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recordsofelysia · 2 months ago

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Planes of Existence: The Parallel Planes

Okidoki I’ve got some spare time so I’m doing the first detailing of the various planes. There really isn’t much more to say about the Astral Plane and the Elemental Planes, so I’m skipping straight to the Parallel Planes, which are easily the most relevant to the actual campaign considering 4/5 of the party are considered locals of them.

It should also be mentioned that my versions of the parallel planes are *largely* similar to their counterparts in published material, but I throw in a few different things here and there, same kinda deal as with my gods.

The Feywild

Hey it’s where 3/5 of the party come from apparently, guess I should write about what it actually is.

The Feywild is often referred to as the realm of pure feeling. Every emotion is expressed tenfold by its denizens, from love and passion to hate and jealousy.

Visually, the Feywild appears very naturalistic, with mountains, forests, and lakes, but again dialled up to 11. Forests are as dense as possible with the most vibrant foliage imaginable, and mountains gleam with gorgeous minerals. There is no such thing as an outstanding view in the Feywild, because all of it meets that standard.

The Feywild also leans towards chaos, and as such it’s realm is constantly shifting. It is exceptionally easy to get lost in the Feywild, as the very trees surrounding you might alter their positions at random. This volatile, shifting nature is also what makes the Feywild more prone to having gateways form between it and the material plane.

Speaking of which, such gateways often appear in the areas that are visually similar to the Feywild, or have something in common. This usually means within dense forests, though it could also be at the bottom of a lake, or some other grand natural vista. Portals to the Feywild can also be conjured, usually by Fey creatures themselves, and these take the form of the expected circles of mushrooms, branches, stones, and the like.

When it comes to inhabitants, the Feywild is home to, shockingly, Fey, though there are other magical creatures that call it home. As far as humanoid races go, you can expect to find: Eladrin, Pixies, Satyrs, Hags, Gnomes, Redcaps, Trolls, Ogres, Sprites, and Dryads. So, a very colourful bunch.

There are also ruling powers in the Feywild; those of the Fey Courts. There are two courts of the Fey, The Seelie Court (led by the Queen of Sunlight) and the Unseelie Court (led by the Queen of Air). Those of the Seelie Court tend towards acts of fairness and compassion, while the Unseelie Court tends towards maliciousness, although both Courts are ultimately unpredictable, and can be made either allies or enemies out of. When it comes to each other, the courts are in constant opposition, and will find any reason at all to go against each other. The conflict between the two is driven by the pettiness and fickle nature of the Fey.

One last feature of the Feywild is the existence of “Domains of delight”. These are regions that are held separately from the rest of the Feywild, as well as the material plane, and exist more on the fringes between the two planes. Domains of Delight can arise through the acts of especially powerful Fey, either on purpose or by accident, or can even suddenly manifest at random. I’d give an example, but there’s one particular Domain of Delight that I’m sure the party will become very familiar with…

The Shadowfell

Aight time for the land of emos, and unrelated is where a certain party member is from.

While the Feywild is the realm of pure feeling, the Shadowfell is the realm of subdued emotion. The land itself is drenched in darkness, and everything from the rocky terrain to the withering plantlife is of a grey tone.

It can also be said that while the Feywild leans towards chaos, the Shadowfell is more in line with the concept of order, and as such is seldom changing. Being less volatile than the Feywild, portals to the Shadowfell manifest less often, though they do exist. Gateways to the Shadowfell are most likely to manifest within dark caverns, in ancient, long undisturbed dungeons, or even within the underdark (another topic I should probably write on).

Being such a lovely, delightful place, the Shadowfell is home to a slew of horrific monsters, mostly undead, but a fair few monstrosities of other varieties. Notable examples would be displacer beasts and shadow dragons.

However, there is civilisation within the Shadowfell, that of the Shadar’kai, or shadow elves. Their society is built around their faith to The Raven Queen, as The Shadowfell is actually where The Raven Queen physically resides, within a castle known as the fortress of memories (I didn’t come up with that bit, Raven Queen lore is just edgy as intended). From here, The Raven Queen presides over the laws of death, and sorts the departed souls of mortals into whatever afterlife they are due, and the Shadar’kai carry out her will.

(this next bit I did come up with) The followers of the Raven Queen form the organisation known as The Sable Church, based in the Shadowfell. The primary goal of the church is carry out the will of The Raven Queen, which basically involves a crusade against undeath, and those who aim to achieve immortality. In this way, The Sable Church is essentially a military power, with their forces targeting the undead, of which there is plenty to be found in the Shadowfell and beyond.

The highest ranking soldiers of the Sable Church are known as Sable Knights, and they lead smaller units of devotees. The Sable Church does contain non-militant members, the highest ranking of which being Bishops who directly serve the Raven Queen.

One last thing about the Sable Church, since I feel like I’ve talked about that more than anything, is that Shadar’kai are not the only civilised people to be a part of it, as, fittingly, the crow like Kenku are also found in the Shadowfell, as well as a more obscure people known as Chronotyryn, who often serve as bishops in the church.

And, finally, to coincide with the Feywilds Domains of Delight, there is a phenomenon in the Shadowfell known as the Domains of Dread. These are similar pocket realms that sit somewhere between the material plane and the Shadowfell, often with no method of escape. Domains of Dread manifest more often as prisons for those who have inflicted great suffering onto others or themselves. I don’t have any specific Domains of Dread detailed for the campaign, but an example of one is Barovia, from Curse of Strahd (which, probably, isn’t an incorporated part of Omnia).

(Fun behind the scenes: in earlier versions, Remire was actually a domain of dread, just sorta fully ripping off Strahd)

And that wraps up the parallel planes! There is a lot going on with them, and I have had to develop them pretty substantially due to their relevance to the party, but I don’t mind! Honestly I probably would have never payed any attention to the Feywild in particular if it weren’t for 3/5 party members, but I’m glad I’ve gotten to learn about it and play about with stuff.

The other posts on the planes will probably be much, much shorter, but I plan to split them into 3 for upper, middle, and lower.

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brushstrokes-art · 3 years ago

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dear everyone who followed me for kid icarus: i am so sorry that the endless cycle of fandom hopscotch carried me to the faraway land of cpu kerfuffle instead. have some more cpuk content. if you think that's dark pit you’re wrong he is but no he isn’t <3

#cpuk #cpu kerfuffle #light pit #fanart #illustration #this isn't even the Most i've got squirrelled away #y'all aren't ready for grunk pit theory #the last one is just an edit of some older art #but the first two are the pure manifestation of my love of the most relevant irrelevant character around <3 #this post also functions as an efficient reminder of how much i switch between art styles

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bluediamonder · 5 years ago

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it was a lot more than a hug: an (unintentional) short essay on mental health & steven worm

I LOVED THE HUG OKAY.

I’ve seen a lot of people saying things like “uGh thE eNdiNG sUcKEd geTtiNg a hUG doEsN’T sOLvE aLL yOuR pRoBLeMs”. but in my opinion, that’s exactly the point.

All throughout the second half of SUF, they’re trying to show us that there is no one way to feel immediately better and have all of your problems solved. He goes to pretty much every source he can. The gems aren’t necessarily seeing what he’s going through, Connie isn’t going to solve this for him, his Dad is helping in an unhelpful way, so he goes to Jasper and that went haywire, so he goes to the diamonds and they just make it worse. And then what is he supposed to do?

Every single time Steven goes to a person to “help” him, he’s going to them seeking help in order to fix it. and there’s a big difference between the two.

I have anxiety, depression, and OCD, and often when I’m panicking or having moments of high anxiety, I do what Steven did: I seek out people not to help me, but to fix it for me. I then react the same way Steven did - with anger - when people try to help instead of just fixing it.

Anxiety, depression, panic, none of those things can be completely and magically cured and rid of in the snap of a finger. But in the moment, for people like me, for a person like Steven, the thought of that feeling not being entirely solveable is petrifying.

It’s like if someone is drowning and splashing around: you can’t get the life ring around them because of how much movement and commotion they’re creating. But they’re drowning, so you can’t just tell them “Hey, stop moving so I can help you!” From your perspective, you’re trying to help them by encouraging them to do something that will in turn allow you to help them. But to that person, if they stop flailing, they’re going to sink even further, and that is terrifying, so much so that they can’t even consider that you might be wanting to help them. All they can process is that you told them to stop doing the one thing that they don’t want to do: sink. Even if they’re sinking just for a moment, before you save them, that doesn’t matter. That feeling of sinking is terrifying, so they end up splashing around more.

When Steven seems to be babbling on, almost comedically, in “Everything is Fine”, trying to convince himself he’s fine, he’s gotten to a stage that I was in for a while, a sort of mania, where he is not only attempting to convince everyone around him that he’s fine, he has convinced himself that he is fine. This is a huge red flag for people with bipolar disorder or manic depression (NOT diagnosing Steven, I am not a professional, I’ve just experienced many of these things and been surrounded by people experiencing these things and professionals explaining them to me. Like I said, I was in the hospital for this, so). Everyone around him starts to see that he is, in fact, not fine, as they’ve already surmised. But the physical consequences of them not doing anything, not doing enough, are starting to manifest.

When he morphs into the Steven Worm, he has lost his sense of self. He doesn’t know what to do with himself, he can’t exist within himself with the world he’s created. He didn’t tell the Gems about the hospital, he didn’t tell his dad he was angry, he didn’t actually tell Connie he needed her he just proposed. He doesn’t know what to DO with all of this. So it explodes around him.

He can’t control his feelings, himself anymore. He feels he’s lost control. For me, a human, this morphs into a panic attack. But for him, he’s a gem, he turns into Steven Worm.

Not even the diamonds, the most powerful beings in the entire Gem universe, are incapable of changing him. His emotions bring White Diamond to her knees. But what they’re doing wrong here is they’re trying to fix him!

When Connie bolts in on Lion and is making her (iconic) rallying cry, she never says they need to fix Steven or heal him; she says they need to help him. Because that’s the only way he can get better.

When you go to the psychiatric hospital, you don’t go to get fixed. You’re in an environment where you’re made so you’re not a physical danger to yourself, and then you do a shit ton of work. You have therapy multiple times a day, every day, all week. You do work, they don’t just fix it for you. And this is the solution that we need to see portrayed. This is the solution they did portray in SUF.

Mental health disorders can’t be fixed. And Steven’s problems weren’t solved with a hug.

But we needed to see the hug. Because Steven needed to see the hug.

The hug wasn’t just about hugging him. It was about literally forcing him to come face-to-face with the love and support he had been inadvertenly, and then intentionally, pushing away. It forced him to say, “Okay, this is who I am right now. And these people love me.”

I had to have the people in my life tell me over and over that they loved me when I went to the hospital. I had to have my doctors tell me that they cared for me, my therapist tell me that I wasn’t talking too much, because I didn’t believe them. I had convinced myself I wasn’t worthy, I was a fraud, just like Steven. Sometimes you need that love in your face, surrounding you so that it is the only thing you can see, for you to be able to let it in.

The hug didn’t fix everything! That’s the big thing. The hug was a pure, beautiful moment, but I don’t believe it was meant to be a plot device to try to fix everything. Everyone was still emotional, he still destroyed things, he scared people, he scared himself. That wasn’t all magically fixed because of the hug. But his resolve to do the work, get help, and accept what happened to him - that is what made him go from Worm Steven to Boy Steven.

And afterward, we seen Steven has grown. He hasn’t morphed, his hair hasn’t changed, he’s not pink. But he’s grown mentally. He’s communicating more making plans, his disposition has changed.

Previously on this post, I said" I don’t like that they called what he had a meltdown (again, I vouch that it was a gem version of a panic attack)" However, I learned that this is actually a really good term to describe what Steven experienced, and as a person in my ask box (@a2Ieep) noted, could be relevant to the headcanon/idea that Steven is autistic, or at least autistic-coded, as well as his PTSD or cPTSD. None of us can diagnose Steven but that also means I shouldn't just pass off terminology like that! I realized it gave people who self-identify as autistic, the same feelings it gave me as I struggle with panic and anxiety. While we surmise different meanings from the meltdown, it was a meltdown. We all feel so touched by it, and Steven's meltdown felf like a panic attack to me, that doesn't mean it isn't a meltdown, and that it can't be meaningful to someone else with autism or PTSD. Steven's meltdown is just as meaningful to someone who has autism or PTSD, as it is to me with panic attacks. Erasure of someone else's feelings on my part was not okay, regardless of my intent or my own strength of different feelings. Plus, it was his choice to use that term. I just want to make it clear that at first I didn't like the term, but it is actually a really important term to use. I didn't expect the post to blow up like this, so I wanted to make this edit known and seen as it's a really important of this post. Thank you to everyone for understanding! And thank you to @tentacrocacles @transtistic @satoshigekk0uga @mercurialmeditator @possumpiebruh and @a2leep for sharing their feelings ans thoughts with me, which helped me to realize this and investigate and alter my own sentiments!

but YALL STEVEN HAS A THERAPIST NOW! He’s is not only getting the help that he needs, he is showing that he is going to continue needing this help, and that’s okay! He’s making plans to visit people, to go see the world, on his own terms!

He’s scared and sad of leaving the gems, and it’s also time to leave the gems. It’s time to move on, and be a new Steven.

We’ve seen a lot of Stevens the past few weeks. But Steven driving off past the Big Donut into the night was my favorite Steven. That was vulnerable Steven. That was Steven doing the work to be himself, to exist with his feelings and the ways he had acted, and the things he had gone through. That was my boy. Steven Universe.

When I saw my mom for the first time while I was in the hospital, the first thing she did was give me a big hug (I was a blubbering mess, of course). But it wasn’t just that my mom was giving me a hug. She was telling me she was there for me, she loved me, she was telling me she would stay up on the phone with me as long as the doctors would let me, she would drive 3 1/2 hours from our home in Michigan to the hospital in Ohio at a moments notice (I went to school in Ohio and went to the hospital there too before coming home). That hug was her forcing me to see that she was there for me, even if I didn’t believe it, or didn’t want to believe it.

So yeah, Steven got a hug. But it was a lot more than a hug, okay? Take my word for it

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ribbonstrawberrysurprise · 3 years ago

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Hi! I am a big fan of the Tokyo Mew series, and I was wondering if you could do an analysis on the Mew Mew's projected elements and animals and colors, and how they all tie into their powers as magical girls?? I've always wondered if there is a certain mythology or reason behind it, but it seems like the girls' colors are mostly based on their names(Strawberry- red and pink, Lettuce-green, etc), but what about their powers?

Like you said, TMM colors are much more based on their food names than on their animals. (Although, based on that one 4-panel side comic in volume 1, it seems that the colors came first, then the characters were given food names that matched.) There are two seeming exceptions:

1) Mint, but it is relatively common for mint flavored candy and gum to have blue packaging.

2) Berry, whose theme color doesn’t seem obviously related to her fruit. There are a few plants with white berries (snowberries, white beautyberry, etc.), but none that are very common in cuisine or native to Japan as far as I can tell.

Actually it seems to be the opposite (at least for the manga), with characters’ animal parts being colored as to fit with their food/theme color! Zakuro’s ears are colored much more purple than on an actual wolf, and Berry has pure white ears and tail despite neither of her animals being that color irl.

I guess it’s possible she’s supposed to be based on albino plants and animals? Her Mew form does pointedly have pale blond hair and red eyes…

Anyway, as for their powers/elements…

The Mews don’t really have defined elements, with the exception of Lettuce! They more so seem to have different methods of using generic light/emotion-based attacks.

Lettuce obviously has water powers in both the manga and anime. She’s introduced telekinetically controlling a swimming pool, and her attacks are always drawn/animated as water. (Except possibly in ReTurn? It’s hard to tell if LettuSniping Shot is a jet of water.)

Her power is clearly based on her animal and not at all on her theme color. She’s actually one of the few water powered magical girls who isn’t blue! I guess you could also make a connection with her name, in that Lettuce tends to have a lot of water in it (at least Iceberg does), but I’m not convinced that’s relevant.

Ichigo seems to have the power of love/heart/purification, in that her attacks can purify the Chimera Anima. You could also argue something to do with harmony/friendship, as she tends to get upgrades by receiving power from the other girls. Also, maybe healing, considering she brings Masaya back to life? In a way, it seems like the Mew Mews powers are very analogous to the Mew Aqua. As for her animal…. I guess people do love cats? But again, it seems more based in genre conventions than exclusive to Ichigo. Pink is classic love, but it’s also classic magical girl leader.

Berry seems to have the same powerset as Ichigo (logical, since she’s her replacement), at least at first. Her powers seem to be emotion-based, as she’s able to undo mind control with Ribbon Loveberry Check, but the other girls’ words (plus the fact that they attack her classmates first) imply this is true of all Mew Mew powers, not just hers. In ReTurn, however, she seems to explicitly have healing powers, which does seem like a natural direction to go from purification/love. Same as Ichigo for the animal connection. White does seem very associated with purity and healing (at least via association with nurses/doctors). Plus white mage.

