#“historical accounts differ” what a way to say what happens to them depends on their route

[reneedenoailles]

langley is so clever i feel obsessed

[katakaluptastrophy]

We've heard the story about the young woman living under imperial oppression conceiving an unusual baby with god, but what happens after that?

The local potentate gets twitchy about succession and engages in a spot of mass child murder, of course!

It's the fourth day of Christmas, aka the Feast of the Holy Innocents, and it's time for more weird Bible study for goth lesbians!

A quick refresher on the Christmas story: following some hotel over-booking shenanigans, baby Jesus is born in a stable and after singing angels turn up to chivvy them along, is welcomed by some shepherds. A little while later, three enigmatic wise men from the East turn up with some rather odd baby gifts, having been led to Jesus by a star.

While cash, liturgical incense, and embalming ointment feel like they'd be considered practical new baby gifts on the Ninth, Gideon doesn't get such fanfare with her arrival. Just a few geriatric nuns who only manage to necromantically scrounge up a name between them.

However, by toddlerhood Jesus and Gideon are on a rather more equal level: people are trying to kill them.

In Jesus' case, it's the local king, Herod the Great ("the Great" is perhaps best read in the same way as "Democratic Republic" or "gentlemen's club"). Herod was a client king, ruling on behalf of the Roman empire. The wise men stop to ask him for directions and Herod is non-plussed to say the least, because prophecies of the birth of great kings who will deliver their people from oppression are not great news if your job depends on said oppression. Handily, the wise men are warned in a dream not to tell Herod where they found Jesus and they go home a different way to avoid having to see him again.

But since Herod knows the general time and location of Jesus' birth, he decides it's better to be safe than sorry and has every boy under two murdered. (It should be noted that historical accounts other than the Bible, while generally agreed that he was a bit of a shit, do not mention this). Mary and Joseph had also conveniently been warned in a dream and left town before the unfortunate incident.

If this story sounds familiar, it's because it's not the only political baby murder incident in the Bible: you may also recognise elements of it from the story of Moses in Exodus.

Meanwhile, Harrow's parents are also rulers of a small but significant province of an empire, whose power is threatened. Though in their case, the issue is not a birth but the total lack thereof. With necromantic fertility issues and approaching menopause threatening to end the line of Anastasia, they murder 200 under-19s to generate enough death juice to ensure a necromantic fetus in what must have been one of the worst date nights on record. This incident is also not widely reported, in their case likely due to their ability to necromantically bind people's tongues.

Gideon, of course, is probably not actually spared in Pluto's own Massacre of the Innocents. But she handily does not stay dead, thus escaping the fate of her fellows. As with Jesus, being god's child has its perks.

Churches that celebrate the Holy Innocents understand them to be among the first martyrs, often considering them saints who have the power to intercede with God, particularly in situations involving babies and children. That is, a collective group of infants (6-144,000 of them, depending on who you ask) have the ability to impact outcomes across time and space.

What metaphysical impact those 200 Ninth infants imprinted on Harrow's soul might have on the outcome of Alecto the Ninth remains to be seen...

[cer-rata]

WIP Wednesday

I'm alive!

As proof of life, let's do a fic accountability game, rules stolen from @authenticaussie, bastardized by myself.

Here's a chance to control my life a little bit!

Here’s how it works:

Make a list of five (or so--) of your WIPs for your followers to chose from.

I like providing short synopses/teases to give some context, but you can be super vague if you desire

Post a snippet from one of your fics that you’ve worked on in the past week.

Your followers get to send an ask with one of the five listed WIPs!

You must then write a paragraph or so in that file. If the filename is one you can’t share from (for example, an event or gift fic), write a paragraph on it anyway, and then another that you can share from something else.

I do recommend adjusting the writing requirement depending on the size of your following. The point is to make some progress, so if you're not expecting a lot of asks, maybe make your goal bigger, and the inverse is true for large followings. Do you.

That’s it! You can invite others to join in, or just post.

If you’re reading this, you’re invited!

If you see someone posting a WIP Wednesday Game snippet, send them an ask! Make them write! Think of it as a call to violence!! 😈

File names:

"No Return": Jason Todd and Bao Pham have found a 6"3 teenager with no memories and terrifying strength. They need to make some calls.

"Unnatural History": Darla Dudley and Jon Kent bump into each other at a museum in Fawcett and things get weeeird.

"Bury a Friend": ...What if I just changed the ending of Sinister Sons?

"The Hand Dealt": Suren Darga is sure that Zatanna is going to do something unpleasant to him in a week, so he's trying to enjoy the little time he has left with the only friends he's ever had. Colin, Damian and Maya just think they're hanging out like almost normal people.

"The International": Tim Drake thinks that putting together a new version of the Justice League International is a great idea. He is the only one who thinks this. It happens anyway.

Swap Day: Jon Kent gets switched with a future version of himself, and learns some...confusing things.

The snippet:

“...I mean...ugh.” Mary brushed some hair out of her face. “Like, on the one hand, it’s super nice of Tim to offer, and It’s…It’s not like I don’t know most of the other people he wants to invite, but also…I feel like the JLI is cursed? Historically?”

Billy spent a good solid fifteen seconds trying to figure out a polite, positive thing to say about his time on the original Justice League International. In the end, he only managed a shrug and a meager “...Eh? I mean it was a different lineup. And Bruce was also like…drowning in grief, Guy was there, Ted honestly loved the drama–”

“Yeah, yeah sure, and this team may be free of old men who under any other circumstances would be dangerous alcoholics, and I appreciate that. But…I think I’m going to get stuck being the parent.”

Billy winced. “Oh no.”

“Yep!”

“Oh, that’s…I mean…but Jaime’s going to be there?”

“Yeah, but do you really think Jaime can get Yara to back off? For any reason? Ever?”

Billy rubbed his chin. “...Well maybe Tim can–”

“Create an international incident by being snarky in an American way that will not translate well? Because he really wants this team to be a global thing and I’m going to be honest I’m not totally confident that the others can or will be looking out for that. Additionally, Yara has already threatened to drown him–”

“Okay so you’ve already locked yourself into this.”

“...Apparently.” 

“Then you need to recruit a co-parent.”

“Oh god.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Oh no you’re right.”

“Mmmhm.”

Mary held her face in her hands and groaned.

[lailoken]

hi lailoken, what would you recommend for a beginner hoping to contact local spirits? I've tried some things but had no results, so i thought I would try asking you :) my apologies if you have been asked this before, i couldn't find anything on your blog!

I may have answered something like this before, but I'm honestly not sure, so I'll do my best to just answer it here. This will look a little different for everyone, but this is what I can say based on my own experiences:

Spend a lot of time in nature.

This is really important. In my experience, it does quite a lot to teach you about local spirits and how one might best approach them. Aside from natural spaces, very old and historically meaningful locales can also be useful to spend time in, though, this is particularly useful when such locals are desolate.

Look into the native mythology and culture of your region.

This can look very different depending on where you are, but I believe it to be vital if you live in a colonized area. While I, in no way, encourage appropriating the beliefs or practices of a colonized area's local indigenous communities, I believe that attempting to make meaningful contact with regional spirits is lacking and disingenuous if it doesn't acknowledge the oldest and most traditional accounts of those spirits.

Learn about the flora and fauna of your region.

This is closely aligned with my first point about spending time in nature, but while that first point has more to do with developing a personal relationship to the land and learning intuitively from it, this point has more to do with actually learning about the biology and synergy of the lifeforms that make up that nature. I partially think this is important for the sake of respecting and understanding the land in a basic, but I also think that a lot of spiritual wisdom can be unintentionally gleaned from a scientific appreciation of nature.

Learn about the history of your region.

This may not always feel like the most thrilling or rewarding aspect of this work, but I think it is also quite important. In the same way that learning about flora and fauna teaches you about the land, learning about the history of a given region can do a lot to inform both your appreciation for a place, as well as highlighting or confirming any personal gnosis you may be sorting through.

Work on dream recall and interpretation.

I believe this to be of major importance for every form of spirit-work. Without a grasp of oneiric work, I think most spirit-work will stagnate, at best, and struggle with getting off the ground to begin with, at worst.

Pray earnestly and often, even if it doesn't necessarily feel like anything is "happening."

This is pretty simple and self-explanatory, but I think it can make a world of difference. Consistent prayer can do a lot to help with building faith, patience, and even intuition.

