#+ the existence of narrative As sacrificial (there is always something else Behind it)

[catilinas]

🚬🧓 <- rene girard smoking dot jpeg

when the scapegoat mechanism hits

[seyaryminamoto]

Do you think canon Zuko has any understanding of the idea of duty? That he, especially given that he aspires to political power, should act like his status as Prince gives him certain responsibilities? That doing what's best for the for Fire Nation or the world might require him to do things which make him unhappy or uncomfortable or require him to make grave personal sacrifices? Does he even understand duty as a concept?

Oof. Complicated questions, thus, this sat in my inbox for a veeeery long time.

I honestly, seriously, genuinely... don't think Zuko truly understood, at any point in canon, what it really meant to be a leader. I know many of us (and I think you, too?) don't particularly like the comics, but in my opinion, The Promise did a surprisingly decent job at highlighting several problems left in the wake of the end of the war, and perhaps unintentionally, this is one of the problems: upon becoming Fire Lord, Zuko is remarkably erratic, unsure of his choices, even seeking advice from his FATHER, of all people, because he has no idea what he's doing.

In the most favorable possible view of Iroh, he taught Zuko to be a better person. I don't entirely adscribe to this belief, but fine, let's concede that he did, or else this answer would never end: not just because you're a good person, however, are you guaranteed to be a good leader. Zuko, as we both know, is far from the best person in the world, and he is prone to making impulsive, emotional mistakes that can cause harm and trouble, and typically, Zuko doesn't face the consequences of most his actions, or the narrative just pins the blame on someone else. When we see this sort of behavior in a real-life politician, the immediate reaction we would have is "this guy is awful at his job", and sadly, I find myself thinking that quite often when it comes to Zuko's canon tenure as Fire Lord.

So... what is Zuko's concept of duty? Going by his pursuit of Aang in the first two seasons, duty is a task given to him by someone whose approval he seeks (in this case, Ozai) and he must pull it off, no matter what, to gain said approval. By Book 3, this logic still applies fairly easily to how Zuko acts over Iroh: I've highlighted in the past that the main motivation for Zuko's redemption is Iroh, doing right by Iroh, making amends to Iroh, regretting how he treated Iroh. He points that out explicitly in Ember Island Players, he does it as well indirectly by bringing up Iroh first of all, when confronting Ozai: this is his main priority. Ergo... I'd honestly say it's safe to judge that this is what Zuko regards as duty, as what he has to do. Iroh wants him to be Fire Lord? That's exactly what he becomes. The difficulties and complications in this particular line of work are taken for granted, and so, we have an outcome that was remarkably well depicted in The Promise, despite that comic's many glaring flaws: Zuko gets swept back and forth, twisted left and right by all the pressures and responsibilities, because he has no idea what he's doing as Fire Lord, and no idea/experience in how to be a real leader.

As far as I can tell, the core of the matter is that nobody really seems to have taken Zuko all that seriously as future Fire Lord. Ozai, evidently, wasn't training Zuko to be his personal heir. Ozai himself is a questionable source of information regarding learning what it means to be Fire Lord, considering he, as well, wasn't raised to take that role, just as he didn't raise Zuko for it. Yet Iroh didn't exactly teach Zuko how to lead anyone either, as far as I can tell: his lessons were meant to be of a more personal nature, and even then, Zuko had lots of trouble accepting most of them. Iroh's firebending lessons to Zuko were typically stunted in the basics because he was hot-headed and rash about getting to the intense and interesting stuff...

So: neither Ozai nor Iroh gave Zuko actual responsibilities. Ozai gave him a punishment Zuko was trying to endure however possible, a punishment he wanted to prove himself unworthy of by finding the Avatar and "regaining his honor". Then, Iroh punished Zuko as well by giving him the cold shoulder in Book 3, then he escaped and Zuko did everything he did, after betraying Ozai, to prove himself worthy of Iroh's kindness once again. It's not actual duty, the way it is in Azula's case: no doubt, Azula wants Ozai's approval too, but she has the madman's trust when it comes to finding her brother and uncle, to taking down the Avatar, and to conquering Ba Sing Se, as far as anyone can tell. I do doubt Ozai gave her all these missions at once, but he gave her the resources through which she pulled off ALL of them: she had the firebending procession, she had a ship, she had a train-tank, she had mounts... Zuko had a rundown ship that looked like a 1:10 scale version of every other ship in the harbor back in the very third episode: he was being punished. In contrast, Azula is entrusted with a mission, with LEADERSHIP, while Zuko has no visible, tangible, objective experience with the latter (consider how Azula steals the Dai Li's loyalty from under Long Feng: when did we see Zuko pulling off something like this? Even with Jet, Zuko was more of an associate to the Freedom Fighters, and Jet was still the leader).

I've always thought Zuko wasn't prepared to be Fire Lord, and the main reasons are the ones you indirectly point out through this ask: Zuko doesn't seem to treat the throne as a responsibility, but as his right. I won't get tired of pointing out that this was NOT Zuko's birthright, he was NOT born thinking he'd be Fire Lord: he was born to the second branch in the Fire Nation family. We literally SEE the day in which Lu Ten's death is revealed to him. According to somewhat official sources? He's ELEVEN in Zuko Alone's flashbacks. I, personally, think he looks a little younger than that, but I think that's the official wikia age, no idea where they got that info but that's what it says. Meaning...

Zuko, objectively, only had been crown prince for FIVE YEARS.

Zuko was NOT raised, not by his mother, not by his father, with the belief that the throne would one day be his (Ursa is gone before Ozai is crowned and Ozai clearly wanted Azula for the job rather than Zuko).

