#and whatever the victim chooses to do upon their vital parts is considered fair

[sunset-peril]

Okay, I dunno if you've thought of a scene where Rhoam really & truly apologizes to Zelda for everything.

However, & I am so sorry for any possible future changes this may cause, but I just saw this as a remarkably fitting thing for him to do.

It's something I just made up.

The act of Iðrandikrjúpa or kneeling penance. A Hyrulean custom adapted from a tradition of Hebran origin is the act of sitting on one's knees, bowing your head & holding out the hand with the palm up. And, originally, in the hand would be offered some sort of item that acts to represent their relationship. Often, something that both treasured.

This is an expression of deep humility & apology. A sort of show of prostration in an endeavor to demonstrate ultimate contrition. The Hebran equivalent to the Sheikan Dogeza when used to express deep apology.

The lowered position & bowed head shows submission & contrition. (Note that looking up or lifting the head during this time is seen as a sign of being ingenuine. And looking the one that you are apologizing to in the eye is considered even more so & is even  thought to be a sign of challenge.)

The extension of the hand palm up is a sign of one's desire for penance.

If the one being apologized to places their hand in the prostrator's, it is a signal of willingness to hear them out. Those with genuine regret will then proceed to either lay their forehead upon their hand or kiss it. Many who are truly wrecked with grief for their actions will also likely begin crying.

But it is the offered item that is the clearest tell of one's genuineness. Because it is saying, "I am unworthy for what I have done to you & I offer it to you as a show that I understand this."

Though, in the case of a parent having behaved unforgivably towards one's child, it is instead seen as more sincere to offer something that they consider symbolic of their role as their parent. This sends the message that they acknowledge that they are unworthy of that sacred role. For that is what parenthood is seen as in Hebra: a sacred honor. For, to raise a child is to raise the future.

To breach that is seen as one of the greatest dishonors you can commit. No one hates a deadbeat or abusive parent quite so vitriolically as a Hebran. They are also known for their senses & recognition of accountability.

However, acknowledgment of one’s own actions, especially to the one that it was perpetrated against, is seen as a show of willingness to change.

However, it is also seen as well within the victim’s right to deny it. If they were to yell, scream, spit upon them, slap the offered hand away, or even strike them about the face. Anything short of outright beating or killing them is considered their right.

At the same time, the victim could also take the symbol from them, they could tell them to speak, or in truly rare cases, they could simply roll the prostrator’s hand back up around the symbol as a sign that whatever was done has already been forgiven.

But, placing the hand upon the prostrator’s own is a show of willingness to both forgive as well as understand & listen. It takes a very mature person to do such, especially when they’ve been hurt to such an extent that this act of prostration is seen as necessary in the first place.

Especially if it was the perpetrator's own choice to do so.

Anyway, upon receiving such a signal, the perpetrator is allowed to speak, but is expected to keep their head down while doing so.

Within Hyrulean society, heads of the family or those in positions of power will often use a symbol of said position in that hand, as though offering it. As if to say that they are unworthy of that position. Those who wear some sort of hat or headdress as part of said position will also remove it & clutch it to one’s stomach.

In the case of a king who has emotionally abused his daughter, true self-contrition would be shown in the producing of the abovementioned item symbolic of his position as her father (such as a gift she gave him long ago that he treasures or something he took from her) then removing his crown & placing it at her feet.

This isn't something to be performed in front of a large audience, but more so an inner circle. Particularly, before those aware of the transgression in question & who aren't likely to just automatically forgive the perpetrator.

It is also not something that is performed often.

Again, I'm sorry. I was just reading your Trial of the Zora Armor & I got into it because I know it's all for Zel's sake & I just thought how could Rhoam demonstrate how truly repentant he is? How could he show her that he loves her more than anything & hated what he was doing without it feeling fake?

My mind went, "by owning up to his behavior & humbling himself in a way that she can't reason herself into thinking that it was untrue."

Once more, apologies.

So sorry to answer this a few days later, I wanted to make sure I had all the possible brain cells (and undivided time) for you!

I actually have not! I knew one would be necessary, but I never came up with an apology of that true magnitude.

Ooo! Ooo! The item in Rhoam's hand could be the little Guardian trinket from Age of Calamity (if I remember correctly, he does present it palm up to her in the Temple of Time, but not while bowing) in that realm of things! I don't know if that specific trinket could work in BotW (if they were able to have this moment before everything fell apart, I haven't mapped that much detail on it), but perhaps Original Terrako could work!

