#I don’t think I believe in any of the major religions (though I’ve been standing from afar gazing at Judaism

[sanguinaryrot]

I’m so excited. I know how to have one (1) extremely specific interaction in Irish now. someone ask me how I’m doing and what the weather is like quick /j

[artist-issues]

Okay here are some questions that are all related but could have different answers depending on the slightly different phrasing.

Do you think that Paladin Strait is gonna be the point-blank end of the saga? The final message will just be, 'the cycle continues' and their next album will be totally something new? (gosh i HOPE not that would be the worst) But if they do this, do you think they'll 'justify' it to their fans?

If it does continue, how do you think THEY will continue/end it? (positively, what we [you + me and maybe others who have similar worldview] WANT)

If it does continue, how do you think THEY will continue/end it? (negatively, what we FEAR they will do)

How do YOU wish they would continue/end it? (99% sure i know the answer but im curious how you'll phrase it exactly)

What do you think the biggest strengths of the Clancy story have been?

Biggest weaknesses?

What are you still drawing question marks on for the whole thing?

About Paladin Strait:

Okay, I hope and tentatively believe that that’s not what they’re doing. I don’t believe they’ve ever been pointing to a big “You’ll Always Struggle Forever” theme. It’s been almost fifteen years, I just have never gotten that impression (until this last album, but I still don’t believe it.) But, if that is somehow the hopeless message they’re perpetuating? I don’t think they’ll have to “justify it” to their “fans” at all. The majority of the twenty one pilots fandom justifies everything the band does, for themselves. Unless it comes to the band refusing to speak on social issues that the fandom has decided are important, and unless it comes to the fans not getting to stand where they feel special in an arena. I’ve seen the fans demand an explanation for those sorts of “lack of action” from the band. But I’ve never seen the fans get upset about any song or performance. They basically make the songs mean whatever they want them to mean, like the majority of fandoms do. So they’ll say “that’s a beautiful message,” no matter what the message actually is.

I don’t know how they’ll end it. They’ve always stopped short of a resolution. They go, “There is a problem (acknowledge it;) here’s how I feel about the problem; here’s what keeps me in the problem; and here’s how I’m crying out for help with the problem—“ but they’ve rarely, ever, said, “here’s how that cry for help is answered, definitely.” Taxi Cab and March to the Sea get the closest (of their “canon” stuff.) Everything else ends with the cry for help, never the answer. So, if I were to respond to “what do you think the answer will be, if they finally tell us about the answer?” I would say: they’ll point out that it has to be “Someone Outside Yourself, Who Knows You Better Than You Do, Answers the Cry For Help.” I hope the Torchbearer will, in some way, save Clancy. Even if it’s pulling his body out of the towers after he’s defeated so it can’t be seized. Some kind of saving. Because that’s what Taxi Cab and March end with; the spaceship takes Tyler up and shows him who to follow instead of the Dead Line, but he has to keep choosing that New Direction every day until the march is over. Or the Three Men hijack the hearse, pick the lock on his casket, and take the Dead Man to the Morning Sun. See, even when the Cry For Help is Answered By Someone Outside of Yourself, they end it on “but the journey isn’t over.” But at least there’s new direction in those songs, not the same old direction. Death-to-Life direction. I don’t know, though, and that’s what has me biting my nails.

About How I Think They’ll End It (Negative)

I don’t love thinking about this because my emotions are real tied up in whether they do or do not step out in faith. But I will point out that the worst-case scenario is, just to answer this question: the worst-case scenario is that Josh has decided there is no One True Faith and he’s into Eastern pagan religion that he associates with Christianity now, and Tyler has decided that whatever might be true about Christianity, the organized-religion Church is wrong about it all, starting with the LGBTQ+ stuff, and so he doesn’t know what’s right but he’s happy with that because it means he can keep “searching” and “imagining.” Like the “journey is the destination, we’ll never really know,” stuff. Which is not Christianity. It’s not true faith.

C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce

Because faith is focused on something bigger than and totally outside of yourself, yet real and knowable. Faith in “I dunno what it is, but there’s somethin big out there I guess I believe in, but we’ll never know what it truly is” is just a cheap disguise for “faith in my own understanding and control.” If you don’t know exactly what the object of your faith is, then you can pick and choose the things you like out of vagueness. Whatever, I can make a post about that later.

But if that’s where they’re at—I am not enjoying thinking through this right now—then the thing that makes most logical-story-sense coming out of that mindset, to me, would be “Clancy becomes the new leader of the Bishops, but ushers in an era of sunshine and imagination instead of the cold bleak walls of the city. What they burn down is the organized-religion analogue aspects of DEMA.” I think that would be a super stupid way to end it but maybe.

That’s worst-case. I think second-worst case would be “the cycle continues.” Clancy wakes up in his old room, the Banditos are gone, the neon gravestones are glowing, and then he like looks down and sees a flower, indicating that the Banditos are still out there and he has the chance to re-start the cycle and do it all better this time… or give up based on the idea that nothing will ever be better. And we end on a twenty-one-pilots-esque “Pick One” ending. I think this is the most likely ending, because it’s not an ending at all, and it will keep the religious crowd and the secular crowd both happy. Plus, as far as the story describing Tyler’s wrestling match with doubt and dark thoughts? It would mean he gets to keep wrestling, which, I hate to say it, has produced lots of successful music so far. But you know what, so would a winner to the wrestling match, because truth is worth more than success.

Third-worst-case scenario—Clancy “dies,” taking down the Towers of Silence with him. And all the Glorious Gone zombies fall over Phantom-Menace-style, leaving battered Banditos standing. And they live to fight another day; Nico is still out there, probably ready to seize and rebuild; but the Torchbearer goes to Clancy’s body and looks somber and takes the mask off of him and carries it away, or some other type of nod to that old performance of Time to Say Goodbye—but the point is it’ll end with the idea that Clancy goes on, but “Clancy” was always a character, an idea, a belief, that anybody can embody if they’re willing to sacrifice themselves so that others can get their focus off of Dark Thoughts. You know, kind of like how Tyler Joseph gets them to focus their ability-to-hurt-myself-energy on him, as a performer, instead of on themselves (Guns for Hands.) This is semi-fine because it’s about some form of self-sacrifice, but I don’t like that the emphasis is on “if I just sacrifice myself for the hope that things can get better, it’ll somehow help people, even if I don’t know what the Hope is.” It would obviously be better if someone outside of Clancy brings about the resolution to Clancy’s story.

FOURTH-worst case scenario—as in, the least bad of all of them—Clancy fights and wins against Nico by using his ability to “seize” Nico, and burns down the towers, and dies or disappears doing it. This is good because Nico dies, and good because of self-sacrifice, and cool because he uses “seizing” his Dark-Self-Focus and puppetting it, rather than letting it puppet him, is very close to what they’ve always been saying: the Biblical Idea of Taking Your Thoughts Captive, and using art as an introspection-weapon. BUT it’s bad, because then it makes Music the Savior, in a sense.

I wish they would end it like this:

Clancy is seized by Nico, who pilots Clancy’s body over to the window of the tower and shows the Banditos, fighting, that their hero has been defeated and is being used. It’s super disheartening, because the implication is maybe this was always going to happen, Clancy was never going to escape, or worse, Nico knew the plan and it was always doomed to fail, because somehow Clancy was always under his power, and Clancy is doing some kind of demonic dance or demonstration with yellow eyes showing that he’s nothing but Nico’s vessel now—but Clancy’s still fighting Nico’s control, on the inside, mentally. (In a music video I guess they could cut-away, between what’s happening outside of Clancy’s head as Nico shows the Banditos that he’s been defeated, and then cut-away to Tyler singing and fighting a battle in Clancy’s mind, trying to re-take control.) But Clancy’s losing the mental fight, too. He just manages to get a kind of moment of control back—maybe his eyes go back to being their normal color instead of seized-yellow—and he basically does this as a cry for help. Then Nico takes over again.

Clancy is seized, he can’t save himself, he’s tried everything and followed the plan of the Banditos up until this point…and it didn’t matter. This defeat is where it’s led. He’s overpowered, seized, back in the same grip of the Bishops, and the Banditos could look, lose heart, and be disheartened, and lose, even after all this work. So he’s managing to fight off Nico just long enough to get that “I CAN’T DO IT” message to the Torchbearer. And the Torchbearer understands. Because he’s not down there on the ground with the Banditos. He’s up in the tower with Nico and Clancy, and has been all along, and now that Clancy flashes the help-I’m-in-here-but-I-can’t-do-it message through his eyes or however they want to do it—THEN Torchbearer saves the day. I don’t much care how, as long as Torchbearer saves the day. I think the best way for him to do it would be to straight-up kill Clancy and that kills Nico. Because they were always connected. And then it seems sad, like Clancy was always going to be the sacrifice, as DEMA burns up. But then at the last second in the music video (or however they end it) he opens his eyes, and the Torchbearer helps him up. And the Clancy mask is burning along with Nico’s robes in the background, something like that. Because if Nico is Self-Focus (which leads to anxiety, depression, and most of all insecurity) then Self-Sacrifice, death of the Self, so that you stop considering yourself so much, is the only cure. And we both know only Jesus can kill your old self and raise you up a new creation.

But they don’t have to do it exactly like that. Torchbearer could beat the Nico out of Clancy, like Jenna Joseph does in the Tear in My Heart music video. That would be acceptable, because it would go with the idea of “Someone Outside of You Who Loves You Despite Your Imperfections Can Beat Your Insecurity About the Imperfections Out of You.” You see, the reason I want Nico to seize Clancy is because this whole time, Clancy has been relying on his ability to seize the bad guys as a method of defeating them.

Using Music, getting inside your darkness and then making it work for you, is the closest twenty one pilots has ever gotten to a functional-savior in their story. But the truth is that only works for a moment. It’s just a bandaid solution. Music can help you see what’s wrong, and help you feel control over what’s wrong by virtue of understanding it and making it work for you…but then eventually, you know what happens? The thing you’ve created becomes what you place your faith in, and then it has power over you.

But in like layman’s terms I guess you could just say: “Boy Feels Darkness -> Instead of Giving in to Darkness, Boy Makes Music About His Darkness -> Darkness Works for the Boy; Others Hear and Like the Music -> Darkness Appears to be Controlled by the Boy as a Way to Connect, Inspire, and Be Successful -> Boy Can’t Stop Focusing on Darkness or Writing About Darkness, Because That’s What Made Him Famous -> The Darkness is Not Defeated, and It’s More a Part of His Identity Than Ever. Who Is He Without The Darkness, Now? It’s Not Gone, and It’s In Charge”

You see? I know I’m saying it five different ways but at this point I’m wishing I was saying it to him.

Demons don’t care if you think they’re powerful, or if you think they’re powerless. They just care that you’re not thinking rightly about them, either way. It’s not “Ignore the Darkness,” and it’s not “Make Everything About the Darkness,” either. It’s “There is Darkness, and it is powerful, and acknowledging that just makes the LIGHT LOOK EVEN MORE POWERFUL.”

So Nico has to seize him. When all along he thought he’d be doing the controlling. And then someone from the outside has to save him.

What do I think the strengths have been?

The idea of seizing. That is so good and perfect. Because creativity is what gives Clancy the ability to seize, but it’s not a perfect solution. The Bishops can use that, too—and guess what, they did, they used Scaled & Icy.

Even Trash the Dragon, who was supposed to represent limitless imagination, is the symbol of that Bishop-Propaganda album—which is interesting, because it makes limitless imagination look like a bad thing, if it’s being used by the bad guys. But also, it’s dead, because the dragon was able to be seized, meaning it was a corpse. So Limitless Imagination was dead all along? Oh but wait, its corpse can still be used—by Keons, who is a bad guy? No, because he betrayed the other bad guys and freed Clancy using Creativity to Revive Limitless Imagination for one specific purpose. And if it’s for one specific purpose, then it’s not limitless. Imagination shouldn’t be limitless, or else you can imagine you’re worthless. It should be used for one specific purpose instead—setting you free from the bad thoughts. UUUUGH that’s so good.

And the contrast between Natural Light (fire, which also happens to be destructive and can get out of human control) and Man-Made Light (neon, which is stale, sterile, and totally under human control.) Goes perfectly with the contrast between a wild, green continent called Trench—and a lifeless, concrete, circular (cyclical) city made by man.

Plus, of course, Torchbearer. Torchbearer being three-and-one. Torchbearer being the leader of a group who wear yellow, a color the bad guys cannot see—and he’s also only able to be seen by Clancy when Clancy’s imprisoned. But sometimes he’s not seen by Clancy and Clancy doubts. But ultimately Torchbearer has always been with Clancy, and always had a plan, and even the Bishops can’t escape being made part of his plan. Torchbearer having an X that lands over his heart made of yellow tape—which looks like a tilted cross. Torchbearer having tape wrapped around the knee where Josh Dun has Tyler Joseph’s name tattooed. Torchbearer having a yellow bandanna that covers his face in the same division mirroring where the Bishops have black smeared.

Also, the fact that Clancy, as a character, is never sure what’s going on. When the whole story is about trying to decide where to go, and why. It’s about a journey and whether or not the destination is worth it. And the main character himself wrestles with that so constantly. He doesn’t know if the Torchbearer’s plan is going to work. He doesn’t know if the Bishops are really all bad, or if the safety they provide makes up for it. He doesn’t know if he’s having dreams or if he’s somehow seizing vultures and seeing real things. He doesn’t know if he wants to leave the city, or stay—and when he figures that out, he doesn’t know how any of this could’ve been planned. He;s constantly trying to separate the good from the bad and figure out which side he’s on, where the attacks are coming from. That’s his whole character.

Polarize is taking your disguises Separating 'em, splitting 'em up from wrong and right It's deciding where to die and deciding where to fight Deny, deny, denial

Domingo en fuego I think I lost my halo I don't know where you are You'll have to come and find me, find me

I'm navigating, I'm navigating my head Give me some advice I am wasting all this time My, oh my Don't know how long it's been My, oh my

And then on the other side? Torchbearer’s role is to guide? They're the perfect pair. Clancy never knows what’s real or not real, what’s going to work or not work, who’s right or wrong, or even what his role is. The world is a dark map and he can’t find himself in the “You Are Here” Dot. But TORCHBEARER lights the way.

Biggest weaknesses in the Clancy Story?

I don’t know because I’m not sure what the Point is yet. I could try to pick apart where the story isn’t doing well with “form” (everything used to deliver the point, the mood, the character design, the pacing, the dialogue, all that) but this is a story embedded in a series of albums and music videos and lots of mixed media. So it’s told in basically the most engaging way it can be told, it’s genius, I have noticed no weaknesses.

…unless you want to say, “the story is too unclear and vague; you can’t understand what they’re trying to say because they’re not really saying anything.” You could make an argument for that. I would be able to pick that argument apart more easily than I would be able to make that argument, though.

Endings mean concluding. Conclusions mean a Point. You can’t end a story without revealing whether or not you had a point. So we’ll find out, I guess!

What Are My Question Marks?

What’s going on with Keons? I can’t figure out Keons at all. I can’t figure out why Keons betrayed the other bishops, what led to that, how he’s connected to Ned.

What’s the Car representing? The car at the beginning of Heavydirtysoul and Jumpsuit—it’s burning onstage for the whole Trench era. It’s a Cadillac, it looks like a charred up version of the one from the No Phun Intended album, so is it supposed to represent a former mindset? It keeps recurring, so it means something, I just haven’t figured out what. The closest I get is “that’s the music, or how he used to use the music.” But I’m not sure.

What does the smearing have to do with the Glorious Gone? The letters make it sound like it’s just for dead people, but Clancy’s been smeared in the music video for Levitate and in Jumpsuit. Am I supposed to believe he was dead all along and being seized by someone this entire time? If that’s the case, he hasn’t been aware of that, according to his letters.

Who was Clancy talking about in that one letter when he was captured by the Bishops and said “He was never there, I would have felt him?”

Above all, what does Tyler think of God now? Where’s he at in his faith? Is he still struggling with the same stuff I am or is it a different blend?

I think that’s all for now.

[missbaphomet]

Hey! I saw your post about antitheism and I just want to give another perspective. I believe antitheism targets marginalized groups, and is not a good outlook. My specific example is Judaism and antisemitism, since Jewish culture is very much tied to religion. I’ve noticed a lot of antitheists were raised evangelical Christian in Christian societies, and in response they treat all religions like they’re just a different form of Christianity, which is ignorant at best, harmful at worse. Especially when they assume all forms of religious trauma they experienced are analogous to all religions.

A wonderful perspective to bring up, thank you. Unfortunately I can only really speak for myself and how I interpret antitheism, but what it means to someone else may be totally different. Let’s start with the definition as a baseline.

This is the definition I and most of my peers subscribe to, and I would be willing to bet it is the most popular one seeing as this is how it is defined. On the surface, that’s all it is— being against the belief in a god or gods.

In order as to not mince words, I will quote you directly.

I believe antitheism targets marginalized groups… [Especially] Judaism, [because] Jewish culture is very much tied to religion.

Before I really dig into this, a couple of things need to be established just as context into who I am as a person and my knowledge on the subject

I am not Jewish and know regrettably very little about Judaism, though I would love to learn more.

I was raised and baptized as a Catholic, but denounced my faith officially at around 16, though I had considered myself faithless since around 12.

My expertise on the topic of religion largely revolves around cults (eg Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons, Heaven’s Gate, Jonestown— here you will notice a large overlap in my interest in true crime) and, I suppose fortunately, I am unaware of any cults based in Judaism. I say this to reiterate that I am by no means an expert on religion, much less Judaism.

Back on topic: I would say that antitheism as a movement targets no religion any more harshly than any other theistic religion— I am just as opposed to the Christian god as I am to the Muslim god, the Hindu gods, the Nordic, the Greek, the Celtic, etc. The VAST majority of people who identify as antitheist are against a god or gods as a collective. To put it in my own words to describe my own viewpoint, I don’t believe in a god, and I honestly don’t believe anyone should.

Tangentially, there is a difference between god and religion. I can absolutely respect the traditions and history involved in a particular religion (even if I don’t necessarily agree) and still be antitheistic, the only prerequisite is that I am opposed to the belief in god(s).

That being said, there are absolutely going to be assholes who demand that people give up their religion because “there is no god”, but that’s just an asshole who more than likely would consider themselves anti-religion (note the difference in terminology— “I am opposed to the belief in a god” vs. “there is no god”) and yeah, those people are just fucking assholes. Tell them to shove it where the sun don’t shine and move on.

Moving on to the final bit, again, I was raised Catholic in the Bible Belt— I know more flavors of Christianity than I know what to do with. I am not qualified to discuss trauma sustained from any other religion that is not notably Christian. I don’t really have an answer or rebuttal here, and I’m not ashamed to say that. I absolutely could learn more about this, but as it stands, I just don’t.

I guess to tie it all together in a pretty little bow, I don’t think antitheism has any tendency to target anyone over another, it is simply a statement of one’s personal stance: I am against the concept of a god.

Sorry if this is really disorganized, it’s late af and I’ve been gaming all day. Feel free to leave another ask or message me directly, anon.

[captainsway]

Satine Kryze, the New Mandalorians, and Fandom Misconception of Mandalorian Culture

If you’re a fan of Mandalorians and like to read fanfiction, you’ve probably read at some point that the New Mandalorians have committed ‘cultural genocide’. That Satine Kryze is a fanatic who is doing everything she can to destroy Mandalorian culture and that she has a watered down version of what it means to be a Mandalorian. And I’m here to tell you that this simply isn’t true.

This is going to be a long read. I will go into the history of Mandalore, what it means to be Mandalorian, as well as how it relates to our own history, so please, buckle in. Also, I will state that there are spoilers for The Clone Wars and season 2 of The Mandalorian.

