#is it even useful to try? identity is not political destiny. we have so many examples of it not being that. | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

bitsandbobsofwriting · 3 years

Text

Merlin has been gone for two years, Arthur has a meeting with the Lord Emrys to help with the changing laws:

And he has never bitterly regretted sending Merlin away more

Part 2(final part)

Angst,

I'm gonna say... about 6 months before Uther dies, Merlin's magic is revealed to Arthur.

He really does NOT react well.

Arthur doesn't let Merlin get a word of explanation in, before he hits him on the head so hard he's unconscious before he even hits the floor.

When Merlin wakes up, what he can only assume is MUCH later, he's wearing cold iron shackles, he's been blindfolded, and gagged.

He just listens at first, still dazed and certainly concussed.

After about twenty minutes he's more aware, and realises... he's outside, in a forest, and he's on his own.

It’s been two years since Arthur abandoned Merlin in the woods beyond Camelot’s border.

He’s been King now for about a year and a half.

He went back three days later and tracked Merlin for a few hours, before coming to the conclusion that he'd gotten away safely, and heading back to Camelot.

He always tried to justify it to himself as protecting Merlin from Uther, ignoring the fact that Merlin had managed just fine on his own for years.

But really that was just an excuse. All he saw in the moment was a liar and a traitor. Really he should've had Merlin executed so... he's still a good person. He did the right thing.

He hadn't told anyone else the truth (perhaps because he knows they would hate him for it). Instead he told them that he and Merlin had argued, and before Arthur could get to the bottom of why his manservant was so irate, he stormed off in the middle of the night, and told him he wasn't coming back.

He stuck to that story the whole two years, though he's fairly certain they at least suspect he's lying. Gaius definitely does.

I imagine Gaius, only a few days after Merlin's disappearance, taking Arthur aside one night, and demanding to know if Merlin was dead. If Arthur had killed him:

"No! No of course not. He... we had a fight. It's like I said. He left in the night and told me not to follow him, that he wasn't coming back. I plan to respect his wishes."

Gaius releases the bruising grip he'd had on Arthur’s arm and takes a step back, his expression unreadable as he stares at the Prince.

"I...why would think I killed him?"

"Despite the fact that he most certainly could've defended himself against you, I always found it troubling how willing he was to let you execute him, should that be what you wanted."

Arthur has no reply to that, what would he even say? Would Merlin really have willingly walked to a pyre? If Arthur had only asked?

Gaius goes to walk away at that, but just before he shuts the door behind him, he pauses, and without looking back, says:

"If I find out you have killed my son, Sire, for who he is, there will... there is a large group of people who would see that justice is served. Myself included."

Everyone notices the change in the relationship between Gaius and Arthur since Merlin had left.

Arthur, with the knowledge that Gaius knows. Knows the truth and had guessed what he'd done. He couldn't face that.

They barely spoke to each other, Arthur avoided the physician wherever possible and words of encouragement and kindness were no longer aimed his way from the gentle old man.

His relationships with the others deteriorated as well.

They either thought he was telling the truth, and resented him for both being cruel to Merlin, and letting him go so easily.

(After years of Arthur treating Merlin terribly, no one is really surprised that Merlin had decided he'd had enough and left.)

OR they thought he was lying, hiding something, and resented him for not telling them the truth, and potentially doing something unforgivable to Merlin.

All but Gwaine are still polite to him, showing him the due respect of a Prince, and then a King, but not of a friend.

After a series of hijinks, Arthur comes to the terrifying realisation that magic isn't all bad.

Really I think, he's known all along. But admitting that magic wasn't pure evil made what he did to Merlin even more unforgivable.

He begins making moves to legalise it. It's slow and difficult, and he meets resistance at every turn.

BUT he also has the surprising support of Gaius, and his knights, and Gwen, and Morgana.

Still, none of them treat him like a friend, not the way they used to, but they're helping him along the way. He hadn't realised how many people close to him opposed the ban, until he started dismantling it.

Hope rises in him, over the months, as he realises that once he's legalised magic, he can find Merlin, and bring him back. The first place he'll check is Ealdor.

He's... scared of that. Scared that he won't be able to find him, but more scared that he will. That Merlin will hate him. That Merlin won't care that he's repealing the ban and won't want to come back.

Arthur doesn't think he could bare that.

Mostly because he knows that it would be entirely his own fault.

After the ban is finally lifted, there are huge celebrations. If the King is seen to be searching the crowds, as if for a familiar face, no one mentions it.

A few days later, a group of Druids come for an audience with the King, and are met by Arthur in the courtyard.

After quick introductions, and pleasantries, the leader begins to speak:

"Once and Future King, I first want to extend my gratitude for this warm welcome, and promise that you have the Druid's full support in lifting the ban. We hope for a peaceful future, full of cooperation and compassion."

Arthur nods and smiles slightly at that, but before he can reply in anyway, the Druid speaks again:

"Our leader, the leader of all Druids and all magic of the world, would like to convene with you, and discuss the specifics of any future agreements between our two worlds."

Arthur is surprised at that, but hides it well. Leader of... all magic? Sounds... powerful:

"Of course, I readily accept. They may bring themselves forth, I will make time for a meeting whenever they so choose."

"Your majesty, My Lord Emrys already awaits you in the throne room-"

(The Druid smiles at Arthur's barely concealed shock at his words, both at the idea that someone had snuck into his castle undetected, and at the mention of Emrys. One of the the few conversations he'd had with Gaius had been an in-depth explanation of who Emrys was, and his and Arthur's destiny (the physician had failed, of course, to mention Emrys' true identity.))

The Druid continues gently:

"-He's not one for public appearances."

"I.... of course. Will you and your group be attending? Or would you like to be shown to your rooms immediately?"

"This is a matter to be discussed privately, between the two of you, My Lord. Myself and my group have a camp just beyond the city walls that we will return to. Thank you for the offer of hospitality, we appreciate the kindness greatly."

With that, the Druid gives another short bow before turning and leaving through the castle gates, his group following closely behind him.

Arthur takes a deep breath, briefly glancing at Sir Leon, who stands at his side, and instructing him to inform the council that any remaining meetings for the day had been cancelled.

Leon gives a stiff nod and stalks off. He had been the best at hiding his disdain for his former best friend, but it still shone through occasionally, and Arthur's heart clenches as he thinks that he really can blame no one but himself for the deterioration of everything in his personal life.

With another deep breath, he re-enters the castle, and heads towards the throne room, trying to psyche himself up for meeting the supposed Leader of All Magic, who had managed to sneak his way into the heart of the castle, without anyone noticing or raising the alarm.

He pauses briefly outside the doors, and instructs the guards to not let Anyone in, without the King's express permission.

They nod, and with that, Arthur opens the doors and enters, shutting them quietly, before turning around to be faced with a near empty throne room.

He furrows his brow as his eyes settle on a single man, his back to Arthur where he stands gazing out a window, onto the courtyard below.

Arthur can't see his face, he can't see much of him to be honest, he's shrouded in a floor length blue cloak, hood up and covering his head.

The King stares only for a moment before raising himself to his full height, clearing his throat, and speaking:

"Lord Emrys? It's my honour to welcome you to Camelot. Thank you for coming."

The man turns his head slightly at that, though not enough for Arthur to see any more of his face.

"Your honour?-"

He huffs a small laugh at that, though it sounds dry and sarcastic, as opposed to genuinely humoured.

"- we shall see about that."

His voice comes out strangely, obviously magically altered, and Arthur has to stop himself from gulping at the many voices echoing around the otherwise empty room.

They sound sort of... familiar? But he pushes that feeling down and takes yet another deep breath:

"Of course. I've been told a great deal about you. That you have always been an ally to Camelot, and have protected both me personally, and the Kingdom, from the shadows, never asking for credit or requesting recognition. I thank you for that, my gratitude knows no bounds. You had no reason to protect a kingdom that previously would have seen you burn, though I swear to you, that is not how things work now."

Emrys let's out a chuckle at that, this one somehow even less humoured than the last

He gives a small nod, before saying, almost to himself, though Arthur hears anyway:

"Yes, we shall see."

His voice is no longer disguised, and Arthur once again pushes down the feeling of recognition blooming in his chest. He's sure he knows that voice.

("It sounds like.... no. It isn't. Stop hearing things that aren't there. You're just setting yourself up for heartbreak." runs through his head.)

Arthur is unsure how to continue the conversation from there, but before he has to force some sort of response out, Emrys finally turns, and lowers his hood.

Arthur takes a step back and gasps, his eyes wide.

Merlin's hard eyes stare back at him, his expression completely blank. He looks very different, but is still recognisable as Arthur's former manservant.

"...Merlin?" Escapes Arthur's mouth, so quietly he can barely hear it himself

At this, Emrys let's out a deep sigh, sounding almost resigned, as he cocks an eyebrow and replies:

"No one's called me that in two and a half years. You know, I used to hate the idea of people calling me Emrys instead of Merlin. Now, I find that I feel the exact opposite.-"

He tilts his head slightly, looking briefly puzzled as he maintains eye contact and mumbles:

“-Or perhaps it’s just you.”

At this Arthur gulps, and really looks at Merlin... or Emrys.

He's bulked out a little, no longer skinny and sickly looking, he fills his clothes (good quality, blues and silvers and blacks, intricate patterns and fitting well) in a way he never had before. His hair has grown out long and curls around his ears. His beard has grown in a little.

(Think, the living and the dead) :

His hands, which now have druid markings tattooed all over (they're also just about visible above his collar, though they don't go very far up his neck) , are clasped tightly in front of him, his fingers adorned with a couple of rings.

Nothing he wears looks especially expensive, Merlin had never been one to dress up, but they are good quality, and screamed "Druid" and "powerful".

"You're Emrys? Why did you never say??"

Merli-... Emrys tenses his jaw at that, his face showing slight anger as opposed to the boredom it displayed before, but before he can answer, the gang bursts in all at once.

Arthur can hear the guards yelling over the top of the door banging against the wall, and the footsteps of eight people rushing into the room.

"I tried to stop them sire but they wouldn't- Merlin??" From Leon has Arthur letting out a frustrated growl.

The King sweeps his eyes over the rest of the group as they all stare in surprise at Merlin.

Gaius is the only one who doesn't look surprised, he is instead smiling, and steps forward to offer Merlin a hug, which he accepts with no resistance as a small smile graces his face.

Merlin speaks quietly, but everyone can hear him:

"It's good to see you Gaius. I've missed you. When this is all sorted I've got so many things to tell you, to show you."

Gaius pulls back and grins even wider,

"All in time, dear boy. You're looking very well. I'm glad you've finally revealed yourself as the Lord Emrys."

Merlin blushes slightly at that and looks down:

"I haven't gone by the name Merlin in almost three years Gaius, Camelot has been the only place to not know me."

Merlin steps back, and glances quickly at the others, before settling his gaze on Arthur, who is looking a little like an animal caught in a trap. Merlin's eyes harden once again, and he schools his face back into disinterest and boredom:

"As I was about to say before, My King, I didn't get a chance to explain myself to you before I awoke, shackled and blinded and cold, with a rather nasty head wound, in the middle of a forest. And quite frankly, after that, I wasn't prepared to stumble my way back to Camelot and try for a second time. Though perhaps I should be grateful you simply knocked me out and dumped me, as opposed to burning me?"

Arthur looks to be in physical pain, but doesn't look away from Merlin, not even as the others gasp and mutter and stare and glare at him.

"Shackled? You.... I knew you were lying you monster. How could you?!" From Morgana is the first thing loud enough to be heard.

It's Gwaine who speaks next, but Arthur still doesn't look away from Merlin:

"You bastard. What the fuck is wrong with you?!" He goes to draw his sword and step towards the King, but Elyan holds him back:

"No, Gwaine. It isn't our place. This is Merlin's fight, and he knows we all stand with him."

At that, Merlin finally looks away, an ever so slight smile escapes as Elyan nods to him, and becomes the first of the group to move to stand behind Merlin, facing the king. The others follow shortly after.

They stand in a group just behind him, the fury rolling off them in waves.

Morgana steps forward and takes one of Merlin's hands in her own. Staring Arthur down, she speaks, her eyes flash gold as a sharp wind whips through the throne room. No windows or doors have been left open:

"Would you have done the same to me, brother-mine? Would you have beaten me and shackled me and left me in a forest to rot?"

Arthur steps back in complete shock, the group behind her and Merlin are also shocked, but take it in their stride.

Merlin squeezes her hand in a silent "I'm sorry, I'm with you, I'll teach you, you're safe."

Arthur doesn't really have the words at this point. He's speechless and in shock and almost crying.

He had always known that his first meeting with Merlin would be difficult, but he wasn't expecting everyone who had ever been important to him to be there as well, stood opposite him, hating him.

The wind dies down as Gwen places a hand on the other woman's shoulder from behind. Merlin looks towards Morgana first, and offers a comforting smile to her teary face, before looking behind him to the others.

"As much as I appreciate the support, and as much as I love, and have missed you all, I think me and the King need to have a private meeting on the matter. Personal problems aside, I need to see to the continued safety of my people."

It’s quiet, reserved Percival, who speaks up:

"Like hell are we leaving you with him now we know what he did." The others nod at this, but Merlin replies gently:

"I'll be fine, I'm perfectly capable of defending myself. Go, I'll find you later."

At this, he turns once more to Morgana:

"There is a group of Druids camped just beyond the city walls, go to them, take Gaius. They will help you until this is all resolved, and then I can teach you myself." he says with a smile, and at her nod, he glances at Gaius, who steps forward and leads Morgana out the room, closely followed by a hesitating gaggle of knights.

Gwen is the only one who remains, as she takes Merlin’s hand briefly in Morgana’s place, and snarls at Arthur:

"Monster."

-before following the others out of the room, and shutting the door behind her, leaving the throne room once again empty of people, bar the Forever King and the Immortal One.

Merlin speaks first, looking back to Arthur, unwavering and determined:

"How do I know this is all real? The change in laws?"

"I... what? What do you mean real? Of course it's real. Merlin please, can we just-"

Merlin turns away as he interrupts him, and walks back towards the window, to look upon the courtyard, where countless innocents had been slaughtered:

"Pretending to change the laws so you can lure my people to your city, before starting another purge, sounds like exactly something Uther's son would do. I will not put my people in danger by encouraging them to come here, before I can be sure they are truly safe from the Pendragon line."

Arthur's heart breaks even more. He really had damaged the relationship between himself and Merlin more than he ever could've imagined. Merlin had seemed to make it his life goal to assure Arthur that he wasn't his father, that he could follow his own path and create his own legacy. Before Arthur had ruined everything.

"I would never. The law is changed. Sorcer- your people, are safe. Merlin will you please-"

Merlin turns and interrupts again, looking Arthur directly in the eyes, obviously not prepared to let the conversation turn personal.

"Promises made to beings of magic are... powerful. There is magic in words, swear to me that my people are safe from persecution, and I will believe it."

"I...yes. I swear it. People with magic will no longer be unfairly persecuted in this kingdom as long as I am king, I swear it, in the name of Camelot."

Merlin’s eyes flash gold, and Arthur feels as though the words he's just spoken have been branded onto his soul. In a way, they have.

Merlin looks once more out of the window, and replies quietly, but darkly:

"I will hold you to that, Arthur Pendragon."

THE END!

This two-parter has been finished!!

As per usual, I only write drafts, so if someone wants to write this up all proper, then go for it, credit and tag me✌

308 notes · View notes

antiterf · 2 years

Text

So I came across a book at one point that claimed that the radical feminist movement actively played a role in trans men becoming more prominent and separated from the lesbian community. I found something that finally replicates that.

Mainly because when the "woman-identified woman" movement gained popularity in lesbian feminism, butch/femme roles were actively looked down upon as trying to play into heteronormativity. - "It was made repeatedly clear in the 1970s that butch lesbians were no longer welcome within the lesbian feminist movement."

It's not hard to imagine that many butches did not fully see themselves as women in the first place, and that some trans men had ties to the lesbian community even if they identified as men.

"Most FTMs were uncomfortable with the feminist idea that they were supposed to take on the burden of changing society. This would have entailed championing the idea that they were females who had taken on a non-heteronormative gender role. The whole point of FTM identity, however, is that it is a male identity, not female. ... Some FTMs were more open to acknowledging a lesbian history, and thereby a past female identity, but the lesbian feminist community generally did not find this to be sufficient to qualify for membership in lesbian feminist identity. Thus, they alienated even those possibly open to the idea of championing social change."

The bold and italics were added by me. But yeah, while many trans men didn't feel comfortable with the views of lesbian feminism being anti-men (I mean, they were men) they did not join. Those who still related were simply not allowed in.

