saw what a black, awful joke the world was, I went crazy as a coot! I admit it! Why can’t you? I mean, you’re not unintelligent! You must see the reality of the situation. Do you know how many times we’ve come close to world war three over a flock of geese on a computer screen? Do you know what triggered the last world war? An argument over how many telegraph poles Germany owed its war debt creditors! Telegraph poles! Ha ha ha ha HA! It’s all a joke! Everything anybody ever valued or struggled for… it’s all a monstrous, demented gag! So why can’t you see the funny side? Why aren’t you laughing?

the background on the joker here is that he had a tragic past where his wife and child died in an accident and then he went to do some shady shit with a couple criminals, then jumped into a vat of acid to escape batman and went loco from the experiences. i’m going to consider it not entirely relevant to my bnha commentary, since the narrative similarities are fairly superficial imo; namely, both jin and the joker’s, let’s say, streak of bad luck started with accidents which led into criminal sprees. otherwise, jin’s story is clearly not about torturing the chief of police and a dude in a bat suit for… reasons, and instead hinges a lot more on loneliness and camaraderie with the concept of ‘lunacy’ being pretty incidental to that. but we’ll come back to the differences! for now, we’ll focus on why hori might have chosen this monologue for jin’s chapter.

purely looking at the monologue itself (i.e. decontextualizing it from the joker’s backstory and the events of the killing joke), the parallels are pretty stark. this is a man narrating his descent into madness that supposedly emerged from a senseless accident, which he doesn’t quite recall; it’s comparable to jin’s own motorcycle accident which led to him getting fired, turning to crime, and then finally the clone mass murders which resulted in his split personality and confusion over being the ‘original.’ and as far as we’re concerned, the only thing that led to jin’s downward spiral is that ‘bad day’ when he got fired, comparable to the accident which killed the joker’s family. there are other elements involved in jin’s backstory of course, notably the lack of a support system either relationship-wise or financially, and the failures of a society that intensely relied on heroes/police work to regulate wellbeing.

that’s about where the similarities end. jin does not arrive at the same conclusion that the joker does. one of the messages the killing joke puts forth is the joker’s: that life is senseless, random, and therefore meaningless, just like violence is senseless, random, and meaningless. jin’s chapters actually take a marked departure from that thinking, where the moral is more like… senseless, random, meaningless shit happens and you make choices that dig yourself into a hole, but what really matters is having connections to people. the conclusion isn’t to destroy things, but to build connections so that you have people to fall back on when things go south. the narrative ultimately rewards him for that thought process as well, because he’s able to double himself again and in the process, he’s able to protect his friends, thus saving the companionship he so badly lacked.

this is where tomura comes in, because he is a different story. ‘one bad day’ applies to him as well, obviously, centering around his father’s violence towards him and his quirk awakening, also an ‘accidental’ event which kills his family. much more than jin, it fits tomura’s mindset that life and violence are senseless, random, and meaningless, and in this way tomura (i’m sorry to say this) resembles the joker in their nihilistic philosophies. they both point out the fragilities of every day existence and basically decide that it’s all a worthless gag (you can see this in tomura’s thoughts as early as the mall confrontation tbh). rather than seeking a way to prevent or ameliorate senseless violence, their takeaway from the violence they experienced is to become it and to embody it, with no particular ‘goal’ in mind than simple chaos. because according to them, that’s how the world is.

so while ‘one bad day’ certainly applies to jin, i think it’s much more telling when applied to tomura, because tomura’s the one who actually mirrors the joker’s mindset. i hesitate to make predictions based off these observations, but i do think we can see a fairly clear lineage from where hori is drawing his ideological inspiration, especially for tomura. it’s not a particular surprise, because he is obviously a huge fan of american comics, but imo it’s tragic because i don’t think the joker has ever been a vehicle genuine ideological criticism….

