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o-king-of-suns · 3 years

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Hi ^^ I've recently found ur blog and read ur meta. Ur analysis is great! I'm kinda new here but I've seen so many ppl talk about Levi's guidebook page, referring to it as "the confirmation of what Levi was solely fighting for in the final battle i.e revenge by fulfilling the promise" I'm sorry if this has been pointed out before but as a Levi fan who believes otherwise, I'd love to read ur interpretation. Also u also believe the GB is implying this? I think ppl are having the wrong impression.

Hi! :) Thank you so much! I am glad you liked my meta! English is not my first language, so I try my best to express what I want to say.

Almost everyone agrees that the final guidebook is just an ABSOLUTE hot garbage! xD At this point that no one is taking seriously anymore! xD It straight up contradicts what happens in the manga, has VERY reductive and nonsensical descriptions of the characters and is FULL of errors.

The main reason to why many people have issues with Levi’s part (apart from it having nothing new or because it mainly focused on the promise) is one word that was used in the text that has been translated by some biased people into “obsessed”.

I asked 3 Japanese people (including my teacher) about the word that was used in the text and the meanings that I was given were: (be) dedicated to; have an uncompromising commitment to ; to really focus on; to be determined to; etc. From what I understood, this term is always a headache as it truly depends on what the writer wants to convey and what it “feels” right in the context. "Obsessed” is like, the most reductive reading of that word, and it's the exact word that Er_ris chose to use xD

Japanese is often qualified as vague, and it CAN leave room for interpretation. For example, the word (きれい) Isayama used to say Levi was the opposite of Rorschach could mean "pretty" or "clean" based on the context, but here's the thing: Rorschach is notoriously ugly, so it makes sense that Isayama meant that Levi is "pretty" (and it IS officially translated to "pretty" ), but I have seen MANY Japanese people say that Isayama meant "clean" not “pretty”! This word meaning in the text literally and solely depended on Isayama's intention even causing translators to get confused and translate it to “pretty”! If we look at the context of Levi’s character description in the last gb, the last line mentions that after his final mission, Levi “meets his friends with a calm heart”. Why would Levi be able to meet his friends with a “calm heart” if his entire arc was about him being “obsessed” with a personal goal and revenge?! Is this why he salutes them and they salute him back in the final chapter?! I am 100% sure that the word “obsessed” was not the one that the person who wrote the description wanted to use.

Now let’s stop talking about language translation and focus on Levi in the manga xD Is the gb version Levi the same Levi whom Isayama described as "as an existence more superior to myself" during Levi’s statue reveal just last March?!

You know, when I asked my native Japanese teacher to help me translate Isayama's statement about Levi, she sent me a 4 minute voice note breaking down the terms Isayma used and explaining how much respect the person speaking (Isayama) has for the person he's talking about (Levi). I was embarrassed to tell her that the person he’s speaking about is actually a fictional character lol

Isyama used 頭の上がらない which literally means “can’t raise someone’s head” but it actually means “can’t raise someone’s head in front someone else for how much respect they have for this person”

Now let’s look at Levi’s actions in the manga to see if we can reach to the same conclusion.

Levi is one of, if not the most, perceptive characters in SNK. In one the official short stories, he was described as a person who is able to “know the true nature of Man”. For Levi, Zeke is a man who cheered with satisfaction as he threw rocks through fifteen year olds. He’s the person who nonchalantly explained to Levi the process of gassing an entire village of unsuspecting civilians and flinging them into an eternal nightmare in order to weaponize their bodies. Zeke’s manipulations are the origin of almost all of Paradis’ problems, whether it’s encouraging Marley to ramp up aggressions or pulling shady shit with Kiyomi, Yelena and the Jaegerists that destabilizes their already vulnerable island. And what’s worse - because we’re reading a story where torn-up characters are often excused by circumstances of coercion or perceived necessity - he doesn’t care. He feels no remorse. He wants to do this. Levi doesn’t know Zeke’s ultimate reasoning of course, but he recognized through the smoke of the campfire a man who doesn’t give a fuck about the wishes and agency of others. Who will force his own will on a race of humans and call it mercy. AND YET, Levi stays with him for A WHOLE MONTH in the forest bringing him books, drinks and a pillow to sit on. He keeps asking him about what happened in Connie’s village trying over and over to understand him. And then the guy transforms Levi’s own teammates in front of him, forces him to kill them and taunts him with their suffering. Levi perceives a person who’s arrogant enough to consider his cruelty compassion as he decides whether the lives of their children are worth living.YET, Levi decided to keep him alive because he believed that it is what’s the best for Paradis; a decision that eventually caused Levi’s severe injuries and the activation of the Rumbling!

During the final battle, Levi offered to act as a bait for Mikasa so she can try to bring back Armin and risks his life TWICE to save Jean and Connie risking his chances to ever fulfill his promise to Erwin.

Please tell me now that these are actions of an “obsessed” man who is only focused on killing Zeke and revenge.

The first time Levi mentions the vow after the time skip, he says: “Erwin, I think I will be finally able to fulfill the vow I made to you that day. Your deathS had meaning. At last I will be able to prove it” Levi clearly associates giving meaning to his comrades’ deaths WITH fulfilling his vow to Erwin. This is the line that proves that the vow has always meant something more.

Levi made a promise that came to represent the fulfillment of the goal all his former Survey Corps comrades laid down their lives for. Slaying the Beast Titan took on symbolic stature, a tangible way of giving their sacrifices meaning - especially in a world where the circumstances had drastically shifted and enemies, allies, and other were suddenly seen from a completely different perspective.

In Ch. 136, Levi remembers his friends and reflects upon their sacrifices and what they meant. They did not sacrifice their lives to “trample the lives and hearts of others”.

We never got a SINGLE panel in which he says that he fulfilled his promise! In the last apparition of his fallen comrades, Erwin isn’t even in the center. He salutes his fallen comrades for devoting their hearts for humanity and they salute him back for honoring their sacrifices.

If there is one thing that Levi was “obsessed” about, it is him trying to give meaning to the deaths and sacrifices of the people who truly devoted their hearts to humanity and whom he truly loved

#anon ask #ask

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killemwithkawaii · 4 years

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hiii your writing is the bestttt! do you know how I could describe the yandere face like idk how I should describe it without saying „she’s doing the yandere face“ u know ,_, do you have any ideas, I’m not the best at writing but I wanna get better at it!

lsfhlasflhga THANK YOU ANON-CHAN! YOU’RE TOO SWEET 🥺💘💘💘

Hmm, describing the ‘yandere face’...

Well, I’d say there are four basic yan!faces to describe:

The Love-Sick face

This is the face of a yan who’s feeling those delicious dokis. They’re full of longing, but still pretty relaxed, just riding that sweet yan!high.

~Dilated (possibly heart-shaped) pupils, shiny, half-lidded eyes ”Their irises were blown wide, as if the sight of their darling had intoxicated them” ”You could almost see the hearts in their eyes” ”a seductive/tender/fond look” “dewy-eyed” ~tilted head “they tilted/cocked/lolled their head to one side” “They lifted their chin” ~Open/soft mouth “Their lips parted to let out a sigh” “They licked their lips” “They spoke softly, almost a whisper” ~touching the face, hair or clothes “They cupped their cheeks” “They threaded their hair through their fingers” “They fidgeted with the collar of their shirt”

The Obsession Face

The face of a yan whos dokis have gotten intense. They might be in the midst of a vivid daydream, are planning something, or have their darling right where they want them and are finally indulging in a long-time fantasy.

~Shaking “They quivered/vibrated/shook with anticipation” “Their hands were trembling as they reached for their darling” “Beads of sweat formed on their brow” “They panted with excitement” ~Smiling/oral stim “They gave a crooked grin” “They bit their lip as the corners of their mouth curled upward” “They traced their lip with the tips of their fingers” ~Intense eyes “Their eyes were wide and unfocused, soaking in the movie-reel of self-indulgent fantasy that played in their mind” “Their eyes were wide and focused, reveling in being able to observe [darling] so closely.” “They stared as if they were starving, and [darling] was a gourmet meal laid before them” “Their brows knitted/furrowed with suspense”

The ‘You’re Fucked’ Face

This yan is pissed. They were ignored, rejected, or their darling has been wronged in some way, and they want answers.

