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picturejasper20 · 3 years

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Infinity Train and Cults

One of the most interesting aspects in Infinity Train's story is how humans passengers start cults and the process of recruitment. This theme is very prevelent during the second half of Book 2 and all Book 3.

This theme is represented with "The Apex": a group commopsed of very young passengers who go from car to car harrassing citizens of the train and stealing their goods. They are first introduced in the series in the episode "The Lucky Cat Car" in Book 2.

In this post i'm going to write a detailed analysis explaining what is a cult, why the Apex could be considered a cult and the reasons why passengers would join the group in first place.

To do this i'm going to cite a few sources about cults and the psychology behind cult recruitment, which you'll find at the end of this post.

Let's start:

1) The definition of the word "Cult".

According to Sociologist Janja Lalich who speciales in cults the definition of a cult is:

¨A cult can be either a sharply-bounded social group or a diffusely-bounded social movement held together through shared commitment to a charismatic leader. It upholds a transcendent belief system (often but not always religious in nature) that includes a call for a personal transformation. It also requires a high level of personal commitment from its members in words and deeds.¨

Another details she talks about in her article are:

¨This definition is not meant to be evaluative in the sense of implying that a group is good, bad, benign, or harmful. Rather it is meant to convey a systemic view of such a group, which is comprised of a charismatic relationship, a promise of fulfillment, and a methodology by which to achieve it.¨

¨Each group must be observed and judged on its own merits and its own practices and behaviors as to whether it falls within this category type, which is not meant to be dismissive or one-sided¨

The Ted-Ed video: ¨Why Do People Join Cults?¨ gives a similar definition:

¨Broadly speaking, a cult is a group or movement with a shared commitment to a usually extreme ideology that's typically embodied in a charismatic leader. A typical cult requires a high level of commitment from its members and maintains a strict hierarchy, separating unsuspecting supporters and recruits from the inner workings. It claims to provide answers to life's biggest questions through its doctrine, along with the required recipe for change that shapes a new member into a true believer.¨

To put it in simpler words: A cult by definition is a social group which has a very strong belief system (this doesn´t mean it is religious), it’s controlled by a charismatic leader whose followers rarely question. The members of the group have to obey an specific set of rules that are usually created by the leaders of the cult. Critical thinking is very often discouraged between the members.

The word cult isn´t meant to be good or bad. It’s just a way to describe a social group with specific characteristics. The definition itself isn´t exact, one has to learn about the group first before labeling it as a cult.

Now, how do the Apex from Infinity Train fall in this category?

2) The Apex as a cult.

For this part of the analysis I’m going to cite common characteristics of cults and how they do apply to the Apex. I’m going to add multiple examples of how the Apex members behave, how they interact with their leaders (Grace and Simon) and their ideology.

¨The group displays an excessively zealous and unquestioning commitment to its leader, and (whether he is alive or dead) regards his belief system, ideology, and practices as the Truth, as law.¨

In the series, the Apex members consider Grace and Simon as unquestionable leaders. They follow their commands including those that are indicate to hurt train citiziens.

When Grace snaps her fingers in one of the kids immediately listens to her and goes to her side, kneeling when he meets her. (The Lucky Cat Car).

Simon also kneels before Grace in next episode since he is supposed to be second in command.

In ¨The Music Car¨ all the members pledge to the leaders and salute them:

¨Apex!

May our spirits be high!

And our numbers higher!

Down with the false Conductor!¨

Both Grace and Simon appear to have a special status within the group as they are given gifts by the kids when the raid a car as seen in the first episode. It’s not stated if this is part of their routine as way for each member to prove they are worthy of being a Apex but considering the rules of the group it is very possible assumption.

¨Questioning, doubt, and dissent are discouraged or even punished.¨

In ¨The Mall Car¨ after Jesse refuses to follow Grace orders and stands up for Lake and Alan, Grace responds by telling him he made a big mistake and uses her mirror to let the flecks catch Lake.

This is a huge contrast with how she was very friendly with Jesse at the start of the episode. Grace´s sudden change of behavior comes from how Jesse didn´t accept her authority and realized how he was being manipulated.

This is another example of The Apex behaving as a cult: In the moment someone doesn´t want to follow Grace or Simon´s orders, they are seen as an enemy who opposes the Apex and there before must be punished. Disagreement is very discouraged in cults groups. Those who show any sign of disagreement or doubt are mocked, guilt tripped and called out.

A more subtle case of this happening when one of the kids,Lucy, calls a train citizen a ¨person¨. Grace corrects him by telling him that the train citizen is ¨another toy the train made to amuse us.¨ She makes Lucy feel ashamed for doubting the Apex ideology by mocking her in front of Simon: ¨Aw, that's cute. Lucy thinks it's a person¨ (The Music Car).

¨The group is elitist, claiming a special, exalted status for itself, its leader(s), and its members (e.g., the leader is considered the Messiah, a special being, an avatar—or the group and/or the leader is on a special mission to save humanity.¨

The Apex believe that they are entitled to their car. They are above the train citizens, they are allowed to take and hurt them as much as they want because for the Apex the citizens aren’t real and they don’t experience emotions.

¨She doesn't even have a number. (..) ¨She's not a passenger¨.(..) Exactly, she's a null. Null, it means nothing, not even a zero.¨ Grace talking about Lake in ¨The Mall Car¨

¨I've got a number, and you don't. You two are only as good as you are useful.¨ Simon referring to Alan Dracula and Lake.

The group itself refers to the old conductor as their as divine figure, who inspires them everyday and has been stolen from his true place by the ¨false conductor¨, who is One-One. It’s almost as the old conductor is their god because it has the highest number in the train.

Grace mentions multiple times in Book 3 how she was saved by the conductor. It´s heavily implied she believes she has been chosen and how she´s the only one that who knows how the conductor looks like.

In Apex ideology, the numbers are very important: They determine your status in the community. The higher the number, the more powerful you are. To increase your number you have to do the tasks the leaders give to you. These tasks involve destroying, stealing and hurting citizens. The person with the highest number is the leader of the group.

¨The group teaches or implies that its supposedly exalted ends justify whatever means it deems necessary. This may result in members participating in behaviors or activities they would have considered reprehensible or unethical before joining the group¨

While wrecking the car in the episode ¨The Lucky Cat Car¨ Grace mentions how the Apex are just doing what they must to survive. This shows a very explicit example of ¨the the end justify the means¨ that is common to find in cults. Grace and the other Apex kids are clear they don´t care about stealing and hurting citizens as long as they are able to increase their numbers and get resources.

Another example of this is when Grace and Simon plan to getting rid of Tuba to take Hazel with them in Book 3. This implies they don’t care about separating kids from their train companions to make them join the Apex. It wouldn´t be farfetched to think they have done this before with other young passengers to isolate them and persuade them into staying with the group.

In case of Jesse in Book 2, Grace tries to convince him to participate in a raid by breaking a cube from a train car. She tries making Jesse believe that those without numbers aren´t real and lack capacity to experience actual pain. Before that she told him to throw food under the train by saying he is ¨free to do whatever he wants¨. This case is more about how members make non-members commit morally questionable actions before they become full members.

¨Subservience to the leader or group requires members to cut ties with family and friends, and radically alter the personal goals and activities they had before joining the group.¨

Very often when joining a cult members are asked to keep distance from their close relationships (family and friends). Applying different methods, the leaders seek to isolate the new members from their family to control them more easily and thus making doubt less of the orders they are following.

In Infinity Train, the apex often try to separate kids and teenagers from their train companions. To do this, they manipulate the passengers into believing that their companions are just ¨toys to play with¨ and that the Apex are going to give them a home to live.

In ¨The Mall Car¨ Grace asks Lake to stay to look for Alan Dracula while Jesse goes with the Apex kids. Grace did this on purpose to be alone with Jesse and cause problems between him and Lake’s relationship.

After Lake stays behind, Grace starts talking about how Lake is getting Jesse into trouble and how the train is a ¨scary and lonely place¨. By giving Jesse all these negative thoughts she intends to giving him more reasons to not continue his journey and be part of the group.

In Book 3, Grace and Simon try applying something similar with Hazel and Tuba. They try to make Hazel to leave Tuba’s side and getting rid of the citizen. Much like Lake and Jesse, Tuba and Habel have a very strong bond which means they are going to have a hard time encouraging Hazel to ditch her friend.

One detail worth of adding is that they considered Tuba a threat because of her huge muscular form which made her look really intimidating. Someone like her was a obstacle that was impeding them to recruit Hazel.

¨Unreasonable fear about the outside world, such as impending catastrophe, evil conspiracies and persecutions.¨

The Apex believe there was a conspiracy against the old conductor and the new conductor (One-One) is the false conductor. They seem to hold into this idea that old conductor was overthrown and their true place is being in charge the train.

When Amelia is explaining them that she used to be the old conductor and she isn´t prisoner of One-On, Simon keeps accusing her of spreading false propaganda and insist Grace that she is trying to trick them. In this scenario, it makes some sense for someone to be skeptical, especially if they held a very strong belief system like Grace and Simon do.

3) Why would passengers join the Apex?

After watching how badly the apex treat the train citizens and separate kids from their companions, why would someone join them? It may look like only those who want to commit vandalism and have a extreme prejudice against citizens would but if one analyses how the train operates it makes perfect sense.

When a kid gets on the train, they are completely separated from their family. Unless they find a kind companion, they are going to be completely alone stuck in a unknown place without adults to take care of them. They are very likely going to feel lost and scared not knowing what they have to do and what they should go.

Combine all this factors and they make a very easy target for a cult movement like the Apex to recruit: The members can take care of them, give them a place to belong, have friends and a sense of community. The kid passengers don’t have to worry about anything as long as the follow the rules.

Cults seeks to recruit people who are in a state of extreme vulnerability, who have issues fitting in or may feel lost. The members give these people a new purpose. They say ¨we can be your new home, your family¨ which leads to people to be persuaded into joining.

In the two examples in the series, Hazel and Jesse, Grace talks to them about how great the Apex are: They are going to help them, they will take care of them and keep them safe from the dangers of the train.

With Jesse, Grace tells him ¨how she cares about people¨. She fills his mind with how the Apex are good and they can do whatever they one. She’s very friendly with him and even invites him to jump from car to car.

In the case of Hazel, Grace tells her how they are going to help her with fixing her number. She also mentions how Hazel is going to meet tons of other kids once they reach the Apex car.

She knows that kids like Jesse and Hazel feel confused inside the train and takes advantage of their weaknesses to trick them into becoming Apex members.

In Conclusion:

For the reasons I wrote in this post, one could interpret the Apex from Infinity Train as a cult or a social group that shares characteristics found in cults : They have a very specific type of almost religious ideology, they think having more numbers gives them a special status, they rarely have doubts in their leaders and don´t care about hurting people to get what they want.

I think that the Apex is one of the most interesting themes of the series. It explores what happens when many young passengers start working together and create their own society with its own rules while showing how people come together when they find themselves lost in a place they don´t understand. It’s worth of analyzing the psychological and sociological aspects of this community and how they work.

Sources that were used for this post:

http://cultresearch.org/help/characteristics-associated-with-cults/

http://cultresearch.org/definition-and-explanation-of-the-word-cult/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janja_Lalich

https://www.insider.com/why-people-join-cults-according-to-therapist-who-treats-survivors-2020-9

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2009/may/27/cults-definition-religion

The video ¨Why do people join cults?¨:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kB-dJaCXAxA&ab_channel=TED-Ed

#infinity train #infinity train season 3 #infinity train season 2 #infinity train grace #infinity train simon #it analysis #cults #Animation

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cruellove · 3 years

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i. ABILITIES » beguilement.

DESIRE—for control, blood, fear, dominance, rapture, justice, adrenaline, ecstasy—can lead both to making war and to making love, to churn and change of all kinds.

VISUALIZATION.

Technically her power is in constant effect, albeit in a dulled capacity, and this on its own comes with no visual manifestations. Though the song of her blood attracts vampirekind in general, it does not alter her appearance to the individual. When she has someone under her spell, Yena’s skin adapts a near-pearlescent sheen, a luminosity - the glow of love, as it were - which is visible to all. Her pupils, akin to the biological reaction induced by love or lust, also moderately dilate. These last until the spell is broken by death.

SENSES.

Her power overlaps very little with the senses, and there are little to no ramifications on her body with its use. Solely with the person bound to her, she experiences specifically-heightened and attuned senses. While neither is enough to lend her any skill or use in Firefly’s experiments like their leader Onyx, it is enough to allow her to detect increased/decreased heartrate or small bodily signs of pleasure, distaste, etc. In general, this allows her to interpret and discern her partner’s emotions even if they aren’t verbally expressed. This portion of her ability does not apply to anyone else. When a new declaration of love is sworn and a person inducted under her spell, she feels a rush of endorphins that mimic a high, which can last from several hours to a full day. It’s during this high that her eyes become most dilated and as such render her vision slightly impaired. Love isn’t blind, but it’s blinding I guess. If the declaration is made when a previous lover is alive and still under her thrall, she is faced simultaneously with a deep physical ache in the chest. This pain is felt simultaneously by her previous partner, both experiencing the severance of what binds them.

STRENGTH.

The only palpable way her appeal manifests to vampirekind is in the potency of her blood’s scent, which dominates other smells that may be in the room. This is largely how one would explain or excuse the draw towards her, though the ‘song’ that emanates from her blood is another layer. This has no real explanation as not even Yena is aware exactly how it works - only that her heart is the drum of it. Those that confess love to her have their emotions and attraction immediately magnified to the point of near-obsession. This does not mean negative feelings or emotions are no longer present - they can still experience anger, jealousy, etc - but they are far more likely to forgive her or let it pass. Given the extent of their devotion, they are generally rendered malleable and willing to give or execute whatever Yena wishes. I’m still deciding whether or not she can control/escalate her partner’s love once they have sworn themselves to her, don’t @ me. The compulsion to protect her is absolute to the point of death, but so to is the desire to ruin her when the spell is broken. Though she does not have the ability to compel or force anyone to love her, her strongest unnatural weapon in the case of seduction is to allow someone to drink from her blood. While the taste of it does not draw out or guarantee emotions or confessions, there is an addictive quality to it that seemingly further endears the drinker and lends them to becoming more malleable to her will. As such, she treats her blood as a holy thing, to be used/given only to a select few. She has found that for all those not under her thrall, increasing her heartrate and therefore the pumping of her blood can moderately intensify the draw they experience.

WEAKNESS.

There are next to no offensive benefits of Yena’s power. While she may have a love-sworn champion willing to fight to the death for her, this means nothing if they are physically separated or are unable to reach her. If she is entirely without a beguiled lover at any point in time, she is all the more vulnerable. Duly, she does not have any control over who professes love to her - though she can seduce or discourage like any individual, ultimately she cannot chose who falls in love and subsequently confesses to her. While she has learned from experience that a lover’s admission will not bind them to her if their heart is untrue or not completely filled (meaning a jovial or platonic i love you will not catalyze the spell), she does not have to return their affections in any way, shape, or form for it to work. This can and has resulted in heartbreak, losing a lover she adored to gain a besotted individual who she wanted nothing to do with. She does not have the ability to nullify or stop her power, either with the general populace or the person bound to her. Even if she wished to be unnoticed or incognito, her blood is distinct and can alert others to her presence.

FUNCTION.

The compulsion and attraction provided by her blood aids her consistently in day-to-day life, having marked her uniquely within society as preternaturally desirable. Without the call that emanates from her blood, it’s unlikely (or even impossible) that she would have ascended to the pedestal she now calls home within such a short time. As a dancer, her blood’s appeal lends performances a transcendental appeal, keeping all eyes captivated on her for the duration of her time on stage. As a vampire moving through the island, she absolutely makes use of her power in little ways - queues are never waited in, bills are often waved off, etc. Her power also aids Firefly well in her capacity as an emissary and ambassador, given individuals often have an elevated interest in pleasing Yena in order to get close to her. It does nothing, however, to help them with their overall mission of medicine in any meaningful way. She makes a good companion to inpatients, but that’s about it.

OTHER.

( 1 ) Though Yena is physically weak in comparison to others of her kind, due to the near-constant threat of being hunted and torn apart as a side effect of her power, I imagine she is exceptionally quick and agile. This in conjunction with her dancer’s nimbleness and flexibility certainly does not render her a fighter, but makes her adept at passively evading physical attack. She has more than once had to fight for her life by simply getting away from a cursed ex-lover, escaping to public grounds where others can interfere.

( 2 ) She’s also found ways to use her blood as something akin to an aphrodisiac and/or distraction. By storing her blood in vials/vases/etc or soaking objects thoroughly within it, these items carry her scent and song. Due to their direct exposure to the air they become quite potent, but fade quickly as with any perfume or flower. Her favourite trick has been to soak a white rose in her blood until it’s dyed red, sending or presenting this to those she desires.

