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aboveallarescuer · 4 years ago

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Daenerys Targaryen in A Storm of Swords vs Game of Thrones - Episode 4.1: Two Swords

In this series of posts, I intend to analyze precisely how the show writers downplayed or erased several key aspects of Daenerys Targaryen’s characterization, even when they had the books to help them write her as the compelling, intelligent, compassionate, frugal, open-minded and self-critical character that GRRM created.

I want to make it clear that these posts are not primarily meant to offer a better alternative to what the show writers gave us. I understand that they had many constraints (e.g. other storylines to handle, a limited amount of time to write the scripts, budget, actors who may have asked for a certain number of lines, etc) working against them. However, considering how disrespectful the show’s ending was to Daenerys Targaryen and how the book material that they left out makes it even more ludicrous to think that she will also become a villain in A Song of Ice and Fire, I believe that these reviews are more than warranted. They are meant to dissect everything about Dany’s characterization that was lost in translation, with a lot of book evidence to corroborate my statements.

Since these reviews will dissect scene by scene, I recommend taking a look at this post because I will use its sequence to order Dany’s scenes.

This post is relevant in case you want to know which chapters were adapted in which GoT episodes (however, I didn’t make the list myself, all the information comes from the GoT Wiki, so I can’t guarantee that it’s 100% reliable).

In general, I will call the Dany from the books “Dany” and the Dany from the TV series “show!Dany”.

Scene 1

While seeing show!Dany with her dragons is always enjoyable on its own, I have some problems with this moment. The first is that we'll begin season four with show!Dany worrying about her dragons' behavior here and, later, end it with her locking two of her dragons away. These scenes don't focus as much on show!Dany herself as they focus on her relationship with her dragons, which I think is quite a problem in comparison to how ASOS and ADWD (which will be the book that the writers will adapt starting from episode 4.6) begin and end:

Dany begins ASOS hopeful and happy that she's finally going to Westeros. She ends the book disillusioned because her efforts to help the former slaves didn't pay off like she expected, so she calls off her dreams of home in order to stay and fulfill (what she thinks is) her moral duty as queen.

Dany begins ADWD distraught because she's still dealing with the nobility's backlash and retaliation against her authority even now that she has tried to be conciliatory and rule in peace. She ends the book a) disabused of the notion that peace is possible and b) directing her eyes to Westeros again.

As we can see, these two books begin and end displaying Dany's multiple dilemmas: home vs duty, other people vs herself, peace vs war, conciliation vs use of force and so on.

In the show, while her last scene in the season four finale at least highlights her compassion towards her people, I'd argue it still mainly focuses on her relationship with her dragons (which is only one of many issues that Dany deals with in the books) rather than on grappling with the questions above in a way that centers primarily on show!Dany herself, like the books do with Dany.

My second problem is that having show!Dany be concerned about her dragons' behavior that much earlier than in the books poses another problem:

In ADWD, Dany ultimately failed in protecting her human children during her tenure because she chose peace with the slavers and was, therefore, detached from her dragon children, from her Targaryen heritage and from her identity as the Mother of Dragons. By meeting Drogon again, getting in touch with who she was and choosing fire and blood (war), she will be able to protect her people again and be a better mhysa. Ultimately, mother of dragons and mhysa are complementary parts of who Dany is.

In the show, however, the dragons begin to seem troublesome before we get to Meereen, before show!Dany begins to rule and before the issue of peace vs war becomes a major dilemma for her. This happened for two reasons: a) D&D are bad writers who dismiss themes as only being necessary for eighth-grade book reports (here, I imagine they probably just wanted to add more shock value to show!Dany's plotline) and b) D&D think that peace = good (even if it privileges a status quo that normalizes slavery) and war = bad, so killing slavers = bad, dragons = bad and continuing on with an anti-slavery revolution = bad (failure to understand reason 1 of why Dany's storyline matters).

My third problem is that, in the books, it's clear that what really upsets Dany is not that the dragons are eating goats, but rather that, as they grow and become more independent, the chances of her dragons a) hurting other people or b) running away increase:

“They have been wild while you were gone, Khaleesi,” Irri told her. “Viserion clawed splinters from the door, do you see? And Drogon made to escape when the slaver men came to see them. When I grabbed his tail to hold him back, he turned and bit me.” She showed Dany the marks of his teeth on her hand.

“Did any of them try to burn their way free?” That was the thing that frightened Dany the most.

“No, Khaleesi. Drogon breathed his fire, but in the empty air. The slaver men feared to come near him.”

She kissed Irri’s hand where Drogon had bitten it. “I’m sorry he hurt you. Dragons are not meant to be locked up in a small ship’s cabin.” (ASOS Daenerys II)

There was no sign of Viserion, but when she went to the parapet and scanned the horizon she saw pale wings in the far distance, sweeping above the river. He is hunting. They grow bolder every day. Yet it still made her anxious when they flew too far away. One day one of them may not return, she thought. (ASOS Daenerys VI)

Her dragons were growing wild of late. Rhaegal had snapped at Irri, and Viserion had set Reznak’s tokar ablaze the last time the seneschal had called. I have left them too much to themselves, but where am I to find the time for them? (ADWD Daenerys I)

If I look back, I am doomed, Dany told herself … but how could she not look back? I should have seen it coming. Was I so blind, or did I close my eyes willfully, so I would not have to see the price of power?

[...] At Astapor the slaver's eyes had melted. On the road to Yunkai, when Daario tossed the heads of Sallor the Bald and Prendahl na Ghezn at her feet, her children made a feast of them. Dragons had no fear of men. And a dragon large enough to gorge on sheep could take a child just as easily. (ADWD Daenerys II)

Before what happened to Hazzea, she was okay with the fact that they were hunting and devouring sheep:

Viserion sensed her disquiet. [...] “You should be hunting with your brothers. Have you and Drogon been fighting again?” (ADWD Daenerys I)

Her dragons had grown too large to be content with rats and cats and dogs. The more they eat, the larger they will grow, Ser Barristan had warned her, and the larger they grow, the more they’ll eat. Drogon especially ranged far afield and could easily devour a sheep a day. (ADWD Daenerys I)

Basically, this is my way of saying that, if they needed to have a scene where show!Dany is uneasy about what the dragons were doing, they should've shown them almost harming one of the people in her retinue or something along those lines (rather than being shocked at seeing them hunt and eat), for that would showcase her empathy like in the books.

My fourth problem with this scene is that we see part of it from show!Jorah's point of view:

JORAH: They’re dragons, Khaleesi. They can never be tamed. Not even by their mother.

In the show, he gets the first line of show!Dany's season four storyline, he gets to be anxious about the dragons before show!Dany is (which undermines how reflective she is in the books) and he is the one who warns her of their wildness when, in the books, she is aware of it without anyone having to tell her. It's another subtle way of undermining show!Dany's agency in comparison to her book counterpart, unfortunately.

My fifth and final problem is that, well, this scene was written by the same people who thought that it was necessary to have show!Dany's dragons taken from her in season two (which never happened in ACOK) and show her going "back to being a really frightened little girl" because she is "so defined" by them. It's the opposite in the books: the dragons only turned into weapons to fight against slavery because of her choices. So, with that in mind, I don't like how they made them so important in her first and last scenes of the season when they never were in the books. And all of this conflict feels superfluous in retrospect, when one remembers that show!Dany doesn't struggle to control them in the last three seasons at all.

DAENERYS: Ser Barristan.

BARRISTAN: Your Grace.

DAENERYS: Where’s Daario Naharis? Where’s Grey Worm?

BARRISTAN: Gambling, Your Grace.

DAENERYS: Gambling?

I have problems with how show!Barristan and show!Dany are being portrayed here because it feels like the show writers switched their characterizations when we consider what we know of them in the books.

First, why is show!Barristan holding his laughter about this situation? In the books, Barristan clearly dislikes Daario and his influence on Dany:

On the day that he returned from his latest sortie, he had tossed the head of a Yunkish lord at her feet and kissed her in the hall for all the world to see, until Barristan Selmy pulled the two of them apart. Ser Grandfather had been so wroth that Dany feared blood might be shed. (ADWD Daenerys VII)

“This is your gift? A scrap of writing?” Daario snatched the parchment out of the Dornishman’s hands and unrolled it, squinting at the seals and signatures. “Very pretty, all the gold and ribbons, but I do not read your Westerosi scratchings.”

“Bring it to the queen,” Ser Barristan commanded. “Now.” (ADWD Daenerys VII)

“...Poor Daario, her brave captain … she will never forget him, no … but better for all of us if he is dead, yes? Better for Daenerys too.”

Better for Daenerys, and for Westeros. Daenerys Targaryen loved her captain, but that was the girl in her, not the queen. [...]

Her love for Daario is poison. A slower poison than the locusts, but in the end as deadly. (ADWD The Kingbreaker)

Now, Barristan is a product of his misogynistic society and I do think he's wrong for thinking (in the last quote above) that Dany's love for Daario is a sign of immaturity, but my point here is that he wouldn't be laughing about something that Daario was doing behind Dany's back; in fact, he would've most likely informed her as soon as he learned about it because he respects her authority.

Additionally, he's known for lacking a sense of humor and not being relaxed, which makes this scene even more OOC for him:

The old knight was a good man, but sometimes very literal. It was only a jape, ser, she thought, but she sat on one of the pillows just the same. (ADWD Daenerys II)

“She needs a spear,” Ser Barristan said, as Barsena vaulted over the beast’s second charge. “That is no way to fight a boar.” He sounded like someone’s fussy old grandsire, just as Daario was always saying. (ADWD Daenerys IX)

Second, why is show!Dany being portrayed as the uptight one here? In the chapter that they are drawing from, there are several moments displaying her carefree side:

“Five, were there? Well, that’s a confusion. I could not give you a number, my queen. This old Plumm was a lord, though, must have been a famous fellow in his day, the talk of all the land. The thing was, begging your royal pardon, he had himself a cock six foot long.”

The three bells in Dany’s braid tinkled when she laughed. “You mean inches, I think.”

“Feet,” Brown Ben said firmly. “If it was inches, who’d want to talk about it, now? Your Grace.”

Dany giggled like a little girl. (ASOS Daenerys V)

He tried to spare me the sight of the dead children too. He should not have done that, but he meant it kindly. And Daario Naharis made her laugh, which Ser Jorah never did. (ASOS Daenerys V)

Besides admiring Daario's sense of humor and swagger, Dany also appreciates that she can let go of the burdens of queenship (and luxury) and be more spontaneous and frugal when she's with him:

In Meereen I was a queen in silk, nibbling on stuffed dates and honeyed lamb, she remembered. What would my noble husband think if he could see me now? Hizdahr would be horrified, no doubt. But Daario ...

Daario would laugh, carve off a hunk of horsemeat with his arakh, and squat down to eat beside her. (ADWD Daenerys X)

Unfortunately, the show never allows any of those aspects of Dany's characterization to come across onscreen because the writers wanted show!Dany to appear very stoic, which we know because Emilia's said in an interview that they wanted her to "sit up straight and don't smile, you're not funny", which is quite a shame; not only the writers would've been more faithful to the books by allowing her to smile and laugh and enjoy herself, it would've made show!Dany more endearing.

Ultimately, I think the change in these characters comes down to a) D&D not really understanding any of the characters of the books and b) their sexist assumptions that men are funnier than women and that powerful women are all ice queens.

I also need to talk about how show!Dany's connection to the Dothraki, the Unsullied and the freedmen is being undermined onscreen in comparison to what we get solely from ASOS Daenerys V.

In the show, the Dothraki only appear briefly in the background of this episode to never be seen again through the rest of season four and the entirety of season five.

In ASOS Daenerys V, we see how Dany's time with the Dothraki influenced her when she judges the slavers' reaction to her army or assesses the way that Oznak fights:

They are pissing on slaves, to show how little they fear us, she thought. They would never dare such a thing if it were a Dothraki khalasar outside their gates. (ASOS Daenerys V)

Oznak zo Pahl charged a third time, and now Dany could see plainly that he was riding past Belwas, the way a Westerosi knight might ride at an opponent in a tilt, rather than at him, like a Dothraki riding down a foe. (ASOS Daenerys V)

We also see her interacting with her khalasar and considering that her bloodriders a) are too important to send to fight against Oznak and b) aren't the most adequate men to send to Meereen's sewers:

Her bloodriders were in such a fever to go meet him that they almost came to blows. “Blood of my blood,” Dany told them, “your place is here by me. This man is a buzzing fly, no more. Ignore him, he will soon be gone.” Aggo, Jhogo, and Rakharo were brave warriors, but they were young, and too valuable to risk. They kept her khalasar together, and were her best scouts too. (ASOS Daenerys V)

“When cowards hide behind great walls, it is they who are defeated, Khaleesi,” Ko Jhogo said.

Her other bloodriders concurred. “Blood of my blood,” said Rakharo, “when cowards hide and burn the food and fodder, great khals must seek for braver foes. This is known.”

“It is known,” Jhiqui agreed, as she poured.

“Not to me.” (ASOS Daenerys V)

“These sewers do not sound promising.” Grey Worm would lead his Unsullied down the sewers if she commanded it, she knew; her bloodriders would do no less. But none of them was suited to the task. The Dothraki were horsemen, and the strength of the Unsullied was their discipline on the battlefield. Can I send men to die in the dark on such a slender hope? (ASOS Daenerys V)

So, despite not getting enough characterization to be set apart as their own individuals because of GRRM's racism, the Dothraki people's influence on Dany's decision-making is still clear. Unfortunately, this is completely absent from the show.

On HBO, when show!Dany passes by the Unsullied, they are shown standing still in silent ranks for no reason while their commander show!Grey Worm is on a contest against show!Daario because the writers wanted it to happen, even though it doesn't gel with his characterization (more on that later).

In ASOS Daenerys V, when Dany passes by the Unsullied, a) they are shown separated in groups that are either training (along with Grey Worm) or bathing and b) we get information on their hygiene practices:

As they rode past the stakes and pits that surrounded the eunuch encampment, Dany could hear Grey Worm and his sergeants running one company through a series of drills with shield, shortsword, and heavy spear. Another company was bathing in the sea, clad only in white linen breechclouts. The eunuchs were very clean, she had noticed. Some of her sellswords smelled as if they had not washed or changed their clothes since her father lost the Iron Throne, but the Unsullied bathed each evening, even if they’d marched all day. When no water was available they cleansed themselves with sand, the Dothraki way. (ASOS Daenerys V)

It's lovely to see Dany returning the Unsullied's greeting, which is another example of how she (relatively speaking) sees lowborn people as equals to her:

The eunuchs knelt as she passed, raising clenched fists to their breasts. Dany returned the salute. (ASOS Daenerys V)

We also get to see the Unsullied cheer for Belwas after he won his duel:

The besiegers gave him a raucous welcome as soon as he reached the camp. Her Dothraki hooted and screamed, and the Unsullied sent up a great clangor by banging their spears against their shields. (ASOS Daenerys V)

We get to see Grey Worm openly objecting to Daario's suggestion that the Unsullied are immune to the boiling oil that the slavers would probably throw at them if they tried to storm the gates. While he and the Unsullied would still do this if Dany had given them the command, this is a subtle sign of his character development because it displays that, unlike with the slave masters, he's at least now able to speak out about the risks that he and his men would face:

“...We can storm the gates with axes, to be sure, but ...”

