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cerastes · 6 years

Note

Something I wanted to ask you a few days ago but then you suddenly actually fucked off to the South Pole: Can I ask about your tabletop characters? I know there's Rasmus and a someone named Lisbeth, I think? Do you have more? I'm always up and eager to hear about fruits born from your disaster head.

I do not have more, it’s those two, my beautiful shit children. Rasmus is for my DnD game and Lisbeth is for my Fate Core game. It’d be A PLEASURE to regale you with The Lore:

If you’ve read my tabletop blogging posts, and you likely have given you’re asking about the good ol’ lovable Human Rogue, then you’re already somewhat familiar with Rasmus Kasper Istre. A 24 year old charlatan and swindler through and through, back in his port hometown, Rasmus was a notorious “fortune teller” that scammed many tourists and merchants, an act made easier by the innate superstitious nature of sailors, and while his daggers are sharp, it’s his creativity that cuts deeper, fighting being his very last option as he will always attempt to fool, sabotage and trick others first, only brandishing harm if there’s no other choice. In stark contrast with his enthusiasm when it comes to taking money from others, Rasmus is vehemently opposed to taking lives unless it’s on self-defense or if the one relinquishing their life deserves it, a philosophy he sticks to even if it bites him in the ass. This is, in fact, what triggers his escape from his town: He swindled the riches right out of a big-time Elf magnate, disabled his bodyguard that came gunning for him some time later and even had the perfect chance to off him, yet refused to do so because, as he learned during his time hiding from him, the magnate is actually a really honest if grumpy guy who treats his subordinates fairly and with love, and he’s not about to take that life, opting instead to hit the road. He used to dual wield daggers, but lost one of the daggers during a sky-high encounter with wyvern riders, using an enchanted gauntlet imbued with lightning in the spur of the moment to fight with fist and blade, and he liked how it worked out, so now he uses the lightning gauntlet to deliver close-range blasts and electric grapples with the left hand while his deft dagger whistles with each swipe and lunge of his right. To not inconvenience himself and others, he wears a half cape draped over his left arm so he can touch things and people without thundershocking them or having to remove the gauntlet and risk being ambushed (wearing a glove in the middle of a fight is kinda hard!). He loves wearing cologne, especially one made with ghostshroom extract that he makes himself. People hate the strong smell of it at first but it sort of grows into them like an acquired taste or Stockholm Syndrome, and his favorite foods are juniper berries and beef jerky. Rasmus is 177 centimeters tall, has curly light brown hair, dull green eyes, wears his beard as a stubble, and has an average, fit build. Do NOT call him “Kasper” unless you’re in the mood for a bar fight. Mostly wears leather armor and has a thing for the color green.

Rasmus is childhood friends with Claudia, the party’s Human Wizard, and the two often snipe at each other with affectionate vitriol, although their attempts to screw the other over with money are very real. No hard feelings, though, that’s what it meant to grow poor in a port town, it’s your fault if something is taken from you. He doesn’t always see eye to eye with the Halfling Ranger (Ranger is rather kill-happy, which doesn’t sit well with Rasmus), and is buddy-buddy with the Orc Barbarian, especially when brothels and taverns are concerned. He currently is invested in helping the Orc Barbarian with his character arc whenever he can, as well as furthering his own Money Quest after accidentally starting a religion, the Solar Sect (it’s a long story). After enough deeds, the party received the blessings from Phantom Animal Lords from the wilderness, with Rasmus’ title being “Rabbit”; This is an inside joke referring to how my DM and the rest of my DnD group call Rasmus “Bugs Bunny” due to his trademark outlandish and creative ways of setting up the board to the party’s advantage and problem solving. Among his faithful, he is known as the Augur-spoken Prophet, and it’s really, really spiraling out of control. Initially, Rasmus and Claudia were supposed to hate each other, but Claudia’s player and I, IRL friends since a long time now, decided to make them shitlord friends instead. We were very involved with the creation of both characters and develop them continuously together now. Check the “Rasmus” tag in my blog for more anecdotes of his balls to the walls DnDventures.

Some of his deeds include:

Killing a seemingly unkillable hero by teleporting him high into the sky and letting gravity do the work, using a circumstantial item.

Strapping the corpse of said unkillable hero to a greatshield and creating an extremely powerful shield for our Barbarian to use whenever we need some nigh invulnerability.

Accidentally started a religion when he was accused of high heresy because he defiled the corpse of a hero by turning him into a shield.

Flirting with an Elf Priestess that turned out to be the magnate’s niece.

Flirting with her further anyway.

Naked Parkour in the Elf capital.

Wrapped his phony crystal ball with a chain and used it as an impromptu weapon after being disarmed, cracking a Chaos Dwarf’s skull with a nat 20 swing.

Earned the ‘Rabbit’ title, which apparently only happens once around every 3000 years, as the Rabbit Phantom Animal Lord is capricious and her favor only goes to those cheeky and cunning enough to both amuse her and impress her. Of all those, he’s apparently the second Human to ever have earned the title. Rasmus wears it with pride.

–

The other is Lisbeth Elstad. Now, you’re no doubt thinking to yourself “Wow! No one has a name like that!” And you’re right! Consider that a stage name, or a pseudonym, if you will. In a setting that takes place in the real world after magic and everything from beyond turned out to be real and has suddenly become widespread public knowledge, 19 year old Lisbeth is incredibly inept at even the most basic magic tasks with two exceptions: Mana Layering, the act of creating sheets, layers, and shells of mana, and Alchemy, the ability to turn one thing into another through meticulous formulas and the Law of Equivalent Exchange. In addition to this narrow scope, Lisbeth has always found it oddly easy when it comes to assembling explosives ranging from homebrew fireworks to high-yield plastic explosive custom formulas such as batches of SEMTEX and C4. Finally, Lisbeth is a natural woman of science, a passionate love for biology, physics and chemistry pulsating within her noodle, unfit body. You could say she’s a Human Alchemist/Bombardier of some sort, but her most heartfelt wish is to become a doctor and pharmaceutic. Now, this probably paints the image of a kind, earnest girl that just wants to help out with a smile, right? Well! That’s not quite it! As noble as she sounds, Lisbeth is quite the thug otherwise. Think of her less as a friendly doctor in the making and more of a really shady back alley doc that looks like she came right out of a The Misfits music video. She tries, oh, lord she does, to come across as classy, eloquent, and elegant, but no matter how much Calvin Klein “One” you spray on a rabid boar, it is still a rabid boar, and as soon as her very little threshold of patience is usurped, the elegant business front crumbles and the reality of a violent, easily angered busybody who happily solves her problems with rocks to the back of the head and high yield explosives lays bare. She’s the foster daughter of a famous nomadic mercenary leader known as the Mercury Witch, leader of the White Silhouette, and worked on board their craft as assistant doctor, with the Witch forbidding Lisbeth of taking part on any training that might foster her latent violent tendencies in hopes of mellowing her out. One day, however, they took on a job in which Lisbeth and her mentor, Melicia, ended up unwittingly making REALLY Bad Drugs instead of the Good Medicine they thought they were making for supernatural creatures, Lisbeth found out, they found out she found out, shit hit the fan, everyone’s MIA.

