#and his whole concept is basically being a battle scholar

[pomellon]

Ended up working on a new baby uwu

[sombrerokiwi]

What I wanted: Making fic for friend focus time

What I got: Me making funny concept yesterday into a short fic

Anyways, have a quick drabble where Hikari just decides to use lightning on Mugen.

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Hikari knew that this whole thing was done to humiliate him. He knew the fight was scripted to favor Mugen. After all, Mugen was always more skilled with combat, both due to natural talent and experience. Having Hikari fight him for a “quick spar” was just an excuse to have the soldiers witness how their strengths differ from each other.

Luckily though, Hikari has several advantages. The first advantage being that Hikari knows more than just the sword and has been dabbling into magical arts, practicing every day and making sure his skills were as good as they were with the sword. He isn’t as good as Osvald yet but he is good enough that several traveling Scholars praised him for his progress and asked who his teacher was.

The second advantage is that Mugen still thinks Hikari views him with admiration and awe, meaning he would think Hikari is viewing this as a friendly spar and not something meant to humiliate him. A year ago, he would have believed that this was a friendly spar but now…

“You don’t owe people your love and care when they don’t return it. Don’t waste your energy on those who will just take advantage of you, Hikari. You deserve better. You deserve so much better.”

He knows better now. Mugen isn’t going to see him as his equal, or at the very least, his sibling. He’s going to view him as an ant that needs to be crushed. Hikari shouldn’t go and hold on to the belief that his family here will care for him. At the very least though, he has his mother, and every few weeks he can visit his real family at Conning Creek.

Now though, he has to, as the soldiers would sometimes say, “one-up” his brother.

“Raise your weapon brother,” said Hikari.

“Let us see who comes out on top then,” said Mugen.

Immediately the battle began with Mugen bringing his sword down to where Hikari was standing. Quickly, he dodges it and takes a deep breath.

“Remember, analyze your opponents before you strike. That’s a basic in battling and in scholarly pursuits. We scholars may have the gift of commanding the elements but that’s useless if we always assume that our opponents will be susceptible to the ones we command.”

Spears and lightning. Those were the two things Hikari noticed Mugen consistently having trouble against. And luckily for him he has skill with both of those things.

Though…considering how much stronger Mugen is, his spearwork probably won’t do much against his brother.

Lightning magic however, that can work. That can work but how much power exactly? He doubts that a simple strike would do. No, if he wants to win then he has to put all his effort into it.

He hasn’t quite practiced the more advanced spells with Osvald but he has been reading ahead, and he has been practicing with the soldiers that spar with him. The real challenge is just making sure he doesn’t expend his energy in the process of casting it. If he lets that happen then he leaves himself open and in the process, would give Mugen an easy victory.

Another strike against Hikari and again, Hikari dodges. The strikes are getting faster now and though Hikari is nimble and much smaller than Mugen, he can’t dodge forever, and his brother knew that.

Now then, he has to do this fast.

He takes a step back. “I summon, Alephan, the Scholarking!” Immediately, he feels the elements course through him, making him aware of all that there is and all that he can summon.

He takes a deep breath and pours all his energy into the spell “The Sky Royals!”

And as commanded, the sky opens up and brings down a myriad of lightning and sparks onto his brother.

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“So,” says Osvald. “I heard that you called for Alephan’s knowledge and brought down lightning on your brother.”

Sheepishly, Hikari nods. He’s here much earlier than he should be but his father insisted on going early to have Osvald teach him proper control and restraint over the elements. A fair request, considering that his “light show”, as some of the soldiers called it, went and caused several small fires within the training grounds.

Osvald nods. “Good. It means you’re reading ahead.”

Hikari blinks. “Aren’t you mad?” he asks.

“Why would I be mad? You wanted to learn more so you read ahead of time, and you were excited to put your skills into practice so you started using them in places where practice is acceptable.”

Again, Hikari blinks. “Oh.”

“That doesn’t mean that what you did was smart though. You should first do that type of magic in a controlled environment before placing it into practice. At the very least though, we now know what you have trouble on.” 

He picks up a leaf. “Now then, the new lesson today is basic control. You managed to impressively use a high-level lightning skill but that’s useless if you can’t control where it’s supposed to strike.” In the same hand, he summons a small flame, slowly burning the leaf away. “We’re going to start with this. Okay?”

Hikari nods.

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Tag:

@beantothemax did the vague Scholar Hikari au writing prompt.

[lesbiansforboromir]

"Yet even so it was Gondor that brought about its own decay, falling by degrees into dotage, and thinking that the Enemy was asleep, who was only banished not destroyed. 

 'Death was ever present, because the Numenoreans still, as they had in their old kingdom, and so lost it, hungered after endless life unchanging. Kings made tombs more splendid than houses of the living, and counted old names in the rolls of their descent dearer than the names of sons. 

  Childless lords sat in aged halls musing on heraldry; in secret chambers withered men compounded strong elixirs, or in high cold towers asked questions of the stars. And the last king of the line of Anarion had no heir." 

Faramir's explanation for Gondor's ‘decline’ is... incoherent.. what the hell are you on about m’love?

The way this reads is so completely misleading when looking at the actual history and reasons for Gondor's receding borders and the loss of the watch on Mordor. Faramir puts the onus on Gondorian Kings wanting to live longer and not having kids... babe? Did you forget... the plague? Gondor WAS watching for activity in Mordor. For 1640 years! And then there was a plague so devastating that it turned the country’s most populous city into a near ghost town. It took 200 years for Gondor to recover, and even then it never truly reached the population levels it had maintained before. Osgiliath was never the same! And by then Mordor had taken the fortresses at the Morannon! 

There is absolutely no mention of Kings or Stewards who were desperately seeking to extend their life in Gondor’s history. Where are these tombs more splendid than the houses of the living? All the Kings not buried in Osgiliath are buried in the Silent Street... There is no mention of achingly elaborate tombs anywhere! 

There WERE however some Kings who did not marry or have children! ... Two, there were just two of them... out of thirty three. Narmacil I was Atanatar's son and reigned in the HEIGHT of Gondor's wealth. He essentially allowed his nephew Minalcar to run the country whilst he had a great time writing poetry and kissing men. And Minalcar did a really good job! He fought wars, he made alliances, he built the Argonath and when it actually came around to his time to be King, he had a nice and peaceful reign! And when his son Valacar wanted to marry a Northern Princess? Even though the worry in Gondor was that that would ‘weaken’ the King’s line and reduce their lifespan? He supported him! Gave his blessing! 

The other King who never married or had any children was Earnur! You all remember Earnur? Oh sure, he desperately wanted to extend HIS life past its natural limits! Fighting in two wars and then riding off into an obvious trap just because he'd been challenged really gives me a whole 'old man in his dotage fears death' vibe. And that was the ‘last king of the line of Anarion who had no heir’. You know WHY he was the last king? Because the King before his father Earnil II (King Ondoher) and his two sons had died! In a massive fuckall war with the Balchoth that nearly saw Gondor destroyed! PRINCE Faramir was TOLD to stay behind! But he was so anxious for his family and so wished to not simply sit and wait for death that he HID amongst the ranks of the Eotheod and went to war anyway!! AND DIED!! Asking questions of the stars??? Making strange elixirs?? Mused uselessly on heraldry??? WHEN? FARAMIR?? Was Ondoher daydreaming about stars and heraldry as he was cut down by a chariot??? Was Artamir brewing potions mid-battle?? WHAT are you talking about!!!

Where are these men fearing death who brought Gondor into it's decline that Faramir is talking about? Is he lying? No, I actually believe Faramir when he says he would not even snare an orc in a falsehood. The things Faramir says are things he believes. But then how, when he is so well known for his loremastership, can he be so misleading and plain wrong about something so basic to Gondorian history? Well I have a suggestion but it means Faramir’s at least a little homophobic so bear with me and I promise this is relevant.

So, obviously, the ups and downs of Gondor society in terms of queer liberation would be complex and rely upon a diverse number of factors. However, I’d say that, if you looked at an overall trend, it goes up in times of peace and takes a hit during times of strife. The basic reasoning for this is that one of the fundamentals of Gondorian society is the concept of doom and fate. This can give both correct and erroneous impressions of cause and effect throughout history. Gondorians tend to believe everything happens for a reason. And due to the (sometimes quiet but always present) elf-and-faithful-numenorean-ruled thinkers, who push ideas of proper marriage, celebacy, romance-superiority and other cis-het-normative agendas, the ‘reason’ that bad things happen is often blamed on the queer liberation of the times. The populace is open to being given reasons for bad things happening and Academia in Gondor is very much elf-revering, so it is often respected scholars who are pushing that narrative. 

HOWEVER, the queerness is rarely what is actually remembered or recorded in history, the wording of records are often bound up in the faithful numenorean rhetoric of ‘heretical kings’ and ‘they fell into the trap of king’s men ideology’ and so on and so forth. Scholars might understand what this means at the time, but it gets muddled further down the road and even academics in the future have trouble finding the intended emphasis. So! By the time we reach 3018 TA, the academic community as a whole has reached a general consensus that ‘the old sins of our past’ are to blame and that, whilst queerness was a part of it, it was more a symptom than a direct cause. 

So! The thought process I’m proposing for Faramir should be easy to guess at now, but I’m going to go more specific for the sake of... me uwu. 

GONDOR has not known peace for the last 500 years, not since Steward Denethor the first’s reign wherein the so called ‘watchful peace’ ended and Sauron returned to Mordor. NOW, before Denethor, his uncle Dior was the Steward and, as you’ve probably guessed, he had no children and nor did he marry. I would suggest that Dior lived through one of the most tolerant and open portions of Gondor’s history. I think he not only was open about his choice not to marry, but he also had a socially accepted partner and lived with him all his life with only a small, vocal minority voicing their objections. 

But then Sauron returned! And it was brutal, bloody and horrific. And that vocal minority saw an opportunity to use Dior’s life as a method to push Gondor once again into it’s regular crisis of conscience, faith and purpose. ‘We betrayed our founder’s’ and ‘We should have been ruled by Dior’s son but because of his weakness against his ill-fate we are doomed, he abandoned his duty! A pitiful fate but pitiful for us as well!’ And so on and so forth, there are reems of academic works written about it.

Now, this doesn’t have an immediate crushing effect on queer rights that one might fear. Denethor I loved his uncle dearly and would not hear a bad word about him, as did Boromir I! And Cirion? Cirion was almost more alternative than Dior. He sold off portions of land when the Stewards had been told to keep them IN TRUST for the king’s return. He made enduring and reciprocal alliances with the Eotheod ‘middle men’, he was very much anti-traditionalist! However, it was after his reign that Gondor truly felt the backlash of all this, spurred on by Cirion’s very alternative views, actions and methods. Because whilst he may have been an effective and charismatic Steward, Cirion had not found so much time to be a good father. And Hallas had been fifteen when his father had left him behind and ridden to war. He had a frightening and lonely childhood and was very open to the idea that his father was wrong, had gone too far, that things should be ‘brought back to normal’. Stability being key and all. The vocal minority had his ear. 

And since then, whilst opinion has still fluctuated, the constant unrest and simmering crisis of Gondor’s day to day has made progress against such concepts difficult and slow going. And it’s informed the opinion of history too, a lot more academic writing has compared Dior to Narmacil I (the first unwed and unmarried King) and has tried to find parallels between them and Earnur. Any explicit discussion of queerness has been relegated to Sindarin scripts (the language only really understood by academics and the upper classes), but the underlying tone is there HENCE! 

“falling by degrees into dotage, and thinking that the Enemy was asleep“ = Dior ‘abandoned his duty’ and Narmacil I ‘was indolent’.

“the Numenoreans still [-] hungered after endless life unchanging.” = A melding of heretical beliefs that occurred over centuries into one monolith that applied longing for endless life automatically.

“Childless lords sat in aged halls musing on heraldry; [-] compounded strong elixirs, [-] asked questions of the stars.” = This is all both reaching back to heretical practices in Numenor, whilst also harkening back to the periods of time in which Dior and Narmacil lived, peaceful times where more introspective and experimental pursuits could be indulged. 

SO! This is where Faramir’s erroneous and misleading opinions come from. And why he is at least a little homophobic. There, I told you all I’d get there. 

[mihidecet]

Sbi&CO d&d AU: Scott Smajor Character Analysis

It’s time for our all time favourite tournament organizer!!! Strap in friends, it’s Scott Smajor loving hours thanks to @hismilw ‘s lovely request! They asked for a character analysis for Scott in the D&D AU, which is extremely good because I’d been meaning to add him to the canon for a while now!! (And now, with MCC becoming part of the story, it’s even more appropriate!)

I also want to thank @octopus-defence-squad for being able to come up with such brilliant ideas for the MCC tournament in the au! They’ve given me so much inspiration and I can’t thank them enough ahahha

So, Scott! This time, his character is inspired a bit more on his role in the story, instead of only considering his actual online persona. 

This is mainly because, in our au, Scott Major is one of the organizers for this grandiose tournament that takes place once every year in a medium sized and primarily tourist town. 

And since him, Noxite and his crew have to build the stages for the tournament every year, there’s no better class to give him other than the Wizard! 

Wizards in d&d are scholars, people that spend a lot of time studying and practicing, and while they do have a bit of “fame” for being nerds, they are also extremely strong spellcasters. 

Therefore, the idea for Scott as a mage and as the headmaster of a wizard school academy was born.

Now, wizards in d&d have got subclasses too, which are centered around a specific “school” of magic. This is because spells in d&d are all divided in different categories, sort of like types of music, and the subclasses kind of reflect that.

So, the initial concept for Scott was a version of him that would allow him to be in a fake creative mode, in order to allow him to work on builds and general organization. But the thing is, the Conjuration subclass, which is centered around making things out of thin air and summoning beings, isn’t really … that strong in my personal opinion. Yes, it is pretty good, but … since wizard subclasses don’t restrain the types of spells you can learn, they just add perks to your magic abilities, the Conjuration subclass just doesn’t hold up in comparison to others. 

[basically, if you’re curious, it gives you the ability to conjure small objects (3x3x3ft max) at second level, and teleport a limited number of times at sixth. Blink is a spell that does basically the same thing, and Scott would be able to learn it at fifth level.]