“Did you see them bronze heads above the gates?” asked Brown Ben Plumm. “Rows of harpy heads with open mouths? The Meereenese can squirt boiling oil out them mouths, and cook your axemen where they stand.”

Daario Naharis gave Grey Worm a smile. “Perhaps the Unsullied should wield the axes. Boiling oil feels like no more than a warm bath to you, I have heard.”

“This is false.” Grey Worm did not return the smile. “These ones do not feel burns as men do, yet such oil blinds and kills. The Unsullied do not fear to die, though. Give these ones rams, and we will batter down these gates or die in the attempt.” (ASOS Daenerys V)

And then, we see Dany deciding not to endanger the Unsullied's lives (similar to how she sought to prevent too many former slaves of Astapor from dying in the battle of Yunkai), which highlights both her compassion and her intelligence (since she shows knowledge of the Unsullied's particular strengths to conclude that they shouldn't be sent to the sewers):

Dany sighed. “I will not throw away Unsullied lives, Grey Worm. (ASOS Daenerys V)

Sadly, the show ignores all of this.

On HBO, show!Dany walked past the freedmen on her way to meet show!Daario.

In ASOS Daenerys V, Dany chose to go meet the freedmen because she didn't want to spend time distracted by her feelings for Daario:

“Missandei,” she called, “have my silver saddled. Your own mount as well.”

The little scribe bowed. “As Your Grace commands. Shall I summon your bloodriders to guard you?”

“We’ll take Arstan. I do not mean to leave the camps.” She had no enemies among her children. (ASOS Daenerys V)

We learn that the fighting men were provided with weapons from the other two cities and were now being trained (though not at the particular moment that she chose to meet them):

South of the ordered realm of stakes, pits, drills, and bathing eunuchs lay the encampments of her freedmen, a far noisier and more chaotic place. Dany had armed the former slaves as best she could with weapons from Astapor and Yunkai, and Ser Jorah had organized the fighting men into four strong companies, yet she saw no one drilling here. (ASOS Daenerys V)

Besides the fighting men, we also get information on children and women:

They passed a driftwood fire where a hundred people had gathered to roast the carcass of a horse. She could smell the meat and hear the fat sizzling as the spit boys turned, but the sight only made her frown.

Children ran behind their horses, skipping and laughing. [...]

Dany had stopped to speak to a pregnant woman who wanted the Mother of Dragons to name her baby[.] (ASOS Daenerys V)

Then, there's also how the freedmen perceive and act around Dany:

Some of the freedmen greeted her as “Mother,” while others begged for boons or favors. Some prayed for strange gods to bless her, and some asked her to bless them instead. She smiled at them, turning right and left, touching their hands when they raised them, letting those who knelt reach up to touch her stirrup or her leg. Many of the freedmen believed there was good fortune in her touch. If it helps give them courage, let them touch me, she thought. There are hard trials yet ahead ... (ASOS Daenerys V)

Instead of believing that she has a "glorious destiny" (like the show writers put it), Dany's actual thoughts display that she only allows the freedmen to revere her because it helps them to feel safe; this is another sign of her empathy, not of her self-gratification or entitlement as many often think.

Finally, the chapter shows the freedmen killing a man for Dany:

Mero went sprawling, blood bubbling from his mouth as the waves washed over him. A moment later the freedmen washed over him too, knives and stones and angry fists rising and falling in a frenzy. (ASOS Daenerys V)

In the books, the former captain of the Second Sons, Mero, hid among the freedmen and bided his time to kill Dany out of revenge for having been deceived by her in Yunkai. Barristan defended her and defeated Mero with a stick, which then led to the freedmen ultimately killing him for their mhysa (and to Barristan's identity and Jorah's treason being revealed).

On HBO, because a) show!Barristan's identity was revealed right away and b) show!Mero was killed by show!Daario (who is part of the Second Sons onscreen rather than the Stormcrows onpage), this scene never happened, making this another example of Dany's connection with the freedmen being undermined from books to show.

If the writers really cared about "the people who may be suffering the repercussions of the decisions made by those heroic people" (which was their justification for leaving show!Dany out of the picture in the second half of the episode where they had her decide to kill thousands of innocents out of nowhere), they would've shown the (already limited) interactions between Dany and her khalasar, the Unsullied and the freedmen at the very least. In fact, if the writers really cared about them, they could've gone further and explored characters that GRRM himself didn't:

“Nine, the noble Reznak said. Who else?”

“Three freedmen, murdered in their homes,” the Shavepate said. “A moneylender, a cobbler, and the harpist Rylona Rhee. They cut her fingers off before they killed her.” The queen flinched. Rylona Rhee had played the harp as sweetly as the Maiden. When she had been a slave in Yunkai, she had played for every highborn family in the city. In Meereen she had become a leader amongst the Yunkish freedmen, their voice in Dany’s councils. (ADWD Daenerys II)

Rylona Rhee was a character whose existence we only learned about in ADWD, after she was already killed by the Harpy's Sons. As the quote shows, though, she represented the Yunkish freedmen's interests in Dany's court and had a lot of potential as a character that GRRM didn't tap into. The show could've easily improved this... Think about it: if Rylona was among the Yunkish freedmen, this means that she met Dany at the end of ASOS Daenerys IV (which, in the show, was episode 3.10). From that point until ADWD Daenerys II, the entirety of season four and the beginning of season five went by (this happened because the show writers reaaaallly stretched out the events of ASOS Daenerys V and VI and parts of ADWD Daenerys I and II). This span of time would've been the perfect opportunity to introduce Rylona's character, flesh her out and give us more information about the freedmen.

Now, the show writers would've never done something like this, of course; they only cared about the lowborn people's deaths and the shock value that would come with them, not about their motivations and lives in general.

DAENERYS: How long have they been at it?

MISSANDEI: Since midnight, Your Grace.

DAARIO: Ser Worm is stronger than he looks. But I can see his arms beginning to shake.

DAENERYS: What’s the prize to winning this stupid contest?

DAARIO: The honour of riding by your side on the road to Meereen.

DAENERYS: That honour goes to Ser Jorah and Ser Barristan, as neither of them kept me waiting this morning. You two will ride in the rear guard and protect the livestock. The last man holding his sword can find a new queen to fight for.

I already talked about my first issue with the scene, which is that it portrays show!Dany as rigid and strict while it ignores that her book counterpart is allowed to be playful and not take herself seriously in several moments in the books, including in this chapter (see above).

My second problem with it is that ... why would either show!Grey Worm or show!Daario think that this contest would give one of them "the honour of riding by [show!Dany's] side on the road to Meereen"? Did they forget that this choice is show!Dany's to make? Did they forget that she is their leader? By comparison, this is what Grey Worm says when Hizdahr tries to give him orders after Dany departs Meereen:

Hizdahr’s blunder with Grey Worm had cost him the Unsullied. When His Grace had tried to put them under the command of a cousin, as he had the Brazen Beasts, Grey Worm had informed the king that they were free men who took commands only from their mother. (ADWD The Queensguard)

Considering that Grey Worm only respects his queen's authority in the books, I doubt that he would've accepted to join this contest because he would know that its "prize" is worthless to begin with. Same goes for Daario. Unfortunately, this goes in line with how the (sexist) writers of this show have show!Dany's men make decisions among themselves and forget that show!Dany is their liege (another example: show!Barristan asking show!Jorah (rather than show!Dany) to take part in the battle of Yunkai), which is something that would've been fixed by simply paying more attention to the books. Unfortunately, this will only get worse as time goes on.

DAARIO: You like this girl? Must be frustrating.

GREY WORM: You are not a smart man, Daario Naharis.

DAARIO: I’d rather have no brains and two balls.

I'm fine with the show introducing a romantic relationship between show!Grey Worm and show!Missandei (which doesn't happen in the books because Missandei is 10-11), but it bothers me that the writers thought that the very first scene suggesting that show!Grey Worm has feelings for show!Missandei should feature show!Daario making an eunuch joke. Not that this would've been better if it weren't the first scene hinting at MissWorm, of course, it's needlessly offensive regardless and, while GRRM isn't immune to stuff like this either, it's true that this doesn't even happen in the books to begin with.

Scene 2

DAENERYS: Have you ever been to Meereen?

MISSANDEI: Several times, Your Grace, with Master Kraznys.

DAENERYS: And?

MISSANDEI: They say a thousand slaves died building the Great Pyramid of Meereen.

DAENERYS: And now an army of former slaves is marching to her gates. You think the Great Masters are worried?

MISSANDEI: If they’re smart, Your Grace.

This detail about a thousand slaves having died while they built the Great Pyramid of Meereen is a show only invention.

Show!Missandei telling show!Dany that the Great Masters should be worried about the latter's army if they are smart is also a show only invention (which leaves a really bad taste in my mouth in retrospect, since this original bit of dialogue most likely stems from their impression that show!Dany is "becoming more and more viable as a threat" based on her campaign in Slaver's Bay, which will also inform why, six years later, they'll think that it's okay to say that show!Dany's actions in King's Landing were foreshadowed by her "willingness to go forth and conquer all [her] enemies"; failure to understand reasons 1 and 2 of why Dany's storyline matters).

It makes no sense that the writers felt the need to add original lines when we could've had what ASOS Daenerys V actually gave us:

When she looked over one shoulder, there it stood, the afternoon sun blazing off the bronze harpy atop the Great Pyramid. Inside Meereen the slavers would soon be reclining in their fringed tokars to feast on lamb and olives, unborn puppies, honeyed dormice and other such delicacies, whilst outside her children went hungry. A sudden wild anger filled her. I will bring you down, she swore. (ASOS Daenerys V)

As the quote above shows, Dany's discomfort with the Meereenese slavers' privileges and traditions stems from the fact that they only have these things to begin with because they've maintained and benefitted from the slave trade for centuries. That's why she no longer enjoys eating puppies:

“...We give each boy a puppy on the day that he is cut. At the end of the first year, he is required to strangle it. Any who cannot are killed, and fed to the surviving dogs.” (ASOS Daenerys II)

“Good dog in Astapor, little queen. Eat?” He offered it with a greasy grin.

“That is kind of you, Belwas, but no.” Dany had eaten dog in other places, at other times, but just now all she could think of was the Unsullied and their stupid puppies. (ASOS Daenerys II)

Or why she asked Jhogo not to use the whip inside Astapor:

He stopped before a thickset man who had the look of Lhazar about him and brought his whip up sharply, laying a line of blood across one copper cheek. The eunuch blinked, and stood there, bleeding. “Would you like another?” asked Kraznys.

“If it please your worship.” (ASOS Daenerys II)

“Make way for the Mother of Dragons!” But when he uncoiled the great silverhandled whip that Dany had given him, and made to crack it in the air, she leaned out and told him nay. “Not in this place, blood of my blood,” she said, in his own tongue. “These bricks have heard too much of the sound of whips.” (ASOS Daenerys II)

Or why she considered banning the tokar, though she ultimately kept it in an attempt to help to make peace with the slavers:

Walking in a tokar demanded small, mincing steps and exquisite balance, lest one tread upon those heavy trailing fringes. It was not a garment meant for any man who had to work. The tokar was a master’s garment, a sign of wealth and power.

Dany had wanted to ban the tokar when she took Meereen, but her advisors had convinced her otherwise. “The Mother of Dragons must don the tokar or be forever hated,” warned the Green Grace, Galazza Galare. “In the wools of Westeros or a gown of Myrish lace, Your Radiance shall forever remain a stranger amongst us, a grotesque outlander, a barbarian conqueror. Meereen’s queen must be a lady of Old Ghis.” Brown Ben Plumm, the captain of the Second Sons, had put it more succinctly. “Man wants to be the king o’ the rabbits, he best wear a pair o’ floppy ears.” (ADWD Daenerys I)

Or why she was intent on keeping the fighting pits closed:

“Ask her if she wishes to view our fighting pits,” Kraznys added. “Douquor’s Pit has a fine folly scheduled for the evening. A bear and three small boys. One boy will be rolled in honey, one in blood, and one in rotting fish, and she may wager on which the bear will eat first.” (ASOS Daenerys II)

“Why?” she demanded, when Ithoke had finished. “You are no longer slaves, doomed to die at a master’s whim. I freed you. Why should you wish to end your lives upon the scarlet sands?” (ADWD Daenerys II)

Or, finally, why she chose to replace the previous throne for an ebony bench:

Her audience chamber was on the level below, an echoing high-ceilinged room with walls of purple marble. It was a chilly place for all its grandeur. There had been a throne there, a fantastic thing of carved and gilded wood in the shape of a savage harpy. She had taken one long look and commanded it be broken up for firewood. “I will not sit in the harpy’s lap,” she told them. Instead she sat upon a simple ebony bench. It served, though she had heard the Meereenese muttering that it did not befit a queen. (ASOS Daenerys VI)

All of these examples highlight that Dany struggles to accept the Meereenese slavers' culture because of her desire to end slavery and achieve equality. The quote from ASOS Daenerys V above could've easily been added in the show during a conversation between show!Dany and show!Missandei like this one.

Now, one could argue that this couldn't have happened in this episode because show!Dany hadn't yet a) seen the one hundred and sixty-three dead children, b) arrived in Meereen, c) seen the Great Pyramid and/or d) faced the risk of her people starve during the siege, all of which increase her righteous anger and determination to move forward with her crusade and do justice. That's true, but it leads to another question: why didn't they let this episode begin with show!Dany in Meereen like how ASOS Daenerys V begins, that is, with her having to face Meereen's champion?

Meereen was as large as Astapor and Yunkai combined. Like her sister cities she was built of brick, but where Astapor had been red and Yunkai yellow, Meereen was made with bricks of many colors. Her walls were higher than Yunkai’s and in better repair, studded with bastions and anchored by great defensive towers at every angle. Behind them, huge against the sky, could be seen the top of the Great Pyramid, a monstrous thing eight hundred feet tall with a towering bronze harpy at its top.

“The harpy is a craven thing,” Daario Naharis said when he saw it. “She has a woman’s heart and a chicken’s legs. Small wonder her sons hide behind their walls.”

