#girls with religious trauma who kill my beloveds

[angsty-art-ist]

and G-d made Eve to bear the curse of blood

[yourlegacysnotyourstosee]

I took notes on my thoughts while watching Nerdy Prudes Must Die because I did the same for Black Friday

DAMN Jon said “I am a TENOR”

I literally can’t get over how good he sounds

AHHHHHH LAUREN!!!!!

Bro these songs SLAP

Damn Mariahs hair is so long

Pete is such a mood

I’m literally terrified of being pantsed so bad

BRUH NOT MICRO-PETER

Omg hey Kim

When Cory enthusiastically agrees I’m dying

Omg Max likes Grace???????

Wait that’s so cute

Wait why’s he kinda fine

“His name is Jesus Christ” HELP 💀💀💀💀💀

It’s giving Apex Predator (from Mean Girls)

Damn these HARMONIES THO

My jaw is on the floor the way Cory is talking to her

“How am I supposed to study without listening to Spotify?” ME LMFAO

I KNOW HE DID NOT JUST MAKE AN ISSAC NEWTON JOKE

The way hes like “this is about thermodynamics” me me me. I hate when people make jokes about the things we’re not even talking about.

“NANI” NO WAY HE SAID THAT HELP💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀I LITERALLY CANNOT BREATHE 💀💀💀💀💀💀

Study date????????

Joey Richter my beloved ❤️❤️❤️

When Max enters and the crowd cheers

“Rondevuch”

Max literally has a God complex

Why is Kim everyones mom?

“Walen place”?????

“Mom will you pass the butt stuff????” HELP SHES BEEN CORRUPTED

NO WAY SHES FANTASIZING ABOUT MAX JAGERMAN

LITERALLY WHAT

Awwww Grace is experiencing Catholic Guilt™ ❤️❤️❤️

Girl wdym “he’s gotta go”???

Laurens character is bisexual???????

“WAIFU MATERIAL”?????? I literally can’t get over Jons character

Wait Grace is a little fucked up actually

Wait since the Waylons built hatchetfield high and the starlight theater, could they have cursed the town somehow? Like I know about the evil brothers or whatever, but I’m not super familiar with the lore

Wait I kind of love Grace now

Mariah slays

“Am I reading as Ghost, or Lin Manuel Miranda?” AWWWWWW❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

“Your fucking useless Pete.” Tgwdlm???? In MY npmd???? It’s more likely than you think

I’m very suspicious about how fast they seemed to put the plan together…

I know the plan wont work and Im so nervous I’m getting secondhand embarrassment so bad rn

“Skele-ens”

I need Max Jagerman actually

Awwww Max is a Theater Kid ❤️❤️❤️

AW FUCK HE DIED

HOLY FUCK HE DIED

GIRL WTF IS WRONG WITH GRACE

I love how upbeat this song is

WHYD SHE CUT HIS NIPPLES OFF WTF

Omg Dan and Donna!

Slay Mayor Lauter

His reaction to being asked to the game is giving- “she asked me for the time” “no way” “way :D”

THE NIGHTHAWKS MASCOT 💀💀💀💀

FUCK CLIVESDALE

DAMN THEYRE IN THE SPLITS GOOD FOR THEM

I like that the football team has only 2 players

I love when actors walk through the audience, but ESPECIALLY here when hes stalking Richie bro looks so good

Listen I know he’s about to kill Richie but HES SO FINE HELP

Im literally so Gay bro

THE SMOKE CLUB!!!!!!

THE NIGHTMARE TIME THEME

When she says hes not hot anymore girl speak for yoursef

Please let Grace swear

Oh fuck they’re giving themselves away

Grace Chastity said “acab”

Cory needs more songs

MAN IN A HURRY RETURNS!!!!!

Damn who is this girl in a trenchcoat 😍😍😍

GERALD OH MY GOD

Random side note but what happened to Robert? I was just thinking about how I wish we could see Hidgens again but is Robert still a part of Starkid anymore? Is he on to Bigger and Better things? Does anyone know what those are? I’d love to continue to support him.

Edit: NVM NVM I TAKE IT BACK I DO NOT WANT TO SUPPORT ROBERT MANION NO NO NO SIR

The invisible bird. Literally high school theater

“Heahs the thang about ah bahbecue”

“Ah wawna remember who ah ayum”

Ruth is so real for not know when to do the lights bc the cue lines were wrong

Ugh Laurens voice is so good and I know ive said that about pretty much everyone but it’s true

I know shes about to die rn

The red lighting gave it away

THE WAY HE LOOKS INTO CAMERA AFTER HE KILLS HER I NEED HIM SO BAD

Why did Kim scream like that

Awww Grace has religious trauma now ❤️❤️❤️

THE COPS THEME

OH MY GOD PAUL AND EMMA!!!!!!!!!

He gave her his number❤️❤️❤️

Hot chocolate boy!!!!!!!! I knew Peter was the hot chocolate boy but still

This duet is EVERYTHING

Obsessed with the fact he called MARIAH ROSE FAITH a MEAN GIRL

“Axe wielding maniacs?”

The Waylons did not dig that shit very deep…

OH FUCK THEY HAVE TO SUMMIN THE LORDS IN BLACK

I KNEW THE WAYLONS BUILT LAKESIDE MALL

im so sorry Zombie Max is So Fine

WIGGLY

THEY HAVE HUMAN FORMS??????

“Let me check my Christmas list”

“What do you want steph?” MORE tgwdlm? In MY npmd?

I feel bad for not knowing all their names

Max says bitch a lot

Damn this show is long

Omg this is so sad im tearing up a lil

Max is so fucking funny

Damn Grace is seducing Max this is hilarious

Fuck Grace Chastity or kill some nerds? One of the many difficult decisions in life

He decides to fuck Grace Chastity

OH MY GOD THATS SO SMART

Thats some fuckin Macbeth level shit

Kims teacher character is so cute awwwww

Paul and Bill dance Chaperones??????

Oh nvm that’s Jason

I don’t think I ever mentioned it but the dancing is really good

It’s very clean and crisp

In the last 2 hours I very quickly developed a massive crush on Will Branner

OH FUCK

WHATS GOING ON

WHAT

[little-meowyao]

Hello..If you don't mind me asking (again), can I ask, what are your top 7 (or top 10) favorite media (can be books/ manga/ anime/movies/tv series/etc) and your top 10 favorite (fictional) characters from any media? Why do you love them all? Sorry if you've answered this questions before......

I haven't! And I'm so thrilled you sent this actually

(Readmore because long-ish post)

So when it comes to medias, I am going to say (and I hope you don't mind classics lol)

No Longer Human

This book is just. Everything to me. You have no idea I went through it so quickly I ADORE IT. Literature bible

Did you ever get the feeling of being so similiar to someone, so close, but there's just this sense of sheer disconnect from them? Like a thread that should in all reason hold two things together but doesn't? "Hello, I feel disconnected from humanity" "Hello, I feel disconnected from humanity too but I can't relate to you"

No Longer Human my beloved

2. Nirvana in Fire

This speaks for itself, I think. It is so incredibly intricate and compelling, also I love Lying Liars Who Lie. And trajedies. I like palace/political dramas a lot!

3. I Became a God in a Horror Game (GHG)

How do I even begin to explain this one. It's a 1.5 million words beast. I've only read half of it. I am on the edge of my seat always. The protagonist is kinda scummy, money-obsessed, and so so interesting. They have powers

Again, I've only read half of it, but it's that kinda novel that just keeps you READING READING READING. I like it a lot

There is a beast of a little girl and a little clown named Daniel. He only just started appearing but if anything happens to him, I will kill everyone in the room and then myself. He's murderous, but that's fine because he spent 10 years in constant torment

The worldbuilding is super intricate

4. Bungo Stray Dogs

I love the worldbuilding (although Fyodor's ability reveal was super whack) but the relationships are what get me. Fyolai especially, a hyper religious man with a savior complex that in the latest chaps I've read is implied to be kinda suicidal and an atheist clown who seeks pure freedom and wants to kill Fyodor because his affection for him is a cage and he also reeks of religious trauma. They are So Insane

Dazai is my most favourite for obvious reasons (see: NLH rant above) but Mori. Mori, this man. Wow

VERY controversial opinion within BSD fandom but I adore Mori and desperately want to know more about him. I will murder someone if his entire backstory isn't shown

Also Fuukuchi. [Weary sigh] I adore Fukuchi. Such a complicated man

5. Mo Dao Zu Shi

I really didn't think I'd put it this low but it's kinda whack actually. Very compelling but also unfortunately very vague world. I love the social dynamics at play and I do think that the ending, while super cruel and horrible to so many people, is thematically appropriate

Also it contains my currently favourite blorbo! Jin Guangyao my dearest. What an interesting little bug

6. The Inheritance Cycle

One way more childish than above (YA) but so good nonetheless. I love the implications of the magic system (a whole language that invokes magic! The Ancient Language) and of the dragons, but especially of the ra'zac. Gods the ra'zac

Birdish creatures that exist outside of the magic grid of the Ancient Language. They cannot use magic but they cannot be detected by it either. Most likely they don't have a name in the ancient language (the One True language of the world that dictates natural laws, kinda). They seem to be natural predators to humans

Their natural speech is hisses and clicks and stuff but they can speak. Then they metamorphise into lethrblaka and lose the ability to speak, and start flying

I also love the implications of the dragons being able to just erase things from existence (via bouts of magic they don't entirely control). They erased the names of the thirteen dragons that willingly participated in the massacre of their species. Their names cannot be spoken out loud and anyone that reads them quickly forgets. It also doomed the dragons to isolation, because any sort of communication or "I like [thing]" would be like naming themselves. Many of their riders (humans bonded to them since their birth) went insane because of that, and a notion dragons are wild beasts spread from that (they're not, they're as sentient and intelligent as any human)

And 7. The Plated Prisioner series

The worldbuilding is not super complex. They have powers that come from fae ancestors, and that's about it (so far; I've only read up to the 4th book)

What keeps me hooked is the story itself. The pacing is actually really good (I think) and the story just keeps going and you just want to keep reading and reading and reading. There are moments of massive tension and people who die and the transformation of the mc is incredibly cool

8. Genshin Impact

This would probably be further up if you'd asked me an year or two ago. I like the story a lot and the characters are really cool. All The Fuckery of Mondstadt has me hooked (why do essentially all the Mondstadt characters have some trauma or something weird about them. Genuinely. And what was the deal with the upside down statue. And why is Celestia pointing to it)

I am really looking foward to 7.0 version and beyond where we get to FINALLY face the main antagonists (HOPEFULLY BECAUSE IF IT ISN'T THE TSARITSA WHO COULD IT BE) and then for Kahenri'ah. There's a character (Dainsleif) that shows up once an year, drops a lore bomb, traumadumps, and then disappears, and he has the entire playerbase by the throath. Though the lsst two quests with him have been sadly very short :(

As for my blorbos, I'm just gonna list some of them (in no particular order)

This is /checks notes, 6 books (series), a show, and a game

Jin Guangyao (MDZS)

Qi Rong (TGCF)

Kaeya (Genshin Impact)

Dainsleif (Genshin Impact)

Bai Liu (GHG)

Dazai (BSD)

Fyodor (BSD)

Mori (BSD)

Nikolai (BSD)

Fukuchi (BSD)

Lan Xichen (MDZS)

Nie Mingjue (MDZS)

Daniel (GHG)

Georgia (GHG)

Tang Erda (GHG)

[the-teddy-bear-butch]

1, 3, 12, 13, 15, 19, 23, 24, 25, 27! Or I’d say any 5 from this list that you want lol because this is a lot

Oh boy [cracks knuckles]

1: favorite fic you wrote this year

Definitely the Christmas fic! I just enjoy the fluff so much and I worked really hard on it.

3: favorite line/scene you wrote this year

I answered this one with the ao3 wrapped asks forever ago but I’ll say it again! I like the imagery in this scene and this is where I think my descriptive writing and sense of metaphors really fell into place, from bad idea!

The girl in front of Robin moved back and forth, alcohol strong on her breath. She laughed as Robin spun her and pulled her close, her breath hot on the stranger’s ear. She made pointed eye contact across the bar, watching as Nancy was illuminated in soft pink. It matched the shade of her lips—the blush Robin wanted to put on her cheeks.

Blue light shone down on Robin and the stranger, gleaming in the former’s stormy eyes as they met with Nancy’s ocean.

Waves crashed and lightning struck, filling the room with unbearable electricity. The lights met and flared in an intense clash of violet sky, and Robin knew she was doomed to be lost at sea. Her heart was racing with exertion and excitement, drawn against her will to the other girl—the girl who wanted to kill her. The girl who was probably planning her demise at this very moment. The thought was exhilarating.