And yet, when you backtrack to the show? It seriously looks like that was the case. He clings to the throne in Books 1 and 2 as though he had no other purpose in life, as though this was everything that was promised to him (in contrast, Azula only ever indicates wanting the throne in Sozin's Comet: Part One). Even when he's an outlaw, discarded and cast out, he STILL talks about the throne, as though most his identity were built upon the notion that he must become Fire Lord: why? How come? Within five years, he's crafted his entire existence around being the heir to the throne? That's... a bit weird.

And a bit wishful, too. Which is why I commend that the comics show him struggling as Fire Lord, if anything they should've had him struggling MORE than that, because Zuko is simply NOT prepared for these responsibilities. He never gave any indication, any sign, of seeing it as such. He sees it as his right, his birthRIGHT. Why? Why more people don't ponder how utterly strange this behavior is, beats me. But it really does bother me that Zuko built his entire existence around being Fire Lord in a very similar way to how Korra built her own about being the Avatar. I have very little praise to give LOK in general, but the premise of Korra learning she was a person, a human, and not just the Avatar felt like the perfect parallel to Aang's story, where he was very much anchored in his humility and belief that he was just "one kid", and his rejection of his duties as the Avatar was meant to change gradually as he learned to accept himself as he was. Korra, however, never fully hit the mark with this subject, in my personal opinion... much as Zuko doesn't hit the mark either, since the show's only direct attempt to "deconstrue" Zuko's clinging to the throne happens in one dialogue, and his attachment to the idea is built up again, right afterwards:

Zuko: And then ... then you would come and take your rightful place on the throne? Iroh: No. Someone new must take the throne. An idealist with a pure heart and unquestionable honor. It has to be you, Prince Zuko. Zuko: Unquestionable honor? But I've made so many mistakes. Iroh: Yes, you have. You've struggled; you've suffered, but you have always followed your own path. You restored your own honor, and only you can restore the honor of the Fire Nation. Zuko: I'll try, Uncle.

And there we have it. The only point in the show (that I can remember) where Zuko seemed to not feel worthy of the throne and questioned he should be the one sitting on it (RIGHTFULLY!), buuuuuuuut he goes right back to wanting it, right afterwards, based on how this single exchange was enough for him to be 100% determined to take down his sister, merely a few lines later.

As for his willingness to make personal sacrifices... some might say he was outright willing to die for Katara in the finale -- though I'll point out he was trying to redirect the lightning anyway, didn't do it as well as he should have, but he wasn't exactly, consciously, trying to DIE for her... --, some might say that he left Mai behind in the FIre Nation, and that as well was a sacrifice... but was it? We don't see him missing her, or suffering about her fate, at any point in time after SHE sacrifices herself for him in the Boiling Rock (my biggest gripe over this particular canon couple is this, tbh). I feel like the show generally presents Zuko's situation as somewhat... self-sacrificial? Especially in Books 1 and 2, and yet that's really not the case: it isn't Zuko himself who makes the choice of traveling to find Aang, it's a punishment inflicted upon him.

This particular view upon his circumstances makes it so Zuko is never responsible for... well, any of his choices? It's always someone else's fault, therefore, whatever he suffers through, there's always someone he can (and usually does) resent for it. Therefore... I can't genuinely think of anything Zuko sacrificed in order to come as far as he did. He was forced to let go of things by his father, typically, by Zhao as well, maybe, but even then, it's not like we saw that he has a super healthy and happy relationship with, I don't know, Earth Kingdom people (his only meaningful positive EK bond was with Jin, which went nowhere and goes forgotten after a single mini episode)? The Palace staff? The commoners of the Fire Nation (they just treat him like a hero and he seems awkward and distant about it anyway, like he can really just do without their worship)? He doesn't have other friends beyond Azula's own friends... thus, he doesn't sacrifice anything that really matters. And in a sense, some people might say he doesn't have to sacrifice anything at all: he already went through so much strife and struggle that why would he need to sacrifice anything else? But the thing is... you DO have to learn to make such sacrifices if you're going to be a good king.

So often, people who devote themselves to their jobs have to consciously neglect their families, to name one thing: Zuko neglects Mai and she explodes at him for it in The Promise, then he just tries to get her back at all costs in Smoke & Shadow, with no thoughts given to the fact that maybe he isn't ready to juggle both a relationship and the throne, that maybe Mai could be happier with someone other than him, someone who can give her the attention and relationship she's looking for... THOSE are the sacrifices I'd be referring to, personally, sacrifices where his happiness and peace of mind have to be set aside for the sake of something much more important than himself, and I expect that's the kind of sacrifices you're referring to, too. I seriously don't think he's ready to make them, and with the comics as reference, there's seriously no evidence to suggest he's prepared to accept these burdens that come with the heavy mantle of leadership and ruling. I've never seen any signs of him being ready for it, myself. Maybe I need to reexamine the show and see if maybe I'm missing something... but I don't really think I am.

The worst part, for me, is that Zuko isn't even doing the bulk of the things he's doing in pursuit of genuine happiness: he's doing it over a sense of destiny. He never stops to reason with that destiny, to wonder if maybe he doesn't need to be Fire Lord, if maybe he could have a life beyond that role. Book 2 veeeery briefly suggests he MIGHT be on his way to questioning that destiny, but as I've said before, I don't see the sense in Zuko's big change of heart after the Appa incident considering we don't really understand what he's learned, other than how to be the perfect nephew for Iroh, apparently. Zuko never really is happy, as he says in the show: his happiest moments are with Mai and they're only like a 25% of his relationship with her, everything else is a mess (and his relationship with her isn't exactly the core of his character, either). So, the way I see it... Zuko is even worse off than it looks at first glance. He's out to fulfill a destiny he has never stopped to reason with, a destiny he's 100% sure is his, despite he has only been on that path, objectively, for five years? Despite he wasn't raised all along under the belief that this was what he was supposed to be? If given a chance to be genuinely happy, what on earth would he even do? A lot of the growth I gave him in Gladiator was based on that particular question: is the throne really what Zuko needs to be happy? It doesn't look like it, even in canon. If it's not... then it's not happiness he seeks, it's some sort of sense of assurance that he's doing the right thing, according to the figure of authority he follows at a set point in time: by Book 3, said authority is Iroh, and Iroh wants him on the throne. His motivation, as far as I can see it, is as simple as that.