[blue-mint-winter]

Reading Fire and Blood: The Blacks and the Greens:

I like that Alicent was prepared and instructed servants to quietly inform her when Viserys kicks the bucket. Finally, characters actually planning their actions in advance. The whole sequence with the Green Council making smart moves was great, like immediately plotting to put Aegon on the throne, imprisoning Rhaenyra's supporters, finding allies by checking who voted for Viserys in the Great Council, vetting city watch captains to ensure their loyalty.

Otto and Alicent: "we need to fight them because Daemon and the bastards will kill us". (Btw, bastards are 15, 14 and 11 years old.) Cole: "bastard king would be the worst and they would turn this place into a brothel and everyone will be whores... even boys". Lol, Cole's priorities are so funny, especially when later he goes to look for Aegon and finds him in a brothel (or with a paramour). Why can't he just say he hates Rhaenyra and Daemon and instead has to justify it with not turning the castle into a brothel, when the one most likely to do such a thing would be Aegon. Also, Cole mentioning Laenor is very interesting, I'm more convinced that Cole had a personal beef with him that wasn't necessarily connected to Rhaenyra.

I love the blood oath! Why didn't they do that in the show, that would have been a cool scene.

The way I see it, when we have the conflicting accounts of different sources, the believability changes depending on their allegiance, beliefs and localization. Mushroom's testimony about what happened at the Green Council is rubbish, because he was with Rhaenyra on Dragonstone, but that also makes his account about Visenya's birth more believable. Also, Mushroom always tells the most scandalous and sensational version of events, so it's harder to say when he makes things up or tells the salacious truth. Septon Eustace was Viserys' and queen's confessor, so he knew some things, that's why his account of Beesbury's death (slit throat) is the most believable, because he probably heard about it from Alicent. On the other hand, what he later had to say about Alys Rivers is rubbish, he didn't know her personally and he is a septon, so he immediately slanders her, because she's a "witch". Grandmaester Munkun made some sort of compilation of historical accounts many years after the Dance, so he probably chose the versions that were confirmed by most sources. His main source was grandmaester Orwyle who was trying to make himself look like a black supporter when he gave his testimony of events, but he clearly wasn't at the time, which is shown when he was sent to negotiate with Rhaenyra and she took his chain of office.

Aemond's reaction to the news had me laughing. He's so sus, why is he thinking about giving Rhaenyra head in this situation? He sounds like he has such a hateboner for her. Too bad Cole wasn't there to hear it, I'd love his reaction.

Helaena being sassy?! She sounded like Alicent's true daughter.

I like that Daemon is thinking about politics on the Black Council. He seems to have a head for it. Let's not forget that he helped Viserys get the throne by gathering support.

Celtigar just wants to destroy the greens (and the whole capital) with dragons right away, what is wrong with him?

Gyldayn tries very hard to prove his thesis that Rhaenyra had no support and no rights. But it's getting ridiculous when he lists among Aegon's advantages that he had Orwyle on his council. On the other hand, Orwyle as an advisor seems better than that Celtigar...

I really like how Rhaenyra dealt with Orwyle, she basically made him admit his own treason. But also, her argument was about upholding the law, by which she meant king's word. The conflict is on legal grounds, because Greens use the Andal law/Great Council precedent/tradition to justify their coup, while Rhaenyra is saying that king makes the law, he's got the absolute power. That makes king above tradition and common laws and this tracks with Targaryen supremacy ideology. People say shit about Viserys that he should be blamed for this war, but from the legal standpoint, it was Jaehaerys who created the Doctrine of Exceptionalism which is the ideology Rhaenyra uses, and at the same time Jaehaerys set the precedent of the Great Council choosing the male heir over female heir, which is used by the Greens to justify putting Aegon on the throne.

[illogarithmil]

I've not really played Minecraft in half a decade+, when all the worlds on my old account stopped loading. That said, I think the reason I still periodically go back to it (either as idle interest in changes or to actually play when I'm too tired to do anything else) where I don't with pretty much any other video game isn't just the checks notes third of my life when it was competing with Warhammer as my main fandom - it's something about it as a game that does things nothing else does.

By way of comparison, the only other computer game I play is CK3. But if I want to experience that kind of genre and focus, I can read any of a slew of historical chronicles or especially great-man-y works of actual history;* or I can turn to mediaeval historical fiction; play a dynasty-building board game like Blood Royale or a medieval strategic wargame map campaign; there's even some TTRPGs that capture the human-scale part of it, though I do think mediaeval high politics is a genre that could be explored more there outside Pendragon.

What's doing the same things Minecraft does? That vast procedural world, all but empty except for you, a few other humans bizarrely different from you, and an enormous number of monsters, many of them humanoid undead; the ruins and lost realms and other dimensions, the general sense that amidst all the endless randomness things have been built before and the encouragement to do so again? The very specific magic (magic as something anybody can make with the right, very expensive ingredients, but which you certainly can't wield willy-nilly). The constant striving for resources, especially through the early game. The ridiculous, deliberate gaminess of it all, the willingness to completely waive any attempt at simulation in favour of links which still intuitively make sense (diamonds are hard, obviously they make the best armour!) The monster design, which is full of unique and bizarre things that I really wish I could steal for D&D campaigns without anybody noticing. Probably the closest thing is actually early D&D, with the players venturing into a vast, hostile wilderness to survive random encounters, make their fortunes, and ultimately rise to lordship of the land; possibly in one of its OSR variants that replaces classes with item choices, like the excellent Iron Halberd. But even there, it's very clearly a different genre which happens to rhyme. And if you try to do something similar outside the medium of a game, in a novel, say, somewhere where the deliberate abstraction from the normal rules of reality isn't taken for granted... as far as I can see, it'd read either as constructed mythology or minecraft fanfic depending on the author's skill.

I think this probably account's for the game's continued popularity to some extent, and certainly it accounts for my own continued interest. *Once I'd have said 'any work of mediaeval history published before 1920' but Burt & Partington's Arise, England! is like this and was published a couple of months ago...

[yourlocaldisneyvillain]

Can I be greedy and ask for 🥺 first time headcanon and 💦 cum headcanon for jane murdstone please and thank you

Have a beautiful day

you can always be greedy in my askbox this is a safe space :D hahahah ALSO I APOLOGISE IN ADVANCE you probably just wanted a smutty hedacanon and i sorta went on a tangent about women's life and education in victorian england uhhhhhhh

🥺 first time headcanon

okay so. i have two headcanons for this and i could see both happening lol. one is wholesome and the other one is fuuuucked up hahahah

so how jane's life would go would also depend on her social status, bc in my fic i like. made murdstones a bit wealthier than in the movie (can afford multiple maids etc) and also idk what the fuck jane does like canonically, bc like she's just like a spinster that hangs out with her brother and it's like hard for me to deduce their social status from what i saw in the movie that i like. skimmed through lol. i have not read the book bc i am Not that dedicated haha, i think dickens has other books that are probably a better use of your time. but anygay idk if she'd like be homeschooled in some capacity -- it was common for wealthier households to have a governess for young girls, but like once girl reached marrying age (which was like 15, 16 already) their education stopped unless their parents were like. Against that which they usually were not. then, if unmarried (and jane is Not married), they'd usually go to become governesses or like caretakers for someone in their family (elderly parents, siblings etc). and that was. pretty much all you could do. so idk what the fuck jane does or how her life played out bc she just sort of Hangs with her brother. i guess she was invited by him to like Help with the household but what did she do prior to that she's like 40 lol. so i guess that would also indicate that her brother can't afford another maid idk. but in my fic i wanted her to have a lady's maid (for purely self indulgent reasons) which like makes for a whole different dynamic and like social status and uhhhh god i am getting too tangled into this. but yeah, as a woman she would not be allowed to meddle into factory business (even tho knowing her she *would* try) so idk what the fuck is her deal. so basically i am saying all of this bc it's hard for me to deduce how her life might have played out and what realistic scenarios would even be for her, like taking actual historical accuracy into account

with THAT huge disclaimer out of the way, let us venture into my garbage headcanons

lemme write the wholesome one first lol. i think jane would be the type to have like an Intense Homoerotic Friendship in her youth, maybe like a childhood friend she was close with, or like if she went to some sort of an all girl's school one day things would just sort of happen -- like they are hanging out alone somewhere or like one of them is sleeping at another's house and things.... just sort of progress haha. i think jane would just sorta go with it because it wouldn't feel weird to her. i feel like it'd definitely be clumsy and just like, finding out what feels good, but they'd be so into it the awkwardness would not stop them haha. it would probably be like gentle and tender and i have a headcanon that jane would be like So Proud of herself once she made her friend feel good and found like the Right Spots ahhaha and i think she would enjoy that immensely. i imagine their relationship would end once someone else caught on and found it Suspicious, so they would be separated OR her friend would get married which results in jane's villain arc ahahhaha