12: favorite character to write about this year

Nancy Wheeler my beloved <33 She’s just such a complex, malleable character. I love writing her personality and trying to figure out how she would respond in certain scenarios—and since the Duffers won’t let her explore her trauma, I will!! Also as an eldest daughter burnt out gifted kid… She’s very projection shaped

13: favorite writing song/album/artist of this year

Stick Season by Noah Kahan for sure! I still would really, really like to write a string of one shots for each song, but especially Growing Sideways, Northern Attitude, and The View Between Villages. I love his music and his voice and I think it’s very easy to ronancify this album lol

15: something you learned this year

Oh this one is fun. Imma be cheesy about it. I learned to stop letting what other people think of me get in the way of having fun. I was so against ever writing fic because “I don’t want to be cringe and get made fun of.” Fuck that. I am cringe and it’s FUN. I will own it with pride. I like my silly little self indulgent fics.

19: any new fics to start next year

Oh god so many. I’m not kidding when I say I’m past 30 on the WIP/idea list. I’ll toss some favorites tho:

say you’re gonna come back: one shot based on Sports Car by Valley, Ronance reunite and fall in love all over again years down the road

there in the garden, she looked my way: beauty and the beast au multi chapter featuring vampire Nancy and just so much pining

she will pull the trigger: monster hunter Nance and werewolf Rob and they’re both GNC ft toxic lesbianism because wanting to kill each other is sexy

23: fics you wanted to write but didn’t

I’m still thinking so hard about run, devil, run, which was a Wild West au featuring werewolf Nance and vampire Rob but I don’t think that one will stick. I go through a circle of phases of really stubborn hyperfixations and the wild west pops up as one of them but never stays for long. Was feeling it for a week, wrote one scene, then sort of dropped it to lowest priority

24: favorite fic you read this year

Oh god there are so many. I refuse to pick just one, but I’ll stick with 3 I think.

One of them (surprise) is you! a never ending story changed my brain chemistry. dungeon master rules lawyer repressed furious mega nerd comphet religious guilt traumatized Nancy my beloved!!!! Not saying I’d get a tattoo based off a fic but I am saying a d20 on 13 would be so cool… (also special shout out to DITM, I love that one dearly too, especially Martha) I also ADORE when you can tell a writer is into poetry and it shows in their word. Flowery prose and heart shattering metaphors my beloved

I have sung praises about this fic and I’ll fucking do it again. Bloodletting my beloved. I am once again in awe of the way @lavenderlevetan weaves the story and connects all the pieces. I love the dynamic and the way the tension builds. I am feral about vampires and biting, sue me.

And I have to say put me in the movies (on a king sized silver screen) by @sapphicriley is also one of my all time favorites. I love the back and forth banter and it’s sweet and fluffy and it’s just a feel good fic and I like to reread it when I’m feeling down. Another example of poetic writing as well <33

25: a fic you read this year that you would recommend everyone read

Well all of the one from above ofc. Also dancing in the moonlight. Also,,, Raise Dead by @eskawrites killed me and healed me. If you can handle the angst, this one is an incredible read and I cannot recommend it enough. I don’t really cry when reading, but this one actually had me in tears in the best way.

27: favorite fanfic author of the year

This is like asking me to pick a favorite child. God. I’m terms of writing, I have to say it’s between a few, but there’s this one rando who wrote this D&D fic and also one about monster fucking. You might have heard of her? I think her name is summersociety or something.

I also adore @lavenderlevetan (I will continue to scream about Bloodletting forever!!!) and you guys are in for a treat with some of the WIP sneak peeks I’ve gotten from @suwunnysideup

And I have to say every single one of my mutuals are just such incredible, talented writers, and such amazing friends. I love you all. 🥺

[potatoesandsunshine]

Same anon as before, I loved the lil fic you did abt Astarion and Taryn, you captured his personality SO well. And Taryn, beloved girl. Absolutely fascinating character study. I’m very curious abt your cleric as well!!

bg3 anon my best friend bg3 anon <3 tysm!! i was really proud of that astarion characterization and i'm glad it was good. i'm juggling a couple ideas with her along with this new playthrough - cried my way through the game epilogue but i just wasn't ready to put her down.

currently chipping away at the postgame waterdeep newlyweds era - the idea of 'tav' as a character taryn has made up to deal with it all is just. she's so much. she can find a way to be honest about her feelings as long as she's pretending to be someone else. and thinking about her and tara is like... the friction between them dissolved when tara realized 'oh, another one'. anyway, i have to learn to write stage direction before i go any further with this idea but it's like five stories smashed together right now (taryn missing the rest of the party/newly married bliss/the sheer trauma of the waterdeep tower/the play within the play/can you befriend a tressym who has decided, no, i'm adopting you) oh! and there's also the alfira story but i think that's a separate fic.

and my cleric!!!!!!!!

this is elsie <3 (a blue tiefling cleric? groundbreaking.) she's got SO much wrong with her she is PERFECT to me. she's a tempest domain follower of talos, but it's kind of the classic 'surely this cheerful character can't be serving evil, can she?' situation. she can be. she's not actually sure WHAT she's doing on any given day. anyway, some elsie fun facts!

her name isn't elspeth, which i think would make more sense for the nickname - it's elisaveta, because a cleric being called 'god is my oath' made something insane happen in my brain. literally it would only be better if she were a paladin. elisaveta storm-heart welcome to the world it will be bad for you.

on my end of it (in the game she's got the acolyte background) when she was fifteen she... ran afoul of(?) and/or was chosen (?) by talos - in a blatant karlach parallel, he ripped out her heart and put a storm in its place, which is how i think of that tempest cleric reaction where you can zap people manifested

this has led to a... kind of weird perception of gods in general? i've got the idea for a conversation between her & one of the companions where she says something like "I've heard of people who choose their gods, but in my experience it's always the other way around" // she would be super insane about the gale-mystra situation but it's only act 1 she doesn't know about it

every misfortune in her life is attributed directly to the god she worships. yeah the logic just isn't there but when she was young and freshly-zapped by lightning the group of talos cultists that picked her up just said this is how it is.

she has fully outsourced her moral compass to wyll, which is honestly one of the best moves she could've made. you're welcome faerun.

i also characterize her as someone who has very strong initial emotional reactions to things - she's a crier, she stomps her feet, she throws things if she's by herself, little lightning bolts from her fingertips etc. taryn shifted into resignation so quickly, but elsie is really different! she's bad at hiding how she feels and she feels strongly. who's crying behind the last light inn? elsie. who's screaming at ketheric while he tries to monologue? elsie. who ran back to the enclave and killed kahga before considering any other options? elsie.

we're really early game with her so she doesn't know about any of the dead three stuff but she's going to be VERY unimpressed. if she didn't hate gortash already for the whole selling her girlfriend to hell thing, she'd hate him as... a religious obligation? and not in a sexy way like whatever he had going on with the bhaalspawn, more like a 'how dare these worms try to end the world that's literally what i was given the holy mission to do (that i've been ignoring)'

anyway she's super cute she has gray hair streaks for fantasy bullshit reasons and she's pretty sure talos never actually checks if she's doing her homework so it's fine, really, everybody's getting dramatic over nothing

[signalwatch]

Marilyn-Noir Watch: Don't Bother To Knock (1952)

Watched::

Format:  TCM

Viewing:  First

Director:  Roy Ward Baker

Huh.  This was not at all what I was expecting.  

Essentially a movie about post-war trauma, wrapped up in a taught 76 minute, thriller-like package, it's maybe more *real* than the well-rehearsed, twitter-friendly approaches to mental illness we'd see in a film now.  It's a thriller without a villain, even though that doesn't feel like the set-up - and the movie absolutely has empathy in spades and as a reflection of a nation on the other side of the war, doesn't really have time for your finger-wagging.

Marilyn Monroe plays a woman new to New York City, whose uncle (Elijah Cook Jr.!) - an elevator operator in a hotel - has landed her a one-night job as a babysitter for a rich couple, the husband there to collect an award for his editorials.  While they're at the ceremony, they'll have Monroe watch over their daughter.

Anne Bancroft (in one of her first roles) is the lounge singer in the hotel, and while she's tried to break up with her sometimes boyfriend in the shape of Richard Widmark playing a cocksure airline pilot, he's shown up at the hotel and is looking to ignore her plans for a split.  

Bancroft is serious, tells him why he sux (he's made being a dick his whole personality) and shoos him away.  He goes back to his room upstairs which looks across a courtyard into Monroe's room and calls over, mistaking her for a society dame.  

But, uh-oh.  Monroe is deeply unbalanced, delusional, and physically dangerous.

Look, Monroe is @#$%ing great here.  I've not watched the various recent movies about Monroe, I don't know what they're telling people about her, but when she's on screen, all the superlatives fit.  Apparently (according to Muller) she was very Monroe on set, but when Widmark saw the dailies, he was like, hey whatever her goofy process is, who cares.  This works.  And it does.

Released seven years after the war, you're in the period where people are still talking about it in shorthand.  Monroe's character had something like a nervous breakdown when her beloved died en route to Hawaii carrying cargo during the war, and she tried to kill herself, ending up in a psych ward. Oh, and apparently her parents were religious zealots who made her life hell.  An armchair diagnoses also suggests schizophrenia (I am not a licensed anything) as Monroe drifts between shifting versions of reality.  Unfortunately, it also means she can be violent - aiming her aggression at anyone.  And that can be little girls and uncles.

But the movie is about the compassion you still have to have for the raving lunatic in front of you.  Even guys who maybe came out of the war inside a shell of cynicism and nihilism - and that's... no small thing.  And maybe the message is more impactful because of the near-horrors of the movie and the rapidly escalating madness as Monroe goes wilder and wilder as her reality splinters.

Anyway, I appreciate the nearly play-like vibe as the movie takes place in near real-time over a single portion of an evening, the inversion of my expectations (I expected Widmark would stalk Monroe and the kid) and the deeply sincere ending of the film - and room for growth for Widmark's character.  It's a deeply f'd up movie, and a sliver of what was happening as post-War trauma played out across the world for everyone in unpredictable and unfortunate ways.  And when you can show people being unpleasant, sometimes you get at something.

https://ift.tt/M40osnK

from The Signal Watch https://ift.tt/vhO820x

[tros-for-dinner]

Like, okay, I need to talk about trauma a second

I’m reading The Body Keeps the Score right now - it’s a pretty comprehensive book about PTSD and trauma, and treatment of trauma-related mental illnesses and, like, I just keep thinking about Kylo (Ben)

In one sentence: Kylo is a deeply traumatized man and I can’t stop thinking about it.

As a general rule I don’t care about the ancillary materials, but “absentee parents” and “being left with droid caretakers that tried to kill him” is trauma - he didn’t have someone to comfort him and his usual caretakers weren’t safe. He probably started acting out, as what happens to kids that go through that. He was also deeply empathetic (metaphorically represented by being strong in the Force) so every lie that was told to him, every time someone feared him because of his ancestors, every time someone tried to use him because of his family - those are all wounds, too. Then, maybe because he was acting out, maybe because he was a deeply religious kid, he goes to live the ascetic life with his beloved Uncle Luke.

And I know this is my own headcanon, but knowing what I now know about trauma: he was still suffering the emotional effects of trauma. The fear, the mistrust, the anxiety, the anger - his fellow Force-sensitive students (and Luke) could feel those emotions. In the Jedi tradition, you either shut that shit down or you’re assumed to be on the road to the Dark Side.

Here’s the problem: the fear, the anxiety, the anger triggered by the pain of trauma can’t just be meditated away. It’s fight/flight instinct; it’s literally the oldest, most sub-conscious part of the brain reacting to the memory of pain and trying to prevent future pain. You can’t control it. You can’t reason with it. You either heal it or it controls you.

Luke can feel that his methods aren’t working but he hasn’t been trained in psychology so he has no idea how to fix this problem. Luke is deeply afraid of the Dark Side, and he was taught that emotions - a deeply-rooted function of the brain - are inherently ‘evil’ and cause self-destruction for the Jedi. Luke has a “all or nothing” “either I do it all or I’m a failure” mindset so he starts feeling despair at the bitter taste of failure. One night, out of pure fear, he takes an uninhibited look into his nephew’s mind (notably, without his consent) and sees how bad things could be in the future. For an instant, he honestly considers killing Ben to prevent that future from happening.

Here’s a question: what would you do if you woke up to a trusted, beloved family member pointing a loaded, safety-off shotgun at you, and you could feel without a doubt that they were definitely ready to kill you?

You would feel abject terror. Wounds from trusted loved ones can be the most painful, and this was a wound that eclipsed every other in Ben’s life. He escapes, and then falls into the hands of Snoke.

