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moontheoretist · 4 years ago

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You know. I have this unique approach to “Tony was selling weapons” issue in which I know it was a legal business and in America it was basically seen as a-ok thing to do, because military propaganda is strong and Tony was basically raised not only in that propaganda, but also in a family which fortune was build on selling those very weapons. On the other hand, I also know that regardless of how legal it is, it was also a war profiteering business which destroyed lives. And on a third hand, because to me Tony is coded as an autistic person with ADHD, I can see how he had issues for so many years to see that the system is broken and cannot be trusted.

Let me explain.

You may call it an excuse or projecting, but when I was younger, I couldn’t process that things I was taught about at school don’t actually work as the textbook claims it does in real life. Meaning that when a paper page in my school book said or a teacher said or someone from my family or anybody who was an authority to me said that democracy is the best system ever and has no flaws, I did believe it and never questioned it. To start questioning it, I needed an outside force to knock the idea that the system is indeed broken into my brain, hard. It’s really hard to accept that the world around you doesn’t work the way you thought it was working on paper, and therefore we as humans tend to delude ourselves that if we cannot see it happen, then it doesn’t exist (though in my case the delusion wasn’t even conscious enough that I could say I was deluding myself, I just was unable to see any issues till they were shoved in my face). So only when we see, and sometimes personally feel that happen to us, we are finally able to let go of that delusion and open our eyes.

Press Reporter #1: Mr. Stark, what happened over there?

Stark: I had my eyes opened.

So to me, the whole Afghanistan incident is this to Tony. To me, it feels logical that he would not be able to compute that weapons are bad and selling them is bad if he was all his life taught that weapons are good and that he helps people by selling them until he was personally smacked with them in the face, because sometimes people saying things to your face (like media, specifically Christine Everheart definitely were doing) is not enough to truly realize something (I also think that Howard and Stane taught Tony how to ignore all the media and what they say to him when he was groomed as SI’s heir, so it didn’t have that much of an effect on him before Afghanistan as it does after it), and you need that smack instead.

It’s a very strong incentive which shakes your whole world, and it is strong enough to make our stubborn autistic brains (mine and Tony’s, I don’t want to insinuate that all autistic people have this issue) to start questioning the status quo.

So, when Tony gets hit by his own weapon and feels on his own skin what it does, sees terrorists use his weapons to target American military (young soldiers who were there mostly because American system is broken and exploits the young, so they would join) and kill them, then has to live with a shrapnel in the cave, learns that Ho Yinsen’s family was also killed by his own weapons, and then when he is free again and continues to live with the shrapnel and sees innocent people in Middle East losing loved ones, it finally starts to compute that weapons are bad, that everything he did till now was bad, that he is the one responsible for this suffering and that his weapons shouldn’t be given to people who cannot be trusted with them (i.e. his own company, America and American military).

It is also in character for him to assume, that if he is the one whose eyes were opened, he should be the one using his own weapons (i.e. Iron Man, which doubles for prostetic too) for good, though it was not his first thought (you remember when he went to Air Force base to talk to Rhodey? It is possible he wanted Rhodey to be his Iron Man pilot instead and when he was rejected and saw that Rhodey believes in the system he doesn’t, he had to take it upon himself, because in his head he was the only one who saw it was wrong).

I think that if Wanda was actually done right (meaning that if Joss Whedon was not antislavic piece of shit and her trauma and suffering were properly represented in AoU instead of being sold as just a low bar villain motivation), the thing which happened to her family when Tony was already a CEO and probably approved of selling the weapons to the military shortly before or long before NATO used them in Yugoslavia to bomb tons of civilians (I am of the mind that military could use the weapons they bought from Tony’s company long ago, and that it didn’t have to specifically be a new contract crafted just to deal with the Slobodan Milošević issue), it would only reinforce the idea that weapons are bad in Tony’s head.

I think that as much as he is not to blame for Wanda’s parents deaths, because he didn’t fire those weapons himself (and possibly was not even that much interested in the conflicts abroad the American army used his weapons for, because he assumed they will use them responsibly, only against enemy soldiers and will not use them on civilians - this is an error born from assuming that war is just and only happens on the battlefield, while a lot of countries since I dunno even how long literally doesn’t adhere to the rules of war (that you can only fight on battlefields with no civilians in sight) and fights wherever they want, not caring about civilians and sometimes even purposefully drop weapons on them like NATO did in Yugoslavia, committing war crimes left and right, making war unjust), I think he bears some responsibility for what happened and has a right to feel guilty over the deaths which happened due to those bombings.

And later on, when he finally switches and does mostly defensive stuff, like making a technology which can remove mines from minefields without any of them exploding, or when he makes his company pursue clean energy instead, and he joins the Avengers, because he truly believes they are good for the world, he is again smacked in the face by the fact that something in which he believed was not good, that it was doing more harm than good. That’s why, in my opinion, he reacted to Mrs. Spencer’s accusations. Because he again let himself believe in something indiscriminately, without doubt, and was again smacked in the face with facts. And the facts were that Avengers were not operating well, and their recklessness and half-cooked last minute plans were the reason why more people died than it would if they actually worked well as superheroes.

To a lot of people, it looks like Tony is motivated by personal hurt and guilt. But to me, it always looks like him being violently shaken into acknowledging reality of something he thought was flawless.

#mcu #tony stark #tony stark defense squad #autistic tony stark #adhd tony stark #op is using their life experience to understand character's pov #op is autistic #op has adhd

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warsofasoiaf · 4 years ago

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Writing Characters With Believable Military PTSD

I typically write these writing and worldbuilding essays from a dispassionate perspective, offering advice and context to prospective writers from as neutral a point of view as I can manage, with the goal being to present specific pieces of information and broader concepts that can hopefully improve writing and build creators’ confidence to bring their projects to fruition, whether that be writing, tabletop gaming, video game programming, or anything that suits their fancy. While writing this essay though, I struggled to maintain that perspective. Certainly, the importance of the topic to me was a factor, but ultimately, I saw impersonality just as a suboptimal presentation method for something so intensely personal. I do maintain some impartiality particularly in places where historical or academic context is called for, but in other respects I’ve opted for a different approach. Ultimately, this essay is a labor of love for me, love for those who suffer from military PTSD, love for those who love those who suffer from it, and love for writers who want to, in the way that they so choose, help those two other groups out. Thus, this is a different type of essay in certain segments than my usual fare; I hope the essay isn’t an unreadable chimera because of it.

This essay focuses on military-related PTSD. While there are some concepts that translate well into PTSD in the civilian sphere, there are unique elements that do not necessarily fit the mold in both directions, so for someone hoping to write a different form of PTSD, I would recommend finding other resources that could better suit your purposes. I also recommend using more than one source just in general, trauma is personal and so multiple sources can help provide a wide range of experiences to draw upon, which should hopefully improve any creative work.

And as a final introductory note, traumatic experiences are deeply personal. If you are using someone you know as a model for your writing, you owe it to that person to communicate exactly what you are doing and to ask their permission every step of the way. I consider it a request out of politeness to implore any author who uses someone else’s experiences to inform their writing in any capacity, but when it comes to the truly negative experiences in someone’s life, this rises higher from request to demand. You will ask someone before taking a negative experience from their own life and placing it into your creative works, and you will not hide anything about it from them. Receiving it is a great sign of trust. The opposite is a travesty, robbing someone of a piece of themselves and placing it upon display as a grotesque exhibit. And if that sounds ghoulish and macabre, it’s because it is, without hyperbole. Don’t do it.

Why Write PTSD?

What is the purpose of including PTSD in a creative work? There have been plenty of art therapy actions taken by those who suffer PTSD to create something from their condition, which can be as profound for those who do not have it as it is therapeutic for those that do, but why would someone include it in their creative works, and why is some no-name guy on the internet writing an essay offering tips as to how to do it better?

Certainly, one key element is that it’s real, and it happens. If art is to reflect upon reality, PTSD suffered by soldiers is one element of that, so art can reflect it, but what specifically about PTSD, as opposed to any other facet of existence? Author preference certainly plays a factor, but why would someone try to include something that is difficult to understand and difficult to portray? While everyone comes to their own reason, I think that a significant number of people are curious about what exactly goes on in the minds of someone suffering through PTSD, and creative works allow them a way to explore it, much the way fiction can explore scenarios and emotions that are either unlikely or unsafe to explore in reality. If that’s the case, then the purpose of this essay is rather simple, to make the PTSD examination more grounded in reality and thus a better reflection of it. But experiences are unique even if discernable patterns emerge, so in that sense, no essay created by an amateur writer with no psychological experience could be an authoritative take on reality, the nature of which would is far beyond the scope of this essay.

For my own part, I think that well-done creative works involving PTSD is meant to break down the isolation that it can cause in its wake. Veterans suffering may feel that they are alone, that their loved ones cannot understand them and the burden of trying to create that would simply push them away; better instead to have the imperfect bonds that they currently have than risk losing them entirely. For those who are on the outside looking in, isolation lurks there as well, a gulf that seems impossible to breach and possibly intrusive to even try. Creative works that depict PTSD can help create a sense that victims aren’t alone, that there are people that understand and can help without demeaning the sense of self-worth. Of course, another element would be to reduce the amount of poorly-done depictions of PTSD. Some creative works use PTSD as a backstory element, relegating a defining and important element of an individual’s life as an aside, or a minor problem that can be resolved with a good hug and a cry or a few nights with the right person. If a well-done creative work can help create a bridge and break down isolation, a poorly-done one can turn victims off, reinforcing the idea that no one understands and worse, no one cares. For others, it gives a completely altered sense of what PTSD is and what they could do to help, keeping them out, confusing them, or other counter-productive actions. In that sense, all the essay is to help build up those who are doing the heavy lifting. I’m not full of so much hubris as to think this is a profound piece of writing that will help others, but if creators are willing to try and do the hard work of building a bridge, I could at least try to help out and provide a wheelbarrow.

An Abbreviated Look At The Many Faces and Names of PTSD Throughout History

PTSD has been observed repeatedly throughout human history, even when it was poorly understood. This means that explorations of PTSD can be written in settings even if they did not have a distinctly modern understanding of neurology, trauma, or related matters. These historical contexts are also useful for worldbuilding a believable response in fictional settings and scenarios that don’t necessarily have a strict analogue in our own history. By providing this historical context, hopefully I can craft a broad-based sense of believable responses to characters with PTSD at a larger level.

In the time of Rome, it was understood by legionnaires that combat was a difficult endeavor, and so troops were typically on the front lines engaged in combat for short periods of time, to be rotated back for rest while others took their place. It was considered ideal, in these situations, to rotate troops that fought together back so that they could rest together. The immediate lesson is obvious, the Romans believed that it was vital for troops to take time to process what they had done and that was best served with quiet periods of rest not just to allow the adrenaline to dissipate (the "combat high"), but a chance for the mind to wrap itself around what the legionnaire had done. The Romans also recognized that camaraderie between fellow soldiers helped soldiers to cope, and this would be a running theme throughout history (and remains as such today). Soldiers were able to empathize with each other, and help each other through times of difficulty. This was not all sanguine, however, Roman legions depended on their strong formations, and a soldier that did not perform their duty could endanger the unit, and so shame in not fulfilling their duty was another means to keep soldiers in line. The idea of not letting down your fellow soldiers is a persistent refrain in coping with the traumas of war, and throughout history this idea has been used for both pleasant and unpleasant means of keeping soldiers in the fight.

In the Middle Ages, Geoffroi de Charny wrote extensively on the difficulties that knights could experience on the campaign trail in his Book of Chivalry. The book highlights the deprivation that knights suffered, from the bad food and poor sleep to the traumatic experience of combat to being away from family and friends to the loss of valued comrades to combat and infection; each of these is understood as a significant stressor that puts great strain on the mental health of soldiers up to today. De Charny recommended focusing on the knightly oaths of service, the needs of the mission of their liege, and the duty of the knight to serve as methods to help bolster the resolve of struggling knights. The book also mentions seeking counseling and guidance from priests or other confidants to help improve their mental health to see their mission through. This wasn’t universal, however. Some severely traumatized individuals were seen as simple cowards, and punished harshly for their perceived cowardice as antithetical to good virtue and to serve as an example.

World War I saw a sharp rise in the reported incidents of military-related PTSD and new understandings and misunderstandings. The rise in the number of soldiers caused a rise in cases of military PTSD, even though the term itself was not known at the time. Especially in the early phases of the war, many soldiers suffering from PTSD were thought to be malingering, pretending to have symptoms to avoid being sent to the front lines. The term “shell shock” was derived because it was believed that the concussive force of artillery bombardment caused brain damage as it rattled the skull or carbon monoxide fumes would damage the brain as they were inhaled, as a means to explain why soldiers could have physical responses such as slurred speech, lack of response to external stimuli, even nigh-on waking catatonia, despite not being hit by rifle rounds or shrapnel. This would later be replaced by the term “battle fatigue” when it became apparent that artillery bombardment was not a predicative indicator. Particularly as manpower shortages became more prevalent, PTSD-sufferers could be sent to firing squads as a means to cow other troops to not abandon their post. Other less fatal methods of shaming could occur, such as the designation “Lack of Moral Fibre,” an official brand of cowardice, as an attempt to shame the members into remembering their duty. As the war developed, and understanding grew, better methods of treatment were made, with rest and comfort provided to slight cases, strict troop rotations observed to rotate men to and from the front lines, and patients not being told that they were being evacuated for nervous breakdown to avoid cementing that idea in their mind. These lessons would continue into World War II, where the term “combat stress reaction” was adopted. While not always strenuously followed, regular rotations were adopted as standard policy. This was still not universal, plenty of units still relied upon bullying members into maintaining their post despite mental trauma.