so the fucked up headcanon would be like. i could definitely see jane being Enamoured with some sort of older female mentor figure who'd probably be super fucked up but jane would be like I Want To Be Like You and this lady would probably be into idea of sleeping with jane and would like take advantage of her. jane'd just be like. Confused by that experience but also not really mad about it bc she would enjoy it, it's just that there would be a huge power imbalance and jane would definitely be pretty clueless about what is happening. she'd have an intense obsession with that woman and not really know why, like the dots would not connect, and this woman would probably be a closeted lesbian in a loveless marriage who liked finding girls she could fuck on the side lol. she'd for sure be kinda mean and as a sort of mentor to jane she'd probs put a lot of fucked up ideas in her head lol. as for the actual first time i think the older woman would definitely lead the game haha and sort of teach jane what to do and jane would probably love every second and it would be a very intense emotional (but also physical) experience for her and she'd probably have some sort of emotional crash once the whole thing is done. it would be a very formative experience and she'd be a Bit traumatised by it lol. i think it would def be a very fucked up relationship and this lady would probably discard jane once she got bored of her

💦 cum headcanon (so like orgasm headcanon i guess)

idk in which direction to go with this, but i think jane would be like a one and done type of person when it comes to herself. i think she looooves pleasuring a woman ahhaha and would enjoy doing that for a long time, but like she wants to come last. and once she's done she's done hahah

[lightbolt]

Truth Through Photography

Racism, discrimination, power are not unfamiliar word to any era. There is always somewhere someone dealing some kind of racism either it is because of color, culture, religion, background, but yes it is happening since forever. Debates on such issues are always there and many people uses their ways to express themselves through different mediums. Photography is one of the medium which contributes a lot towards discrimination, racism. Articles like ‘Exploring Racism through Photography’ by Cass Fey, Ryan Shin, Shana Cinquemani, and Catherine Marino, and ‘Looking Beyond Property Native Americans and Photography’ by Curtis Marez does contribute their words towards racism, point out what people went through.

In the article ‘Exploring Racism Through Photography’ by Fey, Sin, Cinquemani, and Marino says, ‘He also attempted to incorporate the land as much as possible within his photographs. He believed that the environment played a role in how the internees adapted to their surroundings. Though the image of young girls walking to school, Adam’s was attempting to give the viewer a sense of what it was like to be at Manzanar, as well as depict a sense to which all Americans could relate.’ It is true surrounding and environment does impact especially when certain people are being discriminated because of their ethnicity, race, religion which is horrible. No matter how loyal someone is towards his/her nation they get dragged because they do not belong to certain different identities. It is the most horrific and disgusting reality of our society.

Also, in the article ‘Looking Beyond Property Native Americans and Photography’ is a topic where you can understand how photography works against reality, how can artists turn and twist the truth. Marez says, ‘All of these accounts of how images tend to dominate the construction of history and identity under globalization recall earlier and ongoing contexts in which photography partly functioned as a means for colonizing Indian peoples. Consciously or not, non-Indians mobilized photographs in order to remake social reality and replace oppositional historical memories with images that supported white domination of Indians’. There is always a way to use lens to support, to stand against injustice. But, some artists does use their power against reality which is shame to twist the truth. Whatever Indians were going through imagines against them made it worse because some of them was not even depicted the right message/truth. There is a saying ‘The one who can make you can destroy you too’ so yes a right depiction of your image can make it to destroy it, it all depends on you how you portray your image, how you want to use your lens.

Photography can make a big difference, though one image a photographer a say a million words. Ansel Adams portrayed a harsh reality of Manzanar internment camp what Japanese Americans went through because of racism. On the other hand, what Indians went through because of photography is completely opposite. Photographers made things more difficult for them because of their images which works aging the them against the racism, discrimination what they were dealing with. When capture something it suppose to be truth, you cannot capture everything but whatever you can it has to be true.

[septembersghost]

I was reading a thread about blonde and I saw someone say if they wanted to fictionalize her life, they could've made it empowering and changed the ending so she lived, like once upon a time in hollywood, but would that really be any better? why not make a fictional movie depicting these things at that point? why does Marilyn have to be the brutalized subject?

i mean, the director is blatantly obsessed with her death to the point where he said it's the whole purpose of the story and nothing else about her life matters, because he's a disgusting misogynistic ghoul (if you read any of the things he's said, his outlook on people who suffer addiction or die by su*cide is shockingly dehumanizing. which isn't even beginning to get into the fact that marilyn's death was most likely accidental and incorrectly ruled intentional by the coroner).

that said, would a version of her story where she lived be better? i don't know. it would be nice to live in the fantasy where that happened (and it has been done elsewhere, you mention sharon tate in ouatih, they did the same with john lennon in yesterday), it's dependent on how it's handled, i guess, and does raise the question of why not just tell a fictional story then? i have a family member who absolutely hates biopics and even historical fiction because he thinks it's unethical to embellish/fabricate/dramatize real people's lives, and we talked about this at length once. it gets tricky because no history or real life can ever be depicted in its entirety as a story, narratives have to be constructed to be interesting. and historical fiction is an ancient part of the form - i remember asking him how we reckon with shakespeare writing plays about real figures, for example - and there's not an easy conclusion. that said, what i do think matters is some measure of empathy and understanding for the subject so that a piece isn't blatant exploitation. blonde isn't problematic because it's fiction (my week with marilyn is fictional too, but at least she's treated like a person in it; smash fictionalized her a bit musically but was so special and meaningful to me), it's problematic because it's exploitative and traumatic for the sake of debasement.

the answer here being, of course, because it's more buzzworthy to exploit the real person and hideously fictionally degrade and abuse her, and draws more attention, than a fictional starlet would. marilyn is still incandescent and instantly recognizable and consumable as a tragedy. her rights are owned by an ad agency who only cares about making money off her image - hence countless products with fake quotes printed on them (and i admittedly have some mm things) - so they don't care how she's depicted so long as she gets a check, and the graphic fictionalized account of her life is only dollar signs to them.

marilyn exists in a particular section of pop culture that is very difficult to confront. her contemporaries would never be treated in this way, even though many of them had very sad stories of hardship too, or experienced abuse themselves. we're not seeing this done to audrey hepburn or grace kelly or rita hayworth or elizabeth taylor or vivien leigh or natalie wood (the list of talented, unforgettable and beautiful women from that time goes on and is long). even when any of those women have had biopics made about them, there's a very different intent. (ie: nicole kidman portrayed grace kelly and lucille ball in recent years to mixed reviews, and i don't agree with sorkin on the latter at all, but at least it wasn't exploitative. renee zellweger won an oscar for playing judy garland, michelle williams played marilyn and then played gwen verdon to moving effect). but marilyn is so ingrained in the public consciousness as a pinup and sex object that she gets reduced to it far more easily, as if that should just be the expectation for her. i remember there was a thing in the 2000s (which was just not a great time in discussions of women), where there was this idea that "trashy" girls liked marilyn and "classy" girls liked audrey, and you should always aim to be an audrey. (i love audrey too, this is not her fault.) and it was only looking at them as flat images to pit them against each other. hair color, body types, class backgrounds, these were seen as morally based differences rather than any appreciation of either actual woman. pop culture has been obsessed with this madonna/whore mentality when it comes to marilyn - she was poor, her mother was mentally ill, her father abandoned her, she didn't get a formal education, she modeled and (gasp) did a shoot nude when she needed money to survive, so doesn't that make her a commodity, a body we're allowed access to? forget that she pushed back against that very idea when she was living. the way her varying hardships are viewed as entertainment fodder has always been gross, even though she was far from alone in having those difficulties. (the world lost judy only seven years after marilyn, in a not dissimilar way). when marilyn said she was constantly running into people's subconscious, it's still true. so much has been projected onto her that frankly any telling of her story says more about the creator than it does about her. there's a mystique because she's seen as a creation/invention, painted over norma jeane, there's an ease to reducing her to a baby doll voice or to fragility or to desperation for affection. there's an oddly derisive air around her talent, the blame for which is the remains of the studio system that wouldn't take her seriously. there's an obsession with her lateness and her substance abuse and her medical care that erases context for how those things transpired. she's like a mirror reflecting whatever is desired, rather than a human subject. they're taking her personhood and soul away from her to render her this defiled, diaphonous thing.

besides the quotes i put in the other post, her pleading to not be made into a joke, i've been thinking about this a lot too - "hollywood is a place where they'll pay you a thousand dollars for a kiss and fifty cents for your soul. I know, because I turned down the first offer often enough and held out for the fifty cents."