(I hate how the ancillary materials totally erased Ben’s agency by making Snoke influence his mind even before he was born. Grooming from a young age? That would have been fine. But as it is, it’s a supernatural element that oversimplifies and makes unbelievable a story that could have been more powerful.)

In my mind, Snoke doesn’t even have to be Force-sensitive: his gift is that he can tell what people wants, and he controls those people by promising what they want (and getting his victims just close enough to what they want so they keep coming back for more).

So he sees Ben and sees the perfect mark: someone who believes they’re inherently a bad person (drowning in shame, an instinct that is extremely self-isolating), enraged with pain, who has been indoctrinated into black-and-white thinking by the culture/religion he grew up in.

Snoke promises Ben 1. respect (i.e. a form of connection in which you don’t have to be vulnerable) and 2. power (which appeals to Ben’s helplessness).

All of us wear different “hats” depending on the situation we’re in: at work, we wear Customer Service or Manager hats. At home, we wear Caregiver or Partner or Roommate hats. Walking out to our cars in the dark, or taking the bus in a bad neighborhood, we might swagger with a Don’t Fuck With Me attitude. We hide or reveal parts of our personality depending on the tools we need in the situation.

Ben creates a persona to hide his shame, protect himself from vulnerability, and deaden the part of his conscience that objects to being part of an organization that is hurting people like his family was hurt. This persona is named Kylo Ren, and it uses the mask and robes like a magic spell to summon the gravitas and influence of his ancestor. But most importantly, the mask and robes shield him from the outside world as protection, but also to hide his shame and any emotions that aren’t ‘acceptable’ (’acceptable’ being anger, mostly).

The thing about shame is that it separates us from the people around us, preventing us from making meaningful connections. This is devastating to the human mind, because humans survive in groups (and our brain evolved to seek groups out). Bringing shame out into the light in the presence of someone you trust is usually enough to exorcise it.

Kylo doesn’t have anyone he can trust, and he is drowning in shame. He is totally isolated and knows he’s nothing but a weapon in Snoke’s hand. Snoke cultivates his shame and isolation because it makes Kylo easy to control. But then, totally by happenstance, Kylo meets Rey.

I hear people talk about ‘the power of love’ and I used to think it was total bullshit. I realize now that’s because visual media usually simplifies ‘love’ into ‘physical attraction’. In reality, love contains a spectrum of elements that are essential to a healthy, functioning mind. Specifically: a place you feel safe (a place where you feel trust, where you feel genuine connection, where you feel wanted, where you feel heard and seen and understood). The entire spectrum of intimacy (emotional, physical, and sexual) spans this need for a place to feel safe and known.

So Kylo meets this girl and a couple of things happen. 1. he realizes he isn’t actually alone. There is someone in the whole of the galaxy who might be his equal. 2. Totally inadvertently, Rey exposes his deepest shame (that he can’t live up to the legacy, that he is hurting himself for nothing) and brings it out into the light.

And, like, all of that would be disrupting enough, but then something even more important happens. See, Snoke built the expectation in Kylo’s mind that if Kylo cut away everyone who loved him, Kylo would be stronger, would be more powerful. Kylo gets the opportunity to cut away his father in the most final way - to kill him - and he takes the opportunity.

As soon as he kills Han - the very second after he ignites his saber - he realizes that Snoke was lying. It didn’t make him more powerful, it just makes things worse.

So while he’s reeling from that realization, his mind instinctively reaches out for connection, for people who might understand. I once read a meta that the Force Skype scenes in TLJ are initiated when Rey feels lonely, which I totally 100% buy into, but I’d suggest the connection happens when both of them are feeling lonely or hurt.

As far as I’m concerned, they bridged their own minds - Snoke took credit because he knew that would be devastating to Ben. Ben and Rey experience emotional intimacy and through their connection, they both start to heal a little from their individual traumas.

I went on a bit of a tangent there but here’s what I’m trying to get to: trauma doesn’t just go away. You don’t just flip a switch, forget about the past, and move on with your life. If you don’t heal, then that trauma and the damage to your brain persists. It takes time and an enduring safe place to heal. So I’m sitting here, trying to imagine what that healing could look like in-universe. And I’m just thinking about the fact that Episode 9 could have been about healing. They gave Rey the gift of healing. The moviemakers had a love story all wrapped up in a bow that could have been a metaphor for the healing power of love. They had all these traumatized characters that could have experienced healing. We, the audience, could have experienced the healing power of catharsis.

And in conclusion, I’m just thinking about Adam Driver performing this incredibly relatable character and TLJ’s Reylo and Luke&Rey plotlines being what they are - and just feeling deep gratitude. 

[petulant-poet]

Tell me about ur ocs

Okay okay I have been WAITING for someone to ask me this. I hope you’re ready for an onslaught anon!

okay so since you didn’t ask for a specific set or certain oc, imma tell you about my main oc’s, the prime 16!

the prime 16 are a class of super-powered individuals living in a post-apocalypse, and under the gaze of the institute they live in. that is, until they run away and make lives of their own! Their main goal is to regroup in Boston, but many decide to take the scenic route around the broken country. Here they are, from oldest to youngest and in order of class:

Class Alpha: the first class to emerge, they are the strongest and most skilled with their abilities. They’ve been in the clutches of the institute longer than any of the others, and their need for escape lets them find freedom.

1: Marlon, the soul scholar. He is the oldest and was the one to devise the escape plan in the first place. He escaped and went straight to Boston, using his power of elemental construction to research into soul power, making him a useful asset to anyone. However, his need for knowledge doesn’t stop there. He goes searching and looking where no one has or should, and finds himself deep into something he never should have disturbed.

2: Charlie, the shadow spy. She is the second-in-command to Marlon, but prefers to stay out of the limelight. She finds herself in the holographic city of Chicago, and finds that the best places for her are in the dark corners of the streets. She uses her ability intuition to become a valuable spy and mercenary, able to take out or find anything she is hired to find. She finds though that the shadows she saw as her ally can hold more secrets than she could ever want to know.

3: Colby, the glam American. Colby is a lot more easygoing than most of the others in his class, and is able to mutate his genes however he likes. He uses this skill to join a rock band and become a roving sensation across the ruined country. He finds that not everyone just wants to listen though, and that there will be people who may just want to use him for themselves.

4: Lydia, the lucky bullet. She’s the most energetic of class Alpha and has herself a cartoon physiology, making life around her a living cartoon. She moves off to the west to become a famed cowboy, and is beloved by the people around her. However, all cartoons have their run, and Lydia is terrified of when she will run out of luck.

Class Beta: the second best, the afterthought, whatever you call them, class Beta has heard it before. They have powers that are less useful in battle and more with other people, or in life. They are constantly played as Alpha’s little siblings (which they are) to an insane degree, leading them to often resent or idolize the higher class.

5: Kit, the lonesome nomad. He was one of the kids headed for Boston, until a tragic accident landed him on the road. His only goal is to try and make it to Boston with his brothers and sisters in one piece, and he will betray and manipulate anyone with his empath abilities to get there. He is cold and untrusting, but soon finds that self-isolation is an even colder fate.

6: Georgina, the traveling psychic. She has the power of divination, and can see the future. But it’s not the most reliable very often, only showing flashes and bits of voices. However, she manages to use her powers to go from some local psychic of a small town to a traveling performer, telling peoples’ futures far and wide.

7: Samuel, the bloodthirsty knight. He is the second most resentful of class Alpha, mostly stemming from his own inferiority complex from his power, action link. Meaning he can’t be a powerhouse on his own. However, when he escapes, he is let out into a war zone. He works his way up and becomes a soldier, soon earning his title through the bloodshed at one of his most famed battles. But his winning streak can only last so long, and he’ll have to find that out the hard way.

8: Sarah, the starry oceanographer. She is the most resentful of class Alpha, and ironically the first to reach Boston. She becomes an acclaimed sailor with her navigational intuition, and with her help ships stop disappearing into the shifting oceans forever. However, she soon finds out the hard way that there are depths too deep for even her to reach.

Class Gamma: the less put-together class, they escaped at a younger age and have less of a kinship with each other. The only thing that unites them in the slightest is their common childhood trauma.

9: Jordan, the reaper’s seeker. He is young and impressionable, but his path was set for him the moment the accidentally used his power, intuitive aptitude, to find a hidden tumor in his adoptive mother. From there he is seen as an omen of evil to many, but is used as a tool to find the issues in many for others. He wants it to end so badly, but in what way is up to him.

10: Robin, the false herald. Robin finds herself sent to a religious academy for her safekeeping, but in the process uses her power of possession to accidentally call down their god through her. She is revered as a saint and is given special treatment, but due to her identity as the herald, she never gets to find an identity of her own, which is what she wants more than anything.

11: Archie, the human pandemic. Archie’s goal was to try and reunite with his family, but the moment he first contracted the first viruses, he knew that would be impossible. He has the power of invincibility, meaning that the viruses in his body won’t hurt him, but they will hurt anyone else who comes in contact with him. He now wanders the woods alone, hoping that someone will come along and help him. But in the meantime, he has friendship with the other things living on him.

12: Adrianna, the nether queen. After separation from the rest of the prime 16, she finds herself running from raiders and police, until she comes across the entrance to an underground realm full of people that soon forcibly crowns her as queen of the underground after she kills the last one on arrival. However, Adrianna wants nothing to do with the affairs of the underground and longs for escape, and with her indomitable will, she’ll make sure of it.

Class Delta: the youngest of the prime 16, they have little to no memory of the institute. Because of this, they have no practice with their powers and have had their fates completely thrown to the wind, making them the hardest to find of the group.

13: Archie, the calamity child. He has lived his life jumping from one adoptive family to another, and tragedy seems to follow him no matter where he goes. From hurricanes to tornadoes and flash floods, Archie has always been the only one to remain with his botanical abomination power. He has ended up getting bad rep, with people blaming his power for his bad luck. He ends up becoming disconnected from other kids and mistrustful of adults, but just wants a family of his own.

14: Maya, the gateway girl. She was raised in the complexes of downtown New York, and with her friends is constantly braving the dangers of the uptown ruins. Maya’s own power, domain, is only known between her and her own friends. Not even her ‘parents’ know about it. However, she’s forced to face herself and confront her past when she finds how similar her power is to to the monsters living uptown, and finds some shocking truths.

15: Xavier, the griefer king. He was found by the real king as a baby, and after finding out about his power, animalistic abomination, he wholeheartedly adopts the boy as his own. Xavier is raised among the other griefers as one of them, but is abruptly put in charge when the king must go on a journey to expand west. He becomes a ruthless leaver, unafraid to go to violent measures, and finds himself reveling in the hunting of unknowing travelers on the highway. But Xavier soon needs to find the balance of human and animal, lest he finds himself going off the deep end.

16: Adeline, the sacrifice. The youngest and rumored to be the most powerful, Adeline lived her life peacefully without her power ever awakening. However, the truth came to her abruptly and soon uprooted her whole life, and was told that she must become a vessel to save the world. In the stress of everything moving and her whole life crumbling in front of her though, her power awakens, and everyone finds what makes her the most powerful of them all…

and that is the prime 16! Hope you like them, and don’t be afraid to send questions if you want!

[goldenkamuyhunting]

Did you start making chapter theories in ch. 179? I would have liked to see your take in the psychology of certain convicts, like Sekiya, Gansoku and Henmi

Actually...

I began a little earlier at around chap 162, but at the time I didn’t really make a rambling post for each chapter.

I’ve also a re-reading series, but I ended up interrupting it at chap 18 (even if I actually wrote it till chap 38) for various reasons.

If you feel like listening to me ramble about those three I don’t mind doing it, just keep in mind it’s not a real psychological analysis. Those take a professional and much more information about their lives than I have at hand and I’m not even sure if Noda wanted to make them THAT psychologically accurate.

So take this more as a character analysis than a real psychological take of them.

For a moment let me group together Henmi and Sekiya as, like most of the characters of Golden Kamuy, they’ve in common they lived a traumatic event that influenced the rest of their lives and became their Freudian excuse.

Mind you, the trope is called Freudian excuse but in Noda’s case often it’s more a Freudian explanation, a ‘why they ended up like this’ a showing that they weren’t just random bad men born evil but once they were just ordinary guys like you and me and then something happened and they reacted to it in the entirely wrong way, turning them in complete monsters. A For Want of a Nail effect, if you want, something happens, and this event has a ripple effect, resulting in massive change in the character changes radically.

So, with this in mind, let’s go dig into those two.

Henmi is the first convict we meet whose life was totally screwed over by a traumatic event.