Not much to say about her yet otherwise, as the game is still in its preliminary phase. Instead, I can tell you about the scrapped 27 year old version of Lisbeth that I heavily modified after we discussed things and realized I had to make her much younger for it to make sense with certain aspects of the plot. This version of Lisbeth is still very much the same in terms of abilities, but has quit the White Silhouette on her own terms and roams around as a masked vigilante that aids supernatural beings oppressed by humans and as a doctor that helps supernatural beings for free. Most of her time is devoted to finding locations that traffic supernaturals or pits them in underground arena fights and dismantles them with the superior firepower and flair of plastic explosives and some good ol’ infiltration. During her time in France, she was suddenly attacked by a girl in traditional Japanese priestess attire, inciting what nearly was a deathmatch between the two of them. As the mystery girl realized Lisbeth wasn’t her target, however, she immediately stopped and apologized. The girl, named Yamaoka Keiko, is a prophet and descendant of the Blind Dragons who could see the future. The problem, she explained, was that her eyes were stolen and replaced with ones that can see, and she hates it. She’s looking for whoever it is stole her blind, silver eyes to claim them back and go back to her peaceful, beloved life of comfortable darkness and peace back in her shrine. Lisbeth, however, seems to have a clue about who it could be that can steal and switch something like eyes without any difficulty, and believing this to be fate as well as her responsibility indirectly, offers to travel with Keiko in search for her eyes. The two become good friends over the course of 18 months of traveling together in this adventure, but Keiko takes an extremely grave wound one day and is left unable to move for a good while, even with all of Lisbeth’s medical knowledge. Finding herself alone and unsure of Keiko’s future, Lisbeth decides to join the official magic law enforcement outfit that she hates in order to gain access to their information network. I’ll probably use this version of Lisbeth for other things, since I don’t wanna scrap it, bwahaha, probably with Glock Elf and TechSlime (and same with Keiko).

Regardless of her version, Lisbeth has an intravenous hose installed inside of her arms that leads to a “cauldron” in her torso, utilizing “internal alchemy” to transform proteins and cells into other chemicals, which she then expels through holes on the palms of her hands. This way, she can spray, say, napalm out of her hands. Since she has absolutely no competence at all in the art of magic but has an innate talent when it comes to chemistry and alchemy, she instead “fakes” magic by creating concoctions with her knowledge. Lisbeth stands at 176 centimeters, has a lanky, thin physique, and wears silver contacts (which is why Keiko thought she had her eyes) and hair dyed a very light creamy blonde. She wears classy suits and long-skirted jumper dresses for the most part, with an Orthrus (two-headed wolf) pelt draped over her shoulders, both heads dangling off her left shoulder. Her choice of attire and appearance, much like her pseudonym, are all part of her “business front”. Despite her bluster, she’s rather cowardly, but also extremely resolute. Lisbeth is the kind of character that would usually be the NPC Shopkeeper that sells you potions and charges you a small fee to fully heal your party, but circumstance has thrown her right into the adventurer’s shoes, and now she has to deal with it crying, screaming, and complaining, but hey, at least she gets to put her knowledge of bombs to good use!

#rasmus #lisbeth #tiza #long post #whoops I gone and made a wall without meaning to

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princealigorna · 6 years

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So... I watched a Lily Peet video (bad idea, I know) called "Lore Bore" and I had a problem with the assertion that fans more interested in the lore are wrong as well as how the likes of MLP are "ruined" because of it. Except... that's way off. Honestly, MLP has only improved in tandem with its lore. It hasn't sacrificed its core ideals of friendship for the sake of peripheral details, I dunno, how Discord clips his toenails or something.

That and it's hard not to see what makes lore so enticing. That a story has far more beneath the surface, other facets of its world to explore. It's often what we don't know that piques our interest far more than what's been laid out for us right out the gate. This game of "keep away" can often be the basis of some bad faith criticism, don't get me wrong, like with how RWBY's teased Salem and Ozpin's story among other things to some fans' annoyance. Yet I don't blame anyone for wanting more.

I only agree insofar that fans should balance their discussions of lore in terms of how it could affect the story and characters. Like how should it be paced? Is now a good time in regards to where we are in the airing and/or streaming of the show to reveal XYZ factoid? What's more important and what isn't? However, the overall interest in a lore or worldbuilding shouldn't be decried nor does it mean that a show is worse of for focusing on certain things like on an episode to episode basis.

Lily seems to be a person that favors the idea of judging something based only one what is there. Her concern seems to be for the immediate present. What does a story say NOW, and how effectively does it work NOW. As such, I think she finds worldbuilding and fan obsession with it to be a distraction.As a bunch of wishful thinking that ignores the immediate story..

Of course, this assumption presumes that every story should be taken in isolation. But is that really possible, let alone the right route, in an ongoing story? Especially fantasy or sci-fi worlds that operate under a different set of rules than ours and need to establish them in order to properly function? What about stories that set up a bunch of backstory? That’s the thing with MLP: from the start, it suggested this was a very lived-in world, with a lot of history behind it. How are fans not going to want to see that explored? How are they not going to be curious about how that past affects the present story? How about games like Dark Souls, or Metroid, where to understand the present story, you need to find those environmental clues that help piece it together? Dark Souls is a series very much about the past affecting the present, but you’ll never learn the story passing straight through it. It’s revealed in chunks hidden throughout the map. Metroid works more or less the same way. The story is told largely through hidden things you need to seek out, backtracking to unlocked areas, and clues scattered throughout the map. And if you don’t understand at least the relationships between the major characters (especially Big Boss and his relation to everyone else), can you actually play an MGS game? I mean, you can. Each installment has a self-contained narrative that might get absolutely bonkers at times but isn’t so difficult as to border on undecipherable. But it’s fucking hard. The overall arc is so important to that series that taking any part out of it and expecting to understand the big picture creates a house of cards that’s going to crumble as soon as you even think about it.

This isn’t to say that there aren’t dangers to obsessing too much about lore. Some people do get so caught up in it that they do stop appreciating what’s right in front of them. Not every part of a story needs to be devoted to backstory, nor do we need backstory unloaded on us all at once. And I can understand Lily’s frustration with some of us bronies because we can be a little too harsh on the series when an episode seems like a good one to give us a history lesson and don’t do it. But unless you do something truly episodic, like Pop Team Epic, a lack of lore comes across as boring. As there’s nothing to get invested in, because there’s no history to the world or the characters in it. A lived-in world is what you want in an ongoing story. How can you make a world truly feel lived in if there’s literally no history to it? How can you have stakes when everyone is a newborn infant and the world itself doesn’t seem to have a sense of permanence to it?

#lore #worldbuilding #lily orchard #lily peet #criticism #matt0044

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preserving-ferretbrain · 5 years

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Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Chapters 13-23

by Dan H

Wednesday, 01 August 2007In which Dan continues to self-harm with the final Harry Potter book.

Previously: I'm doing a chapter-by-chapter reaction to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

So far we've had a wedding, Harry has sat in Grimmauld place doing nothing and ... umm ... that's it.

Chapter Thirteen: The Muggle-Born Registration Commission

In which we have yet more of the Ministry pretending to be Nazis.

Let's face it: Harry Potter is an RPG with a crappy GM. This would explain why the Troika spend this chapter, and the next couple, acting like a stereotypical bunch of clueless player characters.

They've got into the Ministry, and they've realised that they have no fucking clue what to do once they get in, so they bugger about stumbling into subplots, and wind up having to fight their way out.

They also get the Horcrux, and rescue a bunch of people from the Muggle-Born Registration Commission.