[again this is just a personal preference]

If I had to talk about what I effectively think are the strongest subclasses overall, I’d say either War Magic or Abjuration. The main problem with wizards in d&d is the fact that they are glass cannons: pretty strong, but they need to keep their distance because they go down very easily. 

War Magic is the most “attack” version of the solution to that problem, as it gives bonuses to your armour class (which is the thing that defines how hard you are to hit). It also incentivises you to be in the thick of the fight since now you have benefits to whenever you block an enemy attack. But while I do think that is very cool, I don’t really see it fitting Scott. He is a huge team player, and this is a bit of a “one man army” subclass.

Abjuration seems more fitting to me. Abjuration is mainly focused on magic that blocks, protects or banishes. Incoming arrow? Use Shield, now you’re harder to hit. An enemy caster is about to burn your pals to a crisp with Fireball? Use Counterspell, that spell is no more. There’s a demon bearing down on your whole team, with no way to run? Use Banishment, now the demon is no more. 

This subclass gives you temporary hit points (so more health), and allows you to use that additional health to absorb damage that the rest of your party takes (and more!). 

This, in my opinion, is both very good from a gameplay point of view, and very fitting for the multifaceted role that Scott plays when in a team. He can play support, he can attack, he can help keep control over the battlefield.

Now, I see Scott mainly as an elf. Elves are just very cool and elegant, and I think Scott would enjoy being an elf. It’s just what he deserves. 

From a mechanical point of view, High Elves get bonuses to both dexterity (good for avoiding attacks) and intelligence (a given for a wizard). 

They also get a bonus cantrip! Which is very good overall, even though you have access to a lot of cantrips as a wizard.

And finally, the background! While I do not like being cliché, Scott is 100% a sage. He’s a scholar, and an academic. He’s getting the sage background.

So, in summary: 

Scott Major is born from a small elven family, who are all traditionally artists and performers. Ever since his birth, he’s always displayed a penchant for the arcane, with his magical abilities appearing earlier than usual and his curiosity allowing him to learn a lot in an exceptional short time. 

Due to all this, his parents decided to let him develop his abilities in a nearby arcane academy, where he quickly proves himself as one of the most talented wizards of his times. He finishes his studies and explorations of the various arcane schools extremely at leisure pace nevertheless, taking the time to experiment with his own interests and forming friendships with other coursemates. 

With one in particular, Noxite, he shares not a dream but a project. 

The two of them leave the academic world for a while to explore and learn more about the world of adventuring, then return with enough coin to complete what they’ve set up to do. 

They take what was originally the small academy where Scott began his studies, and make it the centre of arcane knowledge in the whole region - scholars of all types and origins flock to their newly born institute, for research purposes and to teach bright faced young students. 

Then, they start building. 

And many years later, what first began as a small tournament held for only academics, so that professors could show off new abilities and students could experiment the tensions of battle in a controlled environment, became the most renown tournament in the whole material plane. 

There, adventurers and students alike can participate and display their own skills and abilities, and try to win a price that is both of fame and more material.

Scott went from taking part to the tournament to mainly overseeing the organization, but he does still sometimes compete if a team is lacking a contestant. He continues to teach, mostly taking under his wing extremely talented students that attend his academy, and his research on the effects of time and space in magic has never really stopped. 

[normal-thoughts-official]

Do you have any headcanons about how the Polycule helps alter downworld relations? Like obviously it’s not just them, but having high-ranking/leading downworlders all loving/trusting each other is bound to make a difference. Although I hate the whole vampire/werewolf rivalry in the show, I like to hc the tension as stemming from 1. The Clave being a dick and working to separate oppressed communities and 2. The fact that immortality/mortality really makes a difference in POV.

YEAAAA BOIII

i mean i completely agree about the vampire/werewolf thing (i mean i just answered an ask about that and stuff so u know). like i don’t hate it in concept but i hate the execution, it could have been great and shown us a lot about how white/shadowhunter supremacy works to alienate different oppressed communities and this make organizing and fighting back harder or even inviable, but nooo of course they had to go with naturalizing the whole thing because god forbid there’s good lore and metaphor 

anyway! i do think that the polycule does a lot to change that, not even (just) because of their relationship, but because, they, like... truly believe in bringing their communities together and making them stronger, and are all actively working to do that as leaders. it’s part of what even got their relationships started, really - the fact that they had all been working together to bring their communities closer, and halfway through they realized, oh shit i might actually love them

but getting into more detail!

i have already talked many times about how i think that after the whole jonathan fiasco, seelies would have wanted to radically change their external policies, because, well..... it clearly was only working against them and their own rights and needs, including those to leave the realm, interact with other species (that’s part of their nature! they’re one with all beings, how can they be isolated from them??) and just general freedom, you know? and it didn’t even help them keep physically safe, much to the contrary. the world almost ended and they wouldn’t have been kept safe

and whether or not u hc meliorn as the new seelie queen or as keeping their position as a kind of.... ambassador  in this realm, they’re extremely valuable, because they’re one of the few seelies who actually know about the non-seelie cultures, customs, political relations and etc. since most seelies were kept away in their realms, they don’t know where to start, and meliorn has very valuable knowledge, plus again, they’re very loyal to the seelie realm and want to see them thriving

so meliorn definitely works to get the seelies to build meaningful relationships with other downworlder communities. it helps that they already know magnus, raphael, maia, and luke, all important people in that sense. i’ve talked a little bit about how i think their attempts to get closer would go - offering tokens of alliance to other downworlders, teaching warlocks about the workings of their own magic and their knowledge on the forces of nature and ley lines, just generally trying to pick their interest and build something together

i definitely think that seelies would consider education the way to go here - they are the keepers of knowledge after all, so that’s definitely something extremely important in their culture. a treasure if you will. and they know how teaching, exploring, learning and creating can bring people together, help them understand each other, and form meaningful alliances. after all, building knowledge together means that a part of how you think is inherently tied to the other’s culture, and that makes alienating, stereotyping or turning people against each other a lot harder

i say “building knowledge” because i know “keepers of knowledge” kind of implies that knowledge is... a kind of substance, that exists, that can be contained. but really knowledge is ever chaging, it is constantly creating and recreating itself as we create new languages and tools to describe, understand and think of the world around us. and we’re always creating new things too, new technologies, new concepts, new machines, new spells (in sh lore), new laws and societal organizations and ways to help each other.... the world is ever changing and so is the way we think about it. and seelies know that too; they might be immortal, but they’re not static, because the world isn’t either. that’s also why i think that being locked away from other realms was particularly violent towards them - they were being forced into a state of unchangeness that goes against their very nature, that alienates them from their own core

anyway! sorry for nerding out about science and the nature of knowledge. what i’m trying to say here is that for seelies, knowing other cultures and getting educated, educating, and just thinking are extremely precious and valuable. so i definitely think that through things like, i don’t know, creating magical schools where them and warlocks can share their different knowledges and way of using magic, sharing their own conceptualization of the world and listening to others’, trying to create new things together, is a powerful way to build alliances, know each other, and make each other stronger. you know? so in that sense they basically bet on education as a way to bring communities closer, and raise new people with a new mindset who see things differently, in a less... prejudiced, i guess? way 

i feel like warlocks are the ones who have the best relationship with the other downworlder communities - possibly because they are needed by all of them - so magnus would be the one who would have the least work to do here dauhdsauhd i mean not that he’s part of the polycule but you know. he kind of acts as consultant to all of them, and sometimes, warlock territory can be some kind of neutral ground for other downworlders to discuss and negotiate, knowing that they’re all welcome and that they aren’t at risk because all shadowhunters are there. pack and clan territories are no-nos and the seelie realm is still adjusting to some quite radical changes, not to mention can be a little unsettling because many people have simply never been there. so i think warlock spaces can become very important territories for other downworlder leaders to meet, build strategies and share 

we’ve also seen a little bit on how saia helped build a new paradigm for vampire/werewolves relationships in canon, how their bet was on building communal spaces and communities, you know? like places where they could all coexist and meet, like Taki’s. with raphael into the mix, that’s just. a very promising territory

with raphael in it it means that Taki’s is officially co-run by werewolves and vampires, which in itself makes it feel a little safer - like, vampires might not be as willing to go to taki’s before because it was a werewolf place, even if it wasn’t really, you know? but with raphael there it most definitely isn’t, and that helps them feel a little more comfortable, more willing to go and also to be open and meet new people instead of keeping to their usual circles

also! there’s the very specific situation within the NY clan. we see in sh canon how seelies are a society, warlocks are a community, and werewolf packs are a family, but the NYC clan is not like that at all. it seems like they like each other (mostly) but they’re scattered, they’re not really an unit, or a community

this is definitely because of camille - decades of having a clan leader who did her very damn best to keep other vampires oppressed under her rule and dependant on her meant letting their ways of mutual support dwindle, their relationships fail, and their existence be centered on the dependency they have on her. so once raphael becomes clan leader, he has a lot to do, and the first step is to rebuild the NY clan itself

which. i’ve mentioned in passing in many asks, i know! but i just love the idea of raphael slowly turning the clan into a community, into family, again. getting rid of all the ridiculous cold-feeling, unwelcoming decoration and creating a big, attractive communal space, with less harsh lightning, more colors, more places to sit, games, fucking TV, books. spaces where they can be together and share and create and just chill, you know? the interior design of camille’s clan was extremely hostile, it was built for people to be kept away and segregated in their little spaces, not together, and i’m absolutely sure this was intentional. so raphael takes important steps in the opposite direction: making the place welcoming, lively, theirs

it’s not just the place, either. once the war is over and they finally have the chance to breathe, raphael also changes radically the way things are run. instead of a highly centralized leadership, he starts discussing decisions with the whole clan, putting it to a vote. soon his work is way less making decisions and way more organizing their routine so they’re able to make them, together. soon everyone is participating in decisions. soon they’re making sure everyone’s needs are being met

soon they are building their own supporting spaces for vampires battling addiction (since that’s a huge problem for them for many reasons), soon they are getting closer to warlock scholars/therapists and such that can help them with these issues, building alliances in that sense too, where they can help each other with their communitie’s needs. soon they’re getting pets because why the hell not? (cats in particular love raphael) and every stray has a home in the clan because well. they are all strays, lost and found there. life is a lot better, and happier, and once the clan is strong enough to get back on its feet and empower vampires again, then he starts working on getting closer to other downworlders, especially the werewolves

which is how we get to taki’s because again! i’m a slut. look, raphael is a great cook and he’s good at organizing stuff and he understands food in a visceral way that means he also understands what taki’s is all about - he understands that food is community, it’s culture, it’s bringing people together. he’s probably the person who best understands the concept of taki’s the way maia does, a place to bring people together, a place to build a new future. just by hearing about it, he immediately gets what maia’s idea with taki’s is, and just by hearing raphael talk about food, she immediately knows that raphael is perfect to help her. so they get to it

but taki’s is just, well, one thing. i mean it’s a very important thing that they both worked extremely hard on and that brought amazing fruits that they never truly expected. it becomes a safe space, a hangout place, a place for people to meet others and to seek help when needed and to discuss politics and downworlder relations, all in one. the tables are big and communal and the place is messy in the best possible way, with everyone mingling, talking, getting to know each other without being overwhelming. and it’s great, and maia and raphael are extremely proud of the work they’ve done there, and sometimes they kind of just lie back and look at what they have created and it’s like. wow. and they smile at each other and raphael kisses her hand and says “it’s all because of you, bella” and she smiles so brightly at him and laces their fingers together and-

back to politics. yes. community building. i can do this. i can not be a whore for maiaphael for one second. i believe in myself

anyway they also make it a frequent thing to just like, meet? and create a vampires-werewolves alliance that doesn’t just spam NYC, but all their allied clans/packs and tries to bring them all together in other places, too. it’s a long work, but they slowly make a lot of progress and help bring their communities together as a whole and end the whole dumbass rivalry thing. they push back against shadowhunters and the specific laws and mechanisms they created to pit them against each other, they kind of create a common political agenda that highlights all the things that they have in common, because there are many. and it’s just. wow. incredible? like they get so much done and make such a big difference and aaa

and i mean obviously like you said that’s not just them. all the downworlder communities are really working the best they can to become stronger and closer together (warlocks play a very important part in this too, not just serving as neutral ground but actively trying to start groups like that in different regions, bringing representants from the places where alliances like this have worked to help make them in different places with different contexts, etc) and it’s an amazing team work and im just wow so proud of them i love them. but they definitely work a lot, very actively, to make this happen, too (and magnus as well, and the rest of their people) and it’s just :’) incredible. and yeah i mean their relationship is also iconic in a lot of ways, which also helps because damn, if two vampires, a werewolf and a seelie can be in a four-way relationship and be so clearly happy and thriving and achieving so much stuff together, what happens if all the downworlders unite? and i just duaihdsiahda love that for them

[recentanimenews]

Bookshelf Briefs 9/30/20

Accomplishments of the Duke’s Daughter, Vol. 6 | By Reai and Suki Umemiya | Seven Seas – Another series down to “once a year” release—I had to jog my memory at the start to recall what had been happening. Many things are going wrong for our heroine, who is trying to be strong and tough but is also starting to break down, and I felt that the scenes with her and Dean struck just the right balance of comforting and letting the heroine cry without making her seem weaker. This sets the stage for her comeback, which is extraordinary. (And also has a corrupt Church, a constant in Japanese light novels, though at least here there are also honest and good religious people in it.) That said, eventually Dean’s identity will come out, and I do wonder how this very good “villainess” isekai will handle it. – Sean Gaffney

The Ancient Magus’ Bride: Jack Flash and the Faerie Case Files, Vol. 1 | By Yu Godai, Mako Oikawa, and Kore Yamazaki | Seven Seas – A faerie switched at birth for a human child, Jack never fit in in either world. Only in the mortal realm could she earn money for anime collectibles, however, so she decided to make herself into a tough, capable woman like her literary heroes and set up shop as a detective. Together with her fellow changeling, Larry the werewolf, Jack takes on supernatural cases in New York City. In this volume, Lindel tasks them with tracking down a missing dragon egg. I liked the resources Jack uses to obtain information, which include a dapper theatre ghost and a spell with components of rat whiskers and taxi tires because “Nobody out there knows this city better than them.” I still found this a bit hard to get into, though, especially the parts involving a perpetually tearful off-off-off-off-Broadway actress and her pickpocket boyfriend. Still, I will check out volume two! – Michelle Smith