#ask #tomura shigaraki #jin bubaigawara #himiko toga #this took me so long to answer i'm sorry anon #bnha meta

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starsweepersold · 6 years ago

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MY HTTYD 3 THOUGHTS

please keep in mind i didn’t love the film so don’t come here if you want a fluffy, in depth analysis of the good points. and also note that these are my opinions ( on a movie which means this isn’t a big deal ) so, like... if you don’t agree, that’s fine lol. i’m not here to draw fists, i just want to explain my side so that how i approach threads with ruffnut post the movie might make sense ( even though this rant is far from ruffnut centric ).

also. uh. this is long. like. really long.

first, let me clear up two things. one, the plot, while my BIGGEST issue, isn’t really a bad plot overall. it’s just... not what i think the third should have been and, ultimately, was a huge letdown for the franchise. so i’m not surprised people like it and enjoy it. it’s not... a terrible plot, it just. in my mind. ruined so much potential. and could have been handled way better. a few changes, and i think it could have been what i wanted. but how they approached it was just. nah.

two, i’m going to probably address the light fury in a way that makes it seem like i hate her. i don’t. in fact, i liked her more than i anticipated. character wise. i was worried she would be rude, bitchy female who refused to even acknowledge toothless because h00man friends and found him dumb and uninteresting until he majestically saved her and they fly to the moon in loving happiness. but she wasn’t. she was balanced with her caution of humans while also seeing that the ones with toothless weren’t a danger so she didn’t completely and utterly avoid them. she was interested in toothless and not just the other way around. plus, she was just kind of cute. so i have nothing against her as a character. i have every problem with her as a major aspect of the plot which i do not think she should have been. aka i think crappy writing did her wrong. so if it seems like i ever hate or am throwing shade at the light fury, that’s not true, it’s how she’s being treated or used. which isn’t her fault.

okay with those out of the way, one last thing. super brief. the animation and music was ABSO-FUCKING-LUTELY LUSH. no issues with that. smooth, gorgeous, stunning, next to lifelike. the imagination of the movie was a+++ so despite my other issues, i have no complaints on that. stunning. i would watch a thousands times over just to look at all those details tbh.

to le rant... dissertation... thing.

the hard part is figuring out how to start this. because there are a couple... many... problem areas i just have with the movie. so i’mma just go and hopefully i’ll get some formulaic or at least coherent explanation down.

i think my biggest disappointment was just. the complete and utter disregard for the friendship between toothless and hiccup for sake of pretty, dragon lady ( here’s where i’m saying i’ll sound like i hate the light fury. i don’t. but i’ll call her being used poorly as “pretty, dragon lady” a lot because that’s essentially her entire plot use sadly ). i get what dreamworks was trying to do, but shit did it fall flat. did it just crumble. it was painful for me to watch because it felt like toothless just fucking did a 180 and everything he had with hiccup was completely sidelined until the goodbye where we finally get some semblance of emotion from him about the idea that he’s leaving hiccup.

it was like watching hiccup being a foster parent and knowing he’s about to send toothless to his forever home and toothless being the happy, slobbery puppy who is just happy to be there and will love whoever he’s with. literally like. hiccup lets toothless go to find light fury and is like “bring her back :D” and toothless just had no plans of coming back from what we can see in his behaviors. which is where i see what dreamworks was trying to do. they were trying to do hiccup and toothless parallel growing up and finding their places in the world and toothless’ was to go lead the dragons while hiccup’s was to remain with berk as chief. except for while toothless was like “yep, cool, i’m good,” hiccup was the one still thinking and worried about him ( as a decent friend would ).

they tried to explain this by using hiccup’s insecurity. that he’s nothing without toothless, right? and then they just. never instill confidence in him. even to the end he relied on toothless or the light fury. like. at some point they just sort of pretend like hiccup found himself, but there was really no turning point. sure, he learns he needs to let toothless go but.