The American military promotes a culture of competence and ability, particularly for the enlisted ranks, and that lends itself to the soldier viewing themselves in a starkly different fashion than a civilian. Often, a soldier sees the inability to cope with a traumatic experience as a personal failure stemming from the lack of mental fortitude. Owning up to such a lack of capability is tantamount to accepting that they are an inferior soldier, less capable than their fellows. This idea is commonly discussed, and should not be ignored, but it is far from the only reason. The military also possesses a strong culture of fraternity that obligates “Don’t be a fuckup,” is a powerful motivating force, and it leads plenty of members of the military to ignore traumatic experiences out of the perceived need not to put the burden on their squadmates. While most professional militaries stress that seeking mental health for trauma is not considered a sign of weakness, enlisted know that if they receive mental health counseling, it is entirely likely that someone will have to take their place in the meantime. That could potentially mean that another person, particularly in front-line units, are exposed to danger that they would otherwise not be exposed to, potentially exacerbating guilt if said person gets hurt or killed. This is even true in stateside units, plenty of soldiers don’t report for treatment because it would mean dumping work on their fellows, a negative aspect of unit fraternity. Plenty of veterans also simply never are screened for mental health treatment, and usually this lends to a mentality of “well, no one is asking, so I should be fine.” These taken together combine to a heartbreaking reality, oftentimes a modern veteran that seeks help for mental trauma has often coped silently for years, perhaps self-medicating with alcohol or off-label drug usage, and is typically very far along their own path comparatively. Others simply fall through the cracks, not being screened for mental disorders and so do not believe that anything is wrong; after all, if something was wrong, surely the doctors would notice it, right? The current schedule of deployments, which are duration-based and not mission-based, also make it hard for servicemembers to rationalize their experiences and equate them to the mission; there’s no sense of pairing suffering to objectives the way that de Charnay mentioned could help contextualize the deprivation and loss. These sorts of experiences make the soldier feel adrift, and their suffering pointless, which is discouraging on another level. It is one thing to suffer for a cause, it’s another not to know why, amplifying the feelings of powerlessness and furthering the isolation that they feel.

Pen to Page - The Characters and Their Responses

The presentation of PTSD within a character will depend largely on the point-of-view that the author creates. A character that suffers from PTSD depending on the presence of an internal or external point-of-view, will be vastly different experiences on page. Knowing this is essential, as this will determine how the story itself is presenting the disorder. Neither is necessarily more preferable than the other, and is largely a matter of the type of story being told and the personal preference of the author.

Internal perspectives will follow the character’s response from triggering event to immediate response. This allows the author to present a glimpse into what the character is experiencing. In these circumstances, remember that traumatic flashbacks are merely one of many experiences that an average sufferer of PTSD can endure. In a visual medium, flashbacks are time-effective methods to portray a character reliving portions of a traumatic experience, but other forms of media can have other tools. Traumatic flashbacks are not necessarily a direct reliving of an event from start to finish, individuals may instead feel sudden sharp pains of old injuries, be overwhelmed by still images of traumatic scenes or loud traumatic sounds. These can be linked to triggers that bring up the traumatic incident, such as a similar sight, sound, or smell. These moments of linkage are not necessarily experienced linearly or provide a clear sequence of events from start to finish (memory rarely is unless specifically prompted), and it may be to the author’s advantage to not portray them as such in order to communicate the difficulty in mental parsing that the character may be experiencing. Others might be more intrusive, such as violently deranged nightmares that prevent sleep. The author must try to strike a balance between portraying the experience realistically and portraying it logically that audience members can understand. The important thing about these memories is that they are intrusive, unwelcome, and quite stressful, so using techniques that jar the reader, such as the sudden intrusive image of a torn body, a burning vehicle, or another piece of the traumatic incident helps communicate the disorientation. Don't rely simply on shock therapy, it's not enough just to put viscera on the page. Once it is there, the next steps, how the character reacts, is crucial to a believable response.

When the character experiences something that triggers their PTSD, start to describe the stress response, begin rapidly shortening the sentences to simulate the synaptic activity, express the fight-flight-freeze response as the character reacts, using the tools of dramatic action to heighten tension and portraying the experience as something frightful and distinctly undesirable. The triggering incident brings back the fear, such as a pile of rubble on the side of the road being a potential IED location, or a loud firework recalling the initial moments of an enemy ambush. The trauma intrudes, and the character falls deep into the stress response, and now they react. How does this character react? By taking cover? By attacking the aggressor who so reminds them of the face of their enemy? Once the initial event starts, then the character continues to respond. Do they try to get to safety? Secure the area and eliminate the enemy? Eventually, the character likely recognizes their response is inappropriate. It wasn’t a gunshot, it was a car backfiring, the smell of copper isn’t the sight of a blown-apart comrade and the rank odor of blood, it’s just a jug of musty pennies. This fear will lead to control mechanisms where the victim realizes that their response is irrational. Frequently, the fear is still there, and it still struggles with control. This could heighten a feeling a powerlessness in the character as they try and fail to put the fear under control: "Yes, I know this isn’t real and there’s nothing to be afraid of, but I’m still shaking and I am still afraid!" It’s a horrifying logical track, a fear that the victim isn’t even in control of their thoughts - the one place that they should have control - and that they might always be this way. There’s no safety since even their thoughts aren’t safe. Despair might also follow, as the victim frantically asserts to regain control. Usually with time, the fear starts to lessen as the logical centers of the brain regain control, and the fear diminishes. Some times, the victim can't even really recall the exact crippling sense of fear when attempting to recall it, only that they were afraid and that it was deeply scary and awful, but the notion that it happened remains in their mind.

Control mechanisms are also important to developing a believable PTSD victim. Most sufferers dread the PTSD response and so actively avoid objects or situations that could potentially trigger. Someone who may have had to escape from a helicopter falling into the ocean may not like to be immersed in water. Someone who was hit by a hidden IED may swerve to avoid suspicious piles in the road. Someone buried under a collapsing ceiling may become claustrophobic. Thus, many characters with PTSD will be hypervigilant almost to the point of exhaustion, avoiding setting off the undesired response. This hypervigilance is mentally taxing; the character begins to become sluggish mentally as all their energy is squeezed out, leaving them struggling for even the simplest of rational thoughts. This mental fog can be translated onto the page in dramatic effect by adding paragraph length to even simple actions, bringing the reader along into the fog, laboriously seeing the character move to perform simple actions. Then, mix in a loss of a sense of purpose. They’re adrift, not exactly sure what they’re doing and barely aware of what’s happening, although they are thinking and functioning. In the character’s daily life, they are living their life using maximum effort to avoid triggering responses; this is another aspect of control that the character can use as an attempt to claw back some semblance of power in their own lives. Even control methods that aren’t necessarily healthy such as drinking themselves to pass out every night or abusing sleeping pills in an attempt to sleep due to their nightmares, are ways to attempt to regain a sense of normalcy and function. Don’t condescend to these characters and make them pathetic, that’s just another layer of cruelty, but showing the unhealthy coping mechanisms can demonstrate the difficulty that PTSD victims are feeling. Combined with an external perspective, the author can show the damage that these unhealthy actions are doing without casting the character as weak for not taking a different path.

External perspectives focus on the other characters and how they observe and react to the individual in question. Since the internal thought process of the character is not known, sudden reactions to an unknown trigger can be quite jarring for characters unaware, which can mirror real-life experiences that individuals can have with PTSD-sufferers. In these types of stories, the character’s reaction to the victim is paramount. PTSD in real life often evokes feelings of helplessness in loved ones when they simply cannot act to help, can evoke confusion, or anger and resentment. These reactions are powerful emotions with the ability to drive character work, and so external perspectives can be useful for telling a story about what it is like for loved ones who suffer in their own fashion. External perspectives can be used not just in describing triggering episodes, but in exploring how the character established coping mechanisms and how their loved ones react to them. Some mechanisms are distinctly unhealthy, such as alcohol or prescription drug abuse, complete withdrawal, or a refusal to drive vehicles, and these create stress and a feeling of helplessness in characters or can impel them to try and take action. Others can be healthy, and a moment of inspiration and joy for an external perspective could be sharing in that mechanism, demonstrating empathy and understanding which evokes strong pathos, and hopefully to friends of those who suffer from PTSD, a feeling that they too, are not alone.

As the character progresses, successes and failures can often be one of the most realistic and most important things to include within the work, since those consumers who have PTSD will see parts of themselves in the characters, which can build empathy and cut down on the feelings of isolation that many victims of PTSD feel. A character could, over the course of the story, begin weaning themselves off of their control mechanisms, have the feelings of panic subside as their logical sides more quickly assert control, replace unhealthy coping mechanisms with healthier ones, or other elements of character progression and growth. Contrarily, a character making progress could, after experiencing significant but unrelated stressors, backslide either into unhealthy coping mechanisms or be blindsided by another attack. This is a powerful fear for the victim, since it can cause them to think ‘all my progress, all my effort, and I am not free!’ This is often a great fear for PTSD users (people with depression often have the same feeling) that find methods of coping are no longer as effective, and the struggle is perceived as one that they’re ultimately doomed to failure. This feeling of inevitable failure can lead to self-harm and suicide as their avenue of success seems to burn to ash right as it was in their hands. More than one soldier suffering from PTSD has ended up concluding: “Fuck it, I can’t live like this,” as horrible as that is. Don’t be afraid to include setbacks and backsliding, those happen in reality, and can be one of the most isolating fears in their lives; if the goal of portraying PTSD accurately is to help remove that feeling of isolation, then content creators must not avoid these experiences. Success as well as failure are essential to PTSD in characters in stories, these elements moreso than any other, I believe, will transcend the medium and form a connection, fulfilling the objective we set out to include in the beginning paragraphs.

Coming Back to the Beginning

It might be counterintuitive at first glance to say “including military PTSD will probably mean it will be a long journey full of discouraging story beats that might make readers depressed,” because that’s definitely going to discourage some readers to do that. I don’t see it that way, though. The people that want to do it should go in knowing it’s going to be hard, and let that strengthen their resolve, and put the best creation they can forward. The opposite is also true. Not every prospective author has to want to include any number of difficult subjects in their works, and that’s perfectly fine. Content creators must be free to shape the craft that they so desire without the need to be obligated to tackle every difficult issue, and so no content creator should be thought of as lesser or inferior because they opt not to include it in their works. I think that’s honestly stronger than handling an important topic poorly, or even worse, frivolously. Neither should anyone think that a content creator not including PTSD in their works means that they don’t care about those who suffer from it or for those who care about them or who simply don’t care about the subject in general. That’s just a terrible way to treat someone, and in the end, this entire excursion was about the opposite

Ultimately, this essay is a chance not only to help improve creative works involving PTSD, but to reflect on the creative process. Those who still want to proceed, by all means, do so. Hopefully this essay will help you create something that can reach someone. If every piece of work that helps portray PTSD can reach someone somewhere and make things easier, even if ever so little, well then, that’s what it’s really all about.

Hoping everyone has a peaceful Memorial Day. Be good to each to other.

SLAL

#essays on writing and worldbuilding #ptsd

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arcanacritique · 3 years ago

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Wrote this review for the app store but its too long so I'll put it here

I could not speak more highly of this game and it is so disappointing to see so many self proclaimed “fans” of the game trying to bring down and destroy such an inclusive, nuanced piece of media such as this.

The fandom has ruined the reputation of this truly beautiful game because they cannot see past surface level exclamations of justice signaling to try to tear down something that doesn’t cater to their tastes. I wish more people could acknowledge the nuance this game goes through.

The game itself really offers a lot to be analyzed and representation for those without any representation, and when the fandom tries to claim that there are harmful stereotypes in place or that there is a lack of diversity it really just demonstrates that they cannot see the groups that are so often forgotten and not acknowledged that the game focuses on and brings light to.

Lucio has origins from a white, indigenous tribe, which suffers a lot of stigma and lack of discussion that is dismissed purely because he is a white male. These groups go so often undiscussed because people oft think that white exempts them from having other areas that require representation or consideration, such as his indigenous roots.

Muriel is a wonderful example (for me, at least) of mixed diversity, which is forgotten and over looked so often by people of color and by white groups. They are the most ignored for not “fitting” or being “enough” in either group. He challenges ideas of toxic masculinity that imply to be strong you must be cruel, or that to be masculine you must not be softhearted or shy. Julian an Lucio both have central character aspects that challenge stereotypical toxic masculinity, such as Julian and Lucio both canonly wearing makeup, and participating in hobbies, interests, and displaying character traits and elements that in most media are reserved for or coded as feminine.

The entire cast is canonly bisexual, which is the most stigmatized and delegitimized group in the LGB community. Bisexual representation is one of the hardest to find.

Nadia represents a lot of the issues present in non-european aristocracies or other equivalent forms of hierarchy. Likewise, Nadia is a wonderful example of a strong empowered woman, who also suffers from the expectations and learned prejudices that she imposes on her “brutish” and “unrefined” husband, Lucio, who she looks down on for his understandable “only the tough and cruel survive” mindset as a byproduct of the harsh nature of the Scourge, that left him traumatized and without an understanding of how to function without prioritizing himself at the expense of others. Lucio’s need to garner attention and impulsivity to try to erase his tribal roots to fit in with Nadia’s idea of refinement and propriety leaves so much to be discussed, and Nadia’s encouragement of him adopting a “refined” lifestyle, and abandoning his “indigenous” roots leaves much to be discussed about cultural hierarchies.

Julian to me was always coded to be more agnostic/atheistic rather than jewish, and it is frustrating to see so much of the fandom try to reinforce a religion that doesn’t exist in this world—thats the point of the game—there are no real world counterparts to religion or explicit nationality so that everyone can see a little of themselves in the characters and not feel shut out, so that everyone can relate to the game. Rather, people have insisted that taking inspiration from various real world sources and melding them into something original is cultural appropriation and bad representation. It is not. In my honest opinion I found that forcing the company in trying to cater to fan demands (who the fanbase tries to claim never listens to them—they do) shut out fans of other religions/secular beliefs from being able to identify with these characters. The same can be applied to people trying to claim Asra is muslim, and that he and Aisha as such should not be allowed to practice magic. They are not. Rather, these ideas that the devs are racist BECAUSE they do not adhere to stereotypes such as “all people who are middle eastern are therefore muslim” “Everyone who wears a headscarf is muslim” “Julian has a big nose and is therefore jewish” really only reinforces those negative stereotypes.

All the characters of this game are incredibly three dimensional and as such have flaws and strengths alike. The problem with this fandom is that they assume that to have “bad qualities”, character flaws, means its enforcing negative stereotypes for certain races, when it is far from it. Rather, the game treats the characters, which are incredibly diverse, as nuanced, HUMAN people. The idea that people of color should not have negative tendencies or flaws to overcome (WHICH IS THE ENTIRE POINT OF THE GAME) sets up this idea of minorities having to adhere to unattainable perfect standards in order to be “good” representation, and derives them of the ability to be seen as human and imperfect. It only further sets up this precedent that to be less than perfect as a person of color means you are reinforcing negative stereotypes, and exempts cultures, such as Nadia’s, from being forced to address the problems and issues that arise in all cultures—colored cultures, included. Nadia is not a stereotype of an overbearing black woman, rather, she is an example of the humanity that we all possess, being that she is flawed, and not exempt from critique because of her skin tone and is allowed to grow and evolve, rather than being expected to be perfect, which is her entire character struggle; she feels, from the start, that she must be perfect at all times to try and prove herself and separate herself from her sisters.