~Flat-face “Their expression remained unchanged, save for the tension in their jaw.” “They spoke evenly, their monotone voice making promises of revenge.” “Their face was frozen, a mask to barely-hide the fury bubbling beneath the surface.” ~Death-glare “The light faded from their eyes.” “Their line of sight sharpened, as if they were a predator targeting its prey” “A shadow of malice seemed to cover their features, giving [darling] an acute feeling of dread.” ~cracks in the calmness “Their lower eyelid twitched-the first hint at the intensity of their anger.” “Their pointer finger jerked slightly, as if compelled to lead the rest of [yan]s hand into their pocket.” “Their lip quirked, threatening to break into a sneer”

The Maniac Face

This is the yan during and after their needed catharsis, often in the form of committing violence against rivals or fulfilling a fantasy with their darling.

~Exaggerated smile “Their grin seemed too wide for their face” “Their nostrils flared” “They gritted their teeth” “Their cheeks stretched until I thought they would tear” ~Laughing “They cackled with glee as [darling] writhed beneath them” “They giggled uncontrollably” “They chuckled harder with every slice” ~Wide eyes “They wore a crazed expression” “They had a frenzied look about them” “Their eyes darted wildly, taking in the scope of their handiwork” ~Vocalization “The spouted streams of nonsense” “They pledged their devotion to their beloved [darling]” “They repeated their curses on the one who betrayed them” “They rambled on about undying love” “[Yan] screamed as they plunged their knife into flesh, commanding [rival] to die, and making it so.”

I hope these were helpful! Please feel free to use any of these descriptions, as long as you link me so I can see what wonderful stories they’ve been included in ^.^ Happy writing, Anon-chan~ 🔪🎀✨💕

#K.E.W.K. answers #senpai says #yandere #writing tips #writing help #tw yandere #tw violence #tw unsanitary #fic writing #write that delicious yan anon #senpai believes in you

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inkdemonapologist · 4 years

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Okay but I do actually want to know both the things you love and the things you could rant about from DCTL?

OH BOY UHHHHHH okay lets see, I'm gonna see if I can do the "add a readmore after you post it" thing and see if that'll keep it stable.......

But also, much like Sammy, I am incapable of shutting up unless you strike me in the head with a blunt object, so uh, forgive my wordiness:

THINGS I ENJOY:

- DCTL gave us Sammy's ink addiction and like, if you had asked me before all this "what would you most like to see in a franchise?" I would not have answered "one of the characters drinks ink accidentally and then discovers that he can't stop" but boy that sure is my favourite concept that I LOVE to see handled literally any other way than how the book handled it!!!

- I like what it added to Tom and Allison and Norman!! Like, it's not big twists on their characters or anything -- we already knew Tom felt he was doing the wrong thing, so getting to see his CRUSHING GUILT over creating the machine isn't New Information, but it's nice to see and understand more of him; for all of them I feel a lot more attached to them after getting to see more of them as people.

- Like 90% of the "I LOVE IT" category for me is how the book handled Joey, and Buddy's relationship with Joey. The way Joey isn't a Sinister Mastermind Who’s Just Screwing With Everyone but just manipulative in a more mundane way -- someone who thinks of himself as just the guy with the vision to call the shots; he wants what he wants and this is how he's learned to get it; he exploits people not through devious schemes, but just by offering them something that they want or need and asking too much in return, expecting their loyalty for his favours. And the way he interacts with Buddy, making Buddy complicit with him and keeping Buddy off-balance and insecure while making him a favourite and treating him as Special is just PERFECT -- gives a lot of content to kind of extrapolate off of when pondering what must've drawn the others in and convinced them to ignore the red flags. I was initially frustrated with the idea of Buddy not being an artist and jUST DECIDING TO LEARN TO ANIMATE ON THE SPOT ("I've never done this before but I'm sure I can just do an artist's job" is a weirdly common throwaway thing in media and as an artist iTS A PET PEEVE) but actually the way they use his plagiarism to make him trapped in a lie in ways Joey doesn't even realise ends up being a neat echo of other employees (coughTOMcough), who were involved in much graver sins but suddenly felt they couldn't object or they'd lose their one chance, just like Buddy. There's a lot here that I think is really great.

OKAY THATS THE GOOD STUFF, LET'S COMPLAIN ABOUT SAMMY:

- Uncomfortable Bigotry Vagueness that we all knew was gonna be in this list -- I dunno man, a guy committing a microaggression and getting startled and defensive when he's called out for it doesn't necessarily completely ruin his character I GUESS, but the way this was handled is just SO WEIRD AND VAGUE that it's uncomfortable and it doesn't seem to serve any real purpose. "Is Tom black?" is a question I actually have to ask because the text sort of implies he is while also dancing around it and apparently Word of God said he's not??? which makes Buddy's comment nonsensical???? And I mean, you could go that route, since Buddy wonders to himself if Sammy talks to everyone like this -- HE ACTUALLY DOES!! Even within the text of the novel, he uses "Joey" instead of Mr. Drew, which is consistent with his audiologs in the game -- but that makes the writing suggest "this character THINKS this guy might be racist but actually they're reading too much into it and it wasn't racially motivated at all, he's just a jerk!!" wHICH IS SOMEHOW EVEN MORE ICKY??? Anyway like yeah I guess it's not inconsistent with his character that while Sammy Lawrence may not have any specific grudge against minorities he has probably not checked his privilege or done the work to challenge his own internal biases, but “Your Fav Probably Contributes To Systemic Racism In Ways He Hasn’t Considered, As Do We All When Our Assumptions Go Unchecked” is still a wild thing to wade through in a fun story about demonic cartoons

- but yknow so is T H E H O L O C A U S T

- Sammy's voice is wrong. I'm actually okay with him being a weird awkward asshole, I already kind of assumed he was and that's part of why I like him!! but there's so many places he doesn't quite... talk like himself? And not just in terms of word choice, like -- so in his monologue at the end, he's described as talking so quickly that his words are "tumbling out faster than he can speak them," which initially seems fine; like yeah, that's a Standard Scene we're familiar with, the person who's been Driven Mad With Insight becoming more and more manic as they try to convey it -- until I tried to imagine it and realised that Sammy doesn't talk like this. That's a really consistent quality I always notice about his voice; whether he's almost giddily excited in prophet mode, or he’s his irritated and overworked human self, or he's violently angry and his voice has that echo effect -- he always speaks very deliberately. He enunciates carefully. There's some circumstances where I'd buy this as showing that he's Not Himself, but I feel like those would kind of need to be in the middle of his transformation, not at the end of it.

- In fact a lot of the scenes with Sammy kind of have this feeling -- that it's not necessarily an exploration of Sammy as a character, but that he is filling a trope or archetype role here. Once he's fully transformed he excitedly describes the process as more of a mental compulsion, which is in contrast to his weird yeerk-infected behaviour when trying to get ink from Miss Lambert. Both of those scenes don't seem wrong on their own because they fit tropes we know -- but they feel weird when you try to fit them together.

- I also just in general am not a fan of the ink acting like a weird yeerk. It can be a parasite I guess but when it starts overwriting and puppeting people and crawling around to enter their body that's just a completely DIFFERENT kind of supernatural story and it’s not what im here for!!!

- THE FREAKIN!!! HE WILL SET US FREE!!!! WHY????????? SAMUEL LAWRENCE WHAT IS HE SETTING YOU FREE FROM??????? Sammy has No Motive for any of what he's doing, other than just Ink Made Me Do It. The whole thing that was INTERESTING about Sammy as a character is the contrast between this frustrated, ornery musician with no specific love for the cartoons he works on, and the manically devoted cultist he becomes. What happened in the middle there? What made him desperate enough to shift his mindset so much? "Something supernatural made him do things that don't benefit him in any way" is a very boring answer to this question!!! Susie was a victim who implies that her transformation has forced her to do things she didn't want to do, but we can still see her motive -- she wanted to be Alice, so she took a sketchy offer to try to get what she wanted. Even now, her violence echoes that goal -- to be a more perfect Alice. What did Sammy want? WHO KNOWS. Even in his ink-addled state at the end, we don't understand what he hopes the Ink Demon will even do for him, and in fact he seems to be responsible for creating the very scenario he's begging Bendy to reverse in the game.