It strikes me, incidentally, that much as I hate the chapters in which nothing happens at all, the chapters in which things actually do happen are in many ways worse. At least the event-free chapters have an excuse for being as boring as all hell. This chapter, which includes Dementors, show trials, and a running battle in the Ministry, is so tedious I can't even find a noteworthy quote.

I'll leave you with this, then, from Harry's brief glimpse at a copy of The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore (okay, we get it, there's Dumbledore backplot, please stop now).

The boy who roared in silent amusement beside Dumbledore had a gleeful, wild look about him. His golden hair fell in curls to his shoulders.

I quote this not because I have anything to say about it, but so that you can join me in my disbelief when next chapter Harry has a vision of a familiar looking blonde man with a gleeful wild look, and hasn't got a clue where he's seen him before.

Chapter Fourteen: The Thief

In which the Potterites hide in a tent.

Our intrepid heroes can't go back to Grimmauld Place, because somebody was holding on to Hermione when she Apparated, and we all know that when you hold on to somebody who's teleporting, you teleport with them. It's, like, the rules.

So they go and sit in a tent. A magic tent. In some woods. And the realise that they don't know how to destroy the Horcrux. So tell us something we don't know.

Very, very little happens in this chapter. Most of it is taken up with Harry having a vision of Lord Voldemort finally killing that wand-maker he's been hunting down. Harry expresses surprise that Voldemort didn't grill the guy for wand-lore first. Because once again Harry Potter readers are too dumb to decide for themselves how they should react to plot twists and revelations.

Voldemort is looking for something, and he thinks Gregorovitch has it, but he doesn't because it was stolen from him. In a shocking display of convenience, Harry manages not only to read Voldemort's mind, but also the mind of the wandmaker, which presumably Voldemort was reading when their connection was open. So he gets a good look at the "thief".

Harry could still see the blond-haired youth's face, it was merry, wild.

Harry thinks it sounds familiar, but can't think from where.

Clue: it begins with "P" and ends with "Revious Chapter".

Chapter Fifteen: The Goblin's Revenge

In which we get yet another plot dump from some highly convenient Goblins.

Another thing you have to love about JK Rowling is the fact that she's not afraid to overhype her chapter titles. We constantly wind up with titles like "The Massively Significant Thing That Happens In A Huge And Important Way" and wind up with some guy breaking his spectacles. A fine example of this phenomenon was, of course, the first chapter of this very book: "The Dark Lord Ascending".

Indeed, one might almost suggest that the best way to appreciate JK Rolwing is to take her chapter titles and imagine for yourself what actually happens in them. Hmm ... I wonder if any fanfic communities have tried that: re-imagine Potter based only on the chapter headings.

I'm digressing again, but since this chapter is yet another useless waste of space with the protagonists sitting in a tent, I don't feel too bad about that.

Anyway, this chapter is called "The Goblin's Revenge" but could more accurately be called "The Goblin Didn't Mention That The Sword of Gryffindor That Got Put Into Gringotts Was Actually A Fake When He Possibly Could Have." As revenge goes, that's pretty lame.

So the Potteristas, safely ensconced in the Tent of Magically Protected Arse Sitting overhear Ted Tonks and a couple of Gringotts Goblins having a long, laboured discussion in which they painstakingly explain whatever bits of the plot Harry needs to know about next.

Which leads to this awful expository conversation between the Potteroids:

"The sword can destroy Horcruxes! Goblin-made blades imbibe only that which strengthens them - Harry, that sword's impregnated with Basilisk venom!" "Dumbledore didn't give it to me because he still needed it, he wanted to use it on the locket -" "- and he must have realised they wouldn't let you have it if he put it in his will -" "- so he made a copy -" "- and put a fake in the glass case -" "- and put the real one ... where?"

Okay, fine, so you've answered the "Why didn't Dumbeldore give them all this shit earlier" question, and guess what: it's a stupid answer. Why not say "Harry, in case anything happens to me, I want you to take the sword of Gryffindor. Keep it safe, because it can destroy Horcruxes on account of how it's impregnated with Basilisk venom. By the way, we'll need it to destroy that locket we're going after."

Furthermore, the whole reason for the sword being able to destroy Horcruxes rubs me up the wrong way. It's an artefact of one of the founders of Hogwarts: it's a puissant magical weapon of ancient goblin craftsmanship. Do we really need that tat about its being "impregnated with basilisk venom"? Hell, do we really need basilisk venom to be the thing that destroys Horcruxes.

I'm not saying it doesn't make sense, but it makes the wrong kind of sense. It makes the kind of juvenile sense you get amongst seventeen year old roleplayers who will argue your leg off about how a vampire's clothes should reflect in a mirror, even if the vampire doesn't. The Sword can't destroy the Horcruxes because it's a Symbolic Ultimate Good to defeat their Symbolic Ultimate Evil. It can destroy Horcruxes because it's soaked in Horcrux Destroying Juice. This presumably is manufactured by the same people who made the Dumbledore Killing Juice that featured in the final chapters of book six.

In the next part of the chapter, Ron scores major points with me, as he assumes the mantle of Voice of the Reader, and points out what a hopelessly, stupidly, unbearably pointless situation they are now in. They have one Horcrux, they have no idea where the others are. They found out purely by chance that the Sword of Gryffindor can destroy Horcruxes, but they don't know where it is or how to get it. In short, the only thing they can do is sit around like morons hoping to get a lucky break.

I always hate it when this sort of thing happens. You had exactly the same situation in the seventh season of Buffy. The Hero clearly hasn't got a fucking clue what they are doing, and one of their companions finally snaps (often as a result of having seen half their friends die, or having been forced to hide in a tent eating wild mushrooms as a result of the hero's blatant incompetence) and calls them on it. Then the hero is all "you've got to have faith, you've got to believe in what we're doing!" and the friend is all "but this is completely and totally stupid, the only hope we have is to be saved by authorial fiat." And then the hero says "well if you feel like that you'd better leave", then the friend leaves. Then authorial fiat comes along and presents the hero with all the answers which they were manifestly incapable of acquiring of their own accord, and the friend has to slink back and admit that the hero was right all along.

It's awful, and it's always awful. It's bad writers trying to excuse bad writing by pretending that their failure to give their characters adequate motivation to undertake a course of action is really their character having Faith in something Greater Than Themselves.

So Ron Disapparates out of the Tent Of Pointlessness, and I sincerely wish I could go with him.

Chapter Sixteen: Godric's Hollow

In which Potter very briefly gets off his arse.

Ron has left. Harry is all cut up about this. Hermione is even more cut up about it because she is worried that if he doesn't get back they won't be able to get married and give their children stupid names.

Early on in this chapter, I had to wonder whether JK was actually taking the piss, when I stumbled across the following:

He was staggered, now, to think of his own presumption in accepting his friends' offers to accompany him on this meandering, pointless journey.

I mean, seriously. That's a joke, right. That's JK Rowling tacitly admitting that the first two hundred and fifty seven pages of her book have been a complete waste of everybody's time and energy.

Finally, they seize on the nearest thing they have to a clue, which is to go to Godric's Hollow in the hope that they can meet somebody who can point them in the right direction.

They spend approximately a month planning this little jaunt, collecting the hair of random strangers so that they can Polyjuice themselves again, and learning to Apparate together under the invisibility cloak. Much as I appreciate these little details, I'd be completely happy to take them as read.