Speaking of healing, Ringo pretty much exclusively has healing powers, plus her ability to grant power to Ichigo. Very appropriate for a Mew Aqua powered character! She also has a little bit of a music theme since her mini attacks are named after solfege and involve music notes. Penguins aren’t really associated with healing or music (really, you’d expect ice), nor are red or apples (really, they’re more associated with poison!), plus Ringo was explicitly designed to be a healer so your party wouldn’t get wiped out in the RPG. So, her powerset came first, then her design…

Next up is Pudding! Her element, as it were, seems to be… pudding! Sort of… It really looks more like gelatin than crème caramel. In the anime, she does raise up the ground to protect herself in her first appearance, and her attack animation does show it tunneling through the ground, so I can see why you’d make the argument her element is earth, but she never really does anything with this again. Even when it could really come in handy, like when she's trapped underground. And her attack is edible, as per the manga, so it can’t be clay or something! As for an animal connection, I guess you could say that monkeys are kind of known for eating things, I feel like this is clearly based solely on her name.

Zakuro…. sort of has an element? Her whip is called a “whip of light” in the anime, and in the manga it’s literally a glowing cross-shaped whip. This plus the “Cross” and “Pure” give it definite holy/purification/light vibes. But, in my opinion, this isn’t unique to Zakuro! Mint’s arrows are also pure light/energy, Ichigo’s attack is also very glowy, and Pudding’s… puddings(?) seem to form from light/energy. It seems like rather than a unique light element, she has the normal Mew powerset but used in a way that can cut or tie up the enemies. I can’t say wolves are particularly associated with light. Really, I’d assume dark, if anything, since they tend to be cast as villains? Same for purple…

Moving on to Mint! I’ve seen it claimed that Mint’s element is sound, but she never really does anything sound-based. Sure, her weapon has “Tone” in it, and her attack has “Echo”, but Pudding’s attack has “Inferno” despite having absolutely nothing to do with fire. “Check”, “Surprise”, and “Pop” are also seemingly unrelated to the attacks they describe. As for her weapon being lyre-shaped, yeah! All of the anime-style weapons are based on instruments!

As a a ballerina, she has an association with music, but she isn’t particularly useful in the fight in episode 6 vs Mary McGuire Chimera Anima, who really does attack with music. When she fights the ballerina bird Chimera Anima in episode 9, she doesn’t use music, or even really dancing! She defeats it with the power of Kicking Really Hard. And she does hear the Mew Aqua swan calling for help, but that’s just an extension of the generic “can talk to animals closely related to their infused genes” power that Ichigo and Zakuro also demonstrate.

Really, it seems like her power is just “arrow”. Like Zakuro, she doesn’t have an element; she’s just the one who’s able to aim the best from a distance. I guess when Lettuce steals her thunder in ReTurn, she's forced to upgrade to “a whole bunch of arrows all at once” and hit everything.

All Mew Mews basically have light and emotion based powers that they use slightly differently, with the exception of Lettuce, who seems to actually just generate water out of nowhere. But her powers are obviously connected to her emotions still (see how they manifest when she first awakens them). Them all having the same base power is supported by the way the manga will often not depict each attack individually, instead having each girl say her attack name and then showing the Chimera Anima exploding in a collective burst of light.

In short, rather than individual elements, I think it’s more like:

Ichigo: big finishing move

Mint: long range precision attack

Lettuce: knocking back the enemy? area of effect? (water)

Pudding: holding the enemy in place

Zakuro: cutting through small fry or holding the enemy in place

Berry: big finishing move, healing

Ringo: healing (music)

So, none of their character traits (color, animal, power) are that related? There’s some stuff that seems linked, but overall it seems like they’re most informed by genre tropes. (Also, a lot of the details of their powers were hammered out by the anime.)

#Ask #strawbellbellsurprise #Meta #Attacks

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otp-armada · 4 years ago

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If Jason wanted to convince me that Lxa was the love of Clarke's life, he wouldn't have killed her off, effectively cutting their love story permanently, with 4.5 seasons left of the show. Their arc, starting with their introduction in 2x07 and concluding with L's death in 3x07, is 17 episodes long, accounting for 17% of the entire narrative. If I generously add 3x16 to the count, an episode in which L is already dead in the corporeal world Clarke is trying to return to, it's a whopping, grand total of 18%. An 18% congruous with Clarke's intense connection to Bellamy and vice versa, which even A.lycia confirmed as romantic. Feelings romantic enough to spur the formation of a love triangle. An 18% ignoring Clarke's ultimate choice to go back to her people when L wanted her to stay.

CL is a chapter in the story begun and wrapped up in the first half of the narrative. And that's omitting further illumination on the finer details making CL so problematic for Clarke. Do you expect me to believe it was coincidental for CL to occur at a time when Clarke was spiraling down a dark path, commencing with Finn's death? Who played a hand in forcing Clarke's own hand, with Finn, and TonDC, and Mount Weather? Whose example inspired her to ensnare herself in armor and warpaint to be strong enough to save her people? Whose behavior did she emulate in the pushing away of support from her people? Who gave her a place to continue hiding from Bellamy, her mom, and her friends? A place to be someone other than Clarke Griffin? In lieu of facing her fears like the heroine she is? The purpose of CL wasn't to provide Clarke with a magnificent, fairy tale romance gone tragically wrong. I believe Jason's intent with the relationship aimed to further damage Clarke's psyche after L's death, to solidify the belief that her love is not only deadly to its recipients but renders her too weak to do what must be done for survival.

After 3x16, CL is an often superfluous namedrop or two per season for Clarke to briefly react to before carrying on with the plot. Season 5 aside, most of these references are needless enough to be able to interpret them as attempts at reparations for the L/CL fandom's benefit -and their views- without altering the course of the story. Crazy me for thinking it's not enough to constitute an ongoing love story. Crazy me for not thinking this was on par with interactions between living characters. Crazy me for thinking it doesn't befit a love story for the protagonist.

This sliver of the story is what Jason and the CLs would have us unquestionably believe is the pervasive love story of The 100's seven seasons?

Despite his lie and the constant gaslighting from the pineapple CLs, some of us know how to decipher what a temporary love interest is. Lxa? I think you know where I'm heading with this.

I'll acknowledge my admittedly negative appraisal of CL as someone who recognizes its value to the LGBT+ community and treats it as valid while not caring for L/CL on a narrative level. I felt, when swayed by L's influence, Clarke became the antithesis of what I found admirable about her. I resented Clarke's acquiescence of her power to the commander. I wanted nothing more than to remove the wedge L had driven between Clarke and Bellamy.

Let me try to give L/CL the benefit of the doubt for a minute. I don't hold L as responsible for Clarke's choices, but I recognize the prominent role she played in their upbringing. The push and pull was an intriguing aspect of their dynamic, as was the chance to meet a manifestation of who Clarke might have been if she was all head, no heart. Her fall from grace was arguably necessary for her to be a fully-rounded character, not a Mary Sue. It wouldn't be realistic for the protagonist of a tragic story about a brutal world to be a pure cinnamon roll. When forgiveness is an innate theme with Clarke, it would be my bias at work if I was content with her applying it to everyone but Lxa. Clarke saw enough commonalities between her and L to identify with the latter. When she extended forgiveness to L, I believe it was her way of taking the first step on the path to making peace with herself by proxy. None of this means I wanted them paired up. At best, I made my peace with seeing the relationship through to its eventual end. In time for L's death, ironically. My passivity about them notwithstanding, my conclusions are, however, supported by canon.

If I may submit a Doylist reason for romantic CL? Jason knew he had a massive subfandom itching to see them coupled, thereby boosting ratings and generating media buzz. A Watsonian reason? Without relevance, I think L would have been another Anya to Clarke. Grapple shortly with the unfair taking of a life right as they choose to steer towards unity, melancholy giving way to the inconvenience of the loss of a potential, powerful political ally. Romance ensured her arc with L would have the designated impact on Clarke's character moving forward in the next act.

For a show not about relationships, Jason has routinely used romantic love as a shorthand for character and dynamic development. It's happened with so many hastily strung together pairings. And when it does, everyone and their mother bends over backward to defend the relationship. It's romantic because it just is. Didn't you see the kissing? Romantic.

No, The 100 at its core is not about relationships, romantic and otherwise. But stack the number of fans invested exclusively by the action against those of us appreciating a strong plot but are emotionally attached to the characters and dynamics. Who do we think wins? Jason can cry all he wants over an audience refusing to be dazzled solely by his flashy sci-fi.

Funnily enough, "not about relationships'' is only ever applied to Bellarke. Bellarke, a relationship so consistently significant, it's the central dynamic of the show. The backbone on which the story is predicated. Only with Bellarke does it become super imperative to represent male-female platonic relationships. As if Bellarke is the end all, be all of platonic friendship representation on this show. In every single television show in the history of television shows.

Where was this advocacy when B/echo was foisted upon on us after one scene between them where he didn't outright hate Echo? When one interaction before that, he nearly choked the life out of her. If male-female friendship on TV is so sparse, why didn't B/ravens celebrate the familial relationship between Bellamy and Raven? Isn't the fact that they interpret Clarke as abusive to Bellamy all the more reason to praise his oh-so-healthy friendship with Raven as friendship? They might be the one group of shippers at the least liberty to use this argument against Bellarke, lest they want to hear the cacophony of our fandom's laughter at the sheer hypocrisy of the joke. Instead, they've held on with an iron grip to the one sex scene from practically three lifetimes ago when the characters were distracting themselves from their feelings on OTHER people? They've recalled this as "proof" of romance while silent on (or misconstruing) the 99% of narrative wherein they were platonic and the 100% of the time they were canonically non-romantic.

Bellarke is only non-romantic if you believe love stories are told in the space of time it takes for Characters A & B to make out and screw each other onscreen, a timespan amounting to less than the intermission of a quick bathroom break. If it sounds ridiculous, it's because it is. And yet, some can't wrap their heads around the idea that maybe, just maybe, a well-written love story in its entirety is denoted by more than two insubstantial markers and unreliable qualifiers. B/raven had sex, and the deed didn't fashion them into a romance. Jasper and Maya kissed but didn't have sex. Were they half a romantic relationship? Bellarke is paralleled to romantic couples all the time, but it counts for nothing in the eyes of their rival-ship fandom adversaries. Take ship wars out of it by considering Mackson. Like B/echo, the show informed us that Mackson became a couple post-Praimfaya, offscreen, via a kiss. Does anyone fancy them an epic love story with their whisper of a buildup? Since a kiss is all it takes, as dictated by fandom parameters, we should.

If Characters A & B are ensconced in a romantic storyline, then by definition, their relationship is neither non-romantic nor fanon. "Platonic" rings hollow as a descriptor for feelings canonically not so.

If the rest of the fandom doesn't want to take our word for granted, Bob confirmed Bellarke as romantic. Is he as delusional as we are? Bob is not a shipper, but he knows what he was told to perform and how. Why do the pineapples twist themselves in knots to discredit his word? If they are so assured by Jason's word-of-god affirmation, then what credibility does it bear to have Bellarke validated by someone other than the one in charge? They're so quick to aggressively repudiate any statement less than "CL is everything. Nothing else exists. CL is the only fictional love story in The 100, nay, the WORLD. CL is the single greatest man-made invention since the advent of the wheel."

We've all seen a show with a romantic relationship between the leads at the core of the story. We all know the definition of slowburn. We can pinpoint the tropes used to convey romantic feelings. We know conflict is how stories are told. We know when interferences are meant to separate them. We know when obstacles are overcome, they're stronger for it. We know that's why the hurdles exist. We know those impediments often take the shape of interim, third-party love interests. We know what love triangles are. We know pining and longing.

Jason wasn't revolutionary in his structure of Bellarke. He wasn't sly. Jason modeled them no differently than most other shows do with their main romances. Subtler and slower, sure. Sometimes not subtle at all. There's no subtlety in having Clarke viscerally react to multiple shots of Bellamy with his girlfriend. No subtlety in him prioritizing her life over the others in Sanctum's clutches. In her prioritizing his life above all the other lives she was sure would perish if he opened the bunker door. There is no subtlety in Bellamy poisoning his sister to stave off Clarke's impending execution. In her relinquishing 50 Arkadian lives for him after it killed her to choose only 100 to preserve. In her sending the daughter Clarke was hellbent to protect, into the trenches to save him. In him marching across enemy lines to rescue her. In her surrender to her kidnapper to march to potential death, to prevent Bellamy's immediate one. No subtlety in Josie's callouts. No subtlety in Lxa's successful use of his name to convince Clarke to let a bomb drop on an unsuspecting village. Bet every dollar you have that the list goes on and on.

There are a lot of layers to what this show was. It was a tragedy, with hope for light at the end of the tunnel. It was, first and foremost, a post-apocalyptic sci-fi survival drama. Within this overarch is the story of how the union of Clarke Griffin and Bellamy Blake saves humanity, ushering in an age of peace. In this regard, their relationship transcended romance. But with the two of them growing exponentially more intimate each season, pulled apart by obstacles only to draw closer once again, theirs was a love story. A romantic opus, the crescendo timed in such a way that the resolution of this storyline -the moment they get together- would align with the resolution of the main plot. Tying Bellarke to the completion of this tale made them more meaningful than any other relationship on this show, not less.

Whereas the trend with every other pair was to chronicle whether they survived this hostile world intact or succumbed to it, Bellarke was a slowburn. A unique appellation for the couples on this show, but not disqualifying them from romantic acknowledgment.

Framing Bellarke in this manner was 100% Jason's choice. If he wanted the audience to treat them as platonic, he should have made it clear within the narrative itself, not through vague, word-of-god dispatches. A mishandled 180-degree swerve at the clutch as a consequence of extra-textual factors doesn't negate the 84% of the story prior. It's just bad writing to not follow through. And Jason's poor, nearsighted decisions ruined a hell of a lot more than a Bellarke endgame.

The problem is, when Bellarke is legitimized, the pineapples are yanked out of their fantasies where they get to pretend the quoted exaggerations above are real. Here I'm embellishing, but some of them have deeply ingrained their identities in CL to the degree where hyperbole is rechristened to incontestable facts. An endorsement for Bellarke is an obtrusive reminder of the not all-encompassing reception of their ship. A lack of positive sentiment is an attack on their OTP, elevated to an attack on their identity. Before long, it ascends to an alleged offense to their right to exist. The perpetrators of this evil against humanity are the enemy, and they must attack in kind, in defense of themselves.

Truthfully, I think it's sad, the connotation of human happiness wholly dependent on the outcome of a fictional liaison already terminated years ago. I'm not unaware of the marginalization of minorities, of the LGBT+ community, in media. I haven't buried my head in the sand to pretend there aren't horrible crimes committed against them. I don't pretend prejudice isn't rampant. When defense and education devolve into hatred and libel for asinine reasons, though, the line has been crossed. You don't get a free pass to hurt someone with your words over a damn ship war. No matter how hard you try to dress it up as righteous social justice, I assure you, you're woefully transparent.

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concerningwolves · 4 years ago

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I finished The Irregulars earlier this week and i was going to do a scattered, flippant bullet point “review” as i often do, but after stewing in my feelings about it for a few days i want to talk about this properly, actually.

Something I absolutely adored was the way people’s powers manifested / the way their monstrosity was directly connected to the monstrous things that had happened to them. The concept is that a rip has opened in the universe, which allows something to extend its power into our world. This power grants people supernatural abilities when they seek help by praying/asking spirit boards for guidance/seances etc. The in-world explanation for this is that the rip takes the darkest parts of people and brings those parts to the fore, thus making them do monstrous things.

(I did feel like the show sometimes contradicted itself, one minute saying that when someone is made into a monster by the cruelty of the world they ought to be met with compassion, the next minute killing off these sympathetic monsters or subjecting them to cruel fates. The fact that Arthur Hilton, a man whose grief and trauma over the deaths of his wife and child drove him to abduct babies, was locked up in Bedlam in a windowless cell left a nasty taste in my mouth. I understand that they needed to have him there for Narrative Purposes, but after using the episode’s climax moment to reveal that this man is suffering – basically to tell us that he isn’t a monster, but someone who needs help – it felt very cheap to use him as a pawn for the plot instead of further exploring that sentiment.)

I’m a HUGE fan of the way the powers reflected the wielder, i.e., Clara (Ep. 4) was sexually abused and given syphilis, which took away her ability to have children. We learn as the episode unfolds that she’s obsessed with the idea of a family because she never had one of her own, and makes little taxidermy family scenes with dead animals. The syphilis made her hate herself and her own skin, so the rip granted her the ability to literally steal people’s faces and become them – an ability she then used to kill the men who abused her with the final goal of assuming the last man’s identity because he had a family. It was a really haunting exploration of monstrosity / what makes us monsters, and it made me go a bit feral with appreciation.

