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somanyerikas · 3 years

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Nostalgia sells - or does it? About BBC’s rehiring of a previous showrunner for Doctor Who as a marketing strategy

All, right, this is the one where I deal with my issues about RTD’s rehiring from the standpoint of BBC’s business strategy . Brace for passive agression, swearwords, brief history of british television and numbers. So, so many numbers.

Allright, so I already wrote a post about my problem with RTD’s (re)hire from the creative standpoint (it’s here in case you’re interested), but hey, I can bitch about it all I want, but we all know what caused the BBC to make this decision, right? You’ve heard about it for sure. The Dropping Ratings. You’ve read about it on so many posts, lots of them probably oh-so-gladly conflating this fact with their own opinion about the deteriorating quality of the show. (Don’t worry, we’ll get to that.) So Obviously the execs at the Big BBC Quarters needed to do something about it, and what better way to go than rehire a guy who’s run at Doctor Who is a warm childhood memory for so many in it’s fanbase? After all, it’s what we’re seeing nowadays: from Star Wars return to wave of 80′s nostalgia to every old blockbuster star doing a comeback, there is but a single conclusion - nostalgia sells.

Or does it?

Part One: Moving with the change; or very much refusing to.

Let’s start this off with some facts about the ratings for Doctor Who. (Well, I warned you there’s gonna be numbers, didn’t I. Stick with me, I’m going somewhere with this I promise.) In it’s beginnings, in the sixties and seventies , the series flown high, averaging a viewership from 8 up to 10 million viewers per season. Collin Baker’s series 17 brought in a record of 11.21 milion viewer asses in front of a good ol’ TV screen, real champagne opener here. But, as it happens, things were downhill from here. During the eighties, the rating started dropping steadily, reaching an all-time low of 4.15 milion couch-warming bottoms in 1989, the last season of the classic era.

Years passed, 16 of those years to be exact, and here comes our saviour RTD. Under his wings, the revived series premiered, bringing in over 10 milion viewers to the premiere episode of season 1, Rose. A viewership this high did not last for long, but still, RTD’s seasons averaged between 7 and 8 milion viewers per season, which seemed pretty respectable. But then, as the story likes to repeat itself, not unlike the bbc execs just did, along came the decline again. Ever since 2010, the ratings began steadily dropping again, from 7.95 in 2010 to 5.46 in 2017. Then DW experienced an unexpected peak in 2018 with the premiere of Jodie Whittaker’s first season, which averaged 7.96 viewing asses, but then continued the dropping trend on the next season, averaging 5.40 viewing butts.

So what went wrong?

You see, part of the reason that Doctor Who was bringing in such great viewership numbers in the 60′s and 70′s, was that, to put it simply, BBC did not have much competition. Or, to be exact, only had one competitor. ITV was literally founded in order to break BBC’s monopoly over British television. But in the 80′s, with the launch of Channel 4 and Sky, the british viewers had more and more options to choose from. So logically speaking, they no longer had to watch BBC’s programming just because there was nothing else on. There was more and more new programes to boredom-watch. And here’s something y’all need to know about the tv industry: the boredom-watchers, the casuals? That’s the most important demographic. As hard as it might be to swallow, us hardcore fans, forum dwellers and Ao3 gremlins, we’re not as big of a group as we’d like to think. Loving fans are important to the tv execs as providers of word-of-mouth advertisment, but the real numbers come from the casual, everyday viewer who will just put on the next episode cause the other one was kinda fun I guess. Or more fun than the other options, anyway.

And this is why, by the way, when someone is conflating low viewership with the show Dissapointing The Fans, they’re full of shit. I’m sorry, but we’re really not that much of a force here, definitely not enough to make such a big impact on the numbers. Another factor, that some of you probably noticed already, is that the numbers I’m quoting are from british tv only, while the online fandom is very much international, so our opinions matter even less to the british execs, I’m sorry again, hard pill to swallow I know, but true nonetheless.

But I digress. So, to sum up the previous paragraph, Doctor Who’s viewership decline in the 80′s was the effect of the changing landscape of the TV industry, with which the BBC struggled to come to terms with.

Sound familiar?

Let’s move on to the 2010′s, shall we?

2010 was is actually a good marker of a year to choose, because it marks one important thing that begun a big change in the industry. This was the year in which Netflix expanded their services overseas, from being a DVD rental company to providing VOD services. Over the next decade streaming services grew in importance, from being an add-on to your cable TV that you didn’t really want but they were throwing it in for cheap, to very much self-sustainable media services you might very well buy instead of buying the cable. And if you look at the numbers for Doctor Who viewership declining over the last 10 years, that’s precisely what’s been happening. It’s not that people don’t want to watch Doctor Who on tv, they don’t want to watch tv in general. Do you know what was the most popular channel in Britain this year? Can you guess? Fucking Netflix that’s what. It’s just slowly-yet-steadily ceasing to be the way we use home entertainment anymore. Again, not much to do with the audience approval, because for that matter, let’s see about the specific episodes that saw the spikes in viewership.

Rose, which i mentioned at the start of it, was for the longest time the unquestionable queen when it comes to viewership, at 10.81 milion. The next episode, The End of the World, pulled in 7.97 - almost 3 millions worth of lost viewer-butts in one week? Is it because it was so much worse than it’s predecessor? No, it simply did not have the smell of Newness, the Event You Must See, and as such brought forth less of the casual viewers who were simply curious about The New Thing. The next season followed the similar formula, peaking at the premiere, when the marketing was at it’s strongest, going down during the season, sometimes rising slightly for the finale, sometimes not. The most popular episodes are, of course, the specials - yet again, the vibe of The Event To Be Seen worked here, but one more thing working to their advantage is they often aired in spaces between seasons, serving as both a long-waited Crumbs of Content for the fans, and the basically stand-alones for the casuals. Do you know what the single most watched episode of revived DW is? No, it’s not Tennant’s goodbye with the role (yeah I know, I thought it had to be that as well). It was Voyage of the Damned, between seasons 3 and 4. The perfect standalone for the casual watcher. And last but not least, you know one more special feature that brought, maybe not as much, but definitely more than expected? The 1996 movie Doctor Who, with 9.08 million. Again, a perfect standalone.

But the standalones aren’t the only way to grab the viewership. The currently-highest viewing non-special episode of DW? The Woman Who Fell to Earth, Jodie Whittaker’s introduction. In 2018 no less, in the year when the streaming was the ruler supreme, this episode brought a whooping 10.96 million buts to the good ol’ TV again. Let me reiterate: this episode brought in more viewers than Rose did in 2005, while having WAY more competition and way less favorable circumstances of release that RTD’s debiut did. Not only that, it managed to bring on some numbers for the entire season as well, not as good of course as the premiere (because again, the Event vibes faded), but still brought a better average than the last six seasons did. (Again, let me reiterate: more than the last SIX seasons. More viewership than any series since 2010, since the Streaming Wars.) So clearly, this must be the way, right? Catering to this Weird New Trend, that saw directors notice there do in fact exist other actors than white men, that surely brought in some profit, even Marvel does it now, right? Out with the old, in with the new!

Part 2 The Deceitful Charm of Nostalgia

Well, it turns out the whole Doing New Things deal didn’t work out that well after all, now did it? The second season penned by Chibbnal averaged 5.40 milion, that’s 2.5 million drop from the previous one! It must mean it didn’t work, right? Well, yes and no. As much as the refreshment of the formula as simple as Let’s Put A Woman In It absolutely worked for one season, it very visibly did not hold up for longer. An Event-Episode is something that can still happen on TV, Event-Series? That’s pretty much reserved for streaming now, if you think about it, and it’s honestly kind of a miracle that Series 11 did as well as it had. Two consecutive Event-Series on network tv? Flat out impossible.

So how to make those ratings great again? How to get those butts in seats of the Good Ol’? Well, the execs of the BBC have a plan for that. They brought in a devouring beast, and it’s name is: Nostalgia.

Without a doubt, there is a number of people who feel nostalgic about RTD’s era of Doctor Who. It’s a lot of people’s fond childhood memory, or the series they started with, and judging by the numbers, there should be quite a lot of them. So the new plan, as it appears, is to get to those who maybe lost interest in the show and lure them with the promise of the thing That Is Totally Like The Thing You Used To Love, Remember? (This is why I don’t actually think that RTD will be allowed to do anything new and interesting, that’s not what they hired him for. And that’s why I think this is bad from the creative standpoint.) So there are two questions here: One, will the people be lured? And two, for how long?

Nostalgia as a marketing strategy is something that you’re probably sick of seeing already (I know I am). But it has very much been effective on many levels, especially the eighties-baiting, Stranger Things style, can bring a new IP up to relevance. But what about old IP’s that want to have a comeback?

It’s kind of dificult to find another TV show that I could compare to Doctor Who. Most series that have been running for that long are mostly soap operas, that operate on slightly different rules, and are also targeted to a different audience. So as much as the movie series is still not exactly the best comparison, when I think about a big IP, campy sci-fi, family-oriented (at least in theory) on its path back to relevance, I think about Star Wars, obviously. The Force Awakens gambled on that nostalgic feeling and won big, but the next two movies, while still financially successful, were nowhere near the astounding success of the first one. And that’s because - you guessed it - it created the Event You Must See again, The Great Comeback, but merely two years later, the comeback became old news. So what we can gain from that is that nostalgia can create an Event as well as a new trend, if not better. But the question remains: how long will that last?

That is, after all, the main difference between a movie franchise and a TV series in the traditional, network TV sense of the word: movie franchise must bring in the viewership every year or two, and TV series must bring in viewers every week for at least two months. Is RTD’s Nostalgia Vibes enough to provide for that?

I’ll say this: I’m absolutely certain that the 60th anniversary will be very popular. I still don’t think it will break any records because, as I’ve been trying to explain for this whole post, it is not 2007 anymore no matter how much the tv execs would like it to be. But ironically, the almost-certain success of the special is the very thing that could undermine the effect of bringing their precious Nostagia Boi back onboard. Remember, the first Event Episode is The Big Oof. That’s the one that gets asses to the Good Ol’, if anything ever does. After the first big event one, that’s the point when things start going down. They’re wasting their Special Event Boi for something that already would be an event, dear fucking gods, I hate your plan and I would still execute it better. Either have RTD be the Anniversary Guy and then hire someone new, use that hype and keep it going, OR have RTD come in after the anniversary, then at least you get the Event Effect for the premiere of his first return season. Fukin’ amateurs.

But even if they did that, here’s the thing: do you think that the people who departed from the show years ago actually want to watch another three to five seasons of The RTD Show? I mean, I’m sure the thought warmed some hearts, for sure. A number of people will definitely gladly watch the anniversary, probably the first few episodes of the first return to the basics, but after that? In the world when, due to streaming, they have an easy way to revisit the actual thing they’re nostalgic towards? I honestly don’t think so. And you’re not really gonna get many new people by going back, if that nostalgia factor isn’t there. And then there’s casual viewers, the backbone, as we established. And here’s the thing: lots of those people don’t even know who the current showrunner is, cause they’re not Terminally Online like we are, and the second thing? Lots of those people ARE JUST NOT WATCHING NETWORK TV, IM SORRY GARRY. They’re just. They’re just not. I don’t know how to spell it out better. Even my mum has netflix now. Your biggest base is in another castle mate, gotta get moving and gotta get moving quick, cause here’s another thing: all the nostalgia in the world will not do SHIT for you if your target, people who were kids/teens when the RTD era was airing, PROBABLY DON’T EVEN HAVE A FUCKING TV ANYMORE CAUSE THEY MOVED OUT OF THEIR PARENTS FLAT AND LOTS OF YOUNG PEOPLE JUST DON’T BOTHER. Just. I’m sorry but you’re trying to resuscitate a decade-deceased corpse there buddy. It just won’t work. The times have changed and you gotta swim or drown, and it’s just not gonna be 2005 again, no matter how hard you pretend it is. It’s not your content it’s your business model. Just push more marketing for your iplayer or whatever, focus on streaming as your primary not your secondary cause that’s just what it is now, and maybe don’t rely on the viewer-counting systems of the yesteryear to evaluate your business. Or else you’re gonna get stuck sacrificing the creative growth of your show for a marketing strategy that probably won’t even fucking WORK.

There, I got it of my chest. Feel free to reblog, and also: you somehow got to the end of this, congrats! I’ll make numbers nerds out of y’all yet.

#it's like. my sister and I were #watching a movie lately. the one with multiple will smiths and the de-aging tech #(don't recommend it it's real boring)#but when Youngened Will Smith appeared on the screen my sister got my spiting my tea laughing by innocently saying:#"oh i don't know this actor. it's nice that they're giving opportunities to the young actors. great to see a new face in the biz''#and u know what #this rehire is the same fucking vibe to me #some cunts from marketing plastering make-up to an old man's face and pretending its 2005 still #anyway #doctor who #i guess.

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midzelink · 3 years

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People of Shadow: Who Were the Twili’s Ancestors, Really?

The speculation surrounding the mysterious origins of the Twili in Twilight Princess is far from a new topic amongst fans of the series; I distinctly remember staying up late into the night scrounging around old forums in my early teens, ingesting thread after thread on the very subject, hoping against hope that someone smarter than me would at last have found the truth amidst the lies. Those kinds of analyses, the pure intrigue that leads to hours of reflection and research, has long been one of the series’ drawing points for me; that no matter how cracked and inconsistent the story Nintendo has chosen to weave, fans of the series will again and again use everything at their disposal to fill in the cracks.

If you’re reading this, it’s highly likely you’re familiar with the the two most common theories: that they were either Sheikah or Gerudo (though the evidence I’ve seen for the latter has always been shaky at best). When you get right down to it, it’s not as if who the Twili once were really matters - it’s certainly something Nintendo didn’t give more than a few seconds thought - but speculating is fun, and something on which I’ve spent much more time than I’d like to admit. Though the reality, of course, could simply be that they were no one, just a hodgepodge group of dark magic users, never before seen, I always found myself asking: If they were anybody, who would they be? Is there any in-game evidence to suggest as much? I would argue that yes, there is - and though what I’ve written here is hardly groundbreaking, it is fairly comprehensive, and with any luck, I’ll be able to convince a few of you along the way.

With all that out of the way, I would at last like to state that, if anyone, I firmly believe the Twili’s ancestors were Sheikah, and I’ve done my best to compile my reasoning for this below.

The Banishment of the “Interlopers”

Before we get into specifics, I wanted to lay some groundwork establishing when, exactly, the Twili’s ancestors were banished by the Light Spirits at the behest of the gods, as the timeline of events will be important in a moment. In Twilight Princess, we first hear about the dark interlopers and their quest for the Sacred Realm from Lanayru; there was an era of peace in Hyrule, but when word of the realm and the holy triangles within it spread, war broke out amidst the populace. From within this greed-fueled chaos arose the interlopers, “wielding powerful sorcery” - and so great was their transgression against the goddesses that they ordered the Light Spirits to seal them away in shadow forever. (If the story of a war breaking out over the Sacred Realm sounds familiar, that’s because the Hyrulean Civil War, which ended shortly before the events of Ocarina of Time, shared the same conflict; it’s entirely possible that the two wars were one and same or overlapped in some fashion, but for this post specifically, that possibility isn’t entirely relevant.)

This era of strife is colloquially referred to as the Interloper War by many, and from Lanayru’s tale alone we can extrapolate that, at the very least, the banishment of the Twili happened before the events of Ocarina of Time; the struggle was fought over the Triforce, after all, which was claimed and broken apart in all three splits of the timeline following the events of that game. It’s also important to note that Ganondorf was banished to the Twilight Realm shortly after the events of Ocarina of Time in the Child Timeline, and that this was long after the Twili’s ancestors had been banished there; so it can be said conclusively that the Interloper War could not have taken place between the events of Ocarina of Time and Twilight Princess.

The Sheikah, Few and Far Between

It was important that we establish a rough estimate of when, exactly, the Twili’s ancestors were banished for one very crucial reason: to shed some light one who they likely weren’t, and who they could have been. At some point before the events of Ocarina of Time, there was a mysterious group of dark magic wielders known only as “the interlopers” that, all at once, were banished to an alternative dimension - an act that, had there been any of their tribe left behind, likely would have put a serious strain on their numbers. And within Ocarina of Time - a game that takes place after this banishment would have occurred - we learn of a tribe who suffered one such fate:

“They say that Princess Zelda's nanny is actually one of the Sheikah, who many thought had died out.”

As we all know, Impa is the only Sheikah present in Ocarina of Time - I would argue not quite the last, if Impaz in Twilight Princess is any indication - but regardless, they are so few and far between that the general populace had one point believed them to be extinct. Things weren’t always this way; at the very least, we can extrapolate that there were a great many Sheikah around the time of time of Skyward Sword, and even within the context of Ocarina of Time, Kakariko Village was in relatively recent history a Sheikah village that was closed off to the common people. What truly happened to the Sheikah that drove them to near extinction is anyone’s guess, but I would argue that it was likely a combination of two things:

the Hyrulean Civil War, which lasted very, very long, had many casualties, and the Sheikah (being in service to the Hyrulean Royal Family) were likely at the forefront of this, and

on top of this, perhaps before or even coinciding with the Civil War, a not unsubstantial number of the Sheikah broke off from their tribe, betrayed the Royal Family, and tried to claim the Triforce and the Sacred Realm as their own.

Of course, this relies on the assumption that the Sheikah could ever, under any circumstances betray the Royal Family - betray Hylia, the goddess whose bloodline it is supposedly their sworn duty to serve. And though I will not be touching on this quite yet, I did want to bring it to attention, as it is overall a crucial piece of the puzzle - but we have some more ground to cover first.

(As for what I meant in the beginning of this segment when I said who they likely weren’t, I was specifically referring to the Gerudo, a people who many others speculated could have been the the Twili’s ancestors. While it’s true that the Gerudo people have mysteriously vanished by the era of Twilight Princess, they are very much present in Ocarina of Time - and we have established that the banishment of the Twili’s ancestors occurred before the events of that game.)

Beings of Shadow, Enter the Twilight Realm

When all is said and done, the coincidental timing of both the banishment of the interlopers and the dwindling numbers of the Sheikah isn’t quite groundbreaking evidence of anything; after all, it would not be completely out of the realm of possibility that the Hyrulean Civil War had been entirely at fault for their dwindling numbers. However, given what we know about how twilight affects ordinary denizens of the world of light, I would argue that Sheikah may have been the only group of people capable of becoming the Twili, and it is for this reason that I feel assured in my conclusions:

“Twilight covered Hyrule like a shroud, and without light, the people became as spirits. Within the twilight, they live on, unaware that they have passed into spirit forms...”

This twilight - the very glow that transforms the unawares citizens into spirits and Link into a beast - is the very same “light” that pervades the Twilight Realm, and it can only be assumed that any ordinary light dwellers banished there would also become as spirits. Yet in the case of the Twili’s ancestors, this emphatically was not the case; they were able to persist, evolving over time to become the Twili we know and love today. When Midna is explaining to Link the history of her people after the duo enter the Gerudo Desert, she says this:

“What do you think happened to the magic wielders who tried to rule the Sacred Realm? They were banished. They were chased across the sacred lands of Hyrule and driven into another realm by the goddesses... Its denizens became shadows that could not mingle with the light.”

And after Link retrieves the Master Sword, breaking the curse that Zant placed on him:

“This thing is the embodiment of the evil magic that Zant cast on you. It's definitely different from our tribe's shadow magic...”

It’s clear that the Twili and their ancestors had and continue to have a very strong connection to shadow. We know that anyone from the world of light who enters the twilight becomes as a spirit; not even wielders of the Triforce are exempt from its effects, though it does, admittedly, affect them in different ways. (Zelda is the one clear exception to this, an anomaly which I go over in this post - a short and recommended read before continuing.) Just as the Twili, a people of shadow, cannot mingle in the world of light, people of light cannot mingle in the world of shadow - but the Twili are hardly the only people in the series to have a strong connection to the shadows.

"Have you heard the legend of the ‘Shadow Folk’? They are the Sheikah...the shadows of the Hylians.”

The Sheikah, time and time again, are referred to as people of shadow; Impa awakens as the Sage of Shadow, and the accursed Shadow Temple lies on the outskirts of her hometown of Kakariko. We know that the twilight affects all whom it touches in the world of light - “light and shadow can’t mix, as we all know” - but what if the light dweller in question were a Sheikah? How could a realm of shadows snuff out the light of one who is already a shadow?

I would like to posit, then, that even if the Twili’s ancestors had been a mixed bag of peoples and cultures drawn together by the lure of the Sacred Realm, only a people like the Sheikah - a tribe who had perfected mastery over shadow magic, so much so that they had become one with them - would have been able to persist in the anti-light of the Twilight Realm and, over centuries or perhaps millennia, evolve to become the Twili. Anyone else would have simply become spirits upon entering the realm, doomed to spend the rest of their days neither alive nor dead.

Eyes of Red, Show Us the Truth

Now, there is one other crucial piece to this puzzle, and it revolves around one other trait that the Sheikah are known for: with the exception of Breath of the Wild (the disparity of which I have my own theories about, but I won’t get into that here), they all have red eyes. This is something that’s never really commented on in any of the games, but it’s an important enough physiological trait that Sheik, who is merely Princess Zelda in disguise as a Sheikah, also bears the distinctive eye color. Though it’s common knowledge that Midna’s eyes are also red (as are the rest of the Twili’s), this alone doesn’t speak much to a correlation between the two peoples; no, in order for this parallel to mean anything, we must first understand the significance of the Sheikah’s red eyes, and how exactly that ties back to the princess of twilight and the rest of her people.

First, let’s take a look at Ocarina of Time. When Kakariko Village is attacked just before Link heads for the Shadow Temple, Sheik has this to say about Impa:

“The evil shadow spirit has been released! Impa, the leader of Kakariko Village, had sealed the evil shadow spirit in the bottom of the well... But the force of the evil spirit got so strong, the seal of the well broke, and it escaped into the world!! I believe Impa has gone to the Shadow Temple to seal it up again...”

Anyone who has played Ocarina of Time knows that the Shadow Temple is a dark and wicked place, teeming with the souls of the undead and illusions that, without the ability to see through, would completely inhibit any progress one would try to make. As Link traverses the temple, he bears the Lens of Truth: a peculiar artifact (importantly, in the shape of a Sheikah Eye) that reveals the world as it truly is. It is a one-of-a-kind item, and without it, no ordinary person would be able to make it through the Shadow Temple, much less fight the invisible monsters that lurk within - but Impa is no ordinary person.

The explanation is really quite simple: the Sheikah’s red eyes are not merely a distinguishing, but purely aesthetic characteristic (like the red hair of the Gerudo), but are indicative of the fact that they can see through even the strongest of illusions with the naked eye. It’s the reason the Lens of Truth was crafted in their image; though one who wields the lens may not be a Sheikah, they, too, can view the world as one with this powerful artifact, seeing through artificial walls, finding invisible items...and even meeting the spirits of the departed.

Let’s go back to Midna; after you first meet her in the sewers of Hyrule Castle, slowly making your way to the rooftops and the imprisoned Zelda beyond, you encounter several spirits of Hyrulean soldiers along the way. Midna taunts you, saying this:

“It looks like the spirits in here... They're all soldiers. Where in the world could we be? Eee hee!”

As a beast, Link is now able to tap into his new “animal senses” to see that which would be invisible to his human eyes. Yet Midna is able to see the spirits as they are, naturally, without any aid whatsoever - almost as if she retained the truth-seeing eyes of her ancestors.

Before we move on, I did want to bring attention to one other thing the Twili and the Shiekah have in common - and though it’s not technically directly related to their shared ability to see the truth of the world around them, it is tangentially related in the sense that it involves illusions. Early on in Twilight Princess, there is a scene where Midna seemingly transforms herself into Colin and subsequently Ilia, taunting Link about the capture of his friends. It’s a somewhat strange occurrence that happens exactly once and is never brought up again, and it happens so early in the game that, for a very long time, I simply brushed it off and never gave it a second thought.

However, I think it’s pretty safe to say that what we’re seeing here is a demonstration of illusion magic - Midna is not literally shapeshifting into Link’s friends, as if she had this ability, she could simply return herself to her true form at any given moment. This is significant because there is a fairly notable example of something identical to this in the very game I mentioned earlier in this segment; in Breath of the Wild, the Yiga Clan, a group of Sheikah who swore allegiance to Calamity Ganon, consistently over the course of the game demonstrate the ability to use illusion magic, posing as weary and lost travelers on the road, waiting to ambush Link and take him by surprise. And though the Yiga may not technically be Sheikah anymore, they were at one time - and I find it exceptionally hard to believe that such a technique would be exclusive to the Yiga and the Yiga alone.

