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merakilyy · 4 years ago

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Lan Qiren is Not a Completely Terrible Parent + Bonus Headcanon

Some disorganized thoughts on Lan Qiren!

A lot of my thoughts on Lan Qiren come from a bilibili article breaking down what it means be be righteous (雅正) in accordance to the Lan Sect’s motto. The article is in Chinese so I’ll just sum up some of the major ideas first:

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~It fundamentally refutes the idea of Lan Wangji as the “black sheep” in the Lan Sect

~It assumes Cloud Recesses has a highly collective intrasect environment. Children are raised not just by the parents, but by the entire Sect.

~The Elders raised Wangji and saw him grew up and didn’t have the heart to hurt Wangji, even after he escaped with Wei Wuxian into the cave. Western fandom especially tends to see the elders as strict, conservative disciplinarians who are rigid in their beliefs to the point of hypocrisy. This meta refutes that. It’s unreasonable that Wangji, no matter how strong his cultivation, would be able to stand on his own against 33 seasoned cultivators. So, contrary to popular belief, the elders allowed Wangji to injure them so they would not have to harm a child of the Sect.

~Lan Sect rules are not about what is literally written, but the spirit of the rules. This also makes sense given that when you have 4000+ rules, some rules are bound to contradict one another. And, many rules are quite vague. Eg. “sneering for no reason is prohibited.” Where is the line that justifies sneering? There is none because the idea is not “don’t sneer for no reason,” the idea is “don’t be unnecessarily rude.” In many of the rules, there is room for interpretation and it is this process of interpretation that is valued over the literal inscription of the rules.

~Basically, they are not good people because of the rules. They are good people because they are good people. The rules guide them to make good judgement, but good judgement does not comes from following the rules to a T.

~So the function of 雅正 (to be righteous) is internal, not performative.

~It is this internal clarity that makes Gusu Lan “innocent” (the word used is 纯真; 纯/chun = pure, clarity, genuine, practised and 真/zhen = true, real, genuine, clear)

~There is also a long history of Lans being deviant and rebellious. In CQL, there is Lan Yi who invents guqin battle techniques. They are also the only Clan to have been led by a female cultivator. Qingheng-jun clearly went against orthodoxy by marrying a murderer, but still remained in Cloud Recesses. We’re going to set aside consent here because is a total other separate conversation, but his punishment is self-imposed, not enforced by the Sect. So there are a lot of rules, but they aren’t pedantic. There is leeway, as seen in Lan Yi, but only within reason, as demonstrated by Qingheng-jun.

~Like his ancestors, Wangji also deviated from the straightforward path but his sect accepted his unrepentant love for Wei Wuxian in the end.

~In the end, Wangji gets what he wants: to live with Wei Wuxian in Cloud Recess. But he only gets this because the elders and Lan Qiren allow him to.

~To allow Wei Wuxian to exist in Cloud Recesses, the Lan Sect has to be more inclusive than we typically see them as.

~Despite everything, Lan Wangji still wants to return to Cloud Recesses because it is home to him.

~This is also my favourite explanation of Jingyi’s Jingyi-ness. Rather than Wangji (and possibly Xichen) singlehandedly creating a space for Jingyi, that space already existed. Jingyi isn’t as much of a black sheep as people portray him as because you don’t grow into a Jingyi if everyone is constantly yelling at you to follow rules. CQL Jingyi is plenty sassy, even in front of Lan Qiren, and Jingyi isn’t stupid! He was born and raised in Cloud Recesses, he knows when he is pushing several of the rules and he knows that he has the leeway to do so, and that Lan Qiren will not stop him (within reason).

~”Be righteous” is how the Lan motto is translated in English, but it’s….not exactly what it is in Chinese.

~In modern Chinese, it’s 雅正. 雅/ya = elegance, graceful and 正/zheng = positive, correct, straight, just.

~Notice how the two parts of the motto contrast one another. Ya is outward, something that dictates how you act. Zheng is internal, determined by your actions and attitudes. Zheng is the foundation of Ya.

~As a related aside, the literary meaning of 雅正 is slightly different; it means to be correct and honest, and to welcome corrections to one’s shortcomings. The literary 雅 is to be proper。

~The meta ends with this beautiful line: 所谓的“雅正”，家族交出来，体雅是表象，心正才是更本。Now to ruin it in translation: “Each configuration of “righteousness,” as taught by the Sect, is outward physical elegance built on the foundation of a moral heart.”

~TLDR: Rebelliousness is a function of Gusu Lan, not an anomaly.

***

Onto some fun headcanons!

~Lan Qiren has personal issues with Wei Wuxian because of his mother, but he is more horrified by Wei Wuxian because Wei Wuxian has all this potential and then uses it to go down the heretial path?? Blaphemous. All that ability, all that work, only to throw it all away? Wei Wuxian is incredibly competent and Lan Qiren begrudgingly respects that competence. What he can’t stand is Wei Wuxian’s lackadaisical attitude towards his cultivation.

~In novel canon, Lan Qiren accepts Wangji and Wei Wuxian’s marriage. He definitely still has issues with Wei Wuxian for being a mass murderer, a demonic cultivator, for desecrating the dead, etc. Also for his general Wei Wuxian-ness. But Wei Wuxian is nothing is not incredibly competent and Lan Qiren eventually softens towards Wei Wuxian because of that competence. Once Wei Wuxian starts using that competence to be useful to the Sect and not just to be as annoying as possible, he gets Lan Qiren’s approval.

~Secretly, of course. Lan Qiren would qi deviate before saying nice about Wei Wuxian to his face.

~I totally wrote a fic on Lan Qiren publicly defending Wei Wuxian heheh

~Cloud Recesses is only so big and Lan Qiren can’t avoid Wei Wuxian, even if he is never trying to seek him out. Plus, Wei Wuxian has this way of being in the most inconvenient place at the most inconvenient time.

~We all agree Wei Wuxian is a terrible cook. But, is he a bad cook because he adds too much spice, or he is a bad cook because he’s a bad cook? He did manage to cook congee for the ducklings in Yi Cheng without any fatalities. so I’m inclined to believe the former.

~Lan Qiren definitely thinks Wei Wuxian is a terrible cook, especially after hearing about how Wei Wuxian burned a hole in a pot.

~But Wei Wuxian is Wei Wuxian and even if he can’t be trusted with spices (or anything remotely resembling seasoning), he can make plain congee just fine....after some practice

~Lan Qiren eats this congee and it’s a perfectly good congee. Ideal thickness, light taste, no spices, slides down the throat smoothly and pairs perfectly with his dried zhacai (pickled mustard; a super common Chinese side dish). He asks who made the congee, expecting it to be Sizhui. He chokes when he is told Wei Wuxian is the cook.

~Lan Qiren knows how to be a good parent in theory. He’s just terrible at putting it to practice.

~Jingyi’s parents, when he was still a terrible toddler wreaking havoc everywhere, went to Lan Qiren for desperate advice like “why is our child such a terrible Lan???”

~But Jingyi isn’t actually Lan Qiren’s kid so he actually gives good advice. “Give him a toy, he’ll tire himself out for his nap,” “Let him crawl around, just cover sharp objects and table corners,” and “give him a crushed peach as a reward for walking across the room”

~But he doesn’t know how to talk to Xichen or Wangji as family. He loves them both dearly – obviously he raised them, but they’re also good nephews!! Questionable taste in men aside, they are excellent nephews! He just doesn’t know how to talk to them outside of official sect business.

~Especially with Wangji, He kind of did declare Wangji’s husband a heretic, a traitor, was extra hard on Wei Wuxian as a student, Wangji for visiting Wei Wuxian. And there’s that whole discipline whip thing.

~Which, to be fair, did end up saving Wangji’s life. Raising his sword against Sect Elders and one’s own family is an act of treason punishable by execution. But Lan Qiren can’t just execute his own nephew….he has a heart, even if no one believes it

~33 discipline lashes from the discipline whip is very harsh and Lan Qiren won’t pretend otherwise. But he could gamble that Wangji’s core is strong enough to pull him through. Because the odds of a living, resentful Wangji is better than a dead Wangji.

~They never talk about this. There are a lot of things they don’t talk about.

~Even before, Lan Qiren isn’t a bad parent. He just has no idea how to put his ideas of parenting into practice. He knows what a good parent looks like, he just doesn’t know how to be one.

~So he hides behind the rules because the rules can’t go that wrong, right? Right???

~Lan Qiren is lowkey jealous of Wei Wuxian for knowing how to be affectionate. He definitely thinks Wei Wuxian is too open with his emotions, but he is envious that Wei Wuxian and Wangji are open to each other in a way that Lan Qiren never established with either nephew. They are loyal in the filial manner of juniors to their elders, but Lan Qiren isn’t exactly close to his nephews.

~In his ongoing attempt to be a better uncle, he ends up getting advice from Wei Wuxian about emotions.

~It’s not like he can go to anyone else. And, well. That congee was really good.

~Turns out Wei Wuxian can brew the perfect pot of tea, too.

~Offensive. That Wei Wuxian is so competent and the least emotionally repressed person in all of Cloud Recesses.

~Eventually, Lan Qiren begins to understand why Wangji is so attached to Wei Wuxian, even if he still can’t stand to be in the same room as Wei Wuxian for longer than 15 minutes.

~No matter how much he might no longer hate Wei Wuxian, he prefers their interactions in small doses and spaced out.

~But he does learn to bond with Wei Wuxian over cultivation theory. Annoyingly, Wei Wuxian is just too useful to continue to despise.

#mdzs #the untamed #mo dao zu shi #cql #lan qiren #meta meta meta

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captlok · 4 years ago

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Pacifism Isn’t A Character Trait

Or: MLK Day is Upon Us so Let Me Do You a Learn

Or: As An Aang Stan I Got a Bit Over-Zealous But Lemme Explain Why For A Hot Minute

Plus some History and Tumblr commentary that even non-ATLA fans can chew on

And by ‘hot minute’ I do mean this is going to be a long meta, so strap in. For those of you who just might be tuning into this debacle, I, a person who has not used Tumblr, much at all, except for the last half year, ran into some trouble.

If you wanna skip the whole TLDNR interpersonal stuffs and get straight to Why Aang is the Best Thing Since Sliced Bread, I will embolden the relevant parts, and italicize the crit of Korra, if you want that alongside.

I was excited that ATLA was seeing a resurgence due to the Netflix remake. I wasn’t even trying to apply any steep expectations for it. (learned not to do that the hard way with the last live action adaption, and to a much lesser extent, ATLOK, since it had good . . . elements, *ba dum tsshh*)

So, these are a couple aspects of the issue: (1) Even on the internet, I am extremely introverted and until recently mostly came for content, not socializing. My main online interactions thus far have been in forums and artist-to-artist on DA. Tumblr is still very strange to me because it splits up its ‘threads’ so you can’t see all the replies if a certain pattern of users responds in their own space. I’m not even 100% sure it’s in chronological order, and replies are not nested next to each other so you can look in the comments and someone will be replying to something you can’t see in that window. And also since it is a bizarre hybrid of a blogging system, posts are somehow considered ‘owned by’ or an ‘extension of’ OP in a way forum threads are not. (2) ATLOK was good in a cinematic and musical way, to be sure. It also had some good concepts. I can go into it just appreciating it for the worldbuilding and be somewhat satisfied. But the execution was terrible. I was on AvatarSpirit.Net for years, and If I had maintained my presence on ASN to current day and had gotten around to downloading their archive now that the forum is dead, I would include some links to other peoples’ detailed analyses on just how flawed both the plotting and Korra’s frustratingly flat learning curve was especially in the first two seasons. But, that is a task for another day, and only if people are interested.

No, what I’m addressing today, on the issue of Korra as a writing exercise, is how Mike and Bryan said specifically they wanted to make her ‘as opposite to Aang as possible’ and in so doing, muddied the central theme of the original ATLA series.

Now, again, I was mainly an art consumer for my first major round of ATLA fandom. Tumblr is an alien beast to me. But, after I write my first major Aang meta, talking about how amazing it is that he has the attitude he does, and how being content in the face of this overwhelming pain and suffering is an ONGOING PROCESS and an INTENTIONAL DECISION and not a simple PERSONALITY TRAIT, I start hearing that Aang gets a lot of hate from the fandom. Now this would be bad enough if it were merely people not liking his crowning moment of pacifism because they don’t understand the potential utility (I’ll elaborate on that in another post) or the ethics involved.

Aang is easily the most adult member of the Gaang. But he apparently gets hate for his few moments where he actually acts his age, a preteen, and maybe kisses a girl in a historical timeframe in which ‘consent’ discussions were probably nonexistent. Even in the present day, we are still practically drowned in movies that reinforce this kissing without asking trope. And even some female bodied people complain that asking kills the mood! But somehow he is responsible and reprehensible for this, even though the first time she kissed him back. I’m only going to get into the pacifism discussion today, but that was just another layer of annoyance bouncing around in the back of my head. Other peoples’ crit of Korra that was stewing in my subconscious, plus this Aang bashing, which thankfully I had not directly read much of, made up the backdrop of gasoline for the match that set it off. Even that seems a pretty melodramatic way to phrase what I actually said, which was: Aang, on the other hand, lost dozens of father figures and was being steamrolled by Ozai who was gloating about genocide TO HIS FACE, yet he still reigned in all that quote, ‘unbelievable rage and pain’ (The Southern Raiders). We Stan Aang, the Superior Avatar. No I did not f**king stutter. #AangSupremacy In another meta, someone complained that I was too defensive of Aang as a character and didn’t apply literary analysis enough, which I quickly rectified.

What set this off? Someone was kind of indirectly praising the line from Korra, “When I get out of here, none of you will survive” To them it was emotionally resonant or whatever, and I have to point out that no, it was a martial artist not having control of their state of mind, as is the bedrock of the practice. It was never addressed by the narrative, which is a severe oversight. I had a conversation with someone in the chats, making this distinction between Korra’s character traits and life��philosophy. If she were to kill people while enraged and she was fine with that, that’s one thing. But if she regretted it, that’s a whole other kettle of fish. People argue that she comes from a warrior culture, unlike Aang.

Never mind that warrior monks are a thing. That’s what Shaolin monks are. You can be a pacifist and skilled at fighting. Those things are not mutually exclusive, which is the whole point of Bagua, Aang’s style. And also, Katara’s style.

That’s one reason I like Kataang so much- their congruent styles. Both of their real world martial arts are dedicated to pacifism, even though ATLA specifically doesn’t spell that out for Katara and her learning arc.

There was a meta where someone briefly tried to argue that knowing “martial arts” is against pacifism. No. Quite the opposite. I’d argue that you are not a true pacifist unless you know exactly how to handle yourself if someone attacks you. If you are not in a position to make conscious decisions about how much force to use, rather than merely operating on survival instincts, that is not pacifism. Or at least, not any energy or effort towards pacifism as a practical everyday tool. I’ve made a few attempts to learn some tai chi and aikido, and it’s improved my physical and mental health, but some other things have gotten in the way. #lifegoals

I’m not going to tag the unfortunate soul whom I was replying to, because they’re probably tired of all this, but I’ll be sending them a PM to say that I’ve made this into a different post, because as I mentioned before, threads are somehow considered “owned” by OP, so it’s been pointed out to me that I should separate it. I also said, I have basically ZERO respect for Korra uttering violent threats when the writers already minted a far more emotionally devastated and yet still resilient and centered character earlier in their franchise. People always try to excuse away people who genuinely like Aang more. As if it’s just nostalgia or whatever. For me, no, it’s absolutely not. It is respect for a character who stands toe to toe with real people who are kind in the face of overwhelming injustice. (I have another meta on that).

Both OP and people in the chats try to make excuses that she wasn’t raised as a pacifist, and that would be fine if they had addressed it with Tenzin and she had stated outright that she was rejecting pacifism and mind training. As it is, we are left with this nebulous affair where the lines between ideology and personality traits are blurred.

We are told she “has trouble with spirituality” but what does that even mean? Does she have trouble with focus? Does she have trouble relating to the canonically real spirits? And pacifism specifically nor inner peace that it flows from is never even talked about as an extension of spirituality, which is canonically tied to airbending.

“Aang didn't have to deal once with the loss of his autonomy in atla” OP claims.

This was after I had noted that Aang was getting kicked around by Ozai and was most likely going to die. Similarly, someone in the chat rejected the idea that a 12 year old trapped in a stone sphere that is heating up under a cyclone-sized blowtorch feels powerless.

Sorry but that’s flat out ridiculous.

No one wants to admit that both of these people were faced with similar situations, and when push came to shove, one showed his LIFE PHILOSOPHY through conscious effort, and the other was abandoning the basis of martial arts, which is, no matter what the situation, keep thinking. Hold the panic at bay. Non-attachment would have served her well in this situation. Tenzin should have told her this. Before, or afterwards. It should have been addressed in the writing.

People see this as “bashing” Korra, and oh well, can’t help that. If I think the writers didn’t follow through on their themes, that is my concern. OP said I was “offended.” No, not really.

I wasn’t offended by the post itself, or its commentary. Thought I made that pretty clear.

This is not dramatics. Let me be blunt.

As a ideological pacifist, and an actual practitioner of meditation, based on Buddhism, NOT just the fan of some show, I am for calling out writers who write one way from the survivor of genocide, and then stray from that ‘thoughtless aggression is immoral no matter HOW hurt I am’ to ‘let’s not address this character’s aggression in the narrative whatsoever.’ OP attempted to derail by accusing me of being racist or sexist against Korra. Also ridiculous. It honestly should have set me off more, but it didn’t.

Meditation is about reigning in your emotions. Managing your anger when it gets out of hand, and digging down to the roots of it. Being responsible for your own behavoir. Acknowledging ownership of your own actions. Not blaming anything YOU DO on anyone else or any circumstances in your life. Like an adult, or should I say, an enlightened adult.

Or at the very least, that is the ideal ypu strive towards while being imperfect in the present.

. . .

Now.

I’m going to quote a passage in a Google Doc of mine, even though I’d really prefer if you asked to read the whole thing, with context.

“What do humans do when it is necessary to, or greed makes a nation want to recruit?

They go to the army to get trained, right?

Granted, having someone scream and get spittle on your face is, in the grand scheme of things, poor preparation for having bullets whiz past your chest and grenades shatter your ears. And, what do you do to prepare you for the pain of getting your leg blown off? Hopefully, nothing. Like taking a test where you only got half the study guide. But, it’s about the most ethical way to go about it, right?

Not everyone even sees action. So any more more extensive mental preparation for physical pain than that, and you’d have people definitely protesting.

Well, as it turns out, pacifistic protestors themselves, if they were in the right time and place, also very intentionally do this type of mind training. Except, when they did it, they actually did sit still and took turns roughly grabbing each other and throwing each other down and in some cases, even kicking and bruising each other.

Turns out, those pacifists are, in some ways, more hardcore than the army.

Why is this?

Because a pacifist’s aim, unlike a unit, who wants to gain the upper hand in a situation, is to grit their teeth and grind their way through all those survival instincts, and totally submit.

In this, they aim to get the sympathy of the public, who clearly sees they are not aggressive, or a danger, no matter how much the footage is manipulated or suppressed.

In this, they hope to appeal to their attacker’s better nature.

Make them stop and think, wait a second, are these people a threat like we’re told they are? I’m attacking someone who’s letting me beat them up. Or a bunch of people. All forming a line, and letting us peel them off. Or sitting, and bowing their heads. If I’m on the ‘right’ side of things, the law, why am I doing this?

It’s not like a bully, who’s just a kid.” They’re more self-aware.

And might I add the situation influences a pacifist’s actions too. There’s no reason to let a single or a few random attackers beat you up if you can evade or disable without permanent damage.

Pacifism is a dynamic set of responsive actions informed by values. Not a proscribed set or a checklist.

But in terms of organizing against state power, and recording wrongdoing, which unlike during the Civil Rights can happen from all angles from smart phones nowadays, these are the motivations.

“So, the pacifist knows this, and that’s why they go through all that trouble of training themselves to, not only submit, but not turn tail and run, either.”

See, a character trait is something like being a morning person, or ways of handing information, or a given set of emotions a character feels. Once you cross over into actions, you must make the distinction of whether an impulsive character agrees with their own uncontrolled actions, or is embarrassed or remorseful. Those are life philosophy. Now sure, one type of person or character may be more likely to subscribe to pacifism, but there is no gatekeeping on what you have to feel or how you look at things. You can be easygoing, or feel all the rage in the world, but as long as you at least attempt to have a handle on those desires and feelings to where they do not cross into actions, you are still doing the work of metacognition, which is what martial arts and its accompanying mind training are for.

It’s what we see Aang do.

He’s informed us, during the Southern Raiders, on how much rage and pain he feels.

Pain points, TRIGGERS, that were directly struck at when Ozai gloated over him.

He joins with all the past Avatars for several moments, and just like every other time he is in the Avatar State, he is enraged. He wants to exact revenge on the unrepentant grandson of a baby murderer.

We see it when he turns his head away, face still screwed up in anger.

For another example, I could cite my difficulties in being aware and reining in my tongue sometimes. I know the roots of these issues and I seek to let them go.

It’s just that process takes way longer than Guru Pathik would have us assume.

In fact, I would even say that Aang’s portrayal throughout the three seasons is not strictly a realistic representation of at least the sad side of grief. I addressed that a little when I talked about real life figures. But what it IS, is a metaphor that cuts very deep to the heart of pacifism. As I showed in that Doc . . . There is no limit of suffering a pacifist is willing to go through, internal or external, for the preservation of peace.

This was demonstrated during the Civil Rights, and with Gandhi and all his followers beforehand, inspiring them. The pacifists’ method of swaying hearts is probably the reason BLM exists in such numbers as it does today. Will the types of narratives that correspond with their full stories of the way they collectively planned and trained for and approached conflict make it into fantasy media? I’d say, probably not. For a host of reasons.

It could be hoped for, I guess.

But we DO have Aang.

As for myself, whether speaking sharply is an “action,” per se is up for debate- certainly it doesn’t seem to violate the non-aggression principle put forth by the vision of a “stateless society.”

For another example, let’s take my explanation at the beginning. I am examining how circumstances affected my actions, and now am attempting to fix it, if indeed it needs to be fixed.

At least one person said that it not so much what I said, but how and when I said it. I don’t actually think I’ve said anything “wrong” per se. So I have to figure it out.

[I’m considering splitting up this next part into a second post, as it only slightly relates to pacifism itself and is just kinda some more commentary on Tumblr itself- Tumblr discourse, as it were]

[I’ll put more brackets when I’m done in case you want to skip this part as well]

An interesting social difference between Tumblr and other places is this command you often get, “don’t chat/reblog/message me back.”

This is interesting for several reasons. For chats and reblogs, other people may be following the “conversation,” so it’s actually pretty rude and presumptuous to tell a person not to respond to whatever you said, because other people watching still may be interested in your take.

In a forum setting, if someone involved in a conversation doesn’t have anything left to say, usually they just don’t respond.

This method would work perfectly fine for Tumblr, but for some reason, maybe its super odd format, probably due to the “ownership”/“extension of self” I mentioned at the beginning of the essay, people don’t tend to do this.

Now, in comment sections, sometimes you’ll run across an amusing sort of “mutually assured destruction” where two people both say this to each other. You’d better stop responding. Omg just give up. Why are you still arguing. Etc.

But see, no matter where this behavoir pops up, and no matter who starts in on it, those who do this usually want to have the last say on the matter.

Instead of merely not replying, they want to assert verbal control over the conversation.

Tumblr, in its weirdness, is also sort of like a mutant comments section. You can post comment section threads as your own post.

Which is one reason why I’m puzzled when people say ‘don’t read the comment sections’ when Tumblr is so popular.

I’m an oddball in that I browse comment sections for fun.

Probably due to alexithymia, I didn’t really comprehend the emotional toll it takes on many people, so the warnings to “stay out of comment sections” read to me like “hey don’t eat that dessert.” After I’m done with the ‘meal’ of an article or art, I like to see what lots of different people have to say about it. The fluff. Anything vitriolic I either blip over, or extract anything useful, or if I judge the person is reasonable enough, I might engage.

Sometimes I mis-judge on how reasonable someone is, and I shrug and move on after being cussed out or whatever.

In this, I suppose I succeed much of the time in being a verbal pacifist.

[But let’s get back to the more serious stuff.]

We’re talking about what is done in life or death situations, here.

For myself, I may in the near future be working more with dangerously mentally ill people. I’ve had a little exposure to it through various means. Nurses are obligated not to retaliate against patients, and those who have, have been fired in some situations. Again oddly, this is not primarily what triggers my anxiety. Unfortunately enough, this requirement has also resulted in nurses getting seriously injured and violated. I hope to influence whether “no harm” techniques such as tai chi and aikido and arm locks may be allowed. The voluntary philosophy I was luckily already on board with is enforced by bureauacracy, directly relevant to my potential profession.

Were someone to get involved in a dangerous profession, such as a police officer, their moral duty would also be to own up to any spur of the moment anger or fear they acted on.

It’s just that their bureaucracy acts differently, in excusing their actions.

Ideally, they would be taking steps far in advance, to avoid this often-cited fear of death reaction. As training pacifists like Aang do.

And yes, army people are trained differently than police officers because the army, often, even when threatened, is supposed to avoid engagement or deploy deterrents that are non-lethal almost all costs, unless ordered otherwise. Whereas American police are given pretty much complete discretion and often not taught de-escalation techniques. Even police from other nations are better trained in that regard.