But when the credits of the last episode rolled, I just felt... dissatisfied. I was bitter at how although the casting was supposedly colour-blind, the main villain was a black man and the one “sympathetic monster” who gets killed off (Jean Gates / the Tooth Fairy) was a black woman, both with very dark skin. John Watson, meanwhile, is portrayed by a lighter-skinned POC and although he’s written as cruel, aggressive and threatening, he’s given the chance for a redemption while the Linen Man and Jean Gates get killed off. I’m not entirely comfortable talking about this aspect because i’m white and still very much learning about racist and colourist tropes, but I just kept thinking about the colourism and implicit bias in Bridgerton, and couldn’t help but feel that The Irregulars had fallen into the same or a similar trap? (If anyone has any more thoughts on this I’m happy to listen!)

I didn’t like the fact that the writers decided to acknowledge the homoerotic subtext in ACD’s Holmes canon by making John Watson manipulative and controlling, then justifying that as an act of his (unrequited) love for Sherlock. Like, it wouldn’t be so bad if there were other examples of queer love in the series (save for the one f/f couple at a fancy rich party), but when your only explicitly mlm named character is miserable, alone and pining for an oblivious/uninterested love interest – a love interest who is killed off, may I add – it’s Not Fun. Queer rep doesn’t have to be good and pure or whatever (NBC’s Hannibal, anyone?), but sure would be nice to have some positive representation first! It also seemed to me that John’s redemption was directly tied to him giving up his love for Sherlock, which I was in two minds about. On the one hand, it could be seen as him realising his love had become something deeply toxic and so he had to let Sherlock go (and that really excites me! Complex and angsty relationships are most delicious), but on the other hand it got very close to a Bury Your Gays moment so my feelings the entire time were just :/

Lastly I was super excited about Leopold because disabled character! But it seemed as if his disability just got put to one side unless it was relevant to character arcs and/or plot moments. His leg is absolutely fucked up from the first episode, but he abandons his cane? I did really appreciate the whole “you’re not broken” angle they took, though. I think it was a genuinely good-faith representation, it just didn’t quite hit the mark (which is how I felt about a lot of things in the show tbh, so... :shrugs:)

To conclude this wall of text: monsters and the takes on monsters were very tasty, and the supernatural elements and worldbuilding filled me with glee; other bits like representation and narrative choices were dissatisfying. i am now tired and out of spoons, will probably come back and clarify this tomorrow.

#the irregulars #i uhhh idk what tag to sort this into #the hyperfixations tag #monsters & monstrosities

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maxwell-grant · 3 years ago

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Downfall of a Dark Avenger Part 1: El Sombra

Having finished reading Al Ewing’s El Sombra trilogy and having had enough time to digest it, I’d like to talk about the trajectory of it’s titular protagonist, the character and series’s relationship with it’s influences. Relating to The Shadow and Zorro and general pulp archetypes, and also the way it incorporates Astro Boy’s Pluto into the mix. My interest in Pluto’s imagery led to me reading Naoki Urasawa’s Pluto, and I will go into the correlation between all of these seemingly random sources coming together.

But before we can talk about what El Sombra becomes, we must talk about what he is, and where he starts.

The very first chapter of El Sombra is dedicated to establishing the happy scenery of the village of Pasito, as a big wedding is drawing the entire town together, eager to see one of it’s greatest heroes marry his sweetheart. We get a great description of said hero Heraclio...and then the reveal that the character we’re gonna be following for the rest of the story is not Heraclio, but instead his loser brother Djego, a morose, slow-witted poet largely considered a joke by the village, currently being rejected and beaten by the love of his life, which is just about the 2nd worst thing that happens to him that day, followed by winged Nazis storming the village, murdering scores of men, women and children, killing Djego’s brother as he watches helplessly, and then said brother cursing Djego with his dying breath as Djego just barely escapes into the desert, with nothing but a sword and a wedding sash in hand. Djego is probably the last man in the village anyone could have possibly expected to become a hero (which may be part of why he ended the way he did).

Cut to 9 years later, Pasito has been transformed into a mechanized nightmare, a clockwork city of endless toiling and suffering ruled by Nazis, freely enacting their every dark whim on it’s population, revealed to be little more than just a large-scale experiment conducted by the Nazis to increase workforce enough to match Britain’s. After two agonizing chapters with little more than Nazi atrocities to occupy our time, we get our first look at the intrepid hero, Djego. And how does El Sombra introduce himself? Through laughter.

The laughter. Rich and strong, echoing around the square, freezing the milling workers in their tracks. An awful laugh - a terrible laugh of hope and joy and strength! A sound that had not been heard in the clockwork-town for nine years.

as the sound of laughter echoed across the town, the men shuddered and glanced at each other briefly, as though hearing the first sounds of an approaching storm.

The smile on the creature's face was powerful and confident and utterly unafraid. To Alexis, it seemed like the smile the devil might have in the deepest pits of Hell.

For the most part, El Sombra is heavily modeled after Zorro. He’s got Zorro’s swashbuckling fighting style, wields primarily a sword, his main outfit is styled partially after Douglas Fairbanks’s costume, he can be quite friendly and charming and peppers an “amigo” at every sentence. His name is the same as Diego’s minus one letter, his main enemies specifically consist of tyrants who rule over his town, and his mission of vengeance gradually turns him into a rebellious, inspirational figure for the city he strives to liberate. El Sombra is Zorro vs Nazis and it delivers on that.

But nothing is ever quite as it seems in this trilogy, and the first installment of El Sombra goes to great lenghts to establish that El Sombra is a long, long way from being the pure and heroic fantasy that Zorro embodies. He doesn’t live in a world where problems can be solved with guile, luck, good swordplay and a good smile. He doesn’t live in a world where he can show up, humble imperialists and get the people behind him. He lives in a world where the only recourse available to him, to even stand a chance, was nine years of an extended fugue state trip through the desert, ingesting hallucinogens, having his soul shattered and then repaired into something much, much darker. And it’s in those moments that we start to see why exactly his name is El Sombra.

There was something in his voice as cold and unyielding as a gravestone.

"Djego is dead, Father Santiago. He was useless and stupid and pathetic. And he died and left good flesh behind. So I took his place." The eyes behind the mask met Santiago's then, and the priest breathed in sharply. There was nothing of Djego in them. There was nothing human in them.

Something bigger had lodged there, something stronger and faster than a man, something with a laugh that could shake mountains and a spirit like hot iron and fire. Something better.

"I am his shadow. El Sombra."

Atop of his inhuman speed and agility and skill at combat and murder, Djego repeteadly demonstrates skills and traits that, not only did he not have prior, but he couldn’t have picked simply in his desert sojourn. He knows how to apply advanced first aid, he speaks German, in Gods of Manhattan he is able to get the drop on Blood-Spider with a textbook Shadow hypnotic trick, and for all of those, the only explanation he gives is a shrug and “I picked it up somewhere”. Djego had the same trip to the unknown that defined The Shadow and so many other pulp heroes, except Ewing never provides any explanation for El Sombra’s advanced skills other than what the character says. Because there is no explanation. El Sombra is bigger than that.

El Sombra has to be, because a mere man with training and skills and strength and inspirational heroism isn’t going to cut it against what he’s up to. His brother had all of those things, and he died in the first chapter. Like The Shadow, El Sombra has warped himself to address calamity upon mankind, and morphed into something bigger and darker than just another vigilante.

In that moment, El Sombra knew himself to be no longer a man. He was, instead, what the ticking clock had made of him. He was a monster.

In fact, with the devil imagery Ewing grants upon El Sombra at points, and the reocurring “itch in the back of the skull” prelude to crucial moments, you can pinpoint exactly the points where El Sombra’s character traits would later manifest in Immortal Hulk, with Ewing’s reinvention of the Hulk plumbing the darkest possible alternatives for said character by digging into the greater horror roots of the character. This will be more relevant when we get to Pluto though.

But to put it plainly, Djego may be Zorro in every aspect at his surface. He may desperately strive to be Zorro, and it may be his Zorro traits that allow him to truly save Pasito. But Djego is not Zorro. He is El Sombra, as illustrated most in the following sequence. The moment where he pulls the most Shadow-esque destruction of a Nazi ever since The Shadow convinced a Nazi general to gut himself with his own sword.

The chained man began to laugh. Softly at first, then louder, the sound rolling through the quiet, cold room like the skeletons of winter leaves in a chill and bitter wind. It was not a laugh of joy, or of hope, or of strength, or of anything associated with sunlight and clean air. It was a laugh that belonged in these dank and fetid conditions, a snide chuckle, a sneering, contemptuous snicker. A laugh like a thousand beetles marching across a sheet of glass.

It was a sound that would have been sickeningly familiar to anyone who had once been a guest of the Palace Of Beautiful Thoughts. The old man started back, looking at the features of his chained captive, breathing in sharply as the handsome face of the terrorist became foreign and strange, warped by the noise emanating from it. He recognised the sound too, recognised the dry, hollow chuckle. And it chilled him.

The chained man turned his head, as though on aged bones, and smiled, a dry and sinister grin. And then he spoke. And the voice that came from his throat did not belong to El Sombra at all.

The chained man spoke with Master Minus' voice.

The chained man's smile froze him in his tracks. It promised terrible cruelty, a mephistophilean love of manipulation, and the eyes sparkled with fire from the depths of Hell itself. The old man sucked in another breath scented with sickly yellow and looked desperately away, to find himself staring once again at the mirror, at the face that was surely not his own...

The old man, who suddenly felt neither old nor a man, raised his hands, fingertips touching the aged, wrinkled face with the unfamiliar eyes. Could he fool himself that his fingertips travelled across soft, worn flesh, lined with years of service? Or was he feeling sterile plastic, soft, loose latex? He shuddered, the motion travelling up his spine, his hands shivering and twitching as he tugged ...

"Take off the mask."

... and the old, wrinkled, false face was torn away, coming off in long strips, pulled away bit by bit to reveal another face underneath. His eyes were wide, unblinking, unable to close as he stared at the face underneath, the face that had been there all the time.

Behind him, the thin beetle-voice spoke once more.

And this is what it said:

"APRIL FOOL! Quién es el hombre? Quién es el hombre? I'm the hombre! I'm the hombre! Now all I need are some pants."

El Sombra grinned down from the vertical rack at Master Minus, slumped on his knees in front of the blood spattered mirror, staring without eyelids at the remains of his face. He had succeeded in tearing all of the flesh from it, and all that remained were a few scraps of muscle clinging to a crimson, bloodstained skull, with two grotesque eyeballs gazing mercilessly at their own reflection. El Sombra smiled and did the voice, again while he made another attempt to work his left hand free of the shackle that held it in place.

"Creatures of the night... what music... they make... I vant to suck your blooood... yeah, you keep looking, amigo. Intense shame boosted by mind-warping drugs, hey? That's very original, I wouldn't know what that's like at all... ah, these bastard cuffs!" He was babbling, a result of the endorphin rush from the intense pain and the thrill of victory.

The yellow mist coursing through his veins - the mist Master Minus relied on so heavily - had been counterbalanced by the Trichocereus Validus already in his system, the desert cactus that had destroyed and rebuilt his mind. But while El Sombra was in a stronger position than the torturer realised, Master Minus was weaker than he knew, far too used to the easy victories the mist brought him, not realising that his own exposure to it made him ripe for psychological attack. The old man had spent years claiming that he was immune to the yellow mist, but nobody had ever been in a position to test that claim - until now.

In the end, El Sombra is able to drive the Nazis out of Pasito, and he’s succeded in ultimately inspiring the population to rally against them, eventually winning not because of said darkness granting him power, but by turning said darkness into a tool of good. The true victories of El Sombra are not in the violence, but in selfless heroism, in actions big and small. And in the end, He’s given even the opportunity of a happy ending, to settle down in the town he’s wanted so long to rescue. And if this were the story of Djego, the poet turned hero of his hometown, that’s where it would end.

But this is not Djego’s story. It’s the story of a man who’s destroyed himself to be rebuilt as an avenging force of nature. Someone who’s subsumed as much of his humanity as he could, who now can see and done things much beyond the scope of ordinary man, and now must pay the price of said terrible gifts. Who will pay much, much bigger prices for them in the future. It’s the story of El Sombra, and it’s only just begun:

It was too bad about Djego. El Sombra regretted little, but he regretted denying Djego that one small chance at happiness. But it couldn't be helped.

Until Adolf Hitler was dead, El Sombra could never rest

The man walked west, towards the sinking sun.

#replies tag #pulp heroes #al ewing #el sombra #the shadow

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tawakkull · 3 years ago

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ISLAM 101: Spirituality in Islam: Part 125

Ilm (Knowledge)

Knowledge (‘ilm) means information obtained through the human senses or through the Revelations or inspiration of God. It is also used to denote information that is in agreement with facts or realities, and to denote understanding something with its real, whole meaning and content. In addition, we come across usage of this term in the simple sense of thinking, under-standing, comprehension, and conclusions drawn as a result of such mental processes. Sometimes the word knowledge can even mean familiarity.

Although it is well known which aspect of the term knowledge in Islamic Sufism is most relevant in the context of this book, we deem it useful to mention some secondary matters, such as the different types of knowledge and its sources.

Knowledge, first of all, is dealt with in two categories: knowledge without means or knowledge that is had without being acquired, and knowledge that is acquired through some means.

Every living being has its own peculiar characteristics and potentials. These characteristics and potentials are the sources of certain, innate knowledge, knowledge a creature has without having to acquire it. (The modern scientific term for this kind of knowledge is instinct.) A human being’s being able to sense and perceive a lack of air, thirst, hunger, grief and joy, etc., a baby’s knowledge of how to nurse, a bird’s knowledge of how to fly and build nests, a fish’s knowledge of how to swim, young animals’ knowledge of how to avoid dangers, in short, these types of knowledge, knowledge of how to deal with the necessities of life, fall into the category of knowledge without means.

Knowledge acquired through the internal and external senses is included in the second category. Knowledge concern-ing the physical world is usually obtained through the five external senses–sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch–while knowledge about the metaphysical or incorporeal realm of existence is acquired through internal senses–the mind and heart with their faculties of thought, reason, spiritual discovery and experience, intuition, etc.

As for the sources of knowledge or means of acquiring it, these consist of three, according to Islam:

The five external senses, provided they are sound. True reports, of which there are two kinds: reports unanimously given by a group of truthful people of such a number that it is inconceivable that they have agreed to lie, and reports given by the Messengers of God, whom He has sent with special messages. The third source of knowledge is reason. Axiomatic knowledge and the knowledge reached by using the mental faculties are included in this kind of knowledge. Knowledge is also divided into two groups: that which is acquired through the mental faculties, and that which is reported knowledge. The first can be divided up into three categories:

Knowledge of such matters as health and education, which in Islam are regarded as incumbent upon every individual or a group of people in the community, according to the time and conditions. Another kind of knowledge acquired through the mental faculties is knowledge of which Islam disapproves. Sorcery, divination and occult sciences are of this kind. Sciences, such as geometry, mathematics, medicine, physics, chemistry, and history are included in the third category, the study of which Islam regards as obligatory on the community in order to discover God’s laws of the creation and operation of the universe and for the well-being of the community. Reported knowledge is of two kinds: knowledge based on spiritual discovery and inspiration and knowledge concerning Islam and Islamic life. The second kind has been separated under four heads:

The knowledge of the fundamental principles, which include knowledge of the Qur’an, Sunna (the Prophet’s way of life, sayings, and confirmations), the consensus of the scholars (ijma’) and analogy or deductive reasoning. These are the sources upon which the rules of the Shari’a are based. The knowledge of the subdivisions, which includes the knowledge of worship (the Prescribed Prayer, the Prescribed Alms-giving, Fasting, Pilgrimage and so on), the daily life of the believers, marriage and relevant matters, such as divorce and alimony (civil law), and legal penalties (criminal law), etc. Primary sciences, such as language, grammar, meaning, composition, and eloquence, which are ways to properly understand the religious sciences, such as Hadith (the sayings of the Prophet), the interpretation of the Qur’an, and jurisprudence. The complementary or secondary sciences, i.e. the sciences additional to the sciences of the Qur’an. They consist of sciences relating to the wording and composition of the Qur’an, such as phonetics and recitation; the sciences pertaining to its meaning, such as interpretation and exegesis, and those relating to its commandments, such as the abrogating and the abrogated, the general and particular, the explicit and implicit, the real or literal and the metaphorical or allusive, the succinct and the detailed, the clear and the ambiguous, the direct and firm and the allegorical. As for reported knowledge based on spiritual discovery and inspiration, it has also been dealt with under two heads: the knowledge that occurs in one’s heart as a gift from God, and the knowledge that arises in the conscience. What we will study among the topics of the “Emerald Hills of the Heart” is this kind of knowledge. Whether it is of the kind occurring in one’s heart as a gift from God or of the kind arising in the conscience, this knowledge is and must be based on the Qur’an and the Sunna. Any knowledge one finds in one’s heart or conscience which has not been filtered through these two pure sources is not reliable. It cannot be binding knowledge for either the individuals themselves or others, it cannot be considered as authentic, sound knowledge. This important point has been stressed by many great Sufi leaders. For example:

Junayd al-Baghdadi says: “All the ways that do not end in the Prophet are closed and do not lead to the truth.” He also reminds us: “Anyone who does not know the Book and the Sunna is not to be followed as a guide.”