Echoes of the Past

I would, of course, be remiss to not touch on the various architectural and technological similarities between the two peoples. On their own, they aren’t very substantial pieces of evidence - but if we have already accepted the fact that the Twili’s ancestors were, in fact, Sheikah (which, for the purposes of the rest of this essay, I will now do), then it is worth it at the very least to take a look, to paint a somewhat fuller picture of the story.

Take, for instance, the runes in the above photo, adorning the wall behind the throne in the Palace of Twilight. Similar runes adorn the cloak that Midna wears while in her true form, and other miscellaneous places scattered throughout the palace. It is not that much a stretch to say that the large emblem in the center is somewhat reminiscent of the iconic Sheikah Eye, though distorted and changed over time as it may have become. An eye that is unmistakably Sheikah in inspiration even appears on the back of the Fused Shadow, and it is for this reason that I chose that image to head this essay to begin with. But eyes aside, by far the most significant comparison once again returns us to Breath of the Wild, and the Sheikah as they were ten thousand years past.

The ancient-yet-highly-advanced Sheikah technology scattered across the once mighty kingdom of Hyrule in Breath of the Wild simply oozes Twili, from the harsh, blue aesthetic to the angular similarities between the script of the Sheikah and the runes of the Twili. And while it is worth mentioning that this is decidedly technology, and not magic, there is an argument that can be made in the world of fantasy over whether there is in fact a significant difference; looking at the image below of a room in the Palace of Twilight, floating platforms decorated in patterns resembling circuitry, it’s not hard imagine that this is nothing more than highly advanced tech, remnants of a history they left behind.

At the end of the day, it doesn’t especially matter whether either is a case of expressly magic or technology; all we can extrapolate from this information is that the Sheikah who had been banished to the Twilight Realm likely had some rudimentary knowledge of their tribe’s lost technology, had they been banished in an era when it already was lost - or, at the very least, had the same design sensibilities. Whatever the case, it is worth is to try and acknowledge the potential connection, as there is much that can be gleaned by examining the world around us and its history - even a fictional one - and to that end, I would now like to begin wrapping up this unnecessarily long piece of persuasion by doing just that.

Those Who Do Not Learn From History...

...are doomed to repeat it, as the saying goes. Taking everything I’ve written here into consideration, it’s not hard to construe a conceivable timeline of events that could have led to the birth of the Twili, and the eventual invasion of the world of light headed by Zant. Long ago, in an age ravaged by a war over a lust for the Sacred Realm, a sector of Sheikah betrayed the Hyrulean Royal Family, split off from the main clan, and sought their own power - and if the story of a Sheikah betrayal sounds at all familiar, that’s because it emphatically is.

Breath of the Wild is an anomaly in many respects; it seems to defy all expectations of what we understand about the timeline, reviving a people (the Sheikah) who, for all intents and purposes, died out long ago - but it paints a very important picture of what the Shadow Folk had to endure serving underneath the Royal Family of Hyrule, a picture that elucidates precisely why such a betrayal would conceivably take place. The story of the Yiga Clan is, ultimately, one rooted oppression - and though I could go into great detail about the nature of this oppression here, and quite frankly the justification for their cause, I’ve already done so in this post, which I would again encourage be read by anyone who cares about the subject. Very basically, the Yiga were right - having been cast out and mistreated by the very family they served, they did the only thing they could, and turned against them. Glimpses of this mistreatment are riddled in previous entries of the series, but no more jarringly than in Ocarina of Time’s Shadow Temple: a place that likely was once a sacred place to the Sheikah people, reduced to nothing more than a haunted torture chamber recounting Hyrule’s “bloody history of greed and hatred" under direct orders by the Royal Family. In Twilight Princess, Zant specifically refers to Link as “one of the light dwellers who oppressed [their] people” while talking to Midna at Lanayru Spring - and though I would not go so far as to say that Zant was completely justified in his actions, perhaps he had a point. Perhaps the story of the Twili’s ancestors isn’t one of a an evil, mindless group of powerful interlopers who sought power for power’s sake - but one of fierce retaliation. One of a group of people who had soiled their hands with the blood of the Royal Family one final time and said enough. I believe that the Twili’s ancestors were Sheikah, and I will continue to believe it until proven otherwise; for all the reasons listed above, and also because, frankly, if I were a Sheikah, I would betray the Royal Family, too. It happened once - so it will happen again - and again, and again, until the cycle of violence and oppression is studied and learned from, and the truth comes out.

But then, so long as history is written by the winners, it will take more than the red eyes of a Sheikah to parse the truth from the lies.

#twilight princess #ocarina of time #sheikah #twili #yiga #breath of the wild #midna #impa #loz meta #legend of zelda #tloz #loz #analysis #this is actually a heavily revised and edited version of an essay from earlier last year #but that was back when this blog was new and also it was bad #i'm a lot happier with how this one came out!#text #mywriteups*#myposts*

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blackswaneuroparedux · 3 years

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Anonymous asked: I really enjoyed your book review of Sebastian Junger’s Homecoming. Perhaps enjoyment isn’t the right word because it brought home some hard truths. Your book review really helped me understand my older brother better when I think back on how he came home from the war in Afghanistan after serving with the Paras and had medals pinned up the yin yang. It was hard on everyone in the family, especially for him and his wife and young kids. He has found it hard going. Thanks for sharing your own thoughts as a combat veteran from that war. Even if you’re a toff you don’t come across as a typical Oxbridge poncey Rupert! As you’re a classicist and historian how did ancient soldiers deal with PTSD? Did the Greeks and Roman soldiers even suffer from it like our fighting boys and girls do? Is PTSD just a modern thing?

Part 1 of 2 (see following post)

Because this is subject very close to my heart as a combat veteran I thought very long and hard about the issues you raised. I decided to answer this question in two posts.

This is Part 1 and Part 2 is the next post.

My apologies for the length but this is subject that deserves full careful consideration.

Thank you for your lovely words and I especially find its heart warming if they touched you. I appreciate you for sharing something of the experience your ex-Para brother went through in coming home from war. I have every respect for the Parachute regiment as one of the world’s premier fighting force.

Working alongside them on missions out in Afghanistan I could see their reputation as the ‘brain shit’ of the British Army was well deserved. They’re most uncouth, sweary, and smelliest group of yobbos I’ve ever had the awful misfortune to meet. I’m kidding. The mutual respect and the ribbing went hand in hand. I doff my smurf hat to the cherry berries as ‘propah soldiers’ as they liked to say especially when they cast a glance over at the other elite regiments like HCav and the guards regiments.

Don’t worry I’ve been called a lot worse! But I am grateful you don’t lump me with the other ‘poncey’ officers. Not sure what a female Rupert is called. The fact that I was never accused of being one by any of those I served with is perhaps something I take some measure of pride. There are not as many real toff officers these days compared to the past but there are a fair few Ruperts who are clueless in leading men under their charge. I knew one or two and frankly I’m embarrassed for them and the men under their charge.

I don’t know when the term PTSD was first used in any official way. My older sister who is a doctor - specialising in neurology and all round brain box and is currently working on the front lines in the NHS wards fighting Covid alongside all our amazing NHS nurses and doctors - took time out one evening to have a discussion with me about these issues. I also talked to one or two other friends in the psychiatric field too. In consensus they agree it was around 1980 when the term PTSD came into usage. Specifically it was the third edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-lll) published by the American Psychiatric Association in 1980 partly because as a result of the ongoing treatment of veterans from the Vietnam War. In the modern mind, PTSD is more associated with the legacy of the Vietnam War disaster.

The importance of whether PTSD affected the ancient Greeks and Romans lies in the larger historical question of to what extent we can apply modern experience to unlock or interpret the past. In the period since PTSD was officially recognised, scholars and psychologists have noted its symptoms in descriptions of the veterans of past conflicts. It has become increasingly common in books and novels as well as articles to assume the direct relevance of present-day psychology to the reactions of those who experienced violent events in the historical past. In popular culture, especially television and film dramas, claims for the historical pedigree of PTSD are now often provided as background to the modern story, without attribution. Indeed we just take it as a given that soldier-warriors in the past suffered the same and in the same way as their modern day counterparts. We are used to the West to map the classical world upon the present but whether we can so easily map the modern world back upon the Greeks and Romans is a doubtful proposition when it comes to discussing PTSD.

Simply put, there is no definitive evidence for the existence of PTSD in the ancient world existed, and relies instead upon the assumption that either the Greeks or Romans, because they were exposed to combat so often, must have suffered psychological trauma.

There are two schools of thought regarding the possibility of PTSD featuring in the Greco-Roman world (and indeed the wider ancient world stretching back into pre-history, myth and legend) – universalism and relativism. Put simply, the universalists argue that we all carry the same ‘wetware’ in our heads, since the human brain probably hasn’t developed in evolutionary terms in the eye blink that is the two thousand years or so since the Greco-Roman Classical era. If we’re subject to PTSD now, they posit, then the Greeks and the Romans must have been equally vulnerable. The relativists, on the other hand, argue that the circumstances under which the individual has received their life conditioning – the experiences which programme the highly individual software running that identical ‘wetware’, if you will – is of critical importance to an individual’s capacity to absorb the undoubted horrors of any battlefield, ancient or modern.

Whichever school one falls down on the side of is that what seems to happen in any serious discussion of the issue of PTSD in the ancient world is to either infer it indirectly from culture (primarily, literature and poetry) or infer it from a comparative historical understanding of ancient warfare. Because the direct evidence is so scant we can only ever infer or deduce but can never be certain. So we can read into it whenever we wish.

In Greek antiquity we have of course The Illiad and the Odyssey as one of the most cited examples when we look at the character traits of both Achilles and Odysseus. From Greek tragedy those who think PTSD can be inferred often point to Sophocles’s Ajax and Euripide’s Heracles. Or they look to Aeschylus and The Oresteia. I personally think this is an over stretch. Greek writers do; the return from war was a revisited theme in tragedy and is the subject of the Odyssey and the Cyclic Nostoi.

The Greeks didn’t leave us much to ponder further. But, with rare exceptions, the works from Graeco-Roman antiquity do not discuss the mental state of those who had fought. There is silence about the interior world of the fighting man at war’s end. So we are led to ponder the question why the silence?

This silence also echoes into the Roman period of literature and history too. Indeed when we turn to the Roman world, descriptions of veterans are rare in the writings that survive from the Roman world and occur most often in fiction.

In the first poem of Ovid’s Heroides, the poet writes about a returned soldier tracing a map upon a table (Ov. Her. 1.31–5):

...upon the tabletop that has been set someone shows the fierce battles, and paints all Troy with a slender line of pure wine: ‘Here the Simois flowed; this is the Sigeian territory, here stood the lofty palace of old Priam, there the tent of Achilles...’

This scene provides an intimate glimpse of what it must have been like when a veteran returned home and told stories of his campaigns: the memories of battle brought to the meal, the crimson trail of the wine offering a rough outline of the places and battlefields he had experienced. The military characters in poems and plays show a world in which soldiers are ubiquitous, if somewhat annoying to the civilians. Plautus, for instance, in his Miles Gloriosus, portrays an officer boasting about his made-up conquests – the model for the braggart in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum – and Juvenal complains about a centurion who stomps on his sandalled foot in the bustling Roman street.

Despite this silence, compelling works have been written that interweave vivid modern accounts of combat and its aftermath with quotes from ancient prose and poetry. At their best, these comparisons can illuminate both worlds, but at other times the concerns of the present-day author are imposed on the ancient material. But the question remains are such approaches truthful and valid in understanding PTSD in the ancient world?

So if arts and literature don’t really tell us much what about comparative examples drawn from military history itself?

Here again we are in left disappointed.

According to the Greek historian, Herodotus, in 480 B.C., at the Battle of Thermopylae, where King Leonidas and 300 Spartans took on Xerxes I and 100,000-150,000 Persian troops, two of the Spartan soldiers, Aristodemos and another named Eurytos, reported that they were suffering from an “acute inflammation of the eyes,”...Labeled tresantes, meaning “trembler,”. It is that Aristodemos later hung himself in shame. Another Spartan commander was forced to dismiss several of his troops in the Battle of Thermopylae Pass in 480 B.C, “They had no heart for the fight and were unwilling to take their share of the danger.”

Herodotus again in writing about the battle of Marathon in 490 B.C., cites an Athenian warrior who went permanently blind when the soldier standing next to him was killed, although the blinded soldier “was wounded in no part of his body.” Interestingly enough, blindness, deafness, and paralysis, among other conditions, are common forms of “conversion reactions” experienced and well-documented among soldiers today

Outside the fictional world, Roman military history tell us very little.

Appian of Alexandria (c. 95? – c. AD 165) described a legion veteran called Cestius Macedonicus who, when his town was under threat of capture by (the Emperor-to-be) Octavian, set fire to his house and burned himself within it. Plutarch’s Life of Marius speaks of Caius Marius’ behaviour who, when he found himself under severe stress towards the end of his life, suffering from night terrors, harassing dreams, excessive drinking and flashbacks to previous battles. These examples are just a few instances which seem to demonstrate that PTSD, or culturally similar phenomena, may be as old as warfare itself. But it’s worth stressing it is not definitive, just conjecture.

Of course of accounts of wars and battles were copiously written but not the hard bloody experience of the soldier. Indeed the Roman military man is described almost exclusively as a commander or in battle. Men such as Caesar who experienced war and wrote about it do not to tell us about homecoming.

It seems one of main challenges when we try to see military history through the lens of our definition of PTSD is to first understand the comparative nature of military history and what it is we are comparing ie mistaking apples for oranges.

The origin of military history was tied to the idea that if one understood ancient battle, one might fight and, more importantly, one might lead and strategise more effectively. In essence, much of the training of officers – even in the military handbooks of the Greeks and Romans – was an attempt to keep new commanders from making the same mistakes as the commanders of old. Military history is intended to be a pragmatic enterprise; in pursuit of this pragmatic goal, it has long been the norm to use comparative materials to understand the nature of ancient battle.

The 19th Century French military theorist Ardant du Picq argued for the continuity of human behaviour and assumed that the reactions of men under the threat of lethal force would be identical over the centuries: “Man does not enter battle to fight, but for victory. He does everything that he can to avoid the first and obtain the second....Now, man has a horror of death. In the bravest, a great sense of duty, which they alone are capable of understanding and living up to, is paramount. But the mass always cowers at sight of the phantom, death. Discipline is for the purpose of dominating that horror by a still greater horror, that of punishment or disgrace. But there always comes an instant when natural horror gets an upper hand over discipline, and the fighter flees”

These words offer insight to those of us who have never faced the terror of battle but at the same time assume the universality of how combat is experienced, despite changes in psychological expectations and weaponry, to name but two variables.

Another incentive for scholars and researchers is to turn to comparative material has been the growing awareness of the artificiality of how we describe war. A mere phrase such as ‘flank attack’ does not capture the bloody, grinding human struggle. Roman authors – especially those who had not fought – often wrote generic descriptions of battle. Literary battle can distort and simplify even as it tells, but if the main things are right – who won, who lost, and who the good guys are – the important ‘facts’ are covered. Even if one intends to speak the truth about battle, the assumptions and the normative language used to describe violence will affect the telling. We may note that the battle accounts in poetry become increasingly grisly during the course of the Roman Empire (perhaps owing to the growing popularity of gladiatorial games),while, in Caesar’s Gallic War, the Latin word cruor (blood) never appears and sanguis (another Latin word for blood) only appears in quoted appeals (Caes. B. Gall. 7.20, in the mouth of Vercingetorix, and 7.50, where the centurion M. Petronius urges his men to retreat). The realities of the battlefield are described in anodyne shorthand. In much the same way that the news rarely prints or televises graphic images, Caesar does not use gore, and perhaps for the same reason – to give a sense of reportorial objectivity.

Another element in the interpretive scrum is a given author’s goal in writing an account in the first place: Caesar, for example, was writing about himself, and he may have been producing something akin to a political campaign ad. Caesar makes Caesar look great and there is reason to believe that, if he was not precisely cooking the books, he did give them a little rinse to make him look more pristine. Given the many factors that complicate our ability to ‘unpack’ battle narratives, Philip Sabin has argued that the ambiguity and unreliability of the ancient sources must be supplemented by looking at the “form of the overall characteristics of Roman infantry in mortal combat”. Again the modern is used to illuminate that which is obscured by written accounts and the “the enduring psychological strains” are merely unconsciously assumed.

These legitimate uses of comparative materials have led to a sort of creep: because military historians have used observations of how men react to combat stress during battle to indicate continuity of behaviour through time, there appears to be a consequent expectation that men will also react identically after battle. This creep became a lusty stride with modern books written about the ancient world and PTSD.

After I finished my tour in Afghanistan I read many books recommended to me by family and friends as well as comrades. One of these books is well known in military circles - at least amongst the thinking officer class - as an iconic work of marrying the ancient world and the modern experience of war. I read it and I was touched deeply by this brilliant therapeutic book. It was only months later I began to re-think whether it was a true account of PTSD in the ancient world.

This insightful book is called Achilles in Vietnam by Jonathan Shay. Shay is psychiatrist in Boston, USA. He began reading The Iliad with Vietnam veterans whom he was treating. Achilles in Vietnam, is a deeply humane work and is very much concerned with promoting policies that he hoped would help diminish the frequency of post-traumatic stress. His goal was not to explain ancient poetry but to use it therapeutically by linking his patients’ pain to that of the Iliad’s great hero. His book offers a conduit between the reader and the experiences of the men that Shay counsels. In the introduction to this work he makes a nod to Homerists while also asserting the primacy of his own reading:

“I shall present the Iliad as the tragedy of Achilles. I will not glorify Vietnam combat veterans by linking them to a prestigious ‘classic’ nor attempt to justify study of the Iliad by making it sexy, exciting, modern or ‘relevant’. I respect the work of classical scholars and could not have done my work without them. Homer’s poem does not mean whatever I want it to mean. However, having honored the boundaries of meaning that scholars have pointed out, I can confidently tell you that my reading of the Iliad as an account of men in war is not a ‘meditation’ that is only tenuously rooted in the text. “

After outlining the major plot points around which he will organise his argument, he notes, “ ‘This is the story of Achilles in the Iliad, not some metaphorical translation of it”.

The trouble was and continues to be is that many in the historical and medical fields began to rush to unfounded conclusions that Shay, on the issue of PTSD in the ancient world, had demonstrated that the psychological realities of western warfare were universal and enduring. More books on similar comparative themes soon emerged and began to enshrine the truth that PTSD was indeed prevalent throughout the ancient world and one could draw comparative lessons from it.

Perhaps one of the most influential books after Shay was by Lawrence Tritle. Tritle, a veteran himself, wrote From Melos to My Lai. It’s a fascinating book to read and there are parts that certainly resonate with my own experiences and those of others I have known. In the book Tritle drew a direct parallel between the experiences of the ancient Greeks and those of modern veterans. For instance, Xenophon, in his military autobiography, presents a brief eulogy for one of his fallen commanders, Clearchus. Xenophon writes that Clearchus was ‘polemikos kai philopolemos eschatos’ (Xen. An. 2.6) – ‘warlike and a lover of war to the highest degree’.

Tritle comments:

“The question that arises is why men like Clearchus and his counterparts in Vietnam and the Western Front became so entranced with violence. The answer is to be found in the natural ‘high’ that violence induces in those exposed to it, and in the PTSD that follows this exposure. Such a modern interpretation in Clearchus’ case might seem forced, but there seems little reason to doubt that Xenophon in fact provides us with the first known historical case of PTSD in the western literary tradition.”

Arguably in the West and especially our current modern Western culture is predicated at baulking at the notion of being ‘war lovers” as immoral. But such an interpretation speaks more of our modern Christianised ambivalence towards war; to the Spartans and Athenians the term would not have had a negative connotation. ‘Philopolemos’ is, in fact, a compliment, and the list of Clearchus’ military exploits functions as a eulogy. There are points where his analysis does not adequately address the divergences between ancient and modern experiences.

For all the talk of our Western culture being rooted in Ancient Greece and Rome we are not shaped by the same ethics. Our modern ethics and our moral code is Christian. There is no such thing as a secular humanist or atheist both owe a debt to Christianity for the way they have come to be; in many respects it’s more accurate to describe such people as Christianised Humanists or Christian Atheists even if they reject the theological tenets of the religious faith because they use Christian morality as the foundation to construct their own. Many forget just how brutal these ancient societies were in every day life to the point there would be little one could find recognisable within our own modern lives.

Now we come to third point I wish to make in determining where the Greeks or Romans actually experienced PTSD. This is to do with the little understood nature of PTSD itself. As much as we know about PTSD there is still much more we don’t know. Indeed one of the most problematic and complicated issues is the continued disagreement around the diagnosis and specific triggers of the disorder which remain little understood. We have to admit there are competing theories about what causes PTSD but, in terms of experiences that make it manifest, there are essentially three possible triggers: witnessing horrific events and/or being in mortal danger and/or the act of killing – especially close kills where the reality of one’s responsibility cannot be doubted. The last of these was strongly argued in another scholarly book by D. Grossman, On Killing, the Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society (1995).

Roman soldiers had the potential to experience all of these things. The majority of Roman combat was close combat and permitted no doubt as to the killer. The comparatively short length of the gladius encouraged aggressive fighting. Caesar recounts how his men, facing a shield wall carried by the taller Gauls, leaped up on top of the shields, grabbed the upper edges with one hand, and stabbed downwards into the faces of their opponents (Caes. B. Gall. 1.52). As for mortal danger, Stefan Chrissanthos in his informative book, Warfare in the Ancient World: From the Rise of Uruk to the Fall of Rome, 3500BC-476AD, puts it this way: “For Roman soldiers, though the weapons were more primitive, the terrors and risks of combat were just as real. They had to face javelins, stones, spears, arrows, swords, cavalry charges, and maybe worst of all, the threat of being trampled by war elephants.”

Such terrors are regularly attested. During his campaign in North Africa, Caesar, noting his men’s fear, procured a number of elephants to familiarise his troops with how best to kill the beasts (Caes. B. Afr.72). It should also be noted that it was not unusual for the reserve line to be made up of veterans because they were better able to watch the combat without losing their nerve. Held in reserve, they had to watch stoically as their comrades were injured and killed, and contemplate the awful fact that they might suffer the same fate. This was not a role for the faint of heart.

However, while the Romans certainly had the raw ingredients for combat trauma, the danger for a Roman legionary was much more localised. Mortars could not be lobbed into the Green Zone, suicide bombers did not walk into the market, and garbage piled on the street did not hide powerful explosives. The danger for a Roman soldier was largely circumscribed by his moments on the field of battle, and even here, if he was with the victorious side, the casualties were likely to be light: at Gergovia, a disaster by Caesar’s standards, he lost nearly seven hundred men (Caes. B. Gall. 7.51). In his victory over Pompey the Great at Pharsalus, his casualties numbered only two hundred (Caes. B. Civ. 3.99).

So we are left with the disturbing question: were the stressors really the same?

This is the part where I also defer to my eldest sister as a doctor and surgeon specialising in neurology and just so much smarter than myself.

My eldest sister holds the view in talking to her own American medical peers that despite similar experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq, British soldiers on average report better mental health than US soldiers.

My sister pointed out to research study done by Kings College London way back around 2015 or so that analysed 34 studies produced over a 15-year period (up to 2015) and found that overall there has been no increase in mental health issues among British personnel - with the exception of high rates of alcohol abuse among soldiers. The study was in part inspired the “significant mental health morbidity” among U.S. soldiers and reports that factors such as age and the quality of mental health programs contribute to the difference between the two nation’s servicemen and women.

She pointed out that these same studies showed that post-traumatic stress disorder afflicts roughly 2 to 5% of non-combat U.K. soldiers returning from deployment, while 7% of combat troops report PTSD. According to a General Health Questionnaire, an estimated 16 to 20% of U.K. soldiers have reported symptoms of common mental disorders, similar to the rates of the general U.K. population. In comparison, studies around the same time in 2014 showed U.S. soldiers experience PTSD at rates of 21 to 29%. The U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs estimated PTSD afflicted 11% of veterans returning from Afghanistan and 20% returning from Iraq. Major depression was reported by 14% of major soldiers according to another study commissioned by RAND corporation; roughly 7% of the general U.S. population reports similar symptoms.

It’s always tough comparing rates between countries and is not a reflection of the quality of the fighting soldier. But one finding that consistently and stubbornly refuses to go away is that over the past 20 years reported mental health problems tend to be higher among service personnel and veterans of the USA compared with the UK, Canada, Germany and Denmark.

However my sister strongly cautioned against making hasty judgements. And there could be many variable factors at play. One explanation is that American soldiers are more likely than their British counterparts to be from the reserve forces. Empirical studies showed reservists from both America and British troops were more likely to experience mental illness post-deployment. It was also worth pointing out that American soldiers also tended to be younger - being younger and inexperienced as well as untested on the battlefield, service personnel would naturally run the risk of greater and be more vulnerable to mental illness.