The devs are not perfect. I agree that the game WAS severely over priced, from when I first started playing it, but the new daily check in feature and watching ads has made it so easy to play the game for free if you have a reasonable amount of patience (This system is very similar to dislike’s reward and check in system, which also requires patience, but as the game is so new, no one is trying to cancel it yet). They heard the complaints about the game being too expensive and coins being hard to access and they fixed it. You play the game, you watch ads, you do heart hunter and collect chests, you can earn coins so easily and like rapid fire. Just because it takes you, you know, playing the game to EARN THE COINS, doesn’t mean they’re ripping you off anymore. This was an issue. Its not anymore. They fixed it, because regardless of what people say, the devs do listen to their fanbase. Again, they are not perfect, and they acknowledge this, and it boils my blood to see people trying to treat a company that is very professional to all its criticism as “sweeping things under the rug.” There is a difference between professionalism and trying to escape responsibility, which I wIsh the fandom could see. They try so hard to lift up the voices of the fandom, take time to reply to criticism so that the fanbase knows they’re heard, adjust character sprites (which if youre not an artist/coder/animation, you don’t know how MASSIVELY consuming and expensive that is), and promote the fan artists and writers who help keep the game alive through their many events, that all the attempts to cancel and destroy this game and the company seem incredibly unjust. What people do when they try to destroy this game in the name of social justice is really just destroy a beautiful piece of media that provides representation and diversity better than any other piece of media I have ever seen. This game is breaking so many barriers, and as such, definitely is inevitably going to upset some people as they try to tackle such sensitive and nuanced issues that other companies steer clear of, and its obvious why. Rather than treat the game, the devs, and staff as humans trying to actively learn and create a beautiful piece of work for everyone to see a piece of themselves in, they destroy the representation for those who identify with it by claiming its racist because of their own backwards idea of what diversity is.

I said this to my friend the other day: its not racist just because you don’t identify with it, and its def racist of you to shut down the people who do and gaslight them as "racist" for seeing it as it was meant to be seen.

All people do when they try to tear this game down is prove that other companies would be setting themselves up for failure and controversy to try to include representation, and further sets the precedent that media must remain white, conventional, straight, and undeveloped. A game like this has not been attempted before: of course its got flaws, because it is the first of its kind. But rather than give it that understanding, or acknowledge the doors this fandom has opened for other piece of media, the hate is just going to keep this type of representation and diversity from being attempted again in the mainstream.

As for the “Muriel only bathes when it rains,” did I agree with that take? No. Did I see that there’s consistency with Muriel struggling with depression, or being you know, out in the woods without access to plumbing, as an issue? People with depression, and I’ve experienced it, definitely struggle to bathe and get the bare minimum done—self care falls to the wayside. Somedays when I’m depressed the only thing I can stand to do is sit under the water and mope because self care takes too much effort. People are so desperate to see anything as racist they overlook a lot of the nuance and mental health representation the game offers (and I don’t personally agree with Muriel being unhygienic, but I can see where that head canon might have come from, and its not a racist standpoint!) This was a primary example of claiming racism because you don’t understand the other nuance of other types of representation, such as mental health in media/depression. Being depressed isn’t pretty, or always sanitary. Its an issue. I was glad it was given an opportunity to be discussed. I don’t agree it was approached in the correct way, but again, if you stop making snap judgments based on the witch hunts the fandom leads, and look for the representation the game offers, you’ll find it.

If people could give a moment of trust to the devs, and the nuance they try to cover, they could truly appreciate and see this game for all that it has to offer and how groundbreaking it is. Cancel culture has become so toxic, as has justice signaling. Just because it doesn’t fit what you’ve been lead to believe is diverse, doesn’t mean its not. The thought provides so much basis for thought and consideration and deep discussion, even with its flaws (I don’t like Lucio’s route and agree his redemption arc could have been better, but there is still plenty to be discussed about what they did put out to open nuanced discussions of trauma, upbringing, “you can understand but you can’t excuse” and ownership of becoming a better person, not for forgiveness, but to truly become better). The game has done wonders to open discussion, despite its flaws. Flaws are always going to be inevitable in innovation and progress, as are mistakes. Rather, we need to trust and think logically through our personal, gut reactions to what we don’t understand, so that we can acknowledge and appreciate all this game, and the devs have offered. The outright bullying of the devs in the server for just doing their job is incredibly problematic as well. I wish people could see the difference between “professionalism” and “shame and lack of accountability.” @thearcanagame

#the arcana #the arcana fandom

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sokkastyles · 5 years ago

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I said that I wanted to make a post as a companion to this one about Azula focusing on Zuko, because both the Fire Nation siblings crave authenticity and I was thinking about this in terms of this conversation:

Zuko: Why didn't you tell those guys who we were?

Azula: I guess I was intrigued. I'm so used to people worshiping us.

Ty Lee: They should.

Azula: Yes, I know, and I love it. But, for once, I just wanted to see how people would treat us if they didn't know who we were.

This is during “The Beach” when Ty Lee and Mai are invited to a party by some FN teens and Azula invites herself and Zuko. The teens hilariously tell them that there will be “important people” at the party, not knowing that Azula and Zuko are the prince and princess of the Fire Nation. Zuko asks Azula why she didn’t tell them the truth and she says she wanted to be treated like a normal teenager, for once. In this episode we see Azula trying, and failing, to be the teenage girl she never got to be.

Although Zuko and Azula both want to be seen and understood for who they really are, to embrace an identity that is authentic and real, and be seen and known by others on a level that is authentic and real, Zuko goes about it in a different way than Azula. Zuko’s search for his authentic self has led him to pursue the identity he’s been trying to get back to for three years, his identity as Prince of the Fire Nation. That’s why Zuko wonders why Azula didn’t just tell the boys who they were. If she did, surely they would want them at the party? They are, after all, the Prince and Princess.

Zuko also has a different relationship to his status as royalty not only because he’s been away from home for three years, but because he’s always been told that he wasn’t good enough, that he had to better, that he had to prove he was worthy of the title he was born with. Of course, it’s all built on a lie, the lie of noble birth, but it’s been so ingrained in Zuko (and Azula, but we’re talking about Zuko now) that at the beginning of the series, he was bitter and angry over what he felt he was entitled to that had been taken from him.

Zuko asking Azula why she didn’t just tell the boys who they really were echoes his revelation of his true name to the Earth Kingdom village in “Zuko Alone.”

Zuko: My name is Zuko. Son of Ursa and Fire Lord Ozai. Prince of the Fire Nation, and heir to the throne.

Old man: Liar! I heard of you! You're not a prince, you're an outcast! His own father burned and disowned him!

Here, Zuko’s announcement of who he is has the opposite effect than what he thought, as he failed to realize that the Earth Kingdom citizens he sought to protect would not look kindly on Fire Nation royalty. This shows Zuko’s desire to get back what he’s lost without a real understanding of his privilege and the crimes his nation has committed against the rest of the world. And the old man’s reaction also has the added bonus of reminding him that even whatever hollow meaning he could have taken from his title is ultimately meaningless, because his father banished him.

And thus, just like Azula, Zuko’s identity is fractured into multiples. The first one is Prince Zuko, heir to the throne. The second one is Zuko the disgraced, scarred, banished, exiled.

There’s also a third which is further broken up into multiples: Blue Spirit, refugee, tea server, that exists in between the two.

Zuko’s narrative is about trying to reconcile these identities into an authentic self, and for much of the series, he is single-mindedly pursuing what he thinks represents his authentic self. That’s why when he finally goes back to the Fire Nation, he tries to be happy with his identity as prince, and embrace it as much as possible. He thinks that telling the guys at the party who he is will impress them (even though it didn’t work the first time), but once he gets there, he feels more out of place than ever.

What’s this? A shot of Zuko’s scar and a mirror, and a guy who represents the kind of guy Zuko could have been if he weren’t who he is? Zuko’s got everything he wanted here. He’s the prince of the Fire Nation, he’s got a girlfriend, his honor restored, and he’s back home, but instead of enjoying himself, he decides to be jealous of this guy. His existential confusion comes out as insecurity over his relationship with Mai, because he can never be sure if he can be himself with Mai, or if Mai even likes his true self. I mean, if he hadn’t agreed to go back to the Fire Nation, if he hadn’t become Prince Zuko again, he would not even have a relationship with her, as he would have been making the journey back as a prisoner.

Zuko’s inability to return to his former identity as prince of the Fire Nation is symbolically represented in his scar. He is permanently marked by the suffering he has undergone, and permanently changed as a result of his experiences. In “The Crossroads of Destiny,” Zuko almost was able to reconcile these two aspects of himself, and to choose for himself which one to embrace. When he meets Katara in the catacombs, he is confronted with what his identity as Prince of the Fire Nation, and the legacy of destruction that goes with it, means to her:

Katara: You're a terrible person! You know that? Always following us! Hunting the Avatar! Trying to capture the world's last hope for peace! But what do you care? You're the Fire Lord's son. Spreading war and violence and hatred is in your blood!

Zuko: You don't know what you're talking about!

Katara: I don't? How dare you! You have no idea what this war has put me through!

Zuko, of course, objects to being characterized this way, and of course his relationship with his identity as the FIre Lord’s son is much more complicated than Katara knows, but she also is right that he has no idea of the suffering that his people have wrought upon the rest of the world. It’s when Katara brings up her personal loss of her mother, though, that he is able to empathize with her.

Katara: The Fire Nation took my mother away from me.

Zuko: I'm sorry. That's something we have in common.

Speaking of mirrored images, Zuko throughout his journey has had his own self-image held up to him and examined through the mirror of other people, one of them being Song, the Earth Kingdom girl who empathized with him over his burn scar. Katara is another, someone who, like him, lost her mother as a child. There are two things here that are an essential part of Zuko’s journey, 1) experiencing the suffering of others which pulls him out of his own self-centered perception, and 2) having his own suffering validated by seeing and meeting other people who have suffered in the same way. Contrast this to the way Azula treats other people’s suffering as not entirely real, calling her brother and her friend’s revelations about themselves in “The Beach” performances while also denying that she cares about her own damaged relationship with her mother. Zuko’s realization that other people’s suffering is real and something he should care about goes hand in hand with realizing that he did not deserve to suffer in the ways that his family has made him suffer. It is Katara’s pain over her mother’s loss that reaffirms that Zuko’s loss of his mother was also real and causes Zuko to realize that he is free to choose his own identity.

Zuko: I used to think this scar marked me. The mark of the banished prince, cursed to chase the Avatar forever. But lately, I've realized I'm free to determine my own destiny, even if I'll never be free of my mark.

Katara offering to heal the scar, although well-meaning, ironically sets Zuko back, because it reinforces the idea that the scar is a shameful part of his identity, something that marks him as Zuko the banished prince and separates him from becoming who he truly is. Katara connects with Zuko in a way that is authentic and real, but because Zuko cannot yet reconcile the dichotomy within himself, he ends up making the wrong decision underneath Ba Sing Se, and when Katara says during the fight that she thought he had changed, he tells her that he has, having made a decision about which identity to choose, although he still must take the final steps towards becoming whole by reconciling the two parts of himself personified by the “crossroads” in this episode.

But also essential to Zuko reconciling these two parts of himself is the development in season two of an identity that bridges gap between Prince Zuko and Zuko the banished. This is the Zuko that we see serving tea, working the kind of job that we might expect a normal teenager to work, and beginning to form a picture of himself that is surprisingly domestic. And even though he makes it clear to Iroh that this isn’t what he wants, it’s clear that some part of him craves this. Just as with Azula we see her wishful attempt to inhabit the role of normal teenage girl through going to a party and flirting with a boy, we see Zuko at possibly his most vulnerable and most “normal teenagery” when he is on his date with Jin. And even though it’s Iroh who pushes him to accept the date, we see Zuko reluctantly open up and genuinely enjoy himself.

However, Zuko still cannot experience true authenticity with Jin, as he must hide his Fire Nation identity. He does, however, covertly reveal his firebending to Jin, whose silent acceptance moves him ever so slightly towards an acceptance of his true self. This is ultimately too much for him, however, as once he accepts Jin’s acceptance and reciprocates her feelings he is overwhelmed and retreats, in part because he cannot reveal his true self to her for practical reasons and in part because he isn’t ready to do so on an emotional level.

It is also around this time in the narrative that Zuko sees another reflection of himself. His freeing of Appa is a huge blow to his self-perception, and this causes him to go into a fever during which he has several dreams that reveal parts of his identity or how he sees himself. The first is the image of himself on the Fire Lord throne, devoid of the scar but being controlled by two dragons with the voice of Azula and Iroh. And it’s after this dream that he looks in the mirror and sees himself as...

I’ve mostly seen this scene talked about in terms of Zuko and Aang’s narrative parallels and spiritual link, and it is significant for that reason, but it’s also a reflection of the choice Zuko must make about who he will be. If he is not defined by his identity as either Prince of the Fire Nation or his banishment, or his search for the Avatar, then who is he?

Zuko touching the scar upon waking to reaffirm that he is still himself shows us how much the scar has become a part of his identity. At the end of book two, he flirts with the idea of acceptance, and then with the offer of having it removed, and then when he goes back to the Fire Nation in early book three, he attempts to return to a point before the scar existed, before the fracturing of his identity, but finds that he cannot.

Zuko: During the meeting, I was the perfect prince. The son my father wanted. But I wasn't me.

By going to the war meeting, Zuko returns to the place of his original trauma and discovers that he cannot return to who he was before the fracturing of his identity, and that he, in fact, was never the “perfect prince” to begin with, that that person never existed.

What Zuko eventually comes to realize, through all of these experiences, and through returning to the home of his existence before the scar and finding it no longer a home, is that all of these identities are a part of him.

When he confronts his father on the Day of Black Sun, and then when he presents himself to the gaang, this is the first time that Zuko is being true to his authentic self, both by creating a more whole and positive identity and by accepting the trauma and guilt of his past and trying to atone. Therefore he’s able to create a more true identity and accept his place as Fire Lord without the cognitive dissonance that that identity brought him before.