Enter the ironically named @avatarfandompolice whose account description should really speak for itself. Combative, dismissive, and their attention-hungry bread and butter is to find people they think it’s acceptable to ridicule. They basically tried to say trauma was a valid excuse to take out your anger on other people, and in this situation, potentially kill.

Now, does this hold up in the real world? Yeah, sometimes. Especially if some law breaker or law keeper has not been given the anger management tools, they perhaps could be excused, or better yet, rehabilitated.

But especially if anyone finds themselves in dangerous situations, or intends to put themselves in such, it falls to them to do this preparation.

As an aphant, I am at a bit of a disadvantage, compared to an average martial artist, being unable to visualize an attacker. But I still attempt it.

As the main “police officer” of the world- the coincidentally blue clad figurehead that is supposed to keep order, it is apparently fine for Korra to not do the work Aang did to keep level. To blow it off as too much trouble: clearing the First Chakra of fear. For herself or others. And its resultant anger. Had she had access to the Avatar State, the authority figure pretty much would have killed people. This is what the “fandom police” and a certain chat goer ultimately support. Maybe they didn’t understand it that way, and since the second had blocked me, they will also never see this explanation. Unless I were to share it in Google Doc form I suppose.

So, I responded. “Remember kids, you are not responsible for your own behavior if you have the excuse that someone else did something bad to you.” A frighteningly common sentiment on this site.

When it’s low stakes like CAPSLOCKING or internet fights, that’s not such a big deal. But what happens if this attitude leaks into the real world? This isn’t even about Korra or Aang anymore, it’s about toxic mindsets. I didn’t know fans taking pro-Korra posts as anti-Aang was a common in the fandom. I’ll say again I’ve only just gotten really active on Tumblr like the past few months. This is about pacifism itself. MLK and his hardworking, training followers (yes some of them sixteen and POC and not super-powered like Korra) facing down firehoses and staging sit-ins long trained for would shake their heads at this defense of reactionism.

Pacifism is not a Personality Trait.

It is deliberate actions and preparation taken over a period of time.

Then the “fandom police” tried more of this, and these two conversations ensued, the comments with another user resulting in the title and main thesis of this essay:

https://captlok.tumblr.com/post/638777472806273024/avatarfandompolice-response-to-my-independent

https://captlok.tumblr.com/post/638806142933467136/the-plight-was-not-what-i-was-getting-at-it-was

#atla #lok #atlok #atla meta #pacifism #martin luther king #civil rights era #history #blm #mlk #mlkday2021

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colemacgrathtkz · 4 years ago

Text

My love will never die

Full disclosure: I just happened to think of think of the title, afterwards. "My love will never die" by "AG (feat. Claire Wyndham)" is a pretty good theme for this, in my opinion. Maybe you want to hear it? See what I mean?

Previously. Next?

[Two nights before (Empress) Luz's capture, at the convention center]

Eda guided the "New Coven" leader inside the convention center. Ignoring the breaking and entering, they stopped at the very stage Amity had her duel with Luz. Nothing but a dim green trail of light led the way. Stopping just at the center, the owl lady banged her foot on the ground.

Eda: "It's us. Open up down there."

No response

Eda: "Dang it, you two! There's no password! Stop making me look stupid and open up already."

The ground began to split as vines showed them the way.

Willow: "Just being careful."

Gus and Willow stood at the base of the opening. Tonight was the start of a new battle. Journeying further down, Lilith and King were waiting amongst the treasure trove of crystal balls.

Amity: "You found them."

Gus and Willow just stared at the ground.

Lilith: “Something’s been done to these orbs.”

The original two conspirators began loading them into a wheelbarrow. Eda handed one of them to Amity for a look.

Eda: “You really need to see this.”

[King’s crystal ball]

King and his boo boo buddy were taking a stroll in the Bonesborough library.

King: “I still say they should obey me! I brought this place so much business.”

Luz: “ This is a public library and you only published one book.”

King: “ Yeah, but I freed like thirty two other writers. I found Piniet his next bestseller.”

Luz: “I was there, you know.”

King: “ History is what I say it is!”

Luz: “Speaking of history....”

The two had been through a lot. It wasn’t easy. What with King having been caged as the empress’s pet. Anytime they’d been in the same room, King wouldn’t get any closer than six feet. Despite this, Luz made plenty of attempts to make up for what happened. This was her way of trying to make things right and get her best friend back.

Luz: “Ta dah.”

A giant book towered over the more appropriately sized literature.

Ruler’s reach 2

King: “My daring work of genius!”

Luz: “A book fit for a king. I pulled some strings and got it published. Do you like it?”

The small furry friend darted back and forth between the tomes and cardboard cutout. Finally, out of impulse, he launched himself into his buddy’s arms. Noceda almost forgot how light he was.

Luz: “I missed you, buddy.”

They tightly embraced each other for what had felt like forever ago.

Luz: “Forgive me.”

King: “Eh?”

In one swift motion, she launched King onto a page of his huge open book. In seconds, he was wrapped in green strings. A small cry echoed in the empty library as he was sucked into his own work. Luz shrunk the sequel to a normal size. Closing it, she tucked it under her arm. She didn’t enjoy any of this.

Luz: “Luzrura’s dead in your sequel. Now you can live out your dream, King, just the way you want it. Have fun living your masterpiece, without me getting in your way.”

To her, putting King in his literary fantasy; was her way of atoning.

[Eda’s crystal ball]

The empress marched on her carriage through the town. The owl beast pulled her forward down the streets. She was the appointed symbol of the new rule in the Boiling Isles. Eda was remembered as wild and unpredictable. The owl beast was the embodiment of those principles. The empress wanted to make sure her former teacher’s memory was “respected” this way. She’d enjoyed letting her run free. But she also found pleasure setting her loose on rioters. She’d parade Eda’s cursed form as her twisted symbol of liberation. The herald of a new era.

[Lilith’s crystal ball]

Lilith’s cursed form looked more like a raven beast. Chained at the center of a pit, she served little purpose other than to sharpen the Owl beast’s bloodlust. At times she’d throw the two sister in together. The empress arranged for fierce clashes. If Lilith ever seemed to get the upper hand, her majesty would yank on the raven beast’s chain.

[Amity's crystal ball]

Bonesborough had caught fire. Rebels against the empress where busy either retreating from the flames or the marching abomination army. Their general, smiling with satisfaction, carried out her empress’s will. The green haired witch was feared throughout the town. As second only to the empress herself, her power was unquestionable; as was her loyalty. A member of a high class family had become a head of this matriarch. She was exceptionally close to the human on the throne. The power shared between them was unparalleled. But the empress’s will was absolute. Her general lived for the empress.

[Luz’s crystal ball]

Luz cradled the one ball she kept for themselves. Whenever she started to doubt any of this, she looked into this future. The one she wanted more than anything. Eda sipping something warm in her mug. Willow and Gus looking around the house. Amity sitting close to Luz, with King in her lap. And, of course, Camila having this lovely time in her house. Luz’s whole family together. Just being together and having a magical time.

[Empress Luz’s crystal ball]

Whenever Luz was asleep, the empress would sneak a peek to her glorious future. There on the throne, she sat. Amity Blight stood by her side. Grinning at her only love, she was undoubtedly smitten. The human gazed out into the crowd that knelt before them. Her mother also stood before her in the throne room.

But one thing always bothered her about her glimpse into her crystal ball.

No matter what she did, no matter what who else was beside them,

Camila wasn’t smiling.

[Bonus]

Amity just stared at the orb in her hands. This vision of the possible future-no, the plan made her blood run cold. There was no denying what they had seen. No matter what they tried, the orbs wouldn’t show them anything else. Someone had locked them on to these foreseeable futures.

Amity: “....”

Eda( placing one hand on Amity’s shoulder): “It’s time, kid. We need you on this. If we’re going to take her down, we can’t make any mistakes.”

Amity: “What’s the plan?”

Eda: “You’re going to keep her from using magic. As sickenly adorable as you two are, you’re the only one who can get close enough to give her this.”

The owl witch pulled out a purple vial and a black marble.

Eda: “Lace something she’d grab with this. This little guy here is gonna keep her from casting any spells on us. Make sure you don’t get any on ya. Otherwise, you’ll be dragging your feet on this, too. Those two dweebs are going to run interference. They’ll wear her down enough for King to deliver this.”

She handed King of demons a orange squishy ball.

Eda: “We can’t risk her blocking or redirecting any sleep spells on us. Our slippery friend here’ll have to get in close and personal.”

Amity: “ You think this’ll work?”

Eda: “I made this stuff strong enough to take down four slitherbeasts. I would’ve made it six, but that seemed like overkill.”

Lilith handed her sister a green bottle.

Eda: “Lilly got us this far with that ‘special’ ingredient, last time you two met. If we can get more, it should lead us to any other nasty secrets.”

Eda realized she’d been the only one here doing any actual talking.

Eda: “You sure you’re up for this? We kind of need your head on straight when this goes down. We can’t just bring anyone on this particular job.”

Amity: “ I think I should get my brother and sister. They’re annoying, but I trust them to take this seriously. They’d be a big help.”

Eda agreed as she didn’t really know any other way to reassure her. So, once they were done here, everyone was to get some rest.

But those were the last words they’d say to anyone. For the next two days, they’d be as silent as ghosts. With what was about to happen, what they had seen, it’d haunt them in their waking hours. And then some.

Author’s note:

I’d been thinking about this one for awhile. Since Luz does want to make things right, it’d be her curse of a companion that’d twist things. Amity’s vision was actually inspired by someone else’s fanart.

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hellzyeahthewebwieldingavenger · 4 years ago

Link

I will respond to this. But in future I’m asking you and others not to send me things like this please.

“This month, Marvel Comics relaunched Amazing Spider-Man with a Nick Spencer as head writer, marking the end of Dan Slott's long run with the title and an end of the "Brand New Day" era of Spider-History.”

The problems start here. BND ended before Slott’s solo run began.

“ Spencer's run begins with a bit of a bang.

Well, about as much of a bang as you get from kissing the same person you've known for 50 years.”

This is a reductive and childish mentality towards romance and sex. It prioritizes the novelty and excitement of ‘new love’ (which is scientifically guaranteed to last like 2 years tops) over the deeper and ultimately more potent emotions attached to proper love, which in truth is kind of like friendship on steroids.

In this specific case it’s especially stupid as, putting aside fan reactions, the fact that Peter and Mj were back together after 10+ years was OBVIOUSLY going to be a shocking moment. A ‘bang’ if you will. This is like saying it wasn’t a moment of audience interest whenever Ross and Rachel seemingly got back together or when Monica and Chandler initially got together. They too had known one another for a long time, a roughly equivalent time for their character and Peter and MJ in-universe.

“This has come after Peter and Mary Jane have been apart for about a decade. This recent "surprise" get-back-to-gether is the same sort of "exciting development" that happens eventually after Marvel breaks a couple up, or kills someone in one of their books (See the Hulk, Jean Grey, Peter Parker during Superior Spider-Man, etc. etc. etc.) Peter and Mary Jane getting back together (apparently) is sort of a big deal.”

Yes. Because fans WANTED them to be back together.

Fans aren’t in this for the roller coaster of novelty. They don’t want Spidey or Superman to be with anyone OTHER than MJ or Lois. By the same token the majority do not want anyone other than Luthor or Joker to be Superman or Batman’s archenemies.

“See, in 2007 Marvel Comics made the bold decision to end the marriage between Spider-Man and his longtime wife, Mary Jane Watson.”

Watson Parker

It wasn’t bold it was asinine

How bold is it when it was the third such attempt to do that? “At the time, fans lost their shit.” And they are STILL angry about it. “You can't really blame them because the deed was done in the most asinine way. For some reason, divorce was out of the question. The alternative was somehow more awful. After Peter's Aunt May got shot in the bo-bo at the end of Civil War, Spider-Man literally made a deal with the devil to save her life.” WTF is a bo-bo? “What did this change exactly? Well, the events of Amazing Spider-Man Annual #21 didn't end in a marriage. So everything that happened after was still the same except Peter amd MJ were a common-law couple. Or something.” And MJ was never pregnant, and all the shit specifically related to their wedding rings, dress, photos, anniversary couldn’t have happened and given how to them marriage wasn’t a piece of paper then this would have massive ramifications for their relationship quite a part from the fact there would now be a massive sore spot in their relationship. “Anyway, like I said, a lot of longtime fans hated it.” No. MOST longtime fans hated it. And most SHORT time fans also hated it. And even many newer fans who jumped on-board after it hated it too. “You know, the audience they weren't trying to appeal to anymore.” Which was idiotic. You don’t try to gain a new audience by throwing away your old one. You try to retain the old audience and bring new people into the fold at the same time. Noticeably this happened in the 1990s. This failed to happen after OMD and it failed to happen with the Nu52 which was the OMD for the whole DC universe. The latter failed so badly they reverse rebooted many characters, Superman chief among them. Superman’s financial and critical reception increased when they brought back the OLD Superman who was married (and now a father to boot) and used him to replace the younger, single and hip Superman most people disliked. The OLD fans returned. Shockingly appealing to the old AND new fans is possible. “Still, they came up with a storyline that would be relatable to younger readers, and still be relevant to longtime readers as well”

It wasn’t a storyline it was an era

No. It absolutely wasn’t relatable or relevant to younger readers. I was 16-19 when BND was running. I was directly the demographic they were trying to appeal to. Let me tell you straight. Those stories were not relatable. At all. They weren’t relevant. At all. The PS4 game’s take? Now that shit was reltable but noticeably that version only takes plot concept from BND. The characterization of Peter is far more in line with his pre-OMD self and didn’t represent a regression of the character

Thousands of people became Spider-Man fans reading the marriage era Spidey comics. If it was so unrelatable how is that possible?

The stories were not relevant to the older audience at all because the whole purpose of BND was to basically ignore 90% of Spider-Man history between 1987-2007. And more importantly even the characteriation before then that they were trying to invoke was done incorrectly. The Spidey of BND was a systemically mischaracterizion of Spider-Man even if yu ignored OMD “The fiscal reasoning made sense, there were Spider-Man films that were out roping in a new generation kids who wouldn't relate to a married Spider-Man.”

There was a 5 season long TV show before those movies aimed directly at children. Kids got into Spidey through that and we didn’t care he was married. In fact he was married on the show

To 90s/2000s teens and tweens the struggles of Spidey in the 1994 cartoon and Raimi movies were not all that relatable. The male members of the cartoon audience were too young to be interested in romance and all the demographics were unlikely to relate to Peter’s financial struggles as they were too young to work. Even if they weren’t too young to work they wouldn’t have been the breadwinner of the household the way they might’ve been in the 1960s. By the 1990s and 2000s times had changed

Peter had become a MAN like halfway through the first Raimi movie and that wasn’t even the most popular or successful one. Spider-man 2, where Peter was distinctly an adult and grappling with adult problems, was

Kids have been unlikely to relate to Batman. In fact as times have changed it’s evident they infinitely prefer Batman to Robin, the character actually created specifically for them to relate to. Batman is at least as popular as Spider-Man, if not moreso

The MCU has made Iron Man and Black Panther (who kids could never truly relate to) and Captain America (whom few people regardless of age could ever relate to as he is almost a moral paragon) fan favourite characters. CLEARLY relatability is at best highly subjective and at worst not essential to making a character appealing

BND occurred after Spider-Man 3 where Peter wanted to marry Mary Jane. If anything the JMS era of Spidey where he was married to the main love interest from the movies and where Aunt May knew who he was would’ve been MORE synergetic with the movies of the time than what BND was “Also, times have changed. Fans freaked out that Spider-Man was no longer married and back to living at Aunt May's home? At the time Peter Parker was in his late 20s (Marvel Time).” No, at the time he was 30 years old. “If this is basically you in 2018, you had no reason to bitch about Brand New Day.” Get fucked. Fans had EVERY reason to bitch about BND back then AND now too. Putting aside how we got there (which would be reason enough) the stories themselves were objectively deplorable! “Looking back at the storyline 10 years after the fact,” It’s not a storyline. It was an era. “it's hard to understand what the big deal was.” It’s hard to understand mischaracterization, illogic, continuity contradictions, sexism, racism, juvenile writing, character deconstruction, borderline gaslighting of the fans, talking down to the audience, price gouging, inconsistent writing and art and just generally bad storytelling? “Because I secretly hate myself, I decided to read every Spider-Man comic published.” I somehow doubt that. Even if it’s true there is a massive difference between reading a story and understanding it. Dan Slott READ a lot of Spider-Man. He knew a lot of Spider-Facts. But he clearly never understood the character. He might KNOW MJ shut that door in ASM #122. But he absolutely doesn’t grasp it’s deeper meaning. “I started about a year ago, and I'm just hitting stories published in 2007. In retrospect, there are a lot of shitty Spider-Man stories. Some of them weren't as bad as they were made out to be (The Clone Saga, being one of them, surprisingly) One thing about the Peter/MJ marriage (which ran from 1987 to 2007) is you quickly realize their marriage was horrible.” Sure. If you are a bad literary analyst, sexist, crap at contextualization and apply a blunt criteria instead of nuance. If you don’t you get that there were ups and downs with the writing as would be expected of almost anything written across 20 years by multiple writers. “Especially for Mary Jane.” Oh cool, sexist it is then. “It wasn't good, it was a burden to telling good stories.” Kraven’s Last Hunt Sensational Spider-Man Annual 2007 Spider-Man Unlimited v3 #2 Story 2 Parallel Lives Anything by JMS involving MJ Revelations Spec #200 Spec #241-245 Sensational v2 #32 Marvel Knights: Spider-man #1-12 And many other stories I could name say otherwise genius. “This is because the writers involved at the time didn't seem to understand how a marriage works.”

JMS clearly did

DeMatteis clearly did

DeFalco clearly did

Sacasa clearly did

Peter David clearly did

Mark Millar clearly did

Even Bendis clearly did

Maybe it’s not how YOUR marriage works. But everyon’es marriage is a different “The marriage was, at best, an excuse for an instant damsel in distress situation,” Remember how the marriage was used as an instant damsel-in-distress situation in KLH? Remember how that was ALL it amounted to in the Eisner nominated Sensational Spider-Man Annual 2007? Remember how badly MJ was in need of rescuing in the Jonathan Caesar storyline? “or at worse a reason for Peter Parker to go on about how "lucky" he was to be married to a model/actress. Like Mary Jane was nothing more than a trophy to pride himself because he was such a fucking loser in high school.” Yes. Peter never argued with MJ. Peter never confided his concerns with MJ. MJ never alleviated his guilt. MJ never grew as a person from her horrible childhood issues through being married with Peter. MJ didn’t become more self-sacrificing due to Peter. Peter was never pushed to become more powerful by thoughts of his believed wife. They never helped one another through traumatic situations. “What I really want to stress here is, Peter and Mary Jane's marrage was awful.” Nah fam. YOUR analytical skills are awful. “Worst. Idea. Ever.” Nah fam. You writing this was the worst idea ever. Scratch that, me subjecting myself to this shit was the worst idea ever. “Can't take my word for it? Here are some reasons why: Mary Jane Had to Swat Away So Many Dicks” An attractive woman with a very public profile draws unwanted attention? How unrealistic! It’s terrible that such a thing would never happen in real life, real life being the baked into the core concept of Spider-Man. Why if it did it’d be a organic way to give MJ subplots and conflicts of her own to deal with that could impact upon Peter’s life by extension or something. “Almost from the start, Mary Jane had to fend off other men who were obsessed with her and didn't give a shit that she was married. That's not necessarily Peter's fault, but it really says a lot of the opinion towards female characters in comics at the time.” …how…? This happens in real life…A LOT! And what has ‘Peter’s fault’ got to do with this? It’s not even a statement that warrants a ‘necessarily’. What? If Peter was more ‘Alpha’ other men would know not to try it on with ‘his woman’ or something? Also, let’s properly contextualize things okay. Between 1987-2007 MJ was stalked by like 5 people. That’s once every 4 years if you average it out but 3/5 of them occurred in Michelinie’s run alone which is not the be all or end all of the marriage. Another one was for a single issue and the final one was actually obsessed with Peter and used MJ to get to him. I ain’t saying it didn’t get old but this guy is making it out to be something that was an annual event. “Sure, the idea of someone stalking an actress/model isn't outlandish, and a sad fact of the celebrity-driven reality we live in.” YOU DON’T SAY! And it doesn’t just apply to actresses or models btw. “However, the number of times this was used as a plot got a bit out of hand.” I agree. But 5 times across 20 years, when there was a 5 year gap between the third and fourth instances and a 5 year gap between the fourth and final instance (lasting for 1 issue and wasn’t even the main plot) is not reflective of anything. “That said because it's a Spider-Man comic book they couldn't just settle on a dumpy guy wearing sticky jogging pants. They had to kick it up a notch. With horrific implications for poor Mary Jane.” …yeeeeeeeeeeah? And? Stalkers are horrible. You want there to be tension and conflict so the threat of violence is absolutely justifiable. FFS, kraven the Hunter buried Spider-Man alive and Venom threatened to eat parts of him. And VENOM was Spidey’s stalker! “Jonathon Caesar An obsession so cliche, I'm surprised that nobody made a joke about his knife compensating for having a small dick.” Except circa 1989 it wasn’t cliché. At least not as far as a Spidey comic was concerned. If we are opening this up to ALL media then sure but then by that logic Gwen’s death and countless other stories would also be cliché wouldn’t they. “The first scum bag to enter Mary Jane's married life was Jonathon Caesar. He was a wealthy man with a lot of connections.” …Almost like Harvey Weinstein or something… “He helped Mary Jane get into the Bedford Towers condominium (which Caesar owned). His motivation? To kidnap a married woman and force her to live in a specially made trap room until she agreed to marry him. Spider-Man didn't even save the day! Mary Jane broke free on her own and the wall-crawler showed up in time to do the cleanup.” Holy shit. If anyone ever needed proof this doofus’s analytical skills weren’t there this is it. The Jonathan Caesar storyline was designed to be a subversion of the damsel-in-distress trope. The whole fucking POINT was that MJ saved herself instead of Spidey saving her! Jesus Christ how do you miss that. Not to mention how do you complain Caesar as a villain is cliché but then ALSO complain that the damsel-in-distress cliché wasn’t adhered to. “Caesar went to jail but he used his influence to ruin her modeling career and get her evicted from their home.” *coughWeinsteincough* “Not only that, but MJ's money got tied up in a lengthy legal battle, with no apparent end in sight. In fact the money mentioned here is never talked about again.” Er…yes it is. MJ ultimately settles in ASM #333 wiping out her savings. I’d have thought someone who read every Spider-Man comic book would have known that. “Caesar eventually got out of jail and continued to stalk Mary Jane.” Again, clearly hasn’t read every Spider-Man comic book and/or is a shitty analyst. Yes Caesar did this but he did this BEFORE MJ engaged him in a legal battle. “Her husband didn't do squat to stop it.” What was he supposed to do? Caesar was out legally and Peter couldn’t just kill or assault the guy. Threatening him would likely have helped Caesar’s legal case further, especially due to the public knowing about the association between Peter and Spidey. Touching Caesar would be like trying to get the Kingpin locked up. It’s extremely difficult for someone that rich and powerful. “He was too busy playing Spider-Man to help his own wife.” No. He was busy saving the lives of innocent people. He wasn’t doing this for fun, he is Spidey for the greater good. MJ knows that. MJ knew that she could ask Peter for help if she needed it and he’d come running. She made it clear she could handle it and like a good husband he respected her decision. It wasn’t like she was trying to reach him for help and he was distracted or actively ignored her. But you know, those disingenuous pieces of misinformation aren’t going to write themselves. Also the stories are a little ambiguous about this but there is a possible implication that MJ was keeping Peter somewhat in the dark about Caesar’s activities. “The only person who was interested in Mary Jane's safety was Officer Hal Goldman, who ended up shooting Caesar dead. Was Hal a super-cop detective that ate serial stalkers for lunch? Note really, see the thing about Hal.... Hal Goldman Let's follow up this sexist scene with the woman regretting her career choices. Very progressive.”