Long story short... I don't think Zuko really has a strong grasp on many concepts that he absolutely should have reasoned with and worked out in order to become Fire Lord. In a sense, he's way too young for the role he's given, for the heavy burdens he has to deal with, and I'll NEVER see the sense in not having Iroh taking the throne (beyond how "poetic" the creators and writers found it to crown Zuko to finish his story, of course), at least for a short time, before Zuko can be ready. This is exactly why I wrote things that way in my oneshot where Azula takes Zuko's role, more or less: Iroh serves as regent while Azula prepares for taking the full role of Fire Lord when she's ready. I love her, she's awesome, I absolutely adore her character... but I don't think an Azula who was sidelined and sent on a long voyage with her uncle for YEARS could possibly be ready for the responsibilities of being Fire Lord right away.

Meanwhile? Iroh was given leadership of military missions enough times that he became a general in the Fire Nation forces. By all evidence, he was Fire Lord Azulon's pampered and spoiled son, whom he DID prepare for the duties of a Fire Lord for as long as Iroh was born: Iroh literally had fifty-ish years of preparation, as far as I can tell? How is he NOT the better suited person to take the throne, if just temporarily, while his nephew learns what it really means to rule by watching him, or by maybe learning leadership by managing smaller duties first, a specific town or city, and then putting his knowledge to good use by becoming Fire Lord properly?

Eh... because it wouldn't be an epic enough finale for the show, I suppose. That's the only answer I can find for this particular question.

So... yeah. That got long :'D but in short... I don't think Zuko has a strong grasp on responsibility and duty, let alone on the burdens inherent to these concepts. Yet more reasons why his character's arc can't hit all the marks it should, imo, to make it as great as the whole fandom is already convinced it is.

[bthump]

What do you think the odds are of Casca sacrificing Moonlight Boy like you've been hoping?

oof, idk

not completely terrible? I keep calling it a longshot hail mary hope but honestly I think a lot of the especially recent foreshadowing is pointing in that direction tbf.

Like I have my theory that the behelit is Casca’s and it’s about to open due to her Eclipse memories despair and whatnot, and I still think that’s overall a v strong theory. Fate, all those questions about whether Guts is carrying the behelit for someone, Skull Knight planning shit and using Guts and co, the suggestions that he’s in cahoots with Danann, Danann acting shady (Guts get lost Casca’s scared of you vs here Casca put on this dress and go see Guts right now), our recent lesson on dragon roads and spirit trees, tbh Flowers of Distant Days also imo foreshadows SK using Guts, little details like the fact that Elfhelm has used the power of human sacrifice as magic b4 lol (that wickerman), and ofc the familiar visual representation of Casca’s despair:

So the next two questions are: who is Casca’s sacrifice and will she go through with it?

And I think if the behelit does open, the odds are actually very high that the sacrifice will be fetus/MB and not Farnese. My #1 reason for saying this is the fact that the fetus represented her thorn-covered despair-ridden (fragile human) heart in her dreamscape. Like imo that’s pretty damn indicative.

Plus as the… shard of herself closest to the Eclipse it also seems to represent her trauma, which yk, that’s pretty common for sacrifices. Person you loved the most and hated the most, and all. And parent/child sacrifices are the most common from what we’ve seen lol.

There’s also this:

The MB first appears right after a chapter full of foreshadowing and ominous warnings. This moment is Guts watching Casca acting all motherly and shit and brooding over SK’s warning about her wishes. A lot of people seem to take this as foreshadowing that Casca is going to prioritize a baby over revenge but like… Guts wants this. Idt this is Guts fretting over Casca’s motherly instincts because he doesn’t want kids or whatever lol, imo this is Guts seeing a ray of hope for the future and wondering if it’ll be snuffed out.

Further suggested by:

She couldn’t cope with her experience, so what will she do when he forces her sanity back? This is ominous in an active, dark way that a fixation on a magic baby just isn’t likely to follow through on imo.

There’s also the werebaby thing, and if that’s what’s actually happening then presumably MB is on his way to Elfhelm right around when Casca woke up. I mean timing that dumbass reveal after Casca’s screaming cliffhanger? Hm. And handily that fucking werebaby shit means it’s now less likely that MB is going to show up and soothe Casca’s despair through her maternal instincts, which was one of my original fears, and more likely that it’s just gonna add to her despair, assuming the ridiculous truth is revealed. (Speaking of “the person you loved the most and hated the most” lmao. Like yeah, that’s so on the nose it’s comedic, but everything about werebaby is an absurd comedy so.)

As for whether she’ll actually go through with the sacrifice or whether she’ll refuse or be interrupted by plot, that’s unfortunately dicier.

On the pro side you have “what will she do?” Meaning she should do something, not fail to do something. You have all the foreshadowing re: Guts losing himself to the armour for a while, which he needs a catalyst for. I can’t think of anything more well-suited for that than Casca, the symbol of his humanity, essentially sacrificing his hope for the future (and incidentally the very thing that likely keeps saving him from the armour), becoming a monster, and (I guess) Griffith suddenly appearing lmao. And there’s the fact that Casca becoming a monster would be an extremely convenient way for Miura to avoid writing a realistic v traumatized woman while not bypassing or underselling her trauma.