But the hero did not hide. He rode out the city gates, armored in scales of copper and jet and mounted upon a white charger whose striped pink-and-white barding matched the silk cloak flowing from the hero’s shoulders. The lance he bore was fourteen feet long, swirled in pink and white, and his hair was shaped and teased and lacquered into two great curling ram’s horns. Back and forth he rode beneath the walls of multicolored bricks, challenging the besiegers to send a champion forth to meet him in single combat. (ASOS Daenerys V)

That's a problem that I have with how they adapted ASOS Daenerys V. The chapter can be divided in a list of four parts, which goes like this:

How Dany deals with Meereen's champion (this happens in episode 4.3)

Discussions on how to take Meereen (this never happens in the show)

Dany's thoughts on/flashbacks with Daario and Jorah (this more or less happens in episode 4.1; some are show only inventions)

Dany a) meeting her children and Mero and b) finding out the truth about her knights (a never happens; b happens in episodes 3.1 for show!Barristan and 4.8 for show!Jorah)

Despite being a chapter jam-packed with action and drama, the show adaptation diluted its impact by 1) fragmenting it, 2) overfocusing on certain parts over others, 3) creating new (and often unnecessary) scenes and 4) displaying its events out of the intended sequence. Problems 1-3 were already present in the adaptation of Dany's first four ASOS chapters, but I'd argue problem 4 is more serious in ASOS Daenerys V.

In the case of this particular scene, again, because it takes place before show!Dany reaches Meereen (and because the show writers never understood reasons 1 and 2 of why Dany's storyline matters), we don't get to see how her problems with the Meereenese slavers' culture are tied to their practice of slavery. This, unfortunately, is another case of the show undermining Dany's characterization from page to screen.

DAENERYS: You were told to ride at the back of the train.

DAARIO: Yes, My Queen. But I need to speak to you about something important. A matter of strategy.

MISSANDEI: Your Grace.

DAENERYS: All right, what is this matter of strategy?

DAARIO: A dusk rose.

DAENERYS: Would you like to walk at the back of the train instead of riding?

DAARIO: And this one’s called lady’s lace.

DAENERYS: Would you like to walk without shoes?

DAARIO: You have to know a land to rule it. Its plants, its rivers, its roads, its people. Dusk rose tea eases fever. Everyone in Meereen knows that. Especially the slaves who have to make the tea. If you want them to follow you, you have to become a part of their world.

DAARIO: Strategy. Harpy’s Gold. No tea from this one. Beautiful but poisonous.

DAENERYS: You are a gambler, aren’t you?

DAARIO: Your Grace.

This exchange is adapted from this part of ASOS Daenerys V:

On the road from Yunkai, Daario had brought her a flower or a sprig of some plant every evening when he made his report ... to help her learn the land, he said. Waspwillow, dusky roses, wild mint, lady’s lace, daggerleaf, broom, prickly ben, harpy’s gold ... (ASOS Daenerys V)

I have some problems with it, though. The first is that they have show!Daario tell show!Dany that she has "to know a land to rule it". In the books, at this point in time, Dany does not have any intention to stay and rule Meereen because she thinks that abolishing slavery was enough on its own; she only changes her mind after seeing the aftermath of the sack of Meereen, hearing news of Astapor (where her council was deposed and slavery is being reinstalled by a former slave named Cleon) and Yunkai (which was rumored to be making alliances with sellswords to defeat her) and understanding that her anti-slavery measures can be easily undone if she leaves so soon. Additionally, I dislike that they chose to only adapt a (veeery brief) scene from the chapter where she's shown to lack knowledge. Why not also adapt, for example, the scene in which she chooses Belwas to fight for her against Meereen's champion and we get to see her whole line of reasoning for doing so? That they even added the detail (that isn't in the books) about how a ruler should have knowledge of the region (which show!Dany doesn't yet) only adds salt to the wound, since it subtly indicates that the show writers themselves find her ineffective as a ruler when she certainly isn't.

The second problem is that show!Dany's feelings for show!Daario are not that clear onscreen in comparison to what we get in the books:

Dany found herself stealing looks at the Tyroshi when her captains came to council, and sometimes at night she remembered the way his gold tooth glittered when he smiled. That, and his eyes. His bright blue eyes. On the road from Yunkai, Daario had brought her a flower or a sprig of some plant every evening when he made his report ... to help her learn the land, he said. Waspwillow, dusky roses, wild mint, lady’s lace, daggerleaf, broom, prickly ben, harpy’s gold ... He tried to spare me the sight of the dead children too. He should not have done that, but he meant it kindly. And Daario Naharis made her laugh, which Ser Jorah never did.

Dany tried to imagine what it would be like if she allowed Daario to kiss her, the way Jorah had kissed her on the ship. The thought was exciting and disturbing, both at once. It is too great a risk. The Tyroshi sellsword was not a good man, no one needed to tell her that. Under the smiles and the jests he was dangerous, even cruel. Sallor and Prendahl had woken one morning as his partners; that very night he’d given her their heads. Khal Drogo could be cruel as well, and there was never a man more dangerous. She had come to love him all the same. Could I love Daario? What would it mean, if I took him into my bed? Would that make him one of the heads of the dragon? Ser Jorah would be angry, she knew, but he was the one who’d said she had to take two husbands. Perhaps I should marry them both and be done with it. (ASOS Daenerys V)

As one can see, Dany's crush on Daario is significant for highlighting a) how Dany is a romantic person who associates sexual attraction with love and marriage (hence why she compares Daario with her first husband) and b) how her feelings for Daario are tied to her desire to find a home or, in this case, someone who she can rely on (hence why she remembers the prophecy of the three heads of the dragon when she thinks of him).

It was particularly important to display her crush onscreen because of what happens later in ADWD. Unlike what certain people think, Dany's dilemma between Daario and Hizdahr doesn't just represent the choices that she needs to make as a ruler (war or peace), it also illustrates the clash between her main motivations, home and duty: Daario is the former (what Dany wants for herself) and Hizdahr is the latter (what Dany thinks she must do for her people).

Unfortunately, this doesn't come across in the show. To be fair, at least we get to see show!Dany shyly smiling here, but this will be undermined later. In episode 4.7, show!Daario will say:

DAARIO: Never met a woman who didn’t like wildflowers.

In episode 5.7, this is how show!Dany will answer to show!Daario's marriage proposal:

DAENERYS: Even if I wanted to do such an inadvisable thing, I couldn’t.

Then, in episode 6.10, this is what she tells show!Tyrion after rejecting show!Daario:

DAENERYS: Do you know what frightens me? I said farewell to a man who loves me. A man I thought I cared for. And I felt nothing.

I wouldn't be surprised if the show writers made these changes because they a) are among the readers who think that Dany is unlikable/irresponsible when she expresses her romantic feelings for Daario in the books (whereas I happen to think that that makes her more relatable) and b) wanted her to appear more regal (based on their ideas of what that means, of course) in the show because she's older, but, regardless of why they did so, this is quite a problem: if show!Dany isn't in love with show!Daario, her conflict becomes much less pronounced in comparison to her book counterpart's (which, as we'll see later as the show progresses, it did).

JORAH: There’s one on every mile marker between here and Meereen.

DAENERYS: How many miles are there between here and Meereen?

JORAH: One-hundred and sixty three, Your Grace.

BARRISTAN: I’ll tell our men to ride ahead and bury them. You don’t need to see this.

DAENERYS: You will do no such thing. I will see each and every one of their faces. Remove her collar before you bury her.

This is my favorite moment of the episode because it's a major example of how Dany's leadership style is defined by her desire to protect the ones who can't protect themselves (which applies to both book and show versions). Now that she wields power, she won't remain passive when she sees injustices occur, in fact, she'll want to confront them in order to remember why is it that she's fighting:

“I will see them,” she said. “I will see every one, and count them, and look upon their faces. And I will remember.”

By the time they came to Meereen sitting on the salt coast beside her river, the count stood at one hundred and sixty-three. I will have this city, Dany pledged to herself once more. (ASOS Daenerys VI)

Being a queen is not about self-gratification for Dany, it's about her responsibility and duty towards others, which is what this scene ultimately reinforces.

That being said, there are still some problems with the scene.

One, while the scene on its own does illustrate the kind of ruler (and person) that show!Dany is regardless of what the show writers were intending, I think that their primary intention was to provide shock value with the sight of the dead children (which is also the most likely reason as to why they succeeded in depicting how horrific the Unsullied's training was). If they had intended the scene to showcase show!Dany's selfless motivations like in the books, they wouldn't have later stated that her war in Slaver's Bay was defined by "that willingness to go forth and conquer all your enemies" or by how "she's not seeing the cost" (failure to understand reasons 1, 2 and 5 of why Dany's storyline matters). Unlike them, Dany knows that some wars are morally righteous because there are cases in which the status quo is not worthy of being uphold, especially not one that allows children to be murdered without their killers being punished (which also informs her views on Robert, his supporters and the Baratheon regime in general).

Two, the show leaves out the fact that, in the books, the Meereenese slavers burned their own city's lands in order to prepare for Dany's arrival:

The Great Masters of Meereen had withdrawn before Dany’s advance, harvesting all they could and burning what they could not harvest. Scorched fields and poisoned wells had greeted her at every hand. (ASOS Daenerys V)

This is important for two major reasons.

One, it raises the stakes of the conflict in the moment. If Dany continues to besiege the city for too long, her people will starve. If she gives up on conquering Meereen, on the other hand, not only slavery will remain, but her people will die of starvation on the way back to Westeros. If she wants to protect the freedmen that followed her, then, her only choice is to take Meereen.

Dany set great store by Ser Jorah’s counsel, but to leave Meereen untouched was more than she could stomach. She could not forget the children on their posts, the birds tearing at their entrails, their skinny arms pointing up the coast road. “Ser Jorah, you say we have no food left. If I march west, how can I feed my freedmen?”

“You can’t. I am sorry, Khaleesi. They must feed themselves or starve. Many and more will die along the march, yes. That will be hard, but there is no way to save them. We need to put this scorched earth well behind us.”

Dany had left a trail of corpses behind her when she crossed the red waste. It was a sight she never meant to see again. “No,” she said. “I will not march my people off to die.” My children. (ASOS Daenerys V)

Two, it raises the stakes of the conflict in ADWD. By scorching the fields, the slavers deprived Meereen of one of its main sources of income: olives. Now the city's economy is stagnant because it has neither olives nor slaves (because, as we know, Dany abolished slavery) to sell:

For centuries Meereen and her sister cities Yunkai and Astapor had been the linchpins of the slave trade, the place where Dothraki khals and the corsairs of the Basilisk Isles sold their captives and the rest of the world came to buy. Without slaves, Meereen had little to offer traders. Copper was plentiful in the Ghiscari hills, but the metal was not as valuable as it had been when bronze ruled the world. The cedars that had once grown tall along the coast grew no more, felled by the axes of the Old Empire or consumed by dragonfire when Ghis made war against Valyria. Once the trees had gone, the soil baked beneath the hot sun and blew away in thick red clouds. (ADWD Daenerys III)

“The sea provides all the salt that Qarth requires, but I would gladly take as many olives as you cared to sell me. Olive oil as well.”

“I have none to offer. The slavers burned the trees.” Olives had been grown along the shores of Slaver’s Bay for centuries; but the Meereenese had put their ancient groves to the torch as Dany’s host advanced on them, leaving her to cross a blackened wasteland. “We are replanting, but it takes seven years before an olive tree begins to bear, and thirty years before it can truly be called productive.” (ADWD Daenerys III)

However, because the show didn't bother to depict how the slavers destroyed their own city's fields, we don't get to see neither a) how it becomes harder for Dany to sustain a siege (and how conquering Meereen became her only choice if she wanted not only to free the slaves, but also to protect the freedmen that came with her) nor b) how, later, she struggles with reforming the city's economy (which is one of the many ways that the show adaptation undermined her political arc in ADWD).

For this review, there’s no comment of mine on any Inside the Episode because D&D’s Inside the Episode 4.1 doesn’t talk about show!Dany’s storyline. I’m not commenting on show!Dany’s clothes either because she’s wearing the same clothes from season three and I’ve talked about them before in past reviews.

#daenerys targaryen #asoiaf meta #asoiaf vs got #asos vs got #daario naharis #grey worm #rylona rhee #barristan selmy #s4 #a storm of swords #a dance with dragons

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springsaladgaming · 4 years ago

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i love the demo up to now but im getting very mind blind vibes from this (mysterious traumatizing childhood event which tore your family apart, determinable relationship with your brother, unapprochable older RO (ansel and ambrose), cold edgy RO where you have to be kinda rude to get their attention (teagan vs k), and just like, general vibes) and like this isn't a bad thing but i think it's important to keep in mind and make sure your story has its own remarkable distinguishing features

This story is loosely based off of a short story that I wrote when I was in University about a decade ago. The two stories don’t have anything in common in terms of plot anymore (especially since the short story was Postmodern realistic fiction and HEAVILY influenced by Chuck Palahniuk), but the entire family dynamic was based on the main character, then called Jamie, who was struggling with depression and suicidal ideation, and his family, who seem to be oblivious to what’s going on with him. Sun is a pretty close equivalent to the brother in that story, whose name was Graham. Graham was the successful older brother, the one who, in Jamie’s eyes, was everything his parents ever wanted out of a kid. He was also the only one in the family who seemed to notice what was going on with Jamie. The parents in Ninelives are also very similar to the parents in that story, only the family dynamic had to do with the mom giving the dad placebos for an imagined medical issue and lying about it for years. Jamie inadvertently discovers this and has to decide between exposing this or keeping it secret. (The two stories actually start in the same place; the bathroom. Only, in the original story, Jamie was in the bathroom after a failed suicide attempt, trying to OD on the very meds that his father took, which is how he discovered the placebo thing.) I was eventually planning on turning that short story into a novella with the main theme really touching on visibility of mental illness, but between all the writing I was doing for school and some personal issues in my own life, that short story got dusty in a digital folder on a USB drive I have somewhere. Can you believe those used to be a thing? But I digress.

I have read Mind Blind, and I’m not going to pretend that it (as well as other IFs I have read) didn’t influence me to start this project. So you aren’t totally incorrect. There are similarities, but the similarities don’t come from me basing my content off of Mind Blind. Rather, prior to deciding to try my hand at writing IFs, Mind Blind reminded me so much of this short story from college that I finally decided to revisit it, albeit reshape it into something new. And, hey, that’s Structuralism, baby.

So I can definitely understand feeling these similarities at first glance. That being said, it’s also quite early in the story still, and there is a lot the MC doesn’t know, even about their own brother.

So I guess what I ultimately want to say is, give it time. I don’t personally find the characters that similar, but I also have the advantage of knowing what’s going to happen in the story. It’s definitely my goal for this story to be its own unique beast, and I hope to live up to peoples’ expectations of that. The last thing I want is to rip off of someone else’s content. >.< It’s something I always try to keep in mind when I feel inspired by other works.

I want to touch on this subject more, and I love talking about my characters, but I don’t want to ruin anything for people who want to go in blind, so I’ll talk about the rest under this cut. No spoilers, just more background information.

Ansel is actually one of the most approachable characters in the story. If you’re referring to a specific scene that occurs with a specific choice, there is a reason that he is unapproachable in that situation, and it’s something you will get to talk about with him should you trip that flag. The thing about Ansel is, there’s enough going on with him already, even after a single day, that a player might choose to be suspicious of him. And for good reason. I want to say more on that, but honestly it’s hard to talk about what’s going on with him without touching on major spoilers, so I’ll just say that Ansel is probably the easiest character to get close to (besides maybe Rene), provided you don’t let your suspicion stop you.