Black Clover, Vol. 22 | By Yuki Tabata | Viz Media – At long last, this interminable arc comes to an end. I enjoyed a lot of it, but I cannot deny it should have been about two volumes shorter. Most of the book is taken up by shonen battles, with the villain being nigh unkillable, the heroes almost breaking themselves to stop him, etc. Fortunately, the day is saved, and even the Wizard King turns out to be… sort of alive again? Shota fans should be happy. Asta fans perhaps less so—the sheer amount of damage done to the kingdom in this arc means someone has to be blamed, and give Asta has the “dark evil magic” it’s gonna be him, especially when he takes the incredibly obvious bait they use to get him to fight. Oh well, if Asta were smart, this wouldn’t be Black Clover. – Sean Gaffney

Don’t Toy with Me, Miss Nagatoro, Vol. 3 | By Nanashi | Vertical Comics – Part of the problem with titles like this and the other teasing works (Takagi-san less so as Nishikata doesn’t fall into the category) is that they are, at heart, the classic “extroverted girl acts overtly extroverted to bring introverted guy out of their shell,” and that’s not really a plot that feels comfortable in the Gen Z days, where you’re more likely to say “why doesn’t she just let him be in his quiet, safe space?” And by she I mean they, as Nagatoro’s two friends appear far more often here, which offers some good two-way teasing action, as they clearly see her crush on him, if not why. It’s still sort of hard to read, but if you pretend he’s more OK with it than he actually is, this is cute. – Sean Gaffney

Failed Princesses, Vol. 1 | By Ajiichi | Seven Seas – The concept of “popular girl meets unpopular girl” is a common one in yuri manga, and we do indeed hit several of its tropes in this first volume. The amusing thing is that Kanade, the shy outcast girl, is perfectly aware of how things are supposed to go, and keeps pulling back a bit to try to save Nanaki from, well, making herself an outcast by associating with the wrong people. The best part of the volume is that Nanaki really doesn’t give two shits about any of that, and seems set on making Kanade her best friend… and also making her over, which backfires a bit as Kanade cleans up nicely. I hear this gets a bit dramatic later, but for the moment it’s a cute and fluffy proto-yuri story. – Sean Gaffney

In/Spectre, Vol. 12 | By Kyo Shirodaira and Chashiba Katase | Kodansha Comics – The first story in this volume is another “Rikka tries to make people understand Kotoko is an evil Machiavellian schemer,” this time with one of her ex-classmates, but again the response seems to be “we know she’s a manipulative bitch, but she’s a good person anyway.” The larger story, which will continue into the next book, seems to be a chance to write Kuro and Kotoko as an actual romance, as the man we meet here and his relationship with a yuki-onna… as well as his penchant for attracting misfortune… very much parallel them. That said, they’re very cute together, which is why I hope he avoids the murder charge he’s now being investigated for. Still a favorite. – Sean Gaffney

Interviews with Monster Girls, Vol. 8 | By Petos | Kodansha Comics – The author knows what people want to see, but also knows that the best way to get readers is to drive them crazy by not showing it. We finally get what we’ve been begging for here, as Tetsuo asks Sakie out on a date. (This is after rejecting Kyouko’s love confession, both because she’s his student and also, as he is forced to admit, as he likes Sakie.) The stage is set for the date… and the rest of the book is thus spent with the three main student girls going to Kyouko’s for a fireworks viewing and meeting her family. They’re good chapters, and I really liked showing how difficult Kyouko has it as a dullahan in terms of everyday life, but GOD, please get back to the teachers, I beg you! – Sean Gaffney

Kaguya-sama: Love Is War, Vol. 16 | By Aka Akasaka | Viz Media – The series has gotten to the point where the more rewarding chapters are the ones as part of a larger arc. Not that the one-shot chapters are bad—though Maki’s journey to India may be the most pointless thing in this entire series to date, we do get Chika’s iconic “shut up or I’ll kill you” here. But the larger arcs, featuring Miyuki and Kaguya attempting to date without interruptions, and setting up Ishigami and Iino for a romance—though given the number of limbs broken in this book, and Iino’s own horrible lack of self-awareness, it may be a ways out—are better. This series is still hilarious, but we’ve come to read it more for the heartwarming moments. Heck, there’s even some serious drama here. Very good. – Sean Gaffney

Nineteen | By Ancco | Drawn & Quarterly – Although it was translated and released second in English, Nineteen is a precursor to Ancco’s internationally award-winning manhwa Bad Friends. The volume collects thirteen short comics originally published in Korea over a decade ago which absolutely remain relevant to today’s world. While understandably not as polished as some of Ancco’s later work—one can observe her style evolving and growing over the course of the collection (which is fascinating)—the comics still carry significant emotional weight and impact. Nineteen includes diary comics, which tend to be more lighthearted, as well as harder-hitting fictional stories, many of which also have autobiographical inspiration. As a whole, the collection explores themes of young adulthood, growing up, and complicated family relationships. In particular, there is a compelling focus on the relationships among daughters, mothers, and grandmothers. Some of the narratives can be rather bleak, but a resigned sense of humor threads through Nineteen, too. – Ash Brown

Ran the Peerless Beauty, Vol. 8 | By Ammitsu | Kodansha Comics (digital only) – Shoujo manga that has couples getting together BEFORE the end of the series is inevitably going to have an arc dealing with how far the lead couple should go now that they’re dating, and this is Ran’s turn, as she and Akira and their friends go to a beach house Ran’s family owns and have some beach fun. Unfortunately, the cast gets winnowed down one by one until it’s just the two of them… and her overprotective father, who arrives in time to provide the cliffhanger and no doubt ensure that nookie does not ensue. Not that I think it should—these two kids are even purer than the couple from Kimi ni Todoke, and I think they should mature a bit more before going further. Plus, watching them blush and kiss is wonderful. – Sean Gaffney

Spy x Family, Vol. 2 | By Tatsuya Endo | Viz Media – Having spent our first volume establishing that our found family can really come to love each other deep down, this volume shows off how they are also, at heart, fundamentally awkward and unable to socialize normally. This is unsurprising—hints of Loid’s life we’ve seen show him as a war orphan, Yor is a contract killer, and Anya basically grew up being experimented on by bad guys. As the school soon finds, this leads to issues. The second half of the book introduces Yor’s sister-obsessed little brother Yuri, who turns out to be a torture expert for Loid’s enemies. As always, half the fun is that everyone except Anya has no idea who their real selves are, and the cliffhanger tells us we’re in for some hilarious family fun. I love this. – Sean Gaffney

Spy x Family, Vol. 2 | By Tatsuya Endo | VIZ Media – After a brief spell atop the waiting list, Anya officially makes it into Eden Academy. Loid is anxious to progress to the next stage of his mission and, believing there’s not much chance in turning Anya into an elite scholar like his agency wants, focuses instead on having her befriend the younger son of his target. It does not go to plan, of course. Anya is very cute in this volume, and I also really appreciated how Loid genuinely listens to Yor and values her input. The arrival of Yor’s brother, a member of the secret police, is going to be a fun complication, and another cast member with a secret, but my favorite part of this series is probably always going to be how much love these three are already feeling for each other. So unique and good! – Michelle Smith

Sword Art Online: Hollow Realization, Vol. 6 | By Tomo Hirokawa, based on the story by Reki Kawahara | Yen Press – The weakness of this manga is the same as always—it’s written to tie into the games, and features several characters I just don’t recognize, which can be a problem given this is the big final let’s-save-the-world ending. That said, this is still a decent SAO title. Kirito gets to be cool and badass, but because this isn’t written just by Kawahara others do as well, and it’s a nice balanced effort that focuses on heroine Premiere. I also really liked the point where all the NPCs are worried when everyone has to log out for several days for maintenance. While I’ll still remember this as the “SAO only everyone is alive” manga, I enjoyed reading it, when I wasn’t confused. – Sean Gaffney

By: Ash Brown

[quranreadalong]

SLIGHT PROBLEM: NO ONE KNOWS HOW THE ISLAMIC AFTERLIFE WORKS

So. Last time we read this, in reference to the evil pharaoh of the Exodus story.

Allah warded off from [Moses] the evils which they plotted, while a dreadful doom encompassed Pharaoh's folk, The Fire; they are exposed to it morning and evening; and on the day when the Hour upriseth (it is said): Cause Pharaoh's folk to enter the most awful doom.

The pharaoh and his underlings are currently being tortured, before the Day of Judgement, at which time they will... be tortured even more.

This is our first taste of the poorly-attested, barely-understood, but nonetheless mostly agreed-upon concept of adhab al-qabr, literally the “torment of the grave”. This is not a concept that is mentioned in the Quran, beyond the ayah above, but it is found in several ahadith.

You see, Islam has the same problem as Christianity with regards to the whole afterlife thing--the Day of Judgement is meant to sort people into heaven and hellbound categories, but there are stories within both religions indicating that people are punished or rewarded long before this day. Maybe early Muslims didn’t care much about this topic because they believed that the Day of Judgement was approaching fast. Mohammed enjoyed scaring his followers by indicating that the day was getting close, as we’ve seen in the Quran itself. But, uh, that didn’t happen. And so here we are around 1400 years later, and the question of what happens to people’s souls between their deaths and their resurrection at the end of the world has become increasingly pertinent.

Islamic tradition largely holds that this period takes place in a metaphysical realm, time, or just a condition called barzakh, meaning “barrier” (between life and the “actual” afterlife). The word comes from this line in surah 23:

behind them is a barrier until the day when they are raised

Now, tbh, this just says the barrier is behind them, meaning the dead can’t come back to life (Unless Allah Willeth, etc). As we’ve seen multiple times now, Mohammed said that on the Day of Judgement, the disbelievers will beg Allah for a second chance at life and he’ll tell them to fuck off into hell. It’s usually implied that this is their first conscious experience after death. In fact, throughout the Quran, we’re made to believe that people won’t even notice that any time has passed between their deaths and resurrection. The doomed disbelievers who are raised on the Day of Judgement say they were “sleeping” while in their graves, which is odd if they spent the entirety of their time there being tortured, either physically or spiritually (no one knows if the torture is meant to be inflicted upon their bodies or just their souls).

Regardless, the reason why barzakh is a thing is because both the Quran and the ahadith refer to people enduring torment before the end of the world, and scholars needed to come up with some sort of theological explanation for this. Barzakh was the nearest equivalent, so they went with that (though what “barzakh” actually meant varied within the first two centuries of Islam).

In the barzakh realm/time/whatever after death, people will be subjected to two fates: punishment and reward, similar to the Christian theological idea of “particular judgement” preceding the final judgement (which was also debated among different sects of Christians, with some saying that the dead were just unconscious until they were resurrected). The punishment is for wrongdoers, and is the adhab al-qabr in question. A hadith assures us that this is a real thing, and perhaps tells us where Mohammed got the concept from.

There came to me two old women from the old Jewesses of Medina [who] said: The people of the grave are tormented ... He (the Prophet) said: They told the truth; they would be tormented (so much) that the animals would listen to it. She ('A'isha) said: Never did I see him (the Holy Prophet) afterwards but seeking refuge from the torment of the grave in prayer.

The torment of the grave is clearly distinguished from the torment of hell in other very reputable ahadith--so there is a definite basis for the concept, despite its absence from the Quran itself. A variety of other ahadith flesh out the concept. First of all, that line about animals hearing it was apparently meant to be taken literally:

The Messenger of Allah went out after the sun had set, and heard a sound. He said '(It is) Jews being tormented in their graves.’

As for the disbeliever or the hypocrite, it is said to him (in his grave): 'What did you say about this man (Mohammed)?' He says: 'I do not know; I used to say what the people said (ie, he is an idiot moron).' It is said to him (by the angels): 'You did not understand and you did not follow those who had understanding.' Then he is dealt a blow between his ears and the man utters a scream which everything near him hears, except for the two races (humans and jinn).''

Even dead Jews bothered Mohammed. Christ.

Secondly, the “sins” that cause you to be tormented range in severity from disbelief all the way down to............. uh...

The Messenger of Allah (ﷺ) happened to pass by two graves and said: They (their occupants) are being tormented, but they are not tormented for a grievous sin. One of them [gossiped] and the other did not keep himself safe from being defiled by urine. He then called for a fresh twig and split it into two parts, and planted them on each grave and then said: Perhaps, their punishment way be mitigated as long as these twigs remain fresh.

...not changing your nasty-ass urine-stained clothes. Nice of Mohammed to have pity on that guy, though. This indicates that some of the torment of the grave can be lessened by the actions of the living, though why putting an object on someone’s grave accomplishes this is A Mystery Of Allah.

Whether Muslims will be subjected to any of this torture is unclear. A hadith suggests they will not.

“Allah will keep firm those who believe, with the word that stands firm.” [14:27] This has been revealed concerning the torment of the grave. It will be said to him: ‘Who is your Lord?’ He will say: ‘My Lord is Allah, and my Prophet is Muhammad.’

(It’s said in less-reputable stories that angels named Munkar and Nakir are responsible for asking these questions, sometimes with a third angel named Ruman thrown in. They are generally depicted as very scary looking in order to frighten people.)

As for those Muslims who get to experience their pre-Day-of-Judgement rewards, it’s... also unclear what happens to them. Islamic scholars sometimes point to this verse from back in the third surah, following the Battle of Uhud, as a reference to barzakh:

And never think of those who have been killed in the cause of Allah as dead. Rather, they are alive with their Lord, receiving provision, Rejoicing in what Allah has bestowed upon them of His bounty, and they receive good tidings about those [to be martyred] after them who have not yet joined them - that there will be no fear concerning them, nor will they grieve.

And in a hadith, it’s said that these dead soldiers are turned into green birds who live in jannah... presumably temporarily, so they can enjoy their lady-lovin’ rewards later. But both the hadith and the Quran make it clear that Muslims who die while waging jihad (in addition to prophets etc) are given express tickets to heaven itself... they’re not in some in-between state. So this can’t be barzakh or the good equivalent of the torment of the grave. I mean, it can, if you want to connect the two badly enough, but it doesn’t make much sense.