( 3 ) Given her proximity and access to individuals who allow themselves complete vulnerability in her presence, I imagine Yena has become extremely adept at reading individuals. This is not a side effect of her power, but instead something learned over time. She’s also, subsequently, well-versed at moves of seduction -- both towards the bedroom or straight into a heart.

( 4 ) I imagine Hokuei’s populace is moderately aware as to the extent and consequences of her power, though largely it’s speculation. Everyone knows that beyond her general appeal, she seems to have one individual besotted with her, and it’s general knowledge that those who once adored her end up filled with rage to the point of destructive urges. Whether this is jealousy driven to madness over the once-possession of a singular creature or a distinct side effect is up to personal belief. The only thing that she has tried to keep hidden is the eventual death of those that love her by an unknown force - when possible, these have been hidden. Some bodies have been left to find publicly, but I imagine in these cases it has been blamed on the anger of her suitor or prince.

#bt.task #i THINK this is done but there could very well be unfinished sentences somewhere lmao #❛ IT IS FOR SHE THAT THE CHERRY BLEEDS » i. about.

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rebelsofshield · 4 years

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Star Wars: The Clone Wars “The Phantom Apprentice” -Review

The Clone Wars creates a horror movie of inescapable dread in the game changing, “The Phantom Apprentice”

(Review contains episode spoilers)

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Maul and Ahsoka Tano are now face to face. As the battle for the future of Mandalore unfolds around them, it becomes clear that something much larger is at stake. The fate of the galaxy hangs in the balance and everything that is known will change. And our heroes and villains are powerless to stop it.

It’s been known for quite a while that the end of The Clone Wars would tie into the events of Revenge of the Sith. The show has been on a collision course with this darkest installment in the Star Wars saga ever since it premiered in 2008 and now the inevitable moment has arrived. Everything in the galaxy is about to upend itself and the feeling of dread and tragedy hangs over everything. While The Clone Wars has dipped its feet into the horror genre before, director Nathaniel Villanueva and writer Dave Filoni have created a half hour experience of impending dread and terror.

The Clone Wars was always going to end in heartbreak. Revenge of the Sith was the inescapable end point for this series, but the unspoken cruelty of this series is in the unaware insignificance of its own cast. Ahsoka Tano, Rex, Maul, the Mandalorians are doomed to be side notes in the galaxy altering Skywalker Saga. Their narratives are twisting, emotional, and undeniably engaging but they will never escape living in the margins of the adventures of the mythic figures they count as their friends, allies, and enemies. There is a knowing futility to Filoni’s script for “The Phantom Apprentice” that pervades everything. We can be watching titanic battles unfold on the streets of Sundari and daring lightsaber duels, but it’s all for nothing. Composer Kevin Kiner, still the only musical talent that has come close to mirroring and expanding off the legendary work of John Williams, turns the aural landscape of this conflict into a sound that can only be described as Star Wars meets Hereditary. We are never once made to feel comfortable. There are no hints that this will work out. It won’t.

Like the standout season finale to Star Wars Rebels’ second season, the title of “The Phantom Apprentice” is deceptively nuanced. It’s actually in conversation with three different characters, one of whom never actually appears on screen.

The most obvious of the three is of course Maul, the original apprentice to The Phantom Menace. I’ve never hidden my adoration for the long, strange character arc that Lucasfilm Animation has taken this formerly one note villain on. Sam Witwer, Dave Filoni, and the rest of the creative team have transformed this former Sith assassin into a perpetually broken and emotional frail man that is never more than a few steps away from collapse. First hinted at in one of his first appearances on this series, Maul was always aware to some degree of The Clone Wars and the larger machinations of his master. The pieces were always in place and now Maul is slowly realizing that the end goal of his master’s decades long plan is finally upon them. And it terrifies him. Long gone is the confident Maul who thought he could carve out an Empire for himself in the shadows of the galactic underworld. After Darth Sidious’s humiliating beatdown of him in “The Lawless” and the murder of his mother in the Son of Dathomir comic series, it’s now clear to this lost Zabrak that his master is the most powerful being in the galaxy and something to be feared above all else. Witwer plays Maul’s former anger and jealousy at having his dreams of grandeur robbed of him as a transformation into existential collapse. He realizes that he really is nothing more than a cast aside bit player in the revolution that is about to come and he is determined to stop it from happening. Not out of any kind of good will or redemption, but out of his own desperation for survival and relevance.

I’ve always been a tad skeptical of one of the final confrontations of the series being a duel between Asoka Tano and Maul. Not at all because Ahsoka isn’t capable of taking on a character like this wayward former Sith. She’s more than proven herself able and “The Phantom Apprentice” more than sells that Maul is definitely not acting at full capacity. (We’ll talk more about that fantastic confrontation later along with the rest of the stellar action here.) Instead, I was concerned that this clash would feel hollow. Ahsoka and Maul do not have an existing relationship prior to “The Phantom Apprentice.” Their big climactic meeting of sabers could have been nothing more than a set piece that was created only because they were the only characters free during the Revenge of the Sith era to have one. That is very thankfully not the case.

Filoni smartly positions Maul and Ahsoka as two sides of the same coin. As Maul was eventually cast out and discarded as useless by Darth Sidious, Ahsoka was also tossed away by the Jedi order by their own dedication to doctrine and lack of trust. Both are victims of their respective order’s worst qualities and exist as relative outcasts. However, the true dramatic irony of it all is that by doing so, both Ahsoka and Maul are arguably in better positions to survive the coming slaughter and possibly put an end to it. Sure, Maul’s argument for their teaming up to stop Sidious is mostly self-serving (even if I suspect that it does have some root in the sad sack of a Sith’s perpetual need for companionship and belonging), but Ahsoka considers it for a moment because she can see the truth in it all. It’s a fascinating moment and the fact that it feels emotionally genuine is a true feat of Ahsley Eckstein, Witwer, and the entire creative team. We can’t not acknowledge that incredible shot of the shattered glass and embers blowing through the wind as Maul’s fateful offer is made.

The final apprentice is of course Anakin Skywalker. Perhaps the most startling development of “The Phantom Apprentice” is Maul’s revelation that he is more than aware of Anakin’s eventual slip to the Dark Side and it was probably in the cards for quite some time. (His moment of post-mortem pity for Dooku is a fun wink to how doomed all of Sidious’s apprentices were on their eventual march toward Anakin’s ascension.) It recontexualizes so much of the final days of The Clone Wars and of Sidious’s plan itself. Of course as Anakin’s fateful seduction to the Dark Side is occurring parallel to the events of the Siege of Mandalore it is more than fitting that Maul is not the only one with Anakin on his mind. The brief call between Obi-Wan and Ahsoka comes from a place of compassion, but it ultimately serves as further example of Ahsoka’s suspicion of the Jedi. She sees a kindred spirit in Anakin at the moment that the Council betrays his trust and how could she not. The fact that Ahsoka and Maul’s duel happens mostly as a retaliation to the assertion that Anakin will fall speaks to her unbreakable trust in her surrogate older brother. It ends up playing as a bit of a fight for Anakin’s soul. Hope versus despair and denial versus inevitability.

And what a battle it is. Dave Filoni mentioned at Star Wars Celebration last year that they brought in original Darth Maul stunt actor Ray Park to assist with the animation for this fight and it certainly shows. While it may not be the most sprawling duel ever or as brutal as Pre Vizsla and Maul’s duel to the death, The Clone Wars has never featured a confrontation as fluid and dynamic as this one. The constant back and forth of the upper hand and the emotional instability of both fighters gives this encounter a strange edge that ratchets up the tension even if we know both combatants are destined to make it out of this alive. The final stage in the scaffolding that holds up the city of Sundari is a standout and brings to mind a similarly stellar set piece from Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation.

It’s not just our phantom apprentices that get in on the action this week. A claustrophobic showdown between Bo-Katan and Gar Saxon in an elevator shaft is one of the most inventive set pieces that the series has produced and Villanueva sells it with a cluttered intensity that never loses clarity. A prolonged battle between the liberating forces and Maul’s loyalists is similarly brutal and striking with sweeping tracking shots of the action that smartly know when to cut into the carnage and when to transfer back to other scenes. It brings to mind some of the great multi-tiered battles in Star Wars history and it once again gives big screen live action installments of the franchise a serious run for their money.

A few random final thoughts!

It seems only fitting that Almec would be gunned down by one of his own allies. Gar Saxon is poised to take over Almec’s position as the self-serving Mandalorian leader in the era of the Empire and there’s certainly some poetry in this sort of cyclical killing. Poor Mandalore. Planet’s not going to sort itself out anytime soon.

Jesse lived! I’m sure every one of us clone junkies were prepared for one of our last surviving 501st boys to fall to Maul this week, but through some small glimmer of positivity the newly minted ARC Trooper survived. I’m not sure we can be as hopeful in coming episodes, but I’ll take the positivity where I can find it.

I actually really loved Maul’s cameo in Solo: A Star Wars Story and it’s nice to see “The Phantom Apprentice” tee that up with the blink and you’ll miss appearance by Dryden Vos. Was really hoping for a tiny line of dialogue from Paul Bettany, but I guess that’s as good as we’ll get for right now.

Sam Witwer remarked several months ago that the scripts for the final arc of The Clone Wars were the best the series ever produced and it’s hard to argue with that. Never before has this saga had more on its mind or felt as emotional or consequential. It’s a nail biting stunner of a chapter and I’m genuinely in awe that we are only half way done. Buckle in folks. This is when the pain really begins.

Score: A+

#Star Wars #The Clone Wars #Clone Wars #Star Wars: The Clone Wars #review #reviews #The Siege of Mandalore #Ahsoka Tano #Maul #Dave Filoni

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brawlingdiscontent · 5 years

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On eating Will’s brain

Spoilers for all of Hannibal, tl;dr at the end, if you don’t feel like reading 2500 words.

This very long meta post will attempt to answer the common question: why did Hannibal try to eat Will’s brain in Dolce (3.6)?

Introduction

There’s a beautiful ambiguity to Fuller’s characters in Hannibal. Character is primarily revealed not by direct statement of thoughts and feelings (as characters’ statements are often ambiguous and about what appear to be peripheral issues), but by juxtaposition. This includes juxtaposition of a character’s actions over time, thematic mirrors of their situations in the case-of-the-week, and the many mirrored/foiled relationships that pop up, whereby the characters are defined against each other. (For example, Will/Tobias, Will/Peter, Will/Pazzi, Will/Gideon, Will/Chiyoh, etc.--Fuller uses these pairings to tell us something about Will in the ways that he is or is not like them, according to his own perceptions, those of others, and that of the audience). The show uses this ambiguity of character to raise questions about key themes, such as human capacity or potential for evil.

While this is a riveting artistic strategy, it makes the characters’ interactions and intentions increasingly unclear, especially when even the more straightforward characters like Alana drift toward ambiguity by season 3. This is why I think there's so much confusion about what will heretofore be known as the head-sawing incident, and also why I also consider this post to be a reading of the situation, and not necessarily the authoritative one.

1. Duality

One of my favourite things about Hannibal is its duality, the show’s ability to hold onto ambiguity, even with two seemingly contradictory ideas. The acts of the darkest horror can co-exist with the deepest love. When Will clutches Hannibal close and pulls them off a cliff, it’s the acknowledgement that Hannibal’s always wanted of their perfect sympathy (Will decides that he has to go too because of his similarity to Hannibal) at the same time as a murder/suicide. When Hannibal gives himself up to the police it’s an act of shocking romanticism (he is literally sacrificing his freedom for Will) at the same time as it is clear threat, Hannibal saying to Will ‘you’ll never be rid of me’. It’s in the line of this duality that I read Hannibal’s attempt to eat Will’s brain.

In my ongoing analysis I’ll be using text, context and subtext to determine Hannibal’s feelings and motives.

So, for context: What preceded Hanni’s bad decision?

2. Mizumono (2.13) - The gutting incident

Hannibal and Will’s ‘breakup’ at the end of season 2 is what may mostly strongly come to mind as the inciting moment for the head-sawing incident; however, Will’s betrayal, the cause of the breakup, is not what caused Hannibal to wield the bone saw.

Think about it: if Hannibal wanted to kill Will only because of his betrayal, he likely would have just dug his knife a little deeper in Mizumono. Instead, Hannibal states he forgives Will via killing Abigail--“I forgive you Will, will you forgive me?” (2.13) (thereby setting up a pattern whereby death creates forgiveness). No, as Chilton reveals, “Will Graham is alive because Hannibal Lecter likes him that way” (3.4). (I should note that Hannibal preserving Will’s life at the end of season 2 is an act that again, in the show’s dualism, speaks of his regard for Will as much as it does his wish to make Will suffer for his betrayal by having to live with the pain of Abigail's death.)

So if Hannibal isn’t trying to kill Will over his betrayal at the end of season 2, what is the reason? It must be a result of something that happened after that, in season 3.

3. Antipasto (3.1) - A clean break?

My reading here depends upon the understanding that Hannibal’s actions in Mizumono were intended to be the end of that chapter of his life. He cuts ties with his old life in the most Hannibal fashion: by leaving four people bleeding on the ground. When he walks out into the rain, he is figuratively washing himself of that life, and all of his old connections. Or so he thinks.

Florence was supposed to be a clean break for Hannibal (although one could argue that his bringing Bedelia stems from an unconscious desire to hold onto it), but what happens when he gets to Florence? Rather than continuing happily in his murderous ways, he actually tries to establish a peace: “I've found a peace here that I would preserve. I've killed hardly anybody during our residence” (3.1). His desire for this peace is so strong, that he seeks to preserve it even when it means letting Sogliato get away being a dick to him, something that an earlier Hannibal would never have let stand (“My killing Sogliato now would not preserve the peace” (3.1)).

It isn’t until the episode’s end, months after his arrival in Florence, that he breaks this holding pattern with Anthony Dimmond (arguably killing Dimmond for not being Will, but that’s another post), and thus it is fitting, since Dimmond helped him to ‘untwist’, that he uses Dimmond’s twisted body to reveal the cause of his uncharacteristic behaviour, both to us and to himself: Will has broken his heart.

I think this is the first time Hannibal begins to understand what Will says to him in Mizumono, that he “already did” change Hannibal the way that Hannibal changed him. Rather than rolling off of Hannibal’s back like he intended, Will’s betrayal has touched him, changed him, radically altered his behavior--because Hannibal loves him.

4. Secondo (3.3) - Therapy with Bedelia or He made you feel feelings? What a bitch.

Secondo is a key episode for understanding this conundrum because it's this season's ‘Hannibal goes to therapy’ episode. It starts and ends with a ‘therapy session’ between Bedelia and Hannibal, closing with Hannibal's realization: “I have to eat him.” These two scenes that bookend the episode are the most important to my understanding of Hannibal’s motivations re: the head-sawing incident.

At the very beginning of Secondo we see Hannibal returning to Florence after leaving his bloody valentine in Palermo. Bedelia meets him at the train station and asks him if it was good to see Will, and Hannibal replies “among other things.” This sets up the therapy session that follows which is about unpacking those ‘other things.’

So how does Hannibal work out his feelings for Will? Remember how I said Fuller’s characters are defined by juxtaposition? The realization that Hannibal might perhaps love Will prompts him to think of the only other person he has loved: his sister, Mischa.

In their second session, Bedelia introduces this parallel into their discussion:

BEDELIA: What your sister made you feel was beyond your conscious ability to control or predict.

HANNIBAL: Or negotiate.

BEDELIA: I would suggest that what Will Graham makes you feel is not dissimilar. (then) A force of mind and circumstance.

HANNIBAL Love.

I would argue that until this time, the early episodes of season 3, Hannibal never considered the possibility that he loved Will. Of course he knew he was intrigued by Will (or as Bedelia put it ‘obsessed with Will’), he knew that he cared about Will, but love is something that has not come up before--in regards to Will or anyone else (when discussing Abigail, it’s that Hannibal ‘cared about her’ as much as Will did; the one indirect mention of love between Will and Hannibal before this was in Will’s dream/fantasy in 2.9). Thus the introduction of love -- the idea the he loves Will -- is the huge pivot on which 3.3 turns for Hannibal.

So how does Hannibal make the leap from love to murder? From something else that Will and Mischa have in common: their potential to incite betrayal. When Bedelia brings up the subject of betrayal (presumably in the context of Will), Hannibal, running with the already established Will-Mischa parallel responds:

Mischa didn’t betray me. She would influence me to betray myself.

This, I think, is the most important line defining the head-sawing incident. The specifics of what happened with Mischa are never quite made clear--but what does he mean by ‘she would influence me to betray myself’? From the context provided, the implication that I take from this is that whether this influence was conscious (perhaps Mischa actively dissuading Hanni from nefarious plots while she was alive) or unconscious (that just by dying she had the power to hurt him), Mischa’s influence itself was a direct result of Hannibal’s love for her--she was able to influence him because--and only because--he loved her.