The extreme medicalization of trans people did not help this, as even if some trans men did want to be a part of lesbian communities, doctors would not see them as fully identifying as men. Embracing that kind of identity would not allow you to transition.

Oh, and another part that sums it up well:

The feminist discomfort with FTMs, however, was not a logical outcome of identity difference, because the women‟s movement centered on a successful challenge to Freud‟s dictum that “anatomy is destiny”. Rather, it seems to have derived from socio-historical factors surrounding the rise of the lesbian feminist movement: its largely white, middle-class composition, the desire to appeal to the larger feminist movement, and the stigma of female masculinity (Califia 1999:89-91). Lesbian feminists argued vigorously that the lesbian feminist community was not a sexual community, but a political one. (Radicalesbians 1970).

Basically, trans men as a community did not "abandon" lesbians. Because even those of us who wanted to stay were shunned and locked out. It was the radical feminist movement that did that, while at the same time claiming that we abandoned them.

(If it's not open source then let me know and I'll get the pdf and share it - or put it through sci-hub)

#notaterftip #not sarcasm #radfem #radical feminist #terf #anti terf #terf safe #radical feminism #gender critical #long post

18 notes · View notes

minart-was-taken · 4 years

Text

Sort of continuation of this, but it also does stand on it’s own!

Title: A small problem Characters: Ravio, Wind, Minish and Legend Includes threats of violence “Tags:” First meetings - No-one is sure what they’re doing but that’s ok - Zelda shows up!

Enjoy!

Ravio was speechless, a little scared, but most powerfully: mesmerized. Two kids, clearly younger than him and both with bright blond locks that rivaled the sun, were engaged in combat.

Although fists were flying, neither had landed a single hit. When the older one, who he had dubbed Mr. Sailor, threw a hit, the younger one, Mr. Small, would live up to his nickname and shrink to a very small size.

He’d then unshrink, throw a hit himself, and miss as the other pulled quite the leap to get away.

Ravio was simply waiting for one of them to land a hit, and for the situation to escalate badly, as he was too afraid to intervene.

Another crack followed then, they were starting to give Ravio a headache.

From it appeared a pink haired boy, tallest of the people present. He blinked in surprise, glancing around.

His appearance seemed to distract the coat wearing boy, who ended up getting decked in the face and fell over shouting “SHIT!” very loudly.

“Oh my.” Signed the newest arrival, looking at the situation before him with wide eyes. “Am I interrupting something?”

“I’m glad you are.” Ravio responded, walking over to the seemingly sane one, although staying from stabbing range just in case. “I’ve been trying to get these two to stop fighting for ages!”

“No you haven’t!” Grumbled the kid slowly getting himself back from the ground, while the smaller one stood smugly nearby.

“Do I look like someone who could stop a fist fight with force?” Ravio pointed out. “Neither of you listened to reason, so I simply was waiting for an opening.”

“An opening for what?”

He hadn’t had a proper plan. “Why would I tell that? You might fight again and I don’t want you to know what to expect.” However they did not have to know about that.

“Why were they fighting?” the pink one asked.

“He started it.” Coat boy complained.

“Ah. Uhm.” Ravio scratched the back of his head: “From what I could tell, I was simply talking to Mr. Sailor here, then the small one appeared from the bushes and kicked him in the back of the knee.”

“But why?”

“I’m not quite sure.” Ravio confessed.

The stranger tilted his head, confused, before turning to look at the small smug one. “Could you tell us now?”

The very small one scoffed, but signaled for them to follow.

They were in the yard of a small house, and near the window was a little patch of what looked more like weeds than anything else. The kid pointed at one of the weeds that had been very slightly stood upon.

The pink haired one understood, his fist meeting his palm in understanding. “It’s not nice to trample on other people’s plants, Mr. Sailor.”

Coat boy crossed his arms. “I didn’t do it on purpose. I just appeared right there! I would’ve moved if I knew I was standing on a plant.”

“It’s just a big misunderstanding then.” The pink one nodded, kneeling down to be the smallest one’s height. “Next time try to tell him to move before kicking him, okay?”

Mr. Small looked unimpressed, but nodded.

Ravio was just confused as to why anyone would care about such an useless patch of plants. The only valuable thing lost here was a possible alliance between the two small ones.

Kids, oh so dumb. Ravio smiled to himself.

“When you said you appeared-” the Pink one spoke again, standing up and turning to the sailor. “Was it like how I did?”

Mr. Sailor nodded. “Yeah. One moment I was just hammering some nails and suddenly I’m here. Being kicked in the back of my knee. By the smallest bokoblin I’ve ever seen.”

The small one raised a fist, but the pink one grabbed it mid air, and held it still. The small one seemed shocked that someone could- Or more likely- Would try and stop him.

“Oh sorry, I meant rat.” Said the sailor, sticking his tongue out.

“Please stop antagonizing the small child with a sword.” Ravio said in a hushed voice.

The small one was too entranced by having been stopped to care, simply staring at the pink one with wide eyes.

“Huh. What a strange situation.” The pink one continued, ignoring the general chaos. “Well, I suppose if we’re all in it, we should get to know one another. My name is Link. Spelt L-I-N-K”

The smallest one pointed at himself, all the while Mr. Sailor gasped: “Wait- That’s my name too.”

Ravio felt himself tense up a bit, what he had been suspecting was indeed going on, wasn’t it?

The house that looked eerily like the one Link lived in, then there was the clear fact he was in Hyrule, and that there were people who looked eerily like Link but weren’t him…

Oh great goddess of lorule, take him back home please. This is not ideal.

“Hm…” The pink one pondered. “This seems like it’d mean something significant.”

You think? Ravio raised a brow, before shaking off the questioning look to smile politely like a good salesman. “Link isn’t the most common name, so I have to agree.”

He walked closer to the pink one, mostly certain he wouldn’t stab him. With a hand on his back, he continued. “The only Link I know of is the legendary hero of hyrule! It’d be ridiculous for him to be here, though, wouldn’t it?”

“I am he.” Mr. Sailor said.

The tall one blinked at that. “But.. So am I?”

The smallest one dug through his pockets, and pulled out a small note, handing it to Ravio.

Ravio read it out loud to everyone: “Link is the hero of Hyrule, and is allowed to do what he sees fit in order to keep the country safe. Signed, Princess Zelda.”

“...We can’t all be heroes of Hyrule.” Mr. Sailor complained. “And I know for one that I’m not lying, so.”

“There isn’t just one, though.” Ravio spoke up. “Legends speak of a hero in green who appeared centuries ago, perhaps he too had someone before him, and there was someone after.”

“Centuries, though.” Mr. Sailor pointed out, “Do I look a hundred years old to you?”

The smallest one nodded, but Ravio shook his head.

“I’ve heard of stranger things than time travel, in these lands.” Ravio stated.

“I suppose it is a plausible theory.” The pink one pondered, hand on chin. “I know I’m not lying either.”

“And the small one has a letter from the princess.”

“It could be forged.” The sailor pointed out.

Ravio wanted to point out he could tell a forgery from the real thing pretty easily, and had seen enough of Hilda’s writing to know how the royal family conducts it’s deeds. However, that’d make him seem kind of suspicious. “We could go and find out?” Ravio decided to ask instead.

“How?”

“This is clearly the small one’s home, if these are his plants. So this is his Hyrule.” Ravio explained. “Let’s go to the castle, and if the kid is allowed in, it means it’s not forged.”

“I suppose that’s a fair plan.” The pink replied. “And since neither of us are apparently lying, if the letter is real, then- Er, what’s your name?”

“I’m Ravio.” He responded, “The greatest merchant around.”

“Okay- It’s nice to meet you.” The pink one smiled. “Then if all of us are Link like we claim, Ravio’s theory was right.”

“Or some form of it.” Ravio specified.

The pink one nodded. “Very well, little one, could you take us to the castle?”

The smallest one pouted, but began leading the way.

“Holy fuck!” The sailor gasped, looking at the castle once it appeared in the horizon, standing tall yet- A little smaller than Ravio had expected.

The smallest one grinned smugly, walking at a pace more akin to jogging to stay in front of the taller people.

“It’s quite small.” The pink one commented.

“I do agree.” Ravio nodded. “The one I’ve seen is certainly larger.”

“It looks funny.” The pink one smiled, maybe even a little smug.

Ravio took note of it, but did not comment on it.

“So.” The pink one continued. “Your name is Ravio?”

“Like I said, yes.” He nodded. “Are you interested in my wares? I don’t have much on me due to the sudden departure but-”

“Not Link.” He stopped Ravio. “Yet you look a tad like us.”

Ravio blinked, breathing hitched. He missed his hood, but he had been in lorule- He doesn’t need that in Lorule! In Lorule he’s one of a kind!

“I suppose destiny can have a bit of a slip up here and there?” Ravio suggested. Sorry Link, he’d have to steal your identity for a bit here. “I assure you, however, just because I cannot wield a blade does not make me completely useless.”

The pink one simply kept smiling. “Very well, then.”

He hadn’t bought it, had he? Ravio yelled internally, but tried to keep the relaxed facade up.

The castle town was very cute, the sailor looking around with wide eyes, looking like he was taking many internal notes.

What caught Ravio’s eye however, happened a bit later. The smallest showed the letter to a guard by the castle gates, the guard simply sighed, said: “Follow me,” and started walking further into the castle grounds.

“That’s a lot to process.” The pink one spoke again. Ravio had to agree.

They were led to a room to wait- A waiting room, you could say- For the princess to get ready for guests. It matched all the Hyrule castles Ravio had seen, that being one. Stone brick all about, a polished but a little cold interior, with the triforce ever present in all decor.

There were paintings present as well. They seemed to capture the curiosity of all visitors, much to the delight of the smallest one’s ego.

Ravio focused at first on one depicting the princess, she looked similar to the Zelda of the Hyrule he knew, but clearly another person entirely.

He then chose to take a look at the others in their impromptu party, and found the pink one standing under a portrait of what was likely another hero of courage, this one standing tall with a flowing white cape, and a small red bird on his shoulder.

The sight awakened a memory in Ravio, and he found himself suddenly plunged into a mystery.

There was a mural in his Link’s hyrule castle, one depicting the hero prior to him. Zelda had joked to him and Hilda about how she had read the hero actually had pink hair, but the artists took creative liberties and made it dark blond instead.

This couldn’t be the man who sealed Ganon away, was it? Certainly there had been more than one pink haired Link.

Then again, they seemed to be in a situation which included traveling through space and time. Guess that might as well be a detail.

A guard soon showed up, expressing that the princess was ready.

They headed to the throne room. It was bold, large and voices echoed within it. The large windows made it feel slightly less like a scary space, but it did still make him grow a bit uneasy.

In Front of the aforementioned throne, stood the princess, with a bright but curious smile.

“Link, I didn’t know you had made friends!”

The small one tried to hide in his cape, but was unsuccessful.

“It’s very nice to meet you all.” Zelda smiled brightly, as the boys bowed. Ravio hadn’t been sure if that was to be expected, but the smallest one did have a blade and seemed to be satisfied with them bowing, so perhaps it was a good choice.

The pink one took charge soon after, explaining the predicament they found themselves in. Or at least, theorized they did.

“Oh my.” Zelda gasped. “The hero’s spirit will reincarnate this much?! That’s quite saddening.”

“Has the legend of the hero not existed for long here?” The pink one asked.

“We only know of one before Link here.” Zelda explained. “The hero who arrived from the skies to seal away the great evil, so that humanity could return to the lands below.” She said, clearly quoting something.

“...I guess the seal didn’t last.” Zelda added sadly.

The small one rushed over to her, and offered his hand to her. She took hold of it, and smiled with thankfulness in her eyes at the kid.

“Well, if any of you are like Link here, Hyrule is in good hands.” She smiled again. “I wish I could help more though. I’m not sure at all what could be going on, or what to do about it.”

“Do you have time travel items, or something? Getting home would be nice.” The sailor asked.

“I can ask for research on the topic to be conducted.” Zelda nodded. “Until then, you may stay at the castle, if you’d like.”

“Thank you very much, your highness.” The pink- Okay, he needed a nickname, Ravio decided. Whether he was the legendary hero or not, calling him Mr. Legend should help butter the guy up for possible sales, anyway.

With that, they were led to a guest room. Ravio was both deeply glad they hadn’t been paired up, as every pairing seemed like a bad idea, but was also absolutely terrified of sharing a room with three swordsmen he barely knew. They were also given instructions on how to get to both the castle library and the town’s library. Information which Ravio decided to make use of the next day.

It was fine really, and the beds were very comfortable! It seemed the spirit of the hero made them all sleepy as hell, as well. So getting stabbed seemed unlikely. However one thing still kept Ravio up that night.

“Bunnies, dark hair…” Mr. Legend had signed to him, when it was just the two of them, the sun having started to settle for the night “It reminds me of a place.”

“Oh, heh. A place, huh?” Ravio chuckled nervously. He didn’t like being put on the spot without a plan.

“It was a dreadful place.” Mr. Legend stated. “I hope you’re not related to it in some way.”

“I sure hope so too?” Ravio stumbled to find the words:“It sounds much worse than Hyrule. Love this place, the grass is very green. Smells great.”

“I hope so too.” Mr. Legend smiled, a strange dead look in his eyes. “I don’t want to take another life.”

Then he just started talking about how he liked apples.

So, it would’ve been stranger if Ravio wasn’t having trouble sleeping!

Oh, goddesses above, help him.

#The Legend of Zelda #Loz #Ravio #Legend #Minish #Wind #Minish Cap #Zelda #Linkverse

705 notes · View notes

mistwraiths · 2 years

Text

5 stars

You know those books that once you've finished reading them you're blown away by it and have no idea how to explain how amazing it is and how much you loved it? This, my friends, is oke of those books.

She Who Became The Sun is described as a Mulan meets The Song of Achilles. While those are apt comparisons, I'd argue that this feels more than that. The main character isn't doing what they're doing for their family's honor and they aren't a hero or trained warrior. It feels a bit like The Poppy War although it isn't as grimdark or as brutally descriptive, but it is heavy and tragic and deliciously full of military strategy and battle along with political subterfuge and intrigue. She Who Became The Sun is a genderbent reimagining of the rise of the Ming Dynasty.

I loved this book so much. From the antihero main characters to the main themes to the writing. This book moves slowly but you never feel like nothing is happening, the characters are always moving forward sometimes unhappily and other times with determination towards their fate.

Gender and gender dysphoria are some of the main themes of this book. Along with sexuality, diasporic identity, destiny, choice, ambition, and power. Every topic it touches its done so well.

Zhu is the girl who was destined for nothing, not even wanted by her family, and when her older brother dies, she decides to steal his destiny for greatness. Throughout the story, she becomes a monk and becomes an important member of the rebel army against the Mongols trying to achieve that greatness. Zhu is a fascinating character because of her desire to live and her determination to achieve that stolen destiny. Greatness is alluring. Watching her face hurdles and use her ambition and cunning to win, no matter the cost, is so gripping.

On the flip side, we also follow Ouyang, a eunuch general, who is doomed by and also must meet his fate by exacting revenge on the people who slaughtered his family and made him a eunuch. He's arguably the more tragic character because although he's a great general and an amazing warrior, the men do not accept him and he finds no place within them. He also hates women, for many reasons due to being likened to them (but also not anything like them), his beauty, and their own trappings in the world of men. There's no belonging, in gender or even really with the Mongols since he is not one of them. It especially doesn't help when he loves and hates Esen, his enemy, the Prince's son. His hatred towards himself, at the love he has, and how he is a prisoner to his past and revenge is great.

I love that despite them being on opposite sides, I can't help but root for both of them even though I think it'll be tragic for both in some way or another. These characters do terrible things and aren't anyone's heroes, they're full of grey morality.

If this wasn't clear, this book is also very gay! While Ouyang's romance isn't essentially romance but yearning and angst and tension. Zhu's romance is much more in the romance category. It's slow and good and worth it.

Honestly, I'm just blown away with this book and I cannot wait for the sequel.

#she who became the sun #shelley parker chan #steph reads #steph's book review #book review

18 notes · View notes

rein-ette · 3 years

Note

Howdy! I'm going to ask your awesome question back at you ;) what do you think of England, both as a character and as a country? Do tell me all of your feelings towards the grumpy man 👀

Short Answer:

To borrow a phrase from my favourite writer/historian Barbara Tuchmann, if Canada is the country of my birth, England has always been the country of my heart.

Long Answer:

I actually fell in love with England the country a long time before I even knew England the character, but Hetalia certainly reinforced my infatuation ten-fold. I can't say when or how it started because I think I was pretty young (I remember my mom making me take notes on Greek and Roman history when I was like, 7, and uh, let's just say my obessession with Europe only grew after that). It's also kinda difficult for me to parse why I like the country because it's been a constant in my life for so long, but I'll try my best.