So some Islamic scholars proposed more modest rewards. After satisfactorily answering the angels’ questions, they say, dead Muslims in their graves will get a sneak peek into jannah, filling them with hope and tiding them over until the Day of Judgement. The grave itself will be made spacious and well-lit for them, then they can sleep peacefully. (“Wow this is rly helpful!!!” - guy who has been dead for 800 years and is now a femur bone and some ashes.)

The sneak peek hadith linked above basically states that people will know whether they’re going to hell or heaven right after answering the questions, though, so why does the Quran show the disbelievers being shocked when they’re sentenced to hell? What’s even the point of the Day of Judgement when they’ve already received judgement? Why bother with the bridge thing and all the dramatics? Lo! It is a mystery. Then again, Allah judges everyone before they’re even born, so I guess it makes just as much sense as everything else in this religion, which is to say none at all.

At the end of the day, what we really have here is a disconnect between the Quran itself and the ahadith, which does happen every now and then. Nothing in the Quran beyond this one line clearly says that dead people will be doing or experiencing anything other than... being dead, with the exception of those granted Instant Jannah. But the ahadith make it abundantly clear that this is not the case. The ahadith referencing this are very strong and can’t be dismissed as later fabrications.

As for why this disconnect may have arisen in the first place, the hadith from Aisha perhaps suggests that Mohammed made adhab al-qabr a more central part of Islam only after he heard Jews in Medina talking about it a lot. Perhaps he himself didn’t fully understand how all of this was meant to work, since neither Jews nor Christians offered a solid, unified explanation for it, and he didn’t want to incorporate it into the Quran beyond this line. Or maybe he just needed to give his followers some extra motivation to keep following him--now they weren’t just risking torment in hell, but also torment before hell. I don’t know.

What I do know is that the concept of the torment of the grave, and a consciousness-after-death concept more broadly (even if only for a moment), has become an accepted part of Islam over the centuries despite its near-total absence from the Quran. Not everyone can agree on the exact nature of it all, since there really isn’t much material to base it upon, but most do agree that it is a thing. Somehow.

Anyway the real answer to this and many other theological mysteries is that Mohammed didn’t think all of this through clearly enough and so Islamic scholars had to try to fix his mistakes for several centuries. O well!

⇚ previous day | next day ⇛

[alexicacvs-a-blog]

🔥

This is going to be really salty. Though it’s not RP related but more so based on my experiences going into multiple Pagan communities over the years. This will be under a read more.

Anyway a post I saw reignited a massive pain in my ass and that’s the whole White Witchcraft movement that’s been a thing since the 1950′s. This is going to delve into the history and why it’s such a pain in the ass and also go into my reasons for hating Silver Ravenfuck. I mean Silver Ravenwolf.

So before I begin let me just say that White Witchcraft isn’t a thing that solely white people. It was never a thing that solely white people did. In fact it’s whole start was during McCarthyism. We all know about McCarthyism right? For those who don’t, McCarthyism was a period in the 50′s where McCarthy would round up people who were perceived as being Commie scum, typically those who were athiests and Jewish. Believing good American citizens to be god fearing Christians, anyone else is a commie scum. Thus why 90% of Jewish Filmmakers were blacklisted and spent time doing trials in the 50′s.

Also to note that Wica or commonly known as Wicca or British Traditional Wicca (Due to Scott Cunningham writing Wicca: A Guide to the Solitary Practioner and it being a hit in the US and Canada and distingtion needed to be made. However everywhere else in the the world BTW is simply Wicca.) came about in 1954, created by Gerald Gardner and helmed by Doreen Valiente (until I think either the 60′s or 70′s then she helped out Robert Cochrane with his 1734 tradition.). Now Doreen and several other high profile witches were trying to not get caught into the web of McCarthy, and did the one that that Christians have perfected for centuries: Throw people under the bus.

Now mind you this group of witches weren’t all white people. According to Amber and Jet, Desi Arnaz was one of the witches involved in this new movement. Desi was a Cuban immigrant who practiced Santeria. Santeria is an indigenous form of witchcraft that combines witchcraft with Christianity, it’s what Issac Bonewits would describe as a idiosyncratic form of witchcraft. And there were probably several others. Again when you have McCarthy breathing down your back the only thing left to do is to throw people under the bus.

Now the terms for black magic or white magic weren’t chosen because of racial attitudes. In the west and in the east colors have meaning, this is known as symbology. We know that white means pure in the West and black means evil. If you played Final Fantasy, White Mages do healing. Black Mages hurt and poison.

Now in modern times there should be no classification for a color for witchcraft. Your classification should be the type and intent of witchcraft that you do. If you’re a Storm Witch, you work with storms. Water Witch, you work with water. Want to heal people? Then you’re a healer. What to harm people then you’re a Hex Witch. Like Chaos well you’re a Chaote/Chaos Magician.

Even Anton LaVey, leader and founder of the Church of Satan said something similiar in his book The Satanic Witch in his first chapter “Are You A Witch?”. Now mind you this book is more so focused on the notion that only girls are witches and boys are warlocks, also given that the cover is pink it’s possible that he was gearing this book more so towards women and having them embrace their femininity.. Never mind the fact that the word warlock means oathbreaker in Scottish Gaelic. But whatever. I’ll amend it so bear with me.

Aside from the tricks of the movie or TV witch, usually accomplished with special camera techniques, there is no reason why any girl who puts her mind to it and learns the proper methods cannot become a full-fledged witch in accord with the popular conception. Only those who either do not know the means or are too stubborn to use them, once having been told, will persist in defining themelves as witches by using the sanctimonious definitions of so-called “white witches” working for “the benefit of mankind.” There will always be those who, furitvely desiring personal power but unable to do anything about gaining it, will devise their own definitions of what a which should be like, seeing to it, of course, that their definition fits them.

The “white witch” is the by-product of an emergence in England of an above ground witchcraft interest at a time when witchcraft was still technically illegal. In order to pursue the “craft” without harassment and prosecution, the spokesmen for witchcraft attempted to legitimize and justify what they were doing by proclaiming the existence of “white” witchcraft. (The footer note states that the term was first used by William Seabrook in his book, Witchcraft, its Power in the World Today. Which was written in 1940. So it hasn’t been a term that’s been used long. ) “White” Witchcraft, it was simply a belief in the religion of the old wise ones or “Wicca.” (This is based more on Scott Cunningham than Gardner. Also Margret Murray incorrectly stated that and was debunked. Several times.) The use of herbs, charms,  and healing spells was only employed for beneficial purposes.

It was believed that the kind of witches that were dangerous to have around were “black” witches. These were supposedly evil in their pursuits and worshipped Satan. The fact that the “good” or “white” witches employed a hormed god in their ceremonies was justified because it “doesn’t represent the Devil.”

Of course, no one admitted to practicing witchcraft ceremonies of any kind. Anything that was associated with witchcraft was pursued in the name of “study” or “research.” This was the climate in England between 1936 and 1951.

With the repeal of English witchcraft laws in 195, all of the underground witches started creeping to the surface and as their eyes became accustomed to the light of sudden legality, they ventured forth. Unused to such freedom and heavy with the stigma of illegality, they went about shouting “white witchcraft” even louder than ever, as if expecting at any moment to be snared by a heretic hook.

About this time, interest in the occult was becoming popular in the US, so naturally attention was focused on the British Isles with its rich heritage in all matters ghostly and fanciful. As might have been expected, newly emerged English witches saw the US as a fertile stamping ground for safe recognition of their “witchiness”. Concurrent with the first post-war writings out of England came the first diplomats of witchdom, and America was more than curious. Having no other literature but Margaret Murray, Montague Summers and Dennis Wheatly to read it, it was assumed the new revelations by Gerald Gardner and his followers were the straightest stuff available.

“White witch” became a definitive term, and thousands who wouldn’t touch the practice of witchcraft with a ten-foot broomstick found a conscience-redeeming opportunity to follow the “art” by using the new rules of the game. Regardless of what these people would like to believe, the image of the witch had been stigmatized for centuries. All witches were considered to be agents of the Devil, antagonistic to scriptural teachings, and a direct part of the dark side of nature. As there is always a relative outlook as to what is good and what is evil, once witchcraft emerged from its “all evil” state into neutral territory, a differentiation was bound to occur. The righteous, of course, will always wear the mantle of “good”, white light”, “spiritual” and varying shades of holiness.

An analogy might be made concerning “white” and “black” witches.  Let us assume that warfare had, for centuries, been called wholesale murder and the men who fought called “murderers”. One day it was decided that there was something quite noble and dignified about this old activity of wholesale murder. All the murders, basking in the light of new-found legitimacy, began calling themselves “good murderers”. The enemy’s troops, of course, were the “bad murderers.” The stigma of the word “murderer”, still remained, but at least the good murderers felt more at ease. Now, maybe these murderers always had a fairly legitimate reason  for going into battle. Maybe they succeeded in saving their homeland from that which threatened it. They might have even had a scholar among them who had traced the origin of the word “murder” to an ancient word that meant “murder”. But the fact remained, “murder” was still a negative term in the public’s mind. So instead of simlply revelling in their subsequent acceptance by the public, necessitated their placing of the word “good” in front of “murderer” as sort of a self-reassurance that they doing the right thing!

Basically to gather from this that in England there was a witchcraft law. It lasted for about 100 years or so and only was repealed in 1951, because a psychic during WW2 was helping naval officers find a ship or something, seeing that she was a psychic threw her in jail. Parliament thought it was a stupid law and abolished it.

Now while Seabrook does place Voodou to be under black magic it’s less that it’s apart of the African Diaspora and more that involves a level of harm. Silver Ravenwolf says the same thing in her 1992 book To Ride A Silver Broomstick and several of her books (along with the Llwellyn Crew) along with curses, hexes, and other means that does harm. That’s the whole crux of the matter. If it does harm then it’s bad. And this new crew of white witches all follow the Wiccan Rede as law. (Which is ironic cause the word rede means advice.). “An it harm none, do what ye will.”

For this new group if you harm. You’re doing evil and worship Satan. Doesn’t matter if it’s a practice passed down for generations. If you harm others, you are evil. Are you reconnecting with your roots? Don’t care if you harm you’re evil. And that’s not just for those that practice Voodou, Hoodou, Santeria, or other practices among the African Disapora but also for those witches who are White. For those who are Satanist. Who are Chaos Magicians or Thelemites. If you harm you are evil. It’s a black or white morality when it comes to White Witches.

Especially when those whose first book into witchcraft is Silver Ravenwolf. No matter who you are the first time you get interested in witchcraft is as a young teen is always going to be Silver Ravenwolf. That’s what you see in a bookstore or at your library, that’s what you’re going to read. That’s what your friends read.

TL; DR: Magic is based on intent. Basing one’s intent on a color is stupid. The terms black witchcraft or black magic or white witchcraft was boiled down into good or bad. Voodou got lumped in cause it dealt harm. That’s the only reason why it got lumped into black magic.

[mi6021izzyviney]

THE 12 JUNGIAN CHARACTER ARCHETYPES - RESEARCH

The term “archetype” means original pattern in ancient Greek. Jung used the concept of archetype in his theory of the human psyche. He identified 12 universal, mythic characters archetypes reside within our collective unconscious. Jung defined twelve primary types that represent the range of basic human motivations. Each of us tends to have one dominant archetype that dominates our personality. Within character design and development for both animated and live action film/tv, concepts such as the Jungian archetypes can greatly support the process of creating character’s appearances and roles within the plot as a whole.

THE 12 JUNGIAN ARCHETYPES LIST (and how they are typically described as):

Ruler

Motto: Power isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.

Core desire: control

Goal: create a prosperous, successful family or community

Strategy: exercise power

Greatest fear: chaos, being overthrown

Weakness: being authoritarian, unable to delegate

Talent: responsibility, leadership

The Ruler is also known as: The boss, leader, aristocrat, king, queen, politician, role model, manager or administrator.

Creator/Artist

Motto: If you can imagine it, it can be done

Core desire: to create things of enduring value

Goal: to realize a vision

Greatest fear: mediocre vision or execution

Strategy: develop artistic control and skill

Task: to create culture, express own vision

Weakness: perfectionism, bad solutions

Talent: creativity and imagination

The Creator is also known as: The artist, inventor, innovator, musician, writer or dreamer.

Sage

Motto: The truth will set you free

Core desire: to find the truth.

Goal: to use intelligence and analysis to understand the world.

Biggest fear: being duped, misled—or ignorance.

Strategy: seeking out information and knowledge; self-reflection and understanding thought processes.

Weakness: can study details forever and never act.

Talent: wisdom, intelligence.

The Sage is also known as: The expert, scholar, detective, advisor, thinker, philosopher, academic, researcher, thinker, planner, professional, mentor, teacher, contemplative.

Innocent

Motto: Free to be you and me

Core desire: to get to paradise

Goal: to be happy

Greatest fear: to be punished for doing something bad or wrong

Strategy: to do things right

Weakness: boring for all their naive innocence

Talent: faith and optimism

The Innocent is also known as: Utopian, traditionalist, naive, mystic, saint, romantic, dreamer.

Explorer

Motto: Don’t fence me in

Core desire: the freedom to find out who you are through exploring the world

Goal: to experience a better, more authentic, more fulfilling life

Biggest fear: getting trapped, conformity, and inner emptiness

Strategy: journey, seeking out and experiencing new things, escape from boredom

Weakness: aimless wandering, becoming a misfit

Talent: autonomy, ambition, being true to one’s soul

The explorer is also known as: The seeker, iconoclast, wanderer, individualist, pilgrim.

Rebel

Motto: Rules are made to be broken

Core desire: revenge or revolution

Goal: to overturn what isn’t working

Greatest fear: to be powerless or ineffectual

Strategy: disrupt, destroy, or shock

Weakness: crossing over to the dark side, crime

Talent: outrageousness, radical freedom

The Outlaw is also known as: The rebel, revolutionary, wild man, the misfit, or iconoclast.