he never... finds his confidence in being a leader without toothless. and then their friendship for the sake of all this is just. reduced to him riding out on a boat to see the dragon and pretty, dragon lady one day when he has small children. we had two amazing movies with these two growing together and as one and learning and developing and then in this one. toothless just. goes on and hiccup faces a thousand and one problems and only solves like one ( again... i understand they were growing up and moving on and it’s a story about that and how friends can last forever despite that but it just felt like they erased the deep friendship to have one move on quickly and the other just be trapped in insecure land and never give him a way out ). it was such a “we just want to get a tear jerker” ending by that goodbye scene. gotta make the dragons leave, gotta separate the two except the two felt on opposite ends of the spectrum the entire movie. like the only time toothless and hiccup really felt still connected like they were in the first two movies/the beginning of the third before pretty, dragon lady was when toothless would look to hiccup while he needed help trying to do mating dances. and even then it was more just, like... “help me win pretty, dragon lady because she’s more important!!!”

which i get it, love is love and wonderful and great but. you didn’t... have to toss hiccup in the pit for this, you just didn’t. and they stopped being friends but “hiccup doesn’t know how to lead without toothless” and... uh. well. toothless was moved on, “peace out, bro, i got pretty lady <333″

their friendship was just so incredibly special to me. so so so so special. it was what made me fall so in love with the first. and hiccup breaking through drago’s control to toothless was so touching. forgiving his friend for indirectly killing his father. their bond. was THE integral parts of those movies. and in this one. it was played off as more of a hinderance for toothless’ chance at love and freedom. so that just. hurt to watch.

what i wished: light fury wasn’t the massive, major plot point she was. a side plot of them finding out there’s a light fury and hiccup trying to help toothless win her would be great. it would have also been intriguing to see grimmel realize he missed a night fury and light fury and it would give both hiccup and toothless more incentive to fight strong and fast together to protect this new friend of theirs.

speaking of grimmel.

what a bloody letdown.

he started off so cool. he was the night fury slayer. he had these awesome dragons. he could play three steps ahead. he wasn’t phased at all by these three other... hunter warlord people. he wasn’t this emo-looking stereotype like drago. he was cold, manipulative. calculating. deadly. went inside hiccup’s house and everything. i was digging it.

but then his entire evil plot started to revolve around pretty, dragon lady and his... fear factor just.... diminished? like.... badly. like. he knew exactly where hiccup and the tribe was going and yet somehow... lost them? he let the light fury go... to... what exactly? like... it was never fully explained what letting toothless and light fury meet accomplished for him. like if toothless had just stayed with light fury in the hidden world and hiccup hadn’t come with astrid, what could grimmel have done? he just. lost. he only had a chance again because hiccup’s needy, ex girlfriend like status got him and astrid caught and toothless had to save their asses. and then somehow he needed ruff to lead him to them?

...he literally pointed at the islands the berkians could be at on a map. how did he just suddenly lose them. how did he not know they were on an island without ruffnut where did his excellent tactical skills go?

oh, wait.

he had to get made dumb and weaker because if he actually remained a decent villain then pretty, dragon lady would get less screen time in favor of a decent fight. and they made him call it a “waiting game” and that the time was what made it fun but. it was just an excuse to forget about him for a bit so we could get back to toothless trying to mate.

you have the guy who wiped out the night furies and he just. sits back and lets them have fun dance time and go find the hidden world and literally never leave the first island they settled on and he does.... nothing....... until they go to him.

i’m sorry, what.

the killer of night furies? more like the killer of a decent villain plot :/

don’t even get me started on his “death” scene. his dragons are detained carrying the cages. wow. no cool fight with them. captures light fury who he already had and let go ( if he knew toothless and light fury were gunna love love then he could have just used her from the start like he really could have and he also just... seemed smart enough to know toothless and hiccup wouldn’t sacrifice her so he just. yeah. she should have been a side plot, would have been more exciting for him to realize he missed two because his anger could have become beautiful with the fight and will to conquer ). oh and even better, the poison which prior to this final scene only put night furies to sleep suddenly can be used to control pretty, dragon lady. so now we’ve got that typical fight where toothless can’t actually fight or wah wah, he’ll hit his girlyfriend oh no.