I think it might have begun with my fascination with WWII history. There's this Chinese idiom -- 乱世出英雄 -- which kinda encapsulates why the world wars and British history in particular so enchanted me. The literal translation of it would be "heroes emerge in turbulent times" but I think a better figurative approximation is the phrase "for darkness shows the stars." The world wars, British participation in the world wars, and British history in general has many, many dark episodes and in many ways exposes the worst of humanity. But I think it's also true that British history also brought out the best of us -- exposed the "heroes", so to speak. I refer not only to household names like Churchill but also the commanders on the ground, the suffragettes, the workers in the factories, and naturally the common soldier. Of course this is not a phenomenon unique to British history, but it was through British 20th century history that I first fell in love with history in general, so it holds a bit of a special place in my heart.

From a more objective perspective, Canadians are really steeped in British culture, ideas, and history, even if we don't realize it. I mean, most of the ideals we embrace, such as the rule of law or constitutional monarchy, as well as the things we celebrate -- the abolishment of slavery, for example -- stem from Britain. One cannot teach Canadian history in school without learning British history, and when you consider that Canada's massive sacrifices in the world wars also played a defining moment in its national identity, it's really no wonder that many still feel a kinship with the UK. Plus, like I mentioned in the response to needcake's ask, a lot of being Canadian is trying to differentiate ourselves from Americans, and one primary way we do that is by pointing to our loyalty to England and shared monarch.

I'm not sure if this is really obvious from the other side of the pond, but Queen Elizabeth also, like, plays a really insidious role. Idk if Aussies or Kiwis feel this way, but we really love Queen Liz and can't imagine a world without her on our money and all our fancy buildings and occasionally making her speeches. I was an air cadet as a teen too! We had to play God Save the Queen for closing parades every night, and I remember thinking, gosh, one day we'll have to sing God save the king, and they'll have to change all the lyrics and coins and bills and what not, and that's really weird.

But yeah, besides the history and the environment in Canada, I also follow British politics to some extent? It's not as common as following American politics here (if you talk to Canadians ab the American president it's not uncommon to hear people say "why did we elect him" etc.) but it isn't rare either. I mean, I read the Economist (no i'm not 10 billion years old) and I've done courses in British politics, read British authors, a lot of people like British actors and films and shows...the culture is just really widespread, I guess. I also have close friends who lived/live in London...oh, and I went to a British international school when I was young for a year. That might have played a role too. I should say here that I've never actually been to England in person so I can't comment on what its actually like, but it feels so familiar that sometimes I honestly forget i haven't been. I hope to actually study in London soon, actually, so if you have any advice/warnings, hit me!

Alright, onto Arthur. I just? Really? Love him? In particular I really admire his pragmatic worldview, even if I don't always agree with the conclusions it leads him to. When it comes to knowledge and analysis, he's someone who refuses to turn away from the truth, no matter how incovenient. Yet when it comes to his own emotions he's the complete opposite. That mix of cynicism and then escapism to relieve the emotional burden of his own cycnism is just...fascinating. I also really admire his intelligence in general, as well as his work ethic.

Perhaps what I love the most about Arthur, however, is his spirit. I mean, he's just so alive. Whether he's furious or devastated or overjoyed, he's someone who lives life so intensely, so fully, with such fury. When I write Arthur, that's often the feeling I try to capture: someone who cannot help but see all the suffering in life, but someone who cannot help but fight on, regardless. In a strange way, Arthur embodies hope at its most irrational. As Samuel Beckett wrote in the Unnamable, he's someone who is always telling himself: "You must go on. I can't go on. I'll go on."

Absolutely no one asked for fruk, but I'm just gonna seize this chance to throw out a little headcanon. I think this intense, somehow mortal quality of Arthur is what first captivated Francis. As I've written about a bit before, Francis to me has the most "eternal" feel out of the all the nations. He loves humanity and life as a whole, whereas Arthur lives like every second counts. For someone like Francis, who just adores beautiful, wild, transient things, Arthur is like mortality in a bottle -- so utterly enthralling that once he tasted it he could never get enough. Unlike Joan or other real humans, however, Arthur has proved far more durable to wear and tear :P

My final thought on Arthur is that he has so much contempt for fate, its actually both funny and admirable. If I may quote Tuchmann again, "no man ever lived who was less willing to be the victim of events." Arthur's someone who simply refuses to be bullied, even by grandaddy destiny itself, and I think we all love him for that, a little.

#hws england #ask #hcs #whoooo this was a long one but i had a lot of fun answering #its a little embarrassing to talk about how much i love england in front of a brit but #you said such nice things about canada i just had to be honest you didn't deserve some half-assed ironic answer #rainbowfruitpastilles

23 notes · View notes

liesfallaciesfabrications · 3 years

Text

Mr. Queen Analysis

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

#MrQueen #MrQueenep20 #MrQueenexplained #mrqueenfinale

29 notes · View notes

frankendykes-monster · 3 years

Text

Relations among the classes and the permeability of class lines are central to Seven Samurai. The story is structured by alliance and enmity among three groups: farmers, samurai, and bandits. A small peasant village suffers depradations from a gang of brigands, who come twice a year to loot rice, horses, and women. The farmers overhear the bandits planning to return in the spring, and after consulting with the village patriarch, they decide to resist. Agrarian uprisings at the time, often quite violent, were not uncommon, but Kurosawa deals with resistance by the agrarian class in a manner that permits him to juxtapose different social types: the farmers hire samurai to work for them. The samurai plan a defense of the village, erect fortifications, and lead the peasants in battle against the bandits. The film is sometimes interpreted as a study of revolution, as a kind of political statement about how a vanguard group (the seven samurai) can lead a mass to overturn its reified social consciousness and assume a new political destiny. But Seven Samurai is far more ambivalent than this about the nature and meaning of class. The work may be regarded as an inquiry into the social preconditions and political foundations underlying the contemporary films. Seven Samurai is a film about [Kurosawa’s films taking place in the present], an attempt, by moving farther back into history, to uncover the dialectic between class and the individual, an effort to confront the social construction of self and to see whether this annihilates the basis for individual heroism.

At first glance, the film seems to affirm all the familiar elements of the heroic mode. Kambei, who will become the leader of the samurai, is introduced performing a selfless act. By posing as a Buddhist monk, he rescues a child held captive by a crazed thief in an episode that, as David Desser has pointed out, is apparently modeled on a Zen anecdote. He receives no pay or acclaim for this act. It is, simply, the correct way to live, [...]. Moreover, an apparent rejection of social codes seems essential to its success. To fool the thief, he has to put aside his long sword and cut his topknot (both are signifiers of samurai status) and shave his head so that he will look like a priest. Kambei becomes heroic, it would seem, only through the dissolution of his class identity. His determination to accept the farmers' plea for help is a recognition of his responsibility for them. They have given him their best by feeding him rice while they are eating millet. He tells them that he will always appreciate their sacrifice, as he holds a bowl of rice in the center of the frame, the first of many times when rice will function as a vector of communication.

Kambei's decision is an exceptional act of conscience far beyond the capability of the ordinary samurai. The farmers have already approached many warriors [...] who are either drunken fools or worthless thieves, absconding with their rice. Kambei's luck is, initially, not much better. The first warrior he attempts to enlist immediately asks which clan they are fighting for. When told their employer is a group of farmers, the man haughtily refuses, proclaiming the unworthiness of the enterprise for his ambitions. Only seven warriors are capable of lending their skills to a cause promising no reward or glory. When told that they may die this time, Kambei's old friend, Shichiroji, smiles with a valiant warrior's acceptance of the honorableness of violent death.

[...]

Also customary is the film's view of individual choice as a function of social crisis. The farmers are afraid of the bandits but perhaps even more afraid of the samurai. Some, like Manzo, prefer to negotiate with the brigands rather than hire samurai, who may, after all, loot their village and rape the women as the bandits threaten to do. Manzo points to the reality of class hatred when he asks the village patriarch whether samurai will fight for them just for food, which is all the village can offer. The elder replies that they should find hungry samurai. Even bears come out of the woods when they are hungry. The social cataclysms of the age, the defeat and destruction of warrior clans in battle, have dislocated many samurai, who are unemployed, hungry, searching for work and a lord to serve. Joan Mellen has suggested that the film implies that only such extraordinary conditions make possible the emergence of these seven heroes.

Kurosawa translates the sociological dislocations of the era into visual terms, realizing what would otherwise be the abstractions of a historical period as the concrete material of form. Four farmers have been sent in search of samurai, but before Manzo, Rikichi, Mosuke, and Yohei meet Kambei, they room in a hovel with a group of worthless ruffians, a blind musician, and a drunken, penniless samurai. He has lost his money to the ruffians, and they beat him up. Clearly, it is an ominous era when scruffy laborers trounce warriors for daring to draw their weapons. Yohei begins to cry and plead with the others to return home. They know nothing about samurai. The strong ones are beyond their control, and those who seem willing are weaklings. The farmers meditate on their misery, and the laborers laugh at them with contempt for their poverty. The farmers are out of their element, the ruffians hold sway, and the samurai is a disgrace. The three groups are isolated in the frame or are compositionally separated by a ceiling beam or other obstruction. By cutting among the groups with baroque changes of angle and moving the camera to reverse screen direction and to prevent the repetition of previous compositions, Kurosawa constructs a centerless area of spatial fragmentation, where one's perceptual moorings are continually being cut loose and buffeted by compositional crosscurrents. Instead of the repetition of camera positions, each is unique and offers a novel, and often bewildering, vantage on the action. The scene contains nineteen different camera setups and only five repetitions of a previous setup. Some of these repetitions, however, are deceiving because they begin with a familiar framing

but then use camera movement to shift to a new position. The room becomes a signifier of destructured social space through a cinematic rendering that undermines the formation of a coherent spatial field.

This collapse of perceptual coherence is the tremor left within the film from the emergence of a novel code that alters and reworks the shape and position of individual heroism. Kambei's selflessness, the master-pupil relationship, and acts of conscience as a register of social decay are familiar elements subjected to a kind of alchemical transformation that changes their very nature. To see how the change occurs, let us look at the terms of this new code, which are manifest at the level of form, in cutting, framing, and the general orientation of space in the film. A key moment revealing the presence of this transformational code occurs early, just after the farmers overhear the bandits planning to return in the spring. A long shot shows the circular huts of the village, and as Kurosawa cuts to closer views, a circular gathering of peasants appears within the space of the village (established in the previous shot), equating the peasantry with the architectural form of the village and the abstract idea of community it embodies. The peasants have assembled to plan their response. The dominant tone is one of despair and resignation. A woman, framed in an astonishing close-up of her behind so that she becomes pure volume, pure geometric shape, wails about the burdens of war, land taxes, and drought. Manzo is more resigned, saying that suffering is the peasants' fate and that it's useless to try to change it. Rikichi, on the other hand, consumed with anger and shame (it is later learned that the bandits have taken his wife), rebels against this passivity. Why don't we kill them, he asks, precipitating a small panic among the villagers. He and Manzo quarrel over this plan, and Rikichi, frustrated at the submissiveness of his neighbors, breaks rank, leaves the group that encircles him, walks off a distance and sits down. Of all the peasants, Rikichi will suffer the most and fight the hardest against the bandits, and he comes the closest to embodying the courage and fortitude of the samurai. Under other conditions, he might have become a Kurosawa hero. But instead the framing reinscribes him within the group. As soon as he walks off, alone, Kurosawa cuts to a new composition with Rikichi in the foreground and the group behind him, with the telephoto lens flattening the image to eliminate his separation from the others. The extreme compression of space places him back among the peasants by creating an

illusion that no area of separation exists. Then, as the frame is held, Mosuke suggests they consult the patriarch, and the group rises and engulfs Rikichi. Rebellion and rejection of the group with its norms of submission to a history conceived as fate have been countered by a framing and structuring of space that restores the rebel to the domain he has sought to leave.

This important sequence is one of many in the film that articulate a new conception of space, in which compositional relations and patterns of movement work to contain and confine characters within structures of social power. When the samurai arrive at the village, the farmers hide, afraid to greet them. Insulted and angry, the samurai consult with the elder in his mill, and Kambei points out the injustice of the farmers expecting the samurai to do something for them while behaving in this fashion. The other samurai stand in angry silence, and Manzo, Yohei, Rikichi, and Mosuke are embarrassed at the behavior of their neighbors. Inside the mill are representatives of the two hostile classes, but instead of cutting back and forth between them, isolated in separate frames, camera movement is used to counterpoint the emotional rift. The sequence begins with a close-up of the patriarch, but then the camera tracks around him to include Kambei, Shichiroji, and Heihachi in the frame as well. The scene then cuts to a shot of three other samurai, Gorobei, Katsushiro, and Kyuzo, but the camera begins tracking again so that the patriarch is included with them in the frame. Then the image cuts to a medium shot of Manzo and Mosuke, and the camera tracks back to include Kambei and the elder within the frame. In each of these three shots, the characters all face different directions and assume varying orientations to the camera so that the space is a hostile one and indicates the tensions of the moment. Yet in each of these shots, the composition has focused on an individual or class in isolation and has then shifted to integrate them with the other members of the social world. The cinematic energy of the film, framing and movement, communicate the social ties among characters, denying their isolation. In this respect, Seven Samurai is a reversal and refutation of the example of Ikiru, arguing against the possibility of solitary, existential heroics. There is simply no space in this film where a hero can stand as an individual. That space is constantly being transformed into social terms where isolation and individualism are regarded as pathologies.

When Mosuke and a band of men try to desert the common defenses of the village and guard their own homes, Kambei forcibly returns them to the ranks of the villagers. The camera has stressed the solidarity of the group effort through a circular track around the periphery of the villagers, assembled to hear the final instructions of the warriors before the bandits are due to arrive. The samurai tell the villagers they must move in pairs, not as individuals, for safety. Mosuke, angry because his home lying outside the village must be abandoned for the sake of the community's survival, breaks this circular movement with a tangential flight. After forcing him back in line, Kambei tells the others that everyone must work together as a group and that those who think only of themselves will destroy themselves and all others. Kambei's words are extraordinary, given the ethical context established by Kurosawa's contemporary life films, where the hero is expected, as a matter of course, to define an individual path. But here the material of the past discloses no spaces in which the individual can move, no spaces not already inhabited by groups and their demands. The self must be an interactionist self or cease to exist. When, during a meal, Katsushiro and Kyuzo attempt to save their rice for an old, starving peasant whose misfortune is known only to them, Kambei demands to know what they are doing. Information must be the property of the group, and private knowledge is a threat to its security. When Kikuchiyo abandons his post to go into the bandits' territory to get one of their guns, Kambei lectures him about his irresponsibility. Going on your own merits no reward, he says. In war it is cooperation that counts. Freedom thus becomes the prerogative of the group, as a new ethical model emerges in this film. "The limits of individual freedom of action are fixed in such a way as to ensure that the activity of the individual will not breach group limits. . . . Loyalty towards the group forms the basis on which individual activity is carried out."

Kambei's restoration of Mosuke to the group observes the same principle governing the reframing of Rikichi earlier as well as the terms of Kambei's own initial appearance. The cutting of his topknot and the donning of a priest's clothing had seemed to be signs of a relinquishing of class identity necessary for humane action (the saving of a child). They have sometimes been interpreted in this fashion, but as Kurosawa has pointed out, Kambei is really fulfilling his samurai heritage, which specified the warrior as a guardian of the welfare of the other social orders. Once again, a reframing has occurred. What has appeared to be the abandoning of class has actually been behavior in accord with social dictates. Here we may grasp the new code shaping the space and narrative of the film. It is the awareness of class as a determining force, structuring the social field and constraining the individual's range of choice and behavior. Seven Samurai is a film about the primacy of groups, the untranscendability of class, and by implication the fiction of individual heroics. Heroism is possible, but only through merger with groups. "Only through collective struggle is survival possible or can society itself be sustained." As Kambei says, by themselves a handful of samurai can do nothing against forty bandits. But united, samurai and farmer become a ruthlessly efficient fighting machine. The dialectic of individual and group rises to a new level in this film, with a power accorded the group it has never before possessed in Kurosawa's films. Samurai and farmer face each other across a gulf of animosity and hatred, but the possibility of their union, thinkable only in this time of social disintegration, holds extraordinary potential. It offers the vision of a different reality, of a transcendent future, an escape from war, oppression, and class conflict. The union of these groups creates an opening in time, a gap in history, through which an alternate future might be attainable, the millennium grasped. "The renewed world is no mere improvement on the present. It implies a total break, a total discontinuity with the relative conditions we now endure." Fulfillment of this chiliastic dream will depend on the outcome of the samurai—farmer alliance and what it symbolizes: realization of an organic community in a world rent by class division. If successful, it will mean the negation of history, the surmounting of time and class. In this respect, Seven Samurai offers a millenarian model of political reform and the quest for social justice, which has its roots in religion and the radical realignments of perspective announced by peasant revolts.

