#Their only similarities is their general lack of self preservation instincts | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

nicklloydnow · 11 months

Text

“Today there is a state that, with a bit of challenging hyperbole, offers some interesting analogies to ancient Sparta. This state is Israel. Let's see what these analogies are, trying to present them in a parallel chronological order.

Just as post-Mycenaean Sparta was created by a massive Dorian migration, the new Israel came into being as a result of some fifty years of Jewish relocation there. Both displacements of peoples were the effect of two immense geopolitical upheavals: the Hellenic Middle Ages and World War II. Both the Dorians and the Jews had to fight, the former to conquer the new settlements, the latter to take back their ancestral homeland.

Once the situation was stabilized, the Spartiates created their own system divided into castes, while the Israelis guaranteed equal rights to the Muslim population, preventing at the same time the return of the Arabs who had fled in 1948: this because such a mass return would mean, sic et simpliciter, the end of Israel through its demographic destruction.

Surrounded by enemies and with a fragile internal balance, Sparta transformed the ruling caste into a collective warrior elite. Similarly, Israel was born and developed as a nation in arms, capable of mass mobilization in a very short time. In both peoples the brotherhood of arms has helped to cement equality and internal democracy (internal to the supreme caste the Spartan one, more collective the Israeli one).

Last but not least, both the ancient and the modern nation have found themselves having to be one of the spearheads in the eternal conflict between Western Civilization and the autocratic Eastern masses. The fact that these masses before identified themselves with an absolute God-King and today with a religion that claims world domination and rejects the very concepts of freedom and democracy changes little: geopolitics is the daughter of both geography and anthropology, therefore the enemies of the West remain essentially the same, just as the content of a bottle does not change even if the label is changed.

In this brief historical-geopolitical journey of ours, we have analyzed some curious similarities between two state realities that apparently could not seem more different: ancient Sparta and contemporary Israel. Many will find this parallel academic, if not opportunistic. However, it remains undeniable that, in its own way, today's Jewish state has similarities with the homeland that was once Leonidas'.

All the more reason for any Westerner to defend it to the hilt.” - Fabio Bozzo, ‘Israel: a new Sparta?’

“Brooks Adams prefaced his classic study of civilization and decay with the observation that conscious thought plays an exceedingly small part in molding the fate of men. “At the moment of action the human being almost invariably obeys an instinct, like an animal; only after action has ceased does he reflect.” For Israel the moment of action is now, the instinct is self‐preservation, and the time for reflection is yet to come.

When Israelis speak of the future, they generally mean what will happen tomorrow, next week next month. This is true of statesmen and publicists, as it is of the general public. There is no lack of forecasts, but little that rises to the level vision. Political leaders deal in ad hoc solutions to today's (and often, yesterday's) issues. The future will have to wait its turn.

(…)

Ben Gurion was, as events have shown, a premature Cassandra. True to the prophetic tradition, he was giving answers to questions which had not yet been asked. His June, 1967, warnings became relevant only in October, 1973, with the Yom Kippur War and its aftermath. Today, the nearly total diplomatic isolation of Israel, the resurrection of Arab claims to national rights in the entire area of mandatory Palestine, and the readiness of many in the West to bargain away interests of vital importance to Israel have raised, for the first time since the darkest days of Israel's war of independence, the very question of the future of Israel as an independent state.

Certain basic facts of national life obviously need to be reassessed. The increase in strength the Arab world, combining economic muscle with national‐religious fanaticism, and backed by the logistic capacity of the Soviet arsenal, has already affected the global balance of power, let alone the regional one. Perhaps its most significant immediate influence on Israel's military posture in terms of the morale of its foe: Israel today faces an enemy that enjoys a degree of self‐confidence that it never knew before, combined with the motivation that comes with a belief in its cause and in the inevitability of its victory. Loss of life irrelevant, as is loss of equipment, as long as the Soviet Union is prepared to make good the needs in matériel created by renewed hostilities. The major change in Israeli thinking has been with regard to the estimate of the enemy's potential.

There has been no change with regard to the estimate of the enemy's intentions: It is assumed that those intentions remain, as they have since Israel's creation, the destruction of the Jewish State. For this the address of Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian terrorist leader, before the U.N. General Assembly, provides ample confirmation.

A realistic awareness of the growth of the power of the Arab world has not shaken confidence Israel's military superiority. Another war, in whose inevitability there seems to be general agreement, will bring another Israeli victory, costlier perhaps than its predecessors, but no less (and no more) conclusive. On this subject there is no end of reassurance from those who should be in a position to know, both in Israel and abroad. The unanswered question is, what happens then?

Some see this as the pattern of the future for as long in time as it is worth speculating. There will be an endless series of wars, the lag between them determined by the time required for the Arabs to re‐equip and prepare for the coming round. A small minority accepts the possibility of defeat, to which there are two answers.

One is summed up in the word Masada, a suicidal last stand that would satisfy national honor and redeem the memory of the millions of European Jews who were led to slaughter in the Nazi Holocaust. The other answer assumes that in an extremity the means would be available that would be adequate to the circumstances. On the basis of information in the public domain, the possibility of an atomic Armageddon would seem to he a real one, thus forcing the Arabs to reassess the cost that they would be prepared to pay for the privilege of destroying Israel. There is some indication that such a reassessment may have indeed been undertaken in certain of Sadat's (…)

As answers to the possibility of defeat, Masada and Armageddon are not mutually exclusive. Indeed, they have a great deal in common. Desperation, however, is a luxury Israel cannot afford, nor can it serve as a guide to the determination of national policy. Nevertheless, there is some small corner of the mind in which such visions of the Apocalypse are lodged, blocked out from consciousness by their very unthinkability.

Jewish tradition tells us that problems can have a natural or a miraculous solution. To the never‐ending Arab‐Israeli wars, Masada and Armageddon are natural solutions. The miraculous solution is peace. Israel's acceptance by its neighbors remains the cardinal national objective, but its realization would appear to require time of Messianic dimensions. Still, it is sometimes an imperative of realism to seek the impossible.

War and another inconclusive victory are the immediate prospects. Masada, Armaeddon, peace— these define the limits of historical time. Israel lives in that broad range of possible futures that stretch from the here and now to the end of days. And all press into the present at one and the same time.

(…)

It is to be expected that in any garrison‐state society the army will have a dominating political role. In Israel, however, this is apt to be less than might he anticipated. First of all, Israel has been in a virtual state of siege since its independence, and the change as a result of the Yom Kippur War and its aftermath is one of degree rather than of kind. Second, in a state in which the army impinges to such a great extent over such an extended period of time on every facet of society, the society is affected, but so is the army. The Israel defense forces have never constituted a professional elite, divorced from a distinct caste, removed from other decision‐making and opinion‐farming elites. Israel is a nation in arms more than any other in modern history. The Jeffersonian ideal of every citizen a soldier and every soldier a citizen, realized in Israel to a much greater extent than it ever was in Jeffersonian America, makes of military participation in politics something very different than it has been in, say, France or Germany—or even contemporary America.

Nor is there reason to anticipate a breakdown of parliamentary democracy in a Spartan Israel. A continued period of tension is likely to cement further the basic national consensus. Its Achilles' heel has always been the necessity to make decisions on matters on which consensus does not exist and in which any decision is unacceptable to substantial segments of the population (such as territorial concessions, for example). Under siege conditions, decisions need not he made, as options are closed. The result is, on the one hand, immobility and, on the other, a high degree of stability in government, both of which have been characteristic of Israel in the past and will continue in the foreseeable future. A Government of national unity seems a distinct possibility, representing both a response to the demand for a heightened solidarity and the absence of significant issues demanding decision in matters over which the political parties differ fundamentally.

The importance of solidarity and the passage of time itself may help to close the social gap separating Israelis of European and non‐Europe origin, the most significant cleavage in contemporary Israeli society. Generally, it may he safe to assume that equality and fraternity will do better in a Spartan society than liberty. In Israel, however, basic freedoms do not appear to be in any significant danger, beyond those limitations imposed, as Holmes observed, “as long as men fight.” The pluralistic nature of Israeli society inhibits the denial of the right of political dissent, at least for those within the national body which in Israel is virtually coterminous with the society itself. However, tolerance for fringe groups beyond the pale is likely to diminish.

Israeli policy in the occupied areas of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip may be severely tested by future developments. This has been, in many respects, the most liberal military occupation in contemporary history. It has been based on keeping the peace by making it to the advantage of the local Arab population. Economic prosperity and the lack of reasonable expectation of political change have been far more important in the preservation of order and the prevention of hostile activities against the occupation forces than has the direct application of military force.

The creation of Israeli settlements in the occupied areas has been part of the general conception underlying official policy. The settlements, located along the Jordan and south of Gaza, protect basic strategic interests, without seriously intruding into Arab populated areas. (The one major exception, Kiryat Arha, near Hebron, was not the result of official initiative but rather a concession to the political pressures of coalition politics.) By blocking off possible invasion routes, the settlements make the annexation of areas densely populated by Arabs unnecessary. Wildcat settlement attempts by Jewish nationalist groups within Arab‐populated areas have been dealt with sternly and decisively.

Thus, both occupation and settlement policy have been designed to preserve security interests while keeping open options for a compromise solution. Possible economic difficulties and a fluid political situation could seriously threaten to encourage an increase in opposition to the occupation on the part of the local population, while Rabat and its aftermath appear to have barred, at least for the immediate future, the way to a political settlement. Major assumptions of present policy in the occupied areas may, therefore, cease to be valid. A breakdown of public order in the West Bank or the Gaza Strip would severely tax limited Israeli manpower reserves and might require a drastic change of policy. In this event, Arab propaganda claims with regard to alleged Israeli repression in the occupied areas and the displacement of the indigenous population could prove to he self‐fulfilling prophecies.

(…)

Yet fundamental change in Israel's prospects depends on a basic change within the West. There are other areas of the world besides the Middle East in which the Western powers have not acted in unity. However, there is no other area in which they have so frequently worked at cross‐purposes or to no visible purpose at all. In no other area has the policy of Western governments so frequently subordinated national ideals to putative national interests and in the end resulted in the loss or abandonment both of principles and of interests.

Winston Churchill once said that democracy was not harlot that could be picked up on a street corner by a young man with a tommy gun. He was wrong. It happens all the time, with the most prim and proper, the most matronly democracies, including his own. Instead, a tommy gun is not indispensable; hard cash and the control of oil resources will do just as well. Witness the spectacle of French diplomatic emissaries hustling the Middle Eastern turf, turning their tricks with sheik and terrorist. The sale of arms, encouraged by balance of payments difficulties, has become an aim, rather than an instrument, of national policy: and all fat cats are gray in the night.

Today, the fate of much of the industrialized world, with its masses of workers and consumers, has come to depend on decisions made by minuscule coterie of absolute potentates, their feet firmly rooted in the Middle Ages and their hands at the throat of the industrial civilization of the West. Never before in history has the fate of so many been at the mercy of so few. Oddly, there are still those who persist in seeing this as a victory of anticolonialism and anti‐imperialism, those most durable verbal relics of the long‐lost world of liberal innocence. Surely there must come a point at which the act in unity if its own survival is to be safeguarded. When that day comes, Israel's future will take a new direction.

(…)

Earlier, in the fall of 1962, Henry Kissinger visited this communal village and its regional school. In those days the threat came from the Syrian artillery on the Golan Heights, which dominated the area. Kissinger, then security adviser to Nelson Rockefeller and on a special mission fo. Kennedy, was especially intrigued by the attention devoted to gardening and to the atmosphere of tranquillity. juxtaposed against the network of shelters under the shadow of the commanding Syrian positions, visible even to the naked eye. What he founded in the Jordan Valley tended to disprove the contention of Rockefeller's adversaries that extensive civil‐defense measures would disrupt normal life and create panic.

Today, the children of the Jordan Valley communes play and study in close proximity to armed guards. The massacre at Ma'alot proved that children enjoy a privileged position as a priority target for Palestinian liberation fighters. The danger has become less anonymous and less indiscriminate. Life, however, remains normal in every critical sense, and there is no panic.

November 28 was the anniversary of the 1947 U.N. decision in favor of the creation of a Jewish State. The sixth‐grade pupils in the Jordan Valley elementary school wrote compositions on “What Israel Will Be Like When I Am Grown Up.” One theme is dominant: peace. Many express it by predicting that they will visit the Pyramids in Egypt and travel by train to Damascus. Moran Palmoni, a 12‐year‐old fourth‐generation sabra, concluded his composition in verse:

“I hope that peace will come

I believe that it will come

That we will not have to sit in the shelter

That tranquillity will fall also on us

Every child and every flower will he happy when it comes

Only may it come, only may it come!””

“Buried deep inside a Times report last weekend about Hadar Goldin, the Israeli soldier who was reported captured by Hamas, in the southern Gaza Strip, and then declared dead, was the following paragraph:

The circumstances surrounding his death remained cloudy. A military spokeswoman declined to say whether Lieutenant Goldin had been killed along with two comrades by a suicide bomb one of the militants exploded, or later by Israel’s assault on the area to hunt for him; she also refused to answer whether his remains had been recovered.

Just what those circumstances were began to filter out early this week, and they attest to deep contradictions in the Israeli military—and in Israeli culture at large.

A temporary ceasefire went into effect last Friday morning at eight. At nine-fifteen, soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces headed toward a house, in the city of Rafah, that served as an entry point to a tunnel reportedly leading into Israel. As the I.D.F. troops advanced, a Hamas militant emerged from the tunnel and opened fire. Two soldiers were killed. A third, Goldin, was captured—whether dead or alive is unclear—and taken into the tunnel. What is clear is that after Goldin was reported missing, the I.D.F. enacted a highly controversial measure known as the Hannibal Directive, firing at the area where Goldin was last seen in order to stop Hamas from taking him captive. As a result, according to Palestinian sources, seventy Palestinians were killed. By Sunday, Goldin, too, had been declared dead.

Opinions differ over how this protocol, which remained a military secret until 2003, came to be known as Hannibal. There are indications that it was named for the Carthaginian general, who chose to poison himself rather than fall captive to the Romans, but I.D.F. officials insist that a computer generated the name at random. Whatever its provenance, the moniker seems chillingly apt. Developed by three senior I.D.F. commanders, in 1986, following the capture of two Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah, the directive established the steps the military must take in the event of a soldier’s abduction. Its stated goal is to prevent Israeli troops from falling into enemy hands, “even at the cost of hurting or wounding our soldiers.” While normal I.D.F. procedures forbid soldiers from firing in the general direction of their fellow-troops, including attacking a getaway vehicle, such procedures, according to the Hannibal Directive, are to be waived in the case of an abduction: “Everything must be done to stop the vehicle and prevent it from escaping.”