This bozo shouldn’t be lecturing people on what is and isn’t sexist

FFS OF COURSE someone in MJ’s position would be questioning her career choices. She’s just been stalked by 2 lunatics. But noticeably she doesn’t stop being an actress/model after this. The moment was a dash of comedy given the situation and nothing more. But you wouldn’t know that given how this guy is not bothering to use context or anything

How the Hell is MJ macing a stalker and then knocking him out sexist? “Hal Goldman wasn't actually a police officer. He was just a fat NYPD civilian desk clerk with a terrible bowl cut who had an unhealthy obsession with Mary Jane when she starred in a soap opera called "Secret Hospital". Although he was "investigating" Jonathan Ceasar's attempts to ruin Mary Jane's life again, he was also obsessed with protecting her from everyone who slighted her. He ran over an old woman who slapped MJ in the face, dropped a stage light on her director's head and tried to clobber Peter with a piece of concrete. However, this is an accurate depiction of how fan-boys react to things.” Remember how over 50% of fanboys threatened or actually inflicted violence upon people because of OMD? Neither do I. “When he guns down Caesar he professes his undying love to Mary Jane and admits to committing all the above crimes. Again, Peter is nowhere around,” Of course he’s nowhere around. Peter doesn’t constantly monitor MJ all day every day. You know…like a stalker. Fuck real life husbands don’t do this. Moreover if we bother to check the issue in question (ASM #339) some interesting details are presented to us. For starters MJ was only endangered due to trickery and bad luck. Caesar forced a co-star of MJ’s to handwrite a note and sign it asking for her to meet him at the set of Secret Hospital. Between the set being a relatively safe environment and the note checking out as legitimate due to the handwriting and signature, MJ had no reason to be suspicious. Peter absolutely intended to go with MJ but earlier that day had been doused with a chemical by the Sinister Six, the effects of which he was uncertain about. He got a call regarding the Six’s activities and the chemical so logically that would take priority over Mj merely meeting a co-star. MJ chose not to delay the meeting until Peter was available and go herself. Again neither she nor Peter had any reason to suspect foul play. So Peter’s absence was never due to neglect. It wasn’t even due to putting the duties of Spider-man before the needs of his wife. As far as either of them knew there was no danger. So again, distorting the facts. Classy. “so when she rejects him Officer Bowl Cut decides to do the old "if I can't have you, nobody will!" Routine. However, she sprayed him in the eyes with hairspray and clobbered him with a purse. You know just as you'd expect a strong female character to do.” Yes. That is exactly what I expect a female, or indeed any character, to do in that situation. Mary Jane had no real weapons. The story even specified that MJ tried to get a handgun but was still waiting on it. So she improvised and used whatever resources she had to hand. This is routine for Mary Jane both during and before the marriage. Using hairspray and a handbag, which are not obvious weapons but can nevertheless be repurposed for offence, was a perfectly legitimate technique for both the character and writer to employ. It’s almost like it makes her look smart, tough and resourceful for being able to think on her feet like that or something. Oh, and again. MJ is bad because she conforms to a cliché but is also bad because didn’t conform to the cliché of Spidey rescuing her which would’ve also been bad because the marriage is used to easily generate damsel-in-distress situations. This isn’t even a double standard it’s a TRIPLE standard. This jackoff has constructed his argument in such a way that Mary Jane/the marriage can NEVER win. “Jason Jerome This happened in 1990, consent hadn't been invented yet.”

Jason wasn’t a stalker strictly speaking

This storyline, bad as it was, was nevertheless handled very differently from the Jonathan Caesar arc because MJ at least was tempted to reciprocate feelings for Jason whilst she was repulsed by Caesar

YES. the concept of consent WASN’T very well taught back in the 1990s! What the hell is he point here? “Jason Jerome was an actor who thought he could seduce Mary Jane into having an affair with him. This came at a time when there were three monthly Spider-Man titles. This made for one busy wall-crawler. On top of fighting villains, he was also promoting a book and traveling the globe as a reporter. Needless to say, MJ was feeling more than a little neglected. This made Mary Jane susceptible to Jerome's advances. However, despite his best efforts, Mary Jane ended things before they had gone too far. To do so, she invited Jason to her apartment under the pretence of sex. Instead of getting balls deep, Jason Jerome found himself in a room plastered with photos of Peter and Mary Jane together, like inviting an obsessed man into your home without telling anyone is a smart idea.” Jason was not obsessed. He viewed MJ as a ‘conquest’ and from her POV was not dangerous like Caesar or Hal. Also IIRC this occurred after the incident with Hal, which meant MJ would likely have owned a handgun by this point. Even if she didn’t, she defeated Hal and Caesar and his guards when she was unprepared and improvising on the fly. Here she has had hours to prep and it’s literally in her home. If she suspected Jason to be dangerous (which he was not and had given her no reason to believe so) she was in a great position to handle him. “All the lamps and hairspray in the world cannot possibly stop this potentially becoming a bad situation.” A rich and powerful lunatic with a knife and armed guards outside got their ass beaten by MJ whilst she was improvising…on their home turf. A less rich, less powerful, unarmed man with no displays of mental instability or violence comes to MJ’s home turf on his own. So yes, if she was so inclined MJ could 100% rig up a trap with hairspray and a lamp or a fucking gun if she had one. “If this backfires, let's just hope he's into this sort of thing.” A necrophilia joke? How tasteful. “The Stalker "I said, I'm bored with sort of scenario. Can you try and change this up a bit?"”

Jason Jerome wasn’t stalking MJ

Yes the stalker was lame. Also this occurred around 9-10 years later

You know there is more to this relationship than the occasions when MJ was stalked FFS “The most unoriginal character created by Howard Mackie during his run.” His run when he was possibly dealing with serious health issues. Classy. “The Stalker follows a long tradition of Marvel characters whose names are obvious: The Prowler prowls,” Except he doesn’t do much prowling. He flits between retirement and active costumed work. And he’s not exactly a stalker of the night like Batman when he’s out of retirement. “the Watcher watches, and the Shocker finger blasts people.” Does this guy know what ‘shocking’ means? Blasting people isn’t shocking them. Electrocuting people = shocking people. Vibrating them doesn’t = shocking them. “So obviously, the Stalker was a stalker. Specifically, he stalked Mary Jane. The guy went to some insane lengths. He set off bombs and killed people. The whole time this was happening Peter was busy going out as Spider-Man.” YES. THAT’S HIS FUCKING JOB! Also, for the majority of the time Mj was being stalked she had kept Peter in the dark about the guy. Shortly after he finally did learn the truth he seemingly died. For sure he was kept away from her whilst she was being made a target, but

The 1970s Clone Saga

Spec Annual 1988

Smoke and Mirrors

Web #125

Maximum Clonage

Clone Conspiracy

“Each time he seems to forget the fact that a lunatic had cloned his dead girlfriend every time.”

Horseshit.

He KNEW the truth in every encounter following the first one. He didn’t fall for it on the third-sixth occasions but shockingly seeing your dead loved one (who died right in front of you) walking around alive is going to emotionally hurt you and dreadge up old wounds and old feelings.

Gerry Conway in Spec Annual 1988 directly addresses this by having Peter acknowledge that intellectually he knows Gwen to merely be a clone but emotionally he still feels towards her the same way as though she were the real Gwen.

It’s almost like Conway was a good writer not a HACK like the OP and so knows that in matters of the heart a realistic human being might let their sense of logic fly out the window.

If ONLY there had been a global sensation of a movie released months prior to ASM v5 #1 which demonstrated this aptly.

“Every time it made Peter confused and dug up old feelings. Which, naturally, made Mary Jane doubt the strength of their relationship.”

That literally happened twice. And she briefly doubted before thinking otherwise or been shown otherwise.

“With this many clones of the dead girlfriend, you'd figure he would have gotten used to it.”

Yes if he was an emotionless automaton. Or written by someone who knows jack about human emotions...like the OP…

“Instead of going to a shrink to process these feelings,”

Thus risking the anonymity that protects himself and his loved ones.

“Peter usually fell for the various manipulations that typically came from these convoluted cloning schemes and hit whoever was responsible.”

OBVIOUSLY he hit whoever was responsible. They were super villains, he was going to bring them to justice no matter what

Again, he fell for it the first time. But ONLY the first time. He was aware Gwen was a clone in every other encounter and never played along. Many of those instances weren’t even villains pulling a scheme but a situation Peter happened to mix himself up in. Spec Annual #8 had nothing to do with him as the High Evolutionary wanted to apprehend Gwen for his own purposes. Web #125 involved him discovering Gwen’s clone in the suburbs but no villain had planned on him doing that

“That Time Illegitimate Kids Showed Up

Gwen Stacy was always portrayed as a saintly woman cut down in the prime of her life.”

Except for all those times she absolutely wasn’t prior to her death; that’s not even counting AUs.

Saint Gwendolyn I, Holy Virgin Martyr Princess was a revisionist invention fabricated after her death to make her death more tragic in hindsight. It’s a pack of lies that doesn’t deserve to be paid attention to.

“That was until JMS wrote a Gwen Stacy story that was entirely fucked up.”

No. It was only partially fucked up because

Gwen was obviously not pregnant

MJ and Gwen didn’t care about Gwen’s kids

“In it, Peter learns that Gwen had an affair with Norman Osborn (the Green Goblin, AKA the guy who later murdered her) and got knocked up.”

They didn’t have an affair.

People seem to be misinformed on the definition of what the word ‘affair’ means. They use it as though it means ‘being unfaithful to your partner’. That is not the meaning of the term. An EXTRAMARITAL affair can mean that but a regular romantic/sexual affair doesn’t inherently mean there is any unfaithfulness occurring.

But it DOES have to be ongoing to some extent.

Gwen and Norman weren’t in any kind of on-going relationship. They had sex exactly once.

And during that time no unfaithfulness was occurring as Gwen was not with Peter at the time.

“Everyone apparently knew and kept it a secret.”

…er….no…I don’t know how you could even misread Sins Past to come to that conclusion.

The story is extremely explicit that Gwen and Norman kept their encounter and Gwen’s pregnancy a secret. MJ knew about it and told Peter years later. But there is nothing in the story even hinting that anyone else knew besides the three of them.

“During a point where Gwen and Peter were on the outs, she found out she was pregnant, left the country, and gave birth to the kids. These kids were then secreted away by Norman for years.

When Peter found about these kids (but not their origins) he assumed they were his kids, even though he later remembers that he and Gwen never had sex!!”

He never presumes they are his children. Again, great analytical skills there.

“What's worse, is after all was said and done, Peter later went to France to help out Gwen's daughter, who was her spitting image and the same biological age that Gwen was when Peter dated her (they aged fast, look it up) This was all an attempt to seduce Peter and he had to constantly remind himself that his feelings for her were wrong.”

It was absolutely not an attempt to seduce Peter. Sarah’s agenda only later evolved to entail that too but that wasn’t her original motive

In one of the all time best episodes of the Simpsons Homer was tempted by his co-worker Mindy. This occurred in spite of countless episodes demonstrating how much he loved Marge. Ultimately nothing more than a kiss was shared between them and he didn’t succumb to his temptations. In this scenario Peter is being confronted by someone who looks and to an extent acts identically to someone he loved and cruelly lost, someone who for a time he believed he might have a future with. This occurs not very long after he learns that his relationship with that person was at least partially a big lie as she was pregnant for most of their relationship and slept with his ultimate enemy. So he’s going to be incredibly emotionally vulnerable at this point. Sarah kissed him and he didn’t reciprocate at all. Peter if anything can be more forgiven his temptations than Homer was. And Homer was still forgivable as your actions are what ultimately matter. Peter not only acknowledged his feelings were wrong and coming from an emotionally confusing place but he never acted upon them either and reaffirmed his love for MJ when all was said and done. Much like Homer did to Marge after rejecting Mindy.

“Mary Jane had such a bad feeling about it, she travelled to France to check in on her hubby, and walked in on him while Gwen Jr. Was kissing Peter.”

Yeah. Because OOC writing exists dipshit. You don’t just take ANY given story as gospel FFS. What kind of pre-schooler level literary analysis is this?

“The fact that Peter was attracted to a 7 year old girl who only looked like she was in her early 20s because of a genetic disorder is super creepy.”

It is because see above about OOC writing. But by this logic the clones of Gwen were even younger. Sarah was mentally 7 but she looked just like an adult Gwen Stacy so obviously Peter’s emotions and attractions being confused is forgivable under the circumstances.

“So you can totally understand when Mary Jane was upset about that one.”

I’m genuinely shocked this clown was able to be so sympathetic towards MJ here.

“Somewhere, a divorce lawyer just got a huge erection.”

I’m sure he would have if only the story hadn’t ended by reaffirming Peter and MJ’s love for one another.

“It Wasn't Just the Dead Girlfriend, but her Extended Family

Before we get into more of the Stacy family, let's talk about the Watson family for a minute. Mary Jane came from a broken home. An alcoholic and abusive father led to her mother taking the kids and leaving. Although he mom died her sister had two kids and was abandoned by the father. Also, she has a cousin who has an eating disorder. In a lot of these cases, Peter Parker left his wife to deal with the family drama on her own.”

No.

Peter actively helped MJ when she asked him to in ASM #291-292.

He actively helped MJ’s friend who had a drug problem when MJ asked him to.

In the recent one shot Going Big Peter seeks out Kristy when she disappears…because MJ asked him to.

Peter respected MJ and her family and would’ve helped in any way he was able if MJ aske him to.

But between supporting their family, Aunt May and protecting the city because he’s a fucking super hero his time and abilities to help were limited. Oh and MJ didn’t ask him to.

She felt, not unjustifiably, that she could handle it. Often MJ wishes to leave Peter as unburdened as possible if she can handle a situation because his life is dangerous and stressful enough as is. But she knows he’s there to help if she needs it. And he would be there if she needed him.

It’ almost like they were MARRIED or something and divided up their duties appropriately or something.

This clown seems to treat ‘being Spider-Man’ as code for ‘have fun goofing off lulz’. It’s not. It’s a massive duty and higher purpose Peter takes incredibly seriously.

“Which is quite the slap in the face when he spent more time helping the Stacy family. Namely Gwen's cousins Paul and Jill and their dad.”

Because they were his friends, MJ’s friends and at times MJ asked him to help them. Peter didn’t even like spending time with them initially because they opened up old wounds for him. He had to put the work in to hang around them.

“When they appeared in Spider-Man stories in the late 90s, Mary Jane took a back seat to whatever problems the Stacy's were having.”

No she didn’t.

SOMETIMES the problems regarding the Stacy’s happened to be the A plot. Other times they happened to be the B plot. This happened more often than not in peter Parker: Spider-Man by Mackie. But there were FOUR Spider-titles at the time so that’s more than acceptable.

But Peter never helped the Stacy’s at the expense of Mary Jane, not unless there was a clear physical danger posed to their lives.

In Mackie/Byrne’s run MJ and Jill were endangered by the same incident and Peter prioritized saving MJ over Jill.

“You're still dealing with your miscarriage Mary Jane? Sorry, I got to talk Paul Stacy out of a hate group right now.”

Get fucked.

I’ve read PPSM #82-83 as well. In fact they were among my earliest ever comic books I re-read them several years ago.

This is yet another MASSIVE distortion of events.

Peter didn’t talk Paul out of a hate group (specifically the anti-mutant hate group the Friends of Humanity) at the expense of helping MJ deal with their miscarriage.

Peter and MJ were due to meet for a counselling session to talk about the miscarriage. However, Paul was being targeted by a mutant who literally told Peter she was going to murder him. Peter went to prevent that from happening but a bad bout of vertigo (brought on presumably by an encounter with Morbius the Living Vampire) caused Peter to cling to a wall, his life hanging in the balance.

That’s why he missed the therapy session that one time.

He wasn’t goofing off. He wasn’t lecturing Paul about why racism is bad m’kay. He was trying to save his life and then save his own life.

So a quintessential example of distorting the facts and removing things from context.

“Peter Shut Her Out of Every Existential Crisis”

No he didn’t. There were multiple times he questioned if he was doing the right thing, if he was making a difference, etc and talked to her about it

Even if he did shut her out that would be conflict which is what you fucking want in your dramatic story

WOW! Moments of intense mental/emotional strife involve people not acting in a healthy manner, including in regards to their romantic relationships?????? Who’d have THOUGHT!

“Not only were Mary Jane's problems put on a back burner, whenever Peter had a problem, he shut MJ out.”

MJ herself understood some of her problems had to be put on a back burner for the greater good that Spider-Man performed for the world at large.

And the times he shut her out amounted to…I don’t even know…maybe once just prior to the Clone Saga when he was grappling with intense grief and pain and was on the verge of a mental breakdown. Then just went ahead and had the mental breakdown.

“During their marriage, Peter had huge life-changing moments. The first was when his parents came back from the dead only to be revealed as impostors then his Aunt May suffered a life-threatening stroke.”

Yes. These were definitely the first life-changing moments that occurred after he married Mary Jane.

Being buried alive, encountering Venom, going back to school, his best friend turning to villainy and becoming a reserve Avenger certainly wouldn’t have been life changing at all.

“Spider-Man's answer? Give up on being Peter Parker and embracing the spider.”

I’ll take ‘What if grief and emotional trauma’ for 500 Alex!!!!!!!

Honest to Christ. The story makes everything clear as crystal. This is an entirely believable response to trauma, it’s just literalized because the person experiencing it lives a double life already and has super powers.

“The writers were probably going for dark and moody, but looking back at it, it was a lot of whining.”

He lived his whole life in the wake of losing his parents, then had those wounds reopened when he learned they were not dead, then gradually grew to love and trust them, was stabbed in the back by them, found out they were imposters and his parents had been dead after all, then saw them violently die right in front of him, then learned this was perpetuated by his best friend, then the woman who raised him had a stroke and fell into a coma.

That’s not WHINING, that’s an insane amount of grief and pain you fucking idiot.

No human being could cope with that amount of trauma and NOT express their pain in some form. This isn’t him complaining he missed a date or can’t get his studies done. This is his heart being ripped out and stomped on in front of him repeatedly!

“Also, he totally abandoned his wife. Which is a dick move. Hey Pete, she might be someone to support you through your recent loss.”

HE WAS HAVING A MENTAL BREAKDOWN YOU DUMBASS!

NO ONE thinks clearly or logically when they are in that kind of emotional/mental distress. He was grieving the loss of THREE parents for fuck’s sake!

“Somewhere, a grief councilor just got a huge erection.”

This shithead clearly doesn’t know the meaning of the word grief.

“Then came the Clone Saga where Peter was convinced he was actually a clone of the real Spider-Man. He was too wrapped up on the fact that his past was potentially a lie that he couldn't see the good things in his life. He was married. Had a child on the way. None of this registered with him because of all the clones around putting his past into question.”

Peter Parker’s belief system was that a clone is NOT a real human being, it is a creature that is less than human and that in being a clone you have no real identity or right to life, you are just a freak. MJ echoes these sentiments in ASM #400.

Ben Reilly, who had all of Peter’s memories became distraught upon learning he was a clone. That occurred circa 1975 when Peter was approximately 22 years old and hadn’t finished college yet. Ben literally grieved for himself and that the memories in his head were a pretense, a life that was not his. He contemplated killing Peter and taking his life. He became borderline suicidal and anti-social. This went on for years during which he pushed himself to the very edge self-destructively.

Putting aside how the original intent was for Ben to be the REAL Peter Parker, Ben’s behaviours display what a dark and dangerous place Peter could’ve gone to had he been in Ben’s position.

The intent of the Jackal and Norman Osborn in orchestrating the Clone Saga was to shatter Peter’s sense of identity. The Jackal wanted to do that in 1975 with a 22 year old Peter. Norman however knew the blow would hurt Peter much more when he had more to lose and so delayed it until 1995 when Peter would’ve been about 27 years old, had more of a career, longer and deeper connections to his loved ones, a wife and a baby on the way.

When he finally pulled the trigger Peter had also only recently recovered from a terrible mental breakdown, lost Aunt May, been falsely accused of murder, had his sense of identity further damaged by yet more clones of himself appearing and learned that he and MJ’s baby might have serious health problems if he was a clone.

In fact MJ’s first reaction upon learning Peter was a clone was to grip her tummy and express concern for her baby. And remember she directly told him a clone isn’t a real person.

When put in context this caused Peter to have a SECOND mental breakdown. Entirely UNDERSTANDABLY!

This wasn’t a case of appreciating all he had because from his point of view being a clone meant he’d LOST all that. That he COULDN’T have that because he was less than human and not the real person that life belonged to.

If BEN reacted that way when he believed he was a clone then logically OF COURSE Peter was going to take it much, much, much worse.

“It should also be pointed out that during this period, Mary Jane's life was at risk and she was being stalked, again. This time by a clone. However, Peter was once again nowhere to be seen.”

Oh my fucking…HE HAD BEEN ARRESTED!

He wasn’t around because he was literally incarcerated in prison. Breaking out risked exposing his identity and thus endangering MJ and the baby. He also didn’t KNOW she was being stalked. When he found out in ASM #401 he broke out of jail and sought to find her. Later when Ben offered to take his place in jail Peter went on the hunt for MJ’s stalker, his clone Kaine whom he ALSO suspected as the guy who framed him.

Gee, proactively seeking out the guy threatening your wife and who might’ve framed you?

What a shitty husband, it’s not like that’s an entirely practical consideration to take or anything.

“In Heindsight...”

Oh this outta be good

“I could go over every other moment where Peter treated his wife like crap,”

Except he rarely did and the examples you’ve brought up do not hold up to scrutiny in the slightest because you are a clown show of an analyst.

“but those are the huge ones.”

No they aren’t, see above.

“Looking back at the upset of 2007, it's clear that anyone who got mad didn't actually read any of the stories written while Peter and Mary Jane were married.”

That’s so very rich coming from this dipshit, see above.

“Even then, over the past decade there has been a plethora of great Spider-Man stories.”

That’s true.

Agent Venom by Rick Remender

Carnage Family Feud

Carnage USA

Half of Scarlet Spider by Chris Yost

Bits of Ben Reilly: Scarlet Spider by Peter David

AXIS Hobgoblin

AXIS Carnage

Carnage by Gerry Conway

Silk by Robbie Thompson

Superior Foes of Spider-Man

ASM: Renew Your Vows

The issue where Flash Thompson lost his legs

The story regarding the Rhino and his girlfriend

Spider-Man 2099 by Peter David

Notice how none of that stuff focuses upon 616 Peter Parker.

Because between 2008-2018 there were no good stories focussing upon 616 Peter Parker.

At best there were mediocre stories focussing upon the pathetic man-child that was Spider-Man in name only.

“In fact, I'd even argue that Dan Slott's run on Spider-Man has contained some of the best Spider-Man stories of the past two decades.”

And you’d just further confirm yourself to be a moron who doesn’t have the first warm shit of a clue about how to analyse stories if you did.

“I can't think or a stellar Spider-Man run past 198 until Slott's run.”

ASM by JMS+Romita Junior

Sensational by Sacasa

Spec by DeMatteis+Buscema

Spec by DeMatteis+Ross

Marvel Knights by Mark Millar

Bits of Peter Parker: Spider-Man by Paul Jenkins

Hypothetically though let’s say they weren’t stellar.

They would still be OBJECTIVELY better than Dan Slott. Like who’s mothers did Michelinie, DeFalco or any of the above guys murder for you to claim Slott was better than them.

None of those guys:

Had Peter become a paparazzi photographer

Had Aunt May claim she was disappointed in Peter for not supporting her the night Uncle Ben died

Had Doc Ock try to rape Mary Jane

Created a clear cut Mary Sue to upstage Spidey in his own book

Turned Spider-Man into Diet Iron Man

Killed off a Ditko-era character for no other reason beyond a shock death. Except Mark Millar but the character was extremely minor

“Next to JMS' run, Slott has been the best Spider-Man writer in decades.”

Again, notice how he CONVENIENTLY neglected to bring up stuff from the JMS run when MJ and the marriage was written the best.

His criteria for judging MJ literally JUST included:

ASM by Michelinie run from 1989-1994

ASM by DeMatteis in 1994

Conway’s Spec/Web runs from 1988-1989

Spec #226 by DeFalco in 1995

Mackie’s PPSM run from 1997

The Mackie/Byrne run from 1999-2001

That was it.

He stated the marriage lasted between 1987-2007 but his analysis halted at 2001. He’s leaving out 6 goddam years worth of material in addition to ALL the other material he conveniently ignored before then.

“Where to Go From Here?

That raises some interesting questions. Will Peter and Mary Jane tie the knot again? It seems like Marvel is marrying characters off again (Colossus and Kitty Pryde as well as Gambit and Rogue) so that's promising.

Another is the promising thing is that the alternate reality series Renew Your Vows has been doing very well.

The last point is the main reason why they nixed the marriage to begin with: Needing a Spider-Man younger readers can relate with.”

The main reason they nixed it was because Quesada was butthurt Gwen died in 1973 and that MJ got to marry him instead.

“For the past number of years they have been promoting the hell out of Miles Morales, the "Ultimate" Spider-Man. They have been grooming him to be the young Spidey that they want for younger fans.”

Maybe don’t use the term ‘grooming’ in the context of a teenage character there buddy.

“While that doesn't mean Peter and MJ are destined to get married again, hopefully they will allow Peter to at least grow up a little.”

I see.

Marriage = bad because it makes him unrelatable to the kids. But also this dipshit wants Peter to ‘grow up a little’…which is what he had done by marrying MJ in the first place.

“However, let me say this: Doing what's expected doesn't necessarily make for a good story, it's the unexpected.”

Why don’t you ask Star Wars and Game of Thrones fans what they think about that buddy?

“That's what made Slott's run on Spider-Man so great.”

That’s true. Nobody expected Slott would have Doc Ock masturbate in Peter’s body. Nobody expected him to drag out our suffering for as long as he did. Nobody expected he’d invoke such a juvenile idea as Norman Osborn becoming carnage.

“Let's hope Nick Spencer continues that tradition.’

Fuck the unexpected. Just give me competency.

#Spider-Man #mjwatsonedit #Mary Jane Watson #mj watson #Mary Jane Watson Parker #Peter Parker #ben Reilly #Brand New Day #Dan Slott #Clone Saga #submission

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scarlettsabetlondongirl · 4 years ago

Photo

Poet Scarlett Sabet

In conversation with poet Gerard Malanga for London Magazine.

The London Magazine is England’s oldest literary periodical, with a history stretching back to 1732. Today – reinvigorated for a new century – the Magazine’s essence remains unchanged: it is a home for the best writing and an indispensable feature on the British literary landscape-London Magazine

See here

“After meeting at a French New Wave Cinema book launch in London in November 2019, poets Gerard Malanga and Scarlett Sabet have since kept in regular correspondence via email.

In this unique interview, conducted over several weeks while thousands of miles apart, the two writers discuss shared influences, the recent passing of the Beat Generation poet Michael McClure, and the grounding influence of poetry throughout the international lockdown.

