#because I wanted to discuss Scott's trauma. And that is simply not true.

[princeescaluswords]

I know you're not the biggest Derek fan but I just rewatched some of his scenes with Scott and I got cracked up by how consistently he campaigns for the title of President Of The Scott McCall Fan Club.

He brings this energy every time he mentions Scott to somebody:

Really weird that people think he'd *ever* badmouth him to prop up characters he canonically doesn't give a single thought to.

First, I know you sent this as a three part message, but I found things to talk about in each one, so I'm going to answer them separately!

Second, I may not be the biggest Derek Hale Fan in the world, but I am a fan. I love a well-crafted redemption arc, and Derek's story is one of the better ones I've seen. In fact, I wanted more of it. But, for me, the key to a good redemption arc is that it is an arc. For Derek to grow and change and become a better person and for it to have meaning, he had to start out in a state that, frankly, wasn't. That's why I insist in my analyses that Derek was an antagonist in Season 1 and an outright villain in Season 2.

I do have seven pages of posts on Tumblr marked anti derek hale. I wish I wouldn't have to label them that, because I do not hate Canon Derek Hale. I simply recognize that he did terrible things, and that while they were understandable within context, that doesn't make them not terrible. Yet, his manipulative treatment of the teenagers of Beacon Hills, his embrace of lethal violence as his primary strategy, and his trauma-induced selfishness all served to fulfill his role as a foil to the heroic protagonist, Scott McCall, and fans shouldn't shy away from discussing this, but I have learned that Tumblr etiquette, when it is followed, demands that negative evaluations of a character's behavior be tagged properly so people can avoid it.

I wish some of the fans who hate Scott McCall would remember that, but I digress.

But I do recognize the weirdness you are describing. To me, Derek's admiration for Scott McCall is a natural evolution. He starts out in Season 1 trying to sell Scott on the realities of his life as a werewolf (even as Derek is using him): Scott's fate is to become like him. "So you and me, Scott - We're brothers now." Derek wants a new family, one that won't be destroyed, but through tragedy, pain, and violence he learns that you can't create one using brute force -- by coercively reshaping others into versions of himself. He sees that when Scott forms his pack, his family, Scott does it by accepting his friends as they are. Scott accepts Stiles with his sarcasm and insecurity. Scott accepts Allison, with her family and all that demands. Scott doesn't want Isaac to get hurt, remembers Kira's name, and tells Liam that he's not a monster. And Scott accepts Derek, even after Derek manipulated him, beat him, sold him out to Peter, and tried to kill innocents. So by the end of Season 6, Derek has instead sold himself the idea that his goal is to become like Scott. "You came back for Beacon Hills? No. Came back for you."

And that is what parts of the fandom can't stand. With all the tragedies Derek undergoes (manipulation by Peter which causes Paige's death, manipulation by Kate which causes his family's death, manipulation by Peter again which causes Laura's death, his execution of Peter, the disasters of his attempt at a pack), they want Derek to be redeemed without the necessity for change. In other words, Derek deserves nice things, not because he earned them, but as some sort of cosmic balancing for what he has suffered (and, frankly, his identity as an attractive white man and a 'bad boy').

But this misguided empathy runs counter to the themes of the show. Scott's the heroic protagonist not because he suffers more than anyone else (and he absolutely does suffer a lot, a fact that fandom uselessly tries to deny) but because he doesn't let that suffering, that injustice, determine who he is or who he cares about. This is what makes him a True Alpha, because he could have let Peter or Derek or Gerard or Deucalion determine his nature. He could have rejected Derek and Stiles and Liam and Theo and Malia and Jackson after they attacked and hurt him. He could have wallowed in the pain caused by his mother's rejection, or his father's absence, or Allison's death, or "Some of us are human!" He could have placed his own safety and well being first, and hid or ran from Kira or the Dead Pool or the Doctors or the Beast or Monroe. But he didn't. And that's what Derek saw, and that's what Derek learned.

Instead of acknowledging that learning, those choices, and that growth, certain parts of the fandom decide that what Derek should have done is resented Scott for not allowing Derek's pain to control Scott's life. They decide that Derek thinks Scott is stupid for not thinking of the world in terms of "us vs. them." They decide that Derek's repeated submission to the tragedies of his own life couldn't possibly have made him weak -- after all, he's rich, good-looking, white, and werewolf "nobility" -- and instead of what happened to him being the consequences of his own choices, he was bedeviled by the metaphysical forces known as 'the writers.' Oh, and Evil Tree Wizard Deaton and his Moron Tyrant Protege, Scott McCall.

Yeah. It's very weird.

[simply-ellas-stuff]

Submission by Anon: 

Scott conspired with Gerard Argent behind everyone’s back, told Gerard that Matt was the Kanima’s master (thus selling Matt and Jackson out to Gerard), and then tried – but failed – to murder Gerard using Derek’s body against his will. And Derek was never allowed to hold Scott accountable by Jeff Davis; just like Isaac was never allowed to react when Scott acted like a jealous asshole and repeatedly hit him because Isaac liked Allison, his ex girlfriend. Not to mention that Scott had zero problem working with Deucalion (who murdered Boyd, Erica and a shit tons of other people for power) to kill Josh and Tracy, just because it benefitted him. So Scott acting all morally superior and victim blaming Stiles for killing Donovan – a murderous wendigo who assaulted and actively tried to eat Stiles alive – in self defense is hypocrisy 101 and only proves Scott’s double standards. Not to mention that Stiles was the victim of Donovan’s brutal assault and of Theo’s blackmail: he’s not obligated to share his own traumas with Scott like Scott wanted and demanded. So Stiles choosing not to tell Scott about Donovan is both understandable and worthy of empathy. 

Just because Scott is a “true alpha”  it doesn’t mean that his friends have to obey him or let him condemn them for something they didn’t even do and that was not their fault. Scott chose to think Stiles was a cold blooded monster and serial killer based on his own prejudice and on Theo’s words alone; Scott fell for Theo’s cheap lies since the very beginning and let Theo fool him; Theo played Scott like a kazoo; Scott flat out lied to Kira’s face about her fox spirit. That’s Scott’s fault, not Stiles’ nor anyone else’s. Scott’s own actions and words proved Stiles and Theo right in the end, that’s why he had to beg his friends to give him another chance (even though Jeff Davis didn’t make Scott work all that hard to get them back to be honest. He just made them accept Scott back because Scott needs them.) 

Teen Wolf is an ensemble show. Stiles, Lydia, Allison, Derek and Kira are all lead and main characters in the series – Season 3B is entirely focused on Stiles and Void Stiles with Dylan O'Brien at its front and center, and it’s the highest rated and most critically acclaimed season of Teen Wolf. Their feelings and traumas are just as important as Scott’s. But some people (aka rabid Scott stans & apologists) keep acting like they aren’t and as if Scott’s butthurt is the only thing that matters for some reason – stooping as low as to blame other characters (mostly Stiles and Derek, the characters Scott/Posey stans have an obsessive hate boner for) for Scott’s own canon failures and shitty behaviour

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In response to the above submission sent to me: You could’ve just messaged me. This submission feels as if you’re (… for lack of a better word) attacking me for already being on your side with the fact that due to the writing Scott is painted as if he’s got the highest moral point. I have at no point ever said that Scott was completely infallible because of his “True Alpha” status. I have however said that a lot of his trauma gets dismissed often and I think it’s something that should be spoken about. Scott can be both True Alpha and have Trauma that needs to be discussed.

If you’d like to speak about Scott and the bad writing of the show and how that way trauma, justice/injustice and morality is handled in the show, I am open to the discussion. You will not however act as if I have implied or stated that Scott was allowed to do whatever the fuck he wanted because he was a true Alpha. I have openly stated that his actions about the shit Theo told him and then his reaction to Stiles after the Donavon situation was a dick move and complete bullshit.

And Dear writer, I’ll call you D, if you don’t mind; if you’re going to submit something to someone without speaking to them prior, you might want to make sure your email isn’t attached to your ‘anonymous" submission because I now have your email address and know you like BTS. Please be safe on the internet. So to the person who submitted this, Please contact me to discuss this show. Otherwise, Don’t submit things without logging out first. If you’d like me to delete this submission, please contact me. Thank you.

[emily-smx]

Lies of Omission

I know that this scene has been discussed hundreds of times already, and there are probably posts out there that are very similar to this one. However, I saw this being brought up again on Instagram, and I feel the need to say my bit about it.

The question brought up over and over again is “Why did Scott believe Theo over Stiles?”.

He didn’t.

In the entire scene, there’s never once the question of whose story he should believe – as far as the boys are concerned, there is only one story. That’s what causes the miscommunication.

I also noticed something else while watching the scene: nothing that Stiles said actually contradicted Theo’s story.

To go into more depth, I’m going to go through each bit of the dialogue and explain what’s basically being said from each character’s point of view.

[Scott holds out the bloody wrench]

Stiles: Where did you get that?

Scott: This is yours? Why didn't you tell me?

Stiles: I was going to...

Scott: No, but why didn't you tell me when it happened?

Stiles: I couldn't.

So far, it’s pretty straightforward.

Scott shows Stiles the wrench, who immediately reacts in a guilty manner. It’s important to note that Scott’s “This is yours?” holds quite a bit of surprise in it, so he clearly hadn’t already made up his mind about what happened.

Stiles takes the wrench and looks at it, while Scott asks him “Why didn’t you tell me?”

I know that, to some people, his question implies that he’s already leapt to a conclusion about what happened, but this isn’t necessarily the case. He hasn’t specified what it is he believes Stiles has done; all this shows is that he knows something big has happened.

Stiles’ response sounds incredibly guilty, and he struggles to look Scott in the eye. It’s clear at this point that he’s done something bad.

Scott: You killed him? You killed Donovan?

Stiles: Well, he was going to kill my dad. Huh? Was I supposed to just let him?

Scott: You weren't supposed to do this. None of us are.

This is where it starts to get more confusing.

Scott asks whether Stiles killed Donovan, and again the surprise and disbelief in his voice shows that he hadn’t already made up his mind prior to this conversation.

Stiles responds by telling him “he was going to kill my dad [...] was I supposed to just let him?” (i.e. “I killed Donovan because he was going to kill my dad”).

The worst thing about this is that it essentially confirms what Theo was saying. Theo said “maybe it was because he threatened to kill his dad”.

It also implies to Scott that this was not self-defense, because Stiles’ dad wasn’t there. Instead, it tells Scott that Stiles chose to kill Donovan because he couldn’t risk Donovan hurting his father.

Also, Stiles is asking Scott “Was I supposed to just let him [kill my father]?” (i.e. “was I supposed to let him go free and risk him killing my father?”)

If Stiles had explained how much he regretted it, Scott (despite still not knowing the whole story) would likely have reacted differently. Instead, it sounds to Scott as though Stiles has done something terrible and is now defending it.

Hence, he replies by essentially saying that no, his response was not justified. “You weren't supposed to do this.”

Stiles: You think I had a choice?

Scott: There's always a choice.

This is where it’s important to look at the different viewpoints. Scott is still under the impression that Stiles killed Donovan to protect his father. So, from his point of view, Stiles did have a choice.

Stiles: Yeah, well, I can't do what you can, Scott. I know you wouldn't have done it. You probably would have just figured something out, right?

Scott: I'd try.

Stiles: Yeah, because you're Scott McCall! You're the True Alpha! Guess what? All of us can't be True Alphas! Some of us have to make mistakes. Some of us have to get our hands a little bloody sometimes. Some of us are human!

Once again, it’s clear that they’re talking about completely different things.

Stiles is talking about what he can do physically. He’s saying that he couldn’t easily fight off Donovan the way that Scott could have. He’s saying that Scott could have found a solution that didn’t end in one of them dying.

But Scott still doesn’t know that. He still thinks that Stiles killed Donovan by using disproportionate force, because he was scared that if Donovan survived then he’d harm his father. From his point of view, Stiles is saying that murder was the only option, and he couldn’t figure something else out.

So he responds by essentially saying that yes, he would try and figure out another solution to protect his father and also not kill Donovan.

It’s an entirely reasonable response, but obviously from Stiles’ point of view, Scott is being very unfair here. This, along with the fact that he’s being crushed under guilt and stress and anger, causes him to lash out.

Scott: So you had to kill him?

Stiles: Scott, he was going to kill my dad!

Scott: But the way that it happened... There's a point when it's... It's not self-defense anymore!

Stiles: What are you even talking about? I didn't have a choice, Scott!

Scott, to his credit, doesn’t get angry, and instead gets back to the main point. He’s clearly very desperate at this point, desperate for there to be something he’s missed.

So he asks whether Stiles had to kill him – note that this isn’t simply if Stiles killed Donovan, it’s more about whether it was the only choice. Keep in mind, that Scott cares a lot about Stiles. He doesn’t want to fall out with him.