The previous convicts are:

- Gotou who, according to Shiraishi, murdered his wife and child while drunk, even though I would be more prone, analyzing his interaction with Sugimoto during which he’s friendly and harmless when drunk and attempts to murder him when he’s sober, to assume he was actually not drunk when he did it and merely said he was hoping this would result in a less

- Prisoner n 1, of whom we know nothing about except that he viewed himself as a small fish

- Tsuyama, whom we know is a murderer but not why

- Shiraishi, who’s not a murderer

- Hijikata, who’s actually a political prisoner

- Ushiyama, who killed out of self defence

- Nihei, who just couldn’t let go whose who attacked him but had to take revenge on them.

And then comes in Henmi, who actually has a backstory that explains why he became a monster.

Henmi himself doesn’t consider it an excuse, just his starting point, albeit it’s possible that, had Shiraishi never asked, he would have never wondered why he took that turn.

Henmi saw a board killing his little brother, apparently eating it alive.

We’ve no info on why this incident took place, but this seems to point out Henmi didn’t deliberately cause this.

So really, this is what turned him from an ordinary kid to a monster, so it’s not something he had caused.

Henmi watched this from his hiding spot, meaning he either arrived on the scene, was scared and hid or that both siblings were there but only Henmi managed to reach a hiding place and from there he couldn’t move to help his brother.

Henmi describes his brother’s death vividly. It was horrific, his brother was helpless and it wasn’t even the boar’s fault as the animal couldn’t understand him. Henmi thinks his brother was in a lot of pain and fear, in despair and hopelessness.

But then he says something that clearly leaves into us an impression. He says that each time he thinks at his brother ‘he really, really want to kill somebody, anybody’, and he seems to have an erection as he says so.

Due to this it’s easy to think that Noda is trying to depict him as someone committing ‘lust murders’, murders done by someone who searches for erotic satisfaction by killing someone… by is it really so simple?

Not quite because it’s not murdering someone what turns Henmi on, it’s the idea that this someone will murder him.

Henmi is not identifying with the boar, he’s identifying with his brother.

I’ll go and assume the idea here is that part of the problem here is that when Henmi saw his brother being killed, his body reacted in an inappropriate manner.

When one is scared the body produces dopamine. Some individuals may get more of a kick from this dopamine response than others do as, and according to some studies dopamine can trigger penile erection (though they’re still debating over this but whatever, Golden Kamuy isn’t meant to be a medicine text).

Anyway, in between the trauma to seeing his brother being killed in such a horrific way and his body’s reaction somehow Henmi came up with the idea he wanted to die like him.

We see Henmi doesn’t get an erection when he kills the Yakuza,

just when he thinks to how Sugimoto could kill him. We see Henmi thinks Shiraishi is masturbating to the thought of getting killed, not to the thought of killing someone.

Possibly part of all this is also due to guilt, he just stood there, watching as light died in his brother’s eyes (it’s interesting how he carve the kanji for ‘eye’ in his victims, as if to mark them with his sin) and let his younger brother be killed and even got off by it and that also explains his wish to die. In a way in this he’s similar to Sekiya, who thought he should have been the one who died, and not his little girl.

And it’s interesting Henmi has to think at it, before explaining this is what turned him into what he is, because this hints he tried to forget what he saw, that he buried it inside himself, for him it wasn’t ‘oh, okay, so this is how my brother die so let’s start killing people’, Henmi didn’t try to understand his impulses, he just followed them.

But, long story short, Henmi’s wish to die a beautiful death, like his little brother, lead him to become completely twisted.

Maybe the boar attacked them because they attempted to attack him, that’s why Henmi began to attack people, attempting to murder them in hope they would instead murder him, attempting to recreate what happened with his brother. Maybe if this experience had never happened to him Henmi would have just been an ordinary well-mannered and very sociable guy who helps friends (when Shiraishi sees Sister Miyazawa and follows her Henmi stops the guard from chasing him).

This however wasn’t meant to be.

Henmi flips, develops an obsession on his own death, whom he wants to be terrible like the one of his brother and maybe the second tragedy of his own story is by misfortune he had to kill over a hundred people before he met someone who could give him ‘his beautiful death’, hundred kills he likely felt insensible about because, when you start thinking being killed is the most exciting experience ever, you probably don’t even connect you’re doing something bad, which is also why we can label Henmi as a monster, because he’s absolutely remorseless toward his victims.

Henmi is dangerous, a serial killer that can only be stopped by death… but it would be interesting if we could peek to an universe in which he was never exposed to the trauma of losing his brother and see if in it he could have become an ordinary guy instead.

Oh well, we’ll never know.

Sekiya now as he’s similar to Henmi, yet very different.

While it’s likely that Henmi’s traumatic event or turning point took place when he was young, Sekiya’s traumatic event takes place when he’s a man and, in the volume version, Noda pays special care to it.

We know Sekiya used to be a livestock veterinarian who went around to different ranches in Hokkaido and looked after their horses and things like that.

The traumatic event that ruined his life is well known to the fandom and easy to understand and sympathize with.

Sekiya himself tells it to Kadokura, in a way that mimics a confession.

It was a Sunday morning and he was walking home with his daughter, who was still a toddler, she being right at his side, plodding around.

The images shows us a Christian church and this, combined with how it was a Sunday morning, tell us that Sekiya was probably walking home from Sunday mass.

We see him smile as he watch his daughter, light in his eyes.

Sekiya probably used to be a normal person, likely nothing over the top but what you would easily label good, and probably he felt that since he also has done his religious duty and gone to mass, God should smile down on him and protect him and his family.

(It’s possible he’s indulging a little in the capital vice of pride here… and considering his future actions in the future too)

We never hear Sekiya talking about a wife so it’s possible she died and he had to overcome that loss. Assuming a wife existed and died, he clearly overcome losing her and, evidently, being with his daughter, just watching her walk next to him, gives him joy.

Then something exploded behind him and he lost consciousness. When he wakes up he can only see that his daughter head and feet had been blown apart…. Which should be a pretty horrific thing to watch, especially for a father, but it takes him a while to realize this was due to a lighting having struck her, his eyes losing their light as he realizes this.

Abruptly Sekiya had lost his daughter, in a way that he didn’t even understand at first, a horrible way. She was a beloved child, a reason of joy for him and it could be she was the last member of his family alive.

Now there’s a really common characteristic in humans from various cultures.

Many of them tend to think that the lightning is ‘the weapon of God/a God’.

Wikipedia even have a full page in which they list the various thunder gods from all around the world and the bible too implied God can toss thunders and lightnings.

So Sekiya, man of faith, who believed to be a good person likely blessed or at least protected by his God, is facing such a terrible tragedy just after he left the church in which he probably received the Eucharist, a tragedy that took place by a mean that’s considered by many ‘a weapon of God’, a tragedy that should cause him agonizing pain because losing a child so young should be terrible.

Now… sadly the best thing Sekiya could have done at this point was just to mourn his own child and learn to cope with the pain of her loss, possibly without losing his faith but using it as a crutch in his darkest hour.

Sekiya though, doesn’t find in himself the strength to chose the best option for himself.

Sekiya can’t accept his own disgrace and the way it happened, mourn and move on.

We see Sekiya back in the church, wondering why this happened to his daughter and not him.

Actually he asks himself (or God) why his daughter was chosen and not him.

どうして娘が選ばれたのか… どうして俺じゃなかったのか

‘Dōshite musume ga eraba reta no ka... Dōshite ore janakatta no ka’

His next step, he explains to Kadokura, is to ask himself the following thing:

“Is ‘luck’ the will of God… or does the fact that a man like me was left alive prove that there is no such thing as God?”

「運」とは神の意志なのか…神のような人間を生き残らせるということは神など存在しないのではないか？

‘“Un” to wa kami no ishina no ka… kami no yōna ningen o ikinokora seru to iu koto wa kami nado sonzai shinai node wanai ka?’

It’s this thought that likely pushed Sekiya to test people’s luck over and over, ending up on murdering quite a bunch of people.

Now…

I think part of Sekiya’s problem is that he was a man indulging in the capital vice of pride.

He sounds like he believed he believed he knew how things worked (God would punish the wicked and protect the ones who walk on the right path as hinted in chap 172) and viewed himself and especially his daughter as people who should be protected, blessed by God and just couldn’t accept to be proved wrong when his daughter died, demanded an explanation, deluded himself he could understand what no human had ever understood, God’s plans or that, if he can’t, this would mean God doesn’t exist.

Of course Sekiya’s view about who God would bless and who he would punish is extremely limited as it implies God should murder whoever would deviate by the right path and would protect from everything whoever would remain on it and it doesn’t take a genius to know IT DOESN’T WORK THIS WAY, bad things can happen to good people and terrible people instead might be blessed with good luck.

But part of the problem though is that Sekiya’s obsession with trying to understand why his own misfortune happened to him works as a copying mechanism that distract him from the agonizing pain of his loss.

What’s more it makes him feel as if he has the power to control things.

What Sekiya wanted to get in fact was exactly what he got, for God to protect someone righteous and punish him for not being righteous anymore.

He’s overjoyed when he’s proved right, Hijikata survives to an extremely risky bet and kills him.

Although he says he has great interest in observing how fortune play out in people he’s never delighted when they die. He’s just businesslike, this is done, let’s move to the next.

Instead he’s delighted when he’s proved right even if this means he’ll die… but well, life had probably lost part of his meaning to him, circling about a sick game that couldn’t give him any satisfaction.

Nowadays may countries would have given psychological help to both Sekiya and Henmi after they suffered their trauma, so that they might not have ended up turning into monsters like they instead did.

However, in Golden Kamuy’s time, this possibility didn’t exist and if you couldn’t find by yourself the strength to overcome in the right way your traumas and problems well… no one would be capable to help you.

Most of the cast of GK would benefit from psychological help, Henmi and Sekiya are merely among the people who reacted to trauma in the worst way.

Now… Gansoku… well, the guy is hard to pin.

As far as we know he didn’t have a ‘traumatic moment TM’ that turned him into who he is.

When he explains himself, Gansoku says he expresses himself through violence the same way one would express himself through art but acknowledges this made others hate him as they didn’t understand him, which lead him to get jailed.

Gansoku doesn’t view this as bad as prison was a place busting with violence in which he made friends who were happy if he punched the guards and where he would go on a rampage and could only be stopped by Ushiyama.

His explanation seems to pain the picture of a violent man who can’t control himself and beat people left and right.

However when we met Gansoku we discover he’s a guy who basically promoted the stenka fights by encouraging people to bet on them. He’s a man who doesn’t attack at random but in a fight, can play in a team, tries to understand Sugimoto and helps him with his problems, helps Tsukishima when he’s wounded and can’t walk, can travel with Svetlana and protect her and wouldn’t fight with Sofia because he believed she wouldn’t be up for it.

He just love fighting and make no difference if he’s the one beating others or he’s getting beaten up. As long as he’s fighting someone strong he’s happy.

In short he’s not an uncontrollable abuser but a guy who loves to fight and who goes all out when fighting, a guy who can control himself and even being nice.

I wonder if he ended up in jail for a reason similar to Ushiyama, because he overdo it in a fight or in an argument. He said he was hated so maybe it’s the other people who would start the fight but, due to his superior strength he would hurt them too bad when he would react and end up in jail.

It’s hard to say, he’s undoubtedly strange but, at the same time, as he seems someone who doesn’t attack at random, that’s why he remind me of Ushiyama. But well, we’ll see if he’ll get more development.

For now that’s all I can say.

Thank you for your ask!

[starlightdreams-blog]

Ok here is the third chapter to "Love in The Broken Soul" enjoy!

_________________________________________

The Hospital

Griford Hill Hospital: 3:00pm, ER Surgery/Operation Room

Temple, Texas

Arthur felt like he was falling, suffocating in the darkness that surrounded him. He could still feel pain and agony; he couldn't tell where it was, but dear gods did it hurt! He looked up and could faintly see a small light that was slowly getting bigger and brighter. Once the light was close enough, he touched it and was quickly thrown back in to his body, where doctors were desperately trying to revive him.

Even though an oxygen mask was on his mouth to help him breath, he took a shaky breath as his heart started again, cheers coming from the doctors, though they immediately started to continue the surgery as they stabilized his condition. He couldn't tell what kind of surgery he was in as he fell back into unconsciousness.

Two days passed before Arthur woke up again. It was noon as he saw a few familiar faces besides Vivi and Mystery, who both had red rimmed eyes from crying, the girl holding his right hand and the dog on the bed with his ears back. The people he saw besides his friends were the Peppers, the Yukinos, his uncle Lance and... His parents. His parents were there? Why were they here and crying? He thought that they hated him after he told them that he was transgender and was in love with his best friend (s?). They didn't disown him but they didn't talk to him for weeks which nearly broke his heart.