cue dramatic scene from hiccup which was almost nice because asking light fury to save toothless was such a hiccup/toothless relationship moment and, briefly, reminded me of how close they are and that toothless is his best friend, but then it just becomes dramatic fall where of course we know she’ll save toothless and hiccup.

and then grimmel is just in the ocean and buh bye and that’s it.

the infamous night fury killer, y’all. fucking falls in the ocean after the worst plan he’s probably ever thought out. actually, just kidding, he probably didn’t think it out. it was bad and his three steps ahead turned into like seven steps behind because the fact he wants to kill the night furies and deliver all the dragons to his accomplices is just.

put on the backburner for the pretty, dragon lady plot.

man i just really wanted light fury the side plot, hiccup and toothless’ strong friendship to lead them forward into defeating grimmel and protecting her and the other dragons and then just. learning through each other that they both are powerful people/dragon even independently of each other and they have their own tribes of sorts to lead and toothless is needed there and the dragons can have a better life orsomething. toothless having to leave “because humans aren’t ready for dragons yet” was dumb, y’all. and not at all encouraging or lively.

the final lesson was basically humanity sucks, hiccup never learns that he’s strong on his own but he just has to let toothless go anyway, toothless takes 75% of the movie to even care about hiccup and having to say goodbye... grimmel was the most unimposing villain ever. overall lessons: love means letting going ( cough just fucking forgetting your friends cough ), growing up requires sacrifice... basically getting older sucks.

the flashbacks were almost okay. the one with stoick crying over valka was actually amazing but... the one with the hidden world? way to just shit all over how stoick was in the first movie. makes his intolerance in the first movie seem... less so? like. “oh, i just wanna make the dragons go back to their land so we can be safe and they can be safe.”

no, stoick, y’wanted to fucking murder them all. i guess his motives could have become worse over the years but. then that just makes him more a bad character because he just gives up the idea of harmony and becomes “fuck it, kill them all” and uh........ yeah.

( the irony of this all is that hiccup ends up becoming the one to be like “well, guess we should live separated :///” )

i could get more in depth with these explanations probably but idk is it worth it, this post is already long enough. i’m getting the basics across. i think. if you’re really curious, you can ask for more info on something.

a final thing.

other than, like. eret, valka, tuffnut, and astrid, why did all the characters.... suck? they took... literally nothing seriously. tuffnut didn’t either but, tbh, his “guy talk” stuff with hiccup was so great that i’m okay with him lmao. but... fishlegs was barely there, snotlout was creepy with hitting on valka, and ruffnut was literal hell. sure, her scene with annoying grimmel and all was “funny” but man did it make me cringe.

as a ruffnut stan, she’s... not that fucking dumb. she would have looked back, she would have made sure she wasn’t being followed. even in the show she wasn’t that bad. and the show ruffnut was... bad.

like i just don’t know what to say. they were all useless. there were two solid scenes were they felt like they were there and actually friends with hiccup and part of the gang. the first scene with the raid and then when toothless is, like. practicing his awkward dancing and hiccup is telling them all about the light fury ( fishlegs is running around trying to draw her and the twins are interacting and everything like they all felt there and part of the group, it was awesome, and then they just never play a role again other than ruffnut’s absolute stupidity which was just a horrible moment for her and a weakass moment for grimmel because we’re reminded he went from being in total control to not knowing wtf he’s doing because oh, letting pretty, dragon lady go is actually and problem since she and toothless just flew off bye bye ).