[taltos-seidmadr]

hello! i'm a burgeoning queer norse heathen and i was wondering if you would be willing to talk about your personal view on odin, specifically his relationship to loki and their partners and children. i'm interested in working with all of them but i'm conflicted on how i feel about odin tricking and getting rid of loki's children, especially the children of angrboda since i am currently working with her. does it ever feel like, unethical to work with gods who have a bad personal history with each other? or is that an oversimplification of the gods? thanks for any thoughts!

Awww dear anon, as another queer heathen let me extend a hug (respectfully)! I'm happy you wrote. I hope that you will enjoy your newly blossoming spirituality and if you wanna talk to someone about literally anything, don't hesitate to reach out.

I think what you're asking is an extremely interesting question because it fundamentally hinges on what you think the gods exactly are, like what is a god overall and what they do, as well as what the myths actually are, and what they mean if anything? These are extremely complicated questions and depending on the underlying beliefs you can get wildly different answers from different people and even one person's belief can change over time (as mine did quite a lot). I can definitely tell you what I believe/built up from my personal experience but I don't want to convince you to think the same, I thought I would just kinda circle around the topic a little bit and maybe you can sort of use it as a springboard to discover what you want to believe.

So... I will start there, that I don't treat the myths like what you are describing, at all. I think of them as entirely man-made constructs, beautiful stories that explain how a certain culture thought the world works. That doesn't mean that they don't matter, of course, but they matter in the same way that for example a beautiful poem does, and not like scientific facts do. I still think that they can and might hold truths, but in ways that are a thousand ways more removed from reality than say, a historical account. It's not even whether they actually happened or not, it's just that like a poem, it's not really the point whether they did.

I wanna point out that if you wanna treat the surviving myths as an actual account of things that really happened, I don't want to attack that - you absolutely can - but keep in mind that that is also an "artificial" and subjective choice. There are two reasons for this. One, is that type of storytelling where the individual stories all hang on a singular, cohesive narrative thread and make up One Big Series of Ragnarök Netflix Original, either didn't exist yet (afaik) or even if it did, it can only be applied to norse myth as a creative exercise, because "norse myths" as they were, were always a collection of regional traditions that sometimes tell wildly different and occasionally conflicting accounts. The reason why this is important is because originally a version of the narrative where, say, Ódin over the course of five separate but tightly connected, linear episodes "turned evil" and "betrayed Loki's family" did not really exist. There is no linear timeline. There are only stories, loosely scattered across a landscape, in which gods sometimes appear, taking on different narrative roles. There are stories in which Ódin is the villain, and there are stories in which Loki is the villain. And there are sometimes accounts that all tell the allegedly same story but in one everything is Loki's fault and in another Loki wasn't even there.

Is this where I insert the gif? You know the one. Yeah, I think it will fit just right here.

The second point overlaps with the first a little bit, but I wanna point out a different side of the same coin. We KNOW this, for a fact, that those versions of the myths that exist today, are texts that were written by human authors (some of which we know by name), specifically for entertainment purposes, with their own unique authorial voices and intent, and the text should be understood within that context before attempting to take it at face value. This is true for all texts, generally. So it's actually less like Ragnarök Netflix Original and more like Ragnarök Extended Universe (as in like, superhero comics) full of parallel universes, retcons, and being handled by different authors who all might have had different visions of what the canon should look like.

Sorry, unfortunately I learned philology and questions like "what is the context?" "what is canon, and why is that canon?" "what does a text actually say, why that, and how is it trying to say it?" are actually SUPER interesting to me and therefore I had to make this detour. But I wanna point out one more thing, and not as a philologist, but more as a friendly fellow believer.

Like I said, treating the texts as something that literally happened is a subjective choice, and not one that I would make, but making choices like that about your beliefs is not only absolutely okay but YOUR prerogative. If someone tells you otherwise, they are either trying to control you, or take your money, or both. Dems the facts.

To stay a little bit closer to the point, my answer to this question is that to me to blame a god for something they did in the myths would be like blaming an actor for something that the character that they played committed in a movie. This would be nonsensical to me because the context is different. Which is a really simple and maybe kinda boring answer. But if you choose to treat the myths as facts, you have some really interesting questions to ask yourself, like, why is it that there are different versions of the same story? Which one do I choose to believe, and why? Are they maybe... really all factually true at the same time? How is that possible? What does that say about Aristotlean logic? Btw I personally do believe that gods come from a place where two things can be true at the same time, if that's anything!

Ok, so, you're asking about the morality of it all, which is I think an even deeper and more intriguing question. The thing is, that there was a time, when I was just a newly beginning Heathen, when I was very convinced that the gods are actually kinda like personified/conscious forces of reality (kinda like forces of nature, but more abstract) and the myths are like an approximation of the blueprint of how they interact, in an extremely metaphorical way. So at that time I was kinda like what I believe is called a "soft" polytheist except that I ALSO did believe that the gods are actual beings that you can interact with somehow, so I was more like a hard if slightly platonistic animist, if you will, without being completely aware of it. At that time, I would have told you that Loki and Ódin being "in conflict" is more like how fire and ice are "in conflict". Ya feel? That's just kinda how things are and there isn't really any morality involved.

However as time went on, I almost completely shedded this belief, and did so extremely quickly. I'm sure there's someone out there who believes the same thing right now, so I don't want to sound even a little bit dismissive, I think it's just a good example of how you don't have to set your beliefs in stone cause time will shape them regardless.

Today, with all the experience(s) behind me, I can say only one thing. I have no fucking idea what the gods really are, where they come from, and what they are doing when they are not interacting with us, if anything. But I do think that even if they are not exactly like people, they are kinda like people. Thinking, feeling persons with their own choices and preferences, and their capacity to have emotions is either like that of a human, or at least comparable to it in some kind of way. So... yeah, from my subjective point of view treating them like the Blorbos from the Ragnarök Show is a little bit reductive... but only if you are willing to take my assumption as true.

That also means that I'm absolutely sure they occasionally experience conflicts among many other things, most of which we will probably never hear about. But I will be honest, just for me, subjectively, it's hard to imagine that the gods engage in conflicts with each other that are irreparable in nature, because it's bad for PR, to put it bluntly. Like, there are so many forces in the world you could be focusing the anger on instead of infighting. It's way harder to Get Things Done (what things, I don't know, but I do believe that the gods are doing Something, influencing the way the world is going as it were) if they sow pointless discord among the few individuals (human followers) that they can count on. On the other hand, even if Ódin and Angrboda are not like, bosom buddies per se, with a little courtesy and encouragement a human who is willing to listen to Angrboda can become a person who is willing to listen to Ódin VERY easily. That's a net positive for everyone involved. Free of charge!!!!

I don't actually believe that the gods are forming like little high school factions against each other that will one day actually and physically go to war, even though the myths literally say that. I'm sure a lot of people would beg to differ, and they would not be able to convince me. In my belief, there are enormous conflicts in the world, maybe even battles, but they are somewhere completely different, and on entirely different scales.

Because I see gods as Kinda Like People, I would treat the issue of hanging out with one or the other as more or less like an interpersonal relationship, as well. Which is to say, I would ask what they think of it, and then I would think about it for myself and whether I give the gods the right to have a say in that or not. And if you believe in gods as persons you can talk to, I would urge you to do the same.

I wanna go into a hypothetical for a second, cause I feel like there is an interesting sub-question embedded into this that I have several thoughts on. Let's say that you take the myths as something that actually happened (which I think you do) and you also think of a god as a person, more or less like you and me (I don't know if this is true but I wanna assume it for the sake of the hypothetical) AND you think that "following" a god means something like "having a friendly or familial relationship with" (which I agree with, and... I think that's also what you think? I'm not sure but let's assume that too, for now.)