In contrast, the elite forces of the British army, such as your brother’s Parachute Regiment or the Royal Marines, were found to be the least affected by mental illness. It was found that in spite of elite forces experiencing some of the toughest fighting conditions, they tended to enjoy better mental health than non-elite troops. The more elite a unit is or more professional then you find that troops tend to enjoy a very deep bonds of camaraderie. As such the social cohesion of these fighting forces provides a psychological protective buffer. Not for all, but for many.

More intriguing are new avenues of discovery that might go a long way to actually understanding one of the root causes of PTSD. According to my sister, recent research carried out in the US and Europe and published in such prestigious medical journals as the New England Journal of Medicine (US) and the Lancet (UK), seems to establish a causal link between concussive injury and PTSD.

One recent study looked at US soldiers that concerned itself with the effects of concussive injuries upon troops after their return from active duty during the war in Iraq.

Of the majority of soldiers who suffered no combat injuries of any sort, 9.1 per cent exhibited symptoms consistent with PTSD. This allows a baseline for susceptibility of roughly 10% of the population. A slightly higher number (16.2%) of those who were injured in some way, but suffered no concussion, also experienced symptoms. As soon as concussive injuries were involved, however, the rates of PTSD climbed dramatically.

Although only 4.9% of the troops suffered concussions that resulted in complete loss of consciousness, 43.9% of these soldiers noted on their questionnaires that they were experiencing a range of PTSD symptoms. Of the 10.3% of the unit who suffered concussion resulting in confusion but retained consciousness, more than a quarter (27.3%) suffered symptoms. This suggests a high correlation between head trauma and the occurrence of subsequent psychological problems. The authors of the study note that ‘concern has been emerging about the possible long term effect of mild traumatic brain injury or concussion...as a result of deployment related head injuries, particularly those resulting from proximity to blast explosions’

Although these results are preliminary, if confirmed they have profound implications for anyone trying to understand the nature of warfare in the ancient world, especially the Western world.

So why does it matter?

In Roman warfare, wounds were most often inflicted by edged weapons. Romans did of course experience head trauma, but the incidence of concussive injuries would have been limited both by the types of weapons they faced and by the use of helmets. Indeed the efficacy and importance of headgear for example can be deduced from the death of the Epirrote general Pyrrhus from a roof tile during the sack of Argos. It is likely that the Romans designed their helmets with an eye to blunting the force of the blows they most often encountered. Connolly has argued that helmet design in the Republican period suggests a crouching fighting stance (see P. Connolly, ‘The Roman Fighting Technique Deduced from Armour and Weaponry’, Roman Frontier Studies (1989). However my own view is that the change in helmet design may signal instead a shift in the role of troops from performing assaults on towns and fortifications when the empire was expanding (and the blows would more often rain from above) to the defence and guarding of the frontiers.

While the evidence is clear that concussion is not the only risk factor for PTSD, it is so strongly correlated that it suggests that the incidence of PTSD may have risen sharply with the arrival of modern warfare and the technology of gunpowder, shells, and plastic explosives. Indeed, accounts of shell shock from the First World War are common, and it was in the wake of that war that those observing veterans suspected that neurological damage was being caused by exploding shells.

For soldiers of the Second World War and down to our modern day, an artillery barrage is like an invention of hell.

As one American put it in his memoirs of fighting the Japanese at Peleiu and Okinawa, “I developed a passionate hatred for shells. To be killed by a bullet seemed so clean and surgical but shells would not only tear and rip the body, they tortured one’s mind almost beyond the brink of sanity. After each shell I was wrung out, limp and exhausted. During prolonged shelling, I often had to restrain myself and fight back a wild inexorable urge to scream, to sob, and to cry. As Peleliu dragged on, I feared that if I ever lost control of myself under shell fire my mind would be shattered. To be under heavy shell fire was to me by far the most terrifying of combat experiences. Each time it left me feeling more forlorn and helpless, more fatalistic, and with less confidence that I could escape the dreadful law of averages that inexorably reduced our numbers. Fear is many-faceted and has many subtle nuances, but the terror and desperation endured under heavy shelling are by far the most unbearable” (see E.B. Sledge, With the Old Breed at Peleiu and Okinanwa, 2007).

The psychological effect of shelling seems to result from the combined effect of awaiting injury while at the same time having no power to combat it.

There is another aspect that I alluded to above which is the psychological and societal conditioning of the Roman soldier. In other words a Roman male’s social and cultural expectations of his place in the world. Feelings of helplessness and fatalism were probably a less alien experience for most Romans – even those in the upper classes. In general, the Romans inhabited a world that was significantly more brutal and uncertain than our own.

This another way of saying that the Roman and 21st century combat are very different in a variety of ways that subject the modern soldier to a good deal more stress than the legionary was ever likely to suffer. And the Roman’s societal preparation – his life before the battle – was far more robust than that we enjoy today.

Take infant mortality. In the modern developed world, our infant mortality rates are about ten per thousand. In Rome, it is estimated that this number was three hundred per thousand. Three-tenths of infants would die within the first year, and an additional fifth would not make it to the age of ten - 50% of children would not survive childhood. Anecdotal evidence supports these statistics: Cornelia, the mother of the Gracchi, gave birth to twelve children between 163 bc and 152 bc; all twelve survived their father’s death in 152 bc, but only three survived to adulthood. Marcus Aurelius and his wife, Faustina, had at least twelve children but only the future emperor Commodus survived.  

Then look at how that child grows up. The typical Roman child would be raised in a society that readily accepted ultra-violent arena entertainment, mob justice, frequent and bloody warfare as a fact of life. This was reinforced by religious and societal encouragement to see war as natural and beneficial, open butchering of food animals, a total lack of support structures for the poor and less able.

Compared to the legionary our modern soldier has been protected from such realities to a greater degree than at any other point in history, and will thus be far less well prepared for the horror of a warfare that contains far more stress factors than for a man who might fight a handful of battles in his military career, with long periods of relative calm in between, state of war notwithstanding. Modern special and elite forces training often emphasises the brutalisation and ‘rebuilding’ of the recruit in readiness for this step into darkness, but it seems likely that no such conditioning would have been needed two thousand years ago.

I would argue that we experience war very differently from the way the Romans did. Our modern identity is defined far more by our Western Christian heritage than our Western Classical roots. They are in fact world apart when it comes to ethics and morality. Consider the fact that when we talk of war and killing today we often do so through conflict between our civilian moral codes – which offer the strict injunction not to do violence to other human beings – and wartime, when men are commanded to violate such prohibitions. It is a terrible thing to try to navigate ‘Thou shalt not kill’ and the necessity of taking a life in combat.

It is sometimes the case that the qualities that make the best soldier do not make the best civilian, a point amply attested in Greek poetry by heroes such as Heracles and Odysseus.

The Romans, for their part, celebrated heroes such as Cincinnatus, who could command effectively and then leave behind the power he wielded to return to his humble plough. It is important, however, when evaluating combat and its effects in the ancient world, that we do not read our ambivalence about violence onto the Romans. They inhabited an empire whose prosperity was quite openly tied to conquest.

As M. Zimmerman writes in his academic article, “Violence in Late Antiquity Reconsidered’ (2007), “The pain of the other, seen on the distorted faces of public and private monuments, or heard in the screams of criminals in the amphitheatre, reassured Romans of their own place in the world. Violence was a pervasive presence in the public space; indeed, it was an important basis for its existence, pertaining as it did not only to victories over external enemies but also to the internal order of the state.”

Violence then was both the means and the expression of Roman power. The Roman soldier was its instrument. The Roman warrior then would have brought a different perspective to lethal violence, and would have had a far more restricted moral circle to his modern counterpart – his friends and family, clan, patron and clients, as opposed to millions of fellow citizens via the internet and social media.

Part II follows next post

#question #ask #PTSD #war #roman #greek #classical #legionary #spartan #mental health #depression #trauma #warfare #british army #mental illness #homecoming #soldiers #combat veterans #veterans

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thatbanjobusiness · 3 years

Audio

Salty Dog Blues Before Flatt & Scruggs

Old Salty Dog Blues is a Flatt & Scruggs classic and today the song is considered a staple of bluegrass music. However, bluegrass itself is a recent genre, with its inception typically dated 1945. Many songs from its early repertoire came from other sources, both popular and folk.

Above you will hear a compilation of Salty Dog Blues from recordings between 1924 and 1950 (ending with the Flatt & Scruggs version). Below the cut I will provide more details of each selection you hear. This is not a comprehensive compilation; for instance, I don’t have Lead Belly’s 1948 audio here. However, what’s incredibly fun about this recording is how DIVERSE the music is. And how incredibly NOT bluegrass it is.

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Like many people, I became familiar with Salty Dog Blues through the Flatt & Scruggs version recorded in 1950. The song was catchy enough for me to love it as it was, but listening to the lyrics further piqued my interest. I realized I was assuming what a “salty dog” was through the lyrics rather than comprehending a precise meaning. But looking at the lyrics for clues was hard. There’s a narrative, but it feels just off-kilter enough I suspected the song had folk origin. Some folk tune variations can sound like the verses were sewn together haphazardly like patches of different fabrics on a quilt. It makes sense, when you consider how people would’ve gotten the words. Passing lyrics through oral tradition can create curious, wonky results and fascinating variations and divergences. It’s a game of generational telephone. Clearly, I had to go beyond the Flatt & Scruggs version in order to decipher my term.

And so. I found myself. Deep-diving this tune’s origin.

There hasn’t been a second wasted in my life fishing through this. Holy wow have I run into a jackpot of wildly fun things! I still have so much more I could look into. I had suspicions of what I’d find, but the following lyrics posted into a forum went way beyond expectations:

Two old maids laying in the grass, One had her finger up the other one's ass Honey, let me be your salty dog!

Welp. If I hadn’t been interested already, I would have been THEN. And the sexual explicitness... and other fun times... just kept COMING (wordplay intended here).

So! Below cut, I want to go further into the meaning of “salty dog” and listen to how the song developed from a blues tune to the 1950 Flatt & Scruggs country song. It would require a whole other post to go past 1950, so that’s why I’ve restricted my range from the earliest recorded tunes to the moment it entered bluegrass.

1. What *IS* a Salty Dog?

The first entertainment I got was seeking a definition for “salty dog.” The OED gave nothing to me, sadly, so I was left to peruse other sources. Reading forums, interviews, articles, and more, I encountered a hilariously diverse array of proposed definitions. I got peeps saying:

It’s a type of soft drink.

It’s a type of cocktail using grapefruit juice and gin or vodka. It’s served in a glass with a salted rim.

It’s the name of a specific bar in North Carolina.

It’s a medicinal solution from early frontier communities, especially in eastern Appalachia. A sausage soaked in brine solution was placed under people’s clothes during winter as a counter to pneumonia and flu.

It’s an ornery sailor, mariner, or pirate who’s spent a large portion of their life at sea. Just like a sea dog or an old salt.

It’s any person who’s really good with their work. A tough fellow, since salty can mean “full of spirit and fight.”

It’s a sweetheart, someone you love, or a favorite person. Applying salt to hunting dogs was believed to keep ticks away, and because salt was a rare commodity in those times, you’d only apply it to your favorite and most valuable dog.

It’s an illicit lover or libidinous man or woman, someone getting sex the wrong way.

It’s a pimp.

It’s a reference to oral sex. Have sex with one individual, then shortly later have someone perform oral on you.

The last one, which was embellished by Urban Dictionary (thanks, Urban Dictionary) could likely be an instance of linguistic pejoration, in which a word’s meaning “worsens” semantically over time. That said, I’ve seen everyday people in forums comment that in the 1940s and 50s in their communities, it did refer to oral sex. I’ll believe their testimony. So, contemporary to the time Flatt & Scruggs recorded, the more crude sexual sides appear to have been in vernacular use. It’s likely most if not all of the definitions proposed are real meanings of “salty dog,” but clearly the song Salty Dog Blues isn’t referring to all simultaneously.

Bluegrass musicians have not always been helpful providing a definition. For instance, Curly Seckler, one member of Flatt & Scruggs, proposed the benign soft drink suggestion. He said in this moment onstage in 1985:

Curly Seckler: I found out what a salty dog was. I think I was down here before I didn’t know, but I do now. I went home here, I believe it was last year, they had a big day down there. And, course I went over through the Smokies over there, and I stopped over there at Wiley Morris’s garage. . . . And we sang Salty Dog Blues and some of the old numbers together. But I asked him, I said, “Wiley, I’d like to know before I pass on, what in the world is a salty dog?” See, they wrote the Salty Dog Blues, him and Zeke. He said, “Well, North Carolina, years and years ago, had a drink they called salty dog. Now that’s a pop, a soda. And I said, “Well, I’m from North Carolina, but I don’t remember that.” But he said that’s why that got them the idea of writing a song called—”

And then, hilariously, Curly is distracted by his band, who’ve been whispering to each other the entire time and grinning, and calls out, “What am I hearing?” I’d like to imagine they were talking about the real meaning and Curly picked up the chatter’s more scandalous side.

After all, Zeke and Wiley Morris did not write Salty Dog Blues, and their story seems to be a coverup to defend their writer’s credit (which for the record is legitimate... a novel arrangement was given writer’s credit frequently in these times) and a polite way to get around the meaning of what a “salty dog” was. An article written by Wayne Erbsen shows that the brothers themselves gave varying definitions of the term:

Wiley explained that “I have a different definition of a salty dog than Zeke has. Back when we were kids down in Old Fort we would see a girl we liked and say “I’d like to be her salty dog.” There also used to be a drink you could get up in Michigan. All you had to do was say “Let me have a Salty Dog,” and they’d pour you one.” Zeke remembers that “I got the idea when we went to a little old honky tonk just outside of Canton which is in North Carolina. We went to play at a school out beyond Waynesville somewhere and we stopped at this place. They sold beer and had slot machines. At that time they were legal in North Carolina. We got in there after the show and got to drinking that beer and playing the slot machines with nickels, dimes and quarters. I think we hit three or four jackpots. Boy, here it would come! You know you had a pile of money when you had two handfuls of change. The name of that place was the “Salty Dog,” and that’s where I got the idea for the song. There’s actually more verses to it than me and Wiley sing, a lot more verses.”

As I and others who’ve read the article noticed, the fact that the Morris Brothers admitted there were many more verses... is indirect admittance of folk origin. The Morris Brothers were professional musicians in the 1930s, their recording of Salty Dog Blues was recorded September 29, 1938... and our earliest audio versions of the song come from the 1920s. There are many recordings of this song that predate the Morris Brothers. Still, even in a documentary from the 1970s, they maintained their story they wrote it.

But the song’s true origin outside the Morris Brothers allowed me to expand the scope of my investigation. It was time to peep into the alternate lyrics from earlier versions, and hope that those gave me a better understanding of the song and what a salty dog in this context meant.

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2. The Lyrics of Salty Dog Blues

What the Morris Brothers and Flatt & Scruggs sang were fairly tame. However, the lyrics still involved a gun being shot and a person singing the following lines:

Looky here Sal, I know you Run down stocking and a worn out shoe Honey, let me be your Salty Dog

Let me be your Salty Dog Or I won't be your man at all Honey, let me be your Salty Dog

“I won’t be your man at all” in the chorus is a good hint of what a salty dog is supposed to be. It wouldn’t make sense to replace the term “salty dog” with mariner. I suspected from the start this song’s meaning veered toward the concept of a lover, and alternate versions of the lyrics prove that the case, oftentimes in wonderfully blunt or creative verses.

As I was investigating these recordings and their artists, I ran into information discussing the early years recording Salty Dog Blues, including times from before it was recorded. Jazz musician Bill Johnson (1872-1972) had his band playing this song circa or prior to the 1910s, and in an excerpt from the book Early Blues: The First Stars of Blues Guitar, I read:

Papa Charlie’s follow-up release, the ragtimey, eight-bar “Salty Dog Blues,” made him a recording star. . . . Old-time New Orleans musicians from Buddy Bolden’s era recalled hearing far filthier versions of “Salty Dog Blues” long before Papa Charlie’s recording.

Papa Charlie Jackson recorded his version of Salty Dog Blues in 1924 and Buddy Bolden (1877-1931) was popular with his band in New Orleans from 1900-1907. So... what were these filthier lyrics from the early twentieth century?

I want to go back to the lyrics I quoted at the beginning of this post... “Two old maids laying in the grass / One had her finger up the other one's ass. Honey, let me be your salty dog!” The individual who shared these lyrics on a forum said they heard Sam Bush sing that at Rockygrass in 2002. Maybe that was a recent permutation. However, I found variations on this lyric submitted independently by others, indicating this wouldn’t have been Sam creating lyrics out of nothing. Some posts, I don’t know if they were serious or not... “Two necrophiliacs lying in a bed / Each one a-wishin' that the other was dead,” but there’s too many similarities across what I’m seeing. Other individuals said they sang lyrics like these in college parties: “Two old maids, laying in bed / One rolled over to the other and said / Honey, let me be your salty dog.” And the Kingston Trio, whose music was folk-oriented and part of the Folk Revival movement, in 1964 sang in their version of Salty Dog Blues, “There were two old ladies sitting in the sand / Each one wishing the other was a man.”

Digging deeper, I found other folk songs contained variations on the “Two old maids laying in a bed / sand” concept. This discovery is in line with authentic folk lyrics. Remember that folk music is a game of telephone, and sometimes the same verses are found in two or more songs. I found several variations of Brown’s Ferry Blues with this couplet, some of them coming from Folk Revival musicians.

These lyrics give a starting point both to how Salty Dog Blues can contain bawdier concepts, and what a salty dog is.

But lyrics from Salty Dog Blues recordings in the 1920s and 1930s give even more reliable indication. Clara Smith’s 1926 version includes:

Oh, won't you let me be your salty dog? I don't want to be your gal at all. You salty dog, you salty dog.

Oh honey babe, let me be your salty dog, Salty dog, oh, you salty dog.

It's just like looking for a needle there in the sand Trying to find a woman that hasn't got a man. Salty Dog oh you salty dog.

Her lyrics also include a couplet I found in many of the early versions:

God made a woman, he made her kinda funny Lips around her mouth sweet as any honey, Oh, you salty dog, oh, you salty dog.

It says a lot: a verse about romantic love was one of the most oft repeated couplets across Salty Dog Blues variations. Papa Charlie Jackson included that verse, as well as these others:

Lord, it ain't but the one thing grieve my mind, All these women and none is mine.

Now, scaredest I ever been in my life, Uncle Bud like to caught me kissing his wife.

And for those of you who aren’t familiar with the sentential construction, “liked to” means “almost.” Uncle Bud almost caught me kissing his wife. This is a song about a lover, and in one of these verses, the lover’s doing something taboo.

Some forum dudes claimed Mississippi John Hurt and his friends sang a line like this one below, even though they also said it didn’t make any recordings:

Well, your salty dog, he comes around When your sugar daddy's outta town Baby, let me be your salty dog

And there’s yet more elaboration about what a salty dog is in verses in Afro-Creole singer Lizzie Miles’s 1952 recording, which we do have:

Mardi Gras is a dream You can meet all those Creole queens They’re salty dogs, yes, salty dogs

If you want to blow your cares away Just walk on in the Vieux Carré You’ll find salty dogs, yes, salty dogs

Never had no name, never went to school But when it comes to loving, I ain’t no fool I’m a salty dog, yes, a salty dog

I’ve got sixteen men in love with me But the man I love ain’t legally free He’s a salty dog, yes, he’s a salty dog

Granted, I *am* sifting through a huge storm of verses and intentionally picking ones that match this narrative. But these are all lyrics that show a wonderfully off-color, sexual side to Salty Dog Blues. This song sure as hell ain’t singing about soda pop or sailing.

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3. The Earliest Recordings of Salty Dog Blues

So. In my compilation you’re listening to, what is it you’re hearing?

Between the 1920s and 1940s, “race records” were records from African-American musicians. The term would be used to describe the blues, gospel, etc. that these musicians performed. OKeh Records was the first company to use that term in 1922. Also during the 1920s, another line of records, “hillbilly” records, began; this was used to describe what was perceived as rural white musician fiddle and string band music.

These record companies, however, were separating music by race somewhat artificially. There were plenty of Black musicians playing string band music, for instance, during these times. The early history of American country music involves an amalgamation of musical ideas from many demographics sharing and adopting ideas from one to another and back again. When you listen to the compilation I made of early versions of Salty Dog Blues, you may hear a difference between the white and Black musicians, likely because of that artificial distinction I mentioned.

Still, there’s a fascinating amount of overlap. I think it’s particularly interesting to pay attention to how the melodic material varies; it’s the same core melody, but there’s certainly differences. Listening to the variations can get you a sense of how folk music is a wild world of branching versions. There’s different strains, with both the melody morphing as it gets passed person to person, and the lyrics morphing as it gets passed person to person.

Specifically, I took my samples from the following recordings:

Charlie Jackson - Released 29 Nov 1924. Papa Charlie Jackson was the first commercially successful male blues artist who played both fingerstyle and with a flatpick on his guitjo. He was born in 1887 in New Orleans. Even when he was producing his records in the early twentieth century, his music would have been old-fashioned to listeners and given people an ear to what African American music sounded like before the turn of the century. He’s similar to Lead Belly in this regard, whose 1948 recording of Salty Dog Blues I did not include in the audio compilation. Jackson’s music was also in that vague area that leaned toward hillbilly in the early days before the race records / hillbilly records division became distinct.

Lem Fowler’s Washboard Wonders - Released 30 Dec 1925. Between 1922 and 1932 this jazz musician recorded 57 songs and 23 player piano rolls in New York and Chicago. A composer, most of his recordings feature his own work; Salty Dog Blues is one of three pieces recorded with his band that is not his own. I love this recording.

Clara Smith - Dated 26 May 1926. The first commercially successful blues singers were women. Clara Blues was an early classic female blues singer, a genre sometimes also referred to as vaudeville blues that combined traditional folk blues and urban theater music. This native of South Carolina excelled at emotional slow drag blues.

Freddie Keppard and His Jazz Cardinals - recorded July 1926. Freddie Keppard was a New Orleans musician. Interestingly enough, Papa Charlie Jackson is in this version as well, this time played with a full band, and you can hear someone declare “Papa Charlie done sung that song!” at the end.

Allen Brothers - Recorded 7 April 1927. I think this is the first recording of Salty Dog Blues by white musicians we have. Born and raised in Tennessee, Austin and Lee Allen were an early hillbilly duo popular in the 1920s and 1930s. Austin played banjo; Lee played guitar and kazoo. They were influenced by local jazz and blues artists as they were growing up. It’s interesting to note that Salty Dog Blues came out of their first recording session and became a hit, selling over 18,000 copies. And this band, the first white hokum blues musicians (so I’ve seen claimed), were accidentally issued first as a race record by mistake.

McGee Brothers - Recorded 11 May 1927; released Jul 1927. Sam and Kirk McGee were white old-time / hillbilly musicians from Tennessee who performed on the Grand Ole Opry starting in 1926. Sam learned blues techniques from Black railroad workers and street musicians, and the duo would adapt blues and ragtime pieces into string band music. I LOVE this version of Salty Dog Blues; while it squarely hits the “hillbilly” genre, some of the minor melodic fragments mirror what Black blues musician Kokomo Arnold sang.

Stripling Brothers - Recorded 10 Sep 1934. Fiddler Charlie Stripling and guitarist Ira Stripling were born in the 1890s in Alabama. They’re an old-time hillbilly music duo and Charlie Stripling is considered an important old-time fiddler. Their earliest recordings reflect what they learned at home; later recordings contained increasing pop influences. Salty Dog Blues is one of their later recordings; their last release was from 1936. I would love to know more about where they got this version of the song, as I feel its melody is diverges more than the others recordings in this time period.

Kokomo Arnold - 1937. Mentioned above. Kokomo Arnold was a left-handed slide blues guitarist from Georgia.

Morris Brothers - First recorded 29 Sep 1938; released 21 Dec 1938. Second version recorded 1945. I’ve already mentioned the Morris Brothers, but there’s more information you need to know. Zeke, Wiley, and George Morris were hillbilly musicians from North Carolina popular in the 1930s. The Morris Brothers was also the band in which now-famed banjo picker Earl Scruggs had his first professional job. Scruggs played with them about eight months in the late 1930s or early 1940s. If you listen to the full Morris Brothers, it’s obvious Earl learned it from them; Flatt & Scruggs keep everything from the lyrics, harmony choices, and instrumental break points the same as what you hear here. But the Morris Brothers’s version of the song is rather original compared to everything else in this compilation, which is probably why they managed a writer’s credit for it.