Unfortunately, Stiles’ response only emphasised what he’d previously claimed, making it sound like that was his only reason.

This is where both characters should have paid more attention to each other’s words. Scott’s comment about “the way that it happened” should have driven Stiles to questioning what he thought had happened; and Stiles’ confusion should have again made Scott question whether he had the story right.

However, they’re both upset and stressed, and so it’s understandable that at this point they aren’t thinking clearly and rationally.

Stiles: You don't even believe me, do you?

Scott: I want to.

Stiles: Okay. All right, so... So, believe me, then. Scott, say you believe me. Say it. Say you believe me.

[Stiles steps forward brandishing the wrench and Scott flinches]

Scott: Stiles, we can't kill people that we're trying to save.

Stiles: Say you believe me!

Scott: We can't kill people. Do you believe that?

This is where everybody hates Scott, but again it’s taking everything out of context.

When Stiles says “believe me”, he means “believe me that there was no choice, I was about die and it was an accident”, but Scott hears “believe me that my only choice was to kill Donovan to protect my dad”.

Scott wants to believe that Stiles’ actions were necessary, but he knows that killing somebody to prevent the possibility of something else from happening in the future is not justified (especially when there are other ways they could have protected his dad).

Also, Theo was cunning and he told Scott “maybe Stiles thought he had to keep going to defend himself” – which feeds into Scott’s belief that Stiles might have thought it was his only choice, despite this not being the case.

I also want to point out that Scott flinching is likely due to the trauma of Void Stiles. In Letharia Vulpina (3x19), by the animal clinic in the pouring rain, Void Stiles tortured Scott. The similarities of the situation likely caused him to flinch (and then there’s obviously the fact that flinching when somebody steps forward with a weapon is a completely natural response, even without all the trauma).

Stiles: Well, what do I do about this? What do you want me to do? Okay, just be... Scott, just tell me how to fix this, all right? Please, just tell me-- what do you want me to do?

Scott: Don't worry about Malia or Lydia. We'll find them. Maybe... Maybe you should talk to your dad.

This is when Stiles essentially gives up. From his point of view, he’s tried defending himself, but Scott is still condemning him; he’s being blamed for something that was in no way his fault.

Instead of lashing out again, he accepts that he was at fault (although he wasn’t – it was his guilt that was persuading him that he was in the wrong), and begs Scott to tell him how he can fix his mistake.

Scott, who is also very overwhelmed, suggests he talk to his dad, who will be able to fix it and sort everything out.

I know some people equate this to Scott kicking Stiles out of the pack, but I really don’t think it is.

Scott saying “Don't worry about Malia or Lydia” is not him forbidding Stiles from speaking to them. It’s simply a callback to the beginning of the conversation, when Stiles informed Scott that he’d been unable to get in touch with Malia or Lydia.

And yes, he dismisses Stiles, but that’s because so many other things are going on. Hayden is directly behind them, dying in the animal clinic. Scott needs to go and help her, and Stiles being there will probably just increase the tension and make things more difficult.

In Conclusion:

It was a miscommunication. Scott and Stiles both thought they were talking about the same thing, which led to them not understanding what the other was trying to say.

Scott did not come into the argument already believing Stiles was guilty. His reaction to Theo’s story was, literally, “that’s not possible”. It was Stiles’ accidental confirmation of Theo’s story that led Scott to believe it was true.

“believe me” does not mean “believe my story”, because to their knowledge there was only one story.

Scott did not kick Stiles out of the pack.

I firmly believe that the only mistake either character made (beyond hiding the whole secret in the first place) is not pushing further to make sure they were both talking about the same thing. Scott should have asked for Stiles’ full story of the events, and Stiles should have explained what happened when he had the chance. It can, however, be put down to their mindsets at the time: Theo chose a good time to tell Scott, when both of them were already overwhelmed with all the events going on.

[xoruffitup]

AITAF’s 11th Annual Broadway Show

It’s surreal that this was my second year attending and I’m sitting here typing up a second recap! It hardly feels like a whole year has passed since last November, as the time has been so full of Adam and SW-related joy. After last night’s show, Sarah (the same friend I adventured to TIFF with) and I reflected that following/loving Adam has brought us so many extraordinary experiences we would never have sought out otherwise. Attending military-oriented events and creating stronger ties with the veterans and service members in each of our lives, traveling to Toronto (and shortly to London!!) together, and cultivating the most unlikely and incredible friendships. It’s been an eye-opening, whirlwind year of new and wonderful experiences - chief among which was sitting in a theatre largely full of military personnel and having each of my preconceived stereotypes challenged.

The group I gathered with outside the American Airlines theatre was even bigger than last year. We had my friends Sarah and MP ( @reylonly​), my dad who usually abhors the “veteran” label and yet - to his own surprise - confessed to being deeply moved by last year’s show, a retired Army nurse and her husband, a cousin I hadn’t seen in ages who’s currently enlisted, and her two friends from the army. Our sizable group was first to queue up outside the theatre, with more than plenty to talk and catch up about while we waited.

(Fun/Amusing Fact: That enlisted cousin I hadn’t seen in ages? We reconnected ahead of this show when she messaged me on Facebook: “Hi! I heard from X family member that you like Adam Driver. I’ve attended AITAF performances before and I’ll be going to their NYC event, if you’d like to come as one of my guests?” Yes, that is my rep spreading through the family and you bet I’m proud. :’’))

We thought we had an idea what to expect from last year, but this year’s show surprised and took us off guard in almost every way.

After entering the theatre and passing right by Joanne (looking hella fierce in a fitted tweed suit), we headed up to the reception. Here came a surprise I was personally AMPED about!! While MP, Sarah, and I waited to go in the photo booth they had, we saw Scott Burns and Daniel Jones come into the reception area! I explained a bit in my TIFF recap post about how The Report (aside from being just a stellar film) really engaged me personally because not only do I have a human rights-related job, but the Executive Director of my non-profit is also renowned for being one of the first high-ranking whistleblowers against the CIA torture program when he previously worked in the Department of Defense. His name is Alberto Mora and after I heard Scott Burns namecheck him in several interviews, I talked to Alberto about his involvement in the film. From that conversation with Alberto came the idea to arrange a staff screening of the film, given its relevance to our nonprofit’s mission. In addition to seeing the film at TIFF, I also had the chance through work to attend the DC premiere of the film last week, attended by human rights advocates, House Representatives, and Senators (most depicted in the film - including Diane Feinstein herself!) who were all clearly riveted by the film and the discussion with Scott Burns and Dan Jones that followed. SO (sorry for this digression but I’M STILL SO EXCITED BY THIS) when I saw Dan Jones mingling, I practically started vibrating with everything I wanted to say to him.

After psyching myself up and angsting with MP for a minute (“But it’s gotta be the right time - I don’t want to interrupt him!”) I went over and introduced myself to Dan Jones, saying I’d been at the DC premiere of the film last week and how powerful the evening had been. Long story short - omg what a chill and approachable guy to talk to! I explained quickly that I work with Alberto and I’ve been looking into arranging a screening, to which Dan said he’d “absolutely love” to help with! He told me how to contact him and holy shiiiit now this definitely has to happen!!

So after that reception highlight, we ate a little more cheese and fancy crackers before heading downstairs to the theater and our seats. And there we needed to hold onto our hats and strain to remain chill, because like some Adam-related VIP guest list, we brushed shoulders with Noah Baumbach and Laura Dern as we entered the theater! WHATTT!! It certainly made my heart glad to see so many of these high-profile collaborators of Adam’s supporting him and taking an interest in his non-profit work. And just to see that they’re all friends even off set!

This year’s choice of play, A Raisin In The Sun, immediately set a much different tone than last year’s True West. While last year included a cast of only 4, with Adam and Michael Shannon lifting the majority of the performance as the brothers-at-odds Lee and Austin; this year included a cast of 9 almost exclusively African American actors, who would share the stage in a rotating balance. But before anything else... the show began with AITAF’s Director giving a rundown of their recent and upcoming programming, before she introduced Adam to speak. Annnnd out onto the stage he strode in a black suit and tie (pushing the boundaries of fashion for real) looking so striking and handsome my brain and heart jumped into an overdrive race with each other alsdfjslfjalsdfj :’)))) (Yes, the first moment when I see him in person still makes my heart fly up into my throat.) Most of the audience tried to leap to their feet to give him a standing ovation, before Adam quickly made some slightly panicked abortive hand gestures and everyone sat back down. We were seated so close to the stage that that proximity was really the best kind of intense <3333

First of all, I want to assure everyone that our bb does look like he’s gained some weight back. I think his face looked a bit more filled out than at TIFF (and boy did he fill out that suit just right). Adam recognized all of the active service people and veterans in the audience, thanked the actors and AITAF staff for making the evening possible, and gave his background speech on AITAF’s purpose, journey, and mission. He also spoke a bit about the play that was selected this year, quickly adding “I’ll let the play speak for itself rather than butchering it with my interpretation.” Everyone laughed and my heart was only barely beating under the adoration because at the same time I was getting such a good look at just how big he is, being so close... Not only the height, but the shoulders in the suit and the giant hands that fly around when he’s talking, then he stuffed his hands into his pockets for part of his speech and that just made him look taller and more attractive and alsdkfjalskdjf sir you should really take my health into consideration a little bit!!! ;___;

Fangirl feels meltdowns aside, there were a lot of other beautiful things happening on that stage. It was stirring to listen to Adam introduce the cast (and pronounce all of their names correctly, thank you) with all the deference this play deserves and a cast to do it full justice. In a setting where the audience was largely comprised of a military demographic that is often considered to embody more conservative values, it was poignant to see Adam using his platform in AITAF to push the narratives further and confront the audience directly - not with what separates people, but to draw out the humanity that makes us all so very alike. That is, after all, AITAF’s guiding mission. 

Skipping ahead for a quick moment - one of the actors in the talk-back after the performance brought up how difficult it had been to fund this play when it was first produced in 1959 because investors feared it was “too black” and wouldn’t resonate with audiences. Last night was the most blatant demonstration of how close-minded such fears were, as the almost three-hour long reading kept the audience entirely enthralled, caught up in the humor and the heartbreak and the enduring human spirit that keeps the Younger family’s pride and love for each other in tact; then followed by audience members standing up to share deeply personal and candid accounts of how they saw their own struggles with searching for identity and purpose between military-civilian spheres, and their own experiences of trauma reflected in these complex, lively characters. 

As much as I so enjoyed internally flipped my shit completely getting to hear Adam speak in person at the beginning, it made me more proud than ever to love him as I do when I watched him step back and pass the stage and spotlight to an insanely talented cast of color. AITAF is a force and space that aims for all voices to be heard, and Adam appeared only just enough to underscore and enable that last night.

I hope I’ve already made the point that the cast were simply phenomenal. This year’s performance felt completely different than last year’s in terms of the energy and mood. Last year, Adam and Michael Shannon filled two hours with simmering frustration and aggression that grows increasingly outrageous until it culminates in violence. Adam and Michael moved freely around the stage a lot. I’ll never forget Adam doing handstands, collapsing to his knees right at the front of the stage and his lush long hair falling everywhere (UGH <3), Adam yelling about toast and stealing TVs, barking like a coyote, and finally choking Michael in the final scene. This year, the 9-person-strong cast barely moved from behind their script stands, and yet the emotional impact they delivered was simply stunning. The immediacy of this reading-style performance is just incomparable. I do see a lot of theatre and really enjoy the medium, but watching actors like last night’s cast put on a performance that’s completely uninhibited - completely instinctive and raw - was simply unforgettable. It cuts straight to the emotional core and deepest layer of meaning within the material and the characters. There is nothing between the audience and the existence of these characters’ lives, and the actors lost themselves in the roles completely. It was simply breathtaking to watch, and I couldn’t be more grateful for the opportunity to witness it. Falling in to the Adam bandwagon truly enriched my life in ways I could never have expected

While on the topic of things I couldn’t have expected: Chief among them would be (to be painfully honest) voluntarily attending an event geared for military audiences - and even less enjoying and feeling moved by every second of it. I should probably clarify that although my Dad is a National Guard vet, he rarely speaks about the experience because he was drafted straight out of high school. The memories aren’t easy for him when he knows how close he could have been to being sent to Vietnam; alongside (he admitted to me for the first time following last year’s AITAF show) some amount of guilt towards the friends who were sent and lost their lives. My Dad has never embraced the veteran identity - he felt neither a right nor an affinity to it - and a military settings isn’t one I ever pictured myself feeling comfortable in. And yet, a single AITAF performance was enough to achieve their goal in my heart of building bridges and highlighting commonalities between military and civilian spheres. The military identify is multifaceted, and attending last year’s performance was enough for my Dad to unlock some new acceptance or understanding of that aspect of his own identity. It seemed to let him think of that period in his life in ways beyond antipathy or guilt. It was at least enough for him to open up and speak more candidly to me about his experience than ever before. 