To see where Will comes into this, here’s the full close to the episode:

HANNIBAL: Mischa didn’t betray me. She would influence me to betray myself. (then) But I forgave her that influence.

BEDELIA: If past behavior is an indicator of future behavior, there is only one way for you to forgive Will Graham.

HANNIBAL: I have to eat him.

What exactly would Hannibal be forgiving Will for, here? As discussed, he’s already forgiven him for his betrayal in Mizumono with Abigail's death (remember the whole, “I forgive you, Will, will you forgive me? (2.13) and murder = forgiveness pattern). Furthermore, earlier in the episode Hannibal admits that he’s “vague on those details” when Bedelia asks him whether he’s the betrayer or betrayed between him and Will. My argument is that the Will-Mischa parallel that this scene establishes re: love, also applies in this situation re: betrayal; Will again mirrors Mischa. Thus it isn’t Will’s betrayal that Hannibal needs to forgive, it’s Will’s influence, which causes Hannibal to betray himself (hence Hannibal’s earlier confusion on who betrayed whom). And what is the mechanism of this influence and self-betrayal? Hannibal’s love for Will. So really what Hannibal has to forgive Will for is making him love him, and the only way to do that is to kill him (remember, murder = forgiveness).

But why is the idea that he might love Will such a big deal for Hannibal? And what exactly is this self-betrayal that he has to forgive Will for causing?

5. Control, authenticity and the self

Hannibal loves control. This includes control over others/situations (he blows on Will’s soup in Dolce because he has to control every element of the situation and Will burning his mouth on his hot soup doesn’t suit his plan, it would be ‘sloppy’; another example is the care he took with bandaging Abel Gideon) and also perfect control of himself. His ‘re-natured nature’ as Bryan Fuller puts, how he shapes himself through sheer force of will, is perhaps his most defining feature. Hannibal’s love for Will marks a loss of control, for as Hannibal admits: “we cannot choose with respect to who we fall in love” (3.3).

But further than that, Hannibal’s love for Will is a threat to his sense of self.

Arguably, Hannibal’s desire for personal authenticity and self-actualization is his greatest drive. He expresses and achieves this drive through art in all its forms, including fashion, the culinary arts, and of course, murder-art. He is never evil for its own sake, but rather his evilness is an effect of him valuing self-determination and self-actualization over morality: it’s an extreme and shocking form of individualism. He not only acts on these principles for himself, but is constantly guiding others by them. We see this in how he pushes Will to be his ‘best’ (murder-y) self, and in his interactions with many other characters--perhaps most obviously Randall Tier.

For Hannibal, to love means one thing: to compromise this drive and thus to be compromised. Whether that’s out of care for the object of his affections (“my compassion for you is inconvenient, Will”) or the pain/heartbreak that person can cause (moping around Florence for several months, making literal compromises to ‘keep the peace’ because he’s depressed about his break up)--when Hannibal loves someone he is not free to be his truest Cannibal self. Loving Will, then, is a deep existential threat to Hannibal, a threat which can only be vanquished by consuming him, and thus re-affirming his sense of self (if we think of cannibalism as Hannibal’s peak level of self-actualization). Chilton says that, “cannibalism is an act of dominance” (2.6); by engaging in it in Dolce and eating Will’s brain Hannibal is hoping to assert dominance over his feelings for Will and regain control (while at the same time committing a symbolic act of joining and carnal closeness--duality!)

Thus the takeaway from this section is that Will’s real crime for which he needs to be forgiven, and the reason has to die is not because he betrayed Hannibal, but because he made Hannibal love him. Through this love, Will presents a deep, existential threat to Hannibal’s sense of self, and so for Hannibal the situation is literally life or death; worse, in fact, for Hannibal would much rather die than compromise himself. It’s him or Will, and in Dolce, Hannibal makes the choice to save himself--but whether or not he could ultimately have gone through it, it’s all negated by the choices he makes in the next episode.

6. Digestivo (3.7) - The fallout

I’m not sure that we see the moment that Hannibal changes his mind and decides that he’s not going to (or can’t) kill Will. Perhaps he might have pulled away even while wielding the bone saw if they hadn’t been interrupted; perhaps seeing Cordell’s severed flesh in Will’s mouth reminded him of how beautiful they could be together; perhaps, even, he understands that his bargain with Alana for Will’s life extends indefinitely; but, regardless of what caused it, we see the evidence of this decision in his conversation with Will at the end of 3.7:

HANNIBAL: Do we talk about teacups and time and the rules of disorder?

WILL: The teacup is broken. It’ll never gather itself back together again.

HANNIBAL: Not even in your mind? (off his look) Your memory palace is building. It’s full of new things. It shares some rooms with my own. I’ve discovered you there. Victorious.

My reading of this scene is that telling Will he’s discovered him ‘victorious’ is Hannibal’s cryptic way of saying that Will’s won. Will’s victory here is the fact that Hannibal can’t or actively chooses not to kill him and instead is willing to sacrifice what’s most important to him--his sense of self, and, as we see shortly after this conversation, his freedom. In fact, through my reading, Hannibal giving himself up at the end of the episode is hardly surprising and pales in comparison to what he’s already sacrificed in letting Will live. Thus Hannibal’s self-surrender to the FBI is the final step in a beautiful character arc that has him move from gutting Will at the end of season 2 for threatening his freedom (--“You would take my life?” --“Not your life, no.” --“My freedom then?” (2.13)) to sacrificing this freedom willingly just so that Will can’t get away from him--placing their relationship/love over and above his own self preservation, and proving what Will asserts at the end of season 2 -- that he’s already changed Hannibal as Hannibal changed him.

So thus, whereas some people in the fandom see Hannibal’s ‘eat Will’ plot as something he wasn’t thinking clearly about, or attribute it to the influence of Bedelia (I think this doesn’t give Hannibal enough credit as an independent thinker, and in fact, don’t think Bedelia attempted to sway him in any way on this point--that’s Hannibal’s game, she just wants to study him as he is)--I see Hannibal’s ‘eat Will plot’ as borne directly from his love for Will, and in some ways a demonstration of that love.

One final note (TWOTL, 3.13): playing into the key theme of reciprocity (introduced through Will and Hannibal’s reciprocal attempts to off each other in season 2) in Dolce (3.6), the situation for Will is life or death--him or Hannibal--just as it is for Hannibal, but for a very different reason: if Will doesn’t kill Hannibal, he risks becoming him. Hannibal first makes the decision to kill Will (Dolce, 3.6) and then to sacrifice himself in acceptance of their love at a personal cost (Digestivo, 3.7). Will, just to be efficient, completes the reciprocal act by making both decisions at once--both killing Hannibal to save himself and destroying himself by accepting their love at the same time--by tumbling them both off the cliff in The Wrath of the Lamb (3.13). Way to go, Will! They really are ‘identically different’!

In conclusion: Murder husbands 4 eva!!

Tl;dr, I actually have a life, oh God, why was this post so long--

In this literal embodiment of the 'in this essay I will' meme, I argue that Hannibal tries to eat Will’s brain out of self-preservation, because he realizes that he loves Will and that by this love Will has the potential to change him and is thus an existential threat to his sense of self, which he values more than life.

Thanks all for reading!

*all episode transcripts are taken the scripts on Bryan Fuller’s website here. *all screenshots are taken from the Hannibal Screencaps Gallery here.

#hannibal #meta #hannigram #this might be the greatest contribution I ever make to the world #and that's okay #brawlingdiscontent #just missed twotl day #twotl #the wrath of the lamb #hannibal meta

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swingrat79 · 3 years

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Weekly Tarot Card Readings

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#tarot reading #tarot card reading

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sapphires-and-gold-fics · 5 years

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Fictober Day 4: “I know you didn’t ask for this”

Fandom:

Game of Thrones / ASOIAF

Characters: Brienne of Tarth/Jaime Lannister

Read on AO3

It had been 11 days since Jaime had last been to see her in her tower cell. He’d promised to find a way to get her out of King’s Landing. He’d hoped to find a way to save his brother as well. The full moon had come and gone.

It had been 9 days since Lord Tywin had come to her cell and informed her that she and Jaime would wed. She had said little in response, and less still when he informed her that she would be moved from the cell.

It had been 8 days since Septa Donyse had come to fit her for a gown, and 2 days since the blue silk gown had been delivered to her new chamber.

It had been 3 hours since Cersei’s shadow had appeared in her doorway without warning, a smirk marring her beautiful face.

I understand that my son the king, at the behest of my father, has decreed that we shall be goodsisters soon. It doesn’t look like you’re terribly happy at the prospect.

My father believed that I could have some say in my future, she’d said, but your father doesn’t see things that way.

Cersei had almost chuckled. No, he doesn’t. He never did. I confess if Qyburn hadn’t confirmed your maidenhead already, I would have few reasons to believe you were a woman, but my father’s insistence on controlling you seems to make the case quite evident. He does like to play with people’s lives.

Marriages are arranged all the time, your grace.

The queen’s smirk deepened. Except in your case, one would hardly call it a marriage. A wedding, yes, but a marriage...that requires a willingness to be bound to one another. A desire to do so. By the look on your face, you are no more desirous of that than my brother is. Or perhaps your face simply falls like that. But it matters not. Jaime has no interest in a marriage with one such as you.

I have not spoken with him, your grace. But I don’t believe he or I have a choice in the matter.

Cersei’s glance turned almost warm. You know, I could leave the door open when I leave. You could run now and avoid the entire thing. My father will be upset, so the crown won’t be pleased. But you’ve flitted between loyalties before, Lady Brienne. I’m sure you’ll find another berth soon enough.

Your grace is kind to think of my comfort, but I would not go against the king’s wishes in this.

The warmth was gone. Very well. I don’t expect your… relationship will last long in any case. You’ll leave for Casterly Rock but I wonder at your ever seeing it. Take care, Lady Brienne. I would not wish my goodsister to fall ill on the road. And one never knows what might be preying on travelers.

It had been 155 minutes since the queen had left the chamber, air pouring back into the room in her wake. Brienne had sat gasping on her bed. If only she could speak to him before the ceremony and find out what had happened.

It had been 119 minutes since the septa had returned to help her into her dress. Brienne had almost not recognized her own body in the looking glass. Nothing could hide her height, but she seemed to have more of a woman’s shape now.

It had been 88 minutes since Brienne had entered the Sept of Baelor and met Jaime at the top of the steps, afraid to look at him and see his disappointment.

It had been 78 minutes since he had cloaked her with the Lannister colors. He’d struggled with his gold hand and when he’d secured the left side, the right had begun to slip from her shoulder. It would have fallen except that Brienne had reached across her chest and grasped it just as Jaime had reached and caught it as well. She thought he had whispered his thanks to her back, but it was covered by the susurrus of the shifting fabric and Cersei’s snickers from the gallery.

It had been 73 minutes since the septon had bound their arms with ribbon and Jaime had gently squeezed her hand. She’d looked over to find his face solemn.

It had been 72 minutes since they said the words, and she could barely look at him.

It had been 70 minutes since he had leaned forward and pressed his lips dryly to the corner of her mouth, an action so reluctant and impersonal that Brienne felt assured of Cersei’s assessment of her brother.

It had been 55 minutes since they had arrived at the feast - a small affair even by Tarth standards, miniscule by royal and Lannister standards.

It had been 35 minutes since King Tommen had made the only toast, wishing his uncle and the new Lady Lannister prosperity before taking himself to bed; 35 minutes since Jaime had leaned over and taken her hand, raising it in salute to the boy as the small crowd cheered; 34 and a half minutes since he had pulled her toward him gently so that he could whisper in her ear, his face as grim as ever.

My father will not suffer a bedding ceremony. With Tommen leaving, we may taken our leave whenever you wish.

Brienne had ducked her head, feeling Cersei’s eyes boring into her across the room. If we are not needed here, then I am eager to depart, my lord.

He’d given her a curious look, then glanced at his father who raised an e yebrow and nodded just once. Jaime had jerked his face to look back at Brienne, her hand still in his. Come, my lady, he’d said at volume. Then f or her ears only, Let us rid ourselves of these grotesques.

It had been 32 minutes since he had led her away from the hall. They’d walked quickly, anxious to be away from the melee, and both having avoided the lure of the wine. Their quarters had been readied near the Tower of the Hand - a way, perhaps, for Tywin to keep them within his grasp until they departed for the west.

It had been 27 minutes since Jaime had opened the door and motioned for Brienne to enter. A low fire was burning and the sky was purple, the sun’s rays fading quickly. Jaime had bolted the door behind them and then sagged against it with a heavy sigh.

Wench.

She’d hesitated.

Brienne. He’d reached for her arm and turned her to face him. The dour expression he’d worn all afternoon while not quite looking at her had vanished. In its place, one of exhaustion and relief. Blue is a good color on you, my lady. It goes well with your eyes. Are you alright? I’m s orry I couldn’t come to see you these last few days. I’m even sorrier that you had to get the news of your future from my father. Tell me that you’re well, wench.

She’d stared at him, transfixed by his altered expression. No my lord, I--

--Jaime. These last few days cannot have changed us so much that you’ve forgotten.

She’d licked her lips before responding, and he’d watched the motion before flicking his glance back up to her eyes, steady. Where have you been? The words had come out quieter and with more desperation than s he’d intended and she could see the effect on him, the worry building, a face that he’d shown her and no one else.

My father. Once the terms were set he said I wasn’t to have contact with you until the ceremony. I thought of defying him. I thought of coming to you every day and telling you everything. But I was afraid that he would hurt you or Tyrion. He pushed off the door and stepped toward her. As long as I obeyed, you and my brother were protected. Without that protection, there was no telling what Cersei might do.

Brienne had nodded. She came to see me this morning.

To welcome you to the family?

To warn me, I think. She offered me an escape, actually. But I doubt she had my interests in mind.

No doubt. He’d sighed and taken another step. I’m sorry that happened. I swear it shan’t happen again. We’ll be leaving King’s Landing soon, and then she won’t be able to touch us.

Jaime, she suggested that I watch my back on the road, too.

His face had gone stormy. I swear to watch it for you, wench. She has no power where we’re going.

Brienne had nodded and then looked at him resolutely, summoning all her courage, speaking quickly. Jaime, I know you didn’t ask for this. Neither of us did. And I know that I’m not… not her. But I hope that there is some comfort, that is, I am comforted and hope you are as well, that if this is our fate, that at least we are friends. At least we may lean on one another--

—What makes you think I didn’t ask for this? He’d taken a final step toward her and clasped her arm.

Jaime, you were Lord Commander--

--Aye and what a Commander I was. Jaime had crowded her and forced her to step back as he went on. I soiled that white cloak every chance I got. Brienne, they were going to kill my brother, and as Lord Commander I was expected to stand idly by and let that happen. I couldn’t do it. But there was a problem.

Brienne had felt the backs of her thighs hit the bed just as Jaime stopped moving.

You.

Me?

I couldn’t leave you here. I couldn’t leave you behind. I could have told my father that I wanted you for a guard at Casterly and keep you a maiden, but I knew better. He’d been waiting, you see, for me to change my mind about being his heir. But he couldn’t keep other houses waiting for me, so there were no other highborn ladies waiting in the wings; but you were here. If I’d asked to bring you with me in any capacity other than my lady wife, he would have inevitably turned it into a wedding anyway.

She’d shuddered as he ran his hand up and down her arm, her nerves firing as she tried to keep her breath under control.

So I beat him to it. I told him that I was in love with you, and that I wished to marry, but that i would only do it if he gave me Tyrion.

She’d almost whimpered when he reached up and cupped her face.

So yes, I did in fact ask for this. And I have no regrets about doing so. And I would have told you as much before we said the words if I’d been able to see you. I would have told you everything… I would have given you the option at least - I’m sorry that it couldn’t be that way. I’m sorry that you’ve had no say in being married to a cripple, formerly of the Kingsguard. But I’m not sorry for getting you away from here. It felt selfish but I need you to know that I was thinking of your safety. As it is, I still need to make Cersei believe that this was my father’s doing, otherwise the rest of the plan won’t work.

What plan?

Jaime had actually smiled and leaned closer to her. Wench you didn’t think I would just drag you to the rock and put a babe in your belly and forget all about our oathes like my father would want, did you?

Stunned, she had said nothing.

We’re going to find Sansa and bring her north. We’ll try to find Arya too. He’d been so close that his breath had begun stirring her hair. And when we’re done you’ll decide your future, marriage vows or no.

It had been 51 seconds since their lips had crashed together, his hand gripping the nape of her neck, her hands gripping his tunic; 34 seconds since his tongue had slipped into her mouth; 32 seconds since she had moaned into his.