And structurally we’re at the point where something tragic has to happen to fuck things up and drive things forward and finally deliver on the assloads of ominous foreshadowing that Guts is willfully ignoring.

On the con side you have Farnese’s hope that her friendship with Casca will be enough and tbf there’s an arc’s worth of development behind that. And something someone else does could be what causes Guts to succumb to the armour - like learning SK has betrayed him or something maybe.

And this whole werebaby situation is a double-edged sword in regards to this theory.

On one hand it’s timely, like I mentioned above, and it’s an indication that MB is going to be present for whatever shit’s about to go down, and probably in a way that makes things worse rather than better. Sacrificing the kid would also get the story back on what at least I consider its track, rather than fully derailing it into wacky magic baby world.

But on the other hand, let’s be real here: it’s so fucking ridiculous and bizarre that it almost feels like it has to be the new centrepiece of the plot. Go big or go home. As wildly weird as it is to completely derail three relationships that have more than enough build up to carry the plot all on their own, one can argue it’s even weirder to introduce a magic werebaby that completely derails those relationships only to neutralize it a couple chapters later.

Like if Miura’s willing to go that fucking stupid, then yeah I’m completely willing to believe he’d commit to it and make Casca’s new conflict the fact that her rapist periodically transforms into her magic child. Why not? Werebaby has dissolved all the faith I had in his ability as a writer. I no longer have that intrinsic belief that Berserk will ultimately make sense, resolve in a satisfying way, and generally work as a whole to fall back on lol.

So anyway, all that said, let’s just lay out the possibilities:

1. Casca does not sacrifice MB, maybe I’m entirely wrong about everything or maybe she turns down the offer/plot happens and she doesn’t get a chance. The fact that Griffith transforms into a baby every full moon is the new big plot point and character motivation. Story’s functionally over, everyone go home.

2. Casca does not sacrifice MB, the fact that Griffith transforms into a baby every full moon is a new big plot point, and will probably be the central issue of Casca’s narrative, but it won’t significantly alter Guts and Griffith’s relationship. Griffith’s feelings for Guts are still real and gonna bite him, Guts will still focus more on Griffith than the werebaby thing, Casca’s narrative is gonna suck like a black hole, everything’s gonna be weird. This would be incredibly awkward and horrifically bad writing, but honestly I feel like this might actually be the most probable option lol. I mean I’ve always acknowledged that fetus is probably a factor in Griffith saving Casca even while arguing it’s irrelevant to most of Griff’s feelings, I just didn’t think its relevance would end up being this silly lol.

3. Casca does sacrifice MB, this essentially cures Griffith of his infanthropy, and the original hint of babality we saw at the Hill of Swords essentially existed to set up hopeful expectations of Griffith’s ~big weakness~ before climatically dashing them when everything goes wrong for Our Heroes. Moment of hilarious triumph for Griff, low point for Guts and co.

4. Casca does sacrifice MB, this negates the werebaby thing but still affects Griffith negatively in another way - maybe ironically he’s a sacrifice himself now which causes problems for him, or handily negates the apostle worship effect for Casca. And/or because of this sacrifice Elfhelm succeeds in some plan of their own and maybe fucks up both Guts and co and Griffith, or idk, something. This makes werebaby potentially relevant enough to (theoretically) justify its existence as more than just a weird ass bait and switch/plot point to get both Griffith and MB to Elfhelm lol, while also not actually focusing on Griffith being a werebaby as a major plot point. Win/win.

It’s like… I think it’s pretty likely that the behelit will open for Casca and if that happens I think it’s pretty likely that MB will be the sacrificial offering, and if that happens I think it’s pretty likely Casca will say yes, and if that happens I think it’s pretty likely that we’ll be saved from werebaby. But that’s a lot of hope resting on hope, especially when the odds recently got a lot higher that I’m just totally on a completely different wavelength than Miura lol.

Anyway ty for asking. Hope for the best and prepare for the worst I guess.

[godsizemylife-blog]

I’m thinking about the misguided advice in Marabel Morgan’s 1974 book Total Woman, which came out in 1974. Those were the days of tumult over feminism versus traditional womanhood, both rather muddled and culturally driven concepts. Quite a few of us young military wives on the base read that book, touted as it was as a Christian perspective, and young and naive as we were, I know some of my friends and I adopted some of her suggestions. But the book always smacked a bit to me of manipulation. Responding to a nudge today, I looked her up on Wikipedia, and this is a quote they had from her book, and reading it now makes me shudder at the downright ungodliness, not of her suggestions in and of themselves, but of the motivation behind them:

“It taught that “A Total Woman caters to her man’s special quirks, whether it be in salads, sex or sports,”[2] and is perhaps best remembered for instructing wives to greet their man at the front door wearing sexy outfits; suggestions included “a cowgirl or a showgirl.” “It’s only when a woman surrenders her life to her husband, reveres and worships him and is willing to serve him, that she becomes really beautiful to him,” Morgan wrote.

So … my husband is so brain-dead and flagrantly self-indulgent that the only way I can appear beautiful to him is if I make myself scantily clad slave Princess Leia on a chain to Jabba the Hut? I remember something in the book alluding to the way to get your husband to buy you new luggage, or whatever you wanted. Manipulation, idolatry, slavery, groveling, demanding, yech!