#zuko #atla meta

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blackwoolncrown · 6 years ago

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But isn’t it lonely? To disconnect in that sense (or I’m probably misunderstanding your words) but don’t we as humans want to be part of a group? Then again, you’re right. I’m not even out as bi yet I cling to it so strongly that it can feel crippling sometimes, because it’s the only identity of mine that I gave acceptance to on my own terms compared to my really conservative culture and religion in which I was raised and forced to practice by other people. Idk what my end goal is anymore tbh

“Last anon and honestly I most likely just didn’t fully understand your post but now I’m sitting here just questioning my existence lol it’s tiring to live for others constantly. I wish I can disconnect from everyone but that will never be an option for me and I’m trying to find the positive in that instead of feeling so depressed this late at night“

Okay just on a skim you’re totally missing my point. I never said this was about apathy.

We’re all already part of a group. That’s the point. The group is humanity. The group is ‘all beings on earth’.

Every other ‘group’ is illusory or at the least inherently fractured. You wanna join a group based on the media you like? Fine but then you’ll also find issues of race, or religion, or politics because the group wasn’t based on being like-minded in those aspects. Wanna join a group based on your sexuality or shared experience? Ha. Which shared experience? Because not all people in one part of the Venn Diagram are going to line up exactly where you do, and it is in those gaps and mismatches arguments occur.

The human tendency to form groups starts with tribalism, but from there on out struggles to maintain group identity. If I wanted to ally with all Black people based on Blackness, I run into bible thumpers, transphobes, classist white ppl wannabes. Because we are all multifaceted beings, every attempt to connect to humans via one specific facet will inevitably lead to disharmony. It might work with isolated or limited population sizes but in the world we are now living in, we see how antiquated the notion is. That’s what’s tiring.

We cannot expect to find any real meaning in these subjective, surface parts of our humanity when our being is quite bigger and deeper than any of them. We were born human, made of the universe. Everything we learned after that was subjective cultural data. Everything you learned about race, religion, sexuality. It can be validating and emboldening to find acceptance, and I’m not holding that against anyone, but it’s like a training wheel, and eventually you realize that clinging to the acceptance the group once gave you at some point hinders your growth.

Furthermore the thing is, back when this instinct to group had more to do with tribes and territory, that was a tangible and easily identifiable thing. But now we’re grouping (and fighting) over ideas. There’s no actual way to enforce these things! I could have told you once my people’s land was from here to the river in the East. We, sharing the reality of that, can at least both see exactly what I’m talking about- even if we disagree and you want to share or even fight over that territory.

But even race and nationality has shown itself to be more idea than reality. And this is driving people nuts, inciting Fascism and Nationalism because the ideas are fragile and breaking and people whose identities and notions of self are based on them are terrified of losing what they feel to be their identity. But race and nationality are nebulous concepts humans made up. So too for sexuality. In a world without persecution, what is there to be persecuted? Basically every identity we’re dealing with now originates in a false and imposed binary of ‘right and wrong’. My blacknesss is created by whiteness. Both are myth. There are just differently melanated types of human beings. My gender only exists in a social lexicon that assumes ‘heterosexuality’ is meaningfully real, and the norm. But that’s a myth. My sexuality is absolutely average and unimportant for a human being as an organism, but within culture it is seen as a ‘thing’ secondary and abnormal– but that, too, is a myth. Myth as in an idea, a story, a concept of human making.And in order for me to find pride and validity in any of these identities, I must simultaneously validate, re-experience and identify with my suffering and the opinions of my oppressors. The ‘black struggle’ and LGBT oppression become my story. Now, the thing is I can’t opt out of the reality that I am indeed seen a certain way and treated a certain way. Unlike some people, it doesn’t actually matter whether I divulge my identity to the world, I can be persecuted on sight. But what do I do when that happens? I can accept that I’m being persecuted because I’m black or LGBT….or I can see that people are suffering in their identities and projecting that on me.

White people suffer in their identity, cis people suffer in their identity, religious people suffer in their identities, this happens because each identity is ultimately so much smaller than what a person is in sum that it restricts, and unless it’s cast off (i.e. unless that person no longer holds that identity as fundamental to their being) cognitive dissonance sets in and they seek to reinforce the identity by projecting outward violence upon those who are ‘other’ so that they can validate their selfhood.

So cis people attack trans people bc the trans identity showing that gender and identity are not what they were told makes them uncomfortable. White people attack nonwhite people because our existence and successes threaten the myth of white supremacy. So on and so forth with oppressors and the people they oppress.

My point is not that discourse and social progress is pointless, but that these issues are not fundamental and operating within them still operates within a cultural norm that is self-validating. In the end people who do not know who- or what- they TRULY are are pretty dangerous because they will fight to assert their identity to avoid what they feel is loss of self.

The grand joke is that there is no self.

Let me ask you this, anon.

If you were born in completely different conditions, you would still be you- you understand that there is still a ‘you’ in this picture I am about to paint. So think of this– without your name, because your name could have been different, without your race, because race is a myth, without your orientation/identity, bc those are based on heteronormativity (another subjective myth), without your nationality, religious affiliation, job description….

Who are you?

Find that out, and operate from there, because whatever you are? Everyone else is, also. This is not about apathy at all. It is about much greater compassion.

#if you don't live for others you don't live #the human sense of self is reliant on a sense of others #Anonymous

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nunonabun · 6 years ago

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If you don't mind answer (Since I'm loving you digging into other answers you give!) What do you think about the show's seemingly Anti-Adoption standpoint? Even when it's for the best interest of the child, or the mother's insistent on it, they seem to do everything they can to convince the mother otherwise. Even when the mother couldn't afford the child at all, and had a home lined up for them, they talked her out of it.

Thank you for the question! Sorry it’s taken me so long to reply to, I wanted to attempt a thorough answer but I had a lot going on, so it got a tad forgotten in the drafts.

Your ask is quite a toughie. I don’t know that I’d actually characterize the show as having an anti-adoption viewpoint, I think the show is often trying to be conscious of the way class and other social structures interacted with the adoption system at the time, while also trying to deal with other issues adoption raises. I think sometimes they do well with that, but sometimes, while trying to shine a light on one thing, they manage to fall into other biases. I’ll put the rest under a ‘read more’ as this did get a biiiit long.

Class had (and has, really) a big role in adoption, and views of who “deserved” to be a parent often had harmful impacts. It’s a complicated and difficult subject, and there are lots of factors that can come into play in each case, but shame and other pressures were often usedto essentially force poor and/or single mothers to give up children. Some children were outright taken from the biological mother (or couple, in some cases, though overwhelmingly judgement landed on single women) that wanted them and were trying to keep them. The choice wasn’t really a free choice as they often weren’t given the support they would need in order to make keeping the child a viable option for them, nor were they given support in thoroughly thinking through all of their options and deciding what they truly want. Also, young, single, working-class women were generally condemned for becoming pregnant and were often pressured to give the child up so that they could be given to a ‘better’ family (i.e. middle-class straight couple. Having a British background & being Christian did also come into it).

Another aspect of portraying adoption is contending with the bias that a ‘real’ family is biological; that there’s some kind of innate bond between people who are biologically linked that is not present between those who aren’t (I’m going to call this the ‘biology bias’ for convenience’s sake). The elements of classism and biology bias (and bias against single parents, homophobia, racism, etc.) can interact in complex ways. Trying to realistically portray negative aspects of the adoption system that aren’t often talked about can result inseemingly playing into the ‘child should stay with their real family’ prejudice. Or it can both critique the class bias and buy into the biology bias. The latter case often takes the form of ‘well I guess the adoptive couple is providing a promising future for the child, it’s just a shame that it comes at the cost of a deeper/truer love, as the child would have had with the bio family’ in media portrayals. Or sometimes the inverse can happen (undercutting the biology bias but accepting the class bias) and you get an attribution of blame instead of an examination of how people are constrained by their situations in a way that couldbe resolved with good social supports, à la ‘those (lower-income) people were just bad parents who don’t deserve a child, the child should be given to a good (middle-class) couple.’ And plenty of other complex issues arise when the axes of race & nationality, physical & mental differences, gender, etc. come into play. It’s really a hard thing to navigate and communicate all of the elements that are wrapped up in adoption, and I’d say portrayals are often in the grey zone.

To disentangle the elements in CtM’s portrayals of adoption, I’m going togo ahead and take a little look at all of the examples of adoption in the show and try to examine what they’re aiming for and what I think they convey. Please feel free to point out if I’ve missed one or if you think I’ve missed elements of one portrayal or have misconstrued things. Strap in guys, this is hecking long. Or jump down to the Tl;dr, that’s fine too.

First, in 1x02, we have Mary, the Irish girl who came to London, was taken advantage of and pressured into prostitution and became pregnant. Jenny tries to help her, but as she is single, poor, still a child herself, and a prostitute, the child is removed from Mary (and in episode 4 we discover that that has seriously mentally scarred her, resulting in her taking someone else’s child in an attempt to regain what was taken from her.) Here we see pretty much exactly what I was talking about above. Society saw Mary as morally unfit (as being poor, a prostitute, and single & pregnant were judged to be personal failures/sins, and there was additional prejudice against Irish people), so there was no safety net for her, no public services provided so that she, even as poor and young as she was, could realistically raise the child if she wanted to. You could say it might be unjust to leave the child with Mary, given her circumstances, but I think CtM is showing that her circumstances didn’t have to be what they were. If she wasn’t judged so on a moral basis, she wouldn’t be condemned to continue in those circumstances and she wouldn’t have had her child taken from her against her will. If she had been given a free choice and support in making it and carrying it out, she may have kept the child or she may have given it up, but either way, the outcome for Mary wouldn’t have been as terrible as it was.

The second case we see is Doris Aston, in 3x02. Doris is married and has a few children already, and reveals that her current pregnancy is likely the result of an affair with a black man. Obviously, her husband (who is white) will know she was unfaithful when the child is born, and she and the child will be at risk as her husband is abusive (it’s revealed throughout the episode that he is controlling and aggressive, even prior to learning of his wife’s infidelity.) In the end, the child (who Doris names Carole) is taken out of the house, with the husband threatening to kill Carole if she remains. Carole is taken to the Turners’ to foster and then sent on to her middle-class adoptive family.This episode is meant to shine a light on another pressure that results in women not having a free choice in life, particularly around sexuality and children. Divorce was heavily stigmatizedat the time, and it wasn’t easy for a woman to get a divorce from her husband if he didn’t agree to it, especially if the couple already had children together. Therefore, if a woman was unhappy in a marriage, or even suffering abuse, there wasn’t much recourse for her. Yes, in this situation Doris did cheat, but the circumstances of that are complicated. What’s more, as a result of it, she doesn’t really have a free choice in whether to keep her daughter (and sons) and leave her husband (which she wanted) or stay and work it out either with or without Carole. The only real choice she has is to give the child up and hope her husband a) doesn’t find and hurt the baby, b) isn’t violent towards her as a result of him learning about her infidelity, and c) that she can bury her emotions around Carole and essentially pretend she never existed/died at birth. So the episode is seeking to portray the way women, especially working-class women, were unjustly constrained; forced into choices they would not freely have made. Race is touched on only briefly, in that it’s the element that renders Doris’ infidelity evident, and also a mixed-race child is more difficult to place within the adoption system. This isn’t really explored much, as Carole is quickly adopted and we don’t actually really see how her being mixed affects this.An element of this episode that I think they mishandled was buying into the ‘true family is bio family’ prejudice via their attempt to portray the injustice Doris faced and sympathize with her. This mainly comes in near the end of the episode, where they reinforce the idea that Doris is Carole’s ‘real’ mother. Doris herself worries that Carole “won’t know I’m her mother,” and Sister Julienne says “If Carole searches for her mother one day, hopefully records will bring her to us,” Here I think the norm of just saying “mother” as though the adoptive mother Carole will have isn’t really her mother, is partially just because they’re showing that Doris does feel she is Carole’s mother and doesn’t actually want to give her up, however it does play into the biology bias. This is deeply reinforced when Vanessa Redgrave chimes in with a “[Doris] trusted in God that Carole would have a good life with good people who would give her the future she couldn’t. More than anything, she wished she could have kept her because whatever anyone else might feel, it couldn’t be what Doris felt. Her daughter was of and from her. They were a part of each other and always would be.” That could generously be interpreted as Mature Jenny just conveying what Doris believed, but even so, there’s a heavy narrative buy-in to that message, and the message is clearly ‘Doris wanted to keep her daughter and ought not to have been forced to give her up. Biology and gestation result in an inherent, unbreakable bond that cannot be replicated and it is therefore regrettable that Carole had to be given to a family that - though financially secure, potentially kind, and distant from the threat of violence - lack that bond.’ That message again seeks to convey the injustice of Doris’s situation and sympathize with her pain, but in doing so, it implies that adoptive families lack this deep, automatic bond forged via biology and are therefore inherently weaker. They may provide a more materially promising future for the child, but unfortunately, they aren’t as ‘true’ a family as a biologically linked one.Furthermore, Jenny says “[The adoption agency worker] spoke as though Doris had no link at all with her baby,” and notes that the adoptive parents requested no ongoing contact. These elements reinforce the portrayal of the adoption as cold and insufficiently recognizant of how the baby is ‘actually’ the biological mother’s. This bit is difficult, as Carole is not not Doris’s, and it’s totally fair for Doris to grieve for the loss of her daughter. Also, cutting off contact, not allowing any connection at all to the child’s birth family was commonly done and can be a very harmful practice. The adoption agency (and society at large) certainly thought Doris had no moral right to see Carole, as she chose to have an affair and is therefore a Bad Woman and a Bad Mother, and that is justly critiqued by the show. But I think, in this episode, the show is rather clumsy in its portrayal of this complex situation, and manages to imply that the adoptive family (and mother in particular) are kind of interlopers who are only a solution to a problem as opposed to being a potentially very loving family that is just as true of a family as a biological one. Where this reading is a bit shaken is that this is the start of the foreshadowing that the Turners will end up adopting a child, and their fostering of Carole for the night before she is adopted is shown in a very positive light. The whole scene is loving and sweet, and positive comments are made about Carole’s adoption (though sympathy is also extended to Doris.) So it’s a bit of a mixed bag, this episode. Overall I think that it does a good job with the class and sexism elements, but a poor job with handling the biology bias.