So let's say, that said god comes to you, and they reveal it to you as your friend that the other god was really mean to them and/or their family, and let's say you have accepted that as your personal truth. Is it unethical to hang out with said god knowing that they were in some way harmful to your friend? On a completely hypothetical level I think there is at least some sort gray area. But I wanna add two things to this. One, I personally believe that if your answer is "Sorry, I'm a human and this is god stuff and I don't want to be involved/take sides" or even "I don't want you to try and influence my relationships with other gods" it is entirely in your right to set that as a boundary. The second thing is, that the hypothetical is completely moot, because it is my personal experience AND logical conviction that gods never actually do this. If this exact thing happened to someone reading this, I'm not gonna fight that, that's your truth and I'm sure that happened for a good reason. But again, generally this is bad for PR, and also they tend to respect people's boundaries about making their own worship. If a spiritual entity comes to you and tries to control what other spiritual entities you are talking to, that is usually the exact same in the spirit world as it is in the human world. A big red flag.

I will say this. I, as a devoted Lokisperson, not only work with Ódin very frequently, but second to Ódin from his family the one I interact with the most is actually Baldr (if you can believe!) and the only conflict that has ever arisen from this was that at the very beginning Loki was a little bit upset that I assumed he could cause problems about it, which he never did, and truly, it was unfair of me to put him into such a defensive position right off the bat.

I wanna add just one more thing, that I don't really know if it will help or not but I feel like is important to add. Even if you don't believe in the myths as fact even the slightest, like me, being influenced by them on some or other level is not stupid, and in fact in a way kind of unavoidable, I think. Unfortunately it happened once that I had to say: sorry, I know this is unfair to you but the story about you just hits so incredibly close to home in a bad way that it might not ever work out between us in this whole lifetime, no matter what I do. I do think of this as a bad thing, but it is what it is, and we could discuss that and let it rest with no further conflict or issue. I don't really know in which direction the pendulum is swinging for you. But however you feel about working with these gods, is valid, and it's up to you to change it or leave it as it is.

Okay, so Ódin. I like to talk about him, because I think he is a little bit misunderstood and I fancy myself being capable of bridging over this gap, even if shoddily. I think he gets a bad rep because his followers love to talk about him as That Motherfucker(affectionate) and it makes perfect sense from an inside joke point of view but it scares potential new followers away from him as someone not to be trusted. This is really bad for many reasons but especially because he deserves way better than being (mis)represented by fascists and we could always use more people to drown them out.

You know, "tricksterness" is an extremely broad term that entails an entire kaleidoscope of different things, and trickster entities can be so different from one another depending on what aspects they tend to take to. I don't know if you have a personal connection to Loki at this moment, but if you know him, then whatever you think of him (and I can blindly say that, with certainty) you will find Ódin somewhere deep down, in the core, a little bit of the same but in the actual, practical manifestation completely different. What I personally think - and I'm not alone with this view, as far as I can tell - is that Ódin likes to perpetually do something that I could scientifically describe as a "little bit of trolling". If you pick up contact with him, it is very possible that he will purposefully challenge you and especially provoke your intellect and worldviews. Depending what kind of person you are this may seem exciting, annoying or a mixture of both. I think that the sentence "Ódin cannot be trusted" is a 10000000% true statement but more like an optical illusion cannot be trusted. In an emotional sense, he is perfectly capable of building a relationship based on trust and he does deeply care about his followers, like any god worth their salt would. It is definitely worth at least a conversation to figure out whether this is for you or not.

You did ask what I believe personally, so. In my experience Ódin and Loki are clearly very close, and I have never personally witnessed bad blood between them about anything even the slightest bit. Do they bicker, or even fight, yes of course but in the way that two people (and/or two beings who are intertwined across narratives and beyond time and space) who care about each other do. Honestly... I don't even know how to describe that but whatever they have going on makes even such a weighty thing as a narrative plot point in a thousand years old myth completely irrelevant and weightless in comparison. Wherever the story goes, they can go bigger. A book about them may say whatever, their bond is like that which holds the ink of the print to the paper. It cannot be torn apart because it's just on an entirely different level.

As for my tiny little personal perspective, they only ever encouraged me to reach out to the other, I often ask one of their opinions on my workings with the other and they are always supportive and helpful. Needless to say, I treat the myth of Ódin mistreating Loki's kids as entirely fictional, and while this does not necessarily mean that Ódin has never crossed them in any way in the history of time, I have literally never heard about it, saw them behave like that's a thing that happened, or even encountered them referencing it even one time. Somehow I never actually saw Ódin interact with any of Loki's kids but I know that Sleipnir and Ódin are in contact with each other a lot, obviously, and seem to be just fine (yes, I know this may not be the same for everyone but I do treat Sleipnir as a god in his own right). Just going off of gut feeling I would say that out of the whole bunch maybe Angrboda and Ódin are the farthest from each other emotionally, though it wouldn't veer into animosity, just in a room full of gods it's very little likely that they would be the ones to stop to talk to each other unless they had something very important to say. I must admit that I interacted with Angrboda very rarely and I really don't know her well enough to know her true opinions on anything. When we interacted, she seemed like a person who likes to keep a little respectful distance in general, but it was not even a little bit a problem to her that I was connected to Ódin.

The tl;dr of the whole thing is that I don't think that you have to be afraid of picking up contact with either of them if this is what you truly want. I don't know what they will tell you if you do. But I can't imagine they would have anything against it - as far as I know, being an Ódin and Loki follower in some or other capacity, at the same time, is actually very common.

[iteratedextras]

Couple of things.

1 - Already accounted for.

My post says...

scientific racism at best, [...] either you came up with those numbers scientifically (race science), or you made those numbers up (bigotry or other unethical motives).

Basically there are three options: { non-racism / racial agnosticism, scientific racism, unscientific racism }

a - Because racial agnosticism doesn't take a position on the underlying "correct" number of Cambodians to work at Google, it doesn't lose anything if Cambodian immigration switches from farm laborers to electrical engineering professors, or vice versa.

b - For scientific racism and unscientific racism, there is a difference between bounded and unbounded racism.

For example, a bounded unscientific racialist policy might be to install racial quotas for all positions in the country. This would discriminate against people who invested more time, money, and effort into getting the associated degrees. However, a depth 1, non-recursive quota can be considered a form of tax.

2 - We're above subsistence agriculture population levels.

The problem with treating equal outcomes as axiomatic is that this is unbounded unscientific racism.

Human population levels are now over the historical 500 million or so of the pre-industrial era. Human survival now depends on industrial agriculture, and industrial agriculture depends on cheap energy and cheap fertilizer, which depend on industrial mining and refining, and as the most discoverable mineral deposits are extracted, this depends on identifying and extracting more challenging mineral deposits, which depends on a number of inputs, including computer chips.

As you have identified, the people who treat racial equity as axiomatic use recursive racial quotas. It isn't enough to just hire a Cambodian with no computer experience and give him the title of Software Engineer, and then either not assign him any work, or only assign him the work of gaining computer experience until he's ready. No, he has to have the same number of projects, of the same level of importance, from day one, regardless of whether he has ever touched a computer before in his life. (Otherwise, it's "evidence of racism.")

Their defenders would say they don't mean this, but at the same time (as you know), they're always hunting for new disparate outcome stats in the search for hidden racism.

Since the process doesn't stop, it can keep going until it makes production unworkable. Our computer-untrained Cambodian can't write database software, so if we force him to be in charge of the updating the database software anyway, and we demand that he actually write the same amount of code that actually gets used, then at some point we just won't have database software.

What happens if we apply that to agriculture? Is it more important that the people we label "farmers" have a particular skin color, or is it more important that they reliably farm food?

To put it simply, treating absolute racial equality of outcomes as axiomatic, and therefore more important than avoiding a famine, is immoral.

The only way around it is not treating the idea as seriously as it's presented (it's presented as a moral emergency which justifies suspending the rules against open, explicit racial discrimination, and which requires a constant search for more), or corruption - normalized lying.

Now obviously, they would come back at this with, "Oh, so you're saying Hondurans have no ability to engineer microchips? That must mean you want to enslave them all," and make a really stupid fucking smug grin while saying it.

Thing is, they know perfectly fucking well that that's complete and utter bullshit. Show me a Honduran with a degree in computer engineering, and I'll show you a Honduran who can engineer a microchip. Show me a Honduran who is struggling with algebra, and he's not going to be any better at engineering a microchip than a redneck who struggles with algebra.