So they piffle around looking at graves, and we finally get to see where James and Lily are buried. There's also an honest-to-God Potter statue in the middle of the square, and we find that the former Potter residence has been preserved as a shrine for all eternity so that nobody forgets what happened there.

I really wanted to find those scenes touching. Honestly I did. But it's book seven for crying out loud, and Harry has only just gone back to Godric's Hollow? On top of this, the whole thing contributes to the massively mixed messages we get about the Wizarding World's attitude towards Harry. We've spent the past three books having pretty much the whole of wizarding society shun Harry on a variety of ropey pretexts (the latest being "the Daily Prophet says he killed Dumbledore"), so to have this vast memorial to his triumph and his parents' sacrifice is actually rather jarring.

Anyway, the ... well Duo, I suppose they are now ... dick around in Godric's hollow for a bit. In the next chapter they meet Bathilda Bagshot.

Chapter Seventeen: Bathilda's Secret

In which we find out no information of any importance.

The title of this chapter is "Bathilda's Secret". Now I had vainly hoped that "Bathilda's Secret" would be some of this goddamned Dumbledore backplot which JK has been waving in my face for the past two hundred and seventy pages. No such luck.

Bathilda's Secret, in case you were wondering is "she's dead, and there's a gigantic fucking snake living in her animated corpse."

There's actually precious little to say about this chapter. H&H meet Bathilda Bagshot, she acts really, really, really creepy. Like she's an animated corpse with a giant snake inside her, in fact. She lures them into her home, which smells of piss and dead women with snakes inside them. Then she lures Harry upstairs, where she turns into Nagini and tries to kill him.

Or rather, not to kill him, but to hold him until Voldemort shows up, so that the Dark Lord can kill him personally.

I'm going to go off on another tangent now, and rant for a bit about how utterly fucking annoying this is. Voldemort would have won his war in eight seconds flat, bent the Wizarding world to his will, triumphed over all resistance, danced on the grave of Albus Dumbledore, achieved immortality and subjugated mugglekind with ease if he had just been willing to let go of the whole "I have to be the one to kill Harry Potter" thing.

I wouldn't mind so much, but there is absolutely no reason given for Voldemort's stubborn insistence that he "has to be the one" to kill Potter or, for that matter, Potter's stubborn insistence that he "has to be the one" to defeat Voldemort. Everybody just seems to take it for granted that only Harry can beat Voldemort, only Voldemort can beat Harry. And I know that there's the "prophecy" but for fuck's sake. Prophecies are cool when people hear them, set out to defy them, and fail. They are not cool when people hear the prophecy and say: "Oh my god! A Prophecy! I must immediately and unthinkingly do exactly what it says! Which also just happens to be the thing which most directly furthers the hackneyed plot of the quest the author has decided I'm supposed to be on."

Voldemort gets closer, and Harry starts seeing into his mind again, but now Voldemort is reliving his murder of Harry's parents. This flashback takes three pages and tells us literally nothing that we do not already know. It does, however, give us some insights into Voldemort's mono-dimensional non-personality, with lines like:

...how stupid they were, and how trusting, thinking that their secret lay in friends, that weapons could be discarded even for moments...

Do you see. Because Voldemort can't understand love. Because he's completely incapable of any human feeling whatsoever. Another thing that hacks me off about Voldemort is the fact that JK seems on the one hand to want us to view him as something utterly inhuman, a creature devoid of compassion or emotion, a heartless monster that kills at random, but on the other hand wants us to view him as somehow similar to Harry, the hero with whom we are supposed to sympathise. She shows us that he and Harry have vaguely similar personal histories, that they are connected on a variety of levels, and keeps having Dumbledore say things like "It is our choices, Harry, which define us". But Voldemort never makes a "choice" to do evil, or at least not a meaningful choice. Voldemort does evil because if he did not, there would be no book. He walks on stage a psychopath, and he dies a psychopath. His actions gain him nothing, and cost him everything. He plays the villain because Rowling wants him to. He has no personality, no identity, no goals beyond those dictated by the plot. All the effort Rowling puts into "developing" his "character" in books six and seven only highlights this fact.

So Voldemort shows up and fails to kill Harry Potter. Again.

Shoot me. Shoot me now.

Chapter Eighteen: The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore

In which we are expected to give a shit about Dumbledore's lame-ass backstory.

While Godric's Hollow turned out to be a bust, Hermione did manage to swipe a copy of The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore, Rita-Skeeter's tell-all biography of the lovable old plot device.

Blah blah dark past blah blah Grindelwald blah blah world conquest blah blah greater good.

Long story short: Dumbledore spent approximately three months on good terms with the Dark Wizard Grindelwald, during which time they concocted some typically teenage plans about how it would ... like ... be totally radical if ... like ... Wizards took over the world because ... like ... look at how fake and commercial everything was. Or something. It's cheap and unconvincing and really not that shocking at all. It's sort of like discovering that Churchill once met Hitler at a party in 1921.

What makes all of this even more risible is the timeline involved. According to the information provided by JK Rowling, Dumbledore is about 150 when the books take place. Given that he met Grindelwald when they were both eighteen, this puts their Summer O' Evil at around eighteen fifty-something. Dumbledore, of course, eventually defeated Grindelwald in nineteen forty-five. Nearly a hundred years later. Either Grindelwald was in power for a really long time, or else he didn't come to power for nearly a century after he met old Albus. Either way, it seems a bit pointless to hold Dumbledore responsible for the actions taken in 1940 by a man he met in 1860.

Harry, of course goes off the deep end, and Hermione, of course, tries to point out that things aren't as awful as they seem.

"He changed, Harry, he changed! It's as simple as that! Maybe he did believe those things when he was seventeen, but the whole of the rest of his life was devoted to fighting the Dark Arts!"

Harry doesn't seem to be able to get his head around this idea, and for once I can't entirely blame him for it. After all, there isn't one single character in the entire Harry Potter series who has shown any meaningful development between their arrival at Hogwarts and their death. Riddle was always a psycho, Sirius was always a wild card, Lily was always an angel and so on. So Harry can, in fact, be entirely forgiven for assuming that Dumbledore's personality was set in stone by the age of eighteen.

I wish I could say that we had now finally got the Dumbledore backstory out of the way. But no.

Chapter Nineteen: The Silver Doe

In which it turns out that Ron's attack of sanity was really black magic.

For some reason, we are supposed to associate the "Silver Doe" with Lily Potter. I'm not sure why. Okay, so James was a stag. Does Lily have no identity of her own?

Oh wait. Never mind then.

Anyway, Harry and Hermione are still sitting in the Procrastination Tent. Harry, keeping watch, thinks he hears something outside. Then he catches a glimpse of the Silver Doe of the title, and decides to dash off into the dark after it.

Now even JK Rowling, who usually doesn't bother to justify her characters' moronic decisions, seems to have realised that dashing out into the night, away from their magically protected tent and into an unknown darkness where absolutely anything could be waiting for them, so she gives us another one of her trademark "no this totally makes sense" lines:

Caution murmured: it could be a trick, a lure, a trap. But instinct, overwhelming instinct, told him that this was not Dark Magic.

So that's okay then. If you know something might be a trap, it's okay to walk blindly into it.

The Silver Doe (which we are supposed to associate with Lily Potter because she was nothing more than James Potter's woman) leads Harry to a lake, which has the Sword of Gryffindor at the bottom. I shit you not.