Sun is in a similar boat as far as the “hard to talk about without spoilers” thing. There’s something more to his overprotectiveness besides just being a loving sibling. Ulterior movies is definitely a somewhat large focus of some of this plot, and this could become a conflict with more than one character, depending on what the player chooses to pursue. Can’t say more on Sun without heading into spoiler territory either, but your relationship with him could end up really terrible for completely justified reasons later, or you can keep it pretty great, or it can be a mix of the two. I wanted that to be determinable as well as fluctuating with him because sibling relationships are rarely ever one or the other, and I didn’t want to impose that choice on players, especially not since I was already imposing a bad relationship with the parents. I hate taking away player agency when creating their character, but there are some things I just have to do to railroad the plot in the right direction. I didn’t want Sun to be one of those things.

Teagan ultimately appears a little bit tropey. I would go so far as to say there is one of him in a LOT of interactive fictions out there. Tropes aren’t necessarily a bad thing - this is how we, as a society, have formed recognizable archetypes. But that’s something I want to work on with him. My goal is to give him his own flair. Once we start seeing Teagan interact with characters like Alex, Lucia, or Rene, he should start to show his true colors a lot more. One of my major goals with this story is giving the ROs significant opportunities for personal growth, and Teagan is one of the people who needs this the most.

As an addendum to Teagan, he actually doesn’t respond well to people being rude to him, even though sometimes it might seem that way. 🤣 Poor guy is pretty socially inept and doesn’t have a very high emotional intelligence. Ansel also doesn’t challenge him to be better, which doesn’t help. If he smiles or smirks in response to a comment or a dialogue choice, it would be safer to err on the side of caution and make zero assumptions on what it means. There are a couple of smile/smirk scenes in there that are actually considered negatives for him. I’ve been having a little fun with this, because the choices that might seem like the “right” ones to increase relationship when we’re talking about other IFs or visual novels, for example, are often not the right ones with Teagan.

The good news here is that getting to know the characters and getting close to them in Ninelives is more about just spending time with them and learning about them than it is about making “wrong” choices. I play a lot of visual novels, and one of the things I’ve always disliked about them is how often a single wrong dialogue choice (one that usually seems arbitrary at the time) locks you out of certain routes or brings you to a game-over screen. I’ve really never like that. Between that and the fact that fully-released CSGs don’t have a save feature, one of the things I decided early on was to remove anything that resembled a game-over mechanic or a complete failure to achieve something. When applying that to character relationships, that means players are going to get ample opportunities to get to know the characters without locking themselves out of friendships or romances. This doesn’t mean there are no consequences to being an asshole to the characters all the time, but consistently failing to pick the "best” reactions with characters isn’t necessarily going to ruin your chances with them either.

#long post #Anonymous

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iliketowritebnhastuff · 4 years ago

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Yandere prompt no. 20 with Dabi or Keigo takami?

Ho boy you give me 2 options I love, imma do them both lol both are probably gonna be long too so hope you enjoy lol

Prompt #20: “Give everything to me, and I’ll make you the happiest person alive.”

Yandere prompts

Warnings!:

Obsessive behavior

Death (minor characters)

Stalking

🔪Dabi💙

“I’ve told you more than once, doll, running away is pointless.”

That voice, (F/n) knows it all too well. It’s haunted her nightmares for months, enveloped her in fear day after day before she made the daring escape when she saw the chance. The gruff, deep voice laced with danger she knows better than anyone, a danger she’s seen first hand when she’s tried to escape before.

His footsteps echo in the hall of hospital she came to to get help, which he was quick to scorch all that came in his way after entering without a care. His boots snap glass from shattered windows beneath his heels and his steps are slow and purposeful, all she can hear over the pounding in her ears. It was like he knew where she’d go, or he followed her, giving her that sense of false freedom she thought she’d finally gotten when in reality he watched her every movement showing she's still apart of his twisted game. (F/n) knows she should’ve been more wary or careful. She was in such a rush to escape with the sliver of a chance she had in the palm of her hands that she didn’t consider the man that always seemed to be ahead of everyone else would know exactly what his doll was up to. He’s toyed with her before, and this was no different, only now... Now there are at least a dozen or so burnt corpses in the hall and other hospital rooms, the place is charred in certain areas while others remain lit up in blue. The hospital is eerily silent aside for the raven haired villain stalking the halls.

(F/n) hides in a room he has yet to reach and inspect. She’s tucked herself into a ball behind the bed and tries to keep her head low while watching under it, her sights on the door across the room. She can see the flicker of azure light and she trembles as he comes closer and closer to her hiding place. She can hear him check every room he passes, the screams of those he’s killed having died forever ago, anyone still alive is hopefully hiding well.

She freezes when he makes it to her room and the door creaks open; his boots are what (F/n) sees first as well as the shins of his pant legs and the ends of his overcoat. He casually walks in, probably with his hands stuffed in his pockets and looking aloof as always. Her heart thunders, she knows he’ll find her in these last few seconds, and as tears roll down her cheeks she stops following his boots as he checks the room before making his way to the bed. She knows he can see her when he stops and she can almost hear the smirk as he says,”There you are, I expected to be looking all over but you made it pretty easy. How boring.~”

Slowly her (eye color) orbs lift and she goes pale; his grinning but that along with his eyes look... unhinged. His glowing blue orbs are more intense than usual, and underneath how ‘happy’ he appears to be that he found her she can see the underlying rage and possessiveness she’s come to recognize in the months she’s been able to study her kidnapper. He’s pissed, his scars smoking and the villain walking closer. Immediately she jolts up into a sit and backs away scooting against the corner of the wall and shaking her head, sobbing,”I-I’m sorry, please-!”

She’s interrupted when her jaw is grabbed and she’s forced to look up at the now kneeling man. His hypnotizing azure eyes capture hers in a terrifying stare and he brings his face close as he breathes,”Then stop running away if you’re so sorry. How many times do I gotta tell you... Give everything to me, and I’ll make you the happiest person alive.”

She whimpers and he chuckles coldly, kissing her softly but possessively before pulling back so their lips are only a few inches apart. “Now, are you gonna be a good girl and stay put from now on, or do you want to be the reason more people die?”

She furiously nods, this being hard with the harsh grip he has on her jawline. The villain grins, but demands,”Say it.”

“I-I’ll... Be good, Dabi...”

That’s all he needs before he places a rough kiss on her then stands with her in tow. (F/n) is thrown over his shoulder after he wraps her hand and ankles in binds he finds as well as muffles her with a cloth. The two leave the scene just as authorities are rushing inside, leaving only carnage behind but no way to follow Dabi’s tracks as he heads home with his (F/n).

🔪Hawks💕

Nothing could prepare (F/n) for finding out what her boss has been trying to hide from everyone. A man whose image is important to him, finding out he’s been stalking her was something she would have never believed had she not found the evidence with her own eyes.

(F/n) has been with Hawks’ agency for a little over a year now as a secretary, and it’s been one of the best jobs she’s ever had. Not only is she paid well the benefits are a bonus and her boss is, well, the #2 hero himself! Someone laid back and nice, he seems fairly understanding when it comes to his employees.

Over her time working there she also made, at least in her mind, friends with the big name hero himself. Work friends is how she’d put it, but more than once he’s text her outside of work, posted pictures of selfies with her, and even taken her home when she has had no ride. To her it’s all a bit different from what she’d expect of a hero being her boss, but it is Hawks after all, who wouldn’t take this chance with open arms?

The last couple of months, though, things have been.... Weird. He seems to be flirty with her, somehow making it both sly but also very obvious what he’s insinuating. He seems to brush his hand against hers or gets rather close when she’s showing him something, and he’s asked if she wants to go to dinner more than once (every time she’s kindly declined.) While that’s all a bit odd enough she has felt like she’s been being watched, like she can’t keep her curtains open without the cold feeling of intense eyes staring at her as she tries to sleep. Amongst this she’s noticed her window open a crack when she gets home when she knows it was shut before she left, some things seem out of place or missing, and little gifts left on her bed or dresser that are definitely expensive and were definitely not there before. Each time she’s about to catch the person they seem to get away...

But she has caught the glimpse of wings before, one time when she’d been walking home late from shopping and seen them fly away from her window. Her heart pounded, and she almost wondered... No, there was no way...

That morning (F/n) came in and asking Hawks if he was busy and if they could talk the hero hummed,”Oh, anything wrong?” Her mind was whirling, how could it be Hawks? He’s a good guy, why would he stalk her and break into her home?

“I, um... Just wanted to take you up on an offer for dinner, if you’re free,” she replies after a few moments of contemplating this plan out. A voice is telling her this is a bad idea, but the other side of her thoughts is telling her that it’ll all be unfounded suspicions and that Hawks isn’t involved. She’s brought out of her thoughts when he replied,”Ohhh, finally ready to go out with me, huh?~” He winked, which made her look surprised; ‘Go out’? Granted, it’s been obvious he’s meant for the dinner plans to be dates.

“Uh, yeah, I just was hoping to talk about something with you, not really a date,” she tried to clear it up, waving her hands in front of her. That should still be fine right? For a moment she saw something flash in his eyes as his grin dropped, but it was gone as soon as it came as the bird hero returned the lazy smile and simply replied,”Of course, meet me after work and we’ll go.”

(F/n) never expected this to be the worst decision she could have made; While she met the #2 after work as requested and they flew to a location, something seemed off about his demeanor. He seemed to hide something under the grins he’s displaying, and his eyes intently watched her. Dinner went smoothly, but she struggled to find the right ways to ask her questions so she simply brought up the ‘stalking situation’ she’d been having to gauge his reaction. He feigned shock and anger, but she wasn’t blind; the way his eyes flashed again with something dark and rather scary sent chills down the young woman’s spine.

“That’s unfortunate, maybe I’ll look into it for you, see if there’s anything I can find out,” he tried to act sincere in concern, but (F/n) can only feel off. He seemed more concerned in learning more about her diverting away from the stalking, too. Getting an idea she’d go to mention something about herself and he seemed to answer for her, saying something she knew he’d have no way of knowing normally since it was personal or only one or two people knew. Excusing herself to the bathroom the secretary stared in the mirror trying to calm her nerves. ‘It has to be him... I think I should go.’

Coming back out (F/n) told him it was late and she needed to head home Hawks seemed sad for a moment, and sitting while they wait on the waiter to come back with Hawks’ credit card Hawks seemed to watch her, staring. It was uncomfortable, and (F/n) tried to avoid his golden orbs as much as possible as she finished her drink. It tasted strange, and she blinked confused, looking into the last little drops inside while Hawks started to say,”You know, I thought you seemed pretty smart the moment I met you in your interview... But I never thought you’d actually catch on.” She freezed and looked at him with wide eyes, catching how his eyes narrow and he smiles, placing his chin on his palm. “I thought you might’ve seen me that one night too, guess I slipped up, huh?” He sounded laid back like always, but something about his words sent a chill through her. She tried to get up and run out, but her head felt dizzy and she collapsed back into the seat.

“Now, now, chick, don’t want to hurt yourself, do ya? Here, let’s get you home,” his voice ringed in her ears but everything started to suddenly go hazy and she’s lifted into his arms. The waiter came back, and Hawks smiled at him saying charmingly,”Thanks, she’s alright, just feeling a little under the weather.” He took the card, slipping it into his pocket before the two left, (F/n) going unconscious during flight.

When (F/n) wakes up she's somewhere unfamiliar on a soft, plush bed covered by silk sheets. The room is dark but she sees light under a doorway when her vision returns to normal. Her heart pounds in fear and she as quickly as possible gets up and leaves the room, her head still hazy. It’s dark outside, and despite the lights being on she appears to be alone in the house before hearing someone showering. Remembering what happened sometime earlier she panics knowing exactly who it is. Trying to move around the penthouse without making noise is difficult when her legs feel like jello, but she finds the entrance... Only to discover it’s locked. She’s ready to unlock it, but gasps when something red flashes past her. One of Hawks’ feathers, and it shoots at her again, cutting her along the arm as she whimpers and rushes away from the door in fear. There has to be someway out, right? Or someway to lose the feather!

Finding another door she throws it open only to freeze; it’s an office, which seems normal for a place like this, but the pictures around the room are definitely anything but normal. They’re all of her, in different places, situations, some of her unclothed and some while she’s out with friends or at work. She’s frozen, ice cold as her breath picks up. On the desk are different objects she’s found have gone missing like special pictures of she and her family or a perfume she has put on before. She doesn’t even hear Hawks sneak up on her before two strong arms wrap around her as well as his large, crimson wings enveloping them both. (F/n) starts to cry, not sure what to say as he whispers to her,”You kept rejecting me for so long, I couldn’t stand it... What other choice did I have?”

She pulls out of his grip, or tries to, but his wings keep her entrapped and close as she asks shakily,”You... Why....”

“Because I love you,” he starts, smiling like this is all normal, like his confession isn’t seen as insane,”because what else was I supposed to do? Here, you’ll be safe, you can have anything you want, you won’t have to lift a finger! All you have to do is...” He cups her face in his hands and brings his own close, staring into her (eye color) eyes and saying,”Give everything to me, and I’ll make you the happiest person alive.” He looks unhinged, and she’s shaking. Hawks finishes,”Now, how about we get you back to bed, pigeon?~”

Her suspicions were right, but now that’s meaningless as she becomes the bird trapped in his cage.

(WHELP those were both a lot longer than expected, but I was having fun so I hope you enjoy!)

#yandere #bnha x reader #yandere bnha #yandere x reader #yandere dabi x reader #yandere hawks x reader #yandere dabi #yandere hawks #yandere my hero academia #yandere prompts #yandere bnha x reader #yandere my hero academia x reader

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uncloseted · 5 years ago

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thoughts on the latest lana del rey post considered as “shady”?

Anonymous said to effys-closet: what do you think of lana del rey and do you have any thoughts on the recent drama she's involved in?

Honestly, there are very few public figures that I outright dislike, and I try to give people the benefit of the doubt (Lena Dunham is the biggest exception), but Lana Del Rey is one public figure I have a lot of trouble feeling empathy for. Her whole misunderstood, victimized sad girl schtick was understandable (although not all that great) when she was 20, but she’s almost 35 now. It’s not cute and relatable anymore. It’s just sad. And it makes her seem like she hasn’t made any personal progress in the ten years she’s been in the public eye. It’s astounding to me that she can’t conceive of the possibility that maybe the reason she gets more criticism than her contemporaries is because she’s head and shoulders more problematic than they are and has made no effort to learn from all of the times she’s been (rightfully) criticized (for ten years straight). Beyonce and Doja Cat aren’t out here glamorizing mental illness, suicidal ideation, and abusive relationships for six albums in a row while consistently being called out for doing so. That’s why they don’t get as much criticism as she does (which as a premise in and of itself is debatable). The fact that she's equating other artist’s songs about “being sexy, wearing no clothes, fucking, and cheating” with her lyrics like, “he hit me but it felt like a kiss/he hurt me but it felt like true love” shows how little self awareness she has about these issues.