- [sighs loudly into my hands]

- Overall I'm left wondering if the author just..... didn't like Sammy Lawrence? And I don't mean that in the sense of him being a rude jerk -- like, Joey is not a good person, but the author seems to be interested in him and in what makes him tick. There doesn't seem to be that same interest in Sammy. Sammy's role in the story is that of a monster, transformed into something murderous, unable to prevent or choose it. He's not a victim of anyone but the ink, no one had to manipulate him or figure out how his brain worked or what he wanted or what he feared or give him any reason to do the things he does -- ink got in his mouth and overwrote his personality. And we don't even get to see that change, not really. He starts out angry and defensive and continues being angry and defensive up until his very last scene, denying his ink-stealing but not really much else. We see all his prophetic sketches but we never see hints of this in him, we never see him start to act more excited and hopeful, we never see him seek out the demon he desires to please. Why do we never see Sammy struggling between his dismissive angry front and a building religious fervour he can't quite suppress? We don't get to see any of the in-between. There's no interest at all in why or even what it looked like as Sammy became what he became, when, to be honest, I suspect interest in precisely that is one reason he's such a big fav.

- It's funny, in a "cries into my hands" kind of way, when Sammy is just knocked in the head while monologuing and immediately removed from the story without further mention, like...... that sure is the pattern with him, isn't it, he just tries very very hard and never actually gets to matter, but it also fits right in here, too, in this book that doesn't want to think about his motives -- he rambles nonsensically, explaining nothing, gets one trademark phrase, and then is hastily removed so the story doesn't have to think about him anymore.

...................I think that's most of it.

...

Y'all............ I'm not ready for Sent From Above.......... I'm just not.... I'm not emotionally ready...... like..... Sammy has to be in that right..... he’s Susie’s boss and she has that big crush on him..................................... I’m not ready

#i know you have questions you always do #we all write on the walls #hopefully I have not gotten completely confused on any of these points but LMAO ITS POSSIBLE

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spohkh · 4 years

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GOOD AFTERNOON I HAVE A VERY IMPORTANT QUESTION! Please tell me how Dean and Cas would have been if they were raising baby Jack! Also do you think Claire would have babysat for her little brother sometimes if their dads were on a hunt?

HELLO SARAH thank u for this ask that was designed to drive me, specifically, ins*ne ❤️

i feel like... okay. oh this is going to be SO rambling i apologize in advance.

but ok so we KNOW for a fact that dean is a dad like he is just A DAD it is so integral to his being. he's caring and attentive and isn't afraid of the fact that kids can be gross or annoying because he recognizes that they are KIDS and need patience and care. so i feel like at first dean would just take over the bulk of the care for jack bc its just natural for him at this point. (IM THINKING ABOUT HIM BOUNCING THAT BABY IN WHATEVER EP THAT WAS AND ITS MAKING ME WANT TO CRY. HE IS SO GOOD WITH KIDS HES MEANT TO HAVE KIDS HES SO FULL OF LOVE!!!!) and cas ALWAYS looks to dean first when it comes to learning How To Be Human™ so he'd be watching what dean does to emulate him. i imagine theres a lot of "no no no--you need to support his head like THIS", and, "oh that means he's hungry here this is how you should hold the bottle", at the start of their care for him

GOD WASNT DEAN ALSO HUMMING A ZEPPELIN SONG TO THAT BABY HE WAS BOUNCING IN WHATEVER EPISODE THAT WAS (PLEASE SOMEONE DOES ANYONE KNOW WHAT EPISODE IM TALKING ABOUT) HRRGHRGRGHGH LED ZEPPELIN LULLABIES BUT BETTER THAN THAT--BETTER THAN DEAN HUMMING HARD ROCK LULLABIES TO BABY JACK--CAS BEING LIKE OH YEAH THATS GREAT AND CASSSSSS HUMMNING HARD ROCK LULLABIIEISSS TO BABY JACKKKKK I AM GOING SUPERSONIC.

ALSO its important to rmmbr that jack ISNT fully human so there will be things that only cas will be able to take care of. my fuckng god they really are the perfect pair to care for jack oh god im getting emotional. i have no idea what those angel-specific needs would BE.... like god when jack is especially fussy and his unchecked powers start to come out dean is like okie doke time to tap in the angel husband i cannae handle getting laserbeamed by my infant son rn 😌✌🏼 and cas is like honestly id rather deal with jack trying to suplex me into the fuckng wall than change his diaper. quite simply i must admit you humans are kinda nasty at times god bless. but yeah jack would have ALL of his needs addressed thanks to having a human dad and an angel dad which i think is so key!! and is smth that they did kind of have in the show but due to um fukcng EVERYTHING else going on i felt like his human side was kinda neglected and wasnt developed as much as it couldve/shouldve been, which led to, yknow, a lot of dangerous misunderstandings. jack certainly needs and deserves to have his WHOLE self nurtured and recognized.

also wow itd be so nice to have an eldritch interdimensional being who technically doesnt need sleep as your co-parent bc dean can get ALLLLL he blissful sleep he needs while cas takes care of the nighttime baby needs! UGH perfect

AND YES. OF COURSE CLAIRE WOULD BABYSIT JACK. GOD IF EVER THERE WERE A GIRL DESERVING OF A YOUNGER SIBLING. she has older sister syndrome ANYWAY. also shes dean kin so i think itd be REALLY funny if dean is like are you SURE youre okay to take care of him? remember hes a nephilim like he has powers it can be really dangerous when he gets too worked up. actually forget it we'll call rowena or something i dont want you to get hurt. and claire is like dad. for real. just fuck off and go kill the werewolves or whatev i got this. and when they get back from the hunt they come back and jack is like fast asleep beside claire, who is ofc completely fine, and deans like did nothing happen??? claires like WHO do you think youre talking to of course its all fine he was a perfect angel (snicker snicker) because he likes ME. like jack goes down so easy for claire hes just always so calm and happy with her, never fusses, dean is like WHAT gives like not wanting to admit hes a little jealous that jack has never tried to laserbeam HER and shes like what can i say? sibling privilege. we have an understanding :) like father like daughter shes just a natural caregiver. dean is so proud. cas is so proud. they are so happy. oh my god. they love their kids so much.

in conclusion. dean and cas would be the most loving parents a baby nephilim could hope for. just today MY dad said to me that parents never want their kids to experience the pain that they have experienced themselves. he said that bc i was upset he wouldnt teach me how to change the light fixture in my closet bc there was a live wire and he didnt want me to get shocked like he has in the past BUT THE SAME PRINCIPLE APPLIES where, i feel like ESPECIALLY for dean, they would do their utmost to raise jack (AND claire) with the care that was so lacking from their own childhood experiences.

dean certainly tried with sam and did a good job, but he was a kid himself then and wasnt fully equipped to provide all the emotional support a child needs. now, as an adult in a supportive, committed relationship, dean will have the chance to REALLY devote himself in the way he was always meant to.

and cas...well... whats more human than caring for your child? everyday his love deepens--his love for dean, his love for their little house, his love for the honeybees and the clouds in the sky. all things he was never meant to have any feelings for, he just loves and loves and loves more because of the little life he has with dean and claire and now his little baby. everyday he becomes more himself because of his love for his family, and he pours all of that back into them. he is just so adoring. he listens to every sound jack makes with keen attention, committing every nonsensical syllable to memory, because its all important. he wants to make sure jack knows how loved he is and how recognized he is and how appreciated he is, just for existing. he wants jack to feel seen and known, in the ways he never was by his own father.

the way dean and cas are with baby jack is that they try. fundamentally thats what its all about. just trying. because u love so much. thank u

#not me writing a fuckng nonsensical dossier..... SCREAM #this dont make no sense luv x SORRY.....#i love you the universe #anyhoo...well..heres...whatever this is LOL THANNKS SARAH LOVE U SORRY U WAITED 3 DAYS FOR WHATEVER THIS IS JGFDKGHFDKGAGF #castielswift #ask

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arrow-guy · 4 years

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Lizzie is ace? elaborate plssssss I'm dying over here

Hold onto ur butts, bc I’m about the blow your socks off (h o p e f u l l y)

It starts with all the sisters getting all twitterpated over the first ball that happens in the movie. Her sisters are arguing over who will do their hair and all that nonsense. Lizzie doesn’t join in, she’s previously made a face at her mother kissing her father. Lizzie is content to watch from the sidelines, even during the dancing. She likes observing people and jokes about men with her sister. She is the first to giggle when Darcy is stiff and awkward in the dance hall and doesn’t melt the moment she meets a handsome man. She’s just tickled by the fact that Bingly is so taken with her sister. Further than that, she’s able to brush off Darcy’s insults and gives as good as she gets. The smile on her face when she answers Darcy who’s just said, “So what do you recommend to encourage affection?” saying “Dancing, even if one’s partner is barely tolerable.” is life-giving. (Similarly followed by her crack at Darcy for his accomplished women comments.)