He must've said that out loud, for his mother burst in to tears as she said, as his father gave his son a sad and hurt stare, "That's not true, my son! My poor baby boy... We're so sorry; we should've listened to you and supported you! Instead we let our anger and religious beliefs get the best of us! Instead of supporting you, we ignored you for weeks before you went on your trip with your friends! We regret that when we finally realized that you were who you are and let our misplaced anger go, you already left with your team on your journey before we could apologize for what we did. We've never felt so much guilt at what we did to you! Both your father and I love you so much, Arthur! A-and now... Oh dear lord, I'm so sorry... N-no one d-deserves t-this." as Mr. Kingsman pulled his sobbing wife into a hug to calm her down. With the beginning of tears threatening to spill over the man's brown eyes, he looked at Arthur and said, his voice cracking as he tried to explain, "We were visiting your uncle Lance to apologise for what we did when we got the call from the hospital, saying that you and your friends were out hiking and ended up being attacked by some type of monster near a cave.... I-it d-did... D-dear gods, my son..."

As he looked at his normally calm, caring and loving parents breakdown in tears, Arthur didn't understand why they were crying, however his heart started to mend as his parents were accepting him for who he is. He went to hug them but as he tried to sit up, he froze, feeling something off with his left side. Shaking from alarm and panic, he looked to his left and started to hyperventilate, for his arm was gone, torn clean off. Vivi, the three little Pepper sisters and his (still crying) mother pulled him into hugs and did everything they could to calm him down; Mystery laying down on the blonde's lap as he whimpered in concern and worry, leaning his head up and licking the blonde's cheek. Thirty minutes passed before Arthur was calm enough to talk. Then came the moment that froze everyone in the room with panic and true horror. When Mr. Pepper and Mrs. Pepper, in sadness, told them that the funeral for Lewis would be held in about three weeks, Arthur had a confused look on his face, pink faintly flashing in his amber eyes and said, confusion in his voice, "If you don't mind me asking Mr. and Mrs. Pepper, but who's Lewis?" None of the people in the room even saw the tiny sparks coming from the blonde's eyes as they were close to panicking. Why didn't Arthur remember Lewis, his best friend since third grade!? What could've happened to his memories!? Did that blasted demon have anything to do with this!?

To calm the shocked family and horrified friends of Arthur Kingsman down, a doctor was called in to check what was wrong. It was later confirmed that Arthur's mind was blocking every and all memories of Lewis due to trauma and the fact that he must've saw his friend die a horrible death by whatever beast that had attacked them. (In a way, he wouldn't remember what happened in the cave because it wasn't his fault. Probably from the trauma and blood loss.) However, he could still remember the Pepper family, both the parents and the three little girls, and the fact that they run the 'Pepper Paradiso', which confused the doctor but he just chalked it up as amnesia.

By the time it was night, it was only Arthur, Vivi and Mystery in the room while everyone else went home to rest. Vivi squeezed Arthur's right hand as his eyes slowly closed to rest, unaware of the loss they suffered. She still had faint traces of tears running down her cheek. She look to Mystery, his eyes holding centuries of wisdom and knowledge, and said, quietly as to not wake their friend, "Mystery, things won't go back to normal now, will they?" His heart breaking as he saw his normally bright, bubbly charge 'die out' from the death of one of her beloved and seeing the other in the hospital looking so frail, drained and having no memory of their fallen member, Mystery looked into Vivi's now dull, icy, blue eyes and said, his paws moving his glasses up a little and nodding in confirmation, "I'm afraid so, Vivi. However what makes me concerned is Arthur's memory loss of Lewis. How should we..."

Vivi immediately held her hand up, cutting Mystery's rant off as she said, voice suddenly filled with hurt, grief, pain and heartbreak, but most importantly guilt, "Arthur can't know what happened at all, Mystery. Maybe this way, we can heal. At least I'll know that Artie won't wallow in guilt of being forced to kill LewLew. I won't be able to handle it. As much as I'd hate to say it but if... if Arthur remembers Lewis and knows what happened tonight, he might... I can't lose him, too, Mystery. I just can't. I'll be shattered if I lost him too. I owe him that much after suggesting to investigate that blasted cave." Mystery nodded slowly in sorrow, knowing that Lewis's death was hurting them both. However, they both, though reluctantly, agreed to never mention Lewis ever again; even though it will hurt not just them, but also Arthur and everyone who knew the sweet, protective, brave and kindhearted purple haired young man.

[fareweller]

Buffy The Vampire Slayer and coming to terms with my queerness

I grew up in a small town on Lake Michigan, raised by two ultra-religious parents who sent me to Lutheran school until, after much begging, they let me attend public high school. I’ve learned from various interactions mentioning my private religious school upbringing that people’s ideas of what that looks like isn’t consistent. For me, being raised in Lutheran school meant that in sixth grade my teacher wrote “Love homosexuals” on the board, dropped the chalk like a mic, then went on to say that although his gay neighbor makes him uncomfortable he loves him because that’s what God would want. Love the sinner not the sin. No one in the class agreed. At that time, my classmates’ ignorance bothered me. However, at 22 I can better understand the reasons they isolated me: I was an awkward queer goth kid who spent most of my spare time researching serial killers; I persuaded my parents to let me stop eating meat when I was just 10; when I was confirmed at age 12, I knew I didn’t believe in God, but I didn’t want my parents to tell me I was going to Hell. I was different and vocal about that Otherness. Throughout puberty, my only friends lived in Sunnydale, California. Buffy the Vampire Slayer  served as an escape, showing me a world outside of isolation.

The series came out in 1997, five years after the movie that inspired Joss Whedon to make a Warner Brothers spin off.  The growth of Buffy and her friends paralleled mine in many ways. Willow, one of Buffy’s closest companions and part of “The Scooby Gang,” a small group of people aware that their high school sat atop a literal HellMouth, was my first representation of a queer woman. Ever. It allowed me to escape the constant isolation I felt in class and at home.

Willow wasn’t able to address her queerness until college. Until she meets her first girlfriend, Tara. She comes out to Buffy in the episode “New Moon Rising.” After the return of Willow’s ex werewolf boyfriend, Oz, Buffy is excited for Willow because of the work Oz has put into becoming more of a man and less of a wolf. Willow’s not excited because she’s secretly started dating Tara, another witch at UC Sunnydale.

About 16 mins into the episode, Buffy and Willow have this awkward conversation:

WILLOW: It's complicated - because of Tara.

BUFFY: You mean Tara has a crush on Oz? No, not - Oh. Ohh.

“Are you freaked?” Willow asks.

“No. Absolutely no.”

From this point on, there’s never another moment of awkwardness surrounding Willow’s lesbianism. She’s normal and functioning. She’s accepted by her friends. As someone young, closeted and terrified of my identity I didn’t know this was possible.

Whedon hinted to Willow’s queerness throughout the series but it doesn’t, pun intended, come out until season four. The majority of these hints were saturated in darkness -- her doppleganger born of a wish gone wrong was queer. This hornier, darker version of Willow is everything she doesn’t want to accept about herself. I believe she doesn’t truly face this shadow self until the loss of the the very thing that sparked her beginning steps into queerness -- Tara.

“Dopplegangland” is the second time we’re introduced to Willow’s other dimensional self. At this point in the series Anya, who becomes a beloved member of the Scooby Gang, is a vengeance demon fallen from Hell’s grace trying to gain back her reputation as a Big Bad. She approaches regular Willow, who has just begun her journey into Wicca, to help with a spell that will return her demonic abilities. The necklace that allows Anya to be a demon was lost earlier in the series when a wish lead to another dimensional apocalypse. In this dimension, Willow is a vampire. The spell to return the necklace allows Willow’s shadow self to step into the current reality. In this episode, regular Willow is starting to doubt her identity. But it’s not her sexual identity. Instead, she doubts herself as someone who’s always reliable and studious. It’s here that she’s presented with the very antithesis to that self -- vampire Willow. 

As the episode ends, the Gang decides to send dark Willow back to her own dimension, rather than killing her. Dark Willow is finally dealt with when regular Willow loses Tara and must come to terms with the darkness inside herself.

“She messed up everything she touched. I don’t ever want to be like that.” Willow said. Unfortunately, in season six this becomes her reality.

Season six is broken into two parts, two Big Bads. The first is the Trio, a group of nerds dabbling in the Dark Arts run by the misogynistic Warren who wants to rule the world and defeat the Slayer. A man wanting to defeat a powerful woman to feel better about himself. 

The second is Dark Willow. Season’s end, Warren ends up misfiring on Buffy and shooting Tara through a window. Unable to deal with the loss, Willow goes Dark -- the full power of her dark self is unleashed by a man who hates women, who oversexualizes and objectifies them. She skins him alive. 

The only person who can bring her back is another Scooby, Xander, who reminds her of her humaness. She goes to Witch Rehab and deals with all of the things she never dealt with, all of the things that caused her and Tara to fight, all of the things that had been there the whole time she just hadn’t realized it until it got that bad.

In college, I ended up facing my own Dark Willow. I came out when I was 15 to everyone but my dad. At 18, I told him I was gay. When I got to college, I started dating guys along with girls and lost sight of the queer community. I was diagnosed with PTSD from childhood trauma when I was 20 years old. I was on the precipice of my Darkness when my friends, my own Scooby Gang, reminded me that I wasn’t alone. I rewatched Buffy when I was at my sickest. Willow’s strength reminds me that there will always be loss and pain but I am not alone. Even when I am, I can always return to Sunnydale.

[recentanimenews]

An Explorer's Guide to the Wonderful World of Visual Novels

Visual novels! Once decried as a “niche” by the masses, they have slowly but surely wormed their way into video games as a whole. Persona became a visual novel, then Fire Emblem. Now Saya no Uta, Gen Urobuchi's disturbing cult “classic” (?!) is available on Steam to stumble upon. There are fewer barriers than ever before to experiencing this varied, historic and often misunderstood medium.

    But where to begin? Some visual novels are very long. Others are quite lewd. A number of them (even the ones people love) front-load their most boring material at the beginning, and save the best moments for the last hour of what can be twenty or thirty-hour games. Picking up Saya no Uta without being primed for the extremes of the medium is a recipe for despair. But don't be afraid! Many of the best visual novels being made today are only a few hours long, encompass many approaches and genres, and are acceptable for all ages. In this piece I will lay out a path that you, dear reader, may follow into the thickets. Some things to keep in mind:

1. Every one of the games featured here is legally avaliable in English. If you know Japanese and are willing to spend some money, feel free to experiment on your own!

2. The games featured here range from appropriate for teenagers, to appropriate for mature audiences. Content warnings will be marked as needed. That said, almost none of these games feature the kind of graphic sex you'd see in old-school titles like Fate/Stay Night; the exception is the final title, included for completionism, which is truly sordid and not appropriate for anybody (but I like it).

3. While I've had some experience with the medium, BL and otome games are huge blind spots of mine, so I won't embarrass myself by pretending expertise! If you're interested in exploring those fields, I've heard good things about Code: Realize (get the collector's edition with the extra content!), Hatoful Boyfriend and (if you're OK with some NSFW material) Coming Out on Top.

With that said, let us being our journey!

  SHORT AND SWEET:

  These games last about two to three hours, but will stick with you longer than that. Don't assume these are “beginner games” simply because they are short! I could argue that collectively, the three titles here are the best on this list.

    Butterfly Soup is Brianna Lei's follow-up to her cult success Pom Gets Wi-Fi. It's free! It's also one of the most acclaimed visual novels ever by the mainstream games press, scoring praise from folks like Patricia Hernandez and Steve Gaynor. As for what it's about: it's the story of four girls on their high school softball team, two of them are in love, and there are many funny jokes. I found the ending to be abrupt, but if you're looking for good vibes and some much-needed encouragement to stay true to yourself, I highly recommend this game. Plus it references Matt Mullholland's excellent “My Heart Will Go On” performance, which earns it extra points in my book.

  Content warnings: Brief depictions of parental and physical abuse (no visuals!), ableist slurs.

    We Know the Devil is “what if Kelly Link wrote Revolutionary Girl Utena?” Plenty of anime and games channel that energy (my beloved What A Beautiful visual novel series among them) but few do so as succinctly and distinctively as Aevee Bee, Mia Schwartz and their team do in this game. The result is a punk, unsettling take on magical girl stories set in a Christian summer camp, featuring sneaky world-building and some striking body horror. You'll feel for the cast and their struggles, and cheer in the True Ending when everything goes completely off the rails.

  Content warnings: Psychological and body horror, alienation of queer youth in a religious setting, freaky music.

    EXTREME MEATPUNKS FOREVER is a game about gay antifascist folks fighting fascists across the desert while riding giant robots made of meat. It's the equivalent of a zine you'd pick up at a fair, willing to dive into messy topics most games shy away from and wholly uninterested in sanding away any rough spots. The music is great too! Play this game if you want to beat up Nazis in a giant meat machine called ROOTS AMONG ASH.