This interview is based on the poets’ original email correspondence and has been edited for clarity.”-London Magazine

GERARD MALANGA: You ask how my week has been? I’ve been in lockdown now for 3 weeks or so, though I might’ve lost count. I have plenty to keep me busy in the house here, plus I have responsibility towards my 3 cats. And then there’s dreamtime, between 4 & 6 in the morning.

But suddenly I felt days back this ennui coming on, like, did the poetry suddenly disappear? Sometimes I’m concerned—but just for a moment mind you—whether I can match or even better the last one? There’s no way I can predict when the muse will appear. If I had the answer, it would vanquish the mystique.

Since I’ve been in lockdown, there’s no going out for me for the morning coffee and The New York Times unfolding on the table. Many a first draft has begun that way, but now with a physical displacement of sorts I can’t claim to be an habitue of the cafe life. The kitchen table serves me well – or wherever I happen to be outdoors – so long as I have a small notebook in my pocket. I even prop myself up in bed with a clipboard pressed against my knees. I follow where I feel a poem coming on. When I start, then I know I’m in for it, but don’t give it the slightest thought. I’m in for the ride.

SCARLETT SABET: Yes, I find sometimes walking in the morning, having a destination, getting into my body and moving get’s the ball rolling with writing. I can understand the ritual of going to a cafe. I’ve written on trains a lot, the motion and rhythm helps, and because I’m in a vacuum in transit I can’t be reached.

I love the image of your 4am dream writing, I think that’s a great ritual. Sometimes I write three pages first thing in the morning, and it’s just anything on my mind. I’ve also found meditation helpful, deepening my state of consciousness and then writing straight afterwards to see what comes out, kind of like automatic writing in the spirit of Austin Osman Spare.

We were both raised Catholic, I wonder if that has had any bearing on your writing or practices? I find a great sense of divinity in art, those moments of inspiration.

GERARD MALANGA: Funny that you would mention that. No one’s ever asked me about my spirituality, that I recall. People have weird notions about me, like I’m some kind of guy about town. I may have a little bit of that too. But spirituality for me is to be able to laugh at yourself. Even when I talk to my cats, I’m laughing at myself. I don’t mean physically laughing as such but going about life without being self-conscious. It helps when I’m writing a poem.

Back in 1970 or so, I had a spiritual conversion. One of my closest friends, a guy named Jim Jacobs, turned me on to the first two Carlos Castaneda/Don Juan books; so we were basically comparing notes and one of the themes that came through for us was to follow your nature to be happy. Suddenly we found ourselves wearing white clothing and calling ourselves the white lights. When we went to London we ended up buying an all-white 1939 Bentley convertible with one windshield wiper not wiping, and it basically gave us the freedom to go visit friends in the English countryside. It sounds hysterically funny when I look back at this, but we were quite sincere in our endeavors. If this was going to be our path we had to be true to the discoveries we made along the way.

During our travels we decided to split off and agreed to re-connect a couple of years later in the Massachusetts Berkshires where he’s from and continue where we left off. Jim ended up being one of the top dealers in the secondary art market handling the likes of Judd and Cy Twombly, and now he’s curating shows. I continued to write poetry without a care in the world and became more attuned to the pictures I was taking. I truly feel I’ve become a better photographer because of the experiences I had. You have to be courageous to suddenly drop out and then drop back in.

Back in ’74, I had this idea for a book of my spiritual poetry that would have as its cover one of those kitschy paintings of Jesus. I called it ‘Poems for the Fat Lady’. You know, the Fat Lady was a phrase I’d picked up from reading Salinger’s Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters, where he’s actually equating Jesus with the Fat Lady, that they were one. That’s pretty neat, I thought. It didn’t go over too well with my publisher who rejected the idea outright. He thought I was joking. So I settled for a kind of even-balanced title, Incarnations,’ and changed the poems around.

Perhaps, the Fat Lady was the closest I ever got to God, though I don’t give it much thought these days. It’s the inspiration and the love that come from it which is the driving force and source for much of what I’m writing nowadays, and that’s the joy when I finally finish a poem. A state of happiness sets in for me.

SCARLETT SABET: And what you said makes sense, I can understand it. Did you have a period where you rebelled against spirituality or Catholicism and were, say, atheist? Although it’s bizarre for me to admit it, once I left school I did swing to atheism, I guess as a way of rebelling or a reaction. School can be dogmatic.

GERARD MALANGA: In hindsight, to embrace atheism, Scarlett, would deny the spirituality within me which accounts for a lot of my poetry as well. There was no real rebellion on my part. I always felt that my guardian angel was looking after me when I was fated to become a poet. Who would I be, otherwise? It’s a scary proposition, come to think of it.

SCARLETT SABET: True, looking back I realise I’ve always had a Guardian Angel too. I’m so sorry for the loss of [influential Beat poet] Michael McClure, and I was moved by the picture you took of him in San Francisco, 1972. What was that day like?

GERARD MALANGA: If I live long enough, God willing, I may end up not knowing anyone because at this juncture a lot of my friends have already passed. Many of them in the obituary series of my most recent book Cool, which you have. I don’t want to slip into a consciousness of perpetual mourning. Yet I hadn’t anticipated that I’d be writing a poem for Michael, but then I opened up to myself and his consciousness flowed right in. Perhaps I had a vacuum to fill at that moment from an external point of view, taking Michael’s place for the poem that would talk to him and he to me.

I remember little of that when I came to visit with him and made his portrait. It was a serene afternoon. Just him and me. I remember distinctly that we went off in his car, perhaps to a restaurant. We were driving somewhere, and that made sense. But for the life of me I remember nothing of what transpired over lunch. With all the history—and it ain’t an awful lot—there’s still a history there to be acknowledged. You know, I performed the part of Billy the Kid in Warhol’s movie which we adapted from Michael’s play, The Beard. Hardly anyone knows this; perhaps in part because I believe the movie has never been shown. So the friendships last and last and continue beyond the grave.

SCARLETT SABET: I’m always struck by the structure of your poems. I was wondering what your approach to this was, whether there was any major influence from particular poets of your youth, or even whether the way that you frame scenes and ideas within poems has any crossover influence from your work in the wider art world?

GERARD MALANGA: Yes, there’s probably a very strict structure to my poems, but it’s casually applied in what the work proposes as possibility, which I don’t even notice when I’m starting out. For instance, for a very long time, the opening to the work begins with an indented first line of let’s say 8 characters. It’s my way of engaging myself and the reader into a form of poetry that’s a radically different departure from what may be normally perceived. Yes, it’s a poem, but I like to think of them as prose poems as well.

I left ‘influences’ behind decades back. I’m pretty much on autopilot. I’m my own navigator. I travel the journey alone. My earliest influence when I literally started was Gerard Manley Hopkins. I was enchanted by his system of ‘sprung rhythm’ which he basically invented with no imitators following. That would’ve been 1959 during the start of the high school year in my senior class. In 1962, I believe, John Ashbery made a profound influence on my early work with his book The Tennis Court Oath. That became my Bible. I’d carry it around my duffle bag wherever I went. But it was Ted Berrigan with his Sonnets in ’64 that unlocked the door for me into what Ashbery was doing and that was a sheer liberating factor. From there the work continued to expand on its own.

The only ‘crossover influence’ that I imagine, as you put it, in the ‘wider art world’ would be my own life, and not the art world, per se. So what we have here is the tendency to open almost all the work in the form of what appears to be a letter on the surface, but is actually a message. I’m addressing the subjects of my poems directly; they’re not ‘about’ the subject. I’m talking directly to them, as if they’re right in the room, whether it’s a person or a cat.

SCARLETT SABET: You mention you don’t write about your subjects but address them directly in your poems. I think this is what makes them so arresting and intimate, particularly in the ‘Lives They Lived’ chapter in your beautiful collection Cool & Other Poems [published by Bottle of Smoke Press]. Each poem is a visceral portal, allowing the reader to be present with you, and witness Christopher Logue against a snowing sky before warming his hands around a mug of cognac, and Anita Pallenberg a vivacious, laughing woman sitting opposite you at Cafe Flore. Also in that chapter you include a poem entitled ‘Gerard Malanga dies’. The poem contains the line ‘I am my only guide now,’ which I found so powerful. Could you tell us how that poem came to be?

GERARD MALANGA: Putting together that section, ‘The Lives They Lived’, I figuratively had to step outside myself. That’s how close I was with many of those listed and to the memories I have of them held dear. It was not an easy section to compile. By the way, ‘The Lives They Lived’, is borrowed from the New York Times‘s annual round-up supplement. I called my contact at the paper to get permission to use it and he saw no problem involved.

Writing ‘Gerard Malanga dies’ was a tricky situation in the need to make it work. It was one of the final poems in the section and it presented me with an opportunity to address certain issues surrounding death and to those friends I’d already acknowledged over a period of nearly 40 years. I also lapse into a bit of my own personal history, as if I’m contemplating how others might see me after I’ve gone: ‘The rabbit hole is waiting for my plunge.’ Somehow, that image of the rabbit hole has emerged in a few of my poems and also echoes back to Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, one of my favorite childhood books.

The rabbit hole is an image for both death and resurrection, as I see it. Here, I question myself, ‘Am I preparing for another life? A return to life?’ And so I treat this poem as slowly nearing its own end with a ‘journey’ back to life ‘…and on and on…’. I equate this with an actual journey I’d taken by train from ‘Glasgow down to Central London…’ back in 2014 where I’d been dreamily staring out the window at a passing landscape I might not ever explore at any other time.

‘Will I even find my way home to the Bronx’ alludes to a movie I’d seen years back I recall, called ‘The Swimmer’ adapted from a John Cheever short story. Starring Burt Lancaster, his character is swimming across a series of backyard swimming pools and encountering neighbors he knew poolside in attempting to reach home. And when he arrives in the pouring rain and runs up to the door, he discovers that the door’s locked and the house is empty. Such a potent ending and darkened cinematic metaphor, brilliantly done. And it’s these private memories in my life resurfacing that I feel nourishes my work.

SCARLETT SABET: We met at a book launch in London, and you were immediately swarmed, surrounded by people. I think that is a testament to the impact your writing has had globally and across generations. How has your home city of New York and its literary landscape changed and evolved for you over the years? Is it something you feel especially connected to?

GERARD MALANGA: Your question speaks volumes, but I’m going to try to be as brief and succinct as I can hope to be as the facts show. I’m seventy-seven now and there have been no accolades to show for it. Cool came out last year and Whisper Sweet Nothings two years prior and together they comprise the best of anything I’ve ever done, and yet they’ve been totally ignored by the New York literary press overall. In the five decades I’ve been publishing I’ve received not one grant or fellowship or any of the prizes totaling in the millions. Nada. Zilch. I can’t even get my memoirs published and I have thousands of fans waiting for this book. You would think that would count for something. I’m grateful for the European attitude towards my work. That’s what keeps the work alive for me. That’s where my audience is and they relate. I love what I do, and I know it shows through the work from the responses at the readings I give and that’s how my work thrives. I love my audience and that’s the truth of it.

SCARLETT SABET: A year ago today, I finished my waitressing shift, went home and listened to what Jimmy [Page] had produced from the recordings we had made of my poems. this became our spoken word album Catalyst. It was a joy to be able to give you our album as I am so moved by your work. It had a sense of synchronicity also, as years earlier, Jimmy had given me a signed edition of your beautiful poem ‘Devotion’.

You said that ‘Cut Up’ was your favourite track on Catalyst. I had christened that poem ‘Cut Up’ simply because it was the first time I had used the William Burroughs/Brion Gysin method. I always feel it’s a handing over, a leap of faith to a higher power, to introduce another energy to it, and it came out with it’s own dark, random rhythm. Burroughs said “when you cut into the present the future leaks out”, and in that sense it has a spell like quality or possibility.

Some poems I’ve written in one sitting, a sort of channeling, like ‘Fifth Circle of Hell’, which is also on Catalyst. But part of the reason I found the cut-up method so liberating that first time was that I was trying to write a poem to encapsulate that period. I felt cautious because the subject matter was focused on the events in Europe and the Middle East, and the horrors and blood shed of the Bataclan attacks in Paris. I think my own identity and ethnicity – my mother is French-Scottish and my father is Persian – gave this piece more weight personally. So really, the cut-up was a way of detaching through the process, which was effective. I suppose I wonder what your thoughts are on cut-ups?

GERARD MALANGA: Scarlett, cut-ups are a tricky business. They almost feel spontaneous, but with every move there’s no turning back. They’re the antithesis to parallel grammatical structures which is how we reform language to make things sound right. You see Bill [Burroughs] stuck with it all his life. Cut-ups were his language and he embraced the process. It’s okay to experiment with language so long as you come out at the other end with something that satisfies you and encourages you to want to do more, to go further. That’s a big commitment. The one thing you want to avoid is being self-conscious in the process, as you put it. There’s no room for self-consciousness in cut-ups. You have to operate on a more or less unconscious level like when you dream.

Of course, you realize this in dreams. I don’t need to tell you. In dreams, nothing really connects or relates. Dreaming is a series of visual and mental disconnects. One thing leads to the next but you don’t know why nor do you have time to stop to know why. It’s like you go with the flow. Excuse the corniness of this. Dreams are the cut-ups of the unconscious. You can’t go back to change anything to make it better. There’s nothing qualitative about it. When that happens to me, I try to maintain the balance of the good and the bad together. All of it. Yes, I’ve done a little tweaking here and there, but only because I’m now in the conscious state and I want to make the lines sound just right. So it’s okay to prune. Robert Lowell taught me how to prune. But you have to know what you’re doing. It’s trusting your instincts. That’s what I do. If I throw out a perfectly terrific line, it’s because I’m trusting my instincts. But, of course, only I know that. The reader doesn’t, nor does he need to.

One of my earliest poems was a form of the cut-up. My English teacher in high school, Daisy Aldan, who introduced me to the world of poetry, gave us an assignment in class to cut out words at random from the newspaper and fill a paper bag with them. The next step was to reach into the bag and pick out one word at a time and place them on a page, and then to transcribe those words into a text, including all the capital and lower-case letters. I did one better and glued them onto the page. This all had to do with chance. Remember, Stéphane Mallarmé, in his last poem ‘Un coup de dés’ said that a ‘a throw of the dice NEVER NEVER will abolish chance.’ Well, he was right about that. You take your chances, you trust your instincts.

SCARLETT SABET: I’ve started reading Gysin’s novel The Process. I bought it last year at Shakespeare&Co but started reading it now to feel closer to Morocco, a place that I really love, while still in lockdown. I wondered what places have meant the most to you?

GERARD MALANGA: I have Brion’s book on my shelf, but I’ve yet to read it. Perhaps I’m still not ready for it yet. Right now I’m immersed in Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. What I like about it is that it reads like it’s not translated but written directly in English. That’s probably the best kind of translated work.

The first place that comes to mind that has meant the most to me, although there may have been others, is the Cafe Flore. It was my first introduction to cafe life when I arrived in Paris in the spring of 1965. And henceforth whenever I’ve visited Paris, I would arrive punctually every morning during my stays. There’s no other cafe that does it for me. Of course, there’s the cafe in the Luxembourg Gardens, but that’s more like a restaurant; a different ambiance entirely. The Flore has a certain something, a certain charm about it that allows me to immerse myself reading the morning papers or writing a poem even. The food’s good too. The croissants, the omelettes, the cafe creme. Some years back, I started referring to it as my ’office’ whenever I had an appointment to meet with friends. And I’d be certain to book a hotel room within walking distance. Anyway, the Flore is the start of my day.

SCARLETT SABET: Well, I hope one day, when the lockdown is over, we can meet you at Cafe Flore.

Photos: London Magazine

#scarlett sabet #jimmy page #jimmy page girlfriend #led zeppelin #poet #poetry #the london magazine #london magazine #gerard malanga

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alatismeni-theitsa · 5 years ago

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One thing I love about your account is that you challenge all of what I thought being Greek meant. Like growing up, I always felt bad about myself because my skin was pale, and I was always told all Greeks have olive skin. I never liked my nose because I felt it didn’t look like what the media portrays Greek noses to look. Like even looking at my mom and papou’s noses, I just have a different one. I’ve always just been insecure, feeling like I could never look Greek enough.

Ya su! :D Big answer incoming, brace yourselves!

From your question I understand you are a Greek of diaspora and your mother was a second generation Greek immigrant. I have received plenty of messages here from Greeks of diaspora who have told me “I am pale/I have blue eyes/I am blond and I don’t feel like a Greek!” Really, I should make a tag! It’s so strange how foreigners make us feel like we don’t belong in our own ethnicity! North Europeans and Americans make even us, who live in Greece feel like our heritage doesn’t belong to us! “You can’t possibly be the same!” they say. No, we are not the same. However we come from a long continuous line of people who tought the Greek heritage to their children for centuries. We speak the same language, we have many same traditions, we get inspired by the same nature. The antiquity doesn’t exist in a vacuum and it never stopped being a part of us.

That’s why I encourage proper representation of Greeks, especially on American media, so false images stop being circulating. It’s not exactly racist what’s happening but it has resulted in many Greeks straight up being told “you don’t even look Greek, why you speak on Greek issues?” That enrages me EVERY.FUCKING.TIME.

Because to tell you the truth, Greeks couldn’t be further from the stereotype “dark olive skin with curly black hair”! The majority, especially in the north, is pale, many times with big weird ass noses. 99% of us look white with the first guess. Of course there are some occasions where the stereotype is true (I don’t pretend there are no darker Greeks!) but those are rare. An American friend once saw a documentary about modern Athens and she was very surprised about how white we looked and asked herself “is this Germany??”

Even in the ancient art all over Greece we see pale/white people all over the place. I have been to museums all over the country and always seen them (where the colors are preserved) and I have posted some in my tag #ancient greek art as well. The Americans go “oh, those are fake because Greeks idolized white skin”. Sure, Jan, all Greeks all over the country made art with Caucasian white people because they were all in a secret white supremacy pact. Of course figures are beautified sometimes but it’s crazy to assume Greeks did everything in their power not to depict their own people accurately. I have this post (link) where I discuss that ancient Greeks weren’t that different from us today, with sources of studies showing our DNA hasn’t changed much. It’s to debunk the “ancient Greeks were darker than the modern ones”, which is used to depict our ancient gods and people very dark in modern art.

Foreigners also focus on the mixes with other people Greeks had in order to justify how we are dark. “But they are close to Africa sooo...” No. This argument doesn’t make much sense and people who use it know jack shit about our history and demographics and don’t have any common sense. It’s true though that mixes have played a part in our history and our appearance so it’s good to speak about those.

Greeks in the North (Athens and up) have mostly been mixing with Slavs and Germanic people because it’s easier for us to go to each other’s country by foot, and we just are close to each other. Plus, the history of the Balkans is very interesting and full of mixes and immigration! We also have mixed (I don’t know to what extent) with the Turks, who are Mongolic in nature and come north of Greece as well.

People from the Peloponnise can be darker but still they look hella white (as I was told by Peloponnisian friends and as I have noticed myself). People in the south islands are more likely to have some Arab DNA but generally no one has observed that they look different than the rest of Greeks. (I haven’t seen it or heard it ever in my life. Other Greeks, correct me if I am wrong). You can’t tell which person comes from just by looking at them.

Your struggle is understandable and I would like to give some suggestions to overcome it and be more comfortable in your own heritage. Perhaps you do some of these things anyway but there is no harm in listing them!

1) Search historically important Greeks and see their portraits. Seriously, do it! You may find yourself looking a little bit like them. You will surely have one thing common with them since they are usually pale :P Sometimes they may have non Greek names (Karlota, Suzanna, Emilia) but it was a trend for the rich families of the 19th century to give such names to children. I mean if you find a non-Greek name investigate if they are Greek or not because they actually might be. In my tag #Greek people you will find photos and portraits of Greeks from old times!

2) Read the history of Greece. All of it, not just from 300 BC to 100 AC as most foreigners do. Preferably, find works that have someone Greek as a writer or supervisor (because Greeks usually try to depict accuratelly what happened), or writers who truly feel Greece, like Richard Clogg. Read about Greek old allies and old enemies, about who we trade with, about where we immigrated, where we went to study to see what are the most likely mixes. Obviously, every kind of mix can happen but for numbers that matter you got to know the historical trends. It’s gonna be a journey that will help you feel your Greek side more and have answers ready when someone claims you don’t look Greek.

3) Learn more Greek. The Greek language is logical but also stupid and funny, expressing the spirit of the people who made it. Learning Greek means learning how Greeks think. We have 20+ weird phrases to playfully say someone is gay, like “he flogs the dolphin”, “he shakes the pear tree” etc. We have phrases that stem from war and pirate raids and... hating the Turks, our colonizers :P We have many Mediterranean expressions like calling a mole “olive” or saying “I am in an open sea” (”πελάγωσα”) when we feel lost, or saying “he pressed my oil out” when someone tires us. I am very passionate about Greek so you can message me any time with any question about it!

4) Learn where your family comes from. I mean the exact place/town, the geographical compartment. Learn the specific dances and traditional costume of that area from youtube videos or a Greek community in your area! See if the people in your area were great warriors, great merchants, great wine producers. See if there are any Greek heroes of the 1821 revolution coming from your place! Learn the song “Πώς το τρίβουν το πιπέρι” and the weird ass dance that comes with it, which Greek archeologists didn’t even hesitate to dance in a Mycenaic tomb!

5) Meet more Greeks! Through groups on insta or fb, through Tumblr blogs etc. Watch youtubers of Greek diaspora as “Greek in Town” or the comedian Basile! Maybe there is one Greek community near you area and you can pay a visit for festivals!

6) Cook Greek food. If your grandparents and mum know recipes, take them as if they are gold. It’s a great way to get familiar with the local Greek ingredients and the Greek palette. Replace your soul with feta if you can xD

7) Read Greek modern literature, even translated. Elitis, Sahtouris, Seferis, Venezis, Papadiamantis, Mirivilis, Delta, Empirikos, Zei, Kazantzakis are only a few of the literary gems Greeks have to offer. Enjoy good writing, the Greek perspective, and get to know the newer Greek society in a unique and authentic way. Here is a list with more of them (link).

8) Be proud. Be proud of a people who endured earthquakes, wars, genocide, famine, occypation, slaughters and slavery and can still stand. In every anniversary of ww1, ww2 and grecoturkic war, in our schools we sing prideful songs and hang posters with our war heroes, always standing proud. The students and the army parade in the streets, the small childrean wearing traditional costumes. Being proud is one key element of being Greek.

Of course I don’t mean in a nationalistic/facist tone! We also celebrate the fall of the Greek junta of 1967 - which was financed by the US - and we are proud for it! And we fought German nazis. So no such ideology is welcome. Because we have so many things to be proud of (such long history!) foreigners equate our pride with nationalism. That is not the case for a healthy Greek mind who knows Greek history.

Ok, that’s all! Thank you for making it this far and reading what I had to say! I wish you a great cultural journey and I remind you that my DMs and Asks are open if you ever need anything!

#answered #anonymous #greek speaks #greek people #theansweriamlookingfor #recommendation #greek diaspora

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pamphletstoinspire · 5 years ago

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The Cost of Discipleship: Readings for the 23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time

One of the most famous German opponents of Adolf Hitler and Nazism was the Lutheran pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, whom the Nazis executed by hanging in April 1945 for his involvement in a plot against Hitler himself. Bonhoeffer’s most famous work was a meditation on the Sermon on the Mount entitled (in English) The Cost of Discipleship. In it, Bonhoeffer parted ways with a Protestantism that understood “salvation by faith alone” as some kind of easy road to heaven. Bonhoeffer criticized “easy-believism” as “cheap grace”

Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, communion without confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ.

Costly grace confronts us as a gracious call to follow Jesus, it comes as a word of forgiveness to the broken spirit and the contrite heart. It is costly because it compels a man to submit to the yoke of Christ and follow him; it is grace because Jesus says: "My yoke is easy and my burden is light.

Bonhoeffer was a Protestant, but there is much in his writings that a Catholic can affirm, including the passage above. I can’t help thinking of Bonhoeffer as I meditate on the Readings for this coming Sunday, which stress the high cost of discipleship to this mysterious man Jesus of Nazareth, who is nothing other than the Wisdom of God in the flesh.

1. Our First Reading is Wis 9:13-18b:

Who can know God’s counsel, or who can conceive what the LORD intends? For the deliberations of mortals are timid, and unsure are our plans. For the corruptible body burdens the soul and the earthen shelter weighs down the mind that has many concerns. And scarce do we guess the things on earth, and what is within our grasp we find with difficulty; but when things are in heaven, who can search them out? Or who ever knew your counsel, except you had given wisdom and sent your holy spirit from on high? And thus were the paths of those on earth made straight.

There is little controversy over the date and authorship of the Wisdom of Solomon. Strictly speaking, the book makes no claims about its own authorship, although the first-person “voice” of the book clearly cloaks itself in the persona of the biblical Solomon. The Church Fathers recognized this as a literary device. St. Augustine’s remark is representative: Next are the … three books of Solomon, viz., Proverbs, Song of Songs, and Ecclesiastes. For two books, one called Wisdom and the other Ecclesiasticus, are ascribed to Solomon from a certain resemblance of style, but the most likely opinion is that they were written by Jesus the son of Sirach. Still they are to be reckoned among the prophetical books, since they have attained recognition as being authoritative.