[...]

Within the terms of the film, history has brought the peasantry only suffering and an experience of existence as an unending, essentially undifferentiated flow of miseries. War, famine, drought, taxes, banditry, all the dislocations of the period have been internalized by peasant culture to form a consciousness of resignation, a hatred of the oppressor, and a vicious taking of vengeance when possible. Through their bloodlust and war-making, the samurai are responsible for much of the misery of the farmers, and a sudden shift in the film's mode of analysis makes this clear. Kikuchiyo, the most buffoonish of the group of samurai, discovers a cache of armor and weaponry hidden in Manzo's house, and in a scene of great emotional power he confronts the samurai with these weapons, which the peasants have stripped from the bodies of warriors they have murdered. Kyuzo quietly remarks that he would like to kill all the farmers in the village, prompting an explosive outburst from Kikuchiyo, who points out that the farmers may be greedy and tricky, but it is the samurai who made them that way by raiding their villages and stealing their crops. With tears of rage and shame in his eyes, he defends the farmers' right to resort to trickery to survive. The violence of his rage, and the truth of his words, humble the samurai, who are moved by his speech. Kambei guesses the truth. "You are a farmer's son, aren't you?" he asks. Kikuchiyo, embarrassed, runs out of the hut. The samurai take no revenge; they merely renew their pledge to help the villagers. No one protests because they are all implicated in the crimes Kikuchiyo described. Had circumstances been different, had they come to this village as part of a warlord's campaign, they might have torched the dwellings and taken the crops. Instead, the vicissitudes of the time have placed them in this peculiar position whereby they commit a kind of historical suicide. The bandits are samurai, fallen on hard times, and by destroying them, Kambei and his compatriots are annihilating their own class, creating for the seven samurai a profound temporal displacement that subsequent imagery will note. As the pivotal character, the farmer who aspires to be a samurai, who tries to cross class lines, Kikuchiyo becomes, like Rikichi, a character mediating relations between the groups. There is, however, little doubt about Kikuchiyo's fundamental social identity. The framing consistently isolates him from the rest of the samurai, who are clustered together as a group, and establishes a proximity with the peasantry. Often he will confront the samurai to expose, through the contrast with his own buffoonery, the nature of their identity and, in the scene with the armor, their complicity in sustaining a system of economic exploitation. The mediating characters, Rikichi and Kikuchiyo, enable the film to forge a dialectical analysis of class, defining samurai and peasant in terms of a relational opposition. The strife of the era works to sustain and deepen this opposition, but the film asks how inevitable this conflict is and, by posing this question, defines the decisive philosophical moment of Kurosawa's cinema. Its outcome will be far-reaching, for it will determine the manner in which history is experienced and understood by later [Kurosawa] films: as a field of potentialities, loosely structured vectors of action, open to human intervention; or as a frightening teleological process, unyielding and implacable, justifying a notion of karma or fate.

[...]

The events of the film are driven by the need to overcome this lack [of sufficient food and resources], by the efforts of the three groups to control the sources of food and labor. The bandits regularly take the village's crops and animals, and the farmers are initially afraid the samurai will do the same. They hide much of their food, and only after the two classes have begun to trust each other, in the respite between battles, do the farmers dare bring out this hidden food and sake and make a gift of it to the warriors. Every event in the film hinges on this basic question, informing and organizing the narrative: who will control the rice fields? It is rice that structures the relations among the classes, that has brought the bandits like a plague to the village, that signifies and seals Kambei's initial acceptance of the farmers' plea for help, that mediates relations among the samurai and the village children, and that finally remains in the possession of the peasantry in the film's last, powerfully symbolic sequence. George Sansom points out that the samurai wars of the middle ages are comprehensible as attempts by powerful warlords to gain control of the country's most valuable rice lands, parlaying this control over resources into political power. Much of the land in Japan is composed of hills and mountains, unfit for cultivation and lending a special urgency to the bloody quests for control of the alluvial plains. Kurosawa forms his narrative from this situation but adds a bitter, poetic dimension: the irony of the samurai's adventure lies in their desertion of attempts by their own class to gain hegemony. In this desertion lies the force of their moral example, but against the currents of the age they are powerless. As Northrop Frye has observed about the tragic hero, there is something against which he, no matter how great, is small. "This something else may be called God, gods, fate, accident, fortune, necessity, circumstance, or any combination of these, but whatever it is the tragic hero is our mediator with it." It is against the view of time announced by Kuemon's grandmother that the samurai take their symbolic stand and embody the possibility of an alternative. But will the film permit them to succeed?

As the counterforce to the social schisms of the age, as the ideal illumined by the actions of the samurai, the film posits the possibility of the organic community, free of disintegrative rifts and competitions, whose members are fused with a common project and common goals. The warriors and the farmers are battling for the dissolution of class, for an ideal of human cooperation. As they work together to make the village defensible against bandit attacks, seemingly intractable suspicions melt away. Kikuchiyo, Kyuzo, Katsushiro, Heihachi, and Shichiroji give their rice to the village children and joke with them. Katsushiro and a village girl, Shino, fall in love. The farmers share their hidden food with the samurai. Kambei cradles and plays with a village baby in the mill while her mother watches. This is the familiar Kurosawa insistence that true human action must carry a socially beneficial aim, that heroism is measured by the rectification of social oppression. Here, however, the symbol of that rectification is not an isolated park or a diseased individual but an entire community, which becomes transformed morally and economically, its members bound by trust and a sharing of resources. This community is an oasis of life in a surrounding region of darkness and death. Outside the village lie destruction and nothingness, a terrible void. No one is permitted to venture beyond its secured borders. Like the Teutonic knights in another battle epic, Eisenstein's Alexander Nevsky, the bandits are not fully individuated but instead tend to be presented as an irrational, destructive force. They hide in the darkness and attack from three directions under cover of night, and they use their guns to pick off samurai and villagers. (The guns, initially purchased from the Portuguese in 1543 and then replicated by Japanese technicians, will come to alter the social codes of samurai warfare by making obsolete the skills of a brave swordsman.) When Rikichi, covered with mud, ventures past the village borders in pursuit of fleeing bandits, he is transformed into a hellish phantom, his features unrecognizable by torchlight. Kambei tells him to halt and has to ask who he is. From the surrounding darkness and violence, he snarls his name, but it is not the Rikichi we have known. The young couple who leave the security of the village to rescue their father from the mill are killed by bandits, and their baby, the one Kambei had cradled, is barely rescued by the samurai. The fight against the bandits is a struggle to keep evil out, to eradicate class itself, to prevent the transformed relations of samurai and farmer from relapsing into the former condition of hatred and schism. The village contains a fragile moral experiment that must be guarded by force of arms because its example may be so easily crushed.

Heihachi's flag becomes the emblem of these new relations. On it, samurai and village are represented as graphic symbols, and the flag infuses the groups with its symbolic meaning during their moment of deepest despair. When everyone has gathered on the burial ground to mourn the death of Heihachi, the first samurai killed, Kikuchiyo raises the flag, and the entire assembly is galvanized by its image. But its presentation in this sequence is subtly ambiguous and points to the outcome of the social experiment. As the sequence develops, the shots begin to omit the samurai and to concentrate on the farmers. The image cuts from a close-up of the flag fluttering against a bare sky to a long shot of the entire group on the hill and then to a medium shot of only the villagers as they contemplate the banner. A medium shot of the flag follows and then another medium shot of the villagers. Then the camera tilts down the length of the flag, passing the circles representing samurai and stopping on the character standing for the village. It lingers on this character, and then the image cuts to a close-up of the patriarch and several farmers. A long shot of the entire group on the hill follows, then another tilt down the flag, with the camera again lingering on the symbol for village. The structure of this sequence stresses the farmers' relations with the banner, not those of the samurai. By lingering over the flag's symbol for the peasantry, the film visualizes it as the enduring class and the samurai as a transitory group, made peripheral by the flow of time. (This idea is also expressed by the guns—all the samurai who die are killed by firearms that render their prowess with swords useless.)

This imagery implies the ultimate failure of the alliance, and indeed the bitterly ironic, and justly famous, conclusion of the film returns the farmers to their rice fields and a ceremonial replanting while the surviving samurai are clustered below the mound of graves. The framing separates the two groups, and the final camera movement of the film links the samurai visually to their fallen comrades, to a world of the dead. Displaced by history as a vanishing class, and by the structure of the film during the symbolic raising of the flag, the warriors have won the fight with the bandits only to confront a more comprehensive defeat. They remain noble, viewed by Kurosawa as true heroes, but they are vanquished by the structures of time and class. Paradoxically, the organic community is destroyed in the moment of victory. With the bandits gone, the farmers no longer need the samurai, and class disparity and exclusion reappear. Shino rushes past Katsushiro to the rice fields, and he dares not follow her because their romantic alliance is socially forbidden. The framing groups him with the other samurai.

But, more important, at the last moment the film seems to rethink its own analysis and to transform its allegiance to the ideal the alliance embodies. The film climaxes with imagery of true classlessness as the logical culmination of the moral development the narrative has been observing. The final battle is a supreme spiritual and physical struggle, and it is fought in a blinding rainstorm, which enables Kurosawa to visualize an ultimate fusion of social groups. Their efforts forged by common praxis, samurai and peasant become a single team, a fearsome, efficient force defending their community. As such, they are indistinguishable, covered alike with mud and fighting with equal desperation. But this climactic vision of classlessness, with typical Kurosawan ambivalence, has become a vision of horror. The battle is a vortex of swirling rain and mud, slashing steel, thrashing, anonymous bodies, and screaming, dying men. The ultimate fusion of social identity emerges as an expression of hellish chaos, against which the final relapse into native ritual and class separation feels a relief.

- The Warrior’s Camera: The Cinema of Akira Kurosawa (Revised and Expanded Edition) by Stephen Prince

#long post #rape tw #suicide tw

4 notes · View notes

houseofhurricane · 3 years

Text

ACOTAR Fic: Bloom & Bone (15/32) | Elain x Tamlin, Lucien x Vassa

Summary: Elain lies about a vision and winds up as the Night Court’s emissary to the Spring Court, trying to prevent the Dread Trove from falling into the wrong hands and wrestling with the gifts the Cauldron imparted when she was Made. Lucien, asked to join her, must contend with secrets about his mating bond. Meanwhile, Tamlin struggles to lead the Spring Court in the aftermath of the war with Hybern. And Vassa, the human queen in their midst, wrestles with the enchantment that turns her into a firebird by day, robbing her of the power of speech and human thought. Looming over all of them is uniquet peace in Prythian and the threat of Koschei, the death-god with unimaginable power. With powers both magical and monstrous, the quartet at the Spring Court will have to wrestle with their own natures and the evil that surrounds them. Will the struggle save their world, or doom it?

A/N: Elain is really feeling herself in this chapter, even when she starts training and scheming in earnest. You can find all previous chapters here, or read Bloom & Bone on AO3. If you'd like to get an early peek at chapter 11 and all future chapters, follow me on Instagram at @house.of.hurricane. Thank you for reading! ❤️

“You should call a meeting of the High Lords,” Elain says, for the third time in as many days, her wooden practice sword aimed at Tamlin’s neck.

He blocks her easily, his eyes remote, as bleak as she’s ever seen them.

“You should tell your family that you’re here,” he says after disarming her, the sword falling to the floor with a thud.

“Feyre knows I’m in this world.” Within hours of returning to Prythian, she’d heard her sister’s voice in her mind, answered only I’m safe, then went silent, her shields as thick as she could make them. She hadn’t mentioned anything to Tamlin. “She sounded relieved I was alive.”

“Then you have a perfect time to tell her you weren’t conspiring against the Night Court.”

“Or I could tell her at the High Lords’ meeting.” She crosses her arms over her chest and flashes a grin at him.

“Or you could allow someone from your court to fetch you.”

“I doubt they’ll let me return,” she says, trying to sound more casual about this than she feels as she crouches to pick up her sword. In the mornings, she visits the passageways and tracks Koschei as best she can, and in the afternoons, Tamlin has agreed to help her train for a few hours, teaching her the basic fighting movements and, at her insistence today, the fundamentals of swordplay, though she’s realizing he was right when he said she wasn’t yet ready. Still, the idea of herself, pretty little Elain Archeron, hefting a sword, was too compelling for reason, and she wore Tamlin down, going against all the ingrained lessons on gaining a husband. She never imagined she’d be bound to someone for eternity without having to beguile him first.

In the evenings, she visits Melis, gossips a little with the servants before dinner, and then at night, Elain listens to Tamlin’s breathing and tries to sleep. He has gone so far as to find himself a cot, but when she appeared in his room the first night, he was too upset by the revelation of the Autumn Court to insist on her leaving. She’d rubbed her hands down his back until she felt his muscles relax, the strain in him ease, and she’d slept the whole night curled against him, her mind alight with plans and possibilities, the kind of stratagems she wishes Vassa or Lucien could unpick. She did not allow herself to think about the way her heart galloped at Tamlin’s proximity, how every time he’d moved in his sleep, she’d curled closer toward him, how when she’d finally fallen asleep, she’d woken up practically on top of him, her cheek on his chest, his arm around her shoulders.

In other worlds, the situation is simple between them: they are simply two people drawn to each other by destiny or chance. But as soon as they returned to Prythian, the weight of the mating bond and Feyre’s experience, Tamlin’s history and all the court politics pull them apart, insist on being delved into and resolved, too important to ignore.

Now, for example, she does not reach for Tamlin, though ever fiber of her self is attuned to his movements. Instead, she rises, sword in hand, points it at him as if she is full of a bravado she’s never possessed.

“If I go to the Night Court, will you call a meeting of the High Lords?”

“You cannot imagine what it would be to announce my failure for all of them to hear. When they already think the worst of me.”

Though she feels his power rise in the room like a sudden thunderstorm, she keeps her sword aimed at his heart.

“I know exactly what it is to pretend you are nothing until everyone in the world believes it, too. If you let Beron seize the human lands, your territory will be next. And then what will you say to the High Lords?”

“That I never wanted to rule this court in the first place.” His palms are raised toward her. Even Elain, with her conspicuous lack of training, knows that he’s conceding defeat. “Beron has marched ten thousand men through my territory in the last three days. They’ve barely bothered to conceal themselves.”

“Perhaps he wants to provoke you.”

“He wants me to see how weak I’ve become.”

“Then go to the High Lords and raise an army. Lucien will help you. I will go to him and explain.”

Tamlin’s fists are clenched, his rage thick in the room. At this point, Elain has always done what her schoolmasters and governess and family required: spoken a few pleasant words to dissolve every hint of tension.

But now Elain can pull herself out of this world. The furious male is her mate. And it would be easier if he would rage at her, show her the High Lord of the Spring Court who watched her sister fall apart and only made her hurt worse. Let him show her that he hasn’t changed, so she can break the mating bond without regret.

So she tells him, forcing her voice level: “This defeat will be much more painful than a single meeting. You know the Night Court will ally with you.”

“I will not go on my knees before Rhysand.”

“You have wasted years on your self-pity and your people are endangered for it. The human realms of Prythian are in danger. Do you think Beron will show them mercy?” She has not mentioned the humans until now. She does not want to watch him scoff.

His eyes blaze like green fire, a knot in his jaw forming, and Elain can tell that he is barely holding himself under control. Still, she does not look away. She sets her chin against all the comforting words that unfurl inside her, all the things she would say to him if they were people in another world.

“Go to the Night Court,” he grinds out.

“Only if you will call a meeting of the High Lords.”

“And if I will not?”

She takes a step closer, steels herself against the heat that rises in her at his proximity, all the things she wants to do with her hands.

“Then I will stay here and argue with you until you see reason.”

He barks out a laugh, surprise in his eyes, and she starts making her plan.

Elain goes to Lucien first, to Helion’s private library. It’s the only part of the Day Court she recognizes, and though the room is empty when she arrives, Lucien and Helion enter within minutes, Lucien looking a little sheepish at the attire of the Day Court, loose pants cuffed at his ankles and a vest that reveals most of his chest and arms, the corded muscles and bronze skin.

“I was worried about you,” Lucien says, just as she is forming her own remark about how well this fashion suits him. He squeezes her hand tight in hers.

“And I said that you were an Archeron sister, who will bring this world to its knees with no help from any of us.” Helion flashes a smile and Elain offers her cheek to be kissed in greeting, grinning in spite of herself.