It had been 3 seconds since she had pulled him down onto the bed with her and he had mentally sworn to keep every vow to her.

In 248 seconds, she’ll remove his gold hand and press his stump to her heart.

In 14 minutes, the blue silk will be balled up on the floor.

In 23 minutes, she’ll come apart with his name on her lips, and her honey on his.

In 29 minutes, she’ll come apart again when he spills inside her, crying her name.

In 17 hours, they’ll sit for their final meal in the Keep. Cersei will demand Jaime’s attention. Jaime will give it.

In 19 and a half hours, he’ll have Brienne pressed against the inside of their chamber door.

In 32 hours, Tyrion will join them as they ride west from the capital.

In 32 and a half hours, Tyrion and Brienne will be fast friends and take to teasing Jaime together.

In 6 days, Tyrion will continue west while Brienne and Jaime turn north.

In 19 days, they’ll be pressed together sheltering from the rain, his mouth on her scars when they finally whisper their love for one another.

In 95 days, they’ll rescue Sansa from Baelish.

In 8 months, Sansa will be safely ensconced with the Night’s Watch.

In 12 months and 1 day, Arya will join her.

In 13 months and 28 days, Jaime will knight Brienne at Winterfell.

In 13 months and 29 days, Jaime and Brienne will fight at Winterfell in the Long Night, and survive. Brienne has decided her future.

In 16 months and 12 days, they will rejoin Tyrion at Casterly Rock.

In 18 months and 3 days, Jaime will tear up a letter from his sister begging for help in the capital.

And in 22 months and 15 days, Jaime will curl up on the bed next to a propped up Brienne and hold his wife and newborn daughter to him while Tyrion watches them fondly from a chair by the hearth.

#apparently i can't write drabbles #fictober #fictober 2019 #jaime x brienne #brienne x jaime #braime #got au #braime au #asoiaf au #not really asoiaf and not really got

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kyogre-blue · 5 years

Text

Nanowrimo, day 8 (wc 1596)

Day 8 - Chapter 5, part 2

A stunned silence, and then a chorus of questions (Sinbad, Drakon, Hinahoho) and sneers (the assassins) greeted this declaration, but Alibaba only gave them a placating wave and moved to the side, taking a seat next to the djinn’s alter. After all, he hadn’t even really wanted one djinn. What would he do with a second one?

The reason he had come to Valefor’s dungeon was purely to attempt at getting back home. But the world gate in hadn’t done anything and Valefor didn’t know anything, so the only thing left was to see if the gate back might send him to the right place. ...But Alibaba did not have much hope on that point.

Silently, he sighed to himself. What was he supposed to do from here?

“Suit yourself,” Valefor said lazily. “Works better for me too. I don’t want to share with that stuffy old man. And as for the rest of you… let’s begin the trial!” As the djinn gestured with one paw, a small shape rose up out of the shadows. Yawning, it bared tiny fangs -- and sneezed, dribbling a bit of snot. “It’s quite simple. You just need to catch my little buddy, Minifor, before the time runs out. And if you don’t… you’ll remain here in my dungeon forever.”

~.~

Carefully concealed in the icy rukh of Valefor’s dungeon, Falan watched.

It was a rare opportunity. Very few of their number had the chance to see any part of Solomon’s king vessel system from the inside, and any information would be very useful for their future plans. King vessels possessed not only power but a unique quality within the flow of Solomon’s rukh. Using them correctly could yield great results.

They could also become a great hindrance, however, and that was precisely why Falan had put priority on finding out more about Sinbad, the young conqueror of Baal. How to best use him -- her decision on this would determine his fate.

What Falan and Al Thamen had not anticipated was the other one.

How could they have missed Amon’s dungeon being raised? Who had done it? Not Scheherazade, whom they watched closely. Not the child magi Arba had claimed. Was it Yunan? He could be frustratingly elusive. And yet…

For Amon’s king to be able to use the full equip, even if only for a moment, he had to have won his metal vessel long before. No king had ever mastered it in under a year, and most took several to even touch upon it.

And somehow, this king vessel of several years had never even appeared in rumors? It was one thing to miss a dungeon being raised. Even Al Thamen could not monitor the entire world. But to miss a king vessel? People of that sort did not live obscure lives.

They also did not ally with each other, at least not for long, but this boy’s first move was to build ties with Baal’s king.

None of it made sense, and that made Falan wary. There were few things Al Thamen did not know, and the unknown was the greatest danger. It was for this that she remained out of sight and watched, instead of approaching Valefor, even at the risk of the djinn’s wrath. What could Solomon’s slave do to her, except banish her from her temporary form? What could even a king vessel do to her? No, what she was wary of was the potential of someone else behind Amon’s king, someone who had escaped Al Thamen’s eyes and ears.

And the question of what purpose had made this backer finally move in the open.

Most likely, it was...

Falan’s hidden gaze lingered on Baal’s king, the child who shone almost blindingly in the rukh. A boy-king was not such a rare thing, but his capacity was unlike anything Falan had seen before. Was it possible he was the anomaly in the rukh from fifteen years ago?

Unlike the Sham Lash rats, the Imuchakk beast, and Barbarossa's foolish little brother, Sinbad did not scramble in Valefor's petty game. From the way he watched them with a wry smile, she felt certain he had seen through it -- that Valefor had specifically made its familiar just a little stronger and faster than any single one of them, making it impossible to catch alone. Especially when they were each throwing themselves into each other's way out of desperate greed.

"Okay, that's enough," Sinbad called out after yet another failed round of chase. "At this rate, we really will all get stuck here. We have to work together."

"Work together? Are you kidding? You think anyone's going to trust you? Or anyone else?" Ja'far sneered.

Sinbad spread his hands. "I have an idea," he said. "A way for everyone to have an equal chance. How about this? We'll all surround Minifor and close in from an equal distance. If we get close enough, we’ll all jump in. Who it tries to run to, who manages to get hold of it -- it'll be up to chance and your own skill. But no matter what, it won't have a way out, and someone will become the king. Better than being stuck in the dungeon forever, right?"

The others frowned and exchanged looks. But none of them protested in the face of Sinbad's confident smile.

That was why they could only be pawns, their only purpose to be thrown away.

“It’s a workable plan. But,” Dragul said, his lips thinning, “I can’t trust you.”

Sinbad shrugged, unaffected. “Fine, fine. I’ll climb up and give directions instead, how about it?”

His rukh fluttered -- smug and self assured. This was all within his calculations.

And he calculated it perfectly. When the others closed, surrounding Valefor’s familiar, and made a final lunge, confident that it could not escape, the small creature launched itself up, out of their grasp -- and directly into Sinbad, who had used his position to intercept it.

As he touched down on one of the massive chests scattered haphazardly around Valefor’s treasury, six furious gazes locked onto him. Shifting his grip on Valefor’s familiar, Sinbad quirked up one corner of his mouth.

“You bastard! You cheated us!” Ja’far howled. “I’ll kill you!”

Silver darts glinted between his fingers, before an absurd mass of unrefined magoi slammed down on him, pinning him in place. “No violence, no violence! How many times do I have to say it?” Valefor chided.

“It’s alright, let him,” Sinbad said calmly. Finally releasing the familiar, he turned to Ja’far and spread his arms again, unconcerned with the bloodlust aimed at him.

“He’ll really kill you, you know,” Valefor pointed out.

“No, he won’t. I can’t die here,” Sinbad said. “I will live, because there is something I must do. That’s why I’m going to leave this dungeon alive. And I’ll do whatever it takes to make that happen, even use all of you.” His eyes moved across the others, taking in each of them and cutting through to their hearts. “Because the one who years for this power the most is me. What all of you want isn’t really this power of unlimited possibilities. The only fate you want to change is your own. But I... I will change not only my fate, but yours, and everyone else’s.

“I will change the world.”

The rukh around him sang, making Falan grimace in disgust.

He was truly a king vessel. With just his words, he was already forcing the hearts of his opponents to turn toward him. Even if they were unwilling, they couldn’t stop the feeling of excitement. And more than that, a belief in him. That admiration and trust would swirl together to become a single thought.

‘I want to follow this man! This is my master and my king!’

“N-Nonsense!” Barbarossa’s younger brother protested, far too weak to change the flow that propelled Sinbad forward. “You don’t even know anything about the world! Do you really think you can change just because you gained some power? The world isn’t so simple!”

“I know,” Sinbad agreed with a smile. “I know I’m still lacking. Power, allies, knowledge, skill... I need more. That’s why I want all of you to join me. Become mine!”

...Amon’s king palmed his face.

In the end, this exceptional vessel was still just a child.

But--

“Pffft!” Ja’far burst out into mocking laughter. “Alright! I never thought I’d see a guy crazy enough to try recruiting the assassins after his life. You’re kind of amusing. So I’ll join you.”

--his potential was undeniable.

“Chief!” the other assassin protested. “Are you serious? And you! Do you really mean that? How can you want people like us to be your allies?”

“Of course I want you,” Sinbad said. “Let’s build a country that bring everyone together, no matter what their past of origins. That’s my dream!” With just his smile, the darkened rukh around the Sham Lash trash began to lighten. They were already as good as his.

With a few years and a little guidance, he would become a bright light that could drive back Al Thamen for a generation. Any kingdom he created would obstruct them for an age. And that, Falan would not allow. It was past time to put an end to this glowing farce. Reaching out, she activated the small gift she had left behind in their bodies.

Those insipid smiles faltered as the three assassins suddenly found themselves choking on blood. Then, a storm of black engulfed them, and a furious roar echoed from within the cloud of dark rukh.

~.~

#nanowrimo #My writing

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athomeinmybooks · 4 years

Text

Laws of Anime

Version 6.2

Compiled and Edited by - Ryan Shellito and Darrin Bright

Slightly Altered by - Dexyuo Metallium

The Laws of Anime is a growing list of physical, universal, and natural phenomenon that seem to appear in various forms in all sorts of anime. The original intent was an effort to classify these incidents into a list of "laws" that explained how Anime physics are different from our own (real?) world. Due to the rather dynamic nature of Anime Science, theories and paradigms are generally in a state of constant flux, often shifting or changing with the tide of whimsy. By no means all-inclusive and sometimes not even remotely instructive, the following is an enumerated list of semi-empirical islands in an ocean of conjecture. It is our hope that you find them useful to studying Anime, or at the very least, worth a good chuckle.

#1 - Law of Metaphysical Irregularity:

The normal laws of physics do not apply.

#2 - Law of Differentiated Gravitation:

Whenever someone or something jumps, is thrown, or otherwise is rendered airborne, gravity is reduced by a factor of 4.

#3 - Law of Sonic Amplification, First Law of Anime Acoustics:

In space, loud sounds, like explosions, are even louder because there is no air to get in the way.

#4 - Law of Constant Thrust, First Law of Anime Motion:

In space, constant thrust equals constant velocity.

#5 - Law of Mechanical Mobility, Second Law of Anime Motion:

The larger a mechanical device is, the faster it moves. Armored Mecha are the fastest objects known to human science.

#6 - Law of Temporal Variability:

Time is not a constant. Time stops for the hero whenever he does something 'cool' or 'impressive'. Time slows down when friends and lovers are being killed and speeds up whenever there is a fight.

#7 - First Law of Temporal Mortality:

'Good Guys' and 'Bad Guys' both die in one of two ways - either so quick they don't even see it coming, OR it's a long drawn out affair where the character gains much insight to the workings of society, human existence or why the toast always lands butter side down.

#8 - Second Law of Temporal Mortality:

It takes some time for bad guys to die... regardless of physical damage. Even when the 'Bad Guys' are killed so quickly they didn't even see it coming, it takes them a while to realize they are dead. This is attributed to the belief that being evil damages the Reality Lobe of the brain.

#9 - Law of Dramatic Emphasis:

Scenes involving extreme amounts of action are depicted with either still frames or black screens with a slash of bright color (usually red or white).

#10 - Law of Dramatic Multiplicity:

Scenes that only happen once, for instance, a 'Good Guy' kicks the 'Bad Guy' in the face, are seen at least 3 times from 3 different angles.

#11 - Law of Inherent Combustibility:

Everything explodes. Everything.

First Corollary - Anything that explodes bulges first.

Second Corollary - Large cities are the most explosive substances known to human science. Tokyo in particular seems to be the most unstable of these cities, sometimes referred to as "The Matchstick City".

#12 - Law of Phlogistatic Emission:

Nearly all things emit light from fatal wounds.

#13 - Law of Energetic Emission:

There is always an energy build up (commonly referred to as an energy 'bulge') before Mecha or space craft weapons fire. Because of the explosive qualities of weapons, it is believed that this is related to the Law of Inherent Combustibility.

#14 - Law of Inverse Lethal Magnitude:

The destructive potential of any object/organism is inversely proportional to its mass. First Corollary - Small and cute will always overcome big and ugly. Also known as the A-Ko phenomenon.

#15 - Law of Inexhaustibility:

No one *EVER* runs out of ammunition. That is of course unless they are cornered, out-numbered, out-classed, and unconscious, (or if they happen to be Trowa Barton. -- added by Dexyuo-kun).

#16 - Law of Inverse Accuracy:

The accuracy of a 'Good Guy' when operating any form of fire-arm increases as the difficulty of the shot increases. The accuracy of the 'Bad Guys' when operating fire-arms decreases when the difficulty of the shot decreases. (Also known as the Storm trooper Effect) Example: A 'Good Guy' in a drunken stupor being held upside down from a moving vehicle will always hit, and several battalions of 'Bad Guys' firing on a 'Good Guy' standing alone in the middle of an open field will always miss.

First Corollary - The more 'Bad Guys' there are, the less likely they will hit anyone or do any real damage.

Second Corollary - Whenever a 'Good Guy' is faced with insurmountable odds, the 'Bad Guys' line up in neat rows, allowing the hero to take them all out with a single burst of automatic fire and then escape.

Third Corollary -Whenever a 'Good Guy' is actually hit by enemy fire, it is in a designated 'Good Guy Area', usually a flesh wound in the shoulder or arm, which restricts the 'Good Guy' from doing anything more strenuous than driving, firing weaponry, using melee weapons, operating heavy machinery, or doing complex martial arts maneuvers.

#17 - Law of Transient Romantic Unreliability:

Minmei is a bimbo.

#18 - Law of Hemoglobin Capacity:

The human body contains over 12 gallons of blood, sometimes more, under high pressure.

#19 - Law of Demonic Consistency:

Demons and other supernatural creatures have at least three eyes, loads of fangs, tend to be yellow-green or brown, but black is not unknown, and can only be hurt bladed weapons.

#20 - Law of Militaristic Unreliability:

Huge galaxy-wide armadas, entire armies, and large war machines full of cruel, heartless, bloodthirsty warriors can be stopped and defeated with a single insignificant example of a caring/loving emotion or a song.

First Corollary - Whenever a single war machine (mecha, starship, etc.) goes up against an entire army, the army always loses.

#21 - Law of Tactical Unreliability:

Tactical geniuses aren't....

#22 - Law of Inconsequential Undetectability:

People never notice the little things... like missing body parts, or wounds the size of Seattle.

#23 - Law of Juvenile Intellectuality:

Children are smarter than adults. And almost always twice as annoying.

#24 - Law of Americanthropomorphism:

Americans in Anime appear in one of two roles, either as a really nasty skinny 'Bad Guy' or a big stupid 'Good Guy'.

First Corollary - The only people who are more stupid than the big dumb Americans are the American translators. (Sometimes referred to as the Green Line Effect)

Second Corollary - The only people who are more stupid than the American translators are the American editors and censors.

#25 - Law of Mandibular Proportionality:

(from A. Hicks, Tom Williams, and Ben Leinweber)

The size of a person's mouth is directly proportional to the volume at which they are speaking or eating.

#26 - Law of Feline Mutation:

(from A. Hicks)

Any half-cat/half-human mutation will invariably:

1) be female

2) will possess ears and sometimes a tail as a genetic mutation

3) wear as little clothing as possible, if any

#27 - Law of Conservation of Firepower:

(from Tom Williams)

Any powerful weapon capable of destroying/defeating an opponent in a single shot will invariably be reserved and used only as a last resort.

#28 - Law of Technological User-Benevolence:

(from Tom Williams)

The formal training required to operate a spaceship or mecha is inversely proportional to its complexity.

#29 - Law of Melee Luminescence:

(from Tom Williams)

Any being displaying extremely high levels of martial arts prowess and/or violent emotions emits light in the form of a glowing aura. This aura is usually blue for 'good guys' and red for 'bad guys'. This is attributed to Good being higher in the electromagnetic spectrum than Evil.

#30 - Law of Non-Anthropomorphic Antagonism:

(from Tom Williams)

All ugly, non-humanoid alien races are hostile, and usually hell-bent on destroying humanity for some obscure reason.