This year’s Q&A was moving, deeply personal, and at times painful. And yet there was truly no better showcase for how a shared experience of theatre can serve to knock down all barriers that might have existed between people when they entered that theatre only hours before.

Highlights:

A man who recently ended his service spoke about how much he connected to the character of Walter Lee in the play. Like Walter, he too feels restless and unfulfilled in his (civilian) job, always feeling like he should be striking out for something more meaningful, something bigger, and never feeling right in his current place. For the audience member, this resonated with his own struggle to find meaning in his civilian life as he navigates the transition of leaving the military. This moved the actor who played Walter Lee (Colman Domingo, who had been TERRIFIC - I mean full-on crying several times throughout the reading) to speak about the personal inspirations and experiences he brought to embodying the character for this setting. Namely, trying to support his veteran older brother’s struggle with drug addiction. As Colman spoke candidly about how the experience with his brother had seeped into his performance, at least two other cast members dabbed tears from their eyes.

The most emotionally difficult and yet moving moment shared throughout the whole theater. A man in the balcony asked for advice on finishing a play that he began writing as a means of trying to process and work through unresolved trauma he experienced in combat zones while deployed. He explained with something of a despairing tremble in his voice that he’s reached a point where he feels emotionally blocked - where confronting the memories of comrades dying in his arms simply freezes him and he can’t seem to move any further. The theater was silent as he had to pause speaking for a moment, audibly overcome for a moment in the effort of speaking and sharing this aloud. Since the speaker was up in the balcony too far back for me to see, I was watching the cast and AITAF team on stage. Being so close, I thought I saw something visibly pass over Adam’s face. Later that evening, the cousin I just reconnected with at this event was the one to bring it up unprompted when she asked, “Did you see his eyes when the man was talking about his struggle to write?” So yes, it’s confirmed, I wasn’t imagining that Adam visibly choked up for a moment listening to this audience member. After the commenter was able to finish speaking, a few cast members responded. Adam, after being silent for most of the Q&A, then held his hand out for a mic and spoke up, telling the audience member something like, “In a way, you’re already doing it. You’re already writing. You’re already processing. I don’t think anyone knows what they’re setting out to write or how it will take shape until they do. But you’re already doing the hardest part.” Then, in a touching moment of connection, another audience member spoke up about a veteran writing group he’s involved with whose members seek to do exactly the same thing. The safe space the questioner was so dearly seeking did, in fact, already exist, and the people were there in that theatre to help guide him towards it. 

I didn’t think anything could have equaled my experience at AITAF’s 10th Anniversary show last year - and yet, last night was every bit as powerful of a performance, followed by a Q&A discussion in which audience members bared revelatory vulnerabilities and saw their own struggles through the eyes of others. My group went to a late dinner afterwards, where we continued discussing the performance, the dialogues thereafter, AITAF’s work in general, and (my favorite) gendered attitudes and embedded patriarchal norms within military settings and how AITAF challenges these norms even while being forced to work within them. 

It was an evening of connections of all types - between people, experiences, and insights. I can’t laud AITAF enough for enabling such valuable and productive exchange, and I hope to experience much more of their work in the future.

(And if performed with a showcase or even a side of Adam, that would be even better! <3)

Thanks so much for reading! : ))

[dewbond-blog]

The Summer of Love: The English Dub of High School DxD

We will be jumping into the second half of season one next week with a look at the “Raiser Arc” and all it brings to the table, but this week I wanted to steer the Summer of Love into a topic that many people don’t really discuss: The English Dub, and my overall thoughts and feelings on it. There is a good, a lot of good, and some slightly not so good. So join me after the cut as we jump into our next chapter of The Summer of Love, the dub! This is another long one, so be ready!

To discuss the English Dub of High School DxD, it is important to give some backstory about English dubbing of anime in general. If you grew up in my generation, (late 90s, early 2000s)  then you are very familiar with the 4kids of era; a time in which the american company 4kids entertainment pretty much had a stranglehold on the western anime market. Simply put, they called the shots and every anime that was actually on television had to go through the 4kids “Americanizing process.” Needless to say, this was a bad thing.

Cardcaptor Sakura had it’s entire yuri/yaoi subtext removed and whole episodes removed. Dragon Ball censored and omitted world building, Yu-Gi-Oh became a “so bad it’s good” mess of a dub. Vision of Escaflowne became a shadow of it’s former self. Monster Rancher went from a 50+ episodes series to only a handful, and of course what they did to One Piece. The list just goes on and on. The 4kids era of anime was not a good time for the youthful medium, and frankly the wounds inflicted by this era are still fresh in many minds of my generation.

Things have gotten far better since then, with companies like Funimation, Sentai Filmworks and Aniplex taking over the dubbing market and delivering quality dubs of anime that are true to form and (sometimes) even superior to their Japanese counterparts. Yet despite this massive improvement there are still many who refuse to even give an English dub a chance, whether it is loyalty to the “authentic’ Japanese version, or trauma for the scars of the 4kids era.

Now how is this connected to High School DxD? Well not really that much, but I think it is important for readers to understand why people are somewhat hesitant on English dubs, despite a whole new generation growing up with them. There are old wounds that have yet to heal, and in this era where censorship is a hot button issue, I wanted to explain why.

Anyway, let’s get into the dub itself, and let’s start by talking about the cast.

The Cast

The English cast of DxD is frankly very strong, though it has been a cast that has had a few replacements. Akeno has been voiced by two different actress, as has Asia, and the while voice changes are noticeable, they thankfully don’t differ too much to make much of a difference. What I can say is that Asia and Akeno are both voiced excellently, with Asia being played with that cute innocent perfection, and Akeno with a level of sultry seductiveness that, while not on par with her Japanese seiyuu, gets the job done well.

The biggest voice change though has to be Issei himself, who was voiced by both Scott Freeman and later Josh Grelle, and while the change over in season 3 is a rather noticeable change (unlike Akeno’s voice change in the same season), with many people being initially put off by the sudden shift in voices. I can both say that they play an excellent Issei and bring a-

Wait..what’s this?

Fuck…do I have to do this? Do I really have to bring it up? REALLY?

ALRIGHT FINE…FINE..I’LL FUCKING ADDRESS IT.

In 2015. Scott Freeman, the voice actor of Issei and several other Funimation dub roles, was arrested, convicted and imprisoned for the possession of Child Pornography. Funimation rightfully and subsequently cut all ties with him and his roles current and future were replaced with new actors, hence the sudden change to Josh Grelle in season 3 and later 4.

Anyway, Issei’s work in the English dub marks the first, but not the most significant change in the DxD anime. While the script plays him true to form, Issei’s performance in the dub is markedly more “american” compared to his Japanese counterpart. While it is 100% loyal to the authentic story, there is a lot more ‘sex jokes’ and ‘western references’ that peek out from time to time. I’ll get into this when I discuss the script, but I did find it worked quite well for the story, and both voice actors are able to ‘get serious’ when the time comes, especially in season 4 when Josh Grelle gives his best performance as a harem lead, and this guy has MANY to his name.

However the biggest and frankly best change has to be Jad Saxton as Koneko Toujou, who completely re-invents the character for the English dub. In the Japanese version, Koneko is the quiet little kouhai who seems to only have one single emotion, very much in the veins of the Rei-clones that had a stranglehold the industry for years. The English dub however turns this completely on it’s head. Koneko becomes a motor-mouthed little girl who, while still holding true to the character’s spirit, adds far more to the plot and group chemistry than her Japanese counterpart. I just find Jad Saxton’s Koneko to be a far more interesting character, acting as a sort of the reality foil for Issei for many season, and still willing to call him out on his perverseness even after falling in love with him. Frankly, the difference between the two voices is astonishing, just watch this comparison clip.

The rest of the cast do a find job. Jamie Marchi as Rias is an excellent casting choice, and while I prefer the Japanese voice, Marchi’s signature voice is able to play both sides of Rias’ personality well and she only gets better as the seasons roll on. Kiba, Gasper, Xenovia and Rossweise are all again done very well, but it is only really characters listed above who are the real stand outs.

The Script

Remember how I brought up 4kids at the start of this post. Well I did also bring that up, because the English script of High School DxD does feel very much like a bit of a holdover from that era of anime dubs. There is more than a hint of the adapters putting in their own lines and having some fun with the dialogue than compared to other shows. It was clear to me that the writers were having some real fun trying to adapt this show for an English dub, and while some may grumble by only  being a 90% authentic script, the show does give us some great memorable one-liners like:

“I’m gonna make you eat those words like a kid doing the tide-pod challenge!”

“Cunt-tuckey fried chicken over there is in love with you”

“Forgive dat ass, don’t spank it!”

“Her milk-shakes are all over my yard”

Those are just some of the examples of the fun bit of humor that is injected into the series via the English dub and yes, it is not for everyone and yes, it is going to turn some of the purists off. Yet the voice actors give it their all and when the time comes for the show to “get serious” like with the Akeno break down, Asia story-line, the Issei/Rias fight, and more, those actors absolutely step up to the table and deliver excellent performances. So I can forgive them for having just a bit more fun with a show that is, again, about busty big boobed girls fawning over a perverted idiot.

What I do NOT forgive though, is the “president gaffe,” which undermines a vital and important plot point.

See, there is a very clear reason that Issei calls Rias “president throughout most of the anime’s run.” It helps show the class and social difference between the two characters and how, despite Rias falling truly deeply in love with Issei, her social status and his role as a servant make him hesitant to step up. It is only when that issue comes to a head that does Issei finally start calling Rias by her full name, and it is a great moment to cap off four seasons of development.

The dub however ignored that completely for the first four seasons and admitted that they weren’t aware of just how important it is. While they do address it in the season 4 dub, making an offhand comment that “Issei has been calling her President a lot lately” it doesn’t really fix the problem and remains an annoying nitpick for me. Is it a deal breaker? No, but it is a pretty glaring problem when looking at the series as a whole.

Final Thoughts.

Overall, the English Dub of High School DxD is a great one, and I honestly love it to death. As i said in my primer, I would have watched the series dubbed to do this event, but I wanted to be faithful to the Japanese release. The dub is still my go-to way of watching DxD and I suggest anyone to give it a show after watching a bit of the OG Japanese version. It’s not perfect, but it’s made with love and affection and doesn’t stray too far from it’s routes, but when it does what 4kids never could do to anime. It adds something without taking anything away.

[cindyjane]

where my deep gladness meets the world’s deep need: a remembrance of #teachingdiary

I’ve spent the last hour or so rereading old #teachingdiary posts and remembering all those sweet little details of my short teaching career. Some of those stories have already begun to blur in my mind as I’ve begun using my brain capacity to remember my clients’ stories, but thank God I have this Tumblr page as a time capsule for all those student stories.

Back in June, I shared a brief testimony at my home church to explain to everyone why I was leaving teaching and SF. I recently found the full transcript of what I shared at church (that I apparently typed up, grammatical errors and all, in my personal blog just to remember the moment -- good call Cindy), and I’ll share a snippet below:

... I love my students, and I really enjoyed being in community with them in the classroom, but I really didn't enjoy teaching. Even though people always tell me that I am a natural up there, that I have this presence that allows people to pay attention to me, I don't feel joyful teaching. I feel anxious and stressed out that I have to put on an act when I'm teaching. It felt fake, and it didn't feel like I was really connecting with the unique individuals sitting in my classroom. What I did enjoy, though, were the brief moments either before, during, or after class when I got to check in with individual students, to ask how things have been going, how is your family, did you get to talk to your dad, were you able to figure things out with your friends? Things like that. Things that seemed way more substantial, authentic, things that allowed me to give undivided attention to each person that I was having a conversation with. Being able to help my students individually, as unique people with individual needs and areas of growth, THAT gave me joy. That gave me life.

Last summer, I had an internship at a church called Great Exchange, or GrX for short, down in Santa Clara just because I was interested in shadowing the pastor and learning about church ministry to see if it was something I might want to pursue in the future. Pastor Scott had me read books as though I was in seminary, and I was required to discuss what I read with him. One of the books was called Let Your Life Speak by Parker J. Palmer, in which he talked about vocation (a word rooted in the Latin for "voice," and defined as your calling in life) and shared that true vocation joins the self and service, where your deep gladness meets the world's deep need. I thought about how unhappy I felt whenever I had to stand up in front of a classroom and teach, but how joyful I felt connecting with individual students and talking them through their challenges and struggles (and I'm sure you all know, immigrant students in particular struggle with so much, like depression, trauma, separation from family, anxiety and stress about learning a new language, etc.). Helping students find wholeness and happiness by helping them with their mental health felt like an avenue that was closer to how I wanted to help meet the world's deep need.