The people who really are stubbornly committed to this are no better than the members of the far right who wanted us to carpet nuke the Middle East back in 2003.

see, i feel scott is the worst kind of coward, he is the coward that throws the stone but hides his hand. i agree with scott that people have a right to hide beliefs they'd get punished for not hiding. people have the right to believe privately about race realism all they want and not have to disclose it or be interrogated about it.

but what i cannot abide is this wishy washy position where you *hint* that race realism might be correct but never really fully say it or go in depth about it but go all wink wink nudge nudge about it. either say it with your whole chest and have the guts to actually have a proper argument for it or shut it, this spineless hedging is incredibly annoying.

[alatismeni-theitsa]

Honestly I find the current series of posts/asks decrying black actors in European settings quite uncomfortable, as a Greek born and raised in Greece. Especially the fact that it started from bashing the new LotR show, which is not even mythological or traditional folklore. Seems to me there's a xenophobic undertone y'all might need to examine in you. While I would like to see Greeks or people with Greek heritage being hired for Greek roles, I think Hollywood is ultimately a US industry catering to US needs. Our own TV presents other cultures in a just as distorted manner, because it caters to Greek needs and ideas. That's just how cultures work. If at least that role is given to a black brother/sister instead of some WASP, I'm just gonna be glad and happy their career was uplifted by getting a decent role (unlike the majority of roles black folks usually get).

Hi, I am answering this a bit late due to time constraints, sorry for that. More under the cut!

It depends on the setting, to be honest, and what cultures are described and what type of contact they have. If it is consistent with the universe, I don't see why not include people from different backgrounds. And historically we know these people existed in Europe.

It didn't start from LOTR, this discussion. It's been going on for many years, actually, about mythology and folklore of other countries including Greece. Naturally, Greeks cannot always be hired for roles. A Chinese production is not going to be asked to find 50 Europeans to create a play on Odyssey for example.

"Hollywood is ultimately a US industry catering to US needs." I mean yes, it is a US industry. Its reach is global though, so whatever they create it will eventually arrive to the people they are meant to represent. So these people later talk about that. US is a whole empire as of now, to the point it controls many foreign armies and our army with it (sending it to fight against Yemen), while having multiple bases on our soil if it wants to bomb more Middle Easterners and Eastern Europeans. (true historic examples) I am asking for some accountability from the US society here, for them to gain some awareness of the power and privilege they have as a country, and that they don't live in a bubble.

"Our own TV presents other cultures in a just as distorted manner, because it caters to Greek needs and ideas." This is a bad thing on our part, as well and I believe we should improve. In the age of information and adequate resources for a large part of the population showrunners have the capability of doing fairly good research and hiring actors from the backgrounds they want to represent. I am judging Greece in a similar way I judge the US, it's just happened that the discussion around that wasn't as prominent or popular.

If at least that role is given to a black brother/sister instead of some WASP, I'm just gonna be glad and happy their career was uplifted by getting a decent role (unlike the majority of roles black folks usually get). Here I agree with some parts and disagree with others. A Black Greek/Afro-Greek is as much as a brother as anyone else and their presence shouldn't be a negative element in any way. There is also the fact that creatures, gods, and heroes of a nation don't reflect the minorities of a country. Say a Black brother's family comes from Nigeria (I am using the country a lot because many people will be a biiiit familiar with some Yoruba gods). His family wouldn't want the depictions of their African old gods and heroes to change, too, despite Nigeria having large minorities of Europeans, Americans and Asians. If you asked this person to see a movie with his favorite Nigerian national hero played by a dark-skinned South Asian he wouldn't find the adaptation faithful.

I totally understand why that happens, and since I wouldn't ask it from the Nigerians I wouldn't ask it from any other culture because for the majority it feels offensive for the same reasons. Heroes, gods, and creatures were described by the locals through the centuries to a certain degree of agreement. Mythical Congolese heroes looked a certain way and we know it from the sculptures. I don't see any arguments of "But Middle Easterners existed in the country in antiquity! So the mythical kings must also reflect them!" In any case, I don't see this replacement as meaningful corrective action.

A Greek man may not be able to play Hercules because of his height, I am not fit to play any Japanese goddess, and so on. Yes, we are going to lose this very specific opportunity. If I am trying to play local goddesses or spirit in Swiss movies it's common sense I won't much coin. If I don't resemble any local deities then why should I ask I embody them? In another country, I will know that the local creatures and heroes are not meant to represent me, the 0,005% of the population, specifically, and I am not a norm in the country. This fact can coexist with the reality of South Europeans facing some bigotry and racism in North Europe, and South Europeans asking for better treatment.

Not everyone is meant to embody everyone. I don't find anything offensive with this idea and there a multitude of POC don't find it offensive as well. National figures and creatures looking a certain way it's not groundbreaking to them, and they follow this principle in their countries as well. They also know that by following that principle they don't lose any rights in other countries. What they want is purposeful change, no pandering or second-hand depictions from figures that are widely known to be non-Black (they want new roles and historical roles about them and their history), and more steps to be taken by famous platforms towards true equality and opportunities. I had to present this position briefly but, naturally, it would be better to search their comments and see it from their perspective.

[serpent-of-the-silver-plumes]

would you mind talking more about bart and unreliable narration? I always hear people say unreliable narration but I've never seen any concrete examples from media I actually consume so I'd love your thoughts

Oh absolutely!! I actually wrote a thing about this a while back but then went 'this is not well written' and it got buried in my drafts, so I’m glad to have an excuse to pull that up and rewrite it. (Also sorry, this got really long.)

Basically, at one point I was listening to a podcast (Be the Serpent, ep 4), and they categorize different kinds of unreliable narrators into three types: the narrator who knows they are lying to you, the narrator who is lying to themself (and therefore you), and the narrator who is lying because they are missing some key information. I would argue that the three main pov characters of the Bartimaeus Trilogy each represent a different type of these unreliable narrators.

Going in backwards order, Kitty is the narrator who lies because she is missing some key information, at least until the third book. As a commoner, even one who is part of a resistance movement, her knowledge of magic is extremely limited and biased. Were we to go off of her point of view alone, we would get an inaccurate view of this world and the power dynamics that exist within it: that magicians are somehow special in holding magic and that they have evil demons who work alongside them in shared mischief/hunger for power/whatever.

However, because the books include other points of view, the full impact of that unreliability is not realized.

Similarly, Nathaniel lies to himself, especially in the later books. He ignores how much he personally contributes to upholding a system that depends on the oppression and slavery of other sentient beings, and squashes down the last traces of his moral compass. I don’t think he ever really questions the system of government or if it should be there and work the way it does.

To some extent, we do see through his unreliability as well, because Bartimaeus is around to keep a check on him and tell the reader that no, the magicians and their imperialism are bad, that spirits have very good reason to hate humans, and give us other world building details that contradict what Nathaniel believes.

But some of it is about what is going on inside Nathaniel’s own head, so there is also a lot that can’t be fully seen by an outside perspective that has to be assumed by the reader. Like he will deny the sentimental feelings he has towards Ms. Underwood and the guilt he had over Kitty’s supposed death and the fact that he even remotely cares about Bartimaeus, but actions speak louder than words.

Because both of these characters’ unreliability stem from a lack of understanding, having other perspectives in the book in some ways cancels out their unreliability, and actually ties their unreliability more to their character development than as a plot/narration device. Kitty grows more reliable throughout the series while Nathaniel gets less so until the end. This doesn’t make that unreliability useless though, especially in a series aimed for children. By getting each character’s point of view, we can see where they are coming from and how the knowledge and views they have affect the way they act, but there is also someone else to point out how they are wrong, to make you question how true what each individual says is.

Bartimaeus is entirely different from the first two characters. His narration is told in first person, unlike Nathaniel and Kitty’s third person. He talks directly to the reader and goes off on tangential footnotes that are not necessarily part of the events currently happening in the story. Because of this narration style, he also has the power to lie more directly to the reader than any of the other characters.

Given his life, it is understandable how he has gotten into the habit of lying. Every moment of his existence on Earth is spent under the power of someone else, so he lies in order to protect himself. There are some instances where he lies to his masters in order to escape punishment or to lead them into danger so he can be set free, but he also lies about his feelings because he cannot afford to be emotionally vulnerable.

For the most part, I think it can be assumed that the dialogue and most actions that happen in his pov chapters are told as they are, since much of that lines up with what goes on in the other characters’ perspectives, and also there are at least a few things that show him in a less-than-flattering light that he would probably leave out or change if he could. Instead, the lies he tells are largely about his past and his emotions, often done through exaggeration or omission, and cannot be collaborated by others.