#31 - Law of Follicular Chromatic Variability:

(from Spellweaver)

Any color in the visible spectrum is considered a natural hair color. This color can change without warning or explanation.

#32 - Law of Follicular Permanence:

Hair in anime is pretty much indestructable, and can resist any amount of meteorological conditions, energy emissions, physical abuse, or explosive effects and still look perfect. The only way to hurt someone's hair is the same way you deal with demons... with bladed weapons!

#33 - Law of Topological Aerodynamics, First Law of Anime Aero-Dynamics:

*ANY* shape, no matter how convoluted or odd-looking, is automatically aerodynamic.

#34 - Law of Probable Attire:

(from various sources)

Clothing in anime follows certain predictable guidelines.

Female characters wear as little clothing as possible, regardless of whether it is socially or meteorologically appropriate. Any female with an excessive amount of clothing will invariably have her clothes ripped to shreds or torn off somehow. If there is no opportunity to tear off the afore-mentioned female's clothes, then she will inexplicably take a shower for no apparent reason (also known as the Gratuitous Shower Scene).

Whenever there is a headwind, Male characters invariably wear a long cloaks that don't hamper movement and billow out dramatically behind them.

First Corollary (Cryo-Adaptability) - All anime characters are resistant to extremely cold temperatures, and do not need to wear heavy or warm clothing in snow.

Second Corollary (Indecent Invulnerability) - Bikinis render the wearer invulnerable to any form of damage.

#35 - Law of Musical Omnipotence:

Any character capable of musical talent (singing, playing an instrument, etc.) is automatically capable of doing much more "simple" things, like piloting mecha, fighting crime, stopping an intergalactic war, and so on...especially if they have never attempted these things before.

#36 - Law of Quintupular Agglutination:

(from Daniel Mikula)

Also called "The Five-man Rule", when "Good Guys" group together, it tends to be in groups of five. There are five basic positions, which are:

1) The Hero/Leader

2) His Girlfriend

3) His Best Friend/Rival

4) A Hulking Brute

5) A Dwarf/Kid

Between these basic positions are distributed several attributes, which include:

1) Extreme Coolness

2) Amazing Intelligence

3) Incredible Irritation

#37 - Law of Extradimensional Capacitance:

(from Jason Bustard)

All anime females have an extradimensional storage space of variable volume somewhere on their person from which they can instantly retrieve any object at a moment's notice.

First Corollary (a.k.a. The Hammer Rule) - The most common item stored is a heavy mallet, which can be used with unerring accuracy on any male who deserves it. Other common items include costumes/uniforms, power suits/armor, and large bazookas.

#38 - Law of Hydrostatic Emission:

Eyes tend to be rather large in Anime. This is because they contain several gallons of water, which may be instantaneously released at high pressure through large tear ducts. The actual volume of water contained in the eyes is unknown, as there is no evidence to suggest that these reservoirs are actually capable of running out. The reason water tends to collect in the eyes is because Anime characters only have one large sweat gland, which is located at the back of the head. When extremely stressed, embarrassed, or worried, this sweat gland exudes a single but very large drop of sebaceous fluid.

#39 - Law of Inverse Attraction:

Success at finding suitable mates is inversely proportionate to how desperately you want to be successful. The more you want, the less you get, and vice versa.

First Corollary - Unfortunately, this law seems to apply to Otaku in the real world...

#40 - Law of Nasal Sanguination:

(from Ryan Pritchard and Jason Aylen)

When sexually aroused, males in Anime don't get erections, they get nosebleeds. No one's sure why this is, though... the current theory suggests that larger eyes means smaller sinuses and thinner sinus tissue (see Law #38 above). Females don't get nosebleeds, but invariably get one heck of a blush along the cheeks and across the nose, suggesting a lot of bloodflow to that region.

#41 - Law of Xylolaceration:

(from Lyndon Harris)

Wooden or bamboo swords are just as sharp as metal swords, if not sharper.

#42 - Law of Juvenile Omnipotence:

(from Erin Alia)

Always send a boy to do a man's job. He'll get it done in half the time and twice the angst.

#43 - Law of Triscaquadrodecophobia:

There is no Law #43.

#44 - Law of Nominative Clamovocation

(from Luiko-Ysabeth and Adrian Hsiah)

The likelihood of success and damage done by a martial arts attack is directly proportional to the volume at which the full name of the attack is announced.

#45 - Law of Uninteruptable Metamorphosis:

(from R. A. Hubby)

Regardless of how long or involved the transformation sequence or how many times they've seen it before, any 'Bad Guys' witnessing a mecha/hero/heroine transforming are too stunned to do anything to interrupt it.

#46 - Law of Flimsy Incognition:

(from Conrad Knauer)

Simply changing into a costume or wearing a teensy mask can make you utterly unrecognizable to even your closest friends and relatives.

#47 - Law of Gravitational Consequence of Velocity on Mammary Glands:

(from Dexyuo-kun)

Any woman's breasts in anime, no matter how clothed or unclothed the woman may be, her breasts have the potential to bounce at least five times every time she moves. Wheather she jumps from a building, runs away from a bad guy, or transforms into her costume or teensy mask (see Law #46 - Law of Flimsy Incognition and Law #34 - Law of Probable Attire).

#48 - Law of the Death Monolouge:

(from Dexyuo-kun)

Believed to be related to the First Law of Temporal Mortality, any character who doesn't die within seconds will ultimately have to give a drawn out monolouge. The character may be a 'Good Guy' who must, very calmly, tell everyone present what they need to do to be able to win the fight against the 'Bad Guys'. This is also used to snap 'Good Guys' out of a trance (also known as the Trowa Barton 90-Second Monolouge). Or, the character may be a 'Bad Guy' who must, through tears, tell everyone present their heartbreaking story of why they became a 'Bad Guy'.

#49 - Law of Providential Endings:

(from Dexyuo-kun)

This law states that in any Anime, no matter how horrible or angsty the Anime might be, has a happy ending. This law ultimately exculdes any and all CLAMP productions.

First Corollary - One of the heros' is wounded (ie. stabbed) and the series ends. Yet, they must always have a sequel to the season, so that it may be known that the injured hero did indeed live at the end, regardless of being wounded horribly. This also applies to any 'Bad Guys' turned 'Good Guys'. They will ultimately live.

#50 - Law of Invariable Coupling:

(from Dexyuo-kun)

The hero of the story must always have a love intrest. The hero of the story must always save their love intrest, possibly multiple times. There will always be a conflict between the hero and their love intrest, wheather it be it an annoying blonde, blue eyed princess who has a tendency to yell out the hero's name and scream for him to come kill her, or a war, there will *always* be a conflict between the hero and their love intrest.

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mensbodybuildingtips · 5 years

Text

Does CrossFit Work?

All the awesome kids are doing CrossFit these days. Does it function? Should we all come to be 'WODKILLAS'?

' CrossFit will not just change your body,' an acquaintance told me, with a glint of fire in her eyes, 'it will change everything-who you are, how you view the world, what you think is possible.'

I'm a huge follower in the life-changing power of being fit, however she was being a little bit also significant also for me. I seemed like I was being hired for a crusade or trip, not an exercise program.

This kind of talk prevails among the CrossFit group, which is growing at an exponential rate these days. Is it whatever its followers-no, believers-claim it to be? Does it truly change simple 'exercising' right into something transcendent as well as sublime?

Let's find out.

What is CrossFit?

In situation you in some way don't already understand, CrossFit is a high-intensity workout program that focuses on carrying out a selection of toughness and also cardiovascular exercises, ranging from push-ups to sprints to clean as well as jerks.

The workouts are typically incorporated to 'Workouts of the Day,' or 'WODs' as the started call them, which are frequently brief (regarding HALF AN HOUR) as well as incredibly demanding. Efficiency is tracked and also placed to encourage friendly competition and procedure progress.

For instance, here's exactly what a CrossFit workout appears like (this set is called the 'Fran'):

Do the complying with as swiftly as possible:

Three rounds, 21-15- and 9 representatives of: 95-pound Thruster Pull-ups

But CrossFit is more compared to just getting in an exercise. It's the society that has made it so popular. Check it out:

Brilliant advertising, that's for sure. ( I wonder if CrossFit's founder, Greg Glassman, has reviewed this book?)

But does CrossFit live up to such claims? Does it warrant the hype?

I don't assume so. Let me explain.

CrossFit Does not Reach Re-Define the Meaning of Fitness

The Oxford English Thesaurus defines fitness as 'the condition of being healthy and healthy and balanced.' And fit is defined as 'in great health and wellness, due to the fact that of routine physical exercise.'

Using these thesaurus interpretations, we can gauge our fitness level in several means:

By testing our muscle strength.

By testing our cardiovascular conditioning.

By testing our body composition.

By testing our flexibility.

By testing our metabolic health.

Thus, as we get fitter...

We become stronger.

We become better at managing the cardiac tension of physical activity.

We come to be leaner and extra muscular.

We become more flexible.

We improve our body's capacity to use food for fueling and restoring itself.

Well, in CrossFit lingo, fitness has a various, a lot more short-sighted definition-one that Glassman invented, which he claims is the very first 'purposeful, quantifiable means' to specify the word:

' Raised job capacity across broad time as well as modal domains.'

So essentially, inning accordance with Glassman, you're as fit as you could do CrossFit. Creative and also convenient. But silly.

You're not as fit as you could do CrossFit.

Case in point: watch some CrossFit video clips on the internet or head into a CrossFit gym and also you'll see a great deal of weak, obese, inflexible individuals that assume they're Spartans due to the fact that they can do 30 kipping (counterfeit, foolish) pull-ups or finish the 'Murph' and after that make a quick browse through to Uncle Pukie's.

These people are not fit.

Now, I do not say that to cloth on individuals that aren't in wonderful form. I respect any individual that places in job to boost their health and fitness, despite their existing condition.

But I AM ragging on the unfit CrossFit snobs that believe that because I'm not a component of their 'WODSQUAD,' I'm physically substandard in some way.

Wait a 2nd ... I can out-lift, out-run, and out-stretch you, and also I'm bigger as well as leaner than you ... but you're exclusive due to the fact that you could strike Olympic raises with bad kind as well as do air crouches up until you puke?

CrossFit Isn't the Ultimate Way to obtain Fit

With that out of the means, let's discuss really obtaining fit, starting with a simple proposition:

An activity is as reliable for physical fitness as it develops strength as well as aerobic endurance, and improves body make-up, adaptability, and also metabolic health.

Simple enough, right?

Well, if you've ever been pitched on CrossFit, you were probably hit with numerous buzzwords:

Functional fitness

General fitness training

Full-body workout

Metabolic conditioning

General physical preparedness

The chatter usually comes down to the case that performing a wide array of exercises is the most effective way to accomplish overall physical fitness and also a visual body. That a typical exercise program just can not perform like CrossFit can.

Well, CrossFit does have its merits. The exercises are difficult and entail doing genuine workouts, as well as you will see results if you stay with it.

But it isn't really the finest method to obtain fit.

Let's first appearance at research study on what takes place when you combine toughness and also cardiovascular training.

Researchers from RMIT University functioned with trained professional athletes in 2009 and located that "combining resistance workout and cardio in the very same session might interfere with genes for anabolism." In nonprofessional's terms, they discovered that incorporating endurance and also resistance training sends out "mixed signals" to the muscle mass and harms their capacity to adjust to either.

They additionally located that cardio prior to the resistance training subdued anabolic hormonal agents such as IGF-1 and MGF, and also cardio after resistance training enhanced muscle cells breakdown.

Several various other research studies, such as those carried out by Kid's National Medical Center, the Waikato Institute of Innovation, and also the College of Jyvaskyla (Finland), came to same final thoughts: training for both endurance as well as toughness at the same time hinders your gains on both fronts.

Now does this mean CrossFit won't improve both toughness as well as endurance? No, naturally not. If you want to obtain huge and solid, or if you want to optimize your cardio ability, scientific research states that CrossFit isn't the best means to do either.

Thus, it's no surprise that many CrossFitters aren't specifically muscular or strong, and also have mediocre cardio. Actually, the only CrossFitters I have actually known that had remarkable strength, size, or cardio were adhering to a standard weightlifting as well as cardio program in addition to doing CrossFit.

In my experience, both in my own training and also in collaborating with numerous others, the most effective method to both construct stamina as well as improve cardio endurance is to different weight training and cardiovascular exercise.

That is, adhere to a conventional strategy to improving fitness.

CrossFit and Overtraining

Part of the CrossFit culture is taking 'no discomfort, no gain' to a whole new level. Training to the point of outright fatigue makes you a 'warrior.' Puking after a workout is a vaunted sacrifice to the gods of gainz.

Well, unless you get on drugs, this is a fast lane to overtraining, which can lead to severe problems. It could become persistent, which is a progressive onset of overtraining signs like general fatigue, depression, restlessness, anorexia nervosa, loss of desire to work out, as well as a lot more. Or it can be intense, as well as in extreme instances, deadly.

A male called Makimba Mimms was awarded $300,000 in damages from a neighborhood CrossFit fitness center and his fitness instructor for injuries he endured during a CrossFit exercise in 2005. Those injuries consisted of rhabdomyolysis, a problem where seriously and rapidly harmed muscle cells is released into the blood stream, which can cause kidney failure.

The Workout of the Day, or 'WOD,' that nearly killed Mimms was relabelled the 'Makimba' and categorized as a youngsters's workout. Har har. Poor taste in jokes apart, nobody is unsusceptible to rhabdo.

For instance, in January 2011, 13 football gamers at the University of Iowa were hospitalized with rhabdo after doing a workout that consisted of 100 squats with 50% of their one-rep max. It wasn't a CrossFit exercise, however was similar in that it had them doing compound lifts for high representatives and also under severe fatigue.

Here's the simple truth of the issue:

If you're out medications as well as you're educating to complete physical fatigue multiple times weekly, and particularly if your workouts include weight training, you're mosting likely to wind up overtraining. It's only a matter of time.

CrossFit and Injuries

One of the very first points I observed concerning individuals I recognized doing CrossFit was mostly all of them had gotten pain. Strains, drew muscle mass, even torn ligaments.

I had not been surprised. Why? For a couple reasons.

The safety of the CrossFit workouts depends a lot on the trainers. If a rookie is going to execute a compound lift like a deadlift or squat, or an advanced Olympic lift like the nab, he had much better recognize precisely what he's doing. If the coach hasn't educated him best kind, or pushes him to move a great deal of weight or go to outright failing (which is typical in CrossFit classes), the chance of injury goes way up.

Unfortunately, nevertheless, an excellent trainer could just do so a lot. CrossFit features a raised threat of injury built right into it. Exactly how so?

Because CrossFit has you aiming to strike hefty Olympic lifts when you're worn down, which is a recipe for injury. Research has actually revealed this with the squat: as exhaustion sets in, create invariably worsens. Interestingly enough, our understanding of series of movement also alters with fatigue-what feels like all-time low of the squat really isn't really.

If you're tired out, you should not be trying to execute heavy weight-lifting exercises, and also especially not huge substance exercises like deadlifts, squats, as well as Olympic lifts.

Don't believe me?

' The problem concerns tiredness and going to failing,' states Stuart McGill, Ph.D., a teacher of spine biomechanics at the University of Waterloo, Ontario. 'Some exercises contribute to this as well as others are not.' McGill puts Olympic lifts in the 'not' category.

' Duplicating activities where form is compromised with exhaustion actually does not fit the viewpoint of Olympic lifting to decrease injury danger and also boost performance.'

This is one of the reasons the American College of Sports Medication advises at the very least 3 minutes of remainder between hefty weightlifting sets (1-6 reps).

So, you're not assured to obtain injured doing CrossFit, yet you're at a greater danger of injury if you follow the routine protocols.

Unsurprisingly, minority people I recognize that have been doing CrossFit for any purposeful amount of time without obtaining harmed are knowledgeable weightlifters and insert proper remainder periods between heavy collections of lifting.

So Should You Do CrossFit?

The solution to this concern really relies on your goals.

If you're seeking to obtain trimmer and also have some enjoyable, then CrossFit isn't really a poor choice if you have a great train and know exactly how to avoid overtraining and injury. People likewise like the affordable atmospheres as well as sociability of CrossFit gyms, which is totally understandable.

But if you're aiming to maximize strength or muscle gains, or maximize your aerobic capability ... CrossFit is not the optimal selection. You'll do better adhering to a proper weight training or cardio training program.

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haphapner · 5 years

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The Madonna of Allentown

It happened again at Big Len's place in Allentown, Pennsylvania. A steady flow of true humanity came through there every day. Big Len's specialized in cold beer to go and weekly room rentals, an odd mix but it had been around for years.

I had just returned from buying a carton of cheap cigarettes.