Flatt & Scruggs - Recorded 20 Oct 1950; released 1 May 1952. Earl Scruggs would have brought Salty Dog Blues to the band he was now heading, Flatt & Scruggs and the Foggy Mountain Boys. This song was often sung as a trio in concerts when their usual lead vocalist, Lester Flatt, was taking a break. Their band rotated singers, performers, and other forms of variety in their radio, television, and stage shows, but such repertoire never made it onto official Flatt & Scruggs records. This record is, as far as I remember, the only instance in which another musician besides Lester Flatt sings both the verses and lead. That singer is their fiddler, Benny Sims. In later performances and recordings of Salty Dog Blues by Flatt & Scruggs, Lester Flatt took his usual role singing.

I find it interesting to also note the early musicians’ origins. Everyone came from the South. New Orleans especially appeared to have old widespread use of the song. I haven’t had time to listen to see if the musicians’ home location correlates to similarity in lyrics and melodic structure, but that would be hella fun to do sometime, too.

But! I have already fished through the song enough and given you a giant essay. Maybe at a later point I’ll have to entertain myself more and keep digging into Salty Dog Blues.

#hopefully I didn't make a link mistake or some obvious type #typo #I've written on this long enough #hope it's fun!#music #Americana Deep Dive #thatbanjobusiness #that banjo business #long post #Song Showcase #Tuning In #Haddock Deep Dives #General Banjo Business #audio #audio compilations #those old songs

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wixelt · 3 years

Text

Stargate: “Hoag” - Mass X’over Idea

About this time last year, I started watching Stargate with my dad. We watched the original movie and SG-1. And Atlantis. And the SG-1 movies. And Universe. And Origins.

We finished the franchise somewhere about a third of the way through 2020, though with how this year’s been it feels like that was years ago, now. And for a lot of the time we were watching it and for at least a little while after it, I had a thought that wouldn’t go away and that I kind of liked.

Namely that I wanted to write a Stargate fanfic of some kind, possibly even a crossover. A mass crossover, in fact. As with most of my fan-fiction thoughts, no matter the work, they eventually fell onto my pile of half-started ideas. I’m awful at keeping to things and not getting distracted by “new shiny” ideas like some kind of fanfic magpie, even when I like the idea.

That said, this was a concept I really liked, so i’m going to share the basics of it now, as far as I got with it. Maybe it will inspire someone else, or maybe i’ll come back to this someday.

Regardless, though here’s the notes:

- Post-Universe, the war with the Lucian Alliance is still going, and despite the slightly dire situation things were headed toward last we saw, the SGC’s winning. The LA are on the back foot, and is starting to break into smaller factions. One of the larger LA factions decides to cut their losses and make a run for it, their space fleet making a beeline for the Supergate the Ori Army built to link the Milky Way and Alteran Home galaxies, having either deciphered or stolen the codes required to dial it. The SGC puts together an attack force to intercept the faction at the gate and stop their escape. The fleet is accompanied by several characters from existing series.

- The battle’s one sided, but the LA faction continues to make a run for the gate. And then it happens. I’m undecided on the details, but a mix of weapons fire on the ships trying to pass through and other circumstances - in much the same way as that classic episode of SG-1 - causes the open Supergate to “jump tracks”, the destination shifting to somewhere not in the Alteran Galaxy. A side effect of energy on this scale causes all ships in the vicinity to be pulled through.

- Emerging on the far side, the surviving ships exit through what seems to be another Supergate, albeit of less refined design. Later study will show it to be Ancient, instead of Ori. This lesser design proves unstable, leading to the SGC fleet being forced to destroy both it and their crippled ships to force a ceasefire with the LA ships, stranding a cast of both old and new faces wherever they’ve ended up.

- As for where they’ve found themselves, it’s the Hoag’s Object galaxy, they eventually discover. For those unaware, this is a real ring galaxy more than 600 million light-years from the Milky Way (~200 times further from Earth than the Pegasus Galaxy). It’s a galaxy for which we have a low understanding of the mechanics behind its formation - which sparked my interest as the ideal location for a Stargate series with an underlying mystery beyond just “get home”, in the tradition of Atlantis and Universe. It’s a fun place to read and speculate about.

- The base of operations for the “Hoag Expedition” as they try to contact Earth (a challenge when their arrival method and much of their equipment has been destroyed), is the “Spire”, an automated Ancient outpost which is, as the name implies, a massive pointed tower in space. The story behind it, as the cast discover, is that the Ancients were very interested in what was causing Hoag’s Object’s structure, and sent a large automated seeding ship to the galaxy, with the intent that it would automatically drop Stargates on various interesting worlds and other locales - similar to the Destiny - also seed a few worlds with human life, as was their MO to an extent, then take up a preset location and convert itself into a stationary... station, that would serve as the Ancient’s home once they were ready to arrive - a local Supergate also being constructed as one of the projects they were intending to test alongside their studies in Hoag. Like Destiny, though, they never arrived. The Spire was dispatched late in the Ancient’s time, likely around about when they were fighting the Wraith in the Pegasus Galaxy. After that, they focused on ascension, and the Spire lay forgotten, its systems waiting for a crew that wasn’t coming.

- Some of the first things the expedition discover on arrival are tied to the local gates. Firstly, they can’t dial home. Even when they work out where they are relative to Earth, they can’t calculate what the 8 symbol address required to dial would be (for reasons made harder by the second point). There’s no indication what the address would even consist of, given there’s no “dial Earth” address in the Spire’s database - presumably the Ancients didn’t know where they’d end up dialing from, and no-one ever arrived to clarify. Secondly, while the local gates are Pegasus-era 3rd generation Stargates, they have a different color palette - being purple rather than blue, because I like purple - as well as a completely different set of symbols. These symbols are determined to be a very symbol numeric system set up in 5s, presumably because the gate seeding was automated and chose a structured visual system. I actually created a guide for this system. As might be obvious, this gate network has more symbols them any other - to account for Hoag’s Object being a larger galaxy - featuring 41 non-Point of Origin options:

- As I mentioned before, however, I wanted this to be a mass crossover, which is where the Ancients’ MO of seeding human life comes in. Like the Pegasus Galaxy, you can still have those human cultures, but how far out Hoag’s Object is - as with Stargate Universe - allows for more alien cultures as well. Which naturally lets you drop pretty much any non-Earth (or otherwise, in some cases) setting into this concept amid other, more original planets and have it turn up as the expedition does what Stargate does best: explore new worlds. RWBY? No problem. Avatar? Eeyup. Fairy Tail? Definitely. Madoka Magica? Trickier, but even with that being set on Earth the Incubators have to come from somewhere, right? MLP? Simple, if the Equestria Girls world is considered the local side of the mirror and Equestria another reality. Heck, you could even throw in something as out there as Hermitcraft and probably make it fit.

- And yes, I did briefly play around with gate addresses for a few of the above places, too, but didn’t get very far due to waning inspiration (the above symbol system itself was already my 5th or 6th attempt to make something workable). I did include my meta-logic for choosing the symbols, though:

- There were other ideas I had for this whole thing, too. I played around with the idea of writing this on a forum thread on somewhere like SpaceBattles or Sufficient Velocity, and maybe I still could one day, where other people could write in the setting too if I got enough traction (always been a big fan of interactive and/or collab ventures). Also played with the concept of a story-line of two Goa’uld “brothers” who had left the Milky Way in centuries past in search of new pickings, finding Hoag’s Object and setting themselves up as gods over multiple worlds (one of which may have been RWBY, if that gives you an idea of where that was probably going), but that fell apart once I started questioning how they got to Hoag’s Object when the Spire and its gate hadn’t been touched before the SGC arrived.

All that aside, though, this idea is out in the open now. If someone wants to play around with it, they can. Or if people want to ask what i’d do with various settings or features, i’m happy to give it some more thought to get the creative juices pumping again.

For now, though, enjoy! :)

#stargate #stargate sg1 #stargate atlantis #stargate universe #stargate hoag #fanfic #stargate crossover #crossover fanfiction #crossover #fairy tail #rwby #mlp fim

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my-darling-boy · 4 years

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hello! i really want to learn more about ww1, i saw 1917 and it sparked something in me and ww1 specifically seems so complex and interesting, but it is has a lotttt of information, do u have any advice for any specific things to read/learn about first? or should i just dive in head first and learn about random stuff?

Good question! Also, I’m REALLY happy 1917 is bringing in a lot of new people wanting to learn more about WWI!

The good news is I find WWI is a subject that naturally allows you to branch out your knowledge no matter where you start. My best tip for learning more about the history: start out with ANY area that interests you, find a fact about it, and see where it takes you! I guarantee you’ll start out just wanting to know a little more about food served in the trenches and by the end of the week, you’ll be chest deep in a million other things you got caught up in learning!

For example, one of the first things that got me interested in WWI was a memoir (which I HIGHLY recommend) by Vera Brittain: Testament of Youth. From there, I researched her brother, Captain Edward Brittain and stumbled upon the story of his death and his homosexuality. It led me to Geoffrey Thurlow, a friend he showed clear evidence of having been in love with, and then the changes in male affection during the 1900s. It led me to learn of the “Edwardian Period” and delve into the social, political, and aesthetic aspects of the era. I started watching WWI films, reading academic articles, buying books, and one piece of information led to the next!

If 1917 is what got you into this, that’s a good sign! Cos I bet you were just as hurt as I was seeing depictions of that tragedy and were moved by that heartbreak! But while you’re learning about uniforms and trench foot and so on, I think a good chunk of time should also be dedicated to understanding why it’s simultaneously important to be critical of the war, and understand more about why people were very critical of it at the time, and the lasting impact it had on soldiers all the way up to young people today because it’s a HUGE theme throughout the conflict. I do a much more eloquent job explaining it in an ask someone sent me about my interest in studying, but like I said, VERY important to understand the extent of its effects and how what happened catalysed the modern lust for violence, and why a lot of mainstream remembrance efforts today end up exploiting this tragedy for nationalist-like agendas

I will say, even though it’s not filled with as many Insufferable White Boys as the ones found lurking in WWII forums, it’s war, so you still get your fair share of nationalist, white supremacist, imperialist, pro-war, sexist/misogynist pricks, so please do research with discretion and try to avoid these people (i.e. don’t even look at the comment sections on some websites) and watch out for those boasting about how “honourable” it is for boys to have joined up and died for their country at 15 and that there is something “glorious” to be had in war (because is the biggest lie men have invented for themselves and perpetuate the bs well into the 21st century unfortunately)

Some classic things I recommend reading/watching because they got me started on bits of my own research over time and one of them might be of some interest to you:

Testament of Youth, by Vera Brittain (Book)

This true memoir details how the war affected a young British university student and how the tragedies she witnessed led her to become a VAD nurse, feminist, and pacifist. If you are a more visual learner, it was made into a beautifully shot 2014 film (obviously with some inaccuracies and omitted details) and a more in depth BBC miniseries available for free on YouTube. You may also enjoy the books “Letters From a Lost Generation”, “Because You Died”, and “Vera Brittain and the First World War” which give even more information about the Brittains and the war written by the family’s historian

The Christmas Truce commercial everyone still cries over (video)

It’s a couple minutes long, perfectly sums up what draws me to keep studying the war and my love for learning about the unique changes in human connection during the war

All Quiet in the Western Front, by Erich Maria Remarque (Book)

Another classic example of anti-war literature a lot of people start out by reading from a German perspective. You can also watch the 1930 film adaptation of the book if you would like a visual (even if it has American actors)

They Shall Not Grow Old (Film)

AMAZING first hand accounts and original newly remastered footage from the First World War. It’s arguably neautral in its stance on various factors on the war, but it does a tremendous job showing what life was like at the front and giving voices to the soldiers that lived through it to share their stories.

Oh What a Lovely War! (Film)

Another solid (and entertaining) example of media showing high criticism for the war. This film was revolutionary for its time after roughly 50 years of societal silence about the consequences and negative impacts of WWI. It is incredibly condescending and an absolute anti-war gem

Great War Tommy: the British Soldier 1914-18 (Book)

If you’re a visual learner like me and want information about the kit of a British soldier and drill among other kit care details with LOTS of photos, this a GREAT book

British Uniforms and Equipment of the First World War (Book)

Like the above but has a VERY extensive library of photos for uniforms and equipment, and even shows niche patches and what some uniforms look like inside-out! It’s available for download through MLRS Books online

Valiant Hearts (Game)

From the French perspective. Very heartbreaking game about a French soldier produced in a very unique art style and has a wonderful soundtrack. Great if you like causal, story rich games

11:11 Memories Retold (Game)

This very artistic, stylised game tells the story of a Canadian photographer hired to take photos during the war as well as a German soldier looking for his son at the front. Again, superb soundtrack, and excellent if you love causal, story rich games

Shepard’s War, by James Campbell (Book)

A lovely compilation of original artwork and biographical details about E. H. Shepard during his time as an officer in WWI. If you don’t know, Shepard is the illustrator for Winnie the Pooh! Very intriguing to see his depictions of WWI soldiers as someone who was responsible for a childhood classic

Journey’s End, by R. C. Sherriff (Play)

This play tells the story of a trio of British officers on the frontline and how the effects of shellshock has greatly impacted one of the main characters. It was also made into a film in 2018 staring Asa Butterfield, Sam Claflin, and Paul Bettany

Not About Heroes, by Stephen MacDonald (Play)

A play which tells about the gay friendship between wartime poets and officers Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen

Blackadder: Blackadder Goes Forth (Show)

You might have grown up watching reruns of this show already, but in case you haven’t, it’s the fourth series of the BBC historical comedy show Blackadder and is about as condescending as Oh What a Lovely War, but much less Heavy, aside from the last episode that is. I’ve learned it’s kind of a staple in references made by some reenactment groups :P

YouTube also has TONS of WWI documentaries from every subject under the sun, ranging anywhere from 2 minutes to 2 hours. Obviously it will be a little harder to tell if the information given is without bias, misinformation, or has questionable undertones, but it’s usually a good way to teach yourself how to always be critical of any information you take in, and also a low-maitence way to keep learning. I find it’s nice to keep a balance between informative non-fiction and historical fiction when doing WWI research to keep variation in my study and also to test my ability to tell apart inaccuracies, or just to take a break from the crushing reality of it all!

In conclusion, the answer is jump right in! You’ll learn the ins and outs of WWI research as you go along! The more you learn, the more you’ll get the hang of it!

Happy researching!

#asks #wwi #long post

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ruminativerabbi · 3 years

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Election Day 2020

Is it possible that Election Day is finally upon us? Some other time, I’d like to write about the craziness of having these election seasons that go on endlessly—you can expect the 2024 campaign to begin in all but name about a quarter-hour after the new or not-new president is inaugurated in January—and particularly in light of the relative sanity that prevails in other countries, where political campaigns last mostly for several weeks or months. (The minimum length of an election campaign in Canada is thirty-six days, for example, but the longest on record was only eleven weeks. The candidates give a few speeches, the party publishes its platform, there are some interviews and a debate or two, then the polls open and the nation votes. Only here, where the date of the next presidential election has nothing to do with the fate of the current government, is it considered normal for people to spend two or three years campaigning for office.) Today, however, I’d like to use this space to write instead about the concept of participation in an election itself.

While perusing the corners of the blogosphere that are my regular haunts, I’ve occasionally noted the opinion put forward that the American system of government is an outgrowth of the specific kind of democracy invented (and named) by the ancient Greeks and that, therefore, it can only be supported by Jews and Christians willing to set aside what Scripture teaches us about the way people should consent to be governed to embrace a system unrelated to their own spiritual heritage. Generally written by people who know their Bible but who are wholly ignorant of rabbinic tradition, these essays are mostly the work of people who find the distinction between ancient Israelite religion and modern Judaism a triviality to be skipped past rather than a detail of profound importance. How this could or should work for Christians, I’ll leave for others more qualified than myself to puzzle out. But for Jews, the question itself of whether people guided by Jewish tradition should enthusiastically embrace or merely stoically accept the concept of representative democracy is the question I’ve been pondering in these last days leading up to the election.

It surely is so that the Bible does not envisage the ancient Israelites participating in anything like a Jeffersonian democracy. Indeed, biblical tradition imagines an ideal state governed by a king who acts solely in accordance with the law of the Torah and actually goes so far as to legislate that the king may only be seated on the royal throne when he is actually holding his personal scroll of the Law in his arms. How practical that was, or if the kings of Israel truly obeyed that injunction, who can say? But it is a stunning image nonetheless, something along the lines of our nation requiring by law that the President actually hold a copy of the Constitution in his hands whenever meeting with visitors in the Oval Office or making a public address. (That might actually not be such a bad idea, now that I think of it.) Interestingly, the king isn’t expected to be a Torah scholar who can personally puzzle out obscure point of law: in cases where Scripture does not directly address some specific issue with which the king needs to deal, a large squadron of court prophets is also imagined to be in place specifically to transmit the word of God to the sovereign on an issue-by-issue basis. So the model of which those authors I referenced above are so enamored basically features God ruling the nation through the agency of a king who gets his governing instructions from God one way or the other: either directly from his own informed contemplation of Scripture or indirectly from the squadron of house seers installed in the palace for that precise purpose.

But that ideal kingdom is not where any of us lives today. Yes, it is certainly so that Jews who say their prayers in the traditional mode give voice daily to the hope that the messianic era will feature just such a king of the House of David empowered to rule over the Land of Israel in the mode described just above. But in our pre-redeemed world, the footfalls of the messiah have yet to heard even in the distance. For better or worse, we are—for the moment, at least—on our own.

I suppose it could be possible to argue that the kind of democracy that has evolved as the basis for government in these United States is thus merely an attractive stop-gap measure that traditionalists should support until the aforementioned footfalls become audible in the distance. There is, however, a rabbinic idea that actually corresponds precisely to the notion of participating in an election to choose a national leader. And that suggests to me a way to frame voting in a national election as a personal decision fully in sync with tradition.

In Jewish law, the concept of agency guarantees individuals the right to appoint agents to act on their behalf. When put baldly like that, it sounds almost banal. But behind that apparent banality is the legal force that enables the individual to act profoundly in ways that would otherwise be either impossible or, at the very least, impractical. For its part, the Talmud speaks about the concept of agency in absolute terms, going so far as to say that “the agent of an individual is legally empowered to act as though he or she were the individual him or herself.” There are exceptions, of course. For one, the Talmud makes clear that “the concept of agency is inoperative when the agent has been appointed specifically to commit a sin.” In other words, you can’t escape the consequence of wrongdoing by appointing an agent to commit the deed for you. So you can avoid the need to travel to a different locale by appointing an agent to marry your future spouse on your behalf or to act “as yourself” in divorce (or any) court, but you can’t escape the consequences of murdering someone by hiring a hitperson to pull the trigger. Nor was this “just” a regular feature of classical law in ancient times: it appears, at least in the broad way it was construed by the ancient sages, specifically to be a feature specifically of Jewish law. (The second exception, however, regards the commandments themselves: it is not deemed legally possible to hire an agent to fulfill obligations to God. You cannot, therefore, appoint someone to say the Shema for you or to put t’fillin on during morning prayers as though that person were you. Nor can you appoint an agent to eat matzah for you at the Pesach seder or to dine in a sukkah or to hear the shofar blasts during Rosh Hashanah.)

That set of ideas creates an interesting framework for considering the role of the individual in a republican democracy, because it leads directly to thinking of elections as opportunities for individuals to appoint as their agents the individuals they wish to see lead the nation forward. That we do this collectively—i.e., as a kind of contest in which the winner becomes the agent of us all—is just a function of the fact that no nation could function if each individual were to appoint his or her own congressperson or choose personally to serve him or herself. For practical reasons, then, we do this as a group…but the basic principle that underlies the effort is still that, by voting, we are appointing individuals as our agents to represent us in the Congress and to serve as President. We send them not to commit sins that we don’t want to sully our own hands by undertaking (that wouldn’t be allowed) or fulfill our own spiritual obligations to God, but specifically to act on our behalf to ensure the security of the nation, to guarantee justice for all its citizens, to create a safety net into which people unable to care adequately for themselves may fall, to oversee the education of our children, to care for our veterans, to guide our nation to its rightful place of leadership in the forum of nations, to watch over the planet and prevent humanity from irrevocably soiling its collective nest, and to guide our nation into solid, mutually beneficial alliances with other countries. By casting my vote on Tuesday (and, yes, I am planning to vote the old-fashioned way: in person and on Election Day), I understand myself to be participating in a national effort to appoint the individuals who will lead the nation forward.

Because I think of our representatives in Congress and as the President as agents appointed by myself (and several hundred million others) to act on our behalf in the world, I feel a concomitant freedom to inform those people regularly how I wish them to act and what I wish for them to attempt to accomplish.

It sounds a bit passé these days to refer to members of the Congress or to the President and Vice President as servants of the people, but the way the word “servant” is used in that expression comes close to what I hear in the Hebrew shaliach, the standard word for “agent.” So, to answer those who feel that participation in representative democracy is by definition an act undertaken outside the concept of tradition, my answer is that there really couldn’t be a more traditional way to think about governance than by imagining the citizenry banding together to appoint an agent to do their bidding and lead them forward.

#Election Day #democracy #shaliach #agency

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nerd-breached-containment · 4 years

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Might as well give context on the SoD forum thingie

Those who know about soD, might already know about this but if you’re a still-born Viking or are just a passing traveler, then strap in because I’ll explain the fuck be happening at SoD Forum.

Warning: This WILL be long.

Clans were added in V3.0 (not V3.0.0, just V3.0) on 29th of August, 2013, at the time, they were basically useless, only served to hoard on Trophies like maniacs without any real reason to do with them, but as years went on, do they still have a use? Spoiler Alert: Not even one bit. So, in January 2014, the developers thought “why give Trophies a real reason to have them when you can make a thing to hoard MORE on them?”, and so, Clash of the Clans or Clash of Clans, whatever the fuck you wanna go with, was created with the sole purpose of, you guess it: A mess of a tournament where Clans fight each other to hoard on more useless Trophy.

Except at the end, all clanmen get a Golden Item and that’s about it. Literally. At the end of around 4-5 weeks, all they get is a Golden Prize, aka, Gold-Reskined Item. The maybe only exception is the Light Fury Hoodie and that’s about it again. But for some reason, Clans, well, the Popular Ones, seem to cheerish this way to must, nearly devoting their lives to the clans like literal real life clans - I wished I was joking, some Clan Leaders will sing these encouraging songs to the clan or be like “Clan Name Unite!”. The weirdest shit but not the weirdest from my experience. And most of the Clanmen from Popular Clans often hibernate from the Forum until another tournament is announced.

Notice how I said “mess of a tournament”, in classic SoD fashion, the tournament is gltichy but boy, oh boy, it’s not just glitchy, it’s a literal mess of a tournament. How messy?

Hacking accusations towards two specific clans during the 2014 Era, resulting in an actual hacking attack towards the clans in 2015 which the developers didn’t do shit at the time. The clan in question won the 3rd CotC of 2014;

FYI, hacking accusations are stil a thing;

Trophy gathering was often very unbalanced, add a spoon of crashing and everyday glitches and you got yourself a funky lil Soup of Bullshitery;

This also applies outside of the tournament, you want to gather Trophies on your everyday life? Too bad because the Popular Ones are hoarding them all to keep themselves afloat;

Don’t forget that the Popular Ones ended up in always winning because of the constant, nonstop hoarding... and never giving a chance to newer Clans a taste of victory - gotta prove the “newbies” who’s the boss;

Hackers and cheaters are a big thing in SoD, hell, the 2018 CotC ended with a guy and dummy accounts winning, even with proofs, the devs gave them the win because you guess it, they’re from a Popular Clan, therefore, they would n e v e r cheat in spite of multiple proofs proving it otherwise, of course they wouldn’t!!!

The funniest thing is in 2014, a more less popular clan was caught cheating and did got disqualified, yet, a guy playing dummy but it’s from a stronger, Popular clan? Nah, fam, they’re good.

They tried to implement a new mechanism in 2019 but it took the VETERANS of CotC to fucking explain them how it should be in private and it still didn’t do that much;

So after years and years of dealing with unfair, glitchy ass bullshit, the developers finally came to the decision and cancel 2020 CotC because they want to address other important issues and they’re working on a new Event which might replace 2020 CotC BUT CotC will be back in the next year.

Mind you, people all over the Forum WANTED THIS TO HAPPEN for YEARS, this was a legit request, they wanted them to work on CotC in hopes of improving it. How did they reacted?