The third time adoption is portrayed (3x06), it’s more of a subplot that serves to introduce Shelagh and Patrick to the idea that adoption could be the answer to their desire to expand their family. Colin Monk, Tim’s friend, is revealed to be adopted. Learning this immediately prompts Shelagh to propose that she & Patrick pursue adoption to continue building their family. She comments: “I really don’t believe I’d have to carry a child inside my body for it to feel like ours. If I felt that, it would mean that loving Timothy has taught me nothing.” This is a firm rebuttal of the biology bias and it nicely links step and adoptive families, explicitly espousing a positive perspective on both.The episode does touch on the class & religious aspects too. Shelagh says that the adoption charity she went to was the Church of England Childrens’ Society, and notes: “I think they quite like the idea of us, a GP and a retired midwife. (…) As the lady [at the adoption agency] said, the children have already got off to a sorry start in life, they need the very best parents the agency can find them.” So, again, the show is bringing up the normative judgements around parenting, and the idea that a (straight) professional couple where the mother stays home is deemed morally deserving of children.The end of this episode also sees Patrick getting antsy about the conditions of adoption, correctly foreseeing that (in 3x07) his mental health struggles will cause the agency to deem him less deserving of a child (so here’s ableism coming in to play too.)Overall, I think these episodes did a good job with the adoption plot. They push back against the biology bias while also subtly highlighting who is deemed socially worthy of children in terms of class and health.

Fourth there’s 3x08, wherein the Turners adopt Angela. Here, the portrayal is overwhelmingly positive, with pretty much all of our excitement and sympathies going to the Turners, who are meeting their daughter for the first time. They’re excited about the news that they’re going to become parents in much the same way we see people on the show excited about an impending birth. Holding Angela for the first time (particularly with respect to Shelagh) is treated as having as much weight and love as any parent being handed their biological baby. Particularly, In The Mirror plays, a musical theme that has been used to score previous momentous transformations in Shelagh’s life (and Patrick’s, as those changes are often linked), Patrick says “here’s your mummy,” and Shelagh says “we have a daughter.” For me, that is slightly undercut by Shelagh saying “This is the closest I’m ever going to get to giving birth.” This implies that the experience is kind of a consolation prize, as close as they can get to what they’d ideally want; for Shelagh to carry and give birth to a child that is biologically theirs. I don’t think that’s necessarily what they meant to imply - especially given all the talk before and in later episodes about loving Angela as much as if she were biologically theirs - but that’s how that line read to me. But again, that is largely overwhelmed by the positive tone and emotions portrayed in that scene.Switching into the consideration of the other end of the equation, the biological mother, we have a very interesting choice to comment on the deeply uncomfortable situation that led to Angela becoming a Turner. When Patrick asks what she knows about the situation, Shelagh says: “Hardly anything, just that the mother is only 16 and she was meant to be taking the baby home with her, but at the last minute her parents changed their minds.” Timothy, always involved in the family building (another strong element of the portrayal) says “That’s terrible,” and Patrick reprimands him with a slightly curt “Tim.” Shelagh says, “That’s why they want a speedy settlement, to spare further trauma for those involved.” We, the viewers, are excited and happy about the Turners adopting, and then we’re hit with this slight insight into the other side of the equation. Though “our” family is getting its happy outcome, that results from a terrible thing having happened to a young, single girl (‘Miss Jones’.) We don’t know the class differential here, so there’s not much to work with, analysis-wise, on that front. Here, it’s more that Miss Jones doesn’t really have the option to contradict her parents in this society, which results in her being forced to give up the child she wanted to keep. So again the show highlights the lack of choice women (and girls) had, and hints at the moral judgements around who is worthy of being supported in their parenting project. Interestingly, this actually puts Shelagh (and Patrick, to some degree, though the whole plot really focusses more on Shelagh’s motherhood, which is a whole other discussion) a bit in the moral grey, as her (their) desire to have a child causes them to kind of callously brush past the injustice their daughter’s biological mother faced. Though that is slightly tempered by Shelagh noting that it’s felt that doing this all quickly is the least traumatic option, having her convey this information as they’re all rushing to pick up Angela really gets across how the injustices on the bio mother’s side of the picture just kind of get glossed over in the focus on joy of the adoptive family. We don’t take that bit more time to consider what actually results in the best outcome for all involved. That’s an interesting counterpoint to 3x02, where the adoptive family’s love and joy is glossed over by our focus on the sorrow and pain of Doris Aston. I would say though that 3x08 does a bit better at integrating all these elements, as the hurried discussion of the bio mother is, I think, clearly meant to bring us up short and make us consider that there are elements of injustice in this situation, whereas 3x02 doesn’t really give us much positive about the adoptive family. The following episode does give us some balance too, showing the Turners worrying about Angela’s biological mother while still clearly maintaining that Angela is as loved as she would be if she was biologically theirs. Shelagh and Patrick reflect on this together and with Timothy, and the ensemble decision is to send a letter to Angela’s biological mother (though administrative structures make it uncertain that the letter will reach her), giving her some closure as to what happened to the child she gave up. This serves to send the message that communication in the process of family-building is important, while also remaining grounded in a time where it was generally held that the best thing to do in an emotionally difficult situation was to not talk about it.

In the following episode, the Christmas special, we get the mother and baby home, which switches gear firmly into focussing on the judgement placed on unmarried women who become pregnant (especially young women) and the abuses these women (and girls) faced in the institutions they were sent to. First, there’s the fact that these institutions existed, largely tucked away to reinforce that falling pregnant outside of marriage is shameful and needs to be hidden. Then there’s the medical neglect within the home, the only staff being the Nonnatus volunteers and the drunken matron who runs the place. We see one case briefly where a baby is basically ripped from a young woman/girl who was not yet ready to say goodbye. Of our two main cases, we have one woman who decided to keep the baby though she was initially aloof and uncaring, and one who was totally comfortable giving the baby up and does so. I think a strong point of the episode was pointing out that whole Mother & Baby Home system is a result of and in many ways a reinforcement of the shaming and punishment of young, often poor, unmarried mothers for what was deemed a personal failing. We see this explicitly with Tim’s comment about “moral contagion,” wherein he’s voicing/testing out/subtly criticizing the mainstream view of the time. In England at the time, society operated on the idea that treating these women like any other pregnant women would be endorsing their sin/personal failing, and that would lead to a whole epidemic of this sort of thing, which would obviously be bad. So the episode as a whole is bringing that to light and critiquing it and the actions that resulted from it.On to the two main cases. One is a young woman/girl who decides to give her bio son up for adoption, saying that she’s happy to think that he’ll have a good life with people who love and want him and it’s the right choice for both of them. She is shown to have a supportive mother, indicating that sometimes, the choice was freer. The narrative is telling us that there were cases where - in spite of wider social prejudice against unmarried mothers - keeping the child would have been a viable option, but the bio mother decided that wasn’t what she wanted/what she judged to be the best outcome of the situation, and this is a perfectly fine choice to make.My feelings on the portrayal of the other young woman/girl are a bit more mixed. On the one hand, yes sometimes someone is totally set on giving up a child but their mind changes when confronted by the reality of the newborn. However, this storyline is a bit of an iffy trope and I think using it requires some delicacy. It’s very easy to fall into the ‘it’s your child and you will and ought to have a unique, automatic bond with it,’ which places a judgement on women who don’t automatically feel that bond, whether or not they want that child and whether or not they ultimately decide to keep that child. That normative view of bonding downplays the work that goes into bonding with a child and implicitly judges those whose bond is not automatic, as well as implying that there is a sort of bond that is exclusive to the person who gives birth to the child. On the plus side, that storyline directly contradicts the idea that these young women/girls don’t deserve to be mothers, and that is a point in its favour.On the whole, though I disagree with the ‘automatic bond’ portion of the one storyline, the episode benefits from having multiple storylines highlighting different elements within the overall focus on pregnant, unmarried young women/girls and the injustices they suffered as a result of sexism.

Sixth, we get the case of Marnie Wallace and Dot (and Eugene) Spenlow. Marnie and Dot are cousins, the former is poor, the latter is more middle-class. Marnie is pregnant and her husband has died fairly recently. She’s struggling with how she’s going to provide for this child as well as the children she already has. The main option is to give the child to Dot and her husband, who very much want a child but cannot have one biologically. This gets uncomfortable as Dot offers Marnie financial support on the condition that Marnie gives them the baby when it’s born. Marnie does this but is clearly unhappy about it. When we see Dot and Eugene with the baby, they seem fairly uncomfortable with caring for it/aren’t going about it as Marnie would, though they are happy. Marnie decides she can’t live with this and takes the baby back, and though Dot and Eugene are upset, they come to accept this and give her all the stuff they bought for the baby. I’m not entirely sure what the episode was going for. There’s the theme of poor women being forced to give up children out of financial necessity (lack of resources & support made available to them), and there’s the theme of family pressuring a woman to make certain decisions about her children. I think they were trying to highlight class dynamics, and that resulted in the episode portraying a more middle-class part of a family directly preying on a poorer family member and taking her child. My discomfort with that (and I think it’s a discomfort that many viewers had) is not around Marnie not deserving to have the support she needs to raise a child that she truly wants. Portraying class struggles has always been an important element of this show and a praiseworthy one. The reason this episode drew some criticism (at least, on tumblr), I think, is that the portrayal of the couple who cannot biologically have children feels malicious. It feels like the message being sent is that there’s something virtuous about being able to have children even when you “have nothing but love,” whereas the barren couple is materialistic, not naturally good at parenting like someone who can bear children and inherently unable to provide the love that the bio mum could give the baby. That Dot practically bribes Marnie to give her the baby borders on a caricature and makes me question why it was written this way, as opposed to, say, having Dot and Eugene being portrayed more sympathetically (i.e. not bribing Marnie, offering her help) and perhaps having Marnie struggle to communicate with them that she feels pressured into a choice that she’s not comfortable with. While the situation that was portrayed isn’t wildly out there in terms of things that could and probably do happen within families, the predatory portrayal of the Spenlows seems to condemn them for being unable to have children that are biologically theirs. And that’s not a super great message to send.Oh yeah, and Tom has some feelings about the fact that he was adopted. That part of the episode felt quite tacked on. I think they were trying to communicate that a person who was adopted may have complicated feelings about the circumstances leading to their adoption when they grow up. How do you process a situation in which your biological mother was forced to give you up, but you love and were & are very happy with your adoptive family? What if you just don’t know the circumstances in which you were given up but fear they were traumatic for your biological mother/family? I think those are all very good questions to explore and I would love to see the show do a good job of exploring them. This episode wasn’t it. Putting Tom questioning those things against the backdrop of Marnie and Dot, the negative message of their story casts a shadow over those questions such that, instead of really exploring them, you’re left with the feeling that the show is saying ‘yeah, that was probably a bad thing that you weren’t raised in your biological family.’ I think they tried to provide balance to this by having Tom maintain that he loved his family and had a very normal childhood and he didn’t even think about the fact of his adoption, but I don’t think it worked. I also think that positioning ‘I didn’t even question that I was adopted and never thought about the circumstances of my birth & bio parents’ as the sign of a positive outcome of adoption is problematic. A person can be curious about and care about their bio family and the circumstances that led to their adoption without that being a slap in the face of their adoptive family or a sign that they were/are unhappy/unsatisfied with their adoptive family. Overall, though there were a few good elements to this episode… it was a bit of a trainwreck.

Seventh, there’s the 2018 Christmas Special. In this episode, we get the case of Anthea (Tillerson) Sweeting, who was abused by her father throughout her life and was then turned out by her family when she became pregnant as a result of the abuse. She subsequently formed a family of her own composed of some children who are biologically hers, as well as some who are adopted and some who she (and her husband) are fostering. There is also the case of Linda & Selwyn, a couple living in a caravan who are preparing for the birth of a baby who is not biologically Selwyn’s. Their arc largely involves Linda escaping the cycle of self-blame and accepting that the man she loves and who loves her is fully committed accepting the child as his and continuing forward as a family. With both of these cases, the biology bias is directly contradicted. With the Tillerson/Sweeting situations, we compare a family where the biological father was abusive and the biological family as a whole failed to protect the children (though there are nuances as to the mother’s responsibility in a situation where she too was suffering abuse) to a strong, loving family where the degree of biological relatedness varies. Then with Linda & Selwyn, you have a family where the biological father is not in the picture and the non-biological father is shown to be loving and supportive and very likely a good father. The episode as a whole strongly communicates that it is the choice to love and the continued commitment to one another that makes a healthy family.

Eighth and finally, we have the 2018 Christmas Special. I’m not going to go into the whole of May’s situation and its portrayal because there’s much to go into about fostering and, while fostering is related to adoption, it’s really a whole topic of its own. There’s also a discussion that could be had about religious institutions and their role in adoption, but that would really go into the role they have in childbirth as well and that is just a whole big other conversation we could have about the show. Also, frankly this reply is long as heck already and a million high fives to you if you’ve stuck with me this far. In this episode, we go to the Nonnatus Mother Ship House and learn that apparently, they run an orphanage. Sister Winifred has a nice storyline with a boy who has disabilities and is therefore unlikely to be adopted. It is shown that children like this were often pushed to the sides and not given the care they needed to flourish. They were also far less likely to be adopted because they have different needs from children without disabilities, so they’re not what people seek when adopting (or hope for when giving birth.) This was a strong point of the episode, as it highlights the ableism in society more generally and specifically within family-building and childcare. Then we have May, who is part of a group of orphans from Hong Kong whose adoptive parents do not show up to pick her up because the prospective father gets TB, so the Turners decide to take her to live with them as a foster child. We learn that May’s biological mother was a prostitute and struggled with addiction and that though she tried to keep May, in the end she couldn’t manage to care for her in the situation she was in. There’s lots going on here in terms of class, addiction, sex work, and international adoption (especially, in this case, the power differential between Hong Kong (a British colony) and the UK (the colonial power in this equation.)) Later in the episode (or possibly in the series), it’s mentioned that May isn’t fluently anglophone and the Turners will have to work on her English with her, but other than that, questions of race, culture, etc… aren’t really touched on. I hold out some hope that these will come up in the upcoming series but I think they could have been introduced a bit in this episode/series. Also on the subject of international adoption, we have the sad (and sadly mishandled) story of the Australian home children. These children were sent to Australia (and other Commonwealth countries) for adoption, but were actually treated more as a source of free labour on farms. We actually did see this mentioned at the end of a much earlier episode (4x01), where four children were left mostly alone in conditions of abject squalor due to a neglectful mother (that was pretty much played straight, we don’t really gain much insight as to what her story was) and after Nonnatus helps them, they’re sent off to Australia where they suffer further abuse. And this is repeated here, the pregnant woman in question loitering around the Mother House trying to gain the courage to enter the last place she was happy as a child and talk about the abuse she suffered when she was sent out from the orphanage within this program. I think there’s a positive to this, in that it’s shedding light on a dark aspect of history, but it seems like there may have been a larger point/concern they were trying to make about international adoption programs and the positives and negatives therein that just didn’t land.So overall, there was a lot going on in this episode, some positive elements around tackling ableism in adoption and orphanage care, and some missed elements in relation to international adoption programs.