  Content warnings: Body horror, mentions of self harm and abuse, suicidal ideation, alcohol, gender dysphoria, loss of bodily autonomy, apocalyptic ideation. For mature audiences!

NICE AND MEATY:

  These games are a good bit longer, ranging from five to fifteen hours to beat. If you enjoyed the earlier entries and want more, try some of these!

  The House in Fata Morgana is a bonafide cult classic, a game made by a small studio that earned itself a legion of die-hard fans in the visual novel space. At first glance it's an entertaining genre pastiche, four tales of doomed love centering around a cursed mansion. But read past the first four chapters, and suddenly the real story comes to the fore—the tale of two ordinary people and a love that lasts for centuries. Fata Morgana takes some huge swings, tackling societal oppression, intersexuality, recovering from past trauma and learning to move on from those who have wronged you without having to forgive them. Its success at landing these swings likely depends on the reader, but I found Fata Morgana's heart to be in the right place. Couple that with one of the best soundtracks in video games, and you have an experience that is worth it even at 0% off.

  Content warnings: incest, domestic violence, racist and sexist remarks, psychological manipulation, homophobic and transphobic remarks, sexual assault, child abuse. For mature audiences!

    Heart of the Woods is, as of yet, the most ambitious game made by Studio Elan. It's a supernatural mystery where two adult women travel to a small town in the cold and dark to investigate some strange occurrences. What they find leads to unexpected romance, but also incredible danger. Heart of the Woods is sweet, it's funny (Tara is hilarious!) and as has come to be a running theme in this piece, the music is excellent, courtesy of Sarah Mancuso and Kris Flacke. Heart of the Woods is a game made by people who clearly have a lot of affection for visual novels as a medium, but had enough discretion to snip out the bits they weren't fond of. It also comes with a plethora of accessibility options, allowing you to customize everything from the text to the music to your needs.

  Content warnings: Parental abuse, alcohol, light horror elements, some sex scenes you can enable with an optional R-18 patch. For mature audiences!

    As for Seabed, it's... yuri ASMR? It's difficult to describe, as the appeal of this one for me isn't so much the story—which is intriguing, but very slow-paced—as it is the feel of it. Everything from the music, to the sound effects, to the text, contributes to a languid feeling unlike every other game in the medium I have played. Seabed won't be for everyone, but few titles match its distinctive atmosphere.

  Content warnings: alcohol, partial nudity. At least one sex scene that isn't too explicit by the standards of the medium. For mature audiences!

  THE DEEP END:

  These games range in length from fifteen hours to fifty... and beyond! If you're looking for the experience your Japanese-speaking friends fell in love with back in the days of fan translations and frantically searching online for information on Type-Moon properties, this is it! 

    Imagine that you have an idea for a great Japanese TV-drama, but you decide to make it as a visual novel instead. Wanting to produce as authentic an experience as possible, you hire actors and have them act out every scene in your script as you take multiple photographs depicting every twist and turn in the plot. Imagine the sheer amount of time and labor it would require. Then multiply it by five, let the player switch between these narratives with the ease of hitting a button on a gamepad, and tie them together into a vast meta-narrative. That's 428: Shibuya Scramble, one of the most ambitious visual novels ever created and a game that was famously awarded a score of 40 by the Japanese games rag Famitsu. Despite having an enormous and complicated script, it was localized into English just a year ago. Don't miss out on this bizarre and fascinating video game! If you're a fan of the Yakuza series, you'll be right at home with 428's brand of lunacy.

  Content warnings: Violence, drugs, alcohol, some bad language.

    Umineko: When They Cry is a lot.  A gonzo mystery story that starts as a riff on And Then There Were None, it swiftly mutates into a hundred-hour game of four-dimensional chess. It was made by a small team, scored by the music of the gods, and is fully committed throughout to its brand of sentiment, metaphysical rambling and extreme horror. Some might say that Umineko is overwrought, but that is the point: the game is memorable for its excess, not despite of it. If you're looking for a taste of the full VN experience, complete with shocking twists, a weird obsession with trivia and far too many words, this is the most authentic you can find that's appropriate for all audiences. Please play with the original art! It's charming.

  Content warnings: Parental abuse, blood and gore, people getting killed and suffering fates worse than death at the hands of witches (???). For mature audiences!

    And now we come to [NSFW] Wonderful Everyday, everything your anxious friend told you about visual novels. It's not just that Wonderful Everyday has sex scenes, it's that it takes less time to list what triggering and problematic content is not in the game than what is in it. It references Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and Cyrano de Bergerac. The game isn't afraid to take huge, unexpected shifts in tone and aesthetic in order to scare or destabilize the player. You might be wondering: why recommend a game like this, which many would find morally abhorrent? All I can say is that Wonderful Everyday is the game that convinced your Japanese-speaking friends to read Wittgenstein. It's a cult classic, a title unavailable in English for years that came with the highest praise imaginable: that it was a profound work of art, that it would change your way of thinking forever. After finally playing through the game two years ago, my feelings were more mixed; but there's no mistaking that few games better personify the visual novel medium's eccentricities, indulgences or shoot-for-the-moon ambition than this shaggy, gross, but fascinating video game.

  Content warnings: suicide, psychological and body horror, multiple variants of sexual assault, extreme bullying, extreme violence, bestiality (thankfully cut down for release in the US!), a transgender character who is handled in a pretty specious way. Many graphic sex scenes. For very mature audiences!

  There's even more great titles out there that I couldn't fit on this list! The high stakes and interface-shattering plot twists of 999. The countless games being made in engines like Ren'Py, Choice of Games and Twine. South Korean visual novels like Nameless and Mystic Messenger. No matter what kind of person or reader you may be, there is a visual novel out there somewhere for you. I wish you luck in your endless journey of discovery!

  Are you a fan of visual novels? Do you have any (safe for work, if possible) recommendations? Please let us know in the comments!

---

Adam W is a features writer at Crunchyroll. When he isn't eagerly awaiting the announcement of the Girls' Work anime by Type Moon, he sporadically contributes with a loose coalition of friends to a blog called Isn't it Electrifying? Follow him on twitter at: @wendeego

Do you love writing? Do you love anime? If you have an idea for a features story, pitch it to Crunchyroll Features!

By: news+feed@crunchyroll.com

[zeroviraluniverse-blog]

25 Amazing Books by African-American Writers You Need to Read

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25 Amazing Books by African-American Writers You Need to Read

Black History Month gives us 28 days to honor African Americans and the ever-expanding contributions they make to culture. Literature in particular has been a space for black authors to tell their stories authentically, and bookworms seeking good reads can choose from an array of fiction, poetry, historical texts, essays, and memoirs. From literary icons to fresh, buzzworthy talent, we’re highlighting 25 books by African-American authors you should add to your reading list today.

1. KINDRED // OCTAVIA BUTLER

Background: iStock. Book cover: Amazon.

Octavia Butler’s Kindred (1979) is one of a string of novels she penned centering black female protagonists, which was unprecedented in a white-male dominated science and speculative fiction space. This story centers Dana, a young writer in 1970s Los Angeles, who is unexpectedly whisked away to the 19th century antebellum South where she saves the life of Rufus Weylin, the son of a plantation owner. When Dana’s white husband—initially suspicious of her claims—is transported back in time with her, complicated circumstances follow since interracial marriage was considered illegal in America until 1967. To paint an accurate picture of the slavery era, Butler told In Motion Magazine in 2004, she studied slave narratives and books by the wives of plantation owners.

2. HUNGER: A MEMOIR OF (MY) BODY // ROXANE GAY

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In the second entry of her divulging 2017 memoir Hunger, Roxane Gay reveals, “… this is a book about disappearing and being lost and wanting so very much, wanting to be seen and understood.” The New York Times best-selling author pinpoints deep-seated emotions from a string of experiences, such as an anxious visit to a doctor’s office concerning gastric bypass surgery and turning to food to cope with a boy raping her when she was a girl. In six powerful parts, the daughter of Haitian immigrants and National Book Award finalist reclaims the space necessary to document her truth—and uses that space to come out of the shadows she had once intentionally tried to hide in.

3. THE FIRE NEXT TIME // JAMES BALDWIN

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James Baldwin is a key figure among the great thinkers of the 20th century for his long range of criticism about literature, film, culture, and revelations on race in America. One of his most widely known literary contributions was his 1963 book The Fire Next Time, a text featuring two essays: one a letter to his 14-year-old nephew, in which he encourages him not to give in to racist ideas that blackness makes him lesser. The second essay, “Down At The Cross,” takes the reader back to Baldwin’s childhood in Harlem as he details conditions of poverty, his struggle with religious authorities, and his relationship with his father.

4. BETWEEN THE WORLD AND ME // TA-NEHISI COATES

Background: iStock. Book Cover: Penguin Random House.

After re-reading James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time, Ta-Nehisi Coates was inspired to write a book-long essay to his teenage son about being black in America and forewarns him of the plight that comes with facing white supremacy. The result was the 2015 National Book Award-winning Between the World and Me. New York magazine reported that after reading, Toni Morrison wrote, “I’ve been wondering who might fill the intellectual void that plagued me after James Baldwin died. Clearly it is Ta-Nehisi Coates.” Throughout the book, Coates recounts witnessing violence in “the streets” and police brutality growing up in Baltimore, his time studying at historically black Howard University, and asks the hard questions about the past and future of race in America.

5. INVISIBLE MAN // RALPH ELLISON

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Ralph Ellison’s 1952 classic Invisible Man follows one African-American man’s quest for identity during the 1920s and 1930s—and decades later, this is a struggle that many continue to encounter. Because of racism, the unnamed protagonist, known as “Invisible Man,” does not feel seen by society and narrates the reader through a series of unfortunate and fortunate events to fit in while living in the South and later in Harlem, New York City. In 1953, Invisible Man was awarded the National Book Award, making Ellison the first African-American author to receive the prestigious honor for fiction [PDF].

6. BELOVED // TONI MORRISON

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Toni Morrison’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 1987 novel Beloved puts Sethe, a former slave in 1873 Cincinnati, Ohio, in contact with the supernatural. Before becoming a freed woman, Sethe attempted to kill her children to save them from a life of enslavement. While her sons and one daughter survived, her infant daughter, “Beloved,” died. Sethe’s family becomes haunted by a spirit believed to be Beloved, and Morrison provides a layered portrayal of the plight of post-slavery black life with a magical surrealism edge as Sethe learns she must confront her repressed memories of trauma and her past life in bondage.

7. ALL ABOUT LOVE: NEW VISIONS // BELL HOOKS

Background: iStock. Book Cover: Goodreads.

In the 2000 book All About Love, feminist scholar Bell Hooks grapples with how people are commonly socialized to perceive love in modern society. She uses a range of examples to delve into the topic, from her personal childhood and dating reflections, to popular culture references. This is a powerful essential text that calls on humans to revise a new, healthier blueprint for love, free of patriarchal gender limitations and dominating behaviors that don’t serve mankind’s emotional needs.

8. THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MALCOLM X // MALCOLM X, ALEX HALEY

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In 1963, Malcolm X would drive from his home Harlem to author Alex Haley’s apartment down in New York’s Greenwich Village to collaborate on his autobiography. Unfortunately, the minister and activist didn’t live to see it in print—The Autobiography of Malcolm X was published in 1965, not long after his assassination in February of that year. The books chronicles the many lessons the young Malcolm (born Malcolm Little in Omaha, Nebraska) learned from witnessing his parents’ struggles with racism during his childhood; to his troubled young adulthood with drugs and incarceration; and his later evolving into one of the most iconic voices in the movement for black liberation.

9. THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD // ZORA NEALE HURSTON

Background: iStock. Book Cover: Harper Perennial.

During Zora Neale Hurston’s career, she was more concerned with writing about the lives of African Americans in an authentic way that uplifted their existence, rather than focus on their traumas. Her most celebrated work, 1937’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, is an example of this philosophy and brings to light Janie Mae Crawford, a middle-aged woman in Florida, who details lessons she learned about love and finding herself after three marriages. Hurston used black southern dialect in the characters’ dialogue, as to proudly represent their voices and manner.

10. THE NEW JIM CROW: MASS INCARCERATION IN THE AGE OF COLORBLINDNESS // MICHELLE ALEXANDER

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The Jim Crow laws of the 19th and 20th century were intended to marginalize black Americans during the Reconstruction period who were establishing their own businesses, entering the labor system, and running for office. Although a series of anti-discrimination rulings, such as Brown vs. Board of Education and the Voting Rights Act, were passed during the Civil Rights Movement, Michelle Alexander’s 2010 book argues that mass incarceration is the new Jim Crow impacting black American lives, especially black men. In the text, Alexander explores how the war on drugs, piloted by the Ronald Reagan administration, created a system in which black Americans were stripped of their rights after serving time for nonviolent drug crimes.