In August, I will be going to Columbia University in New York to study to become a mental health counselor. I'll be getting another master's in psychological counseling along with my master's in education, and I've had mixed feelings for a long time about my decision: I'm leaving my school and students after only being there for 2 years, I had just paid off all my student debt from my undergrad and graduate years, I have so much privilege to change career paths so quickly since I'm still young and I have no family obligations necessarily, and having the option to choose a job that "gives me more joy" when my parents never had that option to choose. Who am I to make such a privileged decision when my parents were never able to as immigrants in this country?

When I think about following God's will for my life, I know that he wouldn't want me to be miserable working in a job that doesn't allow me to use my gifts to their fullest potential, especially when I have the ability and privilege to choose something else. My parents didn't have a choice when raising me; they needed to simply find a job that paid them money so that our family could SURVIVE. With my basic needs covered, I want people like my parents to not only survive; I want them to thrive. I know that pursuing mental health counseling is a greater opportunity for me to be joyful in my work while answering God's call for me to serve his people, particularly the Asian immigrant community, and I hope that my decision to change career paths is a way for me not only to honor the gifts that God has given me. I think this is also my way of honoring my parents' sacrifice and taking advantage of this opportunity, this open door, to draw closer to what I believe is my vocation and my joy in life.

----------------------------------------------------------

I’m writing this post mainly to 1) thank all y’all for following my posts for so long (and for encouraging me to keep writing #teachingdiaries in particular) and 2) honor my journey the last few years. Sorry that I stopped posting after year 2 teaching diary #6... I do regret not posting more about that particular group of students; they were definitely special. But, more than anything, I’m so thankful that I learned so much about myself and the beauty of community in my teaching years. God really made us all uniquely beautiful to bring a different kind of light in this world, and my students were living proof of that. I still think about and pray for them, and some of them still surprise me with sweet messages and wonderful news (one of my students got married this past year!), and I just feel so honored that I got to briefly step into their lives for a year or two and join them in their growth. 

Maybe I’ll start a #counselingdiaries soon (but probably not because of confidentiality purposes lol), but I really wouldn’t be the clinician I am today without all that I learned from my students. Learning how to be present with them in their victories and struggles, working through challenges and conflicts together, and providing a safe space of acceptance for one another in spite of differences or language barriers... these are all things that my students taught me. In the same spirit, these are all the things that I can now offer my clients in my clinical work, and for that, I am eternally grateful. That’s all! Thanks y’all for the love and support all these years :) 

[pamphletstoinspire]

The Death Penalty and the Myth of Closure

Many argue that the death penalty can help survivors move on with their lives. However, this counselor writes that true healing can happen only when we learn to "walk with the pain."

The death penalty has been with us for millennia. If you take the time to read the Old Testament, you will find that the death penalty was widely accepted. We find in the words of Exodus the justification invoked to this day to defend the use of executions: “You shall give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe” (21:23–25).

This is known as Mosaic law and is an integral part of our legal system. And yet Jesus came to challenge it: “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, offer no resistance to one who is evil. When someone strikes you on [your] right cheek, turn the other one to him as well” (Mt 5:38–39).

What a truly radical notion! In the Old Testament, one sees that violence was a way of life, and execution was a primary tool for meting out justice. But Jesus sweeps that all away.

As with many things Jesus said, excuses have been made and qualifiers added: Love your enemy . . . except when he is a murderer. Then you are justified to kill him, a conclusion that sounds very much like Mosaic law.

Desire for Vengeance Is Real

On the other hand, even if we accept Jesus’ teaching, turning the other cheek is not that simple. I can’t simply say, “Well, Patterson, you claim to be a Christian, so you must love your enemy and oppose the death penalty.” I also understand the desire for vengeance.

Some years ago when I was an Army psychologist, I was tasked with evaluating a man arrested for beating his 3-month-old stepdaughter within an inch of her life on Christmas Eve. It had already been determined that the child suffered irreversible brain damage. As I was interviewing the man, I received a call from the pediatric ICU informing me she had also been blinded. I hung up and told this man that news. He shrugged his shoulders and said, “Oh, well.”

In that moment, I wanted to jump across my desk, grab him by the throat, and beat him within an inch of his life! As I think about him almost 40 years later, I have the same feeling. I am not proud of that, but it also helps me to be sensitive to the feelings of survivors when it comes to discussions of the death penalty. It reminds me to be sensitive to survivors’ need for justice and, possibly, vengeance.

Many justifications for executions set aside the language of Mosaic law and focus on possible benefits for the surviving family. One doesn’t so much hear the word vengeance in such discussions, but one does hear the word closure. A common justification for the death penalty is that it provides closure for the family.

When Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was sentenced to death, the mayor of Boston expressed the hope that “this verdict provides a small amount of closure.” Similarly, when the decision was made to allow survivors of the Oklahoma City bombing to witness the execution of Timothy McVeigh, Attorney General John Ashcroft stated that he hoped the execution would help survivors “meet their need to close this chapter in their lives.”

Whether executions provide closure depends on what we mean by that word. For most of us, closure implies a completion or conclusion. When a corporation announces store closures, that means those stores are no longer operational. So, in discussing the process of grief and trauma, closure would seem to imply a conclusion—the suggestion that there is an end point to grieving.

This expectation of closure is sometimes supported within a person’s social network. At this time, I am counseling several parents of children who committed suicide. All have commented on encountering, either directly or indirectly, the message “Aren’t you over it by now?”

Think for a moment of the people in your life you have lost. Are you no longer grieving? If I think of loved ones who are gone, I become aware that I may be grieving those losses for the rest of my days. My grief may not be as intense as it was at the time of the loss. But reminders of someone’s absence in my life help me see that grief goes on, that there is no closure in the sense of conclusion to my grief. There’s no point at which I dust myself off and say, “OK, I’m done missing that person.”

The Myth of Closure

In her book Closure: The Rush to End Grief and What It Costs Us, Professor Nancy Berns makes the compelling argument that the concept of closure has emerged within a political context to justify the death penalty and as a “made-up concept: a frame used to explain how we respond to loss.” It has become such a common word in discussions about grief that people assume it exists and is within their reach. In fact, its prevalence reflects the hope we all have that we can heal from the devastation of tragedy and trauma.

For some, closure means the conclusion to a very public process of crime, arrest, trial, and multiple appeals. Anecdotal evidence suggests that indeed the execution provides that sense of closure. But the word closure also implies healing and completion. Evidence suggests that not only does the death penalty not facilitate healing but, in fact, may interfere with it.

In his 2007 study of families of murder victims, Scott Velum found that only 2.5 percent indicated a strong sense of closure resulted from the execution of the murderer. A study published in the Marquette Law Review compared survivors’ reactions in Minnesota and Texas. Killers in Minnesota were sentenced to life imprisonment, an outcome that was experienced as satisfying by survivors. Texas survivors were less satisfied by death penalty verdicts, in large part because of the prolonged appeals process.

As Bill and Denise Richards, parents of a 9-year-old boy killed in the Boston Marathon bombings, wrote in the Boston Globe, asking that the government not seek the death penalty, “The continued pursuit of that punishment could bring years of appeals and prolong the most painful day of our lives.”

Jody Madeira worked with and studied survivors of the Oklahoma City bombings. In her book Killing McVeigh: The Death Penalty and the Myth of Closure, she noted that Timothy McVeigh’s execution did not provide the kind of closure some survivors may have hoped for. As one survivor noted, “There won’t be closure till I am dead.”

The Path to Healing

Are survivors then simply left in anguish, or is some form of healing possible? Perhaps rather than talking about closure, we should be talking about healing.

Sociologist Loren Toussaint suggests that healing is possible through the process of forgiveness. Madeira agrees that forgiveness can help but argues that it is not the only path to healing. This is a delicate topic that must be approached carefully and without judgment. Forgiveness can indeed help survivors heal, but it isn’t that simple. Forgiveness is a process, one that can last a lifetime.

First, let’s be clear on what forgiveness isn’t. Forgiveness does not mean condoning—a distinction relevant to people dealing with someone on death row. Forgiveness does not minimize what was done. The bombings in Boston will never be acceptable. The 9/11 attacks can never be dismissed in terms of the personal trauma. The murder of a loved one will never be OK. After all, the God of my understanding is indeed a God of mercy, but also a God of justice.

Then there is the common phrase forgive and forget. Not only is that often not possible, but in some cases it’s not a good idea. If someone has assaulted me, I may need to forgive that person, but it may not be a good idea for me to invite him or her over for dinner. That person may have no remorse and might assault me again.

The first step in forgiving is making the decision to forgive. The important thing to realize in making this decision is that the person who will benefit most from forgiving is the forgiver. Forgiving frees the forgiver from all the negative venom of hatred and resentment. Essentially, to forgive is to reclaim power from the forgiven. Professor Madeira quotes Oklahoma City bombing survivor Bud Welch as saying about forgiving Timothy McVeigh: “I was the one that got relief from all this pain . . . and it wasn’t about McVeigh.”

Sometimes we confuse forgiveness with reconnecting with someone in a loving way. That reconnecting is a decision that I may make after I have forgiven. I also have the option of not having the offender in my life. In other words, to forgive doesn’t necessarily mean to reconcile with someone.

To forgive means I also have to face all my rage and anger, all my thoughts of vengeance. We can’t sidestep the emotions. I have sat with some people who experienced tragedy or trauma and afterwards stated, rather flatly, “I’ve forgiven that person,” without any acknowledgment of the pain inflicted by that person. This to me is an intellectual exercise, not an experience of true forgiveness.

Learning to Walk with the Pain

In exploring alternatives to the prevalent concept of closure, we also need to broaden our understanding of grief. The concept of closure may have its roots in Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’ famous five stages of dying. That theory has been broadened to include grief. The fifth stage is acceptance. Like closure, this notion has many meanings.

What does it mean to accept the death of a loved one? Again, some kind of finality is suggested, a sort of conclusion to the grieving. I have sat with persons who judged themselves because they did not feel they were finished grieving. Others had well-meaning friends and relatives suggest they should be “over it by now” or that they hadn’t “accepted” the death because they were still grieving.

Over the years I have dealt with many people who came to see me because someone else was concerned about them or, more often, because they themselves questioned whether they were grieving correctly.

I recall one beautiful woman who came to see me after the death of her husband of 50-plus years. She was concerned whether she was grieving correctly. She stated that well-meaning friends had given her a stack of books on grieving. Not wanting to disappoint anyone, she read them all. When I asked what she thought after all that reading, she told me: “I’m completely confused. They contradict one another.”

So what did I do? I gave her a book to read! Only it wasn’t an edition of Grieving for Dummies. It was C.S. Lewis’ A Grief Observed, his journal written the first year after the death of his beloved wife, Joy. The book has no easy answers, and, at its conclusion, it is clear that Lewis will continue to grieve. There is no nice, clean ending. No closure. Only Lewis trying to learn to walk with the pain.

In dealing with losses in my own life, what works for me is to view grieving as a process of learning to walk with the pain. This suggests that, because of a particular loss, my life is changed forever. I am challenged to find a way to move forward living my life as well as possible while at the same time carrying the loss. This is especially true for those who’ve lost a loved one through some criminal act, be it murder or terrorism.

To learn to walk with the pain has several facets. One is to make the decision not to let the trauma define the loved one’s life. It is to affirm that I will not be known as the parent of that girl or boy who was murdered. Rather, I will be known as the parent of a child who touched lives in a beautiful way before leaving life much too soon.

Another facet of walking with the pain is to facilitate the loved one’s legacy. Such legacies may take the form of charitable donations or even the establishment of a charity. Others might establish a scholarship fund. Some get tattoos or plant trees. Such actions don’t make pain go away, but they create a legacy that has some meaning.

For me, acceptance means acknowledging that life is now different, and that I will be walking with this pain until I meet my loved one again in a better place. That may be the only real closure.

By Richard B. Patterson, PhD

[love-too-believe]

I've been over this before so I'll probably just tag it with my other Harry Potter stuff. But I'll use this as a sort of master post. This will only be covering Severus as he seems to be the more "villian" of this post. Alright, lets talk about whats canon and some non-bias facts we are told in the story.

Canon: Severus was a poor kid who grew up in an abusive house hold. Its implied his dislike of muggles stemmed from his muggle father and to an extent Petunia.

Canon: Lily was Severus's first and only friend. He loved and cared for her deeply as one of the only people to show him kindness besides his mother.

Canon: Severus wanted to escape to Hogwarts for a better life.

Canon: James and Sirius disliked Severus immediately for wanting to be in Slytherin. ( you can find this on the scene where their on the train )

Canon: Apon arriving at Hogwarts Severus is immediately ostracized by his peers for basically just being really awkward looking and interested in the dark arts.

Canon: Canon James disliked Severus more for his close relationship with Lily. James would also harrass Lily despite her disinterest

Canon: In "Severus's worst memory" ( which also includes him in a fit of anger calling Lily a mudblood. Funny how some people just choose to ignore how he views that as PART of his worst memory ) James and Sirius choose to bully Severus out of boredom. This includes, attacking him out of nowhere, shoving soap into his mouth, forcefully pulling his pants down. Flipping him upside-down in the air and the scene ends with James threating to take his underwear of in front of a crowd.