It was my daughter’s sixteenth birthday. I hadn’t been pregnant for fifteen years, eleven months and nineteen days. On that morning, I experienced a miraculous conception. What would come from my womb some months later would not, indeed could not, be, from a man.

Long ago, I recognized that one should take these things as they come. The years and more than five-hundred-fifty pregnancies have tempered my weariness and bone crushing sadness with wisdom. Inexplicably I felt driven to invest in this child so that it would be more successful than all the others combined.

One minute, I was walking up the backstairs to my bug-infested room, a communal toilet and shower down the hall. The next, a fresh new soul spontaneously generated in my ancient womb. The cigarettes slipped from my grasp and bounced down the dingy stairs, bounding higher as they picked up speed. The carton cracked against the door and burst open spewing cellophane wrapped pleasure across the sun-lit landing.

“Shit!”

I can’t explain it; I just knew it had happened again. It’s like Zen, if you’ve experienced sartori, you get it; otherwise, you’re shit-out-of-luck.

I sat down three quarters of the way up the steep stairs. “Shit, shit, shit … I’m too tired for this.” I slammed my elbow against the wall; dingy, faded wallpaper fluttered. “How does this always catch me off-guard?” I took a long drag on a generic cigarette, my last. “So many myths about gods becoming men and walking among us, the gods of mythology were too chicken-shit to become women.” I ripped at a piece of wallpaper exposing years of corrupted paint. “Woman’s work my ass,” a sarcastic laugh slipped out. “Men should try motherhood.”

My story starts in the mists of time, before I conceived the collective unconscious of humankind. Known by a thousand names – Eve, Ishtar, Isis, Mother Earth – I am the Oracle of Delphi who doled out visions, generation upon generation, ad infinitum. The Greeks referred to me as Gaia, the one who sprang from Chaos and became the mother of all things.

Myth cloaks the truth trapping humanity in ancient prisons of ignorance. A son once said, “The Truth shall set you free.”[1] I have born more grief than the mind can conceive. In vain, I have staggered through humanity searching, always searching for true companionship, a true equal.

Jung wrote, “Whenever the earth mother appears it means that things are going to happen in reality; this is an absolute law.”[2] His words were confused. I do not appear. I never disappear. I keep moving, looking into eyes that cannot see, listening for words that convey meaning. Carl understood one thing. For those who come to know me, reality takes hold. Through the mind-numbing millennia, I have witnessed pockets of hope, people whose peaceful coexistence drew me toward the mainstream. Such communities were but flickering flames blown out by human progress.

Every sixteen years I become pregnant and carry the baby to term – which is usually some time during the twenty-fourth lunar month. I neither consult nor require a patriarch to participate in these sacred events. These children of fiat are my offering, my sacrifice to humanity, gifts meant to foster evolution so that humanity might come to a full realization of their divine nature.

Through the centuries, I have mothered some famous and infamous people. Ishmael and Isaac, those naughty boys who denied the goddess, were mine. Siddhartha and Jesus were my sons as were Attila the Hun, Genghis Khan, and Mohamed. You see, I am doomed to have sons, boys and men who must throw off the fear and oppression of women or die. Warriors, orators, gurus, and shaman alike I have birthed, but very few wise men.

Sid was a rebellious boy in the beginning. Jesus died too soon. I fled the Christian lands after seeing so much harm done in his name. Humans constantly teeter on the brink of madness. After the first jihad, Mohamed tried to honor me in his book, “Christ, the son of Mary, was no more than a messenger; many were the messengers that passed away before him. His mother was a woman of truth. But they had both to eat their food.”[3] Can you imagine? My own son did not understand the divine reality of the one who bore him into this world. With a broken heart, I slowly made my way north and west.

Sadly, most of my sons turned out to be self-centered egomaniacs. Tragedy seemed my only companion. Witnessing their utter lack of respect for women and the goddess, I began to desert my boys by their sixteenth birthday. Hitler broke my heart long before he broke the world. I fled to the west.

I arrived in the new world just after the turn of the century. My next child, Sunnyland Slim, soulfully interpreted my heart through his fingers and songs. But the moral decay and utter inhumanity of the last several centuries had brought me low. I took a long vacation, which brought me to Big Len’s with my only daughter.

Human potential for greatness is exceeded only by its arrogant individualism.

Around each child’s thirty-third birthday, when the calendars of the sun and the moon align, is a powerful opportunity in their lives. At those times, the collective unconsciousness draws toward the surface of conscious thought throughout the earth’s inhabitants. At that time, every generation faces the great question – will they accept their maker as she is. Only during that powerful alignment of the lunar and solar phases, is vision able to break the bonds of human limitation and broach the domain of collective reality. That unified vision is the key to human evolution.

I loved the renaissance when men nearly grasped the divine nature of humanity. Rubens honored me, and all women, with his exquisite art. Things had always been dicey with the boys, but they really went downhill fast during the industrial revolution. My son Karl wrote about a community of equals, but he was no Jesus. He thought economics could alter the human condition. He could not see that lasting social change will only come through an evolved race.

For thousands of years, since the men of this species overthrew the goddess, violence toward women and children has run rampant. The prehistoric patriarchal revolt disfigured the male capacity for love, trust, and connection. In the process, my heart fractured and so began my perpetual search for wholeness.

The myth of the ages is that human men become mature. Their adult lives are lived as an extension of their boyhood. They do not mature they merely age. Their deeply buried true self rarely surfaces. Panic ensues in the hearts of men when they glimpse their feminine side. The fear of homosexuality is but a disguise. Their terror lies in something sinister and primal that they cannot face.

They fear me in them. In the gap between Eden’s fall and recorded history, they knew me as the goddess of all things dark and uncanny. Men’s hearts filled with fear, knowing I could strike them down with arrows of conscience even from afar. In rebellion against the true nature of all things, they have subjugated women since the dawn of human history. Once they seized control, they denied their essence and proclaimed their superiority.

To survive I had to go on the lam. Of course, modern humans have no recollection or understanding of these things. Primeval instinct leads men to oppress and deny their nature and needs. They do not comprehend that their claims of physical superiority and manifest destiny are born of fear.

Men need not fear. I am the self-existent One. Ex nihilo I made all things. I am woman and man, the beginning and the end, the lover of all things. I draw many into oneness creating a race of divine equals, who knowing their origins choose to embrace their divine nature. I alone procreate – the divine begetting the divine.

A sign flashed above my head, Sacred Heart Hospital. I floated along into an elevator. Everything smelled clean and white. Doors parted, closed, and opened again. People rushed past my horizontal floating frame.

“She’s in trouble. Get her into surgery.”

Who could they be talking about? How long had I been here?

I hear my daughter’s voice, “What is it? What is wrong?”

“She’s hemorrhaging. We need to take the baby now.”

“Looks like a lot of scar tissue, possibly an acute ectopic. Get the on-call surgeon.

“Blood pressure’s dropping, pulse is dropping.”

“She’s going into shock; we’re losing her. Come on people!”

The doctor explained that they had done a “clean house” hysterectomy. I would never have another child.

My firstborn daughter, now eighteen stepped forward and looked into my eyes. She held her new little sister with pride and hope. “Mama, she’s the one; the last one.”

[1] Holy Bible, New International Version, John 8:38

[2] Douglas, Claire, Editor. Visions: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1930 – 1934 C.G. Jung. Princeton University Press. 1997. Page 790.

[3] Koran 5:75

#fiction

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lay4decolonisation-blog · 5 years

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She-Ra: Princesses of Power (2018) and the Representation that I Want

**CONTENT WARNING: ABUSE, VIOLENCE**

When I heard She-Ra was back and GAY, I had to jump straight or not so straight into it. The amazing characterisation and themes of the show fit the modern audience perfectly. She-Ra: Princesses of Power (SPOP) did what Voltron: Legendary Defender wish it did. RIP.

The SPOP series was written by Noelle Stevenson, and produced by Dreamworks. Season 1 aired on the 13th November 2018 via Netflix.

There’s two things I want to discuss, so I’ll split this up into sections: visual character design & complex characterisation.

Visual Character Design

80’s She-Ra

2018 She-Ra

She-Ra is the hero alter ego of Princess Adora, who transforms when she calls forth “For the Honour of Grayskull!” with The Sword of Protection.

When I saw the visuals for the series and the new outfit for She-Ra I nearly screamed. It was perfect. I will always prefer Marvel cinematic movie adaptations on the basis that women wear full body armour, and not a skirt. So it was natural for me to fall in love with the shorts, flowy skirt, useful boots and 80’s influenced shoulder flares on She-Ra’s new threads.

She looked PRACTICAL, and totally badass. I see no male gaze in the update. She-Ra isn’t wearing heels, or red lipstick, her dress doesn’t look like it’s about to give her a nip slip, and her hair still flows like golden threads in the wind!

Notice how I just used the ‘Male Gaze’. The Male Gaze is essentially a patriarchal control of representation of women and/or other genders in media, and can be applicable to historical documentation (Mulvey 1989). Ponterotto (2016) describes it expands on the media’s control of feminine bodies as:

“The invisibility of women has been accompanied in an extraordinarily inversely proportionate manner by the visual display of her physical appearance, of her body as material object, to be observed, judged, valued, appreciated, rejected, modified and essentially commodified, for socially-constructed purposes. From a feminist point of view, this purpose can be claimed to be essentially male pleasure, concomitant social benchmarking and commercial profit.” (134)

From the ‘controversy’ from predominantly male audiences on the release of She-Ra’s costume it’s obvious that it’s doing its job (Lenton 2018); with men reacting with things like:

“The character designs for this show are god awful. She-Ra looks too much like a man.” MECCA_Studios @ twitter

“if you're trying to make your girls look like boys for your show then you are not actually fighting for equality you're proving that men is the superior gender and taken more seriously than a beautiful women, you're only helping sexism not fighting it” - iamconsumer @ twitter

I wanna acknowledge this was mainly white, cishet males reacting to a show that is predominantly AIMED AT YOUNG GIRLS. SPOP’s visual design of She-Ra was so key in getting this show right. She is a woman icon for young girls growing up and seeing her on screen wearing a non-sexual costume whilst being feminine, strong and beautiful will mean something for them growing up. Women/Feminine peoples can look at the screen and say “I’m She-Ra!” and not have to feel like they have to look good for male gaze to do that.

People Of Colour (POC) Representation

Bow, Mermista, Frosta, Netossa and Catra’s - along with ethnically ambiguous characters - redesign was kind of glossed over with the amount of objections about the Queer and Feminist arguments going around.

So here’s some of my babies:

Bow 80s

Bow 2018

Mermista 80s

Mermista 2018

Catra 80s

Catra 2018

Frosta 80s

Frosta 2018

Bow stood out to me alot because I empathize alot for my dark skinned brother’s who don’t have any or many examples of good representation on screen that explores queer identity, gender performativity, body image and positive masculinity that is casual and fun. (I speak of course from an Indigenous background, but a lot of my community look at the African-American community on TV for dark bodies representation.) Imagine a young dark skinned boy watching Bow being fun loving, supportive, gentle, obsessed with crop tops, hanging out with girls and embodying positive masculinity, then using as a mold to treat their sisters, mums and cousins. Incredible.

SPOP centers ethnic looking characters amazingly with their characterisation. Having POC on screens breaks out of normalizing whiteness, and de-centers it as the default way of being (Scharrer & Ramasubramanian 2015). People might argue that fantasy worlds don’t overlap with real worlds because race mightn’t exist in the fantasy world, but when you’re a ethnic kid growing up watching/ reading white bodies being superheroes and warriors and People of Colour don’t exist you have no representation, or worse POC are negatively stereotyped. Representation is IMPORTANT. Representation is the ability to control the way the world perceives a group of people, or yourself - white people often struggle understanding this because whiteness as an identity is invisible by normalization (hooks 1992, Dyer 1997). It can be compared to men as ungendered compared to women, or non-cis and queer people with heteronormativity. So it can only be visible when colour is involved, and depending on whether it’s good or bad POC representation it can create racial stereotypes (Brigham 1971, Nosek 2007).

LGBTQIA+ Visual Representation

I feel like you can find a lot of this, but not any by me!

I will start with Scorpia cause she’s such a dear.

JUST LOOK AT HER.

Everyone is screaming ‘butch lesbian’ little to know that she is a total femme (anyone can fight me on this). Her open attraction towards Catra was loud, unapologetic and was super ultra normal. Despite her giant crab claws, I just want her to hold me gently. I think it’s another good example of different body types. Like it’s not just an exterior what makes a woman a woman or a good person a good person. Before I die of thirst, let’s move on to my Bow’s dads.

OH MY GAWD. Bow resembles Lance and George so much. Like the perfect little mix between their two personalities UGH. Both very different individuals who share a common obsession with history. Two gay Black dudes just be out here owning the biggest collection of ancient artifacts, studying the classics and raising 13 kids like wojefdikewajfaij

Lance out here rocking dreads and the glasses with sandals *bathump* and George with his little moustache and fancy hair. They go on like a normal couple picking on one another and knowing each other’s personalities, caring about their son and reflecting on their parenting when they realize they messed up instead of blaming their kid for not understanding them okmfoerngfa

Sorry, my heart nearly went into cardiac arrest thinking about them.

I won’t miss the exceptional drop of them telling Bow their disappointed that he had to hide a part of himself because he was afraid of what they’d think of him or do. I remember that feeling….*glances at my physical wooden closet*

SPINNERELLA AND NETOSSA.

Netossa is the only character (I’m pretty sure) who was originally dark skinned in the 80s She Ra - she also had no powers.

Now rocking up with powers and gf, she is out here living her best life. Look at them. Just look at my babies. They swapped chokers, like wow, what a lesbian power move. Plus sized, buff queer women rocking their femininity being loyal and totally badass. Their actual appearances on screen are limited but impactful as they are seen as people seem to question more what the heck they do in the Rebellion rather than their queer relationship.

Complex Characterisation

Let’s start with Shadow Weaver’s relationship with Catra and Adora.

Starting off at Mystacor as Light Spinner, she a teacher and getting one of her students, Micah, to perform a spell that conjured evil magic - The Spell of Obtainment - ultimately decided her path as Shadow Weaver. She became an abusive, manipulative and self righteous authoritative figure to Catra and Adora.

Shadow Weaver is an abuser. Abuse works differently in each situation but is defined by White Ribbon Australia in categories of: Physical, Financial, Emotional, Verbal, Social, Sexual, Stalking, Spiritual, Image based, Dowry and Elderly Abuse.

The emotional, verbal, social and I’m going to add economical (instead for Financial) abuse she inflicted on Adora and Catra made them stick together as companions through the hardships. Adora upon realizing the Horde’s actions and motives rejects and calls out Shadow Weaver’s abuse. Catra, on the other hand, looks for something like approval from Shadow Weaver. Catra grew up neglected and constantly compared to Adora in her duties to the Horde by Shadow Weaver, so when Adora left a shift happened in Catra. Adora was her main source of comfort and sense of safety in Shadow Weaver’s irract attitude towards her. Adora was her constant feeling of affection and comfort, when she went against the very codes that kept them together their entire lives - Catra was betrayed. Finally, maybe she could get the parental approval she was seeking from Shadow Weaver she never got when Adora was around. Also looking for validation of her moral that has been cause her actions other than rage and sadness that Adora had left her alone. Catra sort out her Abuser’s approval because that’s the only way she knew how to get validity and self assurance of her identity as a member of the Horde - all she ever knew.

Catra feels alone and like she can’t depend on anyone, and because she knows how that feels she was also able to emotionally manipulate Entrapta into join the Horde. It’s a consistent cycle of isolation that stemmed from one person’s influence.

The thing that differs Adora and Catra, was more Adora being given opportunities to lead and step up where Catra was always on the side. Adora gained leadership skills and an emotional capacity where she was able to trust others and trust herself. This ultimately allowed her to do the right thing and join the Rebellion. Catra on the other hand had to quickly use her head and be more aware of things other than herself which made her falter in the leadership role of Shadow Weaver, but that is her coping mechanism of isolating herself and having to immerse herself with other people and the world to take action.

Adora’s culture shock between the way the Princesses live and the way it was in the Horde only shows how she’s been manipulated through learning the knowledge and behaviours that were enforced on her in the Horde. Princesses aren’t evil. The Horde is evil.

Adora’s role of She Ra has put a lot of pressure on her, and she is fighting her own self.

What happened with Adora was she was specifically chosen because she’s had the experiences she’s had. She knows what it's like in the Horde. How their systems work. What type of people and kids are there. She knows all of that to use to win the war. She’s not gonna break into it, but out of it.

When Adora breaks out of the Horde’s learning, and the truth telling begins the walls will crumble and there will be internal upset. There’s a good and evil battle going on inside of each character. Adora wants to protect her friends and do the right thing, but sometimes those two things aren’t the same thing.