Hero

Motto: Where there’s a will, there’s a way

Core desire: to prove one’s worth through courageous acts

Goal: expert mastery in a way that improves the world

Greatest fear: weakness, vulnerability, being a “chicken”

Strategy: to be as strong and competent as possible

Weakness: arrogance, always needing another battle to fight

Talent: competence and courage

The Hero is also known as: The warrior, crusader, rescuer, superhero, the soldier, dragon slayer, the winner and the team player.

Wizard

Motto: I make things happen.

Core desire: understanding the fundamental laws of the universe

Goal: to make dreams come true

Greatest fear: unintended negative consequences

Strategy: develop a vision and live by it

Weakness: becoming manipulative

Talent: finding win-win solutions

The Magician is also known as:The visionary, catalyst, inventor, charismatic leader, shaman, healer, medicine man.

Jester

Motto: You only live once

Core desire: to live in the moment with full enjoyment

Goal: to have a great time and lighten up the world

Greatest fear: being bored or boring others

Strategy: play, make jokes, be funny

Weakness: frivolity, wasting time

Talent: joy

The Jester is also known as: The fool, trickster, joker, practical joker or comedian.

Everyman

Motto: All men and women are created equal

Core Desire: connecting with others

Goal: to belong

Greatest fear: to be left out or to stand out from the crowd

Strategy: develop ordinary solid virtues, be down to earth, the common touch

Weakness: losing one’s own self in an effort to blend in or for the sake of superficial relationships

Talent: realism, empathy, lack of pretense

The Everyman is also known as: The good old boy, regular guy/girl, the person next door, the realist, the working stiff, the solid citizen, the good neighbor, the silent majority.

Lover

Motto: You’re the only one

Core desire: intimacy and experience

Goal: being in a relationship with the people, work and surroundings they love

Greatest fear: being alone, a wallflower, unwanted, unloved

Strategy: to become more and more physically and emotionally attractive

Weakness: outward-directed desire to please others at risk of losing own identity

Talent: passion, gratitude, appreciation, and commitment

The Lover is also known as: The partner, friend, intimate, enthusiast, sensualist, spouse, team-builder.

Caregiver

Motto: Love your neighbour as yourself

Core desire: to protect and care for others

Goal: to help others

Greatest fear: selfishness and ingratitude

Strategy: doing things for others

Weakness: martyrdom and being exploited

Talent: compassion, generosity

The Caregiver is also known as: The saint, altruist, parent, helper, supporter.

THE 4 CARDINAL ORIENTATIONS

The 4 cardinal orientations that the archetypes are seeking to realise are:

Ego – Leave a Mark on the World

Order – Provide Structure to the World

Social – Connect to others

Freedom – Yearn for Paradise

CHARACTERS IN MY FILM THAT FIT INTO THE JUNGIAN ARCHETYPES AND THE CARDINAL ORIENTATIONS:

Isaac - Explorer - Freedom/Social

Therapist - Sage - Order/Ego

Christina - Jester/Everyman - Social

Alexandra - Rebel/Ruler - Order

Jane - Innocent/Wizard/Ruler - Order/Social

Malcolm - Lover - Social/Freedom

Isabelle - Everyman/Innocent - Freedom

Erin - Hero - Ego/Social

[neuxue]

Oathbringer thoughts

I was hoping to be able to liveblog Oathbringer, but it turns out I was too optimistic by half. Well, by about 5/28 anyway, given that I have two and a half WoT books left. I thought about just waiting to read Oathbringer (if there’s anything liveblogging WoT has taught me it’s patience) but I’m going to the Sanderson signing tomorrow so I was running out of time. Anyway, here are some thoughts upon finishing, for the 2 or 3 of you who are interested. I was reading probably a little too fast, so probably missed everything and will at some point need to reread, but here you go.

LOTS OF SPOILERS BELOW. ALL THE SPOILERS. HERE THERE BE SPOILERS. 

In no particular order (but there are 10: a nicely Vorin number to go with my coincidentally Vorin username)

1. Talenel. Taln. Talenelat’Elin. Stonesinew, Herald of War, Bearer of all Agonies. 

That guy.

Taln was a Problem for me literally from the moment he was introduced in the Prelude (offscreen! He didn’t even show up on-page! Why am I like this?!) with the line “Taln had a tendency to choose seemingly hopeless fights and win them. He also had a tendency to die in the process”. A doomed last stand in the form of a character. Why would you do this to me. 

So I’m sure you can guess that Chapter 38 (‘Broken People’ what a chapter title) thoroughly broke me. I mean, it wasn’t even anything we didn’t already know, really. But... “The nine realised that one of them had never broken.” And “The Bearer of Agonies. The one abandoned in Damnation. Left to withstand the tortures alone.” And the fact that it took four and a half millennia for him to break.

I’ve long had a fascination with the idea of ‘everyone has a breaking point’ (when I was 11 I tried to write a novel based entirely on the concept of someone who does not - or cannot - break; the ‘cannot’ turned out to be a rather interesting thing to explore, but the story overall was terrible because, amongst other reasons, I was 11) and with the idea of breaking characters, and what it would take to break certain characters, and what the result would be. 

As I mentioned, I also have a thing for doomed last stands, so basically Talenel was created to be my breaking point, it would seem. (“Herald Talenelat during several of his many, many last stands...” just @ me next time)

And then. And then 

“Four thousand years?” She held his hand tighter. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” [...] “Four thousand years?” Taln asked again. “Ash...” “We couldn’t continue--I...we thought...” “Ash.” He took her hand again. “What a wonderful thing.” Wonderful? “We left you, Taln.” “What a gift you gave them! Time to recover, for once, between Desolations. Time to progress. They never had a chance before. But this time...yes, maybe they do.”

And then...lucidity abandons him, because he is broken, and it’s been four thousand years. But in that one moment, in the moment when he is briefly himself, it’s as if he isn’t broken at all. The fact that this still exists within him, even if the rest of the time he’s found a refuge in madness or forgetting or in the recitation he gives over and over, the advice he needs to give to humanity, the duty he has to them. It’s like name, rank, serial number. It’s very probably the thing he held on to throughout those four and a half thousand years, the thing he could not allow himself to let go of or forget, even as he broke. And the thought that the one point he fixed on, the thing he held fast to even as he broke, was his duty to humankind, is...a lot.

2. Speaking of Taln, let’s talk a little bit about Kaladin

There are plenty of things I could say about Kaladin, but I mostly just want to throw a few quotes out there For Your Interest. Because...I don’t know if there’s anything to this but here.

Quotes about Taln:

“The one who wasn’t meant to have joined them in the first place, the one who was not a king, scholar, or general” 

Um.

“One of them had never broken.”

Quotes about or by Kaladin Stormblessed (surgeon’s son, neither king nor scholar nor general):

“That granite will, that warrior’s poise.” 

(As an aside, how do granite and obsidian exist on a planet with no tectonics? How???)

“Ten spears go to battle” [Kaladin] whispered, “and nine shatter. Did that war forge the one that remained? No, Amaram. All the war did was identify the spear that would not break.”

One unbroken, of ten. 

Eight months. Eight months as a slave, eight months of slop and beatings. It might as well have been an eternity. --from Way of Kings

An eternity of torture? Also Taln’s Scar is high in the sky during Kaladin’s time as a slave. Maybe meaningless. 

Why were they going through all of this? What was the point? Why were they running so much? They had to protect their bridge, the precious weight, the cargo. They had to hold up the sky and run, they had to... --Kaladin’s thoughts, WoK

Take that just a little out of immediate context and that last part especially sure sounds like someone tasked with endless agony for the sake of the world

Yet the sheer glory of what he did seemed at odds with the desolation he caused --Kaladin’s thoughts, WoK

Somewhat less relevant to the thing I’m sort of vaguely postulating but still an interesting choice of words, and the Desolations happen when the Heralds break and return, so.

“His body dead, but not his will” --Hoid, WoR, telling the ‘Fleet’ story

Taln dies a lot. It’s sort of his thing. But his will takes four millennia to break.

“Then I hope I end up in Damnation.” --Kaladin, WoR

I’m just saying.

Maybe it’s nothing. Maybe it’s leftover from one of the things I got hilariously wrong when first reading WoK - obviously Kaladin was gaining the powers of a Radiant but I really, really wanted him to somehow be Taln. (Amusingly, I read Way of Kings before I started Wheel of Time, otherwise it would be easy to see where this notion came from). Maybe it’s Maybelline. Regardless, it’s an interesting set of possible parallels.

3. Wow, he just up and told us what caused the Recreance in book three. 

And it felt like the perfect time for it. It’s the sort of thing you’d normally expect an author to sit on for more or less the entire series. I was tentatively prepared to wait for at least the first five books before getting this much stated outright on-page. 

I’m so glad Sanderson gave it to us now, instead. For one thing, it felt oddly refreshing to have such a big question answered so early. Playing the long game with reveals can work, obviously, but it’s fun to mix things up a bit. It also plays into some of what I ended up talking about in the ‘Dalinar’ section of this list regarding plot twists and the execution thereof. The Recreance is a good example, because it was revealed in full at the point in the story when it could have the impact it needed to have. In-story, it was both the probable and logical time for the secret to come out - it would have started to strain suspension of disbelief if that many characters had some knowledge of it, and none of them ever put it together on-page either in their own thoughts or for the other characters. For the reader, it brings everything together at a point when it’s all very relevant, and at a point when there’s enough information to figure it out if you’re careful and lucky, but not so much that it loses all surprise value whatsoever (For the record, I was close about a lot of it, but there were some pieces I missed and/or put in the wrong place. It did, however, satisfy the one thing I was really hoping it would). 

Narratively and thematically, it makes sense alongside the other questions that are being asked or otherwise addressed - the issue of colonisation and ownership and agency, the question of war and protection and the justifications for either or both, the contrast of unity and division, and of course the question of oaths and honour and betrayal.  

Answering this question now also makes the whole story suddenly feel so much bigger, because when something set up to be this much of a central question is almost just handed to you, it serves to put it into perspective. It makes the rest of the story, and next set of questions we’re starting to ask, and the questions we don’t even yet know to ask, seem so much larger, and the story so much vaster. 

4. OH THANK THE LISTENING GODS THE LOVE TRIANGLE SPUTTERED AND DIED BEFORE IT COULD EAT EVERYTHING 

I breathed an actual literal sigh of relief. I hate love triangles so much, mostly because I usually struggle to maintain ‘bored indifference’ rather than outright irritation at romance subplots in general, so love triangles are almost always intolerable because not only do they double the romance but they turn it into a point of conflict and miscommunication and angst and I cannot fucking stand it. If I had a dragon for every unnecessary love triangle I’ve had to read, I’d have been able to take over the world a long time ago. Or have the world’s most epic bonfire. 

Anyway. Through WoR (and I guess WoK but to a lesser extent) I was torn between trusting Sanderson to avoid or subvert that particular cliche and...not trusting him to do that. There are a lot of things I do trust him with as a storyteller (especially one who has clearly evolved in his writing, storytelling, and awareness) but I wasn’t sure if I could trust him on this. He earned quite a bit of trust from me for how he ended up writing this, actually.

The exact moment I breathed that sigh of relief? It was the conversation Shallan and Kaladin had about her particular coping mechanism. Specifically: 

“No. No, Shallan! I wish I could do the same. [...] How nice would it be, if I could simply shove it all away? Storms.” [...] “This way, I’ll never face it,” Shallan said. “It’s better than being unable to function.” “That’s what I tell myself.”

Because this was the moment when it became exceedingly, abundantly, absolutely clear that Sanderson was doing this on purpose. I had hoped he was, because this was something that felt off about Kaladin and Shallan during their chasms conversation in WoR as well (the ‘she smiled anyway’ thing), but then there was the possibility that it was...accidental. Now, though, I have significantly more faith in Sanderson, because this is a really...I can’t think of the word but I’m glad he did this the way he did.

And I am SO INCREDIBLY GLAD THE LOVE TRIANGLE DIED. And the way in which it died. And the fact that everyone involved respected its death. And that it didn’t stop the characters involved from communicating with and trusting one another. And also that said death included the line “Shallan. he can literally fly.”

(Adolin Kholin is not straight. Just tossing that out there).

(Shallan consistently using the word ‘passion’ when thinking about or describing Kaladin is interesting, though, in light of certain other reveals. Not sure if there’s actually anything to that, but it’s just a thing that stood out).

5. Dalinar

So the identity of Odium’s Champion was one of the things I saw coming as soon as the champion idea was mentioned in this book. (It was brought up in previous books and this was one of my theories but I definitely wasn’t certain, and I was also Distracted by what I wanted to have happen, which is not something that would ever actually happen. I’ll write the fic at some point). 

Anyway, it was predictable...but that didn’t matter, because it was beautifully executed. “You cannot have my pain” is a cool line out of context, but in context it was magnificent. 

I like the way Sanderson does plot twists, because unlike with some authors, it doesn’t feel as if his sole intent is to be able to say ‘ha ha, tricked you, aren’t I so clever’. His goal, it seems, is to tell a satisfying story. Rather than withholding all of the information relevant to the ‘twist’ to make it actually impossible to guess (which doesn’t make you a master of the plot twist so much as it makes you an asshole), he includes the necessary and sufficient foreshadowing to allow the ‘twist’ to make sense and not feel like it came out of nowhere. 

This means, of course, that some readers are going to guess it in advance. That’s just how it works. If you put the information out there, some people are going to put it together correctly and completely. Some people are going to put some of it together, and have a sense of where things are heading. Some people are going to be absolutely sure of where it’s heading...and then be completely wrong. Some people are going to have absolutely no clue. The truly impressive plot twist, I find, is the one that can satisfy people in all of those categories. YMMV of course, but having been in each of these positions at least once while reading Sanderson’s books, I feel like he manages this impressively well. It’s fun if it’s at least a little bit of a surprise, but even when it’s not, it’s satisfying because it’s written as part of the story - as a point of emotional or narrative impact, or a turning point for the characters - well enough that it still has the desired effect. Mostly because ‘gotcha’ isn’t the (only) desired effect.

I digress somewhat.

So before we move on, I’d also like to point out that Dalinar Kholin and Lews Therin Telamon clearly need to form a support group for men who murdered their wives in a fit of madness and fucked with the psyche, memory, and identity of their future selves.