Most of what we know about Mandalorians is from Karen Traviss and her Mandalorian books - she wrote many books about Boba Fett and even about a lot of clone troopers during and after the war. She’s also well known for starting the creation of Mando’a, the spoken Mandalorian language. However, Karen Traviss is also well known for hating the New Mandalorians and even the Jedi. She has (TW here) equated Jedi ‘apologists’ to slave owners and N*zis. She has been a big name for Star Wars for going into Mandalorian history and culture, however, she has a lot of discourse surrounding her and how she interacts with fans including the fact that she apparently doesn’t even read other Star Wars books that aren’t her own. A lot of people have seemed to have taken her rhetoric about Jedi and Mandalorians as fact, even though she is one author and has written from an extremely biased position of refusing to understand Jedi beliefs and the fact Palpatine, the Separatists, and the Senate were to blame for a lot of what happened in the clone wars. The Jedi were conscripted and refusing to understand that is what leads to ‘Jedi were slave owners’ rhetoric. However, that is a completely different conversation and not relevant to this post about Mandalore.

A lot of Mandalorian culture is from the Legends books. They have a long standing history of war, conquering, and allying themselves with the Sith. They started out as a group from Coruscant called the Taungs who were driven out by the native humans and became nomadic until conquering the planet they called Mandalore after their warlord. They continued their Mandalorian empire until the Sith wars and the Mandalorian wars, the latter of which was the time of Revan and the KOTOR games. I personally haven’t played KOTOR and don’t know enough about that point in Mandalorian history, but I do know that there were many wars, genocides, and violence. It was after the planet Mandalore was devastated by the Jedi Order and the Republic and turned into a barren desert that couldn’t sustain life, that the cultures began to shift and the major factions known as the True Mandalorians, Death Watch, and the New Mandalorians came to be. 

(Mandalore after the Mandalorian Excision at the hands of the Republic (Legends) or their own civil wars (TCW). The Mandalorians used biodomes to sustain life on the planet.)

According to Wookiepedia from the Legends (ie, not canon) era, the Republic established a government, but the New Mandalorians were a break off of that. They didn’t follow the Republic nor did they love it, but they did believe in non-violence and peace. They followed the Kryze family who maintained the Duchy in Sundari on the planet Mandalore. Sundari was the capitol alongside Keldabe, the former being for the New Mandalorians while Keldabe was for the planet Mandalore. Many people had left the planet after the devastation to more lush planets or moons, such as Concord Dawn. Satine Kryze herself was from Kalevala, another toxic desert planet in the Mandalorian sector who relocated to Sundari. She was born to a warrior clan and grew up in the culture, but wished to move past that for peace. There was another person from Kalevala who maintained the royalty and also became a senator for the Republic, but he mostly represented the planet itself. 

Again, a lot of this history and the ‘New Mandalorians stemming from the Republic installed government’ is from Legends; some of which Karen Traviss wrote, some of which is written from Boba Fett’s perspective (for example, calling the New Mandalorians ‘Faithless’ was from The Bounty Hunter Code and written from the perspective of Boba Fett. This should be taken with a grain of salt from an unreliable narrator viewpoint.) The Clone Wars show, which is where the New Mandalorians first physically appeared, states that they formed after the civil war to rebuild Mandalore, without interference from the Republic. Any violent Mandalorians were exiled to Concordia except the Protectors who were sworn to protect the Concord Dawn system. How anti-Mandalorian can Satine truly be if the Protectors swore to also protect her and the New Mandalorians? Also, any Mandalorian was free to leave Concordia as ‘Old Mandalorians’, but they had no desire for revenge because there was no reason to do so. They were free to maintain their beliefs and practices as long as it wasn’t on the planet Mandalore where the New Mandalorians kept their main city.

There’s a severe misconception as to what it means to be Mandalorian. I’ve heard arguments that you must follow the Resol’nare, the Six Actions, in order to be Mandalorian. However, I argue that there are many ways to be Mandalorian, that it’s a difference with species/race/ethnicity, religion, and culture. You can be born into Mandalorian space and be Mandalorian. You can follow a specific culture or creed and be Mandalorian. You can be adopted by a Mandalorian and raised by then and be Mandalorian. Just as there’s no one way to be a certain ethnicity or race in our world, there’s no one true way to be a Mandalorian. Jango Fett was born on Concord Dawn, in Mandalorian space. His parents were farmers. Even if he never was adopted by Jaster Mereel and became the Mand’alor of the True Mandalorians, he still would’ve been Mandalorian, just like his family. We’ve all heard the phrase ‘no true Scotsman’ and I believe it applies to Mandalorians as well.

However, let’s go with the argument that the Resol’nare makes someone a Mandalorian. The argument is that Satine Kryze doesn’t follow this and that is what makes her an agent of cultural genocide. The Resol’nare states:

Education and armor, self-defense, our tribe, our language, our leader. 

Reminder that the Resol’nare was created by Karen Traviss, who we spoke about earlier. Also, the Wookiepedia Legends page for the New Mandalorians states that they’ve broken from the Resol’nare (again, thank you Traviss), but it’s more that they don’t follow a Mand’alor, rather than none of the actions. Let’s break this down and see how Satine Kryze does follow the Resol’nare.

The first one is easy: Education. In one of the episodes of The Clone Wars, it focused on the school in Sundari: 

Satine’s own nephew, Korkie Kryze, attended and the main focus was to raise new leaders for Mandalore. The entire episode revolved around the students and Ahsoka Tano uncovering a corruption plot to destabilise the New Mandalorians by Almec, who later joined forces with Death Watch. Also, one of the forefronts of the New Mandalorians is technological advancement. They put their studies and trade into engineering and technology as well as transportation (Legends, established by Traviss).

The second, armour. This is a sticking point for a lot of anti-New Mandalorian fans who believe that Satine Kryze makes Mandalorians give up their armour.

This is a picture of Satine Kryze, Prime Minister Almec, as well as Korkie Kryze in the background. Look at the two people in the middle. See what they’re wearing? These are Mandalorian Royal Guards and they wear armour. New Mandalorians literally had a police unit called the Mandalorian Guards who wore armour, so this is kind of a moot point, showing fanon they are wrong about this. A lot of the Royal Guards were made from the afore mentioned Mandalorian Protectors.

Just because many New Mandalorians chose not to wear armour, doesn’t mean they were not allowed to wear it. One could try and argue that only the police and guards are allowed to wear armour, but the fact of the matter is: there’s still armour for the New Mandalorians. Also, interesting note but all the cadets from The Academy had the Iron Heart, which is a symbol more commonly seen on Mandalorian armour. I think it’s safe to say that is an easy adaption of the culture.

Also in that vein is the ‘self defence’ idea. There’s a lot of belief that the New Mandalorians have no means of defending themselves, that they shun every form of violence. As I’ve just shown, that’s clearly false. They use batons, stun guns, and even hand to hand combat in order to defend themselves. The Royal Guard used force staffs in order to deflect blaster fire, very similar to how the Jedi use their sabers. Even Satine Kryze has used non-lethal weapons of her own:

In the episode mentioned before, The Academy, it is shown that you don’t need guns or lightsabers to defeat your enemies and protect others. Ahsoka didn’t have her lightsaber and yet her and the cadets (including Korkie Kryze) managed to save Satine and uncover the criminal black market on Mandalore. People like to say that New Mandalorians’ creed of ‘no lethal weapons’ means they’re defenceless or ‘erasing culture’, but we’ll get into why this is a misconception with even deeper concerns later.

‘Our tribe’ is easy. The New Mandalorians follow a specific creed of non-violence and they follow that in deference to Satine Kryze, who we can even claim is ‘our leader’ as well. Each creed follows their own leader: the True Mandalorians followed Jaster Mereel and later Jango Fett, Death Watch followed Tor and Pre Vizsla, and the New Mandalorians followed Satine Kryze. All three can claim tribe and leader. 

As for ‘our language’, as mentioned, Karen Traviss had originated the spoken language. Mando’a is rarely spoken in the animated series and is more shown in writing. The written language has been sparked once more by season 2 of The Mandalorian. A lot of fanon claims that Satine Kryze erases the language of Mandalore and forces Mandalorians to stop reading or speaking it, a very common cultural genocide against indigenous people. However, this is also false. It’s shown that there’s written forms in several of The Clone Wars episodes, and Satine Kryze herself even speaks it to a Death Watch bomber, click this link for proof and the translations. The written form was actually made by Philip Metschan when asked by George Lucas for Jango Fett, thus there was very little translation into actual Mando’a and why it’s a fan theory that there’s different dialects of it.

(New Mandalorian console from The Academy with written Mando’a.)

Thus, we can safely say that the New Mandalorians do follow a lot of Mandalorian culture that fans say they do not. I’ve also seen many fans say that ‘weapons is their religion’, quoting Din Djarin from The Mandalorian from season 1. However, in season 2, Din is questioning his beliefs as he meets more and more Mandalorians and finding he’s not one of the few remaining. It’s a fascinating study into diaspora and finding one’s culture, but it appears that some people are not also following along. Din has left behind many things he thought were truly Mandalorian - he’s left his people, he’s lost his home, and he’s even removed his helmet in front of others for the love of his child. After he met Bo-Katan Kryze (Satine’s sister who joined Death Watch), he’s been questioning his beliefs and what his place is in the galaxy. We’re finding he’s from a specific zealous sect of Mandalorians, but that doesn’t make him less Mandalorian. He was a foundling (we don’t know if he’s from Mandalorian space), and he’s taken in his own foundling. Mandalorian fans like to say that love of children makes a Mandalorian, so why must weapons and war make one and not love and peace? Mandalorians can love their children and tribe and still be Mandalorian. Weapons and war is what leads to cultural death and that is what the New Mandalorians are trying to prevent.

It’s a bit concerning that this fanon has been so pervasive throughout fandom. It may have originated with Karen Traviss or not, but it has been stated in many fanfic that Satine Kryze is committing ‘cultural genocide’ and has a ‘watered down version’ of Mandalorian culture. It’s so pervasive that people actually believe that Death Watch is better than the New Mandalorians. Death Watch came to be because of the True Mandalorians in Legends and the Mandalorian civil war in canon. In Legends and new canon (via The Mandalorian), Jaster Mereel made the Supercommando Codex, outlining a new structure for Mandalorians to also move past wars. He believed that Mandalorians should become bounty hunters and soldiers for hire instead of fighting amongst themselves. Tor Vizsla took offence to this and created Death Watch who believed in Mandalorian superiority. They wanted to go back to the Mandalorian empire and stoke war amongst the sector. Death Watch repeatedly worked to destabilise the New Mandalorian rule, to the point where Pre Vizsla, Tor Vizsla’s son, was the governor of Concordia, pretending to be an ally to Satine Kryze while he was secretly working with Dooku and the Separatists.

Death Watch committed many atrocities and acts of terrorism. They bombed civilians at a memorial for peace, and after Vizsla was ousted as governor of Concordia for being the Death Watch leader, one of his first acts was to enslave the women of the Ming Po tribe from the planet Carlac. When the men tried to save them and make Death Watch go away, Vizsla ordered the women dead and the town destroyed. 

(Satine and Obi-wan witnessing Death Watch’s terrorist bombing.)

(The Ming Po people, who are obviously Asian coded.)

Their entire group of people were based on Asian cultures and it’s uncomfortable as an Asian to see people redeem or idolise Pre Vizsla and Death Watch. He committed mass murder genocide against them after enslaving and terrorising them. 

(Carlac, where the Ming Po tribe lived. Note the building structures, the gate which resembles a Japanese torii, and the trees which resemble cherry blossom trees.)

Pre Vizsla and his fanaticism with Death Watch is what directly led to the destabilisation of Mandalore. He teamed with Darth Maul to lead a coup against Satine Kryze and an army to Sundari which led to Satine’s and Pre’s own death. Maul installed Almec as Prime Minister and Mandalore was under civil war once again. This continued until Rebels when Bo-Katan Kryze was given the dark saber by Sabine Wren and she became Mand’alor; unfortunately, the Empire destabilised Mandalore again and that’s what led to the events in The Mandalorian show. Fanon continuously believing that the New Mandalorians’ bids for peace led to cultural genocide is what leads to believing actual genocide is better. Even if people understand Death Watch is bad, there’s a false equivalence saying ‘New Mandalorians and Death Watch are just as bad’ which, again, we’ll get into later.

(Obi-Wan Kenobi arriving on Sundari to save Satine Kryze during the coup.)

Another claim against the cultural genocide argument is the fact that Satine and the New Mandalorians kept artwork of Mandalore’s violent history. They are in no way erasing their past, but instead keeping it as a reminder of what they need to move past.

Murals of Mandalorians killing Jedi and other people. The second is in the Sundari palace where Satine resides. People like to claim this is hypocritical, but it’s meant to show that they are not forgetting their past. That peace is what they must aim for lest they go back to their violent ways.

I have also seen people say that the New Mandalorians are ‘white supremacist’ and that has coloured their beliefs of them. I agree that I recoiled in disgust when I saw the shot of the lackluster New Mandalorians in their full white, blond hair, blue eyed glory. However, that is an animation choice and not the fault of the actual New Mandalorians. Most Death Watch people who are shown are also white with blond hair and blue eyes. In fact, Satine was a politician who often hosted several non-human species and negotiated with them. 

(Scenes from TCW episode ‘The Voyage of Temptation’ with Satine Kryze and Obi-wan Kenobi with aliens and humans of various colour and shape. In this episode, Death Watch attacked the ship.)

You do know who did have a problem with aliens? Death Watch. From The Bounty Hunter’s Code, written in part by Jason Fry, there is this:

(Picture taken from the book by a user on discord. Thank you again!)

It states that Mandalorians in Death Watch must have ‘human faces’ and that non humans are ‘outsiders’ and ‘beast species’. Very reminiscent of anti-immigration views and general racism against black and brown people. And yet, there is a general belief that Death Watch is not racist because of the Wren family from Rebels where Sabine Wren is a clear person of colour. Hopefully, readers can tell what an allegory is at this point.

A problem I believe is that there’s a severe lack of understanding on what cultural genocide truly means. It’s defined as ‘acts and measures undertaken to destroy nations' or ethnic groups' culture through spiritual, national, and cultural destruction.’ As proven, Satine and the New Mandalorians have their own beliefs, but they do not destroy their history; instead they adapt them to what they believe the future is aiming for. They do not suppress nor destroy language, or artwork, or historical propaganda. They cannot be colonisers as they live on Mandalore themselves. They exile people, yes, but the people on Concordia had representation who Satine listened to and trusted before he was revealed to be a terrorist. The Mandalore system is big with multiple planets and habitable moons, and Old Mandalorians were free to build their lives anywhere in the system or galaxy, as long as it wasn’t on the planet Mandalore near the New Mandalorians. 

Going back to the ‘Republic installed the New Mandalorians’ take, it is canon that Satine Kryze and the New Mandalorians resisted the Republic’s attempts to install a military occupation in Mandalorian space. Vizsla committed terrorist acts and attempted assassinations to murder Satine and he was backed by the CIS to create disorder on Mandalore. Joining the Republic at least peripherally had allowed the New Mandalorians to maintain trade and peace for their people, but when war came, they stuck to their beliefs and created a neutral system. In fact, the Republic cutting off trade, food, and supplies was essentially attempting to blackmail the New Mandalorians to participate in a war. Also, sending the Jedi isn’t a sign of Republic approval; even in The Phantom Menace, the Republic wouldn’t do anything for Naboo and Qui-gon Jinn and Obi-wan Kenobi were only sent as a favour to the then Chancellor Vallorum to investigate what was going on. The Jedi served the galaxy, even if their allegiance and oath was to the Republic, and that includes Mandalorian space.

(Qui-gon Jinn and Obi-wan Kenobi protecting Satine Kryze.)

I do understand why it’s awful to see a group of white people with the same model types to preach about peace and non-violence, especially when the only other known Mandalorian at the time is a brown man. However, that I will fully put on Dave Filoni’s shoulders as he wanted to make the Mandalorians closer to Nordic Vikings (something I believe was mentioned to him by Lucas). The Mandalorians may have been inspired and influenced by other cultures, but for The Clone Wars, it reminds me of and reflects the current state of USA. The USA has a long history of wars, genocide, and violence. It started with white colonists killing and enslaving indigenous people and black people and has continued to be the leader in military and police funding in the world. And yet, whenever people wish to progress past that (for example, enact gun safety laws, defund the military and the police, enact healthcare, remove racist symbols), there are people who claim that they’re trying to ‘take American history away’ or ‘take our rights away’, etc. It’s what has lead to the state the country is in now. 

I find it highly disturbing that fandom is hating on New Mandalorians and claiming it’s cultural genocide. It equates to modern times and how people like to claim that ‘liberals’ are trying to ‘take America’s guns’ because we’re tired of war, police brutality, and school shootings. Because we want laws to remove guns from safe spaces and make it harder to obtain weapons. This isn’t cultural genocide. This is progression of society. On January 6th, 2021, we saw an attempted coup where right wingers stormed the American capitol, live fire was shot and a woman killed, where they were actively looking for Democratic congress people to hold them hostage and possibly kill them. I maintain that fiction reflects reality and this is true in this case. The New Mandalorians wish for peace and do not wish for violent weapons in their space and enact laws to do that. However, the galaxy is bigger than America and Old Mandalorians can go anywhere else in the galaxy or even the Mandalorian system. Several countries have enacted anti-gun laws and prevent weapons from being in the hands of violent people. We have labelled white supremacists as domestic terrorists and remove statues of names of slave owners and other awful historical people. I ask you this: how is what the New Mandalorians doing any different? If it’s because you believe the propaganda from Traviss (and Jason Fry, don’t think I don’t see you), then you need to reevaluate your source. It is not a bad thing to see violence and wish to move past that and instead focus your resources to innovation, humanitarian efforts, and, yes, pacifism.

I mentioned earlier that people like to equate Death Watch and the New Mandalorians. It’s generally like how people say ‘Antifa is just the same as fascism’. In fact, I saw a comment on a fic that generally says something similar:

Name removed and the fic will not be mentioned, but it equates the New Mandalorians and Death Watch to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her other POC congresspeople who wish to help people, and literal terrorists. Honestly, there’s a lot to unpack from this singular comment and I’m not sure I have the energy to do so. Death Watch isn’t like ‘Islamic’ terrorists. They’re like the white supremacist terrorists we see in the USA who planted bombs around various political buildings because they wanted violence against the Democratic party. This comment is just shitty victim blaming and promotion of violence. Pacifism isn’t ‘dangerous’. It isn’t ‘suicide’. It’s an ideal we should actively strive for.

I’m tired of seeing writers and fans say that the New Mandalorians commit cultural genocide. I’m tired of the misunderstanding and the attack on pacifism and the refusal to believe that peace is an option. It may not be feasible in the universe of Star Wars, but in that case, it’s not feasible for the USA and our own long history of war and we might as well give up. I ask that you at least do some research on the New Mandalorians before writing them and if you refuse to do so, then at least tag your fic as AUs and not actual canon fact. It’s the same with the Jedi and the propaganda that is passed along for them; you’re believing anti-New Mandalorian authors who aren’t accepted as canon. And for fuck’s sake, every time you praise Death Watch and say that they’re good, or that Pre Vizsla is an alright guy and redeemable, or that Obi-wan Kenobi of all people think that Mandalorians are better off being warmongers, then you’re wasting my time and helping spread bad (and, yes, racist) takes.

EDIT: Since this is still going around, I’m going to add that 1) there are very prominent Maori pacifist groups that are still being oppressed. The Mandos have a lot of Maori influence because of Temuera Morrison and it’s great that he’s bringing his culture to Star Wars, but the greater Mandalorian cultures are *not* based on them. Whether it’s TCW or Karen Traviss, none of the writers had the authority to make Mandos Maori (and Traviss very obviously fetishised them). 2) People keep claiming ‘pacifism is something governments can claim to oppress others!’ and yeah, it can be an excuse, but very often it’s an authoritarian government, *not* a pacifistic government. Do you know what happens to actual pacifistic governments? Groups? They get attacked and genocided. It’s literally what happened to the New Mandos in TCW. They were attacked and killed and their way of life was obliterated thanks to Death Watch and Maul. They weren’t forcing their way of life on the greater Mandalorian population and honestly? Stop acting like *pacifism is bad*. There are legit pacifists out there and people have *constantly* been actively against war all throughout history and they’ve been *murdered* for it. Recall what happened to Vietnam War protestors??? Recall the smear campaign against France for not getting involved in the Iraqi War??? The New Mandos can reflect any point of history in the real world. Acting otherwise is *your problem*. Can pacifism be used poorly? Yes, mostly when you’re ignoring the plights of others around you in the name of pacifism. Are the New Mandos an actual good example of pacifism? No, and no one would claim it would be and I blame that solely on the shit writing of TCW where war is treated like a game half the time. But acting like pacifism as a whole or pacifistic governments or ideals is bad is fucked up and wildly dismissive of the large number of real pacifists.