Tl;dr (and it’s perfectly fine if you jump down here bctbh I wrote a whole freaking tome up there): Dismantling the notion that someone isn’t a “true” parent or isn’t “truly” a person’s child because there’s no biological link is massively important, as is dismantling the notion that you have this instant “natural” connection with your biological child (in terms of what that implies about non-genetic families, the judgement it holds about people who don’t bond instantly with their biological child, and that it erases the work of bonding.) Dismantling the biases about biological connections is helpful in pushing back against a variety of harmful views both within the context of families and family-building, and more broadly. (I’ve actually done some research into essentialist biases around genetics/”blood” and have some interesting papers on it, so please message me if you’re curious and would maybe like to nerd out about it.)

That being said, it’s also important to remember that not all of the choices around adoption are made freely. As with any form of family building, the social structures surrounding it shouldn’t be ignored. At the time, and even now, class, what is considered morally acceptable in a society, and family structure ideals all play into why children are removed from birth families, and which adoptive families they are placed with. They play a large role in who is given support in making, growing and sustaining a family, and who isn’t. Those structures largely favour(ed) straight, Christian, middle-class couples of British backgrounds and judged as worse or less deserving (or completely undeserving) gay, single, non-Christian and/or working-class people of non-British backgrounds.

It’s a really tricky subject, and trying to communicate that biology isn’t what makes you a parent while also showing how harmful the adoption process could be and how rooted it was (is) in unjust social norms & structures is important. I don’t think CtM always nails it, but I think the show benefits from tackling the subject multiple times, from some variety of perspectives, and with efforts at nuance.

#Call the Midwife #adoption #Anonymous

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trinuviel · 6 years ago

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The Spiral, the Storm and the Wheel

THE SPIRAL

The White Walkers are in many respects a mysterious and somewhat frustrating enemy in Game of Thrones. They never speak but they do have some form of intellect since they create grisly patterns out of severed body parts: 1) a bisected circle and 2) a spiral. Both symbols originated with the creators of the WW, the Children of the Forest - and the spiral in particular is associated with the creation of the Night King since the tree where he was created was surrounded by a spiral created out of standing stones.

It is still unclear what the spiral signified for the Children of the Forest - but in an interview in The New York Post, Dave Hill, one of the writers on the show, explains that the Night King has adopted the symbol as a way to mock his creators:

The question is: has the meaning changed through this appropriation? That is at present not possible to answer since we have no idea what the symbol originally meant to the Children of the Forest. However, I do think that we can attempt to figure out what the Night King means when his people re-create the spiral through dismembered human and animal bodies. Because these spirals are a message, in a sense, and he’s saying “I am coming for you” while at the same time making a mockery of something that was sacred to his creators.

This spiral looks a lot like a wheel without a rim, endlessly spinning around and around. This is rather interesting since Daenerys Targaryen repeatedly talks about “breaking the wheel” in relation to her political ambition of conquering Westeros (I’ll return to this subject later). If the spiral is a spinning wheel, then what does it mean? The image of poor little Ned Umber at the center of a spiral made of severed human limbs in the first episode of season 8 inspired Professor Tyler Dean to write a very interesting opinion piece on the website of the publishing house Tor, which specializes in science fiction and fantasy:

The Mexica believed that time was a spiral. Not a circle, where everything that happened previously was destined to happen again, identical, ad inifinitum. Not linear, where the way forward was uncharted and momentum, progress, and change ruled the day. But, as author/illustrator James Gurney once pointed out to my eight-year-old brain, a combination of the two: a spiral. The forces of history push us ever forwards, but events rhyme with one another—parallel but not identical. That was what I couldn’t get out of my head after watching “Winterfell,” the final season premiere of Game of Thrones.

...

Spiral time is uncanny. We are reminded of familiar events and sequences but they are spiked with the creeping dread that they are not quite what we think or expect them to be.

...

We might be tempted to think of spirals as orderly and predictable, but “Winterfell” reinforces the idea that time in Westeros is not organized in a tightly-bound pattern but a widening gyre: each revolution around the center may echo previous events, but it brings its own entropy and decay. (Tor.com)

This idea of time as a spiral is a very interesting one but what I find especially compelling is this notion of the spiral being connected to an idea of entropy and decay. Tyler goes on to quote The Second Coming, a famous poem by W.B. Yeats:

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned

THE STORM

The notion of decay in relation to the spiral set off various chains of association for me - about how the Night King and the White Walkers are an inhuman and unrelenting force of destruction, in that sense that they come close to be the magical equivalent to a destructive force of nature. The NK is even described as such by Jon Snow who says that he is the Storm. That made me connect the spiral with images of storm systems as they look from space.

On the right we have a picture of a spiral that the WW made from dismembered horses after they defeated the Night’s Watch at The Fist of the First Men in season 2. The picture to the left is a satellite image of a hurricane. The visual resemblance is very close indeed.

In the first episode of season 8, the spiral was reintroduced when Tormund, Beric and the remainder of the Night’s Watch come upon what remains of the Umber seat, The Last Hearth, after it has been run over by the WW.

When it turns out that poor little Ned Umber has become a zombie, Tormund and friends set fire to him and the body parts that make up the spiral. This is the first time that we’ve seen the spiral associated with the element of fire. This has led people to note a certain resemblance between the spiral and the style in which the Targaryen sigil is rendered.

There is indeed a bit of a likeness - and it is worth noting that the Targaryen sigil and the spirals that the WW each have seven arms.

(source)

Is this resemblance merely a coincidence or is there a deeper meaning at work? It is hard to tell but I want to explore this connection a bit further because the sole known Targaryen of this story is, in fact, also visually connected to the spiral symbol. In season 4, Daenerys Targaryen wears a dress made from laser-cut fabric that sports a repeated spiral pattern.

She is also known as the Stormborn because she came into the world during the worst storm that Westeros had seen in living memory. She is also a very war-like character and it is worth remembering that in the books “storm” is often used as a synonym for for “war”. With a bit of squinting one can even perceive s spiral shape hidden in one of the final images of the season 3 finale where Daenerys is lifted up by the freed slaves of Meereen.

It is faint but you could make an argument that it is there. This connection between Daenerys and the Night King is enhanced by the larger thematic framework of GRRM’s story. They are both associated with the extremes of Ice and Fire - indeed, just like the dragons are Fire Made Flesh, so are the White Walkers Ice made Flesh, which I have examined elsewhere.

THE WHEEL

The spiral also somewhat resembles a wheel, as I’ve previously mentioned. I’m not the only person who has noted this resemblance, @lady-griffin mentions this resemblance in this post. In the later seasons, Daenerys Targaryen has become known for wanting to “break the wheel” - but what does that mean?

In season 5 she tells Tyrion Lannister that she’ll have the support of the common people in Westeros and she describes the feudal system as a wheel with spokes made up of the noble Houses. In this context, it seems as though she wants to destroy the feudal system of the country she wants to conquer. However, as she herself mentions, her own House is part of this system and she’s not intending to create a radically new system since she still wants to be Queen. She still wants to occupy the hub of the wheel, i.e. the Iron Throne. She simply wants to remove anyone who can be a threat to her power. What she wants is not a more democratic system but an absolute monarchy with her at the top.

Nebulous and contradictory plans is very typical of Dany’s political rhetoric but I’m rather interested in how she describes this system:

“Lannister, Targaryen, Baratheon, Stark, Tyrell. They’re all just spokes on a wheel. This one’s on top, then that one’s on top. And on and on it spins, crushing those on the ground.”

This conjures a specific concept of Classical (and later Medieval) thought: the Rota Fortuna, or Fortune’s Wheel:

In medieval and ancient philosophy the Wheel of Fortune, or Rota Fortunae, is a symbol of the capricious nature of Fate. The wheel belongs to the goddess Fortuna (Greek equivalent Tyche) who spins it at random, changing the positions of those on the wheel: some suffer great misfortune, others gain windfalls. Fortune appears on all paintings as a woman, sometimes blindfolded, "puppeteering" a wheel. (Wikipedia)

Interestingly, the show invokes Fortune’s Wheel visually in the opening credits. Thus, the Rota Fortuna embodies the political game that dominates the show. Fortune’s Wheel is the very embodiment of the Game of Thrones!

The thing about Fortune’s Wheel is that it never stops spinning. The same goes for the political game - there will always be someone who seeks power, regardless of whether there is a throne or not. The games of power and influence exist wherever human society exist regardless of what kind of government they have - there will always be politics and power plays. The only way to truly stop the spinning of the wheel is to eradicate humankind. There can be no game if there are no players.

This leads me back to the what the spiral may have meant for the Children of the Forest. The NK has adopted this symbol as an act of mockery - it signifies blasphemy on his part according to show writer Dave Hill. In this context, it is important to note that the WW always create this spiral symbol out of dismembered bodies - it is made of dead things and, in a way, the spiral as it is made by the WW symbolizes Death. If the WW’s spiral is an image of Death and it represents an act of blasphemy on the part of the NK, then it is very possible that the spiral signified Life for the CotF - symbolizing that Life spins ever onward through nature.

They created the NK by killing and magically re-animating a human man. The original blasphemy was theirs - and there’s a certain symmetry to the fact that the weapon they created by polluting their own magic turned against them. On a final note I also wish to point out that the Weirwood tree where the CotF created the NK is now dead!

This is actually a very important detail because in ASoIaF lore, weirwood trees are practically immortal. They don’t wither and die - unless they are interfered with.

#game of thrones #spiral #symbols #the night king #the children of the forest #the white walkers #daenerys targaryen

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bunny-wan-kenobi · 6 years ago

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Jaime Lannister: A Man of Honor

So I’m supposed to accept that Jaime just *forgot* that Cersei tried to kill him? TWICE. And that after she betrayed him and manipulated him and after seasons of struggling by her side and getting increasingly fed up with her destructive and myopic actions, he had finally reached a point where he could no longer stay in King’s Landing? The line should have been the Sept of Baelor, but since his realization of her toxicity came later, it makes his abrupt return to her even more baffling.

He had realized that his life doesn’t mean more to her than her desire for the Throne, that she would sacrifice him for power, and he decided he was done. And so we’re supposed to forget all the growth and maturation his character underwent to bring him to that weighty point of decision and treat his journey to Winterfell, his fighting alongside Cersei’s enemies, his embracing of his love for Brienne, his committing himself to staying in Winterfell with her while Cersei was losing as a mere blip in his overall storyline?

We didn’t get any insight into his thoughts or any explanation as to what triggered this dramatic shift that led him to leave Brienne and go back to Cersei when Cersei was winning. The timing and potential motivations don’t make sense. He had already left her knowing it was treason and knowing she was pregnant, and that wasn’t enough to keep him in King’s Landing, or enough to motivate him to go back right after the battle at Winterfell. Apparently he was fine staying in Winterfell with Brienne while the Northern armies went forth to defeat her.

There simply wasn’t enough groundwork in place to justify that sudden turn so it felt like whiplash and deeply disturbing to fans who have invested so much in his long journey. We’re being asked to accept that the man who two episodes before knighted Brienne and tenderly charged her to “defend the innocent” all of a sudden doesn’t care about anyone else but Cersei? We’re being asked to accept that the man who defended thousands by killing Aerys, saved a woman who was his captor from rape and then a bear, left his sister because she wouldn’t go fight to save humanity, is really that callous and detached from anyone but Cersei?

It simply doesn’t make sense from a narrative standpoint and based on what the writers have already established within their own canon. Earlier in Season 8, we see Jaime referring to his relationship with Cersei in the past tense and with disgust. He has finally freed himself from that harmful dynamic and now has the opportunity to build healthy relationships and serve alongside people who will not ask him to do something that will dishonor him.

That matters in the overall arc of Jaime’s character and what his motivations are. He is fundamentally compelled by love, yes, but he is also a character who cares deeply about what other people think of him. He does care about his legacy. He does care that people condemn him as a Kingslayer. And so much of his journey is about him rediscovering and reclaiming an identity apart from a narrow adherence to his family loyalties. It’s about him realizing that part of him still yearns to be the knight of honor he initially envisioned he would be, and his relationship with Brienne galvanizes that reawakening. She embodies the characteristics he would like to live up to, and she challenges to be more than what he settles for at Cersei’s side.

During his travels with Brienne and after losing his hand, we see Jaime grow more humble, more willing to consider others’ welfare, more willing to set aside family loyalty aside to do what he believes is right, whether that is sending Brienne on a mission to save Sansa or riding North to fight with the Starks. These actions serve as a counterpoint to how we are introduced to his character when all he appears to be is an incestuous almost child-murderer. Catelyn Stark declares he is “a man without honor,” and the rest of his arc after that point examines and challenges that thesis.

Jaime remains a flawed character who makes some truly terrible choices. However, while the writing for his character was mishandled so often (looking at you Seasons 5-7), the narrative did give him space to actually grow to the point where the Jaime we see land in Winterfell is drastically different than the one we met in Season 1.

Yes, Cersei will always be part of him, but as his scenes when apart from her demonstrate, she does not have to be definitive of him. He can exist and thrive apart from her, he can make choices to defend others, he can live honorably. He has the capacity for this, and this has been evidenced again and again, most notably by his time in Winterfell.

I see Jaime’s story as less of a redemption arc and more about self-discovery and growth--similar to Zuko in Avatar The Last Airbender (another character known for his complicated relationship with honor). When he arrives in Winterfell, for the first time he has to actually confront the consequences of his choices (like pushing Bran) and reevaluate who he now wants to be. He resolves to fight and die by the woman he loves and defend the Living. What nobler and more honorable cause could there be for a man once deemed to have no honor?