That isn’t even to speak of the fact that six of the seven women she calls our are WOC (and Ariana Grande is debatably pretending to be a WOC), who have historically had way less agency over their sexuality and have definitely had a more difficult time making it in this industry than her incredibly privileged, wealthy, white self. It’s telling that she’s painting the lyrics of her WOC counterparts as being crass, while she describes her own lyrics as being tender and vulnerable.

Look, in a lot of ways I can understand how she ended up becoming the person that she is, and I can even relate to that journey... but at a certain point, we all have to take responsibility for our actions and work on improving ourselves. She paints herself as a perpetual victim, but she has always had more agency than the women she’s putting down, and her victimhood is frequently self-inflicted. There are ways to discuss abusive relationships, low self-esteem, and mental health issues that aren’t inherently glamorizing those issues. Skins does a really lovely job of showing that- Effy can at once be attractive and mysterious and charismatic and someone who’s deeply suffering and leaving chaotic relationships in her wake. Lana isn’t doing that. She’s making abuse and illness part of what makes her character attractive and omitting all of the ugly, painful parts. That’s glamorization, plain and simple.

The fact that she’s making other female musicians’ successes about how people should be nicer to her leaves a bad taste in my mouth. “There has to be a place in feminism for women who look and act like me,” the self-proclaimed anti-feminist cries, completely blind to the fact that many traditions of feminism are exclusively for people who look like her, and WOC have had to (and continue to have to) fight their way into those spaces. Her continued success even after mountains of criticism proves that; WOC musicians have been cancelled for much less (Doja Cat nearly being cancelled for her use of a homophobic slur on Twitter from several years before she was famous, when she was still a teenager, comes to mind).

Lana does nothing to support other female artists who are struggling in the same way that she purports to have struggled; she only uses this conversation to ask, “but what about me?” And the thing is that nothing about this conversation is about her. Beyonce’s Lemonade, Doja Cat’s Say So... are not about her. Have nothing to do with her. And she shouldn’t be taking this opportunity to make it about her, especially not when the end goal of that post was to advertise her new poetry books and upcoming album.

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yaboylevi · 5 years ago

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Hi vivi, there's smth I didn't understand, about when Levi was ignorant about Erwin's true motivator then when he knew it. In the beginning he used to talk about freedom stuffs but after Shiganshina battle he almost didn't? Was those freedom stuffs related to his fake vision of Erwin?

Hey there!

Honestly, I'm not the best person you should ask this to. I'm pretty sure I've proven myself to be someone who does not understand Levi very well. Or maybe, what I understood of him was either wrong all along, or it is simply something I don't like anymore, and that I find pitiful (especially if this is all there is to it), after putting together all the pieces of his character arc until now and in light of more recent highlights of his character when paired up with his past.

For the sake of giving you my opinion, since you asked, I think Levi has lost himself, and that's why he doesn't bring up freedom at all. This is just my rough interpretation of a part of his psychology that I've never quite seen analyzed so I could just be wrong ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ tl;dr at the end.

I think he lost confidence in himself all the way back when Erwin made him think that Isabel&Farlan's death, his family, was his fault,

"A heavy sense of regret cut away at his heart, more sharply than the blades he held in his hands. Levi thought. That's right—what Erwin said was right. The one who's wrong was me. I lost a fight that I could've won; I'd even gotten my allies killed. The responsibility for all that falls on the one who'd made that decision…me." x

and so Levi made his life all about following Erwin and his superior, bigger goal, without knowing what it was, with the belief that it was something selfless and that he couldn't understand it simply because he himself wasn't worthy, was inferior. Just like Kenny thought he was inferior to Uri until the very end (but at least Levi had the much-awaited epiphany that no, it wasn't the case. Though I'm not sure if he absorbed the lesson or not - I think he didn't). Anyway in his mind, that goal he couldn't see could make all the sacrifices worth it, it made you a better person, one that had no regrets. And this, in particular, is Levi's biggest struggle - you'll always have regrets, but you can accept them if for the right cause. The moment this cause is no more because it was sort of a fraud, how do you deal with those regrets and sacrifices, how do you make them worth something again? -> simple, pick someone you hate, pin all the fault on them and kill them. This is what he's grappling with, currently.

He's been stuck there for 4 years because he was used to not having "mental autonomy". Erwin's idealized goals became his, simply because Levi considered himself inferior, without a worthy or right goal, only able to mess things up and causing others' deaths, so he should naturally follow someone superior. He gave up thinking for himself when he decided to follow Erwin, because Levi had lost faith in his qualities as a human - he got his friends killed, right? It was his fault, right? He can still think for himself and he has his own opinions, but when it comes to the future, or to making big decisions, he is unsure and scared and lacks confidence and so he leaves it up to Erwin, to following Erwin's orders. This is what I mean when I said he isn't used to "mental autonomy". Because he gave it up for the longest time. Why do I think so? Let's go back to ACWNR, the origin of our current Levi...in a moment of full despair and insecurity about his own decisions and decision-making skills, in my mind, it's like Levi gave up on himself and decided to put those skills and his strength at the service of Erwin's goal:

""All right… It looks like you have something that I lack. Until I know what that 'something' is, I'll go with you.""

What I get from this, and from what we have in the actual manga, it seems like Levi had thought Erwin's goal was a pure and superior one. He idealized Erwin and never really understood him. For years. He could accept all those deaths - of the soldiers they sacrificed together, and of Isabel&Farlan - only because he believed in this goal he didn't really understand and that he thought was a selfless one. He even sacrificed his own feelings. He disliked how Erwin used his soldiers as bait, but accepted every order because he believed in him and the goal he believed they shared.

In the end, he found out Erwin's goal had selfish motivations. He was shaken up and confused and disgusted initially. This is proof that Levi really believed in saving humanity, in freeing it. But then, since he was Erwin's friend, he decided to accept that the real Erwin and his idealized version of him weren't the same. And he chose to keep avoiding making choices and to keep believing in Erwin, for some reasons that I tend to identify into two categories: 1. Erwin was his friend, you tend to forgive and accept things in your friends that you wouldn't accept otherwise, even if you disagree (and Levi disagreed plenty); and 2. Levi's delusion had to go on or he would feel the weight of all the sacrifices he made and he would get crushed - he wasn't ready to decide for himself, so he chose to still follow Erwin. In the end, he was forced to in RtS by circumstances when Erwin failed to make the call for Levi like he used to, failed to give him orders. When Levi tells him to die with the recruits, you can see on his face that this is the first time in a very long time that he actually takes full responsibility for those lives. Before that, I feel like he halved their weight because they were all Erwin's decisions, not his, he was merely following orders for a greater cause.

So, yeah, I think Levi had given up making important decisions (outside of the immediate ones in moments of dangers/on the battlefield), and then he was forced to make 2 very important ones in RtS all of a sudden. After giving up his "freedom" to Erwin's orders and decisions and goals, he was thrown back into reality full force. Making choices is hard and painful. He already knew (that's the whole point of him avoiding having to make them), he is aware of it on a personal level and he directly acknowledges this when dealing with Eren and imparting his lessons to others. But it's actually quite ironic because he always followed Erwin's orders to a T (even when he felt strongly against them), successfully avoiding choosing. In my opinion, his blind belief in Erwin was exactly the result of Levi never properly dealing with his own guilt re: Isa&Far. Because of it, he ended up thinking he's unfit to make choices. So he left the task to someone he deemed more capable and superior (and this is how the whole "Ackerbond" thing was described, basically, but you need to add to it Levi's self-deprecation and feelings of inferiority caused by his guilt, which make the whole thing even more codependent imo). The two decisions in RtS ("Give up on your dream and lead the recruits to hell" and the serum choice) meant he was responsible of the death of almost all the SC and also of their Commander. With how the situation is now in the manga, he may feel even more guilty. Because of those 2 choices, and of his failure at killing Zeke in Shiganshina, they're in this situation: Hange can't lead them, Zeke played them like a fiddle, the SC has never been this corrupted and divided. (For the record, I don't think Levi should be considered fully responsible for this bc it would just take away agency to all the other characters involved, but he sure did nothing to help the situation, that we know of.)

Hence why he's so hellbent on repaying those lost lives and on destroying Zeke, even if killing Zeke wouldn't mean victory for their current situation. Even if those deaths have already been proven to have been useful, not in vain. He's obsessing about this, not seeing past it, not seeing the freedom he was striving for before, because of his inner demons (his guilt and his insecurity about his own ability to make choices). That's why he's always there in the background doing nothing, barely expressing his opinions about the circumstances they're in. That's why his only two modes are conflicted and violent, because he's lost, and he has regressed in the sense that he thinks he can solve anything with violence like he used to. I'm glad the story has proven him wrong. Hitting Eren has amounted to exactly nothing. Being viciously sadistic with Zeke only blew up in his face (ah! sorry...).

I'm not saying he needs to repress his feelings. But everyone has condemned Connie's violent and irrational behavior (caused by pain and confusion) recently, but nobody can acknowledge the problems in Levi's behavior, though it is just very similar to Connie's. The difference is Levi is an adult and should technically act more like it. But I guess his development has been stalled since he met Erwin, because as I said, he gave it all up just to avoid dealing with his own feelings and responsibilities, something that would've made him "grow up" emotionally. So I really really hope he'll finally have this growth he needs to undergo, next time we see him. Just like I hope there is a positive resolution to Connie's internal conflict.

tl;dr: I think Levi really did care for humanity's freedom, he wasn't just parroting Erwin's public speeches. That's why he was disappointed in Erwin, because he implicitly did come to care about their freedom, as he explicitly said to Eren. However, he lacks confidence in his long-term decision-making skills, so he's focusing on the past, rather than the future. The only time he chose something that impacted the future was in RtS, and that "future" he's living in right now seems hopeless, probably also because of his choices (or so he may believe unconsciously). So I think he's been obsessing about the past and his past choices in particular, though this just stumped his growth, made him regress and actually made it impossible for him to create a vision for the future for himself - hence why he never brings up ANYTHING about the future of the island in a positive way like he did before...he doesn't have the confidence to believe in anything regarding their future atm; meanwhile, in the past he gained that confidence through following someone else's leadership. Some find it pure or romantic, I find it looks like codependency. If he managed to kill Zeke, he wouldn't have had anything else going on for him and this is...not a good look for a character, simply from a narrative pov. That's why I knew he would've never been able to kill Zeke and there was zero tension in their most recent fight for me.

In general, though, Levi has directly brought up freedom only once, to Eren. He has always fought more for individuals and to repay their sacrifices (almost as a self-inflicted punishment/strife to atonement for what happened to his friends). But I agree that we all were under the impression that he had the goal of freeing humanity inside the walls. This is also why I say I may have been wrong all along about him, and I have never truly understood him.

Why do you think he doesn't bring up Freedom anymore?

#shingeki asks #Anonymous

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brokenforecast · 5 years ago

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The Emperor

The Emperor: a muggle guide to tarot

It has been more than a year since I wrote on this blog but better late than never. I should have plenty of time from now on, because that is the reason for all this silence: lack of free time. But I handled that like a boss. let’s get on with it. We have finally arrived at an unapologetic male character in the tarot, which took us five cards into the Major Arcanum. So, without writing a paper on the patriarchy let’s dig into my nuanced view of the archetypical father, ruler and ultimately god.

Let’s get the gender issue over with straight away. Like the empress, if in your life the archetypical father is not a man, no big deal, then that person can be represented. The Emperor is at its most basic a person who wields a lot of formal power in your life. Simple as that. My boss for example – which is a very typical interpretation of the Emperor card – is a woman and she has a lot of power over many aspects of my life. If it wouldn’t be for the large amounts of confidence I have in her, it would be scary how much power she has.

> Renaissance Tarot Emperor: secret 4 legshake and birds.

Symbolism

The fact that the emperor’s card is numbered 4 is no coincidence, not only is the four figure the symbol of both the planet and god Jupiter, is also the number most strongly associated with stability (think legs of tables or chairs, limbs of mammals, the four corners of the world, a house has four walls, a year has four seasons, but let’s not get too numerological, shall we?). Some cards represent the emperor with one leg crossed, mimicking the number four, like in the Secret Tarot. There will be some birds, representing the sky gods of many cultures meaning power, royalty, strength and good fortune (think Roman, Russian or German emperors that all have bird symbols). Also: crowns, scepter, suits of armour (the protective side of masculinity), thrones and whatnot. Also horns, horns represent penises.

Sometimes mountains are depicted which might be a bit confusing for some muggles. This can only be understood by understanding the emperor as opposed to and in harmony with the empress. Where the empress has wheat for fertility and growth, the emperor has mountains for infertility and stability. Growth is very nice but one needs a certain doses of stability in life. Fertility and reproducing are all fun and games but someone needs to protect all that growth. I think it’s a nice metaphor for masculinity: (temporary) power without fertility, defending what the empress creates and takes care of.

> The Rider-Waite Emperor: mountains, penises, I mean horns and good old fashioned bearded ruler.

I admit not only lack of time withheld me from writing about the emperor. As a deeply masculine card I - as a man who only reluctantly and not that often identifies as a man but can’t really pinpoint what to identify as, or indeed if I need to identify at all - I do not feel qualified to write about the man. But as is often the case: I couldn’t be more wrong. Due to my struggle with, contemplation, participation and perception of and some distance to masculinity I am perfectly placed to write about it.

Upright meaning

I absolutely believe that masculinity needs a new, positive, inclusive definition that inspires people (not just men) to do good. One such view that heavily influenced me was nurturance culture.

A genderless world where no good (or bad) personality trait is gendered, is not anywhere in the cards (see what I did there?). So how do we as a society give a positive and inspiring content to the idea of masculinity? One of the possible answers are the 4 positive characteristics of the emperor: protection, practicality, authority and structure.

Sure, I’ll argue against all four of them when talking about other cards, but the tarot is about exploring all sides of the human condition and these 4 have value as well and are all four historically associated with masculinity. Is masculinity in a crisis? Yes, it most certainly is; it has been reduced to a destructive cliché where it used to be kaleidoscopic concept. Not by feminists, but by men themselves. We have not emancipated ourselves. In stead of evolving like women did the last century, we have retreated into an ever more meager concept of masculinity. This is my attempt to reconstruct the notion of inclusive manliness.

Pillar 1: protection

You gotta fight, for your right, to party. - The Beastie Boys

Know that feeling when you broke down, when you are at your most vulnerable and you find comfort and protection in someone’s arms? I could be talking about a man who protects you late at night in some shady alley from a knife-gang but honestly: how many times are we in need of that? And how much have we needed someone to just be around us, silently but firmly comforting us. Protection and defense imply some potential for destruction but that does not need to be a bad thing if the thing that is being destroyed is a bad thing. Be protective.