...also tuffnut and ruffnut were HORRENDOUS to each other? wtf? and forgetting his sister? uhm. their whole relationship was just. awful. and just for laughs. it was. cringe fest.

okay lied. now a final thing.

the ending. i get dreamworks wanted to show the kids but just. end it sooner. i didn’t want to see hiccup and toothless reunite. i didn’t. especially not after how bitter everything just made me at least let me be sad and stay sad. you have. all this buildup, you have an actually decent scene with them saying goodbye and being the friends we know them to be. and then you’re just

“lol just kidding here they are again.”

like. have the kids, see hiccup sailing off with them. end. and it just reinforced the idea that hiccup never actually got over the idea that he’s nothing without toothless. i wanted it concluding with strong, hiccup power and the knowledge that we know toothless is off being a badass somewhere with light fury. it would have been much more impactful. if you’re going to commit to the dragons leaving, full on commit. him seeing toothless again would have felt more right if toothless and the dragons had left just for their betterment of lifestyle and not because “humanity no goo.” idk it just. was dumb and dragged on. see the kids, see them sail. end. like i said. i can’t even remember what hiccup was saying over all of it because it hit me it went from something that could have been awesome and learning about letting go and building life and all that to “lol but yay i found my dragon again :D”

also hiccup’s older model was just his same with a beard? at least astrid’s looked better. and then kids were just. baby hiccup boy but with blond hair and little pig tail girl ( isn’t she a model used in one of the other movies? her model was super familiar ) but with brown hair. pretty uh. yeah. and the nightlight babies....................

personally.... not impressed lmao.

and, well. that wraps up my major thoughts for now. i’m sure i had others but it’s been like three weeks since i saw the movie so. i’m going off what fiery embers managed to keep burning during this time.

in regards to ruffnut, you can see i didn’t like how she was portrayed. so for the most part, i’m erasing that section in her canon. she will have looked behind her and been cautious. i’ll do the plot a flavor and just go with how grimmel should have been and that he was actually an intimidating villain who knew where they were and was waiting for the chance to strike. so my ruffnut didn’t fuck up like that. also she escapes by better wit than just being obnoxious :/

and also happy to just ignore a lot of how the movie was handled but. for the sake of partners, i will otherwise accept canon as it is. just. now you can might see why i didn’t care for the canon as is.

ps i haven’t 100% read over this because it’s late, forgive any horrendous typos that i’ll fix later hopefully when less sjklfas;d

#|| the queen sunshine princess ( OOC )#httyd 3 spoilers //#httyd spoilers //#long post //

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britesparc · 6 years ago

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Weekend Top Ten #369

Top Ten Favourite Things About Teen Titans Go!

One of the funny things about life is observing elements of circularity. For instance, nearly twenty years ago, my younger brother really got into the original Teen Titans cartoon, and I sort of got into it with him (having a brother ten years younger than yourself is very good for keeping your oar in with kids’ content when you’re supposed to be too old for that sort of thing; as a result, I got to thoroughly enjoy Justice League, Samurai Jack, Harry Potter and lots more stuff that may have otherwise passed me by). I knew who the Titans were but hadn’t read a lot of their comics; the cartoon was my introduction to most of those characters. It was really good, benefited from a tremendous theme tune, and – for its time – quietly revolutionary in how it incorporated anime aesthetics into a western cartoon. Plus it had a cracking voice cast, which – not that I knew it at the time – would become as synonymous with those characters as Peter Cullen, Frank Welker, and Kevin Conroy had done with cartoons I’d watched as a child.

(that’s Optimus, Megatron, and Batman, in case you’re wondering)

Anyway, here we are, eighteen-or-so years later, and Teen Titans is just a beloved long-gone cult classic but bizarre comedic spin-off Teen Titans Go! is a minor phenomenon. The same characters, the same actors, but wilder, weirder, funnier, crazier, way more violent, and – bizarrely – far more integrated into the wider DC Universe. And my kids – especially my eldest daughter – bloody love the show. It is huge in our house. We’ve seen the film, we listen to the songs, they draw their own comics, they roleplay the characters; we have a home-made Raven costume, for god’s sake. I have a six-year-old who knows who Tara Strong is. This is incredible.