I've seen people on the internet actually praising Rowling for the "symbolism" of this scene. Newsflash kids: ripping scenes off from famous myths isn't symbolism, it's just lazy. It's a sword in a lake, which is only there because somebody sent it to Harry, because the little fucktard would otherwise be completely incapable of destroying any of the damned Horcruxes.

So Harry takes off all of his clothes and dives into the frozen lake, but the Horcrux around his neck tries to strangle him (which it should really have done earlier, thinking about it). He is rescued by the timely re-arrival of Ron, who saves Harry, retrieves the Sword of Gryffindor, and then explains that he was only making consistent, cogent points about how completely fucked they all were, and how Harry didn't know what the hell he was doing, because the Horcrux was doing a One Ring on him.

So they're all reconciled, and Harry tells Ron that he is supposed to be the one to destroy the locket. Seriously, everybody in this entire book should just get the hell over all the "supposed to be" shit. Voldemort won't let his minions kill Harry, because he's "supposed" to do it, Harry can't ask for help defeating Voldemort because he's "supposed" to do it himself, and now apparently Ron is "supposed" to destroy the locket. What. The. Fuck?

So Harry opens the locket by speaking Parseltongue, and in one of the book's three moments of almost possessing merit, we see that Tom Riddle's original eyes are staring out of the two halves of the locket (I like to think that the Cup of Helga Hufflepuff contains his original nose).

Then the locket starts pulling a bunch of annoying "Hermione doesn't love you" shit to freak Ron out, which would be somewhat more effective if JK Rowling had made Ron/Hermione (or indeed any romantic relationship, or indeed any relationship at all) remotely convincing. Ron stabs the locket in they eyes, and they all go home.

They get back to the Inactivity Tent, and Hermione's all like "Ron, you absolute bastard, I'm going to kick the shit out of you and then bang your brains out." Then Ron explains that he managed to find them because the Deluminator, as well as being able to switch lights out, also lets you find your way back to your friends after you ditch them in the middle of their epic quest.

Say it with me now: What the fuck?

You see, it's shit like this that led a small number of people to believe that Dumbledore had to be from the future. I mean foresight is one thing, but are you seriously telling me that when he created the Deluminator, however many decades ago that was, he thought to himself "hey, I'd better install a 'be able to find your way back to your friends for no readily explicable reason' function as well, because one day in the next century, three young wizards might be on a quest to destroy Voldemort's Horcruxes, and one of them might leave, and need to find his way back."

And it's shit like this that makes me really hate JKR's attempt to make Dumbledore into a "complex" character in this book. You simply can't have it both ways. Either he's a real human person who makes mistakes, or he's the infallible plot god who is so wise, so possessed of absolute foresight, that he manages to predict correctly that Ron will fall under the influence of the Locket Horcrux, leave the quest, want to return, and be unable to do so because Harry and Hermione are travelling the country in a magically protected tent.

Seriously, if the guy is smart enough to do that, why the hell wasn't he smart enough to - say - track down Voldemort's Horcruxes during the ten years in which he was incorporeal, or to twig much sooner that Grindelwald was probably evil, or to not get horribly cursed trying to use the Resurrection Stone (of which more later).

Dumbledore is infallible when he needs to do something amazing to advance the plot, but All Too Human when Rowling wants to impress us with how layered and complex her characters are.

I've used the phrase "fucking hack" before, haven't I.

Chapter Twenty: Xenophilius Lovegood

In which we miss Luna Lovegood like crazy.

Here Hermione basically turns into a D&D player again, and spins out a line of logic which boils down to "hey, when we were at the wedding, the GM told us that Xenophilius Lovegood was wearing this symbol on his chest. He wouldn't have told us that if it wasn't important, right, we should totally go investigate this Xeno guy."

So they do.

They arrive at Chez Lovegood, and Ron is all "oh no, I am near my home but am not going there" and Harry is all "oh no, I am near Ginny but have no chance of getting a decent blow job".

It takes them fucking ages to ask Xenophilus about the symbol on his chest, and then Rowling does that gimmicky "end the chapter on the sentence you should probably have started the damned thing on" trick with:

"Are you referring to the sign of the Deathly Hallows?"

We're on page 328. For comparative purposes, the original Philosopher's Stone (UK Edition) ended on page 223, Chamber of Secrets on 251, and Prisoner of Azkaban on page 317. So you could read the whole of the first book and half of the second in the time it's taken us to get to the goddamned title of this one.

Chapter Twenty-One: The Tale of the Three Brothers

In which JK apes fairy-tales and fails.

So there are these three brothers who meet Death, and he offers each of them a gift, but really he's trying to fuck them over. So the first one asks for an unbeatable wand, and gets himself killed. The second one asks for a stone that can raise the dead, and drives himself to suicide. The third one, realising that Death is probably a fuck, asks for a way to get the hell out of there without Death following him, so he gets an invisibility cloak.

That's the story of the three brothers, and the Elder Wand, the Resurrection Stone, and the Invisibility Cloak together comprise the Deathly Hallows. Which is a stupid, stupid, stupid name for them. I mean seriously: "Hallows"? It's almost as bad as the "younglings" in Revenge of the Sith.

So anyway, Harry is all "these things totally exist, we should totally ditch our current quest to go look for them" and Hermione is all "these things totally don't exist, we should totally not ditch our current quest to go look for them" and Ron is all "these things might or might not exist, and I don't know whether we should ditch our current quest to go look for them or not."

Bets on the Hallows being real, everybody?

Anyway, the story of the Three Brothers is quite nice stylistically, but the actual content bugs me. As ever, my new favourite character Ron says it best:

"Nah, that story's just one of those things you tell kids to teach them lessons, isn't it? 'Don't go looking for trouble, don't pick fights, don't go messing around with stuff that's best left alone! Just keep your head down and mind your own business and you'll be OK."

In the "Tale of the Three Brothers," the ones who wind up dead are the ones who try to actually achieve something with their "Hallows". The last brother, the one who makes it through, the one we are supposed to admire, is the one who spends his entire life sitting under an invisibility cloak doing nothing.

I've already pointed out how passive Harry is, how he just reacts to things, how he doesn't have a consistent plan. I've complained about the fact that he's basically spent this entire book sitting in a tent doing nothing, but it becomes increasingly apparent through the book that JK Rowling views inactivity as a virtue and ambition as a sin. The implied morality of all this makes me genuinely uncomfortable, but I think I'll come back to that after I've finished the main article.

Anyway, having had the plot dump, it transpires that the Death Eaters have captured Luna, and that her father has bargained Potter to them for her return. Everybody panics, but our happy band manage to escape because - as Xeno seems to have failed to realise - they can fucking teleport.

The final thing I want to mention in this chapter touches on JK Rowling's dubious morality once again.

During the getaway, they make a big thing about how Hermione puts Ron under the invisibility cloak, not Harry. The idea here is that she wants the Death Eaters to see that Harry really was there, so that they don't think Xeno Lovegood was betraying them.

That's actually really nice, but it's spoiled by this little sequence:

Xenophilius' paper-white face appeared over the top of the sideboard. "Obliviate!" cried Hermione.

So she's gone to all that trouble to stop the Death Eaters hurting him, only to erase his brain anyway. Nice.

Chapter Twenty-Two: The Deathly Hallows

In which we are: Still. Sitting. In. A. Fucking. Tent.

Abso-fucking-lutely nothing-at-fucking-all happens in this chapter.