The Wisdom of Solomon is heavily influenced by Greek philosophy and rhetoric. It gives every evidence of having been composed originally in Greek, and a variety of factors, including the dominating concern with matters Egyptian in the second half of the book, suggest that the large Jewish community in Alexandria, Egypt, was the location of composition, at some time between 250 and 100 BC. Since the author seems to be responding to a campaign of persecution against observant Jews, scholars often propose either the reign of Ptolemy IV Philopator (221-204 B.C.), or Ptolemy VII Physicon (145-117 B.C.) as likely periods of composition.

A major contribution of the Book of Wisdom is to the theology of the Holy Spirit. The book characterizes divine wisdom as a person and virtually identifies her with the spirit of God, i.e. the Holy Spirit:

For wisdom is a kindly spirit (1:6)

In her there is a spirit that is intelligent, holy, unique … all-powerful, all-seeing (7:22)

She is a breath of the power of God, and pure emanation of the glory of the Almighty (7:25)

Who has learned your counsel, unless you have given Wisdom, and sent your Holy Spirit from on high? (9:17)

So there is progress in revelation in the Book of Wisdom. In this late Old Testament work, we see further articulated a reality hinted at previously, namely, that there are multiple persons in the Godhead, and God’s Spirit is a Person.

In Patristic exegesis, these passages about Wisdom are often taken as describing Christ, whom the New Testament identifies as “the wisdom of God” (1 Cor 1:24). Although the more natural application of these passages of Wisdom is directly to the Third Person, the Holy Spirit, their application to the Second Person is justified inasmuch as he is the Christ, the “Anointed One,” who is anointed with the Spirit and thus shares the Spirit’s attributes.

Focusing on this Sunday’s Reading, we note that the sacred author stresses how difficult the attainment of wisdom is, even in relation to material concerns, much less to supernatural and transcendent truth. Our physical needs and appetites confuse and cloud our thinking, because we are strongly motivated to reason to conclusions that allow us to satisfy our bodies, rather than to conclusions that are strictly true. In humility, the sage acknowledges that the attainment of truth about ultimate reality is really a superhuman effort. It is something beyond our strength, truly a miracle. Without the help of God, we would all but despair of coming to the truth about the reality of things. But God makes it possible by the gift of the Holy Spirit:

Or who ever knew your counsel, except you had given wisdom and sent your holy spirit from on high?

The sage here reflects a biblical theme that wisdom is the gift of God’s Spirit. This can be seen in the accounts of notable wise men in salvation history.

For example, Joseph, the visionary and royal steward over the land of Egypt, derived his wisdom from the Holy Spirit:

Gen. 41:38

And Pharaoh said to his servants, “Can we find such a man as this, in whom is the Spirit of God?” 39 So Pharaoh said to Joseph, “Since God has shown you all this, there is none so discreet and wise as you are …

Likewise Daniel:

Dan. 5:11

There is in your kingdom a man in whom is the spirit of the holy gods. In the days of your father light and understanding and wisdom, like the wisdom of the gods, were found in him …

And the Messiah who is to come will be marked by similar wisdom:

Is. 11:2

And the Spirit of the LORD shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the LORD.

2. Our Responsorial Psalm is Ps 90:3-4, 5-6, 12-13, 14-17

R. (1) In every age, O Lord, you have been our refuge.

You turn man back to dust, saying, “Return, O children of men.” For a thousand years in your sight are as yesterday, now that it is past, or as a watch of the night. R. In every age, O Lord, you have been our refuge.

You make an end of them in their sleep; the next morning they are like the changing grass, Which at dawn springs up anew, but by evening wilts and fades. R. In every age, O Lord, you have been our refuge.

Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain wisdom of heart. Return, O LORD! How long? Have pity on your servants! R. In every age, O Lord, you have been our refuge.

Fill us at daybreak with your kindness, that we may shout for joy and gladness all our days. And may the gracious care of the LORD our God be ours; prosper the work of our hands for us! Prosper the work of our hands! R. In every age, O Lord, you have been our refuge.

Psalm 90 is the only Psalm attributed to Moses, and the it has a decided melancholy tone, as a meditation on human frailty immediately after the disastrous ending of Psalm 89, in which all the hopes of Israel pinned upon the Davidic dynasty are dashed in tragedy and destruction. The Israelite reader of the psalms, having been brought to despair over the apparent failure of the covenant with David, now “goes back to Moses” for advice in Psalm 90. Moses observes the utter lack of power on the part of human beings, and recognizes that the only lasting things are those granted by God. He leads Israel in prayer: “Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain wisdom of heart!” Much like the sacred author of the Book of Wisdom, Moses acknowledges that wisdom is beyond our reach, and is ultimately a gift from God.

3. Our Second Reading is Phmn 9-10, 12-17

I, Paul, an old man, and now also a prisoner for Christ Jesus, urge you on behalf of my child Onesimus, whose father I have become in my imprisonment; I am sending him, that is, my own heart, back to you. I should have liked to retain him for myself, so that he might serve me on your behalf in my imprisonment for the gospel, but I did not want to do anything without your consent, so that the good you do might not be forced but voluntary.

Perhaps this is why he was away from you for a while, that you might have him back forever, no longer as a slave but more than a slave, a brother, beloved especially to me, but even more so to you, as a man and in the Lord. So if you regard me as a partner, welcome him as you would me.

From now to the end of the liturgical year, the Lectionary reads semi-continuously through St. Paul’s letters to individuals (Philemon, Timothy, Titus), starting with St. Paul’s shortest letter, the one-chapter epistle to Philemon. This is the only reading of Philemon on a Sunday or Feast Day in the Church’s calendar.

The Letter to Philemon concerns a runaway slave, Onesimus, whom Paul met, converted, and discipled while he was in prison. When Onesimus was finally released, Paul sent him back to his master Philemon (already a Christian) with a letter asking Philemon to free Onesimus and allow him to return to assist Paul in his ministry. The letter is an important testimony to the Christian belief in the equal human dignity of all persons, despite societal structures (like slavery or abortion) that deny dignity to some.

Onesimus was Philemon’s legal “possession”, but Paul is asking Philemon to “renounce his possessions” for the sake of the Gospel, that is, for the sake of the success of Paul’s preaching ministry. Jesus will call all his disciples to “renounce their possessions” in the following Gospel Reading.

4. Our Gospel is Lk 14:25-33:

Great crowds were traveling with Jesus, and he turned and addressed them, “If anyone comes to me without hating his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.

When speaking of “hating” one’s family, Jesus is not speaking literally, but using a common rabbinic literary technique we now call “hyperbole,” that is, a dramatic overstatement that attracts attention and provokes thought. What does it mean to “hate” one’s family? It means one needs to be willing to break family ties if one’s family opposes the call of Christ on one’s life. One never stops loving one’s family, though, because love of God and love of neighbor are the summation of God’s law, and one’s family certainly counts as one’s “neighbors.” Furthermore, elsewhere Jesus criticizes the Pharisees for using a loophole in the law to justify not caring for their parents (Mk 7:11), and Paul rebukes Christians who do not care for their own family (1 Tim 5:8). So we know that under ordinary circumstances, love for family is mandated (as in the Fourth Commandment). Nonetheless, if the choice is between honoring family and following Jesus, one must choose Jesus. The Muslim convert Joseph Fadelle faced this choice and writes about it in the riveting book, The Price to Pay, available from Ignatius Press.

Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.

This is absolutely shocking language, whose original effect is lost on us who now where crosses around our necks as jewelry. The cross was an instrument of execution and torture, like an electric chair but much worse. The use of crosses was almost unique to the Roman Empire, which liked to employ them to make awful spectacle of the agonizing deaths of anyone who opposed Roman power. Jews hated the cross, because a curse was attached to anyone who died “on a tree” according to Deut 21:22-23.

The condemned man carried his own cross to the site of his execution, so “to carry one’s cross” meant that you were on death row, there was no chance of appeal, you would certainly die soon. Let’s keep in mind that Jesus says this during the Lukan “Travel Narrative”—that is, while he is on his “death march” to Jerusalem to experience his passion (Luke 9-19). Jesus knew he was going to his death, and anyone who followed him also risked death. As it would turn out, everyone abandoned Jesus at the end, so he went to the cross alone. But in years afterward, many of his disciples would share the cross with him.

Which of you wishing to construct a tower does not first sit down and calculate the cost to see if there is enough for its completion? Otherwise, after laying the foundation and finding himself unable to finish the work the onlookers should laugh at him and say, ‘This one began to build but did not have the resources to finish.’ Or what king marching into battle would not first sit down and decide whether with ten thousand troops he can successfully oppose another king advancing upon him with twenty thousand troops?

But if not, while he is still far away, he will send a delegation to ask for peace terms. In the same way, anyone of you who does not renounce all his possessions cannot be my disciple.”

Jesus’ method of preaching is so different from methods I was taught or have witnessed at megachurches or on TV. Much of contemporary evangelism relies on some variation of “come to Jesus and your troubles will be solved.” But Jesus seems here to be encouraging people to leave and go away, telling them that they don’t realize what they are getting into. Following Jesus will cost everything that you own. If there is any possession you won’t give up for the sake of Jesus, you have not attained discipleship.

Can the renunciation of your material goods really be the way to salvation and communion with God? This seems paradoxical, difficult to accept. This is the Wisdom that does not follow human logic, that defies natural reasoning. To see the wisdom and beauty of poverty and renunciation requires a gift of insight from God, a reception of his Spirit.

Several times in the Gospel of Luke, Jesus is shown to be the bearer of God’s Wisdom:

Luke 2:40 And the child (Jesus) grew and became strong, filled with wisdom; and the favor of God was upon him.

Luke 2:52 And Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature, and in favor with God and man.

Luke 7:34 The Son of man has come eating and drinking; and you say, ‘Behold, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’ 35 Yet wisdom is justified by all her children.”

Luke 11:31 The queen of the South will arise at the judgment with the men of this generation and condemn them; for she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon, and behold, something greater than Solomon is here.

Jesus now tells us that the path to salvation requires us to embrace death and renounce our family and material wealth in order to follow him. That is not the path to salvation we would have reasoned out for ourselves! But it is the Wisdom of God which transcends our categories, the Wisdom of God that we prayed to receive with “Solomon” the sage and Moses the psalmist.

Many even in the Church would have us believe that we can be saved without repenting of our sins, even that we can receive the Eucharist in good conscience without repenting of mortal sin. Don’t believe that lie. No one will enter heaven without acknowledging and renouncing every sin they have ever committed. This is necessarily the case, because attachment to sin is attachment to that which is not-God and not-love. And no one in heaven will be or can be still attached to not-God and not-love. Therefore, no one will still be attached to sin in heaven. If we do not repent of and renounce our sin in this life, there is purgatory for those sins that are not mortal, and hell for those who have truly rejected God and the kind of love he represents. It is a sobering thought, so let us make a good examination of conscience before coming to this Sunday’s Eucharist.

From: https://www.pamphletstoinspire.com/

#23rd sunday in ordinary time

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trashcanmarvelfan · 6 years ago

Text

Best. Job. Ever. 13/13 (Epilogue)

Summary: Reader gets a job on the set of Spider-Man: Far from Home for the 3 weeks they are shooting in New York City as what she thinks is a production assistant, but a twist of fate has her reassigned as Tom Holland’s personal assistant. As she & Tom grow close during filming, will their budding friendship turn to more or will they go their separate ways after filming concludes?

Warnings: Language, but that’s pretty much it? This is basically a PG-13 rom-com. (Legal) alcohol use as well but since it’s legal do I really need to tag it?

Word Count: 981 for the epilogue!

Author’s Note: As this was written WAY before Spider-Man: Far from Home was released (actually before Avengers: Endgame was as well) I’ve kept plot details and which scene was being shot on what day extremely vague. Also, I’m American but tried to write Tom as British as possible, although I do think he’d try to stay(ish) in character and use as much American slang as he could while he’s still playing Peter.

Chapter-Specific Author’s Note: Thank you so much for sticking with this story and for all the likes and comments - Writers crave feedback!

Requests are always open!

Cross-posted at AO3.

*****************8 Months Later******************

“Ready for your big-screen debut?”

Y/N glanced up from her reflection in the mirror in Tom's bedroom as Tom walked in. She laughed. “Sure, if that take even made it into the movie.”

“Oh, I'm sure it did, darling. You stole the scene.”

Y/N smirked. “Oh yes, I walked across the street better than anyone else ever has in the history of cinema. I should start practicing my Oscars acceptance speech!”

Tom playfully nudged her. “Just remember us little people when you’re famous.”

Y/N arched an eyebrow. “Right... and who exactly is the star of the film we’re going to the premiere of?” She sighed. “I can't believe it’s already here. Seems like just yesterday we were in New York for filming.”

Tom grinned as he came up behind her, wrapping his arms around her waist and placing his head on her shoulder. “Time flies when you're having fun, doesn't it, love?”

Y/N grinned back at him in the mirror. “It sure does.” She turned and put her arms around Tom's neck. “But there's no one else I'd rather have fun with than you, babe.” She gave him a quick kiss. “Oh, hey, I got you something.”

“Oh?” Tom replied.

Y/N walked over to where her overnight bag was sitting on Tom's bed and pulled out a small velvet bag. She handed the bag to Tom, watching as he pulled the drawstrings open and shook the contents out into his palm. His face lit up.

“I thought you could wear them to the premiere if you wanted,” Y/N explained as Tom examined the Spiderman cufflinks and tie clip closer.

“Absolutely, I love these!” Tom quickly switched out his cufflinks and tie clip for his new ones, checking himself out in the mirror to make sure his tie clip was straight.

Y/N grinned and kissed him on the cheek. “Perfect. Now, help me with my necklace please?”

“Sure, darling,” Tom replied.

Y/N walked over to her bag, got her necklace out, and handed it to Tom, then turned around and moved her hair off of her neck.

Tom fastened the necklace around Y/N's neck, caressing her neck with his fingers as he straightened it and placing a small kiss under her ear.

Y/N shivered, taking a sharp breath. She could feel the love in his gentle touch. She turned around to face Tom.

“Have I mentioned lately how much I love you?” she asked.

Tom smiled. “Not in the last 10 minutes,” he joked. “I could probably use a reminder.”

Y/N ran her fingers through Tom's hair, which had been artfully styled into messy curls for the premiere. “I love you so much,” she said.

“I love you too,” Tom replied. “More than anything.” His expression suddenly got serious. “Actually, I--”

They were interrupted by Tom's phone ringing.

“Augh, hold on.” Tom fished his phone out of his pocket. “Hello? Yeah, hey, mate. Yeah, we’re ready. Ok, sounds perfect. Ok, see you there.”

“That was Haz. He said the car will be here in 10 minutes,” he explained.

Y/N nodded. “So, how do I look? Premiere-worthy?”

“Absolutely beautiful,” Tom replied. “Although I think something is missing.”

Y/N frowned. “Oh?” She turned back towards the mirror in Tom's room and looked at her outfit. “What is it?”

She turned back around to see Tom on one knee, a beautiful diamond ring in his hands.

Y/N gasped, her eyes widening and her hands flying up to her mouth. Tears filled her eyes.

Tom cleared his throat. “I was going to wait until after the premiere but the more I thought about it the more I feel like I have to do this now. Y/N, these past 8 months with you have been some of the best of my life. The day I met you I walked into that restaurant not knowing just how much you would change my life for the better. I was expecting just a temporary assistant, but what I got was so much more. I couldn't leave New York without asking you to go on a date with me when we arrived back here in L.A., and now I can't walk into the premiere without having asked you if you'll be my wife. Y/N, will you do me the honor of accepting my hand in marriage?”

***********************************************************

��Welcome back to the red carpet for the premiere of Spider-Man: Far from Home where we are live with Tom Holland, yes that’s right, Spider-Man himself, who has just been joined by his girlfriend, literary publicist Y/N Y/L/N. Tom and Y/N, it’s been rumored that you two actually met on the set of Far from Home. Is that true?”

Y/N and Tom looked at each other with a smile. “Yes, actually, it is true,” Tom answered. “Sony hired Y/N as my assistant for the New York part of filming and we hit it off straight away, although we didn’t officially start dating until after filming had wrapped.”

Y/N threaded her fingers through Tom’s, his thumb lovingly caressing the finger that he had placed a ring on not long before.

Although Y/N had accepted Tom's proposal with a tearful and resounding “YES, OF COURSE!” they ultimately had decided together to wait until after the film's release to make their engagement public, so as to not overshadow the release. “Actually I was originally hired as a production assistant,” she clarified, “but was reassigned as Tom's personal assistant before I could begin.”

“So, Y/N, what was it like being Tom’s assistant on set?”

Y/N grinned and looked at Tom lovingly. “I’d have to say that while I absolutely love my current job, being Tom's assistant on the Far from Home set was quite honestly the best job ever.”

Taglist: @laureharrier @thoughstofaredhead & @greenarrowhead

#tom holland fanfiction #tom holland fanfic #tom holland x reader #tom holland rpf #tom holland x you #avengers fanfiction #Best. Job. Ever.

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avidfanficwriter · 6 years ago

Text

The Other Sister (Chapter 1)

Characters: Steve Rogers(AU!) x OFC.

Summary: After five years of marriage, Steve Rogers finds himself questioning everything that his wife, Annabel has ever told him thanks to the impromptu visit by her troubled younger sister: Addison; whose existence he’s just learned about fives years prior. His only question now is: who verison is the truth? His loving wife? Or the troubled sister?

Ratings: M.

Warnings: Mentions/indications of depression, mentions of sexual abuse, indication of mental abuse, drug abuse, alcohol abuse. (Warnings will be updated as chapters come)

Authors Note: It’s not gonna be pretty. I’m sorry for the you know, skipping out on everyone and neglecting my blog. I’m better than that, you know that. I know that but I’m trying. Believe in me. :)

Chapter 1. Chapter 2.

There's a scene in dramatic movies that always seem to be shot in the same way, a simple setting, two people, one is nervous while the other is calm. The person who is lucky enough to be calm eventually notices the odd behaviors from the other and questions it. They're given a jaw-droppingly shocking statement. The kind that makes them choke on their drink or forget how to breathe. At first, they don't know how to react. It's a pot full of emotions, anger, sadness, annoyance or worst-case scenario disgust. They question how they are going to get over it or understand it.

That moment of being unclear how to continue is how Steve felt right now, only instead of just a flurry of emotions, there's a nauseous feeling pooling in the pit of his stomach.

"-ay for a while." He doesn't have the faintest idea what his wife is saying now, after the first few words she spoke, he's blacked out the rest. It takes a few moments to gather himself, followed by another to convince himself he won't vomit. "One more time..." he asks.

His wife, Annabel Shaw-Rogers cocks her head at her husband. "I said Addison needs a place to stay for a while." He nods. "I told her no but she was insistent on it, something about doctors orders. She's probably just got out of rehab again. Once a junkie always a junkie." She trails off in annoyance.

All Steve can do is nod in response, he's chewing on his bottom lip trying to not scream. "The sister who was in and out of jail the last few years?"

"Uh-huh."

Another nod. "The sister who pops drugs like they're candy?"

"Uh-huh."

He clears his throat and rests his hands on the counter, staring at the wall ahead of him. "The one you don't hear from unless she needs something?"

Annabel chuckles and walks towards her husband of five years, she reaches out to him, wrapping her tanned arms around his waist. "Baby, I only have one sister. All of the horror stories you are about to ask are indeed about her." She takes a moment to rub a calming hand down his chest. "She's going to have to stay here if not, she'll never let that be the end of it." The sentence is ended with a loving kiss on his cheek and she leans into his body, trying to use her affection as an apology for the cards they have been dealt. For Steve, it'll take far more than a simple kiss and hug to rid the horrid taste in his mouth. She'll invade their privacy, ruin their home, invade the wholesome environment they have. Her drug-diseased handcuff ridden hands would be all over his home, infecting it. The air would be toxic, everything would have to be replaced, their home would need to be replaced.

A new home, new furniture, new clothes. He'd be out of money by this time next year.

If that wasn't bad enough, Addison Shaw was trouble with a capital T. The woman had trouble etched in her bones, her blood was filled with negativity. The only way to explain young Addison was everything bad that one person can do, Addison had done and then some. The two sisters were miles apart, Annabel was beautiful, sweet and brilliant while Addison was problematic, untrustworthy and downright awful.

They were cut from two different strands, good and bad. To Steve, part of it would have made sense if one of them was bad if their daddy had a criminal history or even mommy but both parents were normal, average. Met in college, fell madly in love. Their mother was a stay at home mom, dad was a banker. They stayed out of trouble, minded their business, went to church on Sundays and said their prayers before bed. They were loving parents to beautiful girls, Annabel, their oldest, his wife. A dirty blonde haired girl who had dreams of being a singer. Their youngest, Addison was a brunette with-how he remembers hearing their mother describe as-big beautiful hazel eyes with the tiniest hints of green. There were no hopes or dreams used to describe her, no happy or cute memories that followed after any mention of her. It was always just Addison and then silence.

The idea of Addison... staying there in his home, ruining the atmosphere. Forcing he and Annabel to live on edge to accommodate her. It wasn't fair and it wasn't right. However, this was his wife, the love of his life. He couldn't say no if she had already said yes. She had to be dealing with far more issues than his own, this couldn't have been easy on her.

"How long?" He finally asks with a deep sigh.

It takes her a while to answer which scares him, "A few weeks." That's an arrow straight in his heart. He's already envisioning his gravestone, 'Steven Grant Rogers. Died from: sudden cardiac arrest brought on by wife's junkie sister.'

"Fine..." He says with another sigh. "But she doesn't stay in the house."

"Where are we going to put her, baby? The doghouse?"

Steve smiles. "If we had a doghouse, that wouldn't be nice enough for her."

Annabel agrees, pulling her arms from Steve. "Where then?"

"The guest house."

"It's not finished with the remodel."

"The kitchen is the only part left, the room, living room, and bathroom are done. She can survive with half a kitchen." He remarks.

"Just means she'll have to be here when she wants to eat."

Steve wanted to strangle her, probably the only time on this earth that he had the urge to do so. A day he could handle, maybe two but an unspecified amount of weeks was hell on earth. Hell, literary, as if they had taken a one-way ticket to the bottom of Satan's ass. "I'll get the contractor to finish the kitchen within the week, pay him double if I have too."

The contractor comes as planned and is less than happy about the sudden change, "In a week? My guys are gonna be workin' double time."

"I know, I get it. I'll pay you double-triple what you were getting. I just need this done by Monday." With a heavy sigh, the contractor agreed, apologizing ahead of time for the noise they would soon be faced with.

They had noise and he was having nightmares, a horrible combination. Steve was on the brink of losing his sanity and the worst had yet to come. The impending doom of Addison's arrival was rapidly approaching. Each time he closed his eyes, it was followed by a possible outcome of Addison living with them. In one, she burnt down the house another threw a rager when they went out to dinner and the worst was her overdosing in their kitchen. Her arrival was eating him up.

"Addison is aware we are gonna have rules?" Steve asks over dinner one night, over the sound power tools echoing through the home.

"I'm sure." Annabel nods, chewing her food and staring at her cell phone.

"Are we going to have to hide all the medicine?"

Annabel drags her eyes from her facebook feed to stare at Steve blankly. "I hadn't thought about that." She clears her throat. "Probably. She'll probably wind up overdosing on cold medicine." The tone of her voice is full of malice and humor.

It was crude place in time now that Steve found himself chuckling at the statement, instead of being overtaken with disgust. He always saw the best in people, believed that everyone deserves a second (Or more) chance. He extended olive branches, forgave the unforgivable, he was the embodiment of a good guy but times had changed. "You're okay with this, right?" Annabel asks in a small voice.

"Of course." He lies.

"Steve, are you really?"

He exhales deeply, "Baby, she's your sister."

"Only by blood." She remarks. "Trust me, If you could change your genetics, I would be first in line." There's not a hint of humor in her voice, she truly would. As depressing as it sounded, Annabel was ashamed to admit she had a sister almost as much as her parents were to say they had two daughters. He remembers taking Annabel on their first date, they talked about their families, there was never a hint that she had a sister. Annabel had spun a web that led him to believe she was an only child.

In fact, Annabel never spoke about her, nor did her parents; it was like she never existed. It wasn't until their wedding that Addison dropped the bombshell of having a sister that left Steve speechless. It was nearly the end of their romance. "You have a sister and you just what? Forget to tell me about her?" He shouted in anger, slamming the front door behind him as he stomped into their new house. "We've been together for three years! Are those even your actual parents or are you waiting to introduce me to the real ones in another three years?"

Annabel turned to face him, sighing and running a hand through her hair. "Steve, calm down." She pleads.

"Don't tell me to calm down, you've been lying to me for three years."

"I wasn't lying, I just didn't tell you about her."

He groans, "That's the same damn thing." He heads to the kitchen, grabbing a beer from the fridge and quickly gulping it down. The only way he can think to calm his nerves is drinking alcohol also another way to keep his mouth busy instead of shouting.

"Listen, Steve..." He ignores the next thing out of her mouth, pleas spill from her red-tinted lips about their upcoming wedding, 'it's only a month away', 'we can't call it off now! What am I going to tell my parents?'. Excuse after excuse yet she avoids the topic at hand. Her sister, a sister that she never once spoke about. That her parents never spoke about. Their family album had no pictures of another child, the pictures littered through their home was void of this mystery sister.

"Why?" He asks, refusing to divulge into talk about their wedding, one mention of it and that would be all she'd focus on. He feels betrayed and used. He starts to question everything she's ever told him, even questions the validity of their relationship. "H-how.... how does someone lie about having a sibling?"