Although the order specifies that only selective light-arms fire should be used in such cases, the message behind it is resounding. When a soldier has been abducted, not only are all targets legitimate—including, as we saw over the weekend, ambulances—but it’s permissible, and even implicitly advisable, for soldiers to fire on their own. For more than a decade, military censors blocked journalists from reporting on the protocol, apparently because they feared it would demoralize the Israeli public. In 2003, an Israeli doctor who had heard of the directive while serving as a reservist, in Lebanon, began advocating for its annulment, leading to its declassification. That year, a Haaretz investigation of the directive concluded that “from the point of view of the army, a dead soldier is better than a captive soldier who himself suffers and forces the state to release thousands of captives in order to obtain his release.”

(…)

To be clear, there is no evidence that Goldin was killed by friendly fire. But military officials did confirm that commanders on the ground had activated the Hannibal Directive and ordered “massive fire”—not for the first time since Operation Protective Edge began, on July 8th. (One week into the ground offensive, in the central Gaza Strip, forces reportedly** **enacted the protocol when another soldier, Guy Levy, was believed missing.) Since the directive’s inception, the I.D.F. is known to have used it only a handful of times, including in the case of Gilad Shalit. The order came too late for Shalit and did not prevent his abduction—or his eventual release, in 2011, in exchange for a thousand and twenty-seven Palestinian prisoners. That year, as part of the military’s inquiry into the circumstances leading to Shalit’s capture, the I.D.F.’s Chief of Staff, Benny Gantz, modified the directive. It now allows field commanders to act without awaiting confirmation from their superiors; at the same time, the directive’s language was tempered to make clear that it does not call for the willful killing of captured soldiers. In changing the wording of the protocol, Gantz introduced an ethical principle known as the “double-effect doctrine,” which states that a bad result (the killing of a captive soldier) is morally permissible only as a side effect of promoting a good action (stopping his captors).

Whether soldiers have heeded this change in language, and how they now choose to interpret the directive, is difficult to assess. If past experience is any indication, the military hierarchy’s interpretation remains unequivocal. During Israel’s last operation in Gaza, in 2011, one Golani commander was caught on tape telling his unit: “No soldier in the 51st Battalion will be kidnapped, at any price or under any condition. Even if it means that he has to detonate his own grenade along with those who try to capture him. Even if it means that his unit will now have to fire at the getaway car.”

On Sunday, a decade after its initial investigation of the Hannibal Directive, Haaretz revisited the subject with a piece by Anshel Pfeffer that tried to explain why, despite the procedure’s morally questionable nature, there hasn’t been significant opposition to it. Pfeffer wrote:

Perhaps the most deeply engrained reason that Israelis innately understand the needs for the Hannibal Directive is the military ethos of never leaving wounded men on the battlefield, which became the spirit following the War of Independence, when hideously mutilated bodies of Israeli soldiers were recovered. So Hannibal has stayed a fact of military life and the directive activated more than once during this current campaign.

Ronen Bergman, author of the book “By Any Means Necessary,” which examines Israel’s history of dealing with captive soldiers, further explained this rationale in a recent radio interview: “There is a disproportionate sensitivity among Israelis [on the issue of captive soldiers] that is hard to describe to foreigners.” Bergman traced this sensitivity back to Maimonides, the medieval Torah scholar, who wrote: “There is no greater Mitzvah than redeeming captives.”

This line of argument, while historically true, is worth pausing over—if only to unpack the moral paradox within it. In essence, what this “military ethos” means is that Israel sanctifies the lives of its soldiers so much, and would be willing to pay such an exorbitant price for their release, that it will do everything in its power to prevent such a scenario—including putting those same soldiers’ lives at risk (not to mention wreaking havoc on the surrounding population). This is the dubious situation that Israel finds itself in: signalling to the military that a dead soldier is preferable to a captive one, while at the same time signalling to the Israeli public that no cost will be spared to secure a captured soldier’s release. (It’s worth recalling that, three years after Shalit was traded for more than a thousand Palestinian prisoners, the captive U.S. Army Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl was traded for five Taliban prisoners. This isn’t to suggest that Israel cares more about its troops than the United States does, but rather that no crime is greater, in the eyes of Israelis, than the kidnapping of “our boys.”)

(…)

Sharon added that the mixed consequences of the directive are typical of the behavior that now characterizes the Israeli public at large. “On the one hand, we are willing to risk soldiers’ lives recklessly and without need, but on the other hand we have zero tolerance for the price that this might entail.”

#israel #sparta #spartan #war #hamas #western civilization #hannibal #hannibal directive

4 notes · View notes

convenientalias · 2 years

Text

Eve vs. City of Streamer--Who Wore It Better?

Since this year I happened to watch two shows that came out in 2022 about a woman seducing someone in order to avenge herself upon the person's family, I thought it would be fun to make some comparisons and see which show comes out on top. The two shows in question being:

Eve: A 16-episode kdrama. Contemporary thriller genre. The protagonist seduces the son-in-law of the family she's targeting with the aim of learning the family's secrets but also breaking her love interest's relationship with his wife (one of her primary revenge targets), hopefully resulting in a humiliating divorce and mental breakdown for both of them. Except then, oh no, she falls in love for real!

City of Streamer: A 40-episode cdrama. Republican era setting. The protagonist seduces the young master of the family she's targeting, mostly with the aim of maintaining her place in the family (which she joined as a tutor to the young master and the family's two daughters) so she can gather information on them as a spy for someone else who also is after revenge. Except then, oh no, she falls in love for real!

So right off the bat there are some similarities and some obvious differences. Further comparison will be under the cut bc there will be some spoilers ;)

Female Leads

So I'm giving ratings out of ten for each of these sections and I'll just say beforehand that Seo Ye-ji and Jing Tian are both perfect to me so there's no real competition here but the differences are still interesting.

Eve: Lee Ra-el is highly melodramatic. Her character single-handedly gives the show its kind of dark and sexy vibe. She is obsessed with revenge, loves (and needs) the tango, has self-destructive tendencies (including a tendency to self-harm, but also a general lack of self preservation instinct), and wants not only to destroy her targets financially but break their very souls. Kind of a disaster. Her love interests would like to protect her. Good luck with that, guys. I would like to say her soft spot is children but frankly I'm not even sure that's not an act on her part (and sometimes it pretty clearly is). Incredible fake smile. 10/10.

City of Streamer: The first word I associate with Feng Shizhen is "calm" and the second is "competent". Feng Shizhen wants revenge, but given that the incident she's avenging had a somewhat lesser impact on her life, she's pretty clear-headed about it and it's not the only thing she cares about. She still has a family, and sometimes gets invested in the lives and troubles of the Rong family too. Her revenge target is Rong Dingkun--well, also his business, but mostly just Rong Dingkun, head of the family she's infiltrated. She has an excellent poker face but can also play a pretty good wounded gazelle when called upon. Watching her, you have a sense of confidence she can solve whatever predicament she's landed in. Her love interests would probably like her to step on them and honestly same. 10/10.

Male Leads

No one here is going to live up to the female leads' energy but do they try??

Eve: Kang Yoon-kyeom is the most boring part of this show. Okay, I don't hate the guy. He's clearly in an abusive relationship with a controlling, manipulative, and homicidal woman. But you just don't get to see much emotional depth in him until towards the end of the show--until then it's kind of a "just trust me, he's deep" kind of situation. I have limits with how much stoicism I can enjoy. That said once he and Ra-el are together he does get more fun and I enjoy his eventual breakdown but not his ending. Since I'm only giving moderate spoilers here I won't get into that but seriously what the fuck. 4/10, I didn't hate him? I just think Ra-el has more chemistry with. Basically everyone.

City of Streamer: I actually expected to dislike Rong Jiashang based on prior experiences with the actor, but Rong Jiashang's actually pretty fun. It's all about the journey from stoic to simp in this kind of show and Jiashang really devolved pretty fast. That said, he has things going on outside his romantic life. He has conflicted feelings on his family and the family business and works to make changes based on his moral qualms. He loves his sisters. He has actual friends. He has dreams of becoming a pilot and collects model airplanes. Generally more of a three-dimensional human being than Kang Yoon-kyeom and a pretty good character. 7/10.

Did We Get Second Male Lead Syndrome?

Eve: Seo Eun-pyeong IS cooler than Kang Yoon-kyeom but that isn't really saying that much. He blocks a knife at one point! He tells Ra-el she can count on him! He's also a politician with possibilities of becoming the future president but the instant Ra-el shows up she is his Number One Priority, to the extent that he's willing to compromise all his idealistic politics (or at least put them on hold) for the sake of helping her with her revenge plans. I'm ambivalent on this--yes we love obsessive love but we also love a dude with other things going on. I honestly would have preferred if Eun-pyeong's attraction to Ra-el remained ambiguous or if they stayed platonic tbh, bc they met when she was still a teenager and I kind of preferred his initial protective and almost parental vibe towards her. Like he once watched her dancing the tango and the music playing in the background was just kind of heartwarming and calm. That's the unsexy relationship I was enjoying between the two of them but I wouldn't be against shipping them except that being the case I would prefer her to actually like him back. His unrequited love does very little for me. 6/10 I still liked the dude but I wanted either "selfless protective (possibly platonic) love" or "actual relationship" from them and it's not what I got.

City of Streamer: Meng Xu'an is UNHINGED. A complete delight. When you first meet him, you're like, "huh this dude is kind of shady, but he's Feng Shizhen's boss so of course he must be working for the greater good." Later on you're like, "Oh hm. His methods can be a little immoral and he seems VERY smug about the chaos going down here (which is also affecting innocents) but it DOES look sexy on him and there's no serious harm done so?? good for him I guess." and slowly you roll downhill towards the realization that this man is absolutely down for murdering innocents if it will help him achieve his revenge plans and is much more deeply invested in this revenge than our actual protagonist, and you know what? It's still sexy. Did I ship him with Feng Shizhen? Yes and no. They have a great vibe and yes it is hot when they scheme together AND when they yell at each other and throw things but I have a hard time seeing Feng Shizhen be into him. But in a sense that doesn't matter. The important thing is I liked what I got. 10/10, this dude drives at least half the action of the whole show.

The Central ~Seduction~ Dynamic

Eve: High melodrama to match Ra-el's melodramatic energy. Ra-el's INITIAL APPROACH is contriving to have Yoon-kyeom accidentally see her and her husband (yes, there's a lot of infidelity in this show) having sex in a dressing room. Then she tells him they must be "twin flames", something akin to soulmates/fated lovers. It's all very intense but I have a hard time buying it bc her tactics are so blunt and forceful all the time; it's not surprising Yoon-kyeom is initially suspicious. Equally I have a hard time buying that Ra-el would actually fall in love with Yoon-kyeom bc behind all that passion, where's a core of honest affection? The show offers a couple moments of ~vulnerability~ between the two, but... Idk. 4/10.

City of Streamer: Feng Shizhen doesn't initially plan to seduce Rong Jiashang at all; it's mostly something she stumbles into in order to keep him under control while she does her spywork, and then uses so that she can keep his love for her as her in with the Rong family. Her tactics are very bait-and-switch. First she'll praise Jiashang's skills as his tutor and offer him some very hands-on lessons, and then she'll go cold and say there's nothing between them if he tries to approach their mutual attraction directly. I have an easy time believing Jiashang would fall for it, and I can also believe she would fall for him, mostly bc he's actually a pretty nice and likeable guy. But sometimes she can go a little far--while Ra-el will declare love at first sight, Feng Shizhen strings Rong Jiashang along for so long it can get very frustrating. 7/10.

My ratings for these relationships are almost the same as my feelings on the male leads, I guess!

Fashion

It's important to look good while getting revenge. You have to look good while your enemies are suffering, basically. At least that's how I feel about it.

Eve: Impeccable. Ra-el in particular is just look after look. Showing up at her enemy's daughter's birthday party in a dress that looks like a green rose. Wearing a simple black and white suit during some final confrontations as the truth boils closer to the surface. Never going anywhere without stiletto heels. Ra-el's fashion is part of her mask, part of what allows her to infiltrate high society and entrance those in it--not only Yoon-kyeom but Han So-ra as well, and many others. 10/10.

City of Streamer: The fashion is very generic. I try to remember outfits from this show and I can't. I just looked at a bunch of pictures from it and my main takeaway was, I can see why I forgot them. Lots of solids, lots of simple dresses. They suit Feng Shizhen's calm and simple image but they do not appeal. Now, Republican era fashion is not my favorite in general but I've watched shows set in this era that still had some memorable outfits. Winter Begonia has most of its characters in generic suits but the MCs still had their own distinctive look--Shang Xirui's being uniformly bland to contrast his look on stage, Cheng Fengtai's distinguished with a little flamboyance. Granting You a Dreamlike Life has Luo Fusheng, whose outfits are all over the place but always enjoyable and noticeable. City of Streamer just is not doing it for me. 2/10. I tried looking at Meng Xu'an's outfits bc I figured they might be more interesting and they're basically just suits :( Two points bc I do like the hair. If you want to see Jing Tian in a show with showier and more interesting fashion, watch Rattan.

Homoeroticism

It's all very well to have sexual tension with the guy you're seducing but what about having homoerotic tension with some random other character???? I think we have to keep this in mind.

Eve: I loved Ra-el and So-ra's dynamic. It's terrible, of course. It starts out with a kind of high society mean girl and henchwoman dynamic that would be catnip to me already and eventually transitions into archnemeses-going-off-the-deep-end territory. Deceptive friendship to blatant, outright loathing. I need more f/f ships like this in my media. 10/10, I only wish Ra-el had actually seduced So-ra instead of Yoon-kyeom but I guess that would just be a different story entirely.

City of Streamer: I'm gonna be real with you, guys, there is not much here. Feng Shizhen does have some nice friendships with various women, especially one woman who she helps escape the Rong household early in the show, but... there's no real tension there imo. There are two other female characters I love in this show (one being Jiashang's fiancee, the other being one of Rong Dingkun's concubines), and neither really gets to know Shizhen--their primary relationships are also with men. I don't really see any great m/m ships here either tbh. Personally I would OT3 Shizhen/Jiashang/Xu'an, but there's no real basis for this, I just think the chaos would be interesting. 2/10, I can imagine it but there's nothing really there.