SHE IS EVERYONE’S HYPE MAN. She’s constantly telling Jane that she’s worthy of Bingly! And that she’s actually fully out of his league. She wants everyone to be happy and she’s the one to refocus everyone when things get out of hand. She’s able to see relationships from a logical standpoint rather than an emotional one. HOWEVER the second that she shows an emotional response to anyone who isn’t her sister everyone freaks out and assumes that she’s gone crazy. She is uncomfortable with romantic advances from people, (see the incidents with Collins) and outright rejects the first proposal we see to her in the film. (I mean, she rejects the second one too, but that’s from Darcy so there’s some feeling behind it that isn’t there with Collins.) FURTHER THAN THAT, she doesn’t just reject him, she outright says “You could not make me happy, and I am the last woman in the world who could make you happy.” To me, this is openly recognizing that she doesn’t desire the same things from a relationship/marriage that most would see as conventional, which could also be construed as her rejecting the conventional requirements of sex that may come with such a union. Which is absolutely not a stretch, considering the energy and fervor with which she says it in the film.

THE FIRST HINT OF ROMANCE ISN’T EVEN ANY KIND OF ROMANCE. It’s the shitty flirting that could be mistaken for banter between Darcy and Elizabeth and that hand flex from Darcy after he helps her into the carriage which is, in scholarly terms, Good Shit. And you can see Lizzie slowly falling in love with Darcy over the course of the movie because she is recognizing how similar they are! Not how handsome he is, but the devotion he has to his friends and his sister and the way he takes care of others. She falls in love because she learns instead of her desires for another person. It’s not a coincidence that the first time we see the two of them kiss in any fashion is the very end of the film! To commit herself to any person is a huge thing, which is exactly how it may be for someone who’s ace, in any aspect of the ace-spectrum. She explains this exact sentiment to her father after Darcy has asked for her hand in marriage. She knows Darcy on a deeper level and that’s what’s important to her rather than adhering to what’s expected of her, or keeping in line with the expectations of Lady Catherine (who can deepthroat a cactus, if you ask me.)

On top of that, the romance in the movie isn’t really overt in any way (outside of Mr. Nasty and his child bride, ugh, but that’s a different problem, and one that I’m glad was seen as such in the narrative.) Jane and Bingly are so smitten with each other that they can’t stop smiling whenever they’re around one another. Their outlooks on life are very emotional and they react as such and show love as such. Darcy and Elizabeth are completely opposite. They are so much polar opposites that they are the same person. Where Lizzie is the sun, Darcy is the moon and he reflects back the desires that Lizzie seems to project. He learns from his mistakes and works to right the wrongs he set into motion. Likewise, Lizzie sees where she was wrong, is educated, and moves forward having corrected herself. She comes to love Darcy because of this.

OKAY, this is super long and idk if any of that was any kind of coherent, but I DO know that it feels right to me. And that an argument could be made that Darcy is also ace. BUT that’s an argument for another day and an essay that I don’t think I have the energy to write if I’m not either getting paid to do it or getting a grade. REGARDLESS, Pride and Prejudice (2005) is an aspec DREAM and one of my all-time favorite movies.

#asks #pride and prejudice #adriftinspace #asexuality

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thebeauregardbros · 7 years

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Super Mega Detailed Character Meme: Alus Beauregard

APPEARANCE - Gender: Male Race: Miqo’te (Seeker of the Sun descent) Height: 5Fm 8Im (5ft8inch/173cm) Eye color: Yellow-colored left iris / ‘Raspberry’-colored right iris (heterochromia) Hair color: Golden blonde Skin color: Warm natural tan Fur: Ears & tail. Fur on tail is particularly short besides tip of tail, which is fluffier and darkened in color. (lion-like) Scars: Multiple noticeable large and small scars across chest, stomach, upper and lower back, upper-arms, shoulders, thighs. (Note: This is almost always not visible due to clothing coverup)

THE FACTS - Nameday: Celebrated on the 32nd Sun of the Fifth Umbral moon (All Saint’s Wake; aka Halloween) Occupation: Maelstorm miltary medic, Café proprietor, Free Paladin Sexual identification: Asexual Romantic identification: Panromantic Alignment: Neutral Good Criminal history: Once arrested for suspicion of alignment with beastmen (not charged). Relationship status: Single Sweet on: ??? FAVORITES – Favorite food: La Noscean Toast, Roast Canard Favorite drink: Triple Cream Coffee, Raspberry Tea Favorite artist: ? (OOC: Alphonse Mucha, Yumiko Igarashi, Mineko Yamada, Naoko Takeuchi, Tomomi Kobayashi, Yoshitaka Amano, Joseph Christian Leyendecker) Favorite scent: Chamomile Favorite person: Arc Beauregard is the most cherished and important living person in his life.

RANDOMS – Ten facts about your muse:

Alus is an actually really decent at parkour. He loves reaching high and thin spaces that are difficult to access. He tends to mindlessly wander around until he finds himself balancing on a random neighbor’s fence.

Alus is a skilled dancer. He started from a very young age, dancing upon the streets whilst his brother played music, to acquire a little extra pocket money on his family’s travels. Ever since then, he’s kept mostly practicing in ballroom etiquette.

Alus’ adoptive father and sole parental figure, Gwenneg Beauregard, died during the Calamity. Alus’ birth parents have always been unknown. Him and his brother skipped between a couple different foster parents afterwards but nothing stuck.

Alus grew up traveling with merchant caravans. During adolescence, he had little coin and mostly associated himself with lower-class citizens on the day-to-day.

Alus has a large collection of fictional hero novels and romantic novels for younger folk, of both of which he used to be obsessed with. The origins of his light, beautiful, and romantic visual aesthetics has originated from such.

Alus not only can read and write Eorzean perfectly and in detail, he has lovingly perfected cursive handwriting.

Alus and Arc are canonically warriors chosen by Hydaelyn, a.k.a. two of many Warriors of Light.

Alus, for a time, trained with priests of Nald’thal in considering of becoming one himself. He is devoted to The Twelve; primarily Thal and Nymeia.

Alus has completed several years of professional schooling, though dropped out early. He had trouble focusing near the end due to his overwhelming wish to start his adventuring life, which he commenced so, despite objections from his teacher.

Although Alus has a respect for the functionality of law and order in society and would gladly even submit himself to jail if he was under suspicion of committing a crime (which he actually has done in the past), he is fiercely loyal to his own opinions on humanitarianism to the point that spoken down not only to his highest leaders to their face - but to the gods themselves in prayer.

FIVE THINGS - 5 Things they like:

Dodos (and other round, fluffy birds)

Jewelry (favs: Gold, Mother of pearl, Moonstone, Quartz)

Flowers (favs: Nymeia lily, Gardenia, White peony)

Healing magic; healing people; medicine

All Saint’s Wake (and it’s pranks)

5 Things they dislike:

Unhealthy consumables (alcohol, smoking, drugs, etc.)

Politics (especially the corrupt kind; justifications for immoral behaviour through the guise of legality is something that disgusts him immensely.)