"It's complicated."

Steve's eyes go wide and he leans in, chuckling. "Complicated?" he questions, setting his beer down on the counter in front of him. "Hey, Steve, I have a sister. Yeah, her name is Mary, she's nineteen; lives in Alabama, don't see her much. How is that complicated?"

Annabel sets her purse down on the counter in front of Steve, sighing heavily. "Okay... I was going to tell you, I planned on telling you but it just... isn't easy." She closes her eyes and swallows deeply, he notices her hands, she's squeezing her fingers. "We don't talk about her."

"We?"

"My parents, me; my family." Annabel lets out a nervous chuckle, realizing for the first time in years, she's confessing what is suppose to be a lifelong secret. "Her name is Addison and she's twenty-seven years old and... I don't know where she's living, I ran into her in Miami on the girls trip a few months back but I don't know where she's at right now, I haven't since she was sixteen."

It's even worse than Steve expected, however, he's not entirely sure what he expected. "What do you mean since she was sixteen? If she's twenty-seven now that means you're only two years apart." Annabel nods, ashamed. "What does that even mean?"

Annabel can hardly stand the look of confusion on her husband's face. There's no stopping now, she had to continue for both of their sakes. "You need to understand she put my parents through hell. She was horrible, a bad kid, beyond bad. She did drugs, threw parties, refused to go to school; refused to come home, drank. Anything she could do, she did. My parents tried, I tried. They sent to her to my uncles to try and help her but she nearly burned his house down." It's as if a weight has lifted off her chest, the lie that she had forced herself to believe is finally free. "She was unfixable. Getting worse as the days went by."

"And you just gave up on her?" Steve questions in an angered tone. "She was a kid!"

"No, we didn't!" She raises her voice, getting insulted by the accusation. "My parents tried like hell but it never worked. She never let it and they couldn't do it anymore, my dad was on the verge of losing his job, mom was having a mental breakdown. One day, my dad had enough he threatened her if she continued, he'd make her leave. She didn't change. The next day, she came home high and he packed her a bag and kicked her out. Called friends and family told them to not let her in."

"How old was she?"

"Sixteen."

"Six-Sixteen? She was sixteen years old?" He questions in shock. "Your father kicked your sixteen-year-old sister out of the house with nowhere to go?" The thought is unimaginable to him, an innocent child out alone in the world, battling the street of California with no one to help her. It made him sick, he could barely look at her.

"It sounds bad, I know."

He nods, chuckling being the only thing he can do that doesn't wind up with them ending their engagement. "I don't think you do."

"I wanted her to come back, I looked for her but I couldn't find her."

It's a lie or a comedy skit, it has to be. It doesn't seem plausible. He's met her parents, her fathers is the sweetest guy in the world, her mother loves with all of her heart. The first time he met her, she demanded a hug and that he comes over every holiday, birthday and Sunday for dinner. The idea that they, everyone's dream parents had kicked a child out of their home. "So, you guys just what? Woke up a few days later and said we only have one daughter. Gee, what a nice day?"

Annabel cocks her head in annoyance, "No, One month of her being gone, turned into three and then it was a year and before we knew it life was so much easier without her around. My parents weren't fighting, I wasn't missing school because of something she did. We didn't have any police around the house, it was just simple. Normal. A happy family." She finally sits down on the bar stool, feeling exhausted. "Eventually we realized anytime we talked about her, my mother got sad and my father was angered. People didn't understand it either when we said what happened and we found it easier to not talk about her. We just pretended she didn't exist."

Steve doesn't understand, he can't even begin to understand. If he had a child, he couldn't imagine turning on them. Casting them out with all dangers in the world that they could succumb to. No matter how horrible they were, he'd never give up on them. He couldn't. It wasn't in his blood. "You never heard from her until a few months ago?"

Annabel nods her head, brushing her hair behind her ear before she begins. Another jog down memory lane that breaks his heart even more.

It was a few years later before her name was spoken again in the Shaw household, they had a phone call in the middle of the night from a detective in Texas, Addy; It softens his heart just for a second when Annabel uses her nickname, it shows she still cares somewhere in there. Addison was found in a cheap, rat and drug infested motel unconscious with signs of sexual assault. It had taken her three days to finally talk to police and another three for her to confess her first name. it was luck or a miracle that they discovered her purse trashed in an alley.

"Do you know how late is it?" Her father, Gregory had shouted into the phone. His voice rough and full of sleep.

"Sir, I apologize for the disruption. This is Detective Amanda White from the Austin Police department, sir, I'm afraid I have some bad news. We've found your daughter, Addison Shaw."

The detective went on to confess the details of the case, Addison refused to talk, claimed it was a misunderstanding. An accident, she fell while getting dressed but all evidence said otherwise. They had found the doer but she refused to press charges and point the finger at him. He shrugged and simply told her, "I only have one daughter." In his mind, Addison had made her bed and whatever path she was on, was her own doing. After that, anything that reminded them of her was gone, pictures, drawings, baby boxes. She was merely a blip in their past. As far as anyone in their lives would know, the Shaw's had one daughter, Annabel.

"My dad didn't care," Annabel says with a look of pain. "my mom nearly died but she would have followed my father to the ends of the earth without second-guessing when he said never mention her, we didn't."

Annabel goes on about running into her baby sister in Miami on her girl trip. Her last trip as an unmarried woman, the last hurrah. It was the hotel she was staying in that she found Addison. Not recognizing her at first, it had been so long since she'd seen her that time had corroded her image.

"Addison?" She questions on a whim to the young girl with brown hair tied in a ponytail and dressed in a hotel uniform. "Addy?" It was her, beyond all belief. Their eyes met and Addison was a deer in headlights. It was an awkward reintroduction, two sisters split by time, coming face to face.

"I'm getting married!" Annabel shouted midway through the conversation, her happiness leaking through. "I want you to be there." The words came out before she had a second to rethink her sentence.

Addison said nothing in response. It was a brief silence and a deep sigh before she answered, in a distant voice with cold eyes. "I hope you have a good wedding."

"No, Addy, I want you there. It's my wedding day and I want my family there, all of my family." Her sister is still silent, staring at her like she's never met her. Which is nearly the truth, they didn't know one another. Other than their names, they were strangers. It had taken some convincing before Addison had responded with, "If time works out, maybe I'll think about coming." Annabel left her phone number with her, asking her one last time before she left "Just come, okay? It'll be fun." She didn't think it would work but this morning when she woke up, there a text message from an unknown phone number that simply read. "When is the wedding again? And where? -Addison." She texted back immediately, eyes still blurred from sleeping and another text arrived a few hours later. "I can come if you still want me too," Annabel responded by sending her the ticket details and saying she couldn't wait to see her again.

"So, she's coming to our wedding?" Steve finally questions, rubbing his eyes and wishing he'd bought more beer.

"Yes."

"And what do your parents think?" He asks.

"I haven't told them and I'm not going to."

"Anna..."

"Steve, it's my day, if I want to invite my sister that is my choice."

"Fine." He agrees, walking around to the counter to engulf her in his arms. The good guy inside of him begins to think it could be the best thing to happen. The family could mend, forget about the past and begin again, Something good could come from their wedding. "This could be a fresh start. A way to move on from the past. A restart." He’s fooling himself with the agreement but his biggest flaw was always wanting to see the best in people, if she wanted her to be there, he would do that for her. For their family.

#Steve Rogers #Steve Rogers Au #chris evans fic #Chris Evans fanfiction #Chris Evans Imagine #Chris Evans #fanfictions #Avengers #captain america #The Avengers #Avengers fanfiction #Steve rogers Fanfiction #Steve Rogers Imagine #Steve rogers Fanfic #Chris evans Fanfic #Steve rogers Fic

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mittensmorgul · 6 years ago

Note

do you think it's open to interpretation whether dean and cas are in love with each other? Like is it just as valid an interpretation to say they're not? Whenever anyone calls destiel "one interpretation" or whatever, my hackles rise. And I know I'm overly sensitive about this stuff, being a gay and whatnot, but I mean, is it? Am I just insecure because my otp isn't canon, or is destiel really more valid than other readings or what? What do you think?

Hi there. :)

I’m gonna give you the diplomatic, academic answer, and then I’m gonna give you the grumpy-ass queer lady answer. Hold on to your horses. :)

Polite answer:

All media is open to interpretation. Of course, this doesn’t mean that all interpretations are equally valid, or equally supported by canon, especially when taken in context of the entire body of the work in question.

For example, I replied to a post the other day about 13.17, and that scene where Dean and Sam are-- on first glance-- rather disrespectful of the extremely rare and valuable books in the bunker... but in context of the rest of the episode and the rest of the season, that montage wasn’t about disrespecting those books at all. It had less than nothing to do with the books themselves as objects or as sources of knowledge that should be properly cared for and respected. But out of context it kinda looks that way. So, based on that one short gif set, it might seem like a perfectly legitimate interpretation to suggest that Sam and Dean were careless with the immense knowledge and invaluable books they’ve found themselves in possession of. But in the larger context of their entire history, of all their interactions with the bunker and the untold store of knowledge it holds, and with the context of the specific reasons for their frustration in that particular scene, it seems obvious that there’s a lot more to the story, you know?

You could technically argue just about any weird headcanon can be supported by canon. I wrote this weird little post right after 12.11 aired, and it sat in my drafts for a good long time before I finally posted it. But there’s nothing in canon that legit quashes the possibility that endgame fish!Cas is where the story’s been headed all along. He’s positively swimming in fish metaphors. (sorry, I couldn’t resist) Does that abundance of fish, fishing imagery, and water imagery that have surrounded Cas for years lend itself to a literal interpretation? I mean, it’s definitely AN interpretation that is there if you want to see it, and if in your heart of hearts you believe it’s legitimately what the storytelling is attempting to convey here. But does that make it a valid interpretation that deserves serious consideration? Does it truly make sense when taking the larger story around Cas as a whole? Or is it obviously a literary theme that we’re supposed to consider through the themes traditionally associated with fish and fishing as used in countless other fictional works of the past? I suppose that sort of interpretation has been left open for us to take or leave as we see fit. It invites us to examine those references more closely, to help us understand Cas as a character and the journey his personal character arc is taking him through. It gives his experiences and growth a depth of context that is there to explore if we so choose.

(for more on Cas vs Fish, please see my tags regarding “The Fisher King.” I like to think there’s a more well-reasoned and logical line of thinking for pinning so much fish to Cas than my cracky example of fish!Cas would suggest.)

Now, looking at destiel specifically, if you take any single moment out of context, it’s absolutely possible to make an interpretation that their relationship is clearly more “brotherly,” or clearly more “familial,” or clearly one of “very close friends.” But it requires the same removal from the larger context to explain away what taken with the entirety of their history begins to look entirely undeniable.

I suppose, since Supernatural is an open canon and the story hasn’t been fully told yet, that it’s possible the writers could change course with the storytelling. It’s possible that something might prevent them from taking Dean and Cas and their story to the conclusion they’ve been building to for the last ten years. They could decide to leave this particular “interpretation” open-ended and unresolved.

Since that is always a possibility, and because I’m not psychic, nor do I have any top secret inside information from the writers and showrunners, I can’t say that my particular interpretation is more valid or correct or likely than anyone else’s. But I have yet to come up against a credible, coherent explanation for the entire body of extant canon that invalidates my particular interpretation, either.

The vast majority of arguments against boil down to logical fallacies-- cherry-picking scenes out of context as “proof,” straw man arguments, and ad hominem attacks. Because of this, I’m content to wait for canon to play out. I’ll happily watch the rest of the story unfold, and happily continue to interpret what I’m witnessing as a whole instead of attempting to dissect it out and explain away what I see as an entirely logical progression of storytelling.

As an aside here, I find it entirely fascinating that one of the most common complaints I read from people who deny Dean and Cas are in love is that the writing has become progressively more terrible, that the story of Supernatural as a whole makes less and less sense, and that the characters are behaving in increasingly “out of character” ways. And as someone in possession of rational capabilities, I wonder if their disconnect from the storytelling is simply their refusal to see and accept that perhaps their “interpretation” of the story is just... not correct.

When we attempt to deny or rationalize away certain interpretations of characterization, or certain progressions of events and how they relate to one another, the larger narrative just falls apart, you know? Of course it doesn’t make sense if you exclude large portions of it because you don’t want to see it or believe it’s happening, or important to the story.

Meanwhile, I’m over here loving every minute of it (okay... most minutes of it). So even if my interpretation isn’t absolutely 100% “correct” (and really, with any media, there’s always different ways to interpret everything, from what the color of the curtains might imply to who’s gonna get to fire Chekhov’s Gun in the third act), I’m content to continue to interpret it in a way that not only makes me personally happiest, but in a way that makes the story itself seem both logical and entertaining, as well.

Okay, that’s the end of the rational portion of this essay. Now on to the angry queer lady portion:

There’s more canon evidence for Dean and Cas being in love, or at the very least caring for one another to ridiculous, rather mind-numbing degrees, than there is for practically every canon heterosexual couple on television in the last fifty years. Think of any slow burn, will they-won’t they hetero couple, and do the point-by-point checklist of all the tropes they burned through before they got to the love declarations and the kissing and the happily ever afters (or worse, the dramatic breaking up and getting back together, or even worse, the tragically breaking up forever). I challenge anyone to name one hetero-presenting couple who required as many love tropes for audiences to recognize and acknowledge they were in love. Yeah, I’m thinking of that whole “they shared a pencil” post.

So yeah, there is likely a measure of heteronormativity to it, and a lot of the arguments against also devolve into rather gross denouncements that there’s no way Dean’s not straight, because he said so that one time... Mr. “I lie professionally” who also never actually said he was straight... gah... I’m not gonna dig up every ancient meta post on the subject. If anyone is legitimately interested in understanding why making those same tired arguments just doesn’t have any legitimacy in a reasoned discussion, they can damn well do their own digging. It’s not like any of the evidence is difficult to uncover, and it’s not my job to spoon feed it to every naysayer myself.

I feel like I’m standing on a Mt. Everest size pile of rational, reasonable, well-argued analysis supporting the claim that Dean and Cas are in love. *stands back and points at my whole entire blog again* If anyone would like to come back at me with something even remotely worth my time and attention to persuade me to alter my interpretation, I suggest they get busy. I’ll just be up here on top of my mountain enjoying the clean, destiel-scented air up here.

And finally, who says it’s not canon? Ah, right. Moving goalposts. At this point, I think it’s ridiculous to suggest that Dean and Cas don’t love one another. And profoundly, at that. I mean, you don’t give up an army for one guy if you don’t at least like him a lil bit. You don’t shout down God begging him to bring back that dude you’re kinda buddies with, or sink into a suicidal funk that reverses completely within minutes of finding out said buddy’s alive again. You don’t offer to march to your death with your chum because he’s such a nice guy and all. I mean... honestly. How far in denial does someone have to be to suggest they don’t love each other? At this point, when comparing Sam and Dean’s reactions far into s13 to Cas’s death in 12.23, either you accept that Dean has much stronger and far different feelings about the loss of someone that Sam does love and considers a brother, or else you kinda have to assume that Sam’s just kind of a dick for not being as broken up about Cas’s death as Dean is. So... which interpretation do you think is the one they’re trying to convey?

Bleh, whatever. I await the inevitable inbox full of nastiness that I will cheerfully delete while judging every anon who sends it as someone who really should find a better hobby than antagonizing strangers on the internet over a work of fiction.

Anon, basically, don’t let the bastards grind you down, okay?

Now for some reason I feel like listening to Achtung Baby. Imma go do that and feel the love.

#destiel #the scheherazade of supernatural #btw for anyone who still feels the need to antagonize destiel shippers #that tag would be the one for you to find a lot of that content you'll need to actually address in order for anyone to take you seriously #Anonymous

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wellesleyunderground · 6 years ago

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Wellesley Writes It: Jane Ridgeway ‘09 (@janeridgeway), Fiction Writer and Teacher

Photo by Jane Ridgeway.

Jane Ridgeway is a fiction writer born and raised in Seattle, now living in the San Francisco Bay Area. She is the current Writer in Residence at the Kerouac Project of Orlando, Florida, living and writing in the house in which Jack Kerouac wrote The Dharma Bums. Her work appears in the Cover Stories anthology from Volt Books. She has an MFA in fiction from the University of Oregon, and has taught creative writing and literature at the U of O, as well as at prep schools in California and Hawai’i. Interview by Camille Bond ‘17, Wellesley Writes It series editor.

WU: Welcome, Jane, and thanks so much for chatting with the Wellesley Underground! One of your short stories was recently published in an anthology, Cover Stories. What is the story about?

So, as the title suggests, Cover Stories’ mission was to anthologize “cover” versions of other short stories—so you take a canonical (or not-so-canonical) story that you passionately love or hate, and you riff off of it, explore some particular facet of it, or write very literary fan fiction of it, essentially. It’s an exploration of that weird and glorious phenomenon in which, over the decades, a song can be transformed through the different covers of it that are performed by artists with radically different sensibilities.

My story, “Peredelkino,” is a take on Isaac Babel’s “My First Goose,” a personal favorite and a story that definitely haunts me. Babel’s narrator, Liutov, is this gentle, nervous Jewish intellectual who finds himself embedded with the incredibly violent Cossacks and has to find a way to integrate himself to survive—and because he finds himself both drawn to the sort of sexy, robust glamour of the soldiers and terrified of their brutality. My piece updates some of the same conflicts that Liutov experienced to the era of the Soviet purges of intellectuals carried out by the KGB (which took the lives of many artists, including Babel himself).

WU: As a fiction writer, are there specific themes or issues that you feel drawn to? How do you discuss these themes/issues in your writing?

Grief, loss, sex, queerness, mortality, the sturm und drang of being a teenage girl, the way the past keeps popping its head back up throughout a life/a century/a place’s history. People who try really hard to be good but aren’t very successful at it. For some reason, religion, which is certainly not because I want to espouse any particular set of beliefs through my writing, or even something I focus on deliberately—I just can’t seem to get away from it, even if I try to. I’m really interested in the stories we tell ourselves about the afterlife, and how that shapes the way we live.

WU: As an emerging fiction writer, you’ve been accepted as one of four annual residents at the Kerouac Project in Florida. Congratulations! Kerouac residents spend a season living in Kerouac Project housing and working on creative projects. What are you working on during your residency?

I’m now one month into the Kerouac and have been using my time to generate new short story material! When I accepted the Kerouac I self-imposed some pressure to come here and bang out an entire novel draft, which isn’t what’s happened so far. The Kerouac is gloriously unconstrained: I’ve been given time to work on any project I choose, so I’m taking advantage of that freedom to play a little, write outside of my usual range, and create things that aren’t geared toward any particular publication, workshop, etc.

WU: How do you hope to develop as a writer during your time at the Kerouac Project?

I’ve been greatly enjoying finding my rhythm and discovering a creative schedule that works for me outside the constraints of my usual day job and responsibilities. It’s also been an exercise in overcoming self-doubt, because when I first arrived I was walloped by a wave of uncertainty and impostor syndrome. Through some combination of “faking it till I make it” and adopting some of the swaggering ego of the Beat generation that permeates the Kerouac House, I’ve found a way through it. (Kerouac himself said, “You’re a genius all the time!” which feels awfully audacious, but I think we could all stand to borrow a little of the audacity of a man who wrote his unedited first drafts on a single continuous scroll of paper.)

WU: You previously worked as a staff writer at the Los Altos Town Crier newspaper. How, if at all, has your journalism career informed your creative writing?

Working at the paper was one of the happiest phases of my working life! I loved having an immediate and local audience of subscribers with a clear stake in the stories I was covering, rather than a hazy sense that someone might read my fiction years in the future after I’d painstakingly revised for months, spent a year or so waiting to hear back from lit mags, then many more months before publication. I also love the precise, straight-to-the-point journalistic style. (Readers of this interview may notice that my natural tendency leans to the verbose!) Having experienced journalists and a brilliant copy editor to learn from helped me write crisper prose. Coming out of an MFA writing literary fiction, I think I also took the (unproductive) attitude that all of my stories were delicate, precious creations that I couldn’t possibly let out of my hands until they were perfect. Working at a publication that publishes weekly taught me to work with a much tighter turnaround time, much more efficiently, with less unnecessary psychodrama. There’s a deadline—just get it done!

WU: You’re currently teaching in a prep school environment, and have also taught Creative Writing at the University of Oregon, where you studied for your MFA. How, if at all, has teaching the subject changed your perspective on the act of creative writing? How has it informed your development as a writer?

I wholeheartedly love teaching, even though I can’t exactly recommend it to aspiring writers on the grounds of short hours or great work-life balance! Teaching literature means I get to spend my days hanging out with some of my favorite stories, novels, and poems, and really thinking about how to break them down for a young audience. It’s great to admire literature, but it’s even more useful to know how it ticks! On a more woo-woo level, teaching has helped me as a writer because it’s balanced out some of my edges and helped me grow into a softer, more vulnerable, caring, and patient human. Which is hard as hell, and not something I’m sure I would ever have gotten good at otherwise, because that’s not my natural inclination! I’ve always tended to be a seething ball of snark and sarcasm, and, untempered, that’s no way to go through life! The writers I admire most are all able to observe how much humankind can suck without losing their love and compassion for what a desperate, scrappy lot we all are. Teaching gives you great respect for people (young or otherwise) who are trying their hardest. Being a person is hard! We shouldn’t dismiss how hard it is, even when people disappoint us.

WU: Can you tell us a bit about your background in theater, and how this background has informed your literary career?

Some useful lessons of a theater-kid background for writers:

Better to commit to a choice than to be boring

Say “yes, and”

Don’t write any dialogue so stilted your actors would be embarrassed to say it

Read everything out loud after you’ve written it

I actually first started writing seriously after a playwriting class in my senior year of high school resulted in a festival production of my short play. Watching the actors and director in rehearsal, hearing my words, realizing how I could make the work better, was one of the most electrifying experiences I’d ever had as a young person.

WU: Are there any teachers and/or students who have been particularly influential to you?

A long and glorious lineage, starting from my absolute miracle of a second-grade teacher who made me fall in love with Greek myths, to my brilliant high school English teachers who were tremendously overqualified to be teaching me grammar and who told me I could be a writer, to Prof. Erian at Wellesley who actually taught me how to edit, to the teachers who caught me as a proper adult and really kicked my butt into writing things that an audience other than myself might care about. Also, Ehud Havazelet, the stern fiction father figure who permanently broke me of the ability to use the word “impactful” or read it without a tinge of disgust.

Hillger → Culhane → Doelger → Aegerter → Erian → Kiesbye → Brown, Bradley, Havazelet

WU: You have described your thankfulness to belong to a network of writers and thinkers. How can Wellesley students and alumnx build similar networks around themselves?

I love knowing writers and artists and readers all over the country. A lot of my writer acquaintances come not from my grad program but from an eclectic network of youngsters who were all applying to grad school at the same time as me, and joined forces to share information behind the scenes on how well-funded programs were (among other things.) I’ve always found networking in the traditional sense grotesque and repellent, but I think there’s a lot to be said for finding other people who care about the things you care about, befriending them with no regard for whether they’re currently (or ever likely to be) in a position to help you, and generously sharing information that might be helpful. Do your best to root for other people’s success even though sometimes you’re going to feel bitter and jealous because you’re a human and, like all of us, you kind of suck sometimes. Also, don’t be a dickbag. We all know who the dickbags in a given community are.

WU: What is your approach to self-care?

I take a very pragmatic approach to self-care that wouldn’t play well in a glossy magazine! To me, self-care is about doing the things that will make my life better, like doing the dishes I don’t want to do, taking out the trash, and clearing my inbox, more so than ‘treating myself’, you know? This summer, this has included writing lots of snail mail, going running even when I don’t want to, and long, slow, inefficient cooking projects.

#wellesleywritesit #wellesleyunderground #wellesleycollege #@wellesleyalumnx

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ayearofpike · 6 years ago

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Master of Murder

Pocket Books, 1992 198 pages, 14 chapters + epilogue ISBN 0-671-69059-0 LOC: CPB Box no. 1081 vol. 14 OCLC: 26075926 Released July 28, 1992 (per B&N)

Everybody’s reading the thrilling Silver Lake series by Mack Slate. With the last book due out in a few months, fans are excited to finally find out who killed Ann McGaffer. Only problem is, Slate — that is to say, twelfth-grade nobody Marvin Summer, hiding behind a pen name — has no idea himself, and hasn’t even started writing the book. It’s only as he works to close the distance between himself and his crush, Shelly Quade, that the grand finale starts to make itself clear to him, in ways that unexpectedly and gruesomely parallel his own life.

This might not be my favorite Pike book, but it has certainly had the most influence on me. I’ve always called myself a writer, since a fifth-grade teacher recognized my ability to craft a narrative and pointed out that somebody had to make books and I should think about it. In high school, it was my defining trait, and it wasn’t until I’d almost graduated from college that I realized it didn’t make me special. Everybody has a story, as Marvin finds out, and some of them are even better at telling it in an engaging way. It’s sad, in a way, that I identified with this book so much (like, I literally carried it in my backpack for my entire senior year) and it still took me so long to get that theme.

What I did get was an intense sense of connection with Marvin. Shy loner? Check. Separated parents who didn’t get along? Check. Younger sibling who wanted to be like me? Check. An English teacher hung up on prescriptive strictures of language who quietly cared about her students, and a language teacher who was more interested in building a classroom community than sticking to a scheduled curriculum? Check and double-check. Writing ability revered by peers? Check, even if my work rarely made it past my immediate circle of friends. Subconscious inclusion of issues I was going through in my work, to the point where it got me in trouble with the girl I liked? Well, not directly observable, but I mean, it’s hard to not come off creepy if you’re writing a love story to a girl instead of, like, actually TALKING to her.