Where is true love, loving each other for the person on the inside? Where was Marabel’s truly biblical advice, rather God’s commandment, to worship and revere God alone, and serve God first and before all? Out of loving God, honoring and grateful for the sacrificial love God showed us in Jesus dying on the cross for our sins, we give love to those around us, not to manipulate them or finnagle their love, but to truly love THEM as unique individuals created in God’s image, valuable because they are, and loved by God. I was willing to serve my husband, but not willing to enable or encourage him to do what God’s Word calls sin. I’m sorry, Marabel, but If personal integrity made me “unattractive” to him, then was his love truly love, or was it also self-driven manipulation for selfish motives?

The Bible’s ”poster girl” for self-driven unscrupulous manipulation is Queen Jezebel. From her example, her name now means a conniving, seductive, manipulative woman.

King Ahab, indifferent to God’s commands to only marry a Jewish woman who worshiped God Almighty so he would not be led to worship false gods, married a foreign woman who worshipped other gods than the God of Israel, Yahweh, Olam El, the Lord God Almighty. Here is a summary of Jezebel’s life, from https://www.thoughtco.com/who-was-jezebel-2076726

“Jezebel‘s story is recounted in 1 Kings and 2 Kings, where she is described as a worshiper of the god Ba’al and the goddess Asherah — not to mention as an enemy of God’s prophets. As King Ahab’s wife, Jezebel mandated that her religion should be the national religion of Israel and organized guilds of prophets of Ba’al (450) and Asherah (400).

As a result, Jezebel is described as an enemy of God who was “killing off the Lord’s prophets” (1 Kings 18:4).  In response, the prophet Elijah accused King Ahab of abandoning the Lord and challenged Jezebel’s prophets to a contest. (Elijah and the One True God won the contest, and fire from Heaven burned up the prophets of Ba’al)

Although Jezebel was one of King Ahab’s many wives, 1 and 2 Kings make it apparent that she wielded a considerable amount of power. The earliest example of her influence occurs in 1 Kings 21, when her husband wanted a vineyard belonging to Naboth the Jezreelite. Naboth refused to give his land to the king because it had been in his family for generations. In response, Ahab became sullen and upset. When Jezebel noticed her husband’s mood, she inquired after the cause and decided to get the vineyard for Ahab. She did so by writing letters in the king’s name commanding the elders of Naboth’s city to accuse Naboth of cursing both God and his King. The elders obliged and Naboth was convicted of treason, then stoned. Upon his death, his property reverted to the king, so in the end, Ahab got the vineyard he wanted.

At God’s command, the prophet Elijah then appeared before King Ahab and Jezebel, proclaiming that because of their actions, “This is what the Lord says: In the place where dogs licked up Naboth’s blood, dogs will lick up your blood — yes, yours!” (1 Kings 21:17).

Elijah’s prophesy at the end of the narrative of Naboth’s vineyard comes true when Ahab dies in Samaria and his son, Ahaziah, dies within two years of ascending the throne. He is killed by Jehu, who emerges as another contender for the throne when the prophet Elisha declares him King. … According to 2 Kings 9:30-34, Jezebel and Jehu meet soon after the death of her son Ahaziah. When she learns of his demise, she puts on makeup, does her hair, and looks out a palace window only to see Jehu enter the city. She calls to him and he responds by asking her servants if they are on his side. “Who is on my side? Who?” he asks, “Thrown her down!” (2 Kings 9:32).

Jezebel’s eunuchs then betray her by throwing her out the window. She dies when she hits the street and is trampled by horses.”

Uh, it’s clear to me that God is serious about being the one and only object of our worship, reverence, and first obedience. Bad things happen when we put anyone or anything else on the “throne” of our lives! And no, God is NOT a narcissist; God is the Creator, Author of the Universe, Holy, Good, Righteous, Merciful, Powerful, Authority, Kind, Just, and Loving, all together and no aspect of His character ruling out the others.

You open Your hand And satisfy the desire of every living thing. The LORD is righteous in all His ways And kind in all His deeds. The LORD is near to all who call upon Him, To all who call upon Him in truth.…Psalm 145:16-18

Righteous and Kind, Just and Merciful, Holy. Here are clear directives from the Bible on Who is to come first in our lives:

And he (Satan) led Him (Jesus) up and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time. And the devil said to Him, “I will give You all this domain and its glory; for it has been handed over to me, and I give it to whomever I wish. “Therefore if You worship before me, it shall all be Yours.” Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘YOU SHALL WORSHIP THE LORD YOUR GOD AND SERVE HIM ONLY.’” Away from me, Satan!” Jesus declared. “For it is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God and serve Him only.'”

… Luke 4: 5-8, 10

“I am the LORD your God. You shall have no other gods before Me.” Exodus 20: 3

“You shall fear only the LORD your God; and you shall worship Him and swear by His name. Deuteronomy 6:13

–for you shall not worship any other god, for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God—Exodus 34:14

“You shall fear only the LORD your God; and you shall worship Him and swear by His name. “You shall not follow other gods, any of the gods of the peoples who surround you,” Exodus 6: 13-14

Then Samuel spoke to all the house of Israel, saying, “If you return to the LORD with all your heart, remove the foreign gods and the Ashtoreth from among you and direct your hearts to the LORD and serve Him alone; and He will deliver you from the hand of the Philistines.” 1 Samuel 7: 3

For great is the LORD and greatly to be praised; He is to be feared above all gods. For all the gods of the peoples are idols, But the LORD made the heavens. Psalm 96: 4-5

“But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers. John 4: 23

For this reason also, God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus EVERY KNEE WILL BOW, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. Philippians 2: 9-11

Yes, I am to love my husband and respect him. Equally true, my husband is to love and respect me as his wife. Mutually we submit ourselves and our wills to God and what He wants for our marriage and family. That’s the way God intended marriage to reflect His unity, integrity and upright love that calls the beloved to purity and righteousness.

“Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves; do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others. Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped… Philippians 2: 3-8

So Marabel, no; husbands should not seek to be revered and worshiped and served, but as Jesus showed us all to serve one another out of humility and giving love, and wives should do the same.

https://www.biblegateway.com/resources/all-women-bible/Jezebel-No-1

No matter from what angle we approach the life of Jezebel she stands out as a beacon to both nations and individuals that the wages of sin is death. Further, from this great tragic figure of literature and of history we learn how important it is for the influence of a wife and mother to be on the side of all that is good and noble.

If I truly love another person, I ought to be about encouraging and enabling the best, truest, noblest, most upright, God-honoring choices and attitudes in them. I go back to 1 Corinthians 13: 4-7 to the definition of genuine love: Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.

So, Truly Total Woman, honor and worship God first, and your respect and love for you husband will fall into proper place. Total Husbands, same goes for you. Total Singles, same thing: call forth, encourage, support and enable the best and truest, most righteous and kind and good in others. That’s what we all should be about, regardless of relationship to each other.

      Marabel or Jezebel Or God’s Total Woman? I'm thinking about the misguided advice in Marabel Morgan's 1974 book Total Woman, which came out in 1974.

[eriexplosion]

You've articulated something I was struggling with on the stakes argument - that the stakes haven't changed at all. You get people saying "Now we know that the batch can die" like one of the primary predictions for the endgame isn't "everyone gets Rogue One'd." Death was always on the table and, yeah, in universe death was the expected outcome. None of them ever operated under the assumption that they'd live a long and happy life and die peacefully of old age.

You can tell because they have a plan called plan 99 to begin with. Even if we assume it's not just a Sacrifice Plan because dying isn't a plan (but asking to be left behind is) that they have that plan is enough proof that to them this was always an option.

Which is why I can't see his death moving anything forward. Everyone is sad, it HURTS, sure. But it's not something that is going to rewrite their understanding of the universe. Because the universe was always one that didn't have room in it for all of them to live.

That funnels into the "weight of his sacrifice" thing - clones dying to self sacrifice is not new. It's just not. It's a major cause of clone death in fact. Clones were made to throw themselves into the gears. They're trained to see it as a positive in many ways.

Tech dying here is narratively uninteresting because it is the classic clone story, dying for the greater good and being remembered and honored for their sacrifice is one of the most positive outcomes a clone trooper can hope for because living in peace was surely never an option for them.

You brought up Mayday's death and I think that the impact of his storyline is a good example of one way that this gets subverted. His entire unit is sacrificed For The Greater Good, but it turns out it was only for some armor that couldn't possibly be worth so many lives, all those men reduced to helmets and, with Mayday's death, their memories gone for good. His death was a sacrifice but not a dramatic one - just a split second choice not to lose one more man and the long, slow, preventable decline that followed because Nolan didn't care enough to save his life.

It hurts, it's agonizing, and it lingers because it was all so, so painfully unnecessary, it takes the self sacrificial and heroic clone trooper story where we watch heroes going out in blazes of glory and scratches away the shiny narrative exterior to show the bodies that prop it all up. It's similar to how Umbara still lingers and hurts after all this time.

Tech dying heroically with a badass final line and Omega learning that his sacrifice was good and necessary is.... well its a choice but it's not a new one. And in a story that's been so focused on living with the consequences of your choices - of your choices, not of someone else's - it falls rather flat.

Meanwhile if he survives and is permanently changed by his choice, if he has to reevaluate who he is and what his existence means, and at the end of it he can still look Omega in the eye and pull an Echo, say he regrets nothing and made the right decision and he would do it all over again? Tell me that doesn't hold more narrative weight than any sacrificial death could.

Tech’s Alive, Part 6: The Matter of Weight (cw for discussions of death, suicide mention, genocide mention)

AKA, why “Tech should stay dead for the stakes” and “Tech should stay dead so the moment he sacrifices himself retains its weight” are arguments I will not be entertaining in this household. And by this household, I mean my blog. But also probably my actual apartment here in real space.

So, this isn’t really an argument for why Tech is alive, per se. It’s more just me trying to counter the two most common arguments I see people making for why he should be dead, whether the person making the argument thinks he’s dead or not.

Stakes:

The first argument, that Tech should stay dead for the sake of the “stakes” is, to me, the most nebulous. On this here interwebs we tend to talk about “stakes” purely in the negative; everyone’s going to die, the villains are going to win, everything is going to be sad forever, etc. But stakes in a story are really just about potential consequences—what could happen if the characters succeed, and what could happen if they fail. And while it’s true that killing a character can raise the stakes in a story, it’s best accomplished by killing off a secondary character, and it can really only raise them in a story in which death was never a potential consequence.

Death has always been a potential consequence for these characters, not just for failure, but just for existing in the world in which they live. Scratch that, dying is quite literally what they were made to do. This is a series in which two genocides have already taken place—that of the Jedi, then of the Kaminoans—and which has us watching a third ongoing—that of the clones themselves. Almost every new named clone we’ve met has died, and died violently. The clone force 99 characters have all almost died about once an episode so far, and every time they do, the show tends to treat it as a serious close call.

So killing off Tech doesn’t raise the potential consequences of failure to “death” because that potential was always there. Killing off a secondary but known clone character like, say, Howser could have made heightened that risk more effectively. Heck, Mayday’s death does a better job of raising that risk for Crosshair, for example; the only reason Crosshair wasn’t the one who died in the avalanche was was because Mayday noticed the rock and pushed Crosshair out of the way. Killing off Tech and leaving him dead, by contrast, would actually, in a way, lower the stakes—because, again, the risk of “potential consequences” is gone (it’s just reality now), AND stakes are also about what could happen if the characters succeed and get what they want. Meaning that if Tech’s gone for good, the potential positive consequences are much, much lower. The positive consequence of the clone force 99 family reuniting—the thing the story keeps making us want—would just be gone. There’s only so far you can ratchet the spring of tension before it snaps.