No, no it's all good! The fact that you came up for something so cool and precious while reading something of mine. It makes my night! I definitely would love to integrate this into the AoC timeline of HFS regardless of whether I can fit it (in some way) into the BotW timeline of things :3

It's wonderful!!

[perkoform]

Lacanian Junk

taken from the chapters, ‘Empty Gestures and Performatives Lacan confronts tha CIA plot’ and ‘The Interpassive Subject Lacan turns a prayer wheel’ from the book ‘How to Read Lacan’ by Slavoj Zizek, 

available online at: 

https://www.uploady.com/#!/download/ZRuvRbXyta8/T~b5aQoH_PSEXAR0 

The empty gesture:

The most elementary level of symbolic exchange is a so-called ‘empty gesture’, an offer made or meant to be rejected. Brecht gave a poignant expression to this feature in his play jasager, in which a young boy is asked to comply freely with what will in any case be his fate (to be thrown into the valley); as his teacher explains, it is customary to ask the victim if he agrees with his fate, but it is also customary for the victim to say yes. Belonging to a society involves a paradoxical point at which each of us is ordered to embrace freely, as the result of our choice, what is anyway imposed on us (we all must love our country, our parents, our religion). This paradox of willing (choosing freely) what is in any case compulsory, of pretending (maintaining the appearance) that there is a free choice although effectively there isn’t one, is strictly co-dependent with the notion of an empty symbolic gesture, a gesture – an offer – that is meant to be rejected.

Something similar is part of our everyday codes of behaviour. When, after being engaged in a fierce competition for a job promotion with my closest friend, I happen to win, the “proper” thing to do is offer to withdraw, so that he will get the promotion, and the proper thing for him to do is reject my offer – this way, perhaps, our friendship can be saved. What we have here is symbolic exchange at its purest; a gesture made only to be rejected. The magic of symbolic exchange is that, although at the end we are where we were at the beginning, there is a distinct gain for both parties in their pact of solidarity. Of course the problem; what if the person to whom the offer to be rejected is made should actually accept it? What if, having lost the competition, I accept my friend’s offer to get the promotion after all, instead of him? A situation like this is properly catastrophic; it causes the disintegration of the semblance (of freedom) that pertains to social order, which equals the disintegration of the social substance itself, the dissolution of the social link.

 In my perspective, don’t offer, you won fair and square, you can instinctually sense whether you’re good for the job, so can the boss who chooses the shit one as a challenge then like works you to the bone and shows you your depth. Yeah that betterment. This shit is like being admitted ‘voluntarily’ to the mental health ward for a drug induces psychosis. You can’t actually choose you have to say yes, they should just call it compulsory. It would be compulsory if you were a potential danger to others, it’s stupid that they offer ‘voluntary’. suicide is not legal in Australia, though I think it’s becoming legal in Europe. Believing that an ‘empty gesture’ is like a proper part of social interaction just makes you a puppet.

 Symbolic castration and justice:

If a king holds a sceptre in his hands and wears the crown, his words will be taken as royal. Such insignia are external not part of my nature; I don them; I wear them to excerices power. As such, they ‘castrate’ me, by introducing a gap between what I immediately am and the function that I exercise (I am never complete at the level of my function). This is what the infamous ‘symbolic castration’ means; the castration that occurs by the very fact of my being caught in a symbolic order, assuming a symbolic mask or title. Castration is the gap between what I immediately am and the symbolic title that confers on me a certain status and authority. In this precise sense, far from being opposite of power, it is synonymous with power; it is what gives power to me. So one has to think of the phallus not as the organ that immediately expresses the vital force of my being, but as a kind of insignia, a mask that I put on, which gets attached to my body, but never becomes as organic part, forever sticking out as its incoherent excessive prosthesis.

Because of this gap, the subject cannot ever fully and immediately identify with his symbolic mask or title; the subject’s questioning of his symbolic title is what hysteria is about; ‘why am I what you’re saying that I am?’ Or, to quote shakespeare’s Juliet; ‘why am I that name?’ There is a truth in the wordplay between ‘hysteria’ and ‘historia’: the subject’s symbolic identity is always historically determined, dependent upon a specific ideological context. we are dealing here with what luois Althusser called ‘ideological interpellation’; the symbolic identity conferred on us is the result of the way the ruling ideology ;interpellates; us – as citizens, democrats, Christians. Hysteria emerges when a subject starts to question or to feel discomfort in his or her symbolic identity: ;you say I am your beloved – what is there in me that makes me that? What do you see in me that causes you to desire me in that way?’ Richard II is shakespeares ultimate play about hystericization (in contrast to hamlet, the ultimate play about obsession). Its topic is the progressive questioning by the king of his own kingship – What is it that makes me a king? What remains of me if the symbolic title ‘king’ is taken away?