DID THEY GET REVENGE THOUGH?

The most important question.

Eve: Yes. Can't say they didn't. I do wish the court case that the show built up to had been more important but it played its role, and the mind games playing a larger role in the final denouement makes sense given the kind of overall game Ra-el is playing. 9/10 for revenge bc I personally wish the fallout had been different but it was very revengey.

City of Streamer: Yes? At various points? Feng Shizhen's revenge contributions are at their peak in the first half of the show, I'd say. From there the conflict is driven by other players, while Feng Shizhen's plotline focuses more on the question of whether she and Rong Jiashang could ever be together. Towards the end she steps back into the game, but never quite with the same clear focus, and ultimately, the ending feels a bit random. Still more revenge than many revenge dramas have offered me though. 7/10.

THE GRAND TOTAL:

Eve: 53

City of Streamer: 45

In the end, Eve wins with the power of homoeroticism and fashion! I personally liked City of Streamer better overall and am now wondering if I should have weighted the various categories differently but oh well! It's all part of the game! If we knew how it would end, what would be the point of playing it! Eve really did wear revenge seduction drama better but I do recommend both because they both were really good!

#review #eve kdrama #city of streamer #lols

21 notes · View notes

rwby-redux · 4 years

Text

Amendment

Grimm: Origin Hypotheses

There’s an old joke in the scientific community that one could kill a number of archotherologists by locking them in a room and saying, “No one gets out until you all agree on where the Grimm come from.” They are likely to die before they agree.

While a geologist can tell you how islands are formed by volcanism, or a systematist can answer how dogs descended from wolves, the Grimm are not so easily explained. Much of that enigma is due to their acellular composition, along with their inability to leave behind preserved remains. The Grimm’s anthrocidal instincts only exacerbate matters by making histological studies dangerous.

People are motivated by the desire to understand, to eliminate the fear of the unknown. As is often the tendency, when an answer can’t be found, one is created in its place.

Grimm origins are no exception.

For as long as people have walked Remnant’s surface, they have speculated on where their ancient adversaries come from. Unsurprisingly, the oldest theories can trace their starting point millennia back to religion. Gradual paradigm shifts in culture and academia opened the door for scientific inquiries, in spite of lingering pushback from more traditional communities. In the modern era, archotherologists sort hypotheses under three general headings, whereas anthropologists use five for the inclusion of myth-based origins. (It’s a poorly-kept secret that those headings aren’t for posterity so much as they are for placating conservative bigwigs who often have a say in funding.)

The headings are listed in order from least to most scientifically-plausible:

Headings

Theological — These ideas posit that Grimm are harbingers of death, psychopomps, divine beings, physical manifestations of a necessary symmetry between light and darkness, and so on. Nearly all theological hypotheses are derived from creation myths or folk stories. Because of their inherently unprovable nature, they’re seldom brought up in academic settings (outside of lively debates in the faculty lounge).

Occult — Supporters of occult hypotheses believe that Grimm emerged as the spirits of tortured animals, as shades and wraiths, or as embodiments of negative emotions. Not much stock is put into these superstitions, although it’s not hard to see why they’ve endured. The majority of Grimm species (with few exceptions) resemble extant or recently-extinct animals, albeit with more exaggerated, menacing forms. The visual parallels have led to this idea becoming pancultural (even across continents), thus giving it a broad appeal among more superstitious populations. Proponents of negative embodiment, meanwhile, base their reasoning in affective science; specifically, that if Grimm are attracted to negative emotions then it’s because they’re composed of them. The common counterargument is that algeaception (along with pneumatoception) is simply a specialized adaptation for hunting humans and Faunus.

Synthetic — Popular among archeologists and bioengineers, synthetic hypotheses suggest that Grimm are constructs made by some unknown prehistoric civilization. The tantalizing intrigue lies in the Grimm’s habit of obliterating anything created by people. It’s argued that any evidence of an assembly facility would have been similarly destroyed, and its ruins reclaimed by nature over time. While researchers have yet to prove such claims, it’s thought that the Grimm’s compulsion to attack people stems from whatever inciting event led to them turning upon their creators. (Or perhaps they simply outlived them, though what purpose they would’ve served remains unclear.) If Grimm were indeed made with technologies that exceed those in the present day, it might explain why modern instruments are inadequate for studying them (and why their physiology seems to violate natural laws). With how much of Remnant’s surface remains unexplored, it’s possible that some new discovery need only be stumbled upon.

Biospherical — If some researchers are to be believed, Remnant possesses its own Aura, hence why Dust becomes inert outside the atmosphere. Were the planet actually a synergistic self-regulating entity, by extension, the Grimm would analogously function as immunological defense mechanisms that limit the spread of humans and Faunus. Under this model, culling and corralling people safeguards the biosphere by preventing environmental degradation. This hypothesis, while it has the trappings of legitimacy, is criticized on two separate fronts. The first is that it presents the Grimm’s existence as teleological. The second (and perhaps more controversial) criticism is how it depicts people as a disease. Understandably, most folks don’t take too kindly to the comparison.

Cryptozoological — Far and away the most plausible explanation for the origins of Grimm. Hypotheses under this heading are based in the notion that Grimm are a primordial species whose biology predates anything currently found in nature. Whether Grimm are a basal lineage on the tree of life, or perhaps members of an entirely separate taxonomic system, none can say for sure. Were it true, it would explain many of their unusual traits: their frequent resemblance to animals (convergent evolution), their non-cellular morphology (similar to that of viruses), and their lack of soul (due to not sharing a common ancestor with animals). While speculative biology and hypothetical biochemistry are worthwhile avenues for archotherologists to explore, they still can’t account for every discrepancy—what Grimm are made of, why they’re vulnerable to Dust, why they discriminately attack people, and so on.

#amendment #worldbuilding #grimm #origin hypotheses #the sciences #writing #lore #i took a break from job-hunting and packing to get some writing done #after the week i've had i earned it

15 notes · View notes

gunnerpalace · 5 years

Text

It is Time to Kill The Common Understanding of the Dome of Las Noches Fight Once and for All

I’ve been thinking about @starrdustcrusader‘s post making fun of BBS’s interpretation of Full Hollow Ichigo, and while it is very good and covers a lot, I felt that I had something further to add. Please go read that post first so you are on the same page.

I also invite you to go read chapter 350, The Lust 4, and the next few chapters as well.

Now, like I said, the post in question does a very good job of pointing out what’s happening here: Full Hollow Ichigo has less than zero concern for Uryuu or Orihime. He is not interested in protecting them whatsoever. Indeed, he directly attempts to kill Uryuu, with that attack being very likely to kill Orihime as well. It is only stopped by Ulquiorra’s intervention.

And why did Ichigo attack Uryuu? Because he was a threat.

When you are doing dispassionate threat analysis, whether that be tactical or strategic, when you are thinking with an essentially military mindset, motive stops really mattering, because it cannot be taken for granted. What matters is capability. What someone says their intentions are, or what their intentions seem to be, often matter less from this perspective than what they can do, or are doing.

What is Uryuu doing in this fight? He is interfering with Full Hollow Ichigo killing Ulquiorra. And that is Full Hollow Ichigo's only goal. Thus, Uryuu is an enemy and is also to be killed.

And so is Orihime (if “merely” as collateral damage).

It's that simple. This is again pointed out in the original post. In the same way that Ulquiorra earlier said to Ichigo that, "Killing you is synonymous with protecting Las Noches," killing Uryuu and Orihime at this point is synonymous with “protecting,” because they are in the way and are actively impeding the mission. (”Protecting” what? We’ll come back to that.)

I haven’t said anything new yet, now have I? So let’s get to that.

Here is Orihime demonstrating several flavors of hubris, and also completing failing to do anything to save Uryuu from his imminent demise. What do I mean? Well, let’s take apart her statements:

“Because I said that, Kurosaki-kun is trying to help me.” This is an assumption on her part, and it is wrong.

“I trained because I didn’t want to be a burden to him.” Mind you, she also says this in both the Xcution and TYBW arcs, and is a burden and fails in both as well (the infamous ”Why am I crying?” and “Her shield didn’t work” moments). This should have been a learning moment for her and it was not.

“I came here because I wanted to protect him.” There are other meta posts that detail the selfishness of Orihime’s actions in Hueco Mundo and in general. I would also like to point out that this was also her exact same logic in going to Soul Society. She didn’t learn anything from that experience either.

“So why? Why at the very end did I depend on him?” A great question. One that she never truthfully owns up to, given (2). But there was a reason Kisuke told her to stay out of the war. You may recall Rukia's statement to Orihime in chapter 228, Don't Look Back, that "In a battle, the ones who get in the way are not the ones that lack power, but the ones that lack resolve." She went on to say "Of all the battles in Soul Society, no one was a burden to anyone else. Not Ichigo, nor Sado, nor Ishida, and neither were you, Inoue. If any of you were less than who you are, I wouldn't be where I am today." This was very charitable of Rukia, because Orihime's contribution to her rescue was negligible and was, to reiterate, not why she was even there. Furthermore, Orihime didn't listen to her here either: she is once again demonstrating a lack of resolve, as she will continue to.

So Orihime doesn’t learn. Great. But maybe you’re thinking about (1). What do I mean she was wrong? I mean, doesn’t the manga confirm she’s right?

This is the crux of that argument. And this is also one of the cruxes of IchiHime as a whole. The thing is... it’s complete and utter bullshit.

This is the exact same scene in the original Japanese:

Now, I don’t speak or read Japanese very well at all. I’m still a novice at it. What I can do, however, is use optical character recognition and translation tools.

(よ)呼んでる - Yonderu - Calling

(よ)呼んでるんだ - Yonderunda - They’re calling

(き) 聞こえる - Kikoeru - I can hear

(た)立てよ - Tateyo - Stand up

(た)立て - Tate - Stand

(おれ)俺が - Ore ga - I will

俺が護る - Ore ga mamoru - I will protect

(The parentheticals are furigana used as a pronunciation guide.)

Now do you see a single instance of “her” or “she” in this dialogue, particularly when it comes to the final line of “I will protect”? No, you don’t. Because it’s not there. It was never there until a biased translator inserted it into the dialogue. I’m not alone in this analysis, by the way.

Quite some time ago, @kodoku-no-maria did a wonderful analysis about Ichigo’s instincts (”Mistranslations that Created the IH Fandom”) that also covered this (using anime quotes instead) and came to a similar conclusion. It’s a great post and you should read it.

This isn’t the post she mentions in hers, but there is one done specifically of the manga by a deactivated account. You should read this post too. (This also notes other things, such as how Orihime says “Help, Kurosaki-kun!” and not “Help me, Kurosaki-kun!” so we can take it that the Mangastream / Mangareader English translation is just generally dodgy all around at this point. Which may well impact the points I made above about Orihime’s character; but I think given the events of the Xcution and TYBW arcs that it is evident she did not in fact learn anything, so I will stand by the basic thrust of them.)

Okay, so I’ve marshaled my evidence on the battle and provided corroborating analysis. (I have also reblogged all three of these posts because they’re good, although the links are to the original sources or as close to them as I could get.)

Ichigo didn’t turn into Full Hollow Ichigo because of Orihime. She had nothing to really do with it. Great. So what?

Well, let’s now move on to my theory.

Now, you might be thinking that it is fairly obvious that all of those lines are Ichigo’s inner monologue. But I don’t think it’s so obvious. In fact, I would suggest to you that it is actually a dialogue.

On the second page, with the third panel, it suddenly zooms in to the wound in Ichigo’s torso. This notably later becomes Full Hollow Ichigo’s Hollow hole. You notice here the dialogue changes, from commands (e.g., “Stand”) to personal pronouns (e.g., “I”).

I would submit to you that the first three lines are Ichigo’s. But I don’t think the last five are. I think they belong to two other entities. Especially the last three. First, let me steal two of Maria’s highlighted panels to make a point:

So who is talking? It’s simple:

Do you really think it’s a coincidence that Zangetsu (Hollow Zangetsu) shows up wearing the exact same outfit as ‘Full Hollow Ichigo’ after Tensa Zangetsu gives a speech about how:

I don’t think so. Ichigo "fell into despair and halted [his] progress" and Zangetsu, as 'Full Hollow Ichigo' is "the "source of [his] despair." (This is the same despair that Rukia noticed when Ichigo came down from the top of the dome to confront Yammy.) As has been previously pointed out in the linked posts, we see this despair on the dome after Ulquiorra’s defeat in Ichigo’s attitude. Starrdust covered these, but let’s go over them again:

He’s doesn’t seem all that shocked or concerned here, to be honest.

He’s a lot more shocked at what he did to Uryuu.

But the thing that really gets him is that he’s gone and killed Ulquiorra. That’s his despair.

This is the first time he’s out and out killed somebody. (And yeah, Ulquiorra is dead because he had his bits vaporized with a cero, not purified.)

He finally has to learn this isn’t all fun and games, that you can’t turn everyone to your side and redeem them and be friends with them afterward, as he did with Ikkaku, Renji, Kenpachi, Byakuya, and even to an extent Dordoni and Grimmjow. This is exactly what Dordoni was warning him about. This is the lesson he will be forced to learn again after weakening Aizen long enough for Kisuke’s kidou to work on him.

And it is why later, his determination to “save everyone” in the Xcution arc by cutting Ginjou down and killing him (even if he turns into a Plus as revealed in TYBW, undermining the whole symbolic importance of the act) is a big deal for his character development, and one of the few redeeming aspects of that arc: it shows that Ichigo learned a lesson from this fight: sometimes to protect you have to kill.

And who taught him that lesson? Zangetsu.

Who was speaking in the 4th and 5th lines in that transformation sequence? My bet is “Zangetsu” (Quincy Zangetsu) or Tensa Zangetsu. And who was speaking in the 6th, 7th, and 8th lines? Zangetsu.

What was Zangetsu protecting? Ichigo. That’s his instinct. That’s all he cares about protecting, just like Tensa Zangetsu. He sure the fuck wasn’t protecting Orihime or Uryuu. And the mask of ‘Full Hollow Ichigo’ is there to protect those instincts. And the mindless rage of ‘Full Hollow Ichigo’ is Zangetsu’s rage at Ulquiorra for trying to kill Ichigo.