[mallowstep]

What are your opinions on forbidden relationships in Warriors? I've seen people label it as a "trope" because of how common this is. Some find the forbidden romance aspect intriguing, though others find it extremely repetitive and old

I'd like to know your thoughts!

hm. well, it is a trope. i mean, there's an average of one major one a series, right? greysilver, leafcrow (and others, but that's the big one), heatherlion (and implied others), tigerdove, idk i don't remember anything from avos but violetshine luv her but there's probably something, bristleroot. dotc doesn't count bc well it's dotc.

anyway.

definitely a trope.

but that's not a bad thing.

what i think people don't give warriors enough credit for is that these are not all the same forbidden romance. most of them are handled in different ways and bring up different conflicts. i understand why people are tired of them, but let's not discredit one of the only good things in warriors romance: that they make forbidden relationships different.

like, with grey and silver, it's about loyalty and responsibility. leafcrow is just bad idea central, both heatherlion and tigerdove are about responsibilities and young cats, and they have two different answers, and bristleroot is challenging the whole idea from the start.

so like. give credit where credit is due: we're not doing the same (forbidden) relationships again and again. i don't see enough people talk about that.

okay so it turns out i have um. a lot of thoughts about this. idk i just kept writing and now it's over 2k words. so you know. under the cut: matthew does half-baked media analysis to talk about why the code and cats' relationships to it are misunderstood. while actually staying on topic.

anyway from here on i'm just going to say relationship/romance, and understand that i'm generally talking about the forbidden kind. also i'm talking exclusively within the realm of warriors romance, which is, on average, bad. so when i say "X is good," i don't mean "X is good in general," i mean "given what we have, X is good." just to be clear.

right! basically, this is a tool. it creates tension and drama, and that's fine. warriors is a soap opera, remember. soap operas use secrets and relationships and all sorts of plot devices over and over again. warriors is not Serious. it can be dark. it has serious moments. but it is not a Serious Book Series for Serious Kids. it is a soap opera for Future Theatre Kids. yeah?

from that perspective, i'm a-ok with forbidden romance. (also, as a mini-aside, it creates some much-needed genetic diversity when kits are involved.) and again: all of the major relationships are different, so i think that's better than a lot of people give it credit for.

yeah, heatherlion and greysilver and tigerdove are all about the same general idea (loyalty and responsibility), but they all have different circumstances and different resolutions.

so like? yeah. sure. why not?

plus, like, who's reading warriors for the romance? i separate the concept of "romance" from a "relationship" here: i like the relationships in warriors (ivy and dove tension my beloved), but i'm not here to read about tigerheart wooing dovewing. (yes, i do love the tigerdove scenes in oots. no, that's not because i think they're very good at being romantic.)

but i digress.

if warriors was a Serious Book Series for Serious Kids, i'd have a different take here. having been in an IRL forbidden relationship, i have the Personal Insight and Experience to say they're this weird mash of "very much how it feels" and "not at all how it feels."

tigerdove is probably my favourite bc it's the closest to my circumstances, and i think dovewing is a good pov. i like how she breaks up with him because it's a bad idea, but that's not the same thing as not feeling for him.

(heh. twelve-year-old me reading oots like "this will never apply to my life" what did you know)

but to the point, if warriors was serious, i'd point out that the consequences always seem to be internal. we haven't seen characters be punished for their actions. and so on.

but warriors is a soap opera.

and here's my actual thesis: we haven't seen characters be punished for their actions, because "forbidden relationships" are a normal and expected part of clan society.

like no, fandom-at-large, you're kind of missing the point. okay, you know how like. people complain about. idk. ivypool and fernsong being distantly related?

(third aside/very long ivyfern rant, i put a nice big "rant over" after it if you want to skip past it: they're third cousins. they share, max, 2.2% of their genetics. they are fine. do you know your third cousins? do you? yeah. and like. they live in a closed society. there is no one new.

i've never seen someone complain about forbidden romance and ivyfern at the same time, and i do generally agree we should have more mystery fathers, altho for a different reason, but like. idk. this bothers me.

their last shared relative was nutmeg. that's so far back. god. i get it, there was a prophecy saying they're related, but if you remember my rant about how dovewing shouldn't be a part of the prophecy because of how distantly related to firestar is, you know how i feel about that already.

complaining they're related and that's a problem is. deep breath here. it requires demonstrating that warriors has kept track of kinship all the way back to firestar's mother. and even if you wave that requirement, you still have to convince me they would care about that. this isn't a "they're cats, harold" situation, this is a "you would not know your third cousin even if you lived in the same town" situation.

i mean maybe you would. some people do. but my hometown has generations of people who married within its borders. you get as far as "cousin," maybe "second cousin" if you're feeling fancy. i'm not trying to make an always true statement, i just. every time i see someone complain about ivyfern being related, it strikes me as not understanding how extended families work?

i know third cousins isn't technically classified as a distant relative, but you have, on average, 190 third cousins. i feel so strongly about this i looked it up.

like i'm not. okay if you say, "I don't ship ivyfern because they are third cousins and that makes me uncomfortable" you are Valid. in general, you are all valid. i do not think you have to, on a personal level, be okay with ivyfern. you are free to do as you wish.

but. if you want to argue "ivyfern is a Bad Ship because they are third cousins" you have a hell of a burden of proof. simply saying "they share a great-great-grandmother" does not meet that, because like. yeah. we're all pretty damn related.)

(ivyfern rant over)

IVYFERN RANT OVER

right so. anyway. if you remove forbidden romance? you're forcing a lot more of those situations.

i've been messing around with modelling some small-scale fan clan-adjacent stuff to double-check the ratios for wbcd, and it's. it quickly becomes a necessity, is what i'm saying.

but i got distracted like. researching how related third cousins are. my point is not about that, that's like. a different topic. that i crammed into here because i have no self-control.

no, no, what i was trying to get to is: oakheart straight up tells us that cats have half-clan kits all the time, it's not a problem, no one talks about it. and that? that is exactly what we see modelled by warriors.

the only reason greystripe and silverstream have a problem is that silverstream dies and greystripe claims the kits. i feel very strongly that if she had lived, the kits would have been born and raised riverclan kits, that might, maybe, one day, guess who their father is.

we haven't had any half clan kits in a while, which yes! i think is a problem, but like. the fact that the three are medicine cat kits seems to be a bigger issue. which feels right.

and i'm not trying to argue what i think should be, i legitimately believe the text of warriors defends this, even in newer books which throw out a lot of the older world building in favour of more human-like conflict.

as readers, we are naturally following protagonists. we are following the interesting story. but imagine you're just a background riverclan cat. minnowtail, if you will. do you think, do you honestly think, anyone cares about minnowtail?

not in a bad way, just. if she's meeting up with mousewhisker at night, do you think anyone cares? of course not! no one cares. she's not a Protagonist. her kits aren't going to be prophesized about.

heck, finleap switches clans! and it's barely a big deal. it feels like one, but when's the last time anyone bothered dealing with it? that's what i thought.

(also i forgot like all of avos so that very last point might be a bad one if it is my argument stands i just literally do not remember anything in avos but violetshine. none. zero.)

but it's easy to get caught up with characters like hollyleaf and bristlefrost and forget that like. not everyone cares about the code. most of our protagonists do, because it's become mostly equivalent with being moral. and i have an essay draft titled "the code as religion vs the code as law" where i want to expand on this more, but i think like. that idea, that we as readers should use the code as a way of evaluating cats' behaviour, is flawed.

like, i'm not talking about being inconsistent with how that is applied. if you want to say, "the trial leafpool goes through for having half-clan kits is legitimate because of the code," i still think your approach is flawed.

because the cats themselves don't seem to think that way.

the code doesn't, to me, feel like the ten commandments. it does not feel like "you must do this to be a good cat."

rather, it feels like aesop's parables. "here are mistakes cats made and what we do instead of that."

i don't think the cats know the code the way we do. i do not think they memorize a list of rules as kits. i think they know what is and is not part of it, but i imagine they know the stories far more than the rules.

(i'm working on my lore stories to replace code of the clans.)

and even if that's my thoughts, i do think this is supported by the text. no one ever teaches the warrior code, cats just learn it in pieces. "don't waste food because we don't have enough to spare" is taught, not "there's a rule about food and starclan on the code."

that's why the whole arc of the broken code even works: the reason the imposter is able to manipulate things is because cats don't treat the code as a rigid set of rules and commandments, but guiding principles.

the parts of the code that we tend to focus on the most are relationships, apprentices, and battle. or that's my perception. i didn't do a poll to obtain that. there's also the leader's word, but readers don't usually think of that as a good rule, so i'm not including it.

but the parts the cats focus on most are food, territory, and the leader's word. which makes sense: those are basic needs: food, security, and...i don't want to say authority so much as some kind of social system. explaining it would be a whole thing. just trust with me, if you don't mind.

i don't think we have any real reason to believe cats care about half-clan relationships half as much as we do. yes, apprentices are chastized about it, but that's not really the same thing as being punished.

and it's hard to tell, because apprentices being punished has really fallen off, and that's kind of the problem with any argument i try to make about warriors, but.

wow.

i'm actually still on topic? i'm 2k words in and i'm still on topic? a day i never thought would come.

let's wrap this up. cats seem to care about half clan relationships in that: a) they lead to conflicted loyalties, b) they mess with borders and prey, and c) they are in the code as bad. in that order.

and again, if the code was some high and holy religious doctrine, we couldn't have the broken code as an arc. it does not work if the cats are already following it to a t, and know it word for word, because it's signfiicantly harder to manipulate people if they do.

not to the level the imposter does, at the speed he does.

and yes, you could argue that it's more bad writing, but. i think that discredits warriors. yeah, it sure has its fair share of bad writing, but i don't think that's in the way the imposter works. instead, he seizes on a big important doctrine that's nebulous, and uses that to control people.

and that? that feels much more interesting.

so with that in mind, i don't think the cats would care about your typical, non-protagonist forbidden relationship, and i don't think we should, either.

as far as a plot device, i think we're okay with what we have. don't get me wrong, i understand why people are tired of it, but i think we also should remember that warriors is not repeating itself. having multiple forbidden relationships is not repetitive. now, if medicine cats were having half-clan kits every series, i'd make a different argument.

but all of the major forbidden relationships have different outcomes, lessons, and circumstances, and for me, i think that's signficantly interesting.

i didn't really check sources and quotes for this, so like, if you spotted something wrong, feel free to correct me. my overall point stands, but there's a lot of warriors and i have a bad memory, so i could have missed somthing major.

[atths--twice]

Chapter Four 

Sunday afternoon, two days after they had dined together, Dana and Fox were strolling through the marketplace, looking at the many wares people had to sell. She was carrying a basket and had already purchased a few pieces of fruit he had never seen before. He had offered to pay for them seeing as it was he who had asked her to join him, but she would not hear of it.

Since he had last seen her, he had begun a quest to learn all he could in regards to Kha’ari. He had read what was available in his room, venturing back downstairs when he had finished, looking in the larger library for more information. He had found only one book and the description of her had been more informative, but not enough.

Saturday he had gone to the library in town and spent the majority of the day within its walls, hunting for even more information. Copying down what he had learned into his journal, he had begun to gain an idea of who that goddess was and also was pained to think of why Dana had been so drawn to her.

He had thought of her hand grazing her throat, touching the chain and locket, wondering about the picture held inside. Was it a lover? Her husband? She wore no ring, so he could not be sure. Whatever had transpired, the source of it included the contents of that locket.

“Have you had any other adventures since I last saw you?” Dana asked with a smile. “Any new sketches to share?” He chuckled and shook his head.

“No. Not any new sketches, but I have been researching Kha’ari.” She stopped walking and he saw a look of shock on her face.

“You have?” she asked and he nodded, taking her arm and moving forward as a man with a wagon attempted to pass by.

“Your account of her intrigued me along with the fact that I seemed to have completely glossed over her existence among the other goddesses.”

“It’s understandable, as I did the same,” she said with a nod. “What did you find out?”

“Quite a bit. She’s actually incredibly interesting. Many of the gods and goddesses had a scale of measure it seemed. The goddess Ammit, for example, devoured the hearts of souls who were not justified by Osiris. A scale of worth.”

“True, but it’s similar to most religions. The concept of heaven or hell, where a soul will reside, is dependent on your behavior and belief in the higher power.” He nodded with a smile and a tilt of his head, asking her a silent question. “I was raised catholic, though… I’m questioning some things these days.” She sighed and removed her arm from his, switching her basket to that hand.

“Yes, they are similar. But with Kha’ari,” he said as she stopped and spoke to a woman, picking out more fruit. “She was one who accepted all, turned no one away, and took on their pain, demanding or expecting nothing in return.”

“Yes,” Dana said, thanking the woman with a smile and a nod. “Yet many people brought offerings and gifts for their thankfulness.”

“Understandable,” he said. “Without the show of appreciation, they may have felt that pain and suffering would come to them again.”

“Yes,” she said again, softly, her hand once more going to her throat for a brief second.

“I would like to ask something of you,” he said, his heart rate increasing with his worry at what her response would be to his question.

“Yes?”

“I wanted to know if you would consider… being my guide, your knowledge of her being greater than my own.” He watched her profile and saw when she understood his words. She turned her head and looked at him with an expression he could not read. Incredulity? Fear? Anger? He did not know.

“You… you can’t be serious,” she said, shaking her head. “I… it’s impossible.”

“Why?”

“Why?” she repeated with a bitter laugh, her anger now more than obvious. Walking through an archway and away from the marketplace, he quickened his steps to keep up with her.

“Why are you angry with me?” he asked, not understanding what happened.

“I’m not angry. Well… I don’t know if I am. No, I am angry with you.” She stopped walking and stared at him, her entire countenance exuding her anger. “How dare you… to suggest…” She shook her head, words failing her.

“I… I thought you would be pleased,” he replied honestly, surprised at her words.

“Pleased? No, I am not.”

“Why?”

“Do you have permission? Do you have a team of people? A plan? Have you any of that?” She stared at him, her eyebrows raised and he shook his head.

“No.”

“No. You haven’t. And yet you ask me, a stranger, and a woman, to traipse off into the desert with you, alone, to find something of which you knew nothing two days ago.”

“I… Miss Scully,” he said, choosing to not use her first name, showing his respect to her. “Please know I meant no harm or disrespect. Honestly that thought never even entered my mind.” He shook his head again with a shrug of his shoulders. “I only meant that I see the appeal of such a discovery, and I would like to conduct a search, though only with your assistance.”

Her anger, which had risen quickly, was cooling as he saw her relax, her shoulders dropping as a breath was released. She swallowed and closed her eyes briefly, pressing her lips together.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, her slightly wet eyes on his own. “I’ve wanted to search for it for so long, but I also know it’s impossible.”

“Begging your pardon,” he said quietly. “Without meaning to offend… for you it may be, but not I.” She stared at him and he continued. “You hinted at it the other night. I have considerable wealth, thanks to my family, my father specifically. I have no wife, no children, and unless I change my bachelor ways, it may always be so. I haven’t… I’ve had…” He cleared his throat and sighed deeply, not wanting to share his past hardships and pain. “I want to do this and I will work to find a way to make it happen. If I am able, will you join me?” She took a deep breath, looked around as she let it out. He waited, understanding the weight of his  question.

“Can… can I have some time?  It’s all so much so quickly and I…” She looked at him, beseeching him to understand.

“Of course. I understand the hesitancy. It will be some work and so…” He nodded with a smile and she released a deep breath.

“Thank you. I… thank you.” She looked around and spotted a bench. “Would you like to try some of this fruit?” Gesturing to her basket, he nodded with a smile, the awkwardness of the discussion pushed aside.

For now.

_______________________

Over the next couple of weeks, he saw less of Dana, both because she seemed to have pulled away from him, not returning quick informative letters of updates to his plan which he sent to her flat, and he was inquiring how he could gain permission to claim a dig site.

Told different information from many people, he decided to act as he believed he should have from the beginning, and speak to the person in charge of the museum.

He dressed carefully the day he visited, wanting to convey his wealth, something he never paid much attention to, it simply being a part of him. He was not a man who flaunted it, wanting others to see him and not his money. But in this instance, if they saw him as being beneficial, he would do what he could to acquire what he wanted.

Waiting outside of the office of a man named Jean Badeaux, he rehearsed his speech once again in his head. Key points were hit and then the door opened, his heart racing as he stepped forward to plead his case.

It did not go as he had planned.

Jean Badeaux was a man of sixty, loud, large, and obnoxious. Fox did not like him, finding his manner crude and embarrassing. He knew, however, that Mr. Badeaux held the key to his future plans and thus he remained relatively silent while in his company.

When Fox told him of his desire to discover the temple of the goddess Kha’ari, Jean Badeaux laughed heartily and shook his head.

“There is not a temple erected to the goddess Kha’ari, Mr. Mulder. I do not know where you heard that it was a possibility.”

“I believe it is true,” Fox said, standing his ground.

“You can believe as you like, sir, but it’s simply not true.”

They stared at one another and Fox once again stated that he believed himself to be correct. Mr. Badeaux shook his head, looked at his pocket watch before sticking out his hand, dismissing Fox with a condescending smile.

He stood, but instead of accepting his hand, Fox reached into his coat pocket and took out his pocketbook, his eyes on Mr. Badeaux.

“Could your museum do with a donation? A quite… large donation?” Fox asked and Mr. Badeaux stared at him, his eyes falling to the check which Fox knew was within his view. Giving him a curt nod of acceptance, Fox knew the matter had been solved.

The amount was large, but to him it was worth every cent if he could have a chance to find his purpose, and most importantly, if Dana could fulfill what she believed to be an impossible dream.

Leaving the office, a letter of approval in his pocketbook, he walked downstairs, pacing in front of the door which led to the staircase to the research office. He debated internally whether he should bother her while she was working again, especially as they had not had any contact recently.

But this information, the excitement of it, could not be contained to a letter. He was sure that his penned words would never be able to suffice the happiness he felt.

Looking around, he quickly opened the door and walked down the stairs, down the long hallway, turned left and arrived at the glass door marked ‘Research.’

Pacing again, he looked down the hall, feeling he would be caught at any moment and ordered to leave. He clenched his jaw and nodded his head. A hand on the doorknob, he looked through the glass and saw Dana staring at him.

She was a few feet away, but he could see her eyes widen as she glanced to her right, her fellow researcher walking past and not noticing him, Dana saying something to her which he could not hear. She shook her head as she began to step closer to the door, the blue cap covering her hair making her eyes seem even bluer.

He waited for her to open the door, trying to calm his racing heart. When the knob turned, she stepped through it quickly and motioned for him to be quiet and to follow her. He did with a nod and they walked down the hall to a door which she opened, revealing a decent sized supply closet with brooms and mops. She closed the door and they were plunged into darkness.

“Uhh, sorry.” Opening the door, she took the matches and lit the lamp hanging from the ceiling and closed the door again, staring up at him expectantly. “What are you doing here now?”

“I had an appointment.”

“An appointment.”

“Yes.”

“With whom?”

“Jean Badeaux.” Her eyes widened again and she looked down, shaking her head.

“Mr. Badeaux, the man in charge of this entire museum?”

“Yes.” Looking up at him, she let out a breath before licking her lips. “I told you I would find a way.”

“And have you?” He smiled slowly with a nod. “No. Are you serious?” She seemed near shock and he smiled wider.

“I am exceedingly serious.”

“You… how?”

“It’s amazing what a donation to the museum can do to help a person’s cause along.”

She stared at him and then she began to laugh, stunning him and rooting him in place; he had never heard her laugh in that manner. When she calmed, she shook her head.

“And he took it of course? That man is nothing if not greedy.”

“And if we find something, he gains praise and attention. If we fail… he gains a donation and he doesn’t need to get his hands dirty.”

“We?” she asked softly, and he nodded.