Though she wanted to tell them everything, Tamlin had asked her to speak only of what she’s learned about Koschei and the other worlds, the meeting of the High Lords, and request that Lucien visit the Spring Court.

She starts with what she’s learned about the passageways, how she’s learned to navigate by her desire. In addition to the world where Koschei originated, she’s found worlds he’s visited. Though she has not opened the doors to those worlds, she can tell from the carvings on their doors that they are quite unlike each other, that in that ancient time when Koschei punched his way through various universes, he did not seem to have access to these passageways.

“He could have been running from something. He might have encountered your passageways and lacked confidence that a nearby world would be a safe haven,” Helion muses, lifting his eyes from his notes.

“The creature we found in the world of his origin did seem much stronger,” Elain says, catches a flash in Lucien’s russet eye at the word we. It’s all she can do to keep from sticking her tongue out at him, though of course she’s here on official business. “Have you made progress on the tether?”

“You went into this world with someone, did you not?” Helion asks.

“There is another bond between us.” Elain does not quite meet his eyes. She’s not sure what he knows. “He was able to use it to follow me into the passageway the first time I went, without touching me. He wasn’t fully in his body but I could recognize certain attributes.”

“All while you were holding the bone, wasn’t it?” Lucien asks, smirking.

Helion tries to turn his laughter into a cough, and Elain rolls her eyes at both of them.

“You were going to tell me about your progress with the tethering spell?”

“And you were working very hard to conceal the identity of your mate from us,” Helion says, winking at her. “Though I’ll admit I’m glad you’ve spared us the rhapsodies the rest of your court loves to provide on the glories of the mating bond. At any rate, we’ve made progress on the tethering spell.”

“He’s still afraid to winnow with it,” Lucien says.

“I’d like to be sure of the magic before I fling myself into some abyss,” Helion shoots back, turning back to Elain. “And since Lucien is so sure of this spell, he’s free to try it with you any time you’d like.”

She sees the window of opportunity, grasps it like a flower in need of transplanting.

“Then will you come to the Spring Court tomorrow, Lucien, so we can try?”

Helion’s eyebrows raise for just a second. By the time Lucien agrees to visit in the morning, the High Lord’s face is the picture of courtly neutrality. Elain expected she would feel ashamed of this revelation but instead she feels a rush of power inside herself that comes from the strength of her observations, her certainty in the next move. Knowing he’s wondering whether she and the High Lord of Spring are mates, she says:

“Helion, as it happens I come with a message for you as well. Tamlin has called for a meeting of the High Lords.”

“How quickly?”

“Soon,” she says, trying to conceal her relief. Tamlin had been sure Helion would ask about the topic of the meeting, had not wanted her to provide a true answer. Now she’s sure he thinks it’s regarding the mating bond, romantic drama writ large as Prythian itself. “He prefers the meeting take place within the week.”

“The Day Court will be happy to host, of course.”

“Every High Lord will make the same offer,” Lucien says, shaking his head, his voice so much that of an exasperated child that Elain’s heart clenches in her chest. “Will you tell Elain which other sites you find acceptable?”

“The Summer Court. Dawn, if we must, though Thesan will begin to think that we rely on him for meetings of importance. Winter is also a possibility, though I have no idea how anyone is to survive that kind of cold. And the Night Court, but naturally Tamlin would object.”

She nods, trying to maintain the serenity of her features. He’s named every one of the neutral courts. Tamlin had been hoping for the Day Court, given Helion’s presumed allegiance to Lucien, though Elain worries about their ties to the Night Court. Then again, every court seems more tightly bound to Rhys and Feyre than to Tamlin, despite these last-minute machinations she’s making now, sitting in Helion’s library and offering him the barest slivers of intrigue.

“I’ll make sure your preferences are known,” she says, rising from her chair. “You should receive a formal invitation tomorrow. Would it be all right if I took a few moments to speak to Lucien alone?”

Helion exits with a graceful half-bow, and as soon as the door closes behind him, Lucien immediately quirks an eyebrow.

“You know he’s listening at the door,” he tells her. She can tell he’s trying to keep his face impassive, as if Helion can also survey him from any angle.

“I’m sure there’s a spell to keep him from having to press his ear to the wood. Cauldron forfend he strain himself” she shoots back, grins at his answering laugh. “I am planning to go to the Night Court next and I wanted to know if you’d spoken to anyone there.”

“Rhysand has definitely made his displeasure known, but the alliance with Helion is too important to risk over me. I don’t think I’ll be asked to provide a report anytime soon. But they were worried about you,” he adds, reading the shift in her expression, “your sisters especially. They thought you’d followed me here.”

“They didn’t think I’d use my own powers.”

“Their confidence in you is going to be limited, especially once they scent Tamlin on you.”

She blushes in spite of the fact that she’d anticipated this question, had taken her bath in the evening, before she’d curled up in Tamlin’s sheets, spent the night listening for the sound of his breath.

“I thought they’d be less likely to kill me on sight if they thought it would cause war between the courts.”

“You’ve picked a poor ally. Likely they’ll think he’s bewitched you.”

“Sometimes that feels accurate,” she says, the feeling of his lips on hers flashing her mind, as it has a thousand times since she’d kissed him in the passageway, fallen asleep in his arms. When she hadn’t thought about their histories or politics, just the barely contained wildness of him, the way he would allow her an extra few minutes to gain the knowledge she needed even if it killed him, that fact that he never seemed to think Vassa could be a tactical sacrifice. There are other moments, too: when he’d told her she could break the mating bond without ever telling her that it might harm him, when he’d followed her into the passageways and other worlds without a question, as if she were not little Elain Archeron, pleasant ballroom ornament, but the force that Vassa had helped her begin to imagine she could be. Over and over she’s wished for no mating bond, for another history, in which these moments could be cherished proof that she was chosen from the beginning, beloved by someone who saw her clearly and cherished that view. Over and over, Elain steels herself, retells Feyre’s stories as incantations, watches for any alarming sign from Tamlin, a reason to pull on the fabric of this world and disappear somewhere safer.

“I can tell you’re mostly careful, but--”

She holds up her hand to Lucien, the way she might to a brother, to one of her sisters if their circumstances had been less dire or if they themselves had been different, more inclined to banter or affectionate exasperation. “I’m trying, Lucien. But there are only so many places I can go in this world.”

“You could have come here.”

“I thought I would endanger you.”

“Then you could have taken me with you.” He’s trying to be arch, but Elain hears the plaintive note in his voice, the one he can’t quite smother. In all the stories she’s heard, all the tableaux she’s witnessed, it’s always Lucien who is left behind.

“Tomorrow, I’ll take you to a dozen different worlds before lunch. Tamlin’s only seen two.”

“I’m glad you’ve figured out how to take me to peaceful worlds, then. I’m not as handy with a sword as your mate.”

She rolls her eyes at him, the term grating in her ears, turning each sweet tentative moment with Tamlin into a proclamation of fate. Especially when she still has yet to face Feyre.

“He needs help with this meeting, Lucien,” she says, forcing herself to remain in the present moment, the task at hand. “Will you talk to him tomorrow?”

“Are either of you going to tell me what this meeting is about? I noticed you chose a very opportune moment to mention it to Helion.”

“Isn’t he listening at the door? If Tamlin doesn’t tell you tomorrow, I will.”

He gives her an appraising glance. “Is it being in all these strange new worlds that’s made you so defiant?”

“He can’t harm me, according to all the stories about mates.”

“There are destructions that don’t hurt one bit, Elain,” he says, and for just a second, Lucien’s russet eye looks haunted. She decides to change the subject, already knowing that he won’t tell her what experience he’s remembering.

“Tell me what to say at the Night Court.”

“Tell them the truth. Remind them that your power is your own. Appeal to Feyre, not Rhysand. She knew you before you were brought to the Night Court.”

“That was my plan,” she says, her shoulders relaxing with relief, that her own ideas are not so far off from this schemer’s.

“I noticed you flinch once, when Rhys called you his family.” Lucien’s voice is too careful, and maybe it is stupid to trust him, but this secret is too old to cause anyone much harm.

“Before -- with Azriel, he was the one who stopped it. Because of you, I think, and the politics involved. And Azriel just followed those orders. I’m family to him only when it suits.” There’s a darkness in him, she wants to say, Feyre believes he’s good but I’m not sure. She tries not to act on her observations unless she’s certain, and Elain has always been taught to trust in the men around her for her own good. So she swallows the words.

“That sounds like my family on a good day,” Lucien says, gentle, watching her like he knows there’s more that she’s not saying. “And Rhysand has been High Lord for centuries. Perhaps it’s easy to forget, what a family is without politicking.”

“You didn’t. You learned better.”

“I told the world you were my mate to stave off a war.”

She lets the quiet build for a moment, breathes in the old frustration, that he would entrap her as he did, turn her life into a ruin. But when she exhales, looks into those unmatched eyes that see so much, Elain knows that he saved her from this hard truth until she could bear it on her shoulders.

“I saw how you looked when everyone found out about Tamlin. You wanted to save us. Feyre, even me. And you’d never even met me.”

He reaches across the table and squeezes her hands between his fingers, old ink smearing onto her palm.

“If you talk to your old Inner Circle just like that, Elain, they’re going to accept you back with open arms.”

This isn’t her plan, exactly, but Elain just grins back at him, savors the moment.

In the Night Court, she is not blasted to bits when she appears. Instead, Nuala and Cerridwen lead Elain into the formal meeting of the Night Court, where Feyre and Rhys sit across the room. They’re not enthroned, exactly, on their velvet chairs, but they are regal, powerful, certain they hold her life in the balance.

But as soon as Elain sees the dark circles under Feyre’s eyes, she regrets disappearing, the three days she spent in this world with hardly a word. Then Rhysand begins to speak.

“I generally prefer if the members of this court are aligned in their aims,” he says, in that silky, dangerous voice, and she wants to snap at him to stop treating her like the enemy, before she realizes that she may, in point of fact, actually be the enemy to this court, at least in their eyes. His fingers are twined with Feyre’s, and her sister does not look alarmed at his tone. Instead, she studies Elain so intently that Elain checks and rechecks her mental shields, makes sure the shining gates are walled and barricaded, impossible to breach.

“I have been trying to save Vassa in the best way I know how.”

“We have offered you every resource, and you go sneaking off with Lucien. Telling other courts about your powers.”

Elain feels her eyes widening, the apology forming inside her. Because she can see the error in her actions, viewed from his perspective. If she’d pushed, he would have invited Helion to the Night Court, opened the library to the High Lord of the Day Court if the priestesses granted permission. But all of this would have taken time, involved deliberations and politicking and jockeying for power that are forgotten whenever she thinks of Vassa’s screams, the haunted look in Lucien’s eyes.

“I did not think that my powers were the property of the Night Court,” she says, balling her fingers into fists, her defiance rising. “Helion was the one who trained me. He listened to me and adapted his suggestions. With Amren, I was always pretending.”

The words detonate inside her mind: I was always pretending.

The truth of them, expanding far beyond this room. She healed in this court, and she will always be grateful for that time she was given, the care and attention, the gardens and soft words, but, like everywhere else Elain had ever been before, she was never expected to be anything more than lovely.

“Elain,” Feyre says, her voice gentle and her eyes still searching, and Elain braces herself, “you speak of Helion but you arrive with Tamlin’s scent on you.”

This had been her plan all along, but guilt thuds in her chest at the look in Feyre’s eyes, the confusion and concern. Her own hurt is hidden, because Feyre has always cared for her sisters as if she bore them herself.

“In that moment of panic, I reached out with my magic to a place where I would be safe,” Elain says. “I knew he couldn’t harm me.”

Feyre’s fingers are white against the arms of her chair, and Elain realizes she’s misspoken.

“I just meant,” she says, before she can be interrupted, “that I didn’t know what would happen here, and I thought the chances were low that Tamlin would run me through with a sword.”

“Even with everything I’ve told you? Everything he’s been?” She’s rarely heard this harsh tone in Feyre’s voice, even when they had nothing, could feel their bones rising up through their skin. What Elain really wants in this moment is to sweep her sister into a hug, beg forgiveness for her disappearance, and promise she will retire to her old room and only come out for meals until the world is saved. But she no longer believes the best thing is to stand by and let herself be saved. So instead she steels herself, continues with the words she’d planned out in the night, laid out like a star in the middle of Tamlin’s bed.

“I don’t want to hurt you. And I don’t know if he’s changed. I don’t know if I will reject the mating bond between us.” Elain draws a breath deep in her lungs. “But I do know that he saved your life and Rhys’s, even as your enemy. I think there is hope for him, still. And I think he’s trying.”

“How do you know that?” Rhys asks, pulling Feyre’s hand to rest on his thigh.

“He canceled the Tithe. He goes to the villages of the Spring Court to speak with his citizens now, every day. And when we were in danger, he trusted me to save us, even when he could have been killed.”

“When were you in such danger?” Her sister’s eyes are wide and concerned, Tamlin already forgotten.

“I went to another world.”

“That’s why we couldn’t find you.”

“I found the place Koschei came from.” She had debated offering this information but she wants to believe that they will help her.

“How are you so certain?” Rhys asks.

“Why would I lie?”

“It seems to have become a habit with you,” he says, and she feels his power rumble in the room, a reminder that he isn’t just a person who calls her family.

“My power belongs to me,” she says, a claiming on her own self as much as a warning to them, even as she knows that her power was never meant for attacking, only knowing, seeing, that she could only harm them as much as they might be hurt by her disappearance.

Feyre raises a hand and the room stills, Rhys shooting his gaze her way. But the High Lady only looks at Elain.

“Your power is not our weapon. But I wonder what you want to accomplish with it, alone and wandering off wherever you like.”

“What I want is a world at peace and Vassa free.”

“I spoke with her, when you were gone,” Feyre says, and once again her voice is too gentle. “She says that Koschei is treating her too kindly.”

Elain can feel the blood draining out of her face. There are so many ways a woman can become an object, and most of them are not nearly as pleasant-seeming as her own experience, ballrooms and gowns and men who promised her a gilded future. Vassa is so strong, but she’s still a human, and Koschei’s magic is a force unto itself.

But she has found Koschei’s world, is beginning to understand the feel of his magic. The tether will be ready soon, and then Lucien and Helion will be able to break down the spell on Vassa, set her free. She will go to that lake herself, alone, if it will save her friend.

“I can guess what you are thinking,” Feyre says, her voice moving from gentle to too gentle, ready to offer something unwelcome like a gift, “but you cannot go to Koschei. If he captures you...”

“I’ll disappear.”

“You cannot know what magic he has at his disposal,” Rhys says, silencing the room with his icy stare. “If you become his weapon, he’ll fling the door to every world wide open.”

“And so I should stay here until the war is over?”

“Can Tamlin protect you?”

Elain wants to tell him that she would be welcomed at other courts, not just Spring, but this would be a disaster, especially when the most delicate part of the conversation has presented itself amidst all this turmoil, the magic that throbs in the room.

“He is calling a meeting of the High Lords to discuss this, as quickly as it can be arranged. Will you hear what he has to say?”

There is a pause, in which Rhys looks at Feyre and Elain thinks look at me, wishes she’d asked her sister to speak in private, so that she could tell her about Tamlin gently, the two of them crying and bewildered together for a few hours until they were ready for the other topics. And a part of her, the monstrous part, wishes she’d spoken to Feyre because she knows her sister would be easier to convince alone.

“You insist on this?” her sister asks, not in the concerned tones she’s used since Elain arrived, but in her High Lady voice, steeled and elegant and unmoving. It’s a dismissal that Elain is sure she deserves.

But she thinks of Tamlin, agreeing to share the fact that Beron’s army has crossed through his court, is on its way into the human lands. They began to discuss what he’d say at dinner last night. It was the first time she’d ever heard him stammer, swallow his words mid-phrase.

“I insist,” she says, and then, into the silence: “You will receive a formal invitation tomorrow, but if you would tell me your preferred location, that would help the meeting come sooner.”

Rhys drawls his answer, as if he’s already bored. “Day, Summer, and Winter.”

Elain only nods, prepares to leave the Night Court, tells herself to be grateful that Feyre and Rhys listened, did not blast her to bits. Later, she will try to see things through their eyes, if only to predict what they’ll do at the meeting. She extends her hand, prepares to part the fabric of this world until it takes her back to the Spring Court.

When light blooms behind she eyes, she assumes it’s a shifting in her powers. But instead she is near a lake, and Koschei’s voice is in her ears, booming behind her.

“I will leave you this world, my darling,” he is saying as Elain turns toward the voice, too slowly because she does not want to believe what is happening. If Koschei captures you… When Feyre had said this, Elain had been so sure the fear was an overreaction, Feyre’s habitual incredulity about her capabilities.