We of course know from much later, in TYBW, that zanpakutou spirits aren’t some separate entity from the wielder, but are the wielder (hence why we go from “The Blade and Me” to “The Blade IS Me”) which Ichigo will affirm in the reforging of his into the “two Zangetsus.” So this can ultimately be read as self-preservation instinct. These are the aspects of Ichigo that were willing to do what he himself consciously wouldn’t in order to stay alive.

(Also, Uryuu was an idiot and wrong to stop Zangetsu as Ulquiorra still clearly constituted a threat, so he frankly got what he deserved, if a bit harshly.)

In summary, not only did the fight above the dome in Las Noches not have anything to do with protecting Orihime, but it was entirely about Ichigo’s character development and relations with the personifications of his powers, and everyone has been reading it completely fucking wrong for years and years.

If you don’t know, now you know.

#Bleach #Ichigo #The King

350 notes · View notes

linklethehistorian · 3 years

Text

Randou and the Sins of Season 3's Fifteen Adaption (Part 48/???)

Bones' Biggest Changes & Greatest Failures — The Tragedy of Arthur Rimbaud (27/?)

In his final years, the thing that Mori’s predecessor valued most in his men, from what we were shown and told, was pure brute strength that could overwhelm and crush any and all of the Mafia’s enemies, with no strategizing or defensive measures necessary, and our eternally freezing frenchman was most decidedly not it, by any possible definition; given that it took many, many years before the foreigner himself was even able to recall that his special ability possessed the power to subsume the dead and use them in battle, his trademark subspace was thus, at the time, understood only to have been built primarily for defense, to the best of anyone’s knowledge — something which, in the Godfather’s eyes, would have been practically useless.

Still, I doubt if that was the only reason why he was so rejected by the old man as a potential candidate for anything other than cannon fodder; no matter whether it is blatantly apparent to you by this point in the article yet or not, considering that Randou was, by default, just about as far from an eager warrior as one could hope to get, it’s only natural that this would have made his life of even less value to said previous leader than it was already; after all, even if he had happened to possess the most ideal ability in the world, so long as his conscience would still continue to drive him to shy away from engaging in violence and cruelty as much was humanly possible for someone in his position, it would not have been of any consequence or use to the corporation. No, indeed, if he was not willing to become a murder machine that would kill ruthlessly and indiscriminately under his superior’s orders, then the only way to make effective use of him in a similar manner would be to throw him headfirst onto the front lines, where he would have no choice but to either defend himself and his comrades by participating in the fight, or lay down and die, letting everyone else that he could potentially protect die with him.

Even after he was eventually released from this personal Hell by Mori’s ascension to the throne, though, his trials and struggles were still not entirely over. Undoubtedly, his recognition by Mori for his gift and the promotion to associate executive that he received thereafter made his life much easier and more pleasant, as it afforded him greater opportunity to live it at least a little closer to the way he wanted by giving him a boss who appreciated him for his talents and largely respected his wishes, understanding that his skill set was, on the whole, best suited to things other than killing; however, these were not the only personal hardships he had to face in this sort of job — merely the only ones which anyone could make go away for him.

As heartening and constructive of a thing as it may be in all other senses, in a cutthroat world such as the one he was now in, Rimbaud’s purity could only serve to put him at a significant disadvantage to everyone else in his field in all too many ways, whenever it came down to his own self-preservation, or being able to properly assess his allies and foes completely objectively.

Now, I absolutely do not want you to get me wrong on this; in no way am I suggesting even in the slightest that Rimbaud isn’t intelligent or insightful enough to deduce these sorts of things about the criminal underworld as a whole, or even to recognize some more subtle signs of danger, because despite how it might initially sound, that is definitely not the case nor the issue here. If anything, the hyperspace user has actually proven himself to be extremely clever to those ends under the right circumstances, in light of not only his aforementioned statement during the setup of the party about the prevailing force behind violence and conflict in the world, but also his keen instinct towards Dazai’s sinister intentions in setting up the supposed ‘celebration’ — to say nothing of the fact that he had even pieced together enough information from their short time together to suspect Chuuya of being Arahabaki whilst someone like Dazai remained entirely clueless about it until the reveal.

Indeed, looking back upon it all, it cannot but become all the more clear that the only thing which was likely holding him back from being just as masterful as Dazai in every sense was one very simple, yet key truth — that Osamu was very cynical about the world around him and more than capable of thinking diabolically and selfishly even on a regular basis, whilst Rimbaud was not.

Had Randou possessed even half of the brunet’s skepticism, ruthlessness, and self-interest, then he doubtlessly would have risen to his high station as associate executive long ago, under the old boss’ reign, and effortlessly gotten away with his supposed traitorous acts against Mori — no longer held back by the inherent honesty that gave birth to the singular, fatal flaw within the otherwise careful forethought and planning that went into his elaborate “trap” for Arahabaki, nor the morally-fueled hesitance or countless acts of compassion that inevitably led to his defeat and death; however, this was just not who he was or could ever be, even in situations where his life might very well depend upon that capability that he lacked, and so he instead remained the exact opposite of it all as ever before, paying many a price and facing many a struggle over all of the difficulties and disadvantages that came along with that path he so diligently walked.

Yes, for all of the effort the animated adaption may put into convincing its audience of the contrary, the truth of the matter will always remain that nothing Randou had ever done was truly selfish at heart, nor did he hold any disregard or lack of respect for the absolute preciousness of life and all those who lived it; as I have said time and time again, he is a kind soul with an optimistic and loving heart that wants only the best for others, even at the cost of his own happiness, and the only motive he truly had behind his ‘scheme’ was that of recovering enough memories of a tragedy he survived to find and save the person he considered to be his best and dearest friend from what, to him, he imagined to be a life or death situation — no matter the cost to himself.

This way of life is not just a facade, as the show will foolishly try to tell you; it is simply the kind of person he is, through and through, and that in itself is where the trouble comes in the most for him; because he has no other side but this in the way he acts and perceives things, this means that it can often be difficult for him to put himself in the shoes of others who do not think in the same way — even if he might know for a fact that they think very differently from him, and comprehends the general, bare concept of what compels them — without projecting at least a little of himself and his own code onto them and what he sees within them.

[Next]

[Previous]

[Beginning]

[view the masterlist]

7 notes · View notes

amysgiantbees · 3 years

Text

Head-cannons for me for MHA DND

Urarka is grey ace pan. She likes to perform cantrips or float a little to alleviate stress. Socialist, ACAB. Trains with Bakugo regularly, they’re very close friends. Her parents are poor builders. They live in the poor area of the city and do a lot of community and charity work.

Kirishima is a trans man. Loves meat, particularly red meat. Big protein guy. A whole homosexual. He has two mothers, one is a gladiator, the other is a stay at home mom. He does yoga and meditation. Absolute golden retriever, mourning person. He cracks his knuckles when stressed. Always goes for a mourning run. He knows how to speak Bakugo so he knows when is or isn’t being a dick.

Denki is nonbinary they/he, Bisexual. Denki loves flirting with people’s parents especially Bakugo’s. His parents are awful and resent him for being chosen by Kord as they are very stuffy, devout followers of him for years and never recieved similar attention. Dyslexic and ADHD - ticks ALL the boxes, like can pick up talents very quickly, like the lyre. Night owl, puts all his work off till night then sleeps till noon. Gets jitters and ticks when stressed. Massive flirt. No filter. Lack of self preservation. Would be a fantastic dancer if he didn’t overthink it so much. Was in Jiro’s band. Lichtenberg figure. When he short circuits it’s numbing. He can’t think and his thoughts come slowly too him at best. He often ends up drooling. He can’t focus on his surroundings. Can’t feel anything so people can easily take advantage. Usually can only form enough thoughts to reassure people and put his thumbs up to show he’s okay.

Sero is nonbinary, they/them. Demisexual panromantic. Skateboards exist just for Sero. He is from a large family. Two fathers, one mother. They’re part of a traveling commune. Sero is just sleepy, isn’t a morning or a night person. Best wingman, very observant. Very laidback. Rubs arm and elbow when stressed. His family are tattoo artists, did his elbow tattoos as his magic focusses before he left for high school.

Whole Bakusquad are Kord fans.

Mina is ace/aromantic. her parents are assassins' that specialize in poisonings. Night owl. Loves fashion, and visiting Bakugo’s parent’s store. Sensible one out of the Bakusquad. Bakugo is usually the brains behind their plans but she’s the primary authority on whether they go ahead. Kirishima tends to hesitate - look to others for advice, Sero hesitates too - wants to think it over and take his time, Denki just dives in on instinct - what feels right, Bakugo is impatient - does not hesitate at all and often doesn’t factor in people’s feelings. Mina is the perfect balance of everyone. Thinks it through, has good instincts, is brave, doesn’t need to ask but is open to suggestions.

Aoyama is gay. He has IBS (Alcohol, chocolate, caffeinated beverages are potential culprits as are certain types of carbohydrate known as FODMAPs). He massages his face when he’s stressed.

Tsuyu is ace and homoromantic. Her dad is a grung florist and her human mother is the accountant for the flower business. She has two little siblings, a twin brother and sister.

Jiro is a sex positive ace bisexual. Jiro’s family are very popular travelling bards. Songwriters too, they’ve patented songs. Night owl. She plays with her hair when stressed. Plays instruments to relax. Can get stage fright. Likes to sing to calm down people after a monster attack, help people with both her talents. Loves her parents.

Nejire Hado grew up as an orphan raised by the local temple of Sune. She has grown to have a stronger connection with Mystra now as she’s grown into her own person but she still loves and worships Sune. Nejire asks more questions than she answers. Gets over excited very easily.

Bakugo is pansexual - he just likes them strong. His mother is half-orc and a model and fashion designer for her and her husband’s clothing business. It’s called Green with Envy. Masaru has terrible shyness when it comes to modeling. So all of their clothing is made to be gender neutral and Mitiski models everything for the flyers and posters. Totally has ADHD, impulsivity, avoids lengthy tasks, feels restless, can’t stay seated. Never drinks, this man treats his body like a temple, he has a bed time, morning person. Bakugo cracks his neck and joints when stressed. Can play drums, was in Jiro’s band.

Tokoyami is ace and grey aromantic. He can play the lyre, was in Jiro’s band. Dark Shadow likes to collect shiny things. He pets and talks to her her when stressed. He loves poetry and ballads. Often spends nights in taverns listening to dark songs. Writes his own poetry. Only his best friend Shoji and crush Aoyama get to read it though and even then it’s very reluctantly.

Shoji is very nervous to date, very insecure. grey ace, panromantic.

Ojiro is pan. Everyone likes to play with his tail when he grows it. He plays with it when stressed.

Koda is ace and aromantic. Likes to hide, be somewhere small and confined when stressed. Terrified of bugs, but mostly just the crawly, scary ones.

Sato is grey ace aromantic. Stress eats. Solves other peoples problems with food too. Giving gifts is his love language.

Izuku is also pan he really likes them strong. His mother has a tiny cake shop in her house next door to Green with Envy. Night owl, anxious. ADHD - shows in impulsivity, distracted, very observant, fidgeting, can’t stay focused, talking excessively, interrupts, intrusive. He fidgets with his hands when nervous. Holds grudges and guilt trips when upset. can’t forgive himself, apologizes too much. Stubborn, doesn’t know when to give up.

Heroes are gladiator esque. They have posters, dolls, figures, homemade wood carvings. They work as adventures but some are paid by the heroes commission to remain in one city and participate in gladiator battles (not to the death) too.

All Might is currently ranked number 1 in the world by the hero commission and has permission to teleport anytime to other countries to help but is based in Faerun, Masfutu.

Izuku and Bakugo try every year to win behind the scenes tickets to the coliseum.

All Might is ace/aro. He’s always been naturally talented at picking up new skills - ADHD - and is thrown that he hasn’t quite taken so well to teaching. Struggled for a bit but is taking it seriously and putting in the work finally.

Grand Torino and Recovery Girl are in love and they spend their dates hassling and messing with the Youth.

Cementos is struggling with a divorce

Mic and Aizawa are married. They have been since a couple of years after school. Aizawa had a whole flamboyant, elaborate proposal planned for Mic, but the day he was going to propose Mic said “we should get married” while gazing lovingly in his eyes and Aizawa was so relieved.

Mic is nonbinary trans he/they. Before he got married to Aizawa and teaching when they took a break from each other he was a world famous Bard. He sings in class and Aizawa has to always bang on the wall to get him to shut up when it gets to loud.

Aizawa is trans and Shinso is son with an ex he jumped into a relationship with after he finished UA. He was never a “hero” in the coliseum, didn’t want the attention, he was a freelance adventurer for a little bit before becoming pregnant, then teaching.

The reason Power Loader never wears a shirt is because he is a huge fashionista and he doesn’t want any of his clothes getting wrecked because he refuses to own no more ugly clothes than required.

Ibara Shiozaki is straight. She’s from a whole family of temple worshippers. (Fantasy) bible before boys.

Jurota Shishida is the lone survivor of a werewolf attack and an orphan. He lives at the school permanently.

Iida is mostly straight. He swings his hands when stressed and musts his hair. plans everything. Morning person. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day.

Yaoyorozu is the local royalty. She has lead a VERY sheltered life. Never left the city except when directly teleporting to other fancy locations. Iida is very dedicated to her as his family is one of her family’s vassals. She rubs her chest when stressed. Absolute capitalist. Only knows how to ball dance and can play the piano. Was in Jiro’s High School band. Doesn’t get to do her own shopping a lot so loves to whenever she can. Loves spoiling people. Kind of naïve.

Cementous and Exoplasm are the oldest teachers at UA and best friends.

Shouto is a grey ace demiromatic gay man. He darts his eyes when nervous. He’s autistic. Knows how to ball dance.

Hawks is pan. He’s a workaholic so he’s up at the crack of dawn. Always seems laid back but is VERY observant. High alcohol tolerance. He plays with his feathers when nervous but is aware of this tell so tries to just do nothing and only does it if very stressed. Favourite food is birds, like chicken, as that’s hawks primary food. He has tetrachromats eyes so can see ultraviolet light. Female hawks are generally larger than males. Hawks prefer open habitats, like deserts or fields. Probably lives on the outskirt of the city, lots of windows. His preferred time to work is just before nightfall. He will likely only live to his 30s at most. He’s mostly based on red-tailed hawks. Perfectionist. Orphan, is the adopted child of the head of the commission.