Abu Hafs[1] explains: “Anyone who does not continually control him or herself in the light of the Book and the Sunna cannot be regarded as belonging to this way.”

Abu Sulayman al-Darani[2] warns: “I admit the truth of whatever occurs to the heart only provided it is confirmed by the Book and the Sunna.”

Abu Yazid al-Bistami[3] admonishes: “I struggled against my carnal self for almost thirty years and did not find anything more difficult for it to accept than the objective criteria of the Book and the Sunna. You should not be misled by anyone, even if they work wonders like flying through the air, rather you should consider their care in observing the limits set up by the Shari’a and following the commandments of the Book and the Sunna.”

Abu Sa’id al-Harraz[4] sums up the matter: “Any intuitive knowledge which is not compatible with the spirit of religion is false.”

Abu al-Qasim Nasrabadi[5] teaches: “The essence of the Sufi way is strict adherence to the Book and the Sunna, holding back from the misleading inclinations of the carnal self and innovations in religion, being able to overlook the faults of others, not becoming negligent in one’s daily recitations to glorify and praise the Almighty, being strict in fulfilling the religious commandments without applying special exceptions, and refraining from personal, insubstantial opinions regarding religion.”

The Sufi leaders give knowledge precedence over the spiritual state of the Sufis, because that state depends on knowledge. Knowledge is the heritage of the Prophets, and the scholars are the heirs thereto. The Prophetic saying, “The scholars are the heirs of the Prophets,”[6] is the highest of the ranks recognized for scholars.

The knowledge of the truth or knowledge that leads to the truth is the life of the heart, the light of the eye, the cause of the expansion of the breast (with peace, exhilaration, and spiritual happiness), the stimulus to activate reason, the source of pleasure for the spirit, the guide of those bewildered as to which way to follow, the intimate friend of the lonely, and an invaluable table of heavenly foods offered on the earth and one to which the angels show great respect.

Knowledge is an important step toward belief, a standard to distinguish between guidance and error and between certainty and doubt, and a Divine mystery manifesting the truly human aspects of a person.

There is no exaggeration in the following saying of a friend of God:

A human being is truly human with knowledge; But without knowledge is entirely bestial. Action without knowledge is purely ignorance; So, O friend, you cannot find the Truth without knowledge.

By knowledge, the Sufis mean, rather than the familiarity that is reached with the mind, hearing and sight, the light and radiation that come from the realms beyond the material world and have their source in God’s Knowledge. This light pervades the spirit and bursts like flowers in the meadows of the innermost faculties of the person, and swells and flows in the gifts of the All-Eternal One. In order to be able to receive this Divine gift, one should, first of all, turn with all one’s inner world to the Eternal Sun and, freed from the influences of the body and carnal pleasures, lead a life at the level of heart and spirit, and open one’s breast to God, the Truth, with belief, love, and attraction, and then one should be able to rise to a level where one can be taught by God through inspiration.

As declared in the Divine declaration (18:65), We taught him knowledge of a special kind from Our Presence, God-inspired knowledge is the rain of mercy that pours down into the depths of a person’s inner world from the Realm of the Holy Presence– the Realm where those who are the nearest to God experience His Holy Presence–without any intermediary and veils. Deep devotion to God, sincere adherence and loyalty to Him as well as the Messenger, being sincerely well-pleased with whatever God decrees or causes to happen for one and trying to please Him, the sincerity and purity of intention in one’s acts or doing whatever one does only to please Him and because He wants us to do it, and having a heart pursuing certainty in the matters of belief over and over again–all this is what is required to be rewarded with God-inspired knowledge, especially in abundance.

Since the Prophets received Divine Revelation and were taught by Him, their knowledge is a God-inspired knowledge that comes from Him without any intermediary. As for the knowledge of purified, saintly scholars and other saintly persons, this is also a God-inspired knowledge, the only difference being that the source is the rays of light of the Prophetic knowledge. Khadr[7] is regarded as the foremost one in receiving this knowledge. However, he can only be so regarded for a certain period of time and spiritual rank and for the state particular to him. In certain particular matters, some people may be superior to those who are superior to them in general terms. Similarly, in certain particularities of God-inspired knowledge, Khadr is superior to those who are greater than him. He is in no way superior to either the Prophet Moses, upon him be peace,[8] or the other great Messengers.

As a Messenger charged with teaching people God’s commandments and guiding them in their lives so that they could attain happiness in both worlds, the Prophet Moses knew God’s commandments concerning the human individual and social life and the sensitive relation between them and the outward and inward aspects or dimensions of things. But, Khadr’s knowledge is restricted to the inward dimension of things. He points to this difference in his conversation with Moses: “Moses! I have a kind of knowledge which God has taught me and you do not possess, while you have another kind of knowledge which God has taught you and I do not possess.”[9]

In conclusion, God-inspired knowledge is the kind of knowledge which one cannot acquire by studying or being taught by others. It is a special gift from God and a kind of illumination, from a sacred source, that one finds in one’s heart. Rather than being the kind of knowledge about the Creator acquired by studying creation and which therefore leads from the created to the Creator, it is a kind that pours from the Maker to the conscious “works” of His art. It is even regarded as the emergence in the human spirit of the knowledge about some mysteries pertaining to God, the Truth, as special gifts from Him.

Anyway, it is always God Who knows best the truth in every matter.

[1] Abu Hafs ‘Amr b. Salama al-Haddad of Nishabur (d. 879). A blacksmith of Nishabur, visited Baghdad and met al-Junayd who admired his devotion. He also encountered al-Shibli and other Sufis of the Baghdad school. Returning to Nishapur, he resumed his trade and died there in 879. [2] Abu Sulayman al-Darani (d. 830). An ascetic known for his weeping in worship. He was held in honour by the Sufis and was (called) the sweet basil of hearts (rayhan-i dilha). He is distinguished by his severe austerities. He spoke in subtle terms concerning the practice of devotion. [3] Abu Yazid al-Bistami (d. 873): One of the greatest Sufi masters. Junayd said: “Abu Yazid holds the same rank among us as Gabriel among the angels.” His life was based on self-mortification and the practice of devotion. [4] Abu Sa’id Ahmad ibn ‘Isa al-Kharraz of Baghdad, a cobbler by trade, met Dhu al-Nun al-Misri and associated with Bishr al-Khafi and Sari al-Saqati. Author of several books including some which have survived, the date of his death is uncertain but probably occurred between 892 and 899. [5] Abu al-Qasim Ibrahim ibn Muhammad ibn Mahmud al-Nasrabadi: One of the famous Sufi masters and scholars. [6] Al-Bukhari, al-Jami’ al-Sahih, “‘Ilm,” 10. [7] Khadr is he with whom the Qur’an recounts (18: 60-82) the Prophet Moses made a travel to learn something of the spiritual realm of existence and the nature of God’s acts in it. It is controversial whether he was a Prophet or a saint with special mission. It is believed that he enjoys the degree of life where one feels no need for the necessities of normal human life. [8] The writer refers to the significant encounter and experience between Moses and Khadr that is recounted in the Qur’an, 18:60-82. [9] Al-Bukhari, “Tafsir,” 18:4.

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popculturebuffet · 4 years ago

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New X-Men Xtrospective Part 3: Imperial (NXM #121-126)

To me all you happy people! And welcome back to my X-Citing look at Morrison’s Masterwork on Marvel’s Merry Mutants! Part One is HERE, Part Two is HERE if you feel like it.

If not... to catch you up on last time....

All Caught up? Good. Join me under the cut as our heroes head into this old woman’s hedd to see what’s wrong and fight off an alien army while horribly ill.

Silent, Psychic Rescue in Process:

So we pick up not long after we left off: Thanks to Beast waking up from his bat induced coma, the X-Men now know Charles is trapped in Cassandra’s body and she pulled a Freaky Friday on him, with marginally less bullets.

And thus we get this issue. This one was part of Nuff Said, an incredibly clever theme month by Marvel and one I wish they’d try and do again at some point in some form.

The gimmick was simple but amazing: Every issue would be mostly silent, with at most some dialouge at the start and finish to bookend it. So far i’ve only read two issues of this, this one and the X-Statix one, but it is a genuinely great idea. I do think forcing it on the entire line was a bit much, but as I said I do wish they’d do this again just make it optional: have some books opt in or do some annuals with the theme. It’s just a fun break from the usual and with this issue resulted in one of the best single issues of x-men period.

Naturally given the name, which is cleverly displayed on a sign the x-men have because of course they do, it’s exaclty that: Emma and Jean after readying themselves (Jean kisses Scott goodbye and Emma downs a bottle of jack because why not do an alchol before doing delecate mental surgery), head in.

Inside they find horrific old lady head doors, stone ol dlady heads around a tower that shoot lasers, and said doors also bite and puke weird goop because it’s Grant Morrison. This is his chance to just go full balls out weird.. and given last time involved skin flake golemns.. and this isn’t even the weirdest he’s done. As mentioned last time he once had a supervillian run for president using a super LSD Bike that made everyone high.

And just to prove he can reach that level of weirndess we find charles alone, naked and with an overenlarged brain.. before he transitions Jean to a field of sperm.

Yeah... but this DOES have a point.. as it turns out it’s a meaphorical transition into his gestation as a baby.. and how he had a twin. Yeah turns out Cassandra was not lying he did try to kill her.. but as you can probably tell by the fact she’s a genocidal sociopath, she lied by omission to screw with Hank: In the womb she tried strangling Charles to death with his own umbilical cord..only for him to use baby’s first psonic blast to send her reeling and his mom tumbling down the stairs and well.. you can probably guess the rest. Yeah.. Cassandra’s entire origin story is concentrated

And I love it. The sheer audacity is nice and everything but what makes it really work for me is the simple concept: An evil version of charles, one almost born at the same time whose every bit as evil as he is good.. granted there’s a TON of Morally Grey in Charles Xavier ESPECIALLY post decimation and even more so now with Krakoa. But he’s sitll at his heart a well meaning person, while Cassandra at her heart is a racist genocidal nightmare. She is pure evil, with enough personality to not make her boring.. and more importanlty all the power charles has but NONE of his restraint. Part of what makes Charles noble is he only uses his powers when necessary. Cassandra.. has no such restraint and will happily mentally snap necks all day.

So with this our heroine’s leave and we end on the iconic line “Professor Xavier killed his twin sister in the womb. We Really ought to talk.

This issue is an utter classic. It finally explains Cassandra a bit while still leaving a ton of questions, Frank Quitely is at his best here, and he and morrison are incrediby good at non verbal storyteling. The result is surreal, unsettling and awesome. Check it out. Seriously seek this one out it’s worth the trip. It’s so famous it was homaged with a spirtual sequel in the recent Giant Size X-Men one shots. It’s excellent stuff

Imperial:

So with our first issue we open with things going terrible on that flag ship Cassandra took off on with Lilandra, empress of the Shiar and Xavier’s space wife. She’s revealed herself, is ravaging the ship and mind rapes a the helmsman into crashing it, so with no other options Lilandra sends Smasher, not the one from the avengers run earlier version, to earth to send a warning to the X-Men.

At the School things are actually going well for a second. In an intresting move the school is changing things up with no officla timetable.. which I think means there’s no rigid class schedule and you can just do them as you please or as necessary for your power. The plan’s the same, they just want to learn from each other in building mutant society and the future. It’s ideas like this that are the bedrock of the current run and were sadly never fully realized here.. but I don’t blame this run for that. Morrison had 2-3 years and it was cut short early, leading to a rather disapointing ending we’ll get to. They never had a chance to really dig in because they were kicked out by morons and then their whole grand design was undone until Hickman un-undid it in 2019. And even then some of this like the idea of mutant culture and what not hasn’t been picked up on yet. I do mean YET, as given the sheer NUMBER of x books touching on all sorts of subjects, it’s only a matter of if not when.

As for who’s behind this it’s a combination of Jean and Charles: Jean is using charles notes and is going at full tilt. Scott is concerned though.. both about her since she went Phoenix and Logan told him about it and because these plans may alarm the humans. ON the former Jean just brushes him off which is not right.. given what happened with the phoenix force copy of jean, which granted had her personality, memories and powers and Jean later got a set of her memories so it might as well of been and only MAYBE the genocide is something Jean wouldn’t of done under the same circumstances, he’s understandably concerned. He lost her to it last time and it did weird shit to poor Rachel, who hif you don’t know is their daughter from an alternate timeline... because the Summer’s family tree is a WAKING NIGHTMARE. Thankfully I don’t have to untangle it because there’s a handy chart right here to do it for me that was recently released in X-Men Legends, a new series featuring legendary x creators telling stories in the cracks... and given we’re getitng storys by the simosons and peter motherfucking david, yeah good stuff.

And why yes there are more than one clone in this tree and several alternate timelines. , not to mention several clones and a sexy cat lady, it’s complicated is understnading it and i’m not sure what properly states it honestly. Also if your wondering about Adam there he’s the genetic son of Cyclops mom and the ma Shiar empreror who killed her for not sleeping with him through. Again it’s complicate REALLY feels like understatement.

Point is he DOES have a right to be worried about the thing that lead to her being cocooned for a while and left their daughter in the future at the time of this... just in case you needed a reminder after that wonderful clusterfuck of a chart up above athe x-men are really fucking weird.

So Jean brushing that off is not okay. She does however call him out on the second one and rightfully so: This isn’t some dominate the humans manifesto: this is simply changing the course of the future and how they teach their students to create a better one instead of adhering to human norms to try and appease “the republicans’, as jean puts it.. which has only gotten MORE RELEVANT, 20 years on: Attempts to appease the norms of society and things “just because that’s how it’s been” have never been a good thing. It’s why the very writer of this comic took several decades to properly identify themselves as non binary because people were too stuck int heir ways to try and see if there really were just two genders. Fighting against the grain, finding new ways to express things that have always been there... it’s what humanity needs to do and certainly what comes after us would need to do. i’ts how we get better as a race. If something’s not working we change it, quickly or slowly. And given Scott’s huge amount of emotoinal repression lately.. I can see why she’d see the former complaint as just him being a dick as opposed to the genuine concern it is.

Short Version: Jean Grey is fucking awesome and while he’d be the last to write her for decades, no one did it better than Grant and no one has since. Hopefully Gerry Duggan can clear that bar.

After this fight we get a fuller verson of what happened both at the end of issue 120 and in the big reveal last issue: Turns out Hank awoke because Charles piloted his body like a truck and needed it revealed fast. Hank’s regained control of his body and facilities by now, but in a twist of irony he helpfully points out, had Cassandra not gone a needlessly cruel and sociopathic tangent and had Beak beat Beast into a coma, Charles wouldn’t of had a body.

As for Charles in cass’ body he’s now in a tub of goo created by it.

It acts as a shield as well as melding him with Cerebra so he can talk to jean telepathically as his thoughts are very weak.

Thanks to this and her psychic Jaunt, Jean now knows just what the hell cassandra is: She really is Charles twin sister. As for how the hell she surivied outside of the womb and how Charles never knew, she created herself a clone body using his cells and didn’t fully manifest till now. And while she has plenty of intellegence, at an emotional level she’s fully convinced, much like an infant that only she and charles are real and thus destroying him means gaining domance over her world. So in short she’s both utterly insane and now has an interstellar empire at her fingertips.

And the news SOMEHOW get sworse: She booby trapped her body and charles only has days before he’s vegatable, having put every psychological disease possible in there, and she’s probably responsible for their colds and the u-men. So in short their pretty scrwed but at the very least Charles plans to try to flip things, use the fact their now public (a clear tactic to weaken them) to share his manefesto, his last will and testiment if you would.

Scott meanwhile figures since their sick a healer might be a good idea and goes solo to fetch Xorn... who just sorta disappeared after the annual and didn’t return till his arc.

We get an utterly touching scene after this: With Logan staying on his hobbit like toes in case of another attack, Jean goes to talk to hank. Hank is still throughly traumatized from the attack, fearing Cassandra is right and he’ll just keep devlovling until he ends up in a metamoprhisis type situation. I mean it’s not ALL bad hank,.. I mean going through that guarantees a musical about you.

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But Jean reassures him: It’s okay to be afraid of her, they all are.. but as she puts it...

It’s a really powerful inspiring scene... and really afirms how well Morrison writes Jean from the previous arc onward. She’s confident, powerful.. but also caring and compassionate. Here hank’s at his lowest, disparing that this might get worse.. and she reaffirms that htis evolution is an upgrade.. he may not be the same.. but that’s okay. He’s better. It really speaks to the core message of the X-Men as a whole and why they’ve stuck around all this time: It’s not just okay your diffrent.. it’s WONDERFUL. Your wonderful for being you. Whatever meataphor you read into it, it’s at it’s core a message that no matter who hunts you or trys to shame you for what you are, they are wrong and you are wonderful. And you are not alone... your people are out there.. and they will go through hell to protect you. It’s moments like this that remind me despite the bad parts, the accidnetal transphobic metaphor last time, a subplot with Hank coming up, the affair storyline and Planet X, just.. Planet X.. this run is special to me for a reason. It has heart, character and truly gets how the x-men should work, what makes them great... while making something NEW AND FRESH from it’s bones. Pushing envelopes, chanigng things for good and shaking things the hell up after far too much stagnation. It’s just pure good comicy goodness and i’m proud to finally be talking about it after having always wanted to.