But Koschei is not speaking to her. His eyes are on Vassa, who is seated on a throne next to him, dressed in a gown adorned with the feathers of the firebird. One of her hands is held tight by Koschei’s fingers, the other resting on a swollen belly. Her eyes are vacant, nothing like the blue fire that has always burned in them.

“Thank you,” Vassa says, in a voice that is absent, hardly recognizable.

Elain balls her hands, wants to scream run!, to grab her friend’s hand and pull her into a different world, a better world, anything but this destruction, but her legs are fixed, her hands still at her side.

For a second, she’s sure Koschei sees her, meets her eye, but the depthless gaze slides over her, towards the horizon. And in that moment of relief, Elain realizes that she’s seen these thrones before. That a version of herself has sat on them, in some gloomy ruined possibility of the Spring Court, the Crown on her head and Tamlin bound as Vassa seems to be.

I will leave you this world, Koschei said. As if the world were a trifling thing. As if he had access to others.

It is foolish to close her eyes, make herself weak, but she cannot bear this sight, these revelations. She makes no sound but feels the tears on her cheeks, soaking the bodice of her dress as they fall, rage and fear and regret and sadness all knotted together.

Then she is falling, the ground hard beneath her. She doesn’t remember completing the initial tear that would allow her to go to the Spring Court, so she supposes these are the marble tiles of the river estate in the Night Court, that Feyre and Rhys have watched her in the throes of her vision, have allowed her to fall to the floor. She realizes that she does not want to see them, not when she’s this vulnerable, an old vague feeling crystallizing inside her with ferocity, the only fixed point in this whirling world, the sight of which is too great for her to bear.

When she feels hands on her, calloused fingertips, she flinches so hard that whoever she hits gives a little grunt of pain. Then she registers his voice, her own ability to move, the fragrance of the flowers she herself had planted, the lilac and gardenia and rose so heady and sweet that she hopes that it is real, no vision or fabrication.

“Where am I?” she asks, shielding her face, which is just as foolish as it was when she stood before Koschei, but her mind is still reeling, her vision itself overcome.

“The great hall of the Spring Court,” Tamlin says, his voice warm and concerned, his arm wending around her shoulders, holding her upright. “Are you all right?”

“I think… I hope I had a vision.” Every future has always felt the same to Elain, indistinguishable, as possible as anything that has happened in her past. Every future has been horrific, and still somehow this sight was the worst. The violation of her friend.

“What happened?”

“Ask me about your allies first. Ask me about Lucien.” She’s begging, near tears, and all the while the world spins around her, the world she knows and the world she hopes she never does, all the worlds which for now only she can access.

“You’re delirious. Are you in pain?” She feels his hand on her, gentle, looking for the source of hurt, and she wishes, just for a second, that he could wipe her mind of the vision.

“I saw Koschei with Vassa.”

“You didn’t--”

“I didn’t go to the lake. I had a vision. I hope I had a vision.” She presses the heels of her hands against her face, allows him to draw her toward him, the way they’d been in the passageways, her curled-up body against his chest, her head cradled by his shoulder. “What if we don’t win, Tamlin? What if we can’t rescue her?”

“We’ll try again until she’s free,” he tells her, and while the world settles into place, its furious whirling finally slowing, Elain tries to concentrate on the sound of his heartbeat, to believe him.

2 notes · View notes

asiaberkeley · 3 years

Text

Afghan is beautiful

I am a half Afghan woman. An Afghan-European American. An Afghan American.

Admittedly, it took me awhile to offer up this information in the aftermath of 9/11 when Afghanistan became synonymous with terrorism in the eyes of many Americans. Taking pride in my heritage suddenly and painfully became controversial.

People didn’t know about my Afghan-ness though because I had my mother’s surname and not my Pashtun father’s: Hotaki. Also, I didn’t wear any kind of head covering because I was raised Catholic. It was easy to hide and pass for completely White.

My late father, an aspiring doctor and med school student who spoke six languages, left Kabul with his family before the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan as a child. They were the lucky ones. He spent most of his life in Germany where many Afghans have sought refuge. One of my fondest memories is flying kites with him and my Irish-Swedish-French American mother in the Munich Public Gardens as a child. There was no wind that day and we dragged the kites in dizzy circles…laughing together...just as I imagine him now when he was a boy: kite flying in the streets of Kabul.

Since my father died when I was six, I returned to my mother’s hometown of Boston with her in 1996. I was later left to contemplate what it meant to be Afghan in a place with very few Afghans compared to Virginia, California, and New York. In college, as an Asian Studies major at Wellesley College and later at the University of California, Berkeley, I often corrected people who said that Afghanistan is in the Middle East and not in South-Central Asia. I wondered why it seemed that no one had received much education on this country’s history or people outside of reading the popular Khaled Hosseini novel, The Kite Runner, especially since we have been at war—fighting together with the Afghan forces against the Taliban in the longest war in American history.

Many Americans don’t realize that the attackers on 9/11 were not Afghan. The attackers did seek a hiding and meeting place in Afghanistan, however. But those facts shouldn’t matter. Because it doesn’t matter what ethnicity, race, or nationality someone is if they commit a crime and it doesn’t matter where they were hiding. The guilty party does not represent all people of their background or country just like Hitler does not represent all Germans or all of Germany and El Chapo does not represent Mexico or all Mexicans. Similarly, the latest mass shooter in El Paso doesn’t represent all white American men.

After former President Trump pondered out loud the mere possibility of a concocted plan to kill 10 million Afghans and wipe the country off the face of the earth – presumably through the use of nuclear weapons – I have thought more about what it means to be Afghan American today. And it’s not because of those unimaginably cruel musings which add insult to injury in the homes of all Afghans traumatized by decades of war. Indeed, nearly every person who is not a white man has been made to feel worthless, subhuman and criminal under the rhetoric of the former Trump administration...so Afghans are not alone.

But Afghans were alone in the discussion of their genocide in 2019. I have contemplated my identity even more because not one leader or politician in America of any background spoke out formally against those disturbing statements. (And it doesn’t matter if this was an actual plan of his or just an imaginary scenario dangling in the recesses of his mind.) What does the national silence mean?

After 9/11, Afghan American author of West of Kabul, East of New York and Destiny Disrupted, Tamim Ansary, went viral with an email he sent. In it, he wrote:

“The Taliban and Bin Laden are not Afghanistan. They’re not even the government of Afghanistan. The Taliban are a cult of ignorant psychotics who captured Afghanistan in 1997 and have been holding the country in bondage ever since. Bin Laden is a political criminal with a master plan. When you think Taliban, think Nazis. When you think Bin Laden, think Hitler. And when you think “the people of Afghanistan” think “the Jews in the concentration camps.” It’s not only that the Afghan people had nothing to do with this atrocity, they were the first victims of the perpetrators. They would love for someone to eliminate the Taliban and clear out the rats nest of international thugs holed up in their country. I guarantee it…Some say, if that’s the case, why don’t the Afghans rise up and overthrow the Taliban themselves? The answer is, they’re starved, exhausted, damaged, and incapacitated.”

After 2001, my family warned me that just telling people I was Afghan may offend or anger them because they may have lost a loved one on 9/11 or they may have had a son or daughter deployed to Afghanistan. In middle school, a classmate told me I was from the land of the terrorists after I proudly showed her an autographed book I received from an Afghan British writer, Saira Shah, called "The Storyteller's Daughter." My American cousin, a veteran, was later deployed to Afghanistan and brought back a burqa which I showed to my classmates in high school to teach them about the Taliban’s oppression. Contrary to what they may have assumed, what they saw was not traditional Afghan clothing. Traditional Afghan clothing, banned under the Taliban, is colorful, intricate, deeply hued, bright and beautiful. Google it.

A year has passed since Trump discussed wiping Afghanistan off the face of the earth. After it happened, I regularly checked Twitter and the news to see if any of our nation’s leaders denounced those remarks. I called my Governor, Congresspeople, and many others asking if just one would put out a statement to support Afghans and Afghan Americans against talk of our annihilation. The Governor’s office simply said that he did not put out a statement. I still haven’t found any. However, some Americans did speak out on social media. Thank you.

We have studied the long-lasting horrors of the U.S. nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in our classrooms. I thought we concluded as a nation that something like that could never happen again. That not a single person in power thought it worth it to speak out against the possibility of the U.S. committing another nuclear genocide bewilders and frightens me. Is it controversial to say out loud that Afghans civilians do not deserve to die en masse? Are Afghans so vilified in our society that it’s a public risk to defend us?

If you still blame the Afghan people for 9/11 even if only on an subconscious level, think again. Many of the Afghan people are suffering in ways you can only imagine in your worst nightmares. They are not responsible and took no part in this. Like the poor souls who were killed in the Twin Towers, Afghans are survivors and casualties of terrorism as well. Afghan women have lost their entire families. They have been abused and pillaged. Men, women, and children have been bombed and maimed. Their history, including the rich Buddhist Silk Road history of Afghanistan, has been destroyed by the Taliban and others.

Discussing our nation's capability to conduct nuclear genocide of an entire people and country is an affront to all humans.

So I suggest to all of our nation’s leaders who have remained tight-lipped in the face of the unspeakable: Take time to learn something you don’t know about Afghanistan. Perhaps that could start with the story of progressive Afghan Queen and feminist Soraya Tarzi who asked, "Do you think, however, that our nation from the outset only needs men to serve it? Women should also take their part as women did in the early years of our nation..." Or it could be about the life and death of iconic Afghan singer Ahmad Zahir. You could learn about the courageous resistance of Afghan women and girls throughout history or visit that Afghan restaurant you were too timid to enter and try a sweet pumpkin kadoo dish.

As the war in Afghanistan, a war based on lies and deceit, may be coming to another tragic end with even graver implications for the women left behind who have fought so hard for equality, maybe it’s finally time to read another book that is not the Kite Runner... and most importantly, time to look deep inside of ourselves and question the possible anger, hate and bias that has developed towards the Afghan people after the catastrophic and traumatizing events of September 11, 2001.

*See the Washington Post’s Afghanistan Papers which deemed that the American military did not know what it was doing there and that the war was based on lies and deceit. Government officials misled the American public about the war. The war has cost the lives of thousands of American soldiers with many more wounded as well as 100,000+ Afghan civilians killed or hurt. Many of the American troops have returned with PTSD. 30% of the Afghan casualties were children.

Sources

https://apnews.com/a2a8d7a4f89ec0515379dc4d4a38b56a

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/investigations/afghanistan-papers/documents-database/

5 notes · View notes

from-ib-to-asshai · 3 years

Text

WIP WEDNESDAY- I see you down on your knees

Arya should like to imagine that Frey blood is different then other blood. Maybe that the smell is more putrid, or that the liquid more viscous. Perhaps even a different color; more brown. Dirty blood would be fitting for such a dirty, rotten family.

But this isn’t the case. Despite all odds, the blood of the Frey men is almost lovely; she doesn’t clean the blood out from under her fingernails for weeks in a futile hope to keep it there forever. It’s color seemed so bright in the candlelight of the Twins’ kitchen, runny and red like the wine she’d serve to the other family members later on. It was almost indescribable how it felt to watch it.

It was meant for her, she realized. Arya was meant to bleed men like them just like the sun was meant to rise in the east. It was destiny.

At night sometimes, Arya would shake with anticipation at the thought of Cersei Lannister’s blood. Would it be just as wonderful? Even more so? The expression on Cersei’s face would be of no matter to her because all that matters was her blood, because blood was her life force and Arya would weep with joy to have the chance to rip her life out of her, Needle forgotten at her side as she would instead dig it all out with her bare hands, the squelching sounds of flesh and muscle and blood combined with the cracking of bones would-

Oh. She’s getting ahead of herself again, isn’t she.

Sansa stares at her from across the table, obviously still waiting for an answer.

“I’ve been around,” she said, “Surviving. Training. Hiding.” She shrugged. “Nothing worth mentioning.” If Arya hadn’t been trained so well, she would've missed the almost imperceptible narrowing of her sisters eyes.

“I see.”

A pause.

“What about you?”

There was another pause, and Arya saw something in Sansa’s demeanor change - not for the better. On guard. Jaqen would have hit her for her mistake; Now Sansa either thought she was mocking her, since wherever she had been was obviously public knowledge, or her sister now knows that she’d spent the last years out of Westeros.

Jaqen would have hit her for it, the Waif would have beat her for it, Sansa now distrusts her for it. Arya just cursed herself for it instead.

“Lord Baelish got me out of King’s Landing,” the redhead began smoothly, ringing her hands together on her lap, “I was hidden in the Vale for a while(...)”

The silence between them was neither pleasant nor unpleasant, but simply a reminder that they were essentially strangers, weren’t they, after so many years apart. Sansa was beautiful, sitting on the simple wooden chair as if it were a throne, back straight, hands folded and head held evenly as not to disturb the non-existent crown that rested upon it. Her red hair neatly braided and her face illuminated by the low fire, her displeased expression was identical to the one she’d given Arya almost every day growing up. This realization stopped her in her tracks.

She tilted her head. No, it couldn´t be. Couldn´t it? They wouldn't have sent someone to Winterfell this fast, they couldn't have. Oh, but they could have. They could have gotten to Winterfell in the time she was in The Twins, they could have taken it over, they could have taken her sister's face.

They had reasons too.

The House had reasons to be angry with Arya Stark, and they had the resources to tear her down, to kill her. All the shattered promises, all the ignored oaths, all the broken rules. But why? Revenge? That wasn’t their style, really; hadn’t that been the whole point? The lesson that Jaqen H’Ghar had tried to teach her, that The Waif had tried to beat into her?

We never give the gift to please ourselves. Nor do we choose the ones we kill. We are but servants of the God of Many Faces…

A lesson. That would be a motive. That would be a reason to kill and impersonate Sansa Stark. Maybe they needed more servants for the god then she’d thought. Maybe they wanted her back. Maybe-

The door creaks open.

She flinches, instinctively tracing the outline of the hidden knife beneath the sleeve of her tunic with her hand. The door opens too slow for it to be an attacker, the footsteps too loud for an assassin, she knows -- but flinches anyway.

Petyr Baelish looks different then from when she last saw him. Perhaps older, perhaps more weary.The last time she had seen him had been years ago after all, No, thats not it; he looks smaller, almost like a small child dwarfed by the thick winter furs he has to wear to stay warm.

Littlefinger isn’t made for winter, she realizes. A small grin briefly twists itself over her face. His beady little eyes fixed onto her and he smiled tightly, bowing deeply in their direction.

“My Lady Arya. It truly is wonderful to see you,” he said, taking a seat by Sansa, “When was the last time I saw you -- four, five years ago?” He says it like he doesn’t exactly know how long, which of course is a lie, seeing what kind of person Petyr Baelish is. “You were naught but a child then. I am delighted to see you have grown into a beautiful young lady, and are safely back in Winterfell.”

Are you? She thinks to herself. Outloud she says, “Yes.”

The simple reply throws Baelish off, and he awkwardly readjusts himself in his seat.

“You simply must tell me about what you’ve been doing all these years. No one has heard from you in years.” He trying to play with her, she knows, but she is not interested in playing his game. He is far more interested in him playing hers. The smile she wears in small and light, weightless and nonchalant. She needs to make Baelish believe she thinks she’s smarter than she is. Not to trick him later; no, like she says, she has little interest in the game of thrones. No, she needs both him and Sansa to believe she had no capabilities to kill him, that she was too dumb to try.

She shrugs. “Same could be said for you My Lord. I hear one moment you’re working for the Lannisters, next you’re marrying into House Arryn, only to move on to the Boltons. All quite conflicting reports, really.” Her voice is soft and dispassionate. “I was hoping, that as I tell you of my travels, I’d be able to hear about yours more. Oh, you know how the smallfolk speak -- all rumors and claims -- one can never really know the truth.”

“No,” Littlefinger replied, “One truly can’t. I-”

“So I must wonder, Lord Baelish, where your loyalties really lay.”

“My loyalties are solely with your sister and House Stark, my Lady,” he said smoothly, “Any mishaps or conflicts in my actions were purely to survive and to get your family back home.” Sansa stiffened slightly beside him but said nothing.

“As Lady Sansa can surely attest to, the Vale’s armies played an important part in defeating the Boltons and securing Winterfell. The Vale has sacrificed many a moon and many a man to get us where we are today. So if my word itself isn’t enough to make you not distrust me My Lady, then at least trust my actions.” He bowed his head to her with a smile, his hand on his chest.

It took her a moment to riffle through his words to actually gain some meaning from them; Littlefinger spoke fast and spoke many words whilst saying little. But aside from the acknowledgement that his loyalties to Sansa meant more to him then any other, and the mention of how indebted the North was to the Arryns, there wasn’t much behind his words.

