#but nothing is wilder to me than this erasure of history on his part

[twiensat]

also the whole thing about him being the most proud of his son is fucking hilarious especially if you’ve been here since the beginning of it all like who is he trying to convince mr looking dead inside whenever someone asked me about it

[amirofmanderlys]

❅

her words were echoes of a rhetoric, of a stance that they had all heard for years: when the youth of white roses allowed them to bloom, before the frost of their first true winter froze all the bloom from whatever flower they were turning into. all that remained was the shivering sea, that which felt as though it had little to no effect on his wellbeing, and the roots. the ancient roots that spread and held them together; only, it felt as though someone had begun to hack at his roots.

he knew that when he fell, he would fell with such a thunder there would be others that came down with him. "you are right." he spoke, his voice low; though not because he did not want to be overheard. but because he felt as though it were all the energy he could currently muster.

"i know you are right. there must be a reason." there had to be. he said it for her as much as himself. but there was a part of him that asked just how what was enough of a reason for such a calamity?

her words were what he wanted to hear, in the brief moment of men surrounding them; there were multiple family members saying goodbye to their fathers, husbands, brothers, sons; and now she stood before him. she spoke of them facing justice. of retribution. "they will." they were the only words he uttered regarding the men facing justice: all of them. not just those who actively lit the torches, but those who paid for the torches, those who supported the torches and the pitchforks. one by one, they would pay; either at the hands of those they had wronged, or with what was awaiting them when death finally took them.

sooner rather than later, if he could help it. but that was not what kept him awake at night, that was not what was making him feel as though he were being torn apart. it was the fact this was done by their own. those he thought were his own. he was wrong. and he would remember. "you will be safe in white harbor." they were the only words he spoke acknowledging the fact she felt fear. "i promise you. the city walls will not fall, we outnumber them there most of all." he knew she felt that fear. and she was his responsibility: the lockes were the bannermen of house manderly, and she was a ward of his family.

she would return to the sanctuary that was being within the walls of white harbor, but there was no denying the fact that the world had been shaken. the northern folk who worshipped the faith of the seven had never once come under any form of scrunity, apart from being viewed as southern; only now, becoming the other, that process of being made into the one that was different had been sparked by something else. his mind thought back on the bastard playing lord within the walls of the dreadfort, and how it had been him that had begun the long line of consequences of bolton men forcing themselves onto manderly lands.

"i am to make my way to skagos, with the fleet. their presence and patrols block our access to aid one another, and i need reach lord karstark." he considered the matter urgent. the man were essentially blocked off. "it is in follow up to their decision of looting a manderly ship."

a border war was nothing new in the history of the two houses, but this one…this one had been sparked by domeric. and he was gone, and his consequences had spiralled into something even amir was sure the man did not expect. he did not want to kill the bastard that went by the name domeric. he wanted to force him to watch him lose something he cared about. "your brother bekarys is assigned to join me." across the sea, far from land, far from civilisation: skagos was steeped in myth as much as it was reality. and wilderness. "i cannot tell you when we will return: but when the seas are open only to those loyal to house stark, i will consider myself able to return home."

he paused, his tone less official sounding now. now he spoke to her with a softness that equated snow melting upon a surface. the erasure of a snowflake. "i will do all i can to ensure he returns home."

the moment amir looked at her, she wanted nothing more than to embrace him tightly and promise him that everything would be alright. but she could make no such promises. and even in their grief and worry, people would still whisper and gossip, so she could not embrace him either. when he asked her in what state manal would return to them, she had a sudden flashback of what she had gone through herself. feray remembered lying in her bed in oldcastle, the furs stuck to her clammy skin, the strange feeling of being present while also being far gone. she remembered the pain, the claustrophobic sense of being trapped in a body that was dying. the powerful relief she had felt when the maesters finally gave her milk of the poppy before she slipped away into a dreamscape. she remembered the ice breaking underneath her feet, how the icy water immediately froze her limbs as she sank like a rock, she remembered the burning feeling in her lungs as she struggled not to breathe in the water... and she remembered the hope she had felt when suddenly arms were around her, pulling her back up to the surface. then she thought of how hopeless manal must feel, how scared she must be and her heart sank even further.