Well... see it for yourself: http://forum.schoolofdragons.com/content/details-clash-clans-2020

The opinions were divided in 3 types:

The supporters of their decision;

The supporters of their decision but agree that the timing wasn’t the best;

Then... the Sore Losers:

And a bonus:

You heard it right, we can’t complain about this because we never participated on this Event, even though the problems they deal with are EXACTLY THE SAME AS OURS. The entire Thread exploded in these 4 Users attacking others along with side-arguments about word meaning and “fixing what?” even though SoD HAS FIXED BEFORE and STILL DOES... all because they can’t compete due to the cancellation of CotC - literally, the ENTIRE drama happened because of these 4 Users who funny enough, are Leaders (except one) and Members of High Ranked Clans, they belong to Clans that would be sure to win. They are legit angry because they won’t win a Gold Prize, their competitive spirit is so big and strong, they think they can boss everyone around. Someone did even noticed this and commented about it but didn’t attacked them, one of the Clan Leaders (aka one of the Attacking Users) responded with this:

Guilt Trip, much?

And again, all of this because they cancelled CotC FOR NOW to focus on other issues and a possible new event. The game may change, but the SoD Forum will never change.

#its beautiful and sad and funny to see how big of a rollercoaster this was tbh #and i feel like it hasnt ended #school of dragons #lps100 derps #long post

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shefightslikeagirl · 4 years

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CORSETS AND STRIPED STOCKINGS: OUTFITTING THE ASYLUM FOR WAYWARD VICTORIAN GIRLS by She Fights Like A Girl

These articles are best viewed on desktop, but are mobile friendly. Please excuse any strange formatting on your phone browser or the Tumblr app.

This article was longer than intended and image-heavy, so it’s been split into two parts.

PART V: AN ASYLUM MUSICAL

“And if I end up with blood on my hands, Well, I know that you’ll understand ‘Cause I fight like a girl.” - Fight Like A Girl (2014)

And now we're back to the relatively recent past, when this blog was in its infancy and the fandom couldn't decide whether to stick with the forum or run rampant on Tumblr. Fight Like A Girl (the album) was still being recorded, but Emilie did a few live dates Down Under and decided to feature the title song from the unfinished album.

To my understanding, the Harvest Festival was another one of those concerts where the show was considerably downsized because of the cost of shipping props and set pieces. But where the South American tours hadn’t pulled back in the wardrobe department, the Harvest festival did. Emilie and the Crumpets performed in one costume for the entire set. But to make up for the lack of glam, EA debuted the first costume of the FLAG era.

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This costume was worn for the cover art of Fight Like A Girl, and acted as the signature corset for the very first Fight Like A Girl World Tour (2012).

“Asylum Secrets: All of my costumes over the years have been made to look as though someone had been murdered in them and come back from the dead to enact a fabulous revenge. To achieve this, I have employed techniques from melting fabrics with an industrial strength heat gun to spraying them with solutions that no human should ever breathe. In the case of the corset pictured, I burned it mercilessly with sticks of incense before painting the fabric to make it look moth-eaten.” - EA on the creation of the FLAG corset (June 25, 2018)

Speaking of the 2012 FLAG World Tour! While there were a lot of changes from The Door Tour and Harvest Festival, this tour is probably best remembered as a transition phase between eras. There were new costumes, but… the Rat Queen still introduced the show with 4 o’Clock. There were new set dressings, but… the shadow scrim was still main stage center. The new corset was mixed in with the Rat Queen ensemble and the structure of the show hadn’t changed terribly. New, but… kinda not?

Except for that Warrior Mohawk, of course.

Upper: WVC content / eBay listing photo. Lower: Making of the Warrior Mohawk from Emilie’s Flickr account.

This is the only tour where Emile wore a mohawk for the entirety(-slash-majority) of the show. Later concerts would see her removing it after the third song. There was some slight skepticism in the fandom with its debut, sparking discourse about everything from cultural appropriation to thematic relevance, but EA didn’t make much comment on the criticism.

“[The Warrior Mohawk] signified the transformation from victim to warrior. I feel that it is important for me to let go in order that I may go on to transform yet again and create new bits of wearable magic to surprise you with... This headpiece symbolized the birth of a new era in the Asylum…. This is the headdress of a tribal Queen…” - EA, 2012 eBay auction description.

“The Mohawk headdress represents the tribal, wild element of the sisterhood that formed during the imprisonment of the inmates, and shows that, once we escape and are on the rampage to take down our oppressors, we have indeed transformed from individual, helpless victims into a strong and beautifully terrifying tribal warriors.” - EA for Natalie’s World, 2013 (x) (x)

Another costume that debuted on this tour was the MC of the Ophelia Gallery, who had his own brand-new number: Girls! Girls! Girls!

And as for its history...

(My best guess is that this photo originated in 2009, based on her hair.)

This character is a hint at the structure of the tour (and album) to come, where it would be less about the mad girls existing inside the Asylum and more about the story of how they got there, and what happened once they were interned. Allow me to stray from the costuming topic for just a moment…

A TANGENT: OF STAGE SHOWS AND ASYLUM CONTINUITY Spoiler filled ramblings of a long-time fan.

I’ve got a running theory that The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls, in all its forms, runs in parallel to the concerts. But they match each other in reverse. [Spoilers for the book to follow.]

Emilie’s first concert of the Opheliac brand was in a small venue in Chicago, alongside Lady Joo Hee. In The Asylum… book, Emily-with-a-y’s final days in the Asylum were spent with Sachiko (a character based on and formerly named Joo Hee).

The Opheliac shows of 2007-2011 were all about the women in an Asylum singing songs and welcoming others home. Cannibals, ballerinas, pyrate captains, nymphomanics -- they all ran rampant with no apparent oversight except from Emilie herself. Rats crept and crawled onstage unbothered; toys, crumpets, and cupcakes were in abundance, often served alongside “tea,” and there isn’t a single cell door in sight.

Especially in the earliest days of the concerts, the set design had an emphasis on appearing hand-made -- not only because it was, but because it should be for these girls. This was the world EA branded for herself: a world of freedom, without judgement, earned by their own hands.

In The Asylum… book, after the Inmates take over and kill the doctors, this is very much what they do: impersonate medical professionals and welcome sick and not-so-sick girls home to protect them, nurture them, and give them the best life that the Victorian Age fails to do. They take over the Asylum and make it their own.

Then in the FLAG performances (2012-2014), the storytelling shifts. EA’s Asylum world is no longer loosely themed with inmates running amok, but adheres to a more rigid storytelling structure, detailing the struggles and despair of the girls locked up in The Asylum(-with-a-capital-T). It mirrors the bulk of the content in The Asylum… book. The carefree, whimsical stage dressings shift to bars -- a representation of the cells and gates in The Asylum. There might be a bear tied to a dreary grey harpsichord; you might even see a single rat scratching about. But they don’t have dominion here. There’s no freedom. Just the story of the girls trapped behind the bars.

And now we’re stalled on both sides of the street. We’ve met in the middle. The concerts started at the end of the book, and ended at the beginning.

Ok, I’ll put my soapbox away. Let’s get back on track.

BACK TO BUSINESS

Where were we?

Oh, yes: Girls! Girls! Girls! and new costumes.

So let’s jump forward a little more, because there isn’t much else to say about Emilie’s costume style in the 2012 FLAG World Tour. Moving on to the 2013 Fight Like A Girl: North American Tour (and following European and Australian tours), a brand new show was brought to the stage. Full new stage set-up, new costumes, and a full new setlist.

A costume I’ll be referring to as the “armored corset” replaced the moth-eaten FLAG ensemble in the opening number. Both Maggots and Veronica were given new costumes as well, replacing the costumes they had worn for years.

Armored Corset, with varying amounts of sparkled (2013)

Maggie Lally; Captain Maggot / Captain Maggots

Veronica Varlow; The Naughty Veronica

The show design of this tour had Emilie in the armored corset with the mohawk for the two opening numbers, Fight Like A Girl and Time for Tea. The mohawk and the armored plates on her chest and hip were removed during the 4 o’Clock Reprise, leaving her without her armor for What Will I Remember? as the narrative moves back to the beginning of the story, before the “Uprising.”

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On the subject of the corset: structurally, it was outfitted with snaps to attach the armor and allow for easy removal (see corset detail above, bottom right). The mohawk proved a more difficult challenge to remove, as it was securely clipped, pinned, and secured into EA’s hair. This ended up being corrected in the redesign that produced Mohawk 2.0.

Back to the show! By the time we get to Veronica’s Dominant fan dance, EA has removed the armor corset completely in the interim to prepare for the Girls! Girls! Girls! costume change. After Scavenger, the entire cast changes into Asylum Inmate Rags to perform Gaslight and The Key, and then changes back into full costume for the finale. Emilie wears the full FLAG ensemble from previous tours to close out the show, with varying headdresses.

But I’m skipping over something important.

The Scavenger.

Inspired by Jim Henson’s The Dark Crystal, The Scavenger, a vulture-esque representation of Dr. Greavsely, appeared onstage for Scavenger.

“This is the start of the original costume @maggotmagpie wears in our show, the one Greavesly wears in #AsylumMusical will be bonkers…” - EA on the Scavenger (February 7, 2016)

EA on Twitter/Twitpic 2012 (x)

The Scavenger was usually worn by Maggots as part of a stilt-walking performance, but if the venue couldn’t or wouldn’t allow for stunts onstage, Emilie would appear alone in the costume for the number.

Scavenger has plenty of different “shows” (A show, B show, and C show for my theme park friends), with “A Show” being Captain Maggot on stilts.

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Note: The Atlanta show featured here is a bit strange, as it uses the Stage Screen and the Asylum Bars during a tour that doesn’t feature the former. Emilie also isn’t in the normal costume for this number, using a personal scarf to cover her bloomers and bra.

“B Show” would be Emilie performing as the Scavenger, due to venue restrictions. This was actually the way Scavenger debuted, until Maggot’s first performance later in the tour. (See pictures and even more info here.)

“C Show” would be Moth’s performance in the final set of Fight Like A Girl tours, as seen below:

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(There’s also “D Show,” (ha) which is this random dude performing as The Scavenger. I’ve yet to figure this out, but my guess is it was a technician stepping in at the last moment or a friend of EA from Oakland.)

Last, but not least, are the Asylum Rags. You’d think there wouldn’t be much to say here, but there is. Click on the continue link below to learn more about tattered costumes and the rest of the FLAG era, because Tumblr only allows 10 pictures per post.

CLICK HERE TO CONTINUE.

Fly back… PART I: Enchant and the Faerie Queene PART II: Drowning Ophelia PART III: Vecona, Seamstress of the Asylum PART IV: Wayward Victorian Girls

Remember to visit Part III and enter our giveaway! Ends 12/1/19.

[SEE ALL CREDITS AND SOURCES HERE.]

#this ones a long one folks #happy thanksgiving #emilie autumn #corsets and striped stockings #EA wardrobe #flag #sflag #link out to btp

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mittensmorgul · 5 years

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Look, I know you've covered this already but I just want to reiterate how AWESOME it is that several lines and scenes of s14 were deliberately drawing our attention to the in‐betweens, to the fact that these guys have lives outside of what we seen and that they have significant moments in those off screen lives. I just fricking *love* that.

Hi hi! I know you sent this like a week ago, but I really wanted to have time to sit down and detail all the moments in s14 where they’ve used this device before replying– both for the sake of completeness in demonstrating just how critical they’ve made these “in between” spaces to the overall narrative, as well as for my own general reference purposes. :P

I’ll start by saying that the show has done this on some level from the start. I mean, the entire series begins with a cold open in 1983 before jumping 22 years into the future to begin in the “present day” of October, 2005. We begin our introduction to the story of Supernatural immediately aware that there’s already a metric fuckton of backstory we’re due to have filled in, and we’re primed to begin looking for more pieces to flesh out that history from the moment the first scene airs.

*clenches fist* STORYTELLING

I’m currently in mid-late s7 in my eternal rewatch, and even s7 uses this device MULTIPLE times. I mean, s6 does this, as well, immediately informing us that a year has passed since the events of 5.22, and gradually filling in the missing events from that gap, using Sam’s soullessness and then post-re-ensoulening amnesia about his soulless time, him “scratching the wall” and beginning to piece his own memories together, as one entry point into this “filling in the blanks of the past for full understanding of the present” storytelling device. The other major expression of this device in s6 is Castiel’s story throughout the season, which doesn’t truly begin to fill in all the blanks and answer all the questions until episode TWENTY.

(I am not defending this storytelling choice, because in s6 it served as a metaphorical “punishment,” which is still so skeevy I struggle to watch the season as a whole… in Gamble Era, characters are “punished” for remembering their past– Sam for his guilt over what he did while soulless, and eventually Cas for his hubris in believing he could devour the souls of purgatory without consequences… and again, what I get from Gamble Era overall is an unkindness to all the characters… this Erasure of Identity. For years now, I’ve read this exchange from 6.09 as a bit of an indictment of the story of that era by Ben Edlund:

SAM: So you’re saying having a soul equals suffering.DEAN: Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying.SAM: Like, the million times you almost called Lisa. So you’re saying suffering is a good thing.DEAN: I’m saying it’s the only game in town.

but back to the point)

S7 employed this technique in really in-your-face obvious ways, showing us time skips with little montages that cover several weeks in a matter of less than a minute, during which we’re shown the tone of the events of the “missing time” and are being told directly how to fill in those blanks:

7.01 shows this montage through Dean repairing Baby while receiving occasional updates on Sam’s recovery and Cas’s Godstiel rampage.

7.03 gives us a montage of Dean’s healing leg while he’s relegated to the sofa in the cabin watching tv… weeks elapse like this before the action picks up again.

7.10 uses flashbacks as Bobby lays dying to directly show us a fuller snapshot of who he is as a character, and why he’s been so important to Sam and Dean as their adoptive father figure

7.11 uses another “weeks pass” montage to show us Sam and Dean’s grief and their respective ways of handling Bobby’s loss

7.17 uses another flashback montage as Castiel literally rebuilds his identity from these moments… can’t really be more anvilicious than this about the import of filling in the narrative gaps…

But over the years, this has evolved in the narrative from these blatantly obvious tells to something we’re being low-level reminded of in nearly every episode through a constant implicit assumption that these characters have lives outside of what we see on The Magic Rectangle for 42 minutes a week. The show’s gone from literally subtitling these scenes and telling us exactly what we’re seeing to requiring our assumption that all we need to learn how to fill in the blanks is to assume these are actually real people who casually reference things we never knew before from their own lives and assume we know all the characters well enough by now to correctly fill in the blanks they so casually point out to us, or even expand on vast swaths of otherwise “missing time” from what we actively see of their lives from an otherwise minor comment made in passing…

Gosh, ain’t it nice when writers assume their audience is actually intelligent, considerate, engaged, and caring like this? Honestly in this day and age of GOTCHA! oneupsmanship, of authors attempting to demonstrate their intellectual superiority over their audience, it’s rather refreshing.

One more thing before we jump right into s14. Dabb and Company have been “educating” us on how to read these subtextual instructions for years now. We had the Mixtape Revelation in 12.19 that idiotically devolved into fandom arguments over what a mixtape itself was intended to symbolize, with people arguing that the thing itself had no inherent romantic implications (which… wow… but people be dumb sometimes…). I’d argue that regardless of what anyone has convinced themselves the gift meant symbolically (or didn’t mean symbolically for people with their heads shoved so far up their butts they actually made that argument in a public forum with a straight face and actually got mad about folks who actually know better…), what it meant NARRATIVELY was that the original gifting of the tape was something that had happened in the past, that we-the-audience previously had no knowledge of this particular interaction between Dean and Cas, and were being SPECIFICALLY TOLD that even though WE DID NOT SEE IT HAPPEN ON SCREEN, it absolutely, definitely, CANONICALLY ACTUALLY HAPPENED regardless of that fact.

Not only did that unseen exchange canonically happen, it was discussed by Dean and Cas in a casual fashion, as if it was simply one moment in a past filled with moments just like it. In a season where the episodes leading up to this one were filled with comments about Dean and Cas calling each other regularly (conversations that we never see, yet are informed casually happen constantly offscreen), and Dean’s increasing distress over NOT being able to reach Cas for several episodes, it’s impossible NOT to draw the conclusion that this lack of communication is HIGHLY IRREGULAR and therefore SOMETHING WE SHOULD ALL BE CONCERNED ABOUT. We didn’t need to *see* all of this to apply this fact far more broadly to the entire narrative, and understand there were massive gaps between what they could show us in 42 minutes a week versus what the baseline background life is for all of these characters in those between-times.

They doubled down on this in s13, specifically in 13.06, both with the “Dean and Cas regularly watch movies together” comments AND in the casual knowledge Cas shares with Jack about Dean’s sleeping and coffee drinking habits. It’s not just these isolated facts that we’re supposed to take away from these sorts of exchanges, but what they mean in the larger context of their off-camera interactions and relationship as a whole.

So that said, let’s move on to s14, where this has honestly evolved to the next level. The rest of this is going under a cut for now, because the totality of this post is something like 7700 words...

14.01, Stranger in a Strange Land:

The season begins with a montage of Dinkle’s actions over a period of weeks, talking to different people and asking what they want. We don’t see every one of these conversations, but we can extrapolate out from the ones we DO see and infer how all of those experiences guide his subsequent actions (as well as Dean’s subsequent emotional and psychological state later down the road).

But we’re shown one more of those conversations INDIRECTLY, from an offhand comment of another character, where we’re both reminded of Dinkle’s little conversations, AND reminded that they don’t constitute the sum total of those conversations. There is much we haven’t seen (and will NOT see, because this scene renders any additional on-screen time to cover the tone and content of those conversations superfluous and redundant), and yet we still understand the importance and gravity of Dinkle’s entire occupation during those missing weeks:

Kip:You see, recently, I had a revelation. You know, somebody asked me what it was that I wanted. And I realized that after 600 years as a demon walking the planet, destroying, drinking, defiling – you know, the Three D’s – I didn’t know. So, I sat back, and I gave it a good think, and I realized exactly what I wanted.Castiel: And what is it?Kip: Everything.

We also see this from the other side of the narrative– through the progression of events occurring at the Bunker in Dean’s absence. Sam’s despair is conveyed not only in dialogue in his conversation with Mary, it’s conveyed through just how poorly he’s looking after his own wellbeing, not shaving (visual confirmation of his mindset informing us of what his life’s been like over the previous weeks), not eating or sleeping (we’re told, and believe because of how he’s presenting himself, but also emotionally informs us of how he’s been affected by his ordeal), while simultaneously having stepped up to lead the army of AU Hunters– i.e. people from a world where war against Michael has been their lives for more than a decade, and are literally bringing that experience to THIS world, metaphorically going back to the start of their own battle to a world where Michael is only BEGINNING to enact that war on this world, who now have the experience of having survived that war and the knowledge gained while having fought against it, but also a chance to stop it before it can be allowed to start again. Or that is the hope, you know?

We’re also seeing Jack struggle with guilt, with adapting to life without the magical powers he’d been born with, and being forced to confront what is truly important to him, and what his own humanity means to him.

We’re subtly being reminded of VAST quantities of canon upon which the current character developments are resting.

14.02, Gods and Monsters:

There’s a lot of “backtracing” through character arcs in this one, which I’m gonna boil down to the general themes:

Jack seeking out his familial history, seeking out Kelly Kline’s parents to make a personal connection to his mother’s past in order to better understand himself now

Cas relating parts of his own past to Jack (falling and becoming human, not mourning the past he can’t change but finding strength in himself regardless of his current circumstance, and to have patience while his circumstance will change in future) (aside to remind folks that this setup at the beginning of the season is entirely about subverting his words through his own actions throughout the season… with 14.14 being the massive turning point again for both Jack and Cas)

Nick’s setup of beginning to fill in the blanks from his own life after a decade of having lost everything to his possession by Lucifer. He’s got a lot of catching up to do, and a heck of a lot of blanks to fill.

the absolute knowledge that the show is 100% aware of how they’ve trained us to look at the narrative this deeply, using character mirrors, foreshadowing, parallels, etc., and that they’re keen to use this power against us. And it’s up to us to understand the difference between “things being presented to us for the purposes of subversion” and “things being presented to us to fill in narrative blanks.” Like the entirety of Dinkle’s conversations with both Dean and Lydia the vampire. Heck I’m already down to bullet points and I’m gonna need to extrapolate on this one… *sighs*

Let’s start simple, with a couple of quotes:

Michael: Why do you think I dumped your brothers and sisters in plain sight? Why do you think I let you escape?Lydia: You let me escape?Michael: Rule number 1 – you can’t have a trap without bait. That brings us to rule number 2, which says once the trap has been sprung, you don’t need the bait anymore.

and

Dean: Get… out!Michael: I don’t think so.Dean: You can’t!Michael: Oh, but I can. Because, see… I own you. So hang on and enjoy the ride.

Because the first defines and contextualizes the second… Do I really need to elaborate? No? Oh good, then we can move on!

14.03, The Scar:

Again, using the trope of amnesia and memory recovery to illustrate the emotional and psychological impact of “missing time,” if not the entirety of the content of that missing gap. In addition, to Dean recovering his memories and demonstrating his reaction to his own lost time, the two respective cases of the week (Darth Kaia, learning how she came to this universe, and everything she’s endured at Dinkle’s hands also informing further the information we learned in 14.01, and in the bunker Jack and Cas helping heal Lora of a witch’s curse that was literally stealing time from her in the form of her own life energy).

I love demonstrating how “filling narrative gaps from the past” is not only built into the inherent structure of the narrative like this, it’s also the entire purpose of all the character development we’re witnessing, as well as setting the foundation of the entire story going forward.

We had that in spades from Jody, putting in plain words what we all saw happening in 13.10:

Jody: They have a right to know but I can’t. I promised Claire human cases are mine, but anything “monstery” I’d loop her in: this. God. Claire’s been doing so good. I mean anything connected to Kaia, she’s a powder keg. First loves strikes quick, and then to lose it like that. Wow, you two are having a time of it.

Confirming the subtext of Claire and Kaia’s relationship, while simultaneously informing us of what Jody, Claire, et al’s lives have been like since then, filling in a huge narrative gap with just a few innocuous comments. But there’s one more example from within the span of this episode:

Sam: Okay, look, I’m just saying… you said you let Michael in, then, bang you’re back in a blink. But for me? You were gone for weeks. I didn’t know if you were alive. I just need you to talk to me, to slow down so I can catch up.

Sam, defining the narrative gap and begging for information to fill it with. And then at the end of the episode, he gets an answer, but it’s nothing like what he expected or hoped for:

Dean: And it wasn’t a blink, being possessed. I make it sound like that, but it wasn’t. I don’t remember most of what Michael did with me because I was underwater, drowning, and that I remember. I felt every second of it – clawing, fighting for air. I thought I could make it out, but I couldn’t. I wasn’t strong enough. And now he’s gone and he’s out there putting an army of monsters together and he’s hurting people. And its all on me, man. I said yes. It’s my fault.

And it’s still not really an answer.

14.04, Mint Condition:

Narrative gap reshuffle yahtzee. I’m just gonna give a few links to meta already written for this one, because it’s about the journey, and being informed enough to pay attention to all the sights along the roadside as we go:

https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/179792849870/when-in-doubt-sing-mittensmorgul-i

https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/181790806615/questions-and-their-empty-spaces

https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/179742780230/mittens-help-dean-says-he-loves-hatchet-man

https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/179734411135/i-love-there-wasnt-any-acknowledgement-about-dean

https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/179724128520/stuarts-my-best-friend-we-watch-movies-and-eat

(gotta throw in at least one destiel reference…)

https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/179700702490/hey-mittens-just-wondering-if-you-could-help-me

And because this reading list is already getting long, I just want to use this post to point out how the use of narrative mirrors informs our understanding of those one-off characters through our established understanding of the main characters, enabling those mirror characters to serve their function in the story. Davy was not subtle with pointing that out in this episode, and it’s an essential tool in understanding the bigger picture of the narrative. But it’s also a device in filling narrative gaps by recognizing and applying the subtextual lessons being demonstrated:

https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/179695858820/a-few-observations-on-the-mirror-characters

So this isn’t just about individual lines at this point, but an entire narrative shift that the writers spent the entire first half of s14 laying out for us through these sorts of storytelling lessons hidden just under the surface of the story itself. Brilliant.

Basically, if you’re NOT making these connections and using your brain to flesh out the entire world pointed at in the narrative gaps, you don’t really have a hope of understanding the bigger story.

14.05, Nightmare Logic:

Aah, the superpowered djinn, 3D walking metaphor for filling in gaps from the past to find wholeness in the present. Also, one of Michael’s “monster traps” he laid out in order to lure in and kill unwary hunters, which he believed (and the monsters themselves believed) made them more powerful, but in reality became the vehicle through which the Winchesters were eventually able to gain the upper hand… they survived the encounter and walked away with new knowledge about both themselves AND Michael’s bigger plans that had been evading them before this episode.

Information fills narrative gaps.