Pillar 2: practicality

Yes, I am talking about being able to handle power tools, finish an Ikea closet in 15 minutes and fixing your bike. Cliché much? Yes, but it’s a decent and good quality. While the empress listens to how you had a bike accident and fixes that bleeding knee, the emperor is silently repairing your bike in the shed without you knowing and what after the whole debacle and you find out, makes you smile again. Silent, humble work. Thinking of the small things, the pro’s and con’s and getting on with it. This is where the repressed emotions come into play. Not necessarily a bad thing if not taken too far. There is nothing wrong with temporarily repressing emotions to get shit done as long as you deal with them later on. Sometimes the trash just needs to be taken outside, a meal cooked, a kitchen cleaned or a day at the office endured. Postpone emotions, don’t bottle them up. Be practical.

> left: emperor by kindanddemon > right: emperor by skullsquid

Pillar 3: authority

Both having it/using it as well as dealing with it. Yes, I would also like to live on an island in a sea of mutual respect where there is no need for authority but let’s just wake up shall we? Authority is a thing and we need to deal with it. Easiest way is being an authority yourself. And I mean that in a good way. Standing for something, believing in something, without dogma or rigidness but open and evolving. You could also call it privilege, there’s a lot of it out there and like a sword it should be used and wielded for good, to shield (another symbol you will often find on the card) those who do not have it. Privilege is a real thing, you can’t get rid of it (by yourself or in a short amount of time) but you can use it for good. The emperor tells us to use our gifts (remember the magician?) for good, to be ambitious, not at the cost of others but to the benefit of all. Deserve respect.

Pillar 4: structure

The stability in number 4 is also associated with structure, systems, procedures and ultimately rules and laws. They exist for a reason and should be there for the good of all. The empress negotiates and compromises, the emperor confirms this by making rules that sustain this peace. I honestly believe everyone can use some structure, some system, some good habits, some good routines, rules you live by. Maybe not 100% of the time, no one asks you to be perfect, no one asks the rules to be perfect. Even the apparent chaos of nature obeys the laws of physics. Constructing order from chaos has its benefits. Yes chaos nurtures – in an empress kind of way – the new and creative, order protects what is fragile and needs to be maintained. Construct systems that benefit you.

> The Wild Unknown Emperor: The emperor depicted as a large tree overlooking the forest, growing by the bright light of the midday sun, deeply and firmly rooted in the soil.

The emperor can be anyone or anything that radiates the qualities above, not just a person (your father, husband, boss or landlord) but also an institution: government agencies, large corporations, the army etc.

Reverse meaning

"Our fathers were our models for God. If our fathers bailed, what does that tell you about God?" - Tyler Durden in Fight Club

When the emperor appears reversed in your reading you are hugely and utterly fucked. At its base meaning this card represents power and now that immense power is turned against you in one of three ways:

Opposite: the opposite of manliness is not femininity, get that in your head as soon as possible. The opposite of power is powerlessness, not receiving the responsibility you need; the opposite of protection is getting hurt. The opposite of practicality is inertness, laziness, meddling without achieving, not really trying, not having the required skill without anyone around to help you. The opposite of authority is slavery, submission, believing yourself to be weaker than you are. The opposite of a stable structure that perpetuates good is destructive chaos, not knowing where to start, being confused, having to start over and over again because nothing is fundamentally anchored.

cock-blocked: The emperor is blocked somehow. You are unable to assert yourself, maybe lost in a maze of regulations, rules and procedures. You are maybe protecting the wrong things or people. You might think you are practical but got something wrong (it’s mostly not the Ikea manual that is wrong or the piece that is faulty, it is most certainly, you).

Taken too far: This is the domain of toxic masculinity. Yes this is a thing, I suffer from it every day. Masculinity is a prison. This kind is anyway. Defense becomes unwarranted offence, violence, abuse of physical strength, this is the bully knocking you a bleeding nose and your father raping you. This is thinking you can fix everything, that everything is logical and practical and being blind to the emotional, spiritual or natural things in life. This is abuse of authority, corruption, back chamber politics, chauvinism. It is structural sexism, racism and a system that only exists to benefit itself not the people in it. And it is all turned against you.

One card spread – meditation on the emperor:

"Life seems so much simpler when you're fixing things." - Anakin skywalker in Attack of the Clones

The Emperor is the first break we get in a way. In a very – too – short version of our path up until now the fool asks us to unapologetically be ourselves, the magician asks us to be able, the high priestess begs us to be knowledgeable. The emperor asks us to consolidate that into a system, a structure so what we have achieved so far can be defended. It’s about creating habits that benefit you, assert yourself as you are, yourself, able and knowledgeable without shame or hesitation. Use your abilities as a weapon against injustice. But we’re turning too abstract, I know. Let’s be more practical. Answer all the following questions and jot down one action per question that you can do in the next four days:

Ask yourself what is going well in your life and how you can anchor that in your life. How can you make it last?

Who or what in your immediate environment needs protection (or comfort, or help) and how can you provide that? Does something need fighting and which weapon in your arsenal is best suited?

When were you last intimidated by authority? What characteristic was intimidating? Do you possess that characteristic? Imagine yourself unintimidated in that same situation. What is needed to get you there?

Do you own something that is broken? Try to fix it. (Just like there is an inherent value to growing things crf. the empress, fixing things is itself a healing action).

TLDR: Upright meaning: power, protection, practicality, authority, order Reverse meaning: powerlessness, impotence, confusion, chaos, abuse of power

#a muggle guide to tarot #tarot #tarot readings #the emperor #emperor #007 #major arcana #the emperor reversed #emperor reversed #cartomancy

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yenrz1314 · 6 years ago

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LET’S (attempt to) FIX/REWRITE KH 358/2 DAYS

Let me preface this: I love Roxas, Xion, and Axel A LOT. I have been thoroughly blinded by nostalgia as much as you have and I don’t really care. I’ll continue to love them even after I’m finished destroying their game here. Keep in mind I’m not hatin’. And, fun fact, I think that Days is perhaps the best written game in the series regarding character writing. Still doesn’t mean I think it’s actually good though.

I’m going to start off saying something kind of controversial. Axel, Roxas, and Xion weren't that great of friends.

Yes they were the best friends that they ever had, but when you're constantly surrounded by the melancholic mundane, any sort of friendship is the great friendship. They weren't that great at being friends to each other because they dealt with conflict in the most incompetent way possible. As far as I know, there was barely any communication whatsoever between them, which is really disappointing because Roxas is like the most understanding person ever. Most of their conversations concerned small talk. Not necessarily boring small talk, but small talk.

I really wish we could at least have gotten a talk between Xion and Roxas when he was on that mission to chase her down before Axel came in and knocked her out. The only real communication about Xion’s situation is between her and Axel, and we rarely get to see any camaraderie between her and Roxas. We do see a decent amount between Roxas and Axel but I’ll just attribute to the fact that they’ve existed as characters longer than Xion has.

Xion’s inherently pretty bad at communicating. To Roxas especially. Even though Axel tried to talk her down, she didn't really explain herself much. Axel honestly had to figure it out himself.

If Days gets remade I hope to death that we have at least one scene of Roxas and Xion having more meaningful talks. Alone. They were close. Its just that Xion kept stonewalling, and Axel would always be dodgy with his answers, which makes you question if they’re truly all that close. I mean, you wouldn’t just not tell one of your best friends anything about something you’re really struggling about.

Though I guess you can’t blame them since they had no memories of their past and were learning based off of watching those around them, and they did live with the organization

And to be fair, you’re a part of an organization with a leader the answers basic questions like “Who is Sora?” with vague af answers like "the connection".

Also they’re stupid teenagers. I’m already giving them the benefit of the doubt.

Honestly I would normally be fine with her lack of communication and accept it as an character flaw. In fact, under normal circumstances, it would be a reason for me to be invested in her character. But the truth is that we don't see enough scenes of him and Xion having meaningful bonding time for me to be accepting of that lack of communication. There was that one absolutely adorable scene of Roxas and Xion on the clocktower discussing about how much they worry about each other...but the rest of the time they spent together is superficial, mostly consisting of just kind of empty small talk. It’s kind of rare that we see them actually talk about their relationship and/or any chemistry. A lot was just them sitting next to each other eating ice cream or on missions and we did have a lot of skips of one of them being asleep or missing.

The main problem KH has in its writing is that it really likes to display the cute little quirks or tressings of a relationship but absolutely fails to write any core to that relationship. Like, for example, the seashells they leave for each other when they’re sleeping is absolutely precious, but there’s not that much of a core dynamic between these characters that this really cute character interaction can be built upon. And in the end, but just because something is tragic doesn't mean it has substance

Because Days doesn't give me enough meat of writing to bite into, it just ends up as a frustrating tale of Roxas just being confused the whole time. Sure, Roxas is the main character, but he literally has almost no agency throughout the entire game. And I find that pretty insulting to his character. This guy is literally one of the most well written in the series. And no, I’m not pulling the ‘xion’s a mary sue stealing the spotlight’ card. I’m totally fine with her existing, but dang if I had the opportunity to change ONE THING about Days I would totally rewrite the cutscene Fracture on day 298, the day when Xion was captured.

So the original scene goes like this: Roxas tracks her down, asks her to come back, he tries to comfort her, asking why she won’t come back to him. She just says "I can't" and GETS SCARED WHEN THE MOST TRUSTED PERSON IN HER LIFE REACHES OUT TO HER. Okay. breathe. I understand if she’s scared. It’s a bit of a stretch, yes, if we take into account that she’s in the depths of emotional turmoil trying decide between her friends or Sora. I understand if she really doesn’t want to go back to the organization. My problem is that Roxas really doesn’t pose a threat to her at all here.

But then again, it could be that Xion’s a very delicate person, emotionally. And that she’s easily disturbed and is flighty. BUT THE THING IS: We don’t see this anywhere else. Days, as is, doesn’t really do a good job of establishing Xion’s personality at all anyways. So we can throw that excuse out the window.

BUT. BUT BUT BUT. THE ABSOLUTE WORST WAS WHEN SHE TURNED HER KEYBLADE ON ROXAS.

SERIOUSLY I would have totally been fine with everything up to this point except her turning on him like that

Again, he is literally no threat to her at all! I can understand her being scared, but he didn’t threaten to take her back or yell at her or anything

Like why. Why isn’t she willing to tell him anything about the truth about her existence. It's not like she's trying to keep it a secret. I understand how jarring it must have been for her to have that sort of existential crisis knowing that she’s just a puppet created to copy...But telling Roxas absolutely nothing is ridiculous. ESPECIALLY because Roxas was the one who always was breaking his back for her. He was the one who first approached her to join him at the clock tower, he was always trying to reach out to her, understand her. Heck, even when Xion was the aggressor, both times in Fracture and in the final battle, Roxas still sees her as the victim, the one who was in the right, and it's both very sweet and a bit unhealthy that he views her in such a positive light. He always does his best to give her the benefit of the doubt. And this is clearly shown in his actions.

I would rewrite it like this:

Keep everything the same up to the point right before she turns on him. She walks away and he stops her and everything, but after that she stops and thinks for a moment. And she asks quietly for him to let her go. Roxas, of course, let's her go because he's freaking Roxas

And she tries explaining to him what's going on in a very roundabout way, for the sake of being consistent with her established character. I'm not asking for her to explain it word for word. She's as flighty as a deer. I understand her not being direct. And then Roxas tries talking to her how they could work this out. Hell, this would be the PERFECT TIME to incorporate that scene from the manga when Roxas proposes they run away together. Xion is shocked and ask if he is serious, and he says yes. And THAT'S when Axel comes in and stops the party, and everything plays out the same till the end of the cutscene.

Also if this writing was implemented, then that would be a payoff point. The pacing in Days’ story is kind of whack, and adding a breakthrough moment like this would be super satisfying to the viewer.

Also it makes sense that Axel would come in then because he can't just accept both of his friends leaving like that. In the og game, Axel pretty much just let his two best friends walk away from him. The only time he shows any protest is when he is ordered by his superiors to go after them. Xion in particular. Sure this works, as it’s implied that Axel is respecting his friends’ autonomy by letting them go.

But maybe we could make it better by having Axel go through a mini arc where he accepts his friends' departure with a bit of a struggle. You’ll see more below.

The only change that would have to be made is that the organization would have to actively keep Roxas and Xion apart to keep them from conspiring together. Or when they're together, always have a third party member to keep a watchful eye. I’m guessing this would mean no more ice cream time either. For now.

Xion’s communication is just a trickle the first few days, but over time it slowly opens up, gradually telling more as they interact when they have the occasional mission together. She would mutter things like

“The organization is keeping so much from us, Roxas…”

or telling snippits like that when the third party member/chaperone isn’t watching.

Eventually, the organization takes note of this and orders for the two to be kept completely separate at all times, and Axel knows that this will absolutely kill their friendship so he does a solid by confronting Saix about it to propose a compromise. He’s like:

"I'm a trusted member of this organization. Hell, I brought them back for you. So how about this: I'll watch them for you instead"

And Saix accepts that compromise. And the result of that compromise is that we get more trio missions, something we ALL LOVED. And also those would be opportunities for them to talk. ALL THREE OF THEM

Okay so the three talk on missions and at the clocktower again, Xion knows her purpose and desperately wants to leave. She won’t disclose Riku or Namine's location. Axel protests fiercely to the thought of her leaving. Meanwhile Roxas is trying to mediate as always, but he leans more towards helping Xion leave at least. However, he would still show how he emotionally would rather have her stay. He has an internal struggle when Xion tries to explain their connection with Sora and how they need to go back during a few talks with them alone that Axel allows. She needs to be the one who tells him he needs to come back to Sora. Someone who he trusts and can help him through this process. Not a stranger like Riku or Namine.

And then this time of communication all abruptly comes to a halt when the Org. starts pitting Roxas and Xion against each other in missions. Also, let's have Xion be less heartless to Roxas here and not be so eager to leave. Of course, she desperately still wants to, but Roxas is her anchor keeping her there. She knows that it'll all be for naught if Roxas doesn't go with her anyways. Also she doesn't want to hurt him by just leaving like that. She cares.

So, back to the rewrite, the talks stop when the organization starts pitting roxas and Xion against each other in those missions. Axel stops them like he did originally, and they have a talk about how crazy ridiculous this all is. Roxas agrees with Xion and Axel agrees too but hides it because he's a coward and is the org's lapdog, and just tries as hard as he can to keep them together. Roxas is dismayed that his existence is possibly ending, but at the same time agrees with Xion that this is all crazy. Axel shuts them down for the day.

And the next day is the day Xigbar, Axel and Xion go on that mission.

But instead of Xion jumping ship, Riku comes in to take Xion, kidnapping her without a fight because he knows he can't take survive one against two other org. members. Axel doesn't do anything to stop her because he's accepted it at this point. Also seeing Xion as Ven really made him realize the gravity of the situation.