When lying about his past, Bartimaeus frequently exaggerates his prestige and role in history. In Ptolemy’s Gate, Bartimaeus says that he talked to King Solomon about Faquarl’s tendency to brag about his historical importance. Even beyond the obvious irony, in the prequel we see Bartimaeus’s time at Solomon’s court, and while it isn’t technically impossible for him to have talked to Solomon about Faquarl, the timing and circumstances make it extremely unlikely. Although his other stories cannot be proven or disproven with what we know, this instance and his general tendency to brag outrageously makes it very likely that Bartimaeus at the very least embellishes.

However, despite being super showy about his past, Bartimaeus doesn’t actually include much important information. He very rarely talks about his great feats as a thief or assassin or anything else. When he lists his accomplishments, he describes building walls and talking to important historical figures. There’s a post somewhere (if I find it, I’ll link it) that explains this as being a way for Bartimaeus to try to take control of his reputation and therefore his life; by associating with safer jobs, he is less likely to be summoned for very dangerous and morally reprehensible jobs.

He does generally try to portray himself as clever and collected and just generally more cool than he actually is. There’s a moment at the end of the first book where he describes himself as trying to calm Nathaniel who is freaking out, and then the next chapter is from Nathaniel’s pov which describes him as being the calmer one while Bartimaeus is a fly anxiously buzzing around.

I don’t remember the exact line, but in the second book there’s an exchange that goes something like this:

“____” I said calmly.

“Stop your whimpering,” Kitty said.

The way Bartimaeus portrays himself is straight up contradicted by the more factual account of the words and actions of someone else. And presumably there are plenty of other times that we do not see contradictory evidence where Bartimaeus straight up lies about how he is reacting to something.

But one of Bartimaeus’s most unreliable points centers around humans. Throughout the books, he constantly talks about the ways he has killed and would like to kill his masters, if given the opportunity. Nathaniel is an exception, one that Bartimaeus does admit to the reader, but even in the third book when he talks the most about how he would kill Nathaniel or even join a demon rebellion if Faquarl offered right then and there, Bartimaeus does not actually follow through on these threats when he gets the chance. Despite all of his talk about how much he hates humans, Bartimaeus has as much of a positive relationship he can have with as many humans possible, given the circumstances.

A lot of his unreliability centers around Ptolemy, which is what some of Bartimaeus’s biggest lies of omission are about. In the first book, we do get the sense that Bartimaeus has a soft spot for at least some humans. His excuses of saving and looking after Nathaniel in order to avoid Indefinite Confinement, while likely not entirely false, do fall a bit flat. We even get a mention of “a boy I had known once before, someone I had loved.” Although this is not explicitly connected to Ptolemy at this point, mentions of brown skin and the Nile make a pretty obvious connection to Ptolemy, especially as Bartimaeus describes taking on Ptolemy’s form several times later on. There is a less obvious hint too, “I sat on the ground, cross-legged, the way Ptolemy used to do.” Even without knowing much about what kind of relationship Bartimaeus had with Ptolemy, that kind of detail shows ‘a devotion to detail that could only come with genuine affection, or perhaps even love.’

It isn’t until the third book until we learn anything substantial about his relationship with Ptolemy, and even then he doesn’t tell the whole story. The fandom jokes about how Bartimaeus just casually mentions in a foot note that he prefers a lioness form because the manes are annoying, and it’s not until the flashback that you find out that the mane is part of what got Ptolemy killed. And even with the flashbacks, you still never see the time that Ptolemy visited the Other Place.

There are a lot of posts on this site that talk about how Bartimaeus absolutely was idealizing Ptolemy, and how there’s some evidence that he isn’t the perfectly sweet never-did-anything-wrong innocent child that Bartimaeus describes him as (notably that part where he was vaguely annoyed that people kept coming to him to ask for help and interrupted his research). Not that Ptolemy secretly sucks or anything, but it’s really easy to let nostalgia skip over the less dramatic details of Ptolemy being an actual human being with flaws.

In summary, I would argue that all of the trilogy protagonists are unreliable narrators to varying extents, and Jonathan Stroud is a genius for how he manages to make it all work.

[floralovebot]

Hi! Me again, so I took what you said and decided to make Musa's surname Yuen, the Cantonese version of the surname Ruan, for my rewrite. Is that okay? Secondly, I want to refer to what you said about not making Melody a 1:1 version of China, I'm already doing a lot of research but the issue is knowing what to mix so I don't come across as offensive. I'm not trying to be historically accurate 100% but I think you should include an element of a culture and it's history. Thoughts?

Hey!

Yeah that name sounds good :)

When it comes to what to mix and what not to mix, generally speaking just try to be natural with it. Like try to "mimic" how cultures actually mix in real life (but maybe without the colonization factor). For instance, things like proximity and trading are very important when considering what would realistically mix. Southeast Asian countries don't have as much influence from say South Korea but a lot more from China. Meanwhile, the countries that border the continent have more culture mixing with Japan because of water trade routes (and mostly Japan being a major colonizer country but again maybe don't add that for your story).

Typically you should try to avoid mixing things like religions! You do want to avoid mixing anything that is very important and has either a belief or power element to it. Usually, when things like religions or governments are mixed, it's due to forced assimilation and/or other bad things. Pretty much anything that's super important and not on the more mundane side of culture you shouldn't mix. (Obviously, this is a case-by-case kind of thing, but if you mix religions, you need to think about how that happened. Was it due to colonization? Was it due to migration? Was it due to trading? Did one society adopt a religion because they didn't have their own belief system? Why didn't they have one? Things like that!)

Things that are commonly "mixed" though are foods, especially when regions share the same ingredients, weapons, textiles, and information (usually trading). Really just mostly items and knowledge on how to use them/make them. There can also be fashion mixing if there's any fabric trading and some language mixing to account for language barriers (the occasional word or two but usually not entire grammar rules; if it's an entire language, something else was at play there).

Something I personally think you should avoid doing is just mixing it all together and calling it a different culture. Disney did that with Raya and while I know plenty of people felt like that was good representation, to me, it felt very weird. Mixing cultures for the specific purpose of trying to put in as much representation as possible is almost never going to have a good outcome.

Something you also need to keep in mind is the actual cultures you're adding to Melody. In canon, Melody is mostly East Asia but has plenty of Southeast Asian culture. You certainly can add all of Asia but that could feel really forced depending on how you do it. Nabu and Helia are both coded as Asian and neither of them are from Melody yknow? You can do it properly! But it also really depends on how much you're actually going to talk about Melody and its culture and history. (A good way to casually do this is by introducing other Asian characters from Melody [like have a character with a Malaysian or Indian name etcetc]).

Another thing you need to consider is, again, proximity. How big is Melody? This is an entire planet we're talking about, not just a continent. You know how indigenous people in america didn't affect indigenous people in asia much? Same thing here! I'd actually recommend trying to map out Melody and where you want real life cultures to be (do try to keep the grouping similar though). This way you can plan out which cultures would actually "mix" (hint: it would be very similar to real life).

There's also the thing, and I don't remember what it's called, where two or more cultures can have similar aspects without coming into contact with each other. For example, a lot of different cultures can have similar dishes if they have the same ingredients available, even if they weren't in communication at that point.

Listen... there's a lot that goes into making worldbuilding Not Offensive when you make things based off of real life. Rainbow didn't think this far yknow? They weren't going to cause that's too much work and it's much easier to just slap the "vaguely ancient china" aesthetic on and be done with it. That's why they ended up taking so much inspiration from literally everywhere else. They didn't want to think about what would realistically "mix" because in their eyes all asian cultures are the same. And honestly, no matter what you do, there's always going to be an air of "hmmm are you sure about that?" when you don't make things realistic because they very much made Melody the Asian Planet™ and it's hard to get rid of certain real life cultural things without people side-eyeing you because "why did you do that 👀". Yknow?

Just... try your best! There are a couple of accounts here and there that do help with these kinds of things. Like just look for those "i'm writing something and i don't know if it sounds racist please help" blogs. There's so many of them! And while I can't guarantee that they'll answer you cause most of them get hundreds of asks, it would be a great place to look for advice since they've often already answered asks just like this (yknow the "i'm making an Asian Society how to not make it racist" kind of thing).