She’d expected more from Lord Baelish after all she’d heard. Or maybe it was on purpose - perhaps he didn’t think she-

“Of course, you should know best that I can be trusted -- After all, I never revealed your secret to anyone, all those years ago.”

Ah. There it is.

Sansa’s sharp, icy gaze pierced through her. She didn’t even have to look over to see the question burning in those pale eyes. Baelish grinned wider.

“Harrenhal was such a terrible place, wasn’t it. I can’t imagine what it must have been there -- especially under Tywin Lannister.” Arya felt herself grinding her teeth together. “I just hope you managed to get out of there before before the Mountain took over,” he continued, “But it surely would have been hard to escape unnoticed -- especially being Tywin’s personal cupbearer.”

And there it was. The kick she’d been expecting.

Thick tension filled the room as silence took over. Baelish’s smile waned slightly, unnerved by the quiet. He’d surely been expecting some sort of revoke from her, a hurried defense, a glim of anger; even just a startled look.

But Arya Stark did not bend to the whims of men.

Sansa's dry voice broke the moment.

“Lord Baelish, you must excuse us. It seems my sister and I have much to discuss.”

The man stood and bowed, obviously pleased with his work, and left, footsteps loud and they echoey as he descended down the hall.

“You haven’t even been here half a day and he’s already trying to cause distrust between us.” Arya looked over, surprised. Now this she hadn’t been expecting. Sansa leaned back in her chair, rubbing her temples and sighing. She caught her younger sisters inquisitive gaze and smiled faintly.

“He loves doing things like this,” the redhead murmured, tracing her finger along the wood of the table, “Trying to tear families apart, causing chaos wherever he steps foot,” she huffs. “I do understand why, I am easier to manipulate when alone. That doesn’t mean he’s any less despicable.”

Arya blinked. Sansa leaned over to her, laying her hand close to hers, close enough to feel the warmth without direct touch. She appreciated that, in a strange way.

“Why don’t you just...send him away?” Sansa smiles again, and Arya thinks it’s somewhere between patronizing and affectionate. Her younger self would have gotten at the gesture, but the last time anyone had looked at her with any kind of real affection had been years ago, so she didn’t even mind getting talked down too -- For all she’d been taught in Bravos, the House had not cared to teach her about Westerosi politics.

“Because we need the Vale’s army. We can’t afford to lose their alliance because, while Lord Royce cares little for him, if our dearest cousin hears that his lord regent and surrogate father is killed on flimsy claims of conspiracy and treason ...” Sansa paused, looking out the window. The bright grey light reflected on her blue eyes. Arya realizes, then, that she hadn’t suggested to murder him, only to remove him from Winterfell.

No, she realizes then. This was not a faceless man trying to trick by using the face of her sister. The amount of fury in her face, etched into the curve of her gentle smile, sparkling in her kind eyes, evident in every small nod and calm word - this is not the way of a faceless man. The subtlety of the anger, no - they would try to be much more obvious.They would not try to conceal their resentment as effectively as Sansa did.

Arya felt a twinge of pride at that, unable to imagine how the elder Stark had become this good of a liar -- what had caused it.

Satisfied with her discoveries, she excused herself, venturing out into the old, dusty, grey halls that she had once called her home. The dark stains, the crumbling corners, the burn marks on the tapestries and the nervous maids that have quick, hurried direwolves stitched into their overcoats to distract from the pinks and reds of their skirts that they are too poor to replace.

#yeah i aint ever gonna finish this #but i did like writing this part #title is taken from son luxs You Dont Know Me #Arya Stark #house stark #Sansa Stark #peter baelish #littlefinger #wip #wip wednesday #ASoIaF #A Song of Ice and Fire #got #game of thrones #implied vague arya x jaqen #the faceless men #the house of black and white #game of thrones season 7

11 notes · View notes

revlyncox · 3 years

Text

Origin Stories 2020

The stories we tell about our past affect the way we view the present and orient toward the future. This is true about the myth of Thanksgiving, stories we tell about Ethical Culture's past, stories we tell about our individual journeys, and more. When we recognize the impact of origin stories, we can be intentional about how we tell them in the future and how they guide us to bring out the best.

This Platform Address was written for the Washington Ethical Society by Lyn Cox, November 29, 2020.

Has anyone seen the movie, Captain Marvel? You know I did. Back when going to movie theatres was a safe thing to do, I saw it in the theater. The nostalgia for the music of the mid-1990’s alone was enough to catch my interest. I don’t want to spoil it for those who are waiting for a quiet evening to watch it at home, so I’ll try to speak in general terms.

The movie opens with an interstellar super soldier named Vers, who is having trouble with memory, but nevertheless goes out on a mission with her team, part of the Kree empire. Throughout the movie, she learns more about where she comes from, and more about the origins of the conflict with the people she thought were her enemies. Once she has come around to a different understanding of who her people are, the personal qualities she has been criticized for are reframed, and she can draw from them as strengths. This revised worldview moves her to an entirely different sense of her mission in life, as well as a different sense of connecting and belonging.

The paradigm shift that the main character goes through in Captain Marvel reminds me of the power of origin stories. The stories we tell ourselves about ourselves--as individuals, communities, and countries--affect how we reach out to others and what we think we’re capable of. As we reflect on this holiday weekend, we’re confronted with one version of the origin story of the United States, the one some of us were presented with as children at this time of year. That version of the story is infused with myths and half-truths, and depends on the erasure of the historical and contemporary perspectives of Native Americans, among other groups of people. Whether we are dismantling the settler-colonial narrative, incorporating new insights into our understanding of ourselves as a community, or finding personal empowerment in reframing our individual origin stories, returning to the stories about beginnings or turning points with open minds can help us reshape our future.

Whether we are speaking individually or collectively, origin stories matter. Events get baked into information we regard as fact, or perhaps legend. Left unexamined, these stories can divide people who need not be divided and disempower people who could be living fruitful, generous lives. It matters how we tell those stories. The inclusion of truths or half-truths, and which facts are emphasized or glossed over has an impact. In communal stories, whose perspective is centered makes a difference.The way we understand the narrative structure of the story is also a choice. The good news is that stories can be reframed, even within the bounds of verifiable facts. Origins are not destinies. We can rearrange the emphasis, lift up silenced voices, and find strengths that had previously been minimized. That’s what we’re talking about today. With regard to both individual and collective narratives, (1) Origin stories matter, (2) the way we tell origins stories matters, and (3) stories can be reframed.

Origin Stories Matter

Earlier, we heard an excerpt from a talk by Emily Esfahani Smith. She has done interviews and followed studies in positive psychology, first asking the question about what makes people happy, then shifting to the question of what helps people live meaningful lives. She said, “Creating a narrative from the events of your life brings clarity. It helps you understand how you became you.”

In her review of the available research (excerpt from her book on the TED talk website), she found that the stories people tell about the pivotal events of their lives can affect how they feel about themselves, their level of confidence or anxiety, and what behaviors they choose in the future as they subconsciously live by their stories. I’d like to add a caveat that not everything in our personal narratives is about perspective or attitude; sometimes a person’s anxiety or adaptive behaviors are shaped by oppression, trauma, or other circumstances. Even so, examining our lives for the agency and resilience that we do have gives us some extra tools and is worth a try.

When you add humans together to tell a collective story about the turning points of a community or a movement or a country, origin stories can have an even wider impact. Last month, I drew from An Indigenous People’s History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz when we discussed Christopher Columbus. In the introduction to her book, in reference to Thanksgiving, Dunbar-Ortiz wrote:

Origin narratives form the vital core of a people’s unifying identity and of the values that guide them. In the United States, the founding and development of the Anglo-American settler-state involves a narrative about Puritan settlers who had a covenant with God to take the land.

Then, in chapter three, Dunbar-Oritz picks up this thread again:

The United States is not unique among nations in forging an origin myth, but most of its citizens believe it to be exceptional among nation-states, and this exceptionalist ideology has been used to justify appropriation of the continent and then domination of the rest of the world.

In other words, Dunbar-Ortiz credits the mythological version of the Thanksgiving story, a particular version of the origin story of the United States, with fueling some of the worst behaviors of the United States and many of its citizens. A story that was framed to make heroes out of the Pilgrims and inspire patriotism has also inspired exploitation, theft, and violence.

Dunbar-Ortiz is not alone in this observation. James W. Loewen, in Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American history Textbook Got Wrong, also unpacks the Thanksgiving story as an origin myth with devastating consequences.

Loewen says that, in the cases where the Thanksgiving holiday is observed without examination or critique, “the civil ritual” marginalizes Native Americans. That marginalization comes not only from perspective or emphasis, but from actual falsehoods that are re-told in mythic versions of the story. These false myths serve to reinforce what Loewen calls white “ethnocentrism.” He says that when textbooks promote this version of the story, they diminish the capacity of students to understand the culture they are in or how to relate to each other.

At the time of his original writing, the term white supremacy culture was not as widely in use as it is now, but it is apt in this case. The outdated version of the Thanksgiving story idolized the colonizers and erased the humanity of the Indigenous people they encountered. This is both a manifestation of and fuel for white supremacy culture.

We’re finding that, just as our personal origin stories can lead us to make choices so that we live by those stories, national origin stories guide our future behavior. Origin stories matter.

How We Tell Origin Stories Matters

Now that we’ve established that personal and collective origin stories can have an impact on our self-concept and our future choices, let’s talk about how we tell those stories. We have choices in the perspectives and events we emphasize, and in the shape of the narrative arc.

Earlier, we heard a passage from A People’s History of the United States: 1492-Present by Howard Zinn, in which he draws an analogy between historians and mapmakers. Zinn is more generous toward mapmakers or cartographers than I would be, saying that the choices about what projections to use or what details to include in a map are mainly technical. I think maps are much more political than he implies in this comparison, but the point stands that both historians and cartographers have to make choices in conveying information. It is incumbent upon us to examine our purpose in making those choices, and to think about the impact of those choices. How we tell the story matters.

This is where the collective storytelling and the personal storytelling intersect. As we are figuring out how to tell our personal stories, we’re also trying to figure out how we fit into the larger picture. When we are not truthful in our collective stories, we make this task of fitting into the larger story much more difficult for everyone, especially those who have been marginalized. If we have the privilege and responsibility of telling a collective story, we should try to ensure that all of the people in that story are reflected as their whole selves. Incorporating multiple perspectives into our stories makes it easier for the community and for individuals to understand ourselves and to find meaning and purpose.

My colleague Jone Johnson Lewis from the Riverdale Yonkers Society for Ethical Culture has demonstrated this beautifully in her research about the history and historiography of the Reconstruction era. She notes that narratives of the Civil War and the Reconstruction period that were taught in school for decades do not match the evidence. (Here’s her August 2 Platform Address as a guest at the New York Society.)

Starting in the 1920s, professional historians who were collectively known as the Dunning School were training school teachers to talk about the Civil War as a matter of “states rights,” despite the fact that all of the documents about secession referred to slavery, and the founding of the Confederacy did not allow states to have the right to opt out of slavery. This tradition referred to Reconstruction as a disaster, a burden placed on the South (meaning the white landowners of the South) by opportunistic northerners. The Dunning School presented an egregious misrepresentation of the facts of Reconstruction, and was part of perpetuating the idea that African American people were not capable of self-determination. This view lent support to voter suppression tactics such as literacy tests, and fed racist white resentment that is still an active force in politics today.

The deliberate revisions of the Dunning School were partly the work of David Saville Muzzey. Muzzey was not only a professor of history, but also an Ethical Culture leader. Muzzey wrote a history textbook that was heavily in use from 1927 to 1938, and was source material for textbooks for at least another generation. If we’re going to note the successes of Ethical Culturists throughout history in promoting justice, we also have to examine the ways that Ethical Culturists supported white supremacy culture. By learning from the mistakes of our kindred in the past, we can help prevent ourselves and our successors from repeating them.

According to Jone Johnson Lewis, part of Muzzey’s goal was to tell the story of the United States as a gradually unfolding arc of human rights. Acknowledging the initial flowering of human rights and democracy immediately after the Civil War--before the backlash against Reconstruction led to voter suppression, Jim Crow laws, and the great nadir of civil rights--didn’t work for Muzzey. Being honest about the steps forward and then backward did not match the shape of the gradual arc Muzzey was trying to fit history into, and did not comport with Muzzey’s racist views about what African American leaders and thinkers were capable of. He rejected evidence that did not fit his hypothesis, and because of that, generations of students were taught a false history of the Civil War and Reconstruction.

There are a couple of things we can learn here. We can learn that impact matters more than intention. We learn that stories about a community or culture should include the perspectives of all of the groups in that community or culture. Primary sources from the people who are most deeply affected are important in lifting up a complete history. In our local communities, we should be asking whose voices are missing.

As a point relevant to both collective origin stories and personal origin stories, sometimes the truth that is most important to tell does not follow a smooth narrative arc. Neither our individual lives nor our shared history necessarily follows a three-act structure or a linear path. History does not always make narrative sense even if the events follow a logical sequence of cause and effect. Trying to force our personal or shared history to follow a straight line might lead us to cut off important branches of truth.

Anthropologist Mary Catherine Bateson wrote about how this affects our personal stories in her 1989 book, Composing a Life. (Here’s Bateson in an episode of On Being with Krista Tippett.) She wrote that how we grow and change is less like building a linear brick wall and more like improvisational cooking or quilting, putting a life together with the bits and pieces we have in the time available. Noting that people who have been marginalized don’t have the luxury of being able to hold a singular focus, Bateson said that a non-linear art of living has equal dignity and grace.

How we tell our stories matters. It matters that we include truth. It matters when we include multiple perspectives in a collective story. It matters that we allow our stories to take their natural twists and turns. When it comes to our personal stories, we need not be ashamed when our journeys don’t follow a simple or well-recognized path. Meaning can arise from growth and learning, and we don’t always arrive at growth and learning by the direct route. Realizing that stories need not be linear helps to remind us that it’s not over until it’s over - we are not bound to keep going in what is now the wrong direction. Make some room. How we tell our stories matters.

Stories Can Be Reframed

A corollary to the idea that we can choose how to tell our origin stories is that, at any time, we can choose to reframe those stories. We are not stuck with narratives that are inauthentic. We can emphasize different events and different voices to help us figure out a path for the future.

Taking the myth of Thanksgiving as an example, if we are going to treat it as an origin story for the United States, we can reframe that story by correcting falsehoods and expanding the sources we consult.

In 1970, the Massachusetts Department of Commerce asked the Wampanoag People to select a speaker for a Thanksgiving event to mark the 350th anniversary of the English arrival at Plymouth Rock. Frank James, also known as Wamsutta, had to show the event planners what he had written. The organizers did not allow him to read it, and offered him a different speech, which he refused to read. Instead, Frank James gave his original speech on Cole’s Hill, next to the statue of former Wampanoag leader Ousamequin, to a crowd of supporters. This became the first Day of Mourning, now an annual event of the United American Indians of New England. It was a turning point in the Native American movement in the United States.

James’ speech included this acknowledgement of history:

It is with mixed emotion that I stand here to share my thoughts. This is a time of celebration for you - celebrating an anniversary of a beginning for the white man in America. A time of looking back, of reflection. It is with a heavy heart that I look back upon what happened to my People.

Even before the Pilgrims landed it was common practice for explorers to capture Indians, take them to Europe and sell them as slaves for 220 shillings apiece. The Pilgrims had hardly explored the shores of Cape Cod for four days before they had robbed the graves of my ancestors and stolen their corn and beans.

James goes on from there, addressing more of the history of oppression against Native Americans, the way history was being taught in American schools, and the continued persistence and resilience of the Wampanoag and other Indigenous people.

Remembering that the English colonizers who arrived at Plymouth Rock were not innocent or peaceful, remembering that they committed theft and violence on the original inhabitants of the land both before and after the event that is remembered as the First Thanksgiving, means that we can no longer base a national identity on trying to emulate this origin story. It means we can’t pretend ignorance and wonder where it all went wrong when we look at the atrocities committed in the name of the United States in the intervening 400 years. But it also means we have a choice about what to do differently. We can commit to not repeating the past. We can learn to tell our stories differently. The history of Frank James and the first Day of Mourning is incorporated in materials for the 400th anniversary of the landing at Plymouth Rock. An origin is not a destiny.

Collectively, we are the authors of the future of our communities and our nation. Individually, as Emily Esfahani Smith reminds us, we are the authors of our own stories. As we heard earlier, “Your life isn’t just a list of events. You can edit, interpret, and re-tell your story, even as you are constrained by the facts.”