Jaime knighting Brienne is a culminating point in his character arc because in that scene he is given the opportunity to become that knight of honor, repeating the vows he once took with a renewed sense of conviction of their importance. It’s also an act of love that for once does not cause collateral damage in the way his actions for Cersei did. Again, this is the narrative reinforcing his self-discovery and his commitment to change.

And when he and Brienne finally embrace the love they have for each other, that shift feels earned because it’s reaping the fruits of several seasons of their parallel development and the ways their characters have informed and shaped each other’s growth. Their love story makes sense in light of the themes of honor and loyalty and past hurt in relationships that are present in both of their stories. It makes sense that these two could find a fulfilling kindredness in each other that frees them to move forward rather than be mired in past wounds.

I say all this to reiterate that the show’s narrative has already established an arc for Jaime where it feels organic and believable for him to finally leave Cersei and forge an identity and life apart from her influence. That choice carried a lot of weight, and so to have that weight diminished and dismissed with a handwave to conclude, “Well he’s addicted to Cersei and realizes he’s just BAD,” is frankly insulting to anyone who has been paying attention to the storytelling thus far and a huge disservice to both Jaime and Brienne’s characters.

This is not subversion or being “realistic.” This is contradictory and lazy writing that conveniently ignores certain aspects of the Jaime’s journey in order to use him as a plot device to engineer a final scene with the Lannister twins dying together, as if that is the most poetic and fitting way for their stories to end. When Jaime declares, “No one matters but us,” it’s as if absolutely nothing changed for him between Season 1 and Season 8 if he and Cersei are still framed as moral and romantic equals so intertwined that nothing else exists.

If the narrative hadn’t already given me enough contrast to his statement through previous examples, maybe I could have accepted this ending for them. But the fact is....it didn’t which is why Jaime’s arc in Season 8 felt so rushed and like a retcon of all that the writers had already built up over several seasons.

And in a show with so many characters who have suffered from being stuck in a cycle of abusive and toxic relationships, to conclude that they simply cannot break out of that and are unable to change is disheartening and disturbing. Jaime’s story is inextricable from the idea of change and renewal, and to assert that his final conclusion about himself is that he is fixed, static as this hateful person, is truly tragic. It leaves us wondering if Catelyn’s original assumption is the final word on the character, even though we’ve been presented with so much evidence of the contrary.

Give me complex, imperfect characters who make good and bad choices, but may their choices make sense in the larger context of their story and their motivations. And may the end of their journey not pose death as the only way out for them.

#jaime lannister #got #got meta #jaime x brienne #cersei lannister #got spoilers #bunny posts

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mysnarkyslytherinsecret · 6 years ago

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Snape & the Glass Ceiling

One of the reasons I love Snape as a character so much is because he’s so driven and talented. He’s very good at what he does. There doesn’t seem to be much that he *isn’t* scarily good at. He has hobbies, and one might even argue he has a “special interest” in the Dark Arts. He creates spells. He’s shown hunched over a book in flashbacks.

But Snape is a Poor Kid.

This shows in the shabbiness of his clothing, and in the neglect and abuse that he receives due to his father and mother fighting (poverty makes people more stressed out and leads to things like alcoholism and food insecurity-whodathunk?)

Snape is sorted into Slytherin, which is the House of the Elite. It’s the House of the Good Old Boys, of the Monied Kids. Of the families with Names that have Power. But more than that, the Wizarding World in general, the one that he’s so certain will be merit-based on power and ability instead of class and who your daddy knows like the Muggle World is simply a distorted, magic-themed version of his Muggle life. How frustrating that must have been for Snape to finally realize that no matter what he does, he cannot escape his “fate” of being born at the bottom and designated as the “suffering and hated object” for those who consider themselves his “betters.”

Over and over, Severus is ignored. His words are treated as shit. He is made fun of- only the most cowardly of the students is actually frightened of him. Everyone else isn’t afraid to say how much they hate him, disparage him, roll their eyes at his lessons....

Over and over again, Severus is passed up for any advancement in his career. There are certainly some reasons we are not privy to for this (ie: Dumbledore needs Snape to be in a certain place because Voldemort and such), but he is still treated like he’s little more than a snarky babysitter despite having higher expectations than most of the other professors (other than perhaps McGonagall), and requiring much better marks. The most interesting thing here is that the students consistently meet his high and “unreasonable” expectations.

And yet, many of Snape’s thoughts and actions, when masked as someone else’s thoughts or actions, are always taken seriously. For example, when Dumbledore says or suggests something that Snape has suggested in another situation and everyone listens. Or even Remus Lupin and Hermione tend to echo things that Snape says, just in different ways. In every situation, Harry reacts with surprise (and I think the reader does as well). Snape being competent? Seems sketchy, maybe it was one of those OTHER guys who are ACTUALLY really competent?

As a person who is female-presenting myself, I run into this same thing all the time. If I say something bluntly, even if it truly is a fool thing, I am accused of being too harsh. If I sit back and have a male colleague bring up my point, suddenly the idea is “great” even though I have suggested it before and it was overlooked or dismissed. I consistently see (usually male or connected) people getting promotions and advancements while I am told to take on more work without any promise of improvement for my situation.

Sure, I could go elsewhere, but I suspect my treatment in this situation is not unique.

And, even if the Harry Potter thing wasn’t a thing and Snape was just a teacher in a shitty job, I can see him having a similar feeling towards other jobs such as Ministry worker or an apprentice in an apothecary.

He certainly doesn’t have the money or connections to start his own business, and even if he somehow did, many businesses lose money for several years and require ongoing support from connections in high places to succeed.

In this manner, the portrayal of Snape in the series is one of the most depressingly realistic. He is an example of the person who is stuck, through lack of privilege, in a place where he is told he “belongs” and despite any of the work he does to climb out of the hole, he is consistently pushed back into a slot where he vehemently feels he should not have been in. The idea of “slots” in socio-economic status is depressingly true in real life too. Most people will never be able to pull themselves up from poverty if that is truly where they begin, and nowadays with our increasingly uneven wealth distribution, the number of people who are sliding into an increasingly large “slot” of “deserving of lifelong poverty” is only getting larger. When there are “places” to be put into, it only truly benefits a select few, with complicit individuals who are afraid to be put in “that place” as well as a punishment for speaking up.

Snape, contrary to some of the other posts I’ve seen on this subject, is not a cautionary tale. He is a reinforcement of the harsh truth that seems to be as old as humanity- “you have a status you are born into, a destiny of worth that you will never change no matter how hard you work or struggle or how beautiful your soul shines.”

And, in the end, when you die wretchedly and hated by all simply for existing, the worth of your life will be weighed the same as it was upon your birth.

#severus snape #headcanon #privilege #on not being listened to #class #socio-economic status

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pass-the-bechdel · 6 years ago

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Stargate SG1 season eight full review

How many episodes pass the Bechdel test?

31.57% (six of nineteen).

What is the average percentage per episode of female characters with names and lines?

20.02%. For a second there, I thought they wouldn’t even make the 20% this time. So close.

How many episodes have a cast that is at least 40% female?

Zero. Shock, horror. The highest percentage they got was a 28.57 (for ‘It’s Good to be King’, and they only had two named female characters even then), so they didn’t even manage to crack 30% for the entire season. What an odious achievement.

How many episodes have a cast that is less than 20% female?

Seven of them, and as noted above, even the episodes that weren’t under 20% weren’t far over it. At least they only had one episode under 10% this time. Ain’t that damning with faint praise?

How many female characters (with names and lines) are there?

Twenty-three. Four who appeared in more than one episode, one who appeared in at least half the episodes, and ZERO who appeared in every episode.

How many male characters (with names and lines) are there?

Eighty-one. Twenty-four who appeared in more than one episode, Four who appeared in at least half the episodes, and two who appeared in every episode.

Positive Content Status:

As has become their habit, they had just a little solitary glimmer of goodness (thanks C Judge), cancelled out by their standard fallback on treating women like sexy lamps who exist for male amusement. While they were less egregious with their sins this time around than they have been in the past, they also did little work to balance it out with anything positive (average rating of 3).

General Season Quality:

Not bad - there are no truly awful episodes in there - but mostly not great either; there are a few well-earned developments and strong culminations to long-term plots, but there are also quite a few very safe, unremarkable episodes, and the alteration to their team dynamics leads to some flat storytelling. Altogether, it is solid viewing, but they’ve certainly had better, more imaginative, more exciting seasons.

MORE INFO (and potential spoilers) under the cut:

Don’t let the ‘four recurring female characters’ thing fool you: one of them is Carter, one of them is RepliCarter, and one of them is the Alternate Carter from the two-part finale. It’s basically just a whole lot of Amanda Tapping, plus two (2) appearances by the female Trust operative Brooks (and you could be forgiven if you missed the fact that she even got a name, because she wasn’t exactly prominent). This is their worst female:male ratio yet (and they had already set the bar SO LOW), plus their worst Bechdel score so far. I know we’ve got two season left to go still, but I’m gonna guess this will be their worst statistics for the series. Eight seasons in, by which point they really, really should know better. Very heavy sigh.

And it was a pretty weird season; not weird as in ‘bold and different’ so much as ‘everything feels just a little off’. A big part of that is the reduced availability/use of O’Neill, whom I noted as having really too big a personality to be comfortably shuffled off to a minor presence in the majority of the season, and even in those episodes where he is more extensively present, he feels awkward and out-of-place as leader of the base; episodes where he takes on a more action-oriented role are much more comfortable in their familiarity, and most of the better episodes of the season boast that factor in common. They had episodes in past seasons, now and then, where O’Neill had a smaller role (and a few in which he was entirely absent), but those episodes didn’t tend to suffer for it; the cumulative effect of his under-use in season eight builds up fast, and it’s hard not to feel it. You gotta go big or go home with Richard Dean Anderson. There’s just not much space in between.

The other thing that has the season feeling weird is the fact that they played it so damn safe; especially odd since they also wrapped up their long-term plot lines in the process and essentially packaged this like a farewell season. It’s obvious that they felt the show was winding down and that they were expecting this to be the final season (while the show does continue for two seasons longer, nine and ten are distinctly different outings to the rest of the series), and as such it seems very strange of them to not take advantage of the opportunity to have some reckless fun with their show before it ended. They resurrect the Replicators as villains for what is essentially a three-episode arc; they resurrect Anubis as well, though as usual he has little impact beyond making grandiose threats that never play out as meaningful action. There’s not really a single inventive or unusual episode in the bunch - even the two-part time-jumping alternate-reality finale doesn’t do anything particularly notable with its premise - and those episodes which have the most potential for intrigue are often the least-cooked of the season. There’s a lack of real stakes or jeopardy in pretty much any plot other than the ‘Reckoning’ two-parter, and there are some muddling, awkward personal-life narratives which sometimes work ok in a nice understated fashion, but also sometimes come across awfully forced and grotesquely constructed/motivated (why won’t Daniel just stay dead and spare us the trouble of his presence, huh? Also, never having to mention Pete ever again cannot come soon enough).

And then there’s this: despite making a weird not-deal out of Carter being approved as the new leader of SG1 near the beginning of the season, we get to see her actually leading the team approximately...never. When she is evaluated as the new leader in ‘Zero Hour’, SG1′s adventure happens off-screen while the episode focuses on O’Neill juggling his new duties back home. Technically, Carter is in charge when the team shows up in ‘Icon’, but the episode starts in media res with Daniel already stuck on the planet without the rest of the team, and the flashbacks (where Carter is in charge) catch us up to that point almost immediately. The team arrives on Maybourne’s planet in ‘It’s Good To Be King’, but it doesn’t take long before O’Neill is called in to help out and thus takes on his old authority over the team, and for the mission in ‘Moebius part one’, O’Neill is there from the beginning. All the rest of the episodes in the season either take place on Earth, and/or they don’t involve the team working together or in a setting that necessitates someone ‘leading’. For that matter, even in the few brief scenes across the season wherein Carter is ‘leading’, she almost never gets to act with that authority the way that O’Neill did when he ran the team; it’s very easy to forget that Carter is technically in charge when she’s not being presented any opportunities to give even basic orders. In addition to robbing Carter of her deserved status over the course of the season, the lack of proper team episodes works to the detriment of the group dynamic, reinforcing the idea of the show coming to a bittersweet end by having SG1 just not feel like SG1 anymore, not just because O’Neill is gone, but because we aren’t getting the chance to see how the remaining team members are adapting without him. It’s a sad weird way to close out this chapter of the series, and it’s hard not to wonder if they would have been so awkward about it if they had a man as leader of SG1 instead. I mean, just look at season nine...

#Stargate SG1 #Stargate SG1 season eight #full season review #Bechdel Test #female representation

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originaljediinjeans · 6 years ago

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I think here on Tumblr is the only place I “could” discuss this. If I brought it up on a Facebook support group my post might not get approved by admins because of how what I am about to describe touches on multiple sensitive issues. Also I have certain friends in those support groups that might not like seeing what I have to reveal.

I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. We’ve been called “Mormons” in the past but we’re trying to step away from that. Those of you who have heard of the Church know that the Church has come under fire for its policies towards LGBTQ+ people, based on teachings that promote the traditional family and traditional marriage as the center of our lives and the thing for which we are rewarded the most in Time and Eternity for having. For very strong personal reasons I accept the Church’s teachings about the importance of marriage and family.

In the last few years I have added a good number of LGBTQ+ friends into my social circle. A few of them are very vocal about their identity and lifestyle on their online profiles. I have had good experiences with some of these people and I have grown to care about them as peers and as friends. Some of them I have stood by (mostly via internet) as they have struggled with their own mental health problems. I want to have good relationships with people from all backgrounds. There is no reason in my mind that I can’t.

I am autistic, and I have struggled with mental illness off and on since my teen years and issues about marriage and sexuality and my beliefs about them have been at the center of a good portion of those struggles. My parents and my counselors and doctors would all tell you that I have a very “black and white” way of thinking and they are correct. For me, something either has to be all one way or all another way. I have worked very hard since I was a child to try to understand that things that are different can coexist, and things that are not all one way can be just as they are.

There is a part of me that is always trying to reconcile having LGBTQ+ friends and associates with my faith. I have done everything I can to study the scriptures and the teachings of church leaders in order to understand the concept that the Savior taught that we must love those who are different from ourselves. He dedicated His life to making a special effort to reaching out to everyone who was outcast, downtrodden, and left behind in any way: He asks as much of me as well as everyone who follows him.