Seriously.

Harry gets obsessed with the Hallows, he realises that Voldemort is probably after the Elder wand, and they listen to a completely pointless radio broadcast.

They have no plan, no idea what to do or where to go.

Gee, wouldn't it be convenient if they got captured so that the Death Eaters could accidentally let slip the location of one of the Horcruxes.

What's that you say, JK? Harry said Voldemort's name, even though he knows that it will bring the wrath of the Dark Lord down upon him? And they've been captured? And they're going to Malfoy Manor?

No shit.

Chapter Twenty-Three: Malfoy Manor

In which Harry survives by dumb luck yet again.

So after Harry totally fucked up for about the millionth time in his career, and the Trio get captured by a band of "snatchers", one of which is Fenrir Greyback.

Hermione, in a flash of competence otherwise unheard of in this series, blasts Harry with a spell to make his face swell up so the Snatchers won't recognise him. Shame about that massively distinctive scar really, isn't it.

Incidentally, part of me wonders why the Voldemort-Taboo spell, supposedly implemented by Death Eater Central, is alerting random bands of snatchers instead of genuine Death Eaters. Fenrir might wear the robes, but he isn't allowed the Mark, because he's a filthy half-breed, so they have to haul Harry and Co back to Malfoy Manor in order to deliver him to the Dark Lord personally. Of course the Dark Lord isn't there, he's in - like - Albania or somewhere looking for the Elder Wang.

So our heroes, such as they are, get taken back to Malfoy Manor, and introduced to the Malfoy family, in the various persons of Narcissa, Bellatrix, and Draco (who shows a rather touching moment of being not-totally-evil when he is reluctant to formally identify Team Potter).

Bellatrix - again proving herself to be the only Death Eater with half a brain or any balls - recognises the Sword of Gryffindor, which she of course believes to be still in her family Vault. She totally freaks out at this, and thereby tips off Harry to the possibility of one of the other Horcruxes being in the vault. This is actually well done. Bellatrix reacts reasonably and sensibly, and Harry draws a logical conclusion, without having somebody else spell things out for him.

Anyway, Bellatrix decides to torture Hermione to find out what the Potterites know (again, the only Death Eater with any balls or half a brain), then she throws Harry into the World's Most Pathetic Dungeon.

In the World's Most Pathetic Dungeon we find Luna, Ollivander, and some other minor characters who I'm too bored to mention right now. Harry is tied up, but fortunately they have an old piece of nail, which makes short work of any pesky ropes you might happen to have lying around.

So while Hermione is being tortured (incidentally: bets on this hideous torment having any influence on her personality whatsoever? Bingo) Harry escapes his bonds through Luna's broken-nail-fu. He digs through the mokeskin bag which Hagrid gave him (it was a birthday present, nobody can take things out of it except the owner. Why nobody just took it off him I don't know). Fortunately, he remembered to pack the sliver of broken glass from that mirror thing that Sirius gave him. Good thing that. He has a flash of Dumbledore's eye, and calls for help.

He's a man of action, that Harry Potter.

So Dobby the house-elf shows up to rescue him. It really is a fucking curtain-call isn't it. Dobby Appartes out with Luna, Ollivander, and some other minor character, but the commotion caused by all this has attracted the attention of the Death Eaters, who send Peter Pettigrew (who for some reason everybody now calls by his boyhood nickname of "Wormtail") down to investigate).

Ron and Harry jump Pettigrew, who fights back like a good'un, using his Evil Silver Hand to throttle the life out of Harry. Harry reminds Peter that he (Harry) saved his (Pettigrew's) life back in book three, and wasn't it time for some payback. So, in a sequence that makes no sense, Wormtail's silver hand releases Harry, and then turns on its owner, choking him to death. Now I think the implication here is that the Silver Hand, being Totally Evil, was punishing Pettigrew for showing mercy, but that seems a little harsh, since the Death Eaters are all under explicit instructions not to kill Potter anyway.

So Ron and Harry burst upstairs to rescue Hermione. The battle goes exactly the same way as every other fight between hardened Dark Wizards and underage schoolchildren.

During this scuffle, Harry yanks a bunch of wands out of Draco's hand. This is an act of Profound Mystical Significance, for reasons which will be explained later.

Anyway, they fight, they bite, they fight they fight they bite, and then Dobby shows up for the final rescue. Now he should have been able to manage that in about eight seconds flat. He's a house elf, he can teleport even inside Hogwarts. He's got magic the like of which the Death Eaters cannot comprehend.

But this is the final book, and JK Rowling is a serious author who is sending a real message about death and the importance of being a passive whiny bitch, so of course Dobby can't do that. Instead he has to stand around making a speech for exactly long enough for Bellatrix to shove her dagger through his skinny little chest.

This would have been kind of touching, but seriously, all Dobby had to do was to get in, get out, and not bother with the big "you must not hurt Harry Potter" routine and he would have been fine.

So Dobby dies. His actual death is one of the most godawfully crappy bits of writing I've read since, well, since last chapter I suppose.

The elf's eyes found him, and his lips trembled with the effort to form words. "Harry ... Potter ..." And then with a little shudder the elf became quite still, and his eyes were nothing more than great, glassy orbs sprinkled with light from the stars they could not see.

Get your Great Glassy Orbs off me you damn dirty house elf!

On a side note, deaths so far: Charity Burbage, Hedwig, Mad-Eye, Dobby, Ted Tonks.

So of five fatalities, that's two completely unimportant characters, and three utter cheap shots. Way to go you cold, callous killer you.

Next: The exciting conclusion. The fucking awful epilogue.

Themes:

J.K. Rowling

Books

Young Adult / Children

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Arthur B

at 15:03 on 2007-08-01She's gone on record as saying that the fairy tale is based on the Pardoner's Tale, hasn't she?

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http://carojen.livejournal.com/

at 16:42 on 2009-07-10I agree with most of what you have written; pointing out the few instances of good writing really makes the rest look bad in comparision.

it becomes increasingly apparent through the book that JK Rowling views inactivity as a virtue and ambition as a sin.

Not to mention that it is Slytherin, the house of _ambition_, that is portrayed as evil throughout the series. At least she doesn't give us conflicting messages. :meh

By the way, Dumbledore was born in 1881, according to Word of God, but that revelation was probably after this was written.

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Dan H

at 22:51 on 2009-07-10At time of writing, I'm pretty sure the WoG on Dumbledore's age was "about a hundred and fifty".

Assuming he was hanging out with Grindelwald in his school days, that still puts his Nazi era more than a hundred years before the present day of the Potterverse, and a clear forty-year gap between the Grindelwald Reich and the Summer of Evil.

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https://me.yahoo.com/a/tjLTVHEducFb4rKDHU5DukBHtQcCbTVMEEq55v0CxV4-#5e156

at 20:24 on 2009-07-29Very good idea about fanfiction challenges, especially with regards to chapter one. Why does JKR through Ron draw meticulous attention to how badly written the book is? I suppose because her fortune had already been made. And she does send out some massively mixed messages doesn't she? So it's OK by her to zombify your parents and friend's parents without a second thought...

#Ferretbrain #Harry Potter #Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows #J.K. Rowling #Dan H

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bellsyblue · 7 years

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star wars the last jedi spoilers ahead

I went to see the film as part of a work function tonight (ty Jesus) and I need to get some stuff out of my system bc I can’t discuss with my housemate until she sees it tomorrow, so --

No real structure, just streaming it out.