I also really enjoyed the way Pike works with language in this book, and honestly, I still do. Modern YA gets a lot more respect, and deservingly so, but a lot of it is written in a direct, almost sparse way. It makes sense, considering how many contemporary authors write in the first person, and most people don’t actually think in metaphors and syllogisms and even (to some degree) descriptive adjectives. Master of Murder kind of goes hog-wild on this, kind of a leap from representational art to impressionist art. And I buy it. As Marvin is our POV character, it makes sense that as a writer he’d put some more florid prose into his observations and understandings of the world. Plus, this style kind of helps to establish him as an unreliable narrator, as we slowly learn how much he actually doesn’t know and, in fact, how much maybe he’s repressed.

That said, this story does have some holes. Let’s jump into the summary and I’ll get there.

We start out with Marvin in his English class, watching Shelly read his most recent book and thinking about their relationship. They’d gone out a handful of times a year before, but it stopped after the death of Harry Paster, another flame of Shelly’s who’d jumped off a cliff into the nearby lake. Marvin figures enough time has passed that he can ask her out again, but first he has to read the short story he’s dashed off for their creative writing assignment. Man, remember when creative writing was an actual COMPONENT of high school English class? And the only reason I got to do it was that I took a creative-writing-focused senior English course. I mean, I get it — public school English is about preparing you to pass the SAT or ACT, not teaching you how to reach and grab an audience. They save that for us, in post-secondary ed, by which time the interest in writing has already been drilled out of kids by making them do repetitive five-paragraph essays. Most of my students still don’t want to write, but I at least try to give them some room in the assignment structure to flex their creative muscles.

But anyway, “The Becoming of Seymour the Frog” is a legitimately good short-short story. It gives us a sense of Marvin’s author voice straight away, which is of course the same as the narrative, and it legitimizes how much Pike uses what modern writers would call excessive description. The teacher grades it right away (what? I give everything two reads, and this teacher is just going to LISTEN one time?) and tells Marvin he might be a writer someday if he learns to control himself. We both (the reader and Marvin, that is) know he’s already there, and Marvin completely discredits this advice. He writes best by giving up control and going into a state of flow, one where he can’t stop writing but also doesn’t necessarily feel that what’s going onto the page is coming from inside his own head. This is important later.

After class, he catches up to Shelly, but their talking is interrupted by the arrival of her current squeeze, Triad Tyler. Triad is a big dumb football jock who wants to buy Marvin’s motorcycle, which Marvin would never dream of selling. Before he can get around to asking her out, she ducks into the bathroom, and Triad complains that it seems like she’s always trying to escape. This is probably important later too. So already in the first 15 pages, Pike has nicely set up the major characters and their interplay with each other.

We jump to speech class, and I call BS. Like, we learn later that Marvin only has four classes as a senior. Why is one of them speech? My high school only required a half-day of seniors, sure, but our classes were English, math, world history, and economics. It turns out this class would be better called “communication skills,” which was required in ninth grade, but I’d still buy that more than speech. The teacher basically has them engage in conversational debate, and this day the topic they choose is Mack Slate’s Silver Lake series. It’s a good framework for sharing Marvin’s story, and showing the corner he’s painted himself into: Ann McGaffer’s body was found naked and tied up with barbed wire floating in Silver Lake, and five books on we’re no closer to figuring out who did it or why. The description grosses me out a iittle bit, but on the heels of the last two super-tropey thrillers, I’m going to choose to believe that Pike is poking fun at the intentional shock attempts of the genre.

After class, Marvin finally successfully asks Shelly out for that night, then goes to his PO box to pick up his fan mail. His little sister is already there, and once again we’re subjected to the jaw-droppingly beautiful small child. It was gross when it was fifteen-year-old Jennifer Wagner, but Ann Summer is ELEVEN and Marvin’s SISTER. Pike, isn’t it possible to describe a female one cares about without making it all about her looks? He does it with Marvin’s mom in a few pages too, when they get home. We get it — girls we care about are hot. Only problem is Marvin’s mom is an alcoholic who almost never leaves the house except to buy more booze. Dad is an alcoholic, too, but he’s not at home and his child support payments are erratic. Good thing there’s a best-selling author living in the house! But Ann’s the only one who knows, and it kills her to not be able to sing her brother’s praises and brag about how great he is.

They go upstairs to Marvin’s room to read his mail, and one of the last letters makes him pause. It has a local postmark, and the letter inside simply says “I KNOW WHO YOU ARE.” It starts to pull the book into more general thriller territory, but before we can think too much about it, the phone rings and it’s Marvin’s editor, asking about Silver Lake Book Six, which is four months overdue. I have some serious questions about the timeline of this series, but we’ll get there in a little bit. Marvin soothes her concerns, then goes to take a walk around the lake, trying to figure out where to start his book but not actually ready to start it before he picks up Shelly.

The date is successful, by most measures. They have dinner, go to a movie, and then stop on a bridge crossing a raging river because Shelly wants to look at the water. They sit down on the edge, Marvin landing on an old and weathered piece of rope, and watch the waters pound away down to their final destination — the lake. Then Shelly invites Marvin back to her house to sit in the hot tub, where they get naked and make out, but she suddenly gets sad and pulls away. I give Marvin props for being respectful and apologetic here rather than trying to force her to continue. Woke in 1992! But as he’s getting ready to leave, he learns the reason she’s sad: Shelly is thinking about Harry, which he expected, but he didn’t expect to learn that she thinks he was murdered. And she wants Marvin’s help to figure it out and clear Harry’s name.

There’s no basis for this belief, but Marvin figures he might as well listen and do some research, seeing as he can’t figure out his own murder mystery. He checks his PO box first, and finds another ominous letter that’s been mailed there directly rather than to his publishing house, so maybe somebody really does know him. He calls his agent (whose name is one letter away from a real literary rep, maybe even Pike’s) to ask about it. This insert, plus the editor whose name was close to the woman in charge of YA at Simon and Schuster at the time, made so many of us so sure that this was as close to autobiographical as Pike had ever gotten. I seriously chased leads from this book to try to figure out more about him, back before he started answering questions on Facebook and there was so much less mystery about it.

So then Marvin goes back over to Shelly’s house to talk about Harry. She has the police report and autopsy report, and Marvin looks them over, along with articles about Harry’s death from newspapers at the time. What it boils down to is Friday night a year before, a night when Marvin had taken Shelly out for her birthday, Harry and Triad were drinking beer together. Triad said that he dropped Harry off at home, and that was the last time anybody saw him until a fisherman found his body in the lake on Monday morning. Marvin starts to question the narrative that Harry jumped, because there are several physical symptoms that indicate maybe he was held captive. He talks to the fisherman and to Harry’s mom, and takes a look at the jacket Harry was wearing, and makes note of definite rope burn marks around the back and under the armpits. So Harry was tied up somewhere for a long time — but where? And how?

Marvin goes home to rest and digest this info, and has a dream about his book series that shows Ann McGaffer hanging from a bridge by a rope around her waist. He’s startled awake by Ann, who says that their dad is breaking things downstairs. Marvin gets down there just in time to watch his dad shove a lamp into the TV, and the resultant cuts to Ann and his mom from the exploding picture tube send Marvin into a fit of rage. He starts to beat the shit out of his own father, and only stops when Ann tells him to, even though the dude is unconscious. Like, holy shit, buried violent tendencies that will make you like your father? So Marvin gets the hell out of the house to give himself some space.

He ends up back at his PO box, even though he knows there couldn’t have been another delivery, but there sure is a letter in it. He follows this back to Shelly’s house, where he finds her making out in the hot tub with Triad. Marvin overhears her say that she was using him to get him to do something, and Triad tells her not to go out with Marvin anymore, to which she readily agrees. So now Marvin is scared, he is heartbroken, and he has unlocked some deep-seated rage that will allow him to strike back. He ends up on the bridge, where he starts to figure out what must have happened a year ago. There’s a rope, there’s a giant oil stain on the bridge right behind it, and there’s a dead boy with rope burns on his jacket who was maybe hanging from it rather than being tied up. Marvin figures that Harry was jealous of his relationship with Shelly and decided to stage a little motorcycle accident, but accidentally slipped off the bridge and ended up hanging himself, slowly suffocating to death until the rope broke and he washed down to the lake.

And it occurs to Marvin that this would be a perfect way to get back at Triad.

After a misadventure with two girls in a bookstore who accuse him of trying to pick them up by pretending to be Mack Slate, Marvin buys a new car and a bunch of motorcycle-dropping gear at Sears, then takes the bike to Triad’s house to sell it to him. Marvin says that he left the helmet in a motel in the town across the river, and that the manager said he was going to throw it out if Triad didn’t pick it up tonight. Then he hikes to the car, which he’s had delivered around the block, and goes to stake out the bridge. While he’s waiting, he starts to think about the parallels between his own series and how Harry died. And we learn that the first Silver Lake book only came out after Harry’s death — in fact, that Marvin didn’t start writing it until then.

So this is my timing issue. Master of Murder does have some gaping inconsistencies, I’m not gonna lie. There’s the variable height of the bridge over the river: it’s 150 feet when Marvin and Shelly stop on their date, and maybe 60 when they have the final showdown two nights later. Also, later apparently Shelly knows details of a book that Marvin hasn’t even written yet? But this, in my mind, is the biggest problem. We’re supposed to believe that in a year, five books have come out about Ann McGaffer and her loves and hates. We’re also supposed to believe that he’s four months late with book six, and that it takes at least three months for the publisher to turn a story around and get it into bookstores. We also have the information that the fastest Marvin’s ever written a novel is eighteen days. So by that logic, there’s no way he could have finished and submitted Silver Lake Book One before mid-December. So five books have somehow appeared between probably March and let’s say November (they say the fifth one just came out) — five books in seven months — but they’re going to wait another three months to release the sixth? Also, how does an author, even an experienced and acclaimed one, sell a six-book series to his publisher without knowing the beats and especially the ending? There are too many inconsistencies and timeline impossibilities for me to buy it. If I didn’t know better, I’d say Pike was a new author writing publication fanfiction.

But anyway, Triad races across to the other town. Marvin is too far away to see him, but he recognizes the sound of his motorcycle. He grabs his rope, his knife, his can of oil, and his binoculars, and hustles the probably mile to the bridge to set up his death trap. But as the motorcycle is coming back, he gets his first good look — and sees Shelly on the back. So he drops the rope, but Triad is already braking, stops short of it, and shoves Marvin off the bridge.

So now it’s Marvin hanging from his armpits by a rope under the bridge above a raging river that leads to the lake in his town, and did I mention he’s wearing Harry’s jacket? Shelly’s more annoyed than angry — it turns out she’s expected this from Marvin the whole time. In fact, she DOES know who Mack Slate is, and she’s already read about this scheme in the Silver Lake books. But Marvin doesn’t even remember writing it. She wants to turn Marvin in to the police. But Triad wants to untie the rope and drop him into the river.

And suddenly Marvin knows what actually happened. Harry wasn’t alone on the bridge a year ago. Triad was with him, and shoved Harry just as he shoved Marvin. Shelly doesn’t believe it until Triad knocks her out for trying to stop him killing Marvin too. Marvin manages to get hold of the underside of the bridge just as Triad unties the rope, then he kicks Triad in the face when he leans over to look and see whether Marvin has actually fallen. The semi-conscious wedged body of the football jock gives Marvin a ladder to climb back up onto the bridge, and he stomps out Triad’s bad knee when the dude wakes up and threatens to go after him again. Only the knife falls out of his pocket as he does so, and Shelly picks that moment to come to, and it’s a simple matter for Triad to grab both her and the knife and threaten her death if Marvin doesn’t help him get away.

What’s in it for Marvin, though? The guy who tried to kill him is holding the girl who tried to frame him for a death the guy is responsible for. He gets on his bike, where Triad has courteously left the keys in the ignition, and drives away. I don’t like that he’s left a vulnerable girl at the almost-complete mercy (he can’t stand up) of a confirmed killer. What I like least is that he doesn’t even call the police. But then again, he’s abandoned his new car in the woods near the scene and surely doesn’t want to be implicated if somebody dies. So Marvin drives to a seaside town, rents a house and a computer, and writes an entire book in five days, only stopping to eat and sleep. Of course, within a few pages of the end he has to stop, because he doesn’t actually know how Ann’s best friend, left in the clutches of the boyfriend’s jealous best friend, is going to escape, or whether in fact she does.

Marvin calls his editor and tells her the story is done and he’ll express-overnight it to her. He also asks her to set up a reading from it at his high school that afternoon. More BS? Like, how are they going to allow an author to read from a book that the editor hasn’t even SEEN, let alone put through proofs and galleys? Marvin has to physically print and ship the manuscript — remember, this is 1992 and most people don’t have email yet (and when it would become widespread in a few years, it still had a hyphen). But she does it, and Marvin goes home first to find out that Dad’s in jail and Mom hasn’t touched a drop since. More good news! He takes Ann with him to school, where the entire student body is in stunned disbelief about the identity of Mack Slate, and finally gets some personal acknowledgement from his peers and teachers.

But Shelly doesn’t show up. Neither does Triad. The kids he does ask say neither has been in school all week. Marvin can’t dwell on this, because he has a major book series to finish, but it’s precisely this reason that he hasn’t made it all the way to the end yet. He knows that he needs someone else’s story to finish his own. So he goes back to the lake, and makes his way to the top of the cliff that everyone thought Harry jumped from. As he’s thinking, Shelly shows up with his knife. She tells Marvin that she suspected him of being Mack Slate back when they were dating, and he would tell her stories that had the same voice as Slate’s published work. So she sneaked into Marvin’s room one day and snooped in his computer for proof.

When the Silver Lake books started coming out, she saw the parallels immediately, and figured the only way Marvin could have known so much about how Harry died is if he had killed him. She got Triad, Harry’s best friend, to help her set up a situation where Marvin would implicate himself, not realizing that Triad had always wanted Shelly and been jealous of both of the other guys and didn’t care who hurt if it meant nobody else could have Shelly. That includes Shelly herself: if Triad couldn’t be with her, nobody else would. He didn’t tell Harry that Marvin and Shelly were out together that night, and when Harry realized Shelly was on the back of the motorcycle he did like Marvin and dropped the rope. So Triad pushed him.

Triad obviously has told Shelly all of this, and Marvin figures the only way he would have is if Shelly somehow overpowered him. It’s an interesting twist that she told Triad about using Marvin to get him to figure out Harry’s death and Triad never realized she might use him for the same purpose. (I feel like Shelly has more strength than even the story gives her credit for, seeing as Pike describes all her agency as coming at the hands of her feminine wiles.) Marvin suspects that here, the spot where it all began, is the spot where it has all ended as well, and that the soft soil where he’s sitting is Triad’s final resting place. Shelly doesn’t say as much, but elicits Marvin’s silence before throwing the knife into the lake. But of course Marvin still has a book to finish, and Shelly’s OK with that as she’s apparently the only one who’s figured out the parallels anyway. The book closes with them in Marvin’s car, Shelly driving to Portland so they can get the manuscript on a flight to New York while Marvin writes the last few pages longhand.

I have to admit it: I still really like Master of Murder. Obviously I’m not in high school anymore, so I don’t relate to Marvin the way I used to, but I do connect to his being trapped in his own story and having to listen for others. The book has a lot of holes and inconsistencies in general that either I didn’t notice when I was a teenager or I glossed over in the excitement of having a character I could relate to so well. In particular, the YA publishing description is not without issues, and the ways the industry has changed after the Internet and Columbine and social networks and Trayvon Martin and #MeToo don’t jibe with the already-shoddy impression of how it works that Pike puts on display. The story is consigned to be a relic of its time. But for those of us who were there, who were trying to make our stories heard the way Marvin wanted to, it carries some warm nostalgia. Maybe I only like it so much now because I liked it then, but I’m OK with that.

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austenmarriage · 4 years ago

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New Post has been published on Austen Marriage

New Post has been published on https://austenmarriage.com/1531-2/

Sifting Through Austen’s Elusive Allusions

Excellent researchers have divined many, many references and allusions that Jane Austen makes in her novels and letters. In his various editions of her works, R. W. Chapman lists literary mentions along with real people and places. Deirdre Le Faye’s editions of Austen’s letters include actors, artists, writers, books, poems, medical professionals, and others. Jocelyn Harris, Janine Barchas, and Margaret Doody have written extensively about people, places and things on which Austen may have based situations or characters. Some of Jane’s references are clear, some artfully concealed.

Yet we should be cautious about the great number of literary or historical finds uncovered by modern scholarship, because we often don’t know how many of these Austen knew herself. When a modern researcher cites an historical person from a couple of hundred years Before Jane, the marginal query must always be, “Did JA know this?” Many, she likely did. But probably not all. Maybe not even most.

Also, we don’t know how many references and allusions are tactical rather than strategic. Many authors include passing topical references with no other goal than to place the events of a novel in a particular time and place. A writer in 1960s America might show anti-war footage playing on a television. A current writer might mention a controversial American president or British prime minister. But unless a common theme directly connects the background references with the main storyline, these references are likely tactical rather than strategic.

Here, “tactical” means the reference has no profound meaning beyond the text. “Strategic” means an effort by the writer to establish a more general social, political, or historical context. A reference to a Rumford stove in Northanger Abbey, for example, is tactical, playing a newly invented appliance off the heroine’s expectations of dank passages and cobwebbed rooms. The naval subplot in Persuasion, on the other hand, is strategic. It incorporates not only the overall historical context but also the moral and intellectual contrast between the military men who have earned their wealth versus the wealthy civilians who are squandering theirs.

For many other items, it is difficult to determine the precise source. Education and literature in Great Britain then involved a small, fairly closed set of people. Limited common sources included the Bible, Shakespeare, and authors from the classical tradition. A common set of teachers came from the same small number of colleges using those limited sources. Everyone who admitted to reading novels drew on the same small pool of books.

It is conventional wisdom, for instance, that Austen took the phrase “pride and prejudice” from Francis Burney’s book Cecilia, where the capitalized phrase appears three times at the end. However, the literary pairing of “pride and prejudice” occurs elsewhere, including the writings of Samuel Johnson and William Cowper, two of Austen’s other favorite writers.

Even First Impressions, the original name for this novel, may have come from a common vocabulary. First impressions, and not being fooled by them, was a literary trope. In Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho, the heroine, Emily, and the secondary heroine, Lady Blanche, are warned not to rely on first impressions. This novel, shown above by the headline, is mentioned so often in Northanger Abbey that it is almost a character. The concept also arises in the works of Samuel Richardson. Austen may have borrowed from one of these specific authors. Or all the authors may have used a common literary vocabulary. Indeed, it was the recent publication of two other works with the title First Impressions that led Austen to change her title.

Another question is whether Austen knew the many layers of references that academics often point out. She apparently had free run of her father’s 500-book library, but we don’t know what it contained. As an adult, she had occasional access to the large libraries at her brother Edward’s estates at Chawton and Godmersham. How much she read of the classical material there, we don’t know.

Jane knew Shakespeare and the Bible well. She knew many poets, but would she have read a still earlier classical writer referenced by those poets? Did Austen know Shakespeare’s sources, which were often obscure Italian plays? We might be able to trace many connections back to the Renaissance or before, but she may have known only the immediate one before her.

Harris, Barchas, Doody, and others have given us multiple possible historical references to the name Wentworth in Persuasion. Austen might use the name to tie into this network of families and English history going back hundreds of years (strategic). Or she might use the name because of its fame in her day (tactical). The direct novelistic use is to contrast Sir Walter, who measures family names in terms of social status, with the Captain, who fills his commoner’s name with value through meritorious service. Sir Walter finally accepts Wentworth because of his wealth and reputation. He was “no longer nobody.” Yet the baronet can’t help but think the officer is still “assisted by his well-sounding name.”

Barring a letter or other source in which Austen states her purpose, we have no way of knowing whether Austen intended a broader meaning to “Wentworth” than its general fame. To some, the name in and of itself establishes the broad historical context. To others, it would take more than the three or so brief references to Wentworth, as a name, to show that Austen means to establish a meaningful beyond-the-book purpose.

Another consideration is that, cumulatively, commentators have found an enormous number of supposed references and allusions in Austen. Could a fiction writer, with all the work required in creating, writing, and revising a novel, have the time and energy to find and insert a myriad of outside references and allusions? Could a writer insert many references without bogging down the work?

Every writer who has tried her hand at historical fiction, for example, knows that too much history can overwhelm the novel’s story, leaving characters standing on the sideline to watch events pass by. Every external reference creates extra exposition that creates the danger of gumming up the plotline. It might also create a new emotional tone at odds with the characters’ situation or other complexities that must be resolved. We can’t underestimate the extra work for an author who already has her head full of practical book-writing issues—plot and character development—that need to be kept straight.

Finally, writers often plant things for no other reason than fun. In Northanger Abbey, John Thorpe takes Catherine Morland for a carriage ride early in the story. Barchas points out that he asks her about her relationship with her friends, named Allen, at just the point where their carriage would be driving past Prior Park, the home of Ralph Allen. This was the stone mogul who helped build Bath.

Austen does not explicitly call out the family home. Readers who know Bath’s geography and make the connection to the wealthy masonry clan get an extra chuckle. Readers unfamiliar with the geography, or with the wealthy Allen descendants, would not suffer from a lack of understanding.

All a reader needs to know is that Thorpe thinks the Morlands are connected to a very wealthy family, when in fact their friends named Allen are only modestly well-to-do. Thorpe’s misunderstanding drives the book’s plot. Very likely, all Austen wanted with the Prior Park allusion was to give a wink to the bright elves reading her book.

Thus the author may mean one thing, while later analysts might find something beyond what the writer ever intended. In Mansfield Park, for instance, Henry Crawford reads Henry VIII aloud. A broad interpretation might connect the attitude of the rogue Henry Crawford with the attitude of the rogue Henry VIII: Women and wives are interchangeable, expendable, to be taken at whim and tossed away at whim. Or perhaps the name Henry is nothing more than a tip of the hat to Jane’s favorite brother, Henry.

Austen may well have intended multiple levels of interpretation. But note that she has Henry Crawford himself say that Shakespeare is “part of an Englishman’s constitution … one is intimate with him by instinct.” Edmund Bertram agrees: “We all talk Shakespeare, use his similes, and describe with his descriptions.”

Others may feel that Austen deliberately weaves in as many references as she can. One must imagine her writing with a variety of concordances stacked to the ceiling. But she indirectly tells us of a different approach. One is “intimate” with Shakespeare by “instinct.” She knew the Bard and other writers in depth, and the references come out organically. Much more than by design, this fine writer pulls what she needs from history by “instinct.”

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The Marriage of Miss Jane Austen, which traces love from a charming courtship through the richness and complexity of marriage and concludes with a test of the heroine’s courage and moral convictions, is now complete and available from Amazon and Jane Austen Books.

#18th century literature #Captain Wentworth #Jane Austen #Northanger Abbey #Persuasion #Regency era #Regency literature

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thelifedocumentor · 7 years ago

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Kenny Jules Morifi-Winslow - The Third Citizen

Culture. Fashion. Design. Art. These are the realms of expression that peppered our chat over coffee in Johannesburg’s upwardly trendy Rosebank. Kenny Jules Morifi-Winslow is a South African creative who has dedicated her career to the study of culture, fashion and art. A fashion anthropologist and Master’s graduate from Parsons School Of Design, Kenny writes The IIIRD Citizen. Her lifestyle blog integrates academic essays, creative writings and poems that contribute towards opening critical discussions. On The IIIRD Citizen, Kenny expresses her passion for culture and fashion through literary works .She inspires her readers to look at the concept of fashion beyond the visual appeal while ensuring she stays current by publishing the latest reviews from the fashion, design and food industry.

In the following interview, Kenny shares what exploring different countries was like throughout her childhood and the reason why being educated about culture and society is so important to her. Most significantly, she discusses the factors that played a role in shaping who Kenny Morifi Winslow is as we know her today.

I KNOW THAT YOU’RE PASSIONATE ABOUT CULTURE AND FASHION BUT EXACTLY WHO IS KENNY AND WHAT DRIVES HER? That is like asking how long a piece of string is, it depends. I think as people we are in the same way as culture – ever changing and ever evolving .The person I was is not the same person I am today based on the experiences of yesterday and the experiences of today. I am a passionate person, I think I’m a little bit volatile because of it, a bit intense, I think I’m grounded , I like plans and organization. But I’m also a dreamer in a sense that I don’t confine myself to the limits of possibility, of thinking. And I’ve proven that to myself in achieving all of those typesets so I have no reason to doubt that. So yeah: grounded, dreamer, believer, passionate, intense, and curious.

HOW HAS PHILOSOPHY AND ANTHROPOLOGY INFLUENCED THE WAY YOU SEE LIFE?

I always wanted to study Fashion Design but my parents weren’t keen on it. My dad wanted me to study law. So first degree I was accepted for a straight LLB at UCT, I arrived at registration day and I was like I actually can’t do this. This is not who I am, I’m going to be miserable and I switched to Anthropology, Artistry and Media. Anthropology at its core is a way of thinking, it’s a way of looking at the world, and it’s an interrogation essentially. Anthropology teaches you how to ask questions .And I think that had a very strong influence in how I approached fashion in general because it was so important to me. I wanted to do so much more than just make it, I wanted to understand it and I wanted other people to understand it, and to recognize that it is not as simple as putting on a t-shirt and glasses. There are so many questions you can interrogate about a single product that I have taken upon myself to ask about the fashion industry as a whole. It’s a cultural statement. It’s identity, its politics, it is everything.