As a result, I’ve seen an awful lot (not quite every episode) of Teen Titans Go!. It’s fortunate, then, that it’s fantastic, easily one of the best comic-book cartoon adaptations ever made. It’s not just how funny it is; it’s madcap and self-referential and full of many (many) MANY DC comics references. And great, great songs. And – like I said before – tremendous performances. Teen Titans Go! To the Movies is a great, great movie with great, great songs and many great, great gags, and it’s a mixed blessing that it ended up being released in what may well be Annus Mirabilis for superhero movies: it’s great that it’s mixing it up with Infinity War, Black Panther, and Spider-Verse, but I feel it got overshadowed a bit. Say what you will for the slightly more “serious” original Teen Titans series, but it was the barmy chibi-inspired stepchild that got a movie.

So this week, I’m celebrating what has become my second-favourite superhero cartoon of all time (after Batman: The Animated Series, natch). My ten favourite things about Teen Titans Go!. Enjoy!

The Songs: I tried to pick a song, or some reference or line or scene, but really it’s impossible. The songs are sublime. So great, in fact, that I’ll probably do another Top Ten at some point listing my favourite TTG songs. Really catchy, great lyrics, supremely diverse, and full of references not just to DC but to, well, everything. There’s a song about America that includes the line “Samuel L. Jackson on the stamp”, which makes no sense as far as I can figure, but is just wonderful.

Deep, Deep (DEEP) Cut DC References: it started with the Darkseid doll. A little plush Darkseid doll that’s always leaning against the couch. How cute, how funny; Darkseid, the literal embodiment of evil, but as an adorable snuggly. And then it got deeper, and weirder, and more wild. B’wana Beast. Alternate universe Robins. “That movie where their moms are both called Martha”. The Haunted Tank. The Haunted Tank! What kind of kids’ show references The Haunted Tank?! And then there’s the fact that The Comedian’s blood-stained smiley face badge is on display in the Batcave. Let’s go back over that one: there are Watchmen references in this cartoon for six-year-olds.

Batman and Gordon: the original Teen Titans cartoon pretty much never mentioned any aspect of the universe outside of the five characters, barring one fleeting visual reference to the Batcave and the episode where you meet the Doom Patrol. TTG has no qualms about explaining that, yes, Robin is Batman’s sidekick. So we see the Batcave, and Wayne Manor, and Alfred. But it’s Batman’s relationship with Gordon that’s golden. Not just stoic men’s men who diligently work alongside one another, never questioning, never needing to; no, they’re best mates, giggling schoolkids who want to shirk off all work and just sit in their PJs watching crap on the telly. Like a superheroic version of Beavis and Butt-Head, they’re often there, in the background, goofing off, playing games, undercutting the narrative. It’s such a perfect inversion of Batman’s usual persona and a great way of referencing – in supremely silly terms – the deep bond of affection between the two men in most Batman fiction. I especially like when Superman gives Gordon to Batman as a birthday present.

The Night Begins to Shine: I know I said I wouldn’t single out one song, but we do need to talk about The Night Begins to Shine. More than just a cool song in one episode, it blossomed into a whole weird parallel universe filled with bizarre references to ‘80s heavy metal and, well, Heavy Metal. Almost coming off like a primary school version of Mandy, the multi-part epic about Cyborg fighting a giant dragon in the “Night” universe, complete with cameos from people like CeeLo Green and Fall Out Boy (as Transformers!), is just a thing of absolute beauty. Truly, the level of reference and artistry on display in terms of writing, composition, and animation won’t be understood by the kids watching now until they’re quite a bit older. They’ll come back to this in ten, fifteen, twenty years and think “wow, now I see what they were doing; that’s so, so weird”.

The Holiday Mascots: belligerent Santa is the king (“you garbage kids!”), a fat psychopath trying to take over every other holiday, but let’s spare a thought for the other representations of holidays, too. The creepy Tooth Fairy, who eats teeth. The turkey from Thanksgiving who is horribly mutilated. Uncle Sam. And the Easter Bunny. Oh my god, the Easter Bunny. Genuinely unsettling. Words can’t describe. Seriously, check it out, it’s some Babadook-level freaky shit.