Shouto’s father is so desperate to find him and keep him because he knows that news of his reputation is vital. Enji is not royalty by blood but by marriage. He’s aware that if he doesn’t keep a tight leash on his family they could ruin his reputation as he’s human (mostly) and the rest are half-elves. So they’ll all outlive him. He’s already lost Touya so he’s desperate to as discreetly as possible find Shouto. Momo is helping him run away and hide out and paying for his school tuition. Enji was at first a hero like All Might until he managed to secure his marriage with Rei. He’s very aware that there’s only so much he can control his reputation as his whole family will outlive him. So will he redeem himself or double down?

Dabi is the League’s reluctant big brother. Likes to mess around with Toga most of all, she reminds him of his little siblings.

Vlad King is one of the founders of UA and is over 100 years old.

* These are purely notes for myself for a dnd game coming up for myself which is why I’ve nicked ideas from tiktoker lia_faye.

#myanalysis

5 notes · View notes

belphegor1982 · 4 years

Note

C and N for the brothers-in-law. Bonus points if it's Rick who's hurt and Jonathan who's doing the rescuing. :-)

[C: concussion] + [N: getting injured person out of situation]

All right! I went for the bonus points ;o)

And Not a Drop to Drink

The first thing Rick does when consciousness returns is gasp.

The second thing is deeply regret it as muddy water floods his mouth and throat.

The third thing is acknowledge the searing pain in his head that almost makes him pass right out.

It’s the faint but persistent nausea growing in the pit of his stomach on top of everything else that clues him in. Okay, so he got hit on the head and now concussion is setting in. Unless he drowns first, because that’s definitely an option too, apparently.

Somewhere at the back of his mind, his self-preservation instincts are screaming that he should be making fewer idle comments about dying and more attempts to, well, not die. That’s generally what you do when your vision is growing white at the edges from the lack of air. But the thing is, he’s had concussions before, and he’s jumped, fallen, or been pushed into deep waters before, but never both at the same time.

This is not good.

Just as one last spark of life runs from his brain to his toes and makes him try to kick his way up – no way he’s going to die in such a stupid way – he feels a hand grasp his hair. Then his jacket. Then – thankfully – his shoulder, under the armpit.

When Rick breaks the surface he spouts up what feels like half his volume in water, and he has no idea whether he’s expelling it from his lungs or emptying the contents of his stomach.

“That’s right, keep doing that, better out than in”, says a shaky voice right beside his ear. It takes him an embarrassingly long time to recognise his brother-in-law.

What the hell happened?

Rick’s brain doesn’t provide him with an answer right away and he decides it’s a question for another time. Preferably when his head isn’t swimming better than he is and he feels like he would sink like a stone if not for Jonathan’s grip on him.

He noticed early on that both Carnahan siblings do well in water, that time they had to bail out of the burning barge. Evy later told him her childhood included the occasional dip in the Nile and swimming lesson. As for Jonathan, the next time they found themselves having to swim for their lives again – it says something about their lives, Rick supposes, that he can open this sentence with ‘the next time’ – and Rick asked where he learned to swim, he said, “The benefits of a classical education, old boy. Rowed a bit when I was in Oxford. Did you know the Cherwell is beastly cold at seven in the morning?”

Turns out so is the Thames at eight in the evening. Especially in November. Rick’s teeth would probably be chattering if he wasn’t so damn beat.

Ah, well. Jonathan is doing enough chattering for them both anyway.

“– did a splendid job laying out the bounder – anyone ever told you that you could give Jack Petersen a run for his money? Too bad his rotten little friend had the nerve to bring a bat to a fistfight, I mean to say, that bat may have been cricket but the move was absolutely not. Then again, what can you expect from this lot – running about in those ridiculous black polo shirts and idolising foreign dictators, spewing garbage about people who’ve done nothing to—I say, Rick, are you still there?”

“Yeah,” Rick gargles somehow. He still hasn’t opened his eyes. But hey, at least he knows he’s not drowning, so that’s not all bad, right?

“Jolly good.”

Jonathan doesn’t say much after that. Either he talked himself breathless or it takes concentration to lug them both along and not be swept up by the current Rick can feel pulling at his legs. Damn. And people really swim in there!? Only mad dogs and Englishmen, like the song says.

Thankfully it doesn’t take them long before they wash up on the wharf. Good thing they drifted downstream a bit. Rick wouldn’t have liked his chances if the first thing they’d reached had been a seven-feet-tall quay, slippery as an eel.

When Rick finally feels solid ground he rolls onto his back and blinks his eyes open despite the headache. For a second it’s like nothing changes whether his eyelids are up or down. He experiences a short sharp stab of fear before realising that he’s just staring up at a cloudy London night sky. The Thames, when he raises his head a fraction, looks even darker, except for the winks of light where the crests of ripples catch the meagre light dripping from a lamppost somewhere behind them.

The bank underneath him feels cold and slimy and he doesn’t even need to look to know his clothes are coated with sludge. But it’s way better than the alternative.

Beside him, Jonathan is also sprawled on the ground, staring straight up. His chest is rising and falling quickly and deeply as he pants open-mouthed. He actually must be dead tired; nothing but sheer exhaustion can make him shut up, Rick thinks with something like the fond exasperation Evy gets in her voice when she talks about her brother, which was so foreign to him when he met the siblings.

“You all right?” he asks, and almost throws up. His tongue, his mouth, his throat taste like murky, brackish river water.

Jonathan’s head pivots a little. His stare shifts from the sky to Rick.

“Peachy, clearly,” he rasps. “But I should be the one to ask you, really, not the other way around. I’m not the one who got conked on the head and fell into the river. How’s the head?”

“I’ll be fine if we both use small words. What happened to cricket bat guy?”

“Damned if I know. I kicked him in the fork and jumped in after you while he was, er, otherwise occupied. He probably collected his colleague and their nasty little posters and buggered off after a while.”

Rick suppresses a laugh, which would be a really bad idea with a splitting headache and a stomach whose contents are sloshing back and forth like whisky in a tumbler. At a glance Jonathan looks like your garden-variety upper-class twit with more manners than sense, but that impression only goes skin-deep. He has no qualm whatsoever about playing dirty, especially if it means getting out of a scrape.

Or getting someone he actually cares about out of a scrape. This kind of little detail makes all the difference between him and guys like Beni Gabor, as Rick found out over the years.

“You know,” he says, still waiting for the headache to subside and the world to stop spinning – or at least slow down, “when you said you wanted to ‘go out for a drink’ I didn’t think you meant it like that.”

Jonathan snorts. “Well, I don’t. I prefer my drinks with a little more flavour and a little less sewage, thank you very much.” He lifts himself up on his elbows and sits up with a groan. “I might help myself to a whisky or two after this, though. For medicinal purposes. Lots of germs to kill.”

“Go ahead,” says Rick, who still hasn’t moved and doesn’t feel like moving – even though he probably should by now. “I’ll join you.”

“Oh, I don’t think so. You, my good son, are going straight to the hospital. I wasn’t exactly looking at my watch but I know you blacked out for longer than is wise.”

“I’ve had worse.”

“I know that. But that doesn’t mean you get to go home to lick your wounds like a cantankerous bear.”

Both the inflections and the words themselves are so familiar it doesn’t take long for Rick to dredge the memory from the chaos that is his mind. That’s what Evy said last time he got banged up. Which – fair point, even if it kinda feels like cheating.

Most of the time Evy and Jonathan are so different that it’s easy to forget they’re siblings. But every now and then they’ll have the same piercing squint, the same crooked grin, the same quirky turn of phrase, and the similarities hit you like a ton of bricks.

That he doesn’t feel up to arguing more than this tells Rick that a detour to a hospital is probably a good idea. He’s had his fair share of knocks on the head in his life, but there are delicate things in brains that don’t like being disturbed. Judging by the queasy rocking of his stomach, like he’s on a rolling ship instead of slumped on the ground, some things have been disturbed that shouldn’t have been.

He slowly – very slowly – half-rolls on his side and sits up. Then has to stop for a bit. Yeah, his brain definitely shouldn’t feel like it’s leaking out his ears. Even the poor light from the gas lampposts in the distance is loud.

Man, I hate concussions.

“Smaller words, please,” Rick mutters, fighting the urge to rub his eyes. When he opens them – again – he meets Jonathan’s and nods. Slowly.

“All right. But I phone Evy first.”

“St Bart’s has a phone, I can do that from there. Besides, opening with ‘Rick punched a fascist and fell into the Thames’ has a lot more entertainment value for me than ‘Good news, I’m still alive! Bad news, my car is now wrapped around a lamppost because the bloke I play poker with on Thursdays doesn’t like to lose’—”

“Jonathan?”

“Yes?”

“Thank you.”

Jonathan throws him a startled look. For a second the fear that made his voice shake while they were treading water – plus delayed reaction, Rick thinks – shows in his eyes, plain as day. He looks drained, his face white underneath the mud dripping from his hair and into his eyes, and he’s shivering about as badly as Rick is. But then his shoulders slump a little and he gives a small smile.

“You’re welcome. You pulled me out of the soup so many times, I couldn’t not try to pull you out of the drink. Next time you’re picking a fight with those blighters in the black shirts I might bring a bat myself, though.”

“I didn’t pick a fight with them,” Rick points out. Jonathan’s deadpan look as he slowly pulls him to his feet makes him say, “I didn’t! I just laughed at their stupid poster. Didn’t even throw a punch until that guy started ranting about the Jews.”

“I know. I might have taken the opportunity to stuff the rest of the wretched posters into their bucket of glue while they were distracted.”

Rick snorts and immediately regrets it. Some of what he’s feeling must be showing on his face, because Jonathan throws one of his arms over his own shoulder and doesn’t start walking until Rick is certain he’s not going to hurl and looks it. When Rick’s eyelids start to droop he slows down again.

“Don’t fall asleep on me now, old boy.”

“I’m not,” Rick mutters. “Just resting my eyes.” It’s not even a lie. They just passed a lamppost, and while the light looked dim from the edge of the river, the pool of gaslight they walked in stabbed his brain through his eyes.

Sleep is tempting, though, which is why he muses out loud, “Wait, what was that about your car and poker? At that time you said that was an accident!”

Jonathan winces. “So I did. Not one of my finer moments, I’m afraid. It’s rather a long story.”

“Well, we got time. Unless you’re planning to dump me in a taxi and go for that drink.”

“Exactly who do you take me for? All right, so that was around the time I used to patronise a nice little club in Covent Garden…”

Rick ends up paying for the taxi to the hospital, but the story is entertaining enough to stay awake for, even though, he suspects, the storyteller is glossing over certain details to make himself look good… ish. Jonathan’s grip on him is warm, and if it’s shaking a little he shows no sign of letting go. Which is a good thing, because while Rick used to be pretty good at winning bar brawls ten years ago in Cairo and be in good enough shape to limp home afterwards, he’d be in trouble right now if it was just him. Oh, he’d survive. But he wouldn’t necessarily enjoy it.

“Rick? Still awake?”

“Yeah,” Rick mumbles, and does his best to look like it. “Keep going.”

As lousy as he feels, he’s actually looking forward to the end of the story, and – much, much later, probably – a drink to celebrate punching fascists and not ending up a part of the Thames riverbed.

All in all, he really has had worse evenings.

___________

The title is in reference to Samuel Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner:

Water, water, everywhere, And all the boards did shrink; Water, water, everywhere, Nor any drop to drink.

It’s not really important, but this story is set in November 1934. British Fascists/Nazis were a thing: look up Oswald Mosley (who created the British Union of Fascists) and the Battle of Cable Street.

Jack Petersen was a British heavyweight champion in the early 1930s.

Re. Rick saying “taxi” rather than “cab” – I know, I know, Americans use “cab” where the British generally use “taxi”. But Rick hasn’t lived in the US for almost two decades at this point, so I stand by the word :D

I’ll be reblogging this shortly with the link to the story on AO3!

#the mummy #the mummy series #Rick O'Connell #Jonathan Carnahan #fanfiction #my stuff #ask reply #tinydooms

31 notes · View notes

killingeveperspectives · 4 years

Text

Perspective: Can redeeming Villanelle make her character less iconic?

Have you ever heard of the Codex Gigas? Also known as ‘The Devil’s bible’, it is the largest illuminated manuscript in the world according to Wikipedia. It is told that a monk made a pact with the Devil himself and feverishly wrote the entire book in one night! As an acknowledgment to his partner he drew his monstrous figure in one of the pages. Said page looks different from the others, as if touched by some malignant magic. Today we know the reason for it: the page suffered the most deterioration for being the most exposed. For centuries people could not get enough of this character: The Devil. Indeed, we have codified ways to save ourselves from the metaphorical Devil – ourselves. We invented sins and crimes to tame something deeply primal within us. Freud called it id, the origin of all that which makes us tick: impulses, instinct, drives, libido. It reckons only two things: pleasure and satisfaction. If we could strip ourselves from all inhibition there would be impulse and sensation. It would be brutal ecstasy. But what would be of the world if all 7 billion of us would uncompromisingly seek to satisfy our impulses? Hell, so we don’t.

But through art we can glimpse at what this liberation would feel like. Some sort of existential voyeurism. Aristotle would call it catharsis, but what does he know? This is how some of the most remarkable characters were born, they mesmerize us by being their id – unapologetically, terrifyingly, charmingly – like the Devil himself. Characters like Hannibal Lecter, The Joker, Alex DeLarge; they are larger than life, unbind, amoral and extremely bright (and all male). Like Hannibal brilliantly put it in Silence of the Lambs: “Nothing happened to me, officer Starling, I happened” or like the perverted childlike Alex explain in A Clockwork Orange: “What I do I do because I like to do”. As simple as that. Pure satisfaction of impulse because they feel like it. When we, uneased by what they represent, want explanations or justifications, The Joker toys with us, always giving us a different version of his tragic background, as if he knew we want to give him an excuse and, in good joker fashion, he makes a huge joke out of it. They take it very seriously to explain to us what went wrong with them, because it doesn’t really matter.