Showing his skin

Swamps (a majority of The Shroud). He also dislikes Coerthas’ snowy lands; anywhere that’s really wet.

Dirty fighting

5 Good habits:

Impeccably good hygiene/self-grooming

Tends to never speak badly of others, especially behind their backs

Takes walks early every morning, eats healthy breakfasts, and physically trains every afternoon.

Hardly ever leaves an encounter without giving the other party a fresh flower.

Communicative, patient, kind and precise with strangers in randomly paired military duties.

5 Bad habits:

Can get carried away in gambling (hidden vice; rarely seen)

Wandering mindlessly and procrastinating

Rambling, stuttering, going on tangents about nonsense, speaking uncomfortably loudly or even stepdancing when trying to speak with someone he admires.

Being too honest and open with strangers, as well as being easily swayed/convinced; too trusting

Apologizing for - and belittling - his brother.

5 Personalities they gravitate toward:

Elegant, graceful, or fashionable in a traditionally royal/noble sense

Those who speak in poetics.

Those Alus would say to have ‘fairytale levels of good-heartedness’

Non-judgemental; open to new ideas; willing to listen without discrimination.

Those with similar tastes in flowers, jewelry, old fairy tales and romanticism.

5 Personality types they avoid:

Drunkards, or anyone under the influences of narcotics

Cynics, pessimists, naysayers; those who put others down.

Those not open to the idea of talking things out before resorting to violence or aggression.

Those who speak in vulgarity; swearing, absurdly inappropriate slang; things children shouldn’t hear.

Those who do not follow the laws to protect the order of our world; In general, those with a selfish disregard of their surroundings; socially, ethically or legally.

5 Fears:

S L U G S

Death (of himself, or literally anyone else ever)

Being left alone or abandoned by people he deems ‘close’.

Being placed in situations that he is basically forced to kill, injure, or do anything else he deems morally horrendous, in threat of someone else being injured or himself put in legal danger; as well as being placed under legal danger for avoiding his duties

Being a disappointment to his family, fans, and country

Tagged by: @nozomikei Thank you for the wait /o\ Tagging: ahh anyone who hasn’t done this yet! I’m a bit late to the party. if you see this consider yourself tagged

#alus beauregard #meme #image is a wip of an edit i'm doing #sorry for the roughness there

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lodelss · 4 years

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Laurie Penny | Longreads | June 2020 | 21 minutes (5,360 words)

“I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes.” — Winston Churchill, unpublished memorandum

“Will Mockney for food.” — Alan Moore, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, vol. III

This is a story about a border war. Specifically, a border war between two nations that happen, at least in theory, to be precisely the same place. One of them is Britain, a small, soggy island whose power on the world stage is declining, where poverty, inequality, and disaster nationalism are rising, where the government has mangled its response to a global pandemic so badly that it’s making some of us nostalgic for the days when all we did was panic about Brexit. The other is “Britain!” — a magical land of round tables and boy wizards and enchanted swords and moral decency, where the sun never sets on an Empire run by gentlemen, where witty people wear frocks and top hats and decide the fate of nations over tea and biscuits.

One is a real place. The other is a fascinatingly dishonest, selective statement of fact, rather like describing how beautiful the countryside was in the antebellum American South. A truth so incomplete it’s worse than a lie.

Every nation-state is ninety percent fictional; there’s always a gap between the imaginary countries united by cultural coherence and collective destinies where most of us believe we live, and the actual countries where we’re born and eat breakfast and file taxes and die. The U.K. is unique among modern states in that we not only buy our own hype, we also sell it overseas at a markup. “Britain always felt like the land where all the stories came from,” an American writer friend told me when I asked why she so often sets her novels in Britain. Over and over, writers and readers of every background — but particularly Americans — tell me that the U.K. has a unique hold on their imaginations.

That hold is highly profitable. Britain was kept out of recession last year by one industry: entertainment. Over the past four years, the motion picture, television, and music industries have grown by almost 50 percent — the service sector, only by 6. So many shows are currently filmed in England that productions struggle to book studio space, and even the new soundstages announced by London Mayor Sadiq Khan in 2018 will be hard-pressed to keep up with demand. As historian Dan Snow pointed out, “[O]ur future prosperity is dependent on turning ourselves into a giant theme park of Queens, detectives, spies, castles, and young wizards.”

There is hope: the statues are coming down all over Britain, starting in Bristol on June 7, 2020. Black Lives Matter protesters pulled down a monument to slave trader Edward Colston, who is remembered for how he lavished his wealth on the port city and not for the murder of 19,000 men, women and children during the Middle Passage. Colston’s statue was thrown into Bristol Harbor, where it remains. In Oxford, students demanded the removal of monuments to Cecil Rhodes, the business magnate and “architect of apartheid” who stole vast tracts of Africa driven by his conviction in the supremacy of Anglo-Saxons. In Parliament Square, fences have been erected to protect Winston Churchill himself, the colonial administrator and war leader whose devoted acolytes include both Boris Johnson and Donald Trump. Young Britons are demanding a reckoning with a history of colonial conquest, slave-trading, industrial savagery, and utter refusal to examine its own legacy.

Meanwhile, the economic disaster of a no-deal Brexit is still looming and Britain has the highest COVID-19 death toll in Europe, putting further pressure on an already-struggling National Health Service. Under Boris Johnson’s catastrophic leadership, or lack thereof, there are no signs of changing tactics on either. Fantasy Britain is having a boomtime. Real Britain is in deep, deep trouble.

* * *

I was homesick. That’s my excuse. I had been in Los Angeles for six months, writing for TV shows set in England. I woke up every day 5,000 miles from home, in a city of sweltering tarmac and traffic jams and palm trees, to try and explain how British people speak and think. I fell asleep every night to the radio from home, listening to the logic of xenophobia capture the political mainstream as my country circled the drain. I watched my British friends who are Black or brown or who were born overseas trying to stay brave and hopeful as racism became more and more normalized. I was homesick, and people do silly things when they’re homesick.

So yes, I went to see the Downton Abbey movie.

Specifically, I went to the Downton Abbey Experience, a special screening where you could spend a few hours in a mocked-up Edwardian drawing room, nibbling on tiny food and pretending to be posh. I was expecting it to be rubbish, forgetting that this was Los Angeles, where talented actors and set dressers can be had on every street corner. I couldn’t help but be a bit charmed by the commitment: the food was terrible, but two of the waiters had concocted an elaborate professional-rivalry backstory, and the accent-work was almost flawless. It really did feel as if you’d stepped, if not into Downton itself, then certainly onto the show’s set. And I finally understood. The way Americans feel about this is the way I feel about Star Trek and schlocky space opera. This is their escape from reality. This is their fandom. Not just Downton Abbey — “Britain.”

I do try to resist the temptation to make fun of other people who take uncomplicated joy in their thing. The British do this a lot, and it’s one of the least edifying parts of the national character. Fandom is fine. Escapism is allowed. No semi-sensitive soul can be expected to live in the real world at all times. But watching the whitewashed, revisionist history of your own country adopted as someone else’s fantasy of choice is actively uncomfortable. It’s like sitting by while a decrepit relative gibbers some antediluvian nonsense about the good old days and watching in horror as everyone applauds and says how charming.

I decided not to be charmed and sulked on an ornamental sofa, angrily eating a chocolate bonbon and resenting everyone else for having fun. This was where I met the only other British person in the room, a nice lady from Buckinghamshire in a fancy dress. What did my new friend think of the event? “I don’t like to complain,” she said, “but I’m sitting here in a ballgown eating bloody bread and jam. Honestly, it’s not worth the money.”

Which was the second-most-British thing anyone said all evening. The most British thing of all had been uttered half an hour earlier, by me, when it dawned on my friend and me that we really should have worn costumes. “It’ll be alright,” I said, “I’ll just take my accent up a bit posher and everyone will be pleased to see us.” Living in a place where all you have to do is say something in your normal accent to be told you’re clever and wonderful is all very well, until you start believing it. This is as true in politics as anywhere else: just showing up and being relentlessly British at people does not constitute sociopolitical strategy. It doesn’t even constitute a personality. I know that there are a lot of British expats who will be cross with me for giving the game away, and chaps, I really am so terribly, terribly sorry. But you and I both know that someday we’ll have to go home, and people won’t automatically be pleased to see us just because we said some words.