6. “The apocalypse is coming; we don’t have time for bullshit gender roles”

Adolin being absolutely here for Shallan-with-Shardblade. Kaladin going ‘yeah okay’ to women joining the Windrunners. Dalinar learning to read. Jasnah as queen because honestly was there ever actually another choice? 

This is another one that’s just so refreshing to see, especially because it’s clearly something that’s being deliberately examined and played with, but is also integrated into the story. It doesn’t stick out like a sore thumb the author didn’t know what to do with, but it also plays a very real role in the story. It’s not just there so the author can point to the one sword-wielding woman in a cast of thousands of dudes and say ‘but I gave you a Strong Female Character’. 

This ties into something I really appreciate about Sanderson, which is his demonstrated ability and willingness to learn and grow when it comes to issues of representation - not just in terms of including it, but in how he includes it. 

7. Venli

I don’t have a lot to say about her except that I was genuinely surprised by this one. So well done on that, Sanderson.

Also, given his propensity for writing brothers in love with the same woman, I’m almost surprised we didn’t get some sort of reveal about Venli and Eshonai loving the same person.

8. Cosmere convergence

There was a lot more than I expected at this point in the...series? Continuity? Mass of interconnected stories that have evolved into a semi-eldritch being? I enjoyed it and had no problems with this, but I’d be curious to know what someone who’s only read Stormlight thought - does it still work? Do they just play as intriguing and mysterious characters alongside all the other intriguing and mysterious characters, or has it reached a tipping point where you actually need to have read some of the other books?

Also Cosmere-related...Hoid. He’s sure getting more and more screen time, isn’t he? I’m Interested. I have Thoughts. I need to think about them more but I definitely have some Thoughts on who and what he is. Regardless, any character who can say “if I have to watch this world crumble and burn to get what I need, I will do so. With tears, yes, but I would let it happen” is going to Interest me. Not to mention the sheer number of times he tells various characters not to trust him. And then there’s “you turned your back on divinity.” Which is...um. Yeah I’m fine this is fine.

9. Odium

Has to be number 9, because of reasons. Odium was great. Nice subversion of imagery there, and to great effect. 

10. Ideals and Oaths

I mostly find it amusing how a book called Oathbringer is the first to plainly exhibit failed Ideals. Elhokar. Kaladin. (My best guess at the Windrunners’ Fourth Ideal would be something along the lines of “I will protect those I can, and forgive myself for those I cannot” but I’ll have to reread and see if that holds up). The broken Oathpact (there’s a part of me that really wants the gem-encrusted probably-a-fabrial-of-some-sort pillar to be the Oathpact; its manifestation or sealing or what-have-you. Not sure that holds up though). It’s a fun little irony.

[rudolf-rokkr]

Heyo. I've been trying to get into more heathenry/norse paganism kinda stuff (what can I say, I love folk metal), but the one thing that's kind of been a damper on the concept for me is the concept of Hel - specifically, how (as I understand it) dying of sickness or old age is a form of cowardice and punishable by eternal torment. Being chronically ill myself, that doesn't really sit right with me. Do you have any thoughts/corrections/resources on this topic in particular?

Thanks for the question. Basically the image of Viking afterlife concepts that has entered popular culture is extremely shallow and not a good representation of what we know believe actually existed. This is a big topic so it’s easy to get lost but I’m gonna try to keep it simple without leaving too much out but feel free to follow up if it seems like I’ve missed something. It’s long so the rest is behind the break.

I’ll start with the major point I want to make and then we’ll fill in the “so what then?” after. The reason you’re disturbed by this is because it’s, at least partially, a recruitment tactic. It’s designed to tempt you to suspend your reason and even if it did apply to your personal situation you’re better off not falling for it.

I know some people find strength in the Valhöll idea and I don’t want to take that away from anyone but my uncensored opinion is that it’s for dupes. It’s full of people who wasted their lives in service to kings who didn’t give a shit about them, who used them to gain rule over them. Óðinn isn’t vetting them for bravery, he’s vetting them for certain personality traits that are bad for self-preservation but good for early proto-state-formation. That’s why it’s the afterlife we find out about from Snorri. He was a court poet, trying to piece back together a cosmology from shreds of court poetry that extolled the virtues of fearlessly taking an axe to the face in defense of your favored tyrant. Frankly, I can’t imagine anyone wanting to go to an afterlife where you have to die every day. I think this was more of a prestige factor among the living than an actual hope for the afterlife. I could be wrong though since the primary audience of such a myth would have been, like, 18-year-old kids hopped up on adrenaline, having just left the family farm for the first time in their lives, suddenly being adorned in gold and addressed by kings and making their first kills and drinking unending ale. Frat boys to whom the world is suddenly open (note that we’re mostly talking about higher class people anyway because they’re the ones who could afford weapons, so the world was already more open to them than others). Like the primary source for details about Valhöll is Vafþrúðnismál which rather likely was performed before an audience of these young, drunk warriors far from home (see Terry Gunnell for theories about performance of Eddic poetry).

So yeah, I could see them falling for this, or thinking it sounds appealing, or whatever. But at the same time I doubt anyone would have admitted out loud that killing each other all day every day for eternity would be awful (in fact it sounds a bit like the Buddhist hell Sañjīva but with good food). If it’s a real thing its full of people who can’t admit they’ve longed for Niflhel for centuries. 

That isn’t to say it can’t be a legitimate belief as well, just that this is its primary social function from the perspective of our sources. I’m sure that another motivating factor for the preservation and distribution of this belief is that those promising 18-year-olds also had families back home and maybe wives and kids and they were supposed to come home from exploiting the Karelians for the King’s tribute to take care of all this, and the pain of such a loss is made somewhat more mild by believing that these individuals have been called to the higher purpose of preserving the cosmic order. Not saying I agree, just that I get it.

(Note that in reality we have substantial evidence that the actual motivating factor for at least some “Viking” warriors wasn’t a glorious afterlife but rather they were mercenaries and maybe not even locals).

Now onto the next point. In Gylfaginning Snorri says that Óðinn decides where people go when they die and that good (siðaðir, literally more like ‘ethical’ I guess) people go to Vingólf or Gimlé (note: not the same as Valhöll; this might be where Snorri thinks good people who aren’t killed in battle go) and that bad people go first to Hel and then to Nifhel. The problem is that he’s full of shit. This isn’t corroborated anywhere. We can put the “full of shit” onus on Snorri the Christian who believed literally in an all-powerful God and Heaven and Hell, or we can put it Snorri’s depiction of Óðinn as Hárr/Jafnhárr/Þriði lying to Gylfi, but either way it’s obviously wrong and easily refuted.

For one thing there’s nothing moral about it. It’s just down to the manner of death. The greatest hero of Germanic mythology, Sigurðr Fáfnisbani, went to hel because he was killed in his sleep or stabbed in the back. And we know he went to hel because Brynhildr committed suicide in order to follow him. And according to skaldic poetry, King Hákon góði went to Valhöll despite not even being heathen because he died in glorious battle.

Grímnismál says that Freyja gets half the slain warriors; Þorgerðr Egilsdóttir (who is not a warrior) in Egils saga expresses expectation that she’ll spend the afterlife with Freyja. In Hárbarðsljóð Hárbarðr (Óðinn) makes fun of Þórr because he receives slaves into his halls rather than rulers like Óðinn does. Snorri himself tells us that Gefjun receives those who die as unmarried women which doesn’t apply to your situation but is another hole in the Valhöll/Hel paradigm. He also says that Rán (the sea-gýgr) takes those who die by drowning, which is corroborated by Eyrbyggja saga (chapter 54, when the drowned men show up to their own funeral, perpetually dripping wet).

Meanwhile, other than very specific parts of it that might be designated for people marked for obliteration from existence (this is based on lines in Vafþrúðnismál describing Niflhel as the place “whence men die out of hel,” what precisely that means is not obvious), we don’t have much reason to believe Helheimr is really so bad. Hel herself seems to thrive on death and decay and all that but I mean, it’s the world of the dead, that kind of seems to make sense and we can’t frame it according to our perspective as the living. On the other hand though, most of our evidence actually points to the world of the dead having a relatively strong sense of continuity with the world of the living. That seems to be why people were buried with their stuff – they weren’t done using it. 

Whether or not we should place Glæsisvellir or Ódáinsakr in the “world of the dead” (they get an association with Jötunheimar in some sources – it’s not clear if this is part of the Euhemerizing process where mythological places are mapped to geographical locations, or if Jötunheimar was part of the “world of the dead”) is unclear. Glæsisvellir ‘shining fields’ are a sort of “otherworld” more like what you normally see in Gaelic myth and legend that tend to show up a bit later in Norse mythology but seems to possibly play on things that show up as early as Ahmad ibn Fadlan’s description of the Rus’. It’s pretty much Valhöll for peaceful people. Ódáinsakr is a place within Glæsisvellir where there is no death and everything comes back to life. They’re usually ruled over by a very benevolent and hospitable jötunn named Guðmundr or Goðmundr (though split from the same origin, guð is used more for the Christian god and goð more for heathen ones, so calling him Goðmundr is marking him as heathen). Basically it seems to be Norse Elysium.

Finally, the afterlife that has the most support from the Íslendinga sögur, which means it’s probably the best reflection of the day-to-day beliefs of average people during the Viking age is some kind of continued existence in the landscape. The most clear description is in Eyrbyggja saga wherein it’s seen that the mountain Helgafell opens up to receive Þorsteinn þorskabítr and his companions; the mountain contained a whole hall full of people with fires burning and horns blowing and everything to welcome Þorsteinn. It was later discovered that Þorsteinn had drowned (note that this is the same saga I mentioned before where drowned sailors go to Rán).

Some scholars think that this is actually the origin of Hel and Valhöll. That they were just the continued existence of the dead, basically underground or living in rocks or other natural formations (like the elves do in Icelandic folklore). The abstraction of Hel and Valhöll from geographical location might have been part of the universalization/mobilization that some scholars propose for the development of the Óðinn cult (see: Tracing Old Norse Cosmology by Anders Andrén).

We also see a sort of double-afterlife in Helgakviða Hundingsbana II (a.k.a. Völsungakviða in forna) wherein Helgi has some kind of mobility between his burial mound and Valhöll… and then is later reincarnated.

Reincarnation pops up a couple times in Norse lore, this aforementioned poem being one of them. It actually says:

Þat var trúa í forneskju, at menn væri endrbornir, en þat er nú kölluð kerlingavilla.

‘It was a belief in heathen times that men would be reborn, but that is now called an old wives’ tale.’

It’s also implied in Flateyjarbók that Saint Ólafr is the reincarnation of an old heathen king who was worshiped as an elf in death, Ólafr Guðrøðarson (Ólafr Geirstaðaálfr). I did a post about reincarnation on my other blog that covers a lot of the same ground as this post.

Reincarnation is also a more or less fixed part of Urglaawe, a variant of modern heathenism focusing on the experience of the Pennsylvania Dutch (although these other afterlives are as well – just part of a process that ultimately results in reincarnation. To my mind such a view is perfectly compatible with everything else I’ve mentioned above).

The Wild Hunt does not factor much into Norse mythology but we have a pretty good idea that the concept was around based on its appearance in later folklore and its general wide spread across world cultures. It could possibly be related to the Valhöll afterlife concept, perhaps among a different class of people. We are pretty sure, for example, that Óðinn was popular in Denmark before Christianization and we are not able to connect him clearly to a ruling class like we are able to do with Norway (largely because of a general lack of literary sources for heathenism for that time or place). While no evidence compels us to do so, we have room for envisioning an Óðinn-centric afterlife that is not Valhöll, nor restricted to the upper classes. I mean he’s clearly a “god of the upper classes” but he’s no less a wandering hobo.

Anyway, the point so far is that there are lots of alternatives to the “Viking heaven” vs. “Viking hell” bullshit. This is probably not exhaustive and it partially conflicts. That isn’t surprising given that there is no centralized heathen authority and what we’re actually talking about is a huge variety of religious ideas that circulated differently along localities, social classes, time periods, social contexts, etc.

If we can point to something underlying all of this, it’s that there was believed to be some kind of continuity between life, manner of death, and afterlife. People dying in battle and going to Valhöll is, to my mind, an extension of this. “Those who die violently have a violent afterlife.” Whether or not that’s good will depend on the person, I’d imagine. Those who die in illness (and remember that there was a relationship between illness and trolls and elves or other unclean or vengeful spirits) may unfortunately find themselves in an afterlife characterized by fever and coughing and other unpleasant things. However the afterlife also seems negotiable, fluid, and furthermore determined at least partially by the activities of the survivors. When Ahmad ibn Fadlan attended a Rus’ funeral one of the Rus’ made fun of him because to him, the Muslim practice of burying the dead meant that the deceased would have to lie there in the ground while they decomposed, as opposed to the Rus’ who were cremated and thereby went immediately to the gods (by the way both burial and cremation happened under heathenism, so this is clear evidence of discontinuous religious belief among heathens and that we can’t call it “one” “religion.” Snorri associated burial and cremation with the cults of Freyr and Óðinn respectively in Ynglinga saga but of course he didn’t have all the archaeological evidence we do so we shouldn’t take that as necessarily true, but it’s interesting that he knew about both). We also see worship of the dead in the sources as the dead were considered to continue to have contact with the world of the living, for example by influencing crop yields and local weather patterns. Snorri’s Euhemerized history of the kings of Scandinavia exploits this to explain how the human king Freyr became a god – he was a human king who died and was worshiped as an ancestor at first before being reanalyzed as a god in the popular tradition. Though maybe not with Freyr specifically, this probably actually happened, even if more strictly localized, like in Vita Anskarii wherein it’s said that a certain King Erik was accepted by the gods as one of them when he died.

This is why I can’t help but think of Valhöll as “if you spend your life bootlicking you’ll spend death doing the same.” Indeed, even in the old sources, hierarchy in human society is replicated in Valhöll when Helgi Hundingsbani goes there and humiliates Hundingr by ordering him around.

