#and a friend said that was like a hydrogen bomb vs coughing baby

[divinebastet]

really tired of having chronic headaches and migraines, dude

[brechtian]

hi! i just finished st joan by shaw, and as someone who’s a fan of both shaw and brecht (iirc), i was wondering if you had any thoughts on shaw’s st joan and brecht’s st joan of the stockyards as contemporaneous pieces?

Hello friend!!! As you know, I found this ask so exciting I went and read both of these plays (it took me a little while; I’ll blame having to uproot my life suddenly and move to Florida haha).

As to their status as contemporaneous pieces, I do find it interesting that both Shaw and Brecht clearly had strong feelings about the then-recent canonization of Joan of Arc in 1920. To give Shaw an amount of credit, premiering a play in 1923 which criticizes the hypocrisy of the Catholic church’s canonization of Joan while maintaining similar attitudes and hierarchical systems of power which caused her execution to begin with was probably a bit more groundbreaking than it reads now. With that said, I’m not sure I’d consider Shaw’s play… particularly good. Which is a shame; one of my favorite things about Shaw is probably his female characters, but Joan, as the only one in the whole play, is portrayed as kind of… banal. Like, she’s perfect, she’s God’s favored, etc. but she doesn’t seem to have much of an issue with social or clerical systems of power at large except for insofar as they obstruct her goals to defeat England. Glancing through the Wikipedia page for the play, I really enjoyed T.S. Eliot’s criticism “instead of the saint or the strumpet of the legends to which he objects, he has turned her into a great middle-class reformer” (“A Commentary,” 1924). This isn’t necessarily Surprising, since Shaw’s political/social commentary is incredibly hit or miss, but I found the repetition and one-dimensionality of Joan and her struggles sort of a drag by the time I reached the second half of the play. ALSO… I found the epilogue extremely gauche and bizarre, it really did not fit with the piece and was kind of lip-curlingly tacky lmao.

BRECHT <3 I know you’re shocked to hear this but tumblr user brechtian really really really enjoyed Brecht’s Saint Joan. I mean, it’s really Brecht doing what he does best, which is taking a seed of a preexisting story and transforming it into brilliant complex class commentary. I was hoping going into it that there’d be criticism of the role the church plays in maintaining capitalism and BOY was I not disappointed. Literally the relationship between ideological and coercive state apparatuses, the critique of neoliberal nonviolence, skepticism of the reformed bourgeois + the difficulty of genuinely relinquishing that status within a system that necessitates power inequality SHE HAS IT ALL! Brecht also having the guts to actually have Joan lose her religious faith by the end (quite literally disco elysium voice communism replaces a faith in the divine with a faith in humanity’s future…) makes the empty propping up of her name and legacy as a symbol for the continuation of the status quo at the end sooo much more effective than Shaw’s cheesy fucking epilogue. In short, everything I’d want from a communist chicago stockyard loose adaptation of Joan d’Arc’s life because it has teeth it has claws it has BITE! I fear comparing the two is really coughing baby wealthy democratic socialist vs communist hydrogen bomb

[divine-elixir]

Teehee. I....I want to talk about my kids. My babies. My spawn. My pookies.

If I could have pictures of them, I would put them in my wallet to show off to whoever even cares. You WILL look at them! *waterboards you*

I'm unsure of how old they are, as much as I'm unsure of the time difference between here and the Tey/vat I know. It probably doesn't matter much at all or shouldn't. All I know is that around the time I left, they were both at most no more than 3 years old and also around my height.

Are they children? Adults? How do half yak/sha and half whatever I am age? How do they function? What are their needs? Do they actually need to eat and sleep or did they just do it in my presence because they assumed it was normal? I have so many questions now, but I don't think I cared to think about it much then. I just winged it really.

I say wing it, but I didn't raise them at all. And uhhh, I have no clue what Xi/ao did. It certainly wasn't child rearing though, he put a spear in my oldest's hands quick. 2 months into existence. Something about making sure he knew how to defend himself. Fair enough. I do remember Xi/ao genuinely wanting to keep the both of them away from his line of work. Something something, making sure they would have something he never will and wanting them to have happy lives. He never said it out loud, but I know that's what his intentions were.

Honestly, I don't know why we even have kids. Low tier parenting. We just dumped them on Cloud Ret/ainer....I also dumped them on Ae/ther and Pai/mon because I love having free labor. (I only jest. They were fine with it, I'm not mean.)

Personality wise, I only have some idea of their temperaments. They were like, adhd vs autism. Hydrogen bomb vs coughing baby. My youngest, if you were to let him loose into the wilderness I assure you he'll go out of his way to obliterate any monsters on sight. Probably burn something down too. He isn't violent, but Xi/ao told me he was destructive and needed to be kept in check. Hmmm, honestly I think he just had a hard time staying still. He found meditation and "ade/pti business" boring, but I'm unsure if anyone or myself ever did anything for him. I don't remember him having friends either, and I think he did tell me the human kids found him weird. 😞

My oldest. I don't have much to say, he was really polite, quiet, and diligent in matters that interested him. He took that "ade/pti business" seriously too. And he certainly inherited my pacifistic tendencies. Like I said, I haven't much to say. He isn't boring I swear, he's just a really good boy who liked to show me things and info dumped whenever he got the chance. He got that den/dro in him. *headpats*

I can't say much about there interactions with each other or with Xi/ao. They took care of each other sure, but I wasn't around most of the time. With Xi/ao, from what I remember, they just sort of hovered around him quietly most of the time. Like, I swear he doesn't bite. Say something to him.

Hmmmmm. I know Tey/vat is all they know and it's their home and all. But a part of me wonders if they'd be willingly to part from it, even if just for a bit, and see other places. Do what I do, so there's a chance we could be together forever. I guess I'm just afraid of parting with them. I know I'm here right now and they're over there. But...hmm, I wonder if I've made a mistake making connections and having them, and just making attachments for myself. I'm not saying they shouldn't exist, I'm not cruel. However, I spent most of my time hiding and observing others when I first arrived in Tey/vat. If I just kept doing that it definitely would not have hurt to have left that world, but since it didn't turn out that way it does hurt. I didn't understand it then, but I suppose I've developed some kind of paternal? maternal? instincts recently. I can't fathom why they love and respect me when I was hardly present. I wasn't even around when they came into the world. Whenever I was around, they were glued to me, happy, and enjoyed hugs and all..... I just don't get it.

Thinking about it is making me hurt right now honestly. I nearly cried three times writing this and I'm unsure of how to go about coping. Probably why I don't bring up my kids the majority of the time despite my wanting to.