So as we end the issue Scott grabs Xorn, whose been at a budist temple all this time, and Smasher arrives to warn earth... but his warning missed his intended target.

Well at least he got to Hellcow’s coven.. maybe she can call in Man Eating Cow and the Chick Fill A Super Cows.. thought hey might not help. Their parent company IS pretty homophobic.. I doubt their high on mutants either.

Testament Emma and Jean talk over things how i’ts going etc, with Emma unsuprisingly annoyed with most of the students and Jean optimsitc.

But Emma soon has bigger issues to deal with: TEEN ANGST!

Yeah 4/5 of the Cuckoos are upset Esme has a boyfriend. Their concerns in part are because without her their apparently powerless.. which given one will die and another will leave and they’ll be left with three is just factually not true, and either Morrison changed his mind later, or more likely their simply exagerating like teens do. Emma points out it’s pointless to fight this...

So... their in a domestically abusive relationship rife with sexual tension? Are you sure your not htinking of Sam and Diane, Ross and Rachel, Garfiled and Odie perhaps?

Meanwhile Angel’s sulking in a tree talking about how all the kids are stupid and she dosen’t fit in. That sort of thing. Wolverine naturally has a tactful and understandable response to this:

It’s here Angel goes from understandable, a bit hard edged and obnoxious becuase of a very rough life.. and just becomes annoying. I do get what Grant was trying to do: he was trying to play with Wolverine’s habit of taking sassy teens under his wing by giving him a more hardscrabble one with a harder life pre-xaviers.. not that Jubilee’s was easy, but I get what he was going for.. he just dosen’t succeed. Instead of a realistic version of a teen sidekick she just comes off as an obnoxious brat whose rude to everyone including her one friend Logan and her later boyfriend. It dosen’t help that ONCE AGAIN, Morrison flew directly into unfortunate implications without meaning to, by having the only major POC character (Bishop guest stars later and there are two significant characters during the Riot at Xaviers arc but both aren’t relevant before or after), be an abused teen with gross fly based powers and a teen pregnancy subplot. Seriously this isn’t even the LAST time Morrison shoves their foot in their mouth like this in this run. While I do like this run a lot, it’s still 20 years old and it’s still going to have a bunch of bits that have aged like harvarti left on a sidewalk, and handing out unfortnuate implications like their candy is tied for the biggest with their handling of Magneto when he finally shows up in person. It’s THAT bad a take on the character that it’s up there with accidental racisim and transphobia.

So moving on from.. that we get Jean comforting the professor before meeting the press, giving a throughly lovely speech about how Charles got his powers 30 years ago and despite seeing the worst in humanity, used his telepathy to allow him to see past it and see deep down just how scared and alone we all felt. So she takes them into a psychic conference room and we get a very interesting exchange.

It’s an interesting parallel to how real world disinfranchised groups, how it takes time.. but soon being a POC or LBGTQ+ goes from unrightfully perscuted to celebrated. How a group starts with hates whipsers on the fringe of things but grows to be accepted, like it always SHOULD have been. Take representation of Trans people in the media. It started with Trans people being almost entirely punchlines and sources of fucking horendous “DID DEY USED TO BE A MAN.” storylines and hurtful jabs at people who had transitioned, treating them as a sideshow instead of you know as fucking human beings. But now coming out as what you always were ont he inside is celebrated. Sure the right are dicks about it but they always will be: but most media gladly celebrates when someone comes out as trans. Same with being gay, or bi or pan or polamorus or nonbinary. Hell I admire grant for showing i’ts not even 100% perfect once you are popular: you still have to grapple both with people wanting to copot your culture and those who still don’t understand you trying to speak for you.

She also gets the standard question calling the X-Men an army, shoots it down with the normal global peacekeeping operation stuff.. then we get this bitch.

Who quickly realizes she’s outclassed by Emma Frost, professional that bitch. And while Jean is understandbly going to have to erase that.. I can’t blame her for snapping her.

Just to tear this shit down.: The privacy thing is not something she’s doing. All she’s doing is spcyhic teleconfrencing, you harpy. They fight greek gods and monsters to protect your sorry ass and the last one.. just makes me absolutely livid and feels so much like a real world comment i’m suprised there isn’t a fox news logo next to her bigoted head.

Trouble follows them everywhere they go.. because their mutants. They can’t help it. A LOT of shit like the demons, aliens, and gods and what not, I do not know if they actually did fight the greek gods but i’m not going to say for sure they did not, the norse gods defintely, not sure on greek. But the point is allt his stuff HAPPENS TO THEM half the time, or is a consequence of trying to PROTECT PEOPLE. I’m so nettled by this because this is how the marvel unvierse acts all the fucking time towards ALL super powered peoples. Mutants esepcailly but they blame the heroes and what not for being chased and harassed by guys in costumes or alien invasions or all the stuff they FIGHT. Sure sometimes they caused it but it’s either because of a monsterous person with a grudge or just because their powerful and some douche took an intrest. I’m just.. so fucking tired of asshole civlians in comics. It’s realisitc I know but it’s just hard to stomach after so many have turned their back on so many for such DUMB reasons.

Jean recovers well pointing out the genocide and how 16 million people, 16 million possible einsteinss or mozarts are just GONE, and that their trying to focus on the future. She also brings up autistic savants who can talk to atoms and while I don’t like the use of the savant thing, as it brings to mind stuff like rainman I very badly want to see this autistic kid who can talk to atoms as someone on the spectrum myself. Also I just want the crew of HIckma’ns books in general to pour over this because there are a lot of intresting powers and personalities only MENTIONED we never saw proper that could be great characters. Just saying.

Jean cocludes her speech to the world, including Logan whose wisely getting hammered at anearbye bar.. while Hank finds out what’s going on with their sickness.. nanonscopic sentnels in the blood.

But while the press confrence ends well with Jean having won over the press.. things go sideways as not only is it clear Esme’s boyfriend is in fact something sinister.. but Jean falls over due to the nano snetinels, and senses Scott being taken in tibet, taken down by a group of the Shiar’s imperial guard.. picutre the legion of superheroes but blindly loyal to the goverment and far more likely to get killed. And the rest are preparing to attacking including Gladiator who if you don’t know him, has all the powers of superman as long as he retains his confidence.

And it turns out Esme’s boyfriend is an advanced Scout, the shapeshifting amoeba blob thing Stuff, a new addition by morrison and good on him. And the Imperial Guard are here but with one goal

Superdestroyer

On the Ship we find out both wha’ts going on with Scott and Xorn, they’ve been taken and why the shiar are attempting mutant genocide: Cassandra is puppeting ALL of them, has convinced them the mutants are infected and since Lilandra is a puppet, Scott’s words fall on deaf ears.

Meanwhile Wolverine ambushes one of the squads, kiling one named Dinosaurer via claw to the brain, while Emma has had a dome thing put over her head and isn’t transforming into diamond to counter it because...

But the Cuckoos fight back, taking out oracle before easily handling stuff since his brain is fairly simple.. and given he’s racist against solid people and unlike the others reveling in the genocide just a tad.. yeah what he deserves. So now with a living weapon the Cuckoos make peace with Angel as they need all the help they can get.

Jean ushers the press into the panic room, not happy about it but not having anothe roption for their saftey. Hank tells her to self distruct crebra if cassandra get sclose and goes off to join the fight and let off some steam over the situation. Hank easily routes two of them, and one , Manta tries to just fly right ot jtean wince their TK proof. How does that go?

Jean gets to saftey after that, not that she needs it and hank is quickly taken down by a batch of Superguardians.. only for Wolverine to arrive in the Sknitt of time and chop them up.. oh and as one of the puts it...

Bad. Ass. I also like the addition of the flight patch, a nod to the Legion, who the Imperial Guard were based on as those kids used flight rings.

But while Logan and Hank easily tag team these assholes...

The SHiar call in the big guns.. Gladiator.. and I wasn’t kidding abotu the superman thing. While Logan TRIES to talk him out of it, the murders only confirm Cassandra’s bullshit and Gladiator breaks into the panic room throwing hank and wolverin’e before them having utterly decimated them off panel. I mean Wolvie is a badass.. but even he has limits. I also like recontecullizing the guard as a whole here.. showing just how TERRIFYING they SHOULD be as enimies to the x-men. Yes our heroes did win.. but barely and only till Gladiator showed up. In most cases thier clearly holding back out of affection but here hteir just at errifying unstoppable force, and also apparently used to doing genocides like this. It takes what was a cheesy shout out to David Cockrums other big artistic work, and makes it horrifying and it is AWESOME. I admit to not having liked this arc as much for the longest time but this reread, the sheer teror and hopleessness as an interstellar superman easily cuts through our mighty mutants like tissue... it’s awesome.

Thankfully one of the Guard found smasher.. and thus the truth comes out so our heroes are given a stay of execution with Gladiator clearly horrified at what he almost did and our heroes now so sick they can barely move and Hank can’t think them out of this.

Thankfully he dosen’t has to as back in space, Cyclops tires of it and points out something Xorn, not being as experinced nor having delt with the guard ahd thought of: G-Type, the glowly guy about to execute them, is made of solar energy.. and xorn can manipulate that thanks to his star brain. He does, they take out the rest.. and prepare to go save the day.

Losers: PIcking up shortly before where we left off we see Cassandra murder Lilandra’s advisor who figured out what she was just as our heroes escape.. and as Cassandra is having Lilnadra order all of the shiar ships to immolate themselves.

WIth Lilandra not being any use, Cass tries to psychically force her to commit sucidie but jumping off a space ledge but Xorn saves her. Cass tries another turn at mentally breaking an x-man, pointing out all scott’s recent flaws, his increased repression his faling marriage and while it gets him to stop it dosen’t quite work as well as it did on hank, likely because at his heart Hank is simply a more emotive person. Though his REAL reason for stalling is he can’t kill charles.. which he muses just as the ship blows up real good.

Meanwhile back at Campus the kids initaiate their plan, having Angel break in and take a dna sample. She also finds beak naked in a tank and decides eh why not and brings him with her. This ends up paying off as Beak suggests the obvious to get emma free.. just force the space guy they have over in the corner to do it. They do and it works

Back in the mansion our heroes prepare for Casssandra... but Jean and Logan object to saving her body, pointing out that getting hank to repair it is exactly what she wants, and that Jean feels she can save charles without uit, with Hank being understandably doubtful given their current condition.. but Jean’s real plan is to put charles in her head and it’s already too far in actoin to stop now: she’s been saving his memories as they flaked off and if she dosen’t do this now there will be no charles left.

Hank evacuates the civlians to teh danger room, and has an encounter with trish who tries to apologize and get him back.. only for him to rightfully regjecter her..a and then goes a step further by capping it off with:

Yeah on it’s own it’s not TERRIBLE. Still very dated to claim your gay just to spite someone, but for the time it was acceptable and compared to some of Morrison’s other gaffes in the run it’s minor at best. But it leads into a rather annoying subplot we’ll naturally get to that’s a much bigger issue, so i’ll save talking about it in full for when it comes up again.

Jean manages to shove Chuck into her head, but is naturally leaking a bit and barely holding it or him together and may of overestimated herself just a tad.. while on the lawn Cassandra easily takes out the guards. That said the scene of Jean taking Chuck into her head is REALLY damn awesome. Jean is the arc MVP by a mile and Hank is pretty dang good competition.

All Hell: We open the final issue of the arc with Scott and Xorn escaping the spaceship using some teleport tubes taking Arakai and Lilandra with them.

We open with Cassadra utterly humilating gladiator while the kid team prepares to fight her despite you know, the 8 billion to 1 odds against them.

Jean, despite hte discknes and trying to keep an old man in her brain marches out , prepared to fight, for the kids sake. For the world’s sake. But Logan’s easily taken out and with Jean barely holding it together.. the kids prepare to fight.. likely being slaughtered even if they mean well.. onlyf or help to finally arrive with Scott and Xorn glowy porting in. We get a really sweet , short moment with scott and jean...

Scott not knowing the situation tries to have Xorn heal charles first but since Cassandra’s body is dead and unoccupied that’s a no go.. he’s still usefult hough, curing Jean of her nanosentital sickness and moving on to Scott and Hank while there’s still time.

We find out more about cassandra: She’s a murrmadi, a bodyless parasite.. eseetinally the dark first test a person faces... she just stuck around because she was one for a telepath.. the world’s STRONGEST telepath. But really other than that part the rest just feels like stuff we alreayd heard LAST TIME, mildly repaackaged and seems enitrley like filler to pad the issue out.

So while Jean takes cerebra, both to keep it away from Cassandra’s plans of mutant genocide and for whatever she has planned, Scott, Hank and Xorn prepare to hold the line.. and as Jean mentions.. emma’s still out in the wild.

So we get our climactic showdown.. logan, hank and xorn veruss cassandra, with Cassandra trying to do eveyrthing she can, tear them down mentally, throw out the students with our heroes fighting back best they can. It’s good stuff.

Eventaully Cassandra gets to Jean.. but she’s already inacted her plan, putting a piece of Xavier’s mind in EVERY mutant, and giving Cassandra one ohell ofa reason you suck speech.

It’s an incapsulation of what i said earlier and what the runs about: alone we are weak but together.. we just might make it. More on that as we go. But thanks to Cass naturally going fo rcerberba.. she accidently restores charles and is left bodyless.

Emma finishes the fight with her own brilliant gambit, presending cassandra her body.. but it’s actually stuff , reprogrammed into a sentient brain for her to inhabit and leaving her trapped, with Charles hoping t teach the now mentally reset Cassandra. So Cassandra is beat, the virus is stopped, and our heroes have one.. but naturally for this run.. there’s one last suprise in store.

Charles can walk again.. and going forward will be a far more active member of the team. The team is complete, Cassandra is beaten, and the future.. is bright.

Final Thoughts:

This arc is a mixed bag.. it has really good scenes with the first and last issues being the standouts, with the former being an utter classic with an intresting gimick and the latter being a rousing climax with tons of awesome moments, with some good mometns scattered throughout.

But that’s the arc’s issue.. it has good moments and ideas.. but they don’t quite work togehter. The idea of teh Shiar Imperial Guard nearly doing a genocide is good, but the Shiar are such flat characters.. it’s really hard to care. They just don’t have enough connection to the x-men to really have the betryal sting but aren’t callous enough for genocide protocols to maeks sense. It’s a good idea, I still support it being terrifying.. but not enough is done with it and it feels liek Grant is more concerned with throwing weirdos at the x-men than actually saying something.

The biggest issue however is the art. While inconsitant art is an issue as they’d rotate artists.. but in previous arcs it was usually pretty evenly split but here it’s sloppy: Quitely does the first issue, van Sciver the second.. and the worst of the three Igor Kordey does most of the art. I gave him the beinfit of the doubt last time.. but this time not so much. His art is muddy and tries to be stylized but comes off confusing,ugly and not great. He’s probably a lovely guy but given he’s up against two legendary artists, his lack of style comapred to both shows badly. And given the arc is alreayd a bit overly complicated, it makes things WORSE by giving us muddled art in a very complex storyline. The flip flopping art makes a fairly intricate story very hard to follow. It’s easily why this arc didn’t grab me in the past and even seeing some better moments, it’s not the series best. It’s not the worst either, Planet X easily takes that ground despite having far better art. It’s an incredibly muddled incredibly long feeling arc and really needed to be compressed by one or two issues but instead is just hard to get through. It’s owrth it for the rest of the runa nd the good moments within but all in all easily one of the weakest points in the series.

Next Month on New X-Men:The X-Men soak in the new world order, and we meet fantomex, dust and the last surivivors of genosha.

Next on this blog:Green Eggs and Ham is back!

If you enjoyed this review PLEASE join my patreon. The end of hte month is coming and I need eveyr cent I can get so join at patreon.com/popculturebuffet and i’ll see you at the next rainbow.

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drinkthehalo · 4 years ago

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Macro perspective on each Lymond book

I've been listening to the Lymond Chronicles audiobooks, which has given me a different perspective than reading them. With audiobooks, you’re less inclined to stop and dive into the details, to look up an interesting word or obscure historical fact; instead you get swept along with the larger arc of the book.

So, I thought it would be interesting to look at what each book is about from a macro perspective.

Spoilers for the entire series follow.

The Game of Kings

In genre, it's a mystery told in a historical adventure style; it asks the question "Who is Lymond?" and gives us a ton of contradictory clues, then finally reveals the truth - in a psychological sense by stripping away Lymond's defense mechanisms and revealing the human being underneath, as he breaks down in the dell, "the guard was down... every fluent line and practised shade of Lymond's face betrayed him explicitly"; and in a narrative sense via the trial, which examines each "clue" we received throughout the story and tells us what it really meant.