feray did not know what they would do to manal, she only knew her friend would suffer, and she knew that she would do everything in her power to help lessen the pain. but there would be a pain none could take away. lady locke knew that all too well too. and that was only if the manderly sister survived. but she refused to dwell on that as that possibility was too dark a place to linger. "whatever state she will be in when she returns, we will care for her." feray knew what had happened to women of the old way in the north recently. she feared sharing their fate, sharing manal's fate of being held by men who'd like nothing more than to see her suffer, who took pride and joy in killing them. manal's abduction had not only broken her heart, it had made her fear for her own fate. but feray had learned long ago to trust the gods. she had looked death in the eyes twice and yet she was still breathing. a little worse for wear, marked and scarred by her battle with death, but the gods had nonetheless spared her twice already. her life was in their hands, it would end when they wished it to, and she found an odd sense of peace in that.

she usually protested when amir swore but she did not this time. it was not the time or place. feray understood his anger, she knew it was mixed with despair. she felt it too. the desperate hope for manal to return to them alive, the dread of knowing the manderly daughter would forever be changed by whatever horrors she was forced to endure. her worried gaze was locked on amir. "dark hearts are quick to poison others, people fear what they do not understand ― and fear makes people do terrible things." fear caused judgment which transformed into prejudice. and it was unfair, it was cruel. she only hoped that amir's justified anger would not blind him and set him on a darker path. hate could only breed more hate. nothing good came from it. it was a shadow that snuffed any light it could find. and amir's light shined so bright that it illuminated those around him. it was what she loved most about him. "but one day they will pay for what they have done, amir, for all of it. beyond what happens to them in this life, there will be an eternal price to pay for their hatred and cruelty." and feray believed that with her whole heart. they would all be judged by the gods one day.

feray quickly glanced away from amir and looked around the camp. it was somehow both awfully silent and busy. the soldiers were readying for departure but they barely talked. "where will you go now?" dark eyes full of worry once again locked onto amir. she was afraid that he'd do something stupid, something dangerous.

[theliterateape]

The Subjectivity of Historical Revisionism

by Don Hall

The game was simple but difficult.

My first wife was an orchestra clarinetist. I had played in countless orchestras with my trumpet. I never really fit in with the academically inclined orchestra crowd but she did so she would have small gatherings to eat and drink at our home.

I could only handle sitting and chatting with them for a short time before I either started throwing verbal bombs in the mix to keep things interesting (which inevitably set the stage for a fight with my wife after all had gone home) or checked out completely (a different but similar sounding fight later). I finally came up with a game that they could play so I could go into my office and write or drink or drink and write.

I was a middle school music teacher and my curriculum for eighth grade included some college music history.

“OK. I teach a class on the Romantic Period of music for my kids. I get forty minutes to cover composers from 1770 to 1850. This includes Brahms, Liszt, Mendelssohn, Verdi, Wagner, Sibelius, Schubert, and scores more as well as over 5,000 known pieces of music of all genres. Forty minutes. I have to boil the whole period down to roughly six pieces of music at three minutes apiece to encapsulate all of that.

Here’s the game. You have forty minutes to teach a class on the music of the Twentieth Century. You get ten pieces and composers. Go!”

After around thirty minutes, I'd come back in, get another drink, and they'd inevitably have their ten. I'd look at it and comment, "So. You guys don't think jazz should be included?" They'd all growl and go back in to it.

Keep in mind, this game was about determining what specific art would be included for a limited attention span and, in the most subjective way, indicate what art you value first and foremost.

Were I to play that game today with someone my nephew's age, an additional criteria would be added. It would not be enough that the music was important or influential or even good. The addition to the type of person the artist was (or is) has become a part of the game.

It's all revision by exclusion.

Assessing the merit of art or historical significance is more than a popularity test. There have been plenty of popular artists, scientists, statesmen, and entrepreneurs in our history who have become unpopular and even unknown over time and who have been weeded out of curation. 

Why are we exposed to the art we are exposed to? We certainly aren’t the kind of creatures who, when seeking out information, go to a library index file and pour through thousands of entries to find the hidden treasures any more. No, we now have a screen which we type in “What were the best novels of the 20th Century?” and are fed a result.

According to Goodreads.com, there are 164 books listed under the heading The ACTUAL 100 Best Novels of the 20th Century.