Another character I wanna bring up is Glimmer. Glimmer has been fighting to fight. She’s having to fight a struggle in her internal kingdoms. She’s been trying to tell the truth to the other Kingdoms and unite the Kingdoms so they can beat the Horde and save everything they love. She needed to stand up to her mother, the other Princesses, and herself. She is so damn strong and I love her so much omg.

When Bow went to the ball with Perfuma and she was upset, this was because she was afraid Bow would leave her. She’s been isolated also by her mother into doing Princess things that don’t actually have a big impact, but Bow has been consistent in her life and training to be a leader. When he left her side, she was scared that she was going to be isolated again. She knew it was irrational, but that kind of stuff just happens. Sometimes our feelings don’t always make sense to us at first, and we have to look somewhere else to understand what we’re feeling right then and there. But the besties will prevail.

The other thing I didn’t touch on earlier, but will now is age. The Princesses age from around 11-18 (?). The thing about having young people saving the world is really where we’re at. Kids are rioting in the streets trying to get big corporations led by greedy bastards who want resources and exploit people to stop, and save their entire world - yeah, you know I’m talking about situations like the climate strike. We will learn from our elders mistakes and do it right.

We shouldn’t give up because our parents did. We will be the ones to win, just like Glimmer, Adora, Bow and the gang.

Representation isn’t a debate - it’s a necessity.

Thanks for reading babes.

Reference List

Dyer, Richard. (1997) ‘The Matter of Whiteness’ in White, London: Routledge.

Brigham, John C. "Ethnic stereotypes." Psychological bulletin76.1 (1971): 15.

Nosek, Brian A., et al. "Pervasiveness and correlates of implicit attitudes and stereotypes." European Review of Social Psychology 18.1 (2007): 36-88.

Bell, Hooks. "The oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators." Black Looks: Race and Representation (1992): 115-131.

Mulvey, L. (1989). Visual pleasure and narrative cinema. In Visual and other pleasures (pp. 14-26). Palgrave Macmillan, London.

Ponterotto, D. (2016). Resisting the male gaze: feminist responses to the" normatization" of the female body in Western culture. Journal of International Women's Studies, 17(1), 133-151.

Scharrer, E., & Ramasubramanian, S. (2015). Intervening in the media's influence on stereotypes of race and ethnicity: The role of media literacy education. Journal of Social Issues, 71(1), 171-185.

https://www.whiteribbon.org.au/understand-domestic-violence/types-of-abuse/

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auctes · 6 years

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as someone who believes toko best trigger happy havoc character, i HATE IT when people say "syo has no depth!!!" and "toko's an annoying joke!!! wowzurs!!!", AS AN AMAZING FUKAWA/SYO FAN, CAN YOU HELP ME CONSTRUCT COMPELLING ARGUMENTS ON THE COMPLEXITY OF BOTH?

hi , anon !

it can be frustrating when people reduce our faves , but the first thing i’d like to say is : they’re kind of right about touko being a joke . touko’s fragile mental health is usually played for laughs , and reduced to a punchline . the localization calls her a “ schizo , ” and her maladaptive daydreams are framed as something psychotic rather than for what they are : a coping mechanism that her brain has developed to help her endure a high - stress situation .

i love when people ask these things , because the more we talk about that , the more we can start to break down touko’s character .

i would also like to state that this is a dissociative identity disorder [ DID ] conversation . i do not have DID , and i am not a psychologist . i will answer this to the best of my ability based on personal research and an ardent love for the character , but welcome corrections if necessary .

let’s talk about syo .

syo has depth . she is an extension of touko , who is , herself , a deeply introspective person . while syo is played for comic relief , it’s important to understand where she comes from : trauma . childhood trauma that touko , as a very small child , could not cope with . due to the intense physical , emotional , and psychological abuse to which she was subject , touko’s mind created syo , who fronts during times of duress and guards those memories that touko cannot endure , as a means of ensuring touko’s survival and base function . syo and touko do identify as separate entities , with a few key points to consider :

1 . DID alters can be ... anyone . anything . have their own ages , genders , sexual identities , ethnicity , personal histories , and memories . syo identifies as the name the media give her , but identifies with touko’s body , and accepts this as her appearance . a lot of alters look physically different to how the body of the core personality looks . that’s always been very interesting to me .

2 . touko acknowledges syo as part of herself . both touko and syo bounce back and forth when referring to themselves : between singular ( i ) and collective ( we ) . syo , to herself , looks like touko . she looks in the mirror and goes , “ i look like this . ” touko , especially in her later appearances throughout the series , feels a sense of belonging to syo , and acknowledges that she is a part of touko .

3 . they “ share emotions , ” meaning that there is some sort of co - conscious link between them that doesn’t go away completely during a switch . when touko hurts , syo hurts. when touko is in love , so is syo . while syo may not be able to understand and interpret complex emotions to the capacity at which touko does , she absolutely still feels them . this is what enables syo to act upon them : as a persecution alter , and later a protector alter , syo knows when she is fronting that touko is scared , or stressed , or in danger . these are the cues upon which she justifies her murders , but also those upon which she is able to fall in love and build friendships .

which leads me into my next point on syo : everything shed does is with the health and prosperity of touko in mind . DID , as a trauma - based disorder , is a neurological mechanism in place to protect the integrity of the individual . alters fulfill a purpose : they perform roles that the core personality physically cannot . syo is absolutely no different .

when touko decides to actively end syo’s murderous tendencies , syo complies . she knows that touko is suffering maltreatment at future foundation on the basis of her being labeled “ unstable and dangerous , ” and so , syo abstains from killing so as not to jeopardize touko’s wish to eventually join the foundation . while she still responds aggressively to threats , the only time she seriously contemplates killing is during another episode .

you can watch it here .

this scene is so loaded with depth . firstly , we see a clear co - conscious link between syo and touko . syo volunteers control of the body back to touko when touko is ready : even then , touko is able to recall the moments immediately before the switch , when komaru makes an emotional appeal to syo .

here , we also see a reflective , emotive side of her . we see her pause , despite whole - heartedly believing that she is going to kill komaeda . it is apparent to syo what is important to her : byakuya , and komaru . these things are important to touko , and therefore , important to syo . she has never been treated as normal : she has never really been considered by anyone to be a part of the system , as opposed to a “ deviant who kills for pleasure . ” and she thanks komaru for talking her down . in saying , “ i betrayed you , ” syo is feeling remorse . it’s touko’s remorse , because it was touko who made the deal with komaeda to exchange komaru for byakuya .

but , in the end , it was syo who threw the fight in order to spare komaru’s life , because she cannot bring herself to hurt a person for whom she and touko feel so warmly .

i’d also like to turn your attention to danganronpa 3 : future arc episode six , in which we can further witness syo and touko’s co - consciousness , and syo ultimately choosing to pursue what feels safe and warm and inviting rather than exacting vengeance . komaru talks her out of killing monaka : out of quite probably letting herself die in the process . komaru knows instinctively that syo has emotions : love . protectiveness . bravery . syo loves byakuya and komaru more , and feels a desire to protect them , more than everyone assumes her to simply love violence for violence’s sake . if something won’t serve the purpose of protecting touko and what is important to her , she isn’t going to do it .

now , let’s think about touko .

my blog is full of essays upon essays regarding touko , but i believe she can be best summarized by the phrase , the heart wants what it wants . a truly emotional , giving , and romantic woman , she actively hides herself underneath a repelling armor of grossly exacerbated flaws in order to protect her heart from being harmed .

touko has suffered in the past from consistent dehumanization , belittlement , and abuse . her parents expressed that they would have preferred her dead , and so they abused her at home . her classmates thought she was weird , and so they bullied her exorbitantly . whenever touko would actively reach out to others to pursue friendships or romantic relationships , she would be betrayed by others , and made to suffer for it .

to help you understand the breadth of the psychological impact that nearly two decades of being treated as less than human has had on touko , here is a link to a short thing i wrote on her ablutophobia , or fear of bathing . it’s a very quick overview of her self image issues , and self preservation tendencies .

next , why don’t we consider how fully and completely touko fukawa loves ? as a romance novelist , we expect her to harbor a highly idealized , grossly saturated perception of romantic love . instead , we get a woman who writes romance purely because she believes in channeling the ugly tragedies of her situation into something of beauty . here are my style notes of touko fukawa’s literary works , but we learn from her that she :

1 . prefers to write stories that are grounded in reality .

2 . enjoys magic realism , aggrandized settings , but innately human characters .

3 . prefers romantic tragedies to happy endings . ( komaru remarks upon how sad so lingers was . )

furthermore , touko states that while the power of delusion and its subsequent escapism is a powerful coping tool , she understands the harsh line between fiction and reality . she understands that no love story on the page can resemble how true love feels , but her work is so intricately entwined with emotion that she scaffolds her novels with universal emotional appeal . fictional romance , then , does not satisfy the resilience of her own heart . she is as cynical as she is whimsical : a true hopeless romantic who believes herself undeserving of loving , and being loved . she pours her heart and soul onto a page , so that others may feel to even a small margin of the scope of her feelings .

touko has a very resilient heart . despite the horrible things that togami did to her , and the abysmal way that future foundation treated her , touko is able to protect the last shred of love within her being and use it as fuel to improve herself as a person . please remember that all personal tragedies are learning experiences of touko : the pain she felt as a child became a rich and lucrative imagination . the trauma she undergoes as an adult is the catalyst to her finally turning against her self loathing , and building herself from the ground up .

what do i mean by that ? well ... touko fukawa is a badass . komaru naegi remarks constantly upon fukawa’s strength ; that she can’t imagine a “ weak touko . ” touko loathes herself ; her fears , her weakness . loathes that she can’t function as a normal human being who holds meaningful friendships without being suspicious of them ; loathes that she can’t look after herself , exact self care , without knocking back a cocktail of conglomerate anxiety . loathes that she was weak , and cowardly , and it almost got her killed when she has learned the value of being alive .

touko vocally objects to people walking all over her . she wants to be vilified ; she wants to be autonomous , and respected as a woman , an artist , and a person within her own right . touko exits her killing game , and the next time we see her in ultra despair girls , she is the furthest cry from the woman we previously knew . why ? because touko put her foot down , and went , “ i need to change . ” touko decides to do away with her cowardice , to fight for acknowledgement , and to reclaim her own life when she has been so deprived for so long of basic human kindness .

touko systematically exposes herself to blood to combat her hemophobia . touko credits other people for their strength and uses it as inspiration to keep going . touko puts a stun gun to her head and endures fucking electrocution so that she can control her switches and bequeath her body to syo when she needs to physically protect other people . touko mother fucking fukawa admits that she is scared , but picks her broken body up of the ground and stays standing so that she can do what is right .

touko has an incredibly strong sense of right and wrong that was cauterised by her participation in the killing . in this scene , we see touko voluntarily get the shit kicked out of her so that she may save thousands of innocent lives . she calls haiji towa a coward for hiding underground and not fighting back against the warriors of hope as they terrorize towa city . she does these things simply because it is the right thing to do : because if no one is going to stand up and fight for the people who cannot fight for themselves , then by god , touko is going to do it .

and , finally ... the heart wants what it wants , and touko wants to offer her heart to others . “ i’ll definitely protect both ... even if it costs me my life . ” actual quote out of the mouth of touko fukawa . touko loves . touko’s heart leads her into danger with the full conscience of her inevitable death , but she follows it to protect the lives of those closest to her . we see her , over the course of ultra despair girls , as she gradually opens up to the first person who has ever called touko a friend : to have treated touko with an ounce of humanity and kindness , and to have assured her unconditionally that touko was not alone .

pain , to touko , is transient . physical pain , that is . she’d allow a person to beat her to a pulp , even kill her , if it meant she would saves the lives of those who matter to her . byakuya and komaru make her a stronger person : love makes touko fukawa strong . love makes her stand against impossible odds , and tell those odds to go fuck themselves . touko listens to her heart : to what her emotions are telling her , and for that , her loyalty is stalwart .

i hope this helped you . i hope you have enough in your arsenal to speak up for our girl , and to remind everyone of the strong - ass motherfucking hero she is . if you have any further questions , i am always up for talking about my daughter , and how phenomenally important she is to me . i don’t think this post really scratches the surface .

in conclusion ,

#long post /#touko fukawa #ok to reblog #anon.#╰ 📖 —— mail .

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wondertrevcentral · 6 years

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I see a lot of well-intentioned fans of Wonder Woman worrying that Steve Trevor’s return somehow negates what he did for Diana. I would like to change this conversation, for Wonder Woman, and for many movies where the impossible is part of the appeal.

At the end of Wonder Woman, Steve Trevor flies a plane full of poison into the sky and detonates it, sacrificing himself, after telling Diana that he loves her and he wishes they had more time to be together. The anguish of watching Steve’s plane explode, and the inspiration of his love, helps to propel Diana into wielding her awesome powers in full. She handily beats the bad guy, her uncle Ares.

Steve’s goodbye to Diana and death are well-staged and effectively wrought. It’s emotional and wrenching, and losing the first man that she loved a hundred years ago has followed Diana into the present day. “Thank you for bringing him back to me,” she writes in a candid e-mail to Bruce Wayne, who had sent her the WWI picture of Diana, Steve, and their trusty companions that kicked off Wonder Woman‘s flashback. The watch that Steve gave her, and that Diana has clearly kept as a treasured memento, rests nearby.

Ever since Wonder Woman‘s sequel was confirmed last year and Chris Pine rumored to be involved in some capacity, we’ve talked here about how they’ll bring the beloved character back: is he but a dream within a dream? A clone? A hallucination? Did Steve’s plane somehow get frozen, preserving him as a young man, as superheroic Steves are wont to do? Godly resurrection? Illusions? Aliens?

Whatever it is that brings back some version of Steve Trevor, it’s likely going to be one of the bigger reveals of Wonder Woman 1984, and I’m guessing our guesses will be off. What it does not do is somehow devalue or change what Steve did out of love for Diana and to help save the world in 1917.

Here’s the thing about death as fictional a plot device: it’s the oldest trope in the book. It’s far older than books—death, and heroes trying to defy it and return a loved one from that state, are among the first stories that humans told each other. Onscreen, in big action movies, death is often used cheaply. We’re so used to it happening we don’t blink when a trenchful of people take heavy fire in a movie like Wonder Woman. A narratively well-earned death like Steve Trevor’s makes more of an emotional impact, sure, and it can make for a more resonant movie-going experience. But the idea that Steve should have to stay statically dead in a fantastical film where anything is possible in order to somehow elevate his actions and what they did to Diana is mind-boggling to me.

Here’s the thing about death: in real life, it is one of the worst things that the people left behind will ever experience. Death is cruel, merciless, and it can leave you feeling like there’s an expanding black hole lodged in your chest for many years. For the rest of your life.

Here’s the thing about death if we could reverse it here like we can in fiction: not a goddamn person on planet Earth would lament lost heroism or sacrifice or any other grandiose romantic bullshit we lay on death to try to make sense of it. Your loved one died to save you but now they’re back again? Sorry, Steve, I’m just not feeling it anymore because of all of that squandered heroism, no one would say ever.

The fact of the matter where Wonder Woman is concerned is that Steve Trevor did what he did in 1917 and it was surely one of the worst things that Diana went through. Having Steve return in some capacity 67 years later does not alter that past. Steve’s death also did not make Wonder Woman a hero. Diana was already a hero, and the loss of him served as a catalyst at a dire moment. That’s what losing someone does: it changes you like a chemical reaction. But it does not create or define you.

We go to see movies like Wonder Woman, Avengers, and Star Wars in order to escape into fictional realities where people get to do the impossible and have abilities that we can only dream about. So often, our heroes rise to the occasion because of a poignant loss, because this is an instinct that we can all understand. Iron Man with Yinsen. Batman and his parents. Luke Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi. Obi-Wan Kenobi and Qui-Gon Jinn. Captain America with Dr. Erskine and later Bucky Barnes. Spider-Man and his Uncle Ben.

But giving death the slip and coming back from it is also a huge appeal of comic books and their film incarnations. Incredible powers like the use of the Force and the capacity to appear as a Force ghost are part and parcel of what makes Star Wars tick. We want to witness worlds where death can’t quite hold us.

It used to be a longstanding fan and creator expectation in Marvel Comics that nobody had to “stay” dead except for Uncle Ben and Bucky Barnes. Those deaths were seen as being so essential to the narratives of Peter Parker and Steve Rogers that they could not be retconned or revived.

Then in 2005, comics writer Ed Brubaker and artist Steve Epting brought Bucky back onto the scene as the brainwashed assassin The Winter Soldier. It turned out that Bucky had not died in World War II after all, but was taken by the Russians, given a bionic arm, and reprogrammed to do their bidding for decades.

Bucky’s return from “the dead” is a perfect example of how such an important character’s revival does not negate the impact that his life and loss created in the first place. In fact, if anything, Brubaker created in The Winter Soldier arc the most tragic and brilliant foil possible for Captain America.