11. SISTER OUTSIDER: ESSAYS AND SPEECHES // AUDRE LORDE

Background: iStock. Book Cover: Penguin Random House.

Originally published in 1984, Sister Outsider is an anthology of 15 essays and speeches written by lesbian feminist writer and poet Audre Lorde. The titles of her works are as intriguing as the content is eye-opening. For example: “Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power,” examines the way people, especially women, lose when they block the erotic—or deep passion—from their work and while exploring their spiritual and political desires. In “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House,” Lorde explains how feminism fails by leaving out the voices of black women, queer women, and poor women—which are ideas that are still shaping conversations within feminism today.

12. THE AUDACITY OF HOPE: THOUGHTS ON RECLAIMING THE AMERICAN DREAM // BARACK OBAMA

Background: iStock. Book Cover: Canongate Books

Barack Obama’s The Audacity of Hope was his second book and the No. 1 New York Times bestseller when it was released in the fall of 2006. The title was derived from a sermon he heard by Pastor Jeremiah Wright called “The Audacity to Hope.” It was also the title of the keynote speech the then-Illinois State Senator gave at the Democratic National Convention in 2004. Before becoming the 44th president of the United States, Obama’s Audacity of Hope outlined his optimistic vision to bridge political parties so that the government could better serve the American people’s needs.

13. THE WARMTH OF OTHER SUNS: THE EPIC STORY OF AMERICA’S GREAT MIGRATION // ISABEL WILKERSON

Background: iStock. Book Cover: Penguin Random House.

During the Great Migration, millions of African Americans departed the Southern states to Northern and Western cities to escape Jim Crow laws, lynchings, and the failing sharecropping system. Isabel Wilkerson, the first African-American woman to win a Pulitzer Prize in journalism, documented these movements in her 2010 book, which involved 15 years of research and interviews with 1200 people. The book highlights the stories of three individuals and their journeys from Florida to New York City, Mississippi to Chicago, and Louisiana to Los Angeles. Wilkerson’s excellent and in-depth documentation won her a National Book Critics Circle Award for the nonfiction work.

14. BROWN GIRL DREAMING // JACQUELINE WOODSON

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Jacqueline Woodson’s children’s books and YA novels are inspired by her desire to highlight the lives of communities of color—narratives she felt were missing from the literature landscape. In her 2014 National Book Award-winning autobiography, Brown Girl Dreaming, Woodson uses her own childhood story in verse form, to fill those representation voids. The author came of age during the Civil Rights Movement and subsequently the Black Power Movement, and lived between the laid-back lifestyle of South Carolina and the fast-paced New York City. Through her work, we are reminded of how family and community play a role in helping individuals persevere through life’s trials.

15. REDEFINING REALNESS: MY PATH TO WOMANHOOD, IDENTITY, LOVE & SO MUCH MORE // JANET MOCK

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Janet Mock, an African-American and Hawaiian transgender activist and writer, began her career in media as a staff editor at People. In 2011, Mock decided to share her story with the world and came out as a transgender woman in a Marie Claire article, and after landing a book deal, she released this New York Times bestselling memoir in 2014. Mock used her platform to speak in full about her upbringing as a young girl of color in poverty and identifying as transgender—a courageous move that set her on a path to being an inspiring voice for those facing difficulty in accepting their identity.

16. FIRE SHUT UP IN MY BONES // CHARLES M. BLOW

Background: iStock. Book Cover: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

In his 2014 memoir Fire Shut Up in My Bones, New York Times columnist Charles M. Blow opens up about growing up in a segregated Louisiana town during the 1970s as the youngest of five brothers. In 12 chapters, Blow offers an extensive look at his path to overcoming the odds of poverty, the trauma of being a victim of childhood rape, and his gradual understanding his bi-sexuality. Although these are hard truths to tell, Blow told NPR in 2014, he wrote this book especially for those who are going through similar experiences and need to know their lives are still worth living, despite their painful circumstances.

17. I KNOW WHY THE CAGED BIRD SINGS // MAYA ANGELOU

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If you read anything by the late, great, prophetic poet Maya Angelou, her 1969 I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings should be at the top of your list: It provides an in-depth look at the obstacles that shaped her early life. Angelou’s childhood and teenage years were nomadic, as her separated parents moved her and her brother from rural Arkansas to St. Louis, Missouri, and eventually to California, where at different times she lived in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Oakland. Besides the blatant racism she saw unfold around her in the South, a young Maya also faced childhood rape, and as a teen, homelessness and pregnancy. Angelou, who was at first reluctant to write the book, achieved much success with the text as she became the first African-American woman to have a non-fiction bestseller.

18. BABEL-17 // SAMUEL R. DELANY

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In 2015, Samuel R. Delany told The Nation that when he first began attending science fiction conferences in the 1960s, he was one of only a few black writers and enthusiasts present. Over the years, with his contributions and the work of others like Octavia Butler, whom he mentored, he opened doors for black writers in the genre. If you’re looking for a sci-fi thriller taking place in space and centering a woman leader protagonist, Delany’s 1967 Nebula Award-winning Babel-17 is the one. Rydra Wong, a spaceship captain, is intrigued by a mysterious language called Babel-17 that has the power to alter a person’s perception of themselves and others, and possibly brainwash her to betray her government.

19. SPLAY ANTHEM // NATHANIEL MACKEY

Background: iStock. Book Cover: New Directions Publishing.

Readers of Nathaniel Mackey’s poetry are often intrigued by his ability to merge the worlds of music (particularly jazz) and poetry to create soul-grabbing rhythmic prose. Splay Anthem is a masterful work exhibiting his style, and the 2006 collection includes two poems Mackey had been writing for more than 20 years: “Song of the Andoumboulou,” a ritual funeral song from the Dogon people of modern-day Mali; and “Mu.” Splay Anthem is woven into three sections, “Braid,” “Fray,” and “Nub,” in which two characters travel through space and time and whose final destinations are unclear. Mackey’s nonlinear form is deliberate: “There’s a lot of emphasis on movement in the poems, and there’s a lot of questions about ultimate arrival, about whether there is such a state or place,” he said in an excerpt from A Community Writing Itself: Conversations with Vanguard Writers of the Bay Area.

20. THE HATE U GIVE // ANGIE THOMAS

Background: iStock. Book Cover: HarperCollins.

Angie Thomas is part of a new crop of African-American authors bringing fresh new storytelling to bookshelves near you. Her 2017 debut young adult novel, The Hate U Give, was inspired by the protests of the Black Lives Matter movement. It follows Starr Carter, a 16-year-old who has witnessed the police-involved shooting of her best friend Khalil. The book, which topped the New York Times bestseller chart, is a timely fictional tale which humanizes the voices behind one of the largest movements in present times.

21. NOT WITHOUT LAUGHTER // LANGSTON HUGHES

Background: iStock. Book Cover: Penguin Random House.

Take it back to where the Harlem Renaissance legend Langston Hughes began his novelistic bibliography. In 1930’s Not Without Laughter, Sandy Rogers is an African-American boy growing up in Kansas during the ’30s—a story loosely based on Hughes’s own experiences living in Lawrence and Topeka, Kansas. Hughes vividly paints his characters based on the “typical Negro family in the Middle West” he grew up around, he explained in his autobiography The Big Sea. In this way, Hughes paved the way for more storytelling about black life outside of urban big city settings.

22. SALVAGE THE BONES // JESMYN WARD

Background: iStock. Book Cover: Amazon.

Jesmyn Ward’s 2011 novel Salvage the Bones merges fiction with her real life experience surviving Hurricane Katrina as a native of a rural Mississippi town. Ward tells a new story through the eyes of Esch, a pregnant teenage girl who lives in poverty with her three brothers and a father who is battling alcoholism, in a fictional town called Bois Sauvage. Through this National Book Award-winning tale, Ward writes an emotionally intense and deep account about a family who must find a way to overcome differences and stick together to survive the passing storm.

23. DON’T CALL US DEAD // DANEZ SMITH

Background: iStock. Book Cover: Amazon.

Don’t Call Us Dead is a cathartic series of poems that imagine an afterlife where black men can fully be themselves. Danez Smith’s poignant words take heartbreaking imagery of violence upon the bodies of black men, and juxtapose them with scenes of a new plane, one that is much better than the existence they lived before. Upon arrival, it’s a celebration, as men and boys are embraced by their fellow brothers and are able to truly experience being “alive.” Smith’s prose sticks, and you will think more deeply about the delicacy of life and death, long after you’ve put the book back on the shelf.

24. THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD // COLSON WHITEHEAD

Background: iStock. Book Cover: Amazon.

Colson Whitehead brings a bit of fantasy to historical fiction in his 2016 novel The Underground Railroad. Historically, the underground railroad was a network of safe houses for runaways on their journey to reaching the freed states. But Whitehead invents a literal secret underground railroad with real tracks and trains in his novel. This system takes his main character, Cora, a woman who escaped a Georgia plantation, to different states and stops. Along her journey, she faces a new set of horrific hurdles that could hold her back from obtaining freedom.

25. DEVIL IN A BLUE DRESS // WALTER MOSLEY

Background: iStock. Book Cover: Amazon.

If you’re into mystery but don’t know Walter Mosley, it’s time to catch up. The crime-fiction author has published more than 40 books, with his Ezekiel “Easy” Rawlins series being his most popular. Mosley’s 1990 debut (and Easy’s debut as well) Devil in a Blue Dress takes the reader to 1940s Watts, a Los Angeles neighborhood where we are first introduced to Easy, who has recently relocated to the City of Angels after losing his job in Houston. He finds a new line of work as a detective when a man at a bar wants him to track down a woman named Daphne Monet.

[kittypeas]

The Force Awakens and fairytales: part two. Prince Lindworm.

This is the second and (probably) last part or my essay “The Force Awakens and Fairytales”. This time I wanted to describe the Norwegian folktale about Prince Lindworm (which can you read HERE) which, in my opinion, is the most accurate summary of Kylo/Ben & Rey relationship. First, I will discuss a theoretical framework and concepts that I will need to conduct proper analysis of the parallels between TFA and “Prince Lindworm”. But don’t get discouraged! Throughout this essay I will continuously get back to the movie.

Some time ago Pablo Hidalgo tweeted that „long time ago in a galaxy far away” should be read as a begenning of a fairy tale. Surely it means more than just a fact that every movie in Star Wars trilogies is similar to popular tales like Snow White or the Beauty and the Beast. A myth or a folktale is, as Karen Armstrong describes it “in some sense is an occurrence that happened once and happens over and over again”, because it takes place inside each of us when we read, adapt and reenact it. “Mythology, just like poetry and music, should open us to a sense of wonder, even in the face of death or a threat of annihilation.”

This notion reminds me of your posts that I see frequently on my dash: those where you described how reylo helps you in dealing with difficulties, how you find yourself in various traits displayed by the characters, how they can voice your feelings and thoughts. Because every fairytale has also a therapeutic aspect, which manifests itself in the said sense of wonder, described by Rudolf Otto as a numinotic experience. Numinosum is an encounter with Mysterium tremendum et fascinans:

Mysterium which is a source for the English word “mystery” has its roots in Greek “mysterion” which originates from “myein” which can be traced in “mustism”, a condition in which a person is deprived of an ability to speak. Mysterium is a superhuman revelation which we experience in silence because it is both tremendum, as you can guess – tremendous, terrible – and fascinans, fascinating. Igen wrote:

“Our religions and psychotherapies offer frames of reference for processing unbearable agonies, and perhaps, also, unbearable joys. At times, art or literature brings the agony-ecstasy of life together in a pinnacle of momentary triumph. Good poems are time pellets, offering places to live emotional transformations over lifetimes. There are moments of processing, pulsations that make life meaningful, as well as mysterious. But I think these aesthetic and religious products gain part of their power from all the moments of breakdown that went into them.”

There is an intimate relationship between the numinosum and trauma, often conceptualized as a rupture in continuity of personal narrative. On the other hand, experiencing the numinosum –through physically inconsequential process of identfication with fairy – tales characters and participation in their adventures as well as struggles – is a factor that could restore unity to individual’s inner world. To paraphrase Kalsched’s claim: a fairytale describes psyche’s self-portrait of its own archaic defensive operations; in other words, it illustrates a psychological process and even though the events from a fairy tale never took place the material world, they take place inside any of us during the lecture. The Force Awakens, just like the story of a dragon or a snake Lindworm is an example of a type of story about a traumatic event, dissociation or a fissure in personality, and the need for internal integration. In this sense the only hero of the story is Prince Lindworm – or Kylo Ren, whose ego (i.e. self) breaks, or is dissociated.