The most important thing this film showed me was that Leia learned how to use the Force. It was beautiful. The universe that opened up retrospectively when she pulled herself out of the space wreckage to safety (let’s ignore the plausibility of surviving that for a second). I thought of Luke and Leia, fresh off their victory over Palpatine, bonding in the quiet safety of Leia’s senatorial apartments, Luke patiently talking his sister through the ideas of the Force; to quiet, listen and trust her feelings. Imagining her excitement and the joy on his face when she makes that datapad tremble on her desk, the first time she actively reaches out and senses him through the Force, the way they would laugh together the first time they test it on Han and freak him out. Imagining the euphoria of sharing something that’s just between them.

That moment Leia saved herself using the Force shone a beacon on a beautiful past of potential and I think that sustained me through the whole movie.

Thank god.

Because I have not facepalmed so hard nor so often since I had to watch Anakin and Padme “fall in love”.

I am sympathetic to the fact this film had to find its feet in the unexpected wake of Carrie’s death, but WHY DOES THIS FRANCHISE HAVE A 1/3 SUCCESS RATE IN WRITING BELIEVABLE ROMANCE???

On one hand, it’s a good day for you if you’re a Reylo shipper. On the other hand, it was like watching 6/10 fanfiction play out to a rushed pace. Finn and Rose were cute together but even their dynamic felt too fast. The flirtation between Poe and the Vice Admiral. Why so many close-ups??? Also, the Han/Luke shipper in me was mad that Luke didn’t already know Han was dead, but sure he closed himself off to the Force, so he was behind on the news.

the author acknowledges her impressions were exacerbated being forced to sit three rows from the screen

As this film played out, it sounded like it was written straddling the fourth wall: in some ways too aware of its meta wish list and headcanons from the audience, fandom in-jokes, and performing as an echo of the Empire Strikes Back (once was enough with TFA, but again??? seriously?) and Return of the Jedi mashed together “with a twist”.

I waited two years for this film. I read and discussed so much about its potential with so many fans, I think it was bound to fall short of my expectations.

I was really heartbroken when I found myself wishing the movie would just end. It felt way too long. I had waited two years to see Poe, Finn and Rey (okay and Kylo the human disaster) again.

Everything was so rushed. Characters were introduced in a rush. The editing felt rushed. In critical moments where you needed to linger, let the gravity of dialogue or exchange sink in, process who we had just met and why we should care about them, we were instead thrust onto more characters, more spectacle, it was all spilling out faster than Vice Admiral engaging light speed through an entire First Order fleet. Bringing Benicio del Toro in like a passing ship in the night, a darker, shallower tribute to Han Solo’s archetype (don’t bring him back and redeem him, please, you failed to make me care about him, it’s tired and I cbf sitting through that). Bringing back my beautiful Phasmum for two minutes of nothing just to kill her properly. Wtf, film, wtf.

I found myself really hoping Rey would join Kylo, just for something different to untangle in the third film. Let Rey realise too soon what a stupid choice she’s made, but also wrangle with that commitment she’s made, following that dumb instinct that made her seek and have faith in Kylo. I don’t believe the film is done with those two yet.

“I can feel the conflict in you--” Omg every other time a force user opened their mouth in this film, I just wished to end my hearing. This kind of writing flew thirty years ago, but not today, ad verbatim.

I was actually enjoying the moments Rey called him “Ben” and he didn’t flinch, when they were finally fighting back-to-back, and I was like, “Okay, this has potential, the penultimate light and dark come together, now rule together and muddle your way through your problematic commitment, please, that would make fair drama.”

I like that Rey’s parents were revealed to be nobody of worthy note in the “legacy” of the Star Wars universe. I like the message that the greatest hope of a warrior could come from humble beginnings.

I liked that we discovered what really happened with Ben and Luke, and what really sealed Ben’s decision to go dark side. I like that the story made Ben and Luke both share the blame for this. Luke got lost in the airs of his own legend, and Ben had many chances since then to turn back. It’s still shit Snoke clearly got to him young and was manipulating him from a young age; but that doesn’t excuse the shitty things he’s doing by today’s events. He’s a survivor of abuse and sadly, it’s warped his capacity to make rational decisions that take courage by the average person’s measure.

I liked the moment Yoda and and Luke were reunited. Yoda has a levity we often see in older people who have all the perspective, but no fucks left to give. Threaten to burn the foundations of your religion? The old codgers will always call your bullshit. These kind of people bring you back down to earth for #realtalk.

This film smacked of some of the problems I suffered in Justice League, it rarely let people connect as real people with all the awkwardness, tentativeness and vulnerability we often have. Everyone was charging ahead. Everyone was so sure of themselves, even when they were supposedly crying, heartbroken or scared. That moment when Rose’s unnamed sister dropped the bombs and clutched her amulet, and we lingered on her face in slow motion as she closed her eyes? One of the best moments.

War and resistance are fucking scary, exhausting and heartbreaking. This is why I maintain Rogue One is still one of the best films of the film franchise, because it was on the ground where the highest costs were being paid. In war, most people don’t have the means or luxury of fucking off to an isolated planet to nurse the agony of our failure. We have to stick around and muddle through, take actions that compromise our morals and break our hearts in the process, and it fucking sucks (read: Cassian Andor).

I like that everyone in the First Order looked stressed and unglamorous af in comparison to the Force Awakens. I cracked up the moment I saw the shadows under Hux’s eyes, leaned over to my boss and was like, “Yo, that’s my bro, he’s wearing our look.” And seriously, compare Kylo’s unmasking scene in TFA to TLJ. In TLA, they took serious care to unmask him as beautifully, coiffed and confidently as possible. When his mask comes off in TLJ, the camera is tight to his face, showing the blotched complexion of his exhaustion, nervous sweat, his pores and moles and scars, he’s raggedy ann. As Snoke throws in his face, killing his father split him down the middle and he’s never been more conflicted.

I really liked the showdown between Kylo and Luke. I like that Luke apologised for failing him, that Kylo is so far gone in his rage of Rey deserting him, of being alone at last, that Kylo was unmoved. I like how the film says goodbye to Luke, and that Leia lives on at the end.

Farewell, Space Princess. You will forever be loved.

I give it a 6.5/10. But you bet your ass I’m going to see it tomorrow again with the friends anyway, and finish Close the Circuit because now I have enough lore answered to make up my own version.

I look forward to sitting back with enough vantage to actually appreciate Poe Dameron’s beautiful face. Incidentally, this was v insightful for Poe’s character. I’ve given him too much credit as a level-headed commander. He’s way more willing to sacrifice lives than I expected. I understand that was his entire arc, but... the more you know.

#star wars #star wars the last jedi #spoilers #star wars tlj spoilers

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ruminativerabbi · 7 years

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Being Who We Are and Aren’t

What is Jewishness exactly? We talk about it regularly as though it were a heritable genetic trait of some sort, one that—for some reason—is solely passed down from mothers to their children. Indeed, even when people argue the point and try to make a case for patrilineality as a valid determinant of Jewishness, they are merely arguing along the same lines and insisting that “it,” whatever “it” actually is, can be passed along by men to their offspring as well. Of course, the fact that conversion is permitted seriously undermines the genetic argument: if we’re talking about something akin to DNA that you either do or don’t have, how can any behavioral or attitudinal factor override not having it? But, it turns out, that doesn’t mean that there isn’t any a genetic component to membership in the House of Israel…and therein hangs an interesting tale.