That said, when some people argue for Tech’s death in favor of raised stakes, I don’t think the above is really what they’re talking about. They’re mostly making a somewhat edgelordy argument about death needing to feel real in the star war and darkness being the “mature” option. Let’s say I bought that argument. Let’s say I actually thought “the reality of death” and “maturity” were valid reasons to kill off a main character. Let’s even push aside all the reasons why I think killing off any one of the bad batchers permanently would break the story. Let’s do this thought experiment. Killing off Tech in this season and leaving him dead still doesn’t work, specifically because so much time this season was spent on developing and helping the other characters to understand him better.

You can spend time building up a character and developing them for the sole purpose of killing them and giving them a send-off if your show has an unserialized format. Think Gray’s Anatomy or Bones; unserialized shows are just taking the characters and putting them in different combinations or scenarios until the end of time without really worrying about arcs or narrative threads, so in that format spending time with a character before killing them off makes sense. Spending an entire season of a serialized show building up a character and their relationships, using them to develop certain themes and narrative threads, using them to push certain parts of the plot forward, and then killing them off in which a way which does nothing to resolve any of those arcs, themes, or narrative threads, though? That’s just a waste of time. Of limited time—because fully serialized shows have an ending. I’d be more willing to buy into this line of argument if it was Wrecker, not Tech, simply because he hasn’t had the kind of development Tech has.

Don’t get me wrong, I’d still absolutely hate it and would see perma-deathing Wrecker as just as story breaking as perma-deathing Tech. But if we’re doing the thought experiment where I’m talking about stakes the way some people seem to be doing, I could see it working better in that context than perma-deathing Tech. People can make that argument about Tech’s “death,” sure, but what they’re really advocating for is bad writing. And hey! Maybe we’ll get to the end of the show and it will turn out to have been badly written! I just…don’t really buy that right now.

(Of course, this is all moot anyway, because I fundamentally disagree with the definition of stakes being used by some people making this argument and see this line of thinking as somewhat edgelordy bologna anyway. But! Moving on.)

Wanting Tech’s Sacrifice to Have Weight:

So, I’m more sympathetic to this line of thinking. I don’t agree with it, but I can kind of respect where it’s coming from. I’ve mostly seen this from people who really hate the idea that Tech is dead, but don’t see a way for the moment in which Tech sacrifices himself to maintain its emotional weight if it turns out he’s alive, and who want the writers to respect Tech’s choice. And I get that. I’ve watched more than one show that had some big emotional moment that got completely ruined by being undone or having some other development come up later on. So it’s not that I think this argument is invalid; I just don’t think it applies in this specific case.

Because…okay, first, when it comes to the writers respecting Tech’s choice, I want us to think really hard about what he’s choosing to do. Because he’s not choosing to die. Not exactly. He’s choosing to do something extremely risky that will probably get him killed, and he knows it, in order to save his family. And I know it maybe doesn’t seem like there’s a distinction there, but there is one, and it’s important, because—I mean—listen to that last heavy sigh he gives before his last line. He doesn’t want to do it. He doesn’t want to die. He just doesn’t see any way out for the others if he doesn’t risk it. (Also I feel like the “the writers need to respect his choice argument” really kind of…not…real great bad, actually, it’s real bad guys, even if he was choosing to die, specifically, because that’s way too close to advocating for suicide for comfort. I don’t think that’s what anyone is intending by this argument but….)

Second, I don’t agree that Tech’s “death” is what gives that moment its emotional weight. Let’s say that Tech does die here. Let’s say he really isn’t coming back. In that case, his death is kind of meaningless, because he was going to die anyway. If we’re saying he died, then it was either all of them die, or just him. Which means that the thing that gives that moment weight can’t be his death, because he had no way out of dying, if we’re looking at it that way and accepting that he’s just gone for good.

The thing that gives that moment weight—just a warning, I’m about to get tooth-achingly schmaltzy here, and I’m not sorry—is love. It’s everyone in the batch’s love for Tech shattering into a million little pieces of grief and horror as they watch him fall. It’s Tech loving his family so damn much he refuses to even consider letting them fall with him. It’s Tech, not knowing that he’s a character in a story, looking at the situation, knowing what he’s about to do will probably kill him—because if he wasn’t a character in a story, it probably would—knowing that if he does it he’ll probably never see Crosshair again, never see Echo or Hunter at peace, never get to hear Wrecker laugh again, never get to see Omega grow up, and still choosing to take the fall for them because there’s no chance he’d let them take the same risk. That’s why that moment has meaning. And because that’s where the meaning comes from, I can’t see how that meaning or weight would evaporate if he came back.

I mean—let’s say you were waking down the street with a friend. You step out in front of a bus, purely by accident. Your friend notices and pushes you out of the way, and in so doing steps in front of the bus, gets hit, and miraculously survives. Does their survival do anything to decrease the fact that they were willing to get hit by a bus for you? Are we really going to argue “death, or it doesn’t count” when it comes to self-sacrifice?

Furthermore, the “Tech has to stay dead for his sacrifice to have weight” argument seems to be made at least partly from the point of view that “dead” and “fully abled” are the only two options. They’re not. Other people have covered the possibility that Tech will come back with a physical disability that he has to adjust to way better than I ever could, but that’s a very real consequence the show could deal with.