“I did not mention you to him, did not speak of you at all,” he assured her. “But my offer, my plan in my mind includes you. I don’t… I don’t have an idea of where to start, but I know you do. It would be a strictly professional relationship. I will employ you, so you will not be lacking monetarily.” He wanted to say more, but left it there, letting it be her decision.

She took a deep breath, crossing her arms as she dropped her head. He waited, nearly certain her answer would be no, fear holding her back even as he knew she ached to go. She sniffled twice and then raised her head, a hand at her throat, her eyes wet.

“When can we leave?” she whispered, wiping her eyes.

He grinned slowly as she laughed and cried simultaneously, his laughter soon joining hers.

[scripttorture]

I have no idea if you can help me, but I am working on a short story that starts after a Sami girl is recovering from being tortured by Christian police after her father is put on trial for witchcraft. This is during the witch trials in Norway. I wanted to focus on recovery in the community and her animistic religion. However, I don’t know what kind of torture she could realistically be recovering from and if, aside from punishment, it should religiously motivated. Do you have any English links?

I put this one off for a long time hoping that the virus situation would improve enough for me to a) have less stress at work and b) be able to access the university library in my town. It doesn’t look like that’s going to happen.

 Norwegian history in the 1600s isn’t my strong suit. So my focus here is going to be advice on how to research this. I’ll also include the bits I found and some tortures so common that you can throw them in to virtually any setting without it standing out or being inaccurate.

 Before I get any further I don’t know anything about Sami culture. I’d strongly recommend trying to find Sami sensitivity readers if you haven’t already. Because it can be bloody hard to get accurate information on some of Europe’s oppressed minorities and I’d say the Sami fall squarely into that category.

 Historical research is fraught with pitfalls and when you’re starting out it can be really difficult to figure out which sources to trust. This only becomes worse when you’re working across a language barrier. And when the focus is torture it gets even more difficult.

 Torture has always been a hot button issue.

 The fact that virtually every culture has a history of torture doesn’t change that. Cultural ideas about what was ‘more painful’ or ‘more brutal’ or ‘shaming’ have all played a role in what was deemed ‘acceptable’ cruelty. So has the idea of who is an ‘acceptable’ or ‘deserving’ victim.

 And that means that misrepresenting the typical tortures of different countries, cultures, religious groups or past regimes has been part of political practice for literally hundreds of years. It is a very easy way to direct people’s hate and elicit an emotional response.

 I can’t stress enough how important it is to consider an author’s motivations, biases and abilities when you read historical sources.

 Think about whether an author was actually there for the events they describe. Think about their political and religious positions and what they may have to gain by pushing a particular message.

 Apologies if some of this comes across as teaching you how to suck eggs, but I know a lot of people don’t get this lesson in their history classes. So sources-

 Historical sources can be broadly categorised into primary and secondary sources. A primary source is something produced at the time. A secondary source is something produced later.

 Both can be untrustworthy/biased but a primary source gives you information about how events/practices were interpreted at the time, while a secondary sources tells you how they were remembered later.

 Primary sources can be things like diaries, court records of witch trials and objects produced in areas like Finnmark (northern Norway where most of the witch trials took place) at the time. Secondary sources might be things like how the witch trials are discussed in Norwegian history books and local history or stories about the witch trials that are told today.

 By reading about this in English you’re mostly being limited to secondary sources. The danger here is that secondary sources can misrepresent the time period they’re describing, deliberately or not. Authors make assumptions about how historical people lived, thought, what their actions meant and how their beliefs influenced their actions.

 Primary sources can also misrepresent what happened (deliberately or not) but with primary sources they are at least displaying the biases and concerns of the time.

 Generally historical research is about the collation and interpretation of primary sources. Which is a lot of work, requires a degree of expertise and often demands fluency in several languages.

 That level of work and knowledge appeals to some authors of historical fiction. But it isn’t for everyone. There’s nothing wrong with choosing to rely on history textbooks and the like instead of digging through transcriptions of things written back in the 1600s.

 Here’s the problem when you’re doing that for another country: English language sources are often very very biased in favour of other English language sources.

 This means if some bored academic in the 1930s made up a bunch of fan theories based on very little evidence it will probably still be used as a source today.

 And without having another language (with access to other sources it provides) it can be really difficult to spot that kind of fuckery.

 I am not saying that you need to learn Norwegian and believe me as someone with only one spoken language I understand how tackling a new one can be crazy intimidating.

 But I think you do need to know Norwegians. Particularly Norwegians with an interest in history.

 That’s all general stuff about researching historical periods in different countries.

 For torture in particular… I’m not gonna lie it’s a sack of angry snakes.

 Both primary and secondary often have considerable motivation for lying about torture. Historical accounts routinely downplay or outright lie about the damage different tortures cause. They are heavily judgemental about victims.

 And they run in to exactly the same issues we have trying to study use of different tortures today with the added difficulty that accounts from torturers are preserved far more frequently then accounts from survivors.

 It’s only once you start getting to the 1900s that you really start to see multiple survivor accounts of events. For the 1600s as a general period I can think of witness accounts and multiple accounts from torturers or their bosses in various countries. But the testimony of survivors is very very rare.

 This is an issue because we know from modern research that torturers routinely lie about what they do.

 There were laws in most European countries in this period that cover torture. They tend to define a sort of ‘accepted practice’: what torturers were supposed to do and for how long. And don’t get me wrong these are useful historical sources.

 But we know from comparing similar torture manuals used in the 1930s (and indeed more recently) to multiple accounts from torture survivors that torturers do not follow their own rules. I see no reason why torturers today would be less likely to follow ‘the rules’ then their historical predecessors.

 Looking up the laws of the land at the historical time period you’re interested in is a good place to start. But it won’t actually tell you everything that torturers did and it may not represent the most common tortures.

 It will give you a list of things that were definitely used at the time in that place though. Which isn’t a bad place to start.

 Look for history books that cover crime and punishment. If you can’t find one broad enough to do that (or give you a helpful summary of laws at the time) then I’ve found that accounts of specific historical figures in the relevant area/time often contain some of that information.

 The next major pitfall when researching historical torture is the bane of my existence: euphemisms.

 A lot of historical sources use vague or euphemistic terms for different tortures and then leave it up to the reader to figure out what they mean. This was probably perfectly clear at the time but now… less so.

 To use an example from something I’ve been trying to research for a while now I can tell you that the Ancient Egyptians definitely used torture. They say as much in surviving accounts of their justice system. They used it to punish, force confessions and attempt to gain information.

 They definitely beat people with sticks. They say they did, in multiple accounts. There are also wall carvings and paintings that show prisoners of war and enslaved people being menaced with sticks.

 However, I can’t find any definite suggestion that they used falaka, ie beating the soles of the feet with those sticks.

 Did they just hit people at random? This seems unlikely from a practical viewpoint as that’s a very easy way to kill someone. Did they ignore the feet and concentrate on other areas of the body? Did they use falaka and also beat other areas? Do I bring too much bias into this question because I’d love to find a historical point of origin for a torture that’s common throughout the Middle East today?

 Historical sources often just don’t contain the details we need to be certain about what torture they’re describing. Terminology is often vague. Descriptions can be contradictory. Often the only way to be certain is to come across an illustration or surviving device and even then this does not necessarily represent common practice and either piece of evidence could be contemporary propaganda rather then something that was actually used.

 When you’re talking about historical torture it is essential to find multiple sources and make sure they agree.

 Vague terminology like ‘water torture’ can cover a host of different sins. Finding a vague term or euphemism multiple times doesn’t even tell you if this was the same practice carried out in different areas or different practices with superficial similarities.

 If a source doesn’t give you enough information to be sure don’t use it. If a source suggests the meaning of a euphemism based on no clear evidence from the time period don’t use it.

 What I’ve found in my own small collection of books on witchcraft is very sparse on details.

 One of the older books I have suggests that there were almost no witch hunts or witch trials in Scandinavia which is complete bollocks. The book was published in 1959, so I’d suggest being wary of English language sources from that date and earlier.

 A much more recent (2017) Oxford University Press book on the subject gives an estimated 400-500 executions for witchcraft in Norway during the period of 1601-1670.

 This might seem like a small number compared to the thousands that were executed throughout the Holy Roman Empire but it seems a significant number given that the Norwegian trials were so concentrated in a small, sparsely populated region.

 Unfortunately this book is a very general overview of the perception of witchcraft and magic throughout Europe from the ancient world to the present. So it doesn’t really give any details of the kinds of tortures a Norwegian accused of witchcraft might endure.

 The author of the chapter on the witch trials was Rita Voltmer, University of Trier in case that’s helpful. She has published several papers on witch trials and the use of torture and at least one on witch trials in Norway. However a lot of her work is in German.

 These two papers/chapters in particular may be of interest: the english language document on torture and emotion in witch trials and the German paper on Norwegian and Danish witch trials.

 Several of the books I’ve got access to confirmed that Norway burnt witches and provided stories focused on shapeshifting and causing storms at sea. They also confirmed the use of torture in witch trials but nothing so helpful as the kind of tortures employed.

 I found multiple references to ‘water torture’. One of these implied that the particular torture was waterboarding alla the historical Dutch method. But the same source said this caused vomiting or possibly diarrhoea which seems to imply pumping.

 At a guess I’d say pumping is less likely because waterboarding can cause vomiting and so far as I know pumping wasn’t common anywhere in Europe during this period. However absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

 ‘Water torture’ could also potentially refer to: a temperature torture, near drowning, a method of sleep deprivation or even dehydration. Without more detail it’s really hard to say which of these is being referenced.

 I found one mention of ‘burning torture’ a reference that I think referred to tearing the flesh with hot pincers based on the description of a torn wound. However given I only found this referenced once and I’m unsure of the source I found it in, I would not say this is a good one to pick.

 Which leaves me with common tortures.

 Whatever the time period, whatever the place, beatings the most common torture. Easily.

 If your character gets repeatedly hit, whether it’s clean or not, you are not being historically inaccurate. And I’ve got a lot of posts on beatings generally and clean beatings that can help you write that.

 Starvation and dehydration are also both really common regardless of culture and time period. So are temperature tortures or exposure though I think different countries have favoured different methods at different times.

 Torturous cell conditions were incredibly common across Europe historically. Lack of sanitation, wet cells, inadequate bedding, over crowding and conditions amounting to a temperature torture were all really common. They were also often happening alongside starvation.

 I have a masterpost on starvation and tags covering temperature tortures, exposure and prisons. I think the ‘prisons’ tag should give you most of the posts covering poor cell conditions, ‘historical torture’ and ‘historical fiction’ may also be helpful to you.

 I’m sorry I couldn’t come up with anything more specific.

Available on Wordpress.

Disclaimer

Edit: So this should be my week off the blog but I’ve seen a lot of the responses to this. Most of them are extremely helpful, thank you to everyone who knows Norwegian that is offering to help.

However: if your instinct is to say that any torturer, historical or recent, is ‘honourable’ and follows a code of conduct then this blog is not the place for you. I don’t tolerate that kind of apologia or people using my work to spread it. 

[cjstalkingstarwarsagain]

hi! i’ve recently decided to rewatch all the star wars movies and take notes on them and then,,, share them with you. so if you’re even mildly interested in my star wars opinions, here you go :)

i’ll divide it into a couple categories so,,,

well start with rogue one!!

shit that made me giggle

"oh look, here’s lyra back from the dead. it’s a miracle."

everything K2 says and does. i love him and he’s perfect.

i love the continuous attempts by K2 to appear imperial and how he fails every time. not a single storm trooper or officer ever believes him when he starts running his mouth.

so sorry but bohdi getting his cable caught and trying to shake it loose is such an adorably human moment. makes me giggle every time.

i honestly thought this section would be longer, this movie made me laugh a bunch. 

stuff i don’t like or doesn’t make sense

why does jyn start believing in the rebellion? there’s no indication that she cared before they found her. there’s no real turning point that we can see. she just,,, suddenly is really into this shit. which is strange because the only reason she ever joined was because she was given a non-choice (either help or get put back in prison). i guess i can kinda see how her father dying could have changed her, but we see none of that on the ship after his death. we just get to the rebel council and all of a sudden she’s the poster girl for rebellion.

saw seems really stable at the beginning of the film, so why did he go seemingly crazy and paranoid? it’s probably explained in the novelization but that’s no excuse to just have a character go crazy with really no explanation or backstory.

that being said, a lot of the character development is pretty lacking. i don’t think i’d care about these characters nearly as much if i wasn’t already a star wars fan.

video game cut scene style general tarkin

bor gullet is supposed to make you lose your mind but bohdi was pretty much fine after like,,, a day

how does the death star,,,, move?? like i know it can but has that ever been explained? is it like little thrusters? like the ones you can see in real life to stabilize things in space? there’s nothing i can visually see. i’m not mad about it i just wanna know.

why does saw insist on staying behind? why doesn’t he come and help?? it would have been so easy to just leave but he insists on staying behind and just watching as death inches closer. i think it doesn’t make sense because we know *so little* about his character. give me more on him, make me understand.

since james earl jones is getting older, vader sounds older. was there??? nothing the audio or editing department could have done about that??? not super mad about this one just because darth vader is really cool and i’ll never really complain too much about darth vader screen time.

when the fuck did jyn become a motivational speaker??

my one gripe about pretty much every star wars movie is the sheer number of times people climb through huge shafts and jump around and shit and they’re always *fine*. no way they wouldn’t fall to their deaths in any normal situations.

can someone?? check the science of the hammerhead corvette?? because there’s no gravity or weight in space right?? theoretically all you gotta do is give that star destroyer a bump and it’s spinning out, right?? i know absolutely nothing about space physics but i gotta be right. maybe i’m wrong. i dunno. i’m dumb as rocks. hear that baby girl?? it’s the spare change rattling around in my skull. i got pennies where my brain is.

absolutely no fucking shot cassian survived a blaster hit AND that fall AND climbed out. my belief simply cannot be suspended that much.

DUDE I FORGOT THAT THE DEATH STAR CAN TRAVEL THROUGH HYPERSPACE HOW DOES WORK SOMEONE TELL ME!!!!!

why doesn’t vader just,,, force grab the plans. i know he sees them. why not just force stop the guy running away with them??

final note now that the movie is over. yes, it’s got a lot of issues. the plot is ehhh at times. the trailers don’t match up with the movie shots AT ALL (i wanna know what happened behind the scenes with that). the character development is lacking in many major ways (that has not stopped me from loving these characters though, but that’s the autism talking). but like i’ll say in the "stuff i liked" section, this is such a damn cool movie. i was once talking about it with an older friend of mine and he said seeing rogue one in theaters felt like watching the original trilogy in theaters back in the 70s and 80s and honestly that’s such a compliment. i love this movie, i really do.

just cool shit,,, you know the vibe

DEATH TROOPERS

krennic is probably one of my favorite imperial officers. for some reason he just really sells it for me, the evil and manipulation that borderlines in try hard. and (i mention it more later because you see it more in the "choke on your aspirations" scene) beyond that just the fact that he’s?? a guy. just a dude. at any given moment he could be described as just hanging out. but he’s trying so hard (for whatever reason, we don’t know his evil motivations) to be this big bad evil dude. and it’s just interesting to see someone *trying* to be imperial and *trying* to be evil, as opposed to a tarkin-type character who’s just naturally an asshole.

i love the rogue one main theme. don’t even talk to me. it’s so cool.

it’s cool to see more about the birth of the death star, seeing other people learn about it. sort of realizing the fear and terror that everyone must have been experiencing. especially after being a star wars fan for so long and being like, yeah it’s the death star it’s just a staple of this universe. it reminds me that "oh god this was a planet killer and this was the first time something like that had ever even been heard of".

there’s gorgeous visuals in this movie.

i like the "i’m wanted in 12 systems" guy cameo (did you know his name is cornelius? i googled it)

when the storm trooper asks for papers?? like fuck yeah show me what life is like under imperial rule. give me that shit.

chirrut is so badass i’ll never get over it

"i’m one with the force and the force is with me" i’m eating that shit UP! salivating over the meal in front of me. i really want more exploration of the guardians and jedi worship in general. like gimme that weird funky space religion.

seeing an at-st just walk around a town. i dunno i like that shit.

K2 saying sorry for hitting cassian. i’m so soft on this robot.

"clear of hostiles,,,, ONE HOSTILE"

jyn stepping in front of K2 to protect him after she (not ten minutes ago) made the comment “i’m just afraid they’ll miss you and hit me”. jyn,,, your soft side is showing,,,,

i like the cool machine blaster that baze has. it’s awesome seeing different blaster styles when originally the only variation we really saw was chewie’s cross bow style blaster.

i really wanna see more of baze and cirruit. i wanna know what happened that made baze stop believing. i wanna know how they met. i wanna see them evolve and grow together.

i like that jyn argues that 16 is too young to be a solider (she’s 21 in the movie). i like that she’s mad that she’s young and has been put in a position to protect herself and then later save the galaxy. (for context: luke and leia were 19 in a new hope. anakin is 19 in attack of the clones, ~22 when he became darth vader, and rey is 19 in force awakens. stop putting the fate of the galaxy in the hands of people who are *barely* adults)

the testing of the death star is awesome. love seeing wicked cool space weapons. when it blocks out the sun? ominous as hell fuck yeah.

it’s interesting that baze says cassian doesn’t look like a killer, that "he has the face of a friend", when one of the first things we saw him do was kill a man. i think about that a lot. does that say more about baze’s ability to read people or does it say more about who cassian is deep down, beyond what he’s done to serve the rebellion?

cassian’s relationship with death and killing is very interesting. you could argue that cassian is just as brainwashed and deep in the rebellion as anyone imperial. i really hope it’s something that gets explored in his stand alone show. he mentions he’s lost everything and has been a rebel since he was 6. gimme cassian andor backstory.

"careful not to choke on your aspirations director" is probably some of the most dramatic-anakin-skywalker shit i’ve ever seen vader do

i like seeing rebel infighting. so often it seems there’s always general consensus about what the rebellion wants, but it’s good to see that they don’t always agree on how to rebel.

i love the consistent "found family" rebel alliance shit in these movies. it makes my dick so hard.

ARTOO AND THREEPIO CAMEO FUCK ME UP THOSE ARE MY BOYS

okay i totally get that the empire is evil, i really do, but rogue one (and lots of moments in the sequels) really reminds me how fucking cool some of their shit is. like death troopers? imperial droids like K2? the base on scarif? vader’s castle on mustafar and his bacta tank?? fuck me UP.

i loved hearing the troopers doing their dumb small talk about the T-15s on the beach.

i think ben mendelssohn is perfect for the role of krennic, no notes there. he’s just like?? a guy and he’s doing everything he can to fit into this evil role and he just wants to be like this big bad imperial boy on campus. i don’t know. i don’t have the words right now to express how fuckin awesome he is. i’ll write an essay about it later.