And can I just say, I think its so interesting how people try to excuse or justify this behavior. I've legit scene people try and state how Severus "deserved" it. But oh, oh if Severus was female. This would be so much more of an issue. But because Severus is male its not nearly as serious.

Canon: Severus felt horrible about what he said and tried to apologize.

This is when Lucius and his group of Slytherins begin indoctrinating Severus into the death eaters.

Notice how they go for him when he's at the lowest point in his life. This is text book indoctrination. Cults use the same tactic.

Canon: Sirius attempted to kill Severus by having Remus ( his friend mind you ) kill him during one of his werewolf transformations.

Canon: Dumbledore ( not caring for the possible trauma this will cause Severus ) commanded Severus to not tell anyone about what happened but also excused the Marauders for their actions scot free.

Does any of this justify his actions towards Harry or his friends? No obviously.

You know what is does though? Gives you context. The books literally show you the how and why of these characters. Choosing to ignore these facts are your option which is why fanfiction exists. However trying to present fanon as canon is simply untrue.

Now let's get into some fanon so we can better understand.

Fanon: Severus was an incel and just wanted to fuck Lily.

Yeah no. Severus shows no sexual interest in literally anyone. Its true that Severus loved Lily and adored her as his only friend. But there is no sexual implications.

Fanon: Lily friend zoned him.

Lily didn't even know he liked her...

Fanon: Severus believed in blood purity

Also untrue. Severus even when he was a death eater NEVER once believed in blood purity. He even states this and discusses how blood status has nothing to do with a wizards or witches capability. I think people choose to forget how logical Severus is. Not even sure how people come to this conclusion. Severus is literally a powerful half blood.

Fanon: Severus was pure evil MUAHAHAHA

.......So do people just choose to ignore everything about his character including the reveal in Deathly hollows??? His love for Lily, him protecting Harry and honestly other students. Him being a spy for Dumbledore for years???

Fanon: James regretted what he did.

This is never stated. All we are told is that James "changed" from the opinions of people that loved him which is a bias opinion.

And lastly. I noticed how this is another post that chooses to ignore or denounce Severus's abuse in favor of the worst of his actions.

Here's my whole thing. Do the same for Sirius. Who was unhinged and tried to get a student killed when even later in life has no remorse.

If you want to denounce how one character become the way he was and only view him by the worst of his parts do the same to others. The series has quite few.

In conclusion, Was Severus a bitter lonely and vengeful man? Yes. Was he pure evil and showed no regrets? Nope. Is he a morally grey character? Yes. JK Rowling states this herself.

Why do y’all talk so much about Snape and Draco ? There are more intresting Slytherin’s in the wizarding world that can be talked about. Let’s talk about Regulus Black who defied Voldemort for his house elf and died by himself to stop Voldemort. Especially when the entire world looks down on house elves. Let’s talk about Andromeda Tonks who defied her family and married a muggle born. Then lost her husband, daughter, and son in law in the same year and still found the strength to take care of her grandson. Let’s talk about Narcissa Malfoy, who was the only death eater to not have the dark mark. The woman who hides her cunning and manipulation beneath beauty. She lied to Voldemort, the most powerful legilemens to exist, to save her son and Harry. Let’s talk about Leta Lestrange. A powerful black woman who was bullied at Hogwarts yet didnt become evil. A powerful witch that sacrificed herself to Grindelwald to save Newt and redeemed herself. Slytherin is THE house. They have the high class and elegance. Silver with dark green. Slytherin is cunning and ambition. There are so many layered and deep characters but all I hear is “Snape this” and “Draco that”. Slytherin is way too interesting for people to talk solely about a Snivellus and Draco.

[thatonetravelingnurse]

April 29, 2020

What a week. I spent several days at home in bed. I felt the weight of stress on my shoulders and needed some extra sleep. I feel otherwise okay. My CrossFit trainer from CA sent dumbbells and a  kettlebell handle so I can have a little bit of weight in my life, alongside the never ending walking.

One thing I love about this city is the lack of need for a car. I love walking everywhere but anticipate none of the shoes I brought will make it out of this city with me. That is if I ever leave. I love it here so very much.

I mentioned social media in my last note; it has gotten worse.

I’m constantly bombarded with statuses mentioning the laziness of those who must not WANT to go back to work, since they don’t want to reopen states.

Status #2: We’re tired of the ‘entitlement’ of those who can continue to work and make a living, while the rest of us suffer, having to be quarantined.

Status #3: (oh my God, please tell me this isn’t real) A woman identifying herself as an NP, states she is NOT in NYC, but has a friend who is here. States that her friend feared retaliation by speaking out about what she is seeing here, so this woman has decided to publicize her ‘story’ and what she is seeing as a second party to supposedly protect her friend.

A frontline nurse working in New York on coronavirus patients claims the city is killing sufferers by putting them on ventilators.

'It's a horror movie,' she said through a friend. 'Not because of the disease, but the way it is being handled.'

And she said relatives of the sick need to make it clear as soon as a person is taken to the hospital that they do not want them hooked up to the breathing machines.

The nurse, who has relocated to New York temporarily to help with the city's COVID-19 crisis, persuaded a friend — a nurse practitioner who is not working on coronavirus patients — to make the video for her in order to tell the world what she says is happening inside hospitals. 

'I am her voice here. I'm going to tell you what she has told me,' said the nurse practitioner, who was identified only as Sara NP. 'She wants this to get out.'

'She has never seen so much neglect. No one cares. They are cold and they don't care anymore. It's the blind leading the blind.'

'People are sick, but they don't have to stay sick. They are killing them, they are not helping them,' added the friend in the video posted on YouTube. 

'She used the word murder, that coming from a nurse who went to New York City expecting to help.

'Patients are left to rot and die — her words. People are being murdered and no one cares.'

Sara would not reveal which hospital the nurse is working in 'for the safety of those involved.'

More than 12,000 people have died from the virus in New York City, with another 4,300 dying in other parts of the Empire State, which is a far larger number than any other state in the country.

Republican Minnesota state Senator Scott Jensen told Fox News' Laura Ingraham that Medicare pays hospitals three times as much if patients are placed on ventilators.

Sara said COVID-19 patients are placed on ventilators rather than less invasive CPAP or BiPAP machines due to fears about the virus spreading.

She said: 'The patients don't know any better. They don't have family with them. There is no one there with them to advocate for them. So they are scared, and they give consent.

'The ventilators have high pressure, which then causes barotrauma, it causes trauma to the lungs', adding that the best way to survive is to 'buck the system.'

'Your loved one is not going to have you in there advocating for them once they go in, you're not allowed in.

'Do not give consent for intubation if you don't want to be intubated or for your loved one to be intubated… As soon as you give that consent, you might not come out of it.'

And she said if there is a specific medication — such as the hydroxychloroquine that President Donald Trump has touted, the best thing to do is lie.

'A tip from inside the system — if you want a medication to be given, you've got to report that it's an at-home medication, and that you demand that it be continued.'

Sara claimed patients who stop breathing are not resuscitated — again due to fear of the virus spreading.

'Full code, not doing compressions, family is not there. They have no one to answer to. No one is being held accountable.'

She said there are other problems in the 'crappy' hospital where her friend is working, such as lack of personal protective equipment.

'They stay in the same PPE all shift, except for the top pair of gloves… they're only changing the gloves on the outside.' 

They keep the same gowns and masks on because the theory is that all patients on a COVID-19 floor will already have the virus. But she says that is faulty logic as some are there to see if the coronavirus can be ruled out.

'So even if they're rule-out COVID and they're not COVID they're going to get COVID because they're using the same PPE all shift and they're carrying that contamination to all of the patients

The nurse practitioner also criticized some of the nurses who are risking their own health to treat COVID-19 patients.

'We have nurses being celebrated as heroes who are killing people,' she said.

'They're not heroes, and they're being brainwashed to think they're doing something great just by going to work because they're brave enough to go to work.

'But what are you doing at work? You're certainly not saving people if you're not even running codes. You're not even going into patients' rooms. You're a coward. You're hurting people, you're killing them, you're contributing to the problem.

The nurse practitioner said she knows she will receive hate messages for her comments. 'Frankly, I don't care because this could save someone's life.' 

(Oh my God. She really posted this)

I haven’t been able to bring myself to watch the video. The article alone makes me ill. In speaking with the people I know working here, both co-workers and friends who came in a time of need – we are all ill at whomever is spouting this off. It is as much misinformation as any other news outlet.

1: There are times where our PPE is severely limited, this is true. This is however, out of our control. We wear it to protect ourselves – so we can continue to work, and help as many patients as we are handed. Trust me. We do not want to have to reuse PPE. This is our current state, and perhaps instead of confronting it as an attack on us, we should be focusing on how to get better flow to our hospitals for supplies.

2: There are times when we must discuss options in CPR. In patients in the field, there are areas where the Medics have been instructed not to perform CPR on a non-traumatic cardiac arrest patient. This is in fact because they cannot always provide adequate protection to themselves or those in the home or location by performing emergent CPR. There are specific protocols they must follow, but they are following them.

I for one cannot begin to describe the number of CPR codes I have participated in since arriving in NYC. If the patient is a full code, we attempt resuscitation as directed by next of kin, or until medical futility makes itself apparent in the absence of a decision maker. DO NOT TELL ME we just sit and watch them die.

3: Yes. There are times where we MUST ventilate a patient. The oxygen capacity of a severely ill COVID patient is minimal to none. In the early days of this pandemic, we had no idea what we were doing. We still don’t. This is 100% based on trial and error for the individual patient. There’s no sound science, or EBP developed. We are changing things as quickly as possible in response to what seems to work. CPAP and BiPAP can also cause severe barotrauma, it isn’t always the answer. We have to meet and evaluate each patient and weigh all options.

4: Do NOT lie about medications and/or demand continuance simply to try to get on a clinical trial. Some of the medications (specifically hydroxychloroquine) have actually been shown to cause damage, without necessarily being helpful against the virus. We are working as fast as we can to find a way to fight this effectively. You have to let us do this.

5: We are not. I repeat. NOT. One more time for the people in the back – NOT COWARDS. We are also not heroes. There are those that are here for the glory, for the money. Then there are the rest of us, the majority of us. We are here because we care. We are deeply driven to aid those that are the sickest of the sick. We spend more time in rooms with these patients, too often co-workers themselves, cheering them on. Holding their hands. Bathing them. Talking to them. Speaking to families. Fighting for the best possible care we can provide in a war like medical arena. Our supplies are drained and we have to create things out of unused objects to meet needs at times.

We are drained. It is not that we do not care. We are awash in a sea of death. Those my age, younger, older, they are all dying. All of them in a ‘slightly’ different way. There’s some predictability in this virus, but it fades quickly from one patient to another. Choosing to let the 97 year old go home with minor symptoms. Killing the 33 year old with a newborn at home in less than 24 hours.

Plus we have to fear spreading it ourselves. To be the next nurse who goes to work and watches her husband and parents all die within 5 days of her last shift.

To those posting daily photos and videos of escapades in this city in the grips of death, stop. You are the reason people see healthcare workers as the biggest problem. We have a duty to do no more harm. We have to stay focused on this. It’s not our job to be social with the 75 people we know here right now. It’s our job to fight and protect.

 Those of us that are that passionate about what we are doing, we are not cold. We are exhausted. We are exhausted by the constant fight. My main hospital has discharged 500 patients to home. That number, in a sea of 8,000,000 – is nothing. Not even a spit. We fight day and night to save these people. To save patients. Our families. Our co-workers. Those we trust and love the most. We are not getting out of this without emotional damage to pay. We are having nightmares. Unable to sleep. Seeing the ghosts of all we’ve already lost. Seeing the ghosts of what is to come still. We are hurting. We are committing suicide. But we are still fighting. We show up every day, hoping that today we will send someone home in a car instead of a body bag. Rejoicing when co-workers and the patients to whom we have become family recover and return home.

This is all heartbreaking. I pray this NP, this nurse she is supposedly friends with, stops. You aren’t here to have an opinion. You’re here to help fight. To find the correct ways to fight this virus. To find an effective way to help oxygenate the patient, keep them from a cytokine storm, and help get them home. The situation is unlike anything we have ever seen. Unlike anything we even know. Were we prepared? No. Do we want our friends to be able to work if they haven’t been able to? HELL YES. We have to do this in the best way possible for everyone. There is no cost of life that is acceptable due to reckless behavior. This means too that we must have contingency plans in place for future outbreaks, mutations. We need better schooling options for children. Better work from home options for as many areas as possible. Better supply flow. Accurate education to the population at large.

Just please. Stop. As I watched 3 more 26-37 year olds die tonight. Another 66 year old. A 97 year old. Stop pretending this isn’t bad. Stop telling me Manhattan is ‘different’. Just because it hasn’t gotten there yet, stop being so arrogant. It will.