Thematically, it's mainly about "serving honesty in a crooked way" - that morality isn’t simple and that sometimes you need to break the rules to do the right thing. Nearly all Lymond’s acts are apparently bad things done for a goal that is actually good. We see the theme also in Will Scott (who learns that the world is more complicated than the "moral philosophy" he learned in school) and the various characters who help Lymond, breaking the rules of society by aiding a wanted outlaw (Christian, Sybilla, the Somerviles).

It is also about the balance of looking out for self vs the obligation to the greater society - Lymond is not completely selfless (after all, he is back in Scotland to clear his own name), but when forced to choose, he always chooses the greater good above his own goals. He is contrasted with Richard, whose great mistake is to put his obligations to Scotland at risk in pursuit of his personal vengeance, and Margaret Lennox, who is purely and grotesquely out only for herself.

The historical context is part of this theme, as we see the various border families playing both sides between England and Scotland, with the heroes being those who ultimately stand up for Scotland, even as we understand that some have no choice but to profess one thing while doing another.

Queens Play

In genre, it's a spy novel; thematically, it's about what Lymond will do with the rest of his life. The question is asked explicitly several times (most obviously, "You have all your life still before you." / "The popular question is, for what?") It's important that Lymond loses his title at the start of this book; he has to figure out who he will be without it.

The main characters all represent possible paths Lymond could take -

O'Liam Roe, who sits back and laughs at the world with detachment, while abdicating all responsibility to use his mind and position to change the world for the better.

Robin Stewart, who loses himself in bitterness about the ways the world has been unfair to him, and in fixating on how he deserved better, fails to take any action to improve himself.

Oonagh, who works passionately to change the world for the better, but whose ideals have become corrupted because she has attached herself to a leader who is more out for himself than for their cause.

And of course Thady Boy and Vervassal, two extremes of himself that Lymond tries on, and (by the end of the series) must learn to reconcile.

The recurring imagery of the first half is the carnival, the masks, the music, the parties, and our hero in danger of losing himself amidst the debauchery. In the second half the imagery every time Lymond appears is of ice, the ultra-controlled, hyper-competent version of Lymond at risk of losing himself by denying his artistic soul. (There’s a wonderful essay here that explores these motifs.)

In the end, Lymond comes to the conclusion that he must not withdraw into detachment or bitterness, that he must find a way to make a positive difference in the world, but that he also must not attach himself to a powerful figure who may be more out for themselves than for Scotland (ie, his refusal to attach himself to Marie de Guise). This sets up the creation of his mercenary army in the next books, as a way he can exercise independent influence in the world.

The Disorderly Knights

This book couldn't be more relevant to the world today. It's a portrait of cynical hypocrisy in pursuit of power; it lays out step by step the tactics of propaganda and manipulation used by despots to build up themselves and tear down their rivals: pretend to be pious, accuse of others of your own crimes, tear down straw men instead of engaging in real debate. It tells us to "look at his hands"; what matters is what a leader actually does, not what he professes to believe.

It shows us how leaders use charisma to manipulate, and, in showing the battle between Gabriel and Lymond for Jerott's loyalty, shows how Lymond takes the harder and more ethical path, by refusing to use his charisma to seduce (a lesson learned from his experience with Robin Stewart) and instead guiding Jerott to come to his own conclusions by means of rational thought instead of hero worship.

At every level the novel advocates for tolerance and internationalism, and against petty sectarianism, as Lymond questions whether the Knights of St John are really any better than the Turks, and as he tries to get the Scottish border families to abandon their feuds in favor of the greater good of the country.

In terms of genre, it’s a pure adventure novel. I never get bored of the masterful action sequences with the battles in Malta and Tripoli, and the extraordinary duel at St Giles in the end. (Also in terms of thematic imagery, there is some crazy S&M shit going on in this book, with Gabriel and Joleta's sadism and Lymond's self-sacrificial masochism.)

I love Disorderly Knights so much. It is nearly perfect - well structured, thematically coherent, witty, fun, breathtaking, and heartbreaking.

Pawn in Frankincense

In genre, this is a quest novel. In several places it explicitly parallels The Odyssey.

In theme, it explores -

Do the ends justify the means? How much sacrifice is too much? Lymond gives up his fortune, his body, and his health; Philippa gives up her freedom and her future; we are asked often consider, which goal is more important, stopping Gabriel or saving the child? We even see this theme in Marthe's subplot, as she gives up the treasure, her dream to "be a person," to save her companions. Perhaps the most telling moment is right after Lymond kills Gabriel; despite all his claims that Gabriel’s death mattered more than the fate of the child, he’s already forgotten it, instead playing over and over in his mind the death of Khaireddin. If you do what is intellectually right but it destroys your soul, was it really right?

The other big theme is “nature vs nurture.” What is the impact of upbringing on how people turn out? In its comparisons of Kuzum vs Khaireddin, and Lymond vs Marthe, it seems to fall firmly on the side of nurture.

It’s also a kaleidoscope of views on love, with its Pilgrims of Love and their poetry, and the contrasting images of selfless, sacrificial love (Philippa and Evangelista for Kuzum, Salablanca for Lymond, Lymond for Khaireddin, perhaps Marthe for Lymond as she helps him in the end) with possessive, needy “love” (Marthe for Guzel, Jerott for Marthe or Lymond, arguably even the Aga for Lymond).

This novel is also a tragedy. Its imagery and the historical background complement the themes by creating an atmosphere lush, beautiful, labyrinthine, overwhelming, and suffocating.

The Ringed Castle

I have to confess this is my least favorite, in large part because I find the historical sequences (in Russia and in Mary Tudor's court in England) go on way too long and have only tangential relationships to the themes and characters.

It seems to be primarily about self-delusion as a response to trauma. Lymond spends the entire novel trying to be someone he isn't, in a place he doesn't belong, because he is too damaged to face reality. (His physical blindness as a manifestation of his psychological blindness; the sequences at John Dee's, surrounded by mirrors, forcing him to see himself.)

Lymond convinces himself he can build a wall around his heart to block out all human connection, that he can be a “machine,” but despite his best efforts, he cares for Adam Blacklock and develops a true friendship with Diccon Chancellor. And of course, by far the most important moment is after the Hall of Revels, when Lymond's heart unfreezes and he suddenly sees one thing VERY clearly. (And then tries, desperately, to escape it.)

The only reason I can think of that the book lingers so long on Mary Tudor (so boring omg) is the parallel with Lymond, her false pregnancies as a manifestation of her desire to see the world as she wants it to be, and her failure to see reality as it is. Ivan of Russia also is a parallel: delusional, unable to trust, and dangerous. Their failures, and the failure of Lymond's Russia adventure and relationship with Guzel, tell us that you cannot hide from reality forever.

The book spends so long painting the backdrop of 16th century Russia that it makes me think that Dunnett got too caught up in her research and needed a stronger editor, although there is also a parallel with Lymond in the idea of Russia as a traumatized nation struggling to establish itself, and of course, Lymond subsuming his need to deal with his own issues into a goal of building a nation.

It's also about exploration, about the intellectual wonder of discovering that there is more to the world, as we learn about Diccon Chancellor and the Muscovy Company. It’s wonderful imagery, but I struggle to how this fits coherently into the overall theme of the novel, and am curious how others reconcile it.

I like the idea of this book more than the reality. If you’re going to do to your hero what Dunnett did to Lymond in “Pawn,” there has to be consequences. But hundreds of pages of our hero in such a frozen state is difficult to read.

That said, the Hall of Revels is one of the best things in the series, and I’ll always love this book for that.

Checkmate

Checkmate is about reconciliation of self and recovery from trauma, as Lymond is forced (kicking and screaming) to accept who is and what he's done, and to allow himself to love and be loved. Philippa is his guide, as she discovers the secrets of his birth, understands his childhood, hears his tales of all the terrible things he's done, and loves him anyway. As far as genre, this is definitely a romance.

There are villains in this book (Leonard Bailey, Margaret Lennox, Austin Grey) but they're all fairly weak; the true antagonist is Lymond himself. From the beginning, he could have everything he needs to be happy (he's married to the woman he loves, and she loves him back!); his true struggle is to stop running from it (by escaping to Russia or committing suicide) and to break through his own psychological barriers enough to allow himself to accept it.

The primary parallel is with Jerott and Marthe, who also have happiness almost in their grasp, but never manage to achieve it.

The heritage plot looms large and is (IMO) tedious; it's so melodramatic that it takes some mental gymnastics to get it to make thematic sense to me. It ultimately comes down to Lymond's identity crisis and childhood trauma. His “father” rejected and abused him, so he based his identity on his relationship to his mother, but his suspicion that he is a bastard means he lives in terror that he doesn’t really belong in his family and that, if his mother isn’t perfect, he is rotten. (I love him but, my god, it is juvenile. The only way I can reconcile it is that his fear about the circumstances of his birth is really just a stand-in for his self-hatred caused by his traumas.) He also continues to struggle with his envy that Richard was born into a position with power and influence that Lymond has spent the past six books struggling to obtain, and that Lymond’s terrible traumas (starting with the galleys) would not have happened if he had been the heir. The discovery that he actually IS the legitimate heir is what finally snaps him out of it, since his reaction is to want to protect Richard, and this also reconciles him to Sybilla since protecting Richard was her goal too.

There are some other parts of this book that I struggle to reconcile (Lymond's inability to live if he can't have sex with Philippa; the way the focus on heritage seems to undercut the nature vs nurture themes; that no one but Jerott is bothered by Marthe's death, which undercuts some of the most moving moments in "Pawn”; and I mostly just pretend the predestination and telepathy stuff didn’t happen). On the other hand, I do sort of love the way this book wholeheartedly embraces the idea that there is no human being on earth who will ever be as melodramatic as Francis Crawford.

In terms of the historical elements, in addition to providing the narrative grounding for the character stuff to play out, it sets up the idea that Scotland has troubles coming up (the religious wars, the betrayal of the de Guises) and that Lymond needs to go home, let go of France and Russia, and focus on Scotland where he belongs. I’m sure there is also some political nuance in the fact that our Scottish hero, after spending so much time and energy in France, ends up with an English wife.

The conclusion in the music room is perfect - it brings us back to the amnesiac Lymond who innocently played music with Christian Stewart, to Thady Boy whose songs made the cynical French court weep, and fills the “void” Lymond described to Jerott where there was no prospect of music. The aspects of himself are finally reconciled and he has a partner to share his life with.

I am curious what others see as the macro / thematic big picture meanings of these books. :) And if anyone can find the key to make “Ringed Castle” and “Checkmate” make more sense to me...

#lymond #the lymond chronicles

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aion-rsa · 4 years ago

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“We Have Just Never Listened to Women”: Patrick Ness on Chaos Walking’s Relevance Today

https://ift.tt/3sLzUTC

Patrick Ness’ 2008 science fiction young adult novel The Knife of Never Letting Go was published the same year as Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games, but while the latter launched a dystopian YA franchise, Ness’ Chaos Walking series seemed to attract more of a cult following despite tackling similar early-2000s issues through a speculative lens. While Collins struck an arrow through the heart of reality television, Ness turned his attention to information overload, manifesting it as the Noise: an ever-present broadcast of one’s most private, cringeworthy, hateful, earnest thoughts for all to hear—but only for men.

On the “New World,” an alien planet only recently colonized by humans, the all-male settlement of Prentisstown has ascribed varyingly demanding interpretations of masculinity and morality to their members’ handling of the Noise. Todd Hewitt, the community’s sole boy, must come of age when he faces something even more chaotic than his Noise: the first girl he’s ever seen, a silent space traveler named Viola.

Over a decade later, the book’s dual commentary on information overload and toxic masculinity remains relevant. In fact, as Ness told Den of Geek, the intervening 13 years have only provided more dire inspiration for adapting his novel to the big screen. Doug Liman’s adaptation of Chaos Walking, starring Tom Holland and Daisy Ridley, finally arrives in the UK (it hit the US last month) after a perfect storm of delays, from scheduling around two of the biggest franchise stars to dealing with COVID-19 setbacks. The film conjures a similar lo-fi dystopian setting as Gary Ross’ The Hunger Games film while transforming the book’s free-associating monologue into an ever-present visual and aural halo—not unlike the information overload depicted in more tech-y futuristic tales.

In addition to the forceful depiction of the Noise, Ness spoke with Den of Geek about the book dog’s Noise that didn’t make the final cut, the Western homages behind Mads Mikkelsen’s villainous Mayor Prentiss, and what happens when men don’t listen to women.

DEN OF GEEK: When you first wrote The Knife of Never Letting Go, it was a response to information overload circa 2007. What was it like revisiting the story to adapt it over a decade later?

PATRICK NESS: Gosh, just that the world has gotten so much noisier—that there’s just so much more information coming at us. If the original idea was about questioning how much of ourselves we feel obliged to share and give to the world, that question has only become—not more serious, but we now do it so automatically that I just want to be sure that we keep asking that question: What are we losing, and how much of ourselves do we need to keep our sense of identity? The other big thing that’s happened in the last 13 years is that we’ve all gotten so used to sharing on social media—we’ve gotten so used to what it does, that it’s such a fabric of our lives—that people have now recognized, “I can abuse this. I can use this to tell lies; I can use this to make fake enemies; I can use this to manipulate elections”—for example. The genie isn’t gonna go back into the bottle, and I’m not some doomsayer saying we need to go back to phones and blah blah blah. We need to not forget that we have a choice of what to share and that there are—for all the good things the Internet brings us, which it does—we should not and must not ignore the darker parts of it, because there are very dark parts of it.

That darkness is especially apparent in the culture of Prentisstown and their need to control the Noise. In adapting, did you find yourself approaching Prentisstown differently than when you wrote the book?

Books

Top New Fantasy Books in April 2021

By Megan Crouse

Lots and lots of special effects tests and approaches, some really cool technology. There was a Noise unit on the film, so Tom would stand in the middle of a circle of cameras capturing him from 360 degrees, linking it up. Then the final results are a combination of all those things: technology, some artwork, some animation. My favorite little bit of it is a scene where Daisy Ridley’s walking up a hill and Tom Holland is behind her, and he’s kinda grumpy about her, and he’s complaining, and you see the complaints kinda just fly off the back of his head. That, to me, is what Noise would be.

Was there anything cut from the book, or an early version of the screenplay, that you would have loved to have seen?

One of my favorite characters in the book is called Wilf; and he does play an important part later in the trilogy, as well. But it’s a 500-page book, and at most a movie is a long short story, so you do have to make sacrifices. But what you get in exchange is, there’s a scene in the film where Tom and Daisy are under a little tarp in the rain, and something very funny happens. And that’s not in the book, but what you get in exchange is something like that, a little scene that expresses a ton that you can do visually, because [that scene] wouldn’t work in a book. I don’t mind; you give and you get. I’ve always viewed adaptations, even when it’s not my own work, as a remix. It’s not a cover version, it’s not an exact replica, it’s a remix. If I can start with that premise, then I can feel more creative.

Was there ever a version in which Todd’s dog Manchee has the Noise, like in the book?

Yes! But what you find out very quickly is that it’s all kind of about real estate. The animal Noise is very funny in the book, to me—it always made me laugh—and in a massive novel of 110,000 words, that real estate in the book doesn’t take up much. A movie is much more compressed, so every time an animal spoke, it just took up so much room in the movie. And it is funny, because it’s meant to be, but it kind of unbalanced the story, and it totally took away from what really needed to happen. Read the book, is what I would say, because I still love the idea, it still makes me laugh; but in a movie, it becomes too cartoon-y. We’re not making The Incredible Journey, as wonderful as it is! So you have to make some sacrifices.

The movie ends differently from the book, which is more of a clear cliffhanger setting up book 2, The Ask and the Answer; whereas the movie is left open-ended for sequels, but on a less dire note. What influenced this decision?

Doug Liman is an exploratory filmmaker; it’s a different approach than any director I’ve ever met. He’s really very much about what’s happening on set, what feels the right energy, where are we going—which is why there’s additional photography in all of his films. That’s always planned, it’s always in advance; we always knew that was going to happen, we just had to schedule the two biggest franchise stars in the world. But because of that, the story tends to organically develop. So we thought, Where are these two going in particular now that we have these actors, we have this situation, and it just starts to slightly change.

And I don’t mind that—again, in the remix idea—but what it interestingly has done is that it’s become more pandemic-themed, unintentionally, in that here are all these people who have been presented with a situation completely beyond their control, so how do they adapt? And there is a hopeful feeling at the end of this film, one I think is true, because they’ve really earned it, but also it’s like what we’ve done—we’re talking via Zoom, we’ve adjusted. It’s not perfect, and we’re all waiting for a better world, but we’re also probably not gonna go back to the old world, exactly. We’ve found a way, and that is kinda the whole point of the story, which is, here is the very worst example of people who didn’t find a way, as we move forward to people who do. To me, the ending makes emotional sense.

Are there plans to adapt one or both of the book sequels?

They’re optioned, they’re ready, but with a new series it’s all about if an audience wants it.

How did your experience adapting the screenplay for A Monster Calls influence your work on Chaos Walking?