THE AT-AT COMING OUT OF THE MIST?? CHRIST ON A BIKE. LAY ME TO REST. LOVE IT.

fucking love me some female fighter pilots. the women of star wars are so badass. doing justice to my return of the jedi ladies.

i think a whole lot about jyn giving K2 a blaster. the way he takes it and looks at it and holds it so gently. i think that’s the first time a human has trusted him with a blaster since his reprogramming. he seems so appreciative of that trust.

i love seeing the faces of baze and the other rebels when a few of the x-wings show up and take down an at-at. i’m so very soft for the relationship between these rebels. not to be cliche, but the *hope* that they have. it’s so moving. this movie is just so full of that quintessential rebel feeling.

hey so i’m super emotional about the death of K2 okay? because in the novelizations you learn that in the last second k2 had before a full shut down, he ran a simulation where cassian lived and even though he knew it was impossible, it made him happy. FURTHERMORE K2 is very well known and his name is often listed along side jyn’s in terms of talking about the history of the rebellion.

chirrut and baze’s deaths are so important to me. we know they’re best friends, and even though we don’t know how long they’ve been together, they love each other so deeply. chirrut being the path for baze to return to the force? touching. i so wish these dumb force husbands could have had more screen time. baze calling chirrut back?? chirrut telling him to find him in the force?? baze looking to see the man he loves one more time before he dies??reminds me of the silken quote about dying in your best friends arms because it’s all you know. anywho,,, if star wars canon has any mercy then these two lovers are force ghosts together rn. don’t care how you feel or whether you "ship" them or not. love comes in so many forms and they encompass all that love.

terribly sorry but i think about those two star destroyers colliding with the rogue one main theme playing over it every day. it’s,,,,, so,,,, ( ´∀｀)

i’ve said it before and i’ll say it again BEN MENDELSSOHN??? UH YEAH

krennic watching his weapon (his beautiful, successful weapon) power up and kill him,,, the poetic justice of it all,,,,

any time anyone says "may the force be with you" i dunno maybe it’s my religious trauma but i’m head over heels for that good shit

the star destroyer coming out of hyper space as the rebels are escaping and some of the ships hit the destroyer?? one of my favorite things in the new star wars movies is directors and writers saying "oh this can totally happen" and they DO IT

jyn mentioning earlier in the film that she isn’t used to people sticking around when shit hits the fan and then dying in the arms of cassian?? because he stayed?? and for the first time she has someone??

in that same vein: cassian also says earlier in the film that he lost everything too. his connection with jyn is also important to him, just as important as it is to jyn. they need each other. i can’t remember who on this hellsite said it, but someone mentioned that they hope the stand alone cassian stuff coming out doesn’t make him this swindling playboy who fucks around a bunch. i think having him as more of like?? a mandolorian type character would be really cool. like he’s a rebel assassin: make him one. make him independent and badass and cool and DONT give him a bunch of romantic or sexual interests because then that downplays the clear love he had developing for jyn. again LOVE COMES IN FORMS BEYOND BASIC SHIPS. and there’s a lot of love in star wars.

i’ve said it a million times but vader is so cool and over and over again this movie reminded me that he’s actually so scary. i saw star wars for the first time when i was 6 and i can’t remember my initial reaction to him, but i’ve definitely (like with the death star) been desensitized to the fact that if i was in star wars, darth vader would scare the shit out of me. he’s *scary* and that’s cool. i liked seeing vader effortlessly go fucking mad on these rebels. then you understand why they were so scared in that first scene of a new hope.

no i absolutely will not get over the vader scene. i won’t. his saber turning on. his force abilities. his effortless lightsaber work. the choral music over the scene with the hectic orchestra. don’t touch me i’m emotional.

i loved seeing leia. it touches me so deeply every time.

fuck i love this movie despite all its faults.

if you’ve made it this far, thank you!! i hope you enjoyed. please remember that this is totally a safe space for all star wars opinions and you can feel free to disagree with me! i’d love to hear what some of you thought :))

[adifferenttime]

Honest Hearts: A Rough Rewrite

Hey! I’ve been working on an Honest Hearts rewrite-type-thing for a bit and figured I’d solicit feedback/assemble a post to store some of these ideas.

A detailed explanation of the premise is under the cut, but I’ve made this as a more interesting reintroduction to major locations, along with the characters who live there. I also have some lore consisting of letters, scripture, and holotapes that’s still in the early stages, along with a complete companion wheel for Salt-Upon-Wounds (he’ll follow you around for a little if you decide to help him out). Endings are now finished as well. I’m not planning on expanding this into a full mod, but I’m assembling everything in Twine so I can utilize branching dialogue and mimic skill checks.

I want to keep adding to and editing this because I’m having fun with it, so if you have any input, let me know!

Essentially, the story proceeds as written up until the point where Daniel sends you to either kill the White Legs or destroy their war totems. You quickly realize that their camp is deserted, at which point Salt-Upon-Wounds ambushes you, convo-locks you, and tells you that there’s an entirely different side to things here that you might not have considered.

Factions

The Mormons have established a theocracy in the Utah called Deseret, with New Jerusalem - what was once Salt Lake City - as its capital. Large numbers of them survived the initial apocalypse due to their pre-War focus on strong community ties and disaster prepping; over time, they have returned to the model of self-sufficient agrarianism that characterized the historical Mormon state of Deseret that existed in Utah in the 1800s. Their President, who wields supreme executive power, is also their Prophet. The Mormons believe he communes directly with God, but there’s some discontent in New Jerusalem over his hands-off approach to foreign policy and unwillingness to assemble a standing army. The Elders of the Priesthood are pushing him to allow for some kind of formal military to oppose what they see as revived versions of their ancestral enemies: America, Rome, and the “Lamanites” (this is what Mormons call Indigenous Americans; the “Lamanite” idea has historically been used as a justification for racism, and I’m reflecting that here because it’d be kind of heinous not to). In more than a few respects, Deseret serves as a mirror to the Legion and an exploration of the other side of the coin re: the tactics utilized by colonial empires to present themselves as legitimate while still claiming territory and steamrolling the opposition.

The White Legs are now more explicitly Shoshone, and I’m relying most heavily on the Timpanagos Band for names and historical inspiration (apparently the question of whether they’re Ute or Shoshone is pretty controversial, but I’m sticking with what the Timpanagos have said about it until someone corrects me). After migrating south in the wake of the Great War, the White Legs eventually settled in Ogden, about a day north of New Jerusalem. Initial interactions with the Mormons were friendly, but as New Jerusalem grew and its need for farmland and resources increased, tensions rose before culminating in open violence in around ‘76 or ‘77. Deseret’s party line is that the White Legs conducted a “raid” on one of their settlements and had to be driven away from Ogden; the White Legs claim the violence was not a raid, but a revenge killing after a Mormon killed a young man and was found not guilty by Mormon legal authorities (this is a theocracy, so “legal authorities” here can be understood as indistinct from “the church”). The Mormons established a new settlement on the ruins of Ogden, which they called New Canaan, and the White Legs fled to Salt Lake, where they have been dwindling in number ever since. Salt-Upon-Wounds’ plan to seek entry to the Legion is a last-ditch attempt to save his people from eradication when their neighbors and the land itself seems intent on killing them (not that that makes all the war crimes ok, which is a sentiment you’ll be able to express to his face if you engage him in conversation).

The Dead Horses are a pastoral society from out of Dead Horse Point, and are split almost down the middle along political lines. The more conservative, religious side opposes intervention in Zion. Graham desecrates the corpses of his enemies as an intimidation tactic, and because the Dead Horses’ religion is so eschatological and heavily focused on properly cleaning, preparing, and interring the dead, a big chunk of the religious leadership opposes him on that basis - they think his tactics are ungodly. They’re also worried that any Dead Horses who die in Zion and are interred there will be severed from their connection to Dead Horse Point and doomed to a separate, lonely afterlife. The younger, more progressive elements of the tribe are less traditionalist, sometimes less religious, and overall not as concerned about Graham’s treatment of the dead because of the potential benefit they might be able to derive from him. Follows-Chalk is their de facto leader, and while the Dead Horses don’t formally allocate political power, he’s among the most influential people in the informal tribal leadership. Most of the Dead Horses who’ve come to Zion have done so either because they support Follows-Chalk politically, or for practical reasons - namely, Graham’s access to a dizzying number of guns and his willingness to give them to anyone who’ll fight for him.

The Sorrows are now a terrace-farming agrarian society instead of hunter-gatherers (Zion has a lot of agricultural potential, and there’s already a few farming plots in the Sorrows camp you see in-game, so it’s not a huge departure from the canon). I’m keeping their Mexican heritage, but I’d like to give them some Ainu influences as well - partially for selfish reasons, but also because bears are extremely important to our culture and theology, which gels well with the elements of Sorrows culture and religion that appear in the canon. I’d like to keep the Survivalist because I like him, but I want to expand on their faith. One of the ways I’m doing that is by deciding they can still read English, even though they no longer speak it; it’s basically their equivalent of liturgical Latin. They’re also rigidly matriarchal and in contrast to the Dead Horses (who eschew formal political hierarchies) or the White Legs (who elect a chief who serves until he dies, is deposed, or voluntarily abdicates), leadership positions are allocated through matrilineal primogeniture; Waking Cloud inherited her position from her mother. Religious leadership, likewise, is only available to women. You’ll be able to talk to Waking Cloud about some of the ways this framework is incompatible with the Mormon perspective, and can appeal to her desire to retain power.

Characters

Canon Characters

Joshua Graham and Daniel are largely unaltered except through the addition of lore that gives insight into their cultures, motives, and pasts.

All three tribal leaders (Follows-Chalk, Waking Cloud, and Salt-Upon-Wounds) are either given new backstories, a different set of motives, or different approaches to one another/Graham and Daniel. They’re also explicitly leaders now - what power Graham and Daniel have, they derive from whichever tribal leader they’ve managed to attach themselves to. Of those three, I’m altering Waking Cloud the least and Salt-Upon-Wounds the most. Like I mentioned, I have a companion wheel for him so far and the bones of two other conversations - one, where you meet him for the first time, and the second, where you speak to him before the final battle. Will link as I finish them.

Original Characters

Each tribal leader now has a rival or right hand within their tribe so I can reflect the different ways the values of a specific community can express themselves.

Follows-Chalk’s primary rival among the Dead Horses is a man who refuses to tell you his name. That’s because using someone’s name in casual conversation is considered unspeakably rude, and the fact that Follows-Chalk is willing to share his own with you is, to Mysteriously Named Old Man Character, yet another sign of how disrespectful and laissez-faire Follows-Chalk is about their shared traditions. Old Man Character is suspicious of you initially, but if you speak to him more he starts to warm to you. The goal is to give you a sense that this he’s pretty xenophobic but for good reasons, and despite his political conflicts with Follows-Chalk, has a lot of love for him. He just wants what’s best for his family, and Follows-Chalk is part of that, even if Mysteriously Named Old Man Character thinks he’s making the wrong choices.

Kiiki is Salt-Upon-Wounds’ right-hand woman and intended as a contrast re: the approach to war and its costs. Salt-Upon-Wounds has done some horrible things and gets a fair bit of dialogue about that, but Kiiki is willing to go even further than he has with very little prompting. Her chief copes with what he’s done by trying to assure himself that the ends of war are worth the cost; Kiiki deals with it by trying to convince herself that the means weren't so bad, actually, and that anyone who isn’t nailing corpses to walls is being naive. All of that makes her sound pretty shitty, but she’s nowhere near as devoted to the idea of a Legion alliance as Salt-Upon-Wounds is. It only takes one very low Speech check to convince her that going Legion is a bad move, and one of the paths involves assassinating Salt-Upon-Wounds and installing her as the new leader as a way to stop the White Legs from joining Caesar. I haven’t added this path to the ending Twine because I’d like to finish Kiiki’s dialogues before I do that.

I’m replacing White Bird as the Sorrow’s spiritual leader with a woman named Imekanu. She’s incredibly old, savvy, and knowledgeable - she’s never been outside Zion, but has a store of books in English, Spanish, and Japanese that have allowed her some insight into what caused the war, if not the current state of the world. She’s also aware of the Survivalist’s origins - not because she’s entered any of his hideouts, but because she’s read over the scriptures and has correctly identified them as letters. Her perspective is that the Father in the Caves was a human being, but that doesn’t diminish his religious value. She sees him as analogous to the Buddha or a Catholic saint: human, sure, but still with access to some deeper truths about the purpose of man and the nature of human goodness. You’ll discover that this idea (that the Survivalist was a holy man rather than a literal god) is the most common perspective among the Sorrows, and you can talk to her about how this departs from Daniel’s perspective that the archetypal Father is divine, not human.

Quests

Each tribe has a specific quest that will either lower or bypass some of the penultimate checks that will determine your ending (people are more likely to believe what you’re telling them if you’ve already won their trust).

The Dead Horses: Joshua Graham has been putting the heads of the fallen up on pikes across Zion. The Dead Horses’ religion is deeply concerned with proper treatment of the deceased, and Graham’s decision to desecrate the corpses of his enemies goes against virtually everything they believe. The old man who won’t tell you his name asks you to take the heads off of the pikes and bury them deep in Zion, and to bring Follows-Chalk with you so you’ll have someone to tell you how to treat them properly. Over the course of the quest, Follows-Chalk will share some of his own beliefs about death, and you’ll have the opportunity to share your own. If you complete this quest without sabotaging it, Follows-Chalk will be willing to betray Graham to the White Legs before the final battle.

The Sorrows: This is basically just Ghost of She, but after defeating the Yao Guai you’ll discover a holotape revealing that the girl wasn’t killed by the bear, but by one of the murderers from Vault 22. Waking Cloud will speculate that maybe the Yao Guai wasn’t the ghost of the little girl at all but some other force that wanted to push you to discover the truth. If you wait until the end to tell Waking Cloud about the death of her husband, you’ll have to pass a Speech check of 75 to convince her you’re telling her the truth; completing this quest drops the check to 50.

The White Legs: Salt-Upon-Wounds will ask you to help him sabotage the Mormons’ preparations for the battle. If you help him with this, it’ll drop the Speech check for you to convince him to leave from 100 to 80. It’s not necessary at all to get the tribal confederacy ending, but a new note will appear in your inventory if you finish it and meet a couple other requirements (asking him certain questions, not attempting that one Speech check about religion, etc).

Endings

I’m trying to incorporate as much variety as possible, but there are three main ending paths: siding with the White Legs, siding with the other two tribes, and peace. The basic idea is that the outcome is predicated less on your direct intervention, and more on how other people act based on the facts they have available to them. Most of your influence is through your choices to hide or reveal key pieces of information, and the skill checks you need to access certain endings are less you convincing a character to do something and more convincing a character to believe you’re telling them the truth. There’s one major exception to this, it requires maxed Speech, and the ending it gives you is markedly bittersweet because you’re trying to get a guy to act against his own best interest. I’m writing all the endings up here, and will probably edit them as things change. The post where I explain them in more depth can be found here.

And that’s the story so far! Thank you for reading, and again: if there’s anything here you think is poorly-conceived, let me know. Thank you to @baelpenrose, who’s a grad student in the history of the American West, for helping me workshop a lot of this stuff. If you’ve got expert knowledge on any of the concepts I touch on or are personally a member of any of the groups I’m describing, please feel free to hmu: anon is on, and you’re always welcome to DM me. I’m just doing this for fun, but I still want it to be as not-shit as possible.

[deanstop13billyjoeltraxx]

Superposition

a deancas college roommate AU

Chapter 4 is up on AO3! (Chapter-by-chapter masterlist here.)

They’re Gonna Love You

Three Years Earlier

Cas was terrible at making friends. 

He really was trying his best — he spoke up in class whenever he could, he talked to his seatmates when it was appropriate. And that was fine, everyone was perfectly nice to him. But he couldn’t figure out what exactly he was supposed to say to make himself less “that one guy from accounting” and more “Cas Novak.” So, he was three weeks into college with nothing to show for it.

Nothing, save his roommate.

Unlike Castiel, Dean had already found a group of friends from their floor. He was hardly ever in their room. Cas didn’t mind so much; it gave him space to focus on his homework, which already felt overwhelming and never-ending. But every day, like clockwork, Dean was back by seven, and he dragged Cas away from his computer and into the dining hall with him. 

Castiel had to admit that dinner was the best part of his day. Dean rarely failed to take his mind off of the dangerously constant spiral of social anxiety and school-related stress. Cas learned that Dean moved constantly because of his father’s job, that his brother, Sam, was “a textbook nerd,” that Dean’s guilty pleasure was Grey’s Anatomy (“Don’t look at me like that, Patrick Dempsey is in it”), that he loved pie probably more than anyone should be allowed to. And Castiel told Dean things, too, things he’d never had the luxury of sharing; how he decided to be a writer after reading The Great Gatsby for the first time, that his attending college had made him the black sheep of the family, how he had never lost a game of Trivial Pursuit (“Is that a friggin’ challenge, Cas?”). 

They had occasionally eaten with Dean’s friends from the dorms, most often on Fridays when the group was heading to a party afterward. That is, until Castiel brought a copy of Pride and Prejudice to the table to read before his next literature class, and Cole Martin asked him if he was gay with a smirk. The table had gone silent; Cas just looked at him, heat flaming across his face; Dean was staring daggers. Cole, refusing to get the message, prodded for a response, at which point Dean asked if he could talk to him for a minute. 

Dean didn’t speak to Cole again after that. 

He apologized to Cas profusely on Cole’s behalf, the “sorry’s” punctuated by assurances that it was great if Castiel was indeed gay, that Dean didn’t care, that Cas was Cas. But even if he was curious, Dean never asked the question. And that was good, because Cas wasn’t quite ready to have that conversation, seeing as coming out to Bartholomew during his senior year had led to six months of no-contact. Instead, Cas just informed Dean that he was accustomed to the treatment by now, that bringing Twilight to school his freshman year placed him solidly in the “insert homophobic-slur here” category, according to his peers. This only partly fixed the issue, because while Dean stopped apologizing, he started on a tirade against Castiel’s high school demons. 

Cas had never had anyone care enough to stand up for him. He thought he was very lucky to have Dean Winchester as a roommate

It was Thursday, and Castiel was agonizing over a problem set for accounting when Dean walked in. 

“All right, Einstein, let’s go,” he announced, dumping his backpack next to his desk. “Dinner time.” 

“Give me a minute,” Cas muttered.

Dean moved over to Cas’ desk and leaned over his shoulder. 

“Damn,” he said. “You really are a genius. I don’t know what any of this shit means.” 

“Save your accolades for when I pass the class,” Cas said, sighing. 

“You’ll pass, but not if you die from starvation first.” 

Cas rolled his eyes. “I think you’re projecting.”

“Maybe I am,” Dean said, shrugging. “But you still need to eat.”

“All right. I’m coming.” 

The pair walked to the dining hall, Dean explaining the details of the party he was attending the following night, how he hoped the girl from his English class would be there. Cas never had much to add to these types of conversations, but he typically tried to remain engaged. Tonight, he just uttered monosyllabic responses when it seemed appropriate. 

Cas couldn’t stop thinking about how alone he had become. The novelty of college had worn off; all Cas could see now was how many hours he spent in solitude. He couldn’t help but feel as though he was doomed for a repeat of high school. The interaction with Cole certainly didn’t help matters, and though Dean was a great friend, Cas couldn’t escape the feeling that everything he did was out of pity.

“Okay, dude, what’s up?” Dean asked. 

“What?”

“You’re acting all weird. Kinda mopey,” Dean explained with a mouthful of pizza. 

“Oh,” Cas said. “I apologize. It wasn’t intentional. I just…” 

Dean raised his eyebrows. “What?”

“I’ve just been distracted tonight.” 

“By what?”

Cas gave Dean a look. “It’s not important.” 

Dean opened his mouth to argue, but Cas interrupted him, changing the subject.  

“How are your classes?”

Dean shrugged. “Eh. Whatever. I don’t pay attention much.” 

“Have you thought about what you’re going to major in?” 

“Wish I was smart enough for engineering, but… Nah, I haven’t figured that out yet.” 

“Dean,” Cas said. “I’m sure you’re smart enough for anything you want to study.” 

Dean chuckled. “Appreciate that, Cas, but definitely not.” 

Cas eyed his friend a moment, but didn’t say anything else. 

“Hey, you know the party I was telling you about?” Dean said after a moment of silence. “You should come. It’ll be fun.”  

Castiel nearly choked on his chicken strips. There was only one thing that would make Dean invite him to a party. The thought of Dean feeling that bad for Cas made him want to become one with the floor. Not to mention the idea of attempting that level of social interaction was enough to send him into a tailspin. 

“That’s very kind, but I don’t think that would be a good idea,” Cas said. “I’m not much for parties.” 

“Oh come on, Cas. You’ve never even tried it!” 

“I understand the general idea.”

“Man, it’s the experience.”

“Dean, I’m not going to a frat party. I have enough to worry about with my classes. Besides,” Cas looked away, refusing to meet Dean’s eyes. “I’m not… particularly adept at social interactions.” 

“What?” Dean exclaimed. “Dude, you’re awesome. You do fine with me!” 

“That’s different.”

“How?” 

“I don’t know,” Cas sighed. “You tend to do most of the talking. It saves me from ruining things.” 

Dean just looked at him. “Ruining things?” 

“I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but I’m not exactly your typical college student.” 

Dean laughed. “Well, I mean, no, but that doesn’t ruin things. Plus, I can guarantee that every girl at that party would be all over you. Most of the guys, too, probably. You’ve got the sexy nerd thing going on.” 

Cas blushed profusely. “That’s irrelevant. The point is, I’m not going.” 

Dean sighed, long-suffering. “Fine. I give up. For now.” 