[newsnigeria]

Check out New Post published on Ọmọ Oòduà

New Post has been published on http://ooduarere.com/news-from-nigeria/world-news/belarus-independence-ostashko/

Does Belarus need an independence? by Ruslan Ostashko

On July 3rd, the Republic of Belarus once again celebrated an anniversary of its independence. Or rather, given an economic situation, would it be justifiable to put the word “independence” in quotation marks?

We already talked about this in June, let’s continue the topic.

On July 2nd, on the eve of the holiday celebrating Belarusian statehood, Alexander Lukashenko spoke at a solemn meeting on this very occasion. This is what he said.

“Belarus was raised from the ruins and ashes (after the Great Patriotic War, S.H.) by people who came here to live and work from different parts of the Soviet Union.

Many of them have created families here, built houses, and found a second home.

They have become new post-war generations rooted in this land.”

Tell me what do you hear in his words?

I hear a recognition of the fact that without Soviet internationalism, Belarus, erased by the Nazis to the ground, would never have come back to life. Against this historical background, the following phrases of Lukashenko sound like a call for a reunification, don’t they?

“All this has connected our people with the people of the USSR with blood ties.

That is why the phrase “fraternal nation” for Belarusians is not an empty phrase, or a figure of speech.

This Slavic unity will never be able to be broken and defeated by anyone!”

  My previous video about a probability of Belarus being accepted as a part of Russia was widely met with “bayonets” by the viewers. And although this video got several times more likes than average, many comments say that this will never happen.

Here are some comments I have got:

“Frankly, to all the “unifiers,” here and in Russia, I would say: a career of any politician in Belarus, who would bring up the idea of joining the Russian Federation, will be immediately over. This is a reality. And your comments about “district or autonomy” only bring up feeling of rage. “

“We’re Belarusians – expletive!!! You have already reunited with Ukraine… You’ll be re-uniting us only in pieces. Also… The part of Belarus that will reunite with you, will be happy to start knifing you.”

“When I read these commentary, I feel terrible… In a blink of an eye your homeland will be given away by a hundred of stupid sheep, for nothing. Believe me, people, there is nothing good in Russia. Being there, will be much worse than it is now. Don’t you understand it? Why my Belarus has such an appalling fate?”

Does this sound familiar?

Like…

“I, myself, am Crimean, a daughter of an officer…”

[Ostashko refers to an epic blunder made by an internet troll working from some NATO military base during the reunification of Crimea. He failed to re-login and was posting anti-reunification posts as a Russian woman from his account as a male American. Since then, a phrase “an officer’s daughter” is used as a marker for Western info-war “warriors”. S.H.]

Or…

“I myself Litvinka, great-granddaughter of Yanka Kupala.”

I will not reply to everyone, otherwise with video will go on for three hours. First, the real sentiments of Belarusians about the reunification with Russia can be found not among anonymous YouTube commentators, some of whom probably write those comments for 3 euro-kopecks per post, but from sociological surveys. Lukashenko knows the results of those surveys, for sure. So, you can make noises all you want here, it won’t affect the reality.

Secondly, vast numbers of Belarusians work in Russia. They don’t just work here, they settle here with us. They get married, buy houses, they stay. They are not rushing back home. Why? In Belarus, it’s very hard to find a job. I also know the state of affairs in Belarusian villages, where they have three students per class in schools.

Let’s be honest, Belarus simply is not making it as an independent nation. It can’t afford it.

Reach people residing in Minsk can squeal that it is not true, because they didn’t learn anything from the experience of the wealthy people in Kiev, but the Belarusian countryside has its own different opinion about the independence. “Europe is the best, the best option for the people,” – squawks a commentator under my first video on this topic. To write something like this statement one must be either a foreign agent, or an alternatively gifted person.

If Ukraine has taught nothing, then look at the Baltics. Do you know what’s going on there? I’ll quote something for you:

“In just 27 years, we lost almost a million inhabitants of Lithuania,” the Director of the European Institute at Kaunas University of technology Vigaudas Usackas doesn’t hide his concern over the situation.

He admitted that able-bodied people aged 15 to 64 years are fleeing the country, while the number of pensioners who left in 2016 was only 1% of the total number of immigrants.

According to the latest data, 57.2 thousand people left Lithuania in 2017, which is comparable to the population of still existing city of Alytus.

The main reason for emigration is the decline of the economy.”

  Guys, this is what awaits Belarus, if it does not live within its means. Which would mean cutting costs and increasing revenues. Belarusian goods are not needed in the EU, you know this without me. The Russian huge market absorbs everything. But this will continue only on conditions that would convince Moscow that Minsk won’t stab her in the back with a knife by abandoning the “multi-vector politic.”

Do you know why Yeltsin’s family still lives and is not poor, although tens of millions of Russians hate them?

Because, Putin gave them his guarantees, and he keeps his word.

If tomorrow such guarantees will be issued to Lukashenko, who continues to bargain, the Belarusian media will change its tune, and a year later in a referendum on reunification with Russia, people will vote in the same way as they voted at the election of the President of Belarus. I have no idea how it will be packaged in terms of PR, but it is a reality. In popular political Telegram-channels there are endless discussions of an upcoming battle for Belarus. The battle is not military, of course, but political and under the rug.

But it’s coming.

And Lukashenko’s public statements confirm this.

“Moscow is in a hurry to replace Surikov, who shares with Zurabov a title of the worst diplomats of Russia. Babich is in a process of approval. Lukashenko is afraid of a strong ambassador and procrastinates. In 2005, Lukashenko annulled an agreement on the Russian Ambassador Dmitry Ayatskov, who never made it to Minsk. Russia was without an ambassador for several months. Babich’s candidacy was discussed during the last telephone conversation of the presidents. It’s not very clear. Putin is in a hurry before the Duma holiday to appoint a strong diplomat to the Belarusian front. It is the front. In coming months, a tough battle for Belarus will begin.”

“Meanwhile, Lukashenka called the President. In words, he agrees to our terms, with small reservations.”

“After Kyrgyzstan, Armenia and Kazakhstan, Belarus is preparing to purge its elite and reformat its external and, most importantly, its internal agendas.”

In conclusion, a video that will cause not compatible with life trauma to all zmagars. [Zmagars in Belarus are the same type, as Ukros in Ukraine.]

Video was taken in Belarusian Grodno after the Russian national football team victory over the Spaniards.

https://twitter.com/w3c_user/status/1013477878342848512

  Scott Humor,

the Director of Research and Development

My research of the war on Donbass is available at the saker.community book store

The War on Donbass, which is called by the Western politicians and media the “Russian aggression in Ukraine” was a staged psyop.

My illustrated investigation titled Pokémon in Ukraine reveals how this psyop was staged, by whom and why.

[seancallagybusinessmastery]

New Post has been published on Callagy Law

New Post has been published on http://callagylaw.com/dr-james-victor-bastek-a-man-of-true-mastery/

Dr. James Victor Bastek, a Man of True Mastery

Og Mandino, the Greatest Salesman in the World, The Scroll marked 5, I Will Live This Day as If it Were My Last.

In the afternoon of the Jessica Anna Coyle. December 10, 2002, Friday of Memorial Day weekend, 1998, Dr. Bastek walked around his incredible home in Saddle River, New Jersey. He walked from room to room, taking it all in, and then stared out into his backyard, part of his 2-acre family home that he had purchased from America’s diet queen Jenny Craig.

There was so much to be thankful and to reflect upon.

Dr. Bastek was born in Jersey City to parents, Caroline and Adam, that had not graduated from high school. Adam had a degenerative eye disease that prevented him from ever having a catch with Dr. Bastek, who they affectionately referred to as Jimmy.

Jimmy was the oldest of 5, with four sisters: Maureen, Barbara, Denise, and Diane.

There was a lot of love in their tiny home, and a lot of craziness with not only 5 children, but a total of 17 first cousins always running around the house and neighborhood. It was family first.

Jimmy with the encouragement of his Mom and Dad, and the Catholic private school education they somehow miraculously scrimped and saved to provide developed incredible discipline and a world-class relentless work ethic.

He went through St. Peter’s Prep, St. Peter’s college, and ended up with a double Master’s degree in Math and Computer science.

In his first job working for Exxon Corporation, he made more than his parents or uncles ever did.

He was an incredible success in the eyes of his entire family.

He felt though, as he sat in an Exxon office working in Canada, that he had so much more to offer the world, as well as feeling the pain of his father going blind and being disabled.

He decided to go back to undergrad to take his pre-med courses to help fight to save people’s vision.

The journey to becoming a doctor would be difficult. The gauntlet to becoming a retina surgeon would be virtually impossible.

In the 1970’s, medical schools openly engaged in age discrimination. And, Jimmy was too old by their standards. Despite this fact, he would later tell people he had such a clear vision that reminded him of the “Manifest Destiny” he had heard people discuss those going West as a grade-schooler. Jimmy was “burning the boats,” told his plans to everyone, and was going to allow nothing and no one to get in his way.

Yet, medical schools didn’t want him in his late twenties. He was considering a foreign medical school when he was accepted to one of the lowest ranked medical schools in the United States, at the time.

This positive step also was a limiting one: how would he ever get into the incredibly competitive retina programs if he was coming from such a lowly medical school?

What was worse, Jimmy was finding medical school to be all about memorization. His skill set was logic and thinking. His memory was good, but it wasn’t his greatest strength. Some students were just better equipped to memorize, and he wasn’t going to get straight A’s on classes with forced curves.

What retina program is going to accept someone from a bottom of the barrel medical school who isn’t even at the top of the class?

Well, Mastery is about finding a way, asking yourself the right questions, and re-inventing the game and the rules.

“How can I get to a retina residency program in some other way?” Jimmy asked himself.

This powerful question led him to a summer job during medical school performing research by dissecting eyeballs. Jimmy tackled this mission not to just build his resume and pass time, but to make something happen.

And, he did. That summer Jimmy made a breakthrough in the research of RP, the disease-causing his father’s, and other members of his families, blindness.

In a stunning turn of events, this kid from Jersey City was all of a sudden, as a medical student, delivering his published paper before the national elite of the retina world.

The result, Jimmy was turning down Harvard and Johns Hopkins to attend America’s top retina residency program at UCLA.

The Odyssey wasn’t over yet though. Once at UCLA, the head of the program told him he thought letting Jimmy into the program was a mistake because the other students were from Ivy League medical schools and had finished at the top of their classes. Jimmy would never be able to compete.

Well, with incredible personal sacrifice, and the support of his wife Carol, a brilliant woman who used her Ph.D. in math to tutor students and supported a dynamic where she would see her husband for only a few minutes a day while he relentlessly worked and studied.

The result: Jimmy not only was the first person in the family to graduate from college, but he also graduated number 1 from America’s top retina residency program.

Dr. Bastek used his work ethic and commitment to Mastery to build an incredibly financially successful medical practice. Far more important to him, he was beloved by his patients, respected by the medical profession, and saved the vision of countless people.

Even more importantly, he was an incredibly devoted father to his two children, Scott and Jamie. They skied regularly in Windham, New York, as well as attending sporting events, and loving their ocean front shore home in what many know to be not only New Jersey’s but one of America’s best beaches, especially for families, Long Beach Island, New Jersey.

So, it was a Friday, and New Jersey kicks off its summer on the Friday of Memorial Day weekend. In New Jersey, the summer is about family and going “down the shore.” Jimmy had been doing that since his Mom and Dad would somehow save enough to rent a tiny shore cottage blocks away from the beach.

Now, he was ocean front providing the American Dream for his family, but never forgetting his Jersey City roots and what it was like to have little more than family, love, and hope.

On Friday, May 22, 1998, as Dr. Bastek finished his awe and gratitude absorption of what his life of Mastery and blessings from God had provided, he headed off to his structurally reinforced suburban, which he had modified to protect his beloved family. It was time for a beautiful family weekend not only with his wife and children but also his parents, siblings and nieces and nephews. LBI was the whole family’s true home and gathering place now.

Fifteen minutes later, Jimmy was gone. The traffic had backed up on Route 17. He was in stopped traffic behind a tractor-trailer. A few seconds later, a fully loaded tractor trailer with a distracted driver, crushed the suburban into the tractor-trailer in front of it.

Jimmy’s Mastery of even his family’s safety, saved the life of his wife and children, but tragically not his mother-in-law’s life, or his own.

That day, I was a young lawyer and was playing basketball with friends when our friend Mike, now chief of police in Emerson, came by to say hello. He asked us if we had heard about the horrible accident on “17” right by the Garden State Plaza. Never one to like to dwell on tragic stories, I headed into my parents’ home to say hello to my little sister, Randi, who was still in high school.

A short time later, I returned to my house down the block to have dinner.