After this last weekend’s General Conference, I saw the usual backlash on the internet against how certain topics were addressed by the General Authorities. I admit, it was enough to trigger a meltdown. I was able to pull myself out of it. I came to the conclusion that the issue with myself is that I am not ‘homophobic’ as much as I have anxiety about certain topics. I wonder how much homophobia itself is related to actual anxiety etc, but that is not the main issue here. The main issue here is me and how I feel.

I don’t want to “hate” people for who they are. And I don’t. But I have two seperate lines of thinking when it comes to my LGBTQ+ friends:

One: I love and respect them and I am so grateful that I can be friends with people who are different from me

Two: I do not approve of the lifestyle choices of people that I am acquainted with because my Church teaches that sexual relations are only legitimate between a man and woman legally married.

I have to carry those two mindsets in my interactions with certain people--I think it’s partly due to the fact that I’m autistic that sometimes I can’t deal well with the effort of being, in a sense, “double-minded.” It can feel exhausting because I’m trying to resist my natural tendency to think only one way. But I come from a church and a culture that teaches that basic values should not, cannot be compromised, and that only reinforces my mental rigidity, and that makes accepting other ideas harder. I confess sometimes that rigidity lends itself to feelings of anger and hate--but I don’t like to dwell on them. I don’t want to.

I hate reading or hearing that my opinions about anything are wrong, even if it’s not directly addressed to me. But I have a growing paranoia that I’m going to get hate for my opinions anyway (but if it comes because of this post so be it--I have honest concerns and I need to address them and I hope the right people find this post).

A lot of what I see on the internet tells me that my church is wrong about everything: about sexuality, about gender differences, about the leadership, I could go on for quite a while. There are people who question how it is “fair” that the highest rituals of our religion are exclusive to people who do as the Church teaches. There are people who protest that if God’s love is so universal and far-reaching that they should be allowed to have full participation in the Church regardless of their sexual behavior. There are many who claim that the Church wants them to “suffer” rather than have fulfillment from romantic and sexual relations with people they are attracted to. All of those concerns are valid. I don’t know the answers to all of their questions. However, I don’t think that questions or other people’s complaints are a reason to abandon faith.

My biggest concern is that as much as I “love and respect” my LGBTQ+ friends, I feel hypocritical and evil for associating with them because I have negative feelings towards their way of life. I feel like a bad person because I don’t “love” them unconditionally, or that I have to pick and choose how to love them. I think I am being fake with them. I have always been concerned about these friendships at least in theory but now I am an adult and being able to deal or not deal with them is going to have real consequences.

(Yeah, it’s Satan, I know).

When I was younger, I had the assumption that I was supposed to not interact with people who were immoral in any way, that it would make me “unclean”. I have since learned, of course, that that attitude is very wrong. I get that there are plenty of people in my church who treat LGBTQ+ people very poorly and I know that that has caused serious problems--some of my LGBTQ+ friends are from that background. I know that Jesus Christ would never condone members of His Church being unkind to others just because of their sexual orientation.

(Side comment that may hurt the validity of my quandry: I know that it sounds like the General Authorities of my church are talking down about LGBTQ+ people, or at least saying things that sound hurtful or aren’t what people like to hear, but the Church has always taught that we need to show love and kindness to all people, that we are all children of our Heavenly Father, and that being disdainful of others who commit sin is not the right way, even if we aren’t trying to make them “repent.” Those teachings are still valid even if the members don’t always live it. Also, back in 2015 the Church supported legislation in Utah to promote equal housing and employment for LGBTQ+ people, and the Church recently supported a hate crimes bill in Utah that includes protections for LGBTQ+ persons. I feel that the Church is trying to promote peaceful relationships and equal rights for access to basic needs).

I have a very real paranoia that if my LGBTQ+ friends knew how I “really” felt, they would abandon me. I belong to a church that is actively seeking to put them down, in their minds, and the flawed culture of imperfect members is hard to disentangle from Church policy. I have a very real compulsion to “out” my “problematic” side and just get it over with, to post here on Tumblr or on Facebook that I am a “toxic” person who should be shunned. In fact, since last October I have been tempted to commit suicide over the mere possibility that this ugly beast exists in my soul.

(Yeah, that’s definitely Satan)

I still believe that homosexual behavior is a sin. I have no intention of leaving the Church or criticizing its leaders, even if they are imperfect. But I accept that same-sex attraction and gender dysphoria is a reality for many people, and there is nothing wrong with those feelings in themselves, even though living in a world dominated by cishet people is very difficult. I also know that Heavenly Father does not approve of homophobia. The “natural man” is the one that gives in to fear, anger, and hatred.

But there are people who would interpret my religious views as homophobic no matter how I felt about them as individuals. I am afraid that the people that I am actually friends with might think of me as homophobic merely for belonging to this Church and for accepting some of its teachings. And there are people who think that if I don’t unconditionally “accept” and support their sexual lifestyle choices that I don’t truly “accept” them. I’m afraid of my own homophobia and it hurts. I’m afraid of attitudes of hatred and prejudice taking over me and then costing me my relationships with other people.

I am afraid that as we get closer to the Second Coming that the conflict between people fighting for what they believe are their rights and the Church trying to stand its ground will get very heated. I don’t know how that’s going to affect me but I’m not looking forward to it. However, I don’t want to worry about that now. And I shouldn’t. My life is better for my relationships with people who are different from me, including those of differing sexual orientation. I know that my Savior has commanded me to love other people the way that He loves--loving them for who they are and encouraging them to follow Him--and I want to.

I just really need help reconciling my feelings, or at least knowing that such reconciliation is possible. I’m not concerned about doing the right thing as much as am I going to be okay and do my LGBTQ+ friends really accept me without me having to compromise my beliefs? These issues put me under a lot of mental and emotional pressure. What is it going to take for me to be strong enough to withstand it?

Sincerely, Me, a person who struggles with mental illness and wants to do right by the people she cares about

Please interact: open-minded people who are religious/spiritual, Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, people with knowledge or experience of mental illness, LGBTQ+ people who are more tolerant of religious people; people who have struggled with similar thoughts or fears a plus

DO NOT INTERACT: athiests and exmos, antis, etc., anyone who just wants to talk down to me about my beliefs or “educate” me; also far-right religious people who misinterpret religious beliefs to justify homophobia

#mental health #mental illness #autism #tumblr stake #LGBTQ+ issues #sensitive subject #faith #faith and doubt #sexuality issues #paranoia #friendships #stress #personal #homophobia

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thexerohour · 5 years ago

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Politically Agnostic is a Misnomer

ESSAY

October 23, 2020

by J. Slaughter

Someone recently asked me what I thought of the term “Politically Agnostic”. Initially, I thought to myself, “I think I addressed that in Episode 50 of The Xero Hour Podcast.

There’s a bunch of people like that, running around pretending to be neutral because they’re still at their default-liberal settings. I know of one guy like that in particular. He’s got an opinion on everything, but he likes to pretend that his opinions are neutral. He wants to make you believe that his thoughts are well balanced and non-biased. But here’s what he’s not telling you. He knows what opinions are most expedient to pronounce, but he doesn’t seem to believe those opinions. He knows how to coerce you into changing your opinions. He’s a grifter.

Most people are default-liberals (Center-Left), and the things that he says are just going to reinforce an acceptable liberal perspective, with a thin veneer of spirituality just to make it more palatable (and I have to say spirituality because Christianity isn’t a marketable term). Now my friend, he’s savvy to all that stuff. He’s a salesperson. He’s an entertainer and a presenter. But one thing he’s not is politically neutral. Everyone has a political standing. Everyone. Every. Single. Person. But, that’s something I’ll address later.

Right now, we need to look at this phrase, “Politically Agnostic”. Politically Agnostic is a marketing phrase, meaning, it’s made up. It’s not a real set of words that are meant to go together, so it’s not a phrase that people use. Politically Agnostic is something that was likely engineered to appeal to ‘spiritual’ people, or for use in SEO results.

I felt like my original assessment of the term politically agnostic was underdeveloped, and so I did a little bit of research just to see if my instincts were correct. I pulled up a few search results that date back quite a few years, but not much from recent times. After I read up on it a bit, I still feel like the phrase is something that was picked out of obscurity, because it would be good for marketing. However, the phrase should have a meaning. Words have meaning. And, with closer inspection, we can see that this is an odd combination of words indeed.

According to Merriam Webster (which has been recently exposed for changing the definitions of words arbitrarily, see “sexual preference”) the word agnostic means :

Definition of AGNOSTIC (noun)

1: a person who holds the view that any ultimate reality (as God) is unknown and probably unknowable; broadly: one who is not committed to believing in either the existence or the nonexistence of God or a god

2: a person who is unwilling to commit to an opinion about something <political agnostics>

Here’s the thing I can’t wrap my head around. The second definition of agnostic is a person who is unwilling to commit to an opinion about something. People are always trying to sell us on this idea when it comes to politics. It’s as if they are somehow “above it all” by remaining uninvolved. But in this case, inaction is the action. Agnosticism is a choice. Not to be confused with Indifference which is “the lack of difference or distinction between two or more things”, or in other words “ignorance”. There is a BIG distinction to be made between one’s Agnosticism and one’s Indifference.

When people are too fearful or too foolish to make the necessary sacrifices to commit; or are unwilling to change their true values and beliefs, then it becomes expedient for them to try and take the third approach. One that says they’re just not going to engage, as if that’s a wiser decision. It’s much easier to dismiss a political issue entirely than to face the cognitive dissonance of forming an opinion that disagrees with your actions. Why take the risk of offending some of your friends by taking a hard stance on some political issue when you can just pretend that it doesn’t matter. I mean, isn’t that what Jesus did? Well, no. I don’t think the Bible teaches anything like that sort of thinking or ideology.

Jesus never claimed to be politically indifferent or agnostic. When he was pressed on political issues, he exposed the categorical differences between his positioning and the positions that they were trying to impose on him. There’s a big difference between favoring one concept to the expense of another, and just pretending that the other concept doesn’t exist entirely.

So, when they asked “Is it lawful to give tribute unto Caesar, or not?” (an issue of affection and allegiance), Christ answered, “Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s and unto God the things that are God’s.” In this, He highlighted the categorical difference between spiritual affection and political duty. When they tried to provoke Jesus to anger by reporting that Pilate had killed some of the Galileans during their sacrificial worship (and probably sacrificing those men as well), he responded

“Suppose ye that these Galileans were sinners above all the Galileans because they suffered such things? I tell you, Nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.”

This was neither agnosticism nor indifference. Christ was quite committed to the message that he preached and I think that we ought to follow suit. The Bible doesn’t espouse political indifference, but quite the contrary:

Romans 13:1 “Let every person be in subjection to the governing authorities.

Therefore, the phrase agnostic reeks of ignorance and cowardice, in my opinion. If you’re ignorant then you should be willing to learn. You only refuse knowledge out of fear or foolishness. If you’re unwilling to learn, then we have to assume that you’re a either a fool or a coward. That covers both definitions of the word agnostic. Let’s move on to politics.

Definition of politics

1a: the art or science of government

b: the art or science concerned with guiding or influencing governmental policy

c: the art or science concerned with winning and holding control over a government

2: political actions, practices, or policies

3a: political affairs or business

especially : competition between competing interest groups or individuals for power and leadership (as in a government)

b: political life especially as a principal activity or profession

c: political activities characterized by artful and often dishonest practices

4: the political opinions or sympathies of a person

Because neither I, nor most people that I know, are not directly involved with or employed in politics on a governmental level, including Church politics, we have to understand that the only definition that applies to us directly would be the fifth definition.

5a: the total complex of relations between people living in society

b: relations or conduct in a particular area of experience especially as seen or dealt with from a political point of view

This means that politics has more to do with relationships, personal experiences, and community. It’s how we deal with the issues that arise from within. Our political ideologies may be deeply factored into those relationships, and the ‘total complex of relations’, but at its root, it is the ideology that drives our actions. That’s why it’s important to understand where your thoughts come from, and where they lead.

Whether or not sexual predators should be allowed within a certain distance of a playground, or whether or not the government should allow churches to remain open during a Covid-19 pandemic, or whether or not an activist group should be able to compel a baker to participate in their festivities, against his religion, are all examples of politics. Not every conflict has to be adjudicated on a governmental level. This is why the Bible tells us to judge among ourselves, problems within the Church. But, I think it is the willingness among people to remain milquetoast about civil issues, that requires the government to intervene. Before the concept of MAGA, no one had an opinion about whether or not people should wear red hats (unless they really, really hated Limp Bizkit). Now, it’s a social issue. In many social conflicts, we ought to have thought out and set precedent, way before these things get to a governmental level.

The third and final part of this analysis is the perception of value that’s attached to the concept of Political Agnosticism. At its root, I think it’s probably closer to postmodernism. In the sense that things lose meaning or have no meaning at all. If something cannot be deemed important, then there’s no reason to form an opinion on it. I think this absolves one of his responsibility to engage in the world in a meaningful fashion. It absolves one all responsibility toward his brothers and sisters on a personal day-to-day level but elevates selfishness. Because we are born into families, and those families make up communities, I believe that man is meant to be a communal creature. Therefore politics is essential to our social makeup. You can’t have any hard perspectives or opinions on social matters without acknowledging that, the root of all social matters are, in nature, political.

What the left has done in today’s culture has been to change the meaning of politics to something that it doesn’t, while changing the meaning of the word social and applying the original meanings of politics and ethics. When words change in such a drastic and swift manner, they lose meaning. So on its face, political agnosticism is a word salad that truly has no real meaning. It would be better for one to be honest about their understanding, or lack thereof; to be honest about their interest, or lack thereof, without using this misnomer. You have an opinion, even if you don’t have all the facts. Just be honest.

As I said at the beginning of this essay, everyone has a political standing. It may simply be that you don’t know what that is or how to find out. It is very important and helpful to have a personal understanding of your thoughts and instincts on all matters social or political because they affect how you perceive and navigate the world. If you’re interested in finding out where you stand in general, try taking The Political Compass Test. You can find out where your own thoughts lie, and what major historical figures shared your point of view. You’ll even be able to print out a certificate of completion when you’re done (to share with all your friends). https://www.politicalcompass.org/

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#politically agnostic #politics #agnostic #essay

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annwinter94 · 5 years ago

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