“I’m being torn apart. I want to be free of this pain”

In TFA it happens when Ben Solo symbolically kills his former self and gives himself a new name. He tells Han that “his son is dead” but you know that it is not true and those two identities are alive and at war with themselves. In the story about Prince Lindworm this division is marked in the moment of his birth. Lindworm was one of the pair of twins. Cirlot writes in his book of symbols: “dual nature of twins has two sides, one light and one dark, one giving life and the other bringing death; […] However, the night craves to become the day, evil admires righteousness, life is heading towards death.” This duality often serves a certain narrative purpose and can, for example, be used to avoid the taboo of parricide, like in “Enchanted doe” where one of the brothers kills their mother. In The Force Awakens it is not Ben Solo, Han’s son who murders him, but alien to him Kylo Ren.

It is said in the beginning of the tale that “And this [that they couldn’t have children] often made them both sad, because the Queen wanted a dear little child to play with, and the King wanted an heir to the kingdom”. Then, it is quite possible that the duality of twins is used to illustrate the process in which all unacceptable affects – anger, aggression, defiance – are placed not in the firstborn son but in his shadow, his evil brother. What supports this thesis is the fact that after the happy ending another wedding is prepared but not a word is spoken about Lindworm’s brother. In TFA Kylo Ren represents the same qualities as Lindworm, while Ben Solo is a boy who was born to the light.

This is not the only split visible in the characters of the narratives. The “Prince Lindworm” fairytale belongs to quite popular type which describe the story of monsters which hunt innocent girls, like Bluebeard, the Beauty and The beast and almost all vampire stories.

Their common point is the motive of a malevolent figure, abducting and captivating defenseless woman. What seems most interesting, is that every time a vampire, a sorcerer, or a terrifying creature is both a persecutor and a savior. In the fairy tale of Bluebeard, the protagonist wants to test his wife, but instructs her how she can get out of his jail. Similarly Count Dracula, who in the Coppola’s adaptation allows the woman and the men protecting her to catch him. As Suzy McKee Charnas writes in the "vampire tapestry": the monster is a "predator paralyzed by an unwanted empathy with his prey".

The titular vampire of the story recalls yet another fairy tale, when he accuses the main character that she wants to seduce him. He mocks her, saying: “Unicorn, come lay your head in my lap while the hunters close in. You are a wonder, and for love of wonder I will tame you. You are pursued, but forget your pursuers, rest under my hand till they come and destroy you"  That's where the title of this novel came from, and this is what medieval tapestries and paintings depict.  Nowadays we think a unicorn is a beautiful, enchanting horse. Once upon a time it belonged to the catalog of wild beasts and in many works of art it is depicted as a dangerous predator, tearing animals and people into pieces.

The ‘Hellsing” manga describes vampires as follows:

It seems that in the depths of his heart the creature from a fairytale wants to be killed. The human part of the monster is suffering because of the terrible fate he was condemned to.  It is the girl who impersonates this dissociated, human element of the monster who wants to be defeated and liberated by death.

“You, a scavenger”

Typically, these women are described as virgins or poor peasants – which in the “Prince Lindworm” tale is underlined many times – the narrator often speaks of their bare feet, as in the Snow Queen tales in which Gerda sets out barefoot to the snowy land to save her beloved Kay from Snow Queen. The Lapland shaman says about her: “I can not give her more power than she already has. Can not you see how great she is? You do not see how men and animals are obliged to serve her; How she travels the whole world with bare feet? This power does not come from the magic, it comes from her heart!…”

Still, the bare feet of heroines or their virginity do not symbolize - as we would expect - their innocence. On unicorn tapestries there is often a scene in which a unicorn sleeps in a woman's embrace, and then the hunter's arrows reach him. In this situation, the victim puts her persecutor in a mortal danger. Similarly, Rey is “no one”, lowly scavenger from a desert planet, uncivilized and uneducated. But she is the one who brings the prince to his knees.

At the end of the story, it is said: " No bride was ever so beloved by a King and Queen as this peasant maid from the shepherd’s cottage. There was no end to their love and their kindness towards her: because, by her sense and her calmness and her courage, she had saved their son, Prince Lindworm”. Stories about young men tell about their courage that helped them in the process of becoming a hero; correspondingly, the girl from “Prince Lindworm” is not fearless, but brave when she decides to oppose the hideous snake, or, in case of Rey, to defy someone who might as well be a monster under his mask. When the girl says "Prince Lindworm, slough a skin!" (just like Rey when she wants Kylo to take his helmet off) he replies, " No one has ever dared tell me to do that before". He hissed and showed her teeth, but the girl was not afraid (“you! You are afraid…!”) and persuaded him to do as she commanded. At first we do not know if Lindworm, outraged by her impudence, will not eat her alive, but there is  this part of Lindworm which wants to obey and – by revealing his weakness to the girl – make him mortal, easy to hurt. And indeed, "And there was nothing left of the Lindworm but a huge thick mass, most horrible to see. Then the girl seized the whips, dipped them in the lye, and whipped him as hard as ever she could. Next, she bathed him all over in the fresh milk. Lastly, she dragged him on to the bed and put her arms round him. And she fell fast asleep that very moment. "

As it has been said, girl’s compassion is the key to Lindworm's transformation but before this act is completed, "the girl confronts Lindworm with his violence on his own terms." Only after reflecting and recognizing his - and consequently her own - destructiveness and aggression (just the way Rey did during the duel on Starkiller Base), the prince-monster is bathed in milk – which symbolizes the milk of his mother – and can be born anew – so he can lay in the arms of woman. Bettelheim said: "If we do not want to be ruled and - in extreme cases – torn apart by our ambivalences, we must recognize them, deal with them in a constructive manner and reconcile with ourselves and our personalities."

Her grief is nothing more but the mercy shown to a monster by a man in him. It is then that the integration of his "ego" with the numinosum happens. As Anna Freud wrote, "The most pressing task of man is to resurrect what he has annihilated in a defensive reaction, i.e. recreate what has been repressed, return to the previous place what has been displaced what he moved, to return to the old place, and integrate what he dissociated.”

 It seems that Ben Solo has a lot work to do! ;)

[newssplashy]

Opinion: Scarlet letter in the emerald isle

DUBLIN — My parents chose my middle name, Brigid, as an homage to a beloved Irish saint.

My dad had a devotion to St. Brigid of Kildare, and growing up in Ireland, he often visited a gurgling well named after her near his home in Clare to say a prayer and bless himself with the water.

According to legend, Brigid had some cool miracles in ancient times. She was a brewer who turned water into beer. She was a virginal abbess who conjured a comely maiden for her disappointed suitor to marry.

But surely my parents didn’t realize that one of her miracles was reputed to be performing Ireland’s first abortion. She helped a young woman who had slipped up and gotten pregnant by making her swollen belly disappear with no pain.

That may have been the last time the subject of abortion did not evoke pain in Ireland.

This country is in the midst of an excruciating existential battle over whether it should keep its adamantine abortion statute, giving an unborn baby equal rights with the mother. Under the Eighth Amendment, abortions are illegal, even in cases of rape or incest. The only exception is when it is believed that the mother will die. Anyone caught buying pills online to induce a miscarriage faces up to 14 years in prison.

The Eighth Amendment was added in 1983 to the Irish Constitution, a document drawn up in 1937 that was so steeped in Catholic principle, it was submitted to the Vatican for review. Ireland’s prime minister, Leo Varadkar, and other opponents of the amendment want to repeal it and craft a new law that gives women and doctors more options, perhaps allowing abortions for up to 12 weeks, and beyond in certain cases.

The national referendum on Friday is a fractious vote, dividing families and friends, as the two sides thrash out a subject that was long hidden. Even as Ireland has leapt into modernity, growing more European and becoming the Silicon isle as Britain lurches backward with Brexit, women have been left in the past in some ways, absorbing the shame of old stigmas.

In 2015, Ireland became the first nation to approve same-sex marriage by popular vote. But this is much harder. So far, the repeal “Yes” side is leading, but the gap is narrowing.

Posters with graphic depictions of fetuses compete with “Stop Shaming Women!” posters on lampposts in cities and on country roads. At an anti-abortion rally in Dublin’s Merrion Square last Saturday, a small girl handed out flyers that read “Stop the Slaughter of Babies for Body Parts.”

It is a measure of the draconian views of the “No” side that they refer to pregnancies where there are fatal fetal abnormalities as “hard cases,” and most other abortions as “social abortions.”

Maria Steen, a barrister who stopped practicing and is home schooling her four children, works at the conservative Iona Institute and is a prominent voice on the “No” side. At a fiery dinner I attended with key players from both sides, Steen said her position was simple: “Don’t kill unborn children.” To which Una Mullally, an Irish Times columnist who edited a book of essays and poems called “Repeal,” riposted: “The mind boggles at how you seek to uphold a system where women are not allowed to make choices for themselves.”

Condoms and spermicides were allowed to be sold without a prescription only starting in 1985, the year after Ann Lovett, a 15-year-old girl, died, along with her baby, during childbirth at a religious grotto in County Longford.

“Ireland is obsessed with punishing women,” said Niall O’Dowd, the founder of Irishcentral.com.

Two of the most harrowing “hard cases” were the 1992 “X case,” when a 14-year-old girl who was raped by the father of a friend and became suicidal was barred from leaving the country to get an abortion, and the 2012 case of Savita Halappanavar, first reported by Kitty Holland in The Irish Times.

Savita, a 31-year-old Indian immigrant and dentist who was married to an Indian engineer, went to a Galway hospital in distress the day after her baby shower. She was told that her 17-week-old fetus could not be saved.

Over several days, she begged the medical staff to remove the baby to save her life as she developed every symptom of septic shock. But, because the staff members could still detect a heartbeat, they would not do it because, as one midwife told her, “This is a Catholic country.” Savita died four days after her baby girl, whom she named Prasa, was stillborn.

The turbulent debate about the government’s control over women’s bodies may be affected by yet another unspooling scandal about women’s health. The Irish Health Department outsourced cervical cancer smear tests to a lab in Texas, and at least 209 women were at first mistakenly cleared between 2010 and 2014; at least 18 have since died. And the number could balloon.

The government is in trouble for scrambling in secret, once it learned of the shoddy lab testing, to come up with a strategy to save itself. Newspapers and TV are full of anguished interviews with husbands of women who died, never realizing they should have been treating their cancer, and with women who have had to tell their kids they will soon die.

In the 19th and 20th centuries, “fallen” or “errant” young women, as they were labeled, were hustled away to the Magdalene Laundries or mother-and-baby homes, which were essentially prisons for unwed mothers run by nuns. As Dan Barry wrote in The New York Times, many young women were “sent to work, and sometimes die, in guilt-ridden servitude”; hundreds of bodies of young children were discovered in an unmarked grave in Tuam in County Galway, placed there by nuns.

In the 1930s, my grandmother spirited my father’s older brother out of Ballyvaughan in the middle of the night to a nearby village after he impregnated a neighbor. The young woman was sent into exile in America. She put the baby up for adoption in New York and killed herself a year later. My uncle went on to be a landowner, the pride of the village.

In some ways, things have not changed that much. Women who want to terminate a pregnancy for almost any reason except imminent death still face a Scarlet Letter in the Emerald Isle; they have to leave the country and fly to England if they can afford it (3,265 women went in 2016) or order sketchy pills online and risk a prison sentence.

“The Eighth Amendment has never actually stopped abortion,” said Dr. Ross Kelly, a Dublin physician on the “Yes” side. “We’ve just been exporting Irish women abroad to deal with the reality that women access termination. Women are taking the abortion pill at home on their own, unsupervised, and that is unsafe. Hard cases, like the fatal fetal anomaly cases, are meant to mean rare cases. But we still have two women a week traveling to the U.K. to access termination for these types of cases.

“All the cases are hard cases. Women who have become pregnant, including victims of rape, we force them to leave the country or risk a prison sentence — that would likely be longer than what the rapist would receive — if they get caught taking the abortion pills.

“We hear stories of women who sell their cars or take money from loan sharks to get the money to travel. It also means that those women tend to have later abortions because you have to arrange all this travel and time off from work and child care, and that’s not a good thing, either. We’re talking about an awful lot of women who are going through deep, psychological trauma because their country is turning their back on them.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

MAUREEN DOWD © 2018 The New York Times

source https://www.newssplashy.com/2018/05/opinion-scarlet-letter-in-emerald-isle.html

[antitheticaldreamgirl444]

omgomgomgomgomg my carrie hyperfixation is gonna come back because of this THANK YOU

and G-d made Eve to bear the curse of blood