While the id makes us organic, whole creatures, many attributes of it have been culturally dissociated from womanhood. The violent, self-preserving and egoistic impulses were replaced with nurturing, self-sacrifice and compassion – not surprisingly the only impulse afforded to women is motherhood (or sexual desire for the satisfaction of another). Therefore, women cannot fully materialize their humanity. These raging impulses feel alien to womanhood, something imposed on to them by circumstance so severe that it warps the nature of the female itself. Aggressive women are sad and broken, or vengeful, or mad, or sexualized – these are the portrayals we have been conditioned to expect from fiction. When compared to their male counterparts, even mild violence in a female character almost immediately requires an explanation: how someone betrayed them, or abused them, or they were conditioned into it. Rage and aggression are never theirs to own, it is always extrinsically sourced.

On a superficial level, the character of Villanelle doesn’t seem so unique. Immediately one could think of Nikita in La femme Nikita, who was a drug junkie teen, rescued and transformed into a cold-blooded femme-fatale assassin by the shadowy government group “The Centre” after they faked her death to break her from prison (Uncannily similar?). Or the movie Anna by the same writer, where a Russian girl accepts a KGB offer to be trained into an assassin in order to escape her abusive homelife. Or Marvel’s black widow who is also a Russian spy, apparently brainwashed by USSR to become an assassin. Other female assassins include The bride in Kill Bill who set off into a revenge killing spree after being brutally assaulted and left for dead, and other movies I vaguely remember about abused women becoming assassins to seek revenge, or shallow sexy female assassins with no purpose for existing other than being the sexy female assassin. However, all these characters were made into assassins by external factors. Villanelle is set apart from the typical femme-fatale assassin trope by owning her own joy of killing, by the rejection of the broken female narrative and the rejection of the objectifying male gaze. In order to unmistakably ground these traits alienated from women – violence, disregard, cruelty, indifference, sadism, risk-taking – in her nature, the character was written as a primary psychopath. Being an assassin fits her natural talents, not the other way around

Villanelle could occupy a very special place among a roster of remarkable fictional characters like the ones mentioned earlier. She is the female embodiment of absolute, remorseless indulgence and rage, representing the unashamed satisfaction of women’s impulses, for her own enjoyment alone, with style and wit – A truly magnetic character and fresh perspective. In psychopathic Villanelle, women are allowed to reclaim these violent impulses, which is oddly empowering and humanizing. Give us that. Brilliantly, the cathartic element is mirrored by Eve herself. Eve too sees her unfulfilled and alienated impulses incarnated in Villanelle, which in turn sparks Eve’s exploration of her own identity. Ultimately Villanelle’s seduction to embrace impulse despite its danger is at the core of their electric attraction and conflict.

Thus, by retconning Villanelle in Season 3, the character no longer represents the provoking embodiment of female drive, managing to become an elevated female assassin trope, at best. The challenging take on womanhood, instead plays into all of the expectations. Villanelle is no longer a female true to her nature that gets a kick from being an assassin; but a troubled girl, tortured into becoming a killing machine by a past of abuse. A broken woman who rejects the violence instilled into her once she finds healing. Interestingly, it is not that she merely chooses not to kill but she is unable to carry on the act, signifying the deeper alienation of the violent impulse from her own self – the same impulse that once made her so iconic. This lack of impetus to kill is but a symptom of the decreased character’s libido in general: fewer shopping sprees, less savory eating, less unpretentious playfulness, less color, less eroticism, less aggression, less danger. Unfortunately, it also means the weakening of her dynamic with Eve. Villanelle is being tamed, and its well… not her best take.

We, the audience, perceive this lack of vitality oozing into the entire show, but once you shift what Villanelle represents this is inevitable. Villanelle becomes mundane, and it brings the nostalgia of the force of nature she once was. It leaves a similar taste as the brutal transformation of Alex from despicable nihilistic hedonist into a model citizen in A clockwork orange: a conflicted perverted sadness at the loss of Alex’s authenticity despite him turning into a “better” human being – ingeniously, his redemption was to gain his despicable impulses back.

The initial character design of Villanelle was something unique and authentic. However, In the process of redeeming her, she might become a new iteration of a trope explored several times that simply reflect the current space of female characters and lack conceptual originality. Yet, there is still room for the recuperation of Villanelle’s transgressive power: a subversive redemption. By incorporating the impulsive indulgence and violence back into the character, Villanelle’s arc can be taken somewhere new, complex and truly special. A remarkable character we can’t get enough of – like the Devil herself.

#killingeveperspectives #killing eve #killingeve #killing eve retcon #killing eve analysis #killing eve review #villanelle #villanelle analysis

41 notes · View notes

secret-engima · 5 years

Note

I really like that the outcome for the Pretty Song!daemons is becoming their own creatures, bc that means Lucis will have to work out how to deal with a bunch of semi-sapient magical beings that are no longer hostile. Also, on that note, it occurs to me that bad ppl will become much more hesitant to hurt kids in rural Lucis after stories of various assholes scaring kids and getting curbstomped by a FRICKING IRON GIANT, or tackled by a swarm of angry tonberries (1/?, sorry this might be LONG

lark1537 said: (2/?) bc the daemons know Pretty Song; and know that humans hurt her, even if she never said (they see how she stiffens when she hears humans, or they're near towns, and most of them have little enough Thirst now that they don't need to eat humans and the only reason they try is bc HOW DARE YOU SCARE PRETTY SONG, but Pretty Song doesn't want that so they listen to her); and this small human isn't Pretty Song but they are small and scared like she was when they first met her before she knew them

lark1537 said: (3/?) And they will not let anyone hurt another small-human, even if they don't sing. This also leads to me thinking abt children being the first humans to befriend no-longer-Thirsty daemons, bc they're young enough not to have learned to always be scared of daemon-looking creatures, even if they seem nice (bc no parent thought a daemon would seem nice, or could come out in the light); and bc the daemons are already predisposed to like small-humans, bc of Pretty Song

lark1537 said: (4/?) And THAT led to me imagining a parent somewhere in rural Lucis having their toddler come tell them abt the "big puppy" Big Sib is playing with outside, and said parent nearly having a heart attack when they come check it out and find their 10 yr old using a basketball to play fetch with a Cerberus, who is being very careful not to knock over a tree with how hard their tail is wagging, and occasionally tries to catch it with all three heads at once. And THAT image led to me thinking abt all

lark1537 said: (5/?) The daemons that are self-aware/sapient, or at least implied to be (Melusine, that talking Naga, Iedolas-the-Foras) and the ones that seem humanlike enough that it's tough to believe they don't have enough of their humanity left to talk (Arachne, Ronin) being freed from the Thirst that clouded their thoughts and made them more animalistic and essentially being nocturnal, magical, maybe-immortal people.

lark1537 said: (6/?) How would Lucis even deal with having a new group of self aware residents that previously didn't exist? Would Thirst-healed sapient daemons be counted as citizens? Does killing them count as murder? What abt daemons who were turned recently enough that they can still remember some of what they were, like Ravus? Would some of them go back to their old families? I hope so, bc that opens up the possibility of a kid hitching a ride on a half-spider lady and telling concerned

lark1537 said: (7/?) onlookers not to worry, this is her big sister, yeah she looks scary but as long as you don't wake her up before noon and don't complain abt the cobwebs she's really nice! And she's great at knitting! And just think abt how awesome an integrated daemon-human civilization could be! Chocobo ranchers having tonberries watch their flock at night & paying them in new materials to stab, or asking them to help with cooking. Iron giants helping out friendly farmers with the heavy lifting, or being

lark1537 said: (8/?) rescue ppl from a cave in. A kid with a pet/friend bomb who lights up at night to help them not be afraid of the dark, like a sentient nightlight. Mindflayers working at vet offices to calm unruly/dangerous patients with their gas. PEOPLE RIDING MICTLANTECIHUATL. On that note, would half-daemonic creatures like the bloodhorn or mictlantecihuatl who are just daemonized enough to be dangerous be altered by the lack of Thirst? They'd probably be

lark1537 said: (9/9) similar to Ardyn or Titus, who are both calmed by music, and are something more than just human, at this point. Maybe they'd be just aware enough that they could be interacted with more easily, like the intelligence of a dog or crow, rather than a human. Sorry this got so long, I started thinking and I think my latent childhood dreams of having a talking dragon took over. I just really love the idea of nonhuman people interacting with humans peacefully, and the resulting worldbuilding.

Me:

Okay so- WOW this is a long ask XDD. This was a blast to read. You rolled with this SO MUCH FARTHER than I anticipated/had thought of my self but all of this is GLORIOUS and I’m just gonna- bask in it for a few minutes. I have no idea if this is canon for Pretty Song verse but it PROBABLY IS because it’s glorious. Okay so-

It’s definitely an ... adjustment period for people and daemons a like, with semi-sapient (or fully sapient if in some cases) new neighbors being a Thing. The kiddos are totally the first to figure these facts out and take advantage because they find three headed fire dogs of death to be cool rather than terrifying.

Daemons are totally instinctive protectors of kiddos. That’s a new thing now. They do it on behalf of Pretty Song.

From there you have researchers like Sania who are FASCINATED by the sudden change and want to know the catalyst and how smart are these new daemons and ohhhhh you like MUSIC okay (Sania ends up spending like- a month in the wilds following this one lone Ronin who gets INCREASINGLY EXASPERATED over this human’s lack of self-preservation until he’s like “screw it this is my human now”.)

Pffffft I love the mental imagery of this. Just- “I found a puppy! Can I keep it?” Said puppy wags its tail as all three heads happily drool lava on the lawn.

I ADORE THIS??? Just- not all daemons were people once, a LOT were animals, but some of the ones that were people wake up with like- patchy memories and they’ve been daemons so long they can’t remember to be distressed that they aren’t HUMAN but- but they remember families and loved ones and so they tentatively trickle back.

And oh boy picture the REVELATION that rocks the world when this starts happening. The realization that some daemons used to be PEOPLE and now they’re coming back. And I’m sure I could make that super angsty but I won’t. Instead we shall all enjoy the mental picture of a little boy who wished on a star for his missing dad to come back one day opening the door to find a Yojimbo crouched there, shyly holding a poorly wrapped present that he promised his son years ago and the kid is like “MOM DAD’S BACK!” And there is much hugging and crying and the happily wearing of his dad’s giant daemon hat.

It’s a really, really good thing that Regis is the king and Pretty Song is his best friend’s daughter, because as soon as this becomes a Thing Regis is there running damage control, passing laws on daemon protections and rights and how to go about properly dealing with them if they actually perform a crime that isn’t straight murder of every daemon in the area, how to test if these are sentient daemons or the semi-sapient kind etc, etc. He knows it will take a while for society to acclimate to the changes, but curse it all he is GOING to have the groundwork already laid out.

The rest of the world thinks Lucis is crazy at first, but then there’s Weskham, happily hiring several Master Tonberry to work as chefs under him in Altissia and it’s WORKING and more and more daemons are waking up from the Thirst even though no one knows HOW at this point so the rest of the world had better get with the program man.

I think the half-turned ones actually revert? Like- they only stay daemon if they’ve been fully converted, otherwise they slowly revert back to their original state as the Scourge loses more and more of its potency. Ardyn is technically a “full daemon” even if he kept his human shape thanks to his healing magic so he doesn’t revert, but he is fascinated when he and the rest of the daemons all seem to take a collective chill pill.

Cor totally gives Noctis a Cerberi puppy as a present btw. He just- he SO DOES. Regis is Not Best Pleased.

I love the idea of nonhuman/human integrated society too! It’s really cool. Tonberry chefs and various aids/adjustments for beings with extra limbs/odd body shapes. Ronin and Yojimbo who work with the Hunter corps, Bombs that patrol towns at night like the neighborhood watchdogs, goblins getting to work in their mines rather than just be bored in them, Naga nannies (or daemon nannies in general because all the reformed daemons in this verse are MAJORLY protective of kiddos)- it’s a fun thought!

Pretty Song has no idea just how big of a revolution she spawned with just some pretty music and a lot of courage XDD.

#SE asks #lark1537 asks #Secret Engima Rambles #Pretty Song verse

68 notes · View notes

aspoonofsugar · 5 years

Text

Nen and Characters: Ikalgo and Welfin

Ikalgo and Welfin are both minor characters, but they end up having rather important roles in the CAA.

What is more, they are characters who are clearly linked as it is shown by both their fight and the fact that they share a common past:

However, what truly makes them similar is the fact that they are two people who use their own powers to mask their feelings of inadequacy. This is why they can grow only when forced out from their comfort zones represented by their respective abilities.

IKALGO: OVERCOMING PARASYTES AND CORPSES TO REACH THE IDEAL SELF

Ikalgo has two abilities which symbolize respectively his dependance on others (Fleadom) and his self-loathing (Living Dead Dolls).

1) Fleadom is the first ability we are shown and it consists in him being able to cultivate/conjure giant fleas while being inside a corpse.

The fact that he is able to create fleas only while being inside another person’s body is symbolic of his lack of Independence which is represented also by his projectiles being parasites.

In a sense, he himself is like a flea since he infests a corpse.

What is interesting is that, as the wiki highlights, the name of the ability is pronunced “freedom” in Japanese.

Freedom is exactly what Ikalgo wants, in a sense. As a matter of fact he wants to be strong enough, so that others can count on him.

What is interesting is that freedom is also what Killua who is Ikalgo’s foil wants:

However, the two characters go at it in ways which are at the same time similar and opposite.

On one hand they both see in another person (for Killua it is Gon and for Ikalgo it is Killua himself) the key to enter a world they wish to be a part of. On the other hand these worlds could not be more different since Killua wants to enter the world of light, whereas Ikalgo the world of the strong:

What is more, Killua and Ikalgo have what the other lacks:

Ikalgo has the willingness not to betray his comrades and to die for them (he lacks self-preservation), whereas Killua has the strength to kill both for himself and for others (he has killing tendencies).

What I want to underline is that both Killua and Ikalgo see what it could be easily considered a flaw in the other as something positive. In the end Ikalgo’s readiness to die for others stems from his self-loathing, whereas Killua’s strength and violence is the result of a hellish childhood which left him with murderous instincts. However, since they are things Killua and Ikalgo feel they don’t have, they are attracted to these attributes.

In short, Killua is Ikalgo’s ideal-self and vice versa and this is probably why they are able to become friends in such a short period of time.

Thanks to Killua’s friendship Ikalgo becomes more strong willed when fighting enemies and tries to force himself to kill them:

In the end he is not able to do so, but he still finds the willingness to kill (or at least to hurt) his opponent in what is basically a suicidal attack:

Let’s underline two things.