Very different filmmakers, which is interesting because I always tell people writing novels that there’s no one way to do it—as long as you end up with a novel, you’ve done it right, so find out what works for you. So, a very different experience as a writer, but interesting in their own ways.

Books

Top New Science Fiction Books in April 2021

By Megan Crouse

The great thing about [A Monster Calls director] J.A. Bayona is a real lack of ego about ideas; an idea is good or it’s bad, it doesn’t matter who or where it came from. He’s very clear on that, he’s very sincere about that, and that really frees you up creatively. And so I really try to bring that to anything I collaborate on now; I try to never ever be any kind of snob about my ideas or anybody else’s—it’s just what’s better, what works; an idea is good or bad on its own, not because it came from somebody powerful. I think it makes everybody feel more comfortable; we’re all in it together, trying to make something interesting.

What was it about Daisy, Tom, Mads, et al, that made you feel that they were right for the roles in Chaos Walking? Mads in particular has such a striking look as Mayor Prentiss, with the cowboy hat, jumpsuit, and fabulous fur coat.

That coat is actually a tribute to McCabe & Mrs. Miller, a Warren Beatty Western from Robert Atlman. It’s interesting that they’re all European! We didn’t go out hunting for necessarily European, but also Cynthia [Erivo] is European, and David’s European. Nick [Jonas] is not… [laughs] But there is a sensibility that feels approachable to Tom and Daisy, that I think is their little movie-star magic, that they are not forbidding. Forbidding movie stars can be amazing! But they seem like somebody that you could meet, and talk to; and for a younger-centered film, that is vital, to feel like these could be my friends, and I care about them and am worried about what happens to them. That is what they bring so beautifully to the movie. And Mads has that magnificent face—he’s got such a great acting face, especially for a villain—and his manner, the sort of Scandinavian understatements, I love it.

Especially for a villain who’s trying to hide his thoughts—there’s so much still that comes through on his face.

A villain who thinks he’s right! He doesn’t think he’s a villain—and that’s the scariest kind of all.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

Chaos Walking is available for premium rental at home on all digital platforms from 2nd April.

The post “We Have Just Never Listened to Women”: Patrick Ness on Chaos Walking’s Relevance Today appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3wbJf9v

#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

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dndaddyissues · 5 years ago

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What's scarier, one cr 12 monster or three cr four monsters?

i love this question… because i love talking about combat!! HUGE response incoming about combat theory, tactical thinking, and creative ways to design combat encounters – click the readmore if you’re interested!

if by “scary” you mean “more challenging” and, to me as a DM, ultimately “more fun,” then i would have to say… the more, the merrier. because your PC’s are a lot more likely to slaughter a solo monster, no matter the CR (and i’ll get to that in a second) than to slaughter a group of monsters working together. O ACTION ECONOMY!

which brings me to a tangent/thing i’ve wanted to discuss/post about for a while on this blog so i suppose i’ll start with this ask –

i’m a HUGE fan of “monkeying with monsters,” as matt colville would put it. i’ve been implementing some of his creative combat theories in my recent sessions, and they’ve been paying huge dividends in terms of player engagement, tactical thinking, unexpected playouts, and overall fun.

basically, the idea is this: when designing a combat encounter, throw away the CR calculator (i know, i know, but hear me out), and tinker the shit out of the monster(s) in question.

i used to just plug my players’ levels into a CR calculator, look at the appropriate CR for a “challenging” fight, and pick my favorite monsters for the fight that were also setting-appropriate.

but i realized that this method was churning out rather predictable fights. a group of goblins against a level-2 party can be fun, but it’s run-of-the-mill: the goblins might coordinate tactically, especially if they were under the control of a bugbear chieftain or a goblin shaman, but other than that, they’re just stepping up to the players, hitting, getting hit, and dying.

this can be fun, don’t get me wrong, but after several other combat encounters like this, can get kinda… well… boring. predictable. for me, at least.

so, i started homebrewing bonus actions, reactions, and special villain actions for my monsters. especially the special ones: the mini-bosses, the bosses, and the random encounter monster (which i personally think should be challenging, deadly, and – if at all possible – plot relevant, or at least setting-relevant; but that’s just how i like to roll. otherwise it’s just like, “an ankheg pops out of the ground and – oh, it’s dead. you killed him, because you had all of your spell slots and hit points from your long rest. oh well.”)

i’ll use an example from one of my recent sessions. in this one, a party of five Level 3 players were going up against a Spectator – whose CR, at 3, is much lower than what 5 Level 3 players normally consider a challenge.

so i buffed its AC. i gave it twice as many hit points. and i gave it a special bonus action that allowed it to grapple a player with its tongue (which makes sense, cause if you look at a spectator, they’ve got freaky tongues) if the player was within 10 feet of it.

the spectator already has a reaction, and it’s a pretty good one: spell reflection. but because only one of my 5 players was a pure caster, i gave it another special reaction that I called “Terrifying Visage,” to make my martial fighters’ lives harder. basically, every time a melee attack misses the spectator, the Spectator can force a Wisdom save that, upon a failure, makes the player Frightened of it until the end of their next turn.

finally, the pièce de résistance: i gave the spectator 3 distinct villain actions. each villain action triggers at the end of a different round; the 1st one triggers at the end of round 1, the 2nd one at the end of round 2, the 3rd on round 3. you could definitely make more, but i tend to find solo monsters don’t last past round 3 against a well-equipped party – no matter the CR. (unless they’re the BBEG.)

at the end of the first round, my spectator’s villain action was to summon my PCs’ “Evil Selves” out of mirrors scattered throughout the battlemap. this made sense story-wise, and setting-wise, as the PCs had just spent last session grappling with what their dark sides could look like.

the manifestation of these Evil Selves was enough to startle and thrill the players, and i made a show out of taking my players’ character sheets, copying down their weapon information and skills, and giving their sheets back. this definitely freaked out my players!

i placed my PCs’ Evil Selves right above their respective characters in the initiative order, so their Evil Selves always went right before they did. needless to say, my players ended up targeting their Evil Selves instead of the spectator, even though it would have been “smarter” tactically to do so – but i didn’t punish them excessively for this, as it provided great roleplay material.

at the end of the second round, my spectator’s villain action was to “focus fire” – basically, the spectator ordered the Evil Selves to move away/disengage from their respective players without triggering opportunity attacks, and target a specific player. i chose the rogue, because she had insulted the spectator during the fight, and it made sense roleplay wise. otherwise, i would have chosen the warlock, who was the one dealing the most DPR to the spectator and the biggest tactical threat. but i loved the rogue’s roleplaying, so i decided to go for her.

unfortunately, my spectator died before it could trigger the third villain action. i’ll let you guys know what it was – i was going to have the spectator give a “kill” order to the Evil Selves, and they would all make an attack against the rogue (or whoever was nearest at that point, if the PCs moved around or the rogue disengaged), without it having to be their turn.

i designed the first villain action to be a big, “WHOA!!” moment for the players. the second villain action was about positioning – getting the Evil Selves into the right place to make the third villain action hurt the most. and the third villain action, of course, was my “trump” card – i doubt the rogue would have survived the kill order. thankfully, the battle didn’t last that long!

that’s a LONG-WINDED way of responding to your ask, but i hope this was useful in at least some small way! that’s how i buffed up a solo villain that was CR 3 against a party of 5 Level 3 players. according to one of my players, who’s been playing DND for 20 years, even though her character was paralyzed for two of the three rounds that the battle lasted, she was hanging on to every moment with bated breath. because although she’d encountered spectators before – many DND monsters before, in fact, due to her long tenure as a player – she had no idea what was going to happen next. which i take as a great sign.

ALL OF THIS is ripped directly from matt colville’s “building action-oriented monsters” video from his “running the game” youtube series, which is a fantastic resource i’d recommend to any DM who hasn’t heard of him already. please check him out and support his work if you can!

#ask #dnd #dnd ideas #dm tips #dnd combat #dnd inspiration

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mittensmorgul · 5 years ago

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So I feel like this season has something to do with touches, a very hand thing. And I directly paid more attention to sam and rowena. I feel like 15x03 was a direct parallel to 10x19. Specially cause in 10x19 Ro said they were mortal enemies and that they'd tried to kill each other and on 15x03 she said they'd grown quite fond of each other. Both ep contrasted a lot, even scenes from the same angle and, HANDS TOUCHING. Also hands 'barely' touching again when they reunited on 15x08. Thoughts?

Okay, okay… this is something I think I wrote about in my very, very long post about Rowena. The relevant bit:

Rowena got a surprise at the end of 10.18, though. A surprise and a gift in the form of Sam Winchester asking for her help and presenting her one of the greatest magical treasures she’d ever laid her hands on– The Book of the Damned. The terms of their deal would be hashed out in 10.19, where Sam agreed to kill Crowley in exchange for her help in translating the book and removing the Mark of Cain from Dean. Sam had no problem agreeing to her terms– killing Crowley who had been sometimes an ally and sometimes an enemy, but he would struggle to actually complete the mission. The main plot of 10.19, though, is fascinating to me in terms of overall themes. And this was, again, Bobo writing Rowena.

The Werther Project. Sam calls Rowena for help when he finds the location of the codex she needs to decipher the Book of the Damned, held in a long-abandoned Men of Letters chapter house that had seen tragedy befall it after it was eventually bought by a family who didn’t know of the danger buried behind a wall in their basement. This horrific power– placed there by a man who wanted to use the power the MoL had amassed (particularly in this case a codex stolen from a witch of the Grand Coven) for their own purposes– was broken open by a young woman lashing out in anger against her own unfair treatment by her family (her brother enjoyed privileges she did not, while she was expected to do chores and relinquish her own entertainment for her brother’s comfort).

Sam goes to free this codex– once the product and property of women, from the box that required the death of a Man of Letters (apparently) in order to unlock it. But the box contained a different lock, another layer of protection, as well, in the form of a spell that would compel the people present when it was activated into committing suicide by their own hallucinations. Dean hallucinated himself trapped in Purgatory again where a manifestation of Benny encouraged him to stay, to end it all, and not put the burden of killing him onto Sam and Cas. The woman who’d originally unleashed the curse on her own family had stayed in the house for more than 40 years ensuring that nobody ever fell victim to it again. Her hallucination had been to watch her family kill themselves all over again. At first, Sam hallucinated this woman pushing him to end it, but then Rowena mysteriously arrived and promised to help guide him to the codex.

I had to explain all of this, because Rowena… was Sam’s hallucination. Only instead of just guiding him to kill himself to no purpose– the way Susie and then Dean were being persuaded to– she (as a manifestation of Sam’s own subconscious and knowledge of what they were actually there to retrieve) guided him through opening the box. But Dean broke free of his own hallucination and found Sam bleeding out for the spell, and took over offering his own blood in addition. That was the key, that only two men working together could unlock the box and live, and it was Rowena (or a hallucination of her) that guided him to the solution.

She might not know about it, but this was how Sam saw her even then– as nothing more than the potential solution to his problem. At that time, he was using her just like every other man, which he proved to her when he shackled her in iron and forced her to get to work deciphering the spell to save Dean. BOY HOW THINGS CHANGED by the time Sam would willingly give her the spell to unlock her own bound power, right? 2 ½ seasons of growth, in fact, for both of them.

and a link to the whole thing, on ao3 because it’s way too long for tumblr:

https://archiveofourown.org/works/21641770

Season 10 was a wild ride, culminating in a massive wtf switcheroo of plot, and this episode fell right in the middle of what feels like a narrative wrestling match, where half the writers jumped on board with the shift in thematic meaning and burning down the narrative structure to accommodate and entirely different resolution for the Mark of Cain that completely took Dean and his own internal darkness out of the equation. But in doing that, in Freeing The Divine Feminine, they also gave Rowena a chance, just like Sam would eventually, and just like Rowena herself would eventually ASK for herself in 13.19.

And it started right here:

Hands and handprints have long been a recurring symbol and theme on Supernatural. But at this point in the story, back in 10.19? They’re about to thematically explode all over the place. S11… was super handsy.

https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/tagged/this%20season’s%20getting%20handsy/chrono

And that handprint imagery really started ramping up toward the end of s10– not only with this, but also with Dean in 10.22:

I wrote this back in December:

https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/189794971800/whats-your-take-on-all-the-shots-focusing-on-hands

But like back in s11, I’ve also been remembering how these scenes also focus around “transfers of power.” Or perhaps… the balance of power. In s11, these hands all culminated in Chuck and Amara reuniting, by clasping hands. Talk about a power balance.

But before this, what shook Amara? Was that her touch killed. She ran her hand through the flowers, and they withered and died. She was afraid to accept the kindness of an old woman and feed the pigeons for fear of killing them, too.

And isn’t this EXACTLY Rowena’s story? through everything she’s confessed even going back to s11 (heck, all of this is in my long post linked at the top of this), and wasn’t she directly paralleled AGAINST Amara in 11.18, even though she truly believed herself to be similarly aligned WITH Amara? I think that was the moment Rowena began to truly reassess what she ACTUALLY wanted, by seeing the true depths of The Darkness for herself.

Rowena didn’t exactly know HOW to get this for herself, this redemption, this balance of power, and instead ran the complete opposite direction in s12, abandoning her drive for power and seeking purely human security and protection, but she didn’t exactly have marketable skills aside from manipulating men into providing for her, because of her deeper underlying issues with love, the fear of love, and abandonment and abuse.

It’s literally taken opening up about her darkest fears to Sam to help give her the power, the belief and trust in herself, to find another way, to believe she might be able to change her fate. But as of 15.03, and confirmed in 15.08, she was not enough, she couldn’t redeem herself, even by sacrificing herself to save the world. Horrific, right?

In Chuck’s story, the feminine is sacrificed for the sake of creation.

(to quote Dagon from 12.17 when she informed Kelly of her fate for carrying Jack to term: birthing a nephilim is fatal. always. it’s like Chuck’s story, his creation, can’t abide feminine creation, in any way…and Rowena was punished for her magic just as Mary was murdered TWICE to serve Chuck’s narrative, and Jess was killed to push Sam back into the story, and Eileen has been killed once for daring to interfere with the story and Chuck had planned to kill her again if she hadn’t walked away, and all because he’d had to lock up Amara to start the process of creation in the first place. All of creation has literally been “his story, not hers.” And now Amara has found balance within herself, and is able to walk out of Chuck’s story herself. The only one who hasn’t found balance, redemption, or peace… is Rowena. Well, and Billie, who stepped up to fill the shoes of Death, and who Chuck doesn’t like because she meddles…)

(and omg I went looking for that pic of chuck and amara’s hands clasped at the end of 11.23, I ran across this from the beginning of 11.23, and I’m crylaughing over Chuck in Sam’s arms like that with the “wrong shoulder” grip)

I confess at this point I’ve totally lost the thread of what you were talking about in your first message, aside from the fact it had to do with Sam and Rowena’s relationship as expressed through hands, and honestly… this is the level of the story that the parallel fits.

*restrains self from typing something >.>*

*instead types this* Nice angle on that shot there…

eta, when I came back to tag this after posting, the fact their fingers don’t meet, their hands don’t connect in 15.08 was exactly paralleled to Dean and Cas’s fingers not meeting when Cas healed Dean’s hand, and then when they put their hands next to one another but not touching on the spell bowl immediately before going to Hell and finding Rowena there... there’s disconnects all around!

Lol as I was typing most of this, I had Practical Magic on in the background, wherein two sisters break a centuries-old curse on their family that the men they loved would be doomed to an early death… and they did it, they broke the curse, freed themselves to be able to freely fall in love, by clasping hands.

So please just try and tell me this isn’t imagery directly connected to these themes of love and loss and connection and balance and power.

#Anonymous #this season's getting handsy #spn 15.03 #spn 15.08 #samwitch #spn 10.19 #spn 13.19 #grand unification via love theory #we're bringing back s11 tags so there you go... that was the overarching plotline of s11 and it's looking like it's the endgame plot too

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bookburnt · 5 years ago

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a primer course on T.MA for my mutuals who followed me from other blogs and would like to know what the fuck i’m talking about! (hi, guys. love you.) GONNA BE SPOILER-HEAVY IN HERE.

First off, big ups to the T.MA wiki, which you can consult on anything here, but this post is intended to serve as a very basic overview of the concepts relevant to this blog without forcing y'all to go into wiki levels of detail. The first part of this post is some general TMA terms and concepts, and the second part is some characters who have been relevant to Gerry's story specifically. If you're here for a better understanding of Gerry’s arc and don't care so much about the worldbuilding, scroll down to where I start talking about “who’s...?” and that should help you out.

what’s a “Leitner?” A Leitner is a book but spooky. They make bad things happen and, optionally, give you weird powers. They're usually tied to one of the fourteen(ish) Entities, which I will get into in a bit. Gerard hates these goddamn books, and has a knack for finding them and destroying them. His mother, Mary Keay, ran an antique bookstore that did serious business in them.

what’s an “avatar?” An avatar is a (former?) human working closely with one of the Entities. Over time, the influence of their Entity changes them, often granting them certain powers in exchange for a psychological and physiological need to serve their Entity.

what are these “Entities?” / what’s this “Hunt?” Put as simply as possible, the Entities are, like... fear elementals. There are roughly 14 different entities, though the boundaries between them aren’t clearly drawn in all circumstances. As follows, a quick overview:

The Eye. Fear of being surveiled. The need to know the answers to questions that may destroy you. The Eye is tied to the Magnus Institute. Its avatars can have the ability to magically Know things, understand all languages, and compel others to answer any questions they ask. Gerry was tied to the Eye and had some capacity for Knowing stuff, but wasn’t fully its avatar - or if he was, he refused to feed it, which must have hastened his death.