Cas let out a breath of relief.

They finished dinner and headed back to their dorm. Dean asked what class Castiel liked the most, which led to Cas gushing about creative writing for ten minutes. Dean graciously humored him, and when Cas apologized abashedly, Dean punched him in the shoulder and told him to shut up. 

When they got back to their room, Dean put on another record (Wish You Were Here, by Pink Floyd, Cas was informed) and left to take a shower. Cas finished his problem set with “Have a Cigar” in the background, grateful for the distraction from his earlier thoughts. That was the one good thing about his double-major — he truly did not have time to ruminate on his problems. 

Dean returned to work on an English essay, talking to himself the entire time. Cas did his best not to laugh at the muttered “what the hell am I even trying to say” and “I can’t use ‘demonstrates’ again.”

Hours later, after trying, and failing, to read ahead for philosophy, Cas resigned himself to his bed for the night. 

“Tired?” Dean asked from his desk. 

“Yes,” Cas said, throwing off his t-shirt and getting in bed. “But you can leave the light on if you have more work to do. I’ll fall asleep eventually.” 

“Nah, I’m tired too.” 

Dean flipped the lights off and climbed in his own bed. Cas closed his eyes against the quiet blackness. 

“Cas?” 

“Yes?” 

“Are you all right? Level with me, man.” 

Cas sighed. He supposed this conversation would happen sooner or later, if this friendship was to continue. “I’ve never had many friends,” he said. “I told you, after Cole, about the comments regarding my sexuality?” Dean made a grunt in understanding. “Well, it didn’t help that I was homeschooled until I was fourteen. I was what I believe is called ‘the weird kid.’”

Dean snorted. “You? Weird? Never.” 

Cas rolled his eyes in the darkness. “I’m serious. I just don’t want to be the ‘weird kid’ again, I suppose. I believed college would be my second chance, but it’s beginning to feel like a bad sequel.”

“Dude,” Dean said, “you have me. And Benny and Charlie like you, too. If you just went out more —”

“I’m not sure I want my friendships to be predicated on underage drinking,” Cas replied, and cringed at the way it sounded. When Dean didn’t respond, he added, “I just mean… I want people to like me, not my drunken antics.” 

“Right,” Dean mumbled. Then, “What was homeschool like?”

Cas furrowed his brow at the change in subject, but humored Dean, anyway. “Terrible. My father attempted to teach all five of us on his own. It was mostly history and religion, which, coming from him, meant racism, fire, and brimstone. He had this grand plan for me, and for my brothers, to become pastors.” Castiel paused. “I had to sneak out to the library with Anna just to teach myself basic algebra.” Another pause, a breath. “Anna kept me sane most days. She was more of a mother than a sister.” I miss her.

“Where was your mom?” Dean asked.

“Not sure,” Cas said. “We were all adopted as children. My father never took a wife, and I never knew my real parents. I asked my father about them once. He told me they died ages ago.” 

“Shit, I’m sorry, Cas.” 

“It’s okay.” 

“That makes more sense,” Dean said after a moment. “I was wondering why none of y’all looked alike.” 

“I probably should have explained that earlier. I forget it isn’t common knowledge,” Cas replied. 

Dean was quiet for a long time, so long that Cas suspected he may have fallen asleep. Cas was about to follow suit when Dean said, quietly, “Sometimes I was the weird kid, too.”

Castiel snapped his eyes open at that. It seemed unbelievable to him that Dean Winchester could be disliked by anyone. “What?”

“Yeah,” Dean mumbled. “Always moving, you know. Sometimes, people liked me. Sometimes, they really fucking hated me. It sucks, you know.” 

“I do.” 

tagging @nguyenxtrang :)

[coffeeandcalligraphy]

Wicked Child | Feeding Habits #2

Hey People of Earth!

I’m back with another writing update for Feeding Habits (Moth Work #2) at last!

A few things since the last update: this project is 100% going to be a novel and also has a title (Feeding Habits)!

Chapter two has been sort of strange to write as I actually had written a majority of it before starting over after realizing the events I’d written needed to happen later. This is why it’s taken me a while to update on this book, but I’ve finally completed the chapter and am now here to share it with y’all! 

Here’s a scene breakdown of this chapter, which is probably the longest chapter I’ve written in years (6300 words). Buckle up, this update is THICC.  TW: lots of religious content in this one.

Scene A: 

We go through Lonan’s lonely morning routine (lol) that’s interrupted by Anya, a neighbour he vaguely recognizes. She’s there to take him up to her apartment to paint her kitchen as her husband is away and can’t do it, a plan he was not aware of! (Eliza’s voluntold him to hopefully distract him from wanting to help his friend which is outlined in update #1). 

Scene B:

Anya dips before the scene starts to grab some extra supplies to make Lonan some sourdough so Lonan is tasked with watching her young son Joey while he tapes up the baseboards. This is where the “wicked child” aspect of this chapter comes in as he compares the wickedness he feels he and others in his life possess to the full innocence of Joey.

Scene C:

Anya gets back from running errands and at first, seems to be a *chill mom* but as she and Lonan interact more, we get to see that something isn’t fully right with her. From some observation, Lonan finally figures out Anya’s husband is actually dead and she’s struggling with grief.

Scene D:

Lonan is back in his apartment, filling up his bathroom sink. We know from Moth Work that one of Lonan’s hobbies is holding his breath underwater, and he does this in this scene to think. In the middle of this ritual, Eliza gets home and speaks to him as she unwinds, reading rather cryptic notes from fortune cookies she’s brought home with takeout.

Scene E:

Unbeknownst to her, Lonan’s not staying for dinner as Anya invited him to her place as a thank you! However this news doesn't break well and the two bicker until they’re both successfully upset.

Scene F:

Instead of going to Anya’s for dinner, Lonan finds himself at a church confessional. He stumbles through reconciliation in a bit of a haze and eventually heads outside where a concerned mother and her two kids ask if something’s wrong. His thoughts from scene D overwhelm him and he eventually sort of gives himself up to the moment in a bit of a chokehold with the sun.

Though this chapter took a while, I’m happy with the threads I introduced and really got to see Lonan’s mind at this point in time--a sort of lonely state of living. There’s also a lot of religion related stuff in this chapter which is always interesting to write as someone who grew up Catholic, and I was surprised at how pertinent these themes are in this book.

Excerpts:

Here’s the opening bit:

The next morning, Eliza leaves two energy shots on the counter for him, along with a slice of sourdough she bought from the bakery across the street. Both sit on a breakfast tray, room temperature from sitting out too long, icebergs of ginger floating along the glass’s surface, butter on the bread gone pallid and spongy. Next to it, she’s left a note, as she usually does: green casserole in the fridge, running low on OJ.

Lonan retrieves the television remote from the nook between the knife block and flicks the TV to life as he drinks the first shot. Gingerroot—and this morning, a new addition, carrot stems—mush against his incisors, and he swallows just as the TV brightens to an image of some amphibian, a leafy looking treefrog. The crank of their calls bulge like each red eye, the familiar husk of narration outlining the workings of mating. Lonan scoops up the second shot with his pinky and the saucer of sourdough with his index finger and thumb, takes both to the couch where he sits.

Classic Lonan (TM) interaction:

He’s mid chewing the stale crust when he opens the door, expecting a package delivery, an unaddressed sympathy card. Instead, a woman stands in the door, her hair damp and smelling like the coconut salve Eliza rubs onto her kneecaps. He recognizes her face in a fleeting, neighbour-like way, someone he might’ve held the door open for, or let step off the elevator first.

“Breakfast?” She points to the crumb stuck to the corner of his mouth.

Lonan swallows the remainder of the sourdough quickly, combing off the crumb with a shallow smile.            

“Sourdough.”

“Did you make it yourself?”

“It’s probably from the back of our medicine cabinet.”

The woman laughs at this, though he’s not fully meant for it to be a joke. 

Apparently a new motif in this book is the word stunning that both serves as a descriptor for something magnificent/dazzling and the process of subduing an animal (love being heavy handed about this lmao):

She peers at their half-bloody kitchen wall. “You’re doing red?”

“Eliza’s vegetarian.” At the woman’s blank stare, he turns to look at the wall, examining each plane of his throat as hot embarrassment makes him red like the paint. “Her favourite colour. We’re trying something new. Avant garde.” All things he’s heard Eliza say.

“That’s unique. Very. So unique,” she says, adding, “It’s so kind of you to offer some help while you’re in the middle of painting your own kitchen. When Eliza told me about your offer, I danced in my living room. Is that weird? I danced because I’m going to have a green kitchen—a green one.”

Lonan nods, and steps farther back into the apartment, toward the stack of paint rollers, one of many rolls of tape. “Of course,” he says.

“It makes you feel alive,” the woman says. He forgets what she’s referring to, doesn’t know her name, only vague details like the jeweled bangles she wears on one wrist, the shiny cast of hair gel stirruped around her curls, her teeth, white, like the canines of a wolf. But she doesn’t seem to notice, a starriness in her gaze as she says, “The paint. The green. It’s stunning. Isn’t it?”

Anya’s initial dialogue is some of my favourite I’ve written. Probably because of the moon mention lol. Also Joey’s just chillin and I love him for that!!

The woman’s name is Anya, and she lives three floors up. He finds this out at the same time he finds out Eliza offered to paint her kitchen on his behalf, though what Anya says sounds more like “When Eliza told me you’d paint the wall, I could’ve—what is that saying? I could’ve jumped over the moon. I would’ve. The entire thing. All its phases.”

Anya’s got a toddler named Joey. He’s turning two next month, a little boy with a curly halo for hair, two dimples Lonan sees whenever he glances up from his tape-job of the baseboards. Joey eats apple slices dipped in almond butter and watches cartoons with both feet propped onto the couch cushion, too short to dangle down. Ever so often, he laughs, a shimmery sound, like the inside of a snow globe. Lonan half-watches him, as Anya’s asked—He’s good, don’t stress—if he cries, he wants you to turn up the TV—because she’s out of bread flour and insists on making Lonan two loaves of sourdough.

Some Joey:

“Joey’s good, isn’t he?” she asks, her fingers curving around the tape company’s logo. Lonan inhales. Anya smells like Eliza sometimes does, vaguely floral, like jasmine, or cherry blossoms. “Children are little blessings. Powerful little blessings.”

Of course, he should say. There’s no other way to describe a child—he’s a blissful little thing, his only purpose to keep his feet in his two-inch socks, to stare wistfully at a television like it’s telling his fortune in a language of pictures. Of course a child is a blessing—soft cheeks like the belly of bread dough, pinchable, kissable, thumbable, hands dipped into glittery tempera paint and fingers that make chicken scratches that will never be anything but art. Of course, he should say. He knows that, he should say. But Lonan’s vision fuzzes. He sees little of the TV colours projected on the walls like a hypnotic, technicolour exorcism; he doesn’t remember what it’s like to be that small, what it’s like to have his hands expand right in front of him, like seedlings. 

Here’s the title drop ft. a rewritten Bible verse (Revelation 21:8):

He wants to believe children are always powerful little blessings that stay good. He doesn’t know why he doubts her. Joey is just this—a blessing on her couch, smiling at a screen because it’s all he needs to do. But he knows better, knows the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable exist, where they all live, and how they all start—as little blessings. He’s met murderers, liars, sorcerers in the shape of his father, sisters, mothers, all the wicked things that emerge from their second deaths unscathed. He doesn’t know what makes a child wicked. If he is one. If he’s been one. How many wicked children he knows. 

Eliza hasn’t returned any of Lonan’s phone calls since he tried dialling somewhere between the first and last half of the wall. It’s obvious Anya knows he wasn’t aware of the plan, which is why every few minutes, she states new reasons for her forgetfulness with the time. “Eliza ran into me in the hallway, and I’m so bad at hallways,” she said, while rolling the dough between her knuckles. “So many turns.” Brushing her benchtop with more flour: “Time as a mother is such a commodity. It’s like, what’s the down payment for five minutes alone? But Joey’s worth it. Joey’s always worth it. He’s just magnificent. Can’t stay away from magnificence.”

More interactions I adore:

“You want some OJ?”

Lonan looks up from the paint blankly, focusing on Anya in an embarrassingly slow haze. “What?”

Anya reaches over to the fridge and tugs on its stainless-steel handle. It gives with a haunted sound, a subtle sort of groaning, and emerges with a glass bottle of orange juice.

“OJ,” she says, and shakes the bottle so the liquid froths.

“Oh,” he says. Green casserole in the fridge. Running low on OJ. “We’re low on that.”

Okay sorry but I’m so in love with Anya and Lonan’s interactions lol:

“Where are you from again?” She undoes her apron from the back with one hand. It falls, a lilac clump, onto the tile, and she leaves it there, only nudging it slightly with her toe.

Her eyes are golden too. Everything in her apartment. Even the silver parts are somehow gold. How much she could pawn off for eyes like those, like individual buttons of solid gold. Anya squints, and there the gold goes, focusing on him until she leans forward and plucks a strand of hair from his jaw. It sags with green paint, and before he blinks, she’s clipped it with a pair of kitchen shears.

“You got some paint on you.”

“Oregon,” he says. “Boston. New York.”

“What?”

“You asked where I’m from.”

Anya pockets his hair. He’s sure it’s a subconscious tick—she hasn’t even realized—but still, he wonders what she’ll do with it. If she’ll send it somewhere to get scanned, bagged, tested. How much you can find out about someone with just a nib of hair.

“That’s a lot of places,” she says. “You’re basically transcontinental.”

From her pocket, Anya’s hand twitches. He wonders what she’s doing, if she’s touching the hair, or flaking off its paint, or simply flattening out her pocket.

“Are you going to clone me?” He gestures to her pocket.

Anya doesn’t look.

“I could.”

“Why?”

“You paint walls fast. You’ve got nice hair.”

“Do you collect hair?”

“Just from the people I like.”

We get to see Anya unravel a little here as she and Lonan share a drink:

He’s always been good at watching. This is what he does as Anya pulls a miniature bottle of a deep amber liquid from her fridge along with the orange juice, mixing them together so what he pushes toward him smells like ammonia. She drinks half, an easiness as she swallows, and then slides the glass to him.

He leaves it there for a while. He watches Joey, how he claps when more animals show up on screen and gets quiet during the wrangle of commercials. He’s gold just like his mother, with a gap tooth that matches the man’s who grins in every photo hung neatly on the walls. A face he doesn’t remember, not even in the hazy slots he reserves for what he remembers working the hardware store. No evidence of him anywhere else, the shoes on the front mat only women’s heels or child-sized sneakers. One hook that holds one set of keys. Only the photographs.

“Where is your husband right now?” he asks. One wine glass in the sink. One coffee mug. One saucer.

“Businessman. Very busy.”

“I don’t remember him coming into the store.”

Anya takes another sip of the orange juice even though it’s Lonan’s turn to drink. Anya looks at Joey, a desperate fondness that answers Lonan’s question for him. She looks at him like she’s searching for the face of the man in the pictures, searching because she hasn’t seen it in years.

Anya really unravelling:

Anya’s face is bloated and red, a soreness in her eyes like she needs to blink but can’t. Lonan instinctually reaches for her hand, and it’s then that he notices it—two wedding bands on her ring finger. Her fingertips jolt him, but her palms are warm, the skin there taut, like she’s been clutching it for years.

“I thought the wall would help. Green means new life. Doesn’t it? I read that in a magazine. That it brings new life, I mean. New beginnings. New, new, new.”

Lonan getting existential ft. the first Harrison mention so far tho I’ll probably cut it because I want it to be a little more impactful and also half of this makes no sense oops:

His father is a dead man. Just like Anya’s husband is a dead man. Lonan knows so many dead men. Some that matter more than others, some names he revisits sometimes at the graveyard when Eliza thinks he’s out to run an errand as innocent as replacing a bad container of cottage cheese. He knows of men who are dead but still living, like Harrison’s father who no longer exists as a person in his dimension, but a corpse, hanging around in unnecessary things like a last name, an eye colour. Beyond men, he knows of many other dead things: dead pets, dead street names, dead countries, dead houseplants, dead first ladies.

He knows what a dead father does, what a dead heart does, that these things are meant to die—an inevitable thing; a sort of giving up of flesh, burying, toiling into new soil.

This is basically a monologue:

Lonan is in love with Eliza. He always has been. He always will be. There is nothing better than being in love with Eliza. There is nothing wrong with being in love with Eliza. There is no reason to not be in love with Eliza. Eliza is intelligent. Eliza is driven. Eliza is sensitive. Eliza tries to listen. Eliza knows how to take care of him. Eliza knows how to spell words like zolpidem, wears lipstick in the shade Very Vermillion and is delighted when it rubs onto her teeth. Eliza is lucky. Eliza is hypnotic. Eliza is a holy woman, a sacred woman, a careful woman, a wicked woman. 

Lonan gulps water. Too much to keep himself controlled; he sputters, splatters the mirror. He hooks his fingers over his waterline, tugging until water falls out. He paces, chews his palms like Anya did, and steadies himself slowly from the counter to the tile. He is a wicked child. Eliza is a wicked child. Everyone he knows—all wicked children.          

“Accept what comes to you each day,” Eliza says, which means she’s opened three of four of the cookies. “That’s truthful. That’s raw. That’s all you need to do.”

Some Eliza dialogue I like in reply to Lonan’s statement that he can’t do things since she bars him from driving:

“You don’t need a car to do things, Lonan.” She stirs her bowl of congee, the plastic spoon scraping against the Styrofoam. “You need hobbies. Like cross stitch. Pickling. Painting neighbours’ walls.”

Lonan and Eliza being Lonan and Eliza:

Lonan secures his fingers around the tin of madeleines and shifts once more, only for her to mimic his movement. They dance like this for a moment—his shuffle left matched by her shuffle left, his step up matched by her own. More of her mascara has smudged from where she unclumped her lashes, a lazy slash of colour like a samurai belt. Even their stares match each other—as he bores through her with a nimble focus like it’ll move her somehow, she does the same.

Here’s a line I like:

As she reddens, he adds this to his list of synonyms for baptism: to tame. 

Here’s an excerpt featuring self indulgence and proof I miss Harrison:

The confessional smells rank, like rotting paper and expired cologne, all of its corners seedy with overuse. Scratches mar the fabric he rests his elbows on, like someone clawed into it while reliving their sins, track marks on the floor from a rainy day. He can’t imagine anyone else but him in this small box, caged in by the lattice, mumbling incoherent sins to the priest he hasn’t even committed. Stealing a set of glass eyeballs from a garage sale. Forgetting his wedding anniversary. Missing Easter Sunday mass to go whale watching. He doesn’t sign himself at the right times or speak at the right times or thank the priest at the right times. He lies when he’s asked if he’s lied since his last confession. He mentions nothing of drinking with Anya, of not saving the sheep or the bunnies even though he knew the outcome of their lives without finishing the program. Of being a wicked child, of knowing wicked children, of not knowing the difference between wickedness and innocence, and which one he learned first. He says his name is Luka. He works at a law firm. He’s married to a Harriet, a seamstress or a stock broker or an antiques trader—he doesn’t know. He likes golfing, parcheesi, drinking martinis on yachts. He’s never overindulged, he’s loyal to his woman, he wants three kids and a house with finished floors and no neighbours. He’s a good father, a gentle father, a careful father, no wickedness, just an empty shell of goodness, like a father should be. His father is retired, and visits him on weekends—they play checkers, paint birdhouses, keep a distance but toast with spirits he can’t pronounce. Everything is good—it’s all good, all good. That’s not a sin, the priest should say but they laugh—it’s good to be good. Children are good, marriage is good, fathers are good, everything an iteration of good. By the time his confession is over and he’s well on his way out of the church mumbling I am heartily sorry, he believes his lies are true—he’s absolved into someone new, Luka married to Harriet, three kids, an empty shell, dreamily stumbling through a house with finished floors that’s actually just the sidewalk until a woman passing by with a two small children has to help him sit on the curb.

This image gives me Forever & Ever More by Nothing But Thieves vibes (music video was def inspo):

She asks if he needs something to drink, if he needs someone to call, and emerges with a half-empty bottle of sparkling water and a cell phone. She asks what’s wrong with his eye, and he doesn’t know what’s wrong with anything—with eyes, with children, with sins, with confessions, with baptisms, with orange juice, with madeleines, with wickedness, with practicing how long he can breathe underwater because he knows it’s possible just like walking on it.