This is as true in politics as anywhere else: just showing up and being relentlessly British at people does not constitute sociopolitical strategy.

I write for TV shows set in Britain, or a fantasy version of it, and American Anglophilia is endlessly fascinating to me, as it is to most British expats. It comes in a few different flavourways (ed.: Normally we’d edit this to the u-less American spelling, but in this particular case it seemed appropriate to let it go). There’s the saccharine faux-nostalgia of Downton fans, the ones who love The Crown and afternoon tea and the actual monarchy. They tend to be more socially conservative, more likely to vaporize into angry drifts of snowflakery at the mere suggestion that there might have been brown people in the trenches of the First World War. But there is also a rich seam of Anglophilia among people who are generally suspicious of nationalism, and television is to blame for most of it. The idea of Britain that many Americans grew up with was Monty Python, Doctor Who, and Blackadder; today it’s Downton, Sherlock, Good Omens, and The Great British Worried-People-Making-Cakes-in-a-Tent Show. And of course, Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones, which technically take place in Middle-earth and Westeros but, in practice, are set in the version of medieval Britain where all epic fantasy tends to settle — in days of olde when knights were bold and brown people didn’t get speaking roles but dragons were fine.

(No British expat can honestly criticize a franchise like Downton for taking advantage of the North American fascination with Englishness, not unless we can say we’ve never taken advantage of it ourselves. Occasionally we catch one another at it, and it’s deeply embarrassing. Not long ago, waiting for coffee in the morning, I listened aghast as an extremely pretty American lady with her arm around an averagely-attractive Englishman explained that their dog was called something not unlike Sir Humphrey Woofington-Growler. “Because he’s British — my boyfriend, I mean.” Said British boyfriend’s eyes were pinned on the middle distance in the full excruciating knowledge that if he’d given a dog a name like that at home, he’d have got a smack, which would have upset the dog.)

Lavish Britscapist vehicles like Downton Abbey, The Crown, and Belgravia are more popular with Americans than they are at home. Trudging through Finsbury Park in London on a cold morning last Christmas, a poster advertising The Crown had been gleefully tagged “royalist propaganda” by some local hero with a spray can. My American friends were confused when I explained this to them. “Don’t you like your royal family?” They asked. No, I explained. We like Hamilton. The stories we export lay bare the failing heart of Britain’s sense of itself in the world — the assumption that all we have to do, individually or collectively, is show up with a charming accent and say something quaint and doors will open for us, as will wallets, legs, and negotiations for favorable trade deals.

This is a scam that works really well right up until it doesn’t.

* * *

It was irritatingly difficult to remain uncharmed by the Downton Abbey movie. I found myself unable to work up a sweat over whether there would be enough lawn chairs for the royal parade, but I rather enjoyed the bit where the Downton house staff, snubbed by the royal servants, decided to respond with kidnapping, poisoning, and fraud. There was also a snide rivalry between butlers, a countess with a secret love child, a disputed inheritance, an attempted royal assassination, a perilous tryst between closeted valets, a princess in an unhappy marriage, and Maggie Smith. It was disgustingly pleasant right up until its shameless closing sequence, where fussy butler Mr. Carson and his sensible housekeeper wife had a conversation about whether the Abbey would last into the next century. Yes, said Mr. Carson, sending us off into the night with the promise that “a hundred years from now, Downton will still be standing.”

And there it is. It’s not a good or noble or even an original lie, but it’s at least told with flair. As the British Empire went ungently into its good night offscreen last century, many great English houses were repurposed, sold, or demolished in part so that families did not have to pay inheritance tax on the properties. Highclere Castle — the estate where Downton Abbey was filmed — is an exception and remains under the stewardship of the Earls of Carnavron, who live on the estate. They can afford to do this because a lucrative show about a lost and largely fictional age of aristocratic gentility happened to be filmed on the grounds. Let me repeat that: the only way the actual Downton Abbey can continue to exist is by renting itself out as a setting for fantasies of a softer world. Which is, in microcosm, the current excuse for a government’s entire plan for a post-Brexit economy. With nowhere left to colonize, we gleefully strip our own history for the shiniest trinkets to sell. The past is a different country, so we’re allowed to invade it, take its stuff and lie relentlessly about the people who actually live there.

It’s not a good or noble or even an original lie, but it’s at least told with flair.

The uncomfortable truth is that America doesn’t love Britain the way we want to be loved. That white-innocence fantasy of rolling lawns and ripped bodices is only palatable (and profitable) because Britain doesn’t have much actual power anymore. Our eccentricities would be far less adorable if we still owned you. If we were still a military-industrial juggernaut on the scale of Russia or China, if we were still really an imperial power rather than just cosplaying as one for cash, would the rest of the world be importing our high-fructose cultural capital in such sugary sackloads?

I don’t think so — and nor does Britain’s current government, the most nationalist and least patriotic in living memory, which has no compunction about turning the country into a laundry for international capital and flogging our major assets to foreign powers. American businesses already have their eyes on the National Health Service, which will inevitably be on the table in those trade deals a post-Brexit British economy desperately needs. In one of its first acts in power, the Johnson administration shoved through a controversial arms deal selling a major defense company to a private American firm, which is somehow not seen as unpatriotic.

This summer, Black Lives Matter protests are boiling around a nation that has never reexamined its imperial legacy because it is convinced it is the protagonist of world history. Conversation around what “British” means remains vaguely distasteful. “Culturally our stories are of plucky underdogs,” historian Snow told me. “But actually our national story was of massive expenditure on the world’s most complex weapon systems and smashing the shit out of less fiscally and technological societies.”

“Nations themselves are narrations,” wrote Edward Said, pioneer of postcolonial studies. Britain’s literary self-mythologizing spans several centuries. During the Raj, teaching English literature to the Indian middle and ruling classes was central to the strategy for enforcing the idea of Britain as morally superior. The image of Britain that persists in the collective global unconsciousness was founded deliberately to make sense of the empire and romanticize it for ordinary British citizens, most of whom had neither a complete understanding of the atrocities nor the voting rights that would make their opinion relevant. Britain wrote and rewrote itself as the protagonist of its own legends, making its barbarism bearable and its cultural dominance natural.

Bad things happen to people who have never heard a story they weren’t the hero of. I try not to be the sort of person who flashes the word “hegemony” around too much, but that’s what this is and always has been: a way of imposing cultural norms long after we, as my history books delicately put it, “lost” the British Empire. The stories are all we have left to make us feel important.

The plain truth is that Britain had, until quite recently, the largest and most powerful empire the world had ever known. We don’t have it anymore, and we miss it. Of course we miss it. It made us rich, it made us important, and all the ugly violent parts happened terribly far away and could be ignored with a little rewriting of our history. It continues to this day with tactful omissions from the school syllabus — in 2010, Education Secretary Michael Gove, later one of the chief architects of Brexit, pushed to teach British children a version of the “exciting and appealing” Imperial history that cast their country as heroic. According to one 2016 study, 43 percent of the British public think the Empire “was a good thing.” For most British people, the Empire came to us in pieces, in jingoistic legends and boys’ adventure stories with as many exclamation points as could be crammed on one book cover. The impression I was given as a schoolgirl was that we were jolly decent to let the Empire go, and that we did so because it was all of a sudden pointed out that owning other countries wholesale was a beastly thing to do — of course old boy, you must have your human rights! Really, we were only holding on to them for you.

The last time Britain truly got to think of itself as heroic on the world stage was during the Second World War. The narrative with the most tenacity is the “Blitz Spirit” — of a plucky little island standing firm against impossible odds, pulling together while hell rained down from above, growing victory gardens and sheltering in the stations of the London Underground. Those black-and-white photographs of brave-faced families wrapped in blankets on the train platforms are instantly recognizable: this is who we are as a country. Most Britons don’t know that soldiers from the colonies fought and died on the frontlines in France. Even fewer are aware of the famine that struck India at around the same time, leaving a million dead, or of Britain’s refusal to offer aid, continuing instead to divert supplies to feed the British army as the people of India starved.