We might also gain some insight by comparing other cultures that share beliefs in common with the pre-Christian Norse.  Though close reading of literature and comparative religion most people believe that the Norse did not believe in a single soul but rather something of a personal complex. We see this in other circumpolar cultures that also recognize things like the World Tree, ancestor worship, nature spirits, etc – that doesn’t mean we can just lift ideas from these other cultures but they do give real-life examples of how these abstract concepts can work in day-to-day life. Personally I have been very inspired by and influenced by Buryat Mongol belief and custom, especially because they themselves are often eager to share (reminder that it not being strictly “closed” does not mean that inappropriate appropriation is not possible). Buryat Mongols recognize three “souls,” each of which go their separate ways at death. One becomes a nature spirit, one which goes to the underworld and is eventually reincarnated, and another which becomes a bird on the world tree which is also eventually reincarnated (but, if I understand correctly, not along with the soul which had gone to the underworld). Among many such cultures going to the gods in the afterlife is a possibility, but a major exception to the norm. The reason I find this so interesting for this conversation is that if the Norse believed something similar, it would explain why our sources are in such conflict, how people can be going to Hel and living in the mound at the same time, how Helgi Hundingsbani can go to Valhöll and be reincarnated, etc. If you’re interested in learning more about Buryat Mongol belief try the site I already linked and also the works of anthropologist Katherine Swancutt (note that the families she stayed with had complete agency in determining what and how she would share what she learned… she talks a lot about this in Fortune and the Cursed: The Sliding Scale of Time in Mongolian Divination).

This next part is gonna be even more opinionated than what I’ve already written. I think it’s tempting to believe that people get what they deserve in death. That people who are treated unfairly in life are compensated in death and that those who were unfair themselves get their comeuppance. But to my mind heathenism lacks a mechanism for identifying or producing desert. That means it’s up to us, the living, and maybe those dead who continue to exert an influence on the world of the living, to vindicate those who were oppressed, or robbed of a good death; and to mitigate the legacy of unfairness. I do not believe that “the universe” or “wyrd” or whatever punishes wrongdoing – not because it wouldn’t be nice but because how exactly is that supposed to even happen? Do we really want to rely on gods who often act immorally themselves and use their supernatural abilities to exert their wills, to judge us? We might ask for their help, but we shouldn’t leave it in their hands. It would be great to take the burden off of ourselves but for better or worse, that’s where the burden is. This concept is a major spiritual informant to my belief in social justice, it’s (among many other things) a way to achieve a symbolic (and restorative, rather than retributive) equivalent to the social role of blood vengeance, for people who faced oppression. And what’s more, if we’re prepared to accept the possibility of reincarnation, then it actually is helping ourselves as well as our dearly departed awaiting rebirth in the underworld to make the world a better place for future generations.

Finally the last thing I want to say is that all of this is just theory. Not believing it doesn’t make you not heathen. We don’t have a Bible, there is no centralized authority, nobody living a thousand+ years ago was totally sure what happened in death – the lore we have received is just whatever models they came up with that best explained their experiences (probably especially mystical experiences of religious specialists, but still) and informed their behavior. For that matter, plenty of this shit is probably Christian speculation about what heathens believed anyway. If you have reason to believe otherwise it isn’t “un-heathen” to trust in your own ability to reason. Like, I think I did an alright job of framing my distaste for Valhöll in heathen discourse which just means it’s a productive set of religious beliefs that’s capable of autocritique. A person can’t possibly read the sagas and conclude that everyone agreed with each other all the time; variation, dissent, and creativity are generally speaking all good signs.

Hope this helps.

P.S. I know there are a lot of people who see entrance to Valhöll being granted to anyone engaging in struggle, whether physical or otherwise. I don’t agree, and if you’ve read this far you know I haven’t factored it into my understanding at all. But I don’t necessarily have a problem with it. I think it comes down to the active conception of “violence.” I do not believe that violence is strictly an act of causing physical damage to a person or object in a single event. I think that rearranging Valhöll to conform to a modern conception of violence that also includes systematic oppression is a literally incorrect way to interpret it according to Old Norse religion – but fuck it, my opinion of Valhöll is low as shit, so do whatever you want for all I care.

[shadowlineswriting]

Lewis

“Make your choice, adventurous Stranger; Strike the bell and bide the danger Or wonder, till it drives you mad, What would have followed if you had.”

C.S. Lewis wrote a lot of books, and at one point in time I owned a full collection of his works. I don’t anymore, but I do still have several things of his that I’ve never read. We’re going to break him into two posts because frankly I feel The Chronicles of Narnia deserves its own. We’ll read the other six or seven books of his later, okay?

SO. Narnia! You’ve probably heard of these books even if you haven’t read them. There are seven. They were written out of order, but their chronological order is as follows:

The Magician’s Nephew

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

The Horse and His Boy

Prince Caspian

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

The Silver Chair

The Last Battle

It is not at all uncommon for writers to shape their stories around allegory, and hopefully from my collection of books alone, you realize that religious allegory is one of the most popular. However, it is NOT so easy to take religious allegory and apply it to children’s stories, but that’s exactly what C.S. Lewis did. 

For those who are unfamiliar with the story, it tells of a world connected to ours (but separate). This other world is called Narnia. In Narnia, the God character is a huge lion named Aslan. He goes through the same trials God went through--dying for our sins and rising again, most notably--and over the course of the seven books, Aslan creates Narnia, helps Narnia through thick and thin, and triumphs over the Antichrist and Rapture. 

Of course, if you’re a child reading this, the story is basically about children who have adventures in a mythical land sometimes. Still good, but not quite so impactful.

Lewis was a masterful storyteller. He’s very famous because he and J.R. Tolkien were best friends (Tolkien wrote The Lord of the Rings, which will get its own post when we reach the Ts). I’m honestly not sure which series I love better because they are both very close to my heart. In fact, you know that game where if you were on a deserted island and you could only take five books...well, Narnia and LotR would both be on my list, hands down. The reason they aren’t on my Top 10 Favorite Books of All Time list is because they’d take up the whole list, between the 7 Narnia books and 3-5 LotR books (depending on who you ask). 

Anyway. Of all the Narnia books my very favorite is The Magician’s Nephew. This was one of the last Narnia books that Lewis wrote, but it’s sort of the “prequel” to the rest of the series. In this story, two children find Narnia before it is Narnia. They arrive as Aslan is creating it. They get to see as he creates the lands, the stars, the animals, and elect the first King and Queen to rule. This is not only allegorical for Genesis for those reasons, but the finer points, too, though Lewis changes things a bit. For one thing, it’s man who brings original sin to Narnia (through the form of an evil witch who becomes the key villain throughout several of the novels). For another, the tree of life is the protection and salvation of Narnia, not the source of evil. Furthermore, there’s a widely-debated religious figure known as the Lilith, who first appeared in ancient Jewish texts but is also included in the modern Bible. Generally scholars agree that the Lilith is a head demon (usually a woman) but in many Jewish sects they believe that Lilith was actually Adam’s first wife before Eve. Anyway, that’s neither here nor there, but Lewis actually brings Lilith into the story (very briefly) and writers back then weren’t quite so brave about that, so I have to give Lewis mad props for being a trendsetter.

One reason I love Lewis’s writing so much is that he’s able to take major concepts and simplify them so even children can understand. He does that a lot in the Narnia books but especially The Magician’s Nephew. One of my favorite examples is when Aslan explains to the children why their Uncle cannot hear Aslan speak, and why he is afraid.

“He thinks great folly, child," said Aslan. "This world is bursting with life for these few days because the song with which I called it into life still hangs in the air and rumbles in the ground. It will not be so for long. But I cannot tell that to this old sinner, and I cannot comfort him either; he has made himself unable to hear my voice. If I spoke to him, he would hear only growlings and roarings. Oh Adam's sons, how cleverly you defend yourselves against all that might do you good!”

BRILLIANT.

I’m not sure words will ever fully express the love I have for these stories, but hopefully I’ve given you at least a small understanding. 

Needless to say, I’m not getting rid of these, ever! 

[maxwellyjordan]

Ask the author: The evasive virtues and Supreme Court confirmation hearings

The following is a series of questions posed by Ronald Collins to Ilya Shapiro concerning his forthcoming book, Supreme Disorder: Judicial Nominations and the Politics of America’s Highest Court (Regnery Gateway, 2020).

Ilya Shapiro is the director of the Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies at the Cato Institute and publisher of the Cato Supreme Court Review. He is the co‐author of Religious Liberties for Corporations? Hobby Lobby, the Affordable Care Act, and the Constitution (2014). Shapiro has testified many times before Congress and state legislatures and has filed more than 300 amicus briefs in the Supreme Court. He clerked for Judge E. Grady Jolly on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit.

Welcome, Ilya, and thank you for taking the time to participate in this question-and-answer exchange for our readers. And congratulations on the publication of your latest book.

* * *

Question: What prompted you to write this book, and why now?

Shapiro: I’ve been a “professional” court-watcher for over a decade, and even before that was riveted by Supreme Court confirmation hearings whenever they came up. I recall once walking into a law firm partner’s office for a job interview and he had Samuel Alito’s hearings on TV; we watched for half an hour before getting on with the interview (I got the offer). I even own a complete bound set of volumes from the Robert Bork hearings — picked them up from a library that was discarding these treasures. But anyway, the battle over Brett Kavanaugh showed that the court is now part of the same toxic cloud that envelops all of the nation’s public discourse. I wanted to dive into why that is and whether it can be fixed. And after the central role the vacancy in Justice Antonin Scalia’s seat played in the 2016 election, I knew I had to get this out before the 2020 election.

  Question: How would you summarize the thesis of your book?

Shapiro: Politics has always been part of judicial nominations, but we feel something is now different. The confirmation process hasn’t somehow changed beyond the Framers’ recognition, and political rhetoric was as nasty in 1820 as it is in 2020. Even blocking or not taking up nominees, as happened to Merrick Garland, is hardly novel. But all these things are symptoms of a larger phenomenon: As government has grown, so have the laws that courts interpret, and their reach over more of our lives. Senatorial brinksmanship is symptomatic of a problem that began long before Kavanaugh, Garland, Clarence Thomas or Bork: the courts’ aiding and abetting the expansion of federal power, and then shifting that power away from the people’s representatives and toward the executive branch.

As courts play a greater role, of course nominations are going to be more fraught — especially when divergent interpretive theories map onto partisan preferences at a time when our parties are more ideologically sorted than since at least the Civil War. But in the end, all the “reform” discussion boils down to re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic, which isn’t the appointment process, but the ship of state. The basic problem we face is the politicization not of the process but of the product. The only way confirmations will be detoxified is for the court to rebalance our constitutional order by returning improperly amassed power to the states, while forcing Congress to legislate on truly national issues.

  Question: What was one of the most important discoveries you made while researching this book?

Shapiro: American history is long enough that there’s little new under the sun. We think we’re at a period of heightened opposition to potential justices, but of 163 nominations formally sent to the Senate, only 126 have been confirmed, a success rate of just 77%. Much of this can be explained by party control of the Senate and White House. Historically, the Senate has confirmed fewer than 60% of Supreme Court nominees under divided government, as compared to about 90% under unified government. And nearly half the presidents have had at least one unsuccessful nomination, starting with George Washington and running all the way through George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Even qualitatively, I would put the Louis Brandeis nomination in 1916 ahead of modern battles in terms of controversy — and it took the longest time — even if he was ultimately confirmed by a more comfortable margin.

  Question: There is a notable element of legal realism in your book, especially in the chapter titled “What Have We Learned?” All seven lessons you set forth there suggest there is no way out of the politicization of the judicial confirmation process. Is that your view? Might the real problem be not so much the confirmation process but the modern use of federal judicial review?

Shapiro: That’s exactly right. We have severe — and sincere — disagreements over the substance of constitutional law and methods for interpreting statutes, ones that can’t simply be waved away by invoking “norms” or “courtesy.” What courts decide really matters, so who decides also matters. I don’t think the problem is with “judicial review” as such — the Supreme Court really doesn’t invalidate many laws, and the Roberts court overturns precedents at a significantly lower rate than its predecessors — but it’s absolutely appropriate for senators (and voters) to debate the theories that potential nominees would apply. Given a finite number of seats, political clashes are unavoidable.

  Question: The inside flap of your book states that the judicial-appointments process has been adversely affected by “decades of constitutional corruption.” Tell us about the nature of that corruption and when it began.

Shapiro: I would trace the corruption to what legal scholars call the “constitutional revolution of 1937,” but that goes beyond that year’s key cases of West Coast Hotel v. Parrish, Helvering v. Davis, Steward Machine Co. v. Davis, and NLRB v. Jones & Laughlin, as well as the previous year’s Butler v. United States, the next year’s United States v. Carolene Products, and the infamous Wickard v. Filburn (1942).

In 1935, President Franklin Roosevelt wrote to the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee: “I hope your committee will not permit doubts as to constitutionality, however reasonable, to block the suggested legislation.” Eventually, the court rendered constitutional limits on federal power unenforceable and made certain rights more equal than others. After the “switch in time that saved nine,” when the court began approving grandiose legislation it had previously rejected, no federal laws would be set aside as going beyond congressional power until 1995. But even the 1930s and ’40s don’t tell the whole origin story: If the Slaughterhouse Cases (1873) hadn’t eviscerated the 14th Amendment’s privileges or immunities clause, for example, we wouldn’t have the warped conception of unenumerated rights — “penumbras and emanations” and the like — that’s also central to confirmation battles.

  Question: You argue that the court “has let both the legislative and executive branches swell beyond their constitutionally authorized powers.” Can you give us an example of this under the Roberts court?

Shapiro: The most obvious example is National Federation of Independent Businesses v. Sebelius (2012), in which Chief Justice John Roberts transmogrified Obamacare’s individual mandate penalty into a tax. It’s certainly gratifying to those of us in that fight that a majority of justices rejected the government’s assertion of power to compel commerce in order to regulate it. But justifying a mandate with an accompanying penalty for noncompliance under the taxing power doesn’t rehabilitate the statute’s abuses. It merely created a “unicorn tax,” a creature of no known constitutional provenance that will never be seen again. And by letting the law survive in such a dubious way, Roberts undermined the trust people have that courts are impartial arbiters, not political actors.

  Question: You talk a lot about the administrative state (or, as you sometimes refer to it, a “faceless bureaucracy” or “alphabet agencies”). How does this relate to the confirmation process as you understand it?