Just as with the process of updating our collective stories, reframing our personal stories may be hard, even painful. We will have to face uncomfortable truths. Yet out of those truths, we may find an ability to learn and grow, a sense of meaning and purpose, and capacity for acceptance and compassion that comes from whole-hearted experience. By changing the emphasis of our stories, we may find a call to service, or a desire to make amends, or a sense of connection with those who share a similar experience. The power to reframe our stories is in our hands.

Conclusion

The stories of our beginnings as individuals, as communities, and as a nation have power. They can move us toward compassion and connection, or they can move us toward division and disrespect. But that power is not absolute. We can take responsibility for comparing those stories with the available evidence, and for examining the story from a variety of perspectives. We can reframe a story as we learn from both mistakes and successes, seeking purpose amidst the patchwork of love and care that sustains the best in us and in those around us. May it be so for each and all.

5 notes · View notes

miss--awkward · 4 years

Text

OK SO

With Sebastian Stan making a post today about racism in America and having a notification bounce into his video of a text, the content of which contains a draft (possibly) of the caption used on the post sent to/from his publicist, and likely other members of his PR team, agency, etc., I feel I want to say something here.

Before we praise a white man (albeit a very lovely looking white man) for doing what is actually very little in comparison to both other actors, influencers, and front line protestors, let’s evaluate some things here. People are dying for being black. People are dying because police are shooting them, punching them, choking them, kneeling on their necks. People are injured because police are shooting pepper bullets and rubber bullets into peaceful protestors. People are injured from being shoved by cops, walked all over, tased for driving away in their cars. Reporters are being fired at and arrested despite respecting distance and police instruction. This is not hearsay. This is documented on video.

For someone with the amount of influence, power and money that not only Sebastian but COUNTLESS other people have to then post something that doesn’t really do much to help the issue? Doesn’t sit right with me. Or many other fans. For someone who seemingly claims to not be racist, or discriminatory, or hateful, to not then put his money, so to speak, where his mouth is, doesn’t sit right with me.

I do understand that maybe the goal was to elevate black voices, to use a video of black youth to inspire change. That is a move I can understand, and appreciate. At the same time, to not take a stance when it’s quite literally a fight for black lives, a stand off between the criminal justice system and black existence, a war for recognition of basic fucking personhood that will end with death and the emergence of either a country worse or better off, to not take a stance is a stance in and of itself. By not saying, Black Lives Matter, by not sharing and elevating black voices on the front lines, by not asking others to educate themselves and showing that he’s educating himself, is to take a stance that Black Lives dont Matter as much to you as your reputation does. As your career does. As a white man, taking that stance MEANS something to political leaders. It is a SIGNAL. It means that black lives actually do not matter as much as capital. So they can continue on with their inhumanity and murder.

When celebrities, most of all white celebrities with power and influence, put pressure on leaders, things fucking change. Movements actually move things. Society goes through a software update. When people with power and influence not only speak out in support of the most dehumanized people in our society but try to actively, aggressively enact change, THINGS FUCKING HAPPEN. To do as little as Sebastian did, is not going to do enough. I hope he does more in the coming days, like posting links, showing how he’s educating himself and urging others to do the same, showing where he’s donating, elevating black liberation orgs and community orgs, bail outs, etc. On top of that, urging his affluent and powerful friends to do the same. This is a war on all fronts. It should be fought on all fronts.

I do want to make clear, as I believe I have several times in this post, that this is not the sole responsibility of Sebastian. I understand that. I want to BOLD AND UNDERLINE THAT. IT IS NOT HIS SOLE RESPONSIBILITY. BUT IT IS HIS RESPONSIBILITY. IT IS OUR RESPONSIBILITY.

And before we start saying, he did enough, stop asking him to do more, he has no obligation, we don’t have to like his politics to like him, etc. - for people of color in this country (actually, EVERYWHERE), we cannot exist outside politics. Our bodies, our behaviors, our clothing, our careers, our vernaculars, EVERYTHING is subject to judgement, stereotype, discrimination. As an Indian woman, despite being born in this country, I will always be seen as foreign. A latinx person, no matter their immigration status, will be called “illegal” and have DHS or ICE called on them. A black man, despite possibly having generations of ancestors living in the country that they built, will not only be side eyed in a white neighborhood, but possibly killed. Our identities are politicized. Our LIVES are politicized to the point of needing LEGISLATION TO PROTECT US. AND IT DOESNT EVEN TRULY PROTECT US. To then say you can enjoy something absent of politics shows your immense amount of privilege. I cannot watch someone who does not support my right to be in this country. I cannot watch someone who does not support the right of black people to fucking be alive and have the audacity to ask not to be killed. To say you can, shows me exactly who you are and what you value. It is not me. It is not any person of color. It is not any black person. It is your damn self. So don’t ask me to value you.

Last of all, when we evaluate whether a person has done enough, it is not up to US as people in positions of privilege. It truly is not up to me. If a black movement leader/participant or a group of black fans tells me that everything in this post ain’t shit? Then it ain’t shit. It’s not up to me. It’s up to who is being affected here. Who is fighting for their rights. Who needs support. It’s not up to me. It’s not up to you. It’s up to them.

All in all, while I do love Sebastian and his kindness outside of this situation, if he does not continue to stand for the rights of the less privileged in the way only someone with his position in society can, if he does not continue to support not only the Black Lives Matter community but other organizations that protect identities and communities that support and find kinship in him, if he does not support peoples rights to be alive and choose their own destinies and paths? His power and influence is undeserved.

Get the fuck out of here if you think you know what’s good or adequate for the black community. They know what’s good for them. Listen to them. Not just me, or Sebastian or anyone. To them. Don’t decide for them.

#sebastian stan #seb stan #black lives matter #i said what i said

20 notes · View notes

howwelldoyouknowyourmoon · 4 years

Text

How Far Down the QAnon Rabbit Hole Did Your Loved One Fall?

What to do when someone you love becomes obsessed with QAnon, part 2.

Psychology Today

Joe Pierre M.D. August 21, 2020

“Who knows what this means, but it sounds good to me.”

—President Trump, retweeting a QAnon-related meme

This is part 2 of a series on “What to do When Someone You Love Becomes Obsessed with QAnon.”

In the first installment, "The Psychological Needs That QAnon Feeds," I discussed the psychological needs that QAnon may fulfill for its followers. Understanding those needs is a vital first step in order to understand why those who have fallen down the QAnon rabbit hole may be loathe to climb out. In this installment, I’ll set the stage to understand how the chances of rescuing our loved ones from the QAnon rabbit hole—and how to go about trying—may depend on just how far they’ve fallen.

Are Conspiracy Theorists “Crazy?”

To begin with, let’s differentiate belief in conspiracy theories like QAnon from the kind of delusional beliefs that are used to define mental illness and psychosis. Generally speaking, delusions are false and unshared beliefs that are often based on subjective “inner” experience and whose content is often “self-referential,” involving the believer. In contrast, conspiracy theories are usually shared beliefs that don’t explicitly involve the believer and are based on external evidence that one finds “out there,” such as on the internet. Unlike delusions, conspiracy theories may or may not turn out to be true. After all, they’re “theories.”

Based on this distinction, people who believe in conspiracy theories, however “crazy” they might sound, are no more delusional than those who believe in literal interpretations of religious texts like the Bible or the Quran. And so QAnon—the increasingly popular “right-wing” belief about the secret nefarious machinations of the Satan-worshipping, child-trafficking “Deep State” and President Trump’s destiny to thwart them—is a classic conspiracy theory, not a delusion. Now, if someone were to believe not only in QAnon dogma, but also in the false and unshared belief that they are Q, that would suggest a delusion. Note that it’s possible to believe in both conspiracy theories and delusions at the same time, with some overlap.

Conspiracy Theory Belief: Particle and Wave

Another way to understand whether beliefs might be considered “pathological” is to model them quantitatively as a continuous phenomenon—in other words, within a kind of scale that measures intensity or severity. For example, a cognitive model of delusional beliefs quantifies them along “dimensions” that include strength of conviction (how strongly one believes a delusion), preoccupation (how much one thinks about the delusion), extension (how much the delusion “bleeds into” or affects one's life), and distress (how much one is upset by the belief). Applying this model to non-delusional beliefs like conspiracy theories can help to understand when a belief is likely to disrupt people’s lives with a negative impact on their jobs, relationships, and mental well-being.1

Moving along a continuum of conspiracy theory belief, dimensions like conviction, preoccupation, extension, and distress would be expected to increase across it, along with mistrust in authoritative and mainstream sources of information.2 As believers go deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole, more and more time is spent “researching” conspiracy theories and immersing oneself in online discussions with other conspiracy theory believers, with less and less time spent on work, relationships, or other recreational pursuits. As this happens, believers increasingly turn their back on previous friends and family who don’t agree with their beliefs and don’t “inhabit” their new world.

Similar to how physicists understand light as both “particle” and “wave,” it can also be helpful to conceptualize belief intensity as discrete points along a continuum, like colors in the visible light “spectrum.” Conspiracy theory researcher Dr. Bradley Franks and his colleagues have proposed just such a spectrum model, with 5 “types” or stages of conspiracy theory belief.3 Their model goes something like this (with additional comments added by me):

Type/stage 1: People feel like “something isn’t right,” but keep an open mind as they seek answers to questions.

Type/stage 2: People feel as if “there’s more to reality than meets the eye,” are skeptical about official explanations, and start to seek out alternative sources of information.

Type/stage 3: Mistrust of authoritative sources of information increases to the point of definitive belief that some official narratives are untrue. As a result, people continue to seek information and engage with like-minded people from whom they gain a sense of belonging and group membership. They’re also more likely to get involved in “political action.”

Type/stage 4: At this point, nearly all official and mainstream accounts are rejected so that people turn away from the mainstream in favor of affiliation with an “enlightened” community of conspiracy theory believers. Non-believers are dismissed as “sheep” who are “asleep.”

Type/stage 5: In the final stage, authoritative and mainstream accounts are rejected to such an extent as to embrace belief in not only improbable, but frankly supernatural explanations for events (e.g. aliens, lizard people, etc.). At this stage, conspiracy theories and delusions may begin to overlap with self-referential aspects.

Dr. Franks’ proposed spectrum of conspiracy theory believers is a novel framework to help understand just how far down the rabbit hole conspiracy theory believers have gone. But for the purpose of deciding how to intervene within that continuum, it may be more useful to more simply divide conspiracy theory believers into two stages: “fence-sitters” and “true believers.”

Fence-Sitters and True Believers

The mentally healthy way to hold most of our beliefs is with “cognitive flexibility,” acknowledging that we might be wrong and remaining open to other people’s perspectives. It’s likewise a good idea to maintain a healthy level of skepticism about new information that we encounter lest we succumb to our cognitive biases and merely reinforce preexisting beliefs. This is especially true when we’re talking about theories where supporting evidence is modest or preliminary, and in the case of religious or political beliefs, where a lack of objective evidence often leads to many equivocal perspectives, such that faith becomes necessary to sustain belief.

In the early stages of conspiracy theory belief, people are “fence-sitters” who are looking for answers and haven’t yet made up their minds. Cognitive flexibility and open-mindedness may be intact, but skepticism is already closely linked with mistrust of authoritative sources of information. At this stage, conspiracy theories are appealing as expressions of, or even metaphors for, that mistrust—for the idea that both information and informants are unreliable—without necessarily having a significant degree of belief conviction. This preliminary stage explains why some people might endorse Flat Earth conspiracy theories without actually believing the Earth is flat.

Farther down the rabbit hole, conspiracy theories are embraced with greater belief conviction and become entwined with a new group affiliation and personal identity (e.g. within QAnon, adherents identify as “anons,” “bakers,” and “Q-patriots”) that makes it increasingly difficult to maintain previously established social ties. As such “true believers” move away from the mainstream and in turn are estranged because of their fringe beliefs, they often feel increasingly marginalized and under threat.

In order to protect themselves and resolve cognitive dissonance, they often “double down,” ramping up belief conviction further and diving even farther into a new ideological world. Many will increasingly feel the need to take action, whether spending more time posting on social media in order to “spread the word” or at the extreme, through more drastic and potentially dangerous measures like arming themselves in order to “self-investigate” a child pornography ring at a pizza parlor.

When people’s beliefs become so enmeshed with their identities, giving them up can be viewed as an existential threat akin to death. Needless to say, that's a bad prognostic sign.

In Part 3 of this series on “What to do when someone you love becomes obsessed with QAnon,” we’ll conclude by discussing what kind of interventions might be helpful, depending on just how far down the rabbit hole of conspiracy theory belief someone has gone.

References

1. Pierre JM. Faith or delusion? At the crossroads of religion and psychosis. Journal of Psychiatric Practice 2001; 7:163-172.

2. Pierre JM. Mistrust and misinformation: a two-component, socio-epistemic model of belief in conspiracy theories. Journal of Social and Political Psychology 2020 (in press). [Available as a PsyArXic preprint at https://psyarxiv.com/xhw52]

3. Franks B, Bangerter A, Bauer MW, Hall M, Noort MC. Beyond “monologicality”? Exploring conspiracist worldviews. Frontiers in Psychology 2017; 8, 861.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/psych-unseen/202008/how-far-down-the-qanon-rabbit-hole-did-your-loved-one-fall

____________________________________________

part 1 Psychology Today

The Psychological Needs That QAnon Feeds

Joe Pierre M.D. August 12, 2020

https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/psych-unseen/202008/the-psychological-needs-qanon-feeds

____________________________________________

part 3 Psychology Today

What to do when someone you love becomes obsessed with QAnon

4 Keys to Help Someone Climb Out of the QAnon Rabbit Hole

Joe Pierre M.D. September 1, 2020

https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/psych-unseen/202009/4-keys-help-someone-climb-out-the-qanon-rabbit-hole

____________________________________________

Rolling Stone

It took years for the cracks to emerge for Jadeja, who slowly started to realize that Q drops were laden with logical inconsistencies. A turning point for him was a follower asking Q to get Trump to say the term “tippy top” as proof of Trump’s knowledge of the conspiracy; when Trump did say the phrase during a 2018 Easter egg roll speech, Q believers rejoiced, believing it to be confirmation that Q was real. Jadeja did some research and saw that Trump had said the phrase many times before. “That’s when I realized this was all a very slick con,” he says.

Former QAnon Followers Explain What Drew Them In — And Got Them Out

Like those leaving cults, some people who believe in conspiracy theories like QAnon and Pizzagate can break free from their beliefs

by EJ Dickson September 23, 2020 9:00AM ET

https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/ex-qanon-followers-cult-conspiracy-theory-pizzagate-1064076/

____________________________________________

West Point

The QAnon Conspiracy Theory: A Security Threat in the Making?

July 2020

https://ctc.usma.edu/the-qanon-conspiracy-theory-a-security-threat-in-the-making/

____________________________________________

Why it’s important to see QAnon as a ‘hyper-real’ religion

May 28, 2020

https://religiondispatches.org/in-the-name-of-the-father-son-and-q-why-its-important-to-see-qanon-as-a-hyper-real-religion/

____________________________________________

The Birth of QAmom

Parenting influencers have embraced sex-trafficking conspiracy theories — and it’s taking QAnon from the internet into the streets

by EJ Dickson

https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/qanon-mom-conspiracy-theory-parents-sex-trafficking-qamom-1048921/

____________________________________________

CNN: Born on the dark fringes of the internet, QAnon is now infiltrating mainstream American life and politics

CNN July 3, 2020

by Paul P. Murphy

____________________________________________

The thin line between conspiracy theories and cult worship is dissolving

An information war is being waged.

bigthink.com May 18, 2020

by Derek Beres

____________________________________________

The Prophecies of Q American conspiracy theories are entering a dangerous new phase.

The Atlantic June 2020

The Women Making Conspiracy Theories Beautiful

The Atlantic August 18, 2020

I Was a Teenage Conspiracy Theorist

The Atlantic May 13, 2020

______________________________________

I’m dating a conspiracy theorist. But it feels like I’m the one going crazy.

Washington Post August 16, 2020

By Trent Kay Maverick

______________________________________

Coronavirus: How do I recognize a conspiracy theory?

DW Deutsche Welle May 19, 2020

______________________________________

Reddit community QAnon Casualties share stories of conspiracy cult

Herald Sun August 11, 2020

by Jack Gramenz, news.com.au

______________________________________

Christian Groups That Resist Public-Health Guidelines Are Forgetting a Key Part of the Religion’s History

TIME April 20, 2020

by Matthew Gabriele

______________________________________

Childcare in the Unification Church of Oakland

Sun Myung Moon’s Sex-based Adam and Eve story is just another conspiracy theory

#Joe Pierre M.D.#QAnon #Conspiracy Theories #Psychology Today

6 notes · View notes