I do wish you the best of luck! And if you want to shoot me another ask about something specific, I'll do my best to help :)

[edwad]

To what extent do you think that a belief that communism would follow from the collapse of capitalism is an ideological assumption vs a conclusion based on empirical investigation?

i think it depends on the nature of the belief. lots of people seem to think that communism is inevitable due to iron historical laws and i think that's pretty silly, projecting a historically situated set of political preferences onto history itself. there's no reason why communism has to happen or even why capitalism had to happen. these developments can really only be understood retrospectively. i think this is "ideological" in a sense, and (among marxists) generally has something to do with an overly deterministic rendering of marx's work. i think elements of this are in marxs work, for sure, but that's definitely not all there is and i think many of his bold historical claims serve a propagandistic function rather than being honestly descriptive.

easy example would be the manifesto, where he makes some very strong claims about this stuff, like this one:

"The advance of industry, whose involuntary promoter is the bourgeoisie, replaces the isolation of the labourers, due to competition, by the revolutionary combination, due to association. The development of Modern Industry, therefore, cuts from under its feet the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie produces and appropriates products. What the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable."

this begins with an attempt at describing a tendency based on a set of political economic assumptions which are falsifiable in all the ways that people like to make a fuss about, but it ends with a passionate claim about a historical inevitability. the latter claim doesn't necessarily follow from the former, and it would have to be shown why the bourgeoisie as the "involuntary promoter" of modern industry leads to an inevitable victory of a competing class (putting aside the complicating fact that a victorious proletariat is a non-proletariat), rather than a purely economic tendency of self-collapse. this kind of deterministic reading would actually run into conflict with the first sentence of the manifesto regarding history as a history of class struggles since no class struggle would be necessary for capitalism to end, and this is even how certain people read marxs later work like capital, where the "expropriators are expropriated", which is "accomplished by the action of the immanent laws of capitalistic production itself, by the centralisation of capital" rather than as a result of violent class struggle.

but if we were read this bit of the manifesto more generously (probably too generously), there is something to be said about how the fall of the bourgeoisie and the victory of the proletariat as equal inevitabilities is not necessarily the same as saying that they are in fact totally inevitable. they are either inevitable or they are not, but equally so. this could also comes into conflict with rendering of marx as an economic determinist, since the laws of capitalist production could lead to the dissolution of the system on their own, without any inevitable victory on the part of the proletariat, negating their assumed equality. it should also be noted then, that in order for this generous reading of this section to work (if it can), the "fall of the bourgeoisie" would likely have be taken as being of a particular sort. if the sun exploded tomorrow and ended capitalism forever, it could not be described so narrowly as the "fall of the bourgeoisie" but of the elimination of human life altogether. by fall, we would have to refer to it in the sense of the outcome of a competition between classes.

elsewhere in the text, marx also leaves room for a more open-ended approach, when he talks about the historical struggle between classes as "a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes." floating the possibility of a "common ruin of the contending classes" expresses a very different kind of analysis than the purely economic determinism which can be teased out above. for there to exist a possibility which does not simply belong to the historical chain of revolutionary usurpations of power would suggest that the same could be true for us today. even if it's not exactly at the level being presented, this would in a sense be able to better account for things like the aforementioned explosion of the sun, or some other forces which exist and which we are unable to overcome (like a potentially catostrophic climate event). regardless, this attitude of historical openness is very different than what is found elsewhere in the text, and i think it can be located in various other forms later on in marxs life as well.

by 1882 when marx is writing the preface to the russian edition of the manifesto, he says

"The Communist Manifesto had, as its object, the proclamation of the inevitable impending dissolution of modern bourgeois property. But in Russia we find, face-to-face with the rapidly flowering capitalist swindle and bourgeois property, just beginning to develop, more than half the land owned in common by the peasants. Now the question is: can the Russian obshchina, though greatly undermined, yet a form of primeval common ownership of land, pass directly to the higher form of Communist common ownership? Or, on the contrary, must it first pass through the same process of dissolution such as constitutes the historical evolution of the West?

The only answer to that possible today is this: If the Russian Revolution becomes the signal for a proletarian revolution in the West, so that both complement each other, the present Russian common ownership of land may serve as the starting point for a communist development."

one of the interesting things about this is the first sentence where he talks about the aim of the manifesto as "proclam[ing] of the inevitable impending dissolution of modern bourgeois property", which is a one-sided framing of the problem and manages to put the "equally inevitable" proletarian victory to the side or simply subsumed into it. the latter probably makes the most sense, since he's here arguing that a russian revolution which would be made up of non-proletarian elements could have some revolutionary capacity toward communism, even if the proletariat on a world scale would still need to put in the work toward that aim. in each instance, he is talking to representatives of those elements. this is a political manifesto written to agitate and not simply a treatise of social science. this may get partly lost on 21st century readers, but the russian preface was written for the publication to be read by russian readers. the preface to the italian edition referenced italy as the first capitalist nation and asks its readers "Will Italy give us the new Dante, who will mark the hour of birth of this new, proletarian era?" etc.

it should be clear that there were real political stakes; that marx and engels were not simply describing something they saw around them. the empirical investigation was there in some sense and acted as a motivating force for action, but the particular calls on the revolutionary elements of each country which saw a translation captures the importance of political propaganda and revolutionary agency for the two authors. at times they felt a need to blur the differences between what must happen by iron historical law and what must happen or else we're ruined. this means that this famous document which has generated lots of ideas about what marxism is and how it relates to the historical struggle toward communism is full of theoretical ambivalences, and these exist in some way in many other texts by both marx and engels.

the tensions within and between texts give rise to misunderstandings about the need and possibility of communism, but i don't think that they are reducible to each other so that all claims about a future communism are necessarily ignorantly ideological. if there is a mass political will, and this is definitely what marx and engels were trying to generate with their work, then communism can be possible. the immanent tendencies of capital, which neither thinker really understood that well at the time of writing the manifesto (although it's held up fairly well in many ways), only add to the urgency of the need for such a movement. the destruction is all around us and will keep coming but we can't fall back on the inevitably of communism to save us without anyone ever having to lift a finger. the entire point is that we have to do it ourselves, otherwise the communist movement and its various mouthpieces (like marx and engels) would never even have to exist and communism could simply fall into our collective lap.

[thewriterowl]

Owl, my love and one of the patron goddesses of DinLuke! I hope you’re having a wonderful day <3 If you’re still doing fan fiction mashups, what about 1 (historical) and 32 (pregnancy)? I’d love to see what your mind comes up with lol

1: Historical AU and 32: Pregnancy

I know we can do regency or victorian...but I am also tempted for SW Jedi v. Mandalorian era to add in an enemies to lovers and star-crossed layer to it. It was maybe a one-night stand or the two of them met in battle and were separated from their groups and had to depend on each other to survive. They were together for a week and then, well, both are attractive and younger, the war has been hell, and they just allowed themselves to forget things for awhile.

They part with the idea they would never see each other again...only thing is that Luke did not really take into account is that he's part Naboo (and part Force) and well...the Force works in hella mysterious ways and, welp, what do you know...he's pregnant...with a Mandalorian's baby.

Luke has no idea what to do. Who does he tell? Does he tell anyone? Should he find the Mandalorian he slept with? He's in a panic but finally tells Obi-Wan, and well...this is a right interesting situation. Yoda is then the only other one to be told but they agree to not tell the republic. The republic is very territorial and has some uncomfortable power-houses that want to control the Jedi...if they discovered one of the more powerful Jedi masters not only can get pregnant but got pregnant by the enemy it would not be good for Luke.

But they can't remove him from the battle either. Not without good reason.

So, for now, Luke has to be on the field--but he is pulled back from the fronts.

Then one day Luke recognizes the ship of the man he slept with and makes the decision to go and tell him. So he sneaks away and sort of "captures" Din. Din is ready to attack but Luke stops him, begging him to listen for a moment and then he tells him the news and Din is stunned.

"You're having my baby?"

Luke winced, flushed, "Y-Yeah."

Now things are very different. Din cannot be expected to fight the one who is carrying his child...and he cannot let Luke be out in the field of battle either. luke just wanted to tell him but wasn't sure what else to say and...he gets kidnapped by the father of his baby.

Din is a leader of a small group who are told what has happened. They're all suspicious of Luke but if he's pregnant with their leader's baby then he was clan and staying put.

Now things need to be really reconsidered about the war because this baby is half Jedi and half Mandalorian and, yeah, this rag-tag team then decides they want the war to stop (they did anyway) and work to put Din on the throne so he can reach for a treaty with he Jedi and get this to stop.