The phone rang. It was my mother. She was screaming, and I couldn’t understand her. I knew something unspeakable had happened, and I felt sick and panicked.

A short time later I was walking into the trauma unit of Hackensack hospital to see first my cousins, Scott, 11 at the time, and Jamie, 16, at the time. They were seriously injured from the accident. Their mom, Aunt Carol, was in a life and death struggle having broken her neck at the C-2 level, which typically results in death or paralysis.

My Godfather and Uncle Jimmy was gone.

Today, 20 years later, as I am excited to begin the summer of 2018, to enjoy LBI with my children, family, and friends, I, like every year, have tears rolling day my face thinking about Uncle Jimmy.

It isn’t just for missing his life lessons, family ski time at Windham, memories at the shore, and always wanting to impress him and have him be proud of me. I think of the impact his life as an example of possibility gave to me. He was the person who I knew that went after his dreams and made miracles a reality. And, it wasn’t because he was financially successful. That was simply a by-product of a life lived with definite purpose, relentless work ethic, love and a desire for fun and balance. So, on this beautiful sunny day, like that day 20 years ago, I do my small part to keep Uncle Jimmy’s legacy of hope, belief, dreams, relentless work ethic, fun and love being remembered, shared and learned from.

To my family, I love all of you and will see you all soon. My heart is with all of you today.

To everyone else, I pray that it is and will continue to be a “Wonderful Life,” as one newspaper described the time on this earth for my Uncle Jimmy.

Let us all live in gratitude, living each day as if it were our last, while never forgetting what our lives stand for and where they are headed.

Thank you as well to our past and present armed forces on this Memorial Day weekend. May God protect you and keep you safe.

Thank you for providing us with the liberty and freedom to think Memorial Day is about family, fun, barbecues, and beaches and to be arguing political nonsense instead of living under tyranny and dictatorships like much of the world has and still does.

In your service, Sean R. Callagy

[seancallagyshow]

New Post has been published on Callagy Law

New Post has been published on http://callagylaw.com/dr-james-victor-bastek-a-man-of-true-mastery/

Dr. James Victor Bastek, a Man of True Mastery

Og Mandino, the Greatest Salesman in the World, The Scroll marked 5, I Will Live This Day as If it Were My Last.

In the afternoon of the Jessica Anna Coyle. December 10, 2002, Friday of Memorial Day weekend, 1998, Dr. Bastek walked around his incredible home in Saddle River, New Jersey. He walked from room to room, taking it all in, and then stared out into his backyard, part of his 2-acre family home that he had purchased from America’s diet queen Jenny Craig.

There was so much to be thankful and to reflect upon.

Dr. Bastek was born in Jersey City to parents, Caroline and Adam, that had not graduated from high school. Adam had a degenerative eye disease that prevented him from ever having a catch with Dr. Bastek, who they affectionately referred to as Jimmy.

Jimmy was the oldest of 5, with four sisters: Maureen, Barbara, Denise, and Diane.

There was a lot of love in their tiny home, and a lot of craziness with not only 5 children, but a total of 17 first cousins always running around the house and neighborhood. It was family first.

Jimmy with the encouragement of his Mom and Dad, and the Catholic private school education they somehow miraculously scrimped and saved to provide developed incredible discipline and a world-class relentless work ethic.

He went through St. Peter’s Prep, St. Peter’s college, and ended up with a double Master’s degree in Math and Computer science.

In his first job working for Exxon Corporation, he made more than his parents or uncles ever did.

He was an incredible success in the eyes of his entire family.

He felt though, as he sat in an Exxon office working in Canada, that he had so much more to offer the world, as well as feeling the pain of his father going blind and being disabled.

He decided to go back to undergrad to take his pre-med courses to help fight to save people’s vision.

The journey to becoming a doctor would be difficult. The gauntlet to becoming a retina surgeon would be virtually impossible.

In the 1970’s, medical schools openly engaged in age discrimination. And, Jimmy was too old by their standards. Despite this fact, he would later tell people he had such a clear vision that reminded him of the “Manifest Destiny” he had heard people discuss those going West as a grade-schooler. Jimmy was “burning the boats,” told his plans to everyone, and was going to allow nothing and no one to get in his way.

Yet, medical schools didn’t want him in his late twenties. He was considering a foreign medical school when he was accepted to one of the lowest ranked medical schools in the United States, at the time.

This positive step also was a limiting one: how would he ever get into the incredibly competitive retina programs if he was coming from such a lowly medical school?

What was worse, Jimmy was finding medical school to be all about memorization. His skill set was logic and thinking. His memory was good, but it wasn’t his greatest strength. Some students were just better equipped to memorize, and he wasn’t going to get straight A’s on classes with forced curves.

What retina program is going to accept someone from a bottom of the barrel medical school who isn’t even at the top of the class?

Well, Mastery is about finding a way, asking yourself the right questions, and re-inventing the game and the rules.

“How can I get to a retina residency program in some other way?” Jimmy asked himself.

This powerful question led him to a summer job during medical school performing research by dissecting eyeballs. Jimmy tackled this mission not to just build his resume and pass time, but to make something happen.

And, he did. That summer Jimmy made a breakthrough in the research of RP, the disease-causing his father’s, and other members of his families, blindness.

In a stunning turn of events, this kid from Jersey City was all of a sudden, as a medical student, delivering his published paper before the national elite of the retina world.

The result, Jimmy was turning down Harvard and Johns Hopkins to attend America’s top retina residency program at UCLA.

The Odyssey wasn’t over yet though. Once at UCLA, the head of the program told him he thought letting Jimmy into the program was a mistake because the other students were from Ivy League medical schools and had finished at the top of their classes. Jimmy would never be able to compete.

Well, with incredible personal sacrifice, and the support of his wife Carol, a brilliant woman who used her Ph.D. in math to tutor students and supported a dynamic where she would see her husband for only a few minutes a day while he relentlessly worked and studied.

The result: Jimmy not only was the first person in the family to graduate from college, but he also graduated number 1 from America’s top retina residency program.

Dr. Bastek used his work ethic and commitment to Mastery to build an incredibly financially successful medical practice. Far more important to him, he was beloved by his patients, respected by the medical profession, and saved the vision of countless people.

Even more importantly, he was an incredibly devoted father to his two children, Scott and Jamie. They skied regularly in Windham, New York, as well as attending sporting events, and loving their ocean front shore home in what many know to be not only New Jersey’s but one of America’s best beaches, especially for families, Long Beach Island, New Jersey.

So, it was a Friday, and New Jersey kicks off its summer on the Friday of Memorial Day weekend. In New Jersey, the summer is about family and going “down the shore.” Jimmy had been doing that since his Mom and Dad would somehow save enough to rent a tiny shore cottage blocks away from the beach.

Now, he was ocean front providing the American Dream for his family, but never forgetting his Jersey City roots and what it was like to have little more than family, love, and hope.

On Friday, May 22, 1998, as Dr. Bastek finished his awe and gratitude absorption of what his life of Mastery and blessings from God had provided, he headed off to his structurally reinforced suburban, which he had modified to protect his beloved family. It was time for a beautiful family weekend not only with his wife and children but also his parents, siblings and nieces and nephews. LBI was the whole family’s true home and gathering place now.

Fifteen minutes later, Jimmy was gone. The traffic had backed up on Route 17. He was in stopped traffic behind a tractor-trailer. A few seconds later, a fully loaded tractor trailer with a distracted driver, crushed the suburban into the tractor-trailer in front of it.

Jimmy’s Mastery of even his family’s safety, saved the life of his wife and children, but tragically not his mother-in-law’s life, or his own.

That day, I was a young lawyer and was playing basketball with friends when our friend Mike, now chief of police in Emerson, came by to say hello. He asked us if we had heard about the horrible accident on “17” right by the Garden State Plaza. Never one to like to dwell on tragic stories, I headed into my parents’ home to say hello to my little sister, Randi, who was still in high school.

A short time later, I returned to my house down the block to have dinner.

The phone rang. It was my mother. She was screaming, and I couldn’t understand her. I knew something unspeakable had happened, and I felt sick and panicked.

A short time later I was walking into the trauma unit of Hackensack hospital to see first my cousins, Scott, 11 at the time, and Jamie, 16, at the time. They were seriously injured from the accident. Their mom, Aunt Carol, was in a life and death struggle having broken her neck at the C-2 level, which typically results in death or paralysis.

My Godfather and Uncle Jimmy was gone.

Today, 20 years later, as I am excited to begin the summer of 2018, to enjoy LBI with my children, family, and friends, I, like every year, have tears rolling day my face thinking about Uncle Jimmy.

It isn’t just for missing his life lessons, family ski time at Windham, memories at the shore, and always wanting to impress him and have him be proud of me. I think of the impact his life as an example of possibility gave to me. He was the person who I knew that went after his dreams and made miracles a reality. And, it wasn’t because he was financially successful. That was simply a by-product of a life lived with definite purpose, relentless work ethic, love and a desire for fun and balance. So, on this beautiful sunny day, like that day 20 years ago, I do my small part to keep Uncle Jimmy’s legacy of hope, belief, dreams, relentless work ethic, fun and love being remembered, shared and learned from.

To my family, I love all of you and will see you all soon. My heart is with all of you today.

To everyone else, I pray that it is and will continue to be a “Wonderful Life,” as one newspaper described the time on this earth for my Uncle Jimmy.

Let us all live in gratitude, living each day as if it were our last, while never forgetting what our lives stand for and where they are headed.

Thank you as well to our past and present armed forces on this Memorial Day weekend. May God protect you and keep you safe.

Thank you for providing us with the liberty and freedom to think Memorial Day is about family, fun, barbecues, and beaches and to be arguing political nonsense instead of living under tyranny and dictatorships like much of the world has and still does.

In your service, Sean R. Callagy

[seancallagyspeaks]

New Post has been published on Callagy Law

New Post has been published on http://callagylaw.com/dr-james-victor-bastek-a-man-of-true-mastery/

Dr. James Victor Bastek, a Man of True Mastery

Og Mandino, the Greatest Salesman in the World, The Scroll marked 5, I Will Live This Day as If it Were My Last.

In the afternoon of the Jessica Anna Coyle. December 10, 2002, Friday of Memorial Day weekend, 1998, Dr. Bastek walked around his incredible home in Saddle River, New Jersey. He walked from room to room, taking it all in, and then stared out into his backyard, part of his 2-acre family home that he had purchased from America’s diet queen Jenny Craig.

There was so much to be thankful and to reflect upon.

Dr. Bastek was born in Jersey City to parents, Caroline and Adam, that had not graduated from high school. Adam had a degenerative eye disease that prevented him from ever having a catch with Dr. Bastek, who they affectionately referred to as Jimmy.

Jimmy was the oldest of 5, with four sisters: Maureen, Barbara, Denise, and Diane.

There was a lot of love in their tiny home, and a lot of craziness with not only 5 children, but a total of 17 first cousins always running around the house and neighborhood. It was family first.

Jimmy with the encouragement of his Mom and Dad, and the Catholic private school education they somehow miraculously scrimped and saved to provide developed incredible discipline and a world-class relentless work ethic.

He went through St. Peter’s Prep, St. Peter’s college, and ended up with a double Master’s degree in Math and Computer science.

In his first job working for Exxon Corporation, he made more than his parents or uncles ever did.

He was an incredible success in the eyes of his entire family.

He felt though, as he sat in an Exxon office working in Canada, that he had so much more to offer the world, as well as feeling the pain of his father going blind and being disabled.

He decided to go back to undergrad to take his pre-med courses to help fight to save people’s vision.

The journey to becoming a doctor would be difficult. The gauntlet to becoming a retina surgeon would be virtually impossible.

In the 1970’s, medical schools openly engaged in age discrimination. And, Jimmy was too old by their standards. Despite this fact, he would later tell people he had such a clear vision that reminded him of the “Manifest Destiny” he had heard people discuss those going West as a grade-schooler. Jimmy was “burning the boats,” told his plans to everyone, and was going to allow nothing and no one to get in his way.

Yet, medical schools didn’t want him in his late twenties. He was considering a foreign medical school when he was accepted to one of the lowest ranked medical schools in the United States, at the time.

This positive step also was a limiting one: how would he ever get into the incredibly competitive retina programs if he was coming from such a lowly medical school?

What was worse, Jimmy was finding medical school to be all about memorization. His skill set was logic and thinking. His memory was good, but it wasn’t his greatest strength. Some students were just better equipped to memorize, and he wasn’t going to get straight A’s on classes with forced curves.

What retina program is going to accept someone from a bottom of the barrel medical school who isn’t even at the top of the class?

Well, Mastery is about finding a way, asking yourself the right questions, and re-inventing the game and the rules.

“How can I get to a retina residency program in some other way?” Jimmy asked himself.

This powerful question led him to a summer job during medical school performing research by dissecting eyeballs. Jimmy tackled this mission not to just build his resume and pass time, but to make something happen.