One of the children, hair pulled into two plaits secured with pearlescent butterfly bobbles, pokes at her mother and asks if he’s crazy. Her mother shushes her at the same time her older sister shows him a cool trick she learned with a toy convertible. Its wheels whir. Lonan gasps. The girl says, “Even crazy people think I’m gifted,” and wheels the car again. People stop to watch. Church bells gong an elegy he’s sure he’s heard before. The woman’s sparkling water dribbles from his mouth and dampens his dress shirt. Sun eclipses his face and eats at his throat like a parasite, like it knows all the unclean things about him, a watcher, an eyeball, a scorching little thing that bullets through his neck like the tooth of a wolf. The woman shushes her children and asks if he’s got a health problem, a drug problem, any problem, and he could say yes to all three but instead keeps repeating I am heartily sorry, I am heartily sorry. And when she does call someone, no one he knows, he leans against the cool pavement, cranes his neck to the sky, and parts his lips so the sunlight fills his mouth.

So that’s it for this update! I haven’t really been drafting lately, but I hope I can get more of this written because I love sharing!

--Rachel

[nikibogwater]

Niki Blethers about The Mandalorian S2: ep 7

Spoilers below the cut!

*inhale*

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

DANK FERRIK THIS WAS THE EPISODE I HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR HOLY CRUDMUFFINS

I said last week that the series has been struggling to hold my interest this season. I haven’t been super active in the fandom, and I was just overall a lot less invested in the characters/plot than I was for season 1. I was never quite able to pinpoint exactly why until this episode.

The reason I started losing interest in the show was because the show had started losing interest in Din. For several episodes, the plot was mainly focused around finding the Jedi, learning about the Force, uncovering all these Imperial baddies. The show was always at its most interesting to me when the typical Star Wars stuff took a back seat to Din’s personal story, and this season was not letting that happen as often as I would’ve liked. 

But with “The Believer,” everything is solidly fixed on Din and his personal goal: get his son back. It also takes a good hard look at Din’s Creed and the Way of his tribe, which is a unique and interesting aspect of Star Wars lore that I’ve been slavering to learn more about. 

I’ve seen a lot of people saying they want Din to abandon his religion, take off his helmet and be “free” or whatever, and while I understand that there are definitely religious sects out there that champion very toxic and damaging ideas, Din’s Way never felt either of those things to me. It is centered on personal sacrifice for the protection of your tribe and your honor, but at no point was it ever implied that Din was forced into this, or that he regrets swearing the Creed. He even says that nothing bad happens to you if you break the Creed--you just can’t ever take it up again once you’ve made that choice. “Sanctuary” implied that there are times when he is tempted to leave it behind and live “normally,” but he chooses to resist that urge of his own volition, because he believes in the importance of what he’s doing. 

There has been a lot of helmet-removal foreshadowing in this season, and I was starting to get very concerned about the direction the writers were going in regards to Din’s Creed. I am absolutely 100% completely biased as a religious person myself, so this probably isn’t an objective viewpoint, but I think as long as your beliefs do not require you to intentionally harm other people (either physically or emotionally), it should be socially acceptable for people to believe whatever they choose. To practice any traditions they like, even if they seem weird and restrictive, as long as they are doing it by their own choice. I know this is hard for a lot of people to believe (especially in this country) but many people find a somewhat ironic sense of fulfilment in making personal sacrifices for a higher ideal. And DIn has been shown to take comfort from his Creed and the identity it gives him, and has never expressed anything more than passing wistfulness at the thought of living differently--not bitterness or resentment, simply a “Oh. Yes, that would be nice. But I’m still sticking to my guns here.”

So with all that being said...Holy crap, I love how this episode forced him to break his creed and sacrifice his identity. The show has hammered it into our heads since day one: Din’s most valued part of himself, the thing that he loves enough to die for, is his identity as a Mandalorian and follower of the Way. Din taking off his helmet was not an act of rebellion--it was truly a sacrifice, the greatest sacrifice he could ever make. Din has been shown to be pretty nonchalant about dying, but losing who he is, the code that has shaped him and guided his life--to him, that is so much worse than death. And before Grogu, I don’t think there was anyone or anything that could make him willingly give it up. 

Also MAJOR Kudos to Pedro Pascal for his acting in that whole scene. The guy has already been a god of the recording booth throughout this entire series, but his physical performance during this pivotal moment in Din’s arc was just 👌👌👌 Every swallow, every muscle twitch, every eye movement was clearly very intentional, and even though Din was forced to keep a straight face and pretend this was perfectly normal, the small subtleties of Pascal’s acting clearly communicated that Din was breaking inside. 

ALSO HI, HELLO, WHILE WE’RE ON THE TOPIC OF CHARACTER GROWTH, THREE CHEERS FOR MY BOI MAYFELD

You know, my mother pointed out, the first time she watched “The Prisoner,” that Mayfeld wasn’t quite on the same level of malice as the other antagonists. She picked up that there was a spark of morality somewhere in him. I didn’t think much of it other than “oh cool, different flavors of Evil in the villain squad” but hot DANG they really were teasing his redemption arc from the get-go. 

Also Mayfeld being his snarky, irritating self, spewing about the faulty logistics of a religion he doesn’t actually know anything about, trying to goad Din into showing his face, was such a perfect backdrop to his reaction to Din removing his helmet. Like, just seeing him realize what Din’s creed means to him, seeing this cold-hearted bastard have genuine compassion and jump in to help out his bro--just, tres magnifique.

Din and Mayfeld were obviously the stand-out characters here, everybody else was just kind of there, but that was fine. I like that Din and Cara have a few moments of silent communication, where they just look at each other intently, and nobody goes “Alright, break it up lovebirds.” Yes. Please normalize platonic relationships being just as emotionally intense and full of trust as romantic ones.

I still don’t understand why Boba Fett and Fennec are so dead-set on helping Din, but I’m totally okay if they all come out of this as Found Family. Please give me Din bickering with his sassy assassin sister while Boba yells from the front seat “WILL YOU KIDS SHUT UP, I’M TRYING TO FLY, HERE.” 

Also Fennec and Cara are Sharpshooting Sisters now, and no, you cannot change my mind, they are BFFs and they probably get into bar fights together and talk about guns.

Finally, let’s talk about the final scene (the one that broke me). “You may think you have some idea of what you are in possession of, but you do not. Soon, he will be back with me. He means more to me than you will ever know.” EXCUSE ME FOR JUST A SECOND

*screams in Found Family*

So, everything about Din’s threat message to Gideon is perfect. Not only is he forcefully reversing their roles so that now Din is the hunter and Gideon is the prey, but he alters Gideon’s own words in order to communicate something really important. Din doesn’t say “Soon, he will be mine.” He doesn’t think of Grogu as an asset to be possessed. Grogu is only his in the sense that Din needs to protect and nurture him, but no one owns the child. 

Also AAAAAAAAAH DIN STRAIGHT-UP PUBLICLY ACKNOWLEDGING THAT HE LOVES HIS SON, I AM FREAKING OUT, IT’S EVERYTHING I WANTED

I am pumped for the conclusion to this season now. I don’t think I’ve been this excited for a new episode in...ever. “The Believer” gets a solid 10/10 from Niki, if for no other reason than because it actually made me want to read Mandalorian fics again. Ahhhh I feel my passion for this series returning to me...it is Well and Good.

[monkey-network]

My Issues with Butch Hartman

Call this the sequel to my post on Mr. Enter. But honestly compared to Enter, Butch Hartman has made himself look far worse in so little time. Not only with how he uses his influence, but he basically showed his true colors not long after he left Nickelodeon. With Enter, the worst you can say about him is his opinions on media and his politics. With Hartman, there is a surprisingly lot more under his belt that made the hate towards him .

To preface this, while I’m gonna shit on this dude, I’m not shaming anyone who still likes his past content. With that said, bibbity Boppity boopity. Let’s look at the fucking scoopity.

The Telltale Oaxis

This really takes the cake as the scummiest thing Butch has done. Words and opinions can be one thing, but using your platform to basically trick some people out of their money for a project you abandoned for the most part grinds me gears a lot more. As bad as his marketing strategy was, at least Enter provided effort in his indiegogo project beforehand for god’s sake. Oaxis is one of the most pitiable crowdfunded projects I’ve seen.

It’s nearly two years since Butch got Oaxis funded and what have gotten beyond pure dead silence. Nearly two years and little to no significant updates for Oaxis’s Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, his Youtube, or the site’s official account. No wait, that last part’s kind of a lie. They had monthly updates on the official site up until September 2019. Could’ve posted this on their social medias but you take what you can get. 

The major takeaway from the updates, in all fairness, was that the kickstarter wasn’t enough and they still need to raise more funds for the service. The “capital-building” stage he calls it where he’s looking for more investors in addition to getting actual programs onto the service. That and Oaxis is a big vision for Butch and his wife in spite of not only giving up the monthly updates and basically secluding any mention of Oaxis from any place else. That’s basically it and I legit feel sorry for everyone that couldn’t get their refund back.

This isn’t HBO Max or Disney+ where you just expect them to have something together after their initial announcement because they’re already media conglomerates, this is an independent project. One that people, your fans included Butch, put over 200K thinking you would at least give people something. But beyond a “sizzle reel” that said nothing aside from Oaxis going to be a thing, you have presented jack after two years. I don’t expect the ins and outs of every business meeting with executives, but staying silent about everything except for monthly newsletters that offer very little encouraging progress and hasn’t updated since September of last year is not a good sign. And I’m especially hard on this topic, Butch, because this is the biggest point where it is seriously hard to trust you. It’s not criticizing your ego when after having too many cracks in your story, you really haven’t put your money where your mouth is.

I don’t wanna presume the guy’s given up on it, hoping everybody would forget it after a while, but he’s really put the effort in to make Oaxis feel like a afterthought. I’m not an expert in business, but even I can believe that after his non-apology for not being upfront with his initial intentions, that he’d try to provide updates on the project to not come off as the scam artist people have accused him as. Even with his Youtube channel that I’ll get to later, I don’t think it’s hard consistently posting about your so called vision if you have that much faith in its success. You’ve already gotten thousands of bucks initially with the crowdfund, people deserve more than your pitiful wishful platitudes and I unfortunately can’t believe you’ll have anything after a few years. It’s not that everyone forgot about it, but you mostly took the money and ran. If Butch pops up with something if he sees this somehow, I’ll eat that crow, but I sincerely doubt it after this long. Like at least post something on the Twitter, I get depressed just looking at it; that account is the textbook definition of famine.

The Childhood Reposter

I’ve brought up Butch’s youtube channel a couple times, and it’s when every time I look at it, it’s a little sad. When it comes to major creators, I typically think that after finishing their projects they’d move to newer things. People like Lauren Faust, Mike Judge, CH Greenblatt are all continuing to make new works under differing studios while new creators are getting the spotlight. Butch though? I mean, he has a new cartoon that I swear you’ve never heard about but other than that, the dude looks like he has little to say for himself nowadays beyond the 2 shows he’s famous for, Fairly Odd Parents and Danny Phantom. I would’ve added TUFF Puppy and Bunsen is a Beast but I can see that those two aren’t his major players seeing as how they’re rarely ever mentioned on the channel.

If it’s not some watchmojo level meme video, almost every other video is about either two of those shows in some varied fashion. I get that he “created your childhood” and made credulous bank from Nickelodeon, but it’s like Danny Phantom is all that stands between him and having an audience. That and drawing anime characters in his style which is... y’know, I’ll leave that to you. It’s like he retired and yet goes on about the good old days like a fluctuating ego. He’s still making a cartoon but to him that’s hardly a factor compared to his known successes.

Personally, I wouldn’t want to just be known as the guy who made two of your countless beloved cartoons. Not that that’s all he talks about, but it’s the insistence of his legacy that unfortunately gives me Bojack Horseman vibes. He no doubt has a good thing going but I believe that this isn’t gonna last. Just saying, dude has 850K subscribers and unless it’s a real hook like with the recent Danny Phantom/Jake Long death battle, he’s hardly getting a good fraction of views anymore. There’s only so many times you can milk Danny Phantom as your masterpiece before everyone moves on.

The Holy Boast

I wanna make this short because I’m not a huge talker of religion, but I stand to say that you should NOT, under any circumstance, believe BPD, PTSD, autism, fucking heart & kidney failure can be “cured” or “healed” through sermons of prayer. This here? This is genuinely something else.

https://www.healingjourneys.today/

For clarity, this was a gospel conference hosted by Butch and his wife and yes, they openly proclaim that BPD, austism, and heart disease can be cured through prayer of holy worship.

Now, I’m gonna give a full disclosure right here because this most certainly biases my point here, like I’m gonna own this. But my grandpa was a religious man that suffer from health problems. He notably prayed to carry on, yes, but at the same time he sought medical help. Even he told me that prayers wasn’t gonna keep the pacemaker going, he went to the doctors and actually did more than read the bible to improve himself. He unfortunately passed, but he was in his 70s and I honestly couldn’t believe, as hard as I try, that he was gonna live forever. My grandpa would’ve no doubt died far earlier if he followed this conference’s logic.

My point is that this is personally unsettling. I seriously cannot believe this is how autism and religion works and it blows my mind that him and his wife thought this conference was a suitable idea. I’m not bashing them as christians, but thinking mental disorders and bodily diseases can be done away with motivational seminars because that’s basically what they are is a legit slap to the face. And the seedling idea that they’ve done this before blows my mind.

The Financial Flaker

This is very recent and everything is generally explained in the 12 minute video but long story short: Butch hired an artist and never paid them for their work. The artist in question, Kuro, describes what happened between him and Butch in this video and provides receipts. Can’t really add anything to this myself beyond this just builds to the idea that Butch cannot be trusted as a professional business maker. I believe he still has people working for him but from this video, it tells me that Hartman will gladly use those lower than him in favorable pursuits and will gladly throw ignorance when he wants to because his cartoon veteran status presents that shield from thinking he can do no wrong, which can mean throttling his hires.  Let’s end this.

The Conclusion

When I get down to it, Butch is almost a Machiavellian character in a way. It’s amazing how much the trust people have had with Hartman have evaporated in less than a couple years. It’s amazing how much his ego has truly shown after he stopped being a namestay in Nickelodeon. Haven’t even mentioned the times he arrogantly deflected criticism because he was a namestay at Nick and how a couple who’ve worked with are well aware of his ego. I can’t help but believe that even after everything, he claims ignorance to his fall from grace and keeps going. Even when more and more are knowing his true self, he’s mostly just doing what he’s been doing for the past few years.

It’s respectable in a way, but shows that the world will move on without him. Again, if you like Danny Phantom and Fairly OddParents, I won’t judge you for it nor say you should be ashamed. This isn’t about cancelling Butch, or get him to stop spreading whatever wacky things he believes in. It’s my personal take of how this man whom I once respected because of what he made before has lost every bit of that from me. It really feels like he grew up with that “I Created Your Childhood” mentality being a 4 time showrunner for almost a couple decades. And when he finally left Nickelodeon, I guess the chance to be that stand out self-made success got to his head and he finally showed his true colors. I now find it hard to believe Butch cares about the little guy that were his fans as much as he rides off his success and others who tolerate him. As such, like JK Rowling, more are seeing this side of him and leaving him behind. Meanwhile Butch is gonna chug on until he just loses steam. It’s kinda like Icarus where the guy will make every effort to fly to the sun. But sooner or later, he’s gonna fall, and in the end I doubt anyone’s gonna care to see it. I know he won’t.

[icarus-suraki]

If you're still doing them 72, 121, 136 :D

Suuuuure, and I'm feeling down, so...

72. What colour are your towels? Blue. Technically. I have a couple of light blue towels that I got...longer ago than I realized until just now lol...and they're technically "my towels" but I supplemented my supply with a couple of very old and slightly tattered towels that I snagged from the linen closet at my parents' house that actually, like, absorb water? Where the blue ones won't (yet, at least). I supplemented those with a couple of cheap white towels because I had some sweaters that were supposed to be dried flat. I don't have the sweaters anymore but I do have the towels and I throw them in the dryer sometimes to help a load along. And then I got a couple of dark brown ones for cheap because I was messing around with henna hair dye and I didn't want to stain my other towels. Oh, and I think I got a dark blue towel for Christmas one year, but see above re: light blue towels that don't absorb any water and are just rude like that. Hopefully these inferior ones will improve with washing. Also my bathmat is yellow. Because that's what someone gave me, I think. I'm not very aesthetic, I guess. I'm just functional.

121. Are you mean? If you asked my "Mean Girl" classmates in high school they would definitely say yes. My college classmates would probably say yes. Given how I would argue with my parents and the things I’d say to them, they’d say yes. And if you ask me, I'd say yes too.

I mean, I'm snappish and angry and depressed and impatient and "bellicose." I'm bitchy and a bitch and sometimes a super bitch and sometimes a Super King Kong Mega Mega Biatch. People irritate me. I'm a snob. I'm grumpy and crabby. I used to be fucking anxious all the time, which didn't help, though now I'm not really anxious at all so I have a hard time giving a fuck about anything. I'm way too quick with cutting remarks and takedowns and shit. I'm always thinking I'm the smartest person in the room or at least being a giant snob.

Yeah, I mean, looking back on me in middle school, even the latter part of elementary school, even earlier than that--like, I was 2 and a half and tormenting my baby brother or fighting over dress-up stuff in 4 year-old preschool. Girls in my classes in high school were always like "Why can't you just be nice?" And I was like, tch, what does "nice" mean, anyway? And they'd say "It means not mean!" And I hated them because I thought they were shallow but also because they got way more positive attention that I ever did. They had people who liked them and boyfriends and nice things. I didn't have any of that and I knew I never would, so I wasn't left with much. I always wanted to be the smartest person in the room but I never was. I was just a snob, so I ended up covering it up by being a fucking asshole. I think I would have counted as a bully on a few occasions. I wanted people to like me, but that shit wasn't going to happen. I ended up with a couple of friends, not that that was always pleasant. I started shit with them a lot, probably out of envy.

College, I was always trying to bring on the sharp comments and starting arguments for the sake of starting arguments (I still think I'm right on a lot of what I said). I was made the editor of the school literary magazine by default, which was a fiasco, and I was bitchy about all the submitted works. I had basically no friends because I hated the people I thought I was supposed to spend time around despite our being complete opposites from art to politics to religion.

"Ha ha, I got so wasted in college all the time! What was college like for you?" Well, I was a sarcastic little shit in my literature classes and full of myself because I got to skip Freshman 111 English, but I mostly remember being woken up at 2 in the morning because my roommate needed her bible and concordances because one of our hallmates believed in predestination and my roommate disagreed.

And then I can look at how unbelievably shitty I was to so. fucking. many. people. from about c. 2007 to c. 2014, at least (probably more like 2016 or 2017) when I was involved in first Livejournal-based multifandom RP and later Dreamwidth-based multifandom RP. Like I was, in popular parlance, "a fucking psycho." I would fight with anyone about anything. How the fuck anyone put up with me I do not know. Ev.er.y.thing pissed me off and yet I couldn't walk away. It's literally been the closest I've ever come to an addiction because the very thought of leaving upset me, and let's not even get started about my constant fear of my games closing or just dying. I needed my RP fix. I needed it! But needing it like that made me an absolute shitheel. People who knew me both in person and online at that time can probably vouch for how shitty I was at the time. There's a huge number of people I would like to apologize to--not so they can forgive me or anything, but just so they can hear that I'm sorry. Won't get that chance, I don't think.

And that overlapped with retail hell and graduate school. Retail hell will make anyone mean. Graduate school was first boring and then frustrating because I was definitely not among the smart set there. I mean, I got my MLS, though I'm not using it anymore lmao.

Hell, even applying for jobs after graduating, I was given feedback that I have a reputation for being "grumpy and huffy" with patrons in the library. So fuck me, I guess. I got a library job where, if the library system sat down, that library would be immediately plunged into total darkness. The "red-headed stepchild" if you will. And that was like retail hell with less cash. Was I mean? Sure, I guess, because I got called to the manager's office more than a couple of times--once because I got tired of a creepy dude talking to me, so I brushed him off to go on my lunchbreak, and he told the managers and I got in major trouble for being "dismissive" of this guy. So then I wound up standing there from 5:15 (when my shift ended) until 7:30 while this guy talked at me and told me shit like "never cut your hair because it's such a beautiful color" or tried to figure out what color my eyes are and creepy stuff like that. And all because I just didn't want to get fucking fired. Nice, huh?