The djinn itself has been “enhanced” from djinn we’ve seen in the past, able to create its illusions in reality rather than only within its victims own minds. What was imaginary becomes tangible. Subtext becomes text.

We also get AU!Bobby’s backstory, which demonstrates that this alternate version of Bobby is really nothing like our original version, and the sum of his life experiences have made him who he is.

We also get another “zombie” reference, which the more I think back on this entire season (and Jack’s long obsession with zombies in general) is an interesting metaphor for this sort of viewing, not engaging with the deeper text and instead shuffling across it without looking deeper. Because pretty much every time someone suggested the monster could be a zombie, it’s definitively shown to be something much more complex once they begin to dig for answers.

(we also have Dean discussing his past, his relationship with his father, and talking about how setting that baggage aside and living in the present, and for the future, is something he’s worked long and hard to achieve for himself. And we’ve seen some of that journey for him, but this was a huge step for him, which will become profoundly more evident in 14.10 and 14.13)

14.06, Optimism:

Oh, we wanted zombie references? Well, alrighty, have some zombie references! Via the entirely self-deluded MotW character, masquerading as a person with a sad backstory of being “unlucky in love” while all the while she’s a necromancer who murdered and resurrected her boyfriend as a mindless zombie she enacts a brutal game with for her own personal pleasure: luring in suitors and letting her zombie boyfriend kill and eat them. Worst honey trap ever.

Speaking of honey, the other MotW is a fly dude who couldn’t find love among his species and exiled himself to live alone among a pile of rotting corpses of his victims. I mean… ew.

But back to our necromancer, who is a lonely librarian, who is surrounded by stories and laments that people in her town aren’t interested in stories. All the while she’s not engaging with her own reality, and has decided that her own version of the story is an accurate reflection of reality (while the rest of us shake our heads in horror because whoa no hon…)

We also learn AU!Charlie’s backstory, with the constant reminders that what Sam keeps mistaking on the surface level for “his Charlie” IS NOT HER. Man, I feel that feel, AU!Charlie.

Jack: What's 'courting?'Dean: It's what you do before you start dating.Jack: Oh, and that's the thing you do before the sex.Wanda: Sometimes you just have the sex.

Yes, Wanda. Sometimes you skip all the courting, all the emotional and interpersonal stuff, and just go right to the sex. But then you tend to just walk away after without any sort of deeper connection having been made. One night stands are fine, but they’re very different things from deep interpersonal relationships.

You can absolutely engage with Supernatural like a one night stand. The story’s fun on the surface, but ultimately the courting is what provides the deep payoff.

14.07, Unhuman Nature:

We get back to the twisted story of Nick, and his quest to understand himself. He’s filling in more of those horrific gaps in his history and getting closer to the Worst Possible Conclusions about himself. He ENJOYED being Lucifer’s vessel, and wants that feeling of power back, even if it wasn’t HIS power, just being the vehicle for that power is enough for him, more important to him than even discovering the truth about himself. At the bottom of himself, he’s just an empty douchebag-shaped vessel for pure evil.

What a fucking delight >.>

Nurse: Uh-huh. Family medical history? Let's start with the father.Dean: He's dead.Nurse: Cause of death?Castiel: He was stabbed through the heart, and he exploded.Dean: Okay, you know what? We don't have time for this. All right, he's sick. His name is Jack Kline. His father exploded. There, you've got all the basics. Now what does he need to do to see a doctor?

Well that simplified the whole “filling in the backstory through the narrative negative spaces” thing in this episode, didn’t it?

Jack: Since I've been alive, everyone assumed that I would be this special 'person' who goes on forever. Only now it looks like forever might be a couple of weeks, so--Dean: We don't know that.Jack: What I do know is I'm done being special. Before my life is over, I want to live it. I just want a chance to get a tan or see a hockey game... get a parking ticket... get bored... and when it's all over -- die.

I mean, isn’t that what all of TFW kind of wants? They want to not be “special.” They want the universe to stop picking on them specifically. They want to just live their lives until they’re done.

Jack: You once told me you and your father did the exact same thing. It was your happiest memory of him.Dean: I didn't say that.Jack: It was how you said it. I could tell. I guess my point is that if I don't make it... The stuff I'd miss -- it wouldn't be things like Tahiti. Or the Taj Mahal. I'd miss more time with you. I'm getting that life isn't all these big, amazing moments. It's time together that matters. Like this.Dean: Well, who'd have thought hanging out with me would make you sentimental?

Dude. Dean. Everyone thought this. You are the king of “family is the most important thing in the universe without which I am nothing.” Talk about Jack filling in that particular blank for you.

14.08, Byzantium:

Aka that one where we discover something important to Jack in his own Heaven-- and it’s literally a missing scene from 13.06 and their road trip to Dodge City where they stop for burgers. UNPROBLEMATIC FAMILY BONDING IS JACK’S HEAVEN. And it also fills in a past narrative gap, specifically from an episode that was structured around filling in narrative gaps. WE’RE THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS, PEOPLE.

We also have the return of Lily Sunder, now grown old since she’d completed her revenge quest against Ishim and the other angels who’d wronged her (including Cas, who literally killed Ishim FOR her). Talk about filling in a lifetime worth of gaps, and her literal near-lack of a soul she “fills in” through one final sacrifice made of love, which earns her redemption and entrance to Heaven.

I mean… those narrative gaps are looking pretty important here right about now.

Also, what’s that other big gap I haven’t mentioned yet? Oh, right! A villain literally known as “The Empty.” I’m sure that’s not meta relevant to the importance of the narrative empty spaces at all...

14.09, The Spear.

Sequel to The Scar (since the spear is what left Dean with the scar in the first place, so we’re back on our Dinkle nonsense again). There’s a lot of blank-filling going on in this episode.

Remember Garth? Well, as he’s reintroduced in this episode it appears as if he’s gone over to the Dark Side, but of course we learn he’s actually there as a deep cover agent for the Winchesters. This tells us they’ve been keeping in close touch with Garth all this time, despite us not having seen him on screen in ages. (FIVE YEARS!)

Remember Ketch? Well, he’s also doing deep cover agency stuff for the Winchesters, but with a level of incompetence that reminds us all that he’s still not one of the good guys, no matter how hard he’s trying, he’s still… falling a bit short. But at least they’re still keeping contact with him. And BOTH of these characters appearing after a while offscreen reminds us that TFW truly aren’t alone in the world, and they DO have this network of people (at varying degrees of competence still ranging from typical bumbling civvie to TFW themselves).

This entire episode was also a massive reference to Die Hard. Just… it was Die Hard: Supernatural. And we know Dean has referenced this movie endlessly. But the funniest thing: Die Hard isn’t actually referenced ONE SINGLE TIME in text in this episode. Nobody points out the similarities between the situation at the Hitomi Plaza at Christmas with Die Hard. Narrative negative space ftw.

And then we have the reveal that Michael had somehow left a “secret back door” open into Dean, and was able to just jump right back into him when it was convenient to do so. I.e., when he was losing the fight to Dean. He had a cheat code at the ready, because his possession of Dean had been operating on cheat code rules since the start in 13.23. His entire possession of Dean was a violation of the “standard rules of angel possession.” Consent of the vessel being primary. Even BAD consent has been enough in the past-- tricking the vessel into saying yes, backing them into a corner. I mean, remember s5 and the horrors Zachariah was willing to go to in order to secure Dean’s yes? Not even manipulation here with this version of Michael. Even if the face of Dean’s abject rejection of his possession, he refused to vacate the premises. Which is an interesting narrative blank to fill in, yes? Angels may have these rules, but for some reason-- is it Michael’s supreme power? Is it the fact Dean is his “destined vessel?” is it a factor of this Michael being from an alternate universe that might operate on different rules? Is it a factor of Dean’s own lack of conviction in his demand that Michael get out? Whatever it is… it is interesting.

We also catch up with Darth Kaia, who after months of balking at the notion, hands over her spear to Dean with the promise that he’ll return it after he kills Michael. It would solve her ongoing problems with the monsters Michael had been relentlessly sending after her. But he also promises to help her find her way back to her own universe. And now we don’t even know if any of that is possible… (aside to say that I’m now crying over the loss of Wayward again, and I feel this lack of resolution here is a damn pointed statement on that from Bobo.)

14.10, Nihilism.

Nihilism being a descriptor of Michael’s basic personality, in this case.

The most long-term relevant narrative negative spaces in this episode are Sam and Cas venturing into Dean’s mind, and literally using what they know about Dean to find where Michael had locked him away. They literally rely on their knowledge of who he is as a person as a map to find him, and then as a codex to actually get through to him and break him out of the illusion Michael had trapped him in. And then they all turn around and weaponize all of that to lock Michael away in Dean’s mind fridge.

Metaphors, anyone?

Meanwhile, Michael literally insists he’s telling everyone the truth about how Dean really feels about them, but it’s all… ALL OF IT… a manipulation and a lie.

(aside to admit that at this point I have been working on this post on and off for the last 12 hours, can barely remember what the point of it even was, and regret everything. I think we were supposed to be discussing Narrative References To Stuff That Happens On Screen, but at this point, that is so deeply intertwined with the narrative structure as a whole that I’m having trouble separating out textual references to offscreen stuff from the actual content of the story as a whole… yes this is already approaching 5k words at this point, and no I don’t care anymore :P)

14.11, Damaged Goods.

Dean is given information (that we have not yet seen) by Billie (again, offscreen) about “the only way to save the universe.”

Disclaimer to note that we STILL haven’t seen exactly what Billie showed Dean in her magical destiny book… which fact in itself can be open to myriad interpretations, because canon itself has shifted from this point in the canonical timeline to what we have actually witnessed unfold, which fundamentally differs between what Billie told Dean and what actually transpired on screen.

This… is major.

Also, Nick, and the effective end of his story… or is it? He’s finally got his personal backstory filled in, and turns out he was just a dick all along! Surprise! Because his “truth” never actually mattered to him. It was all a lie he told himself from the very first moment he was ever introduced on screen back in 5.01. He was never a good person who’d been used by Lucifer and manipulated into doing terrible things. He was always just a bad person who’d been looking for an excuse to do terrible things. Lucifer was just his excuse.

Dean fills in some horrific bits of their childhood for Mary through the metaphor of Winchester Surprise. Apparently delicious to Dean, but yikes… stuff like that’s really not healthy…

14.12, Prophet and Loss:

So, Donatello might not be as brain dead as previously believed! Let’s fill in that backstory, through a broken prophet who can’t be fully realized because Donatello’s technically not dead, so the new guy is getting a distorted message because Donatello’s interrupting the signal.

Dean asked Sam not to tell Cas about his Drama Coffin plan, but of course Sam had immediately told Cas about his drama coffin plan anyway…

CAS: Sam. Maybe if I spoke with Dean…SAM: It wouldn’t matter. Believe me, I-I I’ve never seen him like this. He won’t listen to me. H-He just – No. If we don’t find some way… Dean’s gone.

But then just a little while later, when Dean talks to Cas and learns that Cas knows his entire dumbass plan:

DEAN: Really?SAM: Dean, it’s Cas. I had to tell him.

Well, some time in the previous few hours, when Sam hasn’t been trapped in the car with Dean (which we know he has been canonically), Sam’s first priority was calling Cas to tell him about Dean’s plan. Like… duh…

14.13, Lebanon:

I love this episode on every possible level. It drops us at the climax of a hunt and just trusts us to understand what’s going on. Someone has been murdered for their collection of supernatural artifacts, and it’s been traced to this shop, where the owner trades in dangerous artifacts… all of that happened offscreen, yet we understand the context if not the specific case itself. Beautiful.

Then we have the cursed pearl that apparently grants a wish. Dean uses it to theoretically wish that Michael was out of his head. In monkey’s paw fashion, instead of just granting the wish through the simplest means, the wish actually attempts to rewrite history (this is the sort of thing that differentiates a “cursed object” from a “magical cure”) in order to remove the root infiltration of Michael into Dean’s life… by literally bringing John Winchester into the present time from 2003, removing him from the entire timeline to this point and changing EVERYTHING.

Talk about filling a narrative negative space. Cas doesn’t know them, Dean never went to Hell. Hell, Dean never even went to collect Sam from Stanford. NOTHING from the entire history of the series as we know it actually happened AT ALL.

At least we got to see Zachariah get stabbed again. Sam deserved a turn, you know? :’)

But we also have the other half of the episode-- the case in Lebanon, and seeing the Winchesters through the eyes of the locals. Talk about a HUGE reminder of the things that happen offscreen. They go to the post office, the local shops, and have a weird reputation around town, despite most of the townsfolk accepting their brand of weirdness. It’s… weirdly refreshing, seeing how they’ve gone from “hunters of urban legends” in s1 to “actual urban legends themselves” in s14. The power of storytelling at its finest.

In this case, so many personal blanks were filled in for Mary, Sam, and Dean just by being able to share a single family dinner with John in the aftermath of everything else. In the end, Sam and Dean CHOSE their own lives, and smashed the pearl with John’s blessing, putting everything back the way it was. The most powerful line in this entire episode, to me:

John: Dean. I, uh -- I never meant for this.Dean: Dad, we pulled you here.John: No, son. My fight. It was supposed to end with me, with Yellow Eyes. But now you -- you are a grown man, and I am incredibly proud of you. I guess that I had hoped, eventually, you would... get yourself a normal life, a peaceful life, a family.Dean: I have a family.

HE HAS A FAMILY. :’)

It might not be what John ever imagined for him. Or even what Mary wanted for him when she rejected the hunting life the first time around. But it’s the family Dean earned for himself. The one he CHOSE for himself. And he wouldn’t trade it for anything-- not even for the family he was born into, or a white picket fence he used to think he should have.

And then after this… everything changes… again…

14.14, Ouroboros:

Right. That one where everything changed. Where everything from Billie’s Books of Certain Prophecy to Jack’s soul to Dean’s certainty about… pretty much everything… went up in a swirling whirlpool of burning grace.

Yes, the episode where they burned the spiral narrative structure and were clearly beginning the inevitable run toward endgame. I mean it had been hinted at as a possibility before this, and 14.13 was certainly a product of the inevitability of endgame, but this episode sealed the deal.

They could’ve technically still gotten away with 14.13 as a one-off product of “very special 300th episode” and still continued down the narrative spiral that they’ve been circling for years now, but in retrospect from beyond the rest of s14, this was the official burn point.

So the story shifts radically in very fundamental ways from this point on, and reference to the past become… different. But what happens offscreen in the context of these episodes going forward takes on so much more weight as a result. We’re now “living in the present” with these characters.

We have Sam’s relationship with Rowena, which has clearly developed to the point of casual intimacy. Rowena confronts Sam in ways we’ve never seen before, demonstrating a confidence in their interactions DESPITE Billie’s assertion that Sam will be the one to “kill” her. That has strangely given her a sense of… comfort… with Sam, that’s demonstrated in the fact that they work together through this entire case-- paired off much the way Dean and Cas are.

Again, like in 14.06 and 14.13, we’re dropped into the middle of their case, and only informed that they’ve been tracing this monster through numerous other towns in this episode, requiring us to extrapolate out their entire hunt from discovering there might be a case, to the point where they’ve even brought Rowena onboard to help give them an advantage of a monster that had repeatedly eluded them.

The monster itself has an advantage in that it can literally see the future and escape before they catch him, until they discover the huge gaping hole in what it can actually see-- Cas and Jack are literally invisible to it. He can’t see THEM coming, specifically. The importance of actually reading what we DON’T see. Because if the monster hadn’t been so confident in what it COULD see, he would’ve understood that he was missing a critical piece of information-- the door literally shut itself in his vision of the future and he didn’t bother to stop and question WHY. And it was his downfall.

The narrative is telling us that missing this key gap-filling information is effectively our downfall as viewers.

14.15, Peace of Mind:

Hooray, we’re back to simple “missing scene” levels of text to latch on to, and I don’t have to swim through the whole of the narrative structure to make a comment. Wheeee! (sorry it’s been like 14 hours since I started writing this reply and I’ve achieved Peak Mental Exhaustion for it) :P

Let’s reflect on how all of the characters managed to delude themselves in this episode, and simultaneously approach their own personal concerns without actually talking to each other directly… and then instead focus on this exchange:

Dean: Oh. Hey! How was Arkansas?Sam: Arkansas was, uh It was weird.Dean: Heard you wore a cardigan.Castiel: Yeah, I told him about the cardigan.Sam: Great. Thanks.Dean: And the wife. He said you were, uh, really happy.

Yep. Proof again of offscreen communication happening, in a way I can yell and point at without having to write paragraphs to explain and defend. :P Aah, just like the simpler days of our past… which hey, is also a narrative theme of this episode! Nostalgia!

14.16, Don’t Go In The Woods:

Or, that one where we discuss why we don’t share everything with the general public, while Jack… behaves poorly with the general public, and then hides that fact from Sam and Dean. Also, we have this confirmation of offscreen conversation:

SAM: You got it. I'll grab Cas.DEAN: Mm. He actually left.SAM: What?DEAN: Early this morning.SAM: Why?DEAN: I don't know. Something about being cooped up in the bunker for a few weeks. We all need to stretch our legs. I get it.

Dean… had a whole conversation with Cas… and didn’t even mention it until Sam specifically asked about Cas. Stuff happened offscreen… big important stuff… and we’re only getting a peek at it now. Not only that-- because this will be VITAL to remember two episodes down the road-- they have been cooped up in the bunker “for a few weeks.” In 14.15 ONE EPISODE EARLIER, Dean complained to Sam that he’d been driving them literally from case to case without a break:

Sam: (Sam was in the map room flashing back to Maggie and the other hunters dying. He looked sad as he went to the kitchen) Found us a case. Arkansas.Dean: We've just done three back-to-back Hunts. I need some rest. At least a night. We both do.Sam: Yeah, well I'm leaving in ten.Dean: Like I said, not good.Castiel: Maybe I should go with him. And you can stay with Jack.

So the events of 14.16 are clearly after a hiatus of several weeks. Again, things have happened offscreen, and we’re only learning about them in the absolute most casual statement-in-passing sorts of ways, but these tiny references are pretty earth-shattering.

14.17, Game Night:

The timeline isn’t concrete, but I’ve written in several places that I believe 14.16, and 14.17 flow one into the other, just based on these subtextual sorts of cues-- Dean’s statement in 14.16 that Cas had been feeling cooped up after several weeks in the bunker, the fact that Cas had only LEFT the bunker at the beginning of 14.16 and we only see him reach his destination of talking with Anael now in 14.17 (and how long do we REALLY think it took him to find her and convince her to meet with him? Especially when the events of 14.17 take place over about 36 hours before bleeding directly into 14.18…). So this timeline that I’ve understood presupposes the gap of “several weeks” of being cooped up in the bunker to have elapsed between 14.15 and 14.16 as suddenly resolved itself into all of them willing to spend time in the bunker as a family… except for Cas, who’s on an as-yet unspecified mission.

This episode reinforces those missing scenes, through showing us the very different mission Cas is on, finally addressing the seriousness of Jack’s condition, but also paralleled through Mary’s growing suspicions of Jack that she’ll be unable to ignore by the end of the episode…

Jack even addresses this “but in that scene you didn’t see play out, this important thing happened!” IN TEXT, TO MARY:

Mary: If Sam and Dean saw what you did, they would be as worried as I am.Jack: Are you gonna tell them?Mary: You need help, we'll help you. We're your family.Jack: You can't.Mary: We care about you, Jack.

And now the things that happen offscreen have been lampshaded as being CRITICAL to understanding the whole of the story. And the divide between the two can be fatal...

14.18, Absence.

Literally, the title itself is telling us to be aware of what’s missing.

But we finally get the payoff on the “missing information” about those several weeks spent cooped up in the bunker-- Sam was literally not there. It was Dean and Cas, alone with Jack.

Sam: You know, after Maggie and the other hunters died... I just left. Just dumped Jack on Cas and left.

That happened in 14.14. The other hunters dying. But we KNOW that Sam had not left on his own at that time. He’d dragged Dean and Cas and Jack on three consecutive hunts in the aftermath of that to avoid going back to the bunker, in the run up to 14.15. THIS was the payoff of that “cooped up for weeks” comment in 14.16… because SAM hadn’t been cooped up with them. He’d dumped Jack on everyone and run off on his own after 14.15…

But this episode doesn’t stop there. It takes each character individually and pushes them through memories of the past, of Mary specifically, but those memories do so much narrative heavy lifting I can’t even begin to yell about them here. I’ll just link a post:

https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/184195342200/you-know-when-deans-turns-around-after-that

Wait, I found that post while looking for the one I’d set to to find, but it’s in my Narrative Negative Space tag, so yay? Bonus. This is the one I’d meant to find:

https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/184144189665/drsilverfish-mittensmorgul-mittensmorgul

There. My best thing from s14. And I’ll leave this episode at that.

Oh, and with the reminder that if Dean and Cas had truly still been at odds over Mary’s death, then Dean would not have brought Cas to Mary’s funeral pyre. Period.

14.19, Jack in the Box.

Aka that one we’d all figured out what the big plot thing was just by the on-the-nose nature of the title, months before it aired.

At least the drama coffin got blowed up good?

14.20, Moriah:

The most meta meta to have ever meta’d. There’s not much happening offscreen in this one aside from the entire setup and premise of the episode as a whole. Again, we’re dropped into a hunt and expected to understand the setup, the legwork that’s already been done. We learn that Dean has been in touch with Cas, but they’re investigating different avenues. We see Chuck FINALLY answer Cas’s prayer for help from 14.17, but Chuck’s idea of “help” isn’t helpful in the least.

We understand the fundamental nature of the extent of the personal little lies Sam and Dean tell each other (Thanks for that one, Jack!), and therefore are being asked to reassess which comments from their past were the full, honest truth, and which were the comfortable performance they put on to maintain their own projected self-identities.

And whoa.

It’s now 3 am, and I’ve been working on this post on and off for the last 16 hours. And I am tired, and officially out of mental steam to keep thinking about it. So I’m gonna post it. All 7700 words of it. I hope this helps... :P

#emiliaoagi #spn s14 #revenge of the subtext #the scheherazade of supernatural #the story became the story

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wessasaurus-rex · 4 years

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One Piece Theory of Everything - A Revision of the Inherited Will Theory

I believe I've figured out most of the manga's greatest mysteries. A lot of the major ideas that I used as a jumping point are from the "Inherited Will Theory" by King Fisher over at the Arlong Park Forums which I'm sure most One Piece theorists are already very familiar with. I know it has it's detractors but for the most part, a sizable number of people seemed to like it and I was one of them. However, I believe the Inherited Will theory was not broad enough in scale to truly explain everything.

However, one of the most solid ideas of the Inherited Will theory was the use of repeating patterns, themes and foreshadowing in One Piece to form a prediction of things to come and this is primarily what I've used to deduce the rest of the theories in this list. I'm not sure how to break these down but I'll just go right ahead. I'm sure I can maybe edit this for readability later.

"One Piece" was the Ancient Kingdom. The One Piece is both an ideology and a tangible thing, as I believe Professor Clover was about to explain before he got shot. The One Piece is the entire world united in a piece, as one nation, and in true harmony with all of it's inhabitants. Therefore...

The Pirate King is the ruler of "One Piece". I formulated this theory even before the reveal of Rocks D. Xebec and that served as a confirmation on my part that I was indeed in the right direction with this theory. The title of "King of the World" and "Pirate King" are basically the same thing. This fits in perfectly with all of the descriptions of the Pirate King as the one who "owns everything in the world" or "owns the greatest treasure in the world". The greatest treasure in the world is quite simply the world itself. How was this done? Not by force, but by 20 rulers around the world swearing loyalty to one man. But this was not to last.

Ims was the first mate of the first Pirate King, the first "Dark King" The Pirate King was Julius Caesar and Ims was his Brutus. This explains why Rayleigh's title as the right hand man of the Pirate King is the "Dark King". He is meant to serve in the shadow of the Pirate King and guard him from the darkness. But this also places him in the perfect position to stab the Pirate King in the back. This is, what I believe, happened to the first Pirate King and Ims. And yes, that would mean that Ims is an immortal being - a possibility that was already foreshadowed in Law's fruit. In order to successfully do this, this must have taken more than one conspirator - which is who I think the first Gorosei were. If we were to take the Shakespearean comparison further, the Gorosei would be the senators that took part in the stabbing. They must have been part of the 20 Kings who swore loyalty to the Pirate King, perhaps swayed or tricked by Ims. However, this betrayal did not go unnoticed...