The Desolation. Fire, but without the warm fuzzy bits. Pure unhinged destruction. Desolation avatars can and will set you on fire with their minds. Gerry’s extensive burn scars are the result of fucking around with a Desolation cultist and finding out. (The cultist also fucked around with Gerry and found out. He’s not around anymore.)

The Hunt. Being tracked by something that won't stop until it kills you. The thrill of the chase. Hunt avatars are capable of killing other avatars, even those who would otherwise be unkillable. The possibility of Gerry being tied to the Hunt is never discussed in canon, but I’ve got my theories. (That last phrase is a link to a post discussing those theories, it just isn't showing up like a link on desktop for some reason.)

The End. Death and dying. Manifestations of the End often involve disruptions of the natural processes of life and death. For instance, the fucked-up necromancy book that Gerry got trapped in after dying was an outcropping of the End.

The Corruption. Bugs, disease, rot, etc. The Corruption's avatars may spread disease wherever they go, or they might just be chock full of worms. Potential of controlling a worm army.

The Flesh. The inherent weirdness of existing in a body. Cannibalism. Flesh avatars may be hulking, twisted parodies of the human form. They might steal your bones, turn you inside out, eat you, or all of the above.

The Distortion. The inherent weirdness of existing in a mind. Doors that shouldn't be there. Getting lost. Being unable to trust your own thoughts. Distortion avatars look, well, distorted when seen in reflections or through glass. Will probably try to get you to go through a door that wasn't there before. You won't like what's on the other side.

The Slaughter. War. Violence. Man's inhumanity to man. The Slaughter often manifests in groups as well as in individuals, so you could get an episode of mass hysteria where an entire small town turns to butchering one another, or you could get an office assistant who just aches to do murder.

The Web. Spiders. Being controlled by external forces. Can operate in extremely subtle ways. Can also just be an unkillable spider who wants you to have a bad time.

The Vast. Really big things. Heights. Your own terrifying insignificance on the cosmic scale.

The Buried. Claustrophobia. Being buried alive.

The Lonely. Being completely alone. Like, completely alone, and never coming back.

The Dark. What it says on the tin.

The Stranger. Something that's not quite right. A joke that you're not in on. Clowns and/or mannequins that might kill you and take your skin.

BONUS: The Extinction. While the other 14 fears have been established for a while (the most recent is the Flesh, which only really came into its own with the advent of mass meat farming), the Extinction is a nascent entity born of anxiety around the idea of the human race destroying itself, and/or being replaced by something else. The boundaries of what constitutes an Extinction manifestation, rather than just a warping of one of the other fears, are unclear.

what’s a “ritual?” Rituals are ways the Entities’ followers and avatars try to influence the world, usually with the end goal of making our world somewhere their Entity can live and feast full-time instead of just sporadically popping in.

what’s the “fearpocalypse?” The only successful ritual to date, as of the end of S4. Possibly the only successful ritual ever, given that it ended the world as we know it and let all 14 fears fully through the gate to fuck everything all the way up. The sky is full of eyeballs now and that's not even the biggest problem. This happened a while after Gerry’s death, but I have a verse where, due to his previous ties to the End and the general befuckening, Gerry is brought back to have a bad time with everyone else.

who’s Mary Keay? Gerard's mother, founder and proprietor of Pinhole Books. Had ambitions of starting a dynasty of supernatural power, starting with her only son Gerard, who ended up having other ideas. Flayed herself in a ritual to make herself “beyond death” via the fucked-up necromancy book mentioned earlier. Gerard was primed to take the fall for her seeming murder, but was let go after the book disappeared from evidence and several key witnesses retracted their testimony. Despite the ritual being incomplete, Mary remained tethered to the world of the living for five years before Gertrude Robinson finally wrapped that up.

who’s Gertrude Robinson? Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, and a stone-cold BAMF with a habit of sacrificing those close to her for (her idea of) the greater good. The late Eric Delano asked her to look after his son Gerry, so naturally she let him live in torment with his abuser’s revenant for five fucking years, then swooped in when he was truly desperate. She got rid of Mary Keay for good, and got Gerard to travel the world with her attempting to prevent various apocalyptic rituals. The two would often pose as mother and son to strangers. Being tied to the Eye, Gertrude seemed to be aware of Gerard’s impending death. After he passed away, she bound him into that fucked-up necromancy book and left him behind. (More on that here.) Gertrude was shot to death about a year later while trying to burn the Magnus Institute down and thereby prevent its head, Elias Bouchard, from doing anything apocalyptic. (Tragically, she did not succeed. SEE: “fearpocalypse.”)

who’s Eric Delano? Gerry’s father. Died too early to ever really get to know Gerry, despite the sacrifices he made to restructure his life for fatherhood. (We don’t need to go into the why of it here, but he did have to gouge his eyes out to try to be a stay-at-home dad. And he did it. We stan.) Unfortunately, he’d fallen in love with Mary Keay, who used him to produce an heir for her planned empire, then murdered him with a pair of garden shears and bound him into that fucked-up necromancy book. She later passed his page off to Gertrude Robinson, who spoke with him. In that conversation, he asked her to look after Gerry and begged her to burn his page, as being bound into the book was a world of suffering.

who’s Jurgen Leitner? A rich, reclusive Norwegian who thought it would be cool and smart to start a library explicitly for corralling forces beyond human comprehension. (He was wrong, and also stupid.) Collected spooky books and put his name in them, giving them their common name. Gerard hates this guy, associating him with the books that dominated his mother’s mind and indirectly ruined his life. He hunted Leitner down and nearly beat him to death for personal reasons. Upon meeting Leitner, he came away with the impression that this was just a scared old man, and couldn’t possibly be actually responsible for Jurgen Leitner’s library. Ultimately, he chose to spare Leitner's life. Unless we're talking about my canon-divergent Hunter!Gerry au, in which case he did not.

Anyways, hope this has been helpful. There's... a lot going on in TMA, but hopefully I've hit the parts that are most relevant to my writing here. If you have any questions about canon, please feel free to ask!

#and return from the ashes you call | RE: MARY ⚿#with all the lies in the books | RE: LEITNER ⚿#I'm writing this letter and wishing you well | RE: GERTRUDE ⚿#⁠he said son when you grow up— | RE: ERIC ⚿

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kabane52 · 4 years ago

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The Covenantal Basis of Sacramental Validity

Good question:

Do Oriental Orthodox have valid sacraments? What about the Anglicans or the Assyrian Church of the East. Where do you draw the line? Much appreciated!

I believe the Oriental Orthodox, the Assyrian Church of the East, and the Roman Catholic Church have a valid priesthood and sacraments. The reason I say so is that the formal teaching of the Church of England after the Elizabethan reforms preclude the sort of priestly charism whose transmission is the essential purpose of the sacrament of ordination.

But we ought to be precise about what it means for a church to have valid priesthood and sacraments. Indeed, what is the theological basis for such things as a valid baptism? The apostles, particularly Paul, closely associate the faith which justifies the Christian with the mystery of baptism. Romans 6:7 says that a person is “justified” from sin in baptism in the same letter where justification by faith is a major emphasis. A person is justified by faith in baptism. We can also compare the language of Ephesians 2:8-10 to the description of baptism in Colossians 2 to see the key connection. I believe the most helpful text in this regard is Acts 22, where Ananias says to Paul: “rise, be baptized, and wash away your sins, calling on His Name.”

The phrase “calling on the Name of the Lord” is first used in Genesis 4 and is echoed throughout the law, the prophets, and the New Testament. Its use in the New Testament principally derives from the text in Joel 2 where we are told that the Spirit will be “poured out on all flesh” so that “all who call on the Name of the Lord” will be saved. Notice that there is a very close conceptual link between the words “Name” and “call.” The word “call” is frequently used in scripture to denote the verbal act of naming. In one respect, then, the phrase means “Naming the Name of the Lord.” In baptism, we are given a new name through death and resurrection by being baptized “into” the Name of the Lord. The genealogy that begins with the son of Adam who initiates “calling on the Name of the Lord” is brought to a new beginning with Shem- whose name means “name.” Shem’s genealogy is brought to a new beginning through Abram, whom God promises to give a “great Name” and who receives a new personal name.

What, then, accounts for the connection between these two words? To grasp this, one must attend to the biblical freight of the “Name of the Lord.” In scripture, as in traditional societies, a personal name expresses the intrinsic qualities and character of a person. God thus “reveals” His Name “Yahweh” (“the Lord”) for the first time in Exodus because it is in the exodus that the quality of God signified by this Name “Yahweh” is covenantally revealed. In the patriarchal period, God’s preeminent name was “God Almighty.” The word “Shaddai”, based on other Near Eastern cognates, seems to relate to the mountain, both in the greatness and power signified by the mountain and also from the mountain’s relation to the human breast. While this might sound bizarre, consider the contexts in which God is revealed as “Shaddai.” God is “El Shaddai” when He makes prophetic promises which appear to be, at first glance, extremely unlikely. God promises the barren and decrepit that they will have countless children. How can we trust this promise? Because God is mighty as the great mountains. And what is being promised? A family- God will give the family of Abraham a fresh birth and nourish them with milk in their promised land. The imagery of birth is used in Deuteronomy 32 among other places: the Lord “gave [Israel] birth.”

The God with the power to give birth through the barren and do the impossible is the God who is the living and regenerative Almighty.

“The Lord” is revealed in exodus because the word “Yahweh” signifies the One who actively fulfills the promises made. The phrase “I am who I am” is transtemporal and can be read “I was who I was”, “I am who I am” and “I will be who I will be.” This is why in the Apocalypse, the Lord God is described as He who “was and is and is to come.” When Yahweh reveals the Name to Moses, He does so in the context of revealing the imminent fulfillment of the Abrahamic promise in Genesis 15. The enactment of the exodus is the public revelation of the God of Abraham as the Existent One, He who is sovereign in all things and does according to His will to be gracious to a sinful nation and judge the wicked. Moses tells Pharoah that God does these things precisely in order that “my Name might be proclaimed throughout all the Earth.” The tabernacle and temple is described as a place where God sets the Name. Israel may build altars wherever the “Name” is remembered. In Exodus 32-34, we read the most important text in the whole Hebrew Bible concerning the revelation of the Name. Israel has sinned against God and has made His dwelling personally in their midst dangerous. Moses ascends the mountain, the Lord tells him to enter into a cave, and we are told that the Lord “descended in the cloud and stood with him there, and proclaimed the Name of the Lord.”

The proclamation of that Name is a proclamation of God’s character governing His relationship with the creation and undergirding His gracious renewal of the covenant with Israel. He is full of steadfast love and faithfulness, pardoning iniquity, showing His grace to thousands of generations, but also judging iniquity to the fourth generation. This text is echoed throughout the prophets and the New Testament. The statement that Jesus is “full of grace and truth” echoes Exodus 34 in its Greek translation. God’s love is more ultimate than His judgment, but His judgment is a real and sobering reality to which we must attend. The revelation of this Name in divine glory transforms Moses. His being placed in the cave signifies death, going into the Earth. The hand of the Lord is upon him, creating a bond between the Lord and the prophet. And when Moses descends, his face radiates with the glory of God, so that Israel exhibits the very same fear they exhibited when God descended in glory on Sinai. Moses is veiled just as the Lord is veiled. The revelation of the Divine Name is such that it recreates the person by their being drawn into that Name, sharing in these qualities.

It is the promise of divine faithfulness which is most relevant in considering the theology of the sacraments. Throughout the scriptures, the “calling on the Name of the Lord” occurs in a liturgical and ritual context. In Genesis 12:8 and 13:4, Abraham calls upon the Name of the Lord at an altar. The same thing happens to Isaac in Genesis 26:5. Moreover, these altars are built in the immediate context of God revealing Himself and making a promise. When Elijah builds the altar at Carmel, he challenges the priests of Baal to “call on the name” of their god as he will “call upon the Name of the Lord.” In light of everything we have seen, “calling on the Name of the Lord” is best understood as a ritual expression of trust in the divine promises. God has promised to act in a specific way and He will always fulfill that promise.

The altar is a liturgical symbol of the holy mountain, after all, a ladder to heaven through which the glory-fire of God flows to Earth. It is at the altar that the person comes to meet God. The underlying logic of the sacrificial system depends on these expressions of faith. The ascension offering of Leviticus 1 symbolically re-enacts Israel’s exodus from Egypt and covenant with the Lord at Sinai. An Israelite who wishes to manifest or restore his relationship with the gracious Lord performs certain actions as the Lord commanded. Having done what the Lord commanded, He trusts that the Lord will do what He has promised to do when these commands are followed. To “call on the Name of the Lord” is to ask the Lord to fulfill the promises He has made. The Name which is called upon denotes this particular fidelity.

In Zephaniah, we are told that God will change the lip of the nations to be a pure lip. The word “lip” does not principally denote a national language. Its usage throughout the Hebrew Bible reveals the lip to be the instrument by which one calls upon one’s god. As David says of the false gods: “their drink offerings of blood I will not pour out, nor take their names on my lips.” Isaiah 19, prophesying the healing of Egypt and Assyria, Israel’s oppressor nations, states that four out of five cities will speak one lip with the redeemed Israel. And in Genesis 11, we read that the human family was both of one lip and one language. The twofold nature of the Babel-project was sacral and cultural. There was a tower (a temple and ladder to heaven) and a city. There was both a false profession and a false, undifferentiated unity. Both are scattered. God creates a plenitude of nations and turns the idolaters against one another. The builders sought to utilize this false religion to exalt themselves, giving themselves a “great Name.” It is in the aftermath of the collapse of the Babel-project that God promises Abraham a “great Name” in the city which is to come. Abraham builds a true altar and calls upon the Name of the true God.

Zephaniah 3 thus speaks of the gathering of the many-tongued nations around a single, true altar, at which the pure lip of divine worship is restored. All nations “call upon the Name of the Lord and serve Him with one accord.” (Zephaniah 3:9) In light of the literary unity of the Twelve Prophets (Hosea-Malachi), we see this to be a further exploration of the word given to Joel. God will “pour out” His “Spirit on all flesh.” It is on that day that “all who call on the Name of the Lord will be saved.” The Spirit of God descends to create a family of nations attached to Israel as the heirs of promise, a family brought into One Name and reborn in and through that Name. Through the Spirit, men “call upon the Name of the Lord” and are saved. Indeed, Joel 2:32 uses the very same word in both directions: “all who **call** on the Name of the Lord will be saved” and “among the survivors shall be those whom the Lord **calls.**” [In context of the Twelve, the survivors refer to people who are redeemed through the world’s being turned upside down. Being redeemed, they come to Zion and are made holy, in the direct presence of God.]

As Paul says in Hebrews 11, we are promised a beautiful inheritance. The possession of that inheritance comes through walking with God through faith. “Whoever would draw near to God must believe that He exists and that He rewards those who seek Him.” God has promised to forgive our sins when we repent. He has promised the indwelling Holy Spirit who will engrave the words of the Incarnate Word on our heart. Faith means trusting that God will be faithful to give everything He promised. To “draw near” to God means to enter into His presence. The “city which was to come” spoken of by Paul is the city suffused and irradiated with divine presence. It is that very city on Zion to which the nations who call on the Name of the Lord are gathered.

Baptism and Eucharist are the preeminent acts by which we liturgically “call upon the Name of the Lord.” In both cases, we have direct instructions from Jesus Christ. We are to baptize in the Name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We are to “do” the Lord’s Supper as the covenant memorial of Christ’s work. Faith undergirds baptism precisely because it is faith which trusts that God will do exactly what He said He would do in the baptismal waters. God said “if you do this, I will meet you here.” And it is in that meeting that we are given the new Name in His Name, reborn unto a resurrected and glorified life. Baptism is usually not attended by a dramatic and visible sign of God’s miraculous presence. Faith affirms that He will do and has done precisely what He promised in the waters of baptism. The same is true of the Eucharist. In the celebration of the Eucharist, the Church joins its work to the perfect work of Christ. Christ gathers up all creation into His Memory and wholly offers it to God the Father. That a human being made this perfect offering repairs the rupture which came in the fall. When joined to the offering of Christ, the ubiquitous imperfections in our offering die with Christ so that only the gold remains. The Church gathers up the manifold wisdom of God throughout the cosmos and offers it, in glorified, transfigured form, to God the Father, fulfilling the divine purpose given to the human family.

3 notes · View notes