No, not that name was given me at the font, bt ‘tis usurp’d; alack the heavy day, That I have worn so many winters out, And know not now what name to call myself! O that I were a mockery king of  snow, standing before the sun of boilingbroke, to melt myself away in water-drops!

In the Slovene translation, the second line is rendered as: ‘why am I what I am?’ Although this clearly involves too much poetic licence, it does convey the gist of the predicament: depreived of its symbolic titles, richard’ds identity melts like a snowmans’ in the sun. the problem for the hysteric is how to distinguish what he or she is (his true desire) from what others see and desire in him or her. This brings us to another of Lacan’s formulas, that ‘man’s desire is the other’s desire’. For lacan, the fundamental impasse of human desire is that it is the other’s desire in both subjective and objective genitive: desire for the other, desire to be desired by the other, and, especially, desire for what the other desires.

Envy and resentment are a constitutive component of human desire, as Augustine knew so well – recall the passage from his Confessions, often quoted by Lacan, which describes a baby jealous of his brothers sucking the mothers’ breast: ‘ I myself have seen and known an infant to be jealous though it could not speak. It became pale, and cast bitter looks on its foster-brother.’ Based on this insight, jean-pierre dupuy proposed a convincing critique of john rawl’s theory of justice: in the ralws model of a just society, social inequalities are tolerated only in so far as they also help those at the bottom of the social ladder, and in so far as they are not based on inherited hierarchies, but on natural inequalities, which are considered contingent, not signifying merit.

What rawls doesn’t see is how such a society would create the conditions for an uncontrolled explosion of resentment: in it, I woul know that my inferior status is fully justified, and would be deprived of blaming my failure on social injustice. Pawls proposes a terrifying model of a society in which hierarcy is directly legitimised in natural properties, missing the simple lesson of a tale about a Slovene peasant who is told by a good witch: ‘I will do to you whatever you want, but I warn you, I will do it to your neighbour twice!’ the peasant thinks fast, then smiles a cunning smile and tells her: ‘take on off my eyes!’ no wonder that even today’s conservatives are ready to endorse rawls notion of justice: in December 2005, david Cameron, the newly elected leader of the british conservatives, signalled his intention to turn the conservative party into a defender of the underprivileged when he declared: 'I think the test of all our policies should be: what does it do for the people who have the least, the people on the bottom rung of the ladder?’

Even friedrich hayek was on the right track here when he pointed out that it is much easier to accept inequalities if one can claim that they result from an impersonal blind force. So the good thing about the ‘irrationality’ of success of failure in free-market capitalism (recall the old motif of the market as the modern version of an imponderable Fate) is that it allows me precisely to perceive my failure (or success) as ‘undeserved’, contingent. The very injustice of capitalism is a key feature that makes it tolerable to the majority (I can accept my failure much more easily if I know that it is not due to my inferior qualities, but to chance).

Lacan shares with Nietzsche and freud the idea that justice as equality is founded on envy: our envy of the other who has what we do not have, and who enjoys it. The demand for justice is ultimately the demand that the excessive enjoyment of the other should be curtailed, so that everyone’s access to enjoyment will be equal.  

 Afterthoughts::

I thought justice was more about place, and entitlement. Who is duly entitled to something, like if someone had their car stolen, it’s justice to retrieve the car from the undeserving thief. You paid for the car so you deserve it. What Lacan, Nietzsche and Freud are referring to is the flaw of seeking justice, false justice or something, letter of the law justice, justice in theory and not in necessary application, assimilation is numbing. ‘our envy of the other who has what we do not have…’ it should not be based on envy, but on necessity, ‘our necessity for what the other has, that we do not have’ regardless of whether the other enjoys or needs it, you may also.

You have to take into account appropriateness, and context, it’s a massive waste to have every resource at your finger-tips but no use for them, just for the sake of equality, people are unique and individual and have different needs and interests, this dictates what kind of enjoyment they deserve, as it is relevant to their unique chemical quality as an organism that is a part of a larger, synchronised web or order, you are a cog in the machine. Everyone plays their part, adds their unique contribution to the larger wheel of symbiotic cooperation. Everyone naturally has the access to every resource in the first place, how can it be real justice or equality based on envy. Also, rightly so, if the enjoyment of the other is specifically excessive. It HAS to be excessive, or else, it really would be nothing more than jealousy.  They are talking about hysteric people who compare yards with their neighbour. Grass is always greener on the other side.