As soon as you start to apply the Woke Metrics (you know, the yardstick that dismisses the accomplishments of Winston Churchill because he was a bigot) these lists start to narrow significantly. Using that criteria (which in the newspeak of that progressive cultmind must come before merit, quality, or theme) the only list that exists is The 100 Best Novels No One Has Ever Heard Of by People No one Has Ever Read.

As I wrote, this sort of assessment can't simply be a popularity test. If it were, Fifty Shades of Grey and The Harry Potter books would top the list.

When I play the game, I’m looking for a few things to merit inclusion in the tiny lists:

How influential was the work on those that followed?

How indicative of the time and place is the work?

Is the work limited in scope or more universal in theme?

There is a scene at the beginning of the Amy Poehler film Moxie where the new student challenges the teacher on the assignment of reading The Great Gatsby.

The scene is fun and pointed. Ike is a hoot as the teacher. Had I been her teacher I would have responded by asking what she thought was a better choice. She might have a novel written by a black woman that encapsulates the American response to the 1918 pandemic in excess and mystery. She might have an example of a novel written that explores the notions of class and the very essence of the American Dream following the horrors of WWI. If she has a suggestion of a novel written by someone not white and not male that deals so eloquently about justice, power, wealth, betrayal, and several classes of Americans who have assumed skewed worldviews, mistakenly believing their survival lies in stratification and reinforcing social boundaries, let's read that!

The issue at hand with much of the faddish push to classify certain artists and historical figures as unassailably evil and worthy of complete erasure is that the most strident either have nothing with which to substitute for the thing they deem canceled or they have replacement art that is not up to the challenge. It isn't that they don't have every right to express their grievance. History (and not merely American history) is littered with people passed over for reasons beyond merit or time as well as people lauded and magnified for rationale limited to race, sex, and religion.

Anger and grievance is not a replacement for a solution.

✶

For much of the past year I've been incredibly frustrated with this push for revision in our history. San Francisco schools voting to replace Lincoln with someone more influential historically on the rights of African Americans? That's fucking nuts, man. 

An English teacher in Massachusetts successfully convinced her school's administrators to remove Homer's The Odyssey from its curriculum because of its alleged sexism. Another English teacher in Seattle said he would "rather die" than teach The Scarlet Letter in class. Mark Twain is suspect because of his portrayal of black people in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

To Kill a Mockingbird, once the City of Chicago book of the month, is now considered a no-go because it glorifies "white saviorhood" through the character of Atticus Finch. The novels featuring Sherlock Holmes should be tossed because author Arthur Conan Doyle included racist language. The author of the Little House on the Prairie books, Laura Ingalls Wilder, was stripped of a literary honor because of the "anti-Native and anti-Black sentiments in her work."

Throwing the shade of accountability on someone like J.K. Rowling seems excessive but more legit because she is still alive and reaping benefits from the sales of her writing. I may disagree with the rationale behind the call-out but it is only slightly different from Major League Baseball boycotting Georgia for re-enacting Jim Crow voting law.

Homer? Lincoln? Twain? All dead. No accountability to exact and all we have is the work left to speak for them.

For much of the past year, this stridency has driven me a little crazy but I realized recently that, especially in the digital age where so much art has been transposed into bytes, no one can prevent me from reading To Kill a Mockingbird or watching the Gregory Peck film. No one can prevent me from enjoying a Woody Allen film or a Harry Potter novel or celebrating the heroism of Churchill and Lincoln.

I love the music of David Bowie because it's great music. Does the fact that he had routine amounts of sex with underage girls dampen my enjoyment? Nope. Will it trigger someone else? Maybe. And it is their choice to avoid his music if they choose. It is not within their power to limit my choice as it should not be within my power to force it upon them.

History, as is art, trends toward subjectivity. History, after all, is just a series of stories we tell each other and stories are always told from a lens of the teller. History is less fact than it is an interpretation of existing facts and illusions. Do I believe, as the authors of the 1619 Project suppose, that America was founded in slavery? No. Do I believe that this means I can learn nothing from the stories they tell? Again, no.

Placing things into a larger perspective is as easy as acknowledging the horrors of the Civil War and still being able to comfortably have an Honest Abe Burger at the now closed Lincoln Restaurant in Chicago.

Now I'm going to go curl up and watch The Purple Rose of Cairo, then read The Great Gatsby while listening to Michael Jackson.