YOU HAVE A VERY UNIQUE SENSE OF STYLE. WAS IT FORMED AS YOU DISCOVERED YOUR IDENTITY OR IT’S ALWAYS BEEN A PART OF YOU?

In my youth I was a lot more playful when it came to my clothing, more colour, I took more risks. I still wanted to look cool without thinking too hard. That was reflective of the stage I was in my life. It’s very easy to be carefree when you’re a student. Going to Parsons and moving to New York City by myself was an emotional rollercoaster. I had to grow up very quickly with that experience. By attending one of the top fashion schools in the world you’re exposed to so many more influences. The older I get, the simpler my style becomes because I start to understand things like quality, what luxury actually means and what style actually means. Trends mean absolutely nothing to me. I still have things in my closet from when I was 16 and things that my mom wore when she was 21 because they are timeless classic pieces. If you focus on shape, fabrication and the way things are made, then the time period you’re wearing it in or even what color it is doesn’t matter. You can always work it into your wardrobe. My style is at its core influenced by the things I studied. Art History teaches you how to think about proportion, shape and color. Anthropology influenced the way I think about how my clothes are made, where my clothes are made and what my clothes are made out of. And then my Master’s Degree was the mix of both. It taught me about sustainability, ethical production and cultural significance. It taught me how the choices I’m making impact my identity, what they say about my identity and how the rest of the world interacts with that.

YOU HAVE LIVED IN CAPE TOWN, LONDON, JOHANNESBURG AND NEW YORK. WHAT WAS THE EXPERIENCE OF NAVIGATING ALL THESE CITIES LIKE?

Wow, I could write a book about it. London is where I grew up. That is where I spent the majority of my life. From London it was Johannesburg then Cape Town for 4 years and then it was New York. Navigating those spaces was wild from a racial perspective most prominently. In London I went to an international school. It was a small diverse group with people from all over the world so we were exposed to a lot of cultures and I wasn’t weird. Then I moved to Johannesburg. Being mixed race had never been an issue until I came back to South Africa as a teenager. People started calling me coloured and they couldn’t understand why I don’t speak Afrikaans and I’m trying to explain that I’m not colored. That was kind of tricky. And then Cape Town of course – the majority of my friends and my social circle are black. Cape Town is a very white city so were always very conscious about the spaces where we were safe, welcome or unwelcome in. The racial divide in that city is unreal. And then I moved to New York where mixed race people are considered black. I was there at the time when Black Lives Matter movement was at its peak. I feel like I became a staunch defender of my blackness. Moving to New York and learning about these things made me feel like I am black because as much as I benefit from privileges such as Colorism because I’m light-skinned and I have good hair, I win in that way. But at the same time I am still prejudiced in the same way that a lot of black people actually are. So why not fight for those struggles instead of just defending my privileges? But you learn to adapt quickly. The move from South Africa to London which was the first big move really taught me how to navigate spaces and then moving every time after that became easy.

I LOVE IT WHEN YOU SPEAK ABOUT PARSONS SCHOOL OF DESIGN. YOU SPEAK OF IT WITH SO MUCH PASSION. HOW HAS PURSUING A MASTERS IN FASHION AT THIS INSTITUTION OPENED YOUR MIND?

My Masters programme was only 5 years old in the world and this particular course was called Fashion Studies. It had only existed for 5 years and they only accepted 30 people a year into this programme. What was really special about that particular programme is that you don’t have to have a background in Fashion. I was in class with people who had Politics degrees, economic degrees and people who came from Development backgrounds. Then we would all sit in class and have to apply our individual knowledge skillsets to this one topic. I think one of the most incredible experiences was the resources that people are. It completely changed the way I think about the work that I do. The resources I had at my disposal were unbelievable, absolutely incredible. New York City itself is a resource; the books, the museums and the galleries – incredible. So I think it completely changed the way that I think about what I do in the sense that people ask all the time, “what do you do” and they expect one job like I’m a banker or I’m an accountant. What Parsons taught me in particular is that there is no way to define the thing that I do now is because it has so many angles and facets.

WHY IS SUSTAINABLE FOOD AND DESIGN SUCH AN IMPORTANT COURSE TO YOU?

On a global scale, we have done a lot of damage to the environment. Capitalism has done a lot of damage to the environment and being conscious of it is a way to remedy some of that damage. I think it is especially important in developing economies like South Africa because it presents an opportunity for us not to make the same mistakes as developed countries. We can develop at the same rate without making the same mistakes. If we can build an economy that is already ethical and focused on sustainable production then by the time we become as big or as powerful or as rich as America, we don’t have issues like wage gaps, gender pay gaps or carbon emissions. To highlight those issues is to learn from the mistakes of the developed nations and prevent them in developing nations. It’s always a juggle between my world and my life in the first world where it’s about how do we reduce our emissions, how do we limit our impact on the environment. And then I come here and it’s about what are the ways moving forward we can achieve the same thing without making that mistake. How do we avoid genetically modified products? How do we avoid outsourcing our production systems to places like China and Taiwan? By building those production systems here, you circulate the money, wealth and the production to keep the entire supply chain local and we stimulate our own economy in the same way that China did. Then we run into whole new issues because China has issues with chemicals leaking into the environment and now there’s a chemical impact on the environment. There are so many plot points we need to identify and I think sustainability and ethical production in designing and food - particularly in South Africa - are the ways that we ensure a healthy growth process for the economy.

AFRICAN FEMINISM IS A TOPIC YOU HAVE HIGHLIGHTED IN YOUR PREVIOUS WORKS. WHAT DOES IT REPRESENT TO YOU?

It is important for us to have our own brand of feminism because feminism as we understand it is a very white concept. White women are very happy to fight for gender but never for race. They become two different issues for them. Whereas for black woman in particular it’s not one or the other, it’s both all the time. We need to start unpacking for ourselves what that means – what black feminism means what it means when we talk about each other’s hair textures and when we number them or when we tell girls who wear weaves that its synthetics and you’re not natural or why are braids and dreadlocks more highly respected than weaves and relaxed hair. Those are topics that are so unique to us and we sometimes overlook what that does to black womanhood. A lot of people aren’t honest about the thoughts that they have and if we don’t talk about them we can’t fix them. It’s really important for me to champion black feminism especially because it’s a fight our mothers didn’t get to fight and it has fallen on us now because we have the voice and we have the platforms to be able to talk about these things. I have a platform with an audience so why not talk about the real stuff?

WHY IS CULTURAL APPROPRIATION A DEBATE YOU FEEL STRONGLY ABOUT?

The problem with cultural appropriation is power. People think that it is about “creative integrity” and “this thing belongs to us and doesn’t belong to you” – no, it is about power. It’s also important to trace the history of things we think belong to us. Shweshwe print was given as a gift to King Shweshwe. It didn’t come from us; we just adopted these things and made them apart of our culture. The problem is when they take it back from us; make money off of what we have created now as our culture without referencing the process of how we got there. Cultural appropriation is such a tricky debate and there is so much grey area when it comes to cultural appropriation that we have to interrogate. That is the point of things like anthropology, the point of the work that I do. It is to go a little bit deeper and take it one step further. When we claim wax prints –who brought wax prints to Africa? Vasco da Gama is a Dutch company and they brought that stuff here. We didn’t make them we just claimed them so whose culture are we really appropriating? But the difference with that is it was never part of Dutch culture, it was part of the Dutch economy. And now we have the difference between culture and economy which we have to define and that filters into so many conversations about food and politics. Cultural appropriation is deep. People think fashion is frivolous-no, it’s a cultural history of a people or a person or a place.

HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT THE SOUTH AFRICAN OR AFRICAN CREATIVE INDUSTRY AT THE MOMENT?

I think we should separate South Africa from the rest of the continent because there’s a lot of amazing stuff happening in countries such as Nigeria and Kenya. And the thing that they have that we are lacking is patriotism in our designs. They believe in their own work, aesthetic and style. They produce it themselves and it has a very unique perspective. I love that. But I think South Africa is still struggling with replicating international designs or styles instead of creating our own. Especially when it comes to street wear labels; it’s just copy & paste of international street wear labels. But then if you think about things like furniture design, we’re really excelling in things like that because we are the home of those natural resources. Therefore our artisans have a much better access to those things and have a fresh perspective because we’re such a diverse country. There are so many cultures to pull from, take inspiration from and to diversify and make new. I think that’s really cool. But we still haven’t found a way to do that when it comes to fashion whole-heartedly. We have a long way to go when it comes to that.

IN THIS AGE OF SOCIAL MEDIA WITH SO MUCH HAPPENING IN OUR GENERATION, AND AROUND US, WHAT KEEPS YOU GROUNDED?

I’m a writer at the very core of what I do, however I do it. What keeps me grounded is that to be a writer – a good writer- you have to write about yourself. You are the subject that you know best so a lot of my work and most of the work that has garnered me the most praise is the personal stuff where I can take something that is personal to me and make it about something outside of myself. People get so concerned with being a brand that they even forget to be a person. I think that’s what people forget when it comes to social media and being an influencer. My brand is being a person. My whole brand is built on being human and sharing human stories and sharing my perspective on things we’re talking about, the things that aren’t sexy and are a little bit dark and a little bit ugly but that everyone can relate to. All of these different things that people don’t really talk about especially on a high profile and highly visible platform. My philosophy is to use that platform for exactly that. So I think the work itself keeps me grounded. There is no way I could float into the sky because the reason that I have any kind of popularity is because I’m so open and so honest about who I am as a person and how I became that way.

HOW DO YOU MANAGE ENDORSING BRANDS WHILE STILL STAYING TRUE TO WHO YOU ARE AS A PERSON?

It’s a really tough thing to do. Sometimes brands will approach you and here’s my thing- this thing called integrity. I don’t mind saying no to brands and I’ve said no to a lot of brands. Because on a superficial level it doesn’t fit who I am, how I dress, the things I do or how I consume things. But even with the brands that I do say yes to, it’s why am I saying yes, do I have enough creative control to be able to write my own story and slot this in. Or is it a straight up brand endorsement? Even with the brands that I’ve worked with - I’ve spent my own money in the past or I’m currently spending my own money and I can find an angle, a narrative to tell a story and that’s important to me. It is to be able to tell stories through brands; that’s advertising. Advertising is all about creating an emotional connection between a consumer and a product. I am the emotional connection between a consumer and a product.

WHO ARE THE PEOPLE THAT HAVE PLAYED A ROLE IN SHAPING WHO KENNY IS TODAY?

Wow, so many people, but obviously my parents at a foundational level. I know everyone says that but I think that with me it’s a little bit deeper than that because like I said I’m mixed race. My mom is black Sotho and my dad is white Italian American. So a lot of my interest in culture, language and history comes from them. A lot of my activism I learnt from home. And a lot of my curiosity, appreciation for knowledge and education I learnt at home -which I’m grateful for. My upbringing- moving around a lot has taught me adaptability in particular ways and particular situations. You have to be a chameleon. But outside of that, I think there are external influences like people that I’ve never met, icons that I admire, writers, poets, photographers, film directors but I’ve never met them so I can’t really say they have shaped me into who I am. The men that I have loved in my life have played very significant roles in how I became the person that I am. The kinds of men that I’ve loved have all represented a different lesson, a different learning. And I think as much as I’ve always been a creative writer in particular, certain loves have given me poetry and have given me a depth of feeling that is now very important to the quality of my work. It’s about who you are and who you become in and out of love that shapes how you move forward. There’s a reason that you were there. They taught me things and you’ve taught me things and I carry those lessons around with me every day in every form - In the way that I write and the things that I write about.

WHAT ARE SOME OF THE BIGGEST LESSONS YOU’VE LEARNT ON YOUR PATH?

1) The most recent one was the struggle between being an exceptional student to feeling like a mediocre adult. I was a straight A student my entire school career – from grade 1 to my Master’s degree. It’s very easy to grade schoolwork – you get a brief, produce work and get a mark back. I’m good at that. And then when I came into the world after that I was trying to navigate not having a rigid system to validate me. I don’t have professors that are praising my work. I don’t have a report card that says cumm laude – it’s just life. And in life, there are so many other people, who can do what you do, who do what you do and might do it better. Then you suddenly went from competing in this tiny little pool into this massive big world and that’s tough. That’s a really tough adjustment to make especially if you’re working freelance like I do. Going from being a student to being just a regular grown up person working was hard. It’s a game of pivots – just keep moving, switching and figuring it out.

2) Another lesson that I’ve learnt is that sometimes you’re the problem. We are very quick to point fingers and say they did this which is why I did that or well you did worse than I did. We’re quick to compare, we’re quick to pass judgments. When you take all of that away sometimes you are the problem – you need to fix some issues in yourself.

3) The third lesson that I’ve leant is that sometimes you have to ask for help when you need it. Don’t be precious about asking for help or sharing ideas. I leant this year what collaboration actually means. It’s not you do one thing and you do another and then we put them together. It’s about how do we marry our two schools of thought or our two ways of thinking or perspectives into this one product at the end. It’s very easy to say, but it’s much harder to do and execute.

OKAY, NOW THIS IS A FUN ONE. WHAT ARE YOUR TOP 3 LIFESTYLE TIPS?

1) Don’t force the issue: People have this thing about flamboyancy and doing too much. That for me is not style - that is fashion. Fashion comes and goes. At school we used to differentiate between fashion with a capital ‘F’ and fashion with a small letter ‘f’. Fashion with a capital ‘F’ is trends – what’s trendy right now. Fashion with a small ‘f’ is the way you make something, the way you fashion something – production or a thought process. When I say don’t do too much I mean don’t do fashion with a capital ‘F’. Forget about trends.

2) Identify what your style staples are and stick to them. And then you can deviate from that in small ways. I’ve got a uniform colour palette and set of shapes. I like neutral colors. The place where I have a lot of fun with my fashion and my wardrobe is shapes. So you can have a whole white wardrobe if you want but have interesting shapes, interesting cuts and interesting styles.

3) Rather save your money and buy less at better quality. I think this is the most important tip. I have blazers that were bought for me when I was a teenager. I still have a Michael Kors tuxedo blazer my mom bought for me when I was 16 in New York. It will forever be timeless because it is so well made, such great quality. Before I would buy a new outfit whenever I went out but now I’ll buy 2 pairs of really well-tailored trousers and then I’ll buy 4 really well-made shirts. That becomes a staple. From there you build and you add small things, small detail. But the core staple remains the same. Choose quality over quantity.

SO WHAT IS NEXT FOR KENNY MORIFI WINSLOW?

Ooooh! I’ve got a big project in the works. I don’t want to reveal too much but March of 2018 keep your eyes peeled. I started a company and we do something very unique. But it has its own name, its own look and its own brand identity independent of Kenny Jules Morifi-Winslow. It’s going to be cool.

WHAT MESSAGE WOULD YOU SEND TO PEOPLE WHO ASPIRE TO WORK IN THIS CREATIVE SPHERE?

I would say – and this is something I learnt from Anthony Bila (The Expressionist) - he studied something so far away from the thing he does now. He worked in advertising and after 10 years, he quit. He only started following his real passion at the age of 29. In the last two years he has excelled like out of this world - his work has been exhibited internationally, he consults on panels; he directs commercials that we see on television. He is behind so many things and we just see the photographs that he takes. Anthony has worked so long and so hard in the creative sphere to build enough respect and credibility to be able to do things that he didn’t study. I’d use that example to communicate to young people to do the work. You don’t have to study it. A lot of people can’t afford to study – the internet is your teacher. Consume things, look at different things, look at film, listen to music, go places you’ve never gone before. Do things outside of what you think is your style or your vibe, experience things and just create. The thing we do as creatives is we agonize over the idea. Is it going to be good enough? How am I going to do it? Essentially you’re doing it for you, if you’re not doing it for you then you’ve got this whole thing wrong. Creativity is problem solving and a lot of those problems are in us. Do whatever it takes to find your thing and just keep doing it.

By using her platform, Kenny continues to push forward the movement of African feminism, cultural appropriation and ethical food & design through eloquent literature. The knowledge that she has garnered from Anthropology and Masters in Fashion is reflected in her work as she inspires us to look at these topics with a much more critical approach. With an eye for aesthetic visuals, a timeless minimalistic style sense and a depth to her soul, Kenny Jules Morifi-Winslow is a young activist using her power to raise awareness for a sustainable future in the world of art, fashion and design.

Images source: www.instagram.com/kennyjmw/

The IIIRD Citizen: thethirdcitizen.com

#kennyjmw #thelifedocumentor #zesintu #thirdcitizen

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scrawnydutchman · 7 years ago

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Why Nite Owl is the Best Character in ‘Watchmen’

Many art forms over the years have had difficulty finding the respect they deserve when they first start out. It’s only natural; new ideas tend to get the shaft by older generations afraid of change “corrupting the country” because apparently centuries of social and scientific innovation can be brought crumbling down by some little yellow cartoon kid saying “don’t have a cow, man”. Every form of artistic expression has had to battle censorship, unwarranted criticism and senseless conspiracy in their day, be it music, film, comedy, animation, video games. Even BOOKS were condemned as tools for evil by the earliest philosophers of human history.

“[Writing] will create forgetfulness in the learners’ souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves.” - Socrates

Comic books are no different. Matter of fact, they might just be the most prominent example of this. They’ve been credited time and time again for influencing youth to a life of crime and ignorance, especially in probably the most infamous case of anti-comic book propaganda, Friedric Wertham’s The Seduction of the Innocent, which made such bombastic claims as suggesting Batman and Robin are encouraging the youth to engage in homosexual affairs (different time folks, different time. Fun fact though; that’s why Batgirl was invented, to give Batman a girlfriend for his time to dispute such claims).

*Though to be fair, when you read these hilarious panels out of context you can sort of see some brow-raising implications. This is why context matters.*

But the upside to the battles every medium faces is that eventually along will come a masterpiece that breaks the mold. A revolutionary bit of literary work that changes the way we look at the medium long after it premieres. When it comes to comic books, if you ever find somebody telling you it’s not real art or it’s just kid stuff, you tell them to read motherfucking WATCHMEN. Written by Alan Moore and illustrated by Dave Gibbons, Watchmen is a timelessly cryptic tale of washed up former heroes, godlike beings with humanity slipping away and debates on proper ethics, all under the tension of a cold war stricken America where everyone feels like they can die at any moment. The story has went on to be recognized as one of New York times 100 greatest novels in 2005, joining the ranks of Catcher in the Rye and Clockwork Orange. And it’s praise is rightfully earned. The compelling murder mystery, the growing tension between military forces, the intricate detail of an alternate history Cold War, the play on themes like science, religion, morality and nostalgia, all brought together through beautiful silver age inspired artwork and masterful frame composition that makes the reader feel like their watching a movie.

Of course, being such a classic in the comic book world, it has equally iconic characters, which are all very original (ironic since they’re all basically reskinned Charlton Comics characters invented by Steve Ditko). The most commonly favorited and analyzed among fans being Rorschach, the conspiracy buff ruthless vigilante who is the black-and-white moral compass (though he’s not nearly as black and white as people give him credit for, we’ll get to that in a bit), Dr. Manhattan, the all powerful allegory for both God AND the atom bomb who is ever so slowly losing his grip on his own humanity, and the Comedian, the nihilistic, alcoholic, sex offender soldier who sees life as a monstrous joke and dies not having the last laugh. Those characters are all well and good, but there is one character I’ve grown particularly fond of whom I don’t think gets enough recognition for just how fascinating his dilemma and growth is. That is of course Daniel Dreiberg, the every-man turned superhero Nite Owl.

In order to fully appreciate Nite Owl, we’ll need to recap some context from the story. I’ve already touched upon how one of the major themes of the story is Nostalgia. After all, nearly every character in this story is distraught about the oncoming terror of the Cold War getting hot and they all want to remember a simpler time when it was clear who the bad guy was and what to do about it. Nobody embodies this theme more then Dan Dreiberg. He’s had a passion for crime fighting since he was very young, so much so that he used his fathers inheritance to develop crime fighting gear and tech and took on the mantle of Nite Owl after the original, Hollis Mason, had long since retired. Many of the other characters only became heroes because they were thrown into their situations by one force or another, but Dan had a longing to be a problem solver who wanted to defend the innocent and uphold the law in the most fun and dramatic way possible. When he wore the goggles he felt like there was no problem too large for him to handle. He was hopeful and he was optimistic.

“No matter how black it got, when I looked through these goggles . . . everything was clear as day.” - Ch. 7, pg 9, panel 8-9

Of course, after the Keenes act passed which outlawed vigilante justice, Dan was forced to begrudgingly hang up the cape. His confidence and vigor was seemingly forever trapped down in his basement, collecting dust. He became overweight. He grew timid and insecure. He let Rorschach walk all over him and abuse their friendship when they used to be trusted partners. He lived on in denial of what he truly wanted. He loved Laurie Juspeczyk for years but never confessed it, and even when he had the chance to embrace Laurie in sex he felt impotent and out of place. The dire feeling of living without meaning haunted his every move, and he was tired of being held on into a life of mediocrity.

“It’s this war. The feeling that it’s unavoidable. It makes me feel so powerless. So impotent.” - Ch. 7, pg 19, panel 8-9

It’s only when he puts the mask back on and willingly breaks the law holding him down that he starts to feel happy again. He begins to smile, he feels more positive about what to do about the cold war hanging over his head and Rorschach’s mask killer conspiracy. He’s finally able to satisfy Laurie sexually, and he even starts standing up to Roschach for all the shit he puts him through.

“I feel so confident it’s like I’m on fire. And all the mask killers, all the wars in the world, they’re just cases--problems to solve” - Ch. 7, pg 28, panel 5

“Listen, I've had it! Who the hell do you think you are? You live off people while insulting them, nobody complains because they think you’re a goddamned lunatic . . . you know how hard it is, being your friend?” - Ch. 10, pg 16, panel 5

The reason why I appreciate this so much is because Nite Owl embodies why we love superheroes: because they ARE problem solvers. They DO take on larger then life challenges, and they always find a way to put evil in it’s place. They enable us to have a more optimistic outlook and they prove that not only is doing the right thing possible, but it can be really fun too! Readers feel more empowered and enthusiastic when reading about the latest adventures of their heroes, because suddenly huge problems aren’t so scary anymore. It’s why comic books were so popular as anti Nazi and Japanese propaganda in WW2 and why superheroes skyrocketed in popularity throughout the decades of the cold war.

Nite Owl loves everything old fashioned. It’s why his childhood hero was the first Nite Owl Hollis Mason and why he spends so much of his time trapped in the past, always talking to Hollis about the old days and constantly visiting his basement to ponder them. He even demonstrates his longing for older times in extremely subtle ways, like his personal taste in music is all classic stuff and he’s out of touch on modern lingo.

“Oh well, mostly I’m into Billie Holiday, Nellie Lutcher, Louis Jordan . . . stuff like that.” - Ch. 7, pg 10, panel 3.

Generally speaking Dan’s dilemma in the story and his evolution as a character is a lot more underplayed and nuance then other character arcs, which I actually really appreciate. The book is fantastic, but I often felt like for other characters they basically just spell out their own character synopsis for the reader and leave little to the imagination. Rorschach and Dr. Manhattan especially had this issue in my opinion. Their character specific chapters didn’t rely very much on context clues or allowing the panels to tell the story (except for in certain instances), instead they basically just monologue to themselves on what they’re all about and why they do what they do. Plus as I stated briefly before I feel like Rorschach is a bit overrated, especially when they describe him as “seeing morality in black and white”. He’s made more then a few compromises and weird judgements in the story. There’s the more understandable example of when he refuses to beat the woman who made false assault allegations on him on tv because her kids were watching, but then there’s also the time where he describes the Comedians rape attempt on the first silk spectre as a “moral lapse”. Since when does the “black and white morality” character believe in moral lapses? Especially ones for topics as touchy as rape? pages later he breaks a guy in a bars set of fingers because the dude said he smelled bad behind his back. So let me get this straight: attempted rape is a moral lapse, but somebody saying you smell bad behind your back is punishable by finger breaking?? Seems to me Rorschach cares more about his reputation in the underworld then actually maintaining black and white morality. He even admits how much his reputation matters to him.

“Can’t. Serious Business. Slur on reputation.” - Ch. 10, pg 6, panel 5

But anyway, I've gone on enough tangents in this post. My point is that this graphic novel is phenomenal and a must-read for fans wanting to get into comic books or even literature in general. I just wanted to talk about an aspect not appreciated often enough, and how excellently it’s portrayed. There’s a reason Nite Owl is my favorite character and my favorite chapter is “A Brother to Dragons”. He articulates the theme of nostalgia perfectly and is a wonderful allegory for the reader and every man just trying to find an outlet for his problems. Plus he brings some much needed positivity and relief into an otherwise mercilessly dark and pessimistic book. It’s a shame Nite Owl all too often gets the shaft, even in his own story arc in the Before Watchmen series (which I have a bit of a distaste for because the artwork is way too layered in thick sketchy linework to be appealing and sometimes Rorschach just straight up hijacks the story). Hopefully this post will bring him some much deserved recognition.

#superheros #comics #DC comics #watchmen #alan moore #dave gibbons #comic books #nostalgia #books #graphic novels #novels

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