Raven’s Legs: a little bit worrying when you’ve got two kids under seven watching it, but the fact that Raven is not just hiding very, very sexy legs underneath her cloak, but is also capable of becoming an entirely other superhero who uses her legs as weapons, is very, very funny. Watching Beast Boy go full Tex Avery when he sees Raven’s legs is one of those gags that, I guess, works on different levels if you’re a child or an adult. Regardless, turning snarky sourpuss Raven into golden-costumed Lady Legasus is a nice move.

Breaking the Fourth Wall: they only really do this explicitly once or twice, I think, but overall the show is incredibly self-referential. From Control Freak trying to get them rebooted or cancelled, to jokes about the animation or the writing, it’s beautifully self-deprecating. This reaches its apex in the 200th episode specials, when the Titans journey into “our” world. It’s hilarious to see them interact with their own voice actors, but for me it’s the note-perfect representation of directing voice actors that’s really funny, almost as good as Toast of London in its depiction. Plus the gag about everyone who works on the show being ultimately replaceable. A scathing indictment of the animation industry, wrapped up in an animation; like The Simpsons in its heyday.

Genuinely Quite Upsetting Violence: I don’t think I’d ever seen a cartoon for small children before that quite regularly featured its main characters having their bones visibly broken. And by “visibly” I mean “cutting to an X-ray of their limb to show the bone shearing in half or crumpling to dust”. It’s almost rare for an episode to go by without one or more of the Titans experiencing life-altering injuries. I’m honestly not sure how they get away with it. but it is funny. Apex moment? Oh, undoubtedly them beating the shit out of Shia LaBeouf in the movie.

Real-World References: clearly the people who make Teen Titans Go! are in their late thirties or early forties; people who grew up in the ‘80s and absorbed ‘80s culture. People who liked Transformers and Star Wars and Back to the Future, who listened to rock music, who liked toys and videogames. They probably grew into teenagers who were fans of obscure animations, cult movies, sci-fi, fantasy, horror. They are, basically, me. I think I would get on quite well with the creators of TTG, based on the things they reference. But beyond cultural appropriation, it’s the references to daylight saving’s time, “shareconomics”, American politics and history, “The Man”, and more, that is so wild and weird to see in a cartoon for young kids. They handle these topics beautifully (I’m honestly not sure if my kids think the things the Titans are talking about are real or not), but as a grown-up it’s really funny to see these gags in a kids’ cartoon. I mean, the Titans fight the Illuminati in one episode. They reference “lizard men in Congress”. It’s bonkers.

Nicolas Cage: in Teen Titans Go! To the Movies, Nicolas Cage plays Superman. That’s it. I mean, what more do you want? The guy whose whole career almost seems to have hinged on playing Superman finally gets to be Superman. The guy who was nearly – oh so nearly – Superman for Tim Burton is now, at last, Superman. The guy who named his kid Kal-El is now Superman. The guy who was namechecked in The Ultimates about eighteen years ago (“this guy wants to be a superhero almost as much as Nicolas Cage”) is now Superman. It’s such a meta-gag, such a high-level gag. Stunt casting taken to its nth degree. It’s even funnier than Billy Dee Williams playing Two-Face in LEGO Batman. And it got better – this part, I concede, beyond the purview of the TTG creators – because the same year he played Superman, Nicolas Cage also played (an alternate universe version of) Spider-Man in Into the Spider-Verse. And, as I alluded to above, starred in his own version of The Night Begins to Shine when he made Mandy. It all links!

There we go. my favourite things. This was tough, I had to leave a lot out. I’m particularly saddened by not finding room for Cyborg’s tiny body made up of wires whenever he removes his head. And The Jeff; gutted I missed The Jeff. Or the episode that references all the movie incarnations of Batman, including a dumpster full of Batman Forever and Batman & Robin stuff (I’ll save my argument that TTG serves as an even better comic analysis and deconstruction of the meta-character of Batman, and of Robin, than the much-ballyhooed LEGO incarnations for another day). It’s really a great show. I love it to bits. Go watch it.

#top ten #teen titans #teen titans go #teen titans go to the movies #cartoons #dc #comics #robin #starfire #raven #beast boy #cyborg

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