I don’t really have a conclusion to this. Basically, while I have seen the stakes and weight arguments floating around, I don’t really see either of them as valid narrative arguments for keeping Tech dead, and I wanted to explain why.

[aion-rsa]

Nightwing #18 Sees the Return of A Classic Villain – But To What End?

SPOILER WARNING: The following article contains spoilers for “Nightwing” #18, by Tim Seeley, Javier Fernandez and Minkyu Jung, on sale now.

Professor Pyg certainly isn’t a villain that needs too much motivation to do horrible things. From his introduction back in “Batman & Robin,” his biggest driving force has been his own insane pursuit of “perfection” and not much else. But it would seem there just might be other factors at play for the madman this time around.

RELATED: Did Nightwing Just Peer Into DC’s Rebirthed Multiverse?

As “Nightwing Must Die!” begins to literally and figuratively heat up, some unsettling truths have started coming to light, and they are pretty ominous, not just for Dick Grayson, but potentially the entire multiverse.

Pyg Will Make You Perfect

With Dick and Damian having made relatively short sort of their Dollotron copies, they set about tracking down Pyg and Shawn to stage a rescue for the latter. They find the villain in an abandoned foundry, surrounded by Dollotrons, with Shawn set up for some sort of sacrificial ritual. To make matters even worse, the foundry is running and actively raising the temperature inside the room, giving the fight a pretty strict timeline to follow.

Luckily, the dynamic duo is able to free Shawn and subdue Pyg as you might expect, but all the while, the Dollotron captives they left behind (perhaps a bit shortsightedly, with no real observation) have been making a play of their own. Well, one of them has, at least. Dollotron Robin had almost managed to break through his own programming, but Deathwing decidedly did not.

After convincing his Dollotron “brother” to set him free from Dick and Damian’s restraints, Deathwing promptly kills Dollo-Robin and stages a trap to isolate and kidnap Damian while Dick is busy reuniting with Shawn.

Bad news all around, but it gets even worse.

Issue #18 of “Nightwing” seemed to insinuate that Deathwing — and by extension, his creator Professor Pyg — were somehow tapped into the multiverse in a way that allowed a cut from Deathwing’s dagger to spark hallucinations of his alternate selves in Dick’s mind. Keep in mind that, traditionally, Pyg’s been an admittedly very dangerous but fairly run of the mill psychopath. He’s certainly not someone with any sort of extradimensional or metahuman abilities to speak of, so this detail was unusual.

RELATED: Nightwing Faces Some Bloody Competition as [SPOILER] Lives Again

As it turns out, it was unusual for very, very good reason. After he’s defeated, Pyg is quick to admit that even he is dissatisfied with his latest Dollotron creations. He hasn’t been making them for himself, you see, he’s been working for an employer who has been giving him what he believes to be impure instructions.

That employer just happens to be none other than Dr. Simon Hurt…and Deathwing has delivered Damian right to him.

Robin Dies At Dawn

Dr. Simon Hurt’s legacy is an exceedingly strange one, even by Batman rogues’ standards. Hurt was first “introduced” as a nameless, panel filling scientist back in the Golden Age Batman story, “Robin Dies At Dawn” (issue #156 for those of you playing along at home) and later redeveloped into a near omnipotent puppet master by Grant Morrison to serve as the primary antagonist for most of his “Batman” run.

Hurt’s ambiguous nature and powers remain to this day an unclear element of Batman history — on the page, Hurt claimed to be everyone from Thomas Wayne, to a literal demon named Barbatos, to an incarnation of Darkseid himself. Eventually, the narrative appeared to settle on Hurt being a devil worshiping Wayne ancestor whose name just happened to be Thomas, though unofficially, the metaphors were never really stripped away. In interviews, Morrison has confirmed his desire to make Hurt read as analogy for the devil, who he considers to be the ultimate foe for a detective like Batman.

It’s also worth noting that this isn’t actually Seeley’s first “Robin Dies At Dawn” reference with respect to Dick. Issue #5 of his run on “Grayson” with Tom King and Mikel Janin featured Dick narrating the Golden Age story as if they were a dream he’d had as a child. Whether or not any of the events in “Grayson” will be called upon to bolster the story in the post-Rebirth world remains to be seen, but is certainly something to keep an eye out for.

RELATED: Supernatural’s Jared Padalecki Has ‘Always Wanted’ to Play Nightwing

Regardless of his true nature, the fact is this: Hurt’s connection to, if not the full on multiverse of the DCU than at the very least planes of existence (psychotropic or otherwise) is totally undeniable. This was a man (or monster?) who was powerful enough to completely dismantle the Batman without breaking much of a sweat. His presence also adds another layer of meaning to the multiverse flashes Dick saw last issue — if Hurt’s involved, all bets are off as to whether or not they were legit. It’s entirely possible that Hurt has figured out a way to tamper with reality — or, at least, make everyone believe that he has.

It’s unclear what Hurt was doing with Pyg’s Dollotrons, or what his plans are for Damian, but given all the strange, multidimensional undercurrents trickling around the entire DC Universe as Rebirth continues to unfold, it’s pretty unlikely that they’re at all intended to be taken at face value. And while there has been no official confirmation of a “Nightwing” tie-in to the newly announced Batman-centric cross-title event, “Dark Nights: Metal,” there’s a pretty good chance that Hurt’s reappearance is building towards something, and something big.

A return to Zur-En-Arrh, perhaps?

Better brush off those Black Casebooks, just in case.

“Nightwing” #19, by Tim Seeley and Javier Fernandez, arrives in stores April 19, 2017.

The post Nightwing #18 Sees the Return of A Classic Villain – But To What End? appeared first on CBR.

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