Firstly, here Ikalgo is using his rifle which is equipped with bullets instead of fleas this time. And these bullets are considered dangerous enough to be deadly. In other words, Ikalgo starts the arc by using non-mortal fleas and ends it ready to use bullets which can kill.

In the end it is not necessary for him to kill his opponent, just like it is not necessary for Killua to die to save Gon, but the point is that both characters are struggling to grow in the other’s direction and to acquire what the other already has.

Secondly, during the battle I kalgo overcomes a technique which consists in putting centipedes in a person’s brain to control them. In short, it is a technique which relies on parasytes exactly like Ikalgo’s own abilities. However, Ikalgo is able to make them disappear and in this way he takes his freedom back. In a sense, we can say that during this fight Ikalgo turned “fleadom” into proper freedom.

By the end of the CAA Ikalgo has grown closer to who he wants to become and in this way he has made progress in overcoming his self-loathing.

2) Living Dead Dolls lets Ikalgo take over corpses and obtain the ability of the deceased person.

This is symbolic of Ikalgo’s wish to be someone else, which is made clear in his first conversation with Killua:

Ikalgo thinks of himself as uncool and wishes to be someone else entirely.

The fact that this is highlighted also by his name of choice (Ikalgo aka squid) is interesting as well and perfectly synthesizes Ikalgo’s role in regards to Killua.

Ikalgo is who Killua wants to be i.e. his ideal-self, (as opposed to Palm who represents who Killua doesn’t want to admit that he is). In other words he has qualities Killua wants to posses and is also a character strongly motivated by the idea of becoming better and of reaching a better version of himself. This is why he is literally called after his own ideal-self. So he represents the part of Killua who aspires to be better and embodies the qualities Killua strives to have.

That said, in the beginning, ikalgo tries to become better through pursuing some superficial trasformation. He wants to be cool and strong and the fact that his power lets him literally change skin and ability is a metaphor for this.

However, all these attempts won’t solve Ikalgo’s problems exactly like no matter how many corpses he possesses, the fact that they become rotten and will decompose won’t change.

In a sense, Ikalgo is nothing more than what the second name of his ability suggests i.e. a kid who plays with corpses. This means that he is a person whose identity is developing and who tries different personas out. However, in the end he has to face who he truly is and this happens through his confrontation with Welfin.

It is important that he wins against Welfin without relying on another person’s corpse or ability and that he does so because of his determination which is his best quality and one he has always had.

Another interesting fact connected to Ikalgo’s victory over Welfin is that he manages to remember something of his human life.

It is interesting because in his introduction he shows to have memories linked to his life as an octopus, rather than to his life as a human.

However, by the end of his arc he has recalled other events which were part of his human life.

This can be symbolically seen as Ikalgo starting out as an animal and becoming a human towards the end of the arc. This reading ties quite well with both the themes of the CAA and Ikalgo becoming his own person and affirming himself in the climax of his development.

In short, Ikalgo appears for the first time in this way:

He has someone else’s looks and uses non-mortal fleas to attack his opponents. He is also quick to delegate when things get complicated and tries to escape.

By the end of the arc he fights an opponent as himself, is ready to hurt him and wins because of who he is inside.

WELFIN: THE IMPORTANCE OF HONEST RELATIONSHIPS

Welfin’s ability is called Missileman and it lets him choose a target and give the target a specific order which must be executed to avoid retaliation.

What is interesting is that when this ability is introduced it is said that Welfin himself looks down on it because it is not really battle oriented. For this reason, he prefers to use it in negotiations:

This underlines that Welfin is a person who fundamentally lacks trust in himself and this makes him similar to Ikalgo. However, differently from the octopus, his preservation instincts are very high to the point that he is so worried about preserving himself and so scared of meeting danger that his defense mechanisms don’t let him trust anyone.

This is well symbolized by his power which is a metaphor of how Welfin faces others. He doesn’t interact with them in a genuine way, but always tries to manipulate them and puts them in a situation of inferiority compared to himself. He is scared of interaction on the same level, so he makes up specific rules others must follow when approaching him.

This is something which makes sense if we consider the only thing we know of his childhood:

It is obvious that his complicated relationship with his father has left deep scars in Welfin and it is probably the origin of his general distrust of others.

This is another trait which makes him the opposite of Ikalgo who has shown to be able to create deep bonds rather quickly and to approach others in a genuine way.

Because of these opposite attributes, the two characters’ confrontation is important for Welfin.

As a matter of fact he has two realizations:

First of all, he realizes that not all people think like him and some individuals are ready to disregard their own safety to reach an objective. Welfin’s failure to realize this beforehand is what leads him to misuse his power and to lose. As a matter of fact, he is so sure everybody is selfish like he is that he is completely unprepared to face a person as altruistic as Ikalgo and we are shown how his power becomes useless and he himself is not sure of how it works anymore. This is because the system he uses to interact with others and the world collapses leaving him vulnerable.

At the same time, it is precisely this vulenrability which lets him make progress. As the panel above shows he is able to be honest for once and realizes that it is actually pretty simple and that interacting with others doesn’t have to be necessarily so complicated. The reason why the centipedes disappears when Welfin is honest is that he gives up trying to manipulate the other, so trying to put ideas and lies into the other’s head.

By showing vulnerability another side of Welfin starts to emerge:

It is true that he went through traumatic events during his early childhood, but at the same time he was also able to create bonds so strong he remembers them despite having died once.

Thanks to these bonds he finds a new will to fight and a new objective.

This is very similar to what happened to both Ikalgo and Killua. In other words it is easy to see that a virtuous circle is at work here. Thanks to his relationship with Gon Killua is able to change and to inspire Ikalgo to change. At the same time Ikalgo manages to get through Welfin.

Finally, Welfin goes through Meruem:

Just like Ikalgo did with him, the key to reach Meruem is the name of a loved person.

Because of Ikalgo proving to him tat he knew his name, Welfin accepts to help him and later on because of Welfin helping Meruem to remember Komugi he is left alive by the king.

This also leads Welfin to actually manage to make a true negotiation without relying on his power. He succeeds because at the last possible moment he is able to understand what is truly important for Meruem.

Finally, it is interesting to underline that after his traumatic experience with the king Welfin has become way more open and optimistic than before:

He is shown more open with his new comrades, invites Bloster to come with him and tries to stimulate his memories through Gyro’s motto:

“Don’t die until you are dead”

This phrase invites people to live to the fullest and it seems that Welfin might be starting to do it after having faced death twice.

OLD FRIENDS AND NEW FRIENDS

Ikalgo and Welfin find the strength to fight and to overcome their respective fears (the fear of killing for Ikalgo and the one of dying for Welfin) thanks to important relationships.

However, Welfin does so for a relationship he developed as a human, whereas Ikalgo does so for one he forged after having turned into a Chimera Ant.

In other words, they find their own humanity in different ways.

Welfin considers humanity something connected to memories:

It is the memories of his human life what motivates Welfin and which constitutes the basis of his identity.

Ikalgo doesn’t give that much importance to memories, instead. What he wants is not to connect with his past, but to change and this is proven by the fact that, despite remembering Welfin and gyro he shows no willingness to meet with his previous boss. This is because for Ikalgo the friends he made as a chimera ants are ultimately more important than the ones he had in his previous life.

In other words, Welfin looks at the past, while Ikalgo looks at the future.

Both approaches are correct, but at the same time they need to integrate.

This is shown by the fact Ikalgo is finally able to remember something about his past and he connecst with his old comrade again despite remaining loyal to his new friends.

At the same time, Welfin stops keeping a passive attitude towards his past and tries to actively find his old friend again. At the same time, he brings new comrades along.

All in all, both characters develop a sense of humanity and find a way to reconcile past and future.

Thank you for reading!

If you are interested in other analysys of HxH characters through their nen abilities here is a list of the ones I wrote up until now:

-Nanika

-Kurapika and Chrollo

-Killua and Illumi

-Gon and Hisoka

-Meruem and Komugi

-Palm Siberia

-Neon Nostrade

-Neferpitou and Shaiapouf

-Kachou and Fugetsu

-Menthuthuyoupi

#hxh #hxh meta #ikalgo #welfin #killua zoldyck #nen and characters #my meta #hunter x hunter

58 notes · View notes

marakama · 4 years

Text

hc- vampiric lore - physical

#v: main #subject to change of course #vamp lore tag #hc tsg

1 note · View note

ckret2 · 5 years

Note

How similar/different are first and starscream?

I'm answering for Ghidorah in general instead of just Ichi because aside from "happens to be in charge of two subordinates" I don't think Ichi has any traits not shared with Ni and San worth comparing/contrasting with Starscream.

All jokes about "Ghidorah is the REAL Starscream of the movie because he's actually trying to overthrow a leader" aside—being serious, I don't think that similar. They're both destructive sadistic winged villains with nasty attitudes who are threatening Earth. Beyond that, the main motives that drive them as characters are very different.

Starscream's character is primarily driven by hunger for power. He wants to be king of the hill. Power, and self-preservation: the only thing that will stop him from pursuing power is the fear of being punished for the effort. That will usually make him cool his jets—momentarily. But it always turns back to wanting to lead. Any destruction he causes—and he DOES cause a lot of destruction—is either on orders, or as an idle whim. Sadism and destruction are his hobbies, not the things that drive him. Hunger for power drives him.

Conversely, I don't think Ghidorah cares about power at all—his character is driven by hunger for destruction. He just wants to watch the world burn. In his quest for destruction, he takes command of the other titans, yes—but it seems mainly to be a means to an end. He seizes control of them to use them to destroy faster. Despite all the talk of "alphas" and "false kings," I didn't get the impression that he had any interest in power except insofar as it helped him burn down the world faster. And he also lacks Starscream's cowardly streak. When confronted with enemies, even his most powerful enemy—potentially the one that iced him—his first instinct isn't to run away, or even to flinch with fear before choosing to fight. He charges right into battle. To be fair, we've never seen him in a battle he didn't think he was going to win, up until Godzilla kicked his ass before he had a chance to even TRY to flee, so sure, it's possible he DOES have a hidden cowardly streak we didn't get an opportunity to see? But I doubt it. If faced with a battle he was uncertain he'd win, I think there's a good chance he'd charge into it with twice the fury. Self-destruction in pursuit of destruction. Seems fitting.

So yeah nah Ghidorah and Starscream don't have terribly similar personalities at all.

... All that said though, anyone who says "Rodan is Starscream" is still factually incorrect, and this is a hill I will die on.

#anonymous #ask #ghidorah #starscream #spoilers #godzilla #transformers #meta

21 notes · View notes

one-of-us-must-be-crazy · 5 years

Text

trying to figure out how to get this past the tumblr bots...

n*t s*fe f*r w*rk under the cut. Like really.

So I know I’ve used the gag of “Amanda Ripley finds something awful that has to do with robots at an antique market and brings it home to the displeasure of her housemate, which might be the main reason she got it” a lot. but trust me on this one I’m dying over it.

On a MUCH needed vacation to somewhere on-Terra, Amanda goes to an antique shop that specializes in old comics and other geekery and finds a few things she might get (some Star Trek fanzines from the 70′s that she shouldn’t spend that much on, but wow that one is near mint; a comic adaptation of a Heinlein novel, some Sandman, idk) but comes across a box of Adult Comics and finds this monstrosity:

I don’t know what it’s about or what’s in it or if it’s an actual comic or an artist using PS to make their work look like a vintage comic, but I took some liberties to get to the horrible, horrible nonsense.

Despite her initial cringe reaction and internal bitching about the lack of understanding of female body proportions, she really appreciates the style the android was drawn in; it shows an eerie resemblance to the internal structures of early synthetic models, even if the head looks like a bad cross between Robocop and Terminator. She’s still thinking this over when her phone buzzes, her own antsy, anxious android wondering where she went becuase they were supposed to meet back up at the hotel room an hour ago to change before heading for the (beach, lake, again, idk) and....the little demon on her shoulder shoves the angel off her other shoulder and she slips the comic into her existing stack of books, hoping the clerk notices nothing.

Samuels reaction is almost invisible; after all she’s brought home similar such nonsense before, even if it wasn’t so graphic. They have that Forbidden Planet poster in the main room still and he’s come to appreciate it as an in-joke between them when friends who don’t know about his nature (or rather lack of nature) when they come on a rare visit.

“Ripley do you know a language other than English?”

“No, but I don’t need to read to see the pictures.”

“That android is from a generation that lacked--er, fully human anatomies. I’m only the second line to be....accurate.” he’s so flustered; as if he forgets she has intimate first hand knowledge of the realism he’s designed with.

“Okay but clearly this one didn’t; and clearly it’s older than that anyway, and clearly it is smut and not an actual historical or recent technical guide or anything.”

“.....Synthetics--I didn’t think that as a.... as an erotic preference the concept has existed for so long.”

“Robot kink? I mean, I guess it was a thing. I found a lot of explicit fanfiction for androids from movies when I was a teenager, and some of it was going back to mid-21st century.”

“I don’t want to think about that, or about that comic, and can you please not say anything about the comic.”

Ripley pages through it with a closer eye than she did in the comic shop. At one point her eyebrows raise and Samuels starts wondering if he shouldn’t have just walked down to the beach himself and left her alone with it.

“Chris look at this one,” she turns the book around to show him a double-page set of three panels that display such an uncomfortable looking scenario that he thinks he’s impossibly blushing.

“Clearly not done from human models.”

“Okay but you might be able to do that--”

“p a r d o n ?” he manages to get out while Ripley flicks through a couple more pages.

“So we could really start using this. Maybe they have similar ones there; I’ll head back later and--”

“Amanda.”

“Look at this one and tell me you don’t want to try it,” she holds up another page.

“I do not want to test the limitations of my joins or tendons, especially not on vacation, and especially not when we’re hours away from the nearest synthetics lab should something happen.”

“Fair enough,” she goes through one more page, and simply stares. Samuels, lacking any kind of self preservation instinct walks over to see it.

“Amy, if you love me please don’t say anything else.”

“I can’t tell if that was a hard nope or a soft yes on this one, but I’ll have to pass becuase I’m not sure that I can bend that way.”