The War between the Ancient Kingdom and the World Government was a Civil War. Imagine a war that spanned the globe that erupted after the great betrayal. This was a war between those that were loyal to the Pirate King and those that usurped the throne. Unfortunately, whether it be by numbers or the use of devil fruits perhaps, the usurpers won a crushing victory against the loyalists who were then forced to run and hide and to inscribe their messages and warnings of this great threat unto indestructible stone while the usurpers erased history in order to both establish themselves as the supreme rulers of the world and also to hide their crime in the murder of the Pirate King.

The World Government is currently the "One Piece". Or to clarify, a corrupted version of the One Piece. Instead of uniting the world in true harmony, fairness and equality, the World Government subjugates the world and controls it for the personal gain of it's leaders. Further evidence of this is the entire ideology of the "Empty Throne". The throne is empty because that throne belongs to the Pirate King. However, only a true Pirate King would actually refuse to sit on the throne and lord over the world, instead choosing a life of freedom and adventure. The very essence of this was exactly recreated in the formation of the Straw Hat Grand Fleet. And we know that current "Empty Throne" is nothing but a farce as there is someone who sits on it in the shadows.

Alabasta, Ryuugu, Shandora, Ohara, Zou and Wano were loyal to the Pirate King These powers and perhaps more were all loyal to the Pirate King and fought against the usurpers, with many other kingdoms possibly completely destroyed and erased during the war. This is why they were all keepers of the poneglyphs. Ryuugu Kingdom was promised liberation from the sea and for it's inhabitants to be able to dwell on the surface by the Pirate King. To light the fires of Shandora is to keep the truth alive in protecting the Poneglyph. Wano isolated itself and kept it's borders closed because they knew that the world was their enemy - and to open it's borders is to signal the return of the Pirate King. Alabasta joined the world government but it's royal family refused to become World Nobles. I'm guessing that the King of Alabasta was actually tricked into betraying the Pirate King and then realized it later and regretted it (foreshadowed by Squard) but decided to stay in the World Government as a means to either survive or keep a mole on the inside.

The Ancient Weapons were the power base of the Pirate King If you're gonna be a King, you're gonna need actual power on top of symbolic power and I believe that's what the "Ancient Weapons" were supposed to be. Specifically, I believe Pluton was the main ship of the Pirate King, perhaps even his first ship when he first united the grandline. I also believe that Franky already built the Pluton in the form of the Thousand Sunny, perhaps as a transformation. Franky burned those blueprints because he already memorized them. Next, the power of Poseidon enabled the Pirate King to control all the sea kings - effectively granting him control of the entire oceans. And Uranus, though it has not been revealed, I am confident enough to assume is indeed Momonosuke and I believe it enables him to control ALL OF THE TITAN SIZED CREATURES of the world - one of them being Zunisha. These Titans were probably immortal and indestructible and were therefore banished instead of killed. Zunisha is one of them...but the rest are hidden away in the Florian Triangle.

The Void Century was but the start of an era of darkness. After they crushed their enemies and formed the World Government, Ims and his Gorosei continued to erase history. It's more accurate to call it the Void Era rather than just a century. The process that rid the world of it's history in the Void Century never ceased. Ohara is a prime example of that. Every time someone got close to the truth, they would snuff out the light and keep the world in darkness. This is how they are able to maintain power - through blind faith in their system of justice and ignorance of the past. And the reason why they must continue this process, even to the very present day of the series, is because a Pirate King always rises. Whether through the hopes and wishes of the people, or through murmurs of a forgotten past, a will to overthrow this darkness and for the Pirate King to rise again was inherited. The Pirate King is not a title passed down through by blood. It is a title gained through merit. But this is something that the Kings of the World Government do not understand and still see the Pirate King as a traditional King and this is why...

Ace was executed because he was the rightful heir to the Empty Throne, The Pirate Prince This explains why the World Government went to so much trouble just to execute one man. Why they would go to war just to make sure Ace died in a public fashion - it was an effort to snuff out the flames once more. To keep the world in darkness. But what they didn't understand was that the Pirate King was not born...he was made. This enables a man truly worthy of the title to rise. And a mechanism of this already exists...

The Grand line is a Tournament for the Pirate King One Piece was a giant tournament arc all along. The Grandline is similar to a grand prix. It is an obstacle course where you also face others in a tournament for the throne. It forges any man, even a simple man, to rise above and become worthy of the title. The Supernovas are rookies that made it through the first elimination. The Yonkou are simply the finalists.

Garp knew. Garp, through his own experiences and probably Roger himself telling him the backstory, knows the truth about the One Piece. It explains his distaste for the Celestial Dragons (on top of the obvious reasons) and it explains why he wanted Ace and Luffy to be marines - he wanted to reform the World Government from the inside by training the next generation to be better. I don't think he knows about Ims though nor did Roger.

The Revolutionaries know. Seeing Roger executed at Logue Town gave Dragon his final resolve but he first knew the truth from his father, Garp. However, they had a difference in opinion. While Garp still believes in the institution of the World Government, Dragon would rather be rid of it altogether. However, he has no desire to be King and thats why he didn't take the route of being a pirate that is gunning for the throne. He just wants to destroy the main obstacle.

The Donquixote Family knew. Through privileged access to information or some other means, Doflamingo's parents probably knew the truth - or at least a part of it. That is what spurned their change of heart and decision to live as commoners. Doflamingo himself definitely knew but probably didn't understand it fully as a child and instead focused and internalized more the abuse that they recieved after becoming commoners. This is the secret that he speaks of often. More on the national relic specifically later...

Kaido vs. The World Government This is the "age of smiles" that Doflamingo talked about - the new age. He knew of Kaido's plan to invade the World Government and establish himself as the knew King of the World/Pirate King. Doflamingo's entire angle is just him being in a high position in the new world akin to a World Noble. This is why he was always just gonna be a lackey - he lacked ambition. This also means Kaido already knew of the secret and instead of going after Laugh Tale, he just plans to go straight for the main obstacle, same with Dragon albeit for more selfish desires that liberation.

Tom-san was secretly royal. Just as Poseidon was from the Ryuugu Kingdom, the original Pluton was probably built by Fishmen (submarine mode?), the same Fishmen who built the Noah. This doesn't necessarily mean he had to be royalty but so far, all the secret keepers of Joy Boy had been royalty. It might also be why he was living in the surface - to hide him away in case the Ryuugu Kingdom fell. It would have been terrible if 2 weapons were in one basket so to speak.

The Will of D The Will of D is the inherited will to unite the two halves of the world in a piece - in relation to the plan of destroying a portion of the Red Line in order to truly create the One Piece. The D is not an initial, it is a symbol. (Half a circle, D) A symbol that one carries in your name to denote that your clan believes in the dream of One Piece. The original carriers of the symbol were all loyal to Joy Boy, the first Pirate King...specifically, I think they were his original crew members. Monkey, Jaguar, Trafalgar, Portgas, Gol, Marshall, Rocks...and one more yet to be revealed (Ims?) And I believe each of them came from one of the allied Kingdoms...Alabasta, Shandia, Ryuugu, Zou, Wano, Ohara...and two more yet to be revealed. (My hunch is the kingdom where Big Mom found her Road Poneglyph and Elbaf). These people and nations represent the 8 outer circles in the symbol of the Kozuki Clan. This I believe was the flag of the Ancieny Kingdom, One Piece. The big circle represents Joy Boy and the One Piece. A total of 9 circles... such as the 9 Red Scabbards...or the 9 Straw Hats. (What about Jinbei? He could be the 10th circle, signifying change and progress, could also be why his proper membership has been delayed) Theres a lot in this one but certain parts could be true independent of the rest. I just put them together for the sake of formatting.

#one piece

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williamsockner · 6 years

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LGBT+ Identity in the Time of Mindless Self Indulgence

Mindless Self Indulgence isn’t an act that could have flourished at any other time. The emo/pop punk wave was gathering steam; hip hop was still a novelty one could distinguish themselves from the flock by cribbing. “Random” Invader Zim-style humor was in the decline, while “edgy” no-limits humor was skyrocketing. Nerds hadn’t become the dominant force they are today, but due to the internet and the rise in manga and anime sales in the United States, they were able to access nerdy content much more easily. Youtube was taking off, music piracy was booming, and reliance on both radio and local record-store gatekeepers was at a low for young music fans.

Perhaps most critically, our national understanding of politics and identity at the time, particularly LGBT+ identities, was in a different stage of development than it is today. “Punching up” vs. “punching down” was not a concept that most people considered in their comedy. “It’s just a joke” was more widely accepted as an excuse for transgressive entertainment than it is today. “I’m an equal opportunity hater” was a common refrain.

Early in their career, the band released multiple tracks where Jimmy Urine, a man who was certainly not black, used the n-word. The “Pantyshot” cassingle was a treasured possession among MSI fans, featuring an early song that supposedly lost them a record deal due to being about lusting over a 5 year-old. Little Jimmy Urine sold kisses for a dollar to fans after shows, including to the teenagers. As a whole, the band made punchlines of racial and sexual slurs, rape and child abuse, school shootings, prostitution, drug use, incest, and just about every other taboo under the sun.

The understanding was that none of it was real and that none of it had any real consequences. Calling someone a faggot didn’t matter if we were all in on the joke, that homophobia was stupid. Words were just words. The identity of the speaker didn’t matter so long as their ideology was clear. It was something of an inversion of the way we publicly navigate comedy now, in that their identity determines where on the ladder they are to punch up or down, and the contents of their ideology is of minimal consequence compared to the text of their words. The context of a joke is not a matter of what the audience believes, but of the many complexities of hierarchy that society as a whole believes.

“Who cares?” asks 2008. “It’s just words.”

“How could it not matter?” answers 2018. “Words create culture.”

So LGBT+ identity in the era of Mindless Self Indulgence.

Describing the difference between 2005 and 2018 to young queer people is a source of anxiety for me, because I feel like the old woman talking about how she walked uphill both ways to the library if she wanted to read a book. It’s difficult, however, to put in perspective how quickly the culture around LGBT+ identities has changed. As dangerous as it is for queer kids today, they have much freer access to information about their resources and history than we did, and far greater representation in all forms of media.

When I was a teenager, I was the first person openly LGBT at my school, and my only point of reference for LGBT identities were Rosie O’Donnell and Elton John. There was no “Born This Way” yet, no Halsey and Hayley Kiyoko and Ellen Page, no Troye Sivan and Adam Lambert and Frank Ocean, no Miley Cyrus, no Laverne Cox. There were no empowerment ballads.

Which was fine, because I didn’t want empowerment ballads anyway. I felt disgusting. In reckoning with my LGBT+ identity, I felt small, broken, repulsive, confused, discarded and doomed. I was sickened in my own skin and filled with self-loathing because of my sexual orientation. Sometimes I still am. When I was 15, I drew a map of my heart, and in between the “fields of sexual insecurity” and “possibly irreparable damage” I had written “guilt!” several times and underlined it.

“You’re beautiful” didn’t only feel false, it felt invalidating. I was fiercely defensive of my self-hatred. I was working so hard at it, spending so much time and energy convincing myself I deserved the beating I was giving myself. To this day the barriers I’ve put up against generic bromides persist, and songs like “Scars to Your Beautiful” or “Roar” make me cringe. Maybe someone gets something out of them, but I can only think of the teenagers like me who used that sort of sentiment as fuel for their own self-abuse. I remember once bursting into tears at a “Jesus Loves You” sticker because it served as proof that the whole world was playing a joke on me, telling me that someone so unlovable should have some hope.

It was impossible to internalize that queerness was not dirty, unnatural and loathsome. Any attempt to break that association was drown out by the rest of the messaging we were receiving and our own tried-and-true mental gymnastics. Reassurance could not reach us at the bottom of the well.

At the time, I was obsessed with Mindless Self Indulgence with the kind of all-consuming adoration that only teenagers can possess. I aped frontman Little Jimmy Urine’s fashion, writing slogans across my coats with white tape. “What Do They Know” and “Cocaine and Toupees” were my ringtones, much to my mother’s chagrin. I had catalogues of bootlegs, lovingly sorted and pressed to CD. Mindless Self Indulgence populated my artwork, both in classroom doodles and in art pieces for my portfolio that I labored on for weeks. They were the subject of my college application essay. I met my first love on an MSI forum (which I moderated) and lost a few romantic relationships over my inability to talk about anything else. I owned every shirt. When I was hired on at Barnes & Noble’s music section, I would nominate Frankenstein Girls Will Seem Strangely Sexy for the staff recommendation shelf every single week, and whenever it inevitably got recalled to the warehouse for lack of sales, I’d order it right back.

Sometimes my friends and I would go to the mall parking lot at night and blast Mindless Self Indulgence from my car, dancing around the empty lot with our striped stockings, fingerless gloves and Hot Topic trip pants.

This band kept me from killing myself.

“I’m filthy, disgusting, horrible, irredeemable,” we’d say. “People tell us we’re beautiful and we know they’re lying. I’m a freak.”

“Yeah, you’re fucking ugly,” the music said. “So what? So’s everything else. Have some fun with it.”

Despite the fact that Jimmy Urine has never publicly labeled himself with an LGBT identity, we young LGBT MSI fans claimed him as our own. We enshrined the article where he described being sexually attracted to anyone regardless of gender. We imitated and revered his gender fuckery onstage, the skirts, the pink suits and tutus, the eyeliner, his yelping falsetto leaping up from the masculine shouting, the way he danced. We pored over lyrics - that we transcribed ourselves in many cases, through multiple listens and endless debate - for those nuggets of same-sex attraction and gender ambiguity.

“I make a good girl but I make a terrible boy,” went one song. “These things in my pants that we’re all waiting for, I never really knew what that thing down there was used for,” went another. And the most sacred text of all was “Faggot”, off Frankenstein Girls Will Seem Strangely Sexy, the most beloved record of the vast majority of hardcore MSI fans.

“I played that shit straight / blowing suckas to the side hopin' I get laid / now everybody knows / no way in hell I can ever live it down”.

Shit was a revelation.

Kitty, the drummer of Mindless Self Indulgence, once said of the band’s LGBT fans that listening to MSI’s music was like vomiting: it hurts at the time, but then you feel better. You got it out. And the band always cultivated their relationship with their LGBT fans. Gay marriage was one of the few political issues they openly took a stance on, in a time when states like my own were amending constitutions to protect themselves from Massachusetts’ same-sex marriages.

Thus, we had a place where we felt simultaneously seen and valued by the band, and unseen amongst the chaos surrounding us. The irreverent humor of the band created a safe space where homosexuality could be disgusting, but so was everything else. There was no shame at an MSI concert. You were listening to a man famed for drinking his own urine sing about whipping his meat out, who cared if you liked to kiss girls? That’s old news. We’re all freaks down here at the bottom of the well.

I’m 28 now, and I don’t know if the kids these days have an equivalent band. I don’t know if there’s a market for it anymore; I’m sure there will always be queer kids who have internalized the awful message that they are inherently unlovable, but I’m not sure if they can’t find more accessible and more inherently positive panaceas. I see mutations of the same style of humor in Willam from RuPaul’s Drag Race and in some of the undercurrents of Tumblr’s teen humor. “We’re goblins, trash, garbage babies.”

“Yeah,” my inner child says. “I fucking feel that.”

The paradigm of humor has changed since 2008, at least in my circles, and the reasons for that are manifold, political, social, capitalistic. In many ways, it’s been a good thing: bigotry can be exposed rather than cloaked in excuses. A basic understanding of social inequality is presumed of most audiences. People are responsible for the impact of their words, not the intent. “Equal opportunity hater” is seem for what it is: intellectually lazy and blinkered, the refuge of white guys who don’t want to own up to the fact that some jokes aren’t funny.

But I’ll always have a place in my heart for comedy that meets people where they’re at. Where we’re at isn’t always beautiful or acceptable or healthy, but sometimes it’s the place where we need the laugh most.

#music #personal #lgbt stuff #humor #mindless self indulgence #jimmy urine #sorry guys i can't figure out how to text break

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maskedmuses-archived · 4 years

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SEND ’ 🎉 ’ TO KISS MY MUSE AT MIDNIGHT ON NEW YEARS EVE || No longer Accepting

@fortunesunfavored asked: 🎉 Ringabel @ Koya (But Definitely Several Drinks In)

With the Starlight Festival concluded, it was only natural that the upcoming days were spent in preparation for Heavensturn, where celebration of the year’s end came in the form of merriment, mochi pounding, and an assortment of other such tidings to ring in a new measure into the Seventh Astral Era. Even with the differing timelines between the First and the Source, the days had stabilized, allowing for the change of one year to the next to reflect from one shard to the next.

However, the traditions were not carried over, only by the Exarch’s imparted knowledge did the celebration go underway. Rather than mochi pounding, drinks were shared and a feast was served in the Pendants for the Warriors who wanted to eat, drink, and be merry for the turning time. Such practices weren’t unknown to the groups that had come to fight, despite their dwindling number.

Most had returned to where they were summoned, leaving Koya and Ringabel to instead have company of locals rather than of their own kind. It wasn’t terribly strange and as the days had passed, rather than being splintered by their differences, the two had seemed to get along more than ever. Any dispute was resolved with feats of strength--mostly, to alleviate any tension before Koya would give in to acknowledging that the man was probably right on their argument--and would simply rekindle any lost morale.

In most cases, Ringabel would take to socializing with ale and ladies from the First, causing Koya to do nothing but roll her eyes and instead enjoy the food. Not disinclined to drinks, if she kept her sober mind about her, it was easier to shut up the man with more if she placed mug to lips herself.

Yet on this night, not only Ringabel had placed her up to it, but many of those she had managed to befriend through his enigmatic charisma that had spread his fortune with her. Even a contest of who could drink the most had been bet by one merchant for the Warrior of Darkness to beat an Elven man from the crafting company.

Winning gil had never been so easy for Koya, even in the Gold Saucer.

Yet now well into the night, the Crystarium holding celebration for the darkness that blanketed it this year, fireworks illuminating the great tower began to pop from different directions. From their seats beside each other, Ringabel and Koya could easily see the glittering lights as they illuminated the sky. “Would’ja look at that,” the woman slurred, finally the amount of ale starting to swirl her thoughts. “Didn’t think they had stuff like tha’ here.”

As the seconds tolled by, the table began to lose members in favor of forming a crowd in the main forum before the tower. Excitement grew on her features as Koya downed the mug of ale she had and grabbed up Ringabel’s wrist to tug him towards the scene. Stumbling, both of them had drank more than their share of the intended tab, but they still made it, and her hand held his own as she stared up at the spectacle.

“’S beautiful...” She remarked, glancing towards the man. His soft features, in her muddled state, even Koya had to admit that he was good looking. It was no wonder that so many vied for his attention, yet he never gave them fully what they wanted. Her gaze turned gentle on him, his cheeks red from inebriation as well.

He had said something about someone who was like her, hadn’t he? In passing, but she had remembered a vagueness about it. Tilting herself towards him, her hand reached up, gently touching his cheek. “Y’er more than what I thought when we first met. Y’er really something...special, y’know?” Her voice was softer, even through the slush of her tongue.

No one else had ever made her feel like she wasn’t so out of place. So abnormal. Didn’t worship or fear her. Ringabel had treated her like an equal and a small thud against her chest made her think, just for a moment, if she could have a simple taste, just for one night...

It was uncertain if because Koya was so alike to Edea that he allowed it to happen, or if his affections were something beyond that of comradery. Koya would never be privy to the reasons why Ringabel leaned down and wrapped his arms around her while the crowd around them cheered on the ticking time. Sliding her arms around his shoulders, she brought herself closer as her vision vanished under heavy lids, a coincidental moment of pressing lips to his own while the new day began caused an uproar that was muted to her in that moment.

Rather, Koya could taste the sweetness of his skin that was coated in the alcohol, brushes of contact turning into something more passionate while allowing the sensation to go freely. Gentleness turned to sloppy and unrefined, ale-covered tastebuds running along the inside of his mouth, a yearning for more that she had never allowed herself to feel.

All of those desires had been stifled, shoved down with fighting. Yet there was no one to fight, only a moment of weakness and haze that allowed the two Warriors to intermingle on an intimate level.

Breaking away, a heavy rising and falling of her chest against his own, lids barely lifting enough for her to peek out from under dark lashes. “...Ringabel...” Koya murmured, lips swollen with contact and desire to feel his own against hers once more. Leaning up, she almost brushed against them once more before finally, the last chug she had taken hit her system.

Drunken sleep covered her like a veil as she instead slacked in his arms, her head coming to fall on his shoulder. A new year and something vastly new for her, a headache Hydaelyn could not cure would be awaiting her when she awoke.

#fortunesunfavored #asks #||Strongest Hybrid On Enterra|Koyakumo||#|V: FFXIV|#Readmore for length #Literally I got way too carried away and this thing is hella long #||ρσυη∂ ιт!| мємє αηѕωєя||#Oops I might ship it #//alcohol

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maddiviner · 5 years

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I’ve watched other witches shudder at the idea of plastic or even processed metal inside a witch’s circle. It isn’t natural, they say. Some claim that, to truly feel the witch power, you must immerse yourself in “nature” entirely.

You must eschew modern constructs. You can find the most powerful witches sitting beneath a tree in a forest, or meditating on mountaintop. So goes the prevailing wisdom of the 21st century Craft.

To me, such assertions raise more questions than they could ever hope to answer.

What defines “natural” in the context of magick? Why is “nature” and a preference for this “natural” ideal so important to so many of us? Most of us live in cities or suburbs. why do so many witches long for an almost pre-agrarian atmosphere for their magick?

The current is not unbroken. Even those of us who study history for a living can’t hope but comprehend what life was like for our ancestors.

Yet, we still have the concept of a pristine and supremely spiritual Time Before. We long to live unencumbered by modern concerns like taxes and WiFi.

Where did the Time Before originate, though?

We have to admit that it doesn’t originate in the files of historians. What we know about the life of the average person in pre-industrial society paints a grim picture.

If anything, the image of ancient paganism stems from the pastoral aesthetic. It owes more late Romantic period literature than anything earlier. In other words, it is a modern invention disconnected from the very era we see it as portraying.

It is clear that we have a habit of fetishizing mass-produced notions of nature and the past. This is to our detriment. Spirituality must be imminent in our actual environments.

This must include urban landscapes of pavement and steel.

We cannot ignore diffuse suburban sprawl that stretches as far as the eye can see.

We must not discount the deep rhythms of the cities we call home. More writing on the subject of urban witch power, flight, and spirit work would benefit us.

Cities do have spirits.

They exist in symbiosis with citizens, spaces and architecture, the land, water, and sky. In my view, city spirits are akin to the genius loci of the ancient world and the Faery faith.

They also have much in common with the more recent concept of egregores or group minds. You can view them as one or the other, or as an amalgamation of the two. I favor the latter perspective.

The notion of urban spirits is not without a colorful (though oft-ignored) history. The idea is present both in popular culture, and in certain occult traditions.

Christopher Penczak writes of urban spirits in his book, City Magick. He uses the term “deva” here. He ssuggests that these entities follow the pattern seen elsewhere

In this way, Penczak is right in comparing them to the “deva”-entities of theosophy. I have, of course, interacted with this sort of urban spirit.

They’re multifaceted to the point of having separate personalities for different functions. This mirrors what Penczak says about so-called “overlighting” spirits in an urban context. Like Russian nesting dolls, smaller functional spirits partake in the city spirit itself.

As is the case with many spirits, city spirits desire your efforts and attention. You must be willing to learn as much about the city as possible. This includes it’s history, natural geography, and inhabitants. It’s usually best to seek the city spirit through flight first. Then you can enact conjuration.

Of course, you must also make a proper introduction of yourself. Getting to know such a spirit can be a months-long working. In my experience, a witch naturally harmonizes with the city’s spirit.

We become part of the underlying pulse of energy after living there for a few months.

Even then, it’s necessary to signal to the spirit your intent to communicate. A reciprocal relationship must begin. City spirits, like many others, often respond well to offerings.

This can take many forms. It may include gifts (monetary or otherwise) that support the city’s interests. It can include actions like picking up litter and other improvements to the city proper.

The Krakow Working, as I like to call it, was one of the most intense magical experiences of my life so far. I performed it on the Summer Solstice of 2016.

I had relocated to Krakow in May after eloping with a Polish man I’d met on a Tarot forum online. My goal was, of course, contact and a reciprocal relationship with the spirit of the city of Krakow.

Preliminary research eats up a lot of time, but the more you know, the better. I began making small offerings with the intent of benefiting the city and its residents. My flights while in the city were into Byzantine, maze-like and shifting, landscapes.

I came to know the smaller spirits of the city first. There were the water spirits of the Vistula river. There were the egregores of the brooding communist-era apartment buildings.

These all helped to build a bridge that would ultimate lead to a relationship with the city’s spirit itself.

I realized that you can connect with these urban spirits through traditional symbols. Because of my flight experiences in Krakow, I will always consider that city to be female. I also experienced it as Saturnian, and thick with the active energies of Air and Fire.