What is more difficult than having to face your best friend turned into your enemy? The film version of Winter Soldier is particularly excellent for the same reason. Cap’s agony at having to fight his old friend, and his unrelenting conflict about it and steadfast belief that Bucky was still Bucky beneath the brainwashing, helped make Winter Soldier into one of the most exciting and moving of the Marvel movies. Their continued melodrama and connection have carried through Civil War and Infinity War, and Bucky is a huge fan favorite. It’s hard to imagine where the MCU would have gone without the Winter Soldier storyline as a part of it.

Yet Marvel has also begun to overplay its hand where these tropes are concerned. They’ve been placing all of their chips on grief as the one failsafe to motivate a hero for too long. It worked so effectively for them before as a critical plot device that Infinity War can be read as a culminating series of attempts at impactful permadeaths in order to galvanize our heroes.

As the Russo brothers and Marvel Studios co-president Kevin Feige gleefully tease that some of the characters lost in Infinity War will really stay dead, they’re missing the point of why we love these films. We don’t need characters that we adore to remain dead for their lives to matter, but we’d like it if their deaths meant something when they happen instead of merely serving as a momentary plot beat.

It’s this kind of cheapened take on death-as-heroic-motivation that makes the Russos open Avengers: Infinity War with the horrific genocide of the Asgardians and the brutal deaths of Loki and Heimdall, just so that Thor is feeling sad and mad enough to go on a reckless quest. Do they know Thor at all? He would have done that anyway.

Will Loki or Heimdall ever return? I’d love that. Loki has also come back from death, not once, but twice, because he still had great things to contribute to the MCU narrative. Good characters in fantastical films don’t need to stay dead, but they do need good plotlines. The problem here doesn’t hinge on whether these characters should come back, but whether they should have died so wastefully in the first place. I don’t go into Avengers for gritty genocidal realism. I want to see them do the impossible.

Does Bucky Barnes’ return to the world cancel out who he was before or the value of how he seemingly died fighting alongside Steve Rogers, Steve’s shield in his hand? Hardly. It heightened the emotional impact of both characters in the modern day because of what they shared in the past. Thus it would likely be with a reunited Diana Prince and Steve Trevor.

We cannot know the circumstances of how they will come together again, but their history, and Diana having felt Steve’s loss, makes the relationship all the richer and all the more compelling. Their experiences are something that we will never experience, but we can have the chance to cheat death and live vicariously through them.

Source.

#wonder woman #wonder woman 1984 #ww1984 #steve trevor #diana prince #wondertrev

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allanfoo4u-blog · 5 years

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I don't know who authored this, but it's powerful, insightful, full of knowledge, wisdom and is educative! Take time to read it_ ....

EACH GIVES WHAT HE HAS

YOU CANNOT GET BY PRAYER WHAT YOU SHOULD GET BY CHARACTER & OBEDIENCE

A man’s character is his fate Heraclitus Thomas Jefferson, the third President of the United States (US), said: “Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude.”

As a clergyman, I have watched pitiably how people self-sabotage themselves by seeking spiritual solutions to character-deficit issues. They look around at everybody as suspects for their predicaments when their greatest demons lurks within them- their character.

What we often call our destiny is truly our character, and since that character can change, then destiny can be altered. Character is destiny.

Is prayer actually EVERYTHING? Many would begin to argue back and forth on this intriguing question, but my main purpose of writing this piece is not to get involved in arguments. Arguments don’t improve the validity of a ‘truth;’ they only determine how long it would take before you realise it.

Most people believe that we can pray ourselves to success and get away with virtually anything if we become a stickler to some prayer routines. There is no amount of spiritual penance that can substitute for character. Sometimes, you need character, not prayer.

Dutch Sheets said: “Prayer is not a check request asking for things from God; it is a deposit slip- a way of depositing God’s character into our bankrupt souls.”

British writer and politician, Thomas Macaulay (1800-1859), said: “The measure of a man’s character is what he would do if he knew he never would be found out.” I have often said that what would ultimately destroy a man going to high places in life is not really the enemies that are waiting for him there, but the character that followed him there.

I want to emphatically underline the fact that this write-up is not meant to trivialise prayers in any way. I have observed that many people take character for granted, while overzealously tuning on into their spiritual mode.

We have become so spiritually in tune through prayers that we neglect the place of character and our relationship with people. Many are actually ‘heavenly’ bound, but with no earthly relevance. You can speak with spiritual eloquence, pray in public and maintain a holy appearance, but it is your behavior and character that will actually trigger the manifestation of all that God has for you.

You must learn to treat people with courtesy.

The Shunammite woman must have been praying for a child all through her life. By being hospitable to a man of God, she eventually got her much-awaited miracle. It wasn’t prayer that opened the door for her; it was her character. Assuming she wasn’t hospitable, she would have missed a critical miracle.

Many times, we pray, fast and bind demons that don’t exist when our real demons are just our greatly flawed character. Many have insulted people that were divinely placed and orchestrated to help them fulfil their destiny. Some people are keeping malice with their destiny helpers.

Treat people with respect. Treat strangers with courtesy. Never look down on anybody. God can use anyone to change your story.

Abigail Van Buren said: “The best index to a person’s character is how he treats people who can’t do him any good, and how he treats people who can’t fight back.”

You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him. The way we treat people we think can’t help or hurt us, like housekeepers, waiters, and secretaries, tells more about our character than how we treat people we think are important. How do you treat people?

One of the most impressive architectural feats and the greatest military defence project in history is the Great Wall of China. In 1987, UNESCO designated the Great Wall a World Heritage site, and a popular controversial claim that emerged in the 20th century holds that it is the only man-made structure that is visible from space.

Originally conceived by Emperor Qin Shi Huang (c. 259-210 B.C.) in the 3rd Century B.C. as a means of preventing incursions from Mongolians and barbarian nomads into the Chinese Empire, the wall is one of the most extensive construction projects ever completed.

History has it that when the ancient Chinese decided to live in peace, they made the Great Wall of China; they thought no one could climb it due to its height. During the first 100 years of its existence, the Chinese were invaded thrice and every time, the hordes of enemy infantry had no need of penetrating or climbing over the wall, because each time, they bribed the guards and came through the doors.

The Chinese built the wall, but forgot the character- building of the wall-guards. Though the Great Wall has over the years become a powerful symbol of the country’s enduring strength and spirit, but it has actually been a good reminder to the Chinese of the superiority of human character.

The Chinese realised much later that the best defence against the enemy is not a fortified wall, but a fortified character. Thus, the building of human character comes before building of anything else.

Prayer is not EVERYTHING! Build relationships, and don’t ever forget that God will always use man. Be mindful of your words and how you speak to people. Work seriously on your character and attitude towards life.

I want to say emphatically that character is not optional; it is sacrosanct to the future that God has planned for you. No matter where you place prayers, character matters. The greatest fraud in life is religion without character. A man without character is recklessly alive.

William Shakespeare captured it succinctly when he said: “The fault is not in our stars, but in ourselves.” Peter Schutz, the former chief executive officer of Porsche said: “HIRE CHARACTER; TRAIN SKILLS.” Back in the days when Germany was divided, a huge wall separated East and West Berlin.

One day, some people in East Berlin took a truck load of garbage and dumped it on the West Berlin side.

The people of West Berlin could have done the same thing, but they didn't.

Instead they took a truck load of canned goods, bread, milk and other provisions, and neatly stacked it on the East Berlin side.

On top of this stack they placed the sign:

“EACH GIVES WHAT HE HAS"

How very true! You can only give what you have.

What do you have inside of you?

Is it hate or love?

Violence or peace?

Death or life?

Capacity to build or capacity to destroy?

What have you acquired over the years?

Team spirit or pull down architecture ?

"EACH GIVES WHAT HE HAS"

Think about it!

Please give out the good in you always.

God bless you...

#prayer #god #gods #insightful #wisdom

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popcornbutterflymedia · 3 years

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every episode since the pilot has been a favorite, so to call this one another favorite is redundant. this is a standout episode, a breakthrough. there is a lot to unpack and i love it.

this episode grounds the central romance in the real world between two people burdened by responsibility, haunted by their past, hardened by their own hurts. there has always been a personal need for a love story between two people who feels undeserving of love, while the other is incapable of giving love. i’ve always wondered at the dynamics of two damaged beings, if love is even possible for them. this single episode has made it that story, and it’s incredibly satisfying.

a random, possibly unrelated question: are hardened people who aren’t used to being vulnerable considered broken, when they don’t show emotion, and are incapable to let emotion in or are they just shaped differently? if they are indeed brojen, is brokenness even a bad thing?

this installment in the series is a reckoning with the hurts that shape people, acceptance and healing.

we are reminded of the outburst from the previous installment that seemingly came out of left field. it accomplished what it set out to do, which was to drive a wedge between taguro and sensui, and thus by extension the friend group. it was clear, after this confrontation that their alter egos are still alive, ready to answer either's call. what it hasn't done, at this point, is explain why everything imploded in the first place. more on that later. what it has also done though, is show donny's improved acting, which frankly, til now still leaves me speechless. the sparks between donny and belle were also on full display, so bright, it's blinding, so present it will be foolish to deny it.

in deib’s bedside monologue for an audience of one, he laments his predisposition to hurt everyone he loves, compounded by having to constantly prove his worth, he carries the weight of the world in his heart. weather or not this is the factual truth matters little when life makes one question one’s worth, and capacity to love.

onscreen moments become relatable when fictional situations are made alive by feelings that become friends you know do well, and emotions take hold of the heart, like this one did and never let go. there is still a heaviness as this is being written, that is not unwanted.

at the barb, team max inquires about the girl's supposed friendship with deib, which paved the way to a map of max's heart, along with a comprehensive history of its heartbreaks. this lesson includes a chapter on childhood love, one she willingly waited on for years. it was a summer romance, new and shiny, bright and childlike and blinding. she had the boy's heart in her keeping only returned when and shares when the boy returned home. it felt good, she said, to be loved, and be loved in return, to be accepted unconditionally. it was good. it was good, until the boy discovered the bigger world, and the bigger world discovered the boy. the world gave everything rj wanted, and maybe demanded so much from him in return. home was difficult to come back to, where without a word, with his heart in her hands, waiting and waiting, her and waiting. that is how we, the audience found her: waiting. that is how her friends found her: waiting. that is how deib met her: in a state of mistrust, and uncertainly waiting.

without a word of absolution, from rj, max took on the responsibility of being left behind. she was left to her own devices for survival, thus the harsh exterior, the high walls around her heart, taking on the pain, keeping it all in, while her trust issues affect all her present relationships, active and possible ones.

a belated realization is that max and deib share a selflessness that can be toxic, in that they both take responsibility for any pain, or unfortunately circumstance. they internalize that weight and carry it around, unprompted

writing is usually a balm for a heavy heart. there is something about putting words to one’s feelings and seeing those words on a safe writing blank space that makes everything better. it has saved max countless times over, that is until it hasn’t.

max’s dad has been surprising me since the beginning. the anchor, and stand up man that is as a character is genuinely refreshing where stories like these are concerned. he is a character i am grateful for. he is found in her eldest daughter’s room late at night after a long day. he worries about max, and doesn’t want her to stay out late, as it may affect her academics. it is powerful to only be asked to do well in school and nothing else. he then proceeds to speak about her mom, for the first time ever. he tells her how he met her mother, a petty thief from a world so different than what he had known. it must have been refreshing to not answer to familial demands, and be treated, and challenged as an equal. it must have been the newness of it all, but there was enough love between them for max to be given a place in the world.

verbal assurance matters. we tend to believe the effects of our life circumstances. we live by that belief until someone comes along and tells us that our minds are playing tricks on us. a definitive absolution and acceptance.

if he had only known, if he had only been told he says, he would have taken care of her, he would have loved her in an instant. his daughter would ask for nothing. the daughter assures her father everything is as it should be, if it wasn’t she wouldn’t be the brave, strong girl that she is. if it wasn’t, he would not be happy with the family he has now. elle, maxrill, and macy. macy, the present wife is a complicated character. macy, the wife that met the world’s standards is in earshot of the room where the conversation that matters is taking place. the door is open, almost giving her permission to listen in. and she does. and she breaks. and she’s a beautifully broken down human being. with wine and an embrace from her loyal but just as hurt daughter, macy attempts to collect pieces of her dignity and bravely keeps it together. i felt that. i felt issa and melizza who both impress every episode. it’s one of the most beautiful moments in the entire series. there’s more story to be told there. stories of mothers and daughters and girls and women and their plight, what hey have to endure, a respected place in the world, for acceptance, for love. goodness, for love. (reason number 345554345678844 for season 2 please and thank you! XD)

back at benison, teams max and deib are still reeling from their rift a plan of action - taguro and sensui together again. it’s the most sincere, funniest, most kilig version of of modern pass the message ever played that involved both friend groups. it gave us jealous deib, triggered max, and kilig tochiko and it got tagsen to crack. it also gave us a cast who has mastered the art of perfect timing with each other.

the mean girls are meaner than ever. elle, is in understandable pain. her own, and as an advocate for her mother. it’s aimee’s pride that is severely offended. she is barely hanging on to her place in benison’s social hierarchy and jostling for deib’s attention. the key to both injuries is max’s removal from campus. a plan is hatched: hurt the girl, and convince the queen bee whose name was once never dared to be spoken of to take up her place in benison again.

en route to the lockers, driven by a pang of jealousy, triggered by max's one word conformation, deib is eager to patch things up with the girl. unbeknownst to him, the girl in question is being followed through the hallways. the assailant got to the lockers, to max before deib ever did. max fought back just like she promised her dad, except, she doesn't win every fight. and this is one of her unlucky nights. deb found unconscious max sprawled across the hallway. in a fit of panic, and urgency to save her, in that moment, all bets, competition, tension and cold wars are off. deib carries max his arms to safety.

she wakes up in a hospital bed surrounded by her friends, her teacher, her parents, dazed and confused, not knowing how she got there in the first place. her doctor explains she suffered a head trauma, good thing her friend found her and brought her to the hospital. said friend in question sits quietly by her bedside. a ghost of a grateful smile appears on her lips, as she catches the glimmer of satisfaction in his eyes. for a moment, she basks in being the hero of the day. she basks in being her hero.

upon further questioning, it is determined that she does not remember anything. max’s dad wants to have the case investigated. the hero of the day. he introduces himself as deib lhor enrile. the father who is meeting the boy for the first time has heard about him. heroic acts lose their value for people whose unfaltering reputation precedes them. it’s going to be an uphill battle for thee girl’s affections, and her father’s approval. this is just the starting point.

max’s classmates wait patiently outside her room. the conversation of choice is max and elle’s family set up, initially a little less discreet until the chatter caught elle’s ire. they had no idea of the ties that bind the two girls. that is until deib chimes in. family is important to max and elle, he says, much to everyone’s surprise.

how could he ever know? this is the same question i had regarding episode five. i was reminded that i had tweeted my confusion about max’s sudden outburst and max and deib’s ensuing confrontation. while we understand friendship fights, max and deib’s just seemed a little to unwarranted, and a little to personal. we get a flashback of max in deib’s room, talking about family sealed with pinky promises, vouched for by an elementary school award in trustworthiness.

i cried. that broke me. butterflies for kilig are fine, but the older you get the more conversation matters. the desire to be seen, to have others be witness to your existence, to validate your journey. the older you get. the small acts of kindness make up grand love. now we understand.

back at the hospital, everything is going well with max’s family unit, which includes macy and elle. she is about to rest when she gets a call from her uncle and grandmother. aside from max, her lola and tito get to speak to maxim too. they get to thank max’s dad for sponsoring her grandmother’s medicines. striking is macy’s reaction to her husband’s helping hand, then we are reminded that she did not know how to feel about her husband’s act of charity. it’s a small thing, but this show wins with their attention to detail.

max becomes her old, spunky mindoro self. brave, astig, angas. all in front of the new family who despite trying, despite the love, she has been tiptoeing around. they saw her loud and strong, even deib did, and for some that whole picture broke me. there is something so sad, yet so victorious about instinctively letting people, especially those you’ve been impossibly proper around, see who you truly are. in some ways it’s also a slap in their faces, a wake up call to allow people to be who they truly are. thank you for that moment.

on a moment of authenticity is where this episode ends. a moment of peace, tentative. consider this the first dig in a deeper excavation of character and history that will make up this love story. i remember tagging this episode six and episode seven twin episodes. i might be a week late but i am excited to revisit that.

just infinite amounts of gratitude for this show, and it’s substance, and its heart, and boundless love for the kids, the cast of characters who are all special, who all have my heart. just for giving me something to write, and keeping me sane, i owe this show a lot.

love and gratitude.

#tv: he's into her #tv

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