What all of this is about, ultimately, is white innocence. That’s the grand narrative that so many of our greatest writers were recruited to burnish, willingly or not. White innocence makes a delicious story, and none of its beneficiaries wants to hear about how that particular sausage gets made.

* * *

Many of the biggest narrative brands of Britain’s fretful post-colonial age are stories of a nation coming to terms with the new and eroding nature of its own power, from James Bond (a story about a slick misogynist hired by the state to kill people) to Doctor Who (which I will defend to the death, but which is very much about the intergalactic importance of cultural capital). We are a nation in decline on the international stage; that’s what happens when a small island ceases to own a third of the earth. Rather than accepting this with any semblance of grace, we have thrown a tantrum that has made us the laughing stock of world politics, the sort of tantrum that only spoiled children and ham-faced, election-stealing oligarchs are allowed to get away with.

In this climate, the more pragmatic among us are seeing that what we actually have to offer the rest of the world boils down to escapism. Fantasy Britain offers an escape for everyone after a hard day under the wheel of late-stage capitalism.

There’s no actual escape, of course. Good luck if you’re a refugee. Since 2012, the conservative government has actively cultivated a “hostile environment” scheme to make life as difficult as possible for immigrants, highlights of which include fast-tracking deportations and vans driving a massive billboard reading “GO HOME OR FACE ARREST” around the most diverse boroughs in London. Seriously. If you want to escape to actual Britain you need at least two million pounds, which is how much it costs for an Investor Visa. Non-millionaires with the wrong documents can and will be put on a plane in handcuffs, even if they’ve lived and worked in Britain for 50 years — like the senior citizens of the Windrush generation who came to Britain from the West Indies as children with their families to help rebuild the nation after the Second World War. In the past five years, hundreds of elderly men and women, many of them unaware they were not legal citizens, have been forcibly deported from Britain to the Caribbean. The subsequent public outcry did almost zero damage to the government’s brand. In 2019, Johnson’s Conservatives won a landslide victory.

“Take your country back.” That was the slogan that Brexit campaigners chose in 2016. Take it back from whom? To where? It was clear that the fictional past that many Brexit nostalgists wanted to reclaim was something not unlike the syrupy storylines of Downton Abbey — quiet, orderly, and mostly white. But to make that story work, British conservatives needed to cast themselves as the plucky underdogs, which is how you get a Brexit Party representative to the European Parliament comparing Brexit to the resistance of “slaves against their owners” and “colonies … against their empires,” or Boris Johnson bloviating in 2018 about Britain’s “colony status” in the EU (although he also believes that it would be good if Britain was still “in charge” of Africa).

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What really won the day, though, was the lie that leaving the EU would leave us with 350 million pounds per week “to spend on the NHS.” Boris Johnson rode up and down the nation on a big red bus emblazoned with that empty promise. The British people may not trust our politicians, but we trust our National Health Service — almost all of us, from across the sociopolitical spectrum, apart from some fringe internet libertarians and diehard neoliberal wingnuts, most of whom, unfortunately, are in power (though they couldn’t get there without promising to protect the NHS).

After the COVID-19 lockdowns end, Brexit is still happening. The actual changes don’t come into effect until 2021, and Boris Johnson, whose empty personal brand is forever yoked to this epic national self-harm project, is clearly hoping to sneak in a bad Brexit deal while the country is still reeling from a global pandemic. Leaving the EU will not make Britain rich again. It will not make us an imperial power again. In fact, the other nations of Europe are now taking the opportunity to reclaim some of the things we borrowed along the way. Greece wants the Parthenon Marbles back, more than two centuries after a British tourist visited Athens and liked them so much he decided to pry them off and ship them home. Spain has made noise that it wants Gibraltar back, and we’ll probably have to give it to them. So far, the only way in which Britain is returning to its days of High Victorian glory is in the sudden re-emergence, in communities ravaged by austerity, of 19th-century diseases of poverty, and now of the highest rates of COVID-19 infection in Europe, after Johnson’s government pursued a disastrous “herd immunity” strategy that transparently invited the elderly and infirm to sacrifice themselves for the stock market. British kids are not growing up with a sense of national heroism; they are growing up with rickets and scurvy. As a great poet from the colonies once wrote, it’s like 10,000 spoons when all you need is for the sneering Eton thugs you inexplicably elected to stop stabbing you in the back.

As it happens, I want my country back, too. I have spent enough time baking under the pitiless California sunshine. I have been to Hot Topic. I’m stuck in the States until the lockdowns end, but want to go back to the soggy, self-deprecating country I grew up in, the country of tolerance and diversity and kind people quietly getting on with things, the land of radio sketch comedy, jacket potatoes, decent bands, and basic decency.

I know that that country, too, is imaginary; just as imaginary as any of the “Rule Britannia” flag-waggery. I don’t believe that Britain is Great in anything but name, but I do believe it can be better. I do not care to be told that I am any less of a patriot because I choose to know my country, or because I can imagine a future where we do more than freeze in the haunted house of our past glories, stuffed with stolen treasures and trapdoors we never open. It’s where I’m from, where my family and friends live, and where I hope to grow old and die. It worries me that we have not even begun to develop the tools to cope with our material reality, one in which we are a rather small rainy island half of whose population currently hates the other.

* * *

Since we’re all talking about myths and revisionist history and the Blitz Spirit, here’s something else that never makes it into the official story.

Those working-class Londoners sheltering in tube stations during World War II? They weren’t supposed to be there. In fact, the British government of the late 1930s built far too few municipal shelters, preferring to leave that to private companies, local government councils, and individuals and when the first bombs first fell, the hardest hit areas were poor, immigrant, and working-class communities in the East End with nowhere to go. Elite clubs and hotels dug out their own bomb shelters, but the London Underground was barricaded. On the second night of the Blitz, with the flimsy, unhygienic East End shelters overflowing, hundreds of people entered the Liverpool Street Station and refused to leave. By the time the government officially changed its position and “allowed” working-class Londoners to take shelter down among the trains, thousands were already doing so — 177,000 people at its most packed.

Eventually it was adopted into the propaganda effort and became part of the official mythos of the Blitz, but the official story leaves out the struggle. It leaves out the part about desperate people, abandoned by their government, in fear of their lives, doing what they had to — and what should have been done from the start — to take care of each other.

This failure is the closest thing to the staggering lack of leadership that Britain, like America, has displayed during the weeks and months of the coronavirus crisis. As I write, more than 42,000 British citizens have died, many in our struggling NHS hospitals and countless more in care homes. On the same January day that the Brexit treaty was signed, Boris Johnson missed the first emergency meeting of COBRA, the government’s effort to determine a response to rumors of a new and horrifying pandemic. Johnson went on to miss four subsequent meetings, choosing instead to go on holiday with his fiancée to celebrate Brexit as a personal win. As vital weeks were squandered and the infection reached British shores, it emerged that the country was singularly underprepared. Stocks of protective equipment had been massively depleted because, with everyone’s attention on Brexit, nobody had bothered to consider that we might have to deal with a crisis not of our own making. Worse still, the National Health Service was chronically underfunded and hemorrhaging staff, as migrant doctors, nurses, and medical professionals from EU countries fled a failing institution in a hostile culture. In the years following the Brexit referendum, over 10,000 European medical staff have reportedly left the NHS.

Over 10 years of wildly unnecessary cuts to public services, successive Tory governments deliberately invoked the Blitz Spirit, promoting their economic reforms with the unfortunate slogan “we’re all in this together” — as if austerity were an external enemy rather than a deliberate and disastrous choice imposed on the working poor by politicians who have never known the price of a pint of milk or the value of public education. Today, it is perhaps a signal of the intellectual drought in British politics that the slogan “We’re all in this together” has been recycled to flog the COVID-19 lockdowns.