#general nonsense #like i hate writing the actual do #but i love them joking about it or teasing beucase it shows that they're yes physically intimate but also emotionally and mentally #intimate as well that they're at the point that they're comfortable enough and relaxed enough to be lighthearted on the subject #I JUST NEED SEVERAL BOOKS ABOUT THEM BEING DISGUSTINGLY CUTE #idk the older I get the more the melodrama bores me and I want cute instead #well half and half #I do love me some stereotypical monster-lover angst and drama (which based on how people write them and how I write them I put them in the #general category of 'monster lover' even though he's not a monster even in his worst moments of self loathing)

6 notes · View notes

schoolcalidity · 5 years

Text

Constructions post historic manipulations and supremacism in Jewish Ashkenazis’m

Fragmentos sobre un ensayo publicado por Devin E. Naar sobre identidad y supremacía blanca interiorizada en los Judíos Ashkenazi versus los Sefarditas y otros emigrados. Me interesa mucho seguir esta línea coincidente por otro lado con asuntos relevantes en estos días y para así comprender aún más nuestra subterranea olvidada y porqué no perseguida aún realidad.

II. “REAL JEWS” AND “FAKE JEWS”

With the goal of securing their rights as citizens, European Jewish intellectuals—those bochers in Berlin—fought back by rejecting and deflecting the negative rhetoric directed at them. They did this in part by projecting it onto their own internal Others: the so-called Ostjuden, the Jews of Eastern Europe; and even more so, the Jews in “Muslim lands,” deemed the real Orientals among the Jews, the most uncivilized and inferior of all.

In his 11-volume History of the Jews (1853-1874), originally written in German, Heinrich Graetz composed a wildly popular grand narrative of Jewish history which would be translated into many languages and read for generations to come. He accepted the dominant idea that Jews were Oriental in origin, but, like Chamberlain, elevated the Jews of medieval Spain. It was thanks to the Spanish Jews that Judaism first assumed “a European character and deviated more and more from its Oriental form.” Graetz highlighted the 10th century scholar, physician, diplomat and patron of the sciences, Hasdai Ibn Shaprut, as one of the “first representatives of a Judaeo-European culture.” Graetz lifted up Ibn Shaprut’s work translating and preserving seminal texts of Western civilization that were otherwise lost during Europe’s Dark Ages as proof that Jews were not only “Europeans,” but more importantly, the saviors of European heritage and the “teachers of Europe.”

Notably, however, Graetz did not claim that all Jews had achieved the status of true Europeans. He expressed hostility toward Eastern European Jews, whom he demeaned as “Talmud-obsessed” and preoccupied with “hairsplitting judgment” that rendered them more narrow-minded than the intellectually versatile Jews of medieval Spain. Graetz further denigrated Yiddish as a “half-animal tongue.” His dehumanizing rhetoric was not so different from that employed by antisemites who imputed negative characteristics—narrow-mindedness, bigotry, and a lack of human language and culture—onto all European Jews.

As much as he belittled Eastern European Jews, Graetz further disparaged the descendants of the Jews expelled from Spain in 1492. He referred to the majority, who settled in the Ottoman Empire, as “Turkish Jews” who “did not produce a single great genius who originated ideas to stimulate future ages, nor mark out a new thought for men of average intelligence. Not one of the leaders of the different congregations was above the level of mediocrity.” Read through an orientalist lens, the Turkish Jews sunk along with the Ottoman Empire, their glory “extinguished like a meteor and plunged into utter darkness.”

Worst of all, from Graetz’s perspective, was the conversion of some Turkish Jews to Islam in the 17th century—followers of the messianic figure of Izmir, Sabbatai Sevi. Graetz described Sevi’s followers as “the lowest savages,” “childish” “madmen” overcome by “mental disease” and “irrationality.” How else to explain their choice to abandon Judaism and embrace the backward religion of Islam? The Sabbatean movement, according to Graetz, threw “the whole Jewish race into a turmoil” that “long interfered with its progress.” Held responsible for such ignominy, Jews in the “land of the crescent” subsequently disappeared from Graetz’s narrative, only to reappear briefly as “Asiatic Jews” more than 150 years later—the helpless victims of the infamous blood libel in Damascus in 1840. The linguistic slippage—from “Spanish” to “Turkish” to “Asiatic”—solidified the image of the decline and disappearance of the Sephardic Jews from the Eurocentric vision of Jewish history and their submersion into the Islamic Orient.

For their part, Eastern European Jews rebelled against the image of themselves promoted by German Jews and developed a self-image as the “real” Jews, who resisted the yoke of assimilation. Philosopher Martin Buber notably reclaimed the Eastern European Jew as the embodiment of authentic Jewishness manifest in the creative spirituality of Hasidism. The Yiddish language was recast from a “half-animal tongue” into the source of the Jewish spirit, binding Jews together as a nation. Non-Yiddish-speaking Jews, alas, were excised from this national conception.

A similar style of denigrating rhetoric, used by antisemites to demean Jews and by German Jews to distance themselves from the so-called Ostjuden, was also projected by the Eastern European Jews onto the Jew further to the east, beyond Europe, in the Muslim world, where the truly “bad” Jews resided. In the period between the world wars, Simon Dubnow, a Jewish historian and proponent of Jewish cultural autonomy in Russia, mocked the “hybrid” Jews of Salonica and Istanbul, whom he viewed as lacking a sense of Jewish nationhood. Lured by assimilation, he argued, they failed to become either true Europeans or Turks and instead were reduced to a “superficial cosmopolitanism of the Levantine type.” (“Levantine” referred not only to the geography of the eastern Mediterranean, but also, pejoratively, to the impurity and rootlessness of those who inhabited the region.) Dubnow alleged that only the arrival of a small cohort of Ashkenazim to the Ottoman Empire had introduced “diversity and liveliness to the congealed Sephardic culture.”

The orientalist rhetoric intensified in the realm of Zionist thought in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The founder of political Zionism, Theodor Herzl, claimed that in building up European Jewish presence in Palestine, “for Europe we will constitute a bulwark against Asia, serving as guardians of culture against barbarism.” Full regeneration of the Jew in Palestine, Herzl indicated in his famous novel Altneuland, would result in the creation of a “Europe in the Middle East.”

A well-known Zionist and the founder of the sociology department at Hebrew University, Arthur Ruppin, added an elaborate racialized gloss to the orientalist rhetoric of Zionism. Influenced by social Darwinism, he internalized the racist thinking of the era to recast the Eastern European Jew as the Urjude, the original Jew for whom and by whom the new Jewish state in Palestine ought to be built. According to Ruppin, if the Semitic and Oriental racial categories, as described by Chamberlain and other antisemites, related to language, then Eastern European Jews could not be classified as such because they spoke Yiddish—a Germanic language.

In the pic some of my ancestors who were clearly of mixed origins all of them conversos but not sure if all from sephardi jewish as there is the possibility of being also moorish converso beduin too the people here are meet between Sicily, Argentina, Pamplona and La Ribera del Ebro.

“Ashkenazim, not Sephardim, thus preserved the “Indo-Germanic” and “Aryan” racial composition of the original Israelites. The problem, as Ruppin imagined it, was that as a result of contact with Semites—especially Orientalized Jews and Bedouins—the racial stock of Ashkenazi Jews had deteriorated. Only on their own land could their race be regenerated and preserved in the face of harmful “dysgenic” influences from the Oriental, Semitic Arab—influences that had already drained the “life force” out of those descendants of Spanish Jews in Palestine who had “assimilated” to the Arab way of life and had become “poorly educated” and of low “moral standing.” Ruppin lumped the descendants of Spanish Jews together with the “Jews of Morocco, Persia and the Yemen, who have come into Palestine of recent years,” thereby solidifying the broad category of “Sephardim,” all of whom he viewed as equally “degenerate.”

Based on little evidence, Ruppin attributed the diverging “racial health” of Sephardim and Ashkenazim to their differing “breeding” habits: Ashkenazim married their daughters to sages. Meanwhile, Sephardim, due to their Oriental essence, which stripped them of their instinct for self-selection, did not reproduce with strategic intention. According to Ruppin, this explained Ashkenazi distinction:

Ashkenazi Jews in our time are better than Sephardic Jews in their abilities and their inclination to sciences. In the schools of Eretz Israel, in which the children of Israel from all over the world study together, the superior ability of the children of the Ashkenazi Jews is a well-known fact.

Such breeding habits also explained, for Ruppin, why Ashkenazi Jews had become so numerous whereas Sephardic Jews had decreased in number. He concluded with a definitive pronouncement on who constituted the “real” Jews: “The Ashkenazim today form such an overwhelming majority among the Jews that they are in many cases even considered ‘the Jews’ par excellence.”

3 notes · View notes

sisterofiris · 6 years

Note

Does Satan mean “truth” in ancient Sanskrit?

Its proven that the Greek God Dionysus is the Hindu God Shiva by the academic book “Gods of Love and Ecstasy: The Traditions of Shiva and Dionysus” by Alain Danielou (an academic scholar and professor who lived in India). What do you think?

I’m not sure whether these two questions were asked by the same anon, but I’m posting them together since they both relate to ancient India.

Disclaimer: I’m not sure what led this person/these people to think I’m competent to answer these questions in depth, since I’ve never studied Sanskrit nor Hinduism. I will answer based on my knowledge of linguistics, Ancient Greek religion and general academia, but I might miss some more nuanced points which better informed people are free to correct (@protoindoeuropean for the Sanskrit maybe?).

Okay, so the etymology of Satan. The theory that it means “truth” seems to be based on sat + an (short for ananda according to this link, or anna according to this one). The problem with this kind of etymology is that, while it makes sense superficially, it doesn’t work historically or linguistically. We call these “folk etymologies”, etymologies based on apparent similarities between words, and they’re incredibly easy to create. Plato considers dozens of them for the Gods’ names in his Cratylus. I can even make up one of my own for Satan: what if the name came from Sumerian ša₃-ta-an, meaning “the sky from the heart”?

Sanskrit Satan may be linguistically possible - though I can’t comment on how - but we have an alternative which is clearly plausible, Hebrew שָׂטָן (śāṭān). This word, meaning “opponent” or “accuser”, is used in the Bible to refer not only to Satan, but also to common enemies. Take for example 1 Samuel 29:4:

וַיִּקְצְפ֨וּ עָלָ֜יו שָׂרֵ֣י פְלִשְׁתִּ֗ים וַיֹּ֣אמְרוּ לֹו֩ שָׂרֵ֨י פְלִשְׁתִּ֜ים הָשֵׁ֣ב אֶת־הָאִ֗ישׁ וְיָשֹׁב֙ אֶל־מְקֹומֹו֙ אֲשֶׁ֣ר הִפְקַדְתֹּ֣ו שָׁ֔ם וְלֹֽא־יֵרֵ֤ד עִמָּ֙נוּ֙ בַּמִּלְחָמָ֔ה וְלֹא־יִֽהְיֶה־לָּ֥נוּ לְשָׂטָ֖ן בַּמִּלְחָמָ֑ה וּבַמֶּ֗ה יִתְרַצֶּ֥ה זֶה֙ אֶל־אֲדֹנָ֔יו הֲלֹ֕וא בְּרָאשֵׁ֖י הָאֲנָשִׁ֥ים הָהֵֽם׃

But the Philistine commanders were angry. “Send him back to the town you’ve given him!” they demanded. “He can’t go into the battle with us. What if he turns against us in battle and becomes our adversary? Is there any better way for him to reconcile himself with his master than by handing our heads over to him?” (New Living Translation)

If Satan did originally mean “truth”, its use in contexts like this wouldn’t make much sense.

The theory also sets of my alarm bells for a major reason: I can’t find any academic articles looking into it, and all the websites that discuss it are clearly non-professional and biased. To quote my guide to online research: “Generally, you should look for websites that are focused on your topic, not websites that use your topic to prove a point.”

One of the web pages I linked above claims: “Abraham took a lot of pre-existing ideas and twisted them for a self serving, fabricated religion, which proceeded to then twist even more ideas (and generations of minds) and created 2 more religions which all literally demonize a pursuit of objective empirical Truth. Satan & objectivity are not our enemy. A historical conditioning in dishonesty is our enemy.”

Now think about what people want to gain from claiming Abrahamic religion’s adversary, Satan, is Truth. Think about what kind of ideology this can lead to. Think really hard about whether that’s something you want to associate yourself with.

Let’s move on now to Alain Daniélou and his theory that Śiva is Dionysos. This has more scientific basis, since Dionysos has strong associations with the East and particularly India (Nonnos’ Dionysiaca are a good example). The first to draw a parallel between Dionysos and Śiva seems to be Megasthenes, a Greek historian who travelled with Alexander the Great to India. In his Indica (preserved in fragments), Megasthenes describes several native Indian deities, including Heracles and Dionysos; however, this is not proof that Heracles and Dionysos are Indian, but rather an example of something called interpretatio graeca - calling foreign deities by their closest Greek equivalent. Herodotus does this a lot in Book 2 of his Histories, where he refers to Horus as Apollon and Isis as Demeter, among others.

Megasthenes was likely tapping into the similarities between Dionysos and Śiva, of which there are undoubtedly many. I could find a number of academic articles discussing them. However, only Alain Daniélou seems convinced that both Gods are the same entity - other scholars view them as deities with similar roles within their pantheon.

It is possible Dionysos and Śiva have the same origin, or that they influenced each other mutually. There was certainly contact between the Middle East and the Indus Valley, and between the Greek peninsula and the Middle East, as long ago as the Early Bronze Age. I don’t know enough to tell you how likely the adoption of an Indian deity into the Greek pantheon is, but, though I’m not opposed to the idea, I’m not likely to trust Alain Daniélou on it. Why? Because he tells me himself:

This book is not an essay on the history of religions. (p. 7)

This is confirmed by the lack of understanding he displays about archeology, linguistics, and the ancient Mediterranean/Near Eastern world. But more than his lack of scientific rigour, I want to draw attention to these three quotes from the foreword:

The dark forces which seem to rule the modern world have shown great ability in diverting, deforming and annihilating all man’s instinctive urges toward basic realities and the divine order of the world. (p. 8)

The way of Shiva-Dionysus is the only way by which humanity can be saved. (p. 9)

There is no other true religion. (p. 10)

Again, think about what he’s trying to gain by writing this book. Think carefully about how this influences its content. Can religious ideology really be considered academic “proof”?

I hope I don’t come off as too harsh on these topics. It’s okay to get confused by what is trustworthy and what is not! The most important thing is to keep asking questions, both of yourself and to others. Don’t stop at the surface. If you’re not sure where to start, I really recommend checking out my guide to online research :)

#debunk #looks like today is psa day #ancient greece #sanskrit #ancient india

21 notes · View notes