This really upsets Roxas because he thinks Xion was taken against her will. Axel doesn’t have the heart to tell him about Xion’s current extremely unstable state. And this sets him off since he's been putting up with so much BS at this point and he runs away as originally written as well as to search for Xion, because he knows the org. will never let him look for her himself. Everything plays out the same after that.

On the clocktower where Roxas and Xion meet, there's one change. When she shows him that she's almost Sora, she *explains* as best as she can what’s happened to her, since she’s under the control of the org. now. She makes him realize that it's inevitable that she must die or she'll cease to be herself. And then they fight as originally scripted, Roxas’ motive for fighting being that there still might be a chance for them to go on if he finishes things himself.

When the fight is over and she begins to die, Xion's final request is that he join back with Sora. That is were it this all leads and she knows it. We're changing that because in the original she, when Roxas and Riku are fighting, for some dumb reason, retracts her final wish???? Like… that's got to be one of the most contrived things in this story.

Also I'd like to cut that dumb pointless plot device that Roxas forgets who Xion is right after finishing his final battle with her, Because by golly did the writing team really want Roxas to be as clueless as possible even as his best friend is dying. Geez wtf.

Honestly, you can keep the memory loss, just please make it so that he remembers her SOONER, so they can actually COMMUNICATE AND SO THAT HE CAN ACTUALLY SAY GOODBYE.

FUACK.

“Promise me...you’ll come back...to Sora. That way...we can be together again...”

Or something like that, make me cry more. 。ﾟ(ﾟﾉД｀ﾟ)ﾟ｡

But then what would Roxas’s motive be for going back to The World That Never Was and fighting Riku then? Just wait a moment and hold on to your seat because I’m going to take the original situation and make it even more badass AND make it work with my rewrite.

Also this blog is finally almost done good job for making it this far.

Let's have Roxas know about the heartless nobody cycle. He can have learned this after maybe sifting through the organization’s research files or something. It wouldn’t be hard to stick it in the story somewhere.

What was the most heartwrenching thing about Roxas’s final day in the real world? I would say his rage, grief, and desperation over his entire life. So let’s take that, and multiply it by a couple dozen times. After Xion's death, his motive to destroy the organization will be more about his rage at the unjust way he was treated. Him and Xion. They messed up his and his friends’ lives.

“Well if I die, then whatever I'll just go back to Sora. Kill two birds with one stone.”

Regardless of however you write Days, angsty, bloodthirsty Roxas is a requirement. It’s what makes Roxas Roxas. And as a result his grief is amplified tenfold. He doesn't even care about preserving his own life anymore.

And Riku confronts him. Asks him what the hell he's doing. He tells him he's going to fuck up the organization. And Riku's like ‘don't be stupid they'll just capture you and hold you hostage to keep Sora from waking’

Roxas looks at him, points one of his keyblades towards him.

"You don't know that."

"I'll end every single one of them before they get the chance. You want me to prove it..? WELL HERE'S MY PROOF!”

AND THEN HE FREAKING STRIKES,

AND THAT’S THE FIGHT

And let's hammer in the fact that Roxas is his own freaking person. Instead of the line "C'mon Sora! I thought you were stronger than that!" from Riku, instead he says to Roxas something akin to this:

"C'mon Sora...I know you're stupid, but not to this extent!"

And then Roxas doesn't give him a Sora-ish line.

“You’re the one calling me by the wrong name.”

Riku sits defeated and despondent on the ground.

"...Why...? It's not supposed to be this way...Sora..."

This breaks a nerve in Roxas.

"This again?! I'm me. NOBODY ELSE. Get that through YOUR thick head!"

And the rest is history...

..................

THAT’S THE REWRITE KIDS. YOU’RE FINALLY FINISHED READING THIS RIDICULOUSLY LONG BLOG. THANK YOU FOR READING \o/

Fun fact, this was all borne out of a late night discord chat with a friend of mine.

Edit: this is the headcanon for what happened in Days now. Goodnight.

#kingdom hearts #kingdom hearts 358/2 days #kh 358/2 days #kh3 #kh #roxas #xion #axel #rokushi #rokushion #akurokushi #rewrite #kh days #organization 13 #organization #organization xiii

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daisypath · 4 years ago

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My thoughts on Darkness Within

Spoilers ahead! (I know it came out a while back now but if it took me this long to read it, other people might appreciate the warning too)

Also this is really long and ramble-y

I didn't like it very much :/

ok like. why was bristlefrost on the journey to find the Sisters in Darkness Within? Okay obviously, she was there to spend time with Rootspring, but other than that her role in the plot was so minimal. I don't remember her doing anything uniquely helpful for that story line. She was literally just following Rootspring around and trying (and mostly failing) to comfort Spotfur.

(Also why was Spotfur there. Oh my god she's grieving why did they send her on this mission)

I personally found Darkness Within very boring, mostly because two of the three main characters were in the exact same story line. And only one of those two had any impact on that storyline.

Think of how cool it would have been if Bristlefrost had been in Thunderclan for the whole book. And we had actually gotten to see more of the fallout of the Imposter's reign. And how Squirrelflight is doing. AND how Lionblaze is doing! I would have loved to get a better sense of his emotional state and decision to kill his father's body. Like how did he come to that conclusion? That seems like a pretty major character beat to happen off screen.

Bristlefrost being in Thunderclan, especially a Thunderclan which is falling apart around her ears, would be a great chance for her to actually bond with literally any of her clanmates and to actually show the loyalty that is keeping her away from Rootspring, away from a half-clan relationship.

If Bristlefrost's story in this book was about her trying to help her Clan, instead of about padding after Rootspring like a lovestruck puppy, it could have given her some much needed agency and given the book a darker tone.

Shadowsight's chapters in this book, while a welcome reprieve from RootBristle roadtrip nonsense, was pretty depressing and repetitive. They seem out of place. Throughout the RootBristle roadtrip, they are treating it as more of a vacation than a challenging journey. Maybe if Bristlefrost's chapters were focused on Thunderclan's struggles and Rootspring's chapters were more focused on the difficulty of the journey, than Shadowsight's chapters would be less tonally dissonant? And maybe Rootspring's success in finding the Sister's and working to convince them to help would be more impactful?

so Shadowsight's chapters are also repetitive. like not a lot changes in the clans while Root and Bristle are away. And I think that things should change. If Bristle had been in Thunderclan for this whole book, than we could even have several perspectives on the events in the clans and really flesh out the politics of this period.

God this book didn't make me feel anything other than like. frustration. I think that this series and these characters have so much potential. and yet...

Okay and now, side characters.

Mothwing: what the heck did they do to her. why is she acting like this. so unlikable what the hell. I think it is possible for her to fill this role in the story, as basically taking away Shadowsight's status as a medicine cat without her being so... irrational and cruel. While she isn't right to be suspicious of Shadowsight and his role in Bramblestar's death, I don't think that is an entirely unreasonable suspicion. it could have been done better is what I'm saying.

Needleclaw: what the HECK did they do to her. I mean, I understand that being anti-half-clan-relationships is the norm in warriors society, but she is really anti-half-clan-relationships in this book. She seemed so kind and supportive in earlier books. and while she isn't herself a half-clan cat, her father is from outside the clans, and her mother was raised in Shadowclan, so this all seems quite out of character. She doesn't seem to be warning Root away from Bristle from a place of concern for him, but from a place of prejudice. it's weird and bad!

Spotfur: spotfur sweetie I'm so sorry about all this. She has no reason to be on this journey, truly. she is just miserable most of the time. she should be allowed time to grieve and rest. And how are Bristlefrost and Spotfur suddenly friends. I'm not sure they have ever spoken one-on-one before? Spotfur doesn't really give any impression that she reciprocates Bristlefrost's feelings of friendship. In fact, she doesn't seem to have any feelings other than sadness about Stemleaf's death (and i'm still so upset that stemleaf died btw). The way that Bristlefrost treated Spotfur was mostly so patronizing. i always got the impression that Bristle didn't feel compassion, but pity. and throughout the roadtrip, whenever Bristle tried to comfort Spot, she often had an ulterior motive of trying to get Spot to do some form of work (hunting, gathering bedding, walking). if they were both in Thunderclan for this book, and Bristlefrost didn't have that ulterior motive, and so much of her time wasn't taken up with pining after Rootspring, then they could have built a good dynamic. Imagine if Spotfur had some expressed resentment for Bristlefrost because of the part she played in Stemleaf's death and Bristle actually faced consequences? for her actions? wouldn't that be wild?

I don't have a lot else to say but here's a few tidbits:

It is annoying that they constantly point out that Jayfeather is blind. I get it.

also, why doesn't Shadowsight have seizures anymore? weird.

Mistystar is terrible right now. She is a half-clan cat herself. she should understand that the code is unjust better than most.

Also, half-clan relationships and kittens aren't even explicitly banned by the code. has anyone else noticed that?

Lionblaze. As I said, I think his opinion about all this business is underdeveloped. yeah. ok.

I understand why Puddleshine would bow before Mothwing, being younger and less experienced, but Tigerstar, Dovewing (and Cloverfoot)? like way to show that you have no spine or faith in your son/medicine cat :/

God I hope Bramble stays dead. And that Squirrel gets to be leader. Or better yet, Ivypool. Or better yet, someone who isn't an ex-main character. I like that Harestar, complete nobody, gets to be leader of Windclan. I just... am so sick of the nostalgia bait in these dumb books. give me something new for heaven's sake.

well. now to read Place of No Stars. I hope that it is any good.

#wc #not gonna maintag this cuz i don't like when people look at me or my posts #god it is hard being so anxious and also having so many opinions. listen to me! stop listening to me! thats how i feel #maybe if i make my posts long enough #no one will have the patience to read through them\#and i will not have to face the Mortifying Ordeal of Being Known

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divinehumanism-blog · 7 years ago

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Without Eugene England, I Probably Wouldn’t Attend Church

Reflections on the Growth-Promoting Gifts of Paradox

First, A Confession

Let me begin with a confession: I often don’t like going to church. I find the experience incredibly taxing, exacerbating, and just plain boring. Rarely am I uplifted. Frequently am I peeved. Paradoxically, and interestingly, I also find going to church one of the most redemptive experiences I am trying to learn to love. It is very difficult for me to articulate the origin, nature, and depth of this love-angst relationship. And to be honest, if I wasn’t aware of who Eugene England was, I probably wouldn’t appreciate the discipline of community that comprises church-going, nor respect its attendant paradoxes. Put differently,without Eugene England, I probably wouldn’t attend church.

This loaded, semi-provocative thesis needs unpacking before it’ll make sense to orthodox ears. Let me drill down a bit.

In 1986, Eugene England, a faithful, critical Latter-day Saint scholar, wrote a game-changing essay entitled, “Why the Church is as True as the Gospel.” Personally, this essay has had a huge influence on me and my relationship with the institutional Church. It has carried me through difficult times in my discipleship, given me a lot of hope, beauty and pragmatic bearing, and has provided invaluable perspective on how “not only to endure but to go on loving what [is] unlovable.” In short, it is an essay that I think all Latter-day Saints should read and become familiar with.

The Power of Paradox: The Gospel and the Church

Much of England’s treatment of effective church-going meditates heavily on the power of paradox. Joseph Smith referred to the concept of paradox when he stated that “by proving contraries, truth is made manifest.” Half a century earlier, the poet William Blake had similarly observed, “Without contraries there is no progression.” Contraries, or oppositions, give energy, force and meaning to virtually everything.

Think about it.

The art you see in a theater, a museum, or historic site has risen from the tension of human conflict and opposition. Economic, political and social enterprises have and continue to emerge from competition and dialogue. Human life itself grows out of pain and controversy. Galaxies form spectacularly amid swirls of chaos and explosion.

The gospels, too, are awash with many paradoxical statements:

To be rich you must be poor. To be comforted you must mourn. To be exalted you must be humble. To be found you must be lost. To find your life you must lose it. To see the kingdom you must be persecuted. To be great you must serve. To gain all you must give up all. To live you must die.

Paradoxes, contraries, or oppositions can sometimes tempt us to think that two conflicting propositions will always be incompatible. Yet, it is often when we sacrifice traditional concepts and change our frame of reference that rival statements of paradox suddenly appear compatible.

A paradox, in other words, is not antithetical to the pursuit of truth, but in fact the very definition of it. In his acclaimed essay, “The Institutional Church and the Individual,” Bonner Ritchie stressed the importance of this pursuit: “By confronting the contradictory constraints of a system and pushing them to the limit, we develop the discipline and strength to function for ourselves. By confronting the process, by learning, by mastering, we rise above.”

“It must needs be, that there is an opposition in all things” is thus a profound statement of abstract theology in our scriptures that describes how vital paradox is to the development of all living things.

From the perspective of paradox, England is armed to build a persuasive case for why the Church (the Work) is as true as the Gospel (the Plan). Upon first blush, this rings like a weighty contradiction that just can’t be. The principles of the Gospel are pure and ideal, we say, but the workings and people of the Church are weak and imperfect. As Hugh Nibley once recognized, “The Plan looks to the eternities and must necessarily be perfect; but the Work is right here and is anything but the finished product.” We seem to envision the Gospel as a “perfect system of revealed commandments based on principles which infallibly express the natural laws of the universe,” says England, but in reality all we have is merely our current best understanding of these principles, which is invariably limited and imperfect. Such an unwieldy divine-human paradox seems to put us in a spiritual straightjacket.

In what world can the Church and the Gospel be as “true” as each other?

Consider first how England uses the word “true.” He’s not bearing down any sort of indexical relationship nor conflating the two with some grammatical set of historical, empirical, or metaphysical propositions. His approach is much more pragmatic and existential in nature. What he means is that the “Church is as true — as effective — as the gospel” because it is precisely the place where we are given a genuine and participating feel to practice the Gospel in specific, tangible ways. “The Church,” he says, “involves us directly in proving contraries, working constructively with the oppositions within ourselves and especially between people, struggling with paradoxes and polarities at an experiential level that can redeem us.”

Callings, for example, draw us into a very practical, specific, sacrificial relationship with others. We learn firsthand how exasperating people can be, how demanding and nagging human diversity often is. Paradoxically, when we work with, serve, and are taught by those who differ from and sometimes frustrate us, we allow ourselves room to become more open, vulnerable, gracious, and willing. When we grapple with real problems and work towards practical solutions with those we serve, we are pushed “toward new kinds of being in a way we most deeply want and need to be pushed.”

The “truthfulness” of the Church thus lies in its ability to effectively concretize the principles of the Gospel, bring them down to earth, down into our bodies, our hearts and minds, giving them corporeal form, thereby allowing imperfect agents to painfully develop divine gifts. And the better any church or organization is at drawing out these gifts, the “truer” it is.

Remember this point: “truth” from England’s perspective gains its meaning in relation to the quality of life, or being, it inspires.