Their other slogan — plastered resentfully on podiums after a decade of decimating the health service — is “Protect the NHS.” The National Health Service is perhaps the last thing that truly unites every fractured shard of the British political psyche, and the Tories hate that, but 10 years of gutting hospitals, scrapping social care schemes, and blaming it all on the very immigrants who come from overseas to care for us when we are sick has not made the British love socialized medicine any less. Every Thursday night across Britain, since the lockdowns began, the whole country comes out to applaud the healthcare workers who are risking their lives every day to fight on the front lines of the pandemic. The mumbling rent-a-toffs the Tories shove up on stage to explain the latest hopelessly ineffectual lockdown strategy have no choice but to clap along. Because, as the murals mushrooming up around the country attest, the best stories Britain tells about itself have never been about Queen and Country and Glory — they’ve always been the ones where the broke, brave, messed-up millions of ordinary people who live here pull together, help each other, and behave with basic human decency.

* * *

I’m not arguing for us all to stop telling stories about Britain. For one thing, people aren’t going to stop, and for another, stories by and about British people are currently keeping my friends employed, my rent paid, and my home country from sliding into recession. And there are plenty that are still worth telling: if you want to shove your nose against the shop window of everything actually good about British culture, watch The Great British Bake-off. If you like your escapism with a slice of sex and cursing and corsets, and why wouldn’t you, curl up with the criminally underrated Harlots, which does an excellent job of portraying an actually diverse London and also has Liv Tyler as a trembly lesbian heiress in a silly wig. And if you want to watch a twee, transporting period drama with decent politics, I cannot more heartily recommend Call the Midwife, which also features biscuit-eating nuns and an appropriate amount of propaganda about how the National Health Service is the best thing about Britain.

I was supposed to be home by now. Instead, I’m in quarantine in California, watching my home country implode into proto-oligarchic incoherence in the middle of a global pandemic and worrying about my friends and loved ones in London. Meanwhile, my American friends are detoxing from the rolling panic-attack of the news by rewatching Downton Abbey, The Crown, and Belgravia. The British film industry is already gearing up to reopen, and the country will need to lean on its cultural capital more than ever.

But there is a narrative chasm between the twee and borderless dreamscape of fantasy Britain and actual, material Britain, where rents are rising and racists are running brave. The chasm is wide, and a lot of people are falling into it. The omnishambles of British politics is what happens when you get scared and mean and retreat into the fairytales you tell about yourself. When you can no longer live within your own contradictions. When you want to hold on to the belief that Britain is the land of Jane Austen and John Lennon and Sir Winston Churchill, the war hero who has been repeatedly voted the greatest Englishman of all time. When you want to forget that Britain is also the land of Cecil Rhodes and Oswald Moseley and Sir Winston Churchill, the brutal colonial administrator who sanctioned the building of the first concentration camps and condemned millions of Indians to death by starvation. These are not contradictions, even though the drive to separate them is cracking the country apart. If you love your country and don’t own its difficulties and its violence, you don’t actually love your country. You’re just catcalling it as it goes by.

There is a country of the imagination called Britain where there will never be borders, where down the dark lane, behind a door in the wall, David Bowie drinks gin with Elizabeth Tudor and Doctor Who trades quips with Oscar Wilde and there are always hot crumpets for tea. This idea of Englishness is lovely, and soothing, and it makes sense, and we have to be done with it now. If Britain is going to remain the world’s collective imaginative sandbox, we can do better than this calcified refusal to cope with the contradictions of the past. We can liberate the territory of the imagination. We can remember what is actually good about Britain — which has always been different from what was “great.”

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Laurie Penny is an award-winning journalist, essayist, public speaker, writer, activist, internet nanocelebrity and author of six books. Her most recent book, Bitch Doctrine, was published by Bloomsbury in 2017.

Editor: Michelle Weber Fact checker: Matt Giles Copyeditor: Ben Huberman

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lillianqrm57-blog · 6 years

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What Is Included In A Basic History Examine?

For a variety of metropolitan pleases, a The big apple Metropolitan Area Tour is actually for you. The lord, whose Only Begotten Child by his fatality, life, and also resurrection, hath purchased for our company the perks of eternal salvation: grant, our experts beseech thee; that practicing meditation upon the enigmas of the Rosary, our dedication may bud forth as the flower in honour of the Fortunate Virgin Mary; which our company might thus follow the pattern of their training, that we may lastly be actually made guests of thy divine commitments; via Jesus Christ thy Boy our God, that reigneth as well as liveth along with thee, in the uniformity of the Holy Character, ever one The lord, planet without end. Brian, are going to talk about a few of the growth vehicle drivers in his discourse, however we viewed a lot of our big growth options remain to hit full stride in the area as well as feel very good about the condition of your business in a lot of those areas. Well, after the other day's Commons demonstration due to the Fathers' Liberties protestors that tossed purple color over Tony Blair, among the conventional routines or standard procedure of English political lifestyle has actually clicked right into activity. By functioning carefully with non-government institutions like Gawad Kalinga and Habitat For Humankind, lots of residences were actually constructed in Baseco, a 50-hectare reclaimed area devoted for the metropolitan area's real estate programs.Atienza are going to prioritize the exact same enormous casing projects in Manila's poor parts featuring Isla Placing Bato, Parola 1 and 2, to name a few. A Cuomo spokeswoman mentioned later that PHYSICIAN Howard Zucker, the condition health commissioner, had contacted his metropolitan area matching, DOCTOR Mary Bassett, to inform her on the breakthrough and left an information, because Bassett was actually actually at de Blasio's press conference. She referred to the surprises of paper-about publications made of newspaper, some with velvet covers as well as gravures, and also regarding her programs to compose more books like Simply Children, regarding her early times in New York Urban area, an opportunity wealthy along with mind. There are a number of periods in life that the person will certainly move by means of and also lots of folks and scenarios they will certainly be obligated to let go of. In the folklore of this Nakshatra, the Pitris live on the Moon, which exemplifies that the forefathers are linked to our heredity as well as leading the serendipity as a result of the relate to mindset. NYC (AP)-- An elephant called Satisfied who has actually lived typically alone due to the fact that her friend was fatally injured or http://lijepo-utebi.info/istrazite-planet-putnog-osiguranja-za-cjepivo-siguran-i-siguran/ hurt is being actually unjustifiably put behind bars" through a New York Metropolitan area zoo, according to a lawful request submitted Tuesday through an activist team. Rose has indulged her very own enthusiasm for record as well as the arts by designing an ingenious stable of outstanding little team time scenic tours and encounters, whether a Venice walking tour, a watercraft flight up the Grand Canal or a memorable lesson coming from a gondolier. Without confining the prior, to the optimum extent enabled through appropriate legislation, Business, its subsidiaries, as well as its licensors carry out not require that the information is actually exact, reliable or proper; that the solution is going to meet your needs; that the company will be actually readily available at any particular time or even site, uninterrupted or protected; that any sort of mistakes or even defects will be actually fixed; or even that the solution is free of infections or various other damaging elements. I went to New York City in 2011 and went to the property and it is actually the properties on Main park West had names like The Dakota, The San Remo, The Beresford, The Eldorado I had a good friend who resided in the Eldorado and she lived on some of the upper floorings where the inner parts of the structure becane strangely reminiscent of an Aztec holy place with painted birds and beasts sculpted right into royalty course a ton of popular individuals survived the playground on Central Park Norh, 5th avenue and Central Playground West and also u sasw them all the time they knew u as well as u knew all of them and also consistently mentioned hi, this was actually technique before all this celebrity-fueled nonsense.

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lodelss · 4 years

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Tea, Biscuits, and Empire: The Long Con of Britishness

Laurie Penny | Longreads | June 2020 | 21 minutes (5,360 words)

“I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes.” — Winston Churchill, unpublished memorandum

“Will Mockney for food.” — Alan Moore, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, vol. III

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So yes, I went to see the Downton Abbey movie.

This is as true in politics as anywhere else: just showing up and being relentlessly British at people does not constitute sociopolitical strategy.

This is a scam that works really well right up until it doesn’t.

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It’s not a good or noble or even an original lie, but it’s at least told with flair.

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Kickstart your weekend reading by getting the week’s best Longreads delivered to your inbox every Friday afternoon.

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Since we’re all talking about myths and revisionist history and the Blitz Spirit, here’s something else that never makes it into the official story.

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Editor: Michelle Weber Fact checker: Matt Giles Copyeditor: Ben Huberman

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