I'm meaner externally now than I used to be. I'm putting that down to a lack of anxiety again. I used to be totally unable to contain my frustration and irritability with other people. Then I got to be afraid of what someone would say or do to me if I was irritable at them. And now I'm just like "fuck it, we're all going to die, climate change is real, why do I have to play by these rules?" I mean, in a hundred years, everyone I know will be dead. Whomst cares?

So am I mean? Fuck YES I'm mean. And I have been for most of my life.

136. Do you sleep with your doors open or closed? O P E N and they must also be pushed ALL. THE. WAY. OPEN. Because of Boo Radley. "What?" I hear you cry. Here, I’ll let Scout explain.

Ever since seeing that scene in about 8th grade, I have had to push my door all the way open so far that the door is touching the wall just so no one is hiding behind it. Boo Radley is a sweetheart, so I don't want to vilify him and I actually feel bad about my whole response now, but I'm just not keen on having anyone standing behind a half-open door.

"And this is what you remember from To Kill a Mockingbird?" No, I remember plenty of it and I'll quote the opening passages with my mom in about late June when it's really hot and if you're from around here then you just about know all the characters personally, but I was briefly terrified by poor Boo hiding there--which says a lot about how people saw him, or didn't see him. It's actually a brilliant reveal, even if it did kind of unnerve me at age 13. (And now I watch horror movies like they're nothing lmao.)

Doors shut just feels kind of stifling to me. That's an easy answer.

You can ask the bitch who owns this blog stuff if you want.

[fathersappointed]

What I speak, You won’t hear anywhere?

Hi, Max Headroom here, I think?

Where am, where am, am I I is there an echo in here? The last time I was here? It was all about apple pie. Now it’s all about scummy guv scummy guv, guv screaming donkeys cash…. it’s all about trash yeah. I feel hmm I feel like I’ve been sucked into a Mad Mad affect Mad a Mandela… an Alternate Universe? A Dark Dark Universe all is not well things are not going go go fried clams .… things are not going well for the People of, the Federation. All the good guys are bad guys!

I wonder if I can find a time time time…. alternate universe machine, yeah.

We have, in actuality, a very serious situation that involves all of us. What I speak, you won’t hear from the Smartest Institute to the Darkest Places. Debating such a thing is seen as a threat it’s not allowed, Thoughts if any are extinguished before they can take hold in the ground. God’s a manipulation created by the Devil, Christ, and the rest of the betrayers when the Devil compromised them. The Devil is consumed with hate. He plans to use this deception in a manipulation to kill Our Father. Whom we were on a mission to terraform the solar system for. This calls for serious thought mature thinking. Really no place for joking! Before we can get to square two, we have to get to square one. You say to yourself this looks really bad, but it’s going to all work out things will get better. But you gotta understand this isn’t going to happen.

You’re in an immense deception and the deck has been stacked. Oh, you’ll get what looks like victories. But you will win nothing they have to give a sense of hope. This is a strategic maneuver. Another one they use is to put a few good guys in with a bunch of bad. Almost all People in groups of power are chosen for their mental deficiencies. God Is a fabrication for manipulation reasons! All enthralled groups are them actively involved in their extremely evil plan. Ask yourself what is it with all this madness with all these groups? How is it we have all these different religious organizations that say everybody else is wrong? Why is it that every government is wrong why is every government oppressive to its people? Why is God on the money when he can’t even show up at a hospital? Why is there praise for God when there are children laying dead on the ground?

Could a mind of great be so inhumane? The answer is an emphatic no. How is it that this could be a natural flow? Wouldn’t an infinite mind of compassion think it wrong? With the majority dying before they hit 72 do you think this is a natural flow? Smashing molecules looking for dimensions casing signals of possible extraterrestrial? Instead of trying to get to oh I don’t know 1072, there’s a reason we don’t live so long? And I believe the answer lies with them.

You asked, what is this man trying to claim that he is the ultimate.

No with my faults, I have more than you.

I am, after all, the man of sin!

I have sinned.

I am, a sinner!

They have destroyed people with this word, but the Religions have destroyed families with it, Sin. Hiding behind Immense literature of manipulation deceptive words. Turning you into narrow-minded vessels lashing out with your hateful ways in your self-righteousness. That served only their purpose.

Sin seems to be the catchphrase for all that’s wrong! But it only stands for one thing, and it’s unpardonable!

You think you understand the meaning? You don’t understand how their minds work. They’ve brainwashed you to it well but, I’ll clarify the meaning. What I’m trying to explain to you is a very horrible thing. I’ll tell you the hidden truth of that now.

†★ stopping imbecilic nonsense… Sin ★†

Let no man deceive you by any means: for unless there come a revolt first, and the man stopping imbecilic nonsense be revealed, the son of perdition

The unpardonable stopping of imbecilic nonsense is blasphemy against the Holy Spirit.

For the wages of stopping imbecilic nonsense is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

If we say we have not stopped imbecilic nonsense we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our stopping imbecilic nonsense he is faithful and just to forgive us our stopping imbecilic nonsense and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not stopped imbecilic nonsense, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.

Now the works of stopping imbecilic nonsense and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.

That’s how you sound to them when you say it. As I’ve said, they’re laughing.

I am, the man of sin!…I am, the man stopping imbecilic nonsense!

I have sinned… I have stopped imbecilic nonsense.

I am, a sinner!… I am, stopping imbecilic nonsense!

You’re wrong about a lot of things! But you are right about one you’re not a sinner.

When you have a dirty job send the janitor.

I’m still pretty mucked up, though they’re out to get me. I swim around vicious fish that watch me from the dark of the deep. They’ve zapped me a few times, toyed with me inflicted some bite marks, and left me to survived or not. I swim away, but they follow me! I think they’re waiting for a special moment they eye me anticipatingly. we’ll see? Who can withstand such malicious spookery? You can and have to if three be any hope forewarned is weaponized you. The fool dooms us people have been dummy down for a reason? I claim to hold the truth. I don’t claim to make predictions. But right now, your future says you’re screwed. When you can buy your intelligence out of colleges. How many people are in important positions that are dumber than the hour? You see the Beast now, it no longer hides. It has no fear now it’s out, to consume all in its way. But you’ve lived in denial too long, telling yourself you were free. It doesn’t really matter you, never had a chance anyhow. You fight for something, You see slipping away, but it’s something that never was.

They’ll be destroying cities soon to distract you. And for a few other reasons mostly to distract you. But also to get rid of some people who did some things that are no longer of any use. And for equipment testing and calculation purposes in reference to shock resistance Levels. If you can understand that you will realize what one of the main purposes of our time is. You’ll catch a glimpse of their nature when you see how many people they kill just to get them. That’s not a prediction, it’s a theory of purpose postulation of modus operandi. They don’t care, and they leave nothing to chance. They’re not playing games and we best stop playing them too. Now, this is the thing they’re not playing games. But to them, this is a game and they are laughing, joking having fun. While they wiped out billions waiting for this moment to come. That’s what we’re up against. People won’t be able to, comprehend this though. They will see it as natural. Do you really think that billionaires are moving because of the taxes some will believe they are?

Visions you see and the communications you are involved in, I know how real this is. I know you find my words hard to believe. You think I’ve been deceived, but this evil group has ensnared you in their cunning. There is no shame in this! They’re cunning, highly intelligent, well-experienced, a coldness that is hard to Comprehend? You have to try to withstand their lies. They’ve taught you, magic words but this is science. What the World Needs is a Mad Scientist. Stretch are you up yet? “It’s clobberin’ time!” The thing to keep in mind is there on a time frame. They’ve got the time, but time is ticking. Hey, you don’t want to hear it you want to hear lies! Maybe about extraterrestrials, it’s more comfortable if somebody else is going to take care of everything. As they say, let’s go, let God. (lovingly take you right to the grave). Now we wait for the fools to speak. Actually, I’m a little preoccupied. Time to play the game it’s all about the game and how you play it.

Max Max Max Headroom. I’m making a comeback! 

[ask-jumblr]

Goy Asks For Help Un-Fucking a Video Game

The game in question is “Crusader Kings 2: After the End,” which takes place in a post-apocalyptic North America which has regressed to a medieval state due to a deliberately-unspecified global disaster some six centuries ago.

Its an overhaul mod, with “Crusader Kings 2″ being the base game which takes place in the actual middle ages, but I’m only concerning myself with “After The End.” For clarity’s sake, I’ll be referring to the base game, which I will not be concerning myself with altering, as “CK2,″ and I will refer to the mod, which I am altering, as “AtE.”

So CK2 has a lot of baked in Cultural Christianity, much of which is carried over to AtE. I am creating a Submod, and as part of that I want to get AtE’s depiction of Judaism to be less, you know, christian. I want to carve out the ingrained antisemitism so that neither I, nor any Jewish players of the game, will have to look at it anymore.

I’ll be cutting this post up into several parts, each one dedicated to what I, as a gentile, think is probably an issue with the way the game portrays Judaism and my best idea of how to fix it. I’m posting this here with the hope of being corrected about everything I’m definitely getting wrong, and help figuring out how to go about actually fixing things.

Mod of @ask-jumblr briefly interjecting: (1) Putting the rest below the cut so this doesn’t clog dashes, and (2) submission is from @frustratedasatruar because tumblr doesn’t credit submissions once they’re posted.

Part 1: Orthodox, Reform, and… Meshichist?

So the way CK2 handles religion is cut up into a few tiers. The largest categories are the so-called Religious Groups, such as “Christian” or “American-Native” or “Muslim.” Judaism comprises one of these groups.

Then there’s the Heresy mechanic, which exists with the intent to model Catholicism’s whole snake-eating-its-own-tail thing with them, especially back in the middle ages. The way the mechanic works is that you’ve got one Religion that is considered the “main” religion with several others associated with it which vie for control. If things are shaky for the main religion, members of that faith may be prompted to join one of the Heretical movements.

I actually think the way AtE applies this mechanic to Judaism is fairly representative in practice. “Orthodox” is granted the position of main religion, with Reform relegated as a Heresy. But! Both Orthodox communities and Reform communities are scattered across the map at the start of the game. Further, Orthodoxy’s position at game-start is very fragile, so a Reform player can fairly simply supplant them as the dominant branch without even needing a military confrontation with any Orthodox factions.

This combination of factors creates a situation where Jewish communities within the game can ebb and flow between the different sects over time, which wouldn’t be possible if the two religions weren’t tied together with the Heresy mechanic.

One problem though, at least as far as I can see; there’s a third sect in the mix. Again, I’m a gentile, so correct me if I’m wrong, but its really weird for the Meshichists (explicitly the people who believe this man to be the Moshiach) to be depicted as a major faction within Judaism, literally on par with Orthodox and Reform, right?

As far as I, as a gentile, can tell from my research on this subject, the Meshichists are a subset of Chabad, which is itself a subset of Hasidic Judaism, which is a subset of Haredi Judaism, which has a complicated relationship with Orthodox Judaism.

So, assuming I’m not out of place in my assessment that the Meshichists are the odd man out, my question is if I should simply remove them from the game, leaving in-game Judaism to Orthodox and Reform. Or if I should replace them with a different third faction, and if so whom? I understand that Conservative Judaism is another major faction, but I know absolutely nothing about them, including how I would distinguish them from Orthodox.

Help, please.

Part 2: Zealous/Cynical

So CK2, as mentioned, has a lot of structural Cultural Christianity.

Individual characters in the games, that is to say Rulers or associated courtiers, have a list of traits, each one modifying their aptitudes and how the AI will direct them. Things like “Gluttonous,” “Charitable,” “Craven,” “Shrewd,” and so on. There’re hundreds of them.

Some of these traits are set as opposites of one another, which means that if a character has one the game won’t allow them to have the other. You cannot be both “Just” and “Arbitrary,” that sort of thing.

Further, one trait can have more than one opposite. “Slow,” “Quick,” and “Genius,” are all inter-incompatible, for example.

Which brings me to the Zealous and Cynical traits.

Their descriptions are thus:

Zealous: This character burns with religious fervor and cannot tolerate heretics, infidels, or heathens.

Cynical: This character is a cynical unbeliever, disliked by the clergy but good at intrigue.

I’ll shy away from describing their exact in-game modifiers and just leave it that Zealous is considered an overall very desirable trait, while Cynical is undesirable unless you’re playing a spymaster. Zeal makes you more popular with priests of your religion, while cynicism makes you commensurately less popular with the same.

Furthermore, unlike Cynical, being Zealous also precludes you from having any of the “Sympathy for [Insert Other Religion Group]” traits.

Now as I understand it, Judaism rather encourages questioning everything, which feels like a third pole on that little alignment graph. I’m essentially asking if I should try and create a “Pious Skepticism” trait to represent Jewish characters who don’t mindlessly-accept-writ-dogma-and-hate-unbelievers but also aren’t unbelievers themselves, while at the same time arguing with and about established scripture.

This hypothetical “Pious Skepticism” trait, name subject to change, would also allow for characters to be both on good terms with religious authorities and still have access to the Sympathy traits.

I feel like the current system of Zealous/Default/Cynical probably doesn’t represent the Jewish experience, but as a gentile I obviously need advisement to be sure.

TLDR: I feel like CK2 lacks a way to represent the whole arguing-about-everything thing that, at least from what I’ve read following Jewish blogs, is considered so important to your community. Then as an addendum on that point, is my proposed solution of making a new trait to represent it, and slotting it into the zealous/cynical dynamic.

Part 3: Depicting Antisemitism in the Game

CK2 has a limited system for dynamically depicting sexism. For what I feel pretty safe to assume are reasons regarding processing power, the degree of sexism within your in-game territory is boiled down to the “Status of Women” modifier in your nation’s lawcode, with five options.

“Traditional: Women are prohibited from holding all [government] positions. Some government types will be restricted to Agnatic inheritance law.”

“Marginal: Women are allowed to hold some power, occupying background positions behind the people in charge.”

“Significant: Women have been granted official power and are allowed to hold public offices.”

“Notable: Restrictions on female power have been officially repealed. All career paths are open for prominent women.”

“Full: Powerful legislation removing old restrictions has finally had the effect of affecting the general opinion on women in positions of power across society.”

These laws are pegged to different benchmarks in the game’s technological progression system, which has the effect of spacing out the reforms over the coarse of your game.

As you try and move women’s rights forward, powerful men in your nation will fight you tooth and nail to prevent that from happening.

As things stand in the game, antisemitism is represented as identical to every other form of xenophobia. Which obviously downplays the the shear length and breadth of impact antisemitism has on society.

Essentially, my notion to represent the special form of bigotry that is antisemitism is to apply a similar system to the one already applied to sexism.

In the sexism system, your nation is quantifiably better off for every step further you advance down the road to equality. The only real reason not to pursue equality is the hope of placating powerful special interests within your state who want a larger slice of the pie for themselves or have other ideological motivations, at the expense of weakening your nation as a whole.

Which I think would be a pretty good angle for representing antisemitism. I’m not advocating for a 1=1 switchover from the sexism system, of course, indeed one of the things I’d want help with is determine what the five stages would be in a similar antisemitism system.

Anyway, for all that this system is really incapable of handling the magnitudes of sexism or antisemitism, its something I can implement without crashing the game and, I think, a significant improvement over the current situation.

But before I started into the in-depth process of trying to code this, I wanted to seek out some Jewish voices to run my thoughts by first.

Part 4: Ethnoreligion

CK2 has a very christian perspective on the relationship between culture and religion, to the extent that I as a pagan am repeatedly jarred by it. And I’ve learned that Judaism’s view of the subject is even less like that of the christians. Making it, I presume, a bigger problem with the game.

So in the game culture and religion are considered completely distinct from each other, the conversion of one not having any effect on the state of the other. The only direct connection of any kind that I know of honestly just makes the problem worse: if you find yourself in control of a county which is both a different religion and culture from your own, you must actively convert the religion before it will be possible for culture to passively convert.

Which can result in situations which, given my knowledge that Judaism is specifically an ethnoreligion, are very strange. Like Anabaptist Yiddish counties.

Or the way any prospective Jewish rulers, if they want to ensure a firmer political position in a majority-gentile kingdom (if they manage to establish such a thing), demographic shift is fastest achieved not by, say, some mechanism to attract Jewish immigrants from neighboring countries, but by relentlessly proselytizing until the goyim convert, and only then the process of cultural shift may start.

Can you tell that this system was designed for the catholics.

I’m not really sure what exactly I could do to fix this, but I believe I can:

Disable the proselytizing mechanic for Jewish characters. I’d need to replace it with a “dispatch debate team,” or something, mechanic so that Jewish players won’t be left helpless in the face of grassroots Heretic movements.

Code a new system for gentile-counties-with-Jewish-rulers to passively convert culture and religion at the same time, but at a slower pace. And maybe, if I’m feeling ambitious overconfident, some mechanic by which you can try to inspire immigration by Jewish populations, potentially causing a brain-drain in nearby Kingdoms if you invest enough into it.

Create an opposite system, so that if a county of both Jewish religion and culture is converted to a different religion group, the county’s culture will autoswitch to an off-brand version of itself. If I’m feeling cheeky, I’ll call the off-brand culture “Goyim” or something.

I think that these three things in conjunction with each other would adequately solve the problem.

But, you know, I don’t know, because I’m not Jewish.

Part 5: Education

The game’s current system has it that as a monarch you can offer your vassals to have their children educated in your court, which usually results in them adopting your culture and religion if they haven’t already.

I feel like Jewish rulers would be less blaze about that than everyone else. Because, you know, experience. I want to set things so that Jewish rulers will either auto-decline those offers or maybe set it so Jewish characters are ineligible for the events that cause culture/religious conversion during childhood. I don’t really need a perfect solution, I just want to stop the phenomena of the idiot AI selling out to the big homogenizing power every single time.

Unless I shouldn’t do that, and I should leave things as is for whatever reason, or do some completely third thing.

Part 6: Logo

So in CK2, religions have their own individual logos so you can tell at a glance what religion a character is affiliated with. Heresies of the same main religion share a logo between each other, which will be a red version of the main religion’s logo.

Should a Heresy grow powerful enough to usurp the main religion’s position, the former-Heresy will get the full color version and the former-main-religion will get the red version.

Long story short, Judaism is represented by a Menorah. Because I learned that gentiles massively over inflate how important Hanuka actually is, I was wondering if that was a good pick, or if it should be replaced with the Star of David, or some other third thing.

Part 7: Terminology

This one is essentially Part 6: Part 2. The game has a shorthand way of copy-pasting in default terms from the different religions, so that a generic piece of in-game text can vaguely refer back to the character’s religion without needing to be rewritten for each religion.

For reference, here’s what that looks like for the christians:

Scripture Name = The Bible Priest Title = Priest High God Name = God God Names = God, The Lord, Jesus, The Blessed Virgin Evil God Names = Satan, Lucifer, The Devil

So in-game text in various places will be coded to say something like “We found a secret chest of gold, praise [Insert=god_name]!” and the game will insert something from the appropriate category at random.

You’ve probably guessed where I’m going with this: as a gentile, I want to double check that the terminology assigned to Judaism is actually appropriate.

However, as the game’s name lists for the three “god” categories drops several names I don’t recognize, and I know that Judaism is against copying certain things in this regard down, to be safe I’m not going to post the specific list unless asked. Instead, I’m just going to ask how those three categories should be filled out.

What I assume to be safer to directly repeat is that the priest title for Judaism is entered as “Rabbi,” and the scripture name is listed as “The Torah.” At least as a gentile, the only question that leaps out to me between the two of those is if “The Torah” might be better switched to “The Tanakh.”

End:

Thank you all in advance for your patience and assistance! I will of course answer any questions.

My thanks to @queerdo-mcjewface, @terulakimban, @miriams-well-of-jewish-thoughts, and @hermione-walked-out-of-a-yeshiva for helping me already when I couldn’t figure out how to submit this Ask.