I read a remarkable story in the Washington Post last July about an Irish-American woman from Chicago, one Alice Plebuch, who took one of the various “just-for-fun” DNA tests available on the market because she wished to learn more about her father, who had died many years earlier, and about her father’s family. (You can read the article by clicking here. You can also visit the websites of three of the larger companies that offer this kind of service to the public by clicking here, here, and here.) The results, however, were not at all what she expected: about half her DNA results confirmed what she already knew about her descent from people who hailed from various regions within the British Isles, including Ireland, but the other half pointed to a combination of Eastern European Jewish and Middle Eastern ancestry. One of her parents was apparently not as Irish as she thought…but which one? That was what she now felt herself obliged to find out.

There were, of course, lots of possible explanations for the unexpected test results. One set of her grandparents could have been Jews from Eastern Europe who so totally shed their previous identity upon arriving in Ireland that just a generation later there was no trace at all of it, and no recollection on the part of anyone at all that they had ever been anything other than “just” Irish. Alternately, one of her grandmothers could possibly have had an extra-marital affair and then simply allowed her husband to presume that he was the father of the child she subsequently bore. That, however, would have led to a quarter of her DNA being labelled as Jewish, not half. Could both her grandmothers have had affairs with Jewish men? Imagining such a thing about one of her grandmothers was hard enough, but about both felt wholly impossible. There had to be other some other plausible explanation!

Plebuch talked her brother into being tested, plus one cousin on her mother’s side of the family and another on her father’s side. Her test and her brother’s yielded the expected result indicating that their mother and father had to have been the same people. But the tests involving the cousins yielded one interesting piece of data and another that was truly confounding. The interesting information came from a comparison of the two cousins’ results and made it clear that the Jewish component in Alice Plebuch’s DNA came from her father’s side of the family. That was what she suspected anyway, but a far more amazing piece of information than that came from a comparison of her own DNA with that of one of her cousins, the son of her father’s sister, which effort yielded the categorical result that they had no blood relationship at all! In other words, reading her own DNA results against her cousin’s yielded the conclusion that her father and his sister were unrelated by blood.

I won’t describe the rest of the story in detail—although I really do recommend that Washington Post article as riveting reading—but the short version is that, after a lot of very detailed sleuthing, Alice Plebuch was able to conclude categorically that her father and another baby were switched at birth, or shortly after birth, at Fordham Hospital in the Bronx where they were both born on the same day of February in 1913. And she somehow managed to identify that other baby and to find his still-living daughter too, whom she felt honor-bound to inform that her father was an Irish Catholic at birth who was simply raised as a Jew by the Jewish people he came to know as his father and mother, neither of whom had any idea that they had brought home the wrong baby.

It sounds like the plot of a made-for-television movie—and not even that believable a one at that. And there surely are a lot of obvious questions to ask about how such a thing could ever occur in real life and who, if anyone, should be held accountable after all this time. But the question that the story raises that matters to me personally has to do with the nature of identity. The Irish Catholic baby brought home by a Jewish family turned into Philip Benson and was raised as a Jewish boy in a Jewish home, then grew up to become what any of us would call a Jewish man. Was he “really” Jim Collins, as the Jewish baby brought home by Irish Catholic parents and raised in their faith was known to the world? Was Jim Collins, the man Alice Plebuch knew as her father, “really” Philip Benson? Were both their lives essentially lies lived out against backgrounds that neither recognized as false but which were, historically and genetically, wholly untrue? Were they both essentially phantoms, men who were neither who they were or who they weren’t? It’s hard even to say what those questions mean, let alone to answer them cogently. Since there’s no reason to think that, had Alice’s grandparents brought the correct baby home from the hospital, that he would eventually have become would have ended up marrying Alice’s mother, Alice Plebuch’s very existence seems predicated on a mix-up that any normal person, other than her husband and her children and all her friends, would easily label a tragedy. Does that make her existence tragic? It’s sounds vaguely right to say that, but I’m not sure I could look her in the eye while I was saying it.

We all believe, or I think we do, that there are character traits that inhere in the shared genetic heritage of any recognizable group. Such talk often veers into tastelessness bordering on prejudice when we “assign” qualities, and usually negative ones, to people based on their race or ethnicity. But does that mean that there are no shared traits that the members of groups with a common genetic heritage all share? (And, if that is the case, then why should those shared traits be uniformly positive? Surely negative traits can also be shared!) But what is the precise boundary between identity and shared heritage, between the autonomy of the individual and the shared genetic heritage that inheres in that individual’s DNA? Surely, both concepts impinge upon each other. But in what specific way and to what precise extent—that is a far thornier riddle to solve.

From a Jewish perspective, the issue is even more complicated. The man the world knew as Jim Collins was born to a Jewish mother and so was, according to all Jewish authorities, a Jewish baby. The Talmud has a name for a child who is spirited away from his parents at birth, or shortly after birth, and raised without reference to his “actual” heritage: this is the famous tinok she-nishba of talmudic lore. Nor is this treated as a merely theoretical issue: the Talmud goes into considerable detail with respect to the specific laws that apply to such a Jewish individual raised in total ignorance of his or her Jewishness. Most of those discussions revolve around intricacies of halakhic obligation when a particular infraction is repeated over and over in the course of years or even decades by a Jewish individual who, unaware of his or her Jewishness, has no inkling that some specific deed is forbidden to him or her by the Torah. Such a person is technically a sinner, but our sages understood easily how wrong it would be seriously to attach that label to someone whose sins are completely inadvertent and who lacks even an inkling of his or her real status as a Jewish individual. The debates are interesting. But there is no debate at all about the Jewishness of the tinok she-nishba, just about the specific way the law should apply to such a person.

Was Jim Collins a tinok she-nishba? Labelling him that way would seem to oblige us to consider Philip Benson a non-Jew. When viewed dispassionately, that sounds almost reasonable, particularly since any rabbi could “solve” his predicament easily enough with a trip to the mikveh, a visit to the bet-din, and a few minutes with a mohel. But let’s imagine that the truth about Philip Benson never came out. Would we really consider it a tragedy for a man raised as a Jew from birth, circumcised on the eighth day of his life, provided throughout his childhood and adolescence with a Jewish education, the husband of a Jewish woman and the father of Jewish children—would it truly be a disaster if the truth about his “real” parentage never came out? Part of me thinks it would be. But another part can’t quite embrace that level of ex post facto harshness.

Most of the time, it’s probably wisest just to allow people to be whom they appear to be. Mostly, we already do this. When I walk into the Kotel plaza in Yerushalayim and join a minyan for Minchah, no one asks me if I am really a Jew, much less if I am really a man! I look like a man, so that’s good enough for them. I apparently look like a member of the House of Israel too…and that too is good enough even for the guys who hang out at the wall wearing their giant black hats. (I don’t push it, however, by also self-identifying as a Conservative rabbi.) Ultimately, we are all Jews by self-definition…and that, really, has to be the bottom line. Sometimes, real wisdom lies in stepping away from the fine print and being content just to read what people possessed of normal eyesight can see, and then leaving it at that.

Should I buy one of those DNA test kits and find out where my people really come from? I haven’t decided one way or the other. But if I do…I promise (maybe) to share the results with you in a subsequent letter.

#DNA #Jewish identity #matrilineality #patrilineality

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