Shapiro: The collection of ever-expanding powers in the administrative state has transferred decision-making authority to the courts. Indeed, the imbalance between the executive branch and Congress — especially the latter’s abdication of its leading constitutional role by delegating what would otherwise be legislative responsibilities — has forced the Supreme Court to decide complex policy disputes. What’s supposed to be the most democratically accountable branch has been avoiding hard choices since long before the current polarization.

Gridlock is a feature of a legislative process that’s meant to be hard, but it is compounded of late by citizens of all political views being fed up with a situation where nothing changes regardless of which party is elected. Washington has become a perpetual-motion machine and the courts are the only actors able to throw in an occasional monkey wrench. That’s why people are concerned about the views of judicial nominees — and why there are more protests outside the Supreme Court than Congress.

  Question: During his 1987 confirmation hearings in the Senate, Bork violated every norm of modernity in word, demeanor, appearance and tactic. He did not feign meekness or prevaricate. He did not fully disavow his former views. He did not kowtow to the whims of his senatorial adversaries or play to the press. He remained conceited and confident throughout. And all of this in the face of a voluminous record of speeches, scholarly writings and judicial opinions certain to invite opposition. In short, Bork did not pretend to be the man he was not. The result: 58 senators voted against his confirmation and 42 for. As Judge Richard Posner viewed it: “He had posed as supremely apolitical, as just letting the chips fall where they may.”

Would you characterize Bork’s strategy as principled or foolhardy?

Shapiro: Both. A nominee has to understand that his or her only goal is to get confirmed, while Bork seemed to think he was there to pass an oral exam. The Justice Department would’ve coached him better, but this nominee didn’t want coaching, blowing off so-called “murder board” sessions. As Senator Paul Simon (D-Ill.) put it: “Bork tended to want to score debate points, rather than appeal to the Committee for votes.” But the White House also erred in its strategy, which was to portray Bork as neither a conservative nor a liberal — much like the “swing justice” he was nominated to replace, Lewis Powell. The demagogic attacks from Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) and various left-wing groups caught the administration on its back foot.

  Question: Building on the last question, and given where we are, it seems that the formula for any nominee to the Supreme Court who hopes to be confirmed is simple. Be evasive yet engaging. Let long-winded senators steal your time. Appear sophisticated, yet avoid controversy or complexity. Deliver soundbites instead of professorial gradations. And be sure to appear groomed, well-suited and TV-friendly.

Will we ever see an end to this in our lifetimes? If so, how? If not, why shouldn’t senators be even bolder in countering such “Kabuki dances,” as you label them?

Shapiro: Indeed, successful nominees talk a lot without saying much. Ruth Bader Ginsburg refined that tactic into a “pincer movement,” refusing to comment on specific fact patterns because they might come before the court, and then refusing to discuss general principles because “a judge could deal in specifics only.”

Around the same time, Elena Kagan wrote a law review article criticizing judicial nominees for being too cagey. But when she sat in the hot seat herself, she realized why they did so: There’s no incentive to be more forthright and thus open yourself to attack, and every incentive just to demonstrate deep knowledge and an easygoing manner.

So no, I don’t see a change possible, particularly when senators themselves have an incentive to collect clips of gotcha questioning for reelection or presidential campaigns, as we saw with Sens. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) at the Kavanaugh hearings. I mean, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) can declare that he won’t vote for anyone who doesn’t explicitly come out against Roe v. Wade, but that seems like shooting yourself in the foot barring a huge Republican majority that can afford to lose moderate votes.

  Question: Assume that the Democrats win the 2020 election, but in late November, one of the liberal members of the court steps down, and President Donald Trump promptly nominates a staunch conservative to replace them. Against the backdrop of the 2016 nomination of Garland, which you discuss in detail, what would you urge Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to do?

Shapiro: As I discuss in my book, this is all about raw politics. The last time the Senate confirmed a nominee from a president of the opposing party to a high-court vacancy arising during a presidential election year was 1888 — that’s the Garland situation — but now the Senate and president are politically aligned.

Moreover, vacancies have arisen 29 times in presidential election years, during the administrations of 22 of the 44 presidents preceding the current one, and those presidents made nominations all 29 times. Nine times presidents made nominations after the election, in the Senate’s lame-duck session, and all but one of those was confirmed, including several after the nominating president lost the election. (Chief Justice John Marshall was one.)

So again, this is purely about politics, not law or precedent, and what McConnell will have to consider are such things as whether confirming someone would hurt the court’s legitimacy and ultimately whether the Democrats would pack the court in response. Of course, some on the left claim that all of the Republican-appointed justices are illegitimate for one reason or another, and McConnell can’t control the Democrats, who may add justices regardless. Judicial nominations are a winning issue for Republicans, so I say go for it.

  Question: You seem cautiously amenable to the idea of term limits for the justices. What is your thinking in this regard?

Shapiro: “Amenable” is the right word. They’re probably not worth the effort to get a constitutional amendment, which I’m convinced would be required despite clever academic theories to the contrary. If the most common proposal, 18-year terms with a vacancy every two years, had been around the last few decades, the court’s makeup would hardly be different; there would now be three Bush II appointees, four Obama appointees, and two Trump appointees – in other words, still five Republican-appointed justices to four Democratic-appointed ones.

In the last 50 years, there have been 30 years of Republican presidents and 20 years of Democratic ones; if anything, liberal voices have been overrepresented. But even if term limits wouldn’t change the court’s decision-making, they might be worth trying anyway because at least there would be less randomness. As Orin Kerr put it: “If the Supreme Court is going to have an ideological direction — which, for better or worse, history suggests it will — it is better to have that direction hinge on a more democratically accountable basis than the health of one or two octogenarians.”

  Question: So far as the judicial confirmation process in concerned, toward the end of your book you write: “I’ve come to the conclusion that we should get rid of hearings altogether, that they served their purpose for a century but now inflict greater cost on the Court, Senate, and the rule of law than any informational or educational benefit gained.” Do you think there is any real likelihood of this?

Shapiro: Well, there’s no law saying that the “advice and consent” process has to include hearings. The Senate didn’t even hold public hearings on Supreme Court nominations until 1916, and it wasn’t until 1938 that a nominee testified at his own hearing. But their utility has largely run its course at a time when nominees come with voluminous paper trails that are instantly accessible to all.

Maybe there would still be a need for closed sessions to consider the FBI’s background investigation, privileged documents and other ethical concerns, but the open hearings now produce more heat than light. It’s against the interest of the party not in control of the White House to dispense with the hearings — how else can their senators extract their pound of flesh? — but perhaps this is something that both parties can eventually agree on.

The post Ask the author: The evasive virtues and Supreme Court confirmation hearings appeared first on SCOTUSblog.

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[weepingstudentprincess-blog]

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Literature in many instances phone calls for one particular to critique a e-book, film, participate in, or possibly a journal. When this is certainly the aim of producing an essay, then a review or examination is necessary. When considering producing, it�s a whole lot more according to analyze than a examination for the reason that many of the details you compose might be backed up by sufficient proof. It is a review inside the sense that prior to deciding to be able to write over it, it's essential to finish browsing the e book or watch the participate in. Even though a writer�s personal impression will not be required in writing critical essays.

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College essay papers are really common. Students emotional tension for these assignments since they are a part of their curriculum. Commonly, it might become a matter or even a issue. A large number of matters from a variety of units shall be granted day in and day trip. University lifestyle as busy it's in professional institutions like health-related, engineering or regulation colleges, there are more give good results being carried out via the college students on the kind of essays on top of that to their principal scientific studies.

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Know the topic effectively.

A transparent introduction and conclusion can be a should always for your essay.

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With regards to the industries, you can find an additional kind of essay generally known as the process analysis essay. Process analysis essays are created to clarify about a process in stage by phase manner. A writer owning analysis essay to write have to have in-depth familiarity with the topic he is going to write down on. The margin for faults should always be stored to zero considering if ever the reader attempts to enact the very same course of action, there should probably be the same final result the author has specified. These are generally the kind of essays exactly where online essay products seriously exhibit their knowledge. Consistently execute suitable exploration with this particular kind of essay to make sure that that you'll be 100% trust-worthy.

There is not only one sort of essay. There are a lot of variations in essay writing design as well since the objective for the essay. Admission essays, educational essays, critical essays and analytical essays are couple of amongst the broad classification of essays. One particular special variety of essay which has been second hand broadly on the enjoyment corporation is the critical analysis essay. An individual unique kind of essay which has been applied broadly inside the leisure organization stands out as the critical analysis essay. By definition, a imperative essay often is the writer�s issue of watch of the perform, journal or simply a ebook, supplied that the writer has sufficient proof to show his statements.

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Astrology Contents.

However this actually doesn't matter how you spell that due to the fact that chaise lounges are actually classic pieces of furniture that will enhance basically any type of location - indoors or even out. This brings our company to the best from all the Nostradamus myths, which is the fallacy that Nostradamus created a manual of astrology prophecies. The manner by which Gayatri Concept preponderates is actually the exclusive attribute of word designing embedded in it. Due to unfolding of the analysis Rajarshi Vishwamitra was right away elevated to the growth from Brahmarshi.

There are actually indications that the word Kabbalah," the acquiring," right now the label from the whole entire religious beliefs, resided in earlier times the foremost label of guide that Nostradamus' publication covers. The Spring season Festival that occurs in China at the start from the Chinese New Year is just one of the moments when the demand from gold in China is actually very high as well as gold as well as jewelry purchases go up considerably. Another explanation early lifestyle spruced up in disguises was actually for objective of productivity. The ancient Romans believed that the Aquamarine was spiritual to Neptune, the god oceanic, having brokened coming from the gem boxes of sirens and washed onto shore. Just as a person has to possess principles and moral market values instilled in his attributes or even great publication should include suitable relevant information, in a similar way the marble to be made use of in property decor has to possess particular qualities which will definitely produce that the best choice for mosaics. In the ancient times, vocals of the wizardry, sorcery and witchcraft were often taken as a weatherglass just before any type of kingdom or even empire will definitely have any kind of process, act or admonishments prior to entering fights, slight or even major jobs or even day-to-day regimen of an empire. That ingredients were actually imported even in ancient times presents the relevance from fragrance. It was during the course of middle ages opportunities that the principle of consuming together while assembled at dining-room dining tables originated. The thinkers which will certainly direct our team through these troubling but rarely apocalyptic times are going to be those who educate our company how to determine undesirable truths in the midst of problems and how you can show both care as well as cunning. However a considerable amount of historians have actually proved that the secret indicators from zodiac are actually pretty much older dating back to the early opportunities of individual creating. In reality, old women were all thought about more desirable if their hair were long and also thick. That was not that only Classical women had an enthrallment for hairstyles, the Classical men were certainly not also far behind either; one of the most typical hairdo that many Greek males in early opportunities sported was - brief and also curly. A spear factor, likewise known as spearhead, was actually rated as the chief item utilized in the battle of ancient Asia as well as Europe. The ancient storytellers from intimate fallacies the good news is kept the elegance from Celtic society. Historical Greeks additionally took advantage of saffron to lighten the shade of their hair, so about additionally boost the type. Old literature, artefacts and also buildings are being actually looked into upon and being actually studied to possessing any kind of proof pertaining to the conference from the historical individuals with these aliens. Angels are additionally aspect of Jewish and Islamic faiths and also a number of other religions and societies going back to old opportunities. Underneath Lake Baikal's mattress is actually an old cemetery matured around 5,000 to 8,000 years old. For this certain design, the old Classical females used to secure their hair all together and constituted a knot at the back. Buddha may be invested with a massive amount from details, effects and also definition; they develop and also they are actually provided lifestyle. In early times the word Dowsing was actually used just for the hunt of springtimes of water or metallics as gold. In old times, Sapphires were thought to be defensive against rivalry, as well as versus poisoning. However in Australia where the historical as well as the early division of mankind appeared the Aboriginal individuals do not have any type of expertise about the timeless doubles, the fallacies discussed by a bunch of societies were emerged off the north when the humanity stretched coming from Africa almost 75000 years back. The old Sumerians, one of the oldest societies which accentuated feet with arm bands, put on ankle joint links as an indicator for wide range of her other half. I am actually certainly not going to point out so much more listed here, apart from that this publication gones on my (very short) listing from ultimate must-reads for any person that is interested in spirituality and also our origins. In early opportunities this was actually essential to remove bacteria and louse coming from the heads from people utilizing the brush. Baseding on the historical kabalistic content, the secret from the five steels ring excellence is that at the particular time of the creation from the ring along with these five steels, Jupiter's effect is summoned forth. The beginning of pizzas actually started in ancient opportunities, and as mentioned previously, was actually a lot more for feature in comparison to exciting. The old people made use of points like weeds and also florals to earn top quality perfumes. Till you have lived in another nation, you'll possess no idea from exactly how fortunate our company remain in South Africa to have the gorgeous moderate climate we have got. However it is known that during the very same time, the twin superstars were actually recommended as Gilgamesh and also Enkidu due to the ancient Babylonians. Historic files signify that the historical Egyptians placed decrease blooms in flower holders. This write-up defines how the early globe watched water, from the flood beliefs of Assyria and the Bible, to the sustainably created water off artesian aquifers in Classical times. For more information regarding yellow pages london (my webpage) review our web-site. When there were actually no surgeons or procedure theatres folks made use of to experience with stones in their gall bladder or even renals, in early opportunities. Stylish methods of luck informing currently existed and dated back to venerable times when old ascendants simply relied on the positioning of the superstars, moon as well as the earths were actually the only noticeable methods from contemplating and reflecting the future. Gould decided on the 48 historical constellations and 40 that had been created mainly in between 1500 and 1800 to fill up spaces left behind due to the ancients. The Early Greeks were loaded with wonder when they to begin with beheld the splendid landscapes from the asian Persian Kings. Redford (Akhenaten, LJ 11/1/84) presents a research study of the political, cultural, and also spiritual relationships one of the peoples from Egypt, Assyria, as well as the Levant during the 3000 years coming from the Paleolithic duration to the devastation from Jerusalem in 586 B.C. What recognizes this study is the per spective of an Egyptologist which ap proaches the subject from historical Egypt and also Israel without the standard preconceptions and also emphases found in the research studies rising off scriptural research studies scholars.