England’s argument follows the late eighteenth century existential tradition of how our pursuit of truth must exist in relation to a more pressing concern than mere historical, metaphysical or scientific claims. Truth must lead us to a certain quality of life and quality of character —what philosophers and theologians have long since called “the good life.” Truth must bear down on the particular, not the general; the concrete, not the abstract. England isn’t elevating one over the other per se. He’s merely exposing the myth that the Gospel (the general) can somehow be salvifically divorced from the Church (the particular), as if pretending that sheer academic knowledge alone, and with it the freedom from dealing with the querulous, niggling life-pulse of a congregation, were sufficient for redemption.

This paradigm, he contends, is misguided.

Abstract and Practical Gospel Living

There are many principles of the Gospel that are conflicting and paradoxical and can’t be effectively lived in the abstract. They must instead be faithfully embodied for them to prove redemptive. Agency and obedience, for example. These two foundational principles are in dynamic tension with another, creating a critical paradox in the Church for how we work with others who may offend us or exercise unrighteous dominion. If God’s anointed leader makes a decision without inspiration, are we bound to sustain that decision? The friction created between obedience to authority and obedience to agentive conscience sparks the creative energy “we need to allow divine power to enter our lives in transforming ways.”

These moments of friction call us to walk an authentic path carved out between two easier paths of blind obedience and blanket rejection. They reveal the truth of how to act and not merely be acted upon.

England continues: “It is precisely in the struggle to be obedient while maintaining integrity, to have faith while being true to reason and evidence, to serve and love in the face of imperfections, even offenses, that we can gain the humility we need [to] …literally bring together the divine [the Gospel] and the human [the Church].”

The confession I began with is a good example of the tension I feel each Sunday while wrestling with these principles in the pews. I’ve attended many wards throughout my life, each replete with a common brand of middlebrow, prejudiced, intellectually unsophisticated types whose opinions I oftentimes vehemently disagree with. I’ve struggled endlessly with socially scripted class discussions, platitudinal public prayer, legalistic watchdogs, and those who proof-text the scriptures to support some idolatrous claim. The people in the Church, to put it mildly, have exasperated me to no end. And it is these very “exasperations, troubles, sacrifices [and] disappointments” that characterize my experience at church that England says “are especially difficult for idealistic liberals to endure.”

But herein lies the power of his thesis: it is precisely in our exasperations with other people at church — those who sometimes piss us off — where we are invited to enter a “school of love,” one that enables us to painfully grow in Christ-like character by “loving what [is] unlovable.”

How might this work?

Not many people I imagine willingly choose to build relationships with those whom they have very little in common with, or who have vastly different temperaments. Paradoxically, when we struggle to serve people we normally would not choose to serve (or possibly even associate with) we enter into a very specific, sacrificial relationship with them that allows us to exercise divine muscles that otherwise may have remained dormant. To accept this challenge, to enter this school, is to potentially become “powerfully open, empathetic, vulnerable people, able to understand, serve, learn from, and be trusted by people very different from [ourselves].”

By entering this school of contraries, we give birth to divinely needed gifts such as patience, compassion, mercy and forgiveness.

These gifts are forged in the furnace of paradox.

Terryl and Fiona Givens have also rightly backed the paradoxes at play in England’s thesis. Sometimes we “imagine a religious life encumbered by fallible human agents, institutional forms, rules and prohibitions, cultural group-think and expected conformity to norms.” Sometimes we “insist on imposing a higher standard on our co-worshippers” by wishing that their prejudices and blind spots did not inflame us. We wish others could simply think about the Gospel like we do. Practice it like we do. Yet when we “submit to the hard schooling of love” the Church offers, we’re able to experience wards and stakes that “function as laboratories and practicums where we discover that we love God by learning to love each other.”

The Church’s perceived weaknesses, paradoxically, are thus actually its greatest strengths.

Each imperfect encounter we experience at church will no doubt stretch and wear down on us, and yet if endured with the right attitude, can act as the very experience, the very gift, needed to become more Christ-like.

If this sounds too sentimental, too lofty, if we would prefer instead our worship services to constantly align with what “we get out” of a meeting, we may be missing the point. England argues, “If we constantly ask “What has the Church done for me?” we will not think to ask the much more important question, “What am I doing with the opportunities for service and self-challenge the Church provides me?” If we constantly approach the Church as consumers, we will never partake of its sweet and filling fruit. Only if we can lose our lives in church and other service will we find ourselves.”

It is a fairly easy exercise to analyze these principles from afar, criticize and make stupid those whose opinions we don’t share. Sometimes we remain too bookish, academic, or idealistic, with little hands-on involvement for the ongoing life of faith. If knowledge and books and abstract learning is where we tap real meaning, and have not charity, the principles we claim to admire so much will have the hollow, disembodied ring of “sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.” We will not know the character-transforming truths that the Church means to imbue us with. It is only when we step into the arena with others, play the game, tussle with their ideas, wishes, and misinformed biases, and try to give constructive answers, that we come to slowly learn the truth of the child-like phrase, “I know the Church is true.”

Or rather: I know the Church is an effective vehicle for divine endowment, despite of, even because of, its very real and imperfect people.

And here is Mormonism asking us to do just that:

Step into the imperfect arena. Wrestle with our leaders. Create an embodied relationship with others. Maintain individual integrity in the face of pressures to obey and conform. Patiently serve those who irritate, bruise, thwart and offend. Love obedience and agency — learn not to resolve their tensions in favor of one conflicting set over the other. Rather, learn to transcend them in our own customized ways while still remaining true to ourselves and our community. Remember, it is not about blind obedience or wholesale rejection. It is about walking the harder path carved out between the paradox. In doing so, we develop divine character in creative ways that no abstract system of ideas (uncoupled from service) could ever produce.

By acting within the zone of this paradox, balancing our individual conscience while serving others and sustaining church leaders, we open doors to prove contraries and encounter truth in tactile ways.

But Really, How Necessary is Church?

Can we not find a framework for practicing divine gifts such as mercy, humility, patience, and service in any number of settings? Of course we can. The Church has not cornered the market on what it means to be a good person nor to practice goodness. All faiths and secular walks of life can be receptive to the larger world of truth and beauty and moral goodness.

Ok, but if the Church doesn’t provide unique opportunities for spiritual practice that can’t be obtained elsewhere, why go at all?

When England takes a hard, all-or-nothing line on this question by evoking the traditional, orthodox answer that the Church has the authority to perform essential saving ordinances, his response is less than satisfying. However, there’s another approach that hides in the margins of his thought that better articulates why church-going (or some semblance of formalized community) can be a powerful boon for developing divine gifts.

To start, we might ask:

How often are most people sufficiently finding ways of their own efforts to love those they would normally not choose to love? And what value could there be in loving those we might consider as enemies?

One way to approach these questions is to consider the kinds of people we normally choose to associate with: If, for example, we choose only to surround ourselves with like-minded souls, people who think, feel, share and welcome our commitments, praise our ideas, flower our egos, what reward do we have? If we salute only those who salute us, if we love only those who love us, what good does hearing what we want to hear and having others confirm what we think we already know do for us? In truth, such groupishness is thoughtlessness. It remains too cloistered. Too bubbled. It runs the risk of creating an in-group echo chamber that appraises the status quo while at the same time teaching us to demonize those who disagree.

Admittedly, it is often in the nature of religious institutions to homogenize disparities and command conformity.

We might ask, but isn’t church just some big, sequestered parrot hall where everyone thinks the same, talks the same, gives unfettered assent to the same basic truth claims? Loyalty to an organization of course can and should be a very positive force, but it can also be a careless excuse to unload responsibility for our spiritual lives onto another. Bonner Ritchie has persuasively framed the dangers involved. Loyalty bent on unthinking conformity, he says, can be “a force which victimizes the individual, who feels freed from the burden of moral choice…We cannot allow the dictates of anyone to relieve the burden, pain, or growth that goes with individual responsibility.”

Indeed, religious institutions are enmeshed in shared networks of meaning and moral matrices that tend to lean towards conservative groupthink, sometimes to the point of giving off the appearance of complete doctrinal uniformity and a fierce, hive-minded group homogeny.

Such tendencies and appearances do not yield optimal religion.

We need the wisdom that is to be found scattered among diverse kinds of people, those who can pull us out of the status quo and be willing to create the dynamic tension needed to constructively fight the overbearing cultural orthodoxy. We need people in our congregations who revel in distinctions, variations, and differences, even those we’d deem as enemies — those we would normally not choose to associate with or love.

As Adam Miller contends, our love of people must be fearless, “marked by [our] confidence that every truth can be thought again — indeed, must be thought again — from the position of the enemy.”

To translate Miller into England’s terms: we must learn to love those who differ from us from the position of paradox. While those who differ from us can always be found both inside and outside the institutional walls of the Church, the practice of going to church can have a unique way of positioning paradox and framing our enemies in redemptive ways that might not be as readily available or instinctive on the outside.

Take the Church’s organization, for example.

That congregations are organized at the local level with a lay clergy and are bounded “geographically rather than by personal choice” cannot be overstated in how Mormon culture is shaped. Many members attend the ward they locally find themselves in rather than shopping around for the ideal, heavenly congregation. There are exceptions of course, but the significance of such standard Zion-building creates a particular kind of community that keeps us within intimate range of each other. We’re threaded together with the devout, the wayward, the liberal, the conservative, the feminist, the watch dog, the intellectual, etc. All kinds of disciples and potential enemies abound. We need all kinds of temperaments, too, to complement the full body of Christ, providing a cohesive enough space to bind our temperaments and differences into mutual loving ties.

Callings, as mentioned earlier, then provide constant encouragement, even pressure, to practice this spiritual binding; they help socialize, reshape, and care for people who, if stripped of them, would have less opportunity to make the sacrifices needed to grow and develop divine gifts. As the Givens put it, church attendance causes us to be “forced back to the renegotiating table by an unavoidable proximity” to iron out, smooth over, and make atonement with those who irritate, bruise, and deeply offend. The luxury to click the block or mute button, like on social media, is not readily available. We are commanded instead to be in harmony. To be at one. And that it is up to each individual to get there through prayer, service and ritual. Though difficult, the rewards of such a community are often, paradoxically, the empowered gifts of patience, mercy, humility, charity, kindness, and forgiveness.

Nothing here suggests that non-religious people living in looser communities with a less binding moral matrix can’t find opportunities to equally advance a charitable praxis. Many in fact do. I’d wager to bet there are actually many atheists who care for people better than some religious people do. The point rather is to raise the question of how often we naturally feel compelled to associate ourselves with people of vastly different temperaments, especially enemies. How often do we assume the hard work of paradox, take up the mantle of sacrifice and renegotiation, then strive to love, serve, cooperate, and bless our enemies in ways that better awaken divine gifts?

This question gets at a critical distinction that has less to do with pitting religion against secularism and more to do with how we might better encounter the growth-promoting gifts of paradox. As Patrick Mason has observed, “there are many orbital paths around the sun, but not all are equally suited to maximize opportunities for life to flourish.” We might, for example, join a book club, attend a conference, or volunteer at a homeless shelter. Each of these activities would help foster a sense of community and provide chances to put the gospel into practice.

For England, the Church is the best vehicle “for helping us to gain salvation by grappling constructively with the oppositions of existence.” He doesn’t draw out specifically why church attendance is the best medium above others. Nor does he deny other existing contexts to help promote the good life. He walks the harder path carved out between the paradox that suggests that while the Church may be in possession of sacred and distinctive truths, it by no means owns a monopoly on truth.

It might be noted here that religious ideology, interestingly, even paradoxically, does make one thing obligatory that secularism doesn’t always reveal as instinctive: it sacralizes and binds us to the enemy.

We must do as Jesus says: we must love our enemies, bless those that curse us, and do good to those that hate us. No escape hatch. No transfer to another school. As the German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer realized, cheap grace would be to remove ourselves from the “discipline of [this] community.” This distinction, this obligation to love someone who hates us, is ground zero for the greatest manifestation for the life of paradox and divinity to thrive. It is the ultimate school of love that reveals, as England would say, a “frustrating, humbling, but ultimately liberating and redeeming” spiritual praxis. To the extent that people feel a disproportionately powerful gravitational pull of being repeatedly drawn out of their comfort zone to love, serve, wrestle with, and sacrifice on behalf of their enemies, these communities provide the best context to awaken divine gifts. Whether we experience this pull in religious or secular settings is secondary.

What matters first is that we actually feel and experience it.

On a Personal Note

If we need to go to church, like we need ethics or community, it is because we live with other human beings. Who would need church, alone on a desert island? The very act of congregating with others helps us achieve together what we cannot merely achieve on our own. And yet, to be educated and wise is to admit what sometimes we would rather not: however special we believe our spiritual customs are, no church, no God, no system or secular organization has conquered the world so dramatically as to universally compel all human hearts and minds to follow it.

We are all, in our own way, still searching for the ideal community — that place to best awaken divine gifts.

While acknowledging that my community experience at church is far from ideal, I personally have yet to find a better substitute than Mormonism to work through and redemptively prove contraries. I have yet to hear a more compelling story of human potential; one that frames the divine nature of paradox in more educative, purposeful, and ennobling ways to help me realize that potential. In this regard, England is a big hero of mine. He’s opened my eyes to the real redemptive possibility of what the Church means to engender within me. It’s full of nagging, irritable people, yes. The historical record is muddy and replete with skeletons, yes. Our leaders are liable to sin and error and actually have made egregious mistakes, yes. The gospels themselves are rife with contradictory tensions, yes. And our meetings are often so boring and soul-suckingly lifeless, yes. Does this all mean the Church is a scam? That it’s broken? That it doesn’t work?

I believe, like England, that all of these detours and complications are paradoxes that can behave more as blessings than curses, if we let them. They encourage me, though sometimes painfully, to sacrifice traditional concepts of the divine, take risks, become vulnerable, and reassess my assumptions. They become harrowing lessons that help me “engage in not merely accepting the struggles and exasperations of the Church as redemptive but in genuinely trying to reach solutions where possible and reduce unnecessary exasperations.” Church attendance is not about singing kumbaya or blithely picking marigolds while ignoring the Church’s myriad problems, failures, and contradictions. That would be “returning to the Garden of Eden where there is deceptive ease and clarity but no salvation.”

Rather, church attendance for me is about being stretched and challenged, even disappointed and exasperated, in ways I would never otherwise choose to be. I’m meant to be bruised and irritated by the flaws and limitations of others, then called to walk the harder path of working to serve and love and patiently learn from them. These experiences provide lessons in grace, charity, and Christ-centered moral improvement. And when accepting these sacred bonds and obligations to love the unlovable, I’m given “a chance to be made better than [I] may have chosen to be — but need and ultimately want to be.”

Living with contraries is a burden for both the religious and irreligious alike. England has merely reminded me of how to thrive in the face of paradox rather than be frozen by it. He’s provided a redemptive context that’s helped me “see and experience the conflicts [at church and elsewhere] in more positive ways.” He’s framed a particular kind of discipleship that to me is most worth believing and following. Without him, I honestly don’t know how well I’d endure on the path of discipleship.

Who knows, without Eugene England I probably wouldn’t know if the title of this post was meant as hyperbole.

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