These ideas are a bit of what you might call “unverifiable personal gnosis,” though. It’s likely that other witches might come to different conclusions. Still, I sought to connect with Krakow on my own terms, and, as spirits often do, she spoke to me in my own language.

I set aside a few hours each week in the month before the solstice for scrying. It was while scrying that first broke through and garnered the city’s attention.

After weeks of planning, at dawn on the Solstice began conjuration. I simplified the methods of the Lesser Key of Solomon as my template. I had received a sigil of the city while scrying, and found that she did indeed respond to it.

I made promises to the spirit of the city, and she made promises in return. That ritual on the Solstice irrevocably altered the way I view cities and spirits. She gave me a more nuanced awareness of my urban surroundings in a spiritual context.

Over that summer, my approach to witchcraft began to change. I stopped seeking some kind of (aesthetic) notion of natural purity in my practice. I began to connect with my environment in full.

I developed a new understanding of my own role in our strange post-industrial society.

To me, a witch’s power stems from connection. The web of Wyrd connects all reality. A witch, though, must be able to discern the connections. A witch’s power alters this web in accordance with their will.

This can be very difficult if you’re seeking a semi-mythic bygone experience. We’re better served by building connections where we stand. We must grow where planted, whether it’s city, suburb, or countryside. We, as witches of the 21st century must be open to these experiences. We must allow interactions with urban spirits. How else can we connect with the city and suburb environments where so many of us live?

This means that a recontextualization of the agrarian witchcraft aesthetic is necessary. There’s no reason to toss the mythic history of magick out the window, of course.

But, we need to admit to ourselves that much of our fascination with the past is just a matter of aesthetics.

We must face the rustic image of witch power as an aesthetic choice, not an innate reality. If we can do that, the door opens to many new and exciting magical possibilities.

Do not neglect where we are in favor of where we once were!

#magick #witchcraft #witch #witchblr #occult #spiritwork #spirits #krakow #eliza.txt #city #urban #modern #postmodern

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leftpress · 5 years

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Jasper Bernes | July 9th 2019 | Commune

Acid against austerity.

When cultural theorist, author, and blogger Mark Fisher passed away in 2017, he left behind an unfinished book manuscript. Acid Communism: On Post-Capitalist Desire was to continue the project of his 2009 book Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? In Capitalist Realism, Fisher wrote that decades of deregulation had all but fully destroyed our ability to imagine viable alternatives to capitalism. If we couldn’t envision a better world, he declared, there could be little hope that such a world would manifest. Capitalist Realism was by no means defeatist, though. The book concludes with a call to action: Fisher draws attention to what he saw as the most urgently needed political resource. If the future we want lies at the limits of our imagination we must begin there — with the creative, unruly parts of our consciousness, that parts that capital wants to claim as its own. The current political nightmare, he suggests, will only be defeated by vibrant dreams.

In this spirit, Acid Communism was meant to strengthen the political imagination. A recently published anthology of Fisher’s writings includes a draft for the introduction, which reads something like a manifesto. Fisher had taken a cue from his friend Jeremy Gilbert, a scholar who had long maintained that the sixties might serve as a blueprint for contemporary leftist revolution. Inspired by Gilbert, Fisher coined the phrase that would become the title for his next book: “acid communism” represents the idea that psychologically profound experiences — including the use of psychedelic drugs — should be used to galvanize anticapitalist movements. In the introduction, he observes that the optimism of the hippie-era left had faded during the heyday of Reagan and Thatcher. Neoliberal economics catalyzed widespread cynicism, Fisher claimed, and in so doing depleted the mental energy required for proactive organizing. We now owed it to ourselves to revive the hopeful politics that flourished in the sixties.

In the wake of Fisher’s suicide, several activist initiatives took up the Acid Communist banner. The 2018 transmediale festival, an annual arts and culture event in Berlin, included a workshop called “Building Acid Communism.” Workshop leaders gave the audience a series of prompts aimed at “unveiling and exploring the precise idea of freedom” that motivated left-wing activists. These questions inquired into how participants experienced boredom, whether fashion and style mattered to their political identity, and the last time they felt truly free from work, among other issues. Meanwhile, a spate of recent articles about Acid Communism reflect the multiple ways it might be interpreted. In one editorial, Jeremy Gilbert points out that the concept has taken on other names, including “freak left,” “psychedelic socialism,” and in the UK, “Acid Corbynism.” Acid Corbynism is referenced in the title for Gilbert’s new podcast, #ACFM (Acid Corbynism FM), which investigates “the links between Left-wing politics and culture, music and experiences of collective joy.” Although they are eclectic, these endeavors agree that the psychedelic sixties might make a reappearance in the political future. The work of Acid Communism, it seems, is just beginning.

The timing is apropos. Currently, we are in the midst of what some have called a “psychedelic renaissance,” referring to the revival of scientific interest in the psychiatric use of these drugs. Psychedelic psychiatry was a burgeoning field in the postwar period, but by the seventies the criminalization of all psychedelic drugs had brought investigations to an effective halt. After years of advocacy by researchers and psychedelic enthusiasts, clinical investigations of LSD, magic mushrooms, and related chemicals resumed in the nineties. 2014 saw the first peer-reviewed study on LSD published in over forty years, and the number of clinical trials is rapidly growing. Until recently, however, the psychedelic renaissance could not be considered mainstream. Its breakthrough moment came with the publication of Michael Pollan’s 2018 book How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence. Reaching the top spot on the New York Times bestseller list, How to Change Your Mind was a watershed moment for the reputation of psychedelics. Pollan is a widely-respected journalist, and much of the current research is being conducted at well-known universities; Stanford, Johns Hopkins, and NYU all currently have psychedelic research labs. This is encouraging to those who have long known what researchers are now trying to prove: when used safely, psychedelics can vastly improve one’s quality of life.

Although Acid Communism stands to benefit from the improved public image of psychedelics, these movements have yet to meaningfully overlap. I’ve been keeping close watch on both. My interest in the two subjects began around the same time, during my sophomore year in college. This was the fall of 2008. I was already skeptical of the US economy, but the financial crash confirmed my suspicion that capitalism was dangerous and unethical. That same fall marked my introduction to psychedelic drug experience. My initial encounter with LSD was overwhelmingly positive. It made believe that that the world was joyful, mysterious, and full of promise — an impression which contrasted sharply with the current political mood. In an attempt to reconcile my psychedelic-inspired hopeful outlook with extenuating social circumstances, I started participating in anti-capitalist and pro-peace activism. The fall of 2008 made it impossible for me to separate my political sensibilities from the hopefulness that psychedelia represents for me. But I’ve rarely seen psychedelics politicized this way in contemporary pop culture. I’d just assumed that after the sixties, psychedelic experiences could not be framed as political in mainstream discourse.

For the most part, then, I’ve pursued these subjects as separate intellectual endeavors. Both have continued to be central to my life. In 2013, I moved to New York City to pursue a Master’s degree in Nonprofit Management. Although I hardly had time for anything other than school, I volunteered to help out at an after-party for Horizons NYC, which is an international forum on the science and culture of psychedelic drugs. Held every October, Horizons brings together researchers, artists and spiritual leaders to give talks on topics ranging from the globalization of the psychedelic brew ayahuasca to the use of magic mushrooms in treating cocaine addiction. My schedule of classes and work prevented me from attending any lectures. Volunteering offered me partial access to this complicated, interesting world.

“If the future we want lies at the limits of our imagination we must begin there — with the creative, unruly parts of our consciousness, that parts that capital wants to claim as its own.”

The night began with a dinner for benefactors of MAPS — the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies — a non-profit promoting psychedelic research based in Santa Cruz, CA. As we relayed kale salad and vegan cheesecake across the kitchen, my friend Nina pulled me aside. “This is weird,” she whispered, nodding toward the dining room. I knew what she meant. The venue was a lavishly-appointed brownstone belonging to a moneyed Manhattan couple. It bore little resemblance to the psychedelic settings we knew and loved: earthy, DIY spaces which would no more readily welcome conspicuous displays of wealth like the one before us than then they would a visit from law enforcement. The guests didn’t match the hippie image we associated with psychedelics either. Their conversation flowed from remarks about exotic vacation getaways to opinions on Brooklyn’s finest private schools.

This shouldn’t have been a surprise. It was a benefit dinner, after all. But I still found the atmosphere unsettling. At the time, the economic crisis of 2008 was beginning to hit me hard. Not long before the conference, I’d watched a close friend become homeless. The tiny heart attack that happened whenever I used my debit card to buy groceries — the I-hope-there’s-enough-in-my-bank-account panic — had become a normal part of my reality, and I was resigning myself to the possibility that things might never get easier. A large part of me felt psychedelic activism to be extravagant in this climate. But I didn’t want the therapeutic use of psychedelics, a cause I’d believed in for years, to become yet another victim of late capitalism.

I tried to keep that idealistic thought at the front of my mind as the night continued. If anything, I assured myself, I should be glad to meet so many psychedelic enthusiasts who appealed to more conservative perspectives. After all, I reasoned, a controversial movement needs allies in the mainstream. Still, I couldn’t help but resent the guests for their seeming obliviousness to the current state of affairs. I wondered if they’d ever drawn a connection between their immunity to the war on drugs and their economic status, and if so, how much this bothered them. I wondered if they’d achieved some sort of enlightenment — perhaps thanks to psychedelics — that somehow made them both socially conscious and comfortable with their personal wealth. Even if participating in this space represented to me giving up some integrity, I wanted in on this insight. I was tired of feeling hopeless.

Although the luxe setting was unfamiliar, that would not be my last experience with psychedelic activism. My interest in hallucinogens followed me to my PhD in critical theory, where I explore the new psychedelic science in my dissertation. Throughout all these years, my social commitments have felt at odds with the pervasive cliché of hippie escapism. There is some truth to the myth of the disengaged drug-user: a friend of mine in the scene once said that, having attained a non-dualistic state of enlightenment, he “saw through” all political opinions. Other psychedelic explorers I’ve met intentionally ignore current events, claiming politics to be too depressing them. But, like a lot of common depictions of drug use, this is more fiction than fact. The consumption of LSD and magic mushrooms is no more likely to promote apathy than caffeine and alcohol. Moreover, in the age of Donald Trump and the rise of the new far-right, more and more people are realizing that their individual lives are ineluctably political. Political consciousness has extended to modern New Age subcultures, which now appear more thoroughly engaged with issues of justice than they did when I was an undergrad.

The Acid Communist movement has helped me view my politics as part of a historical lineage, not a misappropriation of serious Leftism. It’s helped me embrace the idea that if the experience of tripping had a message for society at large — if it aspired beyond the self-indulgence embodied in Timothy Leary’s “turn on, tune in, drop out” — it would threaten the very basis of capital. While the economic virtue of individualism rules over the modern psyche, any dedicated hippie will tell you that hallucinogens offer quite the opposite. These substances tend to break the flow of self-directed thought patterns, leading to a sense of unity with one’s environment. This state of mind is inherently communal and collectivist, and because of that, it’s easy to see how it could heighten sensitivity to political concerns. This is the connection that Fisher was to expound upon in his new book. We can now only speculate on what he might have said.

It would be wrong, however, to portray Fisher as the emblem of the movement. By Jeremy Gilbert’s account, anti-proprietary virtues are key to the concept. As a diverse set of ideas united by a collectivist ethos, appointing a figurehead would make little sense. But if such a title were to be given, Gilbert, not Fisher, may be the more worthy candidate. In a 2017 article titled “Psychedelic Socialism: The Politics of Consciousness, the Legacy of the Counterculture and the Future of the Left,” Gilbert offers some frank words on the difficulties he faced — and still faces — developing the notion in Fisher’s absence: “‘Acid Communism’ was Mark’s term for a political and analytical position that he’d derived more than a little from my work and interests,” he writes. “But it would be totally against the spirit of those shared ideas and priorities to attribute ownership or authorship of any of these ideas to anybody.”

So while Fisher appears to have owed Gilbert more credit than he gave, saying as much might be in bad faith. And, indeed, reducing Acid Communism to a particular thinker or even a cohort of thinkers would miss the point. While researching this article, I interviewed Gilbert, who offered some historical answers to the question of who might claim rightful ownership to Acid Communism. Although lighthearted in spirit, the sixties counterculture was profoundly critical of the bourgeois subject — the individual who sees herself as isolated and therefore acts out of self-interest rather than the common good. On principle, therefore Acid Communism cannot be represented by one person or group. This perspective bears a direct connection to political theories that emerged from Europe in the thirties and forties. Both Gilbert and Fisher link the postwar counterculture to the radical vision of the Frankfurt School, a circle of theorists associated with the Institute for Social Research at the Goethe University in Frankfurt. Its luminaries told of a structural relationship between individualism, capitalism and authoritarianism. With these warnings, it attempted to both retroactively account for fascism and prevent its future resurgence.

“A large part of me felt psychedelic activism to be extravagant in this climate. But I didn’t want the therapeutic use of psychedelics to become yet another victim of late capitalism.”

Unlike the Frankfurt School, Acid Communism deliberately operates outside of academia, which makes it more widely accessible than movements developed mainly inside institutional frameworks. Some of Acid Communism’s strategies include freely disseminating texts and speeches: Plan C, an England-based collective in the UK that produces festivals, includes on its website blog posts and videos of Mark Fisher’s Acid Communism lectures. But Jeremy Gilbert, a member of Plan C, acknowledges that the immediacy and immersiveness of psychedelic feelings demands non-intellectual modes of invocation. He views his work as a dance party organizer as part of his political pursuits. So while there’s certainly no ban on digital organizing, real-world gatherings appear crucial to a new psychedelic Left.

Toward this end, Gilbert and Fisher both explored the viability of incorporating old-school “consciousness-raising” events in a psychedelic framework. First developed by socialist feminists in the 1970s, consciousness-raising encourages participants to share stories about struggles normally conceived as private and shameful. The idea is that when people tune in to others’ narratives of hardship — which may include accounts of mental illness, social isolation and poverty — such problems are revealed as not an exception, but the norm. In his essay “No Romance Without Finance,” Fisher writes that “as soon as two or more people gather together, they can start to collectivise the stress that capitalism ordinarily privatizes. Personal shame becomes dissolved as its structural causes are collectively identified.” When community is built around shared struggle, feelings of alienation are modulated by feelings of solidarity.

Telling stories in this consciousness-raising spirit is key, but making and listening to music might be an equally powerful consciousness-raising technique. At concerts, Fisher writes, “a mass audience could not only experience its feelings being validated, it could locate the origins of those feelings in oppressive structures.” The current popularity of free-spirited music festivals might be framed as a reaction to neoliberal malaise. While modern festivals aren’t as explicitly political as, say, Occupy Wall Street, they do permit attendees to transcend the capitalist reality of dullness and detachment. It’s not just that people directly encounter joy, but that this joy is amplified by the presence of so many others. And at festivals, psychedelic drug use abounds. “Psychedelic drugs gave birth to the modern-day music festival,” points out journalist Kevin Franciotti. “There would have been no Woodstock without LSD.” It matters just as much that the historic Woodstock Festival also has a political history. The anti-Vietnam War movement was at least as essential to Woodstock as drug use. Jeremy Gilbert and the Plan C collective maintain that politics still go hand in hand with festival culture.

The politicization of tripping and trippy art raised my suspicion, however. Political thinkers have long raised been skeptical of a connection between aesthetics and politics. The difficulties of rendering politics as art and vice versa were a major topic of Frankfurt School publications. During our interview, I asked Gilbert about German-Jewish philosopher Walter Benjamin’s essay “The Work of Art In The Age Of Mechanical Reproduction.” Penned by Benjamin during the rise of the Nazi regime, it makes a theoretical argument that the artistic representation of political ideals accommodates fascism. Dictatorships, after all, rely heavily on aesthetics. One might imagine the sweeping grandiosity of Nazi propaganda, or the striking color palette used by the fascist rulers in the fictional government of V for Vendetta. It’s admittedly hard to think that tie-dye and jam bands might be used for the same purpose as the military uniforms and Wagnerian orchestras of the Third Reich. But applying the vibrant, affect-heavy veil of psychedelia to Leftist organizing seems strangely manipulative, as if it’s not enough for politics itselfs to appeal to the intellect. And besides, not everybody likes psychedelic art.

In response, Gilbert reminded me that while Benjamin warned against aestheticizing politics, he was by the same token interested in the social potential that inheres in art. This, he said, is a major goal of Acid Communism, which seeks not to authoritatively impose an aesthetic program, as in fascism, but to cultivate seeds of transformation contained in already-existing cultural forms. Mark Fisher’s writings on Acid Communism make frequent references to another Frankfurt School philosopher, Herbert Marcuse. For Marcuse, Fisher wrote, “art was a positive alienation, a ‘rational negation’ of the existing order of things.” Fisher positioned Marcuse against another Theodor Adorno, another Frankfurt School philosopher. While Adorno upheld creativity as a space of revolutionary otherness, Fisher said, he did not provide any tangible visions for the politics that art might inform. Rather, Adorno had readers “endlessly examine the wounds of a ‘damaged life’ under capital.” Instead of “marking our distance” from utopia — Fisher’s final verdict on Adorno — culture should strive to embody the ideals to which we might aspire.

This sentiment was echoed by Gilbert during our interview. Radical politics, he said, are always utopian, and utopian intentions are wasted without a manifest blueprint for change. Psychedelic art, with its message of love and transcendence, delivers. “It’s not going to be for everybody,” he clarified. But he indicated that its recognizable styles — whirling geometric patterns, fractals, and musical intricacy — offer an “aesthetics of complexity” which contrast with the dull reductiveness of capitalist realism. “Not many people allow themselves the full extent of their complexity,” he said, quoting composer Arthur Russell. With its multidimensional intricacies, both the art and the drugs might throw the banality of contemporary popular media into high relief.

Of course, psychedelic experience can’t be relied on to lead to communitarian politics. One weakness of Acid Communism is that it appears to rely on a presumptive natural link between psychedelic experience and Leftist perspectives. This may have been the case for me, but, it’s not exactly scientific law. In a talk titled “Psychedelics, Fascism and the Politics of Profane Illumination,” religious historian Alan Piper admits that “initiation by psychedelic experience does not inevitably lead to liberal values” — where “liberal” is counterposed with “fascist.” Piper’s talk included a brief history of psychedelia’s dark side. Hallucinogenic drugs, he noted, have long been deployed as tools of subjugation. Hallucinogen use prevailed in the Weimar Republic, and was formative for fascist thinker Julius Evola. Then there are the Cold War era MK Ultra experiments, where US government officials administered LSD to unwitting subjects to determine its potential as a truth serum. Today, the pervasiveness of sexual assault by ayahuasca shamans is becoming well-known in subcultures using psychedelics. And the use of ayahuasca by non-indigenous people has been critiqued as cultural appropriation. Psychedelics, in view of all this, could hardly be said to lead to directly to political enlightenment.

“Acid Communism could be a component of a dynamic, experimental Leftism that is as interested in creativity as it is in critique. It would just take a bit of determination, and a strong dose of imagination.”

The case of Burning Man — the world-famous gathering long heralded as a locus of communitarianism — complicates things even further. In theory, Burning Man perfectly embodies an Acid Communist practice. No money is allowed to be exchanged within its borders; it instead promotes the free sharing of resources as part of a gift economy structure. Burning Man is organized around the idea that people want to help out more than compete with one another. But there has been a recent backlash against this image: a spate of popular reporting tells of excessive tech-sector wealth and the rampant consumerism required to prepare for a week in the barren desert. The stories usually go something like this: once safely distant from their offices, Bay Area Burners descend into well-financed hedonism. Spending millions on private jets to the remote Nevada location, they proceed to “camp” in utmost luxury. Technology scholar PJ Patella-Rey considered this in an article titled “Burning Man is The New Capitalism.” While he emphasizes that there’s no causal link between the two, Rey claims it’s also not a coincidence that Burning Man began in 1989 — the year that the Berlin Wall fell. “Burning Man demonstrates how market-driven consumption fuels a new commons and how this commons, in turn, creates new markets,” he writes.

Gilbert considers the transformation of commons into markets to be a perversion of psychedelic values. But perhaps it’s to be expected. As he reported on his blog, “you can’t expect projects like Burning Man to end up in any place other than where it now is, in the absence of a much wider political movement for them to connect to. Experimental spaces like Burning Man will end up being co-opted by capitalism if there isn’t some wider political movement to sustain them, inspire them, and inform them about how to do things differently. You can’t really blame Burning Man for the fact that that’s happened to it.” It would seem that if music and art events are committed to widespread social transformation, such intentions would have to be extremely clear from the outset.

The intimacy between Silicon Valley and psychedelics deserves further remark. The rise of the “cryptopsychedelic” movement joins Bitcoin boosters and hippies, and initiatives are being launched to help corporate executives expand their professional mindset with some hallucinogenic assistance. And this surpasses the tech sector. Across the US, the reform of drug policy is a popular cause among libertarians and certain factions of the alt-right. Of course, not all who vouch for laissez-faire economics support the new psychedelic movement. But in the US, much overlap exists between these groups. When I pressed Jeremy Gilbert on this, he responded that contemporary hippies who embrace libertarianism fail to grasp the political history of their subculture. The New Agers of the mid-20th century, he claimed, were never in favor of capitalist principles. But this history may be more clear in Europe, where socialism has not withstood the bad reputation it has had in the States. If Acid Communism is to thrive in the USA, it would have to emphasize that psychedelia has been long-embraced by anti-capitalism. Its current vogue among libertarians is a historical anomaly.

On this note, it’s especially relevant that the psychedelic resurgence is not strictly happening in well-financed research labs. Much like the new left, it is taking place in the streets. As the number of legal investigations grows, the rise psychedelic in psychedelic drug may appear to be the exclusive result of science. A recent Vice Magazine piece points that the last few years have seen a major swell in the illegal use of LSD, especially among young people. “US government statistics show 1.31 million 18- to 25-year-olds admitted taking LSD in 2017 compared with 317,000 in 2004 — almost a fourfold increase since the mid 2000s,” it reports. While the fiat renaissance raises the socially-acceptable banner of medical studies, on the streets, it crosses into brazen political territory. Vice interviewed 25-year-old Abby, a student in the US who claims to use LSD to cope with “the ravages of modern capitalism,” as she puts it. “Psychedelics take the edge off the costs and burden of existing in a materialist and capitalist society, and the fact that this is not how life is supposed to be,” Abby said.

The construction of psychedelic spaces “where people can learn and grow” might be a natural pastime for youth increasingly skeptical of the status quo. Indeed, aiding the creativity and curiosity of young people — capacities preempted by neoliberal education policy — could be a goal of Acid Communism. When I asked Jeremy Gilbert about his hopes for the future, he indicated public school curricula as a site desperately in need of reconstruction. While it may be hard to translate Acid Communism into education policy reform, its program of consciousness-raising might take the form of alternative education practices, such as teach-ins and ecologically-focused curricula. And, indeed, there is indeed a burgeoning para-academic psychedelic pedagogy. Most psychedelic conferences welcome speakers without institutional affiliation, and a recent assembly titled “Cultural and Political Perspectives on Psychedelic Science” joined scholars across disciplines to weight in on the social implications of psychedelia.

Although formal meetings openly embrace Acid Communism, its truths might always be more evident at the after-parties. While I missed the lectures at Horizons 2013, I’ve since attended a number of other psychedelic conferences. More often than not, the formal lectures are less interesting than the conversations that ensue. While it’s too much to expand on medicine, culture and politics in a single talk, the disciplinary orthodoxy that guides conference lectures doesn’t apply to casual conversation. [a pattern emerged]. Many people see their psychedelic and political commitments as intertwined, refusing to reduce one to the other.

This brings me back to my story about Horizons. Following the benefactor dinner, there was an dance party. People were welcome even if they hadn’t gone to the conference, and the ticket price was affordable. As my friend and I made our way through the crowd, something stuck out: people seemed elated. They were unselfconsciously giddy in a way I rarely encountered at a typical bar. Of course, for some, this was the result of a little chemical assistance. But I was sober the aura was infectious anyway. It helped me set aside my bitterness from earlier hours and enjoy my company. I ended up talking to a man who’d brought his children along. When I asked him if he was worried about the party’s possible bad influences, he replied that this was the most wholesome thing they’d seen all week. What they encountered at school, he observed, was far less uplifting. There was no argument there. Despite the reason for the occasion, the feeling of inclusiveness made psychedelics seem incidental. People were what mattered, not chemical compounds.

“This is what it looks like,” I thought. An ideal was realized if only temporarily. Of course, it may seem tenuous as the basis for a new politics. But Acid Communism could be a component of a dynamic, experimental Leftism that is as interested in creativity as it is in critique. It would just take a bit of determination, and a strong dose of imagination.

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