And, he did. That summer Jimmy made a breakthrough in the research of RP, the disease-causing his father’s, and other members of his families, blindness.

In a stunning turn of events, this kid from Jersey City was all of a sudden, as a medical student, delivering his published paper before the national elite of the retina world.

The result, Jimmy was turning down Harvard and Johns Hopkins to attend America’s top retina residency program at UCLA.

The Odyssey wasn’t over yet though. Once at UCLA, the head of the program told him he thought letting Jimmy into the program was a mistake because the other students were from Ivy League medical schools and had finished at the top of their classes. Jimmy would never be able to compete.

Well, with incredible personal sacrifice, and the support of his wife Carol, a brilliant woman who used her Ph.D. in math to tutor students and supported a dynamic where she would see her husband for only a few minutes a day while he relentlessly worked and studied.

The result: Jimmy not only was the first person in the family to graduate from college, but he also graduated number 1 from America’s top retina residency program.

Dr. Bastek used his work ethic and commitment to Mastery to build an incredibly financially successful medical practice. Far more important to him, he was beloved by his patients, respected by the medical profession, and saved the vision of countless people.

Even more importantly, he was an incredibly devoted father to his two children, Scott and Jamie. They skied regularly in Windham, New York, as well as attending sporting events, and loving their ocean front shore home in what many know to be not only New Jersey’s but one of America’s best beaches, especially for families, Long Beach Island, New Jersey.

So, it was a Friday, and New Jersey kicks off its summer on the Friday of Memorial Day weekend. In New Jersey, the summer is about family and going “down the shore.” Jimmy had been doing that since his Mom and Dad would somehow save enough to rent a tiny shore cottage blocks away from the beach.

Now, he was ocean front providing the American Dream for his family, but never forgetting his Jersey City roots and what it was like to have little more than family, love, and hope.

On Friday, May 22, 1998, as Dr. Bastek finished his awe and gratitude absorption of what his life of Mastery and blessings from God had provided, he headed off to his structurally reinforced suburban, which he had modified to protect his beloved family. It was time for a beautiful family weekend not only with his wife and children but also his parents, siblings and nieces and nephews. LBI was the whole family’s true home and gathering place now.

Fifteen minutes later, Jimmy was gone. The traffic had backed up on Route 17. He was in stopped traffic behind a tractor-trailer. A few seconds later, a fully loaded tractor trailer with a distracted driver, crushed the suburban into the tractor-trailer in front of it.

Jimmy’s Mastery of even his family’s safety, saved the life of his wife and children, but tragically not his mother-in-law’s life, or his own.

That day, I was a young lawyer and was playing basketball with friends when our friend Mike, now chief of police in Emerson, came by to say hello. He asked us if we had heard about the horrible accident on “17” right by the Garden State Plaza. Never one to like to dwell on tragic stories, I headed into my parents’ home to say hello to my little sister, Randi, who was still in high school.

A short time later, I returned to my house down the block to have dinner.

The phone rang. It was my mother. She was screaming, and I couldn’t understand her. I knew something unspeakable had happened, and I felt sick and panicked.

A short time later I was walking into the trauma unit of Hackensack hospital to see first my cousins, Scott, 11 at the time, and Jamie, 16, at the time. They were seriously injured from the accident. Their mom, Aunt Carol, was in a life and death struggle having broken her neck at the C-2 level, which typically results in death or paralysis.

My Godfather and Uncle Jimmy was gone.

Today, 20 years later, as I am excited to begin the summer of 2018, to enjoy LBI with my children, family, and friends, I, like every year, have tears rolling day my face thinking about Uncle Jimmy.

It isn’t just for missing his life lessons, family ski time at Windham, memories at the shore, and always wanting to impress him and have him be proud of me. I think of the impact his life as an example of possibility gave to me. He was the person who I knew that went after his dreams and made miracles a reality. And, it wasn’t because he was financially successful. That was simply a by-product of a life lived with definite purpose, relentless work ethic, love and a desire for fun and balance. So, on this beautiful sunny day, like that day 20 years ago, I do my small part to keep Uncle Jimmy’s legacy of hope, belief, dreams, relentless work ethic, fun and love being remembered, shared and learned from.

To my family, I love all of you and will see you all soon. My heart is with all of you today.

To everyone else, I pray that it is and will continue to be a “Wonderful Life,” as one newspaper described the time on this earth for my Uncle Jimmy.

Let us all live in gratitude, living each day as if it were our last, while never forgetting what our lives stand for and where they are headed.

Thank you as well to our past and present armed forces on this Memorial Day weekend. May God protect you and keep you safe.

Thank you for providing us with the liberty and freedom to think Memorial Day is about family, fun, barbecues, and beaches and to be arguing political nonsense instead of living under tyranny and dictatorships like much of the world has and still does.

In your service, Sean R. Callagy

[thevalkirias]

The Great Gatsby and Daisy Buchanan’s personal tragedy

In his short life F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote over one hundred short stories in order to survive and a few novels in order to respond to his deeper artistic aspirations. Whenever a new novel of his was published, he also released, more or less at the same time, a collection of short stories with similar themes. Along with The Great Gatsby came All the Sad Young Men and, not by chance, the latter is very close to the former. Nick Carraway, Gatsby’s narrator, is clearly one of these sad men: melancholic and reflective, watching from the sidelines, profoundly aware of his life passing by and of his own detachment from it. The Gatsby which lends his name to the title of the book is not really a sad man, but he is tragic: obsessively chasing a past he cannot get back, he tries everything, but in the end is destroyed by his dream. A dream that seems to include building a life with Daisy Buchanan, a character that many consider the main antagonist in his story. Daisy, however, gets her own share of tragedy, which we usually ignore.

The narrative of The Great Gatsby makes it easy to hate Daisy and read her as empty, amoral, inhuman, a destroyer or even a “bitch”, as pointed out by academic research¹. This happens mainly because Nick, through whom we access the whole story, is very partial to his neighbor and friend. He makes it clear when he says, on page two, that in the end Gatsby was good, or when he states that Gatsby was “worth the whole damn bunch put together”. Nick is someone divided, “simultaneously enchanted and repelled” by his neighbors’ world of riches and superficiality, as he puts it himself. As stated by Tony Tanner in his introduction to the novel, Nick is a “spectator in search of star”, and that is what Gatsby represents for him. That is the reason why Nick describes Gatsby as the kind of person with whom you will maybe bump into four or five times in your life. Beyond that, he chooses to ignore, throughout the whole novel, that Gatsby is a criminal whose businesses are possibly built with the use of violence – because Nick, as Tanner points out very well, prefers not to know; Gatsby tries to tell him, Nick avoids the subject.

Even so, Nick himself recognizes that what Gatsby wanted – not only Daisy, but the Daisy from five years before, a Daisy who could reassure him that her life away from him had never happened and that she had never loved Tom Buchanan – was too much to ask from her. Nick understands that Daisy would never live up to Gatsby’s dreams, “not through her own fault, but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion”. The problem with Gatsby is that he is unable to see Daisy as a person, one that is as real as he is. The novel, by the way, makes it clear that the monetary aspect of the whole thing fascinates him as much as the girl does. It amazes him to see the house where she lived, as it does to realize that that was her reality. Nick perceives and mentions the strange enchantment of Daisy’s voice, which he is unable to interpret. Gatsby is the one who offers an explanation, saying that her voice is “full of money”. Realizing that many other men desired her, “increased her value in [Gatsby’s] eyes”, which sound oddly commercial. Leland Person Jr.’s statement² about Gatsby having an “increasingly depersonalized vision of her” comes to mind, and this is simply another piece of evidence.

It is a lot easier to have sympathy for Gatsby than for Daisy. For starters, Gatsby is the self-made man that goes from poverty to wealth on his own, and not because he was born in that world – like Daisy herself or her husband Tom Buchanan – and it is not without reason that this is a famous archetype: because it captivates us. The narrative helps us with this. I find it particularly horrible that Gatsby is murdered in his expensive marble pool after he, more than once, unsuccessfully tries to invite Nick to go for a swim, always reminding him that he hadn’t used the pool yet. Meanwhile, Daisy is fickle and seems not to have any idea about what she wants; she is also profoundly selfish, always thinking exclusively about her own feelings. But the novel allows us to look a little deeper.

If the 1920s saw the emergence of the “flapper” – a name given to and reclaimed by the women who defied social conventions, like Zelda Fitzgerald herself –, their behavior was still considered shocking by society at large, and it was not the norm. Expectations surrounding women were still the same: marriage and motherhood. Zelda discusses the subject in “Eulogy on the Flapper”, one of her essays, mentioning the “fundamental and inevitable disillusionments” that would come eventually. The flapper lived the way she lived, she says, because she was well aware of this inevitable future and it was because she did what she did that she was able to “live happily ever afterwards” once her role was fulfilled.

At one point in the book, Nick attempts to recount Daisy’s story. Though he hears it from Gatsby, it seems to be taken directly from her letters to him, and this is as close as we get to her version of what happened. At this moment we learn that Daisy had asked Gatsby to get back to her soon because she “was feeling the pressure of the world outside” and that she “wanted her life shaped now, immediately—and the decision must be made by some force—of love, of money, of unquestionable practicality—that was close at hand”. That was when Tom Buchanan – her husband, her daughter’s father, the man she chooses to be with in the end – appeared.

Except it’s a little more complicated than that. As John Callahan very aptly points out³, there is an essential scene in the novel, in which the Buchanans, Nick and Gatsby are in a hotel room at the Plaza, and this is the moment when the truth about Daisy and Gatsby’s affair comes up. In this scene, the two men discuss Daisy as if she were a valuable possession. It’s interesting to notice her silence while the two debate whether she loves them or not. All she does is ask them to stop arguing and if they could all please, please, please leave that room. It is precisely in this scene that Nick realizes that Gatsby’s dream is over, because it was probably in this scene that Daisy herself realized that her romantic aspirations were dead. Between Gatsby and her husband there was no longer such a difference in her eyes, and it isn’t surprising that she chooses Tom, who could at least offer her the security she wanted so badly.

Another essential event is Myrtle Wilson’s death in an accident caused by the car Daisy was driving with Gatsby by her side. He takes the blame and ends up being killed for it – another moment that proves his martyrdom. Daisy seems not to care at all about the dead woman (either way, we could never know), and she does not have to face the consequences of what she did; at the end of the day goes back home and back to her husband (an understandable choice if we consider the traumas of the day, but Nick disagrees). Gatsby, however, does not care about Myrtle either, and Nick himself makes a point of mentioning that it seemed like the only thing that mattered to him was Daisy’s reaction, and it was too bad if anyone was in her way.

None if it means that Daisy Buchanan wasn’t an incredibly flawed character, or that we should approve of her actions throughout the story. Nevertheless, I wonder why we turn Jay Gatsby into a tragic and romantic hero and find it easier to ignore his enormous flaws than Daisy’s. We are able to extend a much bigger amount of sympathy towards him, we try to understand his motivations and we feel the weight of his process of dream and disillusion.

It’s true that Gatsby is murdered in the end, while Daisy survives, and he in a way gives his life for her, though he did not know he was doing that. But Daisy survives to be a “beautiful little fool”, as she summarizes her true role in life to Nick in her first appearance: “the best thing a girl can be in this world”, she says. She survives to live with a man who cheats on her systemically, who is unpleasant to absolutely everyone, including her. Daisy doesn’t choose Tom, she chooses self-preservation after realizing her romantic dreams are over, and her future seems absolutely horrible.

At the end of the novel, Nick reminds us of how tragic Gatsby was from the beginning –as he admired the green light at the Buchanan’s dock, his dream was long behind been (after all, as Nick had always insisted and Gatsby refused to accept, you can’t repeat the past). But in the famous final paragraphs of the novel (“so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past”), Nick stops saying “I” and starts saying “we”. Gatsby’s story is universalized, and that’s why I find it impossible not to wonder why Daisy should not be included in this boat. If she beats on against the current, it is to live with her own disillusion.

Fitzgerald told us about all the sad young men, but the sad young women were there too.

¹ Person Jr, Leland S. “Herstory” and Daisy Buchanan. American Literature, Vol. 50, No. 2, May 1978. ² Person Jr, 1978. ³ Callahan, John F. F. Scott Fitzgerald's Evolving American Dream: The "Pursuit of Happiness" in Gatsby, Tender Is the Night, and The Last Tycoon. Twentieth Century Literature, Vol. 42, No. 3, Autmun 1996.

About the author

FERNANDA

Officially a translator and proofreader, Fernanda has a special love for literature and for this writing thing. A loyal follower of the uncool lifestyle, she doesn’t believe in guilty pleasures nor in the concept of liking something ironically.

This piece was originally published in Portuguese on January 18th, 2017 as "O Grande Gatsby e a tragédia pessoal de Daisy Buchanan". Translated by the author.